I’ve been playing Knarr (I feel it needs more Rs)
It is a very nice looking game and plays fine with two players. I’ve played it with two and three players, both of which were fine, but not four.
It is a very nice looking game and plays fine with two players. I’ve played it with two and three players, both of which were fine, but not four.
5 Likes
Impulse - another Chudyk hit! Last I played this was with Wyvern on one of our post-Covid “play outside” sesh.
The rulebook is a mess. But we got there in the end. And it’s glorious. Glad to get the 2nd edition on second hand, with both expansions. Alas, the exps are “more rules” expansions.
This is strong potential for the 2024 challenge
Goodcritters - Goodcritters now suffers the same issue with my big box games used to have: too many small box games, and so Goodcritters doesnt get played. I am keen on reduce small boxes to a fairly small selection next year.
It was great fun and remains one of my top party games. I am keen on putting the optional rules, which allows a more liberal way of scheming and bribing. Which should be fun!
Mini Azul - super cute on how small this is
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Impulse is mad, innit? I bounced off at first, but after acquiring the 2nd ed., grew to like it. Another exploit a broken combo until someone else breaks it game.
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Although it didn’t occur to me at first, I think I’m in love with the combat system too. At first it seems to be arbitrary and random, but I love the way a combination of careful planning and opportunity can pay off to make for devastating swings of fortune. Too many combat systems either rely on dice, or are too deterministic. This one balances the needs of fleet numbers, hand size, planning with the impulse synergy, and luck, in a really interesting way.
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We were too busy with the rules learning but we started playing combos with the plans, techs, and planets around halfway.
I think the combat is clever. I end up playing cards into the Impulse to strengthen my combat capabilities because I am expecting to start fights on my future turns.
2 Likes
Quick game of Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game tonight, with me as the Rebels and my wife as the Empire. I felt a little bad, as a lot of good cards for the Rebels hit the galaxy row, but beyond a Star Destroyer and Moff Jerjerrod, very little came out for the Empire, and even neutral cards only got Jabba’s Sail Barge as a high level card with everything else being some cap ships or cheaper units. I took out her first base and she took Corellia as her next base, letting her take the Sail Barge into her hand and eliminate my base, so on my turn I took Mon Cal in order to take the Millennium Falcon into my hand. I took out her base right away and she picked Kalfrene(?) which lets her draw the first time she plays a neutral card each turn, and then she took out my base a couple turns later and I picked the base with the same ability. Then I drew a nasty hand which let me do 14 damage, wiping out her base. Win for me!
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Gaming is so rewarding. When I’m not at my table and when I’m not actively enjoying my games, I always think about new games. Worrying about the games that I don’t own and thinking, “oh, I definitely need that one!”
But when I’m actually playing the games on my shelf; when I finish packing up a game and look around for the next game to put on my table, it’s completely different. On one hand, I feel guilty for having so many great games that one person couldn’t possibly play on a regular basis; but on the other hand, I feel like a kid in a candy store; with so many great options to choose from, I get excited and want to play them all. Incidentally, sometimes I imagine that my collection is a candy game store and it helps me appreciate my collection a bit more because… I probably have more of a selection than some small FLGS.
After my summer and back-to-school funk, I’m finally back at my gaming table. I mentioned elsewhere that I was regretful that I hadn’t had a chance to play Turing Machine over the summer because I was very excited to get it for my birthday a few months ago. Unfortunately, I had unboxed and setup Coffee Roaster (also a birthday gift) on my table at some point over the summer; and there it sat for weeks.
Coffee Roaster
I wrote elsewhere that I tried to play a game but had internalized some rules incorrectly and opted to, rather than trying to unlearn those rules forcefully, let time, weariness, and the exhausting strain of parenting push those rules out of my brain. It worked! I became stupider over the course of several weeks and when I re-sat down to play the game again, I had to relearn the whole thing! This time, remembering that I needed to use the effect of the flavor tokens in order to place them on the unlock spaces for the flavor effects (duh! I was mostly cheating myself out of the flavor effects by not doing this).
The result of my coffee roasting journey was surprising because I’m typically bad at these sorts of games!
