Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[gmwhite999]

Two quiet nights in so a chance to try two of my newest purchases.

Friday night gave me the chance to test Concordia with the Solitaria expansion. The solo variant works really well and the decisions as to where Contrarius (your automata opponent) builds are pretty quick and easy to determine. Contrarius seemed to expand its reach quicker and further than me (as Solitaria) although I was able to buy more action cards and three of the Specialists. As before, the scoring seemed close while calculating the result but in the end Solitaria won by 136 points to Contrarius’s 119. I will try it again one night soon but playing as two players with the Contrarius bot (yes, that is an option) and using the larger board for variety.

Saturday night saw me get Endangered to the table for the first trail game, a solo two-hander with the Philantropist and Zoologist working to save the Tigers. I managed to reveal the ambassadors to influence quickly and could try to plan my approach to winning, focusing on deforestation and action cards. This proved useful as my tiger numbers were pretty low throughout the game and I rolled terribly for offspring so only a few new tigers were born. The persistent impact cards were nasty though so next game I have to try to get rid of those quicker. The game ended on the final (9th) round, when I managed to get the influence of 5 of the 6 ambassadors; I would have won on the 8th round if my roll for the Pakistan ambassador had been better. Lovely game as a solo puzzle: pretty tense and I certainly felt up against it despite the planning and range of possible actions available, including duplicates to mitigate dice placement rules - assuming there isn’t a rule preventing such duplicate actions which I missed! I have the New Species expansion to try too but will try to save the sea otters from the base game next time I play.

[VictorViper]

Another round of Tales from the Loop and wow what a difference it made going back through the manual with a game under my belt! The scenario (Firestarter) had a major time crunch, with an automatic loss condition after only the first week this time, and I couldn’t pull it off.

I caught some nice early luck with my Bookworm character as her chore and the single (initial) special location were based at the school. On the other hand, I was dealing with a ton of rumours in restricted zones and was having no luck hacking the machines for their critical piggyback rides. With movement at a premium I was forced to give up on my Metalhead’s chore so she could keep some extra time available to get around.

At the beginning of Friday it was looking like a complete blowout, but by the end of the day I had popped a major plot point and, because I had amassed a decent mix of (thus far unhelpful) items and anomalies, set off a major cascade. With the weekend starting and three extra actions each, there was some chance I might actually pull it off, but eventually I hit the wall. I flipped what I presume was the final major task and all my wheel-spinning finally bit me: I needed to spend 5 Insight, I had zero, and it was going to take me at least two days to get it. With a huge pile of free time left to spend and no good way to spend it, my kids split off and went home, deflated, to try and enjoy what was left of their weekend.

This probably doesn’t look a lot different than the last one, does it?

[yashima]

Played a solo of Imperium: Classics. Me as the Celts vs the bot as Macedonians.

Since I had not played in a while, lots of rulebook consulting. And I agree. It’s bad. Not at first glance the layout is clean and it looks like they followed some of the usual structures: card anatomy, setup, turn structure… but from there it devolves. Because the layout is clean, it also lacks structure so the eye can easily pick out which paragraphs for example represent the three alternatives you have in a turn or when the description for clean up starts.

And in too many places they neglected to define “default” rules instead relying on implicit explanations. For example when your deck runs out and you get to reshuffle you get to add a new card to the deck but only if you didn’t already do that this turn which is marked with an “X” (exhaust) chip. It is obvious that they want to put a break on that because running through all the cards is a viable strategy already and slowing that strategy down is good. But the explanation for it is never explicitly given.

Then there are the omissions that fuck with the bot. The most important thing is that the Unrest cards which cause a lot of negative points and fill up your hand uselessly and thus need to be dealt with are never explained for the bot. They just FORGOT to mention (it’s in the errata) that the bot “returns” those to the Unrest pile and so loses an action. By forgetting that they made it so unrest cards would run into the “catch all” action that is usually very valuable because it is supposed to happen rarely.

All that said, I really like playing the game. I lost (once again) with my 72 to the bots 79 points but building up your civilization, using your powers, gaining Glory cards, allies, lands and techs while building cities and shrines and temples… is just comfortable deck building fun, especially because the whole time you want to keep your deck small (unless your the Arthurians I think). I like deck builders with small decks.

So for me: a keeper. But I completely agree with whoever said they sold it in protest of the rulebook.

[BigJackBrass]

It’s not a game I’ve played or even seen before, but I thought you might enjoy the fact that this even exists:

Robert Ross

[RossM]

Which reminds me. French people don’t use the word innuendo. If you asked a Frenchmen for an innuendo, they wouldn’t give you one.

