Maybe. I think people just like random outcomes, as long as they have the illusion of control and it’s not too obvious. Drafting requires more… effort?
2 Likes
Yeah. Not so hot about Sea Salt & Paper. I don’t get the appeal.
The stars aligned and the four of us played Ticket to Ride: Legacy! We played two games in this sesh as they are getting longer. I might have to call it at one play per sesh if it takes too long. 4 more games to go!!
6 Likes
I wheeled out Castles of Burgundy (the German name is far funnier) for my partner. There was apprehension because the board game arena thing is a bit too much fiddly for a learning on the phone game (in particular even though the buildings need explaining if you can look at them up close they all give a clue at what they do).
I have some Hoooooooooot takes.
If you’re teaching this game (but maybe it’s generalisable in certain contexts) to one other person or maybe two use the looser 4 player side anyway. You definitely lose the sniping aspect but you get a chance to actually get everything and learn what each bit does. For example it seems to me easier to learn the value of mines if you get a chance to buy them and in a 2 player game you may only get 2 at too late a stage. Afterwards once everyone understands what works for them they can then decide how to prioritise those things.
There’s victory points in this game but generally it feels like to me they’re kind of hidden behind a macro task of just filling up the board fast in zones. Unlike other euros where you have to earn your way to points here it feels like you do a fun thing and the points will sort themselves out.
There’s an embarrassing go (+2 workers/the adjustment crew) that feels more strategic than the normal flavour of embarrassing go.
I like how the dice collapse what you can do. Sometimes you can do a fair few things but those get narrowed fast which I think helps with the smoothness. Even still though I think at 4 player this game would be a bit too slow and a bit too boring between turns.
With regards to animals in this game. It’s always a knuckle gnawing choice to block a set for your opponent when it ruins your set.
7 Likes
Yeah, I’d never play it 4 player for that reason. Done it a couple of times and that was enough.
3 Likes
So yesterday I played two back-to-back games of War for Arrakis, the War of the Ring-clone.
Dang it’s good.
Both used the default “standard” setup, but I think we’re ready to move into some alternate timeline stuff for our next playthrough, maybe include either the Smugglers and/or Spacing Guild. Still plenty of meat in the core game, so maybe we’ll stick with vanilla for a few more plays.
ANYway. Both games I played as the Atreides. I don’t like playing as baddies (although apparently in the new movies the Atreides aren’t as “good” as they historically have been presented? I dunno, I have to wait until I can watch both movies in a single sitting because I hate cliffhangers).
Game 1:
Terry strikes out from the Polar Station, hitting one of my Sietches to the south-west (assume the Atreides player is at the “south” side of the board, with the cities located to the “north” side of the board… yes, yes, I know that the polar station is technically the “north” of the planet, but for the sake of describing the game I’m using the board edges as cardinal directions) and utterly destroying it. In response, I first place Jessica, and then kill her to gain 3 Yellow points (and upgrading her to Super Jessica). Paul completes a trial that earns me 2 Red and a Green point, but kills one of my Naibs. The Harkonnen destroy another two sietches with rapid ornithopter attacks from the cities. The end of the round sees the Harkonnen at 5 points, and me with 4 sandworms on the table.
Round two and the Harkonnen bring out Feyd, the Emperor, and Thufir Hawat (who hits like a tonne of bricks!) and continue pushing at my sietches. I get Gurney Hallack on the table with a pair of Elites in the only place his troops can land to strike at my south-eastern sietch, and then learn that’s not a thing (turns out we were playing a bucket of rules wrong. In my defence, I was taught the game, and Terry doesn’t teach super well).
Regardless, turn 3 rolls around and I’m 2 Yellow away from victory… and no yellow objectives come up. Whelp. Sure enough, the Harkonnen rush one of my remaining sietches, crush it with ease, and claim the victory.
Game 2 starts out very similarly, except for two key facts:
- I manage to destroy the Polar Settlement the moment Terry moves his troops out.
- Duke Leto leads a spirited and successful attack on The Beast and his Legion as they sweep from South-west to South-east. I think it may be the first (and only) time I’ve ever attacked as the Atreides and won.
- I receive a Planning Card I have never seen before, allowing me to remove 2 Harkonnen Harvesters from the board from one region. As a result, on Turn 2 Terry loses a die! I’ve never been able to do that before, which we’ll come back to.
A few other factors tie in, but despite a similar start I manage to weather a few rounds of attacks by using Super Jessica (another rule we got wrong, I’ll come back to it too) to clinch the victory for the first time! This makes Terry and I 2-1 for him, and makes him 4-1 overall.
