My problem with X-23 is that they coated her skeleton with adamantium…
…then she grew up…
…meaning her bones would have tried to grow…
…meaning…
I have a very odd thermostat when it comes to what pseudoscience I will and will not accept. This one I won’t. And Ant-Man simultaneously punching with the force of a full sized human, denting car roofs while falling, but also riding on the back of an ant without crushing it still sends me in a tizzy.
They did not. They extracted her claws and coated them. The rest of her skeleton is adamantium free.
87 is a really good score (for me anyway).
La Granja is my go to time killing solo on BGA currently. I’ve hit a skill ceiling of scores in the mid-high 70s and rarely cracking 80.
The card game says “LACED with adamantium”, but I absolutely get your point.
I’m the same with The Hulk. I don’t care if he’s supposed to be “the strongest” and anger makes him stronger, he’s still made of flesh and bone, there should be a limit on what he can do before going squish.
For me, La Granja falls into a bucket with Pipeline and Carnegie. You have to make painful investments in the present to get full explosion in the late game. Cut off an arm to grow a cthulhu tentacle as it were.
Those sacrifices don’t feel right when you make them.
I don’t mind him not going squish - thats just the definition of a super power. However, when he does drop from massive heights etc, the effect of something that size, hitting the ground and NOT going squish should have a much bigger impact than it does, I feel. So I guess I don’t have a problem with a superpower doing anything per se, but I don’t like it when the real world around it doesn’t then work as it should.
Which I suppose means I agree with @Acacia - if you establish adamantium to be this indestructable metal, unless you’ve also made it clear that it should streeeeetch, then you can’t have it stretch. Stretching metal while the bones grow isn’t the superpower so therefore it doesn’t work.
But if @bruitist is right, then meh. I don’t know - I rarely read superhero comics/graphic novels
Schotten Totten - somehow I have never played this before and now its on BGA, it has become my favourite timewaster! PLayed 10 games yesterday
First play of Dorf Romantik.
This is very different to the computer game, most notably in that the tasks are only for areas of 4, 5 or 6 - so anything already at 6 is dead and you should start another 3. No more “Next you want 100 trees” like in the PC version.
Gameplay and scoring are easy to understand, it’s perfect for solo.
There is a translation issue in the instructions, which say “In the first three turns of the game you must reveal 1 task tile”. What they mean is in the first three turns of the game you must reveal 3 task tiles total. (Apparently the German version doesn’t have this problem).
This does mean your starting 3 tiles are all tasks crowding each other for space and hopefully pointing far enough away not to block each other, which again feels very different to the PC game.
Overall very cosy, and the “grow slowly” campaign looks good. I did really well and got 132 points in my first game, which is… 5th from bottom out of something like 32 levels. But it was still enough for me to OPEN A SECRET BOX so I’m hooked now.
Game 2 of Dorf Romantik, 159 points.
I bought the game hoping for a cosy and calming solo, and am predictably spending my whole time swearing loudly and cursing the gods of fate. 10/10 would buy again.
Calico also frets into this kind of subgenre of “swear at cute”
Dungeon Rummy, first play. This is a kickstarter that just came in (for my hosts). No idea if it’s like normal Rummy, because I’ve never played that. But in this one you can create melds of cards, either sequences or same value. it’s a cooperatiive game, so you can also play cards into other players melds, which you’re forced to do because you can’t play two cards of the same colour next to each other. Depending on how many cards you’ve put down, you’ll deal damage to the current enemy. There are two normal enemies and then a big bad. Each player has their own special tokens, mine was a wild card that can turn a card into any value (but the colour can never change). We got thru the bad guys without too much fuss. Was good fun, would play again.
Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps, thought it was time to give this another go. Started with the first mission, to rescue Newt. We mucked up a bit – Newt is under one of the four blip tokens, but we neglected to add aliens to the other tokens. Added a bit more spice to the mission. We found Newt, blew away the aliens, and headed for the exit. We didn’t have any spawns for the first two rounds, and things got a bit spicy after that, Luckily most of them were behind us so we could ignore them and just run. Good fun, and it’s cool to play the characters from the movie, even Carter Burke (but who would pick that doofus).
Maybe we should avoid that corridor…
Space Alert, we are just the worst players at this game. We still do our own thing too much, which means some things don’t get done, and some things are doubled up, which doesn’t help things. It’s still a lot of fun! I probably would have more trouble getting this played without the cool webpage that shows an animated movie of your actions.
Soda Jerk, still a fun filler. We played with the advanced side of the fruit cards, which did various things like forcing cards to be played face up, or discarding the last card played. Certainly changes things up a bit.
The what now? Where?
Regicide Legacy. It’s taken me a few weeks to get back to my solo table and make an attempt on mission 5, but tonight was the night and, after having needed 3 attempts at each of the previous two missions, I finally knocked off another one on my first try!
Concordia (5p). My first time playing this. I felt like I’d made poor decisions all game, but I reaped some rewards at the very end, making my score a bit more respectable than I’d thought it might be (I came last, but by only a small margin), and I came away thinking that I’d like to play it again now that I had a feel for it. I wasn’t remotely in the running to win, though. In fact, nobody came close to the winner. I think the scores were something like 91, 93, 97, 108, 145.
Black Orchestra (3p, x2). Or Assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler - Wikipedia, the board game. A co-operative game full of historical characters and events. Everyone chooses a character with a unique special ability, and as the game progresses you need to obtain plot cards; find the items needed to attempt to carry out a plot; keep your suspicion level low enough to not get arrested; suppress Hitler’s support level to give yourself a chance of succeeding; and ultimately get Hitler to a suitable location and roll the dice you’ve managed to give yourself try to carry out the plan. Failing a plot doesn’t mean the end of the game, but it does burn all the items you’d used, likely forcing you to attempt a different plot with different requirements.
