Another game of Dice Throne, another victory for my partner. This was a pretty grizzly match between the Tactician (me) and the Huntress (her). The game was close in spite of my damage output, which was substantial, thanks to her smart use of Nyra (her faithful tiger and tragic ever dying meatshield). She got uncanny luck with her (basically) free resurrect roll precisely the turn after the KO three times(!), which essentially halted my assault.
The final rounds got nuts as I was down to 6HP to her 10, but with a full health Nyra. I bought myself a round with a well timed card which forced a supremely lucky reroll in her offense phase which caused a full dud roll (very rare). And I actually managed to hold on for a good 3 turns after that, but her tiger (who got one of the aforementioned resurrects here) ensured she stayed at 10HP until I finally bit it.
Another challenging matchup! The Tactician has high damage output, but few unblockable options with reasonable damage. The Huntress, meanwhile, has a pretty significant counter attack in her “defense” roll (no damage mitigation whatsoever). It means she needs to be careful managing her tiger, but it also means she’s frequently able to narrow the gains on my big wallops when she has to take a hit herself. The final two turns were really just waiting for the inevitable, but this round came to one hell of a finale.
Cripes am I ever surprised with how much I love this one.
Over the weekend, my eldest daughter (2.5 years) was enthusiastic about playing games. In the past, she would say, “Let’s play game! Orchard game!” and I would get First Orchard out and set it up and about 30 seconds later she would lose interest. This past weekend was different; where in the past we’ve managed to finish a game, but only just – this past Saturday, we played 6 games back-to-back followed by a short potty break and then another 3 games. And on Sunday, we played 5 more games up until my back began to hurt too much from sitting at a tiny table in a tiny chair. And even still, she wants to play some more. So: 14 games played this weekend and all of them were First Orchard†.
I also tried another solo game of Aeon’s End last night, this time via TTS mod (since tabletop space is at a premium at the moment). Randomly selected nemesis was Knight of Shackles and randomly selected 2-up mages were: Garu and Reeve. Ultimately, I wasn’t able to get those particular mages ramped up fast enough to either do enough damage or create enough Aether to combat Knight-o-Shackles’s straight-forward concept. I forfeited shortly before the end; it’s possible I could have kept going and had a glimmer of a chance, but it was getting late. I’m eager to try again.
My 9YO daughter and I started a game of The Storymaster’s Tales today, since we got the narrations as an add-on to the most recent kickstarter… We almost immediately found a bear skin, and got turned into vampires. My little thief is now nearly unstoppable In a physical fight, but our quest win condition is definitely going to require magic.
(don’t let Reference Pear hear you say that. I’ve heard he’s been struggling to find work as it is without that freeloader “reference pare” poking his nose in)
Speaking of Paolo Mori, yesterday afternoon (before the Village shenanigans I’ve reported on elsewhere) we played a game of Augustus, which I’m very happy to have got my hands on recently. It’s out of stock in the UK but very reasonably priced in France, and completely language independent.
Roman Bingo is just fun. One of the things that makes it fun is that the very nature of the bingo-style mechanism necessitates the players having to call something out when they complete a card, and “Ave Caesar!” is suitably cathartic and ridiculous at the same time. I just rewatched SU&SD’s review on it that they did goodness knows how many years ago (it’s one of their most surreal classics) and thankfully I’m enjoying it much more than their tepid verdict suggests that they did. It’s short, fast-paced, and full of not-too-taxing-but-just-meaningful-enough decisions that fit the brief of “quick breezy game” very well in my opinion.
Yes indeed. It’s not a game I own, and not a game I plan to own, but I’m happy to play it when someone gets it out (and the Tabletop Simulator mod is pretty decent).
Yes I saw. Interesting to see what the “I’ve done a thing” call is going to be. I’ll bet it won’t be anywhere near as fun and/or comical as “Ave Caesar”.
Positive points: much smaller box. (The friend of mine who owns this keeps it in a small plastic tub.)
Negative points: slightly simplified gameplay (no wheat/gold bonuses), 80 rather than 88 objective cards; and for me, generic fantasy. Even more than “Cthulhu”, that says to me “we couldn’t be bothered to think of an interesting theme for this game”. Which is probably unfair.
It was my eldest daughter b’day yesterday, and after her favourite meal (curry) we had a go at her new game : Raiders of the North Sea. She was familiar with it from playing it on the computer, and we had a good time, even though we couldn’t finish the game. We took a picture of the board to continue it another day (unthinkable years ago, remember having to wait to develop your photos and finding out they were all blurry??)
Positives: the coins. They feel amazing. They are the best! And the art, which we knew about.
