Wow, is that just a two-card tableau and you just ran x2-produce the whole game?
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Yup, lucked out on Alien Toy Shop
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I forgot that the app has an actual AI and isnāt just the solo version of the game, and I was looking for how many ā6-dev tokensā it had.
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Are you producing on the windfall world every turn? I think the version Iām playing you need a card power to do that.
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The bonus for selecting the produce action is to produce on a windfall world
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Not sure how I didnāt know that! Although it rings a bell now
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Played my first game of (newly arrived oO) Babylonia and lost 
My partner had trouble remembering the scoring almost every turnā¦ but he got the lead early and stayed there. But I tricked him out of the first Ziggurat with 3 farmers and thought that would give me an edge but I miscalculatedā¦ he placed his tiles all over while I concentrated on a big central territory and in midgame I scored some big cities. Then I spent too many turns to keep all my tiles connected and let him score more on the ziggurats and let him have uncontested citiesā¦ so my huge territory wasnāt enough because he recognized what was going on at some point and cut me off. So he won with a nice lead of 131 over 123 points.
He decided that was when he recognized this was a bit like Go. I think that means he liked the game.
I like the size of the two player side of the board. Itās just right. It was a really quick game, too.
Also very few rulesāand I dare say easily remembered. Weāll see how scoring goes next time. It feels way less aggro than Tigris and Euphrates. (I have not played that many Knizia tile layers so thatās it for comparisons, Through the Desert has been too long and Iāve only watched other people play Blue Lagoon and the copy of Samurai I bought used last year is sitting on my shelf of shame.)
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Discovered over the weekend that the solo AI decks in Empyreal: Spells and Steamās expansion (which I think I vaguely was aware existed but had little intention of ever using as I donāt play solo very often and would prefer to keep it to games designed around solo play) are actually supported for use in a sort of makeshift coop mode - since they can be used to substitute for human players in a multiplayer game, you can do 2v2/3v3/4v4 team games against an AI team. So I tried it out in TTS with my girlfriend. And you know what? it mostly works. Itās not really a simulation of a human player, of course, but at least at the 2v2 count they can do reasonably well thanks to the AI cards letting them often build much more aggressively than most human players will be in a position to do, and the fact that they get to deliver everything theyāre on and eligible to deliver (i.e., connected to the appropriate city) at the end of the game before the human players do. And you can do fun engine-building and such, even do some light dickery to the AI players (though they donāt have captains, specialists, mana or spellcars so you donāt have the ability to steal, copy, etc on that stuff, and obviously wonāt curse your name when you do drop wastelands on them or steal their resources). Itās a bit watered down compared to the PvP game, but itās still pretty fun. We did win, but only by a few points each and the Kingās Line AI managed to screw me out of a full delivery (knocked one crystal out so I couldnāt rush to deliver), so that didnāt help.
I did watch a 3v3 game on the One Stop Coop Shopās stream channel and that was much more one-sided in their favor. It seems like the AI struggles more the larger the board and thus the spaces between cities get. Thereās a provision to give them extra starting trains that might help, conceivably, but I havenāt tried that yet. Iād also consider a house rule to give them a bit more freedom of motion - e.g. if their card would have them build track and they cannot in their current position, let them build one track on any non-wasteland/city terrain type, or something. That might overcompensate, Iād have to test it.
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Did a few multihand runs through of X-Men Mutant Insurrection and had a super easy time of it. I suspect that I am missing somethingā¦
Babylonia is getting a lot of love at the moment. I have Yellow and Yangtze and TTD, but need more players for both.
Iām very interested in your 2 player impressions. I like the high scores as well. Iām not great at tile laying, so having things that reward through the game sounds great to me.
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Had a quick solo game of Cthulhu: Death May Die , which came this week. Itās certainly easy enough to get into and learn. Do three actions, then draw a Mythos card. And then either draw a discovery card (which are good things), or get pummelled by any enemies in your space (not so good). Tiles got clogged up by various beasties, which makes it hard. And you cant just run through them all to get to where you want to go ā enemies will follow you (unless you have Stealth). It was all over before the Elder One (Cthulhu) even made it onto the board. First proper game should be this weekend, will see how that goes (badly, I suspect). Gotta have some challenge for a co-op game, keeps it interesting.
