by filipemep

Ponton wrote:

0-250 poor score
250-325 average score
325-400 good score
400+ great score

are official scoring guidelines? How did they calculate to such limits?

Thanks a lot

by Ponton

filipemep wrote:

Ponton wrote:

0-250 poor score
250-325 average score
325-400 good score
400+ great score

are official scoring guidelines? How did they calculate to such limits?

Thanks a lot

These aren't official, just some numbers I came up with myself.

by Pugnax555

Ponton wrote:

filipemep wrote:

Ponton wrote:

0-250 poor score
250-325 average score
325-400 good score
400+ great score

are official scoring guidelines? How did they calculate to such limits?

Thanks a lot

These aren't official, just some numbers I came up with myself.

At the same time, that post is nearly nine years old and nobody has had any issues with those numbers as a general guideline in all that time. So really, they're about as official as it gets. :)

by filipemep

Pugnax555 wrote:

Ponton wrote:

filipemep wrote:

Ponton wrote:

0-250 poor score
250-325 average score
325-400 good score
400+ great score

are official scoring guidelines? How did they calculate to such limits?

Thanks a lot

These aren't official, just some numbers I came up with myself.

At the same time, that post is nearly nine years old and nobody has had any issues with those numbers as a general guideline in all that time. So really, they're about as official as it gets. :)

I just asked a question concerning a legitimate doubt! understood ? :p

by Vaader

New File: Wariant solo oraz dla 2 i 3 graczy - skumulowane akcje, tylko budynki umożliwiające kombosy for Board Game: Le Havre

by musiclover777

Did you ever manage to pull this off??

by Surya Van Lierde is pure Eurosnoot and proud of it!

Rajas of the Ganges
tl;dr quite good indeed

The Brands have been a bit hit-and-miss for me, but the last couple of years they've had more hits then before. And this game definitely is a hit.
This is a dice placement game. Certain actions require certain colors of dice, others requite certain values. So good die management is essential. But that's not just an interesting mechanism in a shell. No it's been integrated into a very good, tight game that appears to offer a good variety of different strategies to explore.
On top of that it has a rather unique scoring mechanism with 2 different makers moving in opposite directions. When they cross, the distance between them determines your score. But the way you move them (and witch one to move) is what the game is all about. Lots of choices!

Initial rating: 7.4/10
BGG scale: 7/10

Memo Dice
tl;dr: not that good

Roll dice, cover them up with cups and when all cups are placed or none can be placed, start guessing what is under the cups. Very, very basic. OK, this is a game aimed at families with kids. But the box says 8+, so it's not aimed at really young games. The main problem is: if the player starting has a good memory, the other players never get the opportunity to score. In our game we had a player like that, and he also happened to be the player who also got to start guessing. Well, let's just say the score was not close.
I think this is easily fixed: have players guess one die each. It would probably improve the game a bit, but this will never be a great game. It's just too basic and not that engaging.

Initial rating: 4/10
BGG scale: 3/10

Le Havre: The Inland Port
tl;dr: quite nice, but don't expect the full, juicy original

The original Le Havre is in my top 2 ever. It also happens to play very, very well with 2. So why a 2 player only take? Because it takes many of the mechanisms and discards many of them as well and distills it down into a more accessible, sorter game. You can still use each other's buildings of course, but it also adds a new aspect that doesn't appear in the original: the way resources are added and used is now the core of the game. And it leads to very hard choices. How to best combine the buildings to get the resources you need?
I never expected this to be the full Le Havre experience in a small box and it is not. But it is a solid little game with nice choices. Good stuff.

Rating: 7.2/10
BGG scale: 7/10

by Steph

Hia Everyone!

I decided to play my top 50 before the year was out in the month of December. Some folks expressed interest in seeing the top 50 list and here it is. There is no order to it- I just randomly typed it up. But Gink will forever be #1

Monday night Ron and I ended up staying home and playing some games. I really wanted to check Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game off my list. This is a big game and can take a while if we were to play with 3-4 players.

I think it might be best with 2 players since it plays faster and you can really focus in.

This game I ended up being Egyptians and Ron played as Zulu. I was building my Civilization fast and LARGE. I had 3 wonders in no time. I had a hard time, though. I was pulling between military and Culture and just started on the culture track too late. I had a lot of great cards I was gaining and the warfare expansion is just really great adding the policy cards and investments. There is just so much to do and plan for and I love it.

I had a VERY good engine going for culture and a discount when advancing. I was able to get through all 7 stages in one swoop by the time I started in. It was too late by that point round 4 or 5. Starting to move up the culture track that late in the game was a poor choice.

I should have gone all in on that track. I would have gotten closer to the ending.

I didn't have the right cards and Ron totally wiped me out. I should not have had armies on the board at all because he was picking me off and I was losing the units I had. He stoop on my Napoleon and barracks so I was effectively net +10 which is not enough for a major city. Ron had way more military and was able to move in with one army dude and kill me. There were no culture cards that could help me in my hand of cards.

Ron totally killed me this game. It was expected, but it wasn't expected as soon and I thought I would have at least a few more turns before the end. Ugh- Ron is so dumb! :P

#Top10

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While dinner was cooking we played a game of Taluva.

Ron and I don't really play this one all that often but if Riley comes around then it tends to come out. He really likes this one and when I play against Riley, I think "Hey I am pretty good at this game"... then I play against Ron and say "Dammit what happened."

We played with 24 tiles and 1 color each. Ron won by running out of 2 stacks of pieces. It was a mess and by the time I noticed it was too late and there was nothing I could do to stop him. I have to play more carefully.

He can see the map better than I can, it seems. Or I just wasn't focused enough this time.

It is a great game, very abstract. I love the deluxe version of the game too and it is so worth it! :D

Always happy to play this. It is a cool filler that took like 10 minutes.

