Oh yeah,

I haven’t played the 2P outing myself yet, but 7 Wonders: Duel is supposed to be excellent.

Happy with either tbh, your place is a bit bigger, we’ve probably got more parking.

I’m off between Christmas and New Year and most weekends now if that helps.

Parking isn’t too bad here so long as you don’t arrive when the chippie is open. And there’s an actual car park like fifty yards away.

ION, I’ll just leave this here:

https://www.micromacro-game.com/en/democase.html

And finally: Jaipur. I hated everything about this game from the premise to the artwork to… just everything, there was nothing about it that appealed other than people saying it was good. Then I found something that did appeal: the price when it went on sale. I impulse-bought it and, it is outstanding. Anyone with a passing interest in playing a card game at a 2-player count needs this in their collection.

Jaipur is a fantastic game, can’t believe I forgot it!

What’s your rule for drawing the panda?

🤣

I’ve never house ruled it, but I know the backstory is that it was a gentle dig at a rival game at the time.

Ah, got it. From the designer via BGG:

“the race between Zooloretto’s panda and Yspahan’s camels was a running gag during Summer 2007 in the French-speaking ludosphere, and the panda pelt as a good on one of the camels in Jaipur is a wink to that. ;-)”

Sauce

Not really a ‘board’ game, but when round at Sisters for dinner, it’s the occasion of Dominoes that has the 5 of us round the dinner table for a few hours.

It’s all power play and stratagem.Nobody wants to finish on a duck.

I said this earlier, don’t dismiss “old” games. I love me a game of does.

Right.

Boardgame season has taught me a few things:

If you’re taking Codenames, always take Qwirke as well. Everyone will absolutely adore one or the other.

A 10 year old can explain Forbidden Island to an 8 year old better than a 62 year old who’s been at the Benedictine for several hours.

8 year olds should be held upside down regularly to dislodge Quirkle tiles that have been ‘saved for emergencies’.

Small children cannot be beaten at Dobble.

Don’t buy the basic Arkham Asylum core set. Sent mine back and replaced it with the new October revised release – over twice as many cards so can accommodate 4 players. And no, I still have no idea what’s going on, so it fails Cougar’s ‘easy to learn’ test. Massively.
But I suspect that when it all falls into place, it’s going to be epic.

Brass, Lancashire…..(thanks Sue!)
Firstly, it’s very nicely presented. Dark, lots of small text on the cards, but everything fits the theme and the rulebook is a work of art.
It takes a while to set up, so factor that in.
Not played it yet, had a solo run-through and it looks like a properly deep, tactical challenge.

Looking forward to it once we’ve sent the grandkids back home and de-stickied the table. 🙂

Hasn’t got a board, but Bananagrams is fun. Word game – Scrabble-ish but er, without the board. It’s the only game I’ve played so far this Christmas.

My niece brought Mind with her this Christmas. Cooperative card game for 2 to 4 players.
It’s really good fun (IMO), quick to set up an play and dead easy to learn.

It all went a bit south after we had a Baby Guinness or two though…

Got a few new ones in the house over Christmas:

Azul – Played lots. Still haven’t won.
Pass the Bomb. Makes me sweat. Didn’t win.
Dr Who* Uno. Got beat 4-0.
Dr Who** Dalek Invasion Earth Risk***. Played for 5 hours. Lost.

*My son likes Dr Who.

**A lot.

***Risk, but with warring Dalek armies.

Fancy a 10 minute fix of Ticket to Ride? The New York edition is aces 🙂

Wingspan was this year’s addition. Only played a couple of times so far but like it lots.

+1 for Bananagrams and Qwirkle – both simple to play and fun for all the family

Latest games here are:

Memoir 44: Excellent for WW2 fans. 20 odd scenarios based around D-Day missions. 2 players (but more could team up and confer). Sure, a bit of luck is involved with drawing cards, but ultimately it comes down to figuring out strategies for taking/holding various positions. I’d heard it was good and it really is. Loads of expansions available too.

Arcadia Quest Inferno: An expansion for Arcadia Quest. Great fun for 2-4 players if you have a penchant for fantasy creatures or simply like a good old hack n slash / loot n shoot. Flexible rules allow you to work together or tear into each other. Excellent quality miniatures, cards, artwork etc. Hero upgrades are fun and encourage you to play harder levels. Does take 5-10 mins to set up though.

