We had ourselves a best-of-3 Ark Nova tournament yesterday and the day before, where I not only managed to win, but I won BIG, 20 to -6 and 25 to 3! Games were super tight until the last turn or two, though. Got super lucky on some of the draws.
Finished up Canada Day with a game of Splendor Duel and a Patchwork best-of-3 tourney. Lost all games. While Splendor was tight, finishing 20-18, I got SMOKED at Patchwork.
Fun gaming!
Had a game night that included some new friends.
Flip 7 - quick, fun, and easy to learn push your luck game that I got sent for free
Sagrada - The neverending stress engine about putting yourself in situations where you need one specific die and then worrying whether youāll get it. In the final round, I did! I didnāt have a perfect window but I had all of my tool points unused, and I won by one tiebreaker point.
Pictomania - Personally I thought my drawing of a tsunami was pretty good.
No Thanks
**
Not enough googly eyes.
Close enough
Cabanga x2
Bohnanza - āI will give you this bean if you could just accept my gift!!ā - only in Bohnanza that a player bribes you to take their card for free.
Night of the Mummy - deduction game along the same family as Draculaās Feast. Still remember the designer visiting us when they did the prototype for DF. This is basically the sequel. I like how half of the characters donāt reveal their cards if you ask them for a dance
Alibis - reimplementation of Nigoichi, which is a game I was babbling about back in the day, but then the guy who owns it left the country and you can only buy this from Japan. But now it is available in English!! I bought this from UKGE and we enjoyed it. Iām surprised that Allplay turned it into a co-op
Rise and Fall - awesome game but I donāt regret selling it. It has the tempo questions and efficiency gameplay of modern Euros, but man, itās all about fighting over the map. Itās like you want the spatial tussle of Terra Mystica but without all that resource management malarkey. And the map is 3D too.
Hot Streak - Hurley was about to win and then swerved out of bounds. YOU STUPID SAUSAGE!! 
Photo below was taken moments before disaster
Ares Expedition
The Gang
I just had a very satisfying game of Regicide ā perfect damage to every royal; gold victory; and I even had convenient times to play hearts throughout the game(!). Couldnāt have gone much better, really :).
Awkward Guests!
When this first caught my eye a while ago it seemed impossible to find anywhere, but it always looked like it would be right up our street.
A few days ago I happened to look for it (after it was mentioned in passing on here) - not in any great expectation, but it turned out itās readily available at the moment (presumably theyāve just done a reprint). So I bought it.
And weāve just played it for the first time. And I was right! It couldnāt be more up our street if it moved in next door and joined the neighbourhood whatsapp group. We loved it!
Introduced 4 new people to Crokinole in the local boardgame meetup.
Also played Dixit for the first time in about 10 years.
In my Wellycon round-up I forgot Iād gotten in a couple of games of Crokinole! Good fun. Iād have played more, but my opponent had to be somewhere, and no one else was at the table. Iād get a board myself if only the ones I liked werenāt so expensive. (In the meantime I make do with the likes of Planepita.)
So last night we were supposed to have 6 players to give the new HEAT Tunnel Vision a stab, but sadly two players had to drop. With 4, HEAT works, but I have so many great games for lower player counts it felt wrong playing a game that shines with 5+ players.
So instead I got to teach everyone Cyclades! Gosh, what a bangerā¦ I played red (Athenians, if I had to guess, based on the archers) and managed to secure a victory when the blue player (Spartans based on the shields) bid extremely heavily on Athena for his 4th Philospher, and I was able to nab Ares to seize his weaker Metropolis for the win. Damn fine game.
I finally took the shrink off of Cyclades: Titans and put it in the box for next time. Woo!
Afterwards we pulled out Gravwell (2nd Edition) and had a grand olā time at my favourite silly racing game. Managed to pull of the win when Mike decided to use his special power to apply his Fuel card first, placing him directly in front of me, moving me 9 spaces towards victory instead of 9 spaces back the spiral. Took 4 turns, and we all were laughing and swearing the whole time.
Then Ben had to leave, so there were 3 of us remaining, and thus I pulled out Lost Ruins of Arnac and taught that to Mike and Justin. Accidentally set up the āSnake Templeā side (completely forgot there were two sides!), but Mike crushed us, 98 - 69 - 33. He managed to get to the top of the Research Track with both his markers (on his first game!) and pulled the lever four times for 39 points. On my last turn I managed to get up to the top as well with my Investigate (my Publish was a few spaces behind) and pull the lever once, but gosh, he took to the game like a fish to water.
Great evening of great games with great people. Far too seldom these days.
I got given FlickFleet which scratches the itch 
Dark Quarter, we finished the scenario, had some quite funny encounters.
Lord of the Rings fate of the Fellowship, first play. This is a cooperative game, based on Pandemic, which is a game Iām not really into (but I do own the Rome edition). So, you each play two characters, who share cards and tokens. Youāll have to complete four quests, finishing with destroying the One Ring in Mount Doom. Actions on your turn are: Fellowship (sharing cards with other characters at your location), Prepare (convert a resource on a card to a token), Muster (add friendly units), Attack (fight with the forces of the enemy), and Capture (convert an enemy stronghold to a friendly haven). After your main actions, you draw new cards and then draw shadow cards. New cards are mostly location cards with a resource on them, but there are also event cards and a few āSkies Darkenā cards. The Skies Darkness increases the threat level, possibly lowering the hope level (once that reaches zero youāve lost), and adds to the shadow troops.
