Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[COMaestro]

My wife and I played Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game real quick while waiting for some friends to come over for lunch, which I won as the Rebels.

Unfortunately, they let us know they got sideswiped when merging and were waiting for a tow truck, so weren’t going to make it, but thankfully everyone was okay.

After a very nice lunch prepared by my wife (with lots of leftovers since two people weren’t here), we played Lost Cities, which I won by a pretty large margin.

Then her brother joined us for Lords of Vegas. I had an early lead, and my wife was lagging behind, leading her to say she didn’t see much hope for her. So, naturally, she won.

Her comeback started by getting a 6-tile casino in F block, though that only matched a raised one I had in the C block, as they were the same color. What really did it for her was merging into my single, three-story casino in E block, forcing a roll off which she won. She won it again when I paid for a reorganization. She added another tile to it, but then I got the 6 value location and was able to take back what was now a size 12 casino. So, naturally, she reorganized and won, and I lost when I tried to take it back. She got three payouts over the course of her ownership, though I think only one was at the full 12 point value.

Meanwhile, her brother just took over most of D block, and had a size 14 casino there by the end of the game. If the cards had come out differently, he very well could have taken it. Final scores were 66 for my wife, 49 for her brother, and 44 for me.

[yashima]

Counting VP takes forever… just like Mischwald… really this should be a statistic on BGG: how long does figuring out who won take.

I played Imperium: Horizons twice:
Guptas (me) vs Abbasids (bot), trade routes included this time

• Game 1: I lost to first turn collapse on a terrible draw from the bot deck which emptied the Unrest deck rather quickly. Had I spent my first turn getting rid of one of my Unrests, the game could have continued, but who thinks that the bot draws all their “axe” cards on the first turn?
• Game 2: the bot won rather decisively and I found out there are various difficulty levels and despite being more of a beginner than not, I played on one where the bot resolved 4 or 5 actions each turn. Trade Routes makes the game more complex and I neglected to look through my Civ deck before playing. Even an easy civ like the Guptas has a few … features one might want to know about before the start of the game f.e. the Glory card being the ascension card meaning that you can’t use it retrieve (garrisoned) Uncivilized cards you would want to play and also that fame cards will only appear on your side late in the game. I barely managed to develop twice before the bot was completely finished.

And it took me 90 minutes to lose. I think I’ll play a few Daybreak solos on BGA now

[RogerBW]

I believe the automated scorer (take a photo and upload it to the site) is being updated for Horizons content, but it’s not there yet.

[yashima]

I admit I never tried that … (I didn’t play enough the first time I acquired pieces of this giant card stack)
Does it work?

[Brattyjedi]

Beyond the Sun with my husband. I spent about 2/3 of the game saying his personal power seemed over-powered and mine was useless. Then I finally unlocked the one-shot power on my player board which gave me one huge, epic turn and another two or three really good turns after. Suddenly he was on the back foot and saying I was kicking his butt. In the end, it was a fairly close game that I won, 71-64. Note to self: always prioritize unlocking the one-shot powers.

[RogerBW]

I’ve only tried it once, and the local cell service (no wifi in that pub) wasn’t up to it at all. Other people tell me it’s great, but tbh I don’t mind counting my own score. What I’ve been doing lately is:

• Put cards in deck, hand and discard together into a single “system” pile.
• Score up everything with a straightforward point value on it.
• Then go back through each area again (system, in-play, history) looking for the fiddly conditionals and add those.
• Announce my score.
• Remember to add the Vs.

[yashima]

Those arent Vs they are <
Also how do you like the new alien resource?

[RogerBW]

“Ghost squid”. Interesting but I haven’t yet had enough to make a significant difference to scoring.

[EnterTheWyvern]

Today played Tidal Blades for the first time and it’s loads better than I was expecting. It’s a fairly mid weight worker placement with some dice stuff. The spots for workers felt the right amount of tight. The push your luck elements were exciting and balanced enough. It did plenty right. We played the first game set up which wasn’t bad but next time we’ll play the longer game and probably throw in some of the advanced game elements and that should step it up a bit too. I was worried it would be a turkey but it was rather fun.

