Yes. Normally, you can already use track laying to play offensively/defensively by dictating the direction of the track. But this one makes it easier to do.
1 Like
I can see my copy from the door into the garage, though it would take some doing to actually reach it.
I am totally down for SW Trivial Pursuit or Timeline. I was in the same boat; one game and no one wanted to play with me anymore. 
3 Likes
Its the same with Harry Potter Codenames for my wife and sister in law. No-one can compete with them.
3 Likes
I can get mine from the attic. Weāll have to take some thinking on how to adjust the format. Really this is just Trivia night with Star Wars, the roll and move would be an interminable slog by forum.
2 Likes
I love Harry Potter, but Iāve been on the losing side of that dynamic with it, and I completely understand why no one ever wanted to play any Star Wars trivia with me after that.
3 Likes
Banged out a few more solo rounds of Architects of the West Kingdom. The good news is, itās getting better.
Itās following a similar trajectory to games like Istanbul and Great Western Trail.
First game is a fun sandbox, seeing how all these interesting things work.
Next few games start to pale as they feel same-y and like youāve seen everything the game has to offer.
Then, at some point, a light goes on and you start cutting corners off the efficiency puzzle each time, ignoring whole swathes of the gameboard to focus on a tailored engine that gets you to the finish line.
Itās that last step where things start to shine and you can start really wrestling with the game to twist those dials just right, seeing how close you can skate to the edge without falling off.
This last game I went to the clay pit twice and never touched the wood or stone, and somehow still managed to finish the cathedral and put down three buildings. Felt like alchemy.
7 Likes
So what Iām hearing is that if your friends were to cobble together some official-looking cards containing made-up quotations and minor character names, which they all then memorise, they could probably trigger some kind of breakdown?
6 Likes
Quite a few games over the last 7 days or so, including a bunch of new ones at a local meetup:
Welcome to the Moon x3, two multiplayer games of map 1 and a solo game of map 2. I do like the straightforwardness of the original Welcome To, but I canāt argue that this is a tremendous value proposition. Map 1 is less interesting than the second but still had a great deal of fun with it. Not sure when/if Iāll touch the campaign - is it worth mining the campaign deck for extra cards if this is the case? Itād be annoying to have to refer to the campaign book for their rules thoughā¦
Perudo, itād been awhile since this one hit the table but itās still one of my favourite bluffing games. I did terribly though, which is not that unusual.
Sushi Go Party! won off a set of green tea ice-cream, mostly gathered in the first couple of rounds. This one is always a delight to play.
Fleet: The Dice Game x5, bunch of solo games of this one - itās a lot of fun but I think slightly less interesting than Three Sisters. Sometimes thatās what I feel like though. I also prefer the solo mode in this one, feels a little less brutal, while still feeling like a contest.
Regicide x3, terrific game, and my wife loves it so itāll probably get a lot more plays! We even managed to win once, but mostly a good order to the court cards and some fortunate draws later on.
Point Salad x2, a couple of great but vicious 2 player games with my wife.
Star Wars: Jabbaās Palace, this was an interesting enough spin on Love Letter, not one I feel the need to seek out, but Iād be happy to play it.
Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, learnt this one on the fly and we missed the rules about the special action cards (Gorilla, Narwhal and Groundhog). Clever twist on Snap, itās kind of one note but fun enough.
Trash Pandas, learnt this one as we went too. Itās an interesting combo of set collection, push your luck and a little take that. Iād play it, will possibly keep an eye out for it on sale too. I expressed how cute raccoons are only to be rebuffed by one of the other players whoās Canadian and has had to actually deal with them in the real world 
Timeline: Music & Cinema, I really like Timeline, but I was sure I was gonna suck at this version. We had a couple of games and the cards definitely swing for more recent titles. And gosh there was a lot of eighties hits in the games we played.
Deep Sea Adventure, this one was pretty brutal - I think the winning score was like 11. Itās clever but not as much fun for me as I was expecting. Decent but not particularly remarkable.
WordARound, this was the last game of the night and for what it is, that is a simple word search speed puzzle it was enjoyable. Not sure how the replay value would be after a few games though.
Quarriors, swingy and random but still good fun. And one of the older games in my collection that has stuck around.
9 Likes
Have just bought a copy!! 
3 Likes
Iām so glad we werenāt friends when I was 20.
4 Likes
Tyros - Martin Wallace game with a strange dynamic area majority game. There are 4 empires around the Med Sea and you all start in Tyros. You sail out and establish cities on these 4 expanding empires. The largest empire will score loads of pts for the player with the most cities, 2nd place for the 2nd most. And so on. You go through the rest.
Itās has a very interesting premise but the hand draw tends to influence on what you do on your round. While there is trading in this game a la Catan, I feel that this was placed to create an artificial balance to buttress a flawed mechanism. I would rather have Wallace scrap the card play malarkey that he always do because it didnāt work here, than to keep it and put a band-aid on it.
It has missing pieces so this is going to the recycling.
Stephensonās Rocket - more of this game because itās just one of the best Knizias ever.
Ghost of Christmas - very interesting first play. Classic trick taking, but there is a timing question where, in each round, everyone plays 3 tricks - past, present, or future. And you need to decide where you want to play your cards: past, present, or future - and in what order. once everyone plays 3 cards, all 3 tricks will be resolve in order, from past to future.
I will play more of it to get a better idea. Itās such a solid mechanism, but I have some reservations.
