What are you playing?

[LaParka]

I bought Bandu (Bausack) when it was cheap at boardgameguru. It's fun for five minutes but then it gets packed away. There's not much game in there like in Junk Art. 

 

This week I've mostly been playing Snowdonia. I love this game. Been playing it solitaire and as such it feels more like a race than a multiplayer game (although I've not played it with others). It doesn't do anything groundbreaking and in board game years, it's pretty ancient. But what it does, it does it well. You place your guy to collect stuff, which you convert into building stuff, which lets you build stuff on stations which you've had to dig stuff up for etc. 

 

Weather plays a factor in what you can do, which you have to prepare for, you've got to be able to fix your train at certain points. 

 

The solotaire game is essentially playing the game and comparing your score against previous games. You play sequentially with a different train each time. Your train gives you different abilities, which can make your life easier but it can funnel you down a particular tactic because of the bonuses. This can be good as you don't try and repeat the same tactic each time. 

 

The beauty is in the variability. It comes with a different set of stations and I got the Daffodil promo deck which adds a change to the weather. 

 

The designer is very active on BGG and on Facebook and is forever making promos. Quite a few he's put up for you to download so I'm going to make the effort to get those printed out to try. 

 

I've also picked up Hanabi extra (bigger cards and card stands) and just tried a cursory game with my kids, they grasped the concept but we need to play it proper. Also bought a really cheap Solotaire wargame by decision games themed around Mars. It is was only £10 but I want to explore more hex based games without chucking down £50-60. The series has about 30 games with most being based on ancient military battles. 

[Mortis]

So I got presented a copy of Inis from the group I've got off the ground and we've played a few games now. Initially I wasn't sure, it's an area control game which uses a card drafting mechanic for all the actions but there seemed to be a very limited number of available actions (4 initial action cards in play per player) and combat is purely optional, consisting of "you've moved into my territory - do you want to fight" - "yes" and then the players seem to just discard cards until they've balanced the numbers out on the territory they occupy.

 Our first play quickly taught us the folly of rushing into combat though, 2 of us got into a tussle to take over the capital and become the Brenn (leader for the round and tie breaker in victory condition)(thinking it was a super important role) and while we casually wiped each other off the board the 3rd player slowly expanded and added sanctuaries all over the place. Before we knew it we were a couple of moves away from losing and had to scramble to claw things back and this is when the game suddenly just clicked. As soon as we realised what was happening, watched the draft and used cards wisely we pushed back, finding we could take advantage of all the work the other player had done and before long everyone was in a position close to victory. 

 I finally got the Brenn token just as I met a victory condition and despite one other player also meeting a condition I won (Brenn wins on ties for victory).

 

 Our next game a few nights later (4 player with 2 new players) was a totally different affair, one of the new players went offensive and paid an early price, the other stockpiled his clans in a couple of areas, obviously intending to spreadout across the board later in the game while 2 that had played it before were more cagey, slowly placing Sanctuarys, spreading across the board and trying to stay as under the radar as possible.

 I got into a tussle in the mid game and almost got wiped out but other players then left me alone - seeing my diminished clan as no threat which left me to quietly expand into territories and be mostly left alone. 2 players then got into a big scuffle and I looked on helpless as I realised that I was fulfilling 1 victory condition but at that moment the other experienced player got into a fight - when he moved he fulfilled 2  victory conditions but he miscalculated and got into a fight that ended in him only fulfilling 1 - we were tied and neither could claim victory.

 During the next round the other player became the Brenn and now had 1 victory condition and the tie breaker, I was still fulfilling 1 condition so was due to lose and then had a moment of brilliance, I had a card that let me place a new area on the map, still meant I only had 1 victory condition but the next card I had would let me move into the capital and have 2 win conditions!!! If no one noticed I would be fine, I passed a turn in the hope that everyone wasted valuable actions and got lucky, another fight broke out and cards were discarded, no one could counter my move. On the last action of the game I moved into the capital, fulfilled 2 victory conditions and the round ended. 

