Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[bort]

Played Cthulhu: Death May Die, but it was a fairly quick game. After a few turns, one player got jumped by a few cultists, and it was game over (since we hadn’t interrupted the ritual yet).

Another game of Goonies: Never Say Die. Still fairly easy, but at least the bad guys came out (The Fratellis), but the GM couldn’t get to us. He did manage to get a fair way across the map in one turn, thanks to some useful GM cards. But we stalled him with some rubble and got away. Still seems weighted towards the players.

Pictures, which is always a lot of fun to play. Scores were pretty tight too.

Inside Job, I got to be The Insider for the first time. I tried to achieve the missions so it wasn’t too obvious. At 4p, the good guys need 7 missions while the Insider needs five intel, so I figured I could allow the missions to succeed. Obviously I needed to win some tricks as well. Won the second last trick, which allowed me to choose the last mission (which I didn’t care about, but wanted the trump). And luckily I had the 13 in the trump suit, so I couldn’t lose, and got my last intel for the win.

[lalunaverde]

Condottiere - yep. Got myself copy now. 6 players is a bit stupid. Too long

Citadels

Botswana - got the smaller Japaense edition and the animals are wooden!

The Rich and the Good - The thing about stock holding is that it creates implicit alliances between players. And it’s hilarious on who you want to help and screw over! This isn’t that different. Great game

Taj Mahal x2 - played 5 players and then 3 players. Don’t think this reaches the S Tier of S-Rocket and Zoo Vadis, but this is great. The FFG/Z-Man edition is just one of the best reprints I’ve seen in terms of production. But being FFG/Z-Man, they put it in a large square box.

Botswana

Turn the Tide

[raged_norm]

Black Friday, 2 player with MIBS (the automated player for low player counts). One player was useless and the other was 7 years old.

There’s a good game in there. The combination above isn’t it. I’m also offended this doesn’t come in a Power Grid shaped box, more of an Agricola one.

[COMaestro]

@raged_norm

One player was useless and the other was 7 years old.

So which one were you?

[raged_norm]

Readers choice

[yashima]

We‘ve played the 2nd chapter of the Tamashii Chronicles of Ascend campaign. The prelude being a tutorial—which I played twice to give my partner the option of joining me in the campaign. But I think I will play the rest of this solo. While he enjoys the game in theory, the „medium length“ scenario we played today took more than 3 hours and I think with that kind of time he‘d rather be playing *-haven.

We won but barely… but I also made a few stupid mistakes. The scenario difficulty increases over time. But you also gain quite a few improvements. And it was not all that difficult—at least not with 2 players. I am afraid that with 1 character alone, things could have got far more tricky.

So this is a campaign game with a story. The actual gameplay exists. Each story chapter is segmented into goals you have to fulfill step by step through the scenario cards.

The game is played in rounds which have phases some of which are played in parallel and some in turns by player. In theory this should speed up everything but despite pretty good rules retention the first phase just takes a little long. This is
„planning“ during which you refill your board from your bag and then „program“ some patterns to do stuff in later phases. Programming means moving pieces or switching adjacent ones. With just 4 moves (on average) you can‘t do a lot.

Basic Patterns can give you resources or XP to spend on upgrades. Other patterns can claim a new body or maybe hack one of Ascend‘s evil bots that is after you.

Once you have planned your turn, everyone gets to move to a new district, gain some more „noise“ (which attracts the enemies), do the district action and launch some patterns you programmed.

After that is the combat phase which is played in turns again but can easily be played in parallel. Combat is a bit tricky initially and in this scenario we had a total of 3 resets (when a body loses all of its integrity aka HP you reset which may include losing the body). Resets also give you „duds“ to include in your bag—while you can easily get rid of the corrupted data tokens you gain this way (or by running away from enemies), each scenario is also on a fixed pool of these tokens and if that is empty you lose.

