Games day
Lost Ruins of Arnak - Fun game of placing the workers and playing the cards to get the stuff, to convert the stuff into points. No need to own 7/10
Boonlake - fun game of placing the tiles and playing the cards to get the stuff to convert the stuff into points. No need to own 7/10
Lords of Vegas - Fun game of flipping the cards to get the money to convert into casinos to convert into points. 8/10 Own it
I just came close to a loss in Spirit Island. This has not happened in a long time, I donāt usually try to play on any settings above my skill-levelā¦ so what happened was that I chose Lure of the Deep Wilderness and Vulcano Looming High. I thought they were going to synergize with Badlands tokens and forgot that Volcano is stationary and restricted to mountains while Lure cannot go to the coastsā¦
I added Brandenburg Prussia Level 1 because both spirits are only moderate complexity.
Mistakes were made: I forgot that Volcano has higher reach when they reach a stack of 3 presences. And at first I forgot that Lure is restricted to inland.
And in an early event, I lost 2āTWO!!āround cardsā¦
I have never seen so many major powers in a game. I ended up winning through fear because Lure has decent fear generation through both their powers and I ended the game playing a card that generates 6 fear and 20 damage on a field that had 2 cities and a bunch of other stuff on it giving me the last 2 fear cards. Lure played it but it was actually a āVulcanic Eruptionā so really fitting in a wayā¦
I really need a repeat of that combo without making the mistakes.
PS: I almost ran out of Badlands tokensā¦
I just got utterly whalloped by my darling wife at Great Western Trail. Score of 165-124, but we actually had no idea who was winning until we started tallying the points. We both had elements we were scoring a lot in. Fantastic game.
I took Secrets of the Lost Tomb for its inaugural spin today and wow, what a ride. I won by the skin of my teeth and definitely fudged rules along the way, but figure itās a wash in terms of which side won out from my constant little miscalculations. This game is a hot mess and itās fabulous for it. The first couple of rounds really dragged as I muddled through the turn structure, but once I was comfortable enough to let go and really play through, it got incredibly fun. I probably took close to 90 minutes resolving 2 uneventful rounds, but finished the rest of the game (ending on turn 9) after another 90. This included the three mini-boss encounters (2/3 complete) needed to make the Big Boss even manageable.
The big emergent moment of the game came about on turn 6, when the mummy broke free of its curse. We hadnāt even made it to the third floor yet, which meant that he could only spawn directly on the entryway to that levelāas a boss he could freely move up to the next level. Lucky for us, part of our dallying was to purchase a magic ropeāhis movement allowance would see him escaping the tomb (primary loss condition) within only two turns, so with no time left, we jumped down a mineshaft and took the hits for it.
We confronted the boss head-on, but after a full round hacking at him, we decided to use our (magical!) rope to make a tactical retreat and power up to get ahead of the attrition. We both used special powers to do this, and our rope sent us straight to the entrance of the tomb, ready to go shopping with the soul monger and then await our doom. We buffed up and held our ground.
Why did we leave the 3rd floor? We stopped the boss in its tracks just shy of the exit, but couldnāt take him down, which left us exposed to the hordes of monsters that had been spawning and anxiously awaiting our appearance since the mummy arrived. Worse, we drew an event that left us barehanded against the assault! By the end of that round I had a dead hero and three dead companions. Throwing everything I could at the boss, I took a huge chunk out of him with my one last Hail Mary attack, and then barely chipped him to death with my remaining actions.
Surely my last hero died before making it out. The undead raptor hunting party would have seen to that. But the ancient pharaoh was unable to escape the tomb to renew his enslavement of humanity.
Ark Nova , first play. Iād been looking forward to this one, itās been up on the bgg hotness list for a while now, and sounded like a game Iād enjoy. You are all working on your own zoo. There are three tracks to progress on: appeal, conservation, and reputation. The end of the game is triggered when someones tokens on the conservation and appeal tracks overlap. We used a variant from bgg to make the start a bit smoother ā you start with specified cards and suggested moves for your first couple of turns. We thought it would make the game a bit faster too, I had read complaints on game length.
Thereās a lot to think about here, each animal (and there are 212 unique zoo cards) can have itās own special ability. We enjoyed the game, but we found it very long. We basically called it at three hours, finishing would have been at least another hour, maybe two. Maybe weāre bad players (first game, obviously canāt play perfectly), but getting conservation points was a real effort. And that is the only way to finish the game, converging your appeal and conservation markers. Even with the redefined starting cards, it was hard going after that. For example, I had the Australia project, and I started with two Australian animals. Enough to get the bottom level of the project card (for two Australia icons). But after that ā just didnāt see another Australian animal. I seemed to get stuck ā couldnt afford the enclosure and the animals, so all I could do was run the break timer down to get more income.
Ilium , first play. Picked this up because it was a Knizia game. Itās a simple enough game, the board has dig sites with random artifacts. You place your guys on the pathways between the sites. When a pathway is full, whoever has the majority gets to pick a site and take the lowest artifact there. You get points at the end of the game for having a majority for each artifact type, and also points for complete sets. Very quick game, and we enjoyed it.
