Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[Whistle_Pig]

We had a few games in the pub on Wednesday: Roll Player, Through the Desert, and Akropolis.

I wasn’t really expecting to like Roll Player, because I’m just not into RPGs… Luckily for me it doesn’t bear any resemblance to an RPG aside from the theme . I enjoyed the puzzle of where to put my dice, which combination of cards worked best for my character, and so on.

We introduced Through the Desert to someone who looked horrified at my description of it as “kind of like Go but with camels”. Fortunately for them it’s not really all that like Go, and they conceded that it was “quite fun for an abstract game”

Last we played Akropolis (more abstract games). The person explaining the rules managed to keep up the illusion of thematic integration for a good half of the explanation, which was impressive. I enjoyed building up my little city - the layering is quite pleasing. Apparently it’s quite like Cascadia…?

[lalunaverde]

Timebomb: Evolution - a latter reimplementation of Tempel des Schreckens. I really like the different coloured bombs than the empty rooms in Tempel.

Few Acres of Snow - I’m the French in this first time play. As my opponent didn’t employ the Halifax Hammer (not sure if he was even aware of it!), I really enjoyed this first time play of it.

Isle of Skye - A play where everyone knows what they are doing. And it was lame. Which tile are the valuable tiles are obvious. As you can buy only one tile, you can min-max it easily (potential pts X number of rounds it will score). The scrolls do skew the value of some tile to yours, which would be useless to others. But you’re better off just playing The Estates or other auction games instead, where values are vague and fuzzy.

Innovation

Pax Renaissance - players were milling the West deck and so the 2 comets showed up fast. I conducted a trade fair to discard one of the comets to stop the player who manage to have a lot of the kings as his thralls. Once he got the Ottoman Sultan under his control, he pretty much conquered, like, half of Europe.

I then used the other West comet on activating “Holy Victory”, as I have the most influence on the Catholics. Again, to prevent said player from activating “Imperial Victory”. But the same player has the most influence on the Muslims. It was a struggle at that point between the two. Alas, the Sublime Porte carried him to victory.

Magic Maze - the fun bit is where players are still mastering their roles and screwing up, but once you get used to the process, it’s actually very boring. “Division of Labour: the Board Game” as I called it. Escape: Curse of the Temple remains supreme.

Tempel des Schreckens - still better than original Timebomb, but I might prefer Timebomb: Evolutions

Gang of Dice - confirmed. Really prefer the betting of how many dice to roll in this game, than other Knizia’s dice rollers like Rapido

Clank Catacombs - alright! Despite the “generic bad DnD” theme, Catacombs was a very enjoyable deck builder. Very good fun!

[lalunaverde]

@Whistle_Pig

they conceded that it was “quite fun for an abstract game”

That’s how you get em

[DJCT]

Currently playing this - son #1’s first choice of his own kickstarter Europa Universalis.

Second learning game. Its a monster and slow as he checks through multiple rules. But playing with his mum and me it is not an unpleasant experience. Goodness knows if we will get faster, but it is likely to be set up for most of the weekend!

[Acacia]

Got another round of London 2e in yesterday and it continues to delight me. The emotional vibe is like Nusfjord (though not mechanics…) It’s a cerebral game, a little puzzle box, and it persists in throwing up new insights and clever little corners of its decision space. Satisfying to the brain if not the heart (though we do resort to shouting if one player draws all the street lamps or all the museums.)

I have noticed that the game shifts wildly with player count. Not that it doesn’t scale, just that it is a different game. Some cards are dead in a 2p game (which is fine, just use them to build) while others fail at 4p. One angle of the two-player game is that the C cards, which are expensive and offer little in the way of income, last a LONG time. We are always out of money at the end of the game, like, BAD. This game my wife asked, “Can I just leave my shops open and keep collecting money for a few rounds?”

And in my head it was WHAT. Yes, of course you can do that. And then this measly little income generator suddenly becomes a late game cash drop for the price of a few extra poverty. Just leave it there and keep plopping pounds on it for a few cycles.

