Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

Boardgames
1884

My girlfriend continues to have the upper hand in Mandala.

We then played El Dorado with the Heroes and Hexes expansion. Quinns didn’t seem to fussed with this, but it really mixed things up and added some really fun moments to the game. It also led to the most back and forth game we’ve ever had, with me taking an early lead, before the curses hurt my progress. She then took a huge lead, which she only lost late in the game, losing by only one place with one of her explorers. Can’t wait to play more with the expansion!

We then added the European expansion to Wingspan. I think I had just about a perfect game, playing cards on my egg producing row which gave lots of food and a couple of cards, allowing me to fill up my top (food) row with birds which played off my girlfriend’s actions - when she got food, eggs or tucked cards, so did I. Such a satisfying experience when you build an engine that just spits out points like that.

3 Likes
1885

Played my first game of Ticket to Ride: First Journey with the kids. We only played to two tickets and all cards being visible just as a teaching game - eldest (6) really got it quite quickly (well at least the basics - she’s probably too nice to cut anyone off!:rofl:) but unsurprisingly my youngest (4) wondered off pretty quickly. He’ll have to play with someone next time! Think i need to invest in a childs card holder!

2 Likes
1886

Scrabble or rummikub boards are perfect

1887

I picked this up a while ago after being sold by the SUSD review, and I can still see exactly why I did it (the appeal remains strong); but I read through the rules a few days ago in the hopes of playing it with the other half, and realised with a sigh that it’s a great big maths fest, which means there’s almost no chance of me convincing them to try it.

If I have the wrong impression, or if you think that most people can play it pretty successfully on gut instinct, please tell me so. Right now it’s in my “this will be counterproductive to my long-term goals” pile.

2 Likes
1888

Another three games of Hansa Teutonica tonight, with another 2:1 result not in my favour. I’d previously accumulated a lead of four games, so that’s been halved in the past few days. I’m just happy to be playing the game at all, so losing is as good as winning : )

5 Likes
1889

Yes and no. You’ll know better than I do with respect to how this will actually manifest at the table, but I’ve got a quick point and counterpoint:

  • I found it very easy to play intuitively. Numbers are low enough and visually apparent enough that there’s as much emphasis of when and how to make your play as there is on valuation. Because the mandalas have a player-driven break point, there’s also a huge emphasis on cutting your losses, either to set up for the future, to deny a windfall, or both. As a result, the game develops a really sharp edge and gets competitive fast.

  • She suffers some of the worst AP I’ve ever seen her get, and I’ve passed the game on because she found it exhausting to play.

This, to me, illustrates that it can be awfully mathsy to some, so if she’s the type to really crunch on a game, definitely beware.

3 Likes
1890

It’s looking like Calico will be my final game of 2020 as we managed to squeeze a quick game in ahead of tonight’s zoom marathon.

And what a barnburner! At least as far as quiet, solitary puzzling goes. We finished with 57 points each, went to the tie-breaker with cats where we tied at 3, then to buttons where she finally got me 6 to 5. Hardly epic, but a nice closer to the year.

6 Likes
1891

My likely last game of the year was the sixth of our 12 Games of Christmas, Tokaido. We have not played this in forever, so it took a few minutes to reorient ourselves with the rules. In doing so, I discovered something which I think I have played incorrectly since I got the game: that souvenirs score immediately, and then continue to score as you complete the set. I think I always scored them at the end. What a difference that can make to the score!

Playing with just the two of us, we had the neutral figure to contend with, who for the most part just gets in the way, but can compete in the temple donations track. It didn’t, since neither of us ever moved it to a temple, but it has the ability to do so.

I managed to pull off the win thanks to a couple of free panoramas, 3 points, and a souvenir from encounter cards, plus my character’s ability to gain a coin and a point for every encounter. Final scores were 73 - 61. My wife had a bit of money at the end, but just was not able to reach a space to make use of it, though she did come in first on the donation track.

Tokaido really is a great, relaxing game, and it is a shame it has languished on the shelf for so long.

