Your Last Played Game Volume 3

[Marx]

Today was my first play of Imperium: Legends.

Technically my first play of Imperium at all, and I am decidedly uncertain about it. I playrd Qin, Nick played Eygptian, and I ended up winning 70 to 65.

But gosh is there ever a lot of fiddly rules in the way. And a lot of them seem Faction specific.

For example, the Qin start with a card called “Heaven Mandate.” It reduces your hand size to 3, which is awful, for a small bonus. But there is another card you start with that you can only play if you have The Mandate out. Okay, so play that card and then bury Mandate as a Garrison or History, and then you can have your usual 5 cards…

Except there are 3 other cards that also require you to have Mandate in play. And you lose 2VP if it is buried (Garrison or History) at the end of the game? I think? And then there are The Long Walls, which you have to play with other Long Walls…

I think with repeated plays maybe it would make sense? I dunno. I will have to try it again. Maybe solo? We’ll see.

[yashima]

I havent played Qin. They sound fiddlier than most factions I know and are probably more difficult to play. Most factions habe some of these built-in play orders. It often takes me a second game with a faction to learn now it plays.

edit: the typos that typing on a mobile device adds in are just too much. sorry about that.

[RogerBW]

Yeah, the game is kind of about the faction-specific cards. I agree with yashima; the first time I play a civ I usually do badly because I’m working out how it works, second time a bit better.
For learning the game I’d suggest sticking with a civ you like and getting two or three plays of it until you have the hang of how that particular one fits together Then try another one and feel lost again, but some of what you learned last time will still apply, only it’s with a different set of special rules.
The best way to play solo is with the Horizons box - that gives you the cheat cards that make solo play much simpler so you can concentrate on your own game. Failing that, I think there are third party cheat sheets on BGG.

[Captbnut]

2 more games from the shelf in the shade (of the gazebo) *quite like that for a name for unplayed games!

Tiger & Dragon, which is not a good 2 player game.

And Furnace (thank you @Acacia ), which is a good game. Nice auction with incentives to lose. The 3rd player ‘bot’ was quick but interesting and it was a good puzzle to get everything converted. The deck randomisation meant you weren’t stacking resources for an uber powerful final turn.

[yashima]

I owe an update on the Last Bought thread. But I want to wait until the next week. I have at least on crowdfunder incoming. Potentially two along with a preorder. It’ll make for a bigger pile

In any case I’ve already taken a few spins with the latest additions.

I’ve always wanted a Suchy game for my collection. I’ve played Pulsar at friends and got recommenations for Underwater Cities from another many years ago. So every year at SPIEL I checked out the latest Suchy creation and somehow they never clicked enough for me to acquire them: Woodcraft–too busy on the table. Messina–too dark a theme. Praga Caput Regni–too gimmicky. Resafa–I just noped out last year. Evacuation in 2023 should have flown right into my SF-loving heart but it didn’t. Lots of people seem to have small niggles with it and also the solo seems immensely difficult or so I hear. Still this one I’ve waffled about for so long and it’s been on sale a lot recently… but there was always something keeping me from buying it. in the end I saw there is a new expansion coming out soonish for UC and I admit that a 2018 game is getting its 2nd expansion (besides promos) now seems like something that will have legs.

Having played and lost my first two solos of Underwater Cities, I think I made the right choice. How am I to have 7 cities and 100 points for the solo… though the 2nd game I only missed by 2 points. It’s most similar to Terraforming Mars somehow in my mind. And I love that game to pieces. So more of the “similar” is really good. Also the unassuming box size… very pleasing. The rulebook is okay enough, the rules seem easier than many other games I own. I’d probably flag it as teachable if I play another few solos to fix the rules in my longterm memory.

---

The other new addition I’ve already tried came as a birthday present not from myself this time, I swear, my friends gave me a gift certificate for FLGS (they considered our favorite chocolatier in town first, luckily they asked my partner who told them my dad is already doing the chocolate gifting–I told everyone I want for nothing and need no presents but they aren’t listening). Long story… so I got to learn Shackleton Base:

Actually I learned and played this one first. And I really want to either write a player-aid or rewrite the rulebook. How can the people who think of these beautiful systems be so bad at communicating them?!? I may be especially nitpicky as a software dev because I need to be very precise when describing requirements or else…

3 seems to be the number for boardgames these days. 3 eras, 3 rounds, 3 worker types, 3 command action types, 3 main actions, 3 corporations, 3… possibly because hexes have 3 axis… or something like that. (Underwater Cities also likes 3, as does Revive. I think we need to discuss the number 3 and what other games use it)

In this game you play 3 rounds in which you have 6 workers which give you 1 action. So everyone gets exactly 18 actions. No bonusses, extra workers or anything. There aren’t even any free actions (I lie, you can buy solar panels during your turn but that’s about it) or action cascades (unlike Underwater Cities which has the action cards which allow you to get around some limitations for action slots or Revive which has a lot of free actions which aren’t actions but modifiers that enable you to take actions you otherwise couldn’t).

