Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[Acacia]

My parents were in town which means I had a chance to pull out my shortest and lightest games and see which to cull. Also some old, old apps went on sale for the first time so I got to (re)try a couple of games that have been way in the back of the mind.

Sequoia - Ready to cull. There’s nothing wrong with it. Nothing particularly right. Some bad decisions made regarding board state readability. But ultimately, while it does play faster than Mountain Goats, there is very little to recommend it over that game. It may lurk in the sell pile as there are one or two people who may benefit from this game specifically. But I’m at peace.

Switchbacks - Another small box AllPlay down. This is a keeper. It’s like Harvest (Japan) with passive aggressive shared incentive competition. Harvest is better. Switchbacks is less mean and likely better at 2. Not a necessity but it’s cheap and small and pretty, and makes me happy for now.

Lotus - GOOD HEAVENS. Where has this little 6.7 rated megastar been hiding all these years? Beautiful table presence. Featherlight rules. Knizian elegance in countertension on countertension. I was hooked pretty quickly and three games in it’s only stronger. A bit of hand management, a bit of push your luck, a bit of shared incentives, a bit of engine building, a bit of area control, all resting on just three or four rules and immaculate visual design. Made me think of Mandala.

It’s light enough that it’s not going to be an industry powerhouse, but it’s good. And I was horrified to see it rated so low by the general public, especially as it was followed up by…

Lanterns - …
…
Is this a game?
6.9 on BGA. Received an app, expansions, and reprints. This wasn’t quite “gnaw my arm off to escape the table” but I definitely never need to play this again.

Didn’t hate it like Splendor as I didn’t feel like it took anything from me in the process of giving nothing back.

Fox in the Forest - Yep. Now, I haven’t played Jekyll and Hyde yet. But I researched it and got familiar. I can see why the new kids would glom to it but it isn’t Fox in the Forest. I’m not surprised that people don’t love this now, but I do expect in 5-10 years everyone to come around and find what they couldn’t see before. As I always say, play trick taking until you choke on it and hate it, then come to FitF, and you’ll fall in love.

The Great Zimbabwe - 10/10. I came in last, I’m maybe halfway up the learning curve to minimum competency, and I’ve barely scratched what this game has to offer. So this is an early call, put it in pencil. But I’m pretty confident this thing is amazing and I can overwrite those marks in pen one day.

Nippon - Finishing up a LONG async with strangers. Really tired of it. I think this is a good game, but I only half grasp the rules (especially vague on how to score) and haven’t done my diligence of rereading the rules. So I’m just taking moves to end it. I think there is a lot of interesting stuff going on here? Certainly more interesting than the likes of Evacuation that I’ve been trying? I would just need to try it again in a faster fashion, or with a fully internalized understading of the rules. Not currently motivated to try again.

[RogerBW]

@Acacia

Lanterns - …
…
Is this a game?
6.9 on BGA. Received an app, expansions, and reprints. This wasn’t quite “gnaw my arm off to escape the table” but I definitely never need to play this again.

I played this once in 2017. Thoughts at the time: “It doesn’t do anything revolutionary, but it does what it does pretty well. If I weren’t restricted in space as well as game budget, I might pick it up; as it is there are other games I like better.” And I don’t think I’ve thought about it since.

[pillbox]

@Acacia

Lanterns

It’s been a while since I played, but this may be an exemplar of “games that don’t disturb your conversation”. Something to do with your hands while sitting around a table with friends?

Seeing it here makes me think I might need to try it with my oldest child.

[SteveB_uk]

Lanterns and lotus

Funnily enough I’ve played both of these on phone apps.

Yes, I bounced off lanterns too. Tried it several times, met only frustration and not wanting to play it again.

[Acacia]

Adding to what I wrote about Lotus, it may be an explicitly 3 player item. It supports 2 to 4 but I’m not sure it would work as well.

Something like Barenpark which is permanent collection at 4 and cullable at 2.

[lalunaverde]

Weekend of board gaming in a seaside town in south-east England.

Pax Renaissance - a couple wanted to play their copy so I joined it for a 3 player. Went for Eastern Renaissance strat and it didn’t manifested. I manage to clutch the win at the very last turn of the game via Patron victory.

Food Chain Magnate

Mottainai - I need to emphasis this. I played it this weekend for A LOOOOOT of times.

