I’ve been really up and down on wanting to try Décorum. When it was in one of the AwSHUX previews last year I thought it was the most exciting-looking game in the pack, then Tom wasn’t too enthused on the podcast, then we watched the Rahdo and I thought it looked good but not amazing, but the real kicker was that my wife didn’t have a favorable impression of it at all from that video. But now you’re making me want to play it again! I think my main hope will be for it to show up on BGA or as a TTS mod.
4 Likes
I felt like decorum was fun at the start but then became hard and less entertaining. (only played 2player)
5 Likes
Yesterday would’ve been our late beloved dog Lucky’s birthday, and as such, we played a bunch of base Pandemic. We actually played five games. The first two were perfect games (all diseases cured and eradicated and no outbreaks) that came down to the wire with only one card left in the deck when we managed the win, the next two were regular victories and REALLY close as well, and the last was a perfect game again, but this one wasn’t close. Game got spanked. All for you, son. Rest well, happy birthday, we love you.
Today, we got Terraforming Mars out. Two games, I lost the first one by three points on forests, we were dead even before we counted them (I had Thorgate, my wife had The Tharsis Republic) and won the second one by four on VP cards (my wife had the Mining Guild and I had Phobolog). Third game to decide the series will come at some point, my wife is too tired right now.
What a great couple of days of gaming!
13 Likes
We made our second trip to the new games group on Wednesday. After my first mistake of ordering a vegan pizza (the kitchen was very stingy with the not-cheese) the evening improved markedly with a game of 7 wonders architects, followed by 2 games of Bunny Kingdom. I’ll admit to not being keen to play Bunny Kingdom initially (possibly based on a poor review I’d seen somewhere) but I thought it was pretty enjoyable. It’s a combination of drafting and area control, with the drafted cards providing either the ability to place things on the board or end game scoring bonuses. In the first game I managed to build up a single big kingdom which gave me most of my points, with a few bonus points at the end. In the second game I was getting terrible placement cards (I only scored four points from the board over three scoring rounds) but I managed to build up a big stack of end game scoring cards. That big stack got me ~70 points, which was just about enough to win. Both games were very close, and I’d definitely play again 
9 Likes
Had our usual gaming couple, J and C, over today and played Everdell. They had played the base game with us once before, the very first time we had ever played it, and we made a mistake regarding how Preparing for Season worked. This was pre-pandemic. We maybe should have just played the base game with them this time, but we broke out Spirecrest as well. A shortish rules explanation later, we were off.
I felt like I was doing terribly, as I was the first to prepare for season going into both spring and summer, and I only had two cards out. Since we were playing with 5 players, we did not get an extra worker going into spring, and I definitely felt that loss.
However, I was actually able to stretch summer out immensely, getting my city up to 12 or 13 cards before moving into autumn, getting myself some much needed production. I ended up playing a Cemetery that did not end up getting used at all, though initially I was going to try discarding the Castle I was holding and hope no one discarded too many cards before I could use the Cemetery to build it for free. However, it didn’t happen, so I had it and a Postal Pigeon taking up valuable space and not contributing anything to my endgame.
My wife was doing quite well, having a Shopkeeper which gave her a berry every time she played a critter, amd then one of the Discovery cards which let her draw a card every time she received a berry, keeping her hand flush, which was helpful in the summer when the weather effect made us discard a card any time we played a card. C had the Historian, so was able to draw a card every time she played a construction or critter, so kept a full hand herself. Meanwhile, I took my last three or four turns of summer with an empty hand.
Game ended after fourish hours. This included setup, rules explanation, and a crazy amount of child wrangling. Having to get up most of the time after taking your turn to deal with the latest kid crisis does not help your focus much. I kept noticing I had forgotten to do things after my turn, like taking a berry for my shopkeeper, or even doing my production going into autumn. I’d do it then, but is just an example of how frazzled I was. My wife was in the same boat, doing the same kid wrangling, and being a bit extra tired to boot, having let me go back to bed for a couple of hours this morning.
Tallying up the points, J won with 66 points. He had a pile of point tokens that seemed to come out of nowhere, but likely just happened when I wasn’t at the table. My brother-in-law and I tied with 54, my wife had 53, and C was in last with 48. They both enjoyed the game and C was confident she would have a better idea of what she was doing in our next game, assuming that it is not two years later, like the last time.
11 Likes
A bunch of things at the weekend games con:
- Three Arrows
- Final Round Fighting Card Game
- Rallyman GT
- Honey Buzz
- Pitchcar Mini
- Cascadia
- Regicide
- Spirit Island
- The King is Dead
- Obsession (in the end just the set up and learning enough to play)
- Sprawlopolis
As always, not nearly as many games as I would have liked to have tried; but it included a bunch of things I’d been wanting to try out for a while, so not a bad effort.
