Played Burano with @EnterTheWyvern . Since it’s one of his faves, I can’t say that it’s shit 
But really, it’s a charming game that reminds me why I enjoy Ginkgopolis. It’s a stacking game that isn’t a dexterity. The tactical and strategic decisions are very interesting. Why it has a 6.8 on BGG? I can only assume.
5 Likes
In my “non-Essen” games meet, Star Trek Ascendancy face to face – had to call it for time (new or unfamiliar players) but fun was generally had.
6 Likes
Burgle Bros 2 , we had a bit of bad luck early on and got some heat. Couldn’t do much about it. But we did manage to get onto the second floor and locate the safe, and even had some dice on it. Then a player got stuck in a corner with a guard, and we lost. Still searching for a win in this game…
Furnace , first play. I’d been looking forward to playing this, and it turned out to be an excellent little engine building game. There’s not much to it, a deck of 36 cards, some starting cards, some Capitalist cards (with special abilities), and tokens for each player (numbered from one to four). There are four rounds, and each round has a auction phase and a production phase. In the auction phase, you put one of your tokens onto one of the face up cards (seven in a 3p game). The rules are: you can’t put more than one token of your colour on, and you can’t put the same value token as another player. Once everyone has placed, whoever has the highest value takes the card, and anyone else gets compensation – they either get the resources or an ability at the top of the card, and can do it as many times as the value of their token. So, if you had a four and a two on a card, and the card gave you two coal, whoever put down the four doesn’t get anything, but they get to keep the card for production. The player of the two would get two coal twice, so four coal. Sometimes you don’t want the card, you just want the resource.
After all the cards are resolved, you play each card in your tableau, and you can do this simultaneously. You are trying to get as much money as possible. So, you might use one card to give you a resource, and then another transforms that resource into money. You can also upgrade a card, flipping it and getting more abilities.
So, four rounds, it’s a pretty quick game, but it has some good decisions to make. Love the auction mechanic. Looking forward to many more plays of this game, my favourite of the day.
Cubitos , buy and roll lots of dice, run around a map. Not my favourite game at all. It’s not bad by any means, I just don’t find it too exciting.
The Crew: Mission Deep Sea , a couple more missions in.
Fantasy Realms X 2. Not a great first game. One of the players got a new high score, but that only lasted until the second game. I had a seven card run with the Gem of Order, giving me 150 bonus points. How long will the record stand?
Roll for Adventure , you don’t hear much about this, but it’s a fun cooperative game of dice rolling.
Photograph , finished up with this. Great filler.
4 Likes
So b/c going to SPIEL seemed like a bad idea this year (as is going to a restaurant -.-), I invited my friends and even on short notice my noted capacity for 8-9 players was filled up. I want to note: 9 is a stupid number. Too few games for 5.
People arrived in the afternoon and we started straight away with Die Knuffies which was a big hit and caused a lot of laughs. It‘s great because it needs almost no explanation to play and you can sit down a player to the game who only just arrived.
When everyone was there I started a game of Menara with half of them. This became 2 games, the first of which I lost us because I was at the other table most of the time teaching a game and when I returned to take my turn in Menara they said „here put a column here and here and push it between the two tiles like that“ and that was the end of the game as the temple came crashing down. They won a second game without me.
The game I taught at the other table was Lunar Base which again started a bit slow but everyone seemed quite taken by the end one person immediately looked up if it was still available to buy (being a small Kickstarter). The rulebook could be better and I think I‘ll need to make a reference sheet for the actions.
We talked about games, and I showed off a few in the hopes of getting in something a bit bigger after dinner (mushroom risotto because I am sick of always making Pizza and Flammkuchen for such events and there were vegetarians present)
In a funny turn, the last such big game night had been 2 years ago after Spiel 2019 and we must have talked about a game then because one friend arrived with a box of Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space to play and my answer was: „Look here I already put my box on the table because I wanted to play this.“
Obviously it can „only“ be played with 8 so 2 people teamed up. I was a bit scared it could become 40 turns. But it was more like 11 or 13 until the last human was eaten by our resident „hungry alien“. We played the large starter map but used roles and items and it was hilarious fun especially because the first human that got eaten decided to start trying to eat anything that moved and so everyone was on the run. One person held out really long and they got to an escape pod, that was broken, teleported back to base and ran then they were finally found. I was a human Medic who was really unlucky because I kept drawing red cards that pretty much let everyone know where I was.
After dinner—while I played another quick and scary round of Die Knuffies with 1 person—4 people grabbed my new copy of Roll Camera to make a movie and the other 5 stared longingly at my Beyond the Sun copy and realized that can only be played with 4. So yeah, next time I am aiming for either 3 tables or 8 people. The movie crew had lots of fun and laughter (although after playing a second time my partner said it was a little too easy and he wasn‘t sure it had a lot of staying power).
