I did mentioned why I liked it and which games I would prefer playing at which player count 
2 Likes
Iâm not disagreeing, I thought it was good: I really liked the idea of a 3v3 climber.
However Kate and the boys hated it so much I never got to find out if it was good
1 Like
Well thatâs a lovely-looking production. Does the game measure up? (Edit: I guess thatâs a yes?)
I see that Roger has played too, and a few others have ordered/purchased. I shall check some reviews!
3 Likes
Had one friend and his daughter over for a small birthday celebration (his wife was busy). It only felt right that we finally get the game they gifted me for my birthday last year to the table: Cthulhu: Death May Die!
I played Ahmed, my wife was Elizabeth, and our friend was Sister Beth. We played the first scenario, as none of us had played the game before, so it seemed an obvious starting point.
Things started out well. Sister Beth moved into the first hallway and cleared out the Cultists there. However a Byakhee moved to her space due to the Mythos card. So Elizabeth shot it to bits on her turn. Ahmed took the opportunity to sprint to the lab in the back.
By the next turn, everyone was at a lab and we had all three destroyed by the next turn. Ahmed booked it through a bunch of fire to get downstairs to a fourth lab. Sister Beth got there next turn and destroyed it, which brought Cthulhu into play. We quickly eliminated itâs second stage and it moved upstairs. Meanwhile, Elizabeth cleared out enemies upstairs.
We started burning through our remaining sanity due to Cthulhuâs end of turn effects, which meant Sister Beth was likely only going to get one more turn. Ahmed was able to run upstairs and lure the Old One into the hallway by the staircase, setting up a massive explosion for Elizabeth to ignite using her Pyromania insanity. Beth then made a last ditch effort, maxing out her brawler skill and running to that hallway, pulling the Star-Spawn and some Cultists with her. Two attacks later all the enemies were dead and Cthulhu was on its fourth stage, though the Sister went insane in the process.
Unfortunately, this moved Cthulhu away from the hallway trap. On the bright side, that explosion would have killed Ahmed, so yay for me. Elizabeth moved and used her Marksman ability to damage Cthulhu, dealing 8 damage over two attacks (as thanks to skills, sanity, items, and companions, she got to roll 8 dice each attack).
Ahmed moved in to attack, with little hope as my rolls had been pretty terrible the whole game. But for the first time I had an excellent roll, getting 5 successes and finishing off Cthulhu for good. Good guys win!
Really fun game, and if it hadnât been for excessive child interference, it would have been pretty brisk, as downtime is minimal, at least with three players. We all appreciated the easy ruleset as well.
7 Likes
The tower space was indeed key, especially with Johnny Alpha on the team, with his plethora of long-range snipe and psi attacks (the latter being unblockable by the Dark Judges). I moved him to the tower at the first opportunity, and he remained there for almost the whole game, and was responsible for the bulk of the damage his team inflicted.
Summary
My intent was to ignore the Fragments and to try to kill the Dark Judges. My first target was Judge Fire, who has brutal short-range blast attacks, and who was currently roaming in the middle ground between multiple other characters. I could see that taking out Fire would prevent more than one of the Dark Judges assailing any one of my team.
I hesitated a while on my first attack, knowing that I could push my luck to try to defeat Fire without any counter-attack at all, but that a single miss would leave me on the back foot. In the end I threw caution to the wind and unloaded all of my attack cards, and thankfully it was enough! A couple of turns of consolidation were then needed, with Wulf Sternhammer and Middenface McNulty both absorbing damage from Fear and Mortis respectively, while Death moved in on Durham Red. Meanwhile The Gronk sat outside of the tower, ready to offer healing.
