Yes. It’s quite straightforward, explain in a few minutes, not too long to play, and I don’t think anyone would have trouble playing this with medium children; but unlike the games like that we’d typically see in the UK, there’s an actual game with real decisions to make.
Probably a bit fast-moving to play as a forum game here alas, but it’s definitely found a place in the corner of my games basket.
Back to Thirsty Meeples (Oxford) last night.
Some New Hotness tonight: first, Fromage, timed worker retrieval, a variety of minigames on the board and point salady scoring. I’m afraid that to me it felt like a very typical bland modern Euro with nothing to say beyond “look, I’ve combined these mechanisms in a new way”. My friends liked it more than I did.
Then on to Marc Andre’s new production, Middle Ages; in effect it’s worker placement with a constantly changing set of options.each of which determines next round’s turn order, gets you some income, and does some kind of special effect. Again I didn’t feel there was any soul to it, just a bunch of mechanisms arranged in a new way in a slick production. And again my friends liked it more than I did, so maybe I was just in a bad mood this evening.
I do like the “Lord” tokens though.
Finally Cardline: Animals in which we made some wildly wrong guesses about animals’ lifespans.
I played the thing this was reimplemented from and the thing remmeber most were the coins.
Played the first game of Risk: Legacy last night. Pretty vanilla Risk.
My Roman Empire getting its butt kicked in Hispania in a shockingly quick time-span. I need to work on my dice-rolling technique :).
Rock Hard: 1977, first play. Turn it up to 11! This was great fun. You have to balance work and being a rock star, trying to increase your chops, reputation and songs stats. I sold out and did an advert for a Japanese beer company, which dropped my songs stat down a couple, which didn’t really help me much. You need some pretty high stats to fill the bigger arenas. Pretty good fun! Not a real brain burner, but a very fun and thematic game. Loved it (despite losing badly). And we played with the game designers Spotify 70s mix (the game designer, Jackie Fox, was one of the musicians in The Runaways). And also, you can get and use “candy” (nudge nudge wink wink) for extra actions. But take too much and you’ll have to lose a turn the next day to recover.
Did I mention the dials go to eleven?
Harmonies, first play. This is a fairly abstract game where you build up tiles to satisfy cards for points. The main board is populated with five different types: grey, red, brown, green, blue, and yellow. There are rules for each type defining how you can build them. You’ll get points for types (like blue for water counts for your longest river). You will also take animal cards, which give a combination of tiles, and each time you can make that combination you add a cube from the card, and you’ll get more points the more cubes you can place. Your board fills up quickly, and every time you take tiles you’ll need to find somewhere to place them, hopefully somewhere worth points. Pretty easy game to learn, but good decisions in a pretty short timeframe. Enjoyed it – came in last place by a single point, doh!
Knarr. first play. A viking themed competitive game. On your turn you will either recruit or explore. Recruiting is taking a card from your hand and adding it to your tableau. Each card gives a reward, and you get everything in a stack for that colour. Rewards are victory points, reputation points, recruit tokens, silver bracelet tokens, and drawing a new card. Exploring means discarding cards from your tableau to take destination cards, which are added to your ship. There are three possible columns of rewards. You can trade during your turn, which means giving up bracelet tokens. If you use one token, you get all the rewards from the first column. Using two tokens gives you everything in the first and second columns. And of course using all three tokens gives you everything. So you are building up your tableau for stuff, and then discarding for more rewards. Really fun game, easy to pickup and play, but good decisions.
Gachapon Trick, first play. Ok, I didn’t know what gachapon meant. Turns out it’s a Japanese word for coin operated toy vending machines. It’s a set collection game. There are seven different types of toy, ranging from 200 yen to 800 yen. But for each colour the cost for each toy type is different. It’s a fairly standard trick taker, you have to follow suit if you can. But you can choose to follow suit from any card played, and the winner of the trick is the highest value of whatever colour has the majority. So, someone might play red, the second player is out of red, so they play blue. The third player can play either a red or a blue card. If you win the trick, you can buy any number of cards played in that trick (but you have to buy at least one). You can also top deck it and pay 500 yen. The more cards you collect of a type, the more points you get. It felt pretty different from any other trick taking game I’ve played. Good fun! I would like a better money system, I bought some paper money from Amazon, and it was just a pain to count out. Have to find some poker chip money.
Rise and Fall - another day, another game. 3 returning players and 1 newbie. The 3 of us have some understanding on the world creation now and also some opening moves. What’s funny is that us returning players seem to have slowed a bit as we now understand the game better and therefore, can see the various moves. The game is pretty open and creative. We gained more understanding of the game. Will try to cut down the time next time.
Dicke Dämonen
Schnappt Hubi! - co-op game where you try to find Hubi. Seems like a kids game so the whole exercise was straightforward and easy.
Dracula vs Van Helsing - specifically requested by someone after seeing my Top New-to-Me of this year and it includes DvVH. Went really well and it was fun and tough
Oltre Mare - another trading game! Very fun! I’d like to play it more to see beyond the good first impression play. But this might be one of my best new-to-me this year. I’m always a sucker for trading games.
