Introduced the local games pub to Hot Streak. Two games of 7/8 players, lots of shouting, big bets in the double points final round. Perfect pub game.
7 Likes
Played a game with my partner for the first time in months.
This was actually my first full play of the Firefly coffin edition. We enjoyed it quite a bit. The similarities to Outer Rim are striking. I lost. My partner claimed he got lucky. I definitely got screwed by the Misbehaving cards.
Also played some solos in the last few days: Calico, Beacon Patrol, A Gentle Rain
14 Likes
Time I went back to Firefly!
8 Likes
Pax Porfiriana - 4 players. Ended with me taking over after Diazās demise due to my unbending loyalty to the El Presidente.
Condottiere - amazing game.
Inis - great game. The quest to find a copy of the big box continues
Condottiere - we really like it that we played it again
Quartermaster General - played it again. What a banger! Simple card-driven war game in under 2 hours.
Piece oā Cake
Chicago Express with the Eire and Narrow Gauge expansion modules
9 Likes
I see you have the good version, that certainly helps!
4 Likes
Condottiere has languished on my to play pile for over five years. This is the year!
In other news (@MarkSP) Spokes arrived this afternoon and, it being a saturday, we took it for a spin (ha) this evening. It got three thumbs up! (Being a three bike race)
I was standing directly in front of the finish line but could not get across when my spouse zoomed by. Boo!
I had been a bit concerned that long routes would stretch ever longer and by the third lap you just kind of zip around on the trails that had been made. Wonderfully, this didnāt really become a problem. One because you donāt have any of that color on your bike anymore, and you have to spend a turn breaking up the long path to set up a future trip on it. And secondly, those long paths just seemed to organically disappear as people were forced into the opportunistic moves by the color constraints.
Definitely eager to play again.
10 Likes
And our first game of 2026 is Cthulhu: Death May Die! Shame it ended in defeat, our second defeat of the same scenario. We didnāt manage to disrupt the ritual, and then one of us went insane, so that was game over. Itās a tricky one. It doesnāt seem to hard, you just have to defeat cultists and collect meat, while having a certain companion (The Woman in White). We managed to find the Woman, but getting the meat was harder. If you take any damage you lose any meat you were carrying. And itās just gone, not dropped or anything.
Alien Frenzy, first player. This was a new kickstarter. A simple game, you play cards until someone draws the UFO player, and then the alien invasion starts. And then you start drawing alien cards from a different deck. When you draw an alien, you can counter it with a character card of the same colour, which enables you to draw a new card. And the idea is not to run out of cards. Itās a quick and easy game to play, but there donāt seem to be any real decisions to make.
Century: Golem Edition, a game we havenāt played for a while. Only a single page (double sided) of instructions, so itās pretty easy to pick. The objective is to have the most point cards, and the game ends when someone gets six of them (in a 3p game). There are 4 coloured gems, ranked from yellow, green.,blue, and purple, and the point cards list how many of each you need to have, obviously the higher in quality of the gem, the more points itās worth. You all start with the same two cards, one gives you two yellow gems and the other lets you upgrade gems twice (so you could change two yellow into two green, or change one yellow to green and then to blue. Thereās a market of cards, which either gives gems, changes gems, or upgrades gems. I stuffed up early, didnāt get any cards that just gave you gems (forgot how useful they were). So I had to limp along with my starting card to generate gems. Still fun.
Cacao, my favourite Phil Walker-Harding game. Itās a tile laying game, you play your worker tiles next to special tiles, so having two workers next to a sale tile means you get to sell two cacao. Of course youāll need to generate some cacao first. Itās a pretty quick game, but has some interesting decisions.
9 Likes
We played the first chapter (4 puzzles) of Take Time.
There are clock faces that provide the puzzles. There are 2 sets of cards numbered 1-12 (sun and moon or day and night) of which 12 are distributed to the players randomly.
The players then have to place the 12 cards in the 6 spaces on the clock satisfying a bunch of conditions:
- no space should have a sum larger than 24
- spaces need to be arranged with values rising from first to last (or being equal)
- plus further puzzle conditions
No talking with the other players once the cards have been seen.
In two player everyone starts with 4 cards and once 2 have been placed gets an additional 2 cards.
There are similarities here to The Mind, The Game and other limited communication games. I really enjoyed this one. There is a bit more game here but it is not fiddly like a few other similar deduction/puzzle games (f.e. AI Space Puzzle which I also like but keep forgetting the rules for) and everyone gets to play no āGMā needed. The two player mode is a very nice approximation of not having knowledge of some cards at the start. For some obscure reason it also reminds me of The Crew even though there are no tricks here. But the way the card distribution matters to the solution of the puzzle. And some of the puzzle conditions we encountered: play first card here, or play exactly this sum here.
The last puzzle in the first chapter took us a lot of attempts to solve. There is card luck involved and the more often you fail the more cards you are allowed to play face-up. Here we are with 3 cards face up (this attempt was also going to fail).
