Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[mistercrayon]

We played our first game of Paint the roses it’s a deduction co-op game a little bit like cryptid. The idea is you try and fill a board with pieces which help your friend(s) guess a card you have. The games tension comes from needing to fill the board within a time limit but also you need to make progress at a steady rate. In terms of tension I think the base game has a nice knife edge - you can get away with easy choices but you need to be slightly lucky and perfect or you can try and be risky by going for harder choices which give you more breathing room if they pay off.

We liked our first game. It has that nice co-op feel of the Mind where each player genuinely has to contribute to the game and in this case they do it by setting up fun puzzles for the other player which is a satisfying mode of play.

[Chewy77]

I’ve had games between 3 and 4 where all I got was 3s, 4s and 5s of different trees. If it wasn’t for the discard piles, I was going to score a big 0. There is always a component of luck in card games, but then again, on a game of two, if you are not getting the 1s and 8s, your opponent is, and he/she can only hold onto so many cards, so eventually they will drop out…

[SteveB_uk]

Well, here goes…

[Simfers]

We just tried out Pandemic with the State of Emergency expansion (Superbug challenge) and it was a TERRIBLE mistake, LOL. My wife was WAY too tired (she suggested we try it out, for the record) to really parse it and the cards and new roles conspired to make the game very boring to play (she barely got to do anything). Just lousy timing.

[Chewy77]

After a movie and putting the little one to sleep early (my eldest daughter had a birthday party + sleepover) , and checking that today I didn’t need to get up early, I had another go at Bardsung. Finished the second encounter (1B) but only just, only one potion left and no campfires, and the spellcaster character on one wound to die, the other two with two, the echo had activated and was just one area away from us, so really pushed through by the skin of my teeth.

I am enjoying the randomness of the map generation with the cards to avoid repetition and extend replayability. The simple combat is a breeze as well, but I have a feeling that if each encounter is this long (just over 2 hours last night, now that I know the rules better) it can grow old soon, or become tiresome. On the other hand, I cannot wait to see what the narrative will bring later on, and what new enemies are ahead, specially bosses. At least the difficulty is not ramping up drastically like it does in Gloomhaven. We’ll see…

[Phil]

My not-very-gamesy partner granted me a games day today. We played:

• Hive – a classic Hive loss on account of my opponent’s move opening up an opportunity for me to win in two moves, causing me to forget that they were going to win in one if I didn’t actually spend my next turn preventing that from happening.

• Patchwork – a very rare comprehensive victory to myself – getting the 7x7 bonus, the majority of the 1x1 patches, and leaving very little uncovered, the score margin was rather large.

• Geometric Art – an introductory game for my partner, which we miraculously won on the final round after somehow each guessing one another’s drawing when we were down to just 3 dice. (I wish now that I could remember what we’d had to draw, and the 3 shapes we had to do it with, in that final round.)

• Paris: La Cité de la Lumière – I bought this ages ago, but this was my first time getting to play it. I loved it. My partner hated it. I am a little devastated.

• Hansa Teutonica – One of our favourites. We had to stop after about a quarter of the game in order to deal with other things, which took quite a long time, and I knew we’d never get the final game in if we carried on, so we abandoned it, and set up…

• Castle Ravenloft – The first of the D&D Adventure System Board Games cooperative dungeon crawlers (the only one I have), which we last played about… 10 years ago, maybe. In the end we didn’t have time to finish, so I photographed the state before packing it up, and we’re planning to finish it up tomorrow. This game wasn’t even my suggestion(!), so if it meets approval and we end up playing a series of missions I’ll be very happy indeed. Here’s hoping.

[yashima]

@yashima

As a solo puzzle I would love it. As it is my partner promised me 1 (in words: ONE!) game and unless some very huge surprise happens and he unexpectedly likes this

So… for a moment today, I liked Azul The Queen‘s Garden. Only having to manage 1 hand is definitely making this much easier to plan out.

So let me explain how the drafting works. I think this is neat.