Taking down Judge Fear was my next goal. Fear had been chipping away at Wulf Sternhammer until, finally, with only 1 health point to spare, I had a good attack hand and, between Sternhammerâs melee attacks and Alphaâs long-range support, Fear went down. I then chose to sacrifice McNulty to Mortisâ Cloud of Decay in order to conserve cards and build a stronger hand and, with McNulty dead, Mortis warped through the gate at McNultyâs location to attack Johnny Alpha. Alpha was now subject to the Cloud of Decay, but The Gronk was outside to heal him. After a turn of just absorbing damage, Alpha unleashed another lethal barrage and Mortis fell in the tower.
Meanwhile Durham Red had been fending off Deathâs attacks, but unable to use her vampiric attacks to heal herself while I was focussed on other enemies, and had been steadily losing health. Once again I decided to make a sacrifice in order to retain cards, allowing Death to finish her before, like Mortis previously, warping directly into the tower.
With Johnny Alpha now injured, and no more healing cards in my hand, Alpha warped out of the tower to escape Death and join Wulf Sternhammer, leaving The Gronk next door at the mercy of Judge Death. The Gronk made a run for it in order to give Alpha and Sternhammer more time to draw cards, but didnât get far â Death by now had all the bonus movements of the defeated Judges, and quickly cut down my healer before returning to the tower.
I now made a final offensive call⊠Alpha and Sternhammer were in a cover space, and if Death was to join them there would be a greater chance of Death avoiding my attacks. Instead, Alpha warped back into the tower and unleashed all of the attack cards which The Gronkâs sacrifice had procured. Death managed to deflect some of the gunfire, but it was enough â with one final melee attack, Death hit the floor and Alpha and Wulfhammer stood victorious!
5 Likes
Just ordered it with a Zatu voucher.
2 Likes
Oh i love this game and would quite happily play it anytime
Also love little card game so may look into Courtisans but isnât it spelt Courtesan?
4 Likes
The designers and game title are French, and Pandasaurus decided not to change it.
For that matter itâs not particularly about courtesans; âcourtiersâ might be closer.
Yeah just googled it and CourtIsan (rather than CourtEsan) is French for Courtier. Mon erreur
2 Likes
Reminds me of âSwindlerâ, played a few months ago at Thirsty Meeples. The original title is âBeutelschneiderâ which is more of a pickpocket or cutpurse and which makes much more sense in terms of the gameplayâthereâs no swindling involved!
2 Likes
Played 2 games of 1-spirit Spirit Island with the âBiblical Angelâ better known as Wandering Voice Keens Delirium both against Brandenburg Prussia Level 2 (having no opponent is probably too easy but I am too lazy to learn another so for the forseeable future it is this). The first game I made a few mistakes with one of the spirit abilities.
What this spirit does is distribute the blue âtoo confused to fightâ strive tokens and pushing invaders around. They have a manifested avatar that wanders around the map making invaders not want to fight.
Both games ended when the last fear card was activated. Because Wandering Voice is not exactly good at getting anyone to fight but very very good at making frightful appearances. I think it would combine very well with one of the spirits that moves around the Dahan or with one that also generates a lot of fear.
For the first time in a long time I got quite a bit of blight on the island⊠even though I got two âstill healthyâ Island cards in a row.
4 Likes
Some games over the last week and a bit:
Skulls of Sedlec x8, got my new copy of this in with the first three expansions. So far weâve only played with the merchants but I think my biggest surprise is how not drafting all the cards in a game changes the vibe. I already liked the game, but gosh the expansions are a must! Shakes things up considerably! Iâm still yet to try it with three, but Iâm under the impression its best as a head to head (no pun intended) two player deal.
Nut
Concordia, great game of this with three on the Italy map. No salt for once as one of my players had never played before (not that itâs a huge difficulty spike but itâs more fun when you already have some idea what things are worth). Everyone really enjoyed it and I came away with the win by nabbing the concordia card and building in the final cloth city.
Renature, got this to the table for the first time and itâs really fun! Much less like Mexica (another area control classic from Kramer and Kiesling), than I had expected - but while I love that one, this is good in itâs own way. Bit lighter and the constraints of the dominoes give it a very different vibe. Just squeaked in a win despite losing the big 13 point region, (which I was concerned about!). Iâm curious to try it at the other playercounts, cause I imagine thatâd change the vibe and pacing significantly.
