How was it? What can you recommend? Or not?
Radlands. Awesome two player game, and love the components in the deluxe edition!
Got the standard edition last week and have played through a few times. Enjoying the theme and gameplay. A nice quick battler.
Bought it last year at gencon and finally got around to playing it this year at gencon. Agreed! Great game!
We played Grand Austria Hotel, Terra Nova and Clever 4Ever.
We also picked up a copy of Fancy Feathers from the FLGS. Imagine if Friedemann Friese designed Sushi Go and you get Fancy Feathers. I like that each drafting decision often gets you multiple cards so it plays very quickly. Card quality is good and the art on the pheasant cards is nice, happy with it for the price.
Last Friday got to play Mysterium with a group I don’t usually play games with. Originally was supposed to be The Witcher: Old World, but someone wasn’t able to make it last minute but also had a few new players join and ended up with a higher player count, so I guess it all worked out in the end.
Wasn’t able to get around to any board games this weekend because I was DMing my 2nd session of D&D, so it was still a super fun time.
Finally got an old fave back to the table—UNO! I haven’t gotten anyone to play that with me since the nineties. So fun ♥
Weirdly enough, once we started playing the “keeping score” variant, a lot of the tactics went away and play became more automatic. Less “probability calculation for a 2% edge” and more “high value cards bad, play them fast”. But then as I realized we were all doing that, some tactics re-entered the fray since I could then strategically play a lower card early etc.
Also we discovered the “when you have two of the +4 cards, select a color you don’t even have for the first time so you can play the second one soon after” tactic which is pretty punishing and unfun towards whomever’s next to you.
5 players this week, so we brought out Hansa Teutonica. Don’t think I have anything to say about this game that hasn’t been said before: it’s visually drab, but mechanically great. One of our players hoarded routes to gain extra actions per turn, so we were expecting a runaway lead from him, but he was second by a clear margin (and I was only a smidge behind him)!
Board-game agacent, I’m putting together a gang for a local Necromunda campaign starting next week. I’ve played a couple of games with a friend, so I’m looking forwards to getting more skirmishes in!
Last week saw delivery of my Mothership TTRPG pdfs, which coincided quite nicely with the physical fulfillment of Hull Breach, an anthology for Mothership. Both are wonderfully presented and give just enough information for the GM to run wild with the toys in the sandbox.
The best strategy in Hansa is usually whichever one people aren’t blocking you from :)
Can’t disagree! I ended up occupying the entire centre of the board and amassing a large network of points at the end that kept me in running with Action Man.
Broke out Ragusa finally, and played a couple solo games with it. I really enjoyed the “other players benefit from your action” aspect of it (for clarification, you’re placing houses at the corners of resource hexagons, and when you activate certain hexagons, each other player who has house(s) around it also take the action).
The rules take a bit to sink in, but I found it pretty satisfying.
Finally managed to finish a Brass: Birmingham game, split over two evenings, totaling something like 6 hours (official play time: 1-2 hours). Hope it gets quicker next time 🙃
To be fair to the game, a couple of players were quite uncooperative (or outright disrespectful) on this matter: taking 30 minutes for the first rail era action, chatting when it’s your turn…
The game itself is fun!
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I’ve played several games of Cosmic Encounter. Definitely my top 1 boardgame. It’s chaotic nature makes sure it never gets old.
I played Azul. I’ve owned it for a few years, but never felt like trying it out. It was great fun, both with 3 players and 2 players! I’m not usually into euro- or abstract games, but Azul is easy enough that it’s basically like scrabble. You rarely see a new mechanic that’s both this simple and well executed; I can see this becoming a staple in my collection. I guess that’s why it’s top ranked.
Played Dune Imperium for the first time, solo. The game is a lot simpler (in terms of rules) than I expected it to be. I thought the game was just ok. The bot system was one of the lowest maintenance and easiest bot systems I’ve ever used. I’ll probably play it again this week to see if I can get more into it.
A few rounds of skull at a party, good ice breaker, recommend
Played spirit island with 6 players, always fun.
Also played Sentinels of the Multiverse (card game) with my kid for the first time, and he’s hooked. It’s exciting when we get to introduce him to games, makes them new again.
Oh man, how long did Spirit Island take with 6?
Not terrible, less than 4 hours, with dinner in there. We aim for kennel 3-4 adversaries, nothing that’ll just kill us, and we try to move quickly, though that doesn’t always work.
Incan Gold and Pandemic (the Cthulhu version). It was low stakes and very fun.
Got in a game of Indiana Jones Sands of Adventure. Managed a win this time. We were using the “B” sides of the tiles. They seemed to make things easier than the “A” sides. Fun little co-op. Indy and Sallah triumph!