Drafting Rules

• The game is played over 4 rounds
• For each round make a stack of garden spaces, flipped down. These are additional building spaces for your garden with pavillions on them and space for 6 tiles. The number of building spaces depends on the number of players so for 2 players there are 5 building spaces in each stack.
• The first player takes 4 garden tiles from the bag and puts them on top of the stack for the current round (and returns the first player marker to the center)
• The player then drafts all the visible tiles of either 1 symbol or 1 color (this may include building tiles as they have a single hex filled in, but at first none of these are visible anyway).
• Players do not take doubles but have to take all tiles of the chosen type and place them in their storage, if they cannot store the pieces (storage is for 12 tiles and 2 building places) they cannot choose that type.
• After drafting, take the top building place from the stack with any tiles still on it and place it next to the stack.
• Place 4 garden tiles on top of the stack
• Check if any other building space is without tiles and flip them over to the side with a symbol printed on them—the next player could now draft this

You can either draft or place tiles in the garden on your turn. I like the drafting, as the tiles come into play over a number of turns and the starting player does not get first choice on everything.

So our game went reasonably well for 2 rounds. Then on the third round,

I had plans to play some expensive tiles and had been filling up my storage with other tiles to pay for the high-value ones. On my turn I add 4 new tiles to the display and it included 3 different colored tiles of the highest value (6) and there was a 4th one already in the display. I had one of the 5th color and with a joker, which I had I would have been able to place any of those tiles the next turn.

I got excited and then saw my storage had only 3 spaces. So I couldn‘t take them. I was pretty disappointed. As I mused over what else to draft, I explained to my partner that hate drafting anything didn‘t make sense, as the only other group I could reasonably take that included one of the high value tiles was also 4 pieces. And drafting any of the other two, just to make the group less attractive would cost me points later on especially in the colors in question that I had no intention of playing to my garden.

So I drafted something else, and then my partner who had 4 storage left, took those 4 tiles. But he didn‘t have the 5th one and no jokers. So for him this was in fact just denying me the opportunity to score 6 points and then it turned out the cost for him was much higher as he had just drafted a bunch of tiles he had no use for. It was a pretty bad move.

After a few more turns, when my partner noticed how he couldn’t place any of the tiles he had in storage—unless he got very very lucky—he basically flipped the table.

Sadly, it is entirely possible to maneuver yourself into a corner where it is obvious you will lose the game unless something very specific comes up. With a bit more experience in the game, this would not have happened but it happened and it will happen.

I like that drafting tiles to deny them to someone else seems like a pretty bad idea. Especially the valuable ones.

Halfway through the game, I was prepared to write I had been wrong and this was much better than my first impression. Alas… it was not to be. So, as I said before: I would love it as a solo-puzzle, playing just one hand showed me that. But my partner—as foretold—hated the game. He hates when games allow him to make mistakes that basically end the game right there (it was too late to undo by the time he noticed) and he is unwilling to put in more plays to grok a game. A game that is not fun on first play… I am sad that this is the way things are. But this is my collection, he just indulges me and I have to make sure the game sells itself on that first play. I was too engrossed in my own board state to see where that move would take him.

I don‘t know what that means for the game in my collection. I like OG Azul reasonably well and bought it for the explicit purpose of having a game I enjoy that I know I can teach to anyone. The teach for Hex-Azul is not that much more complicated but playing the game is much harder and it allows for mistakes that make playing the game un-fun. OG Azul will always allow you to keep playing, you only notice in comparison with others that you are doing badly. So I‘ll possibly give Hex Azul another try with our friends—but we recently talked and both said „my favorite is the church windows“ at almost the same instant. Weirdly, none of us owns that one.

But chances are that this will go to the sell pile without seeing a full multiplayer game

[Phil]

@Phil

Geometric Art … I wish now that I could remember what we’d had to draw, and the 3 shapes we had to do it with, in that final round.)

I looked at the cards and remembered : ) The category was “body part” and we rolled 1 circle, 1 triangle, and 1 curve. My drawing of an ice-cream cone with a smile was successfully deciphered as “Beard”, while my partner fashioned a “Face” comprising a mouth, a nose, and one eye.

