A game I have seen, and ignored, in basically every store I’ve ever been in. It’s a game that apparently originates with the Amish, and the box art looks like something your grandparents have stored away with their crib board and books about how to play bridge. So. I, the board game connoisseur that I am, turned my nose up at it’s lack of miniatures or theme. At it’s simple art, so offensive to my sensibilities. (I feel compelled to say I’m obviously exaggerating for effect here, it’s just a game I assumed was boring and so ignored).
Then some friends insisted we play, and we obliged.
And… you guys. Dutch Blitz is so good.
We have since bought our own copy, given that one away, bough another for ourselves and another as a gift for our cat-sitters. Why didn’t anyone tell me? Have you played it? You should.
Also we picked up and played Wavelength which is also good and you should play that.
I just got finished playing a (VERY brief) 1v1 learning game of Godtear by myself, nipping at turns here and there between breaks this morning. Finvarr took out Titus with a total domination of round 3, after barely winning round 2. The dynamic control point system is excellent and I can’t wait to play with it some more. I’ll be resetting immediately to give a proper 3v3 match a go on the Life scenario.
This is so immediately appealing… not sure what the future holds for Skytear already…
I expect so. I’m in no real rush to come to a decision at this point - especially with the new map and cards coming for it (Skytear) soon! Ideally there will be room for both, but seriously, is Godtear ever just dead easy to jump right into and get scrapping.
Riiight, after a few days away from my laptop, there are quite afew games to report. First, on Saturday, 5th anniversary of our Geek’s Guild, and 10 am to 7 pm session was on, toppled by a quiz until 10.30 pm. I arrived at around 1.30 pm (children) and finally had a go at Concordia. Played with another 4 players, two of them experienced, and two of them hardly knew about it. I did enjoy the game, but I was not great on the final scoring, the two knowledgeable players did well, and I finished last with around 60 points. I had not been paying attention to the way the cards scored in the end, and it showed. Still, I would give it a go again given the chance. I did really enjoy playing and would not mind mastering it on the long run.
After a little break were I watched two friends end a game of Fog of Love (which actually they just missed by a mere 3 happiness points, I thought they were doing great) I had a quick go at Splendor, were even though I didn’t win, I scored a remarkable (in my record) 13. The winner was a newcomer, and she had really monopolised the green cards, which paid well for her in the last two rounds gathering nobles.
After a remarkable 3rd place on the quiz (we were the smaller team) we called it a night. It is great to have all that time to play games that can extend over the usual 2 hours without time constrictions.
Also, last night we had a game in the hotel room (we were away for two nights in Rotorua), we opened up the Citadels copy I had bought for my friend’s birthday. It did score a massive hit. The scheming and game mechanics did sink in well with everybody, and the tension on the last couple of rounds was great. Their 13 year old won (scoring the Map room did really break it for him) as nobody could get to him (I was assasinated by him as a Warlord on the one before last, and then assassinated as the King on the very last round). Still, a great game that I know will hit the table often with us, we learned it all together and before we knew it, we were cracking up laughing so often it made it a great games night.
I just did a solo run through Orleans just to see how it flowed. It really does look a lot more complex than it really is, though the set up is a bit of a chore. Probably easier with more people who can assist. I liked it a lot, and while 18 turns sounds like a lot, they do fly by pretty quickly. Having friends over this weekend, and depending on how many show up, I might try to convince them to give this a go.
I don’t know, you stay up late to finish your game, you’ve spent the last two hours devoting your undersea adventure to science as a motive, you hit 205 points, which sounds good, then you look it up in the epilogue book that comes with the game and this is what you get.
Played Smartphone Inc. It was meh. Strategy is a bit obvious and I got boatloads of other area controls if I want to play area control, and economic games if I want to play economic games.
Granted, I’ve played it once. But I’m guessing I will have probably around 2 games more before I’m done with it.
I think the cardboard tiles where you cover icons and then you REVEAL! is cute.
The turn order where cheap phones sell first make sense at the start - low price/high volume vs high price/low volume, right? But it doesn’t work, at least with 5 players, because the demand is so static. This is also the reason why I’m not a fan of Pipeline. Because tech and new tiles on your phone tiles can improve your goods output as rounds goes on, but demand remains static. Yes, you can expand on other regions, expanding your market, but so does everyone else. So this means, there’s only one strategy: sell low and sell loads, but sell low enough to outprice your competitors. It also doesn’t help when the high volume seller gets points bonus for area control on each region they sold the most.
The reason why luxury burgers work in FCM is that demand is dynamic and it’s player driven. If there’s a lot of demand, you can get away with it. If there’s little demand, then you create demand.
The turn order tiebreaker based on lowest points to highest points is so bizarre. Yeah. I get it. It’s catch-up mechanism. But players will play around with the turn order and it’s a bit lame. I made myself 2nd place on Round 4 (there are 5 in total) so I can beat 1st place player on the turnorder tiebreaker, which it did came to that. Final Round, we both have the same price of phones, but I leapfrogged 1st player because I sold all the phones, and he got few places to sell.
Setting the price is also restricting. You can’t decide freely what price you set them. You have icons on your phone tiles that gives you -1 or +1 on your sell price. How do you get more phone tiles? Pick up one per round on randomly drawn tiles. Turn order? Lowest sell price player picks first.
So that Imperial Assault facility with Jabba and the Rancor and whatnot? We were convinced last time that we were going to get completely owned. Two massive enemies and supporting troops seemed like a bad scene, even before the scenario-specific enhancements to the boss. In actual fact we burned down the Rancor in maybe a round and then polished off the adds and the power stations in another round-and-change before slowly whittling through the boss’s HP. (Two black defense dice is rough, but you can’t block when it’s not an attack! Cue my Snap Kick and Combat Knife doing two green dice a round, Vinto doing chip damage with split shots and Gaarkhan Rampaging, among other things.) None of us even ended up wounded, unlike most of the preceding scenarios. Looking forward to the horrors mission five will surely pit us against. And, of course, more nonsensical spawns!
Our Pandemic copy made it to the table again, and I think we can conclude that working with the Researcher makes it way way easier. We were 3 (my OH and daughter were Scientist and Researcher) and with me as the medic, we had only one Outbreak and did achieve all 4 cures before a 3rd epidemic occurred.
Might start looking into expansions, because without randomising roles, we have to be very unlucky not to crack it now…
The researcher and scientist are definitely the most efficient characters (especially if the dispatcher is in the mix too). Getting each subsequent card is incrementally more difficult, so being able to act with one fewer card or trade any card with no restrictions is massively strong - it frequently saves at least one full round of player turns. Without those two the game becomes a LOT harder.
Got my posterior handed to my by my wife last night in a game of Patchwork. She managed to fully fill her board while I still had a number of squares uncovered. Final score was 31 to -3, one of my rare instances of negative points.
