In addition to marching our way through the My City campaign (just finished Chapter 5, and that was a neat one), Andy and I tried our first game of Renature today.
A good friend decided that he didn’t want it in his collection, and I was happy to give it a shot. Neat little thing, although surprisingly mean. But satisfying… Andy won 134 - 107 with minimal toe-stepping. She’s still not sure she wants to keep it, but does want to try it at a higher player count to see if it’s better as such. I respect that.
Well, I am quite behind on reporting some games. On Friday I had a game buddy requesting a game of Cthulhu: Death May Die, so we went to his place and played episode 1 against Cthulhu. We were three controlling 4 characters against the cultists, fire vampires and byakhees (or however you spell those abominations’ names). We didn’t manage to destroy all 4 labs before Cthulhu appeared (which may be a defeat?) but we continued on and defeated the Deep One after that relatively easily, without getting any of the characters dead (well, Rasputin died once, but that is his trademark). Still loads of fun, chucking heaps of dice is simple, but it can be so exciting sometimes.
On Saturday I was asked to get a D&D game ready for after New Year’s Eve dinner (which I was a bit surprised about) with my friends, but due to one of them not being able to make it (in true D&D fashion), we left it for next week. I had not brought any board games, so we played with the hosts copy of Munchkin, twice. I must say, if it wasn’t for the humour, I would not have played it. The game is awful. Still, we had a few laughs, which is what counts.
Yesterday I went to Napier for a Gamer’s Night session. We played Euphoria, which I believe is one of Stegmaier’s first games. We played it between 6 players, with a long winded teach from the guy who ended up winning after singing its good qualities. I must admit I was disappointed somehow, after al the hype it was given, and the suggestion that at 6 players count it was at its best. The theme did not do it for me at all, I would play Viticulture instead any day of the week. I managed to end last with another 3 players at 5 stars, so for a first play it was not too disappointing, but it is such an abstract worker placement game that it left me really cold.
After that, we had several people join the largest table, and we played Sounds Fishy, which was loads of fun. I was very proud of throwing off a couple of answers with very close to reality answers, but even more with a really wild one. And I managed to pick up the real answer on one of my turns holding the card, so I was happy with that.
We’ve been playing Clever 4 ever which is the fourth of the Thats pretty clever/ Ganz shon clever. (I hope the fifth is called cleVer)
I think it’s a really good Christmas game for just bimbling around and then filling in for a few mins. Having said that it feels crunchier and longer than the first one but I think the most engaging since the first. I can’t really explain why we are playing it more (maybe just the timing) but I quite like how much choice there is even inside a particular colour (eg if you roll a six green you still choose where it goes in green) and I think the more purely spatial puzzle (gray) adds something refreshing to the mix.
We might have slightly cheated then. I remember we blew off 4 labs, but I am unsure if we did the last one before attacking tentacle boi, as the main intention was to damage as many monsters as possible with an explosion.
Just got done with two games of Everdell with Bellfaire and Spirecrest. The first game was WEIRD, going from bad to funny to bad again to hilarious. Neither of us managed to get ANY production cards, so we couldn’t get anything going. Wound up losing 42-41 after three different miscounts.
Second was much much better, we actually could get stuff. Wound up getting 20 points off various cards’ abilities, while Maryse (my wife, might as well start naming her) got 19 from events. She won 75-72, since she had cards that gave her pretty hefty end-game bonuses (the Theater and the School, leveraging both her unique and common critters), while I only had my Architect, who only netted me three points. Still, that was a much better game.
Played another Chapter of My City, and for the first time ever I won all three episodes… and, to pour some salt on that wound, I also got the gold bonus at the end of the Chapter, meaning I went from 3 points behind to 5 points ahead.
Andy… is not thrilled about that. She was having a really good time up until now, so I’m hopeful that she’ll rally and finish the last two chapters with me.
After that, we played The ??? Initiative (the game is techincally called “The Initiative”, but the box has a word redacted between “The” and “Initiative”), and lost Chapter 2 by one letter but then handily won Chapter 3. Neat little game. Looking forward to playing more of it!
Dune: Imperium 2nd play, 4 players. Not for me. Slow pace, you can’t make plans until your turn and has the thing of cards restricting your worker placement for reasons. Also had a ballachingly slow player who ran away with the victory 13-9-6-4 but took twice as long as everyone else on the table.
For Sale many plays, 3 player. Greatest filler ever.
Learning how to play a game properly is often detriment to scores.
I wonder if this indicates something interesting on an unconscious level.
I guess, also, that getting better might mean a lower score because it’s a score more resilient to the whims of luck/others and so on average it works out better.
This is a serious distaste of mine. I hate people doing that so much. Sure we could all play better by laboriously calculating every possible move and all it’s consequences but as you say it takes ages and stops the game being fun, assuming the game would be fun to any individual. “Mistakes are interesting, play fast” is a good quote for this. I used to quite regularly play with someone who did that all the time. Azul, 2.5 hour game as an example. They’re the reason I hate Concordia so much, played a game with them that clocked in at 4 hours, their turns were 3 hours and 15 minutes of that. Got so bored I relentlessly couldn’t do a good move. It’s just really selfish. Reading your comment here has given me conniptions at revisiting the trauma. I hope you never have to play with that person again
There’s probably some forum called fakeli.li where they lament players who don’t provide challenge by playing loosey goosey and cringe at the lack of maxing out every move.
Chess sort of solves this problem with the idea of a timer where it still seems the best players win regardless of whether they play fast or slow games but as long as everyone is playing on the same constraint.
In this case, it was just a perfect storm. Maryse had a few really lucky draws that always kept her flush with cash, while I had a few MISERABLE ones, including a late-game one where I was only able to sell my herd for $6.
It was enough that she was basically able to clear out the cowboys (and the cows) and the engineers from the markets and get a ton of train stations, while I took too long to pivot to a building-heavy strategy for my VPs. I was actually starting to turn things around when the game ended.
So part of it was great luck for her and bad luck for me, combined with great playing on her part and a costly mistake on mine. C’est la vie.
