Been on a bit of a BGA tear recently Haggis is an excellent 2 player climbing game that I am very bad at. Wingspan I think I like this now. Gentle enough I can click on a button every couple of hours and something happens. So much better async than playing in real life imo. Oriflamme we own this and really enjoy it. Our meta turns the game into a bit of a death cult. Paint the Roses yes, it’s a terrible async game, but boy do I love it Ginkgopolis excellent as always Innovation ditto. Played a not insane 3 player game last night Race for the Galaxy still fabulous Azul ditto Gang of Dice a new Knizia dice chucker that isn’t out in the UK. Plays with probability and seems to be an excellent, light gambling game. And there are loads of dice. Will look out for this when it’s released.
And I saw that Chicago Express is in beta now. Wasn’t great async as an auction game, but I know how to play it now and would be keen to give it another go.
Finally, BGA has changed the UI for setting up and joining a game. It’s not great!
We played this game called Distant Suns. Imagine roll and write where you’re trying to fill a hex grid to cover parts of the page. The couple of twists are that the options are chosen not by dice but one player chooses a thing and everyone else is forced to take some other option (the choice rotates between players). The other twist, which i think matches the theme is that you’re not really incentivised to cover your space too neatly, but more of a reward for getting far as fast as you can (like in the wild days of discovery).
Just played the once but my partner really dug it. I quite liked it.
Vagrantsong, which was a bit of a slog, two of us ended up Westbound (which is a bit like dying, but you still get to participate). So most of our skills weren’t available. We’ll probably ignore the game and just replay that level. I’m not crazy about the game, but my friends bought it at PAX and want to play.
Planet Unknown, a bit on the fence about this one too, thinking of reselling (while it’s still in demand). It’s ok, but nothing amazing.
Biblios. Can’t pick between this and For Sale as my favourite filler. Both are similar in that they have two distinct phases. In For Sale, you auction properties, and then sell them for currency (which I guess is sort of an auction as well). In Biblios, you go through the deck, assigning cards to yourself, an auction pile, and a public pile. And then you auction off the cards in the auction deck. I’d probably say the theme is a bit better in For Sale, Biblios is something about books. But both excellent games, easily understood and quick to play.
Dungeon Raiders, a re-release of an older game from Phil Walker-Harding. It’s a fairly simple game, you have five dungeon cards, some face up, some not, and each player has five cards of values one through five. Dungeon cards can contain treasure, traps, vaults, and of course monsters. Each monster has a defense value, you have to equal (or exceed) it as a team in order to defeat it. If you don’t defeat it, the lowest card player takes damage. Simple, but still good fun, sometimes your greediness can bite you in the arse.
We had a visit from an out-of-town gaming friend yesterday and got in a few games:
Brian Boru: I think this is the third time I’ve played it and I really like the combination of trick taking and area control. A very close game with a draw for first place and everyone else only a couple of points behind.
Metropolys: weirdly reminiscent of High Society in that everyone has a limited range of values to bid with and you have to choose when to use each value most effectively… Except the bidding is spatial.
Another tie for first place. I saw that Roxley Games are doing a reimplementation of this so I may keep an eye out since the owner of this copy lives in Manchester.
Tyrants of the Underdark: this is the second time I’ve played this in the last month. I thought it was a bit meh last time (not helped by the D&D setting) and this time I’ve revised my opinion down to “dull”. Far too much down time between turns and decisions that are difficult because the cards are annoying to parse rather than because the decision space is interesting. I managed to win by miles and barely pay attention to what anyone else was doing
Vikings - a Kiesling game from many years back. Strongly related to Palaces of Carrarra with the pricing wheel system
Nusfjord - still fond of this game. As usual, Rosenberg doesn’t drown you into establishing Rube Goldberg machines, but instead get you more into combo-building. It’s been years and the mundane theme of doing agrarian stuff on the countryside continues to appeal.
Tournament of Avalon - literally trick taking with Cosmic Encounter style superpowers. Take that as you will.
Yesterday we played The Red Cathedral. My wife ended the game by finishing her last section. In was able to build a window to split the points in the tallest tower using my last turn, but I only got 2 points for another tower since it only had one completed section. She had full control over a third tower, while I controlled the last, but she still had presence to get a few points from it.
Final score was tied at 28 PP, but she won the game, as the tie breaker is most completed sections.
