I can do this but would never claim expert knowledge of whichever category that was (unless the category was, “The names of the 3 members of the band Rush”)
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It was '80s rock. The question they went for (level 5 or 6) was about which 1986 Metallica album was the first metal album to be inducted into the Library of Congress.
I asked for the level 10 out of curiosity and I usually could do it, but blanked on Neil Peart’s name in the moment 
3 Likes
Well I know that one! Wouldn’t be able to do the names of Rush tho
3 Likes
Tiletum is a game that asks in interesting question. What if Concordia, but Grand Austria Hotel?
Truthfully, though the Concordia vibe is skin deep. Map of Europe, two figures that you have to move around before placing your buildings in adjacent cities via things like the “Architect” action. Once you actually start playing, the GAH vibe takes over like Putin at a press conference.
The game does one thing really well, which is that dice wheel at the top left. Each of your 12 actions you will select one die. The color tells you what resources you will get, the number dictates how many resources as well as which action you can take, and 7 minus the number tells you the strength of the action. It’s a nice convergence of elements that you have to balance with each choice of a die, and the Resources + Action Points = 7 thing means that no dice are good or bad, just useful for different things. Genius.
Everything else is wildly mediocre.
True to GAH, with only 12 actions, your productivity in the game comes from a veritable combo-tasm of secondary effects, bonus tiles, free exchange actions, etc etc etc. The whole thing is a bit like Trajan, though, with no heart. A bunch of somewhat interesting systems arbitrarily held together by forked in combo pathways. The character action combos into a merchant move just because we put a merchant icon on that character tile. No real reason.
The combos are plentiful, you’ll be exploding nearly every turn, as opposed to its more stately forebears where you might be building toward just a few big combo turns.
Ultimately, though… I’m glad I played this and if someone asked me to play again, a few times in my life, I’d be happy to say yes. That said, one of the easiest cull decisions I’ve ever had. Because we have to ask a question back to Tiletum:
“Why not Grand Austria Hotel, Lorenzo Il Magnifico, Lisboa, Terra Mystica, Gaia Project, Age of Innovation, Paladins of the West Kingdom, Lost Ruins of Arnak, Everdell, or Clans of Caledonia?”
Post note: If you get a chance to play, I’d say take it. It’s got good feels. But I literally can’t think of any reason to own this other than if this is your thing and you love all of the above and just want more. Or if this theme (Europe Renaissance and the age of Cathedrals) is really your thing, or if you need a megaturn combo party that comes in less weighty than GAH, LIM, or Lisboa. Tiletum is breezy and the combos are so self evident you get them just by walking in the door.
9 Likes
Played Colosseum last night (as well as a couple of games of Guillotine while waiting for people to turn up). I really like this game - relatively small in terms of decision spaces but plenty of brainburning going on as you try and figure out the best way to make the most points.
4 Likes
We don’t have our usual Gloomhaven digital game this week so my wife and I scratched the itch with a mission from Jaws of the Lion. This was our second time trying this mission so we had an idea what to expect. I was doing a lot more wounding than normal thanks to a new card, but my timing was always a little bit off - I would go before the monsters when I wanted to go after or vice versa, so I had a bunch of wasted movement and some wasted granted attacks, which hurt. We didn’t have too bad luck overall, so I blasted through all my cards in the last room and died after getting in good hits, and she was able to keep herself alive and finish things out.
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Brass: Lancashire - 3 players
Nokosu Dice - because why not?
Clans (aka Fae) - good quickfire deep game. It’s cool to play it again, but I don’t regret selling it.
Terraforming Mars - 3 players. I have the Prelude card called ‘Merger’ meaning I get TWO corporations. I picked the Terralabs(?) initially, where each card is only £1 instead of £3, then I forgot the other one.
I think I am getting tired of this game. Especially with the back-to-back games of Seasons with a friend.
I also found that initial choice of corporations is too crucial. If, in a 3 player, 2 selected terraforming strategy corporations, it’ll be on the shorter side and one of the terraformer players win. The 2 vs 1 affair can dictate the pace of the game on how long it will take, and if you are the 1 in that situation, you’re at a disadvantage from the get-go.
Brass: Lancashire - 2 players with the Community Variant. It was tight and bad mistakes were made but still manage to win. My Brass plays are returning with more win-streaks.
