You are still in the honeymoon phase. After about 20 games solo on a TTS mod, a different one, but also well scripted, the repetition wore me down. YMMV, of course.
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Played about 30 āyearsā and enjoyed it, but I donāt think I would revisit. Love the exploration of the setting, slightly too much admin.
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While I donāt like the game overall it was the game that reawakened in me an appreciation for what heavy random can do in a game. The advantage of unfair death being around every corner in KDM is what it does to the atmosphere. It makes the world come alive with how grim, desperate and hopeless the survivors existence is. Even your best fighters can just get destroyed out of nowhere so you canāt get attached to an avatar. And that was the feel he was aiming for, so arguable itās well done
For me the main problem with the game is how long it takes to resolve considering how few decisions you have. The fights are a long winded way of seeing what happens with your equipment set up. Maybe itās better online with an automated set up 
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If there were more of a risk of kitted out survivors dying in a showdown it would be more interesting. As it is, once you get used to a given encounter, itās really just the between-game bookkeeping phase where strong characters die.
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As I think we discussed during my write up, almost all problems can be mitigated as you get stronger. I donāt know if this was intentional, but itās a real flaw.
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Is that the point of getting stronger??
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Things happen, they mess you up, you mitigate them, on repeat. Thatās fine, itās just the punishments seem to become more forgiving.
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Oh, Iām sure itāll get to me too - thatās another thing I was dubious about. Yes, the monsters get a shuffled around AI deck every time and levelling them up changes parameters a bit more, butā¦thereās what, 7 in the core game and every expectation youāll fight at least some of them several times? But, frankly, 20 times is more than I play a lot of games. And itās not like I invested $1000 like I would have to on tabletop.
I do find that the atmosphere is strongā¦but for me thatās much more in the crazy creature design and similar than it is in getting arbitrary results off a random table. I canāt imagine playing this thing as actually designed in meatspace, though. The mod doesnāt automate the fights, so it might not help with your complaint, but it does automate setting up the Hunt and Showdown phases (you pick a monster and level and it does virtually everything other than actually placing random terrain and survivors), it automates grabbing relevant cards when you place new settlement locations, it takes you directly to story events when you click on the relevant bit of your timeline (and some other relevant places), it has a one-click button to clear temporary injuries and reset armor when youāre done with a showdown, it automatically tracks the stat profile of every weapon you have in your gear grid as your stats and the monsterās change (except for terrain effects and Hit Location bonuses/penalties), you can automatically pack away a survivor and swap in a new one when youāre adjusting your hunt partyā¦just lots of faff removed. It seems like it would be a giant pile of stuff to track and sort through every single phase of every single play session on the table.
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My wife and I played a couple of games this afternoon. First up was Azul, which my wife won pretty easily, 69 - 55. I got nailed by 6 tiles on the floor in the last round, and took the first player token every round as well, which dragged my score down.
We followed it up with Splendor, which she also won handily, 17 - 10. She nabbed two nobkes to my zero, partly because the game would not stop putting out diamond mines, so I could not prevent her from getting enough for one of them.
Oh well, fun anyway.
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Finished that real life Too Many Bones run with my new girlfriend. We won against Drellen on day 7. This was by no means easy - if Drellen had survived another turn things would have gotten real dicey as Tantrum was down to just a couple HP and as Ghillie I no longer had my pet wolverine to tank for me. But Tantrum was up to five attack dice by that point and weād whittled Drellen down to 3 HP (it helped that he wasnāt rolling well for defense) so, as it turns out, he did not. Also no other bog critters in the Baddie Queue to refresh his invulnerability, thankfully. She had fun and is up for trying again sometime, although weāll be playing one of those Kosmos adventure game titles (Monochrome, Inc) first.
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Finally got to play High Society today ā firstly with 3 players, and later with 5. Everyone really enjoyed it (with one player immediately going in search of a copy to buy), and the superlative artwork (and very funny thematic overview text) of the Osprey edition really is the icing on the cake. I rarely enjoy auctions in games, but my gut told me that I was going to like this game, and Iām happy to confirm that my instincts were correct. Lovely stuff.
Also Geometric Art which everyone also enjoyed. The constraint of creating your picture using only the set of shapes determined by a bunch of custom dice is a delightful way to spark creativity. You might have two ovals, two curves, and a triangle in which to create a picture matching the category āa daily routineā, and the other players must correctly guess the name of your picture. This is the only game Iāve bought solely on account of the SUSD podcast, despite them saying they werenāt expecting to do a review. Iām glad I picked it up.
The next new game of the day for me was The Crew. I felt bad that I didnāt comprehend quite how lost one of the players was by the gameplay, and so they really didnāt enjoy it at all. They were new to trick-taking games generally, and I thought Iād explained well enough, but with hindsight there was some information overload, and I think we needed to have played some open-hand rounds with narration in order to clarify the concepts. Those of us who had played trick-taking games before had a better time, and I definitely enjoyed it ā it can be a bit of a mind bender. In one of our failed missions I realised that of the remaining 6 tricks, the only one it was possible for me to lose was the one trick I needed to win ā and with another player still needing to win one too. Dāohā¦
Karekare is a neat little hexagonal tile-laying game, where every combination of tile types has a particular effect. With 4 tile types (forest, field, hill, water) there are sixteen (4x4) possible actions resulting from playing a tile ā and playing adjacent to multiple tiles means you get to do the appropriate action for each of those connections. I liked it rather than loved it, but Iād happily play it again.
