More Space Base in what was supposed to be a redemption match for my partner, but my scandalous luck continued and she did not get satisfaction. Her engine was gorgeous and really picking up steam, but I had managed a just ghastly rocket combo with diagonal arrows and a really well placed “+1 roll” bay. When you’re rolling for jackpots but it’s all on 7’s and 8’s, you’re gonna get your jackpots. Wonderful market for me this game. Stupidly close match though, we were both sweating on our off rolls for “the big one”.
3 Likes
Breaking with the Spirit Island trend, I played:
Another solo of Ares Expedition and this time I won (with the “bot” on easy which means it raises temp and oxygen by 2 steps every five turns). I needed way fewer cards to get my production up. In a strange coincidence I used a very similar setup as in the two player we played. Towards the end it was a lot of back and forth between the production and action phases to race to the finish line. I am not sure I like that part of the game, it feels… more “on rails” than the same phase in Mommy Mars solos. Here you know the game is done, you’re winning but you still need to play it out. Maybe the difficulty was too low then. Too few cards that help with “incidental” terraforming and so the phases that play cards or gather them become irrelevant towards the end of the solo game and that is probably an indicator that the same is true for a multiplayer winning strategy: build the engine and use it for a few turns. But the using of the engine isn’t as satisfying as the building of it.
Is this true for Race for the Galaxy? Despite having played the app dozens of times and now finally playing human opponents on BGA… I have never grokked it at a deeper level. Do certain phases become irrelevant in some strategies? I never felt that a game of Race threatened to go into “boring” territory. They are just too short with the tableau size limit.
I’ll raise the difficulty on the next attempt for sure and will hopefully convince my partner to play again after the last game turned out to be closer than he thought.
Last night, I got out Tapestry for the first time since last summer. (it is the civ game I bought for last year’s cakeday, this year I got myself Imperium:Classics/Legends, and I am certain next year there will be another tempting civ game). I had completely forgotten the rules. Luckily, with the online automa I didn’t have to also relearn the solo rules. I played a bunch of Desert Nomads with little success. I lost something like 170 to 120 to the bot. I got almost none of the big buildings and barely used the Nomad’s special ability to use buildings to secure their empire. I went for a red (military)/green(science) strategy and oh my–that didn’t give me enough synergy to be faster than the bot and their companion the Shadow Empire. But I want to play again, though the tapestry cards remain disappointingly boring and useless despite me somehow having a somewhat wide selection…
4 Likes
I’ve never found Race For the Galaxy boring, as you said because you get so few turns there isn’t time. If I’ve got a good ‘produce/ consume’ engine I’ll only get to use it a couple of times before the points run out and even then you’re looking at what your opponent is doing.
I’ve had games when I’ve boxed myself in, or had annoying cards come up when I knew I was going to lose, but it’s over so fast.
My two player duel seems to have come to an end. Having been fairly even, my opponent was getting the better of me towards the end.
I’d like to try it 3 player with single action selection to see how it scales.
4 Likes
Games day today, started out with more Dinosaur Tea Party.
Next up was The Climbers which is more fun with house rules. No over hangs and no gaps is less fun than adding in some jenga vibes with balancing and so on. Also in pure rules the end game can start to drag. A collapse is more dramatic.
A KS copy of Victoriana was up next and was exactly the kind of game I have no interest in. First/second ed Arkham horror basically. A generally pointless experience for me but others at the table enjoyed it.
Lastly Trains. I really like Trains but have often struggled to play it. My brother also loves Trains but now lives far away. My other older group had already burnt out on dominion so never went for it. To me it remains a joy. Sure as a deck builder there’s some wonkiness in turns but it does it’s thing so well. The inflection point is finely balanced, the board is meaningful and there’s always good trade offs around timing and tempo.
6 Likes
Have finally been able to get a select couple of friends over to game in person over the last couple of weeks so got out:
My first multiplayer session of Street Masters, taking Wicked, Brandon, and like…Natasha, maybe? Her name just doesn’t stick in my head. Speedy sound lady…anyway, her, against The Brotherhood in Gone Ballistic. We got combos rocking pretty fast and soared to a fairly swift victory, in part because the boss didn’t much care if he was in his own rocket launcher’s blast radius. It’s even more fun with other people than it was solo and definitely a gem.
And then the subsequent weeks we’ve started up a campaign of Etherfields. I’d done a bit solo just because I couldn’t wait, but we got it sorted back into starting position and at this point we have now done all but one of the Dreams I’d done by myself. It’s quite a different experience multiplayer, though, having to worry about three people’s positioning and some objectives requiring stacking a bunch of Intent to process through…but also having three people’s hands to tackle non-scaled actions and three people to search around, plus multiple individual character powers and special cards, more people getting Ether to buy new cards with, etc. I was a little concerned but it’s actually even richer, I think, despite the Wraith (the initial Slumber) being much more challenging with 3. (The Reaper, the 5 player character expansion and my chosen solo character, is really good at red intent generation, so never had much trouble with the Wraith, but if three people need to do it, well. That’s another story.)
