No idea. My friend said that there’s little changes in the game
3 Likes
Yep, it’s my understanding it was almost entirely just an E-G Deluxification with a bit of a tweak to highlight electric vehicles (the environment seems to be a clear concern of Lacerda’s).
3 Likes
I’m still making steady progress through Descent:LotD mostly because it takes up enough table space that I usually just leave the terrain and minis unpacked between sessions. Still loads of fun, and there have been surprises every session.
I paid $80 for it, after cashing out some FLGS loyalty points, and it has hit the value per dollar at that price, for sure. I see no reason to expect late-onset regret.
I’ve also been referee-ing Wrath of Ashardalon, which two of the kids are playing on the floor while I play Descent on the table.
5 Likes
I played a couple games of the solo Warp’s Edge today.
Great component quality. I was expecting something more narrative, and it definitely isn’t (there is a sort of… narrative setup, if you want, but the game play itself is quite mechnically driven, not narrative… no “choose your own adventure” elements, for better or worse.
I lost because I can’t read, apparently (“All tokens cost 1 extra energy to buy” is not the same, at all, as “All tokens cost 1 extra energy to play”, which is what I thought it said. I thought it was weird, but didn’t think to read it carefully). The Titan is a tough ship to start with (2 shields is awful, and the “enemies cost 1 extra maneuver to defeat” is super brutal).
I like it! I’m not sure I like it more than Under Falling Skies, but that’s mostly because UFS actually does have a more narrative element to it.
Hmmm. I should pull that out later this weekend. Maybe as a nice “finished my final exam” reward.
4 Likes
Under Falling Skies is one of those games I can agree is pretty damn solid, but I had to move it along. I think too many years playing shooting games broke the loop for me. You can’t expect to win by focusing on taking out all of the ships, but (for me) that was the most fun part!
3 Likes
Friday Night my youngest daughter fancied playing Game of Life (she is 5 and loves handling the money) and I humoured her. And she beat me right and proper, she nearly got 4.5 million and I barely made it to 3.5 even though I was lucky to bag the doctor job with the best salary… She kept winning the lottery!
After that, I put the girls to sleep, and being home alone, (my partner is away all weekend due to her studies in Hamilton) Spirit Island made it to the table.
Played 2 spirits against a no nationality invader set up, with Lightning and Rivers Surge. What a fight that was, the relentless invaders got me well tied up until their very last card, where I managed to blow their last 2 cities and I fulfilled the terror conditions. It has been one of the games I have enjoyed more, with loads of give and take, and just managing to win the deal on the very last turn. The combo where Lightning makes slow powers into fast, and the repeat power card proved key to snatch that win.
4 Likes
Beyond The Sun , first play. I guess you would call this a worker placement game, but you only ever have one worker. The game board is a tech tree, and you’ll move up on it. You are competing against other to be the leading faction in economic development, science, and galactic influence. On your turn, you move your pawn to a new location on the board, and that’s it, so turns are relatively quick. When you start, you’ll only be able to take actions on the Basic Spacefaring space, which allows you to research both level one and two technologies, send out a basic spaceship, or create a single population and get an ore.
The board is populated with the same four level one technologies, which are all connected to the Basic Spacefaring tile, but after that things become more complicated. Each level one tech is connected to a different level two tech (which you won’t even be able to see until someone researches it. Both level two and level three techs spaces are taken by an event card. Whoever researches the tech first will get the event, which could benefit everyone. There are four types of tech: scientific, economic, military, and commercial. So if you researched a scientific level one tech, and wanted to research the next level, you will go through the tech cards until you find two scientific types, then choose between those. Some techs require two prerequisite techs, which could have different types. In that case, you nominate which type you are looking for. New techs can give an immediate bonus, and/or have a space you can place your token on for an ability.
The two resources for the game are population and ore. After you’ve moved your pawn and executed that action, you have a production phase, which is either gain population or ore. Your player board starts out with your cubes laid out over five columns. These are supply cubes, and can be turned into either population or spaceships. The population and ore tracks are filled as well with their respective tokens. As you use tokens, they reveal spaces which add to your population or ore (depending on the track). So, if had revealed two ore spaces, I would get two ore for production.
