Not at all influenced by the latest podcast, my wife and I had our first ever game of Terra Mystica. We bought the app about 3 years ago and have never played it.
We’ve now picked up a copy on eBay 
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I had a copy of Gaia Project I sold on last year (made a custom insert for it and everything), and I guess I’ve missed it because I’ve been totally binging the Terra Mystica app. It remains something of a mystery to me why the boys were/are so reticent to recommend GP over TM. Granted the area control got somewhat neutered, but I find that change negligible on the face of all the positive improvements GP offers.
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I’m on the Terra camp. I prefer the focus of the route-building and area control of the map and the temples over the emphasis of the technology track of GP. Plus I prefer the fantasy theme and the wooden buildings. Unlike my strong preference between Brass Birmingham and Lancashire, I still like them both though. One of the few heavy Euros today I would actually bother to join the table.
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After one play, I’m hopeful it will fill the Terraforming Mars/ Great Western Trail length/ weight experience in our house. I love both of those games, but fancy a bit of variety.
I don’t like learning a game by app, we weren’t sure about a lot of what we were doing but it was still fun. Hopefully playing irl will make the app more accessible as well.
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I think you’ll find it will help. Even coming from GP, I found a few of the differences confounding at first, and repeated plays (of the app) weren’t making things easier until I actually broke out the manual and sussed them out myself. Seems counterintuitive, but sometimes you need that hands-on fiddliness to really grok a rule/system.
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The app is very bad at presenting all the information you need at a glance. You can only see a fraction of it at a time, and need to switch between screens to get the full picture. Only when you are very familiar with the game does this become slightly more tolerable.
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Managed a couple of solo games this weekend. Space Hulk: Death Angel and Pandemic: Fall of Rome. Almost managed a win in the former, but my last marines got swamped by clawed and fanged nasties right at the end.
Pandemic: FoR was a fair disaster, probably my worst game yet. Everything seemed to be going well, with two tribes allied, and then the Vandels exploded across Western Europe with some really unlucky card draws resulting in chain sacking of cities that I couldn’t really do much about.
Also had a few games of Outfoxed with the wee one during the week too. She absolutely loves ‘the Fox game’, and I think I need to start building on that success by introducing her to some more games.
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Crypt, first play. This is a very quick card game. Each round, a number of cards is laid out. Each player can place a dice on any or all of the cards (not rolled, placed with any face you like). Another player can push you out by placing a higher die (or dice). Then, you have to roll your dice again, and you want the original value or higher. So, placing a 1 is good because you cant lose, but its easy for someone to push you out. Even if you fail on your roll, you’ll get the card, but your dice become exhausted, and you’ll have to spend a turn to recover them. Its very quick, but fun.
Maracaibo, second play. Our first play took us over 4 hours, and I had hoped this one would be a bit quicker, but it wasnt. I was the only one who had played before. We gave up about half way into the game, after a few hours. I dont mind the game, but the play length is just too long for me.
Quirky Circuits, played a couple more levels. Enjoying this more and more. We still make some mistakes, in a hurry to get your cards down, its easy to mistake a backwards card for a forwards one. We had some special yellow cards added to the levels too, which are tricky because you cant see from the back what they do (ie movement or turn), and you have to play them before any other card. Its really a great co-op experience. You cant communicate about strategy, or what cards you may have, so theres a lot of people saying “ok, I see what you’re doing there”.
Heist, One Team, One Mission, good for a quick play or two
Its a Wonderful World, first play. This is a bit like 7 Wonders, you start by drafting a hand of 7 cards. Then, for each card you decide whether to recycle the card for resources, or move the card into a construction area. As you gather resources, you’ll place them on other cards to complete them, and add them to your production. Its a pretty quick game, only 4 rounds.
Awkward Guests, unfortunately a card was included which should not have, so it was hard to identify the murderer.
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Played Lords of Vegas with our friends over Zoom today. Worked pretty well, though we had to keep track of the money for them as our laptop camera can’t fit the board plus their play areas at the same time.