Okay, so turns out that Terry taught a bunch of the rules wrong. The most significant is the way he was using Ornithopters to launch attacks. Basically, he spends an ornithopter, uses it to “move” (theoretical move) two spaces, and then attack adjacent to where the Legion would be had it moved. Abstractly, this looks like (Harkonnen Legion Starting Area) → (Move One) → (Move Two) → (Atreides Target).
Turns out this is wrong. It’s supposed to be (Harkonnen Legion Starting Area) → (Move One) → (Atreides Target). Basically he was getting an enormous mobility boost for his attacks, and as a result the game was always over by the end of Turn 4 at most. His troops were just bloody everywhere, whenever they wanted! Really hard to fight against. But with this one simple change (learn one simple trick that Harkonnen players hate!), suddenly the game has a pace. He can’t strike any sietch directly from one of his Settlements, and as a result he has to telegraph where he will attack, and I can potentially respond. Massive change, can’t wait to try it. It also means I can actually send Legions to destroy Harvesters, since the Harkonnen can’t (as often) just go “Surprise! Attack From Downtown!”
The other rules we got wrong include Leaders spending all Star results as they want (each Leader model can only convert one Star result), using the Bene Gesserit Tokens wrong (Terry thought they were just a “wild” token you could spend at any time… in reality, they are allocated to a spot on your board like a die, and can only be allocated to locations that have the fewest dice), not giving the Atreides players Bene Gesserit Tokens as the Harkonnen gain Supremacy (denying me 2 “free” actions every game), and after the Atreides use their Atomics, whatever territories they open up also become exposed to Coriolis Storms (which, again, massive… free hits against the Harkonnen can’t be overstated in their importance).
All in all, we were playing a very different game than the one that was designed in the box… and, surprise surprise, I think the game is going to be even better played properly!
6 Likes
That sounds awesome!
and Thufir Hawat (who hits like a tonne of bricks!)
Yeah, people forget that as well as being the Atreides mentat he was also their master of assassins…
3 Likes
I wouldn’t say that the new movies tarnish the heroic portrayal of the Atreides. But we don’t spend that much time with them really.
(Apart from Jessica - who is after all also a Bene Gesserit - and Paul, who is a complicated figure in the original books too.)
3 Likes
My best (solo on BGA) game of Daybreak yet. I ended it on turn 3 with 0 temperature rise (okay temporarily I had 1 band). I played with drafting my start projets and went for windpower, quick dirty energy reduction and rewilding. For obscure reasons I drew a lot of geo-engineering cards and used those to get a lot of Oceans 
The key remains to just try and get a lot of cards drawn. Because once you have big stacks on your projects the likelyhood that a new card will give you the combo you need to finish the game rises. So don’t stick with a single project too long. It’s better to trigger a slot more often in a round.
I like it fine without challenge cards. It has not yet got boring enough to add them. Also for a quick work-break I just want to play some cards.
2 Likes
Saturday. Western Empires. 10.5 hours.
I was Rome, pictured here in 6000BC at the birth of an empire:
After a standard opening (except for the Hellas buzzing the Celts) I had developed a Monarchy, raised taxes, and was settled into a comfortable truce with my neighbours. Even coexisting with Carthage in Sicily, and with a market of ceramics and wine managed to develop mathematics.
At this point Assyria had taken quite a comfortable lead in tech, but the Minoans was repeatedly getting into their face.
Suddenly, there was a massive board change. Iberia decided to invade me with their surplus population. The same turn I had a minor uprising, and then a cylcone, which took out three of my cities and 2 of Iberias. The next turn I taxed enough to go after Iberia, whose attack on me saw their paranoia take over as they rebuilt cities with significant amounts of excess population. From 7 to 2 cities in one turn.
Then, Hellas suffered from Tyranny, resulting in me gaining their most fertile land and a key city. Something they never fought back for. I was back in the game! Took military as soon as possible to prevent further backstabs.
During this time, everyone just hammered Assyria, bringing them down to just a few cities, stopping their ascension through the AST track. In the penultimate turn I traded for 3 majors just to hopefully discard Tyranny (an untradeable major I drew), and it worked! Got a pirate city, and spread piracy throughout the board. With even more disasters the final turn saw people with reduced civilisations. The final score (after 10 1/2 hours of playing):
Boom! 5 points between the top 5. Won by 1 point. Not going to play again for another year.
12 Likes
I thought this game was using a really weird map projection for a good few minutes before I realised the boards were upside down.
4 Likes
Ten hours!!??
1 Like
Shorter than the 11 hours the last game took. I got held back on the AST track twice, in the end we all agreed to call it at the 8:30 mark because it was a sensible time to end (we agreed this before the previous round to make sure there were no shenanigans).
The goal is obviously to get Eastern Empires as well as have an 18 player game over two days.
