The Gaming thread - anything but video games

[JNLister]

Two first-time-playing-but-hardly-new games last night.

Garden of Alhambra is a bit of a cash-in as it has basically nothing to do with the original and is largely an abstract strategy game. It's tile-placing with rules and scoring that are so simple they'd sound too complicated if I explained them. The main hook is that your placement is very often going to score for other players as well as yourself, so often you're thinking about ways to cheat other people out of maximum points, which keeps it interesting.

Beowulf is loosely based on the poem, which I suspect is out of copyright. You go through a fixed series of events based on the book. About half are "do a thing or don't do it, you decide" and the rest are effectively auctions where everyone gets something (ranging from useful to damaging), either sequential bidding with people dropping out or a single secret bid where you can bluff. The main twist is that at many stages you can risk, which means taking two cards and seeing if they match symbols: if at least one matches, you get the card; if none match you take wounds which can cost you points as they accumulate. Fun game but the luck plays a big element: the chances of risks paying off even out over the game, but if you start off with a good or bad run, it significantly affects whether you can afford to keep taking risks (and thus your potential to gain).

[JNLister]

Finished last night with a couple of rounds of Inside Job. It's a co-operative trick-taking game similar to The Crew, meaning you're basically playing a basic Whist/Rummy variant but with a group mission to achieve each hand such as "the third player must win the hand" or "you must only play cards numbered 7 or higher."

The twist is that one player is a traitor who wins either by winning five hands or causing the group to fail a certain number of missions. The rest of the players are playing normal rules (meaning you have to follow suit if you can) while the traitor can go against this.

It's a nice twist and plays quickly, but the person who brought it has played six games so far and the traitor has won every time. The main hitch seems to be that the traitor doesn't have as much of a dilemma as they do in games like The Resistance where they have to balance sabotaging missions but not doing it so often/so quickly that they give themselves away.

[ReturnOfTheMack]

Went with a few mates and my wife went to have a go at Axe Throwing today. First time any of us did it. I expected to hate it, but I loved it! And I was surprisingly decent at it.

 

[Nexus]

Bought Horrified (American Monsters) on Prime Day and so had fun with that last weekend - a cooperative monster hunting game. 

 

Received Barenpark as a present from one of my colleagues so we'll crack that out tomorrow. 

[Retro Red]

On 6/23/2023 at 7:45 PM, Bicurious Dad said:

We’re organising a game of Twilight Imperium next month. Average game time 8 hours, what a terrifying thought. 

And we finished just short of 8 hours which given 5 of us hadn’t played before that’s a decent runtime. Really enjoyed it, time flew in and I look forward to next time.

[Jazzy G]

Finally played Cortex Challenge this past week. The best way I can describe it is Wario Ware meets brain training in board game form.you turn over the card and try to solve the little puzzle quicker than the other players. If you want you can also play one of the sensory cards, which have a texture that you have to guess, and this will quality you for a bonus. If you get two of the same puzzle you can trade them for a brain cortex, if you get all 4 to make a brain you win the game. 

The puzzles were fun. There are several categoriea: Maze (correctly find which exit of the maze is correct), match (find the two matching pictures on the car), frequency (see which thing appears the most times in the picture), colour (loads of colours are written in different colours, identify the word that's written in its own colour), reasoning (identify which part completes the image), physical (each digit on each hand is colour coded and numbered, the card is flipped and theres a picture of a face with a colour and number somewhere on it, you have to touch the corresponding digit to the same location on your face), and memory (look at the card for 30 seconds, then try to identify the items on it). 

It was short and fun. Took us a little bit to get our heads around it, but it was good when we started playing it. 

The base version is about £11 on Amazon at the moment, and I think there are expansions as well. 

[Thunderplex]

2 hours ago, Nexus said:

Bought Horrified (American Monsters) on Prime Day and so had fun with that last weekend - a cooperative monster hunting game. 

 

Received Barenpark as a present from one of my colleagues so we'll crack that out tomorrow. 

I’ve got the Universal Monsters version and love it.  Fancy getting the American Monsters version as well.  I know it’s the same games, but Mothman looks cracking.

