I think I played that once. I didn’t find any joy in winning, but rather in my friends losing. Strange.
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Sounds very true to its name then!!
Also had my game of Schadenfreude. And it’s hilarious on how you want to win but you want someone to fail first in order to win. Yeah. This is great!
Railways of the World with 6 player Eastern USA. This board is pretty epic at 6 player.
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Two more games of Great Western Trail + Rails of the North today. I can’t explain it, but I swear those games go by more quickly than with just the base game. Anyway, they went better for me than our first one yesterday: I won today’s first game 126-117, and then lost the finals 111-142.
This is definitely a gem of an expansion, giving the game a second life it didn’t even need but that’s very welcome. Fantastic.
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Some games over the last week:
Hadrian’s Wall x5 - continuing to play through the solo campaign up to fort 10 so far. It’s great fun - pushes you to play in new ways which is needed after awhile. I’ve clocked 36 plays of this one, which makes it my second most played game. I think I’ve had two multiplayer games in there - it’s chiefly a solo game for me, but an excellent one.
Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza x6, made the mistake of introducing my wife to this one. Hence lots of plays. It’s silly but fun.
Ra x1, second play of this one - first with the correct rules (we had been ditching the offer after a Ra tile was drawn and nobody bid). I won, despite a significant swing from everyone else due to monuments (I had like 4 of them at the end) It’s excellent - I’m already looking forward to another game of it 
Parade, I’m starting to get my head around how to play this one. Very nearly won, but someone stole my safe (I thought!) majority of red cards in the last round.
RUM, this has become a regular feature on Wednesday night games as a quick easy game we all know to play at the end of the night. It’s decent, I’m pretty bad at it.
Ohanami, another regular feature, but with my mum this time, I enjoy it as a smooth drafting game with little friction. Even the card placement rules don’t seem to matter most of the time. Maybe that’s a feature of playing it two player - I’ve only had a couple of games at three.
Azul:SP, mum kicked my butt at this one. Peak Azul right here. It’s excellent.
Spring Meadow, yeah lost this one too - I didn’t even win a single scoring, clearly her day today 
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The three of us played Lords of Waterdeep with the Undermountain expansion today. I jumped out to an early lead, but got passed by me wife who completed a 40 point quest. Her brother lagged behind much of the game.
I managed to get back in the lead by the end of the sixth round but my wife passed me in the seventh and hit me with two mandatory quests, which is just evil! I did one of them, as it was easy to get the necessary pieces and gave me 4 points, but didn’t bother with the other and just focused on getting gold and adventurers, as I had no other quests to accomplish anyway.
Almost paid off, too. My wife and I both accomplished six quests for the bonus points for our Lords, so our gap did not change. She won, with me pretty close behind and her brother bringing up the rear. Scores were 183 - 176 - 146.
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Ptolemy - The translations on their website isn’t that good. So searching on BGG forums, the designer themselves put up the rules which is better. Very interesting game where the planets go up and down based on which card you play.
When you play a Mercury card, the planet Mercury moves up and then down and then up. You’d want to play a card that is a planet that’s not been played on that trick before AND it results on the planet being equal or higher in height than the planet that’s been previously moved by the opponent. E.g. Player B plays a “Venus 5” and Venus moves 5 times and landed on Height 3. I can play “Saturn 4” because Saturn havent been played before in this trick and Saturn would end up on Height 4, higher than Venus. And so you continue until someone passes which ends the trick.
Okay. It’s cute. The advanced variant is even more interesting. Ugh. It’s a 2 player but I think the game works as a 2 player trick taker and I love the art and it’s a rare game so I’m keep it.
Samurai 2x - people on the table wanted to play again and one guy wanted to buy it. That’s a good sign. Alas, I have to break the bad news and tell him that it’s rare, but if he’s patient on ebay, then maybe…
I am seeing the annoying “screw the player sitting on your right” shit again, but I am tolerating it for now because this game is just tense. Also we kept the statues we capture public. I don’t think I want to play Samurai with hidden scoring.
Gaia Project
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Thanks for the report on Ptolemy - it’s on my list of games to check out!
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Had a gaming weekend with my husband on a bunch of new games/expansions we just got.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday we played a game of Voidfall each day. The first game was the tutorial - standard competitive mode. The second two were both co-op mode. We really liked the game and are happy to have a sort of 4X that works at 2 players, but the rulebook sucks. It definitely added a lot of time to the first couple games as we kept having to consult it and taking forever to find what we needed. By game 3, we were consulting it less but still not sure we got all the rules right.
Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning we played three games of the new Ruins of Arnak expansion (Lost Expedition). This one has some stuff you can just mix in but the big thing is a co-op mini campaign for either 1 or 2 players. Co-op campaigns are one of our favorite things and Arnak is a great game in general so we’ve had a blast with the first half (3/6) of this campaign. We barely won the first two, then my husband realized we got our games confused and were supposed to have 5 cards in hand each round not the 4 we’d been using. We won the third game much more comfortably.
