In this moment No Thanks needs to become a (semi) co-op/1 v many game you would think. It’s hard to negotiate this play in this kind of game though.
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It was kinda late in the game though, and with six players nobody wanted to be the one to take the big hit.
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I guess my point was how a game can subtly shift in classification inside the game and how games can often feel like there’s another layer to them. You walk in expecting a quick everyone for themselves game but the circumstances inside can create a different dynamic.
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I dont often reflect plays here but I do have to say that Star Wars: Outer Rim has been an absolute godsend this holiday. Played almost every night and has helped my routine-sensitive boy, and Mrs DJCT enyoys the Star Wars theme ( well, wookies).
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Some other games we played after Pendragon yesterday:
Circuitry: a spatial puzzle/maze game involving moving parts of the maze to get to your goal.
Parade X 2: This is a really neat game of trying to avoid picking up cards. I seem to have much better luck with this than with 6 nimmt 
Startups: I think this is still in my top 5 Oink games, but it’s a pretty long way behind Scout and Deep Sea Adventure
Ride the Rails: cube rails! We realised halfway through that we’d been doing the turn structure wrong and the game got much more interesting after that.
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The usual Frosthaven, went predictably enough, not very exciting.
Tiwanaku, first play. This is a deduction game that can be played competitively, cooperatively, or solo. So it covers all the bases. We played competitive. The game has been compared to the old Windows game Minesweeper, and also Sudoku.The full game uses 45 squares, but we started with the beginner boards with 25 squares. The object is to deduce the terrain type and crop type on each square. Terrain can be one of four types, and crops are numbered from one through five. There are some rules about what squares can be. Terrain can be in regions of up to five tiles. A region of five tiles will contains crop tiles from one to five, a four region would have one to four, etc. Also, a crop type cannot be next to another of the same type.
You have several meeples, and they can move on the board until they meet an empty space. You then “discover” the terrain type by using the very cool wheel that comes with the game. You align the wheel with the two symbols shown on the board, open the window, and it will show you the terrain. Very cool.
On your turn, you can either move a meeple, or perform Divination, which is trying to deduce which crop tile is on a terrain tile. If you get it right, you get the points (one point for the number 1 crop, etc). But if you’re wrong, you lose that many points. One thing to note is that there is no hidden information, everyone gets to see which terrain or crop tile you uncovered. It seemed a bit tricky at first, but as the board fills up, you start to put it all together. I guess there’s some push your luck, you know a tile is either a one or a five, for example, do you take a pot shot at it.
I ended up winning by a single point, which sounds exciting, but it wasn’t really. You can get lucky and find a value five crop, and maybe someone else only found the one valued tile. But maybe there’s still room for good play, and we’ll certainly return to it, and of course we only played the beginner level. The game comes with twenty scenario discs that you load into the wheel. Which sounds like maybe there’s only twenty games, but I’m pretty sure if we played them all and returrned to the first, we wouldn’t be able to remember it.
Noctiluca, a fairly simple and fast game of collecting dice to fulfil cards.
The Marshmallow Test. a trick taking game from Reiner Knizia. Standard trick taking rules, but when you reach a certain number of tricks won (for a 4p game this was 3 tricks), you get a point for each trick the other players have won. So, if you won the first three tricks, you would score zero. But if you’re the last player to go out, you also get no points. Simple but addictive fun.
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Ah… i have been teaching Voodoo Prince wrong. In my defence, it was taught to me wrong
And it makes it strictly a 4 or 5 player game for me now with this
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I seem to remember Voodoo Prince was score your own only if you’re last.
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Played Palaces of Carrara (2nd ed) with the seven year old. Aside from annoying him by finishing the game, the scoring is less sharp than 1st ed. I’m not sure I like it as much.
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It’s been a slow couple of weeks boardgame wise, but I played:
Through the Desert, it’s a classic for a reason - still heaps of fun.
Spring Meadow, this one was super close and came down to marmots in the end!
Three Sisters, this one was not close - as much as I try to avoid beating new players too badly, my brain jumps into puzzle mode with these games and I can’t help but play the heck out of it. One of my best scores though! 
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Had a couple over for experimental BBQ (nothing really exciting: just trying to nail down a hamburger recipe I really like… I’ve tried Adam Ragusea’s Thin Burgers, and while good I can’t quite get them to work quickly… they’re very time intensive… so I tried his “Thick Burger” recipe today. Much better results, but it’s nearly impossible to shape them like circles without over-working the meat, which makes burgers tough and dense), and then another full Story in Stuffed Fables. This was Story 2, “Wetting Go.”