[Chewy77]

Soloed last night a quick game of Architects of the West Kingdom. Changed strategy completely, went for the cathedral rather than my usual tax avoidance-low virtue scheme, conditioned by my starting set of building cards (all 5 in hand were 7 VP or lower, so great fodder for that cathedral).

Won marginally 29-25, just hitting that top tier of the cathedral in the turn that closed the game for me. I was lucky two apprentices I enrolled were giving me extra wood and stone, that really helped.

[bengeile]

Taught some kids how to play Planet and had a great time. It’s nice to be able to play half a teaching game, and then be able to reset and watch the kids play on their own.

[VictorViper]

I need to log a shameful skunking tonight after a thorough beating from my partner in Set & Match. We had some great rallies throughout and every game was close, but I could never seal the deal and she took the match with a full three sets to my zero.

It’s been a while since I was able to get this out for a full match session and it’s so much better when played out all the way. Especially after this long on the shelf, we both gave up a lot of points to double-faults and it’s nice to be able to move into more skillful play before packing it all back up. I really need to pull this out more, my partner is quite keen on it and obviously I have some real opposition here.

[COMaestro]

A few games this weekend. Friday we played a quick game of Lost Cities where I had an explosive first round of 104 points to her 17. While she outscored me in the next two rounds, it was not enough to overcome my early lead, final score 169 - 101.

Saturday, her brother joined us for Chinatown. We all felt like we did a lot more trading than usual, though my wife held off on trading me a couple of laundry tiles, which definitely cost me the game. Her brother won with $1.4 million, my wife had $1.3 mil, leaving me in last with $1.16 mil.

More Lost Cities today. First game was atrocious for my wife, ending the ge with a total score of 6, to my 135. She made up for it in our second game, though, winning with 133 to my 94.

Wrapped up with a game of Unmatched, her usual Medusa versus Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with Giles as her sidekick. She may slay vampires, but Gorgons are beyond her, at least as I am learning her deck. While I took out all of the Harpies, I only managed to do 2 damage to Medusa herself. Meanwhile, a couple of Boosted Second Shots were able to take away a total of 7 of Buffy’s 16 health, one of them the killing blow. Her ability did a couple more points, and the Harpies had their claws in her as well. Kept having to discard from my hand, which greatly limits your options, and could not get either of Giles’ schemes for drawing cards. Still fun though.

I like how my wife and I are the inverse of each other between Unmatched and Lost Cities. She almost always wins the former, while I usually win the latter.

[Phil]

My Under Falling Skies campaign is now underway. The first thing one must do is to name the campaign for the log book. I have named this campaign “Intentional Mistake”.

We’re into spoiler territory, so I’ll merely say that had my excavator been one space further forward in the final turn of my first mission, I wouldn’t have had to write an “X” for failure as the outcome. (And if I’d actually remembered the special ability of the city I was defending at any point prior to that final turn, I might also have won!)

I don’t consider it a spoiler to say that the campaign components can also be used to provide even more mix-and-match options for subsequent one-off games, and furthermore that the campaign itself is designed to be replayable and variable every time. There were already a decent number of variations with just the basic game, and I can see that the options will only become more extensive as I progress.

I’m not expecting any of the variations to radically alter the gameplay, but it can definitely be enough to make you switch up your strategies from game to game and prevent things getting stale.

---

Edit: Make that two failures (once again by the slimmest of margins). Sorry, Montreal – if that final die roll had been a four or a five I could have saved you…

[Acacia]

Played a quick round of Barenpark on Saturday afternoon. This was my first game with goals, and they are absolutely essential to make the game playable. It had no substance with the base rules, the goals add just one more layer of tension into your choices that suddenly makes it interesting.

I think Barenpark will be a “keep it until the kids grow through it” game. Patchwork, Blokus, and Tiny Towns fill the niche better and will ultimately give it the boot. Just not yet.

Then another round of Quacks of Quedlinburg in the evening. My wife and sister-in-law really have a grasp of the game now which makes it great. When the fortune teller cards are flipped, we’re all excited. We can see what everyone else is doing and that sense of anticipation yields the payoff when someone hits it big or explodes.

I was in second going into the final round. We did the “everyone draws at the same time” thing. The wife stopped while ahead just as I, already at 7, drew a blue 4-tile (giving me four rounds of explosion insurance). I edged her out in the final scoring and the rest of the night held much discussion about the topic…

[Marx]

Played a few games over BGA on Saturday.

We opened with a quick game of Martian Dice, since a flurry of customers have asked for it at the store… and I do not know why. Sure, it’s better than Zombie Dice, but that’s not saying much. I assume it’s better IRL with dice you can actually hold and roll? Anyway, it was fine.

