Recap Monday Week 26 - What did you play last week?
Recap Monday Week 26 - What did you play last week?
Which games did you play - any tips, suggestions, warnings or awesome strategies? - Please share!
Managed to get a 3 player game of Imperium: Classic in with my group. It was a tough teach but by the end we had reasonable grasp on the mechanics. Still very little clue what we should do. Points were pretty wild. One player stumbled on an absolute gold mine of points and won handily. I don't yet see such a huge difference between the three easiest decks, we all played pretty much the same and after exhausting a good chunk of the common decks I'm worried that there's not a whole lot of variability in that area. Downtime with 3 players is also pretty extreme towards the end. The game took us almost a full 3 hours (with teaching) and I'd say this is about the maximum that we can tolerate. We definitely prefer Earth in this regard. It also takes about this long but you're doing stuff constantly. We'll give it another shot one of these weeks before we decide on it's future...
Played the first couple scenarios of Gloomhaven jaws of the lion with my partner, which amount to most of the tutorial lol. Last time I spent over a week on a game's tutorial was Persona 5. It's been a bit confusing, slow but also exciting so far.
I think I like the game but I'm frustrated by how the rules sometimes discourage discussion. Really looking forward to finishing the tutorial and doing this side quest my partner just unlocked.
The rules don't discourage discussion. They discourage highly detailed planning. The idea is that you discuss priorities, make a rough plan and then go. I don't know if jotl also has the battle goals and retirement goals but these together with the "don't say the initiative number you're playing" rule, the distinct player decks, and the unknown monster initiatives supress quarterbacking and analysis paralysis.
But yeah. GH is a beast to learn. I think we played half a dozen session before we had the rules more or less down. JotL is supposedly easier in that regard but you shouldn't feel bad if it still takes you a while.
We're a few sessions in now, we know the rules but still often forget things. I'm still finding it difficult to evaluate my cards, both for making my deck and for playing them.
I'm finding the 'discourage discussion' part more of a miscommunication issue. The guide stressed about not discussing details and selecting cards at the same time, and with me having no idea about the gameplay at the time, it just sounded like forcing a specific type of scenario in game theory.
Now that we're more or less familiar with the rules, it feels much more natural. Occasionally we do break the discussion rules though, because we really enjoy highly detailed planning, and there's no Gloomhaven police here to confiscate the game.
Btw JotL has battle goals. Not sure about retirement goals, we each have a pack of cards that we're not supposed to open or read about till level 5.
Gloomhaven is hard enough in general. I think you can waive the limited communication rules if you think it will be a more fun experience.
Mice & Mystics core campaign with my old daughter continued. We completed chapter 8 out of 10 or 11 I think. It was a clutch finish but some achievements from previous chapters allowed us to use a shortcut which was nice.
It's a classic dungeon crawl campaign game aimed at ages 8 and up which we have been playing every few weeks for several months now. I can totally recommend it for playing with kids. The mouse theme is fun and the plot is good enough. The combat mechanics are pretty cool too.
Most of my gaming group were unavailable this week, so it was just myself and my partner playing. We're currently renting a trio of games from our local board game cafe, and so we've finally played the last title from that selection: Terror Below.
It's a fairly light, but surprisingly competitive game that doesn't overstay it's welcome! Production quality is fairly good, and the theme is baked right into the mechanics. Racing to 20 points for the victory, my partner secured the win a turn before I would have! At two players, it seems like it's fairly neck-and-neck for victory, assuming both players are competent.
Played a chill game of Root with 2 others (Marquise, Eyrie, and Corvids). Eyrie just climbed ahead and took the win.
I also got to play Tao Long, a personal favourite that almost never makes it off the shelf.
Got two games on import from France (to the UK), played both with my children
Gang of Dice is dumb, takes 10 minutes to play and is great. GOTY
Mind Up is also a fun card game about predicting others sets
Played War of the ring the card game 4 players and it was pretty good, thematic fun but not quite the epic experience of the board game version.
Had a few games of Planet unknown. I was a little underwhelmed after the hype that it's had but it was a decent game.
I played my custom version of Yinsh and it was a great game. I had not playing it before making it and was really happy that I enjoyed the game so much.
This was a shockingly busy game week for us. I blame the 4th.
My wife and I played the following over the week:
Hanamikoji - still an interesting little card game in the vein of something like Battle Line where you want to control either a certain number of cards, or a certain point value's worth of cards.
Ra the Dice Game - dipped into one of our older games. After figuring out how it worked again had a pretty good time with it. Reminder that older games are still fun.
Marvel Dice Throne - Thor stomped all over Black Widow (this was not a shock). Didn't help that I whiffed a couple times over the course of the game.
