I agree, the rat tails look nice but rarely make much difference. I haven’t had a Quacks game like that, but clearly that it can go that way isn’t great.
3 Likes
That’s why I refuse to play Quacks again. Push your luck games only work for me if everyone is pulling from the same luck pool. Diamante or Celestia essentially. And the rat tails have never been a valid catch up mechanism, they’re essentially a placebo.
4 Likes
Been testing out my new solo gaming table in the new house tonight with a retry of Marvel Champions - the tutorial scenario. It’s a nice game that I’m enjoying more the second time, close to Sentinels of the Multiverse which I love, but closer to Arkham Horror LCG with which it shares most mechanics. Definitely will play more of this although I really don’t need another LCG obsession in my life.
The solo game area worked out nicely too! Cosy but not cramped!
12 Likes
My wife and I played Isle of Skye this afternoon. It was a really close game, but I squeaked out the win, 65 - 64.
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My husband and I have played a lot of Frosthaven since it arrived here. We set it up on our game table and played it until my family arrived from out of state for a week. Put it away while they were here so we could play games and build puzzles with them, then once they left Frosthaven was back out and hasn’t been put away since. Assuming I haven’t missed tracking a game in my app, we’re at 22 games played and almost at the end of the first year on the game calendar. My husband is on his third character, maybe about half way to retiring. I got a bad deal on my first life goal so finally retired my first character tonight and created my second that I’ll play for the first time in our next game.
I’m loving all the town aspects and upgrades there. Sometimes it’s been frustrating not being able to do something I know should be possible because we don’t have the right stuff yet (e.g. enhance cards until you stumble on the ways), but it all fits with the theme of the new outpost settlement being a bit rugged and the discovery process is fun. We just unlocked a building associated with a net icon capturing pets and I’m excited to see how that plays out. Having two different ways of accessing items (buying vs crafting) seems a little arbitrary at times, but it works I guess.
9 Likes
Just finished playing a two-handed learning game of Aquatica (I lost to the stuffed monkey 53-51, and I swear it’s taunting me).
It’s hard to explain, but the game kinda makes me uncomfortable, like I’m standing at some kind of precipice. Like, I KNOW I understand it, well enough to teach its basics at least, and I can see its depths (ha!) and I think we’ll have fun, but it… I don’t know, it doesn’t feel comfortable, not like Terraforming Mars, or Great Western Trail, or, more recently, Ark Nova did, right from the get-go.
It’s the same kind of feeling I got when I learned Brass: Birmingham and Tzolk’in, and those became some of our all-time favourites, so I’m confident, but it’s a disconcerting feeling.
8 Likes
We met up with some friends last weekend to play a lot of games…
4 x No Thanks!
Really fun, end of the evening push your luck/ kind of auction game with 6 of us.
3 x Hey, That’s My Fish!
I got this in a trade. It looks like a kids game but it’s actually a pretty tight and crunchy spatial game and really aggressive at 4. Plays in 15 minutes.
2 x Ginkgopolis
I taught this to 4 others. This always proves to be a fiddler teach than I imagine, but much easier than Troyes (which is a similar weight and length by the same designer). There’s so much going on, but the mechanics are smooth and it seems endlessly replayable. It’s a brilliant game.
2 x High Society
Is this a good game? Having a silly conversation around it and being openly incredulous at each other makes it much better. I’m rubbish at it.
1 x Antike II
We got a simple, but major rule wrong and didn’t have starting resources. It’s fun, with a lot of strategy and surprisingly breezy with 6 players. The game doesn’t seem to push towards a crescendo ending and ours dragged while we were really waiting for one player to win. I’d really like to play this again. Lots of Concordia and from the same designer but it also felt a bit like Kemet.
1 x Taj Mahal
Second play of this one, much better with 4 than 3. The art is horrible if you’re colour blind. It’s good, but not great but would like to play again.
1 x Modern Art
Didn’t get quite as silly as our usual games, but was still very silly. I always enjoy Modern Art
1 x The Estates
I’ve been scared of this because I’ve heard it’s mean. My wife didn’t get a company in a 5 player game so just spent the whole game utterly screwing everyone and embezzling cash. It was hilarious (I don’t know if it’s supposed to be) and she nearly won!
1 x Stick 'Em
Aaaarrrgggghhh. I love this trick taker but it messes with my brain like nothing else. I just try to survive.
1 x Cosmic Encounter
7 player game with green powers. One of our group wasn’t in to it so I’m really chuffed he gave it a go. I love it but it is group dependent.
1 x Babylonia
I just scored 6 points for typing ‘Babylonia’ and you all scored 4 as well. A staggeringly beautiful Knizia tile layer where you score all the time. I’m not sure I’ll ever love this because of that (it was so fiddly to keep track of).
