My daughter is 4.5 and isn’t quite ready for most of my games. We have great fun playing Outfoxed together, but Mice & Mystics is a little beyond her at present But she does get great pleasure from playing with the components, and I make up little roll and move games using the boards and pieces. Whatever grabs her imagination can get wrapped into a little game quite easily with a box full of thematic tokens and boards.
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A full-sized copy of Hive is great for gaming pre-school. All three of my kids have gone through a homebrew hex-tile bug ecosystem RPG phase. It’s also a testament to the quality of components that they have weathered all the bashing and smashing over the years
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I think what you are doing is right. My eldest daughter has recently turned 8, and can handle many games that are 8+ or even 10+. She learned to play Raiders of the North Sea on the computer, and after that she can handle the board game, and it is a 12+ game.
I think the idea of an early contact with games does activate the right learning patterns and stimulates their brain in ways that will help learning new games and sorting out logical problems.
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Also, I could deal with my cold turkey, and went to my local club for the first time since mid March. Last week they had reopened by my OH had a night shift so I couldn’t attend.
Played Village for the first time ever, a game of 4, and had a great time playing it. Finished 2nd, only 6 points away from somebody that had played it several times before, if not for a while, and ahead of a friend who had played it once. I was lucky to get plenty of people from the second and third generation into church and they scored me a good 17 points in the final count up. If anything, I think next time I have to tackle getting somebody in the council earlier, the rewards on its third level are really good.
Then played Splendor for the first time ever as well. I got my ass well kicked: the other two players knew well what they were doing and I suffered a bit of third leg syndrome, where often I was left without good cards to pick. It is a game that I am willing to play again, though. I can see how mastering it will take a bit of time. I enjoy a engine builder game, it seems, even though I have not played many.
Finally, I got to see the end of a Nemesis game that had started at the very beginning of the session. Seems like fun, if a but too much fuss. The interesting bit was that the confronting objectives can create a bit of a tricky atmosphere. One of the players had ejected on a pod, and was waiting to see if anybody else survived, as he needed a “friend” to survive with him. This did not go well with the soldier, who was next to him when he used the escape pod, and there is room for two inside them. He ended up dying and not happy. The scientist managed to achieve his objective and survive, so the escapee managed to win his objective.
The question is for the engineer. He did die, but the space ship ended up in Earth and they had managed to kill the nest, which was his objective. Is he technically a winner? I thought he was, even though he died, as his objective was completed. So 3 out 5 managed their objectives (2.5, you could say) but the debate that created and the disgruntled soldier was interesting. I think being a game with aliens, having so many triumph was really good. I would definitely give it a go, although I don’t think I would buy it at that price. The minis look amazing, the game-play looked a bit complex, but I was not playing, and the general look is great. but I am not sure how often I would have a game that long (they took 4 hours and a bit) and “nasty” hitting the table. If I was living close to a couple of friends from Spain that love the theme, I might consider it, though. Sharing the price, that is.
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We finally got around to reviving our regular boardgaming night: this time as though we were hackers from a cyberpunk novel. We used Google Meet for audio and video and leveraged a shared shard of cyberspace a.k.a Tabletopia. Tabletopia being the preferred platform so that one of us that didn’t already own Tabletop Simulator could join us.
I’m not in love with Tabletopia – but the fact that you can play it in a web browser is certainly remarkable. The fact that, for the life of me, I cannot figure out how to be invited to a game without playing said game in the browser (as opposed to the “app”) is certainly annoying.
We started with Shipwreck Arcana which my neighbor couple had played before with actual cards and chits, so they did the teach while we worked out some of the nuances of the Tabletopia interface.
Shipwreck Arcana proved to be extremely easy; I don’t think there was ever a risk of us losing… I asked how to make the game harder, and the response that my neighbor gave was “to be worse at logic and deduction puzzles.” So, probably for the best that I skipped over this one when it was on Kickstarter.
Still, it was fun enough and a good introduction to the austere (by TTS standards) Tabletopia experience.
Our first game took about an hour and I suspected that left us with maybe an hour left before one of us would fade. We struggled to find another interesting game that could be taught and played in an hour or less… we eventually landed on Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig, but only because we couldn’t find any other games with longer titles, so this one had to do.
