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29 Aug 2019 19:25 #301227 by mezike
On vacation:

Every year we stay for a couple of weeks with relatives who live in a fairly isolated spot where the midday sun gets pretty violent and the UV warnings keep us indoors. This makes for plenty of gaming opportunity so we always pack a few things, something big and complex for my son and I, something more family friendly for when daughter wants to join us, and short and sweet filler games for when everybody wants to play.

Terraforming Mars x17
We played this virtually every day and sometimes twice so managed to get really deep into it. I'll write more in the dedicated thread because that's where it belongs.

Gaslands x0.5
Last year we took some dice, cut the templates out of the book and made cars and terrain on bits of scrap paper, and it was a total blast. This year we didn’t get around to playing however we did mess around with some builds using the new(ish) Highway Patrol faction. I dubbed my first effort the “hunter and shepherds” as it features two bikes with loud sirens that are intended to slow down and frustrate a target while the Hunter bears down on it in an armour-plated car toting a mini-gun, taking out the enemy one target at a time. My son, ever the extremist, then floated the idea of an entire fifty-can build of just bikes with sirens where you sit behind the rest of the pack and watch them all crash with anything up to fourteen hazard tokens per turn being handed out to vehicles that have your cycle gang in their rearview mirror. Once they all gear down to avoid collecting the hazards you just keep going round in circles behind them until they all explode. I have no idea how practical and fun-murdering that would be in real play but it sure sounds humourous, particularly as my knee-jerk reaction would be to spin around and drive away in reverse.

Sweet Spot x18
Oh boy this is just aces, a Tennis themed card game that has undeservedly slipped under the radar. The prima facie premise is that you play cards to move a tennis ball up and down a numbered track until it lands in a scoring spot, goes out, or someone concedes the rally. A pretty straightforward concept, however the gameplay is all in the deck of Tactics cards that create all kinds of interesting interactions.

Some of these cards can be used in place of a normal Return card that you would use to bat the ball back and forth, others have special effects that help in the longer run, but best of all are the ones that you play in addition to your return and which are often hidden until the other player has chosen their response. These cards manipulate the ball with spins and feints or create awkward conditions that entrap your opponent into making a mistake. On top of this the mind games begin - have they put down the card that you know will score them the point or are they bluffing with a simple feint? Every time you spend a card you lose some stamina and the fewer cards you have at the end of the rally the less you recover, so there are often times when it is best to concede and take advantage of being able to physically dominate on the next service. Goading your opponent with a well-timed bluff leads to one of those moments where they throw down their racquet in frustration for deciding not to reach for what turns out to be a softly placed ball that just dinks over the net.

What I found when playing is that the limited hand size focuses your attention on the shape of the entire rally ahead. You think beyond the immediate shot, even past how you think your opponent will return the ball, considering instead the ways in which you can put the ball into an unstoppable winning position and how to play down the round to get there. If your stamina is low you want to rush things along, but when you are stronger than your opponent you can keep the rally going to reduce their options and grind them into defeat. Your ability to enact your strategy will depend a lot on what you have in hand and those Tactics cards really help to expand your options when the draw isn’t particularly helpful. The best part for me is that I really get the sensation of being involved in direct and responsive confrontation with my opponent, reading the way he is playing and the types of card that he has in hand to get a feel for how each rally is going to go, and knowing that he is doing the same to me in return.

The only niggle that I have with it is the veneer of an amateur production on the presentation. There are completely pointless glyphs on the Tactics cards which are confusing for new players and unnecessary once you get to know the game, and the inclusion of which doesn’t make sense when the cards are fairly text-heavy anyway. The player character cards each have a special ability and you flip the card when you’ve used it, except the graphics aren’t easily distinguishable which gets confusing at times. Some things aren’t well-worded, although this is a lesser gripe as this is a very simple game where the depth is in the gameplay and interaction and not so much the mechanisms. There is also a doubles mode that I have only tried once and am on the fence about.

