Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[COMaestro]

We had our friends over yesterday because they helped us get a shed for our backyard, and after some lunch we decided to continue our Betrayal Legacy campaign. Bit of a weird one, and story-wise felt very disconnected from the rest of the campaign (to the point the post-game entry basically undid the entire scenario), but as a stand-alone haunt it would have been okay. Dragged a bit though, as do most haunts where you need to try to find certain tiles by exploring. Heroes won, though, and I was able to kill the traitor, which always feels pretty good. I even survived, which has been uncommon for me for the campaign.

Just one more to go!

[lalunaverde]

13 Words - good coop/word game, but not as good as Just One or Decrypto

Night of the Living Dead - a Zombiecide game, and my first game in the Zombiecide series. And it is pretty fun. Snappy and light weight. Load up with guns and pointy weapons and shoot some Zombies. Why would I want to play Dead of Winter when there is this?

Tempel des Schreckens x2

Ra

Blood on the Clocktower - has more depth than One Night Werewolf, that’s what I can solidly say with further plays.

Tribes of the Wind - Love Dutrait’s art as usual. The theme is charming. But the gameplay is very meh. Yes. You do pay attention to what your neighbours have in their hand. What suits their cards have dictates what actions you can do, therefore can dictate your tempo. But it’s just a bit too arbitrary and accidental. No substantial player interaction despite what I said above. One of us left the game due to time constraints and we continued on as if nothing happened, except that I have a new neighbour. I am still looking for a Dutrait game that I would keep in my shelf other than Quest for El Dorado. Dammit!

Glory to Rome - of course! I test drive my new Black Box edition. I really like the minimalist cards as they provide better clarity, but we did remarked that the new player board is very unhelpful and the old cartoony edition got a better player board. Someone was racking up clienteles in the game and it was scary and so I starting constructing the Catacombs to end the game. Biggest mistake is that I let the game on for one more round and it was enough for that player to surpass me with their army of clienteles.

[Chewy77]

Thursday night and Friday I played a couple of two-handed games of The Witcher: Old World to learn the game. I stumbled a couple of times, on my first one mainly with the leveling up system, on the second, I acquired a million cards and probably I didn’t need to, I could have finished a lot earlier. Also quite exciting is how you can build combos that feel quite good.

So far I am loving it, it has a degree of deck building that I can really dig into, there is some take that but not terrible, and the exploration decks remind me a lot of the Gloomhaven city and field events, with consequences that impact the game both positively and negatively.

The fights have been good so far, although I think that on both games I overprepared: your cards you play with are also you hit points, and I had gathered heaps before having my first encounter with a monster, way more that I probably needed, on all occasions I ended up with at least half of my deck unused. I really dig the combos, the dice poker is a nice touch, and besides a couple of rules that could be a bit better explained on the manual, I like that there is a two pages example of play on the last few pages of the booklet.

And the minis are quite something. I am already planning to use a few of them on my D&D campaigns (there’s me justifying Bardsung in the back of my mind…).

[yashima]

@lalunaverde

Tribes of the Wind - Love Dutrait’s art as usual. The theme is charming. But the gameplay is very meh. Yes. You do pay attention to what your neighbours have in their hand. What suits their cards have dictates what actions you can do, therefore can dictate your tempo. But it’s just a bit too arbitrary and accidental. No substantial player interaction despite what I said above. One of us left the game due to time constraints and we continued on as if nothing happened, except that I have a new neighbour. I am still looking for a Dutrait game that I would keep in my shelf other than Quest for El Dorado. Dammit!

I really didn‘t want to feel that way but my trial games were the same. Lovely art, interesting vision… gameplay: just not enough.

[bort]

Frosthaven, despite being a man down, we got through it ok. We had a boss with 30 health, and we just melted his face.

Carnival of Monsters, first play. This is a card drafting game of collecting monsters. Cards are either monsters, lands (you need to match the monster to their land type), staff (permanent abilities), or end game cards. Choose a card, play it or keep it for later, pass the rest of the cards to your left or right. Fairly straightforward. Bit of push your luck because some (high value) monsters have one or two “danger” symbols. After you’ve done all your drafting, you have to roll special dice to see if your dangerous monsters escape (which costs you a fine). Running out of money is bad, it forces you to take a loan, which can’t be paid back, and it costs you negative points at the end. Good, fun game.

King of New York, hadn’t played this for ages. Still such good fun. I think the dice are my favourite of any game, so nice in your hand.

