No. It’s more of a blind bidding game. You open the box to see everyone’s bids.
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Last night we played two games of Ticket to Ride: London. The first game was pretty standard, and my wife won 36 - 31 because I could not finish one of my tickets.
Then proceeded what was probably the most frustrating game of TtR that I have ever played. Started out fine, but then my wife claimed a one train route I needed. Fine, I will just go over a little further and take the next one. Nope, she grabbed that one too. After she grabbed yet another route that would have worked for me, at that point I calculated I could not finish either of my tickets as I did not have enough trains left to go around further, so for the heck of it, I took more tickets, and was able to accomplish one of them, and the game ended with her winning 28 - 16.
That was enough TtR for that day.
Tonight we played Pandemic: Rising Tide again, and once again lost to running out of water cubes. Storm hit after only four cards had been flipped from the deck, so most of them got drawn again, adding cubes and getting high enough tonmake the water spread to a number of neighboring regions, and we lost. We had the purple structure built, and my wife jad 5 yellow cards and would have built it next, and I had four orange cards so was close to that one.
Someday we will save the Netherlands!
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This is how some people play though and totally the reason I am not playing this with my card counting friend anymore. The app is great ….
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To be fair, she was only doing it because they were routes she could use and had the cards for, not just to deny me passage.
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I lost in an impressive display of ineptitude against the Turczi Bot in Petrichor. I have no idea how to play this game it seems. I think I need to play against myself. But I also lost against myself yesterday. Maybe the weight 3.0 BBG said it is, is truer than I thought.
Feels almost like my recent plays of Hardback. My opponent (I wanted to write friend… but 
) has developed a surefire speed strategy with combining red double cards with gold VP cards to win and win and win… he’s always using that stupid F. I hate the letter F. It’s an f…ing F it shouldn’t rule the game. I mean if it was like maybe a Z or a Q… that would be better. I like those. I respect those. They make good words. But F?! Pah.
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Just played Chinatown with my wife and her brother. I am apparently not good at negotiation games (which makes me want to try out Hostage Negotiator sometime 
) as I lost yet again. Wife won with 1.24 million, her brother had 1.21 and I had 1.11.
However, my wife did luck into 5 adjacent spaces and 4 Dim Sum tiles by the end of the second turn, and got another Dim Sum on the next turn, so she was making 110k for 4 rounds there, which really bolstered her score. Still a great game, though would definitely be better with a fourth (or fifth) player.
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A few quick games yesterday evening:
- 6 nimmt: the usual chaos
- Can’t Stop Express: I think this is new on BGA, so I was surprised to learn it was published in 1989! A lot of dice rolling and cursing the results of said dice rolls.
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Simlio: I’ve played this a couple of times now and I just don’t like it. Practically every turn someone needs reminding whether the clues are supposed to indicate which card to avoid or which to remove, or what the orientation of the clue card is supposed to mean. It’s like the designers started with the question “what’s the most confusing ruleset we can cram into a 10 minute game?” and went from there
- Diamant/Incan Gold: A surprisingly close game given that normally at least one person who falls into all of the traps!
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Made a bit of a faux pas this evening after a fun dinner with my family. I tried to cram in a teach-and-play of Survive: Space Attack! knowing full well I had a hard deadline to be home (diabetic kitty) and next to no chance of finishing. The teach went worse than expected: I had an enraptured but super worried younger nephew (he was advised it was a nasty game and his older brother was playing); the elder watched TV for the teach but mostly absorbed things through that maddening teen-osmosis; Their mom literally fell asleep… I packed up after a few turns calling it a teach before anyone made real headway and got their feelings hurt.
When we got home and the kiddo was finally down for the count, I got Caper: Europe taught and played, and my partner eked out a win with 38 to my 35. She’s eager for more (called it “like Air, Land & Sea, but fun!” 
), and I’m impressed as well, so that’s getting a big preliminary thumbs up from us.
Gorgeous cards from Keymaster as usual, and I think even nicer than those in Parks. Truly good playing cards are really hard to come by in board games so I always like to call them out when they impress.
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You’re not the only one. I heard how good it was supposed to be, grabbed a couple, was bored from the first game.
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I convinced my partner to play Petrichor with me–just the base game. I said it was a relaxed cloud moving game. Oh I was wrong. Actual two player proved this is what I consider “highly interactive” and my partner calls “Anpiss-Spiel” (a game where you continually piss off others).
So I won by 2 points because my last move in the game was to move the cloud away from the the coffee where he would have won 10 points over my 5 during harvest because it is a straightforward majority ranking. The complication for the coffee tile is it needs sunny weather. Our weather was always sunny and still no coffee grew the whole game–I think we could safely rename the game to “The Coffee Wars”. Instead I moved the cloud to be over the corn (?) where second place gets 7 points and first gains 3. As he had more droplets in the cloud…
Yeah, so right now he doesn’t want a rematch. I will have to make do with losing against Turczi-bot.
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Taught the five year old Arboretum.
Having played many games since my last play I didn’t think it was great. On the sale pile it goes.
