visited friends because I have a migraine and i thought hanging out would help cure it.
this is my Spirit Island friend and her son is the kid we introduced Ark Nova to back in April. He got it for his birthday in June and since then had been patiently waiting for me to come over and teach his mom because while he can play… teaching is, at just 14 years old, still beyond him.
(the other day he sent me a pic that he went to FLGS and bought both Earth and Rise I’m not the only bad influence here I want to note )
Anyway, so I ended up teaching Ark Nova. His sister wanted to play too and she teamed up with my partner … my partner had played before but it’s not his kind of game. I’m not bad at the teach after 18 games. it still took forever and the game was also slow going with 4 players and 2 newbies. that’s not surprising. so we had to order pizza sometime halfway through because that’s what grownups so when they would rather play games than cook.
My friend won, I made a bad and underserved 2nd place because i played badly (coaching everyone at the table does not help either my migraine or my strategy).
Return trip from Cornwall, which due to more activities than coffee shops and bakeries was disappointingly bereft of scones. Stopping at Manchester at a cottage we stayed at last year (it has a gaming table so I can just hide and save on setup.
Played Santorini (for the first time as it was in the cottage) as a 4 player with the kids. It’s very fun and now making me wonder if I want to late pledge the Kickstarter.
Also played Furnace which is still great. It’s a good length and a nice mix of auction and engine building. I’m now slightly annoyed or missing the point of the repeat industrialisation art on the cards does it signify something or just random?
Tomorrow is my birthday and planned a trip into Manchester to the northern quarter which will include a trip to Fanboy 3 and the purchase of something, although I’ve yet to decide what.
In unrelated news I had to negotiate a friend to get my copy of Voidfall that had been left out by the shed.
Not your fault, really. FFG released a version of the game in which they changed the rules while fundamentally misunderstanding what makes Condottiere a good game. Lots of people bought that edition, and therefore don’t know any better. Indeed, some people later exposed to the better rule set even mistakenly think they are having “more fun” with the bad one.
Takes all sorts, I suppose.
ZMan at least included the “classic” rules as a footnote in their edition, the only edition currently in print, afaik, so it’s not like anyone has to hunt down a Eurogames edition to play the game correctly these days.
Details, in which I excoriate the FFG rules, so people who like them probably shouldn't read this
The good rules:
The bishop ends a conflict, there’s no winner. This means there’s a risk in every conflict that everything you play gets wiped out, making for more cagey plays until you establish that everyone else involved is actually invested, (unless they are actually just stringing you along and plan to scarecrow out).
This tension and uncertainty is really central to the game. With FFG rules, you can’t really do as much with a bad hand, it’s far less likely you can outplay or read the table correctly, and whoever gets dealt the best hand is far more likely to win.
In the same vein, Spring cards don’t exist. Campaigns entering winter can’t magically appear out the other side if someone plays a spring card. So winter is another significant play instead of something that might affect the outcome maybe unless someone else happens to be holding another card, the sole purpose of which is make winter pointless.
Condottiere token always passes left on a failed campaign, providing much-needed predictability. There’s no sub-game of courtesans, which didn’t really contribute anything worthwhile.
Oh, and FFG had the terrible rule of holding 2? cards from the previous round, which meant the player who got wrong-footed and left with cards after all the possible conflicts in a round had been resolved was rewarded for playing badly, which was bizarre. It also provided a perverse incentive to be the last player holding cards, which is worse.
Last night I took on the bot in Council of Shadows again, to mostly the same result. I did manage to last a full extra round, but barely ranked up to Lv. I to the bot’s Lv. IV again.
This morning I played using a very simple hack to lessen the difficulty somewhat. It worked fairly well, and the result was a win for the bot, but with both of us managing a Lv. III result (the bot had FAR more energy generated, breaking the tie). This was an incredibly simple adjustment to make and I feel like it did a reasonable job of emulating a close game between two novices… but it just didn’t feel right. The unadjusted bot cheats to high heaven, but I can’t help but feel like it’s a proper challenge for someone who has mastered the game, and as a result it doesn’t really feel “bad” to lose against it.
