Oh right, I was going to tell you that if you don’t enjoy TIME Stories immediately, your opinion probably won’t change. It is what it is right away.
Usually if I play a medium or heavy game this many times, I’ll find an excuse to come back to it forever. Fresh Fish is the most recent “KdJ-weight” game that passed 12 plays, and over half of those were at one PAX. Food Chain Magnate and 1846 are almost to 12 (and if you consider 18XX as a family, it’s already past 12). Through the Ages is well past 12, but over half of those games are online.
I clear a dozen plays on short games pretty frequently, especially if they get played multiple times in one sitting. Most recently Jump Drive, Magic Maze, and NMBR 9 all passed 20 plays.
I played my first game of Lords of Waterdeep last week. Also Clank!, which I’ve been wanting to try for a while. I enjoyed both, though I only got in one game of each.
Played first game of Terraforming Mars this weekend and really liked it a lot. Would like to play it again with people who aren’t quite so drunk though. Also, I have to note that the rules are horribly written for beginners in that game, that also made the game take a lot longer than it should have just trying to find answers to questions.
Played a second game of Wind the Film! It’s a set collection card game with strict hand management rules. If I can find a copy cheap, I’ll pick it up. Otherwise, I’ll ask @pence to bring it to PAX. I need to read the rules as it was taught to me incorrectly, but I really enjoyed it.
I did mess up a rule 3-4 times by incorrectly removing the Good Shot cards from the game after Sunset. I was happy that, played correctly, I enjoyed the game even more.
Traded in a pile of mediocre games at a shop and walked out with Captain Sonar and Pandemic Iberia so I’m quite pleased.
Played Pandemic for the first time at a friend’s house the other day, and dug it very much. Also got to try Orleans for the first time and dug it enough to be very curious about its expansions and such.
There are certain games (1995-2004 euro games, or the occasional modern game in that style) that I think of as “Rym and Scott” games, as in “Rym and Scott should probably play this.”
Most recently it was Samarkand, and today it was Medici.
Good - I was surprised after I typed “Medici site:frontrowcrew.com” and couldn’t find anything relevant. It doesn’t appear in the show notes of the 2010 episode you did about auction games either - you talked about Hoity Toity/Adel Verplichtet (weird deep cut SdJ winner that no one really loves) and For Sale.
I haven’t discovered that many Rym+Scott games that I haven’t brought to at least one PAX. At this point I’m more likely to find an odd game that goes over better than expected, like Quartermaster General or Factory Fun, or 18XX with Matt and Scott at PAX South.
It’s a re-implementation of Top Race, a 1996 Kramer game. That’s Restoration Games’s whole gig. I don’t think it’s straight reprint though, and I’ve never played the original. So color me intrigued.
There’s a ton of shit out there but I’m not immediately dismissive of most new games as long as they pass the sniff test. And I can certainly say there have been great deckbuilders since dominion. Super Motherload is my best and most recent example. (OK I just looked at my shelf of 200 games and I do not own a single deckbuilder other than Dominion, so there’s a bit more merit to this statement than I thought at first blush).
I actually didn’t know Restoration Games was doing this, I’m interested. However… I’m not surprised that their new addition to Kramer’s old card racing system is “we added variable player powers,” that seems like the easiest (and most ignorable) thing you can add to any game to update it.