Is that the one where you have to destroy four pillars, and then eliminate all the enemies (cultists and stone golems)? Because that one took me 4 tries, I think, using Demolitionist and Voidwarden. From what I have read, I have chosen the hardest combo to work with, so I know that isn’t helping matters, and I don’t think I have played again since I beat that one.
3 Likes
That’s the one. It’s pretty tough with the status effects enemies give you. I tried it once with the demolitionist and voidwarden and decided to start the whole thing over with the redguard and hatchet. I think it helps that my friend has a completely different way of approaching scenarios, so we ended up going at it in a completely new way. He’s very enthusiastic about it and I’m re-energized about the game finally getting the win.
3 Likes
Last night at Local Game Group: Sentinels of the Multiverse with Tempest, Mr Fixer (Dark Watch), and Fanatic (Haunted), versus the Fae Court in Diamond Manor. Haunted Fanatic is frankly terrifying, because she has an HP cap of 10…
5 Likes
Games night!
Nusfjord, you’ve played one one Uwe WP placement game, you played them all. They just vary in length and available actions. Came joint first with 42 points.
Irish Gauge, lots of track building and town to city upgrading followed by a flurry of dividend rounds. Came dead last with 265
Mind Up, excellent filler joint last with 81
Port Royal, solidly average filler. Won with 12
9 Likes
Got murdered by my wife in Ra the other night. Weird game where very few Pharaohs, Floods, and Civilization tiles were drawn, so she kept winning 5 points each epoch from Pharaohs while I lost 2, but she lost 5 for have no Civ tiles for the first (and maybe the second) epoch, while I luckily always managed at least one tile. I think I only scored Nile and Flood tiles once, and then never drew another Flood, and I think she only scored them once in the last round. Just really weird from our previous experiences.
So, with such low scoring opportunities and losing points each round, I lost 48 - 16.
We also played Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game, which I won as the Empire. Nothing fancy, just managed to get a bunch of damaging cards, and a very lucky draw of two Landing Craft (well, one I put on top of my deck, so that one was by design) which healed 8 damage from my base, which if I had not been able to do, I would have lost.
8 Likes
So, because Maryse and I are entirely unreasonable at times and because we were stressed out about yesterday’s trip to the doc, we played a quite long game of Everdell on Tuesday evening. The crunch seemed much higher than usual, maybe because we’re really starting to know the new cards that came in Newleaf and are starting to look for new combos. Whatever the reason, it took us around 2 hours this time. I pursued a lot of events, Maryse mostly the visitors.
She, of course, won. Don’t remember the exact scores, but it was by about 20 points.
It also meant that we went to bed around midnight when we were leaving for Montreal (3 hours away) at 6:45, so we were QUITE sleepy, LOL.
10 Likes
People Power - yes again. It’s great to play a game in constant rate. We played with the same faction. Marcos Government won the first game easily. And I got rather frustrated because I realised on this exactly play that People Power is an elaborate rock-paper-scissors game. It’s the job of the Reformers to put Marcos on check, as they have the ability to punch hard on this faction better than the NPA. As the NPA, I found that I cant stand toe-to-toe with the government, but I am good at thwarting the Reformers. Indeed, the Reformer player was playing so conservatively and just build up money. Mate, your money is fucking pointless un the end if you’re not hammering the Government.
I asked if we can change factions and play again. I took Reformers and pretty much did what I wanted Reformers to do. Hammer hard on Marcos and the faction VPs, especially its Patronage plummeted. The 2nd play was much more interesting as a result where there is no clear winner.
Stephenson’s Rocket - best Knizia. It’s the game that best explores shared-incentives than a lot of his games. Also, seemingly lacking in Left-Right Binding problem that Modern Art suffers. Which is why it’s the best.
My Gold Mine - decent push your luck. Can’t hate it when it’s quick and everyone have a good time with take-thats in this game
Ra
So Clover
Cross Clues
Rapido 3x
13 Words - okay game by itself, but as I have played a lot of word association games, this one is just meh.
Container - years have passed since I’ve played this. And I still enjoy it a lot. The economy is alive and the player cooperation and undercutting are always jolly. I will put this in my “core collection” and will try to have it in constant rotation. I’m not on the fence with it any more
9 Likes
Frosthaven, no major problems. Although I missed my battle goal of looting less than everyone else, I kept reminding my friend to loot something, but he never got around to it.