On top of being fun to play, it is also extremely pretty and the cards are so nice. I bought it after @lalunaverde gave it a 
and I would add my own
PS: my partner also enjoyed it. Which is no small feat. Iāll definitely post when we play next time, which may be a good indicator how good this game really is.
12 Likes
We played Take Time again todayāa day laterābut itās not quite the endorsement that I thought it would be. While I am keen to continue the puzzles, todayās puzzle took us two failures and a lot of luck and the āwhat could we have done betterā discussion ended with my partner claiming the game is too random and if I could figure out some kind of breakthrough where we would solve puzzles more deterministically, he would like to continue playing. But right now he claims there is no way too communicate without communicating and he is unwilling to āfeelā his way through the puzzles.
Meh.
Weāll see if I can convince him to another longer session with more than one puzzle, because the game actually wants you to play 4 related puzzles in a rowā¦ but that concession was too much for getting him to play boardgames with me the third day in a row. I think playing multiple puzzles in a row is key and it may have been my impatience to try again that made it seem too random. Or maybe it is and I am just not yet convinced.
9 Likes
Last night we managed to reconvene our Earthborne Rangers group for the first time since September (one of the group, a professor, had to go teach a semester in Wuhan, China, for some reason Iām not entirely clear aboutā¦ something about Chinese students coming to Canada in a few years and needing their English to be better, despite him not teaching English).
ā¦ and we did not play Earthborne Rangers. Instead we played several rounds of Things in Rings. Yesterday I learned that āHamburgerā is not a compound word (although Cheeseburger is, confusingly), and that āHot Dogsā are easily found if lost. Neat, weird little game. We only played the co-op mode, which I think was the right call.
Then we played Bean Counters Inc, a game I picked up on Tomās recommendation (I think in a podcast episode where they discussed Essen games? I forget). Simple little game, quick, although it was on the precipice of taking too long. But thatās my fault: when the first two memo cards came up, I took them out of the deck, misinterpreting how they are supposed to work. Still, quick and silly and lots of laughter. My partner wants to try it again with the memos used correctly, so Iām calling that a win.
After that we played 2 games of Thunder Road Vendetta. First was super basic version (our two guests had never played before) and over fastā¦ the second we used some of the expansion boards (Salt Flats, Toxic Goo, Pit Fals, etcā¦) and hazards (Ramps!), and it took a little longer, but not much. Still a great, silly little game.
Next time they requested we play either Catacombs (DnD meets Crokinole) or Ascending Empires (Master of Orion meets Crokinole), and I am happy to oblige.
8 Likes
Donāt know if itās a good deal, but thereās a copy here
3 Likes
Second weekend of the year and a chance to get out Brass: Birmingham solo with the Mautoma opponent. I had an aborted game on Saturday to remind myself of the rules, and got to the end of the canal era before having to leave it, but this evening I finally got to finish a full game. I was trailing slightly at the end of the canal era and feared the worst, especially when beer ran out fast so selling and rapid networking become impossible. However the final score was a solid 182 tie thanks to some last round rail construction, leaving me with a good income stream and some cash in hand so a chance to improve my strategy next time.
6 Likes
I saw some people playing it (it might have been dice tower with board game co) and the kind of chat they were talking about before playing a card seemed really involved. A very prescriptive sort of chat which basically planned every move in advance.
I think levels 1-3 were quite doable without this kind of planning but level 4 needed a bit of luck even with some general rules. I think also the two player mode requires its own rules and specific flavours of pre-play chat because the perfect card may not be seen at all until too late. .
3 Likes
Had a targeted group over to try Magical Athlete. My instincts donāt miss - everyone really enjoyed it. Lots of laughing, taunting, groaning. I was the Duelist and lost every single duel except the one where my opponent rolled a 1 and I literally couldnāt lose (although I did also roll a 1 for it).
Then we played a full 5-player game of Istanbul (with coffee of course). I donāt think Iād ever played it with my friends J and K before, although J owns it and pronounced it her favorite game before we started. She had never played with the coffee expansion before, and really liked it. This was also great and also included a lot of laughing, taunting, groaning, as well as callbacks to our Magical Athlete game. I came close but stalled out when someone else took the last ruby from the Sultanās Palace one turn before I could (I donāt think Iāve ever seen it cleaned out before). Appropriately, J ended up with the win a couple turns ahead of 2nd place.
Anyway pretty much one of the best game nights in a while.
9 Likes
Managed to get a 4 player game of Space Empires 4X on the table.
It went well! Although there were frequent complaints about how fiddly the tokens/chits are (which I respect, they are fiddly) , especially when you have multiple Groups in the same hex, each with their own Number Chit), but everyone seemed to have fun.
I was moving a large Carrier group towards one opponentās home system when we had to call the game due to time (started at 7:30, ended at 1am). We played with all the Advanced Ships from the base game, and Neutral Aliens, but thatās it. The Neutral/Deep Space aliens are a weird choiceā¦ they slow the game down AND they make the value of Terraforming Technology less (I notice that they rebalanced that tech at some point to make it cheaperā¦ 25CPs in the base game, apparently down to 20CPs now). I suspect that they become more interesting later? But as it stands, itās a lot of resources (AND showing your hand to your enemies when you attack a Neutral planet) for questionable payoff.
