Catching up on Games (7/30/23)

Village Rails

We had more than enough time for a second game given how short Architects was. And funny enough, I think Village Rails took longer to play!

This is definitely one of those games that does a lot with very little. And it’s another really tight game. Money is always short! Even when you feel like you have a lot, it goes fast. You really get into this trap of making big plans for your routes that don’t quite come together. You might be putting all of your hope into a very specific card that might not come up or might get sniped by an opponent first. And it’s really tough knowing when to grab a Terminus card. Buy it early and sink money into it with no idea when you’ll get a return on it? Wait to grab it when the route is almost done but risk someone taking it?

I definitely enjoyed this one more than Architects.

Museum: Deluxe

It had been several years since we last played Museum. The original release was one of the first games my brother and I played with our friend. I don’t even remember what made me want to get this one back out. We played with a couple of modules too.

It’s an enjoyable set collection game but other than being very pretty, it doesn’t have anything that stands out. And while it had been a long time since we played, this replay reminded us of how random the card draws can be. I went at least half the game looking for something that just stopped coming up. Plan as I could, there just wasn’t any way to mitigate the luck enough.

It’s still fun but for its length, a little more control strategy would have been nice. But the changes from the original release were nice. Much better scoring cards. And apparently, one of the modules we used was heavily redone (we never played the original of it). Maybe another module will help with the luck mitigation. What an insane tablehog though.

Yedo: Deluxe Master Set (co-op)

My friend went on vacation and we helped take care of the cats, and as a perk, we had access to his games (with permission, of course). The first one was another go at Yedo co-op with some rule corrections. Even on my friend’s table, it felt like it barely fit. Part of that are the stupidly large (and mostly useless) player boards.

We played on an easier difficulty but with normal objectives. We had a much better idea of how to approach it this second time. Early on, we decided that I was closer to getting everything needed to kill the shogun, so that was the long-term plan. Meanwhile, my brother focused on points since I wouldn’t get any for killing the shogun.

It was a bit close. I almost didn’t have enough actions to kill the shogun in one turn, but a tea house character helped save the day. It was getting late because the game is still crazy long, so we sped through the last of it since we were pretty sure we had everything. A close win in some areas, and an easy win in others.

Earth

This was our second game of Earth, and I had hoped to use the advanced stuff, but my brother wanted to do one more game of basic.

Last time, I had scored a lot with my compost pile and a scoring card that earned my an extra point for each card in my compost. This time, things were very different. I had an engine focused on spending sprouts and replacing them and earning soil. A lot of my score came from scoring cards. It’s fun, but I really want to see how the advanced stuff changes things. My friend also has promo cards (seasons, I think?) that I want to try out.

Anno 1800

I’ve enjoyed Martin Wallace games so far, and this one looked interesting. I hadn’t ever played any of the Anno games (except one mobile game that actually wasn’t too bad) but I knew what the series was.

One thing I really appreciate about most of his designs is that the rules aren’t that complicated but the game has a lot of depth to it. It didn’t take long for us to get the hang of Anno 1800, and the turns move really smoothly. It also has a lot of positive interaction which is a plus for my brother. Figuring out the production chains and planning out the order to complete your cards is a fun puzzle, and big turns are very satisfying. We’ll be bringing this one out again soon.

League of Dungeoneers (tutorial combat only)

My brother and I had been looking forward to this one, so it was nice to finally get it to the table. We made our characters beforehand so we could dive right into the game.

It is unfortunate that rules and reference materials are a mess. Lots of errors and some bad organization. But we powered through it, looking up what we needed and fudging what didn’t have an answer. The tutorial fight is apparently supposed to be really tough, but we had lucky enemy spawns that made it a lot easier. The setup wasn’t quite how it’s written; my brother had watched videos on the game and used a setup he saw someone else use.

It’s pretty fun. It’s very similar to Warhammer RPG 2nd Edition which I’ve played a fair amount of, so I had no problem picking it up. Having tokens to mark status effects was also nice to have. My characters are a dwarf fighter (or warrior, I forget what it’s called) and a gnome alchemist, and my brother had a gnome rogue and elf wizard. The alchemist was able to do some tanking with the buckler while the dwarf soaked some damage from the bandit leader. It’s a pretty good team so far.

We ran out of time to do the dungeon part of the tutorial, and unfortunately, we haven’t had time to get it back to the table. Hopefully soon.

Everdell: The Complete Collection

This was going to Lisboa, but my friend had come back from vacation and wasn’t ready for something that heavy. My brother changed it to his second choice, but we played vanilla again. Expansions will have to wait.

It’s still a fun game, though it’s already feeling a little samey. We’ll definitely need to sprinkle in some expansions to keep things fresh. And I look forward to the expansion that removes that stupid tree and puts things flat so you can read them.

Castles of Burgundy: Special Edition

This time, we were going to play Gugong, but then this finally came in. So, of course, we had to play it.

We played with the acrylic tiles (miniature castles, though) to try them out first. The production is ridiculous, especially for a simple mid-weight Euro. There are some nice quality-of-life changes though like the bags for the different types of tiles and better player board layout. We had never played with the trade routes before, but it seems that the tiles for that were greatly improved over the original.

Since most of the modules are super simple, we just threw them in for next time. We also took a look at the miniatures. My friend bought the washed version which came out really nice. I was surprised by how light the minis are. And it doesn’t seem like they would be too bad to play with. However, the biggest downside, which we noticed after swapping the tiles with minis on our player boards, is they greatly increase the time for putting the game away. We’ll have to try them out for real to decide which are better. Kind of sad to see how thin the cardboard tiles were; was this on purpose to sell more acrylic/minis?

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