We played a match of Clank: Catacombs with 3 players.

One player was new to Catacombs itself but knew the normal Clank. The dungeon layout this time turned out a bit more tricky and there were few easy escape routes. The new player panicked a bit and decided to grab the lowest value artefact and run for it. He only made it out with 60 points. Final score was 121, 111, 60.

I really like how each game feels much more different with Catacombs, the layout of the dungeon being discovered throughout the game creates a lot of tension. If you love Clank but know the map inside out by now, Catacombs is the answer.

Whenever showing someone Clank, I usually first play a game of Dominion to show Deckbuilding, then we play a game of normal Clank. The next time they come, Catacombs is on the table.

I played Santiago for the first time in a couple of years and it was so much fun. Excellent interaction mechanisms.

I FINALLY tried out the Hansa Teutonica game I got for my birthday two years ago. I’ve been wanting to try it out, but couldn’t bring myself to read the rule manual. It’s nothing against the wording or so, I was just procrastinating (I’m good at that).

1h youtube video later, I felt I understood the basics, and packed the game for our boardgame day last Saturday.

I LOVED IT. I don’t have any other Euro-games, this is by design, but I really wanted to try one. This one came highly recommended, and I can understand why. There are so many things to do, strategies to try… I definitely will play it again.

We also played Codenames and Set a Watch, but that was less of a revelation and more of a return of some favorites on the table.

I finally got to play Age of Steam for the first time, on the Southern US map. I can see why so many people go all in on this game. I’d probably buy my own copy of it was easily available, and I had room.

On Saturday, I started with Decrypto. It’s a fun team game, and quite newbie friendly. I also played a little game called Red Flags, a silly party game similar to Cards Against Humanity.

Libertalia (Winds of Galecrest) was a blast, and it wasn’t too difficult to teach to new players. It’s one of my favourites, and I highly recommend it.

The final game I played was Bunny Kingdom. I like the drafting mechanics, but I felt the scoring was a little fiddly.

Tried Gigawatt for the first time this weekend with friends. It’s a game about countries in Europe trying to transform their energy production into green energy while simultaneously meeting the growing energy demands, balancing the power net, and making sure you don’t go broke. At first glance it seemed a lot simpler than the games I usually enjoy, but it surprised me with interesting strategic choices and a pretty good balance. And the theme is very well executed and (to my knowledge) quite accurate to the real world. Would recommend.

Also played a few games of Frosthaven, we just entered the third year in the campaign. Playing Shackles and Astral. Really loving the experience so far.

Lastly had a few rounds of The Crew, it’s such a good little game for almost any occasion and group!

Mh, we had a round of boardgames with friends two sundays into the past. I’ll chalk that up to rounding errors.

The session started with Flashpoint: Fire Rescue. It’s a pretty simple and straightforward opening game about a burning house and rescuing a bunch of people from there, which is why it’s one of our openers. If you know action-point based games, you know half of the rules already.

You spend 4-ish action points on running around, dousing flames, carrying or healing people and such. Afterwards you roll dice to select a field on the board to escalate the fire. Usually, you place smoke on empty squares (and in our case, the toilet was on fire so damn much…), but if you roll a square with smoke, that field and all connected smoke fields turn to fire. If you roll fire, that field explodes and damages walls, doors, spreads more fire in the cardinal directions. If you roll a specially marked field - a fire hotspot - you roll again.

We played on a medium difficulty setting because we had a new player and won that round, but everyone agreed that it was teetering on a knifes edge at 1-2 situations in the game - how it should be. Next time, heroics will be up :)

And afterwards, we tackled our current raid boss, Dune: Empire. This was our third or fourth session, and we found another 2-3 rules we had been doing wrong - one or two of these mistakes being a rather huge one nerfing cards like the Bene Gesserit very hard.

But as a game loop: You have rather normal deck building ideas. You draw 5 cards from a private deck and play one of those cards to send an agent to places - like cities on Arrakis, places at the guilds and the Landsrat, which gives you resources like money, water and spice, loyality with the guild and optionally armies. However - and this was the mistake we made - this card stays in play until cleanup. This repeats until all players have used their 2-3 agents, at which point you play your entire hand to get the final turn bonuses on them, money practically. This allows you to buy cards from the market, improving your deck a bit. Afterwards, the current combat strengths are evaluated based off or garrisoned or active armies, as well as some instant-cast spellcards to ad some spice to the fight and the winners get rewards according to the current conflict. At the end of the game, victory points decide the winner.

