Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

bort · 4 April 2022 00:32

Loot of Lima , using a new player aid downloaded from BGG. Made it a bit easier, but was a bit small. We did a little better, two of us had one treasure found. I had one treasure site locked in, and that was fine, but I had the second treasure narrowed down to 2 places, and it turns out I was completely wrong, neither had treasure. Oh well.

Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein , first play. A worker placement, where you (mostly) find bodies in various places, like the cemetary, or the hospital, which gives you body parts in order to make your monster. You get fresher bodies from the hospital and public square. Of course, if you really want a fresh body, you can go out and murder one yourself. But the dodgier the act, the more your humanity will go down. You have three dials: humanity, reputation, and expertise. Once you have some bits and pieces, you can make body parts. A body part starts as muscle only, and then you can finish it. Once you have some finished parts, you can roll the dice to see if any of it comes to life. The game ends if anyone manages to get their monster fully built and alive.

We used a variant to make it a shorter game, but it still took us a few hours. Every round new cards come out, which you have to read, so that slows it down a bit. Still, we had a good time.

The Search for Planet X , back to our favourite deduction game (well, this and The Key series). I had a terrible game, nothing was coming together at all. The winner ended up with 24 points, to my 6, and the other player with zero. I still have more idea of what I’m doing than with Loot of Lima.

Noch Mal! , had a good game, won. Woooooo, I think it’s my second ever win. For a simple game, this is pretty good fun.

Benkyo · 4 April 2022 00:48

A dozen games of The Crew, which was fun, but 1 of the 3 of us was constantly confused and didn’t seem to get it. We ended with a loss on a “don’t win with 9s” mission where we flushed two 9s out, but then he lead with a 9…

Two games of Azul, which is… fine. It was great for the intended purpose of introducing people who had no experience outside of Game of Life to the wider world of games. It’s just not something I particularly want to get better at.

And aside from that, I spent a lot of time sitting around waiting for more interesting games that never happened. At least I completed a “Nightmare” challenge on the Through the Ages app, which was fun to revisit.

I really need to try and hook up directly with some people who actually like the games I like. Having one guy tell me that thanks to me, Pax Pamir 2e and Innovation had been huge hits with his friends was probably the highlight of the meet. Hopefully I can get something going with him and his friends.

Brattyjedi · 4 April 2022 02:03

My husband and I got Dead Reckoning from Kickstarter. It’s a pirate themed game that uses the card crafting / deck building system from Mystic Vale for actions and a cube tower with landing tray with icons for combat. We’ve played three games and I’m enjoying it. I’m just not very good at it. My husband beat me by about 20 points the first game. I’ve got a little better every game since while he’s got much better every game since so he beat me by about 50 points our last game. Oh well. We’re both having fun while he’s kicking my butt.

Phil · 4 April 2022 02:57

This game, with its “no talking” rules, is brutal on anyone who hasn’t yet got their head around the gameplay. It’s by far the biggest problem when it comes to introducing The Crew to new players, IMO.

Benkyo · 4 April 2022 03:01

Oh, we did plenty of talking, all through the training missions and some later ones too. We cleared a lot of missions to get to the point where we left off.

Despite all that, I think this guy just saw me lead with a 9, knowing as I did that I had cleared the suit and that he had a rocket, and then for some reason thought he could do the same. He obviously still didn’t “get” it, but I couldn’t see any point where he would. In any case, we stopped because our third player was scheduled to start another game.

Phil · 4 April 2022 03:29

I guess that’s when you need to make a judgement call about switching to another game. It won’t be any fun for that one person to keep running into a mental block; and it’s going to feel even worse for them (and frustrating for everyone else) when it’s co-op.

I think everyone has their Achilles Heel (or several), and I’ve seen seemingly-simple rules completely bamboozle a person in the past because that’s just not how their brain saw things. I’m sure there’s an art to reading the table and knowing when to quit.

COMaestro · 4 April 2022 03:32

After our miserable game day yesterday, my wife tried to cheer me up by suggesting we play Unmatched. Well, that always works.

I got to try out a fighter from Battle of Legends Vol. 2 for the first time. I went with Achilles, against her standard Medusa. Achilles has Patroclus as his sidekick, who has a number of cards in the deck that will damage himself, but when he falls, all of Achilles attacks going forward get +2 and he draws a card whenever he wins combat.

My wife targeted Pat right away and took him out in just a few turns, which did remove some of my options, as his cards were now mostly useless. However, having the increased attack and extra card draw really helped. I was able to take out some of Medusa’s Harpies, and was mostly maneuvering around to get more cards, especially defenses, as Medusa has a lot of discard effects and some nasty attacks. But soon I was going on the offensive.

Overall, I got pretty lucky, as when I had to take an undefended attack that is was just a 1 damage Regroup, rather than Gaze of Stone, which would have done 2 and then 8 since she would have won the combat. Meanwhile, with my +2 attacks, I was winning most combats, only taking a bit of damage here and there while really whittling down Medusa and reducing the number of cards she had in hand.

My final turn, I had to draw the last card in my deck to maneuver, Boosting for extra spaces of movement to get adjacent to Medusa, then attacked with a Wily Fighting for 5 which she was unable to defend, winning the game!

So now I have defeated Medusa 3 times, I think. This was my best win as far as remaining health.

Later, we played Red Cathedral, which similar to yesterday took much longer than it should have due to kid interference, but we at least did finish it. My wife was not at her best due to all the distraction, which helped me win 35-29.

Phil · 4 April 2022 03:33

Achilles synchronicity! *High Five*

Whistle_Pig · 4 April 2022 05:49

Our regular group is now Covid free, so we got in some games on Saturday!

