Now I really want to move to NZ 
Hope you get to play some great games.
PS: I heard Western Legends has Poker at the base of the play mechanismā¦ how much poker is it though? (My partner loves Poker)
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At the beginning of your turn you can choose between getting poker cards (2 max) or $20, or 1 card and $10. The poker cards also have actions, and are used for combat, and the more wounded you are, the less cards you can hold through the game (unless you get healed, or use whiskey).
You can decide to go to town and play poker, were you play a quick hand of Texas holdāem, and with two cards from your hand and a $10 buy in you play a quick hand with 3 cards taken out of the deck at random (and beware, there are trick cards).
The problem is that unless you have such cards, any good cards you use you lose, so I lost two aces to a trio of 9s that the guy starting the game managed with two of these trick cards.
Combat is also sorted with these poker cards, but it is a highest card bid (with bonuses from any weapons you use).
So, after all this, yes, there is some poker, but no, I wasnāt precisely impressed by it. Still, it was an Ameritrash game that I really enjoyed. Itās a western! Thereās bordellos, shoot outs, marshal stars and cattle rustling. Whatās not to like?
Finally played Awkward Guests! And itās decent. Im not a fan of the constant top decking.
I really prefer Cryptid or Draculaās Feast as my deduction games of choice.
Any alternatives for light deduction games?
And our Concept session was really fun and hilarious.
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At some point I need to write up the āstreet Conceptā rules that our group usually plays by. Itās something like:
- First clue-giver is random
- d9 for which clue on the card
- everyone else guesses at once
- first correct guess gets the card for their score pile, becomes next clue-giver
- most cards at the end (usually Last Orders) is the winner
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A quick glance at the BGG entries for Draculaās Feast and Dracula Feast: New Blood didnāt leave me clear in the differences. Have you played both? If there are differences, which do you prefer?
(Iād really like to have a deduction game my 9yo could be interested in, but the ones I have encountered seem either to be very dull or about bluffing, not deduction, so any time someone mentions one that might be different, Iām very eager! 
)
I picked up Break the Code recently as a stand-in for 2P Awkward Guests and itās lovely. The game has rules for 3 and 4 as well, and itās a simple race to see who can deduce the other playerās sequence (numbers and colours in correct order) first. Queries are limited to those included in a small deck, from which 6 are always available (and cycling).
Itās a pure deduction game and itās lightning quick. One could argue thereās some shadiness available by denying cards from an opponent to avoid giving up particularly crucial info, but in our experience the gameās over so fast itās better to gain info than deny.
Anyway, the downside is that it doesnāt have the same layered depth as Awkward Guests, but it trades that for the immediacy of the puzzle, and that makes for a really good mental showdown.
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Played both. New Blood is basically Draculaās Feast 2.0. I like the balance changes on New Blood.
If youre playing with just 2, I really like Mr. Jack Pocket. Draculaās Feast is a deduction party game - NOT a social deduction party game
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Iām enjoying Search for Planet X. Theres a standard and expert mode, and you can have players at different levels of difficulty (by getting more/less facts at the start). Its easier to setup than Awkward Guests, and theres less luck involved.
Also, it requires the app to play.
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Canāt get simpler or easier to set up than Sleuth!
Have you got a scoring system for Concept? The one in the rules is awful
We play until we get bored? We donāt score the game at all. Itās just too much fun trying to explain things and watching people go āDog, cat, mouseā, shaking your head and putting a token on green (or whatever).
PS: The shortest round we ever played, I went for āobjectā and āredā and my partner said āFerrariā
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Yeh, thatās our general approach. We always just do it as a free-for-all and take it in turns to give clues so everyone gets a go.
We once tried playing it using Monikers cards. That was hilariously difficult.
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We do the same. I did try a scoring variant from BGG but it wasnāt great. If someone had a great system Iād give it a go.
āstreet Conceptā that I posted above isnāt sophisticated, but it works and it doesnāt have the team stuff that leaves half the players uninvolved (see also Codenames).
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My girlfriend was bought Azul and Cockroach poker for her birthday recently.
Weāve managed a few games of Cockroach, a couple of rounds with friends we often play games with and two other groups of non-gamers. It went down a storm with all. Lots of laughs and nobody really caring about the result once it was over. The perfect casual game, great for starting or finishing s games night too.
Azul had always struck me as too abstract for my liking, but having recently got very in to Sagrada, so I was cautiously optimistic I might enjoy this. First few rounds of picking tiles seemed pretty uneventful, some scoring going on but no big deal. As the game went on, the genius in the design became more clear and I realised how badly I had been playing. Few games later and itās definitely one thatās going to be hitting the table a lot, at least in the near future. Will be interesting to see if it has staying power.
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Last night we finally got to finish our long delayed full-expansions game of Spirit Island, against level 2 Sweden. Turns out Swedenās level 1 trick of doing extra blight on heavy damage Ravages doesnāt really ever come into play if youāre consistent about controlling Invader population and defending appropriately. It seems like itās a counter to an abatement strategy of concentrating all the damage in a few places, butā¦thatās not really a good way to manage ravages anyway, since absent some specific abilities youāll struggle to clear out those concentrated locations after that first blight lands, and cascades are justā¦not what you want ever, really. Still, this game took longer than our previous runs, making it a couple cards into stage 3 of the invader deck and a more advanced boardstate than weād seen before, before we abruptly won our first total fear victory. It really helped that my girlfriend Maddy very early on scored the Major Power Paralyzing Fright, which is pretty insane. With the right elements (which she had basically every turn), itās 8 fear for one card play. And if that werenāt enough, it can simply stop a whole land full of invaders from acting. So between that and another spiritās ability to have her sometimes repeat a power use (paying the cost again), she sometimes added an entire fear card all by herself. Not that we didnāt have some other pretty great major powers, too. One of these days Iāll play a spirit with enough energy flow to actually reliably play major powers. But that is definitely not Sharp Fangs Behind the Leaves, my spirit this game. It seemed very clear that my role was to spam a lot of low to no cost minor powers, with 5 cards a turn in the late game and the ability to freely reclaim two. between that and my ability to cover the board in presence (plus move around with beasts and beast-moving powers) I could nudge things in a lot of places. And thatās all it took, really.
