Scenario 2 I cracked the gold medal score in first attempt just now. 
8 Likes
Deep Regrets - do enjoy the game generally, love the theme and production, itâs also funny. Can find it turns into a bit of mess, with so many dink cards being drawn and the regret deck runs out and you end up having to swap regret cards with other players and quite often someone will just stumble upon better fish and do better. I guess that plays into the theme of not knowing whatâs down there in the briney deep. Itâs good, itâs fun, lots of hype when it appeared and we couldnât find a copy of it at UKGE last year as it had sold out, seems like loads of copies floating around now. Quite fancy trying the expansion though.
6 Likes
Iâve enjoyed this mechanism, the idea that the seller can either pay the final bid price and get the thing, or lose the thing and get the money, every time Iâve met it. (Can be tricky to explain though.)
My impression was that it was soulless. Possibly because of the constant rotation of roles.
Iâve played it once, and had there been a copy right there to buy I might well have done so. But somehow Iâve never quite felt strongly enough to pick it up.
5 Likes
Corsari - lame card game. Disappointing as itâs a Colovini
Camel Cup Cards - Camel Cup as a small box card game
Sheriff of Nottingham - good fun, despite its issues
Now Boarding
Flip 7: With a Vengeance
New Eden - pretty lame Euro game. It was light enough taht it wasnât annoying to play
The Frozen Passage x2 - good fun but sold it immediately afterwards. I need to cull my small box games
GoodCritters - glad to play this again. Amazing party game that is more clever than initial impression
Diamant
Container - another amazing game of Container. We played with the offshore bank (not my choice). It damped the game a bit but it wasnât used that much so the effect wasnât as bad
Medici - Klassic Knizia. Yes.
Canât Stop
Flip 7: With a Vengeance x2
Mysterium - 4 psychics and Iâm the ghost. Great game! After playing Belratti a while ago, this is way better
Modern Art
dnup
This week is filled with lighter and shorter games which appeals to me. I tried to get Nexus Ops and Tikal on the table but no luck
10 Likes
My wife and I had our closest game of Lords of Vegas today. We tied at 66 points. The money tie breaker ended up being in her favor, $91m to $90m! Just a single (million) dollar!
10 Likes
I managed to play something other than tile laying today. First game of Seti with the expansion. Expansion shortens the game by one round which is very welcome. No new rules besides the setup which is great. A bit more stuff (aliens and cards) and thatâs it. Good addition. I will not play without it again.
The game barely for my solo table but it doesâ
7 Likes
Wow what a selection of games! Do feel that Medici doesnât get the attention it deserves, such a great game.
3 Likes
Only a couple games in the New Forest for a weekend camping trip:
Fungi which I havenât particularly enjoyed before but for the first time felt like I could consolidate a strategy here. Still not sold on it completely but my partner likes it!
Sea Salt and Paper was excellent and it was only the second time Iâve played with 2. Will be trying to get it out more as itâs so easy to carry around.
8 Likes
Two gaming sessions this weekend playing through three solo games of Small Islands. During Friday eveningâs session, I wasnât sure how challenging to make it so (naively) picked the 3-star difficulty using only the basic mission/objective cards. First game was a heavy defeat - about 55 points to his 80-odd - so I tried another approach to laying the island tiles for the second game against the same opponent and even got 13 ports surrounding my ship. However, this had a worse effect, losing by about 55 to 85 this time.
Hmmm. Back to the drawing board; more specifically, back to the BGG forums for the game, only to discover that this particular difficulty level seems to be one of the hardest and that only using the advanced objectives may give me a chance. I dialled it down on Sundayâs playthrough, taking on the 2-star difficulty using the advanced objectives. I thought I was doing well until a critical miscalculation prevented me from placing any of my houses at the end of the second round, wiping away some significant point scoring. I managed to get most of the houses down on the final two turns but managed a tie at 53 points each.