We’re all clicking pretty well with the game and its systems and so far we haven’t had any of the complaints I’ve seen about it, nor felt the need to skip Slumbers or use the official Continuous Dream mode. We do reserve the option, though. Still, overall, between Tainted Grail and Etherfields Awaken Realms have been very consistently excellent for me and Nemesis seemed pretty strong (if a much less narrative experience as well). Looking forward to getting to try Lords of Hellas, The Edge: Dawnfall (both of which are on my shelves currently) and the upcoming The Great Wall and ISS Vanguard as well.
3 Likes
I outright refuse to ever play this game based on how deeply I hated the book. Funny how certain things just rub you in a way that creates a lifelong rage vendetta.
For a decade I wouldn’t shop at Linens N Things (which is now out of business, Ha!) based on much more petty criteria.
3 Likes
Actually played Mensch argere Dich nicht (apologies to the Germans for the lack of umlauts on my keyboard).
We had a German au pair who said she liked to play games with her family. Supposed to be a perk, right? We tried out Ticket to Ride: Europe with her, which she had never played, but it’s Europe and her Dad is in the train business. She won, and liked it pretty well. Tried out Azul, Isle of Skye, Quest for El Dorado… she liked them ok (except IoS, because she got mad whenever people “took” one of her tiles) but she never really wanted to play anything more and found them all exhausting. She said her family liked Clue so I busted out Cryptid but that too was rejected as taxing and difficult.
Fast forward, she has her family send us a copy of Mensch (as I call it, much to the consternation of any Deutschephones) before Christmas. Little bit of research later and I learn the entire history of Pachisi and Ludo. Mensch is basically German Ludo / Pachisi / Parcheesi / Sorry / Yutnori, the very definition of a roll and move.
Does it succeed as a game? Heck no. It’s a terrible game. The wife went to the kitchen to make some food and for a solid 10 minutes we didn’t need her back as there was no decision point.
Does it succeed as a good time? Yeah, it does. There was shouting and laughing and heightened pulses and vendettas and - apparently this is paramount to Germans - schadenfreude. I won, maybe some good luck or maybe my delicate twists on the knobs of politics and probability.
In that sense it reminded me most of 6 Nimmt (well, apart from Sorry and Yutnori). I almost sold that one because it fails so miserably as a game. But then I kept it when I realized it flourishes grandly as a good time.
2 Likes
One of our friends‘ kids keeps asking me to play some kind of „advanced“ version of Mensch Ärger Dich Nicht—this is really hard to translate somehow, it‘s basically calling on people not to pout „Don‘t anger yourself“ or „Don‘t be angry at yourself“ although one is generally angry at everyone else including the dice and not oneself. I think the last time I played this the number on my birthday cake was still in the single digits. This is part of the classic German „Spielesammlung“—basic games including this, Halma, Mühle (9 Man‘s Morris), Dame (Checkers), sometimes Backgammon or others.
I played these as a child with the family. But many many people here play many more modern games. Spiel des Jahres really is responsible for that since the early 80s in a very good way.
3 Likes
I refuse to watch The X-Files because an ex of mine cheated on me with a friend whenever she said she was “going over to watch the X-Files.”
I mean, there are stupid reasons to dislike a show, and then there are reasons that are so stupid they defy explanation. And yet, here I am, never having seen an episode.
5 Likes
Sorry to bring it back, but last night I played Spirit Island again. Mostly because there is only that and three other games on my shelf right now. I used Rampant Green and Ocean’s Hungry Grasp against the Swedish, lvl 1.
I thought the combination would work well, one inland, and the other on the coast. The coast side of things did not go too bad, but early powers from Rampant are not precisely great, and that ended up being my doom. The blight inland was too much for Rampant’s presence, and even though he could regenerate one damaged disc every turn, it was too much for him. The invader strongholds grew too big, and two consecutive Mountain cards proved too much to my combination of spirits. Before the end of the second phase they were obliterated by blight.
I think I am going to have to go back to play without nationality on the invaders, or do other combinations. So far I have played all basic spirits but one, and before going for my favourite two (Thunderspeaker and Lightning) I will try with a few runs at one to see how I do.
4 Likes
It’s not a bad game, but I do agree with you about the book, it was so dull, couldn’t finish it (not sure if I even got halfway).
1 Like
I took a run at score attack mode in Bullet again this evening, this time using Rie Akagi, and again KO’d at the top of round 5 (heat 8). I had to draw an absurd 20 bullets for the round, but had a really nicely laid out (and mostly sparse) target area to open it with. The only thing was my red column had a third bullet in there. I could move it, I guess.
Probably should have moved it. First token out of the bag and that was that. 
