I think what it has about it outside of other games of the sort is this Marco Polo like mad individual rule break. In a way just by not sitting next to someone having a power for you to be jealous of maybe it loses a bit of something that can’t fully be explained by mechanics?
2 Likes
At Thirsty Meeples in Oxford last night:
We started tonight with current hotness Courtisans (at least it’s being talked about here). Six families are seeking favour at court, and your faction wants to be in charge; so each turn you split your three cards between the Queen’s table (favour will end up positive, negative or neutral), your own tableau, and another player’s tableau. At the end of the game, each card in the tableau scores +1, 0 or -1 based on the family’s favour status. There are some complications (the assassin can remove another card in the same tableau, the spy is played face-down so that you don’t know which family they’re influencing) but that’s most of the game, and it was great fun. (Also a pleasing tapestry-style “board” for the Queen’s table, and foil in the cards, because I’m a sucker for that stuff.) Likely to buy.
The Grizzled next, which I hadn’t played for a while. Still very atmospheric; still very hard to win (and we didn’t). Not a game I want to own, but it’s good to play it now and again.
Next, a very shopworn copy of Chariot Race (the edge of each player’s card needs three clips, and we had a total of eight, of which one was broken). It felt to me like the old FASA Circus Imperium in miniature, though basically it’s dice manipulation. We had fun but I think didn’t love it; I would really like to try Rush ‘n’ Crush with these players, because I think it does the same thing (limited lane changes, trading off speed and damage) better.
Finally, Deadly Dowagers, a game of social climbing by nobbling one’s husband at the right moment (but avoiding too much Infamy). I fell for this one instantly; it’s quite explicit about its murderous approach and encouraged us to be similarly cynical (“I’m going to give the dear Baron a Natural Death, if you know what I mean”). Likely to buy.
8 Likes
Great day of gaming today!
Dorfromantik, first play. Based on the video game, which was quite a fun game, very chill. And this seems pretty close. Draw a tile, add it to the map, rinse and repeat. You get points by completing tasks, where you make groups of a particular type of tile (towns, rivers, train tracks, grain, and forests). You can’t really fail, you are just trying to improve your last score. There’s a campaign sheet where you can unlock various tiles and secret boxes. Plays pretty easily, rules are fairly simple. We…didn’t do so well, we scored 93, so that was the lowest level. Room for improvement!
Lancaster, not a particularly well known game, but it’s always been one of my favourites. I guess you would call it a work placement game. Each round starts with you placing your knights in various counties. But you can bumped out by a higher knight. The most unique aspect is that there are three laws that are used each round, giving rewards for certain conditions. But before the laws take effect, you get to vote on adding three new laws. Often a new law only benefits only one player, so obviously the other two players vote it down. But you can gain voting cubes to sway the vote in your favour.
It was a pretty close game, only about 8 points between all three of us. I had a bad final round, someone else took the last nobleman I needed for points (it was the last one on the board). Usually you pick up noblemen from placing in the counties, but you can also start a fight with the French and get an immediate reward. One of which is “take any nobleman”. Thinking back, I probably should have taken the first player action, and then I could have nabbed it. Lost out on another space, just needed one more squire to displace another player (you can add squires when placing a knight to add to their strength). And, stupidly, I missed out on another placement that would have given me my last castle extension, and given me end game points for having the most. That would have given me another 8 points, and the winner would have only scored half that. May not have been enough anyway. Felt like I missed out on any points in the round.
Rolling Realms, a game designed by Jamey Stegmaier during the covid pandemic. Each player gets eleven cards, each with their own dice based mini-game. Each round, you randomly choose three to use, and everyone uses the same cards. Each card is based on a game by Stonemaier Games, like Wingspan, Tapestry, Euphoria. I dont think I own a Stonemaier game anymore. Anyway, you don’t need to know anything about the actual game. So, each turn the two extremely chunky dice and everyone uses the same two values. You have to choose two different cards to play each die value. Each card has it’s own way to score stars, which are victory points. The cards also have ways to gain resources (pumpkins, hearts, coins) which allow you to alter die values, or even get a third (virtual) die to use. All the mini games are fairly simple and varied. We had a good time with this one. I lost badly…
Harvest X 2. Best filler EVAR! We had a minor stuffup in the first game. We got to the end and someone said “I thought there were more of the tornado cards?”. And she was right, the game got spilt in the bag and we were missing about a dozen cards. Disaster!
