13
votes
Which board games have you been playing this week? (to 13th August)
It's Sunday and time once again for the weekly thread. What have you been playing?
It's Sunday and time once again for the weekly thread. What have you been playing?
Rising Sun and Spirit Island
We’ve been playing Bonsai! Picked it up at GenCon last week and it’s been a blast. It’s very chill, short (30-45min), casual game where each player grows a bonsai with hex tiles. The art is gorgeous and it’s quite soothing and relaxing to just make something pretty.
Picked up Horizons of Spirit Island at target for $15 so gave that a whirl solo. I enjoyed it and look forward to playing with more people. I like that it's almost a demo for the full game and also adds content to it if you get it, was debating picking up Spirit Island but now I can play this a bit before I make that decision.
Quiet week for me. Just played a few games of Oink's Insider with the kids, which went down very well.
Insider looks great, but haven't had a chance to try it out!
Tbh I haven't picked up a copy, just randomised the roles with some poker deck cards and chose our own words.
That's clever! Thanks for the idea.
Good full day of games today. Scythe, 6 nimmt!, and Feed the Kraken.
How do you like Feed the Kraken? I heard about it recently and it sounds fun.
I like it a lot, but it is an odd duck as a social deduction game. As such, I think a lot of people will find that it breathes life into the genre, whereas others might be annoyed at some of its mechanisms.
I am happy to elaborate, but in short, there are certain mechanisms that can feel very cruel and punishing. And it can lead to a sense of futility, and yet, your team is never fully out of the game. These moments are often hilarious and make for good storytelling. And if you go into the game knowing that the game mechanisms inherently generate a lot of nail-biting endings, you are far more likely to enjoy it. This type of fatalism makes landslide victories very rare...but it can be frustrating feeling like you have played 99% of the game correctly only to end up on on the losing team. It's a great blend of logic and chaos. And if the chaos is too much for your group, this is where I'd recommend Deception: Murder in Hong Kong. But if you like a good dose of balanced chaos, then this is a brilliant design.
I've got some young children, < 8. We just played Junior Detective, which is an amazing mystery game for kids.
I'd love to hear other reccomendations in this vein, particularily if the mechanics are solvable at a first grade reading level.
Yesterday I played a two-player Winston Draft with my remaining Lord of the Rings MtG booster packs. Was great fun, pretty tight games, we ended up B/R versus W/U/G. Sadly not a lot of synergies emerged, we both initially tried to draft an archetype (food, draw 2) but just didn’t find almost any enablers, so the decks somewhat ended up being goodstuff piles.
I finally got a couple of games of Project L in, it's an engine game that reminds me a lot of Century: Spice Road, but with more things to do, I loved it.
I also played Hero Realms and Sheep Boom-bah. For Hero Realms, anyone also feel like the first person to go only drawing 3 cards a bit too hard of a nerf?
Splendor! Played it thrice this week. Love the simplicity and the little tactics. Reminds me of planning and saving in the real world.
I played Morels, Gravwell, and Tokaido at a tabletop game bar.
Morels is a card game, rather than a board game. You pick then sell or cook mushrooms, very enjoyable. The ways you acquire cards and how you manage your limited hand provide interesting choices.
In Gravwell, you move along the board's path toward a warp core, hoping not to be sucked into a singularity; cards determine how your ship moves - towards the nearest ship, away from it, or to command all ships to move toward you by some number of spaces. This mechanic was unusual and very unpredictable, causing ships to move in unexpected ways.
Tokaido is a trip through a part of Japan, with many stops of your choice along the way. At the stops, you can acquire souvenirs for a collection, eat different foods, enjoy scenic panoramas, have chance encounters with residents, and a few other experiences. I enjoyed the journey, and keeping score to determine a winner really didn't matter much to me, though my opponent preferred to tally it up.
All three of these were good games that I would play again. Each one had a lot of creativity behind it and weren't much like anything I had played before.
Played Endless Winter for the third time.
I've enjoyed the game so far, although it feels like one specific strategy is vastly superior to everything else. Hoping the addition of a couple of expansion packs will allow for other strategies to become viable.