Sagrada: solid game where you create a stained glass window with colored dice. You can’t place die of the same colors or value next to eachother. You have starting boards to where you have limitations to where you can place colored, valued dice in certain spots as well. You win the game by getting points based on your personal goal card and community goal cards. There is a drafting mechanism of 9 rolled dice that changes with turn order. There are also tool card that help you move dice if you need help.
The game is easy to learn and play, but has that really good strategy/difficulty with your limitations from dice placement.
1x Innovation
1x 1846
1x Flash Point: Fire Rescue
1x Arkham Horror: The Card Game
1x Dominion
1x Keyflower
1x Thebes
1x Ticket to Ride
4x Codenames
2x For Sale
2x Fuji Flush
1x Bohnanza: The Duel (new)
1x Dixit
1x EXIT: The Game - The Pharaoh’s Tomb (new)
1x The Grizzled
1x Legendary Encounters: Alien
1x Mysterium
1x NMBR 9
1x Okey Dokey
1x Guns & Steel (new)
On July 4, we played a game of 1846 where I was able to execute a successful train handoff for the first time. Someone should have started the C&O, but no one wanted to - I started the B&O to buy a train and create a route for GT, and I won for the first time with only four corporations floated.
We also made another attempt at Arkham Horror: The Card Game, now that all three of us have constructed decent decks. I’ve been enjoying AH most as a 3p game, even though you need two core sets.
On Friday, we played Bohnanza: The Duel (interested, need to play more) and Guns & Steel (satisfying planning, but don’t need to own it)
We had (game-curious) company for the weekend, and used the shotgun approach to see what they might enjoy. Some games went over better than others - Flash Point, The Grizzled, and Mysterium were winners. They even bought Flash Point while they were here. I suggested a few card games after I learned they were a lapsed M:tG player, but both Dominion and Innovation got strong negative reactions along the lines of “let’s never play these again.” Dominion was my gateway from Magic to hobby board games, but you can really never tell!
We also played EXIT - The Pharaoh’s Tomb, which is our fourth escape room game. 70 minutes, 10-20 of which was variations on failing to input the correct answer we already knew. Most of that is my fault
Now I have a second big box of Japanese games to play through (Emperor’s Choice), and the Innovation: Deluxe KS is arriving today. Between the holiday and the weekend, it’s been a lot of gaming for a non-convention week.
Spent six hours playing Betrayal at House on the Hill this past Friday. I like the game but that was a long time. I was pretty fried afterwards. I got to be the traitor once, though! I also tried out Someone Has Died when the designer waved me over to her table. I am not any good at improv, but it was entertaining.
3x Innovation: Cities of Destiny (new)
1x 6 Nimmt!
2x Coffee Roaster (new)
1x Emperor’s Choice (new)
3x Heat Up Live! (new)
1x Shephy
1x Space Beans
1x Sticheln (new)
1x Ticket to Ride Team Asia (new)
1x Maigo-Neko (new)
1x Vast: The Crystal Caverns
1x Automobiles Racing Season
Innovation Deluxe arrived last week and we spent some time with one of the two “new” expansions (they’re not new if you’ve been playing on isotropic). I really enjoy Cities on its own, we’re going to play with Artifacts of History this week. Playing with all four expansions eventually is not out of the question.
Heat Up Live feels like an arcade puzzle game. I don’t know about my long term prospects for any of the Japanese solo games (Coffee Roaster, Heat Up Live!, and Shephy) but where else are you going to find a game about playing a concert as an idol group?
Sticheln is a trick-taker from 1993, probably coming with me to the next PAX. Space Beans is actually better than I remember, and I didn’t dislike it before.
Team Asia is an interesting TtR variant, makes me wish I had more opportunities to play partnership games.
That’s how I end up feeling about most solitaire games. They end up being more accessible on mobile because you don’t have to deal with setup to play a quick game (like Friese’s Friday)
I finally played Terraforming Mars, after all my friends have been hyping it up all year. It was good. I actually played it twice on Saturday. My first game, I got blown out, because it took me a little while to fully grok how everything worked. The second game, it just really came together for me, and while I didn’t win, I came in second place and only lost by 3 points.
