Thanks, this is super helpful! I didn’t even know it was possible to play with tokens but without events; that makes things a lot more approachable, especially in conjunction with removing some of those token types.
4 Likes
Honestly, Branch and Claw doesn’t add that many rules. From memory, it’s just the tokens and events. Jagged Earth then adds one more token type. If you can handle everything going on in base Spirit Island, it shouldn’t take more than a few games to be like “this game used to not have events or tokens? Huh.”
4 Likes
Just messed around on my own with Men at Work after my wife set up the initial site. Got through adding about four girders and four workers before I knocked half the stuff down. I had to clean up for bed anyway, so that was a good stopping point.
I can see this being ridiculously fun!
5 Likes
I love the “Indy” character looking not really bothered…
3 Likes
Catching up with the Rallyman GT solo challenges. I prefer it multiplayer, but even when it’s just “go round this custom track as fast as you can”, I have a good time.
6 Likes
Lancaster - only the base game. Fun tussling over worker placement spaces. In Lancaster, if you have a strong knight, you can bump off a weaker knight in that action space - like a pseudo auction! Squires are resources which acts as supplements for your knights.
Still fun, and I used to be tempted on getting this, but I should have trusted my own rating/comments from years beck that I would rather play Keyflower. And yes, it did confirmed that I would rather play Keyflower.
Kraftwagen -tense game where Matthias Cramer built upon the Glen More system of moving through a round action track. It’s always the player at the back of the queue who gets the next turn to take an action, then that player may proceed to advance on the track as far as they can. That means if they went far ahead, they’ll find themselves waiting a bit more for their turn
Again, fun game, but it was sullied by the arbitrary card draws of the engineer deck. The deck is just too significant to the game, as it determines the quality of your car body and the speed of your engine, which are the main tools on scoring in this game. Terrible, and what’s worse is that this design can be avoided by making the choices wider.
Cascadia - the parallel game of arranging animals and arrange terrain I found more interesting than my first game. It’s decent
Roll for the Galaxy - as I play more Race for the Galaxy, its relatives become more enjoyable to play. My early plays of this years ago wasn’t a good experience as I prefer to just play Race the entire time. Now, I’m happy to play Roll. Not to my taste compare to Race or Jump Drive or Res Arcana, but it was still good fun
Overstocked - needs more plays. Still determining if this is a game I want to keep or not. Regardless, this is still my hidden gem of the UK Games Expo.
Blood Rage - 3 player is a bad-weird experience. Still enjoyed my play of it. But I still highly prefer 4 or 5
Azul: Queen’s Garden - made more complicated yet they restricted the decision space of the slightly limited space of the original Azul. Put a resource conversion system or a bloated deck (or both!) somewhere, and you’ll have a BGG Top 100 material.
8 Likes
A bit of Judge Dredd: Helter Skelter tonight. My initial plan was to play The Adventuring Party Wildlands faction against the Dark Judges in Helter Skelter, and then delve into the solo mode of Wildlands’ The Ancients, but in the end I started too much too late to be learning new things, so I took the Judges faction up against the Dark Judges (Fire, Fear, Mortis, Death) in the Halls of Justice as a general refresher, and decided to leave anything more for the weekend.
Mean Machine and Dredd started in close proximity to three of the Dark Judges, with Anderson facing Fear on the other side of the board, while Giant and Hershey were a bit out of the way. I had an excellent starting hand for Mean Machine to do some damage, and was also hoping that the three dark judges would converge onto a single space so that Dredd could use his hi-ex ammo. That didn’t pan out (I think I’ve never managed to benefit from hi-ex ammo!), with the dark judges persistently keeping off one another’s spaces until two of them (Fire and Death) moved onto Mean Machine’s space. MM quickly obliterated Fire with smash attacks, and that was the most dominant I ever felt in the whole game (but at least I was free of Fire’s brutal attacks for most of the game). Fear set off in pursuit of Anderson, who retreated towards Giant (who was waiting with a shotgun), but the cards were not favourable and Anderson had fallen before Giant was able to make the kill, which eliminated my only unblockable (psi) attack ability (something which is supremely useful against the armoured dark judges). Dredd and Mean Machine then failed to overcome Mortis and Death, and the latter pair started towards Hershey. At this point there was finally some distance between my remaining two characters and the two dark judges, and so I was scrambling to gather three fragments of reality so that I would only need a single kill to take the win. Having lost three characters did make it easier to pick up the fragments, but by the time I snagged the third I had a very depleted deck and the dark judges were on top of me. Hershey, who had drawn Death away to give Giant a shot at the slightly weaker Mortis, was the next to go; but the sacrifice had provided a little space. At this point I made a silly gamble and Giant was unable to defend the next attack and I realised I’d lost, but I decided to see whether I could have pulled out a win if I’d made a smarter play. What ensued the was the two dark judges chasing Giant all around the map, with Giant not quite having enough attack power to attempt a take-down of Mortis, and generally having to burn what he did have on running away again. Eventually my luck turned enough for not one, but two attempts at victory, but Mortis defended too well and I was out of cards and out of luck.