I will never play B2CoMDL on Tabletopia again. It wasn’t feature-full enough to enrich the experience and there were a number of flaws in the usability of the mod. The one person who was with us who hadn’t played the game before will probably now never take interest in it thanks to a poorly made mod – truly a shame. We, conveniently and fortunately, decided to bail on the game shortly before the mod (and then Tabletopia itself) started misbehaving and causing desyncs between the players.
Hopefully we’ll get back around the virtual gaming virtual table next week (virtually). In the meantime, one of the members (the one who moved to another state) and I may work on getting some 2-player games in to boost his gaming before his new bundle of joy arrives in August.
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Started a game of Nemo’s War with the wife tonight, and just made it through Act One. For as much as it has going on, it was a pleasantly chill experience.
There was a lot of
“Want to do an Adventure?”
“I dunno. I’d rather Incite a revolution. Is that cool?”
“Yup. Torpedo a frigate after, or build a library on our submarine?”
“Library, please.”
"
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The world would be a better† place if there were more libraries on submarines.
†: or at least weirder
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That’s the thing about Nemo’s War. It’s all submersible libraries and high sea high society until the globe’s waterways are choked with the armadas of pissed off governments, and the blood of thousands of rebels is on your hands. Enjoy the next acts. 
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Last night we got in a few games of Warhammer Underworlds.
First game was a wash, as my son basically wiped out my team in the first round. The second game went the full 3, and was very close. He took the win 13-12, as he was able to score a few glory at the last minute.
The scores were slightly different as we played on the Dreadfane board, which scores 2 glory per kill as opposed to 1, so it really benefits aggressive teams, which works for us! Even though our second game we both played hybrid Aggro/Objective warbands, lol.
It really helped me remember how much I enjoy the game.
It isn’t without it’s faults, and while we have other skirmish games I like more, it’s so quick to set up and play, each decision has weight, and the theme is fun (well, maybe to Grimdark-bro to be called “fun”, lol), it’s always on the short list when we want a confrontational game.
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Well, we were down a player for Imperial Assault, so the remaining three of us finally got Too Many Bones out. And I did in fact dig out my (giant) core box from under all the other TMB boxes so I could have a physical rulebook to consult…but we played on Tabletop Simulator. There were a few scripting glitches, and I occasionally had issues with my character chip submerging under health chips, but it was still a pretty satisfying and smooth experience overall and we were all impressed with the game once we figured it out. Hard, though. That’s for sure.
We took out three of the four base Gearlocs for this first run at the game, since we figured other later ones were likely to be harder to get to grips with. I played Tantrum, tiny berserker. My friend Ed took Picket, the Gearloc with a shield bigger than he is. And my girlfriend took Patches, the mad scien…doctor. We played on the Adventurer starting difficulty, which gives you two extra HP to start and an extra training. So we felt brave enough to tackle the first battle without the guards’ helping us…and came out reasonably well, despite a vicious wolf with Lashback 2 making it a touch awkward for a while - I was the only one with more than one attack die at the time, and I rolled remarkably poorly two turns in a row (all bones once, which obviously I didn’t use to attack and couldn’t turn into a Backup Plan because my RAGE! die was knocked out the very first action of the game by a damn goblin with Mischief, and 2 whole damage on 3 dice the second.). And then we took the local mafia’s help getting away from the city, and…that…that did not end up being a wise choice as they immediately shook us down. We bit the bullet and fought them off, and…yeah, 12 points worth of baddies, two of which had Signal, did not go even that smoothly. I managed to use Way of the Wild to defuse the Goblin Alarmist with the higher Signal count, but I couldn’t make much of a dent in the Griffin Howler that had 1, and there wasn’t a good position to take advantage of my RAGE! die’s Execute ability…and then I was clawed by said griffin and then pincushioned to death by the Alarmist and his friend the Goblin Sandbagger. Sorry, to “KO”. Despite Patches desperately trying to heal me. Patches didn’t last a whole lot longer but did manage to mostly kill off the Howler. And then…Picket tanked everything else (with an occasional small burst of melee damage) until exhaustion killed it, thanks to locked infinite duration regen and damage reduction (the latter doesn’t stop the exhaustion damage, but the regen healed it and the enemies never managed to get through his defenses in any meaningful way). Cheesy, but it worked.
We’re still probably not going to make it to the Tyrant, let alone beat him. But we do hope to pick it up sometime soon and give it a good go.