Lastly, Solar Draft is a card game about building the best solar system. The artwork is delightfully silly, and added to the fun. Itās a pretty easy game to learn, but thereās a lot of text on the cards due to the sheer number of different planet/moon/comet types, and the end-game scoring takes a lot of effort on account of all the special scoring conditions depending on what other cards you had played into your solar system ā which would be fine at the end of a multi-hour strategic marathon, but seemed a bit out of place in such a quick and simple game. We all enjoyed this as well, though.
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Scenario 13 of Jaws of the Lion still excellent. All of us are level 5 now, so next game the monsters need to go up as well. My Demolitionist now has the opportunity to have a ridiculous mech suit. Bosh!
We fluked this one. My eldest walked into the final room and hossed an attack 6, range 4 at the boss which should have spawned a lot of minions. He pulled a X2 and exploded said boss against the wall which turned it into a rout.
Weāve won every scenario so far and only 1 had us clinging on in the last turn. That felt the best even though I was out of it so we need to up the difficulty.
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My wife and I just played Brass Birmingham. Iāve been inspired by the Brass PBP to get it to the table again. Definitely our favourite play so far. As we do in many games we played different strategies (she took 1 loan, I took 5 or 6), she had lots of canals and sold lots, I built lots of railways and breweries (that seems simpler than setting up sales). We drew, 136 points each.
BB is the most beautiful game I own (itād be cool if the day and night sides had different set ups, or one side was a smaller, tighter map like with Concordia). Itās up there with Great Western Trail and Gloomhaven to be a pig to set up.
Itās an odd one, my feeling is that it becomes better as you get better at playing it which I think means that a lot of people may not have a great first couple of plays (I certainly didnāt). I think it will sing with 4 players who know what theyāre doing, but that is going to take a while to happen. For now though Iād be keen to play it again soon and try something different.
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Had another game of Karekare today, unexpectedly. I think I enjoyed it a little more than yesterday, but it still falls under the ākinda neat, but not wow-ing meā banner.
One Deck Dungeon was next; another new game to everyone. We played with 4 players and it took too long for my liking, and I wasnāt excited by the puzzle of āhow can we make all these dice results be the ones we actually need using combinations of special abilitiesā. I can imagine it being more fun for some than it was for me, and I might enjoy it better after another play, but I donāt feel very inspired to revisit it.
A few games of Hive and Fox in the Forest followed. I won all of these, but my opponent was pretty tired (and new to FITF), so not very surprising. I really should have lost one of the games of Hive but they made a single mistake in their would-be-endgame which gave me an additional turn, and I was able to drag it back for the win (eventually leaving them without enough moveable pieces to finish the job, after which I was free to move in and surround their queen bee). I felt a bit bad, but it was a pretty interesting game because of that one mistake, and I think it showed the game off well.
I then taught people China which was lovely as always.
Lastly we had a game of Century (Golem Edition) which I found pretty dull. Mostly we were silently staring at cards figuring out what to do next turn, and if Iām going to be doing that I want the gameplay to be more exciing than this. It wasnāt terrible, but I donāt have any interest in playing it again, and I canāt for the life of me figure out why it has an average rating as high as 7.7 (or 7.4 for the regular edition) on BGG (although Century did remind me a little of Splendor, a similarly highly-rated game that I similarly have no interest in ever playing again).
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The app on solo (controlling two heroes) is perfect speed - I got it cheap to try out the game, and now Iām not sure Iād have patience for the physical version.
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Iāve found both Splendor and Century to have the āquietly work on your own engine and compare scores at the endā. Interaction is limited to accidentally obtaining the card I was looking at getting on my next turn.
In other words, it suits a huge audience who find the idea of interaction by interference in a game horrifying which is possibly it has a high rating. The worker placement one in the trilogy has a Keyflower style placement and is much better for it IMHO.
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Im pleasantly surprised that the Web of Power series still find itself on the table
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Another Jaws of the Lion, with enemies at level 3. Really tense, my eldest heroically exhausted himself. My Demolitionist got to use a ridiculous, specific card to smash up tables. My wife and I had 2 turns left maximum when we finished. The youngest gets loads of cards so could have carried on for another fortnight!
Best scenario yet (15), so weāre halfway through the game IIRC. Weāve had a couple of either/ or scenarios already so it looks unlikely weāll get the full 30 but itās still a good game which will give us 25+ plays (if we win every scenario).
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Itās such a good design. I always love introducing people to it. With the recent Iwari being popular on Kickstarter, I figure the series will continue to find its way to lots of tables for many years to come.
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Last night my wife and I played Arboretum. Apparently I am destined to be shut out this weekend, as she trounced me, 25 - 15. I started off with Cherry Blossoms, and it turned out she had been dealt a couple of big ones at the start and held on to them until she was certain I would not be able to score them. I did great with Willows and managed to get Jacarandas as well and shut her out of Oaks, but she took Blue Spruce, Maple which combined with her win on the Cherry Blossoms put her way over my score.
Planning to continue our Imperial Assault Hoth app campaign tonight if the day doesnāt turn to s**t. We were going to play last night, butā¦
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