Look at all those happy customers! Our first two-player Dungeon Petz game was a big success. And we only forgot one or two of the massive amount of fiddly rules! This was really a fun one - the Petz all really feel like they have their own personality as you continue to raise them, and the little puzzle of the best way to arrange your need cards amongst all of them is an agonizing joy every round. We each had some great sales, but my wife won most of the exhibitions and got the win in a pretty close game.
t
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Finally, had a game day! Didnât get thru half the games I brought, was a bit optimistic there.
Arkham Horror â The Card Game, took a bit longer than I thought, but it was our first game, so you have to expect that. Things went relatively well for us, on standard difficulty (which still seems to have a lot of negative chaos tokens). We got thru it ok, except` I burned my house down and now have a mental trauma.```
Five by Five, a fun little filler with lots of dice. The board is a 5 by 5 grid (hence the name). You have action cards and objective cards. Most action cards are a colour, so you roll one die of that colour and place it anywhere on the board. Hopefully so it fulfils an objective card of yours â like â3 connected of one numberâ, or âall odd numbers in a lineâ. There are public objective cards as well. Pretty easy to pick up and play, and, as I said, lots of dice.
Rebel Princess, good fun! We screwed up by letting a player win all the princes, because we were so intent on avoiding them. Then we showed that we donât learn by letting it happen in the next round. Hardly used any princess powers.
Flip 7, a very straightforward push your luck game. You have cards numbered from zero to 12. There are 12 cards of value â12â, 11 of value â11â etc. So, big cards, more score, but more chance to bust. If you turn over a duplicate card, you bust. And if you can turn over 7 cards, the round ends and you get a bonus 15 points. Thereâs a few special cards, Freeze (end someones round), Second Chance (if you draw a duplicate, you discard the Second Charge instead), and Flip 3, where you have to flip the next three cards. Thereâs a few score modifier cards too, from the awesome 2X card, and the others which just add +2, +4 to your end score. Assuming you havenât gone bust of course. Simple, good fun â would probably make a good drinking game.
Good to finally get a day of gaming in!
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Just finished the Exit advent calendar.
Good as ever, if a little simple now weâve done so many.
Also played The Gang (a real copy was an early present from Santa). Following the rules and betting on what you actually have rather than what you might get made it much smoother for our group of non poker players.
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We finished ours as well. It is completely done for⌠I canât post images but itâs hilarious.
We also managed to play one more game on our personalized map for the old Clank! Legacy with characters from C-Team and Upper Management 
The âprepâ is needed so we can begin the campaign probably on the evening of the 26th or so I hope. I lost by almost 30 points and my partner declared âthat was a close gameâ.
At least he also declared he is willing to go back to Ticket to Ride Legacy as well. But first Clank! we have good memories of the first and now that he won that recap game, I am sure itâs going to start off on the right note.
Also metal clank cubes make much better clank!
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Had our friends over this past weekend for some lunch, Christmas cookie decorating, and games!
We played Quacks of Quedlinburg first, where I trailed for pretty much the entire game. I did have an amazing final round, reaching the spoon without blowing up which jumped me into third place by the end, one point behind second place. If I hadnât had one really terrible round where I blew up after 8 or 9 chips, I may even have gotten up into second, or even first as I was only six points behind.
Then our friendsâ daughter (soon to be 9) wanted to join in a game, so we broke out Sushi Go. She had a lot of help from her mom, but once all the scores were tallied, she won!
Per the agreement before we started, the two winners got to pull the wishbone of the turkey we had had a couple of weeks back, and the winner of the pull would get to pick the next game we played when we met up again. No offense to her, but thankfully her dad won that one, so heâll be making that decision. 
