We had a quick game of Splendor between my partner and me last night before heading off to bed. I was quite switched on, and did well on my strategy of trying to have multiple options as often as possible, so I swept up, 16-4. I was lucky with how the middle lane cards came up, with plenty of cards I could buy for free or at a very low cost, and before she knew it, I was owning every single noble, so ran away with a quick victory.
After my despair with this game lately, that felt good.
6 Likes
Last night I played Beyond the Sun on TTS with friends. Interesting game. It looks really complex at first, but you quickly realize the iconography is very consistent and there are only 11 symbols or so total, and most of those are immediately able to be referenced just by viewing the board.
Took us about 3.5 hours in total for the Teach and the game, but one of the players does take a long time to analyze everything before performing his actions in every game that I have seen, which does not help. Well, the game length, that is. He wins a lot, so it obviously does help him. 
I lost, with 39 points, while two players tied at 51 and the AP player won with 59. It is fun watching your options increase as you research more technologies, while trying to eke out every bit of automation and resources each turn. Curious if I will have a better performance next time we play.
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Somehow, it does not help if AP-prone players win by a landslide, does it?
Makes you wonder sometimes if games should have a time per turn limit
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I did better after my first game in some areas while I completely failed to ever again achieve the Warlord goal (the one where you need armadas of power 4 in three placesâŠ).
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We also had a game of Age of Steam yesterday using the Western USA map. I lost very badly, which Iâm blaming on my brain being frazzled from teaching Oath 
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How many people did you have to teach?
Just two, but that was enough!
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Played my physical copy of Vampire: Vendetta tonight, teaching it to my wife and her brother. The game feels rather different with just three players, as you get to play an extra card each round compared to the higher player count games.
Because I was familiar with the game, I chose a harder clan to play, the Nosferatu, and recommended the Toreador and Malkavian clans as easy for first timers, which they picked, my wife as the Toreador and her brother, the Malkavian.
After my rules explanation, both stated they really did not know what they were doing, and to be fair, my rules explanation was rather haphazard, as I am really tired after two really late nights followed by early mornings. However, an advantage to this game is that after one round, you have essentially seen how the whole game works, so you can learn it really easily, and both of them picked it up quickly.
I did pretty good with the Nosferatu, I felt, but I was against a couple of clans that do not tend to do much damage to their Rivals (but then, neither do the Nosferatu). I was Frenzied on the very last turn, at the Princeâs Haven by the Malkavianâs Chaos card, which was the only Frenzy in the game. My wife ended up winning with 33 to my 31 with her brother at 25. They both found the game interesting, though know it will take more plays and seeing more of the clans before they feel real comfortable with it as something we can play quick in an evening.
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Another night away staying with non-Gamer friends but the chance to try a few other things.
The evening started with 6 of us trying A Fake Artist Goes to New York went down pretty well although clearly none of us could draw or collectively identify any of the fake artists. A couple of the subjects of our artwork were rude ones too. They seemed to like it though at least so weâll give it another go in future. Then an obligatory late night game of Cards of Humanity which was okay but not as riotously funny as the last time we played it.
The following afternoon when down to 4, we tried a few quick games of Skull and they quite liked that too, although it got a couple of them talking about other card games to play instead. We followed that with two of the hostâs favourites: Rapidough and Rummikub. My start to the first game of Rummikub was looking bleak (see below, just before I drew another 6) as I had to draw 11 extra tiles before I could play anything - yet somehow managed to win that game.
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Warm bank holiday afternoon (this is England!) games including @MichaelCule whom I hadnât seen in person for over a year (beyond very brief handings-over of shopping etc.).
The Quacks of Quedlinburg (big box but standard intro game): good fun but apparently it is my destiny to run away with this game.
Mental Blocks: too hot for spatial reasoning apparently.
Gladius: needs a rules rewrite/summary but I rather like it.
Potion Explosion: joins Abyss and Splendor in the âmy goodness, this is just so much more pleasant in person than on BGAâ box.
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Food Chain Magnate - played with the new milestones and Coffee module with @EnterTheWyvern from the Ketchup expansion. Very very interesting. Went for a late Trainer strategy and failed badly. I still love it. It reminds me why I love FCM. Anticipating and deducing player movements is just too crucial.
