I really want to play Pax Pamir but I doubt very much any of the gamers I usually play with would want to 
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Same, it’s on my wishlist to urgently play, but I can’t justify buying it because there’s no way I’d get it to the table often enough.
In my littlest enabler voice-
“The solo is quite good.“
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After a bit of a blip of time without any playing, I had a nice Friday Night session in Hastings, even though it was a quiet one. We first played Heat: Pedal to the Metal, that my game buddy Ben got from crowdfunding. Knowing that it was from the makers of Flamme Rouge, I was very interested to give it a go.
Really enjoyed it in a game of 4, although I really screwed up on one of the fast bends thinking that on my nearly depleted deck there was only a 1 after playing a stress card, but there wasn’t, so that ruined my chances when I had to reshuffle and I got a higher card that sent me into a spin. I could only recover from there by forcing the engine, and I was so depleted of heat cards it was impossible to catch up with the lead.
I think I agree with other people from the forums, I prefer Flamme Rouge, but I don’t know anybody that comes to the games nights that owns it, so there’s that, this will do. I think that after having played both, I prefer Rallyman GT with the dice rolls over this, the gears mechanic feels way more convincing to me.
Then we went down to three and played Stardew Valley, and I found that I liked it way more than I expected. I think it is the only worker placement game I have ever played that is coop (if you don’t count the Pandemic games as worker placement, sorta). I have never played the original video game, but I thought the difficulty was well put together, the random events/items were interesting, and the feeling of “we never ever will get those targets done” that you get at the end of Autumn, made a game that I thought I was not going to get bothered about losing or winning way more interesting and challenging. I think that from an original game where time seems not to be of the essence, they have done a great job here to turn that concept on its head.
So in the end we lost narrowly by a single roll that did not give us the final crystal we needed to accomplish the final task, and by then I was on the edge of the chair with excitement (we can do this!). What started like a benign pastoral background where you mine and fish to give gifts to friends for hearts became a frenzied agricultural armaggedon where we built coops to harvest like crazy for eggs, I fished three legendary fish in three turns, and we dug the mines last third of total levels in one single turn. It became very gripping, and I was not expecting that at all.
I would have never thought that I would say this, but if offered, I’d definitely play it again.
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Some 2 player games over the last week:
Blitzkrieg x2, two back to back games with the same friend by request - won one by bombing the heck out of them, which was satisfying. It’s a great 2 player game and even the production has grown on me - it’s quite clean if not that exciting. I don’t love the theme as it has less draw for a number of folks I play regularly with.
Jaipur, introduced this to a friend who had somehow managed to not play this one with me yet (I’ve played a lot of games of Jaipur) It’s simple fun with a great back and forth.
Schotten Toten, wow, this one was brutal I drew maybe 2 cards above a six… Yeah I lost quite badly.
Splendor Duel x2, I may be ditching regular Splendor, this game is just better and I’m rarely drawn to Splendor with more than 2 anyway.
The Fox in the Forest, my opponent was new to this game (and relatively new to trick takers) so I actually won, which is unusual given my limited skill at predicting how I’ll do in games like this!
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Carnegie, first play. Had this on preorder for months, finally got delivered. Designed by Xavier Georges, who also designed my all time favourite game, Ginkgopolis. I knew it would be a bit of a bear to teach, and it was. You only have a choice of four actions on your turn, but there’s a bit more going on of course. Each action has five different spaces on a timeline to move on, so the entire game has 20 actions. There are eight timeline pieces, each double sided for variability. A timeline space will be either an income space, or a donation space. The income spaces are one of the four regions on the map: West, Midwest, East, and South. When an income space is selected, you can return any or all of your employees you had previously sent to that area, and you’ll get a bonus for each employee. You also collect anything on your project tabs on your player board.
So, the active player chooses an action, and everyone gets to do the income/donation. Donation means placing a disc in that area for end game points. And most of your points will come at the end of the game. Donating gets progressively more expensive. It starts at $5, then goes up by another $5 each time you donate. Donation spaces could be VPs for having discs in certain areas, for example.
After the income/donation is the main action, this is one of four types – Human Resources, Management, Construction, and Research and Development. Your player board starts with five departments, covering each of these types. When that action is selected, you can use each of your departments of that type if you have at least one active employee in the department. You start with an active employee on each department, and another five in your lobby, waiting to be moved and activated. The starting departments allow you to move your employees around, get money and goods cubes, add new departments, construct projects by placing discs on the map, and improve your transportation networks and develop new projects.
