Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

Boardgames
4791

Some games arrived from Kickstarters and preorders and so I got to try Factory Funner for the first time. Yay!

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My very first solo factory. This is a lot harder than anticipated. I thought this was going to be a fast moving thing with a side of puzzling. But it‘s more like „OMG what am I doing now?“ I assume that with more tiles to select from in multiplayer this may get better or worse. But in solo you have a stack of 8 machines that you reveal one after another and have to put on your board. Luckily, it is allowed to rebuild the connections and move the reservoirs but machines stay where they are and I had no idea where to place them for best efficiency. Still I got enough points to count for a win. Love it.

I also sneaked a peek into Bear Raid rules. Can‘t wait to try this on my friends (it‘s 3-6). I got a good laugh out of reading the company names: GameStart, Nile, Unusual Oil … and some of those event cards.

Played a first game of Marvel Splendor with my partner which went 17 to 17… I thought I had miscounted and he won but I held the Avengers token and so once again… my game. But because it was really close and he saw the cuthroat move he could have done to secure a win right after he lost…. It was okay-ish. Cards were shuffled badly we had very little blue in the game. To win he would have just needed to reserve the blue card that came up…. I <3 Gamora!

And I managed to lose a 1 spirit game of Spirit Island with Thunderbirdy—uh I mean Lightning‘s Swift Strike against Level 1 Prussia due to cascading blight. It was on the app where I play faster. I negelected to remove one blight token one turn which I could have done and that cost me the game.

And we played a couple of cases of Micromacro. It‘s neat but omg my eyes. Everything is so small… we‘ll play some more I am sure. The first 2 cases did not blow me away though. They are quick. So that‘s a good thing.

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4792

I found it bad on my back too. It’s a shame the included plastic magnifiers are such poor quality. We used the magnifier app on our phones/ipad.

Still great fun tho!

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4793

If we ever get Flash Point (it looks neat, I just might), the dog and cat will be forever safe, I can promise you that.

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4794

Better, in my opinion! Based off Factory Fun anyway. When we play it two-player we flip two machines each to still have that choice. I assume the new version is a little more forgiving - if you just had 8 machines to place with no choice in ours, the tears would start soon and they would not stop.

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4795

@pillbox Where you there?! How did you know? :smiley:

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4796

I’d forgotten about this, but I really want to try it. Hope it picks up for you

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4797

Who do you think started that fire?

Hint: it’s not Billy Joel

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4798

The cat, obviously.

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4799

No, he’s on the firefighting team

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4800

I got this game called Rip Off on import from America. In the game everyone is given a fake £100 note that they tear up.

So the idea is this - three pictures are revealed and you tear your £100 note so that it can cover the area of 2 of the 3 pictures. So it might be with one piece you tear off it has to cover a hot dog picture and a piano picture.

There’s this beautiful mix of theme and gameplay where you try and shave and save a mm here or there to cover the “cost” of the items but if you don’t cover the items - it’s wasted money. So you make a choice - be profligate and make sure you can cover the items but your £100 note has to last the whole game so every extra mm you use is just dooming you to an earlier end game.

It’s fun and light and there’s almost nothing to it but it’s also kind of interesting too.

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4801

A £100 note? Can we see a pic? What design did they choose?

I admit that out of the 16 years I lived in the UK, I only saw 50 pound notes from people visiting that exchanged money abroad… other than that it was all 20s or smaller.

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4802

Managed a decent games night with four of us in the weekend. We started off with a game all four of us have been learning recently, Great Western Trail. When me and my girlfriend had played this at 2, we had moved fairly slowly trying to learn different strategies. The host seemed to have more of a plan, and went all out for the station-masters. He also kept racing around the trail at quite a pace so we were all trying to keep up. His wife is struggling a bit more with the game so I’m not sure playing like this has helped her learn it in the two plays they’ve had previously (he’s also played it a fair bit solo). I talked her through a few different ways to play and showed her my strategy - I initially loaded up on cowboys to get some good cards and the ability to travel far up the track to New York. I then picked up a few builders to generate some points that way. I’d assumed the host was going to come out on top as he seemed to have a clear plan, but his lack of cow cards and inability to deliver far up the track limited his score significantly. I ended up with 95 to his 75, his wife on 64… My girlfriend trailed behind on 44. She wanted the cowboy strategy but couldn’t get it going and didn’t adapt.

