Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[Simfers]

Yesterday we had our buddy Yvan over for a couple of games of Ticket To Ride World Tour. It’s his favourite game, we like it a lot too and since his dog, a lovely Cavalier King Charles named Spock, gets REALLY excited a loud when he gets together with our Balonry, learning a new game can be challenging, especially in the evenings. So TTR it was.

Maryse won a very close, competitive first game on the Great Lakes side by 3 points. Yvan was second and I trailed behind by a single point. Very good.

The second game, however, on the World side, we both got murdered by Yvan, who managed to amass 168 points in tickets alone (he was at, like, 95 without them). I came in second with 83 (plus 129 in tickets) and Maryse brought up the rear at 78 (plus 94). Sheer insanity, never saw the like before.

Great fun though!

[Phil]

Which card sleeves are you using for Courtisans? They’re really pretty cards of an uncommon size (French Tarot, I think I read?), and those sleeves look like a good fit.

[lalunaverde]

I used Sleeve Kings, normally. I dont precisely remember which size, but I think it is this one that I used. Sleeve Kings Standard “French Tarot” Card Sleeves (61x112mm) - 110 Pack, SKS-8824 (bgextras.co.uk)

[Phil]

Ah, excellent, that’s also the brand I usually get :). Thanks!

[RogerBW]

BGG lists 60×113, so that seems likely to be the right one.

[Bondy034]

Some games this week:

Villagers, got a rare in person play of this one in. I feel bad teaching it to people sometimes as I’ve played it lots on BGA and am like top 30 ranked in the world at it there. I’m much more comfortable teaching a game to a table and having them beat me.

Age of Rails: South Africa, friend was keen to get his copy of this to the table - a train game with a more original setting! Though turns out he left the South Africa map at home and brought the generic US one (Pittsburg, Chicago etc.) So that was a little sad. I cleaned up after developing a monopoly in one colour and just hammering the dividend button for the back half of the game! I think I enjoyed it more than Chicago Express, but it’s quite similar.

My City x3, finished my first playthrough of the campaign of this with Mum. I really enjoyed it - Quinns was right that some of the envelope rules are a bit rubbish though (as in, poorly explained). And since we played it two player we have the option of a replay. Though she bought My Island when we were partway through, so that one’ll be next on the list now!

GWT, great to get this to the table. It was mostly new to folks and they all enjoyed it (a couple of them really liked it - sold at least one of them on a copy!). As usual, I fell back on a cowboy heavy strat, but we weren’t getting enough of them in the market so I didn’t win (though came second). One day I’ll try a different approach - I’m just super familiar with cowboys so easy to fall into even when I start with different plans… And sadly I sat on the box lid while packing up - the structural integrity is okay but it now looks considerably more beat up than a game I’ve played 4 or 5 times ought to.

Scout, Super low scores this game - I think our winner had 17…

[Marx]

Managed to get in another almost-complete game of Twilight Imperium IV. Because we didn’t have to get through the rules, we managed to get 1 turn further into the game, which put on right on the precipice of completing it.

I think in the future for after-work games, I’m going to have to stick with 4 players. We can almost finish a 6 player game in 4 hours, but that last turn gets rushed and several of my players are recently turned parents so they transform into pumpkins at midnight…

All that aside, the game was very good. It’s TI, of course it was very good. I played the Hacan, Terry played the Barony, Eric played the Sardak Norr, Mark played the Jol-Nar, Justin tackled the Clans of Saar again, and Mike attempted the Embers of Muat. An interesting mix of very aggressive (Barony, Sardak, Embers) and not-aggressive (Jol-Nar, Saar). Because I have played a lot compared to the others at the table I went very easy as the Hacan (facilitating a lot of trades and giving very fair exchange rates for my mountains of commodities).

One of the first two public objectives was “Have your Flagship or a War Sun on that board,” so the Embers started out very strong. A later Stage 1 objective was “Have units on 3 sectors on the board edge, not including your home system”, and that was an interesting one, because the first Stage 2 objective was “have units in 5 sectors on the board edge, not including your home system.”

At 11:45 we had just started Turn 6 (revealing the first Stage 2 objective, mentioned above), the Baronies had the Minisiter of War and Minister of Science laws, and the Clans of Saar had a massive flotilla in orbit of Mecatol Rex. By 12:30 the turn was almost finished but 3 of the players had to go due to exhaustion (this is what I get for starting at 8pm on a weekday).

Final scores: Saar 9, Jol-Nar 9, Hacan 8, Embers 7, Sardak Norr 6, Barony 5. I think I had the game if we went another turn (I was the Speaker, so I take Imperial and score the Stage 2 Objective during the Tactical Phase… unless the Saar or Jol-Nar have a Secret Objective they score before I rush my fleets into border regions), but that’s one of the lovely things about TI… you’re never really sure until the dust settles.