#Top50

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My wonderful friend Elias is currently living in Japan and happened to go to the Tokyo Game Market in December! He was super awesome and sent me and Ron a game! I had to immediately play it and it is called ブレンドコーヒーラボ (Blend Coffee Lab.). New to me!

This is the same designer as Wind the Film! so it was super cool of him to send this since he knew I liked that one so much.

This is a trick taking game with a lot of weird rules. Weird rules fits right in with Wind the film.

You can't follow suit of the cards played unless you have no choice. You are trying to collect cups of coffee in different blends. The cards are 1-10 in each of the colors and depending on the remaining left over cards in the round you might be wanting to play low or high depending.

There are strange 2 player rules that we managed to screw up 2 games in a row, but now I think we know the rules and we still haven't played it fully correctly yet so I won't comment too much to how I enjoyed it.

Ron was doing very good at getting the bonus points for having the full cup of coffee in a particular blend.

After the 2 games I was particularly fed up because it seemed so wrong and like I had no control. After that we looked and found out why. So I really need to play with the correct rules. I also wonder if the silly 2 player rules are also just worse than playing with 3 player or 4 players.

I really have to give this another go before I review it properly. I like what it is trying to do so I am hopeful.

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Tuesday, Ron and I decided to play Le Havre. This game we played incredibly well. I managed to pick up so many great buildings and have an actual plan. I never skipped a beat and bought the buildings i could manage and got some late ships. I only ever took out 2 loans and managed to pay them off 2 rounds later so I wasn't dragged down by the constant interest rates.

It worked out really well actually and I reallllly thought I would win this game. Because Ron and I scored both so well! I got a special building that was scoring for industrial and that got me a good chunk of points.

This was one of the only times I have gotten wheat in the first round and we got wheat income each round. This helped maintain my feeding at the end of each round. I also had a building that generated an extra cow each round so I was swimming with the cows.

I ended with a pretty high score of 249, while Ron ended with 275- really RON?! Just have to show me up on this game too. Man we got really high scores but nope Ron still wins.

#Top50

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Wednesday Ron and I played a few games to knock them off the Top 50. Since I didn't think I could convince Jess to play Dominion again, I played the other Dominion with Ron and we played 2 player Dominion: Hinterlands.

This is my FAVORITE Dominion. I just love all of the cards in this game, there are some really nice cards here. Maybe I like it so much because it caters to my favorite strategy of collecting weird VP cards in game and there are just fun cards! If only the castle cards lived in that box then it would all be the best!

I still want to try the new Dominion expansion that sounds pretty cool.

This game I was down to like 14 VP cards and maybe 5 other cards. It was just a mess of VP cards. I did have cross roads to help, but the treasure cards were just non existent and it was increasingly more difficult to buy cards as the game went on for me.

This ended with me losing but I still had a respectable score. I had so many Silk Roads but Ron still managed to get 3 of them, so it was not great for me. I needed more green cards!

#Top50

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We decided to give 2 player Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King a try with the new expansion Isle of Skye: Journeyman. I have to say I really enjoy this expansion and think it adds a lot of cool choices and path to take in addition to the normal game. I don't particularly like the big bonus tiles you get when you make it farther down the line. The one that will pay any bid from the bank is just annoying and make the auction almost non existent. That power is just too powerful. Ron doesn't think so. It is weird interaction and leaving me not liking that one tile but everything else is very nice.

This game I managed to get that tile and so did Ron a turn earlier. It is also weird since if people are buying tiles from you then you get to move up a track so you want people to buy from you also.

I will have to try out the other big tiles and see if I feel the same about them. I planned out everything very well this game and I had a nice compact colony where it was great for the normal scoring and just killed Ron this game. So we had a good time, and I won which was even better.

I definitely do recommend this expansion, but it will add time to your game. It worked very well 2 player so that was great!

#Top50

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I wanted to learn a game so I figured it would be easy enough to learn Carcassonne: Gold Rush. New to me!

Well I was sort of wrong since the rules were in German and Ron attempted to read them in German (since he is learning) so yeah he did a pretty good job except we missed some rules.

In the game you are making mines and collecting gold nuggets but you don't know how many you are getting. They are random tokens that get placed. You only get 4 workers to place but you have a tent. You can put your tent where someone else has a worker and then start stealing gold from their mines if you decide to not place a guy on your turn. The roads work the same way. The towns you place will score you 3 points for connect routes into the city so not quite the same as cloisters in Carc.

Otherwise there is farming for teepees and horses in your fields.

This game was pretty good. Definitely not my least favorite Carc game and would recommend trying it out! I love the series and trying new ones so this one didn't disappoint.

We ended up scoring incorrectly at the end and I would have lost by a whole lot. Instead, I won! Later Ron read the English rules and it made more sense. But, I also would have played a bit differently so I could have scored better. When the game ends you don't collect all of the treasure tokens left on unfinished mines so that would have changed up my score a lot.

I like all of the hidden tokens and uncertainty. It really kept it interesting and I look forward to playing again!

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The final game we played was Otys. Ron still hadn't played this and I had played like 5 times already. It has been a hit for me since Essen.

It was easy to teach and Ron understood it very quickly. I suppose I forgotten to give him some points when he did the upgrade action, but it is unclear and he should have known. haha So it ended up with him a few points to 18 and I got one more turn and I was able to get to 19 points and he wasn't able to pass me so I won the game. Had he gotten his points then I would not have gotten one more turn. OKAY so the moral of the story is that you have to remember to take your points!

I am still claiming victory here since it is unclear. :P

He really liked the game and I still love it! It is a great game and i am enjoying it a lot. Managing the divers is so much fun. It is always a puzzle to figure out the best way to manage everything!

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Thursday night we started our game of Charterstone. New to me!

