Played Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers , our second game of it overall. Not my copy…I only have the first game. And a good game is a quick game, right? We lasted three or four turns, one player got six heat (you get heat from being in the same room as a guard, and various other effects). I don’t think we had the game setup properly, since we found the safe on the first floor, should have been second floor. Anyway, it didn’t make a lot of difference. From memory, our first game also ended up with a very quick defeat. There’s not much room to move around, and you can easily get a guard destination that crosses your path.
The Crew: Mission Deep Sea , first play. The sequel to The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, which we really enjoy. We haven’t actually finished the first game, I think we’re up to mission 42, so not far to go. Players of the first game will be at home, here, not a lot of changes besides the theme. And, to be honest, I never really felt the theme in the first game. Still, it’s a great game. The biggest change with Deep Sea is the way task cards are selected. Planet Nine would just tell you how many to use. In Deep Sea, there is a number on the back of each card, one for each of the player counts (3p, 4p, 5p). When you setup a mission, for example, mission four, you draw task cards until you reach the value four (for your player count). And you have to reach the number exactly. So, if I drew a three and then a two, I would skip the two and keep drawing until I found a one. And tasks are a bit different too. The old task cards just duplicated the main deck cards, so you had 36 main cards, and 36 task cards. So taking a task just meant “win that card”. In Deep Sea, the tasks have winning conditions, like “I will win the pink eight and the blue five”, or 'I will win none of the first three tricks". We played the first two missions, pretty easy of course. Good fun.
First “proper” game of Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile . We setup the game from the walkthrough, but then just played our own turns. Went ok. One of the Exiles had a few secrets, and grabbed the Banner of The Darkest Secret, then played the Vision of Devotion, which would give her the win at the start of her next turn. Obviously, that makes her a target, so the Chancellor targets her banner, and succeeds. I collected three relics, and played the Vision of Sanctuary (have the most banners and relics).The chancellor attacks me, and wins one of my relics. On my next turn, I consider attacking back, but decided it was a lost cause. At the end of turn six, the Chancellor rolls a six, and wins the game. Not sure how this game is being received. I like it ok, not in love with it. But maybe that’s just because I bought it. Another player says she doesn’t want to play again, says she doesn’t know what she is doing (same player who would have won from her Vision). It’s an odd game, and takes a few games to get your head around. We did save the game state, ready for the next game. Basically the winner gets to keep sites they rule, and we remove six cards from the deck and add new ones. The new cards added are whatever suit the winner had the most of.
Fantasy Realms X 2. Really enjoying this, so many combinations you are trying to figure out.
Galaxy Trucker X 2. I used to have a copy of this, but sold it, not entirely sure why. Anyway, the new edition came out, not sure of the changes (if any). We played two games, so I think people were enjoying it. We just used the learning board and the learning set of cards. I thought I was looking good for the first game, picked up a few goods cubes (including a red, the most valuable). But the goods tiles were destroyed, and I had nothing. Second game, I ended up with lots of batteries on my ship, not so many guns or engines. It’s easy (well, it’s easy if you’re dumb like me) to stuff up your ship building and just have no options for adding new tiles. I ended up with negative two from the second game, winner had 19. Chaotic, but fun.
Photograph , aka Wind the Film, first play. A tableau building game, where you take cards from a central market and then play them. This is another card game where you can’t rearrange your hand. Every time you take cards, they go at the front of your hand. Then you get to move one card further up in your hand, and finally, play cards from the back of your hand. Cards are valued from one thru twelve. You can have ascending or descending runs, but each card has to be within three of the previous card. So, one and then four is fine, but one and five is not. Fun game.
The winner got most of their points from bonus actions and cards, rather than wine-making. From one play it feels like a game where you have to make the most of your draw, rather than stick to a particular strategy.
