Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

Played Ingenious, it’s pretty good. Not sure I want to keep it around though. Kinda fills the same space as Azul in my head, but I have Travel Azul which take up far less room.

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I don’t play Ingenious often but I do enjoy it when I do. Should, therefore, get it out more…

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More the theme I think - I really liked it when I played it but don’t think my wife and mother in law would enjoy it

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Games meet-up tonight. I played HEAT: Pedal to the Metal for the first time. We had 5 players and played two laps of the USA track. I managed to win after hurtling through the final corner (which had a speed restriction of 2) in 3rd gear on my penultimate turn, burning 5 heat in penalties to play cards worth 7 and take first position for the final turn needing only 12 more spaces for the win. I stepped up to 4th gear and played 5, 4, 3, and a stress card which turned into another 4. I had one heat left so I spent that to draw another card for larks, and it was my other 4. So I overshot the finish line by a fairly ridiculous 8 spaces. It was a fun finish, but I didn’t come away feeling that I wanted to play it again in a hurry. I think partly because I really played it safe the whole game and yet ended up winning. Perhaps we all needed to be taking bigger risks to produce more exciting moments, but I feel like the people who did take risks didn’t really profit from them in the long run. Most of the time everyone ended up in a bunch no matter what they did, so the fact that I’d conserved heat all game really allowed me to take advantage on that final turn. I’d play it again, but it didn’t hook me.

I’ve never played Flamme Rougue but I recall that you control two racers in that, and I always thought that the card play in that game looked reminiscent of K2 in which you are also splitting your cards between two characters, so I can’t help but wonder whether HEAT maybe suffers for running a similar system with only a single vehicle per player. (Just idle speculation though… nothing very much behind those thoughts.)

After that we played two rounds of Sticheln (aka Stick 'Em) which was also new to me. I do not have a strategy for this game, I can tell you. I was regularly staring at a huge hand of cards with that Arboretum-like feeling of “I don’t want to play any of these cards…”

I’d also misunderstood the scoring during the first game and thought all cards were worth their face points, but it’s only the negative point cards which are worth their face value, while your positive points are only 1 point per card. So after clearing that up I found I had a hilarious -59 points at the end of the first game (which I improved dramatically to -2 in the second).

It was pretty fun. I’d like to play it some more to find out whether I can execute some actual strategy, or if it’s going to be pretty chaotic in general. As it was it felt a little bit like 6 nimmt! (in that “surely this will be fine-oh god no” kind of way) and my first impression was that the latter is better, but that might just be the chaos of not really knowing what I’m doing!

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The other thing that’s struck me about Flamme Rouge vs HEAT is that in the latter you aren’t expending your cards - that 5 will come round again, so unless you know you’ll have a use for it next round you might as well play it now. It makes the decisions a bit easier.

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I did hear that in (advanced rules? Expansion rules?) for HEAT there are powers cards which you have to have Heat in your hand to activate, which could really mix things up and prevent people playing it safe during the game if you lose out by not generating some heat. But that’s not base game, and I haven’t played either yet (it’s really high on my “play this and then probably buy it” list).

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Flamme Rouge is different - each of your riders has their own deck of cards, and you pick one for each rider each turn. I really like Flamme Rouge, and Heat looks far too similar…

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That’s the advanced (AKA more fun) rules I think :slight_smile:

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My package of games arrived the day after I ordered it and in a surprise turn of events, I actually got to play the game I expected to see sitting on my shelf of „opportunity“ for a while, tonight.

The Wolves is an area control game for 2-5 players, 2 players has a „special“ mode where a few wolves from a third color are placed on the board to make scoring a bit more competitive. This is the kind of 2-player addition I can get behind. Because that is really all it is, place wolves as setup, be annoyed with them making control of a region more difficult not because you forgot to move them ore anything.

So… every player gets to be a wolf-pack. The „special“ ability of each wolfpack is that it has it „easier“ with one of the terrain types.