Sleuth , first play. A real blast from the past, game first came out in 1971. Its a deduction game. There are 36 gem cards. There are three types of gem (opal, diamond, pearl), three arrangements (solitaire, pair, cluster), and four colours (red, blue, yellow, green). One card is removed, and you have to deduce which card it is. You have a deck of question cards, so you could ask someone how many blue cards they have, or how many red pairs. It was fun, but we all failed to identify the missing card. I thought I had it down to two, but it turned out to be neither of them. Obviously I made a mistake somewhere.
Noch Mal! , first play. Pretty simple roll and write game, you roll six dice and use a colour and a number pair to mark off squares on your board. You get points for being the first to complete a column, and for crossing off all of a colour. You can partially fill an area (so you could cross off two red squares in a block of four), but you canāt use less of a number (canāt cross off four squares if you roll a five). Quite fun, I lost very badly.
Played a number of games today. Kids were being relatively chill, so my wife and I played a couple of games of Azul, which I managed to win.
That was later followed by a couple of games of Ethnos, which I also won, though our second game had both of us achieving really high scores as we both lapped the board twice.
Then later still, as our older kiddo napped, her brother joined us for Lords of Waterdeep, using the Undermountain expansion. Another high scoring game, nothing record setting, but her brother won with a score over 200, and I was just shy of that, with my wife bringing up the rear.
Some games over the last week:
Just One, played a game of this with a packed house - went over really well. Iām told that after I went for a lie down after game #1, they played a perfect round! (though my wife informed me they may have been cheatingā¦ 
)
Super Big Boggle, a few rounds of this during the week - saw our highest score ever which was high seventies! Not my wife or I but a friend who spied an āingā that we had missed 
Forbidden Stars, was pleased to get this one to the table but my enthusiasm for it has waned. Itās clever but just too much rules overhead for my preferences thesedays, and lots of dipping into the manual during the game to look up edge cases and little details. Will be moving it on.
Mundus Novus, this one is still great fun. Not sure the events need to be in the game - I donāt feel like they add a lot and most of it is just moderately annoying. I won our game of this the turn after one of the other players was 1 card away from a complete run! Some good runs and ongoing income from a first turn acquisition of Hernan Cortez gave me a solid lead in doubloons.
Arctic Scavengers, this was a little long at 4 but is still one of my all time favourite deck builders (The Quest for El Dorado is also up there). Was two points away from a win thanks to acquiring a couple of the gangs. Itās probably not the best first deckbuilder (as it was for one of our players) I think El Dorado has it beat there, but the theme in this one really elevates it for me.
Hanabi, my quest to play all my games with 2 or fewer logged plays on BGG (which I started tracking late 2019) led us to try this one, and itās still great fun. Such a unique experience of limited communication and deduction as a relatively fast playing card game. Great stuff, and we did decently with 19. I suspect itāll get played again sometime soon 
I played a two handed game of Great Western Trail yesterday, just so I was prepared to teach it to my girlfriend at a later point. After hearing lots of comments about how difficult it is to get your head around and to teach, I was surprised by how straight forward it all seemed. Lots of things to consider, but it all clicks together fairly easily.
Usually these two handed learning games last as long as I need to be sure I know what Iām doing, but this is the first time doing that where Iāve actually really enjoyed it. Itās such an interesting puzzle. Controlling both players, I managed to make one go heavy in to buildings and the other in to cattle cards (while obviously dabbling in other things). Despite completely different end games, the scores were only 4 points ahead. Will try to solo next and then hopefully a proper 2 player game soon.
Played 2 more games of My Cityāsomehow weāre not into the 3 game rhythm the chapters assumeā¦ I like itāmy partner struggles a bit. At least he won game 3, so that was good.
I played a long solo of Obsession against Windsor and lost. Itās supposed to be an easy opponent but I was a bit unlucky and only won a single courtship. Still, lovely game. Though with 2 long phone calls right in the middle of the game I kind of wish I had settled on the short game. I am happy this plays so well as a solo but I am still waiting for the end of the pandemic to invite āmy girlsā over for that Jane Austen brunch that was the āreasonā (aka pretense) for buying the game in the first place.
Yeah, the game is very intuitive once you have a basic grasp of the rules. It was one of the easier games to teach over here.
I think itās a long teach rather than super complicated. You have to describe the action of all the neutral buildings and all the private ones.
Great game though
Iām a few turns into a second attempt at Shadows of Malice, using just the base game before opening the huge and amazing can of worms that is its expansion. I made a first attempt a few days ago, but packed up after a few turns feeling unprepared and poorly configured for a first game (one map tile, two avatars).
The manual is actually quite good, but structured in such a way that itās a nightmare for quick reference in-game. This wouldnāt be such an issue for rule reminders and edge cases, but there is no quick reference for the turn structure or player actions, either as a standalone card or even within the manual. Thankfully this has been addressed on BGG so Iāll be making a trip to the copy shop for that.
