Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

Boardgames
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Impressions of games new and old from day one of PAX Unplugged:

Impressions

Nocturne - Interesting pathing+auction mechanic, uninteresting tile collection.
Inside Job - I could see it, but we only got to play a five-card hand from the demo so it was hard to evaluate.
Blob Party - Co-op word association game, trying to get everyone in the blob by guessing the same word. Fun party game, picked it up.
Dandelions - small game of dice movement and area majority. Alright.
Bites - speculation game of ants eating food on the trail. Could lead to very interesting and thoughtful plays. Would definitely give it another go.
Crokinole - 5 out of 5 no notes, obviously.
Décorum - First game was super easy, solved right after the first house meeting. So we thought we would play another quick one. That one took forever, ended in a loss, and soured the game.
5 Rafters - Oink balancing game
Cities Skylines - A real dud. Cooperative polyomino city building is right up me and my wife’s alley but this was just bizarre. Most of the cards only pay off if you can provide them with prebuilt services, but the services are buried in a big deck so you might just never get them. You can either play a card or you have to pay 2 money (which is a lot; you start with just 10) to switch one out and draw from one of the three big decks to try to get something better. We ran out of money, started over, and ran out of money again. Ridiculous.
Wormholes - This was fun and felt good to make a nice play. Felt bad that the person who drew all the closest planets to deliver to was the clear winner.
Broom Service - You said you’re the brave forest witch? Huh, that’s funny, because I’M the brave forest witch!!!

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No, I’m the brave forest witch!

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“>:0” you monster

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The Goonies: Never Say Die, our first loss, I think our GM finally started playing properly – he may not have used enough enemies in our last game. Considerably harder this time. He blocked us with rubble, forcing us to spend our turns removing it, and adding enemies. Only two of us (and the GM) which made things hard. Only one of us got to the final battle, and got smashed. Really needed the other player there, would still have been a difficult fight. There’s no player death as such, but running out of health adds to the timer that the GM needs to win.

The Crew, haven’t played this for a while, was stuck on mission 45, we had failed it four times previously. But this time went fairly well, no real problem.

9 Lives, first play. This is a trick taking game from Taiki Shinzawa, who also designed Ghosts of Christmas, Maskmen, American Bookshop, all excellent games. He also designed Big Top, which I have but have not played yet. This is another trick taker where you have to make a bid of how many tricks you will win. The board has places for one to four bids, but it wraps around, so you are bidding on winning one/five tricks, or two/six etc. To bid, you put your cat token either next to a bid, or next to two bids. You get four points if you have a single bid and you’re correct, two points if you selected two bids, and negative points if you didn’t get your bid. There are four suits (three in a 3p game), and purple are trumps. You always have to follow suit if you can. This is one of those games that show the suit on the back of the cards, so you know whether someone has to follow suit or not. The other gimmick is that if you win the trick, you get to put one of the cards back into your hand (but not the card you played). This was really good, and I’m not just saying it because I won.

Ghost Stories, which went about as well as it always does. Which means we lost. Got a reasonable way through the deck, but didn’t even get to the boss. Maybe it’s time to read some strategy guides, clearly we can’t work it out ourselves.

Gussy Gorillas, a game I got with the Zoo Vadis kickstarter. Much simpler game, you hold up your cards so you can’t see them, but the other players can, and then you trade them. Pairs are usually bad, except a pair of ones, which combine to give you eleven, which is good. There are special cards that can split pairs (so they both count), flip cards into another value, or reverse the sign (some cards have negative values). i didn’t think much of the game at first, but it actually turned out to be quite fun. It’s entertaining to see other reactions to your cards. If no-one is trading for your card, you can add another card to it, or, if all else fails, just use the cards yourself. Quick fun, plays up to ten, which would be…terrifying.

That’s Not a Hat, probably not a good wind down game. I continue to suck badly. It seems so easy…

Enemy Anemone, a cute little trick taker. Lovely art, lots of sea creatures. The gimmick is that you have to NOT follow suit. And the lowest player gets to take a anemone card, which they can add to a played card to increase it’s value. It’s ok I guess, didn’t really excite.

So, a bit of a trick taking day.

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Went to see a couple of friends who have recently moved house and played a few games while we were there.

First up was Ticket to Ride: Europe, which my wife had never played before. The long route tickets ended up with me having Western Europe mostly to myself, and it came down to who managed to place their final carriages first to get longest route between me and the person who won the domination for Eastern Europe. I ended up second, I think the winner finished with about 130 points. No arguments from me that this remains an excellent introduction to modern(-ish) board games.

