And with that, we’re a quarter of the way through the year. Time is flying fast.
Today we’ll take a look at the usual features, with an update on our 10×10 progress, discussing new games we’ve played, and once again see how much my girlfriend is kicking my butt in our annual 1vs1 challenge.
10×10 UPDATE
After a slower push on our 10×10 last month, we seem to be back on form during March. And more importantly, we crossed the 50% mark. Already! After last years performance, we seem to be much improved. And the great thing is that we love the games on our list.
My girlfriend’s theory was that some of last year’s games were a chore (looking at you, WAR OF THE RING). But these are all games we knew we liked going in, and there’s never a feeling of “guess we should do another 10×10 game”. We’re always excited to play one of them.
My girlfriend decided it was a good time to twist the knife and finally took away the one game I was looking at having a 100% record on. I seem to be pretty good at STAR REALMS, sometimes pulling off a win when I’m near death and looking to lose. But it seems I’ve become complacent with the base game.
After purchasing a lot of STAR REALMS content at the UKGE last year, we finally got around to trying some of it this month. And it seems that the Colonies set plays more to my girlfriend’s strengths as she got her first victory of the year. We then decided to go straight into another game and try the Frontiers cards instead, and I came out on top. But the damage was already done, as my blue streak got red on it.
So what better time for me to ruin my girlfriend’s last two unbroken runs this year than by finally winning WINGSPAN, and getting my first 2022 win of LOST RUINS OF ARNAK. Of course, the award for ‘Best Supporting Expedition Leader goes to . . . The Captain, who also assisted me in getting a personal best of Anrak, score of 89. Pretty chuffed with that.
We now sit at 55% for our 10×10 challenge this year. If we keep this pace up, we’ll be done by the 2022 half way point.
NEW GAMES OF THE MONTH
It looked to be another slow month for getting new games to the table. But our anniversary weekend, crossed with some cancelled plans, meant we had a three days where we got a fair few new games done.
While out and about at the beginning of the month, we found that Game have branched into all sorts of geeky things, and that includes board games. While we didn’t want to get anything big or expensive, I did spot a copy of KINGDOMINO DUEL for just £4.99. We played it a few days later and I lost with an embarressing score difference. But it’s a pretty fun little variation on KINGDOMINO and falls into our new love of the Roll ‘n’ Write genre.
Next up was the quite delayed GLOW. If you follow me on Instagram or watch my YouTube unboxings, you’ll know that I’m a sucker for art. GLOW was a game that I preordered last summer based solely on the art work. I had no idea what type of game it was or how it played. But after our first couple of plays this month, I’m glad I got it. It’s a nice little dice rolling and card drafting game where you gather creature buddies and use their abilites with the dice to travel further and further across the land. It’s easy to teach and doesn’t outstay its welcome. And just writing this makes me want to play it again.
For our anniversary last year we played an Exit game, and so we decided to do it again this year. We picked EXIT: THE CEMETERY OF THE KNIGHT. It took about 20 minutes to regret it. We had fun with the previous two we’d played, but this one just annoyed us. We got stumped a lot. And when we felt forced to get clues or even cave in and look at solutions, we just felt irritated by the vaguness of the puzzle and clues. We still have two left in our collection, but have agreed that Exit games are not for us.
When it came to our anniversary, we visited our FLGS for an afternoon of boardgaming heaven. We didn’t see the point in only playing games we already owned, so it became about new games that we could learn easily. I also leaned towards games on our Top 100 Scratch poster.
So we ended up trying STONE AGE, which is a classic worker placement I’ve wanted to try for a while now. I spotted the Anniversary Edition on a shelf and we played the original version. It took a restart after we played things a little wrong (the rules were missing and we only had a word doucment to go by), but once we got going, it was a really great game. A couple of different paths to take. And a little luck needed when gathering resources. Would like to play it again, and with higher player count too.
After that we got FIVE TRIBES to the table. I almost bought this a while ago, but was put off by the bidding mechanic. But it turned out it’s not as bad as I thought, and quite unintrusive in a 2-player game. It’s different to other games we’ve played. I like the planning about which meeples you pick, what you drop, and where you end up. Another one with various paths to victory. Would like to play again, also with higher count. And am thinking about adding it to the collection. I have a soft spot for Days Of Wonders games.
