Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[lalunaverde]

TLDR: A love letter to 1817

I am getting good now with 1817 and it seems that it is the only game I want to play more online, while I’m happy to play the rest on the table.

A lot of people seem to lean one way or the other in this genre: whether they prefer the stock market gameplay or the “run-good-companies” gameplay. And they also classify an 18xx title that way one or the other. This is a good distinction on anyone who is starting in the genre. But 1817 seems to tread those two camps pretty neatly at the same time!

Most of the game is spent on buying/selling stocks. And you must run your companies well, or else people will start shorting underperforming or overvalued companies. Loaning system is present, and the interest rates keep going up if loans keep piling up. Survival to the fittest as interest rates starts to make people cry and companies start to sink.

Auctions for sinking companies is tense and requires nerve because it’ll be your companies (not you as a player) that will be paying for the winning bids and they’ll need to take loans if they have insufficient money in their company purse. Interest payments starts to loom on the background again. Acquiring or merging the right company can swing the game to you in such a good way.

The rise and fall of train companies here really shows the dynamism of the game. And it is very rare to see how it is the players on the table, not the game’s system, that are doing the rubber-banding in this game. Companies that rocket up to stratosphere might find themselves getting shorted and players get some tasty money in one simple move. If they shorted the wrong company, get ready to bleed. Dirt cheap ones get cash-flow from players who wants to see them rise.

Of course, there are the private companies. 1817 is unique where private companies do not pay revenues. Instead, they only give bonuses by comboing them with the right major companies. So holding them on your hand is useless to you.

I can see why there are people who don’t play any other game (even other 18xx games) other than 1817. You can sink 200 or 300 games here and you’ll still be playing. i am very impressed and I’m glad I went for it. It was the most expensive game I have bought. Even beating Cthulhu Wars base game only. But I am very glad I have it. It is the “keeper” item in my collection that I’m glad to have.

[Benkyo]

After trying 1889(?) and being unimpressed, I’ve kind of been waiting for a convincing argument for THE 18xx that I should try to see if it will change my mind on the genre. Maybe this is it?

[Bondy034]

Games over the last week:

A solo run of Hadrian’s Wall. Still excellent fun. Still feel like my strategy is only kind of working - I think I could do better, basically.

Bargain Quest played with two (which is not really ideal but it functions). We lost quite a few heroes to bad flips from the adventure deck. Still we both survived, and cleared out the final boss on the first turn. Really need to get this to the table with some more folks soon.

Regicide x2, introduced it to another friend and he rather enjoyed it. We were a little loose on table talk for game one (and we won that one) but tightened up our communication in game #2 and we didn’t even make it to the kings :(. Terrific fun.

Love Letter, played with the new roles and finally saw the Spy actually come into play (and for me to boot!). I may have undervalued Love Letter in the past. It’s quite good - simple and lots of luck but it’s still interesting.

Saboteur, had a bit of a game of this (one round) turned out we were two miners and two saboteurs, so the miners basically never had a chance. I don’t particularly like this one, but I know others do so I humor them.

Azul Summer Pavilion, excellent game of this (though my final round was sad - I had like 8 tiles to my opponents 15+). That swung the game, which had otherwise been really close. My preferred Azul for sure.

Raccoon Tycoon, picked this one up on the virtue of it being super cheap (25 AUD - which is a bargain for a card game, let alone a chunkier box like this.) We enjoyed it a lot, though we didn’t explore much of the building deck as we kept hammering the auctions. I do think it runs a little short with 3 with the base rules, would probably recommend the new/longer rules at that play count. If we had four though, I might stick with the game ending when either the railroad deck or town deck are exhausted. In the end I won with a hybrid strategy - beating out my opponents who super specialised into towns and railroads. The art is also charming - I just wish there was a little more of it. It might be a more fragile game than I’d hoped, but that might have just been by virtue of 3 newbies trying to wrap our heads around the strategy.

