Say that you are playing by golf rules, so lowest score wins!
5 Likes
Thatās quite the handicap.
1 Like
Minus fifty feels like a real - swing for the moon type score but it just landed in the bowlers hand.
1 Like
I just kept taking just one trick less than what Iād bet I would. That adds up. Or down. 
3 Likes
Last night I got to try out Meadow. We had a shortened game (6 rounds rather than 8) and I think there were some advanced cards not in play.
It didnāt feel like a two hour game, but it took us two hours all the same. Granted, we werenāt being hasty in our turns, but I donāt think we were taking ages either. A turn consists of putting down a āpathā marker, either at the edge of the card market (4Ć4 grid, notches round three edges, chosen notch + number on marker determines which card you get) or round the campfire board (which lets you use that markerās special power).
It felt to me like a classic ālarge deckā game like Terraforming Mars or Ark Nova, and not in the good way: card A depends on having a card of type B, the only B thatās come out depends on a C, and C just doesnāt appear for half the game. Which is fine in terms of having to be adaptable, but I at least felt I was mostly playing turn to turn, never getting much of a look at the larger objectives that would need this kind of plan to be achievable at all. (Half-way through the game you switch one of the decks from āmoderately complex objectivesā to āmuch more complex objectivesā and we all felt they expected rather more of an existing tableau than any of us had built.
Also, itās very clear to me that the designers of Forest Shuffle were familiar with this game: similar theme, similar idea of consumption chains.
I had anā¦ OK time. It wasnāt offensively bad or anything. But it really felt like a 45 minute game that turned out to have taken two hours to play.
8 Likes
Whatās the link to The Fox in the Forest and consumption chains?
4 Likes
Argh! Sorry, should be Forest Shuffle.
3 Likes
it arrived. at last. and Iāve spent two hours on the practice battle. also I canāt read.
on the positive side: Appa is back with the Avatar and we finished Season 2 (I know. itās just for contrast)
8 Likes
Brass: Birmingham - Building all smelters on the canal era was highly significant.
Be me
itās the industrial revolution, baby!
Everyone devmaxxing
iron disappears from the market as fast as the child population of England
build all the smelters
they all flipped wtf
???
became the best entrepreneur in the Midlands
Veggies - cool card game. Not enough shared incentives for my liking tho
Chicago Express
Colosseum - a game co-designed by Wolfgang Kramer. I put on the best show in the empire and won! I kinda like this more than Princes of Florence - the latter was also co-designed by him and we found some strong similarities.
I doubt that I want to buy the spin-off, Colosseum: Ave Titus, but keen on playing it.
Tempel des Schreckens x2
Glory to Rome - someone was very keen because they know about its reputation and never played it before. I did got ask if my Black Box edition copy should be behind plexiglass. 
Nah. Games are meant to be played.
Player 4 built up a bonkers combo based on the craftsman action and it was hilarious and fun. I built up for a Forum victory. I had 5 out of 6 different types of clients but the game ended before I could do a patron action and grab the 6th type of client. If player 4 - who sits on my right - didnāt ran down the deck, I would have won instead. Very tense and fun.
10 Likes
Flash Point: Fire Rescue hit the table tonight, first time for the three of us. Well, my brother-in-law had played once before on TTS, but first time with the physical game. We just played the basic rules, to keep things quick and simple.
Started out okay, though the POI I went for in the dining area turned out to be a false alarm. My brother-in-law chopped his way into the bathroom on that side of the house and got that person out on his second turn. My wife went in through the front door to go for the third POI in the other bathroom.
Hers turned out to be a false alarm as well, but the replacement went into the adjoining bedroom, as did the replacement for my false alarm. The two of them worked on getting to those and getting them out, while I went for the new one from the rescued survivor, which showed up in the living room, surrounded by smoke and fire.
Amazingly I got to it and over the next few turns managed to rescue the revealed survivor. Meanwhile my wife and her brother rescued the two survivors they found, though we had our first casualty after that as a new POI showed up in the smaller bedroom that was already full of fire and the next roll was that same space, filling it with smoke which then caught fire. We lost another one soon after to an explosion. Speaking of, we had a number of explosions, most of them in that same bedroom or nearby, completely destroying all the walls of that room.
Two POIs showed up in adjacent squares right near the dining room exterior door, with fire on either side of them. I started chopping down the wall between the main entryway and there while my brother-in-law was just inside the room and would reveal one on his next turn when we managed to eliminate both of them with a couple of bad rolls. One was a false alarm, but the other was the cat! Noooooo!