So Clover
Sons of Anarchy: Men of Mayhem - This is an Ameritrash with a simple resource conversion as foundation. And I really enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Biker gangs. Grab guns and shoot up the opposition. Get contrabands and sell them to get cash. Player with the most cash wins.
Itās raucous and funny. You have a bunch of nerds asking aloud: āDoes anyone want drugs?ā
This game must be played with the sort of players that will go out, extort players, and and have a fight. If play as an efficiency resource conversion game, then it becomes very boring. But this game got more structure and incentive to be aggressive here than some games Iāve played.
The Vault of Dragons re-implementation looks incredibly lame compare to the biker gangs theme. At least the up-coming re-implementation Wise Guys follows the same spirit - Roaring 20s gangsters in Chicago.
7 Likes
Have played some games recently. We played one of the new EXITs: The Gate Between Worlds. It was good! If a little on the easy side. Weāre such EXIT experts at this point that we know a lot of the tricks theyāre likely to pull, which in no way detracts from our enjoyment of said tricks. Plus thereās always one or two new ones per box.
Played Paris: La CitĆ© de la LumiĆØre tonight where I got TROUNCED! I kind of didnāt remember the points from connected buildings until Iād planned out a bunch of isolated building spots, while my wife got pretty much two thirds of my final score from her building chain alone.
6 Likes
Finally finished āourā My City campaignāspeed-played the games 2 handed because my partner bailed out after losing too much. Yeah so thatās not going to be replayable. There is a basic game you can play with the back of the board and the basic tiles/cards butā¦ it doesnāt feel very interesting after the campaign. It is a good game, and the campaign was fineā¦ but it was also a bit soul-less (played with 2 of the boards the campaign should be replayable with the other two boards, there are enough stickers in there for that so I am probably going to hand it to some friends after sorting everything back into the envelopes). I can see a much better non-campaign game hiding behind My City. Please make that!
I am starting to be over campaign games. Legacy was fine when it was a rare thing. A huge campaign is great if you have all the timeā¦ but I am finding out (the expensive way) that I am over games that tell stories or force me to play a whole sequence of games just so I can feel I am ādoneā with the game. Kudos to Welcome to the Moon for making me feel like the campaign really is optional.
6 Likes
Played Lost Cities with my wife last night. It was a very weird game, as in the first round, she got -3 points to my 51. Second round, she got 8 to my -5 (got hit with -60 from blue, started with two wager cards and then never drew another blue card). Third round we were separated by a single point, 32-33. So I won thanks to my good first round, but probably one of our lowest scoring games ever.
3 Likes
This has sat unplayed in my collection for so long. Really not keen on the theme but love the mechanics. I have Lancaster and Argent for the same reason. Vault of Dragons was exciting for the retheme but all reports were that the rules tweaks scuttled the core game.
Why it was made with freeze-frames from the show rather than art, I donāt know (well, I know. Cost considerations. But it looks so bad.)
But what has really scuttled it is the tile where you āupgradeā your recruits by visiting the brothel. That theme/mechanic overlay triggered all sorts of feelings in me and cautioned me against bringing it out in front of people. I know you donāt play with all the tiles, and this wouldnāt be the first game where I āsealedā a few game components to play with the restā¦ Iāll give it its chance one day. Sans brothel.
3 Likes
Yikes! Luckily, I never encountered it. I dont have it so I never get to see the tiles.
Watch out for the reprint - Wise Guys. Hopefully, itās better
1 Like
So having all tested positive for covid on the first day of our holiday, we played a game of How Long Can We Stay Awake, a folk game of my own invention. It was a low scoring series of games. The others didnāt really know they were playing.
Then realising that none of us could go out, we turned to our evil overlord Amazon the Prime to deliver some family-friendly games that could be picked up by a 73 year old. Several games of Ticket to Ride Europe (including myself losing by a full 156 points, donāt ask) and Letter Press later, we now feel a bit more human.
13 Likes
Played
Micro Macro: Full House my rating 1/6, nope donāt get it. I never liked Whereās Wally and this does nothing for me.
Race for the Galaxy: the painful teaching game My mumās here and is game for anything. Bad card draw for her didnāt help her get the strategies.
5 Likes
Had a rather miserable game day with friends yesterday. Our kids (both our two and their one) just seemed to be taking turns causing trouble. Took us well over an hour just to get through 6 rounds of Orleans before we just called it quits, knowing weād never finish at the rate we were going. Took the kids outside for a good half hour or so to tire them out a bit afterward.
Before they left, we played a quick game of Batman Love Letter, which we have not played in a long time. My wife took the win with 7 tokens, while the next closest was our friend with 4. I only managed 1 from a correct Batman guess.
So, lesson learned: take the kids outside to burn off energy after lunch and try gaming afterward.
6 Likes
Played a host of games yesterday, including the excellent pictures, which just inspires creativity. Did play Age of Steam, which was an odd experience- 6 players (too many for a first game) on a map with additional rules. At the end some of the players did moves which moved their goods from one city to the next, not in this one step, but by doing a massive loop back to the original city, then going to the next. I called bullshit, as thatās such a bullshit move, but got told it was correct. Soured the experience, especially when I checked on BGG and I was right! It would be ridiculous to allow such a thing.
That said, without that rule the game is clearly objectivey good, but absolutely not for me. I donāt enjoy games where the economy is so tight you have to plan ever move significantly far ahead, keeping in mind the other players, or face bankruptcy. I like leeway in my games, and the opportunity for opportunistic play.
8 Likes