Every game there’s something new.

[malkav11]

@Whistle_Pig

I wasn’t really expecting to like Roll Player, because I’m just not into RPGs… Luckily for me it doesn’t bear any resemblance to an RPG aside from the theme . I enjoyed the puzzle of where to put my dice, which combination of cards worked best for my character, and so on.

And this is why I’ve passed on it despite backing a couple of Roll Player branded spinoffs (Cartographers and Adventures).

[Chewy77]

I had a Friday Night Games Session locally in Hastings. It had been a hard week at work, and I did not feel like having any heavy games, even though a game buddy brought Beyond the Sun and I really want to play it one day, with the the week I’ve had at work I felt like having easier simpler games.

So the host had found in a street market a copy of the old Donkey Kong game just missing one of the dice, so we had a go at it between four. It is funny how they have designed the meeples as little Marios, but in 4 different colours. I managed to get Yellow Mario to the top level and scored a draw win with another player with exactly the same number of points. There is no tie break mechanism, but I was slightly closer to the top, so I scored a little victory there. The game is very simple, and counting spaces the barrels come down can be a bit tedious, but it was easy enough to kill 45 minutes.

Then we had 3 games of Kingdomino, where I did the teaching (even though I hardly remembered some of the rules). I did sort of all right on all three, but I really struggle to win that game. My last one I was the worse by far.

Then we had two more games of a local traditional 7 Wonders Architects. We had a really close game on the first one between 5, where we all ended in 6 points, but the second game two of the players ran away with the scores, they had two really powerful research powers from early on that made them scoop cards left right and centre, and they ended up on a one point difference at around 60 points while the rest of us struggled to get close to 30.

All in all a relaxing night of light games, which is what I needed.

[Bondy034]

Some games this week:

Raccoon Tycoon, after my second play of this I’ve detemined that I do indeed like it - I wasn’t sure after the first, as that one went a bit weird. It’s still a weird one but very interactive and does a lot with a little. I do kind of wish the aesthetic was there more though - it’s really just the cover and railroad cards that embrace the Victorian animals thing. Missed opportunity.

Cascadia, always keen to get this to the table and this marked my first time with a set of cards other than the A set - we did B! And it was fun as well as being different enough to feel fresh. I’m nearly up to a dozen plays of this now (which is a lot for me for such a recent title) and it’s excellent, one of my faves.

Here to Slay. Yuck. Friend picked this up on sale and it was bad. Very much in the Munchkin style of ‘no you can’t do that cause I say’ and jumping on those about to win until everyone runs out of cards (or the will) to stop it. I honestly can’t really say anything good about it. Our first game did go shorter than most games of Munchkin but it also doesn’t have that game’s sense of humor. They’re both awful and would actively oppose playing again.

Hanabi, this one was a fun one, and with only minimal tabletalk (though a few redundant clues to even that out) we managed 17, which felt decent. I like this one but very player dependent.

Takenoko, new to the rest of the table. They did pretty well for a first game. I have played it too much online though, so I did win (problems you wouldn’t think would be a problem but yes, it’s not ideal…) First game of it with 4 too - it’s a little weird, we ran out of panda objectives in the final turns. I think it’s better with 2 or 3 but it didn’t drag on or anything.

[SteveB_uk]

I’ve only played London 2e once, solo with a bot which simulates at least a 4 player. Going to do it again at 2p speed to see more of the deck and have more time to run my city before the deck runs out, it looks like that’d be a totally different game. Really enjoyed it.

[bort]

Some 2p gaming today

Akropolis, still a great game, maybe my favourite of this year ;-). It’s easy enough to teach, but has good decisions. I finally got the win (over my mate who hadn’t played it before). We both scored fairly evenly across the tile types, but I had one really good one, and that was the difference.

