Recap Monday Week 24: what did you play last week?

Big week for me given it was Origins:

Dien Bien Phu: The Final Gamble (2p) - This was my first game due to a confluence of events preventing me from playing earlier in the spring. I'd read the rules and sort of gotten prepped and did pretty well. The French suffered from terrible rain and thus has trouble countering my VM offensive on the North. In 6 hours we finished 1/3rd of the game. It's just sort of a monster. I have a copy, and I'll get it played some more, but because it's as much a sim as a game, I don't know that I'll end up keeping it.
Fire in the Lake (2x 4p) - Annual long scenario game with friends. Last year we squeezed in two in the 8 hours we had allocated and this was no different. My VC won on the first coup card cause everyone else screwed around and I triggered appropriate events. Second game I wasn't so lucky and the ARVN took it after a slog on a late 3rd coup. I think there are some real downsides to the COIN structure (bottlenecks of information planning, how the deck functions with initiative, etc), but we sit and shit talk and otherwise catch up (cause none of us live in the same area currently) so the time isn't bad.
Mushroom Eaters (4p) - this was my one weird contribution to the con. I go to Origins most years because I want to play games I otherwise can't play at home. I had a copy and few people do so I brought it. This was less like watching a tribe go on a spiritual journey, find enlightenment, and then select a new shaman (which is the thematic victory), and more watching Ren & Stimpy take drugs and get lost in the woods.
Container (5p) - This is my other annual obligation but this time it's with people that, at one time, all lived in town but many have moved away and we only get to see them at the con. I won by about $30. Newbies and rusty players almost always overpay at auctions and thus just hand victory margin to the shipper(s).
Two Rooms & A Boom (11 iterations) - The best game I had was the one where we helped (through an informal lieutenant system) everyone except for MI6 and Red Team all met their victory conditions. I love playing this at cons (because it's more about information trading than about raw deduction), but I'm tired of effectively babysitting a bunch of <10yr olds cause the parents deposit them there and then go play Werewolf or watch the Smithee awards.
Virgin Queen (6p) - TLDR: Abysmal start and then a slow climb out to what we all thought was a T5 victory, only to re-read the rules (after the fact) and someone else won a domination victory on T4. I like the story it makes when we play, but damn if the game isn't slightly overwrought...
Gardeners (2p & 3p) - Met up with another friend I only see at cons and we did the this and the two Japanese games which were new to him. Gardners is a cute riff on Magic Maze. I think it's best at 3, and cromulent at 4.
Madrino (3p) - This is borderline an activity but it's hilarious to play. We rolled 4 toilets the entire game for fixtures, so I plunked them all in the same room with one on one side and the rest all facing it and named my house the Evil Plumber Lair.
Izayoi (3p) - New to both my spouse and our friend. I lost it near the end of the game when I realized that I would get stuck with one of the trinkets which pushed me over my master's point limit. I really need to sleeve my cards for this if it's going to stick around.

Finally played everdell for the first time! I bought a physical copy last year! :( Holy hell what a game. I loved it!

Played Imperium Legends in multiplayer for the first time (3 players) , i played with the Qin for the first time and didnt enjoy it as much as i enjoy other factions, too much restrictions and cards that need other cards or are restrictive of other cards you have in play. My turns took more time than i would like to. I dont know if my friends enjoyed the game as much as i expected, but it was a good game.

Also played Discworld Ank-Morpork for the first time and had a really good time, i think that the mechanics on the board work well enough (moving minions, buildings, trouble and killing) and the cards are fun enough too, some really crazy effects on there. But there are two things i really did not like: Events can go crazy on you, i lost in two events played in the same turn near the end 50% of all the money i had made in the whole game, it was too much, i knew at that point that i had no way to complete my objective nor win by points. Also your actions being restricted to random cards can make the game really one sided at times, if you dont draw decent cards with the actions you need you are simply always behind, and having cards that do actions and then let you play another card is just so much better 99% of the time. There were 3 turns in a row where my two friends had a card with an additional play at least and i didnt so i just played a single card and passed and they played 2 to 4 cards, that just was even less fun than when i lost 50% of what i had as i just wasnt even playing the game in comparison. All things said, its still a pretty fun game i would play again, but its really luck based.

Edit: Rereading my comment about Ankh Morpork i think it sounds weird how negative im on random events and cards but i say i had a really fun time, the main thing is the game has hidden objectives to win that can be pretty different so as i was playing with a couple of friends i knew already most of the fun came from trying to guess what was each others win condition and trying to prevent each other from winning.

