Got a game of Unmatched in with the kids. My 9YO as The Invisible Man held out for a surprisingly long time against my 6YO and my assault with Bigfoot and The Jackalope. The jump around dynamics combined with the Baskerville map were a lot of fun.
3 Likes
That was my first and last Exit game. I hated it. I really enjoy some kinds of logic puzzle, but I found the entire approach of this game incredibly aggravating, so Iāll not be touching any others in the series.
Certainly put my wife off, and she loves escape rooms.
1 Like
This weekendās challenge is to play all of my husbandās unplayed games - some of which he bought at UKGE two years ago!
Manitoba: This was a bit fiddly, but we got the hang of it in the end. Definitely firmly in the āitās fineā camp.
Carthago: I enjoyed this a lot more than I was expecting to. Itās a pretty quick action selection type game, nominally about gaining influence as a merchant family in Carthage. I even quite liked the rather old-school art.
Everdell: I refuse to believe that this could not be a card game in a much smaller box 
Nice and simple to understand, although I donāt think any of us managed a particularly good score. Lots of potential for impressive combos once we get to know the deck better.
8 Likes
So I convinced my partner that we should play a two player of one of my newer games and he chose Merv (the other choices were Faiyum and Pax Pamir 2).
This is most of the board during the second of three years.
The game is played over 3 years (with 1-4 players) during each of which each player gets to take 4 actions. After each year there is a scoring round but before this happens the Mongolians attack the city in the second and third year and raze everything that isnāt protected (or can pay ransom) to the ground. The winner is the person with the most VP by the end of the third year. It took us about two maybe two and a half hours for a first game.
VP can be gained in a variety of ways
- During your turn:
- on the favor, influence or mosque tracks tracks
- for completing contracts
- from one specific research breakthrough
- In Scoring rounds:
- courtiers at the palace expend favor you have gained to give you VP in one of four different areas
- buildings still standing after the attack score 1 point each (first year has no attack buildings still score)
- certain buildings may score additional points if you obtained the bonus tile for that type
- At the end of the game:
- from sets of different spices you traded for
The central mechanism is the action selection in the center of the town of Merv.
The actions are arranged in a random 5x5 grid with the camel market at the center and the other actions placed randomly around it. When it is your turn you place your large meeple on a row or column and choose one tile in that row/column that has the action you want to take. If the tile is empty you get to place one house in your color, if not you do not place a house. You can activate other player colors. Whichever color you activate before you take the action you gain resources (wooden cubes in 4 colors + white as joker) according to the houses in that row/column of the same color. If you activate another playerās house they gain the resource of the tile that you chose for an action.
There are five different actions you can take
- mosque action allows you to move up the mosque track by expending resources in certain colors. each step up has a unique bonus and at the very top you find VP
- library action allows you to expend up to four different resources (or jokers) to obtain as many scrolls. if you reach 2/4/6/8 scrolls you gain an associated breakthrough. each player can gain each type of breakthrough exactly once.
- the tradepost action allows you to place tradeposts and buy common or rare goods in cities where you already have tradeposts. trade goods are needed for the completion of contracts.
- the caravan action allows you to go to the spice market to buy spices by paying a number of same resources of whatever color (or jokers). the caveat is that to buy more than one type of spice you need to have moved up influence track. there are four different spices and the sets of these score at the end of the game. each pair of the same spice that you complete gives a small instant bonus
- wall building, walls protect buildings from the attack at the end of year 2 and 3. buy as many wall segments as you have resources for, each segment needs a specific resource and they cost 1, 2 or 3 cubes. when placing wall segments you protect certain spots from attack which gains you influence in the city (needed for both spice trading and contracts)
- the palace action allows you to place courtiers in one of four halls that each use favor from the track to score points during scoring rounds. courtiers become progressively more expensive but as they can score points up to three times in a game they are quite valuable.
In a two player game (or solo)
there is a simulated third player that is very easy to manage. Player up front in the turn order chooses the column/row the āHigh Courtierā visits and the other player choses where to place on of the houses of the third color. The houses of the third color can be activated by players normally. And that is it for the third player simulation. There is a bot for solo that is almost as easy to manage so as solo you play against the Corrupt Magistrate (the bot) and the High Courtier is also in the game. Despite having to manage 2 NPCs the solo game is quite manageable, as the rules for the bot are quite straight forward.
