Andromeda’s Edge - we will be playing this one again tomorrow. There might even be two tables of it happening (which has already happened previously too!). Has anyone else played or looked into it?
9 Likes
It recently came across my radar. Along with Dwellings of Eldervale.
I’m not buying anything until next year, so it went onto a list rather than really looking into it. How was it?
4 Likes
going very well. 3 of us have purchased it after playing and seems we get like 10 players every session. It is a 1-5 player game. And these guys (and gals) are all Ti4 players. So, the concept (action) is really appealing to everyone! Which is surprising. But from what I hear online, seems it could be the game of the year and that’s what got me initially interested.
4 Likes
Sounds like it was a good further development from Dwellings of Eldervale then. That one I own and have played a few times solo and once with two and then never managed to get to the table for real.
It was quite hyped at the time… and I completely fell for the huge KS campaign but it didn’t grab my like I had hoped. It arrived at a similar time as the Jagged Earth Kickstarter and Spirit Island already was my favorite game then, so it may just have eclipsed Dwellings.
4 Likes
correct, many who love Dwellings say it is even better! And I thought that was surprising because it is a “space” themed game! But everyone who loves Dwellings loves this Andromeda’s Edge. 
4 Likes
Blob Party with the whole group. Eventually formed a big blob and a little blob and had a lot of near misses (including one that was entirely my fault) and decided to call it and split into longer games.
Bunny Kingdom with a very slow start (weird shuffling meant two of the starting hands were chock full of parchments). I decided to lean into that and got a lot of parchments (and eventually a sizable fief), so even though I ended the last scoring phase in third, my parchments brought me just over the 200 line to first and I stayed there.
That’s Not A Hat was an absolute riot this time. Multiple faces hurt from laughing too much.
14 Likes
Ticket to Ride: Germany - brutally tight on a 3 player (but I guess this is standard to most TTR maps on 3 player?).
The Gang - yep! this is awesome!
Caverna: Cave vs Cave + Era II - 2 player small box game of the big box Caverna. Very fun spin-off. It is mostly about synergising buildings together. Not as good as Agricola: All Creatures - but that’s because i prefer having them nice animals
Patrician - Schacht game. I can see the DNA of Web of Power/Iwari/etc in this game. It’s okay. Solid game, but I don’t need solids.
Ticket to Ride: London - it’s fine. When you have a speedy group that can play big box TTR under an hour, what’s the point?
Explosiv - I had high hopes as Geekbuddies rated this higly, but it’s not as great as I thought. I’d rather play Sticheln
7 Likes
Played my first game of Arcs, and it was… fascinating.
It’s weird. Enjoyable, sure, but the fact that it’s not really a trick-taking game, but has elements of trick-taking, but there are the layers of your usual Space 4X game tossed in there…
Yeah. I am looking forward to locking horns with it again.
I jumped out to an early lead Chapters 1 and 2 by scoring really well on “Tycoon”, but Chapter 3 a couple of the players hammered me very hard for my hubris (it is very hard to “protect” resources if you spread out, and having cities isn’t super important until you have a LOT of cities). At the start of Chapter 5 I was tied for last, and at the end of the game the guy I was tied with managed a 15 point jump into first place (all his cities for +5 points, plus 2 different Ambitions on Tyrant).
Fascinating game. I’m not sure I like it yet, but I am absolutely going to try it again.
12 Likes
Played Amritsar: the golden temple yesterday, which is a game I knew absolutely nothing about before playing!
It’s essentially a game of action selection and point salad. The action selection uses a mancala mechanism (like Five Tribes) where matching the colour of the last piece you put down to the action space lets you take a bonus action, and matching to the location of your elephant lets you take another bonus action.
I liked it, although it was quite AP inducing so took quite a while.
11 Likes
We‘ve been doing this year‘s Exit Advent Calendar.
I am not normally a fan of any of those escape room games. I tried a few Unlock ones and they were okay but not impressive. Nothing I repeated. I like puzzles, I really do… but somehow so far this has never appealed.
But I liked the cover of this year‘s Exit Calendar.
