Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[Marx]

Okay, I tried a first stab of Arcs the Blighted Reach.

Fascinating.

First the bad: because of the whole “quitting my job” thing, I didn’t get a chance to read the rules. And that is not a rulebook designed to be digestable. Plus, only 1 refence sheet is bad. Great sheet, but there should be 1 per player.

The good: what a fascinating puzzle. Wanting to complete your Objective, balanced with scoring points and an INCREDIBLY short time frame…

Okay, so the faction I was playing had to score 12 Objective points, and scored 1 every time I seized the Initiative.

There are 3 chapters in the first Act, meaning a total of 18 cards. At best, you can seize the initiative once every other round… meaning, at absolute best, I could score 9 objective points.

And that assumes perfect opportunities and cards.

Now, there was a thing I could do to score 2 objective points: Seize the iniative by causing Outrage (a mechanic specific to my faction). Okay, so there are 5 resources, so as long as I am okay with burning all my cards and ability to, you know, actually use the resources in the game… well then, you have options.

But not many. Remember, perfect world there are a maximum of 9 chances, and that assumes a lot. In reality, I had 5 or 6 chances? I got to 4 Objective Points remaining, realizing far too late that I basically had to use Outrage to seize the Initiative every round to have any chance of completing my objective.

Now, that stated, nobody completed their Objective, and only 1 of us came close (a misplay resulted in him missing it).

Do I like the game yet? Still no. But it tickles the brain something fierce.

Am I going to try again? Absolutely yes. I think the next playthrough (doing all three Acts in a single sitting) will be the make-or-break of Arcs. We’re going to re-rack and try again from scratch… and I am really curious if I can finally decide if I like the mechanics and mechanisms of the game, or if it just is absolutely not for me.

[Benkyo]

I have never played Arcs, but this description seemed weird to me, so I looked up the possibilities. Are you describing the Partisan? (I couldn’t find any other possibilities)

If so, your description seems off.

Partisan Seizing means that you have an easy way to seize initiative up to 5 times, but it doesn’t actually boost your Advance more than seizing another way. So you can seize by playing a 7, or Provoking Outrage. Presumably the Informants are supposed to help with the former.

Meanwhile your Appeal to Supporters is actually counter to Partisan Seizing, not complementary to it: you advance 2 for winning ambitions where you don’t have Outrage.

So, conflicting approaches, with limited caps for each - you aren’t going to get there by doing one or the other, you have to balance both. This sounds more interesting than the scenario you described, of simply seizing initiative as much as possible, using outrage to do it as much as possible. You have to both seize, and to win ambitions, which seems more like “normal” play (while Partisan seizing and Informants actually makes it quite different).

As another point, it sounds like you were playing with more than one opponent, in which case the iconography indicates you didn’t need to Advance 12 times: the correct number would appear to be 11 (3-player) or 10 (4-player).

Or, have I got the wrong end of the stick here and you were describing something else entirely?

[Marx]

Nope, you have it right! Faulty memory: I was trying to recall the details of the game at work.

I initially only remembered the “Score 1 Objective Point by Seizing the Initiative”, but then realized that it would be impossible to complete if there wasn’t a method of scoring 2 Objective Points at least occasionally. I remembered that I had to Provoke Outrage at least a few times during the game, and that led me to think that the scoring must require that.

But you’re right: it was the Scoring Ambitions, which is way more flexible… although much harder, obviously, since there are at most 9 Ambitions declared in the 3 Chapter game, and the odds of you coming in 1st for multiple of them in any given turn is slim-to-none. So, ideally, you have to score 2 points a turn from Ambitions, and 2 a turn from Initiatives.

Tricky, but you’re right, more plausible than the situation I was remembering (incorrectly).

[Benkyo]

Sounds like ideally, in a 4-player game where you need ten points, you seize and win three times, and seize once more. Or seize and win twice, and go all-in on outrage to seize four more times. Four or six seizes over 18 cards sounds more reasonable, though I have no doubt winning ambitions is hard.

[Bondy034]

Some games over the last week and a bit:

My Island x3, plot’s getting kind of wacky but still really enjoying this one with Mum. We’re two envelopes away from the finish!