It’s very much a bigger game and you can expect to invest 3-4 rounds into the game to understand all the rules, to get familiar with the cards and the pace of the game and to get some understanding of some meta of the game.

Like, I approached my first run with a dominion mindset. Get some trashing, get some value, thin the deck and win.The issue is - you only have 6-8 shuffles available based off of the pace of the game. This makes the usual trashing setup too slow usually. Most trashers also have conditions on them like “Have another Bene Gesserit Card in Play”, and if you discard your cards in play too early, that also becomes harder.

But it’s a very fun game once you get into it and it’s going to be the main staple for the near future of your boardgame rounds.

I explored Shadowrun: Crossfire together with a few friends last week. I got it pretty cheaply on a yard sale and thought I it would be fun to try out.

After our first round, we went our separate ways and played a second round with the content from High Caliber Ops on Tabletop Simulator, which was also very fun. The second round basically just flew by and we were able to secure victories in both. I’ll probably try out a new role in the next one!

We recently got Paladins of the West Kingdom and got in a few plays of it. It’s just as good as its reputation. Only missing Viscounts now, have to do my research on that.

We made some attempts at Mass Transit which is a lesser known small coop (or solo). A bit like The Game but with a theme. After a few plays I think I see how you’d win but we haven’t quite made it yet.

On digital I’ve been playing lots of Mottainai (Yucata) which is an amazing game in a 54 card deck.
I have some Newton games going on (also Yucata). Relatively new to Newton but it has become one of my favorites from Luciani & the gang (T-series, Grand Austria etc). Love the card driven actions and the Concordia/Faiyum style deckbuilding.
A Cubirds tournament game, some Tash Kalar, Micro Dojo, Nova Luna, Age of Civilization (all on BGA).

Been playing the Paperback app to help me fall asleep. I think I still prefer Hardback but both are excellent.

Played Project L for the first time for several rounds over a few days. I’m definitely not quite there in terms of figuring out how to optimize the first few turns, and I’m not a fan of the scoring - we may start keeping a running tally so that the endgame isn’t such a surprise. But the gameplay is unique and fun.

After half a year, I finally continued my King’s Dilemma game with friends. We had a huge blast again, it’s definitely one of my favorite boardgames at this point and I’m very excited for the sequel.

Also, this is my first post in the fediverse, so hello! So nice to find a kinda active tabletop community here!

I finished the first campaign of Isofarian Guard and then set up for some Final Girl 2, but didn’t get a chance to play yet.

Kodama!

A cute Japanese tree-spirit creatures inspired board game about growing a tree and earning leaf points over three seasons. Whoever gets the most points wins! Takes around 30 minutes to play.

I played Great Western Trail again. I love this game so much but hate having to tell my friends to think about their turn before their turn happens. When their turn comes and they’re staring at the board for a few minutes just thinking, it really grinds the game to a halt.

Managed to play Arkham Horror twice in one week, though missed playing War of the Ring with my partner.

Wednesday was an 11 hour Arkham Horror marathon due to 2 friends moving away. Four of us took the day off. We attempted the two-party Dream Eaters campaign with two groups of 3. The awake team blitzed through their scenarios while the dreamers struggled through theirs (having already played the other way, the dream scenarios are more complex). This resulted in the awake team waiting 30 mins - 1 hour per scenario for the dreamers to finish. We finished at the end of scenario 3 as we were so exhausted.

Saturday was my Path to Carcosa group, which proved to be a lot more fun, probably because we weren’t trying to cram a whole campaign into one day. Completed scenario 3 before the final agenda came up. Our seeker is ridiculous at hoovering clues.

Had a mid relatively recently, so Thursday was my first game session in a couple of months.

Played Chinatown and won handily. Love that game. Very straight forward rules, lots of good interaction and decisions, and a great narrative over the course of the game. Glad to get back to the table.