Local games night:
We played La Granja irl at last. My wife won (obvs).
3 players was about 90 minutes. This is a good game with really clever use of components - the cards can be used in 4 ways and all other goods are represented by hex cylinders.
It’s a pretty heavy economic game with a bit of area majority thrown in. Turn order is important and can be manipulated a lot.
The big thing though is the use of any time actions - so much of the game is buying, selling and upgrading goods to give you the right stuff to pack onto donkeys to deliver to different places.
Really impressed, and it’s good on BGA.
Crossing - point at the gems and rejoice/curse. Good fun as usual
Pax Renaissance - 3 player Pax Ren. We had Vlad the Impaler and his brother the Handsome. I took over Hungary with the Impaler and used it to crack the powerful Ottoman Turks. An opponent then used the Handsome to take it away from me. Then I took over the Orromans with the help of Greek Klephts, Bandits, and Irregulars. The Empire flipped to Greek Orthodox reincarnating the Roman Empire for the 2nd time. Which I have never seen before.
One player saw all the Spice Islands-related cards as our initial setup and immediately took King Henry Navegador under his control and shifted trade from the Med Sea to the Atlantic. This screwed up my merchants in the Eastern Med. But I joined in the fun and set up merchants along the Atlantic Route with a card that allows me to earn double per merchant.
I was set up for both Imperial Victory with my legion of kings and also Globalisation Victory with my boatload of merchants. But I got kneecapped. No one likes a powerful Ottoman/Byzantine Empire if controlled by a player. I was 2 turns away from the latter, but someone manage to take control of the Mamluk Sultanate. Orchestrated a take-over where the slave soldiers decide to have a Republic instead. Which allowed my opponent to have the Renaissance Victory. A nascent republic in the Nile - what a beauty. Eklund would weep in horror at such a sight.
Botswana aka Wildlife Safari
World of Warcraft (Pandemic) - oh damn. I really enjoy this one. The difficulty is nice. And with me obsessing over no-luck high-strategy Splotters and 18xx, having a dice-chucker mini-fest game like WoW is just nice. The minis are also very tasteful. None of that CMON-style crap where they have these super-detailed minis drenched in grey. Sounds heretical, but I prefer this sort.
Difficulty: I don’t think it’s as hard as Ghost Stories, but I still like the difficulty. Not a push-over like the others such as Fall of Rome or Star Wars
Troyes - meh. I’m happy to play this, but this isn’t my sort of thing any more. I tied with another player in the end. No tiebreakers apparently. And rightly so, imo.
Darwin‘s Journey, the third in my series of recent arrivals. I went into this game with some apprehension. As I backed the KS on a late night whim. It is not the kind of game I would back these days. This was my second attempt to learn this game. The first I gave up after setup and discovering I had to read 25 more pages of rules.
This game was a solo vs Alfred the bot. The game is for 1-4 players and you are following in Darwin‘s Footsteps to explore the Galapagos islands, find fascinating specimens and figure out the Theory of Evolution.
This game is just TOO MUCH. There are some really good ideas here. The workers are satisfying. But not even all spots need colored seals as a requirement. The whole correspondence thing with the letters is super fiddly and adds very little to the game why wasn‘t that „cut“ (ahh Kickstarter). The two layer board still has spaces where stuff can slide around wildly. The objectives even more than the crew cards introduce very little additional interest. You could just not have them and have the „unlocks“ on the player board tied to how far you leveled your workers. The combos and action chaining are something I usually love but somehow here it fails to grab me as a positive thing. Instead I found the Campsite rules just annoying.
I am unsure I want to play this again. The bot is one of the least good solo modes I have encountered recently. (But both Distilled and Revive had really excellent ones so maybe Alfred is not that bad and I just dislike card driven automas). I might consider playing this 2 handed instead or against an actual human opponent but I am not sure I want to subject anyone to an error-prone and incomplete teach from my side which is totally what this would be.