Indiana Jone Sands of Adventure - Prospero Hall continues to make IP based games that are better than they should be. We played this a couple times with just the two of us. Came close to winning, but never managed it. I can only imagine how chaotic this gets with more players. I would think the timed phase gets bonkers.
Five Tribes - Another dip into the past. Had fun with this one as well and the score was super close (I eked out a victory by 3 points).
On the 4th we had some family and friends over so we broke out some lighter party games
So Clover - Generally love this one. Usually find it hilarious. Didn't quite click this time but still fun.
Rhino Hero - This is always a fun dexterity game for me. I don't care that it's a Haba game. If you can't have fun building the giant tower with this game I suspect you have no soul.
In a Grove - Delightful little puzzly game. Which of you is the worst detective? (It was me. I was the worst detective)
Just One - Had fun capping the evening with this one. Even though at this point we were very mediocre by the scoring rules.
Closed out the week with
Cubitos - love this dice builder. My daughter took the win by one square.
Port Royal: People recommended it for me and my son since we love Bohnanza and were looking for something with more variability. I got the Big Box for 14€ and it’s great! Easy to learn, exciting push of luck, a little tableau building, coop mode, vs mode, campaign mode,… neat little game!
Arkham Horror LCG: Just awesome.
For Sale: Played it in a pub. Super exciting and take that auction game. The game was over in 5–10min and I couldn’t develop a proper strategy, but we liked it.
We played some Bot Factory - 4 players. It was the first time playing it and I did not enjoy the gameplay loop that much. The game requires that you plan ahead a couple of moves, including predicting your opponents move and Sandra (the AI if you will). In a 4 player game this becomes extremely hard. I did win but had no fun getting there.
We also player a 3-player game of 7 Wonders Architects - its a super simple game with basic decision making. Rather nice production value and everything fits neatly into the box. I think once you have the normal 7-Wonders, Architects is not worth the addition but if you only want one, either is a fine simple game that are very similar.
Once again Ark Nova was on the table, I cant get enough of the game but my gf is getting upset playing against me. While she enjoys the gameplay immensely, it’s rarely enough to win. The last game was more or less a stomp, we didnt even count the points in the end. I am so addicted to it, its so fun! I think I need to let her win once in a while, maybe playing some crazy strategies.
Got a couple more games of Imperium Legends solo, still the best deckbuilding, i see Kempeth says that their game at 3 was over 3 hours, thankfully for me even at 3 it has always been below 2 hours and actually the games that have gone a bit longer than 2 with set up have been in solo. For me so far i loved how differently each deck has played, so far Egypt with fast development has been my favourite but also tried Atlanteans the other day and was blown away by how much everything changed starting as an Empire. I have not enjoyed Qin that much tho due to how many cards have dependance on other cards to be or not in play.
Got also to try The Hunger for the first time, pretty iterative deckbuilding, but at least has some more innovative ideas than Clank in how you move and having to manage hunting humans for points vs them staying in your deck. Basically, you only draw 3 cards each turn which means that even at 5 there is not that much gap between your turns and from the three cards you get an speed value which is used both for moving and for buying so you have to manage how much you want to move vs what you need to spend buying and also with how much you are willing to spend to move you have to take into account in which position you will be on the map if you want to have your turn be sooner than for the other players to have more options to buy in the market next turn as it only replenishes at the end of a round so if you go last you will have less stuff to buy.
Tried Rattus for the first time at 2 and at 5, at 2 its just okay, but at 5 it was pretty crazy and a ton of fun. I want to try more classes and modules that come on the big box as i have only tried the base game thus far. I love how fast turns go by and how enticed to look at the board you are even outside of your turn. Its a pretty great game but probably would only recommend it at 3+.
Also played The king is dead 2nd edition again after almost a year, actually played 4 games in 2 days with my gf, one of the best games, love how pure of a boardgame it is and how amazing the aesthethics are despite being basically an abstract game. At 2 is more cutthroat than i would like but still pretty fun, could play this game everyday. Its just so simple to teach but so thinky that is the perfect game if you want to play something deep with someone that doesnt enjoy game that are too heavy and with long setups.
Also played RRR but after so many games with my gf and my sister over the last three years i think im ready to stop playing, i think we have more games than combinations of tiles can appear(that feel different of course) and im already probably at 40+ plays. Its a really neat game that feels very chess like and abstract but it has more limitations than i like. I would love an expansion with new tiles tho.
A bit late to the party but during the first week of July my wife and I played Akropolis a few times while at the lake house on vacation. Last Friday we were able to get in a game of Yokohama while over at a friends house which was pretty fun as usual (that game is almost the definition of a point salad, but in a good way).