You win by having the most points and points come from various sources during the game or after the game.

Each player commands a space agency which is trying its best to curry favor with the 3 corporations that are vying for dominance in the crater in this game. In each round every player receives a shuttle filled with exactly 6 workers and maybe some resources. Shuttles determine play order and which worker types you get.

On your turn, you take one of your workers and do one of 3 action types:

• Go to Lunar gateway: send your worker and pick another one to hire into your base directly and gain some money. This is also known as the Verlegenheits Gateway that you wish to avoid.
• Do a command action. There are 3 types corresponding to the 3 worker colors. If you match color and command you get a small bonus. There is a command queue that gets more expensive as it fills up with everyone’s workers during the round.
  • Build (yellow) pay some resources to build a building
  • Projects (red) pay some credits to do a corporation project. Projects go into your personal tableau and give you VP and change up some of your actions or allow you to change your interaction with that corporation
  • Corporate Actions (blue) do up to 3 “corporate actions” → corporations are asymmetrical. They each come with their own rulesheet and have distinct actions. F.e. for Artemis Tours the action is to move a tourist that is in your base to one of the projects you have acquired from Artemis Tours. For Moon Mining you deliver resources in exchange for money and VP etc.
• Use the crater. You can place workers around the crater to activate rows. Depending on the type of worker you can gain resources (titanium or rare earths → yellow workers), corporate resources (tourists, samples or helium → blue workers) or money (red workers are my least favorite kind). Workers placed around the crater will move into the base of the player who holds the majority on the row after the round. So strategic placement of workers and buildings will help you avoid the Verlegenheits Gateway.

That’s it. There is an interactive minigame with a shared supply of solar energy, sola panels that cost rare earths and reputation intertwined with the worker action system. I left out quite a few details that make for some thinky decisions where to build which buildings when and how to make “tasty” rows to activate especially with your blue workers. I made a ton of small rules mistakes in my first game and I may or may not have had more points than the automa…

The solo automa is okay to run for the most part. Not too difficult decision making except for where to place buildings when there is no obvious best move (where they would gain a worker, if no such space exists, the rules are still a bit unclear to me).

I am not ready to judge this game yet. Rule understanding wasn’t good enough until halfway through the game. It was definitely harder to learn than Underwater Cities even though the rules complexity is only slightly higher in my opinion…

As a bonus I got to pick up the framed Artist Series prints that arrived just before my birthday.

[Acacia]

@Marx

I think with repeated plays maybe it would make sense? I dunno. I will have to try it again. Maybe solo? We’ll see.

I’m also taking my first dive into Imperium… but loving it (slow play solo). I suggest starting with some 1-star factions (I started Rome). Much less fiddly than what you described, and I’m more delighted with how the rules evoke the actual history and tenor of Rome in clever ways.

@RogerBW

The best way to play solo is with the Horizons box

OMG. The combined Classics + Legend solo manual omits the rules of what the bot does with unrest. Holy cow. It’s like writing an El Grande rulebook and forgetting to tell people to let people out of the castillo during scoring.

By my second turn I knew something was off, the bot was about to kill itself. I spent too long rescouring the manual before web searching and finding the errata.

I mean, geez.

[RogerBW]

Ooh I forgot to say “download the Horizons rules to learn from”. Do that. Even not considering solo, they make things a lot clearer, including the thematic connection; for example, garrisoning something in a region isn’t “garrison” as we understand it, it’s saying to someone “go out and govern New South Wales and stop being an embarrassment here”.

[mistercrayon]

Yesterday we played a game of Cretaceous Rails. The name might suggest some kind of of dinosaur based rail game and it it is (although not an economic one).

the principle of the game seems to be this really nice loop of actions you want to do but every action you do is obviously worse than it could be if you had done some other action before. So if you want to take photos of dinosaurs you need to cut trees down but the cutting tree action is this slow paced slog so you need to improve your cutting action but to improve things you need to take photos of dinosaurs…

There’s a neat worker placement aspect innovation too (a rearrangable grid on which you select pairs of actions)

it’s a really nice looking game with plastic toy dinos covering the board.

Perhaps also bafflingly for a hex map game, the game fits on my tiny table. Great stuff.

[raged_norm]

On my way from from Holiday.

The most played game was Pokémon: Splendor, followed by Panda Panda

I took Skulls of Sedlec, Race for the Galaxy: Alien Artefacts. Both got played

No Thanks and LLAMA remained unplayed

[Phil]

@mistercrayon

Cretaceous Rails … it’s a really nice looking game with plastic toy dinos covering the board.

