Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[yashima]

After I taught the next generation of techies how to enter the BIOS and switch boot order so the install medium will come up first (…), we played a couple of games with 3:

• Beacon Patrol: not just great as a solo. Also fun with 3. We had a very nice North Sea landscape and everyone enjoyed themselves a lot. And it‘s a game that can be explained faster than Carcassonne (due to having previously played Carcassonne?).
• Rebel Princess: I so rarely get an occasion where I have 3 players and a small game is required, so I took my chance and forced one of my small 3 player games to the table. We did the round setup suggested in the rulebook. Quickly checked the erroneous German translation. The German has replaced „leading color“ with Trump which makes so little sense we realized it after a few hands. BGG rules forums are awesome. I managed to get through 3 rounds with 0 proposals and then I cleared out the last two. There were complaints about both randomness and imbalance from the other two… I think it‘s a fun little thing that I would like to take to a pub

[Delwayne]

Has anyone yet played the game Revive?

[lalunaverde]

I remember @yashima reported the game a few times here

[yashima]

I have played Revive and I like it quite a bit both solo and with 2 players. I hear from elsewhere that 3 is pretty good, too. I haven‘t played much since getting the expansion.

It has nice multi-use card play, a small and slightly different tech-tree per faction you can play. You get to „grow“ both your innate abilities, your card-deck and there is a nice somewhat interactive central map to discover and claim. I say somewhat interactive because it never felt quite as aggressive as a some other area control games, and this is static. Once claimed, you can‘t be thrown out of the spots that you put your towns, cities and explorers in. It‘s all still very euro-y, if you are looking for something veering further away from that (the PBFs you‘ve run suggest that?), it may not be right for you. For me it‘s a keeper not least of all because the solo is fun and quite unique in my collection. And for my tastes it has the right amount of interaction: not too aggressive.

Finally: it is one of the rare games that both me and a friend with whom I usually have little overlap due to his penchant for complex train-games and trick-takers (not @lalunaverde ) have enjoyed. ( I checked, he rates it a 7 with a comment of „at least solid“, I ranked it at a 9 on BGG)

[Captbnut]

I’ve played it. It’s good, but our friend who is very AP prone made it very, very long

[RogerBW]

Yesterday at Hexicon 3:

To warm up, Sea Salt & Paper, always good fun.

Then on to Imperium: Horizons, which I’m getting better at: Vikings vs Egyptians this time, and Glory seemed like less of a trap than usual while I waited for the cards I needed for Vinland (which never came). I’m also getting faster at scoring, to the point that I find it less work to do it by hand than to take the photographs needed by the scoring site.

Then a couple of games of VOLT, one to teach three new players and then another to play more seriously. Always great fun, and yet another game that I really should play more often.

Finally I’d been curious about The Isle of Cats and one of the other players had a copy to hand. It was involving enough that I didn’t take any pictures, which is generally a good sign;; the theme is really irrelevant, but I enjoyed the intricate puzzliness while being frustrated by the drafting.

[Whistle_Pig]

I’ve recently been introducing people to That’s not a hat and it’s gone down pretty well with almost everyone. One unfortunate flaw that I’ve come up against is that someone in our gaming group is so incredibly bad at both remembering and bluffing that the round never gets past them. Luckily the game is so quick that nobody seems to mind

[Benkyo]

Cat in a sack, 4-player, not the actual name - an auction game by Friedman Frieze which was OK.

Innovation x2, 2-player, with Echoes. First time I’ve seen an Industrialisation win: tucking so many cards that I think 4 special achievement conditions were met.

High Society x2, 4-player.

Looney Quest, 2-player.

The Crew V2 x6, 4-player. Kind of fun seeing people trying to figure out how cooperative trick taking works, but also I would like to play one day where everyone actually understands how cooperative trick taking works.

A good day to catch up with friends, but also the usual problem of all the long complex games being played being boring euros or co-ops or iffy-looking Kickstarters. So I end up just playing lighter games with people who aren’t already pinned down.

[lalunaverde]

Cthulhu Wars - ive become brave enough to bring my copy of CW on meetups. I left two boxes at home because…

Played as Windwalker against Opener of the Way, Sleeper, and Yellow Sign

Won the game as Im experienced and they are new. But WW is rather new to me so it was nice to explore the faction. The spell where I pay a flat cost to do the Ritual of Annihilation is amazing

Mottainai - this is becoming my fave “heavy” filler game. Very quick and also the rules are fine for a heavy Chudyk card gamee

[RogerBW]

Games with nearby friends tonight.

I was still feeling enthused about VOLT from the weekend, so we dived in. Good fun; I should definitely colour-code the robot bases, though.

Then on to Realm of Sand (I may be the only person who still has a copy of this), where for once I didn’t get frozen out of the second-level discs.

[Whistle_Pig]

@RogerBW

Then on to Realm of Sand (I may be the only person who still has a copy of this),

We have a copy of this as well, I should dig it out and play it again

[bruitist]

I have a copy of it too. Along with the other two in the “series”, Mystery of the Temples and Trial of the Temples.

[RogerBW]

I’m tempted by the idea of picking up Trial at some point, but I’ve never got a close look at it…

[bruitist]

I enjoyed the couple of plays of it I’ve had (though it’s been a while). It’s quite a simple euro game, but has some quirks that make it interesting.

Haven’t got around to playing Mystery yet.