 Notch up a win - despite having the least number of clans on the board. 

 

I love the fact that there's more to winning than brute strength, in fact a lot of the time fighting actually diminishes your ability, even if you "win" and still hold superior numbers. It's probably not a game for everyone but with our group I can see this one being played fairly regularly.

[LaParka]

Played in the name of odin last night. Typical light euro where you use action cards to do stuff. You have a hand of six cards and on each card there is two symbols. You play cards and using the combination of symbols can either recruit vikings, take a long ship, build a building or take a hero. 

 

Aim of the game is to go raiding for that you need a hero, the right combination of vikings and a boat. 

 

All of the sections link quite nicely to each and it's possible to pull off some nice combinations. So for example I built a jarl which made heros cheaper, my hero gave me free vikings and the boat I had gave me extra victory points for each raid. 

 

All in all it was enjoyable and I'd definitely play it again. There's a few odd choices in design though with some of the icons not being clear. Your player boars is flimsy paper instead of being a board. Looks like they spent the money on making viking miniatures just so they can say it had '100' figures on the box. But they aren't very good, very small, and often quite bent. They could have just had coloured cubes. 

 

Also played Evolution Climate. Oh God this was a doozy. You create an animal and give it traits. Those traits help you in feeding, or attacking or in defence. All your animals are herbivores unless you change it into a carnivore at which stage you can eat another animal (including your own).

 

Victory points are done by feeding your animals which goes up depending on the animals population. 

 

There's a board which dictates the temperature and cards played on it dictate how much available food there is. The temperature is important as the size of your animal could make it lose population. For example when it's cold smaller animals struggle and when it's hot, bigger ones do. 

 

When I was having the game explained I just thought 'eh'. But after a round it just clicked and it's all about getting those combos going. For example I had three animals. Animal 1 couldn't be eaten if the animal next to it was bigger, animal 2 couldn't be eaten if animal 3 was not bigger and animal 3 had a hard shell, cooling frills and some other stuff which gave it +7 in size and to attack it the attacker lost population and had to discard a card which made it a very unattractive meal. 

 

If I play it again I want to try more shenanigans and to try and eat a neighbour brilliant game and I'm going to try and grab a copy for myself. 

[revlob]

Last night I played Tiny Epic Western. The first of the Tiny Epic series I've played, a worker placement game involving poker and gunfights. You place your dudes on buildings, either receiving a small immediate reward of influence with one of three factions, or gambling on not being shot by the end of the round for a larger payout. Attempting to use the same spot as another player starts a gunfight, which is won or lost on the strength of your dice rolling, and delayed rewards are fought for using three-card poker hands. Influence earned can be spent on new buildings, which provide the victory points you'll need to win the game.

 

The thing about using poker hands as a mechanic, is that it's supposed to bring a bit of a take-that to the game. Someone gets smug about their impressive hand, then BAM, someone trumps them with royal bananas, or whatever it's called. The problem with TEW is that often hands are revealed during play, which removes any surprise, and when it does come to comparison at the end of the round, you end up resolving about eight different hands with different rules, which removes the tension from the process.

 

Luck plays a very strong part of the game, with the cards you are dealt determining which areas you can likely win, and shootouts being determined by dice rolls. You can mitigate a bad hand somewhat, by placing a worker on the card modifier actions, but that takes away from your ability to earn resources. Dice rolls can be bolstered by revealing your poker hand, which would be interesting if by that point in the game there were any point to keeping it a secret.

 

The presentation is quite nice, and there are a range of different buildings which give you a variety of different actions to perform between games, but I wasn't really sold on the theme and prefer less randomness in my worker placement games. Not a fan. I hear the Tiny Epic series is a mixed bag, with Galaxies supposed to be one of the better ones. I like the idea of big games in small boxes, not convinced Tiny Epic Western does it very well though.

