Thanks to some shipping tips from @RogerBW and @pillbox my wife got me a custom made crokinole board
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Played a few games today. We squeezed in a quick game of Jaipur, which my wife won in two rounds. First round was very close, 75 - 73, but she creamed me in the second round, 84 - 72.
Later we played The Red Cathedral, which I was finally able to win, though to be fair my wife was a bit shaken up after our younger kiddo had a tumble which nearly cracked his head on the dining room table. Thankfully he missed it and is fine. Still, I am taking the win, 41 - 29.
Lastly, we played two games of King of Tokyo, fir which her brother, K, joined us. K won the first game through victory points, with a masterful use of the Plot Twist card, which let him change one die to any face, which he used to give himself a fourth 3 to get him to 20 points. I was at 17 and in Tokyo at the time, so had a very strong chance of winning, and my wife was just behind at 15 I think.
My wife won the second game, also through victory points, I was at 16, and I think K was at 17.
Good gaming, and another off of our 12 Games of Christmas list.
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Very jealous. Also eat those damn bananas quick!
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I think theyāre already at the banana bread stage!
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Oh no, that would have made the game much easierā¦ although I was playing with the basic blight rules which meant I had five blight overall for a single player.
Yes I think lightning was a good choice, I made lots of mistakes but I think I learned from them. Iām keen to try again!
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Oh, I relate to this post so much. I had a similar experience a few months back, and I ended it thinking āThis isnāt the oneā¦but maybe it would be if I bought a samurai for it.ā.
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A great Christmas with the kids. Played. Klask 4 and Ticket to Ride, both for the first time. Iāve avoided train games for a looooong time, but my daughter picked it out for me as a gift because āit is a board game and it says āGermanyā on it.ā We had a wonderful time, and managed to rope a 7YO cousin into it.
Although, now that the train game seal has been broken, I suspect I may need to expand the game roomā¦
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Played a couple of games today. First up was Ethnos, at my wifeās request. We had Merfolk, Wizards, Elves, Skeletons, Trolls and Orcs (as I missed the rule that you only use 5 tribes in 2 player games). I won by a landside, actually lapping the board to end up just two spaces behind her again. Managed to get a few larger bands in the second (and last, in 2 player) age, plus get 5 tokens on the Orc board, and had the Troll tokens to win ties. Probably the best I have ever done at the game.
After a bit, we played Unmatched, first time in a while. She played Medusa, as usual, while I tried out Beowulf. It was a pretty good match. Beowulfās sidekick, Wieglaf, has a great scheme for eliminating 1 HP sidekicks, and can even get a bonus action if it hurts Beowulf, and I used it twice to good effect.
Got really close to winning, but lost when she hit me wuth Gaze of Stone when I had no defense in hand. Had her down to 3 HP to my 6 just before she got me.
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My partner and I are working our way through our first playthrough of Sleeping Gods. Itāsā¦ weird? Good, but weird. More narrative, but simultaneously less narrative than I was expecting?
I like the combat for the most part (although the āenemies hit you every time and THEN AGAIN after youāve hit them 4 timesā is a bit brutal), and the choose-your-own adventures bits are neat, albeit the difficulty is utterly random. But weāve managed to find 3 totems thus far, and I feel like weāre doing a fair amount of exploring (although weāve only really explored two map sectionsā¦ there was a very brief sojourn into a 3rd which was incredibly fortunate, but literally went to the map, did one event, sailed back).
ANYWAY! Anyway. Itās fun.
We also played a round of Super Skill Pinball Ramp it Up*, specifically the āGofer Goldā. Andy crushed me. I did a few āFlute Loopsā (Marc, this is a family website!), one on a Multiball, and she still crushed me.
Oh, and a couple rounds of Illusion which ended in a 6-6 tie.
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Had some good fun today!
My wife and I introduced my mother-in-law to Full House, which went down very well (I demolished them, for the record).
Then, I played a game of Great Western Trail with my wife, a very tight, tense affair that ended in an 82-93 loss for me. What a superb game.
