It’s the golden cows pushed you over
4 Likes
Played a first solo game of Endeavor Deep Sea (not very deep in my game) and immediately set up for another. Not for today but tomorrow. It is definitely going on my list of cozy games. I am sure my partner will enjoy the exploration and that every single action gets a little reward even movement. I will write more soon , I am sure , when more plays have been played. It only arrived today.
9 Likes
Cosmic Encounter - had a great time with this. I was the Masochist where I win if all of my ships are sent to the Warp. I was stopped on doing this. Great fun!
Not Alone x2 - used to play this a lot pre-2020.
Las Vegas
8 Likes
Hot Streak, it was… fine, I suppose.
Innovation great game, ended due to space junk creating a loss condition in age 11.
Stationfall absolute chaos, 6 players, 15 characters, the security station got shot out almost immediately by the Colonel, offlining the cameras, the Doctor mixed up a firebomb and took out the central hub with three characters in it, effectively splitting the station in half. A lot of bludgeoning whittled down the survivors and then Security “revealed”, turning off peacekeeper mode and taking out more people. In the end I think only the Operative (me, wanting everything on the station to stay on the station, having given up on fulfilling the Doctor’s agenda) and Security (planting weapons on dead people) scored anything, as the two winners. The Daredevil played too obviously too early, and a lot of people acted to stop him getting away. The Colonel basically died to hubris in the form of a wrench to the head. The Astrochimp very nearly succeeded in bludgeoning the Station Chief and dragging her to the medevac pod, but got shot by the Operative, and the Station Chief, well…
Race for the Galaxy solid as always.
8 Likes
Played the second scenario, did not adapt my strategy from yesterday, lost promptly and thoroughly. Maybe not so cozy after all? But I had such fun exploring that I forgot to take a photo again. Game remains on the table.
Taught the rules to my partner during lunchbreak in preparation for having a game this weekend. Rules retention amd teachability is excellent.
9 Likes
Played Inis last night.
It went long, but I still love this game. Loads of subtle nudges and clever play. It was an odd game - no one managed to claim a pretender token for ages, then we realised that it was getting late and everyone went a bit faster and looser before our Brenn won with a very cool move that no one saw coming.
10 Likes
One of the people we met at the game convention a couple weeks back recently moved here and lives pretty close to us, so we exchanged numbers and arranged a meet last night at our FLGS.
I had shared my BGG handle so he could browse my list of games and he suggested a few he would like to try. So, we taught him Ghost Stories, figuring we would likely lose fast enough to get to another game, but we actually held on for a while.
I was yellow with the enfeeblement token, my wife was blue with the double action ability, our new acquaintance was green with the grey die, and the red neutral board allowed a double move.
As usual, things went badly pretty quickly, and we were being swarmed with haunters. Many tiles got haunted through the game, but we kept restoring them to prevent a loss. I got down to 1 Qi with a tormentor on my board, so I knew it was only a matter of time before I was dead, but managed to go a surprising number of turns before I finally rolled badly and was out.
Unfortunately, the red board was already possessed and the other players were both down to 1 Qi as well. We called the game when we realized that one of them would have to lose a life to my full board, and the other would have to lose theirs when green took their next turn. We were one ghost card away from Wu-Feng.
Realized it had already been about 90 minutes, so we just chatted for a little bit before heading home. Good fun and we should be able to meet up with him again sometime soon.
10 Likes
Got to play Magical Athlete in the pub. High chaos, very fun. The first round had “If anyone rolls a 1 I get to do a thing” and “whenever anyone uses a power I get to move” and some others, setting off a cascade of dependencies in our first rolls of the dice. The last round had “most players need precisely a 1 to win, but if anyone actually rolls a 1 this player steals it and moves instead”.
Very different game to Hot Streak, there’s lots of room for both.
7 Likes
Some 5 player games with the usual friends.
Rebel Princess - I would’ve been fine if it weren’t for the 3rd round where I won all but one prince + the frog. Combined with winning no tricks in the last round, forcing me into an arranged marriage, I came last.
The Great Split - Did kinda middling on this one. I like it and it’s quite a simple, straightforward game, but the fiddliness of the different tracks means I answered the same rules question (“what do these symbols mean?”) about 5 times. Could do with a rules reference card.
Azul - (Two players teamed up.) I did really well, getting all of one colour (for the first time ever) and two full vertical lines. Then this happened:
Even with the -14 points, I was only 3 points behind the winner.
10 Likes
On @EnterTheWyvern ‘s recommendation Kate bought me First Class for Valentine’s Day.
It’s really good. Your turn is really complicated…
You take a card from a selection in the middle.
That’s it
It’s all about sequencing bonuses, upgrading things with quite a few different paths to take.
It took about half an hour to play (can’t quite remember, was pretty drunk!). The teach should take 10-15 minutes, but we kept chatting so it took 2.5 hours!
11 Likes
Oh god, I can’t keep looking at your playmat - doesn’t that do your eyes in while playing??
9 Likes
I met a similar one when I was playing Star Wars X-Wing, based on the Death Star surface. My reaction was like yours.
6 Likes
Yeah, but it looks like the Death Star so it’s a price I’m willing to pay
8 Likes
Glad you enjoyed it! It’s quite nice when a recommendation lands. Long may it continue
7 Likes
Fair! I thought it did too but I couldn’t bear looking at that and trying to focus on the cards as well! 
7 Likes
It’s much easier in real life
7 Likes
“Stay on target… stay on target…”
6 Likes
5 player Age of Innovation. Currently preferred as it is the most crowded
Expeditions: Around the World - super fun filler by Wolfgang Kramer (El Grande fame). The original game was from the 80s but I am not sure how different it is in rules. I also forgot the rules from the 90s so Im not sure how different it is now. But the rules here are fun. I like the open communal objectives and that some player objectives are open too. It has the usual left-right binding that is common with Old German games, but this is 30min light game. We had great fun that we played it again.
Toy Battle - Played it twice!
10 Likes
Dangle won the first race easily. The second race walking backwards. My partner put everything on Dangle for the third race. Dangle.turned around right after start and sprinted away from the race. Race was won by the Hot Dog by virtue of being the last mascot sta… uh lying down.
We tried Hot Streak with two. It was pretty fun. can’t wait to introduce my friends with added entropy 
13 Likes
Last night was my first play of my new copy of The Old King’s Crown.
It is gorgeous, but more importantly, I immediately liked it. It feels like ARCS, but surrendering a fair amount of the chaos for control… I have played ARCS 3 times now and I’m still not sure I like it. OKC? Immediately like it. Elegant, with just enough asymmetry for depth and all sorts of crunchy decisions. Love it.
Not sure what the point of the power on the 11 cards is… I guess to say that it can always capture a Kingdom Card from another player, even if held by THEIR 11 card.
Anyway, it was great. Can’t wait to put it on the table again, despite coming in last.
And it was pretty quick! Quick enough that we were able to pull out Dune Imperium Uprising and get a full game of it in… in which I also came last (although close! The final scores were 12-12-10, and the Princess won due to having a few extra spice). This was the first game that I ever really felt like my card economy was “working,” but then I ran into the classic trap of having too many Spice Must Flow cards and so I lost a turn where I had 3 of them in-hand, plus 2 Dune The Desert Planets (Yellow Triangles). Suboptimal. But yeah, great game.
Interestingly (to me), I proposed Lost Ruins of Arnak first, a game I consider very comparable to Dune Imperium, but I seem to be alone in that regard. Everyone else (including my partner!) doesn’t like Lost Ruins. Bewildering to me. But such is life.
8 Likes