November 2016 roundup

In November, I was lucky enough to spend two weeks cruising around the Caribbean with Jan and, although I took several two-player games with me, we tended to do other stuff rather than play games. We did get to try seven titles over the course of the fortnight but I’m not sure if my mind was elsewhere as I had to suffer the indignity of losing all seven. (Call yourself a gamer?)

Over the whole month though, I managed to play just 9 games of 9 different titles, with 7 of them being new to me. The new games were:

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu – 1 play –  8 
First Published 2016

Familiar yet different. This was an excellent revamp of Pandemic, changing a number of elements of play and yet retaining the overall feel of the original. I really enjoyed this and was beaten fairly easily playing it solo with two characters. Looking forward to playing it again.

Tides of Madness – 1 play –  7 
First Published 2016

This was also familiar yet different, but this is much closer to the original with just the addition of insanity icons to some of the cards to give another factor to weigh up because, as well as trying to score points, you also need to avoid gaining too much insanity as this can cause you to lose. Good stuff and a slight improvement on Tides of Time in my view.

Multiuniversum – 1 play –  7 
First Published 2016

Interesting puzzle game that I’ve only played solo so far. You’re collecting card combinations to use to close portals, which will gain you VPs while also hopefully closing the right mix of portals for bonuses.

Matcha – 1 play –  7 
First Published 2015

Very clever two-player only card game where you’re trying to outwit your opponent to win ingredients for the perfect blend of tea. Some tough choices in picking which cards to play and working out what your opponent is trying to achieve and yet it plays really quickly. Very nice game that should see a fair bit of play.

Dice Heist – 1 play –  7 
First Published 2016

Simple yet fun game of collecting dice and then gambling when to try and grab the loot from four different museums with three different types of loot presenting different scoring opportunities. Light and family friendly. This was Jan’s favourite game we played on holiday.

HMS Dolores – 1 play –  6 
First Published 2016

A prisoner’s dilemma theme mixed with a rock paper scissors mechanism sounds an interesting mix and it sort of works but, with two, it fell a bit flat – and, to be honest, I’m not sure adding more players would make it more engaging. Pity.

The Lord of the Rings: Journey to Mordor – 1 play –  6 
First Published 2015

Perfectly playable yahtzee type game with a LotR veneer but the decisions were reasonably obvious and the outcome of the race against the nazgul seemed to be purely down to the luck of avoiding rolling nazgul symbols. I’d play again – and I want to see if the advanced variant makes any difference, although I suspect it is marginal – but there are several other dice games I’d pick before this if asked.

I added 7 new games to the collection: Tiny Epic Western, HMS Dolores, Dice Heist, Lord of the rings: Journey to Mordor, Flamme Rouge, Honshu and A Game of Thrones: Hand of the King. My total collection now stands at 542.

My list of unplayed games is unchanged from last month at 15 and my Game of the Month was Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu.