Is Come Sail Away any good? I’ve always liked the aesthetic of Saashi and Saashi but found the games middling.
Villagers was so bland that the best parts were the wooden coins.
The youngest and I took Hot Streak for a spin. 2 player is the worst player count for these sorts of games and the card distro meant that the we both won too much money and went crazy. However he declared it really funny.
If you don’t mind these “take-and-make” games, it’s pretty and charming. The gameplay is like those MPS where your tableau keeps getting tighter and tighter as you add in more passengers. You’re not really making long term decisions either because it’s a bloody drafting game.
Thanks. In the “play but don’t buy” bucket.
Thanks. I disliked Villagers a lot and I think I remember SUSD liking Moon quite a bit in their video of it? So it appeared on my radar… despite being heighly skeptical after Villagers turned out sooo boring.
I’ve played Villagers only once, and it didn’t make me want to own it, but I don’t recall having a terrible time.
…ah… no, I’m thinking of Village. I’ve never played Villagers.
I bought Villagers because I thought it looked fun. It was ok, but not worth keeping, and I happily sold it on.
Village is great. I like it a lot.
Village is a fun modern Euro. One of the good ones. Timing on when to end the game and when to take time to kill off your family members is an understated lever in the game.
An example of board games not teaching valuable life skills.
But I think death-as-a-resource is so interesting in this game, and very not-obvious to new players
Yeah, I’m always tempted by the Big Box, until I realise it’s a Big Box.
It’s a Very Big Indeed Box!
But despite that, I’m glad I got it.
Speak for yourself! We’re always having to choose which grandparent must die because we wanted a cow or a shiny new cart.
So last night I managed to get Game of Thrones 2nd Edition to the table for the first time.
I’d played the 1st edition about a dozen times, and at least a few of those with all the big box expansions, but this was my first time actually putting 2nd edition on the table.
We had 5 players (Starks, Lannisters, Tyrells, Greyjoys, and Baratheon), and the early game was dominated by the other players earning buckets of Power (the in-game currency) while I struggled mightily to gain any. You’d think the Tyrell lands would be covered in Power, but no.
For the majority of the game I sparred with the Baratheons, initially over Kings Landing (they took it turn 1, I took it turn 2, held it for 2 turns before the Baratheons took it back, and then they held it the rest of the game), and then through the southern reaches of Westeros, me slowly moving in from the west and Baratheon striking Sunspear and then moving towards me.
It was pretty close for the most part, although the Stark player (it was his first game) really struggled, losing Winterfell on Turn 5 to the Greyjoys and eventually taking it back, but at the cost of most of their southern holdings.
Of note that I don’t think there was a single instance of anyone supporting ANY other player during a combat. Not once. Lots of supporting yourself, but there was a lot of recruiting early in the game and then a long stretch without additional troops, making it hard to wage any wars by Turn 5 (especially for the Tyrells, who were lowest on the King’s Court, meaning they couldn’t use any Star orders, which meant no Mustering…).
On turn 10 the game ended with the Greyjoys on 6 points and victorious. I had a run at the win, but the Baratheon’s Valyrian Steel and slightly higher position on the Fiefdom track meant I couldn’t beat them where I needed (although I came close).
Final scores were
Greyjoy: 6
Lannister: 5
Tyrell: 5
Baratheon: 4
Stark: 2
A very good game, even if it took a tiny bit longer than I would’ve liked.
Next time we’re taking the Lannisters out… they’re just in a really weak position, even with the extra navy from the errata… and maybe we’ll use the Mother of Dragons expansion (although I don’t think I want to play wtih a full player count… it was long with 5!).
Chaos of the Old World - 4 players full house. And imo, this is the best Lang. Better than Blood Rage which is so linear and rather uninteresting. Better than Ankh, which is Left-Right Binding Problem the board game. Oh you rushed to sit on the left of the newbie? And then destroy them? You must be proud of yourself. Rising Sun - okay this one is actually a bit decent.
But this? I can see where Cthulhu Wars get its traits from. Very simple yet highly engaging (and I suspect - pretty deep game). It’s better than the others. In this hobby, it’s usually time that is the main bottleneck, so you might be paying OOP price for this, but it’s so worth it.
I won’t be keeping it though… Cthulhu Wars is just so ugh, too good. CW is a nice evolution from Chaos.
And we ended the session without a single game of Hot Streak 
HAHAHAHA BRUH YOU THOUGHT…
Played flip 7 it’s very much uno meets pontoon. The luck is pretty wild in the game so 1st place over the rounds swings about the place. Kids seemed to like it.
Dark Quarter, bit of a slog, we all had a go at one location, and failed each time.
War Story: Occupied France, we did ok (sort of). Completed two (out of three) objectives, but two of our team died. Those pesky Germans!
Sausage Sizzle!, first play. A simple enough game of rolling dice. You have four animal dice and four numbered dice (which have the sausage sizzle face). You roll your dice, then choose at least one die to keep, re-rolling the rest. At the end of your turn you score for one animal type, multiplied by the lowest value on your dice. So, if you roll two crocodiles, and your lowest die is a three, you’ll score six. Pretty easy to play. Normally the sausage sizzle die is worth a measly one point, but if you roll four of them they are worth a whopping seven points! Quick, easy filler.