Each of the areas on the map has a transportation track, which starts with a horse and wagon and can be upgraded. Each time you recall your employees you get a bonus based on this track. Your player board has four project tracks. When you upgrade, you move the track to expose the next bonus. Any empty disc spaces get filled, and then you can use that disc to build on the main map.
This is a pretty solid Euro. No luck involved, all the information is out there. Obviously you want to choose actions that benefit you and no-one else. Game took 3+ hours including the teach. I…didn’t do so well. At one point I moved some employees out of a department because i didn’t think I’d need them for a while, but that was a bad idea. A very bad idea as it turned out. The problem is that moving employees deactivates them, and you don’t get activate them again until the end of your turn. Scores were 139/127/123/66. Yeah, I got 66. The game is probably a bit of the heavy end for us, but I still enjoyed it, despite my poor showing. Hopefully we’ll get some more plays.
Escape The Curse of the Temple X 2. After the brain burning action of Carnegie, we wanted something a bit lighter. So we had two quick games of this, just with the basic setup (no expansions). And we failed each turn. I was blamed in the first game for placing an exit too far from everyone (well, it was close for me). One player got out on the second game, moving past me without helping (I was locked out). I think it was revenge for the first game.
Long Shot; The Dice Game. first play. This is a roll and write where you bet on horses in a race. You roll dice, move horses forward. You can bet on horses, buy them, get their helmets and jerseys, and fill in a grid which gives you bonuses when you complete a row or column. It seemed a bit complicated at first, but we picked it up ok. Each horse has it’s own special ability.
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I dont really like solo gaming tbh
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Played a solo run through of Guardians of Haversack. The statement at the back of the rules which say the setup and gameplay for the solo mode is identical to the normal game was a boon (no extra rules or faff to learn) but may end up being a curse (it’s a literal bunch of solo games next to other people).
The basic premise of the game feels a bit like that AEG game guild of merchant explorers but with a bag building aspect.
You have a gridded map onto which monsters are added throughout the game. You then pull out chips from a bag which you can place on the board either from a central location or another chip you have already placed on the board and then move that new chip to a different spot. The chips are various characters that have powers that interact with the monsters and the board in various ways, for example one chip, the warrior, can enter spaces with monsters and vanquish them another can move onto treasure spaces and collect the treasure.
You’re, obviously, trying to maximise things so you can get coins to buy new chips and have better subsequent rounds.
After only one play I must say I enjoyed the ramping effect and the puzzle. There are games a bit like this (nmbr9) which feel like the control is a little bit too low but the consequences of accidental bad choices are damaging. Here there seems to be enough control and predictability that you feel like you can do a good job. (Maybe this will change).
There’s some good components and stuff in the game too. I’m not sure it feels like a £40 game but you can see where the money has gone. It’s a bit like a plus plus plus roll and write.
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We’re at the family farm for the week (it’s March Break here), so we of course brought a lot of games. So far, we’ve played:
Pandemic, a three-player game where we ALMOST got a perfect game, with only a single outbreak and every disease cured and eradicated. It was a great game that was a great start for the week!
Ark Nova twice. I won the first game 17 to -11 and lost the second one 37-34. Both games were incredibly tight and tense. We’re getting better at it, and it’s SUCH a great game, probably the front-runner for game of the year for me.
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Played a game of Battletech with Nick on TTS Friday. The game continues to impress me with both the relative-ease coupled to multiple layers of ye-gods-complexity if you desire.
One of the pilots Nick considered is very good at making his Mech not skid. Because of course there are rules for skidding. In a 30-100 tonne walking tank. Of course.
Anyway, we both fielded a lance of 5,000 BV: Nick’s was a directly pulled Liao lance of a Cyclops, Cataphract, Raven, and Blackjack. He likes running 1-of-everything style lances (a Light, Medium, Heavy, and Assault). I respect that.
My lance was an Atlas-D (the Stock-Standard-Boring Atlas), two Hunchbacks (4G and 4P, I think… the standard AC20 loadout and the All The Medium Lasers loadout), and a Trebuchet (the only “unusual” mech in my list: I took the PPC and AC5 Trebuchet instead of the LRM version. In retrospect, I really missed those LRMs… PPCs are great, but they’re very feast-or-famine).
