Y’know, it’s strange. Arnak was a good deal better than we remembered, but Inis was worse. Like, if we were making a top-10, Arnak would now be in the conversation, but Inis wouldn’t be.
We were both sure it’d be the other way around…
2 Likes
Inis strikes me as one of those games I wouldn’t even consider playing with only two players. Haven’t tried it myself, but I am sure I would like it a lot more than Arnak, assuming four players.
2 Likes
2 is a bit fragile where if one gets an advantage, it tends to snowball, but it’s really been a while since I have played Inis
I havent played enough 5 (with exp) to judge that. 3 and 4 are good
3 Likes
Modern Art
Seasons - played with both expansions. One of the few card tableaus I have kept. Race for the Galaxy is engine-building. Innovation is uuhhh… Innovation. Seasons seems to fall between them. It is the reason why I sold Res Arcana.
The two expansion modules are easy to include. One is a special rule card for the whole game. The other module are special tokens you can use as a one-off, which gives more control to the player. Both expansions added more cards, but they are all combined together on my normal plays anyway. It doesn’t suffer the “bloated deck” syndrome that the others do, as you draft 9 cards to play. I house-ruled a 3 face-up card shop to make the “take-a-card” die result a more enticing option.
6 Nimmt
Zuuli - card drafting card game a la Sushi Go where you are building a zoo. The card arts are sooooo cute! Like reading on a kids book!
5 Likes
After three weeks at my parents back in warm Gran Canaria, there are a few games to report, mainly Flipology with my little one, Love Letter with my eldest mainly and thre times with both of the girls (so much fun at three, especially now they both get the rules).
Also, went in the old games box and found my old copies of some games like Inkognito, Escape from Atlantis and Space Crusade. The only one we played was Escape from Atlantis (albeit with on of the mountain pieces missing and some villagers, so we replaced it somehow with the central peak and whenever the first hill area sunk we shuffled everything a bit and every team had 10 meeples to even things up). The girls loved it, even with the mild “take that” that took place (just when sinking pieces on your turn, nobody sent monsters to other peoples boats) and I think we all won at least once.
It brought me back memories from the 80s, and funny enough, I thought the games was way too simple, but I was wrong, I really enjoyed it. Way more than I expected.
10 Likes
If that Space Marine is anywhere close to complete, you’re sitting on a very expensive game there
3 Likes
I have the Survive: Escape From Atlantis “30th Anniversary Edition” (plus the Dolphins & Squids & 5-6 Players…Oh My! expansion collection) and I think it’s all great. Just a fun (and funny) mixture of gameplay elements; easy enough to play with anyone; quick enough to mitigate complaints about luck; and a lovely production as well. I haven’t had a chance to play it for ages, sadly; but it’s not leaving the collection.
I would agree with BGG that 4 players is ideal. Despite having the 5-6 player option, IIRC that just seemed too much (in terms of both down-time and changes to the board state between turns) when I tried it with 6. Some amount of chaos is good though, so 4 seems like the sweet spot.
It is a game where you might have your most valuable meeples eaten by sea creatures (whether through bad luck, or good guesswork by your opponents – an element of bluffing can come into play – or by sheer forgetfulness on your part), so I would avoid it with players who might feel upset by things going badly for them in that regard. I remember one game where I thought I’d saved all my best meeples, only to flip them at scoring time and find I’d mis-remembered badly and they were mostly one-pointers and I’d actually done terribly :)
6 Likes
It’s full title in our house is Survive: Escape from Atlantis: Operation Pick on Dad
9 Likes
Mine too, weird
5 Likes
Complete indeed, I was toying with the idea of sending it to NZ, but decided against it because it is a Spanish version. The one I couldn’t find was my copy of Hero Quest, which would take some digging (it is amazing how much crap has accumulated on that attic room since I moved to NZ). That was more for sentimental value than anything else. But that copy of Space Crusade is in good nick considering its age…
EDIT:
I think my version did not have any values for meeples, each one was a value of 1. But I can see how that could change things. To add to the fun, my girls actually loved taxiing meeples around by dolphin. They must have ended knackered with so much back and forwards.
3 Likes
Just finished the first dungeon in a game of Darkest Dungeon.
It was good, but took 2 hours and I only fought 3 combats and saw less than half of the dungeon.
Playing solo may make it slower, and I am still learning the rules…
3 Likes
Today’s advent calendar games were two lighter offerings, Robin of Locksley and 50 Missions (I think it’s called Cahoots in some parts of the world?).
Robin is… Meh. Y’know, it’s funny. As much as Arnak and Inis were different than in our memories (positively for the former, not so much for the latter), this game was EXACTLY how we remembered it: Not a lot of interesting decisions, and one mechanic (bribing the bard) that just kills the game stone dead by removing any real incentive to actually fulfill your objectives, since you can just bribe your way forward. Maybe for kids?
50 Missions is a solid mission-based coop card game, but in that vein, we prefer The Game. It’s fun, though!
We decided to raise the level a bit afterwards and played a rousing game of Everdell+Spirecrest! I actually won this one, and won big! 86-54, holy crap!
