So I guess Fiction is two-player https://lirdle.com/ then?
I played that a couple of times, but didn’t really enjoy the gimmick, so I can’t imagine I’d like it a lot better as a table-top game. Maybe a little bit better, though – I can imagine the human interaction would mitigate some of the annoyance at the lies – if there’s someone to blame :).
Yep. There’s a couple of other twists and tools. I think the main addition is the human element. We only played 2p but the guessing team can discuss things which can help the word chooser in deciding how to lie.
Visiting @Lordof1 and other friends over the weekend…
Imperium [foo], my first try at the Utopians, versus the Greeks. Utopians are strange and I did quite badly, but I want to try them again…
Sea Salt & Paper, technically incomplete (I was ahead 31 to 29 when other people arrived) but it’s one of those games that you can pack away and resume months later.
At the local board game café:
Potion Explosion, first time I’ve seen a copy with the new plastic dispenser. Still good fun.
Alien: Fate of the Nostromo, two plays, because we died quickly the first time. Go for the gadgets, seemed to be the answer, and get lucky with missions that align with each other.
Just One, easier to guess when the other three players haven’t all got the exact same word.
And before we set off for home,
Haunticulture, hand management and tile placement with some light optional deck construction. You’re trying to collect plants and ornaments to place in your garden, by playing cards into the middle, and the cards are various sorts of undead and otherwise monstrous gardeners, but really the theme is irrelevant. Fiddly rules with one key term not explained at all, but we managed, and I’ll do a better rulebook because I can.
Went to a friend’s house at the weekend and played a game of Scotland Yard for the first time. It was interesting to see the similarities and differences to Letters from Whitechapel, which we played on here on the forum last year, and Whitehall Mystery.
Unlike our forum game, the police were triumphant! I think this was due to (1) my wife and I deviating in our approach compared to the owner’s group’s meta and (2) the player of Mr. X being a bit sleep deprived on account of having a newborn baby.
Would happily play again, although my first impression is that LfW and WM give more scope to the hidden player to bluff and misdirect by moving over his own trail.
That sounds like a pretty decent premise for a comedy :).
Or certainly a modified version of the old advert…
“He went underground!”
“He’s got to surface somewhere!”
Cut to Mr X, fast asleep on the train, head lolling, and drooling slightly.
Bag of diapers and formula clutched in his arms.
Been awhile since I’ve posted - so be prepared for a long one!
Altiplano, picked up a copy of this one on sale. Our 3 player game was great - and shorter than I’d anticipated! I really like it. Different enough to Orleans to be worth owning both (if you like them, which I do). Now I need to keep an eye out for the expansion! Still a bit early to tell if I like it as much as Orleans, that’ll take a few more plays. But so far, yeah super fun!
Mountain Goats, fun light little dice roller. Not one I’m looking to buy but I’d play it again.
Barenpark, got to introduce this to a couple of newbies. One of them loved it, the other was less impressed (didn’t help that he had been planning on a move based on missing a point in my rules explanation 
) Hate when that happens, always feel like I should of made it clearer in my teach. I’ll remember to emphasise it next time.
Finca, still great fun, 3 of us played this one and I did not win. But we all enjoyed it - nothing earth shattering here but for a simple rondel with set collection, it’s solid.
Garbage Day, one of our players it turns out is vehemently opposed to player elimination. I don’t love it myself but the shorter sillier games I don’t mind it in. Didn’t help he was first out either…
Forum Trajanum, brought along by our resident Feld lover. I enjoyed it enough. Not one of his best but decent. The first edition of the rule book was awful though! So many things are not explained or misexplained, and impossible to navigate during play.
Sea, Salt and Paper x3
Glasgow, taught it to a newbie. Lost convincingly. We both enjoyed it alot. 2 player city builder, where you are all building buildings into the same city and they often interact with each other in interesting ways. Has the movement mechanic of Tokaido (it’s in a lot of games now, but that’s the first I recall seeing it in) where you can jump ahead on the rondel, but the other player can visit all the spots you passed over.
