Your Last Played Game Volume 3

[Captbnut]

I had an awful play of Acquire last night.

I over spent on shares, then the two hotels I was majority shareholder in went safe and the final one didn’t merge and I couldn’t get a tile to do it. I literally spent 45 minutes doing nothing. Perfect storm of a shit experience. I also think I’m pretty aware when people are having a bad time with a game and try to give them an out. Tbh, I think I could have quit without impacting the game for the others.

I still think it’s a really good game, but would play it differently from now on and I’ll definitely warn new players about spending too much when you don’t have a clear path to making some money quickly.

[yashima]

@browntownlad

Got Cubitos back to the table after quite a while.

Welcome to the forums @browntownlad
My partner likes Cubitos a lot, he is a fan of both dice and deck building. Our previous iteration of this was Quarriors but I very much prefer Cubitos and not only because the dice quality is so much better. I really like the race aspect.

[Whistle_Pig]

A few games last night:

Flamme Rouge: Just the basic version because we had three new players. It was a pretty close race that my rouleur managed to win by the skin of his teeth, despite having a mountain of exhaustion from spending most of the race at the front.

Binding of Isaac: I’ve not played the video game, so I don’t know how this compares. This version is quite Munchkinesque, which is unfortunate given that I don’t like Munchkin. Essentially you take it in turns to fight monsters until one of you has collected enough monster souls to win, and there are tons of items that make it easier or harder. It only took 35 minutes, but I don’t think I’d bother again unless someone was desperate to play.

Just One: This turned out to be surprisingly difficult with two Brits, two Spaniards, and an American It transpired that the American had never encountered the word “nought” before (as in, “noughts and crosses”) which I hadn’t realised was an especially British English word.

Flip 7: with a vengeance: Silly and mean as usual. I managed to score points in only 2 of 8 rounds, so it’s probably a good job that I don’t make a habit of gambling.

[browntownlad]

Thanks very much for the warm welcome everyone

[lalunaverde]

Neanderthal - taught to me which is great because I don’t like learning new rules by myself. Good and rather unique design that doesn’t fit the modern Euro mould but not great.

Innovation

Propolis - 2nd time playing and it’s a nice little game I can show to most people

The Gang - I forgot how good this game is

HOT STREAK - this play in particular was wild!

Set a Watch - Co-op. Light weight. Nice. Comes in a small box

World’s Fair 1893 - old school game from 2016. I am wondering if there’s that many decisions here though.

Piece o Cake

Bridges of Shangri-La - I’m on fire with this game atm

Now Boarding - played it first on BGA and now I obtained a copy. It’s a cool co-op game. Not sure of its longevity and I feel that you can cheese this game in such a lame way by juggling passengers, which feels like work rather than doing something clever.

[Phil]

A few games of Desolate, which is a simple solo push-your-luck game of trying to escape from a doomed moon base before you run out of oxygen. Each round you draw two face-down exploration cards, reveal one of the two, and then choose which one of those cards you will tackle – the one you know, or the one you don’t.

The game is quick, easy to play, and relatively “low-brain”, which are all qualities I appreciate at present! I have two sets of expansion content as well, but am just playing the base game for now.

(Apologies for the distractingly noisy play mat which is not relevant to this game!)

Details

Here I have 4 of the 5 orange power cells I need to escape in the shuttle, and I’ve been forced into conflict with a hostile alien. The two black dice are the alien’s health – the 4 because that’s printed on that same space of that conflict card, and the 3 because that’s printed on the alien’s card. The alien has already hit me for 2 damage (printed on the top card, just below the dice). I’ve chosen to spend 2 ammo, letting me roll 2 white dice, and my rifle scope adds +2 to my roll. If I manage to roll >= the alien’s health then it won’t hit me again, and fortunately my 1+4+2 is just enough. The alien was carrying a “small crate” which means I can have one of the two items on the back of the next Exploration card – in this case either 2 ammo or 1 oxygen (a tricky choice, as that 1 oxygen would allow me to survive a reshuffle of the exploration cards, but I’m down to 2 ammo and might not last long enough for the oxygen to matter if I don’t find more).

