I have only played On Mars and while not playing it a lot, I found it had a good rhythm and came together as a game better than I feared from an ultra complex Euro, but since you ask you probably hated the one that most people rate higher.
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Escape plan is the weirdo one out of the lot. My guess is if one plays two Lacerda games in a day they probably like them in general so Iāll guess the hate is for escape plan.
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I think thatās what he expects us to think!
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Thatās what I heard as well, so I expected to like On Mars a lot more, but absolutely not!
Not that itās trash- it just does a number of things Iāve discovered I really dislike in my games, I can see why other people like it but these things turn it off for me:
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Turns which one player does an action, which unlocks another action which unlocks another action. All of these are compounded by those actions requiring delicate handling of each other and order mattering, bossting and bonuses matter, and players turns taking ages. This became a massive pacing problem.
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Everyone having their own set of unique actions they can take, where you donāt even know if other players can do a thing because theyāre sat a good two metres from you with all their unique actions cards facing them. So you either ignore those things or spend time trying to see what they can do which just adds to the pacing problem.
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Your ability to do an action relying upon knowledge of other players abilities which are only tracked on their player board and not easily trackable. Tbf, this could easily be solved with a track on the main board, but again led to pacing issues.
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Theming really not mattering. I was ready for a game of whizzing up and down on the shuttle repeatedly improving Mars. What actually happened was people were spending all their time on Mars. Just swapping resources for buildings and different resources, for buildings and different resources. The LSS determining how many rockets you can launch, but not the number of people, so we had rockets welcoming 8 people, but couldnāt launch an empty rocket.
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No way to kick first player out of being first player. After a random turn allocation at the start it never really changed. First player always took the first player spot on Mars.
At one point, I went from being start player in Orbit to being last on Mars (I was the only person in orbit, so had to take the 4th spot). Thatās 6 turns between my turns, which took around an hour. Of not playing. Now, I donāt hold the game fully responsible for this, but it was at this time I regretted agreeing to play it.
On a brighter note however, Escape Plan was just a thematic jaunt. On your turn you move and visit a location. All actions are just to escape cops or make money. Apart from some unessecary rules overhead (the 1k once someone escaped not being referenced anywhere in the player aid meant we just ignored that rule accidentally), it was a veritable breeze, and very thematic. Avoiding the cops, getting a chopper, moving all the policeman to the most notorious person all with a chuckle. Itās breezier than the price tag leads you to believe, which is good in a way as itās more fun, but also doesnāt have the heft it feels you deserve for that money.
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Had friends over and we played Chinatown. While I was eventually able to trade my way into a 6 tile business, up until then I only had a 4 tile one and some scattered singles. As such, I lost with only $770k. My wife had most of a 6 tile built by the end of turn 3, and won with over a million, while our friends both landed in between. Still a fun game, even if things just donāt go your way.
My wife and I played a quick game of Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game after they left, which I won as the Empire thanks to an early gain of Commander Krennic, which lets you draw a card (two if your base is the Death Star). I took the Death Star as my second base and proceeded to purchase a slew of capital ships as they appeared, so my wife was never able to hit my base for much after that, while I would get the occasional big draw and smash her remaining bases.
Lastly, the two of us played a quick round of Bridgerton Love Letter, which I bought for my wife last week, while waiting in a lounge for a comedy show. I won the round, attaining two diamonds, one by getting her out and the other by playing the 0 card.
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Family in town for Easter weekend. Played Space Base with my husband and an 11-year-old niece. She picked it up well but was convinced she didnāt since she didnāt win and had very few points. We tried explaining that itās a game where if everyone is building a good set of cards, your engine hits first and you win or it doesnāt and you are way behind. She had a good setup that just hadnāt hit quite right yet but another couple turns and odds were it would have. Not sure she believed us.
Later, my husband and I played Lore with her mother and 15-year-old sister. Lore is a newer Kickstarter that my husband and I had only played once before. Itās a card-driven game with many different actions you can take to tell your fantasy story/score points in different ways (battle monsters, go on quests, write your story/lore, etc.). I think thereās an ok game in there but the rulebook is terrible and card interactions or just meanings arenāt always clear. I would not have played it with others until my husband and I had played it more ourselves and worked out the kinks but I was out voted. It took forever and got frustrating for everyone at times. I also got stuck early on and never recovered so just had a terrible game. My husband and sister-in-law ended up within one point of each other, the 15-year-old was maybe 20 points behind, and I was about 80 points behind her.
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Frankly I blame Roger for this. I had a mild interest in Sentinels of the Multiverse and THEN Roger was kind enough to teach it to two strangers at Tabletop Scotland, who both also happened to know Dr Bobā¦small, small world, and now Sentinels takes up more shelf space than any other game!
Great fun though and I used to run M&M so this was perfect. Please, please donāt let them do Sentinels of the DC Universe, I canāt afford it!
