Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[RogerBW]

I enjoyed Scout at 5 when I played it at Airecon, but all the players were pretty fast-moving.

[raged_norm]

Yeah, I think I prefer fast moving games, particulalry card games.

After Age of Innovation taking an age (ahem - 3+ hours) last night with three, I’m put off playing it again. One player was slow, to the point where the other player and I had planned our turns, back up turns and next turn whilst they were still taking their current turn. It led to a feedback loop that meant they took longer and longer each turn.

It’s put me off playing again, when I can play 2 90 minute games and a small card game in that time, or a lengthier game with a simpler ruleset.

[RogerBW]

I generally feel the same way, unless it’s a long game that drags me in (Firefly, Xia, Imperium CLH).

I’m not quite at Mark Bigney’s dictum of “every game would be better with a timer” but I do think playing promptly is part of good table manners—especially in a game where you can do a lot of preparation before it’s your turn. (Which, I think I’ve said before, is why I sold Alien Frontiers—everything is in the air until the previous player places their last die.)

[EnterTheWyvern]

Having suffered for years with a slow player or 2 and now having a different group I tend to not want to play with people that slow. You have my condolences for suffering that experience.

I also found the longer games are more fun without that drag. Very much personal preference. I have a tendency to enjoy things going longer and getting more built up. I also really enjoy 20-30 minutes of Paris Connection so I’m not consistent.

[Simfers]

Played a couple of games over the Easter extra-long weekend, though not as many as I thought we would, since the weekend was SUPER busy!

Brought Khôra: Rise of an Empire back out of the cupboard for the 52 games in 52 weeks challenge. Hadn’t played in a long time, but man, this is fun. Very unbalanced, though. Some cities are objectively better than others (Sparta, I’m looking in your direction), and the events deck is always punishing you for not focusing on military might. But you have fun the entire time and there’s always something to do. Actually won two games out of three!

That was Saturday, while we were cooking a turkey. Then on Monday, we had a friend over in the evening for a pair of games of Ticket To Ride: Rails and Sails. Always a fun time, that. Maryse actually lost both games! The first by a single point to our friend (I brought up the rear by around 30), but I won the second 118-73 (Maryse)-45 (the friend). I finished all five of my initial tickets which brought me to six pieces, triggering the end of the game, while they both had at least two big ones to go still. Ouch.

[InkyBloc]

It may have been compounded by it being the end of the night and slow players, but for something that looks and feels like just a simple filler, having it go on and on just felt not worth it. And our friends are generally slower players, so in our house, no 5-player Scout is the new rule.

[yashima]

While I generally agree with @RogerBW that playing promptly is good manners for experienced gamers… I can’t fault people who don’t play a lot of games when they indulge me–this is in a private setting of course not a con. Also, I regularly play with several people who suffer AP. One of them my partner. I am the most impatient person I know. It is difficult sometimes. And I’ve been known to complain making them take even longer turns. I try to avoid settings with more than 2 players and games that induce AP in said people.

You could always try yelling my standard remedies at slow players:

• “Hopp hopp!” (classic, like trying to get a bunny to move) (1)
• “Zack! zack!” (classic, represents more urgency than Hopp Hopp) (1)
• The amalgam is also very good and expresses the height of impatience: “Zacki Hoppi!” (1)
• “Yip yip, turn taking!” (this one was added to the collection just recently) (2)

(1) I do not actually recommend unless you are me and have trained your friends to ignore these unseemly expressions of impatience
(2) if you can make it sound really cute and your friends have recently watched AtLA, you might use this one? Maaaayyybe? But you might just have interrupted their turn planning and they then have to start over?

[RogerBW]

Yeah, some of the slow players I know are great friends and so I put up with it. I’m not suggesting any sort of playing standard—I’d probably fail it myself sometimes. Just “don’t take longer than you have to”, really.

[raged_norm]

Holy-Meta Convo Batman!

I’m fine, said player was fully aware of his slowness.

[yashima]

my friends are also aware awareness doesn’t change a thing. at least not for their playing speed.

[Griffster77]

I always if you can’t think of the best thing to do in a reasonable amount of time, just do a pretty good thing!

[Acacia]

@Bondy034

Scout, I’ve also found is not great with three - one good hand will end the round. With four it’s great though, but it’s unfortunate that it has a fairly selective playercount.

Obligatory comment that Scout is also good at 2. But the rules are meaningfully different.

@Bondy034

Archeos Society, I was expecting to like this one but wow! It’s amazing! Best set collection and push your luck card game I’ve played. I’m super sad it seems like it hasn’t sold very well (especially since it makes the emergence of an expansion unlikely ). I’ve not played Ethnos, so I can’t wade into that whole discussion of which is better. But taken on its own this is a simple winner. Can’t wait to explore some of the alternate tracks and professions!