Round-by-Round, Bean-by-Bean
Light Roast: SIERRA MAESTRA (Cuba) – BEGINNER
I actually don’t remember if I randomly chose this one or if I selected it specifically; it had been setup on the table the entire time ready to go – all that I needed to do was verify the correct tokens were in the bag (or, oversized coffee mug, in my case). A very straight-forward bean where the challenge, mainly, seems to lie in decided whether to go on the light side and stop after the “12” round which is the second double-roast round, or push to 13. I suspect if you were savvy you could even try to stop after the “11” round if you leveraged the available “aroma” and “body” flavor tokens effectively.
I focused on getting a good, even roast level and ensuring I had the Tray and the Exchange cup effects so that I had plenty of chances to cup a good cup.
I managed to pull exactly 14 roast levels scoring the max 10 points. But, in doing so, I only scored 3 points for the 2-of-3 matching flavor tokens, and a single skill point (10 + 3 + 1 - 0) = 14
Medium Roast: NGOZI AA (Burundi) – MODERATE
Following the progression guide in the rulebook, my medium roast bean should be of the “moderate” difficulty, so I randomly chose from those options. While not all that different from the Sierra Maestra I had just finished, it did demand a higher roast level (because, well, duh). Coming fresh off of the light roast, I had a good feel for how to build the bag.
Once again, I focused on getting the Tray and the Exchange cup effects. I ended up going through all of the rounds (from 7 to 14, inclusive; total of 8 rounds, 2 of which were double-roasting)
The familiarity with the similarities between the last bean and this one was paying off at this point and I cupped a perfect 17 roast points, earning 12 points. I hit all 3 flavor tokens scoring another 6 points and also managed to get three 3s and four 2s, earning 3 skill points. (12 + 6 + 3 - 0) = 21.
Dark Roast: LIMU (Ethiopia) – EXPERT
Scoring 21 points on the Medium Roast meant that, according to the progression rules, my Dark Roast bean must be of the “Expert” difficulty; my confidence from the excellent medium roast cupping quickly faded as I looked over the Limu bean card. It starts with only 5 0-roast beans but 13 “hard beans”, which take an extra step to roast and are not effected by the double-roasting rounds. On top of that is also the 8 water tokens (that can be nice as a way to control the pace of your roast, but can get in the way) and the target roast level of 20. I knew it would be a challenge and I prepared myself, mentally, to use the “aroma” and “body” tokens aggressively to ensure I get enough roast-levels to be able to cup that many points.
This time around, I still focused on the “Tray” cup effect, but had to forgo the “Exchange” effect in order to unlock the sweetness token that is asked for by the bean, ends up occupying space in your cup, meaning I had to achieve the 20-roast-level with even fewer beans drawn.
I feel like I did fairly well, especially with removing the “bad” beans and tokens from my bag, but even with the Tray to provide extra space to “skip” the beans that didn’t get enough roasting, I still only managed 17 of the target 20 roast points, giving me only 6 out of the max 15 points (that’s a brutal sliding scale). I also only managed to match 2 of the flavor tokens and only managed a single skill point. An adequate ending that opened my eyes to the possibilities of this game. (6 + 3 + 1 - 0) = 10
On each bean, I unlocked the “wild” flavor token and triggered the “Removal” immediate effect; on the first bean, I triggered “Removal” way too early (might have been the first round?), I definitely learned my lesson about saving that one for later in the roasting process where you draw more tokens and have a better chance of getting a bigger bang for your buck.
After the 3 beans, my final score was 45 which awards the title “Chief Roaster”, which is roughly in the middle of the possible ranks – not bad for a first, full game played with the correct rules. The “Master Roaster” rank demands 60 points or more, and “Apprentice Roaster” is anything 19 or less. I feel pretty good about that.
Turing Machine
Not that I was sad to have Coffee Roaster on my table, it felt good to finally put it away. For one thing, it meant I could get Turing Machine out and figure out how this new-fangled contraption works.