Stamp Swap, bought it, love it! I don’t know what it is about this game but gosh do I enjoy it! Those scoring cards needed to be explained in full in the rules though - this game I misunderstood ‘rectangles’ looking at the tiles rather than the stamps. Since we all misunderstood it, it didn’t junk the game but did mean we all scored heaps of extra points on that goal!
My Island x6, continuing my campaign with mum. Still enjoying it a lot. And still two chapters to go! Definitely more interesting developments than in My City and with better explained rules!
Skulls of Sedlec x10, mostly with my wife. It’s our go-to, low energy evening game.
Hanabi, great game of this - really wish I had the tiles version though! (But hard to find and expensive…) We played almost perfectly (save me dumping a 4 with no info) I’m still not quite sure it is possible to get the highest scoring category though…
Circle the Wagons x2, enjoyed this one more than my initial play - my wife found the scoring too tricky the first time we played it. This time with a friend was much smoother and more enjoyable.
Skulk Hollow, great game of this (though I did terribly). We tried the octopus guardian and really shifted up how the game played. I was doing pretty well damaging him but struggled with board control (and gosh I hated the mend cards!)
Great Western Trail: NZ, I liked this one. Not sure if I’d rate it higher than the OG, but I’d love to play it again. A long one with 4 though! The boat is so much more interesting than the train.
No Thanks, x2
Orleans, I think this was my first play with the new deed board from Trade and Intrigue. I really liked it, makes that part of the game much more engaging.
Kanban, I requested this one but struggled big time with the rules. I’m sure it’s very clever, but I just can’t imagine wanting to play this over The Gallerist.
Unconscious Mind, first play of this. I enjoyed it mechanically but the theme did not come through in the mechanisms at all! Visually great, solid mechanics - not a well implemented theme. For me that meant ‘okay but not one I’d rush to play again’. Our winner ran away with the game though - nearly lapped us on the score track!
Gave Arcs another stab. This is my third time playing and I still don’t know if I like it?
Which, honestly, should be the kiss of death. After three full playthroughs if I’m still on the fence then I’m not really on the fence, right?
But it’s so highly reviewed… and we haven’t touched the campaign system yet… hell, for this play we didn’t even use Leaders & Lore…
I will say that 3 out of 3 games were won by the player in last place on turn 4 or 5. This game two of us were fighting for Relics so it had 2 Ambitions declared for it (15 points), and the player in last place built their final 2 cities and managed to steal all of my rival’s Relics and Relic cards. He lost because he didn’t have a single Aggression card in his hand (nor, granted, any weapons), and I was in exactly the same boat… no way to steal the Relics back.
I think that’s my big complaint. It is absolutely possible to not have any of a specific card for multiple rounds, and it’s unlikely but definitely possible that nobody will lead that suit for a round or two. And that’s half the game… and if it’s the last half of the game, you lose.
I am going to try a campaign of it next. Maybe next week.
Anyway, after that we played a pretty snappy game of Ark Nova, which I managed to win without having any idea of what I was doing except “Always Do Whatever Is In Slot 5” for almost every turn of the game. By the final round I was sometimes doing the action in Slot 4, but that was it… didn’t matter what it was, that’s what I was doing. My final zoo had a bunch of Da Bears, rewards for both large (4+) and small (2 or less) animals, rewards for cards with both rocks and water on them, and a small bonus for having all the Universities. It was close (I won 14 - 13 - 10 - 2), but it felt hollow… still a good game, still like Terraforming Mars better, but I don’t mind playing Ark Nova.
Lastly, a quick palette cleanser in the form of the sublime Dro Polter, which Ben won handily. Such a silly, fast, satisfying little dexterity game. All three of my guests want me to order in a copy for them when I get to work today.
I can’t say whether Arcs is, despite appearances, secretly for you; but I can certainly attest that lots of people liking a game a lot doesn’t mean that it’s a game for everyone.
Perhaps at this point you should (if you’ve not done so already) hit up the BGG forums to see whether-and-why other players aren’t bothered by the things which bother you. You might be missing something important, but maybe you’re just not the target audience.
Given that you have it, though, I hope you enjoy your campaign game(s)! :).