Bohnanza, wow, this one had been awhile but it is still heaps of fun and fairly easy to explain. I cut out the Wax Beans, Coffee Beans, and Cocoa beans - and I much prefer the length without them - it’s not a game you want dragging. All our scores were pretty close, but our winner won by a couple of points. Another I’m keen to play again, and with the same people, I think the deals might get a bit more cutthroat (they were fairly loose early on - “Oh you want this? Sure I guess you can have it”)

[lalunaverde]

Not sure tbh. What is it that you like or don’t like, in general? Big open question but there you go. I feel like people would be more comfy playing the more Euro-y ones like 1846: Race for the Midwest - this one was by Tom Lehmann, snowball-y but there’s a segment of the genre who think that this is the shizz; or 1862; East Anglia, you can buy shares up to 100% and sell all of them, so there’s no obligation that people find a bit too brutal. And the focus is more on who has the highest score rather than making someone lose.

but if 1817 is what interests you, have a look around and see what’s up. If you’re gonna play 1817 async online, what sucks is that the initial auction takes forever, and I tend to make these 5 second moves while I’m doing work or something.

I say these because people use their previous experience as their point of reference when trying something new. I used Cube Rails like Chicago Express or other games like Imperial as my reference, and it was a very unsatisfying experience (turns out I still prefer the dynamic alliances of Cube Rails and Imperial). But the group wanted to play more 18Chesapeake, so I manage to play more and see these games for what they do.

If 1889: Shikoku didn’t impressed, suffice to say you should avoid 1830 or any of its derivatives.

[Phil]

@Bondy034

Azul Summer Pavilion

“I thought you’d never ask!”

One of Matt’s absolute best SUSD videos, IMO.

[Phil]

I played Resist! tonight, again going with the standard game with a random draw.

With seven ‘successful’ missions behind us, my band of 15 (comprising 12 maquis and 3 enemy spies), despite having managed to recruit an additional two members along the way, had been reduced to just five. We had earlier managed to flush out one of the spies; so this meant there were two spies and only three maquis who remained hidden and dedicated to the cause.

Our group had attacked the commander’s villa, destroyed the barracks, reconnoitered the mountain pass, taken back the farmhouse, attacked the counter-guerilla headquarters, destroyed the supply convoy, and finally defended the crossroads. Taking out the supply convoy had been at an enormous cost, with no fewer than five maquis sacrificing themselves in the process.

I thought I was going to have to call it quits there (it would have been a “minor victory”), but then realised that with my remaining three, who were now guaranteed to be taking part in any further action, there was one mission – an attack on the mayor’s house – where success was still possible. The attempt would necessitate another sacrifice, and it was unclear what sort of defence we would encounter; however a successful mission would elevate our efforts to the level of “victory” (albeit not a major one), and we could afford a failed mission in a bid to take out one last target…

As we learned what we were facing it became clear that we could pull it off. Emelio didn’t make it back, but thanks to him the attack was a success.

There were two targets remaining – a low-value bunker, and Franco’s own headquarters – but they were both too heavily defended. Sagrario and Adolfo had both kept their involvement hidden from Franco’s forces, and it was time to return to civilian life and hope for the best. They could do no more – the resistance was over.

This was a very poor-quality photo (the text was pretty unreadable even at full-res), so I’ve only uploaded a small version. The stack of names to the right are all the resistance members who were caught or killed. To the left are the only remaining remnants. Above are the two missions we were unable to attempt.

My MVP was Roberto (who deals a large amount of damage when he reveals himself), along with the brave souls who sacrificed themselves to bust him out of prison not once but twice!

This game is good. It is also a brutal series of tough decisions from start to finish, as you realise time and again that in order to succeed at the mission you have chosen (or simply at any of the missions which are available), not everyone will be coming back. And even then you might fail. All you can do is try to mitigate the damage as best you can, and hold out for as long as possible.

[yashima]

Played a round of Roll Camera! With the B-Movie expansion.

I admit my first few plays of this game last year left me a bit undecided. On the one hand it is a movie making themed game which encourages a bit of roleplaying on the other hand, I thought the gameplay was a bit uninteresting.

