My Tabletop Game Play Session Reports 2023

This article the compilation of my play session reports over the course of the year. Usually, I do short reports per week on my BGG blog.

By writing the session reports, it helps me to write the review for the game later. So, it is part of the review process even though I may not even write the review.

I also write once a week a longer session report for one game where I describe what happened turn by turn. There are links at the bottom of each entry to BGG post of that long report.

Some new games get more play until it reaches the target minimum of play. They might appear in multiple months. I also revisit some older ones from time to time.

These are the games that I played over the course of 2023. In general, these are just games in my collection.

Click or tab on any sections from the table of contents to jump right to that part. Use the red arrow button on the bottom right corner of the screen to head back to the top

December 2023

On BGG, here are the links to each weekly report for December, Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Final Week of 2023.

Trailblazers

Continuing with the Standard Solo mode of Trailblazers. This time with the METRO PARK objective. In this one either the longest width or height must be 8 or lower. This means I cannot expand too much.

I thought it was not going to be that hard but shortly after I realized that I didn’t have much room to play. First play, I scored only 46, almost 50. There was one corner of this 8×8 limit that I didn’t use.

With the 8 spaces limit, if you lay out those big camp tiles next to each other, they already take 6 with only 2 spaces left. This made me realize that maybe I cannot use one or two sides of one or more camps. Maybe one camp can use all 4 edges but it will take the room from the other camps.

With only 2 sides of each camp, you can only have 2 loops, with 2 exits and 2 entrances. That means for those 2 camps, I have to keep extending those 2 loops. Of course, I have to leave some space first. My plan was to place the camp as the edge of this 8×8 grid and then try to extend the straight loop to the opposite side. At least that was for one of the camp.

So, in the 2nd play, I placed the first 2 camps right next to each other where half side of each adjacent. This way, I had more room for the 3rd to have the biggest loop. Well, the plan worked to some extend but then I didn’t get the right tile to keep extending in straight form.

I managed to score exactly 50 but I have to say, I got very lucky to get a tile that can easily extend any of the loops. One thing that I realized was that just because I already set my plan for 1 main camp to get the biggest loop, there is still a chance for the other to get more Loops or even extend it.

A tip for specifically this challenge. I realized that you can place the next camp tile to help make a plan even if you are not placing them right away. So, during the 1st round, in 2nd turn, I immediately take the next camp tile just to help me imagine where it should go and to make sure I don’t exceed the limit of 8 spaces.

Also, don’t leave room too far from the main camp for the biggest loop. There is a chance that you fail to reach that far.

Playing time was about 22 minutes each.

Final Girl: The Haunting of Creech Manor

I finally had the chance to play Final Girl for the first time. For the Feature Film, I bought the Haunting of Creech Manor with the Poltergeist as the enemy or killer and with either Selena or Alice as the Final Girl. I played with the Selena twice and won both but since this was my first time, I probably made mistakes here and there.

In the first session, very early into the game I got 2 of the Minor Dark Powers from the Terror deck. Since I didn’t have Carolyn with me at that time, those two affected me until I actually found Carolyn.

So here is what happened…

I started in the Ballroom with 2 Victims while the Poltergeist was in the Garage. So, I thought I should bring those 2 Victims out of the Manor right away and saved them to get some extra benefits. There was also another Victim in the Foyer, which was 2 spaces away from the Poltergeist. That means, I had to leave one of the Victim in the Ballroom and in case I was in the foyer with the ghost, the ghost would just attack me instead.

That was what happened, I was too slow but I decided to focus. The Poltergeist came to the Foyer and hit me once. Then from that Foyer, I sprinted up to the 2nd floor. Found another victim there and drag them along to the 3rd floor to the right wing of the Manor.

I kept running to the next room before going to the 4th floor. Found another victim along the way and eventually ended up in the Closet. I started Searching there and only found MYSTERIOUS PILLS that I put in the backpack. Didn’t find Carolyn so I decided to stay focus.

The Ghost then went to the Ballroom where I left the other Victim there and killed them. This was when I got the 2nd Minor Dark Power. This says the first spaced moved, each action phase is Panicked. I probably forgot to resolve it since I didn’t always move.

I did Search again and found Rabbit foot and the Mr. Floppy. So, I saw all 4 items in the closet (Actually I did another Search in next round to see all 4 items in the Closet). Using the Helpful List Variant, I found out that Carolyn was hiding in the Attic. I brought Mr. Floppy in my hand. Before making any move, I tried to focus and make a plan.

The Poltergeist was too far. But from the Terror Deck, I got hit from Unstoppable Evil. Luckily it was just 1 damage. Next, I run to the Attic which was 3 spaces away. There we found 2 more victims but not Carolyn. So, I did another Search and finally found Carolyn was there. Then we made a plan to get out from there, possibly via the window from the left side of 3rd floor manor.

The Poltergeist was on 2nd Floor, going to the right side and found another Victim. This was the 2nd Kill so it activated the Dark Power. I couldn’t enter the exit space with Carolyn without having full health.

From the Terror deck, the Poltergeist was supposed to mov to the closest Victim, which was in the upper room of where the Ghost was. However, I had a Crucifier to cancel that effect that I found in the Closet.

There were 4 victims so I couldn’t bring everybody with me. I brought along 2 with me and run to that room with window in west side. That room also had another victim waiting. I couldn’t get out and bring any of them along because I was wounded. So, I stayed focus and figured out how to heal.

The Poltergeist was still on 2nd Floor. So still far away. But then the Terror card said “Something Unholy Happened in the…” and I rolled a 2 which was the Attic. There were 2 victims there. I think that card just killed both and ended the Poltergeist movement. Somehow, I resolved it as the ghost killed both and then moved right to where we were in that windowed room. Another kill apparently.

While in that same room with 2 Victims, Carolyn, Mr. Floppy and the Poltergeist, I played the Planning card to roll more dice. Rolled 2 dice, one was a success and the other was a 4, I turned it into success by discarding 2 cards. Then with 4 dice, I did short rest to heal.

I played the Sprint card and rolled 1 success. We run through that window and finally exit this Haunted Manor. I’m sorry for the last 2 Victims there.

So, I think I won? Of course, I probably made mistakes and cheated a lot with those dice roll. At least, I still got a good story from it. I did realized during that game how powerful the IMPROVISE CARD can be to turn 3 and 4 into a success for the entire round.

I managed to keep the Horror level at 1 most of the time so I could roll 3 dice and increasing the time to buy more cards. Didn’t use any of the attacking card, not even the reaction. I think I did use the GUARD once but since I had to suffer 1 damage still so I switched the card for something else. Also, maybe the DISTRACTION can be useful after sudden increase in Horror level thanks to the random terror card.

Playing time for this learning session was about 50 minutes.

So, I thought it wasn’t that long. After putting the game back to the box I decided to setup the game and play again. I still play with Selena but this time using the different Setup card.

Here is how it went…

I started this time on the 3rd Floor in the room with Window in West side of the Manor while the Poltergeist started in the Ballroom.

The 1st Event card said “I AIN’T AFRAID OF NO GHOST!” and somehow the moved every Victim 1 space closer to the Attic. I guess I was lucky that the Ghost was on the 1st floor.

On that 3rd Floor there were 4 Victims across the hall so I thought I should bring 2 of them to the other Window and exit the Manor from there. Walked 2 spaced after discarding 2 cards for the 2nd success and ended up in the room with 3 Victims. I could have walked again but this time I decided to just focus.

The Poltergeist went to the Foyer and got her first kill. Then the Terror card says: “THE GROUND IS SHAKING!”.

This actually moved the ghost to the same space as me… where there were 3 Victims. So the Ghost got her 2nd kill activating the Dark Power. The other 2 victims then got panicked. One went to the left room and one to the right.

I only have Sprint card and 2 Close Call cards. Rolled 2 dice and got 1 Success and 1 almost success. So, I discarded the two cards to get that 2nd success to move to the right. The next room on that right had 2 Victims and I could move again, brought them along to the room with Window. All of us jumped to outside and run away from the Manor.

With 2 saved Victims, I used it to increase the time and lower the horror level by 2. This way I could start rolling 3 dice. I got back all starting cards plus Improvise, Sprint and Search.

The Ghost then moved to the left room and got her 3rd kill. The next Terror Card says: “THE TREES ARE ALIVE!”

I was lucky. Had I chose to stay in that windowed room, I could have taken a damage and another victim killed. Luckily, nobody else in room with windows. But I had to draw another Event card. “PUSHED TO THE EDGE” Another lucky draw as there was nobody in a room with window.

I started using Improvise card. I went to the Main Entrance into the Foyer. At this point, I had a choice between going to Garage and start Searching there or I could go upstairs, drag along the Victims along the way to the Closet again. If I was successful, I could skip the Ghost before she can catch us. So, I decided to go upstairs.

I only had Walk card but got 2 successes. So, I went upstairs leaving 1 Victim on 2nd Floor and found another one on 3rd floor. From that point, I could either go right to the Closet or go up again to the Attic. Somehow I decided to use the other Walk card to move almost to the Attic. Found a 2nd Victim to come along with me. I stayed focus and made a plan.

I still had my Search Card from previous round. This time I took another Improvise, Sprint, Guard and Close Call. Who knows how next Terror Card would send the Ghost again.

The Ghost then moved 2 space. Still on 3rd Floor. We saw a Clown Doll and a Terror Card says: “DID THAT CLOWN JUST MOVE?”

I did not have any Attack card so the Clown attacked me. I was lucky to have that Guard card even with just 1 Success. The Clown disappeared immediately.

This time, instead of entering the Attic, I decided to bring the 2 Victims with me out of Manor. I played the Sprint Card to the left room and moved downstairs to a room with Window. Then I ended my action phase there.

From previous one, I still had my Improvise and Search. Then I got back all of the Starting Cards so I could take 2 cards more which I picked Sprint and another Search.

Well, the Ghost heard that I moved to the same floor as her so she moved closer to where we were. She was in the next room. Then the next Terror Card says: “NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS”.

I didn’t have Carolyn with me so I had to shuffle all Item decks. If Carolyn or Mr. Floppy became the top card the Bloodlust went up. None of them was either.

I used Improvise again and then Sprint to move out with the 2 Victims. So, we were outside and exited the Manor. I got the bonus of Search card for saving 3rd Victim and 1 movement for the 4th. This also activated Selena’s ability to roll more dice when doing Search action.

After that movement to the Foyer. Another choice between going to Garage or upstairs which I decided to save those in the Attic first so I walked right to the 2nd Floor. I kept walking up and arrived at the Closet. Then I did SEARCH using 5 dice and got 2 Success. The 2nd top card was Carolyn!

