A few 6-player games yesterday:
- Planet Unknown
- Deep Sea Adventure: first time I’ve seen nesrly all of the treasure picked up.
- 6 nimmt: chaos, as usual
11 Likes
Nukumi Onsen Hanjouki - worker placement where you build an onsen hotel. It’s bog standard.
Manekine Collection - BEST KNIZIA EVER!!
7 Likes
I’ve played handsome - yeah the words construction is very similar. If you liked that one I think there’s a meatier version here!
3 Likes
Cthulhu Death May Die Fear of the Unknown, unfortunately we lost. But found a great support character in Vanessa – at the end of her turn you get to heal both wounds and stress equal to the number of elder signs on discarded mythos cards. Which is pretty good by itself, but if you take the next point in that skill, everyone in range 2 gets to do the same thing on their turn. Sadly, wasn’t enough to win. This was against Tsathoggua, who we hadn’t fought before. We managed two of the goals, out of three, so the big guy came out before we could damage him, never a good thing. So losing one investigator meant we lost the game. I was doing fine with my healing at the end of my turn, probably should have moved closer to the others, which may have helped.
Dorfromantik, another great game, scored 322. So generally things went well. I sense my group wants to move onto Dorfromantik: Sakura (which they bought). We’ll probably just get our final unlock and then move on.
Eternal Decks, trying Stage D again, which we had lost at last week. Things went a bit better this time and we got the win. And we used the die to select the Eternal to leave out, so we had some Eternals we hadn’t seen before. Still enjoying this a lot. Small asterisk at this one, since we accidentally included a card from another deck that wasn’t in use. Doh.
Sumida River first play. This is a climbing game where you are trying to shed all of your cards. There are four meld cards with black and red sides, and these are the melds you get to play. The deck is made up of cards from three to ten, there are three “threes”, four “fours” etc. For even valued cards, there are the same number of red and black cards. For odd cards, there are more black than red. The melds are single card, pairs, runs, 3 of a kind, 4 of a kind. You still need to play certain values. So, if an “eight” was played, then any meld that follows has to be equal to or higher than the eight. But it doesn’t matter how many you play. 3 eights could be followed by a single eight. But once a meld is played (like the pair) you can’t play that exact meld again. Each meld has a red and a black side, usually having a run on one colour and a same ranked card on the other. it can be a little frustrating, you might have a great run, but in the wrong colour. Also a single ten can really mess up a round. You get points from going out first, round is over once someone does that.
It does have an interesting mechanic – at the very start of the round you can choose to keep your hand of cards, or trade them. If you choose to trade, you add a wild card (everyone starts with two black and two red) and exchange your cards with other players who also chose to trade. And that’s the only way you can add wild cards. We all chose to be boring and didn’t trade.
Park Life: Hedgehog, first play. This was a PNP from kickstarter. And it’s pretty simple. Play a card into the trick, the lowest value in the led suit wins the trick. And you don’t need to follow suit (but you won’t win of course). If you win the trick, you take your winning card as points and then discard according to the card. So low valued cards are easy to win with, but don’t give many points. And higher value cards are less likely to win, and they have a large number of discards. What seemed to work ok was to leave a big scoring card until the end, when no one can follow suit, and you don’t care about discards. Seemed to work ok for everyone else at least. Good fun, simple to learn. We played Hedgehog, there’s also a Park Life: People edition (also have the pnp) which is a bit different (there is some sort of set collection going).
10 Likes
Had our first game of Indian Summer in what feels like forever. I had a monster turn where I got 7 nuts all at once (that fox is covering three of them and provides a nut itself), and realized I could just slam down enough squirrels to win right then and there.
13 Likes
Finally played Tigris and Euphrates, 2 Player.
Holy Crap, wars are devastating. We called the game after my kids started crying after losing the second war. He’s won two and I’d won two.
I won 18-19.
12 Likes
Yup, that’s a big reason it’s still good after all these years. Y&Y is an alternative for people who prefer things watered down.
3 Likes
Or can’t find T&E (I think it’s getting a reprint isn’t it?)
3 Likes
Yeah, I ended up ‘overpaying’ for a copy.
1 Like
Also, 18 to 19? Are you sure you scored that right? Maybe that’s a 2-player thing, but it seems very high.
(Score is the colour you have least of, with the wild colour distributed to make up deficits)
3 Likes
Yeah, we both had temples pumping out 1 colour of each a turn.
2 Likes
Ah, definitely sounds like 2-player thing. There is barely room for monuments in the 4-player game, and they are so vulnerable, building one paints a big target on your back. The game also tends to end quite quickly via the treasures condition, preventing the drip feed from monuments stacking up too much.
4 Likes
Guards of Atlantis 2
Apart from a few rules about defending modifications this game was so much easier to teach than I expected.