Ron, Riley, Derek and I set off for an adventure in building our charters. I ended up handing over the red player to Ron and I picked Blue. I did think for convenience to me. It made it so I could take pictures from my side of the game board and right side up. You have to sit in the correct seat much like Scythe. I named my character Mrs. Lovett (Sweeney Todd for those who don't know the reference).

The first couple of games are really just set up and getting to know the game. We just played one game and during out campaign process, I won't give any spoilers and everything I do mention will be in a spoiler box including photos. I will just give you my overall impressions as I go, however.

I am excited to be playing with such a great group of people though! We had a lot of fun! I clearly understood this game from the get-go because I ended up winning! I beat Ron by several points so that felt particularly awesome. Let me tell you getting points seems to matter a lot so if you are playing you definitely want to score AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE even if you don't win, I do think winning will be good too, but points will be more important. So far it has been great! :)

I really look forward to seeing where this all leads. great stuff!

[o]

[/o]

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Once Derek and Riley left I convinced Ron to play one more game, and we played Coal Baron. I noticed it wasn't on my played games list for this year and that is just not right! I really love this game and it needs to find more love! More people really need to play this one.

I don't think it is particularly great with 2 players but it is better than not playing at all. I would rather play with 4 players though. I need to suggest it more often.

This year I had played the card game several times but not the real deal and I just like the board game better.

Ron ended up getting a lot of higher valued coal carts and that got him a lot of final round scoring. I was doing very well with getting the different types and securing the majorities there, but Ron was getting a lot more points over all in the final round. I managed my money better.

Ron won the game though and had all the trucks and shipped a lot of black coal at the end for the big value scores. Curses! He got me that time. Definitely want to play this more than once in 2018. :)

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Jess came over on Friday and we got in several games! Later Shrey showed up and got to play so much! It was a miserably snowy day, but they still came up to NH it was a great day of games!

We started with a 3 player game of Las Vegas. It is a great push your luck dice game and works so well, I just wish it played with more players so I could bring it to holidays to get a lot of my family to play too.

This game is very interesting with 3 players since you get some extra dice to play as the dummy player and I think this has a lot of strategy and luck tied into it and who and when to screw people over. It is very fun!

Maybe I like this game because I win it all of the time, maybe. I did a great job in the first round and I picked up 3x50k tickets and that was like the start of the game. Those 50ks were the highest paying tickets in the first round so it was just cool. I don't think many other tickets were handed out. In the proceeding rounds I did pretty well and picked up a lot of high values but it was a lot a lot of secondary lower values which really add up.

I ended up winning this game by almost double the other players points so that was pretty cool. I think Jess ended up liking the game, but she was hoping to learn Lords of Vegas... haha cool game.

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Shrey had a bit before he was going to be there so I suggested Helios. I loveeeeeeeeee Helios it is a great game! It is always so hard to get this game played. I have no idea why this one is so hard to get played. It is so great and plays out so quickly. I really hope I can convince more people to play this one because it is a gorgeous production and really pretty great.

There are a few wonky rules about the advisors but I don't think it ruins the game or anything. You just have to plan for it in the first round and make sure you have mana to cover the cost of the advisors you want to get. There is a lot of great things about this game. Planning out what actions to take and gather same colors to gain the bonus actions. Timing is everything and it is all around awesome.

I hope Jess enjoyed this one enough to play it again. I do think it works best with 3 players for sure. So if you play you should play with 3!

I ended up winning this game as well. I had 153 points I think. It was a crap ton of points and even high for me and playing this game. Ron was second and Jess was last with about 100. It was not really a close game but I think she was able to figure it out and see what possibilities there could be in this one.

#Top50

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Shrey showed up basically on cue and we got to playing Agra. I am so thankful for Shrey and his explanation of this game. He has played twice before and really was able to teach it much better than I would have. This game is just so hard. All of the little rules here and there. oh man it is just not intuitive at all.

I just want to love this game so much, but the more I play it the more I just cant wrap my head around what I am supposed to do and why. There are so many paths to take and focus on, but there is no real clear path or if you are supposed to focus on one thing or do a bit of everything. I still have no idea.

It is such a huge game and there is so much to do. It is also SUPER LONG. Being super long is not helpful for the cause of remaining in my top 50 list of games. It is on the top 50 at the moment and I am not sure how long it will stay there.

Shrey ended up winning this game. Again, I have no idea how anyone is playing or what scores people have. It is all very mysterious to me and only at scoring time at the end do you truly see how poorly you played. Jess was about as poor as me at the end and Shrey was double our scores. I have no idea how to play this game well and I have played 3 times.

Several people will enjoy that feature, I feel. But, for me- that is a lot of time invested for something I don't quite understand. I would want to play again for sure, but I highly doubt it will make a regular appearance.

#Top50

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In an effort to keep playing my top 50 I knew Shrey and Jess both like Dokmus so we played that with the new expansion, Dokmus: Return of Erefel.

This is a great abstract game. You have several paths to try and take. The new expansion is awesome and adds a couple new rules but adding in a season tile and a god that will help you from sacrificing your guy in a round. Lots of good stuff.

We choose to play with the winter season and that season freezes the rivers. You don't have to sacrifice to the river when using that as a movement, instead you are skating across, but you can not take and bends in the rivers you simply go straight across. It is pretty cool feature.

Ron ended up getting on every tile like I did and he managed to cover one whole tile like I did. He found more golden temples than me and sacrificed more than I did. Dam Ron won that game. THIS IS MY GAME! I love this game mostly because I get it and normally win it. Boo for losing. Ron was a jerk. :P

I had a great time playing and I really do love this game. I have to remember to play it more. So many great games came out 2016. So many better games last year than this year for sure.

