Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

Boardgames
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First up today was Nippon. First play of this after getting it in a trade. I liked it. Fun interesting choices, a little different to lots out there. That being said, another euro of around the same weight that’s as good as my other ones :man_shrugging:t3:

Next up was Piepmatz. Also first play after trading for it. Really good fun for a card game. Didn’t find it as fiddly as Quins’ SUSD written review made it sound. Glad I got this one. Having traded for London 2e which I never played. London 2 had a box considerably bigger, had more rules and is a longer game. Very happy with Piepmatz even if I’m not sure on the spelling.

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Played several games of For Sale. I love this auction / double thinking game. There’s nothing more satiafying than to sell the crappiest property in the deck for $7000 :money_mouth_face:

Endeavor: Age of Sails - one of the better Euros for my taste nowadays. Yes, it has tracks and you move up. But it’s streamlined and straightforward. Good player interaction with a mixture of conpetition and cooperation.

Slavery is presented in the game, which I think is fine (some dont like it included. Fair enough) because you get minus points for them. And I think our game ends up being too real in a cynically way.

2 out of 4 players played with slavery. However, one of them, at some point, no longer saw use to them and emancipated the slaves. He got points for doing it, enough to negate the penalties. Just like in history: commit sins today, ask for forgiveness tomorrow.

We also played with the Age of Expansion which I thought was a good addition to the base game. I intend to play this more.

Met my friend today to play some 2 players:

Battle Line: Medieval - I cannot imagine having a 2 player sesh without Battle Line!

Carcassonne: South Seas - the Pacific theme greatly appeals to me. I noticed that I become fond of my birth country as I grow older.

Triumvirate - 2 player trick taking and betting which of the three factions will win the struggle. I really like this. Perhaps more than Fox in the Forest

Cousins War - I have the 1st edition which is way smaller. Thats what appeals to me. The 2nd edition along with the others in the series: Ming Voyages and March for Progress arent a " must have" because of that. But Im keen on playing them too.

Cousins War is about the War of the Roses. I still like it despite the fiddly rules. Ended in a tight conclusion in which my opponent control 2 out of 3 regions at the end of the game. I need to play more of this to see if the game is artificially tight (meaning that the game is just full of false decisions). But I have doubts that it’s not.

Field of the Cloth of Gold - Tom Russell (Irish Gauge fame) made this 2 player game heavily inspired from the old school German style games of the 90s. And it delivers. Very good game with serious consequences if you arent paying attention, especially on what you give to your enemy. Obviously, I havent played much games from 2020 thanks to COVID. But this is easily at the top of “Best games of 2020”. Now if only this isnt a “niche game in a niche hobby with niche price like Im buying a Splotter game”

The Great City of Rome - pleasant city builder. Nothing awful, but nothing that stands out. Im surprised at the meh art output considering that this is Z-Man who published this

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Yamatai, havent played this for a while. You build up over the map by placing coloured boats, taking resources and building on the islands. You earn money by making a contiguous line of your own buildings, and points from building and from buying specialists. Specialists can also give you a unique ability. Each player turn starts by selecting an action tile, with gives you one or two boats, and a special ability (just for that turn). The action tile also gives you the player order for the next turn. The better the tile, the further back you are. We had a good time with this one, should play it more.

Scooby-Doo: Escape from the Haunted Mansion, an escape room game with Scooby and his friends. Each character has a special ability, from Research (Velma) to Eating (Shaggy). Its very nicely presented, with cool looking cards and map tiles. We were going thru fairly successfully, until we got to a bit of a roadblock with one puzzle. To use a character, you lookup a code in their book along with the code from the map tiles. So there might be a cupboard in a room, marked as 123. If you wanted Velma to check it out, you would add her code (3) to the map code, so you would lookup 3123. If there is no entry there, you mark off a scooby snack as a penalty. Entries will tell you which cards are to be used, and also which cards can be discarded (because you’ve solved that problem). We found a few times we were being told to remove cards we didnt have out, which means we’ve missed something. We got to the end of the adventure, but still had map tiles to go, so we missed a bit of the game there. Probably needed to research/investigate more items. It was fun. The next game in the series is going to be The Shining.

The Crew

Roll for Adventure, good coop where you roll a lot of dice. You’re trying to complete sections of the board (which has 4 territories). When you complete a section, you gain a power gem. The object of the game is to collect all of the power gems. On each player turn, an enemy card is turned up from the deck. Enemies will attack and remove dice from their section. Each enemy has a rank, and higher ranks cause lower ranked enemies to attack again. If there are no dice on the territory they attack, they do damage instead. Each territory has a damage section – if any of them get to the end, its game over. Which is what happened to us.