EDIT: Coffee not Ketchup
Barrage - very good. Had a good time with it as the communal map where you build dams and stuff is very fun. The worker placement was rather bog-standard. Although, we did mentioned how the Production actions are way too limiting to be satisfactory. I want to play more of it and decide on what to do with it.
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Monday Night Games went interestingly yesterday. I was not 100% if I was going (my left ear was giving me some trouble over the weekend), but given that there will be no Games Night next Monday (half the club will be in Wellycon for the long weekend) I thought I might go anyway.
Ended up playing social deduction all evening. We had Spyfall first between 8, probably for 9 or 10 rounds. Great fun, specially with a couple of quirky players that spiced up the game a lot. I even managed to win once with the spy, the only time I was it.
Then we moved on to another light game, because that was the mood, so Werewords it was. For another 10 rounds or so, until the evening was over. In a way, is not the best of games, but with the right players, it can be great fun, and it was. Plus it has a lot of âmobilityâ, a couple of players left and few new ones joined in, and it did feel smooth, as the main core of players were having a good time.
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I somehow managed to teach myself Loot of Lima playing a 3 handed deduction game 
then tried the solo which is a table lookup error fest⊠in short: a mess.
Iâm putting this here because the good nerds of the geek already solved my problem by creating webapps for it: https://lootoflima.vtkellers.com/
The game itself is indeed simple⊠with what I played tonight I canât even compare it to Cryptid or Treasure Island. That will have to wait for an actual play.
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Just played Tobago with @Lordof1 and got beaten hollow. Hey ho. I blame, erm, TTS. Or the sunshine earlier. Or something.
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Sun is such a bad influence this time of yearâŠ
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I think it was Aragorn that said, âIt is not shaming to lose to the absolutely amazing.â. Or maybe it was Jay Z.
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Weâve played a few rounds of The Initiative (four) and weâve found it really fun. I feel like I like my co-op games to be on the borderline of âtoo easyâ and this one does that.
The game has some nice tricks up its sleeve and is a constant slow drip of surprises.
The story goes at a slow pace. So far not much has happened but the game itself has a nice self balancing tension (youâre looking for needles in a haystack - if you get lucky early itâs harder to find things later) and a really clean and easy set up.
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Iâve got my long-delayed Button Shy package after it was released from customs at last and we immediately tried:
- Tussie Mussie (my partner won 24:23 points)
- Seasons of Rice (I lost badly against my right hand 33 to 47)
- Agropolis which I won with 14 points because I made so many cows happy
But I swear there was a bit of smoke coming out of my ears. I suspect it is because it is new and I had no idea how the new goals would play out. I will try the Combopolis variant soon.
Agropolis is definitely âmore of the sameâ of what makes Sprawlopolis so good 9/10
Seasons of Rice is a weird little 2 person drafter, not bad, 7/10
Tussie Mussie is the one I can least tell how much replayability it has but itâs quick and possibly a bit mean, just a little bit. The main element is an âI cut, you chooseâ which you do alternating four times and repeat for three rounds scoring each set of flowers separately 7.5/10
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A short update on my continuing game of The Hunters: German U-Boats at War, 1939-43:
KapitĂ€nleutnant Stöckheim couldnât believe his luck. First, his command, happy with his first patrol, allowed him to select his second patrol (a KptLt is allowed to select from the available patrols if a 1 is rolled on a 1d6; higher ranks are allowed to select their patrol on 1-2 or 1-3). Eager to encounter bigger ships and, as a result, bigger opportunities to show the strength of his command, he opted for the West African Coast patrol. Immediately when arriving, he encountered HMS Barham, a British battleship. With a full forward salvo unleashed, the Barham was quickly lost to the sea and KptLt Stöckheim just added 31100 tonnes to his career statistics, more than twice his entire first patrol combined.
The remainder of his patrol along the African coast wasnât nearly as exciting as that first encounter; he managed to sink another 4500 tonnes by way of a small freighter, but then wasted the bulk of his remaining ordinance flirting with a convoy; chasing it along the coast but ultimately failing to effect any real damage due to staying at long range (to avoid detection from the escort) and an unusually high rate of dud torpedoes.
