Five tribes!!! How can I love this game so much when I find it so totally frustrating
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Is that any better than using Steam Link? I would have thought the interface options on Steam would be better.
In my opinion, a lot better. First it streams your entire desktop and isnāt dependent on Steam and its awkward adding an external game function.
Thereās a portable client which doesnāt need installing, which is handy if you have, say, a work laptop (not that anyone would do thatā¦), and when without it you can stream to any modern browser.
Latency is really, really low, even online, and the host has good options for streaming quality, and whether it scales video down to stream to lower resolution screens, or whether it changes the host resolution to that of the client when it streams, which is good if youāre playing something with a small UI from a 1080p (or higher) host to something like a laptop with a 1366 x 768 screen.
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Just finished another play if 1889. Was really tense, only 600yen separated first from third with the winning score at 7900. I made a mistake about half way through which tumbled me in to last and compounded it with another mistake shortly after to keep myself there.
Still remains a fascinating system, the delicious interactivity and narrative arc are really spicy. I hope I can play some of these this year in person rather than online.
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We bloody love Five Tribes in this house. We really need to get the other expansion. We got one but Iām not convinced it makes the game any better. I donāt remember which expansion it is. 
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A big thanks to @Ross for the suggestion, so I and Mrs Name1ess played Escape of the Dead this evening. I stole some cubes from Terraforming Mars and pressed a bunch of Carcassonne Meeples into service as the walking dead. I know that itās supposed to be a solo game but it worked well with us dividing the tasks, and dice, between us so that one of us was at the barricade while the other tried to fixing the car. In what was the final round we had the car at 80% complete, six zombies outside and a barricade with only 3 HP left. Going for the Hail Mary play we took 2 dice each and concentrated just on the car. A 6 from each of us gave us the win by the skin of our teeth and in my head it played out like the final scene from a movie. The engine spluttering into life and we were swerving out onto the road just ahead of the horde. We were done in about 15 minutes and it was really quite excellent! 
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During a very long Zoom meeting that only related to me now and then, I read the rules and tried out a solo game of Roll Player on Tabletopia. Ended up with 28 points, so not bad for a first try. I also learned that Yabletopia needs a better way of looking through a deck for the card you want. Or, if there is a way of doing so, advertising it better.
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Finally polished off my second solo Street Masters session, which has been sitting there taunting me for waaay too long as I do, yāknow, cooking and work and videogames and online boardgames and stuff. I took Jack, Tiger Azules and Wicked against the Golden Dragons in the Cashed Out scenario. This was immediately much trickier than the baseline Brotherhood/whatever the arms warehouse is called setup. but I came out victorious, if beaten up.
For starters, the Dragonsā boss, Ah Long hands out a card to each fighter at the beginning. These cards mean youāll eat a big chunk of punch or kick damage automatically if you end your turn within a single move (3 spacecs) of him. They also heal him or penalize you whenever he gets to attack and doesnāt pick that fighter. Secondly, he starts with (and can never lose) a card that automatically refreshes him to a minimum of two defense tokens of each type every enemy phase. That said, if you hit him really hard (5+ damage after defense) you can discard one of the former cards. Not easy to arrange, but it sure helps. Later, he can also get abilities to attack multiple targets and from range, doing extra damage and stealing defense tokens. He gets a card that generates three random defense every enemy phase and if thereās still any remaining he hurts every fighter with damage of that type. And his minions are tough, mobile, and prone to area offense.
Meanwhile, Cashed Out imposes a hard loss condition if enemies get to too many of the objectives without fighter intervention, and has gambler NPCs to keep safe (though I think under most circumstances it doesnāt really make sense to do so - youāre only dinged one out of ten on the loss condition and it makes them go away, whereas you donāt get that much from rescuing them and it takes three of your defense tokens (all at once) and going back to a start position). I got lucky in that I was in a position to keep things ticking along at a low boil but a minion got dubbed a Pit Boss my last turn, so that would have been two enemies activating objectives and that might have been a bit more of an issue.
