I would add that in my one play of Jump Drive on the penultimate turn, I drew 12 cards, meaning I had to discard 2 cards (after completely emptying my hand the turn before) immediately after drawing my income for the round due to the 10 card hand limit. Jump Drive is generous. Other card-based tableau-builders where the entire game is cards are not nearly as generous as this design – and it made all the difference. The difficult decisions were “ooh, this is awesome, but these other three are awesome too! Which should I play?” and not the alternative that I absolutely despise: “… I guess I’ll play this one… Or risk wasting yet another turn waiting for something useful to actually show up”
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I love Roll. So much! It is somewhat random, but the manipulation mitigates much of it once the game gets going. Deciding whether to go for lots of tech to get the dice to do what you want versus planets to get more dice is a really interesting choice for me. And it’s short enough that the odd wacky game is fine.
The orb expansion pushes the game to a further extremes with a free action that can be tailor-made to your strategy. I’m not sure if that would make it better or worse for you!
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I’ve played Race a hundred times and Roll once. I have no desire to play Roll again. I agree with Quinns - why bother when you have Race?
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Cracked open my birthday ‘Volt’ and took it for a spin. Fast and fun and even the mother-in-law picked it up quickly!
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@qwertysoldier and I just had a ridiculous game of Twilight Struggle. It went 13ish points up to the Soviets to 8 points up to the USA in one turn. Back to 15 up for the Soviets in the next followed by my defeat.
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Last game I played was Root on my beautiful new play mat. God, that was like a week ago. Where does the time go?
I did just receive my copy of The Mind: Extreme, and I’m looking forward to the Lament Configuration style hell-portal it’s likely to open up.
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And to add to that: that 12 VP-lead I had as USSR was the same turn I was trying to get SA-scoring for an instant win (I was on the verge of control there). It didn’t pan out and just a turn later the score was US +8. Bonkers!
Oh and the early war was eventful too: we started with all the early war scoring cards in the first 3 AR’s of Turn 1. That makes for an interesting Early War 
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I played another few games of Jump Drive solo last night. I must have gotten extremely lucky in my first play because I really struggled to get quite the same level of income/VP production in any of the next 3 games. My final score in Game 1 was 64 but the highest I was able to get in the next three was 48. So, apparently, luck of the draw is a bit more of a factor than I previously though, but it definitely solidified some things in my mind about “what should I prioritize first?” – the answer being: card draw (probably)
After that, I got out Valley of the Kings: Premium Edition a.k.a a deckbuilder with tarot-sized cards (for some reason). I heard really good things about VotK so I picked up VotK:PE secondhand at a decent price.
Usually in deckbuilders, culling your deck is a component of a successful strategy; here it is more so – you only score cards that you’ve entombed (i.e. you’ve removed from your deck and placed in your Tomb). The market in VotK is unique as well; you build a “pyramid” of cards, 3 on the bottom row, 2 on the row above that and a single card at the top – You are only allowed to buy cards from the bottom row and, when you do, cards above “crumble” down. If you buy one of the two cards on either end, there’s no choice of which card “crumbles”, but if you buy the middle card, you can choose which of the 2nd row cards falls down. There are card powers that allow you to manipulate the cards in the pyramid to give the game added depth. This seems extremely interesting!
Unfortunately, VotK appears to be the least modular deckbuilding system; not a ton of mix-and-match options are obvious, though the player’s guide suggests some non-obvious combinations. For my introductory game, I would be skipping the solo modes and, instead, playing a 2-handed simulated multiplayer to learn the game. I also selected the default cards (from the first iteration of the game).
It was late but I managed to get the game setup and take about 2 turns before I realized that I just wasn’t “getting it”. Did I make a mistake buying this game? I dunno. The tarot cards are novel but are not laid out very well and are (surprise!) too large. The premium edition comes with premium sleeves which the previous owner had already utilized; premium sleeves are nice but are quite slippery, especially considering the heft of these over-sized cards.
I need to circle back around to this one… maybe try the (very stale sounding) solo mode; there are multiple solo scenarios included in the book; two are very similar to just playing alone and the 3rd adds a automa-like opponent.
I really hope I didn’t make a mistake grabbing this one, but if I had to choose right now to either keep it forever or sell it today, I would have dollars bills in my hand by the end of the day.
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My son and I got in another game of Oceans tonight. This was the first time I was able to get a few species going ahead of him, and it was a bit lopsided.