And to compare this to another „too much“ designer. Lacerda‘s On Mars (the only one I have played) comes together to form a whole where everything serves a purpose and if you cut off a piece, something is actually missing from the game. Here I can easily identify 2 different sub-systems I would have ditched completely.
The game reminds me of a dish I had recently at a restaurant. For the 2nd course the cook apparently couldn‘t decide which taste he wanted to achieve and offered so many different items on the plate that it seemed like a convoluted mess more than a dish and while every single piece was very tasty, I moved onto the next dish without a clear memory of that one.
This is the image of a Rococo table I copied from the wikipedia entry. Euros have (probably not just now) entered the age of „late baroque“:
I blame this on Kickstarter. I remember the campaign. Stretch goals over stretch goals. As stated above, I backed this on a whim and I am telling myself today I will not fall for such campaigns. But the designers Simone Luciani and Nestore Mangone have an impressive(-looking) pedigree of games and I wanted to try one of theirs not having played (many) others… and that more than anything is what drove me to back this.
PS: I still enjoy worker placement games all these years later. Please talk to a certain Uwe R. to find out how to make games that center around that without too much needless fluff, just because your game looks miles better than Orange Burger Canal that one is a far better game.
I think that most of the simple mechanisms have been done - if you put out a new worker-placement game now, it has to have a big gimmick, or a big name licence, or something, or it’ll sink without trace. It feels to me – I admit largely as a non-player of heavy Euros – that the current approach is to throw in as much as possible, and not everyone can make that work as an integrated game design. (There’s argument over whether Lacerda manages it; obviously personal taste is involved.)
Counterpoint: Distilled.
I have yet to post a bigger write-up of this. I backed it on similarly whimsical reasons… and yet it produces a cohesive game with all the bells and whistles people expect of modern Euros. It is a (somewhat) complex game with not a few moving parts but I could teach right now without checking the rulebook.
I would argue that while Lacerda is definitely in the “baroque” period he manages to pull it off better than most.
Back to Distilled. The game has a central mechanism that everything else pushes towards: distilling spirits. The distilling part of every round has you take a bunch of cards, add some alcohol, remove the top and bottom card of the shuffled stack of cards to simulate the removal of heads and tails and check the result. Everything else is either there to give you a better set of cards, manipulate which cards get removed, improves the cards you put into the “deck”, gives you recipes to produce or enhances the next steps you take with your product.
I am really (after 2 solos) quite impressed with that. They included variability through a bunch of scenarios (aka recipe sets) and various characters which come with a bit of special setup and 1 special recipe. That’s it.
I need to write it up for contrast.
PS:
I generally agree with your sentiment. Just because I can give you a counter-example doesn’t make it less correct for most games.
This sounds like a cool mechanism to my mind
It is 
I promise I will play a 3rd solo (or 2 player) and write it up. Even my partner is excited to try the game
I find alcohol and board games mix a little too well sometimes.
That bonuses upon bonuses of Darwin’s Journey reminds me of Ark Nova, where someone’s turn can take ages, because every action gives them another action, and they’d only reall planned for the first.
Ok so another wall of text incoming. I played a 3rd game of Distilled (solo because my partner still has work to do). I went through Scenarios A, B and C now.
I did not back this game initially despite some interest in the theme (multiple trips to Scotland may have caused a small whisky habit in this household). The original campaign on KS had incredibly high shipping costs and so I noped out. This was probably the first time I skipped a campaign because of shipping. But then it appeared on our local crowdfunding which is basically a local preorder that has no shipping cost. I still thought this was going to be just a money-grab for people who wanted the game for the theme and I didn‘t like the cover and still don‘t. But I asked my partner and he said „please back this“. So I did.
