I’m interested in this but I wonder whether it has too much puzzle per theme by my standards. (But a year ago I’d definitely have said that about Earth too, so…) Still interested.
3 Likes
It’s not all that puzzly. Just the decision where to move (you get 1 move per turn or 3 if you choose the move action and there are flying potions) and which action to take (there are 9 actions). This is an interesting but limited decision space. Planning your moves well seems to be the trickier part somehow.
Brewing potions without (the right) ingredients is impossible.
Healing people without the medicine is impossible.
Sending people to the court room is only possible if you already have someone there to witness the trial.
There is a memory action that allows you to repeat an action you already played so there are 8 actions and not all will be valid at any given moment.
Choosing your action is the main decision each turn and I found playing 2 handed tested the limit of my ability however in a normal game you really have only the one coven to steer and that should not be too difficult.
I cannot speak to the solo-mode or the full-game with spells and rituals and familiars … yet.
PS: BGG weight says 3.45 which is in Kennerspiel territory not Expert. Which I think is right.
2 Likes
3.45 is way above Kennerspiel level! (At least on spiel des jahres definition)
(And probably getting further away over time)
2 Likes
well my Kennerspiel levels is below 3.5 and I’m sure it would be sold as such. This is not Barrage or Brass
2 Likes
17 Likes
It’s always a good day when you’re allowed out of the cage to play board games.
19 Likes
Is it bad I was thinking something similar?
8 Likes
Yes, pretty bad; but you were not alone.
4 Likes
We are just horrible people. 
OT: played Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game last night, with me as the Rebels and my wife as the Empire.
Despite winning just 3 - 2, I felt like I crushed it. I had I think less than 20 cards in my deck and I had heavy hitters like Andor, IG-88, Dengar, and Quarren Mercenary, plus Jabba’s Sail Barge which lets me take a bounty hunter for the discard pile into my hand, so I could often double dip on one of them. My last turn I just played 17 damage to wipe out her small cap ship and the remaining 13 health of her final base.
7 Likes
Railways of the World + Rsilways of Nippon - ack. 3 players is a bit loose, I feel. 4 player seems to be the best. Will try more of Mexico and the new Sweden map for 3 next time. Portugal at 3 is aces!
Taiwan Night Market - fun auction game with fuzzy ROI analysis and undercutting of opponents. We defo misvalued stalls but thats the fun of a first game. The theme is cute. But the resolution on what order the customers visit the stalls is a big pain in the bum.
For now, I highly prefer Stefan Dorra’s MarraCash. But I’ll be keeping this for now and will play with the expansion next time.
Prey Another Day - double guessing game with simple rules and quick fire rounds. Very good! I think Im happy with my copy of Stefan Dorra’s Turn the Tide/Sauve Moutons/Land Unter
8 Likes
The Great Zimbabwe was great this evening. 3 player game with Atete, Xango and Anansi worshippers duking it out. I dedicated last with Anansi after @lalunaverde chose Atete. I had the builder already and so felt Anansi was the counter to Atete. Meant I could set the price high on items to stop the double tapping of resources hurting my position. Worked out really well as built all the wood carvers and all the throne makers to Atete’s ivory carvers. This gave me expensive monopolies. I won setting 2 monuments to level 4 in a single turn. No one went for a god first turn as we all snaffled a specialist but then all got a god soon after with me choosing last. The board was close in with the rain ceremonies getting everything really connected. My victory seemed like it was sped up with poor diamond mine placement but I may have had enough resources to succeed without, definitely had enough cash. I think because I played in character and was tricksy.
Next we got the rules and scoring wrong on a game of Helionox. It’s a shame as I still really like it, only play the coop version and it does the core thing of deck building well with a unique art style and cool setting. Never mind blowing but always satisfying. Although Mr Verde doesn’t like deck builders so much so he may not have enjoyed it as much as the rest of us. I also think being coop the market’s less of an issue.
9 Likes
I had a bit of a disappointing first solo play of Planta Nubo last night. From setup, learning, playing 4 rounds and tear down it took me 4 hours. I think Contract Fulfillment is a mechanic that is just not meant for me.
Unlike Revive which is an ambitious multi-faceted future vision of humanity after the apocalypse, Planta Nubo just didn’t manage to tie its parts together as well as Revive–or at least that is what my first game felt like.
And the aspect I was most interested in the tile laying puzzle seemed a smallish aspect of the game.
I want to give it another go with multiplayer because the BotBot rules seemed a little fuzzy at times even though they shouldn’t be and I worried far too much about grokking the rules. It may be that this is a game that evolves over multiple plays.
