Recap Monday Week 25: what did you play last week?

A card game, but:

I got back into Skat and Doppelkopf.

7 people, in rotation, played both gamed for a few rounds. It fried our brains a bit, but worked very well and was a lot of fun.

I'd love to get a game of Doppelkopf in

Trying to start playing Marvel Champions again after not playing it for half a year. I bought a bunch of content for it, because I love the game concept, but at this point, if I can't get myself to be excited about playing it, I'll cut my losses and sell it off.

Besides Marvel Champions, I mostly played games online this week.

Dune - In the middle of an asynchronous game of Dune. This is a great game, with a lot of history. It was originally released in 1979 by Avalon Hill, by the same team that made Cosmic Encounter, and has a large following who are into the game, books, and movies. Right now I'm waiting eagerly for the new expansion that's, hopefully, coming out in September.

Twilight Imperium 4 - I just got into this game, and it's awesome. Took a little time to get used to the player dynamic, which is a lot less combative then Dune tends to be, but I'm very excited to play this more.

Pax Pamir 2e - In the middle of a Pax Pamir 2e game on Vassal. Great and beautiful looking game. I'll probably play solo using the physical game this week.

6 nimmt! - I've gotten into the habit of playing a game of 6 nimmt! on BGA any time I have some free time. It's short, relaxing, and I don't have to think much while playing it.

My support worker and I played Dungeons and Dragons: Dungeon Mayhem recently. It's not exactly a boardgame as it's a card game, but it was super enjoyable!

Two rounds of Terraforming Mars with my wife over the weekend. Saturday just with the Prelude extension and Sunday we added the Turmoil extension.

We have played it at friends places a couple of times, but with months in-between. But finally we bought it ourselves.

Great game, but we really should play it more often.

I love terraforming mars. I'm contemplating buying my own (hard) copy but we have it on the tablet already and our gaming friends have two physical copies.

Played the X-Men Marvel United set. Got stomped by Magneto. Had a fun time though.

We mainly played Ark Nova the entire week. All 2player games and I personally cannot get enough. Its not so much about winning as it is the enjoyment of just playing the game, the decision you make, strategies to employ. Often the game is over just before some big moves.

I was aiming to get all the highest. Conservation projects rewards (4 herbivores, 5 africa and 5 primates) i fulfilled all the requirements but did not have enough actions left. I think I waited too long and should have gone for some earlier rewards.

This. Played the game in person for the first time this weekend. Gave someone a couple of venom tokens and it forced her to trigger the end and play some sponsor cards with huuuge end-of-game points. I love it!
- I like your username! Sadly too many in my circles don't like that game so it rarely comes out...

My gaming group played a round of Mystic Vale. We used totems and leader but not amulets. I kinda stumbled into using the good old Growth build because I couldn't really collect much of anything else for a long time. I saw them laying around and figured "oh well". After a bit I quickly caught up and overtook everyone else.

Afterwards we tried our hand at Thanos Rising but were immediately stomped into the ground. One of us for never got off the ground and then made the fateful mistake of going into a sector that would dish out three damage to his color IF it got activated. Narrator: it did in fact get activated.

On the weekend I tried Imperium: Classic with my girlfriend but as I feared it is a bit too complex for her to enjoy. We were both about to rise to empire status when we tallied the score, which was pretty close. It's a fascinating concept, having truly individual startig decks and going from there. But the rules are so cumbersome. Having to look up a billion keywords all the time just slows everything down so badly. But now that I have the rules present in my mind again I'll see if my gaming group will play it. This week we might only be 3 that would be a good opportunity.

My Thursday group played a 3-player Victory Point game of Dark Venture: Battle of the Ancients. Got together on Saturday with two of us and played more! This time we played Scenarios 1-3 of the main Campaign. I'm obsessed.

We played Wingspan and some quick rounds of Love Letter.

Wingspan: We played with 5 people. I really enjoyed setting up my engine and it was interesting to see all the different approaches from the other players. Not sure though if the strategies kinda 'settle' after some games. Especially in the last round it was just 'buying eggs' from all the players. Still fun but maybe to freshen things up after some sessions the expansions might be needed?

