I really enjoyed this interview about the design ethos of Spirit Island. Reuss talks a tiny bit about Downpour towards the end
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Did he just say āanother future expansionā ?! 
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Yep, a Dahan focused expansion is planned, and then there are more spirits so Iām betting a small box Dahan expansion then a large box expansion. But probably a year or two between each. Then a second edition base game.
With the premium tokens released, I guess there probably wonāt be more major tokens, if that was even possible.
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Played my second game of Everdell, this time solo.
The solo mode is great. The rules for the rascally Rugwort make it look like you have an uphill struggle though: he gets 2 points for every card in his city no matter what they are (a lot of yours are only 1), automatically picks up any basic events he qualifies for at the end of season, but the big one is he also collects any special events you donāt get, scoring 3 for each!
This made me worry the whole game that I wasnāt generating anything like enough excess points to catch up, and in the end he scored 43 and I hadā¦ 68. (Mostly achieved by setting up great Berry production, and then using Chip Sweeps to repeatedly activate the Doctor and convert them into about 12 points by the end of the game. But WOW the Judge is useful. And the Historian).
On the medium difficulty he would have got 7 points more, so I was still safe. At the hardest solo difficulty he messes with your stuff during your turn, so Iām definitely trying that one next time.
Interesting solo mode, very different to 2-player where we didnāt think of the Events much at all compared to our cities. Absolutely love this game overall, and the components are gorgeous.
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Oooh, I wasnāt aware of Everdell being soloableā¦ hmmmm 
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Yep, itās one page of rules for a bot in the base game manual.
The only big difference (apart from making you very aware of collecting Events) is that the bot cuts off your access to some of the meadow cards (up to half the meadow by the final season), meaning that Drawing from the deck into your hand becomes more important than in 2p. But itās very simple to apply and keeps the pressure on you during solo, well worth trying out.
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Lots of games today, split between our rpg group and a visit from Mum:
Jaipur, played a game of this with mum while she was visiting and with a mate who stayed late from our rpg group. Both were tense and lots of fun. Solid 2 player classic in my book.
KLASK, played well over half a dozen games with mum!
Hey Thatās My Fish, I won the first game of this by a solid amount, but the second was super close -only 1 point in it!
Sushi Go Party, mum suggested this one and we used the 2 player set from the rules. Worked quite well - I won off of the dessert but it was definitely close.
Babylonia, played this with mum and then later with our rpg group. It scales pretty well with player count. The same friend won both of our games in the evening, with a fairly different strategy both times (one going for collecting a bunch of cities - and the ziggurat which boosts points from cities, and the other combining 2 of the ziggurat powers, so he was placing 3 tiles most turns and scored a bunch of high value connections)
Thereās depth there for sure, would love to get better at this one. I did decent in both games - but I ran out of time to get a few big scoring cities I was sitting on in game 2 due to our friend rushing the end of the game.
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I just finished up a two-handed game of The Lost Ruins of Arnak, which turned out to be completely unnecessary. Aside from a few quick iconography references (mostly covered on the player aid), I had no issues getting up and running, and found no rules quirks through play that might make a teach difficult. Quite honestly, I think most experienced gamers could give the book a good first pass and be pretty well armed to get a foursome up to speed in no time.
Of particular note, I didnāt āsee where the fun was going to beā as is so common in my multi-handed learning games. The overhead is light enough that I was simply having fun playing. This is especially promising for the actual solo mode, but I think speaks volumes to the immediacy of the gameplay and the tantalizing (if a bit narrow) nature of the decision space.
Itās also made me ponder a question: at what point do abstraction and theme need to intersect for a game to be considered thematic? Thereās no question this is a pretty quintessential cube-converting, track-sliding, point-salading Euro, but the paint is so thick and rich, and the theme is integrated into the rules so thoughtfully (if thinly in places) that I have to admit: Iām absolutely able to suspend my disbelief and revel in the delights of plumbing the mysteries of this weird uninhabited island.
I have no doubt some folks will still call this a pasted on theme, but I think thereās a really interesting conversation about why that might be.
[EDIT] Itās a serious miss not to mention: these ācubesā are fabulous. Some of the coolest little custom bits ever.
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I think between this description and Rahdoās runthrough of this, Iām pretty sold on this game. Iāll leave not so subtle hints around the house in the hopes it ends up as a Christmas present, otherwise itāll be too of the list for the new year.
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Iām hoping to start a game with my partner tonight, so Iāll try to post more impressions if that comes to pass. Half the time I was cursing blocked spaces during my two-handed play, I had to laugh that it was my own guy doing the blocking, so it bodes well for tightness at 2P.
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My City , final chapter. And of course, final scoring, where the guy who has led from start to finish unsurprisingly won the entire game. He had an early lead, was easily winning (Iām even suspecting he might have thrown the odd game after that to try and even it up). Definitely not my favourite Knizia.
