Tag: games

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.

I managed to get a fair bit of gaming in this month and did fairly well over all.

Started out by going and playing games at a friend’s house on May 4th.

First played a quick game of Faraway (which I lost). It has an interesting mechanic. You play cards that earn points based on the other cards you play, but you score them in reverse order of play. That is, you start by playing a card which will only score points if you play other cards to fulfill the conditions. You’re acquiring a new card each round, so rather than building on what you’ve already done, your kind of playing backwards. You’ve done something and now you need to acquire and play the cards that make it useful.

After Faraway, we played a long game of Star Wars: Outer Rim in honor of “May the 4th be with you.” Choose a character and then explore the Outer Rim on your way to fame and fortune. Take on jobs as a bounty hunter, smuggler, or mercenary. Upgrade your ship. Bring on new crew. I enjoyed the game–probably better the second time around once you have some idea of how things play out and how to run your character. I lost.

After finally wrapping up Outer Rim, we played a much-shorter game of The Guild of Merchant Explorers. Though I was the only one to have played previously, I did not win this game either.

As a family we finally got around to playing the second half of the Escape the Crate Sled Race mission (we played the first half back in March). We were thoroughly victorious and brought the diphtheria antitoxin to Nome.

Jess and I played Wyrmspan on Mother’s Day. I won that one. And we played another time with friends and I won that one too.

At a board-game meetup I played Concordia. It’s a game about establishing trade routes in ancient Rome. Decent theme, competitive but not particularly adversarial. I lost.

Jess and I continued our adventure in Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall by completing Quest 5. It came down to the skin of our teeth, but we survived. We got to play using the new organizer I designed and printed, but we’ll get to that in another post.

Jess and I played a game of Everdell (the base game) with friends. I won that. Which I was surprised by because I started out with a pretty lousy hand and went in to autumn with a single green production card in my town.

And, finally, I played a game of The Wolves at a board-game meetup which I also managed to win. It’s effectively a wolf-life simulator game. You have a wolf pack and need to expand your pack, hunt food, and defend your territory from other packs to earn the most points.

Jess and I continued our campaign in Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall successfully completing quests 17 and 4 with Feyn and Roland making their way to the great city of Din’Lux.

We played two games of Wyrmspan while in Arkansas for the eclipse (of course we brought a suitcase full of games, do you not when you travel?). I won one (by 1 point!) and lost one.

Also while in Arkansas we played Ex Libris, which I lost.

I also played a few rounds of Cobra Paw (have the fastest paw to collect the tiles) and Exploding Kittens (be the last one standing after all the kittens have exploded) with the girls in Arkansas.

Back at home we introduced friends to Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle by playing year 4; we lost. This is a game some friends introduced us to years ago. I was skeptical at first because there are so many money grabs where a crappy idea is skinned over with a popular theme and they sell a million copies just because. But it actually is a solid game at its core and the theming generally only enhances the mechanics.

It’s a cooperative deck-building game which increases in complexity and difficulty as you move up the years (representing the years in the books). You must enhance your deck with more powerful cards to defeat a set of villains before they take control of a set of locations. My biggest complaint is that the difficulty can vary wildly depending on the ordering of the villains.

At a board-game meetup I jumped into a game of Millennium Blades–which seems to be as post-modern as you can get in gaming. It’s a game in which your characters are collectible-card-game players (e.g., Magic: The Gathering). In the game as your character, you buy/sell/trade cards to form a deck and then you play tournaments of the inner-game card game against the other players.

Points are awarded for how you rank during the inner-game tournaments. The game alternates between these inner-game tournaments and a buy/sell/trade/deck-build phase until you’ve held three tournaments. We didn’t have time to finish the whole thing. We did 2 tournaments and one buy/sell/trade/deck-build phase. I lost. It was a bit of a strange game.

At another board-game meetup I played another game of Mystic Vale. I lost. I still find the core mechanic interesting from a technical perspective, but the game doesn’t really speak to me.