[Phil]

I invited family around for dinner and games. We started with four, and played a couple of games of Kingdomino (I came last-equal with only 21 points in the first game, but then scored a relatively-crazy 70 points in the second game to win that one). I’d bought this partly because my family has a habit of playing dominos and I was hoping to lure them them into playing a game that I think is actually fun instead. They picked it up quickly, and I think they enjoyed it. Next was Azul (which Dad immediately noted looks a bit like “loser” backwards, which made me laugh). I have no regrets about going for the original game over any of the sequels.

After that the others arrived and it was time for dinner (I’d tried a couple of new recipes and they turned out pretty well), and then it was time for Camel Up with seven players (which I managed to win, partly by placing only a single bet on the outcome of the race, and being the first correct bet in that pile. (Ha! They all thought it would be purple!)). My favourite turn in the game saw a “-1” tile placed in front of a stack of two camels on one side, and one of the backwards-racing camels on the other side, and then all three of them rolled 1.

[COMaestro]

A couple of days ago, my wife and I playedStar Wars the Deckbuilding Game and once again she trounced me with the Rebels. I probably spent a bit too much time building my deck and trying to deprive her of good cards, rather than just attacking her bases.

Then, after some sass (“You might have a chance to win this one!”), we played Ethnos. We had Centaurs, Minotaurs, Merfolk, Wingfolk, and Elves. While the game was close, I was not able to win, scores were 96 - 92.

Then today we had another game of SWtDBG and while I was behind for quite a bit, the military might of the Empire finally showed up and I was able to take out her last base in two turns.

We then played Ra, where she proceeded to get all 8 of the monument types before the end of the second epoch. I also managed to get all 8 by the end of the game, but in that time she was able to get 3 of a kind with two and 4 of a kind with one. Unfortunately I had to pick up a Funeral, which eliminated two Pharaoh tiles and gave us a tie in the second epoch and I ended up losing the third by 1 tile. I lost the game overall 48 - 34.

[Whistle_Pig]

I’m a bit behind on my games reporting!

From UKGE:

I have to start with a game that I have heard variously described as “not even a game”, “total bullshit”, and “game of the year”, which is Stomp the Plank:

It’s basically a push-your-luck game in the style of Diamant, wherein every player has a little resin elephant and a plank attached to the “ship” with a magnet. On your turn you reveal cards until either you decide to stop or turn up two the same. The more different cards you reveal, the more weight everyone else adds to the end of their plank, and if you reveal a pair then your elephant moves further along your plank. Last one into the water wins! Very silly

Got in a couple of plays of String Railway, which I bought in the bring and buy at Airecon but hadn’t managed to play until now:

(That’s Japan, in case you can’t tell)

Age of Steam with @lalunaverde on the Poland map. It got crowded pretty quickly with 5 players, but none of us got too blocked out. I didn’t invest in my locomotive early enough to get good scores in the later rounds, so came 4th.

Nova Luna: I think I’d take this over Patchwork

Scram: this is a terrible take-that card game about building towers of cats. Reminds me a lot of games where you have to roll a specific number to move

Senshi: our go-to 10 minute filler

Village Green: I forgot one of the end game triggers and accidentally ended the game way too quickly

Bonfire: a veritable salad of points! I had no idea what I was doing but maybe I’ll have a vague grasp of things when we get around to playing our friend’s copy.

Quickity Pickity: simultaneous tile grabbing for set collection. Okay but I probably wouldn’t buy it.

Good Puppers: collecting cute dogs and bones

SCOUT: the theme makes no sense but still great

Sub Terra 2: we split the party. I’m sure you can guess how it went…

At the pub on Wednesday:

No Llamas: a simple card-shedding game. Not much to it but fun to play in the pub whilst waiting for others to arrive.

Nova Luna

Cloud City: a 3D spatial puzzle about building tall buildings connected by walkways. We played the basic setup and I’m interested to see how adding objectives changes things.

First Rat: this looks like a roll and move kid’s game but there’s actually a lot of strategy! There are a variety of ways to score points (building rocket parts, sending rats to space, donating cheese to the rat space program…) and you have to work out the best balance between them.

[GeeBizzle]

Played undaunted Normandy for the first time. It’s fun. Although scenario 1 seems heavily imbalanced towards the German side. This makes thematic sense but made me feel like my victory was a bit cheap.

[Phil]

Some beginner training for V-Sabotage and I’m wishing the manual was better organised. I’d played the first training mission previously and was hoping the second would be quicker to work through, but no.

They’ve actually tried to do a nice thing of introducing concepts via constrained training missions which are supposed to limit the amount of the manual that you need to read and then let you dive in and play with what you know so far, but in practice you can’t – there are bit and pieces that simply aren’t explained that way which leave you scouring the manual for where the explanation is hidden; or things are buried in weird places, so that if you can’t quite remember something you’re left trawling the manual for where the information is hiding.

