That’s two thirds of the year done.
We’ve had another Instagram meet up, a ButtonShy delivery to finally end the Kickstarter drought, a challenge complete, and a review milestone to name a few good things this August.
KICKSTARTER ARRIVALS
Despite the potential for 13 possible crowd funded games to arrive before August 31st, only three did.
Well, technically four as the first was a double ButtonShy campaign for RIVER WILD and ANCIENT REALM. These Kickstarter’s are always pretty reliable due to their small scale, and it was only a fortnight later than the original expected date.
The next was POINT CITY, the follow up to it’s Salad based older brother from Flatout Games and AEG. While it follows the same basic mechanics with cards being double sided, this time it adds a little SPLENDOR to it all with engine building.
And finally the biggest of the bunch was the CURSED THRONE expansion for NIGHT OF A HUNDRED YOKAI. This is a set of extras for the base game, sort of modules, I guess. I was looking forward to it most for having the new storage tray to hold the base game and all expansions. And while it was designed for that, it doesn’t really work that well. But the game itself is good and I’m looking forward to adding more ways to play.
NEW GAMES OF THE MONTH (including our 52×1)
First new game of the month is one I can’t win despite my love of all things Superhero and dice. KAPOW! from Wise Wizard Games is a head-to-head dice battler with the slight feel of DICE THRONE but being a little different in how you use dice to attack. While you still have a board with available moves on it, rounds start simultaneously, with the attack and defence being selected in secret. It’s pretty good fun, and moves at a nice pace.
I skipped LEGACY OF YU at Kickstarter phase, but when people started posting about it during its fullfilment, it coincided with my slow desent into solo gaming. With the potential for 7-13 plays in this resetable campaign, I’m currently facing nothing but losses as I try to figure the game out. It’s all about resource managment as you are ‘attacked’ from all angles. It’s super tight, and a single bad choice can see you spiral towards a negative ending. Hopefully I’ll get the hang of it soon.
On the 12th we headed to Banbury for our second Instagram group meetup of 2023. Once we had a handful of people just 10 minutes after arriving, we all flocked together and played ZUULI. I see this posted a lot and have always wanted to try it. I tag it as Sushi Go Nova as it has the draft and pass mechanic of SUSHI GO! with the animal collecting and zoo building of ARK NOVA. It’s cute and plays quick over it’s three rounds, but I found myself constantly having to reread all of my cards scoring conditions. Perhaps after several plays things will stick and I’d be able to plan better. Need to play more.
After our five player game of SCYTHE we were taught VAALBARA. I liked this one with it’s drafting mechanic similar to LIBERTALIA. Each round players put down one of their cards, each with a special ability with it’s own conditions. Then the cards are revealed, and going lowest to highest card, players draft land cards, with each of type of these having a different scoring condition. I like that you can see the next rounds land cards, giving you the chance to plan a little way ahead. And the art work is nice too.
I really enjoy the original LOVE LETTER as a small, fun caerd game but I’ve not really branched out into the variants. So I was super excited to try LOVECRAFT LETTER and it did not dissappoint. With it’s extra insanity mechanic causing cards to potentially have extra powers if you’ve started to lose your grip, plus fantasic artwork and a great box, this is an amazing version of the original.
A games day with family saw this gem being brought to the table. SENIOR MOMENTS is a basic game pulled straight from the 80’s, with Roll and Move as it’s backbone mechanic and question cards around every corner. It struggled to be taken serious. Yet we had a lot of fun because of how silly it was. And at the end of the day, fun is what the hobby should be about.
The first of my August Kickstarter arrivals was RIVER WILD, an 18 card game from the folks over at ButtonShy Games. And it was . . . okay. It plays a little like SPRAWLOPOLIS (same designer) with you chosing a card and expanding the map, which in this case is a fantastical river instead of a city. If you create complete islands then you’ll be able to score point, if you planned well. It fell a little flat with me, and passed by quick.
The ButtonShy Kickstarter was for two games, and the second was ANCIENT REALM. Somehow this puts a Civ game into 18 cards, and it does it well. Each turn is a tough choice of having to give up something that could score points so that you can get resources to hopefully build something better. Of the two, this left an inprint on me, and I look forward to more crunchy plays of it.
While trying to ease of on adding games to a collection is tough, sometimes a small box game can help a little. On a shopping trip a few months ago, STRUGGLE FOR CATAN was this for me. And it’s weird, becasue I really don’t enjoy the original CATAN. But this compact card only version was a lot of fun. Part of this comes from an open market. This meant that if I couldn’t trade, I still had options. And the tug of war between the Knight and Road cards still left the game with a cutthroat edge. It was fun at two, but I’d definitely want to try it at four.
Following a messy Kickstarter game for one of the later Mint games, I’d ended up putting all four to one side when they eventually turned up and had kind of forgotten about them. But with more effort to work though our untouched Kickstarter games, MINT WORKS was next on the list. And it’s okay. Nothing amazing, with most of it’s dazzle coming from what it can accomplish out of such small storage. But it very much felt like the first player was leading the way and mostly at an advantage from the off, at least in a 2-player game. More plays needed.
We really like POINT SALAD, a game that oozes simplicity and lets us teach it to most of our gamer groups no matter the skill level. POINT CITY takes the formula, twists it a little, and adds a spoonful of SPLENDOR to be something one level up. Spend those card resources to buy buildiungs giving you perminant resources. And then, just as you think you won’t need cards again, the buildings level up, giving more and costing more. Fun at two, but another that I’m itching to play at four.
With YAHTZEE finally falling into our collection earlier this year, the next ‘classic’ game to step before us and ask why we hadn’t played it yet was RUMMIKUB. A passing comment about games to a work colleague saw him bringing his copy in to teach me. 48 hours later I stumbled aross it in the Dicdot Waterstones and added it to our collection. Ali picked it up quick and now we have another golden oldie for when we want relaxing gaming with minimal set up.
PAN AM has been in our collection for almost 3 years. One of many games picked up during the Great Pandemic Spending Spree of 2020. But with our 52×1 challenge coming to a close for this year, we decided to make the last few count and grab games that may actually have dust on them. And this was good. It’s potential is obviously at full player counts. At 2, we managed to avoid each other, which was good for the teach game. But it’s one we can both see getting more plays and staying in the collection. Glad I got it.
And the final new game of the month? The one that completed the 52×1 challenge for this year? Well, it was MAGE KNIGHT. It’s been a game I’ve had my eye on since falling into the hobby and I finally added it to the collection recently. With more time to myself it seemed good to end the challenge by myself, and on the last day of the month. But what about the game? Well, it’s good. I can see that immediately. But also overwhelming. I was playing along with a How To Play video for this first play, and it may be a few games before I can take off the stabalisers. But there is a fun adventure waiting for me to explore and I’m looking forward to digging deeper.
20×5 CHALLENGE
Our 2023 Challenge is going well. We have all the remaining games games at their final play now, so I think we’ll focus September on getting this complete. One I enjoyed ticking off was SCYTHE because the 5-player game that finished it was our first ever with more than just the two of us. Good to finally get that different experiance of the game.
HIGHLIGHTS
- Selling some more games to make more room.
- Posting my 100th Instagram review.
- Making it to PimpCon 2023.
- Finally playing SCYTHE at more than 2-player.
- Playing a lvl 20 D&D one-shot.
- Completing our 52×1 challange for another year.
Always Play Blue 