Firstly, purple forever. Secondly, wow did I manage to misinterpret the gameplay on that one! For whatever reason I was under the impression L.L.A.M.A. was more akin to a light, family style trick-taking game. To some degree that’s still the case but WOW did I miss the dice and all the wild rules.
Your horns just got a little longer. 
Sometimes the games are nothing like what they talk about because they aren‘t game explainers… maybe you had heard of LLAMA the card game… I have no idea how that compares because I somehow managed to never play. Maybe that has trick tacking… edit: according to BGG it does not
Oh shoot. You know, I didn’t realize there were two versions so that’s probably exactly what I was thinking about.
[EDIT] It’s hand dumping rather than trick-taking but I find those mechanisms often play similarly (and have huge fun factor with a good group).
[DOUBLE EDIT 
] I looked into picking it up as my folks will be in town in a little over a week, but sadly I think I’m too quick on the uptake here. My FLGS indicated Amigo doesn’t currently have it listed for Canadian distribution.
Small games online yesterday. We played a couple of rounds of Troyes Dice, Oh Hell!, No Thanks!, Railroad Ink, Papayoo, and Can’t Stop.
I prefer full-size Troyes to the dice version, but it was a quick and pleasant game that I would play again.
Great Western Trail is my absolute favourite game. I hope you enjoy it
As usual, variants of a game can usually only approximate the original and Troyes is by all accounts a very good game (I‘ve only played twice with @Captbnut). I think for a bingo style roll&write Troyes Dice is one of the better ones and—until I find one I like better—is definitely staying on my shelf. (For reference, I have tried: Rajas Dice Charmers and Welcome To, possibly others that are so forgettable that I forgot them. The Ganz Schön Clever series is awesome but I play those as app)
It’s definitely a good roll and write. I probably wouldn’t buy it because I already have enough along the same lines, but I’d happily play it with other people 
Yeah, okay, Cascadia is a bit genius. (Don’t look at how badly I messed up the terrains on my first go, but I still scored 83 on the solo).
…Huh. From the description and theme, I was much less interested in this game than Calico, but actually seeing it on the table, I think I like it a lot more.
I love the theme of Calico, but suspect that the game has too much “get this precise piece, or work out how to fail less than your opponent” in a very ruthless way. So far Cascadia is a LOT more forgiving, makes it feel as though decisions are in your hands right up to the end, including a nice increasing urgency as you can see the stack of future tiles getting smaller. But there’s no “get all 6 of this or you didn’t complete it”, you can finish and seal off an achievement quite early.
For example, in the rules above (which can change each game) Bears score points for being in pairs. You can achieve that in 2 turns and it’s locked - those points are in the bank, and you have flexibility to choose what to go after next.
Still LOADS of paralysis while I was making decisions (I played solo but a 2nd player would have been waiting a while for my turn to end) but it doesn’t feel out of your control, just satisfying when you finish one part and then turn to look ahead at the next task. I liked it a lot.
(I think it’s online to play in various places if anyone wants to try it out).
I played before the Kickstarter at https://cascadiagame.github.io/ and enjoyed it quite a bit. I think this was a case of the Kickstarter coming at the wrong moment (also shipping). It is still on my watchlist. I agree it is far more relaxed than Calico.
Vic’s back with his patented cheater post. Putting a pause on my game of Zombicide Invader this morning to get the kiddo some relief from this heat. I’m playing mission 0 (introductory) solo, have just completed my fourth round, and have formally shifted my attention to escape.
It is way more fun than I expected it to be. Obviously I wouldn’t have given it a shot if I didn’t expect to enjoy it, but I think it’s a flat-out riot on first blush. I’m also super amused that the glut of aliens are so hysterically inconsequential that I can just toss em in bowls like tokens. I’m pulling them out by the handful anyway, why not condense the table a little, right?
Anyway I don’t want to add much else given how preliminary these impressions are, but I wanted to point out that the Friendly Fire rule is amazing and I’m loving what it does for positioning. It’s just the right layer of funk to elevate the gameplay, IMO.
It looks fascinating, we’re looking forward to trying it! Looking through our collection, I think it’ll be the most complex game we own, and probably the only one of its kind, too.
Went to visit a friend this afternoon, and taught/learned:
Got some post breakfast Heckmeck in. Lost to the five year old on the tie break.
The Morning was RPG character creation and we tackled the intro mission to Tails of Equestria in the afternoon. Good times had by all.
Played Kanban EV. It’s good. Its complexity gets better when the various mechanisms all mesh together very well. Players get parts which allows players to build cars, which allows players to grab cars. Grabbing models which you either use for upgrades or grabbing cars to score you pts. The pts is determined based on how much the car is upgraded collectively by all players and how many times a specific upgrade is used for all cars. So it has that player synergy that I really like.
But it all felt a bit too loose and a bit out of control. Too many steps where you get a small number of pts every time and I feel that tactics felt a bit too prevalent at some certain points in the game. Tactics is fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. Games like El Grande? That’s fine. El Grande is quick enough and tactics in that game are always fun as they are about playful interaction with your friends. But I can’t tolerate it when self-proclaimed “high brow” games like these does it. Kanban EV avoids itself leaning to hard on that side and Lacerda made the game feel coherent and less of a “theme park Euro”.
Oooooh, Onitama, haven’t played that in a WHILE! Really like that game, the theme is wonderfully executed.
Played some more Tash Kalar on BGA. I now have 2 wins with Etherweave and I think it is my favorite deck so far (1). It certainly helped that it worked brilliantly against the Highlanders who wiped me out on previous games. For the current game I am trying Everfrost again which I failed at a few weeks back.
Tonight, I taught Rallyman GT to my opponent for a bit of lighter gaming in between the Tash Kalar games.
(1) most of my games of TK were with just the base game right after the game was published, I dutifully bought all the expansion decks but never got to play them until now
I met Onitama a few years after the Arcane Wonders edition came out, and I love it as a physical presentation as well as as an excellent game. (Though I’m still trying to work up a design for a travel set.)
Is there much difference between Kanban EV and the earlier version(s)?
