Your description of Rokugan was really enjoyable. 
Itās no secret I love that game.
However, your description of London is the most boardgame thing ever. āThis player was doing really well, but then their poverty got the better of them. Iād managed my poverty well, but of course my boroughs were from the south.ā just sounds like total nonsense to somebody whoās never played it.
Games are great.
Well, itās Sarf London, innit?
Sarf of the river this time of night? Youāre 'avin a giraffe mate!
As someone who is currently living in the Borough of Greenwich (technically, off to the side a bit) I approve of this!
Must buy London 2nd ed, especially if itās cheap.
After a nice walk during the day and some birdwatching my wife and I played some games in the evening:
Bananagrams, this one was close but I managed a win, despite my wifeās attempt to again dump a āZā on me at the very end (but she got stuck with it 
) ! Such a great word game of building and tearing down to build anew.
Garbage Day, this silly dexterity game isnāt really one of my favourites - the dexterity challenge tends to mean failure is always total and the ātake-thatā cards mean that dexterity skill is not the main factor in who wins. But on the other hand I love the theme, and itās a great low energy game for two or a small group.
Point Salad, my wife surprised me by wanting to play this one - I remember teaching it to her but didnāt realise she rather liked it. Itās a cool drafting game at lower playercounts - Iād be a bit worried it would be too chaotic with more than a few players though, but Iāve not played with a bigger group yet. One win each on this one.
āI live in X. Well, not really, but Iām going to claim it is. No, itās not the same post code, I just include it in my address because the post office doesnāt ask questions and it makes me feel better about buying/renting in the adjacent, slightly cheaper, area.ā is the most British of traditions!
(Keep an eye on London on Amazon. It fluctuates in price on an almost daily process. When it hits cheap, loads of people buy it, causing it to shoot up in value within a few hours. But donāt worry, itāll be cheap again soon. Algorithms! What are they good for?)
People on the edges of London have variously petitioned to have their postcodes moved outside (cheaper car insurance) and inside (higher property prices).
My favourite story about this was politics comedian Mark Thomas, who did a āPeopleās Manifestoā tour where audiences could propose any laws they liked. Apart from some excellent suggestions (catwalk models should be chosen at random from the electoral register, election promises should be legally binding, there should be a Maximum Wage) he got into the local dispute of Windsor and Slough (rhymes with cow).
Windsor (super posh, THE QUEEN, etc) didnāt like having an SL postcode because Slough (famously grubby and awful, brown concrete office blocks) was next door, said it was bringing down house prices etc (That was nonsense. Itās freaking Windsor.)
Slough responded in the Manifesto and proposed that Windsor be renamed āLower Sloughā.
I forgot to mention that my online group met up this week for our second game of The Kingās Dilemma. In a complete reversal of my previous statement regarding the stability track, the King had to abdicate after 5 or 6 dilemmas as the wealth track utterly plummeted. So it all seems to depend on what cards come out and how much attention us being paid to the track.
I voted against lowering it at one point, but was outvoted, which took it to the bottom of the track and left the stability marker just 2 spaces shy of abdication. Then, the next dilemma had negative resource movement no matter which way we voted, so we went for the non-wealth one in the hopes weād get lucky, but no dice. Game ended.
I came in third on points, getting a Crave for my house. I am very curious what balance of Prestige to Crave is needed at the end of the campaign to give your house a good ending, or win the game, or however it shakes out. Looking forward to next week.
Itās not something you can really plan for very much, honestly. Theyāre both good for you though.
Played War Chest against SWMBO yesterday for the first time. I was very conservative, but by the end game I had her on the ropes. I then snatched defeat from the gaping maw of victory because I didnāt realize she had FIVE control markers on the board, not four. I took the wrong coin off the board, and she then spent the only duplicate coin she had left in order to claim her sixth spot for the instant win. I was inconsolable. 
Scenarios 7&8 (note to others, you shouldnāt play 7&8!) of JOTL.
Weāre beginning to level up now and itās becoming a bit too easy. Due to the mistake of playing and rather than or 8 weāre going to play one more scenario and then level up the monsters.