As Finn has an exam tomorrow morning we went for a shorter game, which meant that Hero kills were ultra important and in the final round all 4 of us were one successful attack from losing as we’d levelled up quickly.
Everyone threw haymakers which were blocked. Everyone hanging on by a thread. Kate had set Seth up with a Siren Call the turn before (after I’d made him discard the turn before that). With the final turn she was able to knock him out for us to win.
Such an awesome game, already talking about the next one
11 Likes
Wooo!! Another GOA2 fan 
4 Likes
So yesterday was an epic 9 hour game of Twilight Imperium 4th Edition with Prophecy of Kings.
The table consisted of:
Me (Titans of Ul)
Terry (Valdraith Cabal)
Justin (Clans of Saar)
Ben (The Empyrean)
Mike (Federation of Sol)
Eric (Argent Flight)
Katie (Mentak Coalition)
and Mark (Emirates of Hacan)
We started at 11am with selection of home world location around a pregenerated 8-player map, and whoever picked last (Eric) was Speaker first.
The game ended on Turn 6 when several of the players (Justin, Eric, and Terry) were so beaten and frustrated they handed me their 1-VP Supports for the Throne, allowing me to end the game.
Which brings up my issue: this is a consistent problem I have with TI. I love the game. I love it! But the endgame often seems to devolve into disappointment and anger instead of triumph.
On turn 5, a 2-VP objective was flipped that said “I have 8 ships in the same sector.” Relatively easy, despite the entire game being Token-starved for most of us (the Hacan were rolling in money due to the Cabal’s ability to immediately convert into Trade Goods). Eric was 2 points from winning, and so the game became an hour of almost everyone around the table trying to specifically stop Eric.
Which… fine… but my argument is that if you don’t have a path to victory, why are you stopping the guy who does? If you DO have a path to win, sure, go at 'er, but I wasn’t going to try and stop Eric because I had 6VP to his 8 and there was no way I was going to win. So instead I focused my turn on the best things I could to for the Titans, and as a result I found a way to score another VP.
Mike manages to smash Eric’s home system and capture a world, preventing Eric from scoring public Objectives. So we grind into Turn 6. Another 2-VP objective is flipped: control 2 worlds adjacent to two different player’s home systems. Tricky, but I have a path (both of my Neighbours have poorly defended sectors adjacent to their homes)…
Herein follows a brief summary of events: Justin sends a huge fleet to Mecatol, smashing Mike’s fleet but failing to grab the planet (Mike: “Cadia STANDS!”). Mark sends a massive fleet into Mecatol, smashing Justin’s fleet and also failing to capture Mecatol (Mike: “CADIA STANDS!”). Terry jumps through a wormhole to hit Eric’s massive fleet but barely scratches it (Eric’s upgraded Destroyers are scary-good). Eric attempts to recapture his homeworld and does, but no longer has 8 ships in one location. Katie attacks a world adjacent to Eric and fails. Justin sends the rest of his ships at Mike and is destroyed.
At this point Justin turns to me and says “Hey Marc, do you want to win?”
“I mean… I’m trying to win, yes.”
“Here are 3 Support for the Thrones. You win!”
I glance around the table and everyone besides Mike and Ben are fully checked out. Like, physically still present, but that’s it. So I accept the victory to end the game, but I don’t like it. And Mike is actually upset by it: he had a clear path to victory AND it would’ve been exceptionally difficult to stop him (not impossible, but he took Diplomacy so he would score before anyone besides Ben, and Ben didn’t have 3 VPs in the tank).
It’s just frustrating. The game, up until Turn 5, was exceptionally fun. Jostling for position, negotiations, big swings of chance but nobody was ever out. And then that last turn…
I think that will be the last time I play at 8 unless the new expansion radically changes something for big player counts. I might still play with 6 for a big full-day game, but yeah, I honestly think the sweet-spot might be 4 players? Which feels weird for TI4… but I dunno, those last few hours got grindy for people? Maybe I just need a group of players who can focus on the game for a solid 10-12 hours?
Anyway! I still had fun. But I have to “solve” that last turn problem somehow.
10 Likes
How about ending on turn 5 every time ?
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Just finished a 3-night cruise then got back on the ship to start a 4-night cruise. Our travel tradition is to do Unlocks during wait times at airports, on flights, and other dead times. Got two in during the first half of the vacation and have three more with us for the back half.
13 Likes
Last ight, 6 players, Project L with the Line Clear variant. Always great fun, and if the variant rules are a bit on the fiddly side it doesn’t break the game. Quite a close finish, too.
Then we went on to Elder Sign which was less of a success. I’d played it once before, but didn’t remember the rules, and the owner perhaps wasn’t as current as they’d thought. Frankly felt like a bit of a slog, which is a shame, but good people helped salvage the experience.
8 Likes