@VictorViper@RogerBW Neither of you are wrong. Everything you see in the first play is what there is, it IS just nice and there’s no hidden depth. And it certainly is trying to appeal as a gateway game (which I think it’ll be brilliant at).
I just love it anyway. It’ll be my go-to game for relaxing (I don’t really understand some of the big reviewers who relax with Railroad Ink, that one stresses me out, but Cascadia is just comfortable and slowly rewarding).
For a game which is missing all the unfairness of Calico, it still makes me pause to analyse for a really long time on trickier turns despite the simplicity.
I do think the physical version gains a lot over the TTS, because handling the wooden counters and just having a nice experience with absolutely top-tier components is a big part of the reward. On the other hand, you have to “replace the pair you took” over and over as a physical action, which online might help to streamline.
I don’t know why I love it so much - maybe because it’s so fair. If you make points early on, those aren’t taken away. There’s luck, but it doesn’t devastate your score like Calico.
But yeah, if simple and relaxing aren’t your thing, you won’t be challenged by this one at all. I’ve found there’s enough there for me to enjoy repeated solo plays to try and beat my score, but if you want complexity or stress in your games Cascadia isn’t going to satisfy that.
If Cascadia released first, I’d have been all over it, of that I have no doubt. The issue for me, and why I didn’t ultimately back it, was because I already had Calico (and man, do I LOVE its claws!).
I think I’m probably weird, but the hair-ripping catastrophes in Calico (and Railroad Ink—fire red all the way!) actually does seem to relax me, or at the very least stimulates me in a way that relaxes. I like an element of stress in my games, I suppose.
Anyway, my intent wasn’t to come off as negative (and hopefully it didn’t read that way), but Roger’s impressions were the first I’ve seen so far where a little hands-on time had a player coming away underwhelmed.
Yeah, I mean between the writing which feels like fanfic for a YA audience, and the fact that this “feature” just turns setup into a 20 minute affair, I don’t really see the value there. I dunno, maybe I’m just being grouchy about it—it’s a bit of gravy afterall, it’s not like it would reduce my opinion of the game—but that’s the first and last time I’ll be using the book.
I just picked this up and all this is good to know. I actually liked the cheesy writing and gameplay for Proving Grounds. I’m hoping Renegade keeps up With the solo line.
I really enjoy them, but I just couldn’t get going last night. I never had the right cards - or didn’t put sympathy where people were going so they had to give me cards.
Yep, and that’s the thing. These games are opposites.
I don’t even think they were aiming to make Cascadia a friendly Wingspan-rival, I think they just took out the nastier bits from Calico that some people didn’t like, and ended up there. But if the “building to a tense endpoint” part of Calico is what you like in it, you’ll be underwhelmed by Cascadia.
Played Ride the Rails with the Australia map. This game finally opened up to me and saw the possibilities in this game. Ride the Rails is a good example of a very transparent decision tree (at least on the stock side of the game). Round 1 start with only red or blue company. You must take 1 share from either. That’s your only decision in the stock phase. Same with round 2 but now with Orange company. R2 then widens the tree. R3 adds another company and widens the tree even more. And so on.
The complaint that I had from someone that the obvious way to play this game is to keep getting shares from the two starting companies only, turns out to be unfounded. The winner of the game was the one with a diverse portfolio and the player who went strong on blue and orange went last, as we avoided using the blue tracks.
The game is different enough to Chi-Ex style Cube Rails that I can keep this one and play it more. And the player interaction here is sooo strong but not in an in-your-face way. It is subtle as new players won’t understand the dynamic on their first play!
Nidavellir
The Crew Planet 9
Taverns of Tiefenthal with the Inn(?) expansion - the expansion bolts on a little inn upstairs where you can have nobles in those rooms to rest. Plus, a wine cellar to serve wine. Not much rules, yet adds more tools to the player.
Hallertau - average. I hate the whole “pick some cards and do what it says and get rewards”. It’s reactive play rather than making players play freely. I hate it in Viticulture and I hate it here. The worker placement and the engine building on your tableau weren’t really inspiring. The soil condition was cool. It gets better when fallow. It gets worse if used. Not worth my time when Uwe have done so many farming games in his name, many I would rather play than this.
Played Warriors with @EnterTheWyvern . Area majority card game with dice rolling! Good fun. I would prefer if the players have the freedom to attack each other, rather than waiting for attack cards to play in order to do so.
Tokyo Tsukiji Market - very very interesting game! Used Container as inspiration. I will keep my copy of it and I am eager to play more of this. Although, I feel like I prefer Container, as the value of your items in the latter is often vague and highly dependable to the on-going dynamic of the game.
Heul Doch Mau Mau - great fun! Better than Knizia’s Llama! card game.
I get what you are saying about the cards and for myself would probably agree with you. But on the other side it makes these games more accessible for players who don’t play as much, telling them “here are some rails, hold on and the game will flow more smoothly for you” I have seen this happen with Viticulture. Even as they complain about the cards boxing them in.
In any case, I really liked the way the worker placement here works where spots are probably available just more expensive.