Now that I have acquired the expansion, I thought I had to try again. First things first: it feels like it is one of those „required“ expansions that complete the game. The changes are:

• more stuff
• 2 more actions on the main board (I chose to sticker them permanently)
• 1 additional script part defining required or prohibited genres + genre tokens
• cosmetic decorative items to add to your scenes for no gameplay effect whatsoever—unexpectedly, they are good fun and definitely made me enjoy myself more.
• use once per game equipment cards

So „genre“ is the general thematic addition.

To make a movie you still have to film 5 scenes within the time and budget you get.
Each player takes on one of the growing number of roles on a filmset. These roles give them some special actions that are more or less useful.

On your turn, you draw a problem card—because film making is just a sequence of fuckups apparently—and then you roll 6 dice and assign them to actions as you see fit. Some actions cost budget. Your turn takes up 1 unit of time. And then it is the next person‘s turn.

There are a variety of thematic actions like having a meeting to generate ideas, or problem solving or building the set or adding a bit of genre to one of the proposed scenes.

The center stage is the set though where you can place dice according to the patterns on one of the 3 scenes that are currently available to film. If you can fulfill a pattern that scene goes on to the right side of the board and you adjust your quality based on the scene you filmed…

When either budget or time runs out or you completed your scenes the game is over. You can gain both time and budget during the game through creative problem solving, ideas or even filming certain scenes.

With the expansion, I felt I had more options and it became rare that I had a left-over die at the end of my turn that I didn‘t know what to do with. And the additional genre requirements added a welcome bit of complexity.

I am definitely looking forward to playing this again—now.

I think it needs saying that this falls flat if players do not engage with the theme. The game has a lot of fun hidden in all those cards: the scenes, the idea cards, the problem cards and even the script cards. The roles have their own little jokes and offer suggestions for a bit of roleplaying. But none of that happens if the players do not engage. The puzzle of the game is okay but not great. To turn this into a fun experience players need to cooperatively make it so.

Recommended for players who are looking for a thematic, cooperative movie making game. My rating today: 7.5/10.
(Definitely planning to play with my partner sometime soon)

[Captbnut]

My wife and I played Ginkgopolis. First time with 2 players after a couple of games with 4. We play pretty fast, but even so to be done in 35 minutes was very cool.

2 player adds some randomness, with you discarding the top 7 cards at each reshuffle, but having a better idea of what cards were coming made up for that.

Being organised with tear down speeds up set up, but makes packing away a quite lengthy process. There is a lot to sort at one end of the process.

I’m really enjoying it. We’re still pulling levers and seeing what happens rather than really understanding the implications of our decisions at the moment. It’s not as good as Race for the Galaxy or Innovation as a thinky filler nor as accessible as something like Quest for El Dorado but I think it’s a really good game.

[lalunaverde]

Sushi Go Party - it seems my group prefers this one as we like the variety, and doesn’t get bog down on indecisions on how to setup the game.

Acquire - I played with the fancy as heck edition

The Crew 1 and 2

Turn the Tide - ah this trick-taker (if we even consider this a trick taker) seems to work with 3 players. Nice!

Kingdom Builder 2nd ed Big Box - we played this one twice as we are having a good time with our first game. Always great when that happens. We seem to have internalised the rules of the massive amount of content that the expansion gives that I have no problem playing with all the expansions with newbies

Papua Another Euro game from Devir where you have Euro mechanisms for the sake of Euro mechanisms. My interest on Devir’s output nosedived quickly recently. Red Cathedral is so far the best one, but I have zero desire on playing it again.

Tindahan / Filipino Fruit Market - 4 players this time. Pretty good! This is slowly becoming my fave trick-taking game now. Not sure if anything can beat Trick of the Rails or Sticheln / Stick Em

[raged_norm]

Casual games evening.

3 rounds of Codenames followed by 5 player Big City.

The winner had a double church build in the last two turns and was 10+ points clear of everyone else. I cut up my own shopping mall build with the tram… argh.

[COMaestro]

Another play of Everdell, this time with three of us and trying out the Pearlbrook expansion. Pearlbrook adds a board with a lake/river containing five new locations, which can only be visited by a new Frog Ambassador piece, and everybody gets one of them. The Ambassador can only go to these locations, and one addtional location that is on a new card shuffled into the deck.

