I’ve played MK2 once (@MichaelCule owns a copy) and I’d like to try it again - it does seem to be proof against this sort of standardised play.
I like the core “roll for resources, everyone gets payouts regardless of turn” mechanic as far back as Catan but I much prefer Valeria Card Kingdoms and am guessing I might also enjoy Spacebase.
1 Like
Space Base left me cold but it’s another of those games that is widely loved by people who aren’t me. 
Here’s some thoughts on the games I played at Airecon (to distract me from the covid I also picked up there, very cheaply!):
The Climbers - really like this as a fun quick colourful game, works a lot better with the rules tweak that the game only ends when everyone has passed. Also I like how @RogerBW ’s beard seems to form a cloudy mountaintop.
Damask - played this a couple of times and enjoyed both games although I find the patterns slightly hard to distinguish between at first glance. A close encounter with the taxman in the first game scarred me but I made it through. Pleasant enough and would play again but I shan’t be buying. Also I’m slightly distracted as there was a (alleged) brothel next to the vet school in Bristol called ‘The Damask Rose’.
Salty swingers - or something, I’ve forgotten the name. A very light eurogame fishing thing which I really enjoyed, although the set collection mini game seemed too hard to pull off to us. Anyway I won so it turns out vegetarians make the best fisherpeople. Oh, was it Coldwater something?
FUSE - amazed I got a photo as it’s very fast real time no nonsense bomb decision. The fact I got a picture might explain why we lost, although we finished it a second time with two minutes to spare. Very good, liked lots.
Ashes - phoenixborn thingy - another game in @RogerBW and my odyssey as we finally finished playing through the phonetic bore things. I worked out my deck needed to play aggressively and this ended badly, for @RogerBW at least.
Xia - legends of a drift system which I have enjoyed greatly every time I played, this time joined by @lalunaverde who cheered us all up greatly by blind jumping directly into a star. This was the first time I’ve tried being nice and not an outlaw and also the first time I haven’t won. Coincidence?
Cosmic Encounter - with excellent explanation from @Captbnut . Never played it before and had little idea what was happening but I enjoyed it very much. Nonsense but glorious nonsense.
Regicide I like it very much, kind of an aggressive co op solitaire. We failed miserably twice, but we had fun.
Ohhh I forgot the name again. It’s one of those little pig games, one word, like Vajazzle or something. Anyway it’s really good and I very much enjoyed it.
Rallyman Dirt - hmm. I know Roger enjoys it a lot and mechanics are fun and interesting… but here’s the round structure for a 5 player game:
Turn 1… P1 moves
Turn 2… P1 moves, P2 enters the map and moves
Turn 3… P1, then P2, then P3…
And so on. Which means if you are player 5, you have to wait through 14 other turns before you start. Which is, I’m gonna be honest, not much fun in itself, but then combine that with the fact that there’s a mechanic for roughing up the track as people go round it, which means as the last player you’re almost certain to be at a disadvantage for you… it’s frustrating. Then imagine player 4 crashed before you so having waited 14 turns you then can’t do what everyone else did because there’s a car blocking you.
You could argue that you’re going to be at an advantage watching everyone else try different strategies possibly but the nature of the game is that there’s one good opening path that everyone tries, and some succeed or not based on the dice. It changes from there of course but everyone does the same opening move. It was fun but with significant drawbacks.
The Night Cage
A fun little co op that we solved first time and consequently think it’s very easy although I’m assured it isn’t really.
Heat - quicker and easier to grasp than Rallyman. I enjoyed it although I think Rallyman is probably the better game, I must say I had much more fun playing this though.
22 Likes
The Oink game is Scout.
Glad you enjoyed Cosmic
6 Likes
My D&D session last night got cancelled last minute, so I went to Friday Night Games in Hastings. It was nice to see 8 people there, after having heard last week it got cancelled after nobody but the host turning up.
I played a lot of card games, namely 2 games of Adventure Time Fluxx (dodging Killer Bunnies, phew) between 4, and then between 5. One game of Superfight between 3, which was funny at times, but left me a bit cold.
Then one game of Kiwis Versus Morality (meh, and not being a kiwi, some of the cards were lost on me) two games of 7 Wonders: Architects on which I had my highest score ever on the first game (50 many), but still finished second. It was a weird game, we went to war 4 times. Then did terribly on the second, due to bad cards. The game is light enough to be enjoyable, as it has the right length and complexity for most players, but I still find it too often decided by luck.
We finished the night on something light: Joking Hazard. Follows the same premise of many of the card games we played through the night, and can be very funny at times, but I think my surreal sense of humour was lost on the judges very often, so I finished last.
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The “fishing” game is Coldwater Crown.
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Aradel’s horde of puffy smoke creatures is always fun! I refined her until someone got so pissed off and dedicated a deck to counter this. It was the Egyptian lady with the snake and mice and designed the deck to quickly kill off Low-HP hordes like this.
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Yeah, I had Saria, and it was very clear that what I had to do was exhaust my opponent’s deck. Which is fine, but not always compatible with having enough creatures out not to get shredded by mist thingies. Should probably have left more creatures guarding me rather than using their crunchy powers.
2 Likes
Well, today we were supposed to be playing Frosthaven, but when I arrived they were still sorting through the tiles. We made some small talk, and then decided next week would be better to play it. Especially as we have a 4th player who couldn’t make it today.
So, we played Tiletum instead. For a game with only 12 (ha!) actions, this games really forces you to wring every last point from your turn. Our winner was coming last by 45 points about halfway through, but managed to win by a decent margin. Mostly from contracts. Might have to look into that some more. I was trying to put out houses and pillars, and also getting points from the city fairs.