Since I found her, I decided to just stay focus, twice. I had a choice to just end the game right now or tried to save the remaining Victims. I still had some cards and I took Improvise, Sprint, Guard and Close Call just to get 10.

The Poltergeist finally went to 2nd Floor as that Victim there was the closest at this moment. That was her 4th Kill. So the two in the Attic were the remaining.

The next Terror Card says “VOICES… I HEAR VOICES!” Well, the remaining victims were already at the top level. But this increased the Horror Level by 1 and the ghost started moving again upstairs from 2nd floor.

This time, I just Improvise and Sprint to the attic. I found the 2 Victims and decided to make the last plan while keeping the other cards. I took the other Improvise and this time the DISTRACTION CARD to lower the Horror Level.

The Ghost moved up again. I think I made a mistake here. She was supposed to be on 4th floor by now, very close to the Attic.

The next Terror Card says: I HAVE TO KILL YOU! IT TOLD ME TO KILL YOU!”.

Somehow the Ghost managed to speak to these remaining Victims and convinced them that they should kill me. I now had a choice between killing them or suffered some damage. Well, I went with the latter… I didn’t have any attack card anyway…

Another mistake here. They were supposed to be panicked if I didn’t kill them which I didn’t resolve. But the only way out from the Attic was that one door. (3-6). I just assumed they didn’t go out.

I started with Distraction. Got lucky with 2 successes so I could roll 3 dice again. Next, Improvise, 2 successes. Then I walked 2 spaces from that Attic to the left.

Had I played correctly, then the Ghost was exactly 2 spaces away and she could have taken out those 2 last Victims. After that, she could move 3 spaces. With the incorrect way I played she was still 3 spaces away from us.

Then the next Terror card says: “THE SHADOWS ARE CLOSING IN!” This increased the Horror Level by 2, so I could roll only 2 again. Then, the Ghost moved again 2 spaces and now 1 space away.

To end this, I only needed to move 2 spaces to the Exit. However, I also needed to heal first because of the Dark Power. I used Improvise, then Long Rest, then Sprint. All 2 Victims, Selena and Carolyn managed to get out.

Playing time was 47 minutes. Well, I still made some errors and cheated a bit for the dice roll here and there.

Nautilion

This was my 2nd time playing Nautilion with all of the expansions. Still with the basic Nautilion, Normal difficulty of Darkhouse Cards, 4 starting Reserve tokens and the easy Mercenary.

The first Darkhouse card was forcing Nautilion to move backwards. With the 2nd, I had to swap tokens between Nautilion and the Phantom. Then the 3rd card, I had to pick one figure and roll 1 die and then roll the other 2 for the rest. For the 4th, if I gave a 2 to Darkhouse, I had reroll that. The last one was the Blue and I got to take 1 discarded token as my reserve.

This time I decided to activate one of the Mages very early. I got a 4 and the a B so I could start reroll one of the dice which happened in the 4th round or so.

I got a couple of Mercenary tokens early which I placed at #6 and #7 hoping that I could get the 2, 5 or 8 without losing them after the fight with Phantom.

The collision happened in 14th round or so. I got 7 harpoons from 2 Mercenaries and 3 of the regular crews while the Phantom only had 2 Mercenaries and 2 from their board. Previously there was a moment when they could get the same amount of harpoons and I would have lost the game.

So, I won. I had 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 for the Nautilion Crew and Mage A and B. Both Phantom and Nautilion were in 15 spaces away from their destination.

While the Nautilion had to move backwards a couple of time, I managed to always give the lowest value to Phantom. From the last expansion where I had to lose 1 Crew to activate one card, there was one to force Phantom to move backwards in which I gave them the 4.

I was lucky to have all 1s in the remaining paths so I could keep taking one by one while letting them go to activate the rest.

In the last round, Nautilion was 4 spaces away and Phantom was 5 from their own destination. I got a 4 for Nautilion and I gave the 1 to Phantom and I won. For the entire game, I think I only lost 1 Reserve token for giving the Darkhouse the high value die.

I had to say that I did use the reroll from Mage a couple of times even if it was just once per turn. Getting 1 extra token because of that one Darkhouse card was helpful.

Nautilion also landed on a Reef 7 times and about half of them was stuck and didn’t move. It was actually a good one since that happened a couple of times when the Darkhouse card forced me to exchange the tile between Nautilion and Phantom. So, I didn’t give anything to Phantom while getting something from Phantom.

Playing time was about 41 minutes. Maybe I should start playing with the other Nautilion board next.

Old Town Road

I played the Old Town Road again, still on the table not in hand. Started with 7 of Spades between an Ace and a 6 so I could flip that 7. There was a 6 but no 5 insight. I decided to make a Flush set instead since there was a 2 of Spade. Got lucky that the next one was 3 of Spade that could be killed easily by 2 of Club.

Then I had Ace, 2 and 3 of Clubs so I decided that the next set should be the Straight Flush. The 4 of Diamond killed the Ace and then the Sherrif took down the 2 and after the 3 got closed to 4 of Diamond, she got killed.

I had a couple of 4s, a 5, a 3 and 2 6s. If I got lucky maybe I had a chance to make another Straight Flush with 4, 5, and 6 of Clubs. The Sherrif got murdered first followed by the 6. Unfortunately that last card didn’t come out. Also, apparently nobody could took down that existing 5 so I had to discard the 4 of Diamond. Then 5 of Heart was next to the 6 of Diamonds that killed him.

Next, I had a 2, a 3, a 4, a 5, a 6 and a 7. I could easily make another Straight but no chance for Straight Flush. I let the 6 of Diamond got killed first. After that I had to let go the 3 so that the 7 was between a 5 and a 2. Those two robbed the bank so now I had to kill the 5. Ace of Heart showed up and did the job.

I had a 7, an Ace, 2 2s, a 4 and a 6. I already scored 3 different sets and to get 5 unique sets I still needed a Pair and 3 of a Kind. From what have come out my chance to get 3 of a kind could only happen with Ace. So, the 2 2s should be the Pair.

2 of Diamond was first to die. Unfortunately, nobody could touch the 2 of Heart. I let go the 7, hoping to get another card to do the job. It was a 6 so I decided to make a Pair of 6 instead. That 6 of Spade was in range to kill that 6 of Heart. Then the Ace of Diamond killed the 6 of Spade.

At this point, 3 Aces were available to kill. Ace of Heart went out first killed by the Sherrif Ace of Spade. Ace of Diamond then killed that Sherrif. Nobody could touch this last Ace unless I let go the 4 of Heart. The 2 of Heart next to this last Ace killed her.

Last 6 cards were a 2, a 3, a 4, 2 5s, and a 7. I made another Straight with 4 of Spade, 3 of Diamond and 5 of Spade. The last 3 cards were a 7 between a 5 and a 2. Sadly, I couldn’t use it.

1st Set: Flush + 2 Moneybags + 1 Chip = 8 points
2nd Set: Straight Flush + 2 Wanted = 7 points
3rd Set: Straight + Chip + 1 Wanted + 1 Moneybag = 9 points
4th Set: Straight + Chip + 2 Wanted + 2 Moneybags = 12 points
5th Set: Pair + 2 Wanted = 3 points
6th Set: 3 of a Kind + Chip + 2 Wanted + 1 Moneybag = 12 points
7th Set: Straight + Chip + 2 Wanted = 8 points
All 5 Poker Sets Bonus: 10 points
TOTAL SCORE: 69 points

Playing time was about 24 minutes.

Carson City: The Card Game

Another solo play of Carson City: The Card Game, still with the standard rule. With this play, I finally reached 21 plays of 21 different games. I played as the Hat against Boots, Cactus and Bulls.

Era I started with a Mercenary character with a value of 3 at 2nd place. Two other cards had houses, one with a single Mountain. I thought the Mercenary was the best but since this was the start, I played my 4. Another 4 was played by Cactus but I won the tie breaker so I picked that character.

Then the Indian showed up on 3rd space. The highest one had Mines and Mountains, while the 2nd had 2 Ranches. The 4th had 2 houses and just empty slot as the last. I played my 3 and this time Cactus was the only lower one so I could take that Indian character.

Next is the Undertaker character. This one is important if I want to focus on getting character with 2 VP per character. I could get up to 36 just from this. This one was also the 2nd highest card with the highest one having a Church and 2 houses. I played my 8 and a single 9 from the Bulls was the highest so I managed to take that character.

Paperboy next and he was in 3rd place. The 2 cards with lower appeal were empty card. I played my 5, which was tied with Cactus which I lost the tie breaker and there was 1 from Bulls. So, I managed to take that Paperboy without using the Mercenary.

Next was the Settler and he was the highest one with just appeal of 5. The next 2 cards were the same with one mine and 1 mountain for the same appeal. I didn’t care much about any of these so I played my 1 and it was of course the lowest one. So, I had to pick the empty card.

6th round was for the Cowboy and he was the 2nd lowest appeal with the lowest one had just 1 house. The 2nd highest had a Prison while the highest had Outlaw. I played my 6 hoping at least to get one of the highest. The highest was 8 but I was tied to Cactus again but they were the lowest in tie breaker for this round. So, I did pick the one with 1 Prison and 2 Mountains. I should have just cover the empty card completely but somehow I didn’t and only overlap one part of the card.

After that the Banker showed up and he was in 2nd highest appeal. The highest one actually had a Bank with the appeal of 18. The other only had either 1 Ranch or 1 House. I played my highest card with 9 and I was the highest. Somehow I picked that 18 appeal card instead of the Banker. I placed the card so that the Blacksmith was next to the existing Mountain.

Then the Sherrif showed up. I already had 1 Prison so I could get easy 3 points plus from the Undertaker. The other 3 higher cards had just Mountain and Mines. I played my 2 and I was the lowest but I managed to get that Sherrif.

The last of Era I was the Editor and he was the highest appeal. The other cards only had Mountains and or nothing. My last card was 7 and I played my Mercenary to increase the value by 5. There was another 7 as the highest card but I won that Editor. This would give 1 point per passive character and 4 for active character.

Era II started with a Doctor and all of highest value cards between 15 to 12. I didn’t want to waste my card to compete for this so I just played my 1 and be happy with that Doctor. Everybody else played between 2 to 4.

Next was the Gunsmith with the 2nd lowest appeal. The highest card has an appeal of 16 with a Townhouse, Saloon, General Store and Outlaw. I played my 4 and it was increased to 9 by my Mercenary. The next highest one was 7 so I picked that highest card. I placed it so the Townhouse part was diagonally adjacent to the existing Bank.

After that the Prospector showed up. I didn’t invest in any Mine but I had a couple of Mountains. That was also the 2nd highest card so I had to play high. I played my 7 and it was one of the lowest card so I ended up with an empty card again.I just placed it closer to the existing so I could cover it later.