1 x SCOUT
I joined the table at the end of what looked like a weird and disappointing 3 player game, but it made much more sense with 4 or 5. It’s good, but not great imo
1 x Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition
First play of this and the joy on my friend’s face as he taught it was worth it alone. Another game I tried to survive in. Really, really enjoyed it.
1 x Biblios
It’s a fine, quick auction game.
1 x Black Orchestra
A Pandemic style co op where you are trying to kill Hitler. Apparently all the characters and plots were real people. It’s a decent game and the theme is really cool. We had a number of things go out way in a short space of time and we won a little bit too easily.
Chaotic plays of Just One and Doodle Dash. Just One is a better game design, but I think Doodle Dash is more fun and my current favourite party game. There’s so little downtime.
We’ve also played some card games recently…
Blaze is a spin on a Russian folk game with really cool card art. It’s a bit fiddly, but we’re all still learning. My wife researched and bought me this off her own back, which adds at least 2 to my rating. It’s a game I could see being played a lot over and over again.
Yokai Septet
The twists are there are 7 cards in seven suits, but each has a different distribution (Green is ace -7, all the way to Blue being 7-13). You follow suit, trump is decided by the undealt card, but the Green Ace is the most powerful card. The art is very striking and in the edition I have (2e) the 7s are shiny on the face so they stand out.
The only things you score are the 7s, and only if you win the hand. If you win 4 7s (Boss Yokai), you win. If you win 7 tricks without winning 4 Boss Yokai you lose. My wife and I had a situation where we had 6 tricks and only 2 7s so my son and Dad (it’s a team game at 4) were trying to make us win a trick and we were trying to lose!
Winner is first to 7 points, our games have been 1-4 hands long.
Each 7 is worth different points, so there’s a lot of strategy and meta to develop.
Dad picked it up really quickly. He’s played a lot of things like whist so even a fiddly trick taker had a lot that he recognised.
When we finished we reset straight away and played again.
Tichu. The king of climbers, we won without calling Tichu once and let the kids dig themselves into a deeper and deeper hole!
12 Likes
Some 2p gaming today
GKR; Heavy Hitters, first play. My mate brought this over to play. And it looks amazing, the models for your main mech are awesome, and even your smaller support robots are pretty cool. The GKR in the title means Giant Killer Robots, and that’s pretty accurate. While your main robot does most of the work, you also have robots to recon, repair, and fight. First you construct a deck from the various decks, giving you primary, secondary, deploy, support, maneuver and reaction cards. In a turn, you will use any deploy cards you’ve drawn (to bring out the support robots), then your units move, and then fight. You always have a deck of 25 cards, and you draw up to 6 at the end of your turn. These cards also represent damage, if all 25 cards are lost, then you’ve lost. Other than destroying robots, the other way to win is by destroying towers. Each tower has six slots on it, if you’re next to a tower you can add one of your tags to it, and when you have four tags of your colour it is demolished. Demolish four buildings and you win.
Combat is pretty straightforward. You always roll 2 black dice, and you need at least five to hit a main robot, or seven for a support bot. Units can be fully blocked behind towers, or partially in cover. If you hit on an attack, then the target player rolls a die for each damage, and if they roll a five or a six, the attack is blocked.
Moving robots and firing weapons uses up your energy, which is then replenished at the end of the round. You can use more energy, but you’ll damage yourself, and you won’t be able to recover to full energy.
Somehow I managed the win. Our main robots were trying to take cover behind a tower, and I finished him off by using a card that allowed me to move again during the combat phase. Usually all movement and attacks are done in their own phase, so you generally know where people are and what attack they are going to use. But there are faction cards that give a variety of effects. I was hit by a “bad taco” card which made my pilot sick and made his attacks harder to achieve.
It was pretty good fun, but I reckon a full four player game would take a while.
Ra, first play of the new shiny edition. And you know what I’m going to say, because I love Ra! The new artwork is pretty cool, and it has player boards now, which make it easier to arrange your tiles. I don’t know if that’s completely new, I had a pretty old version. It was a weird game, because we just weren’t drawing Ra tiles at first, I’m not sure if I shuffled the tiles well enough (I tried, I really did, and the bag is large enough to shuffle properly). Anyway, I got the win, so happy with that. My mate had good points from monuments, and I knew I wasn’t getting that, but I held a pharaoh advantage throughout the whole game.
I think the thing I love most about Ra is the fact you know exactly what each player can bid. You might know someone can beat your bid, but how much do they really want the auction? And you can force them to make that decision. Obviously some auctions are worth it, but what if there’s just one or two good tiles there, and you’re not even sure how long it will be until the end of the round. I had the highest bid tile (nine in a 2p game), and never used it, which probably wasn’t a great tactic, but it all worked out for me.