Tomorrow, an oldie, Mr. Jack New York, and the inner peace of Mandala!
10 Likes
So, turns out I’d misread the calendar and today was, in fact, Space Base and Jaipur. Was my mistake a taste of things to come? Read on.
Space Base was up first and I swear that game hates me. I never managed to roll the right numbers, while my wife rolled exactly the number she needed 7 TIMES IN A ROW! I kept my unvictorious streak alive, losing 40-11 (at some point my goal was just to pass the 10-point line) and then with the slightly more palatable score of 40-20. I still like the game, it’s very light and breezy and fun (and has more decisions than, say, Full House despite the prevalence of dice), but I’ve never won once since my teaching game (and I just barely won that one).
Jaipur was up next, an absolute classic of a game, and one where I have a higher batting average… At least usually. I lost both games this time, both at 69 points to my wife’s 92 (!) and 77, respectively. Still adore this game.
Tomorrow should indeed be Mr. Jack New York and Mandala! After that, holy crap, we’ll only have three days left!
8 Likes
Ah, interesting. With the varied value meeples, you only get to look at the numbers before they are placed on the board, and then not again until scoring happens. So the longer you wait to place your high-value ones, the less likely you are to be able to place them in a good starting point. But if you place them first, other players might well assume you’ve done that, and intentionally target those ones. It definitely adds some wrinkles to the gameplay and the final scores.
The current edition has meeples with baked-in numbers, but at least one of the earlier editions required you to add stickers to the meeples to add the numbers, which you might just choose not to do (or of course you can always ignore the numbers regardless). I only know about the stickers because, before I got the “Oh My” expansion collection for my base edition, I’d picked up the 5-6 player expansion for the earlier edition extremely cheaply, and discovered I had some annoying fiddly little stickers to add before I could use it.
(I think putting stickers on game components may be my least-favourite thing in all of board gaming. It probably wouldn’t be so bad if I knew that I’d be fine if I failed to place them perfectly – but unfortunately that does annoy me quite a lot, so I always find the process incredibly time-consuming.)
4 Likes
Got to games night!
Pax Pamir great fun, switched my alliance in the game which meant that three out of four players were with the British. Scraped a second from last place because of that.
Parks, it’s pleasant
For Sale, absolute banger of a filler
5 Likes
Best filler ever! Well, ok, it’s a toss between this and Biblios
2 Likes
For Sale just edges it for me, due to a wider player count. The newer version of Biblios (For the King (and Me)) gets very close with a 5th player though
2 Likes
I played solo deck-builder Friday for the first (and second) time. It has a pretty good reputation, so I had moderately high hopes for it. I thought it was just ok. It’s a very basic/pure deck-building experience – trying to acquire better cards and rid yourself of unhelpful cards, and that’s about it. The gameplay is pretty abstract in practice – the theme is definitely there, but I think it would take a lot of effort to feel it in a significant way. It’s also either a much longer game than the 25 mins on the box, or it just feels like a much longer game (which generally isn’t a good sign). Perhaps once you’re purely going through the motions you could knock out a game in that time frame, though.
The bulk of the game is played over three increasingly-difficult phases, requiring your deck to become stronger and more reliable as time goes on. You are pretty useless to start with, so you’ll fail a lot, which hurts you – but this also allows you to destroy some of those useless cards, so thematically you learn from your failures, and are that much less likely to fail in future. I do like how you frequently have a choice between accepting failure and paying a higher cost (but also reaping the aforementioned benefit); or repeatedly paying a smaller cost in an effort to press on and succeed, but potentially for no improvement (or even making things worse!).
Each phase will be a little shorter than the one before, because the “hazard” deck which constitutes each phase is also the source of the improvement cards for your deck, and so it will be smaller every time you shuffle it. In addition, every time you cycle through your own deck you have to add an “aging” card to it (which will be something horrible you’ll want to get rid of at the earliest opportunity).
The best part of the game is the show-down with the pirates at the end (the 4th phase, if you complete the main ones), as you’ll generally end up using a much larger number of cards to try to attain a much higher target score than at any other point in the game, so after all of the build up you suddenly get to perform these enormous combos, maybe churning through 20 or more cards. In my first game I didn’t reach the pirates, but in my second game (which I won, albeit with at least one rules mistake in my favour) I found that final phase a lot of fun. You have two randomly-selected pirate cards to defeat, so you’ll have two of these Big Turns which feels like a good amount.
Still, despite the high note of the end-game, I thought the build-up was too lacklustre and unsatisfying given the amount of time it takes. It’s quite a clever system, but I’m not sure it’s an especially fun one. I might give it another chance, but I suspect I may punt this one along. If you’re looking for a solo deck-builder though, this is one to consider.
3 Likes
Sounds similar to my first impression. I played it once between games at a friend’s house, won, and decided I really had no need to play it again.
3 Likes
Totally agree with all your comments on this.
I bought it because it was in a lot of YouTube “Top 10 solos of all time” in 2020 or so, and it’s not great.
Very simple structure, very difficult because the maths are stacked against you, and just not one I rush to go back to.
2 Likes