Two @lalunaverde favourites this week
Wednesday night was Fresh Fish
Which I really enjoyed, but wasn’t a huge hit at the table, although we did play it twice
Last night was Hot Streak
Stupid Dangle kept running off the track.
This is finally the race/ betting game that makes people stand up and shout. It’s brilliant
Forgot to take pictures, but got to put an old 2007 classic on the table last night… Starcraft the Board Game!
I played it once in 2009 or so, and just like then this didn’t include the expansion. For those unfamiliar, it’s a solid design by FFG back when they made great games, but a lot of the mechanics and elements were then folded into games that are just kinda… better. The closest relative is Forbidden Stars, but the combat in Starcraft is… well, it’s less refined, IMO, but not much slower. But the order of operations for combat is very fiddly an the iconography doesn’t quite work.
Anyway. I played one of the two Terran factions (Jim Rayner’s forces, or “The Good Guys”), Mike played the other Terrans (Arcturus Mensk), Justin played Tassadar’s Protoss, and Matthew played The Queen of Blades Zerg.
I managed to get a relatively secure section of the universe, and my first event card allowed me to rearrange one of the Z-axis portals to basically give me 2 completely uncontested worlds and only 1 chokepoint where people could strike at me. I managed to build my Spaceport pretty quickly and churn out all three Wraiths, and an early fight with the Zerg went my way, allowing me a very secure defensive and launching position.
The game took a while to teach, specifically because the combat system is archaic (“Take all the models from the region on the planet you’re fighting. Whoever is attacking lines them up into skirmish lines with a front line unit that is fighting and support units behind it. Then play cards from your hand to each unit in the fight, with only cards marked by a + letting you support the front line units and the image on the card showing what units they buff, but then the Attack and Health of each unit is determined by the card you play for that specific front line unit, which are the only units at threat, but some units can’t attack air, and then there’s Splash Damage…”). But I won very early into Stage 3 (of 3) when I captured and held 6 resource zones, taking victory from the Protoss who had some high VP-generating regions.
Oh, each faction has its own unique victory condition that triggers in Stage 3: Rayner needs to hold 6 resource-producing zones, Tassadar needs to have more regions than any other player, Karrigan needs to hold 3 VP-generating zones, and Mensk needs to hold every zone on two different worlds. The catch is that most of those are really easy if you don’t specifically move to counter them, so I stumbled into a victory.
All in all, it was good, but Forbidden Stars is better, and maybe Cry Havoc is better. I certainly like Cry Havoc’s combat a LOT better… but it was neat, and surprisingly thematic. And Mike found his copy (the one we played) for $75 in a store during a sale. He basically grabbed it, paid, and ran to his car before the owner realized what he had.
After that we played a very short and silly game of Turbo Kidz, which is… weird. Good but weird.
And then Mike and I tackled a 2-player game of Twilight Inscription which, honestly, continues to impress. I can’t wait for the expansion content coming in the new Twilight Imperium 4th Edition Thunder’s Edge expansion! WOO!
Vantage, our third game. we failed our mission, had to
find two crystals. There were hints that they could be found in skeletons, and I saw a skeleton on my location, but couldn’t move to it. I thought it was either north or west, so ended up doing both, no skeletons. We did accomplish our destiny card, which ended the game. One bit that was interesting was a card that gave us a web page where other players had left messages about what could be found from that location. I thought it was a cool idea.
Dogs of War, one of my favourite games. Was just not my day to shine, lost badly.
Marshmallow Test, a pretty cool trick taker where you are out if you win a certain number of tricks (3 for a 4p game). When you go out you’ll get points equal to the number of tricks the other players have won. So you need to time it for maximum point. And if you’re the last player remaining, you get no points, but you do get to set the trump suit for the next round. It was a close finish, we all had from 16 to 18 points (the target is 20). So all the player on 18 had to do was wait until at least two points were there, and then go out, which they successfully did.
