I totally forgot: we played „August“ of our Pandemic Legacy 2 campaign the other day and it was a blast. It is the month where the players get to use the radio towers to scan frequencies and discard cards from the player stack—we got 1 epidemic! The game became quite close in the end because we played through half the infection stack and emptied sooo many cities of supplies that we had a hard time keeping up. Ah well… next game is going to be interesting. We only have 1 city left that is not in the grid and if we include that city 3 searches we can do. But this leaves us no possibility of winning unless the searches reveal something (we already know one of the Labs is in Johannesburg, but the card was the third from the bottom this game and we didn‘t get that far)… Riad is in the middle of the desert so that leaves us with Dehli, frequency scanning or setup for September for options to even play the next game.
We were doing so well in August we even built an 4 Supply Centers (whatever the white plastic houses represent this time—I only know the German term „Versorgungszentrum“).
We need to start getting rid of the blue supply cards sometime soon, we used them to pad the deck to prevent epidemics from coming to quickly but right now they are bloating the deck to keep us from finding cards we need.
Pandemic Fall of Rome entered my collection on the recommendations from this community (in particular I remember @RossM posting about it in a thread about solo games). Besides „default“ Pandemic and Legacy it is the only one I own and I have really enjoyed my plays of it. It has a dedicated solo mode!
Ages ago, my husband and I had played through all of the main Gloomhaven campaign to the main completion. We hadn’t unlocked all content, but we reached the story end goal. We then started up the Forgotten Circles expansion storyline. For those who don’t know, Forgotten Circles is not designed by the main Gloomhaven designer but by a guest designer who had done a few scenarios in Gloomhaven. It has a different feel and after a couple scenarios of it, my husband was very frustrated with it and just didn’t want to play it anymore. I was less bothered by the differences, though I do agree with some of his concerns. My husband got so frustrated with Forgotten Circles that it and Gloomhaven overall has sat on our shelf with Forgotten Circles only about 4 scenarios in since May 2019.
Yesterday out of nowhere my husband suddenly announced he wanted to play Gloomhaven/ Forgotten Circles again. The first scenario we played had most of the things he dislikes about Forgotten Circles and he was growing increasingly frustrated as we played and I was afraid he would end the one play by declaring he was done with it again for another couple years but he said he was willing to give it another go today. Today’s scenario was much less of a problem and he actually enjoyed it. Maybe not all of Forgotten Circles will bother him? Hopefully we’ll be able to finish it (I really want to but I’m much less bothered by the things that frustrate him) and either pick up Jaws of the Lion or have Frosthaven by then. Both those are by the original Gloomhaven designer so hopefully won’t have the problems of this expansion.
I’ve seen mixed responses there. Those who seem to consider themselves hardcore players who play Gloomhaven on +2 level difficulty or similar and view it as a challenge to be solved generally tend to dislike it. Others who have played all of the original Gloomhaven campaign just seem to be like “More to explore and new characters to try out! Neat!” And of course there are dozens of other opinions based on individual specific interests, likes, dislikes, etc. I’m concerned it would be a little too easy, especially going back to it after the mess of Forgotten Circles, and we have way too many other games we could be playing as is, so we may just give it a pass and wait for Frosthaven.
Another recommendation for Pandemic: Fall of Rome from me. To re-iterate the others, there’s a good solo mode. It feels sufficiently thematic with good alterations to the core Pandemic mechanics, with you dragging little meeple legions around the board to battle the barbarian hordes.
A tangent - I have seen that there is a Pandemic/World of Warcraft cross in the making, based on the Wrath of the Lich King. I reckon it will uplift the core mechanics from Fall of Rome, with little undead hordes rather than barbarians to battle.
As much as I loved World of Warcraft and it was definitely at its best with Wrath of the Lychee King… current affairs surrounding Blizzard make it very hard for me to stomach giving any money to associated franchises. Otherwise this might have been an insta-buy as I skipped the Smallworld iteration. While I still own Smallworld, I don‘t see myself playing a new iteration or even the one I have very much.
After a two week long hiatus, I managed to attend Games Night Monday again. It was a freezing night, and with heat pumps and radiators blasting, we tackled a German copy of The Pillars of the Earth between 5 (we were going to be 4 but a late addition to the game joined in half way through the teach). With the translation done by the couple that owned the game (they are Belgian) and the expansion in place, off we went to build the cathedral.