I’m always happy when I find a Watch It Played instructional video for a game. When it comes to learning new games, I certainly can do it from a rulebook (that’s how I learned 1862: Railway Mania in the Eastern Counties; a rulebook written in near-legalese), but my ability to sit down and read something start-to-finish has been significantly reduced due to the stresses of parenthood. So a better strategy is, often, watching an instructional YouTube video while I fiddle with the physical components (I’m primarily a kinesthetic learner, after all).
The Watch It Played video was very good and I felt like I had a pretty good grasp on the required thought processes to play the game. It wasn’t until I read the The ‘X’ Paradox rules supplement that I realized there was a gap in my understanding.
For those of you reading along, if you ever encounter this game and have the same issue, remember this
Specific to the first example in that document:
you don’t need a Verifier to tell you if your number contains a ‘1’; you know it does (you chose the number!). Instead, consider that if a Verifier card shows 3 options at the bottom, it’s your job to figure out which option is being validated by that card; there are effectively “3 copies” of that verifier in the game and you need to figure out which copy you are playing with.
Once you identify which copy of each verifier card you are playing with, there will be a single number that is 
for all of them.
Additionally, if there are 3 options at the bottom of the card and you rule out 2 of them, the process of elimination provides the conclusion that it must be the 3rd option.
I followed along with the example 01 in the video and felt pretty comfortable with it, so I immediately opened up the website and asked for a hard Solo/Co-Op challenge with 6 verifiers. After 3 rounds and 9 questions (3R9), I had the right answer, but the mysterious-and-never-actually-explained “opponent” in this challenge did it in 3R7. Oh, I see how it’s going to be.
I ended up played a number of solo challenges. I tried the Extreme mode (but not the Nightmare mode yet), which was very interesting. Eventually, I did get a win against the MACHINE which felt good.
Grand Austria Hotel
I was reluctant to put Turing Machine away; it’s certainly something I want to figure out how to keep handy so I can setup, play, and put away when I have 10 or 15 minutes to spare.
But I was also eager to get back to some euro-gaming. Dice drafting is actually one of my favorite mechanisms. For a mechanism that always feels fairly pedestrian, I find it just so interesting.
I worked through the instructions (again; I once tried to learn the game by playing with the community automa). I setup the base game with the appropriate Leopold automa on “Medium” difficulty.
It definitely felt like one of those games where the required “pace” of the game should be “frantic” – you need to focus on getting the most out of each turn; forward-planning may be important, but not nearly as much as right-now-planning. Get. Those. Guests.
My first game was terrible. I felt like my employees were pretty good, but I soon got into a position where I couldn’t keep up with preparing rooms and fulfilling the customer requirements (recipe fulfillment is another one of my favorite mechanisms, even though it’s so over-done). Honestly, it was pretty demoralizing and I lost by ~40 points.
For my second game, I found even better synergy in my starting employee cards and lucked into some great customers the first couple of turns. By the end of the game, however, after pushing and pushing and pushing to maximize my turns, my board was nearly completely empty, having run out of food/drink, money, and prepared rooms. However, by finishing a block of 4 red rooms, that cash infusion allowed me to have a big final round. Then, as is usually the case, I desperately needed just one more coffee than I could figure out how to get, and ended up with not-quite-as-spectacular as I hoped, but still a good turn. Leopold’s final turn then gave him a blue guest worth 7 VP that took a room on the top floor (i.e. tons of points for Leopold) and I thought the game was sunk at that point.
I had not, however, been tracking which end-of-game-scoring employees that Leopold had pulled. Of the 3 that Leopold had played from his deck, two of them ended up giving 0 points. At the end of the final scoring, I was winning 117 vs Leopold’s 116. I won by a single point and it was mostly by luck-of-the-draw, but it still felt great.
Leopold is a difficult opponent who clearly cheats, but it is still a good challenge and his behavior certainly makes me think about what guests I’m choosing to invite to my hotel; both in favoring the higher point value guests to stay competitive, but also helping to ensure that Leopold doesn’t get too many of the big-point-value guests.
CURRENTLY ON MY TABLE – Carnegie (still learning)
10 Likes
Couple of games this evening, first a quick tournament of Patchwork,which finished 2-0-1 in Maryse’s favour. I scored negative points in my two losses, the middle game was a 13-13 draw! Those don’t happen often!