That stated, I was less economically destitute this time, so I might be kinda, sorta figuring the game out? And the MS Pipelines to help move your ships and gain a few more critical CPs really help.
I think we might have to use the āInstant Upgradeā option for everyone else, though. Nobody keeps track of their tech for their fleets properly (says old man shaking fist at cloud). Ah well.
Next step: Read through all 3 expansions I own (Close Encounters, Replicators, and All Good Things) to figure out which expansion content to propose for our next game. The goal is to still play in 4 hours (8pm to Midnight is okay), so probably not Infantry or anything that adds remarkable length to the game.
Whatever. I have Frosthaven scheduled for tomorrow, and then no more games for a week or two to let me get more writing done, so I have time to figure it out.
8 Likes
I am really happy with the amount of games I have managed to play this year. Mostly solo. But still.
- Iāve already had a couple of games of Hispania
- The Elevation expansion for Naturopolis is probably the best *polis expansion I have tried.
- I played Fairy Trails again after ā¦ years?
- I played Darwinās Journey on BGA and still didnāt like the solo.
- Letās Go To Japan has been to the table with an awesome train-intensive journey
Naturopolis Elevation: You get 6 new cards with double sided landscapes. When one comes up it must be played immediately. They all have rivers, one side featuring bears, the flip-side salmon. All bears must be fed salmon. Fed bears give 2 points, unfed ones -2. One additional very tricky rule: the first card play, signifies the foot of the mountain. No card may be played ābelowā. Cards can be placed at the same height or higher but cards must be supported by cards at lower elevations.
The picture shows one of my best games with this expansion. So many interesting choices. Really refreshes this particular game for me and since it is the prettiest of them allā¦
(I really hate Trees in Threes, it is the WORST goal, I managed 4 groups of 3 and still had 7 forests placed to give negative points)
11 Likes
Just got to finally play original Azul for the first time. Yep, I can see why itās lasted for years, lots of replayability, satisfying clacky counters, great fun.
Also played Copenhagen (tetris type) but we cut it too short as we should have had another round with 4 players before the Mermaid card stopped the game. Still, in the half game I tried it was very enjoyable.
12 Likes
Played Finding Atlantis, first play. This is a app driven deduction game where you are finding pieces of Atlantis. You all start with the same set of action cards. You can move about, explore your location, or scan every location around you. The app scans in your action card and shows you the results. I was having all sorts of problems scanning cards, until I realised where the front camera on the ipad was (in the middle, not the corner).
Not sure how deduction fits into it all. I found a piece of Atlantis, and then it was like playing Battleships, just exploring the spaces around it. And each card can only be used once. You have one explore card, one movement card (ok, really two movement cards, but if you only want to move one space you can only use that card. Also only one scan card (that tells you what is around you). If you want to get your cards back to play them again, you need to surface, which tells everyone where you are. Youāre obviously meant to track the positions off the other players, but thatās difficult, since you can only see what sort of card they played (like a movement card), but no details (like which direction they moved).
We all had a crack at the solution, eventually I got it right. Failing at the solution just repositions your sub at a random place ā I got lucky, when I failed it put me in the same quadrant, so I didnāt have to move much to have another go. As it turned out, I didnāt need to deduce anything, I found all four pieces of Atlantis.
Take Time, in which we failed at the basic levels again. Its a simple game, play four cards each on the board, total of each position must be in ascending order. Itās a quick fun game.
Dorfromantik: Sakura, no high score this time, but did ok.
Dungeon Raiders, another game by Phil Walker-Harding. You have to get thru several levels of dungeons, encountering shops, traps, and of course bad guys. Each level consists of five cards, some will be face up and some will be face down. You have five power cards, numbered from one thru five. Each bad guy will have a number you must reach (for the player count). If you reach the number, the enemy is defeated. If not, whoever played the lowest card will take damage. At the end of the game, whoever has the most damage instantly loses, and the winner is the player with the most coins. Good fun!
7 Likes
Another weekend game night completed on Friday with the first time trying Glass Road. A first solo game of trial and error without any sort of plan resulted in a nice score of 23 points; given that the book says a score of 30 points is remarkable I thought that was a bit low, but seeing some youtube playthroughs it seems about average. Then just before bed I gave it a second go, found a lovely building combination to convert ponds to coal to clay, then score 1.5 points per clay and built a water tower to create several extra ponds, all resulting in a score of 29 points. Chuffed for a second game of it. I can see it becoming my favourite quick Uwe solo title, ahead of Nusfjord as it seems quicker to setup and play through.
11 Likes
Fate of the Fellowship!
Although it was such a fumblingly learning solo game that it hardly counts. I think I made a lot of mistakes along the way, but I was expecting that.
I basically learn games by reading the rules, not really understanding them, having a shambolic attempt at playing, then reading the rules again, understanding them now Iāve actually played the game, then playing almost properly.
Anyway, Iām going to like this.
11 Likes