I did really enjoy it, even with ad hoc translations (cards and boards were in German, so the “what was this card” was balanced by trying to name the different professionals in German without sounding angry) I managed an early lead, but towards the end of the game, the resource management did not bode well for me, and a couple of really expensive card towards the end game gave me plenty of points, but I was short of money on the last round due to an event card that took 5 gold out of everybody’s purses.
I really look forward to play it with less players. The mix of Village and Architects of the West Kingdom it evoked really did it for me. And I must admit I love a good worker placement game.
After that, we played a game of Urbania at 4. It took me a couple of rounds to work it out, and I admit the board looks a bit overpowering with so much colour and crammed buildings, so if enjoyable as an experience when I started grocking it, I will not jump for it if proposed again. Plus the choice of soft grey, brown and champagne did it difficult to tell at times what building/suit you were up to take very often. Even with the building shapes on the cards, I don’t think the design is very good.
Funny enough, the player that came last in the first game took it away by a big margin. So good on her, but I will pass on this TTR/Tile management if it comes round again. There’s plenty out there I enjoy more.
A few of us got together and played some Android: Netrunner starter packs together. As I used to play mostly as a Runner back in the old days, playing as a corps is a learning experience. Played with the Criminal runner deck, and Weyland and Jinteki corps deck
Played some 6 player Power Grid with some newbies. A mixture of 2 members of the newly formed “economic games” clique and some newbies. We played with the France map, which is a nice change as France starts initially with more uranium supply in the market + the nuclear power plant no. 11 was on top of the deck, instead of the renewable no. 13 - which allows nuke power as an opening.
I think I have come around on Power Grid, in terms of how the turn order manipulation works. I still hate it in Smartphones. But my taste for no-luck Splotters and 18xx didn’t made me bitter towards the elastic-banding of Power Grid. If anything, I think I am now highly preferring economic games over modern-style resource management game.
I played Spirit Island again last night. I was double checking I was doing things right on the app, and I think I was missing a step on some of the initial turns in my previous games; after setting up, you do pull out a card for exploring, and I think I was not doing that all the times I played.
Anyhow, I tried my luck again with Thunderspeaker and Vital Strength of the Earth in a game against the Prussians. I must say, their special ability to pop a new town on empty areas in their phase 2 was definitely wat tipped the game in their favour.
I started really well, holding the invaders at bay, and using Vital to remove blight, to the point that I even managed to remove all blight from the island, but I think my engine was not generating enough fear. By the second phase of Prussian spread, I had my first two cards appearing, and they weren’t particularly great. I was mainly only getting good defensive cards in my new powers acquisitions with Thunderspeaker, and even though I was being very careful this time not to lose Dahan, and dodging presence loss, at some point the coastal regions became too crowded to even tickle them with my powers.
So Blight started to pop left right and centre, and our presence started to wean. By the 3rd phase, I was just feeling like terrorizing odd inland populations, while the coast was heaving with Prussian activity. When the coastal areas cards reached the ravaging spot, I knew the game was doomed. I still held my corner for a bit longer, but the flood was too much to be controlled.
So with two cards left on the invaders pile, blight overran the island. And now, there must be some coconut cream factory there. But the spirits are no more.
I also just played Spirit Island, this time trying out Thunderspeaker and Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares for the first time. As such, still not using blight card, adversaries, or scenarios.
I was getting worried early on. Bringer really cannot handle its part of the island since it cannot actually destroy any invaders with powers. I was lucky enough to get cards which let me do just enough damage to cluster all the invaders together in a couple of lands, bit did lose most of the Dahan on that part of the island on the first couple of turns.
Thunderspeaker also seemed to struggle at first, with low card playing ability and low energy generation. She never lost any Dahan though, which is good as she loses presence when that happens. I was able to move them, and her presence, out of harm’s way.
Once Bringer consistently got 3 moon symbols every turn, it was able to give an extra air to Thunderspeaker, which in turn made her innate powers fast, and that helped a lot. Also started getting some good defense cards, allowing me to defend the rather nasty strongholds the invaders had built.
Managed another fear win, with one last phase 2 invader card yet to reveal. Bringer got a card that pushed explorers or towns around, and generated 2 fear, +4 if 4 moon symbols, so I was able to really stoke up the fear between that, its other cards, and Thunderspeaker taking out towns with her innate and some Dahan assistance.
Might be time to start trying out adversaries and blight cards. Though I still have a couple of spirits to try out yet.
What a lovely game!