Chu Han - I was keen to try as I didn’t buy the game because I don’t play 2 player games often. It was pretty good first play. I’ll put my trust on Lehman that this game has a long tail like Res Arcana or RFTG

Blood on the Clocktower - hmmm… I don’t seem to enjoy low player count plays. LPC in Clocktower’s context is 6 to 7 players lol

High Frontier 4 All - 3 players with only the base game (no Module 0 - Politics) we have a newbie who only played it once and the owner wasn’t keen to relearn the expansions. Oh well.

I manage to do a “perfect” game where I built all 6 factories and 6 colonies. I’m sure I accidentally cheated somewhere but that was my best scoring game so far.

Saer - light bluffing game

Big Two - granted we played with the basic version. It was a big meh! I would rather play other shedders than this.

Fishing - still funny and novel. Although, I don’t regret selling my copy. Friesse manage to do rubberbanding on a card game!!

North American Railways - by Peer Sylvester. Disappointed because it’s really shit bad.

Mu - more plays of Mu and the auction and alliance decisions are just great!

Flip 7 - a nice closer, but man, I’d rather play something hilarious then a quickfire “blackjack”

John Company - yeah. I don’t regret putting this in the cull section. If I’m gonna play it, I would play it with my group. And I don’t want to play this with randoms. I would rather play Stationfall

Panda Spin

VOC: Founding the Dutch East Indies Company - dexterity Splotter?? WTF??? The guy wanted to play it so much and we are all like: “eehhh? You close your eyes and then you move around the map? uuuuuhhh suuuuure…”

We were fools. It’s one of the most innovative designs I’ve ever seen. And I don’t mean Euro Game Remix #447 “”“innovative”“”. No. I mean what I said: it’s one of the most innovative designs I’ve ever seen. It was very clever. It was exhilarating. It was hilarious. And it was… just a few steps away from greatness. The game has so many awesome ideas but the execution could do more polishing and perhaps Splotter need to do a 2nd edition.

It wasn’t good enough for me to buy it and yet VOC was one of my most memorable moments in that weekend. The first topic of discussion when we were driving home to London? VOC. We really wanted so badly for that game to work.

Age of Steam - southern USA map with 5 players. Tense and exhilirating. The GOAT.

Challengers: Beach Cup - Do I need this as a party game for my group, I ask to myself. Then I play it and have a fun time. Then, I wipe the thought of owning it.

Pax Porfiriana - 4 players in Wild Wild West in Mexican El Norte

I closed the weekend with one game of Mottainai.

[Marx]

Quick game of Battletech Alpha Strike in which my buddy and I are playing a coop Aces campaign recreating the Battle of Tukkayid.

The mission was for us to get our 50% of our 5 mechs from here…

… to here…

… in 15 turns or less.

Our heroic ComGuard (painted in Aurigan Coalition colours, because that’s just my jam) included a Banshee, Black Knight, Marauder, Phoenix Hawk, and a Valkyrie. We got a 3 turn headstart, and in that time managed to reach here…

Nick, realizing we wouldn’t make it to the other side of the map without the Clanners obliterating us, suggested we turn and fight.

Which was wise, because the first turn the Clan mechs (a Mad Dog, Stormcrow, and Ice Ferret) reached here…

So we turned and fought!

The Ice Ferret and Mad Dog obliterate the Marauder almost immediately, then our return fire manages to take down the Ice Ferret.

The following turn the Banshee loses a leg, but we manage to drop the remaining two Clan Jade Falcon (technically painted as Clan Wolf Beta Galaxy) mechs.

Leaving us with 9 turns to rush across the board. The Banshee couldn’t make it without its leg, but the Phoenix Hawk and Valkyrie easily make it, and the Black Knight just barely makes it across. Victory!

We managed to salvage the Marauder, and will repair it, but nothing else survived in a repairable state.

This marks the second loss in a row for the Falcons, and they’re running low on War Chest points and mechs. Another good mission and we might be able to push them straight off the planet!

[Simfers]

We own Lotus and we indeed founr that it really needs that third player to sing. Can’t speak to 4 players, as we’venever tried it, but it works magnificently well at 3.

But we love Bärenpark at 2!

[RogerBW]

Some short and light games with nearby friends, starting with new hotness Curses & Covens, an anti-social dedction game. (All roles are open, both the witch hunder looking for witches and the townsfolk protecting them.) It feels pretty random at times, but I won as hunter and then joint-won as townsfolk, so clearly it’s a good game.

Then on to Trio, probably the first time I’ve played with my own copy—and someone managed a triple-seven win about three rounds in.