Finally, played three games of Patchwork with my father-in law. An old damily classic. I won that little tournament.
A good Christmas, considering.
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Some games in the coldest venue I have experienced. Iām only just now warming up on the train home.
Roads & Boats first physical play. Just a teaching game, but I was pleased to find it only took slightly over 2 hours and wasnāt nearly as fiddly as I feared.
Cryptid all over on the first guess. Made no impression on me.
The Great Zimbabwe first physical play. Trickier to teach than I anticipated, and one player was completely lost, spamming out craftsmen that facilitated an easy win. Need to play this more.
Tash Kalar mirror match, the only game of the day that wasnāt a teaching game. Good fun as always, especially at the punchy pace we played.
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Actually, thatās one area where Iāve been lucky. All of the prior games Iāve tried have either been actively unpleasant (i.e. Gloomhaven, the worst 3 hours of my leisure-life), or swollen with content in the base box. In either case, the inclination to engage in the olā sunk cost fallacy just wasnāt there.
Christmas Day games!
My nephew got Kluster as a present and he was eager to show it off to me. You drop a looped string onto your play surface and divide a big stack of strong, oddly shaped magnets between the players, with the goal of being the first to ditch your pieces. You can probably guess, but if you make a move that results in magnets snapping together, you need to take those back into your hand. This was a really neat filler. Itās got a great āooh, lemme try that!ā table presence, and you can get pretty tricky with your moves. We played on the dining room table (with tablecloth) at my nephewās request but Iām going to guess this would be even better on a nice, low friction surface. Per BGG, it seems to support up to 4 players but to me it felt very much like a head-to-head game. You can play this in about 3 minutes and Iād accept an invitation to do so any time. Very unique!
I certainly could have gone for more Kluster, but he wanted to pack up after catching a glimpse of Kabuto Sumoāmagnets just canāt compete with super-powered insect wrestlers in the battle for a 10 year oldās attention. I called a couple of the other nephews over and we had a few 3P games. I got this as a gift for Christmas, so it was new to me as well and I was very happy to see a pamphlet for rules. We jumped straight into the full game with special powers and it was a hoot! I had to take off the gamer hat a few times and paste on a glossy smile as they bumped, blew on and generally futzed with the board, only piping up once or twice when a loose move or turn sequence would have impacted one of the other boys unfairly. Fun and laughs all round with this one, and Iām thinking my partner will be pretty keen on it too.
Lastly, we played Labyrinth just before dinner, another gift and new-to-me game. Itās the Super Mario Bros. themed version, which doesnāt come with any kind of special rules as far as Iām aware, but it sure as heck went a long way with engaging one nephew in particular. Firstly, this is a game Iāve almost picked up about a million times in the past since itās got āfamily stapleā written all over it, and I can confirm itās instantly a staple for this family. Itās brilliant. Secondly, my nephew kicks ass at it. He made a couple of plays during the game that seriously made me feel like I was completely out of my league. My other nephew wanted to cooperate in this one for some reason, and he kind of got his wish as we both desperately tried to slow his cousin down! We both managed to shed our last cards, but to no avail: āOh! So I can just do this, then!ā he says, pushes his pawn off the board (looping it to the other side) and moving a single space for the win. Proud, proud uncle and I think he could see that in my face when I said so.
A wonderful hour of games with some of my favourite little buddies.
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Played the 2 player variant of 1846: Race for the Midwest. Interesting experience. Not sure if I want to continue exploring this.
Also played Takenoko and Beyond the Sun. Great joy as usual.
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Boxing Day Boardgames is an actual tradition now (Iāve been jokingly calling it one since I started doing it in 2015). Several of my fairly-local gaming friends donāt have much in the way of family commitments, so I invite them over; we were six altogether, including a couple I havenāt seen in person since probably early 2020. So that was good.
