Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

Boardgames
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Last day of games for a while today, usual group including @lalunaverde.

We finished up the last scenarios for Mechs Vs Minions. One scenario was tensely difficult but felt maybe a little to arbitrary in some aspects to be fully satisfying. Which was a shame as a little better thought on the scenario and it would have been amongst the best. The other 2 were good high standard fun. Having finished the campaign I’ve really enjoyed al of it. Even the less good scenarios were fun, the boss was always tough and interesting. Marvelous stuff but I could also happily never play again.,

To finish we played Spirit Island. Level 4 Mining Hapsburg were invading a land guarded by Wounded Waters Bleeding, Ember Eyed Behemoth, Hearth Vigil and Dances Up Earthquakes. 4 player games always take a while but really enjoyed it. At this size it’s nicely messy and too big so it becomes a bit more trust others to deal with things all over. We went blighted reasonably early and the board got hairy as the blight card added 2 cities on each board. Fortunately some escalation of major powers and some mighty hearth vigiling saw the invaders pushed back to the oceans.

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8845

Last night I completed the Arcadia Quest campaign solo, finishing the sixth and final scenario much more easily than I thought I would do. I loved it as a solo game, giving the time to develop and improve my team and tactics with each scenario, and I don’t think I’ve played a newly acquired game as often in such a relatively short space of time for me, getting through six sessions in about three weeks. The Beyond the Grave expansion is up next although I doubt I’ll start that until after Easter, and have the next week or so to select my three heroes for that campaign before hopefully getting to play it competitively against my brother when he visits at the end of April.

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8846

Played two games over the week-end:

First of all, Ark Nova got a work-out and I wound up winning 34-5! That hardly ever happens!

Then, yesterday we tried out Apiary, and boy oh boy, is this ever great. Got the same feeling we got from Everdell back in 2022, and the aforementioned Ark Nova last year. Best game we’ve played so far this year.

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Not much to add from this post other than photos

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Power Grid - played France map with 4 players and it went well. I am now disappointed with Power Grid. It took me like 15-20 plays to see this. With the end game condition at 17 cities, the 7’s and the 6’s are just TOO important. If you lost on all three 7 power plant auctions, chances that you’ve already lost. With a 7, you can tolerate two 5’s. Otherwise, it’ll be a 6-6-5 setup.

It does remind me of 1830 where 5 trains are the best permas and (D)iesel trains are not good. But the difference with 1830 is that there’s too many factors going on that getting 5’s isn’t so straightforward, and there’s more heuristics to think about than to get the 5’s.

I’m still keen to play more, but it is discouraging. If I want economic snowball game done right, I’ll play Age of Steam instead

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Saint Petersburg - Tight engine-building tableau-building games that I tolerate more than most of these engine-building tableau-buidling types. It was still rather boring without much decisions. A lot of the big decisions happened at the first quarter of the game. Lame.

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8848

Playing with friends tonight, some FUSE and then Spirit Island (basic set, I was the only one who had played before). I made a slight error in the Explore (should be “terrain of that type with a town/city or adjacent to the ocean”, not “adjacent to a town/city or the ocean”) and we went down to a blightsplosion in about turn 3.

But perversely I feel more positive about it now than I did going in.

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8849

Played some solo games of Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, which… hmm. The game itself is actually less rickety than I expected; it doesn’t reach the heights of best-game-of-all-time Marvel Champions, but it does feel like it still stands out, and hasn’t just been replaced by its more modern siblings. The resource matching leads to more agonizing decisions than in something like Arkham Horror LCG, and even with a single deck there’s a strong feeling of leading a party, which is fun. Unfortunately, the game is also incredibly brutal (especially for a single player), and the core set is pretty stingy in terms of content, even with the revised core that was recently released. I felt like MC had a pretty generous bit of replay value in its core set, but without additional content I think I’ll quickly tire of LotR. But will I buy more? That’s the question…

Also played through the solo campaign of Worldbreakers: The Indigo Sisterhood, the first expansion to Worldbreakers. The game proper got some praise from SUSD and other critics (I remember Space-Biff was reasonably positive on it), but I haven’t seen any coverage of the solo game, which is a crime because it’s great. The solo campaign in the Advent of the Khanate set was good, if very limited (ten scenarios, but mostly just increasing difficulties of two different opponents), and the campaign in Indigo Sisterhood is straight-up excellent from start to finish. The different campaign missions play very differently from each other, and you really have to think about your deck and play style to get through each one. I still want to play the proper 2-player game, but Worldbreakers is edging up my favorite solo games list at an alarming rate.