There’s also an exploration board, which has four planets and four shipyard systems (where spaceships can be created). As you send your ships out, you can colonise planets, which give VPs at the end of the game, and also a unique ability. Your ships have levels from one through four, and you control a planet or shipyard if you have the most power there. To colonise, you need to have control of the planet, and then meet the military value required. Then you take the planet, but use up your ships.
The game ends when a set number of achievement discs are out, three for a 3p game. There are four achievements, and two of them are in every game – Transcendence (researching your first level four tech), and Empire (colonise four systems).
It all seems a bit daunting at first, but the iconography is clear and we picked it up quickly. Bit of a long game, but you have to expect that for a first game. Rulebook is pretty good, lots of examples, good to see.
Overalll it was an engrossing game, and I’m keen to play again. I came last, so there’s nowhere to go but up!
Ghostbusters: Blackout , first play. I’m a huge Ghostbusters fan, so it was inevitable I would get a game based on it sooner or later. There’s a few out now, and this seemed to be the best regarded. Its a pretty simple game, you take your four Ghostbusters (and it always has to be four, no matter how many people are playing), roll your dice, move around New York, defeat ghosts by using dice, buy equipment, rinse and repeat. There are eight Ghostbusters available, the game is based on the comic by IDW. We (of course) went with the movie Ghostbusters: Peter, Ray, Winston, and Egon. There are five locations, each with it’s own ghost. If there isn’t a Ghostbuster in a location, the chaos track increases. And a lot of ghosts move it up as well. If the chaos gets to twenty, you’ve lost. Your objective is to capture fifteen ghosts. It’s pretty light, as you would expect. The only decisions are really deciding who moves where, and whether or not to transfer a die to another character. It’s fine for what it is.
Scotland Yard . I have played this before, twice according to BGG. But so long ago. But it’s pretty straightforward. One player is Mister X, and the other players are detectives trying to find him in London. There are four different methods of moving: taxi, bus, underground, and ferry. Each method moves you further, but you have to be on a correct space to be able to use it. The last option, the ferry, can only be used by Mister X, and they have to use one of their special black tokens. Each time Mister X moves, he has to show the method he used. Unless he used a black item. Mister X also has two “X2” tokens, where he can make two moves in a row, but again, the detectives can see which method they used on both moves (unless a black token was used). As the detectives move, they use up a ticket. If they use up their tickets for say, the bus, then they can’t use a bus to travel anymore. With two detectives, you get two bobbies to use, who don’t use any tickets to move. So, basically, I had four detectives after me.
To win, Mister X has to evade capture for 22 turns. The detectives win if they move onto Mister X’s location. I volunteered to be Mister X, and did pretty poorly. Mister X has to reveal his position after moves 3, 8, 13, 18 and 24. I was caught after move sixteen. The detectives did well, they predicted where I was and where I was going, and I just couldn’t wriggle out of it. I used all my black tokens, which are great for escaping, but you only have five. Also used up my double moves. Without them I probably would have lost in half the time.
I tried to use the companion app, which is actually for Scotland Yard Master, a later game. Decided not to because I wasn’t sure if the maps were the same, and also because the app just shows what possible locations you can (as Mister X) move to. I found it easier to plan on the proper map. So I took a picture of it on the Ipad, and used that, seemed to work ok.
It was good fun tho. We’ve played Letters From Whitechapel a couple of times, and it takes so much longer. Scotland Yard is easy to setup and play. I’m sure we’ll get another game in, the detectives both said they would like to try to be the hunted.
Arkham Horror:Final Hour , first play. Yet another game with investigators, Ancient Ones, and rituals to stop. We’re pretty big fans of Cthulhu:Death May Die, and I was hoping this might be a quicker version of that. The game board represents Arkham’s Miskatonic University. Each location has a spot for a token (usually clue tokens, but also gates, and one location is marked as the ritual location. Each location also has spaces for monsters. You choose a character and take their deck of ten cards. There are eight rounds, and on each round you will collectively play four cards. On your turn you take the top action card from your deck, read it secretly, and then play a priority card face up on it. The priority cards have values from one to thirty, and determine the order in which cards are resolved. Lower numbers go first. Each action card has an top and a bottom effect. In priority card order, two top effects are resolved, and then two bottom effects. Top effects are usually moving and attacking. Bottom sections are often investigating (which you need to do), but also activate monsters.