Calico , first play. Pretty easy game to learn. Each player has a board with 22 hexagonal spaces on it. On your turn you play one of your two tiles, then take a new tile from the three in the market. Refill the market back to three, rinse and repeat. Youāll get points from objective tiles, and from patterns. Your objective tiles will have various symbols on them, like AAA-BB-C, which would mean three tiles the same, two the same, and anything else. Each objective tile has two values. You can meet the requirements by matching colours or patterns. If you do both, then youāll get the higher of the two values. You get points as you go along by making groups of three colours (you get a button), or by getting the correct pattern type and grouping to attract a cat for victory points. There are three cats, each with two patterns they need. Theres a bit of luck involved, I got enough favourable draws to get an 11 point cat (I still lost). Good looking game too.
Shipshape , first play. Another pretty straightforward game to play. You start with a hold, which shows you a three-by-three grid with rats on some spaces. On your turn, youāll bid to take crate tiles, which will cover or add to existing spaces on your grid. You want money, cannon (whoever has the least gets zero money), and contraband (whoever has the most gets no money). Its a spatial puzzle (which Iām not so good at). Cleverly, sometimes you can examine the crate tiles and see past the top tile to what the tiles underneath it have. Its a pretty quick game, but good fun.
Back to the Future ā Back in Time , this was a pretty quick game, because we lost it half way through, even worse than our first attempt. The dice were not our friends, we rolled Biffs on almost every roll. Biff faces means that the Biff character moves towards our heroes (George and Lorraine), and force down the love meter. We had it in the negative all game, which meant that during the love check we lost two pieces of Martys photo. Three love checks and we had all the pieces turned over, to lose. Every dice in this game has two Biff faces, and once you roll them they are locked and you canāt reroll. It seems that you need a decent slab of luck to do well ā not surprising for a dice rolling game. Still fun ā maybe weāll have a break from it next game day.
Search for Planet X , still really enjoying this game. Setup and play is so straightforward, and luck really isnt much of a factor. Well, sometimes you take a punt. I thought I had stuffed this up, had made some deductions and one of them was apparently wrong. As player theories come out, you learn what is in some sectors, and maybe uncover an error in your logic. And one deduction leads to another, so any faults can have a catastrophic effect. Luckily (for me), I managed to get past it, and was first to get the location of Planet X, and win. Still close, 22 to 19.
Filler , first play. A light game of trying to to fill recipes. Nothing too interesting.
Similo , a couple of quick games of this. So far, not as engaging as Iād hoped.
Nova Luna , still fun.
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Played the tutorial of Unlock! Star Wars with mini Ross. (It was only fair, Iād used her laser like eyesight to help me return the numbered decks to the correct order.)
Considering sheās 6 she followed all the logic, worked out how cards interacted and only needed the in game hint on the final code. Going to try and print out the other tutorial for her.
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I just asked my cats how many points they are, but they didnāt seem to want to tell me, and just went back to looking at one another suspiciously.
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Traditionally itās 18 on the paws and four in the mouth, though breeds vary.
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I had an initial play of Judge Dredd: Helter Skelter with the Dark Judges solo rules. This is the 2000AD-themed version of Martin Wallaceās skirmish game Wildlands, and I played as the Judges (Hershey, Dredd, Anderson, Giant, plus Mean Machine) against the Dark Judges (Fire, Fear, Mortis, and Death), and managed to win by grabbing three fragments and then killing Judge Fire. Chief Judge Hershey was an absolute badass all game, and finished things with a completely epic five-card turn, sniping twice (firstly dropping Fireās armour, and then doing damage), followed by a double-move into mĆŖlĆ©e range whereupon she punched Fire in the face for the win!
I decided to āplay things outā after that, to see whether I could take out all of the Dark Judges, as Iād done at least some damage to three of them along the way. I thought I might actually manage it for a time, especially with Mean Machine almost finishing off two of them on his own; but in the end it was Mortis who was the last one standing. The rules have an interesting system whereby each Dark Judge who dies makes the remaining ones more powerful, and I think Mortis is the nastiest option as the sole remaining Dark Judge.
I managed a few successful tactical decisions along the way, including realising that if I sacrificed Judge Giant, then Dredd ā who was next to a fragment, yet had no useful cards of his own at the time, and was very likely about to die ā could use the demised Giantās cards to grab that third fragment for my team before being killed, which allowed my remaining Judges to go on the attack, needing only a single kill for the victory. (Collecting fragments is expensive, but grabbing several of them early means youāll need to defeat fewer of the dangerous Dark Judges; or you can alternatively ignore the fragments entirely and just try to eliminate the entire opposing force).
It wasnāt until about half-way through the additional tasks Iād set myself, that I realised that Iād been playing the Dark Judges wrongly. It had suddenly occurred to me they had no defence at all against ranged attacks, which immediately seemed wrong. Thatās when I flipped through the deck and spotted that their defence (for the solo cards, at least) is completely different, and there was actually a separate icon in the top-right corner of the cards which I had failed to notice at all until then. No wonder I did so well against them!
