Finally some games. We visited friends for a 2 day Easter-game-retreat 
Dropolter was quite the success. I did not exactly expect our friends to enjoy but they did. Also suprising despite having had a nice aperitif, I won. It helps taking your time and snatching up bells and NOT losing them again.
A full game of Terraforming Mars on the extra-long Amazonis map with 5 players and ALL the expansions. Someone threw Deimos on my head and likely cost me a possible victory. Parliament only managed to serve up one crisis after another and so once again as usual I could not guide Phobolog (orwhatevertheyarecalled) to their deserved victory. But it was a good game and it was my first time playing multiplayer with all expansions.
I know why I love this game so much. It was just a nice adventure. With all the expansions and the extra long map it felt like there was a lot of exploration possible. Most of us came in quite close in scores except for my partner who lagged behind by about 10 points. But he did suprisingly well considering he has played this game maybe 3 or 4 times and the rest of us dozens (I am well over 100 solos on the app alone). He says it helped that he went inside during scoring and didn’t learn how he scored at all. He is usually super frustrated when he learns how badly he did compared to others and is then unwilling to consider the mitigating factors so maybe we just need to do exactly that: score without him.
After dinner, I first brought out Link City. It was new to only one player at the table and our first city we managed a pretty good score of 41. We played 3 subsequent games across both days and scored abysmally. In 2 games we didn’t even manage to crack the 30 point winning condition. But it is fun even when losing. The discussions where to build or where something should be built… great. Highly recommend this if you are in the market for a low-rules, quick, cooperative experience that helps start or close a game night. Note: The youngest person we played with was 13 at the time and the age-gap showed clearly in that game.
Next up: So Clover. Again one of the people did not know or remember the game. It was a good success as on all previous occasions. We all agree that Just One is just a bit better but this is the close runner-up from the Repos Line of partygames. Everyone was quite engaged, swearing about difficult clues, laughing about misread words… good times. Was also played on both days.
For the best times however… I brought out The Gang. I wasn’t sure about this one. I had played it with my partner and one of the family before but I had my doubts about it because poker and cooperative games felt so out of their usual fare. To my huge surprise it was the biggest success story of the week-end. We only play hand after hand with just the chips and a deck of cards (my partner brought one from our collection for the purpose). We never played with the Sonderkarten or the actual heist part of the game yet, because we enjoying just playing hands and learning to read each other so much. We had some incredible rounds where we managed to sort a bunch of High-Cards and had some wibbly wobbly back and forth between what turned out to be absolutely identical hands… this is greatness. Games that cause high-fives at the table are the very best.
On day 2 after some rounds of the Gang with 6 players, everyone was keen to see if we learned anything about Texas Hold’em we then brought out some colored dice to use as money and played a few rounds of actual poker. I lost big time to a bluff and then went all in on a hunch that wasn’t a bluff. Oh well… I’ll spare you the analysis. But fun was had and hitting a 2-8 Full House on the flop made the daughter’s night.
For the final game I asked if they were willing to try Zoo Vadis which has languished for almost a year on my unplayed shelf. Unsurprisingly I had to read or rather translate the rules because despite reading them several times before hand without being able to actually play I had a hard time retaining them. But luckily this is a game of few rules and since I had managed to bring 3 previous games that have almost no rules at all, teaching a new one from the manual was acceptable. I more or less handed my partner the victory on a silver platter when I tried to help him out so he wasn’t too frustrated. But it’s okay. One player tried to block the easy routes up and then failed to make any deals with other players and never made it to the star exhibition. He was quite frustrated by the game. Overall I think this was the wrong group to play with. They have played negotiation games before (notably lots of Bohnanza and they are the only ones still playing Catan) but this is too freestyle and doesn’t really allow for any unengaged strategies. Still: I enjoyed it but I now realize except for it being a very pretty game, I wouldn’t have needed it in my collection. Now that I have it, it stays.
I know that a lot of you here like it. And I wish I was playing at tables more regularly where Zoo Vadis was as smashing a hit as The Gang. But I am not playing at these tables. And the table that might enjoy it more is now once again fixated on Robo Rally. On a sidenote: I saw a first edition on the shelves this week-end