[Professor Rob]

Galaxies is the only one I've played, and I can recommend it – it packs a decent amount of strategy gameplay into the box. Good solo mode against a choice of different robot players, too. I kickstarted Tiny Epic Quest on the strength of it.

[Hexx]

Elysium

 

Rather liked this. During rule explanation sounded overly complicated - but actually it's not that simple when up and running.

 

The combination of pillars, gold, VP and "moves" worked really well.  Surprising mix of strategies for points as well - with some gods (i.e. card sets) we didn't play with this time so even more options for future games.

 

3 new players and the final scores where 41, 42 and 46 as well. No one knew I'd won trill we tallied and no one thought it was that close.

[LaParka]

Picked up a copy of Hanabi because amazon were selling the deluxe version cheap. It's got big tarot size cards and card holders. Makes it easier for my kids to keep hold of the cards.

 

Its gone down really well. Played it quite a few times and once with my kids and the mother in law and she loved it too. The beauty in seeing everyone's cards but your own and having to remember the clues given to you. It's been hard trying to teach my kids about trying to be efficient with their clues and why you would tell people about certain cards instead of someone else. 

 

In the game with my mother in law we actually completed all rows of fireworks, which was very surprising. And even though they achieved that, they still want to play it. 

 

We also continued diving into carcassonne. Base game carcassonne is a family favourite. The girls love the princess and the dragon expansion because they can eat my meeples. They can take or leave the other two expansions though. We've also got over hill and dale which has a vegetable collecting theme but it's not as popular as base game. 

 

That being said, we've now got a firm favourite in carcassonne south seas. It was very well received.

 

This differs by not having a score track instead you collect shells by completing bridges (roads) bananas by completing islands (cities) and fish by fishing (farming). At the end of your turn if you have the right goods you trade them in for a ship which has points on it. A treasure island works like a cloister and when completed you choose any ship you want without paying goods. 

 

It works well because each turn, the girls were working towards one ship so it narrowed their choices and stopped them feeling overwhelmed. It also had that instant gratification of trading goods for points. You also only have four meeples and if you don't place a meeple you can take a guy off an unfinished section without losing him for the game. Base carcassonne always had moments where you place a guy and then just not be able to complete a section and it becomes a limit on your future potential choices. 

 

When my oldest was out, me and the youngest played Camel Up with the photography module and the extra dice. She loves this game because it's chaotic and the way you get dice out of the pyramid is awesome. We played the straight module rules for dice and just added the last camels dice to the pyramid each leg, instead of putting dice back in after a turn. 

 

Even though the course was longer, it didn't make it feel any more longer than the base game. It also made the last leg really unpredictable with me going all in on orange which was first and then blue (with extra dice I forgot about) moving 5 places in two turns to cross the line! 

 

Also played Ivor the engine. I really want to like this game. The theme is lovely, the artwork is true to the source and the designer is responsible for Snowdonia and Guilds of London. But it's just meh. 

 

I've got 7 wonders duel sitting next to the pile to try next. Going to see if the oldest (she's 9) will be able to wrap her head round it. She's played normal 7 wonders, but more like she understood the rules but not any actual strategy so she tanked in points. 

 

Oh and Onirim is on ios and Android. It's one of my favourite solitaire games and the app is absolutely lovely. It's only 99p so everyone should buy it. 

 

[Alexlotl]

Hanabi is a fascinating psychological experiment where a group of people establish, through indirect communication and implication, the maximum level of cheating/rule bending they will tolerate to succeed at an arbitrary task.

I quite like it.

[revlob]

I need to try Hanabi again. I've played my copy twice, with different groups, and both times it sank like a lead balloon. Nobody I played with seemed to be able to muster any enthusiasm for it, which is a shame, because I'm sure there's an enjoyable game in there.

[Hexx]

I like Hanabi - but often it can become a social experiment "Will this group of people forgive Person A when they fuck up?"

