Pluto has to be made a planet again.
If it’s not then search for Planet X is just a weird name for a game.
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If Wales and Scotland aren’t countries, then England can’t be one either.
But they are!.. sort of.
The UK is often referred to as ‘a country of countries’, and the way in which they are split (if at all) depends on the domain.
For international politics, it’s generally one.
For law, it’s three (except sometimes it’s four).
For sport, it could be anywhere between one to four.
So they’re all countries at some point or another, just not always.
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Pluto was only Planet X until it was discovered.
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I always assumed the x referred to it being the search for the 10th planet. Interesting, cheers.
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THIS IS EXACTLY MY FEAR.
I’m also pretty convinced that it’s way too easy to make a mistake in the game - placing a tile in a group it shouldn’t be, hoping to pay with six tiles and accidently picking up a double that you can’t use.
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Played the last battle last night on my first campaign with Townsfolk Tussle. We faced Qing and Kween, and got obliterated properly. Mainly because as a Final boss, their power of removing equipment makes you discard your items for good instead of just unequip them(plus they recover one HP if the item discarded is over 7 or 8 gold, I cannot remember exactly), and in the first two turns I got Irongut and Fisherboy removed from all their items, so I only could shoot every two turns with grandma Melba’s revolver (as getting close to them was suicidal).
So we failed miserably, and the town was sacked by the infamous tweens. Note to myself, that duo in the Final Stage is well overpowered.
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I’m making an intentional effort to find more time for gaming – something I haven’t really done since my latest offspring was sprung.
My partner has been dealing with a head cold for a few weeks; once she gets over it, I think she might have the energy to start playing games again. Until then, solo gaming is my best bet.
Last night I made a point to get some games played.
It’s a Wonderful World – I played the solo base game once and did… okay. Then I played one of the solo base game scenarios and did quite bad. Overall, It’s a Wonderful World is good; I like it. It’s a drafting game with some interesting engine/efficiency considerations. I can see why it got as much buzz as it did. There’s a ton of content in the Heritage box that I bought, so I might start working through it; I had thought about waiting to work through it with my former neighbor, but I doubt we’d find the time.
Firefly: Shiny Dice – the dice aren’t shiny. That’s about the nicest thing I can say about it. It was a birthday gift from my partner, so I would feel bad getting rid of it. Maybe I’ll just repurpose the components.
Mr. Cabbagehead’s Garden – a wonderfully produced small box with wholly unsettling art-direction. Still, it’s a nice little solo puzzle with some reasonably well-done random elements.
No energy tonight for any more games, and tomorrow night may be the same. So that leaves me thinking about what I’ll get on the table Thursday night (there are hundreds of possibilities).
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I think this game has one of the quickest learning curves.
- I have no idea what I’m doing.
- Ok, I think I see how this works.
- Right, my strategy seems to be coming together but I wish I hadn’t made that move when I didn’t know what I was doing.
- Aaaaargh, I don’t know what to do!!
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It’s a wonderful world is a really cool game. I think I would still have it if my partner and I enjoyed it more equally.
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Got in two solo runs at Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles Episode 1. Lost both. The first one turn into the second round, the second one turn before the third assembly and probably a win. This game is hard! You get a lot fewer actions than it feels like you’re going to, and you need to cover both political and dino-defense bases while somehow generating enough resources to be able to effectively do those things. I would guess in multiplayer it’s mostly a matter of degree as to how well you do those things and you could probably specialize to a greater extent because you’re just looking for Followers (i.e., VP) and you can get those from a lot of sources. But in solo, you need a certain Follower threshold and you need to control areas (or otherwise source Votes, which in multiplayer just win you assembly voting for big Follower gain) to get Acceptance above a certain threshold and you can only have X settlements destroyed, collectively, based on your difficulty. Which is what lost me both games. Because the problem is, the Dissenter bot players are not strategic about placing their action dice to minimize dino risk, and they will defend, but they don’t defend very actively and they focus primarily on their own settlements. As in, that specific bot’s, not both Dissenters at once. So you will need to supplement that for their dominant areas or entirely generate defenses for your own strong points. And that’s not a small ask! Also, you kinda want at least some of their stuff wrecked (ideally, not on your turn) so you can control that area more easily for Acceptance. But you gotta be real careful about it…
Fun, though! Episode 2 looks wild, don’t want to get to that until I actually manage to win Episode 1, though. Even on the easiest setting, which I dropped down to on my second play.
1 Like
Had a good game night. Started with Codenames as people were trickling in, because it’s so easy to get going and for other people to just jump in on.
Then we had quite a number of people so we split, and I played Alien Frontiers with two friends, a very fun dice placement game with a little bit of area control on the center planet. I started with a tech card that I could discard to place a field generator on a territory that meant that no colonies could be added or removed there, so I got the area with the bonus ship as fast as I could and locked it down, which meant I consistently had 6 ships without having to spend as many resources. *chefs kiss*
That took a little while, so after the other group wrapped up their game of Celestia, people filed out, except for my always-down-for-Mottainai friend, and we played a game of Mottainai. I got two metal in my craft bench on my first turn, but I was not getting a lot of metal cards in hand to use them. I finally did get the Pin out, which is great, and later the Flute, but my friend was rushing the end to stop me from doing anything more (like selling the metal) and he got the right cards in hand to do it one turn before I would have made a massive set of sales, ending the game quite quickly and with him ahead by one point, 8-7.
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The Welsh Assembly became the Welsh Parliament in 2020.
