I once tried looking for For Sale on eBay…
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Played Ra yesterday, two player with the 6 year old. It’s fun, new edition is gorgeous and very playable.
Then 3 player 7 Wonders Architects. 10 year old won, with me a distant third place.
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Had a get together with old board game friends I hadn’t seen in a while yesterday.
The Fuzzies - Kicked off with this as I’d just bought for one of them as a gift. Very fun and possibly beats NMBR 9 to being the game with the quickest setup (definitely quicker to pack away though).
Cat in the Box - I think every round ended in a paradox this time, but that’s probably to be expected with 5 players.
Crokinole - Didn’t get to any more games as we just played this for this for the rest of the night. Just quick 1v1 games where the first to 50 points won and then played whoever was next.
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That was a busier than usual weekend of gaming.
First on Friday night I managed to attend the Hastings Game Night. We played Space Race between 5. Really enjoyed it, even if on the first two rounds after a fast-paced teach I was a bit lost (another game with a lot of card symbology that can be tricky to translate for two or three rounds). But the game clicked quick, I started seeing the connection between bidding cards and market cards, and soon there we were, racing for it. I managed to win on a tight game where we were all close until the last two rounds, where three of us managed to scape. I had the Soviet Union, with NASA and the European Space Agency close by. In the end I won by just two points.
We decided to keep the theme, and played Space Base. I was last in turn, and was never lucky enough with the market. The low numbers I managed to scoop were only 3 and 5, and hardly anybody was rolling them. So I only managed to score points late in the game, when I got a couple of lucky 11s that gave me enough money to pay for bases, but by then the winning player was already in his high 20s. I finished on third position at 21.
Then we played three games of Adventure Time Fluxx to fill up the time, of which I managed to win the third.
Then went on to Saturday afternoon, where I played D&D The Legend of Drizzt with my eldest daughter. We played scenario 3 with Drizzt and Cattie-Brie, and managed to win, even though half way through we found a troll that nearly totaled us.
Yesterday I had 3 games of Love Letter with the little one (she won two), and I taught her how to play Root with the Marquise de Cat while I was struggling to get the right cards with the Eyrie; and in the evening two very satisfactory games of Splendor with my better half, where she won the first one a tight 18 to 17, and next time I blocked her out of red and black, so I swept up the second game 15-11 (even without scoring the third noble tile).
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Charlemagne: Total War Charlemagne: Master of Europe is a solo game from Hollandespiel by Amabel Holland. It is based on her earlier work: Agricola: Master of Britain
You do play as Charles. And you’re trying to clamp down on revolts inside the Kingdom of the Franks. The Moors are creeping in from Spain. The Avars - living in central European plain of modern Hungary are being annoying. The Saxons are also being annoying. The Byzantines being snobs as usual. It’s difficult being Big Carl.
The game gives you three major tools to enforce your will:
1.) Your Marquis who impose order while you arent around.
2.) The Church - there’s something about these big church buildings that makes people more friendly.
3.) The army - you have the best army in Western Europe. And they are your hammer on every nail in this game.
I wasnt so keen about the “cups system”. Each faction have units inside these cups: friendly, unfriendly, hostile. You transfer these units/events around based on what actions you do. In theory, it sounds good. But in practice, it is less counter-insurgency, and more whack-a-mole a la Pandemic. “Oh… you’re going unfriendly to hostile? Okay. I might kill you next.” Thats pretty much the mentality. But I am keen to play more to see if I can use the cups to my advantage, rather than just being mere timers.
So far, I love the theme. You get to be Big Carl. Unite the Franks. Shed the blood of the Saxon Men. Push back the Moors. And get crowned Emperor of the Romans.
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This is both last played and Last game you bought?
Yesterday my husband and I stopped in at a local game store. He found Distilled on the shelves and we decided to get it. We played it today and broke our brains in all kinds of good ways on the many possibilities and made a dozen errors, mostly in strategy but a few in rules as we figured things out. We took a quick break for a little food and paying some attention to the dog then immediately reset for another go and did much better on the rules and maybe the strategy on the second try. Definitely played with more confidence anyway.
It’s one of those games where no individual thing you are doing is actually that complex but all the pieces add together and build onto each other to make a tight little puzzle. Just the kind of thing we love. Very happy with our purchase.
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Yesterday we played another game of Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game, and I squeaked out another win, with just 2 health left on my last base.
Then we played Ethnos using ALL THE BITS! Random chance gave us Merfolk, Trolls, Orcs, and Giants, with Wizards to round out the tribes. I did pretty good with Orcs in the first age, so cashed them in for 10, which put me in the lead going into the second age by maybe 5 points. Unfortunately I was not able to keep that lead, so my wife won 101 - 96.