5 Likes
1892

So, what better way to spend New Years eve than playing games with some good friends…

Ship Shape X 2, its an ok light game, but pretty random. We had a lot of ties on bidding (when people didn’t want to take the top card), but we didn’t realise that after two ties, the winner is determined by the number on the player boards.

World Without End , the sequel to Pliiars of the Earth, which is an excellent game. i wasnt quite so keen on this one. You do have various buildings, and you collect resources. Each player turn has an event card, which you can turn around to collect stuff, but each of the other players also gain something. The orientation of the card also determines how far the favour marker moves, which can give you points or resources (or take away money). Each event card may have a condition (like put out a certain building, or a trade option that players can make).

On each turn, the players will play one of their action cards. We started with six cards (because it was our first game). Starting from the second chapter, we had an extra six cards. And from then on, you play a card each turn, but you also have to discard one. So you have to plan carefully. Each chapter you need to have certain resources (money for tax, grain, and piety tokens), and if you don’t have enough, you’ll lost victory points, and also suffer a penalty in the next chapter. It feels like you’re always losing things in this game, which was a bit annoying.

Downforce , easy light game. Very simple – you play a card, which shows coloured cars and how far they move. Each car is auctioned off at the start. So its possible to control several different cards. I thought I had stuffed up by low bidding on cars and being outbid, but I ended up with one car, which one the race. My mate ended up winning 4 cards, but that meant he was 23 million behind just from the auction. Its a good fun game.

Mountain Goats , first play. This was from a kickstarter of three filler games, all games you are supposed to be able to play in ten minutes. Mostly accurate. Rules were pretty easy – roll dice, make groups of dice. For each group, you move your goat token up that mountain (cards numbered from five thru to ten). If you get to the top, you collect a point token. If you are already at the top, you just gain the token. If anyone else gets to the top, they push you off that mountain.

8 Likes
1893

Because of the way scoring works, there will be some maths involved at some point during games: e.g. the greens are 4 points for me, and the blacks are 6, but I’m better off taking the greens as the difference between my score and my opponent is better.

But I’ve found the game has a lot more going on that. There’s a push your luck element at times - e.g 5 colours out, lots of reds in the middle. I can keep filling up the reds to sweeten the pot, but my opponent might steal it at any moment IF they have the right card(s). You can also lose Mandalas but win based on score, or ensure you gain a lot for playing only one card.

Once you get a feel for the game, it’ll become more instinctual. E.g. The orange cards are worth only one point for them, so I’ll place oranges on the mountain (cards you can win), so I’ll get cards while offering them very little.

I would recommend at least trying it. We’ve got a number of two player cards games, and this is by far our favourite. So many interesting decision for a seemingly simple game.

4 Likes
1894

So I played my first game of the year. Obviously it had to be Spirit Island. I chose Many Minds and Shifting Memory vs Scotland Level 1 and lost on turn 3 when the extra loss condition for Scotland happened due to a bit of bad luck and too defensive play.

I got marshlands in turn 2 for explore and there were four coastal marshlands and I was unable to prevent building in more than one of those on the next turn and was unable to remove either of the starting coastal cities by that time and so on turn 3, I had 5 cities on the coast and I was out. Scotland is harsh.

7 Likes
1895

I had a go with the Oceania Wingspansion this afternoon, playing against the Automa. I lost, but I think I understand the new mechanics now. I was disappointed that I didn’t manage to get the kiwi or the kakapo on my board, but the appearance of the spangled drongo made up for it :grin:

3 Likes
1896

Some games with a buddy this weekend:

Coatl, first time getting this one to the table. It’s pretty good. Not being able to discard cards means you’re often having to make the best of a sometimes not-ideal situation. The building is satisfying and special bonus tiles are a nice addition. I won by virtue of having finished 3 coatl to my opponents 2 (though one was massive) - I feel like that’s a bit of a trap in the game - trying to get the perfect coatl, rather than keeping the pace up and making the best of what you’ve got. Definitely a clever little abstract pattern building game.

Concordia, first game at 2 players and I think maybe second on the Italia board. It actually works quite well at that playercount (though the map is probably a touch too big for 2 - you can mostly keep out of each others way, which is not really peak Concordia but still works fine. If I played with 2 often I would probably seek out one of the tighter maps). It really is an exceptional game though, one of my faves.

