Is it a papercraft 1:1 scale Orient Express?
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How did you guess?
Day 2 of LoBsterCon (London on Board)
Epic 7 player game of Stationfall -
GAME OF THE YEAR 2023
Not as complicated as I thought. It has that Ameritrash framework of rules that have little rules all over to make thematic sense. But your two actions are rather straightforward.
This game is made for me. Unfettered space station of chaos! An array of characters that no one owns and therefore can be controlled by anyone, until that player reveals their secret identity and take full control of that character.
I was the Stowaway who can only spawn on unlit areas and I thought I can show up anywhere by causing a blackout in the space station. I grassed Project X to the news to show the world the despicable experiments they do in there.
“We need kill LLV! He is THE cause of all this!” I only destroyed 2 out of 3 power source. It’s not my fault. 
I attempted to trigger the antimatter bomb to detroy the whole space station but failed on that regard.
Absolute sheer hilarity
Container - we kept losing money amd we called it quits when someone had gone bankrupt
Brass Birmingham - very nice to play it with very competent players. I was doing well in Canal Era but busted at Rail and so lagged behind in pts.
Zoo Vadis - 6 players
El Grande - we played with the new edition
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I’ve been trying to drum the hype for Stationfall here, but it weirdly seems to have flown under everyone’s radar.
I don’t own it yet, too expensive to ship, but I know a local guy who has the all-in Kickstarter bought from someone else, and he’s just “I’ll bring it eventually, I need to learn the rules, not sure if it’s my thing”.
Grr.
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Last night with my Standard Reference New Gamer (really can’t call them a novice any more):
- Terraforming Mars The Dice Game, this time the dice fell my way
- Riftforce,which I’ve been inspired to get out more often lately because of the expansion; I still prefer the original basic icons on the development copy I saw at UKGE 2019 to the art on the production version, but that’s my problem.
2019 prototype:
published game:
5 Likes
Seemed to get a lot of attention when it first came out, but haven’t heard much about it recently.
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They were saying on dice tower it had a huge queue at the ion game design booth at Essen.
3 games now of TTR Legacy.
It’s been a nice way to get our eldest into it so far because the early game is really short (like the city versions).
No more spoilers!
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Just played Solarius Mission for the first time. Wow, it’s so good. Another fiddly euro that’s really open but also quite focused. Digging the theme, the tight action efficiency and you can tell that it’s got the same designers as La Granja and Agra. So many choices, so few points. Really needs more plays to mature but there’s much that’s tantalisingly close to me synapses.
It’s a massive shame that the second edition Kickstarter collapsed in to being a huge collapse of no refund and no product as more people should get the chance to play this one. Sad times.
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Our better halves were away for the weekend to celebrate a birthday, so we managed a games night this last Saturday at home after some snacks and having the children raiding my place. We played a game of Flamecraft, which is growing on me, even if so far I have played it so many times while teaching it that I never do very well on the scoreboard due to having to “police” it.
Although this time it turned out to be a very disputed game. We played four (including my eldest daughter) and she won it by one point, with all four of us ending around low 50s or so points. I managed a good half a dozen points through special dragons at the end of the game, and brought the rear with 49. My daughter had been storing coins, and they proved to give her the edge to steal the win.
I must admit it is becoming my “entry point” favourite game, every time I played it everybody has enjoyed the experience, the tactics and the components/art.
EDIT: I also played a game of TtR: Europe yesterday night. It has become my little daughter favourite game, and I cannot refuse her. And she gets familiar with European geography, which is always a plus, I guess
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Day 3 of LoBsterCon (London on Board)
Root - Played with the Keepers in Iron and they are pretty cool faction to play!
Indonesia - screwed up mid-game by having one shipping company that is almost useless and then lagged behind. I still enjoy this over FCM.
Bus - cutthroat 5 player game!
Food Chain Magnate - new milestones. Got trounced against proper players. It was a great play still, as you learn new tricks
Harvest
Turn the Tide - this play really confirms how great this game is. Unfortunately, it proved itself by seeing how different skill-levels fare, in a blatant way
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Very light week-end games-wise, as we were in Montreal catching the Addams Family musical, which was all kinds of awesome.
We played a quick game of Patchwork after supper, though, and I got my butt handed to me, to the tune of -11 to 46. AND Maryse managed to fill out her board completely, which, according to our rules, meant that she won the tournament as well as the game.
That, my friends, is a record. I’ve lost this plenty of times, but never THAT badly.
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Decent weekend of gaming. Yesterday my wife and I played Lost Cities, which she won handily, 200 - 147.
Afterwards, we played Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game, with me as the Empire, and I won thanks to getting Jabba’s Sail Barge and a few bounty hunters (Sail Barge lets you take a bounty hunter from the discard pile into your hand). I kept having hands of either all purchasing power, or tons of attack, which gave me some really big swings.
Today I let her sleep in, which she really needed, so in thanks she offered to play Unmatched with me, which I happily accepted. She was Medusa (naturally), and I dug into the new Brains and Brawn set and tried out Spider-Man. He has a great ability: when attacked, your opponent has to tell you the printed value of the attack card, then you get to choose your defense card. This is really helpful, as he has a number of cards that have effects that trigger if the opponent’s card value is 4 or more.
We played on the Sanctum Santorum map from the same set. It was a really close game. I was at 3 health when I hit her with an attack to get her to 1 which also knocked her away, but not far enough to keep her from pinging me with her special ability at the beginning of her turn, bringing me to 2.
She attacked using her last card in hand, which I defended with my last card in hand. It was a tie, so I took no damage, but best of all, it prevented her from drawing any cards for the rest of the turn, forcing her to have an empty hand going into my turn. I maneuvered, drew an attack card, and won the game!