6 Likes
Frosthaven in France… we gave this a go a few weeks ago and lost twice on the first real scenario. The difficulty level is definitely a notch up on Gloomhaven and we were starting to think of ways to tweak the challenge down a little. Set up yesterday and got through the first two scenarios pretty much unscathed so maybe we were just rusty - or maybe we got lucky this time. Set up/take down is somewhat improved… which is a relief.
We got to experience one round of the new “village (re)building” element which looks intriguing but doesn’t seem to do much at this stage of the game - at least the outpost wasn’t attacked. We’ve not got a forced link to a third scenario so no hot baths for us till we get the next one sorted 
Earlier this week we introduced my brother-in-law to Pandemic and Scotland Yard which went down pretty well. Pandemic went well with a good combination of characters (Scientist, Ops Experts and Quarantine Specialist) and Scotland Yard was a win for Moriarty - which was a first for us in four or five play throughs.
12 Likes
Sunday my partner and I drove into Toronto to hang out with some old friends. Had good bubble tea (sometimes called “Boba”), milk taro with tapioca for me and roasted oolong with jelly for Andy.
Also played some games! Some bad timing on one person’s part meant we were just about to start a 5 player game when she showed up, so she took my seat and I adjudicated a game of Steamed Up, the Kickstarter edition Andy bought.
It was… okay. Super cute, light on strategy but a fair amount of variability… my only real complaint was a bit of railroading asthetics into the design (there is a lazy susan in the game that I think it would be much stronger without, but since the game is based on dim sum, it kinda had to have a lazy susan…).
Anyway, better manual than 90% of Kickstarters, and not a bad game.
Then we played a game of Deep Sea Adventures, which continues to be a favourite Oink. Not my absolute favourite, but top 3 for sure.
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So in a still somewhat surprising turn, we had a perfect game room last week-end and willing players.
I had brought a bunch of games and several friends had brought more. Lots of games were played that I didn‘t participate in Azul-Churchwindows, Set, Rage, more Azul, Ganz schön Clever, and probably more I didn‘t even notice. I got to play:
- Heat : Pedal to the Metal with 6 players which we enjoyed quite a lot (there was another game with more interested players the next day but I was busy at the time—with… the next one:) edit: everyone was being super careful until I miscalculated my speed at some point drew a bunch of random cards and sped with 15 through a 3 speed curve… from there it became somewhat more chaotic because people began to take risks at last… my partner won this one quite happily.
- Ark Nova: not my copy! There were 2 four-player games (which I both won) with 1 new player who after the teach played like you wouldn‘t believe because the kid is only turning 14 in 2 months.
- I won the first one with an incredible combination of primates and bonuses for rock symbols and an elephant… I have never before pulled off such a lovely zoo.
- I won the second one in tie-breaker after a being brought to a full-stop at the start by a poison attack—and my friends didn‘t know you could pass to gain an X and to remove the poison and I didn‘t realize they didn‘t know so didn‘t insist that it should be possible. I have never before done 6 conservation projects… or crossed my markers at the 25 attraction mark.
- The owners of the game have played this probably 50 times, so I really don‘t feel bad for winning twice and the 13 yo proudly scored points and 3rd place in both games!
- Wingspan: Asia I finally got to play the new 2 player iteration which I have owned for a while. But this wasn‘t even my copy and I had the luxury of being taught the game. I won this very narrowly.
- Stationfall we went through the tutorial game with 4 players—with me teaming up with the same 13 yo kid and one friend having studied the rules and stepping us through the rounds. It went well enough all things considered and I guess I could say that I grok the game enough to play a „real“ game of it. Rulebook is terrible. Player aid/reference thing is ok. My partner describes the game as Among Us the Boardgame and he‘s not wrong. If there had been another evening we might have given this a go with more players.
- Just One: this is simply the most hilarious game. We played my copy so much that I have to buy new markers now and probably the new cards expansion. The kids asked for So Clover before we began playing Just One. But I think they completely forgot about So Clover after the first round. We played 3 or 4 rounds with 7 players (with round I mean everyone getting to guess once each round). We took away some really terrible in-jokes and one hilarious story we won‘t soon forget. I only got to play the first time but the kids especially kept playing the rest of our stay all t he time.
And then I made the mistake of pulling out Distilled after dinner on the last evening. We had all 5 distilleries present, 1 being played by 2 players. A total of 4 new players at the table, with a couple of drinks each, too little sleep and a room full of other adults and kids being loud around us. My voice was still gone from laughing so much playing Just One, so my partner took over most of the teach—which is impressive considering he has only played the game once and never read the rulebook. I only had to jump in with a few details. (This shows btw that the game is not that complicated and has very good rules retention if the teacher gets a chance to do it right)
Sadly after the teach everything went downhill. We took a total of 4 hours to finish the game. One player didn‘t grok the basics of the gameplay throughout the game. The team of 2 talked constantly, not helping anyone else‘s concentration and I was so stressed that the scoring was all over the place because points were overlooked or counted twice. I coached the player sitting opposite me and that worked well, except he needs glasses, and couldn‘t read most of the text on the cards.