Second was Splendor, specifically the travel edition which comes in a box in which there is no wasted space (which is good) but which sacrifices the poker chips of the original for small, thin cardboard tokens (which is bad). Our friends play with a house rule which doubles the number of points at which the game ends, which I feel removes a lot of the strategy from the game since there is almost no reason not to keep buying the lower level cards.

Third was Mamma Mia!, a 1998 Uwe Rosenberg card game that I hadn’t heard of before. My friends described it as one one third luck, one third memory game and one third strategy. Seemed like a fun, light game that I imagine would make a good pub game.

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Terraforming Mars Dice, trying to heat up Mars and the kitchen at the same time.

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IMG_37303024×4032 2.75 MB

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The Estates

Samurai

Botswana / Wildlife Safari

Couture - one of the latest auction game from AllPlay. Very good game, but I don’t need it in my life. Will be selling it to a friend who wants it.

Pax Renaissance - we planned Bios Origins and I’m glad we had Pax Ren as our back up game.

Why go through the process of overthrowing a king and install someone pliable, when you can find them a bride instead and end up with the same alliance? The Coeur and the Medici family were the first to woo the Ottoman Sultan. The Medici even aided the Ottoman army on sacking Rome - to confirm his title as the Caesar of Rome (Kayser-i Rum). The Pope fled the Eternal City and to Milan he sought refuge. The Ottomans annexed several Italian states with Florence remaining intact and the Medici being a de facto viceroy of Italy.

After the conquest of Hungary by the Sultan’s army, one would think that the Coeur’s and Medici’s domination of the world would be a walk in the park from here. But the tense rivalry between the two eventually led to both of them losing the Sultan’s favour. The Medici lost more, as most of their concessions in the Eastern Med were taken over by their rival.

The Fuggers - away from the intriguing and scheming in the Med Sea - set up their vast trading network in the North Sea. Even so far as to influence the flow of the trade away from the Black Sea and Kaffa, and towards the Novgorod Republic and the North Sea instead. The kingdoms of Northern Europe found a new source of strength and wealth after the chaos and struggle of the Reformation.

(NB: This is where I am annoyed and on the backfoot the entire game. I was the Medici player. The Coeur player secured the Eastern Med trade and the Fugger player has the monopoly on the new North Sea trade. With very few merchants on the board, I was lacking for money)

Desperate for any openings, the Medici supported the rebelling guilds in Catalonia. Under repeated revolts, the Aragonese King surrendered and a new treaty forced on him by the Guilds. A treaty stressing that even a king has an obligation to respect the rights of his subjects. A king is not above the law. And on the same evening, a bright comet was sighted. A sign interpret by some as the end of the absolute kings.

Another comet was also sighted (what is up with all these ominous comets?!) on the night that a Protestant Emperor - backed by the Medici - was crowned in Germany. A sign from God of their Holy Victory over Catholicism. France stands anxious. The Turks in Italy. England and the Holy Roman Empire fallen to heresy.

The pieces of the puzzle start to form an image. An alliance between the French Protestants, the
Kingdom of England, and the Emperor to invade France. The final triumph of the Reformation. The Medici might just grab victory from the jaws of defeat.

But before the such a complex plan was pulled off, the Fuggers won the Catalan guilds and overthrew the King. A bourgeois republic was born. France, too, fell under pressure. The Estates overthrew the King - a republican alliance of the nobility, clergy, and peasantry. Victory was stolen from the Medicis.

Would this infant republic withstand the armies of the Protestant kings? Who knows

(NB: Fugger went for Renaissance Victory. And I was going for Holy Victory. The Coeur player faffed around and failed to buy the second comet card to activate the Globalisation victory. He stated that he doesn’t want to show his hand too early, but I feel that you have to make a move by then. Because once I bought the 2nd comet card, he has to wait for the 3rd one and we don’t know where it is

This has been one of my favourite games of this year.)

EDIT: Kaffa by the Black Sea, not Jaffa in the Levant.

Furnace + Interbellum expansion - reosurce management Euro that runs for 4 rounds in around an hour. This is the kind of resource management / Cube Accounting that I like nowadays. Simple and quick. And if someone runs a broken combo, the game ends quickly. The expansion is nice with gizmos that help with comboing.

Rebel Princess - Basically Hearts but with asymmetric player powers and random rules every round. Very fun. Not a top game like Nokosu Dice, Schadenfreude, Tindahan/Filipino Fruit Market, etc etc. But it was zany with the round-by-round rules changes and it is pretty cute.

