It took a few consultations of the rulebook, but we got there eventually!
2 Likes
I really like Dominant Species and have played it as a family multiple times. That rules wrinkle is something I have got wrong as many times as I have got right!
3 Likes
We started with the Clash of the Gladiators - perhaps one of Kniziasâ most thematic games. Dice rolling gladiatorial combat.
Acquire - played the fancy edition. The whole table was impressed on how good this 59 year old game is, and yet the rule set is so simple.
Holâs der Geier - old school 90s German card game. Something that old schoolers here will enjoy. I will only play this with 5 or above to make clashes occur often. Better than Go Nuts for Donuts
Squaring Circleville - I thought this is a good Euro, but found it to be strategically linear despite the tactical player interaction. Itâs like a worse form of Gaia/Terra. They can be a bit linear but still good, this one is a bit more obvious. Splotters, Cube Rails, etc have spoilt me. Like, so many of them are like decent or good games, but youâre just going through the motions once you understood how the game is played (âthe game behind the gameâ)
Spirit Island - I was teaching two newbies so I end up picking up Oceanâs Hungry Grasp as I donât have the brain power at that point to teach AND learn a new spirit.
And I deluxified⢠my copy.
Horseless Carriage - another game with @EnterTheWyvern . 4 players. The flow of the game is just too good that it was rather easy to teach the rules. This leans more heavily towards the âmodern Euroâ side of things, similar to Antiquity. And away from the emergent shared incentives of The Great Zimbabwe or Indonesia.
I am now seeing the game where thereâs alliances happening on the tech track. Which spec will show up is crucial. How to setup your factory is crucial and mind-melting. Where to expand your factory towards. Which car type do you want to produce? Which car type to market? What to research? When to focus and do you want to focus on engineering or sales? Just hard decisions after hard decisions after hard decisions. And donât think that itâs more heads-down. Enough decisions were made on the shared board that completely swung the game to my favour.
And if youâre fine calling this a modern Euro, then HOT DAMN, this is one of the best. I donât have one in my collection nowadays, but Horseless Carriage decides to represent the genre, I guess.
12 Likes
I guess I can see the âmodern euroâ angle. Itâs kind of like one, but without the guard rails. Spiky enough that it avoids that modern euro vibe for me.
2 Likes
Ooh. I think that might actually make me more eager to play it. (Yes, I know the haptic argument about the plastic bits, but the explorers in particular I find unpleasant to handle.)
6 Likes
That argument was always dire anyway. Strong freshman media studies energy. Itâs a nice touch, but nowhere near as profound as BGG wishes it was. 
4 Likes
Played murano the light masters over the weekend a few times. Itâs pretty good in some ways but a bit too wishy washy in its design in other ways.
The basic game is similar to something like Century - order cards, swap resources to fulfil the order hope you finish first. The main tweaks are you are rewarded for neatness and there are lots of powers. So if you can imagine your resources holder having limited spots (8 in this case) if you can complete a 4 resource card while only having four resource on your holder you get more points than if you you complete while having five or more resource on your board.
The general problem I have with this game is that too much seems to be in the luck of the gods. I think it is really possible to see who will win based on a dealt hand. The reason for this is two fold. Some orders are inherently harder to complete (and the mitigation offered is flexibility rather than material bonus). And the powers available in a game may not chime with helping you complete things with the board state.
It felt very unsatisfying also when the games end with close points. I think this is sometimes a mark of a tight game but sometimes a mark the skill ceiling is very low (or has a wide band such that decentish players should end at the same time).
It comes with some nice bits though - great art, custom glass tokens, a nice tray - for a ÂŁ25 game though.
So I would say itâs kind of a breezy game but a bit too breezy and the veneer peels off a bit too fast.
5 Likes
Played some Spirit Island against France level 4. Started off with Lure of the Deep Wilderness and Sun-Bright Whirlwind. Some bad play, a pair of spirits both with similar weaknesses against France and some unlucky timing on events meant we called it in stage 2. I switched out to Starlight Seeks itâs Form and we smashed it. Starlight is amazing, wobbly start but is so flexible and powerful. Fun spirit to play crucially.
Sunday and as @lalunaverde said we met to play Horseless Carriage. First impressions donât set it up there with Indonesia or Food Chain Magnate. That being said the way you seed the boards development feels very Splotter. Permanent influx of demand so you have all sorts to balance as other players have that information also so itâs unlikely to be a given that you will do much taking advantage of it easily. The factory building phase is so brutal in trade offs. I managed to link up my 3 mainlines all together 2 sharing D upgrades, 2 sharing A upgrades and 2 sharing B upgrades. My Sports cars could have 0 C upgrades though as that space ended up being needed for marketing space to get a bigger square, this feels classic Splotter squeeze.