[LaParka]

Onirim. The shuffling gets tedious very quickly so I hardly play my physical copy. Since the app has come out I've played it about 20 times (winning percent of 33%). 

 

It's really good and just confirmed my love for it. Hopefully they get the expansions done quickly as the base game is more like a tutorial 

[Hexx]

Arkham LCG Miskatonic Museum

 

Was a little disappointed by this (first "pack" I've done solo - did Carnival of Terror at games night and it seemed much more meaty)

 

The Hunting Horror mechanic seemed interesting (the main new feature of the expac), but due to solo play and limited encounter draw it barely got involved in the game at all which might affect my experience.

But after the great 2 (and interesting mechaniced) scenarios in TDL pack, was disappointing.

 

It doesn't help that Ashcan Pete is a beast (using the basic suggested deck with 1 or 2 upgrades)

 

You better believe I kept the thing at the end...

 

[Mortis]

Picked up a copy of Scoville the other week, loved this when I tried it on Tabletop Sim and it's even better having a big pile of wooden chilli resources on the table. Takes an hour to play and is nice and simple to explain. Bid for stuff in the auction house, choose where you go in turn order Highest > lowest bid, plant a chilli in the grid adjacent to an already planted chilli, harvest in reverse turn by moving your farmer along the grid of planted chillies 3 spaces and collect the colour of chilli that corresponds to the colour on the chart (red and yellow give an orange, red and blue give a purple etc, 2 secondary colours give a white or black and a white + black give a "phantom") then in turn order fulfill actions from the market (sell chillies for $, make a tasty chilli recipe from the hand that's dealt or sell chillies for money)

 Everything is done in secret and at the end of the day (when the market or recipes < number of players) you add up victory points from cards, cash and bonus tiles),

 There's loads of opportunities to mess with the other players (blocking off on the board, planting chillies to stop them getting a combo they wanted etc and it scales nicely to 6 so I can see this being a popular one at the game group.

[Mortis]

Played Riff Raff tonight at the game group. It went down a storm. 

 It's a dexterity game with the best table presence - a wildly swaying wooden boat and 8 pieces per player of varying shapes and sizes to place on without tipping. 

Everyone draws a card from the numbered deck and then has to place a piece on the corresponding area, if it tips you can attempt to catch what falls and that stuff is removed from the game - anything that lands on the table you put in your pile to add. 

 We ended up with a crowd of magic and dice masters players standing watching as we gently tried to pile crap on the masts and deck - the first time any game I've played had drawn so much attention from onlookers. 

[LaParka]

Finally got to play Power Grid and it was awesome. Took about 3 hours and we played on the Europe map (Benelux?). Like all good Euros, every part of the game is relatively simple. Start with an auction, buy some resources which gradually cost more, buy a city and then use your resources to power those cities. Simple. But getting them all to work together and having the resources and the money to do it is not so simple. 

 

One chap went off on his own in one corner of the map. Because it was a six player,  the map filled up really quickly. He went from paying £12-15 for a city to having to pay about £35 in the first few rounds. 

 

And turn order can really hinder you. It's based on the amount of cities you've built and then how good your plant is. Do really well in that regards and you're going last at buying resources (which are now really expensive) and buying cities (oh, they're all gone!). 

 

The other players had all played it before but this was the first time with this map and they all said that it was a really good game. Three hours just zipped by. Now I know what I'm doing, I'd love to play it again. And I finished joint third (tiebreaker is cash and I had the same as another player). 

[Nicky]

Has anyone here played Wings of Glory? basically the simpler original X-Wing where movement isnt done by a ruler, but each warplane has a small movement deck of cards with different built in speeds and maneuvers losely based on the aircrafts gneral agility and power. its quite elegant. you program your 3 maneuvers at the start of the round. Damage is handled via damage decks A B C etc. A being the most damaging, B next powerful etc. so your warplane may be fast, but in turn have shit guns.

damage is always hidden from the person doing the shooting, so you never know how much damage you're doing until they die.  many of the damage cards will also have 0 damage on them too, so you could get 6 shots on your opponent and all could be zero damage.  It's really really good.

plus the miniatures are all pre-painted like in X Wing.

