I actually learnt the rules for the AI, but thought I’d keep it simple. The rules do seem to be very straight forward.
4 Likes
First game of Beyond the Sun in the books! With the teach and the usual growing pains, we were at the table for a whopping 3 hours, though it kinda flew by, which is a good thing. It’s very good, but it’s very intimidating. Lots of rules (the manual is great though, and the teach went super well) and lots of text, so it’s easy to miss stuff. And it doesn’t have the visual punch of a lot of our faves.
I won 49-38. My wife’s mistake, which she spotted immediately in retrodpect, was that she colonized her fourth system too quickly, triggering the endgame and preventing her from making more points while I tried to research a level 4 tech (I was bled dry at that point).
She’s keen to play again, but fatigue was starting to be felt.
Tomorrow’s an Inis and Lost Ruins of Arnak double feature!
11 Likes
Glad you enjoyed BTS, we think it’s great. With a few games under your belt you should get it down to much closer to an hour.
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Just finished another game of Everdell with Spirecrest. It was SO close, but she beat me 76-74!
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My husband was on a bit of a winning streak yesterday, winning our games of Stroganov and The Expanse.
Stroganov was new to all of us and I thought it was quite good, once we’d figured out the masses of iconography on the board. There are quite a few way of scoring points and limited actions in which to do it, so it’s a matter of using your actions efficiently. I wouldn’t say that it’s the most thematic game but it is pretty and there is some integration of the theme with the mechanics - e.g., successfully hunting a bear gives you extra points to spend on singing songs around the fire in the winter because you killed a bear!
Our game of The Expanse was very tense. Normally what happens is the other two spend the whole game fighting each other and let me run away with it 
. This time was much more of a three-way knife fight with lots of tactical scoring of areas to stop other people scoring better areas. I’ve never seen the associated TV series so I have no idea how well it’s represented in the game, but it doesn’t seem to matter too much 
In the end the scores were 109 - 108 - 102. My husband had a huge lead about halfway through and I was well behind but managed to claw my way back to 2nd place.
I also played a round of Welcome To the Moon - my husband doesn’t like Welcome To and couldn’t be tempted by the promise of more SPACE… We played the 2nd map and I can confirm that it is just Welcome To on a slightly different board, but it made a nice change.
10 Likes
I haven’t played a lot recently due to being quite busy with the Advent of Code (I totally blame @RogerBW), but today I sleeved my Ark Nova cards (for some reason I had fitting sleeves sitting around) because sleeved cards shuffle easier and the Ark Nova deck is in dire need of help in that aspect.
And once the cards were sleeved I had to play a solo (also the neighbor was having a techno party upstairs the whole day which meant my concentration wasn’t up to coding).
This was my third solo I think and I am quite impressed how smooth this plays and how well this solo mode is executed.
The solo mode consists of
- 1 card sized board that uses cubes of a different color to track your actions, just like Wingspan you get one less action each round until there are only 2 cubes left and the game ends.
- Cards that have interactive elements have alternative actions on them (also an option for those who don’t like the take that elements in multiplayer
- The “pause” track is simply ignored you reset when the solo board tells you to.
- You win if your score is positive after 6 rounds.
That’s it. I like it a lot. Setup is fairly fast, I just keep all materials needed for 1 player in the bag including 5 X tokens, the 5 zoos and the 3 universities…
If not for the coding challenge, I might have played a few more of those solos already. As it is, it still stands a good chance to be the final entry needed for my 10x10 solo challenge.
5 Likes
Arnak in the books. Lovely, lovely game. Better than we remembered, even. We think the issue we had when we first got it was mainly that it was around the same time as Great Western Trail, Tzolk’in, Brass, etc., so it kind of got lost in the shuffle a bit. Shame, and it’s not the game’s fault, but them’s the breaks. Definitely keen to play again.
More plays needed, but we preferred it to Beyond the Sun, inasmuch as they can be compared. BtS has a very drab look that can make your eyes gloss over, especially in your first game or when you’re tired a bit (and yesterday’s learning game lasted, like, 3 hours).
Up next, Inis! Just got through re-reading the rules, just resting our respective backs (first shoveling of the season was rough).
10 Likes
Well, just got destroyed at Inis. There’s something about that game I just don’t get, I’ve never won a single game. Its a lovely game, and quite good, but I think it’d be better at 3-4 players. Still fun at 2, mind. But if I was to make a top 5, or a top 10, I don’t think it’d be in the conversation.
4 Likes
Y’know, it’s strange. Arnak was a good deal better than we remembered, but Inis was worse. Like, if we were making a top-10, Arnak would now be in the conversation, but Inis wouldn’t be.
We were both sure it’d be the other way around…
2 Likes
Inis strikes me as one of those games I wouldn’t even consider playing with only two players. Haven’t tried it myself, but I am sure I would like it a lot more than Arnak, assuming four players.