We‘ve been doing the puzzles with our morning coffee. It says Beginner on the box. But … I think we are below that level. Yesterday we had to look up all 3 clues. Not all puzzles are equally difficult and sometimes we just seem to have a „Brett vor dem Kopf“
In any case, it really works for us this way, 1 puzzle every day. There is a lot of story text and it is quite funny so far. Lots of little jokes 
Recommend this one. Even for people totally not into exit games
15 Likes
My copy of Hispania arrived yesterday and I had to try it out:
As a sequel to Tetrarchia, it is of course quite similar. But this time the opposing armies are not “babarians” coming from the borders to attack the Roman empire, but the Romans are attempting to conquer Hispania and the locals are fighting back.
There are a bunch of newish mechanics:
- Roads allow for faster travel
- Fleets move with the transported general
- Rebellion stacks up to 3 hight and so do my own garrisons
- Garrisons defend against attacking armies (at least a little)
- Armies stick to their own province until it is secured
- You can spend money (actions) to make your own attack stronger
- You can spend money to uproot a garrison again
- After each round one rebel token is put on a track counting the years of attrition
Overall this got me thinking. The Roman conquest of Hispania took 200 years. I imagined living in a place that is slowly being taken over like that. It seemed quite awful overall and it made me feel like I was playing the antagonist in this game. I never had such thoughts playing Tetrarchia.
I enjoyed the game quite a bit. Sufficiently different from Tetrarchia to keep both boxes on the shelves. They are tiny for the amount of game they provide. If you missed out on one of them, no need to “have” to hunt down the 2nd one. They aren’t that different. I think I’d recommend Hispania over Tetrarchia (remember I only had one game) but I think this is a good evolution that improves on some of the “issues” Tetrarchia had by putting the game on a timer for example.
PS: my copy arrived with the beige general’s arm being … separated from his body. I’ll reattach it of course. Just a warning to anyone else getting a copy: these are breakable meeples.
11 Likes
Gang of Dice
Small World - a strict distillation of area control genre! SW is deride as simplistic with 2 decisions: which race combo you pick and when to decline with it. Nay! I say, nay! The map positions and bashing are interesting decisions.
And I appreciate how elegant it is compare to ToaM games today that are more complicated (cough Cole Werhle)
But I dont find the area control interesting enough. The games I kept have something I like more than its area control core: so, Dominant Species got the strategic worker placement style of Bus (but better) and Cthulhu Wars got these stupid ass broken special powers, and the area control was the least interesting and works as complement.
Manekinecollection - another Knizia cat game from Japan!? Yes!
It’s basically 4 player Schotten Totten, but instead of only 3 cards and cards w ranks and suits; you have 3 cards and 2 communal values, there are no ranks, only suits.
It is now in my wishlist
Just One
Aqua Garden - that pretty Japanese game about marine animals. It is that cosy weekend afternoon game and we did play it in a cosy weekened afternoon. It is boring and not sure if I am keen on repeatedly plays
Glory to Rome x2 - amazing game! No regrets buying the Black Box edition. It was pricey but got it cheaper than 2nd hand market value online. It is roughly in my Top 20
Arcs - 2 players! It works and it is still fun. There’s more control, obviously, but I find the scoring easy for 2nd place, which means that trying to monopolise an ambition is crucial
11 Likes
That’s a looker!
1 Like
Some games over the last couple of weeks:
Finca, it’d been awhile but this is still a super easy teach/learn and with just enough decisions to make it interesting. Still quite light but I enjoyed it.
Cat in the Box, still great. I’m starting to understand the strategy a bit more, i still do terribly at the area-control board but it’s good fun.
Scout
Distilled, got a friend to bring his copy of this around. I really like this game. I’m not sure how much is me vibing with the theme vs the mechanics but it feels super solid and always engaging. Definitely picking up a copy when I find it for sub $100!
Great Western Trail, great game of this - cowboy heavy strat, as usual. Next game I’ll have to try buildings or trains, but I suspect I’ll do quite poorly. It’s not that going heavy into cowboys is stronger than the other options, I think it’s just a bit more straightforward than the others. Insert quote about the dark side being quicker and easier etc. 
Sea Salt and Paper x3, love this game, such a great light little filler.