It’s certainly not all bad – the writing is generally clear, and they have an index (excellent – I wish all games had an index!) which is a great help for the things it covers. The frustrating thing is that in theory that index would be an adequate workaround for any organisational problems, but it’s simply missing things which ought to be in there. For instance, “doors” (and related terms) are not indexed, yet the information about doors is scattered all over the manual in sections on “moving” (which mentions that locked doors are impassable for your characters – but not what you might be able to do about that); “enemy movement” (which mentions that enemies can pass through locked doors); “elements of the map” (which repeats the aforementioned details while still refusing to even hint at how one unlocks a door); “equipment” (which mentions that a crowbar can open a locked door – if you happen to find one of those); and… “shooting” (of course; how intuitive?!) which contains the info you actually need – which is that shooting a locked door with literally any kind of gun makes it an unlocked door with guaranteed success… (and also that explosives cannot be used to open doors… which is even more bizarre than the part about shooting them).

Naturally, training mission 1 requires no shooting, and training mission 2 places a locked door between your start position and the first enemy you might fancy taking a shot at, and doors aren’t covered in the training brief; so it took me a stupid amount of time to locate that information.

[Brattyjedi]

My husband and I recently acquired the leaders expansion for Beyond the Sun. He had already played it on someone else’s copy at our local game group whereas I hadn’t played it at all and hadn’t played base Beyond the Sun in over a year. That’s my excuse for why he so thoroughly kicked my butt on our first play, 55-40. We played again the next day and I won with a much closer 54-52.

I very much enjoyed the little bit of extra individual player powers the leaders add to the game. It’s not too much more complexity for a lot more sense of control and focus in what is otherwise a very open game.

[lalunaverde]

Spirit Island with 4 players!! We played against Austria-Hungary level 2. Volcano Looming High remains one of my fave spirits

Stick Em

Blood Rage - I’m cooling with this game. Yeah it’s cool that the strategies employed are counter-intuitive. But I feel that I am being driven towards efficiency rather than confrontation due to the very restrictive budget you have - in comparison to Cthulhu Wars (Yes. Any ToaMs will be compared to CW)

Glory to Rome - 4 players. Went very smoothly after a couple of rounds

Beyond the Sun x2 - we played with Advanced boards and techs. Had a blast with both plays, but I dont regret letting this one go. The advanced rules did help give players more “look-ahead” space. When it comes to Space Euros, Gaia or New Frontiers are up there.

Mysteries of the Temple - small box cube-conversion game. Decent. Short play time so it doesn’t waste your time.

Turn the Tide - hard to call this trick taking, but man, it’s a good game where you can mess around with the players. Play low or play high? For as long as you don’t play the 2nd highest card

[bruitist]

It’s been my (and my partner’s) birthday week, so there’s been a few opportunities for games.

First up, I had the week off, so I turned up early for Monday D&D at the games cafe. Took the opportunity to try a new game/introduce people to some games.

Kites - Freshly bought at UK Games Expo, apparently. Simple and hectic game. Fun, but I wouldn’t feel a desperate urge to play again. Might be slightly better if the sand timers weren’t so easy to knock over.

Splendor - Introduced a friend to this. She picked it up very quickly and beat me (I could see it coming and there was nothing I could do.)

6 Nimmt - Also introduced this. Didn’t get a full game in, but people enjoyed it.

---

Then after birthday D&D on Friday we played some more games. Unfortunately had too many people to play stuff I’d brought (I’ve been itching to play Inis for a while). I need fewer friends …

Telestrations - Fun as always. Bad drawing skills turned an owlbear into a gryphon and produced the nonsense of “car volleyball” (should have been “car pool”).

Concept - Similar. Stellar play by a friend who got Lara Croft in two guesses after I’d only managed to indicate it was a fictional woman.

---

Then went to see my partner’s family yesterday and played a couple of games.

Jazz: The Singing Card Game - I managed to lose, as apparently no one else thinks like me and tries to make patterns to make them easier to remember.

Marvel: Remix - Very pleased with how you can give a basic rules explanation at the start and then just clarify things as you play, without really giving your hand away. My partner, who’s not much of a game person, managed to pull off a neat win.

[COMaestro]

My wife was kind and suggested we play Unmatched today. So it was Medusa vs. Black Panther to break in my For King and Country set.

BP is interesting, as his special ability is to draw a card every time he BOOSTS. Additionally, he has cards which let him take cards from the top of the opponent’s deck and store them to use for BOOSTING. So he drills through his deck rather quickly, but also deprives his opponent of cards.

