Another play of Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game as the Rebels again. I lost, but only by the lack of a single damage point, and despite my wife getting some cap ships in play and healing 7 damage, if I had lived through the round, I had enough to take her out. But alas, 'twas not to be.
7 Likes
Tried out Maquis last night, using the suggested first play setup. I won on turn 3, so that is either a bit too easy, or I got lucky with the order of patrol cards. I only lost one worker to the Milice Parade mission, which is a requirement. Otherwise, I spaced out the graffiti marking for the Officerās House mission and accomplished both missions on the third turn.
Going to try one harder mission next time.
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Respectfully, I resent you for this. 
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Nice three-player game night tonight.
Alien Frontiers: I pretty much rolled exactly what I needed every single turn and skated to the fastest win weāve ever seen in this game.
Istanbul: Before we started my wife said she planned to hit the guildhall cards hard. True to her word she stuck around there and kept picking them up, and used them to pick up goods and rubies from far-flung places. She ended with six rubies while me and our friend only had three each.
Cat in the Box: Feels very different at three! Itās much easier to keep track of everything which can lead to some fun plays. My wife paradoxed the first two rounds, so she was pretty much out of the running. Our friend had a chance in the third round if I had paradoxed, but actually nobody did so I kept the lead for the win.
7 Likes
If it makes you feel any better, I played four more times today. First was Officerās Mansion and Double Agent, which I won, but realized I played incorrectly, as I counted locations west of the river as āvisitedā if I had a worker there and performed some other action, so I voided that win. I replayed the same scenario and played correctly this time and won on turn 7.
Then I tried out Underground Newspaper and Sabotage, which ended very horribly on turn 12 or something when my last worker was arrested. Basically every risk I took cost me.
Replayed and it was looking like it was going to be a repeat when in an effort to protect my path to the safe house I had workers on Port de Levenique(?), the Doctor, and Radio A, a Patrol card came up that was blocked on all options and arrested my guy at the Port, meaning I lost all three workers. Figured I was doomed, but the last two managed to get the last Intel needed and one was caught after delivering it to the newspaper, giving me the win with just one guy left.
So, I am not waltzing through these.
What was nice is I played all four of the games today during my lunch break for jury duty, which admittedly was like 1.5 hours, but still awesome that it can be played so quickly and still give you a very engaging experience.
7 Likes
My final standings for John Company 2ā 3 handed play to teach myself the game.
It took me the better part of 2 evenings and I am sure I made more mistakes. How can a game that just lasts five rounds take so long? (I know, I played it, just tired rethorical questions)
So I played The Sykes Syndicate vs me as the Walsh Smash vs me as the Bridgerton Hastings.
I have more questions: how do these brilliant games have suchā¦ difficult rulebooks? How can they forget to explain that āextraā cards are not just extra but labeled as such. This has to be the worst component description Iāve seen in a while. That setup issue with the cards alone cost me an hour of searching for a clue what they meant by extra cards (I never saw the tiny label) and the forum on BGG is so full with more important seeming questions and I couldnāt find an FAQā¦ also the order seems to be largely by what comes up during play, except the end of the game is explained at the start and some other things also seem to appear out of order. Ah well, who needs rulebooks anyway.
With some hints from @lalunaverde I grokked most of it eventually. And after having to tear down my game from last night after 1 round, today I managed to somehow simulate 5 rounds.
Obviously negotiations were ā¦ unspoken and my 3 families largely cooperatedāthough purple tried hard to grift via dividends because they got real lucky with the initial setup for shares. Green tried their best to hold all the offices while blue remained prime minister throughout and on the last turn managed to make so much money from plundering and uhm trading they were able to buy the 20 point retirement for their very tired Chairmen (last round was the only one someone else had more shares than purpleāpurple got the stock exchange early on and backfilled the company with cheaply bought shares. When blue noticed it was almost to late to stop the super-grifter.)
I might possibly be able to teach the game to some friends. But I think this will have to wait for a bit. Learning this was hard enough and I have a bit of stuff going on like managing the moveā¦
It is very fascinating like every Wehrle game I have played and I am glad I own it.
11 Likes
Thereās no excuse for this, but I think widespread use of tabletop simulator to playtest has made this a more common error lately. The setup is scripted early on, then people forget about some basics.
