That’s going to feel a lot better. There’s one combination in Marvel Champions that doesn’t really scale, and it’s “Single Hero vs Rhino”. An unlucky Advance card on Rhino can instantly end the game from too much threat and it won’t be anything that you did as a player. The other villains allow more threat, and “x number of heroes” gives enough threat on any villain if the number of heroes is 2.
I haven’t played much with Hulk, but I’m definitely going to try him alongside another hero with Justice aspect, who will be doing all the complicated plays while Hulk sits on his side of table randomly and thoroughly smashing everything in sight
Woah. The track laying and tokening in 18GB is fun! If you look at the spaghetti rails in the Preston, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield cluster, it’s just wild.
Oh, I am aware, I have played two-handed before, and against Klaw and Ultron. I just like trying to get a feel for each (pre-constructed) deck in solo play, and Rhino is not very complex, but definitely agree those Advance cards can be brutal.
I find Ultron really difficult for something that’s in the first box! (Although I haven’t tried an “I love minions” hero like Thor with Ultron yet, must do that).
Sister-in-law requested Wingspan, birder that she is. I have all the same feelings about it. Not a terrible game, just the constant reminder I could be having more fun in less time with so many other offerings. I got a Swift, which switches habitats every time you use it. That spiced things up as I was doing more interesting pathing for a few turns.
The next night we played Pictomania. So much fun. The wife was stressed for the first half until I reminded her the goal was to have fun, not win, with this one. With the second half of the game, she did both. Felt good to laugh out loud so much.
Also ran Sagrada through it’s paces via the app. It is rare that a game underwhelms me this badly. And I love Azul. I could take the time to find and articulate the difference, but it’s likely not worth the effort. Anyway, I got zero from it and an easy delete.
Crazy times this week with the new job, so I needed to go out and play some games on Monday Night.
Ended up playing Praga Caput Regni with the “Euro couple” that I had not played with for a long time. I could see very soon why I had not.
On a very overcomplicated euro, the game became a nightmare with loads of AP involved (I nearly screamed when in a game of allegedly 90 mins, after 2.5 hours she was a good 5 mins between taking an action that would give her 11 points or an action that would give her 13 when she was 3rd and way over 30 points behind the lead). I must remember never to sit behind her. Nearly every turn she took the action I was going to take and ruined my plans.
I finished last under 100 points when everybody else was on the 140-120 bracket. That should not be a problem for me, I don’t mind losing, the problem was that hour and a half before I knew that was very likely to happen.
After the game we had a good chat, and actually they are a lovely couple, but playing euros with them can be… tricky?
Finally got to play Outer Rim with the expansion. Played Hera against the AI for Hondo, and just barely creaked out a win. The new content really polished an already great game experience.
I had previously dismissed Outer Rim after asking around here but the new expansion makes it sound really more interesting and I still don’t have a Star Wars game in my collection (A friend keeps offering to loan his copy of Rebellion to me)
Argggghhh… the store I work at only got 6 copies for the 14 people on our waitlist, so I surrendered my copy to one of our regulars.
ARRRRRGGGGHHH…
sigh
I’ll get it when we get more, which is supposed to be by the end of the month. But I enjoyed the base game a lot, and am super excited to get the only thing it really needed: a bit more polish, and a lot more variety.
Brief report on Pulsar 2849. It was neat. 7/10. 6 or 7.
It’s a mash-up; on the one hand you have dice drafting and your dice dictate your actions - so Castles of Burgundy, Grand Austria Hotel, Marco Polo. On the other hand, you have multiple-paths-to-point-salad, with a variable set-up and limited resources helping you choose one of the three main paths for focus (a la Great Western Trail or Viscounts of the West Kingdom).
It’s got little touches that compare favorably to all of those. E.g., more variable than Burgundy, more breezy than Grand Austria, more interactive than GWT. That said, I’m not sure it’s overall better than any of those competitors.
For instance, in GWT you each have your own buildings that may favor one strategy or another. Here you have a tech tree which is a common asset and you are competing to be first to get the tech you want. This is an exciting layer of interaction (given that you are also fighting over turn order during the dice draft). However, it’s also pretty jilty when you construct your strategy around a specific focus and then someone snatches a key tech before you do. Pretty deflating. I can see why GWT gave everyone their own buildings now.
Bottom line, I like it. It’s got a lot of good ideas and they fit together very well. I’m keeping it for now. I’d recommend people play it if they get a chance, though I bet most wouldn’t go on to purchase it.
I finally played Wingspan. It’s alright, nothing special. Maybe if I hadn’t played Terraforming Mars (to death), Terra Mystica and Ark Nova I’d be more excited, but at no point could I do anything cool or exciting. I’d play it again but I think my tastes have changed.
Played a couple of games of Flashpoint with the family rules, no specialists. Won both games, but it was indeed rather hard. Super good. While it hasn’t dethroned Pandemic, even ignoring the emotional aspect of it, this is a solid number 2. And coming in second to Pandemic ain’t no shame.
Also punched out Rococo Deluxe. My GOD, that game is a glorious ode to boardgaming excess!
The Player boards are all different but don’t change the game much. They just give you a handful of super-powered actions to kickstart your points engine (and nudge you in a direction) or cash in on some points later in the game.
The different goals bluntly steer you into one of a few directions. The real value here is in preventing the players from dividing the board and playing independently - the goals focus you into direct competition.
The random tech tree is where the real spice is. It’s mostly reminiscent of Great Western Trail where you start out staring at your buildings and the board, or Agricola where you stare at your cards, and map out a plan. There are so many different boards and combinations and it gives you a turn zero to parse the available techs, how they feed into goals, and make a plan for the game.
That’s where most of the excitement and agony came in in the second game, as we got or lost those techs we’d mapped your strategy around. I did miss my central tech in the second game but was still able to win. So there’s some flexibility in the system to find a new way up.
And I did end up playing a reasonably different game the second time around. Yeah the goals made exploration more valuable in the second game. More interestingly due to the tech offerings.
Played Horrified for the first time in a while, so we played at novice difficulty against the Invisible Man and the Mummy. My wife was the Explorer and I was the Archaeologist.
Novice difficulty indeed. We won pretty handily ant the Terror Track was only on the 2. We lost two villagers through no real fault of our own. Can’t do much when the game moves you away from them when there’s a monster waiting to strike. Nice, easy game, so we will definitely need to up the difficulty next time we play it.
I felt that the game opened up with the player boards and random tech. The intro scenario I played twice due to introducing people and a big pandemic gap second time was tedious as it felt on rails.
It’s interesting that you felt you could strategise in the game, I’ve always treated it tactically, feeling my way through based on dice opportunities, could be the reason I’m yet to win a game. The race for tech and the ease with which they get blocked off was a big part of that. I might try being a little more considered when I next play then.
Due to little time and a lot of migraine, I’ve been playing a few games on my tablet and for some reason I went back to playing Ascension. Quite enjoying that and it is nice how easily I am getting back into it. I hope to go back to bigger games soon enough. There is a pin-prick of light at the end of the no-time-tunnel.
My wife and I played Tyrants of the Underdark, using the Demon and Dragon half-decks. Despite purchasing lots of cards, it felt like I was never getting good combinations in hand other than once or twice. Meanwhile, my wife was taking control of most of the board, and controlled all three site markers at the end of the game, but only had total contol of one in the last couple of turns.
However, I was able to seed her deck with a lot of Insane Outcast cards, worth -1 at the end of the game, so the score was a lot closer than I expected. She won, 70 - 61.
