Yep, you need a bit of luck for a gold victory, but it’s very achievable.
My ‘gold’ rate certainly isn’t 50%, but I can manage it pretty regularly.
3 Likes
I wonder if going for gold would lower your win-rate. That’s not how I’m inclined to play such games, as a rule (which funny, now that I think about it: I would have no problem playing without Jesters if that were a “challenge mode” or something). I’m more interested in trying the game cooperatively though - I guess it would be much harder.
2 Likes
I played a whole bunch of solos of Factory Funner:
I have yet to get any good at it 
The solo works that you just get a stack of 8 machines to place one after another. No choices. No realtime. No punishment for not placing a machine but you really need to do so to get the 50 points needed for a win on the A-Board. In theory you would progress to B1 after a 50 point game. I have not even tried anything beyond the starting board.
I keep making mistakes with the outputs from machines using them for too many inputs sometimes.
But it is such a fun & quick puzzle that once I start I keep playing.
13 Likes
I believe you’re obliged to inform Mark Bigney/SVWAG of this.
9 Likes
King of Clubs was a good card to have in hand for that final pesky King of Diamonds Definitely a bit of luck involved in the order of Kings
6 Likes
Today, after work I thought I’d play a quick round of Spirit Island on my laptop. Lost thoroughly with Keeper of the Forbidden Wilds due to a variety of app-related reasons. This includes a card explicitly specifying an or-condition plus a bonus “you may do both” with 2 yellow elements. But in that case the app forces you to do both which in my case was unpleasant as it meant concentrating my power instead of spreading out—which Keeper has a hard time doing anyway. And because Keeper always has a yellow element it meant this was always triggered and the card made my situation actively worse.
Also, I completely overlooked the moment when the next ravage was going to make me lose. The events went by so fast and in one case I mis-clicked to my disadvantage and because of a randomizer card draw there was no undo. In another case I played a card without quite realizing what the end state would look like and there was some kind of auto-continue which I could have undone but somehow didn’t realize at the time and so on.
Miffed I went downstairs and setup the Real Game™ and proceeded to whack the invaders twice with Keeper. Easy win without an opponent and vs Level 1 France as well. (I am not really practiced right now, I usually need a few games to play myself to harder opponents, France seems easy enough with Keeper as their advantage lies in exploring and Keeper prevents some of that)
To continue my app/game comparisons: The disparity between the app and the game is by far the largest I can think of right now. The app just does not give a similar experience at all and IMO still contains bugs in the card implementations. Which is understandable due to the number of cards but still sucks when you lose a game because of it.
9 Likes
I started (and finished 
) my first attempt at a campaign run in Dungeon Degenerates this afternoon. Taking a path that fully avoided any chance at a law encounter netted me substantial resistance from the riff-raff, and I had to resolve 7 battles across 6 turns (damned thief in the loot deck). My Hinterlander couldn’t catch a proper rest and spent most of the game near death, but it was my Bloodsport Brawler that fell in battle. The Hinterlander stood a good chance at escaping, but not without (fatal) damage, so I just called it and shuffled quick for a new attempt.
Brüttel. 
3 Likes
Played Cryo for the first time.fairly quick playing worker placement game. You have landed badly on a planet, and you need to send out drones to collect resources and save your people. If you like multiple use cards, then this is the game for you. Cards can be used in three different ways. They can be added to the top of your board to give an ongoing effect, played face down on the left to be worth points at the end of the game, and they can be played under your board to give you a ship. Ships take your colonists down to the planets surface. You have three drones, and on your turn you either place a drone or recall your drones. Collecting resources is interesting, you can either have the resource straight away, or you can add it to your player board so that when a drone is recalled, it gives you the resource. You have six spots available for drones, and can choose which one to use when you bring a drone back.
When you recall your drones, you also resolve an incident tile. Half of these are just collecting a resource ,but the other half are sabotage. When you play one of these, you destroy all the crew pods on the lowest position in that section of the ship, including your own if you failed to move them from the ship to your platform (and ships). This seemed a bit awkward, a bit of take that in a euro game. We didn’t like that.
We also disliked that the start player never changes. We found that the third player was getting blocked out from the space that allows you to take or play a card. Normally it would have three adjacent spaces into which you could play, but one of them was blocked out randomly.
Kick-Ass the Board Game, another go of this. Started with a health kit as an item, which I guess is good if you need healing, but not much use as a weapon in a fight. So went to the shop and got a katana, which could be used in both hands to give me two red and two blue dice. It’s hard work this game, you clear out bad guys and then they come back. But we were doing ok, and managed to get to the boss (Red Mist). He has eight tokens, and each of his boss event cards allow you to uncover two tokens. We got down to the last four tokens before we found him. And we won! Somehow, we probably missed something somewhere, it’s a fiddley game. Despite the win, I think we’re done with this game. It’s so long, and a lot of it just isn’t fun (cool, I had a fight and now I’m unhappy and I’m lazy and can’t move around).
