Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

[COMaestro]

Last night my wife, brother-in-law and I played a quick game of Ticket to Ride: London. I did horribly, only scoring 26 while my wife won with 38 and her brother came in with 32.

He bowed out so the two of us played two games of Kingdomino. I did much better with this, winning both games. The first was incredibly close, and she likely would have won if she did not get screwed by the last tiles, unable to place either of them in her remaining slot, so I won 32 - 31. The second game she again only had one open slot in the last round, but I had an amazing set of swamps, so I won again 44 - 29.

Then today we played Concordia, just the two of us, using the Italia map. Once again, a very close game. She had all of the wine cities and two of the three cloth cities, as well as the weaver and vintner cards. I had all the brick and most of the food cities, with the mason and farmer cards. I managed to get in all eleven provinces to her seven, but she had more cards overall. I managed to build my last house and get the Concordia card and for her last action she built a tool city, necessary to get full points for Mercvrivs.

Final scores were tied at 132…until I factored in the Concordia card, so I pulled off the win 139 - 132. Game could have easily gone the other way. We have not played in a while, so both of us felt we make some sub-optimal plays, and we had a lot of interruptions from our kids. Game took about 2 hours total to play and should have been more like 1.

[bort]

My City , second last chapter, no spoilers! I won one episode, last in the others. I’m so far behind now.

Crystal Palace , first play. Took ages to explain the game (probably longer since I didn’t know it that well). We only managed half a game, one player wasnt enjoying it much. Hopefully we’ll get another game of it. Its a dice placement game (which instantly turned off one player, because she wanted to roll her dice). You don’t roll, you just select die faces, but you have to pay money equal to the total, so you don’t want to just make everything a six. There are eight locations (each with their own board), and a central black market. The locations have dice spaces, with a minimum value. Some board have action spaces as well. You place dice in player order, then go thru the locations, highest dice get to select an action first. Theres a few different ways to score. Theres yet another board to track “buzz”. Oh yeah, and each player has their own board to track newspapers and achievements. If you have a small table, this game isnt for you. It seemed like an ok game, would like to play again.

Back To The Future Back in Time , first play. This is a cooperative game based on the first Back to the Future movie. You can play as Marty, Doc, Jennifer, or Einstein (the dog). You have to get George and Lorraine to fall in love (awwwww), avoid Biff, and collect the parts for the Delorean. On your turn, you maybe have to draw a trouble card (which adds a negative event to the board), movement card (moves George, Lorraine, and Biff), and love tests (where you have to turn over pieces of Martys photograph). It does a good job of recreating the movie. It can be a bit random with movements. You’re trying to keep George and Lorraine away from Biff, and sometimes they move towards him. Its pretty hard too, it seems like a lot of things have to go right to win. Your board has power tokens, which allow movement of your character, as well as rolling dice to fight Biff, move the Delorean, add to the love track, and complete challenges. Each coloured die has a specific symbol, but all the dice have wild card faces. So you can add multiple dice. And you get unlimited rerolls…except once you roll a Biff face, that dice is locked. For each Biff you roll, Biff moves closer to either George and/or Lorraine. And any extra Biffs move the love track down. Its pretty good fun, but it does seem pretty hard.

Byzanz , scored ended up at 34, 34, and 33. Great auction game.

Silver and Gold

[Captbnut]

7 Wonders I used to love this. Seemed a bit boring today. I think my tastes have moved on.

Pandemic Legacy Season 1. September not played this in nearly a year. We got whooped. 8 outbreaks before the end of the 8th turn!! Sometimes Pandemic seems (and probably is with a bad draw) utterly impossible. I’m desperate to finish this, although it’s going to mean a lot of losses.

[yashima]

@Captbnut

Sometimes Pandemic seems (and probably is with a bad draw) utterly impossible.

Absolutely, and if it’s not the legacy game those chain-reaction explosions on turn 4 can be quite amusing but in the legacy game we had one with really really bad luck and meh that gave me some grumpy grumpiness because then the bad luck carries over into more games…

[Benkyo]

Without that bad luck, the campaign is much less interesting. Be grateful you have something going on to keep it spicy!

[Griffster77]

My wife has announced that she’d like to try some more boardgames (she’d previously said she didn’t like playing cos i always beat her - turns out she just doesnt like strategy type games) so we played a few games of Railway Ink. I lost all 3 games!!

[Whistle_Pig]

My first IRL game of Pax Pamir 2E. It was a pretty brutal spy fight between the two Russian allies (I came off worse).

[Deviates]

During a busy Saturday with lots of running around, we managed to get a few games in too.

