I have heard that about Black Angel. The strangest change in theme for a sequel!
I’m curious how BA plays since all I ever hear about it is how convoluted and unintuitive the rules are. Yet I’ve never heard that said about Troyes. So there must be some crazy changes to the rules unless it’s just not presented as well?
There is exactly one unintuitive rule in Troyes: the cost of buying others’ dice
Oh no, that’s fine. Every game comes with me to bark at players when they get it wrong.
It’s been long enough that I can’t remember specifics, but I found it to be a reasonably intuitive game, mechanically. But that’s me… I sold the game on long ago because nobody I showed it to wanted a second play which must say something.
Troyes is the game I really want to get hold of. I need to find a good trade for it
First plays of Maths Trade acquisitions Flick em Up: Dead of Winter and Decrypto, both with 4 players.
FEU is daft, silly fun. We played the opening scenario and had a simple win. The zombie activation mechanism is cool - basically they fall down a dice tower. It’s not a thinky game but I enjoyed it.
Decrypto was excellent, giving clues that are simple enough for your team to guess, but not allowing the other team to jump in is such a simple mechanism but it injects a gamery tension to an otherwise simple word game. Production seems excellent as well.
My partner and I got another round of Arnak in this evening after a lovely feast of prime rib and piles of vegetables. This was our third game together and she got her first win with a final score of 73-71. It’s a Christmas miracle! 
Still just loving this game to bits. The escalation toward the end is always so explosive.
Managed to snag a copy of mons-draw-sity from Santa for the 7 year old.
Have to say it’s a belter of a family game that was at a good level we could all play without playing down to the kids. In fact trying to draw a monster based on the descriptions of a 4 year old was great fun.
Merry Christmas everyone!
No games this year under the tree for me (boo) but I got my daughter Stuffed Fables (technically from her grandma, but I decided on it) so we had a go at the first scenario yesterday evening and left the second one pending (photo + note down buttons, hearts, items, etc). Lovely game if a bit tricky to teach on the go as I learned it. Now that we have learned the gameplay I think it will go smoothly on future games.
Merry Christmas all! Hope everyone had an enjoyable day and that you all managed to squeeze in some tabletop gaming.
We had our first ever game of Crokinole today, starting with a couple of rounds with 3 players before switching to the standard 2 player version. Ready to play in about 30 secs and super addictive fun from the first flick! We had such a good time that as soon as we finished a game we’d immediately start setting up for another one, without even thinking. After being worried that I’d made a gamble going for a quality board of a game I’d never played, I think I absolutely made the right choice.
I can’t imagine getting our previous flicking games to the table again to be honest, which were Catacombs and Ice Cool. The former, despite being a really good game, is likely to go into the trade pile I think.
OK, so all these comments are on day 1, and I’m interested to see how I feel in 3, 6, 12 months from now… But today I’m delighted (and still stuffed to the gills with food). Have a good one all!
[Edit] Rambled so long I forgot to add the first match photo 
My wife and I played her new game, Honey Buzz, yesterday. It’s a lightish Euro with a couple of interesting little special puzzles. You’re supposed to be accountant bees, setting up honey sales empires in the name of the queen. By adding to your (part of the) hive most turns, you have the opportunity to trigger a bunch of actions that let you get new workers, forage for nectar or pollen, turn nectar into honey, fill orders for honey, and a handful of other actions. I like that you only get to fire off the actions if you’re completing part of one of the special puzzles—but I definitely didn’t figure out how to do it correctly, because I lost 31 to 102. 
The couple of weeks before Christmas we were bubbled with friends away from whom we moved this summer, and we got a few games played. We played our daughter’s Draftosaurus, which is inoffensive and not very memorable, but light fun for the moment. I also played our son’s Curious Cargo about halfway through with our friend’s 9 year old. We were enjoying it quite a bit, and I was fumbling my way into the lead, but then naptimes ended, and it got very dangerous for board games.
So far, all three games I’ve mentioned we received as part of our family St. Nicholas Day tradition, which means books and a board game for each person. So we’re almost caught up now!
We also introduced their kids to Mysterium, one of our family favorites. It’s sometimes a bit of a wait for fidgety children, but it is so flexible with respect to communication and observation skills. With a little bit of help, even the 3 year old joined in. At some point, we’ll probably get Mysterium Park to have a faster version to pull out right before bed, and our eldest has expressed interest in trying to get the motive cards for Tajemnicze Domostwo and add them into the big game to make it even bigger.
Finally, we played a lot of The Crew. Both the adults and the 9 year olds enjoyed it quite a lot, although some of the challenges proved quite difficult for four exhausted parents after the kids were tucked in bed.