As every player only has 12 actions in the entire game and there are 5 different types of actions it is absolutely possible to never take a certain action. As with many euros Merv rewards you with more points if you concentrate on certain types of actions. But you always need to supplement your main strategy with bonuses from other actions.
If you manage to activate a row/column with 4 or 5 houses of the same color and possible bonus tiles it makes for a āvery fine moveā indeed. All actions are paid for with resources, so the more houses you activate the more powerful your action becomesāobviously one can hold back resources to take powerful action where there are fewer houses but that is a strategy for those who know the game well enough to plan ahead 
So in our game I went for spice trading. I ended up buying almost all the available spices in the game (there are 24) and despite behing behind by 60 or so points eeked out a two point win over my partner who had completed the mosque track, maxed out the courtiers in the palace for the track and managed to hand in a few of contracts. He had also managed to gain far more VP during the game than me.
115:113 points. If he had bought a single spice however at the right moment, he would have screwed me over easily. So after this game I definitely think there are multiple ways to win the game if only because having courtiers in the palace can generate huge VP payoffs for any of four different parts of the game.
In general I would rate this a medium-high complexity (probably a 3.5 on BGG), it probably plays best with 3 (at four I imagine the game could be come a bit cut-throat as everyone obviously clashes over the same tracks). For a Euro it has nice player interaction and Iād definitely play this with all my Euro-loving friends. The theme is stronger than in the average Euro but itās still a Euro-theme and not a thematic game. The material is very nice although one of my camel meeples came with a broken leg (which was easily repaired). I am quite happy with my purchase.
Sry this has gotten longā¦
9 Likes
I have Crystal Palace 99% because itās to do with patents and the patent office but I just went through the rules and I thought āwhat is the point of this game?ā Itās just hard busywork. Not for my brains.
We recently finished the āwar and peaceā five game campaign in its a wonderful world and it was really great. If you wanted to you could probably do a whole campaign in a single session. Itās got this competitive structure where winning games 1-4 give you advantages if you win (each game also has a slight twist on the base game) but really it comes down to game 5 the winner of that is the champion of the game. Highly recommended breezy (kind of mathsy but not the worst) and fun game.
2 Likes
Huh. I almost got this on sale last week, so maybe Iām glad that I missed out? It was going to be a leap of faith as Iād not heard much about it.
2 Likes
Had a Monday Night Games session, with two games played.
Bohnanza, which I played so two of the other players achieved their āgames from the year you were bornā trophy. Which left me a bit sour, as it was only 1990ā¦
Jokes aside, the game was way more enjoyable that I expected. Very entertaining, particularly on the trade side. Definitely good fun, even if I only made 11 coins and finished 4th out of 5.
We continued with the achievements (the end of year is looming) with a game from the shelf of shame, so we played Hanabi between 4. For being a game none of us liked much, we did pretty well. Perhaps because we are not the usual game crowd, and we did play with no code, we did nearly clear 3 colours (2 5s and a 4 on White, Yellow and Red) plus three more pieces before we ran out of tiles, without a single bomb deactivated. I think we ended up working out really well the āgive clues so we can discard pieces for more cluesā mechanic really well.
We continued playing for the sake of it, and after thinking that we were stuck but managing an extra clue by placing the red 5, we kept going for a clear out and only got stuck with the final 5 and 4 blue, as they would have come out the wrong orderā¦ still, pretty impressive.
After that exercise of brain-melting logic abuse, I decided to call it a night, and head home early, I didnāt feel like playing a time filler for just under an hour.
6 Likes
Played some Space Alert, which is a game I sold, and then recently re-bought. We did the training mission, did pretty badly, and then decided to skip the other training missions and do a proper mission. This (obviously) was a mistake, but it was still fun. Have to have another go, after a bit more preparation.
Had a quick game of Men at Work.
6 Likes
Last night with Local Game Group:
Bandido, enjoyable geometry puzzle but suffers from the usual problem of badly-defined limited communication: āSince Bandido is a cooperative game, players should discuss the best way to proceed, but beware, youāre not allowed to show your cards to the other players directly.ā So what can you say?
