Two games of Sobek 2-Player with my wife tonight. First game was rather low scoring, and I won 46 - 40.
She came back in the second game though, and won 64 - 60.
4 Likes
Im the Boss - this game is stupid - in a good way. Yāall wheeling and dealing. Iām not sure if this has legs compare to other trading game, but it generated so much table talk and I had a blast with it.
Inside Job - been very keen on this when I hear good stuff from club members and other online ppl. And now I played it myself and it is a very fun first play. Some say itās better than The Crew, but I disagree. It doesnāt have the cerebral fun of The Crew or even Shamans, but this is straight up fun like any quick fire social deduction game. Deep mistrust and a lot of table talk.
Kingmaker - the reprint of the old Kingmaker and we played with the shorter Kingmaker 2. It was shit. The owner might have taught it wrong, but it was just shit the entire game. I usually have some tolerance on ToaMs, but this is just awful. The main issue I see here is that the gameās tempo is so slow. Even taking a lowly castle with just 100 garrison is difficult to conquer, so thereās not much to do except wait for random card draws to give us more troops. These issues are so easy to fix and they were fixed by modern games by giving players agency and something to do.
Skull - I won even after people found out that I only have 3 flowers in my hand.
9 Likes
Yesterday was a bad day. I was justā¦ Drained. Not tired, more like someone just scooped up every bit of cheer and drive I had and dumped it. Hollow. Skipped jiu-jitsu training because I was so out of it I was worried Iād hurt someone (myself or someone else).
So when Maryse came back from her appointment, we played a couple of games of Everdell, as usual with Bellfaire, but adding the weather cards fromSpirecrest. That fixed me right up. We played another one today before I left for jiu-jitsu. Donāt remember who won the ones from yesterday, I think I may have, I know I won today, but that hardly matters.
Board games are pretty awesome, yāall!
9 Likes
Finally got a stab at Deep Sea Adventure, or, as it should more appropriately be called, Suffocate the Optimist.
I understand the mechanics of this game and can see the simple but clever hooks. It works.
Not sure I particularly enjoyed it, though. It seems people will fall into roles; the one who wants to go deep, the one who turns back first, and beyond that āgoodā and ābadā play is pretty much defined. It just comes down to who wants to be who and then how the dice treat you.
But man, once the diver up top starts choking the divers down below, it gets mean.
I was the optimist.
I think Incan Gold for this sort of thing.
6 Likes
Drown your friends for fun and profit
3 Likes
Derp Sea Adventure, Iāve played many games where I feel the dice hate me, I made the ācorrectā choice and still got hosed. Itās why I sold it and kept Incan Gold, any mistake is my own in that.
3 Likes
Deep sea adventure is a menace of a game.
4 Likes
My favourite games of Deep Sea Adventure are where everyone dies
5 Likes
V-Commandos/V-Sabotage is on my āwrite a better manualā list - but I think itāll need graphics to be optimally clear. I agree that things often arenāt in the places one expects to find them.
3 Likes
Been thinking about Hegemony since playing it with @Captbnut and some other players.
I think itās a supremely interesting game. For something that has so many cogs itās really easy to actually do a thing. Your choices are limited to your hand of cards and thereās usually a stand out couple of actions in amongst there
Iām pretty sure the game is meant to have both a lot more horse trading and reacting to other players positions than the way we played it. Maybe the overhead of just doing your own bits means also having an idea of three other playersā contexts is too much in a first game. I think to really get the game you need to be able to smell the game state and I think that requires a lot of plays (which is hard for a 4 hour game that plays mostly best with an identical set of players between games Iād assume).
As Capt said - he won the game and I came a modest second. I think the teacher came last which I think might be punishment for being a teacher and bookeeper in a chonk game.
But then I was thinking on the way to football todayā¦ what does winning mean in the story of the game here?
Yes the workers got athe most victory points but in the game weāre trying to make a collapsing country work. So surely the victory condition should have that baked into it? Like if the capitalists exploited everyone to husks they āwinā but in a hypothetical ānext turnā you can have the state calling a billion in imf loans, mass unemployment and so on. In my own position I wasnāt dissatisfied with my position in terms of points but I had tonnes of unemployed people and the state was nearly finished. Should I be okay with this just because I hit over X points?
I think the game has a kind of fragility baked in because the simulation works really well in terms of tensions but has this euro game blanket over the top which slightly skews motivations I think. In a game like root where single faction supremacy feels like a legit desirable outcome for a faction Iām not sure In a genuine sense the working class earning a zillion points at the cost of everyone in a rubble would a desirable outcome. I wonder then if the game would benefit from some Knizia type āworst score is the scoreā (actually there is an element of this in there) or something to really make the narrative feel more front and centre.
