Carnegie lives rent-free in my brain, I’ll admit. I played it twice solo and twice, I think, via BGA with @Acacia. I still think about it from time to time.
But I also think about what I wrote about it:
4 Likes
Just like PR, I think it’s a cool game. And just like PR, it has Left-Right Binding. But the flow is pretty good and the engine building and everything else is pretty cool too.
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Skull Queen - nope. Got nothing to do with Skull King. It’s merely the use of branding from Schmidt, i feel. It’s by Stefan Dorra and it’s a trick taker (I swear I’m nearly done with this genre. Promise!)
And it’s a great first play! Still uses the trick taking mechanism with nothing much changed. There’s custom cards, but not egregious like Skull King. That game is just absolute nonsense.
Instead, the game has this very clever scoring system on you decide on how to place your pirates on the plank and they advance according to whether you play the highest or lowest of that suit. It melts my mind and players can pull tricks (hah!) in this game.
I’m glad to have acquired this.
CV - a game about Life. You draft these childhood cards which will be your starter cards on this card tableau building game. The gameplay itself is milquetoast bog-standard matching up symbols and making sets but the storytelling is zany and funny. I’m… enjoying it???
It fits in the same category as the Networks where you have this game that looks ands feel like a mass market game and it’s enjoyable enough. My Hipsterism has gone full circle!! What’s next? I’ll play Catan and think it’s awesome?
Xylotar - amazing amazing amazing. It’s not just a trick taker - it’s a deduction game too
Kobayakawa - Oink game and it’s a pretty fun bluffing game. Nothing extraordinary, but it works. It has flaws on how turn order works and the fact that we only get one turn before we start betting. But eh.
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I didn’t know Xylotar but that theme alone would make me play it.
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Having played it a lot, I heartily disagree. But each to their own!
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I thought the whole point of Skull King was that the special cards were nonsense, otherwise it would be no fun 
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Depends on which cards I suppose - are they really nonsense if you’re still trying to work out the odds of someone playing a pirate before you do, or if you play the Skull King, someone will have the mermaid? Yes its fun, but you’re still thinking.
1 Like
Busted out Return to the Dark Tower tonight, a co-op game about defeating some big bad guy living in the titular tower. It’s been a couple years since we last played, but it didn’t take too long to get back into it. It helps that all the overall game management is done through an app. There are two expansions that cannot be combined, which annoys me. We played the Covenant expansion, which adds monuments you can build for bonuses.
Our overall goal was to move caravans around the board (by going through dungeons), while not getting overrun by bad guys and evil skulls. My husband exploited the monuments and his character powers to keep the board pretty well managed, defeating enemies and keeping the evil skulls from building up. His power exploits weren’t much use doing dungeons to move the caravans, though, so that’s like 90% of what I did in the game. It was a nice division of the needed activities that let us win while only feeling a little pressure maybe once or twice.
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No cyclones this weekend, so was able to get out and play some games.
Wrath of Fire Mountain, first play. Designed by Eric Lang and Phil Walker-Harding, this is a competitive area control game. You each have a tribe of people, and on your turn you roll the custom dice to see what actions you can do. Depending on the dice, you can put your people onto the board at specific locations, place your guys on the a fore mentioned Fire Mountain, move guys around, and collect dinosaur eggs, which can be traded in to give you your own pet dinosaur which has a special ability and can also move around like one of your tribe. When you add guys to the fire mountain, you can choose to move the row or column that its in, which causes one tile to wrap around to the other end, hopefully thwarting other players and helping yourself. When the fire mountain is full of people, you score each area. Areas are worth the number of tiles that are connected, and each of your guys is worth a point. It’s fairly simple, easy to learn, and looks great (particularly the dinosaurs).
Bastion, an older game where you are all wizards, collecting mana pieces in order to destroy the deck of monsters. It seems easy enough at the beginning, but the enemies start to mount up, until they overrun the board and you lose. We had some confusion, because there seems to be some rules differences between my copy (from Zman) and other versions. We eventually lost with only four enemies left on the board.