Five Three Five, a quick shedding game to finish the day. This is a pretty good, colourful game, easy enough to play.
7 Likes
Love Dorf.
We got 113 first time out. It’s just the right mix of chill and thinking.
4 Likes
After cleaning up my shelves a little, I moved my gaming back to the room where the games are stored. So I might get a little variety because more games are easier accessed. Before I had stacks of games in the dining room because it has the better table for multiplayer. But currently it‘s mostly solos.
Games being played:
- Beyond the Sun — I never really tried the solo mode after I got the expansion. I did badly. I set up again and will hopefully play that later
- Harmonies — patterns and building something nice. So good. I want expansions though. More variety. Just MORE!
- Naturopolis — I still lose so badly sometimes. But even when losing it is fun.
- Evergreen — first games with the expansion. Such a neat game that I almost exclusively play solo. Who needs Mitspieler?
- The Guild of Merchant Explorers — It is fine. For getting it out for a few games every other year.
7 Likes
Puerto Rico - okay. The Left-Right binding is getting annoying now. New Frontiers did this better. By the same criteria, one shouldnt bother with Carnegie
Dicke Dämonen 2x - brainy filler. Just how I like it
Cat in the Box - HEAR YE! HEAR YE! We had a round where we didnt caise a paradox!!
The Rich and the Good - hilarious as usual. It was a bear market where we sell more than usual. We have more minus cards than pluses. And we keep playing these minuses for their full strength.
Cabanga!! - Cabanga, duuude!!!
Feed the Kraken - okay. I do like this more than Secret Hitler. Theres more control here than I thought.
Not Alone - it’s been aeound 6 years since I have played this game. Very interesting and tense on the double guessing of your opponents
8 Likes
Games played recently… since I decided to put my solo gaming right next to my shelves–surprisingly I’ve been picking out games that I’ve not played at all or not for a long time. This was the plan but plans don’t usually work out once battle is commenced.
So:
- Guild of Merchant Explorers: total of 7 recent games now. And still: it’s fine. I like the feeling of exploration. But it’s still basically a fluffed up R&W with added fiddly because you place the little figures instead of just crossing stuff out on a sheet of paper. Also it is quickly getting repetitive. As long as I am not direly in need of shelf-space I have games I need to get rid of first, a lot of them, but… also still not keen on multiplaying this one unless we really really need filler material which rarely happens
- Sprawlopolis with Beaches expansion (3 plays): I managed a scenic route with a Superhighway of 33 road segments–I ignored the other goals mostly though I almost managed to meet the Park Hopping requirements. Lovely expansion. Much better than the one-card expansions I have and never used. Recommend.
- Limes (1 play): new solo tile laying I picked up when I saw several people mention it on the various solo-player outlets. It’s fine on a first game. More games need to show if it might be a little on the easy side for a solo. I am used to getting beat up by the *-polis games after all. Such games have a hard time grasping my attention. This might suffer the same fate as Chomp… the decisions just didn’t have the tension I am used to from solo-tile-laying. The final few turns just went by without any “Oh no I should have done something else earlier moment.” It might be that I just lack comparison in scores. Since it is really quick, I’ll find that out soon enough.
Darwin’s Journey (2 plays): I didn’t play this since first receiving it and failing to really learn it more than a year ago. I was severely disappointed not so much in the game but in my backing something I could clearly see I shouldn’t have backed. But also in the game. But I always meant to give this another chance because I realized that most of this was me being pissed of at randomly backing something as retail therapy during the pandemic.