3 Likes
Iāve seen plenty of criticism that it totally fails as any kind of simulation, for reasons including the ones you outline above.
3 Likes
My half-a-year-ago order of Clank! Catacombs finally moved to the front of the queue for the current print-run and I got it today and managed to drag myself away from both Zelda and my python project to play a 2 handed test game.
I just like Clank! Deck building, racing, rpg tropes ā¦ and this one adds exploration to the mix. Exploration=good.
This creates such beautiful labyrinthine maps that ā¦ right-hand just died in a tangle of tunnels as left-hand rejoiced with a 5 point artifact because left-hand could smell the skeletons from a mile away and opted for survival.
Canāt wait to play more but it is too late now to play another round.
6 Likes
I donāt want to be too harsh on it. It could be that it exists in that uncanny valley where it gets (or appears) to be close to doing one thing well but not close enough it becomes a bit more disappointing than something that didnāt even try. And a fairer appraisal could be the economy dressing is just good for helping understand the mechanisms of the euro game.
One cool thing that happened in our game was that weād had this extremely low wage economy but with a weirdly delighted working class (lots of points no trade unions or worker rebellions). It turned out having cheap health and education and enough food to go around might be enough to compensate for low wages. You can see that possibly being accurate.
3 Likes
Eh. X group screwing over everyone for their own benefit is pretty normal in politics.
The game, if I end up caring a lot about the theme, end up presenting a strictly Materialist perspective. Whether that is the intention of the designers or not, no idea. But in general, any kind of attempt to simulate something based on reductionist views like Class Struggle will just give you a simplistic system. Which is fine, if you just wanna play with the gameās system.
2 Likes
I think Dan Thurotās review summed up some of the issues well. Basically, even accepting that it is a limited materialist perspective that necessarily cuts out a whole lot, it doesnāt really work under its own limitations.
relevant excerpt from his typically wordy review
For instance, multiple sessions have resulted in a peculiar situation where the Working Class is absolutely stacked with cash while also suffering from crippling unemployment. Now, thereās a way to combat this. The Working Class can launch demonstrations when there are too many unemployed workers. This potentially robs the other factions of points if new jobs havenāt been provided by the end of the round. Except the Working Class likely has plenty of money, which theyāre using to buy services and goods to increase their prosperity, so they donāt have a strong incentive to actually hold the demonstrations for more jobs. Their incentive, when you get right down to it, is to drain opposing points. An odd carrot indeed, breaking the gameās fourth wall and representingā¦ what? Resentment? Jealousy? It seems like there could have been more tangible ways to depict the quality of living gap than an appeal to the scoring track. Meanwhile, all those unemployed workers incur neither penalty nor obligation. As an entity, the Working Classās approach to its clients is all positive contribution, no responsibility.
The same goes for the others as well. The Capitalist Class is the boardās main generator of new businesses ā until a switch is flipped and it halts the growth, for no in-setting reason whatsoever. For no in-game reason, either, except that theyāve maxed out how many points they can earn from cash. How cool would that be, if the worldās wealthy suddenly decided theyād made enough scratch? The Middle Class is vacillating and unsteady ā until the last round, when suddenly theyāre pushing for centrist policies. The scoring track is always oppressively close at hand.
ā¦
By their very nature, board game scoring systems intrude into the magic circle, but rarely do they highlight such a brittle model. I donāt believe Iāve seen a single session of Hegemony conclude with what feels like a ānaturalā state. It isnāt always a rich but unemployed Working Class. Sometimes itās a State with a bunch of empty businesses, or a Capitalist who barely founded any companies, or a Middle Class that never once bothered to claim some free healthcare. Whatever the cause, Hegemony struggles to connect its underlying model with its outward expression.
3 Likes
Another game of Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game with my wife. I did okay except I had a dearth of cap ships until close to the end. As such I was not able to defend my first or second bases at all, and lost them before I managed to take out her first base.
On the bright side, I then had an explosive turn which took out her second 16 health base as well as a 5 health Nebulon-B frigate, with enough attack left to knock out something from the Galaxy row.
Unfortunately, she then killed my base with the exact amount of damage needed, though to be fair, even if I had survived, I would not have taken out her third base with the hand of cards I had and she would have finished me off the following turn.
