That makes sense, I saw the Dice Tower’s review of Fantasy Realms and it looked really similar. The only problem is the game plays like 3-5 players, and I pretty much only play games solo nowadays, with the rare two-player game if my partner is feeling it. That’s one of the reasons I don’t like large boxes, because I don’t like taking up so much space with games that only I will play. (Ironically, Stonemaier games always come with a solo mode!)
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I am super conflicted about Barony. Only had one play of it,so that’s not a good position. It’s done the game well and plays well, and it’s totally up my alley. But it felt drier than I thought and a bit bland. I need more plays of this. Also will include Sorcery next time to see if the expansion can spice the game up with spells.
We will finally have our last session of Scythe in a couple of weeks. We are playing the Rise of Fenris campaign
Here are my thoughts:
1.) In the context of playing the campaign (as oppose to playing the game) the campaign is sooo unexciting. It was like “Play Scythe but with this tweak!”. Oh cardboard! They didn’t learn ANYTHING from the godawful Charterstone. Now, compare that to Pandemic Legacy Season 1 with the surprise on scenario 1. Right there at scenario 1, you know it’s not going to be the same.
The story line is a bit tame. I don’t get any excitement. I was at least interested, but to me it feels like PanLeg 01 is a fantastic tv show, while Rise of Fenris is one of those run-of-the-mill History Channel documentaries you are forced to watched because you wanna watch a History Channel docu and there’s no alternative.
2.) The factions are nice. They’re good to have at least for the vanilla game! I’m more keen on playing this with the random map and random factions. This game is getting samey to me now.
3.) Leaning again on point 01, no lesson learnt from Charterstone when the leading player (me) get good money to buy modules, it improves my future plays where I kept winning. I mean, I play 18xx and Splotters where the wrong move will set you back and there’s no catch up mechanism. But RoF allows you more opportunities, simply because you’re winning more?
4.) The modules are very fun to have. Buy this perk and you can use it once per game! And it’s pretty cool.
I don’t think my thoughts would change after Play 7 and 8
Had my third game of Red Rising.
I generally like overproduced when it doesn’t include plastic minis. But it is a big box game containing a smaller game. True. But metal cubes trump everything… (don’t ask about my Ares pledge.)
This time I played two handed which is surprisingly difficult due to the nature of the puzzle. Completely different dynamic as compared with the randomness of the bot. Cards get used more and there are more interesting decisions in which locations you place cards in and which cards you may want to prevent an opponent from getting.
The automa isn’t bad but this isn’t one of the games where the solo feels at least as viable as the multiplayer. Flourish has a better solo and it doesn’t even need an automa. I am slowly realizing I am not a fan of automas in general. GAmes that either lend themselves to solo play or they don’t…
The game ended with left hand scoring 288 vs right hand with 282. Both hands had 8 cards. One scored 30+ points on institute, the other 30+ in helium. Lefty scored higher on fleet and while right had more valuable cards one didn’t score any bonus points and that decided the game.
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I enjoyed it a lot at Spiel way back with a full set of players and I was very excited to get it for Christmas that year.
We played a couple of two player games and I vaguely remember some kind of postgame discussion that banished the game to the bottom of the stack which it never left… it makes me sad and I have been listing it for trade and unlisting it on and off for the past year.
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What made you put it on the trade list and what made you remove it from your trade list?
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I have acquired a whole bunch of area control games in the meantime… and I seem to remember my partner declaring he never wanted to play again.
He just now said he doesn’t remember the game at all.
I keep wanting to go back and try it again. So my nostalgia goes like the moon … in cycles.
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You know how people resist legacy games because they don’t like damaging or throwing away game components? Today I smashed a Cloudspire chip tray with a hammer. And I did it because Chip Theory Games told me to.