It is obviously less “do what you want” than Odin or Arler Erde. But as I said that makes it more accessible to other people and with the worker placement board looking more streamlined than my favorite Nusfjord, I have a feeling it is the one I might eventually get to the table in a multiplayer. Last time I tried Nusfjord people were so overwhelmed by the boards… they just ran out on me (not literally, we just played El Dorado instead Knizia > Rosenberg)
Managed to play through all the Taverns of Tiefenthal expansion modules now, most recently in a couple of fairly lengthy 4 player games. There’s enough variety in this expansion to add a lot of replay value to the base game, especially with the instructions advising you to use only two or three of the expansion modules at a time. I think I’ve mentioned module A (sommeliers acting as dice to serve guests and getting you money), B (a guest house for your first noble, potentially getting you a bonus that round such as upgrading your guests or moving along on the monetary track and C (a bartender with a unique ability). Module D throws in objectives with one time rewards you can use at any point. Timing these can be huge, and the rewards are pretty substantial, such as filling up your beer storage or moving significantly on the monetary track.
We found with a four player game that adding 3 expansion modules adds a lot to play time, especially if you have someone who suffers AP. The last round in taverns can often take a while, and here it’s worse. I think I still prefer this at two for that reason. But the modules themselves are all great. I’ve always thought of Taverns as Ganz Schon Clever with a theme, and it gives me more of what makes that game enjoyable - lots of way to combo points and pull of ridiculously big moves. In the game we played the winner ended up with around 260 points, with nearly a hundred of that coming in the last round. And the expansion fixes my main gripe with the base game which is that the monetary track seemed hard to get the most of. Now you can get quite far round the track. Highly recommend the expansion to anyone who enjoyed the original game.
After that, a game of Cascadia. After the end of Taverns feeling like a slog, this chilled puzzle was perfect. I can’t remember the score or who won, and frankly I don’t really care. That’s one of my favourite things about the game, it’s just such a calming experience. I’ve seen a lot of comparisons to Calico, and frankly beyond the shape of the pieces there’s not a huge amount of crossover. Calico is an amazing game partly because of the stress a seemingly cute and fun puzzle can induce. Cascadia is great for the exact opposite reason. In fact I reckon following up a game of Calico with Cascadia would be the perfect combination.
We just finished our first game of Great Western Trail. Unbelievably, I won, 133-122! It’s an absolutely fantastic game, filled with interesting and hard decisions.
As usual, my wife picked it up with the quickness and madecit very tight.
Got two rounds of Warp’s Edge in. Decisively crashed and burned trying out a “medium” challenge in the first game. Squeaked out a victory in an “easy” challenge for the second. A good sign.
I went to a local Flesh and Blood sealed event (my first time playing a game with strangers, my first time playing a CCG, and my first time going to an event at a FLGS), and had a whale of a time! I thought my extensive experience with Marvel Champions might help me, since it has a similar system of spending cards to pay for cards, but FAB is an entirely different beast; for example, I can think of at least three occasions where a phenomenal turn became completely worthless, because I miscalculated the cost. I lost three games and won one, but the game I won was an unforgettable triumph, and I really love this game. Not enough to really get deep into it, but probably enough to go to the occasional casual event.
I’ve also been playing some two-handed games of Undaunted: Normandy, and am really shocked at how poorly it plays as a two-handed solo game. As a system, I think it’s incredibly sharp, a rare game where you don’t deck-build so much as deck-manage, and where the card play and tactical play interact with each other in fun and unexpected ways. As a solo game, though, the ending feels anticlimactic. Maybe this is a personal issue, but I’m so focused on achieving victory for each side that I forget to consider defending against assaults; every game so far has ended with a rifleman waltzing up to an objective, because I didn’t think to stop them or plop a solder in their path. I’ve heard good buzz about one of the solo variants on BGG, so I’ll have to give that a try in the future.
Thursday played a few games with the local games group:
Colt Express: still silly and fun. I lost the game on the last card by punching instead of picking up the briefcase full of cash that someone else had dropped at my feet.
Mysterium: We played with the Secrets and Lies expansion, which adds scene of the crime cards to replace the weapons. I quite like the new cards. We didn’t know the people we were playing with very well, which made it rather tricky (we didn’t win)
Sub Terra: Pandemic, but escaping from a cave. There’s no potential for the cascading horrors that you get in Pandemic, so not as tense. Probably a game I’d prefer as a solo puzzle.
Coup: The new printing with the updated art and unnecessarily large box. Still a decent filler.
Yesterday played with our regular gaming buddy:
Mariposas: I was all prepared for disappointment because I’d read a few "not as good as Wingspan grumbles, but I liked it! Fairly breezy rules explanation, a few tricky choices about where to send your migrating butterflies, and when to start the return journey. I’m looking forward to playing again.
Sakura: I think someone here advised me to “embrace the chaos” which was sound advice . There’s something especially comical about the theme of a gaggle of painters jostling like paparazzi to create the best painting of the emperor as he serenely strolls through a beautiful cherry orchard.
Inis: I have had A Week at work, so I think my brain had switched off by this point. I wasn’t really paying attention to what was going on and can’t even remember how the winner won …
. There’s something especially comical about the theme of a gaggle of painters jostling like paparazzi to create the best painting of the emperor as he serenely strolls through a beautiful cherry orchard.