I think I’ve had Pandemic: Fall of Rome on my shelf for a little over a year now, and I finally tried it for the first time yesterday. I’ve played two games, both three-handers (not using the solitaire rules), and I lost the first game (with 4/5 alliances) and won the second. It’s too early for many thoughts, but my goodness is the set-up ever time-consuming after so many games of Tetrarchia.
For the moment, a size-comparison:
Tetrarchia pretty much ruined my desire on going back to Pandemic, unless it’s one of them Legacies. It pretty much delivers the “firefighting” type of games in a small box.
I started my first game of Tetrarchia on the hardest mode. Bad idea. Which is good. Fall of Rome was beaten for the first time at Legendary(?) with the variants.
In human v human games we often bulk up to 7+ boroughs! Five is kind of the natural size given your hand limit of 10. But street lamps and museums and Kew Gardens can help you hold onto those extra piles and give you more draw turns with fewer running turns.
London is a game I like more over time, there’s wrinkles and wrinkles to squeeze more pennies out of the machine.
A good week of gaming and a successful completion to my 12 Gamedays of Christmas run on schedule, despite fighting through a mild lurgy.
Day 9 (January 2nd) saw a game of Endangered with the Lobbyist and Zoologist campaigning to save the Polar Bear, my first attempt at this scenario. A dicey start with some duplicate deforestation rolls in the early rounds melting a few ice tiles but the Ambassor cards looked pretty favourable with four seeming relatively achievable. With the Zoologist working to protect the animals and limit the deforestation/ice melting, while the Lobbyist was influencing the Ambassors, it proved a fairly comfortable win at the end of round 8. A nice scenario and makes me want to try more complicated ones in future.
Day 10 (January 3rd) was my most sick day, so it seemed apt to reach for original Pandemic. For my first time, I tried playing on Heroic difficulty with 6 Epidemic cards in the Player Card deck with the Operations Expert, Medic, Researcher and Scientist trying to find the cures. I got lucky with card draws and had the yellow disease cured after the fourth turn (the Scientist’s first) and then elimated during the Medic’s next turn as he swept through South America, then headed to the Far East to deal with the increasing threat of the red disease. Although trying to keep things under control, the Epidemic cards kept things tense with some nasty outbreaks in the red and blue disease hotspots, but I was able to cure red and black in shortish order thanks to the Researcher and Scientist working together. Blue took some planning but a lucky card draw lead to a victory with the Operations Expert finding that cure just before the fifth Epidemic card would have been drawn and after 6 outbreaks had occured. Felt more tense than it probably was given the extra Epidemic cards in the deck, though.
Day 11 (January 4th) featured one of my favourite solo games, Maquis, where I played three games against the Infiltration and Sabotage missions. I got carried away in the first game, getting too many workers arrested too early and losing to low morale, so tried it again taking more care and limiting myself to only 4 workers at a time. This worked much better, completing the Infilitration mission fairly quickly and then finishing the Sabotage mission just before that final worker and another got arrested. I had forgottten the rules about completing missions so wasn’t sure if I had succeeded, so played a third time to make sure. Another game I should get out more and still lots of tougher scenarios to try out.
Day 12 (January 5th) wasn’t spent out playing darts while I recover (although I am noticably better today). I was torn between what to play but decided to tackle a game that has troubled me: Sprawlopolis. I remember watching or hearing something about how the bonus goals requiring higher scores might be easier, so selected to start with the three highest: Morning Commute (16 pts), Tourist Traps (17 pts) and Sprawopolis (18 pts) - and started needing 51 points to win. I wasn’t expecting much but decided on one key strategy to focus more on planning bigger areas of blocks rather than on the roads. This seemed to work a treat - especially after realising a miscount of the Sprawopolis goal - and I scored 55 points, somehow! Convinced it was a fluke, I tried again against the same three bonus goals, this time scoring 52 points. A third game followed, this time trying against tougher goals in the Master Planner (6 pts), Central Perks (7 pts) and The 'Burbs (8pts) goals. Needing 21 pts to win, I focused on building a big region of residential blocks and a large central park, scoring 24 points at the end. I think I get the game better now, so will crack on with Agropolis next time as well as work on Circle the Wagons more.