 

 

 

[LaParka]

The only thing I know about wings of glory is xwing ripped it off and the designer of wings of glory is still salty about it. 

[Nicky]

from what i read, he agreed to work with FF to use the ruleset of WoG, and they said sure we'll put your name on the box, then they renegged on it all and did their own thing. either way, its a really beautifully implemented ruleset, rather than the increasing complexity of Xwing.

[LaParka]

Yeah, they said they'd work together, then the company he worked for went under so they cancelled and said they're going in a different direction and then released xwing as an eerily similar game. Bit shitty of FFG. The guy even said the money he was going to get from it was pretty small, just the way they did it was dodgy.

[RFT]

I've started getting into Wings of Glory - the WW2 version (WGS). There's a new starter set with 2 Spitfires and 2 Bf109s, which I got a couple of weeks ago. I then bought a playmat and 2 more planes (Hurricane and stuka)

 

 

 

While there are certainly similarities between it and X-wing, the differences are quite significant once you start playing and you can see why FFG decided to go in a bit of a different direction, because WGS wouldn't suit itself to a tournament-focused game with up to 8 ships per side (and for that Star Wars feel, you need to be able to field a swarm of tie fighters)

 

WGS's harder planning (you plan your moves a turn further ahead) mean that controlling more than two aircraft is a real headache. There are no "actions" as there are in x-wing, so your decisions each turn are simply choosing your move and, if you're lucky enough to have two targets in arc, choosing what you shoot at. X-wing gives you a lot of decisions per turn (planning, action, target selection spending tokens)

 

The chit-drawing for damage does even out some of the variance that x-wing's dice add, but equally, there's less drama - there's something less exciting about pulliung some "zero" damage chits instead of your spitfire pilot heroically rolling a couple of evades to dodge the incoming fire.

 

The cards are much fiddlier to use, and less precise, than X-wing's templates, but WGS's cards have 2 important advantages, being that you can have much more variation in mobility (you can have a unique "template" set per aircraft) and you can also restrict access to powerful moves by limiting the number of them in the deck (the spitfire has a hard turn the 109 doesn't but it only has one in each direction, so you can't pull two in a row)

 

This sounds like I don't like it much, but I really do- and I decided to get into it as I'm suffering a bit of X-wing burnout, but it's clear that a pure Wings-based x-wing would not have been the success that X-wing has been. Wings feels much more like a sim- the advanced planning and the less maneuverable planes (that hard turn on the spit is 60 degrees) make them feel heavier, where as in x-wing you're zipping about the place much more quickly, the actions give you more to do, and the base nubs/templates make movement more precise which helps both beginners and in the tournament setting where agreed exact positioning is important.

 

Wings has a small but enthusiastic community and where it looks like shining is a more narrative/mission based game, something that x-wing is sadly lacking. you can play big games faster (because nearly all activation/firing is simultaneous) with multiple players per side, each flying one or two aircraft.

 

Oddly, the things in x-wing that the designer seems most annoyed about (I've been reading the big Wings forum for a few weeks) don;t seem to make much sense. he seems mostly angry about the fact that x-wings turns are 45 and 90 degrees, as if those were some sort of unique thing, and that there's the k-turn/immelmann which he says doesn't make sense in a star wars setting, which is logic I can't really fathom.

[Nicky]

I chose the ww1 version of wog mainly due to the people I play with aren't wargamers or fans of massively complex rules. I personally am a huge star wars fan but they aren't either. So I'm hoping wog acts as a sort of gateway for both. So far, i think its working. I might be up to 15 warplanes already with another two rare ones on their way over from Italy..... Fuck.

 

I'll post my fleet soon. Gotta love WW1's blatant disregard for sensible paint schemes on their arcraft.

