My wife’s absolute least favorite thing about Gloomhaven. It can be like “There’s a kitten about to be eaten by a monster. Do you save it?” And you say yes and it’s like “The kitten scratches you. Start the next scenario with two damage. But at least you did the right thing…”
8 Likes
I had myself a compact nature-tile-laying themed solo game night 
- I think I have now played Trailblazers in various variants of the solo about 8 times. Beginner‘s mode is fine now. But as soon as I try to go for the goal cards… it‘s really tough. I have also tried the animals expansion and the adventure mode. Both very lovely. I have yet to read the rules for the „epic solo“
- Naturopolis proves to be of extremely variable difficulty: first game I got 3 goals with a target of 14+ and failed abysmally, second game I got 3 targets that were <10 and none had any placement penalties and I won with 10 points.
- Cascadia: first game was weird I got an abundance of single terrain tiles for the first 5 rounds. I didn‘t do well. Second game I tried to go for Scenario 10: it requires 60 points from animals and 3 territories with 7+ tiles. I managed to complete neither goal.
All in all it would have felt even more relaxing if I had not also been listening in on my partner watching Extraction II. Sounded like a splatter movie, though he assures me it is an „action“ movie. The contrast to my games though… 
10 Likes
Met up with a friend today for a run of 2-player stuff. Almost all new (to us at least). Ended up with somewhat of a sea theme.
Splendor Duel - Second time I’ve played this. Definitely won’t replace the standard game, but good if you want something a bit more thinky. I managed to just squeak out a win.
Titania - Odd Rüdiger Dorn game that doesn’t have an English version, but no in game text, so just needed rules off BGG. Interesting situation where you don’t own anything on the board. Also an interesting mechanism where the more cards you play, the less you draw at the end of your turn. Enjoyed it, despite the theme being largely irrelevant.
Vivarium - New birthday acquisition. Really light set collection game with lovely art. Unfortunately I got carried away with collecting pairs of cards and forgot that the scoring bonus maxed out at 4 pairs.
Deep Vents - I need to show this to people who say the iconography in Race for the Galaxy is confusing. We barely knew what we were doing turn to turn, let alone trying to work out any kind of game strategy. An interesting game, but I don’t see myself taking the time to get my head around it.
Traders of Osaka - Hadn’t played this in ages. Still good, but maybe not at its best at 2. I really like the way the cards are multi-use (working as currency, goods to be bought/sold, and also insuring goods).
Tiny Epic Pirates - I wasn’t a fan of the previous TE game I played (Quest). This was better, but still felt like too many moving parts for what should be a snappier game.
9 Likes
Another play of Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game, another loss as the Empire. I made a tactical error on my last turn, taking our my wife’s second base rather than eliminating Luke from the Galaxy row, because she then picked the base which lets her take a Rebel card from the row to her hand for free, and proceeded to play Luke and a number of other cards which eliminated my cap ships and dealt enough damage to my last base to destroy it.
5 Likes
Some games over the last week:
No Thanks x3
Just One
Telestrations
Love Letter, played these with a group of non-gamers, went over well. We were terrible at Just One though! I think our final score was like 4…
Everdell, got this to the table with some mates. Just the base game - I don’t really play it enough to justify expanding - and the base game is still very enjoyable. I very nearly won but forgot to leave a worker to claim one of the special events… 
Gizmos, man I’m terrible at this game. I seem to lose pretty much everytime I’ve played it. Something about seeing the combos is something I struggle with. Still fun to lose though
Legacy of Yu x2, another win and a loss in campaign two.
Disney Mad Tea Party x2, played this a gaming meetup as an icebreaker. Lucky and with predictable failure points (cup five on a stack is almost always the one that does you in). There’s a lot of better dexterity games out there.
Kabuto Sumo, this one was interesting, very novel gameplay (even if we had some debate about what a legal push looks like… A novelty but an enjoyable one.
Great Western Trail, big 4 player game of this with one new player. Our new player ended up coming in second, so clearly my teach was pretty good 
He followed my advice about focusing on a particular kind of employee. I went cowboys, he went builders. The other two flirted with multiple tracks but missed out on account of lacking that focus. Although one of them just narrowly missed two deliveries to New York, which I always find impressive (I sometimes get there once, but twice seems tough to count on). It was a long game but everyone enjoyed it. The player who was new to the game seemed particularly taken by it - he said it was a step up in complexity from what he normally plays but was considering picking it up after our game! Which I’m always enthused about - I love introducing new games to people and them coming away excited about them. Might just be one of my favourite things about the hobby, honestly.
Splendor Duel, game of this with mum when she was up visiting. We were neck and neck by the end but I just slipped ahead.
Jaipur
Ohanami x2, again with mum, this one was new to her, but she enjoyed it enough to call for a rematch after our first game
7 Likes
We did some boardgame cafe yesterday. It was good fun. We have this slight trickiness in that one person wants to play a certain kind of game but the number of people makes it a challenge.