The Teacher was next and she was the highest appeal with 3 other empty cards and next one with 2 Ranches. I had to play my 8 and this time I was the highest so I took the Teacher.

Next was the Lawyer. This could help me get any card guaranteed. He was also the 2nd highest card. So, I played my 6, increased by the Doctor by 2. It was not even the highest and tied to Boots. Luckily I won the tie breaker this round so I could take that Lawyer.

6th round was the Captain which could extend the Area I could build. This works well with my Indian guy. I didn’t want to play my 9 yet so the next highest one was 5 and I played that one. It was the 2nd highest so I could take that character.

Then the Heroes showed up with a value of 6 and can increase the auction card by 3. I only had 2, 3 and 9. At this point I just played for more characters. I played my 2 but with the help of my Lawyer so I could take that heroes. Those heroes should help my 3 next.

After that was the Chinese Worker. This could help me get 2 cards in a round guaranteed. He was also the 2nd lowest appeal. I played my 3 and it was increased by 3 thanks to Heroes. It was tied to the Bulls player and I lost that tie breaker. I was still 3rd place so I could take that character.

Last round was for the Governor which was useless at this point. I played my Chinese Worker so there were 5 more cards. The two highest ones had appeal of 17 and 15 so I picked those 2 instead of the character.

That 2nd highest card had a House at the top left corner. I’m not sure but I assumed I can cover it with a Hotel since it works as a Townhouse from that highest appeal card. So, that was the end of the game.

Boots and Cactus players scored 103 each while Bulls scored 112.

My Score:
Paperboy: 3 points
Indian: 26 points
Undertaker: 24 points
The Captain: 6 points
The Teacher: 9 points
Sherrif: 3 points
The Editor: 27 points
The Doctor: 5 points
the heores: 6 points
Saloon: 6 points
Drugstore (1st): 3 points
General Store: 16 points
Drugstore (2nd): 7 points
The Hotel: 3 points
The Bank: 6 points
Saloon (2nd) : 8 points
Drugstore (3rd): 2 points
TOTAL SCORE: 160 points

Playing time was about 43 minutes.

Rush M.D.

Played Rush M.D. the solo variant again 3 times. During the 1st session, with the hard difficulty, I immediately lost the game after failing to save 1 Critical and 1 Mild Patient. So, I continued with the Normal difficulty. Scored 59 with 8 Medical Points left, treated 7 Hospitalized and a lot more the Outpatients.

2nd session I scored 61 with 5 Medical points left after saving 9 Hospitalized Patients and a lot more Outpatients. I remember this one I placed a Hospitalized patient on top of another on the same bed. Losing a lot of times from it.

3rd session I only scored 59 but with 16 Medical Points, still with 9 Hospitalized patients. That means I got about 7 Medical Points from the extra module as I didn’t lose any. I was trying to use the 2-player objectives with 10 Hospitalized or about 65 points but still with 5 minutes as in solo.

Playing time was about less than 40 minutes each.

Tiny Epic Defenders

After almost a year, I revisited Tiny Epic Defenders again. I still played with my favorite Elfs, Laishom and Nyrra. This time I picked The Ancient as the Epic Foe.

Actually, I played 3x and lost twice, using the same setup. In the last one that I won, I got very lucky to get the Spear of Valor that deals more damage to the Epic Foe and the Staff of Control to move that Epic Foe. They were very helpful so I could almost defeat this Epic Foe in a single round.

The 2 Dire Enemies were Wraith in Ruin Region and Manticore in Desert, all the same for 3 sessions. So, I guess I was prepared for them and take advantage to get those artifacts. The Capital City was at Level 4 threat at the time I defeated the Ancient, so maybe I could survive one round longer.

So, why did I lose, besides playing poorly? I remember, maybe in 1st session, 2nd round where all Defender cards came out all at the start. At that point, I wasted a round where I couldn’t secure anything. I managed to survive until the Epic Foe showed up but I didn’t have a chance to deal much damage. In the same round when the Epic Foe showed up, 3 regions were destroyed and the next round was when I lost.

In previous post, I shared that I had similar experience when playing Sylvion which is also another Tower Defense Game. I got a couple of wasted turns where I didn’t get much to do early since all Elemental cards showed up later. I couldn’t prepare for things and got overwhelmed later. Maybe I just played poorly. :shake:

I think I could have kept track on which card that has showed up and which one was still in the deck. It’s just sometimes I felt it was unnecessary for playing Tiny Epic Defenders well. Also, it breaks the flow for doing so as I like how fast the turn is.

I don’t remember much about the 2nd session but I think I didn’t do much better than the first. In the 3rd one, I kept using the Leap ability from the Mountain so Nyrra could defend any Dire Enemy attack, mostly Wraith while Laishom just stayed in Desert area. Also in the 8th round, but I won with only 2 destroyed regions.

Playing time was about 30 minutes for each session. Read the Full session report of that 3rd one here.

Learn more about the game from Tiny Epic Defenders Review.

Grove: A 9 card Solitaire Game

1st play, with Lemon Curd (26) and lemon Meringue Pie (31). I got 53 with 1 die worth 10 and 1 Wheelbarrow. Failed to score the Lemon Pie recipe after decided to change Yellow 6 to Yellow 10.

2nd play, with Tutti Fruitti (35) and Lime Jellyo (31). Scored only 46 – 2 points from Squirrel + 6 from Lime Jellyo but failed the Tutti Fruitti. 3 dice left but 2 Yellow. It was supposed to be 1 of each left.

3rd play, with Orange Liqueur (44) and Orange Marmalade (26). I got 38 points from Orange, 10 from Yellow and 9 from Green, -3 from the Squirrel + 1 from Orange Marmalade. So, only 55 from 70 target, not even close. 🙁

4th play, with Fruit Cake (26) and Fruit Punch (40). I got exactly 66 points. 3 x 5 Orange dice, 10 + 4 + 4 + 3+ 2 from Green, 4 + 3 + 3 + 2 from Yellow. 4 points from surrounded Glade, another 12 points from Yellow as the lowest scoring color. 😀

1 die left, no Wheelbarrow and no Squirrel. I was surprised with this as I thought I lost when I had 1 turn to only get 1 die trying to get that surrounded Glade.

Playing time for 4 sessions was about 58 minutes.

Arkwright: The Card Game

Played Arkwright: The Card Game again after almost a year using the solo variant again with the expert setup. Also, I played my variant that reveals the next 4 cubes right at the start of the round.

I started with the Bread and Cloth Factory and increased the Quality track from development board. Scored very poorly with 15 shares worth 21 each. The opponents got 484 and 396 points.

I chose to focus on only 2 Factories and remembered that I couldn’t do much to prevent the opponents to increase the value of the other 2 factories.

1st Decade
1st Round: Increased Quality for Cloth Factory. Took the Engineer card as the first development.
2nd Round: Increased quality for Cloth Factory again and picked the Quality track from Development board.
3rd Round: Hired more Workers for both Factories. Increased the quality track to the maximum from the development board.
4th Round: Increased the Quality of Bread Factory. Increased the capacity of automation from development board.

2nd Decade
1st Round: Upgrade both Factories. Increased the Share Purchasing track.
2nd Round: Increased the Quality again on both Factories with Cloth had 6 and 4 for Bread. Another increased in the Share Purchasing track.
3rd Round: Bought 2 Shares and got the 2 Ships. No loan. This time I increased the Marketing track development.
4th Round: I think this time I did Automate action for 3 machines, 2 for Bread and 1 for Cloth. I also picked the Development card to get extra selling power for Bread / Lamp.

3rd Decade
1st Round: Increased the Marketing for Bread. I think I increased the number of development cards here to 3.
2nd Round: Increased the Marketing for Cloth Factory and picked the card to get bonus for doing Shipping.
3rd Round: I did early Production for Cloth. I could only afford 2 ships with 2 goods each. So, I only run the factory plus 1 Worker card. This one I don’t remember the development action that I picked. Maybe I didn’t since I didn’t see any use of it at this point.
4th Round. I did Early Shipping from previous production.

At the end, I got 84 money and bought only 3 shares worth 22 each. The value of share dropped by 1 since I did Ship action.

There were a couple of moments when I couldn’t tell whether I have updated the opponents’ tracks of Shares and value. Maybe they got more than they should but the scores were not close.

I finally learned how to justify the price of produced goods in a factory. Basically just divide the cost with the number of produced goods. Most of my previous plays were focusing only to beat the appeal of opponent and just make sure to sell all goods.

I think determining whether it is a good price or not is important but a bit difficult when deciding to choose upgrade or hire action as you have to evaluate the future rounds. I only realized it in last part of the game and after about 20 plays. Well, it doesn’t help much to win but so far with the way I played, I couldn’t tell and ended up just do the action and try to get lose money less later.

Playing time was about 85 minutes.

Castellion

Played Castellion again 3 times. I was planning to try out the Expert mode but somehow I decided to play the Basic Mode again. First play was a loss after 23 minutes. As the 2nd Ordeal, I needed 2 2×2 and 2 horizontal lines while the 3rd Ordeal I needed 6 2×2. I failed because I didn’t have enough tile to complete the last 2×2.

2nd Play with the Basic Mode again using the same set of Ordeal. After 15 minutes, I completed the 3 Ordeals. I got the Purple Tower, Red Horizontal and the Blue Bastion for 1st Ordeal.

I kept the Blue Bastion and another Purple Bastion. For the 2nd horizontal line, I made another with Red above those two Bastions. For the 3rd Ordeal, I had to move the Purple Tower to make Bastion. Initially, I started another Tower with Green but only had 2 so far, next to that Purple Tower. After a lot of movements, those 2 Towers became 2 Bastions.

So, I had 4 Bastions, 2 more. I managed to get another one with purple Bastion above the Horizontal and the Blue Bastion above where the Towers were. I still had a lot of tiles left. From the discard pile, it seems I run out of Green already. Red and Blue were the next on discard pile. Almost nothing from the Purple as I had 12 of them on the board.

For the 3rd play, I finally tried the Expert Mode. I first built Purple Tower again and discovered that the first Ordeal would take out the first base. Later I realized that I had to make another layer after they take out the bottom most row to survive. I had another Tower almost ready with green and the rest was filled with Blue so at that point the foundation was complete.

Then the 2nd Tower with Green was complete and revealed the 2nd Ordeal. That one would take out 2 layers of foundation and I had to have another one after the destruction.

Before the 2nd Ordeal was triggered, I managed to remake the Green Tower after it was partially destroyed by the 1st Ordeal and revealed the 3rd one. For the last one, I needed 5 Horizontal lines or I had to lose 42 tiles. Not long after that, the Ordeal 2 happened.