So… my 2 solos against the easy bot left me with wildly different scores. The first one suggested the game wasn’t all that hard. I had 100 points more than the bot. On the second play I did far worse–I still won but only by a few points.
So this is a worker placement game where throughout the game new more powerful or even completely new worker spots are added while you try to move your explorers and your ship along their various tracks for lots and lots of bonus chaining. Also workers get upgraded with new color seals that allow them to go to more different or powerful worker spots and generate even more bonusses. I generally really like bonus chaining. So that is a good thing. And the worker upgrading is neat. Less fascinating than it could be but overall a pretty simple mechanism that is very much at the heart of the game and I have not seen this kind of thing elsewhere. So another good thing. The solos play pretty fast. Just 5 rounds with 4-5 actions (the biggest difference in game 1 was that I acquired my 5th worker on the 1st and not the 3rd round) and the bot is kind of okay to manage decisions are easy to figure which is a plus, too.
Overall it is still a big convoluted Euro thing but it is different from most of the big convoluted Euro things I have I think so for now I might set it up again. Not necessarily a great game but it has some interesting decisions and a good ark and the solo only just overstays its welcome. But since the rounds are fixed and there is no “early win” condition, it plays around 40-60 minutes plus a good amount of setup/teardown.
And finally Hoplomachus Victorum. Since I now have a table where I can keep games setup for longer, I thought it was time to try this one again. Playing all 4 acts is a lengthy endeavour and I am not yet done. But mostly that is because–confession time–I’ve been cheating and fudging die rolls like I was the cat who thinks nobody can see her when she sneaks into places she shouldn’t. I should have been dead after Act II I guess. I want to like the arena skirmishes that make up most of the gameplay of this. And I do kind of. I just really really hate combat dice resolution.
I roll 4 dice and see four empty faces staring back at me and that is one of my best units. Empty die faces have to be the saddest thing in gaming.
I probably chose my hero poorly. I thought Bingqing looked nice but she is a defensive character and that totally doesn’t match my playstyle which goes roughly like this: the best defense is if the opposing unit is no longer there.
Also her home region–Kunlun–is at the far right corner of the map and the Primusses I had to battle for Act I to Act III were all located in the left half of the map. So during the first 12 weeks I couldn’t really pick and choose the simple fights but I had to run straight west just to make it to the first boss on time. That was the start of the suckage that followed.
I checked the BGG forums and mostly I found people complaining that the game is hard even on the easiest of easy modes. The best clue I got was that I should use tactics on bloodshed events (where units go to die) and keep my hero away from sports events (where units go to show off so you can recruit them) to preserve their hitpoints and that I should be trying my best to remove Venusians into the bag or I will get lots of Banes on the Scion fight (Act IV finale, Banes are BAD). But the way my game has gone, I will barely make it to Vesuvius in time from all the way back at the west end where I now am.
I am slowly seeing fights becoming a little easier as I start to understand how various unit abilities interact and how to use units including my super-defensive hero. But I’ve retconned SO many turns saying to myself “I would have anticipated this, if I was better at this game.”
I also made a bunch of mistakes how the opponents use tactics because I had overlooked the adjacency rule this made things harder for me. Then I forgot to add the extra units for at least half of the events in Act II because… I just forgot. This made the game easier obviously.
Each act has about 6-8 fights I would say. Each fight takes me a about half an hour, sometimes more. So each act is probably 3-4 hours for me. I am willing to try again armed with the knowledge about the flow I have acquired in this “play through”. Then I’ll pick another hero and I think I will handpick the Primuses. The game is enough of a challenge without adding “race across the map” as another difficulty.
PS: the plastic health chips REALLY suck. They are slippery and prone to topple a completely healthy unit across the map. But I was cheap when I backed this–to my regret. Luckily, we have poker chips at home.
