Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

Boardgames
7320

Had to cancel the session for my regular D&D campaign last night as not enough people could make it. So instead, one of the players and I headed to the board game cafe for some games.

Nova Luna - Another close game of this. I had one piece left and could’ve placed it on my next turn :frowning: One day I might play it with more than two!

Splendor Duel - First time playing this. It’s more complicated than regular Splendor, but interesting. Definitely a good option for when you’ve played regular 2-player Splendor to death. Another close game, but I came out ahead this time. (My opponent could’ve also hit 20 points if they’d had a final turn, like in the regular game, but I would have still won with 21.)

Odin’s Ravens - Decided to switch to simpler stuff after those two. I managed to win the first game, but then got trounced in the next two.

Concept - Finished off with a few turns of this. As always, took some interesting journeys to get to answers - particularly “swallow” and “A Study in Scarlet” (they got that it was the first Sherlock Holmes book, but didn’t know the title).

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7321

I played some rounds of Century: Golem Edition at a meet-up the other day. It didn’t change my mind about the game at all (this style of engine-builder doesn’t do a lot for me), but it did remind me that the components are really lovely. The big chunky crystals are nice, but what I really liked was the wonderfully-creative collection of Golem illustrations. There are a ton of them, with wildly different concepts, and they are all beautifully drawn.

Frankly the spice-trading theme of the original game makes a lot more sense, but I’d suggest checking out the artwork for both editions if you’re considering getting one of these.

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7322

Got to play Revive again with or rather against my friend.
This was 2nd two player and overall 5th game.

I stand by my previous opinion that it is a very good game. I am looking forward to more plays.

As for tonight, I botched it. I never made it to the big scoring tiles in the corners, meandered my turns, optimized my cards only to accidentally end the game and giving my friend a final gorgeous turn and then losing 96 to 118 or so points. I could see the loss coming a few turns earlier when I noticed I had messed up my tempo… but it was still good fun and I have never had such great card combos before.

One caveat to the game: tonight I almost lost my patience. Each turn has just 2 actions and they can be quick and snappy but there can also be lots of free actions, effects and bonus stuff happening… which can lead to a) taking a long time or b) losing track of how many actions you take. The game provides 2 helpful wooden cubes for players who can‘t do it on their own and for good reason. This game can be a bit less great if you combine a person with AP and one with impatience—the latter would be me.

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7323

Overstocked - cute filler that was my hidden gem of last year’s UKGE. Keen to explore this year’s in a couple of months

Ticket to Ride: Rails and Sails - we played with Great Lakes this time. Owner said she wants to try it as she always play with the world map. I agree with her. Why do you wanna play with the Great Lakes (unless you’re from Canada or from the US Midwest) when you can play with the world map???

Gunkimono - a Jeffrey Allers night this one with Piece o Cake. Old school German game with 5 players. Zips fast. Easy rules. Angst and fun in good amounts.

PIece o Cake

Puerto Rico 1879 - not sure if this is the norm as I only played it on BGA, but we zip through PR pretty fast with 4 players. I haven’t played it in years and I’m sure the others haven’t (except for the teacher who played it in the previous library session). Very very keen to explore more of this game and see if the expansions are worth it in terms of rules investment and added depth.

Complaints: Awful on what they did with this edition. In the OG edition of Puerto Rico, the buildings have English text which tells us what each do. But they got rid of that here. Must be an attempt to be language friendly. But provided fuck-all material for each player to check what buildings do. No player aids to tell us what’s what. So one player has the rulebook and checks. It gets worse. The rulebook is shit. We actually consulted the rulebook from the original edition if there’s any confusion. Alea did such a bad job.

Durian - this is one of those good Oink games. I’ll be finding a copy.

9 Lives - another trick taker, designed by Taiki Shinzawa, and published by Allplay (aka Board Game Tables). What else to be said!?! Interesting wrinkles. You bet tricks as usual. But when you win a trick, you must take a card from one of the losers. So the duration of the round isn’t determined. The card backs are also different on each suit so you know how many yellows and reds and so on each player have. And I have used it to my advantage to pull out the right cards from them - though you have to do the lame bit of memorising what cards they take. I am very keen on exploring more of this.

Diamant - we played by revealing a meeple from our hand or an empty hand. Much better than revealing cards.

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7324

Yup, we play it the same way, the cards can be confusing (I think they are clearer with later versions)

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7325

We do it with thumbs up to continue or down to leave. Good for kids.

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7326

Played Star Wars: the Deckbuilding Game again, using the Empire again versus my wife with the Rebels. This time we had a reverse problem with the deck where most of my cards were coming out, and not much for the Rebels, but the game was very close anyway.

