I’m seeing this roll out and I’m regretting not backing it.
Still, it was ridiculously expensive. There’s a very real chance I’ll be able to get a kickstarter version or at least partial upgrade used within the next year.
There’s nothing wrong with my old one, though… right?
I have the retail one for normal price
Managed to get a game of Brass Birmingham on the table… and gosh what a game. The final scores were 111 - 110 - 109 - 98 (the player who has only played once before did the worst, but even he did well, he just didn’t win). And I managed to win!
The funny part (to me, at least) is that I didn’t have a “strategy” in the traditional sense. I had no idea what I was going to do before it was my turn: I mostly looked at the resources available and then built stuff I could afford. I had to take a loan (I hate taking loans, but I think it’s unavoidable in the game), but by the endgame I was making over 20 coins a round from income by building and then immediately consuming resources I produced (build a factory and railways one turn, and then the next build a brewery and then consume it to ship goods, using the factory and the beer).
Great game. Tight, tense, not super complicated (although a few weird rules I learned for the first time… like you have to consume coal from the closest mine regardless of whether its yours or not, but you can consume beer from anywhere unless its somebody else’s beer… and the ability to ship as many times as you have beer to ship in a single action). Just a great game.
Afterwards I put Courtisans on the table with 5 of us, and I’m still not really sure how I feel about it other than saying that it’s utterly beautiful. Gorgeous cards. But as for the game… I think 5 might be too many? It felt like I couldn’t control any element of the game, and the final scores were -3, -3, -1, 2, and 11 (and I didn’t win this one). But I think I still like it? I dunno, it’s a weird egg, I’m glad I have it, but yeah. Weird.
Played Sea Salt and Paper as a filler game at a new local game night, and… it wasn’t a hit. I’d had to look up a video last week because just reading the instructions made no sense, and even so trying to explain it in the pub was a bit much. Then the deck ran out in a 4 player game before anyone got 7 points so the round ends immediately without scoring.
I can see a lot of potential, I got the “3 points per anchor” card and did the duo to search a discard pile for an anchor I spotted (only to have the 3x card stolen from my hand, curses). But the random group didn’t love it. Awesome art though, and I feel like I could teach the game more competently next time.
I backed it and got what amounts to the retail edition and the wood meeples are just so nice. apparently the standee replacement can be bought separately. i don’t intend to do that.
Huh. I’ve never seen a deck exhaustion. Not impossible of course. I’d be happy to recomnend my mini rulebook, and talk through the game, if either would seem useful.
I didn’t know this was possible - do you feel confident you were playing it right?
Not really. I think we all had 6-7 cards each. But several people had played duos for 1 point and not collected the right cards for their hand. And just about everyone was drawing from the main deck instead of the discard piles.
Hm, interesting. It’s worth noting that you don’t have to play duos to count the points, but not drawing from the visible piles seems unusual! If someone is leaving set-collection cards in the piles they’re often an easy way to get lots of points, particularly if you can tell what cards others aren’t going for (which then of course makes them reluctant to give them up)
With 6-7 cards it feels like you’d have to do quite a bad job collecting the right cards, eg: with 2 duos played and then 7 cards in your hand you might have 2 more duos (4 cards for another 2 points) and then getting 3 points with a collection of 3 cards isn’t too tricky (2 octopi will do it)
I’d recommend giving it another go with a better grip on the teach (I also found it’s surprisingly difficult to teach for how light a game it is!) as I do think there’s something special there. But YMMV!
We’re all shooting in the dark, but it’s worth noting that a) cards played to the table are still “in your hand” and b) duos are worth 1 point whether in hand or on the table.
Yes, got both of those rules okay, it just meant people were spending lots of cards for only 1 point (and drawing more) in a four player game, and the remaining hand cards didn’t make 6-7 for anyone.
I don’t remember exactly, but if there are 64 cards in the deck (per internet) and no one ever drew from the discard pile, that would be 32 turns or 8 cards per player in hand when the deck emptied. That would be the bare minimum handsize. A single draw from the discard pile would increase that…
So not having 7 points is possible if no one collects any set cards at all. Hands of 6-7 cards shouldn’t be.