We tried a scenario that had us each with 2 APCs (Heavy Wheeled, 2 Machineguns) that we had to get across the map. I did by driving wide of the firefight… Nick drove close enough to pull my AC20 Hunchback out of the fight but they moved fast enough that I could never get a bead on them. My Laser Hunchback took out his Blackjack before having its head carefully removed from its body (AC10 followed by a lucky Medium Laser). Technically a tie, but Nick destroyed more tonnage.
Then today Adam visited and we played String Railway which is… weird? Neat, but weird. Not sure it’ll stay in the collection (if I weren’t pruning so aggressively I’d keep it but I really need to shrink the collection), and then Gravwell which continues to be a joy, and then lastly two rounds of Scout which is weird. Good, but weird.
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Played Irish Gauge for the first time. Was OK. Apparently I got lucky when my initial focus on expanding one line paid off. Ended up with me having 3/4 shares, both other players neutered it towards the end by developing cities, but it was too little, too late to affect the outcome.
Innovation 4 player team game, excellent as always. Not a teaching game, hurrah!
John Company 2e teaching two people who had never played a game more complex than Wingspan previously. They had a great time, and said so! The Company was doing well, India was playing ball, until maybe round 3 where my family traded away all their shares “cheaply” to marry into high society (specifically, the spouse that prevents you from having shares), after which they shifted focus to things like raising huge unsustainable armies and buying luxuries. After the crown bailed out the company once, and at maximum debt with no ability to take out more loans, the other two families successfully hatched and executed a plan to gamble everything on one massive trading fleet in West India, only to fail on the pivotal dice roll. The military took the blame for the Company failure, India was left a mess, but all our families got out with a lot of mansions. Several marriages to influential people were enough to see my family at the top of the heap.
Impulse teaching a guy who knows Chudyk’s games are great, but he didn’t end up with a good first impression. Impulse is definitely spikier than Chudyk’s other games, and that’s already a high bar. Hopefully we’ll get some more games in sometime, see if he comes around.
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Only if you’ve just made a physical attack against infantry. 
Also the heat thing. Mind you, I’ll take a classic Awesome every time in a one-on-one.
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In a very nice surprise, my partner suggested (!!) that we play a round of Descent 3rd Edition last night. We’ve left it out on the table, but we usually only play once a week or two… this was the second time in two days!
I think the immersion is aided somewhat by the fact that I painted everything (not my best work, sure, but pretty dang okay), but it continues to be really fun. And while I understand the complaints against the app doing a lot of the heavy lifting… I love that it tracks most of the heavy lifting.
Like, Andy is playing (mostly) Kehli, who is currently equipped with a Hooked Hammer and a True Aim Crossbow. Both of those have two additional pieces of upgrade gear… for example, the Hammer has a Shaft that gives a 20% chance of removing all Fatigue from an attack card, and the Pommel doubles that chance. If we had to remember that, I’m not sure I would… but we don’t! We just tell the app what we rolled, and it tells us to do the things when we need to do 'em!
My one complaint is that I wish we rolled more attack and defense dice. Rolling 1 die just… isn’t as satisfying. Hopefully as we continue to upgrade our skills and gear we’ll get the opportunity to roll a second die (you roll 2 dice for Skill Checks, and that’s pretty dang satisfying).
We finished the 3rd campaign mission (technically, there are 2 “first” missions, each of which unlocks 1 new member for your team, Chance and Kehli, and then 2 “second” missions, one for Syrus and one for Galaden… so we’ve done both of the “first” missions and the first of the “second” missions). Chance’s mission almost kicked our teeth in (we both had Wounds, and Kehli had a Major wound), but Syrus’s required more brainwork (neat puzzle we had to solve which I got wrong twice before Andy figured it out) but we managed it more easily.
Oh, and a tiny thing, but I love that most of the missions don’t have arbitrary “clocks” you have to play against. You can take your time (most of the time) and explore. I really, really like that. I wish it let you do so after finishing off the Big Boss, but that’s a tiny complaint.
I love Awesomes. One of my favourite mechs (probably second only to the Timber Wolf).
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Realize I forgot to post a few plays.
A bit over a week ago, my wife and I played Lords of Vegas. Really tight game that ended up a tie at 66 points, which I won due to the money tie-breaker.