I’ve reached the conclusion that Archeos is better at 2, maybe 3, because the tracks work better than area majority at those counts. Ethnos is better at 4-6 (maybe 3) due to area majority. Generally, Archeos is the more “family” game due to the less competitive nature of the scoring tracks and Ethnos is the more “gamer” game due to the extra layer.

Consensus is also that, since they didn’t really do a lot interesting with the double-sided continent cards for Archeos, why can’t they have a majority scoring side and a track scoring side so that everyone wins? Maybe Archeos will get an expansion with area majority tiles and that will convince me to switch over. Though I’ll regret the loss of the John Howe artwork (not the rest of the production, though…)

I finally read that Mori did, in fact, send the publisher a map of Slovakia as a 3 second mock-up and expected them to make their own board, while the publisher thought the mock-up was it. Thus, Slovakia.

[Acacia]

A cautionary tale about playing 20-questions style games (here, Guess in Ten) with three-year-olds:

What has five legs, lives on the farm, is small, and eats fruit?

You guessed it: The Zebra.

[lalunaverde]

Court of Medici - this is a very abstract card game but this is very clever design.

Facecards - animals, people, inanimate objects. You have a hand of cards. You select 2 cards. One you play in front of you. The other in the middle. The middle cards are pooled and shuffle. Each player has 2 chance to try guessing a pair that another player has made. It’s a funny party game

Age of Steam - we played 3 players with France map and it was tense, difficult, and exciting as usual

Medici - played the new edition and wow they fixed the scoring track. The colour scheme isn’t perfect, but this is way better than the Grail Games edition

Wavelength - another great party game that allows great discussion

Flamme Rouge

Just One

Codenames - yeah. This feels dated on how there’s so much down time. There’s so many party games that I’d rather play.

Waterfall Park - Chinatown reimplementation. The pseudo-hex grid is a great improvement. This allowed better chaining of lots.

Wandering Towers - A Kramer and Kiesling title. Defo in the family games section and can’t fault the game for that. But it was rather meh playing it.

Schadenfreude - great game. What else can I say?

Voodoo Prince - one of the clubmembers who returned from Korea bought this (along with loads of card games). This edition is annoying as it lacks the icons to indicate that 0’s beat 12’s, and that winning with 5’s and 7’s will award the winning player 2 tricks instead of 1. The German edition is better.

Dracula vs Van Helsing - amazing 2 player game. I don’t really consider this as a trick taking game. I would say that this is more comparable to Schotten Totten/Battle Line than a standard trick taker.

This game is easily in my top new games of this year.

Jekyll vs Hyde - I might put this as my top 2 player trick taking game. Need more plays

[Acacia]

Finally notched Sequoia. Hmm.

To rank the small box AllPlay titles so far, I think it’s:

1. Mountain Goats (though this is probably group dependent)
2. Sail (good but also frustrating)
3. Chomp (quite good, but has to compete with Cascadia, Habitats, and Trialblazers, which is a tough situation)
4. Sequoia

You roll five dice, choose two pairs, and the sum of those pairs let you put out two tokens for area majority. The problem I had is you have somewhere between 2 and (someone do the math) permutations of dice combinations in your hand, then you have to look up to the board to cross reference the winning/losing situation on the board spaces, and also track which board spaces are worth more or fewer points at the end of the game. It’s mentally fiddly in a way I found tiresome, when that was the whole game.

Now the tiebreaker rounds suddenly got spicey, that might be the real game right there?

Also, my opponents didn’t really grok the importance of different trees being worth different amounts of points until scoring, so future games could be a bit more tense with competition focused on a smaller group of spots.

It had it’s moments. Maybe destined for the kids games pile. It’s simple/short enough and small enough that it can stay around for further evaluation.

[Captbnut]

Kate and I just played Forks on BGA with @MarkSP.

Have now pledged for a copy. Really nice pub weight game and the art is great, even on BGA.

[Acacia]

How did you pledge? I’ve been trying to get in but missed the campaign.

[MarkSP]

Thank you! Late pledges are on Gamefound (Forks 2nd Edition by Radical 8 Games - Gamefound) super late pledges will just be buying it off me when it arrives, so please don’t feel you have to rush or anything.

[DJCT]

@MarkSP - did you end up doing anything with Lounge of the Ghost Ship? I have fond memories - it is where I got my descriptor after all …

Lounge of the Ghost Ship Game (Play by Post)

You all awaken in a lounge on a ship. A bunch of strangers without recognition in your eyes. A clock chimes and you somehow know, you only have 13 hours to escape… @Captbnut @RossM @Scribbs @Suz @DJCT Welcome to the Ship. It is Round 1- Planning Phase. Currently the Ship is locked down, so you can only explore Locations 1-4. When everyone has chosen somewhere to go we’ll start the Exploration Phase. Any player who hasn’t chosen somewhere by 9pm Wed (GMT) will remain here in the Lounge. No…

[MarkSP]

Thanks, I made a physical copy, but never got around to playtesting it. It would be so hard to playtest a game where the play takes place in different rooms I’ve left it for now.