Yeah, I’ve had that happen too, and my take away was “seed the deck with some guaranteed chaos any time I introduce the game to new players”.
7 Likes
Played a 2 player game of Space Empires 4X, using a bunch of Advanced and Optional rules from both the base game and Close Encounters…
- Fighters, Carriers, Raiders, Mines and Minesweepers, Titans, Flagships, Boarding Parties, and MS Pipelines
- Terrafoming 2, Fast Battlecruisers, Reaction Sensors, Scanners, Ship Experience, and Point Defence
- Alien Technologies, Empire Advantages (with bidding), and 75CP for bidding (using open bids for the tech).
- Galactic Capital and Doomsday Machines in Deep Space (neither were found in the game)
I outbid Mike to pick an incredibly powerful Empire Advantage: 20CPs to his 15 let me nab Nanotechnology (allowing my ships to upgrade for free(!!!) anywhere on the map (!!!) by not moving for a turn. Worth twice that). Mike got Experimental Drives for 15CP, allowing him to move +1 but having to roll for each ship that attempts it: on a 9 or 10 they are forced to skip movement.
I managed to get an early string of planets, but forgot about building a 2nd Miner until Turn 3 which slowed down my grabbing of resources (and I was building tech instead of my MS Pipeline), so by Turn 4 Mike was outproducing me. I had spent my leftover Bid CPs on Attack and Defence tech, and got both up to Lvl2 pretty quick, while Mike?
Mike made Titans.
By turn 6 I discovered a Wormhole that took me 2 hexes from his homeworld and moved my fleet into position, but Mike stumbled on a Space Wreck and I lost focus… had I jumped through and hit his homeworld at that moment, I would’ve had 6 Battlecruisers, 2 Cruisers, and my Flagship against his Titan, 3 Fighters (Lvl3), and 6 Shipyards… but he had no Attack or Defence tech, so I would be hitting on +2 and all of his stuff would be -2 or -3 (for Experience). I also psyched myself out a little, thinking that Mike had built mines and so I built and escorted a Minesweeper to my fleet, wasting more time.
So instead of going for his homeworld, I went for the fleet protecting that Wreck. Mike’s first Titan and 3 escort Fighters was destroyed at the cost of 2 Battlecruisers, giving my ships useful experience, and I nabbed the Wreck, but Mike built 2 more Titans and 6 Fighters and sent that through the Wormhole at my home, destroying the small fleet escorting the Space Wreck on their way.
I managed to get my Fast Cruisers into his backfield and bombed 4 of his colonies back one tier as well as destroying 6 MS Pipelines and a Miner… but in exchange Mike blew up the planet next to my homeworld.
The fleet I sent to protect that world (a Carrier, 3 Fighters, and a BC) managed to destroy 3 of Mike’s screening Fighters, but that was it. I called it at that point… although I had temporarily inflicted over 20CPs worth of damage on his economy, Mike was within striking distance of my world, and under no obligation to attack it: he could keep destroying my colonies until he crushed me with his wallet.
I really should’ve moved my fleet throigh that wormhole and taken a swing at his homeworld. Gah. Oh well!
Still a fantastic game, although the chits are still very fiddly. However, still superior to the BGA implementation if only because BGA lacks expansions!
9 Likes
Have you ever tried this solo?
And thanks for posting the pics. I could probably find some on BGG but this is the first time I am seeing the full board.
3 Likes
I have played the original Solo version (versus Doomsday Machines) on BGA, and it’s not bad! Challenging, certainly, but not sure how much is me being bad at the game. 
I haven’t tried any of the many other solo variations (Alien Empires or Replicants), but I might at some point if I get some free time.
I actually spent a few hours yesterday punching and corner-clipping the Replicant stuff so I can try them next time. I may even punch all the All Good Things stuff today after work…
3 Likes
These posts almost make me regret selling Space Empires 4x unplayed. But I turned a profit and I’m still looking at TI4, WotR, Eclipse, Forbidden Stars as unplayed games I’d get to first.
Maybe when I’m retired I’ll seek out a copy and go nuts.
In other news, I’ve been on the Nature beta for IOS and Android.
Base: Don’t care for it at all. But it holds promise as a way to introduce people to the system. Everything is just to seatbelted here, it feels like nothing can go right or wrong.
Jurassic: Hmm. Not interesting. Maybe it works well in combination with other modules? Just more attack and more defense and the game felt mostly similar to base, with bigger numbers.
Flight: Hey! This game can be fun! The cat and mouse of predator and prey crossed a threshold here where it became interesting. The Flight cards allow for population explosion if you can keep triggering the conditions, making the puzzle more difficult and more rewarding. And the predator / food supply / population and food for migrating (finishing eating first) creates a three-way tension so the game starts to sparkle.
Tundra: Oh yes! Now I feel like I’m playing Oceans, which is a great thing. The cold is killing off species left and right, but you get bonuses for just not dying. And the food is put on the other side of migration, which opens you up to predators. Every move here is fraught and keeping your ecosystem going is a real balancing act. I’m sold!