At that point, I only had a Horizontal line. I wasn’t sure about the rule but I decided instead of completing the Ordeal requirement, I chose to build as many Bastion as I can.

I managed to make 5 Bastions. Then, the Ordeal happened and I had to destroy 42 – 20 tiles. I had 30 tiles so I survived. This session took 22 minutes. Well, I cheated as I actually drew a couple of Traitor tiles and just discarded them. I consider this as just learning game for this new mode. The last 6 tiles were those Traitor tiles.

Walking in Provence

I played Walking in Provence again with the 2-player variant, 2-handed, Red vs Green.

Green was the first one to take photo that required 2 shops a chapel and a sunflower by the photographer. 2 rounds later, Green found a spot to take picture using their Drone with 4 Lavender spaces plus 2 shops.

5th round, Red photographer finally found a good spot to take picture with 4 Lavender spaces and a Chapel. In that same round, apparently Green got that picture with the same requirements. So, both scored 6.

6th round, Red got a spot for the Drone to take picture with 2 Shops and 4 Lavender spaces. Green already did that first so Red got 5 points as 2nd place.

7th Round, another Drone spot for Red with 2 Shops, a Chapel, 1 Windmill and a Forest space. This was the first one so Red scored 8. In that same round, the Green photographer found a spot with 4 Wheat fields and 2 Shops. This was also the first to score so Green got 8.

8th Round. Green finally got that Drone spot that Red just got. Green was the 2nd place so they only scored 6.

9th Round. Red Photographer took the picture with 1 Chapel, 2 Shops and 1 Sunflower. This was the 2nd to do so Red only scored 6. In that same round, Green photographer found a spot with 2 Forest spaces, 1 Windmill and 1 Sunflower. They were the first one so they scored 7. At the same time, Green got a spot for their Drone that captured a scene with 4 Wheat fields and 2 Forests, scoring 7 as the 1st time.

10th Round. Red Photographer found a spot with 4 Wheat fields and 2 shops. They also found a drone spot with 4 Wheat Fields and 2 Forest spaces so both were near each other. Unfortunately, Green already scored those two sets already so Red only got 5 and 6 points.

At this point, Green already scored every Photo requirement. So the last scene card was just to extend the Wheat field at the corner.

Final Score
Red:
Photo Sets: 6 + 5 + 0 + 6 + 5 + 8 + 5 = 35 points
Lavender: 8 + 6 = 14 points
Wheat Fields: 10 + 3 = 13 points
Sunflower: 2 points
Shops: 1 + 1 + 7 = 9 points
Goal: 6 + 3 = 9 points
Red’s Final Score: 82 POINTS

Green:
Photo Sets: 6 + 7 + 7 + 8 + 7 + 6 + 7 = 48 points
Lavender: 6 + 6 = 12 points
Wheat Fields: 11 points
Sunflower: 4 – 3 = 1 point
Shops: 1 + 12 = 13 points
Goal: 6 + 6 = 12 points
Red’s Final Score: 97 POINTS

Green won by 15 points, 13 of them from the Photo Sets. Red failed to win most of them and didn’t score one.

Playing time for playing both sides was about 61 minutes.

Let’s Make a Bus Route: The Dice Game

I played Let’s Make the Bus Route: The Dice Game again using the solo expert variant, still with the Mars Map. Blue route first with Line B scored only 72.

This time I managed to activate the 3 special powers very early since I had to use the Red dice to fill while using the longer-range die to move. That was also after changing 4 times, suffering -9 points.

As the result, I didn’t get many points from the Tourist (Purple) with just 10. The Blue was better though. I got three B stops, failed to scored the last 3 Blue, needed 1 space movement.

For the 2nd part with the Pink, I decided to bring along all of the special powers so I didn’t get to score 12 points. This time, I scored 89 and the total was 161 which was “The Promising Bus Route” title from the score chart.

Pink had the Line C and managed to connect all 3 points. Scored better from all colors except for Green. Activating those powers were really helpful, at least to fill the tracks more.

I was surprised that I didn’t change the movement at all. There is a chance I forgot to keep track of it. Even still, I was expecting I changed the movement a lot more. On the other hand, the Bus route suffered a lot of traffic jams, almost completely reached the maximum. So, at the end, I lost more points from penalties because of it.

Maybe I should try the solo expert variant with the regular map next. Playing time was about 44 minutes.

Bamboo

Played Bamboo again, back with 2-player variant, 2-handed. This was the first time trying the Advanced or Expert variant using the other side of the Player Board. On this side of the board, certain spaces must be filled and some even require specific type of tiles. Failing to do so leads to losing 1 point each. The other parts of the game play the same.

My initial impression of this variant is I’m not sure if this is a better experience. More challenging? Maybe. But then again, the penalty is also just 1. That extra requirement forces player to take the Decorate action more than usual. The problem is that you still have the same amount of actions. That means more of one action leads to less of the other actions.

In this case, the action that became less was the Balance action for taking the Scoring tiles or to score those tiles. Maybe that was my specific play. I think one of the reasons that I didn’t use this action as much is because that extra requirement on the player board doesn’t always work with the existing scoring tiles. I ended up picking the scoring tiles that can score just from a single tile.

When the scoring tiles require specific pair, then most of the time, it is not going to work for certain player. Maybe less of a problem when playing with all player boards. Also, with more players, tiles on the market will cycle faster so more chances to finally find a matching one. On the other hand, if that tile shows up late, then maybe the player with the biggest chance to match probably already filled the space with something else.

Of course, there is more room for tiles to pursue that goal without interfering with the requirement on the board. However, again, less time completing those requirements.

Since players have to do more decorate actions which requires spending more money, more actions for Money and less action for the scoring again.

In my session again, apparently I forgot that the Balancing during final scoring is about the Comfort points not the amount of tiles. So, I kept pursuing tile with the biggest Comfort value without trying to distributing them evenly between left and right.

Green player scored 44 while Purple won with 46, a close one. I think this was lower compared to my previous play where one of the players can score above 50. Both suffered penalties from imbalance but not that much. Green scored 4 Scoring tiles during the game while Purple only 3. Purple got 6 different Spirits while Green got 7. Ookami Spirit came out early and both player got one so feeding the family was not a big deal in this session.

I also noticed that I spent more money to awake the spirit again so I could use their action more. Only Green got the Kappa early but didn’t use much because the tiles on the market didn’t work well.

Playing time was 94 minutes.

OddVille

Played OddVille with the 2-player variant, 2-handed. Red was the starting player and Yellow was the 2nd. Yellow player managed to take advantage the Green Character, Tax Collector for the most part. This was the one that generate 1 Coin everytime the opponent has to pay a Coin.

Red player on the other hand utilized Seignior character from Blue a lot more. This is the one that allows the player to get 2 resources with just 1 Worker.

The other two were not utilized as much. It seems that Blue character was much more powerful than the Tax Collector. Placing 2 workers on resource board means blocking the opponent, forcing the opponent to pay more. Red also had 3 Workers left all on the resource board while Yellow only had 1, probably because of that character.

Red got 41 with 6 buildings and 3 characters while Yellow only scored 28 with only 5 and 1 character. For the most part I think both sides did almost as well.

Red got lucky with a building that score 1 point for any building in the same column. They even managed to extend it to 5. Yellow on the other hand picked and built a City Park with no connecting road to adjacent buildings.

Not bad with 6 points but they didn’t get the resource bonus as much. Ironically, this was when the White or Yellow character allows player to gain bonus from adjacent building even if they are not connected by road.

Playing time was about 43 minutes. Read the full session report here.

Learn more about the game from OddVille Review.

Keep the Heroes Out!

New game to me. I immediately played with the Normal difficulty with the Slime and Poltergeist since a lot of people said that the easy one was too easy. Lost in the Scenario 1 after the 2 last Heroes went to the same space and inspired the other 3, next to that Vault. this was in 2nd part (Red), still within 5 Guild cards.

Slime couldn’t do much after taking damage to multiply a lot and eventually got removed completely from the board. I actually forgot that they can activate their main ability to draw more card.

For Poltergeist’s power, it seems it doesn’t have any benefit for the Scenario 1. There are no rooms adjacent to each other connected by just walls. Unless I misunderstood the rule.

So, I played again immediately but with the easy difficulty but this time only with Imp. This made me realized how significant the deck building part. I don’t know why that a lot of people say that the deck building is not there. I understand that with higher difficulty, the chances to buy cards is lower so it makes the game harder.

Using Imp, I managed to get a lot of cards. Especially with pets, they allow you to draw more cards which lead to more actions, 3 to 4 actions per card compared to 1 or 2 action from their Starting Cards. I used a couple of scrolls to get ranged attack or build portal Weapons also helped a lot to deal damage. Didn’t use the Potion at all.

I got lucky with drawing the Event card to jail which I assumed it did nothing but I can still draw 3 cards.

One issue with the production is that the Room Tiles are warped. I also need to find better storage system for these tokens.

Playing time took about 60 minutes for each of 2 sessions. Even though the Normal difficulty one I lost early. Definitely need to play more. Maybe just stick with one and the same Clan.

Seastead

Played the solo variant again. The opponent won with 47 points, 9 buildings, while I only scored 43 or so. I just realized that I was supposed to remove the last depth dive cards that I didn’t do in my previous plays. So, I made the game easier apparently. This time, I got to before the last card.

I kept diving early to gain resources and let the opponent built their buildings. After 6 of theirs were built, I built my 1st one. It seems I made a poor play by building the Shipyards first which didn’t help me much even if the opponent used my ships.

I triggered the end of the game after building everything. It seems I forgot to take 1 more character that could have generated at least 1 more point. I activated all of their abilities since I could get more than 1 point by doing so from each. Got 10 points from the Cleanup Tokens. Also I should have gotten more points from the 4th Dock.

I guess I was about to give up in the last few rounds before realizing that I had more chance to score a few more by activating those Characters. Apparently, I didn’t resolve them correctly. I should try again.

Playing time was about 33 minutes.

Learn more about the game from Seastead Review.

Sylvion

Played this again for the first time with all expansion and using the Ravage pawn for the first time. Lost horribly but I don’t think it was necessarily because of the Ravage pawn. The pawn actually showed up like twice? Maybe I forgot to place it several time. I only got 4 Edge cards left.

I got like 30 cards during the drafting phase. 3 of them were the Extraordinary Feats, no traitor. The Hedgehog, Whales and Armistice. Two of them can get me instant win but very unlikely. I got 7 Fountains, 6 Trees, 3 owls, 1 Fish, 1 Dove, 1 Elephant, 1 Stag, 3 Whales and 3 Squirrels.

So why did I lose that bad? Maybe I’m just bad at this game.

