There was like some Russian polar bear themed trick taking game called Nyet! that seemed pretty neat too but I'm always a bit skeptical of those types of games until playing them.
Matt Morgan hosted an Extra Life event at his house this weekend, which translates to another firehose of gaming.
Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn (new to me) - A single game on Netrunner night. Seems like a fine two player constructible deck game. But… most people don’t get deep into more than one of those, and in this regard I’m most people.
Elfenroads (new to me) - The new reprint of Elfenland, which we played with the Elfengold expansion. Based on our final scores, you would like to take cards instead of money at least two or three times - those that took money every time were left significantly behind.
Between Two Cities (new to me) - A very clever idea. But after two plays, none of the final cities felt different from one another, which gives me doubts about its long-term interest.
Fünf Gurken (new to me) - Not an interesting card game.
Hare & Tortoise (new to me) - I realized around space #25 that I was completely out of the race… but I didn’t realize just how much until I was systematically denied every opportunity to dump my lettuce. I actually like this game a lot, I might need to pick up a copy.
Baseball Highlights: 2045 - I went from 1st seed in the last tournament to 4th seed in this one. Never making more than $7 in a round really hurts your long term prospects… so does drafting the wrong players.
Brass - People can teach you a lot about their favorite game, which is exactly what happened here. I lost on the tiebreaker, but we got enough juicy strategy discussion that I’m excited about the game again.
Tigris & Euphrates - Meanwhile, I crashed and burned in T&E. Maybe it’s because it was 3AM, but really it was a stubborn refusal to cycle my hand of tiles for temples and getting internaled out of every kingdom… I’m amazed I even got six points.
The 24 hour gaming marathon also included Empires: Age of Discovery, Too Many Cinderellas, Favor of the Pharaoh, and Roll for the Galaxy... but I don’t have anything particularly interesting to add about them.
I'm definitely adding Baseball Highlights 2045 to my collection after trying out your copy. I'm only holding off b/c I get cold feet when there are too many optional expansions to something.
I am also excited to play more Brass. That victory undid the shame of the last time I had played.
My copy of Food Chain Magnate and a couple Essen 2015 releases finally showed up yesterday, but those are for this week. In the meantime:
Android: Netrunner - 4-ice Jinteki kill deck actually wins games. Whenever I start to feel burned out on Netrunner, something will come along and remind me why I like it so much.
Art of War the card game (new to me) - A fun two player card game - at least, the game we played based on our first attempt at reading the rules was fun and quite interesting. But English is clearly not the designer's first language.
Caylus - The bailiff moved two spaces on every turn of the game. I don't think I've seen that happen before...
Navegador - All bow to MechaPope's Factories and Churches.
Alhambra - Two back to back games - one with three players and the other with six - really reinforced how much more interesting this game becomes with small player counts.
Bohnanza - I took the coffee beans out of our 6p game so the game wouldn't go long. In fact, the game was shortened further because people were hoarding cards.
Bomb Squad (new to me) - A clever real-time cooperative game similar to Hanabi. I would play this again.
Coup: Rebellion G54 - Sometimes you get boring sets, sometimes you get interesting ones. Like Dominion!
Favor of the Pharaoh - Like Coup G54, this is also a game with a randomized setups - but Favor of the Pharaoh seems more resiliant toward dull combinations. This game, I fell behind early and started focusing on the tile that gives you three immediate dice only at the end... and I probably could have pulled it off if I had bought one more die on the last turn.
Yeah, that Industrial Death deck is pretty Nanners.
In other news, I think Spark FA has breathed life into not one, not three, but two binder trash cards. I'm bringing it to Thursday and we'll see how she goes.
Favor of the Pharaoh - Like Coup G54, this is also a game with a randomized setups - but Favor of the Pharaoh seems more resiliant toward dull combinations. This game, I fell behind early and started focusing on the tile that gives you three immediate dice only at the end... and I probably could have pulled it off if I had bought one more die on the last turn.
What's interesting is the person who got the Queen wasn't the person who ended up winning that game. The problem was the person who ended the game was the worst person for you. If you, coldguy or I had gotten the Queen you would have had your extra die.
Carcassonne: South Seas - I suffered an abysmal loss!
The Grizzled - We suffered an abysmal loss!
Between Two Cities - Won both games of this we played; It can go by at a really quick pace once everyone knows what they're doing.
Nyet! - I also won this partnership trick-taking game one thanks to some smart card plays from partner in the last round. We played the variant where the game ends after someone breaks 100 points, because the game would have been incredibly long otherwise. It's very good, and the Nyet! phase is just as engaging as the trick phase.
