So does this mean that you’re usually only making 4-6 letter words?
Finding long words is part of the joy of word games, so this sounds super weird to me.
Maybe some of the cards let you add more letters, at least? (It would make sense, as IIRC Paperback was like that; but I don’t think Paperback limited the initial hand so severely!?)
So there are items that let you draw more cards. I had a McGuffin in the first game that increased my handsize to 5.
And then some letters let you draw more cards on the next word when played “on top”.
Or a Z can be discarded to “Plot” and that gives you an additional card next turn.
The longest word I made had 7 letters I think.
The word making is far more complicated than Hardback. And I am still playing Hardback… I must have over 100 games by now… and I thought I was pretty good at finding words. For some odd reason this game defies me.
The wordmaking is still fun but I feel less central than in say Hardback. There is so much “other stuff” and strategy in battling the boss, that the word making has a smaller part of the game.
Yeah, the little bit I have played suggests to me that you are more trying to play cards in certain ways and the constraint on that is words, rather than being rewarded specifically for word building. If that distinction makes sense.
You are getting a special effect for (and then losing for the fight) whatever the card on top is, but you only get one side of the symbols based on how you “splay” the cards and that also determines which card is on top. If you need a specific card to be on top and a specific side of symbols that’s going to be a whole different word than the other way around. If you can think of one.
We played our 2nd game of Star Wars Outer Rim–this time with all of the expansion modules including the “Ambitions” (I don’t know what the actual module is called. We have the German version which is fine, luckily names never got translated in this universe) and “Favors”. Both of these really enhance the game.
This time I played Lando Calrissian and my partner was Han Solo (I was going to be Hondo, but Hondo’s special is a bit Take That and knowing us, I thought he might not be the best idea for me to play). We got off to a somewhat smoother start since we now knew which actions are too difficult at the beginning. My ambition–despite not being Hondo–was to become a Pirate King and Han Solo, absolutely in keeping with the character wanted to become a Legendary Smuggler 
Lando’s ability includes re-rolling dice and being “friends” with all the factions and it is so funny how that turns out. Same with Han zipping across the board with all the bonus movement he was able to acquire… I got really lucky early in the game hiring some great crew including Boba Fett and Doctor Aphra and later Lobo and still later–after upgrading my ship to the Aerie–I scooped up Hondo from some remote place… The only small downside was that as my early game “soared” my partner looked on and got frustrated because he was somehow low on credits and it took him a while to get going… in the end we both completed our ambitions in the same round calling it a draw (I would have won, as I “finished first” but I was also start player).
Some thoughts:
This is exactly the Star Wars adventure game that I had hoped it would be.
The thematic trappings of Star Wars are well implemented and it contains references to some of the most fun moments from Clone Wars to the OG Trilogy. I have not played it without the expansion as I bought it together with the expansion (nor will I play with out the additional content ever): half of the cards in the game were in expansion box. There are additional player characters, the “Core” planets and the ambitions and favors modules… and a few rules modifications and all of that really makes a difference. I think also I wouldn’t want to play with more than 2 as it is already quite a long game with 2 players and some turns can be quick but others can take a while and there is not much to do while the other player is doing their turn.
PS: we replaced the “credits” with our poker chips and that makes the game even better. Game also needs an insert ASAP especially card trays… and no the game does not fit in the expansion box but everything fits in the core box together.
Quite a few games to report here.
I attended Friday Night Games in Hastings with another 5 players.
We had two games of Secret Hitler, where on the first one the Secret Hitler won when I made him Chancellor (I was really cornered between him and two other players that had passed Fascist laws) and a second one where we won as liberals.
Then we played a typical Friday Night two games of 7 Wonders: Architects. I did terribly on both, barely scratching the 30 points each time. We finished with a couple games of Adventure Time Fluxx on which I won the last one.
On Christmas day I had a a games evening with my friends, and even though I brought a few games, we spent the evening playing Werewords
Then on Monday we had a long day of games with the Geeks Guild, from 1 to 10 pm. Started heavily with Railroad Tycoon, between 3 on the USA eastern half board. For a first play, I did better than I expected. Being at the south of the map did not do me any favours, as looking at the East Coast where most of the cubes were was a job and a half. Finished a decent 3rd with just under 100 points, with the other two just over (102 and 104, I believe) Then we moved onto party games, for decompression. A good 8 or so rounds of Werewords, then another 8 or so of Sounds Fishy, which did impress me positively.
After that we had a go at Star Wars: The Clone Wars (they did not want to leave the Pandemic bit in it, but it is Pandemic with Star Wars minis) between 4, which we won on the edge of the game (we were one planet total invasion away from losing), then we moved onto about 6 games of Spyfall and one of Trust me, I’m a doctor. To finish the evening, we had three games of Codenames: Pictures, where I had a terrible start as a clue giver, then a win as a guesser and a win as a clue giver. After that, I called it a night (it was past 9 pm) as teh only games going were far from finishing and I had had enough short games for the day.