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I think this is a game that you should play with several characters, even if soloing.
I played it once with 6 and it was a blast. Only 2 of us made it to the end. But I like how the madness gives you an extra edge with abilities that make it possible to defeat the boss and minions.
Itās less tile laying I feel and more placing āflat dudes on a mapā ā¦ 
I call them Knizia Tile Layers because everyone does. But Carcassonne and Alhambra are Tile Layers. Kniziaās part of the genre is something else.
I hope we play another game soon.
Last night, I taught my partner Roll for the Galaxy on BGA. I had video help because itās harder to teach without the physical game and I think Roll and Race are difficult teaches. Not like Root but still the phase selectionā¦
He likes games with dice and I gave away Quarriors (we recently played again and he was finally convinced that the game wasnāt as good as he remembered). So I am looking for a replacement. I won Rollā¦ because itās hard to lose against someone playing for the first time who doesnāt quite realize the game ends when the VP chips are gone and doesnāt realize that he can gain them from consuming instead of trading the dice on his planetsāthis is something that escaped me for my first dozen plays of Race on the app. I forced the game to be over because it was late. I could have meandered around the galaxy for a while longer.
I am not sure he wants to play again. Without physical dice the charm of rolling them diminishes.
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I used two characters, as the rulebook suggests
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I played a quick game of Maglev Metro against myself in a two-handed learning game. I had initially started with the solitaire setup, but it became clear right away that it wasnāt going to be something Iād enjoy (nor a good way to learn); this game is all about moving passengers around, and without that competition I saw no reason to play. That said, the rules are there and I can see some people enjoying the puzzle, but it basically reduces the game to scoring against a variable timer. Blegh.
Anyway, to the game played: Itās weird! Or, to put it a little more nicely: itās unusual, and certainly unique among my collection (past and present). The gameplay is straightforward enough that I was already pursuing loose strategies with each hand during my game, yet the finale caught me off guard completely and I scrambled with one player most of the way. Basically I have no clue how I performed relative to a competent player. Thatās kind of cool. For now, a few points that surprised me:
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This is a game focused on passenger delivery, with a flexible system with respect to making passengers available for useā¦ but donāt let that or the friendly track coexistence fool you: thereās LOTS of opportunity to be ruthless with snipes and builds.
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It leans heavily on the engine building, but again that flexibility comes through to the point where Iād almost call this an engine tuner. You can think of it like powering up in general: once you have the juice to crank things up, you can adjust the dials as you see fit.
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in spite of the focused design, thereās a distinct ātiny sandboxā feel to the game, in large part to the customization options and the variable scoring system.
Really neat. Not āfineā, but neat. Gonna need a few plays.
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One character that was key to us was the girl that managed to block new minions from appearing, did you use her?
Played a game of TS where the opposing Soviet player is at 18pts. But I fought hard for Europe control and hope i can last until end of game scoring.
Last round of the game, I got the Europe card and won via headlines
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Nope, didnt use her - sounds like a useful ability
Board games with our regular weeknight group this week:
Ramen Fury, one of our group brought this one along for us to try out. Itās not great - very ātake-thatā with lots of card luck. It reminded me both of Sushi Go and Burger Up, but itās definitely a worse game than either. On the plus side it didnāt drag on too long.
Small World, first time Iāve played this with five. It was a bit long, but not to the point where it got boring - youāre always interacting and reading the new board-state in Small World so I donāt mind the downtime that much. Very close final scores - I lost by like 2 points to the player who got trolls early and bunkered down with them in decline for most of the game. Oh and one player refused to go into decline with his race for the whole game, and he came out pretty okay. Each round he pulled off all his units and entered the map again from the edge! He scored a pretty consistent 9 points or so most of the game with his race/power combo (Merchant Skeletons I believe). Definitely the weirdest strategy Iāve seen in awhileā¦
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