Sounds a lot like A Fake Artist Goes to New York
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Itâs kinda like the inversion of that. Only one person knows the word, instead of all but one. (Plus everyone does their own little drawing.)
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I am so lost by this explanation. People were looking at a pyramid and a smiling face, and they couldnât work out which one was most likely to represent âMona Lisaâ?!
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Possibly because the Mona Lisa is in the Louvre, which has a big glass pyramid at the entrance?
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Yes indeed. I forgot all about that architectural monstrosity!*
Having looked at BGG Iâve now understood that both of those drawings were âMona Lisaâ, and that the only players who have seen those words are the two who drew them. Everyone else has drawn the different word(s) they were given; and then based on the drawings alone the players each have to decide whose drawing was based on the same subject as the dealerâs drawing.
* Itâs fine on its own; I just think it fits in like a disco ball in the Sistine Chapel.
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Yeah itâs kind of a tough game to explain, even in person. We actually played an example round to start and that helped a lot. Gotta tighten up my pitch - having this good Mona Lisa example will help with that.
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That may work better psychologically for me than the âeveryoneâs an insider except youâ in Fake Artist and Spyfall.
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Dune: Imperium + Bloodlines - I only keep playing this because we are starting a new games night on Thursday until it becomes sizeable and stable. The game was okay. Bloodlines is fun
Overparked - very meh
the Voynich Puzzle - it was good fun playing this for the first time. But I can imagine it being insufferable after repeated plays. Rather Feldian in design. The Art is cute.
Fief: France 1429 - lots of fun. Crusader Kings as a board game in 3 hours. You marry with other players for alliances. Take titles. Elect bishops and the Pope. Be the King. Etc.I remember Quinns having a video of this. We played around 3 hours and it was full of laughter and excitement. Man, these are my sort of games nowadays. Make me roll dice!!
Zoo Vadis - as if I havenât had enough of talky games, we played Zoo Vadis. Great fun
HOOOOOOT STREEEAAAK - we had crazy races this time. Way more unpredictable than the usual.
Kuhhandel
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This weekendâs gaming was split over two afternoons: not because of limited time for once but with abundant free time for a replay. The game was Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game, and Saturdayâs session saw two solo runthroughs of the introductory adventure Escape the Tomb using the Dwarven Cleric Thorgrim. The first escape was mostly to relearn the rules but it seemed to be a bit tricky before I remembered about drawing Treasure cards, and this addition made the second runthrough more straightforward, escaping Strahdâs clutches both times without confronting the Count or levelling up.
Sunday afternoon saw a first playthrough of the longer solo scenario Adventure: Impossible starting with the Dragonborn Fighter Arjhan to search for and defeat Strahdâs allies. It started badly with early gargoyles and wraiths to contend with and hit points falling fast. However the dungeon was clear by the time I found the first ally, the Howling Hag, and I was able to defeat her with tactical retreats and lucky die rolls, mostly from when she did attack me. A long search followed for the next ally, but with a few treasure cards in hand and refreshed power cards I faced the Flesh Golem. Another tough opponent but hit-and-run tactics with some nice items saw me through. I finally levelled up while searching for the third ally - courtesy of another treasure card - and so the 2nd level Fighter finally found the final ally: the Werewolf. His healing ability would have been a big problem if I had not had my two strongest daily powers left, and more fortunately-low attack rolls from my foe gave me the victory. A surprise win without losing a hero after spending a lot of the early game very close to death, and with only one ârangedâ power which was basically a taunt to pull an enemy next to me to whack it.
A fun dungeon crawler although I feel as if another character with better ranged attacks would have had an easier time of the Impossible scenario. Will have to try it again outside of my annual challenge, playing through the Ghosts of Saltmarsh expansion for a different variety of monsters.
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Relatively busy weekend of gaming, which was nice! First up was Aliyah and Thomas coming over on Saturday.
Neither of them are âbigâ gamers, so I went for a few lighter games, starting with Things in Rings, which continues to be both entertaining and delightfully frustrating. Andy was upset that I put âRiceâ as âSomething Most People Have at Homeâ, but not âCheese.â I dunno, I just think that more people in North America stock rice than stock cheese⌠am I crazy? Maybe.
We then played Hot Streak, which was a riot. I have never seen such a poor performance from Mum, who three races in a row Turned Around and then ran straight off the track. My final round double bet on Dangle⌠did not pay off. Fantastic, fantastic game.
Sunday we had Jen and Chris visit to continue our campaign of Descent 3rd Edition, now firmly in the expansion content. It was neat, but weird! Basically one of the characters was standing trial while the rest of us rushed around to find evidence⌠except the person on trial choose âTrial by Combatâ so was facing down wave-after-wave of baddies while the rest of us tried to find our weapons. We did eventually, but there were so many baddies at that point⌠but still, we managed to rescue an injured Brynn before we all chased down the evil guy and thumped him good. Great game.
Andy had a headache and so went to lie down for a bit, so Jen, Chris, and I played a quick game of Cascadia, which was really nice. Final scores were 95, 86, and 85 (me in last, which means I did a good job teaching it, right?), but it was relaxing and nice, which is kinda what we all wanted for a closer to the day. Jen has requested that for our next game day (we meet more-or-less monthly) that I bring an array of smaller games, putting our Descent campaign temporarily on hold, which I am definitely okay with.