[Phil]

More Small Fjords and so close to a maximum score (just one tile missing around one of my longhouses). My best game to date.

The right-most water tile in the top row was the very last tile I drew. It wasn’t possible to place it at either end of the coast, so I thought I was going to lose points there, until I realised I did actually have a legal placement which didn’t break the landmass! Pretty chuffed with that :).

[yashima]

not a great score because too much hybris at the start with the coastline. my first village placement was on that coast tile. not a good idea

[SteveB_uk]

Played a great game of Beyond The Sun, 4 players.

It took a very long time because one of our players needed every move explaining to them every time, for the whole game. Could have been quicker.

It was good fun though, and has prompted me to look at prices for Beyond the Horizon again now it’s a bit cheaper.

[felix]

Two games today, a big one and a small one, both brain burners!

Spirit Island with the correct rules this time, which led to our first win. I went for a slightly weirder spirit and it was cool seeing some of the different systems like the increased potential of the Dahan. This has solidified that I’ll pick up an expansion or two at some point and I might have another go at the solo two handed.

And Arboretum! Just as good as ever, I lost but felt like I could have pulled it in a different direction with some smarter moves. Really cool, really simple and a fun flavour of frustrating the whole way through.

[gmwhite999]

This weekend’s game saw a long-overdue return to one of the first games I bought when getting seriously back into the hobby: Terraforming Mars. This solo run saw the Credicor corporation attempting to bring life to the red planet - while I attempted to work out the right approach from a fairly rubbish early few draws of project cards. A few asteroid bombardments got the ball rolling, focusing first on raising the temperature. The project card draw kept giving me more advanced plants/animal cards but the terraforming engine was slowly gearing up by mid game, by when a regular water import from Europa was helping build a nice ocean across the equator as the temperature was creeping up. I felt behind on the oxygen level but was struggling to get that level rising without basic greenery projects until finding two cards that created oxygen through microbes in the last few 4 to 5 turns. It was about this time that the game really started to accerelate, with money and production more available for my projects but I still felt I’d not made sufficient progress. I placed the last ocean tile in the penultimate turn, but still felt too far away from the target oxygen level and temperature. Some handy project cards in the last turn coupled with lots of funds got the temperature to the target but I fell one short on the oxygen percentage and, for what it was worth, a final score of 70. A frustrating end but an enjoyable puzzle throughout. I never felt remotely close to completing the game until the last three or four turns but was just one project card or a few money units away from a solo victory.

[Marx]

Yesterday was our friend Jen’s pre-birthday (her birthday is tomorrow) gathering, and so while we usually play Descent (we’re on Act II, and I am legit gutted that they announced there will be no Act III) her request was for a bunch of lighter games.

We started with Railroad Tiles, which I taught two rules slightly wrong (the one about Cities I said was points for the largest city when it is actually 5 points per group of cities that are 3+ tiles not connected to another group of cities, and the Star just lets you swap one type of token for another, not gain another token). Chris, Jen’s partner, won by a fair margin.

Then we played Cubitos and I setup Race 5 (lemme see if I can remember… Bad Cow, Dr. Livingstone, Mr Bats, Goes to 11, Bad Cheese, Champion, Llama Shaman, and You Bet Jurrassican). It was fun, but Chris is prone to heavy analysis paralysis, and it hit pretty hard here. He would occasionally wait until everyone else had finished rolling to decide whether to push his luck again or not… which I don’t think is explicitly against the rules, but it’s certainly against the spirit of the rules. But he did win, so. Otherwise fun!