One character seems to get XP pretty much every turn whereas for my Demolitionist itās much more of a struggle. Itās very smooth, especially with the helper app. We all seem to find ourselves thinking about the game when weāre not playing it, which I always think is a good sign.
Followed by a 2 player Terraforming Mars which we havenāt played in a good while. From the Corp and Prelude draw I thought I was in for a hiding, but I somehow won. Weāre at a point with 2 players now where my wife is better than me, but only just and whoever draws the best cards wins. Itās not a great place to be, but we both still enjoy it and it isnāt an issue with a higher player count.
Last play was Zombicide spread over two weeks, ran the first full mission and Wanda managed to skate in the objectives to the exit. We had a good game and a good chat while we played it. Reminisced about a good friend we lost.
Before that was Unmatched. We had a good time, if you asked me I would say I took at least one dive to give the newbie a taste of victory but that wouldnāt explain why I lost twice.
Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion , scenario 5, won relatively easily
Rick and Morty: Total Rickall , named after the episode from the tv series, where parasites infiltrate their house, planting fake memories. Its very light. You get three cards, you choose one to play each round. A lot of the card allow you to peek at the hidden identity cards (which will say either parasite or real). Shoot the parasites, dont shoot the real characters. Its simple fun, especially if youāre a fan of the show (which I am, but noone else was).
Fort , first play. This is a deckbuilder, which is a type of game I really started to dislike. But this had good reviews, and I liked the theme, so got it. You are all kids trying to build their fort, while gathering toys and pizza. Each card is a kid, with a suit icon (like a skateboard, or a book),. Each card can have zero, one, or two actions. If a card has actions, they can be public or private. As the name suggests, everyone can do a public action ā by following and discarding one of their cards of the same suit. Actions can be to gather resources (toys and pizza), move resources around, get VPs for resources, upgrade your fort, and a few others. Cards can be added to your lookout and used to match icons and therefore boost your actions.
Its not too bad to explain. One interesting feature is that any cards you play on your turn go into your discard (as you would expect). But any cards not used go to your yard, where they can be recruited by other players. Except your starting two cards, marked as your best friends. Best friends, of course, will never leave you.
Its all good fun, but both games I played this weekend (at 3p) seemed to take a long time ā 2 hours or more. I know, weāre all getting used to it. I guess its because of the follow action, so the active player and all the other players could be performing an action every turn. A lot of deckbuilders seem to accelerate as the game progresses, you get better and better cards, while trashing basic cards. In Fort, there doesnt seem to be that acceleration (or possibly we are bad players).
Ghost Stories , weāve been playing this every week for a couple of weeks now. The first game was pretty rough, we didnt come close to winning (and I made that horrendous rules mistake, didnt think you could move diagonally). This time we did better, and actually got down to the villainous Wu-Feng. But we were too close to death, had multiple nasty ghosts (of strength four) around. One of us managed to try and exorcise Wu-Feng, but there was a very small chance of success. We felt it was a big step just getting to the boss. Its such a great (but hard) game.
The Crew
Silver and Gold
Sunday, played
Fort , play time was similar to first game (too long), but it was a new group, so had to teach. Everyone enjoys it, but the game length was brought up.
The Search for Planet X , came second ā just needed one more theory. And I was too close to the leader at the end, so getting the Planet X sector correctly only gave me 4 points. Good game. I managed to stuff up something, but it didnt hurt me too badly. Its a sinking feeling when a theory reaches the inner space and gets flipped, and its not what you had marked off. Now, this is a game that has the perfect length (imo).
Rick and Morty: Total Rickall
First play of Through The Desert. Picked this up for a decent price on eBay after the podcast. The family didnāt enjoy Blue Lagoon, so I didnāt say they share a lot of DNA.
Really good 3 player game. I concentrated on enclosing a big area, looked up and realised that 2 of my caravans were pretty much stuck.
Looking forward to this again and, as all games must be these days, probably playable on Zoom.
Monday night, so Games night.