Much like Darwin‘s Journey I backed this against my better judgement so my excitement was way below my apprehension when this arrived. As I unboxed the game, I noticed a lot of small cardboard pieces that I thought would be awful and fiddly. And I still didn‘t gel with the cover or the artwork. But as I sorted everything into the insert, and it all had its place and it looked like the box would close without issues and I could begin to see how the materials might work together and which decks of cards would do what… I thought „this might not be all that bad.“
And as I have mentioned multiple times, it is not that bad. Quite the opposite. But let me put this first: I am impressed and I think it is a solid game that I can teach and would be willing to get to the table, which shouldn‘t be hard. If you like the theme I would say go get it. But… I have a lot of better games that I am far more enthusiastic about playing and I have a couple of doubts about depth and balancing. Compared to Darwin‘s Journey though, those are small niggles. And I have had this game only for a week or so and have played 3 solos, so there is that.
So let me explain a bit how a game of Distilled works.
The game is played over 7 rounds which each have a number of phases. Each round you distill some kind of spirit, sell it or mature it in your cellar and then gain some money and VP. There are a few end-game points to be gained and after that the person with the most VP is declared the Master Distiller.
So every player gets a personal board as a distillery, with the distillation vat, space for some improvements (bought from the market), space to keep the ingredients (bought from the market) and space for bottles and casks (bought from the market, though you have a set of basics you can always use). Everyone takes on one of the various roles that are suitable for the chosen recipe set (aka scenario, the rulebook tells you which roles are appropriate). For every role there is a special ingredient you put aside to be gained later, some starting money and ingredients and the special recipe that only you can make! Everyone gets a recipe sheet and a recipe board to put it in.
Setup for the various card decks takes a few moments but it is intuitive and impossible to forget how. Once I had learned this game I only had to consult the rulebook a couple of times. Even the solo, which requires a bit of additional setup, is easy to remember. It works a little bit like 7 Wonders duel, you lay out some cards and have to fulfill a goal in each row before moving on to the next and you can only fulfill goals that are „above“ the one you fulfilled (see lower right corner of the whole tabel part of the photo). I struggled with the solo during my first game but once you‘ve figured it out it is really great and quite unique, I haven‘t seen anything similar (at least that I remember).
So what do you do on a round?
I‘ve found that the game really converges nicely around the distillation process and the theme is well represented in the materials, the art and the game play. My partner—who hasn‘t played but watched—keeps comparing it to Viticulture in that aspect. In all 3 games I was so far focussed on grain sugars as those are cheapest and I found myself making grain spirits almost exclusively, though I feel in multiplayer this may not be an option because the number of labels for each spirit is finite and labels give important bonusses on your player board. The improvements you can buy for your distillery are really well done though not all are equally useful throughout the game. I am also assuming that there are more points to be made beyond grain spirits.
There are goals in multiplayer that I have not checked out this was a game for once where learning the solo first didnt seem like a terrible idea.
I think with the various spirits and recipe setups and characters and cards there is a good variability in here—although I want to add that most recipes are similar: a certain number of required sugars, a type of cask to age them in or not age them in…
The puzzle is tight enough to not be trivial. Buy a recipe marker first and risk making moonshine on your first turn? (Not the worst idea, moonshine pays extra). Buying an improvement may save you money or make you VP or it may cost you making that spirit that needs aging on round 2 already… I am keen to see this in multiplayer. The phase that is the most complex can be played by everyone at the same time.
Btw it plays 1-5 and it suggests it takes 30min per player which seems on the low end for 1 or 2 but from 3 up I say that might be correct.
These days I am quite happy to find games that I know will appeal to my friends, that I can teach easily and where I do not worry about wether I will ever find a group for this niche thing. So if you want a solid mid-weight Euro game that does better on theme than most of these and if the theme appeals…
Regarding the solo: I found it fun and it plays quick enough. However, I think part of the appeal of this is that I can put it in front of others. That it also offers a nice solo is a bonus in this case. For all that it plays quickly, it still requires quite a bit of setup and tear down in comparison with game length and meatiness. So for solo-only I would probably not recommend this—unless you are in love with the theme of course 
Tonight: some more Project L, and if it weren’t in a large Kickstarter-bonus box to hold the Game Trayz™ I’d probably take it to more game events. Always surprises me how quickly a game ends.
