Played 18Chesapeake and I guess this is also my first impression on 18xx in general. It’s very fun. It went longer than it should, since we are all newbies, I guess. 18Chessie is pretty streamlined and very interactive. And this might be a thing in 18Chessie: while I really like the dynamism in the stock market (compare to other games), the stock market is not as fluid as I’d like. It’s easy to crash a corporation’s share value, but way harder to build it up. And once it’s at the bottom of the stock market graph, you pretty much have no incentives on cashing out, unless you want more liquidity.
So far, I would love to have more plays of 18Chessie. But I don’t have the want to dive into 18xx (again, game duration is the main issue here) when I have games like Imperial 2030, Age of Steam, and Chicago Express which doesn’t have the stock market drama that I expected from 18xx, but are excellent enough to keep me busy for literally years.
This isn’t really gameplay, but my Core Space package came in and I started to punch things out last night… and it’s still going to be a while. There are enough elements to construct to keep me busy for a few sessions, so I’m calling this hobbying for now (at least until it’s all made). Pretty crazy, some of the intricate punches in the board. The effect is pretty amazing and I think anyone who gets to see this in person will wonder what the heck most other companies are doing with their crummy, warping stock. Very cool production, this has been an exciting box to open and explore.
Played a few hands of The Crew, up to task 42 now. It’s an excellent game. Really, really tense and some tasks are hard. I can see this being an excellent filler when we’re able to have in person gaming again, picking tasks at random. It’s a great family game at the very least.
3 player Age of Steam last night. 2 of us in the room with 3 phone cameras running for someone on Zoom. It works surprisingly well and is still an excellent, mind bending game. I’ve never had AP like it.
2 games of Race for the Galaxy as well yesterday. Not played this a huge amount since getting it last summer, but enjoying it a lot. I feel it needs 4 or so games in quick succession to grock the rules. I actually managed to win a game last night. I think I only had 6 planets but was able to hammer a produce/ consume engine.
Today my wife and I played Factory Fun, which I got her for her birthday yesterday. This was a game we had played a few times at Meetup, and it’s a really fun and absorbing spatial puzzle which she won handily the second game, so I figured it would be good to make it part of our collection. Boy, it’s very different at 2 players rather than 5! Only 2 options for machines each turn means that neither of us really got what we wanted, and weren’t able to save up any money because we couldn’t get any machines to fit with our existing floor and had to do a bunch of moving around. For this game we allowed ourselves to go into debt (which I promptly did for 35 dollars). Next time we play with just 2, we’ll flip two machines each, and I think that will allow us a lot more leniency. Anyway, here’s my final floor (with the efficiency markers removed). Looks like a nightmare? It was!
I picked up a used copy of Factory Funner not too long ago (unfortunately, some of the tight-bend pipes were missing). I was pretty stoked about it and discovered there’s a web version available for solo-mode. I felt a little cold on it after half a game solo. Do you know what kind of differences there are between ’ and -er?
Oh wow, look at that! It looks like it has a plain old Factory Fun version as well. Going through a few rounds of Factory Funner, on first flush it looks like it’s pretty much the same, but it feels like hexes are a lot more forgiving than plain squares.
Two nights ago, my wife and I played Unmatched again. She stuck with Medusa, while I tried out Sinbad for the first time. My problems fighting Medusa seem to stem from a hand disadvantage, as she has a number of cards that make you discard. Couple that with already playing cards from your hand to attack and defend, and your hand starts getting pretty sparse.
Sinbad does not have this problem. In fact, for the first time, I actually ran out of cards in my deck. It was only a problem for two rounds, as I died quickly after, but it surprised me, because I don’t think I have ever come close to doing it before in my previous four plays. I was just so focused on making sure I had a lot of cards in hand, I did not pay attention to whether or not I should.
This one felt closer than most of our other matches, as I was able to get one really good hit in with Sinbad on Medusa, and a few smaller hits as well. However, she returned the favor with a 7 or 8 damage hit to me, and along with some damage from her special ability (we were on the castle map, which has a lot of overlapping zones), a couple of small hits, and the 4 damage I took from maneuvering with no cards in my deck, she beat me yet again. Sinbad was a lot of fun to play, though, and I would like a rematch on the other map.
Biblios, terrific 2 player game of this - super close though, went to the third tiebreaker which I’ve not seen before!
Silver and Gold, great 2 player game of this, I won by focusing on higher value cards and knocking out some trophies early on.
Red 7, one of the players was new to this one so we brought in the advanced rules over a couple of hands. Didn’t get to the odd number powers, but was still great fun.