I was fortunate to have a great group for Rallyman GT – it was just a single lap race after the teach, but they were really into it (one of them thought they might need to buy a copy for themselves), and it went really well. I also saved everyone the set-up time by having done that before looking for players. As expected I found it more fun with 4 players than with 1, so I was glad I’d taken it. I had stupidly good luck with my rolling… I went flat-out most of the time (partly hoping to lose control and not be in the lead any more) but I just never rolled 3 hazards. I went flat-out completely unnecessarily in my last turn, using nearly all of the dice to try to cross the line, and… I did. I just couldn’t throw that race. I ended with so many focus tokens!
8 Likes
For me the slowest thing about R:GT is the track building. The app helps a lot (tap on a track then on the “details” tab, and you can get a hex layout with large tile numbers), and at some point I mean to write a microsite that’ll just produce those on the fly (but I’ve already done the enjoyable bit, the back-end coding)… but you still have to find each tile number, and then afterwards you have to put them away in order or it’ll take even longer next time. I wonder about storing them in blocks as a compromise, 100-104, 105-109, etc.
7 Likes
How did you like Honey Buzz? I‘ve only managed to get a 2 handed learning game done since I got my copy (an embarrassingly long time ago).
3 Likes
We certainly enjoyed playing it more than setting it up and learning the rules. We didn’t have anyone who already knew the game, and it felt like a fairly long-winded process to get going (I remember one particularly irritating instruction to take a large pile of mixed tokens and sort them by type… so I did that (which took a while)… and the next instruction related to me was to remove one token of each type from the game, and then throw all the remaining tokens into a bag!!). So, like most games, the manual could be better.
Once we were a few turns in though, it felt really smooth, and I enjoyed the puzzle. It seemed like a game where someone who can plan things out in detail multiple moves in advance is going to flourish, but if you make mistakes then your efficiency is going to plummet. Pretty clever, and it’s a game I’d happily play again, but aren’t looking to buy for myself.
6 Likes
I played a learning 2-hander of Tribes of the Wind.
Game after setup.
A mid-weight euro-y city-builder.
The earth has perished only a few survivors live high among the trees… the Tribes of the Wind. Those (slightly asymmetric) tribes want to rebuild now.
The game is a race to build 5 villages on your player board. The winner is the player with the most VP which you get for villages, temples, tiles placed, VP cards fulfilled and pollution cleaned. (There is a helpful reminder at the bottom of your player board)
On your turn you either
- play a card from your hand of 5,
- discard 3 cards (to reset your hand) and build a temple and get a reward or
- build a village.
How do each of these work?
- Temples can be built on any tile that doesn‘t have a temple.
- Villages can be built on tiles that have the minimum number of your wind-riders on it.
- Cards can be played if you fulfill the requirement on the left side of the card (f.e. Have more blue cards than one or both of your neighbors, have 2 green cards, have no red cards, have at least 1 card of each color…). Card effects vary in the details but as far as I see it there are 4: acquire and place a forest tile from the market by paying with water (the card determines cost), acquire water, clean up pollution, move your windriders.
There is a bit more to the game, like the village cards you get for building a village that you can either use for endgame VP or an instant effect right now, or your tribes special powers and how you acquire those.
But the basic turn is „play a card“ and draw to 5.
It is fast and easily explained. Setup is also fast as is teardown. The rulebook is good and mostly complete (I ruled after not finding anything that if a card provides 2 effects, you can still play it if you cannot play one of those effects). The 2 player mode using the card market as simulated 3rd player for card requirements is elegant and simple with no overhead at all.
What I cannot tell after a learning game is how much staying power this has. BGG has the weight somewhere around 2.5 which is solidly in the middle of the scale and I would say that is correct. I think I could teach this easily to most of my boardgame playing friends. But for me as someone who enjoys games a little more complex than this, I cannot yet tell, how many plays this has before I think it might be too simple or the gameplay even repetitive. I had expected it to feel more interactive but the conditions on the cards—while a neat idea—are not truly „interactive“.
But my collection is a bit thin on mid-weight euros and city-building is a thing I enjoy a lot. So who knows… right now this is definitely more than a 7, depending on how actual play feels possibly an 8. Keen to try this with 2 or more players (plays up to 5)
End state of one board.
8 Likes
Our third game of Terraforming Mars was played to conclude the series! I won by around 7 points this time, playing Credicor, while my wife was Teractor. It was a dead heat before we started counting the tiles on the board, that was a great series.
After, we played a coop variant of Everdell I found. It’s really fun, and we JUST managed to do it.
