Shiny black miniature sheep: all hope abandon ye who enter here.
8 Likes
Keep forgetting my async games.
Been playing Tikal on BGA with some friends and we all enjoyed it. It is my fave from the trilogy. A lot of people say Mexica and I respect that. I would love to play them repeatedly before I make a decision. So far, only Tikal that I own atm. Mainly, if Iām gonna bring a āfunā game, I would lean on Tikal than Mexica or Cuzco, so whatās the point of owning all three?
Daybreak - glad to refresh myself with this game. Played it with @yashima . The virtue of it being solitairish and played at the same time means that itās snappy on the table. Although, one would question on a philosophical level about coops and eveyrone playing their own personal tableau. Ah, at least, I donāt have to suffer under the ārule by committeeā problem.
ONDA - shedding game where the ranks can go ascending or descending depending on the tide. Players have 2 Wilds and can be used as Wilds or to change the tide (and return that card into your hand). I really enjoy this one. Iām more into shedders nowadays, it seems.
Botanicus - decent light Euro. Iāll play it but thatās it.
there are others that I was bored playing that I donāt want to discuss them. E.g. Spellbook
8 Likes
I would like to add that with 4 players on a real table quite a bit of talking ensues as one person always needs something from someone else.
In 2 player one can get away with everyone āsolvingā their personal tableauā¦ about half the time. Iāve played about 50 or so 2 player games of thisā¦ and at higher difficulties we lose about half of the games due to the nature of async play on BGA more or less preventing the kind of cooperation this game wants.
Still, there are quite a few interactive cards in there, that I largely tend to ignore. Which returns us to the original argument @lalunaverde makesā¦ oh well, no game can be perfect 
4 Likes
I would rather have Daybreak as it is, than to suffer being in a committee 
2 Likes
Mexica is also on BGA
2 Likes
available only to the cool kids
2 Likes
I can open a table, I just canāt remember how to play it
2 Likes
More Uwe Brass. Much better attempt at building a city. I even managed to score maximum points for the Wasserschloss. That building more or less defined my strategy from turn one. It gives points depending on the size of the Kanal loop it is in.
C Deck with 157 points. Also BGStats Scoresheets 
This has to be the most beige game ever but it plays very nicely as solo and has definitely earned its spot among my top solo games and it might even be my favorite Uwe
ps: resource fiddling to the max though. if you hate thatā¦ ā¦
11 Likes
Played Botany with my mum today. This is the first board game that my dad has backed on Kickstarter, and he seems to have resisted throwing more money into the pit so far 
The theme of the game is that you are Victorian plant collectors aiming to amass the most exotic collection of specimens for your (employerās) country estate, which you do by moving around on a map to locations matching specimen cards that you draw from a deck. There are event cards that can gain/lose you reputation/money/specimens, and other cards that you can use to improve your dice rolls for resolving events: at one point my inventory contained a pig, a tiger, a falcon, and a shotgun, which seemed to serve me well 
Thereās a bit of take that, in that you can sneak poisonous plants (negative points) into other peopleās collections.
The game isnāt very complicated, but a lot of effort has obviously gone into the events and art that made the theme work really well, and since there are a couple of expansions (more plants), I have an easy Christmas gift idea for my parents!
14 Likes
Missed a few a couple of weeks, so hereās what I played over the few weeks or so:
Coimbra, really great game of this one. Quite tense also and very divergent strategies from everyone. Great solid euro.
Point Salad x3, still an excellent filler at lower playercounts.
Patchwork
Food Chain Island
Metro X, very tight game of this, was won on transfers.
Quacks, yeah kinda the opposite of Metro X, our early leader just kept growing further and further in front - I do feel like catching up is pretty hard in this game, even with the rat tails and a fortunate event or two. Still fun, but less fun knowing who was going to win before we hit halfwayā¦
Andromedaās Edge, big game of this. I enjoyed it. I liked Dwellings of Eldervale when I played it once at a con. This one is probably a little sharper. Still not quite good enough for me to pick up this hefty and expensive box. But Iād play it again, for sure. Game owner won solidly but the rest of us were quite tight. I played as a refugee faction so thought āah I should avoid fightsā, when actually I wouldāve been better served getting into lots of fights and losing themā¦ The kickstarter version we played was massively overproduced just like Dwellings but I guess it sells it for some people. Iām just not much of a minis person, really.
Scout
Schotten Totten
Iberia, we played with the malaria variant but actually it was our yellow disease that did us in - a few cascading outbreaks sealed our fate after having researched 2 of the 4 diseases. Still great fun.
7 Likes
The rattails in quacks are a big clue it isnāt a serious game. You just have to accept itās nonsense like Mario Kart I think.
6 Likes
When Iām introducung Tinderblox I make a point of saying āthis game is not fairā.
5 Likes
I had friends over for the Nach-SPIEL (post-Essen) event that Iāve been doing for a few years (except last year where I forgot to send out an early enough save-the-date)
So with my partner and me we were 11 people 
One person who was supposed to come was sick. 2 more were on trips and couldnāt make it. 2 were next generation gamers (teenagers) but they can now play all the games we play so the circle grows
There had been a request from someone to play Setiā¦ lesson #1: do NOT play the big Euro-game at an event like this or at least as a host donāt participate.