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Finally played against some other than Rhino in Marvel Champions. Tried out Klaw with Spider-Man and Iron Man. Things started out pretty easy, had a Weapon Runner as the starting minion, which Spidey took out on his first turn. Iron Man got out Mockingbird, his helmet and some rocket boots and went ahead and pinged Klaw for a small amount. Klawās return attacks were negligible.
Got a good base of cards after a while, Black Cat and Daredevil for Spidey, with Aunt May for healing while Iron Man had Stark Tower, a Helicarrier, and most of his Tech cards. So I nailed Klaw with one of Spideyās attack cards for 8, plus sent Daredevil in for one more attack to finish off Klawās first card, though it took Daredevil out due to a Retaliate card on Klaw.
Then trouble started, as side schemes and Masters of Evil seemed to pour from the encounter deck. Both heroes were engaged with two each, and the two side schemes were causing more Threat to be added each turn. The first Main Scheme advanced soon after.
Since both my heroes were getting low on health and Klaw still had that Retaliate card, I used a couple of Spideyās attack cards to clear off the enemies on Iron Man, then Iron Man was able to clear off one from Spidey in return, plus do enough Thwart to eliminate a side scheme and get the main one clear. This side scheme happened to give Klaw an extra 10 HP, so it was helpful to get rid of it.
Mamaged to tread water for a few more turns, though the Threat got up to 11 or so (out of 16, where I would lose). But I finally had all the cards I needed. Spider-Man used Black Cat to attack Klaw and remove the Tough aspect he had picked up, then had Jessica Jones hit him before attacking Klaw himself. And despite Whiplash coming after him, and knowing Klaw would Retaliate after each attack, Iron Man went Aerial and hit Klaw with a Supersonic Punch, and then blasted him with a couple of shots from his gauntlets, taking him out. Even though that won me the game, I continued to have Iron Man use a Repulsor Blast which hit Whiplash for 3, and he did a standard attack to finish off his nemesis, at which point I truly felt victorious.
Spidey had managed to keep his health up, finishing with 7, but Iron Man was down to 4 after his last turn.
I read lots of people say how thematic this game is, and while I have seen small bits of it from time to time, I think tonights game really shone in that department. The heroes were running out of time, were seemingly outgunned, but then managed to turn everything around just in time to save the day. Targeting each otherās foes, gathering allies and using their abilities at the right time and in the right order, and just an epic feeling finish with a coordinated attack plan. It felt like playing a comic book tonight. So much fun!
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After buying just about every hero pack and the new box expansion for Marvel Champions, I really rate it. Itās excellent.
Thereās never a game where theme isnāt part of the action, and the bad guys being a fixed deck (which you can add to if you want to increase difficulty) just solves so many LCG problems in one step. Iām really pleased itās been regularly near the top of BGG hotness list.
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I got to play Iki last night. Itās been so long Iād lost my sharpness. However itās nice to be reminded what an excellent euro this is. Still feels a top 10 game. All the opportunity costs all the time. Then layer on a slightly opaque layering of strategies shot through with some crucial interaction and having to play the players of the game as opposed to just the playing the game itself. Also unique, for a board game, art.
Then a quick round of Hanabi. Still great.
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Right, we had the big games day today, so I had a 10.00 to 16.00 session. They kept going (probably they still are, is just before 22.00 here) but I decided that was enough on my other half with the children, so I came back after three games, two long and one short-ish.
First played Battle for Rokugan between 4. None of us had played it, and the teach took a bit longer than I expected, specially as I wasnāt so familiar with the nitty-gritty of some rules and we had to go through the rule book on a few occasions. After a set-up session that took a while, the game got going, and by round 3 we were all really enjoying ourselves.
I was playing with the Crane clan, and was doing quite well until the last round, were I was second to place my tokens, and had only one decent infantry 4 one and all the rest were 1 and 2s. Still managed to keep my secret objective and enough points to finish second, but lost my foothold on the coastal province of the Phoenix territory, and the guy playing the Unicorn pulled away to over 40 points with Phoenix, Dragon, and all but one of he Unicorn provinces, and ruined my island domination that so much effort had costed me conquering from the Scorpion clan.
Then we played a round of London (the same 4 players), the 2nd edition version. I did win that game by the skin of my teeth. The owner of the game had nearly gone to the top of the scoreboard (40 many points) but his poverty put him last. I had looked after keeping a clean score on poverty and it paid off, even though all my boroughs were from the South side (which shows to all those saying nothing south of the Thames is worthy in London are not quite right). My Greenwich borough and the Brixton prison proved key to get rid of loads of poverty on my two final rounds, and I think that gave me the edge to snatch it by one point.
And last, a quick-ish game of Aquatica, between 4 players again, where I was last with a mere 25 points. I think being 4th did not particularly help me, and I was a couple of times interpreting rules the wrong way, so that showed in the final score (I though for all the scoreboard credits I had to use flipped mantas, which is only for one of the four categories, for example). I was not particularly impressed by the game, to be honest. Nice art and that, but it felt too much about points, points, points. It left me a bit cold (pardon the pun).
Still, a great day of games, even though the odds didnāt favour our chances of playing Merchants and Marauders as we have planned. The novelty of London 2nd Ed. and Rokugan ate a big chunk of time and I didnāt want to come home too late. But I am sure there will be plenty of other chances.
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