Your Last Played Game Volume 3

[yashima]

Over the last 3 days… I have played a total of 11 games of Dorfromantik Sakura (so far, the day isn’t over). I reset the campaign. We had not played in over a year and it was almost finished and I didn’t want to have to relearn all the Sonderplätzchen all at once.

I keep playing game after game. It is kind of addictive. I am only here at the computer instead of down in my “den” because I finally managed a game that had such great flow where I completed all but one of the tasks / Aufträge.

So lovely. I knew something was missing from my meditative tile laying games… it was this game.
edit: game day is over. 14 games

[Whistle_Pig]

Wednesday games night:
played a close game of Yokohama. The contracts ran out much faster than we all expected, resulting in a lot of "I just needed one more turn! Followed up with Panda Spin, which seems to be Tichu with bells on. My brain was a bit melted after Yokohama, so I didn’t do very well but would be happy to play again

On BGA I’ve been playing a lot of Forest Shuffle. Thinking of getting the Dartmoor version for my parents, who used to live in Dartmoor National Park.

[Phil]

Hot Streak. Lovely chaos. So much running in the wrong direction. We saw a mascot get swallowed by the back of the track moving up between shuffles for the first time (and then very-nearly the second time in the next round of the same race). At one point we had three mascots in the same lane with the front-most of that trio facing backwards towards the others… that looked like disaster for someone, but we drew a green card next and they all safely ran past each other!

[gmwhite999]

This weekend’s game, inspired by recent PBFs here, was Flash Point: Fire Rescue. A solo two-hander using the Veteran difficulty and most of the advanced rules, starting (randomly drawn) with the Generalist and the Rescue Specialist. Oh and virtually all of the centre of the board on fire.

Luckily two of the early PoIs were near exits so the game started quite well with three early rescues, two hazmats removed and fire advancing as smoke in the corners of the board. Things got worse quickly when one of the remaining hazmats exploded and a big corridor of fire stretched across much of the building. A false alarm PoI proved a big distraction but led to me clearing a narrow path into the heart of the building, which proved useful when another PoI appeared there. Moving the ambulance around the building allowed me to rescue the last few victims as the structural integrity came close to cracking for a nice if tense win: 7 victims saved with only one casualty, two hazmats removed and only one damage cube remaining - and without needing to change roles.

Two months in and still going strong with this year’s gaming challenge. Next weekend is the first really busy one though so expect it will be a very short quick game for the next update.

[yashima]

I have finished my current campaign of Dorfromantik Sakura by gathering 30 flowers in game 19. The longest holdout achievement-wise was the (I don’t think it’s a big spoiler that there is this particular one) “long river” Achievement. I managed a score of 450 on that game. I am never going to score like that again. Definitely. After binging through the game since last Wednesday, I have now put it back in the box. It’s okay now. I can play something else again.

I also played missions 13 to 16 on our current “campaign” of The Crew Deep Sea with my partner today. Yay! We had some really tricky ones and I messed up today’s straight “first try” run by playing a single card wrong on my attempt to get all cards of one color… I am so bad at card counting. But in our second attempt it went smoothly. Thus we learn: having a lot of cards of a single color is better to grab everything than having 3 trumps. At least in a cooperative trick taker.

[Marx]

So Saturday I played Twilight Imperium 4th Edition with Prophecy of Kings and a few pieces from Thunder’s Edge.

The holes you see in the board are TE pieces that the game owner didn’t have, and were being borrowed from another player (not me!).

This is my first time ever playing any edition of Twilight Imperium with somebody else’s game. One other time I had a friend who hosted, but requested that I bring my copy to play. Anyway.

Jeremy organized this one. He moved away from our town a few years back, but last month his regular gaming group out east imploded due to serious infighting and petty squabbles, so he rounded up a few of his old friends from my town (including me) for a 4 playet game.

Jeremy played the Arborec, Colin played the Nomads, Eric played the Argent Flight, and I tried the Yin.

I am not very good with the Yin, I have learned. They are very aggressive theoretically, but I didn’t have the economy to threaten either of my very military neighbours.