13 Likes
I genuinely don’t know if it’s a good game, because it’s SO vicious, and the penalties for getting any of the bad cards are SO severe, that the outcome often seems to be more about luck than skill and the same person rarely wins twice.
But the experience is always good, because every hand is tense and no-one knows who’s really ahead until the scoring. It’s guaranteed to generate shouting and laughing, which means it’s probably a good game 
7 Likes
We played another game of Frosty last night and I got my first level-up. I think it is a neat change that retiring characters unlocks new buildings and new characters unlock during the course of the campaign. It makes better story sense.
The next scenario is already set up on the table to be played after breakfast (we have another holiday today).
We do not yet have the space to leave the game up permanently but if we did have the space we would do so. My partner has not been enjoying any games for the past year and he is quite enthusiastic about this one which is both a surprise and a delight.
edit: and we have played game #5 as well. Now both of us with level-ups. We lost a bunch of morale to an event because we were greedy. Hopefully that will not be terrible to get back. We forgot we get inspiration for every scenario and didn‘t need the extra resources… my partner is the loot master btw. I don‘t know if that is the Banner Spear or him? I … don‘t really loot. My battle goal more or less prevented looting this scenario (Wallflower was an easy 2 checkmarks though in this specific setup)
7 Likes
I think I wasn’t far off in our last game of Quacks from @Number1TheLarch experience. With those extreme moments of bad luck I think the rat tails at least bump your money so you get to feel some progress on chip purchasing ability even if they don’t give you much hope of winning most often.
I find this very interesting. I think for me with Quacks everyone building there own pool is cool for people trying different strategies. It falls apart a bit of a chip type is clearly better than anything else at the table. Level 1 blue chips are often that. That being said I think you have a good point about games like Celestia creating more shared drama with a central focal point and maybe more fairness.
4 Likes
Over the last few days I’ve been introducing various 2-player games:
Sentinels of the Multiverse (with bot-Legacy): a lot of tracking “this token comes from that card” and “whenever X happens”. I know the publishers have said they’re going to redo OblivAeon in the new edition. Not entirely sure I’m looking forward to that.
Hanamikoji really have to watch the dual win conditions. Could be fiddly, but everything you can (and will) do is laid out in front of you, so easier to concentrate on strategy.
Jaipur it’s a classic, but there’s a reason for that.
Flamme Rouge I haven’t had occasion to play this since I first tried Heat, but I’m reinforced in my feeling that I’ll keep this and probably not buy Heat. (If Heat gets a proper rulebook, as has been promised, I’ll look again - but I’ve played with three different groups of people and we had different rule interpretations each time.)
6 Likes
It is. What a great game.
3 Likes
I love Babylonia despite the interrupted flow where we score every single time. Alas, I found that my time for confrontational tile laying games were being sucked up by Tigris or Bridges of Shangri-La
1 x SCOUT
I joined the table at the end of what looked like a weird and disappointing 3 player game, but it made much more sense with 4 or 5. It’s good, but not great imo
Yeah. Scout sucks at 3 players. If the next player scouted, then the 3rd player must scout & show or play. 4 or 5 player only.
4 Likes
I adored Sentinels and Oblivaeon killed off my interest for years. Wasn’t a fun solo experience at all.
3 Likes
Today at Less Local Games Group:
Flamme Rouge, still a solid keeper for me.
Project L, I can see how one could burn out on it but I haven’t yet.
Werewords, seven rounds - I like the basic social deducty bit, but everyone firing questions at the Mayor, and the limited array of options for words, irked me. (Also we were in quite a noisy pub and hearing people could be a challenge.)
Mysterium, the full unofficial four-phase version. Great fun as always, at least for me as the ghost.
11 Likes
visited our gamer friends and got to play
- Dodelido — one of those horrible games where you have to say the right words matching the current visible conditions when it is your turn. I got rid of my cards first so I guess I won. I was just glad my brain could rest. I do like Cockroach Salad sometimes…
- Paint the Roses with 5 players… we kind of won, but only with my partner once warning me that my notes on his puzzle were incorrect. Which we might have survived maybe… in any case I think 5 is just one too many for this. But it was still nice to get this played with more than 2.
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Terraforming Mars with 5. It‘s been ages since I got to play this multiplayer. We played with Prelude, Venus and one of the alternate maps. I got some kind of corporation I had never heard of which allowed me to execute one of my card actions twice each round. I specialized in bacteria with Regolith Eaters and some Venusian ones that made money. I made some points everywhere and kept terraforming … and then suddenly everyone was like „oh if there is another round I will be able to do this and that and … Nobody had bought any of the titles yet and I would not have won any of them, I realized. We were missing 2 temperature and nobody except me had any money left. While I also had plans for another round, I decided to just use my remaining money to end the game with 2 standard projects. I won by only 2 points I doubt I would have kept that lead another round I played largely the same as all those solos… proves that the solo is not bad training for multiplayer.
