Had a crazy game of Lost Cities against my wife last night. Everything just kept going my way, to the point that I won 249 - 49.
Also won our game of Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game as the Empire, though she won the game the previous night. Feels like the Empire has been chalking up more wins lately, regardless of which of us is playing as them.
More than 2 islands seems risky to me. 4 or 5 is crazy.
He had an occupation card that gave him a lot of money for having lots of islands (or something like that) and was hoping that would push it over the edge.
Boy. These pictures make me question my decision to get the old version. I do think the old version is still more readable from a board state perspective, but that new one is awful shiny and does seem easier to parse (game in progress) than it looked like in the marketing images.
Well, if I make enough room in my collection, maybe one day I’ll swap for the biggun.
I’m having a similar thought with castles of burgundy but I think it’s fine.
Definitely fine. Nope not tempted.
Oh how I missed having this game on my table. But waiting for Nature Incarnate made me avoid this one. Not that I needed new content but… I don‘t really know, I was angry about the whole mess GTG made of this expansion in Europe.
Last night, after a long and stressful day though Spirit Island proved again why it remains my favorite game of all time 
I played with 2 of the new spirits. I deliberately chose 2 of moderate complexity and no opponent. I had a hard enough time as it was.
Ember-eyed Behemoth is a an angry hill (not a mountain I think) that moves across the land stomp-stomp style with their Incarna. Good fun but a bit fiddly in the management of movement vs stomping invaders (probably only because playing 2 handed).
Towering Roots in the Jungle also has an Incarna (new spirit avatars that strengthen the land they reside in a lot and they can move around more freely than normal presences). This one strengthens the land’s resilience with a new token type that prevents the grey ickiness from spreading in that land. They can also draw invaders to their Incarna where they don‘t do damage anymore but also can‘t be damaged until Towering Roots uses their innate „Withdraw Sanctuary“ to … remove them.
Both spirits are on the slow side… so it took me a while to get a grip on things and I won by stomping enough invaders to generate so much fear that when Behemoth stomped the last city I won.
For a weird reason, I had lots and lots of beast tokens on the board and the beasts never ever did a thing. Every time they would have damaged something the invaders were already somewhere else.
I like the Incarna mechanism of these two a lot. Next, I have set up a game with Relentless Gaze of the Sun (some kind of super-laser that moves around the lands shooting invaders from the sky while also burning the land, oopsie) and Hearth-Vigil, a Dahan enhancing watchdog.
“This land is now safe from communism the Invaders.”
Been kicking the tires on some games, mostly via digital means:
Harvest (japan): This one didn’t rise to the levels I’d expected. I wasn’t playing with the most nuanced gamers, but the prevalence of negative value cards seemed to make it pretty easy to determine where to play cards. We weren’t really coopetitioning, just trying to score points and penalize our opponenents. It was decent, but not what I expected. Will play again with more savvy players.
New York Zoo: This is good. Really good. Quite amazingly good. It’s also a fiddle fest, by which I don’t mean exciting Irish music. The setup is fiddly. The rules for placing and moving animals are so unintuitive and fiddly… I mean, mechanically they make perfect sense and I can see how they are necessary to make this game such a superstar to play. This one is officially off the “maybe cull” pile but I’m nervous about teaching it to anyone who isn’t all-in.
La Granja: 10/10. More of this.
Through the Ages: Nations, please. I do get pleasure playing this but I’m always ready for it to end after 2/3 of the game is through and it’s too obtuse for me to zero in on “trying something different” next time. Playing on BGA has turned me back onto playing on the app, which is a pretty good medium for this beast. But overall impression is, “it’s been too long since I’ve played Nations.”
Caverna: I avoided this for at least a decade (two?) because I didn’t need “weak sauce Agricola” in my life. I’m really enjoying it, and also surprised by how different it is. The two share mechanisms and iconography. The main changes are in feeding (Caverna = you can always get food, but do invest in something to make it easier) and scoring (Caverna = 1 point per thing, no limit) transform not just the mood but the entire point of the game. This has me thinking about ranking my Big Uwe’s and I think it’s Agricola, Arle, Le Havre, Caverna. Caverna reaches the top shelf.