We were playing a house-ruled harder version of the Joint Exhibition mode, whereby we still have to “complete 5 topic cards”, but we have 10 rounds to do it, and we only “complete” a card if we both guess correctly, and it came down to round 10. I think the game is lovely, but the standard rules just aren’t challenging for two players, so I was glad that I’d tweaked things. (I’m not sure my variant is a good one; but it’s an improvement.)

[Phil]

@yashima

He hates when games allow him to make mistakes that basically end the game right there (it was too late to undo by the time he noticed) and he is unwilling to put in more plays to grok a game. A game that is not fun on first play… I am sad that this is the way things are. But this is my collection, he just indulges me and I have to make sure the game sells itself on that first play. I was too engrossed in my own board state to see where that move would take him.

I’m feeling this so much with my game of Paris today. I’m fairly confident that my partner would be good at the game if they were willing to give it a chance, but they didn’t enjoy the first game enough and that was that; and I fear that part of the reason was that I failed to sabotage my own game. I have real difficulty doing that – my brain just wants to solve the puzzles it sees as best as it can, and sometimes I’ll suddenly notice that I’m going to win by a landslide and it’s far too late to do anything about it. This is exacerbated by the fact that they don’t want to sit around and learn the game with me – they want me to learn it and then teach it, which means that I’m almost guaranteed to have the advantage of understanding the gameplay better than they do, and thus even more likely to win initial games, unless I carefully try not to. But then (almost hilariously), if I do sabotage myself and they realise what I’m doing, they get annoyed with me for going easy on them. I’m not sure that this was the only reason they weren’t enamoured with the game, but it might easily have been the difference between them being willing to give it another try or not.

[yashima]

I am quite sure that this is the fate of quite a few of us here and some of the rest will say „be glad your partner is willing to play with you at all“ and I am glad. And a lot of my collection is still tailored to find games we both enjoy. And he tolerates me talking about games, theorizing and watches some of the videos with me. But this is not our hobby anymore, the deeper I get into it the more it is mine. He still wants to come to SPIEL with me. So there is that. And I struggle to keep it that way.

But the struggle to win less—especially on „Partner‘s First Game“—is real. That first impression… maybe we need a thread on „how to lose secretly on purpose“. I have a very hard time refraining from the optimal moves. The worst is when I do something terrible on purpose and it works out to an even better advantage.

The pandemic hasn‘t helped btw. Before, most of our game nights were with friends. Playing with 2 so much has allowed for the difference in win percentage to become more obvious and second place is always last place.

[Captbnut]

Had a couple of rounds of a Maths Trade acquisition, Hey, that’s my fish. I liked it. Light and quick (like 5 minutes with 2 of us). Some DNA from things like Through the Desert and Santorini. I was able to block my wife out in our second game by creating pinch points, so I think it might have some teeth and tension when we all know what’s possible.

[gmwhite999]

After a manic build-up to the Easter weekend, this week saw a chance to get out some of my newer solo acquisitions for a few plays each. First up was two games of Railroad Ink: Lush Green Edition to test out the Forest and Trails expansions, of which the Trails expansion was far more pleasing to use and map out - although both expansions made me want to get some different coloured (and thinner-nibbed) dry-wipe pens for future plays to make my cartography really stand out.

Next I got my first few plays of Black Sonata. Tracking the Dark Lady’s moves was pretty straight forward thanks to my hunting experience in The Fury of Dracula but I missed one key rule in my first two plays so ended the game having to pick between two options of symbols - picking wrong both times! Some quick rules revision reminded me that visiting every location allow me to rule out the other Lady in the same suit, so the next two games breezed by pretty quickly. A fun challenge of a solo game and I’m looking forward to trying more tricky routes and variants in future although the rather drab colour palate doesn’t give it the table presence it deserves.

Finally I got try my newest arrival Maquis. This had far more appeal for me than Black Sonata in terms of theme, mechanics and visual “pop” so I’m sure it will get far more table time. I soon got the hang of the game through the starter and 1-star missions, so am really looking forward to trying the harder 2- and 3-star missions in future, especially to get a greater variety of the Spare Rooms into play for specific missions. My initial plays have also shown it seems a worker placement game where having more workers is often as much a hinderance as a help, leading to a greater risk of arrests.

