After seeing several recommendations I gave A Gentle Rain a try, with help from my lovely assistants…
More of a way to relax than a game, exactly, but honestly that’s just what I was hoping for.
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It’s more of a meditation for me… but sometimes I want just that on my table.
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As you can see, it became slightly less meditative when Madeline Kahn decided to wander across the table…
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Last night, neighbourly games, Trio and The Networks.
I like Trio, but there’s clearly an influence from your initial hand (last night I had two 1s and two 12s). The usual solution to that is to play several hands. But while I enjoy it, I don’t want to play it again straight away.
Thoroughly close game of The Networks, and I’d like to bring this back into regular rotation (but I feel that way about every game I don’t sell on).
7 Likes
Triumph and Tragedy - second play with @EnterTheWyvern and a friend. I really enjoyed our 2nd game. I have to play risky and aggressive as the Axis forces. A combination of diplomacy and war, I had a mostly good position in Central Europe. Wyvern manage to put Czechoslovakia under his sphere so I cannot invade it… yet. We called it after screwing up a major rule. But I really enjoyed it.
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Always a bit curious, was surprised to see my most played games (on BGA) and the tallies. Most are higher than expected:
Race for the Galaxy: 73 games
Innovation: 47 games
New Frontiers: 20 games
Memoir '44: 14 games
Neom: 14 games
Tigris & Euphrates: 13 games
The Castles of Burgundy: 12 games
Agricola: 12 games
Great Western Trail: 11 games
Bärenpark: 10 games
Jump Drive: 10 games
Beyond the Sun: 9 games
Keyflower: 9 games
Just One: 8 games
Railroad Ink: 7 games
La Granja: 7 games
Thurn and Taxis: 7 games
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Had a friend couple over for dinner and some co-ops.
Witness - A few easy mysteries as a warm-up. Very fun game, although one of the mysteries depended on some outside knowledge that one person at the table did not have.
The Crew - Original-style, but still working through the fan-made Alien Encounter missions. Some of these get really hard! We easily succeeded our first, then had failure after failure on the next mission, which had the twist that the leader of the trick had to play two cards facedown, and the rest of the players would randomly choose one to be the played card. Made it harder than we expected! Funnily enough we eventually moved to the next mission, which was that we had to pass all uncompleted tasks to the left after each trick, and we completed that in the first four tricks.
11 Likes
Through the Ages - full 4 players and went on for 4 hours. Tier 1 game!
Zooloretto - Coloretto the board game! Great fun and it’s still the same game of screwing each other’s options.
Agricola - 3 player with drafting. Very good fun
Liar’s Dice
Lure - new filler game from Allplay. Pretty good dice chucker with a clever risk management mechanism.
Tempel des Schreckens
Terraforming Mars: the Dice Game - good fun, but less interesting than Ares Expedition or its board game sibling.
11 Likes
Yeah. It was enjoyable. I think my problem is I just don’t love it. It’s good and interesting in many ways, however I think for me it’s just a little too close to Cthulhu Wars and I’d much rather play that. Cthulhu Wars is a bit faster, and I think the core point of when to attack someone to stop them getting too far ahead happens a bit more and maybe is less ‘I did that to you so the third person wins’.
The blocks are cool and I can see why it’s a whole genre. The diplomacy + cards are good for changing things up by maybe a little more arbitrary in a way I’m less interested in. I think the spread of possibilities are a too wide with the top decking you can get pushed in to. This limits a bit the interesting moments and surprise plays. Without the cards I’d be worries it might be a bit too rote though.
Despite some bits being a little unsatisfying there were fun moments. I enjoyed absorbing all the nordic countries in to the USSR by force. You units rolling over all of eastern europe to furl the war effort in France was entertaining. The allied raiding forces doing relentless hit and run attacks became a fun theme. So I will happily play more but I still struggle to feel it as a great experience.
5 Likes
Last night. Imperium [foo], first try as the Martians. Oh boy they’re a bit fiddly.
Start as an empire. Nation cards are powerful but mostly worth negative points (unless in history, and many of them let you exile them when played). When your Nation deck runs out, you get a .Reactor Explosion, which gives you two Unrest per Solstice, one of which goes straight into History
Can you avoid this? Yes: get rid of your initial 20-25 Progress (plus any more you may have had to pick up) via various means, and Go Native, which dumps your entire Nation deck including the Reactor Explosion and turns you Barbarian. Which I managed, just, but we hadn’t done much else.
But we did develop both Triremes and Tyranny (“we have imitated the elements of Earth culture you value most highly, as seen in this ‘encyclopaedia volume T’. Are we doing it right?”),
10 Likes
OK, what is Imperium Foo? I see it mentioned frequently here. BGG doesn’t have it, and google just sends me back here.
I’m taking from context that this is related to Classics, Horizons, Legends, and The Contention?
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Sorry! It’s my own shorthand for the composite game made by combining all three of Imperium {Classics, Legends, Horizons}. Imperium The Contention is an unrelated game. I can’t call it “Imperium” on its own because that’s at least two other games. Since I’m using the Imperium Horizons rulebook (which fixes some problems as well as introducing the trade rules, which on this occasion we weren’t using anyway), I’m logging the play as “Imperium Horizons” on BGG, but in any given play I may also be using components from the other games.
“Imperium CLH” might be fairer but would be just as hard to find if you didn’t already know what I meant.
4 Likes
Spoiler: all of the *Imperium* games are related and will eventually Voltron together, masterminded by a hybrid super-designer who has, for all these years, been masquerading as separate and distinct designers.
Even the Imperium from 1970 is involved in this decades-long Ploy.
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Foo is foobar. You use it as a placeholder in some circles.
If (foo) {
bar();
}
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My usual pattern is foo, bar, baz, qux. If you need more than four you’ve messed up, but I have known people use quux, quuux, etc.
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Certainly familiar with fubar but I guess the community found a new use for the term.
Making the idiom fubar 
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That’s probably related, though nobody’s quite sure; “FUBAR” is definitely WWII vintage, attested from 1944, while “foo, bar” didn’t get used in programming until the 1960s, Foobar - Wikipedia.
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Kate, our youngest and me got slapped around by Daybreak last night.
I think it’s the sign of a good co op that a) we lost horribly b) it seems impossible and c) I’m desperate to play it again.
The production is lovely, little cardboard boxes rather than plastic baggies and it feels like no plastic coating on the cards.
Hopefully we’ll last more than 3 rounds next time!
11 Likes
or the cat jumped on the keyboard
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