Didn't realize its been 6 months since I posted here, but I've still been keeping notes.


Wyrmspan. I really didn’t want to play this game. If you’ve seen some of my other posts, you know I’m not really a fan of Stonemaier games. This game is a re-skin/retheme of Wingspan. It’s about 80% the same game, with the other 20% being different ways to do the same thing. And I’m not exactly going out of my way to play Wingspan these days because of the usual Stonemaier balancing issues (seriously, they’re releasing a FOURTH balancing pack for Tapestry. ) It seems like a lot of their success is being able to sell a theme, and this game exists because the Apiary designer pitched it to them, and I guess that game did well enough to warrant a look at this. But I think it’s another way to get people to buy Wingspan for a second time (sold 2+ million copies btw). First game we played, I managed to fill up my entire board with dragons and still ran into the usual Wingspan problem of the endgame being an optimization math problem. 7/10. (edit - still have only played this once, and in retrospect I would rate it lower because I really go out of my way to not play it)


Shipwrights of the North Sea (redux). Never played the original, but I guess this is like a 10 year anniversary remake. It’s by Garphill games (south tigris, west kingdom, raiders, etc) and they might be lowkey the most constantly great game publisher. I’m not sure if I’ve raided a single game of their below like an 8, and this one is really good too.

It’s a fairly simple game, moreso if you’re familiar with all the reused Garphill Games iconography (and resources and meeples.) 5 round drafting game. The closest comparison is It’s A Wonderful World, and honestly, it’s a pretty good comparison.



Skull king. Wizard, but with a fixed trump suit, and 3 different types of wizards that rock-paper-scissor each other. There’s also various bonus points you can get if you make your bid. Scoring is slightly different, as if you bid zero, you either get points = to the round *10, or lose. It’s a lot of fun. (edit - we’ve played this like 40 times in the 4 months that we’ve had it. 10/10)


Robo Rally. Ancient move-programming game by Richard Garfield. On the surface, nothing to dislike too much, until you start getting seasoned players arguing about upgrades, and also mixing up edition-specific rules. 6/10


Cat in the box. Trick taking game. The deck is 5 uncolored suits, 45 cards, 1-9. When you lead a trick, you declare which suit it is. Red is always trump. There’s only 4 actual suits, and you can’t duplicate cards. If you want to play a different suit, you have to get rid of a marker, indicating that you can no longer play that suit. If you make your bid spot on, you get bonus points for how many adjacent markers you have,(4,5,6 red, and then 5,6 blue for example, would be 5 extra points) Round ends when someone does have a legal move (such as playing a 5th 4), they create a paradox, and they don't get any points.


Architects of the west kingdom 6p expansion. Makes the game a bit more like some of the other Garphill games. Some extra action spots, and adds in cards that attach to the top and bottom of other cards, giving points, production, or stronger actions, etc. Still an approachable game for someone looking to get into heavier games


Skyrise. A mix of Ra and Acquire, with the overproduction of Foundations of Rome (at least for the kickstarter version.) Each player has pawns(like 12? I think) in 3 heights, with unique values. There's a colored city grid and bonus objectives. When you place a pawn with a value, the next player can place their pawn of a higher value in an adjacent spot, this keeps going (basically like a bid) until everyone passes or theres no legal spots to go. And this continues over 2 rounds, until everyone has placed all their pawns, so also like in RA, if you're the last person to go, you have free reign a bit. Theres various scoring objectives. It’s one of those light, but occasionally thinky games, but sort of unremarkable despite the production quality. 7/10


Wayfarers of the south tigris (surprise replay). Had a lot of fun replaying this, though it had been slightly long enough that it took some relearning. Not an easy game to teach, even if you’re familiar with Garphill Games.


Eclipse: third play. We played a 6p game of it without any of our problematic slow players, and we finished the whole thing in 2.5 hours (not counting setup/teardown), which is kinda of impressive since we play it like once every 2 years and always need a refresher of the rules. From a technical standpoint, it’s not that complicated of a game, though we haven’t played with the advanced aliens yet, which might raise it up a bit, and there always seem to be various edgecase rules. The random rewards for flipping tiles can still kinda ruin the mood though. Sometimes you have to kill a ship, sometimes you get a ship, kinda dumb, so whoever gets luckier gets a big advantage.


