Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[bort]

Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers, hadn’t played this for ages. The latest one is on KS now, so that’s what prompted it. Usually this game kicks our arses, not sure if we’ve ever won it. But today went well, we got to the safe and were ready to roll dice to crack it. And someone rolled perfectly, we cracked it with one roll! Then we still had to escape, and we did it.

The Dwarf King, first play. Fairly standard trick taker, except that each round you get a new special card with it’s own rules, and you also select a quest which tells you how to score.

Spectral, our second game, so the training wheels were off. It’s still a pretty quick game. The winner went hard early on, put their best workers around one tile, so I figured he had worked something out, at least a double gem space (it turned out to be a triple gem tile). I could have displaced him, but would have required both of my highest workers, which I thought was too much. Probably should have done it, because he ended up being the only one there, big points. Maybe I should be marking which tiles other players have seen.

Faraway, first play. Pretty simple game, place a tile, do it 8 times, then play them from the last card back to the first. So you want to play big scoring cards early, because you need to be able to collect the symbols required. There’s a bit of luck involved, you just may never see cards you need. It’s pretty quick, and good fun.

Bravo!, a roll and write where you are trying to fill in areas of various colours on a grid, and getting points for completing columns and rows (but of course you need to be the first to complete them for maximum points). I usually go badly in these sorts of games, and that’s certainly how it played out. Not even going to mention my score.

Harvest to finish up.

[yashima]

@yashima

So … I am making lots of waffles tomorrow for brunch.

So we had friends over for brunch and lots of waffles were eaten.
Games played:

• Lacuna: twice against daughter who was curious about it and it plays incredibly quick and flowy. I am glad I finally got to play this. Funny enough both my partner and her mom kept telling the kid how to play (she‘s old enough) and it seems like everyone was interested in playing as they began to watch. I won both games and I have a feeling that if you play this a lot you can get better and optimize from the first turn (each player just gets 5). As it was I just played on intuition. My partner said „it‘s like shaker-Go“
• Harmonies: had not realized my partner (who won) had not played before. I didn‘t grab a 4th animal and those were the missing points. Bad planning on my part and lack of a river. But it‘s lovely even when losing. I noticed though that everyone at the table spend a lot of time thinking over their turns this round.
• Planet Unknown: last time the whole family visited we had introduced this and the daughter demanded it. Who am I to refuse a tetris game? We played with the asymmetric planets. They are probably not as balanced as could be. I had the one that has no water but electricity counting as energy terrain and I was able to complete the whole planet for the full 40 points (I had a lot of meteorites collected and lots of red/grey track). I got incredibly lucky with my Level 3 Civ card allowing me to place an extra tile and get rover movement from it precisely the 5 movement I needed to pick up the final 2 meteorites. And then suddenly everyone looked at my board and said „omg she can only place a maximum of 2 more tiles and then it is game over.“ And it was. For some reason even though I had picked a lot of „inside“ tiles which are generally covering fewer squares and still completed my planet way ahead of the others.

At some point my friend got annoyed at her daughter for taking long for her turn. The answer was „Well, I am your daughter!“

I promised for next time I will have the rules for Wonderland‘s War memorized so I can teach it.

[yashima]

@Bondy034

Food Chain Island x2, won my first game of this - thought ‘gosh I hope its not too easy’ - then lost my second rather badly. I think there’s depth here, and it’s so breezy and easy to setup and play it’ll hit the table quite a bit.

This was my exact reaction the first couple times I played this. But since the puzzle shifts every time and you can include the sea animals to change difficulty up or down… it‘s not as much played as Sprawlopolis/Naturopolis but definitely a good quick solo with a coffee

I cannot play too many in a row. But it is one that is really nice to get out every once in a while.

@Bondy034

Iberia, played my new copy of this and confirmed it’s basically made base Pandemic obsolete

Yes. I have only played once so far, but this is definitely my pandemic of choice now.

[lalunaverde]

Through the Ages - 3 players and finished in 3,5 hours. Great game!

Penguin Party

Imhotep - possibly my fave Phil Walker Harding title. Interactive enough and the cubes are chunky

Power Grid the Card Game - Yep. prefer this one over the board game. Quicker and more compact version.

