Continuing the discussion from Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2) (Part 1) - #10026 by RogerBW.
Previous discussions:
Everybody post! 
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The Thread is Dead! Long Live the Thread!
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Say hello to the new thread
Just the same as the old thread
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Well, I played obscure game youāve never heard of, and it leaves all this modern stuff in the dust. A mere Ā£500 for the basic set, and then you can get the expansions on eBay of course, but itāll certainly help if you have a spare gymnasium to set up the miniaturesā¦ My group gets though a game in a mere 16 hours, First to take a bio break gets backstabbed!
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Had a game night while my wife was away which gave me the opportunity to pull out a game that sheās not fond of, Mission Red Planet. Simple, chaotic (but not too chaotic) area control. I did absolutely terrible, spreading myself way too thin. One friend dominated Phobos and used that to great effect on Mars, but ultimately lost to another who used his knowledge of the discovery cards to get himself lots of unexpected points at the end. Really glad to have this one around!
Then we played another mean game, Tournament at Avalon. I played the Elf Queen, who I had heard sucks, and guess what! Itās very true! Itās basically not a power - it confers you no advantage, just makes the trick slightly different but with no real consequence. Only reason I didnāt come in last was I kept getting dealt high cards, and another player kept getting dealt low cards.
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Inis - 4 players. They manage to get a good grasp of the game that we are all one step from winning. One manage to breakthrough
Project L
BattleCon - 4 players. It seems that the board game concepts and terms arenāt that intuitive.
El Grande - LONG LIVE THE KING!!!
Harmonies - playing it with people in the library and it served its purpose as an āeveryoneā game.
Tash Kalar - 3 player melee.
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Compile Main 1āmy brain hurts. In a good way. As I suspected, itās Riftforce meets Air, Land & Sea, but with three places for card effects: the top box is always in effect if itās in play, middle box happens when itās played (or flipped face-up or uncovered), bottom box is in effect only if itās at the top of its lane stack. Which means a lot of stuff to keep track of on the table, and a fair bit of specialised terminology tooāthough not as annoying as Radlands.
Early days but Iām looking forward to playing againāthough not straight away!
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Played Dead Reckoning with my husband for my birthday. Itās a fun merchant/pirate/exploration type game using the card crafting system of Mystic Vale. I really like it and think Iām pretty good at it, but my husband still wins like 70-80% of the time. Today he won 138-122.
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Played with @EnterTheWyvern today
Agra - nice to revisit this. Top modern Euro. But felt that I donāt need my copy any more and so, it goes to the sell pile
Glory to Rome - easier to teach this to them as theyāve played Mottainai before
BattleCon - playing BattleCon with more experience board gamers gives me better insight of the game. And glad that the 2vs1 mode was still fun. I get nice buffs as the solo fighter. Played as Oriana and she was a fun fighter to play. Alas, I misjudged her finisher. It has a high cost and I didnāt save up for it, and so I couldnāt afford it when I needed it. I got KOād
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Yep, easier to learn. However harder to pick a strat and know the flow. My card draws felt odd, I assume this is unfamiliarity though and not knowing how to roll with the punches in this game. Thanks for teaching. It felt a bit special to be opening and playing a pristine copy of this. Ā£50 in 2025 for that still feels a bargain although itās not an insignificant sum.
Agra I really enjoyed. It does some really clever things with the worker placement to feel restrictive and somewhat interactive but still giving you choices that are exciting. The bonus actions are really smart for letting you do great things on your big turns but also donāt stop you having to build up. Also the booting and meditating generation force you to think on the fly as an opponent can really mess with your set up for either. Also the board being full art work gives it real presence even if itās not as clear as one would like. That being said Iām a little tempted to put it on the sell pile. Itās on the heavy end of euros and I just donāt think it will be selected often enough to really sing and is heavy enough and long enough to compete with the Splotters. I think KeyFlower is similar in thoughts but can zip by in 90 minutes. Iki is more solidly medium so has a different space and is similarly a 90 minute game. Noria is also a gear grinder but has something a bit more interactive about it with itās shared incentives. So I think maybe my time for it has passed. Similar in ways to Terra Mystica.
BattleCon is cool. Thanks for sorting out Devestation for me and I think v4 has really tidied it all up so itās now easier to own, setup and play. Playing one v one against a super opponent was tough while D learnt to play on my team was tough but fun. I think the double stun turn where you had stun immunity was my downfall, so well played sir. Hopefully next time weāll get to test out the coop mode. Mainly to have seen all the modes. The character I played with alternate bases was mind boggling to start with but also really interesting. Iād like to try them again for sure.
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On Saturday we attempted a 3 player + bot scenario of Europa Universalis and I can safely say that sometimes things should stay as a computer gameā¦ Having to manage the bot and its ridiculous number of flow charts meant that we got through two of eight rounds in 6 hours, at which point we gave up!