We’ve just finished a 4-player game of Carcassonne with our 8-years-old niece and our 6-years-oldnephew. My wife won in the 70s, I was next in the 60s, our niece was third in the 50s and our nephew was bringing up the rear at around 46 (he was playing the long game, looking at one big town, but couldn’t finish it, though he came very close).
What a nice week-end.
7 Likes
Introduced my kids to Clue yesterday, followed by watching the movie. The kids now have a new favorite family game.
Today, my 8YO put this game together:. Monsters of Doom
It is a simple dungeon crawler, but all the parts are sized to fit inside the Duplo blocks. The bottom block has been converted to a custom die.
17 Likes
My wife and I played Tyrants of the Underdark today, using the Drow and Elemental half-decks. Seemed like the market favored me for the most part, as I was able to get a lot more attack overall than she did, and thus was able to control a good chunk of the board and eliminate more troops overall. I controlled Menzoberrazan for most of the game, but never got total control. I only managed that for the southern-most city on the very last turn.
In any case, I won 78 - 60. Really need to get a four player game in of this at some point.
6 Likes
The set up is the only thing that’s prevented me playing Honey Buzz more, though to be fair my girlfriend and I have still got a lot of plays out of it. I’ve not bought many inserts but if there’s a good one for this I’d be tempted.
5 Likes
I have a new fan of Flipology in the family, I played like 10 games of it with my 6 yo daughter this evening. She loves it. Funny cause her sister hates it (too much “take that” for her)
5 Likes
One of my best friends turns 40 next week (29th), and we had a small gathering (5 of us total) to celebrate.
After roasting some pork loin, veggies, and potatos I attempted semi-successfully to make two roulades (I over-baked both so they were too crispy to properly roll). Those pictures will go in the “What I Ate” thread in a bit. But then we played a few quick games!
We started with Anomia which continues to be a simple joy. Lots of “Uhhh! Uhhh! Seals!” Famous Musician, Aquarium Animal, and two others I can’t remember at the moment… plus I won “Famous Address” by saying “The Gettysburg!” So, ya know, fun times! I gave our copy to Dana (who’s birthday it was) since she had so much fun with it.
Then we tried Spot It (Dobble, I think, everywhere but Canada?) and it was fun as well. Simple twitch-reaction game with a few interesting variations. Adam enjoyed it the most, laughing like a schoolchild the whole time, so I gave my copy to him. Hey, I got it for free, and I work at a game store.
After that we played the always-fantastic Illusion (Warsch is a godsdamned time-travelling super genius. Only explanation for how he makes such fantastic games), and then a few rounds of No Thanks! which is rock-solid fun.
Tonight is the next session of our ongoing bi-monthly D&D campaign (our intrepid heroes are still working through “The Dragon of Icespire Peak” from the Essentials Kit), and that will probably be it until after Xmas… one of the downsides to working a game and toy store in November-December is that the hours get real long and the work ramps up real fast at the same time I will be studying for exams.
9 Likes
Photosynthesis - really simple game but have caused headaches on some people on the table as there’s a lot of look-ahead one needs to do in order to play well. I’m used to that, but it means that the game took longer than it should. It’s a good game that is defo my style. But I don’t think I have the space for it.
I had a look at the expansion Under the Moonlight and it looks utter ****. Seems the designer couldn’t think of a way on how to expand on the existing system, and so designed a roughly similar system and put it on top of the old one.
Senators - aaahhh! Great fun!
6 Likes
Caesar! Seize Rome in 20 Minutes
Caesar (red) demolishing Autocratus in the solo mode:
After a few games today, I feel the solo opponent is successful mainly at making me very eager to play this with proper (human) opponents. This is right up my street, and I wish that I’d played it with people on the weekend.
Edit: Ha, just found I’d glossed over a very important rule. Let’s see if I’m still doing as well tomorrow…
Edit 2: I also just looked on BGG to confirm what was meant by “landlocked”* region in the solo rules, because there isn’t a single landlocked region on the map! It turns out that the writer was very confused, and the intended meaning is the very least-landlocked regions in the game – the islands, and Italy. Unsurprisingly I was playing that bit “wrong” as well. (* Apparently some editions have this text reworded.)
I’ve also now seen it suggested that with the Poison and Centurion expansions in play, the solo opponent feels much better, so I’ll have to add these into the mix.
10 Likes
I was totally going to buy this and then some reviewer or other insisted this was so ugly it was barely playable. I don’t think it is ugly. I mean I am no longer sure this is a game for me but have they successfully forgotten the Age of Beige? I mean sure there is some beige here… but I am sure that is just a respectful reference to the “good old times” 
3 Likes
It looks fine to me. I’ve seen worse from other recent releases.
4 Likes