#Top50

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Shrey hadn't gotten the chance to play Rajas of the Ganges so we pulled that off the shelf. This was great because I hadn't actually played my copy of the game and I only had played the prototype back in April. The final product is wonderful and those dice are gorgeous! I wish there was a fuzzy Hippo as the start player but, that is fine.

If you don't know the game it is worker placement and you are spending your dice as a type of currency for the actions you are taking. You are working to get a mixture of fame and income. The first person to cross both their fame track (heading clockwise) and Coin track (heading counter clockwise) will win the game. It is a race to get this done!

You might build some buildings in this game and puzzle it out on your player board. You get bonuses when placed wisely. There is a boat track where you will get lots of cool bonuses for advancing on there. You are really looking to collect more workers to get more actions, however.

Let me tell you, I had a rough game. I was focused mostly on the fame track, and it was just not going my way. I needed more building to show up to collect the fame but they all sort of disappeared and then I was screwed. I didn't have any $ income and was just simply far behind everyone else. I lost this game so hard.

Jess was doing pretty well and I thought she really had the shot to win this game. Ron, of course, came out of no where and got like a million bucks or something and manged to end the game. It was definitely not a shocker though.

This is a game I really need to play again and see if I can recover from this terrible loss. I think Shrey ended up liking it a bunch and would play again. I am glad I have it in the collection, I like it a lot.

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I wanted to play another longer game from the list so I suggested Brew Crafters. Jess hadn't played before and was interested in learning it.

This is a great game but Ron is just freaking amazing at it and I don't get how. He always seems to end with double the amount of points I end with. How is that possible?

This game was no different and Jess and I sat there at the end of the game like buh wha? I was doing alright but everyone kept stealing the extra 3 point tokens from under me and that definitely can damage a score if you don't pump out those brew quickly. I was the first to hire a second shift though and man was that very expensive. I ended up having to take a loan and the loans are super painful in this game.

It was ok I know Ron won and Jess probably beat me, but I don't remember we were pretty close in score. I think Jess ended up liking it a bunch but I am not sure she is in a hurry to buy it.

#Top50

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Jess had one more game in her before calling it a night and we played a fast game of The Game. This was using my special rainbow deck of cards and it was awesome.

We got through the deck of cards and it came down to just the cards in hand. It was so difficult to communicate without being specific. We ended up losing this game because we just screwed over the stack of cards. We did such a great job maintaining one stack that was at like 17 going up at the very end but then Ron had to jump to like 50s then 70s in the final play. It was a bust for us and we were just so close!

Cool game glad I got to play it this year. :P

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Saturday I got to playing my SS gift A Game of Thrones: Catan – Brotherhood of the Watch.

I got to play this at GenCon very briefly and had a great time! I was super excited to get it this holiday! Really makes me want to play Catan again. It has been years since i have played Catan and I actually like catan so it needs to happen again soon.

I mean I don't think it is going to change your opinion of Catan if you already don't like catan, but man it is just so awesome to have it with Game of Thrones themed. I like it a lot.

This game Ron remembered the rules better than most and Simon was trying to help me with the rules by reading them. They are pretty badly laid out however. I would expect more from FFG.

Regardless, the wildlings attacked us and we all lost. But, if 3 breeches happen then the person who has the most guards on the wall will win the game. Ron remembered this and claimed to have told us this, but we all choose to not listen. Since Ron had 2 guards and we all had 0 then we all lost and Ron ended up winning, even though Felix had the most points on the board. Hahah

Now I know how to play better, I think I will do differently. I really want to play again this week so I hope I get to. For me it is a rekindling of Catan and I think it plays out even faster than the original because of how the game is designed so I think that works very well!

#Top50

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Next up I wanted to cross off some more of my top 50 so I suggested Orléans: Invasion. Felix and Star were interested and Simon was interested. The 4 of us played and we lost on turn 4 of the game.

We lost because there was no way that Star could get the good he needed to pay off the goal card. He had the goal card which requires payment of some sort each round.

We decided to reset and switch up the roles a bit so I ended up taking that goal card he had and gave him the one I had. We reshuffled the A events and started over.

This time went a lot better. We managed to all complete our goals and get the fortified towers down with ease. I mean they were all posted with 4 rounds to spare. We worked together very well, actually and it was all coming together nicely.

On the final turn we needed to send 2 guards to the wall and no one drew any guards to send. We ended up losing because we just didn't get enough guards to defend. Simon had like 3 or 4 in his bag and drew NONE of them. It was a shame! We did managed to complete every other task at hand though. It was a pretty great game!

#Top50

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Felix really wanted to learn Whistle Stop.

Star was interested and Simon just will play whatever I tell him to play!

This is a fast teach and game play so it was great. I did my normal strategy of getting my trains to the end and dumping all my trains for big points. I got a few stocks but didn't focus on that at all. It worked out though I still managed to get 15 points for a stock in the end since no one got more than 1 of that type.

I absolutely crushed them this game. I guess experience really helps. We never made it to the round that provided whistles so it all happened very fast. I ended up winning this game super hard!

Felix liked the game since he lost so badly. haha He doesn't like winning games on his first plays.

I schooled them all and I think they enjoyed it. It makes me laugh and I can appreciate that. It is a fun game!

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EVERYONE wanted to play Dinosaur Island. Top game of the year for me so I was definitely interested in playing this as well. Derek, Star and Ron played and I got to play with the googly eyes! Yay! I love them with the eyes so much! they are just so cute!

Ron taught the game and we started. We were just playing the medium game and wow there is a lot of stuff happening with 4 players. Going last is a pin in the butt, but I was going last a lot. Ron made sure to pay attention to the objective goals this game and managed to get like 4 of them. I thought I would get one and he wouldn't but he was able to make a couple different types of species in one shot so we both managed to get 3 types of species in the same round.

I should have been paying better attention.

