Palaces of Carrara (2nd ed). I won! It’s a solid 7/10 for me, which potentially puts it in the sell pile. The saving grace is the resource wheel, which I find really interesting.
Northern Pacific (3 player), great game with few bad investments
Gang of Dice, dumb dice rolling from the Good Doctor. Keeper.
Northern Pacific (6 player). More temporary alliances than 3 player but still works. Would play this with the random turn order variant though as the player binding is strong.
EDIT Also Mind Up which is a top tier filler for me
What about “capricious?” Is that a better description?
I’ve been reading more reviews. There are a lot more now than when I backed it. For anyone else who’s interested, or struggling with this game (or genre, for that matter), this is what I’m learning.
I’ve been expecting Tigris & Euphrates, but the game is more like Innovation. Pamir is, in fact, a game without rails. Sessions will play wildly differently. One might be the pinnacle of your gaming year. Another will close out in 30 sour minutes. Sometimes you’ll have a swiss army knife of options and deploy them like a field surgeon. Other games you may find your fingers taped together as you helplessly prod the board. Each session is like a single psalm, giving you one facet of the whole system. It’s going to take several different psalms to get the big picture.
Quinns and NPI both pegged something as well, something akin to Oath - the promise (premise and rules) are enticing, but the experience delivers something different. Pamir is almost more of a storytelling format than a skirmish game. Sessions may not be fair to every player, some may not be fun for every player. But from a table perspective, every session is going to be interesting and tell a unique, memorable story. Again, very much Innovation and comparatively little T&E.
In the reviews, people tend to tell their best sessions. Their T&E sessions (not helpful for expectations). Where a different faction won each dominance check, and a perfectly timed betrayal led to a jump from behind win. Where clever reading of the board and deployment of tools led to a twist in the game’s trajectory. I haven’t had a session like that.
The game so far eludes that level control due to the sporadic availability of resources and actions. But even viewing this most recent session through a more Innovation-y lens, looking at the story of the table rather than the quality and cleverness of the sparring, it’s kinda coming into focus. It was a good story.
That sounds very different to my own experience. Only in one three player game can I remember feeling locked down and forced into various moves by the skilled manipulation of the game state by my opponents, and in that case it was their control of the game rather than any “capriciousness” that led to the situation.
Five player games are more chaotic and uncontrollable, which I like, overall, giving more scope for shifty alliances and shifts in fortune.
Overall though, I find it to be a relatively low luck game compared to most.
It has also been very consistently entertaining, and the idea that many games will just be duds seems outright false. Whether that’s because your “sour 30 minutes” are my “dramatic wins” or not, I don’t know, but it must be something like that, seeing as I haven’t had a bad game yet.
To tap into your T&E comparison, a major war where you have a 5 tile advantage, but your opponent drew into 2 reds last turn to add to the 3 they were holding. Random and huge swing. Not unlike a 1 in 12 chance that the dominance check is the top card of a 12 card stack. But both odds are reasonably knowable and predictable (the Pamir odds moreso, because you rarely know how many of X tile an opponent is holding).
To be honest, I pretty much have control in that game of ours. I always have the initiative and can always respond to what their moves are. Im still unsure what would happened if they manage to get the British faction dominant.
I never played it at 3 before and dont fully know the nuance between this and 4 and 5.
That’s Not a Hat - you want another party card game in your menagerie of party card games? Buy this. I like this better than Cockroach Poker. It’s memory game mixed with the latter. And I hate memory games.
You pass around “gifts” to your neighbours which are cards each depicting a object. When you pass one over, you put it face down and will remain face down for the whole game. So you have to remember it - or rather, trust that whoever pass the card to you is telling the truth and just parrot what they are saying. Pray the receiver of the gift doesn’t call your bluff…
We had a hilarious case where they were two baguettes going around (but there’s only one) and the same player end up receiving them both, was too afraid to call the bluff on either of them, and end up claiming that both of his cards are baguettes.
Scout - Cool game and will always play but I am kinda fall out of love with it. Will still play it though. I want to play more Nokosu Dice dammit!!