Four of the locations have one card on them, which is only revealed when you place your Ambassador there. However, you can only place it there if you have enough cards in your city of a given type, much like you need to qualify for claiming basic events. For being first, you get a pearl, and can do the action on the revealed card, if able. These cards are a random assortment of two locations and two citizens. One lets you discard particular cards from your hand in return for a point token and a pearl. The other lets you return a point token and some resources in return for drawing cards and a pearl. The fifth new location lets you discard two resources and two cards for one pearl.

Additionally, there are Wonders and Adornments. Wonders replace the basic events and are valued at 10, 15, 20 or 25 points, each costing an increasing number of twigs, resin, pebbles, and pearls to obtain. Like events, only one player can claim any given Wonder. Each player is also dealt two Adornments at the beginning of the game. Each costs one pearl to play, and gives an immediate effect, and then an end game scoring bonus.

Add in some new cards, special events and forest locations, and that’s the entirety of the expansion.

My wife was having trouble focusing today, so she felt that she made a number of tactical mistakes. One that I know of for certain is she missed that a Crane had entered the Meadow at one point and didn’t take it, so I did when it got to my turn. She was able to get the 10 point Wonder, and was the first to get one. However, I got the only other one taken, and it was the 25 pointer.

I won with 76 points. Her brother was second with 69, and she came in third with 56.

Pearlbrook was interesting. It is hard to get pearls, as you only get to place your Ambassador four times at the most, and while you get one when you go to one of the river destinations, you may not be able to use the card there because you don’t have the necessary cards or resources to discard. As such, you have to carefully deliberate between the Adornments and the Wonders. The Wonders are worth major points, but can cost a lot in resources. The Adornments only cost a single pearl and give an immediate effect, but the end game bonus may not come into play. For instance, I had one that gave a bonus 3 points for every Wonder I had. I got 3 for that, but it easily could have been 0.

Contrast with Spirecrest, which has all the new stuff happen automatically after you prepare for season, but with the penalty of the weather effects. I think Pearlbrook requires more forethought, and you need to know if you are going to commit to the Wonders or not probably by the beginning of Summer. This is just based on one play, admittedly, but the pearl game seems really tight. I got lucky in having an Adornment which gave me a pearl in return, otherwise I would only have been able to take the 15 point Wonder at best, or not played one of my Adornments, either of which could have cost me the win. Spirecrest has some forethought in picking map tiles, but otherwise it just requires estimating which of the destination cards will benefit you the most. In any case, I enjoyed it.

Newleaf up next! Probably!

[Marx]

Had a couple of friends over for some games. First on the list was the continued joy of Archaeology, which I continue to love and my partner continues to be lukewarm towards. I love the push-your-luck set collection style, but she finds it too chaotic. Matt won two games of it by a fair margin.

Then we tried Twilight Inscription. We got through the tutorial okay, but by the end half the group wasn’t excited to continue so I pulled the plug on it. I continue to think it might be really good. It’s definitely interesting, at least! I may try to tackle the single player mode tomorrow.

So, instead we played Dream Crush, which is just silly fun. Matt won again, but it’s not really about winning. Just a ridiculous game.

Then, lastly, we pulled out Colt Express, which is just a rock-solid bucket of chaos. Wendy and I tied for first, but I had 15 bullets inside of Doc and Wendy playing Belle was shot… maybe three times? So she definitely won the tiebreaker.

It was nice to play a few games. Hopefully more in the future.

[SteveB_uk]

@Marx

Then, lastly, we pulled out Colt Express, which is just a rock-solid bucket of chaos

Having only played it for the first time this year, it’s right up the top of my wishlist because I can’t imagine it ever failing. Instant fun even with being a new player.

[Captbnut]

Colt Express has been crazily cheap in the UK recently. It was £12 in GAME

[Benkyo]

First game. Just scraped a win on the final retirement with 23 points after some tense last-minute negotiation to prevent the 6-share chairman getting enough for dividends. Everyone said it was more enjoyable than their previous games, in large part because of how hard I pushed negotiation to the fore, despite it taking at an hour or two longer.

