Hansa Teutonica 2: Too Hansa, Too Tonica.
10 Likes
Hansa Toot Toot. Now a cube rails game.
8 Likes
Pansa Teutonica - a WW2 tank game.
9 Likes
Hansa & Greta Teutonica: build routes from the witchâs house.
7 Likes
It is a cube rails game though.
2 Likes
Pantsu Teutonica - make Japanese underwear for the crusading knights heading off to invent banking.
3 Likes
Pasta Harmonica - A game about crafting harmonicas using Italian wheat-based ingredients.
6 Likes
Touche! Didnât think of it that way, but it sounds plausible.
1 Like
Handsa to Tonica - A game about being an Italian bartender.
Or
Landsa Bubonica - A territory control game set during the black plague.
4 Likes
Well, we couldnât keep our advent calendar appointment yesterday on account that we preferred going to see our nieces and nephew and afterwards my wife was just too tired. So we played two games today instead!
First up was yesterdayâs game, Calico (yeah, Flashpoint is just too tied to awful memories and fear for now. Maybe next year). Lovely kitties abounded! We played three games and I won two (the scores escape me, but they were close). Itâs so good, a chill atmosphere but a murderous puzzle.
And then we unearthed Caverna: Cave Vs. Cave. Weâd originally bought this very early in our gaming journey, thinking itâd be similar to Patchwork since both were designed by Rosenberg. I knew weâd made a terrible mistake the second I started reading the manual. Weâd played it since and found it more palatable, but that was nearly a year ago. Now, itâs⌠Itâs fine. Itâs not BAD, we just have much much better games. And the manual really isnât great. It ended in a 65-65 draw, though, which is always funny.
Now Iâm about to start learning Beyond the Sun for tomorrow. Wish me luck!
10 Likes
Lots of new games today!
Sanctum, first play. A game of two halves, and one that feels like it should be cooperative, but it isnât. You are all legendary heroes, seeking out evil or something, blah blah blah. Each character has their own skill tree, which is pretty cool. There are six acts to the game (but some are skipped with less than four players). You travel along the maps, collecting bad guys and then fighting them. Each enemy has a die shown, match the die to kill them. You start with basic enemies of one die, moving onto more difficult foes as you travel.
As enemies are defeated, they allow you to level up your skills, and their card is turned over, becoming an item to be equipped. Itâs pretty easy to play, and good fun. On the final board is the big bad, the Demon Lord. And then things get serious, with a line of demon lord cards to battle and take damage from. And unlike the earlier part of the game, you donât get to rest. And thereâs no healing, at any stage of the game. Somehow two (of three) of us managed to fight off the Demon Lord to win.
12 Days, first play. A Christmas themed game, what else? The deck is styled after the song, so youâve got twelve drummer cards, eleven pipers, and all that. You all play a single card for the current day card, which go from one to twelve points. The lowest card played wins, but any duplicates cancel each other out. And at the end you get points for having the most of each card. Pretty easy to play, good fun.
Heat: Pedal to the Metal, first play. Iâd been looking forward to this one, itâs currently at the top of the BGG hotness list. Which just means a lot of people are clicking on its page, not necessarily that itâs a good game. We had a lot of fun with it. You have 15 cards in your deck, and you mix in three âstressâ cards. Each turn you can change gear, and this determines how many cards you have to play. One card for first gear, two for second, you get the idea. Add up your cards movement, thats how far you travel. You can move through other cars, but you canât finish on the same space. And you stick automatically to the racing line, so youâre not wasting movement trying to maneuver.
So, just play cards and go fast right? No, there are corners, which have to be taken at a certain speed. Oh, youâre in fourth gear and the corner has a speed of three? Thatâs probably going to end badly. You have to play four cards for being in fourth gear. But one thing can save you, and itâs in the title of the game â heat cards. Whatever you exceed the corners speed by, thatâs the number of heat cards you need to discard. Not enough, and youâll spin out, go back to first gear, and get an extra stress card. Stress cards are supposed to represent lapses in concentration. What they do is force you to top deck your speed card, so it could be anything from one to four.
Itâs pretty good fun. We had a pretty close race, the lead changes a few times. I got a bit unlucky (thatâs my story, and Iâm sticking with it) on the last corner to the race and got held up, so I lostâŚ
The game comes with a basic rulebook that we played with, but there is another with extra rules for weather, car upgrades, and AI cars that you can add in as desired.
Dungeons, Dice & Danger, first play. A roll and write game. You have four different maps to play on, and we started with the suggested one. Each map has itâs own features, but the basic idea is the game. Roll dice, make pairs, cross out spaces with the paired value. Thereâs also a black die, which only the active player can use (but passive players can use three times in the game). Youâll find gems, treasure, and of course monsters, which must be defeated. If you canât mark off a space, you lose a health. I did not do well, but it was fun still.
