Cthulhu: Death May Die, which we unfortunately failed at
Merchants of the Dark Road first play, took forever (not my game). A bit confusing, but it all started to make more sense as we went. Would probably play again, hopefully wouldn’t take as long.
Pictures, we always have a good time with this.
There was a small convention in the town I live in (Kitchener) called “Ragnarok” (the tagline, from back in the misty BeforeTimes of 2018, is “Game Like the World Is Ending”, which was funny at the time and is very, very dark now). I know all three founders/organizers, and so I kinda committed to poking my nose in for at least a little bit to show them support. They all expected it to flop (they couldn’t keep putting off the deposit they put down with the hotel for their 2020 event, so they had to run it this weekend or lose the money entirely).
It was well attended, though (they were projecting about 20-30 people over the weekend, and got 250+). While there, I played:
Whirling Witchcraft in which I made a classic blunder: I let somebody else try to teach the game. I forget sometimes how hard it is to teach games, and my dear friend did an awful job (to the point of completely messing up the scoring/win condition). Whatever, the game itself was neat. Solid, not world-shaking, with an interesting draft “take that” sorta mechanic going on.
Mission Catastrophe, in which I made another classic blunder: I believed somebody when they said a game was appropriate to play with kids. I jumped on the grenade of learning this one, and aside from one PIP card I couldn’t figure out (What does a “Reboot” card do!? It’s not in the stupid manual anywhere! So frustrating!), I managed to keep the game moving along at a fast enough clip that the kids (5 and 7) almost kinda were into it. Their dad really wanted to play, though, so we muscled through. And two other people who I know from work (regulars, and nice people) wanted to play a game with me… anyway. It was fine. Fast, light, with some very “Kickstarter”-esque feels (I don’t know if it was a KS, but I would be kinda surprised if it wasn’t). Got a couple rules wrong but they didn’t really change much. It was okay. Not my bag, but okay.
Then I was exhausted by being masked around people in my time away from work so I bounced. Which is a damn shame… I could’ve used some time to relax and play games but I’m just not mentally there yet. But still, I’m super happy the event went well.
In 2020, with Covid-19 starting to sweep through populations overseas but still not a whole lot of information known about it, there happened to be a screening of Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys (organised long in advance, as part of a retrospective of his films). Pretty much the first thing which appears on screen is the sentence “5 billion people will die from a deadly virus in 1997” and the nervous tension throughout the theatre was palpable.
Played Lords of Vegas with my wife and her brother today. He got out to an early lead, but we caught up to him around the 2-point breakpoint. Then my wife got ahead with a couple of 2-tile casinos and a 4-tile casino. While there was some leapfrogging between the two of them, I kept up the rear the whole time.
Eventually, due to the Up expansion, she got a 10-tile casino that scored a couple of times, jumping her well into the lead. The final scores were all in a line due to the breakpoints, so it wasn’t a total blowout. Scores were my wife at 54, her brother at 49, and me at 44.
Yesterday we played a couple of games (and then went home because I was still very tired from socialising the previous day):
The Palace of Mad King Ludwig: along the same lines of The Castles of… except you all build the same palace so you have to make lots of decisions about whether to help other players by completing their rooms to also benefit you, or whether to wall off their doors/cut them off with the moat. I prefer this version because of the interaction with other players. It also doesn’t have the market from Castles which I think is a big improvement.
Beyond the Sun: tech trees in space! I was getting very sleepy by this point so I didn’t really have a strategy. We never managed to unlock the level 4 techs, which was a shame but also meant the scores at the end were closer than they would have been otherwise.
Oh, that’s good information. I won my only game of CoMKL, but that market is the reason I’m never playing it again. I previously described it as the appalling AP-triggering “choose the optimal sequence of these tiles every single turn” which made every turn a drag, sapping most of the enjoyment out of [the game] in my group.
Given the almost-identical naming, I’d just assumed that ‘Palace’ had the same feature, so I’ve never had any interest in it before.
Last night, we went to my in-laws’ place to play some cards and we also got to try out full-player, count Bärenpark for the first time. Quite the different experience than with 2 players, let me tell ya! It was great, though!
Since it’d been so long, especially for my mother-in-law, we played without the bonus objectives. Scores were 93 for my wife, 80 for me, 73 for my mother-in-law and 69 for my father-in-law.
Really really enjoyed it. It’s a lot meaner with four players.