So, a successful challenge completed for the holiday season. Acquiring more shorter solo games with a smaller footprint and quicker setup certainly helped this season’s run, so I will look for more such games this year. I may not have as much time next Christmas season for longer, bigger games although one of my presents this year is a new dining table which arrives in a couple of weeks, allowing me to replace a 4ft (120cm) diameter circular table with a 3ft by 5ft (90cm by 150cm) rectangular one which extends to 7ft (210cm). That will finally give me the space to properly host those table hogs like Fortune and Glory, Eldritch Horror and Firefly.
This bot shoots through the deck really quick (as if you’re in a 4-player game, I think), I’m interested to try it at 2-player with more time to build/purchase!
You’ve reminded me that I’m TERRIBLE at Sprawlopolis and need to practice more 
I was about 0 for 9 or 10 in my games of Sprawopolis before tonight, so still trying to process my change in strategy: to focus on the colours much more than the roads.
My Sprawlopolis road networks generally look like someone had climbed a ladder and dropped a handful of pasta on the city.
After owning it for a year and a half, I’m finally diving in to Gloomhaven. I’m having fun, and definitely appreciating the Folded Space insert I got for it. So Many Bits…
Last night at a boardgame cafe for the first time with a bunch of friends.
I was kind of nervous about the range of players so we stuck with party games Fake Artist and wavelength.
Fake artist was a first play to me and was pretty funny overall. It seems like it’s pretty easy to hide in amongst the crowd but people also pick up when people are hiding. I think being wilder with your moves is the way to fish out the bluffer.
Wavelength is good as normal. Not really convinced it needs or really would work with scoring but also it does drift a bit.
I liked going to a boardgame cafe. I think there is real value in going to a space where everyone is playing a game. You could theoretically get a similar effect in a pub but the more chaotic ambiance makes it significantly more risky. It’s also fun seeing what other people pick out.
Was that Chance and Counters in town? I like it in there
Chance and Counters
What a brilliant name!
Yep. (With at least six more characters)
Yesterday, we hosted my brother-in-law and his wife for dinner and games. Well, it turned out to only be a partial game because we started too late, the teach took a bit and their three kids were there and were getting VERY tired on top of their allergies flaring up (Baloney is adorable and they adore him, but over several hours in close proximity, even their medicine couldn’t cope), but man, WHAT a game it was: Our first four-player game of Great Western Trail.
It’s a completely different beast than at two players, my god! The employee and cow markets are abundant but get cleared out really quickly, the train stations stay free roughly five minutes and you start running out of spaces for buildings almost immediately. Everything’s even more necessary now!
In the end, we played roughly half a game then went through scoring just to give them an idea how it would go:
Sister-in-law had 33, but she had a TON of engineers and a good amount of artisans, so she was gonna be in a good position to build/upgrade buildings and get her train to the high-value stations.
Maryse had 41 and a lot of artisans that were gonna start really paying off with high-value buildings, along with a good number of engineers to get her train moving.
Brother-in-law had 45 and a good mix of engineers and artisans that were gonna start being super useful.
I “won” with 59. I had loads of cowboys, so I got quite a few very good cows. I also had a few engineers to get my train moving and get to the VP-getting cities (with some penalties occasionally, I was almost always skint). I think my engine was solid, but my lack of buildings and stations could’ve proven problematic.
