Tag: games

Didn't get much game playing done this month. Too much going on with birthday preparations and Halloween I guess.

I made it out to one game night and one afternoon of games at a friend's house.

At the game night I first played Flamecraft. I'd played once before when the owner first got it and brought it to a game night--which was probably at least a year ago. It's got really cute artwork about dragons and the town they inhabit. I had thought the girls would like it, but the gameplay can be a little challenging and I deferred adding it to my collection.

On each turn you choose from a variety of actions to collect resources or help grow the town. It's competitive, but not adversarial. There are several actions you engage in which require you to give other players resources or points and it's not a zero-sum game.

I had a difficult start, but had two turns where I was able to really capitalize on fortuitous situations on the board and pulled out a sound win at the end.

After Flamecraft I played Zoo Vadis. I knew I wasn't going to care for this game from the beginning as it's a wheeling/dealing negotiation/backstabbing game which just isn't my jam. But I go to play and this is what people wanted to play. Unsurprisingly I lost.

You play as a group of animals in a zoo and your goal is to negotiate with the other animals to get your group promoted up to the premiere animal enclosure.

At the afternoon of games we started by playing Apiary. I played part of a game previously to take over for someone leaving, so this time I got to play through from the beginning. It's a bit of an odd game--sentient space bees building out spaceships--but, it has solid mechanics (as can usually be expected from Stonemaier Games).

I made a run for points via the "Queen's Favor" track and chalked up another sound win for the month.

After Apiary I convinced a group to play The Stifling Dark. I got this from a crowdfunding campaign in December 2023, but hadn't gotten around to playing it yet. It being October it seemed like a good time to give it a go.

I originally backed it because it's a bit of a table-top incarnation of an online game I'd been playing with friends for a while called Phasmophobia. Team of investigators need to go into a haunted location and avoid being killed by the ghost while completing some objective. So same concept, but here someone has to play the ghost.

Having not played before (which I warned everyone about) it was a learning experience and the game ran quite long. I played as the ghost stalking and attacking the investigators who were trying to escape the abandoned sawmill. The team managed to get the gate powered up and one of them made it out alive, but I got the rest--which counts as a win for me.

I think the game could easily be shortened by skipping the "Act 1" evidence-collection phase and instead dropping the characters in the map and randomly drawing an objective for them (with some balance adjustments to the ghost as well). That would probably get a game down to under 1.5 hours. Our game, with learning, making mistakes, looking things up, and trying to make sense of it all, ran for ~4 hours--which was a bit much.

Didn't get a ton of gaming in this month. Board game group moved to a new location because the restaurant we were at was grumpy with our existence. I think the group is quite well mannered and we've never taken up so much space that they couldn't seat other guests, but they felt we weren't spending enough money so asked us to find somewhere else to go. Which, fine, that's their prerogative, but groups like this meet on Tuesdays because restaurants tend to be dead so our presence is just extra money with little work for them. The last night we met there they had a total of 4 other tables the whole evening.

Anyway. We're trying a new location, however the new location is a brewery and limited to 21 and over so we'll likely keep looking for locations since there were often people in attendance that now can't attend.

Played the first scenario of Peacemakers: Horrors of War again with 2 players at the meetup. We were successful in ending the conflict.

At the next meetup we played Heat with a full group of six. I'm still really enjoying the game. I did not win this time. I believe I came in 4th due to poorly handling the final 2 turns.

Celebrating Jess' birthday we played Everdell with a friend (without any expansions to keep it a little more simple). Jess won handily.

And the following weekend, to further celebrate Jess' birthday with other friends, we played Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle. We played Year 4, without any expansions, and were victorious.

Did a fair bit of game playing in August.

Played Heat a couple of times. One loss, one win. I'm enjoying this game much more than I expected to. It's pretty straightforward to play and there's no adversarial interactions, but the competitiveness pushes me to play more aggressively than I normally do in games.

I got tagged in to Apiary take over for someone two-thirds through a game at the board-game group. I did not win. It was not what I was expecting from the few times I've seen it go by on the Internet. It's not about being a beekeeper. It is about a far-flung future where bees have evolved sentience and you need to manage a bee spaceship to out-compete the other bee species. I'd play again to at least get the full experience.