Gizmos x4
Not much more to add to what I’ve previously said. This is a very straightforward engine builder where you run your engine while it’s being built and has a fun marble dispenser that adds a nice tactile element. The gameplay is almost identical to Wingspan and on balance I would prefer to have the latter out of the two, although I find neither of them to be particularly stimulating. The kids are still enjoying playing this but as soon as they tire it’ll find its way onto eBay I think.

Bohnanza x5, Love Letter x 6, Plus and Minus x4 – three family favourites that never get old. I finally won a game of Love Letter for the first time and did it in style with four in a row so took great delight in being completely insufferable by reminding people about it for the rest of the day. Plus and Minus is an eighty-something year old antique, a simple premise of playing numbered cards to move pawns into a home space except there is a wonderful Kniziarian twist where the uneven distribution of numbers makes it a challenge to manage the position of your pawns effectively in relation to the cards your opponents are playing. We love this game however I think it’s better without the full compliment of four players as there is then some mystery as to which cards are in circulation.
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29 Aug 2019 19:35 #301229 by mezike
The gaming didn’t stop after we got home either with the whole of the Bank Holiday weekend to enjoy and no desire to go anywhere after all the recent travel. Waiting for us in the mail were copies of Snow Tails and Club Stories that had arrived while we were away.

I played Snow Tails a couple of times at the club when it first came out and we all enjoyed it, however the owner is a Eurogame Collector who baulks at the idea of playing a game more than a couple of times before moving onto something else so it disappeared. Given that Flamme Rouge has been such a big hit with us for the last couple of years I wondered if Snow Tails would stand up well against it; my fears were unwarranted as although both games share a good amount of DNA they have very different approaches and playing experience.

A quick summary for those unfamiliar with Snow Tails, it’s a race game where you mount a Husky-driven sled and careen around a twisty course trying not to soil yourself as you whip between the trees like an out-of-control version of the Endor speeder-bike chase in Return of the Jedi. Each turn you play one to three cards onto the available spots of your sled which will determine how much each team of dogs are pulling and how hard you are standing on the brakes. Then you move forward by the value of your dogs less the strength of the brake with the really cool part being that your sled drifts to the side where the dogs are running the hardest. This results in enormous fun as you skid around corners like you are doing a handbrake turn in an off-road rallycar and creates all kinds of carnage when you realise that your sled is moving far too fast and then you find yourself buried three feet deep into into an inconvenient snow drift.

A lot of people here on TWBG have recently taken a shine to Flamme Rouge so I’ll make a comparative point as both games have a similar premise of playing cards to move along a modular race track and are equally accessible and quick to learn. The main differences in gameplay with Snow Tails is that you re-use your spent cards when you cycle through your deck and that the wider track provides turning angles which make the course slightly shorter if you manage your driving line well. The onus is less on pacing yourself and getting the timing right on your breaks for the front, and more on correctly positioning yourself on the track as poor control of your sled can leave you struggling on the outside of a long bend or in danger of crashing. Both games ask you to look at your hand as a method of control, but the inference of what that means in each game is slightly different. Quite often in Snow Tails you will slow right down and let your opponents go ahead simply because it will make your next turn or two more effective and they will be stunned when you then go past them sideways with a cheery wave.

One notable effect that this creates is that interaction with your opponents in Snow Tails becomes almost incidental, a timer against which you are racing, and your involvement with your own sled is most vital. That isn’t meant as a slight, it just presents a different set of considerations as you have to make compromised decisions under pressure. There is an art to switching your drift from one side to the other without losing control because every card you play in a given turn must have the same value, leaving you in a position where sometimes your only option is to bring your sled to a standstill or face crashing into the rough or taking out a sapling tree. Taking a knock or two can still be manageable as doing so puts a ‘dent’ card into your hand, a blocking card that cannot be discarded and effectively reduces your hand size. You can take one or maybe even two of these so long as you can get through the early game without incident but any more makes it almost impossible to compete as your options become more limited with a battered sled that slides and bumps around, and picking up five dumps you out completely with no way to draw up new cards.