Aside from needing a second full pass at the manual, it also felt weird using a single map tile. I was having a hard time wrapping my head around why one would even want to play a solo game on a single tile, based on the win/loss conditions. It looks like thereās some consensus that you want to run 2+ map tiles using at least 3 avatars, so thatās what Iāve set up for this attempt. Itās already feeling better suited for a first play, if not also for a solo run.
Itās amazing how far just one extra piece of documentation can go sometimes. This might have been a hurdle not worth jumping if not for 8 years of cult fandom urging me on at this point. And this is the 2019 revised edition!
Just played my first game of Welcome Toā¦ The Moon, which I rather like and my partnerā¦ dislikes.
I tried to sneak it past her that itās the sequel to Welcome Toā¦ Your Perfect Home, which she despises, but about halfway through the game she glanced at the box cover and the lightbulb clicked.
āOh! That explains the awful artwork!ā
Her scathing judgments aside, she won by a fair margin (her rocket launched before mine was past halfway) and I think itās pretty satisfying. I also like that they included a specifically single-player campaign mode, which it looks like I will be using for the rest of my games until the AfterTimes are upon us.
Interesting side note: the actions are very comparable to the original Welcome Toā¦, but arenāt used for the first mission. Which was nice! Makes it a lot more gentle to get into, toning down the complexity of teaching it. And, it should be noted, that my partner didnāt hate it, which is a big, big step up from the original. Iām not sure yet if itās better than the original, but it uses dry-erase, which is a nice theoretical upgrade, and the 8 different campaign/mission styles is a neat tweak as well.
Had a good play weekend.
Art Robbery ā Nice filler game, I didnāt think I would like it as much as I did. Also always nice to see the Publisher Helvetiq doing well.
Dreadful Circus ā My first play, unsure about it, maybe I need to see more of the cards to make a real strategy.
Blank Slate ā I love word games and this is a nice one. All players get the same word with a blank and have to write something to complete ( Sky___ ā Skyline) match with another players word. We played twice First time I won, second time I lost miserably, trying to be clever is pretty dumb in this game.
Scape Goat ā I like it, but not as much as my group does. Winning by framing doesnāt happen that much.
Sushi Go ā Great game, I canāt really explain why I love this game so much, but donāt like 7 Wondersā¦
Shamans ā I really like the art design, and a trick tacking game with a traitor mechanic seems fun, but I am not totally convinced by this.
Welcome back to the Dungeon Āā Fine, good new heroes, some new monsters.
Iāve managed to find some games my partner likes!
Since trying one at Christmas, weāve been working our way through my stockpile of Exit games. So far weāve done The Mysterious Museum, The Abandoned Cabin, Theft on the Mississippi, and The Haunted Rollercoaster. All taking about 1-1.5 hours and only needing 1 or 2 help cards (where weāve invariably kicked ourselves for not realising something obvious).
Then last night we played some other games.
We started off with Fishing For Words, which is fairly simple word game that I got for Christmas. Itās basically Scrabble but with dice instead of tiles and no board. You roll the dice, make a word, then your opponent rolls everything left, makes a word that connects crossword style, then you pick up everything not used in their word and repeat like that until youāve both made 5 words.
Good for a quick and easy game, but Iāve got better word games if I want something more substantial.
For more silly dice fun, I brought out Cindr, the dragon dating game. I think thereās limited life in the game because there are only so many cards in the box, but itās still fun to bring out and introduce to new people. Pretty much zero strategy involved though.
Finished up by introducing her to The Mind where we managed to get to level 10 before losing both our lives.
Played games with @lalunaverde and 2 more today.
Started with Tharos first play of a spieleworx game I backed in KS. Wasnāt good so itāll go on the sell pile. Wasnāt bad but itās averageness was a bit dull and kind of frustrating.
Next Callimala which as always was a delight. I shot in to a strong lead but ran out of steam a bit, didnāt get much help from the action card deck and made some sequencing errors so lost out on final scoring by 5 points. Of the games that seem to get modern euro with old school feels this is the only one Iāve played and really liked.
Next up was a game of Shamans which remains a curio. I want to play again with the same group to see if a second play with a consistent group does something extra to it. I donāt know if thereās too little input from the players or if itās maybe a bit more subtle still.
Lastly when the Green Moon set off for some well earned rest the remaining 3 had 3 games of Quarriors. This game is very silly and weirdly satisfying to me still. No regrets on getting the big box and Iāll look forward to more nonsense from this in the future.
That first mission is a bit of a con. It sort of makes you think youāll like a completely different game to the normal one.
I kind of really hate how wildly it departs from the standard rules in the first go.
āBefore you play Adventure 1, make sure you learn all the normal rules!ā
āOkay, I will!ā
āExcellent! Now, to play Adventure 1, ignore all the rules you just learned.ā
āā¦ bugger.ā
Ra: the Dice Game - horrible game. Took out whatās interesting about Ra: the Board Game. I wasnāt interested with what people are rolling, so it becomes more solitaire.
Calimala - another strike in my 10x10!
Tharos - I didnāt like it. The others, I think, enjoyed it more than I did.
Shaman - I think I made my decision with this. I like it, but I have too many filler games.
For what itās worth Iām planning to hang on to my copy at least for now.