I actually had everything under control until like 8 rounds from the end where I got my first hit. Up to that point the battlefield was almost always empty except Geysers.

But maybe that was the reason of my loss. Because it was empty, there were a couple of rounds where I didn’t play most of my cards. This never happened before. I managed to utilize the Squirrels and the Dove a couple of times, making the game a bit shorter.

It seems I lost my chance to play more cards. Definitely reached the end of the deck less than my usual play. I didn’t cycle the deck faster and unfortunately, the moment those Elemental cards showed up, I didn’t have a good Fountain to beat them. My whales became useless as well. Tried to heal more with Stag and Trees combo but I didn’t have enough cards to pay for the trees. I probably should have started planting them early but is there a way to know that?

While the Dove managed to remove Blaze and Demobilization cards, all of the Acid Lake cards, those that block spaces permanently, showed up almost at the same time towards the end. So, with a lot of Elemental at the end, the hit the forest faster. I guess Demobilization was not that bad? They could remove some useless cards and helped the cycle faster.

Or maybe I should do the drafting better. Playing time was about 45 minutes, excluding the drafting.

頼りない魔法使い (Unreliable Wizard)

Played the standard game with 3 cards for the map again. The extra starting cards were the 2nd Blue spell and the Porcupine character. For the Porcupine character, I picked the side that increase my Red attack by 2 and Blue attack by 1. Porcupine will also inflict 2 damage to that Trident type opponent.

My first journey, I went to the left to the Brown area and found Dero the monster. Dero had 3 points, strong equally in 3 colors. One red and 1 Blue spell and I defeated Dero. As a bonus, I got the 2nd Green Spell.

I continued the journey to the east to the Green area and found DODO. DODO was strong in Green and the terrain enhanced their Blue. I was strong with Red. After drawing a Blue, a Green and a Red, I managed to defeat DODO. After that I met with the Monk to accompany the journey.
I picked the side to increase the Green and Red side. Monk was also strong against that Triangle type enemy, inflicting 2 damage per turn.

Then I went north to the light Green area and found TOH. Toh had 4 points, strong in Blue and the terrain increased his defense on Green. That means Toh was weak in red. I drew a Green, a Blue and the Red to defeat Toh. From that I got my 2nd Red Spell.

I went to the west with the light Brown area to a healing spot. After that, I continued north, in that area and found ARO. Aro was very strong with Red with 8 points. Even the terrain enhanced their Red power. So, I had to rely on the other 2 color.

I drew 2 Green and 1 Blue. It was not enough. ARO countered with 2 points damage to me and I had 15 left. Next round, I drew 2 green and 1 Blue and defeated ARO.

After the battle, I met with HERO as the next travel companion. I picked the side where the Hero will attack 1 damage to enemy at the end of every turn of the fight.

From that position, I went back a bit to the Light Green area to a healing point before marching to the north and found ROBI. Robi had 7 points and part of the triangle type which the Monk will add more attack on. They were strong in Green and the terrain enhanced their defense on Blue. Red was less strong so I had to take advantage of it.

Drew 2 Green and 2nd Red so the Red didn’t deal any damage but the 2 Green dealt 4+2 – 3. Hero and the Monk added 3 more but it was close to beat it. Robi countered by 4 points and I had 9 left. I decided to not draw anything and let my travel companion finish Robi.

We found the PRINCESS and she joined the journey. The Princess had the ability to prevent the Demon Lord from healing every turn so she could be a great help.

After that, we continued the journey to North West to the Gray area and found YABI. Yabi had 7 points, strong in Blue and the terrain enhanced their Green and Blue. So, this one was also weak in Red. Yabi was also triangle so the Monk can easily hit them.

I drew 2 Green Spells and it was enough to beat Yabi. I learned the Mid Spell. The journey continued north east. After visiting a healing spot in the dark brown area, we entered the Blue area and found KARU.

Karu also had 7 points, strong in Red. The terrain even enhanced their Red so I had to avoid using my Red spells. Luckily, I drew 2 Green and the 1st Blue which was enough to beat Karu.

We found the Paladin. I asked the Paladin to help me enhance my Red power by 2 instead of the Blue even if Paladin was not going to help us fighting certain type of enemies.

We went west in that Blue area to a healing point. Then continued north entering the Purple area and found ZAZA. Zaza was strong in Green and the terrain even enhanced it further. Luckily Zaza was the Trident type so my Porcupine can hit this harder.

I immediately drew 2 Reds and it was enough to deal 8 points. My travel companions then finished them. This was the last monster before the Demon Lord. I found the Grimoire 2 Book of spells so I could do the healing spell now.

Before facing the Demon Lord, we travelled to east to the last healing spot and went north to where the Demon Lord was.

1st Round, I drew 1st Blue the 2 Red and the Mid Spell so I could heal. The other Red hit 4 damage. Demon Lord countered by 5 points.

2nd Round I drew the 2 Blue and the 2nd red plus the Mid card. I could heal this time but no other spell. The Hero dealt one damage which was enough to lower the Demon Lord’s attack to 4.

3rd Round. I drew the same as 1st round. I got to heal and deal 4 damage to the Demon Lord. Apparently the Demon Lord became Berserk and hit back harder with 6 points. I almost got killed.

4th Round, I didn’t have enough power to draw the spell card. The Monk sacrificed his life to help.I drew 2 Blue and the 1st red plus the Mid spell. The Demon Lord had 2 points left and countered with just 1 damage attack.

In the last round, I drew 2 Red spells and beat the Demon Lord. I had 4 points left.

Playing time was about 31 minutes.

Mint Works

Revisiting old(er) games. Played the solo variant against Justin again. Justin had the Starting Player Token with 3 Mints and block any location he occupied until the next round.

I lost in first game after 6 rounds. Justin built Obelisk that generated 1 Star per face up card. 4 Stars from 4 buildings, He got Lotto for 2 and the Truck for 1. I only got 3 face up cards and 1 face down with 4 stars only. Even after getting Assembler, I didn’t have enough time and Mint to take advantage of it.

I played again 2nd time and won after about 10 rounds. I got 6 buildings with 12 Stars. Justin also had 6 with 1 Star each. This time I got the Assembler again and immediately built 4 cards I got from the supply. I even built 2 in the same round thanks to Assembler after collecting Mints in previous round and let go the Starting Player token.

Justin got the Wholesaler and maybe that helped me a bit since I had more chance to access the Supplier and Builder card while he stuck with his Wholesaler.

Playing time was 10 minutes for the 1st and 13 for the 2nd session.

Learn more about the game from Mint Works Review.

IKI

Played the fan-made solo variant again. I scored 100 while the opponent scored 58 and immediately realized that I made a mistake running this opponent. During the game I kept trying to block the opponent from taking the movement space to reach their next destination. That way, they opponent should take the 1-4 movement without hiring.

My mistake that I forgot was the opponent can still take the shorter movement and as if they spend their unlimited Sandals. Of course, there was a chance that the Blocking token also helped me block their movement. But there should be times when my attempt to block becomes useless.

As a result, the opponent was stuck with just 2 Workers, and ended up hiring only 3 or 4 characters and with only 2 Fire Fighting Powers.

Let’s see if I can make this right. The opponent could have hired 1 character during 5th month and increased the Fire by 1 and got extra 12 points. Same as in 6th month, extra 12 points again.

In 8th month, they got the chance again but their workers were already in the stores. Same as 9th month. Another hiring opportunity in the 12th month which could get them 7 points or so with additional character type. That can lead to extra 9 points.

So, there was a chance that the opponent managed to get the same or even higher score. Oh, well. Hopefully I can remember this in my next session.

There were some highlights during the play. My store got burned down twice, during the 2nd and 3rd. That also happened to the opponent during the 1st Fire.

During the 2nd Fire, I placed my character next to the middle section. The problem was the other 2 stalls were empty and even after decreasing fire power, it was not enough to protect mine. During the 3rd Fire, I hired the last Blue character and I could only place it at the 2 corners. I chose incorrectly so I failed to get the last character type.

I thought I couldn’t build any building as I had almost no money, only 1 Wood, 1 rice, no sandals and no Gold. Luckily there was Imperial Villa that requires just 4 Coins and 1 Wood. I only got 4 points from it since the benefit was during Payday. I spent my last rice to the Candy Maker next to that Builder during the New Year.

Both players got a set of 3 Fishes. I only managed to buy 1 pipe and two tobacco pouches. The opponent bought 3 of each.

Playing time was about 71 minutes.

Firm with Brownies

I played this 2-handed competitively twice. The first session made me realize how important getting one of the Basic or Starting Building early. If one player managed to take them all, then the other player may not have a chance to win. That got me thinking maybe when teaching the game or playing for the first time, players should start with one of them.

That is actually how Gizmos handled it even though players get identical starting cards. It’s not just helping the players but also helps teaching the game because you can give example of how to use those buildings right away.

So, I played the 2nd time right away. 2nd player won by being the first to score 10 points while the 1st player was behind with just 9 points. I don’t know if it helped but 2nd player got 2 of the Starting Buildings. 2nd player also got the MARKET building which was very powerful. As long as the player can get any Level 2 Products during their main action, they can immediately sell that product. If it was a Bread, that player can almost buy any building. I don’t think it is that overpowered since they are just 1 point apart.

Playing time was about 40 minutes for that 2nd session. Read the full session report here.

Onirim (Second Edition)

Played this again with all expansions but not the Incubi pawn.

The 4 Dark Premonitions were the 2 Red, 2 Blue, 5 Doors and 3 Doors. I think this was my first time playing with that 3 doors. This means if I find 3 doors on the table, I had to discard my hand and take another Dark premonition. For the 5 I have to take 2 more. So, I had to avoid red, blue but I also couldn’t play more than 2 with the other color.

My first door goal was red, so it was not helping. There was an interesting moment where I got the Wild Key but Door with Wild Color. Am I supposed to just open the door? I decided that that door must be in the Wild Door Goal so I let it went to the limbo and dreamcatcher.

One Nightmare hit pretty early so I had enough cards in the discard pile to change position of that Goal cards. Since I had a lot of Blue I swapped the Red Goal door with the Blue.

The 2nd was supposed to be the White door. Got a lot of Dead End cards early as well so I had to discard the whole hand. That allowed me to swap that White goal with Green since I had enough Green cards. However, I got the Green Key when I found that Door. So I already started a new set but that had to be for something else.

Got the Blue and Green Tower that worked together. That third door was supposed to be the Wild Door but the Wild Key was discarded already by the Nightmare. So, I swapped it with the White.

Well, I couldn’t work on the 3rd door because of that Dark Premonition. Luckily I found the other two Towers that worked on my existing set. So, I completed them, no need to worry about Nightmare ruining it. From that point, I could use the rest of the Tower cards to peek.