And then it was Things in Rings for a couple rounds, which we argued over whether the Sun has value or not.
Look, I’m saying if something is “invaluable” and “priceless,” that means they have no value or price. It’s right there in the words! WITHOUT price, NO value. It’s like saying “Infinity” isn’t a number (which it isn’t, as memory serves, it’s a function, loosely speaking). Needless to say, they disagreed with me. But then Chris had to argue that Frogs don’t float (which may be true? If you swim, you’re not really passively floating? I dunno). Fascinating game.

And then we played Cats Knocking Things off Shelves, which I utterly dominated. I think the final scores were 11 - 6 - 0 - 0. Unusual for me… I tend to be pretty good at dexterity games, but CKTOS isn’t usually ne that I’m good at. Ah well!

A fun day of lighter fare, no question. And Thursday I have a game of Dune lined up! It’s gonna be a good week…

[lalunaverde]

We played 5 player Axis and Allies. Good dice rolling fun. With the time it cost, I might prefer History of the World instead

Then I played Set a Watch and Innovation before going home

[MarkSP]

I will say, everyone I’ve played it with has much preferred Beyond the Sun to Horizon. You are made to play with the variable player powers in BtH, and they are completely unbalanced.

[Phil]

@Marx

then Chris had to argue that Frogs don’t float (which may be true? If you swim, you’re not really passively floating? I dunno).

A friend once volunteered to help me improve my swimming technique, and when I got in the pool he was immediately flummoxed by my body’s failure to float the way he expected. I think it threw off his entire plan.

So… if I don’t float… then… I’m a frog… and therefore… I weigh more than a duck??

[Phil]

Played some more Desolate today.

Summary

I had one game where I romped through, finding the power cells and escaping with barely a scratch. I’d again had the rifle scope (which is a particularly strong item), but I didn’t even need my second item.

In the next game I had an extra ammo clip, which enabled me to be less conservative with the number of dice I was rolling in combat; but despite this, a couple of very poor attack rolls left me extremely hurt due to heavy counter-attacks from aliens I’d failed to kill, and I was unable to sustain another hit. Unfortunately the enemy always makes the first attack, so when I inevitably found myself forced to fight before I’d located a sick bay or a medpac, I knew it was game over. I had plenty of ammo and plenty of oxygen, but unless the next conflict card was the one and only card in that deck which deals zero damage, I was done for. I drew the card. It was the zero. The alien didn’t have a ton of health, but I used extra ammo to obliterate it, and I discovered a large medpac (2 health) in its possessions. I only needed to find one more power cell to power the shuttle, but decided to stop looking for them on this level, and just focus on health and supplies, and by the end of the level I’d managed to avoid any more combat and had also found the sick bay and was back to 5 health. There was only one exploration card left on that level, so I reshuffled the discard pile to add a second card (my oxygen dropping, but still safe), and I had to decide which of the two cards to reveal – the final card of the previous level, or the first card of the next. I’d discarded several unseen cards in the process of playing safe, so the chances of the last card of the previous level being an power cell were slim, but still… I revealed that card. It was Engineering, with the final power cell I needed to escape :).

The game over, I allowed myself to flip the other card to see what it was. It was the other Engineering bay :). Usually that’s a terrible draw, as it means you’ll only get one of the two power cells for the level, and you also don’t know that you’ve missed the second; but it was a nice way to end the game in this instance :).

Some more of the game cards, this time with a more-appropriate “deep space” background:

I noticed I’d uploaded two photos with the same two items, so the second picture is the full set of items included in the base game (each game you draw 3 randomly and keep 2). The “Dark Matters” expansions add another 12 of those, along with some additional encounters, some nastier conflicts, a small deck of “afflictions” (of which there are more ways to gain one than to lose one), and a collection of optional “characters” each of whom are equipped with specific sets of items (anywhere from 2 to 4), ranked from “novice” to “veteran” as a kind of difficulty setting for the game.

[SteveB_uk]

Two games of HOT STREAK! in the pub. One match had Dangle and Hurley fall down with their first cards on the start line, and Mum immediately turn around (but then benefit from a -2), leaving Gobbler to slowly move up the track.

