Your Last Played Game Volume 3

[bort]

Rumble Nation, first play. This is a competitive area control game. You roll three dice on your turn, choose two of them to give the region you are moving troops into, and the last die determines how many troops. Once everyone is out of troops, you do battle in the regions, starting with the lowest numbered areas. If you win a region, you get to move reinforcements into any adjacent areas, provided you have at least one of your troops there. Pretty easy to learn and play.

Project ELITE, one of our favourite games. Even on easy this game can kick your arse. And that’s just what happened to us, I think we managed one objective, had our hands full just trying to survive. Still good fun tho.

Boss Fighters QR, we won! It was pretty close tho, we all got down to low digit health, and used up all of our medical bags.

Cozy Stickerville X 2. Nice relaxing game to finish up. We made our town flag, very stylish.

[RogerBW]

Catching up.

Neighbourly games:
Two games we knew well tonight, but they both seemed to have much more friction than usual. In FUSE I ended up with two level-2 tasks, usually quite easy, which repeatedly left me unable to add any dice to the cards at all (which penalises everyone).
And then Horizons of Spirit Island (using the nicer on-board components from the original game, but all the gameplay was still Horizons), which has gone well for us before, but seemed to be descending into paralysis and collapse by the time we had to call the game for time.

Three weeks later, back on form: although FUSE started slowly, we ended up completing it, with 23 seconds to spare. (Yes, lowest difficulty level and so on, but we haven’t done that for a while.)

Then on to Steampunk Rally Fusion: Atomic Edition with Marie Curie, Auguste Picard and Alexander Graham Bell on the Macchu Picchu course. The event cards are still more fiddly than I’d like (this space is attached to that card, but space is very tight even with my preferred “snake” tile layout as shown). Still, this is a game I enjoy every time I play it, and this was no exception.

[RogerBW]

And then Tabletop Scotland. Full blog post at RogerBW's Blog: Tabletop Scotland 2026 .

Back to one of my favourite conventions, still at the Royal Highland Centre next to Edinburgh airport. I stayed in Rosyth again and commuted in each day (usually about a twenty minute drive each way). There’s not much beer on site so I didn’t feel I was missing much. As usual, I took time off work before and afterwards for dedicated days of driving. I do love that range of hills in the distance as one leaves Preston behind and cuts north through the hills of the Lake District.

₣riday’s games started with Ticket Gagnant (not at its best with two players, but it was what I had out on the table) and Piepmatz.
Then I got into a longer game of Imperium: Horizons with @DJCT (I lost by three points as Carthaginians vs Japanese), and some Compile: Main 2.
Many people complained about the chairs last year, and this time they’d provided some padding for them. It helped, a little.
Onward to Rush ‘n’ Crush, with some glorious explosions just short of the finish line (that was why I had put The Cheesegrater there), then Xenon Profiteer to round off the evening.

The bulk of Saturday was an eight-player session of Firefly: The Game, in which I had a lovely starting point but lost one particular job which would have put me well ahead. So it goes. An interesting combination: Vehicle-Mounted BFG relies on Transport, which is provided by the Sky Hook, which relies on Pilot, which Bolles (one of the new Leaders in the 10th Anniversary content) provides.
Once per job, can substitute Negotiate for Fight. As I see it, that’s something like: “Please observe the polite lady with the extremely huge gun. The only reason she has not already ventilated your sorry carcass is that the rounds for that thing cost like two hundred bucks each.”
On to some Coldwater Crown and Small Islands with a passing player.
Much chat in between games, but I ended up with some players for Sea Salt & Paper and dnup last thing.

Sunday started with those two games again; I didn’t get any signups for my Steampunk Rally Fusion: Atomic Edition session, but had some passing players who were interested.
After some more of the short games, we finished off with Tavarua (cut slightly short by the hall closing an hour earlier than we’d thought).

With Airecon shutting down, this is the biggest “play first” rather than “selling first” convention that I go to, and I love it. Suppers each evening were provided by the Rosyth Fish Bar as last year (indeed, that’s why I went back to that hotel).