[RogerBW]

@kyuss and I went to visit @cornishlee and play games in his local pub.

The Climbers – how did I not find this years ago? Teachable to anyone (without colour vision deficits, and I think it should work for most of those), simple rules but sneaky emergent complexity. Lovely stuff. I am likely to buy this.

War of the Nine Realms – I’m the guy with most logged plays of this on BGG (58 out of 91 total, #2 has 5 plays logged), because I’ve demoed for Laurence (Wotan Games) at UKGE. And yet this was the first time I’d got out my own copy. Had a really good time, and now I feel all evangelical about it.

Niagara – another one I missed when it was a thing; a game I’ve seen at a distance but not played before. Good fun.

Glen More – heavy and largely-abstract Euro, and yet I enjoyed it.

Colt Express – not at its best with three players, not enough confusion.

Spirit Island – my third game, and it’s already on the “buy some time” list. (When there’s room! Buy some of the games I’m trying to get rid of!) I get the plastic/wood contrast thing, but those explorer pieces irk me.

Downforce – liked it much more in the flesh than playing on BGA. I’d still prefer it to be a racing game, but you can’t have everything.

[Benkyo]

@RogerBW

Spirit Island … I get the plastic/wood contrast thing, but those explorer pieces irk me.

I see this in SI and Scythe called out as a positive design thing, but yeah, I’m not a fan. I feel sure a similar thing could be achieved without the ugly plastic.

[Simfers]

Big game day here!

Three games of Pandemic with the Superbug challenge (and the base roles this time around). It went down MUCH better than the previous try, we even won a game and the other two were close! Definitely an interesting challenge, this. Adds a logistical component that requires some different strategies.

And two games of Everdell, one base (lost by ONE POINT), one with Pearlbrook. Oooooooh, that’s a fun one. Like Terraforming Mars with Venus Next, the base game is so strong that any expansion is very much non-essential. UNLIKE Venus Next, however, we actually want to play with Pearlbrook again. Adds complexity and new options without being too much. I was concerned about the wonders (one of which gives an INSANE 25 VP) causing a runaway winner problem, but I didn’t get one (my wife got the 20-point one) and the game finished 71-68.

Good day. Good day.

[Bondy034]

Some games over this past week:

Hadrian’s Wall x2, another solo game of this and a rematch with my friend. My multiplayer game was my highest scoring ever at 81 (on normal). He somehow did worse than his first game though! He enjoyed it nevertheless, though he’s a pretty ‘interactive’ gamer so the relatively solitary nature of HW is not completely up his alley. Having played this a bunch recently, I’m not sure there are as many strategic options as it initially presents as - you kind of need to build the fort and the wall, you need to try and max out the citizen tracks and then it’s choosing between the auxiliary buildings in the citizen sections. Maybe I’m just in a rut though… It’s still a lot of fun.

Quacks, this might be the first time I’ve seen a player get off to a rough start and manage to turn it around by the end! I know I never seem to manage that.

Skull x2, I won one of those! So rare for me to do decently at a bluffing game, I was chuffed.

Regicide, a game of this with my wife - we got two kings deep before flunking out. So far we’ve won once (of like 6 or 7 games probably?) It’s a very dynamic puzzle, and the communication restriction lends some interesting guessing and second guessing.

Fleet: the Dice Game, two player game of this, I won by a decent chunk - that’s the unfortunate reality of enjoying a game solo for me - new players are likely gonna do worse than I do Eh they still enjoyed the game, and I suspect it’ll hit the table again soon.

Welcome to the Moon x4, I’ve been exploring/learning the different sheets for this one solo, in prep for teaching them to others. They’ve all been a lot of fun (though I ended up having to look up a video for mission #6 - the rules for that one were not well explained!) They’ve all seemed a lot more interesting than the intro mission though (though more complicated of course). I think my fave so far is the mining one - though I’m still more fond of the original Welcome To… at this stage, that may change with more plays though.

