We played my latest acquisition last night, Forbidden Island, between my daughter and me, last night. She was red, I was blue, so I had the pilot and she could dry two tiles per action, which was handy.
We managed to recover all treasures still with half the island semi-there, and two levels to spare, although we started from novice level.
Really enjoyed it, but I can see how it is a simple entry game, and it may get old soon. Still, would be good for game nights with friends.
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5 player Hansa Teutonica. Loved it, the board was just clogged up and messy and every turn was hard and expensive. Loads of different strategies competing. Such a good game
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God, I want to get this to the table!
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I ordered a deck of alternate island layouts and homebrew roles a few years back on artscow. The new layouts added a lot to the challenge variety.
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A good week working through the first four scenarios of A.H.:LCG; The Dream Eaters.. I decided to give myself a difficulty break and throw an extra +1 token in the chaos bag for this cycle, so I could make more narrative-based decisions and still come out okay.
I’m also playing Ashcan Pete for the first time, and his 4 base Willpower points have come in very handy. Looking forward to completing this one.
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Some games with friends last night:
Quarriors, well this one hadn’t been played in years! I played it a lot with my wife when we were dating (largely why I’ve held onto it), but it’d fallen out of favor in recent years. Having replayed it now? It’s decent. A bit more luck driven than I’d like, and the balance of the monsters is all over the place but building a little engine is fun and the dice are appealing. I’d completely forgotten how the quests worked though, so we just played without them, which is easy enough.
Suburbia, this was a fun game - my opponent went heavy into green buildings, which I tend to avoid when playing. He did pretty well though, it’s kind of opened my eyes to the viability of green buildings! Will have to test that a bit next game (providing the tiles come out of course). Balance probably remains key though.
Concordia, terrific game, one of my faves. I had a slow start this time, with a couple of ill timed plays early on but picked up soon after. I ended up with a significant lead thanks to buying a few more cards than my opponents and really pushing for Mercury points. I’m 3/3 of our last few games at least, which is unusual for me, but something about Concordia just clicks for me for some reason. Great stuff.
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I was looking at this and foundations of Rome as games that have that building mechanic where you have a sense of having made something.
Interesting to hear it’s a bit white bread.
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I think I’d rather just play with Lego
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My wife and son enjoyed it. None of us triggered the big trouble actions so it was just a bit unexciting.
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I would definitely rather play with Lego
We got it in a sale so I’ll put it up for trade
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This is one of my played (and in progress) posts so common these days. I’ve got a bank heist lined up in Flick 'em Up! for my partner’s outlaw team to try and pull off.
We’ve got a pretty standard “landing strip” Main Street, with the Bank straight across from the Sheriff’s Office (town planning 101), a general store that can be looted (guns and, notably, up to two dynamite), a few barricaded buildings, and the centrepiece at the end of town: the gallows (just for show/obstacle) getting rigged up for tomorrow’s hanging.
This is the conceit for today’s heist. The town (and the law) are preoccupied with tomorrow’s events. Two lawmen are preparing the gallows, while the Sheriff sits on the porch of her office rocking her Winchester. Two lawmen sit inside (will begin off map). The bank has 5 bags of money “available”. Two by default (the tills) and three only accessible after a successful dynamite blast (the safe). The outlaws start with a single stick of dynamite, but there are two others available (next door to the cops!) at the general store. Should the outlaws manage to bust the safe with more dynamite available, they can use them to open up one of the barricaded buildings (cover options) or otherwise use them “as necessary”.
They start exposed in town, with very little cover not already taken by the law. However, once they have their gold, they need to dash to their hideout just outside town. They’ll have some cover as they hack their way out, but if they manage to make it to the hideout, there’s a Gatling gun pointed straight out the front door for any unwanted guests, and a horse for the getaway. Of course, the law will get that cover too.
Finally, once the outlaws have stashed as much loot as they think they can manage, one lone rider must make a mad dash through the cops and try to make it out through Red Rock Canyon.
Who will succeed? Probably gonna take the whole weekend to find out, the way the kiddo’s been going. 
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Played Blokus, four year old had some emotional issues today. So it didn’t go well.
Could be better but much better with people who don’t cry when they perceive they’re losing.
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I got in all of my new games yesterday.
- Calico - 3 solos by now. Wildly different scoring. Love the puzzle (had played before on TTS so I knew what I was getting)
- Unmatched: Lost with Artus to my partner’s Medusa. Thanks @COMaestro for posting all those times Medusa won. And because I lost so badly, I will get to play again.
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Hardback is so much better on the table in my native language. I really like how the deck building comes together and it does remind me of my favorite deck builder Star Realms in a good way. But it’s a puzzle and it plays solo, lovely. Also the ink mechanism is great. Buying more cards that you then have to use… my final word was “Fön” btw
my longest one was “Stirnglatze” (yes, I used duden.de to verify)
Tonight we had a wonderful online game night of old favorites (both games and friends 
)
- 2 games of Azul in TTS which… … I both won. It was close between my partner and me (2 points both times, the other two were a bit behind). And that fully scripted lazy people’s mod that does all the work…
- Then 2 games of 7 Wonders on BGA. My first ever BGA games and I must say I am pleasantly surprised how much fun that was. I won one of the two games because green cards…
- 2 rounds of Hana Bi which we had not played in ages and my partner was not having fun. I do not regret giving it away in this week’s purge. I like the game but The Crew is much better.
The nicest thing about tonights game-night? Nobody had to explain any games. No teaching, just playing.
