Which board games have you been playing? (to 24th July)

My partner and I recently got Arkham Eldritch Horror. She's new to the hobby, but I've shown her Everdell and Wingspan, which she loves. Arkham Horror is like pandemic on nightmare mode. I love the setting, the artwork, and how much more there is compared to pandemic (I use that comparison because it's the closest I know). We're yet to win, but we have lots of fun every time. Our last game we actually played with 3 characters between us to try and cover more ground and that helped a bunch.

Edit: it was eldritch horror, not arkham

At last week's boardgame meetup event, I couldn't be bothered playing something complicated, so I got out Lords of Waterdeep and Stone Age, a couple of old favourites. I felt like some worker placement, but nothing too challenging.

Very low stakes and fun but I've been continuing to enjoy Potion Explosion whilst either thinking of the next thing to play or fitting in a quick game whilst the pasta boils.

I'm finally trying to finish out my solo Gloomhaven campaign. I stalled out for quite awhile when Real Life/Kids and just other games came up and it's been a struggle to get back into it. I had thought I might be able to switch over to the digital version of it, but alas, there's no easy way to just convert your tabletop game to digital. Every method I've found so far requires you to manually play through every scenario all over again (they add cheats, but just the thought of going through all that bother is off-putting).

Luckily, the iOS app Gloomhaven Campaign Tracker (GCT) has saved my campaign all this time and I was able to more or less jump back into it, and it helps take some of the pain away from setup, since you don't have to scrounge around for quite so many components with it. Otherwise, I've been enjoying it again, though I'm far from completing it, I had maybe made it about halfway through the content, there's almost too much there to fully go through.

I saw there was a recent Backerkit campaign for an updated 2nd edition, but I just decided to avoid that completely, lest I find yet another reason to put off finishing through the campaign, a similar thing had happened to me with the Middara update. I was close to backing for the RPG version, but decided against it because I don't care for RPGs that have extra components or card decks associated with them. Our gaming group plays digitally for the most part anymore, so adding an extra set of components was a no-go.

First time playing Orléans - a really fun bag engine builder. I've never played a bag building game but it did give me similar vibes to Roll for the Galaxy which has some similar mechanics.

We then played Castles of Burgundy which I haven't played in a few years. The game plays so well, there's a reason it's a classic.

Ive been playing Dungeon. A classic from when I was a kid, reimagined with newer characters from the Dungeons and Dragins franchise.

We were also playing Munchkin Quest, but havent picked that one up for a few game nights

What’s a good 2 player board game? I’m a total newbie to board games and basically only ever played monopoly.

One of our regular games is called citadels. It's like a card game with characters that you choose each round who have different abilities that can help you build your kingdom or mess with the other players.

Another great card based board game is flea circus or circus flohcati as our version is called. It is a card collection gsme with trumps where yoh take risks by oushing your luck. Quite fun and simple for anyone to learn, also works well as a drinking game. I highly recommend both of these.

This week was a family get together in the mountains, and as usual it fell to me to bring the games. I brought a bunch, mentally preparing for none of them to get played - and all but one did! Thanks, rain.

The only one I hadn’t played before was Ra, the new 25th Century Games edition of which was brought over by my brother from the US. It’s SUCH an amazing production. I especially like Ian O’Toole’s use of vibrant blues and turquoise in the artwork. So many ancient Egypt themed games just go with bland beige. This is the first one that looks like how hieroglyphics must have actually been painted. Or at least, how they were in my head! And of course the game is an absolute banger, but everyone knows that. Modern Art is one of my favs so I had a feeling this would be a winner as well. It was the only game my family requested playing multiple times.

Others were Star Wars: Outer Rim (fun but I really need to get that expansion to ease some of its rough edges. Just can’t find it here in the EU right now!) and Pan Am (picked this up at UKGE this year, my mom worked for Pan Am toward the end of their reign and, as I was hoping, she had many fascinating anecdotes to share during our game. The game itself is pretty good, a nice TTR replacement, if punishing at 4 players with so few actions and so many opportunities for other players to waste yours). Lighter games that hit the table were Fantasy Realms, Cockroach Poker and Cat Crimes. All solid light family winners.

The only one that didn’t see table time was The Quiet Year, which I’ve not tried but I’m very curious about. We didn’t find the time. Maybe later this week…