We started with Among Thieves, also known (I think not unfairly) as āIterated Prisonerās Dilemma: The Gameā. Itās another of those weird releases from Indie Boards & Cards that I picked up from them at Essen because I was being paid in product, but which Iāve never seen anywhere else. Nobody is trustworthy, and there are incentives for all sorts of weird behaviour. Only the second time Iāve actually got it to the table ā itās 3-8, Iām unconvinced it would work at 3-4, and at 5-10 I usually get out The Resistance instead ā but I had a great time.
Then Flamme Rouge, on a promo course.
Itās an odd set of constraints but I ended up making the most of it and winning (though my sprinteur was a long way behind by the end).
(I did work out a new way of setting up quickly: find and make a stack of the next five or so track tiles, and pass them out for other players to join together while I search for the batch after that.)
Finally V-Commandos (now renamed V-Sabotage thanks to a legal threat). Itās been rather too long since I played this at all, let alone in person, and I probably didnāt do a great job of a combined setup/teach ā but the players had a good time anyway. (Scout (me) and Spy went through the Explosives Factory like a dose of potassium chlorate, while Sapper, Sniper, Medic and Officer had a tougher time in the Station.)
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Iāve found some games my partner enjoys playing! 
Started off with Anomia as it was newly acquired, so I wanted to get it played. It went down well, though it over again have me a bit of a headache.
Then had a couple of games of Decrypto (which my partner actually asked me to bring). I messed up majorly in the second game, thinking I was being very clever giving āSudafedā as a clue for āSpeedā, before instantly realising one of our other words was āNoseā.
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Itās been awhile since Iāve posted my recent plays, so thereās a few to get through. Was pleased to play a bunch of games with Mum over the week leading up to Christmas, and some gaming with mates before then. We played:
Fantastic Factories - Really like this little race/engine building game. Few games so far, simple and quick but quite satisfying. The solo mode seems quite challenging though, though maybe I just need to get betterā¦
Concordia ā Always enjoy this one and Iām slowly coming around on the forum expansion, but itās definitely not necessary.
Three Sisters ā A few more games of this. Itās terrific fun, one of my better kickstarter picks. Hope it does well for them as Iād love to see more games from these designers.
Schotten Totten ā Seems to me that itās almost impossible to play just one game of this! Such a great 2 player simple (but thoughtful) card game. Iām yet to try the tactics cards, but will probably give them a whirl soon. Sucks thereās no player aid for the tactics cards though, what an oversightā¦
Fantasy Realms ā Iām not very good at this one, I think Iāve won once so far of the half dozen games or so weāve played. Itās a lot of fun though for a fast simple little card game. Hard to hate-draft though, as you never really know what kind of hand your opponents are building. I suspect thatās intended though.
Everdell ā Got my first multiplayer game of this in recently. Itās such a fun game, what a pleasant surprise it turned out to be! Got trounced though ā one of my mates built an unbelievably epic tableau, despite me making mad points during the game he still came out with a solid lead.
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Cascadia ā This one is only growing in my estimation with repeated plays. Interesting decisions throughout and a nice mix of tactical and strategic thinking.
Blue Lagoon ā Another one that just seems to be getting better. Still havenāt played it with more than 2 though. I should work on that.
Takenoko ā Very tight game of this with Mum, came down to the Emperor card! Closest game of this Iāve ever played, and Iāve played a bunch online ā was super proud of how well she did given that!
Calico ā Interesting coming back to this one after playing Cascadia more. Theyāre both very good, but very different games despite a similar puzzly core. I think Cascadia edges it out, but Iād not turn down a game of Calico either.
Patchwork ā Continues to be a delightful polyomino game, one of my faves in that category for sure.
Sushi Go Party ā A couple of two player games of this with Mum and I got trounced both times. The two player suggested setup in the rules works quite well. My fruit game is terrible though, really need to rethink how I pursue that goal next time!
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So Clover! , a cooperative word game. Each player gets a funky board with spaces for four word cards. You place your cards at random, and now you have four word pairs, and you have to write a single word to connect the pair. So a pair of words might be āstuntā and ānurseā, for example. You remove all your cards, and then the other players have to try and figure out which cards go with which clues. Itās simple, but good fun. Reminds me a little of Codenames. The other players have two tries to get the cards correct and you score for each correct card. So good we played it twice!