Archeos Society, still excellent and easy to get to the table. Sad that it’s pending retheme has probably killed any chance of an expansion for this one (though Paolo has mentioned he struggles designing expansions before, so was probably an outside chance anyway…)
Gizmos, I came in second this game, thanks to putting together a little point scoring engine early on and just hammering it turn after turn. Our winner really hit his stride in the last couple of rounds with some big point cards. He always does very well at this game! Still striving for a win over him - this was probably the closest I’ve come.
Ezra and Nehemiah, second proper game of this, and I won by a decent chunk due to grabbing some amazing scribe tiles early on and exploiting them at every chance I could! (particularly the one that lets you spend a coin to reactivate a trader and the one that gave auto advancement on the altar track) Also it’s much faster at 3 than 4 - sub 3 hours for our game, even with a full teach. Our 4 player game went over 4 hours… Still fun but yeah, definitely recommend 3 over 4.
Abyss, real weird game of this - only two locations in play by the end, cause it went super fast! Also got more than 20 points in monster tokens in the end. Not enough to win but enough to make a decent showing.
10 Likes
Maryse and I tried out The Vale of Eternity over the week-end, playing three games.
Guys, it’s really good. Big, big hit. It’s light and breezy, but at the same time, the limitations in resources, combined with the fact that each card is unique, so if you want a particular power, you better grab it when it shows up, because it is not coming back, make for a delightfully crunchy puzzle.
This turned out way better than I expected. I expected it to be good, but not this good. Awesome!
7 Likes
I also posted my comment on BGG on my “comments” as a review. I felt this one was fit to go there for people to see with Buddy Analysis.
In any case I got a message from the designer with this link.
I’ve been trying to be more aware that smaller publishers/designers will read ALL the comments on a game. So I tend to be more careful if I have negative critique during the early release stages of a game. But this one was not, so I am happy it was seen and I got an interesting article on top of it
8 Likes
The Gang - 5 players and we narrowly lost (2-3). One club member showed up and joined us after, so we are playing 6 players and WON! 6 player win (3-2). Would you believe that!?
This is one of my best games of this year.
Ticket to Ride India - just when I thought I got out, they pulled me back in
I lost to JB as he manage to create 4 Mandalas while the rest got none. That was a 40 pt swing. Definitely one of the better TTR maps.
Han - yes, the one that used to be Web of Power and then became Iwari. Classic old German game.
Curious Cargo - god I hated it. Same thoughts on Pipeline. I think it has great design, but so tedious playing with pipes. Even Rosenberg’s 2 player worker placement have more tension between players than this. Totally not for me.
Foodie Forest - not a trick taker. IDK why it’s considered as one. More similar to Poison. It’s a Knizia and it’s fine.
5 Likes
Second game of Arcs last night, and it continues to bewilder but entertain.
Came dead last (again), didn’t leverage my Leader or my Lore at all over the game (but neither did anyone else, really), and I am still not sure if I like the game.
Gosh it’s weird. Going to try the Campaign because obviously, but I haven’t had that “Wow! This game is GREAT!” moment that I kinda expected?
Like, I loved Twilight Imperium the first time I put the cardboard chits on the paper map. I loved Eclipse as I was reading the rules. I loved Star Trek Ascendency the first time I setup a warp lane.
Arcs is… weird. I am not sure I really like it.
It boils down to choice. You rarely have much. Winning initiative is necessary to declare Ambitions, but you can only declare Ambitions for the cards you have in your hand. And if somebody else declares, you have to try and get whatever they are scoring, but what you can do is so tied to the random draw of the cards…
Plus combat is really swingy. Like, more than TI amounts, and that’s an interesting amount of chaos, but I don’t feel any agency?
But by the same token, I do still want to try it again. Is that just the $200 I sunk into it speaking?
Maybe?
For contrast, right after finishing the game last night we played Dune Imperium Uprising, and gosh that is good. Also finished dead last.
5 Likes
(For more contrast, I tried Dune Imperium Uprising last weekend, and I cannot see the appeal. Literally nothing about it grabbed me, or even piqued my interest.)
4 Likes