Your Last Played Game Volume 3

[lalunaverde]

Rattus again

DNUP

Golden Goal - 2 player tiny box from Allplay. Thematic and fun.

Azure

Tenby - 2 player. It’s still okay. 4 or 5 is where it’s at due to the turn order jostling.

World Order - simpler and faster than Hegemony. We played with 3 players. It turns out to be a rather streamlined area majority game (for a modern design). I will find a copy and keen to explore it. I had a look at the expansions and they seem cool.

the asymmetry gameplay is already a potential problem as it already shaping the strategy of the players from the get-go, which I find to be a problem with modern designs. Dictating the game to you, rather than asymmetry itself emerging from collective player decisions (think Food Chain Magnate). In this case, the theme helped with the strategy-on-rails design that I wouldn’t like with the theme being anything else. So, similar to Cuba Libre. But you don’t see me owning Cuba Libre, no?

I’d like to play this more. You’ll hear shit like “it’s a nice mix of deckbuilder and area control” but the deckbuilder aspect is pretty much a nothingburger. It has good enough player interaction that it is interesting enough for me to play.

[gmwhite999]

This weekend’s gaming involved a title I like but never get to play often: Le Havre. Actually I had two solo games of it, realising after the first game that I’d forgotten to remove the multiplayer standard buildings from the deck and wondering why I hadn’t constructed that many buildings. Attempt two was more like it and flew by, with the game finishing with me having built/bought most of the available buildings and five ships including the luxury liner on the final extra round, but not earning much money from my actions throughout the game and only getting one shipping line action completed. I was happy with my final score of 261 but I know that I’ve passed 300 in prior playthroughs. A lovely leisurely Uwe, but a bit more of a chore to set up and teardown than Nusfjord and Glass Road, which is probably why I can see myself playing them more regularly.

[browntownlad]

Railroad Tiles - it’s fine, solid enough and certainly fun. I think some of the rather gushy reviews are possibly overcooking it a bit…it’s nice, artwork is good, I don’t know maybe I wasn’t in the most receptive mood, not sure what I was expecting, it’s not bad ok!

[Marx]

I like Railroad Tiles, I think it’s slightly better than the dice version, but I hate those Points tokens… and I feel like they didn’t give you enough of anything except the wood, and even there they were close to stingy.

But it is a good game, and I do enjoy it.

[yashima]

Our couch finally arrived in the version we ordered (the previously delivered it with the wrong covering, some weird grey cloth we didn’t want). The room is 90% complete now.

I am once again in “playing solos to destress” mode.

• Small Fjords–I think I may almost know the tiles by heart. I am getting more and more games with a perfect score.
• A Gentle Rain–still measuring my stress levels → I lose when I am stressed out
• Naturopolis
• Sprawlopolis (took that one on my business trip)

Playing Hardback again on BGA. We lost one and won one in the coop mode. We’re very out of practice with that one.

[Phil]

What a lovely games space!

[Benkyo]

I trawled through the BGG prints trying to find ones I like recently, and it seems you picked the three good ones (I can’t recall any others now).

[yashima]

The choice was difficult. I wanted

• „worthy“ (in my personal view) games represented
• art I like ideally from artists I already know (same as games really)
• the triptych had to be a thematic fit in some way
• Rftg had to be included because it is the best one
• I adore Kwanchai Moriya
• TM really was the most difficult one but I love the game and it fits the SF theme

There are a couple others I like
Tichu which I have never played (I own a copy)
Quacks, friends own this and I like it but it is a bad fit with Rftg and Galaxy Trucker
Power Grid is cool but not something I would put on my wall. I considered this for a friend who loves this game a lot
Underwater Cities is beautiful but I think it was published after I shopped

[Benkyo]

Yeah, that mirrors my own process picking through the designs very closely. In the end I decided I only really wanted the RftG print, and then decided even that was too expensive.

[yashima]

That was the result of my first 3 iterations of the process as well. Plus hoping for new covers that would convince me like Rftg

[COMaestro]

Met up with my new friend for a little gaming today. Taught him Unmatched and he taught me Dice Throne.

I tried to keep things somewhat simple, so avoided the latest sets. After giving a brief description of the fighters I had brought, he chose Alice, and I tried out Jekyll and Hyde, which I don’t think I have played before?

This game went very quickly, through lucky card draw on my part. Alice can change sizes between Big (for +2 attacks) and Small (+1 defense), and managed to hit me while big for a total of 5 damage. However, my defense card let me draw cards equal to the damage I took. One of which was Forever Hyde, which is an attack which does 5 damage, plus 2 per Dr. Jekyll card I discard. I had four of those so on my turn I hit him for a devastating 13 damage, which was just enough to defeat him after deducting the 2 defense card he played.

