Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[COMaestro]

Last night my wife and I played Isle of Skye, which has been sitting on the shelf for a while. I popped into an early lead, and held it through the entire game, meaning she got every start of turn money bonus for being behind me. However, while she was a decent way behind me early on, she caught up once she managed to complete some terrains, which I never managed, and it was one of the scoring tiles.

So, at the end of the game, I thought I had won by 6 once we tallied everything up, but realized two of her scrolls were in completed areas, so they counted for double, amd I had missed another that gave her a point for every two barrels, bringing it to a tie at 49. Tie breaker is money, and she had 3 more coins than I did, giving her the win.

Then, tonight, we played Tyrants of the Underdark, using the Dragon and Elemental half-decks. I managed to get some good assassination cards, but she kept getting cards that let her place spies, and a number that let her deploy troops. As such, she was able to spread over the board much quicker than I could, and I nearly got trapped, enclosed in an area surrounded by her troops before my one card that placed a spy finally turned up and let me branch out.

She controlled Menzoberrazan for most of the game, bit only got total control right at the end. I was able to get control of the middle city (can’t remember the name) and have total control for a couple of turns before the game ended, with my wife having deployed all of her troops. She won, 68 - 57, having a lot more controlled areas, and more under total control than I did. Our cards tied at 24 points. My greater number of assassinated troops and extra round of VP from total control of the middle city could not overcome her points from control.

[Bondy034]

Some games over the last week:

The Fox in the Forest, true to her word, my wife made a start with improving my strategic and tactical thinking with trick takers. She’s now slightly miffed that I have a chance of beating her at this one however… Consolation is I’ll be a better 500 partner for her though. Still aways to go to get there though.

Villagers, I won this one finally. Prioritizing the extra draft and build professions definitely helps, as does building a bit of a strategy around end game scoring cards - I went heavily into wood this game and scored very nicely off of it. But it’s definitely a game that rewards dabbling more than I had initially thought - and some of those solitary professions are terrific.

Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age, a three player game of this one, had some bad luck with disasters early on and our winner managed to pull of the masonry/quarrying combo to great effect.

Revolution, this is a fun game driven by a fairly cruel blind-bidding mechanic. Reading the table is super important though, and I managed a decent win by grabbing the priest frequently, and sometimes the printer too, while they squabbled over the fortress and acquiring resources. I wish its production was a little better, and I’d love to try one of the expansions sometime, but it’s still great fun as is.

Cartographers, I’ve fallen out of love (eh, probably ‘like’) with this game. It’s decent but I think I just prefer other roll & writes. I’m not sure if I can nail down why. Maybe part of it, is that it feels a bit slow to play, and planning ahead is often hard to do. Will be moving my collection of stuff for it on (I never needed those map expansions and other extras I picked up…).

Bananagrams, had some folks over for dinner so we broke out some games before and after.

Just One, went over a treat and we did decently.

Dixit, we only got a half game of this out as some folks had to head. It’s still fun enough for me to hang onto it for similar situations, even if it’s no longer the top of my list of accessible games.

[modfan77]

Yesterday I got together with two gaming buddies I hadn’t seen in person since the pandemic started. So we had a three player game of Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy. It was only my second ever game in person, except for playing a round or two with kiddo to see if he’d understand it. Got handed an unfamiliar alien board that excels at research, and then failed to draw any hexes that made use of it! It was a fairly low scoring / learning game all round, and I managed to bludgeon my way into second place with some lucky battles in the final round. We had a lot of fun playing it and hopefully will get to give it another go sometime soon.

[raged_norm]

Went to the local games café today, while family in tow.

Played Ker-Plunk, Forbidden Island and 7 Wonders Architects

Mrs. raged_norm said she liked it and would play it. So I came home with it.

[Captbnut]

Just played Pit for the first time. Chaotic set collection. Absolute rubbish but brilliant fun.

