Here’s some thoughts on the games I played at Airecon (to distract me from the covid I also picked up there, very cheaply!):
The Climbers - really like this as a fun quick colourful game, works a lot better with the rules tweak that the game only ends when everyone has passed. Also I like how @RogerBW ’s beard seems to form a cloudy mountaintop.
Damask - played this a couple of times and enjoyed both games although I find the patterns slightly hard to distinguish between at first glance. A close encounter with the taxman in the first game scarred me but I made it through. Pleasant enough and would play again but I shan’t be buying. Also I’m slightly distracted as there was a (alleged) brothel next to the vet school in Bristol called ‘The Damask Rose’.
Salty swingers - or something, I’ve forgotten the name. A very light eurogame fishing thing which I really enjoyed, although the set collection mini game seemed too hard to pull off to us. Anyway I won so it turns out vegetarians make the best fisherpeople. Oh, was it Coldwater something?
FUSE - amazed I got a photo as it’s very fast real time no nonsense bomb decision. The fact I got a picture might explain why we lost, although we finished it a second time with two minutes to spare. Very good, liked lots.
Ashes - phoenixborn thingy - another game in @RogerBW and my odyssey as we finally finished playing through the phonetic bore things. I worked out my deck needed to play aggressively and this ended badly, for @RogerBW at least.
Xia - legends of a drift system which I have enjoyed greatly every time I played, this time joined by @lalunaverde who cheered us all up greatly by blind jumping directly into a star. This was the first time I’ve tried being nice and not an outlaw and also the first time I haven’t won. Coincidence?
Cosmic Encounter - with excellent explanation from @Captbnut . Never played it before and had little idea what was happening but I enjoyed it very much. Nonsense but glorious nonsense.
Regicide I like it very much, kind of an aggressive co op solitaire. We failed miserably twice, but we had fun.
Ohhh I forgot the name again. It’s one of those little pig games, one word, like Vajazzle or something. Anyway it’s really good and I very much enjoyed it.
Rallyman Dirt - hmm. I know Roger enjoys it a lot and mechanics are fun and interesting… but here’s the round structure for a 5 player game:
Turn 1… P1 moves
Turn 2… P1 moves, P2 enters the map and moves
Turn 3… P1, then P2, then P3…
And so on. Which means if you are player 5, you have to wait through 14 other turns before you start. Which is, I’m gonna be honest, not much fun in itself, but then combine that with the fact that there’s a mechanic for roughing up the track as people go round it, which means as the last player you’re almost certain to be at a disadvantage for you… it’s frustrating. Then imagine player 4 crashed before you so having waited 14 turns you then can’t do what everyone else did because there’s a car blocking you.
You could argue that you’re going to be at an advantage watching everyone else try different strategies possibly but the nature of the game is that there’s one good opening path that everyone tries, and some succeed or not based on the dice. It changes from there of course but everyone does the same opening move. It was fun but with significant drawbacks.
The Night Cage
A fun little co op that we solved first time and consequently think it’s very easy although I’m assured it isn’t really.
Heat - quicker and easier to grasp than Rallyman. I enjoyed it although I think Rallyman is probably the better game, I must say I had much more fun playing this though.