Mexica, great game of this teaching to a new player (and a rusty old player). Ended up fairly tight - our clear leader after the first age ended up in last place by the end!

Hansa Teutonica, played a three player game of this. One of our players is very much a ‘multiplayer solitaire’ kind of guy and he did not have a good time! Hansa was probably a terrible choice with him at the table, honestly. He did okay but it’s definitely very interactive and our winner did a lot of blocking and getting in his way.

Stamp Swap, taught this to a new table and was broadly enjoyed. One of our players is colour blind though, and before he’d figured out to look at the borders made some poor calls in the early game. I wish it wasn’t an issue but I’m not 100% sure how you’d fix the design for that. I continue to enjoy this game heaps, despite it’s issues.

The Quest for El Dorado, wow. This was brutal. I made an overagressive deck cull early on and ended up stuck in place for 3 or 4 turns. It sucked. I was miles behind the others by the end. Whereas they were within a turn of each other finishing. I shouldn’t cull without thinking - I normally don’t in this game and I should probably stick to that strat and keep moving rather than do too much deck building. Though the different layouts do impact the best racing line and approach to deck building substantially!

Suburbia, super tight game of this - winner and loser within three points of each other! Our ‘loser’ had a solid lead early on but missed out on his private goal, which proved to be his undoing.

Five Tribes, this was a weird game - one of our players managed to grab a Djinn early which let him chuck out more camels and as a result it was super short. He did not win though, I managed to sneak in there with a couple of great early turns and some conservative bidding.

Barenpark, great quick game of this. Sold a new player on a copy which is always nice

Sea, Salt and Paper

Scout, using one of our players homebrew for 3 players - letting everyone scout and show up to twice a round instead of once. It’s definitely better than the rules as written for sure. But still not one I’d go for at 3 players as much.

[Phil]

I played Samurai, which was quite exciting – I realised a while back this was going to be my kind of thing, and was just waiting for the next time it’s in print. It turned out that a colleague at work owns it, and he lent it to me for a few days. I played it at 2p with my partner, and I really enjoyed it, but she wasn’t especially taken by it and didn’t want to play more than two games (despite winning the second one). She didn’t hate it though, so I believe I’d gamble on being able to convince her to play from time to time (and failing that, it’s super simple to teach, so it’s definitely something I could break out with others when occasion arises).

Not exactly a tale of resounding success, then, but I’m still enamoured by the game.

For right now, I’m hoping that folks at work might be available for a few games of this at the office in the coming week, before my colleague takes it home again.

[MarkSP]

Played a bunch of games yesterday, and only forgot to take photos of one of them!
Gaia Project with the new expansion. Cemented as my pick of the Terra Mystica systems, the new expansion adds 4 new races, 2 new planets, derelict spaceships with new abilities and general balancing. Tried the new race so no players were adjacecent planet wise. If it weren’t for a 4th player who turned out to be a lot worse at internalising rules then they let on it would have lasted a decent length of time too.

Funner Factory, haven’t played this one for a while so busted it out, a great little spacial reasoning game. When I uploaded the photo I noticed another way I should have scored more points as well!

Stationfall, in which the colonel escaped to earth taking the deadly nanobot swarm with them in the same escape capsule, the Stranger jetpacked to earth, and Security bot started shooting everyone left on the ship and planting wrenches on them. I have freinds who hate this but I really like it. If it weren’t for the initial rules dump and massive unbalanced factions it would see so much more time on the table.

And Worms, a boardgame which somehow captures the chaos of Worms and futility of having a welll made plan involving accuracy. Lots of cluster bombs, but the main damage was a ming vase. 4 way tie for the win.

Oh yeah, and Fast Flowing Forest Fellers, which is still wonderful daftness. Everyone got caught in a rockpool, pushing and shoving.

Brilliant games, every one a banger. Unusual to say that as I normally get pulled into some dry euro auction game where the twist is the auction is slightly different, but not yesterday!

[COMaestro]

Saw our friends for the first time since December. After a delicious lunch and a Christmas gift exchange, the winner of the last game we played last year got to choose the game we would play.

He decided we should give Escape the Curse of the Temple a go, as we haven’t played it in years.

