Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[COMaestro]

A few days ago we played Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game, with me as the Rebels and my wife as the Empire. We stayed pretty even, and I had her on her third base with two cap ships (one with just 1 hit remaining) when she took out my second. I took a gamble and used Mon Cala, which let me take a Rebel or Neutral card from the galaxy row to my hand and grabbed Bossk, who has 3 attack.

I then proceeded to play out my hand with Luke, who’s special ability took out the healthy cap ship, Bossk, and a bunch of other attack cards for 14 damage, which was exactly the life of her base. Sadly, she had the 1 hit left for the second cap ship, so she was down to 1 health on her last base.

So, of course, she took out my base on her next turn. I knew it was a gamble. Sadly she had purchased Jabba’s Sail Barge on her previous turn, which is 4 attack, because that was the card I was originally planning to take and it would have won me the game.

Last night, just for a little normalcy after all the craziness lately, we played Lost Cities, where I played fast and loose with wager cards, which bit me in the ass. She won, 90 - 15.

[Bondy034]

Some games over the last couple of weeks:

A potion themed evening with Quacks of Quedlinburg and Potion Explosion. We followed those up with Fantasy Realms, my first play with the expansion (though we didn’t use the item cards). Narrow win via gem of Order!

Patchwork and Ohanami with Mum while she was visiting, She’s yet to win Ohanami but requests it nearly every time so clearly enjoys it regardless

Raccoon Tycoon great game of this with 3. I went very heavy on railroads, so despite ending with the least cash I had a solid lead)

Spicy got this little bluffing game to the table as well. It’s a lot of fun - granted not particularly deep or complex - it’s bluffing and some basic card counting, but easy to teach and play.

Blitzkrieg x2, a couple of back to back games with a friend - he won the first (by quite a bit) but I won a considerably closer second game.

The Quacks of Quedlinburg, this game was a friends copy with the Herb Witches expansion. It was good, not particularly different than the base game. I like the witches but the extra ingredient sets would be the real seller here. Alas I play infrequently so unless I spy a copy of the expansion on sale, I probably won’t get it.

Isle of Cats, first ever game of this in person as it was also someone elses game (I’d had a couple of plays online) I won by a solid amount thanks to nabbing loads of good lessons and a couple of substantial cat families on board. I enjoyed it a lot, still not sure I need to buy a copy though - but the mix of drafting and polyomino placement is great fun.

[MarkSP]

Won Tigris and Euphrates last night! Played it a couple of times before, but never won.
Then played Search for Planet X. A fine game, but imo worse than Cryptid in every possible way. Lower player count, more luck, less interactivity, and drawn out scoring.

[EnterTheWyvern]

Last night finished the last scenario in our campaign of Expedition to Newdale. Last scenario was the most radically different, I won’t say too much about it. Overall though I’ve really enjoyed this game. It’s not too sharp elbowed but it’s not a forgiving game either. It hits a sweet spot for me where the random is exciting and it’s light enough that the card draw isn’t too sad when it’s not going your way and the draw from the bag for production is nice in it’s a planning wrinkle with the value of the resource that you mitigate poor draws with and is still consequential enough to be tense and fun. Each game has come in under 90 minutes so for mid weight/mid length it’s done sterling service. Really pleased I plumped for a copy. Will decide if I move it on having done the campaign. There are a couple of issues that make me wonder if it will get a bit annoying so I could move it on while it’s still in high esteem.

To round the night out Spirit Island saw Spread of Rampant Green, Ocean’s Hungry Grasp and Shifting Memory of Ages tell Sweden level 3 to do one. It’s soo fun when someone else plays Rampant Green, my usual duo partner rarely goes for it so to get more presence out sooner is a rare treat for me. Shifting Memory is good fun but maybe this game wasn’t the most fun as I drew a great major early where I could easily get thresholds so generating 8 fear and invaders skipping actions became the main thing I did. It made the game fairly inevitable so we won after flipping the second stage 3 card killing the last city while generating sufficient fear to get terror victory.