4 Likes
I played a relearning game of Imperium: X in the Horizons iteration.
It turns out I should have probably taken the commons cards from Classics or Legends too many cards referenced the traderoutes which I had not included for the first revisiting of this.
My main take-away was that I should have played this on the dining table sitting on a chair not on the couch table sitting on the floor with bad lighting.
I had forgotten how much I enjoyed this. Last night I was the Japanese vs the Carthago bot. The new bot cards are really nice. Much better than having the rulebook on the table.
I really hope that they will offer the replacement cards and bot cards as a separate package for Legends/Classics owners.
3 Likes
Did you winnow the Commons decks? This isn’t well-explained; I’m qiuite unimpressed with the rulebook. It’s mentioned on p.13 para 2 in the box, but it’s only really described on p. 5 para 5 “The Classics and Legends boxes”. Some of the Commons have small “sword” or “trade” icons at lower left; you’re meant to select one or the other, and if you use the “sword” ones there should be nothing that invokes the trade rules.
My full review is up at Zatu but to oversummarise:
- this has revived my enthusiasm for all of Imperum and I’ve now bought Classics and Legends too.
- but ideally don’t start with just this box because there are only three low-complexity civs that don’t require the trade rules.
- it’s a bit of a table and time hog.
4 Likes
I’m keen to use the trade rules and i had seen the rule about removing cards but the sword rule seemed clearer than the other. i suspected i should have removed the cards after the first turn but was too lazy to reset
3 Likes
Had a big gaming weekend. In kind of preference order, we played…
QE. An blind bidding auction game where you can bid whatever you want, except, High Society style the person who spends the most automatically loses. I have wanted to play this since I first heard about it.
First round bids…
2 (auctioneer for the round makes their bid public)
7
5
3
1.4 trillion (me, obvs)
I had a nice experience of winning the first 3 bids in secret with the auctioneer laughing at my bid. When I opened the 4th auction with a public bid of 30 trillion the others realised what was going on. Somehow, I won! My total spend was 361 trillion, the loser spend 700 trillion.
Absolutely loved it, really not sure what the replayability will be like. A very interesting demonstration of inflation at work.
Sol. Was not expecting this at all. What a beautifully designed game with simple, clean components with minimal set up and tear down. I was expecting an overwrought euro, but this played like Hansa Teutonica with quick turns that flew round the table. Nice use of shared infrastructure and very cool theme. Fantastic game
Acquire a classic, 60 years old apparently. A bit like scrabble with set collection and a stock market. You can see the rough edges, but another game with quick turns and as easy teach which I very much enjoyed.
Revive my overwrought Euro experience with a billion components! It was good, but my friend who I love dearly plays and enjoys games in a very different way to me. I swear he took 15 minutes taking his second turn and by the end I wanted to kill him.
Insider 20 questions when someone knows the answer. We were knackered and went with the simple ruleset, but 20 questions under time pressure is fun, who knew?
Perudo always a belter
Gingkopolis I really like this game. I am rubbish at it, Kate is amazing at it. Very hard to keep bringing out a game when you get your arse handed to you.
American Bookshop it’s clever, it’s alright. I’m not sure how much control you have
Twinkle Starship melted my brain, made me question my life choices. Brilliant!
Planet Etuc 2-3 player climber, it’s ok I guess. I’m sure @lalunaverde loves this so I think I’m missing something
Antike 2 6 player civish game with a rondel an lightning quick turns. Very good but the end is hard to pace and it got kingmakery
Quartermaster General WW2 in less than 90 minutes with 6 players. I like this a lot, but I really need to see an Axis victory soon to keep coming back
Green Team Wins stupid fun
13 Likes
Yeah, the friend I play this with sometimes drives me nuts. (It is also a very good solo)
2 Likes
I love taking 15 minutes to take my turn. But that’s something I’ve grown more comfortable with by playing solo games; and something I reserve, as much as possible, for solo gaming.
7 Likes
I find a great deal of pleasure in playing a game with too many things for me to track at once, trying to plan during other peoples’ turns, forgetting two thirds of what I planned by the time it’s back around to me, and then making less-than-optimal moves and seeing what happens.
I like a game that feels like it’s holding my head underwater and the interesting situations that can arise when we all make imperfect moves.
(I detest games that break when someone makes an imperfect move. Sheriff of Nottingham springs to mind….)
7 Likes
Played some games over the weekend with friends, and the mutually agreed best new game was Sky Team, a cooperative two-player game where you are pilot & copilot landing an airplane by placing dice on a control panel to set angle, speed, flaps, etc. It’s quick and pretty light, and while you can strategize between turns, the actual dice placement is done without talking, so there’s a little tension. Highly recommended.
15 Likes