I got interested. I’ve always thought the colours of the plastic pieces in Ethnos were some pretty strange choices, so I fed that photo into the same colour blindness simulator I use when I’m picking colours for web sites etc. Looking in particular at the five discs in the red-outlined area in foreground right, the yellow and green markers merge together in several cases, but otherwise they’re all distinct for anything short of monochromacy. If any of you have colour vision anomalies that you’re happy to talk about, I’d be interested in your thoughts.
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A nice cup of tea and a sit down to determine who has to run the galaxy.
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I had an unexpected game of Splendor with my partner and my eldest daughter. The apple did not fall too far from the tree, both mother and daughter crushed me 16-16-8 and my daughter won by having the least cards… (I admit it is the first time I had to look up for the tie-breaker rule)
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I don’t say this often enough: I love all of you. Even the fine folks I didn’t tag in this response, although this series of responses reminded me how deeply affectionate I am for this silly little corner of the internet, which is basically the only place I ever go to the internet aside from my email.
You’re all amazing. Thank you.
13 Likes
Hot Dog Eating Contest for the Galaxy
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Bit of a round up here.
Blue Lagoon - Second play in as many years. Last time I thought “I need to play this a few times but it’s not a keeper.” Long term evaluation may be the same, but my estimate of how many times I want to play at least doubled. For one, my girls are hugely into Moana now and looking at that cover I have hopes of luring them to the table. But also, I think I had a better expectation of the game this time. First play I was expecting more of a Hex experience where chains and blocking were the name of the game. This time it was more a point salad mindset and it hit much better. Still a ton of respect for Knizia on how much game and tension come out of so few rules. Those end-of-round triggers bang up against so many other rules to make this a nailbiter.
Bohnanza - Two more games. Higher play count and repeat play really make this one shine. I couldn’t have been more happy than when my parents, both with a field of Soy Beans, were trying to convince each other to give away their own soy beans.
Timeline - Still a banger of a session as long as you only play every once in a while.
10 Likes
My wife and I had a quick game of Ethnos while our older kid was taking a nap (my company closed today due to snow, so I have the day off). We had Elves, Wingfolk, Orcs, Giants, and Halflings.
Turned out to be a very high scoring game thanks to a lot of decent sized bands being played in the second age. I pulled out the win, 133 - 102.
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2 games from this evening. Started out with Scorpius Freighter which was really fun. After my ambivalence at Tekhenu it was nice to play a tighter euro that’s quicker and is a little more interconnected with the other players. I think there are multiple ways to play this for victory but it’s not quite point salad. Also mildly abstracting some pick up and deliver it’s quite tense on the order fulfilment at the heart of the game. Also like Race for the Galaxy you have less turns than you’d want for getting an engine going and scoring points. Marvellous 60 minutes this one.
Next up was Cthulhu Wars Bubastis, Great Cthulhu and Crawling Chaos duked it out over the remnants of earth. Bubastis is real interesting but I won with Crawling Chaos. CC is fairly straight forward so I chose them as I was tired and had to teach. Bubastis have this odd thing of they want to coexist and also get killed a bit, so deciding whether to attack the or not is interesting. The minis are great, my favourite sculpts for the game so hopefully will get to play them soon. Game was a touch wonky with one new player and 2 more experienced but it was fast again and we’re all set to play again next week. I’m hoping to try out the Daemon Sultan, but I’ll have to read their rules in advance so I’m not to frazzled to try them out like this evening. Really glad I got this remains head and shoulders over any 4x or DOAM I’ve played in the last 8 years for me. I don’t consider it a 4x but when ever I play one I find myself wanting to play Cthulhu Wars instead
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Depends on how many sets you have and mix together!
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Vivaldi - 5 player only trick taking game. There’s an auction at the start of the round where you bid from 10 to 1. The winning bid will be the number of the chosen card and the auction winner will decide what suit (or season) it will be. E.g. I won with a bid of 4 and I chose Autumn. So the player with the Autumn 4 will be my secret partner in this game against the other 3 players. Yo!!
Then, you follow standard trick taking rules with the chosen season being the trump suit.
Cards score according to their value, but the season opposite to the chosen one - in this case, Spring - will score negative points. You total the two teams and the players will score +1 or -1 points, but the Auction Winner will score +2 or -2.
It’s nuts. That’s all I can say for now. The team dynamic is interesting as you need to figure out who the other person is, regardless on whether you’re the Caller or from the opposing team.
Alas, the inflexibility of playing this with 5 makes this difficult to play.
Ticket to Ride Europe
Acquire - apparently Acquire is now 59 years old.
Bus - full 5 player game. More plays required as it is deceptive (or at least it appears deceptive). With only 20 tokens, it becomes a game of making the best VP you can squeeze out of those 20 tokens.
There’s a trade-off between sharing location points with others or going your own way, due to the zero-sum game with the passengers. Geography is important. Do you take a passenger that Blue/Yellow shares or one that is shared by Blue/Red and send it to a location that Blue/Purple shares? Obviously, would be nice to place passengers on a route that you only have access on. But route building will attack those positions. Delicious. The actions on placing new passengers and buildings are “risky” moves as you spent a valuable action token for the benefit of everyone in your vicinity. Wouldn’t be better if someone else do those actions? Still needs more plays to explore more of those, but I like how you can screw up people (in the short term, at least) just by placing new buildings.
Route building is stellar, but I’m still puzzled on the other aspects of the game. As usual with Splotter, incredibly light rules for the game it delivers.
Oros - New Kickstarter game from a friend. It’s an abstract tile-laying game where there’s a strong plays on the shared central board and less focus on the engine building on our personal board, but still crucial. Thus, making this more hybrid than the usual old school Germans from the 90s.
