Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

Simfers · 31 July 2023 11:37

Played quite a few games over the week-end this time around!

Started Saturday off with a trio of heavy-hitters:

Tzolk’in was up first, and I tried a different strategy to my usual “crystal skulls and temples” by getting a lot of green buildings and the monument that gives you 4 points for each. Didn’t work as well as I’d hoped, as I lost 74-38, partly because Maryse sniped a few buildings from me, partly because I failed to diversify. Still good and fun.

Next came Great Western Trail, where I again tried a new strategy, again going heavy on buildings, but not by choice, Maryse just kept hiring all the cowboys! Also got some absolute crap draws. Finished 173-141, in her favour of course. Had a couple of combos going I was quite proud of though. Always a good game, this.

Closed up Saturday with Ark Nova, where I got MASSACRED. Didn’t bother counting the points, but there was at least a 50-point gap. Did her big final play of two huge animals that give huge points (this time the Siberian Tiger and the Giant Gallapagos Turtle) again to destroy me.

Opened up Sunday with my attempted revenge at Ark Nova. This was MUCH closer, with barely a 20-point gap. You’ll notice I didn’t say I WON, but hey, progress! Love this game, definitely the best we’ve played this year so far.

Finished up with two games of Pandemic. One with three characters, which ended with our usual victory+ (all cures, all diseases eradicated, but had a couple of outbreaks this time which were quickly brought under control) and one with all seven, which we managed to beat for the first time! It was a tense affair, got all the way to 5 outbreaks, but things were pretty much under control by the time we got the last cure.

What a great week-end!

Snobbydolphin · 31 July 2023 13:00

I’m discovering that I really like that kind of pressure in a game, though I’m generally not that good at them. The odd thing is that I realized I play fairly opposite when it’s a multiplayer situation. I will risk it all with reckless abandon, but every time it’s solo I get really conservative. I need to get a copy of sentinels.

Simfers · 31 July 2023 21:13

I just broke my losing streak! We just played a game of Everdell + Bellfaire and Newleaf that ended in an 84-84 draw!

I didn’t lose!!!

Acacia · 1 August 2023 14:27

Sorry if you’re short on time. I need to gush for a hot minute.

So, Furnace Interbellum.

Furnace.

Interbellum.

We’ve got a hot box on our hands.

First off, does the whole game fit in the expansion box? The one that’s about 1/3 the size? Yes, yes it does. That’s more game in less box and a winner is you.

Furnace (base) has a (fire) auction that really makes the game sing. The dynamic where you are trying to win some cards and lose some cards makes every placement crunchy. The fact that others are doing the same is pure agony when you drop that 2, hoping to get a quick 4 iron, and everyone just stares at it and you end up with a cheap card you can’t use (and no iron). It’s so simple, four discs, basic placement constraints, and yet so crunchy.

Then the deck. Is boring. There are very few effects - collect coal or iron, convert something into something else. convert something into money. Yes, the permutations are many and every card is unique in specifics - but pretty generic in function. No, running your engine is not simple, but it is samey.

Now Furnace (Interbellum). It’s like someone filled a line drawing with color and now we’ve got the picture. Here’s what we get:

Variable “capital discs” that let you spend resources to “inflate” a bidding disc, really throwing a side-jab into both the prep and execution of auctions.
Delivery cards that give you an instant rather than ongoing effect when you win them
Business school, where you can gain cardboard chits that bolt onto your existing cards, tweaking their effects
Passive cards that change how all the other cards in your tableau work
Accumulation cards that grow stronger or collect resources based on tableau synergies

…plus four new personalities (asymmetric player powers) and four good bots that pursue specialization strategies to fill out the table when playing at 1 or 2.

Is it good? Oh my gosh. The other half of the game (non-auction) is now fascinating and dynamic. We’re veering into Glory to Rome or Pipeline territory where your job is to literally break your engine and exploit game loopholes to obtain an entirely unreasonable score. Every angle of this game (auction included) got ratcheted up in tension and intrigue.

Am I going to make $100 in four rounds? You better. The bots will.

It’s so good. I’m going to stamp it a must play.

Acacia · 2 August 2023 13:55

Catching up here: Glass Road.

