You were right. You can affect something but something has an effect, if that makes sense.
2 Likes
Of course, English being what it is, effect can also be a verb, and affect can also be a noun :). (neither of which is equivalent to the verb/noun for the other spelling).
3 Likes
True - but not in the sense that Marx was talking about
3 Likes
Waiting patiently for a reprint 
4 Likes
On Mars - First ever play, ooosh what a game, so good. Can’t wait to play again! Also, first ever Lacerda. Bit ashamed to say that!
Kronologic - Another first play and another belter! Great little deduction game. I’m rubbish at these sort of games but absolutely love them!
8 Likes
Kids and wife all went to bed early, so I dug out Legacy of Yu, which I haven’t played since last year. Game three of the campaign.
It would really be nice to get good things out of the story book, but not much of that happened this game. However, despite all that, I got my first victory! Sure, I had to sacrifice a bunch of townsfolk on the last turn to get shells, which I used to buy food, which let me take out one more barbarian, making sure I would not get overrun on the last turn, leaving me with just two cards, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay (cue Lord Farquaad meme).
I thought I had no path to victory, being short one yellow worker and three food, but then realized the sack a townie for two shells ability must be there for a reason! Sure enough, sacked four cards, moving the flood marker to the last canal space in the process, but gave me what I needed to win.
Great game. And my reward for victory? Four more nastier barbarian cards!
6 Likes
you have to lose to get nice cards in this game
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I just got this today and I already love it. Cascadia Alpine Lakes is a tile stacking sibling to the OG edition I have been waiting for simce it was announced. First game felt very thinky. As tiles go up, animals move up as well. Trying to score too many lakes severely reduces your options and with both types of scoring cards suddenly there are so many considerations… awesome but I dread playing this with AP players
edit: game 2 was even more fun as I’m starting to understand … 
a new favorite I’m sure. I’ve played the original a lot this will surely follow.
if you haven’t played the original I’d still recommend that first. this feels like “advanced version”
edit again: 4 games played now. oopsie
9 Likes
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Ofrenda (solo x2). After my initial game for 86 points the other day, I managed a slightly dismal 75 points in the next, but then an excellent 113 in the third (which could have been 117 – I only realised while scoring that I hadn’t actually met the constraints for one of the last two portraits I placed, and there’d been another option I could have afforded to place which would have been just as good in that position while also lighting my only unlit candle for an additional 4 points). You do need to pay careful attention when scoring this game – I’ve made several mistakes in my initial games, which I only picked up upon review. It’s a brain-burner as well, which is part of the appeal for me as a solo game, but it might well be an A.P. risk with multiple players (it plays 1-4 and I note BGG likes it best at 2p, maybe for this reason).
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El Grande (5p). My first time playing. I enjoyed this a lot. I was in second-to-last place for almost the entire game, and the very last change to the score track was for the last-place player to move one space past me :). I think I scored a little under 60, with the winner nearer to 90. I thought it was pretty neat, and the particular ways in which the King’s position affects what you can and can’t do is something I couldn’t recall seeing in other games I’ve played.
8 Likes
This weekend’s gaming saw two trials of a new game to me: Innovation 4th edition, played solo using the Singularity solitaire rules, where the automaton opponent cycles through the “I Demand” cards to attack my growing civilization. The first game seemed a little uncertain for a few turns and the singularity grabbed a few early achievements and was consistently attacking my developments before I had any sort of plan - or much real understanding of what was going on. I found a couple of cards with dogmas that gave me good quick scoring though, allowing me to collect enough of the mid-technology achievements to win. During the second game I was more focused and spent some more time developing and splaying my cards to protect against the Singularity’s attacks, and although they got more of the early tech achievements, by board state allowed me to collect a couple of special achievements by mid game and spamming another dogma allowed me to double scoring cards and quickly acquire enough normal achievements to win. It’s a very enjoyable solo game although it definitely seems that this solo variant is more of a hectic race than I expect a normal multiplayer game would be.
7 Likes
Having not tried the solo variant, all I can say is that a normal game is very much a hectic race.
5 Likes
Quest for El Dorado - playing my Nordic edition copy. I bought the whole Expansion Collection bit and so I need to play them, and not just the Heroes and Hexes expansion. So far, I haven’t
Moon Colony Bloodbath
UPSP: the Great American Mail Race - funny filler. the rest of the table weren’t amused by it lol
World Order - bought my own copy to explore it more. Better than their previous title Hegemony mainly because the system is a lot simpler and so all the levers all service towards a narrow objective (El Grande style area control scoring). Indeed, I don’t see the appeal of playing 6 hours of shitty Euro gaming. And somehow 18xx is daunting in comparison.
There are still the concern of factions being blinkered to a few avenues. But so far, the execution avoided being “shittier version of Root” I’d like to try the Events module next.
Dominant Species - good game, but not enough theme for me now. Either give me theme if the game is heavier or let’s just play El Grande
Innovation + Artifacts of History
Rise and Fall - I remember that this was one of the best New-to-Me on the previous years (forgot which one) and I still stand by it. Simplicity of design like Concordia yet the decisions are really tasty.