Upon returning to port, he was awarded a Knightâs Cross for sinking the Barham; The type IX-B submarines are just becoming available and, as the recipient of the KC, he could ask to receive one of the new models, but the rumor has it that the IX-Câs are coming available soon as well and he hopes to instead have one of those to better prepare for the rumored Atlantic patrols â the IX-B having a longer range than his IX-A, but IX-C having even longer range.
Yes, I am still playing the same game of The Hunters, and the story continues to develop in interesting ways.
Iâm still enamored with this game and I really hope to be able to build my gaming table soon so that I can leave it setup within the vault, rather than having to setup and pack away when I want to run another patrol.
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It feels like the shop I preordered Dune: Imperium from was the last in all of Europe to get it in stock. But it finally arrived⊠just a few days after we got a new thematically fitting playmat (since the stinky blue thing is banned from the apartment now):
Yet another one that has special rules for two players. I appreciate that they do make 2 player rules for games that donât work at lower player counts. But it took me a couple hours for the three-hand a learning game.
In a satisfying turn, for once, my left-hand won (as Paul Atreides no less )
Despite great reviews and ratings, I was a bit anxious how the game would turn out because I have had some not so great experiences with these modern mechanism amalgams. But for me at least, this one works: The workers help build your deck, but your deck determines where you can send your workers. The three resources arenât all that complicated too balance (water, spice and spacebucks), the four faction tracks are short but you really go there because of the worker spots⊠the running up the track is incidental to that. The fighty part is straightforward and ramps up slowly in importance thus giving the last two turns of my game a nice urgency.
So, since I haven't seen this mentioned much in this thread, here's a short overview of how it works.
The game is played over 12 rounds or until one player reaches 10 VP. VP can be gained by allying with the factions of Dune, by winning fights on Dune, by buying âThe Spice Must Flowâ cards (a bit like the Magic Tomes in Clank! except slightly less useless), from Intrigue cards and from some regular cards from the market.
Each round:
- 1 card from the Conflict Deck is drawn to determine the next fight objective on Dune.
- everyone draws five cards from their deck
- play proceeds in turns around the table as players send out their 2 (later 3) workersâuhm agents
- to place a worker: play a card and place the worker in a free spot indicated by one of the symbols on the card (there are 4 factions and 3 location types: Landsraad, Dune Cities and Dune Desertâeach with multiple different worker spots).
- execute the action and any worker relevant parts from the card (card anatomy may seem complicated at first as there are cost, type, associated locations, agent placement bonusses and reveal bonusses on each cards but it takes only a couple of turns to grok it)
- each player ends their round with a ârevealâ action in which they play any leftover cards for âInfluenceâ which is the currency that will buy cards from the market (there are three fixed cards and 5 random cards in the market). There may be other bonussesâespecially combat powerâon the reveal sections of the card. Sometimes one can gain resources or VP at this point.
- once everyone has finished their round, combat power is compared.
- Everyone has a garrison on Dune and during some worker actions you can send/muster troops to the current fighting objective.
- Troops are worth two power each to which anything from the reveal turn is added. Whoever has the most wins the objective which may be control of a location, VP, resourcesâŠ
- second and third place also get some stuff but only if they actually had troops out there.
- in the cleanup all the desert spots that have no workers accumulate spice, all the troops in the desert return to their playersâ supplyâthe desert is deadly!âand workers are retrieved.
A few more things to note:
- For a game with so many different aspects, it still feels like the ruleset is not really complicated to learn or teach. I think I could teach this in 15-20 minutes. It helps that the iconography is quickly learned and not overwhelming.
- What I have seen from the cards is interesting if not revolutionary. The characters feel quite thematic overall. A lot of standard stuff that most deck builders have: drawing cards, trashing cards, bonus resources, combos with cards of the same type, bonus fighting power, additional troopsâŠ
- The materials are nice. I do like that the components are made from wood. These days too many plastic components have invaded my games.
- My one complaint: the insert is meh, the box could have been smaller and mine has a scuffed corner from transport
Overall, I am quite pleased by this latest addition to the heap of games that no longer fits into the apartment.
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