[lalunaverde]

1852: Missouri - a derivative of 1846: Race to the Midwest played online with some strangers and a friend of mine. It is indeed a derivative that you can apply 1846 fundamentals to 1852 and it still works. But I’m sure there’s more nuance to it. The map, for example, is radically different. So different track heuristics. But I won that first game so I’m not sure if there’s a lot of learning. That’s the drawback of winning games. But I like that opening a 2nd company as a strategy is less risky,

People Power - I’d like to have this game played again before I forget the rules difference to Cuba Libre. Turns out that you only see ONE card at a time, rather than the standard 2! Ugh. I skipped that bit and assume it was 2 just like in any other COIN game. Very interesting. The Reformer player figured out how to use their faction to devastating effect. Protests can destroy Government units easily in Max of 2 spaces. And with Cardinal Sin, you can even convert a unit to one of yours.

NPA player still figuring out how to put regions into Resistance and have good income. Marcos player is pretty strong at early game because they only need control (and patronage). So you train up some police and army and then swamp the map. It is imperative that the NPA and Reformer player prevents the Marcos player from just winning outright on the 1st election - but that’s the meta for now.

I am very keen to play more of this.

Also, I balked and bought Cuba Libre. Put both games inside People Power’s box. There’s only one owner in the group and if she’s not around, there’s no one who can bring a copy of CL

Citadels - we randomised the characters and it was a money poor economy with some good card income. The biggest money maker in the game was the Tax Collector - when you pay for each building, one of the coins for payment for each building will go to the Tax Collector card. This means that the Tax Collector was the one big source of money windfall in the game, especially when everyone is building.

Or maybe we weren’t thinking this through and we should have opted for high quality buildings. High cost, but the tax man still only gets one coin. Meaning, if you built four buildings at the cost of 3, 3, 2, and 2. The tax man gets 4 coins. But if you built 5 and 5, then the tax man get 2.

Oh well. One player manage to pick the Witch and bewitched the player who picked up the Tax Collector and end up grabbing the mountain of coins in the card, and pretty much won using the Architect as the finisher.

Acquire

[Whistle_Pig]

Someone left me in charge of the nukes…

[RossM]

You had one job!

[Marx]

… to nuke all the things?

[Whistle_Pig]

As you probably gathered, we played Dune yesterday. It was a four player game with the Fremen, Harkonnen, Bene Gesserit, and Spacing Guild. We played with at least some of the advanced rules, which is a good job because they lead to some of the most interesting events in the game!

Some highlights:

• multiple instances of a fortress ending up under the control of the Bene Gesserit due to the armies they were “advising” wiping each other out.
• laser gun related nuclear explosions
• the nuclear destruction of the shield wall, with the aim of letting the storm wipe out the armies holding two of the cities behind it. Unfortunately (for me) one of the other players had a weather control card which let them keep the storm back long enough for everyone to scarper.
• the Harkonnen kidnapping a traitorous Fremen leader, then using it against me in a fight that I started to wrest control of a fortress. Unfortunately, the combination of weapon and defence cards didn’t go my way so I lost the battle, and the Harkonnen player won the game!

I enjoyed fleecing everyone as the Spacing Guild, but we agreed that it would have been a good idea to have included the Emperor as well to balance out the spice economy and make the auction for treachery cards more interesting.

[mistercrayon]

Played a first game of Archeos Society - the re do of Ethnos broadly speaking. I think I like it more than ethnos but mostly because it seems a better 2 player game. Without the Area Majority business the focus is much stronger on the cards and so on. Also you don’t get driven towards this dance where if one person goes somewhere the other player has to either bin it off or fight hard and compete. I liked it.

[raged_norm]

Played Hollywood: Golden Age, 4 player.

Playing with my children the bids were wild. We all started competing for the worst movie award. Deftly won by my 10 year old. Giving them the win.

