Month: January 2016

Jan and I tried a learning game of The Big Book of Madness this evening. I was solidifying the rules in my mind as we were playing so Jan found it hard going and didn’t enjoy it as much as she might have but I thought it was really good.

This is a co-op game where everyone is building their own deck and using their cards to tackle the challenges thrown at the players. It seemed pretty tough even on the easy level and we lost due to running down the Madness card deck in the fifth round of six. However, that may have been exacerbated by the fact that I had ignored that one of the actions was to cure a madness card in your hand and return it to the deck so neither of us ever picked that option.

It plays up to five players and seems fairly easy to try solo so I think this should get played again pretty soon.

First games played for a fortnight for me this evening -two player with Jan. Started with a game of Jam Sumo, playing Jam. I was rubbish, flicking a die off the board each round. Two rounds was enough with Jan winning 4-14 (lower score is better).

We then had a quick game of Cribbage, which I’ve not played for ages. The scores were reasonably close but Jan was playing catch-up for the second half of the game. I ended up winning 121-115.

Just back from a week in Tenerife and, although I took several games with me to play, not a single title saw the light of day. That’s pretty unusual but we were having fun with other things and Jan managed to catch my cough and sore throat so wasn’t in the right frame of mind. So Mottainai, 3 Sind eine zu viele and Qwinto will have to wait a while longer for us to try them out. Patchwork, Tiny Epic Galaxies, Groo: The Game and Red7 also missed out.

After a couple of quick rounds of Dobble with Jan and Becky (Jan winning both), I tried out the solo version of Between Two Cities, the latest Stonemaier Games release. This is a drafting game and I suspect it will be very good with multiple players but the solo game is also pretty interesting.

You’re building up a city in a 4×4 grid and each building type that you place in the grid has a different way of scoring. However, you’re not just building one city, you’re building two with each of your neighbours and, at the end of the game, your lower scoring city is your game score. This makes for some agonising decisions as you want both of your cities to score well but not so that your neighbour gets the better lower score.

In a solo game you play against Automassa and Automarta and a deck of cards dictates how they draft buildings into the two cities they are interested in. I really enjoyed the puzzle aspect of this and it played pretty quickly. That said, Automassa did a better job than me and ended up the winner with 56 points. Automarta and I lagged behind on 48.

Tried a two-player run-through of World 123, which is the suggested starting game for Friedemann Friese’s 504. It worked fine but it was pretty fiddly to set up and I’m not sure whether the payoff of game enjoyment over set-up time might be low and make me reluctant to get this to the table on a regular basis.

I also need to research which of the worlds are reckoned to be the best in terms of gameplay so we can see it at its best. Plus the rulebook / book of worlds is horrible and not easy to follow. Perhaps I need to see a decent video of the gameplay for another world.

Managed to try the 2014 trick-taking card game from Zoch, Scharfe Schoten, this evening with Jan and Becky. I really enjoyed this. At the start of each round you predict which colours of card you are going to collect both the most and least in. You score points if either of your predictions is correct and a bonus if both are correct. The card backs show the suit colours so you have some knowledge in working out your card play but it is often tricky trying to win enough cards in your off-suits to ensure your predictions pay off.

Jan and I managed to tie for points after three rounds and, with no tie-break rule, were happy to share the victory.