Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

Boardgames
1522

I don’t think it is much of a deep “game”, but I’ve found myself playing it with friends at cafes in the past. After climbing rocks all day in the cold it’s very nice to sit down around a small table with hot chocolates and play a light filler game that doesn’t require strategising all the time but still allows a move or two over the course of the game that’s clever or lucky or surprising.
I feel like portable games that don’t require huge amounts of attention absolutely have a place, even if I’d never break it out at a games night. It just fills a different niche in my eyes.

Edit: also my mum can play it without too much trouble, which is great! Never underestimate the value of simple games that casual players can pick up

6 Likes
1523

I really like Love Letter. There’s some skill involved in making sure you’re aiming for the right thing at the right time, but the percentages between a good player and a bad player aren’t going to be massive. You play like first to 11 and the better player will generally win, but it can be like 11-6 or whatever, so it never feels like you’re getting trounced.

EDIT: Also you can just name Princess every turn with a Guard and see what happens.

3 Likes
1524

Maybe someone else has CAH or Munchkin with 11,000 expansions…

When games happen in-person, Love Letter is one of the small games I throw in my bag along with Coup, Red7, 6 Nimmt, Hanabi when I still owned it, to play while waiting for people to turn up – especially because you can easily stop the game when someone else arrives and say “X is in the lead at this point so they count as the winner”.

Last night I played another game of Sakura Arms. Yeah. I think I’m actually liking it better than Netrunner (at a similar point in my experience of it, using preconstructed starter decks), maybe because there isn’t such a huge amount of it out there, maybe because of the slightly simpler base rules before you start laying on card exceptions – I don’t know. Not going to stop playing Netrunner. But I fear Ashes is dropping to #3 in my personal deck-construction-duel-game ranking and this makes me less likely to buy the upgrade pack.

2 Likes
1525

Ashes to me always suffered from a card design standpoint. I think the idea behind it is wonderful, and I don’t think they’ve executed the mechanics well.

The cards are also a mess. They’re very pretty, but a graphic design nightmare.

3 Likes
1526

You strike a hard bargain : )

3 Likes
1527

I played a round of Pax Pamir 2 with the Wakhan bot. She’s giving me trouble. I don’t quite understand some of the more intricate prioritizing of the card buying algorithm. But I’ll figure it out eventually.

We played a 4 player of Viticulture on TTS and it was quite enjoyable. Not too difficult to teach to 2 newbies and playing went without lots of AP. Personally, I’ve always found the decisions to be made a bit too boring and the cards a bit too random (we played without any expansions) but TTS makes playing and teaching games more difficult and I am glad when I find something others enjoy that I can now add to my “socially distanced” game collection and the very variable player count is definitely a plus (1-6). I won in the end because it was late and I pressed for an end. We broke it off when I was 10 points ahead of everyone after my partner paved the way for me… I got all the bonus spots :slight_smile: and luckier draws than him…

3 Likes
1528

I am hopefully of getting teach either Viticulture or Architects of the West Kingdom to three newbies in person one weekend soon. I feel Architects might be easier for them to understand and play but the theme of Viticulture might seem more intuitive and go down better.

3 Likes
1529

Actually the teach for Viticulture was pretty harmless as things go. I tried Nusfjord the night before and gave up really quickly. But Architects should also be pretty straightforward.

I am thinking at some point I need a thread about learning to teach better because with any game the chance is that I mess up during the teach…

3 Likes
1530

Both are pretty easy to explain, but I think Architects is a little more fiddly, and can be confusing with all the iconography. Viticulture is a smoother teach because it can be explained thematically, and all the actions are printed on the board, so it’s easy to remember. The only trouble I’ve had with Viticulture is explaining the spring/fall worker placement, but that makes sense after an in-game year or two.

2 Likes
1531

Legends of Andor: Journey to the North , this is a cooperative game where you sail between islands, trying to achieve certain things. It reminded me a little of Forgotten Waters, except we’re not pirates (or are we?). We played twice, lost the first one and then had another go. We should have lost the second really, we were about to win, but then a random storm card threw us across the map. So we ignored it, because we didnt want to have to do it again. Its pretty hard, and its only the first of six missions in the game.

Viscounts of the West Kingdom , the strategy of placing workers in the castle seemed to work pretty well for the winner (not me). I was going ok, but about 75% of the way thru, I had no money and no resources, so that made it hard to keep going.

My City – Chapter 6, episodes 16, 17, 18, went ok. Came third, then second, then I won! Yay!