9 Lives, always good.
Quashars, another trick taker where you need to make a bid for how many conditions you will win, like winning a trick with an odd number, or winning tricks in a row. It’s a bit tricky, harder than just bidding on the number of tricks you’ll win.
Following my recent success in playing my ‘rare’ solos, I took out my copy of Ark Nova for the first time since acquiring the water expansion. Oopsie.
It was good fun. Left it on the table for another game (as an aside I’ve also played that 2nd game of Nusfjord but not during lunchbreak). I like the new tiny changes of the expansion like the improved action cards and new university but I have yet to build a zoo with an aquarium. Not enough water animals popped up.
Another game I had not put on the real table in a good while was Trailblazers:
And finally I broke my losing streak of Terraforming Mars solos with the weirdest of games.
I played as the Mining Guild on Elysium and I swear I have never won with the Mining Guild before. It’s usually quite useless to produce lots of Steel. I never get enough building cards. But I got some titanium production from my prelude cards and for some reason started out with science tags early. For the first 4 rounds I didn’t terraform a thing. It was a bit scary. But once my science was all built up, I was drawing so many cards… that in the end “I got lucky” (nope the science got lucky for me) and I drew just the card that gave me 4 plants and 4 bacteria that allowed me to not have to buy a level of oxygen. I got all the asteroids to smash into lakes that I needed and was able to use the cheaper standard projects from another science card to raise the temperature.
PS my card drawing power can be seen in the deck having only 147 cards remaining. I think I saw 30 or so more cards than in a normal game.
I play Terraforming Mars solo a lot on BGA to kill time, always with prelude.
I was going to say I usually win, but I think I’ve lost the last 3. I’ve hit a ceiling with scores - 75-85 with the occasional higher one. Whenever I decide to go for a high score I lose!
I noticed that due to the nature of the automated scoring, I forgot a few things about how cities score. I think my highest scoring game ever was some time ago with Ecoline or the city building corp probably. Something around 99 points. I think I have yet to crack the 100 in a solo.
I also always play with prelude.
On the app I sometimes add Venus Next. But currently I am trying to get back to winning without it. It’s even more difficult with Venus–unless you draw some really nice floater cards.
I tend to gravitate to the power of Titanium. Except that the power of this is an illusion. I recently lost a game with Saturn Systems by just 2 steps of temperature because I had invested too much in Titanium production and too little in actual terraforming by the end. It just didn’t scale and I didn’t get the cards I needed to profit off of my production. Turns out flexible builds are … more flexible because you never know what cards you will have and if you have to rely on standard projects you better be rich. (I also lost badly with Credicor lately, trying just that.)
There are so many different strategies to try that even losing does not get boring. And my hope only ever dies on the last turn because sometimes, like today, you can turn around everything on turn 11 and 12.
edit: another game. Tharsis Republic. Lots of steel. Lots of cities. And all the science. 103 points has to be my solo highscore.
Istanbul + Mocha & Baksheesh + Letters & Seals - Mega Istanbul as usual. I have to push two newbies in to the deep end (Istanbul standards). The feedback was great and pretty much the same as mine: a lot of micro rules, but the game itself is straightforward, snappy, and have good flow. We were slow at 5. I should have brought my whip. Would have sped up the game.
Concordia + Salsa - 4 player with the Byzantium map. MPS Euro but it was nice. The experience would have been nicer if I didn’t played it with one player. Really made the experience bad.
Hot Streak
Cant beat a #RiskySausage
Everyone else in shambles.
Castles of Tuscany - 2 players and it went for 25 mins ish?? I prefer Burgundy
Rumble Nation
Nippon
Manekinecollection
Yesterday’s games:
Arcs unfortunately the owner is just too damn slow. I think I might like it a lot more if that weren’t the case. It was a relief when someone won early (end of round 3 of 5).
Hamsterrolle or something. Silly balancing game, I don’t hate it.
Flip 7 uh, it’s a game, I guess?