[COMaestro]

Yesterday, we played another game of Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game, with me as the Empire. I had a bad feeling about it when the opening galaxy row had one neutral card and five Rebel cards. While over time so.e Empire cards came out, it was not enough to save me, or even take out my wife’s second base.

Then today we played Sobek 2-player, which she also won 77 - 72. I had really bad luck drawing coins as three of them were only worth 3, and one was worth 6.

We followed that up with Star Wars: the Clone Wars, and her brother joined us. Third try against Asajj Ventress, this time with me as Mace Windu, my wife as Aayla Secura, and her brother as Yoda.

We really lucked out this game. My wife was able to reach a mission and complete it on her first turn, which revealed a new mission right on Yoda, amd he completed it on his turn. Halfway to the finale in two turns!

I took out Ventress on another mission planet before she could add Threat, and on my next turn took out the mission, leaving just one (which had to be accomplished twice). My wife took care of one, and her brother got the other, starting the finale. Luckily I was just one planet away from where it was, so moved there and waited for my wife to join me, as I had 7 possible attack I could contribute, and she had 3, for a mission that needed 10. She came, she attempted, we conquered! Our first win!

[Simfers]

Actually had a pretty games-heavy week-end over all! We had an actual, real-life person over for some games on Friday night! We played lighter fare: Wazabi and The Game with her and her kid, and I introduced her to Patchwork. Such good times, it had been so long…

Then on Saturday, Maryse and I played three back-to-back-to-back games of Everdell, with Bellfaire, Newleaf and the weather cards from Spirecrest. Took the whole afternoon, but it was wonderful. Scores were 102-93, 84-103 and 120-89, giving Maryse the overall win of 2-1. We’re really starting to learn the new cards from Newleaf, so things are startting to get really spicy.

Finished yesterday with a five-character game of Pandemic. Contingency planner, Researcher, Dispatcher, Operations Expert and Quarantine Specialist had their hands full, but we did manage to win by getting the fourth cure in the penultimate turn of the game. And while we only managed to eradicate one disease, no outbreaks were had (we got stupid lucky in that almost every Epidemic card we drew was a city that was either eradicated or protected by the Quarantine Specialist).

Lovely, lovely week-end!

[dscheidt]

playing codenames with my wife’s family on vacation.
Clue was ‘vault’, word guessed, correctly, was ‘bark’. later in the same game, same team, clue ‘gold’, picked leperchaun. Other side’s word. What?

[Phil]

I’ve just realised that says “bark” and not “bank”.

[Acacia]

@GeeBizzle

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?

The repeated art indicates a category of card. If you get Interbellum, you take 2 of each “art” into the new deck to maintain mix of resources and abilities. No one knew this until Interbellum came out

[Acacia]

@Whistle_Pig , @lalunaverde , and I played a last round of Pax Pamir over on Rallythetroops before BGA takes over, as it does all things.

This was my fourth play and the first time I had anything approaching an interesting time. I’m committed to give this game more time, as there are a dozen reasons I’m supposed to like it. I don’t yet.

Three player still offered good intrigue. By the end of the first round of play, we were all Afghanistan. The market just went that way. So it was a race for ingratiating ourselves to the Afghans. LLV and I pulled ahead, while a Military suit kept the Dominance Check out of reach in the market. LLV finally got ahold of it one turn before I pulled even and took the majority of the points. Still, I was on the board, which is more than I can say for my last play.

WP and I put our asynchronous heads together at this point and figured the best play was to switch allegiance and 2v1 LLV - that might help me more in the short term but would hold LLV back and keep WP in the mix.

So we did that, and I think it was well executed. I was able to use in suit actions to have 2-3 big turns where I went British, dropped some Brits on the map to close the gap LLV was already trying to reopen, tax everything in sight, become ruler of Transcaspia, and assassinate an LLV card with two of his cylinders on it and his only access to the battle action. I think WP was doing similar things but asynch

This is where I was happy. For the first time I had a sense of the game state, what the vulnerability was, and assemble the cards and actions I needed to do something about it.