5 Likes
Played a whopping 3 boardgames on Saturday (one of them twice), which explains how long they took
Started with Beyond the Sun. Absolutely loved this, so did the people I played it with. Really smooth, elegant with just enough dickishness in space. Shot to the top of my games.
Age of Innovation next. I want to like this, and I do enjoy playing it, but twice now it’s just been Terra Mystica but longer with a randomised setup. I have a sneaking suspicion I’ll just prefer to play Gaia Project when we need one of these. I’ve spent an extra £30 on an insert to try and speed up setup to something reasonable, and I don’t really want to make a huge loss upon selling it, but it’s taking up time I could be playing Beyond the Sun, or La Granja. Also it’s so heavy I can’t really take it to the club for a jaunt. Hmmmmm.
Then Beyond the Sun again, because everyone wanted to play it a second time.
Finally, Wonder Bowling in the pub. Hit a box with a ball on a stick to knock down a specific number of pins. Superb.
10 Likes
After not having played Beyond the Sun for a while I recently got it out for 2 solos and continue to love it. It is one of those games that I knew I would like and liked from the first game. It‘s just so snappy. Place your worker execute the action, produce. Next. Even with 4 players the situation doesn‘t change completely from turn to turn, there is a lot to be gleaned from the board state and the known information. The amount of random in the game is just right I think. I just like tech-trees I think and the way it opens up once you get into the level 2 and 3 tech… I tend to not go into space enough for most games… unless it feels like my opponents are also neglecting it.
6 Likes
I finished Act IV of the Hoplomachus game „defeating“ the Scion (well I did but I wouldn‘t have gotten there). I am relieved I could put it away now and play something else. I want to try again. Soonish. With everything I learned yesterday and today. And hopefully less cheating. This was definitely a learning experience. I so want to like those tactical fights but I have yet to find a game that I really enjoy. I think I need to head over to BGG to figure out what it is that I really want and what other games provide it.
6 Likes
I’m way behind on reporting the games we’ve been playing, though mostly it’s just been games of Lost Cities and Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game, with victories going back and forth between the two of us. Hasn’t helped that our last couple of planned game days with friends have fallen through.
My wife and I played a couple games of Kingdomino, both of which she won.
There’s been a couple games of Ethnos, where we each won a game.
We had a couple of 3-player games of Lords of Vegas. In the latest, despite having casinos with the best odds for paying out nearly the whole game, I came in last because those cards just weren’t coming out. My brother-in-law won this one. The other game I managed a come from behind victory because the cards finally did start coming out!
Had one game of Tyrants of the Underdark using the Dragon and Elemental half-decks, which I won by a good margin, but I just had some better draws letting me buy more expensive cards overall.
Biggest news, however, is my wife and I have played two games of Through the Desert, which has been fun. Plays very quick, though setup takes a bit. Tough decisions on which caravans to expand each turn, whether to try for sectioning off part of the map or just go for some quick oasis points, whether to try to cut off an opponent, etc. Only had the two 2-player games so far, I think it’ll be even better with more people.
6 Likes
Scout - funny 6 player setup. Less cards but the game didn’t feel degenerate.
MarraCash - auctions and nastiness in Marrakesh. One of Stefan Dorra’s best title
Overbooked - game about fitting airlines passengers into your planes. Decent game. It was fun
Cascadero - more Cascadero. I am liking this. Smart and cutthroat
Glory to Rome - The Forum building allows me to auto-win by having one client of every type. I was ONE client away from winning 
Cascadero - it was at this game where I finally saw the light. Great game!! This is definitely one of Knizia’s best. I have a feeling that it is better than Babylonia (which is also a great game) but below Through the Desert
6 Likes
Oh man, I’ve avoided Cascadero but it’s getting hype!
(OK, it’s flavour of the month on the Knizia Discord which is the place it would be flavour of the month)
4 Likes
Still waiting on my copy of Cascadero …
Played some stuff today
Played Dorfromantik again, did a bit better than last time, but I think we can do better. We scored 120 and unlocked the first box. Although any score would have given us the tick we needed for the unlock. We still stuffed up a few tasks.