On the radar:

Mage Knight: Said to be the ‘best’ adventuring game out there with plenty of scope to buddy up. High quality miniatures. Bloody complex though, and hard to get hold of at present.

Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion: The more I look at this the more I think I’ll get it. Far easier to learn than the full GH, with booklet-based scenario maps meaning super quick set ups.

Oh, I meant to post this earlier. Micro Macro is getting a bit of attention, I haven’t played it directly but they have a free online demo and it looks like it might be fun.

https://www.micromacro-game.com/en/democase.html

I’ve just discovered this thread. Quite a few games entered the household this Christmas:

Carcassonne
Ride the Rails
Z-Cars
Elf (snakes and ladders engine so youngest happy)

Ticket to Ride arriving tomorrow after reading the above.

Finding one the kids don’t get upset with is a challenge and the easier to play the better.

Thanks for the interesting suggestions.

My wife picked up Kids Against Maturity as a family Christmas pressie. Basically a toned down version of Cards against humanity. Played it on Christmas day. I didnt think it was going to be any good but it surprised me. We had 3 kids aged 9,10 and 11 and 4 adults playing. Lots of belly laughing at some of the answers. Edgy enough for the adults to find funny but not too dodgy for the kids. It won’t have much longevity so probably not great value for money but good fun in the short term.

That micro macro demo was quite interesting. Nice concept.

We added Catan and a Ticket to ride expansion this Christmas. Got beaten be our 9 year old at Catan last night 😠.

About a dozen more added to the list!

Brass Lancashire:
My head hurts, but in a good way.
By far the most complex game we’ve touched.
Every rule is conditional – you can do this, but only if x, y or z applies. And then each condition has sub conditions. And there are lots of them.
Annoyingly, it’s all logical, but the manual barely scratches the surface.

Tactically, it’s terrifying.
Unless your called Marvin, don’t attempt to think too far ahead.
Everything links to everything else.
A degree in economics might help, but don’t count on it.
A very deep game indeed, I could see us losing an awful lot of time to this one.

Anyone else played it?
If so, how’s the counselling going?

I watched an interview with the designer where he said he came up with this in response to those who complained he’d gone soft and his games were getting too simple.
The utter ****. 🙂

It’s like reading ‘A Brief History Of Time’. Occasionally, you can cling onto some of the simpler ideas whilst catching fleeting glimpses of the overarching concept.

So far so good.

Arkham next. That has a manual thicker than a whale omelette.
Great….

If it’s any reassurance, I found Arkham to be brutal. 😁

There are several incarnations though, the game you have and the one I have may well be somewhat different.

At the other end of the complexity scale we have absolutely battered Azul over Christmas in our house over Christmas. Somebody must have played it everyday. Thanks for the recommendation!

Ticket To Ride Europe got a good few outings too.

We got Labrynth for Christmas.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1219/labyrinth

Bit too much for our 6yo but if it’s not too complex (board changes every game) we can get through a game with some help.

In the encroaching debate of whether to get her a tablet / console, this is exactly the kind of game that would be good online – then msJimmy pointed out she’d be playing it online, alone, without family time. True enough, we’ve had some good time playing board games.

Swapsies, anyone?

Just ordered the Port Royal and Colt Express Big Boxes (base games plus all expansions) from Zatu.
Good value, cheaper than buying the expansions separately…..

….so, have mint duplicates of:
Port Royal, original base game.
Poer Royal, One More Contract expansion.
Colt Express, the base game.

Happy to swap, what’ve you got?
Would be £42 brand new, to give an idea of value.

Also, received Small World a few weeks ago for my Birthday and yes, it’s bloody marvelous.
Basically, what Risk should be, but less reliance on lucky dice rolls, a fantasy theme and only takes an hour.
Another one of those easy to learn games with a surprising amount of depth. Lovely maps and artwork too. Everyone seems to really enjoy it and I can see why.
I’ve just ordered the River World expansion, half price at Zatu at the mo.

Also ordered the Sherlock Holmes, Thames Murders – wanted this one for years, really looking forward to it.

How about you lot, owt new?