Broadhorns: Early Trade on the Mississippi, a pickup and deliver game. Good fun, as you pick up goods and try and sell them at a profit. I feel like I have a lot of games like this, they’re ok, but you don’t really go out of your way to play them. Why play a 6/10 instead of a 9/10?

Are You Dumber Than a Box of Rocks?, where we managed to lose to the rocks.

Men at Work, great dexterity game.

Traders of Osaka, a great game for such a little box

[raged_norm]

Quick update from a con.

One for the people who know Power Grid.

Got my 7th city. I’m Purple. Ouch. Still won though

[bruitist]

Went to the game cafe for a friend’s birthday last night. 4/5 players. Mostly light stuff.

Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra - First time ever playing this (or anything other than Azul: Cool Original). Adds a lot of faff that doesn’t make the game more interesting. Spent most of the game not really sure if I was doing anything right, but still came 2nd. Don’t think I’d ever choose it over original Azul.

Nice Buns - Mindless little game with an “I split, you choose” mechanism that barely does anything. Mostly just random.

Sounds Fishy - Kind of a trivia game? Basically “Call My Bluff” (for anyone who remembers that). Bit hampered by having to come up with answers very quickly.

Secret Hitler - I’d avoided it because of the unnecessary theme, but other people wanted to play it. And now I have … it’s just The Resistance but worse? There’s less information, no different roles, and you can get screwed over by randomness.

Muffin Time - Take that card game where the basics aren’t anything to write home about, but it works well as a party game with the way it gamifies out of game actions with the trap cards (eg “if someone checks the internet, they discard 2 cards”).

Telestrations - Always good fun. At one point we tried to switch to Scrawl, which is basically the same game, but with more “adult” prompts, but the components were a mess (pens with barely any ink, boards that were mostly now grey), so we just used the cards and the pens/pads/etc from Telestrations.

[lalunaverde]

Played the Weather Machine. And it was definitely the most terrible Lacerda game. Even Kanban with its eye-rolling moments is better than this. It still contains moments of collusion that Lacerda likes to put, but there’s less of that and more Euro BS like “get some cogs and robots >> go to this area of the board to get some books” “get some resources and robots >>> go to this area of the board to get some books” “Now that you have these books. You can do the final step to score points”. Regimental and boring. Most of the time, I was bored because what everyone else is doing isn’t interesting to me. The prototype weather machine bit is so dependent on the tile draws that it is so tactical and reactionary, rather than strategic. Not sure if I can give this a 1/5, because it has that player collusions that appeals to me. But for a designer that made the Gallerist and Lisboa, which I really enjoy, this is a proper shit game.

[Chewy77]

@bruitist

it’s just The Resistance but worse?

I so want to play The Resistance one of these days. Secret Hitler depends a lot on the people playing. I have a feeling that The Resistance does as well, but way less…

[RogerBW]

Would a PBF be of interest?

[Whistle_Pig]

Yesterday we played a couple of old favourites (Blood Rage and Battle for Rokugan) and a new shiny game (Kabuto Sumo)

Our friend has been showing excellent judgement with his Kickstarter acquisitions lately. Turncoats was excellent and Kabuto Sumo is very silly fun:

We were playing with the expansion that allows you to use furniture in the ring, WWE style. Three games and a win each

In Blood Rage and Battle for Rokugan I was inhabiting the persona of an agent of chaos. Blood Rage has such great scope for shenanigans and my favourite is to get all of the cards that give you points for having your boats destroyed, buy the sea monster (effectively doubling my boats) and then pick suicidal fights with them or let them be destroyed in Ragnarok. Before we started, our friend reminded my husband that on no account should either of them pass me any of the boat cards… and yet… Unfortunately I was denied the sea monster, so I had to supplement my strategy with a bunch of other cards that reward you for losing fights. I didn’t win, but I did have a lot of fun throwing battles and chuckling at “who passed her the boat cards?!”