You win the game by having the most victory points. VP are gained by playing stuff from your player board to the landscape (dens, lairs, more wolves), hunting prey (by surrounding it with your wolves) and controlling territory during the moon-phases (scoring). It is pretty simple overall. The game ends after 3 scoring phases have been triggered. They are triggered when pieces that are removed from the game get placed on the Moon calendar and one of the „phase“ symbols is reached.

On your turn you get 2 actions (you can gain up to 3 bonus actions during the game when removing stuff from your player board to play). You pay for the actions by flipping the terrain tiles of your pack that need to have the matching terrain you are targeting. Actions cost between 1-3 tiles.

Possible actions are : Move wolves (1 tile), build dens/lairs (2 tiles), howl at lone wolves to recruit them (2 tiles) or dominate an opponent‘s den or pack wolf (3 tiles).

By playing stuff from your board you not only get points or bonus actions or bonus terrain tiles but you can also improve the pack spread, movement and howl range.

Overall we found the rulebook did a very good job teaching the game quickly, the rules are simple enough and the decisions quite tricky. Playing our first game including learning took around 90 minutes maybe even a little longer. Because of the way the action tiles are arranged you have to be careful how to use your tiles because except for your special terrain, most of the time you can only have 1 terrain that shows twice on your tiles and so all the „cool“ actions are really forced to target that terrain or you need to spend an action to move…

My partner said it felt quite thematic and at the same time reminded him of abstract games like Go. So make of that what you will… he was also happy because he won with 63 over my 53 points. I really made a mess of building my dens and scoring the regions. Each region gets some moon phase tiles which determine when and how often it gets scored. So you need to move around your wolves to the regions that will score next, place strategic dens—ideally next to water where you can upgrade a den to a lair and beware the possibility of the opponent dominating your dens or packwolves. Alphas and lairs cannot get dominated also if you have 2 pieces on a hex they are safe—there can never be more than 2 pieces on a hex. Lairs are the really good stuff because they are the only thing that counts for 3 strength during scoring, every other piece is just 1.

I am glad I bought it, and happy it is an area control that works at 2 players and that I managed to (inadvertently by just playing badly) lose the first game. Turns are quite thinky and I can imagine the downtime with 3 or more players could be considerable. With two the flow was nice and play felt … organic.

It is a very pretty game, with nice production. As stated a good rulebook. Small but complete player aids. Very pretty player colors and easy to grasp rules with an interesting decision space. There is some stupid extra height to the box it could have been Brass B but it is full Queen-size square instead.

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Decrypto - still a great thinky party game

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Thebes - old school German game where you build up your simple engine and then use that to pick up stuff from the bag a la Quacks. The probabilities are very predictable so the game isn’t taking the piss. The game is more about seeing how you and your friends execute the “digging for artefacts and steal them back to Europe” and have a laugh that all you got was sand and zero artefacts…

Timebomb - this is the original. We prefer Tempel des Schreckens or Timebomb Evolution

Azul OG

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The only time I’ve played Thebes, I went on one dig, got one artefact and then milked the lecture circuit for the win.

Felt very true to life

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I went for that route too but the final 3 cards are at the bottom of the deck :dizzy_face:

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I have a real soft spot for Thebes. There’s a lot of luck involved, so I’d never recommend it to anyone who wasn’t down with that; but I always enjoy it. The visual design is great; time-as-a-resource is always such a lovely mechanism; and those blind archaeological digs can be a hoot. You can invest months of game time turning up nothing but sand, and then someone else swings by for the most cursory of rummages and pulls out the most valuable artefact in the whole site, to the absolute disgust of all their competition. It works great as a team game as well, as it suddenly makes players responsible to their partners for being lucky, and you get these “well let’s see you do better” exchanges (which tend to be funny however that next dig turns out).

Not a game for everyone, but certainly one I’m glad to have in my collection.

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Some games over the last week:

Viticulture, played a solo game of this (really just an excuse to handle my new metal coins :stuck_out_tongue:).

Morels, not a bad two player game, though it’s not one of my very favourites.

