Huh. I own Unicornus Knights because Tom Chick was a huge fan (I got it from a remainder shelf - it apparently was not a hit) but haven’t gotten around to it. I wouldn’t have expected it to be Spirit Island level weight from his description, though. (And he described it as best played solo, but in fairness, he thinks almost all coop games are best played solo.)
It doesn’t have the depth of possibilities from cards as Spirit Island and doesn’t have so many moving parts or rules to grind through. However clocking the game, the game state and the strategy seemed to take up as much of my brain. Planning things out with possibilities for success and failure certainly kept me on my mental toes.
It was fun, reasonably thematic and had decent surprises and moments of exultation and despair. However there was a serious grind in working out sequencing and supply.
Playing at 2 was excellent. It meant we each had 2 characters and got to do plenty of stuff. First game with my main coop buddy in months as well, so that helped. My tiredness and brain fog could be behind the weight comment in retrospect, but it was a 4 hours session learning the rules and playing so must of had some chunk. I’ll stand by it even if the game doesn’t have Spirit Island’s legs.
2 Likes
I really liked the basic pitch of shepherding a recklessly charging princess through with wildly asymmetric possible generals.
2 Likes
Amazing!
I was looking this up on BGG and noticed that you can play it with Survive! components – along with some cards which I’m unsure about.
3 Likes
Yesterday, my wife, her brother, and I played Lords of Waterdeep. We were on a bit of a time constraint, so we did not use any expansions. In what seems to be normal for us, my wife lagged behind in scoring at first, while the other two of us leapfrogged a bit, but things started to even out in the middle of the game, and my wife jumped ahead to win the game, though there was not a huge difference in scores. I came last.
Then, last night, I played Vampire: Vendetta on TTS with some old friends. It takes s a fun little game, with each player representing one of the White Wolf games vampire clans, each with a unique 7 card deck. There are a number of lairs on the table and the players fight for control over them to get points and win allies, which are also worth points, bit can also grant some special abilities.
At the beginning of the game, each player starts with a Hunt card and a Ready card, which can have different effects for each clan, but also draw two cards from their deck, choose one to keep and put the other on the bottom of their deck. There are a total of three rounds. In turn, each player will play a card at any of the lairs, face up, or they can pay a blood to do it face down. They can also add up to three blood to the location when placing a card, which adds to their strength. Play continues until there is only one card in each players hand, then starting at the first lair, all players there simultaneously decide to stay, or to withdraw.
If you withdraw, you regain any blood you placed at the lair, but your cards are turned face up and go to the final lair (the Prince’s lair, worth one extra point if you win it), which can let you swing things in your favor there, but sacrificing your chance at the current lair.
If you stay, all cards are revealed and then resolved. Some cards have a day effect, which happens first. Then strengths are compared, and the first place player gets points and the ally card there. Second place gets points and a victim card (worth 1 point but generates 1 blood at the beginning of a round). Third place just gets a point. Then there are cards with night effects, which then happen.
Once all lairs have been resolved, all cards are collected, lairs get new allies placed on them, and players again draw two cards from their deck and keep one. Then the next round begins and everything happens again.
One other way to earn points is to cause another player to lose their last blood point in their supply, causing them to frenzy, which forces them to kill one of their allies or victims at random, gaining back some blood, but lowering their point value. If you do this, you get a point.
It is an interesting game. Since players only get one new card per round, you typically know most of the cards your opponents will play in the later rounds. The ability to play cards face down let’s you make some really interesting plays, and there are just some really evil cards in various decks.
The only problem seems to be with the balance between the clans. Some are just obviously better than others. The way to win seems to hinge on being able to place, if not outright win, in multiple lairs each round, but while some decks have cards that are powerful enough to compete at a location all on their own, others seem to require a combination of cards to be effective, meaning those clans will inevitably be more concentrated on locations, so while they may win a location, that is likely all they will accomplish that round.
I do like the game, and do think my friends may be underestimating the value of some of the cards on offer, but since you only gain one card each round, and you have to choose between two, you can be stuck having to discard one of your best cards in order to keep another of your best cards. And due to the card count, there will be one card you do not see in the game.
I might pick this one up once it releases. I have had fun with it, and want to better explore some of the clans that seem weaker. I would love to see a designer’s diary for the game to see why some of he clans seem so imbalanced.
4 Likes
I have got it on my shelf but haven’t had a chance to play because of minimum player count of 3. Is there a chance the imbalance is due to different strategies needed to win? Could be an attempt to make each clan thematically unique that didn’t work out.
Just finished a game of four with Forbidden Island. We failed, with just two treasures to go, we could not keep the last earth temple connected, so we had to send my 8 yo daughter to claim it, with no way back, hoping for another helicopter lift. It didn’t happen.