Definitely more plastic than I was anticipating – it’s quite the attention-grabber.

Cretaceous Rails

[mistercrayon]

Yeah it’s insane! It was a large part of me wanting it!

[mistercrayon]

Played Cretaceous rails again last night. Like a lot of games of this sort it does seemingly favour unethical practices/turbo farming.

these are all titanosaurus cooped up on my train ready for my personal park

[Phil]

Invisible pianos.

[Acacia]

As previously hinted, I just finished my first solo of Imperium. Thank you all for this gem!

I played as the Romans. Pretty much doubled the solo’s score. But that is due, I believe, to playing against the easiest bot (you never know how these things are tuned until you try) and due to a LOT of mistakes. Some details I missed, some rules vagaries.

But I really enjoyed this. I’m going to go one more round as the Celts to see what a 2-star civ is like and try the standard bot (with fewer mistakes) as well.

Thanks all for talking about this one incessantly!

Known mistakes:

• First rounds I had the bot taking actions for unrest, bogging it down (per the manual).
• After taking a glory card, I put the unchosen cards into exile rather than back into the deck (one time, found during cleanup).
• For the first half of the game, I (and the bot) were acquiring cards into the discard rather than our hands.
• I pretty much never remembered to put a development token into the market at the end of my turn.
• I had the bot often taking the furthest left card rather than the highest points card.
• I played at least one Empire card while I was still a Barbarian. But don’t blame me, Barbarians gonna barb.
• I think I also played a Barbarian card after I went Empire. That one’s uncivilized.

[BertFill]

Concordia. I love this game. If I only had Concordia, Spirit Island and Carcassonne, I think I’d be happy enough.

This game is like a 1960s Aston Martin, or a Hollywood musical with Gene Kelly in it. Even if you don’t like it, it’s obviously brilliantly done.

Of course if you don’t like Concordia (is it possible to not like Concordia?), we can never be friends…

[Captbnut]

Have you tried the app? I’ve heard it’s very good

[BertFill]

Ooh, I’m so tempted, I really am. But I worry that if I had the app, it would make me less likely to get it out and play Solitaria in real life.

Mind you, the only game where I have both the app and the actual game is Spirit Island, and I don’t play the physical game any less with that, so…

[yashima]

Played 2 two handed games of my fresh crowdfunding arrival Leviathan Wilds. Very nicely sized box that fits the expansion. Good insert. Rulebook is pretty good. A couple edge cases remain that I will need to look up on bgg. First game was hard. Second played on casual mode with better understanding was still hard.

[raged_norm]

Time of Empires, realtime 4X. Pretty intense, as with all realtime games it’s hard to know if you are playing correctly on a first play.

Quantum, fairly big map so no real competition for spaces. Good game though

Skyrockets: Festival of Fire. Co-op game about keeping the colours of fireworks in the air. Sandtimes that run at different paces and you play out a card with two colours. Unfortunately the colours are tiny circles with icons in the corner of the card so can be pretty hard to parse at speed.

Come Sail Away. This is fun, but I don’t think I want to own it now.

[lalunaverde]

Daybreak - 3 players with handicap and I volunteer to play as the Majority World as I’m the most experienced on the table. We lost terribly.

Innovation 4e x2 - base game only. I brought the smaller 4e box. 2 players on both plays. The Junk mechanism is fun for both of us, I guess, because it’s fun to rocket up through the ages (lame joke).

Perennial card game. It’s slightly larger than the card game box (e.g. Coloretto, the Mind, Skull King) yet there’s just so much game in here.

Navegador - 3 players and we are quite speedy. I find Concordia to have a more liberating gameplay, especially if you play with the “money start” variant that I starting to play the game with nowadays.

The game still has a strong interaction. Similar to Brass where you recognise a slack in the economy and you fill that up (but without the bullshit nonsense you get from Brass)

But both this and Concordia are rather on rails strategically. I think I would rather ask for Concordia instead (unless Imperial is on the table. Imperial/Imperial 2030 remains the top Gerdts)

Res Arcana - 2 players. Random 8 card deck. We don’t care. Zips fast. Very good fun. I do feel a tang of regret selling my Res Arcana bundle but I have so many of these “big game card games”

Bonnie & Clyde - rummy-esque card game. No strong opinions

Pandemic: Fall of Rome - playing this after playing Fate of the Fellowship: man, this game feels so flat. In comparison, LOTR Pandemic is just full of colour and personality. Way more thematic and fun. I do understand that Matt Leacock took a lot of ideas from FoR and injected them into LOTR. Fall of Rome is good fun but disappointing in a way now I’m so deep into LOTR Pandemic. Also, Tetrarchia is a more thematic “Pandemic set in Rome” game.