Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[Bondy034]

Bunch of gaming over the last week:

Village, was pleased to get this one to the table for the first time in yonks. And was pleased to discover it’s still wonderful, one of my absolute faves. I love the subtle black humor here and it’s a great all round mid-weight Euro. Can run a little long, so best with fewer than 4.

Morels x2, my wife’s burgeoning fascination with mushrooms was the driving factor in back to back games of this. It’s a clever little two player set collection deal. Pleasant without being exceptional. Probably won’t turn down a game of it though.

Metro X, my wife rather fancies this one as well, as do I. It’s an interesting puzzle and a solid roll and write all around.

Super Big Boggle x3, no crazy big words this time

Point Salad x2, the more I play this one the more I enjoy it. There’s randomness, sure, but also solid decisions throughout.

Azul: Summer Pavilion, went to a local gaming event in the evening and played this along with the next one there. This one is fun. Feels a little more forgiving than regular Azul. I might like it more, but then I own the first one so not sure I can justify owning both, as they’re very similar despite me liking the differences. And on the plus side I won this one, and I can’t remember the last time I won the original. I’d need more plays to work out if it’s good enough to replace the original.

Tiny Epic Galaxies, this one was just okay for me. Reminded me of Roll Through the Ages, but I think that one is better, offering a little more control and multiple paths to victory. But it wasn’t bad.

[SteveB_uk]

@Bondy034

Azul: Summer Pavilion ,

So this is the only Azul I’ve played, and I understand that it builds slightly from the first one. The scoring (and therefore all your choices) were just slightly too complex to pick up easily if you haven’t played one before. I’m very interested to see if folks who are more familiar with Azul end up liking it.

[VictorViper]

I played through the introductory scenario for Space Cadets: Away Missions last night, and it was an ok time. This was very much a tutorial mission and was positioned as such (replete with warnings about what’s to come!), so the gameplay was relatively one-trick and never threatening. It did at least confirm that the core loop is fun, and should make the first real mission (for which I’m already set up) a little smoother.

This might sound a little lukewarm, but it’s hard to get too enthused about a mission like this. Just setting up for the second mission confirms they aren’t messing around anymore, so I’m hopeful I’ll be able to play another game today for a real taste.

[COMaestro]

Last night I got Spirit Island to the table for the first time in a while. Had to run through the rules briefly, but it came back to me very quickly. Simce it was getting late, I just used one spirit. I tried Rampant Spread of Green, and used a Blight card for the first time (baby steps).

It was pretty much a slaughter. I was able to fully defend the first Ravage between my natual abilities and a minor power I drew, which let the Dahan retaliate with impunity. Each turn I kept avoiding any damage, occasionally hitting back with Dahan, and often able to destroy a town with my innate ability.

Eventually, I unlocked Fear level 3, which win me the game as I had destroyed the one city that starts on the island a few turns earlier. Just really easy game. Need to play again, and maybe introduce some new content, like an adversary or the event cards from the expansions.

[RogerBW]

Had some fairly-local gamers over today…

Steampunk Rally Fusion (by request of one of them; my copy was unplayed since it arrived in January last year). A bit more complex, but nothing super challenging. My distant last place is obviously the result of a flaw in the game design. Clearly Orin Bishop is a [political epithet elided].

Sentinels of the Multiverse Definitive Edition got a bit twiddly for some tastes but I think overall a good time was still had. (As a non-fan of superheroes I don’t know why this game should speak to me, but it does.)

Forum Secret Santa present Paranormal Investigators next, and while it wasn’t the hit it was when I played it in the board game café, we still had a good time. Definitely at the party-game end of the scale, but in the right context this is Just Fine.

Finally Alien: Fate of the Nostromo (we played Nemesis a while ago on the same table, but I’m the only player who was present for both). In some respects better (none of the hidden map nonsense), certainly more straightforward, but like Nemesis it didn’t grab me, even as a fan of the films. (Possibly because what I get from the films is specific to me and what the board games give me is what the designers of those games got from the films instead…)

[VictorViper]

@RogerBW

…like Nemesis it didn’t grab me, even as a fan of the films. (Possibly because what I get from the films is specific to me and what the board games give me is what the designers of those games got from the films instead…)

Have you had a chance to try Another Glorious Day in the Corps yet? I share your reservations with these games but I just couldn’t help myself with that one (mostly for the paint project). When I got it home and realized it basically iterates upon the Flamme Rouge exhaustion mechanism, I got real hungry for it. My god I need to get off my ass and paint so I can play it.

[RogerBW]

I haven’t. I’ll keep an eye out at Airecon.

[VictorViper]

You can believe I planted a little buzzword there for you. Two of em, I guess.