[DJCT]

It was great to see you there and play with you on Friday and Sunday Roger!

I do worry about one of those fish suppers (pictures were supplied) every single night of the convention …

[RogerBW]

I could live there on those.
I’d be dead in a year, but what a year.

[mistercrayon]

We played a game of falling. I’m usually nervous about both a) teaching and b) playing euro* games nowadays. The modern sorts always have a lot of stages and rules upon rules with subtly signaled paths. I think this one was a really good time though. Surprisinginly less fiddly than it appeared and a fun and brisk turn structure.

there’s a nice softening in prioritisation in the game in the sense that getting points is not a full sacrifice of getting resource which I think does make it motivating to get points early in the game.

the game has a nice ramp up and flow and you can feel yourself being able to do a good amount of stuff as the game progresses and eeking out an extra resource or two can be worthwhile in the long term.

Very nice.

[Simfers]

So, weekend half over, but some gamimg was had:

Yesterday, we played a game of Brass Birmingham with Yvan that ended 146-143-140 (Maryse, myself and Yvan in order). Brass at 3 is SO different than at 2, my god.

Then we had quite possibly the meanest TTR R&S game we’ve played yet, where there were elbow shots being thrown right from the beginning (to give you an idea, Maryse had to abandon a ticket after TURN 2) and ended 246-202-197 (myself, Yvan and Maryse this time).

And now Maryse and I just played a game of Wondrous Creatures where I got beat 168-136.

Man, Wondrous Creatures is just spectacular. It’s everything I hoped it would be. Instant top 5 for me, displacing, ironically, Brass.

[Acacia]

That’s funny, I just came in to report on Wondrous Creatures as well. I recently heard about it, billed as the Everdell killer. Forums seemed to agree. Then I saw it was on BGA so had a chance to see it myself.

First reaction, I can see why it’s being touted this way. Place workers to collect resources and draw cards. Pay resources to play cards into your tableau/village/sanctuary whatever.

But I’d say it’s very much not an Everdell killer. Not that it’s worse, it’s just the same mechanics facing a different direction. Everdell, at it’s heart, is a combo/round extension game. You have, quite strictly, 15 worker placements to collect resources and jump start your engine. Everything else is comboing cards into other cards, the right discounts, the right resources, the right bonuses, to get as much as you can out of those 15 placements before the game ends. This puts it in a family with Arnak, Paladins, Terra Mystica.

Wondrous Creatures is open ended. You play as long as you need to until someone is done. Placing workers is more powerful, insofar as you get more stuff more easily. The card tableau has some instant abilities that are helpful but not game extending, a lot of passive abilities that trigger frequently, etc. Much more of a tableau engine builder in a family with Vale of Eternity or Fantastic Factories. And then there’s goals (people say “like Ark Nova,” but it’s pretty generic) for set collection, so you’re trying to match things in the cards you play.

My thoughts:

1. I don’t feel like this is a New Everdell. While I see the points of comparisons, the comparison is faulty.
2. This seems pretty derivative and recycled, I don’t have a compelling reason to play it over the wealth of other tableau engine builders that I’ve already curated.
3. I wonder if this is a bit like Cities & Knights for Catan. People complained about Catan, they made Cities & Knights to solve those problems, but in reality they removed what made Catan work. You need the dice, the trading, the robber, to make Catan the gateway phenomenon it was and is. I’ve detailed this on Reddit and was gratified to see a lot of responses of “I never really saw that before, but I can report that we used to love Catan, we got Cities & Knights because we were supposed to, everyone loved it, but three plays later we stopped and never came back.”

I think Everdell is already fixed by people who understand it, with Newleaf, Farshore, Silverfrost. If Wondrous Creatures is “fixing” Everdell, they’ve also removed what made Everdell work. And a moment of gratification with having the tensions and frustrations removed will quickly spill into apathy.

AAAAND that’s a hot take. Strong opinion from 90% of one play. Open to being completely wrong down the road!