I was pretty hot for Rie’s setup (low HP but performs well if you get stuff right at the line—super risky!), but had a pretty good run of pulls early on and I only used her power once; hers is one that can produce big score (clear) effects so I’m going to stick with her a while and really try to thread the needle.
5 Likes
Last minute decision to go to games night lead to…
Beyond the Sun, 4 player. Much better at 4. Came joint second on a 32/49/49/54 split. What was interesting were the differing strategies throughout the game.
Imhotep, 3 player. Surprisingly mean filler. Lost that one
4 Likes
A friend and I played Agricola today. It was about my third game ever, and I think I last played it about five years ago, so I was mentally prepared for my mediocrity : )
For about 90% of the game my family remained as a couple in a two-room house.
About half way through the game they plowed their first field and planted grain, and fenced off a single square containing a stables and a pair of sheep.
In the final 2-3 turns they plowed and sowed a second field, added a new room to their house, stuck a cow in there, and popped out a couple of underlings.
It was the most pitiful farm you’ve ever seen – two thirds of my player board was unused.
On the other hand, I had four occupations and something like eight minor and major improvements, and I can’t recall ever having so much spare food.
I lost by about 15 points, which seemed like a pretty successful outcome all things considered : )
9 Likes
This is now my new term for my kids.
6 Likes
True story: have friend who refers to her kids as ‘zerglings’
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I played a bunch of my fresh arrivals in solo learning games.
My first Bullet 
play with Adelheid yesterday was still full of misunderstandings and doesn‘t really count. This time I got to Intensity 9 on the Score Attack… I think Esfir here is even easier to play as she has less colors in her abilities. This reminds me of this Dr Who mobile game I used to play… (which they had messed up beyond recognition when I went back after a break.) I have yet to try any other modes or use a timer but as it is, it is a neat puzzle and quite unique. Next up: teach my partner. Looks like a keeper.
This is a two handed play of the Whatnot Cabinet. I am surprised how well this little set collection game worked and how relaxing it felt. It is not trivial to play (at least not on game one) and still relaxing enough I can see myself getting this out for a morning coffee game or an after dinner thing. Setup is quick and the game doesn‘t last long 20 minutes maybe? The art is as pretty as I have come to expect from Beth Sobel. There is a solo mode using a bot and but I always want to learn the full game first before I try whatever solo challenges there are. This would make for a perfect game night together with Obsession. Looks like a keeper as well.
My first attempt at Atlantis Rising was also plagued with rules mistakes and so I will attempt a less error-prone game tonight.
In other news: I have returned my copy of Formosa Tea and a new one is on the way. They offered a 5€ discount and I had to go to Packstation mail off something anyway….
And finally: I seem to have found a deck that agrees with me in Tash Kalar. Etherweave. I should have known: it is purple and has time travel .
Edit: playing this many different and new to me games all at once plus all the stuff going on over at BGA, I feel like I am making my own convention…
13 Likes
Last game we played here was Bunny Kingdom and its expansion, In The Sky, which we bought when we took a short trip for my wife’s birthday around a week ago. It’s so much fun, and the art is just astounding.
We also got Great Western Trail and Space Base during that trip, but I have yet to play my learning game. Gonna be fun! But it’s harder to play in the Summer.
7 Likes
That sounds like an awesome selection (not that I have played either GWT or Bunny Kingdom but I hear good things). Space Base is great fun. I really need to play again soon.
2 Likes
As we were talking about luck I convinced my partner that L.A.M.A. Dice was the best game to play after a stressful week.
And then I busted…
So for everyone who has not fallen what I felt was a recommendation by SVWAG: You start with a row of six cards per player and the central row of „bonus cards“. All the cards in your row at the end of a round are worth negative points à la 6 nimmt. Lamas are special they are -10 points, the rest just their printed value—multiples of the same card do not count so if you have three 6s that is -6 not -18.
You throw three evil dice to get rid of matching cards. If none of your cards match: tough luck, you need to choose a matching card from the center row and add it to your own. If nothing in the center row matches either, you bust and get whatever is left in the center to add to your score. Score is tallied with black (10) and white(1) chips.
You can stop rolling dice at any time and just take your points with you. Busting is expensive. There are a few more fun rules like you can return one of your point chips (even a 10 point chip) if you ever finish a round with no cards or throw 3 lamas on the dice.
In any case in the picture I busted to a complete center row due to the wonderful special rule: if you are the last person still trying, you auto-bust if no die matches your cards no matter what is left in the center. My partner took his -9 points or so and I got the whole center row for a nice -31 points. Did I mention that the game ends at -40?
In any case, I ended up winning that game because I was able to return 2 of my black chips in the next round with some application of deep strategic thinking and … luck!
Plays like 6 nimmt on something. Something with rainbows and lamas. I like it. Definitely going to take it to the next game night to have some laughs.
PS: my next attempt at Atlantis Rising was post-poned due to having to play a rematch of Tash Kalar. Purple deck rules!
4 Likes