Final games night for a while.
Tinderbox x lots of games. Stack, stack falls over. Good fun
7 Wonders Architects x 3, 3 players with a win each. It’s swingy, but 20 minutes long. Had fun with it.
Isle of Skye, good fun
Ended with a 5 player Scout and it absolutely was a blast. Won it too.
Played a learning solo game of Knight Fall during Open House on my desk at school. I’m super happy with it. Swingy in a fun way, and great art all around.
Glad to hear it is good. I first saw something for it on BGG and was intrigued. Even moreso once I saw the price.
Played a couple of casual games.
Wits and Wagers, decent. Happy to own it for the pub quiz feeling.
Secret Hitler, nope. I’d rather sit out all social deduction games in future. Played due to friends. Lost the game as a liberal put down a fascist policy to ‘mix the game up a bit’. Just nope.
Even as a fan of social deduction I’m not a fan of this one - there seems to be one best way to play as Hitler (always be liberal until you become chancellor).
I finally played a game of Solar Storm this evening.
And that’s about how it panned out. I played at the “medium” difficulty, which is the second-easiest of five. The difficulty determines how many wildcard resources will be shuffled into the draw deck: 0, 2, 4, 6, or 8. I can say I made eager use of those wildcards – and was extremely grateful for the appearance of the final two when my draw pile was nearly extinguished, because despite burning all of my bonus actions on scavenging in a quest for one single blue card, it was determined to hide from me!
Pleasingly true to its ilk, the game went right down to the wire with three of the eight outer rooms of the ship at maximum damage and me still requiring one additional turn, and the result of the game consequently at the mercy of the final damage card to be drawn. Fortunately for me that card turned out to be damaging rooms which could still absorb it, and I was able to take my victory actions.
The theme didn’t jump out at me; but it was only a first game so I was focused on the mechanics. I believe it’s a game that will feel more thematic if you make a bit of an effort.
I’ll be interested to find out whether it feels different each time I play. Pandemic creates little narratives by virtue of the the way it will target different areas of the map every time you play. Here the playing field is shrunk to only 9 locations, and although that 3x3 grid is randomised each time you play, I don’t think the same sense of variety could emerge from this. It’s a trade-off for the size of the game, of course (which was one of the reasons that I bought it; and indeed I played this very easily on a small table), so it’s less a criticism than an observation.
I expect that if it has longevity it’s going to be rooted in those difficulty levels, and in how enjoyable it is to learn how to optimise my moves as I bump the difficulty up.
Playing time says 30-60 minutes, which sounds about right – I took more like 1:45 for my learning game – including set-up, re-reading the rules, and packing up after – so I can imagine future games being around or under the hour mark.
Played 2 player Spirit Island this evening. A Spread of Rampant Green and Downpour Drenches the World took on Russia level 5 and won!!! 
With 2 defensive spirits I was worried we’d hang in but not kill enough to win by fear or clearing. In the end we had a choice of victories on the turn of the second to last card. Russia has a rule of adding the unused invader cards in to the fear deck which get added to the build slot. Our level 3 won joined another level 3 and managed to cover all 4 terrain types which was really hairy having the whole island build and next turn the whole island ravaged. Fortunately by this point we had enough stuff thinned and pushed that we only had 6 blight go out 
. Some juicy majors and Downpour’s repeating of powers got us some mass wipe outs of explorers before we got all coordinated in buildings destruction so last fee turns we got 2 fear cards a turn and they really helped with avoiding blight catastrophes. As always excellent game and much fun was had.
Argh. The fact that the “liberal” lost you the game and you didn’t immediately break their kneecaps…
The last game of Avalon I ever played (and will ever play) we, the good guys, lost because one of the other good guys specifically didn’t want me (on her team) to win because “I was playing too well.”
I almost flipped the table.
Curious what the LLV take on Wingspan is?
Also trying desperately not to defend Ethnos. It’s all good.
I didn’t care.
I’d checked out after the rules explanation and realised that, despite many people loving it, it still was very similar to Resistance. The only game like that I’ve enjoyed is Mascarade
Pre-holiday gaming
Dominant Species - It is still a damn enjoyable game. People find it swingy and has strong luck elements on what food source shows up - and I agree. But it’s still a fine area majority game like El Grande. The mutual sharing of what kind of food source their animals can eat produces interesting dynamics between players and how this creates divergence on which players end up sharing which spaces. How the tundra spreads is also intriguing.