Despite my limited skill and understanding of its strategies, I do like this game, at least as a solo title. Looks lovely and a nicely chilled tile layer with helpful focus from the objective cards - when you pick the right goals and remember to move towards them. From memory of my earlier games, even against the lowest solo automata, I donât recall scoring more than the mid-50s in any of my games of it though, but itâs a game that is beyond enjoyable enough to get sufficient replays of in order to find more rewarding strategies.
9 Likes
After 5 years, I finally had a chance to put Scott Pilgrim Miniatures the World on the table!
Itâs pretty good. Itâs not great, it needs 2 more dice and some of the terrain is very flimsy and fiddly to construct, but the pre-painted minis are top notch and the game is quick and pretty intuitive.
Thereâs an expansion that is now officially, massively out-of-print, which is a crying shame because it was on 80% clearance for a while there (copies these days go for $250CAD, and a local store was selling it for $30). I may try to track down a copy at some point⊠I might not, I dunno. Itâs good, but I wouldnât say itâs great, but only having 1 Evil Ex to fight against is very limiting. And Matthew Patel is kinda the least interesting (despite being a pirate⊠which, as we all know, are definitely cool).
Anyway, it was good! In the end, the Forces of Evil won by a small margin⊠Patelâs âFirestormâ ability is really powerful against clumped heroes, and I didnât quite âgetâ the way to work the heroes until too late in the game. But thatâs okay! It was fun.
9 Likes
Teaching game of Indonesia, 3 players, everyone had a great time. I acquired and sold off shipping, which worked surprisingly well, and made a ton of money from an early fast food empire. A lot of aggressive mergers.
Teaching game of Food Chain Magnate, 3 players with expansion milestones, at least one of the two players being taught seemed enthused about it, while the owner of the game I couldnât read.
10 Likes
I bought my copy of Small Islands from @cornishlee who had got it mostly for solo. Iâve only soloed it once, but I love it multiplayerâŠ
4 Likes
El Grande 5 player, still good
Billabong Race, 5 player, dragged a bit but I have a feeling that three kangaroos at 5 player would speed it up a bit and may be the actual rules
Tax the Rich, trick taker with shifting teams.
You bid on how many tricks you think you can win on a central board. The winner chooses a card and teams up with the player that has that card. Collectively both teams try and win enough tricks. One point per trick, plus a bonus for hitting the bid.
Also if you only have female cards you can declare a feminist revolution that adds 10 to each trick. Having only low cards allows you to declare a revolution and low cards will win. Both require you to play open handed.
Itâs chaotic, but fun. Not sure if itâs worthy of keeping around though. Iâd rather play Seas of Strife at 6, and Schadenfreude at 4-5âŠ
4 Likes
Played Leviathan Wilds, first play. This is a cooperative game where the players scale ginormous monsters, attempting to capture the crystals that make them evil, or something. Cards in your hand can be used for their skill or for their action points. Before each players turn you reveal a threat from the cards for that leviathan, which is always a penalty. Some cards target the active player, other may apply for being the highest, for example. But during that players turn you may be able to move out of the way of the threat card penalty. After the threat card, you play one card for itâs actual points, which allow you to climb, jump, glide, strike a crystal, rest, and mend (heal). What you donât want is to run out of cards, because that makes you fall from wherever you are down to a ledge. And if any spaces in between cause you to lose health or cards, then you take those penalties as well.
Your deck of cards is composed of a character set and a class set. It seems that some character sets contain only a few cards, not sure if Iâm missing cards there, have to check.
Played pretty well, no major problems with the rules. Once you used to the play, turns are pretty quick. We played on normal difficulty, and were getting close to the end of the game by the time we won. I was a little surprised by how close we were to losing, even against a tutorial boss and just normal difficulty.
Boss Fighters QR, we fought against a three headed ogre, and won. Still having fun with this one.
