Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[bruitist]

Played some games for the first time in ages tonight. It ended up being three of us rather than two, so getting Ashes Reborn out (and tipping it all over the floor and subsequently reorganising it all) was for naught.

Race to the Raft - Same designer/artist as Isle of Cats (and some other stuff). A co-op game of placing tiles to make paths so some (very lazy) cats can escape ever-expanding fire.

Quite bland, really. It’s an Ok puzzle with uninventive anti-quarterbacking rules (either that you have to be vague about the cards you have or just aren’t allowed to talk when someone’s placing a card) that occasionally just makes it annoying.

I’m not one for campaign games, but even if I were, 81 scenarios of this sounds interminable.

Unmatched - Got to try out my two new Marvel boxes by having a 3-way matchup between Squirrel Girl, Ms Marvel (me), and She-Hulk. I got taken out first and it came down to a close finish. Squirrel Girl managed to deal out a bunch of damage, thanks to a pile of squirrels, that took She-Hulk from 10 health down to 2.

Unfortunately, that was the end of her turn and she lost her last 2 health thanks to She-Hulk’s start of turn ability of just throwing something at her.

[COMaestro]

LOL, I don’t have Brains and Brawn yet, so I haven’t seen the three new fighters, but now that I read this I can say that She-Hulk’s special ability is amazing! I mean, “Just Throw Something” has to be one of the best ability names ever!

[lalunaverde]

Galaxy Cat Extension x2 - such a dumb game. The cat theme pretty much carried the game.

Rheinlander (there’s an umlaut here somewhere ) - glad to play this again, but kinda dismayed at how defensive it is and lacking in conflict. End up preferring Acquire instead

Karawane - blind bidding galore. Everyone has the same number of bidding tokens, and the camel caravan race is separated into 3 legs. You then separate your bidding tokens at the start into 3 piles, one for each leg. These tokens can only be used for those respective legs you assigned them on.

The tokens are then used for blind bidding. Highest bidder will move X, which is the number of players still playing. 2nd highest will move X-1, then X-2, and so on. It’s a lot more clever than I thought. The pain comes when there are bonus/penalties that people are incentivised to stop/ignore, which transmit information. More pains when players reach the end of each leg, because the value of X decreases! You don’t want to be the sad sack who end up with no bidding tokens left at this point

I am highly impressed. I wanna play this more. I’m keen to see if this game has… legs.

Stonehenge & Nuba - 2 player abstracts from Knizia. Big meh. With 2 player abstract that aren’t as deep as Go and Chess, I’d opt for any of the GIPF series

Gambler x Gamble - hmmmmm! Very interesting filler game! It’s a gambling game, but with no random input from the game! Instead, everyone on the table puts a card down face down (except for the starting player with a face up card) and then the starting player can play a +1/-1 modifier. The sum is the winning number, and anyone with the winning number will win money.

Very clever minds game for a 15-30 min game.

Marco Polo Expedition - more Knizia

Modern Art - we used the Matagot edition of the game, which is still great. Highly entertaining. We did the rule where we have to talk about the painting that we are bidding on. I was lagging behind on R1 and R2 as two players sending money to each other and made each other wealthier. I continue to sulk. But I noticed that one of my double cards was a popular artist, and opted to wait until R3 to sell these duo paintings off. It went very well and racked in big money. I made more good decisions and also, one guy overpaid on one of my paintings and I am more than happy to take their money.

Hol’s der Geier

Texas & Pacific x2 - woo! More Cube Rails! Very much a derivative of Chicago Express with the terrain cost simplified, which is nice. But it lost the tension of the race to Chicago in this game. The replacement was the “Go West!” mechanism where you reach the western end of the map and then you “go west”. Meaning that the company will no longer build more tracks, as it is too busy reaching the west coast.

Maybe with more plays the Go West thing will reveal itself. But for now, I still prefer the race to Chicago. The new addition here are the ranches. ranches give +1 value like cities, but once they are connected, players can take the ranch action and grab one of these ranches. Each will pay out $1 during dividends phase. It’s a nice alternative from the Develop action in Chex

Trans-SIberian Railroad - this is now perhaps my favourite Amabel Holland game (still haven’t played Dinosaur Gauge) and it’s a nice recovery after the dismal Iberian Gauge. The threats of Nationalisation is always tense and the pseudo race to be at the top of the income track is fun. Speculation on which shares will appreciate well and/or which shares will pay out more. The timing questions are very good. Each of the 2 actions you can do (buy shares or build) can be done normally or do their souped up version. Meaning you pay way more, but it’s 2x better, and you advance the round time marker by one. Passing, if you’re like that, will advance the timer too!

