I sold Broom Service, can’t remember why - I still have the card game (unplayed)
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My daughter was in the mood for a quick game, so we played Arboretum. That was way trickier than I anticipated, we blocked each other main sources of points, and I only won by a blue spruce that I planted on the very last turn.
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Played Jaipur with my wife this afternoon when the kids were being pretty chill. I won the first round in a blowout, then she came back with a close win in the second. I took the overall win thanks to a 3 point lead in the final round.
Then, this evening we played Lords of Vegas with the Up expansion. Neither of us ever built a Vega casino, as many of the cards for it came out early. I started out with an early lead, as the two casino colors I chose to start with came out a few times. I was in the teens somewhere before my wife finally got a point from a Strip card with a one tile casino.
I had a two tile casino in the D block which she took over, but I took back the next turn with a Reorganization. However, she then took a gamble and built next to it again, forcing a roll off of my boss die with a value of 6. She rolled another 6 against my 5, taking the casino over again and then expanding it, making it too expensive to Reorganize again.
Despite my early lead, she came back to tie me on points by the end of the game with 44, having just Raised a three tile casino the turn before, which let it advance a space in the end scoring, when it would not have before. I will note the game over card hit on the turn I was planning to Raise my six tile casino, and finally had accumulated the money to do so. As such, I had a ton of money, which broke the tie in my favor.
While looking at the board after, we realized my wife could have won if she had sprawled her casino to the last D block space, as a 9 tile casino would have moved her to the next space on the score track. Vegas is just cruel that way.
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We just finished the last case in the Power Behind series in Chronicles of Crime. It was the last case and we seem to have missed so much… and even when we miss clues or lack information from a previous case the game sometimes presents it to us anyway. The idea is fun but I don’t think crime solvers are our thing. Also by the end of a case my voice is done for.
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My parents are over for the weekend. They aren’t what I’d call gamers but enjoy light stuff.
Played a few rounds of Coloretto and then Mum smashed us at Wizard. All in the sunshine.
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Another game of 1862 yesterday, 3-player this time. I’m beginning to think that starting with freight is not the way to go…
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Another game of Lords of Vegas with my wife tonight. Much closer this time throughout the whole game, rather than her coming back from way behind to tie like yesterday. We also used a lot more of the Raise action this time, with most of our casinos having an upper floor.
Game turned in my favor when I managed to take her raised 3-tile casino after getting a 6 pip location on the Strip, and win the Reorganization roll she made on her turn. Then I expanded the casino more, and then again, winning the Reorg rolls she kept making. It became a 12 point casino for me, along with a 10 pointer I had, just let me break ahead.
At the end of the game, I had 81 points to her 49, and just one space shy of the Instant Win. My best score ever.
Bonus: this finished off my 5 plays for my 2021 Challenge. Another game down.
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Yesterday had sunshine, almost no wind and outdoor games after the morning rain, which was most fortunate.
Meeting @lalunaverde and others we started with a game of Noria which was excellent. After a teach and setup the game flew but in 90 entertaining minutes of cutthroat positing and wheel turning. Such a great game. I was a bit off the pace and missed all my goals by a turn and/or a resource. Sad times.
Next up was Expedition: Northwest Passage which is always worth a play even if it’s not as good as Noria. The main selling point with this one is a rather unique feel. There’s a tile laying element, as you explore the Arctic, to create the routes from Greenland to the northwest passage while searching for clues of Franklin’s expedition. The whole thing is action point allowance powered. The uniqueness comes from the race, the tile lying and the action points blending in their own way but it’s topped off by the sun that circles the board. It’s half and half warm and cold so there’s a shift through out the game of wether the water is frozen or not in any particular region which feels nicely thematic and adds an interesting timing element to the game. A very thematic euro indeed.
Lastly we played a little 6 Nimmt! 
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Noria is defo a very underrated Euro at 6.5/10.
Expedition: Northwest Passage - really enjoyed this. The coop-etition where we race to the North Western Passage is fun, and the freezing waters is too. I’d very much rather play this than Isle of Skye, which I also like, but is becoming easily calculable to me.
6Nimmt!
I also met a friend on Sat and played Summoner Wars 1st ed. I can’t stop fanboying over this game. You can’t make me do a reasonable take on this game. However, I can say that the 2nd edition rules are very very good.
Then, we played War of the Ring 2nd ed. I played as the Free Peoples again. The Sauron player went for a Northern strategy planning to knock out the Northmen, the Dwarves, and the Elves. But Sauron was too focused on the war that the Fellowship literally strolled into Mordor, the Fellowship proceed to pull jokes on Boromir. During the journey, Gandalf died (oh no!) but showed up in Fangorn and went to Gondor to rally the kingdom to their side, he was then followed by Strider who was latter crowned as Aragorn. Gimli went to Ered Luin to rally the Dwarves to war.
Sauron’s massive armies then ravaged the Northmen’s realms. The Shire and Ered Luin were sacked, but Gimli retreated to the Grey Havens before they were crushed. The Grey Havens were then put under siege. Erebor fell into darkness.
The climb to the top of Mount Doom was a different story for the remnants of the Fellowship. One by one they died under Sauron’s corruption. Boromir first, then Legolas, and then Pippin. Only Merry, Sam, and Frodo were the only ones remaining when they met Aragorn and Gandalf again.
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I love that table cover! Is it a Star Wars game mat or does it just have those vibes? If it’s themed it’s subtle enough to be classy.