I only got the solo of this in (x2) and it was… fine. For those unfamiliar, Glass Road is half standard Rosenberg, half Broom Service. Player board, remove the forests, build buildings, collect and convert resources, etc. But there’s no worker placement; instead you have 15 cards. Choose 5 for the round, play one at a time. If you are the only one who chose that card this round, you get superaction. If you are not, you and everyone else who chose it get weakaction - with the added benefit that your opponents may be forced to take that action before they planned.

It’s neat and unique for Uwe. A little bit of randomness and psychological warfare.

However, one challenge with the game is turn zero. You’ve got 16 buildings and 15 cards to scan, interpret, and then assemble into a plan. This is a short game, so you need a plan. Now, for experienced players, the 15 cards are always the same. The buildings are familiar. If you can do Agricola turn zero, you can do this. But it’s a barrier for teaching and for new players, set against the otherwise quick and light game. And you don’t need to start with just one decision, you need to start by picking all five cards you want for the first round.

The chaos of the cards is also at odds with the game. It’s a short game. You want to do a lot. It demands precision. However, you will frequently only get half your planned action, or have a card pulled out of your hand at the wrong time before you have the goods you needed to activate it. Things go wrong. Which is fine, it just feels like two different genres thrown together and not quite integrated.

Solo is one wrinkle worse - you choose your cards for the round but the order they are played is completely random.

This all sounds negative. Verdict - Nusfjord is preferred for that weight and play time. And this didn’t pique me as a solo game. But I remain intrigued and excited for the 2-4 player game. It’s different but I think the issue is mostly with my expectations (and I think the vs game will offer a lot more control than the solo did). There’s something really unique here and I still want in. Nusfjord may eventually drive a cull, but not before some good times are had.

lalunaverde · 2 August 2023 23:22

two rounds of a 5 player Briscola Chiamata as our starter of the night. Still an interesting game.

Pax Renaissance - a lot of trading, so the kingdoms remain sturdy. There was a tense fighting for kings. Even tense when two comet cards showed up and threatens an Imperial victory by another player. At least I manage to build a good engine with Janissaries, a card that destroys Eastern units - and a few more cards that can repress units on different regions. This put a blocker on the imperial ambitions of the Ottoman Empire - controlled by an opposing player. Me controlling the Mamluks and bash them against the Ottomans was a good measure as well. The fight for Imperial Victory was intense.

Due to the need for money to finance all the wars, we have a pretty good amount of merchants. Me being an idiot, I allowed the card that shifts the trade from the Red Sea to the Atlantic to be discarded. This would have heavily deprived the Med kingdoms, controlled by Purple. Purple player controls the Ottomans, the Papacy, and Aragon.

Comet cards were spent to open up other victory conditions other than Imperial Victory. We activated Globalisation (Merchants) and Renaissance (Republics) Victories. I couldn’t find the ship icons to beat the other players on have the most ship icons. I already have the most merchants. Otherwise, I would have won with Globalisation Victory. The game ended on a deadlock and it became a Patron Victory. The player who patronised the Renaissance the most is the winner. I won the tiebreaker by having the most money out of the tied players.

The King is Dead - still a tense filler. I miscalculated and bid incorrectly for a French invasion. Instead the Scots won and I lost the tiebreaker.

Durian - I have been called “Mr Chaos” due to the shenanigans I caused in games like this.

Zombicide: The Night of the Living Dead - we played with the last scenario and lost. It was still great fun.

Cat in the Box

Skull

Millennium Blades - this is pretty fun and thematic! It’s cheesy and a lot of randomness, but I enjoyed the immersion. I find the weakness is the tournament phase where it’s mostly solitaire combo building - in which I would rather play Res Arcana, RFTG, or Seasons. For a game that’s suppose to simulate a CCG, there’s not much take-thats and attacks going on. So, that part was a bit lame. LVL99 Games is pretty solid. Never disliked a game they make. Now, if only they keep their games in print, that would be great…

bruitist · 3 August 2023 00:01

Maybe one day Bullet will make it to the UK …

Whistle_Pig · 3 August 2023 07:34

A very successful board game evening for me yesterday: a very unusual 100% win rate!

Wok & Roll: a fairly simple roll & write that I picked up at UKGE. Rolling dice to get ingredients for your restaurant.

New York 1901: this one is also fairly straightforward. Acquire land and build oddly shaped skyscrapers for points.

Nidavellir: Dwarven set collecting. My Dwerg acquisition strategy paid off this time!

Marx · 4 August 2023 13:31

Played my first game of Eclipse 2nd Dawn.