It took me about 30-40 minutes to teach the game. And then my friend, who always plays slow, played slow. We played a total of 4 hours. I lost badly due to a couple of mistakes in the first and second rounds (I usually play badly after teaching such big games because I still focus on the other players at the table and try to see that they are playing all right, another clue I should have not participated). I also possibly handed someone the victory because I gave them an alien card when the first aliens were revealed and they should not have had one. I misread a rule that I had previously read correctly. But I felt bad because they were lagging behind in points and looked for a way to make them feel better. The puzzle is so tight that making a mistake or injecting a few additional resources can topple the balance.
The game definitely does not forgive mistakes. Me and one other player were clearly out of the running after the second round. Then we had to sit out half of the third one due to lack of resources. And while there is interaction there is not enough to keep someone from running away with the game. There is no real way to interfere with anyone other by getting things first or possibly turning the solar system and messing with their probes but except for two or three cries of āOh no why did you have to do thatā that was all in 4 hours of play.
I still think it is a good game, if everyone plays about the same skill level and avoids the type of strategic trap I fell in. I will definitely want to play more solos of it. But this is peak-Euro and I may be getting to the point where I donāt exactly dislike this style of game but I am coming to appreciate how the lack of interaction and the point optimizing gets pretty boring when you could instead be playing Zoo Vadis (spoiler: I didnāt get to play this, because Seti took up all of my time).
I am also appreciating games
- that I can teach in less than 10 minutes.
- that donāt make me say āplay fasterā all the time.
- where I donāt know Iāve already lost after round 2
- games that donāt last 4 hours
- that donāt give me another migraine
- (none of this goes for solos of course, those are different. Two player might also be different.)
I am not usually a sore loser. But somehow this felt like a waste of timeāpossibly this effect was stronger because I was hosting and I realized too late I should not have joined in. But I so rarely get big 4 player gamesā¦ the temptation was too strong.
If this had been a solo and I had made such bad moves, I would probably have started over, conceding the game. Actually, due to the nature of the game maybe I could have just bowed out. There is very little this would have changed for the others after half a game. I need to think about that. Also, both the players in the lead offered to ācallā the game after the third round. No surprise really We should have because the order of where we stood did not change in the final two rounds of the game. But I really wanted to see if I could somehow close the gap to the leaders and now I know the answer: NO, I could not. There never was a chance. Once again: Compound interest.
Before Seti as people were coming in we played a very wild game of Beacon Patrol with 6 playersāyes the expansion still says to only play with 4. But there are all these boats and tiles and who cares about the score anyway?
This was the result. The lakes on the left side were created by the Hovercraftāthe player kept asking about eels for some reasonā¦
Playing this with 6 takes a bit too long. I donāt necessarily recommend. But itās fun with all the various ārolesā. I was the ferry that can go quickly from one end of the board to the other if there is a straight line available
Late at night we taught someone The Crew without really explaining anything beyond āthis is a cooperative trick-taker. The submarines are trumps and we need to solve these tasks which are assigned to players at the startā We wanted to prove that trick taking games are well-known enough that we could do that. It is possible. We had a debate if Skat might be dying out though and if it was still just āour bubbleā whatever that meansā¦
Other people played other games:
- Spectacular
- Link City
- MLEM Space Cats
- Cascadia
Maybe other games because I had to be teaching Setiā¦ I didnāt really notice what was going on at the other table/s (other room). We have a total of 3 tables that allow for an average sized game. Only one is for table hogs though
The best thing is I now have a Signal group for almost everyone who was present. Previously my local gamers were distributed among several messaging services and now I need to just convince one more person to please install Signal I know there are several who would really like more frequent game nights. At least one person would definitely love to play the outliers in my collection (he noted Weimar, Cuba Libre, 18DO).
13 Likes
This is quite a good list! I donāt think SETI is for me but Iād like to try it at some point.
Sounds like a really nice gathering, and every time I see Beacon Patrol on here I feel like Iām getting closer to picking it up!
5 Likes
Played a couple of games yesterday. Started with Burgle Bros which was an easier teach than I remembered. It has a couple rules that are easy to forget or miss and a few weird edge cases so it helped having someone else who had also played a few times to catch mistakes. Iāve played the beginner scenario too many times now and am quite keen to get to the main game more often. But everyone had a good time, despite it being late.
Then, because it was late, we played DroPolter for the first time. Really fun, especially when youāre too tired to learn more than a handful of rules. It only plays up to 5 but Iām pretty sure you could combine 2 copies to go up to 10 without losing anything (if you use 2 ghosts that can both be grabbed then people still have a 1 in 5 chance each round)
I think Iāll probably pick up another copy and try itā¦
6 Likes
Big hands are very helpful and I probably shouldnāt play any more.
This afternoon, first outing for a while of Firefly. (May be the first time Iāve played my physical copy since the pandemic began.) Glad to know that I still really like it, even though I have Xia now.
9 Likes
Itās been the same few people posting about it over and overā¦ mostly me Because I enjoy it very much. Just ā¦ so you donāt overestimate how many people love the game.
6 Likes
Got some gaming in this week-end! Yesterday Maryseās friend Yvan came over in the evening, so we played three games of Ticket To Ride: Rails And Sails. Serendipitously, we each won one! All with stupid scores in either high 100s or mid 200s, LOL.
Then today, Maryse and I broke out Apiary. I lost 104-100, a very close game. We each got back in the groove quickly and itās still a super fun game, though itās now been displaced as our game of the year, by TTR R&S for Maryse and by Everdell Farshore for me.
8 Likes
But - donāt underestimate how much those people do like it! I think itās great (with the proviso that I havenāt played it very much yet).
7 Likes
Mein Luftkissenfahrzeug ist voller Aale?
5 Likes