.
Twin Palms, a quick filler trick taking game. Probably nothing too different, but it’s fun and pretty easy to pick up. All you play is two cards at a time. There are two suits, one is better than the other. It can be a game of trying not to win a trick.
5 Likes
Got introduced to Rise of Moloch (World of Smog) over the weekend. It plays a lot like Zombicide, with one adversarial player running the baddies. It has Zombicide’s quick player turns plus a bit more tactical crunch, and the PCs have more distinct roles and some initial customization, which I appreciated. There’s a leveling-up mechanic at the end that definitely adds to my desire to play again.
I would advise players running the enemies to operate more like a tabletop RPG GM and aim for table fun, not just try to crush the other players (we were fortunate that the game’s owner, running the “Nemesis”, thought the same.)
8 Likes
One of my best friends in Kitchener/Waterloo is moving away in a few weeks. Like many others I know (I think 3 other couples), he and his wife are leaving for the East Coast (Newfoundland, in Graham’s case… the others landed in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and PEI).
For our European readers: Newfoundland is a big honkin’ province about the size of France that is located about a 3 hour flight or a 40 hour (yes, four-zero) drive which includes at least one, sometimes two, ferry rides. Is far away.
So in honour of his leaving, he is giving away a bunch of his games he doesn’t want to transport, and I was happy to give two of them a good home (specifically the amazing 1812 and the thoroughly silly String Railway). But we also decided it would be fitting to host a goodbye game night.
We decided that 3 weeks ago, and then he caught COVID the day before our scheduled night. So we pushed it off a week… and then another week… and then we finally got together last night!
Eric was the first to show up, and we played a quick and wonderful game of Jaipur. Eric took the first game 76-71 (stupid Camel token), I won the second 80-74 (wonderful, blessed Camel token), and then took the series in the last game with a commanding 82-60. Still a lovely, fun, engaging two-player game.
Terry showed up just as we finished that, and so I got a chance to finally try Colt Super Express. It’s… okay. It’s okay. Each player has 4 cards (Move horizontally, Move vertically, Shoot, and Turn Around). Every time you’re shot you’re knocked over, and at the end of each round the final car of the train falls off. Whoever is closest to that car collects it as points, and at the end of the game if only one player is still on the train they automatically win, otherwise whoever is still on the train compares the cars they’ve collected (which have dollar values on the back) to see who wins. Terry managed a quick victory, and while it was neat… I’m not sure it was great. But hey, it’s small and cheap and comes with two expansions in the box that I haven’t touched, so who knows?
We then pulled out the utterly sublime Deep Sea Adventure. Eric had never played before but caught on almost immediately. Terry, it turns out, is a complete jerk (in a fun way) when it comes to this game, picking up shallow treasures on his way down and back, causing the oxygen to plummet… we finished with Terry holding a commanding 23 points to my 13 and Eric’s 4. Laughed our butts off.
Graham came in just as we finished that, and so we played Wormholes for the first time. It’s good! It’s… not what I expected, but it was very good. Kinda like an utterly minimalist interpretation of Xia. We all missed that the 10th Wormhole had been placed, and the Solar Cannon was in a useless space, but it was really satisfying. And, hey, the currency from it and from Xia are both triangles of almost the same colour, so we got to use those. Really lovely pick-and-carry game, looking forward to trying it again!
Lastly, we dug into something a little meatier: Inis, without the expansion (which I still haven’t had a chance to play!). It was Eric’s first game and I warned him that he would probably lose… but be damned if he didn’t do really well! Around Turn 5 we had a 4-way tie for the King, and the final turn (using the “We Need a King” variant rules because it was getting late) saw Graham and I share the victory. Really tense, really clever game that continues to impress me.
Good times had by all (I hope!), even if Eric did back into a telephone pole on his way out of my driveway. I feel really bad about that, but he didn’t seem too bothered by it.
12 Likes
Played Chicago Express again. 4 players, 2 were new. Teach and game done in 75 minutes.
It’s really good, Knizia esque as there’s only 3 actions you can take and every action advances to one the end game triggers.
It’s not a ‘filler’ but it packs a lot of punch into a short time.
9 Likes
Nice. That’s what Cube Rails are. Simple to learn, quick, and full of opaque decisions.
Had my game of Chicago Express too. Running the Red Company is always a risk business. Two players partnered up on the Yellow. Again, I kept low-balling on bids and kept getting elbowed out on getting new shares. I need to be more aggressive on bidding next time.