We played again a few days later, and again tied, this time at 60. This time my wife won the tie-breaker, by just $4 mil! So close!
Lastly, we have played Lost Cities, which ended with me being obliterated 215 - 148.
Good times.
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Two games of Quacks of Quedlinburg, losing both quite healthily. Two games of Jaipur, winning both narrowly. It’s lucky we don’t keep aggreate scores.
Played another 2-player game of Dead of Winter using Jon Gilmour’s Prisoner’s Dilemma variant. My good objective required 5 of barricades at the colony which seemed a fairly challenging prospect with the scenario we had (riddled with zombies). Luckily, my partner drew a crossroads card in which two of her characters had the opportunity to risk blowing themselves up to kill 6 zombies and lay 5 barricades from the rubble - job done! But then I realised about 2/3rds of the way through that the main objective (deplete two item decks) was insurmountable. Turns out, I wasn’t the only one to notice this. We both completed our betrayer objective and both lost with smiles on our faces.
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Two more games:
Carcassonne with our niece, where Maryse won at nearly 100 points, I came in second with about… 70, I think (I drew TERRIBLY), and our niece brought up the rear at 63. She drew a ton of abbeys and had an incredibly long road, but really nothing else. Great, spirited game.
Then Great Western Trail with Maryse’s brother. Suspense right up 'til the end with Maryse winning 146 to 136 (me) and 109 (her brother). I had a cowboy-heavy strategy, her brother pursued lots of train stations and Maryse managed to get quite a bit of both, hence her winning, but it was up in the air until the very end.
Great week so far!
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At Local Game Group last night:
Jamaica – did a little better this time but it’s still basically a game that has nothing to say to me. Minimal meaningful decisions, lots of randomness, hey ho. What’s a good game with a pirate theme? About all I have in my collections is Pirate 21, which is fun but again kind of non-thematic.
Deep Sea Adventure – I got stymied by the dice (first two moves were double 1) but it’s the first time that’s happened, so it could be worse. Had fun anyway.
3 Likes
Depends on how heavy you want to go, and how “pirate” you want your pirate games:
Art Is Pirateseque But No Actual Piracy
Cartagena is a neat little race game where you move to the nearest unoccupied symbol of a card you played: this means the game is all about leap frogging (if the first two Bottle symbols are covered by your or an opponent’s pieces, you get to move all the way the the third!). And since you have to get all of your pieces onto the boat to escape… a clever puzzle, but a fast one.
Skull King is a simple set-collection style game a bit like Wizard. Easy, but colourful.
Game Has President’s-Choice-Memories-of-Piracy Elements
Port Royal has a solid pirate theme, I’m told, but I haven’t played it in years. I think it was pretty good? I do know there is a new big box version that was very popular.
Forgotten Waters is a fantastic game nominally about pirates, and there is certainly elements of piracy, but it’s most a story-driven competitive narrative game. A lot of fun, honestly. I’m a big fan.
Y’arr, I Drink Only Rum and Eat Only the Dubloons Of My Enemies, Me Hearties!
Merchants and Marauders is probably the most ambitious pirate game ever made, and it’s good albeit a little too mean for my tastes (there is a “pick on the loser” mechanic that thematically and mechanically makes sense, but it can be a real feel-bad to drive somebody who is already losing deeper into the sea). I think Xia, Legends of a Drift System does it better, but that’s not pirates, only space-pirates.
A Tale of Pirates is a fully co-op game about working placement with sandtimers that is a tonne of fun, tongue firmly lodged in cheek, but very pirate-themed throughout. And the 3D ship you play on/with is really clever, plus it has a campaign that sees your ship getting better and cooler over time! We just unlocked the super cannon, but only on the port side, so now where we are facing is twice as important! Really great game.
Other than that, there are a few games where you can be space pirates (Outer Rim, Xia, and Twilight Imperium all jump to mind), and a few games that include pirates (whether sea or space… Starfarers of Catan, Race for the Galaxy, and Tiny Epic Pirates), but I don’t know if I would necessarily call them “Pirate Games.”
3 Likes
Thanks!
The particular player who owns Jamaica likes pretty light games and pirate themes; I like slightly less light games where the theme is a core part of the gameplay. Xia is too long for these evening sessions. Bizarrely, I don’t have a copy of Port Royal; I really ought to fix that.
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Its Hearts with knobs on
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