And that was February 2023

Another fun month of gaming was had as we chiped away at our two challenges.

We also met up with our good gaming buddies for the first time in months, and I also got back to gaming with work collagues.

KICKSTARTER ARRIVALS

With our increasing sub collection of Roll ‘n’ Write games, and our enjoyment of THREE SISTERS, it didn’t take much to convince me to back MOTOR CITY, the next in the seires from Motor City Games. It’s once again a two sheet Roll ‘n’ Write, but this time it’s almost the complete opposite of a quiet garden, with players in charge of a car factory.

NEW GAMES OF THE MONTH (AKA 52×1)

The first new game of the month was DICE KINGDOMS OF VALERIA. This is a Roll ‘n’ Write game set in the Valeria universe, and a game that I backed on Kickstarter along with THRONES OF VALERIA (still not played yet) and SIEGE OF VALERIA (already one of my favourite solo games). Dice Kingdoms sits nicely with some of the bigger two sheet Roll ‘n’ Writes we enjoy like THREE SISTERS or DINOSAUR ISLAND: RAWR ‘N’ WRITE. What I like about this one is that the colour of the dice you choose on your turn determines what area of the sheets you’ll be working towards. It also has that SPACE BASE or VALERIA CARD KINGDOMS mechanic of having an effect based on a pair of dice results. It starts slow but quickly escaltates as you chain moves together. And there are Statue cards that give you end of game scoring, but they are available to choose from, meaning you pick one and then work you strategy around it. So not every player is racing towards the same finish line.

After a new Kickstarter turns up, we make a real effort to get it played quick, and that’s what happened with MOTOR CITY. The next in the series from Motor City Gameworks, following FLEET: THE DICE GAME, and THREE SISTERS, in MOTOR CITY players are running a car factory using Engineering, Production, Testing, and Sales tracks. There’s lots of crossing over of sections of the sheets as certain requirments in one section need to be reached in others. This caused us to struggle on our first play, as expected. While the game was easy to learn and get going, you sometimes need a full play to figure out how everything links together so that you can be productive. My first few turns were all over the place. But we enjoyed it, and will definitely be back for more now that we know how to plan better.

This next new game to us is not actually in our collection, though after a few plays, it has a good chance of joining us. We borrowed our friends copy of SAGRADA, a game I’d always wanted to try but never managed to. And it’s a lot of fun. It’s quick, meaning you can get right back into it. And it’s got variable set up for abilities and goal cards making it different each time. I found it tough to spot certain placement errors and was constantly putting down a dice that would screw up my board once I noticed it later. It took a few games before it all clicked and I managed a win. We even managed a five player game with family and that was a lot of fun too.

Next up is a game that is pretty old now, but I’ve not played it once my entire life. While in my local bookstore, I spotted YAHTZEE for the hundredth time, but instead of carrying on by, I decided we should give it a go. It’s small, it’s cheap. Why not? Well, despite how basic it may be, we’ve been playing it a lot. It’s so easy to chuck in a bag and just play alot anywhere. And the absoloute high from getting a Yahtzee on your first roll (I may have used an expletive in a place where I definitely should not have), is addictive. We’ve played once at a high player count, and I found this quite slow, but as a two player back and forth, it’s a great little filler game.

One of my all time favourite games is TOKAIDO. It was the one that really got me into the hobby. Unfortunately, it’s not great at two, so I don’t get to play it as often as I’d like. Which is why I was over the moon when a 2-player version was announced, and even more over the moon when we got the chance to try it out at UKGE 2023. So of course I preordered it the first chance I got, and as soon as TOKAIDO DUO turned up, we played it. It’s a really nice implimentation of the original with the same art and similar mechanics, but there’s a bunch of changes too that make it something else. From dice drafting to having mutliple scoring mechanics, it makes players consider each turn by being efficient across all three of their characters while not spreading too thin. We really like it.

And finally, with thanks to University Games UK for sending me a couple of games to review, we played RACCOON TYCOON. We already have LIZARD WIZARD which is a spiritual successor to RACCOON TYCOON, so learning the game was quite straight forward. The issue I’ve had with LIZARD WIZARD in the past is that the Kicstarter version we have is a massive table hog, so we never get the chance to play more than two. And at two, the bidding mechanic is terrible. Despite the bidding in RACCOON TYCOON still failing at the smallest player count (and not having player screens to hide your money like in it’s reptilian follow up) it’s board size and card size meant that we were able to rope some family in to play and it ended up being a really fun game. The bidding doesn’t stop at any point like in the 2-player variant. And it can get crazy which is so much fun when people are throwing cash at small rewards just to prevent someone getting a high scoring set. While I prefer the art and theme of LIZARD WIZARD, I think the more compact RACCOON TYCOON is going to get more plays when we have visitors.

20×5 CHALLENGE

January saw us tick of one play of each game to really get the ball running, but we took our foot off the gas for February. It is a whole year long challenge.

Saying that, we only have seven games that need their second play, so we didn’t exactly come to a grinding halt.

One evening saw back-to-back plays of WAYFARERS OF THE SOUTH TIGRIS followed by GREAT WESTERN TRAIL which was nearly four hours of gaming that saw my brain fried by the end.

HIGHLIGHTS

• 20 x 5 Challenge = 34%
• Deciding it was time to have ECLIPSE: SECOND DAWN OF THE GALAXY in our collection.
• Completing BOX ONE and being pleasantly surprised by it.
• Losing my third consecutive annual pre Superbowl game of DUNGEON BALL.
• Getting my first win at THE CASTLES OF BURGUNDY.
• Another awesome D&D One-Shot where I somehow came close to death. Again.