Iām looking forward to playing this some more. I found it a wee bit mechanical this first time through, but afterwards my mind was full of tactical possibilities for future games, which is a good sign (and there are also another three teams to play with, each with their own unique abilities). I suspect Iāll get some decent mileage out of this, and will hopefully also get some multiplayer games in down the track.
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I finally played another two-handed Spirit Island with Finder of Paths Unseen and Shifting Memory of Ages:
I chose Scotland Level 1 as opponent (it has difficulty rating 3). And as much as I like Finderā¦ it is really something playing 2 handed with the very high complexity spirits. I quite messed up my initial growths because it took me forever to gain a second card play and so I kept having to choose the āplus 1 card playā growth to be able to have enough elements to trigger Finderās powers (mostly moving things and isolating lands). Luckily, Shifting Memory of Ages can gain a lot of element markers and has one power card that can give 3 of those āpreparedā elements to another player. That helped quite a bit.
Finder is bad at removing invadersā¦ the colibri prefers moving them around and with Scotland making coastal explores into insta-villages I quickly accumulated a fun mega-city.
What happened is that I managed to clear out Shifting Memoryās half of the island almost completely and the second half of the game was me figuring out how to get rid of Finderās mega-city.
Then Shifting Memory who is one of the spirits with enough energy and flexibility in regards to elements to make the most of Major Powers got one that allowed me to do an initial cleanup through a lot of direct damage (mostly because of their prepared elements I was able to trigger the second half of the major power making it 14 instead of 4 damage). And when the second Major Power came up, I won:
I was able to trigger this twice on my last turn in combination with Finderās power to make one other power fast. So on turn 8, I drew everything into the void, gaining enough fear to win through removal of all cities and villages. The win was coming that turn or not at allā¦ and if I didnāt have a second major powerā¦ I am not sure I could have held up the tide of invaders.
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Gaming with a buddy the other day, we played:
Roll for the Galaxy - great fun, works pretty well with 2 (though with a touch more luck and less prediction than 3-5). I managed to nab a couple of 6-cost developments for the win.
Raiders of Scythia - this one we both really enjoyed. Itās kind of worker placement, but in a way that just serves to facilitate the card combo rich engine building. The quests are a bit dull (given theyāre really just contracts) but it all hangs together quite well we found. Itās a goodāun
KLASK - it may not even be possible to play only 1 game of KLASK, Iām finding.
Point Salad - Iāve only ever played this one with 2, would like to try with 3 or 4 but I would be a bit worried that more players would simply amp up the chaos. As a two player itās tense and thinky but in a very short playtime
Isle of Skye - this worked okay for 2, though I think it really shines with a bigger crowd. But it had been ages since Iāve played it and was good to refresh my memory and remind me that I do quite enjoy it.
Burger Up - light puzzly game of building burgers. This one had a swing due to me scoring a top bun that had accrued 7 coins on it! Otherwise it was quite tight.
Arboretum - still an amazing game, we both managed to deny the other one of the tree types we were hoping to score, but I managed a win with a sneaky dip in maple.
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We began our 12 Games of Christmas for the year today. For the past few years my wife and I have each picked 6 games from our collection and try to play them at least once during the holiday season. We have never managed it, and feels about as attainable as my 10 x 10 each year.
First up was Kingdomino, which had the added effect of completing it for my 10 x 10 challenge. We played two games. My wife obliterated me the first game, 58 - 38, a massive swamp containing all the scoring parts gave her 30 of those points. I managed to win the second game with a less commanding lead, 44 - 36. Might try out the two player variant where you build a 7 x 7 kingdom and use all the tiles sometime.
After that, we played Hanamikoji, which only lasted two rounds before my wife won by having the favor of four geisha. Such a fun and thinky little puzzle of a game.
So, only 10 more games to go (and 60+ plays for my 10 x 10), but those were definitely the two quickest and easiest to play games on our list.
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Played almost a full game of The Castles of Burgundy on Friday night. Kiddo was looking a bit tired but kept asking to play it, as I tried to deflect him to some quicker card games. Of course I relented, against my better judgement and then about an hour later as we were just setting up the last round, came the inevitable āletās stop now and call it a drawā¦ā 
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Dredd vs Death, round twoā¦
I again tried for the strategy of grabbing three fragments before going after the Dark Judges, and while I managed to get the fragments, it was all downhill from there ā I had one turn where Judge Giant had a chance of pulling off a win for us with a double shotgun attack, but Judge Fear deflected one of the crucial shots and survived, and I think that may actually have been the last bit of offensive play I managed in the entire game! I tried to keep everyone alive, but the Dark Judges hunted my team down and picked them off one by one, and all I could do was keep defending and running until the last of my luck ran out. Iād burned so many cards with my grab for fragments that I was constantly on the back foot, and the more of my team I lost, the less likely it was that the cards I drew would prove useful. Chief Judge Hershey was the last to fall, at the hands of Judge Death. More lessons learned.
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