Oh,I really want to play Outer Rim now.
I remember SVWAG being a bit down on it, but I love the IP.
Played some escape room style game the kiddo got for Christmas, forget the name but it’s a giant deck of puzzles and you need to solve six to escape a house. Pretty decent but ruined by roll and move. Will update with a name when I’m not two hours away from the game.
Also Cat in the Box! Nephew ran away with it on a one win bid and a seven point bonus score.
We played Bärenpark to complete our advent calendar! That game’s always good fun , one of our favourites. I lost 111 (something like that, anyway)-83, she got all three challenges (two statues simultaneously, three pandas and three Gobi bears), while I only managed the statues one (second) and there weren’t enough pandas OR Gobi bears left for me to get them done. Still happy with my score, although I was happier when she’d forgotten to score her challenges (something she often does, both here and with Everdell and I thought she had 84.
And with that, the advent calendar’s done! Now we really have only two objectives remaining before I go back to work on 9 January: Play Beyond the Sun again to really give it a good go, and play one of our unplayed games. The list so far:
Aquatica
Ark Nova
Bitoku
Cryo
Furnace
Ghost stories
Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North
Khôra
Spirit Island
Choices! And of course, play other good games!
Ghost Stories is probably the easiest and quickest of your unplayed games to get to the table. You set it up, play maybe 10 - 15 turns each, and lose! Easy! 
LOL, I’ve had Ghost Stories for nearly two years, it’s just… not getting to the table for whatever reason.
You are soliciting opinions are you not?
Well, solicited or not… here‘s my bit.
We played our copy recently for the first time and it‘s a nice little auction game that is very quick to setup learn and play. The core idea is that you bid for factories with your 4 coins and you win the card when your bid is the highest as usual but all other bids get some resources as printed on the card and multiplied by their bid. With the factories you build a production engine (just play the advanced „chain“ right away, it makes for a quicker game in the end). Plays over 4 rounds and takes maybe half an hour.
It‘s been some time since I played but I remember it being quick enough to learn… and yes lose. It is really pretty, too, and it has great highs—but also great lows when you just can‘t fight off the ghosts. Everyone gets a special ability that can save the day and that feels great. You have this little 9 square village and from each side there are up to 3 columns of ghosts marching up… sometimes faster, sometimes a little less fast and you have to keep them from reaching the village by throwing colored cardboard at them… but it better be the right colors. There are dice… that always seem to roll the wrong colors. But there are also these cute little Buddha statues that ward of ghosts completely before they even appear. Those are my favorite. But eventually the ghosts take over the village tiles one by one and it is rare that you even make it to the final boss… be prepared to join the ghosts. A challenge surely but a fun one.
a lot of people are initially put off by the game because it is so difficult to grok. It is not that the rulebook is bad—but it could be better—it is just that there is a lot there to understand. So my recommendation is to find someone to teach you either a YouTube video or a person who can do it on TTS or even better a local friend who knows how to play.
It is a great game and once you know how to play you can vary the difficulty to adapt to what you want from it—the actual base game is not all that difficult once you know the rules. I also highly recommend starting with the basic spirits: Lightning, River, Earth… those have fewer but very powerful abilities and you can choose to have the cards they acquire in the first rounds fixed as well which takes away another layer of complexity for the first game.
Just yesterday I thought I could graduate from the „learner‘s permit“ to the standard Plan 0 and the game showed me what was what as the solo mode ended with a whopping -17 points. Yay!
Just like Spirit Island there are a lot of rules to learn here and I spend my first couple games with my nose in the rulebook all the time and that is after I learned the game from friends a few months ago. The solo mode is great by the way but not what you are looking for. It does remind me of Terraforming Mars a bit because of the amount of cards and the combo-ing nature of those cards—and the possibility that you need a certain card for a combo and that is at the bottom of the huge deck. Of the games on your list this is surely the most „pastoral“ especially when you play with 2 people who haven‘t played before there is likely time to explore a bit.
I played a 2 handed learning game and have not had the energy to bring it to the table (probably because I am reasonably sure my partner is not going to be a fan I bought it because the same designer as Dwellings of Eldervale which is just too huge to get to the table). I remember it is a worker placement game with a bit of combo-ing going on. Really need to get this to the table.
In any case you have a really nice list of possibilities here
Thanks for the write-up @yashima! Yeah, we got ourselves a nice list there. Gonna be fun to explore!
A couple of solo games of Sprawlopolis yesterday evening, attaining both my best and worst score.
This evening we (ambitiously) taught my parents to play Kemet: Blood and Sand. We hadn’t played Kemet for years, so teaching it was a bit stressful! My Dad seemed to pick it up fairly well but my husband just about managed to steal a win using a terrifying Soul Stealer.