And them some Ominoes, quite random and lightweight but always good fun.
I saw a retail edition and it is way smaller. The box size is what I would expect from a game like Project L
Yeah, the original box was fine. Then the supplemental KS happened with the GameTrayz and the taller box lid that fits over the original box bottom. Similarly the only Star Realms I ever take anywhere is Colony Wars, and I have a megabox full of unused expansions for that.
ETA correction - it’s the original Project L lid, but the KS bonus storage thingy extends the new main box below the height of the lid.
Yeah. After I told myself to create a physical limit of 4x4 Kallax (in reality: it’s two 2x4, but same thing, innit?), compact games are just nicer to have. TTR box size now feels too large.
Had another crack at Venom Goblin in Marvel Champions. And got my ass whupped again. But at least this time I did defeat his first phase. That damn glider that lets him double activate against each hero and which I have never been able to discard because I never have enough attack cards in hand…if I were a vindictive sort, I would set that card on fire…
You could try to lure in a cat, but I’m sure they wouldn’t cooperate, because cat.
On Sunday my partner and I made the drive down to St. Catherines (near Niagara Falls, for those of you who aren’t super familiar with Ontario geography) to visit our co-op playing friends. The main reason for the trip was to play Oathsworn, which we did!
We just completed Mission 5, which was neat! Good final boss which almost beat us (3 of us went down in the fight, and the last guy was on 2 health remaining!), but we pulled off the victory at the end. Story continues to be on the strong side.
I do have a concern, though… which is probably silly… but the game looks to be about 20-24 missions long. That means, at the rate we are playing, we won’t be done with it until 2025 (we play about once a month, sometimes a little less!), and that’s just too gosh dern slow.
Ah well. Good problem to have (aside from the arrival of Frosthaven, which will be even longer!).
After that, we played a quick game of the thoroughly ridiculous Team3, which is a joy. A co-op physical manipulation game that Ava recommended a while back, it’s good clean stupid fun. Big fan.
Then it was on to Scout which is consistently weird but in a wonderful sort of way, and then a game of Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza which I admit is more fun than I thought it would be. I gave them my copy because it’s cheap as dirt and I think they’ll get some mileage out of it.
Good times! No other games on the horizon, aside from Andy and my continued journeys through the new Descent we’re on our first side-quest, which I think is around mission 6 or 7 for us)… super happy that they just announced Act II, less excited about how expensive it is, but hey, we’re having a great time with the game!
… and now my cat has sat on my arm so I can’t type very well. Anyway! Descent is good, more Descent is better.
Played a 2nd solo of Revive.
Discovered an egregious rules mistake I made, the meeples you use to „populate“ locations can only populate cities (ruins?) and the special scoring locations in the corners of the map. Started over, seemed harder at first but not by so much that the game became impossible to play. The rulebook is clear about it and yet not clear enough. I am so used to rulebooks that are bad that when something shows me the exact spaces that are allowed but neglects to mention the other similar spaces are disallowed… I infer that everything that is not forbidden is allowed. Not here though: both BGG and another friend who learned the game at SPIEL told me my interpretation was too lenient.
I‘ll need a third game or possibly a multiplayer to write more about this game which is really the one that suits me best of my recent trio of „big new games I waited a long time for“.
Quick games this afternoon with my in-laws!
First was a 3-lap race of Pitch Car where I managed to completely blow the win, not just on my last, but also second to last shots of the game. I managed to take second place only thanks to my nephew, who pushed me over the line at his own expense. Lots of big cheers and groans (mostly groans) as always.
I then got to play Crokinole with my brother-in-law. We didn’t get to play to a full score thanks to an interruption, but we got three rounds in with a win each and a tie in the middle. That said it’s fair to hand him the win on the game since the point spread was 65-10 by the time we split. 
Rustyyy.