Pax Renaissance - manage to squeeze in a 3 player game and went pretty quick too as we focused mostly in the East. Manage to finish before the library closes. Ah this time I didn’t won. I nearly won through Islamic Holy Victory, but they manage to stop me, and one of them won via Imperial Victory instead.

Rafter Five

King’s Dilemma - first session and we played through the reign of 3 kings - because the 2nd king’s reign went too fast. I feel that the game works enough, but it does have the problem with players if they are a bit too “gamey” with it. At least the game leads you to create your own narrative, so the gameplay and narrative does bond well. It does require some participation from the players though during the game. We are playing with 5 players.

[mistercrayon]

Played two new ones for us over the weekend.

Middle Ages. This we played a couple of times and I think was a success. I wonder about its longevity in appeal maybe? Both games were tight though which is nice and kept things thrilling.

This is a rework of majesty for the realm so if you’re familiar with that you’ll see a lot of that here. The game is essentially a drafting game with the puzzle around balancing specialisation versus general play. You build areas to bring in money knowing that the more an area is built, generally, the better it will be and the more money that will come. There are interplays between areas though- so a highly built area may cause a large payoff in n a different area so balancing is essential too.

You build areas by drafting tiles with the kingdomino mechanism meaning the value of a drafted piece is both the thing itself combined with its ability to grant you an earlier pick next time which can give crap stuff enough value which is nice.

There’s a nice breeziness to the whole thing along with this feeling of engineering increasingly generous jackpots which feels nice (balances the feeling of abject uselessness when you’re forced to pick a tile that gives you a piddly amount late in the game).

I really like it and the production is very nice (gold lettering on the box, a smart insert, nice wooden horse pieces, jigsaw piece tiles).

Also played

Mycelia

Which is this low difficulty deckbuilder with a spatial scoring aspect.

Instead of points your cards grant you the power to move these little tokens on a map towards an end goal (if I want to be spiky, it feels like your flushing things down a toilet, but it’s in fiction placing dew drops into a portal).

So a card might say - move a piece from a red square on the map, or remove one piece if there are three pieces on the square. This kind of thing.

It’s again very cute and the production is nice and chunky. I’d say in its desire to be slim the rule book is probably a bit too vague. But also maybe it’s easy to gloss over the rules if so much is familiar.

It’s pretty good and our game came down to a one turn difference in moves.

[lalunaverde]

Pax Viking - returning to it, and I am now seeing it on a better light. Lacks the shared incentives of Pax Pamir and Pax Renaissance, but it was light and nice. Very Inis-esque, and I would say that as a good thing. The box is stupid af thooouuuuggh. TTR size!

Bridges of Shangri-La - The BEST game from Leo Colovini’s oeuvre. TOP 10 GAME. I’m now daring to say that I now prefer this over Tigris and Euphrates that I don’t really regret selling the latter.

Fun Facts

Stephenson’s Rocket - someone (not me!) brought S-Rocket so I was happy to teach. 3 players and it was tense and opaque as expected.

Haggis - 3 players. Playing this after a series of Bacon plays - confirm that I would rather play Haggis. Five stars . One of the best card games. Really damps my enthusiasm on trick takers now when I can just play Haggis plus other selected trick-takers/shedders.

[Griffster77]

Played Terraforming Mars last night. Its only the 3rd time I’ve played it.

I don’t know if I’m just not good at engine building games or what but I just don’t seem to ‘get’ TM - I actually did pretty well (came 2nd out of 4) but at no time did I really feel I knew what I was doing or that I had a real strategy.

It might just be that each play has been more than 3 years apart so I’m just not getting familiar

[RogerBW]

It doesn’t seem to have anything to say to me. Not saying anyone who likes it is wrong, but the buttons it’s pushing are not mine.

[Brattyjedi]

If you play with card drafting, you can build more of a focused engine and have a strategy you are likely to be able to develop. Without drafting, it’s super random. Either way, I think it’s just ok, but it is one of my most-played games as it’s easily one of my husband’s top 5 favorite games.