My gods. They actually fixed missiles. Such a simple solution…

Weapons in Eclipse were d6 + computers - shields, and results of 6+ were hits with 1s always missing and 6s always hitting. Trouble was that missiles fired first, so you could jam interceptors with a few missiles and a good computer and wipe out an enemy way before they could fire back.

Simple solution: missiles now ignore your computers, only hitting on 6s. Making them powerful, potentially, but very swingy.

We played 4 human factions (first game and all), and Eric seized the win by a last turn computer upgrade that let his cruisers hit on 2+. End scores were 31 - 28 - 21 - 19 with me in last… great game!

I still like TI4 better, but it’s a neat difference. More exploration and science focus.

Then we played a quick game of Condottiere, which I love. Lost because I bishoped away all the 10s and the next player had a Heroine in play and dropped a traitor to end the round.

Great game.

VictorViper · 4 August 2023 15:09

I played a first game of Council of Shadows this morning against the bot. I had read about the bot’s brutality and I was still not prepared for it. I lost 4-1, which might not sound that over-the-top, but think of that spread more like getting lapped three times on a race track.

It is a race at its core and there’s some neat stuff going on here. There’s a deckbuilding element but you only ever have a hand, and the cards are laid onto your player boards into a three round sequence. Cards shift to the right at the end of each round and only return to your hand when they “fall off”. Each of the three card slots (and other elements of the player boards) can be upgraded to be more effective on the main board, so the card’s position in a given round can really matter. Thankfully it’s not too rigid and you can always play a card over top of an existing one to overwrite its function for the turn, but you still don’t get the old card back till it falls off.

Meanwhile, the race is against yourself as much as the other players. The “track” in this case is an energy meter. Playing cards adds to your total “consumption” (your disc), which never resets, and then your actions generate energy (your cube), which resets each time it reaches or surpasses your consumption—effectively a dynamic finish line. The trick here, is that you don’t really care how far up you or any given player is pushing their finish line, only how quickly they’re able to reach it. Every time your cube reaches your disc, it gains a power level (effectively marks a lap) and you get a powerful permanent bonus. Three laps and the game is called, with the round playing out in full. This is a furthest past the line scenario, so triggering end game won’t necessarily win you the cup (throne, in this case).

This is all wrapped up in what seems like it’ll be a highly interactive multiplayer experience on the main board. I’m glossing over it here because it’s a pretty bog standard hybrid of worker [and tile] placement and area control, with a razor focus on resource production. It’s fun and it’s an important part of the game but it’s not the jazzy element here, even if it’s where most of the jockeying will transpire.

Really neat, and in spite of the crushing beat down I’m pretty keen to play again. This seems to have released to minimal fanfare last year in Germany, and I hadn’t heard a peep about this English/French edition coming in, but I’m glad I kept my eye out for it. Something really spoke to me and it hasn’t let me down for a first impression.

[EDIT] to add: The game includes a couple of modules which I chose not to include for a first play, and I think I’ll stick to that for a while. Plenty to chew on here.

EnterTheWyvern · 4 August 2023 15:33

Yesterday 4 player games with @lalunaverde and 2 others. First up was a quick fire get back to the table The Great Zimbabwe. This time I tried a bold opening and finished last. Overall the game was tight. Mr Verde got all the money so everyone else decided expensive craftsmen were the best way to extract that from him. This knackered my hope of using the 2 monuments a turn god to build lots of low level monuments. Finishing last still only saw me 4 away from VR and the victor was at score. It shows the repeat play got us all playing better which is fairly different to club play in my experience.

Next we put Chicago Express down and the throw down continued. I really upset one player who was feeling victimised after some very expected blocking, but stand by it as I think it was the winning move. I got some serious value from that share and the whining got quite funny. There’s much to unpick in this game and I don’t think I know even half of what’s going on with this. Alliances and managing incentives are very key I guess. Hyper satisfying evening of games and my brain was drained but tingly. Bravo!

yashima · 4 August 2023 19:05

Last night I had my first full game of Earthborne Rangers.
Which I started over after a few turns due to some rule mess-ups with card placements and tests and tiredness.

This is a story driven card game with deck construction à la Arkham Horror:TCG (which I tried and got rid of quickly because Arkham theme and Arkham style and Arkhamechanisms)

The story takes place in the Valley in a far future where mankind had retreated from the surface of the planet long enough for the Earth to recover from us and now we‘re returning with a promise to take better care of everything this time around. Thus the Rangers. 1-4 players take on the roles of newly graduated rangers.

