Got to visit with my Mum for the first time since Covid hit, and we played a bunch of games:
Barenpark, won this one with one of the biggest scores I’ve ever managed! Was super proud of my park too. I’d go there.
Splendor, 2/1 on this one, tried shifting up my strategy (from normally trying to do a bit of everything) to focus more on ‘top row’ developments. Am pleased to discover there’s still room for me to improve at this game, even after dozens of plays.
Potion Explosion, this one was new for mum and our first learning game she spent a lot of it unsure what to do. But by game two, she seemed to hit her stride and said she really liked the game. Her scores were decent too, despite it being new for her.
Spring Meadow, I really love this game as does she. I’ve only played it once with more than two but it works tremendously well as a two player game.
Jaipur, This one was tense and tight scoring as usual. Her game would probably be improved if, instead of hoarding the camels, she put them to work but I think she knows that. She just really loves collecting the camels!
Kokoro, First game she wiped the floor with me. Second one, one my big gambles paid off in a +100 point score without busting. We also threw in one of the more interesting decree cards in the second game to switch things up. It’s nice to have some extra options in the box, I’ve yet to explore them much though…
All in all a great day, great to finally catch up with her after so long apart due to Covid. Throw in some stellar cold-brew coffee and tasty cafe lunch and it was a winner of a day all round!
A TTS session started with Spirit Island. Level 3 Prussia with A Spread of Rampant Green, Vengeance as a Burning Plague and Heart of the Wildfire. Last minute victory on this one. Killed the last city in the growth phase before the last 3 card would have explored. So 1 turn ahead of the end. Started out with quite a harsh explore so it was difficult from the off, which I like. Had an interesting mix of Spirits. The new player I think is ready to go up to high level Prussia now so that’s exciting!
Next up was a game of Little Town. Quinns reminded me of this on the latest SUSD podcast so it was nice to give it a spin again. I’d forgotten how interactive and cutthroat it is is. While it’s playable as a nice family game it can also be a knife fight. We had a knife fight! I’m not sure if it’s quite shared incentive but it’s certainly a very shared space. I’d for sure recommend it.
It was a friend hosting. I think it has the the word deluxe in the description. What I do know is that it doesn’t have the jagged earth spirits inherently. He found an extra mod of jagged earth content and loaded it in game to add the new stuff. What it did mean was the scripting had some rough edges when it was interacting with the new cards bit nothing bad enough to be an issue with playing the game.
I’ve tried several before, I’ll definitely check out this one. I used to have one I liked but that didn’t have a good Jagged Earth implementation last time I checked.
Believe it or not, I am a bit on the shy side when it comes to online games but if there is one game I’d like to try it is definitely SI. However, this month I am severely short on time…
I’ve taken to carrying Elevenses For One (only 13 cards) in my jacket pocket. If I’m by myself and am going to be waiting on something for a few minutes, and there’s a table, it’s quite nice being able to play a quick game!
Three games of Splendor last night with my better half. And she showed it. Definitely owned me on the first game 17-12, got the second by a 16-15 and I only managed to win the last one 16-13. I am starting to think that I need to change my strategies, I only won the third game due to her bad luck/my good luck as nearly every time she removed a card by buying/reserving, a cheap one appeared that was good for me.
I think I suffer from the “not very good at planning moves ahead” malady that also affects my chess playing…
With Vengeance as a Burning Plague, I have now played every Jagged Earth spirit once. Almost all of them solo just to get a feel for what they play like.
Played Hive tonight and was delighted to lose by 2 games to 1. This included a fascinating final game with the board getting into a really unusual state whereby my opponent couldn’t do anything at all, but I needed beetles and grasshoppers to access fully half of the spaces around his queen, and even then I couldn’t make headway without freeing some of his pieces. The one move I thought was safe turned out to be my undoing, and I lost from that position. I’m still not sure if I had better moves available to me or not (but I probably did).
Finished 18MS on 18xx.games. Thoughts, I like it a lot. For an 18XX dabbler like myself it keeps the fun of share price manipulation, token manipulation. What it removes is the train rush by rusting whole sets of trains at specific points. For me, this is the 18XX I’ll keep.
Also played Nova Luna, 1.5 handed (against the four year old, coached through the game with eight year old advising). I lost. Thoughts, unsure. It’s thinky but I’m not sure it’s my kind of thinky.
Had another one on one yesterday at Brass: Lancashire. Knowing the game a little bit better, I managed to be on top of my expenditure from the word go. Managed a good deal on my first Cotton Sale (-1 only on the foreign trade) and that gave me a good edge for the rest of the game. Still my OH went for the Shipyards this time and built one per era that kept her close, to a final score of 144-136 to my favour.
I definitely cannot wait to play it between 3 or 4, I think it will be not so cutthroat then, but less predictable in exchange (other players getting in the way sort of thing).
Tonight, finished off a game of Hornet Leader with @Lordof1. (I was mostly being a rules-engine while he learned the game.) Not regretting the copy of it that is on its way to me.
Played about a dozen games of Super-Skill Pinball 4-Cade, and–it’s quite good! I like it a lot. I might like it more than any other roll-and-write, because it feels like I’m actually doing something, rather than just filling in a grid. Wouldn’t say I love it yet, but it’s a fun time, each of the four tables is surprisingly replayable, and it’s so easy to get to the table.
I think we screwed up one of the rules in previous months because the actual rule meant a portion of the game felt tedious and unthematic so I interpreted it in a nicer way.
specifically the rules regarding external locations which use a whole action to move into an adjacent room. I didn’t realise this because just to get in and out of a space you need to use half your turn and that is before exploring the space which you might or might not be able to do if you have the wrong cards. I just thought having the cards was enough because there’s so much randomness in if you can progress and how much you waste that it felt dumb. Also it doesn’t make sense thematically that moving between rooms takes the same amount of time as moving from San Francisco to Tokyo.
Still I think we won the games handily enough that the the rules miss shouldn’t have been a problem - the only game we missed an objective was January and only in October we had drawn to the last pair of cards.
I think we’ve got lucky a few times but it’s very doable so far and once you get what you need to do (hint: don’t focus on fun stuff) it’s a pretty easy difficulty.