Then a nice game of Quacks of Quedlinburg with The Herb Witches. I got a very nice, big lead going, but man, she caught up quick.That woman can BREW. I did, however, wind up winning, 120-115. I actually won a game!
10 Likes
I hadn’t seen the X Paradox sheet before, or used these criteria cards. I’d love to change the visual design so as to distinguish “this is the option you’re choosing by virtue of the query number” (e.g. criterion 2, play a blue 4, I’m asking “is blue greater than 2”) from “the game setup has chosen one of these options for you, and that’s the only one that I’m checking this game”. So for criterion 33, the second example, I might have red vertical lines (“this entire game is in only one of these three spaces and you don’t know which”) and green horizontal ones (“and you’re choosing one of these two with your query”). (Well, I wouldn’t use red/green obviously.)
2 Likes
But yeah, each verifier only gives information for that specific verifier. Some of these verifiers verify certain conditions like number of “4s” they verify that and it really does not matter which numbers of your input are 4s at all, the verify just verifies the count. If you have the right count, it is green, if you have the wrong count of 4s it is red.
You want to figure out for each verifier which of the conditions shown on it is the one you are looking for and then find the code that matches all of those conditions.
For the more tricky problems I found that sometimes you want to make some implicit deductions like “if this is so and so, there would be multiple solutions, so it has to be this way.” to speed up your deduction.
The game is also on BGA now and not having to do the whole setup shenanigans makes it better IMO.
1 Like
The fat pile of square cards in Turing Machine is a real pain in the hands.
1 Like
Yes. Physically managing the square cards is the biggest timesink and also the least fun part of the game.
I saw both some 3D-printed and also 2D-printed deck placeholders; when you take one of the square cards out, you put the appropriately labeled placeholder in its place; it has a tab that sticks out that says “A” or “B” or “C” or whatever. So when it’s time to put the cards back, you just replace that placeholder with the original card, et voila. Definitely going to print those (probably just the 2D, laminate and then cut).
Additionally, there are 4 sets of indices for the cards. If you sort the cards by any of the indices, they will be in order for all of the indices; two of which will “ascend” and two of which will “descend”. The reason, I presume, for the 4 different indices/colors/symbols is to make it hard to accidentally memorize what square-card-verifier combo is which, not to make it difficult to find the cards you need.
3 Likes
Le Havre - found a new appreciation with this game. Very combotastic game with several early, mid, and late game manoeuvres. This is something I would like to dig deep into due to its sheer elegance (for a modern Euro game!). This is perhaps my favourite out of Uwe’s farming games. Might even beat Nusfjord if it wasn’t for LH’s time duration. As Wyvern have said a few times, modern Euros are a bit transient, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy your X number of games of it.
Harvest - Tic Tac Toe for ****holes. Really having a good laugh at this, but I decided that I don’t need to own it. I have too many small box games.
Nigoichi is my new Let’s Make A Bus Route. I will keep talking about this until it is released in the West.
4 Likes
Started the long week-end off with a pair of games:
Ark Nova, wound up losing 20-22. Was super proud of myself for ending it when I did, as I stifled Maryse’s usual big play. Didn’t draw a single sponsor card with end-game bonuses, so all my points came from my final scoring card and the conservation projects I’d backed. Super super close game.
Pandemic, four players. Cured every disease and didn’t have a single outbreak, but unfortunately only managed to eradicate three diseases. So not quite Victory+. We were close, too. Just one more go around the table, at most, and we would’ve done it.
Great start to the week-end!
4 Likes
Some games this week:
Spots, got this one to the table for the first time - it’s a great little dice game. Good push your luck and enough interesting decisions to be engaging. Although I’ve pretty much only played it 2 player, so not sure how extra players would affect things.
No Thanks x3
Spicy, first four player game of this, works great as a clever little bluffing game. I managed to keep correctly identifing bluffs of one player but getting wrong what they were lying about! They ended up winning.
Ra, finally got my hands on this one and had our first game. It was even better than I’d expected, my favourite Reiner game to date. I ended up winning of the back of a good collection of monuments and managing to score my 11 Nile tiles in the second and third epochs.