Then several games of Landmarks because we all wanted a turn at clue-giving. It’s a bit more crunchy than the obvious competitor Codenames and so far I’m liking it rather better.

[yashima]

After my initial encounter with a bad printing, A Gentle Rain (sorry no photo) left me quite cold. I played it twice and did not see the appeal at all. Since I am not good at memorizing tiles or cards, there seemed to be little point to the game. Each tile has four half flours on it. There are 8 different flowers and you have to match up the tiles so the fit and place each flower type just so that it is on the corner of 4 placed tiles and a completed one is adjacent to.

I have played it a few more times now and it is slowly growing on me as a relaxed cup-of-tea or morning-coffee game. I have even managed to lose twice–initially I doubted that would be happening at all. I won the first few games with tiles to spare.

So not in love but keeping it for occasions, just like Food Chain Island.

---

Yesterday, I finally got my copy of Black Forest (I live right at the northern most tip)
I was asked at FLGS to report if the boards with the resource wheels are warped in the post-SPIEL printing as well… and they are. They haven’t ordered any except that copy for me. I have a feeling due to the warping they saw at the fair. So… yeah my resource wheel boards are warped, too. This is because they made them double layer so they could have the wheel thingies and still lie flat–which they now don’t. Double layer boards are so prone to warping.

In any case despite the warped boards I have now played 2 solos and it’s just a joy to play. Not too difficult. There is always something to do.

The solo sings as usual with Uwe games. Instead of having just one meeple–they seem to be wearing typical Black Forest Trachten (traditional festive clothing) as far as I can tel from their shapes–you get 5 for the 5 actions you get to take per round. The solo lasts five rounds. So 5x5 actions to gather resources, develop your board/s, herd animals and win the game.

In multiplayer, you would be traveling with 1 meeple around the various villages that have the actions you can take and pay provisions for that, or stay in the same village. You pay provisions to others if you visit the same village they are in. In the solo, you just take the next meeple and pay provisions as though you traveled from the previously played one. If you go to the same village, you have to spend the resources still. Only the white meeple doesn’t have to pay for visiting a village that already has another visitor. After 3 rounds the action tiles are remixed to switch up everything. After 5 rounds you count your points. The winning value is just 20 points which feels quite lenient. Also the solo round marker is a cute little cuckoo clock

A-typical:

• no magical sheep (or other animal) multiplication
• no sheep
• no sheep!!!
• no feeding your family, your stone-age clan or your elders
• no polyominoes

Other than that: very nice Uwe game–co-designed by Uwe, actually designed (mostly probably) by Tido Lorenz who also made the Arler Erde expansion.

• Good and easy to learn iconography.
• Simple ruleset–if you already know how Uwe resource wheels work, you can almost skip half the rulebook
• While the building board may look overwhelming at first it is quite nicely organized–I will need something to store the buildings as they are displayed in fixed order and it will really save time on setup if they are stored that way.
• If you don’t have to sort the buildings setup is really quick and playing another round is even quicker.
• Solo plays in under an hour, with a bit of practice it is probably a 40 minute game à la Nusfjord.
• It is definitely on the easy/relaxed side of Uwe’s farming games. Kanal feels much more challenging. Arler Erde sits between. That said it probably allows for horrendous amounts of overthinking and optimization.
• A rare thing these days: the board is orientation agnostic. Which is irrelevant and even a little irritating for the solo but so many boards these days more or less force at least one player to play upside down. This one doesn’t. Everyone has a few action spots that are turned upside down. For the solo I just switch them around–it doesn’t look great but as I am new to the game I prefer it that way. For multiplayer it feels better to have everyone in the same situation sitting around the table. (the building board is not. but you can push and turn that… they should have made three separate parts instead of one folding and one separate)

My only complaint really are the warping boards. Feuerland: you can do better. The cardboard feels a little thinner than previous games I bought from them. But the rest of it is really thick enough. They used to do very thick cardboard this seems just a tiny bit thinner. And there is a lot in here anyway–the game is quite heavy even after punching. So maybe it was just weight consideration?

[lalunaverde]

Food Chain Magnate

Bus

Pax Renaissance - 2 player blitz that the game finished under 30 mins

Black Forest - yes. Again

Lets Go to Tokyo - 2 players and it was very fun as usual when we talked about our trip day-by-day

Botanicus - enjoyable light nu-Euro game. Fulfil missions. Action drafting. Very straight forward and fast that it’s hard to dislike it.