Next we played 2 games of Anansi which was great fun again. First time I’ve played 4 player and it’s a step up from the 3 player experience. Really fun trick taker, amongst top tier for me even though I’m hopeless at it. I like the shiny cards too, probably shallow but it adds something for me.

[MrJackdaw]

No time to play at home… again. Life gets away from me!
At Tabletop club after school on Friday I had some new students.

Introduced them to King of Tokyo - not my favourite, but a classic for a reason. I also showed some others Mists over Carcassone - but I don’t think I explained it very well. I was drawn thin by Friday…

[Simfers]

Week off last week for March break. We were planning on going to the family farm and playing games, but that didn’t pan out, so instead we stayed home and played games.

Played quite a few, actually:

Ark Nova, finishing up our small tournament. I lost after all, but I remember it being rather tight.

Brass Birmingham, to this day the game I have the most trouble grokking. I love it, but man, it burns my brain. Maryse has no such issue. She slaughtered me. I think she was at 140 while I was around 110.

Tzolk’in, tried out a building-heavy strategy, while Maryse tried a religion-heavy strategy. Mine didn’t pan out, I lost by around 30 points (70-40, somewhere in that range).

Great Western Trail, 3-player, Yvan came back. Hurray! He’s still coming to grips with the game, but he still managed to come in second with 140, behind Maryse at 191 and in front of me at 121.

3 games of Everdell, as ever with Bellfaire and Newleaf. I won the first, Maryse DESTROYED me in the second (120-73), and I won the third to take the tournament. Both my victories were close, though, less than 10 points.

Yesterday we were supposed to have Yvan back, but he had to cancel, so we finished off the third Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective box. It had been quite a while. Sherlock is still bullshit, but man, it’s a fun little game, innit?

And that was last week!

[mistercrayon]

In game 6 (six) I finally beat my partner in castles of burgundy. I don’t know how to feel about it. It took every duck to show up in single file with a sign that said “shoot me” and then standing still and even then it was just by 6 points (out of about 150)

[yashima]

So… Trailblazers is beta on BGA.
And I have played a bunch of it and failed at the first “challenge mode” for the solo: completing 4 hiking loops until the start of round 4 and scoring 50+ points. My best one was 48. Most of the time I am out before the end due to failing to get 4 loops.

I have also played a bit of 2 player Daybreak and today we won for the first time. My friend played a few learning solos while we were losing our first game. His comment just now was “Saving the world is fun.”

I played another way too long round of Imperium: Horizons, this time with the bot on lower difficulty. I actually won in the Japanese (me) vs Guptas (bot) matchup. My rulebook is about to tear the outer pages out of the binding because I have been needing to consult it in so many of the details. There’s just always something else. Yesterday it was figuring out that if a card lets me “Develop” I can do that even if the deck is blocked by an exhaustion marker. The trade rules for the bot also keep throwing me off…

But the games last too long and I need a better strategy for scoring (as in counting the points after game is over not buying cards that give me points–that, too, but that’s a different topic). That by itself took far too long.
It’s still the best civilization game I have despite all my griping about the number of cards, the quality of the cards, the many moving parts, that there are no 5/10 tokens for the new resource… the format of the rulebook and the plastic inserts that don’t fit sleeved cards. (I’ve probably got more). Still a keeper. But I think now that the big square box is almost filled: please no more big expansions. Maybe another commons deck would be nice. Those get repeated a lot.

ps and I’m setting up the next one. one of these days i shall know the rules

[Bondy034]

Quite a few games over the past week or so (a local game day helped!):

Under Falling Skies, finally got to try this one. It was a little underwhelming. It’s fine but I wasn’t particularly compelled to replay it.

Photosynthesis, always enjoy this one, the sun/shadow mechanic is great, I do need to try Evergreen sometime though.

Azul SP, managed to knock out two stars, my opponent nearly caught me by getting all the ‘3’ slots full, but with only one star on his end didn’t quite happen.

