Feudum with a real human! The appeal of the game on the table last week proved irresistible for my partner and we sat down to our first game with the advanced rules, across two 90 minute sessions.
The first epoch lasted five rounds, but then we had a change every round thereafter so the tempo was brisk. We stuck to the centre of the map for the first half of the game which meant we were getting frisky from the first round, jockeying for rulership and rushing to place subjects. We put out Feudums early too, accepting the military burdens of becoming vassals.
While things looked grim on the map, in the guilds things were a little more relaxed. Too relaxed. We were each enjoying uncontested guild master statuses in our respective guilds, so with little reason to compete for ownership, the war was fought on the shelves. My partner was constantly bombarding my farmer with harvests and rosaries, ensuring the market was always stocked and making my pushes impossible. She was neglecting her knight duties perfectly, meanwhile, sniping all the royal seals for herself and ensuring none moved back in for me. Thankfully I had a good farm network for efficient harvests, so made good use of rosaries for my seals.
Pretty soon it became clear that neither of us could sustain our combat obligations without suffering for it. Our pawns werenāt starving yet but they were constantly drunk and with both of us ranked equally for disloyalty, we backed off. The rest of the game never got more heated than some more influence jockeyingāwhich my partner used to great effect on her final turn!ābut it was where we did most of our diversifying. My partner used her airship and Behemoth to expand deep into the badlands and mountains, all the while fulfilling her secret Royal Writ. I doubled down on Feudums and took the opportunity to take over the Knightās guild, landing me my 5th active guild, with me as guild master in four. I also tended a few lucrative landscape tiles.
In the end, she was able to outperform me in most of the final scoring categories, and picked up a juicy 9 points from her writ, but lost a few easy guild points during the mid-game scoring checks (rookie mistake stuff) which definitely would have been enough to swing the victory over to her.
Iāve recently been so tired in the evenings that I have been playing solo games in the mornings. My current rotation includes Calico, Sagani and Sprawlopolis. This morning I almost ālostā Saganiāthe solo challenge says to reach 75 points within placing 25 tilesāit took me 24 tiles today and I had to take a bunch of red minus points along the wayā¦ because I overreached and got unlucky with tons of 10 point tiles coming up and too few white tilesā¦
On a slightly different note: I have recently crossed 50 plays in Hardback
We included the Literary Awards again for the last 3 games or so but I think weāll go without again from next gameāboth of us enjoy the deckbuilding more without the possibility of 15 points from the literary awards deciding victory. Although now that we have played so much the games do not last long enough for anyone to really go for the 12 letter words. But the long words detract from the game we both find no matter which one of us is winning.
First play of my copy of The Great Zimbabwe! Very nice.[/borat]
Played 1870: Railroading Across the Trans Mississippi with @EnterTheWyvern . Interesting premise where your founding companies will be full capitalise at 100%, but any unbought shares will continue to give money to the company. Meaning that the best way to damage your opponents is to cross-invest on their companies, depriving theirs of long term funds.
The map is large, but chokepoints exists everywhere. The Mississippi River acting as a barrier on accessing other parts of the map is interesting too, as the player who owns the bridge company WILL literally gatekeep in this game.
However, I feel like the train deck is a bit too thick, making it more difficult (therefore, slow) to plow through it. But thatās based on 1 play at 3 players.
Very intriguing and I want to play more of it
Codex Naturalis - itās very pretty and enjoyable too
First play of the Arnak:Expedition Leaders expansion. Plenty of new guardians, locations, artifacts and assistants to make the game feel fresh without adding in the new major changes.
The new research tracks look interesting, but to get used to the new asymmetric play we stuck with one of the older tracks. My girlfriend played as the falconer - an interesting power that provides a few bonuses. I played the baroness which allowed me to buy lots of cards, including the power to put one item per round straight in to my hand rather than at the bottom of the deck.
It took longer to play than normal Arnak, but thatās probably because we were trying to learn how best to use the new powers. There also seemed to be a lot more choice as a result, allowing for a lot more planning 3 or 4 moves ahead than usual. I ended up winning 95 to 89, but neither of us really cared by that point. It was enjoyable just exploring new aspects of the game.
Overall, itās the perfect expansion. Lots of what made the base game great, with some asymmetry thrown in for good measure. Looking forward to exploring the 6 characters in depth.
Has a 5 player game of Vanuatu 2nd edition. The action selection proved to be brutal as usual. The game is beautiful as expected from Quined Games. But felt that the game takes too long at 8 Rounds with little strategic arc. I really had a good time, but Iām finally getting rid of Vanuatu.
Agra - had a grand time with Agra. Still a bit of a chore to teach with new players.
Takenoko
Senators - one of my faves this year and have been our end-of-the-night filler game. Designed by the maker of Coup. It is arbitrary and mean, the game ended with one friend really wanting to kill me. Mission Accomplished.
Forgot to mention, my wife and I had another game of Lords of Vegas on Sunday, this time using the Up expansion. Due to a poorly thought out trade on my part, she was able to take over my casino in the C block and there was nothing I could do to stop it, which let her rocket forward into the lead. I slowly started clawing my way back, but it was far too late to prevent her win, 81 - 49.
Then last night we played The Red Cathedral again, which she just seems to grok a lot better than I do. Admittedly, it did not help that she was able to knock me down two or three points by completing sections above my uncompleted ones, and due to the layout of the workshop bonuses during the setup, she was able to get a lot of dice based ones by claiming spots above sections I claimed.
Final score was 26 - 21. Low scoring game for us, but she just blitzed right through everything and finished really quickly.
Well, I may have opened a can of wormsā¦ We played Cluedo again yesterday
Me and my partner just saw how our 9 yo daughter won the game on the very first suggestion she madeā¦ So 5 minutes, including set up?? I think it could be a record.
So my little one felt like she wanted to play a game as well, and we played her favourite, Game of Life. First time ever we all had twins, (my OH, the little one and me) and also all bought a house. Look at us, popping up children like rabbits and collapsing the housing market The 5 yo was exhausted at the end, so we declared her winner without a count up (who cares? she loved it)
So, to make up, later in the evening I played Architects of the WK solo again (gosh, I cannot wait to get my games out of their boxes). I played the easy mode this time, and I sort of regret it, because I have a feeling I would have had a chance against the difficult bot. I trounced Constantine 54 - 29.
Online games with my team worked pretty well. We started with No Thanks on BGA, which took a surprisingly long time to explain, but we got there in the end! After that we played a few rounds of Codenames, Telestrations, and Dixit.
I found it interesting to see how many unconscious shortcuts my brain has developed that make understanding new games easier, compared to people who are smart but donāt spend a huge chunk of their free time parsing the rules to multi-hour strategy games (apparently there are other hobbies that people spend their time on )
Another one! My mother memorably did that the first time she played the game. We all tried to tell her that sheād misunderstood something when she announced that she was making an accusation. Of course weād all passed, but none of us imagined that she wasnāt holding at least one of the cards sheād suggested on her very first turnā¦
I picked up Luna Capital yesterday afternoon, played a solo game last night, and put it up for sale over various channels this morning. Ugh.
Thereās a fine puzzle in there somewhere, but for all the sorting consideration they made with the cardboard insert (why isnāt this more common??), the overall user experience is the pits. Scoring was long and painful, particularly for the AI (I wouldnāt wish a solo game of this on anyone, or would at least suggest ditching the scoring component).
Woof. Is anyone actually enjoying the experience of playing this thing?
The 5 yo was exhausted at the end, so we declared her winner without a count up (who cares? she loved it)
(apparently there are other hobbies that people spend their time on 
)