I will say that Eric did incredibly well with the Sardakk before he pumpkin’d, especially considering he was sitting next to the Jol-Nar and they developed and built War Suns on turn 2… there were also a couple mid-to-late game fights that reminded the Jol-Nar that they suck at fighting (two Sardakk Exotriremes and a couple fighters taking out a War Sun, fleet of fighters, a cruiser, and a destroyer). There was also the moment that the Sardakk player realized that a War Sun with his flagship couldn’t actually miss (3+ with his racial bonus and his flagship bonus means that he hits on 1+ on three dice).

ANYway. Next game is a week Sunday, and it’s going to be a full day affair with Prophecy of Kings in the mix.
happy sigh

[Guvnor]

Played and enjoyed Dice Forge. Lovely components, easy to play. Relaxed and fun

So, Twilight Imperium can be played in six hours?

[Marx]

Twilight Imperium without Prophecy of Kings takes about 45 minutes per player (3 player in 1.5 hours, 6 players in 4) if you use a pregenerated map. The map setup is about 30-45min on its own, and then 15-20 more if you want a draft or selection process for what race you play.

Prophecy of Kings bumps it up to 60-90min per player.

[bort]

Only got one game played today, took us all day. Game was Big Trouble in Little China. It had been a while since our last game, so there was a lot of looking up rules. It’s based on the movie of course, and you play one of the main characters. It’s basically a dice chucker. Each character has their own mini deck of cards, plus quests. As you defeat bad guys, you can add new cards or turn an existing card to it’s “epic” side. You can also upgrade how many dice you use on a turn, so that’s always handy. The board has a normal side, and the other side is Lo Pans palace, where you’ll fight him and his henchmen. I started badly, not rolling well, which meant I hadn’t levelled up much, but it all worked out in the end as I defeated the evil Lo Pan. Epic win!

[Brattyjedi]

Monthly game group yesterday. We were out of town for every meet up all summer so it was great to finally go again.

Started with a couple light card games with my husband, me, and one of our closest friends at the game group. I thought she’d really enjoy Abandon All Artichokes and I was right. As I was putting it away, she pulled out her phone to order two copies - one for herself and one for someone’s upcoming birthday. Then she requested Archaeology and we had fun with that, too. My husband won both games but on Archaeology it came down to a tie breaker between him and me.

After that, my husband wanted to join a game of Root starting up so our friend and I played a two-player game of Shakespeare. I love this one so much. The theme and mechanics really work well together and both make me happy. I won with my highest score ever (31).

Then somebody else had a new-to-him game he had played double-handed solo a couple times to learn the rules and wanted to finally play an actual game with others. He roped my friend and I in saying it was about building a university (we’ve both worked for universities), so we gave Alma Mater a try. It was a basic modern Euro efficiency puzzle with nothing about the mechanics that really stood out from a crowd of dozens of similar games released every year for the past couple decades and the theme didn’t really shine through for me. I enjoyed it because I enjoy the modern Euro efficiency puzzle but don’t feel excited about playing that exact one again anytime soon. I won with 141 points while the other three players were 106-92-90.

Ended the night with a play of Century:Spice Road. I don’t think I’d ever seen the original in the wild before, only the Golem edition. It’s a perfectly fine game and I enjoyed playing it with my friends but nothing about it really excites me. Winner had 81 while I was middle of the pack of the rest of us clumped around 50.

[Captbnut]

Couple of 2 player games today.

First go at Star Wars TDG this morning. I got crushed by our eldest but I enjoyed it. Like Star Realms sometimes the market got a bit clogged, but good, quick fun.

Kate and I just played Yokohama. Setup, game and teardown in less than an hour, which was pretty cool. I won 179-173 by winning the church and management boards. I think 3 players will be best as the point swings in the area control section are probably too swingy with 2.

I think this is a belter and am looking forward to more plays. I like the variability in setup

[lalunaverde]

Inis + Seasons of Inis - 4 players and I manage to thwart two players nearly winning and win myself. Tbf, it’s everyone else’s first time playing. I’m sure more plays will make them more effective.

Forest Shuffle - suggested it to an Ark Nova fan and she said yes. So happy to show her FS. Went for Wolf + Deer combo

Batavia - an old school game from Queen Games (with its stupidly large box). Great auction game and area majority gameplay. 5 players and we all had a good time

Pax Renaissance - 3 players and it went down to Patron victory and there’s a tie. Tiebreaker is money and I have the most money

[COMaestro]

I really want to get my copy of Yokohama to the table. I have really enjoyed my plays of it on BGA.