Babylonia 3 player and the two let me get away with a mega network allowing me to score loads every time a city is claimed. The central land area has a tight cluster of cities and so end up with the typical strategy of doing a mega network.
Cross Clues - yet another word association game. I like this. Better than 12 Words imo. EDIT: also better than So Clover
Tikal, introduced this to some folks new to it and one of them beat me by 1 point! Very satisfying They both enjoyed it a lot. Hoping to follow up with my new copy of Mexica next week.
Sprawlopolis, we won this one! I seem to have the most luck with low valued goals. Or maybe in this case it was having a couple of other brains to bounce off. Either way plenty of fun.
We played Concordia last night, using the Italia map. I got a bit burned when my wife purchased the Mason card right before I could, as she had no brick cities while I had one or two, but I was able to get the Farmer, at least.
I was not able to spread to all regions, while she did, and had four Saturnus cards to take advantage of it. However, I had four Jupiter cards to her two, and outbuilt her by one, and ended the game, getting the Concordia card.
Good thing too, as I won, 110 - 107. Very close game and it easily could have gone the other way.
Frosthaven, played the scenario we lost at previously, at an easier difficulty. No major problems for us this time.
Trajan, my favourite Feld game. Sure, it’s a bit of a point salad, but that’s not such a bad thing. I always feel like I’m up against it with the people demands, hate losing victory points. There’s always a bit of tension around that. I got off to an early lead with the nine point trajan tiles, but then fell off as the eventual winner took the lead and never gave it up. I did get a lot of end game points with construction tiles and commodity cards, made up a lot of ground and finished second. Was chasing another construction tile but just couldn’t grab it in time. Wouldn’t have won me the game. Love the mancala system in this game, but it can be frustrating sometimes (but in a good way?)
Rallyman Dirt which shows me I clearly need different friends because they only wanted to play one stage. (Still, it was theoretically a day for short games…)
Then we split and I was in A Touch of Evil. Still enjoying the base game but I wish I could find the expansions at a reasonable price.
First was a quick game of Eclipse 2nd Dawn using alien races and two new expansions (“Rift Cannon” and “Minor Races”). The whole game took less than 2 hours… which I’ll admit, is pretty dang fast.
I still like TI4 better. But it’s a neat difference in mechanics and tone. There was a very real risk of me being eliminated on turn 3, and I completely torpedoed my empire on the last turn (basically bankrupted myself, causing me to lose all my systems). Still, a really fun game, despite an abysmal showing points-wise (37 - 33 - 27 - 9).
After that we played a lovely game of Brass Birmingham. Gosh, that game is a joy, although the manual isn’t super helpful. Still, that one was a little closer… I still came in last, but I generally don’t actually care how I do in a game as long as everyone has fun. And I did! One of the only games of BB that I’ve ever played that the Iron Market was never, ever touched. Always lots of iron on the table.
Today my wife, her brother, and I played Lords of Waterdeep with the Undermountain expansion. Her brother jumped out to an early lead with a 40 point quest, and kept it all game. Another 40 pointer helped with that. My wife started out buying buildings, making us joke that she was the builder, but when she continued, we were confident that she actually was.
While she lagged behind early, she caught up enough to pass me before the game ended. While her brother was still ahead by 20 points, he was not feeling confident. And he turned out to be correct. I finished with 170, 5 points behind him before he scored the points for his Lord. He ended up at 194, but with 48 bonus points for her Lord, my wife passed him to win with 203.
Onitama while waiting for people to turn up; at one point I was two pawns down but pulled off a last-minute win. Rallyman DIRT which I clearly like a lot more than other people do (not that they objected, but they didn’t fancy playing the other two stages). A Touch of Evil which, as usual, got me enthused for playing it again. (The expansions still aren’t available at a reasonable price.)
Had an excellent days games today. Started off with Indonesia and it was chewy. The game is so deep and clever it remains my favourite Splotter. Every decision drips with consequences and it’s so interactive. Top that off with deliciously fuzzy auctions and it is tense and exciting throughout.
