Played The Vale of Eternity at the board game meetup. Overall gameplay is pretty simple, but with many opportunities for emergent complexity and dramatically different strategies and play styles. Definitely a game that requires playing a few times in order to learn what kind of cards exist in the deck and how you might plan around them. Otherwise can be challenging to make much headway since most progress is made by gaining cards that play off each other. I enjoyed it. Would happily play again.
After The Vale of Eternity we played Marvel Dice Throne: X-Men which just came out this year. Select a character and fight each other to the death by rolling dice to determine which action you take each turn. Tons of variety across characters making it nearly impossible to know what other players can do (or if they’re playing accurately unless you’ve played a ton). Dice-rolling games aren’t generally my jam, but the way the mechanics are designed significantly limits the pain of having a bad roll. So that helped. Still not really my jam though. Wouldn’t seek it out myself, but if others wanted to play, I’d still play.
Had friends over and played Ex Libris with the Expanded Archives expansion (which I gave Jess for our anniversary last year). This games is always a challenge to play after time has passed and difficult to learn fresh. While the mechanic of your turn is simple (place a worker on one spot and complete that action) what spots exist each round changes and there are a lot of options. So first just understanding what all your options are is tiring, then figuring out how to utilize those options effectively is an additional challenge. Jess has won Ex Libris every time we’ve played–until now! My only win of the month.
Played Mistborn cooperatively again at the board game meetup. Had mostly players who had played at least once before this time and we did significantly better, but still ended up being defeated in the end. In a crushing blow all 4 of us were brought to 0 health at the same time. I enjoyed it more the second time–now having a slightly better grasp of the general strategy and progression arc.
After being defeated in Mistborn we played a quick game of 7 Wonders. A tableau-building game played across 3 rounds (“ages”) in which you build your civilization and attempt to complete your world wonder. Play is simultaneous and moves fast regardless of player count. This was one of my earliest purchases after starting to attend the board game meetups. I still enjoy it, though it doesn’t get much play. I lost this time.