Jess and I played Quest 19 of Kinfire Chronicles: Night's Fall and got drubbed by a dragon. We limped back to town to lick our wounds.

Later we played Quest 9 which went far more successfully. We caught and defeated an illicit arms dealer as the mystery of his customer network deepens.

Played a game of The Guild of Merchant Explorers at a board-game group. I lost.

Got two of my crowdfunding games this month. The first to arrive was Defenders of the Wild. Which in my head is "Everdell goes to war." You play cooperatively as a confederacy of woodland creatures defending their homes from marauding machines. Played at the board game group with experiences gamers--we lost. And what's more is none of us had a clear idea what a winning strategy looks like. We were really close to winning at one point though. Need to give it a few more goes to see if I can "figure it out."

The other crowdfunding game that was delivered in August was Peacemakers: Horrors of War. This one, in my head, is "Everdell tries to stop a war." You play cooperatively as a team of woodland creatures trying to stop battling tribes from destroying each other. It's a very unusual game. Your ability to influence things is subtle. You're looking for opportunities to nudge events just a little in one direction or another in order to create conditions for the warring factions to negotiate a peace.

I played the first scenario two handed (two players, but only me playing) and was able to eek out a victory and get the ocelots and macaws to stop fighting.

The family continued our time-traveling adventure in Escape the Crate: Escape from Sherwood Forest. We successfully completed both chapters and rescued Robin Hood and Little John from the sheriff's jail.

Before Peacemakers: Horrors of War the publisher released another game Lands of Galzyr which takes place in the same universe. This is a purely story-telling game however. You take on the role of one of 4 woodland creatures making your way through the world. You have a personal quest you're embarking on but can engage in any number of side quests and narrative vignettes along the way. It's not a game you win or lose--it's a game you experience for the joy of the journey.

We played through one session as a family, but with 4 players I think it moves a bit too slowly. I think it would be significantly more enjoyable for everyone to play with no more than 3--and preferably just 2--players.

And finally, on the last day of the month, we played Ex Libris with friends. Jess won again, as usual.

Played several games of Turing Machine over the course of the month. I won 1 game outright and tied for the win on 4 more. I brought it to work one day for a team activity and it was significantly easier to teach to a team of computer scientists.

Jess and I completed Quest 8 in Kinfire Chronicles: Night's Fall. It was a fierce battle which came right down the last couple of chit draws. But we prevailed in the end.

I played a new game at the board-game meetup this month: ARCS. It's been bouncing around the top-5 of the BoardGameGeek Top-50 Hotness chart since it was delivered to crowdfunding backers earlier this month. It's a game I wasn't expecting to like very much--direct adversarial play, zero-sum aspects, but without being narrative based to counter some of that pain. But I enjoyed it and the guy who owns it says the campaign mode (which adds narrative) is spectacular.

Something I found very engaging is that because of the randomness of dealt hands you have to have a very adaptable play style to be effective. So it's not a game where people pick a strategy and play it. If you are an aggressive player, you might be blocked from making aggressive moves due to the circumstances of a round. If you persist in an aggressive play style you'll just be ineffective. So that aspect of finding an effective path forward for the hand you are dealt keeps things interesting and fresh.

It is a fairly complex game which is somewhat necessary to support the level of flexibility it requires. There have to be enough routes you might pursue to have room for players to shift strategies. But it can be a lot to take in as a new player.

I played twice over two meetups. I lost the first time and won the second time.

The family played a session of Castle Panic with The Wizard's Tower expansion. The balance on this game is very well done. Our games often come right down to the very end and this was no different.

Our castle was down to a single tower which was on fire. We managed to get to the end of the monster bag and then kill all the monsters on the board, but we couldn't finish off the last imp before it got into our castle and toppled the final tower. A real nail biter.