2 Likes
2 is a bit fragile where if one gets an advantage, it tends to snowball, but it’s really been a while since I have played Inis
I havent played enough 5 (with exp) to judge that. 3 and 4 are good
3 Likes
Modern Art
Seasons - played with both expansions. One of the few card tableaus I have kept. Race for the Galaxy is engine-building. Innovation is uuhhh… Innovation. Seasons seems to fall between them. It is the reason why I sold Res Arcana.
The two expansion modules are easy to include. One is a special rule card for the whole game. The other module are special tokens you can use as a one-off, which gives more control to the player. Both expansions added more cards, but they are all combined together on my normal plays anyway. It doesn’t suffer the “bloated deck” syndrome that the others do, as you draft 9 cards to play. I house-ruled a 3 face-up card shop to make the “take-a-card” die result a more enticing option.
6 Nimmt
Zuuli - card drafting card game a la Sushi Go where you are building a zoo. The card arts are sooooo cute! Like reading on a kids book!
5 Likes
After three weeks at my parents back in warm Gran Canaria, there are a few games to report, mainly Flipology with my little one, Love Letter with my eldest mainly and thre times with both of the girls (so much fun at three, especially now they both get the rules).
Also, went in the old games box and found my old copies of some games like Inkognito, Escape from Atlantis and Space Crusade. The only one we played was Escape from Atlantis (albeit with on of the mountain pieces missing and some villagers, so we replaced it somehow with the central peak and whenever the first hill area sunk we shuffled everything a bit and every team had 10 meeples to even things up). The girls loved it, even with the mild “take that” that took place (just when sinking pieces on your turn, nobody sent monsters to other peoples boats) and I think we all won at least once.
It brought me back memories from the 80s, and funny enough, I thought the games was way too simple, but I was wrong, I really enjoyed it. Way more than I expected.
10 Likes
If that Space Marine is anywhere close to complete, you’re sitting on a very expensive game there
3 Likes
I have the Survive: Escape From Atlantis “30th Anniversary Edition” (plus the Dolphins & Squids & 5-6 Players…Oh My! expansion collection) and I think it’s all great. Just a fun (and funny) mixture of gameplay elements; easy enough to play with anyone; quick enough to mitigate complaints about luck; and a lovely production as well. I haven’t had a chance to play it for ages, sadly; but it’s not leaving the collection.
I would agree with BGG that 4 players is ideal. Despite having the 5-6 player option, IIRC that just seemed too much (in terms of both down-time and changes to the board state between turns) when I tried it with 6. Some amount of chaos is good though, so 4 seems like the sweet spot.
It is a game where you might have your most valuable meeples eaten by sea creatures (whether through bad luck, or good guesswork by your opponents – an element of bluffing can come into play – or by sheer forgetfulness on your part), so I would avoid it with players who might feel upset by things going badly for them in that regard. I remember one game where I thought I’d saved all my best meeples, only to flip them at scoring time and find I’d mis-remembered badly and they were mostly one-pointers and I’d actually done terribly :)
6 Likes
It’s full title in our house is Survive: Escape from Atlantis: Operation Pick on Dad
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Mine too, weird
5 Likes
Complete indeed, I was toying with the idea of sending it to NZ, but decided against it because it is a Spanish version. The one I couldn’t find was my copy of Hero Quest, which would take some digging (it is amazing how much crap has accumulated on that attic room since I moved to NZ). That was more for sentimental value than anything else. But that copy of Space Crusade is in good nick considering its age…
EDIT:
I think my version did not have any values for meeples, each one was a value of 1. But I can see how that could change things. To add to the fun, my girls actually loved taxiing meeples around by dolphin. They must have ended knackered with so much back and forwards.
3 Likes
Just finished the first dungeon in a game of Darkest Dungeon.
It was good, but took 2 hours and I only fought 3 combats and saw less than half of the dungeon.
Playing solo may make it slower, and I am still learning the rules…
3 Likes
Today’s advent calendar games were two lighter offerings, Robin of Locksley and 50 Missions (I think it’s called Cahoots in some parts of the world?).
Robin is… Meh. Y’know, it’s funny. As much as Arnak and Inis were different than in our memories (positively for the former, not so much for the latter), this game was EXACTLY how we remembered it: Not a lot of interesting decisions, and one mechanic (bribing the bard) that just kills the game stone dead by removing any real incentive to actually fulfill your objectives, since you can just bribe your way forward. Maybe for kids?
50 Missions is a solid mission-based coop card game, but in that vein, we prefer The Game. It’s fun, though!
We decided to raise the level a bit afterwards and played a rousing game of Everdell+Spirecrest! I actually won this one, and won big! 86-54, holy crap!
Tomorrow, an oldie, Mr. Jack New York, and the inner peace of Mandala!
10 Likes