[Simfers]

Went to our local board game pub on Sunday (long week-end over here), had an absolute blast!

First was Splendor Duel, which was delightfully crunchy. I lost by going for the “10 points in a single colour” strategy (I made it to 7) while Maryse managed to get 20 overall. Very good game, will be bought.

Then we played Quacks of Quedlinburg The Duel, which is… VERY different to the base and much beloved game. It’s quite good as well, though! Will also be bought. I of course got destroyed.

Then yesterday, we finished off the long week-end with a game of Ark Nova. An INCREDIBLY close and competitive game ended in another destruction, I lost by 20 points, 54-34. The scrore absolutely does not reflect the game. Man, that was a good one.

[raged_norm]

Last games night for a while.

Played Agricola. It’s better than I remember. I ignored the farm part and built a pottery empire with a clay oven, a potter, ceramics, clay supports and a pottery shed. Herb, my pet cattle survived until the end. As I ignored the farm part and expanding my family I lost.

Followed by Potato Man, it’s a great simple trick taker to teach ‘must not follow’ with chance for some clever colour blocking play

[lalunaverde]

Mind Up - ppl have compared it to 6Nimmt and it’s a fun filler

Scout

Old London Bridge - clever game from Colovini. The box from Queen Games is atrocious

Stick Em/Sticheln - 6 players!! right at the first trick, ppl realised that it’s a game to screw up other players. Great fun! Top trick taker.

Age of Steam 3 players and so I brought out Hungary. The rule is that you must deliver using at least 1 link from another player!

[Acacia]

Hallertau

OK, Haller-wow. Big fan over here.

This feels very unique in the Uweverse. The few hooks built in:

• Fallow field system is nice, where fields get worse the more you plant and you have to let them sit to git good again. Feels like a DJ sliding equalizer buttons up and down.
• Old sheep. Your sheep die of old age. You have to slaughter them or take care of them before you lose them to old age.
• The worker and refresh system is great. Spots aren’t blocked, more of a 1-2-3 escalating cost like Keyflower. But spots also aren’t always cleared at the end of a round. So actions have a cooldown that forces you to move around and choose how many workers to invest. Tasty.

At it’s heart, this is a recipe fulfillment game. You have five recipes that you are trying to fill over and over (though they get pricier). These move five small buildings sideways, allowing you to move one massive building sideways, which is really the beating heart. The farther it goes, more points and more workers.

You’ve also got a trillion little cards with tiny contracts to fulfill.

You’re always pulling in a trillion directions, therefore.

And it’s got a nice Agricola/Arle tension between getting stuff and building infrastructure. Yes, you want stuff NOW so you can finish that contract NOW while it is cheap, or so you can get the reward. But the infrastructure - healthier sheep, more good fields, more tools is so powerful, too.

Anyway, I’m wracked and thrilled for all six rounds of this thing. Big win over here.

Recommended for fans of Agricola or La Granja… …

[bort]

Finally got some gaming in, after a couple of weeks off!

The Key: Royal Star Casino Burglary, another of the Key games, rated at medium difficulty. Definitely not as hard as Escape from Strongwall Prison (which we all failed at). Still a bit tricky, with some new features like trying to work out which levels our crims accessed. I got an answer, but it wasn’t correct. Still good fun, and now we have played all of the games in this series.

Cascadero, new game from the up and coming designer Reiner Knizia. Pretty straightforward, on your turn you place one of your envoys on an empty space. If you place next to a town (and you have a group of at least 2 guys), you score for that town, and move up on that coloured track. Points for scoring are from one point (if you’re the only one connected to the town), two points (if another group is connected), and three points if it’s a specially marked town. Multiple points are very important, because each scoring track has two forbidden rows, which you can’t stop on, you have to be able to move past them in one go. You also get extras from the track, like an extra turn, or being able to move one of your envoys to an adjacent space (this is important because you can move back to a town and score it again. There are various achievements possible, for example for connecting all five colours of town, or multiple of the same colour.

And the most important coloured track is the one in your player colour, because if you don’t get to the end, you can’t win the game. I realised towards the end of the game that I wasn’t going to be able to do it, because towns of my colour were already surrounded by myself and other people. You can score a town again, but it needs to be a new group connecting to it, not an existing group. As it turned out, our game leader was leading by a good margin, but, like me, he couldn’t finish his own track. One player managed it, and they got the win. Good, thinky game, easy to learn and fairly quick to play.

Auf Falscher Fährte, a trick taking game. You’re trying to win by either winning the most tricks, or the least. At the start, everyone plays a card facedown, and these cards will be shuffled in revealed one by one. If the total of the cards is less than or equal to 13 (for 3p), then it’s a minus round, meaning you want to win the last number of tricks. Anything above that threshold is a plus round, where you want to win the most tricks. Good fun, enjoyed it!

Luz, another tricktaker, but you can’t see your card values. You start by organising your hand by colour and value, and then handing that hand onto the player on your left. But they can only see the back of the cards, not the front. So you know what colour they are, and can deduce information from seeing other peoples hands, as well as card you might have already played. Every trick is an adventure! Another easy to play trick taker.

Dorfromantik, went ok, didn’t score as much as our last game (barely).

Harvest X 2, ideal filler to finish up.

[BertFill]

Two solo games of Fields of Arle. Took a while to remember how it works (my scribbles on the handy score pad suggest it’s 18 months since I played it).

Gosh but it’s good. I’m not very good at it, but it is very good indeed.