7 Likes
1897

First game of 2021 was Lost Ruins of Arnak with my partner. We started at 10pm, brains good and frazzled, so of course we drew a set of ruins that really made us work for our conversions. Still finished just under 90 minutes though, in spite of some AP on both our parts.

We both came out with our worst scores yet, but they were hard fought, and we ended in another tie (a running theme lately)! So far, Arnak seems to favour me in these, so I took the win. This closed our first series to 5 and it went like this:

  1. 67-63, victory me.
  2. 61-61, tiebreaker to me.
  3. 73-71, victory Ms. Viper
  4. 59-59, tiebreaker to me.

This is a really good weight and length for us, so it’s especially nice to see us well matched so far. Also we learned tonight that we can fit this huge beast on our coffee table, so we can actually play this thing right from our couch!!

5 Likes
1898

Nusfjord , first play. Had this one for a while, finally decided it was time it hit the table. I thought it was going to be complicated, but its really not so bad. To summarise, over seven rounds, you will collect fish and distribute them, and place your workers on action spaces on the main action board. Possible actions are gain money, transfer resources from your reserve into your personal supply (where they can be used), serve fish (to make money), build a building, issue a share, buy shares, deforest (to gain wood), reforest, thin out (which also gets you wood, but not as much as the deforest action), build a ship (to collect more fish each round), and take an Elder tile. Once you take an Elder, you can place a worker on it to take the action.

Each action space has a worker limit, from one to three. You only have three workers, and there is no way to get any more, so you have to plan carefully. We accidentally used the wrong deck of cards – there are three, and one is recommended for a first play. All because we didn’t know what a herring looks like (this is not a joke).

Its a fairly quick playing, but nicely thinky game, we all enjoyed it. I managed to get the win, thanks to some high scoring buildings. Looking forward to playing it again.

Suspend , a cool dexterity game, where you hang various pieces and (obviously) try not to let it collapse. Each piece has notches where you can pivot the piece on, and hopefully counter balance it against another piece. It was good fun.

Mountain Goats , again – still fun.

Sequoia , first play. This was the second of three games from kickstarter. Again, its pretty simple. A ring of cards is created, from two through to twelve. You roll five dice, and make two pairs. On each pair, add one of your tokens to that number tile. Each tile has a random value, whoever has the most of their tokens will get that point value. Very easy to learn and play.

GPS , first play. This was the third of three games from kickstarter. And while the first two were pretty good (Mountain Goats and Sequoia), this one was…not so good. It looks cool – you have a rocket on a spinner, which selects an area for you to place one of your satellite tokens. The object is to get your numbered satellites in sequence from 1 through 12. Which sounded pretty dull, and it turned out to be. Oh well, two out of three isn’t so bad.

Chaos and Alchemy , first play. Simple enough game, you play cards to your tableau, and try and reach ten points to win. You have several dice, and you roll these against a special die. For each success, you get to take an action (like draw another card, or play a card). For each failure you have to discard a card. There’s lots of “take that” cards that you can play into other peoples tableau. Pretty forgettable.

Horrified , we won against three monsters! Only three cards left in the monster deck, so we cut it pretty close.

9 Likes
1899

First game of the year with Warp’s Edge–it’s okay! I think the design is quite good, but over the years I’ve found that this style of game doesn’t appeal to me nearly as much. I broadly split solo games into games with dense, puzzly turns and those with small, simple decisions each turn, and this very much falls into the latter category. You draw some chips from your bag, assign them to enemies maybe buy some chips or activate some abilities, and repeat for about 30 minutes. The decisions are interesting and tense, and the arc of the game keeps it from feeling repetitive, but none of my turns felt exceptionally memorable or thinky, which is what I want from a solo game.

Second game of the year was Viticulture: Essential Edition with the Tuscany expansion, this time with a partner, and was fantastic. I already liked the original game, but the expansion’s board makes the game arc so much more fluid and fun. I lost because I kept drawing low-point wine contracts while my cellars were chock-full of classic vintages (the card luck being my main complaint about the game), but it was still a great time, and the art and theme made it quite a relaxing experience.

