We’re back from a week’s vacation with our friends and their 2 kids. I’ll probably post some pictures of the places we saw later in the Where in the World thread… for now I “have to” report that we got to play lots and lots of games.
- Just One (1): a single game on arrival. Most of my pens are rubbish now. I forgot to bring my replacements. The game is not rubbish. Never.
- Harmonies (3): taught this for my first multiplayer. We played a total of 3 games. It’s a very relaxed little filler that is just nice to play when you don’t want to brain yourself out. Everyone enjoyed themselves but a few mistakes were made along the way and playing “flat” really speeds up the game.
- The Crew 2 (5): played a few rounds late at night. I had a migraine and I was rubbish. Not the game. Never
- Libertalia Winds of New Edition (2): with 6 players lots of mayhem, very successful. These were my first plays since acquiring it ages ago. Good fun. Learning the cards might help in future games.
- Mischwald (3): I only participated in 3 games, I played in one of those. The other 2 were total misses… this is not a game I enjoy with 5 people at the table, especially because our friends know ALL the strategies backwards. Once I tried to play butterflies because they said with the expansion it was now a valid strategy but I needed the Maulwurf/Mole to play them for free on a single turn. I never got one. I was frustrated because it was all going so fast and I had nothing. My partner 3 spots downwind says “I’ll help you, okay? I’ll pay with a card you want.” Then he proceeds to play a Mole… I howled. The whole table fell over backwards with laughter. I think I don’t need no Mischwald for a while. Especially not with more than 3 players. I think 3 is the ideal player count for every game that is not a solo game. The others must have played another half dozen games of it.
- 7 Wonders (2): This is always fine. But also our friends have played this to death and … … in the second game I battled it out with a player sitting exactly 3 spaces from me to either side because EVERY one was always ducking out of the fights. But at least I was participating. Not my favorite anymore but inoffensive. We played with additional wonders, leaders and cities. No ships because the table wasn’t big enough. Yay. I don’t like ships.
- Stella Dixit Universe (1): our friends hate Dixit. I didn’t know I had never played with them. Someone taught it to them in a weird way it seems. Stella went down well enough but didn’t get a 2nd game despite some fun interactions. I think I prefer actual Dixit. I don’t really need a game around the cards
- Cascadia (1): with Landmarks and 6 players this can take surprisingly long.
- Ares Expedition (5): I played the base game coop mode with the son five times, maybe 6 who knows. We lost. And lost. And Lost. (he played at least 3 more games of this with his dad and a few solos). We got closer to winning. I think the base game mode is really really difficult. I have played a lot of solo OG Terraforming and I know it is tough to get the rhythm right. We began playing OG: TM solo on our respective apps to check if it was us or the game. But it is different enough to not be comparable at all. As soon as I got home I checked the expansion coop mode and I think we should have used a set of cards as dummy player as the “X for the Galaxy” 2 player games do. The Crisis mode does this–of course it also has a specific board and the Crisis cards. Still we got closer to winning with every game. But terraforming Mars with 2 phases each round in 15 rounds and reaching 80 points… hard. I had almost put this on the cull pile but now it’s back
Might even get my partner to try it with me. - Ark Nova (2): I participated in 2 games of this, one with 2 players and one with 4. Four is too much. I had a very nice primate Zoo in the 2 player game and scored 51 points. Everything just came together perfectly. I built on every spot in the zoo. Every single enclosure housed an animal. Lots of bonusses… really nice. 2nd game all 4 players complained things weren’t working out. While I didn’t win I had a better flow than the rest. I had a nice start with the Africa conservation project for 2 green points and next round I was able to directly play the “Auswildern” (releasing the animal) Project. I got all my workers quickly and I was soooo rich. I had a card that gave me income from kiosks the others played and someone had a zoo that asked him to play lots of kiosks…
- Cryptid (2): two very quick rounds once late at night. Had not played in a while. Still a good game. Not my copy, they bought theirs after playing mine
- Pollen (1): friend learned the rules for my copy and then taught it to us. Luxury. Was a bit of a weird game everyone seemed to be playing in their own little corner of the yard… and we had not quite understood the scoring and knowing a lot of Knizia games I was the only one who saw the result coming–I didn’t win I did really badly. But 2 people had collected lots of tokens of one type and neglected collecting a 2nd type… third player won. Has some potential and is very quick and easy to set up. Box is too large and that’s Allplay the usually get it right.
- Wyrmspan (1): I like it. But everyone I have taught it to, doesn’t. It’s getting long. The change that puts people off the most is that where Wingspan has fewer and fewer actions as the rounds go on, Wyrmspan is likely to give you a few bonus actions in later rounds (Coins are actions). And my game ran away badly with me having 9 coins at the start of the last round (I took the 3 I had left from previous round over to speed up the game and take my extra turns at the end because I didn’t want to make anyone suffer. The other critique is that the caves are colored as are the cave cards but there is no requirement to play cave cards to matching caves. This irritated everyone. I won with a nice 90-something points and an 11 Point lead. But I had very lucky draws.
- Welcome to the Moon (1): first map was well received and if more of the pens had still been functioning we might have played another round. I got the end-of-game condition wrong and so we couldn’t actually score points. But I think they enjoyed that being fans of the Ganz schön Clever series (which was also played but I was mostly playing Ares Expedition when that happened)
- Cockroach Salad (1): we had to play one game for old time’s sake. It’s fun enough when you have nothing else to do. Then we had to pack and play a final round of 7 Wonders…
- A few small solos of Sprawlopolis, Grove and Trailblazers mostly in the mornings…
Overall a very very good gaming vacation.
Games we wanted to play but didn’t find time for:
- Istanbul
- Lost Ruins of Arnak
- Formosa Tea
- And a bunch of small card games.
Games I should have brought because it was finally the right group:
- Sidereal Confluence
- My 2 unplayed Splotters. (TGZ + FCM)