About to play PitchCar with the kidlywinks, so that will be the first for 2022!
Also have Gloom of Kilforth and a Kickstarter edition of Tainted Grail on my table, which I cleaned up yesterday to facilitate a playthrough. Sagrada is sitting on top of those and I hope to convince my wife of a playthrough in the coming days.
Super coolio!
Summoner Wars 2nd Ed. Really great game, surprised how different a factions feels with a new opponent. Lots of great interplay in that design
By myself, 7th Continent obviously. With others, I’m currently engaged in a Tabletop Simulator game of 13 Days, which is kind of like a mini version of Twilight Struggle just about the Cuban Missile Crisis. It’s pretty good. There’s lots of give and take. The game forces you to back off from the brink and be sparing with how you deploy influence by using the DEFCON mechanic, just like TS, but in kind of a more deliberate way.
I also have played several rounds of UNO Flip with my kids.
That was Boxing Day for me… picked them up a couple expansions, at great expense. :)
Just set up memory .1 in Assassins Creed: Brotherhood of Venice. Lots of upkeep it seems but a lot of good reviews so i’m diving in…mostly solo with 2 Assassins but my kid says she will try once I get past the tutorial memories.
Played In Too Deep with my son. We had a good time. It’s basically a pick up deliver game with a cyberpunk vibe. You go around hacking into criminals to complete missions and gaining evidence which is used as multipliers for end game scoring. As you use a criminal more and more you gain access to their special ability and eventually the ability to gain more actions. The more you use criminals (and depending on how you decide to complete missions) you take corruption which can potentially cost you a lot of points in the end game. The game was a little long, but I feel like all pick up deliver games tend to run long. Overall a successful and fun game.
Next up Great Wall and The Defense of Procyon III.
Just returned from a seven-day summer holiday with another family (4x adults, 4x kids aged 11-13) in which we played the following:
Citadels
A couple of 8-player games, and the kids played it with four. I think I last played this in the early 2000s and the experience was similar - takes too long for what it is, even when everyone was more familiar with the roles in the second 8-player game.
Resistance: Avalon
A handful of 7 and 8 player games in a single session. None of us had ever played a Werewolf-style game previously so we stumbled through initially before everyone started cottoning on to some very basic strategies. We likely would have returned for more but we had a lot of other games in the queue.
Viticulture with the Tuscany and Rhine Valley expansions
Two 4-player games (all adults). Basic Viticulture is ‘fine’, but Tuscany takes it to ‘great’, and Rhine Valley elevates it to one of my favourite worker placement games. The special workers from Tuscany can really shake up the usual strategies (the professor + farmer combo was particularly odd!), while Rhine Valley pushes the focus of the yellow/blue cards back on to wine-making.
Brass: Birmingham
Two 3-player games (adults). Another new one and I think we all regret bringing it out so late in the holiday as we were all keen to play it more. The ever-changing state of the board and markets makes for tasty tactical decision-making within your wider strategy.
Dune Imperium
One 4-player game (adults). I’d played this a couple of times with my daughter before the trip away and, once I’d realised it’s mostly worker placement with a splash of deck building, was really enjoying it. I’m not sure the others were as enamored with it, as a relatively close game blew out in the space of two rounds when one player hit the Heighliner space twice to take consecutive conflicts with double victory points on offer.
I’ve got the Rise of Ix expansion on order and, from what I’ve seen, it looks like it provides some interesting alternatives to the under-used CHOAM spaces.
Scythe
One 4-player game (2x adults, 2x kids). Another new one that I was aware of by reputation only, but really had no idea how it actually played. Turned out to be far more ‘euro-y’ than the theme and miniatures would suggest. We misunderstood how river crossings worked which unduly influenced the outcome of the game, but everyone enjoyed it even if it took 4 hours with learning included.
Decrypto
Two 8-player games. Felt like a better version of Codenames - it’ll definitely be replacing that game’s spot whenever we want a relatively quick-playing party game with four or more people.