The game proceeded relatively quickly and cleanly… Colin is an experienced player and knew the rules almost as well as I did (and caught me on one or two mistakes, as always happens… in this case I didn’t know that you can’t Invade from a planet to another planet unless you have capacity for the troops in your fleet at that location… a weird corner-case where a Carrier was full of Fighters and therefore couldn’t grab Infantry from one world in the same hex to another world). Eric is a good player, but we spent half the game reminding him how constructing fleets works (which, admittedly, isn’t trivial: your Space Docks can produce X new pieces, where X = the Resource value of your world +2, but then you also have Fleet Limits for how many capital ships can be in a system and limits on how many Fighters can be supported by a fleet which depends on the number of Space Docks, Carriers, Dreadnaughts, and Flagships you have in the system). But trivial or not, the rest of us managed to remember how it worked… anyway…

The real sour moment happened near the midgame. I was speaker and had recently revealed an Agenda, something relatively mild. Colin and Eric both played Riders (cards that allowed them to predict an outcome which, if it came true, gave them a bonus… but in exchange they forfeit their ability to vote on said Agenda). Colin played a Political Rider.

“So, if your prediction comes true, you win some Action Cards?” I asked.
“Yep,” responded Colin.
“Okay, that’s not such a big deal.” I then negotiated with Jeremy, saying that if he abstained I would use my power as Speaker to make sure the vote went in our (and Colin’s) favour.
“So how many Action Cards do you win?” I asked Colin.
“Three. And I become the Speaker.”

It was dirty. That’s not trivial, and refraining to share that meant I acted in a way that I otherwise wouldn’t, and he very much knew he was intentionally excluding important information.

Regardless, I didn’t do very well. The Nomads grabbed Mecatol Rex on Turn 2 after a shockingly fast expansion, and while I managed to keep up with everyone for a couple turns, by Turn 4 I was already falling behind.

The game ended on Turn 5 after the first Stage 2 Public Objective. Colin (Nomad) scored 10 with a lucky Secret Objective, Argent Flight finished with 9, Arborec with 7, and me with 4.

I don’t think I’m going to play with Colin again. He’s a nice guy! I like him as a human. But I don’t want to play games with somebody where I have to police every question and answer for precision to make sure he’s not intentionally omitting critical information. Especially in a game as complicated as Twilight. To me, games like this aren’t about “Gotcha!” moments, and playing in that style just… kinda sucks?

Maybe I’m just Shakes Fist at Cloud about those kind of players. I dunno. But it was otherwise a fun game, despite my poor showing. I was Resource and Token starved all game, and despite having a Legendary world that gave me 2 free Warsuns, I didn’t get in a single fight at any point other than being attacked once to enable Eric to score a Secret Objective.

Still love Twilight. It is still great with 4 players (although harder to set up a Milty Draft for). Ah well.

[lalunaverde]

Played some Indonesia while still waiting for 3e!

Project L

No Loose Ends - this is one of the best trick taking games Ive played

[yashima]

@lalunaverde

this is one of the best trick taking games Ive played

Why? What is the twist or no twist?

[lalunaverde]

Standard precision bidding trick taker. One at a time, everyone bids but they have to bid with a card. Or they pass. So if you bid two cards, you think you’ll win two tricks.

The twist is that when you win a trick, the winning card you played must match the number or suit of one of your bid cards. E.g. i have a 3 red and a 4 blue. If I win with an 11 blue, I can cover the 2nd bid card.

If you wina trick that you cant use to cover one, it’s a penalty. If you didnt cover a bid card, thats penalty too. If you cover everything with no extra tricks, then congrats!! You did the pefect crime!!

[yashima]

I played my new arrivals.

Small Fjords is just adorable. Everything is just right. Box size, art, rules, relaxed tile puzzle for one or possibly even a good game for two. I admit I have not read the two player rules. I have no other game of this size that has hexagon tiles.