So after a quick rules refresh and finding the soundtrack on YouTube, we started. And lick was NOT with us. We had only revealed a few tiles and placed two gems before the first gong. Meanwhile two of us got fully locked up and the other two had some black masks showing, so we added a gem to unlock everything.

We ended up doing that again before the end. We did find the exit, but we had 10 gems still in the supply by the time the temple collapsed, so no one could have escaped anyway. We had paused a couple of times because of kid interruptions and a couple of rules clarifications, so really it was just chaos. Fun, but too stressful for the day.

We moved on to Sushi Go so their daughter could join in. Played two games, my wife won the first, and our friend won the second.

We finished off trying to get in a quick game of Ethnos, but we only got through two ages. Had Merfolk, Giants, Halflings, Wingfolk, Centaurs, and Wizards. I was ahead after the first age thanks to some large bands, but got passed in the second age by our other friend.

My wife and I also played Lost Cities and Star Wars the Deck building Game: Clone Wars yesterday. I won the former, she the latter.

[bort]

Fromage, second play of this (and first for one of our players). Went pretty well, I improved my last score, but still finished last. I’m not much a planner…

Arcs, first play. We started by watching a 25 minute instructional video. I felt people were losing interest towards the end…Game went ok, a bit slow to start as we got used to the playing of cards. We called it after 3 chapters, I think the player in the lead had 10 points or so (target is 27 for a 4p game). I hadn’t looked at many of the court cards, so reading and understanding them took a bit of time. Several players commented that they wanted to take a particular action, but just didn’t have that card in their hand. Using prelude actions (from resources) help a bit here, but you can still just not have the required card or resource, which can be frustrating. Same goes for trying to declare an ambition, you may not have the right card to be able to declare. As far as length, the game reckons it should take 45 minutes per player for your first game, which wasn’t far off the mark. Not sure if we’ll give it another go.

The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game, first play. So, obviously it’s a trick taking game in the Lord of the Rings universe. So, each chapter gives you which characters to use, and each character has a win condition, like win the least tricks, or win just one trick. If anyone fails, you all fail. And we were off to a bad start, I had Gandalf, and just had to win a single trick – which I failed to do. Didn’t have great cards, but still thought I’d win one sooner or later. But that didn’t happen. To make it worse, I had exchanged my best card (card values go from one to eight) with another player as part of the setup for Gandalf. I’m not sure my group will ever let me forget that. Some people say this is like The Crew, and I guess that’s fair, but it feels different enough to have both. Pretty good fun.

My Favourite Things, it’s a bit of fun, but doesn’t seem to be too popular with my group. Maybe we’re playing too safe with the topics. Two of us chose (independently) “board games”. Other topics: sports, transport, smells. I still think it’s fun.

The Gang, wanted to play this at 4p, since 3p felt a bit meh. Unfortunately, our 4th player left early, so it was back to 3p. Most of the time we’re lucky to get a pair. We still did ok, we won (three successes, one fail).

[lalunaverde]

Seasons - 4 players. New guy came in and wanted to play and we suggested to join on a different table as Seasons might be a difficult to them. They said they played games like Anachrony before and I internally said “Yeah. Fucking sure, you did”. And my instinct was right: they kept asking what move is best for them throughout the entire game. Honestly, there’s should be no shame on walking away from a medium to heavy game table. We don’t think you’re an idiot. I remember being new to board gaming and Agricola was a brain burner to me.

Still, it didn’t totally ruin the experience and JP pulled a sick combo where he summoned TWO Mesodae’s Lanterns and inevitably smashed us.

Lure - more Lure. More rowdy dice rolling fun

Indonesia

Power and Weakness - get to play this again after several years. It’s a 2 player, that’s why.

Lure - seems to be my new go-to filler, at the moment

Arcs - 3 players and it was a blast. All 3 of us played before and are good players so it was tense & difficult, and went for 2 hours.

Istanbul - Shitstanbul as I call it. We played quick with 3 players so it only went for an hour, which made the game tolerable as it was usually a heads-down efficiency game despite the shared map.

[Griffster77]

@MarkSP

And Worms, a boardgame which somehow captures the chaos of Worms and futility of having a welll made plan involving accuracy. Lots of cluster bombs, but the main damage was a ming vase. 4 way tie for the win.