Nova Luna, its simple, but very addictive.

Silver and Gold

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Yesterday we played Santorini, Praetor, Okanagan, and Frenemy Pastry Party.

We started off with a tile-laying extravaganza (Okanagan and Praetor).

Okanagan is pretty light and chill. I have a soft spot for it because I spent a few months in the Okanagan valley when I was 19, but it would have been nice if a bit more thought had gone into the setting (yet another game about colonising an “empty” part of the Americas…)

Praetor was quite thinky and interesting, but a lot slower than I would have like. I didn’t win, but I was playing purple, which I think is a victory in itself given the setting :crown:

We followed that up with a couple of games of Santorini, which both looks great and is brilliant. The only reason I won’t buy it is because my friend already owns it (see also, Sagrada and Zendo).

Lastly, we played Frenemy Pastry Party, which is a Korean semi-cooperative card game in which you play cute animals trying to bake cakes (don’t ask…). I’m still not sure about this one. The art is lovely, but it doesn’t feel like there’s much there. I’m trying to think of some house rules that make it work better.

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Yeah, solo Rhino can be tricky with only 7 threat before he wins. It’s often easier with solo to control two heroes yourself, so that the total goes up to 14. If you have the time, running two heroes as solo is great fun with any enemy!

And Spider-Man is brilliant against Rhino for the “somersault out of the way and avoid ALL damage” ability (which even with the extra hero packs out now is still something that only he has). It’s great when Rhino has built up loads of support cards that would otherwise deal a million damage.

Captain Marvel just draws so many extra cards though, and her Energy Channel is awesome.

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We meet our friends yesterday whom we only met for online gaming since February. We had plans to play Alubari but instead spent all afternoon talking… then played a few rounds of Druids and after dinner played one game of Isle of Skye which I like but suck at playing so badly…

interestingly the final score was the two men at 90 points and the women at 69. how me matched so closely is a mystery but the game ended on a laugh and then it was already to dark to keep playing outside.

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We spent a weekend even higher up in the mountains with some in-laws in our bubble.
We got a few games in, with the mostly non-gaming group.

Queendomino was a hit with the kids, two of which used the pieces to make 6 or 8 different games. The adults were surprised at how much of a brain-burner it can be when choosing tiles.

Mille Bornes, Scrabble, and Rummikub are the three games that this part of the family plays every time it gets together. My wife and I are solid as a Mille Bornes team, I have never beaten my mother in law at Rummikub, and my father in law and I have a long-standing rivalry at Scrabble. He is currently in the lead, with 25 wins to my 24.

Disney Pictopia this was the biggest win of the weekend, with everyone, from 3 to 67 years old, involved and invested in the game.

I introduced Unmatched which served as a vehicle to allow my sister in law to hand her husband his ass. She absolutely wiped the floor with him as Alice. He tried as the raptors, Bruce Lee, and Jekyll and Hyde before he figured out that switching characters was not helping him. He then switched characters again, and tried three times as Sinbad, and lost.

I spent a fair chunk of time reading the manual for Gloomhaven and trying to wrap my head around the best way to leave the monster set up in my vault table, while using the top of the table as a makeshift digital classroom.

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Top tip, which I got from someone over in the Gloomhaven thread: use the Gloomhaven helper app and reduce the required space by 25-30% :slight_smile:

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Thanks, I’ll check it out. I used to be very anti-app, but Imperial Assault showed me the error of my ways.

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Played Lords of Waterdeep yesterday using the Undermountain expansion module with my wife and her brother. I got the builder lord, who I feel is one of the hardest to do well with, especially when money is hard to come by. As such, I lost, trailing the other two for most of the game.

While I managed to get the lieutenant plot quest to give myself a much needed boost, my wife got the one that let her draw and play an intrigue card after taking an action that let her play one, so she got the equivalent of a number of free actions from that. And she won. Final scores were 187 - 174 - 154.

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Played Tsuro, Junk Art, and No Thanks a few nights ago.

Junk Art was the main game for the evening, and we achieved some fairly remarkable junk sculptures : ) Lots of laughs, and a good time was had by all.

Tsuro and No Thanks are both excellent fillers. The latter looks like such a rubbish card game, but it’s almost ridiculously good for what it is.

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Had another Monday Night games with the Geek Guild and it was a blast.