We were both down to our last base, but mine was damaged. I got Vader while the Force was with me, and Boba Fett out for a total of 15 damage against her base, and ultimately left her with just 2 health remaining. She retaliated and managed to get my base down to one health. I won on my next turn. I got lucky, though, as I had gotten a card which let me heal 4 damage from my base a turn earlier, as if I hadn’t, she would have won.

But seriously, none of her big name cards came out, and there was a dearth of capital ships for both sides, only weaker 2-4 health ships ever came out. Hopefully more shuffling over time will mix the deck up better, as this meant that the high power Rebel cards were still relatively clumped together, just at the bottoms of the deck this time instead of the top.

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7327

Had an “Other People’s Games” night, since we are usually the ones hosting.

One couple brought Deception: Murder in Hong Kong. I was in sync with the forensic scientist, figuring out that naked+scar=tattoo. Then on the second game I was sufficiently shrewd as the murderer and escaped justice. So a very gratifying experience!

Then we split up into separate groups, four to play Azul and the other four of us to play Whirling Witchcraft, a lighter game of making potions. There are five ingredients (five colors of cubes) and every turn you play a recipe that turns certain ingredients into other ingredients, and the ones you make get passed to the player on your left (and you get more from the player on your right). You get points by giving the next player more cubes of one color than they can fit on their board, so you’re trying to make an engine that uses the colors you’re being passed and generates a lot of one thing so you can overload your own passee. Very fun! Easy to learn, easy to play, a lot of fist-shaking and going “Ahhhhh!”

Then we reconverged - we only had Deception for seven players so instead we used the pack of cards one person brought to play Asshole/Presidents/Rich King Beggar or whatever you want to call it - classic climbing game of high school. It had mixed reception! Unsurprising for what is essentially a time waster.

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7328

So, I did that thing and I think I’ll do it again.

As part of my planning for doing the thing (creating solo boardgame playthrough content on YouTube, that is), I came up with a number of gimmicks fun ideas to, hopefully, create some interest.

One of them was to have a recurring series on Spirit Island.

“Well, lots of channels have had series on Spirit Island. How does that make you special?”

– you, asking rhetorically

It doesn’t, really. But if it did, it might be because I’ve played Spirit Island a total of 1.5 times. Once over a year ago (maybe 2 years ago?). And another time last night (sort of, but I’ll get to that). Total n00b status, to be honest. The ‘half a time’ I mention was cut short when I scrapped the game because I made too many mistakes; most of which being the one rule I can never seem to remember, “blight removes 1 presence of each spirit in that land” (I struggled with this last night as well, but I think I caught them all and it didn’t impact the result of the game).

So, my idea is, then, that my Spirit Island series will be a journal, in some ways, of my progression through Spirit Island’s vast array of content. Ideally, it will be full of ups and downs as I grapple with new spirits, adversaries and scenarios, eventually overcoming them and moving on.

Tentatively, the series title may be “Spiritual Succession”. Or maybe “That’s the Spirit!”. I’m still working on that part.

Well, anyway. Last night I did a trial run with the camera setup and component layout. My camera quality is still pretty bad, so it’s a bit of a struggle to get things framed so they can be read. Especially since I decided to start my series with Horizons of Spirit Island and that quad-fold board takes up a lot of table space; not only more than the original game’s modular components would, but in an inflexible arrangement that demands more than half of the frame to be easily parsed.

Using mostly Horizons components, I pitted Fathomless Mud of the Swamp and Sun-Bright Whirlwind in a two-handed battle against the standard scenario (or, non-scenario?). Horizons comes with the same cards as the base game (updated for clarification and wording in some cases, so I have retired my base game cards, for everything except the Blight Cards, as Horizons does not provide any of those).

I did, however, use the wooden and plastic components from the base game rather than the cardboard huts (because they are lovely components), explorers, towns and cities.

My first impressions of the Mud Otters (Fathomless Mud of the Swamp) was that they might be pretty dull. I was expecting Sun Cats (Sun-Bright Whirlwind) to be an exciting and dynamic spirit. Interestingly, I found the actuality to be the opposite. Sun Cats spent most of their time boosting the Otters; pumping energy, or simply corralling the invaders into one place that the Otters could wreak havoc upon. The Otters ended up having quite a bit of personality; throughout the game, I could imagine cheeky mires of swamp mud shifting this way and that swallowing up explorers and towns while safely shepherding the Dahan out of the way.

In classic Spirit Island style, from what I’ve heard, I would look at the board after each Invader phase and think, “omg, how am I going to deal with this?” and before the next Invader phase, half the board or more would be clear of foreign presence.

I took a surprising Terror Level 3: No Cities on the island victory before the first of the 3rd stage Invader card could Ravage – I suppose, then, that I won pretty handily as I had plenty of time remaining. A couple of turns prior, I was very close to achieving the Terror Level 2 victory condition, save for 2 towns that I just couldn’t reach due to blight downgrading a couple of key Sacred Sites.