We did play “that’s not a hat” which is a bit like cockroach poker but I think with a slightly adjusted focus. It seems a lot tighter in focus but probably loses something.
Hues and clues which is okay fun.
Telestrations was an intersting one. I thought it’d be worth a go because the group has a nice time with Gartic Phone. Telestrations confirms my belief that a fundamental part of these kinds of game is the chosen words. Here it feels like the game expects and needs people to be bad at drawing basic items to get real fun out of it. Whereas something like Gartic allows people to be bad at drawings because the words are actually impossible to draw. Or it could be the aim is to only have one bungled set per game - in which case the game is a success on those terms.
5 Likes
Our club went off to a board game escapade where we stayed in a big house and play games. Apparently, the 2 days (plus Thursday evening) weren’t enough to some people. No games on Sunday as we left and went out for some crazy golf. Sontag ist ruhetag.
No Thanks
Glory to Rome - Someone got away with a bonkers af combo with no counter from us. I would have ask if we can call the game if I’m with Wyvern’s group, but I think ending the game rules-as-written would be polite.
Voyages of Marco Polo - Used to be one of my faves when I was into Euros back in the old days. Still enjoyable.
Poker: Texas Hold Em and Omaha styles - Omaha seems more interesting. You start with 4 cards, and you play it like Texas Hold Em. Except you choose 2 cards out of those 4 for the grand reveal.
Biblios - wow. This was a lot more boring than I remember
Bios Mesofauna - one has to drop out as she got a bad headache. Still enjoyable at 2 players. The teach is a lot more smooth than I expected it to be.
Cuba Libre - Played as July 26 faction on a 4 player game. Great game! I am keen on retrying Falling Sky and pick up the other COIN titles. I would be keen on exploring Fire in the Lake, Pendragon, Colonial Twilight, and Liberty or Death. I am definitely grabbing People Power as it was set in the Philippines back in the Marcos Dictatorship Era.
Blood on the Clocktower - awesome game. I think this is becoming one of my faves.
Wildcatters - Great game of shared-incentives, but meh. Playing it again made me realised that the gane’s rule complexity was beyond my threshold and it’s more procedural than I can tolerate. So I’m selling it but I would always be up for a game of this. Highly prefer it against modern Euros, for example.
Senators - Grand game of 5 players. The dynamism between players is just great.
10 Likes
I’d be interested to hear what you think of fire in the lake. Still the only coin I’ve played, and after a few games I probably won’t play it again.
4 Likes
Got our Atlantis Rising expansion and played a couple games with the Monstrosities and allies. This is a co-op game with the classic model of players do things them the game does bad stuff then repeat for the next round. First we played the harpies monster scenario and struggled at first. We eventually got a handle on them and won in the end. Then we played Medusa and turned her from a monster to an ally on the third turn so not much difficulty with her and not much trouble overall. We played both games on level 5, which was the hardest difficulty in the original game so maybe next time we’ll try one of the new harder levels in the expansion book.
4 Likes
I might dislike it as it seems complicated and long, but we’ll see. Cube Libre shines because it’s so straight forward for a thematic war game.
I knew I missed some things:
Inis - 5 player game with the expansion cards. I left out the Seasons module as I’m not hot about this module (pun intended. Hottest weekend in the UK so far). The table didn’t like but I still like it lol
It’s a Wonderful World - The table really like this game, but I didn’t. Most of the decisions are done on Round 1 and 2. 3 and 4 are for min-maxing. I really don’t like the A Side cards. They pretty much railroad the players into certain strategies. Since everyone was doing their own strategies, there wasn’t much interesting decisions other than picking up the cards that are beneficial to you and cards that gives income to the cards that are beneficial to you. E.g. I was African Union in this game which gives 2x multiplier for each Science cards. Therefore, I pick up Science cards to build and cards that produces Science income. Meh.
7 Likes
My comprehension of the flow of this game is poor enough that when I actively try to score more points I score fewer.
7 Likes
Played a total of five games of Ark Nova over the week-end, since the weather was dreadful (hot and sticky, with very bad air quality due to the forest fires). Three on Saturday (back-to-back-to-back) and two on Sunday (back-to-back).
On Saturday, all three games were super close, including a 19-19 draw. The widest score differential was, like, 8 points (I lost both games that weren’t a draw).
On Sunday, by contrast, both games were massacres with score differentials of over 40. In the first one, Maryse had, like, 15 conservation points already when I got my first one (I, unsurprisingly, lost and was quite proud to get a 0). In the second game, though, I got basically a royal flush of a draw that enabled me to jump out to an unsurmountable lead AND get an insane income bonus as well really early. It did NOT go well for Maryse.
It waas too late to get a third game in, but we’ll lilely play the last game tonight. 
10 Likes
Update: I won the last one. It was a massacre. I got insanely lucky with my animals, while Maryse struggled to get any.
I’m not used to winning at anyyhing, this is quite novel!
5 Likes
For the first time in what might actually be years, I got Burgle Bros out.
Had to completely re-learn how to play it, then played a couple of solo games.