2 Likes
Jaws of the Lion!
Voidwarden and Red Guard going through THE GAUNTLET!
This was an incredibly fun mission with all the traps scattered around and pretty much doing most of our work for us. Obviously I took the Voidwarden card that lets me move enemies and had a blast. And of course we got some good luck as well - the sludges didn’t use their hexes very often, and on my first attack on the chaos demon I got my 2x, dropping 2/3 of its health in one blow. Thanks to the encroaching traps in the last room I cleared it out before Ms. Red Guard even got there!
3 Likes
Played a solo session of Spirit Island last night, now with the expansion (Branch and Claw). I have to say that I liked it for the next level of complexity it brings to the game, and for the events randomness (although I had a bunch of missionaries that sort of screwed with that, as I had to return the card to the deck under the top 2 cards).
What I didn’t like that much was the extra length it brought to the game, and how it slowed the pace for me. I take there is a degree of “this is all new and I am still not really fluent in its new gears” but for example, one of the events was stopping the next explore card from happening, but did I have to show it? Did I not? And what about the next build phase that comes after? That sort of glitch irked me a bit. \
I played with Rivers surge (after a great performance in my last game) and one of the new spirits, the one that uses the Beasts. Interesting new spirit, I liked how the little claws on the island map gave it opportunities and limitations. It felt a tad Thunderspeaker like, but more limited to the jungles in general. So it is great that you can jump up to three regions to expand your presence, but not great how tricky it is to get out of them.
Won by a Fear victory, removing all the fear cards from the deck on the turn before last for the invaders, and I did not think it would go that way, but two cities became really tricky to get to for both my spirits and that gave life to the colonizers for an annoying couple of extra rounds.
The last few games I have won relatively easily, so I think I may be ready to try countries in the mix or scenarios. I think I have used Prussia-Brandenburg once and lost badly, so probably it was too early to do that.
5 Likes
I also found that I had to look up a lot of how the events worked in the wiki and faq initially. If they don‘t do an explore action It seems like you would not draw the card at first. But you have to or else they are also not going to do the build and ravage that follow. The card does not give you an extra turn, they just look at the „jungles“ and go „meh, not today“ 
But I agree the added complexity probably adds a bit to the length of the game. And handling of events can take some time, too, as you need to decide between different options and the added randomness throws wrenches into well-laid plans more often.
5 Likes
My first game of the solo mode of Wildlands: The Ancients.
I took The Adventuring Party up against The Phantasm in The Abyssal Lake, and got absolutely crushed! There are five Ancients, and I hope that’s one of the harder ones, or I might not see any victories anytime soon. I have some ideas about strategy, but not enough to see myself winning that scenario. The rule book does suggest one concession to difficulty for an easier game, which I’ll definitely be using the next time I play.
Each of the Ancients comes with its own scenario rules, and there were lots of tokens to find and randomly distribute about the board, and extra card decks to prepare, so set-up is slower than Helter Skelter, and there’s a bit more to manage in general. I found a few rules ambiguities which was a bit annoying, but mostly it was clear enough. I always find that Helter Skelter: The Dark Judges plays extremely elegantly with virtually no faff, so hopefully I won’t wind up feeling that this more complex version has overcooked it. (Much, much too early to tell after only one game, though – and there are so many combinations of factions, maps, and scenarios with the content I have.)
I’ll have to read up on the easiest combinations of scenario and faction, and hopefully I can feel more competitive in my next game.
Edit: If it’s of interest, here is a session report at Osprey’s blog of a solo game vs The Phantasm.