My favourite racing game remains Flamme Rouge because I enjoy the personal interplay in judging what I think the other players will do, but I do enjoy Snow Tails very much. Both kids have declared the latter to be their favourite so it looks like the one that will be getting aired the most and I’m perfectly happy with that.

Club Stories is an intriguing offering that is rare as Hen’s teeth due to being handmade in small batches by the designer, and one which I am glad to have stumbled across. The premise is that you take on the role of a football (soccer) club manager in five interlinked scenarios that chart your career through the lower leagues. It is closer to being a boardgame simulation of football management PC games such as Championship Manager as it focuses on the background operations of the team over the on-field escapades.

The opening paragraph in the rulebook reminds you that you are an unknown factor at a newly-promoted third division club that is declared to be destined for immediate relegation back to non-league football. Nobody knows you and you have everything to prove. It’s a more refreshing take on the approach that other games in this space have previously tried; this is not about super-star Premier League or World Cup action, this is grass roots without presumptions. It’s an effective approach because it allows for choices in the design space that make more sense when presented this way. You begin with a team of average players and a lack of staff, a fresh slate without sponsors and a half-full stadium, so it feels natural to be building up and constantly improving throughout the season.

Some really smart stuff is going on. I particularly like the ‘network’ system where hiring staff into the club introduces you to their personal networks. In game terms you get to draw out additional cards that give you more choice in the various ‘markets’ for players, staff, sponsors and so on, from an experiential point of view you are building connections with people that can potentially help you to propel the club to success. The bigger your networks the more likely you are to find the right person at the right time, or to keep in touch with useful people who might be able to help you later.

Matchdays are also handled in an intriguing way. You assign your players to a formation in attacking or defending roles and then compare to your opponents formation and player skill to determine how many goals each side are able to score. Hiring a scout lets you draw the opponent’s card before you set your tactics but only to read the back which gives you some vague information on their strengths and preferred formation. It is rarely precise but is enough to give you an edge that results in league points, and you really get a feeling that you are responding to your scout’s assessments with meaningful tactical choices. Knowing what is coming up also helps you to prepare in the best way as you might need to bulk up your fitness or look for a new player to shore up your leaky defence.

There is more besides, the action system with its combination of allocating and rolling dice, the way that the personalities of the board of directors guide the club into responding to various crises and challenges, the inter-relation of the clubs popularity and finances. There are clever touches everywhere which allow the game to glide along with a light touch that still feeds back an interesting story as you work your way through the scenarios. It’s a purely solo game despite having a wonky co-op mode where you split duties between management and coaching, and because it’s self-published the component quality is variable despite being quite pretty and well visualised. Some of the icons and card text is miniscule to the point of needing a magnifying aid to read, but you can see how a more experienced publisher could take this and give it a really exciting final polish as well as developing some much-needed additional scenarios and maybe even a workable way of introducing additional players. I very much hope that this happens (according to the designer there has been some interest) as it’s a really great game that I can’t stop thinking about at the moment.
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30 Aug 2019 14:29 #301257 by cdennett

mezike wrote: Sweet Spot x18
Oh boy this is just aces, a Tennis themed card game that has undeservedly slipped under the radar.

Wow, never heard of this, but this sounds like maybe something the wife would enjoy. Have to seriously consider this, thanks for putting this on the radar.
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01 Sep 2019 12:04 #301299 by hotseatgames
Had some people over for a 6 player game night last night. Not a "hardcore" crowd so the intent was to keep things on the lighter side, games-complexity wise.

One couple that came over brought a game they bought, seemingly on a whim. It's called Spy Alley, and it's basically Monopoly with a hidden role mechanic added in. You roll, and move, around the board, collecting "evidence" tied to different spies. Each player is secretly assigned one of the spies at the beginning of the game, and you can accuse someone of being a given spy. If you are right, they die and you get their stuff. Otherwise, you die. Yes, player elimination is here, but nobody fell for that in our game. I ended up winning, but there really isn't much going on in this game.