One Night Ultimate Werewolf - My group had a lot of fun with this; we played a handful of rounds, and I was on the winning team 4 out of 5 times. We caught two different werewolves in the same lie in two separate rounds. If you're going to lie about being the Robber and go silent when you're asked what role you switched to, you're a werewolf.
Pandemic Legacy - We played five games of this tonight, ending in July. We won the first two, and then... well...
I'm glad your west coast crew liked Nyet - trick taking games with partnerships and bidding (I'll count picking the trump/super-trump/etc. as bidding) are a hard sell for the usual Friday crowd, here.
Food Chain Magnate: I want to like it, but you need to play at least one game to get the game's "flow". It's more important to dictate the demand then it is set up the supply.
The game on Saturday accelerated way more quickly than I expected based on the game on Friday. A monopoly on every house on the board, even for one turn, was a crushing blow.
The game on Saturday accelerated way more quickly than I expected based on the game on Friday. A monopoly on every house on the board, even for one turn, was a crushing blow.
It felt like the only way to block you or slow you down would have been to do multiple Pizza Campaigns force you to go into the Pizza and Burger business. Creating more houses wasn't working, the radio town flooded everything with burgers.
I do sort of worry that this is the optimal strategy and whoever achieves it first wins the game. Which makes most of the other options pointless bullshit.
What exactly happened on Friday? I know you said you won by supplying drinks to houses that weren't being serviced.
After New Business Developer, we had... something like seven houses in a 3x3 grid on Saturday, I think. And five of them were in the same, non-circular road network. Three of those were closer to my restaurant, and one of them was equidistant - so the single radio tower did a lot of work. The barren tiles - with no houses - were also on 'my' side of the straight highway. Sometimes you get maps like this, that are less dense or have loops:
I've been thinking about what the counterstrategy in our game would be, if we ran it back and I played the same opening. Probably getting a Recruiting Manager, Kitchen Trainee > Burger Cook as soon as I started slow teching up the Marketer with a full freezer of hamburger on turn 4-5, and using the superior hiring/training power to grab a Local Manager and put a second restaurant on the opposite side of mine (which also lets you use drive-ins to reach the smaller road network). Also staying away from New Business Developer to reduce the effectiveness of the radio tower until a second restaurant could reach the 3 'empty' tiles. If more than one person can produce 2+ hamburgers a turn once the radio tower is ready to go down, then it's back to being a real game.
Not that I expect anyone to know that beforehand, it took me a day to think of it, with two games worth of experience. (I wasn't kidding when I said I was surprised how effective the first radio tower and a food monopoly was at generating money on that board). I suspect there are at least a few more 'gotcha' plays that no one will see coming, using the 1x employees.
I played Food Chain Magnate at BGG.CON, and lucked into a victory against one newbie and two people who had already played the game earlier in the con. I went with an Errand Boy first, and produced soda. This nabbed me the freezer and the +1 beverage bonus. By time everyone got their engines up and running, I have a freezer full of 10 sodas, had hired two marketing folks, and was able to throw soda demand around to screw up people's plans. People realized they needed to take me out 2 turns too late. In those two turns, I was able to steal sales to a house w/ a garden added on by another player, and sell to two neighboring houses, all while using the +10 price employee. I then sent the +10 person off to the beach for the rest of the game, in order to remain competitive and sustain my small lead.
This was actually a slow week for new games - my copies of Grand Austria Hotel and Karuba are still unplayed. But I did get at least one major new game to the table twice in a row.
Food Chain Magnate (new to me) - This is a big one, Food Chain Magnate has the potential to become one of my favorites from 2015. I'd like to play it a few more times before I make that determination, though.
Snowdonia (new to me) - Finally got to play Snowdonia. I'm glad I did, although I don't think I need to own it. It's a very simple economy, the play is mostly seizing opportunities and blocking opponents.
Favor of the Pharaoh - This is the first time I've seen seven 4s win the final rolloff - the dangers of taking the Queen with a weak roll.
Every had one of those nights where you just won 4 games in a row and worried about the karmic backlash?
Won Quartermaster General with Pence as Germany/Italy and me as Japan. Japan can only hold maybe two or three supply points outside of the Main Island.
Two Rounds of Cash and Guns, gotta love being the fly on the wall.
Castles of Mad King Ludwig: Being able to double score completed living rooms allowed me to ignore several of the goals and still win by 30 points. This is a game I want to own just to play solitaire. The moats have some interesting features. It's worth having at least one early for the points. However depending on the game setup, you may be just better off sprawling out your castle.
I finally got some board gaming in after a busy few months.
