My girlfriend and I almost only ever play Orleans at 2 and it’s still great. I’d highly recommend the trade and intrigue expansion for the new beneficial deeds board (not the intrigue one) and events alone as they massively improve the game. The trade part can make the map feel more interesting, but we don’t always play with that. The new events and board always get used though.
4 Likes
Yeah I’ve had folks recommend that one to me. I’ll probably get it eventually. There felt like a lot to explore in the base game as it is!
I love Orleans and only played at two. Providing you can find a similarly skilled rival (of course) you still have to do a multi choice path efficiency puzzle. I think these are satisfying actions outside of fighting over certain spaces.
2 Likes
I’ve had a couple of half games of Concordia Solo (amusingly the opponent is called Contrarius).
My experience with Concordia is zero and then when I was reading the rules and had the game out I realised it would be a hard sell for my partner - so in the best spirit of throwing good money after bad I bought the solo mode. It was described as quite a low input solo mode, which is my kind of solo mode - if you do X action the Contrarius always does a corresponding Y action.
Here are my feelings on it.
Internalising Concordia before playing the solo is a very good idea. I think not intuitively knowing the cards makes this hard to manage.
I think I hate it when I make a mistake against a robot and I instantly want to start all over again. And find it really difficult not to just pack the box away.
I think I find being responsible for every move kind of exhausting. I complete a move and I have no time to really relax. Maybe this is true in all strategic game. I think though the act of thinking all the time plus admin for a ghost then instantly thinking is tiresome for me.
I’m not convinced I find the puzzle that attractive to try again. I will endeavour to give Concordia a go in multiplayer but we’ll see how it goes.
4 Likes
Not this past weekend, but the weekend before that, I actually managed to sit down at a table with several other people and play a game! It was a friend’s birthday party, and he was hosting an all-day game day. My partner arrived there separately (with our children) as I had to stay behind and do some last-minute work for a particularly demanding client.
On my way there, my partner messaged me, telling me how much fun she was having playing 6 nimmt! and also Snake Oil, but she didn’t enjoy that as much. I’ve been meaning to check out 6 nimmt for a long while, so I was pretty excited when I read that.
I arrived around the time there was some churn in the attendees, so the games got put away while people came and went and some catching up took the place of cardboard and cards for a bit. Shortly after, my partner took our children home for their nap/quiet time and I stayed behind to play a game or two before dinner.
Trailer Park Wars was the next game, apparently, in the queue, the pick of the birthday honoree’s partner, her favorite. I wouldn’t say it’s a ‘bad’ game, but it’s a bit slow and long for what it actually is; it wasn’t, in my opinion, a good choice for a high-distraction environment and what should have been a fun, silly thing was on the table for 2 hours before the host arbitrarily cut the game short.
Our hosts’ son was about to leave for a sleepover at grandparent’s house, and was given the option to play a game before he left. He chose Dungeon!, which I’ve never played. We got it on the table and I thought to myself, “Oh, this should be a fun 30-minute romp”. Due to the table behavior of the aforementioned 9-year-old, we were still struggling through the game 2 hours later. The person to win was also the person that came about an hour after we started and dropped-in due to the game taking so long and tying up everyone else.
It was enjoyable to sit down at a table across from some friends and play a game, but the games played and the specific situations in which they were played were not particularly enjoyable.
7 Likes
I almost played 6 Nimmt! for the first time on the weekend, but was too disorganised in the end, and bumped it for things I already knew the rules for. One day.
Snake Oil I’ve not played for years, but I had such a wonderful time with it one Christmas when my sister was visiting (she lives overseas), and she and my brother and I played. That was partly a case of “knowing your group”, as I know our senses of humour so well that I’ve rarely been so confident about how well a game is going to go. Our product pitches were ludicrous, very long-winded, and had us all absolutely falling about laughing. I love that game.
3 Likes
I still find it fun at 3 even if it is a bit better 4-6 players.
This evening I got in two 2 player games of Spirit Island. First run out of Russia as the adversary, in fact the last adversary for us to try after having beaten all the others at level 6 at least once.
First up we randomised in to Sharp Fangs Behind Leaves and Finder of Paths Unseen against level 1 Russia. I think I played Finder once before but they were awesome fun this time. Combined well with Fangs as the placement/positioning shenanigans were fun in the chains we could build together. I think we won with 2 level 3 cards to go.
Then we edged Russia up to level 2 and Keeper of the Forbidden Wilds joined Lure of the Deep Wilderness for a wild alliance. This one went smoothly we didn’t even get to the level 3 cards when we won with no remaining invaders. I think Lure really comes in to their own against Russia, and actually Lightning would also probably be excellent too.