Negatives: setting up is a little bit too much faffing around, we were spoiled by the computer game doing the hard work for us! And on our version the grey and black workers are a bit too hard to tell apart. A lighter shade of grey would have been more adequate.
Some of the cards In Augustus are maligned - the take that ruin your opponent ones - so if they are booted it’s no loss.
If People want a chunkier Augustus the game Ecos seems basically the same. I personally dig Augustus and the fact it fits in a tiny bag is great.
I think Paolo Mori is a relatively unheralded designer in a lot of ways (he doesn’t feel as famous as others) despite also doing Libertalia and one of the freshest redos of Pandemic.
Paolo Mori: I always thought that there was an interesting game in Ethnos if you could get past the genre fantasy and all the brown. I wouldn’t buy it as it stands, but I’d love to see a retheme and re-art of it. Dogs of War is solid. I don’t seem actually to own any of his games.
I’ve no idea which cards are gone in the Augustus → Via Magica transformation. I do think I’d miss the wheat and gold reward tiles, though they’re fiddly (if you fail to take one when you qualify for it, there’s no way to work out later where it “should” be).
It’s been a big hit with anyone I’ve played it with. It fits nicely in the Ticket to Ride niche, but the variation in rules makes it a bit more interesting.
I haven’t found the theme much of a deterrent, but then it may as well not be there for as much as it affects gameplay.
Last night, my wife and I played a game of Marvel Legendary. Used Daredevil, Iron Fist, Elektra, Gambit, and Ultimate Spider-Man versus Kingpin with the Scheme that uses the Sinister Six and lets all your recruited heroes have Wall-Crawl.
We struggled at first, trying to get our engines going while villains marched through the city. We did get lucky in drawing half of the scheme twists early, which had little effect as we had not defeated any of the Sinister Six yet.
We did manage a win, and only let one Sinister Six member escape the city, however, we did screw up a little. After playing it right every time before this game, and even for the first half of this game, I re-read some of Iron Fists’ cards incorrectly which really overpowered them. So, while I think we still would have won, it would have taken a little longer and we might have not been able to recruit a couple of the cards we did as easily. Still fun though, and another play towards my 10x10 for the year.
Last night my son and I attempted to play a game of Ashes: Rise of the Pheonixborn. I say attempted because we were both trying “new to us decks” and between bad draws (after the initial 5) and poor rolls, my son was having a bad time, so we just called it.
Going to give it another go one day this week.
After that we had a quick game of MtG. First game we called because he’s still learning the core ideas, and didn’t realize he should have taken a mulligan (had nothing to play until turn 5). Second game went better. I still got off to a good start, but he got a couple big hitters on the field that I couldn’t deal with, and he was able to bring me down.
Always remain NDS me how much in love MtG, and why I definitely shouldn’t get back into it! Lol
Killing some time this morning between conference calls, I got Jump Drive out on my desk and played a quick solo game using the Solo Campaign designed by BGG user Epyo (the rules and campaign log sheet both were printed by a previous owner of this copy and came included).
I’m not a huge fan of the “here’s a deck of 100+ cards; luck of the draw is your problem… see how well you do” types of games (looking at you, Teraforming Mars!). Typically, these types of games that include multiple copies of each card are way better. And even better yet are when you don’t need to get combos put together and when you do they are nice, but they aren’t game breaking.
Jump Drive is just as I described above; I was never left thinking, “Oh, well, this card is worthless because I don’t have the card that goes along with it” – instead, I thought, “I’ll play this card and if I get the symbiotic-card, that’s just gravy.”
The sensation of arc is really present here; because of the simple mechanisms and turn structure and the way cards interact with each other, you feel like whatever you do just explodes and before long you’ll be marveling in your vast riches of Space Points and Space Cards. Truly, I would best describe it as a jet-propelled rocking chair; a subtle shift in your direction will send you careening into a vastly different trajectory – but you’ll be on your way with a smile on your face and, likely, you won’t be disappointed.
I guess the one concern I have for multiplayer is a run-away leader problem (which could become very apparent very quickly) but only time will tell.
After playing this, I definitely want to get Res Arcana played (same designer, lots of similar ideas)
Eager to play this some more solo as well as try it against my neighbor whom, I suspect, will adore it (perhaps more than me).
Have you played the “full” Race for the Galaxy? Because I quite enjoy it, but I do sometimes feel that there’s a lot of “take a punt on this keyword coming up, and if it doesn’t then I lost the game in turn 2”. (Though not as much as there is in Terraforming Mars.) (And at other times I feel “well, I’m going to see a lot of the deck eventually, I just need to grab the cards I want when they show up”.)