One of them lagged behind in scoring for most of the game, never being boss of a casino for long. Partly due to bad rolls on reorganization attempts. I even gave her money to afford a reorg roll in the hopes of her winning, just so another player would not get further ahead, but she didn’t. Oh well.
I was in the lead for a short bit, then my wife and our other friend caught up, and we all stayed pretty neck and neck for a while. Our fried pulled ahead in the end though, buying his way into one of my casinos and having two reorgs go his way. I managed to sneak my way into boss of the only 9 tile casino, but too late for it to get me victory.
Final scores had our friend win with 54, me in second with 44, my wife just behind me at 40, and our other friend bringing up the rear with 10. Always a fun game, but if we play it again we will peobably wait for a time the kids are in bed, as the game lastted at least 30 mins longer than it should have due to interruptions. And due to the fact that I screwed up the set up and shuffled the game over cards into the bottom fourth of the deck, rather than just having it on top.
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I played this on one of my gamers’ club sessions about a couple of months ago, as somebody had bought it through a KS. Great game, if only a bit confusing as to how to get victory points in the very end. The owner of the game gave the rest of the three of us a good walloping, which wasn’t precisely inspiring (you can tell he knew what to invest in for the long run), but I can see it has potential for mastering it and make it more competitive. Great tactility to it as well. I loved the deck building combined with the tokens, and that it was only 4 rounds of 7 cards each.
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Finally played crown of emara. It’s a ridiculously breezy game considering how much set up and bits and bobs there are.
The game has this dual rondel system where you place cards that indicate how many steps you move but you choose which rondel you move on.
I liked it except I think the set up is too fiddly In comparison to the meatiness to make me really desired to set it up. I think we’ll play some more but we’ll see.
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I have been playing a ton of Sergeant Major with my partner and grandmother lately, and I think it’s earned its place as a Card Game That Doesn’t Suck. It’s a fairly straightforward trick-taking game for three players only, where the number of tricks you have to take changes every round, and if you come up short you have to give up your best cards next round to players who took extra tricks. I think the game is traditionally a gambling game, but it has an interesting enough arc that I’ve enjoyed it without needing to gamble. If SUSD ever bring back the series, this would be my nomination.
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Played two 4 player games of Pax Pamir 2 with @Whistle_Pig . First game ended with the first dominance check, so we played again.
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Either one person got dominance all by themselves, or all four players were in the same coalition and three of them were tied last? Either way, not a result I’d expect to see twice.
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I purchased the event that lowers the dominance requirement of a faction from 4 to 2 as a gamble. I was alone as the Afghans and purchased Dominance Check card early after knocking down the powerful Russians on a later turn
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We were all a bit surprised!
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Including me. 
I thought I was only scoring 3 pts for that, not 5!
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Various games on yucata and boardgamearena, including Colt Express (an unexpected two-player variant where you get cards for two bandits but only a normal hand size, disconcerting to meet suddenly and I did very badly), and more VOLT, 6 Nimmt! and Rallyman GT. I’m a much worse 6 Nimmt player than the people who play on BGA…
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For Mother’s Day, my wife, her brother, and I played what is likely my wife’s favorite game, Lords of Waterdeep. We were trying to keep the play time down so we did not add an expansion. I jumped out to an early lead thanks to a few high scoring quests that complemented each other well, but after that I felt like I was struggling to get resources to accomplish more quests.
Meanwhile, my wife got the lieutenant at the beginning of the fifth round, giving her an extra action each round, and also had the Magister’s Orb quest, which lets her play an agent on the same space as an opponent’s agent once per round, which is a really useful ability.
Her brother just seemed to be doing his own thing, but near the end of the game came into some very high scoring quests and jumped way into the lead. My wife managed to pass me as well.
I managed to complete 10 quests, 7 for my lord. My wife did 14, but also only 7 for her lord. I don’t remember how many her brother completed, but he won regardless, with 203 points, my wife was in second with 170 and I brought up the rear at 155. Good fun, though it took a little longer than we expected.
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