Tiny Turbo Cars, remember those puzzles where you slide around tiles in a grid? This uses that idea to select what your cars do. You can move forward, diagonally, jump, and fire missiles at the other players. Lots of stuff to run into as you go. So you’re trying to plan your route and program your controller. But you don’t want to be the last one to finish your puzzle, because you’ll lose one of your batteries (which track damage from running into things, including other cars).
The Lost Code, a great deduction game. I completely failed to figure anything out. The winner of the game got five out of six numbers correct, and he was already leading on the score track, so he beat us by a good 25 points or so. Realised we missed a rule where if you play with less than four players (we had three) you still set up the tiles as if you had four players. Obviously everyone can see the missing player tiles.
Nova Luna, always a favourite. Nearly stole the win, had just one token left. Doh.
The Number, a fun little filler. You write down a three digit number in secret, than flip them all over and arrange them in numeric order. If one of the digits in your number is repeated in a lower number, you lose and score nothing for that turn. If your number is ok, you write down the first digit for that turn, and you get a bonus if yours was the highest number. And you cross off your digits from your number, and you can’t use them again. Fun game!
Harvest X 2, always time for our favourite filler!
12 Chip Trick, a trick taking game with only 12 cards. When you win a trick, you take one of the cards played and place it in front of you. Once someone has played all their cards, you add up each card you have, either in front of you or in your hand. You’ve gone bust if you get over 21. So a lot of the game is trying to shed the higher cards so you don’t take them. So if you play the highest card (the 12), you win the trick, which gives you first choice of the other cards played. And you probably don’t want the 12 – that card seemed to move around a lot.
7 Likes
Some games over the last couple of weeks:
Skulls of Sedlec x8, taught this one to my wife and she’s really been enjoying it as a quick little thing to play here and there - so we’ve played it a bunch. I really need the expansions but they’re hard to find in Aus. 
Nut x2, I saw this is getting a reprint which I’m pleased by. It’s one of the stronger ones from this line of little ‘Pack O’ Game’ games. Particularly at 2. There’s not lots to it, but it’s quick and engaging enough.
Verdant, got my butt kicked at this one - I spent way too much effort collecting furniture and pets for my house and neglected growing my plants. Appropriately, I was punished.
The Castles of Burgundy, great game of this, but gosh it’s in need of coloured baggies for the tiles! One day I’ll cave and buy the BGG set of bags for it. Oh and we played with three and I learnt that the goods are worth more points each with more players! It’s clearly been a very long time since I played it with more than 2.
Ezra and Nehemiah, finally got this to the table with other humans and it’s excellent. Brand new humans also - I’ve recently connected with a bunch of gamers through Facebook groups, both to supplement our regular Wednesday game night and for more consistent weekend gaming. And it’s been rather successful so far, lots of really nice folks, plus a chance to play longer games like this one that would be unfeasible for a weeknight! It was long but didn’t feel too long, even with 4 players. I think I made best use of the Torah teaching/tech tree section which gave me the win - managed a decent little combo early that I exploited constantly for most of the game. I was also the only one to have acquired all my workers by the end, which helped. No one went heavy into walls though, so our final city was a bit patchy…
6 Likes
There’s a ton of them now. I’d suggest just doing an order direct from ButtonShy. (You may also be able to pick up extra wallets for them, if you do that.)
1 Like
- On going series of Daybreak on BGA remains awesome at two—even async. We switched to harder setup and take challenge cards now. Solos are also great. Far easier though. Still awesome almost 70 plays later.
- Harmonies remains ever close to my table and now sits at 22 plays—mostly solo.
- Cascadia—still trying to play through all the Landmarks scenarios. Today I completed #7 on 2nd and #8 on first try.
- Dorfromantik—after a break we continued our 2 player campaign. We finally scored over 300 points. It‘s fun. But I won‘t mind returning our friends‘ copy to them. I prefer the boardgame over the computer game.
