I believe they are traditional “Odin’s Turkeys.”
Very traditional Norse bird.
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So Rococo Deluxe is wonderful. My wife and I both loved it (I won this game, in a surprise twist, although we’re currently on the family farm in Gracefield and my batting average goes up DRASTICALLY here). Surprisingly straightforward to learn and teach, too, which was nice.
I totally get the criticisms regarding price, though. Like, for the price of this one game, I could have gotten any two of Brass Birmingham, Tzolk’in, Great Western Trail, Terraforming Mars and Everdell, pretty much our top 5 all-time, and have a few bucks left over (probably not enough for a third game, but still).
This game is a luxury item, and it not only knows it, it REVELS in it. Really really good game however. Absolutely not disappointed, we had an absolute blast.
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Just wrapped up a game of Taverns of Tiefenthal with my wife and her brother. My wife had a rough time, having some bad turns where she was not able to do much, and didn’t manage many upgrades, so had few nobles.
I thought her brother was going to win, as he steadily got upgrades through the game and managed to buy two nobles on the last turn as well, but I actually edged him out by 10 points. We had the same number of nobles (8), but I had gotten some higher point value guests, some of which had gotten me some free cards as well, for more points.
Final scores were 109, 99, 55. First time trying out the reputation module, which was fun and added very little to the rules overhead.
Edit: and I just realized after reading a thread on BGG that I neglected part of the reputation module rules where you get to move forward on the track each round by the lesser value of your coins/beer, based on your dice placement. I was just moving it for Bards and the occasional guest purchase bonus. Oops. I don’t think it would have changed the outcome, other than all of us having an extra noble or two.
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It was vanity. He traded the ravens in when he found that the parrots called him a pretty boy.
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My feelings on Fog of Love are similar. I like that they tried to solve the idea of an RPGish with a win state such that there’s constantly a drive to move forward but system is too much of a game really. In a sense it’s quite a cynical view of relationships (even though it’s intent is probably not cynical).
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I think I’d have remembered ‘Ravens’, maybe the parrot thing is a ploy to make it stand out?
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Absolutely. Fun at first but feels like the story you’re telling is hampered by the game mechanics. Might play again in another 5 years or so I suppose but not in a rush to otherwise. Reminds me slightly of some indie RPGs I’ve tried where the system seems designed to engineer a specific situation rather than giving me freedom to play. As a board game it’s fiddly and unpredictable (hard to win if the cards you need don’t come up) and as an RPG it’s constraining. Still, we made a fun story and I suppose that’s the point of it, it felt a little as if we did it despite the game, though.
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We’ve been playing a couple of oink ones recently.
One is called town 66 (which we guess must be pronounced six six rather than sixty six). So our first plays of the game were marred by me misunderstanding a rule, luckily the game is fast enough that you can bash through unlearning the bad rule and replace it with the good rule. The rule I messed up was the critical one regarding win conditions - specifically it’s the last one who finishes who wins the game.
The game is very simple and has this Azul feel of filling out an increasingly constrained grid of tiles. What the game really is is a judgment of timing and risk - the main idea is to stay in the game as long as possible knowing that if you don’t voluntarily exit the game you will almost certainly be forced to quit with a worse score. The problem is that to exit voluntarily (optimally) takes at least four of your turns to do properly, you can’t bow out gracefully without laying a lot of groundwork but as you lay the ground work the chance of a forced quit also increases.
it’s very thin as a game but it gives some real tense feelings of constraint and you feel like you are always planning.
THe other game we’ve been playing (also Oink) is called Dragon and Tiger. Perhaps the first thing to say about this game is it comes with some nice components - some chunky Mah-jong style blocks with some neonred/blue numbering. We’ve only played this one 2p but I think the main idea is to play it four player in partners. It’s based on a Japanese game which uses the tiles from Chinese chess. The idea of the game I think is basically similar to WAR (at 2p) but with a couple of twists - the main one being that instead of playing a higher number to win you need to play the same tile. The game feels almost Knizia like in that if a person gets moderately lucky they will win but in a hundred games the better player should win. I’m not really sure what the strategy is at this point - it’s sort of like a trick taker but prediction are harder I think due to the randomness of the set up.
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You’re probably right. Norwegian Blues, I expect.
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Well, we played Root again. The Cats and WA player swapped, and I persisted with the Birds. And the same player won, as the WA. Pretty easily. I really can’t get the hang of the Birds. I find it easy enough to put cards in recruit and move, but struggle with battles and building. The points were WA with 30, Cat on 16, Birds on 8. We still haven’t had a game with the Vagabond. On the plus side, two of us probably have a good understanding on the Cats and WA.