Space Station Phoenix. Been following this KS for awhile, didn't realise someone in my group actually got it. It’s got a neat mechanic where you’re slowly salvaging your ships, which are worker placement spots, to pay for the construction of your space station, so its a neat push-pull mechanic. Not a terribly complicated game (theres only 5 different actions which vary in strength) aside for the third tier station components I guess, but they’re all explained on the player aid. 8.5/10


Trailblazers. 4 round drafting game where you have square base cards that you tried to build long, matching color paths to, while fulfilling shared objective cards to get points. Some of the objectives seem impossible, but it is satisfying to complete a path. You also get points for each segment on a path (each card has like 2-4 different paths on it, think how Tsuro looks, so you want all your cards to pull double or triple duty to get good points) 7/10


World wonder. Every round, you get $7 and on your turn, you spend it on roads or a colored district (in 7 different sizes/shapes) to place on your map grid. There are also wonders which cost all your money, that have some requirements to place (such as needing to touch 2x purple district and a road). So there’s some tension, as even if you are watching what the others are doing, it’s still easy to get them swiped from you, but its also fun knowing you will get your wonder for $1 uncontested. Each district also advances a colored track which in turn advances your population track which gives victory points. Simple, easy game, but fun. 8/10

 

Terminus. Action management/optimization railroad routing game. You move your meeple forward around a track, choosing actions. Basically some spots you collect resources, other you spend them, and you have limited capacity so you have to do some planning. Goal is to build tracks using very finicky rules and building stations. You get points from basic objective style bonus cards. One of those games that I feel is very hard to understand on your first play, despite not being overwhelmingly complicated, but I found it overall more difficult than the fun factor is worth. I would go into more depth if I liked the game more. 7/10


Arcs. Some hype with this game. Card based system control game. Apparently this game is a 3.37 complexity? I don’t really see it. It gives me the same sort of vibe as Last Light, which I didn’t like, and it’s simpler than that. You play a card numbers 1-7 in 4 different colors, and you get actions depending on the color and number. Opponents can play a higher card of the same suit to get their full amount of actions, or play any card for 1 action. You can lead a card as a zero instead to unlocked round scoring for 1 of 5 objectives. You can build ships, but they’re all the same, get cards that give alternative actions and other abilities (this is where all the complexity is I guess), move, tax, and battle. Battle is done with 3 different sets and you choose which dice you want to use, so you have to do some light strategy and maybe push your luck. It’s decent fun but I wasn’t wowed. 8/10


Ezra and Nehemiah. One look at this game is all you need to know that it’s a Garphil game, except without the usual iconography. One issue that I’ve never really brought up with these games is that the manuals are never that good, though not quite in a tangible way. Perhaps its the order in which information is disseminated, but there was some struggle to figure it out, but once you did, it wasn’t too bad

You have a nice dual layer player board, and you have the main board. There’s 3 sections to worry about, each in 2 flavors. The red section, you use red actions to either advance the god track (which you shouldn’t ignore since it's scored 3 times), or the resource donation. The grey track, you either clear a crumbled wall/gate section and get those resources, or spend resources to build a wall/gate. Blue section you either move your tent and collect bonuses, or research the torah for techs.

You start with 6 workers and collect up to 10 more throughout the game. Some of the actions require the permanent usage of them, while some are temporarily locked away for the round (and there are only 3 rounds of 6 actions each). Actions are card driven. Everyone has the same set cards but they’re randomly drawn. A card has 3 flags on it, and an optional bonus action on the bottom you can do when you play it. The flags give you actions, so when you play a card, you chose a color, and you get actions equal to those colors showing, from all your cards (you’re tableau holds 3, and then you start placing new ones on top), a bonus worker can give temp +2, and tucked cards (end of round, you chose a card(s) to tuck and gives you a bonus scoring objective). There was some confusion on how you can spend your action points, but overall, it ended up being a very fun game. Maybe like a 9/10. It feels like it would be a hard teach to less experienced players, and while Garphil does produce nothing but 9/10 games, a lot of them basically never get replayed.


Logistico. 20 year old pick up and deliver game with some needlessly obtuse mechanics that we messed up. Also, route planning as per the name. You can take up to 8 actions per turn, but you have to spend your VP on actions, and the cost increases. Cool idea, Haven’t seen it that much (Terra Mystica kinda has it) But, we messed up badly enough that we all finished with less points than we started with.