Got plays of Foundations of Rome and Clank! in.

Also played Rear Window by Prospero Hall. It’s roughly a Mysterium-style game themed after the Hitchcock movie. The one twist which probably should be skipped for the first play is that the clue giver might be a secret traitor.

We mainly played Ark Nova. We bought the game a couple of weeks ago but it was a bit daunting to crack it open. Boy am I glad I did it. An absolutely amazing game. Its so much fun with many interesting decisions and a nice flow. It seems very cerebral with some decisions taking some time. I think we did 5 games during the week (2 players)

We also played some splendor duel its just a solid 2player

Another game we played with 6 players was Virus! which is a simple yet entertaining game. The single game was at least 2 hours and we finished a bottle of pacharan 🤪

Played a few good ones this past week.

• Beast - 4 Players. This was our first time playing. I played as a beast (Hogbad) and was slain by the hunters on the 3rd Day. Would definitely play again.
• Dark Venture: Battle of the Ancients - Solo. Very excited to play this a ton more. Plays solo, co-op, and competitive. I did the first scenario in the solo campaign a few times to get some of the basic concepts, and because the Auto-Enemy Bohmerk kept killing my Varpen warriors.
• Wingspan - 2 Players. Always a relaxing, enjoyable experience. I won this time, which is rare.

Because our DnD session last Sunday ended a bit in limbo we decided to continue it on Tuesday which quickly let to another almost TPK. I've grown pretty frustrated with my character and vented my dissatisfaction with the class online and was quickly schooled on my mistakes. I'm now looking forward to our next session and playing it differently.

Friday one of our group had his birthday and an impromptu get together with beer and cake turned into a round of Spirit Island with spirits and cake. Heart of the Wildfire, Shifting Memory of Ages and Stone's Unyielding Defiance played on the sunset layout with events. Said events hammered us hard early on with destroying presence and adding blight which given Wildfire's playstyle was a problematic combo. But we turned it around and managed to remove all the towns and cities by roughly the second level 3 card. I liked playing Stone's Unyielding Defiance. The amount of "defense" and retribution you can apply even pretty early on is just mindboggling. The spirit does take a good long while before you can do much more than that but being able to sit in a sprawling urban landscape looking at whatever damage they do on ravage and just say "That's nice, honey, but the Dahan all stay and fight back, oh and half your damage goes right back atcha" is simply delicious.

We played a lot of the Isofarian guard last week, finished chapter 2 from the first campaign. They announced a couple of changes to the rules last week, and we really like them.

We also had our first introduction to Arnak at some friends. I like it, but I feel that you have to do too much, without becoming good at anything.

Lastly we finally git around continuing our alphabet challenge with Noria and Onirim :D

We played Next Station: London for the first time, flip & write with a neat spatial puzzle. Does pretty much everything right: simple rules, interesting decisions and scoring and it's fun to pass the color pencils around. Always neat when you realize that a bunch of games you like are by the same designer: Next Station, The Guild of Merchant Explorers and Aquamarine in this case.

Also played Photosynthesis (aka murdertree). Evergreen finds more table time these days but they are very different games and I like them both for what they are. Photosynthesis is confrontational abstract, Evergreen is chill drafting followed by some MP solitaire. Kinda wish I could get a version of Photosynthesis with Evergreen-style components.

Online I've been liking Challengers (BGA) a lot, also got some Newton and Mottainai games going on (Yucata).

We tried Flamecraft for the first time (2p). The game has amazingly cute artwork, gameplay is fun. We enjoyed it!

I got a second crack at Blood Rage after my gaming group introduced it last session. It's a favourite of Adhil's but the rest of us are new to it. I went from being lapped on the victory track to dominating despite winning no battles. Honestly I'm not sure how I stumbled onto a winning strategy which I'm a little embarrassed about. Simply a good synergy of Odin upgrades and the other players being too busy fighting to realise what I was up to on the sidelines.

We're going through Eric Lang's games at the moment but out of order. We played Ankh first (not a fan) and Rising Sun is up next.

I ended up playing Sidereal Confluence with 5 for the first time this week, and I see why it is considered a great game. The decision space was so large that it was hard to “math” out the best trades, so trading was fast and loose. Thoroughly enjoyed it.