It’s not a SICS game like Chicago Express or The Great Zimbabwe, but not everything has to be a SICS game.
You can add me as your Geekbuddy and see my thoughts when doing Geekbuddy Analysis 
Didn’t like it in 2019; still don’t like it now. I am more tolerant on these sort of games now. Sometimes, playing Sudoku isn’t so bad. (maybe because I play them less?) Although, I’m sort of leaning on not showing up in the club I’ve been in since its inception because these are the kind of games they play most of the time. I can only play Yokohama so many times before I get bored.
But there are still a couple of members who bring games I like. Someone brought Navagador while I wasn’t around, and that was a fine Euro.
Anyway, I would rather play other cube-pushing card tableau games like Race for the Galaxy, Res Arcana, or Seasons. Or just play a Chudyk title. Wingspan is an example of “board games are getting better” is absolute BS. Wingspan and other titles like Ark Nova pretty much forgot the design lessons that RFTG have learnt many years ago.
You’re a better man than I, Gunga Din.
I like some of the “hidden traitor” games that are on the sillier side (specifically Fake Artist Goes to New York and Spyfall), and I do think that Mafia de Cuba is very good, but yeah, normally social deduction games just aren’t for me any more.
I own a few social deduction/ hidden traitor games and keep trying them as they are such staples. I definitely prefer ones where you are doing something as a game together so you have information to use to work out who might be the traitor(s) rather than the pure social ones like Resistance. The only one I’ve found that really works for me is Saboteur.
Last weekend was my local game group meetup. I tried Ark Nova for the first time. It was OK. I can see why people have been comparing it to Terraforming Mars, and if you hate TM I don’t think this is different enough you will like it. If you like TM this might be different enough you will like it a little more if the changes are in a way you prefer or less if not. I like TM ok but not a ton and probably like AN a little less. I doubt we will add AN to our collection as we are all in on TM since my husband LOVES it.
I also played Quest for El Dorado and Ticket to Ride on a map I’d never played before (US West). I love El Dorado and had fun with it as expected. It’s a deck builder race game for anyone who has never played it. I generally think TtR is ok, but this map was a little more crunchy and I enjoyed it a bit more than I expected.
Other than that meetup, I haven’t been playing games much. My husband and I are working on painting and slowly moving various rooms of our new house. Hopefully we will soon have a much nicer game room setup and then not too long after that get fully moved and be able to play more games again.
I foolishly bought Ark Nova, even knowing I wouldn’t like it, on the strength of the zoo theme in my house, the thought of a new solo experience, and the thought that it looked like it might fix the Terraforming Mars model.
I don’t particularly need any of those.
I haven’t played yet, but since that impulse I’ve only heard disappointments. We’ll see. Should have a fine resale market if it comes to that.
Edit: and I just found out that due to shipping box damage, UPS insurance refunded the cost of the game. Free is a pretty good entry point for trying out a game!
Another two solo runs of Solar Storm, this time on the middle difficulty (“hard” – 4 wild cards) – with a loss and then a win.
I was very close to the end of the damage deck again in these games. That deck has 24 cards, so that seems like the intended ballpark number of turns for a game. It’s not a hard limit – when all of the damage cards have been drawn your ship suffers a hull breach, and you start losing the undrawn cards from the other (resource) deck instead of taking damage (discarding 1, 2, or 3 cards based on a die roll), from which point it’s only game-over if the resource deck is expended.
This time I acted out some radio chatter between my three astronauts as they moved around the ship and communicated what was happening to one another. That helped :)
I’m still feeling the same at this stage. I focused more on the special abilities of the eight outer rooms in these games, and how they would interact, and the puzzle felt more interesting.
(Unlike Pandemic, the special abilities aren’t character abilities, but rather locational abilities; but you can only use a room’s ability if it is undamaged (or fully-repaired); and you can also only divert power in an undamaged room (a thing you must do once for each room, but it’s more expensive than other actions). There are some nice dynamics between rushing to divert power from rooms which have yet to suffer any damage vs repairing damaged rooms with more powerful abilities so you can take advantage of those, as well as the ‘usual’ (Pandemic-esque) dilemma of whether to risk The Badness accruing to dangerous levels elsewhere while you try to achieve something helpful where you are now, and options for mitigating that.