All in all makes me appreciate Jagged Earth still as the new powers are generally top quality for being interesting to use. Thanks Eric R.
5 Likes
My wife was kind and suggested we play Unmatched this evening. She played Medusa, as usual, and I decided to try out Bullseye from the Hell’s Kitchen set.
The whole game pretty much went in my favor, and while I may have been able to end it faster, I chose to be a little cautious, keeping my hand count up and distance from Medusa, although there was one turn where I had no defenses in hand and a Gaze of Stone would have killed me, but my wife was also trying to keep some distance as she was losing. To be fair, she had to let 2 or 3 of my attacks through during the game, as she had no defense cards in hand at those times.
I got hit hard with a Second Shot, which she Boosted to a 7 against my 2, which brought me down to 4 health, but that left me able to attack on my turn with a card of my own which I could Boost, which gave me a 6 to her 3 defense, which was just enough to finish her off.
Bullseye looks tricky to play against, as his special ability lets him attack from up to 5 spaces away, which means he can hit most spaces on the board from wherever he is. I think the opponent needs to play very aggressively, as Bullseye can attack from so far away, so it is almost impossible to run away from him, so just blast him as hard as you can.
A lot of his cards are dependent on him winning a previous combat that turn, so he can make some pretty great chains if the cards come out of the deck in the right order. I never felt like I got an ideal tempo going, but still did well with him. So far, the Marvel sets are feeling really good.
1 Like
Yeah. Titan is fun. Perfect timing with the SVWAG talk in their latest eps too. I got some rules wrong, but I think I got them all right now.
Tawantinsuyu - I thought I would find the ideas interesting to play around, and ultimately decide that this game isnt my style (like with Teotihuacan). However, I found myself bored playing this.
Pax Renaissance - a newbie wants to play Pamir or Renaissance. Pax Porfiriana now seems shallow, in retrospect, when compared to Pax Pamir or Pax Renaissance.
Mogul - a more complicated No Thanks! with shares and trains. Pretty fun, but simple enough for our group to internalise the rules easily. Light rules, but tough decisions.
Flamme Rouge
Skull - this one is one of the weirdest and most hilarious game of Skull. It was skulls, skulls, and skulls. Players stumbling face first again and again and again. Until it reached the late game where the table changed tack and went for flowers. The winner won via 2 pts condition.
Tigris & Euphrates
Scout - because it was nommed by SdJ so why not?
Arboretum - I just find this game so samey nowadays. It still has some tough decisions. As I own the green 1st edition, I’m keeping it as a collectible - it doesn’t occupy a lot of space.
12 Likes
I’m looking at the screenshot of Pax Porfiriana on Yucata and wondering how this could possibly be true.
1 Like
Complexity isn’t depth, nor is bad graphic design.
(I haven’t played Pax Porfiriana, but I’m grappling with High Frontier now, and my initial impression is of a great deal of complexity and surprisingly little depth.)
7 Likes
I decided that Warp’s Edge was more important than grad work this evening. It was a good decision.
6 Likes
Played Vampire the Masquerade: Vendetta with friends on TTS tonight. There were four of us, one who had never played, so we gave him the Toreador, which is one of the strongest decks. I played the Malkavian, while the other two were Brujah and Tremiere.
I did really well thanks to the cards Indrew, and winning two really important allies. The first was a vampire that let me play cards face down for free. The other which I won in the second round added a card to my hand, which was great when I had the Madness Network card which lets me play the remaining cards in my hand to its location.
Overall, I won three locations in first place, and a couple of second place wins, and also caused a couple of Frenzies, netting a total of 26 points. Sadly, that only put me in second place, as the Toreador player won with 29. The other two had 20 or so and 16 (table was flipped for fun after the winner was determined).
I still really like this game, I just wish the clans were a touch more balanced.
5 Likes
It’s all relative. All these 3 has area-majority element. But take Pax Pamir, for example: there’s a parallel play between the players supporting the same faction. The players compete together against other factions to make their own the dominant one, when the dominance check happens. At the same time, these players compete against one another to be the dominant player within that faction. And within each player, they find themselves pulled between attempting to dominate the faction they are in, or to balance the factions and have the most tribes and spies instead.
In Renaissance, there are non-player pieces here too, and they are used for different purposes as players might have different end goals in mind. These pieces also fight against one another based on different angles. Peasants revolt involves a battle between unit types. A holy war involves unit colour (instead of type), conspiracy is a battle between pieces that are repressed and pieces that currently rules (regardless of type or colour). So a kingdom with a set of units will have different belligerents on each side, depending on which conflict is triggered.
