The snakes for hair is always a plus…
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I spent rather a long time at a con one evening learning enough to play just a single solo turn of this (and then realising I needed to pack up for the day!), so “pretty quick” wasn’t my experience (although I do tend to be slow in learning things, I think).
Ah, maybe that accounts for the difference : )
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Have you encountered the Stroop effect?
A few Airecons ago I ran into a chap who was planning to print up a deck of cards based on this: each one would have a background colour, a foreground colour and a named colour. I don’t think anything ever came of it, alas.
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I was lazy and played a round of solo Ark Nova for lunch on BGA 
Also, I finally won 7 Wonders Duel. But it was close. Pantheon saved me. It distracted my opponent into making less optimal moves I think 
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Started the night with Zoo Vadis 6 players boiiiii!! As usual, I’ve been a victim where the group ganged up on me. Poor me!!
Through the Desert - 4 player
12 Chip Trick - we played the whole game and it was fun. Not as good as Planet Cute nor Nokosu Dice, but then those two are just the best. 12CT is still tense and super fun
Azul: Master Chocolatiers - yeah. Please don’t eat the “chocolates”. They are actually resin bits.
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Until they aren’t. And then, soon after, they are again.
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Yesterday, we played two games of Everdell, as usual withBellfaire and Newleaf. The first game was MAD. We were both comboing like crazy, making huge plays, scoring events left, right and centre… When the time to score came (this was a long game, too), we each had no idea who’d won. Turns out, nobody did! It was a draw, 126-126!
Of course, this required a follow-up. So we did what we usually did: Start again with the leftover cards, no reshuffling. This went way quicker, as we’d already gone through most of the good cards. We were both caught off guard when we reached 15 cards in our tableau, and again, there was much suspense in our scoring, but balance was restored when I lost 73-116 (to both of our surprise).
Great evening!
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Went over to a friend’s for a couple games. First up, Dune: Imperium, my wife and I’s second foray onto the desert planet and its imperium. There’s a lot of random chance in this one, isn’t there? Especially with the intrigue cards. I was getting hosed in the conflicts so I was able to opt out of them with the help of a card that let me pay 6 money for a point whenever I drew it (and I drew it a lot!). I also had two intrigue cards that gave me victory points for very little effort. So I was the first to get to 10 points, but (again by chance) all the two-point conflicts showed up, so the person who was getting all the intrigue cards and winning all the combat won the combat, then had an end game intrigue card that gave her another point to win with 11.
And it reminded me of the first game of it I played where, in the final round, me and my friend both drew an intrigue card, but mine gave me two points and his gave him one. But he would have gotten two from mine as well, meaning it was just down to me happening to pick up the card first. Kinda iffy for a game that looks like it should be more about strategy! My wife was annoyed because she was getting a lot of resources via conflicts, but there really wasn’t anything to spend it on (especially the solari). So like, what’s the point of it?
We cooled down with a game of Azul, always a nice time. I absolutely crushed it. ^^
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We got a number of games played on Thanksgiving.
First up was Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game, which I won as the Rebels.
After that, we played Ethnos with Wizards, Trolls, Giants, Orcs, and Skeletons. I was slightly ahead after the first age, and my wife had already cashed in her Orc board while I hadn’t so I was feeling okay. Then she proceeded to get control of nearly every region by winning ties with Troll tokens, so while I became far in the lead after scoring bands and my full Orc board, she easily surpassed me to win, 109 - 93.
This was followed up with two games of Azul, where I lost the first horribly, 48 - 16, but won the second, 139 - 126, which are ridiculous scores, but it just took that long for someone to complete a row.
Big game of the day was Lords of Waterdeep, where her brother joined us. We used the Undermountain expansion for some variety. I came to a bit of a standstill when I was trying to get a couple more rogues to finish a quest, but my wife kept stealing them with intrigue cards. I watched as both of them scored more and more while I brought up the rear, but my time finally came when I was able to accomplish a 40 point quest, and managed to catch up, and even spend a moment in first place.
Game ended with me just one wizard away from getting 20 more points (well, 13 after deducting the points I would gain from the resources needed), but there was no way to get it. I was the expansion lord that gets 5 points for every completed quest worth 10 or more. My brother-in-law was the other that gets 3 points for every completed quest, and my wife was the one who gets 4 points for every warfare and arcana quest, of which she had plenty. She won with 225, her brother was in second with 217, and I was last with 204. Really high scoring game.
Didn’t manage to get anything played yesterday, but today we have played a few. First was Isle of Skye, which I won pretty handily 58 - 34. Actually, I just realized I forgot to score our money, but with 5 coins = 1 point, the scores would just increase by 1 or 2 each.
Then we played two games of Kingdomino. We tied in the first game with 42, but she had a larger region than I did, so won with the tie breaker. The second game was a win for me, 32 - 24.