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Alchemists, a good (if lengthy) deduction game. I got off to a bad start, tested a couple of potions on myself, didnāt work out so well. I spent the entire game in last place, finishing last as well. Couldnāt get any money going, so even when I deduced the correct alchemical, couldnāt afford to publish. It can be a tough game. Still fun though.
Tinderblox, first play. Simple dexterity game of placing logs and cubes onto a campfire, with a tiny pair of tweezers. Tricky to do, and no margin for error, if you make one mistake, youāre out.
Perfect Alibi
So Clover, which we failed at. One player wrote āTinderā for the clue āboneāā¦I failed by writing āoompaā for green, forgetting that Oompa Loompas were orange, not green. So closeā¦
American Book Shop, cool simple tricktaker, where having the highest card in the hand doesnāt mean youāll win the trick. You may not even want to win the trick.
Scout to finish up
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I donāt get itā¦ please explainā¦ in detailā¦
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To āboneā is slang for sex
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Weāve played a couple of things this week.
Quartermaster General with a full 6 less than a week after acquiring it (and a week after cancelling game night because everyone dropped out on the day). This was pretty enjoyable. With 6 new players we were done (including learning) in 2 hours. Itās an asymmetric, team war game. There was a lot of post game discussion about how each of us would have played differently if weād known the precise make up of our decks (especially from Italy, although they occupied Western Europe for most of the game and scored a lot of points). It looked like the Axis were going to win comfortably, but Germany couldnāt get battle cards into their hand and were ultimately squeezed by Russia and the UK. The Americans ignored the Atlantic and Europe to repeatedly headbutt Japan.
It was enjoyable, there arenāt many games of that weight and length for 6 so will keep hold of this, even just for big meetups and conventions.
Yesterday we played The Search for Planet X. This was my secret Santa gift (thanks Santa). I got very lucky with an asteroid belt and ended up winning despite being a fair way from finding the planet. Our youngest found it, but when we talked about it later it transpired he shouldnāt have been as confident as he thought he was and he got lucky! I like the puzzle, but we pretty much played in silence, which isnāt really what weāre into. Iām really glad to have been given the game and I think Iāll try it solo, but we much prefer Paint the Roses for deduction.
We also played The Quest for El Dorado on a hideous course that my youngest created. Iām so, so bad at this and lost by miles. Very enjoyable though, but having only 3 of each market card can be brutal.
Finally a couple of games on BGA when we couldnāt be bothered to set something up. Yet again a unique game of Innovation when Kate climbed up to the 10 deck using Mathematics and I was stuck in era 4 but managed to win using Oars, stealing her points with a level 3 card and then finally jumping up to win. Then a couple of games of Cribbage which we are obsessed by, but is a little bit luck dependant in a single game.
12 Likes
Yesterday we played Sobek 2-player, which ended up being a very close game, even though I thought my wife was going to run away with it when she had 54 points in ivory alone. But I did have a number of Debians and some decent sets of goods, so managed to keep the scoring margin close.
She won, 85 - 83.
We then tried to play Lost Cities, but had to quit after the first round because our kid was causing so many interruptions that we were losing track of whose turn it was, and were overall distracted. Though I was up 54 - -2. 
5 Likes
Some games over the past week:
Concordia, super tight game - I ended up winning because of the Concordia card! Iād happily play this game every week honestly, but itās always fun to get to the table.
No Thanks x2, this is a winner and a go to game for gamers and non gamers alike.
Legacy of Yu, finished campaign two with a far better win rate than my first. And Iād happily play another now - donāt sleep on this one, my favourite solo game for sure.
Scout, I love this game but gosh Iām bad at it. My final score was 0 
Archaeology, introduced this to a table of new players. Itās such a simple easygoing card game. Excellent.
Star Wars: Jabbaās Palace, this is definitely the most unique version of Love Letter Iāve played. I love that the high cards also have cool powers in this one - makes the decision of whether to play them for their effect or try to keep them for the endgame. Though having fewer guards Iām less sure about as itās a big shift away from the deduction of the base game.
Campy Creatures, great theme of B-movie monsters snatching mortals. The game play reminded me of Libertalia, with a touch of Sushi Go. I think I prefer both of those to this one but it was decent, despite me having never heard of it before this game.