Then finally, I found Happy Dream cards, 2 of them even. So, I canceled that 3 door and 5 door Dark Premonition cards.

Apparently I found the Sun and Moon cards with wild colors or the Crossroads. So, I decided to continue working on the Green set on the row to get a Green Door. I had to cast spell again to swap the White goal with the Green.

The 4th door goal was Red. Thanks to White door I knew that a Red Door was about to show up. Luckily, I had a Glyph to open that door immediately.

I couldn’t work on the next red door yet because of that Dark. Premonition. Another lucky moment when I found the other 2 Happy Dream cards to cancel the last two Dark Premonitions. So, at this point, no need to worry about those penalties.

The next door goal was supposed to be White but I had a lot of red cards. So, I swapped again and started completing the set.

The 6th door was Blue. I had another Glyph. I remember that this was pure luck that when I discarded, I found a Blue door.

Then the 7th door was White. I remember that I was frustrated because all of the cards I had in hand was sun. I kept getting White sun and had to discard them even though I hadn’t found any White door yet at that point. Finally, I got a White Key that I played instead of waiting for the White moon, completing that 7th door.

The 8th was Blue. I had to start the set with anything but Sun. This was probably the moment I used the Robot card from the Door to Oniverse to switch card between hand and discard pile so I could take that Blue Moon. After that, I got the Blue Moon, then the Blue Sun. I had to play the Blue Key to complete it.

Previously, not exactly sure when, all of the Dreamcatchers were full and I had to let go some before they got overloaded either from completing the set and search through the deck or I spent one Freeing card. I already let go the Wild Door card.

So, the 9th one was supposed to be Green. I forgot how I knew but the Wild Door card was about to show up. I had the Red Glyph. Switched the door by casting the spell and discarded that Glyph to open that door.

I had a White Sun and White Moon so I started a new set with these. But the next Door was supposed to be Red. I switched it up with the White. I found the Crossroad Sun so I completed that set. The Door was in one of the Dreamcatcher so I didn’t need to search through the deck.

The 11th door was supposed to be Red. I had probably less than 20 cards in the deck at this point. With a Blue Tower to peek and I knew a Green Door card was about to show up. I had a Green Key that one of the Denizen held it for me. It probably was the Treasure one.

So, I swapped the Red Goal Door with the Green which was the next one. I drew the Door Card and opened it.

Two more Doors, Red and then White. Both doors were in the Dreamcatcher. I could complete the Red set since I had all of the cards but for the White one I needed to rely on the Glyph card. Luckily, I had 2 even.

However, this means I had to start freeing the card from those Dreamcather. I spent 1 last card to freeing the Red Door so that when I completed the Set, I had to search through the deck and returned the White door from Dreamcatcher.

I played the Red Moon, and the Red Sun. Lucky that I found another Red Moon to complete the set. I still had that Denizen that can take cards from the discard pile anyway.

Last door. I had exactly 10 cards left, 5 in my hand and 5 in the deck. All of the Dream cards had been caught. In my hand, I had 2 Glyphs, 1 Green Moon and 2 Towers. I discarded one of the Glyph and there I found the last Door.

I won. 😀

Playing time was about 44 minutes. This was half the time it took during my previous session with the same setup. I didn’t keep track of the cards and didn’t take as many pictures as that last one.

Biblios: Quill and Parchment

Played the solo variant again. I scored 39 while the opponent only got 13. The opponent only won the Pink for the majority. I managed to get a lot of influence while opponent only got the minimum in multiple rounds. The opponent was ahead on the Chapel track but didn’t reach the highest position.

The change in value only happened once since the opponent didn’t have enough influence to begin with. And that was decreasing the red from 2 to 1.

Playing time was 22 minutes. Learn more about the game from Biblios: Quill and Parchment Review.

Siege of Valeria

Initially, I was about to try the campaign expansion for the first time. However, the designer recently announced that they removed one rule from the game which was about using the die in order to remove 1 Impact token from the Turret.

I found that the game was challenging enough even with that rule. So, I thought maybe I missed some rules that should help make the game easier. There are a couple of rules.

One of them was that you can play a card anytime during the game, not just during the Action Phase. This explains how to use the reduce value by 1 during the Seige Engine phase. This is actually in the rulebook. My last play, I didn’t feel I needed to use it. Or, even if I had the card to change the value from 6 to 5, there were other die that may still take that hit. So, I thought I could use it better for something else.

The 2nd part that I missed was about how you spend the total value of multiple dice. You can overspend and the excess value can be spent to pay the overkill. This saves a lot of dice or activating certain Champion. Also, the fact that you can immediately use the card with this overkill ability that you just defeated helps a lot.

The last thing that I wasn’t sure about was the rule about drawing a Champion. The rule says that if you don’t want that Champion, you can return the card to the bottom of the deck without getting repair benefit.

I interpreted that as you can keep drawing the Champion until you get the one you like. But the rule was not really clear. I think it makes sense that you can search through the deck or otherwise, you just wasted the chance for that champion.

On the other hand, in my last play, I didn’t feel the need to not use any Champion at all, even if they are just there to repair. In fact, since you can no longer use the die to repair, that session shows, maybe keep cycling the Champion is the answer. There was 2 Champions left in the deck.

My last session took about 42 minutes. I also won the game in the 6th day. After utilizing the strategy to use all dice as much as possible, I even managed to bring one of the Siege Engine to the front like in the first round.

On the other hand, I feel like I got lucky enough that first two rounds, all of the Blue Troops showed up right away that helped all of the overkills.

For Northwood!: A Solo Trick-Taking Game

Played with the first scenario for the first time, without the extra challenge. I had to play with 10 cards instead of 8 in this one. In this one, I either scored or discarded the cards with the same value as the one I played.

My first 10 cards were with 4 yellow cards, 2 pink and 4 blue, nothing black. I thought I got a good hand to deal with the Prince of Leaves where I needed to win 5 cards. It was a success.

2nd Hand, I had 4 yellow, 2 Blue, 3 Black and 2 Red. Got a couple of 6 and one of them was black so I thought I should try the Baron of Claws with 7 cards.

I actually failed to get 7 and only got 6. Luckily, the Prince of Leaves from previous round helped me by moving the visiting card to the lower fief. So, I managed to convince Lady of Flowers to help me. The other friends also helped me, King of Claws, King of Leaves and King of Eyes. I think the King of Claws helped me to score my last card.

3rd Hand. I got 4 Black, 2 Pink, 3 Yellow and 1 Blue. I thought this was a good hand to retry that Baron of Claws with 7 cards. Clearly I had to change the Prince of Leaves since there was no adjacent fief. Instead, I brought along the Lady of Flowers.

She helped me remove Yellow 2 when I only had 2 cards left. I won exactly 7 cards.

4th hand. I got 3 yellow, 2 Black, 2 Blue and 3 pink with 3 2s, 2 7s and 2 4s. Actually, I didn’t know which fief I should go next with this hand. So, I thought I should use the Prince of Leaves again for the flexibility.

I picked the Baron of Eyes with 3 cards so I could either move it to 2 or 4. I managed to win exactly with 3 of my highest card. Actually only twice but the 2nd one brought the other 7. The Lady of Flowers helped me get rid of my Blue 1 at the end.

5th hand. I went to the Lady of Eyes with 4 cards to win. I got all 6s and I scored them with just 1 win. The King of Leaves helped me to exchange my other strong card with the next one on the deck. This was useful when exchanging the trump suit especially to lose the card. The King of Eyes helped me discarded all 4 blue cards.

6th hand. I got 1 Yellow, 3 Blues, Pinks and 3 Blacks. All 4 Blacks were weak, between 1 to 4 so I thought this was a good time to aim for Queen of Claws with 0 card. I still had Prince of Leaves just in case.

Unfortunately, I had to score even with those low cards. Even if the Prince of Leaves moved the visiting cards, I ended up scoring 2 cards so I failed.

7th Hand. I got 2 Pink, 1 Yellow, 2 Black and the rest was Blue with 3 7s, 2 1s.

The remaining fiefs’ suit were either yellow (2) or Black (0). I thought maybe I had better chance with the Jack of Leaves with 2 cards. The first card was yellow so I won that. Then they played Yellow 7 and since I no longer had yellow, I played the other 7 along with the other 7s to lose them all. At that point, I only had 2 6s as the strong cards.

I thought I had to use the help from King of Eyes to remove those blues but I didn’t The other win was the Blue 4, so I got exactly 2 cards.

8th hand. I got 1 blue, 1 Pink, 3 Blacks and 5 yellows with 2 8s and 2 7s, 2 4s and 2 3s. I visited the Queen of Claws again with 0 card to win.

The King of Eyes immediately removed all yellows from my hand. They played Pink 7 and I lost that Pink 6. Then they played Pink 8 and since I had no more Pink I played the 7 to lose both 7s.

After that, Black 4. I was lucky to have Black 3 and lost. Then, they played Pink 4. I had no same suit so I played my Blue 4. My last card was Black 8 which was a guarantee to win. So, I let King of Leaves helped me to exchange it with the next card which was a Blue 2. So I won 0 card.

Failed to score those 3 points so my final score was 17. Playing time was about 34 minutes.

Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write

Played solo variant. The specialists were Union Boss, Mascot and Herbivore Researcher. These worked well with the 2 solo objectives where I had to build 4 Merchandise Stores and 2 of each attractions. Unfortunately the last specialist didn’t work well with having the Herbivore in order to get advanced DNA. The other solo objective was to had all 3 types of Big Carnivores.

The 3 buildings were First Aid Hut, Security Hub and Prehistoric Garden. I definitely needed to build that second one, combined with Union Boss to generate a lot of securities, I could get a lot of points.

1st Round. I got some money, doubled it and immediately hired the Mascot. I also built my first Merchandise Store.

2nd Round. I got another Store and a Attraction Ride from the dice. No money and Build space was occupied. So, I placed the 2 dice on that Raise Funds space. With those Money I hired the Security Chief and started paying the Union Boss.

3rd Round, first Park Run. So, I placed the 2 Stores right to the top left exit and connected them to the HQ so I increased the excitement by 2. The dice roll from Stores gave me a Restaurant and 1 coin. I had enough money to hire Boss Union and that specialist gave me another Restaurant.

4th Round. I got some coins which I doubled it. The rest were a couple of DNA both basic or advanced. I placed one die on the Build action again to build the 2nd Attraction Ride. So, at this point, I have accomplished one of the solo objectives. The money I got was enough to hire Jr. Scientist.

5th round. No money again from dice, only DNA. The Build action was also occupied but I had to stack one of 2 dice there. I probably should have used this chance to build more Dinosaurs instead of just doubling the DNA.

