GRcade

Budget?
Numbers?
Experience?
Co-op? Teams? Battle Royale?
Play time?

Splendor

So people at group have been talking about this as some sort of level of gaming perfection.

Played it for the first time last night...and it's ok? Simple/quick to teach and play, but just seemed to just "occur"...and then someone suddenly wins?

There's good ideas in the mechanics (liked the reserve feature) and it's perfectly acceptable - but I didn't get the impression of some sort of gaming Nirvana. It also seems to be very light on talking/interaction.

Potion Explosion being played at the other end of the table looked much more fun

On the other hand the gem tokens feel amazing. 10/10

Tried deception murder in Hong Kong last night. Really enjoyed it, like a cross between mysterium and cluedo with an element of werewolf thrown in. Has great interaction / discussion / arguments.

After a bit of searching I've managed to find the Imperial Aces set somewhere else, so I've cancelled my order with Element games.

The TIE Defender is such a good looking ship Baffles me that they've stuck with the dull ordinary TIE Fighters in the new films.

Rapper wrote:

Hexx wrote:Budget?
Numbers?
Experience?
Co-op? Teams? Battle Royale?
Play time?

minium 2 players so me and the other half can play on our own if we wish but at games night there’s always at least 4 or more. Can be co-op play isn’t relevant really something that’s easy to pick up and enjoyable

Carcassone is the one my other half and I play ourselves. Also a great 4 player game and accomodates 5.

Hexx wrote:Splendor

Yeah I pretty much agree with all of that. Including the gem tokens. I've heard Century Spice Road is a similar game with more mechanics and theme built around it, and my friend has it so I'd be interested to try that.

FatDaz wrote:Tried deception murder in Hong Kong last night. Really enjoyed it, like a cross between mysterium and cluedo with an element of werewolf thrown in. Has great interaction / discussion / arguments.

We've been loving that game recently as well. So hard to keep a straight face when you're playing as the forensic scientist and someone perfectly describes the murder on the first round of discussions.

I got a few boardgames for Christmas.

Lost Cities
One Night Ultimate Vampire
Orleans
Champions Of Midgard
Dice Forge

So far I have played only Champions Of Midgard and its wonderfully brilliant. Love it to bits.

I only ever play Champions of Midgard with my wife as it's rare that we only have 4 players when friends come over but I also really like it too.

DML wrote:I got a few boardgames for Christmas.

Lost Cities
One Night Ultimate Vampire
Orleans
Champions Of Midgard
Dice Forge

So far I have played only Champions Of Midgard and its wonderfully brilliant. Love it to bits.

Post up some impressions when you give Orleans a try, it seems wonderfully cimplicated and the kind of thing I could never convince anyone to play.

Imperial Assault

Well this was great fun.

Tutorial, Mission 1 And 1st Side Mission done in about 4 hours.

Very clean and easy rules (campaign transition/set up took a couple of reads)

Seems to be quite a variety in which missions you do and what happens in them

We had to learn quickly that time pressure (either from turn limits or enemy escalation) matters. A lot. Focus on objectives. You can’t move slowly or try and kill every last enemy.

And that getting wounded (or killed) isn’t that bad.

And also only open doors at the start of turns!

Some light Spoilers for missions follow so being safe

Pandemic Legacy

Second loss in a row and March is a complete write off We were so close to a win as well. Two turns and we'd have done it but the 4th epidemic card was drawn and we were just really unlucky that the first card drawn caused an outbreak which depleted are black cube supply. Any other card and we'd have been fine.

We did name the blue disease "Frigid Shakes" though which slightly eased the pain. We also have "Banana Pox" and "Glankitis".

Mansions of Madness: Streets of Arkham



(Astral Alchemy)



Not sure what to make of this. I blow pretty hot and cold on MoM.



The scenario itself is pretty good - some of the new cards and statuses are quite interesting. This xpac also brought in the "improve" mechanic which allows you upgrade your stats (this scenario apparently is to show that off and it happened a lot )



But it's a difficulty 4/5. Which meant we failed. We had to gather 4 component for someone in a time limit - but we didn't know where in the setting they were.



We felt quite efficient (as much as you could be going in blind) but only found 3 (and only got 1 back in time). The game was telling us there's time pressure, we're running out of time etc, but there was nothing we could do to speed up. Even when we found the items we couldn't move them back to to the target any quicker...


And then everyone died in a damp squib of an ending as we ran out of time (we'd have got progress next turn) with nothing we could have done to be quicker for last few rounds (particularly as the games warnings ramped up) - we didn't even get to "phase 2" of the scenario...



It's a standard MoM problem that if you don't act efficiently you run out of time - but felt particularly bad here. A second play through with some hints/tips on where to go might help, but feels like you shouldn't need that to have a chance. I've failed others and with hindsight it felt like we made bad choices based on information we had, this was just we didn't pick the right options to get to our objectives quickly - with no info to help us make the right choices.


A real sour note to end of decent evening

Have the ticket to ride UK expansion to try tonight. Adds technology cards to it which means you need certain cards before you're allowed to build certain lengths or types of routes. Hope I don't have to hand the franchise back to the government halfway through the game arf arf.

So Destiny has it’s hooks in me. Just ordered another booster box at £70... it’s such a mechanically simple game but has so much depth for strategy and variety and like all FFG games the theme and art is top notch. I also love how quick it is to set up and play, something x wing and rebellion suffer from

Not my fault!

Played an Exit game last night. Was really good fun and just like being in an escape room. We did the Cabin one with 6 of us and got out in 57mins with no clues. I think it would play better with 4 players. I have my own copy now and will probably hide some of the clue cards around the house to make it more Escape-room like.

Also played Magic Maze. Ridiculously good fun!