After the player cards are resolved, the Ancient One gets a go. Each priority card used has zero, one, or two omen symbols. You add those up, and then check the Ancient One card to see what happens. We almost always had three to four symbols, so it was the same effect each time. We played with Cthulhu as the Ancient One, the recommended one for new players.
To reverse the ritual, you have to match symbols from your priority cards and two facedown symbols on the board. There are five symbols, with two of each on the board. As you investigate, you deduce which symbols are on the board, and aren’t the secret ones.
Monsters are activated by location and colours. So a card might say “activate all monsters in the purple zone”. Each monster can have symbols which determines their behaviour. The symbols are killer (investigators in the same location lose a health), runner (the monster moves), or wrecker (damages its location and moves on).
What you don’t want is having too many monsters at the ritual location. If a monster needs to move there and can’t, you lose.
We managed to pull out the win, two of us on a single health. It’s an ok game, but mostly it just reminded me how good Death May Die is.
5 Likes
Also, I had Cascadia on my list to play yesterday, but we just ran out of time
2 Likes
It was a stellar games night for me when these are the three that I get to play:
Irish Gauge
El Grande
King of Siam
8 Likes
I sold Letters from Whitechapel because of the protracted setup and play time. Whitehall Mystery is mostly the same game with a fraction of the setup and less than half the playtime. It’s brill.
8 Likes
Usual Saturday games yesterday. We’re still chugging through the 10×10 with Oh my goods and Coimbra. This has definitely solidified my feelings of “meh” towards Oh My Goods, but I’ve warmed up to Coimbra. Our friend seems to be getting a bit tired of this challenge, which is a shame. I’m actually quite enjoying playing games where I know the rules and can develop a better understanding of the strategy! I had thought of suggesting a collective 10x10 or 20x5 next year… We’ll have to see what the others think.
We also played Oath, which was a very tense game. We were using the Oath of Protection (hold the most secrets and banners), so we all went treasure hunting straight away. I drew the Vision of Faith (win by holding the banner of the darkest secret) early on, which was easy to conceal under the guise of competing to be the oath keeper. I revealed my vision a bit too early, which led to a bit of back and forth with people targeting my banners, until the other exile revealed the Vision of Conquest (hold the most sites) and the Chancellor and I took a break to gang up on him.
In the second half of the game, I had managed to collect a relic that let me take secrets instead of favour when playing cards to a site, so I was in a good position to take the Banner of the Darkest Secret. This also made searching the deck cheaper so I did a lot of searching and eventually came across this card:
Rubs hands in evil glee
At this point the Chancellor and the other Exile decided that it was time to put aside their differences, join forces, and take down the weird cult that was gathering followers in the Hinterland.
Then followed two rounds of the Empire booting me out of the site with the Tome Guardians and wresting the Banner of the Darkest Secret from my culty mitts, only for me to sneak back into the site and make off with the banner.
At the beginning of my last turn, which was the final turn of the game, the Chancellor was the Oathkeeper again, and the other Exile was in possession of my precious banner. I managed to collect another relic to draw with the Chancellor, but couldn’t see how to overtake them. With no other sensible options left, I searched the world deck and drew:
Allowing me to grab back the banner that I needed to fulfill my vision, and win a War Exhaustion victory.
Needless to say, I am enjoying this ridiculous game.
P.S. have I mentioned how much I love Kyle Ferrin’s art?
9 Likes
2nd solo game of Cascadia.
I got 92! (Up from 83 last time). Used the “B” scoring cards which were indeed just a little bit trickier than the starter "A"s. Really concentrating on the terrain scoring side helped me boost it though.
I like this solo, because you’re able to take your time with the decisions. Two-player could be sloooow while you wait for your opponent, will be interesting to find out. Solo at least, the pace is lovely - steady and calming progress, with enough draw luck to keep it tense. You get both “okay, none of those came up, I need to change my plans” and “I only have X turns left for a Salmon to be drawn, pleeeeaaase”, but other than that you know you’ll always gain regularly and there will be something that will work.
I think this definitely counts as a “relaxing” game, especially because of the theme, the fact that it’s not totally ruthless and no-one has clearly won until scoring, and the dependable pacing. The wooden animal tokens are really satisfying to handle, too. (None of this stopped me from screaming “Noooo I don’t need any more Foxes!!” at least once).