[bengeile]

I’ve gotten in a few games of both Deck Box Dungeon and Deep Into & Back Out of the Belly of a Huge Mechanical Beast and am very satisfied with both purchases. Tiny footprints, easy solo, pretty parts.

[InkyBloc]

We played Heist 8 of Burgle Bros 2 tonight. Started off bad with my wife basically stuck in the owner’s office and me getting bodied twice in one turn by a bouncer. Got better afterwards though - the safe was in a blessedly accessible position. That was my job though - my wife was totally stuck at the end of a nightmare hallway on the first floor, and the one time she tried to escape she ran into a drunk who sent her sliding… right back to where she started XD

[MarkSP]

Played one of my bucket list games yesterday- Here I Stand. Full 6 player game, started at 10:00, finished early (round 3 auto win for the Hapsburgs on key captures) at 16:00. Really glad to have played it, but not sure if I would play it again. If it was shorter than absolutely, but not at that length. Gamewise, I was suprised by how much luck was involved. Hapsburgs had fantastic rolls (got Maya turn 1, circumnavigated the world turn 2, drew Diplomatic Marriage, Treachery, and Andrea Doria. Just ridiculous really). The main problem I had was, if I played again as the English, and drew the same cards, I would do the exact same thing, which leaves the loss a little hollow. Ultimately the luck means this is more historical roleplaying than a game I would normally play.

[RogerBW]

Played at Tabletop Scotland:

Firefly: The Game, someone else’s copy, knocked off a three-player game in two hours. Great fun to get back to this; I should get my own set out more often.
Rallyman: GT, three separate games over the weekend. This arrived at the end of January 2020, and the only place I’ve previously played it face to face was Airecon that year. It’s fun with a table atmosphere in a way that BGA and solo play doesn’t match.
Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition, just the intro scenario but it came together very nicely.
A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game, two players against the Horseman, lost by one hit point.
Hidden Leaders: definitely in the “learning how things work” phase on this one.
Shamans, chaotic and very backstabby.

That’s rather fewer games than I’d normally play in a weekend - there was lots of sitting around chatting.

[raged_norm]

Final games night for a while.

Tinderbox x lots of games. Stack, stack falls over. Good fun

7 Wonders Architects x 3, 3 players with a win each. It’s swingy, but 20 minutes long. Had fun with it.

Isle of Skye, good fun

Ended with a 5 player Scout and it absolutely was a blast. Won it too.

[bengeile]

Played a learning solo game of Knight Fall during Open House on my desk at school. I’m super happy with it. Swingy in a fun way, and great art all around.

[COMaestro]

Glad to hear it is good. I first saw something for it on BGG and was intrigued. Even moreso once I saw the price.

[raged_norm]

Played a couple of casual games.

Wits and Wagers, decent. Happy to own it for the pub quiz feeling.

Secret Hitler, nope. I’d rather sit out all social deduction games in future. Played due to friends. Lost the game as a liberal put down a fascist policy to ‘mix the game up a bit’. Just nope.

[RogerBW]

Even as a fan of social deduction I’m not a fan of this one - there seems to be one best way to play as Hitler (always be liberal until you become chancellor).

[Phil]

I finally played a game of Solar Storm this evening.

@Phil

It’s substantially the form factor. I’m not expecting a better Pandemic game; but as a small box which doesn’t need much table space, with a different theme, that I can solo, in a game style I enjoy… there’s quite enough appeal there for me to want to see how I get on with it.

And that’s about how it panned out. I played at the “medium” difficulty, which is the second-easiest of five. The difficulty determines how many wildcard resources will be shuffled into the draw deck: 0, 2, 4, 6, or 8. I can say I made eager use of those wildcards – and was extremely grateful for the appearance of the final two when my draw pile was nearly extinguished, because despite burning all of my bonus actions on scavenging in a quest for one single blue card, it was determined to hide from me!

Pleasingly true to its ilk, the game went right down to the wire with three of the eight outer rooms of the ship at maximum damage and me still requiring one additional turn, and the result of the game consequently at the mercy of the final damage card to be drawn. Fortunately for me that card turned out to be damaging rooms which could still absorb it, and I was able to take my victory actions.

