I’m not sure what has happened but our kids have wanted to game with us this weekend.
Have managed Gloomhaven, Tichu, Carrom and 4 games of Cosmic Encounter.
It’s been ace
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Windsor corridor?
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Really? I like Skull King. What should I be playing instead?
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For a very similar (but imo better) game try Wizard which also has inadvertently hilarious art.
I think Wizard has simpler rules, simpler scoring and less incentive to try to get zero tricks.
@lalunaverde is the king of trick takers so I await the response with interest
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It’s been a busy week for gaming including after work games in a pub called the Cock and Bottle (very British):
Verdant: I was very tempted to Kickstart this since I love both spatial puzzles and plants, but I managed to refrain. At first look it seems on a par with Calico (same co-designer). My husband prefers it because he finds the colour combinations in Calico a bit much!
Flamme Rouge: I was given the Meteo expansion recently, so we played with that. It adds a little variation to the game, but I think Peloton might be more interesting.
Tsuro: quick and easy pub game
Timeline: my dreadful film knowledge ensured that I came last 
Codenames: Duet: it’s codenames, but co-op 
7 Wonders Architects: easy enough to teach to people in the pub
Dixit
Yedo: my husband bought the fancy-pants deluxe version at UKGE, and we’ve just got around to playing it. We played with just the base set-up, which was fine. I’m keen to try some of the modules to see we whether they take it from “fine” to “good”. In particular, we didn’t play with the cards that allow you to manipulate where the watchman goes, since he effectively blocks off a sector of the board each turn. I had a very frustrating couple of last rounds because I was last in the turn order and blocked from the sector that allowed me to do anything about it.
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That’s not quite how I understand the rules….
When I’ve taught it, I’ve taught that it’s mandatory to make a train sound when passing a train between cities, but that table talk is fine.
Edit: But, yeah, I like it a lot, too. 
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Personal opinion: Peloton is essential for the additional track pieces, and because six-player games are better than four. Meteo is merely nice to have.
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The problem I found is that Skull King adds a lot of special characters that
1.) made it more difficult to teach compared to other trick takers.
2.) The special characters pretty much greatly devalued the colours.
Both of these didn’t sit well with me. If the teach is gonna be a pain, I would rather suggest Tichu (which has bombs and 4 special characters) or Haggis (also has bombs) The devaluation of colour cards mean that bidding became much easier. Pirates are pretty much a guarantee win if you’re upstream on the turn order, as there’s only 1 Skull King in the entire deck that can beat the pirates. The Skull King in turn can be countered by 2 mermaids in the deck. This means that the best bid to amass pts is to bid high (according to hand size) or bid zero. To bid low is to play defensively if you’re in a good position.
Skull King is pretty much a souped-up version of Oh Hell. I remember Oh Hell being a Card Games That Don’t Suck episode (HERE IT IS!!! (51) Oh Hell - Card Games That Don’t Suck - YouTube)
Trick takers/shedding that I end up liking:
- The Crew 1 & 2
- Sticheln/Stick Em
- Marshmallow Test/Voodoo Prince
- Cat in the Box - sorry for suggesting this as this game is still unavailable. But I am liking it so far.
- Tindahan/Filipino Fruit Market - alas, another hard-to-find game, but can be bought from Amazon Japan. You can also play up to 4 players (instead of 5) with normal cards from 1-10 and one face card from each suit (acting as the shop) and a bunch of cubes.
- SCOUT - not a fave, and not a trick taker! but it’s just way easier to teach than Tichu or Haggis.
@Captbnut Wizards is something I am keen on trying. As for being “king of trick takers”. Thanks! 
But I am still mining the surface of this genre. I have a stack of trick takers that I need to play.
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I forgot to mention that this was greatly enhanced(?) by the terrible Yorkshire jokes precipitated by any word on the grid beginning with T. Anyone want to guess the “Yorkshire definitions” of “toast” and “turtle”?
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Where do you stand on Plums (aka Pi Mal Pflaumen) being a trick-taking game? BGG calls it one, but it doesn’t really seem like one. The mechanism seems more like an auction …
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My worst driving experience ever was 401 between Woodstock and London. The highway was basically a massive sheet of glass/ice: we were rerouted off the highway because there was an accident blocking all the lines, and when I got on the detour I turned left when I should’ve turned right. As a result I got back on the highway one stop before I had to get off the highway again. Made a 1 hour drive take 6.5 hours.