[Marx]

Yesterday we had some friends down for a visit. We usually play Descent 3rd Edition with them, but with FFG announcing that they have abandoned the Descent line entirely (no conclusion whatsoever, be it digital, board, or written), I’ll be honest, I’ve lost some of the wind from my sails. Which is a pity, it’s still a good game (although, admittedly, the more recent missions are on the long side). I still hope to finish it at some point.

But my partner was off doing the Waterloo Terry Fox Run, so she was running late, so after a breakfast of Biscuits with Sausage Gravy (that turned out pretty well but not fantastic), we played a “quick” round of Three Sisters. It was… okay. I like Fleet better, but Three Sisters is pretty good in that same “Because you did X then you get to do Y which lets you do X again which unlocks Z and a persistent bonus to X for the rest of the game!” style. I liked it, and managed to win, but it wasn’t a blow-out (64, 61, 57).

Then Andy joined us so we played Magical Athletes, which was good… I managed to win due to deep strategy and incredible foresight… nah, I just rolled well. The first race was funny because Chris scored 8 or 9 points as the Lovable Loser, which was hilarious. And then Jen won the second race as Baba Yaga and was disappointed because she was so far ahead she never got to trip anyone! Neat game.

We followed it up immediately with Hot Streak, which I still think is better. Not dramatically better, but better… just a tonne of fun. Andy won with a commanding $74, and the rest of us were clustered around $50 (“$50 is objectively the coolest amount of money, and you ride that high for years.”)

Then we played a bunch of rounds of The Gang but with Omaha rules (everyone gets 4 pocket cards instead of two, but you must use exactly two of your pocket cards to make your final hand, and all of us screwed that up at some point… both Chris and Jen used 3 cards once to make a straight, Andy and I both wanted to use 1 card at one point to make a Flush (4 Spades on the table and each of us only had 1 Spade in hand)… but always a neat puzzle. The Deluxe edition continues to prove its worth.

A good Sunday of gaming, no question. And this week I have Twilight Imperium on Saturday, and then more Battletech on Sunday! Calling that a win in advance!

[gmwhite999]

Another surprisingly busy weekend but I found some time on Sunday afternoon to squeeze in a hour or so of gaming time, so brought Endangered to the table, trying out the Giant Panda scenario solo using the TV Wildlife Host and the Environmental Lawyer to try and win the influence of Canada, the UK, the US, Germany, Pakistan and China. The first few rounds saw a good steady growth in the panda population while the activists were building up their action options, but before long the devastation tiles started to swarm in. The activists managed to hold on in the mid game once the Canvassing action card appeared, and the influence started gaining among the target countries but it never felt like a certainty. It proved difficult to get a handle on the increasing devastation of the panda’s habitat and stop the persistent impact effects, but in the final couple of rounds I managed to clear a corner of the environment board to give a chance of victory. The voting for the penultimate round was way short, but by the final round the activists had secured the support of three of countries - Canada (thanks to the actions available), the UK (thanks to the TV Wildlife Host’s available resources) and Pakistan (thanks to a good die roll) - which would give me an win on easy difficulty but just missed out on the normal difficulty win I was aiming for, just needing a better die roll for the German support and falling just one Panda short of obtaining China’s vote. A nice puzzle of a game though, and still plenty of scenarios to try as I bought the New Species expansion a while back.

[COMaestro]

I agree with most of your takes. This feels nothing like Everdell to me as I am not feeling the need to squeeze every possible drop of efficiency from every action. If you don’t do that in Everdell, you are going to lose. Period.

The resource gathering is very generous in Wondrous Creatures, especially compared to Everdell, though you can still get locked out a bit by opponents. And I think it is due to this that I am not seeing comboing in the card plays. In ED you have the ability to play critters for free if you have the matching construction. I see nothing like that in WC.

Simiarly, while both games have achievements, one player must accomplish nearly all of them to end a game of WC, while most of them may not even get accomplished in ED. With the limited number of turns, there just isn’t time to keep fishing for cards you need to accomplish them, so you are forced to make the best of what you have. The crunch in WC comes from your opponents, and not the inevitable arrival of Winter.

So yeah, both games have some similar beats, but they are playing very different styles of music, so to speak.