Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[RogerBW]

Thirsty Meeples in Oxford last night.

We started with First Rat: the rats are going to the moon, with a rocket built from plastic bottles and cornflake packets. All right, the gameplay isn’t a great match for the theme; mostly you’re collecting resources and spending them to place cubes on multiple score tracks (first come most points). Movement is interesting; you can move multiple rats as long as they all land on the same colour of space.

It took me a while to get the hang of this one, and by then it was too late to do well, but I had fun with it and would like to try it again.

Then on to Swindler, which I hadn’t heard of. The core of it is a push-your-luck game: five loot bags you can dig into, each of which has one or more tokens that cause you to lose what you’ve gained so far. You then spend the loot on filling orders, or with a dealer.

Working through the rules was hard work, since they’re ambiguous on such matters as whether a previous turn’s green loot is lost when you pull a green skull (we thought yes, but in that case why all the fuss about separating your current turn’s draw from your previous ones?) and whether an accomplice card can be used just once or several times (one of them is explicitly noted as remaining permanently in the game, so that was a proper case of the exception proving the rule).

We didn’t love the cutesy art (by Lisa Forsch), and the whole thing felt quite random and flavourless at times. Not terrible, but I don’t think we’ll go back to it.

[Whistle_Pig]

Beyond the Sun and Scout in the pub after work. I didn’t do much exploring in BtS, and would have managed two tier-4 techs if I hadn’t made a hash of my research order

[COMaestro]

Played Lost Cities and Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game with my wife. Lost both. The winning streak has ended.

[yashima]

BtS at the pub? Oh my, I hope no spillage. What kind of pub do you have that it has tables that fit a game like that?

[Whistle_Pig]

No drinks were spilled. I think we were using the biggest table in the pub

[MarkSP]

Just finished La Granja with Extra Cards, Broken Roofs and Donkey Songs. Came second - 78, 77, 74, 74
Everyone liked it and wanted to play again. Next- Workers and Buildings

[Acacia]

The interesting thing about Scout is that hands fall into the main archetypes: aggro, control, and midrange.

The bad thing about Scout is that you can’t really play a bad hand well.

Thoughts from ongoing 2p match ups.

[Captbnut]

We played Lunar in the pub tonight with @mistercrayon and his delightful partner.

A team trick taker where one of you plays the suit and the other plays the rank, with an added twist on scoring; 0-3 tricks gets 10 points, 4-5 zero, 6 scores 5 points, 7-8 tricks 10 and 9-12 zero.

Some really interesting push pull decisions with imperfect information.

This can be played with 2 but someone on here said it was terrible, which I can easily believe; there’d be no game.

Really interesting and unusual concept. Interested to see if it has legs.

The Kickstarter upgrades are cool, but comically heavy metal tokens.

[Bondy034]

A bunch of games over the last couple of weeks:

Hadrian’s Wall, another solo game of this. Down to the last couple of forts in the campaign! The end is in sight

Architects of the West Kingdom, 3 player game of this. Felt like a weird one with very little use of the black market. I won but it was a close one!

The Quest for El Dorado, great game of this - I won but the others were 1 turn away at most! Tense fun as usual.

Saboteur x2, after we ended up with 6 players unexpectedly for game night, this was suggested as a fall back as someone had brought it. I don’t love the game but it was fun enough I suppose. The expansion simultaneously makes it more interesting but also more unfair…

Small World Underground, the teach was a bit lacking on this (not mine, though I was trying to help with my faded memory of how the original plays) but we got there in the end. It’s fine but no great improvement over the original (which I sold due to it being simply okay).

MLEM, cute theme about astronaut cats. It plays similarly to something like Celestia, it was fun but not especially remarkable on a first play. Wouldn’t say no to another game though at all.

Silver Bullet, didn’t love this one - you all have a secret hand of cards that no one can see including you and you’re trying to ditch the high ones so you get the lowest score. There’s some action abilities when cards are flipped or discarded also. Fine at best.

Calico always a fave, this one I won despite failing at most of the special goals - cats and buttons gave me a narrow win.

Atlantis Rising, first play of this and - yeah it’s a lot of fun. Not sure how often it’ll hit the table but it was very enjoyable, more going on than something than Pandemic but the core mechanisms are pretty straightforward. We were playing on Lvl 2 and our win was super narrow, which felt about right as none of us had played before. We seemed to always have an abundance of library cards though - would’ve liked to have been pushed to use more of them. We’ll probably play on Lvl 3 next time and see how that changes the vibe.

Corinth, a fairly standard roll and write with dice drafting. It was good but not one I’d seek out to own and I fear it would become samey a bit too fast.

Trails of Tucana x2, I was hunting for a copy of this for awhile so was pleased to have a chance to try it. We all enjoyed it a lot, even requested a second game (though the owner trounced us both times - which is probably a good sign there is some depth there!). Now I’m back to trying to track down a copy for myself - how is this game still so hard to find?!