Dog Tag Trick, first play. This is a trick taking game where you are dog trainers competing in various events. The lead player has the option of playing one or two cards. Playing two cards is the main event, and a single card is a sub event (for less points). If you play two cards they must be one of three types: High Five Pair (play two cards that add up to a multiple of five, higher cards win), Low Set Pair (play two cards of the same value, lower cards win), and Low Run Pair (a sequence of values, lower values win). Once someone has played to the main event, each other player must play the same format to be eligible for points. The main event scores three points for the winner (and five in the last trick), second place gets one point. And winning a sub event is worth one point for the winner, which can be useful if you know you’re not scoring in the main event. One player didn’t enjoy it much, she always seemed to have low cards when she needed high, and vice versa. And the winner of the main event leads the next trick, so they can choose any of the main event types. I enjoyed it (ok, I won).
Bid Coin, first play. Another trick taking game, this time we are investors holding crypto assets. It’s a fairly standard trick taking game, but you all start with bid coin cards numbered 1,2,3,5 and 7. This represent your bid for the number of tricks you will win. So everyone starts at zero, and whenever you win a trick you have to use the coins cards to increase your bid. The idea of the game is to get rid of your bid coin cards. If you match your bid, you get to discard those cards. I usually enjoy trick taking games where you have to successfully bid for the tricks you are going to win. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy this one, but there’s no reward for matching a low bid. I guess that’s the fun bit, maybe pushing your luck to win more tricks. I missed my bid in two out of the three rounds. And they were really low bids too. One player just had a bumload of high cards and trump cards and just smashed us.
Here to Slay, first play. This is a very competitive game, with a lot of take that. You draw cards, which can be heroes, magic, or item cards. The object of the game is to either have a party of all the possible types (wizard, warrior etc), or beat three monsters. Each monster needs to have a party of the correct types, and then you roll dice to defeat it. Other players can screw with you by playing a modifier card which increases or decreases your roll. And you have challenge cards as well, so someone can challenge whatever card you just played. It’s a lot of take that, which I can see some people would be into, but it’s not us.
Nova Luna, one of our favourite abstract games. Pretty easy game to teach and learn. You move your piece around the board, taking coloured tiles which you place in your area. Match the symbols to place your pieces, get rid of them all and you win! I got off to a pretty bad start, was way behind. But I managed the win, so that was great. Might have gotten a little lucky on the last placement, got just the tiles I needed.
My friends received their kickstarter copy of The Dark Quarter, which sounded cool. Unfortunately, even tho the kickstarter was delayed, they still haven’t finished the app, so there’s no way to play the game.
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To my relief, I finally lost a game of The Last Lighthouse! :). (Followed by a win.)
Then two games of Hispania in which things went varying degrees of pear-shaped. In the first game I ended every single round with every revolt token on the board (until round 4 when I lost). The second game got off to a good start, but I was losing ground each round, until it all came crashing to a halt at the half-way mark. I’m playing on the hardest difficulty settings, and it’s a challenge for sure. Good stuff.
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I’m waiting on the dark quarter to be delivered but with no app yet it’s all a bit redundant. Probably the last time I go for an app tied game.
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Yeah, it’s not a good case for app driven games. Although it would take some time to do, with the narration and everything. Which is no excuse.
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4-player session with old friends as one of them was ill. Unfortunately didn’t know that until just before, or I could’ve got a first play of Damask in. Instead we broke out some old favourites.
Pandemic: Fall of Rome: Got a bit scuppered by Revolt cards consistently coming out early, but managed to scrape a win just before the draw deck ran out. Last two turns added two more alliances and I used my Vestalis ability to grab an event card that luckily allowed me to remove the last blue cube from the board.
Cockroach Poker: Usual silliness.
Azul: I was ahead for most of the game, but the last round didn’t fall my way and I ended up in 2nd place by about 5 points.
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Played Crokinole with my partner. Instant laughing, shouting and swearing. This is me doing pretty well right up to the point where she sinks a goddamn 20.
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Played our first 2 player game of rivers of gold. It’s good, light enough with some random effects but enough control that you’re not left frustrated. Has that classic board game feel which I can’t quite explain.
Only criticism is it ended very abruptly. Never really experienced a game that ended so abruptly that we both were desperate for 2/3 more turns. Might be that I had left my two ships too close to the end of the river that I couldn’t avoid ending the game but still felt very weird. On the plus side it will definitely get played again as we both want more turns damn it!
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Managed to get Descent Legends of the Dark on the table for the first time in a year! Woo!