Finally, we got a first play in on Great Western Trail: New Zealand (now with sheep). I love Great Western Trail. I’m not as big a fan of the Argentina version. It adds stuff but not in a way that I find different enough and interesting in comparison to the original. New Zealand has the same core but a lot of changes that makes for a really different play experience. Some of what it adds (ships) is very similar to the Rails to the North expansion for the original, but the rest is more new and really ups the deck building aspect with lots of paths to take. I told my husband after one play, I’d be happy with base original and this version and see no need for Rails to the North and Argentina. He disagreed but that’s my take.
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Played Ethnos with my wife today, using Dwarves, Wingfolk, Giants, Skeletons, and Halflings. Despite only winning one region in the first age, I was still in the lead due to some large bands I was able to play.
Still wasn’t feeling good about the board state, but then I was able to take the lead in a few regions and still played a bunch of bands, and that was enough to get me the win, 110 - 78. Feels like my first win in this for a while.
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I had posted a list of games that I wanted to play before the BGG One Player Guild’s Top Solo Peoples’ Choice voting concludes. On the list of “I will definitely play it”, was:
1862: Railway Mania in the Eastern Counties – Solo
Not the first solo-able 18xx game, but the first one that I owned for sure. It’s not a secret that I adore 18xx games; and, as my primary expression for Boardgames these last few years has been “solo”, it may come as no surprise that I love this game.
But, dear friend, I regret to inform you… I… <chokes up>
I have no mania within the Eastern Counties, or anywhere else for that matter. If I were a aspiring business man in the mid-19th century, certainly I would have gone to debtors prison.
I played this game last week. And it took me all week (I mean, a good portion of that time was spent sleeping, parenting, eating, working). And some of the time it took me to “play the game” was actually me spending an inordinate amount of time (we’re talking hours) taking notes and transcribing notes – why, you might ask? Because I would play a set of two operating rounds and, at the end, be unable to remember who or when I was. The solo experience fills me with so much analysis paralysis that I literally am not entirely certain whether I sat there for 2 hours or 26 hours.
But that’s the point, right? If Kanban EV is a “good solo game” because it makes you slow down, think through the next couple of turns, and making the right tactical decisions to accomplish your long-term strategy, then 1862 is double that or more.
1862 is absolutely my favorite solo game. But I did terribly at it. Awful. My final score was £5145 out of a minimum £9000.
Last time I played, I focused on “merging and merging and merging. Never stop merging” which left me tile-action poor with a massively under-developed rail network. This time, instead, I focused on identifying the 6 companies I would start, get them started, and leave them independent as long as possible – providing the most tile actions possible. I look at the map and figure I had 32 total tile-actions (including 2 London tokens). My board is completely-filled.
Unfortunately, starting so many companies took a lot of money. And without starting any briefcases, it left my many corporations very poor, meaning that in OR-set 5 (the penultimate OR set), I had to merge down into two surviving companies (from a total of 5 that existed at the end of SR5); and it took me probably about 2 hours to figure out how best to ensure that each of the surviving companies a) generated revenue, b) had a plan for a permanent train, and c) ended the OR-set with a stock price that I could afford.
So, I didn’t do great. As soon as I finished the final OR-set, I was hopeful that I had done well – and then I tallied everything up and was crushed.
And I immediately wanted to clear the board and start a new game, even though it had taken me from Monday afternoon until late Friday evening to finish.
The next time I play, I want to experiment with a true-briefcase vs a short-lived float-and-merge; probably trying one of each, but possibly 2 briefcases – because I also want to focus on building out a 2-permit-type map rather than trying to accommodate all 3 types; I’m thinking Freight + Express, but really any of the combinations are truly possible.
*[briefcases]: companies you open just to generate capital and then throw away
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Yesterday was time travel games day, with 2-player Anachrony and That Time You Killed Me. I think I actually prefer the latter, although I did like the “borrow resources from the future” mechanism in Anachrony. We probably got a few things wrong, since neither of us had played before and there was a lot of stuff to remember! TTYKM made my brain hurt in a very satisfying way, although I don’t think my opponent was very enamoured with it.
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I dont know the solo rules but Im surprised that you can briefcase companies in 1862. There’s an Emergency Train Purchase if there’s no trains - unlike its 1825-style siblings.
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Yeah, but you can just loot the company (albeit, company-to-company train purchases are at fixed prices; full-price for current-band, half-price for older-than-current), and then sell all the shares because there’s no limit to the number of shares that can be sold to the bank pool.
The fixed-price c2c train purchases are why I’ve never done a briefcase in 1862. I’m willing to give it a shot; gotta pull all these levers to see what they can do.
One of the great things about solo 1862 is that the meta can be drastically different from the multiplayer game (which I’ve never actually played, if I’m honest; but I’ve watched a couple of gameplay play-throughs).
1 Like
Interesting!! Briefcasing is a typical strategy elsewhere in 1825-style. It’s typical to stuff your companies that you have significant shares-delta (ideally, the company you 100% own) with trains and run it to the max for that sweet 100% revenues.