We played our second game of Beyond the Sun today, still with the beginner objectives, since it was very much still a learning game. This one went much much better, with both of us adopting a more balanced strategy. In the end, my wife triggered the end-game at JUST the right time, when I had to spend everything I had to get my first level 4 tech and couldn’t then research an extra level 3 to get the win. Final score was 60-58 for her. Fantastic game.
We then realized we hadn’t played Pandemic all Holidays season and decided to remedy that.
The first game went badly, with a cascade of outbreaks causing us to run out of red cubes. Of course, this could not stand, so we played a second game…
Which we won! Down to the wire, but we were just one cube away from clearing the board, so we gave it another shot…
And THIS time we got a perfect game. Lots of good plays and some lucky draws, we had all cures and cleared the board by the time we’d drawn 4 Epidemic cards.
Hell of a day!
Cooper Island - typical Euro. At least the game has some strategic depth.
Food Chain Magnate - The other players only played it twice and thrice. But it would be lame to hold back. At least, one said that I showed how my Cola Rush destroyed their tempo by disrupting their engines. But that’s FCM for you. I literally won by using an army of minimum wage workers.
SCOUT - Is it skill due to repeated play or just dumb luck? Tbh, I don’t know and I can’t be bothered to find out.
Terra Nova (a Terra Mystica game) - ooohhh this is interesting. I read the rulebook and any Terra players will get it immediately, albeit a few rules change.
What I liked: I do liked that they coalesced the two resources: coins and workers, into just coins. These two resources are duplicates that does the same job - fake depth by making you do Cube Accounting™ twice. You can switch them and you won’t notice the difference. I didn’t miss the temple tracks. But I feel that Gaia Project only introduced blinkers with the Tech Tree. And without the temple tracks, priests doesn’t make sense to put into this game (they aren’t in the game).
I do miss the temple tiles which is an avenue for you to do engine building.
And so, you end up with this game that is still manage to evoke interesting spatial decisions. Indeed, The buildings in Terra Nova are the only means and end in this game. Does that sounds good to you? There you go. For me, that is a plus. The game still rewards foresight and without the anguish of inefficient accounting. But it does feel smaller, in a way that Big Terra would have offered more tools for you to play the game. I will have to think more about Terra Nova and get more plays out of it.
No comments on the factions, as I only played this just now.
Autobahn:
What a steaming pile of shit. Our table stopped playing it mid-way. The system is just fiddly and soulless. The ideas actually sounds fun: you build a shared infra that is the (West) German Autobahn and then you use lorries to transport goods here and there, and service stations worked as toll gates for other players. Sounds alright!
But the whole game is just this typical Euro vomit of mechanisms and mechanisms and mechanisms, and it was so rote and monotonous. I know that you know that I don’t like Euros, but I wasn’t so repulsed since Tapestry?.
“What’s the point of all this?” asked one of our players. I don’t know, man. I don’t know.
So your very hot take is that Terra Nova is Mystica with the boring bits shaved off?
Considering your taste, yeah? There’s still the 3 bowls and the power resource that goes with it. So it’s money and power. I found that the teach length is still there but not as long as Big Terra.
I was hosting family for games and films (and lunch and dinner), and I had plans for a camel-themed Through the Desert with 5 players and then later, with 7-8, Camel Up. Instead, finding myself with 4 players rather than 5, I decided to introduce Azul… and then we didn’t get to the other games at all. On the one hand I wish I’d stuck to my plan as I’d personally been looking forward to playing TTD – but OTOH everyone enjoyed the initial game of Azul and wanted to keep playing, so I wasn’t going to say no. Afterwards, with the other guests having arrived, it was time to watch a film, and then I needed to prepare dinner, so I quickly taught everyone how to play 6 nimmt! and left them to it, and I really got a lot of vicarious enjoyment from listening to all the laughter ensuing from the card game while I was cooking.
There were also a couple of quick games of Push It before dinner, and I have no regrets picking up that. (The family was playing Pétanque at our Xmas picnic, so a table-based equivalent was a very each teach.)
So while I didn’t get to play all the things I’d planned and (despite having done a ton of cooking the night before) had to spend more time in the kitchen today than I’d wanted to (and hence less time playing games myself), it was still a fab day.
(And as time-consuming as all the cooking was, the day was also a good excuse to try out a whole bunch of recipes that I hadn’t tried before, and pretty much everything turned out well.)
Race to Escape
There’s a timed element we didn’t use…
I’ve played Spots three times. Twice with one person with a second set up and once with the default set up with a different person.
I feel almost no excitement with this game. I think the push your luck aspect feels like it lends itself to an exciting or thrilling game but the control is so low that it feels more like a chore to me. Here I can blame crap dice rolls/crap dice on things not panning out oddly I accept no joy of judgement when it goes well
The look is nice.