You also draw shadow cards, which either add enemy units (including Nazgul) or move existing troops. Each location on the board has pathways with arrows between them. The shadow units move along these until they get to the location at the end. This is really cool, you feel like the forces of evil are gathering and taking over the land. Enemy units donāt affect your heroes, or even stop them from progressing. But they will attack your havens, turning them into enemy strongholds and lowering your hope.
It was a long game, something like 5 hours (with coffee and lunch breaks). But it never felt like a long game,we were fully engaged. A few people have complained that the map is too crowded, and I can see that. It can be difficult to see a location when it might have player characters, friendly units, and shadow troops. And the Nazgul, although they have stands so they are raised up over the map. The various troops are pretty small, but the Nazgul look very cool (imo).
In the end we completed three out of four objectives, so just had to destroy the Ring. We didnāt even make it to Mount Doom. Frodo needed five rings to complete the objective, and we only got to four. Plus you need stealth cards/tokens to be able to even get to Mount Doom (or go the long way around). Need to plan that a bit better next time ā playing Frodo is probably the most important character. Some cards specifically target Frodo, and you need to distract him from the Eye of Sauron.
So, was it fun? Hell yeah! Hopefully we can shave a bit of time off on the next game. Thereās plenty of replayability as well ā there are 13 characters and 24 objective cards. Oh, and it has a cool dice tower, with itās own instruction book on how to put it together as well as how to store it. You just have to take the base off to store it. We probably got a few rules wrong, itās a lot to take in.
Skull Queen, second game of this, itās a great trick taker.
Were copies of Fate of the Fellowship available at a con or something? Everything I see says it will release in Aug/Sept.
So last night, my partner and I were supposed to finish our second Mass Effect campaign. Andy and I have done one run through already (itās only 5 missions long), and we have played 2 missions already with Mike and Katie and were hoping to finish off the run. Sadly, Katie came down with a migraine, so she had to wave off, and so I invited Justin over and we played Lost Ruins of Arnac again.
This time the three of us (Mike, Justin, and I) used the Expedition leaders with the regular side of the board, and it was much, much closer. Final scores saw me with 82, Mike with 81, and Justin with 57.
The two of them both concluded that rushing down the Research track is the āonlyā viable strategy. Iāmā¦ not sure? But Mike did get to the temple and earn 28 points that way, and I only got 11 (I managed to get into the temple once, Mike did three times), but then I earned more points for Publishing, Idols, Guardians, and cards than Mike. I had to beat him in every category except the Research track, and only won by a single point.
Maybe theyāre right? Maybe there is only one strategy. I donāt think thatās right, it doesnāt feel right, but Iām not super good at these kinds of games (I just enjoy them a lot). Iāll have to give it a few more whacks before Iām willing to say itās āResearch Track or Loseā.
Anyway, after that we pulled out Dune Imperium: Uprising, and again I was impressed by how much I like the game. Mike pulled out to a very early lead but then sorta waffled around turn 4 and 5, letting Justin and I to catch upā¦ but not quite enough when he lurched across the finish line with one last titanic battle. He was playing Gurney Hallack, Justin playedā¦ somebody I donāt know, and I tried Muaādib who was, honestly, kinda underwhelmingā¦ but that was on me, I shouldāve leaned into his Fremen-ness instead of trying to go for Emperor Alliance for laughs. Final scores were 11 - 9 - 9. Great game.
Also, in case this helps anyone else: the army men from a copy of Risk 2210 are exactly the right size and colour to replace the wooden cubes in a copy of Dune Imperium (and if youāre feeling super-extra, you can use the Commander pieces instead of your Agents). Unfortunately, there arenāt quite enough pieces in one copy of Risk 2210 to do both Dune Imperium and Dune Imperium: Uprising (each needs 12 cube-replacements, and Risk 2210 only comes with 20 total regular troops per colour), but if you want an upgrade, itās a nice option, especially if you find a used copy at a thrift store.
Two game days in a row! Lovely.
It was certainly on sale at Wellycon here in NZ, so some amount of stock is floating around for sure. I imagine Gencon will be well-stocked with it!
It seems that Australia were one of the first to stock it, lots of stores with stock (I even heard of gamers in the US importing it).
Played Lords of Vegas 2 player. Let my son win by selling him the two lots he needed for a 6 point casino. I wanted to see if I could keep the lead.
Root - 3 newbies and 2 experienced players. The newbies got the base factions: Mice, Cats, and Vagabond. The other 2 played Corvid Consipracy (the Crows) and Underground Duchy (the Moles). I played as the Crows
The Crows felt like Mice but with a faster tempo. I can plant plots all over the map and triggers them fast in a triangular scoring manner, every time I activate a plot. So my first plot flipped will score 1 VP. Then, my 2nd will score 2 VP. and so on. The plots remain on the map so you have to squash them like the Allianceās sympathy tokens. But with no penalties. The plots can be exposed and removed by guessing it correctly.
Really had a fun time, but Cthulhu Wars is the better game.
Hot Streak - is there anything else to say?
Link City - played it a few times. Im on the point where Im asking āwhats the point of playing this game?ā. Itās your standard filler that will be forgotten in a few months time.
Charms - Shinzawa trick taker. Very tricky to play since you can only change number or suit as you play tricks.
Fate of the Fellowship - 2 players. We did it. Played standard scenario with 5 Skies Darkens (aka the Outbreak cards from Pandemic) and 4 Objectives. So far our highest is Heroic (5 cards and 5 objrctives)
En Garde - 2 player Knizia and a very clever one.
Hot Streak - Best. Game. Ever.
Challengers: Beach Cup - I requested this prior to the games session. I had the special ability where my starter cards have a +1 when attacking.
Someone asked who this game is for since itās too complicated for non-gamers but too light for gamers and it seems to be a party game for hobbyists.