After that ordeal we had dinner and then played Joraku, which is a neat little trick-taking + area control game. The number of the card you play determines how many action points you get for moving and fighting, or in which area of the board you can place pieces. Winning the trick lets you score the area containing your Daimyo piece. Definitely more fun than spending 6 hours managing PolandBot 
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I had a look at that as I used to play a lot of Paradox games. But then I have Pax Renaissance and played it hundreds of times. This seems like self inflicted suffering
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I like it with only other humans playing, but the bot is a chore. Iāve never played Pax Ren so I donāt know what Iām missing!
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Happy to show it on AireCon. Itās all housed in my King is Dead box with the TKID game too
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Obsession.
I bought it on something of a whim (despite trying not to do that any more), and have spent the last few weeks suspecting I made a mistake. I couldnāt really make sense of how it worked, and it looked both dull and complicated.
But then I got round to actually playing it (solo), and itās neither of those things! Itās great!
Basically Downton Abbey the board game (but not actually āDownton Abbey: The Board Game,ā which it turns out exists, and which looks unutterably dire).
Downton Abbey: The Good Board Game, if you will.
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I was lucky enough to have the chance to play Obsession for the first time at a recent game night. It was the only session Iāve managed to drag myself to in months, I was dead tired, Obsession was the only game I managed to play, and Iām not overstating it when I say that it rekindled the coals of my enthusiasm for board games, which had been smothering under the weight of life.
Iād read that Obsession was fun. Iāve been planning to get it for years. I couldnāt quite see what was good about it, and Iām still not sure I can see what was good about it. But it is definitely good.
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Obsession is a bit of a weirdo.
When I am not playing it I am wondering why I think itās good.
But when I play it, itās fun, cozy and quite satisfying. Thereās something about putting all those guests and servants in a location and hosting an afternoon teaparty at the Western Library (no idea atm what all the tiles are called), or getting a party of 8 together to host a ball at the end of the game figuring out who to invite to get the funds to build that beautiful Gazebo (or whatever) or the reputation to come out ahead of everyone else or whatever you need in that moment 
I think itās the surprisingly strong thematic element that pulls it all across the finish line.
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BattleCon - couldnāt agree more. And Exceed has the same problem. As if it were translated from a Japanese or Chinese game, but these dudes are in New Mexico (IIRC). Good game, simple game, but always a bear to teach and even remember.
El Grande - LONG LIVE THE BEIGE BOARD
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I taught the Mrs Splendor Duel. What a cracker. While I did play low tempo, and I did avoid all-but-one opportunity to pilfer her tokens, I didnāt exactly go easy for her first play. Even so, I thought I had it in the bag.
I needed one card to win, which needed a pearl. I pointed this out. She bought a card and took my pearl. No worries, right? I reserved the card and took a gold, win delayed by one turn.
Right?
She was conceding defeat when we saw it. She bought 1 card which got her to 6 crowns, which got her a noble worth 2 points and another turn. Then she USED MY PEARL to buy a third card to put her over the 20 points threshold.
Thatāll teach me. What a cracking game.
Second, Iām having a love affair with Carnegie.
This was a game I initially passed over, despite Xavier Georges, due to its overlap with Puerto Rico. Then I played with @Pillbox on BGA and it was pleasant, but not enough to buy. Then my well aligned reviewers (e.g. Bitewing, TwoMexicanMeeples) kept bringing it up. Itās Georges, so I bought it. And now I canāt stop thinking about it.
Carnegie is like the child of New Frontiers and La Granja. But they tragically died in a space ranching accident and Carnegie fell in with Troyes where it grew mean and bitter. Which brings us to present.
Without exploding word count (too much), the New Frontiers comparison comes from a) the hyperfocus on role following. Puerto has this mechanically but itās not a huge deal, insofar as many actions are follow-for-free or set-up-your-fields-and-go-autopilot. New Frontiers requires you to plan all game to make sure you have the requisite resources to follow each action, and so it is here. Not what do I do on my turn, but what do I need for the next four turns and how do I get it? Also, Carnegieās departments invite different engines, much more like New Frontiersās develoment market than Puertoās mathed-out building tray.
The La Granja comparison comes because there is an explosive but expensive engine. The game asks to you invest SO MUCH back into it to unlock these cash/goods/workers/points bonuses, and then returns your investment tenfold. Itās a wrestling match throughout.
Contrast to Evacuation, where I got 61 my first game, 63 my second, and maybe 64 my third. A āgood gameā was 70. This is more like Pipeline (first game ~400, most recent game ~1500) or La Granja (first game ~50, best game ~90). Thereās so much to learn here and so much power when you figure out how to wrangle it, and just which arm to cut off when in order to get your reticulating octopus tentacles. Thatās a metaphor, here weāre just getting dollars and cubes. But you get it.
The Troyes angle is the worker shuffle. You are constantly sending your workers out to the main board to unlock the best actions. And then bringing them back to trigger income. And then re-employing them with an HR action. And paying them to start working again. This cycle is so action and resource consuming that it can be your whole game, but you need to keep it running while also getting cubes, diverting cash to scoring tokens, constantly researching to increase income and keep your construction pool fullā¦ just like Troyes you are drowning all the time which makes each breath of air all the sweeter.
I think my scores have gone something like 90 > 106 > 137 > 164. Thereās a lot to learn.
I love it. Glad I stuck with it. Georges, again, FTW.
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