I had 2 species that could leech from him, so it really slowed him down. I felt kind of bad (genuinely), but I kept thinking/hoping he would draw into some defense cards. Final score was about 60-30, which is about the same as out first game, but he won that one. Our second was 3 player and was much closer (I won by 1 point).
We may try again this weekend and see how it goes. I think he’ll be watching for that next time though.
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Played Ticket to Ride in app form last night. Asia map, my sister eeked out victory from me but my nephew got absolutely trashed
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How does the fun hold up? Still eyeing it but not sure if I need another 20 minute card game
Comes back to my personal rule. If can be playing card sized, it should be playing card sized.
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Finally got back to my Arkham Horror TCG Dunwich Legacy campaign, playing Blood on the Altar. Things did not go well for Jenny Barnes, but they went better for her than for…a lot of other people. I had a shot at a good resolution, but I drew the Mob Enforcer treachery from my deck, which bogged me down for a couple of turns, enough for the Agenda to fully progress just after I eliminated him, which ended the scenario.
Luck was not with me tonight, as the Chaos Bag seemed particularly unforgiving, with a lot of -3 or worse draws, when I did the usual planning for -2. Did waste some turns early on trying to investigate locations for clues when I just did not have any assets to assist with that. Only moved on after the Searching for Izzie treachery came out, which worked out in the long run, as I found what I needed to advance the Act, just not fast enough.
I intend to finish up the campaign in the hopefully near future and then I think I will try it again with two investigators. A better clue finder would have really helped with this scenario.
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Managed to get a few games in of the recently purchased Imperial Settlers. Really enjoying this one, had a feeling I would based on the videos I had seen. Couple of games against the girlfriend and I think my brief familiarity with the game gave me a slight edge. Also managed a few solo games of it, which is actually pretty easy to win but the ‘beat your own score’ element to it is strangely compelling. Really looking forward to the campaign-style expansion coming out soon for this, and the other factions you can buy for it mean I think this one is going to be hitting the table often for the foreseeable future.
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Yep! I think the reason Jump Drive is holding steady for me is because it’s 20 minutes (or less!). Luck of the draw has played more of a roll than I previously thought, but ultimately I’m not bothered by it because I can always just play again! Multiplayer it may be slightly more frustrating if you can’t pull the cards you need – but I think that’s true of any card-based tableau builder.
In this case, I suspect it will feel luxurious once you get a familiarity for the cards; as it stands, not only are the cards too big, but they are hard to parse. The benefit of tarot-size cards is the text is, at least, quite large so it’s certainly a game I could play with my in-laws.
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I’d be all over it if it was say £15 or under. However it seems closer to £25 in the UK.
My partner and I played another Gloomhaven scenario yesterday afternoon which felt way too easy (#25) and in the evening my gaming girls and I played the awesome Codenames implementation that was shared by @bruitist over here. This online variant was immediately declared “better than the original” as soon as we set up the second game 
Obviously, we’d be having more fun if we could meet up somewhere offline but for now this is a great non-TTS game to play with as many friends as fit on our jitsi. We followed this with a few rounds of Wavelength using the http://heretothere.app gizmo again.
Now that we’re on vacation-at-home there may be a few more boardgames coming up to be played and we just left out Gloomhaven on the dinnertable… because we can eat dinner in front of the TV
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Yesterday I saw a copy get listed on BGG’s Market showing as shipping from the UK for £16 with £4 shipping within UK
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Finished that game of Raiders of the North Sea that we had “paused” last Tuesday with my daughter. Won 72 to 52, all because she just want to hang out to girls characters, which is fine, but they kept avoiding appearing for her out of the deck. So she wasted a few turns on the Gatehouse trying to get new girl cards.
I have to add that in daylight (we played in the afternoon with natural light) the grey meeples are easier to tell from the black ones, but I still bought some light grey paint from the game shop in Napier to paint them one of these evenings. Winter is coming and there will be plenty of games under the economy light bulbs of our dining room.
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Here’s someone who likes to be well prepared!..
checks location
…Here’s someone who better get painting!
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See I love both - Race gets a lot of online 2 player plays at BGA (it’s an exceptional 2 player game), Roll I enjoy playing more in person. I find Roll has a more satisfying arc - Race is almost a bit too fast paced. I’d be really curious to try Jump Drive or New Frontiers though, see if the rest of the family is as solid as these two.
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