Race to the Raft, first play. This is a cooperative game about herding cats. You have to guide your cats to the raft before they get burnt up by the fire that spreads. Nothing new here, but it’s an engaging game. Each colour cat can only move on tiles of their colour. And every time you place a tile, you have to draw a fire tile from the bag. We did the basic introductory game, which obviously wasn’t very hard, then we skipped the other tutorial levels and did the first “real” mission. It was still pretty easy, but I can see how things could go badly. Good fun.
Desperation, first play. This contains two games with the same format – Dead House, and The Isabel. Each game contains a deck of cards, and promises an experience with “claustrophobic world of interconnected characters”. We played Dead House, set in the great blizzard of 1888 in Kansas. There are several types of card – locations, people, and event cards. You start by drawing a card, then reading it out. The locations and people are straightforward enough, but for the events you have to read the text as one of the townspeople. Events start with Autumn, then Winter, then Hell. And bad things happen in all of them. One of our players really wasn’t into it much, just reading his card in a monotone. You can add anything to a cards text, embellishing the story more. It reminds me of For the Queen, except in that you are free to make the story as fun or horrible as you like. In Desperation it’s all pretty bad. The rules allow you to take out any cards that deal with things you may not enjoy, like mental health and suicide. It also adds that if you take too many cards out, you might want to play a different game. Not sure if we’ll get the other game played.
The Number, first play. A very simple game, each round you write a three digit number down, and your score for the round is the first digit. After you all write down a number, you sort them from high down to low. If any digit from your card matches one from a lower value card, then your number is discarded and you score zero. So if your number was 999, and the next card shows 819, then your card is out. If your card is ok, you score, but the numbers you used are marked off and you can’t use them anymore. I enjoyed it, obviously it’s not something you would play all day.
6 Likes
Spirit Island: Nature Incarnate arrived and so I took it for a spin 2 players with my regular Spirit Island buddy. Played 3 times against Scotland level 4. First pairing saw me use Wandering Voice Keens Delirium alongside Wounded Water Bleeds so my first use of an incarna. I need to do some more checking but the rules seem to suggest the incarna can not count as presence so doesn’t need to come off when blight goes down. It did in fact have nothing explicit about them coming back on if destroyed. Research aside it was fun with this spirit as it dashed around the board handing out strife.
Next I was Ember-Eyed Behemoth with Towering Roots of the Jungle. Ember-Eyed really lived up to the name and bundled around beating stuff up, easy win.
Lastly Hearth Vigil and Relentless Gaze of the Sun scared the Scots off. Hearth was fun to play. At first it seemed really straight forward but then the blight pilled up with me getting any defend cards and it became a headache. Gaze cab kill Dahan so my friend felt inhibited playing with this combo as a result.
A crucial aspect of the expansion for me is that I can just about fit it in the snazzy organiser I got with the last Kickstarter, maybe broken token? I dumped out the pointless board from branch and claw and moved the invader board to the other box to squeeze the spirits in and had to lose the dividers in the innate powers tray. This might I’m done buying SI expansions. Especially as some spirits were just too straight forward to play. Nothing quite as boring as the volcano spirit of jagged earth, but not super scintillating for a couple.
9 Likes
Yesterday, Maryse and I played a game of Ark Nova that was the best we’d played in a long time. We each were able to implement our strategies, but I wound up losing 42-26 because I dragged the game out one extra turn to maximize my score, enabling her to use her Sponsors card to get money and force the break, giving her enough to play two big animals that got her the win.
Big, great, tense game!
9 Likes
We’ve played Tournament at Avalon with 6 (utterly nuts and Kate was battered) and then 2 games of War of the Ring TGC at 2 v 2.
Avalon was the Cosmic esque silliness I remember with lots of take that and splash plays.
I really enjoyed it, but it’s not one to take seriously. Fits the bill with lots of table talk and interaction and probably a bit easier to teach than Cosmic. Set up is much, much quicker.
War of the Ring was fantastic. It’s so thematic with loads going on.