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Plaued 1889: History of Shikoku Railways. I think I am understanding the mindset required to play 18xx. It is not a cardboard version of Wall Street gambling of buying low and selling high, but it is much more similar to Imperial where you try to speculate which train company will perform the best.
Indeed, if you arent making the most money on that round, you’re losing. The rusting mechanism and the emerging map creates a fluid dynamic between the train companies so there isnt a runaway leader amongst the companies.
So far I’ve only played this and 18Chessie. I noticed that there’s a smaller number of train stations on the companies in Shikoku, which means blocking is less frequent and placement is much more strategic than Chessie.
The graph also isnt as deep as Chessie. So, crashing the shares price isnt that easy here.
So far, I still prefer Chicago Express and Imperial 2030 on a games night, but ugh i want to play both of these again!
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Last night was the first night my son’s Karate dojo was open since the lockdown, so it was a bit of a hectic night (nothing crazy, just busier than it has been lately). We were still able to get in a few games though.
Before we left, we got in a game of Schotten Totten. It was close, but I was able to take the win 5-4.
After karate we had a game of Unmatched, with Bruce Lee (me) vs Robin Hood (my son). It was fairly close, but Robin Hood took Bruce down in the end.
After dinner we had a quick game of Wildlands on one of the 2 player maps (Hedge Maze). It was fairly close for most of the game, but my son pulled ahead and took the win 5-3.
Tonight we had a few games of Dice Throne, our fist in a long while. Still a blast! First match was Huntress vs Tactitian, and my son led the Huntress to victory. Second match was Artificer vs the Vampire Lord, and I was able to take down the Artificer after I left him bleeding.
I can’t wait for Season 1 Re-Rolled to arrive…close to Christmas! Lol
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At this point I’m waiting for them to do a proper digital version. They support Tabletop Sim (and Tabletopia)…kind of. But the approved mod only has I think six of the characters? They’ve been clear that they don’t want a full version made available by third parties and have had them taken down. And they’ve said that they talked to Berserk Games about doing a DLC and the terms didn’t work for them, but intimated that they’re looking into some other approach…an app version, I think. All of which is fully within their rights of course, but as someone who owns everything currently available for the game it’s frustrating not to be able to use it safely during the current pandemic.
(I, uh, do still have a complete season 1 and 2 mod that was uploaded briefly before being taken down, which I don’t feel too bad about using privately given that I own everything involved. But, still. It won’t have the new stuff!)
Completed Act Two of Nemo’s War. Turns out the fleets of the world don’t like exploring. Good thing we’ve got a library. And torpedoes!
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Aaand we just now hit the Nemo’s War finale. An Exploration Triumph by a mile:. 315 pts. I’mma put an asterisk by that score though, given the games reputation. I’ve been scouring “common rules mistakes” lists, and haven’t found anything that we were consistently doing wrong, but I’m sure we missed something here or there during the first playthrough.
Definitely had friendly dice, and two people working together surely prevents some idiocy. Surely…
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That’s one of those games where the dice never, ever treated me well. I scored some high ones, but they were always a grind. Best score I logged was just shy of 350 from memory, with the Science motive. Took me quite a few plays to reach a triumph though, well done!
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Marlin’s Son’s Conflict – Nemo’s War has been calling to me for a while. It is sitting right next to my desk; the rulebook has been removed and placed atop the box – when my workday is getting dull, I look over to it and it speaks to me… I really need to get it played (but what a tablehog!)
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Yeah, it luxuriates. The big board is super helpful though. Lots of baked in player aids. The vault of our table is 36 inches on the short side, and it just baaaaaaarely fit lengthwise in that space.
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At last, I managed to get Love Letter to the table. We played one game between 3, and then my OH was not very impressed (she does not take well losing sometimes), so she went to do some of her college work; we had 4 games more between my daughter an me. She didn’t win any, but the last 2 games were 7-6 and 7-5, the rules did really sink well with her on those two final goes.
Lovely game, I can see it travelling often with us, so handy and simple. And the art is beautiful. Maybe next time I have to let the missus win…
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Another game of Antiquity ended with @Benkyo winning with Santa Barbara. I had San Niccolo, which gives me the bonus of “buy 1 get 1 free!” when it comes to housing but was too slow on getting the resources and building my houses.
I think I’ll keep my copy of Antiquity in my shelf.
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