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Coup x2 - classic Coup!
Ticket to Ride: Europe
Magnate: the First City - good light weight fun about buying and selling property and make sure you arenât holding the bag when the crash happens. Itâs simple and light weight but it comes in a dumbass big box with huge minis that doesnât nothing to the game and actually obscures very important information on the board. This standard bullshit is how you figure out that this is a Kicksharter game.
It has funny and we had a good time though. On the last round, one of the players said âThey are running away with it. If we both sold our properties, we can crash the market and they loseâ. Indeed, I would have lost as I bought a massive AF $6M corporate office building. They did sold everything and the crash happened. Pure drama.
But I sold it in the end. The production of this game is just nonsense.
Panda Spin - glad to play this again. What a game!
Beer Pioneer - we are beer brewers in Germany. Why Germany? Well, why not?
It was a standard Euro. It was compared with Viticulture with a couple of players on the table, but I prefer this one. It is a bit boring and derivative. But Viticulture is just outright awful.
Steam Power - 5 players and itâs a light weight Martin Wallace. Itâs okay. Nothing amazing. I only forgave this game because it manage to deliver a nice light weight experience with a taste of Brass and Steam in just under an hour - yes, even at 5 players.
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Wednesday night gaming:
Obsession: Just the base game, which is a shame because I think the expansions add a lot without too much extra complexity (or maybe Iâm just salty because I did very badly 
)
Skull: My copy is actually starting to wear out from use. A silly game that teaches you not to trust anyone.
Things in Rings x2: Amazingly, someone managed to correctly guess that one of the rules was âyou can look through itâ with only âcurtainsâ and âmicroscopeâ as clues.
11 Likes
I played a bunch of new arrival Small Fjords today, solo. Itâs lovely! (thanks @yashima :). Thereâs not a lot to it (the solo game specifically) â youâre rolling with the random tile draws, and the decisions are usually straightforward â but itâs exactly what I was in the mood for.
And for even more ârelaxed tile layingâ, a couple of games of A Gentle Rain followed:
(I was wondering whether I was going to get a remarkably high score in that game, as 7 of the 8 blooms were out with about 10 tiles still remaining; but by the time I managed to get the final bloom the stack was down to 5 tiles. Still a good score, but not the crazy one Iâd thought/hoped I was headed for.)
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We played viticulture for the first time. I really liked it.
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Kinfire Delve: Vaingloryâs Grotto
A challenging ârun the gauntletâ game, trying to get through (or past) a stack of âchallengeâ cards of various kinds in order to face the big bad at the end. You can play with one or two characters, and I decided to two-hand it.
Itâs neat. Each character has a deck of 18 cards with lots of unique abilities, and lots of ways for each character to support the other. Itâs pretty daunting â each character starts with a hand of 7 cards, and most of the time you do not get to draw new cards to replenish your hand unless you take an âexhaustionâ card â of which there are only six in total, and they all make the situation worse for you. Each character can support the otherâs actions by adding cards from their hand, but⌠well⌠see the previous sentence â losing cards is bad. So you push your luck with the dice, and hope that you didnât need that card you decided not to play.
Failing a challenge often inflicts damage, and your characters have a shared health pool of only 10 hit points, with very few ways to heal. Some abilities may negate the damage, but that might cost you cards. The reward for succeeding at a challenge is usually to burn a certain number of cards from the challenge deck â so while it looks like an impossible task up front, youâll only face a random sub-set of the challenges in any given game, and youâll get through it faster than you might expect.
This photo is me winning my first game unexpectedly, after limping into the final showdown (expecting to lose in short order, and quite surprised to have made it even that far), and then discovering that between my two characters I had the cards for a spectacular synergy move which would get me close enough to a victory that I might actually be successful.
Also pictured: The official playmat for the series (there are three boxes which you can mix and match). You absolutely donât need the playmat, but it was unexpectedly cheap at the time I placed the order, so I couldnât resist including it.
Not pictured: Me, 30 minutes after packing up the game, realising that Iâd cheated in my excitement over that great move; that I couldnât actually have done it at that point in time; and that in fact I was probably toast :).
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Well thereâs something I didnât expect: Maryse and I played a best of 3 series of Sea Salt And Paper and ALL THREE games were decided by the siren cards. Maryse won the first one, I won the next two.
Never had that happen before.
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Nusfjord is rapidly becoming one of my favourite games (solo, so far). I tried it with the mackerel deck this time, and scored 31, above 30 for the first time.
The Fisherâs Cottage building is insanely good.
But I noticed late that the Fisherâs Trade is 3 fish â 1 gold within your reserve not your supply! Noooo
Such a thinky game, and always different, driven by the available buildings.
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Followed immediately by 38 on the next game with the same deck, despite failing to plan for enough wood for the big card at the end.
Strategy of Buy Big Boats really paid off. [Edit: However, as I learned below, the Sailor elder doesnât give you double gold.] I still got enough in my final turn, which I promptly spent on another boat.
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Sorry to rain on your parade but this is a very common misconception (itâs the fault of the wording on the card). The Sailor doesnât give you two gold and a wood per plate, just one gold and one wood.
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Aaaah thank you so much for telling me, scored 38 then 
Yes, the appendix makes this clearer. Itâs 1 wood on top of the normal - they really shouldnât use â+1â for the gold on the elder card in that case!
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