No, all four of us wanted the yellow and brown factions to do badly so no one was getting hammered.
By the time I’d realised Red was the strongest faction it was too late to swap
1 Like
Gaia Project with Tekelili. Placed my two starting mines close to each other, and struggle to breakout as a result. Great game. I thought @Whistle_Pig and I are in contention, but @Acacia went ahead and smash it with the last round boost.
Castles of Burgundy - very moreish. Played 4 relatively fast players and it was fun. Tuscany is still marginally better
LLAMA Party edition
So Clover
4 Likes
A quick game of Lost Cities last night. My wife had a good first round while mine was lousy, something like 88 - 5. It was too much of a lead for me to come back from, though I did close the gap significantly, as the final scores were 120 - 114.
1 Like
I love that game, must remind my partner to play it as she goes full competitive and enjoys it greatly 
2 Likes
It was an interesting game played over so much calendar time. First round I was a distracted mess, second round I passed after two actions, Rounds 3 and 4 were slow play as I worked through COVID. Then the last two rounds I had the lucidity that comes after a week of sleep. I think it was around round 4 that I realized I was still in the game and round 5 I knew I was IN the game. It worked out 
6 Likes
Played so clover and lords of vegas both with 6 players. Lords of vegas was a slow start for those less familiar with board games but think everyone got into it. So clover was OK BUT… the lack of real team play kinda made it a bit of a lesser experience than codenames. There is probably a house rule to fix this, but was overall a bit disappointed.
3 Likes
I finally got a few games of Nusfjord in. Conclusion: neat!
This and Lowlands sit side-by-side on my shelf, another duo sparking the sneaking suspicion that only one belongs. Nusfjord is the incumbent with a more flexible player count and higher general rating. But these playthroughs crystallized some stuff.
Nusfjord is cerebral. It’s like a Swiss watch. All these different, perfectly balanced and cryptically interlocking pieces to put together. It is extremely tight, balanced, and intellectual. Not in the dense way, but meaning the only part of you it is likely to tickle is your brain.
Lowlands, in contrast, is a game of heart. You decorate your little pasture, move your fences and explode your sheep. There is good natured bad blood (and good blood) between the players as you build or ignore the dyke and invite or exclude your opponents to the work. There’s a bit of theater in the reveal of the surge cards.
As in most cases, both are good. Neither is really better than the other. I’m coming to terms with the different flavors, though, and I think I’m more of a Lowlands guy. Not overly motivated to sell either right now, but if push comes to shove, Nusfjord is just a fascinating trinket that doesn’t capture my heart in the same way.
That said, boy the LOVE that went into Nusfjord. In contrast to the oft-decried (by me) Stonemeier products that are flashy and fun but often rickety underneath, Nusfjord is about as plain and unassuming as it could be but as you use it you realize how painstakingly thought-through every detail is. Both the game and the little interlocking pieces and mats. Respect.
12 Likes
Alchemists , first play. This is a deduction game, which we love. Probably the heaviest deduction game we’ve ever played. But that’s because there is so much game built around the deduction. You have eight ingredients, and each one corresponds to an alchemical. An alchemical is composed of three attributes (red, green, blue) and either positive or negative. Combining two ingredients gives you a red, green, or blue potion, and it’s either positive or negative. There are several ways in the game to test pair of ingredients, which allows you to narrow down what their alchemical could be. For example, if a pair of ingredient gives you a positive red potion, then you know that neither of those ingredients can have a negative red attribute.
There’s a clever turn order mechanic, where you can choose higher rewards (like ingredients and special cards), but you take your turns later. Then you place all of your action cubes on the various spaces. The spaces are forage (take an ingredient), transmute (trade an ingredient for gold), sell potion, buy artifact, debunk theory, publish theory, test a potion on a student, and drink a potion. Publishing a theory means you select an alchemical for an ingredient and place one of your seals on it for end game points and reputation. But you can also debunk other people’s theories if you think it’s wrong.