Ack! And then there’s the tough question of company control. You can only build on a company you have the most shares on OOOORRR tied. So, which is the better deal? 2 or 3 players tied for control and all 2 or 3 of them can build, meaning faster tempo, but the delta isn’t the good, as you’re only beating the players that doesn’t own those shares? Or do you want to be a greedy scum and take control of the company, but no one except you can build? But if you take control, you have better delta than everyone else. Huh. I don’t know!

Amabel Holland is just great for creating these unique games. Even if this one isn’t that unique - it’s a Cube Rail - it manage to make itself different from John Bohrer’s stuff like Chicago Express. Alas, that means some of them fail badly. But when they work, damn, they work. TSR I feel is one of them.

Age of Innovation - YEah boi! This made Terra Mystica officially obsolete to me (please don’t quote me if I changed my mind a few months later). I didn’t really gel well with Gaia, and I feel that this is the Terra 2.0 that really fits with my preferences.

[COMaestro]

So, first night of Unmatched league. There are 12 of us playing. The format:

In first come, first served basis, players are randomly given two fighters to choose from. Once everyone has chosen a fighter, players are matched up. I think maps were just randomly assigned by the organizer tonight.

After every match is finished, players are allowed to swap out their fighter for any one remaining in the pool, in the event they are unhappy with their initial choice, but then they are stuck with that fighter for the rest of the night. Those who lost are paired against another player who lost, and those who won are against another winning player. After those matches, same thing occurs and there is a third match, and that wraps up the night. You get a point for each win. There will be 5 nights of 3 games overall, with one make-up night. At the end of the league, points are added up to determine the overall winner.

Tonight, I got Moon Knight (also had the choice of Luke Cage). First match, I was against Robin Hood in the Yukon map, which I remarkably won, and I say that because archers have a good advantage on that map. The organizer knew it, too, as he said, “Welcome to Hell” when he put it down. But, I was able to whittle through Robin’s outlaws with him only able to bring one back into play all game. I was able to run him out of defense cards in hand to finish him off with just 2 cards left in my deck.

In the next round, I was up against Yennenga, another archer with two 2 HP ranged sidekicks on the Heorot map, which has lots of nasty zones for ranged fighters to take advantage of, but includes doors that can be closed and break up the zones.

I was able to take out one archer right away, though my opponent brought it back the next turn. Over time I took it out again, and as the game progressed both our heroes had their health whittled down. Luckily I managed some healing and when I was at 6 health to their 4 health, I was able to play an attack that they couldn’t defend for 2 damage, with an After Combat effect of doing 2 damage to both fighters, winning me this game as well.

Final match was against Elektra in the Hanging Gardens. I was able to eliminate one of the Hand sidekicks on my first turn and actually managed to stay at full health while taking out a couple more and damaging her, but got me down to 9 or 10, I think, by the time I got her to 0.

When she Resurrected, my opponent did the very annoying double Mesmerize, which let him look at my hand and force me to discard a card of his choice and then gain an action. So, I lost two very helpful Versatile cards and he still had two actions to hit me with, which he did and I think took me down to 4 at the cost of one of the Hands. I was able to heal a little and take out two more hands, plus drop her from her 9 starting health to 4, but that’s when I got double attacked with only one defense card in hand. Took 3 for the Hand, leaving me at 2, and defended against Elektra, but with a 6 attack, my 4 defense just wasn’t enough, giving me a loss and ending my streak.

Had a lot of fun, and everyone that I interacted with seemed to be good people to play with. Looking forward to the next night in two weeks.

[yashima]

I managed to squeeze a game of Trailblazers (I managed a 31 point kayak loop!!!) and a game of Cascadia (Scenario 11 remains unbeaten, how am I to make 30 points from bears when it means placing 3 groups of 3 bears, that‘s almost all the bears in the game) into my „relaxation“ week-end when doing nothing seems to mean getting at all those leftover corners of the house that still need our attention.

Other games I played were

• a 3D tile layer equivalent possibly related to Castles of Mad King Ludwig: set up a Kallax and fill it with contens from boxes (this game has really cheap and awful components, publisher used to be better)
• Another tile layer, this one a bit more like Calico: measure the room to figure out how to place the leftover furniture
• A dexterity game, maybe reverse jenga: stack the camping gear into a single shelf without anything falling down
• A game that is seemingly all setup: carry the old kitchen table into the room where the games are so I can have a sologame-station (Indeed this is where I played Cascadia)
• The last one seems to be a bluffing game consisting of only bluffs: think about games I could be playing

PS: also you people managed to side-track me into beginning to reread Malazan, so that is taking a huge bite out of my possible game time

[malkav11]

That is a super classy game room. Mine is going to just be the furnace room.