No Thanks!
12 Likes
How is Brass (either) with 2 players?
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Bham is terrible at 2. Too solitaire. Lanc using the Community Variant is nice
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I was reading that the Roxley edition has an alternate side to the board? Is that what you use or do you have OG Brass?
1 Like
Correct. The Roxley edition has the 2p Community Variant at the back
edit: added a photo
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We love Birmingham at 2. It’s Maryse’s favourite game, in fact, or near enough.
I do get the criticism that it’s too much solitaire, though.
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Pit Crew - Fun times, although it does suffer a bit when one team basically has no chance of catching up.
Calico - First try of this. It was fun - just the right level of frustrating when someone takes the piece you desperately need, and satisfying when you see a great move to make. Reminded me a lot of Sagrada, which I think I would rather play if given the choice between the two.
That’s Not A Hat - with the full eight players. Not as difficult as I thought it would be because of each gift only going in one direction. Hilarious time nonetheless. I wonder how a house rule of being able to pass the gift whichever way you want would work - or even to anyone you want. Maybe with fewer players.
Sushi Go Party! - I was one card short for my Green Tea Ice Cream set at the end, and I lost 9 points by deciding to go all Miso Soup all the time. Each time, the player to my right also went Miso so she also lost 9 points, and we were solidly in last place at the end. Gotta risk it for the biscuit!
7 Likes
One final playthrough of Heroes of Air, Land and Sea, which was again thoroughly fine. Four players: Undead (who ended up winning), Goblins, Lions, and Elves. The game was defined by loads of quick little skirmishes, which I think is what it wants you to do (every time you start a fight, you immediately score a point). I managed to get my city up to Level 2 very quickly, but then couldn’t manage to get to Level 3 because I lost both of my Food territories in quick succession and couldn’t really recover. Still did pretty well, but nobody bothered to build a Ship or an Airship through the entire game: I was thinking about building a ship just to explore when the game ended.
It was fine. Happy to move it out of my collection (despite it being 100% complete, with a tonne of new races, maps, and other do-hickeys).
Then a 3-player game of Search for Planet X, which I managed to win despite having no idea where Planet X was. I scored buckets of points for lots of accurate Theories, including locating the Dwarf Planet and both Gas Clouds, oh and both Comets… but I couldn’t figure out which sector were empty and which were Planet X based on not knowing if a particular sector was Asteroid or Empty.
I could’ve run my brain through the cheesegrater to figure it out if I really wanted to (“If Sector 12 is Asteroid, then Sector 11 is Empty and therefore Sector 9 must also be empty which is impossible so therefore Sector 11 is Asteroid and therefore sector 9 is empty which means Sector 12 is…”), but when Eric figured out where Planet X was I wasn’t willing to hazard the guess, so I just put down two more theories.
I ended up winning 20 to 16 to Terry-refused-to-score-because-he-lost-but-probably-12-ish. A solid little game, and I think I like it more than Cryptid, although way less interaction.
9 Likes
Been behind on listing our plays here.
Two games of Ticket to Ride London with my wife, both of which I managed to win.
Had a three player game of Chinatown which my wife won handily, despite “trying to help us out”.
Numerous games of Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game, most of which I have won. One was a real nail biter, come from behind victory. Then there was the game last night where I got Leia on my first turn, used her ability on my third turn to get the Falcon for free on top of my deck, where I got to use it on my next turn to bring Leia back into my hand, etc etc. It was a bit of a blowout, as there was nothing that my wife could really do about any of it, it was just the luck of the shuffle.
5 Likes
My husband and I played 7 Wonders two player with a dummy city. We counted up everything and it was something like him and I at 90, dummy at 85. Then I realized I had one card that hadn’t been counted with 1 point on it. Yay! Then he realized he had one with 3 points. And the dummy had like 11 points. Then we caught another category that hadn’t been scored and I had negative points in that one. By the time it was all done, the dummy won and I lost by a lot. I should have left it alone when I was tied for the win, but this is what happens when you play with expansions but use a base game score sheet that doesn’t have all the categories.
8 Likes
Pax Transhumanity - this play is more competent than the previous ones. And also more special abilities popped up. Living standards in the Developing World grew fast. Computing tech was also explored, but a Conscious AI was commercialised (me) and nuked the competition. That stopped any future attempts on that area.