Stamp swap. Newest Stonemaier game, if you’ve read my previous posts, you know how I feel about them. It’s decent for what it is. It’s got the usual generic point salad stuff, but the main mechanic(s) is a draft, followed by what I can only describe as the Magic card Steam Augury so you only keep some of what you draft. There’s a few cards that change how you score and such, and of course, the usual SM manual awfulness. I would play it again, and I like it more than something like Expeditions, but I don’t know if it’s really more than a 7/10

 

Andromeda’s edge. SEE Dwellings of Eldervale. Massive kickstarter game, much like dwellings, and the gameplay is like 90% of the same. Think Lizard Wizard compared to Racoon Tycoon, or Wyrmspan compared to Wingspan. Honestly, it was surprising how similar it was. But, it does have slightly improved combat with rerolls (still isn’t good), and the engine building is a bit more interesting, but honestly I’m not sure if it’s a better game. 8/10


Tournament at Camelot. Bought this game like 6 months ago, finally played it. Always saw it on people’s top 5 trick taking games, and we play a lot of those so I thought it’d be nice to get a new one. It plays quite well, and it’s one of those games that has a set of rules, then has cards that elegantly break those rules but still in a somewhat controlled and fair way. Only tried it with 3 players, which is the minimum, and it was fun, but it’s probably better at 4 or more, since there’s 2 different wild card mechanisms, and if you tie a card number, those cards are nullified so you can stick someone with tricks that way, so you can kinda gang up on someone when its just 3. 9/10 (edit- I’ve since played this with 6 players, and it’s a bit chaotic and fun, but honestly doesn’t really feel like a trick taking game, which I guess could be an upside to some people, edit#2, I’ve played it twice at 6 now and it’s fun, still not very trick take-y, and it takes kinda long. We had a pro bridge player get the card that makes someone play with their hand revealed, and he still couldn’t really make that mean anything)



Can't stop. Push your luck dice rolling game. There’s a board with 11 columns, numbered 2 to 12. Goal is to claim the top of 3 different columns, and each column has a different number of required stops. You roll 4 dice, and split it into 2 pairs of 2 dice. Those are your 2 numbers (if its the same number, you go up that column twice) but, you only have 3 different number columns you can go up each round. You mark the numbers you keep, and you can roll again if you want. The trick is, you can only go up columns that you’ve used the markers on, and if you don’t roll any of those numbers ( just 1 is fine), your round is over - that’s the push your luck element. When the top of a column is claimed, you can no longer advance up it, but that means you don’t have to waste a marker on it. It’s kinda clever and it is fun, but i’m honestly not sure if the math actually adds up to it being difficult, which I guess it would end up more as a psychological thing. Like, if you keep losing, there’s impetus to keep trying to make up for the loss. Or, if someone else is about to win, there’s no harm in trying to go up a whole column, and that’s where I think the math kinda fails when you have 4 dice to roll 1 pair. 7/10


Red Rising. Been a really long time since I last played it (my only previous time was the previous review). Some of my complaints are still the same, a lot of reading unless you’ve played so much that you know all the cards. I think there’s also a real problem with card digging, like theres a 100+ card deck, and you’re only going to see like 25% of them in a game. The issue is kinda like in rummy, if you need 3 of a kind, and have a pair, you’re going to try and complete that pair rather than break it up. In this game, most of the time you’re going to work around the known quantity in your hand. And the scout action doesn’t help - it puts a new card out (and there are cards that do bring more out), but the next player has first pick. That leads to a dichotomy where we sculpted our perfect hand and are just doing scout actions to trigger end game, and thats kinda boring. And then you realize that this is a stonemeier game, and that’s the same exact issue with Wingspan and suddenly everything makes sense 6/10



Deep Shelf. Kickstarter game I picked out like 18 months ago and finally arrived. It’s a mix of scythe and terra mystica I say, maybe with a splash of On Mars, and with a heavy Subnautica vibes. You in the shallow end of the hextile board and work your way down to the deep shelf, then the trench. You have 4 buildings types, extractor, smelter, lab, house, and a special faction building that unlocks a special power. You can also build tubes which connect hexes, and a crawler, which collects resources. You start with a sub which can also extract and carry resources.

Each player has the same six actions cards with slightly modified #’s, and a seventh you unlock with your faction building. Extract, build, move, smelt, science, unload (might not be the exact names). On your turn you play 2 of them, the first goes back to your hand, and the second one goes on cooldown for a turn. You collect various resources, can spend them, refine them, sell them, and use them for buildings and science. Your upkeep goes up the more buildings you have built. Science gives you various upgrades, and it’s a cool system, but a bit finicky. Game ends when the research tracks are max, or the ecosystem collapses.

