Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[Phil]

I finally broke out the Nikolai Dante faction in Helter Skelter tonight – the only team I’d yet to play with. In game 1 I managed to pull out a win from a bad starting position, while in game 2 I managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (and the jaws of victory had to be really patient about it too – I was lingering in there for ages!)

---

In game 1 the Dark Judges had a strong starting position, and I didn’t think that combat would pan out in my favour, so I focused on grabbing fragments, hoping that I could get three and then still be in a position to take out one of the judges, which is exactly what happened. Having gone on the assault in so many games, this was a reminder that running from the Dark Judges can be a good tactic.

---

I’m sure we can resolve this amicably…

Game 2 started with four of my characters surrounding two of the Dark Judges, so I immediately hit them with everything I had, dropping Judge Fear before the judges even got a turn! Judge Mortis followed quickly afterwards. My plan had been to start grabbing fragments from that point, but Judge Fire came quickly into range pushing me back into combat, and soon Fire was also defeated. This left only Judge Death – who from the outset had been threatening Viktor Romanov in a corner of the map far away from all the other characters.

I still had all five of my characters alive (albeit in varying states of health), with only Judge Death left to take care of.

Judge Death then proceeded to murder my entire team.

At the end, it was Nikolai Dante himself vs Judge Death. Nikolai had three health, while Judge Death was down to just one health. I was irked to have lost everyone else, but I still had no concerns about my assured victory – all I needed to do was draw a few attack cards, and I was surely home free. I then proceeded to churn through what seemed like the entire deck (an intervening shuffle included) without ever producing a hand which was useful to the one character I still had. There was no point to grabbing any fragments – the only way I could win now was by defeating Judge Death – but at one point I spent cards to pick a fragment up simply because my hand was continually useless for any other purpose. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t attack – I couldn’t even run away… All I could do was defend and hope that I would finally draw the cards I needed, and in the end it was too much.

Looking at my deck in exasperation after the game, I found Dante’s two strongest attack cards at the very top, waiting to be drawn…

[bort]

Ruins of Arnak, first play, went pretty smoothly. Bit of a teach, but it has good player aids, and things seem pretty straightforward, didn’t spend half our time looking at rules on BGG like some games (cough AGDITC cough). Wow – its tight tho, you have to scramble for every point, and then the games over. I had nothing going into the last round, needless to say, I did not win. In fact, I came last (3p), by some margin. The winner topped every scoring category except one, so the winner was never in doubt. The second placed player did very well out of her cards, scoring 21 points there. I enjoyed it, but not raving about it. Maybe I’m just salty…

Aliens – Another Glorious Day in the Corps, mission 2. This was a rescue mission, you have certain characters in the APC, and you have four trapped soldiers who have to get to the APC to win. Same mission I played with my other group last week. Did a bit better this time, we smashed the blips that started on the map pretty easily (Drake and his smart gun were doing well). And after that it was just a case of running for the APC, and keeping spawns away. We barricaded one door from a spawn point (I keep forgetting that you can directly barricade a spawn point, not just doors). Oh well, the door barricade was good, there were only 3 places to spawn blips from the spawn point, so most of the movement tracker cards were ineffective. it seems a bit cheap, but I can’t think of any other solution, it would be ridiculous if they spawned outside a barricade.

Somehow we had a lot of cards in the discard pile, which wasn’t ideal. Newt did her usual job of recycling cards back to the main deck. We had a hazard that exhausted 8 cards, that was a bit rough. Still a helluva lot of fun, and I hear the motion tracker in my head all the time I’m playing. I’d like to play the full campaign (3 missions, with extra missions to rescue any captured characters), but I’m playing across 2 groups, which is a bit awkward. No models came apart during play, Ripleys head was securely on. They feel fragile, but so far the aliens have been fine, no breakages. Their tails do get a bit caught up sometimes.

Roll for Adventure, obviously we hadn’t done enough dice rolling in Aliens. This is a cooperative roller, where you have to defeat various creatures while rolling particular sequences to get gems. Good fun, we came very close to losing, but managed to pull it out.

[SteveB_uk]

Scenario 4 of Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion and… I don’t know what happened last time. I’ve had two previous attempts at this and got so absolutely slaughtered that I thought I was doing something wrong, and I might have been (I suspect I was using the enemies for 3-4 players when soloing only 2 PCs).

This time I bashed through it okay, it was still tight and one hero was exhausted because they ran out of cards when I had to ditch a card to prevent damage earlier, but everything felt like it was the right difficulty.

Phew. Now onto Scenario 5.

[Captbnut]

Hansa Teutonica with 4 of us. I really like this game. My wife and my second play and the kids first. We all went with different strategies and it was pretty close between 3 of us; I managed to get a merchant on the bottom left route (Koellen?) for 11 points and the win in my final turn.

My youngest unlocked keys, my eldest got 5 actions and built a massive network and my wife did bits of everything.

When packing up I noticed that Cardiff is on the Britain map which is an added bonus.