- Tamashii Chronicle of Ascend—it has been a while. I had to relearn a bunch of rules. I played the 3rd scenario. It was fine. I have a feeling I should play another game soon. I got a really cool unlock for this game and maybe the game is better than fine, I just havent seen enough of it?
Yesterday we had friends over with their kids and after some nice cheese and wine and ice cream for dessert… „Should we play a game?“
I had prepared some ideas for 6 players. It was a bit late and I wasn‘t in the mood for teaching Libertalia to a fresh set of people. Planet Unknown is the far easier teach and I have played it far more often. For 6+ players I really prefer either party games or games with synchronous play.
About halfway through the game the son declared he was now sure he was going to win. I was sure he wasn‘t, but teenagers… he kept repeating it so I more or less told him to keep his gloating down a little.
The game went on for a bit longer and I got extremely lucky with my last few tile placements. I only had 3 open spots on my planet in the end and was able to collect ALL the asteroids. I managed to save 5 of the pods and even scored decently on the water track. I won 1 and tied the other goal.
So I am tallying points and we get to the civ cards and I ask everyone for their points. I had 0. I almost always choose some kind of immediate bonus. Most people had 2 or 3. The son proudly waves his and exclaims „40! See, I win!“ He had collected all 4 of the Trade Agreement Civ cards that give you points and more if you have more of those cards. Which at 4 cards says 10. He meant that every card was supposed to give him 10 points. He thought it was overpowered but he never questioned he might be misreading the card… English is not his native language and he only turned 15 today so I wouldn‘t expect perfect knowledge. His 13 year old sister was able to ask for words she didn‘t know. He was disappointed for a moment I guess… but I doubt he learned the lesson that if something seems to good to be true it probably isn‘t what you think it is… in any case getting all 4 of those cards is quite a good play and I told him that. But it was not the overpowered insta-win he had hoped for.
When I counted up the points, I saw with some horror that I was far in the lead. So I announced that because I had played so often I had only participated for playing not for points. I think this was a good decision because discounting me everyone clustered in the mid 40s except for my Spirit Island Mitspielerin who somehow completely messed up her planet. With the scores mostly close, everyone felt good and I got to play an awesome game without feeling bad about having won yet again. So the daughter ended up with the win.
Overall one I will always happily put Planet Unknown on the table for 6 players especially when there isn‘t that much time left in the day and the play experience and play styles vary wildly.
6 Likes
Vinhos Deluxe (2010 Reserve) - played the 2010 rule set thought that this is one of the good Lacerda titles. I like the Gallerist and Lisboa. Kanban is borderline.
Vinhos is pretty fun where it is about action efficiency. You only have 12 actions the entire game. And so you have to use those 12 actions (plus free actions) to buy vineyards, wineries, hire enologists and such. Both to sell your barrels for cash or export them overseas for points or present them in the Fair to improve your reputation. The trade off between the decisions is very good.
As usual, this is a Lacerda. He creates a great game during the early development stages, but found that the game is just too good, and so he puts so much bullshit on them. And then Eagle Gryphon publishes it in a deluxe edition and rake in the money from his fans. Fans who claim that he is their favourite designer, but dont really play any of his games more than twice per year. Vinhos 2010 is the same.
I didn’t like the Bank mechanism. A very craft way of creating two currencies. In the rules, there are only cash or barrels. But in practice, with the Bank, there’s no single “cash” currency. Instead, it’s two: “virtual cash” (in your bank acct) or “physical cash” (cardboard chits in front of you). These two distinct currencies interact with the system in different ways. The Bank serves as the bridge where you can convert between your two currencies in a one-to-one basis.
I went home and read the simpler “2016 Vintage” rule set and I am impressed. Lacerda end up making the right decisions in the end. He cut out the Bank, and reformed the Fair mechanism in a way that I find more interesting than 2010. It seems that majority opinion is that the 2010 is the better game, but I have never really aligned with BGG opinions.