[Whistle_Pig]

@lalunaverde

Played the Weather Machine. And it was definitely the most terrible Lacerda game

That makes me feel satisfied with my decision not to back the Kickstarter, although I think my tolerance for convoluted Euros is quite a bit higher than yours

[Bondy034]

Yeah I also got to try Azul:Stained Glass recently and was rather underwhelmed. I do think Summer Pavilion is the best though, you should definitely give that one a look if you can.

[Phil]

I was convinced that Summer Pavilion was going to be the Azul that I bought until I went to actually buy one of them, reviewed what they all brought to the table, and… ended up getting the original.

I realised that I would be able to explain it more quickly than any of the others¹, but it would still do much the same job as any of them. I also had a few accessibility concerns with Summer Pavilion – in particular the potential for the slightly low contrast of the little numbers on the board to cause readability issues and/or confusion, when contrasted with the highly intuitive approach of the original game where there are no numbers to read and you just need to fill the available spaces. (I don’t really consider this a fault of Summer Pavilion, but I could envisage it being a difficulty for some of my intended audience.)

---

¹ I then introduced it on an unplanned whim when a group of 5 ended up being a group of 4, with no preparation on my part, having not yet played my copy since buying it, and I fluffed the teach so badly; but oh well… we sorted it out in the end, with many apologies on my part, and everyone had a good time :‍)

[Phil]

Lots of games on holiday recently (even if not nearly as many as I’d hoped for). From memory…

• Push It – only as a very quick filler while waiting for people, but with set-up/reset taking about 3 seconds, and any single round taking about 1 minute, it’s absolutely perfect for that purpose.
• No Thanks – many times; everyone enjoyed this.
• For Sale – my first play… super simple and fun/funny, and I really liked it; but one player just found the game frustrating, so we moved on. (IIRC I won, and managed to sell a cardboard box for $3,000 :‍)
• Camel Up – several games; one of which started out awfully dull for a couple of legs, before turning into absolute mayhem – I lost count of all the last-moment swings, and the winner was so unpredictable throughout the game that I never attempted to pick one at all (and having no penalty points from incorrect guesses nearly won me the game). Some folks really loved this one.
• Hey, That’s My Fish – a great little game with a slightly annoying set-up that I always wish was quicker and less fiddly. I still really like it, though.
• Snake Oil – I love this so much, because I have an absolute perfect group for the game in my siblings – we have the same sense of humour, and can spin out the product pitches in ridiculous long-winded ways that are guaranteed hilarity (the rules impose a very short time limit on each pitch, but as that would be hugely counter-productive for my family, I’ve never considered using that rule). If I ever had only my siblings to play games with for an extended period, it might be this game and nothing else…
• Telestrations – several games; this was another big hit, and I hugely regret not taking photographs of the book that transformed “Caesar Salad” → “Killjoy” → “Reincarnation” → “Funeral” (with vastly different pictures for each, unsurprisingly).
• Monikers – ah… so nearly great, but ultimately a bad selection as some of the group had severe difficulty due to impaired hearing, so we abandoned this after playing only once. For the rest of the group this was fab, so I was sad that it didn’t pan out. I also chose not to bring out Decrypto as a consequence.
• Diamant – it’s not an amazing game, but it’s pretty reliably fun, and I do love the components.
• Mysterium – the only “big” game I managed to get to the table in several days, but it went really well. I set it up with the “story” cards from the “Secrets & Lies” expansion replacing the “item” stage, and I liked those – I think they’re an easier choice than those small “item” cards (which, being less complex in what they depict, can often be super hard for the ghost to deal with). I went with medium difficulty (8 cards between 5 psychics), left out all of the “voting” gameplay, and didn’t set time limits on anything, which felt right for the group (and I have no regrets). Our first-time ghost did very well, and we were able to collectively set their spirit to rest.

On my own, I also played a bunch of Skulls of Sedlec, Sprawlopolis, Food Chain Island, Village Green, Cribbage, and Regicide.

I’d taken a bunch of other things with me besides; but, thanks to unexpectedly good weather, people mostly wanted to spend time out and about. Another time, perhaps.