As for my fighters? They were all pretty great. Jack has ready access to healing and defense token generation, but powers up almost all his moves by damaging himself (and has a card that amps his attacks if heās taken at least 8 damage), so itās a balancing act. Tiger Azules has a bunch of repositioning and the ability to steal or discard enemy defense tokens, and his passives give him automatic extra damage (one per type) on his attacks and the ability to use defense tokens to block damage without using them up by exhausting the passive. Wicked (who is a mutant horned lizard) has the ability to squirt blood from her eyes in a couple of different ways and specializes in doing a lot of little stabby attacks that do direct damage and trigger bonus damage from passives. She can also have another fighter attack on her turn, which is pretty handy.
All in all, I continue to be excited to play Street Masters with my friends. But next Iāll probably take advantage of the quarantine to get stuck into 7th Continent in a bigger way. Maybe Iāll even get through a curse in less than a month. (I wonāt.)
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We only ended up playing a round last night. Itās looking like weāll do the same tonight. Weāre also using the generic heroes with the first game settings; itās already a lot for my partner to take in. Since we only played round one, we didnāt get into too much cardplay. She has the 1st player position, but didnāt have a reason to use her mana discount card yet. Weāll see how things go with new cards about to get drawn and a potential ultimate coming for (against) me.
[EDIT] Round 2 complete. Iāve been maintaining control of the dome (and the big bad Outsider), but sheās been winning in the tower wars. My left laneās tower took 2 hits and theyāre right on top of me. I made a fancy move on my last turn and managed to reposition one of her heroes to barely take control of the right lane, but that only put me back on neutral ground. I did, however, manage to knock out one of her heroes in the left lane, so sheāll be at a disadvantage next round. Things are tense and the card play is ramping up with the mana boosts. Lots of fun!!
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I am a big fan of the hail mary pass to finish! Itās a nice little thing. Never thought of using meeples!
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I played a few games of it too, and kept losing in the 70-90% range, so I had a look on the BGG forums for the game.
Unfortunately I read a message written by Morten (he who founded Automa Factory to add AI players to new games) and thereās a tactic for winning that works 80% of the time, and I canāt make my brain un-learn it. Cool Idea for a game though and some fun, free entertainment for an hour 
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Had a head to head last night with my 7 y.o. daughter, and she made me sweat for it. Up to the last tree (Willow) we were head to head (I think she was ahead by 2 or 3 points) and I managed to snatch it by having the 1 that cancelled her 8. Sheās learnt now not to drop 1s unless she really doesnāt want them. The hard way.
Hopefully tonight she will beat my ass at Ticket to Ride-Europeā¦
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I tried out the solo mode for Pax Pamir 2E on TTS yesterday. It ended with me winning 19 points to 9, which makes me suspicious that Iām getting an important rule wrongā¦
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Sometimes the bot plays very stupidly, but Iām pretty sure thatās an impossible outcome.
To win by 10 points, you would need uncontested domination on the final check, right? But the bot always has influence in every faction, so even if you scored 10 on a successful dominance check, the bot would score 6.
Also, professional curiosity, is the TTS module easier to use than the Vassal one for solo/realtime play?
EDIT: it just occurred to me - if you really want to know, you could generate a log of a solo game and sent the log to me - it would be easy to determine if you have all the rules straight. Youād be doing me a favour too, as I could find out if there any UI issues to trip over.
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I think it was 3 unsuccessful dominance checks where I had the most cylinders in play, and then one successful dominance check where I had the most influence. So 3 + 3 + 3 +10 = 19 to me, and 1 + 1 + 1 + 6 = 9 to the bot?
Iāll try it and get back to you!
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In that case, one rule you definitely missed is that you win immediately if you are 4 points ahead after any dominance check =)
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Thatās awesome! Weāve had a few games come down to a destroyed Nexus, but also a couple have been won with the āeventā cards (forget the actual name).
I really want to try the 3-lane side that has the sole win-con of taking down a Nexus.
On a superficial note, I really wish I had the 3d tower minis. May need to get some printedā¦
Have you seen any good places doing piecework printing? Iāve been tempted to drop the ridiculous amount needed to buy one of their competition packs just for the towers and poker chips. Itās a suckerās deal cost-wise but man the visual upgrade!
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I do short-run 3d printing, but for anything of any size the cost gets quite silly.