I love the cuboid pigs 
6 Likes
I occasionally get annoyed with myself with waffling on buying this game. I finally decided to get it when it went OOP and the prices jumped so I then didnāt buy it. Sad times
3 Likes
Another game of Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game and another loss for me. My wife was drawing practically half her deck each round as she had the planet that lets you draw a card when you play your first neutral card, then she would have a capital ship so any TIE Fighters would get to draw an extra card, and then she got Jabba, so she could exile a card to draw two cards, and for kicks, one of her cap ships let her discard a card to draw a card. So, yeah, didnāt go very well for me.
6 Likes
After work tonight some of us played a little bit of Push It, then a game of Tinderblox, and finally two games of For Sale. Everyone had fun (I think; I won For Sale both times, so Iām biased :). but one said theyād love to play it again, and another said āthat was a lot more fun than I was expectingā). Best of all, I chatted with one of my colleagues about arranging a games night for something a bit heavier, so will hopefully get in some more substantial games nights on occasion in future.
In the second game I managed to sell a property valued at 7 out of 30 for the 2nd-highest price in the game ($14,000) in the second sale phase, thanks to every other offer on the table being absolutely rubbish, and every single player declining to risk a good property for little return. It turned out that weād all put our weakest properties forwards (I think it was 7,6,5,4,2) assuming that someone was going to use something good to get the 14K, and my card happened to be the least-bad of the bunch :).
9 Likes
I played taxi for my partner last night who went to a wine tasting. While not really close by but kind of is one of our friendsā places. So I spent the āwait timeā there. She had offered to play Ark Nova (their son has a copy) but I was a bit too tired from work and decided I wanted something smallā¦ and on my pile of shame I found a small big game that she was just the right person to try out with: Mottainai.
I studied the rules at home almost well enough to teach the game. First game was a bit meandering for both of us and I won with 22 to 20 points (I had to finish because she had a work out that would have given her an instant win if she had all 5 types of works). Second game she played a work that ended the game early and she won with 11 to 7 points. Very enjoyable. But with chatting and all it was almost time to pick up my partner and we decided a third game would have to wait for another time.
Very lovely, very thinky, definitely not one to instantly think through. Hope we get to play again at some point. It really packs a lot of punch for just a deck of cards.
I think I did well not ever trying to get my partner to play this.
Also bunch of solos this week:
- Naturopolis
- Terraforming Mars
- Tetrarchia (getting better at it)
10 Likes
Pax Renaissance - 3 players. Germany was in ruins as trade doesnāt reach far into Western Europe. Crusades were a common thing, to stamp out the Reformation rot and beat the Muslims in Spain/Portugal. We were all eyeing the Holy Victory with all these Catholic wins but Western Europe are often doing this historically European thing where they are poor and always killing each other. So they dont have enough armies to trigger the victory conditions.
The Coeur family sponsored Vlad the Impalerās empire, they are on the brink of dominating the world. But Europe got twitchy again and sent a Crusade against Vlad Dracul. The Wallachian Empire collapsed. And this allowed me to snatch the Imperial Victory
5 Likes
Finished 2 rounds of The Wolves with @COMaestro and @lalunaverde. What can I say? I enjoy it.
Now there are certain games I respect. Jaipur. First Rat. Nusfjord. Race for the Galaxy. Games that have been tested and balanced within a hair of their life. Games with no extraneous or fiddly rules. Games that unfold over time.
The Wolves is not this game. I keep thinking about what tweaks might make the game better. It plays like someone had a good idea and then a publishing house came in and said āoh, your game has to have this and this and thisā so all these things got shoehorned in and the sharp elbows got pillows strapped to them.
Palaces of Carrara feels similar. Thereās a shared market of resource collection, where all the players are manipulating the prices and supply both for themselves and others. And then the scoring, some scoring is exclusive so you have to be careful about what (and when) you plan to score. Someone else could take the whole basket from you. So do you go fast, score early, and take it from them? Do you play contrarian and build up scoring potential where no one else is building? BUT THEN, there are these end-of-game objectives that can often score 2x or 3x what you get out of the āmain game.ā So, you end up hyper-focusing on those objectives rather than playing the fascinating game that was given to you. (In theory, 2e addressed this problem but so far most people like it less rather than more. I think they just should have rebalanced the objective cards against the other parts of the game.)
So with The Wolves. There is a pretty interesting game of movement and area control, where your actions are constrained by terrain tiles. Thereās a lot of planning, a little bit of comboing, and a degree of sweating as you try to maintain control just long enough to score and then move your pack onward. The problem is, this fascinating game is worth ~28 points, max. And thatās if you score EVERYTHING. More likely you could get 15-20 points out of it. At the same time, you can get 66 points off of non-confrontational board upgrades (albeit still impossible to score all of that). So are you going to play the interesting game, or are you going to retreat to corners of the board and focus on pack upgrades?
Itās not that bad. Getting the upgrades requires moving around the board, so you canāt really turtle. And, at least for us, we all kept up the area control while also trying to take pieces off our player boards. The good stuff was still cooking.