Architects of the West Kingdom. Really enjoying this one. Firs time I’ve not really worried about contributing to the cathedral, edged out a win againat the girlfriend, but an enjoyable game all round.

We also received Wingspan yesterday, so set that up and got playing quickly. I had been very much on the fence about this game, but once unboxed was a little seduced by how gorgeous everything was. I’m a big fan of games which allow for a chain reaction of actions to take place, and this hits that spot nicely without being too complicated. A lot of fun, looking forward to more plays of this one.

[RogerBW]

More Sakura Arms, which again turned out to be “I win, but you would have beaten me next turn”.

Discovered on yucata.de: Lemminge. You’re racing over a map with terrain hexes, and you have numbered terrain cards. Play lower than or equal to the top of the visible stack and you move up to the whole stack’s value (on neutral or that terrain); play higher and you move just your card’s value, but you put one of the tiles of that terrain type on the board first.

[RossM]

Played my first game of Twilight Struggle (Steam against AI).

And I won!

Of course I didn’t win. Lost round three, learnt a lot about the importance of battlegrounds. Playing as USA it feels like the early game favours the USSR. Obvious errors included putting an influence in Panama, not reading defectors properly, and not knowing the difference between coups and realigning.

[Captbnut]

You’re right, the early game is weighted heavily to USSR. The AI is pretty good

I’m happy to give you some human competition if you want.

[RossM]

Thanks, still working on card familiarity at this point.

[Captbnut]

Got our revenge on Pandemic Legacy Season 1: September. Our setup and card draw was as excellent as yesterday’s was bad and led to us curing black in the first turn and eradicating it in turn 3.

Big narrative shift the paranoid soldier’s revelation led to my character leaving the team. Just a civilian now.

When Pandemic is good it’s so good.

[EnterTheWyvern]

A bit late but last Sunday I played a game called Budding Botanists. It’s a prototype but was absolutely excellent. Family weight game with some really good choices to it. Highly recommended for of it actually comes out.

Today finally finished a game of 1861:Russia. Really pleased to have backed the KS. Incremental capitalisation and mergers are both things I liked here. The map and the routes ended up being the stars in some ways. Right until near the end new routes were forming which meant it stayed fun and engaging rather than wrapping up.

In general I think there’s still a lot to unpack and a bunch of things to try. I didn’t abuse the national. Playing away from Moscow and blocking it in could be interesting. Merging more small companies is something to try. Merging more with other players is maybe top of my list though. I hope this are legs rather than a collection of novelties

[lalunaverde]

Yeah. The free-form merging game is very fun. It remains to be seen if it’s just novelty. Keen on playing it again. I managed to exploit the Russian national railway as a spur-of-the-moment by transferring assets from my 2nd company to my 1st company and let the RNR nationalise my 2nd, since I don’t get punished for failed companies.

[Whistle_Pig]

Yesterday I played eight (eight!) games of arboretum on TTS, thus completing a 10 for my 10x10 challenge

[KIR2]

Was the opponent a willing participant, or under duress?

[Whistle_Pig]

At least semi-willing, in that they volunteered to help. He wants me to help him finish his 10x10 next year

[Chewy77]

Had a quick Monday night, having had my fix last week, we played two games. First, Betrayal at the House of the Hill at five, where, after a long crawl dodging omen after omen, the newbie with the green kid ended up activating the 7th omen and getting the Frankenstein’s Monster released. I did the heroic thing with my white old dude, and managed to burn him once, but it cost me dearly, getting thumped by its mighty 8 dice roll (he got 11, I got 6 with my 4 might, I died). Funny enough, the other three players were in the basement and the monster could not get to them, so they managed to open the Vault and they beefed a bit up before using the Mystic Elevator to taunt the Monster by the tower. The Monster squashed the blue player after she completely messed up a torch throw, but the red muscle guy managed to push him down and kill him. Besides the randomness of the game, I do really enjoy it, it can convey the right amount of strategy, mood and comical moments.

After that, we had a go at Detective Club. I think it is a great game, if a bit ruled but how lucky you are with your cards. On the occasion I had no clue I was the last player to draw out cards (which is great), and I could see how watery cards kept coming up, but all my cards were random af. The only card with water I had was a girl holding balloons and one was planet earth. The next card I drew was a pond. When the word turned out to be waves, I was well done for. not even my explanation of cosmic waves for the first card saved me on that round. Still, managed to finish third by guessing correctly three times…

After that, I stayed to see a game of Dark Moon finish (they were doing well but managed to screw up the life support to the point of no return), and left after a satisfactory games night.

[raged_norm]

Got this on preorder as well, not sure I need to keep though as two more 18XX mad people in my group also have it on preorder