We had two games of Splendor this evening. My better half won both. At least on the first game I put a fight, and lost by a decent 17-12.
On the second game, she kept blocking me, and I could barely make it to double figures while her engine got her all the nobles and a final blue card to dispatch me 18-10
2 games of Quest for El Dorado tonight, getting a bit chilly for the second game. Really enjoying this. We all went hell for leather in the first game and then in the second game we were much more measured and tried to build our decks before flying through the trail.
Anyone got the expansion? Any good?
I own it but never played it. The promo pack is pretty solid though. I could separate both out and post it to you as a ārentalā if you wanted.
Not sure about Golden Temples though. I already know I wouldnāt mix them though.
Played After the Empire. Bog standard worker placement with a hugely hilarious castle siege at the end of the round. Enjoyable but not Ā£100+ enjoyable.
Thatās a shame. It did look excessive, but thereās always hope itās justified.
Thatās kind thanks.
My birthday isnāt far away so hopefully Iāll get it then.
Thanks for the offer
There is a cheaper ānon-deluxeā version thatās about Ā£60. Still not sure itās a Ā£60 game though
I have the Heroes and Hexes expansion which we sometimes play with.
It offers some fun new elements. You can gain a hero card to your deck, which offers a powerful (sometimes one off), unique card to your deck. These are fun, but depending on the route you have set up, some are definitely more useful than others.
You also get familiars, and extra starting card which is slightly more powerful than those in the normal starting to deck. You can burn the card to move double the distance with these, which theme-wise is a bit grim.
The Hexes part is a way to get curses, which may prevent you moving, allow your opponent to move you back spaces or force you to discard something. The game at times encourages you to risk getting cursed in exchange for a shortcut.
Thereās nothing complicated to the expansion, but in my experience it does make a very streamlined game like El Dorado feel more bloated than it should. Itās also more prone to run away leaders/winners in my experience. So it adds some fun elements, but I wouldnāt call it essential. We enjoy it when we fancy throwing something different in the mix, but are more than happy playing just the base game.
Iāve introduced another friend to Hardback on BGA. After we finished the first game, we accidentally opened 2 tables because we each proposed a new table and somehow that got crossed and now weāre playing two handed 
Also it seems like there are now several languages to choose from on BGA. Maybe Iāll play a game in my native language eventually.
Weāve only plaid with anything beyond base game content once and I agree with this assessment.
The new cards are super neat. Adds more options in the card shop.
The hexes themselves - not that impressed. The bad one is moving back 3 space malarkey, which is a defacto ālose a turnā. Im happy to grab it for the cards.
Played our first game ever of Orleans today. I liked it quite a bit! The game flows well, with everyone doing things at the same time for the most part, and only going in turns for the action phase. Trickiest things was remembering to do the coin bonus/penalty for highest/lowest on the farmer track. Everything else was well laid out and easy to follow. The game looks complex as hell, but after a couple of turns, we all knew what we were doing, if not what strategies to follow.
I managed to win with 112 points, to 101 for my brother-in-law and 93 for my wife. The game did run a little long, about 2 hours of play and 10 minutes of setup, but it was our first play and hope that will drop a little bit with more plays. And I hope it can be brought out now and then, as I had a lot of fun with it.
Lots of gaming this week:
Calico had five plays, four with Mum and one with a gaming bud. Itās lots of fun - lots of agonizing decisions packed into under an hour (at least with 2, Iām yet to play it with more)
Love Letter
Diamonds, played with my wife and a couple of friends. It was late and I canāt really remember how the game went. I lost though, I believe.
Star Realms, a friend brought this over for game night, so we played a couple of games. The game owner won both, though the second was pretty close though. Itās not my fave (I believe Iāve ranted about preferring deckbuilders with a fixed or mostly fixed market here previously) but I get more opportunity to game than most of my friends so when they bring games, Iām pretty happy to give them preference in getting them to the table.
Just One, thrilled to get this off the shelf of shame and it was great fun, as I suspected it would be. We did pretty poorly, 5 points out of 13 in both of the games we played. We did only have 5 players, so Iām fairly confident we could do better with more clue-givers, but definitely room to improve as well.
Startups, I always really enjoy this one. Lots of tied majorities this game, so fairly low scores. I won, I got dealt a good starting hand that helped secure a clear majority in Elephant Mars Travel which tipped things in my favour.
Jaipur
Spring Meadow
Arboretum, taught this one to Mum and she beat me, so obviously I taught it well 
Compounded, someone suggested a farewell game for this one that Iām selling on. It was enjoyable but confirmed that, yes I do want to sell it - itās a bit long and fiddly for the proportion of choices it actually gives you.
Nut, lost a pretty close game of this one, itās still one of my faves from the Pack Oā Game series, shame it was kickstarter exclusive 
.
Azul, requested by the same guy thatās been kicking everyoneās butts at it for awhile. One day weāll beat him, I came in a respectable second but yeah, heās way too good at it!
The mind games you play with yourself in this game are hilarious. Ok, it canāt be TOO obvious or other people will write it. But it canāt be TOO esoteric or they wonāt make the connection.