I did the kickstarter and I’ve yet to be exposed to three of the modules (Rainforest, Climate, and hubbahubbanoidea). Flight got me to “this wasn’t a mistake” and Tundra got me to “this was a win.” Hooray!
8 Likes
The last one was events. Basically, awful things keep on happening to everyone!
3 Likes
Played Century: Golem Edition. Really enjoyed it.
And a 4 player of Sunset Over Water, which is supposed to be relaxing and arty but gets quite stabby at 4 (when there are only 5 VP cards to win per round and choosing to “wake up late” and go last can really hurt your score).
6 Likes
These are the kind of games I rather play at low player counts. Like 1 
5 Likes
Played Magical Athlete at 5 players. Wasn’t actually expecting that much from it but it was a huge hit for a group that had asked for “not a thinky game please”. I came last!
11 Likes
I usually only play Sunset over Water solo (apart from once, I think) and I actually enjoyed having to plan around the other players.
And Century: Golem was great at 4 - people building different engines, having to deny them obvious cards, they clear the acquire or claim decks for you when there’s nothing you can buy so the new options keep coming, I had no complaints.
I did have a phone app of Splendor that was brilliant solo, hadn’t thought about how good Century might be solo.
5 Likes
A few more games of R.A.V.E.L. I had one very easy win, one slightly more difficult win, and a loss which surprised me by going right down to the wire after starting so badly that I’d burned all my tokens before the half-way mark, and had expected to lose shortly thereafter! From that point things just fell into place one after the other, though, and in the end I was only a single token shy of a win, with just the one card remaining.
One of the cats did his best to lie all over the game, but fortunately it’s small enough to be safely shifted out of the way of a rogue tabby.
I was expecting the game to be a bit swingy with the randomness, but all my losses have been pretty near things, so maybe it tends to pan out more closely than I’d imagined.
I also realised I’d been making the game harder than it was supposed to be (when playing with the easy cards), in one case due to a misleading misprint in the manual for one of the cards, and in another due to just misreading the rule and doing something randomly when I was allowed to choose. If it starts feeling too easy, I’ll start using the harder cards!
9 Likes
I’m going to have to keep an eye on (R.A.V.E.L. publisher) InPatience – solo puzzles seem to be their thing:
- Sfynx looks quite nice, but I think maybe I’ll skip that… whereas R.A.V.E.L. manages to distinguish itself with its dice system, I think Sfynx would feel a bit too similar to other games I already have.
- Freigard is a very lightweight push-your-luck Knizia design, and might be the sort of thing I’d really appreciate when I’m low on brain.
- Mayor of Chicago meanwhile seems relatively complex for such a small box, and pretty interesting. Cute art work, too.
- Skoventyr is another one I have, but don’t have a firm opinion of it yet… need to play more. The 2-3 games I’ve played were all losses, so it’s not too easy. (I know I was working on a strategy when it got put aside for other things, but I’ve probably forgotten everything by now!)
They also publish the “Oniverse” games, but I know almost nothing about those…
5 Likes
I have played several. They are a modern take on „patience“ games. I have none in my collection anymore, I can look up rules for games like Grosser Napoleon online and play with a regular deck of cards. YMMV. Onirim is available as app. It is probably the best one to give a try to see if it is for you.
5 Likes
Pathfinder: Dice Conquest
The Magus and Alchemist successfully defeating Nuldranog the Vile, after running the gauntlet of Pathfinder monsters.
I picked what seemed like two of the strongest hero characters for this initial two-hander game, – but most of them (there are 6) had really good abilities – and with the help of the magical loot items picked up along the way I only had a couple of turns where I needed to take end-of-round damage due to not defeating all of the current set of opponents. (Most of the damage we took came from the creatures counter-attacking mid-round.)
Good fun. As with the original Dice Conquest, some of the enemy abilities are really horrible! It’s the same basic game system and so there’s a mixture of similarities and differences in the constraints and special abilities of the various cards of each game; but they’re different enough on the whole that I think I’ll hang on to both boxes.
Other differences from the original, aside from creature and hero abilities:
- Instead of always facing the same final creature, there are now three options to choose from (one per game).
- For the advanced rules, Traps (which were always bad) have been replaced by Spells (which are sometimes good). You generally have a 25-50% chance of a good result (apparently the team are middling spell-casters at best!)
(See also my discussion/photos of the original game here and here.)
8 Likes
A couple of 2p games today
Spokes, I’m not sure about this game
Moon Colony Bloodbath, lost by a single person. I’m still impressed by how quick this game is.
Dorfromantik, ignored anything we had already unlocked (with another group), so it was just vanilla Dorf. Stilll good fun.
9 Likes
Tonight I got to try out my copy of Dark Souls: the Card Game. Since it was my first time playing, the 60 minute time listed on the box ballooned to 90 minutes as I referenced the rulebook periodically to clarify a rule or answer a question, but overall the game is pretty simple.