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Hosted my parents for Christmas, and played a few games:
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Forks several times (and putting my theory of how to teach the game to the test, very successfully). My dad scored a ludicrous 69 points in the first proper game, having ended up with no negative points. I think I was about -20 :). I managed positive scores of 2 and 5 in the last couple of games. Iâm continuing to enjoy this a lot â itâs chaotic, but the brief duration of each game is packed with decisions, and the agony/ecstasy of the final reveal of the positive/negative suits is real. Also, each game is always 4 rounds, and every game I announced âthis is the final roundâ when dealing the 4th round, and every game people responded âwhat, already?!â
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Spots with 4p, and there really arenât a lot of rules to this, but I still managed to muck them up in the worst way. The way I taught it, the âHowlâ action was the only way of acquiring a new dog card, but in fact youâre supposed to draw a new dog card every time you score a dog card. Gah, Iâm an idiot. This led to people effectively missing turns repeatedly, which absolutely wasnât fun. The worst part is that I then remembered making that same mistake and noticing the error when I was teaching myself the game a couple of months ago⌠and then I go and make the exact same mistake in a game with other people.
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Half of Thebes â another blunder on my part, simply because it was too late in the evening. In the end we just played one year of the game, which is ending the game in the middle, which is just unsatisfying. We all attempted the biggest excavations that we could, and some remarkably good treasures were found, but still⌠Iâd needed to either start it much earlier, or forego it in favour of a quicker game.
Not really the games evening Iâd had in mind, then; but we still had a nice day, beautiful weather, good food, and everyone enjoyed themselves.
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And this is all that matters, after all.
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Yesterday, we had Maryseâs dad over for Christmas Eve and we played a couple of games of Bärenpark. Super fun, as always, thereâs a reason itâs one of our favourites. Maryse won both games, but I was nipping at her heels both times.
The day before, we babysat our nieces and nephew (Maryseâs sisterâs kids) and gave them their Christmas present: Quedlinburg Dash. Nephew wanted to try it right away, so I punched it, learned it and taught it, all in 15 minutes total. Then we played. Itâs delightful, a really good intro to the bag-building concept, super simple and super cute. Loved it.
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Just played our first two games of Cascadia. Lost the first one 95-88, the second was a 93-93 draw! Itâs delightful, so chill!
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Tried out Star Wars the Deck building game: Clone Wars edition tonight. While the game mechanics are almost identical to the original (this one has personal exile piles rather than a universal one), the new cards, planets, and interactions make it a very different experience. There were multiple times I read a card effect and said, âWhoa,â because of how powerful it felt.
It was looking like I was headed to an easy victory with the Republic versus my wifeâs Separatists faction, but she had a couple of good turns which put us on more even footing, but I was still able to get the win.
Glad to own both. We also had a game of the original version earlier, which she won as the Empire.
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Gave my husband the new space setting Undaunted for Christmas and got our first play in of it tonight. We were learning as we played so it was a little bumpy but overall not too difficult to pick up and we both enjoyed it. I got very close to a win from area control as the corporate faction but he managed to stall me long enough as the striking miners to get a win from kills.
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Got the youngest a copy of Wilmerâs warehouse and played it today. So much fun but apart from the obvious voodoo of the game, I really canât think of a game where playing a second time is nigh on impossible as your brain (or at least mine) needed a break to reset.
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Magic Maze, at least for me.
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As has become a tradition, a bunch of us without family commitments got together for Boxing Day Boardgames.
After a bit of Sea Salt & Paper while people were arriving, we moved into some six-player games, starting with Deadly Dowagersâwhich is good fun at 2-4, and pleasingly chaotic at 6. Three out of six of us had the money and reputation to marry the Duke on the same turnâŚ
A couple of games of Landmarks next, first time Iâve had the chance to try the team mode. The connection with Codenames is even more obvious, but I still very much prefer this one.
On to Curses & Covens, definitely better with six than with four.
Back to party games and some CrossTalk. Hard work for me, this one, and I think it may be degenerate: each turn a team has a choice of making a guess or asking for a clue, but thereâs no penalty for a wrong guess and if they get a clue the other team will get to guess it first. So I suspect it might be most advantageous never to ask for a clue but guess based on what the other team get. Still, quite fun, but not one I adore.
Then 3 of a Kind, in which one person chooses a category (âanimal noisesâ), three other players choose descriptions (âmost likely to start a dance partyâ), and then everyone writes down answers. If you have the same answer as at least one other person, you each score equal to the number of people with that answer. So a bit Just One-ish, but more distributed. All right, nothing offensive about it, but nothing Iâd go to any trouble to own.