This game has some interesting things going on. I was especially taken by the thematic imprisonment rules – if you are too suspicious, you can be arrested and imprisoned; and that’s not the end of the game for you, but in order to get out of prison you’re going to be given a choice between options which are all bad in various ways for the rest of the players (in essence you’re going to be betraying the cause in some way). I couldn’t think of a game I’d played which had a system like this, and I thought it was a nice bit of the design (albeit we all managed to avoid being arrested in both games, so it wasn’t a factor for us in practice).
We managed to fit in two games of this because the first game (on the easiest difficulty level) ended rather quickly after one of our players managed to successfully pull off a “lone gunman” plot about 30 minutes into the game with a very lucky roll. We reset the game and kicked it up to the highest difficulty (which immediately eliminated the chances of a lone gunman being sufficient), and that game went a lot longer; but ultimately the dice were with us and we won again with a combination of (again) lucky rolling, the right plot, the right items, and the right support from our cards and player abilities.
Arcs - ARCS! ARCS! ARCS! ARCS!
Full 4 players and yeah, this is just better than Root. Sold my copy of Root to a club member and the players are keen on a future game of Arcs very soon.
Tricky Time Crisis - very good “not-follow” trick taking game! Very clever. Reminds me of Potato Man
Trick & Snipers - original and really enjoyed this one
Pax Renaissance - I’m surprised. People actually asked me to have this one played. Not only this is a pain in the ass to learn the rules. The game is incredibly foggy as well! Since I have over 200 plays of it, I’m more than happy to be less ruthless and point out strategies/tactics. I found it fun and it seems everyone else enjoyed it as well. I’m glad.
Bacon - flexible player count made it a more fitting game than Tichu on a board game night setting. We played 3 but I do prefer 4 or 6 for the partnership game. That is just superior.
Citadels - classic Faidutti game. Found it a bit sedated game for me. Would definitely prefer mroe cutthroat games like Intrigue, Bohnanza, Goodcritters, etc
Magical Athlete - ah it is fun. But, man, I don’t find it as fun as Hot Streak. The game’s duration is to play with 4 races and I think that’s too long for a filler game like Magical. I would house rule it to 2 races and players only do one round of drafting. Ergo, 2 racers and 2 races. I would probably even forgo the Wild Wilds board. The blank board from the original worked and I’m sure Magical can do without Wild Wilds.
So far, I’m not fully sold on this like Hot Streak so I’ll be trying the 2 race short variant and see what happens.
Also, I haven’t been posting photos of MA. Because we are all too busy playing the game and laughing.
Stephenson’s Rocket - another request game. Friend saw that it’s one of my Top 5 games EVER and so he wants to try it. 3 players and damn I’ve played this so many times and yet this game is hard work. The rules are mid weight but the decisions are a pain. Dramatic moves and mergers later and my victory was STOLEN from me!!
Endeavour: Deep Sea - cool. I get to play this again and I’m not crashing down. The last time I’ve played this was at SPIEL 2024, we just arrived at our Airbnb in Essen after a long road trip and we decided to start a game of Endeavour. I was crashing during the middle of the game but managed to finish the game without falling asleep.
Very enjoyable! I’m not sure if I prefer this over Endeavour: Age of Sails. But it got some good stuff going on. I won’t refuse a game of this. Very good!
Kitchen Rush - basically, Overcooked: the Board Game. Very fun
Escape: Curse of the Temple - 5/5. Classic!!
Amused to note that Sigourney Weaver is now prepared to let her likeness be used. In the 1990s Leading Edge Games boardgame, they got a last minute stop press from the film company that she was a serious actress now and didn’t want to be associated with the film. Quick replacement of all headshots with silhouettes, but they missed their print slot and that year’s Gen Con. That’s not what killed the company, which went on for a few years, but it didn’t help.
Is this basically Space Hulk but with Aliens?
Never played Space Hulk, so no idea
On Sunday I went to a buddy’s place in London (Ontario, the awful one) for his birthday.
Opening game was Xia Legends of a Drift System which was great. One player who was very sour-grapes about a few bad rolls, but even he was doing quite well. I secured the win on the last turn with a 3 Fame Point turn (sold a massive pile of Cyber for 7,000 credits and one Fame, bought 1 Fame for 5,000 credits, and had enough leftover to buy a new ship). The player in 2nd was playing pure hostile and did very well.
Then I tried Distilled, which was taught very badly but the game itself seems… fine? I wasn’t impressed. A lot of fiddle for not a lot of juice. But the guy who taught (and owns) the game scored 173, the next closest was 112, then two of us with 100, amd the final player with 67.
Aside: what an awful scoreboard. Badly designex, way too small and yet still sprawling… it fails in every possible way.
Game was fine. I was one of the 100s.
Then a quick game of Hot Streak which was an amazing riot (Dangle finally showed their worth!), and then Courtesans whichwas really good with 3 players. And man, that artwork…
And then last night I tried my copy of The War of 1812 for the first time…
Neat, neat game. We only played the Intro scenario (2 turns, limited decks) and it was just the two of us, but gosh. I think it might be great?
I might still like Sekigahara better, but that is an event to teach. 1812 I taught in minutes.
i haven’t played my copy in ages. there is a neat concept i there but the game surrounding it is way too overloaded with stuff. it was a Kickstarter after all
the solo is fine, too. i only still have it because the theme is unique in my collection and it speaks to some of my friends. but those ones are now in love with the robo rally anniversary edition because they always were… so it should probably move to the sell pile but the pile is full and unless i can suddenly find time to clear out 30+ games…