Royal Visit, won this one via crown. My opponent expressed that maybe tug of war games aren’t really for him. I do like the cardplay in this but I’ve yet to see anyone win via getting the king to their chateau.

Raiders of Scythia, my opponent and I took very different approaches to this one - he went heavy on quest fulfillment and burning cards for points, I managed an early brawler in my crew so I took the riskier gold raids. Managed a solid reversal by scoring like ten gold at the end! I do love this game, it’s so dynamic and interesting and allows you to be clever in interesting ways. So good.

Legacy of Yu x3, finally got my hands on my kickstarter copy of this one and couldn’t resist three games in a row (good sign there…). First was me basically just learning the rules. Second was me learning some strategy stuff. Suffice to say I lost both of them fairly badly. But I won the third and am hyped to play it more! It’s an excellent game - the gameplay is solid and interesting with a bit of engine building and deck building going on, and the story/campaign stuff has also been rather good. I’d definitely recommend it!

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I played my first game of Onslaught in Hoplomachus Remastered this morning and had my troop eviscerated by a relentless and nigh-indestructible cheetah. Antony Blackbird, beast master, is a beast!

Onslaught is one of the two solo modes included in Remastered, and the idea is to survive against all six “Immortals” in a series of waves. Mr. Blackbird was my first Immortal. I’m gonna be at this one a long time. :sweat_smile:

I’ve already seen enough to know grabbing both boxes wasn’t a mistake. Still, I’d argue there’s a hard decision to be made for any prospective solitaire[-only] player who can only justify (or afford!) one.

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I actually don’t feel like it’s a particularly hard choice. If you aren’t strictly there for solo, Remastered is the only multiplayer one. If you are, it’s straightforwardly “campaign or one off fights?” Victorum is the most robust solo offering but I know not everyone wants to do campaigns, even replayable and with bite sized bits of action.

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I think the big difference for a solo player comes down to scope, and I mean that with regard to the arenas. Victorum isn’t offering a skirmish game, it’s offering knife-fight-in-a-phonebooth chesslike challenges. The ruleset may be the same, but the mindset is so completely different it’s astonishing.

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This evening saw the resumption of Expedition to Newdale and chapter 6 was fun. Not a departure really from previous rules but the map was fun and I pipped first place in a tight game. Still really enjoying this one, maybe more than I could justify as it has flaws but it just hits some good notes for me. Excited for the next 2 scenarios.

Followed it up with a game of Paris Connection as always it was super interesting. I’ve only played a handful of times but each game has been so different. I did this one badly and finished last by a good chunk.

Lastly we got Octo Dice out and it remains my favourite roll and write even if the dice are bastards :face_with_symbols_over_mouth::face_with_symbols_over_mouth::face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

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Had a quality game night. Since we started with 5 with time to kill before our sixth arrived, we tried Briscola Chiamata, the five-player hidden-traitor classic trick taking game. It was fun! So hard to wrap your head around not having to follow suit though. Interesting variety in the three rounds we played: Round 1, bidder and partner take it, with the partner not revealing until the last card; Round 2, partner revealed on the first trick to snag some points, but that just allowed the other three to band together, and the 2-team didn’t have the trump to back up the bid; and Round 3, partner was pretty obvious early on, but since they were right after the bidder they could funnel them points pretty easily, so the 3-team couldn’t pick up enough to win. Relative seating positions for the roles is super important, which is cool! I’d definitely play again, but obviously numbers makes that hard.

Then since it turned out our sixth had forgotten we moved onto Letter Jam, which remains excellent. I had two very good clues, USELESSLY and FUNKOPOP. But the funniest clue was PFFFFFFF.

We ended with the goofy push-your-luck equality-simulator Celestia, where we noticed for the first time that some of the islands have very small signs on them and spent a while trying to parse them out with a magnifying glass.

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Yesterday we played two games of Kingdomino. I won the first, 44 - 43, and my wife won the second, 26 - 24.

Then tonight we played 7 Wonders Duel, and she obliterated me, 82 - 61. Her Wonders alone were the 21 point difference between our scores!

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