Kokeshi has some box air issues. Meh.
And the rulebook could be clearer especially the solo mode. But after my 2nd game I think I have understood how to play. It’s teachable. Strategy is a bit opaque at first but acceptable. The tiles are very nice and the iconography is simple. The basic game consists of building up 5 tracks with those tiles and each turn you activate one track and hope for a cascade of effects. Very nice combo opportunities that probably reveal itself after a few games. The solo presents a satisfying puzzle with the bot forcing the player to manipulate activations so that the bot does not gain tiles on all tracks equally.

Also the theme is paper thin.

[Whistle_Pig]

I assume there are fewer tiles in Small Fjords than regular Fjords, or are they just tiny?

[yashima]

They are thinner than Cascadia tiles but about the same size. But there aren’t a lot of them. Maybe 30 or 40. edit: 40 tiles says the rulebook.

[Phil]

I decided against regular 2p Fjords (because I was convinced my partner would hate it), but I see that the Small Fjords solo mode is new to this edition, and now you’ve gotten me all interested. Doesn’t seem available locally, but I’ll have to keep an eye out.

[Phil]

@Phil

[Hot Streak] needs a theme-appropriate start player token. Maybe a picture of the gambler receiving a phone call with a hot tip for the race. Except the tip just tells you how many places to move the token along for the next race, depending on the player count :).

I just re-read that and realised that a rotary dial phone with the numbers being the player count would work beautifully for this.

If it was really fancy, it would be one of those double-layered disc assemblies, and you’d physically dial it to the player count to see the correct value.

Younger players would need to learn how rotary phone dials worked, but I see no problem with this :).

*attempts to manifest this object by sheer force of will*

[yashima]

I am really enjoying it soio. So much so I am making a Top 10 of my favorite solo tile laying games I still need to rank them. But: I now have 10 I can rank (Counting the 3 entries of the *polis series that I like as separate ones however).

[Acacia]

Tabled my recent acquisition of the Manhattan Project: Energy Empire reprint.

What can I say? It’s good. It’s really good.

Solo mode? Easy and effective.
Components and new design? Beautiful.
Gameplay? It shows its age in all the right ways. We’ve got standard worker placement, resource management, engine building, and a mix of default and customizable scoring objectives. Sounds derivative, but it’s a case where this was one of the patriarchs that created the glut, not the glut itself. -and so it doesn’t pile on more faff than the model can sustain in order to “differentiate” itself. It just does what it does and does it well.

Everything’s connected. Everything is frantic, in that the game is moving just a bit too quickly and you’re always just a token or a worker short of doing everything you want to do. Your environment is polluting just as you want to clean it up for scoring, but you just can’t wait another round to take that action…

The old complaints with this were that it was static (a la Puerto Rico) and therefore solvable. I find that surprising, given how important the card market at the bottom is - and what you get out of there is going to wildly impact what direction you take in the game. Plus the soft-blocking of worker placement forcing you to re-route each round.

That said, the new edition has a basket of modules that tweak the economy and the objectives in simple but effective ways. They did a good job of addressing the concern just right, if it was ever there at all.

So… Luke Laurie. Whistle Mountain, and now Energy Empire. I’m going to have to look into the rest of his library. Cryo? Eldervale? Andromeda’s Edge?

In other news: On the Underground four wins in four plays. This last one on Yucata was the fiercest yet with some more experienced players who blocked - hard right out the gate. I never finished a scoring loop (which in past plays made up 10-20% of final scoring) so I had to get very creative with controlling routes and snatching other bonuses. In the end I scored 68 against a second place of 67 - surprising everyone (read: me) - and the game got even better in my esteem.

Red Cathedral - I played this twice solo and didn’t care for it at all. Then I played with people and it was better, but only just. After a long hiatus I’m playing again (Yucata again). With a fresh palette I’m digging this as well. Yes the rondel and your engine building are opportunistic and completely uncontrollable. But the flat-out race to control and finish the cathedral is real. My attention is more over there now and I’m experiencing the thrill. So yay for Red Cathedral as well.

[lalunaverde]

@Acacia

The old complaints with this were that it was static (a la Puerto Rico) and therefore solvable

At this point, you can ignore such criticisms when you figure out that your average Euro gamer couldn’t solve shit. I would respect this opinion more if they actually play their games more than once or twice a year

I’ve heard of this critique with, say, Caverna before and I doubt a lot of people have solved Caverna.