[Hexx]

Arkham: Curse of Rougarou

 

Mechanically this was brilliant, but I gained no XP for campaign so 'net loss', plus I can't see how I can do 5 more campaign

scenarios with the scars from here

 

I went for what I thought was the 'good' ending - working hard with the mechanics.

But now I'm chuffin cursed for the campaign. And that weakness is horrid for single player - very very easy for there to be nothing spawned.

 

Tempted to ignore it and just play on, that's how screwed I feel SP

[Alex W.]

Mr. Jack Pocket is great, although four of the cards had been punched in odd ways that might make it easy to guess who Jack is unless we studiously ignore them.

 

Then I tried to explain One Deck Dungeon to my wife and I sounded like a madman. Every basic rule has a caveat or exception or side effect. We dropped it after one floor.

[Mystacon]

I've been playing Libertalia the past couple of days. It's great, especially when you can get more players involved. I particularly enjoy holding cards back until later rounds once others have already played theirs

 

Was disappointed to see it's already tough to get hold of in the UK unless you're willing to pay almost £60 though, so luckily as I'm in the US at the moment I got it for about $35 on Amazon.

[Benny]

Gloomhaven. I've got an update coming to my top 20 or so games buyer's guide thread, as I have to say, it could be the greatest board game I've ever played... Ever.

[LaParka]

Played a few games over the Easter break and hopefully get some more in today. 

 

Ticket to Ride - UK map 

Picked up the UK map for  Ticket to Ride. I love TTR, the beauty in its simplicity, the feeling of putting trains onto the track and who doesn't like trains? The base (Europe) is quite simple and after a few plays can be a bit run of the mill. 

 

The UK map adds technology cards so at the start you can only build small routes until you acquire the to build bigger. We played the pennsylvania map which adds stocks in companies. When you complete a route, the route will list companies that you can take stocks in, and you get to choose one. At the end of the game whoever has the most stocks in one company gets xx points, second player gets xx points etc. 

 

Adds a nice little wrinkle to the base game. Instead of taking route cards when you've completed your three starting routes you could go for stocks instead. The biggest company is worth 30 points for being first for example. And of course having a different map is always good. 

 

7 Wonders Duel  - taught my 9 year old how to play last week and we've played it a few times. My 7 year old wanted a go so me and her played as a team against the 9 year old. 

 

In Duel you can win by three ways. Military, science or points at the end. Military and science end the game immediately. We were absolutely trouncing her and she hadn't got her resources sorted in the earlier rounds so was discarding cards fairly often. I wasn't paying attention though and in the third age she won by science as her built wonder gave her a science symbol to take her over the threshold! 

 

Carcassonne South Seas (with Friday expansion) - I love carcassonne and so does my kids. It has entry level accessibility to it, but underneath it there is this incredibly tactical puzzle. 

 

Anyway. South Seas is a standalone variant and the first thing you spot is that there is no score track. Instead, you get points for delivering goods to ships (which are worth points). You obtain goods by the usual carcassonne methods. Clams are obtained by completing bridges (roads), bananas by completing island's (cities) and fish by fishing (farming). The other difference is that the amount that receive is dependent on what's printed on the tile. Not every piece of road, island or sea will show a goods image. 

 

The other difference is that you only have four meeples to place. Which makes it quite a tight game. The rules do let you remove a meeple from an unfinished feature if you didn't place a meeple on your turn. But that's not very efficient at getting you points. 

 

The expansion mixes it up by having a separate island which is constructed in set intervals (every ten tiles, one is turned over) and Friday stands on a new tile. The tile he is on is then active and has an affect on the game. So for example one tile is +1 banana for when you take a banana, another is -1 to goods traded in. 

 

I really enjoy this version. Not having a scoring track is enough of a change to justify having this and the base game. Not sure if I'd play it with Friday as routine as it does increase set up and the rules for essentially a very simple game. 

