Kodama!

A cute Japanese tree-spirit creatures inspired board game about growing a tree and earning leaf points over three seasons. Whoever gets the most points wins! Takes around 30 minutes to play.

I’m currently in the honeymoon phase with Innovation, a small but wild and cut-throat, kind of abstract civilization style card game originally released in 2010. I played it twice with my girlfriend now and she won both times, but losing is also fun here, simply because so much chaotic stuff will happen. It seems that so many different strategies are possible that no two games will feel similar.

I heard that some people dislike it for the chaos it contains, but I hope I can get some people from my usual gaming group interested so that I can play more often.

There will also soon be a Kickstarter for an updated version which I am excited for.

I went to a board game trade fair (“Spiel doch! Am Bodensee”). I had my kids with me, so I did mostly play family and kids games with them, but also found cough some cough games for me. But now I’m broke LOL.

Anyway, I welcome Hens (“Hennen”), Factory 42 (german edition; signed by the designer), Dune:Imperium and Everdell to my collection. I also got bear and puma tokens for Cryptid, as missing an areal and needing to correct a yes/no was always a strong hint to someone’s rule and has ruined a game already a few times.

My kids also got some new games, but the only one of them, that I liked personally was Café del Gatto

Got reacquainted with Raiders of Scythia, to teach next week - I needed a refresher. Trying to get better at Glass Road solo, the scores on BGG are some way above mine…

Managed to play Arkham Horror twice in one week, though missed playing War of the Ring with my partner.

Wednesday was an 11 hour Arkham Horror marathon due to 2 friends moving away. Four of us took the day off. We attempted the two-party Dream Eaters campaign with two groups of 3. The awake team blitzed through their scenarios while the dreamers struggled through theirs (having already played the other way, the dream scenarios are more complex). This resulted in the awake team waiting 30 mins - 1 hour per scenario for the dreamers to finish. We finished at the end of scenario 3 as we were so exhausted.

Saturday was my Path to Carcosa group, which proved to be a lot more fun, probably because we weren’t trying to cram a whole campaign into one day. Completed scenario 3 before the final agenda came up. Our seeker is ridiculous at hoovering clues.

It was my birthday on Saturday, so I was able to get a few friends to come home and play a few games with me. We got these to the table:

Cross Clues: Fun warmup game. Easy to integrate people midgame, which happened because a couple of people were running late. Also, my kids (8 and 5) got to play too, even if the 5 year old couldn’t think of a clue (and one of my friends had to bite his tongue and not say the very nsfw clue he was thinking of).

Scape Goat: This game shouldn’t work as well as it does. It’s too simple, but still manages to get you paranoid. Also, you need to make sure you read the grid correctly, or you might target the wrong goat, which two of us did. Still, it was fun.

Derby: Simple horse betting game. Not a lot of depth to it, but it was fun. I like the illustrations Maldón (the publisher) usually does, but I think they could have made a better job of differentiating the colors. I wouldn’t play this with bad lighting.

Codenames: Pictures: A classic. Also could involve the kids, so that was fun.

Article 27: I hadn’t played this in ages. It’s a fun negotiation game.

In all, we had fun. Next time I hope I can get something more meaty, but it was still fun.

Bought a copy of Turing Machine for my bf and me. We’re programmers so I couldn’t pass it up. Pretty good if you can keep from making foolish mistakes. Messed up the ordering of the cards already, but I figure that makes it a more authentic experience.

I FINALLY tried out the Hansa Teutonica game I got for my birthday two years ago. I’ve been wanting to try it out, but couldn’t bring myself to read the rule manual. It’s nothing against the wording or so, I was just procrastinating (I’m good at that).

1h youtube video later, I felt I understood the basics, and packed the game for our boardgame day last Saturday.

I LOVED IT. I don’t have any other Euro-games, this is by design, but I really wanted to try one. This one came highly recommended, and I can understand why. There are so many things to do, strategies to try… I definitely will play it again.

We also played Codenames and Set a Watch, but that was less of a revelation and more of a return of some favorites on the table.

Diamant 1x 4P (cardboard)

An always fun push-your-luck mechanic with a cave exploration theme.

Low learning curve, highly luck based and just sillyfun really. Yes, I recommend it (c:

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Also in the middle of some games on yucata.de : Port Royal, Rose King, Spexxx, Las Vegas, Thurn and Taxis, and Ali Baba. All are worth a try.

Terraforming Mars Ares Expedition - nice Variation to the original, better for 2.

Imperium:Legends - interesting and deep civilisation deck builder. We have both this and Classics, which means tons of civs for lot of replayability

I finished the first campaign of Isofarian Guard and then set up for some Final Girl 2, but didn’t get a chance to play yet.

I played Great Western Trail again. I love this game so much but hate having to tell my friends to think about their turn before their turn happens. When their turn comes and they’re staring at the board for a few minutes just thinking, it really grinds the game to a halt.

I played Santiago for the first time in a couple of years and it was so much fun. Excellent interaction mechanisms.

Had a mid relatively recently, so Thursday was my first game session in a couple of months.

Played Chinatown and won handily. Love that game. Very straight forward rules, lots of good interaction and decisions, and a great narrative over the course of the game. Glad to get back to the table.

Avatar Rising. Fun game, more difficult than I’d thought (we were three players). And they really nailed the heroes/villains abilities for the lore of the game