Continuing to play and enjoy solo Regicide. I started tonight with another outright loss in a game where I actually emptied the tavern, having never managed any significant healing for most of the game – always finding those cards more necessary for absorbing damage, but never turning things around, and it bit me in the end.
I then redeemed myself thoroughly with my first Gold victory!!
The cards just seemed to fall nicely for me in this game. The decisions were still engaging throughout, but I always had a way forwards; I never wound up with a diamond-less hand; I was able to keep cycling (healing) the discards back into the tavern; I didn’t run into the brutal situation where the Queen of suit-I-didn’t-want is immediately followed by the King of suit-I-didn’t-want; and I was able to deal exact damage to about 3/4 of the opponents to strengthen my hand when I drew cards. In the end it wasn’t even down to the wire – the final king didn’t stand a chance : )
My own skill level wouldn’t have varied significantly between those consecutive games, so all outcomes for any given game seem possible at this point, from a loss to a total victory. The best thing is that I found both games equally engaging – I knew the first game wasn’t going well, but some kind of victory never feels completely out of reach until it’s over, so there’s always something to push for. And when you’ve made it deep into the game with no jokers down, there’s the added tension of wondering how long you can hold out for.
Cthulhu Wars, six players, two new. I was Crawling Chaos. Even after many, many plays It’s still so brilliant, Cosmic Encounter-esque game-breaking powers but actually fun. In me top, top games.
We played a first game of my newly arrived copy of Search for Planet X.
I found the X first but guess who won? Not me. I messed up some positioning because at some point I simply forgot one of the possibilities for the asteroid placement.
My partner just had so many more correct theories–it made all the difference. But first game and all that. I like the deduction. Even the app usage was very smooth. I am still figuring out how to take notes “correctly”.
I am sure to try a solo soon–someone across the table from me was suffering from AP a bit much. Deduction games without note taking may be a better option for him.
Broadhorns: Early Trade on the Mississippi , first play. You start with a boat and some cargo, and then it’s off down the mighty Mississippi. You can stop at any of the towns, and sell your goods (hopefully for more than you bought them), and buy new cargo, if the town allows it. You can also pickup and deliver travellers for cash. We had some trouble with the traveller, there’s no mention of this in the actual rulebook, but you can only pickup travellers from their starting location – but you can draw them anytime. I had my hand full of travellers, that I couldn’t pickup up (and get out of my hand). I guess it’s logical that you can only pick them up from the starting location. I didn’t have a strategy for this, but the two other players pushed on ahead, so it felt like my best chances were to play after them and finish up towns for bonuses. Each town has a number of cargo spaces, fill them all up, and you get a cash bonus, and you get the town card for end game scoring. In spite of getting a few bonuses, I only won by three points. Good fun, I described it facetiously as Whale Riders with knobs on.
The Crew , lost the mission, then replayed and won. Go us.
Kitchen Rush , started with scenario four, things are getting a bit hectic now. We completed that scenario, but couldn’t pull off the next one.
MicroMacro: Crime City , a couple of four star cases, which took a bit longer, but we got there. Still loving this.
Hats , I think we had a bit better idea of what to do now.
Mysterium Park , had to play with a new person as Ghost. And we won! Some luck involved on the last selections we guessed right, but for the wrong reasons. Oh well, still fun.
No Games Night last night, we were tired from a bad Sunday night sleep, so we stayed home. My daughter fancied a quick game of Love Letter, which she won in the very last hand. I do like the edge the spies bring to the game on the newest version, they make the scoring a lot more dynamic between two.
Got in a first game of Cosmic Frog which was promptly followed by a second game. It’s fun and the theme definitely helps alot. However serious comparisons to Survive! Escape from Atlantis abound. Similarly petty and random and similarly fun. Each with different strengths and weaknesses in comparison which all come out in the wash. We played the short game twice and the second game was really very short indeed. Speed up hugely by my fat frog crashing through the shard to end the game early and give me a second victory. First game I won on 29 points with the next closest at 26 then 16, 14 and second game I had 15 to 10, 10, 8. Good fun but for £65 Survive does a similar job at half the price.