I think I’ll keep my easy mode in place while I continue to learn the intricacies of the game (this has proven a real challenge for me), but that’s definitely a temporary thing. Long live crushingly ruthless opponents!
The other day my wife and I played Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game which I won as the Rebels with no damage on my third base. I also never purchased a cap ship, I just got lucky that nothing very damaging came out for her when she could afford it.
Today, her brother joined us for a game of The Taverns of Tiefenthal, which was fun per usual. For the first time, we used every module. We all still had the same initial set up, as we all picked the card that gave us a table and a fully stocked and upgraded beer storage. And then there was the guestbook, where you gain a signature every time you pick up a patron and put it in the guest book at the topmost row in a column equal to the cost of the patron (3 and 4 share a space, as do 7 and 8). If you fill a column, you get a noble. Same if you fill a row.
I like that both change up the game while adding almost zero complexity. I made the most of it, I think, by keeping a balance between coins and beer each turn to ensure my reputation marker moved as far as I could make it, which got me more nobles and free signatures than the other two players. And I just realized that I forgot to add the points from the reputation marker at the end of the game! Kids were making things difficult and I was rushing to put everything away.
So, I remember that I was on the noble space, and purposely did nothing that would move it further, so that’s 8 extra points to bring my game winning total to 129. My wife was in second at 102 and her brother last at 97, but those would change based on where their reputation markers were. I think his was on the 7, and I am just not certain where hers was. I think she had just got enough for a schnapps, which would be 2 or 3, depending on if she moved past it, so really, they may have tied…
Anyway, very fun game, other than the very end when our kids were driving us nuts.
It’s Europa Universalis. Ulm is a minor power and apparently a meme in the EU video game community is that Ulm is the strongest power in the game. The cards with the terrible art are from a Kickstarter stretch goal which added an additional scenario called “glory for Ulm”.
Yeah. The old rules are far better. You get penalised for playing conservatively with a Key card. You get punished for playing aggressively with a Bishop (and Winter, to some extent). The lame ass FFG Bishop pretty much removes penalties for aggressive plays. Some threat still exists but dont see why you should play conservatively with a strong hand
Wait, you made me recheck the Eclipse: Second Dawn rulebook there - Missiles are still subject to computers and shields. The balance changes are making them cost energy and more ways to mitigate them via rare tech.
Yesterday we played Dune Imperium with the assistance of my cat. It was a very close game with lots of competition on the influence track. Still haven’t read or watched Dune!
Played People Power for the first time and it was very simple to teach to two other players who knows Cuba Libre. A lot of transferable knowledge is what is so awesome with 18xx. Glad to see this with COIN
The game was a rather anti-climactic game using the standard scenario with the Marcos dictatorship winning on the first election phase. I feel that the extended scenario with 3 elections is where the game is. But if you have newbies, standard seems to be alright.
For Sale
Kingdom Builder Big Box 2nd edition
5 Minute Marvel - okay real time game, and feels like an inferior version of The Mind.
Res Arcana with the two expansions - I house ruled it with 9 cards and then keep drafting until you have 8, discard the last card. I might prefer this approach as I am seeing the cards the 2nd time, which is the freaking point of card drafting. Might stick to this house rule from now on
How does the base game compare to the game with expansions?
I sold my copy before even trying the first expansion and sometimes I think I shouldn’t have.
More of the same stuff: cards, places of power, etc. Lux et Tenebrae adds in Demons, which is a new type of card, other than Dragons and Creatures. Perlae Imperii adss in pearls as another source of score. One can dedicate an engine on the production of pearls. And yes, more cards and stuff. The latter extends the game to 13 pts for end game trigger which is fair with the pearls scoring 1 pt each.
So if the base game didn’t really work with you, I don’t think the expansions would change it. I like Res Arcana because it’s a card tableau builder that is very quick and light.
I’m not the only bad influence here I want to note 
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