 

Splendor  - my youngest has understood the rules to this now and as such, she's asked to play it quite often. Probably helped by the fact that her first game she played she absolutely trounced everyone!

 

I do like it as an entry game and wouldn't turn down a game, but it's starting to wear a bit thin. Be interesting to see what the expansion adds to it. 

 

Caverna  

 

Played a solo game of Caverna. I definitely feel the need to own this and Agricola as they're similar and yet very different. Agricola is very punishing, in Caverna there are quite a few ways to feed your family. Still trying to work out how to get to 100 points though

 

Need to convince the wife to play it as having to compete for action spaces will make it more difficult. 

23 minutes ago, Benny said:

Gloomhaven. I've got an update coming to my top 20 or so games buyer's guide thread, as I have to say, it could be the greatest board game I've ever played... Ever.

 

You're not helping! 

[Benny]

Public Enemy were wrong.

[Exit Chamber]

Finally got round to playing Viticulture with the Mrs last night. Loved it.

 

It's just enough of a step up in complexity from what we've been playing recently that she got her head round it quickly and we had a really close game which I won by two points due to a last turn purchase order.

 

Finished at half eleven and were pretty close to starting another game immediately, which is always a good sign

[LaParka]

Railroad Revolutions - oh boy, this was awesome fun. I'm not smart enough to work out the apparent OP strategy on my first play but we did play with the amended cash totals to stop it being a thing. 

 

RR is a worker placement game where you have four action spaces in which to lay rails, build stations, build telegraphs and sell materials. Each sections does roughly different things for example Telegraphs are centred around giving you shares which are used when you need to make deals and building stations is how you acquire workers. 

 

What makes it that step up in complexity is that each action space is surrounded by four other options if you use a different coloured worker (which you have to acquire through other spaces). For example, if you use an orange worker to build a station, he lets you build it for free. A gray worker lets you get the build station bonus twice. So each action space can be used five different ways. 

 

Along side these spots there is also three tracks which increase the value of your buildings, rail network and telegraph network. You're also completing contract cards, which you discard workers to achieve. 

 

This constant need to get new workers (in particular colours), send workers away, build stations and lay track (which costs money), have enough shares for deals is a real brain burner. You want to make sure you don't have any wasted actions by being caught short or by having to sell equipment. 

 

What did surprise me was how quickly it played. Once we got the rules explanations out of the way it flowed pretty quickly. End game is triggered when you deplete your stations and track and like all good games, you don't have quite enough to complete all your plans. 

 

Looking forward to playing this one again. 

 

 

Detroit Cleveland Grand Prix - older game but pretty fun. Racing game where you get a hand of ten cards. Each card has a colour and a number which is how far a particular car moves. You look at your hand, see what you've got the most of and try and bid for that colour car. 

 

You start the game with 200k which you use for the aforementioned bidding part. You then take your car and the race starts. On your turn, you play a card and move all cars in the order of the card. 

It's controlled chaos. Sometimes the move doesn't benefit you at all, other times you can really screw your opponents. The track has a few bottlenecks and if you're caught up in it, it can take some fancy driving to get through it. 

 

Game is three races and at the end of each your race the winner gets 200k all the way down to last who gets 10k. I finished with 180k....

 

The game looks really dated (1996!), but with a face-lift, this could do really well. Not as uncontrolled as Camel Up, but not a po faced racing game. Three races did go slightly long, but there was 6 of us. 
 

[Hexx]

Mystic Vale

 

Well this was a delightfully cute variation of a deck building game.

(You're druids trying to make the best farm or something :))

You draw a number of cards from your deck to give a field that you're trying to grow, and you spend mana on various upgrades to those cards (slotting them in their sleves)

You then redrawn, repeat and reshuffle when you need to.

Building up a better and better plot.

Seemed quite hard to play tactically (our first game scores were 11, 20 and 30...I've no idea what I did to do 3x as well as someone else) but it's thematically cute and quick moving.