Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

Boardgames
5371

Today with Slightly Less Local Game Group (I seem to end up playing with a different subset of it each visit)…

VOLT, definitely one I’ll be taking around with me more now that I’ve got it sensibly bagged. Might even give the minis a quick going-over with a suitable paint. Two games, new players got the hang of it very quickly.

Unfair, one I heard about from Cathy of the much-lamented Our Turn Podcast (which in turn I heard about from SU&SD originally). I think it may be a bit too random for a game that lasts quite a while – you can build up quite a bit of stuff and then have it kicked over by a random event draw. Still had a good time, though.

4 Likes
5372

Some games over the last week and a bit:

Jaipur

Patchwork

Incan Gold - this one was weird - my wife got an early score on the first round and then 3 of the following rounds saw no one getting any gems, cementing her solid lead. It’s games like this that leave me a bit cooler on the game than others - it doesn’t always give good meaningful choices on top of the randomness. Quacks (though longer and more complex) offers a much better sense of a wild out of control game but with enough real choices where you don’t feel entirely beholden to luck.

Skull x2, this game continues to grow on me - it’s largely a faster less mathsy Perudo. It doesn’t have the tactile thrill of the dice cups in that one, but the nice thick cards/coasters give it’s own appeal. Lots of fun.

Whitehall Mystery, we detectives did awfully - we failed to pick up the murderer’s trail at all on a few of the rounds! The end was close but in the end some sneaky back tracking and careful planning secured the win for our murderer.

Arboretum x2, taught this to a new gaming bud, he struggled to grasp the scoring in the first game so we had a rematch. It was much closer, I missed out by virtue of having one fewer point in a key suit in my final hand.

Splendor, great game of this one, super tight, and the winner just edged over the line before the others could.

Silver and Gold, another excellent game of this, nabbing two high scoring trophies won it for me, in the end.

Great Western Trail, terrific game of this with a bud I hadn’t seen in awhile. I continue to prove that if I can get cowboys consistently, I can normally at least put myself in contention to win, but I’m much weaker at builder and train strategies, so if I’m forced into a hybrid strat or completely into something else, I tend to do terribly. This game I got my cowboys so I won solidly with like 40+ points for cows, and great points on deliveries. My opponent simultaneously made the mistake of not buying better cows early enough and wavering between a builder and train strategy. I look forward to playing it again with him soon - he enjoyed it a great deal, and is the kind of systems thinker that will probably wipe the floor with me with another game or two under his belt.

8 Likes
5373

Two games of Lost Cities today with my wife. Won the first, lost the second due to a really poor second round. Just some quick fun while we had the time.

2 Likes
5374

I’ve never played Men at Work so I don’t know how different they are. I also already have Rhino Hero so I don’t think I’ll be buying another stacking game anytime soon.

1 Like
5375

Is that photo just for showing the game off? It looks like the car placement isn’t right (I vaguely remember reading the rules a while back when I was thinking of buying the game).

1 Like
5376

I played a 2 player of Libertalia with my partner yesterday because Pirates!

And I lost badly, yay! Not even on purpose! He made a terrible first move and was ready to pack up… so I declared we would play the first of the 3 voyages as a test, reset and then play a full game if he wanted to. But he ended up doing so well on the rest of that first voyage that we just kept going :wink:

I might get better at the game eventually or it might be something that doesn’t mesh with my brain at all. I have no idea what I was doing, but I sure had a lot of plans I didn’t quite manage to execute because “oh shiny new card”. I liked the decisions which cards to play and I expect 6 player to be a fun chaos. Two player is far more tactical. Definitely want to try with a larger group.

I have not checked out the automa. I am not sure I want to.

5 Likes
5377

It’s a photo from the game. What looks wrong about the car placement?

5378

Having never played, I’m probably wrong. I also realise now that since you have to know in what order the roads were built it’s very hard to judge from a photo. It just looked like you had more cars on the roads than there should be.

5379

I think there were 4 roads underneath when that one was built. I’d have to check whether it makes a difference that some of them belonged to the same players!

5380

More Brian Boru - still works with 3 players.

1828 - a nuttier version of 1830. The company roster was expanded both for public and private companies. The huge number of companies means that the train rush remains relentless. This has been an observation of mine on enough number of 18xx where the limited number of corps tends to slow the rush once all the corps are founded.

However, the best thijg about this is the turn order. In most titles, turn order is always clockwise, which leaves to be desired. Some like 1844: Switzerland arranges turn order based on cash at hand. 1828 turn order is based on who passes first. If you pass, you take the number 1 card; and if you decide to take an action, you have to give up turn order 1 to the 2nd player who holds turn order 2 and so on.

It was a vast improvement, imo. It gives a more interesting decision on either passing to secure your place for the next stock round, or take an action to influence this stock round. I am keen on house ruling this on every 18xx game that uses clockwise order but not sure on what @EnterTheWyvern thinks of this.

1870 - I became a bankrupt. Great fun like with the last play I did with Wyvern.

5 Likes
5381

Brief visit last night to Monday Games. Played/taught a game of Oceans to a couple that had played it only once and bought it. Some components inside were still in shrink. It was a really fun game, their version has some promo cards and plastic fish, which go better with the ocean tray, but are not as pretty as the cardboard ones (or very environmentally friendly). I think this game would benefit from wooden fish meeples myself…

Anyway, the game played really well, I had to remind them of a few rules and teach it to a fourth player, and we went on. Finished tied second on a very tight game where scores were 50, 47, 47 and 42. Besides one person, we all went for foraging whales, and I managed to get 5 species going for a while, but the winner closed the game tactically before I could react. Still amazing how well this game follows the theme of ecosystems with species interacting with each other.