And with only 30 minutues left, we hastily tried PATCHWORK DOODLE. We’re big fans of the original, but we’ve never played any of the variations. It didn’t go well, partly because I was trying to speed learn and speed teach. Made a few mistakes and it only clicked in the final round. But despite that, I don’t think it’s one I’d look to play again.
The rest of our new plays were in the last week. We treated ourselves to a co-op as an anniversary gift and now own the second Forbidden game. FORBIDDEN DESERT is similar enough to Island to make it easy to learn, but has a few new mechanics to make it a little more interesting.
We’ve also continued expanding our Roll ‘n’ Write sub collection, and tried THREE SISTERS for the first time. It’s a little more complex than others we’ve played, but just as much fun. And by complex, I don’t mean difficult. It just has more decisions than games like GANZ SCHON CLEVER or ROLLING REALMS.
And finally, we played DOMINION, a game I’ve heard great things about, and have owned for about a year now. Deck building is my second favourite mechanic (after worker placement) and this is the grandaddy of them all. It’s got a nice quick pace to it, even with us having to learn the specific card abilities. It really flowed, and I like that you can all see the end game coming, that it’s not suddenly leaving your plan half finished. You might have to pivot, but you’re not off guard. I feel like we’re going to be playing this a lot in the future.
1vs1 CHALLENGE 2022
The challenge still isn’t going my way, but I have made my first real dent in my girlfriend’s dominance. In the final week or so, I managed to get a 7 win streak, which began with my first LOST RUINS OF ARNAK win of the year, took in three new games, and ended with LEGENDARY FORESTS.
As it stands now, she is still 19 wins ahead of me though. Still nine months to go.
Current score: (Me) 80 vs 99 (Girlfriend)
(Clarification: co-op wins count as a point to both)
NEW ARRIVALS
Once again, space is a premium, but games still have a way of finding their way into our collection. We made a bit more effort this month to get new games to the table quickly, hence why several of these are also in our list of new played games.
ISLE OF CATS: KITTENS + BEASTS – One of my girlfriend’s backed Kickstarters turned up in all it’s white box glory. We love the base game (was on our 10×10 last year) so she didn’t hesitate to grab the expansions. Now I just need to put together that insert.
KINGDOMINO DUEL – We really enjoy the original, and we’re getting more and more into Roll ‘n’ Writes, so when we saw this for £4.99, it was a no-brainer.
TUSSIE MUSSIE EXPANSION COLLECTION – We love TUSSIE MUSSIE and I keep backing the ButtonShy campaigns on Kickstarter. This gives us more flowers and the ability to play solo.
GLOW – This was one of those games that I wanted as soon as I saw the game art. This English language version was delayed several times, but it eventuallly turned up and we got it to the table pretty quick upon arrival.
MARVEL UNITED X-MEN – I back a fair few Kickstarters, but I’ve never gone ‘All In’ on something big . . . until now. I almost backed the original MARVEL UNITED the previous year, but I’m now glad I didn’t as I couldn’t have justifed both. And I’ll always be an X-Men fan first.
THREE SISTERS – We’re slowly expanding our our Roll ‘n’ Write collection, and I managed to pre-order this one about two weeks before it was released. I still want to go back and try FLEET: THE DICE GAME, but I couldn’t resist getting this when it showed up.
MARVEL CHAMPIONS: RISE OF THE RED SKULL – I’ve started to get back into MARVEL CHAMPIONS, and I had room in my big storage box for one more campaign, so I went with the first one. Some more villains to fight, and a couple of interesting heroes to try out.
FORBIDDEN DESERT – With space lmited, we agreed no to buy each other games for our anniversary this year. The girlfriend said we shoujld just buy one as a joint gift, and then she had the cute idea of making it a co-op. We enjoy FORBIDDEN ISLAND, and I’ve always wanted to try FORBIDDEN DESERT after seeing the TableTop video.
HIGHLIGHTS
- Hit my 25th Blues Review on Instagram (with KING OF TOKYO).
- We crossed 50% in our 10×10 for this year.
- Managed to get on the leaderboard for WINGSPAN at our FLGS.
- We started chapter 3 of Lost Mine Of Phandelver. Really getting into D&D.
Always Play Blue 