[Nexus]

10 hours ago, Thunderplex said:

I’ve got the Universal Monsters version and love it.  Fancy getting the American Monsters version as well.  I know it’s the same games, but Mothman looks cracking.

Yeah we played the Universal Monsters one in a board game cafe in Norwich which is why we decided to get it (I didn't actually realise it was the American Monsters one when I bought it). 

 

I like how easy it is to set up and play, despite having a lot of pieces. 

[JNLister]

Played Neom, a city-builder game that's effectively a combo of tilelaying city games like Between Two Cities/Carcasonne/Suburbia and the drafting mechanism and resource acquirement of Seven Wonders. (To the point that after a bit of confusion about the rules we realised you just follow Seven Wonders principles and it all makes sense.) Plays very smoothly once you're going and there's a good mix of different approaches depending on your personal end-game bonuses, plus a lovely opportunity to screw over everyone else by causing a fire or crime wave. Would definitely play again, particularly now we know the ballpark winning score (100-120) and can assess how the comparative values of the various scoring opportunities and penalties.

Also played Gloom, which is a card game where you are trying to make your family members miserable before killing them (aka there's some dark humour). It's fairly basic stuff with adding modifiers (happy events make for worse scores and vice versa) to cards, but the twist is the cards are transparent, with different modifiers in different places on the card. You lay the cards on top of each other and everything that shows through is active, meaning you have to think and anticipate a bit more than normal.

[Carbomb]

3 minutes ago, JNLister said:

Also played Gloom, which is a card game where you are trying to make your family members miserable before killing them (aka there's some dark humour). It's fairly basic stuff with adding modifiers (happy events make for worse scores and vice versa) to cards, but the twist is the cards are transparent, with different modifiers in different places on the card. You lay the cards on top of each other and everything that shows through is active, meaning you have to think and anticipate a bit more than normal.

Played this a fair bit a while back. It's fun, especially with the Molesworth-style artwork, and part of the fun is coming up with death stories, but it doesn't have a lot of replay value. Kind of game you play as a sort of "palate cleanser" between big ones.

[Jazzy G]

I got a copy of What Next from Amazon reduced from £40 to £13.99. It can be played solo, but might also go down well with the Autistic board gaming fraternity. I've not plucked up the courage to try and play it yet, but it looks thoroughly fascinating. 

[JNLister]

Played The Taverns of Tiefenthal. The theme is running an inn, but it's pretty much a combo of a deckbuilder and a dice drafting/placement game. Plays very smoothly and simply and doesn't outstay its welcome. There's also a bit of theme in the gameplay as you spend all your energies improving the pub and then old biddies hog a table all night and hardly spend anything.

The only downside is that on your first play, by the time you've got the hang of what's going on and a good strategy, you don't have long left. I'm not quite feeling it's BGG ranking of 230 (which means among the best games ever given how many are ranked), but I can see how it could be improved by the various mix-and-match modules that come with both the base game and as expansions.

[Thunderplex]

8 hours ago, jazzygeofferz said:

I got a copy of What Next from Amazon reduced from £40 to £13.99. It can be played solo, but might also go down well with the Autistic board gaming fraternity. I've not plucked up the courage to try and play it yet, but it looks thoroughly fascinating. 

Fucking bargain from what I’ve heard!  Ordering now, cheers!

[SuperBacon]

Does this count?

We have a monthly-ish team meeting where we all meet somewhere nice (usually a country park or the beach) so we can have a bit of wellbeing time/walk the dogs after the meeting (genuinely one of the best bits of the job) and today we took Finnish skittles down the park.

What a game! So you throw that thing on the right, and if you only knock down one, you score the value on the peg.

If you knock down more than one peg, you score the amount you've knocked down, NOT the value of the pegs.

You do this until you reach 40, but if you go over that, you go back to 21. Also where the pegs get knocked down is where they are put back up so it gets more difficult if you just need the one value.

Brilliant fun, and I imagine even better after a few sherberts. The only issue is it's a pain in the arse keep putting them back up. Best played in a big park as well.

This is me fully embracing the village life. Next up, boccia.

[Just Some Guy]

Sounds great fun. I am lacking in friends that would love a lawn game though. And my family who would play irritate me deeply.