Your Last Played Game Volume 3

[gmwhite999]

This weekend’s game was a solo reminder of Eleven: Football Manager Board Game, replaying the introductory solo scenario “Surviving the Third Division”.

Numpty FC began the season with a nice mix of directors focusing mostly on the fan base, and multiple objectives to recruit and train lots of young players, hire lots of staff and keep several clean sheets. I got some nice advertising board and shirt sponsors early plus trained my first young player into a fine defensive midfielder. First match was a 1-1 draw, but my veteran defender got too big for his boots, got awarded a new contract and then became useless so was sold shortly afterwards. I bought and trained a young striker as a replacement and hired some more staff before the second game, fighting to a goalless draw. Acquiring a good experienced defender and a young goalkeeper rounded out the team before the third draw of the season, another 0-0 which somehow left me in joint third place of the league.

An expensive board decision to fly the team to the next away game proved a big hit with the fans though, and money was flush, allowing me to expand the stadium facilities just in time to train up my attacking super sub (who feeds off big crowds). This lead to the first victory - 1-0 to the Numpties, setting up a top of the table clash against Steelchester FC. Another shrewd veteran buy (an attacking defender), building the stands to full capacity and fleshing out the staff in the lead up to the game was promising - and lead to a comfortable 3-0 win and sole leader of the division. The board fought off a hostile takeover from a foreign investor in the final week, before some timely advertising contracts and training another young defender had the team primed for their last game - and led to a comfortable 4-0 victory!

First place in Division 3 was ours! Played 6, won 3, drew 3, scored 9 and conceded 1 - with the victory points for players trained, stadium facilities constructed, staff hired and objectives met led to a handy final score of 54 Victory Points, good enough for a Promising Manager ranking, and just one shy of a Reputable Manager rank.

Lovely game as a solo but not sure how it would be multiplayer as no real interaction between the teams. Nice table presence too, if a little large and long to set up fo a solo title, but nicely thematic. Photo is not the best, sadly.

[COMaestro]

Had some time tonight, so broke out Metal Gear Solid: the Board Game and played mission 2. As it has been a number of months since I played mission 1, I took a bit of time to go back over the rules and did some references to the rulebook during play. They are simple overall, but I wanted to make certain I was moving the guards correctly.

I did a small mulligan when I was headed for an optional objective, then realized that it is impossible to reach without being spotted by a camera. In the video game, you just wait until the camera is not looking at the item, but with the way line of sight works in this game that doesn’t happen, so I rewound my turn and went a different direction.

I reached the mandatory objective without incident, but because a guard was coming my direction, I had to stop and wait. So, of course, on the next guard turn, the card indicated that they all move 5, which was exactly the number of spaces to be adjacent to me, and the space indicated that the guard would turn, so he spotted me and shot me. Now alerted, all the other guards raced towards me, one getting adjacent to the first guard, by the others still far away.

On my turn I was able to perform a combo attack on each of the guards near me, knocking them out, and was still far enough away that the other guards did not catch sight of me. Two turns later and I had escaped into an air duct, completing the mission.

I know I am just two missions in, but I am rather impressed with this adaptation of the video game. It manages to feel like MGS and manages it without a ton of rules overhead (though later missions will probably get more complex).

[lalunaverde]

Now that I have a copy of A Gest of Robin Hood, I did a two-handed game on BGA and it’s nice that I don’t need to do a lot of admin. I still need to read/watch the rules because I skimmed through them. But I get the basic idea - it’s a lighter COIN, which is a nice thing. If anyone would indulge me on a game on BGA, I would be thrilled

[mr.ister]

Send me an invite!

[COMaestro]

If you are up for multiple games of it, send me one too!

[DJCT]

I would defo play again too. I am rubbish tho …

[RogerBW]

Games with nearby friends last night.

First outing for the long-awaited Disparation expansion for Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition. Using a fair bit of expansion content, we fought La Capitan in Silver Gulch, with Setback, K.N.Y.F.E. and Unity.

Impressions: La Capitan is not too tough, but provides a lot of distraction, which one has to ignore to win (which we did). Silver Gulch is indiscriminately damaging, and particularly annoying for Unity’s low-HP bots. And K.N.Y.F.E is an uncomplicated damage-dealer, an asset to any team.

With a little time to spare we had a quick run of FUSE, a close loss this time but we’re getting better in general. I think the particular skill may be in quickly spotting and avoiding cards that will be traps that demand specific dice, since the last (players × 2) cards don’t need to be completed so they can be left to the end.

[Phil]

I played Azul with my parents the other night and have left it at their place for future games.

Prior to that I had a couple of games of Dorfromantik with my partner (who didn’t want to play more than that in a row, but did enjoy it well enough to not sound averse to future games – which, for context, is a promising result).

I think we scored 90-something in the first game, and then 120 in the second, so that was a good improvement!

Today I tried out my new solo puzzle R.A.V.E.L. and it’s nice.