The central aspect is that you put tiles in your airy tree garden. Those tiles come with flowers on them which you want to deliver to the waiting zeppelins or your own board for green energy points with which you then power your tree and get to move your energy die around it to collect action activation tokens for your custom card actions and O^2 (aka VP). After each of the four rounds if you have planted and subsequently cleared a large enough area of your board you can plant a forest on top of the flower beds to gain even more points.
To the right of the big central board you can see the action selection thingy. In each round everyone gets 3 turns to place their tools between those actions and activate 1 adjacent one (the overtime token allows you to activate 2 actions once per round). There are some placement rules for your tools. And the leftover one gets placed for an additional bonus on the main board before forest planting at the end of the round.
One of the things it has is bonus chaining and extra actions etc. so a turn can be quite complex and take a while so while that is interesting it will also make multiplayer harder because you need to wait for others to resolve their long turns and if you messed up your own turns are short and you sit their watching the rest most of the time. I can already see my partner’s frustration. This is a mechanic I enjoy in other games though (Arnak, Revive…)
8 Likes
Yashima, may I take a moment to compliment your pictures? I don’t know what you do, but every time you post a picture of your games, my first thought is “Oh dang, that looks REALLY good.” Like, the game really pops.
7 Likes
thanks . there is a lamp right above the table. other than that having a dark background helps and my phone is a Pixel with a lot of automated post processing–I am too lazy to get out one of my actually cameras. Phones are really fine these days. So mostly the thing i do is arranging the game, getting a good perspective and trying to avoid glare. the rest is Google. I find some illustration helpful, especially when i post about a game the first time.
4 Likes
We played The Barracks Emperors.
Do you like surprisingly large games with good production where at the start you having absolutely no idea what a good play is?
You’re playing 13 tricks at the same time, with card powers that can move, flip or discard other cards. Cards of the same number cancel each other, barbarians can kill the Emperor you’re trying to win. When you play a card for yourself you are potentially playing it for each other player in up to 3 different tricks.
It’s a shifting sands game state with buckets and buckets of player interaction.
If you’re into the usual GMT stuff then you might find this too chaotic, but I thought it was brilliant and totally unique.
By the 2nd round we got a hang of what we were doing (mostly) and were pulling out game swinging plays one after the other. Loads of clever play, loads of swearing at each other. And we only played with 3. With 4 I think this would be brutal, brilliant insanity.
I genuinely could see someone who loves Cosmic and Tournament at Avalon loving this, as much as a historical war gamer. The historical text is great.
It’s like the bastard love child of Tournament at Avalon, Tash Kalar and Tigris and Euphrates (but with a heavy element of tactics rather than strategy).
14 Likes
Dvonn, maybe a bit too close to "chesslike"space for me, but interesting.
Aeon’s End, I really need a better way to store this, and I have a Plan.
Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game, a comprehensive loss to two first-time players so clearly I am a great teacher.
11 Likes
Ok, first game of Ra, my word that’s a tasty game. Played it at 4 players with complete boardgame novices (my parents) and it went very well. Quick to grock and then the strategy develops with time. Yup it’s staying in my collection.
10 Likes
Is this the new fancy edition? It’s a winner in our club due to the above reasons.
4 Likes
Yeah went for the pouch full of wood edition, 25 th century game, it’s very nice and the iconography and layout all help.
3 Likes
Some games over the last week:
Endless Winter, trying to get this played with 3 on a weeknight was probably too ambitious as we finished pretty late. It was still a lot of fun though. I appreciate that while it’s a bit of a grab-bag of euro mechanics, they all have a kind of twist that makes this implementation stand out.
Hadrian’s Wall, another solo game and another fort knocked down (or built I guess…).
Point Salad x2, excellent little filler, I’ve not tried Point City yet, but I’d like to.
Silver and Gold, lost this one thanks to palm trees of all things! I’ve never seen them make a huge difference before, but yeah, on this occasion they certainly did.
Spring Meadow, lost two scorings back to back again. Mum was on fire this day!
Everdell Farshore, couple of games played at a local event. This one is a lot of fun. It’s still basically Everdell, a couple of the changes are great, some of the others a bit meh. I won’t be rushing out to buy it, but I’d rank it about the same as the original.
Clank Catacombs, I’d played original Clank just once, but I enjoyed this twist on the formula. Having a non-fixed dungeon would certainly help on the replay value. But it can lead to some kind of weird builds due to the random tiles. I’m still not in love with the random card row, and this game went super long (not sure if that’s typical - we were playing with four, but I do remember the original played a bit faster). But it was decent.
7 Likes