Recap Monday week 31 - what did you play last week?

Radlands. Awesome two player game, and love the components in the deluxe edition!

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.

A few rounds of skull at a party, good ice breaker, recommend

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.

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.

We had a very busy week and only managed to squeeze in one game of Ark Nova. It remains my favorite game for two players.

We also had some family over with whom we played some games before even though they are not that much into boardgames. They usually play lighter Euros like 7Wonders Duel of the like. We introduced them to Castles of Burgundy. It was a gruesomely long game, at least 3.5 hours. In particular one of the relatives was stuck in analysis paralysis for a long time. Even though he was the last player, it felt like he did all the thinking when his turns start. However, Burgundy remains a really strong game and I usually just try to reach at least 200 points towards the end of the game.

The good thing was, since the game lasted until 2am, we had the prime-time window for the Peresid Metero Shower which was really spectacular. One was so strong that its tail remained visible for much longer than normal ones and was not a thin streak but more a thick line tapering on both ends. We also spotted Andromeda with our Binos.

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!

Incan Gold and Pandemic (the Cthulhu version). It was low stakes and very fun.

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.

Regular boardgame nights returned from summer hiatus. The full group assembled for 5 player coop Great Wall. The game has amazing table presence and pretty interesting mechanics but absolutely no balance.

• Some leaders are just vastly better than others (pay a chi to make one additional damage vs get a massive discount when you recruit.)
• Missions have massively different difficulty levels and some are nigh on impossible for 5 players.
• Events are just ridiculous. Their immediate effects are ok but their ongoing effects are just way too punishing. Still the basic gameplay loop is compelling and we're probably gonna play this on occasion.

On the weekend my sister also hopped over for a visit and we played:

• Thanos Rising - I basically had one decent turn, the rest was all a wash and with only two players pulling we had no chance.
• Earth - First time for my sister but she quickly took to it. This was the first game where I dared to take one of those terrains that forbids you from taking a particular action (growth) and I got by quite decently. Getting another card on every plant action was well worth the tradeoff. With enough card draws, I could fuel a lot of compost actions and on top of it I got lucky and drew the terrain that gives VP based on composted cards. All in all I won with a commanding lead. But after initial confusion over the common scoring cards (fauna) it was nice to see that everyone ultimately got the hang of it and scored at least 3 of them.
• Würfel Ligretto - Early morning we decided to wake ourselves up with someting frantic. So frantic in fact that one of the dice tumbled off the table and somehow into the kitchen installation. But we were ultimately able to find and retrieve the bugger and complete the game.
• Moving on from that we played Shark Attacks - a push your luck game where I consistently have less luck than everyone else. At least this time I lost to my sister instead of my GF.
• Pharaon - We capped the visit off with this game that I had kind shelved for a while. GF wasn't in the mood for something heavy and just watched leaving it at a 2p setup. I must say I vastly preferr this game with less players. While I apprciate that it does go to 5 players and works it just becomes soooo much thighter. Spots per player are 7.5, 5, 6.25, 5 (from 2 to 4 players) and more importantly with 5 you might not even have the opportunity to go in a particular sector if everyone else prioritizes it.

I've played several games of Cosmic Encounter. Definitely my top 1 boardgame. It's chaotic nature makes sure it never gets old.

This week I played Neanderthal by Eklund. It'd been a while since I played it, so we played it a bit wrong. But now I've got the rules down for next time!

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!

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.

I tried Regicide because of this post, really liked it.

Our few victories were always obtained by taking risks and was never easy. The mechanics are a bit overwhelming at first, but after a couple of matches the effects are easy to remember. We still haven't found some general strategies beyond "diamonds are really useful, don't waste them".

A game ended after we had J♦ as the last jack and Q♦ right after it, we simply didn't have enough cards to deal with them one after the other.

@Kempeth

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.

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.

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.