I really want to try this! I loved Worms on the PS1 and played the shit out of it at Uni

@bort

My Favourite Things, it’s a bit of fun, but doesn’t seem to be too popular with my group. Maybe we’re playing too safe with the topics. Two of us chose (independently) “board games”. Other topics: sports, transport, smells. I still think it’s fun.

This sounds interesting and I wonder if would go down well with my family?

[MarkSP]

I was sceptical but it’s really good. Lots of poor-accuracy based carnage.

[bort]

I was told (in another forum) that it’s more fun if you go a bit wild on the topics. Suggested topics were “Worst 3-word text to receive from your mum at 3am” or “Best ways to kill an ant” or “You wake up and there’s an animal in your room. what’s the most scary animal it could be?” or “Worst medical malpractice cases in an ER”. If you provide a fun category and they give you back fun answers, you’ve already won the game before you start.

Maybe my group is just unimaginative…

[Griffster77]

This kind of works for topics for the Topic of the Week thread too!

[Captbnut]

I like it

A highlight of our friends’ game was, ‘oh my God, Ryan Gosling just lost to a beansprout’

It’s not clever, there are much better trick taking, boring categories are boring and there is a lot of downtime when people are filling in their cards, but the highs are very, very high.

I will only play it with people who I know will lean into the silliness. It’s probably worth spitballing some potential categories together before you start to set the tone.

[Marx]

Sunday I managed to get Ascending Empires Zenith Edition on the table.

I loved the original game, but the cardboard puzzle-piece board occasionally resulted in wasted flicks. The new one has much nicer pieces, cleaned up rules, and a neoprene mat that plays like a dream.

I had two players that asked a lot of… very… silly questions. Like:

“If you hit a starbase, is it destroyed (rammed)?”
“No, starbases are considered to be on the planet, it’s just an obstacle.”
“But then is the ship that rammed it destroyed?”
“No, no interaction. It’s just an obstacle.”
“Then can I move enemy starbases out of the way?”
“… no, they’re obstacles during your turn.”
“Okay, but can I flick a starbase into a different starbase and destroy both?”
“What? No!”
“So then can I–”

… and on and on… the Gravity Shift caused particular issues. The tech states that after you flick a starship, if the starship is still in play (not destroyed or flicked off the board) you can move it into the orbit of a planet it hit, but you are not allowed to flick it again or land and launch it.

That’s it. Clear. Simple.

“Can I hit it with one of my own ships?”
“Yes.”
“So can I move it somewhere else in the orbit?”
“Yes.”
“So I can flick it again?”
“No.”
“What if it hits a starbase?”

It takes a lot to get my goat, dear reader, but these two… gods, they were trying. In multiple senses of the word “trying.”

When the smoke cleared, we had a tie for first, I got third and my partner came in a very close 4th. Great game, but wow, frustrating play experience this time.

[Griffster77]

Just played Fox in the Forest Duet with my wife - I don’t know if I’m tired or what, but I so totally did not read ANY of her signals and fluffed it up completely

[lalunaverde]

Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective Vol 1 Case 3 - slightly annoyed that we manage to answer the questions, but we thought it wasn’t enough as we don’t have a “smoking gun” on the suspect. Argh. We did pretty well though on deduce on who is the murderer and the other questions of the case.

Yes. My friend actually brought a magnifying glass

Fields of Green - it was pre-COVID when I was an idiot at games when I last played this. It’s more of a light game to me now. Wasn’t wowed with it as I used to but it was a quick drafting game. Tbf, a lot of games I’ve played and loved 7 years ago feel a bit lame nowadays.

The Networks - theme is amusing with nice art. But gameplay-wise, one of the most generic stuff I’ve seen. Just like cable tv shows I guess.

[InkyBloc]

A rare Thursday game night means a rare appearance by a busy-on-Tuesday friend!

No Thanks

That’s Not A Hat

Sushi Go Party!

Irish Gauge - My first win! Wasn’t shy about buying shares and got two two-share special build payouts. Orange line seems to be very, very strong.

FUSE

[Whistle_Pig]

Played Evenfall on Wednesday. It’s a tableau/engine-building game which allegedly has a theme but the whole thing was very muted and a bit dull, so I can’t really say what it was…