Well RamiCon happened. And there is a whole debrief about it (or at least part 1 of it). The good news is that a lot of games got played and a lot of fun was had by all. The less good news is as you will see below, there have been very few “new” games. Some games arrived a little late to be included in the RamiCon lineup and schedules are getting more complex as the days get longer and warmer.
Everything I played
The New
You know…I think I am a little upset with myself here. I had RamiCon where I brought so many of my own games, I played so many great games and yet….only one new game. To make it worse it is not even a game that I own. It is someone else’s game that I played at one of our quick work game lunches and the great game goes to:
Exploding Kittens: Can you believe it? I have never played exploding kittens. Yep. I knew about it, I mean everyone knew about it. It had a huge kickstarter a mainstream small box game, but I have never really felt the need to try it. It seemed like a silly game overall. After trying it I can see that my guesses were correct. The game definitely has some decent design considerations. The game has a fixed length in that on average you draw one card per player turn and the game ends at worst when the deck depletes. Cards act as your lifeline, but also manage to paint a large target on you if you have too many of them. Overall a fine timewaster of a game that can be enjoyed with kids, adults and whoever has the 15 minutes to play it. It’s not bad it’s just….
Verdict: The Meh
The Good
Well fortunately we are eating good here so fair warning this section is slightly longer than it has been for a while
Fast Sloths: I was fighting myself whether this belongs here or up top in the New. My explanation is that I actually technically played this game last year where I was taught it at a convention. That being said I see that we actually played the game kinda incorrectly with misunderstanding how several of the animals worked (both ants and the eagle). I managed to acquire this game for far too much money right before RamiCon and was excited to get it to the table. The game definitely hit with the group. The race was tight and close the whole time and the winner was determined by the player that was able to best plan their hand to be able to grab the last two leafs in a quick fashion. Overall very enjoyable game, can’t wait to show it to my partner who will probably kick all of our asses due to her amazing performance in race games as a whole. This one might be worth even putting a whole post together about in a few more plays.
Guards of Atlantis 2: Played a wonderful 2v2 game where my team got absolutely whooped! It may not have seemed that way but I felt the whole time we were losing both from pushes and in facing the enemies one a 1v1. Specifically we were Wuk and Razzle versus Garrus and Snorri. I felt that both me and my partner were good at locking areas down so we could handle Garrus, but Snorri had options to be able to move through obstacles so we had a very hard time not just letting him do whatever he wanted to. Even when getting rocked the game is fun and there was a lot of good planning and some cool situations. I had to make some interesting calls specifically not to get killed (play sub-optimally just not to die…which I guess is optimal) I swear if I had way more time to game I would play this game so so so much more than I do, but there are too many other great games that I love to just throw all my time at this one.
Millennium Blades: After skipping last years annual game of this gem, the game about card games returns with a vengeance. It is still an amazing experience game. The funny thing about this game is that some people play it specifically just to win the tournaments they don’t care about anything else. Unfortunately that does not win you the game, I was able to eek out a win with just 6 points, through I don’t think I won any of the tournaments. it helps to get a lot of NPC and set collections points though, those consistently help. If I ever have a lower player count I would really like to try the co-op version of this and see how it works.
Ginkgopolis: Man I wish other people liked this game as much as I do. Managed to get it down again and this time I was not part of any of the fighting! Actually this was a non standard game in a few ways. First of all, my previous games had all ended in the exact same manner, us running out of tiles twice. This time we actually didn’t have excessive tile draw going on and instead ended our 3-player game because one of the players had placed all of their player tokens onto the board. The other interesting bit was that I played a strategy that I long throught was “possible” but wasn’t sure was actually going to work and that was to get several powers that just gave me point tokens no matter what action I did. It wasn’t really planned it just so happened that I was the baron of the yellow tiles. This allowed me to get lots of point tokens when expanding and several yellow cards in front of me, using that alongside the card that gave me 2 points at the end of the game for every yellow card in front of me meant that I managed to run away with the game while not actually getting that many district points. I always feel like there is so much more to this game than I have experienced. It falls into the same category for me as Keyflower (which I also need to play some more).