Next up was Hellapogos. Two people had never played. I explained the rules and informed them that things would get mean quickly. I was wrong... due to a freak series of circumstances, all SIX of us made it off the island. There was even an attempt on one person's life just for fun, but that person had the sheet metal. While it was a novelty that we all survived, this game is definitely more fun when that doesn't happen.

Finally we got to the main event, Cosmic Encounter. Again, 2 new players. Aliens in play were Filch (me), Symbiote, Macron, Seeker, Animal, and possibly Mercenary? They could use their cards as ships that counted as 1 each in an encounter.

The game was brutal, and rather protracted. It took 3 hours to resolve, but everyone was engaged the entire time. Literally every player was sitting at 4 points, so it was anyone's game. As the Filch, I had been in a good position for much of the game since I had my Flare and was scoring lots of cards with it. Unfortunately, the Animal played a crooked Negotiation on me and took 5 of my cards. He went on to end up holding about 30 cards.

The game finally ended in a 4 way victory. The idea of a 3 hour Cosmic game might sound awful, but it was actually highly strategic and one of the best sessions of it I've had. Everyone loved it.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Gary Sax, mezike, BillyBobThwarton

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01 Sep 2019 15:06 #301301 by Shellhead
Delobius of F:AT and his wife hosted boardgames for myself and another friend. First game was Root. He played the Vagabond and his wife play the cats. I had the Woodland Alliance and our fourth ran the Eyrie. I have only played twice before, as the Eyrie and the Vagabond, so I effectively had to re-learn the game as the Woodland Alliance. Everything about my faction seemed counter-intuitive for the first two turns, but then I started to get rolling. For most of the game, the cats were in the lead, especially early on. But eventually the Vagabond and I caught up, and the Eyrie wasn't far behind despite a couple of regime collapses. In the final stretch, I easily won by spreading influence at 3 more locations. I haven't played the cats yet, but overall, the Eyrie was difficult to play, and the Woodland Alliance was definitely the easiest.

The wife retired from the gaming room as we set up Blackstone Fortress. We have only taken out one stronghold so far, so we got our stuff out of the card vaults and started a new mission. We had a few relatively easy challenges, one of which got my character leveled up permanently because we found a specific loot card for him. Then we finally got a big set piece battle, with chaos marines, lots of traitor guardsmen, and a couple of Spindle bots. Noah was playing the big robot character, and needed to kill one more spindle bot to achieve some kind of personal objective, so we decided to head their way and then exit via the elevator in their section. The whole board layout was like a four-left clover, more less, with us starting at the stem.

That stem section consisted of our entry point and two straight passages branching away like a V, with two enemy groups apporaching from each side. Our flamer guy kept them bottled up on one side with tactical placement of flame tokens, while I lead the way with the psychic navigator with pimp cane. I would move forward to a strategic spot, then camp with my psychic shield up while taking a convenient shot. Then our group would advance up to my position and wipe out enemy while somewhat protected from return fire by my shield.

We got close to our exit and had everything under control when a random event roll suddenly closed off every exit except one on the far side of the map. A couple of our characters made a straight run for the exit, but Delobius and Noah ran out of their way to grab a couple of loot cards. Enemy reinforcements arrived in serious numbers and seriously injured D while completely whacking Noah. Then we escaped. By then, it was 11:30 PM and we decided to call it quits for the night.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Gary Sax, hotseatgames, Frohike, charlest

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01 Sep 2019 18:02 #301307 by bendgar
Core Space is just not working for me personally. About once a year I get amnesia and forget that I don't like minis games with 3D terrain.

Anyone who does like this sort of thing can hit me up.
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02 Sep 2019 07:18 #301313 by mezike
At home:

Star Wars Rebellion with an interesting conundrum for my Rebels and a bold and unusual strategic choice that delighted me in exploring a different way of playing.