Skull Queen, first play. Interesting trick taker, with some new (at least to me) features. Each player get a plank, which can be arranged from one thru eight, or the other way around (eight to one). You have four crew tokens, and you’ll score each of them depending on where they end up on your plank. And you can start your guys anywhere you like. Each time you win a trick, that coloured token moves up, and if you have the lowest card, you’ll move back one. And if you fall off the end, well that’s too bad, no points for you.
Also, any single cards (where there is only one card of that colour) are kept on the table for future tricks. As soon as you get more than one card of a colour, it scores. There’s also a couple of special cards, which can cause people to move twice up or down, that’s a good one to play on other people. All good fun, and an interesting puzzle to figure out. Things can go very wrong in the last plays of a round.
No Loose Ends, first play. Another trick taker. You start with a round of bidding, where you can play a card that needs to be covered for points. if you play a blue 10, for example, then if you win a trick with a blue card or a 10 of anything, you can cover that card up (the theme is that you are covering evidence). At the end of the round you’ll get points for any cards you’ve covered, but negative points for card you didn’t cover (or extra tricks that you’ve won). And you get a bonus if you manage to cover all your cards and didn’t win any extra tricks. You can also bid no tricks at the start, but no one tried that.
I had a couple of games each of new arrivals A Gentle Rain and Floriferous and then a game of Village Green for comparison.
A Gentle Rain is slightly more “activity” than “game”, but you can strategise a little and you can certainly push your luck by confining your options and hoping to turn up the perfect tile to fill the gap. The theme is visiting a lake on a rainy day, looking for lilies which only bloom in the rain. The stack of face-down tiles represents the rainfall (there are little shiny water splash designs on the backs!). Each turn you simply draw and place a tile so that its four sides are a match for all adjacent tiles, and any time you have a 2x2 block of tiles you get to place a token in the middle of them (if you have a matching token left). The aim of the game is to place all of your tokens, and the game ends when you achieve that or when the rain stops (i.e. the stack of tiles runs out). Your score is the number of tokens you placed + the number of tiles left in the stack (if any). Each turn is just drawing a tile, scanning for the best place to put it, and maybe placing a token. It’s intended to be that light, though – a thing to occupy the mind in a relaxing way (the instructions even start with a breathing exercise). It’s a very small box with lovely components and it fills a niche. I’ll be keeping it.
Hot Streak x 4 (mainly two player, one three player)
This game has fired my previous favourite racing/betting game (Camel (C)up). Three player was stacked with Hurley, Dangler and Mum getting into the same lane and piling up taking everyone but Mum out. Madness
I too have placed Camel Cup in the sell pile. Anyone wants it? It has the Super Cup expansion
Challengers: Beach Cup - a rather substantial party game that captures the CCG tournament vibes (minus the nerd stink) right in your BG club, but without the experience needed to play Magic or Pokemon.
Not as outrageous as Hot Streak but we were all having a good time bashing our decks together. We had two Magic Bois in our game. Alas, their experience with MTG didnt carry them to victory. Instead I won with my base-power focused deck. “Zeppelin, m*********er!”
Minecart Town - a game of resouce management and logistics. The former doesn’t really excite me, since it’s been done to death - but combining it with railroad logistics of moving goods from A to B was the right amount of MPS angst. The game is snappy as well and it comes in a nice compact box.
The Great Zimbabwe - 3 players. I took up Engai (+2 cattle income each turn). B took Shadipinyi (drunk god who gets first dibs of the cattle during auction), and C took Tsui-Goab (can use multiple same goods when upgrading)
Smashing game. This is literally in my Top 3 board games ever
Broke out Everdell (with Bellfaire and Newleaf, of course) for a ‘‘quick’’ best-of-3 tournament yesterday. Maryse won it 2 games to 1, but they were all tight as hell. Super, super fun.
We haven’t played games as much so far this year as previous years, since Maryse is feeling A LOT better, pretty much back to normal, so we’ll more often go out to do stuff, either together opr separately rather than be stuck inside.
Games lose out a bit, but I don’t think they mind. It’S for a good cause.
Got a game of Compile in this weekend, which was our fifth in total. I’m still really enjoying the mechanic of “middle text resolves every time a card is uncovered or flipped face-up”, which feels like it provides several opportunities every game to do something clever with your own cards or set traps for your opponent.
We also played a game of Railroad Ink with the Forest dice. I usually have the upper hand with these dice, but the game finished 101 points each and I lost on the tie-breaker of having made more errors.
In addition, I release that I haven’t posted about our most recent Marvel Champions plays, which was a run through the three scenario MojoMania mini campaign with Shadowcat and Phoenix. It’s clear the designers had a lot of fun with this one: there are quite a few silly cards poking fun at TV and film. All three scenarios offered a good level of challenge, and the second one took us a couple of tries to beat.