Let’s see…

I had a brief stint as a chairman, in which I slowly clinked £1 coins into my own presidency while soliciting bids for alternative investment. Got blackmailed into losing that position shortly after, as another player commented “the reign of terror is over”.

One player started as prime minister, amassed a solid voting block of shipyards, kept the prime minister role the whole game, and never got a company share. He leveraged the law choices nicely, and if the fine line between too many dividends and company failure had gone the other way, he probably would have won.

One player got the “shares for £1” card, and went all-in, seeing how the company was faring well, and was only pipped to the win by my final retirement, the fact that two of us used most of the money he assigned us as Chairman to deploy and loot India instead of making more profitable trades, and a promise card he had traded away at a low ebb that later forced him to give another player his London season reward - a 3 VP spouse. I can only imagine the kind of deal being struck there! “Well, even if I do successfully woo Lord Highgate when I retire to a larger mansion than you, I’ll let you have him, darling, if you spot me the money to buy a Company share now”.

Just great fun, and so different to anything I have played before (and miles beyond the solo experience).

[Captbnut]

Is there any comparison to Pax Pamir 2e, apart from the designer?

And what was the game length?

Great you enjoyed it, I’m hoping to play this week

[Benkyo]

No, totally different games, other than perhaps some graphic design and production choices (and, I suppose, a common thread of manipulating “greater powers” for personal gain? But obviously radically different there too).

I think we took about 4 hours, including teaching one new player.

[MarkSP]

Really like Factory Funner, not played the solo let though.

Played Tank Duel yesterday, really fun daft mechanics in a GMT historical accuracy wrapper. Only thing I didn’t like was when VPs were part of the asymmetry. We had weaker tanks but scored more VP when we destroyed the opponents- not as fun as just being as powerful, but then I rarely care about VP.

Also played Through The Ages. Me and a friend were introducing a enw player to it. As always the new player was winning age 2, before falling behind massively in age 3.I took a bunch of their resourecs age 3, ot something I’d normally do to a new player- but I had a chance of beating the other player who is unbeaten (spoilers: I didn’t).

Finally Blood of the Northmen. Just too complex for me. Each tile can only be placed according to carcassone rules, but each tile gives you 6 different actions, in a partcular order, plus bonus village tiles etc etc. Just too much going on to really plan.

[Captbnut]

Played a couple of games with the always delightful @mistercrayon this afternoon.

Started off with Glenmore 2: Chronicles. I believe we played the base set and it was a really good and interesting experience. Lots of crunchy decisions with bonuses firing off and a real push and pull of the value of each play. He won by a point with my wife in third and we all got there in pretty different ways. Would like to play this some more.

Finished off with some more Ginkgopolis, where my wife trounced us. It really does seem to give more with each play. It was the first time for @mistercrayon and I think there is a moment with about a third of the game to go where everyone I’ve played it with has a “ah, so this is why this is important” lightbulb come on. Different again with 3 players and including teach, set up and tear down we were done in 75 minutes.

[Chewy77]

Had two plays of basic Everdell on Sunday evening, with the family on the first one, and then a solo to give it a try.

I did quite poorly on both, with the team 6 year old plus mum taking the first one with a very commendable 42 against my daughter 28 and my poor 24 points. I did the mistake of focusing on getting extra points from the special events, and I was out of a card for two of them in the end, which cost me dearly. The winners focused on getting Critters on their city, and stole away most of the berry sites available, so me and my eldest daughter had to focus on something else, which fell short in the end.

I had a go at the solo game after putting the children to sleep (as I had the game laid out on the table already) and even though I did a couple of mistakes (forgot to rotate the King’s workers on one of the seasons) I enjoyed it enough. Not enough to set up by myself, but enough to not rushing to pack up the game if it happens in the evening and I can have a go after putting the girls to bed.

I lost to the pesky Rat king 28-30, by the way. I used to be good at this game, I swear…