My starting position was about as awkward as it’s possible to get, with the Empire cutting a line straight through Rebel territory right onto the doorstep of Mon Calamari and surrounding far-too vulnerable Kashyyyk with the Death Star under construction on distant Hoth. It was abundantly clear that I was going to lose both those core worlds and my other starting planets gave me scant options for securing a breakaway region as a power base. Guerrilla warfare or blocading to frustrate exploration were going to be tough to pull off with poor reinforcement. I thought about slipping the base behind lines on Ilum and as far away from the Death Star as possible but the enemy had carriers already in place to swoop across the backwater regions. I didn’t fancy an early scrap against them without the support of decent unit production nor did I want to spend the entire game on the run and harried into the corner of the galaxy which the Death Star was preparing to explore. So I needed to plot a different scheme.

I reached a decision and loaded the bulk of forces into the Rebel Base, allowing the Empire to roll over Mon Cal and Kashyyyk as expected. I deployed what I could into the base and left the rest on the production queue for later. The Emperor was cackling madly as he tightened his fist against a weakening rebellion, even ignoring my sabotage as he focussed instead on extending the web. Turn three comes around and the Death Star is about to become operational, which is when I choose to reveal the location of the Rebel Base is right in their shadow on Endor which becomes the launchpad for an all-or-nothing assault on the superweapon. I realise later that I could have launched this attack with a hidden fleet card, even so there was an inspiring feeling about the bold revelation and last gasp assault on imperial might. The battle went far closer than either of us expected with the Emperor himself coming in to take charge, however I managed to destroy the space station despite losing my fleet in the process. The final stage of the ground battle was also a great chance for me to play the tactic card that kills off the opposition leader, something which will open the way for me to start rebuilding alliances unopposed and to take back territory. I roll my hits and take out the last standing Stormtrooper, and it looks like the Emperor is going to meet an ignominious and early end! My opponent only has one dice and a reroll and has to score a heal. The first roll comes up blank to my delight, but the second lands just right and the evil one escapes, cackling mad revenge from his escape shuttle.

I then had to relocate but wasn’t in a hurry as there wasn’t anyone in easy striking distance. I played a mission that allowed me to put probe cards back into the deck which then gave me the interesting option of relocating back to Endor again. My opponent was watching where I put the cards so I went for a double bluff by pointedly putting just one of the cards back on top and then relocating instead to Ilum. He didn’t take the bait but proceeded to make two fatal flaws; the first was to spend leader actions opposing missions when he should have been spreading out to take advantage of a weak Rebel force, and the other was a determination to wipe out the only stronghold I had which was on Nal Hutta. He just couldn’t believe that I would have an almost empty rebel base anywhere on the map and because I had been rebuilding my forces around that top edge of the board as well as placing the Rebel Hanger special token up there it gave him the impression that I had relocated somewhere up in Hutt space.

We also had a big tussle over the fate of Princess Leia who had been captured in an ambush by Krennick’s troopers. I kept sending missions in to her location and he felt obliged to oppose in order to keep up the number of icons ready for his masterplan of using the Emperor to lure her to the dark side. She couldn’t resist and switched sides, to which I responded with mock remorse as I was perfectly happy to lose an action in the last couple of rounds if it meant that he slowed down the spread of his fleets for a whole round. With all the fuss going on he had completely forgotten to move his assault carriers and so it wasn’t until very late in the game that he finally put some boots on Ilum and accidentally walked into the Rebel base. By this point I had been sending my troops away from the heavily contested Hutt region and back to the safety of the base so there was quite the welcoming committee. We looked at how distant his forces were and he chose to concede at the realisation that there was nothing he could do to contest the base before the timer ran out. The Emperor may have escaped death and added another Skywalker to his collection but he just couldn’t whack those sneaky Rebels.

More Club Stories which I am trying to pace myself on by replaying the early scenarios so that I don’t race through it too quickly. The first one isn’t too much of a challenge and is mainly a learning game, but things step up when you move to a new club with bigger ambitions. I am faced with a club that is riddled with corruption and have to cope with the distraction of replacing the club directors and hiring a private investigator to prevent the club going into financial meltdown. It utilises the scenario card to add some extra elements which fires up the imagination for the potential that just a few side rules and special circumstances can have on the balance of the core game.