I used a lot of my scientist actions as extra workers in the worker phases and that really helps out.

Ron ended up winning though. I was about 15 points behind him. It was close but not close enough!

Love this game! So did everyone else!

#Top50

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Derek got a new game he shared called Kokoro: Avenue of the Kodama. New to me!

I am counting it as a new game even though it really is just the same as Avenue. You can add in all sorts of different scoring cards or objectives. Yah screw that we just played the normal way. The artwork is cute.

The boards were really not great. They are terrible quality and not even coated properly. #dryerasefail

Yah I would be highly disappointed in the final product. Better to get paper and make your own laminated boards.

I love the game still and the cute art. Jess absolutely hated this game and so did Star.

I completely crushed them all with my very high score and Jess managed to get a score of 25. I am not sure if that is why she hated it but I don't think she likes abstract games in general. So that happened.

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Derek and Jess hadn't played Russian Railroads before and Russian Railroads: German Railroads is on my list so we played that. Thanks to Ron for helping and teaching the rules.

We played this in anticipation for Joe C showing up at like 8pm.

This was actually a pretty low scoring game. I really thought I would win this one too. I was doing very well! I worked the industry track and got lots of early scoring, but ended up pushing out the white track in the final round.

Ron was working the white track a few rounds earlier and ended up getting the engineer bonus 40 points. Dam Ron! I ended up being just 10 points behind. It was so damn close this game. We didn't break 380 points so it was pretty low scoring overall.

German Railroads is just so much fun!!!!!!!!! Love this game!


#Top50

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Joe C showed up and we played an EPIC game of Nations. 5 player which is not the best count but works. Jess and Derek were learning this game.

The first thing I said to Derek was take food! I saw a natural wonder that made everyone lose 3 food and I was America that got a bonus for discovering Natural wonders. I was going to do that if it was still available on my turn. Knowing Jess, Derek and I all started with 2 food. I advised getting food. Jess listened to me and Derek did not. He got hit with this wonder right off the bat.

It was the start of his decline. Eventually he had no more points to give up but he was playing Ghangis Kahn and Joe was the mongols and together they caused a lot of damaged Wars every turn and destruction. This kept the victory points lower this game, but also 5 player keeps the game points lower too.

We were all pretty close in score at the end of the game. Derek in last with 27 points still after losing all points in game- not bad. Joe C ended up winning with 38 Ron 37 Jess 34 and I was at 30. It was blah! Everyone decided i was a treat some point during the game so that wasn't good.

It was a 4= hour endeavor and everyone had a good time though Derek didn't look like he had fun.

It was an awesome time and I am glad we got to play! :D

#Top50!

Jess took this amazing pic for us!

:star::nostar::star::nostar::star::nostar::star:


Christmas Eve we spent the day in Maine with my family to celebrate Christmas. We were expecting a huge storm the next day so it all worked out to spend time together on Sunday.

We got in several games and we started with New York Slice. My mom had played this game before and it handles 6 players well. I think everyone wanted the game to add more rounds or something because when it ended it was pretty unsatisfying for most players.

So as you can imagine this game didn't go over so great. I ended up winning with 20 points and Christina actually had a pretty good game and got 18 for second place. She didn't mind it! And she is the one who just doesn't like games as much, but I am getting her more into games which is awesome.

I still had fun! Maybe because I won.

:star::nostar::star::nostar::star::nostar::star:


We moved onto a game that my family really likes called America. My mom has her own copy of the game.

We had the full count of 6 players and the first round was for Scrabble!! This was excellent! I ended up getting all my answers correct which was even more awesome.

The State with the highest value? You can't cheat and you get 1 minute to think of the answer... On the East for the clue.

So much fun!

Of course I did my best round that round, so, I was really off for the rest of the rounds and ended up not winning this game. My mom did the best and won that game!

:star::nostar::star::nostar::star::nostar::star:


My dad joined in for the next game. I taught everyone SiXeS.

I got this game a while back at the Gathering and we played once and never again. It is really a party game and it worked WONDERFULLY with my family. I ended up leaving the game with my mom since we liked it so much.

We played two games of Sixes and we had a lot of fun. Thankfully a lot of us have similar ideas when it comes to topics so it worked out. I think my dad was the only one to ever get all 6 answers to match other people so he got the bonus.

My mom did the best and won both games, however. We were a bit lenient with her answers, however.

I am very glad I ended up bringing this one along, I wasn't sure about it, but worked out very well.

:star::nostar::star::nostar::star::nostar::star:


Brian had one more game in him and we played maybe 30 rounds of Word Slam. It was a long game but we kept going since we were having fun!

Trying to get everyone to say Cirque Du Soleil was hard but my dad managed to get Ron to say it... Grr I wish Ron was on my team.

Ron Nick and dad played this game surprisingly well and collected about 2/3 cards where we had more people and I think that might have hurt us a bit.

This is a great party game too. Happy to have picked this up at GenCon it has proven itself!

:star::nostar::star::nostar::star::nostar::star:


The final game of the night was 3 rounds of Codenames: Disney Family Edition.

Ron got me this for Christmas so we had it there.

This is a hard game since you can't really connect these images so well because they are so specific. I might have to try this game with the word side of the cards to see how that plays.

I won the round I was giving the clues but I am pretty sure we lost the other 2 games we played. Once I definitely picked out the assassin since yeah- failed.

I really like this game but I definitely prefer to play Codenames regular.

It is pretty easy to explain though and playing is fun. We played the next day as well.

:star::nostar::star::nostar::star::nostar::star:




Merry Christmas!!

:star::nostar::star::nostar::star::nostar::star:


Christmas Day we spent with Ron's Family. There is his 3 siblings and one of them has a daughter who if 4 years old! This meant I got to play Candy Land.

I honestly have no idea when I last played this game, if you call it that.