7 Likes
I strongly recommend adding in the AI cars (Legends) as soon as you can, at least if youâre playing at lower player counts. The additional rules and upkeep is kept to an absolute minimum, but racing with a full host of 6 cars helps the game feel much more dynamic and alive.
The other modules are great as well, but add more rules and complexity that you donât need if youâre enjoying the core systems.
5 Likes
I actually learnt the rules for the AI, but thought Iâd keep it simple. The rules do seem to be very straight forward.
4 Likes
First game of Beyond the Sun in the books! With the teach and the usual growing pains, we were at the table for a whopping 3 hours, though it kinda flew by, which is a good thing. Itâs very good, but itâs very intimidating. Lots of rules (the manual is great though, and the teach went super well) and lots of text, so itâs easy to miss stuff. And it doesnât have the visual punch of a lot of our faves.
I won 49-38. My wifeâs mistake, which she spotted immediately in retrodpect, was that she colonized her fourth system too quickly, triggering the endgame and preventing her from making more points while I tried to research a level 4 tech (I was bled dry at that point).
Sheâs keen to play again, but fatigue was starting to be felt.
Tomorrowâs an Inis and Lost Ruins of Arnak double feature!
11 Likes
Glad you enjoyed BTS, we think itâs great. With a few games under your belt you should get it down to much closer to an hour.
6 Likes
Just finished another game of Everdell with Spirecrest. It was SO close, but she beat me 76-74!
6 Likes
My husband was on a bit of a winning streak yesterday, winning our games of Stroganov and The Expanse.
Stroganov was new to all of us and I thought it was quite good, once weâd figured out the masses of iconography on the board. There are quite a few way of scoring points and limited actions in which to do it, so itâs a matter of using your actions efficiently. I wouldnât say that itâs the most thematic game but it is pretty and there is some integration of the theme with the mechanics - e.g., successfully hunting a bear gives you extra points to spend on singing songs around the fire in the winter because you killed a bear!
Our game of The Expanse was very tense. Normally what happens is the other two spend the whole game fighting each other and let me run away with it 
. This time was much more of a three-way knife fight with lots of tactical scoring of areas to stop other people scoring better areas. Iâve never seen the associated TV series so I have no idea how well itâs represented in the game, but it doesnât seem to matter too much 
In the end the scores were 109 - 108 - 102. My husband had a huge lead about halfway through and I was well behind but managed to claw my way back to 2nd place.
I also played a round of Welcome To the Moon - my husband doesnât like Welcome To and couldnât be tempted by the promise of more SPACE⌠We played the 2nd map and I can confirm that it is just Welcome To on a slightly different board, but it made a nice change.
10 Likes
I havenât played a lot recently due to being quite busy with the Advent of Code (I totally blame @RogerBW), but today I sleeved my Ark Nova cards (for some reason I had fitting sleeves sitting around) because sleeved cards shuffle easier and the Ark Nova deck is in dire need of help in that aspect.
And once the cards were sleeved I had to play a solo (also the neighbor was having a techno party upstairs the whole day which meant my concentration wasnât up to coding).
This was my third solo I think and I am quite impressed how smooth this plays and how well this solo mode is executed.
The solo mode consists of
- 1 card sized board that uses cubes of a different color to track your actions, just like Wingspan you get one less action each round until there are only 2 cubes left and the game ends.
- Cards that have interactive elements have alternative actions on them (also an option for those who donât like the take that elements in multiplayer
- The âpauseâ track is simply ignored you reset when the solo board tells you to.
- You win if your score is positive after 6 rounds.
Thatâs it. I like it a lot. Setup is fairly fast, I just keep all materials needed for 1 player in the bag including 5 X tokens, the 5 zoos and the 3 universitiesâŚ
If not for the coding challenge, I might have played a few more of those solos already. As it is, it still stands a good chance to be the final entry needed for my 10x10 solo challenge.
5 Likes
Arnak in the books. Lovely, lovely game. Better than we remembered, even. We think the issue we had when we first got it was mainly that it was around the same time as Great Western Trail, Tzolkâin, Brass, etc., so it kind of got lost in the shuffle a bit. Shame, and itâs not the gameâs fault, but themâs the breaks. Definitely keen to play again.
More plays needed, but we preferred it to Beyond the Sun, inasmuch as they can be compared. BtS has a very drab look that can make your eyes gloss over, especially in your first game or when youâre tired a bit (and yesterdayâs learning game lasted, like, 3 hours).
Up next, Inis! Just got through re-reading the rules, just resting our respective backs (first shoveling of the season was rough).
10 Likes
Well, just got destroyed at Inis. Thereâs something about that game I just donât get, Iâve never won a single game. Its a lovely game, and quite good, but I think itâd be better at 3-4 players. Still fun at 2, mind. But if I was to make a top 5, or a top 10, I donât think itâd be in the conversation.
4 Likes