As an aside, the fact that Terraforming Mars is a medium-heavy Euro that you don’t feel completely mentally exhausted and drained after you play it, and can play again an hour or so later, is great.
Played my first game of Android: Netrunner today. We had a fun time in a terrible match. I had only read about half the rulebook before the guy who brought the game had finished putting together the decks, so we played really slow and made a ton of mistakes, went back to fix it. Game sped up a bit later when we both were comfortable with the turn order etc. (He had also only played it a couple of times before). The game was awful because I was playing the company (?, game was in german so forgive me if I make a mistake with the terms) and I just absolutely couldn’t find any agendas. Still had the runner just bash his head against some well laid countermeasures a couple of times. My opponent was attacking R&D because of a virus that let him look at extra cards. I put up additional defenses there but he was still getting through due to a “doping” card (giving him an additional 9 credits for an extra run but at the cost of one brain damage). On the very last run he could perform before running out of cards in his deck he found the third agenda to steal and won and I died with five countermeasures Ice cards in my hand.
Was still fun though and would like to play again, though it took like an hour and a half for the game.
Nah, it’s still called “Ice”. Dunno why I repeatedly used the word “countermeasures”. As for Stimhack: I really didn’t know the name anymore, just that the owner of the game explained the flavor as “doping”.
1x Innovation
1x Sticheln
1x The Gallerist
1x The Fox in the Forest (new)
1x Bohnanza: The Duel
1x Nubia
1x maskmen
1x Verflixxt
1x This War of Mine: The Board Game (new)
1x Tamamooool: Defend the Eggs (new)
The Fox in the Forest is a “two player trick-taking game” and that’s techncially true, but “two player card game” captures it more accurately. You can tell a lot of thought went into the design.
Just this morning it occurred to me that Maskmen is a card game where you convert a heap into a linked-list. That kind of captures the difficulty of explaining how it works when teaching it…
I enjoyed playing The Gallerist more than the first two times, it may be worth revisiting Kanban with knowledge of Vital Lacerda’s approach to design.
Sticheln and Bohnanza: the Duel are keepers. Undecided on Verflixxt and Tamamooool.
1x The Fox in the Forest
1x Luna (new)
1x Medina (new)
2x Dice Forge (new)
1x Emperor’s Choice
1x Lazer Ryderz (new)
1x Deadline (new)
1x Between Two Cities: Capitals (new)
I’m spending this week in California for family stuff, but look at that: six new games last weekend :]
Luna is unique and good. Perfect information, but player interactions branch too much to be easily calculable. Dice Forge is great fun, a snowball game with dice, more intricate than Machi Koro but still accessible. Between Two Cities: Capitals is a great addition, love everything in the box.
Layzer Ryderz is better than it should be. The giant standees are a little wobbly but the vaporwave track pieces are excellent. Medina is fine, but it’s a perfect information abstract with relatively straightforward scoring.
We played several rules incorrectly in Deadline, I’ll withhold judgment for a week
2x Innovation
3x Mottainai
1x Bohnanza
1x Snowdonia
1x Honshu
2x Deadline
2x Frank’s Zoo
2x Bohnanza: The Duel
1x Between Two Cities: Capitals
1x Sticheln
1x Burgle Bros
1x America
Every time I play Snowdonia, my rating has risen significantly (it was initially a 6, after this week I raised it to 8 on BGG). It has been great with 2, 3 and 4 players.
A lot of these plays were with Anthony’s friends from California… Bohnanza, Frank’s Zoo, Between Two Cities, Sticheln, and America.
Deadline is fine with the correct rules, very unique but not a replacement for The Grizzled or Witness. I’ll happily play through all 12 cases.
After playing the two “new” Innovation expansions, my opinion… Figures > Artifacts > Cities > Echoes. Maybe it’s time to play with everything.