First mission on the app for Imperial Assault. Few terminology issues where we knew words from other games but we got there. I think we’re going to like this
I played “whistle mountain” because it’s getting a lot of buzz in end of year lists. Here’s the thing. I think it’s an excellent game and there is some fun stuff in it but by golly it really has a lot of hinderances between you and the delicious bit and those delicious bits are a little bit too few and far between.
The basic concept that attracted me was that this was a polyomino game where you play bad tetris, an unsatisfying tetris. That is pretty weird concept. Upon playing it’s a little more subtler than that. What you’re playing is 80 percent good tetris but enough awkwardness so you don’t set up your rival. Good but not the game changer i was expecting.
The other part is that this is quite the gamery game. You need to hold in your head details of a lot of things to make even simple moves work. There’s a fair bit of “oh i know what a way better move could have been” about a move or two too late (if you have my brain). But i think it’s a little bit too tight to make that missed opportunity feel horrible rather than slightly disappointing.
There’s some nice passive agression where you can see your friend try to do something cool and you can try your best to ruin it not Through actual ruination but just eating a little bit of that pie. That’s a nice feeling if you spot it (although I suspect it should be a default thing to do rather than a cheeky play that feels delightful)
I think the worst part of the game though is that it’s one of those games where you need to look up reference sheets a little bit too often because the game has iconography but that it also has to break the rules of its own iconography or it’s iconography isn’t good enough to convey everything it needs to. It’s a shame because it makes playing a bit more of a chore especially when the value of such items is not that clear.
Anyway a fun game.
A number of Christmas presents played during a much smaller Christmas celebration than we would have liked.
Lots of Mandala - lovely game, very happy with this present. We haven’t been able to get away with just one round of this, usually playing 5 or 6 at a time. My girlfriend dominated Christmas day, winning every single game. I managed to get my own back on Boxing Day.
We have got in two games of Raiders of the North Sea. We both enjoyed this one, another present, but I think we’re still feeling out the best strategy. First game was close, second game not so much. Very enjoyable though, and looking forward to playing this with friends.
Quacks with the herb witches expansion - we’ve got one game out of this so far, which the girlfriend won. I’m usually fairly wary of expansions as they can make a game feel unnecessarily bloated. Fortunately this one works well, giving more options way to mitigate luck. There’s also more ways to catch up beyond the rats tails which rarely allowed someone to fall behind and still win.
Non-Xmas present games we played were two favourites of ours - Taverns of Tiefenthal and Wingspan. I decided to play very differently in Taverns, which almost ended in disaster but managed to edge out a win with a good last round. Wingspan, I was beaten very convincingly.
Im hoping to buy a new house soon, and I’m seriously considering getting a nice crokinole board like this for the place. Great to hear your positive thoughts on it!
Some Lost Cities and a fun game of Shakespeare Munchkin (my girlfriend is an actress who does a lot of Shakespeare, and cried laughing at the puns like the “T-man of Athens”.)
Also got Caper, that’s up next.
If you wanted sell Catacombs… 
My partner and I played 2 rounds of Inhuman Conditions yesterday.
It was a risky purchase… while I love narrative-style games, they don’t always land well with Andy. We played the same scenario (“Small Talk”) twice, being the interviewer once each.
I lost both times (Andy convinced me she was human when, in fact, she was a Patient Robot who couldn’t state opinions, and then when I was a Violent Robot who worked as a Maker of Fake Animals I couldn’t get the second instance of using three words with the same letter in a row… I managed to get “beautiful Boston Bay” out, but she stamped Robot at that moment).
Definitely a neat game! I look forward to playing again in the future, as well as checking out the more than 2-player variants. Beautiful production work on the game, although the manual leaves a lot to be desired (like an explanation of how to identify each of the components as you’re opening the box: the various cards need to be sorted into their specific colours before your first game, for example).
Oh, and the tiny little 5 minute app is neat.
I haven’t played my copy in ages and I don’t see myself playing it for a while. Would you like it? PM me if so.
Sadly, we have only played one game so far over the holiday. My wife and I got in a game of Jaipur. We played two rounds, and while both were relatively close, I managed to pull off the win.
Actually, I did mess around with another game. I received Marbology which is basically a sliding tile puzzle with marbles thrown into the mix. My older kid saw “marble” on the box as was interested, as he lokes marble tracks. He got bored with it pretty quickly when I wouldn’t let him run off with the marbles, so I tried a few of the puzzles. It’s a decent little diversion, which I can see getting rather difficult as the puzzles go on.