Mapmaker, quite thinky and definitely one I want to try some more.
Martian Dice, does what it says on the tube.
Lemminge on yucata, in which I managed to pull off an unexpected win with a four-hex push up to the line. I donāt love the Keyflower games but this, from the same designer, is great. (Some resemblance to The Quest for El Dorado from a few years later, but this is closer to being abstract.)
5 Likes
We had an after-birthday cake-board games session at home, where I played a game of Splendor with my better half (her favourite game by far) and then 4 or 5 games of UNO also with my eldest daughter.
Splendor went well in my favour since a well wanted (and very cheap) red card appeared just after my partner picked up something else when we were just entering double figures, which gave me the edge for a 18-14 win.
UNO, well, it is what it isā¦ I think I won one of 4 games, so there you goā¦
4 Likes
The Space Hulk: Death Angel manual is a bit like that.
āPlayers may share any information they wish about the Action cards in their hand but may not show cards in their hand to other players.ā
Greatā¦ so Iām allowed to convey all of the same information that they could acquire by seeing my cards, but only if I do it in the most inconvenient and game-slowing manner possible? Thanks! Good rule! *tears up rule*.
(This was probably my fastest ever transition from āread the ruleā to āhouse-ruled it into oblivionā.)
4 Likes
I started Spirit Island solo last night with Jagged Earth. Then remembered it hurts my head and it was late and took forever to set up.
Stopped after 1 turn. 
6 Likes
We need to have a debate about the new spirits at some point though 
(But after playing once with every spirit I havenāt found the time for more indepth play yet)
3 Likes
I played Fractured Days Split the Sky for the first time yesterday. 2 handed solo with Vengeance as a Burning Plague. Fractured has a lot to read through to start but I found it to be super powerful! The power of Time pours sideways was immense. First time in ages Iāve won at terror level 2 with no building on the board. The sheer control that spirit can exert is huge. Plus I found starting with possible blight removal really helpful. I almost donāt want to play the spirit too often as it seems too strong
2 Likes
I have yet to do more than play solos. Some of those new spirits are really melting my brainā¦
I am not a fan of the destructive spirits, so Vengeance is not quite my thing. I actually would have to play Fractured Days again but I think it was also one that didnāt quite click with me (I remember those that clicked better).
Have you played Finder of Paths Unseen, yet? That one is also immensely powerful because of its ability to isolate lands and create new paths. But winning solo was hard. But this might be one of my favorites.
1 Like
Iāve not played it but have seen it played. A friend used it in a 4 player game when outdoors with masks was still feasible. Itās one Iām interested to dive in to. It seems like itās got some great subtleties.
I donāt really like playing solo spirits. I enjoy the interactions between spirits too much to want to use just one at a time in any game. Maybe I should try a solo to sharpen up the skills a bit. I will very rarely play a solo game tbh. That was 1 of 2 this year and youād think this would be the year for solo gaming.
Maybe we should split this off to a new thread?
2 Likes
Me neither, but I noticed that while I play the base game and first expansion spirits āblindā, the new ones have amped up the complexity and so I played learning games with all the spirits and then came November and no time to play what I really wanted: two handed games. And my partner says our last game is still too recent for him to play again (it was in August 
)
Anyway, tomorrow thereās something else I have to play and depending on how that goes Iāll have time for a bit of Spirit Island during the week-end or not 
1 Like
I donāt have either of the promo packs. Patiently waiting for cons to start again, so my friends can pick a pack up for me without crazy import costs 
I do have the premium token pack though, and it was worth it!
1 Like
I like the spirits from the new promo pack better than the first. The first had one destructive one I donāt even recall the name of. And the Serpent is very strong but very much a support spirit which is fine if you play multi-handed but I wouldnāt want to play her in a multiplayer game. If you can get the second promo pack: Finder is great and I really enjoyed my play with Downpour Drenches the World although I would debate the high-complexity. Of all the spirits that one felt most easily mini-maxed:
For each 2 Water
- Gain 1 Energy; or
- Repeat a land-targeting Power Card by paying its cost again. (It need not target the same land.)
That was an insane game Power repeating isā¦ thatās the one Iāll recommend to my partner to play if he ever agrees to another game.