[Marx]

Last night I managed to get a bunch of games to the table… it was supposed to start with classic Dune, but two of the players were stuck in traffic for almost 2 hours (7:30pm and they actually showed up at 9:15pm), so in the meantime Eric and I played a handful of 2 player games.

First we played Air, Land, and Sea, which I lost by a fair margin.
Then we played Schotten Totten using the cards from Schotten Totten 2 (but none of its rules). The decks aren’t quite the same, I learned… ST1 has 5 colours numbered from 1 to 9 and SC2 has 5 colours numbered from 0 to 11. But that’s okay, it worked pretty well regardless and I was thoroughly obliterated.

Then the other two players (Mark and Tyler) showed up, and we managed to actually play classic Dune with all the bells and whis… well, many of the bells and whistles because Tyler had never played before and I didn’t want to dump EVERYTHING on him. He chose to play the Emperor, Eric got CHOAM (and proceeded to say it like Goldfinger from the Austin Powers movies every time… CHOOOooooaammmm… which I respect!) Mark took the Spacing Guild, and I got the Moritani (the Terrorists, basically).

The biggest problem I had (and I knew I would have) was going to be the economy. Everyone else earned Spice basically for doing nothing… the Guild from us landing our troops, CHOAM just got 8 free dollars every turn, and the Emperor received money by the sale of Treachery cards… however, both CHOAM and the Emperor start with no troops on Dune, so I was able to claim Arakeen and then, on the first turn, nab Carthage so I was earning 4 Spice for holding those two strongholds.

Sadly, turn 2 saw me strike an Alliance with Eric and CHOOOOooaaaam, because he was able to land on Sietch Tabr and threaten the Emperor (who had landed on the Habanya Sietch, while the Spacing Guild took Tuek, obviously), so I made a play for Tuek with a slight numerical advantage. And I would’ve won, too, except by sheer bad luck the Guild had my Traitor, and I used that exact traitor against him. Instant defeat!

I never recovered from that moment, basically. The Guild took Arakeen on Turn 3, and on Turn 4 they drew a Nexus event that allowed them to defuse my Terror token protecting Carthage (it was the Nuke) and then sweep in to take it.

Gosh, what a great game. I love Dune! For such an old design it holds up remarkably well.

After that we played a quick game of HOT STREAK in which, at least twice, every runner was knocked down, but nobody was ever eliminated. I managed to “win” with a final score of $67, whereas everyone else was in the $40s… the final round risky bet on Mum nailed me $30 and the win.

[Phil]

More 'Small Fjords'.

Scored 41/47 in the first game, and things went downhill from there. The last game was a debacle, with the coast line split and only 3/4 of my longhouses played (I had the spot for it but didn’t get a tile to fit it, and I couldn’t bring myself to take the single consolation point I would have gotten for just placing it on the final tile I drew. In my mind this little world keeps going after the game, and my last longhouse eventually gets to go in the spot I’d prepared for it :).

More 'Desolate', this time with all of the expansion content added in.

I was Corporal Taylor, who has a variety of items for mitigating the risks of combat, but in the end the only item I used was the Mirror, and it never had an impact – every time I used it I just kept the card I’d peeked at (those cards were never great, but they weren’t terrible either, so I didn’t risk making things worse).

Almost everything went remarkably smoothly, as I didn’t miss a single power cell along the way; but in the second level I picked up a very nasty Affliction from a dead alien which meant I would consume 3 oxygen at the end of each level instead of 2, and this almost finished me off as it looked like I was going to be short by 1. Thankfully when I drew the final exploration card of that level as loot from combat, it contained oxygen!

(Rather annoyingly, the expansion cards fail to identify that they’re from an expansion, so I’ve slipped little “1” and “2” paper squares into the sleeves so that I can easily separate them if I want to, without having to look up a contents listing online.)