Played three games of Deception with 7 players, followed by 7 Wonders, which I really, really liked, I can see why it has become quite a classic. Managed a third position between 7 players, so I am quite happy with that, even though on the first two eras I was struggling a little bit to grasp the trade mechanics. We finished the big table of 7 with a Cockroach Poker, which so many years of playing card games did help me well (I am good at Lying card games) so I actually ended it not being caught up even once.
After that, I changed over to a couple of games of Coup between 4, playing with the Inquisitor replacing the Ambassador. Interesting twist to the game, so interesting that I finished second on all three games… they were reading my bluffs by now, I guess.
And I ended the night with an Isle of Skye game. God, that should not have been my last game of the night…! The bidding and reading other players cards made it a bit painful to my brain. Still really enjoyed the game, and finished third just one point behind the second player (helped by loads of money on my last round) so among two experienced players and another newbie like me, I cannot complain. But I think this is a game to play with a fresh head. If you are analysis paralysis prone, this is not a game I’d recommend for you… or a perfectionist. Trying to slot those tiles can be… challenging, to say the least. Bloody New Hebrides geography!!! :smiley: :smiley:

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Last night: boardgames round the garden table, in masks. Dead of Winter (where we managed to lose by the end of the first round, which is pretty good going; a combination of lots of initial zombies round the colony, a crisis we couldn’t sort, and morale exhaustion) and classic Robo Rally (still fun, but I still prefer the newer version and next time these people come over I’ll try them on Volt).

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The newer version rules are much better, but the components took a massive nosedive

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Having been discussed in another thread earlier, we played Hive Pocket this evening. Awesome setting, back of a surf board whilst on the beach.

Got a game of Innovation against my eldest this afternoon. I was scoring ok, but stuck on the low cards. He gambled, 2 turns later I was holding a level 10 insta win.

I think we play both of these games poorly and would get destroyed by even a good beginner, but they’re both great fun.

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Bringing it up in the Two-player games thread reminded me that my wife and I played Arboretum the other day. It was an odd game for us, as it took a lot of turns before either of us pulled cards out of a discard pile. Usually it does not take long for one of us to snatch up something the other discarded.

Wife got a bit upset with me when I had higher values of Oak cards in hand than she did, which robbed her of her best path. Because of this, I pulled off the win, 16 - 13.

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I’ve found that with more experience I have started avoiding the opponent’s discard pile for the most part. The danger is that every time you’re pulling from there you’re missing out on one more unseen card that could be the exact card you or your opponent need. If you end up drawing 5 more cards from the draw deck than I do then there’s a decent chance you’ll pick up an important 1 or a 7 that I was hoping to grab. No idea whether this translates to 3-4 player games where there’s so much more going on, and maybe I’m being too extreme…

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As with most things in life, it depends what is on offer. I tend to only go for the discard pile if I can take something that will give me the double score bonus for a path. Sometimes your opponent discards a species you were thinking about playing but had not yet, which can give you a boost with that species. Sometimes you blind draw into some good cards for a species that your opponent (or you) has already discarded some cards for. These can get you a continuous path of a species.

Then, other times, you can just calculate that you will win a species, guaranteed, by the cards visible in the discards and on the table, and what you have in hand, and just don’t worry about it.

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I’ve only played 3-player, and drawing from the discard has great strategic value in that case. You can limit your opponents’ willingness to build a path if they see you grabbing higher value cards of a type they’ve been putting down. Discard also lets you outright rob them of their points if you’re strategic about it and not obvious each turn. I tend to pull from 50/50 from the discard and blind and so far have won more than I’ve lost. I’ve also found that if you find your opponents are fighting it out over a specific tree, you can use discard draws to take advantage of the types they aren’t paying any attention to, until they do, but by then it’s too late.

I could also be playing with people who are just really bad at the game…

I’ll add, though, that I see how playing 2-player would be vastly different and this may not be as effective. It’s a lot harder to hide your intentions when you can’t get your opponents muddled by focusing on each other.

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We finished our first Spirit Island game. We didn’t quite manage to win in that next turn, but we prevented any actual damage from Ravage and entirely forestalled Building, so we won the following turn with one firestorm from Lightning’s Swift Strike. Now we’ve switched to a more updated mod (which now includes Jagged Earth) and have gotten a bit more adventurous by 1) folding in Branch and Claw, and 2) our more experienced players (myself and my friend Ed) switching to high complexity spirits. I’m running Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares (with my friend Liz playing Shadows Flicker Like Flame and my girlfriend using the Aspect for Lightning’s Swift Strike that generates fear as an innate, this should be a fear-heavy game). Ed is trying the promo spirit Serpent Slumbering Beneath the Island. Our adversary? England. Serpent Slumbering is wild. Double growth options, criscrossing presence tracks, and the necessity to absorb presence from other spirits to properly power up, plus innate powers that, at the extreme end, can potentially do damage in every space across the whole board.

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