Which shows that sometimes, Turmoils are very necessary for the Eyrie to win. It is very counterintuitive, but very often it is a turn that is not wasted, you just gain 1 VP or none at all instead of 3-5 per turn as you would.
This is my main perk against the Cats. You start strong, but if the Alliance is playing, your steady pace and the nature of the Alliance makes your chances of winning very slim against somebody who knows how to use them.
I appreciate this. It makes sense - Iād been percolating on a few of the ingredients but that ties it all together.
Got to play the Clone Wars Pandemic, and it was pretty great. Aside from the original, itās the only pandemic Iāve played, and it was cool to see the system tweaks made to fit the theme. My daughter was very excited to see the Clone Wars characters that sheās gotten to know from the show, and the mechanic of discarding one of them for each damage taken hit her hard. We defeated Ventress, though, so Commander Codyās sacrifice was not in vain.
Played last night a few rounds of Love Letter with my daughter. Even though I won the first āsetā easy, she wiped the floor with me on the following two. Amazing how many times she guessed my card right using a Guard or managing to make me drop the Princess through a Prince card. Hatās off.
I just saw an ad for this on BGG the other day and I am very interested. But I still need to get Fall of Rome to the table.
Thisāll teach me to post a photo without any accompanying text indicating the game title. It took me ages to locate my Land vs Sea post in the Last game you bought? thread. You can see some of the game tiles there.
I played a two-hander this evening to learn it. (I didnāt think to take a photo of the end state before I packed it up, so here is someone elseās.)
I like it (as Iād expected), however I fear for my chances of getting to play this with my partner. The game is superficially a bit like the city-building part of Carcassonne, but each (hex) tile contains both land and sea areas, and one player is trying to enclose areas of Sea while the other is trying to enclose areas of Land. So youāre wanting to play tiles that help to close off areas for you, while ideally expanding the extent of your opponentās areas to make it harder for them to close them. Closed areas score 1 point per tile involved for the associated player, plus possible bonus points for whichever player actually closed it. (In the above BGG link, Sea has had rather a bad time of it ā most of that is one huge incomplete area which has scored them no points. As a rule you want to make lots of small areas, but my first impressions are that this is much easier said than doneā¦)
I think my biggest problem will be that whereas in Carcassonne you can be mean, I think in this game itās absolutely inevitable. Because every tile you play affects both types of areas, messing with their borders to make things harder/impossible is a certainty; You can also finish an area for them (if you think theyāll do it themselves otherwise) and steal the bonus points (marked on some tiles) which they would have gotten for finishing it; Some tiles cause you to steal one of your opponents two tiles from them, meaning they only have one option on their next turn (but drawing back to the normal hand of 2 afterwards).
As often happens with Carcassonne as well, I found the last few turns took me into A.P. mode as I tried to figure out whether/where I could get any points with my final tiles.
I played the basic rules, but there are three sets of optional advanced rules built into the system which could easily be very A.P. triggering. Some tiles have mountain/forests on some land edges or corral reefs on some sea edges, and there are points to be had for matching those things together (with escalating points if you can connect more of those tiles in a sequence). Then there are tiles with ships or caravans which introduces some area-majority scoring at the end of the game: if a group of connected tiles have a total of 5 ships and 4 caravans, then the Sea player wins the majority and gets 5+4 points (tbh I think this would be extremely tough to keep tabs on ā the ship/caravan areas can arbitrarily overlap multiple land/sea areas, and that just seems like itās going to be hard to track visually). Lastly each player optionally starts the game with a token they can place on unfinished areas, and if the area is later finished there are bonus points and they get their token back (but they only get it back if that area is finished ā much like having a single meeple to place in any city-in-progress in Carcassonne). I can envisage it getting pretty tricky to figure out the best use of your tiles once you start adding in these additions. (Also, I really like the detailed artwork on the tiles, but I hadnāt realised how many of those details were gameplay-related until going through these extra rules.)
Finally, while you can see which 2 tiles each player has, all tiles are double-sided with different things on each side, and only the player with a given tile knows what the hidden side has. So you could figure out half of their options on their next turn, but not the other half. Maybe theyāre about to finish an area that they canāt finish with their visible tiles, etc. This also affects your choice of tile when drawing back to 2 ā you donāt know whatās on the other side of the tiles youāre choosing between.
All in all it felt like a pretty neat design. I just hope I actually get to play it with another human! : )
If youāre in the market for a very interactive tile layer which is easy to learn and kinda cut-throat to play, Iād say this one is worth looking at.
Just played a bunch of games at SHUX, so Iāll just post the short notes I took on all of them
Wormholes - Hella fun, will buy
Spirit Island - Maybe?
Tsuro - Enjoyable enough
Rebuilding Seattle - I liked a lot, will buy
Heisenburger - Fun, but not really my jam
Allthingi - Interesting, but probably not a buy
Container - It was fun, Iād play again but not buy
Irish Gague - Also fun, maybe a buy but check out Iberian Gague and Ride the Rails first?
Sidereal Confluence - Still fun. Still no idea what Iām doing.
Kingdomino - Fun little game
Tales From the Loop - I dunno. I wouldnāt own it but probably wouldnāt say no to a game.
Twilight Inscription - I liked it
Codenames Duet - Mostly captures the fun of the original
Onitama - If I wanted a 2p game, Iād get it
More Cat in the Box!