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Played Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game last night as the Rebels, but lost, though I would have taken out my wife’s last base had I survived.

We then played two games of Ticket to Ride: London, both of which she won.

Then today, we played Tyrants of the Underdark, and her brother joined us, though it was his first time playing. We used the Drow and Elemental half-decks.

By end of the game, I had a lot more control over the map than I realized, as I thought her brother had me beat there. Both of them had some VP from having total control over a city for a bit, while I had never managed that the whole game. However, I was able to deploy some spies to remove the total control after a few turns. My wife had a massive inner circle, as she got the Matron Mother card which let her put her deck into her discard pile and then promote any card from the discard, and she kept drawing it after shuffling for her new hand. Meanwhile, her brother only managed to promote two cards total.

I ended up winning thanks to the aforementioned map control, as well have having more points in my deck than either of them. I had 95, my wife was second with 83, and her brother had 80. Good game, and not just because I won. :slight_smile:

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Games in the past week or so:

Parade x3, great little card game this one. The strategy is a little deeper than it intially appears but it’s still fairly lightweight. A great starter or finisher.

Air, Land, and Sea:Critters at War x2, another fun two player head to head game. I have not committed the cards to memory, but I’m at least aware of some significant ones (like Support - that one will mess you up if you can’t flip it!).

Azul: SP, lost this by virtue of failing to fill my second star I had two colours that would’ve worked and final round had basically no tiles of either colour :frowning:

Tiny Towns x2, two games with different groups, both with the normal cube placement. I like this game, though the setup is a little long for how short the game is. Next game I’ll have to try the resource deck. Not sure it’ll stick around for ages but it’s been enjoyable. I’ve lost quite badly both times, though.

Bamboo, another game of this - enjoyable that rulebook is a bit of a mess though. But the game is quite fun when you get the rules straight. Little fiddly but the theme and aesthetics are top notch and backed up by some decently crunchy decisions.

Quacks x2, couple of games of this recently, a two and three player. My wife won the three player by a fair margin. She’s keen to get it to the table two player soon also, so that’s a win. It could do with an Etsy/BGG Store upgrade, Actualol highlighted some little cauldrons you can get on Etsy and now I really want them. (though I think they’d probably only fit the cardboard chips, and I’d rather like the Geekup bits also… Dilemma I know!)

Splendor Duel, it’s superior Splendor for me, love the flow of the two player game and I think all of the win conditions are equally viable (unlike 7 Wonders Duel, where a science victory is quite hard to pull off!).

Bohnanza, taught this to a table who had mostly never played it! We had a great time, it was a generous game lots of two for one trades and donations, which was a good vibe for a first game.

Startups, my teach of this was a little faltering (that’s what I get for teaching all night! My brain checks out at some points) but we got there. Our winner was holding 3 cards of Hippo Powertech at the end, and proceeded to drain the coffers of the rest of us who’d been fighting for it all game! Game goes very fast at 6 (too fast perhaps, I think it’s probably best at 3-4.

Codenames x3, these games were a lot of fun. It included the most ambitious but brilliant clue I’ve ever seen ‘Scrooge 7’. And they very nearly got seven! Meanwhile during my stint as cluegiver I had to endure one person instantly getting my clues and then being talked down by the rest of the team! Man, I was screaming on the inside… They opted for ‘undertaker’ rather than ‘revolution’ with the clue - scientific. And undertaker was the assassin. This is an excellent party game. Maybe my favourite actually. It’s great fun, providing the clue givers can move along at a decent pace.

Quarto x3, a few quick games of this little abstract after dinner. It’s fine - kind of feels like your pattern recognition is being tested rather than your decision making though!

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Impressions of games new and old (mostly old) from PAX Unplugged day 2.

Impressions

Can’t Stop - A killing time game and an excellent one at that.

Trash Talk - Funny concept, feels like it would only hit if you were clever and someone picked up on that same cleverness.

DroPolter - Oink game where everyone holds five little objects in their sweaty little hand, a card is flipped to tell you which objects to drop, and you have to drop them as fast as you can one-handed and then grab the ghost. Win a round, get a bell… which goes in your hand too, and if you drop it you lose it. First to five wins. Raucous good fun.

Kabuto Sumo - Wasn’t as seamless as I would want it to be. Played it 2v2 which is probably best.

Tucana Builders - Pathbuilding game. Placing the tiles was agonizing; scoring the boards was even more so, but in a bad way.