Akropolis, one player managed to get to the 4th tier, which is a first. He did well, though I won off of good market scoring and nabbing a couple of green plazas.
Suburbia, had a great time with this one, though two of us tied on all the public goals and our third player who ignored them managed to get a strong lead early and we just never caught up.
Anomia, my wife joined us for a game of this one. She won, as she tends too. Two of our players had the longest face off I’ve ever seen with Broadway Show and Opera. Clearly not performance people 
, my wife and I kept throwing clues but they didn’t seem to help.
Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, played this two player with my wife, mostly just to teach her the rules as I thought it might be a good one for her to break out over drinks. She won. I was really struggling with the action cards though, kept whacking myself in the face! Not bad for 12 bucks though.
6 Likes
The longest one I recall was for “baseball team”. Finally one player said “The Tigers?” and looked around the table, and everyone else shrugged, and the opposing player said “yeah, that sounds pretty likely” and gave it to them. I must remember to throw out that card.
Yeah it’s a tough one for non-Americans. Thankfully Back to the Future gave me ‘the Cubs’ for that one!
1 Like
Another slog in Frosthaven, took us over four hours. At least we won I guess. Everything was spread out, so not ideal for a Deathwalker. Basically it’s three hours of holding back your best cards until the final push. I was just drained by the end. Not much chance of getting in another medium or heavy game after this.
Luckily, I just got my copy of Zoo Vadis, a remake of an earlier Knizia game. It involves negotiation, which isn’t really what we do as a group. We’re fine with cooperative games, love them, but cooperating in a competitive game? Not our style. It’s a simple enough game, there is a board of connected spaces, and you need to move your animals up into the last space, while collecting victory points. If you can’t make it onto the final space, that’s zero points for you, no matter how many points you may have picked up.
The trick is that you can’t move out of an area unless you have a majority of votes. In a three space, you need two votes, in a five, three votes. Obviously your own animal give you a vote, but if someone else is there, they probably won’t give you their vote without some encouragement. You can negotiate victory point token, promises to help you later, or player abilities. Each animal type has their own ability, which can only be used for other players, not for yourself. Each path has a random victory point token on it, which you collect if you move up.
There are also peacocks, which can be moved around. If you need a vote and a peacock in in your space, you can bribe them with a victory point token. Or you can move them into the victory space at the end, and forcing the game to end early ( did this). It’s a lovely looking game, even the standard edition (that I have). The various animal tokens look great.
It’s an easy game to learn, and quick to play. I’m not sure if anyone else was very enthused – only one other player even made it to the end space. The space contained two of my animals, one of another, and two peacocks. You don’t get anything for having more than one animal of yours there, it just blocks a space for anyone else. So there were only two of us that scored, I had sixteen, and the other player had two.
Inside Job, this time with four players. Really really good fun, and the insider got away with it. I unfortunately brought suspicion down on myself by having the most intel tokens (the insider wins if they get enough). And I failed a mission or two, not because I was trying to sabotage, just bad luck. By the time you’re down to your last few cards, there’s a good chance you’ll fail a mission but not be the insider. Everyone pointed to everyone else in the final voting, so the insider won. This just might be a game we play almost every week.
7 Likes
A post was merged into an existing topic: “Oy!” “Wut?” Just chat (The Return of)
The local game cafe had a party to celebrate its 1st birthday yesterday, so I went down and spent time with friends and played some party games that just got more chaotic as the night wore on.
Concept - Always good fun. The only stumble was managing to get people to guess Sherlock Holmes, but none of the other players could name any of the books.
Telestrations - Alcohol was kicking in and things got more chaotic. One round had multiple people forgetting the rules (despite them being written on the drawing pads) and just copying each others drawings. Then the next had someone chose “penis” when given a blank prompt, and this masterpiece was produced:
One Night Ultimate Werewolf - A whole bunch of games of this. Starting off with far too many players, we eventually got it down to a manageable 12, which is more than the game says it supports, but still managed to work. Very little proper deduction was done and it was mostly just wild accusations or people claiming they were every role at various different points.
8 Likes