This may be the euro game I am most eager to track down and play next.
And that’s saying something as, a few months and/or weeks ago, I saw a BGG thread about recommending “euro games” to someone and I literally could only come up with like… 4 – which caused me to question whether I still like euro-style games any more. The answer is: I do, but not for solo gaming as much… which is where I’ve been spending most of my gaming time lately.
welcome to the club! 
1880: China - fun game! But it’s just too long for my taste. I think my play of 1860: Isle of Wight was the good limit for what I can tolerate. 1817 remains the exception to this and that one is definitely a “convention” game.
Lowlands - definitely more interesting than previous plays of it. I have a better understand of shared incentives compare to pre-pandemic me so Lowlands combo making and analysing player incentives makes this a more interesting game. I would still probably prefer Nusfjord and Le Havre though. if I want shared incentives, I’ll just play Cube Rails or Splotters.
Food Chain Magnate - 4 playesr with all newbies except for me. Went for a Trainer >> Guru strategy when I saw 2 players before me went for Recruiter Girl opening. Beeline immediately for Guru while the rest nabs up Milestones. The Guru strategy was doing well, but I made a mistake of missing out on a Recruiter Girl which would speed up me getting some kitchen trainee, which I am lacking. The opening of more marketing pretty much locked me out of selling when the lemonade radio station was placed! Also, the game went too fast for my long term strategy with a $100 + $100 + $200 + $200 reserve. I would need one more round to starting making serious money and another round more for even more serious money.
We played with the new distracts that can be used for base game. So, we had the 2 new apartment buildings which were Pi and 9 3/4 values respectively. Apartment works like normal houses on Dinnertime, but when you market on them, the marketing effect is doubled and have no limit on marketing!
Pax Renaissance - 3 player game. We all started off by setting up marriages to kings. Aragon, Hungary, and Portugal were taken. I took the King of Portugal with the plan to open up the Atlantic trade route and screw up the Med kingdoms (especially the Ottomans!). But made a serious mistake where I placed my merchant in the Med Sea instead of the Atlantic to cash in on the new route! The Teutonic Knights made an appearance and allowed me to take over Germany now armed with 2 knights, which should put a stop to the Ottomans.
We struggled on controlling kings, and it concluded with Player 3 controlling the Ottomans, Byzantines, Hungarians, and the Aragonese. Which is enough for an Imperial Victory.
Discworld: Ankh-Morpork - I am certainly seeing the silliness in a better light than me playing this years ago. Good fun and the theme is more attractive than Nanty Narking
Lost Cities with my wife tonight. I had a pretty good feeling after the first round when I was up 72 to -9. She did catch up in the second round, but I smashed it in the third round, winning the game 183 - 87.
Games Night!
Crokinole, won pretty handily on the second round.
Hamsterrolle, lost pretty badly.
Both fun, don’t need to own either.
Breaking Away. Another fun game that I don’t need to own. Velodrome cycle racing. Pick.yoir speed, gain speed the further back you are but any gaps reset the speed counter.
Black Friday. I wanted to love this game. It’s just missing something. On the sell pile. The playing the odds is great though.
I kinda love when people are away for the holidays and game nights can be more targeted. Tonight we had a perfect four.
First tried out our new copy of That’s Not A Hat on the basis of seeing posts about it here. God, when someone gets a gift and says “Thank you”, puts their finger on the gift they’re giving away, and just pauses, and everybody starts giggling… this is a good game.
Main event was The Voyages of Marco Polo. Money was very scarce in the cities so it was a poor game. I played the oasis-hopper and got goal cities that were all kind of near each other, so I quickly crossed the board and picked up some first-in-the-city bonuses and the 10-spot in Beijing, and used the Sumatra cards for some extra points and gold, before jumping back in the final round to hit my final goal city. Mr. Extra-White-Die-And-Free-Contract very nearly caught up from contract points but wasn’t able to hit his goal cities enough so I scraped the win. My wife didn’t have to worry about money when placing so she got lots of goods and made a lot of points off contracts. (The poor Pooper kept rolling low when he needed to move high.)
Played two new games today (one of them actually was delivered that very day). Just me and a friend playing. He brought over Twilight Inscription, which is the roll and write version of Twilight Imperium (that my friend is also keen on, but he only plays it once a year or so). There’s a lot here for a roll and write, each player has 4 dry erase boards to manage. It plays up to eight, that would need a good sized table. Each turn, you turn over a new event card, which tells you what resources you can use that turn, and then roll the dice. You start with three dice but can unlock more as you go. Each turn you decide which of your four boards to use (I stuffed this up, was using different boards). The four boards are Navigation, Expansion, Industry, and Warfare. it’s a lot of crossing out and circling symbols from each board, to give you victory points. Would play again, and probably will this weekend.