Stephensonās Rocket - yep. This is the Japanese edition, and my priors were confirmed. Visibility on who has what commodity and who has what shares is not as good as the Grail Games edition. Grail just did an excellent job on the UX of this game. The only reason why you want to look at other peopleās personal board is the number of passengers they hold.
Anyway, best Knizia game ever.
Yes! Even more Cat in the Box!
Decrypto - I have swung the other way in the party gaming pendulum. I am now seeking these thinky filler games. Decrypto is just aces!
Irish Gauge - Iām trying to put Cube Rails on the table. Irish Gauge is, so far, Amabel Hollandās best title. Need to explore Dual Gauge and Trans Siberian Railroad more. Will be waiting for Dinosaur Gauge.too
Imperium: Classics/Legends - We played with 4 players and itās soooo booooring. This is ONLY a 1 player or maybe 2 player game. The take-thats are just the shallow BS from Euro designers. āooohhhh you get an unrest! Oh no!ā. Like, how is this āinteractionā fun? I wasnāt interested on what everyone else is doing!
I have this theory that take-thats are now on designer check-list because games have to have interaction nowadays (disagree). And this is the most milquetoast crap they can think of. As the Celts, I didnāt feel like thereās anything different with playing against the Arthurians, Romans, or Mauryans. Thereās no ecosystem. This could have been like a light deck-building interpretation of Root or something, or maybe Iām just expecting too much.
Tonight my wife and I played Taverns of Tiefenthal to unwind after the kids fell asleep. I think we were pretty even for most of the game, but on the last two rounds I got very little money, while my wife got a ton on the last round, managing to upgrade four of her sections while I could only upgrade one. She won, 126 - 98.
My husband and I tried a new gaming group yesterday! Itās in a nice pub about halfway between the office and home, so it would have been rude not to 
We just played a couple of games and chatted, which was nice. One game of Lanterns and one of Condottiere. The highlight of Condottiere was probably when one of the players managed to force someone else to discard the cards theyād been carefully saving, which provoked an impressive amount of (good humoured) Geordie swearing.
The next meetup is in two weeks, and weāll probably go back 
I played it once, with three, and had a really good time. If thereād been a vendor at that pub meet, Iād have bought it on the spot.
Then I played it again on TTS and it seemed awfully similar.
would not play Imperium Classics with more than 2 players. it is very good as a solo. even if I found it initially difficult to grok how the bots work
Iāve been Jonesing to play Condottiere for so long! Soonā¦
Having a crazy couple of weeks, so to cheer myself up I bought and played Ginkgopolis.
Itās really interesting. You get 4 cards, play 1 (to do one of 3 actions) and then you pass them to the next player. It means planning isnāt really possible, but you can mitigate it by having lots of options. I think thatās why it would be much, much quicker with 2 because youād have a better idea of what cards were coming.
Lots of tense decisions and paths to victory (straight points engine, area control scoring and playing end of game scoring cards).
Itās good. It took 90 minutes with the teach, canāt see it at 45 with 4 players. Very clever, not quite Knizia esque with rules simplicity turning into complex decision making but itās up there
I actually had a dream about playing Condottiere last night. Though we got part way through the game and I realised I hadnāt taught anything about scoring. And I had possibly actually taught everyone the rules to Arboretum instead ā¦
That would explain the grove of dogwoods running from Venezia to Sicilyā¦
Tonight, the two of us played Everdell. Despite having the ginormous box with everything, we just used the base game we already owned, so no expansions tonight. I have not yet learned any of them, and it was a little too late in the evening to do so.
As usual with Everdell, I got partway into the Spring season feeling like I could barely do anything and that it would be the shortest game ever. Then I got a Judge and Courtroom, and things just exploded. I had 11 cards in my city by the time I had to prepare for Summer. Two more cards went in and I had to prepare for season early to get the Production materials so I could play the Queen from the Meadow on my next turn. Finally, I also lucked into drawing a Husband and Wife, which both fit into my cityās 15th spot.
Meanwhile, my wife had been having fun with her University and Cemetery, destroying a Castle for its resources and then bringing it back. Also used an Inn to build a Lookout and Theater. She only managed one special event, to my one special and one basic, but she more than made up for that with end of game bonuses. With the Castle, Palace, Ever Tree, King, and Theater, she wracked up a ton of points. I only had the School.
She won, 71 - 60. I thought it was 66 - 60, but I missed the bonus Ever Tree points.
Next time, going to break into an expansion, so I can actually have input on one for those who are curious.
Itās always a good game of Sprawlopolis when you reach double figures. I equaled my second-best score of 12 (my best is 13), with The 'Burbs and Master Plannedā¦ which I see is exactly the combo I had the other time I scored 12 :ā)
(Donāt look at the roads, @yashima. Justā¦ donāt look.)
I see the Naturopolis launch campaign ends in a little more than a day. I didnāt bother with Agropolis though, and Iām still not convinced I need a second one of these. (Iām also not sure I can cope with entirely-pink āmeadowsā, despite that (a) being feasible; (b) making no less sense than the orange residential and blue commercial tiles in the original game regardless; and (c) recognising that they were really running out of useful colour options, considering an expansion lets you combine all three titles in a single game.)
Isnāt this the Sim City colour palette? Could just be youāre conditioned from those games.
Thatās a fun observation. Although the only machine I ever played Sim City on wasnāt really capable of things like āorangeā, so I donāt think itās specifically that.