El Grande - the king still reigns. 4 player game, which is still great. I don’t know why some consider this as a “5 player only game”. Nonsense.
Tempel des Schreckens
Khan of Khans - Knizia push-your-luck. The Glorantha theme was charming on an otherwise dull game.
Tetrarchia - okay. Pandemic formula in a small box. If anything, this made Fall of Rome obsolete to me. The support rules on combat made this more co-op-y than the standard Pandemic.
Ghost of the Moor a Kramer & Kiesling roll and move. It’s actually more clever than I thought. It’s okay.
Maskmen - This is one of those games that have an utterly annoying rulebook where it doesn’t make sense on how to play it. I have to look at bgg and see how wrong we played it. Needs more plays.
Tigris and Euphrates
Pioneer Days - it was fine. Too tactical and boring. As in, the random card draw will determine how good your combo is.
So, Chicago Express, Tigris & Euphrates, and El Grande in a week? Solid solid week.
10 Likes
Had a first “learning edition” of Everdell last night. I have played the app before. (And I played it on the app for comparison right after, the app is fine, the game on the table feels better as usual it is easier to keep most information in your sights → just to continue my series of app vs game posts).
The game has a nice table presence and I am not talking about the tree.
I like that effect that @Acacia appreciates about Clans of Caledonia, Lost Ruins of Arnak and TM: between playing cards and placing workers being two distinct actions there is always this drive to stay in the round as long as possible and each subsequent round becomes longer. I like that you get your workers automatically.
It seems like a well-rounded game and I do regret a tiny little bit that I missed out on it all these years because I passed on it at SPIEL because of the stupid tree because–and I quote myself-- “games with gimmicks, meh” and also cutesy antrophomorphic animals and Kickstarter shenanigans… all highly sus.
My main deck still needs shuffling. And I was a bit irritated when some of the harvesters and gatherers came up with an empty banner without text. Turns out your supposed to name them to personalize your copy oO
And how do you even get at special events except randomly? Is it a strategy to go for card-draw / discard to do those events? (This is something the app does a little better. I find the events hard to see up on the tree)
8 Likes
Just trying to wrap my head around this monster by two-handing it.
One player started with a whole heap of strong positions and little cash, while the other had all the army commands and a pile of cash. Opened up some trade, found the company very limited by its lack of sufficient shipping. One commander looted Hyderabad and took control, only to have a powerful rebellion spring up from nowhere in exactly that same region. Still, company dividends paid out enough to counterbalance that embarrassing upset, and nobody really important died. The prime minister successfully pushed through a new law to use sepoy regiments, which will reduce upkeep but increase the risk of unrest. Next up, find out if anyone retires and cashes in as we go into round 2…
Interesting game. There’s power, which is quite fluid, but basically just a winner takes most VP boost at the end of the game. Then there’s retiring, marrying, and buying luxuries, which is where the real VP is, but they all have upkeep costs. Meanwhile, keeping the company afloat and profitable is probably good for everyone, but everyone is trying to siphon off enough funds to retire on, and India is being India.
10 Likes
Oooooooh, welcome to Everdell, it’s a lovely place. The loveliest, perhaps. 
For special events, the times I went specifically for them the loss of opportunity that entailed made them very much not worth it. The deck is so massive that drawing the precise cards you need is gonna be rather rare. I find it’s a better idea to go with a “if it happens, it happens” mentality.
The Everdell Games is perhaps, ironically enough, the easiest of the bunch to purposely go for, since you just need two of each type of card and odds are, you’re gonna get there organically.
8 Likes
I had the same hesitancy, due to the tree, the ks hype, and the complaints. The complaints are kind of true, as you mentioned, the variable events on the tree are a real mixed bag. Some are universally pursuable, some have a cost to offset the benefit, while others are just hitting a random draw or give a rich get richer effect. Some cards are likewise “dead” unless you are lucky enough to pair them, or overpowered if you do.
In the end, though, these seemed a small enough part of the game that they were just a rounding error on a good session.
5 Likes
Played a two-handed learning game of Honey Buzz (I lost to the stuffed monkey 130-111).
It’s VERY early days, yes, but this is the first time I think Everdell might have some competition for the best game we’ve played this year. It’s delightfully crunchy, filled with hard decisions and gorgeously produced.
I have a very good feeling about this one.
9 Likes
SHUX is here!
We took a train, which sadly changed over to a bus about halfway up. While on the bus, though, we did fit in a game of Railroad Ink: Blue edition, which I won 44 - 20.
Today, we got in four games, but all of them were new to us. First we played a demo of Dodos Riding Dinos, which has a very Mario Kart feel to it. Everyone has a dino, each having a special ability. You start withba hand of 5 cards. Each turn, everyone plays a card from their hand. Starting with the first player, they resolve their card, then going clockwise, each other player resolves theirs. The cards move your dino X spaces, and then have a special ability that triggers. These can move you more spaces, let you throw, roll, or drop certain objects and try to hit your opponents, or a variety of other effects.