At the festival, we „played“ several rounds of Top Ten (bought it because of SdJ nomination). This is pretty cool to bring along if you won‘t have a table to play on. It basically goes like this: Everyone gets a secret number from 1-10. And one person gets a Top Ten card from the huge stack that gives you a Top Ten. Then everyone has to give an answer that matches their number to allow the „Captain“ (we say „Mops“) a clue how to order the answers. It quickly becomes very silly with recurring jokes and that was all that is needed for a festival. Obviously you can also make up your own questions. There are some that have activities on them we skipped all of those. (Oh and there is a bit more like an actual game but just like So Kleever and Just One we ignored those parts, that would have also needed a table which we didn‘t have.)
Example Question: You are going to a festival to see metal bands. Name a band on a scale from „I‘ll put wax in my ears“ to „I‘ll be in the first row“ to see them.
Remember: all the numbers are secret and the captain has to order the answers.
The captain who has a 3 says „Helene Fischer“
I have a 10 and say „Within Temptation“
My partner has a 7 and says „Testament“
And the last person has a 4 and says „Knorkator“
Now everyone knows my favorite band of course. The captain knows their own number and that my partner likes old-school metal. So now they only have to guess how much the last person enjoys Knorkator.
A real question: „You were going too fast with your car and get stopped by police. What do you tell them on a scale from „They let me get away without a ticket“ to „They arrest me on the spot“?
The highs and lows lend themselves to all kinds of humor, the 5-7s are a bit difficult. Overall it was quite hilarious, especially when it turns out that it is possible to nearly always give variants of the same answer and have people still guess correctly no matter your number.
However, as funny as it is, once you played a while, the game needs to vanish for a bit to come back with another group. It is not one I would want to play all the time. Over the course of 3 days we played 3 times. But after that I knew I would not take it out again with that group until at least a couple of months have passed.
The humor does remind me a tiny little bit of CaH—as in it depends very much on the group how that turns out and I would refrain from playing this with anyone but good friends.
Sounds a bit like Reverse Wavelength?
Yes, it does. My friend mentioned it reminded her of that one. But when we played Wavelength it fell completely flat for that particular group, so I sold it on. I have no idea why this one worked better. Possibly because there was no other game, there was beer and we quickly hit on those two recurring answers that brought much laughter… also here you get more variety in the answers (I don‘t remember Wavelength that well) intead of just guessing what 1 person meant everyone gets to participate in the answer shenanigans.
Wavelength has the slight problem that I think this one solves with calibration because you’re here constantly refining the scale with each guess whereas with wavelength there’s a a scale and you’re trying to mind read with a single datapoint.
The main action for most people a round of wavelength is arguing about whether the top of the scale is X or Y when I’m reality no one can know for sure so it’s a pointless thing to get excited about.
I think where top ten might end up losing as it needs more “sporting spirit” to play because it’s probably easier to game and “solve” eventually.
Played games Sunday with @lalunaverde and 2 more. While waiting for the last player we played some 6 Nimmt! which was as excellent as always. I managed to play one round spectacularly badly. I was quite impressed at how much I managed to pickle myself for all the last 3 cards.
Next up I took a unilateral decision that it was a day for Indonesia. It was a good use of my executive powers, I think we all really enjoyed it, I even got a follow on text to say how good it was. If only my exec decisions in game were as good… I had a real strong start, but dropped out of contention missing an era change so ordering my R&D wrong for going in to era C. I think as well I’ll need to relearn the game at 4 as I’ve mainly played 3 player and the pacing is quite different. I sold ready meals mainly, did some shipping but was mainly king of the mergers as I jumped that track most.
Lastly to play something as relentlessly aggressive, positional and spirally in the player driven decision department we put Chicago Express out to try the Nickel Plate expansion. I was very tired so I got a second as 2 players over spent on shares at the end to ruin their positions by dumping all their cash in non-scoring shares. I don’t think I deserved second place on my positive plays, but I did avoid overspending so I guess next least stupid. @lalunaverde took the win with his experience clearly showing. One day I will learn enough from this master to get closer…
Experienced at being a dick, more like!
Perhaps the best play of Chicago Express that I can remember? My paranoia got hold of me so I avoided trying to get majorities (and waste a turn!), so I’m happy to achieve parities and shift companies when necessary. Another player and I went for the Red company 1 to 1 shares, but broke the balance when he took the 3rd (and last) Red share. Sabotage was the only option I can think of to prevent the Red company from reaching Chicago. In hindsight, it went alright.
There was an opportunity to block Yellow using the Blue company but didn’t see it until it was too late. I hedged my bets too much thinking that I can join the Yellow company. Unfortunately, everyone was thinking the same.
Got elbowed out of some auctions with high high bids that are too high for me. It went alright too, as I end up being first
Indonesia was a disaster for me though. I was initially planning to be a shipping magnate but end up being elbowed on merger auctions. My companies got sold repeatedly and end up with lacklustre companies on highly competitive fields. But Indonesia is one of my Top 10’s now. A lot of depth here that can be explored and one of the players say that “[Indonesia] is a train game”. I very much agree with that. But I prefer the term SICS.