Triumph and Tragedy - first time to play. Axis forces rushed both the Allies and the Comintern. And barely won. All 3 of us were basically stumbling through the game and screwing up badly but it was fun and interesting. Might be a more easier learn and teach if I can decipher the rulebook
The City x2 - a simplified and blitz version of RFTG, by Tom Lehmann. The theme is also more approachable and, frankly, more relatable. @EnterTheWyvern won both times
What on earth is going on here?
We got absolutely battered by Spirit Island yesterday
We ran out of explorers, so had to proxy with some 3D printed Warhammer miniatures!
4 players - 2 totally new and Kate and I had to relearn it.
I absolutely loved it, but we got thrashed on the most basic setup. I’ve been thinking about it ever since though and can’t wait to go back. My dream is for the 4 of us to learn and improve together.
I think we were too passive and purely reacting to Ravage. I suspect I need to learn to use slow powers more and use them to set up the next turn, rather than them being an afterthought.
Am also loving Harmonies on BGA. Really good puzzle
In my experience, if this happens, you’re gonna lose.
Yep. That sounds familiar. In fact it still happens to us sometimes. You’ll get better. Superb game. Can’t think of a better one.
I thought the photo tells you everything you need to know 
Think The King is Dead where you hedge bets on colours and claim one eventually
Similarly with fire/smoke markers in Flash Point.
Really enjoyed this. Very different to anything I’ve played in the past 20 years I think. My old school wargames era was now a long time ago. This was really interesting about the balances of building up vs going to war to haul back whoever’s leading. Will definitely be up for more games to see what develops.
This is light, fast, solitaire-like, maybe very arbitrary and really fun. I seem to have ended up with a full KS version which is nice. I think the art on this edition helps the pleasant vibes. All the pastels sit well with a cloud like fluff of a satisfying combo builder. Just enough decisions and fast enough to be a really nice end of session. Sits happily alongside things like Love Letter and 6Nimmt! Thanks for teaching
Bit of a roundup here:
Haggis: Played a few rounds. Not sure I like it. The condensed deck (2-10, vs 3-A or 1-13 for similar games) and three perma-wilds mean that everyone has access to huge hands. So hands play out so fast (one round, someone led a massive run only to get bombed, and two plays later the round was over).
What is certain is that the economy here is quite different from Tichu or Dalmuti. Less about pathing your hand and more about when to play your wilds.
It felt a bit porous and rushed. I’d like to come back, as there’s this niggling though that I just don’t understand the game well enough (and I certainly don’t) but I’m not sure this is a keeper.
Castles of Burgundy: Played the supertastic overdeluxe version which arrived last month. It’s pretty, and nice to touch. Same old game. Nice way to spend an evening.
Sushi Go: I have Party, but we haven’t played in so long that I chose the base game setup. Thinking “oh, these cards were a successful game all on their own.” I really missed the newer cards, though. I did win, so this whole drafting thing may finally be making sense to me (thanks Neom.) The highlight was the end when the 2nd and 3rd place players (of 3) swapped places due to dessert, leading to a predictable exchange between the two of them that continued through the rest of the night.
New York Zoo: Still enjoying this. However, starting to worry again that it gets samey. Yes, different tiles are available to you. But as you are just trying to fill a giant open space, specific tiles don’t matter much until close to the end and the puzzle of “tile or animal?” can feel rote. If I didn’t have too many polyominoes, this would be secure. As it is, I don’t know. It’s only half on the keep pile.
Bacon Petrol: Bought unresearched due to price and praise around here. It’s ok. As people said, super chill. The clean design is also good for my daughter’s compromised vision. We’ll hold onto this for a bit, but I’m not sure yet what to do with it.
War of the Ring: The Card Game So there’s this expansion, Against the Shadow. I found it on clearance and just bought it as it is Lord of the Rings. I opened it last week and the first page of the manual explains that it is a solo module.
WHAT??
Anyway, I had no idea what I’d bought. This has been a most-wanted game for me, regarding table time. Feels like I just found a 20 in my pocket. Up next, WOTRTCG, baby.
Okay, I’ve owned this for well over a year and it has not been played, so I was not going to concern myself with an expansion. But then I read this and now I am very interested!
In two-player Haggis, why would you bomb (and throw the trick to the other player)?
I think it’s similar to other games in the genre. Lose the points, get the initiative.
In this case, she’d played two wilds already. By bombing I gave her a pittance of points but got the lead, which allowed me to play two big sets she couldn’t match and then lay down my last card. So I got the Haggis and 40 points on her unplayed cards. She got the two wilds she’d played and the four points from my bomb.
I’m usually bad at memory games but Trio demands little enough that I can often play it quite effectively.
Yeah it’s like, a little bit of memory, a little bit of deduction, a little bit of bluffing and enough luck that it’s difficult to feel too mad if you don’t get any points.