We played again, this time I switched to Moon Knight, one of my favorites, while he stuck with Alice. I chose to focus on the Jabberwock sidekick this time, wanting to avoid a potential easy win after the first game.

This one came down to the wire. I eliminated the Jabberwocky, then we whittled each other down. I was at 5 health and I got him down to 3 when he ran out of cards in his deck. I still had a few. With just one card in hand and four spaces between us, he was forced to Maneuver, and being unable to draw a card, took 2 damage, and then again for his second action. Very close match.

Next he showed me Dice Throne. After a broef explanation of the fighters he brought, I tried out the Monk while he played the Treant. The game is a bit like Yahtzee. Each fighter has five dice, values 1-6 but with symbols on each face. On your turn, you roll the dice, trying to match patterns on your player board, which can attack the other player or provide you with tokens that can be used for various effects. The Monk, for instance, got Chi tokens, which could be used to add damage to attacks or prevent incoming damage.

Additionally, there are cards, which can be played for various effects. Some upgrade the abilities on your player board, others can change the value of a die, or let you draw more cards, or provide free tokens, etc.

I wasn’t doing so hot at first. He kept rolling a combination that did 4 damage, plus 4 more per plant token he discarded, and he was always able to get one or upgrade one as a passive effect each turn, so I was dealing with 8 and 12 strength attacks. I managed to get a few licks of my own in though, and managed to even out our HP.

I got really lucky when I rolled three 6’s, but then had cards that let me set the value of the other two dice to 6 as well. This let me use a special attack causing 10 damage and giving me a bunch of tokens and even put a status effect on his fighter which prevented him from attacking unless he spent 2 CP, which is the currency used for playing cards, which he chose to do but it left him with 0 CP.

He got me down to 15 HP, but then on my turn I rolled a combination for an attack I had upgraded. I rolled three dice and dealt the total value in damage, plus could reroll one die by spending a Chi. I rolled 6-4-2, but then rerolled the 2 to a 5. He was at 14 health and only managed to block 1 damage, giving me the win.

I really enjoyed the game. I have been tempted by it before, but felt I have already gone all in on Unmatched so can’t justify it, but now I wonder if just a set or two would hurt…

[Phil]

• Sheriff of Nottingham (6p) – Just half a game of this (one round instead of two), while waiting for one other person to arrive. Good fun – I confiscated some valuable contraband when I was the sheriff, and then flagrantly bought myself a pass for a bag filled with illegal goods in the final round to pick up enough bonus points to put me in the lead. Lots of laughter. I hadn’t played this in ages, and forgot how funny it could be.

• Zoo Vadis (7p) – Confirming my expectations that I have basically no interest in this game. I wouldn’t refuse if someone else was eager to play, but I’d be happy to not play this one again. (On account of some minor thematic and mechanical overlaps, Chicken Caesar came up in our discussions afterwards, and I’d play that over this every time.)

• Wormholes (3p) – My second time playing Wormholes. I came last, but it was a fairly close game (60, 67, 70) and I did much better than I had done in my first game, so I was happy. It’s not amazing, but it’s an unusual game, which benefits it, and it’s light and breezy and doesn’t outstay its welcome. I don’t think I’d buy it, or often pick it, but it’s not bad.

[lalunaverde]

Feya’s Swamp - reimplementation of Kaivai. It’s basically modernised version of it. As expected, it is shallower and less interesting than Kaivai.

Betrayal at the House on the Hill 3e - this is pretty fun! It’s been years since Ive played the earlier edition. I enjoyed my time on this but it has that annoying small rules that we keep checking the rulebook for.

Hanami - first outing. Nice game. It’s Samurai so no expectations. Retail edition components are fine.

Vanuatu 2e - 4 players this time and without the characters. Quick rules teach without them and much tighter. Very good game!

DNUP

Impulse 2e - solidifying to be in my top games ever. This is amazing.

Medina 2e

Gulf; Mobile, & Ohio - great game! One of the best aucrion games out there. The play style feels more like Old German than a Cube Rail a la Chigaco Express so it could work for people who arent into Cube Rails. Rio Grande’s austere production doesnt sell itself though.

Tower Up - good game but I dont need it. Contact me if you want to purchase it.

[Simfers]

Yesterday was my birthday (I’m now 47), so Maryse got me Everdell Silverfrost and we played two games.

Maryse won the first one 115-104, I won the second one 124-105. We both made rules errors in both games, so those scores don’t really count, LOL. It’s a lot denser and brain-burnier than base Everdell. Resources are more scarce and snow will cover some of your cards between seasons. Snow-covered cards can’t be used AND don’t count for anything aside from taking space (though they don’t count for number of cards-based objectives), so you need to clear them, but that costs fire, which is hard to get especially since other resources are harder to get now.

