Which board games have you been playing (to 9th July)?
Tabletildians,
Which games have you all been playing this week? Time to share and compare.
Personally, my group and I played a game of Racoon Tycoon, a simple but enjoyable little trading, auction and set collection game. We didn't do any auctions for quite some time at the beginning and I was starting to think the game was going to be a bit dull, but the auction really transformed it, and it was actually really quite enjoyable.
After that we played Iberian Railways. I wasn't too impressed with the board, as it looked bleached out like it had been left in the window of a shop. But the game was fun, marking routes with cubes, taking loans and claiming business contracts. Interestingly you're trying to earn money to buy the routes but you're measured equally on other criteria, like longest route, most cities, &c. It amusingly (read: disappointingly) ended in a three-way tie, with no tie-breakers. Don't think I can recommend this one, due mainly to the scoring.
Finally we played a few games of Cat in the Box. Absolutely fantastic trick-taking game where your cards have numbers but no suits and you decide the suit of each card as you play it, marking off that colour and suit combination on a board. Thus the gamut of possibilities for your remaining cards shrinks as cards are played. Really recommend this one, it was great fun.
Tried SushiGo for the first time last night. I'm not usually too big on tableau building games, but this one was quick to get through and easy to learn, so makes for a good time at a party. Has a variety of different sushis and a random set are selected at beginning of game so there is a bit of variety.
Ohh, I haven't played this in a while, but I remember being surprised at how fun it was as well.
Sushi Go is a great little game. But don't be tempted by Sushi Go Party as it ruins the game, in my opinion. You see the regular Sushi Go has enough cards to play all three rounds, whereas Party has fewer, so you have to shuffle between each round. Add in the fact it's less portable, more expensive and has longer setup, and I think it loses the magic of it's little sibling.
Ahh good to know, thanks for the heads up!
All of @oniony's opinions are valid, but they didn't ruin the game for us - we love Sushi Go Party.
We would shuffle between rounds anyways, so the shuffling is not much of a problem for us. I would also, depending on the group, maybe gently recommend shuffling, because you can use the information from previous rounds to know what to keep. Alternately, that can be a feature of the game if you like, but it wouldn't work well with my play group, because they would be trying to take notes on how many of each Sushi have gone past.
We play games 95% of the time at home so the portability isn't much of an issue, but if we go camping, we just take Sushi Go, or other more portable games. Sushi Go Party is most definitely less transportable than a card game. But also one of the benefits is that you don't have to write scores as you go; there's a board for keeping track of the score.
Variation is the main thing we like about the Party version. There are different maki, rolls, etc. that you can add in, and the game has a fair amount of variety while still having the same general structure. If you don't like, say, chopsticks, you can just remove them and add in a different piece for that slot, and you don't have to deal with the relatively awkward chopsticks mechanic. We like playing two ways - either the kids will make selections based on what they want to play, or we'll just randomize the sets of cards that we are using.
I think that there's some magic in the simplicity of sushi go, but the party version is still great, and for some people will be better, depending on what you are looking for.
Ahh, good to hear another perspective on this. Thank you!
I've been visiting my parents who are not huge board gamers at all, and there was a copy of this at a bar. They enjoyed it enough to buy a copy and we've been taking it everywhere we go and getting better at it, it's a great little game. I was familiar with card drafting from MTG but I like that it makes more information public as you go around, and there's generally less to keep track of while still allowing for some strategy
Recently broke out Aeons End after several years on the shelf. It's tons of fun! I love a deckbuilder, especially a "market-style" one like Dominion, and the combination of co-op and the many different characters gives the game some real life.
My wife and I had Terraforming Mars sitting on a shelf for a while, so we broke that out today to figure it out. There are a lot of components so it takes a while to learn, but it's reminiscent of Agricola which is another one of our favorite games.
I love Terraforming Mars. I've played it quite a few times over the past three months. (We've got a small cadre of people in my gaming group who enjoy it.) It's complex without being impossible! And it has high replayability.
Someone brought in 'Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition'. Don't play that. It's nowhere near as good.
I also enjoy the theme. It's interesting how close it comes to a certain author's trilogy about terraforming Mars without actually crossing the line into copyright infringement. So, it ties in to one of my favourite science-fiction series, as well.
Good to know not to get the other version! And I did notice the high replayability. Not only with the huge number of action and corporation cards, but the Corporate Era and other variations.
One more thing that this game has spawned for me is the desire to 3D print storage boxes/trays for the parts. I did this for Agricola and it was hugely helpful in keeping everything neat and organized.
Yeah, the 'Ares Expedition' version is stripped down, and it's more card-based. Definitely less fun. Even the woman who brought it agreed that it wasn't as much fun as the original game (she'd bought the 'Ares Expedition' version but hadn't had a chance to play it yet, which is why she brought it to the games group).