Overall I like the gameplay but the scenarios today was too long. And the complexity of the actual game with the programming is just so that I doubt I would want to 2-hand the game but it is so far not engaging enough to make me want to play this as a game beyond trying to discover the story. The decisions which patterns you want to make are always straightforward, the question is can you get to the patterns you need?

Setup and tear down are pretty long and a bit on the fiddly side.
Now that I have the game, I will hopefully play a few times and maybe even finish the campaign—it is not overly long, I think 12 scenarios in the base game and another handfull in the expansion. I doubt I will use the scenario generator. I do hope that I might discover some more depth in the next games… and I really hope it works solo. I don‘t think—with other campaign games available to us—that my partner will want to play again. He almost quit 1 goal before we got to the end of today‘s scenario „we‘re losing anyway and I don‘t want to play another 3 of these goals that scenario stack is huge“ (there are choices and branches in those „stories“).

If I had played this at SPIEL or a convention it would not have made my buy-list. But I adore the cyberpunk setting and looks and so I was helpless against a crowdfunding campaign. 7/10

[Chewy77]

Played Revive Saturday with the main game buddies returned from Spiel in Essen. Really enjoyed it, even if it did take quite a while to teach (40 mins or so). We finished a 4 players game in three hours, and I did really enjoy it. I was on the leads for quite a while, and my final scoring was decent, but one of the other players managed an amazing combo on their endgame score and overtook me, plus I did a mistake that would have given me quite some more points, but I cannot complaint for a first timer.

Then after that we played Forest Shuffle. Enjoyable game of cards, sort of gave me a Race for the Galaxy vibe with foxes and deer. I went for the Chestnut tree strategy plus some butterflies and bats, and finished last. Wolf and deer seemed like a better one, as the winner tripled my final score.

Yesterday I had a game of TtR Europe with the little one before going to a Robbie Williams concert, and she trounced me. I was really unlucky with my tickets, they were all over the corners of the map.

[yashima]

@Chewy77

Robbie Williams concert

@Chewy77

unlucky with my tickets

I read quickly and wondered what happened… then I remembered you were playing TTR…

[Chewy77]

Not my best sentence composition example, I give you that…

[Simfers]

Broke out Terraforming Mars today! Always a good time! Today also saw a first for us: The game was a draw! 95-95!

Out of curiosity (I’m always fine with a draw), I looked at the tie-breaker. It’s money, and by a strange quirk of fate, we actually tied there too! It was a double draw!

We both played great, it was incredibly tense and ridiculously close, and unlike yesterday’s games of Great Western Trail and Ark Nova, which I lost 125-185 and 23-66, which ALSO felt really close, the final score actually reflected that, LOL.

[Brattyjedi]

Went to a local mini game convention on Saturday. Met up with some friends I haven’t seen in forever and managed to get at least one game in with all of them.

When we (my husband and I) arrived, all our friends were in games. There was a couple with a game setup and a looking for players sign so we joined them. They taught us Godsforge. It’s an attack / last player standing kind of game. You roll dice and use the results to play cards that attack the person on one side of you, defend against the person on the other side of you, or manipulate game conditions in some way. I had the most health left by a lot then my husband did something crazy to deal 28 damage in one attack and I was instantly first out. After one player is out, everyone else automatically takes extra damage every round so it didn’t take too much longer to finish. It was an ok game but nothing I’m overly excited about.

Then a couple of my friends were free and I have the new Ex Libris expansion that I desperately wanted to play so we asked if they’d be up for that. They were super excited to find out about an expansion, as was one of the two people we had just played with. So the other new friend went to find something else to play and we setup a five player game. We had a great time trying out the new expansion. I really enjoyed it. It mostly adds artifacts you can shelf with your books that each have their own ability. My husband won by quite a lot.