Trickdraw x3, 3 games of this at the game day. It’s an okay ‘take-that’ ish card game. Not sure there is heaps there but it was easy to knock out a few games in a row.

Cascadia, taught this to a couple who had been trying to learn it - went well, we all had fun. I did win but they put up a fair fight.

Everdell Farshore, this is probably the first time I’ve taught a game I don’t own! So that was a thing. I think I did pretty well, I didn’t win but it was close! The game is good but I think I still prefer the original, despite them being pretty similar. I don’t know, maybe it’s just familiarity - I do really like most of the changes to the mechanics.

Dixit, long time since I played this one. And I’m not sure I’ve ever played with complete strangers. It’s pretty rough… Not too many inside clues on their part, but a few of mine didn’t land (they had no idea what a gorgon was…) I lost by a lot!

Bananagrams x2, couple of games of this with my wife. It’s a go to low effort game for us at this point.

Waterfall Park, this is the recent re-theme (with slightly tweaked gameplay) of Chinatown (which I’ve never played. This was fun, though I can see it being super group dependent - talkative confident folks can really steer the whole thing (for better or worse). And that last round is still not great (I remember Quinns mentioning that in the SUSD playthrough, apparently they couldn’t figure out how to fix it). I’d love to try it at five and with some more charismatic friends, I think it would shine. But it’s good fun!

Meadow, one of my friends is undefeated at this game after 4 plays now. He got pretty lucky with some discoveries this game though - without them I might’ve been in the running. It’s a great simple tableau builder though and great presentation.

Fantastic Factories, love how close all my games of this have been - the winner is normally only the winner by one or two points. I managed 4 beacons (and nearly 5!) which along with a drip-feed of goods from one factory I activated almost every round gave me the win.

Terraforming Mars:Ares Expedition, second game of this and it confirmed I do like and will be hanging onto it. It’s a little long with new players, especially for a weeknight, but there’s a lot to like, even if it can tend a little mathsy at points. I went heavy into heating Mars and managed some good points from cards also so solid win.

[lalunaverde]

Puerto Rico - we played with all the expansions and it was interesting to finally play them.

Expansion 1: New Buildings + Drafting - new buildings in the game (Green set), but you do this initial drafting where you draft from the base game + exp 1 buildings on which buildings you want in the game until the board is filled up. This obviously leans the game towards experienced players and towards more strategic depth.

Expansion 2: More New Buildings + Citizens - This one is less daunting without Exp 1. You simply add these buildings (Red set) in without the drafting. It includes citizens, which are souped up workers. They are 1 VP each and they improve buildings from the Red set.

If you play with both Exp 1 and 2, then you draft until all the slots from base game and Exp 2 are filled up.

Expansion 3: Smuggler - it was only used once lmao. So no comment

Expansion 4: Festival - very easy to include but very meh.

Five Tribes - Very fun, but yeah, very flawed if played with AP players. Also a game where you avoid opening up opportunity to other players.

The Cost - a Spielworxx game about Asbestos mining and refining. It has spatial play and shared incentives involved, so hell yeah! This is my kind of game!! And I am indeed impressed with this game. I might also prefer this over Spielworxx’s prestige title, Die Macher. I now want to try their edition of Yunnan

You know what’s one great thing about Just One? I arrived to games night and immediately joined in in the middle of the game.

Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam - very meh. None of the small TTRs have impressed me tbh

Ticket to Ride: Italy - hot damn. Italy is very competitive. Region scoring and the rectangular shape was tense

Ticket to Ride: Japan - At the back of Italy is Japan and damn, the bullet trains are a nice wrinkle. I need more play, however, it seems that avoiding building the bullet train seems… to be the way to go. Will report more about this. But yes. Italy and Japan, so far, is the best TTR expansion pack I’ve played

Ticket to Ride: Great Britain and Ireland - The technology mechanism is very fun, but I am a bit suspicious that the players who were granted locos in the market during their turn in early game would put them in an advantageous position, and that the losing players dont have enough agency to jostle for player positions. Oh well. Need more plays, I guess. Because the tech mechanism is actually cool