Man, what an improvement over Mice & Mystics. Still some unclear rules (for example: a Group Test requires you to allocate dice of a specific colour to reach a specific number… say 15. But there are only 5 dice of each colour, and then 5 “wild” Purple dice that work as any colour. So you could, in theory, use all 10 dice available and not hit the target number. It’s unlikely, but it is absolutely possible… and there are no rules to say what to do in those cases… maybe if you use all 10 dice you just auto-succeed? That would make sense). And the story is still ridiculously childish coupled to surprisingly dark. Which is weird. But all the bits and bobs are a joy, the game is quick and elegant, and working through each scenario is really neat. We came very close to a weak ending (we were 1 card away from “Waking”), but weren’t ever really in major danger.
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More games!
Age of Steam on the Hungary map with five people. It’s a small map so at that player count it’s like a knife fight in a phone box. The rules are changed such that you have to use at least one link belonging to another person every time you move goods. It was a really interesting variant 
The Artemis Project: I hadn’t come across this one before. It’s a dice bidding and placement game about building an arctic base. Lots of opportunities for getting in each other’s way and having your carefully made plans thwarted.
Hiroba: sudoku, the board game.
Skull King: one of my favourite trick takers. Essentially Oh Hell! with bells on.
Altiplano: I have this and Orléans, and am trying to decide whether to keep both or not. I really prefer the theme of Altiplano, but it always seems to take such a long time! This time I focused on filling up my warehouse with jewellery, and since nobody else was taking the same resources as me that resulted in a lot of points!
Just One: always some silly fun. For “Lake” 3/4 of us gave “Michigan” as a clue… Which left the guesser with only one lake that they’d never heard of to work with.
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This picture gives me some Roads & Boats vibes.
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Fortunately for my frazzled brain it was nowhere near as complicated as Roads & Boats!
Played today:
Scout with three. I’d heard that it doesn’t work with three players, but I think it just plays very differently than at higher player counts. You have to pay much more attention to blocking people from ending the round by having everyone else Scout their cards.
Merchants of the Dark Road: a contract-fullfilling game in a gloomy magical setting. It has an interesting action selection and movement mechanism involving dice. It felt like a Kickstarter that needed more streamlining and the graphic design was not very good (pretty but infuriating). Still an okay game though.
Ducks in Tow: See above. It’s a fairly chill pick up and deliver game. About the right speed for the last day of a three day convention!
Citrus: tile laying area majority. Allegedly it has a theme but only barely! Luckily I like a good abstract game
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@lalunaverde bought Titans round after I expressed interest. Sadly it was a turkey. Managed to be annoyingly arbitrary and layered too many fandoms up so it wasn’t even a probability, risk and positioning calculations game and was just a crap shoot. Also was too long and not much happened either.
We then played The Great Zimbabwe and it was a silly game where no one was sharp enough so it ended really quickly. For me that left me in last as I was going for a long play game having grabbed The Herd early. I also built something for me benefit that didn’t hit anyone else which was a mistake that compounded 2 poor first time placements of monuments on setup and turn 1. Boo me, boo!
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The Great Zimbabwe is such a Top 10 game ever. That was great fun. Glad TGZ salvaged the night after the disastrous Titans
I introduced Spirit Island to a table of newbies too. Good time, but found how heavy the game is in terms of understanding the implications.
6Nimmt
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First time hosting a game day at my house since COVID became a thing! First time using the table I had made way back then for that purpose! First physical tabling for Food Chain Magnate! First use of the poker chips (other than for teaching math). First physical tabling for Oath!
Quite a lot of firsts, yesterday.
Everyone loved FCM, even though (or perhaps because) we called the game early. Definitely the winner of the day.
Finished up with Pictomania. Highlight for me was that I was the only player to figure out that another player had misread “bawl” as “brawl” and drawn accordingly.
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I finally got a (minor) victory in Resist! It only took me about 10 games 
. I’ve realized that with both this and Maquis I play super conservatively, and trying to avoid all risk does not cut it. It’s such a great game, and I fall in love with the art more each time I play it.
Got a couple of games of Root in. I’ve been trying to to really grasp the woodland alliance, and I just about got a victory the second game, but I lost to the lizard cult by one point. All I needed was to remove two tiles in an undefended clearing and I, of course, rolled a 1 & 0. Still had lots of fun and think that I can play the faction with some confidence now.
What really has me happy is that I finally got my warhammer partner to play Jaws of the Lion. He loved it, and we ran through the first three scenarios. He’s really excited to get it to the table again (I’m very excited to play past scenario 4). I was Hatchet and he was the Red Guard, and we had some great combo moments that were very satisfying. I think this campaign will actually get finished. I appreciate the story so much more. I played 11scenarios in my big haven campaign and all I remember is that we found a half-sunken boat.
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I get a similar feeling with Sentinels of the Multiverse – you are going to lose a bunch of hit points, and the way to avoid losing is to win the fight before you run out, not to go all-out on avoiding the loss.
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