Pax Renaissance - 4 players. Friend is keen and taught two newbies. We had a strange opening flop where you don’t really capture any kings in early game. And so, no one has any kings at early game. I manage to grab some patron icons to win with the patron victory as there’s only 1 card left in the game, but the player on my right manage to get enough kings for an Imperial Victory.
Mega Civilization: Western Empires - I’ve done it. I’ve played THE civilization game. Here’s the SUSD review. This game pretty much killed whatever desire I have left on playing these so-called “grand epic games”, which aren’t really epic, to be honest. (18xx not included in this bucket. 18xx are the real deal).
With 8 or 9 people, this is my choice of game. Oh, and it’s designed by Tresham himself. (EDIT: Ah. With 8, I’d rather play a 3+ hr game of Cthulhu Wars. With 9, they’ll release a 9 to 11 player neoprene map 
)
7 Likes
Stephenson’s Rocket - 3 players and it’s still great.
Applejack - this is a pretty chill Uwe. I don’t need it and I’m not yearning to play it again though.
Rebuilding Seattle - here I thought I am slowly mellowing out. Where Euros are kinda fun to play again. Polyominoes too. But no, I was completely bored playing this from start to finish.
Bacon - Tichu-esque. Seems like this is the game I would grab if I want to play Tichu faster or couldn’t play Tichu because we don’t have 4 players
luz - eh? WTF is this?
Vinhos Deluxe - we played with the 2016 Vintage rule set and it confirmed my suspicions. Lacerda cut out the uninteresting bits out. This is the better game. Yet, I don’t see this to be more interesting than The Gallerist nor even Lisboa. I would liek to try On Mars still as a friend offered to teach. Other than that, I am so done with Lacerda. Despite trying out the best titles, these games just aren’t worth it in the long run. Splotter games are much easier to play and have vastly better depth. I have around 20 plays of FCM and the base game alone is still fresh.
Turn the Tide - the best laugh I had for a long while. One of the best card games ever.
Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: the Card Game - yes. It’s a trick taker with the Labyrinth theme. The art is amazing. But the game is your standard trick taker. Didn’t hate it but hard to make itself stand out in the current tsunami of trick takers today.
Money - club member brought Playte edition of Knizia’s Money. For a filler, it is a heavy hitter
Eye My Favourite Things - Our resident Le Collectionneur brought the Japanese edition of this game. One of you might have backed this on Kickstarter along with the String Railway Collection
Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition - okay. This game killed OG Terraforming Mars - although I am bored of the latter by now. Still, the former buried it like an undertaker,. Faster and it uses the more dynamic RFTG simultaneous action selection, this is the better game. However, it still suffers from its fundamental flaw of having a massive deck. The card draws are still volatile and therefore, the game has the tendency of skewing who wins. But, eh, I like it.
Mottainai - Mottainai, my love. After playing Glory to Rome several times, playing Mot just feels better. It’s sleek and the rules flow much better than GTR. I will keep both though.
Millions of Dollars - I was hyped about this game thanks to Quinn’s review back in the old days of SUSD. And wow. It’s booooring. The players on the table all like tabletalk and negotiation. But, the problem is, we played more of these heads up games. Goodcritters is just better. Intrigue is more cutthroat and brutal. Zoo Vadis… is Zoo Vadis. We are nosier playing Bohnanza. I’m just so disappointed…
Bottle Imp - nah. This isn’t a good trick taker. Swingy and not in a good way.
Megaland - it’s basically a souped up Diamant. But less snappy and less interesting than Diamant. You just can’t trust Ryan Laukat.
Tichu - we finally played this again. Tichus and Grand Tichus were called. Nerve-racking and exhilirating. Great game.
Foodie Forest - I’ve been told that this was an old game called Too Many Cooks. It’s a pretty decent Knizia, but with more plays, I don’t like how the scoring works and how Left-Right Binding is so prominent.
11 Likes