Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

Boardgames
1743

We didn’t get a chance to sit down together, so the 2P game of Arnak has been a bust so far. I did get the opportunity to try out the solo mode, however, and it’s fun! But…

…I caught wind about the bot actions being a little on the easy side, so I played at “max difficulty” on the normal side of the board. I won 80-67. It’s true there are a lot of variables in each game, and it was a single play, but that’s not great from a par-setting standpoint.

That said, the gameplay is incredibly enjoyable and the solo rules help facilitate that, and they do so admirably. As it stands, however, I’d rather wait for the solo campaign rules to release before playing more on my own. I feel like I’m just setting myself up to destroy my partner for when we do sit down together, and that’s not a great way to introduce a game. :kissing_heart:

4 Likes
1744

No thanks! - still one of my fave fillers

Intrigue - one of those games that perfectly condense a concept into a small box game. If Wildlife Safari does it for commodity speculation, Intrigue does it for negotiation/alliances/backstabbing games.

Quack Quack! - I screwed up on the last round where my cauldron exploded and missed out on scoring pts on the “money” I earned. We played with the basic player boards, but I prefer the advanced one with the test tube track. Makes it interesting if you want to advance your drop token or your test tube track.

Merv - didn’t like it that much, but it has some very neat ideas in it. I really like that the game rewards you more for helping your opponents. However, it’s a Euro game with several minigames attached to it - I have come to despise this type of design (e.g. Trajan). The rulebook is awful. Like, you screwed up somewhere when Agra is easier to teach, more integral, and has a better rule book.

9 Likes
1745

Under Falling Skies is alright, innit?

4 Likes
1746

Played a couple of games of Ticket to Ride: Europe with my eldest daughter yesterday evening. I managed to win both to her despair, as I think her tactics get muddled by how many cards she can hold. Either she goes for the big ticket or for the small ones, I think I have to get some Rumikub stands for her cards…

6 Likes
1747

My partner and I got a chance to try Curious Cargo this afternoon. I’m too spent to say much (there is so, so much to say), but this much is easy: it’s an absolute mind-melter. This is either going to become something we really enjoy, or ultimately find too demanding. I’m hungry enough for more to find out, but not tonight.

7 Likes
1748

Played some games recently. Friday we played a couple of our favorites:

Race for the Galaxy - My wife got a bunch of development help and lots of goals, but although she had Galactic Federation, she wasn’t able to get many 6s to work with her worlds. Meanwhile I went military early (started with Separatist Colony and good stepping stones in my hand) and had fortunate card draws, so I had a fair amount of Rebel and Alien worlds in my tableau. The frustration came when I had three 6s in my hand (the two military ones and the Alien one) and only enough cards to build one. Managed to squeak out a win of just one point!

Indian Summer - Got a fuckton of berries, four of which turned into a mushroom. This was a close one too, coming down to the treasure tiebreaker, where I had one or two more. Failed my secondary objective though (didn’t get the raccoon).

And of course we’ve been playing weekly virtual Iron Dragon and are up to game 33. We’ve developed quite a few metas and in-jokes by this point, and I’ve been keeping track of certain stats and entering them into a database to do various fun queries and stuff. We’re still waiting on the first threepeat - I’ve won the last two (after a long dry spell), so if I win this week’s game I’ll be making history.

7 Likes
1749

Saved me buying it cos it’s cheap. I’m also not a fan of this style of eurogame.

1 Like
1750

I have only been into boardgames for about a year, but I still know enough that this made me immediately laugh loudly :slight_smile:

5 Likes
1751

topbun

Such a lucrative hairstyle.

8 Likes
1752

I think that’s a fever-dream you’ve described there.

7 Likes
1753

It was an achievements night yesterday on our Geek Guild Games night. We ticked the Monopoly-like box playing a quick round of Monopoly Deal Card Game. It ticks the box, it is quick, and ruthless, and completely random. I can see it staying in my collection just as a filler.
Then we had a game of kiwi design with my copy of Raiders of the North Sea. The banter through the game made it one of my best gaming experiences of the year. We played between 4 (my first time ever at that number of players) and I think between teaching it, and being the last turn, besides having a decent start, towards the end I lost a few key members of my crew through take that cards and never got any decent cards to replace them. Ended up last, but still really enjoyed the fun we had, particularly when one of the players went to town for the highest score on the Valkyrie section. Nothing like getting heaps of points for sending more and more members of your crew to the halls of Valhalla to feast with Odin.
Finally, with a different group of people we had a Just One few rounds to kill the last hour, that actually turned into getting the host and his son involved and finishing a good 20 minutes after 10 pm. Nice and simple, I can see how it is a good party game starting from a single premise, similar to headbands but with limited information.
A good gaming night.

5 Likes
1754

A lot of roll and writes hit the table this weekend, some more successfully than others.

Started with a solo game of Welcome to New Las Vegas. I love the original game, it gets the balance between interesting choices and simplicity that I really like in this type of game. Las Vegas misses this by some distance, with it being overly complicated for a roll and write. I don’t want to say it’s a bad game, but it’s really not for me.

The girlfriend and I then played a few others over Zoom: Trails of Tucana, Welcome to Dino World and Ganz schön challenge 1.

Tucana couldn’t be simpler - flip over two cards, find these terrain types adjacent to each other on your map and link them. It’s light and breezy with some basic strategy to it. Very accessible, great people new to games and for young kids.