The theme didn’t jump out at me; but it was only a first game so I was focused on the mechanics. I believe it’s a game that will feel more thematic if you make a bit of an effort.

I’ll be interested to find out whether it feels different each time I play. Pandemic creates little narratives by virtue of the the way it will target different areas of the map every time you play. Here the playing field is shrunk to only 9 locations, and although that 3x3 grid is randomised each time you play, I don’t think the same sense of variety could emerge from this. It’s a trade-off for the size of the game, of course (which was one of the reasons that I bought it; and indeed I played this very easily on a small table), so it’s less a criticism than an observation.

I expect that if it has longevity it’s going to be rooted in those difficulty levels, and in how enjoyable it is to learn how to optimise my moves as I bump the difficulty up.

Playing time says 30-60 minutes, which sounds about right – I took more like 1:45 for my learning game – including set-up, re-reading the rules, and packing up after – so I can imagine future games being around or under the hour mark.

[EnterTheWyvern]

Played 2 player Spirit Island this evening. A Spread of Rampant Green and Downpour Drenches the World took on Russia level 5 and won!!! With 2 defensive spirits I was worried we’d hang in but not kill enough to win by fear or clearing. In the end we had a choice of victories on the turn of the second to last card. Russia has a rule of adding the unused invader cards in to the fear deck which get added to the build slot. Our level 3 won joined another level 3 and managed to cover all 4 terrain types which was really hairy having the whole island build and next turn the whole island ravaged. Fortunately by this point we had enough stuff thinned and pushed that we only had 6 blight go out . Some juicy majors and Downpour’s repeating of powers got us some mass wipe outs of explorers before we got all coordinated in buildings destruction so last fee turns we got 2 fear cards a turn and they really helped with avoiding blight catastrophes. As always excellent game and much fun was had.

[Marx]

@raged_norm

‘mix the game up a bit’

Argh. The fact that the “liberal” lost you the game and you didn’t immediately break their kneecaps…

The last game of Avalon I ever played (and will ever play) we, the good guys, lost because one of the other good guys specifically didn’t want me (on her team) to win because “I was playing too well.”

I almost flipped the table.

[Acacia]

@lalunaverde

Wingspan

Curious what the LLV take on Wingspan is?

Also trying desperately not to defend Ethnos. It’s all good.

[raged_norm]

I didn’t care.

I’d checked out after the rules explanation and realised that, despite many people loving it, it still was very similar to Resistance. The only game like that I’ve enjoyed is Mascarade

[lalunaverde]

Pre-holiday gaming

Dominant Species - It is still a damn enjoyable game. People find it swingy and has strong luck elements on what food source shows up - and I agree. But it’s still a fine area majority game like El Grande. The mutual sharing of what kind of food source their animals can eat produces interesting dynamics between players and how this creates divergence on which players end up sharing which spaces. How the tundra spreads is also intriguing.

It’s not a SICS game like Chicago Express or The Great Zimbabwe, but not everything has to be a SICS game.

@Acacia

Curious what the LLV take on Wingspan is?

You can add me as your Geekbuddy and see my thoughts when doing Geekbuddy Analysis

Didn’t like it in 2019; still don’t like it now. I am more tolerant on these sort of games now. Sometimes, playing Sudoku isn’t so bad. (maybe because I play them less?) Although, I’m sort of leaning on not showing up in the club I’ve been in since its inception because these are the kind of games they play most of the time. I can only play Yokohama so many times before I get bored.
But there are still a couple of members who bring games I like. Someone brought Navagador while I wasn’t around, and that was a fine Euro.

Anyway, I would rather play other cube-pushing card tableau games like Race for the Galaxy, Res Arcana, or Seasons. Or just play a Chudyk title. Wingspan is an example of “board games are getting better” is absolute BS. Wingspan and other titles like Ark Nova pretty much forgot the design lessons that RFTG have learnt many years ago.