After Mystic Vale, we played The Guild of Merchant Explorers which I really enjoyed. It’s a quick game with simple mechanics, but I found the core concept and theming to be very engaging and fun. It’s the first game in quite a while that I played and then immediately put on my wishlist.

It’s a “group solitaire” kind of game played in 4 rounds. In each round you build out trade routes on your map (everyone has their own, identical map–no resource contention with other players). Everyone can play each turn simultaneously which keeps things moving. With your trade routes you score points in various ways (connecting cities, exploring ruins, building villages, etc.). Most points wins.

The game comes with 4 different maps to play and several different objective cards (3 used per game). There’s randomization of how you can build your trade routes and players get asymmetric special-building powers that really drive differences in play between players. So there’s some decent variety built in. With 3 of us playing for the first time I think we completed a 4-player game in 30-45 minutes.

Games I played in March 2024. Like books, I didn’t get nearly as much game playing done this month compared to February.

Wyrmspan – Expand your cave system and attract new dragons to live in it. This game just came out last month. It’s an adaptation of the game Wingspan–changing some mechanics and swapping dragons for birds. This games falls under “group solitaire” in that what each player does has very little impact on the other players.

It’s a game of resource constraints requiring careful analysis to maximize your actions for gaining points. If you want to score well, that is. You can just enjoy the artwork and collecting dragons and not worry too much about points.

We played once at the very beginning of the month and once more today. I lost both times (Jess won both times).

Escape the Crate – Sled Race – One of the “escape room in a box” companies for which Jess’ parents gave us a subscription for Christmas.

This is the second box for us. The story set ups and narration are a bit campy, but the puzzles have been pleasantly reasonable and we’ve been enjoying them as a family. I think I enjoy them more than the “Exit” series. In this one we’ve time traveled to 1925 when a mustache-twirling-type nefarious time traveler had swapped the diphtheria antitoxin out before the dogsled relay rushed it off to Nome, Alaska. We have to work together to catch up and put the correct medicine back in place.

We completed the first half successfully at _just_ below expert speed–still have to play the second half.

Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall – Jess and I continued our adventure as Feyn and Roland and played Quest 16 (you don’t necessarily complete them in numerical order).

We had a very successful little adventure and handily defeated the ursaur in battle and rescued the elven pilgrim. I’m still very much enjoying it and looking forward to continuing our story.

Games I played during February 2024

Mystic Vale – This is a deck-building game, but instead of adding cards to your deck, you add overlays to existing cards. An interesting mechanic which avoids the problem of decks getting bloated or needing to get rid of low-power cards as the game progresses. However, it means cards are made of plastic and require sleeving. Played at the board-game group, I lost.

Empires’s End – Instead of building up your civilization from scratch, your peak civilization is assailed by disaster after disaster. You do your best to mitigate the damage. The winner gets to be emperor of the rubble. Played at the board-game group, I won.

Keep the Heroes Out – The pesky “heroes” are coming to loot your dungeon, keep them out. Play as one of the creature factions that lives in the caves and work together to fight off the invading humans. It’s a fun, light-hearted game. Played with friends, we lost.

Davy Jones’ Locker: The Kraken Wakes – Sail your ship from port to port gathering supplies and readying yourself for the day the Kraken attacks. Then fight the Kraken in an epic sea battle. A cooperative game that I backed through Kickstarter. I want to like this game, but I think it fell victim to “more is more” and would be more enjoyable if the designer cut 15% of the features and focused on ways to streamline the game loop. After several plays, the most accurate word I have for it is “finicky”–which is annoying. I played solo (loss), solo 2-handed (win), 2-player with Jess (loss), 2-player 2nd-act-only (win).

Dune: Imperium Uprising – The sequel to Dune: Imperium, which builds around the 2nd-half of the Dune story (apparently the games were designed to coincide with the 2-part movie releases). The goal is to gain enough influence with the various factions to take control of Arrakis. It’s a worker-placement crossed with deck-building game. We played in teams mode during DunDraCon for a whopping 5.5 hours. My team, the Fremen, lost–but not by a lot.