Welcome to the Dungeon - It's an interesting opener, basically a glorified game of chicken.
Netrunner - I'm banned from using virus decks.
Rococo - This was the bread and butter for the day. Great deck builder, great placement, and great resource management. It was the most fun to be had with grown men claiming to be the best at dresses (I am). Definitely putting this on my top five.
Star Realms - This was my first time playing it. A deck builder with politics. Not very impressive, nothing can stop the blob.
We had some fun with Welcome to the Dungeon, but it hasn't hit the table since we first played it. Maybe this week.
Did you play Star Realms with multiple players? I've only done that once, and we played with the very restrictive attacking rules, which seemed to work fine. Probably better as a two player game, though.
Goa - I pulled the win with a 36, 35, 34, and 32 with all scores. A solid game.
Food chain Magnate - my counter punch skill from Puerto Rico allowed my mid game to sweep the board and take the game with a few hundred difference. Thinking Scott would love this game since its all on you, and its unforgiveness towards dumb players.
Sheriff of Nottingham - Good spot for the convention collection
Game of 49 - Solid game with amazing depth that should have a better publisher. Thankfully Amazon has copies to get auction bingo to the masses
There are more but many were already mentioned earlier.
I bought some games because of sales. Patrician is an interesting-looking Michael Schacht euro game (Zooloretto guy). Also picked up Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Medina (second edition), and Sheriff of Nottingham. Now to see how to fit these on the shelves. Might kick out a game or two.
^^^ WttD is one of those games to pull out for that guy who complains he never wins. Also, we learned that everyone going all-in on the dungeon means the last person to draw a card automatically wins.
We played star realms with three people. It was tame until turn seven when I reliably could reliably blob thirty votes every turn. With two players, it just feels like a variant of Ascension.
Comments
There was like some Russian polar bear themed trick taking game called Nyet! that seemed pretty neat too but I'm always a bit skeptical of those types of games until playing them.
Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn (new to me) - A single game on Netrunner night. Seems like a fine two player constructible deck game. But… most people don’t get deep into more than one of those, and in this regard I’m most people.
Elfenroads (new to me) - The new reprint of Elfenland, which we played with the Elfengold expansion. Based on our final scores, you would like to take cards instead of money at least two or three times - those that took money every time were left significantly behind.
Between Two Cities (new to me) - A very clever idea. But after two plays, none of the final cities felt different from one another, which gives me doubts about its long-term interest.
Fünf Gurken (new to me) - Not an interesting card game.
Hare & Tortoise (new to me) - I realized around space #25 that I was completely out of the race… but I didn’t realize just how much until I was systematically denied every opportunity to dump my lettuce. I actually like this game a lot, I might need to pick up a copy.
Baseball Highlights: 2045 - I went from 1st seed in the last tournament to 4th seed in this one. Never making more than $7 in a round really hurts your long term prospects… so does drafting the wrong players.
Brass - People can teach you a lot about their favorite game, which is exactly what happened here. I lost on the tiebreaker, but we got enough juicy strategy discussion that I’m excited about the game again.
Tigris & Euphrates - Meanwhile, I crashed and burned in T&E. Maybe it’s because it was 3AM, but really it was a stubborn refusal to cycle my hand of tiles for temples and getting internaled out of every kingdom… I’m amazed I even got six points.
The 24 hour gaming marathon also included Empires: Age of Discovery, Too Many Cinderellas, Favor of the Pharaoh, and Roll for the Galaxy... but I don’t have anything particularly interesting to add about them.
I am also excited to play more Brass. That victory undid the shame of the last time I had played.
Sometime you stumble onto a pic on BGG and you just really want the story behind the tattoo
The collection is complete.
Android: Netrunner - 4-ice Jinteki kill deck actually wins games. Whenever I start to feel burned out on Netrunner, something will come along and remind me why I like it so much.
Art of War the card game (new to me) - A fun two player card game - at least, the game we played based on our first attempt at reading the rules was fun and quite interesting. But English is clearly not the designer's first language.
Caylus - The bailiff moved two spaces on every turn of the game. I don't think I've seen that happen before...
Navegador - All bow to MechaPope's Factories and Churches.
Alhambra - Two back to back games - one with three players and the other with six - really reinforced how much more interesting this game becomes with small player counts.
Bohnanza - I took the coffee beans out of our 6p game so the game wouldn't go long. In fact, the game was shortened further because people were hoarding cards.
Bomb Squad (new to me) - A clever real-time cooperative game similar to Hanabi. I would play this again.
Coup: Rebellion G54 - Sometimes you get boring sets, sometimes you get interesting ones. Like Dominion!