Then we played Velonimo, which is themed as a cycling game, but is actually a ladder, or climbing game. You group your cards by value or colour, and then your total is the number of cards you put down, multiplied by 10, and then adding in the lowest card value. So, playing two “1” cards, would give a total of 21. You’re trying to get rid of all of your cards. There are five rounds, each worth more and more points. It was quick fun, and the art is amusing.
And then we ended with two games of Escape The Curse of the Temple, where we came desperately close, but still failed to escape. And we haven’t even added any curses of treasures yet! At 3p, we decided to stick together as much as we could.
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Played a quick euro games night.
First up was Scorpius Freighter which continues to be good for the 45-1 hour mark. Unfortunately one person was dragging it out which didn’t help.
Next up was City of Spies: Estoril 1942 this was a close run tense thing. I lost by one point due to a flipping of a reward on the last turn that swung 2 rewards in their favour. Bah!
8 Likes
An underrated game - not sure why I sold my copy
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I just finished up my first game of Frostpunk and it’s a hard keeper. It’s huge, long and unwieldy but it’s also tense, brutal and thinky. I have absolutely no time to write much more at the moment, but it’s a blast and has an absolutely ingenious event deck system that allows for maximum flavour with minimum frustration (critical in a long, serious game). Completely blown away by this one.
10 Likes
Last night with two:
- The Climbers, feels very different with two than the chaos of a four or five player game, quite tactical.
- Project L, I don’t play this anything like often enough (in fact I think it might make a good lightweight PBF).
- then some TTS Sentinels of the Multiverse, with Expatriette, Mr Fixer, Nightmist and Setback against Terrorform in Diamond Manor. Not a great fan of Setback so far, but he feels a bit like Fanatic, whom I do enjoy playing. Diamond Manor’s mobile relics got a bit fiddly. Mr Fixer is great.
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…five weeks later…
I finally got a second game played. Same map; different player faction; different scenario/ancient/minions; same result as before – my team was absolutely pulverised by the unstoppable force of the Ancient one.
I remain a little frustrated with this one. I hope that it starts to click for me, otherwise I’ll regret not just sticking with Helter Skelter + The Dark Judges, as thus far I flat-out prefer the structure of TDJ (which is simply skirmishing against the enemy faction, which is what the game is definitely good at). For me, the jury is still out on the scenario-based system they’ve used here.
Edit: It sounds like I randomly picked one of the hardest scenarios in game 1, and one of the most difficult player factions to win with in game 2. It seems that I should try playing against the Tyrant next time…
5 Likes
Played Outer Rim again. The theme is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this game, but we all love Star Wars so it pays off!
There’s a lot of skill checks on D8s, but knowing how the game works meant it was easier to pick up the stuff needed to modify your rolls and manipulate the dice.
It’s enormous on the table. I don’t think it’s a good game if you don’t like the IP, but it does feel like you’re being a scruffy looking nerf herder.
13 Likes
Briscola Chiamata - Yep. The trick taker that is similar to Vivaldi that I mentioned above. Other than this Italian trick taker, all the games I’ve played in our library session are Knizias.
Penguin Party
LAMA Party - won both rounds by shedding my hand of cards. Pure skillz, burv. Pure skillz 
Modern Art - The two newbie ladies who joined us who never played MA before understood how the game is played (the game behind the game that is). Incentives, player positions, and determining values. Mainly due to not having to play board games to know these skills. It was a very pleasant experience. I do tell the first and second layer strategies of MA right out the bat, because I can’t deal having a Groundhog Day vibes when I’m playing Modern Art. And credit still goes to them, because a lot of people still dont get it after I say how MA is played. I did suggest to talk about the paintings before we do the auctions. It was a very good game and very enjoyable game of Modern Art.
Poison
Spectaculum - Knizia’s Cube Rails in disguise! You buy and sell on circus companies as they travel the kingdom and their values go up and down like a rollercoaster. So buy low and sell high. Rather shallow compare to other Cubies, but it’s fun, especially with its non-train theme.
Babylonia - 3 player game. We went for network strategies and it was fun. I got the edge by going for the Ziggurat strategy on the side, which won me the game. I think Babylonia is one of the best Knizias and one of the best light games out there, but I feel that even Babylonia is getting elbowed out by its peers. Through the Desert is more approachable and more charming and its still cerebral. T&E and Stephenson’s Rocket are deep af, and Babz is, imo, not good enough to compete. Oh and Bridges of Shangri-La is much more opaque yet simpler with its rule set
Then, I played Indonesia with @EnterTheWyvern . I went for a full-on shipping strategy and try to monopolise the shipping industry and failed. I wasn’t earning enough money and fell behind against the other 3 players. It was still an exhilarating experience that I only get with Splotters and others, unless it’s a difference niche like immersive story-telling like Xia
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I almost bought Babylonia a while ago. I think it was only the poor contrast on the numbers on these tiles that stopped me.
1 Like
As advice to the young, that’s better than most.
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Last night at Local Game Group: we started with Parade, always a favourite, and ended up with some very good scores - I came out with 9, and I was in third place.
Then an introductory Sentinels of the Multiverse (Fanatic, Wraith, Setback, Alpha, Captain Cosmic vs Baron Blade in Megalopolis) which was, alas, something of a failure: I think we broke the rules-learning buffer on one of the players, and there was just too much for them to keep track of at once. So it went very slowly, and wasn’t much fun for them, so we called the game rather than get thrown out when the pub closed. Oh well. I hope I made it clear that this doesn’t mean we don’t want to play with that person…
10 Likes