7 Likes
Looks lovely on the table. I can see myself playing this in physical form. It definitely has this puzzly aspect that should make for fun repeated plays of this. Also hex fields > all.
3 Likes
Oath always sounds fun.
I think the arch-nemesis of the Darkest Secret holder is the Roving Terror though. Horrible card. Horrible, I say! Tome Guardians… huh? Goes to search the world-deck some more… oh wait, it is expensive now. Hmf. Looks around, who took my Dark Secrets… @COMaestro … I am coming for you :P—you can hear a screeching sound followed by almost inaudible grumbling that sounds like some witchy curses being prepared
I have seen some awful card that can target someone’s advisers I think… nothing is safe in this game. And the art is indeed great.
PS: totally not sorry for escaping our Oath thread 
5 Likes
I’m sort of kicking myself for not getting Cascadia on the table this weekend, for some reason I chose Arkham: Final Hour instead…
3 Likes
My darling wife is off camping for the week, so yesterday we had ourselves a good ol’ game night:
Jaipur (I won this one, close game though)
New York Zoo (another close game, but I lost this one, such a cute fun game)
Race for the Galaxy (2 games, I narrowly lost both, despite my wife claiming she doesn’t understand the game really 
)
Pandemic (with four characters, we not only won, we cleared out the board, though it was a near thing)
8 Likes
I finished my game of Zombicide Invader this morning, and took a decisive victory. The escape portion of my mission was pretty uneventful, as the bulk of the enemies were inside the main structure and hobbling slowly along, and my gun emplacement was making short work of anything that decided to spawn outside.
With that said, this was the introductory mission, so I expected a bit of a cakewalk, and as a demonstration of game flow, I think it did a pretty bang-up job. Things would have been grim if I had delayed much longer before pushing the escape, and the board was absolutely riddled with enemies on the final turn, including an especially active Abomination spoiling most of the interior.
On that note, this mission was configured such that you could not lose by one of the main conditions (two spawn points linked by mold), but again did a great job of making me understand the seriousness of the mechanism. Between the escalating numbers and spreading mold, there’s a really nice, organic Doomsday clock built in to force your pace.
Lots to like here, I’m looking forward to a stiffer challenge with the next runs.
3 Likes
Just want to quickly mention that my partner and I tackled all the 3 and most of the 4 star cases in MicroMacro yesterday.
It continues to be a joy. We have… 6 or 7 more cases (including the 2 promo cases they released), and then we’re done and ready to pass it along to the next family. Super satisfying, a joy to explore. A little depressing for a few of the cases and some… questionable… content for a couple so far, but still, a great, satisfying game.
I’m still not sure it’s Spiel das Jahres material, though. I mean, what do they care what I think, but… it’s a weird pick. I think Zombie Teenz Evolution deserved the win, but meh, whatever. At least it’s better than Pictures.
7 Likes
We played the first 8 cases of MicroMacro today in less than an hour. We found ourselves discovering the answers to most of the questions before they came up because we were just following the threads of the story and getting ahead of ourselves. That’s a pretty good sign. It’s not genius, but it is a lovely time. Though as many have said, it’s rather a shame that there’s a lot of sensitive material in there because the format would be great for younger children.
Over the weekend we played also played 3 EXIT games. The Abandoned Cabin was pretty good. The Enchanted Forest was mostly irritating - by far the worst one we’ve done. Dead Man on the Orient Express was great from start to finish - by far the best one we’ve done.
We played a game of Century Eastern Wonders, which continues to be quietly satisfying. I can see why Quinns liked it. Bit fiddlier to set up than Spice Road but unlike its predecessor it feels like there are plenty of meaningful decisions to make in the second half.
We also played Codenames Duet for the first time in a while and picked up where we left off by losing twice more. Good stuff.
6 Likes
Played a “quick” game of Nidavellir with my wife today. I was not feeling too good about things as she was getting more higher value coins and had a lead on heroes, plus 10(!) blacksmith ranks by end of game. However, due to a good score with miners (77), we ended up with our closest margin yet. She won, 322 - 319.
Might give the Thingvellir expansion a try next time.
4 Likes