Catching Up on Games (6/25/25)

I’m trying to keep more caught up so there isn’t a giant backlog to go through. I think, given how much gaming we’ve gotten in this year, I might have to do this once a month! At least my solo gaming has been a bit quiet lately, so fewer of those this time, also making almost all of these multiplayer.

Lately, we’ve continued our mix of returning games and new games (new to us). We’ve also got some returning games but with different play modes. Overall, I think this was a good streak of gaming; no major duds.

Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth

My brother and I have continued our playthrough of the base campaign. I won’t cover ever session in detail. We’ve had a couple rough sessions, but haven’t lost any yet. We’ve also added quite a bit to our collection of trinkets and titles. During one of the scenarios, Legolas got absolutely pummeled early on and spent most of the game trying to slowly recover (eating food) and not die. We also successfully killed a big ol’ troll.

Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth: 9/10, I hope to get one of the other campaigns going this year. Maybe 2!

Unmatched Adventures

We came back to this one to try the aliens side. After playing competitive with the T-Rex, I had chosen the T-Rex as my character for co-op, so this was a strange match-up of characters.

We didn’t do particularly well. Part of it, is that the more players there are, the more chaotic the turn sequence gets. For each player, there’s a minion added, so the initiative deck gets bigger. It remains even, but with more cards in it for both sides, there’s a greater risk of one side going for multiple turns in a row. If it’s us, cool. If it’s the bad guys, we might be getting wrecked before we get any chance to react.

We might still try again at 3, but we all agreed, it’s probably better at 2 or solo just so the initiative deck isn’t as chaotic.

Unmatched: 8/10 Great head-to-head game.
Unmatched Adventures: 7/10 Not as good as head-to-head, and a bit chaotic at 3P.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

We haven’t played many of the Pandemic games (haven’t actually played the original), but the mechanics in this one seemed interesting. We failed our first attempt but quickly reset to try again. We won the second game after strategizing a bit more.

We all really like the card system in this one, but it felt a bit lighter than others in the series. It’s very easy moving around and helping each other. I’m sure there’s a variety of ways of increasing the difficulty, but I don’t think much will change the complexity (except maybe more complicated bad guys).

Now that there’s a Lord of the Rings version that seems to increase the complexity, that might be the one for us. Certainly a theme we’d enjoy more.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars: 7/10 (First Impressions) Pretty good, but maybe a bit lighter than we’d prefer for our co-ops.

Clinic: Deluxe

Here’s something new and different! This was my friend’s pick, and it’s one he’s had for a while. I didn’t really know anything about it, so didn’t have too much for expectations. Watching a playthrough to learn it, it looked pretty interesting. A crunchy business simulation with a hospital theme.

It’s certainly has some crunch with lots of placement rules for the tiles and pieces. Despite Ian O’Toole’s usually stellar graphic design, we did feel there was difficult iconography in a couple spots, and we all would have greatly preferred personal player-aids we could refer to instead of one central aid on the main board (which is up-side-down or side-ways depending on where you sit!). That alone made the game a lot more difficult to play than it should have.

Beyond usability issues (which weren’t major), it was a pretty neat game. I really enjoyed it, but my brother seemed a bit more lukewarm on it. There are lots of opportunities for people to take something you really wanted.

Clinic: 7/10? Maybe an 8? (First Impressions) Not sure yet, but I enjoyed our first play.

Xia + Expansions

Now that the missions and ship powers have come in, my brother wanted to get this back out to give them a try. Xia is much improved (again) with them.

Honestly, between the expansion and the new missions and powers, Xia really ought to be re-released as a single revised box with all the good stuff packed in. The original base game is just missing so much on its own. I would never recommend Xia unless you’re playing with the Embers expansion.

It’s still super random, though, but at least, once you get the hang of things, it doesn’t actually take as long as you’d expect. We’re down to around 2 hours or so? Maybe close to 90 minutes for our last game? But we’ve still been doing only 10 Fame, so maybe we’ll do a bit more next time.

Xia: 7/10 Still very random but the new missions are neat, and the powers add a lot more ship variety.

Galactic Cruise

We’re back to Galactic Cruise. This time with the standard setup (more random setup).

Two of us really didn’t like the randomized setup as much. The actions were really difficult to navigate (only our second game), requiring us to spend more time developing early on just to make more efficient turns. It really slowed the game down and felt more frustrating than interesting. I’m sure it’s great when you’re more comfortable with the game, but it should have been listed as an “advanced” variant for players wanting more challenge.

Galactic Cruise: 7/10 A good Lacerda-style game that is maybe a bit of a hodgepodge of modern Euro stuff.

Pax Viking

My brother and I played the introductory setup before, but it was way too fast with simple goals, so it was over before we felt we really got into it. This time, we opted for the next level of goals at 3-players.

Pax games are tough to get into. I don’t post our online games (BGA just doesn’t make for good looking pictures, the UIs are usually a mess), but my friend and I had tried out Pax Pamir recently. Wrapping your head around the rules while also figuring out what on Earth is a good strategic move is a lot. It’s a game system that hides strategies behind complex rules and requirements. It’s like you have to pick a goal, and then reverse-engineer how that goal is actually accomplished. But events will often give you ways to break rules.

I was able to make a big last turn thanks to an event (and used a couple other events to recover from my friend taking all my stuff!), at the end of which I had achieved a goal. It’s a system that often has you making very small, minor moves, leading up to one huge turn.

Pax Viking: 8/10 Might not be one I pick often, but it’s an interesting puzzle with a theme that’s very much for me.

Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth

My friend had a copy for a bit, but we hadn’t gotten around to trying it out, so since Pax Viking hadn’t been too long, it was the perfect time to play Duel for Middle-earth.

We’ve played 7 Wonders Duel several times, including with the expansions (we like Pantheon a lot more than Agora, but they’re both good), but we ended up feeling differently about DfME. I definitely prefer this one for its map interaction, no points scoring, and more goal-oriented victory conditions. I also really like that the card offer feels more strategic, where you can avoid removing a card by building a landmark. In 7WD, you always have to remove a card, and sometimes, that means you’re forced to open up a card your opponent needs just because of how the cards came out.

It’s not quite as interactive (other than the map) as 7WD, and the economy is looser. And of course, it doesn’t have the expansions. Those were the main reasons my friend prefers 7WD. I’ll still play 7WD, but he’ll have to pick it. My pick is DfME.

Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth: 8/10 (First Impressions) Replaces 7 Wonders Duel for me.

SETI

My brother and I had played this one, but my friend hadn’t, so this was our first 3-player game.

Scanning still seems incredibly strong. If it wasn’t for my brother losing a ton of points at the end, he would have handily won. Maybe scanning is just the easier strategy? The probes feel a bit slow and inefficient in comparison. But the game overall felt much better at 3-player than just 2.

Other than that, I still enjoy it. It has some really neat, unique ideas. And lately, there seems to be so many heavy Euros just grabbing random mechanics we’ve seen before tons of times and just rearranging them. SETI isn’t doing anything crazy different, but it feels fresher than a lot of others.

SETI: 7/10 A really solid heavy Euro.

Civilization: A New Dawn (solo)

I borrowed my friend’s copy to try out solitaire. FFG released a free print-and-play solo mode for the base game, but nothing for the expansion. Someone else made a fan-made solo add-on for the expansion that I haven’t tried yet.

The FFG solo mode works pretty well. Not too many fiddly rules, and the bot functions pretty closely to a player. It does get a bit aggressive late into the game, though, so you have to be ready for it. I lucked out with my victory. Despite the bot’s aggressive takeover of my territory, I got my second science wonder built (forgot to place the token, though).

It is a bit of a slower game running the bot. Some turns are quick, but others slow down with lots of steps and checking things to make sure you did it all correctly. I’m sure it would speed up a lot with repeated plays, as is common for solo bots.

Civilization: A New Dawn: 8/10? I need to play the expansion some more to really decide; it improves the game a lot.

Lord of the Rings TCG

After our first game just using the starter decks, we decided to go through each set with customized decks. So this was our Fellowship of the Ring game, Elves/Nazgûl vs. Aragorn/Sauron.

Aragorn got his gear out pretty early on, which made him a powerhouse. I just wasn’t getting Nazgûl out in good numbers or with their weapons, so they were no match. My elves were cleaning up pretty easily, at least, because my draws were almost all elves! Later on, however, I was finally able to crack Aragorn’s defenses, and once he was exhausted, I ate up the rest of the team until he died and left Sam alone against a really big Nazgûl. It was close game, though, we were at the fierce skirmish of the final site (my last chance to get the kill), so Sam would have escaped and won if he had survived!

Mines of Moria is next. It’ll be Aragorn/Uruk-hai vs. (probably?) Elves/Nazgûl. Haven’t decided yet. But we’re taking our time through the sets since it’s a dead game; no rush to catch up before a set comes out.

Lord of the Rings TCG: 9/10 One of my favorites; RIP.

Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth

Following the TCG, we brought this back out for another match. It was really close, and I thought my friend had the win, but I was just able to build Barad-dûr in time and play the perfect card from the discard pile and win another victory on the map.

Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth: 8/10

Altered TCG

We played some more with customized decks. I played both games with Bravos and my friend played Bravos and Axiom. My draws weren’t great, but Bravos is pretty aggressive, so it worked out anyway. First game was close, but I snagged a win in the second game.

Altered TCG: 8/10? The customized decks have been fun to explore.

Age of Steam (Sweden)

It’s been a while since we played, so my friend chose it again, but this time with one of the slightly more unusual maps: Sweden Recycling.

I started out down at the south and quickly built a wall to keep anyone else out (or at least, make it expensive for them to get in). The other two were competing for space in the north. Turns out it worked great!

This map had some interesting interaction with the cubes being processed into other cubes, allowing you to build reliable networks. The map, however, was pretty basic (and very yellow!) with nothing to affect building.

Age of Steam: 7/10? It’s one of those games I enjoy quite a bit while playing, I just don’t seem to really gravitate toward it as a game I’d pick to play.

Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth

More! I try to let my brother make the narrative decisions in the playthrough since I’ve already done the campaign. Though, I was hoping he would pick things I hadn’t picked, but he also decided to side with a certain wraith fellow.

A couple highlights include a weird map that seemed to have a secret area we weren’t able to open? We interacted with everything and finished what we could on the map, but there was still an area in fog, seemingly with no way to access it. Hadn’t seen that before. Also, on another map, Legolas had an absolutely insane attack with huge damage from successes and bonus Strikes.

We’re nearing the end!

Page 2

Pages: 1 2

Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth

Unmatched Adventures

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Clinic: Deluxe

Xia + Expansions

Galactic Cruise

Pax Viking

Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth

SETI

Civilization: A New Dawn (solo)

Lord of the Rings TCG

Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth

Altered TCG

Age of Steam (Sweden)

Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth

Share this:

Related

Leave a comment Cancel reply