Next up, Rajas of the Ganges dice charmers. We played this at 3. I’m on a losing streak of about 8 or 9 games on this, despite a winning streak on the board game. Add another one to the L column.

We finished with Lost Ruins of Arnak with the Expedition Leaders expansion. A four player version of this feels very different to a 2 player - in a good way. A lot more going on, options blocked etc. And you see more cards. I eeked out a narrow win with 72 point as the Explorer, my girlfriend placed second as the professor (68 points) 3rd was the host as the Baroness (67 points) and 4th was his wife as the captain on 66.

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4803

Okay it’s really a hundred dollar bill. :(.

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4804

And a lot of places wouldn’t accept them, because they were such an obvious target for forgery (both because of the value and because most people didn’t see them often enough to be familiar with them).

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4805

Although pound coins are (were?) the most forged currency followed by the £5 note

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4806

My partner and I finally got Lost Ruins of Arnak to the table since grabbing the Expedition Leaders expansion, and we started only using the titular module (but otherwise incorporating all the new cards). We’re still pretty satisfied with the challenge from the snake temple, so we held off on changing that up for now. I played as The Captain, with my partner as The Falconer and we both enjoyed the added wrinkle the powers add to the game. I was able to put together a monstrous series of turns in round 3 that let me really pull ahead for the win at the end, but neither of us got the sense it was due to any imbalance in our abilities. On a first impression, I’m very pleased with how easy it is to add in these asymmetric characters.

This morning I played Kick-Ass using Night Bitch against Vic Gigante and his Skull Gang thugs. This was a really close call and I think I could have pulled it off if not for some wheel-spinning early on that revealed the boss plot a full turn later than I had hoped. There seems to be pretty good synergy with Night Bitch versus Vic and his gang, so it was a lot of fun to attempt as a lone wolf. In the end I was able to cripple his influence, but just didn’t have the time or weaponry to really take the fight to him. I knocked out 1/3 of his thugs and was prepared to focus on laying into them but just didn’t have the time.

We’ll see how I feel about the game after a dozen plays or so, as there seems to be a lot of talk about broken difficulty. So far I’m not really seeing it (though I can see some matchups being painful at lower counts), and in the meantime it’s a blast. Super happy about taking a risk on this one.

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4807

Last night my wife and I tried out Lost Cities for the first time. We had the headspace for something familiar and a bit meaty, or new and light, and I opted for the new game.

I got utterly demolished in the first round, my wife getting 112 points thanks to a great run in white with wagers and at least 8 cards to get 84 points from it alone. Meanwhile, I had a couple of negative expeditions, including the blue one that I started with, but only managed to get the 5 and the 9 into, for -12 in blue after the wager, winding up with a total of 18.

I did much better in the second round, scoring 45 to my wife’s 25, but still trailing by a lot, 137 - 63.

The third round, though, I managed a few great expeditions, including one for 104 points, added to the 56 I was able to get from others just gave me a smashing 160 for the round! My wife was only able to get one decent expedition going, but did not get a lot for it, giving her only 55 for the round.

Amazing comeback win for me, 223 - 192.

It is an interesting game, though you can get a bit screwed in the card draw. It always stung a bit when you played, say a 5 in an expedition, just to draw the 3 or 4 right afterward. Still, lots of room for strategy, holdong back cards your opponent needs, or discarding ones they can no longer use. Good fun, plays quick, and the big cards are nice to shuffle.

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4808

Wow those are high scores.

There is an app that will do the scoring for you by taking a picture.

I’m terrible at Lost Cities. It makes me swear more than any other game. It’s a brilliant game and a superb piece of design though

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4809

Bank of England say its the £20…

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4810

Well there you go.

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