Back at our regular game group after a month of holidays and other clashes. I played a very long game of Scythe… I ended up with Saxony, which is my least favourite faction because I’m not keen on the fighting mechanics in Scythe, and did as badly as I expected. The owner of the game had put quite a bit of effort into painting the minis, so I had something to examine while everyone else took forever on their turns 
10 Likes
Some games over the last week:
Sprawlopolis x3, three plays of this, one co-op, two solo. Still yet to see a win, though it’s always pretty close! It is a fun little dynamic puzzle game though.
Cafe x3, a solo game and a couple of 2 player games of this under my belt now. It’s great, the layering cards mechanic means you’re almost always covering up stuff you need. It’s a lot of great decisions in a very condensed package, so I’m really enjoying it.
Skulls of Sedlec x2, a win and a loss. This one is super interesting, I do kinda wish I had the expansions to vary things up a bit, but for such a small game it’s a winner.
Anansi, one of my friends is far too good at this game. He’s managed to win by a large amount both games I’ve played with him. And he’s not even that into trick taking! Ah well. It’s a solid one. The scoring massively rewards being able to judge how many tricks you can win - but with a shifting trump and other peoples plays messing up your plans, it’s not always easy to do!
For Sale, nice light one we all knew to end the night. Our initial scores were super tight, but then I realised I forgot to count my left over coins, so I did just manage a win. My cards seem to be permanently bent though. Not sure why, they were like it when I first bought the game and despite my attempts to bend them back, they keep returning to their original state. Ah well, doesn’t really have an impact on the game, but it’s a bit annoying.
Agricola: ACBS the Big Box, just picked this one up the other day and it’s great fun. The special buildings seem like they’ll shake up the game significantly. My whole gameplan revolved around use of the stud building, which lets you store horses in unimproved tiles around it. I ended up with heaps of horses, though my scoring with the other animals suffered a bit. But I’d also built a couple of stables so building points gave me the win in the end. I originally experienced this game through an app, but live plays are almost always more interesting to me, and I like the setup variety in the Big Box.
Royal Visit x2, I won two games of this, one by nabbing the crown and another by running out the clock. It’s terrific, though I’m not sure I’ve seen someone succeed in getting the king to their chateau though!
Morels, casual game of this with my wife, who’s become quite the mushroom afficionado. Her love of Lawyer’s Wigs in real life negatively impacted her strategy this game, but it was a nice chill conclusion to an evening of games.
6 Likes
The mandatory buildings can feel very samey at some point that I also mix it with the rest. Not sure how that will affect balance. But since the game is zero-luck, it shouldn’t be that much of an issue.
3 Likes
Just received #3 in the *opolis trilogy 
And my first loss. Roads are now -2 points 
And sadly roads and rivers my not connect directly, apparently the nature lovers aren’t all driving amphibious cars…
It seems the difficulty goes up with each game. This one is the most pretty though 
(and I won the 2nd game with 1 point)
11 Likes
I assume the Spy Hunter expansion is forthcoming.
5 Likes
Having started on BGA with @lalunaverde and @RogerBW have also played 99 with my parents and then with my youngest and my Dad.
It’s a trick taking and bidding game using 6-A in the four suits of a standard deck plus a joker. The cool wrinkle is that when you bid for tricks you do so using cards you take out of your hand. Diamond is zero, spade is one, heart 2 and club 3. You have to bid with 3 cards,so you aim for anywhere between 0 or all 9 tricks. You get a point per trick, plus a bonus for hitting your bid.
You can also bet, making your bid open is a 30 point bet. Making your bid open and playing with an open hand is 60 points.
Like this…
This hand didn’t go well!!!
The secret bids remove cards from the game, which adds an extra twist.
It’s really good, definitely gone past Dou Dizhu as my favourite 3 player card game with a standard deck (not played Cribbage with 3 yet)
9 Likes
Yeah. Been enjoying this
3 Likes
Definitely want to try this now. That deck of cards rules also, what is it?
4 Likes
6 Likes
Played two games today! Suck it, pending items and responsibility!
First up was Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game where my Empire just squeaked out a win against my wife’s Rebels. To be fair to her, though, almost no Rebel cards came out, and of those that did, I eliminated most anything that could cause damage, leaving her with the ability to buy just about anything, but nothing came out. Despite that, she still almost won!
Then this evening we played Ra for the first time. And I am happy to say we both enjoyed it. I sadly did forget to mention one thing during my teach, and that was you are completely out of a round once all your sun disks are flipped down. My wife used her last disk of the game, thinking she could still take turns and use her God tiles, so she might have played a little differently had she known that.
Very close game, with me winning 53 - 51, and only because I was able to run the table with my remaining two disks after she was out. But the win is tarnished by the teaching error, so I guess we will need to play it again sometime soon.
9 Likes
Had a break from Frosthaven this weekend, we were missing a player.
Loot of Lima, another deduction game. You have to find buried pirate treasure in this one. The world is divided into 8 sectors, with three terrain types within each sector – beach, forest, and mountain. You roll three dice, pick two, and use their directions to ask another player about. So you might ask a player how many beach locations they have between North and East, for example. You’re at the mercy of the dice here. I knew about half the map, but just couldn’t roll the dice with the other directions on it. There are a couple of abilities to help here, like being able to ask a player any question, but these are one offs. Strictly speaking, I won the game, because each of the other players tried and failed to get the treasure locations correct. But I had a go, and was wrong as well, so I feel like we all lost.