Next up was some Marvel United. Of those at the table myself and the other bg vet didn’t have a bad time, but it felt like some fluff of not much. The 2 who are newer to modern board games both really enjoyed it. This leads me to conclude it does a good job of being a better mass market/family game. This time we played with painted toys too!!
Played a 5-player game of Oath on TTS with @lalunaverde and @Captbnut. It was a very close game - we all ganged up on @Captbnut to prevent him winning by holding the Favour of the People, the Empire failed their two dice rolls that could have given them the victory, and I eventually won using a Vision of Faith (which I think means I brainwashed the denizens of the empire into joining my cult…)
The deciding factor, in the end, was that one player had to decide whether he would use his turn to stop me or @lalunaverde and the Chancellor from winning. He decided that, narratively speaking, he would prefer the toppling of the empire.
Definitely a game that needs repeated plays to get properly into the storytelling aspect, and to see the game state evolve, otherwise the ability of one player to essentially pick a winner could be really annoying!
TTS always slows things down and I think I was one of 4 of us who hasn’t played. Big thanks to @Whistle_Pig for setting the game up and explaining as we went along.
It combined the feelings of quite a few games (Root for the look, Blood Rage, Inis, Pax Pamir 2e and strangely Villainous).
I’m not one to grok games quickly but I certainly couldn’t see any obvious strategy until I stumbled into one.
Even on TTS it’s clearly a lovely looking game and it’s very unusual and very interesting. I’d happily play it again. .
Trek 12, a roll and write with one interesting idea. Two games is probably about the right number of plays for me.
Railroad Ink with the Lake dice, I continue to enjoy this game every time I play it.
Tokaido which is remarkably hard to use on BGA. That’s me sorted for another few years then.
More 5-player The Crew, enjoyably hard.
The next session is in two weeks, which as I understand it is the current candidate day for no gathering restrictions in England. So if that happens, the pubs will be rammed by the sort of people who actually like rammed pubs. Our session will therefore be on-line.
Played Lisboa again and I still enjoy it. The decrees at late game becomes a bit annoying now. A friend of mine suggested the Queen Variant which stops players from hoarding decrees at late game and turn it into an exclusively long term decision, as it should be. I will still be eager to play it again.
Nemesis was super fun. We explored the spaceship, aliens shows up and attack us. Ship goes on self destruct. Then, as we rush to the escape pods. The queen finally shows up near the escape pods in a cinematic twist. Hilarity ensures! Only one player survived.
Our Oath session was fun. At the start, I had the Long Lost Heir, which can turn me into a citizen. So I bid my time and avoided taking areas to me, as that would help the Chancellor more. As the leader of my group, I travelled and gathered secrets and favours. And when I thought the time was right, I revealed the long lost heir of the kingdom - thought to be dead a long time ago. See? He has his signet ring with him. It’s very legal and very cool.
I joined force with the royalist and keep the regime alive, but was planning to replace the Chancellor himself by gathering relics. After all, you cannot claim to be the strongest person in the kingdom after the king if you aren’t the swaggiest of them all! And so, swags were taken or stolen. But the others are too fast. @Captbnut kept bribing showering the people with money. @Whistle_Pig ruled through secrets and blackmails. And the Chancellor kept out-swagging me. I planned to steal his swags but he always kept a close cohort of loyal soldiers with him. In the end, the empire fell and I now live in exile, just like before. Oh well… I’m used to living on hard bread and dried fruits anyway.
First up was Istanbul, with my wife and her brother. My wife jumped into the lead by getting both tiles from one of the mosques early, gaining the gem for that location. Meanwhile, her brother and I focused on upgrading our wheelbarrows.
