I have the latest expansion sitting on my shelf waiting to be played, because I’m alone 
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You have a kitten on your shelf?
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tencharacters
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I had another online boardgame night with 7 Wonders, 6 nimmt (that was the most hilarious loss of a game in a long time. I was at -3 and the winner at 50 points) and Kingdom Builder. This last one I managed to win because I got 2 paddocks and there were points for having a lot of settlements and I jumped about like a maniac.
And yet another evening proving that it is much easier to play games most people at the table already know.
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Me too.
Not even played the first expansion yet.
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Played two games with my 8 yo daughter yesterday, Forbidden Island on Normal setting, which we won easily before even hitting the 5 cards of flooding a turn (we were really lucky with the treasure cards).
Then onto a game of Oceans, where she started well, but never got her species going. In the end she started migrating fish to avoid me getting some bonuses from the ocean areas, but it did not work for her, I got a stomper of a Deep card that foraged 8 per turn and she could never catch up. Still enjoyed it. She wasn’t too bitter either, which I consider a win.
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I taught my partner Maglev Metro tonight, a first game for her, a first proper opponent for me. She won 74-64 with a really huge score in links between stations making up over half of that. I performed reasonably well but over-invested in my bonus cards relative to their potential, and recognized it too late to pivot.
I feel like there is some fragility in this game that’s ripe to exploit against unskilled play. There’s a tight little economy in the passenger pool, and the decision space is surprisingly wide. Even at 2P the game is wildly interactive, and you’ve really got to pay attention to what your opponents are doing, particularly with the bag.
This isn’t a bad thing at all, but it’s something I think owners of the game will need to bear in mind. Once I get some experience with this thing I suspect I’ll need to pull punches and throw bones to avoid ruining any interested new players’ nights… at least the first game.
Critically, my partner seemed to really enjoy it. I’m somewhat on the fence about it at the moment (a few early reservations I’ll withhold), but I’m finding it tremendously fun to play. Good enough for now!
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Cthulhu: Death May Die , second play (but first with other players). We tackled the first mission, with Cthulhu himself (itself?) as the boss. It’s his game, after all. Every game of Cthulhu is the same – first you have to disrupt the ritual, then destroy the boss, who will have 3 stages, all of which have to be dealt with. The deck of cards you use is made up by a special set of cards for the particular boss, and then another set of cards for the episode. You start by choosing a character from the ten available, all with their own special ability, as well as two others that may not be unique. Each of your skills can be levelled up, and you will have to choose which ones, you won’t have time to do them all.
A player turn consists of 3 actions, which are moving, attacking, resting (if there is no enemy in your space), and trading with another character in your space. There are also mission specific abilities, in this case these were to extinguish a fire, and destroy a lab (you needed to destroy four of the five labs to disrupt the ritual). Running around can be dangerous, because enemies will follow you, unless you have the Stealth skill.
Each player has a sanity track, and as you hit each milestone you get to level up a skill. At this time, your own insanity card activates, usually with a good result. Or not – I had pyromania, which added fire to my location, and then does damage to every figure there (both enemy and friendly). Fire was a big part of the episode, it was hard to move anywhere without taking damage (moving from a room with a fire added fire tokens to your character, and at the end of your turn you rolled a die for each token you had). The sanity also gives you bonus dice, but if you hit the last sanity space you’ve gone mad, and it’s game over for you.
You have two tracks to look after. Health, and stress. Taking stress allows you to re-roll any single die, no matter where it was used (ie when monsters roll). Possible dice faces were success, elder sign, tentacles, and tentacles plus success. If you’re rolling against an enemy, successes are hits. Elder signs do nothing unless you have a specific ability to utilise them. Tentacles move you up on the sanity track. You need to move up the track to get bonus dice (and allow your insanity card to go off), but you need to be careful not to go too far. It doesn’t matter when you roll tentacles (ie when the enemy is rolling) – they still count on the sanity track.
If anyone dies before the boss comes out, its the end of the game for all. But after the boss has come out, you can still win the game if at least player survives (and obviously, does the required damage).
Overall, it was a helluva lot of fun. Took a few hours, which surprised me, I thought we’d probably lose in a hour or so. Things looked grim, but we managed to pull out the win. I went mad a couple of turns from the finish, and another player died. Leaving the final player, on her last health, and she brought it home. Could not have been any closer! Amazing game.