51st State + Scavengers good to give this another go after a couple of months break. I really like this deck because it has some cunning card interplay that allows you to bounce cards between ruination, the discard pile, and back into your hand to be reborn again. As a result it is higher on complexity if only due to the larger number of card draws adding overwhelming choice. I had the best of it with Mississippi who gave me an easy exploit on ruin cards with their inherent brick production, then quickly added a couple of ammo token deals to add some flexibility. Later on I was cycling discarded upgraded cards back into hand which enabled me to double up on selling resources for VP. This was especially useful as we had the cities promo tiles in play and I had a massive boon after scraping together enough raze tokens to swag half a dozen ammo tokens in one raid. This is still my favourite engine building game.

Plus lots of Snow Tails which both kids are repeatedly thrashing me at.

At the club:

Hellapagos + expansion was being played when I walked in. I didn’t get a chance to play myself but I watched to see what impact the expansion was having. To be honest the dynamics and the fun were no different than without, but I guess if you’ve played it a lot and are getting bored then it would be nice to have some extra random events involved. It mostly just seemed to be drawing cards and making decisions on consuming stuff or taking risks on bag draws. Each player gets a special power but some of them are just begging to have you bumped to the top of the hit-list (like the beefcake that produces double quantity but also consumes twice as much) so there were a couple of disgruntled faces around the table at the heightened feeling of unfairness. Best new item that I saw in action was a metal tube that deflects a shot to the person sitting next to you. Two other people have a copy of the expansion so I’m still taking a pass on it.

Nine tiles panic is one of the latest batch released by Oink games and follows their typically minimalist approach. Each player has an identical set of nine double-sided tiles which they need to race to put into a 3x3 grid in order to maximise their potential against three randomly drawn scoring cards. The first person to complete their grid sets off a sand-timer that puts pressure on the rest which generates the titular panic, and the order in which you finish breaks ties when dishing out the points. Spatial awareness and quick cognitive reasoning are the great divider here, things that I seem to have an innate affinity for and which made the game feel a bit simple for me. Even though it was the first time I had even seen it, one keen observer advised the rest of the table to be wary of playing this with me and he was right as I quickly took first place and top score in every round. Sure I enjoyed it, especially when considering it as Galaxy Trucker without all the faff, but more for the annoyed panic I was instigating every time I flipped the timer over and started trash-talking. I don’t think it’s something that I’m going to play a great deal more of but I do think it’s one of the better ones that I’ve seen from Oink.

Sweet Spot in doubles mode. This is quite a different game with four as you don’t hit your stamina so hard and the increased number of cards in circulation ensures that you see saving moves more often and a greater showing of the two response cards (Too Much and Focused Control). It also took considerably longer to play and feels much slower as you don’t have direct feedback with a single opponent which means that you spend more time waiting for your turn to come around than being actively involved. I’d try doubles again but it will take a lot to convince me that this isn’t simply a case of a great two-player game that has been squeezed into an awkward and ungainly multi-player format in order to open it up to a broader market.
The following user(s) said Thank You: mads b., Msample, hotseatgames, BillyBobThwarton, DarthJoJo, Ah_Pook, n815e

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02 Sep 2019 08:44 #301314 by DarthJoJo

mezike wrote: Sure I enjoyed it, especially when considering it as Galaxy Trucker without all the faff[...]

But the faff is the fun.

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02 Sep 2019 09:31 #301315 by mezike

DarthJoJo wrote:

mezike wrote: Sure I enjoyed it, especially when considering it as Galaxy Trucker without all the faff[...]

But the faff is the fun.


Then I guess Nine Tiles Panic is Galaxy Trucker without the fun...?

It has the same feel as the first phase of GT where you have that "I need to build something that sort-of-works in a rush" experience, it's just that being an Oink game this is squeezed down so that it is shorter and simpler. You then score that phase immediately instead of testing your build over a second phase that is almost a distinctively separate game. I suppose that makes it less game in a more direct experience?

