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Last week saw the arrival of a kickstarter game I backed a couple of years ago, Mercurial!
As a result, I've seen 3 plays of this in the last week; one solo, one 2-player, and one 4-player.
Very much enjoying this title so far! The designer has opted to use iconography on the cards instead of any words. Whilst this slows the initial couple of plays down, you soon learn the language it was designed with and you can begin to intuit cards quite quickly.
Something I forsee possibly being an issue for some people is the lack of player interaction. It falls into the same space as Wingspan in that the only interaction one can really have is drafting a card that another player wanted.
The art is beautiful, vibrant, evocative, and most of the time you feel like you are manipulating the elements as you flip and convert your dice to your needs!
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I took a quick look at Mercurial, sounds neat! I hope it makes it into retail too. Did it work well with 2? Sounds like with the low player interaction it should. How long did the plays take?
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I believe it got picked up for retail, so do keep an eye out!
Because of the very low player interaction, it worked really well still! I scored 71 whereas my partner scored 69 - so it felt competitive also.
We had to cut out 4-player game a little short as we'd started late and it was running on a bit, however I was teaching the rules to the other 3.
Our 2 player game was probably close to 2 hours, but again there was a reasonable amount of rules clarifications from trying to parse the icons fully!
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just recieved two games that I bought in 2022 and 2020: Spirit Island expansions and promos and Glen More II with expansion. I spent my saturday morning drinking coffee and organinzing all boxes, but it is just too damn hot (40+C all week and until tuesday), so I read and played video games with my son, locked with our AC.
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I played Ra, Blood on the Clocktower (not sure that counts as a "game" but we had fun👍🏻), and some more Sail. Sail is so great. Ra is good too but as we were packing up the game some anti-boardgame people came up, being jerks to us.
And also I played some Magic which I am so sick of.
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I don't even play MTG and I'm fucking sick of it
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I forgot to add the best part which was the Ra game itself.
@reverse bought out early and had no sun discs left. Our other friend had only one, and it was the lowest remaining disc, a three. I had the highest three remaining discs.
But Ms. Disc Three refused to invoke, just pulled tile after tile, and finally we had a full action table. It's pretty good, but Ra's boat is on the middle of the field. I figure I can get three times as much as her if let her have it, so I do.
I have the run of the board.
And immediately pull three Ra in a row and die. I ended up dead last, and @reverse actually won the game. I got played 🤦🏻♀️ I love Ra!
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Arkham Horror 3rd Edition. I was quite apprehensive since I hated 1st edition, but my friend is a huge Lovecraft Mythos fan so it hit the table. When I saw how different it was, I was much less nervous, and I had a good time. We played Focusing wrong for a bit before correcting. We ended up losing, but had a pretty good time. I'd play it again.
Spirit Island: Nature Incarnate. Played with just two people after Arkham. We are more experienced than the other players so we tried the thematic map. Whew, boy can that thing screw you over. Our first game was over in about 3 turns because my spirit couldn't grow to the board all the invaders were in. Attempt two, I replaced one of the growth powers and was able to respond to the early explores this time. My board had a couple explorers at the end of the game as my teammate scrambled to survive. I wish I could help more, but it was enough. I think thematic map is probably better with more spirits.
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Two plays of Coimbra. Great little euro if you like dice and card drafting and track-based income. Sits somewhere in the neighborhood of Tiletum and Lorenzo Il Magnifico. My only complaint is that the symbology is a little unusual and can take a while to get back into after a break. But maybe it will be easier next time. I lost both plays but really enjoyed it regardless.
One play of Gizmos which is a comfort game, always happy to play and we get though it pretty quickly these days. I found a cool draw engine and got lucky with the draws so I was able to jump ahead and finish with 4 level 3 buildings and a bunch of VP tokens that were doubled by one of these buildings.
A quick play of Rajas of the Ganges: The Dice Charmers which is another comfort one, a roll & write with lots of combos and cool dice drafting. This and the original game have popularized the two-sided scoretrack that Ark Nova uses too.
Picked up the Open Doors expansion for Taverns of Tiefenthal. Punched and sorted it and managed to fit everything into the expansion box (which is smaller than the base one). Studied up on the rules and looking to play it very soon, maybe today.
Online I've been having fun with After Us which is a unique deck-builder with some mild programming elements. When you play your cards you place them next to each other on the table and the way their edges connect determine how you will be able to use them.
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Starting from Sunday and going backward:
- Cthulu Death May Die - my favorite coop, finally defeated the Black Goat of the Woods boss
- Welcome To - Great simultaneous flip and write for 6+ ppls -Planet Unknown- One of my new favorite lighter games
- Flamecraft (first play! it was pretty fun, not my favorite but partner enjoys)
- Ark Nova - I freaking love this game
- Oceans - getting ready for the expansion to arrive!
- Deep Rock Galactic- I love this game way more than I ever thought possible
- Lorcana - still getting my ass kicked by newb with starter decks, my deck sucks
- Earth - Always solid but lots of scoring conditions to track
- Terraforming Mars: Dice Game - first play with newly arrived kickstarter and we really like it! Good for shorter form TM but still engine-y
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I happened to play freshly bought My Lil' Everdell.
It is marketed as a kids' game, but I can confirm there is space for a little bit of strategy.
The game works well both multiplayer and solo, and it can also be added in fewer player counts to raise the tension a little bit
I already had few ideas for variant that would raise strategic decisions one can make, but I'll need few more playtests to throw it into the BGG forum's variants thread.