I might have cost myself the win with a defensive research that allowed my less favoured demand to come in over my favourite demand. It would have allowed me to get almost all the juicy sales in the last round. There are 2 things here, first itâs good that it shows the player choices driving the game state development. Second though it gives me some pause on the how this game will develop with more plays. It may remain interesting but it could also be probe to some popularity contest/arbitrary choice issues. Alternately it could flatline with experience. The choice between engineering and sales felt interesting from when I understood enough right to the last turn so thatâs a god mechanic.
So what holds it back? Faff and components may be quite a bit of the issues. Maybe itâs just less familiarity. I think though that thereâs just a bit too much delay between the aggressive move and the resolution. Also the flatness of taking a square of sale off someone else often has a feel if those feeding off scraps picking at each other while someone else makes hay.
Sorry, that this may seem impenetrable if youâve not played but Iâm working out some thoughts without fluency and itâs not a review.
8 Likes
Our campaign of ISS Vanguard has had a bit of a hiatus due to life and schedules (waves around), but we managed to retake it yesterday evening.
We had our asses whooped big time. We followed a lead from one of our discoveries, and we got into the hell of a lot of trouble.
Rather than a landing mission, we got attacked by another alien vessel. I admit I got mildly annoyed because the game keeps setting up these traps, and we were already planning a landing, but these unusual events can get easily missed if you missed entering a log in the book. We had planned all our landing gear, and we had done it wrong, so we had wasted a good 20 mins or half an hour for something that we should not have been able to do.
The other big issue we have is the supporting app. The acting on the logs is great, but there have been a few occasions where weâve been looking for stuff all over the box after a hint, and not wanting to lose the information from the screen, we have not pressed proceed. And then this is precisely what needed to be done in order to follow to the next step.
I understand the magnitude of the story that is being told can lead to issues like these, but it has been already 3 or 4 times that we have reached points where it is unclear what to do next. I donât know if it is an issue with translation from Polish, or just the implementation of the app being just awkward, but as they are making updates to the app every now and then, you would think they would have picked these up by now?
Anyway, after a tragic game, where we had to take decisions that kept getting our recruits to an early death, we managed to fail the mission badly and lose over half a dozen recruits (which is bad). I am starting to feel like every game we have played lately has been on the depressing side of things. I can understand that the mission was complicated, but a carrot every now and again would help put up with so much stick.
9 Likes
My wife and I played Istanbul yesterday, with the Mocha and Baksheesh expansion. For the first time, we played with an entirely random layout, other than needing to swap a couple of tiles to put the Black Market three spaces away from the Tea House.
I ended up going first, and it became a bit of a rout. The mosques were next to each other, and I was quickly able to get all four of the upgrades, and two rubies. My wife was able to fully upgrade her wheelbarrow and get that ruby in the same amount of time using the Caravansary a bunch to keep getting a 5 Lira bonus. She also got one from the Sultanâs Palace.
However, I got one from the Coffee House, and then was able to use a Guild card to get a ruby from the Gemstone Dealer, which also gave me four more coffee. A few visits to the Roasting Plant (I may have these names wrong) gave me a bunch more coffee, and I was able to purchase the last two rubies I needed for the win, while my wife was only able to obtain one more for herself.
8 Likes
Game night. We started with That Old Wallpaper, which I picked up from a sale on a whim. Itâs not very good unfortunately. The center mechanic of choosing tiles by all selecting number cards at the same time, where the lowest played card gets the bottom tile and the highest gets the top, but if two players play the same number only one gets a tile, is good and fun if youâre not taking it too seriously. But the game behind it is a very simple tile-laying pattern match game, and the scoring at the end is tedious because itâs hard to pick out the relevant parts from your tableau. Too bad! Will probably give it away at some point.
Then we played 6-player Cosmic Encounter. I was the Loser and quickly became somewhat of a villain, as is wont to happen, but tensions were eased a bit when I stole some cards from the Guerilla, two of which were rifts, losing me 8 ships all at once.
No one was getting very strong attacking going on so it went around a few times. In the second-to-last turn the attack totals got up to 53 each, but we on the defense kept it just enough to stop the Filch and Oracle from winning.
Then it was my turn. My first encounter was from the Vacuum - we had had a bit of a contentious game, but I saw the opportunity to mend fences as I launched at one of their planets where I already had a colony to display my intention to negotiate. Negotiate we did, colony for colony to get us both up to 4, and they gave me a nice low card for my Loser power. Thankfully my next Destiny was against Guerrilla, so I invited Vacuum along, called the upset, used their nice -07 card, and we sealed our victory. Loser and Vacuum: The Alliance of Suck.
11 Likes
Played two games of Ticket to Ride: London with my wife today. I won the first game in a slew of tickets that all flowed into each other perfectly. This let me get up to 45 points, compared to my wifeâs 17.