We still enjoyed it. But I think at higher player numbers, this game becomes really tough. Specially when there are turns where you cannot really do anything useful, that would be great otherwise.
1 Like
Played some Codenames Duet today. Included two rounds where the very first guess turned out to be an assassin. It’s fair to say that we are not very good. We did win some rounds, but we were playing on the easiest difficulty the whole time.
One clue (which was for multiple cards) expected me to have recollected my partner’s sister’s childhood nickname which, at some point in the dim and distant past, they thought they may have mentioned to me (one of the cards said “sister”). I think that the sheer optimism of that clue is going to give me pause for weeks to come.
Followed up with some games of Klask, and followed that with a particularly lengthy game of Hunt The Tiny Magnet – which turned out to have flown into a hole that the cats had ripped in one of their scratching posts, and onto the soft bed of shredded cardboard at the bottom of the tube. Fortunately it had landed on the half which was visible if I shone a torch inside and pressed one eye up to the hole, and I was able to retrieve it by lowering the drawstring bag into the hole with one of the big magnets inside. It will likely not surprise you to learn that this location was not the first place I looked…
5 Likes
Possibly. I have only played three times now, but my friends have played more often. It appears that Brujah and Tremere are really strong, as they have cards with high potential to cause other players to frenzy, in addition to just having high power cards in general. Ventrue and Toreador also are pretty strong, and both seem to have defenses against some of the powerful cards from the other two.
Nosferatu you need to be cagey with, as many of their cards either automatically go to the Prince’s lair after use (letting you double dip with them), or give you a bonus for withdrawing. The cards are relatively underpowered, though, so you aren’t likely to win with these cards, though it is possible you could at least place at both locations. But they do have a couple of really great cards, one that forces people to play their cards facedown at that location, and the blood paid is essentially added to your strength, and one that makes the other players have to pay 2 blood in order to reveal each facedown card at the location.
Malkavian is just chaos, which is very thematic. A card that let them draw the top card of their deck and add it to the location, another card that lets you play the last card in your hand at the location, a card that lets you pick someone else at your location and play THEIR last card in hand on your side (which is almost always Hunt or Ready). They just don’t really have cards that are likely to frenzy anyone and it feels like they really need two or three of their cards in one location to even have a hope to place. My friends think this is the worst clan, great for a beginning player to have fun, but near impossible to win with. I think there is some potential here, but I would need to play with them more to find out. As it is, our last game one of my friends played with Malkavian, as it was the only clan he had not played with, and tied for third place (with me), but was only three points behind the winner, and a couple of different decisions earlier could have given him the win.
Gangrel seems like the worst to me. They have some really nifty cards, letting them take blood deployed at a location into their supply, shifting deployed blood to another location after using it, but nothing that really hits other players supplies, so they also have no good way of causing other players to frenzy. And their cards just feel underpowered. Even just a few more points of strength throughout the deck seems like it would make a big difference. However, despite this, someone managed to get second place with them in our last game, though they were just 1 point ahead of third. The card abilities feel thematic with the clan, but the strength of the cards feel underpowered from the way I remember Gangrel vampires from back when I played the game.
I don’t think there has been enough time for a meta to really develop among us, where an assumed best-playstyle for a clan has been ingrained and that is the cause of these rankings. Just observation on the individual cards which we tend to look at after the game and discuss, noting good combos for things, with the caveat that the more you need cards to combo, the most focus is on one location and the less chance you have at placing somewhere else. Still, I think the game is very fun, and despite being just three rounds and a total of 9 card placements (13 in a three player game), there is a lot of strategy, bluff and double bluff, and neat combos to be had.
1 Like
Last night I tried out my new copy of Star Wars: Outer Rim. I just played solo against the AI deck, and was getting obliterated when I stopped. I tried out Lando, who can reroll a die whenever he needs to roll dice for any reason. The objective is to get 10 Fame, which you get by accomplishing your personal goal, delivering illegal cargo, doing certain jobs, catching bounties, etc. Problem for me was I was mostly getting legal cargo, and the one job I tried I failed at because if you do not have the skills necessary for the job, you only have a 1-8 chance on the die to succeed at those parts. My job had four parts, meaning four rolls, two of which I had the skills for (greatly increasing my odds of success) and two I did not, giving me 2 damage any time I failed a roll, which ended up defeating me on the fourth part of the job. You get to keep it, so you can try again, but knowing the 1 in 8 odds of success on two parts of the job (even with Lando’s re-roll ability), it was not worth trying until I got a crew member to help.
Meanwhile, the AI deck just lets the AI player autocomplete jobs when they get to the location needed, and some of their steps have them just buy Fame for 8,000 credits. It was getting late, so I didn’t finish the game, but score was 8 - 3 in the AI’s favor when I stopped, and with it already having another job lined up, I think the winner was a foregone conclusion.