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Iād love to see this updated for the Definitive Edition rules. I suspect licencing may make it tricky, though.
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Played the calm side. Going to try stormy tonight.
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I suspect you are correct.
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They were explicit that they werenāt gonna do it. They had looked at it prior to fulfillment and opted to fulfill instead as they were already late by years. I really wish theyād just delayed a bit longer. Whatās another 6 months or a year at that point?
And it was such a clusterfuck of a project I imagine neither the G>G folks nor Green Ronin are eager to do any more. Which is a shame, I think some of those decks are very cool.
(Also, as I recall this project was going at a time when they were fairly well done with Sentinels content proper, which is extremely not the case anymore, so I doubt theyād want to add designing other companiesā IP to the workload of updating and expanding their own universe for Definitive Edition.)
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Yesterday played Hadrianās Wall for the first time. Solo (canāt imagine Iāll ever play this any other way) - I think I might like it. I certainly want to play it again.
And today we played Cascadia for the first time, and itās just as lovely as Iād hoped.
What with all that and the severe collection pruning thatās gone on over the last couple of years, I think there might now be only one game in the house thatās never been played. Although Iāll have to take a wander along the shelves to check. Furthermore, the number of games on those shelves no longer feels wildly excessive.
All is good. Well, all is better at least.
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Lost to my wife at Ethnos, as it seemed that I could only draw cards for green, and then some purple and gray. Other than Halflings, but they canāt place control markers. I was slightly ahead after the first age due to some good bands, but after scoring bands at the end of the second age we were tied, and she had four regions to my two, so I knew I had lost. Scores were 97 - 79.
We followed that up with a game of Kingdomino, using the perfect grid and centered castle bonuses. I won and achieved both bonuses, but would have won in any case thanks to my 33 point forest region. After bonuses, I won 53 - 30.
Later, we played Lost Cities, which was pretty close until the final round, where my wife did poorly, only gaining 4 points to my 30. As I was already a bit ahead, the victory was mine, 170 - 125.
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I played Dune today, with my youngest on 3 of his friends.
It was an interesting experiment for me because I know nothing about the IP so none of the thematic elements of the game had any impact.
Playing with 4 teenagers was an experience, but it was very cool to be taught a game by my youngest.
I was the Fremen. I thought Iād be aggressive and start some fights to shake things up - and make sure of not having to get my soldiers coked up to do some damage.
The boys formed alliances and I got squeezed on my own, but I wasnāt far from winning in the end. An alliance of the Emperor and the Atreides won in turn 5.
Iād happily give this another spin, maybe with not quite so many 15 year olds next time!
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Played Libertaliawith the storm side. Yup this is more like it a bit meaner and thinkier.
Also played MTG for the first time, itās good although a bit fiddly, with its key terms. Could see it becoming a possible hole if the boy got into it.
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It wasnāt so fiddly 28-ish years ago when I played. Dear God, Iām getting oldā¦
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No, they had a major restructure of the MtG rules around 2010, and it got simpler briefly, but theyāve since added 100 new keywords 
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Tried out some new games!
Tournament at Avalon is trick taking take that with silly powers. My wife set a Plague on me and made every card I played worth 2 less, which, with the Dwarves in play so nobody could play matching values, meant I dropped a ton of points. But my special power meant that when I dropped to 0 I regained 150 points, which was enough to get me second after the final tourney. Itās a fun game that I think depends on the right group more than most - we had two pretty quiet players on it, but with a raucous crowd this one would really sing.
Then we played Scout, and this is a neat little numbers game that goes way too long at 5 players! Not only do you play a full five rounds, but each round is longer because you need even bigger shows to get a full-table scout. Weāre actually going to take this off the 5-player list - that is 4 max for sure.
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Scout, Iāve also found is not great with three - one good hand will end the round. With four itās great though, but itās unfortunate that it has a fairly selective playercount.
Meanwhile over the last couple of weeks Iāve played:
Oceans, two player game of this, and itās a great playercount for it. Did pretty well off of a pack-hunting super predator. It eventually went extinct when itās food source ran out, but had a good run there! I love how well the theme works here, and with no flavor text or anything!
Truffle Shuffle, simple little tableau drafting, poker hand collecting card game. Easy to get to the table and easy to enjoy.
Archeos Society, I was expecting to like this one but wow! Itās amazing! Best set collection and push your luck card game Iāve played. Iām super sad it seems like it hasnāt sold very well (especially since it makes the emergence of an expansion unlikely 
). Iāve not played Ethnos, so I canāt wade into that whole discussion of which is better. But taken on its own this is a simple winner. Canāt wait to explore some of the alternate tracks and professions!
Above and Below, great game of this with some expansion stuff (though we didnt use the new stories though). It can sometimes feel like exploration is way more attractive earlier in the game, whereas building and harvesting pays off better later. Iām curious if the new stories change my perception of that. Looking forward to trying them out next time though!
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