I still think that every game of this will inevitably feel much of a muchness – I’m not sure if even the randomised layout of the cards really makes much different in practice (although there’s an alternative set of rooms in the mini-expansion which would provide a bit of variety) – but as a tactical puzzle it seems pretty fair.
I should probably also get out my copy of Forbidden Island (which I’ve not played in ages) and see how I feel about that by comparison.
45 mins per game this time (not including set-up and tear-down).
Two games with the kids today
Seven Wonders: Architects - lost to the six year old. High scores though 39-52-56
Get on Board - came first, 52-49-49
A few new games played yesterday
ScandalOh!, first play (not my copy). I knew this was the newest game from the designers of Awkward Guests, which we enjoyed. I probably would have backed it, but my mate did instead. On BGG it’s listed as a reimplementation of Awkward Guests, which I wasn’t aware of. AG was your classic whodunnit mystery. ScandalOh! (yeah, I don’t love the name either) is about trying to find the scandal, which celebrity is involved, and what newspaper will cover the story. Your player board shows the possible stories, contacts, and newspapers, all with their own icons. You exchange cards the same way you did in AG, and each card can confirm or exclude an icon, so you mark them off as you go. I was a bit confused to be honest. I had a go at solving it, after someone had already done it, and got two out of three things correct. I just picked the things that had the most hits. Not sure about this one.
Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest, first play of the new edition. I used to own the original Libertalia. This is the same, with more characters and a different reputation system for ties. Also has a solo mode, if you’re into that. It’s pretty easy to learn – there are three voyages, each consisting of a number of days. For each day, you play one of your cards and then activate them. Cards are placed by rank, and their day time ability is triggered from low to high rank. Then, in reverse order, you do any dusk abilities, and also take one of the loot tokens on that day. Loot tokens are chests, maps, barrels, relics, sabers, amulets, and hooks. What they do depends on which side of the board you are using. There are also loot tiles so you can mix things up even more. On the normal (calm) side of the board, all the loot is beneficial, apart from relics, which cost you money. I kind of miss the old games art, which was darker and a lot more piratey.
Break the Cube X 2, first play. We play (and love) Break the Code, so this seemed like something we would like. It’s still breaking a code, but this time the “code” is an arrangement of blocks in various colours. You all set your blocks behind your screen, and each player is trying to guess the arrangement of the player to their left. On you turn, you can ask a number from one to nine (it’s a 3 X 3 grid), and the answer is the colour you see from above that number. So, you might have a red block and a yellow one on top of it – you would answer “yellow”. The other question you can ask is a letter, and the answer is what colours are seen if looking from the side of the structure. This could be up to three colours. But everyone has to answer this, including you, so you’re giving information to the player trying to guess your blocks. Finally, the third question you can ask is to ask a player if you have their code correct. It’s a fun game, reminded me a little of Zendo. We played two quick games.
Roam, first play. A simple area control game. You have a grid of six tiles, and you start with three cards. Each card has a pattern, so you place that pattern on the grid, take any money you’ve covered, and if all the places are taken on that card, you get to keep it, so you’ve got that new pattern to play in the future.
Planet Unknown
Fantasy Realms
Some games over the last week:
Fantastic Factories, always a tight game here, in the end I won due to a good combo of goods and point value buildings. Scales well, lots of fun, easy to grasp. It’s a winner.
Samurai, another game that was super tight. We played with three and, as expected, each of us won majority in one type of figure, and then I won the tie-breaker by one. One of our players expressed his distaste for games with hidden trackable info upon the teach, which this does have, but I’ve not felt that to be a big issue in any of my games, including this one. Maybe I just don’t tend to play with folks with amazing memories so guesstimating is par for the course.
The Fox in the Forest, a win against my wife! A rare treat. Her tutoring is paying off it would seem…
Regicide, we were taken out by the third king, which felt like a fair effort (we really lacked spades in the back half of the game, which hurt us a lot).
Roll Through the Ages:The Bronze Age x2, my wife insisted on multiple plays of this one. It’s still pretty fun. Not my favourite roll and write by any stretch, but holds up as a fairly breezy dice game.
I just assumed that was a Friedemann Friese game until I looked it up.
I didn’t realise until now how thoroughly he’d occupied that particular alliteration in my mind. What if another 25 designers have the same idea?
Designer #26: “Oh darn. Um. Xanthic xerography?”
