It’s not a bad game, but looked at in terms of mechanics it’s just the same “when do you switch over from building up point-getting resources to actually getting points” as many other games. And the theme doesn’t really mean much of anything. In a way it felt as though someone started with the die faces and then built a game round it, but assumed the dice faces thing would be enough to carry it.
It’s not a bad game, but I have limited space and there are lots of amazing games out there.
We do seem to be going through a phase of “we built it, because we can” innovation at the moment. Maybe in a few years all this unique printing and odd 3d components will be settled in some more to move away from gimmicks.
I quite enjoy Roll for the Galaxy’s implementation of changeable dice faces. Don’t have to change the faces all the time, but it provides opportunity to push your engine to further extremes.
Big thanks for making this little post that made me go 
! I love logic puzzles and Sleuth, and I only read @bort’s post half-asleep so I didn’t grasp how deduction-puzzley it was until your post. I’ve ordered it and I’m really excited to try it out! Especially because I’ve seen some reviews that say it works really well at two players.
Speaking of two players, my wife and I have just moved into a new new apartment (after a whirlwind week and a half of finding out our new apartment was more of a shithole than we anticipated, trying to bring ourselves to cope with that fact, deciding not to cope with it and look for a new new apartment instead, finding that new new apartment, getting it, etc. etc.). We were going to have a celebratory virtual Iron Dragon game with the usual friends, but one turned out to be busy, so instead we scratched the itch with a quick game of Nippon Rails. My wife took this one by a mile; she had spent a lot of time (and all her money) to get up north to Hokkaido, but she was rewarded by some incredible deliveries from Hokkaido back down (including what I think is the biggest delivery in the game from Asahikawa to Kagoshima, which she already had the track for). Meanwhile I was shuttling between the Osaka region and Kyushu, but the amounts weren’t high enough and I still hadn’t connected Sapporo by the time she realized she had the requisite money to win.
<3 crayon rails
This is even more inspiration to try to get my partner exposed to crayon rails. I’m really torn between Empire Express (because it holds your hand) and Empire Builder (because Eurorails, British Rails, and Nippon Rails, while all excellent at 2 players, have hard to pronounce, unfamiliar names for us mid-continental-USians)
at danger of opening a can of worms… what are crayon rails? i imagine newer incarnations of Dampfross?
(https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/25312/dampfross-2 i loved this back in the 80s. a friend owned it though)
Very much a continuation of Dampfross!
Empire Builder was published in 1982 and is definitely a spiritual successor to Dampfross (1979-ish?).
Empire Builder and its subsequent family of crayon-rail games are not contemporary designs; even though some of the games were published (first edition debut, that is) as late as 2012 (Empire Express a.k.a. My First Empire Builder) or 2009 (Martian Rails), the design is dated, truly reminiscent of the types of games from the 80s and early 90s: clunky, eschewing ease-of-play in favor of accurate-simulation, and desperate for decent art.
Do they stand up to modern boardgaming standards? No, not really. But there’s something extremely charming about them. I do think that if an Empire Builder game were to be developed today, it would be possible to overhaul the gameplay to bring it inline with modern expectations. Still, I adore them because of their low-key nature and the wonderful tactility of drawing lines on a map, fighting little tactical battles against your opponents in key geographic areas, but otherwise just sitting around a table for 2-4 hours (yes, unfortunately), making “choo choo” noises and picking up/dropping off tiddly winks with 80’s quality clip art on.
We tried to play Star Trek Ascendancy over the weekend, but made the classic mistake of trying to learn it as we went (I don’t recommend doing that). After many rulebook perusals and YouTube diversions, we called the game a bit early with an agreed-to 1st place tie between my Romulans and my friend’s son’s Federation. We sort of got the hang of things during the last few turns, but had screwed up royally very early, which turned out to have an inordinate influence on who was leading when we ended. Anyway, it was at least fun to fly our little ships around discovering systems and space anomalies! 
There’s an integrated rulebook on BGG which makes life much easier.
I think we are perpetually in that phase, but after a few years you can look back and forget about it, and just look at all of the genuinely great ideas that stuck.
I quite liked dice forge but it’s too much of a pain in the arse to explain really for what is a normal worker placement but you get extra stuff.
My partner and I played a game called Tales of Glory. It’s a game where you secretly select a tile and then hope the person ahead of you hasn’t had the same idea or decided to be cheeky. I sort of wish the game had a more focus on the abstractions rather than the nice art because the symbology is a little small - which might be a problem if you don’t want to hint what you’re interested in. But it is extremely breezy and quite good fun. It’s cheap on the Ankama shop at the moment.
Yes! I wish I’d known that a week ago! 
It’s more obvious with something like Discover: Lands Unknown which very clearly had a secondary purpose of testing the manufacturing and logistical pathways for an each-copy-unique game. There doesn’t seem to have been a wave of modifiable dice games following Dice Forge.
I could see something like Star Wars Destiny following Dice Forge.
With a unique die with each SWD pack, it really didn’t take long before there were dice that were identical except for 1 or 2 faces. There were also huge logistical issues due to the packs being so large compared to a pack of cards - massively increasing shipping, retail space, warehouse space etc… And that’s without even considering the complexities of custom dice manufacture, and how a defective die means the entire unit is discarded. The whole model was doomed to failure.