Fantastic game, too bad we couldn’t finish it. Lesson learned, next time we’re going to their place so their kids can go to bed if needed. Especially now that Maryse’s back is doing a LOT better…
With @lalunaverde last night and made him suffer euros games 
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First up was Murano, I wanted to play this as I hadn’t in years. It was one of my first purchases that really stuck when I was getting back in to gaming in ~2014. Pleased to see how well it holds up. The turns when people are deciding on which scoring cards to buy are slow but other than that it’s snappy. The uncertainty on end gaming scoring is tense, the shared rondel is satisfyingly frustrating and it manages to be nicely focused. It was nice to be reminded of where much of my last 8 years stems from.
City of Spies: Estoril 1942 was up next. Took a while with rules explanation when I couldn’t remember the rules but once we got in to it much fun was had. One of the players was super excited as they love the game, really helps the atmosphere. I find it impressive how much game there is with so few actions/turns. With refreshed familiarity hopefully this can get back in rotation as a satisfying and quick game. I think as I have this I won’t investigate the retheme but would recommend people check out 2491 Planetship. Really solid area majority game this.
We had a quick game of Lost Cities last night. I was ahead by about 24 points after the first round, my wife shaved that down to about 14 in the second round, and in the third she zoomed past me to win 167 - 146. If I had had one more round, I would have been able to play a 10 which would have doubled to still give her the win, but by just a single point.
Terracotta Army - Surprising on how good this is. It’s a modern Euro of beige and brown where you’re gathering brown bits and convert those brown bits into points. The scoring is very interesting, where you are keen to group up with other people with the same type of terracotta soldier. And, at the same time, compete on an area majority fight on those same groups that you all created together. In a way, this is like a Euroy version of Reiner Knizia’s Genesis. In which, yes, I would rather just play Genesis, but this is still a good game.
Modern Art
Tigris & Euphrates
Rurik: Dawn of Kiev - manage to play this again. Very fun TOAM game! Glad to have it
Murano - yep. It’s by Markus and Inka Brand. Good game. I do like it as most of the things in this game are shared. The flow is fast, but there is indeed this issue where the game grinds to a halt whenever someone picks up some scoring cards to grab. A lot of reading and this contributes to creating a downtime that otherwise would be minimal.
City of Spies: Estoril 1942 - Simple area control where you are double-guessing where everyone else puts which agent on this and that location. I sold my copy a long time ago without playing it. Glad to play this now. This is my kind of jam.
Games in the pub on Wednesday. We started off with a quick game of Eight Minute Empire and then my husband went to play Dune Imperium for hours. Meanwhile I played two games of Heat. I find racing games very hit and miss for me, but this one seems to be quite good Somewhat reminiscent of Flamme Rouge but with more steps. It was a bit slow to begin with as we figured out what order to do things in (and how the cornering worked) but the second game was much more fast paced. The second game we also played with the car upgrade cards, which added some nice decisions into the hand management.
I’ve been meaning to catch up here but I keep forgetting!
I actually played some games, yay!
Underwater Cities (solo)
I tend to like Vladimír Suchý games and was very excited to get high top-rated game and its expansion for my birthday several months ago. I was intimidated by the iconography, of which there is a lot; after reading the rulebook, watching a video, reading the rulebook again, then watching two more videos, I was confident that I had the game setup correctly.
Then life got very hectic at both work and with parenting responsibilities. So the game sat on my table, setup and ready to play, for about a month.
Then, I had to watch part of a video again to jog my memory before I could play.When I finally did play, I found a very brutal economy. Going in fresh, even after watching some videos, I wasn’t sure how to value each of the different resources and foolishly squandered some hard-to-get money early and suffered. I really like the card play mechanism, but found myself almost always matching the card color, even though I played several cards that would allow me to profit when playing a non-matching color.
I made some mistakes; I let myself retcon a few obvious (in hind-sight) blunders but mostly I just kept moving. At the end, I managed to get the 7th dome built, but failed to get the requisite points. Even after re-engineering my final turn, I was still 4 points short of the 100 point goal. I felt as though I could see, roughly, where I had made mistakes, and that’s the kind of game I really like. I don’t like always winning, but I like to be able to see how I could have done better.