Played the first two scenarios with 2 new players (our usual co-op group), and it went over very well. The 3D terrain is a treat, and the mechanics are simple and elegant, especially when compared to the games we’ve been playing recently (Oathsworn and then Divinity).
Also it helps that I did a really good job painting the minis.
Anyway, it was nice to revisit, and we’ll now work our way through the campaign again! Last time my partner and I almost finished… this time we’ll actually get 'er done.
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After what seems like ages - around three months - this weekend I finally got some gaming time in, trying out two recent purchases.
Saturday saw a long awaited first game of Brass Birmingham, playing the shortened introductory game solo against the Mautoma. I wasn’t too worried about the scoring and was just trying to get a feel of the rules, which I’m sure I got a few wrong, but it was a great evening. I can see why it’s so popular and respected: a lovely experience and challenging puzzle.
Sunday followed with a first game of Imperium Classics, testing the rules with a two-hander featuring the Macedonians against the Persians. A more tricky learning process but I seemed to get the hang of it, until remembering the rule about ending the game when the Unrest cards run out. Another great game and many more options to try out with the solo game too, before considering getting one of the other sets.
With luck I’ll get more gaming in each weekend now so can finally work through my unplayed games and expansions before summer arrives.
12 Likes
Silent Victory – U.S. Submarines in the Pacific, 1941-45
Last week, in a fit of spring cleaning, I suppose, I managed to clean off my solo gaming table. I was eyeballing Spirit Island and Unmatched: Tales to Amaze as likely candidates to pull out on the newly cleaned table, but instead my hand, surprising us both, pulled Silent Victory from the shelf.
I went with it, mostly because I figured it was my hand, so I probably ought to pretend I’m cool with whatever it does. And also because I remembered I started a game last year but never finished it.
I often say I don’t like war games with modern settings; and I, for the most part, don’t. But Silent Victory isn’t a war game- it’s a solo role-playing game where you take the role of the captain (and crew, really) of a World War II submarine.
This game is in the series that started with The Hunters: German U-Boats at War, 1939-43, a.k.a. “The Hunters” series. I own The Hunters and also Beneath the Med: Regia Marina at Sea 1940-43.
Tambor Class Triton
My bold submarine Lieutenant Commander took command of the Tambor Class submarine Triton in December of 1941.
The first patrol was mostly quiet, but was declared a success when the Triton encounted and sank the warship Kuretake. After the attack on the Kuretake, the Triton took on some damage to her hull from the ensuing depth charges from the Japanese fleet.
After refit and repairs, the Triton’s second patrol was equally quiet, encountering only a passenger ship, which was sunk near the Marianas.
The third patrol became a key moment for the Triton and her crew, encountering and sinking the cruiser Ōi.
On the fourth and final patrol of the Triton, setting out in October of 1942, she tank the tanker Tokyo Maru and then was successfully depth charged after sinking the destroyer Kishinami.
Despite lasting less than a year in the service of the US Navy, the game took around 3 hours to play. A lot of this was due to the fact that Silent Victory has a lot more sub-vs-warship action than the other game in the series that I’ve played, The Hunters. Three of the six targets I encountered over 4 patrols were warships; if I hadn’t attacked these, my patrols would have been unsuccessful- but attacking a warship is very dangerous and the evade/escape efforts after each attack could be quite time-consuming.
I had a great time with Silent Victory. I’ll probably get it out again soon and try for a “full” career. But there are some other things I want to get on my table first.
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I find this is a trademark of a well-made game with a variable/sudden-death end condition. Whether it is Great Western Trail, New Frontiers, or Beyond the Sun. The first couple of plays, the game feels like it ends at a very wrong moment (could be too soon or too late). As you get better, the game naturally starts to end at just the right time.
If it ends just right the first time, there likely isn’t a learning curve or perhaps you’ll grow out of the sweet spot rather than into it!
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I’ve suddenly starting playing the Le Havre app nightly because I can’t stop. Really good, and also the games feel quite different despite the mostly static card set.
The complaint is that the AI plays pretty destructively, taking a dozen loans and exclusively building buildings. It’s not a terrible strategy, as loans aren’t super punishing (and it leaves me lots of room to feed my own workers) but it’s annoying to have the buildings fly off the proposal pile before I can build my own pile. Regardless, a lot of fun here.
6 Likes