Doodle Dash - Draw fast but accurate - faster than Pictomania even! I can’t draw accurate at the best of times but the speed with which you have to do it really evens that out. Good fun.

Irish Gauge - What a corker! (Do they say that in Ireland?) Shared incentives make very interesting discussions.

Battle for Rokugan - As far as area control wargames go, this one was not so bad. There’s a lot of things that make you go “that would be good to know for next game” (card/clan abilities) but we all know there won’t be a next game. Was happy to get 2nd behind my wife who has been getting victories left and right this weekend.

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If it helps at all I have the cauldrons and they do snuggly hold the tokens with the 3d printed token holders I use so they may be ok for geek up bits.

They are also well printed and look cool.

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Played first 2 games of Ticket to Ride Legacy. and we’re done. I didn’t think I was good at the game, as I lose a lot against the app. But my partner is worse at it than me and lost twice in a row by not small margins. Other than that I really enjoyed myself. I like that you just get a bonus for how many wagons you placed instead of by route lengths. Shorter routes make more sense now. still long routes have a tempo advantage that showed in game 2.

Also I miss the highlighting of cities you still had to reach from the app. I almost missed one in game 1. I probably should have let it go. Just so the game would have been closer. I frustrated my partner with forcing him into a detour on turn 2. and I saw it and shouldn’t have. I know him and I shouldn’t have. But I didn’t think that was a game deciding move except it was.

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I first played with geekup bits and didn’t buy a copy of the game until I could find a set for myself.

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Done as in your partner won’t play it any more? That’s a shame, I was thinking of getting this to play with my partner as I’ve heard very good things.

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Just reporting a quick game of Flamecraft with my 7 yo daughter on Saturday evening.Some very interesting shops that I had never seen before turned up on that game. She did well for her age, but I had very good special dragons that gave me a massive edge on the final scoring, so the game ended 72 - 51

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He definitely needs a break from the game and maybe some chocolate to forget how badly he lost both games.

For what it is worth I thought those were to quick snappy games of a great game and there was immediately new fun stuff to play with after the first and before the 2nd game.

Very cool. So far definitely recommend. But remember: it‘s a competitive game and it is one where you get in each others way—especially on a small map like the game starts with.

You start with just 20 traincars each and the games were over in no time. The second game was even worse. I claimed a route that took 4 and then one that took 3 where most routes are just 2s and 1s. With just 20 … having 7 gone in 2 turns… is pretty fast.

It is a bit unfair. I have played the original US map on the app dozens of times (and Europe and Scandinavia and Germany and … a bunch). Not recently though and this is only a partial map that is also changed up quite a bit. But I know my route building and I know the game pretty well and how you need to be fast to claim core routes and how to work around detours and to always keep an eye on what your opponent is doing. And to beware the big tickets and hybris („I can still make that work“). When I see my opponent has 5 cars left and has a handful of train cards…. well I hurry up and do not take more tickets.

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The games of TtR that I’ve had with three or more players have that feel of everybody trying to get into each other’s way. That’s why I enjoy Europe more, there are solutions to it with stations, plus I think the tunnels add an element of chance to it that the base game lacks. But one 3-long and one 4-long route sounds like a knife fight in a phone box…

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Impressions of games new and old from PAX Unplugged day three.

Impressions

Time Divisions - 1v1 small deck drafting then battling game which is mostly about moving cards from one area to another. Mostly notable to me because we sat down to the demo and I recognized the demoer from Meetup.

Trio - Go fish + memory. Fills five minutes I guess.

ArcheoLogic - Logic puzzle about fitting polyominoes in a grid. I went about it all wrong, my wife really took to it.

Cosmic Encounter Duel - A lot of elements to try and get the feel of Cosmic with just two players, none of which really worked. Missing the most important element - the people.

Rail Pass - Goofy real time game of passing toy trains with cubes around to get the cargo to its destination. Also a lot of shouting of “Choo Choo!” and the like.

Inside Job - Full try of this, a few rounds. It was fun but I would say as a trick taker, it doesn’t measure up. As a hidden traitor game, the trick taking part of it helps it, so you want to be more in the mood for structured hidden traitorness than for trick taking.

Q E - Hard to tell what’s right. I spent early and late and went bust (and not even with enough points to win if I hadn’t).

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Without getting into too much spoilers in TTR legacy there are some mitigations for your problems as the game continues. And it’s worth noting that later games will have a larger impact on net score so these early losses should be taken in that context.

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Huh. I freely admit we may have been playing it wrong, but I checked our score sheets, and we have rarely had paradoxes at two. They have been much more common at three.

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