Seal Team Flix: The monthly game night was just three of us and I didn’t want to bring anything that I thought I could/would play at RamiCon so I pulled out this little gem as something I haven’t played in a while and it was glorious. We all had some fun shots and ran into the standard conundrum of when to go loud and when to go quiet. We ended up going loud way too early and were in danger of being swarmed. But then a big opportunity came for all of us to clear out of the area where all the sound had happened and sneak past it. Meaning the patrols would all pass us by and go towards the loud areas while we would be able to sneak past them and go towards the rest of the objectives. It worked out and outside of a few tiny play errors at the end (that I don’t think would have changed the results), we were able to secure our targets, find all of our evidence and win. The only sad bit is that we didn’t have an opportunity to engage with any of the mini games this time. Maybe I’ll pull it out sooner rather than later, or maybe Phantom Division will finally be delivered and I can just move on to playing that!
Zoo Vadis: Managed to get Zoo Vadis played with 5 people, the game really does shine with more people making more decisions. We all started playing quite nice together but at the behest of one player (who turned out to be the winner at the end), we soon started charging for every single service, to move people, to push things forward to make any kind of deal. I still think we ended up being quite nice to each others as we made sure that every single person did reach that final exhibit and everyone got to score! I am always surprised at how brisk and fast this game is at all player counts. I need to bring it out more often.
QE (with commodities expansion): I stand by my previous statements that QE with the commodities expansion is legitimately a 10/10 game. This play proved it. I think we have all now played enough that we are less likely to get caught in the inflationary cycle that early plays of this game have had. That doesn’t mean prices don’t rise but it does mean that they end up in a logical place. I think I prefer this game 4 player to 5 player though. I think in 5 player it is way too difficult to get a handle on the current prices, the once per game “see the top bid” is not quite strong enough for you to get a good idea of what other people are bidding, maybe making it twice per game could help but I digress. At 4 players I feel like we all had a decent idea of where prices were going and how well people were doing. That being said as always in the game of QE I got absolutely destroyed, this time by having the highest spend and therefore auto losing. That doesn’t mean I didn’t have a great time. Seriously if you are reading this and haven’t tried QE with the expansion just do it, it is probably one of the best auction games I have ever played and I love it dearly.
The Rest:
Kabuto Sumo: I pulled this game out because my oldest requested it. I got to try it out with the Lazy Susan wooden ring (which is delightful to use and really does make the game better) and the championship belt rules change, which is really for the better. The game ended up pretty close with a win for me. I think this game might have more strategy than it lets on for the kids, but he seemed to enjoy it. The only reason it gets put into the rest rather than the good is I still have not had a chance to play this with the standard rules where you can use the wrestlers power and I feel like that could enhance the game to be so much better. Though I am not sure my kiddo is quite ready for that yet.
Kremlin: I….I don’t know if it is just my edition of the game (I have the abysmal Jolly Roger 3rd edition), or if it is just me but I feel like this game takes too long for what it is. Maybe if it was played more often some of the items would go by on a faster clip and that would help a bunch. This time we played with a mishmash of the rules that seemed to work though we still had a few questions (can you play multiple “the first purge must be made against x..” cards?) but we just hand waved it away and went on with our game. The game ended with one player needing to roll a 15+ to wave and they managed to make it after 7 rounds. Fun was had by all but I am not sure if the solution for this game is to throw out the rulebook and download the old AH version and play with those rules instead (which reading the rules later was 90% of what we did but those other 10% do make a difference in the game)
Witch’s Brew: You have no idea how many times I went back and forth between this being in the Rest or the Good. My play of it was fun. I do thing it is still an enjoyable for game for the gimmick and the trade off. I Also think it does a lot of things not so great with how the “extra” points you can get are often worth quite a bit more than the cards you can get especially early on and with the limited amount of resources you have to trade for them. I am also loathe to get rid of this in my collection considering the insane difficulty that I would have getting it back if I ever wanted it. That in itself isn’t sufficient reason to keep the game but it is an original and interesting mechanic in my collection and every time I get it to the table it is enjoyed. Here is to hoping this does end up with a reprint at some point.
Hopes for Next Month:
April showers bring…more time to stay inside and play board games. Actually it brings a lot of real world commitments. There is still some expected gaming there with both a chance to finally play Kingdom Death: Monster (not my copy but someone elses) and maybe get the recently purchased Eternal Decks to the table. I think there is still quite a bit here to play but I am not expecting as many games…but somehow I may get more new games played than this month which is kind of surprising.