There are 16 cards (in 4 stacks of 4), and you need to satisfy the requirement of each card using only the three dice closest to that card. If you do, you perform the special action of that card, and remove it to reveal the next one in that stack. You also have 8 tokens which you can spend to manipulate the dice, spending one token to switch two adjacent dice, or two tokens to set any die to a value of your choosing.

End game (and a loss). With one extra token I could have swapped the blue 3 with the black 5 to satisfy having both blue dice on the left edge, which would have allowed me to adjust any two dice by one pip each… but unfortunately I needed all even numbers for the bottom card, and all three of them are odd, so… still not enough :).

First impressions are good. There’s lots of randomness in the set-up from the shuffle and the initial random dice selection and rolled values. You can adjust difficulty with the number of tokens you start with (up to 12) and by swapping in any-or-all of a more difficult set of cards. And then it’s a matter of trying to figure out how you might chain together actions and bonuses to acquire as many cards with as few spent tokens as possible, and with each new revealed card potentially offering up other combos. Also compact on the table and pretty quick, and the dice manipulation isn’t very fiddly. I’m happy I picked this one up. Randomness might doom you in some games, but I don’t think that’ll make it any less enjoyable to play.

[Acacia]

Is that a “surface of the death star” playmat??

[Acacia]

@Marx

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.

I side with Andy here. Yes, Paleoamericans, Arnak, and DuneImp all came out about the same time with the “worker placement + deck building” combo. But I still assert that mechanics are generally a bad way to categorize games. Arnak feels like Everdell, Clans of Caledonia, Gaia Project, Paladins of the West Kingdom where the game dynamics are about resource conversion, comboing actions to rewards, and round extension.

DuneImp is about posturing, anticipating, and timing, making it like… Inis?

[Acacia]

I’ve been active with strangers on Yucata as there’s a backlog of games I just want to try. I’ve mentioned it elsewhere but:

On the Underground: Amazing. Bought. It’s by Bleasedale, one half of Keyflower. Turns are simple, lay four pieces of track and then move a single passenger through the London Subway following simple preference rules, with the active player choosing between all tied routes. Points every time the passenger rides your line, or for connecting certain spots on the map.

So simple. But also interesting, tense, and exciting. Could very well kill Ticket to Ride (which needs to be killed) and Thurn & Taxis (which doesn’t but I’ll allow it) both.

Rajas of the Ganges: I’m only halfway through. I’d define this as a “session Euro” - which is hard to define but it’s not heavy and it’s not gateway but it’s definitely pure modern Euro with a manual mostly dedicated to a section titled “the actions.”

First take is, it’s vanilla, but it’s good. Maybe this is the one I keep and get rid of the others. By late game I’m wondering what the shelf life is. We’ll see. I have too many of these and really only need a handful.

Iliad: Finally got a real game of this, after a disastrous session teaching my father. It is a hard teach. Your turn, very knizia, place a tile, draw a tile. Fill a row, we each get one of these tokens. Higher total (or active player) picks first. So far so good.

Then you get into the win conditions (a bit Samurai but worse) and you use up your goodwill.

Then you have to say “also…each tile has an optional special power” - and that’s when the knives come out.

That said, you get over the hump, and it’s a good game. The kind of game that will definitely flourish with repeat sessions, hopefully with the same opponent. Very tight, very tense duel but every jab comes with a cost, so it really doesn’t feel mean.

THAT said…the description feels very much like Splendor Duel (less confrontational, still highly give and take with double edged swords) and Toy Battle (equally confrontational, less obtuse). And both of those are better. I have Iliad, it’s good, it’ll stay for now. But I can see a world where I only have Toy Battle.

Movers & Shakers: Been very curious about this one. By the same publisher that brought back Carson City and at least billed as a bit older, more interactive, more jostley euro. I didn’t back.

Tried it out solo on BGA. Yes, there is one (important) angle to the game where you can load crates on each others’ trains, and the trains are merging and breaking and bumping in a way that is pretty cool. But that all serves to support maybe 6 different abstracted scoring tracks (a la Khora), each with different AxB scoring, and it gets very nu-Euro. Mechanics soup. Individual efficiency. And I wouldn’t want to teach this to anyone. Not backing was a win.

[Captbnut]

Not an official one

[yashima]

A mid-week game night is something rather unusual for us these days.

Even more so by the fact that both “kids” were home and I was asked to bring games for 6 players. Now the tastes at this table are somewhat specific. Mom really does not like cooperative games or restricted communication games. It better not be a game with English text and yeah it would be best if it was something Euro and actually scales at 6. 7 Wonders is an old favorite for this kind of session. Except everyone else at the table is rather sick of it.

So I brought Hot Streak and had a hard time explaining that this was NOT a racing game and NO it is not for just 4 people

Dad looked slightly bored the whole first race. He prefers thinky games. Dumb games are kind of beneath him or so his facial expression said.

But by the 2nd race he was completely engaged. I had no idea this table could get shouty and laugh so much but it worked just as well. This game is something like the 8th wonder of the world.