Aeons End , which I played last weekend, new to the other players. Very close game! If the Nemesis had one more turn, we would have lost, it was that close. But we got the turn and finished him off. And the next card that would have been played was the Nemesis. We had three points of health left. Nemesis was Ragebourne. Enjoyed the game.
Sheepy Time , first play. The players are dream sheep ā the sheep that people count to get off to sleep. Your sheep moves around the board, and gains points every time they pass the fence. Once you pass the fence, you can stop there, or push your luck and try for another lap. But if you get caught by the Nightmare, then you awake and lose all your points. You have two cards in your hand, and on your turn you will play one of them. Most cards give you an option, to move, or to gain Zs. If you choose to catch Zs, you place one of your Z tokens onto a dream tile, which gives you a special ability if you land on that space. You start with two dream tiles, and after each round you can add more. There are 30 tiles, so good variety there. You win if your score token reaches your pillow token (that starts at 40 points) At the end of the round (when everyone has either woken up, or decided to stop) you score for your place in the round. So, the winner might get 10 points. They move their pillow token down 10 points, and now their score target is only 30 points. Good fun game!
Coyote , first play. Everyone draws a card, but puts it in a holder so they cant see it, only the other players can see it. Theres a facedown card in the middle, and then the player takes turns to make a bid or challenge. So, someone might start with a bid of ten. If the next player can either raise the bid, or challenge. If they challenge, all the cards are turned over, and the total calculated. If the total is less then the bid, that player wins the challenge. If the total is equal to or higher than the bid, the challenger loses. The cards are 1 thru 10, 15, 20, -5, and -10. And there are two special cards, the ? and the max zero. The ? card is replaced by drawing from the deck. The max 0 card makes the highest value card a zero. It was an ok, game, a bit random. You can try and guess your own hand from the bids I guess. And you can peek at the facedown card ā you have three eye cards at the start, two open and one closed.
The Key: Sabotage at Lucky Llama Land , three quick games of this ā I won one! Got the solutions ok, just used too many cards on the other games. Made a mistake somewhere in the first game, had to just wipe the board and start again.
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Played a few games with my wife today.
First up was Pandemic: Rising Tide, a game she bought for me for my anniversary a couplenof years ago, but only hit the table for the first time today. An interesting twist on the Pandemic formula, where you only have water to deal with, rather than four viruses, and dikes you can build to keep it out of regions.
The interesting bit is how the water spreads at the end of each playerās turn, as regions adjacent to one with three water cubes will automatically get two cubes unless there is a dike between them, and then it continues by putting one cube in each region adjacent to a two cube one. Means the water cubes can disappear really quickly, as we discovered when I made a bad decision between which of two regions to go build a dike in. The one I didnāt choose hit three cubes, which then flooded out to three adjacent regions and then four more or so after that. We lost a turn or two later. Really interesting and I want to try it again.
Then my wife wanted a rematch in Ethnos, so we set it up, following all of the 2-player rules this time. We had Wizards, Minotaurs, Skeletons, Wingfolk, and Giants and my wife redeemed herself and pulled off the win.
A quick game of Azul followed, which I won only because managed to complete one more column than she did, as otherwise we were tied through most of the game.
Then we tried out my new copy of Royal Visit, which seemed to go over pretty well. I managed to win by moving the crown to my chateau, shortly after we reshuffled the discard pile. She admitted that she did not quite understand the crown mechanic, so we will revisit it when it next hits the table. Hopefully it wonāt be too long. I really enjoyed it.
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More games today! First Tzolkāin with my wife, an utter delight of a brain-burner. It was REALLY close, with my wife beating me 64-60. Went mostly religion this time, while she built a lot of buildings. Love it.
Then we broke out Telestrations with my in-laws, my wifeās brother and his own wife. So much laughter was had. Turns out none of us can draw AT ALL.
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