Yay! Tetrarchia has unexpectedly become one of my most-played games. It’s not because it’s the best game, nor the one that does the most; but it’s a good game that does a lot with a little, punching above its weight in most respects, in a modest time-frame, and with almost zero set-up and tear-down time. It just strikes an attractive balance for my tastes, and so I keep going back to it. I’d set it aside for a while after one monster game that really took too long, but it wasn’t all that long before I pulled it back off the shelf. (I’ve noticed that the upcoming Hispania has a turn limit so that games can’t just go on indefinitely.)
My best advice is that you want to start making things harder for yourself sooner rather than later, as I think that losing the game because things got out of control is more fun than winning easily if the dice never roll anything bad. I try to ensure that there will always be fires to fight.
I settled on 4,1,2,2 as my preferred difficulty settings, so most of my games have been played like that. I had my first game at only 3 garrisons each the other day, though, and it was a really good game! (Well, the second attempt was a really good game ;) – things went awfully pear-shaped awfully quickly in my first attempt, and I lost the game with most of the empire in revolt…)
Just won my first game of Caïrn on BGA against a random opponent. Interesting game, kind of reminds me of Onitama in that there are limited options for moves, which change after you make a choice, just instead of swapping cards around, there is a common pool of movement options and the tiles flip over once used, changing up the ability.
Goal is to build three megaliths, which is done by transforming an opposing shaman (all the player pieces are shamans). This is done in one of two ways. One is by moving one of your shamans into a particular arrangement (either having a piece on either side of the opponent, or two pieces in a line adjacent, depending on which side of the tile is showing). In this case, the megalith is built where the opposing shaman was. The other is moving one of your pieces off the other side of the board. Here, the megalith is built on the space your shaman left.
There are only three movement tiles. When One is used, it flips to the other side. One brings your shaman onto the board, on either the one white starting space, or the black one, depending on which side of the tile is showing. The second allows you to move one of your pieces orthogonally, or diagonally on the other side. Last one allows you to jump your piece over a friendly piece, while the other side jumps over an opposing piece.
Then there’s the megaliths themselves. Each has a unique power that you can activate when you move a piece onto them. These can be things like remove an opposing piece that is on your first line of the board. Another gives you a bonus turn. One let you move another megalith to a different space. Yet another let you move the shaman from it to any other megalith. Apparently there are a lot in the advanced game, I just played a basic one, so it had less variety, but these give the players more options on their turn, and only expand those options as the game progresses and more megaliths are built.
So yeah, found it entertaining and a bit brain-burny, trying to advance your goals while trying to leave bad options for your opponent.
Played two games today. First was Lost Cities again. This time my wife won, though the first round was kind of funny when she took the lead, 8 - 7. Final score was 133 - 82.
Then her brother joined in for Taverns of Tiefenthal using all the base game modules, and also the Wine Sommelier from the expansion. I really thought my brother-in-law had it, as he upgraded a lot of his tavern, getting those valuable nobles. By end of game, turned out I outscored both of them with my nobles alone (13)! Final scores were 159 - 123 - 120, with my wife in last.
Quiet weekend for gaming, but was at a birthday party yesterday, and everyone was a gamer, so of course we got a bit of gaming in. We warmed up with some Crokinole , which is always fun. Then we had a six player game of Skull , which went on forever. Some pretty bold bidding too, people calling eight or nine when there were only ten or so cards out. Which made it easier to slip a skull in. Such a great bluffing game. Sadly, the other two games I brought (Thats Not a Hat and In Vino Morte ) didn’t get a play.
We finally got around to playing Mage Knight yesterday. Only the most basic scenario, so we should probably play it again before we forget all of the rules! I think it’s a bit too close to the “should have been a video game” line (like Gloomhaven) but I’d play it again as long as I was given sufficient warning
Yesterday was my monthly game meetup but I also had another friend invite my husband and I over to play games. We split the day and spent about 3 hours at the friend’s game day then got lunch before going to the regular meetup for about 4 hours.
The friend had said about 8 people were expected so I tried to bring games that could support a larger group and that worked well. We played 7 Wonders at first when there were 7 people. My husband won, the host got second, and I came third. Then another couple arrived so we were at 9. We played Saboteur for a few rounds. This is by far my favorite social deduction game because there’s an actual game to support the social deduction. The host was on the winning team every time so he won this one. Last game before my husband and I left for the other game day, I pulled out a couple roll and writes and everyone picked “Welcome To…” partially because the host had recently bought the new “Welcome to the Moon” and hadn’t played it yet and hoped learning the original would make learning his from the rule book easier. My husband pushed getting all 3 goals and hoped he had rushed it enough to win. He came solidly middle of the pack because other players had lots of points from parks and pools, mostly. The winner came down to the second tie breaker after a couple people tied on points and the first tie breaker.