Race for the Galaxy great as always
Race for the Galaxy with the alien orb exploration despite my love for this, it was too much bolted on for everyone else, as usual.
Regicide Legacy mission 2.
I haven’t had a lot of time to play anything in the past couple of weeks, but today I went through the rewards for previously winning the first mission, and then I played through the second mission (which meant I learned how a particular card, which I’d seen in my 4p game of this same mission at Wellycon, works in solo mode).
Thus far the Legacy elements are all easily manageable without making the intended permanent changes to the components (albeit I’m only two missions in). It’s a bit of added faff though, writing things down on paper, and cutting out things to slip into card sleeves, so I might have spent more time on the two “between missions” phases than I did on mission 2 itself (which thankfully went smoothly for me, meaning I’m two for two at this early stage).
The rewards for mission 2 were fun and thematic, and hopefully they’re going to show their worth sooner rather than later, because I then opened up the box for mission 3 and read through the set-up, and YIKES… I am not confident about getting through this one unscathed!
(“That escalated quickly”, as they say.)
My son keeps asking to play the orb, but I always forget to read the rules beforehand. Maybe I’ll bring it out
Just be aware, it does bolt a whole extra game onto the explore phase, and it will double the playtime and lead to a lot of “can I place this card this way?” headscratching. I think all that gets better with repeat plays, but I’ve yet to find anyone interested in it.
Gave Trio a shot with our buddy Yvan, good fun, very light palate-cleanse. Also showed him The Game before settling into our usual games of TTR: R&S. The last one was particularly brutal as we were all playing in the same area.
Meanwhile, Maryse and I started the campaign in Everdell Duo. Oooooooh, we’re gonna have some fun here!
Some dry people (like me) will suggest open info if everyone is cool. But usually, people prefer closed, which I understand.
I now do open info on Modern Art (because, apparently, people just don’t know how to play the damn game properly) and also the statues in Samurai are also open info
The owner of Popcorn suggested that we can always look at our bag to see how many meeples we have and what colour, despite the fact that the rulebook explicitly forbids it. He called it a “dumb rule” and I completely agree with him
EDIT: In fact, you see all these dumb “typos” on these sort of games like Knizia’s. I don’t know why they don’t fix these “typos” and rules goof when they are publishing these rules
- Concordia I was thwarted by someone else buying the Mason card so I got very few points for my 5 brick cities.
That sucks! And you cannot pivot to Jupiter because those are also useless!
I don’t think it would break Quacks of Quedlinburg either, though it is explicitly forbidden there.
The way I/ we play Modern Art is to try to make each other laugh as much as possible.
I don’t think its what Reiner intended, but I’ve tried playing it straight and I can’t.
I absolutely adore it, but I’ve no idea what its like as an actual game
I always think this is a curious one. Some number of players (albeit perhaps only a small minority) will still know what everyone has without needing to see behind whatever obscuring device is employed by the game. Other players will completely forget what anyone else has. I suspect these rules are generally aimed at a middle ground of players having a vague idea of what people have, but also introducing some uncertainty and consequently some randomness. Or maybe the intent is to stop players trying to “math things out” by removing their ability to count visible things? Or maybe it’s intended to allow players to maintain some degree of hope of winning the game, even if the reality is that another player had it sewn up by the half-way mark. I’m never really sure – it always seems to me that the actual impact of these rules may differ vastly from player to player, so it’s never clear to me whether it’s a good thing overall, or just something that worked well for the designer’s brain.
And some games are deterministic about it (i.e. you could by paying close attention to what everyone did and said keep track of exactly how many Things they had) while others make it slightly more hidden (e.g. you take three Thing tokens but their exact value is unknown to anyone else).
The designer of Aeon’s End has said that the only reason you’re not allowed to look through your deck is that the game takes longer that way as players try to prepare for what they know is coming up. (You see the cards as they go into your discard, choose the order, and don’t shuffle when making it your next draw deck.)