Specifically, it had three whole factions worth of chips in it and the lid was on so tight I couldn’t get it to move even slightly. I asked if they had any ideas and they said that they’d talked internally and thought anything I might try to loosen it would risk damaging the chips, so I should just wreck the tray and they’d send me another one. So I did. Took quite a bit of hammerwork and breaking most of the lid into small pieces to get it loose and the chips free. Those suckers are sturdy. I declined the replacement tray - I had a spare thanks to having all the expansions and all four coming with new trays they only partially use. And only the six trays I now have fit in the box w/ everything else anyway.
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Thinking outside the box. Nice!
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Just two of us for games this evening, we played:
Above and Below, this is still one of my absolute favourite games, love the addition of the storytelling to the standard euro city building. I won, but not by heaps. My adventures were largely finding people to rob and then funneling the money into buildings. My opponent was far more well liked and beat me out on resources but only managed one of the star buildings to my two. I keep thinking I should pick up the other Ryan Laukat storytelling games (Near and Far and Sleeping Gods chiefly), but the others all seem to be structured around a campaign and I know I’m unlikely to be able to play through a whole campaign with the same people. Though I can see how the storytelling would be helped by that campaign structure…
Railroad Ink, we played with the lake expansion. It was quite close, but my opponent managed to connect more exits (he made better use of his lake than I did) and even with losing a few extra points to dud connections, he still pulled out slightly ahead. Terrific fun, can’t way to try the new Railroad Ink Challenge, hopefully they’re as cool as they look. I didn’t end up backing the kickstarter as funds were a bit tight at that point, but am still keen to check them out.
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You are right about Near and Far being best with campaign play.
Sleeping Gods also, but, probably best with 1 or 2 players I think (only soloed a bit so far but intend to go back over Easter holidays) and a lot easier to drop players in an out over the course of a campaign (as all the characters are in play all the time).
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Yesterday was easing of restrictions in the UK first outdoor games day for me.
Played the intro scenario for Solomon Kane. As a choose your own adventure it was fun. The friend who had backed the KS claimed the rulebook is awful and so the whole thing was a bit slow. They’re notoriously not in to learning games in advance though so I wouldn’t swear to that being the case. I’m certainly happy to play the game again. It might lean towards something like an interactive story as much as a game but that didn’t make it less fun.
Next up was a bunch of missions of The Crew. Still wonderful. I think I mildly prefer Hanabi. Possibly because I have much more experience of trick takers than my friends I find it more frustrating? Maybe I just prefer the more shared deduction in Hanabi. That being said it’s splitting hairs. Would happily play either almost any time.
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I have the same problem. I love his games, but I’m just not interested in campaign/legacy games. Not just the problem of needing a consistent group, but having to play the same game regularly enough for it to be coherent.
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If you play in the BGG Rallyman GT championships on BGG, you’ll know I always ask you not to wait till the final day to get your run in.
Oops.
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Omg that bridge is adorable…
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Isn’t it though! And it has those fences at the ends so that your car will stay in any space on it.
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Is the bga implemenation for Rallyman any good? Still haven’t tried.
It’s OK. The implementor has lost interest and gone on to other things, so there are some edge case rules it will never get right; and because each track is built as a separate entity in the game, there’s no way there will ever be custom tracks. On the other hand it does mostly work, and it has ODaly’s collection of real courses as well as all the official ones.
Key thing to know: the die placement algorithm almost always puts it where you won’t want it (favouring the outside on curves). Clicking that die again will cycle through the placement options.
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First play of Patchwork (Christmas Edition). What a fab little 2 player tile layer. Really clever game clock, simple but with crunchy decisions. Loved it.
7 Wonders Duel made an appearance as well. I wasn’t fussed on this when I first played it, but as the main game has slipped, very much enjoyed this as well.
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Two games that my wife and I play rather frequently. Along with Jaipur.
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We just won January for Pandemic 2 after having had the game since December 2019. We only finished Season 1 a year ago. We played the prologue a couple of times and had a hard time figuring out the new perspective… so we put off starting the actual campaign several times. But we hope to get through the next two months over Easter and then play one month per month.
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