New, you say.

I got Alien: Fate of the Nostromo for Christmas. I’ve not played it as yet, seems to be a fairly generic “collect all the things without getting eaten” outing with a decent theme theme bolted on.

Also picked up Fossils a couple of weeks back. Literally – I backed it on Kickstarter forever ago, it arrived over a year ago and I forgot to collect it from the guy who offered to mule a group pledge back up North. I only realised when I came across his address on a Notepad file on my desktop! Now, this is decent. Production quality is very high, some love has gone into it. The centrepiece board is a dig site where you move archaeologists to extract bones hidden at random, then use those bones to collect dinosaur cards which score you points. There’s a bunch more things going on but it’s towards the “family” end of the difficulty curve and as I said, is just a Nice Thing.

Oooh, Fossils looks really good.
Nice theme too.
What’s the minimum age recommendation? The eldest granddaughter would love that.

I’m getting seriously tempted by the smaller Gloomhaven gateway game as well. Must resist……

The forum ate my previous reply. Let’s try again.

The box says 8+ but there’s a paragraph at the start of the instructions explaining how you can remove various gameplay features if you want to simplify it. There’s a degree of thought gone into this, eg on the skills cards anything which is an attack has an icon identifying it as such so you can easily remove them if you’ve got a group which doesn’t like player conflict.

My biggest concern with younger players would be that there’s a lot of very small components. If you can trust them not to eat the fossils or otherwise stick them somewhere unmentionable you’ll likely be fine.

… if she likes the theme I also have Tiny Epic Dinosaurs (another as-yet unplayed Kickstarter…!) It looks to be a bit worker-placement / resource management a la Agricola, which appeals to me.

Huh. It’s actually “Fossilis” not Fossils, I totally didn’t notice that until trying to look it up just now.

Cheers fella!

The removable elements aspect is very clever and as you say, bodes well.

Further reading:

https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/212428/fossilis-english-rules

When are we having a games evening?

Soon.

Been a bit hectic this end health/job wise.

Will contact you in a day or so….sorry for the delay.

Recently, a few of us have been getting together weekly to smash out some Call of Cthulu one shots. Obvs more RPG than board game and certainly an acquired taste. Lots of fun though and we’re all somehow just about still alive. Ramping up to Mask of Nyarlathotep soon, which should last us a few months. Interestingly, all of our characters’ back stories are coming to the fore and we’re starting to understand why we make the decisions we do.

Have also been playing Mansions of Madness. I expected to like it a lot, and the app works very well, driving the narrative and explorative parts well. But some scenarios are a bit unsatisfying and only one of us wants to continue playing.

A group of us also started on 7th Continent last week. Pretty intense to get your head around the rules, but perseverance helps make the mechanics kind of fluid. We’ve agreed we’ll do our best with the first scenario/curse then give it a break.

I think we’re playing Eldritch Horror next week.

Have you played the Arkham card game?
If so, give us a clue!

And if you’ve not listened to The Lovecraft Investigations on BBC Sounds, I cannot recommend it enough!
Genuinely scary, and because it’s radio, you can’t even hide behind the sofa.
One of the best things the BBC has done for years.

Have you played the Arkham card game?
If so, give us a clue!

I think that might be what I meant to say we’re playing next week, not Eldritch Horror.

Not heard of that Lovecraft series so I’ll give it a go, ta.

Can’t remember if I previously said, but Patchwork is an outstanding 2P game. Just bought a draughts board – as soon as we work out how to drive it, job’s a good ‘un! 🙂

just had an ad for ‘outsmarted’ appear in my facebook feed. looks a bit like a quiz game my daughter has where you use your phone to select answers, but also seems to be a board game too.

anyone played it and can either recommend it or not? it would appear to be a decent game for a family night in with a few beers but thought id ask here first.

Viking Chess or Tafl

I made the board/design and the pieces were collected from the beach. Then varnished.

Awesome game, no dice or cards 😉

I also like the Roman version.

That’s incredible. Fair play.

@cougar

Thanks. Pondering making few more, people do ask where it came from 🙂

Also, making a game based on HG Wells “Little War”but trying to replace the actually toy canon with with a dice/basic chart mechanism… hard to to come up with something simple but not a maths test 🙂