Arrived a bit late, and a friend that was late as well wanted to play Fog of Love, as she never had managed to. So we had a go at The Trouble with the In-Laws. Interesting play, where I played a female doctor with broad shoulders, and she played a male pilot with tattoos, hairy and with a facial scar. I think it took her a while to guess what kind of traits I had, which is tricky, as you hardly have any sweet cards to choose from, and you get soon thrown on the deep end. Named the baby Turbulence (obvioulsy, given her dadās job and the trouble ahead), and even though he actually cheated on me at the very end, we managed not to break up, but fell short of the objectives from our Destiny cards.
Still enjoyable, we had a few hilarious moments. I think that this game always suffers on the first play, as it is tricky to get the mechanism of choosing independently from your own opinions instead of following your character traits, or your partners.
After that we joined another two fellow geeks from the Guild and we had a quick Kingdomino game. I had a terrible start and never recovered from it, the turns where I could choose first were not very kind to me, so I finished last on barely over 20 points. I guess I paid the price of never having played the game beofre.
To finish the night we had a bit of social deduction with Secret Hitler between 5. I was given a liberal card, but got into a bit of a pickle when elected chancellor and given only fascist options on my cards (we were a few rounds in). Still managed to get away and when elected president we could shoot one player and I guessed right by shooting one of the fascists. In two more elections we had the liberals win and Hitler was spotted.
With half an hour to spare, we went to see how our friends were doing with a game of Dead of Winter. It looks like a great game, but gosh, thatās like half a million components and cards. They mostly got overrun by the zombies, even with some final sacrifices. And as expected, there was a good 20 mins discussion about the game while tidying up. Looking forward to give it a go, now that summer is showing up down under.
I played two more solo games of Architects of the West Kingdom over the last two nights. Sundayās game saw a win for Caroline over Helena by 43 points to 34. I wanted to test the ādark sideā in this game so my Virtue stayed low until the end and there was lots of use of the Black Market and Tax Stand while constructed 6 buildings including the Aqueduct but only constructed one level to the Cathedral. Seemed a quick game though but nice to see that route is as solid a path to victory as staying virtuous.
The second game was my first test of the Age of Artisans expansion which was a lovely addition. Initially I thought I had won with Gisela beating Helena by 33 points to 28 - but I forgot to award Helena some Adornments midgame so she should have beaten me, and probably comfortably. Loved the Adornments and Tools additions along with the Artisan, but was too carried away trying to get new Tools that I ignored the Cathedral and let my Virtue slide badly despite constructing seven buildings. A great set of variations though but my initial feeling is that these rules might play out better with multiple human players rather than against the bots.
Reading about your plays somehow gives me more joy about my own copy of this even though I have only played once recently:)
I think Le Havre might be my favourite bucolic Rosenberg, more than Agricola, Nusfjord, and Feast for Odin. Needs more plays to confirm that I prefer it over Agricola, and also I want more plays because I really love it. Ava confirms to be my fave SUSD crew member. Now Iām curious on how this fares over Ora et Labora.
Played Container Jumbo Edition with Wyvern, followed by Liberte. Itās been 2 years since Iāve played Container and yet I still remember 90% of the rules due to how dead simple it is. Love it. Glad I have it in my shelf.
Liberte is area majority, the genre that I love. Thereās a double majority dynamic here. Something I find far more interesting than Tammany Hallās double majority. Yāall still fighting for area via plurality, but you need to back a candidate from a certain faction. If your candidate wins, they go to parliament both as your representative and the factionās representative. If the faction becomes the government, then you check who has the most influence on that governing faction. (reminds me of the King is Dead too) 2nd place gets fewer pts. Furthermore, the player who has the most influence from the main opposition party gets more points than the 2nd place on the governing party. Interesting.
This isnāt just rehash of El Grande. Choosing which faction you want to back on an area is interesting. I end up backing two horses that I think had a good chance in government and opposition, while trying to keep the 3rd faction down, or use the 3rd faction to balance the fight to my favour.
Also, thereās something really thematic and funny about it when thereās infighting among the factions themselves, considering what a confusing mess the French Revolution is. And my man, Napoleon Bonaparte, getting beheaded by the guillotine and removed from my tableau and the game was very memorable!