1862 multiplayer in my games becomes a game of speculations. If you know someone will do a sly float-and-merge, you can buy up shares on the new corps and see them sweat on letting some Trojan Horse enter their treasured company.
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Since getting back from SPIEL yesterday, I have played Terraforming Mars the Dice game 3 times. 2 solos one of which I actually won albeit with a terrible score and 1 game against my partner which I barely won—it is likely he forgot to score a couple of oceans and then it would have been tied.
Lovely, quick TM experience which is actually quite a bit like TM—unlike Ares which is a butchered RftG experience (I like Ares, I do. I just like all its relatives better).
Also we like dice. Dice are good.
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Maryse and I celebrated my return from Toronto with another game of Great Western Trail + Rails of the North. While she went for lots and lots of cows, I removed a ton of hazards, got a lot of stations and built quite a few buildings. Actually finished the game with only ONE 3-value cow (a yellow one, so only worth a point), and that was a free one from one of the medium cities bonuses.
I wound up losing 135-148. It was initially 135-139, but she’d forgotten to score a pair of objective cards. 
. Ah, at least this time it didn’t change the winner.
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Update: It’s been 4 days since I finished my game and I still haven’t packed 1862:RMitEC away. I should just do it and get it over with…
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Is ‘just do it’ play again? If so I concur!
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It might be!
Ahhhhhhhhh
I don’t know
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Septima 2-handed learning game:
I played a 2 handed game of the basic game of Septima last night.
The basic game has a bunch fewer rules no spells and rituals.
There is a solo mode but I wanted to learn the game before.
In the basic game you move the head of your coven around the forest and the village to gather resources, brew potions, heal illnesses while trying to maintain a low “sus” meter and sending some loyal villagers to the court where there is a witch trial going on.
The game plays over 4 seasons with 5 moon phases each. During each moon phase / turn everyone chooses one of their actions simultaneously. There is also the Septima–the President witch, whose heir you want to become–she also chooses a random action this round, not that she is doing anything but…
If any players or the Septima play the same action, that action gets a bonus for everyone involved. Which is really nice and you are allowed to coordinate your actions in that way. Possibly getting more ingredients when collecting, getting some bonus when sending a person to witness the trial…
But this kind of coordinated action also raises your “sus” meter and triggers a witch-hunt. At the outside of the forest are the witch-hunter huts. One for each of the 6 “segments” of the forest. In the first season there are only 3 occupied… by the end there are 5 witch hunters. If your “sus” meter is raised in any way during your turn, if there is a witch hunter in the segment you are in, he rolls the “hunt” dice adds your “sus” score to the result and tries to reach you. If he does, one of your coven’s witches is put on trial. If there is no hunter in your segment, one is moving to the hut in your segment but after the move is too exhausted to hunt, so you are safe–for now.
At the end of each season there is a trial. Your loyal citizens compete with each other and the angry Wutbürger about who gets to decide what to do with the accused. If you win the majority, you can recruit them to your coven and gain wisdom, if the angry mob wins, the witch is banned (yes, banned, burned is such an ugly word).
So how do you win? There are various ways to gain wisdom and only the wisest of witches can become Septima. There is a bit of wisdom salad going on in the game: you gain wisdom for brewing interesting potions, you gain wisdom at the end for healed illnesses (there are also immediate bonusses for each of the 3 afflictions), you gain wisdom if you successfully defend a witch at court with your loyal citizens… you gain wisdom from your leftover resources and from your secret goals… of which you have 4 but you can only fulfill as many as you have witches in your coven…
I had planned to end the game after one season and ended up playing all 4. I probably miscounted some points, especially those you gain during the game are easy to forget if you play multi-handed. So left hand lost to right hand by 90 to 91 points. My hands played largely cooperatively… while the rulebook states that the coordinated action is “positive” player interaction I want to note that you could use it to get another player in trouble with the witch hunt… there are definitely possibilities to play that as a take that move, especially if one person is honest about their actions and another decides to lie–maybe just this once…
There’s a lot more even to the base game and I can’t wait to try out spells. The basic game felt a little too constrained at times despite the numerous actions available, despite potions allowing you to do various small bonus things and at one point there were no good options for right hand and so despite not needing to lower my sus-meter, I did.
There is also a small expansion in the deluxe box. Something about shapeshifting and familiars which sounds very tasty. I can’t wait to try all that. And the solo-mode.
I also can’t wait for Mindclash to get back to me about the missing components. I was able to simulate the missing resource tokens easily and I doubt I’ll play with 4 players anytime soon so the missing meeples aren’t a problem but I please want a complete game. (edit: they got back to me on Kickstarter and said they had forwarded my message to their logistics people so I will hopefully get a small pack of components soon)
So my verdict: it is very pretty, the basic game can easily be learned from the rulebook. The ebb and flow of the game seems good so far. Quite thinky, playing 2 handed learning and playing took about 3.5 hours I would say after I had done the setup in the morning. But not too thinky either and the option to hook people with the basic version if they are averse to more complex stuff seems good. For now a tentative 8/10.
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