Blitzkrieg great game of this, my opponent had the tech advantage from early on but I managed 5 tiles behind my screen which gave me a lot of good options. I won by a decent chunk.

Caesar!, good game of this too, I didn’t win this one. Actually it’s probably my worst loss to date - nothing seemed to be going my way and my opponent built up momentum I just couldn’t counter. Fun though!

[raged_norm]

@Captbnut

This can be played with 2 but someone on here said it was terrible, which I can easily believe; there’d be no game.

It was me! It’s a weird open draft with two

[Benkyo]

Two days of gaming at the golden week convention.

Day 1
Slay the Spire 4p: as a big fan of the computer game, this was squarely pitched at me. But it’s a co-op, with a mad rich get richer risk-reward system that is just like the computer game but makes no sense in a connected series of co-op boardgame sessions. My character got so overpowered almost right out of the gate, it was weird.

Mage Knight 3p: good fun as always. Snowballing issue meant we ended the game a little early.

Day 2
Galaxy Trucker 3p: amazing as always.

Innovation 2p: teaching game.

Burgle Bros 3p: I don’t hate this, despite it being a co-op with seriously wonky design around the guard manipulation.

Cthulhu Wars 4p: I read the description of the god I rolled for randomly and I hated everything about it. But I decided to persevere, and play to its strengths outside my comfort zone, and totally ran away with the game. Was quite funny, really. I didn’t choose to battle at all.

Mottainai 2p X2: teaching games. 2nd game really hit home for the first time how big the backorder bonus can be if you set up for it.

[lalunaverde]

Solid con!

[EnterTheWyvern]

@Benkyo

I read the description of the god I rolled for randomly and I hated everything about it.

Which god? The colour will do if you can’t remember the name

[Benkyo]

Red - spread everywhere.

[lalunaverde]

Ah. This is why I should have written things down day-by-day. I already forgot some of what I played on Friday

Through the Desert - absolute banger for the starting game of the con

Q.E.

Modern Art - aaahhh what a world of difference playing it against people who knows how to play MA. My conservative style backfired - buying is way more viable as ppl dont go crazy on bids.

Pax Renaissance

Snowdonia - elegant game for a Euro! Dont like it enough. Can be calculated easily.

Dawn of Ulos - a weirdo Acquire style design. I’d rather play Acquire.

MarraCash - been called an absolute wanker by qwertymartin. That is all.

Pax Porfiriana - 3 player and manage to pull off a Pax Porfiriana win! Im President Diaz’s most loyal stooge.

Challengers: Beach Cup - even with 4, it still works. I do prefer this over the OG

Ethnos

Dicke Dämonen - ooohhh man. Finally played this OOP game. Highly recommend. It’s in my PnP list now.

Dokitto Ice - Good trick taker. You prefer to win 3 times but not more, and have the right modifiers.

Indonesia - my con is now complete with a game of Indonesia.

Lifeboats - vote which boat gets a leakage. Vote which ship goes forward. Vote which passenger from a leaking boat to be tossed to the water. A game for scums like me

Pax Emancipation - ah. My suspicions are right. Phil Eklund titles do feel lacking compare to titles with Matt Eklund in them. See also HF4A below.

High Frontier 4 All - man. 6.5 hour game with just the standard rules. It is indeed a sanbox game where you go around and have fun industrialising and colonising the solar system. Not much depth, but the logistics puzzle is fun. If Im gonna play a heads down game, I’d like it to be strong on thematic immersion.

My brain was fried that I forgot to take a photo

Impulse - 3 players and it was great!!

Tigris & Euphrates x2 - banger! Finally played a T&E game with qwertymartin.

Through the Desert (again) - another 5 player game.

Tatsu - weird trick taker. Hard to explain the twists.

Pikoko - okay. The twist here is great. You see everyone’s hand except for yours. Full of double thinking

Big Top - auction game where you play a game of bingo with your cards. You can only add a token on a spot if you bid with that amount. So, a 7 will only be covered if I bid in the auction with a 7.

[yashima]

I played another round of Spirit Island.
I wanted to see how Hearth Vigil and Thunderspeaker would synergize, and to switch things up a little I played my first game with an aspect card, giving Thunderspeaker the Warrior aspect.

I chose Brandenburg-Prussia Level 2 as opponent because I expected the spirits to be pretty strong in working together and I wanted the game to be a slight challenge.

It turns out I was right about the synergy. Both spirits can move with the Dahan and can move the Dahan and spread with the Dahan. And they swept the board with presence pushing around the invaders as they went. Hearth Vigil’s ability to have Dahan attack before invaders eliminating them before they deal any damage is very strong.

Hearth Vigil almost exclusively used the growth option that gave it a new card and allowed it to place a presence. It helped that there is a card that allows target spirit to reclaim a card which has exactly the right elements to trigger Hearth Vigil‘s innate that allows Dahan to „shoot first“. Very early on, I took a major power that then took me a long time to actually play but when I did I think it decided the game. I held it until there was a use to defend 3 adjacent lands—which happened when the Level 3 invader card from the Brandenburg-Prussia level 2 setup came into play. By that time Hearth Vigil‘s board was almost cleared except for 2 coastal lands.