The old friends we played Ex Libris with got called into another game and another friend became free so we changed up players a little and the new person we had been playing with offered to teach us Call to Adventure. It’s a light card game where you build the life story of an adventurer. You roll runes to see if you succeed on certain “quests” and I had a couple lucky tosses that went my way when odds were they shouldn’t have so I won.

After a quick food run, we came back and another friend of ours had arrived. We asked what he wanted to play and he looked over the games we brought and asked about Dead Reckoning. We explained it is a pirate sandbox game. It uses card crafting (deck building) to make the crew of your ship and then you use them to take over islands, produce resources, build stuff, and/or attack ships in whatever combination you want. He thought that sounded great and one of our other friends was still free so we set it up. It’s a slightly longer and more complicated game (not terribly so) so it took a bit with two new players. One of them went super pirate attack heavy and managed to sink me. That set me back and I lost by quite a bit. My husband won with 97 and I had 67 with the others in between.

By then it was around 9pm and we had an over hour long drive to get home so headed out.

[COMaestro]

Had friends over this weekend for a soup-based potluck, which went over well with everybody. After the Soupening (as we called it), we went ahead an pulled out a game. Much as I was hoping to get Zoo Vadis to the table, we instead went with Lords of Vegas. We had two total newcomers to the game, and three experienced hands. After a rules explanation, we got started.

I think this was one of the worst games of LoV I have ever had. It got to the point I was considering it a moral victory if I ended up rounding the first corner of the scoring track (meaning I exceeded 10 points). I mean, none of the lots I was drawing were near any others, there were never any good trade opportunities, except at one point for me (other people had some really good ones), and half my casinos got taken over quickly, to the point it wasn’t even worth trying to take back (their 3 dice to my 1, for example). I finally had a bit of luck in the C block when I was able to roll a 6 on a tile, and was then able to take over someone else’s one tile casino and link up three more of mine for a size 5 which was touching the strip.

It was only because of this that I was able to attain my goal and round the score track corner. I ended the game with 18 points. My wife won with 40, our two newcomers were next with 36 and 32, and our other friend managed to finish just ahead of me with 20.

The one couple left, so the remaining three of us played Ethnos, which my wife really enjoys. We had Dwarves, Centaurs, Merfolk, Orcs, Giants, and Halflings. It was nice playing 3-player, as it’s much easier to place control markers when you only have to exceed your own, and not the combined total like in the 2-player rules.

I didn’t think I was doing particularly well, as I felt pretty behind in regions as we started the second age, but some heavy playing of Merfolk let me jump ahead on the track and place a couple of free markers, locking in a 10 point region and forcing a split of an 8-6 region with my wife (so we both got 7 for it). At the end of the game, my wife and I were tied at 105, with our friend bringing up the rear with 82. Tie goes to the person with the most control markers on the board, which turned out to be me by 1! We were both out of markers in our supply, she just happened to have one more on her Orc board than I did (which did give her 5 points more than I got from mine), so yay, I won!

Hopefully we can have some more larger gatherings with the holidays approaching.

[Captbnut]

I met friends in an Airbnb for a gaming weekend. Starting at 1530 on Friday and ended at 1300 on Sunday.

Played quite a bit! Will try to flesh this out when I’ve had some more sleep.