As the game progressed, I got three of the mosque tiles, while my wife and her brother unlocked them all. Last I looked, though, her brother and I were at 4 gems and she was at 3. Well, while I was distracted enacting my plans and checking on our kids, she finished her wheelbarrow, getting her 4th.
I was one turn away from winning when she got her 5th gem from the Sultan’s Palace, and since I was the first player, I had no more turns. Her brother was close to his 5th, but would have needed another turn to get it, so she won. Not that I could have done anything to stop her had I realized she had 4 gems, but it was still a shock to hear her brother say that she had won while I was getting the kids a drink.
After that, my wife and I played Legendary Marvel, trying the Superhero Civil War scheme (one less Hero for 2 players, empty the HQ for scheme twists, lose when Hero deck is empty) against the Mastermind Macho Gomez. Tricky part with him is he gets harder to fight as you defeat ”’Friends’ of Deadpool" villains. The scheme kept causing our better cards to be discarded from the HQ, so we were left with pretty low damage options, and no good way to cull our decks. As such, we lost, though not a single villain escaped the city.
Played a two handed learning game of Honey Buzz. I enjoyed the puzzle of building your hive, triggering actions, producing honey and fulfilling contracts.
It was definitely easy to learn. The materials are beautiful just as I expected. Feels like it shouldn’t be hard to bring to the table… and it is quite unique in my collection. So overall I am happy to add this to my shelves.
Tried out Nidavellir with my wife this afternoon. What a simple but fun game! The dragon, Fafnir, has awoken from its slumber and is coming for the Dwarf kingdom to ruin it and steal all it’s treasure. The players represent Elvaland, Dwarf elders trying to raise the best army to win the glory of being first to fight the dragon.
Cards representing Dwarves are laid out in three taverns and each turn you bid using your five coins to get first pick for each tavern. There are five classes of Dwarves, each of which have a different method of scoring, and each time you get a complete row of ranks of the different types, you get to recruit a special hero that provides a bunch of points, ranks, or other bonuses.
Also, if you bid using your 0 coin, you get to replace the higher of the two unused coins with a new coin with a value of the sum of the two coins. So if you did not use your 2 and 5, you would discard the 5 and take a 7 from the treasury. In the event there are no more coins of that value, you take the next highest coin available, or the next lower if nothing higher exists.
After one age of cards, the King reviews the armies and grants bonuses to players if they have the highest number of ranks for each class of Dwarf. Then you play one more age, then the game is over and all the points are tallied to see who gets to fight the dragon.
My wife beat me, 320 - 299, which seems like a pretty close game, all things considered. Very fun, and hope to play more of it, with more players soon.
I did exactly the same and played a learning game of Honey Buzz. Activating different combos and using them in the right order was a lot of fun. Looking forward to playing it for real soon.
Also played a few games of another new addition, Calico. Simple to play, infuriating when someone takes the piece you need and stress inducing to pull off even half the scoring objectives. This has been a hit so far, with 4 games in total played and me and my girlfriend drawing 2-2 overall. This will get played a lot, very quick to set up and straightforward to play.
Started with Gravwell, which is a nonsense-filled racing game where everyone is rubberbanding back and forth but gradually creeping towards the finish line.
Then we played Bunny Kingdom, a drafting game about getting territories and the buildings to go in them. A very satisfying drafting game, I might add, since you get to pick two cards each time. I played worse than I’d ever played before and came in a very unrespectable third.
We ended with Sleuth for some classic logical deduction. It was a good time but it reminded me why I now prefer The Search for Planet X - I had a solid guess as to what the answer was for a while, but I never got a question card with which to confirm it until it was too late.
It’s been nice that we’ve had four game nights recently and haven’t played the same game twice, even though certainly don’t have the biggest collection.
I had NOT gotten all the Mosque tiles before you.
I still needed one. Once you got it I realized there wasn’t a rush to get it anymore (since the price wouldn’t change) and focused on a bigger wagon then getting the las mosque. Which let me save moves to get the last gem.