I liked it very much. I’m glad it survived my huge Airecon bring & buy purge (it very nearly didn’t)!
10 Likes
Inspired by my Burgle Bros success, I’ve started digging out some other games I usually only play solo and haven’t played for ages.
Today it was Welcome To… Your Beautiful Home and Troyes Dice. Both of which reminded me that I really quite like both playing smallish, shortish solo games and these two games in particular.
Next stop? Maybe the not remotely smallish Fields of Arle…
7 Likes
Last night I decided to have another go at the Venom Goblin scenario from Marvel Champions Sinister Motives campaign. And once again that sorry sack of s**t beat me. Approximately two hours of play, and I probably didn’t even get a chance to damage him for the first 45 because I was constantly being harassed by minions with Guard, and sometimes Patrol. I did finally manage to defeat his first form, though it may not have been the best idea, but I just wanted to feel like I accomplished something after all that time. That frickin’ Advanced Glider is just horribly imbalanced, allowing a follow up attack/scheme after activating against each character! And you can only get rid of it if you discard attack cards from your hand with a total cost of 3 or more, which is rather difficult for the default decks for Miles and Gwen. I was able to get rid of it once, using Miles’ two best attack cards, but it came out again after the Encounter deck got reshuffled.
This really is just a miserable scenario and I’m tempted to just skip it. I’ll probably give it one more try and then move on to Mutant Genesis, as I’ve really been looking forward to playing with Gambit and Rogue.
5 Likes
I like Venom Goblin as a scenario, but it can feel very punishing, and Advanced Glider is easily the worst card ever designed for the game. If you do try it again, I would recommend replacing the Goblin Gear modular set with Goblin Gimmicks (or Bomb Scare if you don’t own the Green Goblin expansion); it makes the scenario more manageable overall, and prevents that bleep-ing glider from single-handedly ruining the game.
Not sure why, but Marvel Champions has consistently struggled with creating final-boss scenarios that don’t feel like getting mugged in a dark alley. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a single final scenario in a campaign box since the first one, at least not without making some modifications to the modular sets or something.
2 Likes
Yeah, I have read that suggestion to replace the Goblin Gear, and that might be something I try at some point. I have the Green Goblin scenario but have not played it yet, so I can access the Goblin Gimmicks or whatever it is. Because you are right, the scenario itself is pretty cool, but it is just incredibly punishing, and the glider just increases that level of punishment exponentially.
2 Likes
Before.
After.
Gods I love Twilight Imperium. 3 new players (Hacan, Jol-Nar, Sol) and me as the Barony. Such a good game!
13 Likes
Games meet-up tonight. I was just in time to get in on a game of Q.E. which is a bidding game in which you have unlimited funds with which to bid! – but at the end of the game, whoever has spent the most money over the course of the game is disqualified. Thematically you are all playing government banks who can literally print money, and who are bailing out companies in a financial crisis; but someone is going to ruin their country in the process.
I don’t know what kind of legs the game has, but I would happily play this again. Each round a different lead player places a public starting bid on the newly-revealed company, and everyone else writes a secret bid, and all bids may be literally any amount. The lead player reviews the bids in secret, announces the winner, and secretly documents the winning bid in dry-erase pen on the company tile before returning it to the winner. The company tiles won by each player therefore provide a record of all of their successful bids. Other players will only know the lead bid and their own bid. When you bid high and lose, you realise that other people are upping the ante – but you don’t know by how much, and you also don’t know how you compared to the other losers (unless any players bid zero which is made public knowledge, but provides that player some points on a maximum of three occasions).
(The worst part of the game was when I had flashbacks to trying to buy a house in a really horrible housing market, when we kept submitting larger and larger offers, but were still being outbid every time…)
At the start of the game the lead bid was 100. The end of the game saw a bid of 900,000 (which also lost that player the game : )
Early in the game I was in knots over whether to bid as much as 12,000 and probably lost a company by changing my mind and dropping down to around 8,000. Late in the game I was throwing hundreds of thousands at things, and feeling like a fool for quibbling over such tiny amounts earlier. Except you don’t actually know for sure that the numbers are going to escalate, and the prospect of finding that you’ve spent more than everyone else is always hanging over you. And if you increase the bidding early, things will probably just escalate faster.
I ended up spending the second highest amount of money and also winning the game. The two don’t necessarily go hand in hand, but it’s probably a pretty good spot to be in. I started throwing a lot of money around in order to get myself some good bonuses and would have lost on that account were it not for the should-have-been-the-winner panicking on the final round and pushing their spending past mine by about 100,000 or so.
Unusual and fun.
We then played Sushi Go Party (which I also won, but only via the tie-breaker of having more dessert cards than the other player with the same score).
Finally myself and one of the other players at our table split off for a game of Targi which I’ve been wanting to play for a long time, and which didn’t disappoint. It’s a really neat design! I didn’t come close to winning this game (I managed about 3/4 of their score), but I had a good time and I hope to play it again before long.
9 Likes