We later played Ethnos, using Dwarves, Merfolk, Wingfolk, Giants, and Halflings. While the first age was relatively close, the second age was a slaughter, in my favor. I had a number of large bands, and controlled the more valuable regions, and was even able to snatch the Giant token away from her shortly before the end of the game. Final score was 162 - 112.
Then today, we played Ticket to Ride: London, which I won 42 - 38 thanks to reaching all of the 4 cities for the bonus points.
Afterward, we played two games of Kingdomino. I won the first, 49 - 35, and she took the second, 50 - 32.
Played some games with my lovely wife yesterday! It was NOT my day. I kept forgetting rules and making boneheaded plays.
First, Great Western Trail, this time using only the B sides of the buildings, which changed up our usual strategies a great deal. Was very interesting, and it’s always a good time. Lost 89-75, which I thought was a very good score compared to how I thought I was doing. My wife did something unexpected at one point early in the game and it threw me off completely for a while. I was always riding with a nearly empty wallet due to removing lots of hazards and buying lots of cows, but it’s how I managed to score my points!
Then we broke out Rococo Deluxe. This time, my boneheaded play was forgetting how the hall majority tie-breakers worked. I thought it immediately went to funded decorations, but no, it first goes to master spaces, which I’d been ignoring. That was partly responsible for giving my wife her very first win, 62-51. Absolutely love this game, surprisingly quick to set-up and tear down and lots of different avenues to victory. It’s really good.
Then my wife had a great idea of starting a sort of advent calendar of games, so every day until Christmas we’re gonna play a different game (or two in the case of some super lightweight games). Lots of them are older games we haven’t taken out in a while, but we got two new ones planned out!
So far, we’ve retroactively assigned our previous games of Pandemic, Tzolk’in and Great Western Trail to 1, 2 and 3 December, respectively. Yesterday was, of course, Rococo.
What a great idea! I don’t play nearly enough games with my wife to make that happen, but it would be good motivation to get my less-played solo games off the shelf–I think I will steal this idea for myself.
I’m already thinking about the possible titles for my 12 Gamedays of Christmas, initially all for solo play but allowing options for group play if with the right friends on Christmas Day or New Year’s Eve. At least this year I have more options for short games in case I don’t get much time some nights.
Played a solo game of Spirit Island, two handed with Rampant Spread of Green and Heart of the Wildfire. I had not played with Wildfire before, and I think I screwed up his power, forgetting to cascade Blight whenever his power put down a new Blight token. As it was, I think I would have won the game anyway, as the island blighted but gave me a good amount to work with afterward, I just would have blighted earlier and had fewer tokens on the card at the end of the game.
I won through a Fear card, allowing the removal of a town from each board, and conveniently there were just the two left while at terror level 2. The two spirits were a pretty fun combo that I might try again, playing with the cascade rules correctly to see if I can win legitimately.
Day 5 (technically 1, but who’s counting?) of the games advent calendar done with New York Zoo! Such a delightful little polyomino game (with a touch of animal breeding). Kinda tricky to get your head around, but simple when you get right down to it. And I, of course, lost. Twice.
I’ll be honest: better than I expected. Nothing like what I expected, but really smart. Andy crushed me (it wasn’t even close), but I suspect the game will be even better with more players. Really clever, really fun.
We also played a silly (and slightly wrong) game of Jamaica… wrong because I forgot to add the dummy third player/ship to the game. But again, Andy crushed me. I think the final score was 4 for me, and 30+ for Andy. Not even slightly close. But fun!
Schotten Totten x2, introduced this to a friend who’s pretty new to gaming. I won but they still enjoyed themselves.
Coimbra, this one was even better than I expected - so much fun and different paths to victory. It’s a little complex for newbies but the iconography is far simpler than I had expected and playing isn’t hard - just playing well is.
Cockroach Poker, always a winner.
Hue x2, excellent little tile layer - light but easy to grasp and with some interesting decisions in a tiny package.
Silver and Gold, a great little filler, I got very lucky and ended up with a mad score.
Carcassonne x2, Got to introduce this to a table of 5 who had never played it before (well one of them had but barely remembered it). Playing a good game is fun, but introducing a classic to a table and having them all really enjoy it is brilliant! I did chop out the farmers - it’s better with them but it is ‘another thing to explain’ and I didn’t fancy that at that point.
Coup x3, another one that was new to the table but enjoyed by all. Memorable moment in our first round - one player got called out on not having a duke repeatedly, and continued to draw a duke from the deck round after round. He won that game without a single lie…
Gem, another solid entry from this series - simple little auction game, went over well.
