In all honestly, I own both but haven’t played either, beyond some table exercises a couple of years ago trying to decide if I could easily justify getting rid of one or the other.
My thoughts at the time were that the actual on-the-table feel of the games were very different and that I couldn’t easily discern whether one was clearly better than the other.
I believe Blue Lagoon’s rules are probably a little easier to grok; but I suspect that T&E would probably offer the deeper strategic horizons.
It also takes forever to set up. Or maybe its just cos I’ve played it so infrequently (my friend fully backed the Kickstarter) that we forget what we need to do everytime!
I think I have or used to have distilled. I really like the concept of the game that sometimes hard efforts can be undone by unforeseen moments. I don’t know if it sits well with the general medium + eurogame crowd.
Speaking of, I’ve been spamming Le Havre on the app, and then finally broke it out for solo (with these lovely bgg acrylics, so nice). This game is so tiny - table footprint, setup, components. And it gives you SO MUCH back.
I’ve been playing a lot of newer, busier games, and I just can’t stop noticing how tiny Le Havre is on the table.
That’s the problem - when you go to attach, THAT interface doesn’t let you rotate. So you have to exit out, go to photos, rotate, save, go back, and upload again.
Sushi Go Party with a lot of cards that necessitated looking at other players’ tableaus (even more than the usual “will they take what I want”) - Soy Sauce, Temaki, and Edamame.
Witness - Four very fun rounds of this, although we disagreed with the rating on some of the puzzles; one of the Normal levels we played was much easier than one of the Beginner ones.
Cat in the Box - All conservative players so no super bold jump to Red early. We even had a round where all three other colors were filled up before any Red was played.
The multiplayer on the app is a bit frustrating as the ai has the self-destructive strategy of taking a zillion loans. Loans aren’t that punishing, so just like the Stone Age Starvation strategy it’s reasonably viable. But it means that the ai is always ripping buildings off the proposal deck faster than you can keep up (even though you end up winning in the end).
Solo is nice in that you can actually buy the buildings you want and the game unfolds at the expected pace. However, here the change to the order of goods delivery and the change to the order of the cards does little to change up the puzzle of the game from session to session. There will be 3 special buildings built, but only the first two really have an impact on your strategy. It’s a great, satisfying challenge and the tempo of food and town-claimed buildings keeps the pressure on, but it won’t stand up to repeat plays.
You really need opponents taking buildings (decreasing their efficiency for you), blocking spots, and emptying supply piles to create the shifting landscape of what is efficient for the game to be replayable.
But at SPIEL they were not fun at all, you had to reserve tables in advance before the fair or no play-testing. Still miffed about that half a year later. But “this is a fun Euro” comments are so rare from you it must be kind of good… care to elaborate what makes it fun?
There are 3 worker placement areas you can go on your turn.
The 3rd one is like a pseudo-pass - that kind of action space on a Euro game when you can’t do anything cool
The 2nd area is a standard worker placement on one of the 3 different actions, if you put a worker of the same colour then you get a bonus.
The first area of placement is a shared map of the moon where you can place workers. Depending on which colour of worker you place, you either get resources from the hex, money, or corps bonuses. Then those workers placed on the moon are taken by players with the largest combined habitats of that “row/column” - these workers are no longer workers you place, they become part of your moon base which powers up your game’s engine.
And, standard for your modern nu-Euros, you randomise 3 corps in the game which interacts with the system. So you have your strong variability in your nu-Euro, but I felt that these are too significant, which really differs your playstyle. But I’d like to play more to say more.
I mean, it’s not Calimala but it’s good for a nu-Euro
