Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

Boardgames
3367

In my games it felt as if the literature price decided the game. Whoever raced to 12 letters first… so I am now playing a game without it. It feels more strategic deck building wise. But well whatever is more strategic in a deck builder a la Star Realms :smiley:

Personally my favorite colors are everything but yellow. Yellow is a good winning strategy but oh so boring and also inflexible and risky for longer words and you still have to buy letters that will not make it impossible to get a word. My friend recently discovered that words with 3 W are not that common. I also think that F and J is a dumb combo that I keep buying because???

I like red because you can get the boring cards out of your deck and green for the ink remover because it makes long words that much safer. Both of these allow me to get more combos and those are sooo tasty.

4 Likes
3368

Played Dune: Imperium. Great game, much better than it sounds in paper

Followed by Rocketmen I was cash starved for 2/3rds of the game. Unlike other deckbuilders there’s no card always available to get you money. Game ended with me limping along on 13 points to 26 and 34. May go on the sell pile.

5 Likes
3369

Had a fantastic game of Cosmic Encounter tonight, first time in a while. We had the Mite (defense has to give them a free colony or discard down to three cards), the Deuce (plays two encounter cards each time), the Locust (eats planets if it’s alone), the Hate (makes everyone discard cards or lose ships), the Warrior (slowly gets stronger and stronger), and I was the Oracle (sees opponent’s encounter card before choosing my own). Pretty standard opening - some negotiations, some fights, etc.

HOWEVER! I happened to pick up the Reincarnator flare, which allows you to cause a loser in an encounter to discard their power and draw a new one. For spite reasons I played it against Warrior, turning him Human. But the kicker is you then give the flare to that player. So then the Hate proceeded to become the Chosen, the Mite became the Zombie, and I became the Merchant.

Finally I squashed the beef with the Warrior-now-Human and joined him on his turn to get us both up to 4 colonies, meaning everyone was one point away from winning. He didn’t invite me on the second encounter and tried to do a Negotiate win with the Deuce, who wasn’t having it and played an attack against him. So then it was my turn, and I invited the Deuce (who had a big hand) to win with me against the Chosen (and everyone else, who joined as defensive allies). And we succeeded thanks to my 18 attack card and x2 kicker! And a Cosmic Zap on the Chosen.

3 Likes
3370

Other than the ones that people have already mentioned there’s Letter Jam, which I haven’t played but have heard some positive things about it.

4 Likes
3371

I’ve been wondering about Letter Jam, mainly because the retailer 6-pack of Letter Jam is available really cheaply second-hand here.

2 Likes
3372

pinch of salt alert I’ve played Letter Jam once.

It’s the type of co-op I like and it’s fine. I’m not hot on co-ops but would play it if offered.

2 Likes
3373

I have played Letter Jam. We only got it shortly before the pandemic hit so it hasn’t seen the table that much. It’s a horrible teach but a solid deduction game after that teach that even works at 2 players I am happy to say. Definitely one of the better word games out there.

Maybe I can convince my partner to play a round on the week-end to give everyone a more current impression.

Edit: and we like coop games here so there’s that.

So you would get 6 copies of the game? I am confused.

2 Likes
3374

Yes. It’s an odd thing to see for sale second-hand, but it was like $20 for 6 copies + bonus demo materials.

3 Likes
3375

The one drawback I’ve found with Letter Jam is that if you have players with very different vocabulary sizes it can get frustrating. But that’s probably true of most word-making games.

4 Likes
3376

A couple of other good ones to mention (that are quite similar): Letterpress and Handsome. Both are simple and quick (and very portable) and more about “what can you spell with these letters?” than any other mechanic (like deckbuilding in Paperback/Hardback, or placement in Scrabble).

Letterpress is the slightly more complicated one, with a bit more strategy.

4 Likes
3377

I’ve been playing Go with mixed results. Beat a 20 kyu by ~100 points and then got clobbered by a 17 kyu player, so my rank is probably somewhere around there.

I got into Go briefly about 10 years ago, then discovered designer boardgames and lost interest in Go, but have rediscovered my love for Go in the past couple of months.

Anyone here inspired by Quinns to give it a go…?

2 Likes
3378

I love Go.

.

.

.

But I don’t like playing Go

4 Likes
3379

Also about 10 years ago I used to play it a lot, but mostly teaching people how to play. I do struggle to get through a full size game against anyone competent, as I get lost in a head maze of wanting to avoid bad moves.

3 Likes
3380

Black Sonata. And boy did I miss a major rule!

2 Likes
3381

I’m waiting on my copy of Handsome from the last Button Shy reprint kickstarter, but looking forward to trying it.

Letterpress I have, and the default rules were not well received by a friend, and I could only agree with them that there’s a runaway winner issue which can make the game feel really unfair to the loser, which is that the players who make the best words receive more cards than other players, which can simply allow them to continue to get better words and even more cards. It has the potential be a pretty unwelcoming experience for anyone who doesn’t quite have the same vocabulary as other players, and I think the biggest issue with this is that it’s completely unnecessary – the player with the best vocabulary is liable to win a word game regardless; so for the game to actively punish the other players rather than letting the best wordsmith win on a level playing field seems like a dubious design to me.