[lalunaverde]

Three times Pax Renaissance - The initial investment paid off after the subpar first game. I played it with the same peeps from econ clique who played it last week. So the rules was easy to explain. I think Pax series are the kind of thematic games that I don’t mind having to learn the rules for. They are very tactical (when I prefer opaque strategic ones) but the struggle is pretty interesting to see. It’s standard Pax where clever moves can be pulled and you respect opposing moves when they do an astounding reversal or a game changing move.

Another important point is that Phil Eklund’s “my little thesis” doesn’t seem to impact the game design and thematic feel. I like how the Ottomans are ridiculously strong. I like how it takes effort to create republics, and pulling it off is very satisfying. It seems that the Imperial Victory is the type that stops the game if someone is running away with it.

The kingdoms of Pax Ren feel more alive than the static powers of Pax Pamir 2. But Pax Pamir 2 has the advantage of a more streamlined design that still captures the spirit of Pax.

Won twice and “Adam” won once. The last game was the most interesting as I pulled off a Holy Victory, despite both of them knocking me down. And “Ellen” was just a turn away from a Republic Victory.

For a more simpler interplayer tussle, I would rather suggest Inis or other high interaction hybrids. Too many little rules in these games. Still, I’m keeping this series.

Yokohama - “heavy Istanbul” is my two word description. It has a better forward planning and a wider space for creative decisions in Yokohama than Istanbul, but I am still not super about the whole “Are you finish with those errands?” vibe that it shares with Istanbul. A bit too tactical for me. I’ll just play a hybrid/area control game if I want tactical games. “Ellen” won this comfortably.

[VictorViper]

Did you know Prof. Russell Pelham is also an ordained priest and booking now-now-now! for all your matrimonial and last rites needs? So he’s got that going for him too!

Catastrophe befalls the stalwart yeoman as our duo stuffs into an already overcrowded elevator. I thought impatience was a virtue? Stopped dead at the finish line with the requirements met. Well, except that last pesky one. “Next time”.

[Phil]

It’s a lovely morning here, so I’m sitting outside enjoying the sun and the view with one of the cats, a cup of tea, my Regicide deck, and this laptop. There’s a breeze, but somehow it didn’t bother the cards even once as I played my way to a rare Gold victory. I’ll just soak in all this goodness for a bit.

[Simfers]

We broke out Bunny Kingdom for the first time in a long time today and played twice without the expansion. Rules came back pretty quickly. Lost both games (because of course I did, I’m still me) but they were close, with the widest gap being 7 points.

It’s a delightful game. The mechanics are simple and lightweight, although not devoid of strategy at all, but the art and the puns really carry it further.

We’ll be headed to the family farm for the week and that’ll probably be a game I bring to try with a third player (my wife’s brother is keen to try some games). I imagine the board must get very tight very fast.

[InkyBloc]

I love Bunny Kingdom with 3 or 4 (haven’t played it with 2). It’s true the board does get tight, but surprisingly often a person who has the option to take the space you really want will pass it by because there’s other stuff too good to pass up (as long as you’re not playing with hateful players).

[Phil]

@Phil

My first game of Under Falling Skies, on the suggested-first-game easy difficulty … I’ll hopefully have a more challenging game tomorrow on a harder difficulty, as the base game definitely needs to be harder than that to have any kind of staying power.

I kicked it up to maximum difficulty today, and got annihilated three times in succession.

We’re good : )

I played twice in Roswell (the second time with the research bonus), and then in New York with a robot die. The third attempt was the most successful of the three, but I still needed another 27 research points!

Time to dial it back again…

[bort]

Seasons , first game. The board is made up of the four seasons, with its own dice. In each round, a player takes one of the dice to use. Dice give you resources, allow you to take a card, increase your summoning ability (so you can play more cards). Cards have a summoning cost, and sometimes a cost to then play them into your tableau. We used to first 30 cards in the deck, which are the basic cards, the others are advanced. It’s all about the crystals in this game, crystals = victory points. The main board also shows how to transmute resources into crystals, it’s different for each season. It was an ok game, bit mean in places. A few cards take victory points from other players, or destroy cards they have in play. It seemed hard to have much of a strategy, you don’t know how the dice will come out, and you don’t know what cards you’ll be dealt.

Witchstone , first game.A Knizia co-design, which he doesn’t seem to do much of. Each player has 15 double hex pieces, but only five to choose from at any one time. There are six action types: energy (create paths on the main board), witch (move your witches on the main board), pentagram (move along the pentagram track), crystal (move crystals on your player board), magic wand (another track to move along), and scroll (take cards from the market). So you place a piece with two action types, and do those actions. But if you can make a contiguous group of an action type, you get multiples of that type. Both of the tracks (pentagram and magic wand) give you extra actions. Also, moving a witch onto a location first lets you take the action token that is there. Also, moving crystals off your player board allows you to take extra actions as well. So many extra actions. It’s a relatively quick game, you have 11 moves in total. It’s a bit of a point salad, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. I thought it was a really good game, will definitely play it again.

