How is Arcs compared to Andromeda’s Edge?
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Sadly, I don’t know. I don’t own Andromeda’s Edge, nor do I know anyone who has it yet.
I liked Root much more immediately, although I’ve only played that twice at this point, and I disliked Oath after the first play (not hated or anything, but I could immediately tell that it wasn’t a game for me… too much kingmaking and wibbly-wobbly political elements, not enough balance in the armies or warfare).
I like it more than I liked Black Angel? But now we’re going for a stretch. Card driven 4X (which really aren’t 4X… no Exploration, almost no Expansion, some Extermination, some Explotation) aren’t a super common genre that I own.
Work is ramping up dramatically between now and the end of the holiday season, so it’s unlikely I will get it to the table again before 2025, but I am cautiously optimistic about the Blighted Reach campaign. We shall see, we shall see.
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Tried out For Northwood! on BGA. Took me three tries to get a victory, and it was pretty much pure luck, as I won a couple of the conversations on the last draw when I didn’t have the ruler’s suit, so just pure luck that the suit I had came up with a lower value than mine.
Fun game, nice way to kill a little time.
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I think it’s an interesting push and pull between trying to get lots of tricks and then trying to get almost no tricks. I only played one game so far though. It took a lot longer than expected for a small box solo-game.
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Haven’t played Imperium Horizons for a bit and got it out this evening. Gosh, the Taino are a bit good; I was never constraibed by resources.
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SETI - cool. After playing it again, my sourness for modern Euros seems to be returning. Because this is fucking boring. I think my first play was vastly more enjoyable when the other 2 players I’ve played it with (J and B. B, aka Euro Beast) were fast players.
Also, I am now opting to have the aliens revealed (at least for newbies) right at the start, but the effects won’t apply until you fully research about the alien. The fact that we have to stop playing and read up on what each aliens do, is boring. It breaks the flow of the pace.
Or maybe because I’m playing more Splotters again (albeit, online). Or maybe because I am playing more Age of Innovation. IDK
Bear Raid - faster game this time since people finally understood what a “short” is in a stock market. Still a bit too long. But the problem is, you do want the game to go longer so you can play long term with your shares/shorts. But this is a filler light game, and there are better ones with short duration and have better depth.
The next day, I showed up at @EnterTheWyvern 's place and played some good games!
Prussian Rails - another outing of PR and the auctions are mind-melting like Chex. Realisation hit when during the auctions, you also now have to factor in turn-order manipulation in an interesting way.
Timing on when to merge lines with other rail lines is interesting. It can be random because turn order is literally drawn randomly, but it is that random draw of turn order is what makes Prussian Rails so blindingly explosive on top of the usual shared incentives gameplay.
In my top games ever.
Spirit Island - played the Turtle Spirit, which is interesting to know that it’s an offensive spirit! Turtle smash! We lost against Scotland Level 4, but it was still great fun. Though, it is argued that it is SI’s hard difficulty is what stops it from peaking.
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I took care of that today :).
It feels a bit different to Resist for a few reasons; and it’s a more-involved set-up (although the game time greatly outweighs the set-up time).
Set-up starts with randomly selecting three “jurors” from the village deck, and you win the game if at least 2/3 of them are on your side if-and-when the witch trial takes place at the end of the game. The set of missions for that game is then specific to those jurors (each villager comes with a three-act mission sequence). Succeeding at a mission will gain you favour with any single juror of your choice, but will gain you the most for the juror it was associated with (thematically you are helping the village in a way that one of the jurors always cares about especially). The challenge cards (some good; most bad) which are randomly drawn and attached to the missions are then a mix of common challenges, and 15 juror-specific cards (5 each), so the themes you see through the course of any given game are always connected to the three villagers drawn at the start.
How much convincing each juror requires is hidden information (which you may or may not be able to uncover along the way), so when you choose to go to trial (you can lose the game in a number of ways, and it’s your call when you make a bid to win) you quite likely won’t know for sure whether you’ve done enough.
The final set-up step is to draft your coven of 12 by considering two witches at a time and selecting one. There are numerous families of varying size, and any time you get to play multiple witches from the same family on the same turn there are bonuses; so if you find yourself drafting more than one of a family, you might want to double-down on that and try to maximise the potential benefits (which in turn modifies the set of abilities you’ll end up drawing from).
Failing two missions loses you the game immediately, so with things looking very dicey in the third act I took my chances and went to trial. I’d gained almost no favour at all with juror Hackett, but I had a healthy 7 persuasion with Martha, and a rather risky 5 with Ichabod – however I knew that one of Ichabod’s two cards was a 2, so a 3 or less for the other would be sufficient. The highest card is a 6 (the worst case is 6+5 = 11), and I didn’t know any of the other values for the jurors.
I won! Not a complete victory – I had no chance at all of convincing all three – but my 5 turned out to be exactly enough for Ichabod, and Martha too had needed only 5. The one juror I’d mostly ignored turned out to be the most determined of the bunch, but fortuitously they were in the minority. (In fact I’d made a good call after one mission to improve my standing by a lesser amount with Ichabod vs attempting to gain the full favour with Hackett, as I’d seen Ichabod’s ‘2’ card by then and figured he was probably a safer bet. It could have gone either way though, so luck was certainly on my side in the end.)
Good game. Mechanically very similar to Resist!, naturally, but the thematic and gameplay changes make it feel different enough that I can see myself hanging on to them both.