Later we played Taverns of Tiefenthal with her brother. We tried out the first module from the Open Doors expansion, the Wine Cellar. With the addition of just two cards, one tile, and a couple of cubes, it seemed the most straightforward. So now you can get a sommelier who will serve wine (the cube) to the last guest that enters your tavern (up to two maximum), so you get the money from them without needing to use a die.
There’s also a Quack Doctor, who will either give you one coin, or you can return it to the supply to reactivate an immediate benefit from a patron. So, for instance, if there is a patron that gives you a dishwasher when you buy them, and they are in your tavern, you can discard the Quack to get a dishwasher.
We all took a setup card that gave us a brewer, a barback, a bard, and a dishwasher, so we were all on the same footing. I felt that I had a lot of bad luck in the dice drafting, but for most rounds I was able to get at least four or five beers and usually more coins. Still, I could tell I was lagging behind the other two.
I was able to pull off some decent placements and purchases to get some nobles in the last round, but I still lost with 116. My wife got 123, and her brother won with 137.
Lastly, my wife and I played two games of Azul this evening. I won both, the first 72 - 68, and the second 54 - 32.
8 Likes
So back in early October, one of my best friends who lives an hour away (in Canadian terms, that’s pretty close by!) had a birthday. I was going to visit, we were going to play games… but then he, his wife, and both of their kids came down with a plague that took them out for three weeks. Whee!
So this weekend, on the precipice of the “Holiday Season,” I managed to get Sunday off and head down to play some games. Woo!
We started with my first-ever game of Battletech using 3050s technology (the Clan Invasion stuff). Nick went with a Highlander (Heavy Gauss, normal Gauss, and a smattering of other weapons), an Axman (Hatchet, AC20, Large Laser, and some medium lasers), a Hollander (a light with a Gauss! Hilarious!), and an Urbie with an MRM30.
I decided to go almost-full Clan: Timber Wolf Prime (ER Large Lasers, ER Medium Lasers, LRM20s, a Pulse Laser for some reason, and 2 Machineguns), a Mad Dog/Vulture (Large and Medium Pulse Lasers and two LRM20s), and because we were playing with “only” 6,000BV I took a Locust (2 Mediums, 2 Small lasers) and a Stinger (Medium Laser and 2 Machineguns).
The Highlander took a huge amount of damage, the Vulture blasted its left arm off, but then it and the Hollander put Gauss shots straight through it. But my Timber Wolf was 80 tons of angry, carrying more weapons than any sane pair of legs should and 34 heat sinks to let me fire almost everything non-stop, plus a pilot that lets me kick twice a turn. So I did what any sane mechwarrior would do and waltzed straight towards the heavily damaged Highlander. If I could take out the Assault, the balance would tip back in my favour.
The Timber Wolf hammered the Highlander. The Highlander’s Heavy Gauss missed (woo!) and then the regular Gauss took the head clean off my pristine Timber Wolf. In the biz, we call that “good salvage.” With only two lights remaining against all 4 of Nick’s mechs, we called it.
We then played a “tutorial” game of Star Wars Armada. We just took everything Nick had (two Consulars, an Acclamator, a Pelta, and a Venator, plus four V-19s) and I brought an approximately equivalent amount of Rebels (two Corellian Corvettes, two Hammerheads, a Nebulon-B, a Pelta, and an MC-30, and four X-wings).
Since we were only playing 3x3, I was basically ramming myself after turn 2. My Pelta ran straight into the jaws of the Acclamator and Venator, got a few good licks in but withered under the concentrated firepower. The Nebulon blasted his Pelta into fragments, but the Venator sweeped up a Hammerhead and a Corvette without me even getting through his shields. I managed to put my MC-30 in perfect position, unleashing both broadsides at his big ships to reasonable affect and a few critical hits, but then the Venator managed to get side and front on the MC-30 and those ships are built for firepower, not abuse. My X-wings took out both Consulars, but in return his V-19s managed to wipe out three of them, and we called it.
Gosh I love Armada. I haven’t played since… 2019? Probably. But it’s a great little game. Hopefully Nick enjoyed himself enough to want to play another at some point!
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Day 4 of LoBsterCon (London on Board)
Take the ‘A’ Chord - a trick taker from Saashi and Saashi. More complicated than what I’d like, and I can see the cleverness with it, but I’ll skip buying this. I’m glad Nokosu Dice is killing my appetite on keeping a lot of trick takers.
Harvest
Divinare
We left before lunch, and travelled back to London.
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And talking of which, last night at Local Game Group:
- Nokosu Dice, I’m starting tp get a bit of practice at teaching this. Great fun with 5. (The 3-player version works, but 4-5 is definitely better.)
- Deep Sea Adventure because ND had taken a while.
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Which Harvest is it you all keep talking about? I have a very different Harvest, and BGG doesn’t exactly clarify things when searching for “Harvest”
New on BGA…
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This one.
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And I have this one:
A super compact Trey Chambers farming game.
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Sorry to double post, completely different topic.
Just came here to say Lords of Waterdeep
I’ve played a lot of Skullport because it is obvious. Corruption, push your luck action spaces. It’s good and I know what it is.
I’ve never played Undermountain because it seemed so blah. Contrast to Skullport, a few extra boring spaces? To make room for an unnecessary 6th player?
I just discovered that Undermountain is about the CARDS. The new Lords, buildings, quests, and intrigue cards. They are bonkers! Maybe my best game of Waterdeep ever.
I’ve tried to cull Waterdeep many times, as it just seems too simple. Every time I play it, though, I’m really pleased. After playing Undermountain, I think I’m thoroughly done trying to cull it.
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