Hallertau, Glass Road, and Odin are the question marks - 7 is too many but I don’t know which of these lower three can go yet. I’m looking at Hallertau in a way that is making it very uncomfortable, though…
I have yet to try Caverna. I am almost ready to possibly get the „big box edition“ for the 2 player version because i doubt very much I will ever need it for more players.
Hallertau is also the one on my list to maybe … get going. I think I need to play it again before booting it though.
Glass Road is getting a new Black Forest iteration this year—I am holding out for that one, as it‘s „almost home“. I got a rules explanation many years ago at the fair but never followed up with a game.
Odin with Norwegians is really nice. I wish I could actually play it on the table as much as online—but with the viability of BGA becoming a bit of a question mark for me with the recent news, I am definitely holding on to it.
Glass Road almost got culled after my last play. The economy was painful to get going and the need to plan 5 moves ahead, tracking 8-9 resources and all their potential ups and downs, was just a pain. But I read some reviews and there was consensus that “it’s worth it once you grok it” so it’s in something of deep storage until I have at least 2 committed partners and the potential to play several times in a short window.
…and I heard it’s coming to BGA? That could be just what I need.
I actually haven’t played Hallertau but I’m pitting it’s reputation against my known opinions
Yeah. I like Glass Road due to how airtight it is. But Im not sure how I feel about the role selection. Seems rather random and hard to deduce, but needs more plays to see what’s going on.
Cat in the Box - I am liking this again. Although, who ends with a paradox seems rather arbitrary because the 2nd to the last trick is very crucial on who wins, which determines who paradox first. Now, I would be fine with this if we don’t know which trick the paradox happens, but almost always it occurs on the last trick.
Steam + Steam Barons - jeez. As if I need more proof how mediocre Martin Wallace is as a designer. Steam Barons clearly lacks playtesting and actually made Steam terrible and very predictable. Auctions are pretty much a sham - a way for players to do silly overbids, because the predicted future value is very narrow. Other aspects of the game got terrible decision space too.
I’d been variously tempted, on and off, by Glass Road, Hallertau and Ora et Labora, but never enough to buy them. Obviously I wanted another Uwe game, and then I suddenly realised that the one I think I wanted all along is Feast for Odin…
After game 1 last night, I have now played 2 more 2 handed games of Spirit Island—I did not procrastinate all through my work-free day, I did get started on my taxes.
But … as previously mentioned my 2nd game was with Relentless Gaze of the Sun (aka Space Laser) and Hearth Vigil (Thunderspeaker: the next Generation). I still played without an opponent because I am out of practice and the spirits are new to me.
I felt like the two spirits had very good synergy even though they were working opposite ends of the board.
Space laser works by just burning up invaders and … burning up the land as well—until she learns to focus better (by getting cards with additional elements). She also has a power that lets her repeat card powers which is very powerful if you get the right stuff. With this one I got absolutely lucky with my card draws drafting 2 powers that let me clean up the blight she was spreading and a major power that fit perfectly: Transformative Sacrifice: destroy up to 3 presences and take (!) as many minor powers and play them for free. You get to keep those powers and Relentless Gaze has a growth option that allows her to return 3 destroyed presences to the board (well, she is pictured on the card so it makes sense that the power fits her style)
Hearth Vigil is far lower risk. It‘s a big cuddly Dahan loving hound that makes the Dahan very strong and moves with them a bit like Thunderspeaker.
With the moderate spirits all tested, I had to go for the more complex ones and decided to just throw a Level 1 Sweden into the mix. That was almost too much for me with these two:
If these two spirits needed soundtracks one would be Van Halen with Jump and the other would be Moonspell with Opium.l
I nearly lost it when the board was at one point completely overrun with cities(!!!) and I was getting into the Level 3 Invader cards with two land types…
But that was the round just before the Earthquake was finally finished being danced up and I destroyed so many invaders that I accumulated 4 fear cards for the following round and those just mopped up the leftovers before I could even get to the invader phase.