With those 5 games of Frosthaven, this was quite the boardgame Easter for us Very happy-making.
13 Likes
Got another game of Spirit Island in on Easter Sunday. A Spread of Rampant Green and Ocean’s Hungry Grasp defeated England level 2. We had a favourable board setup for Green, with the far corners being Jungle and Wetland and the those terrains nicely spaced two lands apart. Ocean is an absolute beast of a Spirit, although I suspect that it might be at its most powerful with two players. We’ve now done all base set adversaries on level 2. On to level 3…
I think those last upgrades helped a lot. The free Helicarrier goes some way to offsetting the frequent discard effect of one of the locations and Gwen in a Symbiote Suit only flipped back to alter-ego once, and that was to shuffle Ticket to the Multiverse back into her deck rather than because she needed to heal. Silk was also very useful for getting rid of the Treachery that finds and attaches the Advanced Glider.
We might also have been lucky with the encounter deck? We didn’t get many enemies early on and We Are One (+3 Atk, +3 Sch) came up late enough that we endured it for a round, leaving it until after the reshuffle to remove it. On the other hand we got a Turn 1 Shadows of the Past.
I’ve actually got a picture of the main schemes at the end of the game, you can see how close we were to losing:
6 Likes
My first trial solo game of Eleven: Football Manager Board Game is in the (onion) bag and a good experience it was too.
The introductory scenario to survive the 3rd division (by basically not finishing last of 9 teams) was pretty straightforward although took about 3 hours to play through the 6 game weeks involved. It has a nice variety of options and I was focused as much on the off-field improvements as on developing and enhancing the on-field talent, but still ended the game with six trained players, including three youngsters. On-field results ran well, with 8 points from the six matches courtesy of two wins, two draws and two losses but the wins and losses were by a single goal so close matches, all of which was good enough for joint 5th position. Working out the match scores wasn’t as tricky as feared, neither was calculating the end of game victory point scoring, and I ended with 52 VPs and a “Promising Manager” grade.
I will try that scenario again before moving on to the other scenarios and getting to incorporate the better regular and veteran players and face higher division opponents. Good fun solo at least, but yes quite a table hog even for one player - and will consider buying the stadium expansion to add more infrastructure features.
5 Likes
Well after a bit of a dry spell in late March, April is indeed already looking better:
Verdant, still really enjoying this one, especially at 2 or 3 players. It still hasn’t overtaken Cascadia, but boy is it close!
Fleet: TDG, one of my favourite roll and writes. This game was sans bells and whistles as it was new to my opponent, but even so it was still great.
TIkal, got my new Super Meeple printing of this one to the table. Same excellent game, very nice visual and tactile improvements. Our game was at 2, which I think is a hair less interesting than with more - particularly the artifacts are less interesting with 2 but I’d still play it any day.
Motor City x2, I’m getting better at teaching this, but there’s still a lot to take in for new players. And I’m beginning to realise that you can’t focus on one thing like you can in Fleet:TDG or Three Sisters - despite the engine building, it’s very hard to win if you ignore production and engineering. Which makes sense but feels a bit more constrictive than it’s predecessors.
Azul:SP x2, a couple of good games of this with mum
Parade, first play of this one - it’s great and seems like it’ll scale pretty well with playercount. Super easy to grasp but with meaningful decisions beyond the tactical concerns of “which card will hurt me the least…” 
Scout, first play but at 3 players, which I suspect is not ideal - the rounds were too fast to manipulate your hand enough to be interesting. Hoping to get it to the table with 4 soon though!
Akropolis, great little tile placement game. It’s really interesting and being able to build up leads to some agonizing decisions.
Land vs Sea, another excellent tile layer, albeit with a very different feel than Akropolis. Every tile you play is potentially helping your opponent as well, so it’s very puzzley.
Royal Visit x2, neither of us managed to get the king to our chateau in either game. Our second game was super tight though - burned through the deck twice without triggering a win. I lost both games, but still really enjoyed it.
Blitzkrieg, my opponent lost this one largely due to deploying a nuke… it seems like a good idea at the time but is often tinged with regret (and in the game!)
Hanamikoji x2
Splendor Duel, I’ve ditched it’s larger cousin now, as this one is an excellent improvement. I lost very badly - I stuck to a red points strategy when I needed to pivot to something else cause the higher value red cards weren’t coming out.
7 Likes