It’s REALLY good. Way better than I expected after playing Farshore, which was good but not really… Necessary, if you see what I mean. This, however, does something really worthwhile with the formula, we’ve found.

[bruitist]

Had our annual barbecue for my friend’s birthday last night and unexpectedly ended up with 7 players.

No Thanks - I am bad at this.

Robo Rally - Replacing our traditional game of Asteroyds. The board hazards nicely made up for the fact some of us weren’t drinking. The game ended with a crush around the first flag, while the birthday boy just quietly went and touched the second flag for the win. And I drove into a pit.

The Resistance: Avalon - Three games including Merlin, Percival, and Morgana. I was a Loyal Servant of Arthur, then Merlin, then Morgana, and my side won all three times. Obviously all thanks to me

NMBR9 - Really nice the way this can easily scale by just adding extra copies. And always fun to hear people saying mean things about numbers.

[RogerBW]

@bruitist

No Thanks - I am bad at this.

Last time I played, I tried deliberately seeing if I could score as badly as possible. And found that I scored better.

[gmwhite999]

A very busy weekend led to a last-minute gaming session starting after 11pm on Sunday night to keep my streak of weekend gaming going for the year. This time, a quick solo game of Pro Golf with Ben Crenshaw taking on Pebble Beach in the 1988 tour season.

The front nine was fairly uneventful, going out in a level par score of 36, with birdies on the par-5 2nd (thanks to a tremendous third shot approach to 2 feet) and par-3 7th (after a tee shot to 10 feet away) balanced out by bogeys on the par-4s 3rd and 9th due to missed putts. The back nine was much better, sadly starting a bogey on the par-4 10th from poor approach shots, but a birdie on the par-4 11th with an approach shot to 4 feet away, another birdie on the par-4 13th by sinking a 23 foot putt, and back-to-back birdies on the par-4 16th (courtesy of a 32 foot putt) and par-3 17th after a tee shot to 4 feet from the pin. This gave me a back nine of 33 and a final score of 3-under-par 69.

A fun little dice game although the limited strategy really boils down to a choice of approach shots on a few of the longer holes, so it was the perfect game for a late tired night requiring little concentration.

[MarkSP]

Finally seen through my UKGE spoils.
Tenby. Absolutely fine, except the scoring which I wouldn’t even bother with if not for calculators. As a result completely anticlimactic at the end. A fine game, but I’m not sure why I’d play this above anything else.

Ghost Lift. A perfectly fine shedding game. Need to play it more, I like being able to optionally draft from a set.

Nokosu Dice. I enjoyed this, but none of my gaming groups have got to grips with it at all. Having to focus on matching your bid and destroying other people’s is one thing, but the concept of a trump number being the same suit as the trump colour for some reason has confused a lot of my game groups.

[RogerBW]

@MarkSP

Tenby. Absolutely fine

I played it at Airecon. Had a good time, but I felt nothing to tell me I wanted to play this game again rather than some other tableau-builder.

@MarkSP

Nokosu Dice

Yes, this is the usual hurdle and something I emphasise when I’m teaching it. If trump is a yellow 2, every yellow card/die and every 2 card/die is no longer its own suit; it’s a special trump suit. (And you’ll rearrange the dice on your mat to show this; I rearrange my hand too.) So if someone else leads green 1 you can’t follow with your green 2 unless you have no “real” greens left and choose to trump it instead.

[lalunaverde]

Hanami x4 - essentially Samurai. Not much can be said

Avalon - man, it’s been a while since i’ve played Avalon. It’s great! I’m one who thinks Clocktower is awesome but Avalon is just pound-for-pound the best social deduction game.

Skull

Versailles 1919 - very good game! It’s more area control mixed with negotiations. And I love it. I was France and there’s a lot of sequencing and timing questions to probe. I intentionally discard issues that can cause negative happiness to France. And negotiation is pretty much a must. Unfortunately, I don’t think we were playing at our full potential. We didn’t grasp the rules properly to utilise the levers that we are given.

The theme wasn’t really strong, the issues given to you are basically quick references to post-WW1 issues. And I have some suspicion that the negotiation isn’t as deep as Sidereal. The whole haggling over cube economy and tempo questions might dry up after a few plays, like Chinatown, but that’s just my suspicions so far.

For now, I like the dry negotiation over cube and post-WW1 issues like what to do with Tyrol exactly

EDIT: Also.. 3 hours? People play this for 3 hours? We had the shitty rulebook as usual from GMT Games so we have to keep checking rules and we were definitely haggling and dealing - it went for 2.5 hours including setup. Dafuq you mean you play this for 3 hours?