Her brother joined us for a game of Lords of Vegas, which I managed to win after I got the D1 space which let me take over my wife’s 1 tile raised casino on the strip, then over a few turns add three more raised sections to it for a size 10 casino. I had 49, her brother was at 36, and my wife was in last with 32.
Lastly, we played Lost Cities, where I got horribly trounced, 206 - 96.
Hoping to get at least one more game in tonight.
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We did! And best of all, it was Unmatched Adventures! This is the co-op version and we played against the Mothman and his minions the Skunk Ape, the Tarantula, and the Jersey Devil. My wife was Medusa, as per usual. I tried out Tesla, and her brother joined us and tried out the Golden Bat.
Unlike the standard game where players alternate turns, this comes with initiative cards, one for each player and one (or more) for each enemy fighter. Rules are pretty simple: when a villain or minion takes a turn, they attack one fighter adjacent to them. If there isn’t one, they move up to their move value to get adjacent to the nearest fighter. If they can’t get to one, they do not move and instead increase the threat counter by 1.
The threat counter is how the villain wins the game. With Mothman, when the threat counter reaches the end of the track, he destroys one of the four bridges on the board, and the track then resets. If he destroys all four bridges, he wins.
Villain has health equal to 10x number of players (so 30 for us) and minions each have 10. We just need to defeat the Mothman to win.
First round was unlucky, as every baddie got to act before we could. We also learned the Jersey Devil sucks, as a lot of his effects make players discard cards from the top of their decks, which can be devastating to some fighters. Skunk Ape just hits hard, and the Tarantula puts down web tokens that stop opposing fighters if they move into those spaces.
Golden Bat hit Skunk Ape for half, and I as Tesla did the same to the Jersey Devil. Meanwhile Medusa focused on the Mothman and did severe damage to it over the course of the game. While we all took some damage, Medusa got Mothman under 10 health, with just a modicum of help from me, while Golden Bat finished off both the Ape and the Devil. Medusa finished off the Mothman with a Stone Gaze, winning us the game. We only lost one of the four bridges.
It was fun, though not super difficult, but there are tougher minions, as well as the Martian Invader villain. Most importantly, my brother-in-law liked it, at least as a co-op, so I think he will be happy to join in with us in the future.
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Taught my parents So Clover, after picking it up in the Travelling Man 20% off Black Friday sales. They loved it, and got it instantly. Even if my dad couldn’t hold the clover without the cards falling out.
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Got back to some gaming today after a break
Cthulhu: Death May Die, our second attempt at episode 5 from Season 2. The idea is to gamble at the casino, rolling dice for various effects. You’re trying to collect “lucky” tokens to disrupt the ritual. Last time we barely lasted a few turns before someone was down. Today went a lot better, we collected all the tokens without too much fuss and then took on Cthulhu. I ended up going insane while killing Cthulhu last form, it was an epic death. So I had all my bonus dice, plus another 2 from the Marksmen ability. Ok, if I hadn’t killed him someone else probably would have, but it felt pretty good to finish him off myself.
That’s Not a Hat, first play. This seems like an easy game at first. There’s a deck of common objects, like toasters and backpacks. You all start with a single card, face up. Then the start player draws a new card, which is face up, so everyone sees it. They pass it to another player, while stating “This is a nice ,”. Easy enough, everyone just saw the card, so of course that’s true. The player with the new card has to pass their old card to another player, again, stating what it is. The back of the cards show what direction to pass, so it’s not always the same way. And so it continues, until someone challenges the gift, “That’s not a toaster”. The card is turned over, and whoever is wrong takes the card as a penalty point. Three penalty points and the game is over. And that’s the game. The same object could go around the table and back to you – can you remember what it was? I expected to be terrible at this game (and I was), but I was surprised when the other players also forgot which card was which. And this was only at 3p. It was hilarious fun.
Tiger and Dragon, a fairly quick little filler. You play a tile (numbered from 1 to 8), and the next player has to block it with the same number. If you defend, you get to attack again. Fair bit of luck involved, people would get three or four tiles of the same number and just play them out. The object is to get rid of all of your tiles. Also, you can win in one round by winning with a “1” valued tile, which I did. Felt a little cheap.
The Lost Code, still enjoying this. Came second.
Are You Dumber than a Box of Rocks?, just a quick silly game to finish up. And we won!
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Local con this weekend so played a number of games:
Apiary, got to try this one in a two player game. I enjoyed it - it’s very competant and presented very well. The worker bumping mechanic is interesting as is the forced hibernation of lvl 4 workers on their bumping. I did have a few concerns about the balance of some of the tiles - in this play farms seemed generally not good enough to justify the action of acquiring them. But I’d have to play it again to check this out. I’d be happy to do so though, so there’s that .