We followed this up with a game of Trains. Chuffin’ love it despite being awful at it. I get to play rarely so it’s a real treat when I get it to the table. I didn’t buy enough waste clearance so I stalled ahead of the other players. Oh well, give it 5 years and I’ll play again…
Played through the recent NeXt Evolution campaign for Marvel Champions by myself (obviously), and enjoyed it, but felt a tad underwhelmed. I really liked playing as Domino (one of the two heroes in the box) with all of her deck-manipulation shenanigans, but the first three scenarios felt more generic than I expected, and the final scenario was maybe a little too fiddly compared to how much it actually affected the game. Admittedly, I did play on Standard and breezed through most of the scenarios, so their little quirks might come through better on Expert. I also enjoyed the campaign elements; you get to choose a little side quest every mission, and completing it gives you a substantial bonus for that scenario and every future scenario in the campaign. It’s easy to implement and adds a lot flavor, which is how I like my MC campaigns.
Also, played a few games of the much-awaited Disney: Lorcana with my partner, and… hmm. I want to like this game so much; the art is fantastic, and the theme is wonderful, and any game with cards as resources is off to a good start in my book. And the game isn’t bad by any means! I enjoyed playing it, and my partner wanted to play multiple games, which is a huge sign. But, the game has so little available ways to draw cards that you’ll likely only see about 15-20 cards in a game. That wouldn’t be a huge problem if the decks weren’t 60 cards minimum! That’s objectively too many cards; I went through the starter deck I played with, and found multiple cards that I never saw in any of the three games I played. It makes the game far more luck-driven, and means you’re less likely to see the coolest cards and synergies in a deck. Why would they possibly make the decks this big?
Unfortunately, I know the answer–bigger decks means you buy more booster packs, which means the publisher makes more money. And that’s my problem with the game–I would happily build some casual decks to play together with my partner, maybe seek out some fun thematic synergies, if I felt like I could do that with a moderate quantity of money. As is, I feel obligated to fork over multiple hundreds of dollars just to come up with a deck that has any chance of even working the way I want it to, much less a deck that actually feels competitive.
I’ll still happily play with my partner, but don’t think I will be getting into the game as a hobby. Which sucks, because it could be the perfect game for us, a sort of Pokemon-plus card game that grows with us over time. I guess only time will tell.
Fine people, I finally beat scenario 4 of Jaws of the Lion! It came down to the last turn. My friend and I took it down to the very last of both of our hands to finish off the last enemy. This is, I think, my fifth try at this scenario. Please tell me the rest aren’t this tough! My friend is really enjoying this, and my plan to use the Warhammer highway to tabletown has him wanting to get into Root and try some other stuff that’s more strategic or tactical (Kemet, Pax Pamir 2nd).
I lost a couple of games of Plendor Duel to my partner. I really enjoyed it. The changes to the formula create some fun new decisions, greater opportunities for hate-drafting (which clearly didn’t help me), and the tradeoff between taking a strong move and giving your opponent a privilege (bonus action) creates some really fun decisions. This is a great 2p game.
The three of us played Lords of Vegas last night, and it did not go well for me. I had a size 4 casino in the F block, one of which was owned by my wife which got me in the lead early. I sprawled it to get to the strip, and the very next turn, my wife drew that card, and then was able to build a neighboring lot she owned, making a 3-3 split in ownership and also made us roll off our 5’s for boss, which she ended up winning. I tried rolling off a couple of times through the game but always lost, so the casino ended up netting her probably 18-24 points over the game.
Her brother got most of the D block and built it up to get him some good points. I was stuck at 8 for a while because I didn’t have a size 2 casino to get past it, but eventually built up and made a bit of progress, but nowhere near what I needed to stay competitive. My wife ended up winning because her brother had two casinos of size 3 when he was at the size 4 breakpoint, preventing him from advancing those spaces at the game end, leaving the scores at 44 - 40 - 26.
They both enjoyed it a lot. Hoping to follow up with my new copy of Mexica next week.