Ticket to Ride: Switzerland - a 2 to 3 player only game. Meaning, it’s a 3 player only game. Another suspicious expansion due to too much overlapping tickets. And tempo is entirely dependent on luck of the deck draw. But hey, if you like the push-your-luck infused in TTR: Europe and you want more of that? Swiss seems like the map for you

Tigris and Euphrates - hot damn. 3 players and we clocked at - give or take - 45 mins. Tigris and Euphrates is now a filler game: comfirmed!!!

Tempel des Schreckens x2

The Secret of Monte Cristo - an old beige game. Very lame game though.

[COMaestro]

Tried out Cascadia for the first time. Just solo. Nice, chill game. Got 93 points.

[MarkSP]

If anyone wants to play please swing by

Just realised I posted this in the wrong thread!

[raged_norm]

Played Kingdom Builder 2 player, it’s good, 2nd play has been requested by the 7 year old to see if it’s a keeper

[yashima]

Kingdom Builder is a very good game I have fond memories of it. I recommend not ever playing the app, I killed the game (for myself) through overplaying. Luckily for idiots like me, they made Winter Kingdom which has sufficient twists to be fresh again.

[yashima]

I convinced my partner to play a game of Dune: Imperium with Ix and Immortality with me.
2 players includes a simplified version of one of the bots of the solo mode, otherwise the Skirmishes would not be very good contests.

It took quite a long time to play, my partner is prone to AP and we had not played this together in a long time. He said there were too many possibilities but that was already inherent in the base game and that the expansions made the game actually easier for him. He specialized with the spacing guild smuggling early on and had a very good combo going with the 2 freighter moves and a tech that allowed him to immediately deploy the gained troops.

I struggled to figure out a coherent strategy, kept forgetting which tech I had bought and managed to buy only 1 The Spice Must Flow card because on the penultimate turn I only had 8 conviction or persuasion (or whatever the “buy cards” currency is named). The card costs 9 and gives 1 VP. I could have had the 9 if I had played just a bit more considerate. I had an intrigue card that gave me an additional VP if only I had 2 such cards and I would easily have won with 2 more VP…

As it was, I am not sure we counted my partner’s points for the alliances he held correctly and when the game ended with 11:11 and I would have won on the spice tiebreaker we declared a tie instead.

I really want to play with 3 actual players but with a setup + play time of 3+ hours this is currently unlikely. My partner has declared he won’t play this again soon even though he says he sees that this is a very good game and he likes it but it breaks his brain.

Now having played both expansions: Immortality is a little whacky. What I like about it:

• more card draw abilities which I really like and it is not difficult to include.
• improves 2 cards from the starting deck in a way that I would not play without it again.
• the Tleilaxu cards are the fun and whacky part and you pay for them with putting some of your troop cubes into their Axolotl tanks …
• the ability to combine 2 cards and play them together
• the “spy” cards that allow you to go to a spot that is already taken.
• the Nukes are a nice addition allowing you to reset the market once per game per player. (I never thought I’d say Nukes are nice, but here we are.)

I still think Ix is a requirement. The spots that it replaces are really not great and the MAFEA spots it introduces instead a really a good strategy as my partner’s success with it shows. Also the Dreadnoughts are just a nice change for the Skirmishes as they remain after battle. The tech gives far more flexibility and more possibilities to gain VP.

One of my favorite and most hated things about the base game btw is the Bene Gesserit spot that allows you to draw an Intrigue card and take a card from any other player that has 4+ Intrigue cards. Sometimes you just can’t get rid of the cards fast enough but just the threat of that spot prevents hoarding.

PS: what I would pay good money for would be an integrated board with both Ix and Immortality side boards included and a single comprehensive DinA4 rulebook (can publishers PLEASE STOP making rulebooks in square box size? Those are the worst–also see Imperium:Horizons). As it is Dune has a real Zettelwirtschaft going for the rules.