The other table waffled over a variety of games for a bit until I remembered one I had wanted to play for a while but couldn‘t because it needs at least 3 people: Kyoto. This is a small negotiation game where each player represents a country at the conference. At the start you get some money, some prosperity cards (like SUVs, Coal Plants and other „great things“) and 3 lobby cards of which you keep 2. The game is played over 10 negotiation rounds or until the earth is destroyed. If the game ends and the earth is not destroyed the person with the most points is declared the winner (aka the richest) if the earth is destroyed they become the scapegoat („You did too little“) and the person with the second most points becomes the winner. The earth has 3 gauges of 5 that signify possible destruction: temperature, air quality and animal diversity. If one gauge reaches 5: game over.
In each round the presiding country gets to present 1 of 2 study cards that have costs of money and require either CO2 removal or certain measures that might anger your or someone else’s lobbyists. The consequences for inaction are on the card though half of it is hidden and only the presenter knows the full range of problems. So you may think that killing off another animals species is not a problem because the presiding country didn‘t tell you that the hidden cost is another rise in temperature. Add to that, that each of the air and temp gauges have tipping points where other gauges are increased as well… and each negotiation becomes quite tense.
The negotiations last 90 seconds and every country can add as much money or prosperity cards to the pool as they want or you can even bribe another country to take back a card if that card would for example anger one of your lobbyists. The presiding country can choose which cards and whose money to take. Cards are added to the display of „measures“ where you can see which lobbys are particularly unhappy.
So how to come out on top? Points are awarded for the most money, for each prosperity card you kept and for how happy your Steel and Pharmaceutical (or other) lobby is at the end.
At the start the negotiations were quite harmless because the earth looked well and there was not a lot of pressure to act. Still, we passed a few successful measures. But especially my Big Pharma friends really wanted to see the world burn and so I busted negotiations at least twice (and so did everyone else, especially China who sat on my right side was absolutely unwilling to do anything but drop the occasional money bag on any problem. Curb their prosperity? Never. I was Canada by the way).
Toward the end though, each further measure that we didn‘t pass would mean the earth became unlivable but also people had fewer prosperity cards and wanted to hold on to them more and there were quite a few bribes going around because someone was deep in the pockets of the car industry.
In a last second decision we managed to keep from burning up in the final round of negotiations and then we discovered the EU (to my left) who had hoarded money came out on top. 4 people had 16 points each (weird, I know) and the EU got bonus points for all their money and won with 21 points. So the rest of us would have won jointly if we had let the world burn and blame the EU…. I think there is a lesson here somewhere or not?
The game was way more fun than I had anticipated. And once we knew the rules it played really fast. I am glad I bought it and will definitely propose to play again at another game night.
After that we played a couple of rounds of ScapeGoat. As the other players had never played before it was a bit too easy for me to both initiate the Frame in the first game and figure out I was the scapegoat in the second. Still, now more people know the game and that is great.
Sadly, that was the moment I got the stupid notification from the app about my covid exposure and that kind of killed at least my mood. I think my friends were more relaxed about it than myself. We talked about games as the other table finished their movie but despite it being early enough for another game the evening wound down with talking.
9 Likes
Yesterday, my wife and I were able to get a couple of games to the table. First up was Patchwork, which my wife won 17 - 8. She got the 7x7 bonus token and had more of her board covered. I had gone for pieces with lots of buttons, so on the last income space, I received 20 buttons, but promptly lost them and some more to the penalties.
A little later, we played Jaipur, which she also won, in just two rounds. I made an error at the end of the second round when I placed a gold back on the market when trading, as there was only one token left for it. Of course, my wife had another of the cards and was able to pick it up and then play it next turn, ending the game before I could play my hand of silks. To be fair, we were having to get up from the table after each play as our kids were being pests, so I was a bit distracted and did not realize the end of the game was so near.
8 Likes
Played a few cases of Micro Macro: Crime City. Not had a great day, feel totally surrounded by Covid. I really wanted to play something to take my mind off things, but nothing too dense. This has been passed to me through 4 different people.
We really enjoyed it, like nothing else I’ve ever played. It’s essentially Where’s Wally but on a huge scale and black and white. You get cases with clue cards and you have to hunt this massive map to find stuff. It’s really enjoyable.
9 Likes
On Saturday we played:
Tribes: dawn of humanity: a fairly simple action selection game based around the development of early humans. A bit of exploring, discovering fire, etc. I didn’t feel like there was much to it, but I also lost spectacularly, so maybe I just wasn’t paying attention!
Beyond the Sun: definitely easier to grasp on the table than online. It was a very close game, even though we all took quite different routes. Looking forward to playing this more.
Roam: finished this off for our friend’s 10x10 challenge.
5 Likes
In a continuation of Saturday’s game day, I indulged in playing what is the equivalent of comfort food on Sunday and got out Obsession to play a solo. As I had not played for a while I made some mistakes but the game is just a joy to play. I just wish it was easier to randomize the huge amount of tiles in the game.
10 Likes
On Sunday I managed to attend a lovely, small “Infinity” tournament run by a friend. He hosted at his house (we usually play there on Mondays), and there were 6 of us total.
