I’m tempted, but it is soooo expensive
I got lucky, I found it for about 60, but the box was the last one in stock and has an almost imperceptible crease on the lid, so he knocked 6 pounds off.
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That’s excellent. I’ve not seen it South of 80 quid.
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Well holy cr*p, it might be your lucky day.
Looks like chaos cards has it in for £55!
Awesome.
Now if only I hadn’t banned myself from buying more games…
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It’s more of a guideline than a rule
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I’ve had quite an expensive lockdown so far!
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Well, it took a while, but thanks to my trade with @yashima a couple of weeks ago, Tokaido has made it to the table, and I’m really looking forward to giving it a go 
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Some good gaming with the girlfriend the last couple of days. A nice warm up with Ganz which I was thrashed at. I shouldn’t have learned my lesson from that game, the dice were not going to be on my side.
We moved on to my favourite at the moment, Taverns of Tiefenthal. First game I recorded my worst ever score (when all modules are in play) and lost. I’ve never rolled so many useless numbers in a session. Second game was the complete opposite and my board was popping off bonuses like a fruit machine. Recorded my best ever score this time with 179.
We finished with a couple of games of Imperial Settlers. We’re still getting to know this one but enjoying it a lot. We played Romans Vs Barbarian twice, switching factions for the second game. She won the first by a handful of points, second game I won by nearly doubling her score. The Barbarians are the really winners though.
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Another Splotter down. Played Antiquity with @benkyo and @pillbox . Having just recently listened to SUSD podcast’s latest episode, Ava’s description of Antiquity is pretty accurate. It’s like a more extreme version of Agricola. Old Gric is one of my faves and, no surprise, this one is a love at first sight.
It has that good mixture of short-term goals and long-term goals that I really like, which I also found in FCM too. Long term is to figure out which patron saint you want to choose (which determines your victory condition) and how to achieve that. And your short-term goal is to simply survive. Every resource gathering operation you do, you always leave behind devastation. Wood cutting will cut down trees and no tree replacements. Mines, fishing, farming, all leave pollution rendering that area unusable. It’s a game about hacking your own ladder to build up the next rungs above you. Make sure you don’t fall.
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I’m not really seeing the comparison with Agricola, to be honest, but I agree with the rest of it.
To me, it seems like a fairly complex optimisation game - players of RTS games might understand the early game as a competition between different build queues - that about halfway (~5 turns in?) becomes far too complex to plan for, as other players’ actions start really complicating things beyond simply “how much famine there is” (incidentally, I love that players largely control the speed of famine acceleration), and the number of workers you have in the fields and where and for how long they remain there starts really gumming things up. I can see one point of similarity with Agricola, where early build queues are largely forced by what spots other players took, but it is really very different from Agricola in every other way - no shared worker placement spots, no cards, a shared expansive map, etc.
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My son and I were able to get in a few good games over the weekend. No real “gaming day” as it was nice, so we got out for a hike yesterday, and a walk with the dig today, as well as made some homemade dog biscuits!
Anyways, the games!!
Friday
Unmatched - Alice vs Sinbad. I took Sinbad to an early lead, but made some poor choices and let Alice and the Jaberwok lock him down. A few big hits that I couldn’t deal with was all it took.
Blue Lagoon - this was possibly our “meanest” game yet, as it was the first time we actively blocked eachother (as opposed to accidentally blocking eachother, lol). It was also the game where we finally realized that going for a 5th of any resource is usually a wait (outside of the Statues and denial).
It was a fairly close game. I was ahead offer the first round, but he had a solid second round a took the win by about 13-15 points.
Saturday
Mythic Battles Pantheon - still one of my favorite games. I took Persephone against Pan in the Labrinth. It was fairly close, but I took the win getting my 4th Omphalos. We realized that on that map, even if the game stats with both side going for Omphalos, if one person get a bit of a lead, the other side is probably best to just change tact and go for a deity kill. The map is very restrictive to movement, and it can be hard to catch up. Unless you build your team for it, which neither of us did, lol.
Roll Player - after our hike we punched and sorted Fiends and Familers, and had our first game with it. It was fun as always. F&F is a bit of a “just more” expansion, especially if you already have Monsters & Minions. That said, I love the game, and more is great. I think this is the last expansion, which is good. I’m not sure the game could handle much more being added on, and it’s probably already more than some people want.
Also, the Big Box is fantastic! Just waiting for Folded Space to make an insert, and the Meeple Realty one is hella expensive!
Sunday
Aeon’s End - I’ve been wanting to get this to the table again for awhile, especially with all the talk here, to see if we still enjoy it enough to keep among our other games.