Ghost Stories , wow, we really did badly this time. Nowhere near even seeing the boss. Not sure where it all went south, thought we had a good start, were mowing thru the ghosts. Before we knew, we had 2 tiles haunted, and it just all went downhill.

Bastion , cooperative game, sort of a tower defence game. We were soooo close to the win, just had one enemy to defeat, but we couldn’t close it.

Fearsome Floors , or as the cover says “Finstere Flure”. Its been ages since I played this. You construct a monster anyway you like, and then he starts in the opposite to your characters. Each character token has a dark and a light side, and the numbers always add up to 7 (so 1/6, 2/5 etc). In turn, you move one of your characters, and you’re trying to make it to the exit in the opposite corner. I had forgotten how the rules work for the monster warping around when he comes to a wall, and two of my characters (who were nearly to the exit) were both eaten. Good times!

The Crew

Heist: One Team, One Mission

Ohanami – fun little game. You have cards from 1 thru to 120 in different colours. From your initial hand of 10 cards, you choose 2, then pass the rest of the cards to your neighbour. Then you place your 2 cards. You can have 3 rows of cards, but you can only place new cards at either end (not in the middle). At the end of each round (there are 3) you score for particular colours. So in the first round, you score 3 points per blue card. In the second you score for blue again, but also 4 points per green card. And in round three, you score blue and green again, and 7 for each grey. You also get points for pink cherry blossom cards.

Silver and Gold

7 Likes
1532

Been playing a daily game or three of Kingdomino with the four year old. Beat me legitimately a couple of times. I’m keen to either pick 24 tiles to use so everything is “balanced” in terms of crowns for scoring or try the 7x7 variant.

1 Like
1533

I had a splendid solo game of Nusfjord last night, finishing with my personal best of 36 points, 9 buildings, 5 ships with a 12 fish catch, all 5 shares owned and 6 gold. One particularly pleasing action involved using the Constructor to build the Portal building, which allowed me to issue my last unissed share, which in turn activated the Ship Holding Company building action so that I could also buy a ship - and thanks to the extra gold from issuing that share I bought a Schooner. A lovely chain of events!

7 Likes
1534

When the stars align like that it’s so satisfying. Congratulations :slight_smile:

2 Likes
1535

Had my first experience of TTS last night, thanks to @Whistle_Pig for the patience in walking us through it. A first real time play of Brass Lancashire , also a first play for either Brass game of getting the rules correct!

4 Likes
1536

A full game ahead of the rest of us! I’ve been itching to see how the rail phase plays out.

5 Likes
1537

I also liked this game and although I didn’t win, I managed to claw into second place, so I’m pleased with in.
I very much like the mechanics but the manga-style artwork doesn’t help me; it’s not to my personal taste, but I’m prepared to see past it to play more of the game. I do like the petals, however! I enjoy the slight feeling of dancing and positioning to this game, which I haven’t personally encountered before.

2 Likes
1538

Yeah. The artwork is my biggest stumbling block, and it’s why I wanted to get a look at the game before committing to the kickstarter. I don’t mind manga style, but I’m no fan of Combat Cleavage.

2 Likes
1539

February of Pandemic Legacy turned out to be much less painful than January which is nice.

5 Likes
1540

We finished Machi Koro Legacy over the weekend. I don’t really think it’s a great game, it’s unbalanced and feels under-tested. However, with new mechanics spicing things up in most sessions, along with a very cute theme and gameplay that appeals to casual gamers, it went down very nicely with my housemates. I’d absolutely recommend the experience for a family or casual games group, although there’s nothing particularly impressive for more experienced players so you kind of have to make your own fun.
Trying to create a machine that won’t necessarily win but will get you some fun stacked bonuses or get you special [redacted] for later on in the campaign was enjoyable, and it’s so straightforward that you don’t need to think. If it were better balanced (or balanced at all really) then I do think it would have made a bigger splash. As it is, definitely not worth your time if you’re already playing deeper campaign games but if you’re looking for a my-first-legacy experience I think you could do a lot worse.

2 Likes
1541

Played one more Spirit Island solo spirit learning game last night.

Tonight my girl night expanded beyond The Crew and Codenames. We have two new games that were added to the mix: Skull and a fully automated TTS mod for Sushi Go Party! Yay! And we played rounds of all of these tonight with 3, then 4… then 5 and eventually 6 people :slight_smile:

Tonight, everyone had a working camera on jitsi as well, we’re getting there.

7 Likes