10 Likes
The game night group lent itself to lighter games, which led to some big laughs.
Magical Athlete - Amazing races. Romantic stuck going in the Wild Wilds loop forever, lots of players skipped by the Skipper, and M.O.U.T.H eating half the players in the last race.
Sushi Go Party - Lost my Miso Soup four times
KnitWit - Always a good time, especially riotous and contentious this time around. Are gnomes round? Is Gastly ugly? How happy are fops, really?
8 Likes
On Saturday I got a game of Twilight Imperium IV in! 4 of the players were new-ish (they’ve all played once, about three years ago), one of the players was semi-experienced, and then there’s me… this was my 6th game this year, and I’ve played 4th edition about… 30 times? Maybe 40? A bunch. A whole bunch.
Regardless, since we were using Ian’s (the host, wearing the “Player 1” shirt) copy, it was actually just the bare TI4 game, except I brought the revised (and improved) Strategy Cards from Thunder’s Edge. They’re just better.
Everyone was dealt 2 races and could pick either of those OR take one of the 4 remaining races at random (the Winnu were removed because they turbo-suck before Prophecy of Kings fixes them). Jenny (Ian’s wife, wearing “Player 2”) didn’t like either of her races (Arborec and Sardak N’orr) so she took a random one off the top and got the Ghosts of Creuss. Going counter-clockwise from her, Joel chose the Federation of Sol, Rob took the Clans of Saar, I selected the Naalu (it’s been years since I’ve played the Naalu), Kyle took the Yin Brotherhood, and Ian chose the Embers of Muat.
An aggressive field, certainly… but a lot of B-tier Factions (in my humble opinion) and the Federation of Sol as the single S-Tier. Ian happened to be sitting near the Supernova, which is good for him, and there were 4 wormholes for Jenny’s Ghosts, so nobody was in a terrible position.
Early game saw Jenny sprint for Mecatol Rex and claim it, and then take Imperial the following turn as she fought off moderate invasion attempts from the Clans of Saar (the two asteroid fields next to Rex had unassailable, indestructible Space Docks for Saar basically all game). By turn 4 she was at 7 points while the rest of us had between two and four points, a massive lead. Joel took a moderate fleet through the Gamma wormhole and captured Jenny’s lightly defended homeworld right after she scored 2 more points, putting her at 9 points but no way to score Public Objectives… but she just needed 1 Secret Objective for the win.
It took three more turns for her to get it, but she did. Eventually the weird Law that either gives everyone 2 Technologies or blows up Mecatol Rex and all the nearby systems triggered, getting her the two Faction Techs she needed for the win. In the meantime, the rest of us managed to do a pretty good job catching up, and there was a chance I could’ve snatched the victory (I needed 6 Command Tokens to spend from Tactics and Strategy, and I couldn’t quite swing it over the turn).
Everyone seemed to have fun… it was a longer game (9 hours total including me teaching the fundamentals at the start for about an hour), but that’s pretty normal with inexperienced groups. It was also interesting to see how a different group from my regular TI4 players reacted to negotiations and such… only a few Support for the Thrones were exchanged, which was an interesting twist. Nice to see, though.
8 Likes
Container, first play. A deceptively simple game, all about delivering containers to Container Island (yes, that’s what it’s called). Each player has a board with a factory and a harbour area. Containers are produced in the factory area, according the the coloured factory they own. The harbour area is where other players can pick up your containers. The thing is – you can never buy or ship your own containers. This is not a game where you can just huddle over your board and ignore the other players (multiplayer solitaire). You have to price your containers to make them attractive to the other players.
The basic actions are: build (factories or warehouses), produce (make new containers), factory purchase (buy containers from another players factory area), harbour purchase (load your ship while docked in another players harbour), reprice (change your prices), sail (move your ship), and call bank (start a new auction or bid in an active auction). Building factories allow you to produce that colour of container. Building warehouses allow you to hold more containers in your harbour area.
At the start of the game you’ll get a secret card which tells you how much each container colour is worth to you. You’ll score any containers delivered to Container Island. Any time you deliver, an auction is started for those containers. Everyone bids, and then the current player can either accept the highest bid (and cash in), or play the higher bidder and keep the containers.
I think we were too conservative, no one was setting high prices on containers. It also took a while (even tho we were playing the short game). The game ends when you run out of two container colours. The end of the game came a bit suddenly, I wasn’t keeping an eye on it. I had just taken out a loan and bought another factory, and never got a chance to actually produce the containers.
Good, fun game still, we enjoyed it. Future games would go a lot quicker I reckon.
Boss Fighters QR, defeated two more bosses. The second one was close tho, the guy who landed the ending blow was down to a single health. Very exciting!