Our second game was The Barracks Emperors, which is basically a trick taking game with an ancient Roman theme. Apparently it’s from the Roman Crisis period of history, where at least 45 different men made a claim to the throne of the Roman Empire. The board is laid out with emperor cards. The object of the game is to capture the most emperors. Each emperor has it’s colour (red, blue or yellow) and a different symbol on each side. On your turn, you play one of your influence cards next to an emperor, so that the symbol matches your symbol. In a two player game, you have two symbols. Which we missed at first. We made a few mistakes, but we soldiered on. It’s an interesting puzzle, each card you place could help your opponents (by matching their symbol). The cards all have an optional ability as well. Your influence cards are in three colours as well, the colour of the emperor is the trump suit. Once an emperor is surrounded, it is taken by the player with the highest value card next to it. There are a lot of abilities, I don’t think any of them are repeated (it’s not like all three valued cards have the same ability or anything. And you can be winning an emperor, and then someone removed your high card, not much you can do about it. Overall, a good game, keen to play again.
Games in the pub yesterday:
Tsuro to start while waiting for everyone to show up.
IKI with three players. It was a very close game with very little scoring from the harmony bonuses. I just needed one more turn to build a building that would have one me the game…
A couple of games of Mascarade, which was extremely confusing, as always. I think I prefer this to Coup, but not sure whether it works at lower player counts (we had seven)
Been playing 2 games in a row of Seasons and Innovation each with the same person on BGA. I won Seasons twice and he won Innovation twice.
Finished our tekelili game of Yokai Septet. Very fun! Need to play it more physically!
Played solo Terraforming Mars in the mobile app, since the local game with AI doesn’t seem to work (it works fine on Steam), so I’ll be more keen on playing more Through the Ages than this one. I still have some more to go before the end of the year.
Yes indeed! The partnership thing meant there was a whole new lobe of game I was trying to pick up…
Played Twilight Inscription again today, at 4p. The winner really ran away with it, scores were 95, 59, 45, 34. I was 34, never got anything going.
Another game of The Barracks Emperors at 4pm, took a while to get through. I think on our first game we were playing quickly, but on the second we were trying to think about it more. Probably could have played the shorter variant, with two rounds instead of three. Felt like it outstayed its welcome. It can feel like a “take that” game a bit.
Nokosu Dice, still good fun.
Edit: Doh, missed a game – Strike . You get dice, and you roll them one at a time. if any come up with a X, it’s out of the game. But you keep any matching dice. Run out of dice – your game is over. Last person remaining wins. Not much to this game, those are the entire rules. Good for a quick 5 minute game.
Heading back home from visiting my family (don’t worry the better half is driving).
Played
Zoo Vadis, still a great game. Suffers a bit when no-one wants to do deals and try to get simple majorities in the exhibits.
That’s not a Hat. Hilarious. 11/10. great game. Will be getting the next box, as what it needs is more pictures.
The looks of people when faced with remembering two things is fabulous.
We’re finally over our respective illnesses (I had a cold, Maryse had Laryngitis and maybe influenza to start with, but anyway she was basically bed-ridden for two weeks). So we played a few games! Huzzah!
On Friday, started my vacation (not going back to work until the 15th) with a 4-player game of Pandemic where we MASSACRED the game, achieving perfect victory before getting our fourth Epidemic card. It was glorious.
Then yesterday, while waiting for something to cook, we broke out Ark Nova. Maryse destroyed me, nothing I was trying worked out (lousy draws) and the only reason I managed to mount a comeback and make it somewhat competitive was that she got greedy and extended the game. No point even counting the points, we were so far apart it was silly.
Then, after dinner, 4-player Pandemic again. Still a victory, though not a perfect one. We were lacking a means of eradicating diseases easily (AKA the medic), changing our approach. Still managed to eradicate the blue and yellow diseases, but this one came down to the wire, as we got a chain outbreak in the black territory the turn before I could create the cure (the last one) where we had to put down the VERY LAST black cube. One more black propagation card and we’d lost due to lack of cubes. But we drew a yellow one and I made the cure and all was well.
Then, Maryse offered me my revenge at Ark Nova. It went way better than the first time, a lot tighter. But in the end, she had a big huge turn and destroyed me again. If I’d had just one more X token, I could’ve gone for an extra conservation project and, while I would’ve still lost, it would only have been by 5 points. As it was, I lost by… More. 
So much fun though!