8 Likes
5382

Boardgameextras has a 240-piece painted wooden fishmeeple set for a mere £90…

1 Like
5383

What a pittance! Let me see if I have some loose change somewhere…

2 Likes
5384

Just finished a game of Lost Ruins of Arnak on BGA… and I am a bit proud that my last round seemed to go on endlessly. I have never before climbed so high on the research track and my deck ran out of cards… it went 74 to 53 points to me. But winning was not the point… just combo-ing through that final round.

7 Likes
5385

Finally played Bora-Bora which is one of the rare Felds that I am keen on. It didn’t disappoint. I really like The Voyages of Marco Polo, but this one seems tighter. It’s tight but it didn’t cut down gameplay to a linear one like Barrage

Free Ride - It has the Ticket to Ride vibe, but the mechanism was built upon the design of Trans America/Trans Europa. I was having a good time, but then it starts to get repetitive by mid-game.

Risk: Europe - simple Ameritrash area-control. Didn’t like it, but didn’t hate it.

Alchemist - this one is by Carlo Rossi, not the heavy deduction game by Matus Kotry. Very open and very opaque. But some people found it very dry. I think I found a hidden gem for myself.

The objective is to score points by making potions and to make your secret ingredient to be the most used ingredient. You can create potion recipes, but you cannot use them yourself, only your opponents. So, do you want to create a potion that is “easy” to make and uses your secret ingredient. But this will allow opponents to score easy points. Do you want to create a potion recipe that consumes your secret ingredient (hence, take those cubes out of the game) or a recipe that creates them (hence taking cubes out of the reserve and into circulation)

It’s a cube pusher, but this one is a cube pusher where nothing is obvious, and 100% of the gameplay is on the central board that facilitate cube-conversion.

I will be keeping Alchemist for a while. It’s a small box, same size as Carcassonne and the new Galaxy Trucker

6 Likes
5386

I felt the same. I think it’s a game where everyone needs to be super aware of everything going on I think. My basis for this is how tight the score can be at the end I bet there’s a really vicious game in there but it’s too boring to do anything.

2 Likes
5387

Played a quick game of Lost Cities with my wife this evening. I just could not get a good round going, so lost 128 - 56.

Later, I played Unmatched on TTS, part of the season 3 ladder on UMLeague. Played Daredevil against Buffy, using Giles as her sidekick. I had a decent lead in health after a few rounds, eventually getting her down to 3 and Giles down to 2. But I got too aggressive and ran out of defense cards in hand, which let Buffy hit me for a bit, and getting me down to 3 as well.

I worked on rebuilding my had (despite DD’s ability working when you only have 2 or fewer cards in hand), but kept drawing Scheme cards. Five in a row. My opponent used a scheme of his own to see my hand, but was too far away to capitalize on it. Once I had some combat cards, I was able to close and use my scheme cards to take out Giles and reduce Buffy to 1.

She made a last ditch effort to get me, but I was able to defend and then take her out on my turn.

I almost got really screwed over by that card draw, but thankfully I had wounded Buffy enough that she was afraid to engage, and was busy building up her own hand. Saved my bacon.

4 Likes
5388

I got to play another game of Lost Ruins of Arnak last night, teaching @Captbnut. Despite my teach being all over the place, it seems it went well enough to “hand” my “student” the victory :slight_smile: Also, I ran out of stone tablets in the last round and wasted 4 VP drawing another card I couldn’t play.

Note: if you want to play lots of artifact cards don’t forget to play the ones that give you stone tablets first…

8 Likes
5389

I also played Bora Bora this week. It’s a really good game, but I’m bored with it. I’ve played a bunch and got through the meat so I’m now just feeling a bit gristly about it now. A game that will now probably go on the sell pile. I’ll mull this one over for a few weeks before committing though.

Played my second game of Scorpius Freighter and again really enjoyed it. It’s definitely helped by the speed at which it plays but still it has some knife fight in a phone booth vibes. Decent interaction with the shared rondels that time the game and the markets are a bit racy. It won’t set my world alight but it sits nicely alongside Calimala for a quick and good euro.

Next we set up Food Chain Magnate vanilla base game set up. This was a bit skewey as an inexperienced player gave someone all the money 3 turns running and so it snow balled super fast. Hopefully the noob learnt something and they did enjoyed it so better fun next time.

Lastly we played 2 rounds of Quarriors using the next expansion along in the ultimate edition. Was really good fun as it has been so far. Wild ride of nonsense. Top marks

5 Likes
5390

Had five for game night which is a nice number. Settled on Ethnos, which always provides a nice amount of drama with the final scoring and when the deck is getting to the last cards. It’s also a game where it’s basically always your turn just because it goes around the table so fast.

Then we played Sagrada, where everyone finished their board (hooray!) and the tools were generous enough and the dice friendly enough for me to get tons of points and win (hooray!).

Other games from the past couple weeks: Some Jaws of the Lion (which is fun), Burgle Bros 2 with my dad who was in town for the day, Indian Summer where we had a full tie, and full Gloomhaven where I promoted my character after an incredibly difficult mission, and then it turned out the owner was promoting his as well. Looking forward to trying out my new one, the Elementalist, who I haven’t even looked at the cards for yet.

5 Likes