My take aways were this: when I teach a new game that is not family weight I will accept a total number of new players equal to experienced players at the table. Maybe if it is a 4 player game, I could live with teaching to 3 players. But the more complex the more important it is that each new player has someone to coach them. I am not terrible at teaching games but I get flustered and nervous when I have to essentially play a game 4 handed with 3 people watching me. I think I‘d rather just moderate in that case. Everyone recognized that it was a bit of a total disaster. If these weren‘t all close friends, it would have been worse though. edit: I want to note that despite the disastrous nature of the specific play I still think this is a very good game and at least 2 of the new players would agree. (I didn’t dare ask the other two)
Otherwise a really good week-end in all aspects. It made me realize once again how lucky I am
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Last night at Local Game Group (which turned into Very Local since only a few of us would have been there and we all live quite near each other anyway, so we got together at someone’s house):
A Tale of Pirates, aka Kitchen Rush of the Seas – it came out in the same year. Cooperative sand-timer worker placement, actually felt quite relaxed, but we did only play the first mission. Personally I’d replace the app with a book of mission setups and a countdown timer, but that’s me. Can’t deny the table presence.
Then on to Sentinels of the Multiverse with Nightmist, Setback and Captain Cosmic versus Citizen Dawn in Rook City. Nightmist felt frankly munchkinny by the end – one of her major drawbacks is cards that damage herself as well as the enemy, and I had a relic that let me redirect infernal damage to me to another target. Good fun even so.
8 Likes
Age of Steam - glad to paly this again. I was wondering why I have this game when it doesn’t have any “shared incentives” type of gameplay, but the recent play answered the question: it’s one of the best efficiency-type game that I have played. It’s up there with Race for the Galaxy
Puerto Rico - Still fun. Great player interaction. But I can see now the issue with the left-right binding. But I am too stupid at this game atm to see its full effect. The winner won because of the Wharf. But then, the player on his right defo set him up by playing the Craftsman action, which then allowed him to play the Captain action. I would need more plays. This and New Frontiers
Steam - PR was our palate cleanser before we dive into another train game. This one sits in the middle of Age of Steam and Railways of the World, in terms of rules weight. But, wow, this is surprising. The standard rules is inferior to both AOS and ROTW. How? It’s so loose and forgiving. AOS is not surprising because that game is just tension all the way. But Railways of the World’s route building is more tense than Steam! Those route goals in ROTW are something you have to plan for the long term!
As a game itself, it’s a good game, but against those two: disappointing. I have suspicions now with Bigney’s affinity with Steam. Maybe because you don’t need to plan in Steam.
Qwerkle
Gunkimono x2 - wonderful old school German. Used to be known as Heartland - which has a theme that is preferable to me 
. Played 3 players and then 5 players.
6 Likes
Iirc, that requires discarding 2 cards each time, and is only for the first source of damage in a turn, so it needs some support to be sustainable.
1 Like
Got rather demolished today playing Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game with my wife. I had her second base mostly damaged when she took out my third. I knew I was in for a rough game when she got the Millenium Falcon and Cassian Andor back to back really early, as combined they can do 10 damage. I just didn’t get enough capital ships in my deck until too late to try to soak up firepower of that magnitude.
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What’s a good score in Skull King? Played 6 player last night and managed to get 440. Its the highest score Ive ever had and actually I think ever seen but was wondering what it actually compares to in terms of good/great scores?
Also played The Grizzled, a favourite amongst our group. Got so close with 5 players which is hard.
It may have changed in Definitive Edition:
It’s not a Power or a Reaction, so I don’t think its uses are limited.
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Yeah, that’s much better than it was.
1 Like
Mega Village - Village base game + Inn + Port + promos expansions. Thought this Euro is pretty great. Participating during Market Day is a must though.
Just One
John Company 2 - really long game if played for the full experience. But for a 6 hour game, this is pretty clever and opaque - despite the randomness. It is that American style game, but there’s a lot of short and long term decisions here. Learning new tricks every damn time. This, Through the Ages, and 18xx would only qualify as worthy of playing within the 3+ hour bracket.
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What a beaut. We always play with both expansions (usually just 2P though). Port makes the market less important because you have other avenues to sell goods, but market is definitely easier and shouldn’t be ignored.
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Selling via travel can be worth it, but the thing with Market Day is that you can sell goods without you even executing that action. Not having greens during Market Day is painful and a big tempo loss.
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