Second game I also had starting tickets that worked well together, but they used up a good chunk of my cars to complete so they were the only tickets I had. Meanwhile, my wife had four tickets which she accomplished, and got a last play bonus by connecting the number 2 landmarks, which gave her the definitive win, 40 - 38. She still would have won with the tie breaker more completed tickets, but having the clear win was nice.
6 Likes
Played a game of Terraforming Mars with Maryse yesterday after my work day. I had Ecoline and she had Viron, somewhat to her dismay.
Being Ecoline, I of course pursued the âtree-hugging hippyâ route and planted a ton of forests (along with cities to score more and also to add animals to my Pets and Herbivore cards.
She also drew a bunch of âcubes on cardâ VP cards, including Safety Fleet and Fishes. With the Viron power, she had some serious VP at the end.
The game ended when she pushed the temperature to its final level. Every spot on Mars was covered except for the leftover ocean spots and I won 133-132.
Our scores wouldâve been inverted if sheâd remembered that forests also score by themselves, not just around cities, and had placed one (it wouldâve cost me a point on my Herbivores card as well).
QUITE the game!
11 Likes
Had a veritable glut of gaming lately. So nice! Like, with people, not online.
Last night, Brass Birmingham. Had to play it to celebrate it taking the #1 spot.
Went into the Rail age with the most points, most money, and highest income. It was my game to lose.
So⌠obviously I lost.
Yes, the other two players gave each other a leg up in the last round, which did in fact make the difference in my 4 point loss, but it wasnât kingmaking it was just them acting in mutual self interest. It never should have been that close to begin with, but someone took my pottery spot and rather than pivoting I overinvested in reaching a different pottery spot and didnât get the return for that investment.
Saturday my gamefound copy of Ra arrived and got a 5p game in Saturday night. Wow. What a game! First I gave my family a brief lecture on Knizia and OâToole so they knew what they were playing. Like it or not, they are real hallmarks of the present industry. Iâd only ever played Ra on the old Sage app (yes, I still have it and if my ipad ever crashes and I lose my old defunct apps, you might want to be a few hundred meters away from me). Playing digitally against ai is okay but Iâll be honest, I havenât been much of a Ra fan. But, like Bohnanza before it, at a certain point youâve got to respect and try these stately old games.
Bottom line is it was near perfect. Great game, great table presence, and really good dynamics around the table. I botched the teach (protip, donât explain the scoring up front but rather explain the tiles as they are drawn) and botched the bookkeeping (the app never tells you the used tiles donât go back in the bag) but it was great anyway.
Last game, 3p of Tiny Towns. Same message as always; simple game but it delivers. I love that moment about a third of the way in when all the first time players suddenly get it. âOh. OH. Iâm going to run out of spaceâŚâ
11 Likes
Lucky! Mine isnât due to arrive until Thursday.
3 Likes
I may be petty, but one of the main reasons I gave away my copy was that I really didnât like the spiky sticky plastic of the explorers (also, I knew it was going to a good home).
4 Likes
After the thrilling first ever Spirit Island win the other day, we only went and got another one yesterday - followed today by my first solo win! 
Weâre now so super confident in our skill and expertise that weâre going to stop making it âmoderately easierâ at setup. If weâre feeling particularly reckless we might even skip âslightly easier.â
Why, at this rate it wonât be long before weâre even using the blight cardsâŚ!
8 Likes
Last night, my wife and I played Unmatched. She stuck with Medusa while I broke into the Teen Spirit set and tried out Squirrel Girl. She introduces small fighters to the game, which can share spaces with other fighters, and can stack up to 4 in one space. However, if one dies, then all the small fighters of the same type (futureproofing here) in the same space are also eliminated. Not ideal against Medusa.
Nor was the match as a whole. We played on the new Navy Pier map, and there is a spot that is great for ranged fighters, as it can target a majority of the map. I took out a couple of Harpies and hit Medusa for 6 damage, and had the opportunity to do more as she had no cards in hand, but with just one card left in my own hand, it felt better to run. I lasted a couple more turns, but couldnât draw any more defense and got taken out.
4 Likes
I got to play my first multiplayer of Revive 
A friend came over to have a week-night game.
The game is a table hog. And it desperately needs a few trays to help with setup and tear down. So many pieces.
The teach took something between 30-40 minutes I guess. This included setup though. I am happy to report that I only had to consult the rulebook for a couple of symbols and the multiplayer end-game condition. The rulebook is fine. I think it could still be better and I wish there was a separate player aid for the myriad icons / symbols in the game but thatâs small criticismsâŚ
This was my most anticipated game for Spiel 2022 and it delivers. I want to compare it to Spirit Island or Beyond the Sun in that regard. It is not often that I am so hyped for a game and the game fulfills its promises.