I did very badly. But that’s okay! It was just really lovely to be “normal” for a while… and, in my third game (which I lost) I got to use perhaps the single greatest application of the rule “Climbing Plus” I’ve ever had a chance to use…
That, my friends, is a Zeta TAG sitting about 24" above the table. From that glorious vantage point I was able to rain fire down on my opponent’s Puppetmaster and Clockmaker, as well as mildly annoying his Zondnautica before retreating back down the side of the tower and to “safety”.
Sadly, my opponent managed to toss a Repeater close to my TAG, possess it, and then climb right back up that tower to shoot my own Lieutenant off the table, as well as putting a significant amount of hurt on my remaining attack pieces. I managed to wrestle control of it back on my final turn, but by then the damage had been done and it was destroyed by a link team of Hollow Men with missile launchers.
I had fun! It was just… pleasantly normal. For a few hours I got to forget about (gestures around in all directions) and just play a game.
10 Likes
Definitely looks quite impressive from up there.
I am happy for you! I hope we are all getting back a few of our game nights, meeting a few people and encounter a sense of normalcy. I hope everyone here gets to have more of those moments and hours in the coming weeks and months 
4 Likes
I have been wanting to play that game for a while. Somebody on our Gaming Guild has it, but it comes out rarely…
1 Like
I got a few rounds of Deep Space D-6 Armada in this evening and promptly put it up for sale. That’s probably enough said about it. 
5 Likes
I (purple) played a round of Beyond the Sun on BGA with 3 “localish” friends the other day. 2 (orange, blue) of them didn’t know the game yet. Red has played a few times. We produced the wildest tech tree ever:
I messed up early in the game in resource production because I decided to “experiment” and started with “Narrow Beam Lasers” which I rarely do. And so I couldn’t do a lot of research (I somehow made it to a level 4 tech despite that but barely). The other players decided most of the tech in the tree and chose to go with LOTS of “jump” tech. And there was jumping like I have rarely seen and ships… so many ships. In the end everyone was scrambling for the 2 spots that allowed colonization. It was definitely weird.
One person (orange) wanted to use “Android Destroyers” but ended up not using the UI correctly and didn’t get to do their jumps somehow and that cost them a valuable turn and so they moped for the rest of the game. And I must say not having the ability (on BGA) to go back on something that is a technical error can be debilitating in a game as tight as BtS.
I also notice a marked difference when playing with people from the forums vs my local friends. The locals play a lot more take that moves just to piss off another player. “Gain points for myself or block someone? What should I choose? Clearly, I should block someone.”
PS: The extra achievements were all level 2 tech and the weird one with control 6 matching locations.
7 Likes
It’s also frustrating. My attitude to boardgames is generally casual – if someone has made an error and it hasn’t affected too much, I’ll pretty much always say “eh, fix it, you ought to have that many thingies”. BGA feels like having to play every game with That Guy who insists that every time you wave your hand near a piece you have finalised your move.
First time back in person at Local Games Club last night, playing Tavern Masters, which I might have liked better if, for three out of what turned out to be five rounds, card luck had not left me with nothing to do and no decisions to make; also the art gets kind of boobtastic in places. Then on to Shamans, which I hadn’t fully internalised, but I think I’ll be able to teach it better next time; and people still enjoyed it. (Colours on the reflective board don’t show up too well in fashionably low lighting, mind.)
6 Likes
Oh no! That bad?
While I am not “casual” - I am the kind of person who tries to ensure that everyone is following the rules exactly - under normal circumstances I can warn about mistakes or correct them as they are made. Or even correct them sometime later. No undo function is a major problem with BGA. No override to correct the game state is another. (Both are reasons I prefer Vassal.)
2 Likes
Absolutely, but even among my technologically less challenged friends Vassal is a hard sell.
A lot of them have TTS which allows for all kinds of shenanigans (I have disabled the flip table function when I host for good reason) but recently I have avoided TTS because it needs a rules enforcer for most modules and I am already game proposer, game teacher and IT-girl (yeah, the kind that explains to people why they can no longer see the table or how to center their player board so they can see it. I play boardgames with people who have never in their life played a computer game). So recently I have preferred to let BGA do the rules enforcing and some automation so I have a bit of an easier time. Lazy me.
But I do wish that a group on BGA could vote to let the game host undo a turn and return to a previous game state (it shouldn’t be impossible, the log has all the information and the replay-from-here ability shows that it is easily possible to rewind.) Without having checked any information on BGA redarding this, I suspect that the reasons for not having such a function are less technological but more social.
3 Likes
Oh, believe me, I know how hard it is to sell people on Vassal!
(And I do really like full automated rule enforcement, with a mobile friendly interface - it’s far from a clear win for Vassal.)
3 Likes
I am a reasonably technical chap and I have not yet got any version of Vassal actually running to the point of being able to host or join a game; always some sort of random Java error. To be honest I haven’t put huge effort into it, because my experience with Java desktop software has been universally unpleasant.
I didn’t mean “I don’t want to play by the rules”, but rather “if someone messed up let’s be friendly about it”, especially in a longer game.
My own experience is that TTS doesn’t need a rules-enforcer any more than a physical table does, but I’ve played mostly with people I already know quite well who won’t muck about.
2 Likes
Oh no. That bad? Damnit… I just punched my copy. What was wrong with it?