There is a map and you can travel around the map for as long each day as your deck lets you. There is a 30 day campaign. There are quests you can pick up but it is very open world style. While there is a starting quest you are given this one is meant to just get you playing, after that… it is exploration and discovery. I am sure more of a central story-line will emerge soon enough. I have already had a chance to note a couple of „reactions“ on the campaign sheet for later reference

For my first game I traveled to several locations, completed the first quest and helped out another resident of the Valley… and just when I got my first quest reward, I keeled over from exhaustion (of my deck). Oops.

The game is played in turns, on your turn you either play a card or perform a test. Both usually costs energy. Everyone has 4 attributes and gets energy according to how they chose their attributes (which are unlikely to change except for maybe some rewards one might get?). When you run out of energy you/the group rests for a bit to reset your energy, draw a ranger card (from your deck) and an additional path card (those are usually „problems“) and then turns resume.

A test is much like an RPG test, you get a difficulty that you need to surpass and a strength of effect from the test. There is a random element from the world effect you draw to see if you succeed and some consequences where path cards match the world effect are triggered. Also failing a test may give you a wound or tire you (losing cards from the deck to your exhaust pile which is different from your discard mostly in that you sometimes get to recover cards from the exhaust). To pass the test you can discard more of your energy or discard cards with a symbol matching the test.

At each location you have different combinations of path cards depending on the location and how you traveled there. Your goal might be just to travel to another location, meet a person, explore, find a special or …. I have only played a single game.

Many cards have some storybook elements you get to read and depending on a variety of factors there are branches… nothing too complicated so far.

It is all quite nice and feels like actually playing a game and not just reading story book elements like I felt with Sleeping Gods.

Also there are different approaches to solving cards, you can just try to sneak past the beast, you might have a weapon and fight it or you might „convince“ it you are friendly and not food. You might just ignore it to „fulfill“ the location card as fast as possible to get away from the location…

I am looking forward to my next game. And hope I will not fall over from deck exhaustion again because I want to incorporate my quest reward from the last game
PS: wounds are terrible and to be avoided at all costs, it is very tiring to keep going when you are wounded.

Benkyo · 4 August 2023 21:06

That’s not how bishops (papal intervention) works!*

I’m glad you think it’s great regardless, but you could be playing a much better game.

(* according to the good ruleset)

Benkyo · 4 August 2023 21:08

Been there, done that, lol.

bort · 5 August 2023 09:37

Frosthaven, started out just doing an outpost event, but then we decided to play a scenario as well. And it was another “let’s spawn everything but the kitchen sink” scenario. By the time we got to the second room, we were all almost out of turns, there was no way we could make any kind of impression on the bad guys in that room.

Fit to Print, first play. Just arrived this week, and was a bit of a surprise. You play a newspaper editor, putting together a page of news for three days. Tiles are either articles, photos, or ads. You start with all tiles scrambled up face down. There are no turns, you grab a tile, then turn it over and decide if you want it or not. You can stop any time you want, and then you move to the placement phase, where you arrange your tiles on the page.

There’s a few rules – tiles can’t be turned, and you can’t have tiles of the same type placed next to each other. Articles of the same colour can’t be adjacent. You’ll be penalised for having empty spaces on your page, or for having tiles left over that you can’t place. It’s a bit tricky trying to figure out the right tiles as you go. And there’s a time limit too, although we used the most forgiving time of 5 minutes. Finishing first isn’t a huge deal, it just gives you first crack at the centrepiece tile, which gives you a special ability, or a special way of scoring points.

Placing ads doesn’t give you points, but your ad values are totalled over the three days, and then the lowest total instantly loses, which seems a little harsh. I knew I was down on ads in the final day, so I took a centrepiece tile that allowed me to place ads adjacent to each other, figuring I needed all the help I could get. As it turns out, I finished last anyway. But the winner was only one point from having the lowest ad total, which would have taken him out of the game. Scores were 45, 33,33,22. Having left over tiles hurt me.

Good game, we had fun. Not hard to teach, plays pretty quickly.

Biblios, I think I’ve stated my love for this game before, so nothing has changed. It’s still awesome.

Red7 X 3.

