Any recommendations, warnings or nice strategies to share?
I tried Orleans for the first time. I liked it but lost badly against someone else who had played it before. (And who owned the game.) What I didn’t realize is how important gaining money and adding estates was in terms of point value. I went the route of adding goods for points but it wasn’t nearly enough.
I also played Cartographers for the first time. I really like roll and write games, but this one was more of a “card and write”. It has different colored pencils you can color in the maps with, so that made it more fun.
It actually doesn’t come with the colored pencils in the retail box, I had to pick some up aftermarket. The basic pencils it comes with don’t cut it! But I do enjoy that game a lot, as an avid doodler!
We started on our Dorfromantik campaign. Only 3 games in so still a lot to explore. It was fun even in its simplest first-game setup and its cool to see the decision-space expand as new ways to score are added. Feels a bit like My City in this sense.
We’ve also played some Sagrada which is a turning into a real comfort pick that I am happy to play even when I am too tired for other stuff. Easy to get on the table, no problem remembering the rules, focused decisions. And I love drawing dice from a bag, Pandemic The Cure, FUSE and Roll Player are some others that do this that I like a lot.
Online I’ve been enjoying the BGG version of Wizards of the Grimoire. Still in alpha but already works very well. Planning to get in a few plays of it in person too.
I have been playing the Steam version of Dorfromantik and am curious how it compares. Have you tried it?
Yes, I have played the Steam version. IMO the boardgame captures the essence of the videogame quite well. There are changes but they totally make sense, for example counting individual buildings or trees by hand would get annoying real quick so in the boardgame you count entire tiles. The way they handled the quest rewards extending the game is quite neat and smooth too. My partner liked the boardgame so much that she has started playing the Steam version too.
(note that this is based on a few early plays, not the entire campaign)
Interesting. I do like the video game, even though, it is rather simple overall and is almost more like a variation of a puzzle game. But I like puzzles too so this is all good :) With how many players to you prefer to play it?
Played ticket to ride for the firsy time in a years. Managed to span my network all the way across europe and get a 20 card. My friend made a network in western europe which branched out to practically every city and won. In hindsight, I think a good strategy would have been to draw ticket cards and when possible only keep ones which were already connected by my network. Instead, at the end I kept an additional card and tried to finish the route. Oh well, maybe next time I’ll remember.
Played a few rounds of Thunder Road Vendetta, finally breaking out the Choppe Shoppe expansion. Such a fun game if you can deal with unexpected chaos.
And as usual a few rounds of Unmatched. I’ve just got Doctor Strange left to play and I’ve played everyone at least once.
Frosthaven, La Granja, Black Rose Wars, Terraforming Mars, Calico, and the Crimson Scales
