Oops, I forgot to track some games from Monday night. I did not attend my club Game Night, but my daughter fancied playing a game, so she beat me at Love Letter, a solid 7-5. Encouraged by that, we played a game of Tiny Epic Dinosaurs, where she beat me 75-70. Managing a private contract on round 5 gave her the edge on game that I thought I had well lined up
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Played a couple of games of Aquatica now. On the box it says itās a 60 min game but it really feels like a thirty minute game. It feels like youāre setting an engine up for one fabulous go and then itās done.
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Yes, it is very much a Splendor lengthā¦ I think it can do with an expansion.
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Played Spirit Island, Love Letter, and 6Nimmt with @EnterTheWyvern . I was River Surges in Sunlight against Prussia 4. Still a very fun game. I finally figured out why I want to return. Itās the kind of narrative-through-gameplay that I like. Thereās just pure satisfaction that I wonāt get from an 18xx game or a Splotter when my sea monsters crush a Prussian city like itās reverse Pacific Rim and my Jungle Hungers creeps from the interior and kills everyone else.
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I must admit Spirit Island has been very appealing to me due to the theme, art, and being co-op and soloable, but the complexity level kind of put me off a little bit. Considering that I have played now games that are slightly higher on the complexity index on BGG and found them manageable, SI feels moreā¦ reachable?? Now just the price puts me off: I think it is a game like Root (at a different level), where not getting the expansions you kind of miss some of the fun that can be had without making things so much more complex.
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Branch and Claw I see very much as a part of the base game in a separate box. Itās probably better to not have it straight away due to the learning curve but what it adds is part of the natural progression and adds longevity.
Jagged Earth is a brilliant expansion. Everything in it is so well done. However it is the I already love this game and have played a ton expansion not at all mandatory and something I didnāt feel i missed not having for years but has been a welcome jolt after 3 years or so of owning Spirit Island.
Were you to take the plunge I think budget for Branch and Claw around 10 games in if youāre all new together. Jagged Earth or the promos, well I got over 50 games in before adding any of them and clearly enjoyed it tons to get that many games through before getting them. 10 spirits in combinations even at 2 player with adversaries is all the combinations already with the power cards being different each game on top. Donāt stress it from a completionist perspective. On TTS playing a mod without jagged earth and still having tons of fun.
See @lalunaverde above for insight of the fun levels. Although not sure how much I can trust him anymore, he didnāt wax lyrical about 6 Nimmt! 
Although he does have sea monsters so should probably say nice things 
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I love 6Nimmt. 5 and 6 player count was great.
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Itās my youngestās birthday today and my parents bought him Klask.
Itās set to go high up in the chart of games that Iām bobbins at but really enjoy.
Itās like table football crossed with air hockey crossed with LSD. Itās mental and an absolute scream
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Have you watched the World Championship Klask games? Theyāre often on Ye Olde Tube of You.
I donāt quite āgetā the game, but I have watched some it played in YouTube spiralsā¦ theyāre pretty cool.
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That.
Is.
ā¦
2 hours of Klask
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Love me some Klask! Especially 4 player
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That 4 player board looks crazy.
(Edit: Unexpectedly, the more I look, the more that actually looks like Klaskā¦)
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Even with 2 players, I have preferred the circle board
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The 2 player game seems to be on sale everywhere. That circle board is a lot of cash.
Played just one round of Splendour tonight. Found out my wife reallt doesnt like an aggressive move - i reserved a card i knew she wanted. All hell broke loose.
And then she thrashed me 16-8 so i guess it serves me rightā¦
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Never ever anger a dragon 
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RPG group tonight:
51st State Master Set, this one went long (2 and a half hours or so!) and one of our players had to nip off before the end - Iām not sure playing with 4 is ideal for this one, especially not new players. The game was good though - one of our players took an early lead on a point-scoring raze engine. We definitely shouldāve done something about that earlier in the game - he scored at least 20 points with it by the end. If I remember correctly, a similar thing happened with Empires of the North as well (even though you canāt destroy buildings in that one) - we needed to be a bit more aggressive with the razing. Iām keen for another game sometime soon with that in mind. Maybe with 2-3 rather than 4 though.
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Played Parks with solo mode for my first game of it. Absolutely gorgeous, but we knew that already.
Took about 2 rounds (seasons) to get the hang of the game, I felt up to speed by the fourth and final season. Itās a surprisingly tense face-off where collecting every token counts and your maneuvering on spaces can really make a difference.
The solo game uses āpark rangersā as a second player, and you can both manipulate their movement by being ahead or behind them and see when theyāre about to trigger an event (very bad for you). Being able to see these things a bit in advance doesnāt help much, but does give you a LOAD of choices to make. (I successfully held of a penalty of ādiscard all your tokens except 4ā until Iād done a big spend at the end of the season, phew).
The solo game has scores you can aim for, and I got 20 points - which is exactly enough to graduate from the lowest category and into the casual one. Not bad for my first attempt. Would have been more if that last season hadnāt come out and added a Sun token to every park on the grid! Aargh! Luckily I had a lot in reserveā¦
Easy to teach once you know it, looks astounding, and if you have a competitive friend to play 2-player with itāll definitely get nasty enough while also giving you the feeling of completing a nice trek.
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Played my first game of Jaws of the Lion. It was, unsurprisingly, pretty good!
The TTS implementation isnāt perfect, but overall it worked out pretty well (the biggest problem was the two people I was playing with had only one computer, so they had to use the āGamemaster Modeā, which was sub-ideal). And it was nice to try something a bit chunkier than the games Iāve been playing recently.
Tomorrow for the livestream (the game store I work at has me doing Facebook Live events twice a week: Tuesdays and Fridays, and I cover all sorts of topics) Iām going to be talking about Dungeon Delvers for 30-45 minutes, but Iāll be opening by playing a 10-15 minute game of Catacomb Conquest with Natalie, one of the other employees at J&Js. Just a silly little dungeon-themed dexterity game (I originally suggested āWelcome to the Dungeonā, because itās easy and I love it, but Nat wanted to try something a bit more visually impressive, so weāll see how this works out!).
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Got 2 games of Hansa Teutonica yesterday. First was me and the boys - the eldest trounced us by building trading posts at both ends of the action route.
Second game was via Zoom. My wife won (surprise!) despite being locked out of extra actions for a while.
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