The Fox in the Forest, same friend I won against in Hadrian cleaned me out in this one! I did moderately well for one round and tanked the others… Not really surprising at this point - I’m not great at this game. I like it though.

Three Sisters x2, a couple of solo games with some fairly high scores - one I focused on the garden and got an amazing score - maybe I get too seduced by the combos normally and lose sight of how profitable doing well in the garden can actually be…

Great Western Trail, solo game of this (with the correct rules this time) and lost by a decent chunk - I do well at a cowboy strategy but not many cowboys came out early on so I dipped into builders and yeah, it didn’t go well. Still lots to explore here.

51st State, I solo’d this one but - wow the solo rules are not well explained. Got it mostly right judging by forum clarifications on BGG but yeah, the base game is not amazing to solo, despite how much I love the game generally.

Grimm Forest, played this one at a local BG meetup. It’s okay. The theme is great but I wasn’t a huge fan of the fable cards which seemed to lean a little ‘take-thaty’ for my tastes.

Epic Spell Wars… etc., this one dragged a little, it wasn’t awful but feel like it would have to be half the length for me to really want to play it again.

[Phil]

@Phil

Castle Ravenloft … we’re planning to finish it up tomorrow.

Victory!

Meanwhile, the dark lord watches on…

[Phil]

I realised my biggest blunder while setting the game back up again. As I placed the treasure deck on the table it occurred to me that, other than the one we’d each started with, neither of us had drawn any treasure cards – somehow I’d managed to forget that defeating monsters doesn’t only get you XP, but treasure as well.

As XP and ‘treasure’ (which includes magical items, blessings, and fortunes) are pretty much the only nice things which ever happen to you in this game, skipping 50% of that was pretty terrible : ) I went back through the pile of defeated monsters and we drew three treasures each, and suddenly it all felt slightly less brutal than before!

The end-game was a bit of a doddle as it turned out, thanks to my rogue’s Stealth ability negating a nasty monster that I’d drawn, and our having enough XP to cancel an Encounter card which would otherwise have switched the positions of my character and the farthest Gargoyle in the background!

My partner rolled a 20 at one point yesterday which enabled her to level-up her cleric (as we’d accumulated enough XP), which I was pretty stoked about. I’m considering not telling her that this game doesn’t carry over that state from one mission to another, and simply letting her start at level 2 in our next game (there are only levels 1 and 2 in Ravenloft). Levelling up doesn’t provide any restorative effects in the game at the time it happens, so no potential in-game benefits are lost by doing this, and I suspect that “sorry, back to level 1” may prove to be a disappointing revelation. It makes the game easier, but I’m totally fine with that – I was already using the recommended “easier” setting of having a third healing surge available to us, because I think having to repeat missions is liable to kill some enthusiasm for playing. The game can be tough, so I don’t think this is going to change the balance dramatically.

[SteveB_uk]

First game of Nemo’s War, and phew.

It’s a beast to set up and learn, but once you’re going each round is quite simple: draw an event, add baddie ships to the board, take your actions.

Acts 1 and 2 were calm (although this is very much “The dice hate you: the boardgame”, I got two double-ones and barely ever more than 1 action a round) but Act 3 is frantic. Ships start appearing at great speed and being able to choose between 3 dice for your number of actions mean you can frequently have 3-4 instead of having to take all those 1s.

I was following the Explore motive on easy difficulty, and did well at collecting Wonders but didn’t concentrate enough on Uprisings. I survived to the end (just, it helped that Nemo was on +3 for being a bit unstable), although my Notoriety was so high I couldn’t afford to sink any more ships and probably only had a round or two left at most.

After totalling the points I had… 232! Which was “inconsequential”. I needed 239 for the average win. More uprisings next time.

The game is a delicate balancing of threats and slow damage, which you’re only going to be any good at after 1-2 plays, but it looks incredible and the panic as it accelerates to the end is real.

Oof.

[mistercrayon]

We played our first game of Planet Unknown today and had a really good time with it. It’s got that ganz shoen clever feeling of bumping up tracks to get more points but integrated into a polymino puzzle. On top of that you have this grid movement thing as well.

It blends very smoothly imo and is a fun thing to mess around with.