This was the play I was thinking of most of yours. They made a poor move going all in, stopped them getting to Chicago. Classic hubris. I was also tired and got a little annoyed about not nulling the auctions but actually it let them make a big mistake.
Played two games of Ghost Stories tonight with my wife. We played twice because the first game was over in about 15 minutes. After drawing the 14th ghost card, the game was over with both of us dead, but remarkably no haunted tiles, considering we had 5 Haunters in that bunch.
We reshuffled the ghost deck and played again with the same setup. Normal difficulty. Went much better, and actually had a few turns where we did not feel totally pressured.
That said, the crunch came just before Wu-Feng. We were using the guardhouse expansion tile, so we could look at the top 4 cards of the deck and rearrange them. There were two black ghosts, one a 3-pip advanced haunter and one a 4-pip tormentor that also made both of us lose a Tao token. Also a blue ghost and a yellow ghost that would spawn another. But Wu-Feng was just two below those.
Put the blue and the tormentor on top, yellow on the bottom, took our next turns, then used the guardhouse again, thinking to put Wu-Feng on top. It was the Untouchable incarnation, a black 3-pip which requires it be placed on a Buddha statue before it can be exorcised, so that changed our plans. Luckily, we already had the Circle of Protection set to black.
I got the statue, my wife cleared a space using the Sorcerer’s Hut, I was able to move a ghost that was blocking my power (green, rerolls) over to a neutral board, and placed the statue. Untouchable was out at this point. Luckily my wife did not draw a blue or black card, as her board was otherwise full and would have used up the statue.
Being the blue monk that can both interact and exorcise, she used the space to move Untouchable onto the statue, then tried to exorcise it, but failed. My draw filled up my board and both of us were at 1 Qi. My wife had the only open slot on all the boards. I used the yellow neutral board power to Enfeeble Untouchable so we only needed a single black on the dice. Rolled and failed. Used my reroll ability and got one! Victory!
First game was just demoralizing, so it was nice to have the second one, which came down to the wire!
Edited to add just a smidge more content:
It’s really good. Reminds me of Brass a bit, but a good deal lighter (mechanically, aesthetically and thematically). Totally understand why Quinns couldn’t recommend it, though. It’s unapologetically, appallingly opulent, LOL. And in a strange twist, set-up takes seconds and take-down not much more.
Next step is to teach it to my darling wife and play a game. Likely not today, she’s a bit tired and she has a breakfast thing with her school colleagues tomorrow, but she’s really keen to play it soon!
Games Night!
Nine in attendance, so three tables of these were formed. More importantly I played three games and won two.
Big City (old rules), it’s fun. Deceptively simple but a game of jostling for sets of cards. But hey, the end city looks cool.
Mille Fiori, good fun but decisions feel pretty meh. Wouldn’t say no to a game though.
Iberian Gauge. Hmm, need time to process this. There’s a great game in here, but I feel it’s a 4-5 player game.
I feel like the game got too much money in circulation that the last stock rounds are a bit nonsense and so dependent on turn order. Trans-Siberian Railroad, imo, did this “rail sharing” better. It also has a Tsar that will nationalise your companies if they grow too slow.
There was a lot of money flying about at the end.
I did tank a company that I had one share in by using the remaining money to lease/build to nowhere
Some games over the last week or so:
The Fox in the Forest, game of this with my wife. She won as she usually does. I’ve asked her to share some of her insight and experience with trick takers next time we play.
Hansa Teutonica, played this with a full 5 players and it really shines with a full complement of players. Interesting to see all the different approaches people took and how they panned out. Such an interesting game to ponder.
No Thanks
Cascadia, brought this one along to a local meetup I normally go to. 2 player game, tight as always but my opponent scraped ahead off of habitat scoring.
The Red Cathedral, first play of this. Super interesting, glad I picked it up. My opponent liked it so much he said he plans to buy a copy. I do think it’d be more interesting with more than 2 players though, particularly the endgame scoring, but it was still quite fun.
Air, Land & Sea, continue to really like this as a quick little 2 player, though it normally takes a hand for folks to figure out the importance of withdrawing. He got there though, kicked my butt in 3 rounds!
Burgle Bros., man it had been a long time since I last got this one to the table. It’s still terrific fun. We did get a rule wrong (drawing a new card each time the guard reached an alarm) which would’ve changed things a bit, but regardless it was great. I love how dynamic it feels compared to something like Pandemic, which can feel a bit predictable at times. We won, though it was pretty tense toward the end. I am intrigued by the sequel (BB 2), but given how infrequently I play this one, it probably wouldn’t make sense for me to pick it up.