[yashima]

it took me getting covid and playing 50 games in 2 weeks in the app to get a “feel” for that particular Big Stack of Cards… I liked the game before. but the familiarity helps a lot figuring out what a particular draft let’s you do. but even with 100 games in now, I still sometimes have games that feel arbitrary. I mostly solo, so i don’t know that i would do well against opponents.

[yashima]

I played the Arnak Campaign mode solo this week. All 6 scenarios. I had a table where I could leave the game set up the whole week. It helped a lot. Nevertheless I played fast and sloppy and I made mistakes especially in the last 2 games because I was in a hurry because tonight was the last night I could leave the game on the table. (We have guests tomorrow).

Overall I think the various scenarios do a pretty good job of focussing on the different elements of the game. One game makes you buy lots of cards, another discover as many locations. Most force you to race up the temple which is really good training for me because when playing my friend I kept ignoring the temple thinking I might get points elsewhere when the temple is a huge source of points.

I am going to play the campaign mode with my partner at some point I think. Maybe not all of it but at least a couple of games. It is nice to have a cooperative mode for the game.

I also played various of the expedition leaders. I really enjoyed the Journalist. The Mechanic baffled me. It was the first game and I lost badly because I misread some of the scenario 1 rules and so I had to repeat the game. The last game I had the Falconer which is an old favorite. Also The Professor is great. Lots and lots of artifacts which I really like.

Overall Arnak remains a really great deckbuilder with a board. Very different from both Clank! and Dune:Imp so I am keeping all three

[bort]

Transmissions, a game we haven’t played for while. You control four robots while they run around on the map, collecting resources and picking up various tiles. You can add new abilities to the robots, and they only apply for you. It’s pretty light fun.

Summer Camp, first play. Picked this up cheap from the last Amazon sale. I don’t really do deck builders anymore, but I will always consider games from Phil Walker-Harding. So, in the game you’re going to summer camp and do various activities, earning merit badges as you go. You add three different types of activities, and move along the path. Getting to the end earns you a badge, if you’re the first you get the maximum points. We used the suggested starting set, which was Cookery, Outdoor, and Water Sports. Each activity has it’s own market of two cards, and there are also cards from the base set for you to purchase. Obviously you want cards that move you along a track, but you can also get energy cards for purchasing from the market. Any card can be played for one energy. It’s a pretty basic game, no really hard decisions. A good, inoffensive family type game. I was a bit disappointed, there’s not much here.

Dorfromantik, game 6, and we weren’t going well. Just weren’t getting thru the tasks, although we did step it up a bit at the end. Finished on 201, which was less (barely) than our last score. Some mistakes were made, have to more careful with our train tracks and streams.

Seers Catalog, first play. I thought this was meant to be a trick taking game, but you’re actually playing either single cards, sets of the same number, and sequences of numbers. And it keeps going round until everyone passes. Doesn’t that make it a climbing game? Anyway, you don’t want to be caught with too many cards in your hand when someone else runs out of cards. You get points equal to the lowest card in your hand, and a negative point for each card you have remaining. But using up all your cards gives you zero points. There are artefact cards, which change the rules in some way, and wild cards. Not as good as I was hoping, maybe we just need to get used to it.

Dino Tricks, such a great filler! I wasn’t doing badly, and went for broke on the last round and said I would win no tricks. No tricks gives you points equal to the round number, so it would be worth +6 points. And everything was looking good, I was holding a one in the last trick and thought I was home free. But the other two players both played fives, which cancelled each other out, and my one won. Sigh, so close.

[Simfers]

Maryse and I gave Littoral (Seaside in English) and Azul Summer Pavillion Mini a shot.

Littoral is great, super simple and ideal for the beach or a camping trip. Very portable and impervious to the elements. Wouldn’t play all day, but it’s perfect for what it is.

We found Summer Pavillion to be WAY thinkier than Stained Glass of Sintra, but fatigue may have been a factor, LOL. The mini version is also super well done, with plastic boards and little recesses for the pieces so they don’t blow away.

Both recommended.

[BertFill]

Recently played Raiders of the North Sea and Shipwrights of the North Sea (Redux) - both for the first time non-solo, and both a thorough success. Great fun!