Fjords: recent Kickstarter arrival for our friend. I thought it was very elegant and a little go-like, so obviously I was terrible at it

Calico: My husband has decided to “gift” this to me because I like it much more than him. Does anyone have an opinion on the solo mode? I did much better here than with Fjords, even though our friend took exactly the tile I needed to get double points for one of my scoring tiles * shakes fist*

Pax Pamir 2E: still great - I love the balancing act that you have to do through the entire game. The usual dynamic of our group played out again: our friend doesn’t pay enough attention to what my husband is doing, because he underestimates his aptitude for this kind of game, my husband wins, and our friend blames me for enabling him . I’ll take partial blame, but not all of it

Century: Eastern Wonders: still fine. My husband won this one as well!

Crokinole: our friend described this as an “old person’s” game, so obviously we had to play so he could be shown the error of his ways (he won).

yashima · 4 April 2022 06:40

Lots of opinion… which one do you want?
I have mostly played this solo and I think I prefer it over playing with others who get AP over tile choices I think removing a tiles from the market works fine to change it up between turns.

RogerBW · 4 April 2022 22:46

This evening at Local Game Group:

Witching Hour, one of those games I never see except for my own copy. It dragged a little compared with my usual experience but we still had a reasonably tight finish.
The Crew, three or so rounds, for me it’s just OK but one of the regulars is very enthusiastic so we often end the evening with it.

raged_norm · 5 April 2022 22:26

Chester Centurions games night…

Art Robbery Fun little game but ultimately forgetable. On the sell pile

Cascadia Nice double drafting mechanism but lacks player interaction. Can’t make any choices until my turn as well. Would play wouldn’t buy

Rallyman GT I like this but have a huge problem that every game I’ve played with more than four one player is essentially eliminated at some point in the first lap. It’s a really interesting dice roll and move but because one person isn’t having fun in the game it’s going on the sell pile.

Good Critters We started with thieving, we ended with thieving. This is excellent and doesn’t last longer than it needs to.

RogerBW · 5 April 2022 22:30

I absolutely do not want to second-guess you, but I have to ask: are they getting 00 crashes? Because it’s pretty much possible to avoid those, and I think one should.

bort · 6 April 2022 01:00

I really wanted to like this, but reached the same conclusion as you

yashima · 6 April 2022 05:20

I haven’t played as much as @RogerBW but I agree for the most part concerning larger group races. Our last game on BGA, I started with one unnecessary 00 crash because I was overly optimistic and then miss-clicked to produce another one and despite that was able to catch up again and definitely didn’t finish in last place. These were my first 00 crashes in a long time. Both preventable.

However, playing races with my partner sometimes there is just no competition. He just runs away with the race and no amount of not crashing gets me close to him. There have most definitely been races that were decided in the first few turns somehow.

raged_norm · 6 April 2022 05:53

Yes, I must be missing something in the rules then.

RogerBW · 6 April 2022 08:24

Basically my approach is:

if there’s a 1-limit I can deliberately cross at 2, then flat-out, and if I get too many hazards make sure I do that so as to end on a 0
otherwise one-by-one, usually putting the coast dice last to keep my final speed up
occasionally take a risk, and almost always regret it

It varies a bit depending on where I am in the race. But yeah, if the runaway loser thing keeps happening then fair enough.

raged_norm · 6 April 2022 09:05

There was a lot of the last option

Bondy034 · 6 April 2022 12:57

Some games played over the last week or so:

Regicide x2, more games of this with my wife - we won once and lost once. Our win rate is decent but yeah, sometimes the deck just doesn’t want to cooperate, and you’ve gotta be okay with that. Good decisions throughout though.

Great Western Trail x3 - 2 solo games and one with 3. All were enjoyable, but played a little weird since I’d missed the rule that you need to deliver a certain total cow value in order to deliver to the further cities (we’d been leaping on New York right from the start!) Definitely prefer the actual rules, and look forward to getting it to the table sometime soon.

Three Sisters, solo game of this, super high scoring - the garden, perennials, fruit and shed all game me heaps of points well over a hundred

HeroQuest, this one was a blast from the past! A friend owns one of the relaunched copies and asked if we could try it. It was decent. Some of the design feels a bit dated and it certainly makes you work hard for rewards. I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather play D&D though…

Fleet: The Dice Game, first game of this with actual humans - went great. Scores were close but i pulled ahead off of focusing on oyster boats and the Captains Club to have heaps of full boats. Lots of fun, and definitely requires keeping an eye on your opponents on occasion - particularly with the king crab license and shrimp dice for players that focus on them. This definitely runs smoother than Three Sisters, but the strategy and dice drafting in the later is probably a bit more interesting, with the rondel and other possibilities beyond just grabbing points available there. They’re both great though.

Acacia · 6 April 2022 15:14

Saw my sister and her kids for the first time since 2019! They were in town. My nephew is a kindred spirit who is always asking his family to play the board games I gift him but they only do so grudgingly, and never well.

We ran through Barenpark which was new to him. He was starting to get it by the end but I could tell he was hungry for more familiar waters where he could flex his gaming muscles. So we switched to Quest for El Dorado, which he also owns (thanks to me).

We played the fan made maps and they are really good.

First game we uncovered all the rules he’d been getting wrong and I got a chance to see his gameplay. I tried to keep it close, and about halfway through the map we were neck and neck, but in the second half there was just no way to keep my people by him without gratuitously throwing the game so I took the win.

Second game I explained the value of trashing, why (and how) some of the cards he’d been avoiding “worked,” and took a few minutes to parse the map with him and set an overall deck strategy. And he legit won.

It was great to see him grok it and to see how excited he was when his explorer crossed that finish line!