Not being the best with words doesn’t mean that one can’t come up with a corker on occasion if given the opportunity, and therefore have some satisfying moments in the spotlight; but I think the standard rules take away those opportunities to shine.

It can be played solo, in which case these issues obviously don’t arise. It may also be that with large numbers of players the issue is reduced. At the two-player count, the issue is probably maximised.

I need to play it some more with others (different others : ) before I could be sure, but from that first experience my inclination was to reduce the benefits to winning a round by allowing all players to obtain the same number of new cards, and merely give the winner the first pick. It’s still an advantage, but not such a big one.

1 Like
3382

Ohanami - SUSD mentioned this in their podcast and someone wanted to try it, so I got curious. It’s decent. The card drafting and arranging of cards in numerical order mixed with the changing values of the cards is interesting. The values changes because blues score every round, green on 2nd and 3rd round, and grey on 3rd. Pink is set collecting at end game. And so, each card has to be valued based on their number, because you have to sort them out. And also their value based on your short term and long term goals.

The weakest part of the game is the arranging of cards in numerical order, where if played repeatedly, you’ll play them in certain way to maximise the viable options you have so to lessen the shock of the random draft. But at the first play, y’all will laugh at how you keep screwing over your position as you have to play bad cards. It got nothing compare to the hate draft of Fairy Tale or the interesting choices you have with Age of Assassins. Or if I want to arrange numbers in order, 6Nimmt!, the Mind, the Game are more to my taste. But I’m usually not a fan of pure card drafting games, too solitaire for me.

Tigris and Euphrates - truly a game for Kings and Queens :crown: :joy:

Through the Desert - One thing I wanted to do nowadays is to play my faves. Wish granted.

Whale Riders

Quest for El Dorado - Great fun. Didn’t regret selling my copy.

Spy Connection - rather lame. There’s blocking-ish, but it’s pretty tame and solitaire-ish.

Monster My Neighbour - social deduction game with card play. Very interesting idea, but waaaaaay to arbitrary to have any form of control to deduce who the monster and their allies are, and who are the friendlies.

Mysterium - a newbie-ish brought Mysterium and I’m more than happy to be the ghost to show her how the game works, so she won’t have difficulty playing it next time. Mysterium is always a treat, regardless of what my role.

Anomia - great fun. The “no repeat variant” is very good. The problem with this game is that it gets super boring when people recycle answers. It becomes a matter of recall rather than thinking on one’s feet.

Skull King

5 Likes
3383

Played Kingdomino with Age of Giants today. Two player with the 8 year old.

I like the new tiles but the giants I’ll happily never play with again.

Also Blokus x 2 and Abdandon All Artichokes. I’d happily sell the latter if the 8 year old didn’t
Ike it so much

5 Likes
3384

I just finished a game of Regicide when I’d made a pretty terrible decision very early on (effectively discarding one of my best cards for no actual benefit) and, having realised this, I was about to take it back and rethink that turn, but then decided to “be good” and accept my bad play and see what transpired…

What transpired was my second Gold victory! Very satisfying : )

I got to play it with others (3p) for the first time a couple of days ago. We only played one game, and got as far as the second Queen. The others picked up the game quickly, although one declared it to be more mathsy than they were prepared for. I think the solo game is probably the most mathsy option because you often can (and should) do precise sums when planning the upcoming turns, whereas with other players you have to guess at what they might be holding – so unless you’re remembering the cards which have been played and doing probability calculations in your head, I think multiplayer shifts the balance a bit further away from the numbers and more in the “gut feeling” direction.

Edit: Next two games were a Bronze victory and a Defeat. It’s probably not a coincidence that, while hearts always seems like the most expendable of the suits when taking damage, the games where I lose outright are often the ones where I just haven’t managed to play many hearts (as evidenced by the enormous pile of injured heroes lying outside the empty tavern : )

2 Likes
3385

First play of A War of Whispers. Got this in the second Kickstarter campaign as we enjoyed the political intrigue in The King’s Dilemma. They are very, very different games but you’re still acting as the power behind the throne.

It’s an area control game, but unlike something like El Grande you don’t control a faction on the board, you have different, secret levels of affinity for each of the 5 factions. That’s done at random, so I believe there are complaints this game can be ‘broken’ if too many players end up favouring the same faction.

There’s some funky card play to break the rules and my wife ended up playing about 7 cards in her final turn but couldn’t quite break me to win. The final reveal when you each show who you’d been rooting for is nice as well.

It works with 2 but I really want to play with 3&4. Very nippy as well, first play including a teach was just over an hour.

Looks good as well

IMG_20210717_163835599
IMG_20210717_1638355994160×3120 3.52 MB

10 Likes
3386

Really enjoyed my play with Roger and Luna. Can see it developing a decent meta with repeated plays

5 Likes