DunDraCon

Encouraged by the guy that runs the board-game group I attend I decided to see what a board-game convention looks like. DunDraCon held its 47th event this year. It’s emphasis is on RPGs, but they have miniatures war gaming, board games, table-top games of all varieties, and mostly lots of space for open gaming. It runs all weekend over Presidents’ Day, but I opted for just a single day. I figured a whole day would be enough of new social environments for me for one weekend.

Recently the event moved to Santa Clara. It used to be in San Ramon, which would have been a lot more convenient.

As mentioned above, I played a game of Dune: Imperium Uprising there which took most of my day. But I also took some time to visit the vendors’ hall. Lots of what you’d expect, but also a couple selling these laser-cut, hand-painted and -assembled Mimics and Monster Books (operating under the name “Serial Hobbyists“). They’re absolutely amazing and available in a variety of sizes. After selecting your box/chest/book you get to pick out eyes to go on it which they glue in place for you.

I selected this Mimic and this Monster Book:

I still have to decide on something fun to store in each of them.

While there I participated in one prototyping event for a game called Rift Zone: Contact. It’s a miniatures war game run through an augmented reality app on a phone. It’s a neat concept, but not really my jam. One of the appeals of table-top gaming for me is to not be fiddling with technology, since I spend all day doing that for work.

Sagrada – Build the best stained-glass window in the cathedral. I also played this at DunDraCon. It’s a drafting game which mostly falls into “group solitaire”. It’s fine, but not a game I’ll be adding to my library. I lost.

Everdell + Spirecrest expansion – Return to Everdell Valley, but now send your explorers on an epic quest to map the surrounding regions and discover wonderful new experiences. Jess and I really enjoy Everdell. It’s an enjoyable worker-placement game at its core, but built inside beautiful artwork and a cozy/folksy theme. I received the Spirecrest expansion for Christmas, but hadn’t played it until now. It is a pretty significant expansion and really changes the game flow. With the base game (and other expansions) we always found the end game revolved around optimizing which cards you’d add to your town as you hit the 15-card limit But in our Spirecrest game there was much more scarcity pressure and I think only one of us actually hit the 15-card limit.

The game adds “big creatures” which you can put a little saddle on and have your regular meeple ride, which is completely unnecessary as a design element, but greatly amusing. Jess and I played with a friend, I lost.

Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall – I’ve been searching for a cooperative narrative-adventure game that strikes just the right balance. I’ve tried Sleeping Gods, Legends of Andor, Legacy of Dragonholt, Legends of Sleepy Hollow, and Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. Sleeping Gods is alright, but a little finicky and can be demoralizingly rough at times. Legends of Andor is a series of independent scenarios with tight time pressure, making it a puzzle/optimization game. Legacy of Dragonholt is a choose-your-own-adventure story with only a hint of gameplay. Legends of Sleepy Hollow hits the right core, but lacks polish. And Gloomhaven: JotL has a continuing narrative but is fundamentally a puzzle/optimization game due to a time pressure mechanic (I like it, but the puzzle/optimization nature slows things down dramatically).

Kinfire Chronicles, so far, is working out well. It’s core mechanics are deck building and tactical combat. I’ve been playing it with Jess. I’ve been playing as Feyn Longstride (human bard) and Jess as Roland Wordforger (dwarven scholar). It builds an interesting world and the combat loop is pretty snappy–without the time-pressure of Gloomhaven: JotL or Legends of Andor.

We’ve played through Quests 1, 2, & 3 and won them all. I also played Quest 1 solo as Kohr and Valora Helsman (and won) to get a feel for the game before inviting Jess to join me.

Ex Libris – Compete to curate the best library in the land. It’s a game about collecting and organizing books! Jess gave me this for Christmas and this is the second time we played it. It’s a calm, relaxed game of acquiring books then adding them to your bookshelf while keeping them alphabetized, avoiding the banned books, seeking out the prominent works, and striving for your own, personal library focus. We played with a friend, I lost.