It took a while to teach, you have to understand the alchemy to play well. We were all new to that, so mistakes were made. it was a good, close game, and I’m hoping we get a few more games out of it. it’s a relatively old game (2014),.
Rear Window , first play. This is a co-operative (mostly) game, similar to games like Mysterium, where one player gives clue cards to the others. This time it’s based on the classic Hitchcock movie Rear Window (which I have to admit I have not seen). There are four windows, and each one has a character and an attribute (like thief, or klutz). There are four days, the director places eight cards (two for each window) for each day. The watchers need to identify the correct person and attributes. Each day, after the watchers have placed their guesses, the director gives their score of correct guesses (from zero to eight), but the watchers don’t know exactly which ones are correct.
There is also a possibility that one of the attributes is the murder token, and then the game becomes a competitive game between the director and the watchers. The director wins if the watchers guess either six or seven spots correctly and do not guess the murder tile, and the watchers win if they identify seven or eight spaces and the murder token. We didn’t include the murder tile, thought I’d keep it simple for the first game. We failed too, the best score for a day was five. It’s interesting, and different enough from Mysterium to keep both.
Paper Tales , played before, but a long time ago. This was on my sell pile, but a recent podcast raved about it, so I thought we’d give it another go. It’s…ok I guess. You draft cards, then place them in your tableau. Then you fight with your neighbours, get income, and contract buildings. Most units age and die in two turns, so you can’t just get a great card and keep it for the whole game.
Century: Golem Edition , first play. While I haven’t played this exact game before, I have played Century; Spice Road, so I knew what to expect. The gems look great! Good filler game, fast playing but a bit to think about.
6 Likes
We’ve played both Ra (still excellent, somehow I smashed it) and Paint the Roses this morning with @mistercrayon.
Paint the Roses is a properly hard deduction co op that looks simple from components, theme and rule set. We lost on the penultimate turn. Putting the deduction into a coop was really good. Definitely want to play this until we beat it
9 Likes
Yeah some nice times thanks for having me again - I can feel relieved my accidental deluxe purchase of Ra will be nice too
Paint the roses is a really nice game - its got a nice and smooth tension curve.
5 Likes
We played Kingdomino real quick yesterday, which I won thanks to a large section of lake tiles.
Today we played Lost Cities, which I won due to a great first round, and Ethnos, which I also won, thanks to lots of Halflings.
5 Likes
I’ve been away at Stabcon (which happens twice a year in Stockport and has no web site).
Apart from the RPGs, I got in games of Lemminge, Sentinels of the Multiverse, Zombie Dice, Rallyman GT, and lots of Flash Point Fire Rescue. Been too long!
10 Likes
I would not take Stabcon for a gaming convention…
OT: Got Downforce to the table for the first time with just my wife and me. It was pretty fun, but I think it may need more players to truly shine.
EDIT: Forgot to mention she won, 23 - 19.
1 Like
Managed to have a humble (by my old “BeforeTime” standards) gaming day with a couple friends.
We opened with a game of Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition, which asks the simple question “What if Race for the Galaxy, but less good?”
That’s unfair, but it did feel… I dunno, let elegant than RftG but not as meaty as standard TFM, so I passed it along to the guy who won.
Next up was a game of Three Sisters, in which the owner of the game utterly clobbered us. No harm done, but I think I actually like Fleet the Dice Game better? Probably an unfair comparison, but gosh there is a lot of things to keep track of in 3S that FtDG makes more elegant, I think?
This writeup is becoming very acronym heavy. Sorry! Only more more to go!
Lastly we finally played Dune Imperium which I admit I like far more than it deserves. Not that it’s a bad game, it’s definitely not, but I know in my heart-of-hearts that Lost Ruins is mechnically stronger… but LR doesn’t have Bene Gesserit, so Dune Imperium (“DunIm”? “DuIm”, pronounced “Do- 'em”? Doesn’t shorten well) wins. Although we had to call it before the last turn, I think I was in a pretty strong position to win.