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Played my first “full” game of Legacy of Yu. I had previously attempted to play it at work over my lunch break: I couldn’t manage it. Today took the full 1 hour it claims it will take on the box… I suspect future plays will be similar.

However, I did get a crucial rule wrong: when you take “casualties” (either from construction or barbarians) I was discarding from the Townsfolk Draw deck, but you’re supposed to discard from your Ready deck (like, the workers you have hired). In retrospect, this makes a ton of sense: you lose people that you have with you, not the ones that are potentially going to join.

Anyway. It was close, and then we lost because a swarm of barbarians took out the last few cards from the draw deck, which prompted me to check the rules because it felt quite wrong to lose that way. We should’ve won handily!

Oh well. Still a neat experience, and the campaign has gotten ever so slightly easier for my next game. Andy wasn’t a fan of playing it with me, though… “It’s a board game about managing resources. Fine if you like managing resources. But I don’t.”

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I had such a good time with Yu. Managed 3 campaigns. Went from kinda 50/50 win/loss to almost perfect clear the third time. And fully resettable so you can sell it on when you’re done! I’d love to see Garphill do a follow up or spiritual sequel. It’s some of the most fun I’ve had solo gaming for sure!

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Three player game of Quacks of Quedlinburg with my wife and her brother today. We used some of the new books from the Herb Witches expansion, as well as the 6-value pumpkins and locoweed, but didn’t bother with the witches.

I fully randomized the books, and think I broke the game. Locoweed was the one that copies the last colored chip played in both value and effect. Blue was from set 1, where you pull the value worth of chips from your bag and may play one of them. Purple let you upgrade a chip in your pot for free, the value depending on how many of them were in your pot. Then red allowed you to move the white 1 chips two spaces if any red chip was placed earlier.

So due to some lucky drawing, I won with a score of 95 points. I rarely pass 50 when we play this, so almost doubling that is nuts. But I kept drawing purple chips, and with three I could upgrade a 1 to a 4! So, of course, I upgraded my blues, as being able to pull out four chips and choose one to play is huge! Especially if you get a locoweed or another blue so you get to do it again!

Scores were 95, 73, and 57, my wife in last due to some unfortunate explosions. Good fun.

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I think you were right - the ‘adjacent to’ is correct. If there’s a town or city next to the ‘Explore’ land, they explore there; the building doesn’t have to be in the land itself.

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Ah, you’re right.

Add an Explorer to every land of the shown type which either:
• Contains a Town or City; or
• Is adjacent to a Town, City, or Ocean.

So we were just playing very badly. :slight_smile:

ETA: However, I was spreading Blight to each adjacent land when it cascaded. So that wouldn’t have helped.

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Le Havre - 3 players and it remains one of the best Uwe (better than Agricola :crazy_face:). I went for grain >> bread strategy with some cattle >> meat.

I’ve been thinking about this talk on how steel strategy is too dominant. I feel like people are missing the point (or maybe I’m just wrong). You want late-game steel to score a lot because there’s not much time left. And early game or mid game money generator shouldn’t score you that much as you have more time using them.

Irish Gauge - played under an hour and it’s hard to dislike this when it goes that fast. it is a “poor man’s Chicago Express” indeed, but I thought the random cubes reveal during payout is very interesting. Calling when to pay out dividends is also interesting. Minimalistic even for a Cube Rail. This is one of the Chi-Ex derivative I’ve decided to keep. The other one was Luzon Rails - because I grew up there.

6Nimmt

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Two player game of Lords of Vegas today with my wife. Very close game that would have gone her way except for a longshot gamble I took by building three 1-tile casinos adjacent to a 5-tile casino of hers, rerolling a couple of them and got lucky enough to tie her highest two with two of mine. I then remodeled a two storey 3-lot casino which was that color to something else and then changed each of the new ones to that so merge them with her casino. This forced a roll off of the tied 5’s, which resulted in low rolls for both of us, meaning we then rolled off our 4’s, and I came out on top!