I finally finished designing and printing my box organizer for The Guild of Merchant Explorers. I'll get to the details of that in my 3D-prints post for the month, but here's a sneak peek:

Jess and I played after I completed the organizer. The organizer is great. The longest part of getting ready to play now is just shuffling the cards. and clean up takes seconds. I'm very pleased with it. Jess won our game. Then I brought it to the board game meetup to show off the organizer and after ooh-ing and aww-ing we played--which I won.

Amazon's Prime Day has usually been pretty disappointing unless you really want lots of cheap houseware crap or cheap jewelry, but this year actually had some decent deals on things I had on my wishlist. So I picked up a copy of Heat: Pedal to the Metal. It's a racing board game which I had been hesitant about. But it's been bouncing around the BoardGameGeek Top 50 Hotness charts for months. So after reading some reviews I decided to put it on my watch list to grab if the price was right. And during Prime Day it had a solid discount well below its lowest previous price so I nabbed it.

While a racing game is nominally adversarial this one's really not in practice. You don't attack other players or anything. It's kind of a sneaky "group solitaire" game. You're managing your car to perform around the track as best you can with the hands you're dealt. You can't block other cars or interfere with their actions. So it ended up being right up my alley.

Jess and I played the basic rules to introduce us to the concepts. I enjoyed the game and am interested in getting into the advanced rules and grand-prix mode (in which you play a series of races and obtain vehicle upgrades in between). I won our game.

With new games for my birthday we had to get to playing!

Made Mom & Dad play Turing Machine, Camel Up, and The Guild of Merchant Explorers while they were here. I lost Turing Machine, won one and lost one of Camel Up, and won The Guild of Merchant Explorers.

Turing Machine is an interesting little game. I received it for my birthday. A set of punch cards is used to define the behavior of each scenario. The coolness of that implementation isn't really relevant to the actual gameplay mechanics, but it's a triumph of design. The gameplay is like an advanced form of Mastermind/Wordle/Clue. You propose a hypothesis of the solution and then obtain information about how much of your hypothesis is correct which you then integrate with your existing information using deductive reasoning to arrive at the correct solution first.

There's no story or narrative behind the game, the theme is "Punch card 'computer'!". A straightforward mechanic which also means it plays quickly. For players familiar with the rules the 20-minute play time is accurate--and the rules are not complicated.

Camel Up I've covered previously. Still silly fun running camels around the track.

I'm still enjoying The Guild of Merchant Explorers, which is good as I received a copy for my birthday. I've been working on designing a 3D-printable organizer. I think it's done, but I'm letting the design sit a bit before I print it so I can look at it again with fresh eyes. Also it's 100+F here all week and I'm avoiding adding even more heat to the house that needs to be removed.

Played again with Jess and I won then too.

Went to a board game meet up and played another round of Faraway (previously discussed), then Call to Adventure, and Turing Machine. I won Faraway and lost both Call to Adventure and Turing Machine.

Call to Adventure is a simple and fairly quick story-telling game. I like to call it "short-story generator." The idea is that you're developing the narrative of an epic-story character. On your turn you attempt to advance your story in some particular way and to do so you consult the soothsayers and cast the bones in the air and read the result to determine whether you are successful in that endeavor.

The rulebook has one major omission that would ease learning the game, though, which is a simple diagram of card anatomy. Instead you have to read a bunch of text and then attempt to match what it's talking about to the cards you play with. A picture would resolve all the common questions that come up when learning it. I guess I should just make one and stash it in the box.

The family finally advanced our Mechs vs Minions campaign by successfully completing mission 4 with a flawless victory. Our mechs arrived at the target location without a single minion alive to tell the tale. But boy was it an emotional rollercoaster for some members of the family--I guess that made the victory even sweeter.

And to finish the month Jess and I continued our Kinfire Chronicles: Night's Fall story by successfully completing Quest 7, "Red Sky at Night". We escaped the fire, defeated a foe who we thought was a friend, and gained access to the next part of the city. I'm still mostly happy with the organizer I designed. I'm starting to think that were I to do it over I'd just have the cards sit vertically instead of angled. Room is a bit tight. Or maybe go through the effort of making adjustable dividers.