2006 Terra Nova seems like something I’d enjoy!
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My first game of Beacon Patrol. There didn’t seem to be much point in leaving out the mini-expansions, so I used them both. 62 points by my count, for a medium rating of “Captain”. (Or 58 if lighthouses are somehow not “buildings” for the purpose of scoring the piers, but for the same ranking.)
It didn’t blow my mind upon first play, but it was a perfectly pleasant game and I look forward to playing it more.
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Lots of Oathsworn here. Solo, as I ain’t got no friends, nor time to find 'em! Getting lots of rules wrong, but enjoying every minute of it…
A bit of Zombies Run the Board Game with my boy. It’s light, with some nice puzzles.
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I must get back to zombies run. Did the transmitter puzzle and that was about it
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Knowing what you like: yes, totally
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The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire - good area control game by Eric Lang. Good fun. But for a game about “area influence”, I would opt for the old schools: Tikal, El Grande, or Han
Bear Raid - very good light game from Ryan Courtney. But found that it drags long, but maybe because we were slow. I would rather opt for the other light games I keep yapping about here like Zoo Vadis or Intrigue
Age of Innovation - I might have reached 10 plays of AoI. Been my fave this year. I need to show this to @EnterTheWyvern
Also this is the first time I’ve won against B, who is a beast at Euro games.
Caverna - 1 of 3 games that B rated a 10/10. Glad he brought it for me to play. Really compelling WP. Far more similar to Gric than most of his works but with public buildings for combos rather than private cards to build up your engine and your scoring avenues. At first glance, it seems to temper what I don’t like with Gric.
Player count: the degenerate player order is still present, which makes this optimal at 2 or 3 players.
The Forgotten Folk is really nice. The asymmetries are nice. Although, there’s still depth with the static base game setup.
The Gang - coop Texas Hold’em. REALLY GOOD. It’s hilarious on how bad our differing wavelengths are. It can be difficult when playing with people who don’t know how to properly play Poker, but at least, it results on the team losing hilariously, rather than ppl getting dunked by veterans
Hard to Get - prefer this now over Codenames. The snappy gameplay easily makes me prefer playing this.
So Clover
Flamme Rouge with the new Grand Tour expansion - 5 players and we had the new extended maps, which allowed us to pick up trashed cards back to our deck. We had roundabouts and asymmetric riders. I think this is the best expansion. Grand Tour > Peleton > Meteo (weather was better handled at Heat). The changes are very subtle that made card choices more interesting, and isn’t just me playing the largest effective card every time.
10 Likes
That was a fun game to Google. Turns out there are quite a few ‘hard to get’ board games! Who knew?
The irony being that Hard to Get is in fact, impossible to get!
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Very exciting to hear, thanks for sharing! Looking forward to picking up a copy 
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Yellow House - 2 player shedder from Geonil. Very good game. Learnt new tricks from that play
Cabanga!
Inis - a club member bought Inis for 15 quid from Dragonmeet. Yes. 15 quid! It’s all complete and condition is very good. Taught her the game and glad she now knows how it is played.
Age of Innovation - currently one of the hotness in the club. 3 players. Did a sick play with the Forest Goblin combo paired with a palace tile that has a double terraform action
Bus - Taught 4 player Bus. Manage to hang on to my lead and won the game through tie breaker
11 Likes
Some two player games this weekend:
- Hive: my husband always kicks my butt at this, and this time was no exception. I blame the fact that he’s always playing Go online.
- Bamboo: mostly to help me internalise the rules so I can teach it at our game group. I think it probably plays better at 3 or four. I like the action selection mechanism: you choose which colour temple to visit and use all of your bamboo shoots of that colour to take actions. When you return those shoots to the centre board they are used to “grow” more bamboo by pushing other shoots upwards, which you then take and add to your pool of possible future actions:
- Hanamikoji, which we played in the pub:
I usually like this, but it overstayed it’s welcome somewhat this time. Took an hour rather than the 15 mins suggested on the box!
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Ouch! Too evenly matched I suppose…
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Quick disclaimer: I’m not sure this report is relevant in this topic, but wasn’t sure where to write to about playing through a “choose-your-own-adventure” game book using an established role-playing game ruleset. Anyhoo…
Last night I played through The Wolves of Langston, a solo adventure game book from Obvious Mimic using the D&D 5e ruleset. I spent a couple of hours creating a character - a Human Scribe Ranger 1/Monk 1, if you really wish to know - and then about 4 hours playing through the adventure, using it to test out the new 2024 5e rules which were released earlier in the autumn. I was looking for a way to get back into roleplaying, albeit solo while I look for players or work out times/ways to play with others that might fit my schedule.
I was very impressed by it. Of course it is more linear than proper roleplaying due to the nature of such books, but it had a good story for a murder mystery and was a very enjoyable and involving distraction for 6 hours or so. Sadly it won’t have much replayability although I can see myself trying it again in 6-9 months with a different character when I’ve forgotten many of the details of the story. It has definitely given me the spark to try other such books and games, and get back into proper roleplaying next year if possible. I have two other Obvious Mimic titles to try as well as the Legacy of Dragonholt game to go through too with its own ruleset (which has some advantages to these gamebooks) and will look for other 5e solo adventures to try too on DriveThruRPG or similar sites.
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That looks like a nice pub 
I would play games at that pub.