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I don’t fancy Arboretum as well nowadays. The grid play is so predictable and samey. Hand management is still tight though.
The only reason I didn’t sold mine is because it’s the beautiful Z-Man edition.
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No such sentiment for me
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*muffled jealous sounds*
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Guest visiting from about four hours’ drive away. Last night: Jaipur, Terminator Dark Fate; today, Spirit Island, Machi Koro 2, A War of Whispers, Star Trek Ascendancy. (Memo to self, if you spot two other players about to win, you don’t have to deal with them both yourself.)
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Caught a little redemption this afternoon with a rematch of Caper: Europe. It was a tight race all game, but my partner never utilized a Blazeblaster, forgetting she had a control synergy with them. Far more critically, she let me keep hold of a few key area control cards on the last two turns that let me swipe a HUGE location from her, and that really put me over the top. I won for making fewer mistakes today, basically, but it’s heating up between us already! Scores were an improvement for us both, ending 55-45 (realistically 47-45 without the location bonus gimme).
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My wife, her brother, and I played Everdell today. I never managed to get much production in my city, so often felt strapped for resources, but did managed to get a Courthouse built, which helped a bit with that.
My wife won with 60, I came in second with 53, and her brother brought up the rear with 35.
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Familiars Trouble , first play. This is a three player only cooperative trick taking game. It’s pretty simple, play a card, follow suit if you can. There are three suits, and you are trying to win task cards, which have a number of each colour required to take them. It was a pleasant enough way to spend half an hour I guess. There’s no real objective, just score as many points as possible. Our performance was rated as “so-so”.
The Key: Murder at the Oakdale Club X 3. We were waiting for our fourth player, and he doesn’t seem to care much for The Key games.
The Crew , a quick couple of games, which all ended in failure.
Break the Code , first play. Another deduction game, but with more math. There are 20 tiles, numbered from 0 to 9. Each number has a black and a white tile, except the 5, both of them are green. Each player takes a number of tiles, leaving some in the middle. The object of the game is to identify the tiles left in the middle. There’s a deck of question cards. You pick a card, ask the question, and everyone (including you) has to answer it. Questions could be “how many black tiles do you have?” or “What’s the sum of your first three tiles?”. It seems tough at first, but gradually you work your way to the answer. Main problem (for me at least) was not enough room on the player sheet to record information. You can cross out numbers, thats easy enough, but adding answers to each question was harder. Maybe you’re not supposed to keep that info. Worth another go.
Manila , I had played this before, but quite a while ago. You are betting on boats as they make their way to port. You can add you token to a boat to take a share if that boat reaches port. You can bet on how many boats reach port, how many fail to reach the port, or even become a pirate and take over ships. It’s all risk and reward. Each ship gets three dice rolls. Successful ships increase their share price, and the game ends when a ship reaches its maximum price. Good fun.
Project ELITE, a 4p, which was a bit chaotic. We did manage the win, but it was close.
The LOOP , last time we played this we got beaten pretty badly. And this time…much the same result.We did survive a bit longer, but still only completed one mission (need four to win). Co-ops shouldnt be too easy I always say, and this definitely isn’t. You can get a bit unlucky, we lost a mission that was almost complete.
Fantasy Realms to finish off the day.
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Got to try out a friends copy of Dune:Imperium this week - it was good. Not really amazing and I’m still not a huge fan of a random market in deck-builders, but I enjoyed it. The conflict mechanic is great though (even if it’s clearly lifted from Arctic Scavengers 
). Runs long though - granted this was a first multiplayer game but I think we hit 3 hours with the teach, for 4 players. It would definitely go faster on repeat plays though. I’d be happy to play it again though - it didn’t feel too long.
Also got Arboretum to the table in a weird game where we both ended up with all the cards for 2 suits between us. So score was unusually high. Luckily I managed to deny him a key suit while preserving one (admittedly small run) that got me the win.
And after no one managed to turn up for our Saturday gaming sesh (thanks to some invalid Covid tests and general busyness), which was sad (but understandable), my wife and I played a few games together instead:
Super Big Boggle, still a go to for us - we never stop after a single round. Word of the day was investment (and I still didn’t win that round!)
Truffle Shuffle, my wife has started requesting this one, which is nice, as I rather like it.
Love Letter
Metro X, my wife’s been struggling with back issues, so was great to find a game that can be played lying down for when it’s acting up. She beat me, but it was close.
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Just a few games yesterday:
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Five Tribes: still fine, my husband likes it a lot more than I do. Probably because he usually wins!
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7 Wonders Duel: the first time I’ve played the physical version rather than on BGA. Still my favourite version of 7 Wonders.
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Crystal Palace: I think this is more faff than it’s worth, but I’ve also been tired 2/3 times I’ve played it, so maybe that’s why. My mood was not helped by, when expressing frustration at being penalised by another player when I was way behind anyway, being told that I’d got myself into this mess because I had made a mistake at the beginning of the game… They weren’t necessarily wrong but I think it’s a bit of a jerk move to point it out (/rant)
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