Welcome to Dino World manages to do what New Las Vegas fails to- it provides a little more complexity without making the game feel bloated. Turns can take a little longer than other roll and writes, but the fact you can waste that time by drawing your dinosaur, and adding various other features to the pens.

Ganz Schön is always great fun, and hugely addictive. The challenge sheets initially don’t look so bad, but they really do mix things up. Probably the favourite of the night.

On Sunday it was just the two of us, so we settled for a 2 player game of Architects of the West Kingdom (without the additional player), which she destroyed me at. I took my eye off the board, and before I knew it she was taking in resources. By the time I had rounded her workers up and put them in prison she was in a ridiculously strong position.

Then to finish the weekend, Wingspan. I started a thread here a while back questioning the popularity of this one. It look nice, the components were clearly high quality but is the game all it’s cracked up to be? I took a punt on a cheap out of stock order. It’s become a firm favourite since, I get the hype! I’ve even played it a lot solo. Not because it’s particularly challenging, but that’s incredibly satisfying getting a good engine going in the game. That practice might have paid off, as I managed to win, though by only 4 points.

6 Likes
1755

Continuing the theme of getting things finished before the end of the year, in the last week and a half:

Playing all of my husband’s unplayed games:

  • Guilds - Auction + set collection + spatial puzzle. Nominally building a guild house and attracting members to your guild. The setting is traditional fantasy so obviously I felt that I needed to make some paste-ups for the female character cards so they didn’t die of exposure :roll_eyes:

  • Jigūan: The Eastern Mechanist - Chinese steampunk-esque setting where you have to collect gears and blueprints to construct mechanical animals. Once we’d figured out the rules from the terrible rulebook I quite enjoyed this.

  • Realm of Sand - A pretty quick game which felt like a cross between Splendor and Patchwork. We picked up several games by this publisher (EmperorS4) at a discount at UKGE a couple of years ago and are only just getting around to playing them. They all seem pretty solid.

  • Glen More 2: Return of the Scotsmen: I really liked this one. It’s a fairly simple concept (pick up tiles from a rondel, place them in your estate and activate the surrounding tiles) but the placement rules and the combos make it quite tricky. You also lose points if you have more tiles than the player with the smallest estate, which made things very difficult for me towards the end of the game. We also played with one of the modules (the Highlander) which added a little twist to the game. I’m looking forward to trying some of the others.

  • Silk: AKA another game that gave Matt Lees an excuse to dress up as a worm. This is really cutthroat, since you can push other people’s pieces around and off the board. You could also easily replace silk worms, mastif, and ookami, with sheep, sheepdog, and wolf, but where’s the fun in that :wink:

Finishing my 10x10:
It’s not quite finished, but:

  • Wingspan (10/10): still not tired of this, and I’ve just had a notification that my copy of the Oceania expansion has shipped :partying_face:

  • 3 x Root (7-10/10): playing against the Mechanical Marquise

  • 7 x Bärenpark (4-10/10): Did this all in one go on Saturday. My husband never wants to play it again (or so he claims)

  • 2 x Quacks of Quedlinburg (9-10/10): Introduced our gaming buddy to the Herb Witches expansion. I managed a nice build involving a lot of mushrooms which allowed me to postpone an explosion until I’d almost emptied my bag, much to everyone else’s annoyance :grin:

Just for fun

We’ve played a couple of games of Pax Pamir 2E on TTS with @Captbnut recently. I feel like I’m just about starting to understand the game now!

10 Likes
1756

I could get behind a themed remake of Silk…
image

2 Likes
1757

I thought it was 100 points for the cat, regardless of which part you hit… oh wait, you’re not talking about nerf guns.

1 Like
1758

Two nights in a row versus my partner in Lost Ruins of Arnak! Yesterday was her teach and introductory game, where I eked out a win 67-62. Tonight was even closer, with a tie at 61, and me stealing the win on the tiebreaker due to reaching the top of the research track first. I was lucky to have sussed out what I believe to have been my most optimal final play, as all my other options would have yielded fewer final points. I’m really pleased that my partner seems to be enjoying it, and I’m glad we got a back-to-back session in with it, to help cement the rules.

7 Likes
1759

Played a few games of Spring Garden over the last few days. I feel like it was well-regarded when it was released but (along with the other 2 in the ‘trilogy’) got dropped from conversations about tile-laying games. At the moment they seem to revolve around Patchwork and Barenpark, along with newcomers New York Zoo and My City. I haven’t played those apart from Patchwork, so not sure how it stacks up, but Spring Garden is very satisfying. It’s a tight design and the last game in particular involved all 4 players winning one round each, followed by a win from me in the final round of scoring.
I’d highly recommend it, and I like tile-laying so much that I think I’ll check out the other options as well if anyone has suggestions for what to try next.

3 Likes
1760

I heard about Mapmaker: The Gerrymandering Game for the first time when someone nominated it for the Pearple’s Choice. It sounded interesting, and BGA had just introduced it, so now I’ve played it. Not in love with the random setup, but the actual gameplay is fascinating.

1 Like
1761

I played it two player on BGA and I’m not sure I got it

1762

The tiebreaking is a bit weird, and because typical scores in a 4-player game are 3s and 4s it often gets used.