We would all much rather play games on a table together counting points ourselves and setting up games. When you don’t have to do that 7 Wonders lasts all of 15 minutes… But as we’re sliding into the third wave… game nights here are still a far off dream.
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Well, it turns out we smashed through it pretty good, actually. My partner’s gang was allowed one full free movement round to “mosey into town” without any harrassment from the law (basically freely position on the board as she/her flicking saw fit). Once in position, she wasted no time, sending a bandit into the general store, and two others into the bank—one with the dynamite! *Here I’ll note that she had an option to short-fuse the dynamite by tossing it in for an instant blast, or “planting it” while inside for a guaranteed kaboom the next round (with or without her men inside). The conceit here being that any of the money available before the blast would be destroyed if not pocketed first. Anyway…
My sheriff tagged one of the outlaws stuck outside and tucked deeper into cover, while the two inside the building burst out to secure positions. One of the cops by the gallows rushed into the general store and won a duel with the bandit inside, kicking him out without anything stolen (this guy ended up being a clutch sniper from inside the building). Two cops took hits though, and by the following round, my Sheriff was on her last legs.
I was able to secure the bank, forcing my partner to cut their losses and make a run to the hideout with 3/5 moneybags, but since I was hunkered down pretty deep, she was able to get one bandit away and secure one of the bags (not to mention access to the Gatling and the getaway steed). My pistols were on fire and I was able to knock out three of her bandits, but her captain (the one carrying the other two bags) made a deep run for the hills, skirting a mountain of obstacles to make it to the hideout.
Outnumbered and out of time, I had a pretty good blockade as I waited for her to make her escape, but her horse was good, and with four flicks available to her (plus mayyyyyybe a mulligan), she was able to thread the needle and make it into the canyon, home free.
Outlaws win, 3/5 potential moneybags. 
[EDIT] FWIW this was what we called the “par” victory for the scenario. It’s so easy to make fun scenarios for this game.
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I recently bought the expansion for Era. It’s definitely a lot more fun if you try and ruin your opponents by actively trying to get 3 skulls.
I think the game does get a lot more fiddly with the expansions but the game gets fairly samey without them.
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Nidavellir , first play. Easy enough to learn, even tho I accidentally bought it in Italian. It’s a reasonably straightforward auction game. There are three areas where you put cards out, and for each area you make a bid by placing a coin facedown. Then you take a card in bid order. Each class of card has a different way of scoring points at the end of the game. Warriors add up their value, but whoever has the most ranks gets to add their highest coin. Hunters score the square of the number of hunters. Miners are the sum of the ranks, multiplied by the number of ranks. Blacksmiths continually add +3, +4, +5 as you get more. And Explorers just use the sum of their cards. The player board shows the points for Hunters and Blacksmiths, so you don’t have to work it out.
Each player starts with coins of value 0,2,3,4 and 5. You can upgrade a coin by using your 0 coin in a bid. Then you add the coins you didn’t use together, get a new coin of that value, and discard the highest coin. So you always have five coins to use.
There are two decks of cards to go thru. Once the first deck is done, you gain a distinction card for each class if you have the most ranks. This could give you a coin upgrade, or allow you to win any ties, depending on the class.
Also, every time you have a complete set of all five classes, you get to pick a hero, which have a range of abilities. It turned out to be a pretty close game, only a single point between first and second. Good game, I like auction games usually. Simple enough, but has some interesting decisions to make.
Oriflamme , where I was targeted by the other players because I’d played it before.
Coloma , another player asked to play this. I wasn’t too keen on it, based on my single play of it, a while back. There are some interesting ideas, but it just didnt work for me.
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Managed to get the first couple of games of the newly purchased Rajas of the Ganges. Such a fun game! My girlfriend was initially a little overwhelmed by the board itself, but once you realise the actions are actually fairly limited, it came together nicely.
In the first game we both approached it like your usual point accumulation game, which meant it seemed a little more slow and considered to begin with. It was only in the last few rounds that the ‘race’ element of the game became super obvious. The second game we played it as a race from the outset and it was incredibly tense towards the end. It finished one game each.
I think this also has one of my favourite end game triggers. Rather than being a “first to 10/20/30” style game, the end of the game is triggered when a person crosses their two points tracks (money and fame) which have been working around the board in opposite directions. Not only does it give you different ways to play the game, but it creates a lovely bit if tension as someone gets close to crossing the tracks.
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I was hyped at Knizia’s Babylonia. I thought it was one of the best ones ever.
But Stephenson’s Rocket is just perfect. I think it’s just below Tigers & Pots and Yellow & Yangtze. Shared incentives, area majorities, and mutualism. Wow. Took me a while before I could play this one
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I taught myself Hansa Teutonica today with a 3 handed solo.
I made oh so many rules mistakes at first (mostly when and how you get points and I didnt realize keys are only for the end of the game and only fully developed abilities give points later and that towns counted for majorities)… but that’s why I do these solo experiments.
It seems really quite wonderful ( a solo like that can only ever transport an impression ). So deceptively “simple” that a 1 page rule summary says it all. And yet … from what I can tell there appear to be a lot of different strategies to go for. I am not sure though I want to look up the two player variant. It’s not the kind of game my partner will like for two players. I can see so many ways to piss off someone… it’s better if we play this in a larger setting.
For a beige game the art is really pretty good.
What I really like is how the language on the player boards is Latin. Lovely way of making it “language independent”… or at least spoken language independent.
I also enjoy that my dad’s hometown is on the map (Dortmund).
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