Sorry, my curiosity is so piqued here I just can’t help but ferret!
Both discard piles were pretty chunky, but I expect we just forgot a stack of cards somewhere.
And I’m thinking of that time I thought Jaipur was trash because we were allowing blind draws from the deck. Simple thing but it turns out the hinges on that specific.
For me it was a minute of tapping on the app trying to figure out how to draw that finally didabused me if the notion.
(Is there anything other that a notion that you can disabuse?)
Happily, this appears to be a single-use verb. I love linguistic oddities such a this.
Illusions, misconceptions?
Cyclades - 4 players. Went faster and thus more fun. I’d be keeping this for now, as it is different to CW which avoids the “I’d rather play Cthulhu Wars” problem. Something that Kemet and Root suffers from.
The auction is pretty tense. Although, the game may or may not suffer from turtling - so far, turtling is slow and attacking rewards more
Isle of Skye + Druid - still a boring game even with the exp. The so-called tension isnt really there once you know what youre doing.
Celebrated our friend’s birthday today with some food and games. Went for medieval theming, so we started with Mystery of the Abbey. I have always enjoyed this game, despite it usually becoming a race to the Chapter Hall at the end to make an accusation, which goes to the player earlier in the turn order unless someone has a Crypt card.
The winner went away with 8 points, having two correct revelations and making a correct accusation. The birthday girl had 2 points for a correct revelation. I had -2 for two incorrect ones, and my wife, who just really wasn’t having the best time with the game as her post concussion syndrome wasn’t playing well with tracking info, had -7 or so after just trying to get lucky accusing a few monks.
We were going to follow up with Orleans, but after dessert a couple wanted something easier and more familiar, so we abandoned the medieval theme and went withMysterium. Since we really just play for fun, we always play easy difficulty and don’t use the clairvoyance tokens. We sailed through in 5 game hours, and the birthday ghost got perfect cards on her last draw to make the finale obvious.
Seeing as we still had a bit more time, we brought outKingdomino. A massive 44 point forest gave the birthday girl the win, with me in second, my wife in third, and our friend pulling up the rear.
Was hoping to get something new to the table, but it was still a fun day, and at least got a rarely played game out for a spin.
Played a lot of games last weekend, and got to introduce @mistercrayon to my other gamer friends.
Orleans
I think this is an excellent euro. Setup is very annoying; I think I need to separate components as much as possible. Having played on BGA without Trade & Intrigue I would say that the expansion is a must.
Fast Sloths
I just really like this. Very different with 4/5 v 3. Want to try the proper set up with the players placing the animals.
Eternal Decks
Did we break the rules? Probably. It feels clever and unique and beautiful.
Sol and Hansa
I made a point of playing tactically and reactively rather than sticking to a plan. I enjoyed them both a lot because of it.
Chicago Express
I want to play this again without missing the end of game trigger. I think it needs repeat plays to get a grip on values and timings. The fact that it’s 6 player means that is probably more likely than if it was capped at 5. If that was the case I think I’d always opt for the accessibility of Ride the Rails
Tulip Bubble
Just gorgeous, glad to have played it. The two people who did well in the first round absolutely rinsed the rest of us.
Wilmott’s Warehouse
Just a joy. Lightning in a bottle?
Speaking of which…The Gang
Is this too easy when everyone knows what they’re doing? I think maybe 6 players is the way to go now to create the tension.
Zoo Vadis
I still love it. Will be my go to 6 or 7 player game for a while.
Jekyll and Hyde
I don’t understand how this can work, but it does.
The Barracks Emperors
We played 1 full round out of 3 because I think it was going to go long and it’s not a 2.5 hour+ game. Is it weird? Yes. Unique? Yes. AP inducing? Yes. Good? I think so.
I’m not sure where it sits. It’s too big to be a trick taker. The designer says it should be ‘light and casual’, but the decisions feel too complex. With the powers (which I think it needs) I’m not sure if it begins to move into the Cosmic Encounter space, and I don’t think it wants to.
Going to try it again in a couple of weeks. As I’m thinking I might sell it, it’s annoyingly gettable!
Any reason you think you broke the rules?