Ghost Stories, started off well (as games of GS often do), but then descended into madness. We ended up five cards away from the Boss, which we felt wasn’t a terrible effort.
The Crew, just a couple of quick missions, which we lost, from promising starts.
Carnegie, which was hard going – lots of AP (and not from me). I was generally not doing well, managed to connect two cities on one of my last turns to get some respectabilty, still lost 109/89/73. I like the game, but I’m genuinely bad at it.
7 Likes
Cat in the Box interesting. Not sure I’m fully on board with how significant paradoxes are to ending each round.
Turncoats much better live than online, still doesn’t really excite me.
Race for the Galaxy
Innovation with Echoes. Interesting game, reminded me just how crazy the expansion is. Opponent managed to knock me back to age 3 from 8, and stole my hand on the same turn.
Galaxy Trucker great to get this played again.
Modern Art reinforced it’s position as my favourite auction game.
8 Likes
I prefer Ra because I don’t have to do math.
3 Likes
Need this deck.
“Do math” sounds a lot more intimidating than “add small single digit numbers”. Seems like most games involve that in some form or another.
1 Like
Any math is too much math
1 Like
New Frontiers - At glance, it is mechanically more Puerto Rico than RFTG, but closer inspection shows that the play-style is more RFTG. Blocking isn’t prominent in NF. It is pure engine-building in a way that is so different to PR that I can own both. Yet, NF is so board gamey enough that it doesn’t fire Race (or the other way around). Will keep it for now. But I’m doubtful that this will be in my rotation list.
Evolution: Climate - Tekelili gang takes the blame here indirectly. Really enjoyed Oceans that I went out and get EC. We played with 5 players with simultaneous play. Way faster than Oceans, but suffers from having less synergy. Oceans focuses more on this, while EC focuses more on offensive and defensive traits. The games end up doing their own style, that I can choose one or the other based on preference.
Age of Steam - more Age of Steam! We played with the Poland map and it’s a great 4 player map. I won’t be playing this with 5 or 6. 3 will work, but I’d rather play on the France map with 3.
Notre Dame - yuck. Another nonsense from Feld.
4 Likes
More Naturopolis. I like how it is totally possible to have a single road. I have won subsequent games… so maybe it is easier than Agropolis?
In any case tonight I set up one of my favorites for the new solo mode:
I had not played „Beyond the Sun“ in a good while and I am happy to report I remembered the rules—not that they are complicated.
The new expansion comes with a bunch of stuff:
- 4 replacement technologies (balancing stuff)
- some new technologies
- new planets
- 2 new factions
- a solo mode
- „Leaders“
- It all still fits in the base game box, which is now really full though. no air. No space left to build any kind of insert. It is also really heavy, was it always so heavy?
I have tried the solo just now but neither the new factions nor the Leaders.
The solo is easy enough to learn and run which is kind of expected given how easy to learn Beyond the Sun is. The Anarchist has a deck of cards with the same types of actions a player would take: research, jump, colonize, make ships… they have unlimited resources. Initially their action deck is small. But it grows with each level 2 or 3 tech discovered. Because the event cards are replaced with solo specific ones and under each event card a new Anarchist action card awaits. The events are always good for the player if the player triggers the event, not so good if the Anarchist gets there first.
The Anarchist has one more action „Doom“ which removes discs from the Doom Track. The game ends if the doom track is ever on „Doomsday“—obviously. The game also ends if the player has either
- colonized 4 planets
- colonized 3 planets and researched 2x level 3 tech
- colonized 2 planets and researched 1x level 4 tech
There are no achievements in a solo game. Otherwise points are calculated as usual and how well you did is calculated by the difference between you and the Anarchist.
One thing the Anarchist is not doing is blocking action spots. This makes it almost always possible to find a fitting action to do. Which is ok. In a 2 player game this is mostly the same.
The whole thing plays lightning quick. It almost feels as if setup and teardown take longer than the actual game.
I would say it is good to practice your tempo and if you cannot find anyone willing to at least play 2 player. But as much as I love solo play and despite this one being good, multiplayer definitely remains my preferred way to play this (I have other multiplayer games I prefer as solos!) Because I lack a willing duel player atm and am often too tired to BGA these days I will definitely play this again 
10 Likes
Just finished up a game of Lords of Waterdeep with my wife and her brother. We used the Undermountain expansion.
Her brother and I kept jockeying for first, leaping each other until I burst ahead for a while, but he eventually caught up. Meanwhile, my wife languished in last place the whole game. When she bought three buildings pretty early, we had her pegged as Larissa, the builder lord, which was confirmed on round 6 when she played the Open Lord Intrigue card. She did manage to build all nine buildings she could, maxing her score with her lord, but it was not enough to win.
I had the plot quest which gave me 2 points for each Intrigue card I played, and on my last turns, I played my last one on her brother for 2, and when the scores were totaled up, I won over him by 2 points, so that felt good!
Scores were 189 - 187 - 181, so really close overall.
9 Likes