Whistle_Pig · 5 August 2023 12:21

Professional board game art…

yashima · 5 August 2023 12:42

Played a 2nd game of Earthborne Rangers. It was over far more quickly than Day 1 because I was wounded early on, due to some failure of threat management and bad luck.

Now that I know the game a little better, I reconstructed the deck one more time which is not allowed during the campaign. So I would have to start over the campaign or consider myself a cheater. I am still pondering the details. I have a little story progress from the first day…

My deck was really unfun though.

To cheat or not to cheat?

I got to use very few of the card effects because I had constructed a deck that didn‘t have good synergy. The game/manual gives you so few clues as to how to build a good deck. Even the „tutorial“ game did not prepare me adequately for the kinds of synergies I was looking for between my Characteristics (4x2 cards, relating to the four stats, very basic effects you play with a test), my Background (5x2 cards from one of 4 different Backgrounds, card effects are thematically fitting, can be anything really), my Expertise (5x2 cards, the stuff you learned as a Ranger), my Hobby (1x2 cards from any of the other sets except „expert“ cards) and my Archetype, which provides a special ability and is not part of the 30 card deck.

I could have read a tutorial probably somewhere online or find a „good“ decklist. But I prefer a bit of experimenting and I barely have the patience to read the rules of these games… I just want to get playing…

Each card has so many elements of which you want a good balance in your deck. And then you want synergies from the effects. For example, I chose an Archetype that can put markers on „help“ cards but my initial deck only had a single one of those because I had not checked thoroughly.

Card color means it is associated with that attribute and if you play the card for effect it costs that type of energy. Since your attributes are not necessarily evenly distributed, you might want to have your deck distribution to be somewhat congruent with that. If you have very little blue energy it makes no sense to have a lot of expensive blue cards.

Then each card has a type. Some other cards interact with those types. Like my Archetype interacts with „Help“ Type cards. So you might want to make sure that if you have cards interacting with a certain type that you have some of those.

Also each card has 1-3 symbols—these are associated with tests and via the default tests give you an idea which attribute they are also associated with. So to be able to perform tests you might want to not overspecialize with the symbols or make sure that you have some way of mitigating your lack of „heart“ cards.

And of course all cards have effects…

And if you do not know what kinds of cards are present in the game to interact with you may not quite grasp the importance of being able to interact with Flora or the worth of a card that helps you explore „Special“ cards.

So what would you do? Start over?

Also I am still somewhat unclear on a few rules that I will need to check. Sometimes you move your ranger to a card and I have no idea if that changes „distances“ at all… have you really moved there? Rules are not specifying anything so my guess is not and that‘s how I think I played it for the most part. But it is irritating and prone to mistakes because it would make thematic sense to have the distances change when you move the ranger to a card.

RogerBW · 5 August 2023 13:04

Put it this way, whenever I’m running GURPS (which has quite complex character generation) I always treat the first adventure as a “pilot” – afterwards, you can change anything you like about your character, to the point of having a completely different character, based on what you now know about the style and mood of the campaign. So I’m in favour of flexibility.

Whistle_Pig · 5 August 2023 19:23

Today we played a couple of rounds of Europa Universalis, which took more than four hours!

It’s definitely one of the most rules-heavy games that we own. Hopefully we can set up another game soon now that we have a vague idea how it all works

lalunaverde · 5 August 2023 19:43

The Great Zimbabwe - call me Cattle King, yeehaw!! I took up Herd which allowed me to acquire 3 cattle and the Cattle God that gives me 2. The Herd’s power does freezes up 6 cattle of mine, but it’s pretty good long term. But I found that the VR is still too high in relative to the others that they can get there faster than I do. So, I must have done something wrong but I can’t pinpoint exactly why. Maybe a mistake on tempo. I should have probably build new monuments rather than upgrading 1 monument.

Chicago Express -

Age of Empires III - hmmm yes. The area control that is in the middle of Dominant Species and El Grande. I am enjoying this far more now than years ago. Glad to play this again.

Hol’s der Geier / What the Heck? - A lady with her small kid joined us so I’m happy to show some games. Absolute hilarity and they remarked that it was one of their faves from this day, other than Push It!

Push It! - why y’all still not playing Push It?

Hit - Knizia push-your-luck

My Shelfie - it’s cute. It’s novel. It’s my first play so the novelty worked. But I can see this being so boring on following plays

Ticket to Ride USA