[lalunaverde]

@yashima

I lost badly due to a couple of mistakes in the first and second rounds […]

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 “Oh no why did you have to do that” that was all in 4 hours of play.

Ever since I’ve become more competitive, this has been my main issue with low interaction Euro games in general. Once you know how the game works, you can play the first third of the game, see who is winning, and then shake hands: “Congratulations”. Shit. Chess doesn’t work like this!

Some nu-Euros fix this with BS RNG that arbitrarily spits bonus pts to people during the game. That doesn’t fix the issue because: 1.) randomly awarding pts is not interesting. 2.) the points teh game is awarding to isn’t necessarily going to the last player

Some fix this issue by being REALLY balanced, which kills the game.

I still play nu-Euros. I still have Seasons, The City, and Age of Innovation in my shelf. So I have to set expectations that you can lose on early game. But if I want deep competitive gameplay that I would dive into for 100 or more plays, Euros are the last thing I would look into. 1830, designed in 1986, performs way better where even late game is competitive.

What’s funny is that train games are not immune to this. Age of Steam is literally one of the most streamlined snowball game I’ve played. You can pretty much tell who wins if someone breaks through. “Run Good Companies” style 18xx are even worse than nu-Euros!! You lost on the first quarter of the game and you have to play for 4 more hours! While nu-Euros should end after 1 to 2 hours on the clock.

The only time I can enjoy a slow play without being competitive is when the expectations and the setting puts me into that mood. I’m happy to play slow low-interactive games on cons because it feels carefree, but not on a Tuesday night where we have work tomorrow. I’m happy playing low-interactive Rosenbergs because it’s just fun getting tetris pieces and putting them on your board. Does that increase my tempo? Who cares.

SETI does feel like it wants competition through analysing the puzzles rather than building your sheep farm carefree.

@yashima

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 don’t 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 didn’t get to play this, because Seti took up all of my time).

Or be ready to be humiliated when you sit down on a table with games like these. I went through that process when I play Terra Mystica every week with a board game group and always go last. But that is how it is.

Somewhere down the line, I get repeatedly beaten by @Benkyo on Twilight Struggle

Nowadays I’m being regularly beaten on Food Chain Magnate and Indonesia by a clique of gamers here in London. Different boat; same river, I suppose.

Anyway, wonderful closer. Yes. We should be playing Zoo Vadis instead

@yashima

I am also appreciating games

• that I can teach in less than 10 minutes.
• that don’t make me say “play faster” all the time.
• where I don’t know I’ve already lost after round 2
• games that don’t last 4 hours
• that don’t give me another migraine
• (none of this goes for solos of course, those are different. Two player might also be different.)

This is what made me turn into “old German” games like Knizia’s or Kramer and Kiesling’s in the first place. I only then discover Splotters and Cube Rails like Chicago Express somewhere along this journey. I’d rather have a fun time with most of my games club members playing lighter but still fun games, than us trekking through slow mud.

[raged_norm]

Bouncing off this, I saw a picture of some local gamers playing Civolution.

The player board alone is ridiculous. Noping out of that one.

[bort]

@raged_norm

The player board alone is ridiculous

And bloody expensive too, at least here in Aussie Land ($170).

[Marx]

Played some of the lovely Mass Effect Board Game for Mass Effect Day (November 7th… N7… you get it).

We won the first scenario “Guns of Cereberus” with a neat Paragon victory and stockpiling some extra explosives for later. Liara went down early, but Shepard was able to rush over and get them back on their feet.

Next we try a Loyalty mission, and then onto the Mech Bay!

Honestly a great way to spend an hour.

[yashima]

@lalunaverde

Ever since I’ve become more competitive, this has been my main issue with low interaction Euro games in general. Once you know how the game works, you can play the first third of the game, see who is winning, and then shake hands: “Congratulations”. Shit. Chess doesn’t work like this!

I really really need to learn to call games and quit before the game overstays its welcome after it is clear who is the winner. For Seti this was really on me. The others offered and I just HAD to see it to the end.

@lalunaverde

I still play nu-Euros. I still have Seasons, The City, and Age of Innovation in my shelf. So I have to set expectations that you can lose on early game. But if I want deep competitive gameplay that I would dive into for 100 or more plays, Euros are the last thing I would look into. 1830, designed in 1986, performs way better where even late game is competitive.

I still think there are quite a few of this type that are good. Depending how far we cast the net on the “type”. I like Euro mechanisms and games, and I am not into heavily interactive games on many occasions. But there seems to be something I can’ quite grasp yet that makes some games work for me and others not. I will figure it out!