After our lunch break, we got to our usual game meetup and a few other regulars there pulled us into a game of Mlem. This is a push your luck dice rolling game themed around cats in space, or Catstronauts as I believe they were called in the rule book. I came in second by one point to the owner of the game. Then my husband jumped into a train game (Age of Steam), while I wasn’t up for that so went off in search of something else. In the time he trained, I got in 3 other games. I got to play Heat for the first time. It’s an alright racing game. The card management has some solid stuff in it but there’s so many catchup mechanics I’m not sure it matters all that much. I came in second by one space despite being the only player on their first game. Then I taught Point Salad to a couple people. It’s such a fun quick little card game. Finally I ended the night teaching the same couple Tiny Towns. This is one of my favorite mid level games. It’s so simple but will break your brain and I don’t know of anything else quite like it.
I might have been a bit harsh to Cottage Garden in the Uwe topic. Just played a two player game of it and I liked it much more than I remembered doing! It’s really quite nice, and an ideal game for a lazy Sunday with spring beginning to approach.
Played episode 3 of Threads of Fate. I’m really not sure how I feel about this at the moment. I love the concept, the components are incredible and the writing is good. But…
Some of the puzzles are so hard. One from episode 2 we had to go through every single clue and the answer and I still don’t know how it got there!
It takes a bit of the satisfaction away because we haven’t been able to solve everything in a set yet (even with clues).
And we’re really good at Escape Rooms, Exit games and Unlock.
I really want to do the final envelope soon, it is really, really good. I hope we can solve the final set without help.
Ticket to Ride: India - the routes are tight and the Mandala scoring is pretty interesting
Ticket to Ride: Africa - the doubling of points when laying tracks makes TTR even more degenerate. The route alone that goes to Madagascar will give you 30 pts (15 * 2), which is way more than any ticket in the game. This expansion is terrible and will be sold.
Charms - A very bizarre trick taking game and I haven’t fully internalised the consequences of your plays. This is pretty cool
Valley of the Kings - cool concept where you score points only for your scrapped cards - “entombing” them. Might be best played by people who would appreciate this sort of thing, not me.
Played Tyrants of the Underdark with my wife today, using the Drow and Demon half-decks. We were pretty even for a while, but she managed to actually promote some cards to her inner circle, while all I ever managed to promote was an Insane Outcast, removing a single -1 value card. She meanwhile kept loading them onto me, and while I managed to get rid of some more through discarding another card in my hand, I still had four at the end of the game.
So she won, 70 - 66. It would have been worse, but I managed complete control over the middle city for three turns before the end of the game, getting me 9 points.
I guess mileage really does vary! We sold some other TTR expansions that we didn’t get on with, but we like Africa, so we kept that one, along with Switzerland.
Got Watch played over the weekend. Enjoyed it a lot- really fast paced, managed to mess up the rules so I came dead last by misreading the card scoring, area control on tracks actually pretty damned important.
Then played Agricola- French Deck. Won 55 points to 52 (to 23 to 19)- managed to get all 7 occs out within the first two stages thanks to some odd French cards, and two of my occs benefited from playing occs. The rest was a very standard stone house with 5 fields and 4 pastures.
Played Tekhenu, Oblisk of the Sun. A Turzi, Tascini design, and it feels that way. Incredibly inelegant, loads of rules for different parts of the board, and an increibdly tight efficiency puzzle. Was fine, but I just think these games could be so much better if a cooler head went over development and just made the whole system more elegant.
Finally Forks, not just for the photos, but because it was a great end of day play.
Played a quick game of Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game last night as the Empire. She took out my second base the turn after I took out hers. I had a crappy hand going into my next round, and she had chosen Alderaan as her third base to move the Force fully to her side. So I took a gamble and chose Corellia as my new base, allowing me to take Jabba into my hand from the galaxy row.
I had a Kel Dor Mystic in hand, which moves the Force my way by 2, coupled with Jabba put the Force on my side. I was then able to Exile a card to draw two new ones, and one them was General Veers, which when paired with the Stormtrooper I already had in hand let me draw a third card. Overall, I was able to deal 13 damage to her base, 1 short of victory.
She, of course, had Luke and a few other damage dealing cards in her hand, which was more than enough to take out my 10 HP base, giving her the win. Very close, though.
My eldest offspring and I had a lovely game of Happy Pigs, the only ‘economic’ type game that I own. We adapted Bruno Cathala’s two-player variant which uses a third dummy hand, controlled alternately by each player to try and stymie their opponent. Instead we drew for the ‘dummy’ randomly each turn for a gentler (happier!) game.
We then tried the 18th Century Das Spiel der Hoffnung (‘The Game of Hope’). Sadly, the designer Johann Hechtel succumbed to smallpox not long after this was first published. Which puts ‘hope’ in perspective. The game involves laying out 36 picture cards to create a 6x6 ‘board’ which players then traverse in a snakes-and-ladders fashion, but fancier. Landing on ‘the cunning fox’, for example, ‘leads the player astray and he has to find refuge in the Forest’. There is a specific order you are supposed to lay out the cards and we briefly wondered what would happen if you randomised that. I guess we were feeling kind of random that day!
Final score was 133 - 82.