Favor of the Pharaoh - Like Coup G54, this is also a game with a randomized setups - but Favor of the Pharaoh seems more resiliant toward dull combinations. This game, I fell behind early and started focusing on the tile that gives you three immediate dice only at the end... and I probably could have pulled it off if I had bought one more die on the last turn.
In other news, I think Spark FA has breathed life into not one, not three, but two binder trash cards. I'm bringing it to Thursday and we'll see how she goes.
Carcassonne: South Seas - I suffered an abysmal loss!
The Grizzled - We suffered an abysmal loss!
Between Two Cities - Won both games of this we played; It can go by at a really quick pace once everyone knows what they're doing.
Nyet! - I also won this partnership trick-taking game one thanks to some smart card plays from partner in the last round. We played the variant where the game ends after someone breaks 100 points, because the game would have been incredibly long otherwise. It's very good, and the Nyet! phase is just as engaging as the trick phase.
One Night Ultimate Werewolf - My group had a lot of fun with this; we played a handful of rounds, and I was on the winning team 4 out of 5 times. We caught two different werewolves in the same lie in two separate rounds. If you're going to lie about being the Robber and go silent when you're asked what role you switched to, you're a werewolf.
Pandemic Legacy - We played five games of this tonight, ending in July. We won the first two, and then... well...
I do sort of worry that this is the optimal strategy and whoever achieves it first wins the game. Which makes most of the other options pointless bullshit.
What exactly happened on Friday? I know you said you won by supplying drinks to houses that weren't being serviced.
I've been thinking about what the counterstrategy in our game would be, if we ran it back and I played the same opening. Probably getting a Recruiting Manager, Kitchen Trainee > Burger Cook as soon as I started slow teching up the Marketer with a full freezer of hamburger on turn 4-5, and using the superior hiring/training power to grab a Local Manager and put a second restaurant on the opposite side of mine (which also lets you use drive-ins to reach the smaller road network). Also staying away from New Business Developer to reduce the effectiveness of the radio tower until a second restaurant could reach the 3 'empty' tiles. If more than one person can produce 2+ hamburgers a turn once the radio tower is ready to go down, then it's back to being a real game.
Not that I expect anyone to know that beforehand, it took me a day to think of it, with two games worth of experience. (I wasn't kidding when I said I was surprised how effective the first radio tower and a food monopoly was at generating money on that board). I suspect there are at least a few more 'gotcha' plays that no one will see coming, using the 1x employees.
Android: Netrunner - Ever faithful Thursday game.
Food Chain Magnate (new to me) - This is a big one, Food Chain Magnate has the potential to become one of my favorites from 2015. I'd like to play it a few more times before I make that determination, though.
Snowdonia (new to me) - Finally got to play Snowdonia. I'm glad I did, although I don't think I need to own it. It's a very simple economy, the play is mostly seizing opportunities and blocking opponents.
Favor of the Pharaoh - This is the first time I've seen seven 4s win the final rolloff - the dangers of taking the Queen with a weak roll.
Won Quartermaster General with Pence as Germany/Italy and me as Japan. Japan can only hold maybe two or three supply points outside of the Main Island.
Two Rounds of Cash and Guns, gotta love being the fly on the wall.
Castles of Mad King Ludwig: Being able to double score completed living rooms allowed me to ignore several of the goals and still win by 30 points. This is a game I want to own just to play solitaire. The moats have some interesting features. It's worth having at least one early for the points. However depending on the game setup, you may be just better off sprawling out your castle.
Welcome to the Dungeon - It's an interesting opener, basically a glorified game of chicken.
Netrunner - I'm banned from using virus decks.
Rococo - This was the bread and butter for the day. Great deck builder, great placement, and great resource management. It was the most fun to be had with grown men claiming to be the best at dresses (I am). Definitely putting this on my top five.
Star Realms - This was my first time playing it. A deck builder with politics. Not very impressive, nothing can stop the blob.
Did you play Star Realms with multiple players? I've only done that once, and we played with the very restrictive attacking rules, which seemed to work fine. Probably better as a two player game, though.
Food chain Magnate - my counter punch skill from Puerto Rico allowed my mid game to sweep the board and take the game with a few hundred difference. Thinking Scott would love this game since its all on you, and its unforgiveness towards dumb players.
Sheriff of Nottingham - Good spot for the convention collection
Game of 49 - Solid game with amazing depth that should have a better publisher. Thankfully Amazon has copies to get auction bingo to the masses
There are more but many were already mentioned earlier.
We played star realms with three people. It was tame until turn seven when I reliably could reliably blob thirty votes every turn. With two players, it just feels like a variant of Ascension.