Scape Goat , first play. This is a social deduction game, which I don’t play a lot of. They can be fun, but usually require more players than our usual 3p. This game was supposedly good even at that low count. It has a traitor (the scape goat), but even the player who is the scape goat doesn’t know it at the start. It’s a bit of an odd game, learning the basic mechanics was easy enough, but then we looked at each other in confusion. You roll two dice at the start, and then look up those dice on the back of your player card. No matter the player count, all but one player will have the same colour. So, in a game with red, yellow and blue, red and blue could have the colour yellow, but yellow (the scape goat) would have one of the other colours. You have locations you can move to and then do an action, like looking at someone elses card, or trading with another player, or taking a face down card). You can also take a token from the frame/steal card, which starts with two tokens on it. Once both tokens are taken, the frame ability can be used. Each player shows a single card, if everyone (except the scape goat) show the colour of the scapegoat, then they have successfully framed the scape goat and they win. The scape goat wins by working out that they are the scape goat, and going to the police. So, if you want to frame someone, you need to have that colour in your hand. But you start with random cards, so if someone looks at my hand, or trades a card with me, it doesn’t really prove anything. Maybe its just my inexperience with social deduction games that is making this game hard. Interesting enough that I’d give it another go.
Magic Maze , first play. You are trying to guide each character (there are four) to their item (to steal it), and then escape. You can move any of the four pieces around, but each player has a direction card. So, I might only be able to move a piece up, for example. And you’re not allowed to speak during the game. And theres a time limit, from an hourglass. You start with a single tile and you need to keep exploring to find all the items. The only communication allowed is a token which you can place in front of someone to indicate they need to do something. We just did the first couple of levels, easily enough. Its easy to not see a particular object on a tile, and then you wonder why someone has put the token in front of you and is glaring at you. Good fun, can see it being a little stressful.
Paleo , first play. Yet another co-op game. You all have a group of cavemen, trying to get resources, and overcome obstacles. You each choose three cards from your deck, but you cant look at the front of the card. So you’re meant to be able to guess what a card could be from the back only. If its a forest for example, you’ll probably be able to gather wood or food. You all start with a group of two people. Each card will have options, most of which are one of three symbols that are on the people cards. You can also choose to help someone else, and then you can add your symbols for that person to use. A lot of cards are just not possible early on (like killing a mammoth), so you can just ignore it and do it on another day. Once you’ve been thru your deck, night falls, and you have to supply food for everyone. If too many people die, its game over. The object is to find five pieces of a cave painting. We found the game very confusing, wasnt sure how some things (like tools) were meant to work. I guess we’ll try it again, but I’m in no hurry. Maybe its just not our sort of game.
Bandido , first play. A very quick game of placing cards and creating tunnels. The object is to finish up tunnels so the prisoner can’t escape. Once all the cards are placed, if any tunnels are left open, the prisoner escapes and you’ve lost. It was kinda fun, and we failed miserably. Seemed like a game you could play by yourself and get just as much enjoyment out of it. Then was no real sense of playing with other people.
Oriflamme , yay, I won this by a landslide.
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Our second game of Unmatched ended with my Alice beating my partner’s Sindbad… even after my Jabberwock had died. Long debate after as to why Alice is apparently imba… is she? Sure when she is big she hits quite hard… but I spent at least two rounds just maneuvering to get more cards…
Well, I guess next game we have to pitch Medusa against Alice.
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I am keen to try this but missed the short window of availability over here. I saw one copy on a shop. next time I looked it was gone. So I wait…
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Played Lords of Waterdeep for the first time - yes, I know. How did I hold out for so long? Played with both expansion modules. It was nice to play a game without having to read a rulebook.
It was a 5 player game, so when the extra agents came out to play, it suddenly meant the 2nd and 3rd agents in the harbour almost always had to take a corruption space. Early game I took a bunch of corruption, then mid-game shed a lot of it. Late game I was forced to take more, which led me to have 5 corruption versus 2/3 for everyone else. Disaster! Ended 4th of 5.
The quest cards were very odd too. Early game all the MASSIVE high point scoring quests no one could achieve were out. Then late game, it was all the low scoring quests no one could be bothered with.
Overall surprised how much I enjoyed it. The corruption adds an awful lot, so don’t think I’d play without the expansion. 5 player (as ever) is too many too. Think 4p is the sweet spot.
I’d like a house-rule to set up the quest deck to have a bit more of a fair distribution throughout the game. Maybe even make it so the starting quests are 1 plot quest each + one =<10 point non-plot quest. All the plot quests coming out round 6+ was a bit of a nuisance.