Haha too funny!

Katie played and I dragged Ron to play with us. Half way through the game we invited Barbie Doll to play with us as the yellow player. We kept Katie honest and made her miss the turns when she landed on the X. I got super lucky and was in the lead the WHOLE game. Until Ron got a double past me.

Not to worry I still won the game.

I can safely say I don't have to play this game again. Though it will likely happen.

:star::nostar::star::nostar::star::nostar::star:


The family got a gift of Family Feud. New to me!

Of course the updated version of the game. It is super cheap and the quality is SOOOOOO TERRIBLE just like the Candy Land game we had just played.

They didn't even provide cards in this game. Ron was the host and he had to read from the book the answers. Wow it was just terrible.

The game turned out to be pretty fun with everyone. It was like teams of 4- the Dempsey's and The Whipper Snappers.

We played 3 games and the whipper snappers won each and every game. It was pretty hilarious and those lightening rounds are difficult when you are put on the spot to think of a good answer.

We had a fun time and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

:star::nostar::star::nostar::star::nostar::star:


Next up we played 2 games of Codenames and 4 games of Codenames: Disney Family Edition.

The first couple of games of codenames went over pretty okay. It was great to see the comparison to both games back to back and I have to say codenames is just so much better.

The Disney was taken out when Ron said but what about Disney. Now Ron's family is SUPER DISNEY FAMILY they loveeeeeeeeeeee Disney. Seeing as thought I played the game the day before I wasn't as keep to play it, but I knew it would make everyone happy so we took it out and it did make everyone happy.

It worked out fairly well and we all had a good time. I will have to bring around codenames more often when I go to family events. I think people can understand it who doesn't really enjoy games so much.

It works well.

:star::nostar::star::nostar::star::nostar::star:





I challenged myself to play my top 50 games before the end of the year!

So far I am 43/50 complete



New to the Collection:
ブレンドコーヒーラボ (Blend Coffee Lab.)
Mangaka: The Fast & Furious Game of Drawing Comics
Sid Meier's Civilization: A New Dawn
Dominion: Nocturne
Codenames: Disney Family Edition






Thanks for following along! I hope you have an amazing week.


Until next week!


Happy Gaming!!!


-Steph

If you like what you saw, please thumb!

All images in this post are copyright, owned, and controlled by Steph Hodge Photography, Unless otherwise noted.
Please contact me if you would like to purchase or use my images in anyway.
Thank you.

by Brian Rodenbeck

AUGUST 2017 ACQUISITIONS

This wasn't a bad month of purchases for me. There was a fairly big list still, but at least most of them got played or were played before purchasing. This also the first game I'd backed on Kickstarter since May and have only backed one since then. This is my birthday month, so that could have made this month much worse. For that reason, I'm pretty proud there was at least some restraint.



Banned Words
I got this on sale plus a coupon. I really like the idea of this game. It's similar to Taboo if you know that game. One team has a word to try to get their team to guess within a time limit. The other team has a short amount of time to write down words that are banned for the clue giver. I believe the clue giver doesn't get to see the banned words list, but any time they say one the banned word is revealed to give the opposing team a point. Its a cool balance of what words you can give in clues and which will get banned. Sometimes the obvious clues are missed and available, so the obscure ones that you are trying end up giving the other team points. Very interesting.


Caverna: Cave vs Cave
2 player only versions of games have been doing well and we recently got hooked on Caverna: The Cave Farmers and liked it a lot. I could see us playing it more often if it were shorter and adapted specifically for 2 (although the base game is great with 2, but possibly "long"). It turned out that this is hit or miss with most people. It somehow came into our collection and didn't get played. I was sure that it would and am still baffled as of why it didn't.


Le Havre
:star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star::nostar: (9/10)
Le Havre is a game that I've actually only played with the app. I do own the game and find it very fun. With the random setup for the buildings, you really have to update your strategies accordingly. There are some hard choices with each turn you get. Gain the built up resources from the boats that are moving, or go to a building to perform those actions. I'm still not sure about the strategy of feeding and if taking out loans can be a good thing or should be avoided at all costs.


Loony Quest
:star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star::nostar::nostar: (8/10)
What a cool, silly, fun game. I guess I'd group this with the dexterity realm, but it has more to do with your spacial abilities. This is not to be taken too seriously. There is a map to navigate. You have a clear sheet to draw your path on and it will be in front of you, but the map is in the middle of the table. After the time limit, you take your sheets and place them on the map to see how well you've done. It makes for a lot of laughs. Seeing different paths and strategies i a blast and I've laughed at someone's rediculous approach... just to see it score more points than mine. Loved it!


Mint Delivery (Kickstarter backed)
I backed this project for a number of simple reasons without even having to play the game. This is a very inexpensive game. The designer did a wonderful job with Mint Works. They are very responsive and communicate with backers to keep them informed on the progress regularly. I really only have 1 other pick up and deliver game, so it will hopefully fill that hole nicely and give me a better idea of whether I should look at other games of that type.


NMBR 9
:star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star::nostar::nostar: (8/10)
I love, love, love tile laying games. This is a fantastic one. It's short, quick, and easy to play. The insert is great for setup and tear down, so it can be played in a flash. I thought that would allow me to play this often. We played a few times at first, but it isn't a favorite for my family. I enjoy it a lot though and would happily play it with anyone that wants to. The biggest complaint is for people that follow or duplicate someone else. I never found myself looking at anyone else's area until the end. They also have some promo tiles to make each players starting tile unique to keep that from happening.