I will say that I hated the leader I randomly got… a Countess Tho-something? Every time I was supposed to get Spice, I got 1 less and drew a card… which is potentially interesting, but 9/10 just threw me off. Plus, does it trigger ANY time I get spice (like, for winning a combat)? Because that’s awful if so.
Anyway. Good times had by all.
3 Likes
Only played each once but the big advantage Dune: Imperium had over Lost Ruins for me was actual player interaction. The politics and maneuvering around the conflicts was a huge part of why I would play it again.
2 Likes
It began as a Diplomacy-related gathering.
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Im on holiday for a week so no board games. But I am finally trying out Scythe digital edition. I hated how opaque the info here compare to the noard game where everything is vvisible to you. But later realised that I can show the tracks which does help a bit (I still have to zoom out or pan)
Successfully won with all factions on 6 player hard difficulty so far. I have 3 more mats to play and win. The AI is very competent on Hard so it’s fun.
I might try Root and Spirit Island next.
3 Likes
The UI for this is 
. Good luck, I hope it doesn’t ruin your holiday.
I played some games recently. Friday I got Lemminge out as a warm up. I discarded and drew 4 times in a row and still couldn’t move my second Lemming so I didn’t win. Good fun game though and the new player enjoyed it too.
Main event was Lisboa and it started out fun but then a few things happened that started to cool me on it. Some irritating turn order stuff combined with some draws from the clergy bag messed stuff up for in an almost take that manner. In the blink of an eye half the games work was undone for me. I’ll play again but now thinking I might have hit the inflection point with this one.
Last night I played 2 games of Spirit Island against Russia. Got beasted against level 5 using Starlight Finds it’s Form and Shadows Flicker Like Flame. The person using Starlight had a mess of a game and did almost nothing which really compounded the event on the second turn covering the entire board with invader little people who skip death thanks to Russia’s abilities. All the blight went out on turn 7.
We re-wracked, toned Russia down to level 4 and sent Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares along with Serpent Slumbering Beneath the Island along to save the dahan from the unwanted attentions of the invaders. This time a rousing victory saw the fear cards come out on a turn we could have killed the last city first if we’d chosen. I think it was turn 9. Russia is a tough nut to crack. The human mini invaders(explorers?) do 2 damage, so cause blight and kill Dahan alone and each action that would kill them they get pushed instead so are really tricky to manage. Add in the rule where any land with 3+ hanging out getting added ti a turns ravage and it’s just difficult. We’ll keep going up levels when my Spiriting chum has had a better night’s sleep so is a bit more on it.
6 Likes
Ah. Say no more.
1 Like
Played Concordia with my wife today, using the Creta map. An unusual game in that we both had 7 unbuilt houses remaining when the game ended. We usually have built quite a bit more by the end of the game. My wife purchased the last two development cards from the track to trigger the end of the game, getting the 7 point Concordia card. She won, 116 - 97. I realized afterward that I could have played my final turn better to get more than the 12 points I did acquire by playing my remaining colonists, but it would not have been enough to change the outcome.
Later, I played three solo games of Marvel Champions, all against the standard Rhino setup. First two games I used Hulk, my first time with him. Lost both games due to too much threat on the main scheme, though did better in the second game overall. It was fun one-punching Rhino’s first form on the second turn though!
Played with Thor for the first time in the third game. It was really close, but I just came up short of taking him out. He had 1 HP remaining and I was going to lose to either an Attack or a Scheme, so chose to go down fighting, as Thor would prefer. Got through both my deck and the Encounter deck, which really sealed my fate.
Both decks suffer from low hand sizes, but Thor at least has cards to help mitigate that like God of Thunder which generates a resource, and Asgard which increases his hand size. While Hulk has a few cards with three resources on them, they never came up in either game I played. And with low Threat removal, it seemed like the strategy was to use Hulk’s high health to take attacks from the villain and just try to hit him harder and take him out before going down. Got close, just didn’t work out.
I think that just leaves She-Hulk, Groot, Ant-Man, Wasp, and Vision to play out of my owned decks and then I will have used each hero at least once in a solo format, after which I will probably play mostly two-handed against more interesting villains.
3 Likes