I really struggled with the Cats to keep presence on the board due to the card and energy economy I was balancing with them along with presence. There are some tempo nuances to consider with the Cats that might be interesting to investigate; but probably next time with either a more offensive or more defensive co-spirit.

The Otters were just a blast to play; they feel, at the same time, extremely slow, but also very pacey. Though, if the Cats hadn’t been around to provide the energy flow needed, the Otters likely would have struggled much more.

Anyway, if you’re interested in that sort of thing, I expect to be starting my Spirit Island YouTube series in the next couple of weeks.

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7329

I’ve just picked up Spirit Island and have muddled through a couple of plays, so I’ll look forward to your video series!

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7330

I tried to think of something, but ended up with:

“(If at first you don’t succeed) Spirit try-land try again.”

which I am posting only because it is so bad that it made me laugh.

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7331

After a few relatively boardgame-free days I knocked off some Rallyman and Sentinels of the Multiverse for monthly challenges.

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Still loving Sentinels, weird combinations and general lightheartedness.

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7332

Had my monthly board game group.

Archaeology - one of my absolute favorite small box card games. We loaned our copy to a friend last summer (July range) and finally got it back this week so had to play it. It’s just set collection with a push your luck mechanism. Very simple, but it does what it does very well.

Shakespeare - one of my favorite point salad kind of games. Hire actors and craftspeople, build sets and costumes, work on your acts (there are only 3 for some reason?), etc. in whatever mix of stuff you want. It will all benefit you and you can’t do everything. It’s a real shame this is out of print with no signs of a reprint as it should be more popular than it is.

Clank Catacombs - I have all of original Clank (many expansions with different maps), all of Space Clank (ditto), and Clank Legacy with plans to get Clank Legacy 2. I really wanted to play someone else’s copy of this new version in which you build the map as you play to determine if it was worth buying on top of what I already have. Decided, nope. It’s a perfectly good version of Clank, the same deck building used to race through a dungeon after treasure before dying fun, but not different enough to be worth yet another separate game.

Libertalia - fun and chaotic. I have the original version of this. No clue how it compares to the new one as I’m content with the original and don’t play it enough to even consider just a new version of the same game.

Enchanted Plumes - small box card game a friend introduced me to tonight. Collect feathers to build peacocks. It was fun and looked pretty on the table.

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7333

I think I need to revisit this. I picked it up following Quinns’ review, but it fell a bit flat for me when I played it, and it’s been sitting around unplayed ever since. I wish I could remember exactly what hadn’t worked for me at the time.

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7334

As usual, we played Frosthaven again today. It’s going ok, I guess. Would be happier if it didn’t take as long. Story has not grabbed me so far – although the narration through the app seems well done so far.

Mysterium, which we failed at, but still had fun.

Witchstone, which was a very close game. I had a lot of points at end of game from cards, enough for equal second place. Not much in it. Far from my favourite Knizia, but it’s still pretty good to play. Not much interaction with other people, and a bit of a point salad, a normal Euro in other words. It’s still fun.

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7335

We say pochard whenever the pot shard card comes up.

There’s so much room for disaster it’s kept its place even through all of my culls.

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In the Year of the Dragon - one of the few Felds I enjoy. It’s basically project management: the board game

More 9 Lives

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7337

Kindred Spirit? All In Good Spirits? The Spirit is Willing but the Flesh is Weak? When the Spirit Moves Me? Dunkirk Spirit? That’s The Spirit?

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7338

We played our first game of Dungeons and Dragons: the yawning portal.

There’s some cool ideas in here but I can’t help but feel they’ve over egged the game a little bit with card powers meaning there seems to be a lot of contextual luck at play. I need to play it again though. The macro game feels like it should work for us but the details details details bog it down a bit too much in my view.

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7339

Yesterday, my wife and I played a game of Ethnos, using Centaurs, Dwarves, Wingfolk, Giants, and Merfolk. I managed to eke out a win by playing some large bands in the second age, while my wife took a majority of the area control points, 98 - 95.

Then, last night we played Star Wars: the Deckbuilding Game again, still using the same factions. The Galaxy row at the start was almost entirely Rebel cards, which did not give me warm, fuzzy feelings. Luckily, as the game progressed, the balance got a bit better.

It was a really close game, and if I had survived one more turn, I would have been the winner, but she was always just one step ahead of me in base destruction. Would have helped if more of my capital ships would have come into my hand, as I kept just drawing one at a time which would promptly be destroyed. In any case, with our games being so close, I feel that the game is pretty balanced, despite all the threads on BGG to the contrary.

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