[Phil]

Palm Laboratory arrived (via kickstarter), and I gave it a whirl. It’s a no-table-required solo card game, designed so that you can manipulate the cards in-hand throughout (which is a bit fiddly, but not too fiddly).

The game is an engine-builder (not something I tend to enjoy greatly, but those physical aspects were appealing enough for me to want to try it, and it was a pretty cheap punt). It features “upgradable” cards: you use only the top half of any card, but can spend resources to rotate them to get the version on the bottom half, or to flip them to their reverse side. As such there are four states that each card can be in and, depending on how the rotation and flipping actions are allocated, you might have an obvious linear progression through each of those states from worst to best, or you might have choices about which variant is most useful to you.

There are three different mission cards to choose from, which affects the kind of engine you’re trying to build, but in all cases you’re aiming to possess enough resources in hand at the end of each round to upgrade the primary mission card to its next state, with each mission upgrade being more expensive than the last. In order to afford the later expensive mission upgrades, though, you’ll need to be spending resources upgrading other cards along the way so that in later rounds they will give you more/better resources. If you cannot progress your mission at the end of the round, the “danger meter” card is upgraded to a more urgent state instead, and you lose the game if you would need to push that beyond its limit.

It succeeds in being an in-hand card game, but the gameplay didn’t instantly grab me, and the first game took longer to play than I was anticipating (certainly more than the 15min suggestion, but I reckon with practice the time will drop – and so long as I can get through a game in a 25 minute train commute, it’ll do what I wanted).

I’m not sure whether this is really for me, but I expect to find out :).

[Whistle_Pig]

5+ hours into a game of Europa Univeralis…

[DJCT]

It does take a very long time. What did you think of it? We have played limited 3 players a couple of times and it’s a lot!

[lalunaverde]

Ra the Dice Game - cool game but took out what is interesting about Ra ( the auctions) and have it as a pseudo-roll and write (but with cubes instead of a pad of paper)

Huang - playing this more. I’d like to explore this more like what I did with Tigris

Taluva - MEGA TALUVA! 2 copies in 1 box because I thought the game goes a bit too fast

Faraway - 2nd play. This doesnt do anything to me. I’d rather play a filler game that is fun

Harmonies - cute game! A game along the lines of Azul and Cascadia, but would prefer this as I have overplayed Azul and its kin.

Concordia - it’s like seeing an ex partner that you are still in good terms with. Pleasant experience and it was lovely to see the game again. Im glad other people are seeing the elegant design that Mac Gerdts usually creates

Also, there’s something colourful and nice about Conc that stops it from being “that beige game”

[Phil]

@Phil

the first game took longer to play than I was anticipating (certainly more than the 15min suggestion, but I reckon with practice the time will drop – and so long as I can get through a game in a 25 minute train commute, it’ll do what I wanted).

I’m getting dubious about that. I’ve played four games now, and I timed the last two at 29 minutes and 37 minutes (for the basic Production mission and the Experiment mission respectively), and don’t believe the earlier games were any quicker. At present, the “15” seems a bit nonsensical. Maybe if you know the cards and strategy so well that you can immediately cycle all non-helpful cards without thinking about it, you could knock out a game in 15 minutes.

That aside… the jury is still out, but I’ve enjoyed the additional games a bit more than I feared would be the case after playing once. I’ve tried all three missions and, if they don’t mix things up dramatically, they do add some variety and randomness in the set-up. On top of that, there are points to be scored on top of simply winning the game (introducing decisions about whether you can afford to spend resources purely for points, or if you need to focus on improving your engine), and the manual has a bunch of scoring challenges for each mission type which you can try to achieve.

Thus far I haven’t even bothered counting my points at the end of games (I’d kinda missed that they were even a part of the base game), so I’ve no idea what I’ve been scoring. Doing really well at the challenges probably necessitates a little luck and a lot of familiarity with the deck, and a really good memory for what you need most at any given point in time.

[Whistle_Pig]

I think my main takeaway was “I can see why this is a video game” I did enjoy it though and am quite keen to arrange another game. I suspect we made quite a lot of rules errors…

Out of the four of us playing I think three of us enjoyed it, and one though it was more faff than it was worth, and would rather play the computerised version, which is fair enough.