There are some games that, when I first hear about then, I get a strong feeling that this is Not For Me. Terraforming Mars may be the first one that struck me this way: suddenly it was on half the tables at every gaming convention, and the theme is very much something I might care about, but there was just something about ti that didn’t sit right.
Since then I’ve played a few times and my opinion hasn’t changed, though it’s become better informed. If I could never play it again, I wouldn’t mind in the slightest.
And Arcs strikes me the same way. I can see the appeal, but I can’t feel it. I wouldn’t mind trying a game some time but there’s no way I’m going to risk money on it without feeling a lot more positive than I do now.
The Emperor’s New Game?
If you look upthread for my play report, you’ll find at least one person who doesn’t like Arcs.
He turned into Cad Bane there in panel 5.
Slowly working through a War of the Ring: The Card Game solo.
Thoughts:
I like it. It’s a bit of a beast fiddle-wise and how-do-I-do-this-good-wise. It is thematic. I’m starting to get it.
A few highlights from this session:
As part of the club’s SDJ (and Kennerspiel) challenge, a club member brought a book “Everybody Wins” which is a book that talks about each SDJ winners since its inception. It stops at 2022 (Cascadia).
Ares Expedition + Discovery exp + Foundations exp - full house of 6 players. Crazy. We still finished in 2 hours time. Highly preferable to TFM
Sea, Salt, and Paper - okay. I’m appreciating what this game does now. But still would rather play a quick trick taker/shedder or something like that
Yangtze - Knizia game. Meh game. The auction items tend to have a concrete price tag so there’s a ceiling…
Torres - we played with the advanced game. Fun and amazing!
Tikal - Exhilarating! Old school German game that is still great and well deserving of the SDJ award. I would say that this is the best K&K game ever…
Codenames - it’s been a while and we did okay. Threw caution out of the wind so as not to drag the game. And it’s still pretty fun.
Micromacro: Crime City - we did 2 cases as part of the SDJ challenge.
Rise & Fall - 3 players this time and glad that it still works. A lot more interesting once you understand that this is an area control game, not an efficiency/racing Euro. The efficiency scoring is a side quest - and also the timer.
The Gang - new people, so new meta. We did miserably. The new people played “bad poker”, but that’s okay and we start to improve as a group. We played 3 full games.
The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick Taking Game - man. Very similar to The Crew. From a technical side, The Crew wins easily. But TFotR is okay because of the theme. Although, we only played two games so I can’t say much, but so far, the theme is pasted on.
As per my 25x1 “big solos” challenge, I have played a quick game of Arler Erde last night. I scored an abysmal 55 points. Game is still on the table. I will play another one tonight. This is the 2nd game from the challenge I managed to get to my solo table (51st State was the first).
I had played the first round when I was interrupted. And by the time the interruption was “dealt with” it was too late to finish the game.
But I had left my phone on the game table and as I went to retrieve it, I thought to myself… ah just one round before I go back upstairs. And suddenly it was 45 minutes later and the game was finished.
What is a full game of The Gang? 
Here it immediately turned into an activity style game like Just One (I know there are rules for “how to win Just One”). “Just one more hand”
Last night, Imperium[foo] with a seond try at the Utopians. The pattern is persisting that the first time I play a complex civ I do very badly, second time rather better.
I had another game of Ecosystem: Coral Reef to see whether I got a similar result, and the cards were pretty different this time around. In particular, not a single Whale turned up (they seemed to be replaced by Endless Turtles), so (a) I didn’t get to double-dip on points for the Krill I was collecting, and (b) I ended up with no predators at all, which meant my “lowest points in any category” bonus was zero. I also found it harder to avoid giving my ‘opponent’ points this time. I ended up with 80 points vs 27 for my opponent for a score of 53 (not quite a win at the ‘easy’ threshold, and a stark difference to the previous game’s 101). I mostly tried to discard the same sorts of thing to the opposing ecosystem, but possibly could have done better by mixing things up more (especially wrt predators).
Different is good, so maybe I was a bit harsh last time. Will undoubtedly play more games…