6th round or 2nd Park Run. Got more coin and DNA from Stores. The money I got from Restaurant was to hire the Tour Guide so I increased the excitement by 3. The Jr. Scientist built 2 different Large Carnivores, placed one on the right and one of the left.

The tour line on the right connected 4 attractions and that one Large Carnivore to an exit at the bottom right corner, increasing the excitement level by 5 which was at #24 space.

Got some money to hire the last specialist. Still no investment yet for any of the buildings. Got a total of 13 securities, containing about 11 threats so far, no Death Toll.

7th Round. Got another Store from Dice and a lot of Money. I doubled the 2 Coins which was not enough to build the 1st building. I also built the 4th Merchandise Store so I completed the 2nd solo Objective. One of them was placed extending the right Tour Line while the other one was build as the 3rd line from HQ and connected to the Large Carnivore on the left.

8th Round. Got some money and more DNA. The double action space was taken along with the Build Dino space. I stacked one die to build 4 Dino, 1 of the last Large Carnivore and all 3 different Herbivore to take advantage of the 3rd Specialist.

The 2nd dice was to build road to connect all of those recently build Dino spaces, extending the left Tour Line to the south exit.

9th Round, Last Park Run. Got another Restaurant, Money and DNA from the Store. Also more money from the 3 Restaurants now. The Jr. Scientist only built more Large Carnivore to boosts the excitement Level.

From the Dino Tour phase, I increased the excitement level by 6. The excitement level was at #48. From that I got a lot of money and securities. I managed to built the Security Hub and the First Aid Hub but not the Prehistoric Garden.

Final Score was 138,
6 from Herbivores,
nothing from Small Carnivore,
25 from the Large,
18 from Specialists,
25 from 2 Buildings,
22 from exits,
19 from excitement track,
10 from leftover DNA
nothing from Death Toll
13 from all 3 Objectives.

Playing time was about 46 minutes.

Yin Yang

Played this 2-handed, Red as the 1st player and Blue as the 2nd. Red player started on the East region (Brown) while Blue started in the top middle.

1st round. Red got 2 White and 4 Black, took the Goods action and the Carriage token. Blue got 1 White and 5 Black, taking Boat token and also taking goods from the board, a red one.

Red then moved 3 steps to that same region as the Blue and built 2 temples along the way. This way Red had the same number of Temple with the Blue in that top middle region and that region only had 1 open city left to build a Temple for one of them to win the majority.

Instead of securing the majority, Blue player decided to go north east, to that yellow region. Built 1 temple there, winning the majority and landed on the top most city. Blue couldn’t use one of the action so bump the black track one space with it. From that position, Blue could stay at northern region or go to south west.

2nd round. Red was still the 1st player, got 3 Black and 3 White. Red took a Goods token and did a Carriage action and went south to the bottom middle region.

Blue got 2 White and 4 Black, taking 1 Yellow and 1 Red goods from the middle. Blue chose to take Carriage action token and activate the Goods action to take the Blue from the board.

In this bottom middle Region (Dark Green), Red built their 1st Temple, already winning the Majority. Then moved 1 space still in that region and took Green goods from the board and built the 2nd Temple. At this point, Blue couldn’t win that region anyway since there was only 1 more city.

Blue decided to stay in northern region. They built the 2nd Temple, moved to the next city in that region, taking that Green goods. Finally moved again to the next city via Boat action and landed on a city with Yellow Goods.

3rd Round. Red got 2 White and 4 Black and got a Blue and a Green goods from the middle, spending all of the Black. They took the Temple action token and performed a carriage action to the south east region.

Blue got 4 Blacks and 2 Whites as well. The 3 Blacks was to perform Carriage action to move to the next city with a Yellow Goods still within that yellow region. The rest was to take a Goods Action token.

Red then built their 2nd Temple on that South East Region. After that, Red immediately moved to the South West Region, taking the Red Goods there, building 1st Temple ever on that region. Red moved again via Boat action and took the Yellow Goods from that adjacent city.

Blue took the Yellow Goods, built 3rd Temple there, move via Road to the Brown Region on the east with 1 Red Temple, Blue took the Green Goods there and built 1 temple, matching the number with Red. The last action was to move via water to the North East Region.

4th Round. As still the starting player, Red got 3 Blacks and 3 Whites. Spent 2 Black and 1 White to get 1 Boat Action token and the rest was to perform Boat action.

Blue got2 White and 4 Blacks. Taking goods from both White and Black since both tracks reached 8. Blue took the Temple token since they didn’t have that yet, and performed Carriage action with the rest of the Coin, moving to the East, planning to go to South East.

This was when Red realized that they made a bad move. Red realized that there was no point on exploring this Region since Blue was not even going to compete. So, Red decided to go back the other way ignoring the 2 Blue goods, thinking that Red could take the other 2 Blue from South East Region. Red wasted 2 Goods tokens and landed on Middle Top Region, building 1 Temple along the way.

Blue took the Red Goods from the top Right city. Then via waterways took Boat action to the Brown region again, building 2nd Temple in that region, winning the majority. Then moved south again via waterways to take the Yellow goods. Blue ended the movement with Carriage action moving north in that South East Region.

5th Round. The Yin Yang Board had Red, Yellow and 2 Green and there were 4 Blues, 2 Yellow, 1 Red and 1 Green goods on the map.

Red got 2 White and 4 Black and the White was on 5 while Black was on 7th space of its track. So, Red took red and yellow goods and the refresh was 2 Green on Black. They still needed 2 Blue, 1 Red, 1 Yellow and 1 Green. At best, Red could take 2 Blue, 1 Green and 1 Yellow from the map.

Blue got 3 White and 3 Black. Blue took the 2 Green since they had 8 on Black and now Blue only needed 1 Red to activate all scoring tiles. I think Blue spent the one-time ability here to flip one of the coin from black to white. This way, Blue could take 1 more Boat Action tile, while also bumped the Black track by 3.

Red moved to the Capital City and took the Yellow. Then Red moved again 3 steps, entering the South East Region. With the remaining action, red could only take 1 Blue Goods and built 1 Temple, winning the Majority of this part. The last action was converted into a Black to take more Goods from the middle board which was 2 Green. So, Red didn’t complete 2 rows and 2 columns of that Scoring track.

Blue from South East Region only needed 5 steps to go to North East where the last red Goods was. Blue actually had 2 viable ways. From West or from East. The East way required 1 more Boat action. After flipping that coin, Blue had more chance for road ways with carriage action. Blue got that last red and activate all scoring tiles.

Final Score. Blue got 84 while Red only scored 69, mostly because Red failed to score 4 of the Scoring tiles. Red won more in majority by less than 10 points.

Gizmos

Played this solo with the fan made variant. This was the first time playing with the more difficult setting where the opponent doesn’t do action only when they roll 6.

I scored 56 while the opponent only scored 43. The opponent almost trigger the end of the game very early with having 2 or 3 Level 3 Gizmos. Somehow I got lucky and the opponent kept rolling either 4, 5 or even 6 so they didn’t trigger the end of the game with 16 Gizmos either.

The opponent stuck with 13 Gizmos from Round 18 until almost the last round, the 29th. Maybe I should try playing with multiple bots next time.

Playing time was about 33 minutes. Read the full session report here.

Learn more about the game from Gizmos Review.

The Guild of Merchant Explorers

Played solo variant with the Aghon Map. Final Score was 153 completing the 1st objective and 3rd before the game blocked them but only 2nd place for the 2nd objective.

So, I won even in Hard Difficulty. However, I made a major mistake that significantly helped me. My first Investigate card allows me to explore 4 spaces within a single region. At first I thought a region was just within a continent. Apparently, 1 region means 1 of the same area.

I only realized this during the 3rd round when that card showed up again. Almost consider resetting, thinking that I only made mistake from the last round. But after checking the pictures, I made that mistake even from the 1st time.

So, had I played this correctly, there was a good chance I couldn’t reach the minimum score required in Hard Difficulty. Even the first objective was so difficult that I had to discover a Village next to the Tower. I managed to make this happen because of that mistake.

I also realized that for that objective, the Towed must be discovered first in order to complete, not just a village next to that Tower space.

So, my score was invalidated. However, I think I played the last round correctly. The good thing was that in the first 3 rounds, I was exploring only the half right part of the map. Then in the 4th round, I started from that Village in the middle that I discovered before all of those mistakes. It didn’t matter anyway.

I got a couple of Investigate cards related to Grasslands and sea. With 2 that I picked allow me to explore multiple types of terrains.

Playing time was about 48 minutes.

Roll Camera!: The Filmmaking Board Game

Played this with single role, the Cinematographer, still with the easiest difficulty setting. That GAFF TAPE ability was very helpful. Instead of spending 2 dice every round to resolve a problem, I only needed 1. So, the other die can be used for the Production Meeting a lot. There was even a Problem that blocked the Production Meeting happened.

Shot my first scene in 4th round. Got lucky that there was a Green Scene at the start of the game that matches with the Script. 2nd Scene was shot in 6th round for the Red Scene, also matched the script. Got an Idea to ignore 2 Actor dice requirements. Even though I didn’t get the Quality bonus from the set.

In 8th round, I shot the Purple Scene. The funny thing is that while the Script Lethal says Purple but somehow I read it wrong that I assumed it will add quality while in fact it will decrease it. That Blue script should have been a better choice, thematically and mechanically.

In the 10th I got another Green Scene that I shot. In the 11th round, I almost run out of budget. Luckily, the Production Meeting managed to come up with a plan to make more money.

“Crumple that up and think of something cheaper or better.”

This actually helped cycle the Script deck by discarding 1 so I could get a better one that matched the script.

There were 2 more ideas in 12th round that helped increase the budget. 13th round was when I shot the last scene which was a Red Scene.

I got 2 sets of 1 Green and 1 Red Scene that match with the Murder Script and increased the Quality by 4 which made the Movie (more than) the Cinematic Masterpiece. That was even after that Comedic scene in the middle decreasing the quality by 1.

I think I cheated a bit with the Script deck by keep shuffling it so I could get the one that matches the script but apparently it was not necessary. Even if I didn’t get the Green and Red as the last two, I got more than enough Quality to win.

Playing time was about 58 minutes.

Rescuing Robin Hood

Played this again with 3 characters, Alan A-Dale, Little John and Will Scarlet. One strong in Yellow, another in Red and the last one in Green. None of them was strong in Blue.

During the 5th day, Little John led the charge to the Castle with 28 Red. With about 28 villagers in the Sherwood Forest, got 9 points of Jolliness.

With the help from Affan, Anne Dittover, Fawkes Enhound and Lewis Kilner, Little John got 16 Blue, taking down like 3 Red Guards of the first row.