6 Likes
Last night, my wife and I played Everdell, just base game plus Extra, Extra! It was an odd one, as we had few opportunities to get pebbles, but the others werenāt too bad. It was also weird in that I did not have a ton of Production cards by the time Autumn rolled around, as I usually do.
That said, I was super stoked that I managed to get all three of the Scurrble Champions, giving me 18 points for just the three of them, and they only take up one slot of your city! Along with the Ever Tree bonus, they scored me 21 points total, which was just about the amount of points I scored over my wife. Won 69 - 49.
5 Likes
Frosthaven, a bit of a slog this week. And I found out Iāve been playing my class (Death Walker) wrong all this time. I have an ability called āCall to the Abyssā, which says that when you attack something, you can place a token beneath it. I mistakenly thought this was one of my shadow tokens, but no, itās a character token. So I put a character token on a bad guy, it gets killed, and I get to place one of my shadows. So you build up shadows, which is very important for this class. Makes much more sense now. Duh. I should be able to contribute a bit more to the group now. I feel a bit stupid for making such a basic mistake.
It was a weird game, I didnāt get any shadows out, because we spent all our time doing our objectives. At a point in the game, you clear the first room and the second opens up, and we thought we would stay in the first room and destroy the bad guys as they came to us. This was a mistake, we really needed to get into that second room, and we should have pushed forward. Probably added another hour to the game. Other than that it was an interesting scenario, and we came through in the end.
Bonk, first play. A dexterity game where you try to move the wooden ball into the opposing teams goal. Itās a team game, 2 on 2. Itās pretty simple to play, but good fun. For a cheapish game, it seems to be well constructed. The only issue is that itās a relatively huge box, but it is quite light. I think it went down well, we all seemed to enjoy it. Itās a pretty quick game, if the main ball is touched it will start rolling towards the goal. A long point was maybe 5 seconds.
Belratti, we lost badly, but it was fun. The game has a bit of a Dixit vibe to it, which is a good thing.
Nova Luna, one of our favourites, always a close tussle. You always look over your tiles at the end and think āI could have done this betterā, but of course you canāt always make everything work at the time. And we like to boo anyone who gets to take a double turn (the next player is the one farthest back). Good fun.
7 Likes
We played a 2 player Clank! Catacombs ā¦ before lunch. This has never happened before. My partner normaly āidlesā until lunch. For him to play a game this earlyāis very special. He must like Clank! even more than I thought. Glad I backed Legacy 2 
And I lost by 20 pointsā¦ but only because I thought I was further ahead than I was. My partner managed to grab an artifact at the last possible moment and with much luck made it back out of the dungeon just before he would have collapsed from his wounds 
Good times for everyone. The dungeon discovery is such an added fun elementā¦
We sleeved the cards before that play. Card quality on any Clank! is not the greatest and deckbuilders in general need so much shuffling which is one major improvement of sleeves over not.
I think the game would profit from a full 4 players (apparently it accommodates 6 with one of the expansions from basic Clank!) which would fill out the map faster. But it scales really well with just 2. Better than the big fixed maps I feel.
I like the lockpick mechanism a lotāthose are an additional resource that you can use to permanently unlock certain tunnels, open libraries, chests and prison cells (the latter 3 on a first come get something, everyone after gets nothing basis)
Also like the new location cards that are effectively āuse-onceā effects you buy from the market row.
Random artifact placement in random tiles also makes it even more important to consider wether to take one or not because you never know if you will even counter another artifact in the course of the game. Our map had 2 tiles with artifact spots and that was it.
9 Likes
Some games over the last week:
Legacy of Yu x3, sigh, so the temptation of another crack at this won out. Iām now 1 for 3 in campaign twoā¦
Bananagrams x2
The Quest for El Dorado, played this with 2 - very different game, having to get two people all the way to the end effects the game more than Iād have thought! I do think I prefer it with more though.
Darwinās Journey, got a game of this in at a local game day with the lovely ladies from ThinkerThemer. I did awfully, but itās definitely interesting. Super tight with the worker placement early on though and thereās really no room to muck around!
Dwellings of Eldervale, I liked this one a fair bit, but gosh is it overproduced! I was having the feeling of a run away leader but that end game scoring can be a huge swing and indeed the player who was in last for most of the game ended up winning by a couple of points.
Endless Winter, this was my favourite of the day - super interesting weird hybrid deck builder/worker placement/area control/a bunch of other stuff. Didnāt think Iād like this one (kind of reeked of ādialed up to 11ā at first blush) but was pleasantly surprised. It kind of comes together in a way I found rather satisfying - only downside is I may have to find a copy now!
7 Likes