There's also a few expansions. I've played 'Colonies' and 'Turmoil', once each. Colonies didn't seem to add much to the game, just some more spaces to play. Turmoil added a new mechanic, of having a government which you could use to influence the game. It seemed overly complex, but it did add some interesting new twists. I would try that again.
As regards printed storage boxes, one of the people in my group bought some wooden storage boxes and player boards designed for 'Terraforming Mars' (the boards have small squares holes for the production counters, so they don't slip all over the place, so you don't lose track of how much titanium and plants and energy you're producing!). He found them online somewhere.
They probably got the boards from here:
https://thebrokentoken.com/en-ca/products/terraforming-mars-organizer
I got it for myself and it is almost essential
"Broken Token." That's it. That's the name they said, but I couldn't remember.
Oohh, slotted player boards would be awesome! I'm sure we'll end up upgrading parts as we go. I've heard that the paint chips off of the resource cubes after a while, so they sell nice metal ones. It's nice that some of these games have improved replacement parts.
Recently played "The Quacks of Quedlinburg" ! It has a fun mix of random change, strategy, and a little blackjack-esque gambling. The setup might look complicated at first but is ultimately pretty easy to pick up. Due to a set turn limit the game doesn't go on too long either!
oh man, it was just on sale and i passed because i thought "it looks to complicated" is what my GF would say
I play this regularly with non-gamers and agree it's easy to pick up. My biggest complaint is that blowing up a pot can take you out of the running for the rest of the game. Rat tails aren't enough of a catch up mechanism to overcome such a set back.
What I haven't been playing - but wish I had - is Twilight imperium. Man do I love that game. It checks almost every box for me - but it's so hard to find a group of people who are willing/able to put 5-7 hours in.
Played The Loop with my wife. Got our butts handed to us, even though we played the least complex mode and characters, at the lowest difficulty. Feels like things can go south in the blink of an eye, and it might be a bit too RNG-dependent for me.
Also finally got to play Tiwanaku (basically Minesweeper as a board game), solo. Lost that game too but man, what a clever little game.
I also had some friends over and played Cross Clues (fantastic Codenames-like game IMO), Fort (I lost by a wide margin) and Kites (real-time and chaotic, it's great) .
I had the chance to play Detective: a modern crime board game recently. Had a couple of friends with my girlfriend and I went and hung out in a board game cafe last week. We randomly picked a selection of board games and ended up spending almost the entirety of the afternoon on just the Detective board game.
We managed to collectively figure out how to play the game and managed to solve the first case.... with a pass. Note, we are not avid game board players, and this is our first time getting together to play a board game. Despite all that, we enjoyed discussing and figuring out how to solve the case. Even pulled out our tablets to write notes and connecting clues, we enjoyed the process of weaving together a plausible theory. Would definitely try out the rest of the cases if we have the chance.
Our playgroup tried out Flamecraft for the first time. It was.... alright. It felt surprisingly messy for how simple it is. The game starts off relatively simple, but than it feels like things quickly start ramping up with each action triggering a ton of different effects. But it feels like it's hard to actually make good decisions because of how many things there are going on in each space. So you end up just going anywhere, getting a boatload of random resources, than spend your next couple turns figuring out how to spend whatever resources you have.
I would NOT recommend this game as an intro game for non-gamers. It feels like a decent game for people who have already played a few medium/light weight games and like the theme.
It's settlers of Catan.
The name of the game is I always lose. I get close to winning, and the entire table gangs up on me to prevent things like longest road, sheep, etc.
I still enjoy it even though I lose all the time. Maybe I just like the attention.
Have you played any of the expansions? I think that Cities & Knights is one of the best expansions for any game - the difference between Vanilla Catan and the C&K version is incredible, and the game goes from a 4/10 to a 9/10 for me, but that's just a personal opinion, not trying to yuck your yum - but the Seafarers also adds some really neat mechanics, including map discovery which has been pretty delightful. We have the Dragon expansion, but haven't tried it yet.
Played “Race for the Galaxy” for the second time ever (first time must’ve been years ago because I don’t remember it).
I didn’t hate it, but it was definitely a bit more thinking/strategy than I thought it was. Didn’t have a great time (was a little boring as a 2-player game), but that might’ve just been because it was a poor choice for the mood we were in.
I tried the preview of Slay the Spire on tabletop simulator and it's a pretty decent co-op deck builder. I'm still a bit fuzzy on some of the rules or how open players should be in discussing their plans each round but it was pretty easy to get started with the basics and sounds like it would be fun to replay a bunch.
My copy of The Lucky Seven (prev. Zachtronics) showed up and I've been getting to grips with it. The kickstarter for Postmark's new game also just sent out the files, so I'm excited to play that this week.