[Bondy034]

Some games this week:

Fresco, had been awhile since I’d played this one. It holds up. First time I played with the Bishop’s Favour tiles. They helped me win so I approve. They’re a little less interesting than the special portraits and the new paint modules though. Still good fun.

RUM, I’m terrible at this game. I always seem to mistime things when playing sets. Our winner managed a high value steal with a set, with me in a distant third.

7 Wonders Duel, new acquisition here after playing it a bit on BGA. It’s actually pretty great. I was deterred in part by Paul and Quinns not liking it, but more because I burned out on regular 7 Wonders, but it’s a very different game. You deeply care about everything your opponent is doing. And it may be because I’m bad, but folks seem to manage science and military victories against me frequently I think I’ve had one military victory (online - not this game) but yet to get a science win. Timing is so important in this game. Would totally recommend giving it a whirl though. One of those rare occasions I think SUSD got it wrong. And a lesson to try new games on BGA, it’s great for that!

Blood Bowl: Team Manager, great two player game of this - 1 fan in it in the end! So close! It’s an excellent game that will sadly probably never get a re-release… That’s a real shame imo.

[bort]

Cthulhu: Death May Die, possibly our favourite co-op game. Everything went pretty well, we disrupted the ritual very quickly, so had plenty of opportunity to kill the boss (Yog-Sothoth). Such a great game.

Roll for Adventure, another co-op, lots of dice rolling, and we won.

Inside Job, first play. This is a traitor game, you are either an agent (the good guys) or the Insider. Each side has their own win condition. The agents win if you successfully complete enough missions, and the Insider wins if they collect enough intel tokens. The start player (whoever won the previous trick) selects two mission cards and chooses one for the round. Missions can be something like “all cards played must be odd”, or “the last card played must be the lowest”. The Insider player of course can’t be too obvious about failing a mission. Even an agent can fail a mission by accident. It’s standard trick taker rules – you must follow suit if you can. But the Insider can play anything. We probably needed one more player (we played at 3p). If noone has won by the end of the round, you have to vote on who you think the Insider is. The winner of the trick gets an intel token, it doesn’t matter if the mission succeeded or not. Our second game came down to the wire – there were eight completed missions (at 3p, the agents need nine missions), and our Insider had four intel tokens (he needed five to win). I was under suspicion because i collected enough intel to win if I had been the Insider. Of course, by not claiming the win everyone knew what my role was. It was a pretty entertaining game, everyone enjoyed it.

Maskmen, first play. For a simple looking game, this was a bugger to teach. This is a shedding game, you are trying to empty your hand as quickly as possible. The theme is wrestlers. There are six different colours of cards. To start, you have to play a single card and place that colour wrestler on the table. After that, the next player needs to play one more than the previous colour, and that sets the hierarchy of the two wrestlers. So, if I opened with a green, and the next player plays two blue, then the order is blue > green. If someone plays three of another colour, then that colour beats both of the previous wrestlers. Once a hierarchy is formed, you can’t change it. But it can branch off. So, if you had blue > green > orange, then you start a new round and orange is played. If someone then played two purple, than orange is linked by blue and purple. The purple can’t be added to the main hierarchy because you haven’t established how purple relates to blue or green. I couldn’t understand the rules that came with the game, so I downloaded a simpler version from BGG, watched a review, and then played with an online app. We started up the app and entered our turns on that, to make sure we weren’t making any mistakes. That helped a lot.

[lalunaverde]

The BGG rules helped a lot. The English translations were very confusing when we played it out of the box.

[RogerBW]

Last night, A Touch of Evil.

Love this game. Anyone with expansions to sell, get in touch.

[Whistle_Pig]

Some new games today:

The Red Cathedral: lots of game in a small box. I like it but I can’t quite articulate what exactly about it I like

The King is Dead: we just played the basic version, but I could see it becoming a favourite of ours.

My parents are visiting next weekend and I think both games are just the right level to try with them

[lalunaverde]

@Whistle_Pig

The King is Dead: we just played the basic version, but I could see it becoming a favourite of ours.

I only played with the basic, and won’t play with the variant. But some people like the spice of having asymmetric cards at hand though. Worth a try to see what you think, at least

[lalunaverde]

Brass: Lancashire - manage to build some Level 2 buildings in the canal era, a Level 3 iron smelter, and a Level 1 Shipyard. The game was for me to lose at that point. I built even more, but couldn’t get the Level 4 iron smelter up. I did manage to build the two Level 2 Shipyard.