What was a surprise to me though is how Space opened up so early as we had two players who went for a Space strategy. Indeed the Space industry grew faster. Corporations popped up like mushrooms extracting all sorts of minerals and back to Earth. Problem here is that they are all owned by the same player. Only a few steps away from a Tycoon victory. One conglomerate to rule them all.
One would think that the “Space Baron” ending would have happened, but the threat of Singularity puts said Space Baron to halt. The Baron fears the Singularity (because I would win instead). This allowed the rest to catch up a bit. Social techs were instead commercialised, which puts D-World strategy ahead. And by Divine Providence, the Space Tipping Point was the ending card that showed up first. I took it and lets me nuke the Space corps and solutions.
The nascent Space Empire imploded and the world’s centre of balance continues to shift towards the Developing World. Maybe people should be more socially responsible next time and future-proof themselves. Ho-hum.
6 Likes
Kicked off today with Amsterdam the new (ish) release based on Macao. My second game. I can’t remmber the first game in much detail, but I don’t think I did very well. And this game followed that trend. There’s a lot of checking up on cards, which is never much fun. I’m not saying the iconography is bad, but there are so many icons. And lots of cards, you’re not going to see all of them in a single game. I find the game pretty challenging, you really need to plan well to get going. The game forces you to take a card at the start of every round, and I found myself just taking cards that I could activate, rather than cards that might actually help me. The game loves to hand out penalty tokens. No resources on your roundel? That’s a penalty. No room to take a card? That’s a penalty. Have any unactivated cards at the end of the game? Yup, have some penalty tokens. And penalties really stack up – your first token costs you three points, the second is eight points, the third fifteen, the fourth twenty two points. Ouch. I think I whinged about this on my first game. Seems to be a “me” problem. I want to like this game, but it’s tough going.
Quantum, always fun. It’s a shame this game is out of print, it really is excellent. Pretty easy to pickup, simple rules, but you can do clever things (or dumb things). Things were more or less even, but it stings a little when you are attacked and you’re coming last. If you don’t like take that, this probably isn’t your game. In the late game you find yourself stopping a player from winning, but that means you don’t get to advance yourself.
Was Sticht?, first play. This game is one of four in the box “Mu and Lots more”. Some cards are reused in more than one game. Was Sticht is a pretty different trick taking game. You win by fulfilling your function cards, which have a winning condition, like “win no tricks” or “win the last trick”. Complete your four function cards, and you win. And you choose function cards before you even see your hand of cards, which is fine, because you get to make your hand yourself. The cards are laid out in rows, and you all pick a card from the top row. After you take your cards, the start player will tell you who would have won that trick, if you had played it. We’re not actually playing the trick yet. This is important because only the start player knows what the trump colour and number are. But by seeing which tricks are won, you deduce what the trumps are. The start player doesn’t say why a card won, just that it won.
So, with all that out of the way, you get down to the actual job of playing, and the actual trump cards are shown. Standard trick taking rules, have to follow if you can. The start player can win anyone elses function card, provided that player doesn’t win it themselves. It’s a pretty different trick taking game, went pretty well.
Last game of the day was Inside job, and I was the insider – completely failed at my job.
7 Likes
Had a game of Terraforming Mars yesterday, to kind of close out our little best-of-three series (we were tied at one apiece). So I picked Phobolog, Maryse The Republic of Tharsis, and we were off!
And it didn’t go super well for me. I had a couple of cards that would give me points based on cubes on them, but she got cards to neutralize them (Predators and whichever one lets you remove a microbe), on top of getting the Pets card, which synergized insanely well with her corp, and a few more. In the end I lost, 118-139.
5 Likes
It’s back! Or I’m back! Or something! A teaching game of Leaving Earth this afternoon and oh boy it is Too Long since I played this.
Missions on the table:
Easy: Sounding Rocket, Artificial Satellite, Man in Space
Medium: Mars Lander, Venus Lander, Lunar Sample Return
Hard: Venus Station, Extraterrestrial Life
I ignored the human missions, as I often do, and went robot-first for a Venus lander (since it doesn’t need actual Landing tech, one fewer thing to develop than ditto Mars). And then…
“The sample of Venusian wetland life goes ‘quack’. Admittedly we weren’t expecting the fire breathing and acid spitting.”
11 Likes