Game details
The game consists of an exploration board and two combat boards, one for the player characters and one for the enemies. The exploration board has paths connecting encounter spaces, with difficulties ranging from 1 to 3. The paths end at boss encounters, one on each side of the board. The characters start at the bonfire in the center and then follow a path to an encounter. These encounters are seeded with a card at the beginning of the game which when revealed shows how many monsters appear and the number of treasures drawn from that deck when the encounter is overcome.
Monsters also have three difficulty levels, the harder ones more likely to appear for harder encounters. The battle boards are just 3x2 grids. The characters can place themselves in any space on their board before an encounter. The monsters have two grids on their cards, showing where they are placed on their board, and where they will attack on the character board when they activate. The monster card also shows their health, attack power, defense, possibly special abilities, and how many souls they are worth when defeated.
The character decks consist of 28 cards to start, a mix of attack and defense cards, and stamina cards to pay for activating the former. There are four types of stamina: strength, dexterity, intellect, and faith, and each attack and defense card usually needs some combination of these in order to be played. Additionally, there is usually a more expensive activation cost that will keep the card in your hand, otherwise it will be discarded with the stamina when played.
Players draw six cards and enemies attack first. If there is no character in their listed attack space, they will instead attack a different character in that row. If there is still no character, then they can attack any character on the board. Players can play a single defense card if they wish. Any unblocked damage has to be paid by discarding cards from their hand or the top of their decks. Once all monsters have activated, the players draw back up to six cards and take their turn.
Characters can make one attack against any monster in their column, as long as there is no other cards between them and the target. There are special ranged attacks that can bypass this restriction. Characters can also make one move to an adjacent space (swapping with another character if one is in the space, which counts as the move for both characters that turn), discard cards from hand to draw an equal number, and do one special action (such as heal). Once all characters have acted, the surviving monsters activate again.
If the characters win, they can immediately go to rest at the bonfire and obtain the rewards from the encounter, adding it to their inventory. If not, they all draw back up to six cards and the rewards go in the loot pile and they choose a new encounter. If they fail the encounter, by any character needing to draw and having no more cards in their deck, they lose everything in the loot pile. If they win, the current loot pile goes to inventory and the new rewards become the loot pile. So you are at risk of losing precious rewards by pushing too hard.
When the characters rest at the bonfire, they get to reveal the treasures they have won and also upgrade their decks with new stamina cards. There are cards with two stamina symbols, letting the player choose either when playing it (costs 2 souls) and cards that have two stamina symbols which both are used when playing (costs 5 souls). Also, the top bonfire card is flipped, giving the players a reward, and increasing their deck sizes by 3, but also reactivating all the encounters (but not bosses). So more treasures and souls can be won, but this also means you can’t clear a path to a boss and then rest before fighting them. You will always have at least one encounter first.
The characters win the game by defeating both boss encounters. They lose if a character is defeated once the 5th bonfire card is showing.
I played as the Knight with the suggested starting bosses of Vordt and Pontiff. Did good at first, but after my first rest I went for a level 2 encounter, which went fine, but then decided to challenge Pontiff and lost horribly, losing the rewards for the encounter. A bit of a setback.
I used the next run to do a couple of encounters, powering up and then went for Vordt on the next run, defeating him. Rested at the bonfire for theast possible time and went for Pontiff. Got him about halfway before my deck ran out.
This game is tricky, and with the huge variety of cards, you can get very lucky or unlucky with the monster encounters and treasures drawn. Similarly, you can end up with a hand of attack and defense cards, without the necessary stamina to play any of them, or nothing but stamina and no way to attack or defend. Being able to cycle cards helps, but you can only do it once a turn and it is no guarantee you will draw what you need, plus it puts you closer to losing. It’s a very punishing balancing act, but I did enjoy it.
6 Likes
+1 for the Onirim phone app. It makes a HUGE difference to have the shuffling automated, you can play fast enough that you get a feel for the game and can see if it’s for you.
5 Likes
Viticulture World . The coop variant starting scenario with my partner. Finally after having it on my shelves since publication.
It’s fine. My partner who hates competition enjoyed it. For a long time we felt like it was impossible to win but at the end we didn’t play the last round because there was only 2 more obvious actions to do. All the entropy in the game is from the cards which are so random that you just can’t count on them in late game or generated through competing players. Remove the latter source… it feels like a somewhat overly complex optimization puzzle.
Wouldn’t recommend unless there is a really good reason to not play this competitive.
Note: there are a bunch more scenarios that are not introductory and supposedly more difficult. So maybe that’s where the cooperative game shines?
6 Likes
Lords of Vegas - amazing! We were told to pipe it down due to how much fun we are having. Whoops…
Azul: Master Chocolatiers - I’m concluding that this is my “family game” of choice other than Dixit/Mysterium. I like this more than Harmonies
HOT STREAK!!
Maria - this is a lot easier than I thought. I need more plays of this, but this is now in my Top New-to-Me this year
Chicago Express - 3 players. I think this game is great at all player counts
No Loose Ends
7 Likes
but it’s really the same as base Azul right? Just different tiles?
4 Likes