Any tips, recommendations, warnings or cool sessions you played last week?
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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!
I love everdell, such a satisfying game! We also got an expansion called spirecrest. Its a nice addition but honestly the base game has enough content already and the addon bloats a bit the time between the seasons.
I didn’t realize how many expansions the game has. It can suddenly become quite spendy. I do love that it looks like a sea turtle when you have them all out.
Haha, I did not know that! So far I think the base game is all I need
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.
Have not tried spirit island yet but I really want to, sounds like a blast! Is quaterbacking a problem in this game?
Quaterbacking is extremely difficult because each spirit works completely different from each other.
- every ability card in the game is unique and while in the beginner setup each spirit has their fixed selection even that is too much for me to remember. If you go full rules. Every spirit play with different cards each game.
- every spirit has their own set of innate abilities that tweak their gameplay and uses different growth options that influence the pace and rythm at which they grow in power. One of may faves for example is Ocean’s Hungry Grasp where one option is to flow into the land and have powerful turns but are ultimately forced into an ebb cycle where you pull back to the sea to recharge
- at higher player counts there’s simply too much going on on the island to fully discuss every little bit. The game runs far better for everyone if each player takes charge of the problems they can handle and calls out the one’s they can’t. This leaves a small subset to cooperate on.
This is probably the most truly cooperative game I’ve ever played.
Wow thank you so much for the explanation! I am very intrigued! Will have to consider it for sure
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 🤪
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
I really want to like Arnak but I just cant, for me the game is very flawed and too much min maxing from turn 1. Tried a couple 2-player and 3-player games and did not enjoy it that much. Its still in my modest collection but will probably be sold soon
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).