Thunderspeaker suffered from the usual balancing act between spreading itself quickly vs getting more cards. It feels noticable that it is an older spirit design; her only way to gain cards are on a reclaim turn. Most newer spirits seem to have some way of obtaining or reclaiming cards in various ways (her reclaim spot is far down the „plays“ track). Thunderspeaker has a pretty fixed rhythm at the start unless there is another spirit that can help her along in some way by giving her additional presence placements or power gains. Hearth Vigil could not do that. Still with the Incarna that deals 1 damage when moving and the Warrior ability (that rarely triggered) and the additional mobility gained from Hearth Vigils moving of the Dahan, she was quite a danger.

Together these two spirits were closely following wherever the invaders went, lonely invaders got obliterated so fast and even villages and cities proved easy to fight off in larger numbers. I had one turn where defense was not possible and I gained 2 blight on the island. But that was just the calm before the storm.

Thunderspeaker found one of my favorite major powers. I forget the name but the small invaders get „turned“ and fight alongside the Dahan and take damage from the villages and cities. This is perfect in fighting off a big accumulation of invaders when you couldn‘t prevent a build action.

This is what the board looked like for the penultimate turn just before Ravage. This was where I played the major powers. I got lucky and the event had skipped the exploration of that round. Ravage was on mountains and wetlands as you can see. Building was in the forest.

Next round I chased the invaders out of the forests and the game was almost over. I could probably have pushed Brandenburg Prussia even higher with this kind of synergy. The early Level 3 Invader card was actually somewhat helpful in winning the game as it posed less problems for me (coming on the heels of a Wetlands card, sharing one of the territories) than a level 2 escalation would (the escalation on the next card is what cost me another turn).

Still a 10/10 game. Every. Time.

[Acacia]

In Three Parts: Flamecraft

There’s a lot to like here. Foremost is the art. I love the art. The colors are wonderful. The heart of it, though, is that everything seems so alive. Everyone is in motion, you can almost hear the bubble of conversation rising from the table. Something here is just a cut above.

Regarding play, we’ve got something of a worker placement - recipe fulfillment game. You go to shops to collect resources, then later go to shops to use those resources to cast enchantments, which is where the meat of the points come from. There’s a few interesting twists - let’s compare to Waterdeep. In that game, collection spaces are static and exclusive, but your quests are your own to finish in your own time. Here, spaces are communal (just pay whoever is there before you, a la Istanbul et al) and dynamic. You can add dragons to spaces, and each enchantment strengthens the space, so that shops evolve over time. Something of communal engine/tableau building?

At first blush, this may make it seem stupidly loose. However, now the quests (enchantments) are public. So that recipe you’re trying to concoct may disappear from under your nose before you can get to it. So in that sense, it inverts Waterdeep.

Second part:
So there’s a few other things going on here to keep the game interesting. Fundamentally, it’s a race to cast those enchantments while eking out some points wherever else you can. Fundamentally, though, this feels like a kids game. I’m not sure I’d recommend it without kids around.

Third part:
So, kids. My players are only 3 and 6. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that we’ve been trying to ferret out what is going on with 6, as she’s stumbled on a lot of games, and are finally homing in on visual processing issues (as in, visual impairment that lives in the brain instead of the eye). So games with busy boards and/or spatial elements (i.e., most every kids game) are exhausting to her, like she’s listening to a podcast through heavy static.

I’m kinda keen on this one. Each shop is distinct and pretty easy to parse, the icons for what you collect are in the same place every time. And then you have a card (enchantment) with the resources you are trying to collect. The way the game is in distinct pieces may be a real boon to her.

The game itself is too complex - there’s some text and some moving parts that are probably more 7-8yo. Reading is going to unlock a lot of games, I think. But for now I’ve been distilling down a simplified version of the game, ignoring things like “fancy dragons” and “shop abilities” to just focus on collecting resources at shops, adding dragons to those shops to increase output, and collecting sets to complete enchantments. I think that will work for the 3yo intellectually and the 6yo visually and I’m excited to give it a whirl.

They are excited as well, as the resources fit into the dragon tokens’ mouths.

[lalunaverde]

Games session with @EnterTheWyvern

We first played Fresh Fish. Full of disasters, misery, and hilarity.

Then we played 2 games of Paris Connection. Dubbed as a “Cube Rails party game”, it remains interesting with difficult decisions that comes in a short duration that doesnt exceed 30 mins

[yashima]

How do difficult decisions mesh with 30 minutes?
What kind of Schnellentscheider do you play with?

[lalunaverde]

Not as satisfying as Chicago Express, I admit. But Chex is the GOAT it is preferable to other 30min games.

Fresh Fish is also the same. Around 1hr and we got frustration and mindbending stuff going on