Then a few days went by and I logged in to see what the holdup was? The dominance check had come up, LLV had dropped everything to buy it, and we’d been skunked.

It felt really capricious and out of control. Which is the recurring issue I have with this game. Even with a growing understanding of the game, a smart set of actions, and a strong hand/tableau the game can just happen to you and there’s no time and no actions that can mitigate it. Maybe the Dominance Check came out abnormally early due to a shuffle? Maybe I didn’t understand how strong LLV’s position really was; for instance, he had four spies and a card that protected them from removal by battling?

My first game of Inis ended as abruptly. We were all just playing, trying it out, and then suddenly things and epic cards fell out such that I won out of nowhere. In that case, we all looked at the board and had a sense of what went wrong, mistakes, etc. It made us want to try again and apply the lessons.

Here it felt like I was doing things right - at least right enough to not get skunked. I can’t think of any obvious mistakes I made. I couldn’t have gone British any sooner due to how tight the first race was and the points I got from it. I couldn’t have done more or moved any quicker after the first Dominance Check.

The game feels fragile and capricious. Some good moments, good sessions. But also broken and stupid ones. I’m not done with it yet, still hoping for an epiphany.

[lalunaverde]

Yeah. I thought the 2v1 was a good move, but I didn’t expect the Dominance card to show up that early. My strategy from the end of the 1st check is to stop the Brits from dominating - otherwise, only you and WP scores - and try to keep the number of my tokens up. Yeah, if the Dominance card was a few more down, both of you could have fought for 1st and 2nd as the token gap is a bit close. Then I expected the British to continue on to their dominance on the 3rd check.

[Benkyo]

I read that description, understand perfectly what happened, and can’t see anything remotely “broken” or “stupid” about it.

Which is to say, if you think what happened is “broken” and/or “stupid”, then the game is not for you, no matter how much you might want it to be.

[lalunaverde]

Modern Art

Liar’s Dice

Guillotine - nope. It’s not fun. There’s a great wealth of fun fillers, but we are playing this one. This Kniziaphile told me that this is one of his 10/10. Oh well.

13 Words - good word association game. But there’s a lot of these now that this kinda fails to compete

Bridges of Shangri-La - glad to play this again as I am getting a bit rusty. Will put this in the challenge in 2024

Next Station: Tokyo - okay this one is cute (never played the London one) …for a roll and write. The way you build routes for a specific train line and then starting over again on another line is a nice twist compare to the overcomplicated bingo crap that roll and writes are nowadays.

People Power - another return play with the same 3 people. Same factions. Still on standard scenario. We kneecapped the Marcos dictatorship of US Aid and denied control of the strategic cities in the south. This prevented the Marcos player from winning the first election. The Reformer faction starting to gain steam by the 2nd and 3rd that they are fighting toe-to-toe with the Marcos faction. The NPA are still figuring out how to play, and now understands how to pull the levers.

This is pretty different to Cuba Libre where the government and the Castroists are polar opposite: both want popular support among the locals so the “popularity meter” swings towards one or the other. In People Power, the government wants control instead. So the NPA player is torn between denying gov control or use its actions and resources to gain support.

The government faction feels stronger here too. Another way to score is through patronage. You garner support on the population and then enrich yourself (patronage = local population x 2) by spending these local support. So, it “cashes in” support at double rate AND it scores instantly by swamping the map with Train action and then instantly take control of areas. Granted, this is something you can’t easily do outside of cities with bases or control. But you simply do a move action next time you’re eligible to take an action.

I will play again. I think with NPA, guerrilla bases are more important on the 1st election, while knocking down Marcos support to deny the player the Enrich action.

City of Remnants - ooooo a trip back in time! Back in 2013 (ten years ago!) this would have blown my mind. I like the ideas, but this is a bit dated now. Again, why not play Cthulhu Wars/Glorantha instead?