Mutualism is rewarded. The light engine building is nice. Chaotic with 4 players but I didn’t mind it that much. It’s not one of those old-school Germans like Kramer & Kiesling’s Tikal or Mexica, but it’s a good game. Keen to see on future plays: see more on how the engine building side of the game responds to how the game develops.
Gloooomhaven
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That sounds a lot like one of the old Card Games That Don’t Suck videos, Briscola Chiamata, which I always wanted to try. But obviously the strict player count is a limiting factor there!
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Yes! It’s a redesign of this classic game
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I so want to play this on the table
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No dessert games with friends last night after dinner… the kids did want the PS5 and we got caught up in a lengthy discussion of adulting plus migraine flared up and I was unable to motivate anyone for some games though I thought about it a few times—ah well next time
I have played a bunch more solos over the last few days
- Still loving Cascadia such a relaxing game
- 51st State continues to amaze
- Long Shot The Dice Game: a couple of real photo finishes… and in the 2nd game I owned all the winning horses but failed to place many bets…
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Agropolis is so much harder than Sprawlopolis. I lose every other game and when I win with it is just barely. My last game I had 8 points… I couldn‘t quite believe it but then Bacon & Eggs (one of the goal cards) is just good
Also sat down for my 2nd game of Oranienburger Kanal.
I probably repeat what I wrote previously: a really good game for aficionados of Rosenberg‘s Solos.
I scored worse than on my first game which is actually a good sign that this is more puzzly than I thought and not easily mastered. I can see a few of my mistakes at the end…
A few less enthusiastic notes:
- I would not want to play this kind of game with 2 players. This is a pure solo for me.
- the industrial theme fits the game play of route building + buildings and resource management really well but I dislike the theme quite a bit. I rarely think this because I do not focus on theme so much but I with a different theme it would be even more fun to play. Or maybe with a different execution of the theme. It is just ugly.
- I retract my statement that the iconography is good. I keep consulting the card almanach. Many of the cards are just too complex…
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Last night I finally got around to playing the fourth scenario of Marvel Champions Sinister Motives campaign: Miles and Gwen vs. the Sinister Six!
This was a tough one, as the Six are a round robin of pain and suffering. One is considered the “active” villain. After it attacks, if it damages you, you get a further negative effect, and then the next villain becomes the active one. As such, I spent most turns defending, meaning my heroes were exhausted going into their turns. Plus, you win by removing a crap-ton of Threat from a side-scheme, not by defeating the villains, as they get put back into play in various ways.
It took a while, but I was finally able to whittle down all the Threat, which then flipped that scheme over and added another crap-ton of Threat, and brought a villain into play, and had a Hazard icon on it, meaning each villain phase an extra encounter card would get dealt out.
Took another long time, but managed to win. Each character only flipped to Alter-ego mode once, to take advantage of Confused villains and have an extra card the next round. Overall, pretty happy with my performance.
One scenario left in the campaign!
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Time for an old favourite yesterday – Escape The Curse of the Temple. Roll dice in real time, find the exit and well, escape. Just as much fun as I expected. I used to own it, sold it for some reason, recently saw it on FB and grabbed it again. Only 2p today, which is probably not the best way to play And I missed the setup rule for 1 or 2 players where the exit tile is hidden halfway in the deck. That made it harder than it needed to be, and we failed. Dice hate me.
Hamburg, first play. This is the new implementation of Bruges. It’s game with eight seasons, and four rounds within each season. Each season you’ll have a hand of cards, from five differently coloured decks. On your turn, you can get money or workers, create buildings, and build sections of the wall on your player board. When getting money and workers, you discard a card of a colour and then use the dice of that colour. At the end of each season, you check for majority in various areas, like the most buildings or wall segments. The friend I played with didn’t seem to enjoy it, said it was nothing like the original Bruges, which seems like a much simpler game. As in Amsterdam, there’s a lot of iconography to wade through. There didn’t seem to be a lot of tension to the game. I know Euro games are known for multiplayer solitaire.
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We had some work friends over yesterday for some games. I’d specifically suggested Power Grid in advance because I know one of them always brings it and we never play it because they are too laid back to insist. One of the others grumbled so much about the theme of Power Grid that the owner acquiesced and we ended up playing Scythe and Tidal Blades instead 
I think Tidal Blades is a good example of “just because there’s a fifth player expansion doesn’t mean you should play it with 5 people”. There was a lot of time between turns and not a lot of player interaction. I wasn’t that invested in what anyone else was doing so spent a lot of time not paying attention to what was going on. I could be persuaded to play again at a lower player count, but I’m not in any particular rush to do so.
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The need for the almanac has really put me off entirely trying this at all with my partner and made me be 90 percent sure I won’t play this at all.
On a general concept level it seems so cool the interactions and timings seem really fun but I think that this is one of those games that moved all the complexity of comprehension away from the rule book and onto the cards. I think there are probably some wild and wacky cards possible with this kind of system.
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Each card is quite unique which makes it interesting and I guess with repeated plays and maybe playing multiple games in a row I could probably stop refering to the alamanc. I admit I could probably derive the meaning from the iconography in most cases but it is just quicker and safer to look it up. The alamanac is easy as the cards are numbered… but the fact it needs to exist … speaks for itself.
I previously compared the game with Nusfjord… and that does not need additional explanations besides what is on the cards and has a lot of unique effects as well.
I like those card decks in my “big” Rosenberg games (Nusfjord, Hallertau, AFfO) but I admit that I have barely ever switched out any: only in Nusfjord did I play with a couple of different decks. Most of the rest I just have not played enough to get bored of the default set.
I think Oranienburger Kanal may be the first where I might switch to another deck on game 3 to see how different that feels. Nusfjord had a decidedly different feel with the different decks.
4 Likes