Hereās the game I imagine:
- Dens are worth 2 pts each (total 8 rather than 20)
- Prey is worth 3 pts each (total 18 rather than 25)
- Wolves canāt move past enemy Alphas or double wolves blocking spaces
- Alphas can howl at isolated wolves to āpushā them out past their howl range
- Already scored regions continue to score (just 1 or 2 pts) each subsequent scoring round, so that people canāt abandon parts of the board later in the game
These changes would, in theory, both force people to play the game as well as providing some additional interesting tools for board control. Iām unlikely to have the time or people to really test any changes. As I started, itās not the tightest game and I think a lot of the modern tropes detract from what about the game is really sharp. But I still had fun and itās on the ākeep playingā list for now.
6 Likes
Second game of Imperium Horizons, this time using the Trade Routes expansion rule. Itās not the silver bullet to give the game solid interactivity, but at least you want to be aware of what fellow players are putting out.
I can see its length and sprawl but I think Iām falling in love with it all over again.
4 Likes
Yeah, The Wolves feels rather point-salady. Just about everything you do earns you points (eventually).
Though Iām not sure that messing with the point values would really change all that much in the game. For instance, I still would have done pretty much everything that I did even if they had been worth lower point values, as most of the time, I was more interested in getting the bonus turn and terrain tokens offered, and the stats kind of support that, as I used more of those tokens than either of you.
I do like the idea of the regions continuing to score, as the game feels like it should be about gaining control and keeping control of territory. As it stands, you can almost just ignore the first scoring phase and instead focus on establishing control of at least one each of the second and third scoring regions, and in the process of doing that, you hunt and claim some lone wolves, which will get you points, tokens, and increase your options. And you can pretty much guarantee control of at least one of the final scoring areas by flooding it with your wolves and building as many dens as you can, plus turning one into a lair.
Iām only going on two plays here, but I feel like there is nothing in this game that you can fully ignore. You need to hunt to get easy bonus tokens, as you need those extra actions and terrain in order to effectively spread and get control of regions, and thereās just not enough time to do everything without them. You need to build dens not just for control, but to boost your range of movement and howling and also to get tokens. You need to upgrade to lairs for the control and the bonus terrain tokens.
Dominating is near impossible without the bonus terrain tokens, as you only have three cards of one type of terrain, and a good chunk of the time, one of them at least will be turned the wrong way, and if your opponents are paying attention, they wonāt leave any single pieces in those areas, but double them up to protect against it. And Domination becomes very important near the end of the game, as at that point, it and lairs are the only way to progress the game. If you are in the lead, and have control of one of the final scoring regions, you are trying to do anything you can to fill up that moonlight track. With only one lair allowed per region, you either need to send an alpha wolf off to do some den building, or Dominate, and the better your Howl is upgraded, the less likely it is you need to move an alpha wolf first.
Iām actually pretty impressed with this game, and not just because Iāve won both of the games I played 
Itās not a perfect game by any means, but it provides a lot of interesting decisions on how to best optimize your turn, plus try to set up the turn after that, as which way your cards are flipped is really going to determine what you can ultimately do.
7 Likes
Yeah, listen to Maestro. He won both games.
4 Likes
Tabletop club at school tonight. One of the students was desperate to play Elder Sign - I want to say a classic? Itās our most played game at home anyway! Soā¦ we had less than an hour to get through a game. I GMād it for speeds sake and, including rules intro, we finished the game in 40mins with a victory over Yig! They were absolutely delighted!
9 Likes
Tonight for the first time in a while, we went to a game night hosted by someone else!
Heat with the full six. Lot of laughs around the table (the stress cards are great for this). Definitely feels a little skinny with just the base game. I first learned it with drafting the deck upgrades and that makes for a much more exciting time.
Obscurio where the person who was obviously the traitor in fact turned out to be the traitor but most of us just thought he was incompetent. Our failure at the last door combined with bad voting meant the traitor was he who laughs last.
10 Likes
We started our gaming day with a quick round of Inflation!, which was fun.
Then onto our usual game of Goonies: Never Say Die, which was tough, but we won. Although it was obvious that our GM was letting us win. He had three out of four of his win conditions, and he could have played another but didnāt. Also, two of us were almost dead, down to just one health, yet he chose to attack a player who had full health. We failed on this scenario last week, so I guess he was making sure we won. Iād rather he just went for it.
Dogs of War, one of my favourite games, hadnāt played in ages. Itās totally over-produced, with unnecessary figures, but thatās CMON for you. The game dates back to when CMON were known as Cool Minis Or Not. I guess they just wanted to add miniatures. Itās an amazing game, I always enjoy it. Such a shame itās hard to get hold of. I came second, but it was daylight between first and second. I had a bad second year, put everything into a battle just to get pipped at the end with someones special ability (they could add another two points into any of their battles. I invested a lot into that battle, some of my most expensive units. Anyway, it was a whole lot of fun.