Catan, four player game of this with my some of my preferred tweaks (Fishermen of Catan, variable set up, event cards instead of dice) Won this one in the end by dominating the harbors and pushing for longest road
Star Realms, enjoyable if chaotic 4 player game of this, I won in the end though more by accident then plan - just happened to draw my strong cards at the right time. It’s not my preferred deckbuilder for sure, but a friend who really enjoys it brought it and it is enjoyable so was happy to play.
Point Salad, second run at this one and it was terrific fun - I did terribly - we played two rounds to get all the way through the deck with 3 of us (which is a nice feature of the 3 player game). This one will be seeing a lot more play I expect!
Played Tyrants of the Underdark for the first time in a while. I broke my usual golden rule of resisting entering into fights until all the easy growth has settled down, so I didn’t do too well! I came in third of four.
Played with Dragons & Undead. Don’t think it’s my favourite combo - almost all the cards are based on getting troops and spies onto the board, with very little ways to purchase new cards or promote cards. We ended up completely devastating the priestess card stack, which I’ve never seen in a game before (but I haven’t played 4p many times).
Think I’m getting my second wind with Underdark. I was souring on it a few years ago and thought about selling it. I’m finding it quite charming again now.
It literally couldn’t have been any closer. A tie in final scoring is recorded as a win for the US on the Playdek app (but not according to the actual rules).
The US was 10 VP ahead in the late war, and ahead on the board.
In Turn 10, I think I was 4 VP behind, but got 4 from the Space Race and 1 from LaLunaVerde’s card play. LaLunaVerde also stole the China Card. Asia went from 0 to 6 to me (ABM Treaty headline coup + AR1 influence), S America went from 0 to 5 to US (Nuclear Test Ban AR1 massive coup), C America went from 5 to 4 to US (Liberation Theology), and Europe changed from 5 to 0 to US in AR 7 (Socialist Governments). Possibly the most upheaval I have ever seen in Turn 10! We went into final scoring with the USSR 1 VP ahead, and Final Scoring came to 0 VP!
Played a second game of Feudum today. It was good to get a second game in of it in 2 weeks. Much closer game this time and still interesting. There’s a lot going on and I’d like to play a game where more goes on with the guilds really. The top 2 both went with a Feudum strategy which goes against the grain of the internet’s opinion of it. Will be interesting to see how it shakes out in the long run there.
The game’s still unusual. It’s really fun and maybe more so because it’s not like much else that’s out there
Last night we played the first mission of a Legends of the Alliance driven Imperial Assault game, via Tabletop Simulator. We spent the last couple sessions working through the tutorials, which definitely helped. When I originally got Imperial Assault, my group at the time played a few games with me as Imperial player and the rest as Rebels (I won every time but it was getting closer as they got more used to the game), so I did remember vaguely how the overall structure of the game worked, but we’d never played with Descent or IA’s app and it works quite differently. A little like the Mansions of Madness 2E app…but not that much, honestly, given the much different emphasis of the games. So the tutorial was very helpful…but the intricacies of Imperial movement are still a little confusing. (People complain about the complexity of monster movement in Gloomhaven, but honestly, that feels a lot more straightforward to me.)
Took us close to four hours, but we prevailed, only having our wookiee wounded, and that only towards the very end when Darth Vader turned up. He simply way outclasses starting characters. But you’re not expected to defeat him - it’s a desperate defense against the hordes, and he’s the signal that you’ve got to fall back and prep to bug out. Which we did. Smashed a whole lotta other Imperials before that, though, including nearly immediately obliterating Admiral Thrawn when he decided to spawn right next to our melee fighters without bringing bodyguards. You’d think a tactician of his caliber would have made better plans…
Had a busy day yesterday, with a shared Birthday party for my youngest daughter (4) and her best friend, and as the older one had no kids her age (8) we had a go at Munchkins with our friends’ game to keep her entertained.
We were lucky to get both of us SuperMunchkin (her) and Half Breed (me) on our starting hand, and even though we had to leave the game at level 5 (semiorc) for me and 6 (magician-cleric elf) for her, she enjoyed it.
I know that for a few reasons Munchkin is not considered as much in the gaming circles, but I still enjoy its simplicity and humour. It is partially guilty of getting me interested in games again (played it about a year ago or so with these same friends) so, even though limited, I can happily give it some credit where it’s due.
Played Troyes twice. It’s been a while since I sold my copy. Eh. It’s okay. I love the art though. It tried to capture the medieval vibe without looking beigey.