But I am not sure if the expansions do add new mechanics (and allow new 'combos') or just additional birds with kinda the same effects that are already in the base game...

Love Letter: Quick to set up and much fun. I like that it's easy to learn but that you still see after some games that the playstyle kinda shifts into more bluffing (to avoid being exposed too soon) which is quite fun. We played with 3 players. I would like to play some rounds with more players soon since we have the Big Box edition with some additional cards (that will be added with 5+ players) and they look very interesting!

Oh yeah and we played Rush Hour Shift: Looks kinda silly, very easy but it was still fun for some lightly competitive rounds. It is also a good game to have around for e.g. family gatherings to be able to include the little kids as well. A good introduction I would say and makes everyone around want to try at least a round as well.

The week has been crazy and I got no physical games played, only BGA or mobile/tablet versions of games

Had a few new friends over for dinner and a game night on Friday.

We played 2x 4P Inis including the full Seasons expansion. This game is glorious and deserves the high praise it gets. With the art, theme, gameplay and player-interactions all being outstanding, Inis ( pronounced 'Inish', and means island in Irish language) is always a fun outing.

Then 1x 4P Port Royal a light push your luck card game that involves modifying strategies constantly, depending on the cards drawn.

[A high recommend for both of these games]

I played Carcassonne and Jaipur.

My cat also joined in with Carcassonne, so it took a bit longer than usual!

Quest for El Dorado, having got the new Dutrait art with proper cards it was a delight to get this out. Myself vs my seven year old kid.

I won with a thin deck and taking the longer easy routes. Kiddo concentrates fully on the shortest possible path and often gets stuck on teh three symbol spaces waiting for the perfect card.

Tried a few games for the first time during the last week. Age of Steam is the one that has stayed with me, it's depth is obvious, how to navigate those depths less so. Looking forward to playing it again.

Lords of Vegas was a lot of fun, monopoly done right. Quite a bit of randomness, but plenty of agency all the same, and a healthy dash of dickery.

Small World of Warcraft was fine, nice combos of various powers and player positioning, but parsing the constantly changing token salad on the boards became tiresome.

Taluva is a thinky multiplayer abstract that can be knocked out pretty quickly. Very pleasant experience.

Dune: Imperium is my current favourite game and i am preparing to teach it on friday, so a couple of solo games have happened this week. Besides that Marvel:United and Karak with my son and the new implementation of Challengers on bga

Dune: Imperium is sadly one of the unplayed games in my collection. Would you recommend it with 2 players?
- even though i have not played it with 2, i am certain that is works well with two since i play it solo a lot and that is similar. The game works by emulating the missing players to have 3 using the house haggal deck (i use the dire wolf app, since i find it easier). So a 2 Player game is a 3 player game with 1 automated opponent.
Dune Imperium is such a fantastic game, have you played with the expansions? Rise Of Ix is incredible
- Not yet, i‘ll try to keep my patience until the base game becomes boring, and to me immorality sounds more interesting than ix, but i guess i‘ll have both someday

I played 3P Ares Expedition with the new expansion that adds milestones into the game. I liked that it gave you something to compete with other players over but sadly none of my cards really went together at all and I got kinda destroyed.

I've also gotten my wife to play some Magic: the Gathering with me after the release of the new Lord of the Rings set. She loves the flavor.

How does Ares compare to the normal terraforming mars? I only ever played the original.
- Its more of a solitaire thing. Plays very different but I like that it gives the same tableau building feel but way faster. I would have said when I first got it that I wouldn't go back to playing original TM, but lately I would just say it depends how competitive you want to be.
- Ive only played once. While the theme carries over well, it's a very different game. It’s much more of a card fishing game centered around a lead-follow mechanic like RftG or San Juan.

Got my Codenames-loving friends to try Decrypto, and they had a blast!

Explaining the rules is a lot more complicated than actually playing the game though. I’ve found that explaining the rules to a large group of people to be the biggest hurdle in getting this game to the table.

We played some Cascadia and Carcassonne. About half of my board gaming is done virtually these days as my core crew has moved too far away.