This might be a one-off game, because this is the kind of stunt that I get to pull in Brass: Birmingham because that game is too forgiving, I’m surprised that the tighter Lancashire didn’t manage to kneecap me.

Isle of Trains - a quicker and lighter game of RFTG (for one thing, you don’t need to memorise the icons). Enjoyed this, but I might opt for Jump Drive instead

Mind MGNT - Get to play this after all that hype… and it was okay? The logic deduction with the plethora of icons on the board is just added noise to make the simple logic deduction seem complex - it’s not. I’m gonna guess that the expansion stuff in the box will make this better, but I would rather opt for the sleek Whitehall Mystery instead. And if I want glut and theme, there’s Fury of Dracula. I cannot believe this game made me choose Dracula. That’s how underwhelmed I am.

[mistercrayon]

I think mind mgmt needs the extra bits and bobs for a couple of reasons. The game is really it’s about tuning the experience over time between you and your opponent

[Phil]

@lalunaverde

And if I want glut and theme, there’s Fury of Dracula. I cannot believe this game made me choose Dracula.

[COMaestro]

Played a few games yesterday. First was Ghost Stories on medium difficulty. So, in any other gaming parlance, hard mode.

My wife was the blue monk that could do an action twice, and I was the green monk with the gray die and could ignore the curse die. We had really bad luck with our draws, getting a lot of ghosts that brought out another ghost, which sometimes even then brought out yet another. Three of the boards had their powers locked down, including mine, about halfway through, and the boards started filling up because of the extra ghost draws. The powers stayed locked for so long because we kept needing to prioritize haunters and tormenters. Overall I think we played well, but it was just too much and two cards before Wu-Feng would have appeared, we were overrun.

We followed up with Ethnos, using Elves, Centaurs, Wingfolk, Giants, and Orcs. This was a blowout, my wife winning all but one region in both ages, and while I kept close to her in the first age with better scoring bands, she outdid me in the second age. I lost horribly, 128 - 81.

Finished off the day with Lost Cities, which I won pretty handily 226 - 144. She had a very bad last round where she started focusing on other colors and totally forgot that she had put down a yellow wager and only had a 3 on it, for a -34 to her score that round. Otherwise, I was just having some very lucky draws and got the 8 card bonus twice through the game.

[Brattyjedi]

My husband and I played Star Wats Rebellion this weekend. I am a rebel at heart. I played as the rebels and lost. My husband and I have played this 8 times since I started recording my plays. We’ve both had 4 times as each side. With me as the empire and him as the rebels, we are 50/50. With me as the rebels and him as the empire, I have never won a game. I might need to start rethinking my affiliation. Or look up rebel strategy guides online.

[COMaestro]

Played two games of Marvel Champions today, both solo with Gambit vs. the Hood scenario. Neither went my way.

First game started well. I got Hood to his second phase before he advanced the main scheme, but unfortunately that’s pretty much where my progress ended. An attachment came out that made me search the deck and discards for a minion, and while I am not certain what the official rule is, I just stop at the first one I find, which happened to be an Armored Guard, which prevents me from attacking the villain until it is defeated and starts with a Tough card. Then the attachment gave us +3 ATK, and then another attachment was played which gave it +4 health and 2 Retaliate, doing damage to me if I attack it.

Soon, I had three more enemies to contend with, and I just could not fight them all off. Got rid of one, injured another, and was defeated the next turn.

Second game was just as bad. Got him down to 2 health for his first phase, but he got both his pistols on him, each adding +1 ATK and +1 SCH, and on his activation he advanced the main scheme to it’s third and final stage. Then, due to his ability, I ended up having an extra encounter card to resolve. The first one made him activate again, and added 5 threat to the 10 point scheme. The second made me draw another card, which made him scheme again with a +1, adding 6 threat and ending the game. Just super harsh.

I think the Hood may need two heroes, at least at my skill level, in order to give me more threat to work with.

[SteveB_uk]

Yep, I play with two heroes by default against any villain, just for balance.

[SteveB_uk]

Played some BGA with London folks:

6 Nimmt (which that group calls “Angry Numbers”) and which I’d never played before. It was good! I can see why it’s up to the top of a lot of top10 lists. Other player took this screenshot:

More Yahtzee (I got a double yahtzee by mostly luck and won by miles, otherwise would have been 3rd out of 5).

And finally Railroad Ink, which worked really well on BGA. I thought I was doing really well, but then saw that everybody else was too! Didn’t use any expansions, and I think I usually lean heavily on expansion points. Very fun to do online though.