Swap out custom dice with customisable dice and the whole thing becomes far more economical. Smaller packs with new faces, and it’s easier to replace defective faces. Downside is it’s not quite as pretty, but even the custom dice duplicated the same picture over and over. Maybe it would be less suited to a tournament environment since the dice is easier to tamper with, but I can’t see that being a huge issue.
Wouldn’t be surprised if FFG did SWD with a different franchise (Marvel?) using customisable dice. It’s what FFG do! Incremental changes with different theming to resell the same thing again.
Nusfjord game number 3 last night and my first attempt at it using the proper solo rules. I’d watched The Dicey Review’s solo playthrough video on YouTube and it certainly helped a lot. I got to 32 points, ending up with 5 Elders, 5 other ships, 9 buildings and all 5 shares issued in total with the Herring deck plus a handful of fish and wood in my personal supply. I did enjoy it playing solo but found it much easier than playing as mulitple players: different challenge of course but I’m getting it more now and will play it both solo and multiplayer more this autumn.
Um @pillbox, I think you lose 5vp for Killing an astronaut?
Doh! I thought it was only -2
You may be right. I know there’s a negative modifier…
Yes, -2 (and it doesn’t affect turn order, closing an unfortunate loophole).
This evening with @Lordof1 - Rallyman GT finishing off a race we had saved on Tabletop Simulator, then Automobiles on yucata. I really like Automobiles; it’s basically a Euro deckbuilder at heart but with lots of variation in which cards are available for any given game.
Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, new to us, but we’ve played the original Gloomhaven a fair bit. We did the first two introductory levels, even though we could have skipped. You get a special hand of 6 cards for the first mission, you get a couple more for the second scenario. Core concepts are added for each scenario, making it easier for first time players. What can I say – its Gloomhaven. I played Hatchet, the Inox hunter, and it seemed fine, although I did almost die in the second scenario. They’ve improved the map, it now comes in a scenario book that you open to the correct pages, and enemies places are shown clearly on the map, allowing you to easily place monsters according to player count. If you wanted to dip into Gloomhaven but weren’t sure about the original, this is a pretty good introduction.
The Grand Carnival, first play. This was a kickstarter – I’d never heard of it. Each player has their own board to place attractions on. In each round (of seven) you have five actions, selecting an action space on your board from one thru five. You can then select a new foundation, a new attraction, or move a guest. What you can select is governed by the action space, if you selected action 4, then you could take a foundation from 1 thru 4, or an attraction of size 1 thru 4, or move a guest from 1 to 4 spaces. Theres a couple of ways to earn points. You can collect attraction – three, four, and five of the same sized attraction will score you more and more points. Obviously, attractions of size 5 give you the most, but are going to be the hardest to fit in. When you take a foundation square, it will have walkways (in green), and spaces you can build an attraction on. But just building the attraction isnt enough, it needs a ticket to be scored. If you move a guest (which all start in the entry spaces at the bottom of your board) ends its movement on an attraction, you place a ticket on that attraction. Larger attractions have more space for tickets. You get points if you manage to have 15 of more tickets on your board. You can also get points by moving your guests to the big top at the top of your board.
The components were pretty good, each player has unique shapes for their pieces, which is a nice touch. And it played pretty smoothly – all you do each turn is select an action space and then one of three actions. But still, theres a bit to think about. We expected the winner to be our Tetris champion, who usually wins at these sort of placement games. But he actually finished last. I let the other two take the larger attractions, and went for the others. Somehow (bit of luck involved), I managed to get 15 tickets as well, to finish with second place.
Really enjoyed it, great looking game, easy to learn and play, but a bit of depth.
The Search for Planet X, first play with actual people. Fairly easy to teach. Made a couple of mistakes, like someone researched twice in a row (we evened it out by allowing everyone to do two research in a row as well). Not sure why the app doesn’t check for this. One player seemed to be having a bad time, just wasnt making any connections. First game tho, I think thats normal. I was first to find Planet X (yay!), but lost overall. When one player has (successfully) found Planet X, the others can either search for the planet themselves, or put down two theories (depending on how far back they are). The winner found the planet after me, and got the same points I got (10) – you get 2 points per sector you are behind. I thought this was unfair at first, but its probably fair, we were at the same sector, and it would suck to lose just because of the player order. And you still have to correctly find the planet and identify the two sectors next to it, so you need to have worked that out.
Overall – good game. Not a ton of interaction, but it is interesting how information is added by people adding theories. I probably should have added one or two early, but i really didnt have any idea about any sectors at that point. Theres no huge penalty for getting a theory wrong, you move one time period, which isnt much. But you do lose that token, and it cant be used again.
I probably like the theme of Awkward Guests more, but this is so much easier to setup. And you can have players at different difficulty levels (because you get more/less clues at the start). The app is quite good, you can see a history of your moves, including your starting information. Although, as I said, it doesnt check for repeated researching. And also, while you can see your moves, you cant see the results of them again. If I did a survey for Asteroids in sectors 1 to 3, it will show that, but not how many were found. It seems that would be easy enough to add. Maybe its because you could have several players passing around the device, but if so, then you should be able to see the starting information either. Minor quibble.
Pictures
The Crew
Nova Luna, a very close game, we all had our final two pieces to place towards the end.