Edit: I hate that I wrote that. I’ll blame it on being a pedant, and teaching A-level Politics.
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Had a solo session last night at Bardsung.
Boy that was interesting. I am really enjoying the combat now that I am getting more familiar with it. I admit I still struggle a little bit interpreting the maps on the chapter. Yesterday I was following the map on chapter 1, and when a random room card that was going to be the second room turned up to be a dead end card, the whole map got a bit squashed to the left side. Luckily the corridor before had been a three way. I guess there might be some rule I have missed to replace that dead end for a real room if the map is to be followed, but as the chapter maps are ruled by cards being pulled out of the deck, this could lead to some trouble if not addressed on the rules.
The other issue was the length. I take i that I had to check rules more often that if I was more familiar with the exploration phase or icons checks, but I started at 21.30 and finished the chapter after midnight. I could have taken a pic and leave if for the next night, but I was close to the end and ploughed on, which took me 45 minutes that put me into the next day of the calendar, if only just. The prospect of having to set up again what I had slowly developed on the board put me off. (Note to self, play this game when the next day you don’t have to get up at 5.15 am, which is every working day)
Enjoyed the challenge, but I admit I need to re-read things, at the end of the chapter it was not very clear what chapter I have to go to next. It sort of implies it, but not sure if I have to go to chapter 2, which I could have gone to directly at the beginning of chapter 1… ???
3 Likes
Doing a bit of light reading on the BBG forums, I got the understanding of the maps and nodes very wrong… how very much like me… what I played last night was not the whole chapter, but encounter 1A (boy is this campaign going to be long…). And not very well. Rulebook, rulebook…
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Tempel des Schreckens x3
Undaunted: North Africa - having played both Undaunted, they are very fun. I’m convinced. Will try to grab some copies.
Manhattan Project: Energy Empire - decent Euro. Middling.
Titan - this is the big stupid game I first saw in Essen 2019. It’s a game that looks more like an extravagant cake than a board game. What’s worse is that after playing it, you don’t actually need that gimmicky 3D structure malarkey. You can have a flat board and the game will work functionally.
Aside from the gimmick, it’s a very fascinating game. Very hybrid-y between old German and modern Euro. You start your base on the outer layer of Titan - one of the moons of Jupiter? Saturn? IDK. Then you build network of pipelines on these rigs players build that no one owns, initially.
Very spatial game and the decisions are very interesting and deep. There’s trade-off between isolating and sharing rigs. There’s trade-off between high VP rigs and low VP rigs. Light-medium rules framework yet it’s so good.
I am keeping an eye on a slightly cheaper copy. Yes. Despite the silly gimmick. It’ll just make it easier for me to lure some victims.
5 Likes
Calculating, please wait... Calculating, please wait... Done. Analysing results... Done. Appraisal: A bold decision.
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Only two people turned up to our Boardgame group yesterday so played a couple of learning games. After starting with Timeline: Star Wars (surprisingly hard despite being a big fan of the films) we learnt Arboretum - BGG says it plays best at 2 but I felt it might be better at a higher count - in two player, you know exactly what cards the other person has which makes it easy to hold onto cards to mess them up. Maybe if you like very combative play, that works, but I think a vit of not knowing may make it better?
We then learnt Undaunted: Normandy. Unfortunately we tried to play the first scenario with the cards from the 2nd scenario which caused a lot of confusion until we figured it out. We abandoned the game then but we’ve got the mechanics sorted so just need to do it properly now!
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[following on from What Should I Play? (Help me decide)]
Last night, I did manage to find some energy to play. Under Falling Skies was the clear winner of the poll, so that’s what I got to the table.
I think, I’m finding, that “crisis management” games are not my thing. I lost. I was 2 research jumps (which is I think like 13 research points on the basic scenario?) from winning. My city had only taken 1 damage when the mothership landed. I know, intellectually, that I could have easily won by letting more ships through and spending just a few more dice on research. This is basically the same conclusion I have with Pandemic: yep, I could have won if I had just let a couple of more outbreaks happen to afford me the action-economy to cure the last disease.
So, I think I’ll give UFS another shot tonight, but ultimately, I think it might end up on the trade pile. Not because it’s a bad game, but rather it’s a game that doesn’t stimulate my brain in the ways I’m looking for. Or, perhaps, rather it pokes my brain in uncomfortable ways, and I just don’t need that – I’ve always got a copy of Pandemic I can fall back on.
I actually set up for a retry of the base game, Roswell, last night. But after the first die roll, I just couldn’t be bothered to lean my brain into it.
At the time, there was a 3-way tie in the poll for 2nd place. Clinic, Empyreal: S&S, and Fantastic Factories. Knowing that my brain wasn’t up to a huge task, I did get Fantastic Factories down off the shelf and familiarize myself with the rules. My impression of it is that it’s a pretty big sandbox; the action menu at any given time is slightly larger than I think I prefer – but I also expect that once you learn the lay of the land of said sandbox, the reasonable action menu is quite narrow.
5 Likes
Arboretum at 2 is a very different game than at 3 or 4. You got it right, at two is more chess-like, see where you can hurt each other, and less luck is involved (which I guess the BGG tropes might prefer??) At higher counts is way more open, and more luck dependent (IMO) I enjoy the crunch of playing at two, but the possibilities that open with more discard piles at higher count have their juicy side that I like too.
A great simple game (besides the scoring, that I always have to re-read if I haven’t played for a while) that plays well and with lovely table presence (at least 2nd edition has).
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You say less luck but I didn’t draw a single 8 all game and only two 1s!!
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