[Whistle_Pig]

Lots of gaming this weekend.

On Saturday we had a three-player game of Europa Universalis. We chose the "Sea route to India** scenario this time, so we mostly ignored anything east of Spain to trading and “discovering” in the Pacific. I was Portugal and managed to win on points because everyone else left me alone to build colonies all over the place - we got to the final couple of rounds before England decided to sink my navy. The whole game took from about 11 am to 1230 am, so I was very tired…

On Sunday (once I’d spent most of the morning in bed) we played a couple of games of Kingdom Builder, which is very quick and easy in comparison! We followed that up with Sidereal Confluence, in which none of us managed to get a good engine going except for the faction who don’t have to share their technologies…

[Acacia]

Decided to start Wolves with just two players and guess what? It’s pretty hawt at 2. Here’s the thing - each pack is extra strong on one terrain type. So if you leave a wolf alone in someone else’s terrain, can be big trouble. What’s nice in a 4-5 player game is that most every terrain but yours becomes dangerous, and you are always watching where the packs are to make sure you don’t lose a wolf.

2p loses that, as most of the board is safe and you can often just avoid “that one color hex” that puts you in danger. But what you get for it is much more control of the timing and fencing of the game, as prey becomes zero sum and you know what your opponent can or can’t do to trigger scoring before your next round. Also, the scoring tokens are stacked so a region scores more than once, and I liked that aspect. You aren’t perpetually abandoning your infrastructure.

Like Thurn & Taxis, this is a game where whoever triggers the last scoring can really blow it up. @COMaestro destroyed me in the second game, but it was actually quite close just a moment before that last turn!

Also, Mind MGMT (solo against the app). I liked it. So I can sell Jaws. This genre currently has Nuns on the Run, Whitehall, Hunt for the Ring, Mind MGMT, and Jaws so something had to go.

First game I caught the computer on turn 4. Second game the computer finished recruiting on turn 6. Both very quick, with the game timer extending out to turn 11? I got a bit of a Ghost Stories vibe and think I wasn’t doing enough (either game) to control the Recruiter’s four henchmen with the two figures who are good at that.

Turns are slow. There’s a lot to think through before each decision and a lot of board state to parse. This may not be a forever thing but I’d like to see some more of it over time.

[RogerBW]

Last night with the local neighbourly gamers, about half a game of Imperium: foo (mostly Classics). We knew we wouldn’t make it to the end in the time available, given that it had to include an explanation and those fumbling early turns, but the two new players enjoyed it and we may be able to get through a game on a future meeting.

[yashima]

Back from vacation and lots of work and deadline looming… no games on vacation except for a single game of Railroad Ink with the Islands board. I brought a bunch of games but should have anticipated this was not the kind of trip that would feature games.

I did play a game of Beacon Patrol on Sunday after being back home. Always awesome. Can‘t wait for the expansion. Gimme gimme gimme.

And I got out Floriferous today. I was sorting a few games back into the small games corner and somehow the Floriferous box made it into my hands. After buying it, I had been a bit disappointed in the game which had been mentioned by Zee a few times… and so after a couple of trial games it went into the corner of „lame solo games“ because it didn‘t meet whatever expectations I‘d had. Probably something more puzzly along the lines of Sprawlopolis.

Somehow tonight it was just the right thing for a couple rounds of relaxing flowery set collection Sometimes games apparently need to mature on the shelves for a year or two. Just like a good wine.

[lalunaverde]

Prussian Rails / German Railway / Preussische Ostbahn - 3 players. Me and A steamed ahead with our back-to-back payouts with the Brown company. But C manage to catch up by late game by making the right decisions on acquiring new shares and making sure his companies are the ones that get the bonus payout during dividends.

Top tier Cube Rail

Taluva - played double Taluva again and it is pretty cool

[yashima]

I may have gone to FLGS for some retail therapy (and also because I have seen Nekojima at the online shops and I had promised myself to buy it at FLGS )

And I may or may not have bought even more surprise games … (await my confession booth post after DHL has been here for the day)

Anyway I have already played Nekojima:

A couple of moves later it all came down courtesy of a fat cat.

And big surprise—arrived yesterday apparently—Pink Dorf is already available. I thought it was going to be October… but it‘s not:

Besides the new theming… the rules are exactly the same. What is different are the unlocks. I have played 2 games (one even with my partner, yay) and I really like the stuff from the first box that you probably unlock within the first two games. So yay. If you like the first, you‘ll like the second. Luckily, I don‘t own the first myself so the choice was easy. They won‘t fit in one box. You may not want both…