Archipelago, on my quest to purge games that donāt get played much, this one was up for consideration. But I was pleased to discover itās still excellent. So much fun, layers of decision making and interactive in a great way. Lost by a single point by virtue of not having assassinated the popeā¦ Great emergent story telling. No separatist in this game though, which meant unrest was not a big threat (I was actually thinking we had a pacifist, but no, one of our players was just feeling particularly generous (he didnāt win)). Lots of wonders this time around. Each of us had one by the end.
Agricola: ACBAS, I built a horse and sheep farm and got great points for some buildings so had a ten point lead by the end. I donāt regret getting rid of the original Agricola, particularly when this one exists. Great fun.
7 Likes
I read the title, and I could tell that Iāve been listening to too many political podcasts because I immediately thought All Cops Bastards Are, Soā¦ which doesnāt even make sense.
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Catch the Moon XXL
Bot Factory - Light game co-designed by Lacerda. Based on Kanban but I guess it eventually become its own game somewhere in the design process. It was a good distillation in theory, but it only made it more apparent, these problematic design issues with Lacerda titles tends to have. Their overall design sounds good on paper, but it end up with decisions being rather inconsequential. And if there are consequential, they are too swingy. Which is the big problem with CO2: Second Chance
Any designer and their dog can design a game with a convoluted system. Just call in Beth Sobel or any other talented artists to slap in a cute theme like nature or animals and you have a GOTY. However, it takes a better designer to make a great game out of that convoluted system. And it takes greater talent to create a game with a relatively lighter framework but with hard decisions. I donāt think Lacerda is on that level. He failed with Mercado de Lisboa which is abysmal. Bot Factory was better, but still awful in some regards.
Time of Crisis + Age of Iron and Rust - okay. First game so far, but I think this is my favourite deckbuilding game so far. Yes. Itās better than Trains.
More Chicago Express!
Ginkgopolis - leans too heavy on the tactical level, but still found it enjoyable.
Innovation - we played with 4 players (not teamed). We know itās unstable, but we just want to kill some time and have fun while we wait for others. We reached Age 10 and someone triggered Fission because they are not winning which plunged us to a nuclear war and we went back to Stone Age. Never had that before and we found it hilarious.
An Infamous Traffic What a game!! Damn. What a game! Shared incentives all over. Take-thats that are fun and predictable. Tough choices. Fast gameplay. And with a rather slim rule set and slim box (itās your typical Hollandspiele box). This is my new favourite this year outside of The Old Prince. And I think this might become my favourite Cole Werhle.
The Old Prince - I havenāt been talking about TOP as itās an 18xx game that is only available for pnp. Rumour mill says that Lucas Boyd found a publisher. Weāll see. Canāt wait. This has been one of my favourite 18xx titles this year. Itās very different from the 1830 formula yet it seems to take what I like from 1830 and reduce the parts that I donāt like. A friend of mine said heāll pnp TOP for both of us.
Monuments - very Scythe-esque in game play. I got tired of Scythe after 40+ plays. This didnāt ignite a renewed feeling.
Reef Encounter - mind melting SICS game from the designer of Keyflower. I still havenāt internalised all the basics of this game so Iām keen on more plays.
7 Likes
Are you planning to get the second edition of An Infamous Traffic?
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Yes! Iām sure I will. But I will keep this one as itās an easy one to store - and also in case that I didnāt like 2nd edition.
But I heard some talk that Cole had trouble with reprint it in China and thereās Arcs currently underway so weāll probably wonāt hear much for a while.
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Annual barbecue and games for my friendās birthday. None of the games I brought got played as I hadnāt realised thereād be more players.
Played some 2-player stuff while we waited for others to return.
Kingdomino Duel - Iām not big on roll-and-writes (I donāt dislike them, they just all feel the same) and this didnāt do anything to change that.
Mandala - Enjoyed this more. Thought I had the hang of it in the first game, but then my friend understood it better and I lost the second 
No Thanks! - My gift to him. Went down very well with everyone.
NMBR 9 - He has two copies, so we were able to play this with 7. Always fun. Not much to say other than that.
Whoosh: Bounty Hunters - Struggling to find games that would play more players, we pulled out this that we hadnāt payed in years. Basically slightly more complicated Snap, but about the right level when the player group included a 12 year-old and several people whoād been drinking throughout the afternoon.
Asteroyds - Traditional game of this. Not as drunken/chaotic as it has been in the past, but still good fun.
9 Likes
Yoda has a political podcast?
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(Yoda Voice): āHmmm-mm-mm, wrong srsly, the boys are.ā
2 Likes