5 Likes
1900

Caught up with some friends again today.

We tried to play a game of Fury of Dracula on TTS but for some reason one player couldn’t join the game without errors or assets failing to load.

Instead we got in a game of online Dominion which I’ve not played in a while. I like Dominion just enough to be invested in trying to build a fun engine, but not enough that I worry about really understanding the meta for the available cards or winning.

Then we tried Welcome To … Las Vegas on TableTopia. We’ve all played the original game so were just about able to stumble through a game whilst learning the rules. It’s very different to Welcome To … Your Perfect Home, almost as if the designers turned it up to 11! The individual actions aren’t complicated per se but there’s a lot going on and the scoring is not exactly straight forward. I’d play it again, but this won’t be a Roll and Write that I introduce to my parents.

Over Xmas I played a few games of Azul with the parents and my mum won every single one! I did win a few games of Yahtzee though to make up!

5 Likes
1901

I would be curious to hear your opinion on Hands Teuonica with two players. Are you using the modified two player variant from one of the expansions? I had mentally filed this game as ‘not worth playing with less than 3’ but you repeatedly reporting your plays rekindled my interest.

1902

Three more days of my 12 Gamedays of Christmas challenge for 2020/2021 are now complete, with just three more to go.

Day 7 (31st December) was a lovely New Year’s Eve night in playing games with the same friends from Christmas Day. We began with my new gift of the mini game version of Articulate which went down really well: well enough that I’ll get the full version of it in the coming weeks and maybe look for Monikers too. We then retreated to my friend’s safe space of Rapidough again before giving Anomia its first try, which also proved fun, although we were a bit too merry then for everyone to be that quick to spot the face offs. Then the host remembered they had a copy of Cards Against Humanity. I probably shouldn’t admit this, but with our collective sense of humour and state of relative inebriation, it was funnier than I expected it would be.

Day 8 (1st January) saw another solo game of Doctor Who: Time of the Daleks, playing alone with the Thirteenth Doctor and Yaz (well, it seemed right after the New Year special). All was going swimmingly until the Destiny of the Daleks Time Anomoly card was revealed which captured the Green dice and led me to a failed dilemma against Kronos, which in turn triggered the Genesis of the Daleks TIme Anomoly card. Fortunately it was near the end of the game and didn’t prevent the victory but did make it my closest solo-Doctor session yet.

Day 9 (2nd January) had less time than expected so I went for my favourite acquisition of 2020 and one of my quickest solo worker placement games Viticulture Essential Edition. Victory was achieved with 23 points at the end of the seventh year, thanks to some lucky Winter Visitor cards early on, leading me to have all six workers in employ at the end of the second winter. It did take a haul of 9 VPs from two big orders in the final year however to pass the Automata target.

Still plenty of choices for the final three days although I know time may be limited on Monday and maybe Tuesday this week. I’m pretty certain of two of the titles - another worker placement favourite from last year, and finally getting the opportunity to try another solo aquisition from last summer - but will have to either test custom solo rules for other newer purchases or go for an older or longer game for the third option.

3 Likes
1903

I guess YMMV. It seems that officially it’s not recommended at two – they’ve actually listed the reprint as “3-5 players” (on purpose), so the designer clearly feels it’s much better with at least 3. It’s certainly a game which feels different at different player counts – on the rarer occasions when I get to play it with more people, I often don’t do very well : )

I still like it as a two-player game, though, so that “3-5” change kinda surprised me. Maybe what they say is true; but the revised 2p rules are a definite improvement on the original 2p rules. (The new rules were introduced with the Britannia expansion, but they work for all variants of the game, and you can find them on BGG.)

However, a big reason I play it so frequently at this player count is that my other half actually likes the game, and is willing to play it (and, sadly, there aren’t a ton of games about which I can say that – not even the expansions for H.T.!). So, were it all up to me, I would report on a much wider variety of 2p games; but in practice if I’m able to convince them to play a game, we’re often going to be playing Hansa Teutonica.

I’m pretty sure I’d still want it in the rotation, though, even if I did get to play other things more often!

2 Likes