Game is simple to play, though I kept referencing the rule book for each thing to make sure I was playing correctly. Especially with the AI, as some of the things the deck wants it to do does not seem to make sense (buy a card from X deck and place a goal at the destination, when the card does not have a destination). I played for probably 90 minutes or so, but think that time could easily drop to an hour with familiarity. Probably have to add 30 minutes per actual human player though as an estimate. Had fun, though, and want to try it again sometime.
2 Likes
Had a quick game of the newly-arrived Canvas, solo against “Vincent” the bot.
It’s great. Nice pull between only being able to use three cards in each finished painting (so one icon might have to cancel one underneath it if the cards you have aren’t perfect) and having a max hand limit of 5, so you can’t wait that long.
Also interesting that it’s not really a race against the other player - they can steal the card you wanted, sure, but if they finish all 3 paintings early then they just wait it out until you’ve finished at your own speed. It’s the hand limit of 5 that dictates how long the game can go (unlike for example Parks, where if your opponent finishes a round before you do you lose your remaining actions and it’s a big deal).
Gorgeous art, but I’m also impressed with the quality of the cards and tokens. Much better than I’d expected from the Kickstarter page, big and chunky and looking great.
Two player will probably be a very chill mix of NOOOO screaming (as they take the only card with purple on it that you needed, you needed it and now you’ll have to hope another one comes along real soon) and lesuirely almost solo art-building.
I scored 32 on my first go against the solo bot, which is right in the middle of the scoring range, so you can definitely understand the game straight away.
3 Likes
We’ve had a bank holiday board games weekend with our bubble, in lieu of going to any conventions for the last year…
- Food Chain Magnate with the coffee module from the expansion
- Hyperborea
- Inis
- Wibbell++
- Near and Far
- Herbalism
- Okanagan: valley of the lakes
- Coimbra
- Pipeline
- Babylonia
- Awkward Guests
- Oh my goods!
8 Likes
How did you find Babylonia?
It looks cool, but I was never a fan of Blue Lagoon. Not sure if that rules it out for me or not 
1 Like
I’m not a fan. In my opinion (after three plays) the decisions aren’t very interesting, and it’s too easy for someone to get an early lead and run away with the game without anyone being able to do anything about it.
3 Likes
Big day today. Got 1862 to the table with @lalunaverde in a 3 player game.
Enjoyed it throughly. Played in about 4 hours including a rules explanation and some hefty component sorting to add in the wooden tokens. I imagine same group a little more familiar could well see this become a less than 3 hour game easily, maybe even as tight as 2hours. That’d be useful.
Time aside I also enjoyed this play of the game. The 3 trains is interesting, the constant mergers are fun, the ability to cross invest safely is nicely different. I hope this one has legs.
Followed up with a game of Spirit Island. Bringer of Dream and Nightmares, River Surges in Sunlight and A Spread of Rampant Green took on some nameless invaders. Teaching the game to a third new player hence the no adversary. As always was great. I like a lot of the new powers from Jagged Earth and they’re still exciting when they pop up. Also more proof that the broken token organiser was a worthwhile purchase. It makes set up and pack away a breeze, even if it does fill 2 boxes.
3 Likes
You have no idea how jealous I am to read this.
And also very happy!
Edit: I think 1862 may be my favourite 18xx. So far I’ve only been able to play solo, but it has so many interlocking systems to keep it interesting, and a super-tight board that keeps the game interesting even though you can buy 100% of a company, or dump 100% of it, and any combination between.
Looking forward to finding an audience to try it with.
5 Likes
Played my third rousing session of Rearranging Gloomhaven since buying the game in July. This time I put it in a Folded Space organizer, which I think is the winner. Still haven’t played any of the actual game.
4 Likes
That’s a really nice number of games for your mini convention you’re heads must have been smoking afterwards 
3 Likes
Slightly inebriated Go Cuckoo was enjoyed by all concerned.
1 Like
Dont know what to think of 1862: East Anglia. It is definitely an 18xx. You buy trains and they rust at some point. You build networks and use stations for access/blocking. There’s merging. Yet the game doesnt play like the usual.
It doesnt feel like the others I have played, even if they have similarities with 1846: Race for the Midwest and 1817: NYSE.
I find it interesting enough, and not just yet another 1830 spinoff. The best selling point for me is the duration. We played with standard yet our game went pretty quickly. The train deck went by fast as we kept rusting and buying trains.
The rules weight is more complicated than your typical 18xx but if you have your share of heavy Euros, you’ll be fine.
I will keep my copy and will play more of it.
3 Likes