Twin Palms, first play. This is a new trick taking game from KS, just came in. Pretty easy to learn. You have 10 cards, and you play at a time. So it’s just about playing pairs, and nothing else. There are three suits, we were playing a Normal game, so we only had two suits. After you get your cards, you pick a bet card (you bet money equal to the round number), and a bid card, where you say how many tricks you will win. Very fast to play, probably nothing too ground breaking, but still a good, enjoyable game.
Rolling Realms, first play. A roll and write game made by Jamey Stegmaier, designed for play over Zoom. There are three rounds, with nine turns in each. Before each round, you randomly select three game cards to use. They are all fairly simple, but there’s some good variety there. Good fun.
Chronicles of Crime, hadn’t played for ages. We won the scenario, but missed a few questions about the case.
Break the Code, we all successfully got the code right, never had a three way tie before.
Fantasy Realms
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As something of an old hand at role-playing (40+ years, eek) I thought it felt very “RPG for beginners”. I played with a friend of similar gaming vintage, and we started off by working out who our characters were… but then the game kept trying to tell us who they were, by giving particular rewards for particular actions, and it was all a bit of a straitjacket. (Which, if we hadn’t already got some idea of our characters, might have felt more like helpful suggestions.) There never seemed to be the option of “sit down and have an honest conversation about what we each want”.
Not for me, then, but I can see that it has a target market who isn’t me.
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That’s strange… as an RPG vet of 30+ years (eek!), I really enjoy FoL.
And, for the record, I think you’re spot on in your assessment! I do not disagree with anything. But I think I kind of like the “on rails” element of it… I think to some extent it’s the “romantic comedy” element that really lands for me. Because think about how short most, if not all, romantic comedies would be if any of the major characters actually communicated. Like, just talked like adults.
Part of the appeal is the whole “this crazy train is on rails and we can’t get off” thing for me. I love the fact that I have a hand full of cards and that I might not like any of them but I have to pick one.
ANYway. There’s a new expansion coming out soon (“Love in Lockdown”) which I am somewhat morbidly curious about… I doubt I’ll pick it up in the near-to-foreseeable future, but I love that they’re still making them.
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This was the point when i was for a few brief moments, ahead of @RogerBW in rallyman at Tabletop Scotland. Great to meet you in person and thanks for the game
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I prefer Norwegian jazz.
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Since Rallyman GT arrived in January 2020 most of my play has been on BGA or for the monthly challenges. It’s great to have human opponents at the table!
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I completed the caverns stage in Forgotten Depths this morning, moving my Thief to level 3 and ready to attempt the final stage in the ruins.
I think I’ve seen what I need to see with this game whether or not I’m successful next run. There’s plenty left to uncover and discover, but the core loop isn’t quite compelling enough to make me want to revisit again and again. There’s a lot to like, just not enough to really grip me. Soft rules around the more interesting encounters and elements really don’t help.
I do like how easy it is to set up and play though, so it shouldn’t take long for me to sneak in that run and then work on selling it to someone with a spare house to store it.
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It doesn’t surprise me that it’s not for you as I recall you’re not much on that style of roleplaying in general, but that’s kind of the point of Fog of Love - and a lot of indie RPGs, as noted - it’s not about you telling whatever free-form story you want to tell, it’s about you riffing within the constraints you’re being provided to tell a particular kind of story. In this case, a romantic comedy.
Just a different approach. It’s one I really like but nothing saying you have to.
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I think it was indeed spoiled by us both bringing too much of “the way we do role-playing” to it; our characters were people more than they were notional playing pieces. If we’d avoided that, I think we’d have been playing more as intended.
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I reminds me of the Simon Munnery joke where he was praised as having the comedy which is as close to art as possible. He draws this Venn diagram
https://images.app.goo.gl/AgHnaZbNZFbT6UZw5
And complains about the praise meaning he’s about as far away from peak comedy and peak art and lives unsatisfyingly between two houses.
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Back to the board games cafe tonight (Twist in Plymouth) - we enjoyed it so much that we went again tonight! So, a few firsts for me…
Forbidden Skies - okay, a big part of it was playing with a big toy, but it’s a interesting and quite hard puzzle game and we both really enjoyed it. Plus we lit up a spaceship. Gimmicky but a solid enough game underneath that we liked it.
Azul - have wanted to play for ages, but ultimately it’s too dry and euro gamey for me. An interesting puzzle and I can see the fun of solving it, and I’d be happy to play again, but I have found I at least like something to riff off or roleplay with during the game, and that was very hard here. Pretty but a little cold for us.
Finally, Exploding Kittens - new to me and a really fun end of night game, my partner sacrificed herself to give me the win on the very last card, which rather cruelly denied me of my usual refrain that ‘I won the moral victory’. Fortunately, the very cruelty of this selfless act gave me the moral high ground enough to claim both the moral victory as well as the actual victory, leaving me as a sort of double winner*.
*morality: models own.
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