Tag: games

Got a couple of new games this month, some simple card-based games that are quick to play.

First up is L’oaf, which is just a fantastic name for the game. The premise is that the players are team of bakers in a French boulangerie. But, none of you _wants_ to be a baker and this is just a temp job. So your goal is to do as little work as possible without getting fired. Each day the boss sets a production quota for the team. Each baker privately selects how many loaves of bread they will bake. Then you reveal your choices and see if the quota is met. Bakers earn or lose reputation based on their efforts and the boss’ mood. Whomever does the least amount of work while still remaining in the boss’ good graces wins. Played 4 times. Won 3.

The second new game is Goblin Laundromat. The players run a laundromat (individually) to clean the filthy clothes of adventurers. Clean the most laundry without taking on too many stains. This game is primarily a push-your-luck game with a memory component. I like L’oaf better. Played twice, lost both.

Played another really great game of Heat at the board game meetup. Really tight through the whole race with several switch ups of leader. It came right down to the wire on the final turn. I lost.

Played a couple rounds of Cat Fluxx. Lost both times.

Storyfold: Wildwoods is one of the last games I’ve crowdfunded that I was waiting to be delivered. A solo (or loosely co-op) game built around a narrative. It sounded intriguing. To my dismay, however, the gameplay is built around an arbitrary restriction on how many turns you can take before you lose each scenario. I typically dislike that mechanic. It makes the game into an optimization puzzle–which can be fine if actions are fully under your control, but when success or failure is probabilistic you create a game system where perfect play can still mean you lose. Which is stupid. And a couple turns of poor dice rolls means you can end up in a situation from which it is impossible to recover. Which is stupid.

I played through the prologue twice (which guides your turn and dictates your successful dice rolls) and then played chapter 1 twice. The first time I was defeated and the second time I fudged the rules a little to accommodate a couple turns of bad dice rolls to make it more fun and less annoying.

Played a round of Hardback at the meetup and won. Played another round at home and Jess won by a point.

Played Ruins again at the meetup. I lost.

Started the month off with another adventure in Vantage. We completed our mission for a victory ending. Looking forward to playing again.

At the board-game meetup I played a couple rounds of Ruins. It’s a trick-taking game which usually isn’t my thing, but it has some interesting tweaks which I liked. It uses card sleeves and overlays so the cards get more powerful each round. I usually find trick-taking games to be repetitive and not interesting after a few rounds, but with this mechanic the game has a very different feel each time and we discovered very different strategies that could be used. The second game ended in a one-on-one tie-breaker round which I lost without even taking a turn when Robert made the ultimate play using every card in his hand on his first turn. It was brutal and epic. I also lost the first game too.

At the next meetup I played the classic Carcassonne for the first time. I can see how many games since have borrowed or built on the concepts introduced in Carcassonne. I lost.

After Carcassonne we played a couple rounds of a Hanabi. The cover art would have you believe this has something to do with fireworks. That’s a very loose theme–so loose I didn’t know that was the concept until looking up the image. It’s a card game where the only cards you can’t see are your own and you have to work together to play the correct cards in the correct order.

Like most games which do cooperation within restricted communications you end up with game-impacting issues. For example, if someone asks for clarification about a rule, just asking the question might give away a piece of knowledge that they’re not supposed to. Also, once a group has played a few times you end up with a significant amount of implied communication which maybe is intended in the design, but maybe not.

Rather than win/loss the goal is to get the most points. In our two games we ended up with 14 and then 20 out of 25 points.

During Jess’ birthday weekend we played Garden Variety which is another trick-taking game. It kind of highlights the things I don’t much like about many trick-taking games. In particular, many of your turns are spent just throwing away a card for no purpose because you have to play a card and your cards aren’t currently relevant which is both annoying and boring. I lost.

We also played several rounds of Cat Fluxx that weekend and in the following days. The base game, Fluxx, has dozens of themed variations and Cat Fluxx was just released in September. I thought Jess might enjoy the general concept themed around cats since the general concept has a lot of arbitrariness and is not to be taken seriously–like cats. I lost 3 and won 3.

Back to yet a third meetup for the month I got in a game of Heat. I still really enjoy playing. I was pushed to play much more aggressively than I usually play games and I just barely squeaked out a victory in what is probably the tightest and closest race I’ve played yet. It was lots of fun.

I did not get much of any game playing done in August.

The family played Vantage, but didn’t ended it incomplete to get to bed.

Then Heather and I played Vantage with friends and after several deaths (and running out of time) decided to call it a defeat.

We’re still really enjoying the game though. So much to explore. It’s really about the journey–not the destination, so leaving a game incomplete doesn’t seem like a waste of time. And being defeated is okay since you got to learn more about the world.

I won another game of Hardback. The “fan fiction” mods make for some interesting tweaks to the game play.

Jess and I played Harvest with friends. Definitely a game you need to play a few times to get a feel for the timing of tasks and nuances of resource management. I lost.

Played Heat at the board game meetup. We played the Tunnel Vision expansion. It adds one track that has a slight nuance to it and a few new cards (as well as parts for another player). I lost.

Played a game of Everdell with Jess. I won.

Vantage was just released and arrived before we left on vacation. I got it to the table for the family before leaving since I was excited about it. It’s a cooperative exploration game where the point is to enjoy the journey. So it’s not really about winning or losing, but we were successful in achieving our mission goal.

The girls had a blast and we did smoothies for dinner to keep playing and then played past their bedtime and they were insistent we play again the next day.

It’s chill. You wander around this planet discovering people and places and secrets. You can pursue a mission goal or just enjoy the journey.