Eternal Sevens, first play. From the same designer as Eternal Decks, with the same graphic feel. But this is a competitive game (ED was cooperative). We didn’t have a lot of time, so we just played the casual mode game on beginner level. Apparently Sevens is played in Japan, I’m not familiar with it. The idea is to get rid of all your cards. There’s a row for each colour, with each value from one thru ten. You need to start a row with a four, five, six or seven. After that anyone can play a card before or after the starting card. If you complete a row you’ll get a star, and this is another way to win the game (the other being to play all your cards). If you can’t play a card, you can pass, but you can only do this three times. Passing gives you three options – gain a rare card (a wildcard that can be played anywhere), discard a single card, and activate an Eternal (which all have their own unique abilities). Good fun, but not sure we played properly. You can play purple cards at the start and end of each row, and this causes a star to be put at the other end of the played cards, and if you finish the row you take the star.
8 Likes
Played the new Marvel Champions “Fear No Evil” box (Daredevil and Echo fight Kingpin).
Used the pre-constructed decks to get used to the new cards, especially the protection “army of one” types that come with Echo.
Echo is brilliant, Daredevil takes some getting used to, and in particular Daredevil’s pre-constructed Justice deck is absolutely terrible. Going to create some real decks for them and see how much that improves things.
Cannot wait for the next Jessica Jones and Luke Cage heroes.
7 Likes
Played wingspan pocket. Played 4 players and only one game. It’s very wingspan lite which for me is the right amount of wingspan.
Was enjoyable and quick, not sure what the optimum amount of players are and how much luck is at play in the card display. Regardless this is hanging about for a while.
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World Order - 4 players. Good fun.
dnup
Belratti - it’s fine. It’s Mysterium in 30 mins or less. Could have played Coup at this time length.
Hanami
Valley of the Kings + Afterlife + Last Rites - 3 players. Pretty fun deckbuiilder in a small package.
World Order - 2 newbies who requested it. Went on a good pace with this play but still took long. Perhaps that is just the game. Meaning I only get to play this on a weekend or a specific game night where we only play this.
The game still has some modern elements where you can score loads on different paths that isn’t area control. I’m fine with that, expecting this to be a modern game. So far, everyone who played Hegemony thought this is better. I agree. But perhaps we differ on why it’s better.
We started on our campaign of Pandemic Season 2 so far I am liking it. It’s been what? 7 to 8 years since I played Season 1? So, Im not sure if I can trust my thoughts. Season 1 was my first legacy and it was the bees knees back then
This is the prologue - aka tutorial mission. You aint seeing any spoilers from this photo
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A very busy weekend again - as August in the holiday sector always is - but a chance to get a first solo playthrough of Clans of Caledonia. I randomly picked Clan Cunningham (allowing solid trade for milk) and started expanding my territory slowly. I was focusing more on building settlements, getting my foresters, miners and cows out but was not working enough on contracts until the middle of the game while I got more comfortable with the other actions. About mid-game I started getting some contracts completed although didn’t dabble in the trade market much, collecting enough money for my settlement expansions from milk sales. My final score of 98 - assuming I calculated my settlements correctly - was quite low but it was a very enjoyable and gentle solo game and gives me plenty to think about for another game if I get a quiet evening this week.
5 Likes
I have been playing games. A little.
- My solo-streak is now up to 225 days. It’s been invaluable at providing a mental break from work-stuff this year. Small solo tile layers are so soothing … I recently had game #100 of Small Fjords. I guess I’ll have to put it as my GOTY for 2026.
- I played a few Roll & Writes, after the glut of them I took a break but recently I played a few rounds of Newsboys and a new acquisition Daydream. Both are really nice. Daydream is also very pretty.
- I had myself a Dorfromantik game after hearing that there will be yet another iteration this time “Südsee”–honestly I can’t wait to get my hands on an iteration that includes the sea and islands and palm trees.
I am up to 18 plays of Cascadia Alpine Lakes now. It took me 10 attempts to crack the gold medal score for the first “simplest” scenario (90+ points).
It is quite difficult to get the balance right. In the first scenarios there are only the landscape scoring cards not the additional “challenge” mode ones and so points are pretty scarce. This one I got so many points because I managed 2 forest corridors with 4 different animals each, got a group of 6 pikas on the meadow corridor and completely ignored glaciers … well realistically there aren’t many glaciers left in the alps so that makes sense 
I got a decent enough amount of lake points, pine cones and animals scoring for being stacked 3+ high… but it took a while to get there and I assume it’s not easily repeated.
I also got to play a round with my cousin’s daughter (I think she is 8 now. I have previously mentioned her here when we played OG Cascadia together 2 years ago and she complained the family mode was too easy. Now she complains both Harmonies and Cascadia are too easy).
They also had a copy of Magical Athlete with them (the English version) and we played a round with 5 people. She lost with very good graces and my BGA friend who was also there was impressed because his daughter is a very sore loser at about the same age…
I wish I had had the energy to put Hot Streak on the table after that. But after almost no sleep after the party… I just couldn’t bring myself to explain even a game as simple as Hot Streak.
Really too bad that a good chunk of my more gaming obsessed friends and family don’t live close by.
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