Every player plays a tribe of people in a post-apocalyptic world that is only just being rediscovered. Every tribe has some unique abilities that make them quite different to play. Everyone also gets a big machine and some energy to power the machine. The machines are all the same until you unlock bits and pieces and get to modify them with new machine parts. Lovely thing and quite intuitive despite the convoluted looking messy board (the machine may qualify as a tech tree btw). Despite all this the theme is not strong hereâŚ
This is a resource management, (literally) engine building, exploration card game with multi-use cards. It is quite unique. You gain VP for exploring, populating and building on the board and for building up your machine and your deck and ⌠is it really that much of a point salad? It doesnât feel like it but it probably is.
There are 4 resources. Crystals are a joker, the other 3 (cogwheels, books, food) are each associated with one of the main actions which are in turn represented on the 3 card colors and on the 3 machine tracks. Most tribes specialize in one of those resources.
On their turn a player gets 2 actions or resets their board by hibernating. (We only took 2 Hibernates each before the game was over). The possible actions are:
- play a card in 1 of your 4 (later 5) card slots and gain the resources or bonusses either on top of the card if you play in one of the 2 top slots or the bottom of the card if you play in one of the 2 bottom slots of your board
- use your machine switch to gain a resource (only once between hibernates), optional: copy another players card which then gets discarded to the ârest area freeing up that players card slot)
- explore a tile by paying some resources (mostly food) to gain VP and a new card and place tile in an advantageous way to create ideal conditions for your next moves
- populate a city with one of your meeples by paying the books that meeple costs on your player board and unlock a special ability or gain a bonus. You want to reach the corners of the map with your meeples for some sweet extra VP
- build a village (3 cogwheels) or town (5 cogwheels for double bonusses) to gain adjacency bonusses that improve your machine and if you build next to water you can find some specialsâŚ
There are certain free actions like resource conversions or using energy to power your machine. But do 2 actions is pretty quick⌠unless you try to overthink which card to play in what slot⌠because slots can be enhanced with bonusses over time and cards can allow you to play more cards and sometimes even allow a 2nd card in a slot and depending on what you do you may want different resources or the action will yield you a new machine improvement or energy you want to use⌠and maybe you want to build in that one space on the board but do you want to extend your building range by paying food or using the machine piece that does that for you?
Overall, I find that the game has a complex setup and certainly complex rules but my friend never felt lost despite this being her first game, she always knew what she wanted to do. Same for my first game (where I made a bad rules mistake: meeples can only populate the city spaces that are available on some tiles, the rulebook is clear enough on this really but I found the prospect too daunting to believe what it said). All the various moving parts come together to form a cohesive game where every part just works together. The game has very enjoyable combos and a good ark. The first hibernate comes rather quick as you run out of cards and slots to place them in both. But that second hibernate takes a lot longer to come around and the third one⌠if you donât want to waste a turn (hibernate gives you a small bonus every time but 2 actions are wortth more)⌠we didnât need it before all the âmasksâ were taken and the game ended. It definitely didnât overstay its welcome. It was over just at the height of the arc when turns started to take longer because of all the various options and combo possibilities that come about when you have a well-energized machine to play with.
I have enjoyed my solos quite a lot (the solo gives you a set number of action pointsâplaying a card costs 1, hibernate costs 2 and you just play against the game to get a good score, very fun) and I enjoyed the duel tonight as well. I won by a narrow margin possibly because I was able to end the game and force my friend into a suboptimal final turn and also I had played before and she had not.
I definitely recommend this. I just do not know exactly to whom, as I find the game difficult to classify. Complex card game with combo potential, a bit of a tech tree and a shared map?
Looking forward to playing this more.
PS. just saw a post on BGG that they are planning to announce an expansion for SPIEL 2023 in the next few days. ooOO nom
6 Likes
Glory to Rome - We saw; We play; We build cards
Taj Mahal - tense 4 player of this game that isnât talked about among Kniziaphiles, in relative to the other popular ones. I wouldnt put it at Tier 1 but itâs pretty tense and fun
Tor - 2 player Football-themed (or Soccer-themed) Knizia where you literally have the same deck of numbered cards and you try to put the ball on the opponentâs goal. Itâs strangely fun. How? Not my kind of nugget though, from Knizia. I would prefer something like En Garde or Schotten Totten
Fruit Spy - another obscure Knizia card game.
Zombiegeddon - another Knizia where they took Jaeger und Sammler and put this awful zombie art on top. Actually unplayable because of it. Itâs hard to read the board.
Urland - from Doris Matthaus and Frank Nestel. Bizarre area majority game where one player secretly decides from 3 random tiles which region would score. The nxt player on the left doesnât do anything. And the rest does their standard âchoose an actionâ turn. Weird. But didnât charmed me. The whole process made our decisions feel significantly arbitrary.
5 Likes