This is the first time that Tekeli has started to feel like Facebook. There’s enough people on here that everyone is always playing something and I start to wonder why my gaming life doesn’t measure up.
But the asynch is keeping me afloat. Lost Beyond the Sun to @Benkyo and absolutely loved it. Won Lost Ruins or Arnak in a weeklong microturn fest.
[panics, reaches for the purge button]
[reads again]
Don’t do that to me!
(I may not be entirely serious.)
Oh gosh. Dont scare me like this 
I take it all back! I take it back!
Damn my fat fingers!!!
I’ve played Tzolk’in on BGA for the first time, my friend was going to teach me and we ended up playing a whole game. I like it, although it strikes me as the type of game I am bad at.
I’m nearly at alpha privilege on BGA (750 plays and at least 50 unique games) so we’re playing lots of quick nonsense. Really, really dislike Bandido - seems to be pure chance and if you’ve not won in 10 turns you never will. Connect 4! It’s quick.
Lots of Race For the Galaxy, which is just awesome. Super fast tableau building and if you screw up then it’s over in 10 minutes. It’s a classic BGA where the scoring is done for you and saves a lot of time at the end.
We had a belting game of Beyond the Sun the other day. It is different at each player count. I really, really struggle with tempo though. A fast start doesn’t often translate (for me) into a big finish, I’m finding I often have to start again at a second achievement rather than building on the first.
Had a couple of friends over yesterday for lunch, first time seeing any friends since January. Rounded things out by introducing them to Splendor Marvel, which my wife won pretty handily. I kept finding myself one chip short of being able to buy anything useful. I think I only had 10 points when the game ended, but was probably still in second. But then, I’m used to normal Splendor, while neither of our friends had played either version before, so that’s not unexpected.
Yeah, nah. I must admit I am guilty of being in NZ and being able to play games with people for most of last year… (Please don’t hate me). Plus playing a few games with family now and then.
But if it was only up to me, I’d play more. Jobs, and chores, and responsibilities and budgeting keep getting in the way…
Played some super pinball. Not sure it’s a very good multiplayer game. I went for a poo while my partner finished her first ball after I got knocked out early.
As a single player game it’s probably at least engaging the whole time.
Got a teaching game of Arboretum in with my 10 YO. She was not into it until scoring, when she discovered that she’d blocked about half my paths with the cards in her hand.
That’s not bad, normally it is the other way around:
“But I have planted all these trees…!”
“Yes, but I have the 6 and 7 here…”
My 3 handed Intro game for 18DO. I’m stopping now because I’ve had a migraine from the heat all day.
I’m quite happy because I’m convinced the ruleset they created for this beginner version is accessible enough I can get this to the table. the thing I struggled with the most was that the market board has two sides and I started setting up on the advanced side.
The intro game had no money in it. each turn players take one share, place one tile and built one station or upgrade an income field. Each train company has a single train that has simple rules for upgrading and at the end each train drives one route for income which paid dividends, player with the most dividends wins. Easy. Not trivial to play well but no overwhelming ruleset which is exactly how it was advertised in the Kickstarter.
There is also the standard game and the beer game for experts and extensions to make the expert game more complicated.
18xx games often get called “complicated”. The rulesets are, often, the exact opposite; it’s more often a case that despite straightforward rules, of which there can be many, it’s the decision space that’s complicated, not any given mechanism.
The ones I played (although I know City of Big Shoulder is just pseudo-18XX) I thought were simpler than I expected. Rules are not overcomplicated if you compare them with, say, Root, or most heavy euros I played, but they can get heavy on the maths side, and complex in strategy. Throw in the mix the length of it, and you can end up with @yashima migraine easily. I think I prefer the Martin Williams games (Brass, or Age of Steam) that are one step below in complexity and definitely length.
Agreed, I wouldn’t say no to an 18XX but the strong butterfly effect puts me off. I’m pretty sure I once lost a game of 1846 on the initial auction.
Got a chance to play Babylonia against a real live human before my parents got on a plane to head back home.
If you’ll spare me a moment for my thoughts, it really is a brilliantly designed game, and I’ve now put my finger on something. So Yellow & Yangtze is obviously a renovated Tigris & Euphrates. Blue Lagoon, the same for Through the Desert. Babylonia was expected to be the renovation of Samurai. However, many comments call it more of a mixture of all three - a statement I’ve agreed with but couldn’t articulate why.
The Samurai reference is obvious; surrounding cities and capturing via majority. Likewise the TtD/DdW reference is obvious, as you link up your pieces and snatch up farms for bigger and bigger scoring opportunities. For T&E, yes you have four types of tiles (Noble, Priest, Farmer, Merchant) and play two per turn, and a map with two rivers, but those are all superficial similarities.
Here’s where I now think Babylonia evokes T&E: Tigris has four games going on at once. The Blue game, the Black game, and the Red and Green games. You have to monitor all four at once. And as monuments appear and kingdoms form, those four games take on different tenors. Babylonia also has four games going on at once - the Farm game, the City Capture game, the Ziggurat game, and the Link Up All Your Tiles game. As in Tigris, you have to monitor all four and approach the game with balance.
In a twist, (everyone plug your ears), Tigris accomplishes this with a inelegant, tacked on rule - score your lowest color. I’m not complaining, just noting that the balance between colors is overtly enforced by a rule designed specifically to do that. What makes Babylonia so remarkable is that there is no such rule. All four games contribute to a single pool of points; you can choose to diversify or specialize however you want. This is a nice degree of freedom. However, the game still finds a way to enforce the four-game principle, with a much more elegant solution. The scoring of each of the four areas accelerates through the game. So if I ignore one of the games and give my opponents free rein, they will start racking up massive 10 or 20 point turns every round toward the end. If I fall behind in city capturing, for the rest of the game I can’t score a city without benefiting you more than me. In this way, the game organically forces you to dabble in all four areas, either to keep abreast of the accelerating scoring or to disrupt your opponents’ momentum.
It’s really remarkable.
Now, I still prefer Tigris as the better overall game. But I find this deep, deep respect for Babylonia, in the genius of its design and how it drives the experience from an almost invisible ruleset. (and I still peg it as a darn fine game in its own right).
We’ve played a few rounds of scarabiya. A neat little variation on the kind of game My City is. Try and pack a space optimally inefficiently so that scoring spaces are exposed at the end in the best way.
Thinking about super pinball. I find the production to be a complete mismatch to the thing your playing. I really dislike the moving ball around while you have this dry wipe surface. It’s like the worst aspects of dry wipe are exposed continually. I wish the tables had very specific spots to place the marble, especially in the bumpers area.
I cannot equate Babylonia like Y&Y with T&E. As I feel it’s its own game.
But I agree that Babylonia is one of his best one - same league as T&E, Stepehsons Rocket, and Through the Desert