I didn’t get any other gaming done in December, except…
My partner and I went on a date night to the local boardgame cafe on New Year’s Eve Eve!
Coconuts
I wanted to show this game to my partner after me and my oldest daughter had such a good time with it. It’s Beer Pong: The Kids Game, basically. But with rubber coconuts. We both had a good time and my partner won skillfully.
Point Salad
After trying to setup and learn Everdell in a crowded and noisy cafe, I relented and went to grab something else and came back with Point Salad. I had heard good things about it and it seemed to fit the environment well.
The most exciting game it is not. But it was fairly quick to catch on and try to optimize your choices. My partner and I actually tied even though we took completely separate and distinct paths; I won the tie-breaker due to player-order, but it really should have been considered a tie.
We both liked the game and I will be looking to pick up a copy at some point.
Cat Lady
I picked this up at the same time I picked up Point Salad because of, exclusively, the involvement of cats. As we were setting it out and learning the game, we realized the similarities between it and Point Salad; though Cat Lady probably has the cooler drafting mechanism… I would say the card combos are more complicated and it wasn’t quite as easy to forward-plan. We had the cut the game short, however, so that we could make it home in time to relieve our babysitter. I’d be happy picking this one up as well, but it would definitely be harder to get to the table than Point Salad.
The following day, my oldest daughter was asking me to take her back to the boardgame cafe (because she really enjoys both games and spending time 1-on-1 with adults); I said we couldn’t go, but we could play games at home. So I picked out some games neither of us had played. Neither game was recommended for a 5-year-old, but both had a BGG suggestion of 6, which seemed like a reasonable stretch.
ROBiTs
A cute little game. Card drafting to build a robot. Bonus if you get 3+ matching colors in a complete robot, otherwise just tally up your points. My daughter didn’t like it because she couldn’t actually complete her robot because no Leg cards came out and she didn’t want to draft a “junk” card wildcard that would count, in the game, as any part. She still won 10-to-9, somehow.
SOW
A “Pack O Game” game that looks like a pack of gum. The game is described as “Mancala meets secret goal/set collecting farming game for 2-4 players”. It was actually pretty clever; I rather enjoyed it. But the mancala mechanism with extra rules for what happens when certain cards are dropped in specific situations was too much for a 5-year-old; I ended up coaching her on every turn to let her know which rows she could select and where they would land if she chose them. I won easily 25-to-11.
My partner really likes Mancala, so I plan on showing this to her sometime. I just wish the components were more practical and it could be played on a couch without worrying about cards sliding around.
And, finally, yesterday I was clearing some junk off my solo gaming table and wanted to get something setup to play soon. It’s been a stressful week and this weekend will also be a tad stressful, so I was looking for something simple and relaxing. I had Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest sitting nearby and decided to get it setup.
Libertalia was released right around the time I was first getting into the hobby. I really didn’t like the art/graphic design of the original and didn’t, at the time, understand the cleverness of the card play, so I completely ignored it.
I love the colors and boldness of the new game, even though it is thematically less cohesive.
I really need to stop being surprised by the automas included in Stonemeier games; this one is really good and so smooth to run. I found myself constantly surprised at how the automa could cope with interesting situations. I mean, it’s not perfect, and I was able to easily “outwit” it on some key plays, but it still kept me on my toes fairly regularly.
In my first game, I lost badly, my 99 points to the automa’s 113 with the bulk of my points (almost half of them!) coming in the last voyage.
My second game, I thought was going to end similarly, but the Plunderer portion of the solo mode made several key plays (completely coincidental) that crippled some loot selections that would have otherwise made it impossible to beat. I won, just barely, 88-to-86 and the difference is likely the number of relics the automa was forced to take on the last voyage.
I look forward to playing this both with the 2-player mode as well as with higher player counts; I feel that the solo mode feels nothing like those experiences, but I still rather enjoyed it – not enough to make me re-order my top solo games of 2022 that I recently posted, though.
This evening at Stabcon in Stockport:
