Res Arcana - drafted some demons with my demon mage. When I bought the sacrificial pit, I read the fine print and it says that I can only destroy creatures or dragons. Oh. Not demons? Oh. There’s my strategy. But still, I manage to race up to 13 pts while the win won with a knife-edge 14 pts
Seasons - 4 players. Good fun! A keeper. Combotastic card tableau game that I manage to squeeze into 2 boxes the size of those Dixit expansion boxes.
Courtisans x2
Gloria Picktoria - we call this “Airlines Europe: the Card Game”. Great filler to end the session
Unwell for much of this week but time to post some of the backlog of games played:
My City x15, continuing our campaign of this - Initially mum was kicking my butt but she struggled with the gold nuggets, so I’ve now gotten a decent lead. We’re up to the final envelope now - and My Island is already sitting on my shelf… Sans spoilers, we’ve both really enjoyed it. Some fundamental rules get turfed as you go, so I’m not sure that I’m enjoying the late game as much as the early game, but as an experience it’s very solid.
Spring Meadow
The Gallerist got this to the table again, which was great. Far from my best game though - came in third, our leader broke 200 which seemed super impressive!
Scout, I won this one! Which is not at all common…
Skulls of Sedlec x2, a quick couple of games of this while waiting for others to arrive - won one, lost one. It’s such an easy game to squeeze in between other stuff or to fill 10 minutes.
The Red Cathedral, really enjoy this one. Won by a single point in the end!
Had a suprise yesterday when I turned up to the club and 2 players asked if I knew how to play Through the Ages which I then taught. One quit in the first age, and we decided to call it at the end of the second, but hopefully got another player for that.
Then won The Great Zimbabwe. First time playing, first round other players built cheap craft shops, so I upgraded my monument up to 4. Then I just built 2 other monuments and upgraded them all once to win.
Had the god that lets you use resources twice, and the rainmaker, both of which were essential to my win.
Finally Beyond the Sun with the expansion. One player went full planets, I just went tech heavy, both of us frustrated that the guild unlocking events were the last two level 3 techs to be unveiled, so I had to waste two turns researtching a level 1 and level 2 tech just to be able to research level 4. Got 3 level 4 techs in the end though.
On Thursday I introduced the “New Group” to Twilight Imperium IV, my favourite game of all time.
This was a post-work “Learning Opportunity” more than a full-playthrough… I stated at the beginning (7:30) that we would stop at midnight. I had the pregen map set up already, and the teach took another hour after that, so we actually started playing around 9pm, and finished 5 turns in those 3 hours. When I called it, Katie had 5 VPs with the Mentak (fuelled almost entirely through economic plunder, which had been copious), the Jol-Nar and Nekro Virus were nipping at her heels, and 4 of the 6 players had War Suns (not I, as the lowly Xxcha, a faction I do not play well… although I basically pulled out my Flagship as a way to discourage people from wandering too close to my PDS and, thereby, my territory.
Gosh I love that game. We have 3 more games scheduled for September (this Thursday, then a week off, and then two big games on the last two Sundays of the month), and I’m really, really looking forward to those.
Also have a game of Alice is Missing scheduled for Tuesday. Cautiously excited!
We played a couple of games of The Great Fire of London yesterday, after having it unopened on our shelf for several years…
I’m going to have to reserve judgement until I can play a >2-player game, because the added rules for where fire is allowed to spread in a 2 player game are convoluted enough that I was getting quite angry with the rulebook…
I enjoy Great Fire but have never tried at only two. I feel like it is more an exercise in attempting to manage chaos than anything about real strategy/tactics. Maybe I’m just not good at it, but I tell myself that’s the intent to mirror the unpredictability of a raging fire.
Around the twelfth move there was a complete breakdown in game play as an argument ensued about whether the rules had been explained correctly.
I think this has come up before. With more players, there’s some arbitration around what has or has not been covered. With just two players and the right (wrong) kindling these things can explode.
This was already a “play one or two games and cull” box, given Catacombs and Flipships. …I don’t think we’re touching this one again. Bad night all around.
It fell silent. Silence like a wet scarf on your face when you step into a hot room. Like the GPS recalculating. You missed the turn. It’s going to be a long detour.
Her glasses came off, hands pressed to eyelids no longer thick enough to shut out the room.
Something like that. Knock over a cactus and you’ve got it.
My husband and I had a lot of Ryan Laukat’s games, but not all of them (had: Sleeping Gods and sequel, Above and Below, Near and Far, Now or Never, Megaland, 8-Minute Emp). When we backed the latest kickstarter (Creature Caravan), we decided to add on a couple we were missing (City of Iron, Islebound).
All three arrived today and we busted open the truly new one (Creature Caravan). I really enjoyed it. It’s a light to medium weight strategy game. Mostly a card tableau builder as you move across a map. My husband and I played very different strategies. He ran through cards getting as many good combinations as he could. I played fewer and drew A LOT fewer cards, instead getting a couple early that comboed well to let me fight monsters across the map. We ended up super tight his 129 beating my 126. Can’t wait to see what other strategies and card combos are possible and looking forward to taking this one to our gaming group, which we can’t really do with his more campaign-oriented ones.
Power Grid - 3 player on the US map. As the most experienced, I taught the game and won by pushing the game to end game and scored 16 knowing they cannot beat me.
Prussian Rails / German Railroad / Preussische Ostbahn - 3 players and it was good fun
Pax Transhumanity - I went for Cloud strategy, one on Space, and the other 2 on First World.
3 and 4 competed against each other and failed to swerve the game towards 1st World end game. Azure Verde is back online. Sensing that no one chose Developing World as their secret scoring, I start nibling at this sector. 2 did the same.
Player 3 (aka J) commercialised these new Mitocondrias that caused widespread chaos in the 1st World and pretty much nuked Player 4’s pts.
We manage to start up a lot of companies that it’s super cheap to do actions on the Cloud sector. This made the already fast pace game even faster. We also nearly triggered the Singularity but no one is keen on letting Player 2 (aka M) win. But M manage to find another way by starting his 6th company to win with the Tycoon Victory.
Whale Riders - light Knizia game of contract-fulfillment.
Courtisans - all the cool kids play Courtisans. I’ve been told that Tom Vasel hates it
(Scoring: I’ve recently been trying “have three piles, positive zero and negative, and put each suit into them as they’re evaluated, then count the + and - piles”. I think this is better than counting up +2 points from light blue, -3 from light green, etc.)
Taught us Yokohama tonight- a real good game i think. It’s like going to the shops and beelining the best path and sometimes you get distracted by cool some tasty crisps and sometimes you get held up because some guy is deliberating at the yogurts aisle so youre forced to go via the cheese hoping they’re done.
I think there’s potential for real viciousness but in a way that doesn’t automatically hinder the the villain which is extremely cool.
It was… huh. It’s hard to quantify. Nobody said it was “fun.” Everyone was really glad we did it, and all 5 players are excited to try it again eventually.
Tomorrow we play another 6-player game of Twilight Imperium IV. Phew. Long night last night, and it looks like tomorrow will be another long (but way more fun!) night tomorrow.