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02 Sep 2019 11:38 #301321 by Gary Sax
Your reports are so good, Mezike, thank you for taking the time to post them.
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02 Sep 2019 13:17 #301323 by DarthJoJo

mezike wrote:

DarthJoJo wrote:

mezike wrote: Sure I enjoyed it, especially when considering it as Galaxy Trucker without all the faff[...]

But the faff is the fun.


Then I guess Nine Tiles Panic is Galaxy Trucker without the fun...?

It has the same feel as the first phase of GT where you have that "I need to build something that sort-of-works in a rush" experience, it's just that being an Oink game this is squeezed down so that it is shorter and simpler. You then score that phase immediately instead of testing your build over a second phase that is almost a distinctively separate game. I suppose that makes it less game in a more direct experience?

I hear what you’re saying and even a little sympathetic when Galaxy Trucker starts to run long in the third round, but the faff gives you something to stick to and remember. I remember dodging asteroids and getting blown apart by slavers just to limp to the finish line with three of my initial eighteen tiles. Nine Tiles sounds fine, but it doesn’t sound like it can provide anything like that.

To put it another way, I’d say play Nine Tiles if you want a game; play Galaxy Trucker if you want an experience.
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03 Sep 2019 09:50 #301333 by RobertB
I gamed Friday with my brother, my daughter, and her boyfriend. Daughter insisted on Century: Spice Road. My brother squawked about it because he wanted to play something else, then got revenge on us by winning. Then we played a prototype that another member was working on, where you gather various primates for points. It was a roll-and-move on steroids. I'm not sure what strategy was in there, beyond, "get cards as fast as you can," but we all enjoyed it.

Saturday I played the missus Terraforming Mars. That was a close one, and I won by two points. She had ended the game, and if she had let it go another round she'd have won. Moral of the story is 'count your opponents points'. Or maybe it's 'play another round if you're getting 150 me to my 3'.

Then Sunday evening the three of us played a couple of games of Spice Road. Daughter won one and I won one. We like it fine, so it was an hour well-spent.
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03 Sep 2019 10:09 - 04 Sep 2019 11:41 #301334 by charlest
Did some holiday weekend gaming. A buddy had people over for his birthday and I supplied the games.

I told him about UBOOT a few months ago and he's a history teacher/buff and really wanted to try it. It was pretty awesome. The other two were newbies of course (one handled both the navigator and chief engineer role), I've played this three times prior. Birthday boy was the captain and I covered the app/first officer position. We hooked my phone up to his nearby big screen which really heightened the experience of the app.

Our first play saw us fortunately coming across a lone shipping vessel off the eastern coast of England which we summarily blew the hell out of. Unfortunately it took four torpedoes but we finished it off well.

Not long after we approached a convoy of two merchant ships escorted by a lead destroyer. My buddy wanted us to try and take out the destroyer giving us more time to hunt the other ships. I tried to warn him but we approached above water, firing right into the destroyer that spotted us. They evaded the shots and started lighting us up. Suddenly we died and discovered the cheeky bastard rammed us!

So that was about an hour of playing, which lead to us starting over and playing a new mission. This one had us trying to breakthrough a heavily patrolled area north of the U.K. It went better early as we sunk two ships and evaded their escorts for the most part. We had to whisper as the app monitored our noise with the pursuing destroyers leaning into the hydrophone.

The player handling navigator/chief engineer stayed on top of the repairs and did a good job navigating. We didn't use the sextant at all because we had visual landmarks with an island off to the east for much of the trip.

Then things went South. We found ourselves in a mined sector. This game is brutal with minefields as you basically hit a mine every 30 seconds or so, and sailing straight through it is ridiculous. While repairing flooding compartments and leaks, we now used the sextant and were astonished to find ourselves off course.