But maybe i ought to go for the obvious, cos others wonāt. Or will they.
Plus what is obvious to you (I gave the clue āprostitutionā for GAME and really threw them off!) isnāt necessarily the obvious answer to others
Met up with the same group as last time, but it was for my friendās birthday.
Billionaire Banshee - Using the variant rules where a judge picks from dates proposed by each player. And slightly tweaked so āquirksā were given by other players, rather than players picking for themselves. Made for some silly discussions.
King of Tokyo - Dark version with the Power Up expansion. I almost managed a super quick win by rocketing to 19 points, but then gto taken out by the player after me. She at least went on to win.
Geek Out! - I easily beat everyone at both games we played of this. Maybe need to see if teams of āeveryone vs meā would be more balanced.
Cindr - A favourite from last time, so we had to play again. I did about as well as usual. Iām not very good at dating dragons.
Sparkle*Kitty - Quite a silly game thatās a bit like Jazz: The Singing Card Game, but with more rules. Somehow I won? I was a Metal Princess.
The Estates - Iām not good at real estate development either. Managed to end up with no money a few times. But I didnāt come last!
Citadels - Sadly we had a delayed start because of the sudden addition of a 5th player, so we only managed a few rounds before my friend had to start work (at the cafe we were playing in), so we called it a day.
Had a first game of Under Falling Skies yesterday.
Which I lost. But I did really enjoy. I think I was not focusing enough on getting the developing science and too much on shooting ships down
By the time I spotted the Motherās hip was only three moves away, it was a bit too late.
Saturday games yesterday consisted of Near and Far (game 4 in the campaign), Caverns, and Stew.
Caverna was a very close game, with only 2 points between each of us.
Stew is one Iāve been meaning to learn for ages, but kept putting off. The rules are very simple, so I donāt know why! Turns out that itās a quick, fun little bluffing/push your luck card game. Going straight in the āgames to play at work games nightsā pile 
First ever play of Hansa Teutonica for us tonight. None of us had a clue what we were doing, so I think a lot more of our desks (well, my wifeās and her brotherās) got unlocked than would be seen in a game with more experienced people. They both got up to 5 actions per turn while I only got to 4, and my wife had the income and privilege fully unlocked. We also only had a total of 4 bonus tokens taken for the whole game, which seems low to me, considering running out is an endgame condition.
My wife won with a final score of 52, just edging out her brother who had 51. I brought up the rear with 41. We all only had a 2x multiplier from the keys, her brother was the only one to make the East-West connection, and no one put a merchant in the bonus prestige city for the extra points.
I did enjoy the game, though it went a bit longer than I expected, but again, I feel that we were not playing very efficiently. Would love to try it again.
Heavy on tile layers this week
Five Tribes
6Nimmt
Kokopelli - a Feld game that is so unFeld. No point salad. No mish mash of mechanisms malarkey. (Also, it end up being actually good 
). The way that the power ups mash up together within the players tableau and how they also interact with other playersā tableau is very playful.
Portobello Market - Im sensing great potential with this game. I think itās a hidden gem. Will be playing more. The rules is very simple, but the game is a bit foggy to me.
Batavia - old school Euro about auctioning cards and use those cards to form area majorities in order to grab tiles, which forms different sets of area majorities. It sounds average, but it was the collective amount of cards that everyone plays that if it reaches a threshold, the suit that has the most cards on the table (from all players) will be discarded, ties means they are all discarded together. It was much better than I thought it would.
Played Kepler 3042 with @EnterTheWyvern . Itās a pretty strategic Euro. The short duration means that the turns and rounds are very tight. I like the bit where the resources are based on which planets they are sitting on. So you canāt do an action that requires 2 energy and 3 matter if half of them are located on a different planet.
Cockroach Poker - Okay. Iām really getting tired of this now. Compare to other party games, itās slow. I would rather play Goodcritters for a bluffing game or Pit for a rowdy party game, in general.
Carcassonne Safari - Another Carcassonne spin-off. Nothing much to differentiate itself from the original. The watering holes are nice. But thatās it. The jeeps are a really cool idea that incentivise players on playing a tile on a position. Which is very neat.
1822: The Railways of Great Britain - our game was so wonky that I have nothing to comment. There is a lot of auctioning though. Every stock round is an auction. However, what I am worried about in this game is that, at some point, the players will figure out a meta on how much the companies will optimally cost in an auction. But I can be wrong.
Nidavellir
For the first time in 2 years I was able to invite my family around for food. My niece (3 years) and sister (35 years) spotted the Crokinole board and wanted to play. Unsurprisingly this developed into a tournament in which my father of 70 years wiped the floor with everybody (myself included). On winning, his only words were (translated from Welsh) āNo one beats the 1958 Aberystwyth shove-haāpenny championā.
In future, I expect this will be my fondest boardgame memory.
I hope everyone has as good a day as this.
With due respect to my friends and gaming circles, nothing beats a good, competitive session with a game that really connects with your family. With the notable exception of a years-long D&D campaign through highschool (and perhaps conventions on the whole), no game nights produce āone for the memory bookā as often as family game night.