Spots, fun dice rolling.
Just One, still fun even at 4p.
Charms, another game (along with Inflation!) where it can be hard to predict how many tricks youāll win, harder than other trick taking games. But I did worse at it than the other players. Not many points in it. I was all set to get my bid but failed on the last trick of the game. Couldnāt do much about it, just had the wrong card which unfortunately won me the trick. Hard to judge sometimes. Loving the game tho.
10 Likes
To be fair, Threads is probably the most challenging of their games - so far it felt fair, but yes, the puzzles are a few steps above Adrift and even Emerald Flame. I might revise this once weāre done with itā¦
13 Likes
Root - 5 player game consisting of the Vagabond, the Cats, Lord of the Hundreds, Mice, and the Racoons (Keepers of Iron). I was the Lord of the Hundreds, which is straight up area control and super aggressive fighting.
It was fun! But Cthulhu Wars have more depth with faction strategies. Rootās factions - especially, the expansion ones not designed by Werhle - are very linear. But itās more portable than CW and itās still fun in its own regard.
I am confident now that Root is the least interesting Cole Werhle title. Oath manage to surpass through its superior storytelling and niche metagaming.
So far:
1.) An Infamous Traffic
2.) John Company
3.) Pax Pamir
4.) Oath
5.) Root
Fractured Sky - new kickstarter game with blinged out bits and painted minis. And it was shit. Blind bidding is fine. I love blind bidding. But the problem is that the reward value are also unknown! There is a side of deduction but thereās usually not enough time to deduce. In fact, youāre better off spending your resource on taking a peek at the objective cards and screw the deduction. Soā itās a terrible deduction game!
And so, I end up winning by simply bidding on areas I know will score and take a random punt on those that are unknown and end up winning.
7 Likes
Had friends over, as we had not seen them for about a month. Had a delicious lunch prepared by my wife, then we settled in for some gaming.
We intended to start with Ethnos, but it ended up being the main event due to various interruptions by children, making a 30 minute game take over an hour.
We used Centaurs, Elves, Wizards, Giants, Orcs, and Trolls, and I feel I did pretty badly, though I did come in third out of four. I only got 5 points from bands in the third age because the dragons came out so quickly, the last two being right together. It happens. Though it was right before I was going to play my sixth Orc for the bonus 20 points, so instead I just got 15. Wouldnāt have changed my placing, but would have felt better. 
So my wife won with 105, followed by our friend J with 93, me with 79, and our friend C with 74.
We let the kids run around outside for a bit, as our friends had brought their dog and she needed to run around too. After that, we just didnāt have a lot of time, so we played Sushi Go. Did poorly at this one as well. J won this one with 45, followed by C at 42, me at 38, and my wife at 28.
We then started a game of Jabbaās Palace, but it got too close to the kidsā dinner time, so we called it after three rounds, giving the victory to J again.
Good fun, even if I had hoped for more gaming today.
8 Likes
Some games over the weekend (hopefully this marks the end of my very limited gaming through Feb):
Suburbia, this was a wild game - my opponent forgot to consider the public goals so my final score was wild - jumped off the top of the track which Iāve never seen happen before. He did okay but those bonus points hurt!
Blitzkrieg!, great little two player tug-of-war style game. I won but not by much.
Azul: SP, didnāt manage to get my second star done, so I lost. The timing with those stars and the wild and the bonus tiles is such an interesting dynamic puzzle. Great stuff.
Barenpark, blitzed this one with a 100+ point score. Everything seemed to go my way this game - that never happens!
7 Likes
Blood on the Clocktower All Day!! We played 3 games of it with 9 - 12 people. I was the Demon in the last game and it was stressful, and i was mentally exhausted afterwards.
Great game! I might even say this is the best social deduction game, or maybe equal to Avalon. Iām leaning on the latter. The game has very good depth. So, haters gonna hate! Iām with SUSD with this one.
10 Likes
Went to Meetup. The organizer was like āAll the games are full unless you want to play Castles of Burgundy, because one of those guys doesnāt really want to play it.ā So I did! It was a super deluxe version in a titanic box.
Slow teach and two new players (one of whom was very slow) and involved set-up/breakdown meant it all took about three hours. But you canāt knock the quality of the game!
Then we played Fit To Print. This is a tough one for people who are bad at eyeballing measurements, aka me. Pretty fun and very cute, but I would never choose this over Galaxy Trucker.
11 Likes
On Saturday, we, along woyh a couple friends of ours, went to another couple friendsā new place for dinner and gaming. In the end, due to conversation (we hadnāt seen each other in years), we only played a 6-player game of Skull King. Itās a fun, very light game (though the scoringās a bit arcane) thatās basically Wizard with more variety and a theme. Scores ranged from 300 (Maryse, who won) to -50 (me, who did not, LOL).
Yesterday, two games of Ark Nova that both ended in destruction. I won the first game 34 to -7, Maryse won the second 55-25.
The tie breaker will come!
6 Likes