The navigator rechecked his work and let out a gasp. He thought the island we had seen was a different island that was further east, so we mistakenly cut the Northwestern trajectory too tight. Headquarters had warned us of several mined sectors but we thought we would clear them easily.

Nope, we sank.

I'm stuck in a love/hate relationship with this game. The parts it does well are exceptional. It's incredibly immersive and produces a fantastic team experience that's punctuated with intense moments of drama. But all of the crew management and fatigue considerations kind of suck. They add a big resource element to the game, but it feels very kludgy as there's simply not enough activation potential among the crew for the actions required. It means you have to plan exceptionally well as you can't just correct your course over and over again.

The extreme punishment of the action system conflicts with the realistic elements of the game. What ends up happening is that we cheat and fudge things. So like if I exit the periscope screen to check our course or depth or modify something, but we want to check the periscope again a few minutes later, we don't pay another order with that sailor. This is the most enjoyable way to play in my opinion, adhere to the order system but don't mind cheating every so often.

That's not ultimately very satisfying gameplay, but it is still a fantastic experience overall and it produces plays which are entirely memorable.

I wanted to pull out Finger Guns at High Noon but we never had over four players at any one time except for one stint where we played Fief. This is an annual occurrence at this event and I always look forward to it. We had five, which is not ideal as someone gets shafted when alliances break. We also played with an accelerated start which everyone enjoyed (two nobles instead of one, one extra Knight, and two windmills. You start in two spaces instead of one naturally).

My alliance pushed hard into the ecclesiastical titles and we were on a fast road to securing pope. That, combined with our land acquisition, would put us close to winning somewhat early in play (would have won around turn 3 or 4 I think).

Unfortunately, the main opposing alliance which was focused entirely on establishing Fiefdoms for their VP pulled out a huge surprise assault with the secret passage card. They snuck through the walls of my ally and totally ransacked his land. We did not anticipate this and were a bit distracted with the political aspects of the game, leaving that castle a bit underdefended.

Losing the fiefdom was bad, but even worse was my ally's noble dying as he was a cardinal. This set us back in opening up the vote for pope.

The other alliance would win as they pushed their other boundary and the fifth player was busy waging war against my people instead of policing the Western edge of the map.

It was fun although brief (1.5 hour).

I think we would likely use the accelerated start again as it got to the best parts of the game quicker. We grabbed land faster and amassed armies more rapidly. It does present the conundrum that a single mistake is likely more easily punished (since players have a wider range of strategic pathways it's more difficult to anticipate), but we could have defended our stronghold and made a game of it.

We also used the attendant rules from the politics expansion for the first time. I think we'd likely do that again as well. We had one huge turn where the player with the Thief stole my entire income. It's a take your money and split it into two closed fists thing with the player stealing one. I risked it all and lost.

World Championship Russian Roulette and Fireball Island were also hits at the party. It was maybe my best play of Fireball Island and the group was totally into it.

Also played a ton of Just One with the family Sunday night. We typically play Wits and Wagers and Catch Phrase, but they loved this. It's so simple and yet interesting and you can keep going around and around. I think none of them had played a cooperative game before either, which made it enticing.
Last edit: 04 Sep 2019 11:41 by charlest.
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04 Sep 2019 11:30 #301367 by barrowdown
I had a lot of family in town this past weekend and so we played several games of Hellapagos. The first set of games was with four and I thought it was kind of okay. The second set of games had eight players and was a lot more fun (even though I was shot first in both games). It's not my favorite large group game (I prefer One Night Ultimate Werewolf), but it is a lot less fragile and much easier to teach.

Charlie - I have Uboot sitting on my shelf after I picked it up at a big sale at my FLGS. Why should I get it to the table over Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective or finishing off Chronicles of Crime?

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04 Sep 2019 11:40 #301370 by charlest

barrowdown wrote: Charlie - I have Uboot sitting on my shelf after I picked it up at a big sale at my FLGS. Why should I get it to the table over Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective or finishing off Chronicles of Crime?


You've played Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective and Chronicles of Crime and probably other games like those. You haven't played something like UBOOT.
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