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We’ve had three games of red rising now and I think I quite enjoy it but I think it’s kind of a finely balanced game in 2 players. It’s worth experimenting to see what kind of set up and works for you but this early it feels like some of the starting powers are better than others - and not just in strategy terms but also fun levels. Half of the starting powers give bonus points and half give some kind of management of the board which feels situationally good - I think there was one time where I used my bonus power where I felt i was doing something devious - the other times just busy work or damage limitation to prevent easy moves for my opponent. She on the other hand grazed points from her power every time.
The timing and length of the game is very odd as well - it feels like it can all click together very quickly and because a hand is very precarious at some stage you just want to stop touching anything. At this point you just do boring point grabbing just to end the game.
Having said alk that the main task of creating a hand where each bit triggers its end bonus feels great. The riskier you go at creating a giant hand of cards the more chance that the extras will score worse Than the penalty of having too big a hand and unforeseen interactions which can cause a bigger mess.
There’s also the slight bug that you can think you’ve done well but because a hefty chunk is secret you might be blindsided with a big defeat.
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I taught my partner Rallyman GT today, which was a dead easy task and we were racing within 5 minutes. We went for a team game, so two racers each, and no additional rules consideration other than to play through till we had a full podium. To that end, my orange car took first, with my partner just behind in 2nd and 3rd, and then my red car taking the participation prize in the rear, a full round behind. I drove hard in that car when I could, and make a couple of insanely long runs throughout the lap, but got blocked on a few occasions (once by my own teammate!) and suffered hard for it.
This is a beautiful game. Utterly smitten.
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So… I did a thing 
Got Galaxy Trucker Anniversary Edition, and then just added in my base game to make a 9 player game. Played with 8 today, and honestly it worked out pretty well! Didn’t bother with the rulebook errata-stravaganza that is the 5 player version, instead just simplified it to “everything that happened once now happens twice”. Also binned the rules for Engine/cannon boosters, and just treated them as a standard double (potentially triple) version, definite improvement there.
Definitely looking forward to trying it again, when it’s not 4 new players, late at night on 4 hours of sleep 
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Games Night (as every Monday) and played two games.
First it was Isle of Cats between 3. I was the only one that had not played, and it showed, it took me three cats to realize that my strategy was subpar blocking cats of different colours. At least the hosts cat showed how well trained he is, and went to have a nap in his position. Finished last by quite a bit, but the picture was worth it.
Then we played Pendulum. Interesting twist on a euro worker placement setting led by the sand clocks mechanics. I think I am not sure about this one. We were going to be 4 players but a fifth player joined last minute, and I think it did not help much. Too many hands and positions being disputed at once, if you ask, it was chaotic at times. To the point that I would not be surprised if there was some unintentional cheating going on, there is so much happening at once.
I think the game with 5 should include one more province card per round, as often cards disappeared at an alarming rate after two moves or less. We only had 3 rounds, and on the very last round after two moves I had no cards left to choose from. And they are key for getting an engine going.
Plus that franctic pace at a late hour (we finished at 10 pm) did really hook up on my mind and I dreamt of the game and the bad choices and placings I had, so I think I will stay away from this one unless the player count is lower.
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Just been playing Leaving Earth with Lordof1 - with Outer Planets and (first time for me) Stations. Wow, lots of STUFF! Which was a distraction from the ion-drive probes we should have been sending to explore the outer system, so we didn’t reveal all the explorable missions and therefore lost - but we had fun anyway.
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Stations has so, so much more stuff!
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I really need to put it back on the table here and it is so awesome with everything… just the prospect of playing for 10 hours is a bit daunting…
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We did two-player coop on TTS and took… maybe three? Four?
I really want to do a “fully expanded” forum game now. 
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Finished my first campaign of Sleeping Gods yesterday. My wife’s comment of “but that took you, like, 4 days?!” suggests I’ll be continuing to play this one solo haha
Collected 8 of 75 of the totems you’re supposed to get, and got the first of 13 different endings; so I’ve kinda only just scratched the surface. Really enjoyed it, but glad I finished that for now - got some model painting to catch up on and it won’t feel like I have that unfinished game hanging over me.
Likely going to alternate campaigns of 7th Continent and Sleeping Gods for a bit - though Comanauts has been catching my eye again the last few days as one that I can play a quick game of in one sitting every now and then
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