Tindahan - already loved this, want to play it again and again
Mino Dice x 2 - a hit, but not to be taken seriously
That’s not a Hat - best game ever???
Quartermaster General x 2 (kind of) - I’m getting close to looking for ‘balance’ threads on BGG with 5 consecutive Allies victories, but the last game showed me how the Axis could win. I think this is pretty good for a 6 player strategy game without loads of downtime. I ran the first game for the others in the group.
Hanabi - don’t love it, but it’s good
99 - love what this does with a standard deck
Maharaja - this was an excellent, interesting game. The kind of game that I’m rubbish that. Felt like a lot of decisions in a pretty swift time.
Schadenfreude - always enjoyable but I was too knackered to really appreciate it.
Calimala - another interactive, speedy euro.
Project L - clever little puzzle
Bring Your Own Book - it may have been lightning in a bottle, but one of the funniest experiences I’ve ever had gaming.
Just One - always a strong filler
Pax Renaissance (happened while I was there!!) - super opaque, very kindly walked through by the teacher.
The Great Zimbabwe - loved the first half. Baffled by the second half
Guards of Atlantis 2 - an expensive play, I think the boys are going to love this. I late pledged for this as soon as we’d finished.
Voodoo Prince - glad to be indulged, definitely a keeper now. Doesn’t work with any player count apart from 5.
Spicy - a clever twist on Cheat with great art. Fun enough but not my bag, may have just been too tired to get into it.
Colourful - I think this is great.
Hues and Clues - boy was I shit! More fun than it has any right to be.
Bohnanza - glad everyone got a chance to experience this.
Cascadia - this was ok, similar vibe as Carcassonne for me.

[lalunaverde]

@Captbnut

Guards of Atlantis 2 - an expensive play, I think the boys are going to love this. I late pledged for this as soon as we’d finished.

Man, I need to play this more with our club preferably with 6 or 8. I don’t see why this wouldn’t be a difficult game to pick up. It just appears complicated.

EDIT: Will put this in 2024 Challenge

[Captbnut]

It certainly wasn’t the most difficult game I learned this weekend.

I imagine it’s pretty brutal to play against more experienced players though.

[yashima]

Which one was the most difficult game you learned then?

[yashima]

I know it’s just app games. But sometimes for solos… they are just faster. And sometimes for multiplayer as well.

Friday Night: Got to play app Gloomhaven with my partner. We were supposed to be 3 but our friend got caught up in some online meeting–he kept complaining about it via chat but had to stay… We played the first scenario and … made it. Me playing the Brute and the Spellweaver and my partner his old Cragheart. It’s really nice not having to worry about enemy movement and LOS. Really nice.

After having had a taste of Gloomhaven, I couldn’t resist on Saturday and opened my old campaign with Cragheart (level 9 and just can’t manage to faint often enough to complete his quest), Music Notes (also level 9 now), Two Minis (level 7) & Triforce (new character I have no idea how to play)…

Because I didn’t have the solo scenarios before for the app, I chose Music Notes randomly to try it… I remember failing a lot with my solo for Cthulhu guy… I won this one one the very last card I could play with the exact amount of damage I had to do… and got a very neat toy that I tried directly after in a 4 character scenario–and it really makes the music that much better. I don’t even like Music Notes that much, the music mechanic is a bit on the annoying side especially without the gimmick from the solo… … but oh can she put out curses and with Cragheart doing so as well… nice synergy. One doesn’t even notice that the Triforce guy did basically nothing but force everyone to heal him.

I was going to go play some BG3 again now that I have a bit more free time in the evenings but I’m afraid the pull of getting back into that particular Gloomhaven campaign is strong.

Today I played 2 solos of Terraforming Mars on the app one with Credicor–easy win, I got the Regolith Eaters on Generation 1. I finished terraforming in Generation 11 and spent the last round scrambling for points. Luxury! Then I added in the new Venus DLC (yay!) and struggled a bit with Inventrix but got some nice titanium production going and then it was raining asteroids… I made more points but it was unclear if it was going to be a win until Generation 12.

[EnterTheWyvern]

@yashima

Triforce (new character I have no idea how to play)…

I really enjoyed Tri force until level 6 or 7. Was the most challenging character to play with the balancing of so many moving parts. However one card added and it became so easy that I got bored very quickly.

[Captbnut]

I feel like I understood the first half of The Great Zimbabwe but once we got to level 2 craftsmen I just got lost.

However, I don’t think I even understood that much of Pax Renaissance!

[Benkyo]

Funny how people struggle with that in TGZ, but it’s really simple:

One of the inputs for a secondary craftsman is the output of a primary craftsman.

That’s pretty much all there is to it.