In Porfiriana, the area majority contest is where you have 4 different types of points (think Tigers & Pots). To topple President Diaz, you want to have a certain amount of points of a colour more than the combined total points of President Diaz + the next top 2 players of that same colour (e.g. I have 7 blue points against Diaz’s two blue points + Player 2’s one blue pt + Player 3’s three blue points). I might be blind to see the nuance, but I don’t see those kind of interesting ideas here. The units belongs to you, your income buildings are yours. And the area majority contest is rather straight forward. Have the most of a colour, and try to deter the others by grabbing a few points of other colours.
I hope that makes sense.
4 Likes
It was the first entry in the Pax series/design space so it doesn’t surprise me it doesn’t do as much with it as later games.
2 Likes
Got to play a game of Unmatched on TTS last night for the S3 ladder in UMLeague. Both of us chose Bullseye, so per the rules he was eliminated as a choice. I then went with Daredevil and my opponent chose the Raptors. We played on The Bronze map from the Buffy set, and I chose to go second.
Raptors exploded into action, fully surrounding me and attacking with a card that would give them an extra action, but I defended with Feint, canceling that effect, though I still took 2 damage. I played a card that let me move up to 4 spaces and deal 1 damage to each fighter I moved through, so pinged two of the Raptors that way, then attacked one and was then able to use DD’s special ability to Blind Boost the attack, which got the Raptor down to 1 health, and was able to put some space between us with the After Combat effect of my card.
Because of my positioning, only two Raptors could surround me, and they did. Again they tried an attack that gave an extra action, and again I was able to Feint it, only taking one damage this time. Since I was pinned, I could not move, but still maneuvered to draw a card, and used it to attack the heavily wounded Raptor and took it out.
A couple of turns later, I was able to take out the other damaged Raptor with a double Blind Boosted attack, but it left me with no cards in hand. The remaining Raptor came in and dealt 10 damage in three attacks, leaving me at 1 health. I was forced to run away and draw some cards
The Raptor closed again, but I successfully defended with a card that let me heal for 3. A couple more exchanges left me at 3 health and a third defeated Raptor.
It was a really close match, very exciting, and super fast. Being my second win, I moved up to silver rank in the ladder! The sad thing is in 26 days of the month, I have only managed to play two games for the ladder. If I can somehow get three more wins before the end of the month, I can move up to gold (assuming no losses). At the rate I have time, I would be lucky just to get one more game in, period.
9 Likes
I played the current Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition challenge* on Thursday night with @Lordof1, and while we managed to avoid Dawn ever flipping we made an error near the end that cost us a lot of points. So this afternoon, since there’s pleasant weather in the Secret Command Gazebo outside High Wycombe, I had another run at it.
And even with the identical setup the game was completely different. This time we got lots of citizens up front, and so the flip came pretty quickly (round 3, I think); but with a bit of cunning deployment we managed to have three citizens sitting at 1 HP each by the time we could start eliminating them again, and with Ra doing a 12-point Ignite (broken Staff of Ra), followed by Tachyon with a 15-point Lightspeed Barrage, we managed to control the new Citizens and knock down Dawn at the same time.
Still loving this game.
* ObDisclaimer I’m running these challenges, on BGG.
11 Likes
So myself and kiddo started out on Gloomhaven: JoTL today. We played the first two scenarios and he has absolutely loved it so far. He wanted to plough straight on through to scenario three but I had to remind him of the concept of food, and we’ve agreed to take a break for dinner at least!
I’m still keeping an eye open for the crunchier bits ahead, interested to see if that tempers his enthusiasm at all, but he’s been waxing lyrical about it to my wife since we packed it away. I love the relatively fast setup and tear down, hopefully that will help us get it to the table often over the coming weeks and months. Looking forward to playing it again very soon, perhaps even another scenario before bedtime… 
9 Likes
Are we talking about the same game? 
In all seriousness, I find it a bit of a chore to set up and tear down, but I am doing it solo. Maybe it’s quicker with two.
4 Likes
Well, I did preface it with the word relatively! 
Yeah it was a bit of a chore to set things up to start with, and adding the new bits takes a little time. However, the tokens and cards are mostly sorted, everything bagged and ready to go so it’s now down to just flipping a page, grabbing some monsters and shuffling some decks. The only other dungeon crawl type game I own is Catacombs, and that feels like an absolute beast by comparison! 
4 Likes