I like Revive for example but I’ve never played with more than 2. It also has more interaction by virtue of a shared map and that simple “copy the other players bonus” thing. It is so easy but it changes a lot in terms of how much I follow someone else’s turn. Revive still has looong turns sometimes but it solves the different round length thing quite elegantly by having players “reset” whenever they want–they kind of lose a turn to the reset so you don’t want it often but you keep playing alongside the rest.

So there are mechanical solutions to some of the issues I have with such games.

@lalunaverde

What’s funny is that train games are not immune to this. Age of Steam is literally one of the most streamlined snowball game I’ve played. You can pretty much tell who wins if someone breaks through. “Run Good Companies” style 18xx are even worse than nu-Euros!! You lost on the first quarter of the game and you have to play for 4 more hours! While nu-Euros should end after 1 to 2 hours on the clock.

Seti is a solid 3 hours and that’s too long if you spend most of the time watching. I really wish designers would help me learn by providing rules or at least proposals/variants for early endings. But I guess I have to learn this on my own. (Pax Pamir has the “one play is so far ahead, oops they win” alternative victory btw and I love it.)

I really need to sort all of my games into “how many players am I willing to play this with” categories. I have already put a bunch of my games into “will only solo” and “will only play a maximum of 2” even though official player counts are higher.

[yashima]

I just suffered through a solo of Darwin’s Journey on BGA. I have the game. I thought it might be a quick “check in” with it. This really really needs to go on the sell pile. I’ve just not had the energy to sell games since moving last year. This is SO not for me. I knew this the moment the KS campaign was over. Sleep-deprivation does not make for good decisions. Lesson maybe learned?

[lalunaverde]

Hero Realms - meh, as I remember it

Bridges of Shangri-La Top 10!!

Glass Road - it’s been a while. Really like how snappy this is! 4 rounds (houserule is 5) and you play cards and build buildings and combos. Great game.

[yashima]

More Pink Dorf & Chill today. 352 points is not bad.

Then I taught myself Flatiron:

1-2 players by the Red Cathedral designers. Plays in 45 min. I bought it for solo-ing.
It needs a bit of wrapping your head around the structure at first.

On your turn you put your architect in one of 5 spots (4 streets around the building and City Hall). Caveat: can’t move to where the other architect is and you have to move from where you are, that gives you 3 options. When you arrive choose:

• take 2 money
• buy a card and place them on the street the card names either showing top or bottom half.
• trigger your actions for the street from top to bottom or use the current newspaper token at City Hall

Types of actions are:

• buy or sell a column in one of 4 colors (every player board has different valuations for the colors from 1 to 4)
• place column(s) on the current floor
• get some money
• build a floor (obviously only if 3 columns are placed)

There is some fine-print about when you can do what and how many cards you can have and how you get points besides placing columns and floors–which are about 60% of the point total I guess.

The game ends when the roof is placed. City Hall Decrees are scored then and your building company’s reputation is checked for each street. Done. Over.

There is a bit of setup and teardown. But nothing too bad or needing an insert. There aren’t that many components.

There seems to be a bit of tempo considerations because there are only 3 columns per floor and one of the default actions places 2 and so it seems there is little room for idling. The building must go up and quickly.

Current verdict (after 1 solo): not bad. Not bad at all. But I am withholding a rating for this one until further plays.

PS: I don’t like the rulebook. It feels unnecessarily fiddly and has tables with iconography for various components throughout and while the iconography is not bad and probably easily learned after a couple of games… I had to go back and forth far too much for this to be the best it could have been.

[mistercrayon]

Played a couple of games of grand Austria hotel over the weekend. A cool game I think!

The game had on its front emblazoned “expert level” which should have brought nerves but I’d seen enough videos to know it wasn’t that hard. Or had I?

The “expert” in GAH seems to be in digesting every card you come across and knowing its context and place in your current game. Every card in the game is a unique combination of powers, requirements, points and all of this is where the trickiness is. The actions and idea of the game are really straight forward - fullfil orders of waiting guests and put them in open rooms of your hotel so the conceptual side of the game is really smooth. The difficulty is in balancing the maths and trying to combo one or two of your 14 turns to take you over the edge and roll to a good score.

If anyone does get it I’d suggest getting some kind of cube upgrade because the plain cubes look the same as the white cubes. (Ideally you want brown ones instead of plain wood)