The short answer is yes! We’re not good at the game, and still need to work on our gameplay. We don’t really focus enough most games, and both go for a “jack of all trades” route which isn’t ideal.
This was a fairly good game though. We took Kadir and Xaxos (sp?) against the Carapace Queen. Despite a rough start that looked like the end after 3 rounds, we were able to hang on long enough to get ramped up, and my son got Kadir tonuse her Ultimate twice (with the help of Xaxos), and cast 7-8 spells 2 turns in close succession, smashing the Queen for a ton of damage. She brought her down to 3, and I was able to get the last hit in, just in time, as she was about to Unleash twice and Swarm, which would have ended the game!
Were we playing on “easy”? Yes. Do I care? Not really, lol.
Tiny Epic Galaxies - my son had wanted to get this to the table for awhile, and we finally did (after baking some dog biscuits! 
). It was going well until we realized we were not taking the points for upgrading our empire into account and were both over 21 (the end game is triggered by the first player to hit 21). As we were close in score, and unsure who hit 21 first, we played to 30. He took the win by about 7 points. It was a close game until that point, lol.
Tiny Epic Defenders - he wanted to play one last quick game, and we tried while I was making dinner. Unfortunately, having to constantly get up to check thibgs, was making me frustrated, because I felt like I could just enjoy the game. On my suggestion, we reset, and got the game ready to try again right after dinner. This was a great idea, as it was much more enjoyable, and we both had a lot of fun. We came fairly close to winning, but the game spiraled in the last round (as it does), and the Capital fell while the Epic For had one. hit. point. left!!! 
Not my favorite game my any stretch, but it’s still fun and he enjoys it. I may consider the expansions for both of those as they still hit the table. Tiny Epic Zombies not so much…
So that’s that. I’m hoping next weekend he’s over we can get Godtear and/or Skytear to the table again, but he also wants to finally play The Edge: Dawnfall. I’ll probably have to get the rules down, and get the 2 easier factions ready to go. I don’t think it will be too difficult, as it shares some ideas with a few other games we have (Warhammer Underworlds for one). We shall see…
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The other night, I got New Bedford to the table it was actually the sofa, laid out on a particularly large “chaise lounge” section of our sectional sofa – and I sat on the floor. Yes, I could have played on the table, but all the flat surfaces in our house suffer from a chronic disease known as “things that don’t belong here are here, probably because they’re out of reach of children” a.k.a. “The Elevated Flat Surfaces” problem (we used to just have the “Flat Surfaces Problem”, but that was pre-children).
I played the solo game against Stubb. I won, I think. The solo rules appear to be, as best I can make out, written as though you already know the rules and are there merely to remind you of the stuff that’s easy to remember. A game really sours for me when I have to browse to BGG multiple times during the first round, so you can imagine the frown on my face when by random luck, the AI captain did the one thing possible (out of hundreds of possible outcomes) of completely derailing my starting strategy on his first action… only for me to have to consult multiple forum threads and errata to confirm, yes in fact, he has torpedoed my second move expertly.
In that way, perhaps the solo mode is interesting. In another way, I apparently won because Stubb just built so many buildings (earning quite a few points, mind you) that he was unable to score the whales that he had bought of me (he never actually launched a ship of his own… he was too busy building new buildings every round – which, I guess, is his status quo). So while I was unable to pay the cost to score all of the whales I caught, I was forced to sell them to Stubb… who couldn’t score any of them because he had built 12 buildings.
I’m currently of two minds:
- Play again against two AI captains
- Don’t bother playing it again solo until I can play it against another human.
And, unfortunately, it’s not the type of game that I can effectively play 2-handed solo because vying for the same resources/worker-placement-spots is just too pivotal (and I always end up favoring Lefty).
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Gotten some new stuff and some neglected stuff played recently.
Had a first play of Diamant, which is light, fun, addictive, and swift. Played with 3, but I’d really like to play this with more, likely won’t happen for a good while, though.
Duelosaur Island - FLGS had it for a decent price. I was intrigued by the integration of several interesting mechanisms (I was also taken with the art), and reading about it, it seemed like it could be a really interesting mix with some fun decisions. It was… fine? Only had 1 game, so it’ll need another go, but it just never really seemed to fire.
One of the group got Photosynthesis, which I’m taken with from an aesthetic standpoint because I love some plants. It’s a very satisfying little abstract. It doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. It’s satisfying to grow your trees. There’s some take-that, but what goes around certainly comes around. I can see this getting a good deal of play.
Air, Land, & Sea is still great. Welcome to… is still great. It also helps that I seem to be preternaturally attuned to both of them. Raptor is also still great, though I’m only really any good as the scientists. It seems that one mistake as the raptor creates a cascade of things you can’t overcome, but maybe that’s just my group’s experiences. Raptors have yet to win a single game.