It’s not official, but the Death Star look is why we chose it.
I can’t remember where we got it from - playmats were discussed on here about a year ago and it’s the most common one you can get in the UK - the brand that someone else mentioned (it might be Ulimate Guard)! Its 90cmx90cm which is bigger than standard because we wanted it for a whole game, not just a tableau.
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Had our first go playing with the Russians in Memoir '44.
“I have to choose my card for my next turn now?”
“I have to make that decision before we even resolve my actions on this turn?”
“I only have 3 command cards to choose from?”
No wonder the Russians had a hard time. My partner won, but I still had a great time.
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After listening to the latest SVWAG podcast, I decided I should try out the scripted TTS mod for Fantasy Realms they mentioned. Fantasy Realms as you may remember is nominated for Kennerspiel des Jahres. You may also remember that it inspired Jamey Stegmaier to make a game about some of his favorite books: Red Rising.
While not a huge fan of Stonemaier games, I was among those who preordered Red Rising because I like the IP and the game features Mars. I didn’t have huge expectations and a first game with my partner quickly proved that the game has a few issues with luck and top-decking. For the record: I enjoyed my solos of Red Rising.
So to compare both games, I played Fantasy Realms 4 times against 2 scripted opponents.
Both games are about the same thing: you get an initial hand of cards, all of these cards are unique. Cards score points in combination with each other and your basic turn is to take a card and “discard” a card to improve your hand. In the case of Red Rising, you do not discard the card but play it to one of four locations that give you other bonuses and playing a card may also give you bonuses and cards block access to other cards that were played to that location earlier.
In Fantasy Realms the game ends after about 5-8 exchanges per player: the discard display can only hold a fixed number of cards, game ends as soon as that is full. So if you start with a good hand, you just watch the others struggle for cards to improve their lot. If you start with a bad hand… it’s a lottery. In both games that deck is pretty big and the probability of drawing the right card from the deck… small. Both games mitigate this by including a number of jokers but in Fantasy Realms the jokers do not usually score any points themselves. In Red Rising there are whole suits of jokers and they do score. The scoring issues in RR are more about how little variance there is and how a huge hand definitely scores more points so cards that allow that extra draw become so much more valuable. Hand size is fixed in Fantasy Realms. SVWAG mentions that scoring for Fantasy Realms takes longer than playing the game–this is true, luckily the TTS mod scores for you. But the issue extends to grokking your hand (a little less an issue with RR but still exists). Some of these cards aren’t trivial in their effects on your hand and the manual doesn’t do much to clear up how they work.
I am unimpressed with Fantasy Realms to say the least and how this game made it to the Kennerspiel list is a mystery to me. 2020 really wasn’t a bad year for games.
I really like Red Rising better now after having played Fantasy Realms. At the size where my collection currently seems to be staying, I plan to keep Red Rising in my collection because a) it is pretty and b) it has Mars and c) the gameplay is unique in my collection. Would I buy it again? Probably not. But I will most definitely not be buying Fantasy Realms.
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I’m confused because I played it at Essen in 2017! I mean, sure, new edition, new publisher, I think it’s just been translated into German, but it doesn’t feel like a “new game” to me…
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It is not. It is just the weird “has to have a German version” thing.
They could have had Hallertau, Oceans, Nidavellir, Brass Birmingham (yes, DE version was 2020), Viscounts of the West Kingdom, Anno 1800, Renature, Coatl… --BGG sadly has no language search. But those are just a few of the really great games that were published in 2020. Maybe some of these are like Arnak beyond Kennerspiel…
Dune: Imperium, Beyond the Sun, The King is Dead 2nd and quite a few others are only getting German versions in 2021. So I have hopes for BtS for the next round… and if Arnak doesn’t win, then Dune may get a shot…
Looking at games from 2020 now, if I had to nominate for Kennerspiel, I would have gone with Oceans, Renature and Nidavellir. Not saying these are my personal favorites (I haven’t even played Oceans). I just think they make good Kennerspiel material.
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I feel that every year Spiel de Jarhes becomes less significant to hobby boardgamers – to the point that it’s practically without value to people who already visit BGG more than once or twice a month.
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I’m probably one of the people who still look at SDJ and try out the winner and nominees, and ignore Kennerspiel. But since last year, it looks like the type of games that are usually in SDJ are now showing up in Kennerspiel. I was expecting The Crew to be an SDJ material.
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Tried a repeat of last night’s Memoir '44 scenario but with me as the Fins this time.
A Russian victory via Finnish ski troops falling through thin ice. A cautionary tale.
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I ended up going the opposite way on red rising. That game felt like the last twenty mins of the game was just trying to sustain a decent position and very rarely did it feel that thrilling to me. Whereas you can probably finish two games of FR in the mean time. In the context that both games are limited a lot by the opening hands id prefer the one that’s easier to take to a pub.
We did try scoring once in fantasy realms using a pencil (I think the score pad in Red Rising is kind of deficient too - it needs More room for cards but is hampered because it could be unlimited in cards) but quickly went to the app which is really useful.
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We played some of this beta penguins drawing game on board game arena. It’s a bit of a rip off of one of the jackbox games (maybe drawful) but the issue is you can see the lions share of the Labour (and therefore the fun) of these games is actually in drafting fun clues that create ambiguity and amusement rather than the mechanisms. An interesting case study but kind of boring otherwise.
(I will say we did have fun but some of these were distinctly laughing at failures rather than laughing at doing an impossible task)