The Chamaeleon struck me as unpleasant in much the same way as Spyfall (one player has no idea whatâs going on and has to bluff it, i.e. me in many social contexts).
A few rounds of ito which is more or less Wavelength without all the bulky plastic bits. Everyone gets a card numbered 1-100, thereâs a category, and you put your card face down into the row while naming a thing; the quality of match of the thing to the category is a clue as to your number. (So if you have card 1 and the category is âthings you could stare at all dayâ, you might say âthe sunâ.) The objective is to get all the numbers in order.
Finally, Project L using the âline clearâ layout to allow two players to play at once. Itâs all a bit chaotic and we didnât line up the turns until the end, but I think that did no harm. Still a game I enjoy each time I play it.
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Another game day, thatâs two in two weeks, yay!
War Story: Occupied France, first play. This is a co-operative game where the players are part of the SOE (Special Operations Executive), which recruited and trained agents to gather intelligence, support resistance movements, and disrupt enemy operations. We played the tutorial mission, which is available as a pnp from the Osprey Games website (https://www.ospreypublishing.com/us/discover/gaming-resources/board-card-games/). You get agent cards, equipment, story cards, and a mission booklet. So you choose your team, then choose an option from the cards you have. Each choice takes you to a paragraph of the mission booklet, which you read out and then go from there. Sometimes youâll need to check stats on your team (like the total of their firearms skills). Thereâs no dice or anything. You can increase a skill level with tokens if you think it will help (the higher the level, usually the better the outcome). Some cards get joined together to make a map where you can assign your team to a position). You can play the missions in different ways, so there is some replayability there. So we ended up with our team dying, so that wasnât ideal⌠Good fun, looking forward to the actual game missions (there are 3).
ALIEN: Fate of the Nostromo, first play. Cooperative game based on the first (and best?) Alien movie, where the crew is chased around their ship by the alien. You each take on one of the characters from the movie. We ended up with Dallas, Brett, and Ripley, each with own special ability. The aim is to fulfill each of the objective cards, and then complete the final mission (which you donât even see until the other objectives are completed). Objectives can be something like âall crew must be in the galley with one scrap eachâ. So, itâs pickup and deliver, a little similar to Horrified (which we also enjoy). After each player turn, an encounter card is drawn, which moves the Alien towards the nearest crew member. If they catch someone, your morale goes down, and if it goes down too far, itâs game over man (yes, I know that isnât from the first movie). Also, as you move you encounter tokens which can make the Alien move to your position. You can also craft various useful pieces of equipment, like a movement sensor, or a grapple gun. We won, but it was pretty close, and we needed to use equipment to keep the Alien at bay.
Sea Salt and Paper, first play. A cool little set collection game, with some great artwork. Thereâs a few different ways to score points, and some of them also give you a special ability (like playing pairs of crabs, which lets you go through the discard pile and take a card). Once you have 7 points, you have the choice to just end the game, or give the other players one last turn to beat your points. Fun little filler. Got a little combative at times, but nothing wrong with that.
Torchlit, first play. This is another trick taking game, but pretty different to most of them. You start by choosing one of your cards as a prediction of how many tricks you think youâll win. Ok, thatâs not all that different, a lot of trick takers do it, but thereâs a bit more going on. There are dungeon cards marked from zero to seven (or six at 3p). You each have a token, and this starts on dungeon card zero. Each time you win a trick to move to the next dungeon. You can also move if you played the same value as the winner of the trick (so you could play off suit). The player who played the lowest card value (ignoring suit) gets to add cards from the trick to the dungeon cards. Usually, this means taking one card of each colour and adding them (so if there were two green cards, they could choose which one gets added). Each card added to a dungeon increases itâs value, and if you end up on that dungeon card at the end of the round, you get points. Remember that card you chose at the start of the round? if you finish on that number dungeon, you also get bonus points. Thereâs a few things to think about here, not just âwin the most tricksâ. Good fun. No idea where to buy it from, I made my own.