Bamboo, fastest turn around from buying a game and teaching it with this one - about 10 minutes. My teach was a little ramshackle and we made a couple of minor mistakes (the rulebook isn’t awful but the layout makes learning the rules a little awkward). Nevertheless, we all enjoyed it a great deal and I’m keen to get it to the table again soon. A solid buy for sure.
Kitsunedo x2, this was pretty average honestly - it kind of wants to be Coup but lacks the sharpness of that one for some extra complication of rules. Also though it gains points for some great art on the character tiles, it immediately loses them by forcing you to either have the art and theme, or the rules of what it actually does (which is inexplicably on the back of the tiles 
).
Cascadia, after a day of learning rules, I jumped at the chance to teach and play this with some other con-goers. It went well, I think they enjoyed it. I certainly did.
Ark Nova, I’d wanted to play this for awhile and jumped at the chance to join a 4 player game on the second morning of the con. We finished in the afternoon of the con… It’s a long one but I felt pretty interested throughout. There’s plenty to ponder but turns are normally fairly short. The theme is excellent but it falls a little into the Terraforming Mars trap of having little control over the cards you end up with, and having to tailor a strategy on the fly. It’s not totally my thing but I didn’t mind it here. The scoring is a bit weird. I believe my final score was -16 (and I came in third!), our winner had like 20 points. It’s a lot of game and I don’t love all of it, but I’d play it again.
My Shelfie, played this with some friends. I rather liked it as a simple yet puzzly filler. Had a few minor component issues (of tiles falling behind other tiles), but then I have no idea how many times this game had been played so no idea if that would be a common thing. I liked it.
Trust Me, I’m a Doctor, my friend picked this one out. Very much in the Funemployed and Cards Against Humanity vein. Better than the latter, not as good as the former. There’s not much to it but the theme is amusing. My friend was immediately looking for a copy. I’m not sure it’d have a lot of replay value with the same group though - the humor of the cards carries it more than the humor of the players like in Funemployed.
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Got QE to the table today with my folks and wife. Easy to teach, although I must remember to remind people to always write the winning bid on the won token. A lot of laughs, even if it feels as broken as hell.
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Played TtR: Europe yesterday with the family, first time that my partner joined (and learned the game). I was really lucky with my tickets, and won easily (got tickets included in my pre-existing network twice) by just making the network reach from Lisbon to Petrograd. my better half finished second against a close third from the 7 YO, who stuck twice on a tunnel through the Alps. Enjoyable, and quick.
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Two games played today. First up was Everdell, just the base game (which we still have) as I didn’t feel like breaking out the big box.
I was feeling a bit leery of my chances going into the third season, as I had a bunch of low value cards in my city with only the Ever Tree in purple for end of game scoring bonuses. Plus, I had two value 0 cards, the Ruins and a Dungeon.
However, the rest of the game really went my way as I got a University which let me get rid of those 0 pointers, I was able to get a Theater and Architect and even managed to luck into a Wife on my second to last turn, making playing her my last.
As such, I won 70 - 61. Really close overall.
We also played Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game, with me as the Empire. Things started out pretty even, but an early Han Solo for her gave me a bad feeling, and sure enough she soon also had a B-Wing, a Mon Cal cruiser, and some other things.
On the bright side, I got the AT-AT, IG-88, and some other good hitters, which got me the moral victory of destroying her second base before she won the game, 3 - 2.
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Playing a solo game of recent Kickstarter Forests of Pangaia.
Initial thoughts:
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The solo mode is actually an advanced mode, suitable only for people who already know the base game. You need to learn the 2p game and then adapt it. Unlike the 2p where you both grow slowly, in the solo the enemy bot starts and full strength and you start weakest, and you have to grow while also pruning the bot down. If you can do it before it corrupts the whole place, you win! The 2p mode actually looks like it’ll be really fun based on the mechanics - you collect elements by growing trees, and life force by performing nature rituals with the trees. When trees decay they leave seeds.
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The production value of every piece of this is absolutely 10/10. It’s gorgeous, and solid, and bright. I got the premium edition with wooden tokens, but the cardboard versions are still tough, chunky and colourful. The art is great, the components feel amazing to handle. It’s like Everdell, but makes certain parts of Everdell (cough the tree) feel very flimsy. The tokens/map actually remind me more of Cascadia.
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you are right and that explains why i failed to learn the game in my first try and it has since for buried by… easier to learn arrivals like Voidfall 
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I played the tutorial for Cuba Libre and finished it 4 handed over a couple days. it’s so compact i could leave it on the table. In the end government won because Directorio overextended or rather mistimed their moves for the propaganda rounds. Mafia took very long to get resources. 26 July terrorized everyone but failed to gain footholds in the cities. Also government got 2 events that raised Aid just before the penultimate propaganda rund and because I ignored the ECs all game started that round with 46 resources they mostly invested into training and civic action😊
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