About 6 games of Ice Cool 2 have occurred in the last several weeks. This game is such a blast. Lots of trash talk with absolutely no one backing any of it up. I love the components, the atmosphere it creates, and the feeling of pulling off a really sweet curling flick. Mmmm… spinny penguins…
Two more games of Oceans. I really love this game. I didn’t win, and probably won’t for a while because I have way too much fun putting wacky deep cards on my species and creating chaos. The majority of games have been won by one player who NEVER uses deep cards and just plays off his own species. I think drafting deep cards early is the mistake here, and probably need to wait to see the game state, but how are you going to say no to paralyzing venom?
Got the Danger Circuit expansion for Downforce, and Savanna Stretch led to the most satisfying game we’ve had yet. This was a much more strategic game with some unpredictable moves and bets. It was my first win! Finally, after about 11 games or so.
And I finally beat Rugwort in solo Everdell (year one), so I am going to pat myself on the back for a little bit before I start playing year 2 and getting angry again.
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My partner and I were unusually aggressive getting the chores done around the house after the kids were in bed; earlier in the evening she said she may be up for a game if we got the table cleared off – so I made an extra effort to do just that.
I had been waiting for the right opportunity to show her Quacks of Quedlinburg. Honestly, I figured, that if she didn’t enjoy the game, I may trade it off as I’m not much for luckfests like this. Credit to Herr Warsch, I did the The Teach™ from memory, using the rulebook only to clarify a few edge cases (that, honestly, were fairly intuitive and I could have forgone the rulebook consultation) – this is after only having played once, 2-handed solo.
I eased her into the rules; starting with a short demonstration of how to draw and place chips, followed by going over what each of the (Set 1) chips did (other than yellow/purple, which we covered later as they were added). And then I did a sample End of Round phase; it literally took longer to setup the game than to explain it (the setup is still unfortunate in its fiddle and intimidation). We stayed competitive throughout the game; I blew my cauldron up three times and her only once. I had a very strong Orange/Red early game and shifted to Blue about midway through the game. We played Cold War Arms Escalation with both Purple and Black chips throughout the game and ended up fairly well balanced. Starting in round 7, we both went really heavy into Yellow as well.
I was leading going into the final round but only by 3 points. I chickened out early (showing 5 white) and she kept going, getting a lucky yellow draw that put a White 2 back into her bag and allowing her to skyrocket past my stopping point (final stopping points in the cauldrons were my 24 to her 29). After she managed to get significantly farther than I had hoped, I figured she had won for certain – but it turned out a very tense and close her 51 to my 49.
After we packed away the game and she went to get ready for bed, she stopped what she was doing and came back to the living room where I was to ask me, “You bought this game for me, didn’t you?” She knew it was not my sort of game – which is obvious; I just didn’t think it would be so obvious that I bought it with her in mind.
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I would normally post this just in the AHLCG thread, but the restrictions have relaxed here so people can have “social bubbles” and my friend came over to finish our Forgotten Age campaign in person!!! 
After three months of playing online over TTS, it was wonderful to shuffle cards and handle tokens and move our little investigator standees (borrowed from Eldritch Horror) around.
And even better, we won the campaign!
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We’ve been loving Oceans as well, but I haven’t found the Deep cards to be as game changing as some others have.
I think it may be the biggest issue playing at 2, because unless you are aggressive about emptying the first ocean area, the Cambrian Explosion happens so late in the game, the Deep cards aren’t likely to do much.
I’m going to try and push that a bit more next time we play and and see how it goes. Fortunately, while the deep cards are crazy fun, we really enjoy the “first half” of the game.
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Feels like ages since I’ve last played anything - too busy to wrok on my ideas either of late - but I got Terraforming Mars solo to the table last night. A close fail by the Thorgate corporation though, needing just 1% Oxygen more but not quite having the money or resources to get in in the final turn.
Hopefully this weekend I’ll find time for a longer solo game of something else, but not sure what yet.
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I’ve been thinking the same thing, though I’ve only played it at 3. The cambrian explosion always happens late and anyone willing to take a chance with a deep card is either already behind, or the whole ecosystem goes insane but for the one player who has insulated himself. I think being more aggressive about that first ocean area is going to be happening as it gets played more.
I still absolutely love every minute I play.
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I pre-ordered Oceans after picking up Evolution and falling in love with the art design. I hadn’t played Evolution yet but thought I’d give it a go and then could play Oceans and see how they updated the mechanics. Then lockdown hit and Oceans eventually arrived so now they’re both on my shelf, still in shrink…
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