Architects of the West Kingdom with the Age of Artisans expansion
Three 2-player games. This was a last minute purchase the day before the holiday as a local game store had it significantly discounted. The twist on worker placement was an interesting one but in all three games I was unable to figure out a sound strategy for picking apprentices and came in last. All the games clocked in at just over an hour and I can see that even at six players it wouldn’t be much over 90 mins. Not a lot of downtime either as each turn comes around quickly.
Parks
One 5-player game (adult and four kids). I was making dinner while this game was going on so I can only say that the art and presentation was amazing. Kids all seemed to enjoy it.
Good to know it went down well. I’m still waiting for my KS copy in UK. I enjoy In The Hall Of The Mountain King. The mix of polyomino and resource management is interesting. I have been looking forward to their cyberpunk take on pick up and deliver.
For the first game of 2022 I Played Terraforming Mars with 2 friends. Won 2 out of 3 games.
Anyone else find it tough to play games you really want to get to the table, so you play the popular game you like that everyone else likes?
First game of the year was Caper: Europe on New Year’s Day. It’s a fun 2-player game about dueling crews of thieves pulling off heists in glamorous European locales. Set collection, card drafting, and a sort of tug-of-war contest. I like it a lot.
The length is putting me off Citadels nowadays. For a somewhat similar vibe (though not gameplay beyond people selecting a role to play secretly every turn), Oriflamme has replaced it for us.
It plays in 25’ or so. It only plays 3-5, so can’t replace Citadels for larger player counts. It is simple to explain and has a neat gameplay loop. During role selection, you put a card face down from your hand at either end of the card line on the table. During the resolution phase, players can then decide whether to flip it for its effect when its turn comes in the line, or keep it face down and store a victory point on it. The latter has you hoping your card survives so you can bank those later.
The various roles make the line unpredictable but in a fun way.
It scratches some of the same itch as Citadels in a fraction of the time. We like it.
Definitely. The more players there are, the more I compromise to ensure the games have the broader appeal and everybody has fun. This means my longer and heavier games often stay on the side until those rarer opportunities to bring them out.
But that’s ok. What I really enjoy is sitting with my friends or family at the table and us all enjoying a good time together. There have been too few of those these past 2 years. And I have nothing against the games we play, even if they aren’t those I would really like to bring back to the table.
Played Townsfolk Tussle for the first time after getting my kickstarter copy last week. It’s sort of a shorter (4-boss rush), less town-buildy Kingdom Death Monster with a Cuphead aesthetic. Verdict: Fun! Mostly! There’s a bunch of terrain interactions that seem important but that we barely touched because we were too busy dealing with the boss in each scenario, and wasting a turn on terrain seemed crazy. We won the first three fights relatively easily and then got wiped on the 4th and final fight in like 3 turns. So there appears to be a big difficulty spike on the final battle. (The 4 bosses are randomized from a pool of like 10, but they each have a ton of special rules and abilities if they’re the final boss of a run). Anyway, so far I don’t regret backing it.
Our NYE game of Wingspan lasted until past midnight!
Crokinole, if that counts as a board game.
BoxONE was the first game of the new year for me. A highly enjoyable experience. My adult children that bought it for me for Xmas came to see what it was all about and got dragged in completely, so it wasn’t quite a solitaire experience, but was all the more fun for it.
Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll check it out!
Only game so far this year is:
My kids were super into 5 minute dungeon and I have only played two games but this seems like it cleans up some of the issues with the dungeon version where if you didn’t plan your party composition it was pretty easy to stall out. Which is a problem with kids games because if a four year old really wants to be the ninja then she sure as hell isn’t going to change to a druid just because you need a different card distribution.
Dragon’s Breath with the kiddos (one of their Christmas presents):
It’s a turn-based Hungry Hungry Hippos, and very cute. The real draw is its wooden Dragon Dad 1P marker meeple.