Played ready set bet with my parents and sister. It feels like a good game to get with the whole family - especially the really pared back rules. We played with the app streaming on the tv which I think is probably the best way of playing (not least because everyone can play the same game)
We actually managed some games today.
We taught my dad Cascadia, The Crew 2 (we played and won the first 5 rounds) and finally I badgered my dad and my partner into playing a single round of Cat in the Box which ended with my partner running into a paradoxon on the last trick. After that they both declared they were now tired and wanted to rest. But I know the rules now and I think it might be a hit for the New Year’s Eve party.
Boxing Day Boardgames has been a bit curtailed this year due to a very unexpectedly tiring Saturday, but I did get in a game of Targi. I get the same kind of feeling from this game that I do from the innards of a mechanical watch.
I very much liked this one. Ta!
We tried out Great Western Trail: New Zealand, one of my Christmas gifts today! This is an excellent reimplementation that manages to do its own thing without forgetting the original. It’s different enough that owning both doesnt seem excessive, but similar enough that the teach was vastly streamlined. Fantastic game.
And, testament to my skill as a teacher, I lost 161-200. Yes, really. 
Had a really good Christmas holiday of gaming.
The day before, we played Lords of Waterdeep with the Skullport expansion and my brother-in-law joined us. I was Sangalor, getting 4 points for every Skullport quest and building I completed/owned. As such, I tried to focus on those, as well as those that removed corruption so I could benefit from corruption spaces. We all stayed pretty close together in scoring as the game went on, and all of us thought we were going to lose at the end. Turned out I was the incorrect one, winning with 154 with my wife in second with 149, and her brother close behind at 144. She had the Xanathar, which definitely didn’t help.
On Christmas Day, we played Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game, Lost Cities, 7 Wonders Duel, Ethnos, and two games of Azul. And in a true Christmas miracle, I won every game! Most by a pretty large margin (though 7WD was a somewhat lucky Science victory).
Today we got in a game of Star Wars, which she won, so the miracle time has passed. 
My sister in law and her husband have been staying with us, and this afternoon we got in some gaming:
I was trying to gauge what they’d enjoy, and had an array of additional possibilities lined up, but that’s as much as we managed. Not sure if I’ll get anything more played before they leave (but fingers crossed).
I’m hoping to teach them Hive and a couple of my other favourite two player games, in case they resonate with any of them.
They had an early start planned tomorrow morning, so after dinner they retired to bed, but my partner happily played some Hive with me after that. (I won the first two games and then lost the next three.)
My neiphlings came by yesterday, and we gave them a gift from their grandmother (The Adventures of Robin Hood, because apparently Matteo needs to use his imagination more), and Santa Cookie Elf Something Snowman.
But then they got to pick one of either Deep Sea Adventures or Cockroach Poker Royal, and we figured out which they wanted by playing both! My SiL won Deep Sea pretty handily (47 - 32 - 27 - 0 - Drowned - Drowned) after three rounds, and Adela lost Cockroach Poker after running out of cards (many of us had 3 of a kind, but she had a streak of losses that had her run out of cards).
Then we played Turbo Kidz and it was exactly as silly and fun as I expected it to be, but also way more varied. What a stupid, fantastic game!
Then we ate, and then they had to leave (Go Karts near Toronto). In the aftermath, I managed to talk Andy into trying Trek 12, which I bought myself for Christmas, and she was willing to give it a go despite hating roll n’ writes as a general rule (she likes Encore, but that’s about it). She won due to a very long line, but neither of us reached the summit. And, unsurprisingly, she doesn’t really like it, but that’s okay! I bought it almost exclusively for the single player mode!
Oh, and then we played Paperback Adventures, just open handed (rather than using the slightly byzantine two player rules) with “The Damsel.” The first lackey we fought was The Suitor. The first hand we drew had our “Sneak Attack” which does 5 damage, stunning him immediately, and then over a couple turns we managed to smack him down after taking 1 point of damage. The Muscle, the Chapter 1 Boss, was a bit more of a challenge due to his ramping up of damage really quickly, but due to our Venom Vial we managed to defeat him without taking any damage.
And then we stopped because the discordant theme of the game really bothered Andy. Like, why does the medieval Damsel have a mini-fridge? I am okay with it as a brainstorming session, but she just didn’t like it. No worries, I bought it for the single player aspect as well.
(Coincidentally, those trays are awful. Like I expected them to be bad, but my god, what an idiotic design from one side straight through to the other)
After that I played a few more games of Trek 12, and I am now ready to tackle my first solo expedition vs Max! After a few of those (hopefully winning at least a few!), I’ll crack open my Trek 12+1 expansion.