Donât L.L.A.M.A. Dice, first play. A very light game of dice rolling. You get a hand of cards, and then roll three dice on your turn. If you can match the dice to your cards, you can discard them, and youâre trying to get rid of your cards as quickly as you can. But if your dice donât match, you are forced to take extra cards from a row of cards from one to six (and a llama card). What you donât want to do is not match your own cards AND not match from the extra cards, because that means its a Llama Drama, and you take ALL the extra cards. It sounds more complicated than it is. Light, but good fun.
Flip 7, another game of this. Good, clean, push your luck fun.
Another great gaming day!
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Is anyone on the Codenames app? I bought Kate it for Christmas.
Sheâs Kateind if anyone wants to team up
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Went over to my buddy Terryâs last night to try out a few new games.
First up was a round of Wilmotâs Warehouse with Terry, me, Andy, and Terryâs youngest, Zoe. We did very well, with no mistakes and a respectable 2 minutes to fulfill all the orders. The 9 camels under the sun that came from the hills of Vegas (using geolocation) pooped, which somebody stepped in, near the water that had waves from the beaver tails that were being chased by the cats that three people said were okay. The camels died and people argued about whether they should be buried in the pyramids with the axes and boats that travel the river Styx, but then everyone had tacos, cherries that had no pits, and played tambourine.
Weird little game. I think I enjoyed it? Iâm keeping it in the collection for now, at least.
After that we played a 2 Age game of Tales of the Arthurian Knights, the sequel to the Tales of the Arabian Nights. Itâs⌠good. Not as silly as the original, but much more inclusive and a lot of the rough edges from Arabian Nights have been sanded down to a nice mirror sheen. I won, but only because I completed a neat Location quest.
I will say that I miss the ridiculous number of things you can do with/at each location. There are now usually 2 choices, or two branches of two choices for a total of 4, occasionally more, but it felt like there was never the 8-10 choices that Arabian Nights presented. By that token, I do really like the skill system, and the way you score Destiny separately from Renown is very smart.
Anyway, I had fun, and the other three (Zoe was too young for TofAK, but Terryâs cousin joined in) seemed to like it. Terryâs suggestion was next time we play on more comfortable couches, since the game isnât high strategy, so instead playing someplace you can relax, listen to and engage with the story would be better. An interesting observation, but itâs true that the last time I played TotAN we were on the couch, and it was a lot of fun.
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Amazingly, yesterday, Maryse and I decided to try out her second Christmas gift to me, after Cascadia, Forest Shuffle!
It was so good! Lots and lots of points to be scored (I won it 241-234) and youâre never without options. Lovely, lovely artwork, too. Surprisingly a bit of a table hog, however. So this has a pretty hard limit of 3 players I think, for space reasons.
But man, what a good haul.
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This is the last unspoilered image I can post of our Clank! Legacy 2 Darkest Magic game because we finished game 1 and already everything looks different. For now the changes to our board remain subtle but still. this is after we set up for game 1.
We love it. Our new âFranchiseâ is called âTo be defiantâ because thatâs all that came to mind in that moment.
As with the first Clank! Legacy game (which you should really play before even thinking of this oneâyou would be missing out and it is available) this one is quite cozy? But it is Clank! and if you dislike Clank! in particular or random deck-builders in general, this is not for you. It stays true to the formula even with all of the big and little additions to the rules.
It is not a cooperative game but playing the campaign we tend to play it slower than usual to move through the story. It feels quite nice to be semi-cooperating to get the best copy of the game we can. The game has so many small and big changes, stickers and marks to apply, stuff to add to the game, changes to make to cards or the map⌠this one has even more than the first and the first already felt quite generous in that regard. Itâs as if the people who made this think the most fascinating thing about a legacy game is making a modified and customized game filled with fantastic memories of your games
Games of this tend to go slow and run long. But it really is the one game that we both really WANT to play right now. And it makes it quite precious because this comes after a year where we played very few games just the two of us together. I really hope we will play another tomorrow. I canât wait to see what comes next.
PS: My favorite new cards involve âhaving to make noisesâ to get bonusses or getting something extra for reading a text in a funny voice So silly, I love it. I always make the noises and funny voicesâeven if I get clank! on top of them.
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Have also got the codenames app
Captbnut on there as well
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