=============================

Lords of Vegas - great fun!!!

Kopi King - imagine the thrill of Galaxy Trucker’s spaceship building but you’re fulfilling orders. And so the game only goes for 10 to 15 mins. It’s definitely my type of dumb fun filler game

Commands & Colours: Ancients - the Battle of Trebbia between Carthage (feat Hannibal and brothers) and Rome. I played as the Romans. The battle started with an aggressive Roman advance on the right flank. The Carthaginians countered with their superior cavalry and routed some my forces. I kept my ground and scored a hit on Hannibal himself and he died there at Trebbia instead of causing more manace to Rome.

I advanced the light infantry towards the main enemy line to launch missile attacks. But an ambush was revealed where Mago attack our left flank from behind and nearly crushed our forces. I sent a counter attack and crushed Mago’s forces but at a heavy cost of both left and centre.

It was a knife edge at this point and the Carthaginians called for a main advance of the centre and the Romans were routed on such a close battle.

New York City - remake of Rialto. For a Feld game, it’s pretty fun. Mainly because it’s an area control

Fire & Axe: A Viking Saga - you’re a Viking and you have a ship and a crew. Hooray!! You go out from Denmark, Sweden, Norway and trade, raid, settle all over Europe. It’s great. This is when I know that I’m sliding towards Ameritrash nowadays.

Tongiaki: Journey into the Unknown - funny! but it has some flaws that hinders on our random BS fun.

Arboretum - 4 players. The scores went like this: 8, 0, 0, 5. Basically, standard Arboretum game

[yashima]

@lalunaverde

At this point, you can ignore such criticisms when you figure out that your average Euro gamer couldn’t solve shit. I would respect this opinion more if they actually play their games more than once or twice a year

I’ve heard of this critique with, say, Caverna before and I doubt a lot of people have solved Caverna.

I wish the people making this kind of critique of “solvability” would just frame it differently. “Solvable” really depends on the person playing. And I know at least one person who can do such things even with few plays.

And while for most people “solvable” is probably not the actual issue, I want to argue that the critique isn’t wholly invalid because even if I cannot solve a game, the feeling that someone could is not that great.

@yashima

Remove the latter source [of entropy]… it feels like a somewhat overly complex optimization puzzle.

Case in point, we recently played the coop version of Viticulture and I said it feels like an optimization puzzle (implied that it has a best solution) after a few turns of struggling. That does not mean I can solve it. But it still makes the game kind of boring. The puzzle isn’t wholly bad changing the worker spaces in Viticulture World is a fun mechanism. But moves in the latter half of the game were rote and formulaic with a lack of interesting decisions to be made.

I want to say that even an implied solvability has effects on gameplay that an average gamer can “feel” and may not like: a bit like railroading in RPGs, I am on a track and I better not deviate from it.

[yashima]

Because someone asked for the size of the tiles.

I have now played Small Fjords 10 times and it probably means I like it
Everytime I fail to get a really good score… (I even got one below 30 which is deemed as a loss) … I think “next time I will really do better” and then I score 34 again. 34 counts as a very middling “barely passing” score. It’s not difficult–it is just easy to mess up

[gmwhite999]

This week’s gaming night featured a solo run-through of Stefan Feld’s Hamburg. Just the base game, although I was tempted to add in a few of the expansions but as time was against me I kept it simple. Automata “Tom” raced away on the point track through some quick points and moving up the central courtyard ahead of me but I decided to concentrate on building, and got a nice collection of parks created and laterly two zoo animal enclosures, as three early clerics would give bonuses for parks and zoos. The dice rolls for each round were not of great help though and throughout the game the disaster tracks were regularly increased, causing much concern and diverting my attention to try and minimise their damage. I was able to get four useful buildings created however and use their beneficial actions to reduce the disaster levels, but never built any city walls and always trailed on the main points track. Final scoring seemed worrying initially but the combination of the right buildings matching the cleric bonuses led me to a comfortable final score of 58 points to 42. Seems like a low total though and more of a struggle than anticipated, but makes me want to get a few expansions involved for my next playthrough.