Pit
I'd heard about this game from the Dice Tower contributors, The Family Showdown. They have talked about how exciting, loud, and crazy this game can get. I ran across a copy at a thrift store for chump change and picked it up without hesitation. We haven't played it yet. You are gathering up cards by drawing or trading to try to get all cards of a single type. There's also the infamous bell to ding once you've completed your set. Who doesn't like a good bell featured in a game, right? LOL


The Quest for El Dorado
:star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star::halfstar: (9.5/10)
WOW! This game is fantastic! Deck building is a huge hit with me and the people I play with the most. We really loved the twist of using that deck to move for a race rather than the typical battling themes. It does have some similarities to Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure, but a much different feel and a true race game at that. The modular track is great and you are able to make the difficulty as easy or hard as you'd like. The setup and tear down isn't as fast as I'd like, but the game play is worth it and we have played twice in a row and just mix up the track. I can't wait to see what else they release for this game!


Roll Player
:star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star::nostar::nostar: (8/10)
I played this at the St. Louis, MO convention, Geekway. I enjoyed it and so did everyone else that played it with us. Unfortunately the theme is actually one that isn't interesting for my family. You are building up your RPG character to get the desired stats based on your goals. The biggest complaint is that you spend your time building up this character and then don't do anything with it, but the expansion supposedly fixes that. I'm worried that this game will never make it to the table for me and getting the expansion might not change that and dump more money into a game I won't get played.


Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 1 – Team Asia & Legendary Asia
:star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star::nostar::nostar: (8/10)
I'd been waiting on the Ticket to Ride expansions for them to be on sale, discounted, or ding & dent. This was the last map pack we needed and it finally hit the discounted shelf. It was an OK version, but nothing very memorable for us. We haven't tried the cooperative side and I think that might help make it unique and interesting enough to pick to play. We have broken it out specifically to use the card holders that come with it though! What a great component addition! That alone made it worthwhile to have.


Las Vegas
:star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star::halfstar::nostar: (8.5/10)
My family absolutely loves this game. You are rolling dice, taking all the dice of one of the numbers you rolled, and placing them on the associated numbered location. There is money to be won at each location and whomever has the most dice there will with the largest amount, 2nd most... etc. There is also a tricky part of the game where ties eliminate those tied dice and can possibly leave the big prize to someone with less dice at that location. Easy to teach, play, and have fun with. A great filler game. Does anyone know anything about the expansion for this? We play this a lot, so I was curious about what it adds.


Werewords
:star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star::nostar: (9/10)
I'd heard a lot about how much fun this game and Insider was. They are very similar, but it seems that there's a slight edge to Werewords. It's basically a game of 20 questions (although not limited to 20). They've added in the seer and werewolf roles from One Night Ultimate Werewolf if you are aware of that. Both of those roles know the secret word along with the mayor that is the person answering the questions. The werewolf tries to lead the group away from the word, but the seer is guilding them to it. However, they can't be too obvious about it. When one team wins, the other gets a chance to identify the seer/werewolf. If they do, they steal the win away! It's also a great introduction to the One Night series of games.


Whistle Stop
:star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star::halfstar: (9.5/10)
I had this high on my anticipated game list this year. You are moving your train and building the board as you explore new areas. Picking up the rare and common cubes along the way. You'll deliver them to stations along the way to get stocks or the end destinations to get higher points and bonuses. There are other special tiles as well to get, trade goods or gain coal or whistles. It seems like the real focus of this game is around the stocks. The person with the most stock of each type gets a bonus 15 points which really adds up.

by Fribian

<div>Dollar Store solution for resources</div>

by Stuart Burnham

Gareth had organised an afternoon of gaming in the Kings Head for people to get together and play something new or something longer than normally possible on our regular Tuesday evening sessions. I had packed and hoped for a first run out of Time of Crisis but it was not to be...
Still, Billy and I did get to play a leisurely (3hr!) game of Le Havre with Terry, who we hadn't seen for ages.

Billy and Terry built some early ships whilst I used my resources on building as many properties as I could. This did lead to me acquiring an uncomfortably large number of loans however! Billy struck on a nice little special building combination, The Ranch and something that allowed him to get extra cows during each harvest - meaning that his food needs were sorted and he could score 2 points for every cow on his Ranch at game end, so no need to ship them off! I finally managed to start a little fleet and had some excellent buildings but Terry managed a killer move of building the Bank and the Town Hall in a single turn, guaranteeing a healthy number of bonus points at game end and scuppering both Billy and I, as we were both about to build one of them each as well. This almost certainly sealed the game for him and I don't think he shipped once, but did build some luxury liners to supplement his little civic empire.

The game did feel a bit odd, with certain important buildings (Iron Works, Steel Works and, for a good while, Shipping Line) being buried quite deep, with a fair amount of dross piled above them so it did become a late game rush, for me at least, to do the usual shipping of goods to clear the loans I'd taken and then I didn't have enough actions to get together enough goods for a reasonable the last move shipping opportunity. Never mind, I still really enjoyed the game, even though it took all afternoon.
Terry had around 215 points, I was on 190 and Bill about 160, having slaughtered a few too many cows to score that big on his ranch and had piles of left over good that he didn't get rid of - he probably should have used the Bridge over the Seine as his last turn actually, which might've garnered a lot more points than what he did do. Hmmmm.

Elsewhere a great many other games were being played, including Keyper and Concordia which all concerned were very happy about. There followed some playing of dexterity favourites like Junk Art and Meeple Circus for John to try out so as to decide on what to buy himself as a Christmas gift. As Billy and I left they were starting on a whole new pile of games as well.
Although we could have stayed on we decided to head home for an early evening in the warm on the sofa, watching more TV...

by morpheo996

Hi boys...an answer.
If I have 5 wood and 3 meat it's possible sent with a single boat?

Thank in advance

by bruno555

Nope. The biggest ship is steel ship which can load 4 goods.
But you need to have an energy to send it.