So Clover!

The Key: Theft at Cliffrock Villa X 3. This is probably the Key game we’ve played the least of, not really sure why.

Fantasy Realms

[COMaestro]

Another play of Lost Cities this morning. Took back my title of World’s Best Explorer after losing the first round by 20ish points, only to win the next two to bring the final scores to 201 - 135.

Then, we later played our first game of Raccoon Tycoon, which is rather misnamed as with just three players, the only sign of a raccoon is the start player marker. The game itself is pretty easy to play, with players choosing one of five actions to do on their turn.

You can do Production, which means playing a card from your hand, collecting three of the commodities shown at the bottom of the card, then increasing the price of the commodities shown on the top of the card on the price tracks.

You can sell one type of commodity for the current market value, then reduce the value by the number of u its sold.

You can buy buildings, which give you various benefits, allow you to hold one more commodity, and are 1 VP each at the end of the game.

You can buy towns using commodities, which are worth VP, and the game ends if all the towns are purchased.

You can start an auction for a railroad, starting at the price shown on the card. If you pass once you can no longer bid on that card. Goes around until someone wins it. If it was not the player who started the auction, that player gets another action to perform, and it can even be starting another auction. Game will also end if the last railroad card is won. There are four of each type of railroad in the deck, and the more you have, the more the set is worth.

That’s it! It plays really easily, and if it weren’t for our kids causing havoc, we likely could have finished in an hour instead of the two hours it took. At the end of the game you add up all your VP’s, plus a bonus 2 for ever pair of one railroad and one town card. I won the game with 52, my brother-in-law was second with 40, and my wife had 34, though we realized about halfway through the game that she had been using one of her buildings wrong, to her detriment, so likely she would have scored a bit more.

Decent little game and we all had fun with it. Want to play again with no kid interruptions.

[EnterTheWyvern]

Last night was euros night! First up was Pulsar 2849. Played the intro scenario after a pandemic gap from my first play. This is super point salad style euroing. I reasonably enjoyed it but I think playing the intro game is a bit lacklustre. A bit like the opening Teotihuacan set up there’s a definite way you get pointed by the game. I’d like to play again soon to see if the HQ boards and variable awards/tech opens things up a bit. I definitely felt some frustration early on around the turn order track and the clever median die mechanic. My hope is the HQ boards open up other ways to achieve things so being stuck in turn order less leaves one a bit stuck on choices. Withholding judgement for now bit interested to try the full game.

Next we hopped on to the orient express in First Class. Kenneth Branagh’s moustache was excellent in this one. Played with modules A and E. Super enjoyed getting this one to the table. It’s crunchy, sharp, fast and ultra combotastic! I ran away with this one thanks to some brutal comboing of mechanics and contracts out the gate then overlaying the mechanics with switches. Some serious lapping occurred thanks to smashing ahead to the 10 trains and getting both the first conductor bonuses for the last cars. In a novel thing for me I didn’t extend my rail line at all so I think I had a luxury train selling food and drinks at high prices on a tot track on the Isle of Wight or something. Didn’t get near to the orient, might have mislaid the theme somewhere. Only issue is it was so fun I’m now eyeing up the overly expensive Ultimate Railroads box…

[Chewy77]

Yesterday morning my 9 yo daughter came up with an interesting suggestion: “Daddy, do you fancy a game of Root? We haven’t played in ages.”

As you can imagine, I didn’t hesitate. So she got ready with the Marquise du Cat, and I went with my favourite Vagabond, the Tinker. I did struggle a bit to begin with, as she was not crafting much, and I was not getting good items to craft either (just a boring backpack, that you start with one as the Tinker anyway). She was building left right and centre, and on one occasion she was out of wood, attacked me instead. I thought we we re going to be friendly, but this was Root after all.

On that very previous round, I got a third hammer crafted, and pulled off a Power of the Mice card that destroyed all her buildings and warriors in Mice clearings. Just at the end of that turn I got a similar card with Foxes, that crippled her. So I overtook her (she was away 19-14 before I crafted that 3rd hammer) and I won on the next turn doing a random Vagabond mission (giving a Speech, I think).

So I won, mainly because of luck with the cards, and she took it well. We enjoyed ourselves, thinking we need to play it more often. And what a lot of game in a modest sized box.

[Whistle_Pig]

Next time somebody tells me that Root is too complicated I’ll let them know that it’s suitable for a 9 year-old!

[Chewy77]

She’s played it a lot in the Steam app, that helps. And I did “help” her a bit now and then with some decisions. But yes.