4 Likes
Root, first play. I knew this would be a tough teach, since all the factions are different. That was the reason I hadn’t bought it before. But it was a good price, so I grabbed it. Teaching wasn’t too bad, we only had three players, so there was no Vagabond. Our best player was the Cats, that may have been a mistake. He just built…and built, and built. The Cats start with control of almost every clearing. I was the Eyrie player, and I was finding it pretty tricky. You have to add cards each turn to your decree, and then execute all the cards in sequence. So, if you have a card under battle, every turn you have to have a battle. And if you can’t execute a card, you go into turmoil, losing the cards in your decree and losing victory points. I found it pretty frustrating. Our Alliance player wasn’t doing much better, she only managed one officer, and she needed those to take actions. It was a pretty interesting game, and I think we’re keen to play again. The Cats player won by about 20 points (which is a lot in a game with a 30 point track). And he could have won with either of two dominance cards as well.
Vengeance: Roll & Fight – Episode 1, first play. A pretty quick dice rolling game where you fight your way through to the big boss. You’re rolling in realtime, trying to get the dice you need for abilities (like moving, or shooting). It was pretty good fun.
The Search for Planet X, had a terrible game. First, we accidentally used the expert side of the player sheets (we’ve never played expert). So we tried again. Winning score was 27, second 26, and the second place player was pretty salty (I would be too). Sadly, I was way back on 10 points, did not have a good game. Compounded by a stupid mistake finding Planet X – I knew it wasn’t within 3 sectors of the dwarf planet, but like an idiot I picked the wrong sector. Ok, I still would have lost badly, but I would have felt a bit better about it, always nice when you get the planet.
Century: Golem Edition
3 Likes
The cats are one of the most difficult factions to win with, but yeah, I can see how an experienced player vs. two beginners might have an easy time of it.
3 Likes
The problem with the cats is that they tend to start strong and that, adding to the fact that they are spread all over the map at the beginning, paints a big target on their back. If they are ganged up on early, they really struggle.
I have played a fair bit, and I still find the Eyrie and the Woodland Alliance tricky to play with, but they are slow factions that towards the end can pack a big punch (I have seen the Alliance get a dozen points in two turns and snatch the victory that way, and if the birds manage 4 roosts or more, they are generating points per turn non stop).
I think the more you play, the more you get the game. So keep at it.
4 Likes
Hopefully we’ll have a second game this weekend, people seemed to enjoy it, and I did warn them that it was a game that might need a few plays. Maybe even with 4p, so we might have a Vagabond. I’ve read up on the the Vagabond, and I’m still a bit confused about it.
I can see that the Eyrie can be very powerful, I’m hoping to make a better game of it.
3 Likes
The Vagabond works on getting items, and reactivating them. You will have different slight varieties of Vagabond, but mainly you source items from relics, crafting them from cards if you have a hammer item, from trading cards with factions (that have crafted them) and improving your standing with them (to a point that you can get both a win if you get to the higher tier and they win) and said items sort of become your actions/hit points. Every turn you will refresh used items depending on how much root tea you have, your item capacity depends on how many bag items you have, and your attacking levels depend on how many swords, movement on boots and so on.
Also you can complete missions on different clearings, that will exhaust your items. But those are not really worth many points, I tend to not do many of those.
More often than not towards the second half or last third of the game you have to start hostilities (if they haven’t been started against you first) and then the full combat power of the Vagabond can be unleashed, but said hammers become key to heal your items that are damaged during fights.
I find it lest tricky than the Eyrie programming or the Alliance card trading, but that’s my taste.
4 Likes
Played about four 2player games of Catherine: Cities of the Tsarina. I like it. It reminds me of ticket to ride a fair bit both in its simplicity and the excitement to do your thing. But also its very much its own thing in gameplay - Its got some very compartmentalised interaction but you do need to pay attention to it (or you need to be reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally lucky). The majority of the game is card choices where you balance about four tensions (flexibility, the quality of an action, the competitive part and future actions) and before making a decision that you have to live with, hoping you can ride through whatever future card draws will bring.
It’s about £30+ which I think is probably about the right price of the game today.
7 Likes
Thanks Chewy, I’ll have another read of the rules, I might have more questions
SUSD don’t seem to like the Vagabond much
2 Likes