So with steel ship you can ship 3 meat and 1 wood. And 3 wood is wasted for energy.

by undinefuerte

<div>Tiles into tokens</div>

by Murr

grant5 wrote:

Murr wrote:

Compare it to how the description of the Bridge over the Seine building is written, and it's easy to make this mistake.

The player may sell as many goods as he wishes. He receives 1 Franc for each upgraded good and 1 Franc for any combination of 3 standard goods (they may be the same or different goods).

Both entries use the word "goods"

Yes, but the ship entry dictates specific quantities, while the bridge says "as many goods as he wishes." So I don't see where the confusion comes from.

You're right, it specifies a quantity, but it doesn't specify it's talking about tokens and not stacks. It can just as easily be read that they're talking about 2 types of goods in stacks, like a stack of fish and stack of bread, and not 1 fish and 1 bread.

The last sentence of the example "A player may ship several of the same good or different goods on a single ship." clarifies that they're not talking about stacks of goods but individual tokens. This should have been in the description of the building, not in the example of how it was used. Had they put it into the description, I don't believe we would have been confused about the building. That's all I was pointing out.

by grant5

Murr wrote:

grant5 wrote:

Murr wrote:

Compare it to how the description of the Bridge over the Seine building is written, and it's easy to make this mistake.

The player may sell as many goods as he wishes. He receives 1 Franc for each upgraded good and 1 Franc for any combination of 3 standard goods (they may be the same or different goods).

Both entries use the word "goods"

Yes, but the ship entry dictates specific quantities, while the bridge says "as many goods as he wishes." So I don't see where the confusion comes from.

You're right, it specifies a quantity, but it doesn't specify it's talking about tokens and not stacks. It can just as easily be read that they're talking about 2 types of goods in stacks, like a stack of fish and stack of bread, and not 1 fish and 1 bread.

The last sentence of the example "A player may ship several of the same good or different goods on a single ship." clarifies that they're not talking about stacks of goods but individual tokens. This should have been in the description of the building, not in the example of how it was used. Had they put it into the description, I don't believe we would have been confused about the building. That's all I was pointing out.

You're reading it and mentally inserting meaning that isn't actually there. It says X number of goods. A good is a good. A good is not a stack of goods. A good is not a type of goods. A good is a single, solitary good, and there's no reason to think otherwise. That's all I was pointing out. :)

by Murr

grant5 wrote:

Murr wrote:

grant5 wrote:

Murr wrote:

Compare it to how the description of the Bridge over the Seine building is written, and it's easy to make this mistake.

The player may sell as many goods as he wishes. He receives 1 Franc for each upgraded good and 1 Franc for any combination of 3 standard goods (they may be the same or different goods).

Both entries use the word "goods"

Yes, but the ship entry dictates specific quantities, while the bridge says "as many goods as he wishes." So I don't see where the confusion comes from.

You're right, it specifies a quantity, but it doesn't specify it's talking about tokens and not stacks. It can just as easily be read that they're talking about 2 types of goods in stacks, like a stack of fish and stack of bread, and not 1 fish and 1 bread.

The last sentence of the example "A player may ship several of the same good or different goods on a single ship." clarifies that they're not talking about stacks of goods but individual tokens. This should have been in the description of the building, not in the example of how it was used. Had they put it into the description, I don't believe we would have been confused about the building. That's all I was pointing out.

You're reading it and mentally inserting meaning that isn't actually there. It says X number of goods. A good is a good. A good is not a stack of goods. A good is not a type of goods. A good is a single, solitary good, and there's no reason to think otherwise. That's all I was pointing out. :)

Interestingly enough, Mayfair decided to clarify this in the 2017 edition of the rules. My rules are the 2012 Z-Man edition that simply says "2 goods" Maybe they saw this thread :)

It's now stated this way (emphasis mine).

The player pays 3 energy for each of their ships that they want to use to ship goods. Wooden Ships can ship 2 good tokens, Iron Ships 3 and Steel Ships 4. Luxury Liners cannot be used to ship goods. Each shipped meat, smoked fish, charcoal, hide, brick and iron earns the player 2 Francs; each cattle, bread and coal earns 3 Francs, each leather 4 Francs, each coke 5 Francs and each steel 8 Francs.....

by apertotes

chipmafia wrote:

Confirmed - it does work.

If you are still monitoring this thread, could you say whether the insert helps with setup time? I've only played the game once and it took so much time to setup that we never had the spirits to give it another opportunity.

by farmergiles

I've been testing the theory that you don't need a bunch of ships to win and can manage with any loans or ships. Now after many games, I can see that even though you can SURVIVE a game without any ships or loans, doing so will tank the game for you.

Every game I've seen won has been done with many ships in tow. Hell the last game I played had a guy take out 10 loans or something in the first half, no worry at all and then simply whitewash the game in the second half because of all the ships he bought. He could sell a ton in the last 2-3 rounds and could easily buy luxury liners, of which ONE cancels out ALL loans. And yet the stupid rules say "ONLY PAY ONE FRANC OF INTEREST!?!?!?" - that rule alone has made loans actually a good thing to get. Every game now I'll be like "loans are good, it's free money, all you have to do is buy one luxury liner and boom, they're paid off. I survive a whole game with no loans and no ships, but can barely make 2nd because by the end you have to do nothing but feed yourself. The ships save you so much food, time and money in the game it's insane.

I used to love Le Havre, but I don't think this is going to survive in my collection much longer as a one trick pony.

by Brandizzle

The last time I played Le Havre, I played pretty poorly at the beginning and ended up with two accidental loans. When I realized that two wasn't much worse than one, I leaned into it, getting even more loans. I scored much better than three other players, but the ultimate winner was a player who did not buy a single boat!
But yeah... that loan kind of scared me. I was curious how much it could be exploited.
However, a note: I do believe the rules say that you may not choose to take a loan. You can only do so when you have no other options. So 10 loans would be impressive.