The free people won both games (yay). Apparently it’s setup for them to take a big lead, with the shadow player coming back later in the game (which is the opposite of how I remember the books and film).
Nazgul are bastards, the hobbits do cool things. Gandalf and Saruman are epic. The game does a really clever job of ensuring characters are played in situations that make sense.
Having done 1v1, 2v1 and now the full team game, 2v2 gives the best balance and the best table experience.
I think there is going to be a high ceiling as we get to know the decks better because a lot of the game has you eliminating cards for good before seeing them.
7 Likes
Had our friends over for a pool party yesterday, and of course got in some gaming afterward.
Started with The Quest for El Dorado, which our friend J won a good turn or two ahead of anyone else even having a chance. And since he was last in the turn order, it didn’t matter anyway.
We followed up with Lords of Vegas, which resulted in the worst game ever for my wife. She didn’t really play “wrong” for lack of a better word, she just had rotten luck with the dice and cards did not come out when she was in charge of big casinos.
Our other friend C managed to get a size 6 and a size 10 casino, and though I was right behind her, I only had a size 9 on the strip that would score for me at endgame, due to the breakpoints on the score track. J took a last shot at taking over the size 10, but she had 4 dice to his 1, so it didn’t work, and sure enough she won with 49 to my 40, with J at 23, and my wife in last with 10.
4 Likes
I played my first game at the house.
A nice round of Sprawlopolis scoring 11 points.
A nice variety of goals that didn’t complement each other but also did not get in each others way. Those are the best: Concrete Jungle, Central Perks & Minimarts. Each block type was present in 1 goal.
Obviously, I have more gaming plans for the near future…
8 Likes
I tried to have my Asian stuff played with some success.
Galaxy Cat Extension - forget what I said about Tigris & Euphrates and Stephenson’s Rocket, Galaxy Cat Extension is the best Knizia ever (because Long Cats)
Trick Taking in Black and White - very simple but I really like it. I need more plays to see if it holds up
Death Angel - This is a pretty good coop housed in a small box card game.
Planet etuC - aka Ambiente Abissal - this one is genius!! It’s more of a shedder than a trick taker, so more similar to Scout, Tichu, Maskmen. Very good game!
Eldritch Horror - played it many years ago and was turned off by it. Two factors maybe.
1.) My taste really isn’t into this kind of stuff back then, I was more serious. Nowadays, this kind of thematic adventure games are a nice complement to the 18xx/Splotter games I’m usually into. (I manage to control myself on getting Xia) You know what to expect with these games and you get what you expected.
2.) The other reason is that the other people I’ve played it with are - looking back - just shit to play with in a coop. One of them I’ve played in Jaws of the Lion and takes a while to play. THe experience is better now in Big GH. They didn’t really explained the rules to us, it was fast and loose, and these two players pretty much hogged the game to themselves, taking such a long time to discuss and play when it’s a freaking straightforward adventure game where you roll a bunch of dice. While my friend and I were bored to bits (so it wasn’t just me).
Now, it was pretty good with the right people. I still got the odd questions “what’s the best thing to do here?”. Which is okay. There are some form of decisions in this game. At least they aren’t strategizing it like a Euro. I can see why these kind of games become a niche in the hobby.
Tigris and Euphrates - played the first tournament match and had a good time with it. Definitely prefer on the table, but BGA is the next best thing.
6 Likes
I tried to have my revenge at Ark Nova yesterday. I failed miserably, losing 40-15. However, this was our tightest game yet up until that final turn, where Maryse, as usual, did a grand move that wound up scoring her a boatload of points. I should really try to do that too…
5 Likes
I’m glad you liked it. I wasn’t sure after our first play.
I got Twinkle Starship at the same time and found that much more enjoyable initially
3 Likes
OK Voidfall.
Pile of everything design.
1.5 hour teach then 5 hour game for 4 players. It’s solidly fine, might be better in a second play but I’ve no desire to repeat that.
Followed by Great Western Trail: New Zealand. Prefer this to OG GWT, the deck is much more important and you have more options to do things with the deck.
10 Likes
Oh no. I’m still waiting on my Voidfall Kickstarter delivery. Y’all are not giving me much confidence in it.
3 Likes
You might like it!
It’s squarely not for me.
2 Likes