Tag: games

Played another race in Heat: Pedal to the metal at the board game meetup. I lost. Still enjoying this game a lot each time though.

After the race we played a session of Unmatched. It’s a player-vs-player battle system made of up compatible, themed-boxes of characters. I played as Hamlet who on each turn had to decide whether “To Be” or “Not To Be.” With each option offering various tradeoffs. Hamlet faced off against Ms. Marvel, Dr. Strange, and someone else I’ve forgotten. I lost.

Played a couple of games of Creature Comforts during the month. Still enjoying the cozy art and chill gameplay. I lost one game and won one game.

At the next board game meetup we played another session of Marvel Dice Throne: X Men. This time we played 2v2 teams. I played as Psylocke. I rolled an Ultimate move which tipped things in my team’s favor and led to our scant victory.

With time for something short we played two rounds of Stool Pigeon. This is a silly game of memorization and deception. You each have cards with points on them face down in front of you. You get few opportunities to look at them and many opportunities to swap them around the table. Your goal is to have the fewest points on your cards at the end which occurs when someone uses their turn to trigger a final turn for the other players. I lost the first game, which I called (I managed to work myself down to only 2 cards, but other players swapped in high-value cards on their last turn). I won the second game when someone else called and I was able to keep a hold of only very-low value cards without anyone taking them off me. A silly game, but fun for killing 10-20 minutes at a time.

Jess and I finally got back around to moving our Kinfire Chronicle’s: Night’s Fall campaign forward. We picked up a side quest (Quest 21) and were doing quite well in the battle. But we lost control of our boat and capsized. So we weren’t defeated by the enemy, but neither did we defeat them. Tails tucked between our legs we limped back to town still dirt poor after several less-than-successful missions in a row.

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.

Tried out the fairly new deckbuilding game, Mistborn, set in Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn world. At a game meetup we played cooperatively but were defeated. The game mechanics have a lot of similarities with Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, but inflicts a strict turn limit to defeat the boss. I dislike this mechanic because it tends to be quite punishing and in this case highly unbalances the game when scaling up to 4 players. Because there are only X turns available and you get stronger each turn you take each player will now be only X/4 as strong by the time the turn limit runs out. This is a fundamental issue with this game because you realistically cannot do any damage to the boss until you reach a minimum level of strength. So I think cooperative mode probably plays better with 2 or 3 players. You can also play it competitively instead.

Jess and I replayed the first scenario of Peacemakers: Horrors of War. We were victorious in bringing about a peace negotiation. It’s still a very unusual game of having minimal power to achieve your ends. Will eventually need to proceed to the later scenarios and see how they differ.

With friends we played Call to Adventure. This is the “story-arc generator” game. Your character begins with an origin, motivation, and destiny and then you cast lots to let fate decide if you are successful in achieving your goals along the way which shape your character’s story. I won.

At another game meetup we raced our cars around the track in HEAT: Pedal to the Metal. I lost. I continue to really enjoy this game. The mechanics are pretty simple and turns move fast, but I have yet to see anyone “solve” the game with a definitively winning strategy. And it comes with a ton of variations to layer in to keep it fresh. That and it’s a game in which you need to play aggressively to win, but playing aggressively doesn’t mean targeting and attacking other players. I typically adopt defensive / cautious play styles and this game pushes me to change that without feeling like I have to choose someone to pick on–which I don’t like doing.

Despite my hopes from last month, I did not get much game playing in this month either.

Played a session of The Guild of Merchant Explorers at a board game meetup. I won.

Played a scenario of Mechs vs. Minions and introduced the game to friends. We ran the gauntlet and succeeded in reaching the other side while subduing the minions along the way. Victory.

After playing Creature Comforts at a board game meetup last month I thought Jess would enjoy it. So she found it under the Christmas tree. We played with friends and I won after a very productive final turn bringing in 29 points in just the one turn.

Tallying up the blog posts gives us 63 games played in 2024.