[Captbnut]

I remember one early scenario being really, really hard - is 4 the one with one massive room with the book landscape?

[SteveB_uk]

Yes, no doors, all one room with the extra book lined up landscape at the bottom.

Looking online some Gloomhaven experts even had trouble with it (but I’m also pretty sure I added an extra enemy on the map when I shouldn’t have).

[pillbox]

Not sure if you’re aware of it, but there is a misprint on the Britain board. There’s a BGG thread about it

[Captbnut]

I wasn’t. Haven’t even opened the board tbh.

Does Cardiff not exist?

[pillbox]

It’s just a route bonus mistake. The publisher has provided a printable fix

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2571856/misprint-britannia-board

[Captbnut]

Cheers

Cambridge is on there as well!

[raged_norm]

Thanks for the heads up. Usual sense of entitlement on that thread (gave up on page 2 though)

[raged_norm]

My wife offered to play Exit: The Sunken Treasure tonight. Not being one to turn down a night of fun with my wife I took her up in the offer.

Far less frustrating than the other we played, but also far less exciting. That’s the 2/5 difficulty compared to a 4/5 difficulty I guess.

[COMaestro]

Played two games with my wife this afternoon. First up was Azul, which I lost horribly, 67 - 50. I think I kept focusing too much on completing a couple of columns (got one of them), which kept me from getting more easy points elsewhere.

Then we played Jaipur, and man, did the game hate me in the first round. Started with a gold and a silver card, but never managed to sell any gold, and only sold two silver right before the end of the round. Didn’t get any rubies either. Lost that round 80 - 57.

Managed to win the second round, though it was pretty close. Then horribly lost the third round again, 79 - 62.

We are planning to play Shogun later tonight with her brother, so we will see how that goes.

[Marx]

My partner and I played the first game of Super-Skill Pinball 4-Cade (gods that’s a stupid name). It was fun!

She crushed me! 101 to 43. She got a very solid multiball PLUS managed the Feats of Strength (I missed the “5” tier for that three shots in a row).

A very fun little game! I look forward to trying it again soon!

[Chewy77]

I think I printed that sometime during lockdown back in May, and never got round to play it. What scenario did you play?

[Captbnut]

Just played Tranquility

It’s a small box co-op for up to 5 players. It has similar DNA to Hanabi and The Mind where you take it in turns to lay cards into a grid which must go up in ascending order.

The catch is you must discard the number of cards that equals the gap between the ones you played if you go next to another card.

This game is gorgeous. Each set of 10 cards has different art with a day and night. The cards are beer mats so it has more life if we get bored of it!!

Also don’t be fooled by the picture, we haven’t got close to winning

[yashima]

That is good to know … I skipped that Kickstarter (just like Calico) and regretted it a bit (just like Calico, except Calico is getting a German version by Ravensburger in March which means it will be widely available here).

[Marx]

@Chewy77

What scenario did you play?

There are quick-start rules included for Carniball (which, sadly, is travelling carnival related, and not cannibal nor Carnival, the Toronto-based celebration of southern culture). And they’re not “easy”, but they do make sense after a few missteps.

[SteveB_uk]

Found some solo variant rules for Kanagawa (which is otherwise stuck on my shelf during lockdown) and tried it out.

Target is 40 points and (after a quick go to remind myself of the game) I got 38. The solo version essentially makes it so that you have to prioritise getting the assistant in order to build up the rows and lose less of the fixed 36 cards each round.

Rules here:
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1681942/solo-rules

Kanagawa remains VERY PRETTY:

[COMaestro]

We did get Shogun to the table last night. I always forget that it is a bit of a chore to set up, especially with 3 players, as you have to remove some of the province cards from the deck. Things went pretty smoothly after set up and a quick rules refresher.

Not enough refreshing, though, as when scoring the first winter phase, I forgot to give everyone a point for each building they controlled, just the bonus for having the most of a given building in a region. First winter was nasty with a -7 to the rice supply before counting how many provinces we could support. My wife did okay, I lost one province to rioting, and her brother lost two.

Second winter was much milder, only a -2, but I still had revolts, losing both provinces, including one with two buildings on it which would have also given me the bonus for most in the region. Final scores had my wife and I tied at 47, with her brother bringing up the rear at 26. I won the tiebreaker by having one more war chest than she did, but again, with forgetting to score 1 VP per building in the first scoring phase, it is a tainted victory, as we just aren’t sure what the building counts were at that time.

Still fun, and I love the action mechanic of the game. Seeing the order that 5 of the 10 actions will occur and then planning your turn, possibly gambling on the order of the hidden 5 actions, determining which of your provinces will most benefit from each, if you can even perform each, is always a great little brain burner. Shogun is probably one of my favorite games that I play the least.

3 player is not ideal, as there is usually room for each player to spread a little bit, without needing to engage each other at all until near the end of the game, making 4 or 5 player the better experience, but I would rather play it 3 player than not at all.