My wife took out Shuri (my sidekick) rather quickly, though to be fair I think I played her too aggressively. She damaged BP for quite a bit as well, but I did manage to get some good hits in, bringing her down to 3 HP when my deck ran out, but at least she killed me, rather than exhaustion. Interesting matchup, which I think I could win with better play.

EDIT: Later today, we played Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game where she once again crushed me, 3 - 2. Sad thing was on my second to last turn I had an amazing hand which dealt 18 damage…to her second base which only had 2 HP left. Nothing in the galaxy row to attack, so I just had a bunch of wasted attack power.

[Bondy034]

Some games over the last week and a bit:

Sprawlopolis, another close loss.

Roll Through the Ages, steamrolled through a game of this with very low scores.

Splendor Duel, I went broad and my opponent went narrow, I ended up with a win, which seems to accord with my experience of this so far - being flexible is important given how few high value cards are visible.

Cockroach Poker Royal x2, managed to lose one of them with an ill considered call Great fun though.

Coup x2, still fun. Cockroach poker is better though.

Calico, managed to hit all three of my design goals for once! And one of them in two ways. My cats and buttons were less impressive but enough to give me the win.

Age of Steam, big ticket item of the day. I kinda screwed up on turn one by not snagging a particularly valuable section of the board. In fact the player that did went on to win solidly so, yeah, not a great feeling. I don’t love this game, I happily indulge my friend every so often, but we had a couple of newish gamers (I did warn them of it’s length and complexity) but both were really struggling to keep their heads above water. Which was not great. Ah well, no one permanently scarred or anything,

Akropolis, quick two player game of this lovely little tile layer to close out the night. It’s really good, for me totally replaces Kingdomino/Queendomino - bit more dynamic and the vertical element really does add a lot of satisfying puzzling!

[MarkSP]

Secret Identity by Hachette Games truly has become my party game du jour. Bought with 20% off at the Waterstones stand at the UKGE. I have never laughed as much as when playing this game, myself and a friend were telling stories about a recent game of it, it lends itself so well to ridiculous situations.

The game is pretty straightforward - everyone has to describe a famous person using small pictures. But two wonderful mechanics made it sing:
Everyone starts with 10 cards, 4 pictures on each, and don’t draw any more the entire game. This makes later rounds bafflingly incomprehensible.

You guess each person without seeing the next. Which makes processes of elimination impossible, and the best results when similar boards are circulating.

Honestly, it’s one of the best party games and highly recommended.

[Captbnut]

Played Hegemony with @mistercrayon, another friend (who’s game it was) and another couple at our local convention (Rules Con).

It’s a highly asymmetric politics game. It took 4.5 hours! Tbf, we knew it was going to be long but thought it would closer to 3. I can easily see it getting to 3 hours (or less) with repeat plays. Joe had posted for a 4th player on Facebook. We assumed this couple would have been pretty hardcore gamers to jump in, but they’d never played anything longer or heavier than Pandemic! I thought they did really well with it though.

It’s very good, really finely balanced between the factions. Almost everything you do impacts at least one other faction and there is both strict competition and informal cooperation in certain circumstances. It’s highly thematic, and evoked a lot of my A Level Economics. It’s also utterly vast.

I do like this kind of thing once in a while, but it was a lot, especially considering I’m not used to being hungover!

I was the working class and managed to win by taking advantage of working in the state sector to produce and then take advantage of cheap health and education (at good wages) to become prosperous. @mistercrayon launched a series of boutique middle class businesses and then forced my guys to work for bugger all. The Capitalists were cranking it up at the end having opened a series of academies to undercut the state on education. The state got a bit trapped - by creating a high wage public sector they created a happy working class. If they and the Capitalists had driven wages down then I’d have been in trouble.

If that sounds like macro economics then that’s what I got out of it. I genuinely think having done it at A Level helped me! Can’t say that about many games.

That there is a balanced game there at all with what seems like a pretty accurate model of a modern economy is very, very impressive. I’m not sure how replayable it will be, but I’ve thought about it a lot since Sunday. Like all the asymmetrical games I’ve played it needs every faction to know the game as well as each other to make it balance. It’s an absolute beast, but I’m glad I’ve played it. I preferred it to John Company, but not as much as Cuba Libre for similar weight and length.

[lalunaverde]

Yes. I’m not sure if there’s replayability here once you become comfortable with the 4 factions. But I feel that by the time you have done that, you’ve marked a good number of plays. The question is how many.

[pillbox]

Does it feel as Spreadsheet-y as it looks?

Because… I’m pretty sure I’ve used that spreadsheet template before.

[yashima]

Well, since that Competitive Spreadsheet Video with Quins I consider spreadsheets absolutely salon-fähig (~acceptable). Also you own Leaving Earth the game my partner happily described as needing spreadsheets to properly play.