Cozy Stickerville, first play. This was nominated for the Spiel Des Jahres this year, so itâs pretty light. You have a map that can be played on twice. Each play has itâs own event deck, and you play it out as one âyearâ. Each side of the map can be played once, so you can play the game twice. As the name suggests, youâll be putting a lot of stickers onto the map, And thereâs not much you can do with the game after youâve played those two plays. Unlike some legacy games where you end up with a custom board/map that you can still play. So not much repeatability, but still good fun. And we certainly enjoyed our play today. Itâs about having a laugh with your mates, so itâs a winner with me.
Each day was 2 phases, morning and afternoon. In the morning you reveal an event card, and in the afternoon you play an action. Some cards will stay out until you do their action, and then they are discarded.
And a very boring picture of Cozy, with not much added to the map
Just One. We played at 4p, with is probably the least you want to play it. According to BGG, itâs best player count is 6 to 7. But whatever, we still had good fun, even tho we didnât do that well. And I had another reason for bringing it to the tableâŠ
Puerto Banana, first play. All you need to play this game is a set of erasable drawing boards, you could play it with a deck of postit notes if you really wanted to. But we used the boards from Just One, worked well. The object of the game is to have 200 bananas. Each round youâll bid for a number of bananas, this number is the highest of the player number. You can bid anything you like, what might trip you up is that the winner of the auction has to pay a bonus (from their bananas) to the player who made the second highest bid.
And thatâs the rules. How about an example? So, I had the most bananas with 20, so thatâs the auction amount. People bid 15,10, and 5. Whoever bid the 15 wins the auction, but must then pay the player with the second most bid (10) the difference between the winning bid and that amount (so, 5). One player seemed to get confused by the bid, because you never have to pay it, unlike most auction games. Like the game Q.E, you can literally bid any amount you like, you could put in 1 million. But the higher you bid, the more chance the bonus will be more than the number of bananas you have, and youâre out of the round. We had a pretty good time with this one, good quick game, and we had a few laughs.
8 Likes
Dune - AMAZING GAME!! BEST NEW TO ME THIS YEAR
Modern Art
the Gang: Deluxe edition
Glory to Rome - always great
Nexus Ops - light weight Ameritrash with 5 to 10 min rules explanation. This is great!
Discworld: Ankh-Morpork x3 - we played Discworld THREE TIMES. Very BS game and very fun.
dnup
Magical Athlete - the plays are much more interesting here. Very thrilling
Push It! x3 - played 3 times. Won 2 out of 3.
8 Likes
Isnât it brilliant? This is why it was my grail game while it was out of print for decades and I bought it as soon as this edition came out, even though itâll rarely get played. So asymmetric that if you play again with different factions you have no idea how itâll go. Unlimited potential to backstab your friends. Just fab.
5 Likes
I am genuinely surprised it took you this long to get around to Dune.
2 Likes
Dungeon Petz - Gotta make an event out of this one because itâs so long. Some good old worker placement, running a pet monster shop for a variety of dungeon-based customers. Get baby monsters, cages, food, magic artifacts, and get to raising! The pets steadily grow so youâll need to feed them or play with them more and more (and make sure they donât outgrow their cage). Then show them off in an exhibition each round and sell them off to the perfect new owner!
This had some pretty cut-throat placements. My friend took the selling platform the round I was going to (and the round before it got blocked by the neutral color) so I was stuck selling my first two pets for x2 rather than x3. However I pulled the same on him (after a last-minute money move) with immigration processing, so I led in workers in the back half of the game, which was huge.
In the second-to-last round I knew I had to get on the selling platform so I did that first with two workers, figuring I had plenty of time to get my last baby to raise up just a little and sell in the final round. No such luck - my friend took the bull weird troll thing by the horns and bought BOTH available pets, meaning I would have only one to sell at the end.
I made it count though, picking every last scrap of food off the board (he had to keep most of his workers back to beef up his cagesâ security) to have a huge eating, pooping, fighting machine that I sold to the perfect customer for MONDO points (nearly as many as his two sales combined). Ended up tying both final scoring exhibitions so the scores were 83 for me, 73 for him. An excellent night.
Our happy customers:
8 Likes
I adore this game, but itâs hard to get played due to the length. I should really try to get it to the table again sometime.
3 Likes