The dino in the lead at the end of the round moves forward one more space, while all other players draw a card. The first player marker then passes to the next player. The cards act as your life, so if you take damage, you have to discard cards from your hand. If you run out, you drop back 3 spaces, but then draw a new hand of 5 cards. There are also some reaction cards that can prevent other players’ effects from happening, move you more spaces at the cost of damage, etc.
It was silly fun, but would need to see a price point before thinking about picking it up once it hits retail. I thought I had it in the bag, but my wife passed me by on her last move, getting further past the finish line than I did, so the victory went to her.
We then checked out Calico. Took a few minutes to read the rules amd figure it out, but once we got going it was easy enough. Definitely a game I would need to play more to figure out a good strategy. I was working on achieving the full bonuses from the bonus tiles, but then the color yellow just stopped coming out of the bag. I was able to get the minor bonus on two of the three tiles, but working on that cost me a couple chances at cats or buttons, I think. My wife won again, 52 - 40.
Then a couple of guys were walking by with Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest, which I have been wanting to try out. As they were looking for more players, it worked out wonderfully. Took a few minutes for us to figure it out, but soon we were blitzing through it. My wife did have some trouble differentiating between the hook and the anchor, but in fairness both are black, while everything else is a distinctive color. I rocked this one, getting 90 points, with our new acquaintances tied at 71, and my wife bringing up the rear with 63. I liked this one and could see picking it up.
Lastly, we tried out Sobek 2-player. Again, tookba few minutes to learn the rules, bit they were pretty straightforward. However, we both spaced the part about getting the tokens on the side of the board when playing a set, so our game was definitely flawed. However, pretty sure we played everything else correctly, and my wife won 54 - 47. Need to try it again with remembering the tokens to see how the game changes up.
Been a lot of fun so far, even if we have not gamed a ton. It’s nice just being on vacation.
14 Likes
We had our local Con, Bay Con, organized with the local Geeks Guild. Even though the weather was very damp and rainy, we managed a good 40 or 50 people, which is great for Hawke’s Bay.
I only played 2 games, one of them Firefly, with Kalidasa, Blue Sun and the Pirates and Bounty Hunters expansion, and it was quite the beast. I am regretting not having taken a picture, because the table was full to the edges with cards (my ship upgrades had to be hanging over the edge, which made moving a delicate issue). The objective we had was getting 5 goals through completing crime, smuggling, bounty and piracy missions. We started at three, but at the end of the refreshal of rules a fourth joined in, which made things waaaay longer. I think we started the game at about 9.30 ish, and we finished it at roughly 15.45.
One of the co-owners came up with an interpretation of the market rules that I knew was wrong, where if they were revealing 3 cards from the deck of a market deck, they could replace from the deck any card they were not choosing. I did not want to make things difficult and went along with it. But with the double picking from markets, we managed to turn all of Space Bazaar and Persephone cards, which was quite bizarre.
What I did not concede was when on one of the travelling cards through the Alliance Space was when getting a distress call and the options were to stop and help for 200 bucks and a fuel or fly by without helping but disgruntling all your moral crew members, I was forced to fly by and not help because on the first option the middle bullet point said:
-Remove any disgruntled tokens from your crew and get $200.
The owner said (and was quite agitated at some point) that if I didn’t have any disgruntled crew members I could not take that option, and I have to fly by and disgruntle half my crew. She was offering to concede my point but was complaining that we were not being literal with what the card said she would interpret other cards in the future as she would want to see fit.
Eventually I offered to concede and not get the 200 bucks because I did not have anybody to remove disgruntled from, but she still got quite agitated about it. In the end her partner intervened and said that it did not make much sense that you could only help a distress call if your crew had disgruntled members. After a good 10 minutes, we all apologized (I did out of courtesy), and kept playing.
I’d like to think what other people here that owns the game think about it, as maybe I’m wrong…?
After a long slog, and failing my last showdown with a draw on the dice roll for my fifth goal, she managed to win two turns later, so she was quite happy about it. And even though I love the game, I was happy it ended as well, 6 hours of it is more than enough.
After a late lunch at the local Scottish restaurant (with a big M on the entrance) I played a game or Res Arcana between 4, that went on quickly. We didn’t draft, which I think did not help me at all, as my hand was very unmanageable, so I ended up last. At least we were done in an hour or so.
It was great to assist here and there for another hour or so, but in the end I left at around 18,30. Tomorrow is the second day and we have less voluntaries helping, so I will see how it goes.
9 Likes