Sprawlopolis, been awhile since this has hit the table, but cracking solo game of it reminded me how much I enjoy the puzzle. I may pick up the new boxed Aussie version for the expansions (which is joining the list to buy along with Circle the Wagons and Food Chain Island - it helps that theyâre retailing at a decent price here as well - cheaper than getting them imported from Button Shy at least!)
Three Sisters, came in just shy of the top scoring category in a solo game of this. Lots of fun.
5 Likes
This is not something I would say about Spirit Island!
3 Likes
I have played quite a few games over the years since acquiring it. Maybe that helps. This was game 66 and 67.
Brandenburg Prussia on Level one just adds 1 village to the map.
Level 2 just moves a single of the Lvl 3 cards between Levels 1 and 2.
The only other thing is that they add extra villages on the Level 2 escalation cards.
Many events have worse consequences than whatever the lower levels of the opponent cards throw at you 
3 Likes
Okay, that sounds better; Iâve probably only played it about twenty times so far. One of the many things I like about it is that if it ever does become too easy there are a lot of interesting ways to make it more difficult again. I have just started to investigate the scenarios, but am still a bit frightened of the adversariesâŠ!
Thatâs reassuring to hear. Sometimes those events can be killers!
2 Likes
We borrowed this from those friends, and gave the Alice in Wonderland game a go last night. (They buy and sell a lot of games, particularly things like this that donât have long-term replayability.)
And I think my feeling in the end is: Iâm interested in solving the puzzle, but Iâm not interested in finding the puzzle, which this one relied on quite heavily. Why do I have to use a card from right near the beginning as part of a two-part combination near the end? Why am I presented with a puzzle that turns out to be âstack three cards in a particular orderâ when I have no reason even to posit the existence of two of those cards? The majority of my time felt as though it had been spent on frustratedly poring over the revealed cards and trying to work out a new way to put them together in order to reveal the âactualâ puzzle, with actually solving the puzzle being relatively minor.
Iâm not saying this is bad. I mean, Iâm not in the market for this type of one-off game in the first place, so itâs not surprising it wouldnât appeal to me. But with the ones Iâve played before (Exit Abandoned Cabin and Heroic Adventures Sherlock Holmes) I havenât had such a very strong feeling of a split between theoretical and actual goals.
4 Likes
Met up with a couple of friends as one had a birthday the other day. I was hoping to try Unmatched Adventures, as my friend is a big Mothman fan, but they were tired from work, so we stuck with stuff they already knew.
Nova Luna - Was going very nicely for me right up to the end. Then my friend took a tile and place their last two discs just before I would have been able to do the same.
Courtisans - Finally got a chance to play this and itâs great. Really nice simple-but-thinky gameplay and I do enjoy a good game about backstabbing nobles. I won both games.
My only complaint is about one of the houses being called Butterflies, when this is clearly a moth:
Azul - Iâm pretty good at Azul usually, but my friend is just a monster at it. Finishing up with almost double my score (97 vs 49). Unsurprising when they were the cause of this:
9 Likes
Cosmic Encounter happened. One new player (who took to it like a fish to water), so we just played with the green aliens. Chosen vs Will vs Parasite vs Symbiote vs Guerilla. Plenty of fun plays and offensive fuck-you plays all around (especially the Parasite blowing up his own planet instead of letting two other players get their FIRST colony on it). Game ended in a Chosen-v-Symbiote encounter where the Chosen betrayed a promised negotiation. And of course the Parasite had tagged along as well so it was a shared victory.
Then three games of Red7, all won by the (reformed) Parasite, continuing his winning streak over two previous game nights.
9 Likes
âAh, yes, the old Count complained about our heraldry. Havenât seen him lately, have you?â
3 Likes