Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

Boardgames
7460

Pretty big games day today, actually, after a rather intense bout of yard work (we’re getting a pool)!

First off, 2 games of Everdell with Bellfaire (AKA Base Everdell at this point). I won the first one 60-59, insanely close with plenty of twists and turns. Lost the second one bad at 82-64. We were expecting it to be a lot closer, since we both had a lot of point multiplier cards, but Maryse’s just fired way more. Great game, the final score truly belies the tension.

Then we had ourselves a good game of Ark Nova. I won this one by about 10 points (we didn’t bother calculating the scores, the winner was obvious from the positioning). I got super lucky by drawing the sponsor that gives you cash for primates and 3 primates in my opening hand. Went super well.

Ark Nova’s fantastic, definitely the front-runner for our game of the year. There’ still time, though, and we still have 9 games to try out!

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7461

Went to Hamilton to play some games with an old family friend I haven’t seen since the BeforeTimes, and two of his friends.

Opening volley was a game of Anomia to get us off to a nice, gentle start. It worked! Lovely game, consistently good with anyone who is okay with speed-word-style games, which is a lot of people!

After that we dug into two games of Kingdomino, of which I won one and Sara won the other. Her strategy was, legitimately, “I think this tile looks pretty!”, and I’m not saying that as an insult or disparagingly! It was a perfectly legitimate strategy both games, and she did really well with it. Just a lovely little game.

After that we played a game of Century Golem Edition, which Alex won handily. But it was close! Final scores were in the 70-60 range, and it’s just such a lovely production.

After that we played six rounds of The Crew, which was satisfying. I really wish my partner was at all a fan of trick-taking games, but it was surprisingly satisfying… although it doesn’t solve the Quarterbacking Issue quite as elegantly as I had hoped (I did a lot of “So if you play a higher card that that, we all lose…”). But still glad to get it to the table again!

And then after that we called it.

Lovely day of gaming, and it was nice to “talk shop” with Gabe again. The man has the largest collection of sci-fi I have ever seen accumulated in a single place, including any library outside of Toronto. He gave me a list of recommendations (for example, apparently Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake” is apparently far better than any of the other Atwoods I have read, and John Varley’s “Steel Beach” and Charles Stross’s “Saturn’s Children” both are post-human AI worlds… ooh, and a Indigenous writer named Daniel Wilson did a post-apocalyptic book called “Robopocalypse” that’s supposedly very strong… he also recommended a Tchaikovsky, Howey, Watts, and Octavia E. Butler… it’s not unheard of for somebody to read more sci-fi than me, but Gabe has read more sci-fi than possibly anyone alive). Interesting note: he refuses to buy books new. Everything is things he finds 2nd hand. As a writer, I don’t “mind,” but I do hope more people buy my books at some point.

Oh, and David Brin has a personal grudge against Gabe because Gabe had a discussion about American Imperialism that Brin didn’t approve of (The Pax Americana, as Brin apparently called it, is not the universal good that many Americans seem to think it is…). Anyway. I digress.

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7462

That’s a recommendation in itself, given some of the other people against whom Brin has personal grudges. (Possibly including me, though it was many years ago and he’s probably forgotten.) One of those people who can’t bear to lose an argument, or to be told he’s behaving badly.

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7463

It’s a crying shame. Aside from the end of the series spiraling out of his control and beyond all reason, “The Uplift War” is a damn fine book and overall a damn fine trilogy. Great sci-fi.

But yeah. Good sci-fi writing does not a good human being necessarily make (I’m looking at you, Scott Card. What a colossal disappointment as a human he turned out to be).

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7464

I forgot what exactly happened in real life there but I do recall reading Ender’s Game, thinking it was a colossal, spectacular success and then diving into his other work. They just got weirder and weirder and at a certain point I didn’t want any more of whatever was happening in that brain.

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7465

Paraphrasing briefly: Scott Card wrote one of the greatest novels about inclusion, togetherness, and the power of people coming together for a common goal, and the evil of exclusion and societal isolation.

He then became a vocal, raging homophobe. So.

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7466

To be fair, the homophobia was apparent in Ender’s Game too, just not to an extent that was obvious without the context of the author being a tool.

(I read Ender’s Game merely knowing that people I respect didn’t like the author for some reason. While reading, I remember thinking, “oh, this guy must be homophobic”.)

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7467

I did not know anything about the author when I read it (late 90s) and I did enjoy the book. I just knew that had won the Nebula and the Hugo awards. But then back in the 90s we were miles away from where we are now in regards with social integration, so probably my radar was not very well attuned in that respect.

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7468

Played Ra again with my wife. Really close game. Neither of us ever scored for Civilization tiles, but at least we didn’t lose points either. Lots of Nile tiles, but only a few Floods. We each got 7 of the 8 monuments by the end of the game, though she managed to get a 4-of-a-kind and a 3-of-a-kind to my two 3’s. Final scores were 63 - 59, she won.