Overall, it’s a pretty good game. There’s a lot more than what I mentioned above, and there’s some nuance. There’s also a few things that seem unneeded, such as the water dragon, and the anomalies. And the color coding isn’t that good so it’s not always clear which material is which. There is an interesting dichotomy between extracting ores, refining, and selling vs using the ores, and a lot of the games is trying to find the right balance, because if you don’t, you can flounder. Learning curve is probably steep. 9/10

 

Civolution. Heard about this game about 15 months ago, finally came out. Actually, someone else in the group got it independently, but I might buy my own copy anyways. Designed by Stephan Feld, who has some pedigree (Castles of Burgundy, Carpe Diem, Bonfire, Oracle of Delphi, etc). Definitely too complicated to explain in great detail, but it has many of the hallmarks of the type of games I enjoy, engine building, tech routing, dice placement, and you definitely see the influences from his other games

The story is something like, you’re a godling and you’re uplifting a civilization. There’s a map in front of you that you explore and slowly expand across and get resources from and build buildings.

Everyone starts with 6 dice (1 of each number), a few cards you can build, and some starting resources. On your turn, you spend 2 dice to do an action. Your tableau in front of you has an action for every dice combination, 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 1-5, 1-6, 2-2, 2-3, x-x, etc. Each action can be upgraded 2 times to be more powerful. You also have dice adjusters and “focus” which can be used as any number When you have 3 or less dice left, you can do a reset. Usually people try to maximize dice usage, because there’s a lot to do. When a certain amount of resets happen, end round triggers (there’s a tracker, but it’s something like PlayerCounter*2 +1. When round end is triggered, you finish the current round (even turns), and everyone gets another. So it can be like Teotihuacan, where if you do your reset in this phase, it doesn’t count against the timer.

The six double actions all create a DNA which is used to build some cards. Otherwise you’re making/moving people, producing/trading/transporting resources, smoothing out dice rolls, activating abilities and building cards. The cards have a somewhat escalating cost based on previous ones of the same type, and give you a passive effect and sometimes an instant bonus. Every card is also worth points at the end of the game, and it scales up decently.

It’s one of those games that has a lot of strategies, and can be determined by your starting cards, the randomized bonus objectives, the even cards, whatever you want. There can be a bit of a puzzle-routing situation going on, which is what I enjoy, because you’re only getting about 30-40 actions a game. It's definitely a heavy scoring game, but not really point salad. I’ve played this about 15 times in the last 2 months, and it’s a 10/10



Nefarious. Quick little card game. Uses a cards as actions, with the mechanic where you can’t play the same action twice in a row. Collect money to build cards, cards give points and have effects. 20 points triggers end game. Its cute and quick, but mostly unremarkable. Near the end you kinda get stuck in the death loop where you just got money _ build card -> money -> build card over and over, and thats not that interesting. 6/10



Age of Innovation. A reimagining of Terra Mystica. I’ve never played gaia project, so IDK how much is taken from it. It’s about 80% the same as Terra Mystica, but that 20% really makes the game shine. I won’t go over what’s the same.

Player powers are now modular (factions are now detached from color) and some were removed and there’s some new ones.

There’s a new “book” resource. 5/6/7 books lets you buy an innovation tile. Most of them are points, so there’s some push/pull on when to get (later is better, but bigger chance of getting swiped), some have production, some have actions. There are 3 new action spaces that are randomized. Spend book(s) to get an action, similar to the purple action. Can also buy a book for 5 purples.

The rewards for the cylinders (idk what they were called previously) are somewhat changed. Works the same, but there’s 4 of each, and they give bonus books as well as god chart bumps. God chart works the same, but slightly altered, need a city to get above 7 on one track, step 9 gives production.

Bonus objectives are the same but some are changed. Last round has an extra scoring objective instead of god chart reward.

There are neutral buildings that you can place on your terrain tile (thats how you know whose it is). Theres neutral buildings of each normal type, and there’s a special monument worth 4 power that only needs 2 buildings to be a city. There’s also annexes that reduce city cost and size by 1, so getting 3 and 4 cities is far easier.

Palace powers are first come first serve from a randomized assortment. Cool change. There are new city rewards. There are new bonus tiles. There’s also an initiative track that changes turn order by pass order.

Overall, I think the game is excellent, and a worthwhile improvement over an already good game. There’s a lot of smoothing out, and you’re less likely to get stuck. You usually feel like you get to do more, and some of the stuff you get to do almost feels broken, but everyone has that opportunity.. It is more difficult than before, but anyone who has played terra mystica can pick this up easily. 9.5/10