Second worst was the same section of highway: I was in the 2nd lane and the snowplow (far ahead) decided to stop plowing, and so I suddenly found myself skidding towards the highway divider at 80km/h. I jerked the wheel, avoiding jumping the barrier (and certain death), swerving back across three lanes and missing being splattered by a transport truck by about… 10 meters? If that?
There have been some other fun ones (a car hitting a puddle ahead of me that sent up a huge wave that completely obscured everything for me for about 2 seconds: by the time my wipers cleared it the same car was now perpendicular to traffic and smashed into the divider by flying across the highway in front of me… super fun… oh, and the time that we were driving to Boston and it rained so hard for 5 minutes that we had to pull over because even with the wipers at full speed visibility was zero… and 2pm… it was incredible). But those two were the worst.
This time it was just a few kilometers north of Waterloo in a little town in the middle of nowhere. The road being elevated over the farmers fields was terrifying… it’s not a big shoulder, and then a 2-4m plummet that would’ve probably ruined the car, or rolled it. Possibly both. Not a fun experience, do not recommend.
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It’s been years, but I’d say technically yes, but it is straying way too far. The game isn’t about trying to win or lose tricks.
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My wife and I got in a few games yesterday. First up was Marvel Splendor, which I won 16 - 8, inadvertently ending the game when I purchased Vision and suddenly realizing I had 16 points.
After that, we played Lost Cities, and again I dominated, winning each round and the final scores were 280 - 174. Highest scoring game we’ve had in quite a while.
Rounded it out with two games of Kingdomino, both of which were won by my wife. First game was 48 - 39, and the second was a very close 34 - 32.
Today, we had a quick game of Ethnos, and while we were just a single point apart at the end of the first age, she was able to take control of all but one region, and outscore me on bands, giving her the win at 97 - 62. Total blow out!
We were hoping to get another scenario of Mansions of Madness in after the kids go down tonight, but it has been an incredibly rough day, and neither of us really have the headspace for it. We are going to shoot for Wednesday on that. Here’s hoping!
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Yes, found the same thing. Sure, it’s exciting, but shouldn’t decide the game. I want so much to like PTR. We tried to take notes, and then found a web site that made it a bit easier. Still feels like we spend all our time making notes.
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I was amazed when I found out that the grid notetaking sheets were just a pad of paper. I was taking notes on every single medium and hard card! So what is that, like 10 sheets gone through per player per game? Ridiculous.
I had a good time with the game but I feel like I saw everything that it has to offer with the one game. Planet X obviously has a lot more variety in how the puzzle can get laid out, and Sleuth has more variety in how you get to your conclusions. The key difference between those two games and PTR is that the solution never changes, you’re just getting more and more info for one big puzzle. With this, you get a lot of little puzzles which aren’t as satisfying because you can’t make as many deductions, and also sometimes you just can’t get the clues you need (due to the selection of tiles) and just have to take a guess because the pressure’s on. So it had less of what I want in a logic game which is going “Now that I’ve learned this, that means I can deduce this this and this oh my god!”
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Yup, love Planet X. Played Sleuth once, not sure how I felt about it. Turing Machine is really good, I’m enjoying it.
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The first game of Sleuth is just figuring out the notation you want to use for Sleuth. The second game of Sleuth is the real first game of Sleuth.
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I have been packing like crazy and preparing for our holiday to Spain that starts this Friday, but still managed to play a couple of games with the girls on Sunday night. The little one wanted to play something different after so much Flipology, so we had a go at Game of Life (I know, I know… I consider this an investment for when they are older, guess what? Let’s try this game which is waaaay better)
Much as I tried to let the little one win, I was too lucky with children (got triplets, just the thought of it, brrr) and won by a nere $30.000 in a game of 3.2 million each at the very end. At least she took it well.
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Really want to try Sleuth now
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I keep wanting to play something bigger but not having the energy, and just playing a round or two of Sprawlopolis instead. It really is so very good at what it does – simple, quick, satisfying.
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