A couple of my earlier reports on Resist!:
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We played a couple of new ones for us: Wilmots Warehouse and Gardlings
Gardlings is a bag builder in the Quacks style push your luck mould. It shears off a tonne off Quacks though so you’re looking at a purer game. I think I like it doesn’t have Quack’s perpetual leg ups for losers but it’s also a much smaller game. It’s pretty cool.
Wilmots warehouse was a delight really. everyone who says it’s a magic trick is right. I don’t know if this means it also has diminishing returns like a magic trick but certainly our first game was in that high five zone. The idea of creating these mad links across the board is really cool.
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I’m half interested in Wilmots, I just have a really really bad memory, I’m worried that would be a problem
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Because my memory is getting worse I want Wilmots as it’s a game form of a recognised memory practice. Hopefully slow the decline…
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I’m loath to say anything as strong as “don’t worry about it it will be okay” but it was surprisingly doable. There’s some really clever techniques at play which mean it should be possible to have fun even if your memory isn’t tip top.
You can see that there’s a lot of care put in because they don’t tell you how to setup up the game until they’ve told you to talk to each other.
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Some games recently!
Race for the Galaxy
Gravwell, just a solid racing game where everyone’s invested all the time because you’re all just crawling over each other, which lasts the perfect amount of time.
That Time You Killed Me. Got this as a gift. It’s more chess-like than I usually play, and the time travel theme doesn’t really hang together if you look too closely, but you can feel pretty clever with some of the moves you can make. Only played a best-two-of-three of the first module, interested to see what the other ones are like.
Fromage. Place workers to get your cheese into different minigames. Point salad. Looks nice, theme feels tacked on, was a good enough time-to-enjoyment ratio that I would play it again if need be (need probably won’t be).
Moving Wild - Oink drafting game of getting biomes and animals and matching them up for points. Would rather just play Sushi Go, it’s not like it’s even that much bigger!
I think I’m done going to this meetup - too much of a schlep to play mediocre games where most tables have at least one annoying person at them. I get enough gaming in at home. Speaking of which…
Irish Gauge - My top pick from last year’s PAXU and another birthday gift. I am so bad at this game man. Ended up with shares in most companies but majority in none, was surprised to be tied for third (aka last) but not surprised to be 25 behind the winner.
Hansa Teutonica - A weird low-scorer where nobody got the east-west connection, only three bonus markers were picked up, one player got like 17 points from owning the action city, and it came down to the second tiebreaker for first place. This game is so goddamn good!
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Games!
Fishing, 4 player. It won’t be for everyone, but what a fun ride of a trick taker.
Comic Hunters, 4 Player. it’s good and the theme is excellent. Had a huge comic book nerd playing who recognised covers. It was never worth the $90, but well worth the $25 from Barnes and Noble. Got mine for £25
Stay Cool, 3 players, weird game where you assemble answers from dice with letters on whilst answering another set of uestions verbally, whilst remembering to flip a sand timer 4 times. Good fun, but no need to own.
Tower Up, 2 player, again a good interactive puzzle but I worry that everyone ends up on similar scores all the time making the game moot.
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Time travel themes never hang together if you look too closely. Best not to!
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Got to play some games with Maryse and Yvan on Sunday (yes, this report is late as heck, I know).
Two games of our classic, Ticket To Ride Rails & Sails, where Maryse destroyed us both. I forget the exact scores, but the last game I came dead last at 55. That’s gotta be some kind of record.
But then… THEN! We taught Yvan Tzolk’in. Oh my oh my, what a crunchy game that is at three players. He was a bit overwhelmed at first, but he did quite well, managing a score of 49 (I came second at 72 and Maryse won at 79, or somewhere in that area). 49 is a very good score for a first game! He was keen to play again, so we likely will this week-end.
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Pitchcar x3 - we played Pitchcar thrice!! I did not expect how popular Pitchcar will be in the club! All with high player count! It’s the Spirit of Christmas that made them play fun games instead of Euro games with scowling Renaissance men, I’m telling y’all!!
The Gang several times at 6 and 4 players - amazing! We are now finding 4 players too easy. 6 players is just the right amount of difficulty.
Tumbling Dice - again, the club put a notice to bring “fun” games and Tumbling Dice is another. Great flicking fun! Not as good as Pitchcar, of course, but what is!?
Ice Cool 2 - see Tumbling Dice. Another flicking game where I would rather play Pitchcar
Insider
Pit - a game from 1903 and is still fun today. Again, the club wants ppl to bring “fun” games. It’s a real time trading game a la Sidereal, but as a filler. Still works even today and it’s one of my fave fillers. I still own this 1930s edition copy and I haven’t played it for years. I should be bringing it more often
Power Vacuum - I do like this game. The shared incentives when it comes to your political agenda is very interesting. Although, I’m not sure if latching it on a trick taker mechanism was a good choice overall. it was the shared incentive that was interesting and I wasn’t into the trick taking bit that much. Can’t blame them as trick taking is the “flavour of the year”
Still, I wasnt excited on getting it, but will play it. Shared incentives with trick taking? Why not?
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This is how I felt about Inside Job. Social deduction plus trick taker! Except there’s a lot of super interesting trick takers already, so this elevated the social deduction bit, but is not something I would reach for if I wanted a trick taker.
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Have you got a group meta?
Admittedly I’ve only played this twice, but we’ve always found it really difficult to beat, but normally only getting 1 trick out of order. How one player ranks Queen high versus how another ranks Jack high always tripped us up.
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Same. Only played at 3p, which sounds like it may not be the best player count.
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We (quietly) deduce what hand they have when they change stars drastically. We still get tripped when two players have the same rank but got the kickers wrong, for example
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