After that we played a game of Go Nuts for Donuts, which I continue to hate but my partner loves. It’s a semi-bidding kinda game that’s too random for my tastes, but the group seems to really like it (there were 5 of us total). I do like that there is more player interaction than you might expect, but after that… yeah, I don’t think I get the game? But whatever, again, it was fine.

After that was a game of No Thanks, which I demolished everybody at and so they demanded a replay (always a good sign!), and then I crushed them even more (first game my final score was 11, second game it was 6). Everyone had fun, and it was definitely close for most of us except one friend who just didn’t quite grok it. Oh, and it’s weird not knowing how many chips you have remaining, which I didn’t know you’re supposed to do (keep them hidden, that is) until Tom’s sublime review recently. Definitely changes elements of the game!

After that, one of my friends had to go walk their dog, and so we got to play Can’t Stop, which is probably my favourite push-your-luck-dice game? Hmmm… no, Cubitos is my favourite, but where Cubitos is big and expansive and clever, Can’t Stop is laser-focused. I do wish there was some way to avoid those mid-to-late game “All the numbers you rolled are for lanes that are already blocked and therefore your turn is over” thing, but that’s a small niggle in an otherwise very clever game.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot that we played 2 games of Draftosaurus (with two dinosaurophiles… actually, that sounds dirty than intended… anyway, they knew all the dinosaurs based exclusively on their silhouettes). I won both, and as a result I am… skeptical about it. I don’t like games that I win the first time I play. But it was okay! If it’s cheap, I would definitely consider gifting it to the couple that love dinos.

[RogerBW]

@Marx

Everyone had fun, and it was definitely close for most of us except one friend who just didn’t quite grok it.

As an experiment, I shifted mid-game to trying to maximise my penalty score rather than minimise it. As a result, I did better at minimising it than I had before.

[lalunaverde]

Bitoku - I end up liking it more than I expected. I have low expectations with this, as it seems to be yet another complicated Euro with little returns. And that is kinda true. It is complicated without being either thematically immersive like Pax Pamir, or has great player interaction like Inis, or strategic and opaque like a Splotter game.

It has some strategic choices with the rocks and tense interaction with the area majority track. But the game is too tactical for my liking, but I end up liking how tight the actions in this game. It has the tightness of Voyage of Marco Polo with both of its dice and card actions. The mechanisms are interdependent (well, most of them are) that you can’t treat this as a “theme park Euro”, a term coined by this forum.

I found the prettiness to be pretty indeed, but the board is noisy and it didn’t complement the game’ boatloads of icons.

I think I will enjoy this a few plays more in the future. But I don’t see the need to do it now, nor I dont see a strong longevity with this game. This is the type of game that will be played for 5 to 10 times and I will get sick with its samey-ness.

As we talked about rulebooks in the other thread, this one got “thematic” terms that doesnt really help the game, both on internalising the rules and on immersing us with the world. I pretty much discarded the thematic terms as they are not thematic at all. C’mon… it’s a purple tile, not a Something Spirit. It behaves like a tile that gives bonus and pts like in any Euro game. It doesn’t make me believe that there is a spirit on my side after obtaining it.

[COMaestro]

And now you’ve insulted the spirit, and as such will never have a chance to win this game, ever!

[MrJackdaw]

Yesterday…

Gloomhaven where we beat a boss and… I suspect my son stacked his deck. Didn’t say anything, but it left a bad taste.
Micro Macro bought this for my wife and knew she would like it. I opened the packet and got it on the table or it would have sat there for ages, unloved. She absolutely fell into it. Seven missions later we went for a walk or I think she would have done them all!

[BigJackBrass]

@MrJackdaw

Micro Macro

Is that this game? Looks interesting.

[Simfers]

We’re a bit over halfway through the sequel, Full House. We love it. Think of a cross between Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective and Where’s Waldo (or Where’s Wally, depending on where you live). We also had to stop ourselves from completing the whole thing in one sitting or two.

[EnterTheWyvern]

@lalunaverde

This is the type of game that will be played for 5 to 10 times and I will get sick with its samey-ness.

I think of getting to 10 games as ‘great investment, excellent game’.

[RogerBW]

@BigJackBrass

Is that this game?

Yes; that’s the original, and the newer one is MicroMacro Crime City: Full House (you don’t need one to play the other). Great big map with figures on it, and you follow the prompts on the cards to try to solve crimes. (Conceptually it’s smeared across time, so you might see a body and be able to trace back to where that person had been earlier.)

With the original box, some of the content is a bit not-for-kids; in the newer one those cases are labelled.