At this point, there was only one POI left, back in the master bedroom and my wife was close to it. We had an explosion on my turn which took us to one remaining damage cube. She moved to reveal the final survivor, and would be able to get him out on her next turn. She rolled and smoke was placed. Her brother moved and rolled, placing smoke which became fire, but no explosion. So, of course, I rolled am explosion on my turn, losing us the game just before we would have won.
It was fun, and maybe next time we will manage to rescue enough people to win.
5 Likes
Got to save the cat!
3 Likes
When demoing iāve found about two thirds of people prioritise the cat over the humans, and the rest donāt think it should count as a rescue.
9 Likes
At least we saved the dog.
7 Likes
my husband and I got our Kickstarter copy of Lore this week and played it for the first time this afternoon. Itās a card-heavy board game about being adventurers on epic quests and the like. The art is absolutely beautiful and the decisions are interesting but not too complex. Itās a fairly light game overall.
The big problem is the rule book. It seems to assume lots of things as obvious that are not at all obvious. After our first play, we found BGG threads to cover most of our questions. My husband thinks he benefited a lot from the incorrect calls we made on things that werenāt clear so wants an asterisk on his win. Good, since he trounced me 60-122.
7 Likes
The joy of teaching someone Ashes Reborn and they get it. Woohoo!
9 Likes
Yesterday my son (7 years old) wanted to play a game. He disappeared for a few minutes to look at my games. He reappeared declaring he wanted to āplay the game with trains, stations and different coloured tracks like brown on greyā. After some further questioning, I determined that he meant 1848: Australia.
Instead we played Concordia
8 Likes
Some games over the last week:
Bananagrams, a game of this with my wife when we were both feeling pretty wiped. It took awhileā¦ But close finish as it tends to have.
Orleans, still great - an absolute banger. My opponent was not hugely impressed with the theme (heās a theme guy) but enjoyed the gameplay, so I chalk it up as a win.
Wyrmspan, played this at a local meetup (and like a month before itās available here!) and I was pleasantly surprised. Iāve played Wingspan once, and thought it was decent but nothing to write home about, so I was a bit apprehensive about this one. I really liked this one! Thereās more going on, but it all kind of connects in a pleasing way. The dragon guilds are great for adding some variety and interaction to the game. The theme is pretty loose, it must be said - I never super connected with any of my dragons (and I generally like dragons!). There feels to be more paths to victory though and a little less reliant on getting the right cards out of the still very large deck. Lot of fun, will have to get a copy when itās available!
Disney Lorcana x2, got a couple of games of this in, despite it also not being available in Australia yet. Itās okay. Iām not a huge TCG person - I mean my big complaint about Android Netrunner was that I wished it was just preconstructed decks (a la Summoner Wars). We played with two different matchups of starter decks. The presentation is pretty great, though the game seemed pretty simple - not heaps of different powers or special abilities (they were starter decks though, so I suspect folks will find more to it when building decks). Not really my thing. Iād still prefer Netrunner, but thatās way more complicated - this is a fine streamlined family TCG with nice presentation. I suspect itāll do very well (as indeed it already seems to be).
8 Likes
Played 2 games of the battle of Versailles it seemed interesting and the space biff review got me backing it. So far Itās all a bit meh. The card powers seem interesting but the balancing is all over the place. Iām gonna need to check the rules as it seems like the USA has a massive advantage and the French game is very much a preventative/defensive one. Of the two games the US won both and the second win was in the second round on prestige.
Also first time Iāve said this but the card art repeats dress images, I wanted more dresses from a game about dresses.
If Iāve not made a total meal of the rules then Iām gonna add this to the sales pile.
7 Likes
Sea Salt & Paper, which was touted as ousting Sushi-Go, but I canāt see how random draw is supposed to be better than drafting for set collection. Not a fan.
Innovation X3, all amazing games, all very different to every game Iāve ever previously played.
Race for the Galaxy X2, good stuff.
Cascadia, which was unexciting, but fine. One of those games where you each work on your own thing and at the end get out the scoring chart to find out who has 109 points and who has 106.
8 Likes
This comes recommended as a card game to have. I read the rules and got the same feeling as youāve just described.
One where the slightly unusual art garnered it way more attention than it should have.
3 Likes