She was able to take control back easily next turn, but not before she drew that color, letting me score 8 points with none for her. That gave me the game as I ended up winning 66 - 60. Overall she scored more points during the game, but kept getting blocked by the breakpoints, which let me catch up and ultimately pass her. I mean, she passed the first breakpoint when I finally got on the scoreboard, so that should give some ideas of how badly I was doing at first. Good game.

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We’ve got my husband’s children with us for Easter, and yesterday he let them pick any game… So we played Cloudspire. The youngest declared it to be his new favourite game (which he does with every game). My main impression of Cloudspire is that it ought to be a computer game…

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The A.R.T Project is a rather good coop game!

I had a solo go at it to find out how it works, and lost, but liked it. So we had a two player game of it and just squeaked a win.

Great fun and highly recommended.

But they suggest playing your first game on moderate difficulty. I say ignore that and go for easy. Then at least you have a chance.

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8859

Today at Hexicon 2 (church-hall convention near Reading):

  • FUSE - always a good warmup.
  • Nokosu Dice - loving every time I play this.
  • Lemminge - I know one person who doesn’t like this. Still surprised that it’s been allowed to fall out of print.
  • Revolution! with the Palace - obviously I am a great teacher as I was beaten by all the first-timers.
  • Dune Imperium Uprising - liked it better than my play of original Imperium last year but it felt very bare and mechanical, possibly because I’m not a great fan of the book. Reminiscent in some ways of Scythe.
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First game of the new edition of Libertalia with 6. It’s a solid 6 player game with a good amount of strategy.

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Base or classic? The latter is nastier

Fungi

Antematter - it’s basically two games taped into one. One of the space exploration pick-up-and-deliver game where you raid spots to grab poker chips (Yes. Poke chips. Stay with me here) and explore planets to grab cubes to deliver them for more poker chips.

And once that phase is over. We stop playing that game and we move onto a Texas Hold Em mini-game, which is the 2nd half of the whole thing. Yes. You play Texas Hold Em as usual, except you have these crew cards which can break or change the rules like it’s Cosmic Encounter. Yes. That’s right.

And after that Poker face phase, we return back to the pick-up-and-deliver mini game.

As you’d expect, the two are very disjointed. The first game is pretty much just a mechanism for players to get more money for their gambling addiction. The spatial game of the 1st half is almost meaningless and there’s very little effect you can do other than “haha I grab this poker chip before you did”, which suffers this turn order issue.

And the Poker mini game is just poker with card powers. And often, we can’t understand what the damn thing means when you read the cards.

I’d rather we just play Poker. Omaha style, please.

Lord of the Rings: Confrontation - this is the deluxe one after they released the original one from 2003. A sleek Knizia design which is just Stratego but with special abilities and special cards.

Listen. This game SHOULDN’T work, but it works! It’s fun and tense. And it’s thematic.

We have the deluxe one so there’s a 2nd set of characters you can use for both Fellowship and Sauron. And there’s the draft variant too where you can draft special cards to complement the default hand of cards you already have

Alas, this game goes on the 2nd hand market for OOP prices

Hollywood Sensation - oh man. This is pretty fun. A 2 player trick taker that works. I’d put this somewhere on the same level as Triumvirate. Oh and the Art Deco theme is pretty

Fields of Arle - another Uwe. It seems that I picked up an Uwe fever. This is my first time playing FOA and the strategy is very interesting. It’s rather solitaire (as one would expect from a modern Euro designed by Rosenberg), but I still found the worker spots to still be competitive. I’m keen to try this again with the Trade and Tea expansion and with 3 players.

Just like with Agricola: All Creatures, Glass Road and Nusfjord, I find the combo building with buildings you build from a public display to be more interesting than other means.

Also, I am finding this to be more interesting on a strategic level compare to other Rosenberg titles (maybe even more than Nusfjord). And I find it more interesting strategically than A Feast for Odin, but I think I need to revisit AFFO as it’s been literally years.

Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde vs Scotland Yard - 2 player cooperative trick taking game. Good fun! And it’s better than Fox in the Forest Duet. (I also remember being underwhelmed by OG Fox in the Forest. This one is better on what it does

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Two Lacerdas today, On Mars and Escape Plan. One I really enjoyed and want to play again, albeit it could do without some seemingly extraneous rules, the other I absolutely hated because of its design choices. Anyone want to guess which is which?

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I’ve heard Escape Plan isn’t brilliant.

But I’m going to say you think On Mars is trash

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