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It was a nice pub 
we found it on Britstops, which is an app that lists pubs (and other places) that will let you park up in a motorhome/camper overnight in exchange for you buying a meal in the pub
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We played spectacular a few times today. It’s very drafty and has a nice feel. Just a light touch of tension and nervousness but without being overly harsh or villainous. The puzzle is quite nice but perhaps a little bit too much can be influenced on initial draws and dice rolls. I like it though. It’s good Sunday game.
8 Likes
Hosted our friend Yvan on Saturday evening, two games of Ticket To Ride Rails & Sails. First game finished 300 (Yvan) - 266 (me) - 213 (Maryse). I was DELIGHTED at coming second for once!
Second game, balance was restored as it finished 294 (Yvan) - 213 (Maryse) - 188 (me).
Sigh. Yvan is entirely too good at this game. Time to show him a new one. He needs to come by in the afternoon, as his dog, Spock, is always super excited to come and play with Baloney, and that’s a lot of noise, so it’s harder to learn when we’re all a bit sleepy.
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Catching up here:
Russian Railroads: I’ve been supposed to try this for a long time. Various buddy-type analyses recommend it along with reviewers who mostly align.
Didn’t like it.
Struck me as Roll & Write: The Worker Placement game, where you place workers to figuratively check boxes on scoring tracks. This all has led to an epiphany, though. Segue…
New York Zoo: Been waffling on this for a long time, but I’m keeping it. I like it every time. Hard to set up, hard to teach, a few fiddly rules hard to remember. But it plays so well. I figured that out quickly, though I feared the static setup would lead to a fixed opening game leading to a fixed puzzle. That has not proven out, so NYZ can stay.
That still leaves me with too many polyomino games. And maybe that’s ok. The only one I’ve been able to part with is Planet Unknown, a game which offered me absolutely nothing. And, like Russian Railroads, I continue to be baffled by its ongoing praise, especially from people I usually align with.
Adding those two together, I may have just learned something. I’ve always said I don’t like Roll & Writes, with Ganz Schon Clever (GSC) being the poster child for my aversion. But maybe it isn’t the roll & write mechanic, per se, that gets me. GSC, Russian Railroads, and Planet Unknown all have this “advance down a score track for uncertain future benefit” thing and they all fell flat. On the flip side, Railroad Ink, Mindspace, and Welcome To continue to delight me a little more than they should. I think it is something specific to this GSC type puzzle - mathable, uncontrollable to an extent, and unearned value gained or lost by future events you don’t choose - which is what I actually don’t like.
Huh.
Babylonia: It’s been a while. Really strong game. Really tense game. I squeaked out 107-104, having one tile left for the last move of the game and exactly one space open next to a Ziggurat. So, Samurai + Through The Desert = Yes. I, like others, have worried that this game gets stale but it seems playing it against a new opponent really shows you a new face.
Tales of the Arabian Nights: Tried this out with family for Thanksgiving. Two kids, three adults. Chaos. We played maybe five turns, enjoyed ourselves, and packed it up. I am super impressed with the system here, both the mechanics of the book of tales, but especially the status cards. It’s a simple mechanic leveraged for massive storytelling and game bending. Those status cards. Genius.
Made some tweaks on how to better handle the chaos next time and we’ll try again.
Highlight is the post-game debrief and my 4yo cackling at how she was locked in a room full of ants.
Mountain Goats: Overdelivers. So bad at this game.
Keyflower: So unique, still one of my favorites. Blast the BGA implementation, it ruins everything.
GWT with Rails to the North: Interesting. I like it. I don’t like it better or worse than GWT without. So this is a sometimes on, sometimes off expansion for variety. Aces.
Orleans: Played this and Altiplano two-handed and didn’t like them much. Playing against people is what it needed. My score was much better in a second attempt and the game was much more exciting. This one survives the cull pile!
Evacuation: Still solo. Went back for one more before I had to relearn the rules. I’ll say, race mode, advanced action option, and generous end-of-round benefits is THE configuration. I wanted to try the advanced actions before selling, and that recommends generous benefits. The last, race mode, was a lucky mistake where I just forgot to deal out goal cards at the start of the game. I realized I was enjoying myself far more than the previous games, so I decided not to fix the error, even though it made the end-of-game win/loss evaluation pointless.
This is still getting sold, but I found the right way to play and I’d be happy to play again. I’m just not going to pony up to teach this to anyone ever and know it would languish underneath stronger alternatives pretty much forever.
8 Likes
online plays
the Great Zimbabwe - another Tekelili game. I took Anansi and hyperfocused on building monuments. Indeed, no craftsmen or special cards to increase my VR. By increasing one of my monuments to 3, I can guarantee income based on that, plus whatever cows that land on my hand during the Generosity of Kings.
I am still wondering what would be a counter for Anansi other than keeping prices low. I’m guessing Anansi will be cow poor if the game continues on and other players who got better engines will have the upperhand.
Despite that, Jango is still the god to play for a rush strat.
Pax Porfiriana 2x - one played with @mr.ister and another for a 3 player game. Another 3p game was also played with friends. Lacks the shared incentives of Renaissance or Pamir but man, it’s just fun playing in Diaz’s Mexican Wild Wild West
Horseless Carraige - 3 players and I’m appreciating this more. I would prefer this on the table though. Or again, I might need more plays on OBG to get used to the UI
Terraforming Mars with the forum. Went for a metals strat to get cheap af cards with metal tags on them. Got beaten on the 3rd milestone, which is crucial.
7 Likes
Aw, how did I miss out on that Horseless Carriage game?
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Ah it’s a game with buddies. I got invited.
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