The last holdout somewhere in the Jungle, the Dahan would have finished them, but they ran off before I could dance up more Earthquakes. And my major powers for this game. I never got to trigger Fragments of Yesteryear because at some point the game ending came very suddenly.
Earthquake-girl is a bit slow but once the dance is done, it is quite devastating. The biggest problem here was my abysmal luck of the draw with minor and major powers always getting the wrong symbols and so it took me 2 attempts to get a really big Earthquake going (one that quakes in all the lands where I distributed my tokens and not just one of them). I really like the machinations going on here but it is definitely a risky one to play.
It didn‘t help that Delirium was a bit of a slacker. It took forever to get the tracks freed enough to power up the Incarna and then the Incarna was never quite in the right place. The powers barely triggered at all… I think I might have been to busy with Earthquakes on the other side of the island to give justice to this spirit.
And the events… all the good stuff fizzled and all the bad stuff converted my lovely Dahan into little plastic loving invaders.
But just like that Spirit Island has jumped into my solo-challenge Finally.
Played Taverns of Tiefenthal yesterday with my wife and her brother, using all the base modules, and also the wine cellar and quack doctor from the expansion. For the first time, I believe, we all picked a different setup card. My wife took one that gave her four cards in her deck (I think it was brewer, barback, bard, and dishwasher?), her brother took a free upgrade of beer storage with a bard and barback, amd I took one that eliminated two of my starting patrons and moved me 3 on the monastery track, giving me a barback.
It felt like we all struggled a bit with getting both gold and beer through the game. Most games I feel I get around the reputation track twice. This game I just barely got the noble from it. The other players got further around, but still not twice. My wife invested in brewers, having four by the end of the game, but seemed to draw them when she had very few dice to take advantage of them. Her brother made good use of the wine cellar, upgrading it early and have some stewards in his deck so he could use both wine markers, but usually got them on starting patrons.
I ended up with 81 points, with only six nobles. The other two had eight nobles each, so it was obvious I was in last place. Brother got 95 and my wife won with 107.
Tzolkin - played with 5 player and so used the quick actions module. It was pretty easy to learn than I thought.
I still don’t understand this game!!!
Hollywood Blockbuster - excellent auction game! It isn’t like Medici or Modern Art where you evaluation how much you’ll be gaining (you spend money to gain money) but rather you timing it well. There’s a big tension pull between finishing a film fast or do it slow to make sure you get the best film ever or the best film of that category. Excellent game.
Quest for El Dorado - this one was a tense 4 player with good amount of blocking in this play
Bus - 4 player
Charms - another Shinzawa. This one is very good. I sold Inflation but I am keeping this one. Since you can either only change the suit or the number in your trick makes this difficult to parse on how many tricks you should bid.
Holly Oak - Tom Lehmann trick taker. The suit changing is pretty cool. You have 4 suits representing the 4 seasons. Seasons change by trumping with the next season. I’m not that impressed with what I saw though.
Photograph - perhaps the only Saashi & Saashi game that I really like so far. I would like a copy.
Actually got a quick game in! Our friend Yvan came over and we played a game of Ticket To Ride Rails & Sails.
I actually managed to win, 236-225 (Maryse)-170 (Yvan). I was lucky with my tickets and made 80 points with my ports alone.
Great game, and felt real good.
… I’m sorry, but you managed to play a quick game of TTR RnS?! What sorcery allowed this!?
I’ve only played it twice, but both times were over 3 hours!
Quick is relative. 
It was around 90 minutes, maybe two hours if you count the table talk.
Been a rough day, mental health-wise. Had tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat basically the whole afternoon. Likely just a spill-over of emotions from all the unpleasantness recently. Decided to skip training tonight, I was actually concerned I’d have a meltdown or something and hurt someone (or myself). Happens once in a while. Lots going on.
So Maryse and I played a nice, relaxing game of Chromino. I lost, but it was close, 204-199. And now I’m right as rain.
Maybe there’s a kind of magic in setting down some coloured plastic pieces. Clack, clack, clack, and the world makes a little more sense. And a picture emerges, and sure, it’s abstract as hell, but it’s kinda beautiful. And the pieces fit.
Clack, clack, clack.