In the last epoch, she used her last sun disk before I did, with just one more space for a Ra tile, so naturally my first draw was a Ra tile, ending the game.

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7469

Makes me happy to see Hoplomachus Victorum on a table :slight_smile: My copy has languished because I don’t have the brainspace for it right now but I expect to get this to the table after our move. My biggest gripe is how badly readable the small map is. If that were just a little clearer with the symbols… also the plastic HP chips don’t mesh well with the much nicer units… I plan on upgrading those at some point.

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7470

Ra is surprisingly great as an auction game for two players.

I think it’s because unlike a normal auction where the fight is one v one and the test is holding nerve or being great at maths Ra adds the equivalent of a madman at an auction I think. This mysterious force that can antagonises both (all) the other players is the real twist I think that makes it work. Of course the nature of the madman means sometimes they are overly generous or overly mean and anything in between which means a fair few games can hinge on this randomness.

Somehow though the game has balanced everything just right that players can feel like they’re in a little bit in control (not least because the bag has a memory unlike a coin flip).

I think it fits also into the class of Knizia games where if you play 1 game the winner is randomish that a clown or a genius could win but if you play 100 games the genius will win the majority.

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7471

Ended the long week-end yesterday with another game of Ark Nova that I wound up losing 18-10. Everything was going well, the pace was sedate and I had a number of longer-term plans I could work on, and then in just a few moves, Maryse brought the end-game VERY close indeed! A lot of those plans now couldn’t be realized… What a game, though!

Also played a couple of games of Pandemic, trying out a 7-player variant (each character is represented, with the initial hand being a single card). It’s BRUTALLY hard. It takes so long for your turn to come back that you can’t really pivot to adapt (and the board WILL look radically different by the time your turn comes back). Super interesting though.

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7472

Went to visit a buddy who recently bought a new house. The house is beautiful, and big, but gosh is there ever a lot of people living in it: him and his wife, his three kids (9, 6, and 4), his wife’s sister, his father, and both of his in-laws.

Still, I’m happy for them. Buying a house in Southern Ontario these days is an ordeal.

But while there we got to try out a couple new games! Well, new to me at least…

First was Sagrada, which is nice, because I can finally stop lying to customers saying that I have played it. I did okay, but my partner won by a safe margin.

After that we played Parks, which is nice, because I can finally stop lying to customers saying that I have played it. Very Tokaido, but the variable path is neat, although I found it was almost impossible to get all the resources I needed… but in a very satisfying way. I like it! And gosh its pretty… only complaint is that apparently the expansion doesn’t fit in the box? Which is a crying shame, because the box and component design is great.

And then, while my friend is showing off his collection, I spot a copy of my current grail game, Merchant of Venus! Which he bought for a song! So jealous… Terry lends it to me, so I’m actually looking at it right now. I am positive it’s not as good as I think it is, but I need to play it to confirm. I’m, like, 85% sure it’s Xia but worse? We’ll see.

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7473

Acquire

For Sale

Archipelago - good heads up game of negotiation. But this is a bit too out of control compare to the likes of JoCo. I’ll stick to SideCon, I guess.

Timebomb Evolution - still my fave iteration. The different kinds of bombs are more interesting than the blank rooms of Tempel des Schreckens

Evolution New World (ENW) - this is based on the original Evolution. The one by North Star and this diverged on their own ways. The scoring is pretty simple and the gameplay is simple too. It has the same magic of Evolution by NSG. But I found ENW to be very fiddly than NSG. The usability is poorer that I found myself wanting the NSG Evolution. I still own Evolution: Climate, which I now also prefer over Oceans. Playing 2 hour Oceans with downtime against the snappy and more brutal Evolution: Climate starting to look like a less attractive proposal when I am choosing which games go into the bags.

6 NImmt

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7474

No, Parks fills up the base box precisely, even providing shaped compartments for the various pieces. It’s a nice use of space but there’s definitely no extra room.

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7475

I actually just had my FLGS set aside Remastered for me till I can swing by. The integration perks are nice, but mostly I’m just hot about deep diving this system. It’s really got me excited.

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7476

Tonight we played Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game. I think we both managed to construct decent decks, but mine came out on top due to drawing effects. On the last turn, I managed to draw something like 5 extra cards to do a whopping 27 damage to her base. Her one Nebulon-B frigate had no chance of saving Hoth from firepower of that magnitude!

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7477

I want to buy this but I don’t think it’d would get to the table very often with the people I mostly play games with

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7478

I haven’t played the 2012 FFG second edition. I’d say MoV puts more rules emphasis on the trading than Xia does; but having played MoV once or twice I didn’t feel any great urge to seek out a copy.

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7479

If it’s an issue with rules weight, it’s a light game simpler than Monopoly.