In any case, we played 1 round and then without unpacking my games I began trying to sell the big game I had brought:

“Look you guys like Catan, right? This is a bit like that as you have to trade resources to do your thing. It’s also a bit like 7 Wonders because there’s a lot of stuff we get to do in parallel, so this should scale well with the amount of people we are. And the biggest thing is: you are building an engine and need to find good combos to get that running, doesn’t that remind you of your favorite game Terraforming Mars?”

Then I showed them the cover and they agreed the cover was so beautiful we now had to try the game.

And so I finally got to play Sidereal Confluence.

I admit… it was hard. The daughter almost started crying during the teach. I was afraid of losing them before we even played the first round. Dad who is a master player of all boardgames got the easiest civilization … I have no idea why that happened. I ended with the guys who have to lend out there machines… but in a first game nobody knew how to valuate my machines or my partner’s joker cubes. But somehow with lots of discussions and very long trading rounds we made it through the game and people … didn’t hate it. I think first games would be far better with 4. Six at the table… you almost couldn’t trade with everyone.

But I think it was a good fit for the table. But definitely a hard sell. I had prepared and learned the rules of course but having never played, the teach was hard and many details had to be looked up throughout the game because I had missed them. In any case the “read this aloud to teach” sheet was very valuable. (Dad won with 55 points, I came in second with 35 points)

Big Mom (or so we christened her after the One Piece pirate) dominated this round of races btw.

[SteveB_uk]

@yashima

So I brought Hot Streak … by the 2nd race he was completely engaged. I had no idea this table could get shouty and laugh so much but it worked just as well. This game is something like the 8th wonder of the world.

I know I’ve been championing Hot Streak since long before it arrived in the UK, but it really is this good with everyone I’ve played it with. I’ve not had one player who didn’t enjoy it.

[lalunaverde]

Yes. The best part of Sidereal is that the values are very vague, despite the guidelines on the player screens (which is often incorrect once the game starts). But that’s also the worst thing about Sidereal if you just want to play a game

[RogerBW]

I have a similar feeling about Zoo Vadis. At the start of the game, what should I be asking for a favour? But then I don’t really get on with it anyway.

[yashima]

@lalunaverde

values are very vague, despite the guidelines on the player screens (which is often incorrect once the game starts)

We had so many discussions during the game about those guidelines and how to value things that gave VP and …

One of my best deals involved lending out one of my Converters alongside a bunch of my own cubes to share the resulting production of +4 big cubes. Also I had a few 3 way deals that helped me a lot and those felt really like an achievement.

I thought it was stressful (as kind of “host” of the game and teacher even more so) but I also really liked the whole thing and believe that repeat plays would be excellent. I think I would also prefer to play this at 4. We had a distinct production overhead at the other end of the table with the two hardest negotiators… one of them bragged how they took advantage of my bad position even. (I had more points than him at the end).

The most common question around the table was: where do I get those victory points? And by now we all know the answer: technologies more than everything else. And I believe my big converters would be much more coveted in a 2nd game

@RogerBW

I have a similar feeling about Zoo Vadis. At the start of the game, what should I be asking for a favour? But then I don’t really get on with it anyway.

Zoo Vadis fell completely flat with the exact same group when we played it last year.

Sidereal was very challenging to all of us but was much more enjoyed and I had the feeling most if not all of them were willing to play again in the right setting (enough time).

[Benkyo]

I don’t know if we just happened to get a very “nice” deal of initial cards, but all our races just had all four charging towards the finish line, with very few upsets. It made for a fairly boring game, and not a great first impression.

[lalunaverde]

Finished A Gest of Robin Hood with @mr.ister . I’d like to play more.

Cosmic Encounter - 2 aliens per player. Great fun.

Bristol 1350 - this game is weak at 4 players. Needs more.

Puerto Banana - didn’t capture the vibes this time with my bids but it was still pretty funny.

Pax Renaissance - 2 player. I went for Imperial and Globalisation and A went for Renaissance. He’s was gonna win on his next turn but I kept running down the two decks and won the game via Patron victory.

Medici vs Strozzi - still like this 2 player Knizia game. Very well done as a 2 player auction game.

Kingdom Builder Empire Edition - 5 players. We had Citizen, Geologist, and Ranger.

No Loose Ends - another trick taking game from Taiki Shinzawa. Used to be known as Shut the Books.

It’s a precision type trick taker. You have to play a card as a bid during the planning phase or you pass. You can keep doing this until you hit the max bid allowed or you pass if you’re content with your bids (or lack of bids). So, if you bid 3 cards, that means you’re betting that you’ll win 3 tricks.

But winning tricks isn’t enough. You have to “cover” your bids. When you win a trick, your winning card must be the same number or the same suit as one of your bid cards. At the end of the round, you suffer penalties for your “loose ends”: bid cards you didn’t cover AND tricks you’ve won but didn’t cover any bid cards. If you cover your bids without any loose ends - you’ve done the perfect crime!! And you score bonus points.

The game therefore is a lot trickier than I expected. I will be keeping this for now. I think this is more engaging than the usual trick takers.

Prey - trick taker from Allplay. Fun but it’s alright.

[COMaestro]

I have a Gest of Robin Hood invite in the Asynch Recruiting thread…