As a little 10-15 minute space drama, Desolate is pretty neat. The decisions aren’t “big”, but they’re frequent, and fast, and it’s a quick little sci-fi rollercoaster of luck each time. A shame it’s not cheaper, but it’s certainly a fun little solo diversion.

[gmwhite999]

An extended weekend of gaming this time, as I found myself with more free time than expected so decided to tackle a campaign game - and brought out Arcadia Quest to play through the Beyond the Grave expansion for the first time, and managed to play through the first four scenarios over three sessions up to Sunday afternoon.

I selected a team of Darryn (a bruiser from the expansion) and original characters Scarlet (the sneaky rogue) and Seth (the deranged wizard) and prepared to enter the Haunted Barracks first. A cautious approach paid off given the limited equipment available, but sadly Darryn died at the hands of a Skelebone during the final round of the scenario. Fortunately, the Death Curse proved to have no effect - a lucky start - and I was able to buy some nice upgrades along with the Spinal Tap bow reward to steel myself for the second scenario in the Slaughter House.

The Slaughter House proved a tougher slog - although I remember the step up from Level 1 to Level 2 in the solo game is always significant - and the monster spawns seemed relentless. Darryn died twice while trying to destroy the food reserves, and came close to dying again while facing main villain Ivan, but somehow survived. He wasn’t so lucky with his Death Curse result, receiving the Accident Prone condition, adding an element of personal injury risk with each of his attacks. The reward of the Flaming Chain weapon and purchases of Knight’s Plate armour and two useful weapons offset some of that concern in preparation for the next challenge.

A visit to the Crypts was next in the third scenario, and resupplied I tried new tactics, switching Scarlet to pure melee and pairing her with Darryn at the front, with Seth blasting his magic from behind their brawn. That strategy was working well, even with getting heavy bogged down at the entrance to the central graveyard due to regularly respawning Ghosts and Skelebones - and then Seth died after finding two traps in quick succession. Some fortunate defense rolls kept the other party members alive before Seth was resurrected in time to help kill the Necromancer and cleanse the crypts for the victory. Seth’s Death Curse gave him Amnesia, losing his armour-piercing magic ability, but this was overcome by purchasing a Wand of Haste to boost his magic attack die pool and an upgraded Nova Bolt spell. The party pressed on into the Inner Circle.

Scenario 4 saw the party enter the Secret Laboratory and our first opportunity to face Dr. Spider. Another cautious start was proving highly effective until Ivan and the Doctor got moving towards us - and caused a major problem when the Doctor hit Scarlet and banished her to the largely-empty Spawn Tile. Darryn and Seth made a quick tactical retreat to regroup and try to kill a few easier foes to fill up the Spawn Tile and get Scarlet back - only for her to eventually be respawned in the centre of the laboratory surrounded by monsters! Cue a major rescue operation over about 5 rounds - and many unbelievably fortunate defense rolls - to get the party back together, highlighted by Seth obliterating Dr Spider with his improved Nova Bolt, Darryn doing 8 damage (!) to a Ghost courtesy of an incredible exploding die chain with his Decimator and finishing with Seth’s Life Drain fully healing Scarlet. After all of that excitement, brewing the hulking serum challenge was a doddle. No deaths - miraculously! - and three useful purchases (King’s Plate, Bloodthirst Axe and the Life Drain III spell) sets the party up nicely for the penultimate scenario - which I may get to attempt later tonight or save the final two for one night this week.

Truth told, I had forgotten quite how much I like this game: a great theme and aesthetic, fabulous artwork and miniatures, quick simple gameplay, enjoyable characters, addictive upgrades between each scenario, and increasing challenge with every scenario. I’ve only ever played it solo but I’m sure it would be as fun as competitive multiplayer, and possibly more so with the right players. Plus, I’ve got the Pets expansion to try out as well, adding even more replayability when I have the time.