Will Scarlet then came next with 10 Reds, finished the first line of defense. With Green, Will Scarlett took down the first 3 Red Guards of the 2nd line of Defense.

Alan A-Dale, with the help from Anastasia Forester, Mosie Onnover, Noah Guy and Leolina, got a lot of Green with 22. After Scouting, the 2nd line of defense had a total green of 26, so with a bit of Jolliness, Alan A-Dale managed to defeat this line.

Unfortunately, Alan A-Dale failed to rescue Robin Hood in the last line of Red Guards. Alan A-Dale only got 24 in Red while all of those Red Guards had a total of 36 in Red. One of them was even 8.

Playing time was about 101 minutes.

Kingdomino Duel

Played the solo variant of this vs Bruno. I lost with only 124 while Bruno scored 136. Much better than my first play of this variant where I only scored 80 or so.

I guess I gave too many 2 Dots to Bruno and they got like 70 points, the highest one. Luckily the other didn’t score much. My biggest score came from the checker pattern with 65, got lucky enough to get that one a lot.

Both players only got 1 ability but then Bruno got 20 points from it. I’m not sure the dice rolls gave me enough chance to activate the other.

Playing time was about 27 minutes.

Juicy Fruits

Played this solo against the FULL FRUIT, twice. The first time I scored 70 while the Full Fruit scored 96. I realized that in the business tokens, none of them was the extra fruit basket token. So, even if I got the ice Cream token and made 3 Smoothies, I didn’t generate enough fruits. I also picked that Alligator big square token.

So, I played the game again but this time I filled all slots of business tokens but only 2 of each row can be taken. This way I had more options to include not just the ice cream token but the extra fruit basket.

After 20 rounds or so, I scored only 99 while the opponent got 100. I also got 3 points from the Juice module. The opponent’s last boat was 9 points which brought their score to 97 but the next boat move the token on the rock counterclockwise and got extra 3 points.

I had to pick 2 extra fruit basket tokens and with the Tucana big square token. I could have ended the game sooner by completing all Smoothies and ice cream. But then that Giant Tucana token was worth 17 points and I needed a couple more turns for it.

Playing time was about 30 minutes each session.

Aleph Null

Played this again 3 times still with the lowest difficulty. For the first 2 sessions I picked 3 Level 1 Interference Cards then the last one I picked 1 Level 2 Interference.

After 2nd session, I noticed that I misunderstood the Magical Power Tokens. I thought it was supposed to help keep track of that Virtual MP but apparently that was only for when getting MP in later rounds. The thing is the way I played so far was always to get that Golem early so I kind of ignored the damage.

In all 3 sessions I managed to get rid of all cards when summoning Baphomet but hopefully the 3rd one I played correctly.

Here is the session report.

1st Draw. Book of Pacts, Vitriol, The Weeping Tree, Circle of Protection and Wax Candle.

Played the Wax Candle and discarded the rest.

2nd Draw. Lodestone, Salamander, Akhtoi, Chasuble, Mother Shipton. Discarded the Candle to summon Akthoi and played the Mother Shipton. Discarded the rest.

3rd Draw. Wax Candle, Boline, The Devil in the Hearth, Exorcised Water, Grand Circle. Played the Wax Candle and Boline, discarded the other.

4th draw. Wax Candle, Besom, Golem, Mirror, Wand of Power. Played the Wax Candle and immediately scrapped it, along with the previous Wax Candle and Mother Shipton. With 3 MP, played Besom and Mirror. Discarded the rest.

I had Mirror, Akthoi, Boline, Besom.

5th Draw. Wealthy Tanist, Salamander, Baphomet, Wax Candle, Bell.

Played the Tanist and and Wax Candle, immediately scrapped them to get 2 MP to play Salamander. Scrapped Boline to play Bell. Discarded the rest.

I had Mirror, Akthoi, Bell, Besom, Salamander.

HOUR II

6th Draw. Sacrificial Lamb, Deck of Cards, learned Tanist, Wax Candle, Baphomet. Played the Tanist and Wax Candle. Scrapped the Candle and Salamander to play Sacrificial Lamb. Discarded the rest.

I had Mirror, Akthoi, Bell, Besom, Tanist, Sacrificial Lamb.

7th Draw. Wealthy Tanist, Wand of Power, Boline, Wax Candle, The Devil in the Hearth. Played the Candle, Boline and the Tanist. Scrapped the Lamb and the Candle to get 4 MP to play the Devil in the Hearth. Discarded the Wand.

I had Mirror, Akthoi, Bell, Besom, The Devil in the hearth, Learned and Wealthy Tanist.

8th Draw. Grand Circle, Exorcise Water, Golem, Mother Shipton, Wax Candle. Played the Mother Shipton and the Candle. Scrapped the Candle to Sacrifice BELL to summon CHASUBLE.

I sacrificed Akthoi and scrapped the 2 Tanists to summon Golem. Discarded the rest.

I had Mirror, Golem, Chasuble, Besom, The Devil in the hearth, Learned Tanist. Sacrificed cards: 2.

9th Draw. The Weeping Tree, Wax Candle, Circle of Protection, Vitriol, Book of Pacts. Played the Candle, immediately scrapped it and the Tanist to play The Weeping Tree. Discarded the rest.

I had Mirror, Golem, Chasuble, Besom, The Devil in the hearth, Weeping Tree. Sacrificed cards: 2.

HOUR III

10th draw. 1 MP. Grand Circle, Wealthy Tanist, Wax Candle, Boline, Sacrificial Lamb. Played the Candle, Tanist and Boline. Discarded the rest.

I had Mirror, Golem, Chasuble, Besom, The Devil in the hearth, Weeping Tree, Tanist, Wax Candle, Boline. Sacrificed cards: 2.

11th Draw, 1 MP. 2 Wax Candle, Deck of Cards, Vitriol and Learned Tanist. Played Tanist and 2 Candles. Scrapped the Candles to play Deck of Cards and Vitriol. Nothing to discard.

I had Mirror, Golem, Chasuble, Besom, The Devil in the hearth, Weeping Tree, 2 Tanists, Wax Candle, Boline, Deck of Cards and Vitriol. Sacrificed cards: 2.

12th Draw. Salamander, Mother Shipton, Lodestone, Wand of Power, Wax Candle. Played the Candle and Mother Shipton. Scrapped the 2 Candle to play Salamander. Sacrificed the 3 Tanists to play the Wand of Power. Sacrificed the Devil in the Hearth to summon the Lodestone. Nothing to discard.

I had Wand of Power, Mirror, Golem, Chasuble, Besom, Weeping Tree, Boline, Deck of Cards, Vitriol, Lodestone, Salamander. Sacrificed cards: 6.

13th Draw, 1 MP. Baphomet, Salamander, book of Pacts, Circle of Protection, Ill Omen (Interference). I had to Summon the Ill Omen and immediately sacrificed it along with 1 Magical Power. I chose to sacrifice the Salamander. Scrapped Boline and spent 1 MP from the token to play the other Salamander. Discarded the other 3.

I had Wand of Power, Mirror, Golem, Chasuble, Besom, Weeping Tree, Deck of Cards, Vitriol, Lodestone, Salamander. Sacrificed cards: 7+1.

HOUR IV

14th Draw, 1 MP. Exorcised Water, Sacrificial Lamb, Wax Candle, Boline, Book of Pacts. Played the Candle and Boline. Sacrificed the Salamander for 3 MP to play Book of Pacts. I also sacrificed the Mirror to get that 3 MP and played the Sacrificial lamb. Scrapped the Boline and sacrificed the Wax Candle for 2 MP to play the Exorcised Water.

I had Wand of Power, Book of Pacts, Golem, Chasuble, Besom, Weeping Tree, Deck of Cards, Vitriol, Lodestone, Sacrificial Lamb, Exorcised Water. Sacrificed cards: 10+1.

15th Draw. 1 MP. Wax Candle, Cursed Hourglass (Interference), Circle of Protection. Baphomet and Wax Candle. I didn’t sacrifice my Chasuble so I let the interference discard the rest of the cards.

I had Wand of Power, Book of Pacts, Golem, Chasuble, Besom, Weeping Tree, Deck of Cards, Vitriol, Lodestone, Sacrificial Lamb, Exorcised Water. Sacrificed cards: 10+2.

HOUR V

16th draw. 2 MP. Grand Circle, Baphomet, Circle of Protection, 2 Wax Candles. Played the Candles. Scrapped the Sacrificial Lamb and sacrificed those 2 candles for 5 MP. Sacrificed the Weeping tree for 6th MP to play the Grand Circle.

I think the other action from sacrificing the tree was to draw 1 card which was probably the Boline. Don’t remember exactly, but it seems I sacrificed the Deck of Cards to draw 1 and discard 2. I drew the last Wax Candle and discarded the Baphomet and Circle of Protection.

I had Wand of Power, Book of Pacts, Grand Circle, Golem, Chasuble, Besom, Vitriol, Exorcised Water. Sacrificed cards: 15+2.

HOUR VI

17th draw. Baphomet, Sacrificial Lamb, Circle of Protection and Reliquary (Interference). I sacrificed the Chasuble to cancel the Interference.

Scrapped the Boline for 1 MP but then sacrificed along with Exorcised water for 2 more MP. Spent the 3 for Sacrificial Lamb which then immediately sacrificed to play the Circle of Protection. Sacrificed that Circle of Protection along with Golem.

Sacrificed the Wax Candle to sacrifice Besom for nothing. So, the remaining were 3 played Keys and Vitriol and the Baphomet.

I summoned the Baphomet, sacrificed those 3 keys plus the Vitriol. Finished in Hour VI so no extra point but – 1 from Vitriol. No Damage.

Playing time for that last session was 27 minutes.

Streets

Played the solo variant, using Business Token module. Scored 138 while the opponent got 119. I won in Easy Difficulty but lost by 1 point in Normal.

There were moments where I could have prevented the opponent from getting the same score as me when they used the COPY VALUATION. I had to abandoned one building once and it was very a lucky move that I used a very low value building and I managed to catch the occupants to stay in my new place.

Playing time was about 52 minutes. Read the full session report here.

Learn more about the game from Streets Review.

November 2023

On BGG, here are the links to each weekly report for November, Week 1, Week 2, Week 3 and Week 4.

Calico

Played the Achievement Scenario #7 again. 64+ points, 1 yellow goal, 5 of any 3 cats, with Gwen, Rumi and Coconut.

I got 5 cats, 1 Gwen, 2 Coconuts and 2 Rumi (35 points), 4 buttons (12 points), yellow score from AAA-BB-CC (11 points), Blue score from AAAA-BB (7 points) and nothing from AAA-BBB with a total of 65 points. So, I completed the challenge.

Actually, halfway through the game, I almost gave up. My initial plan was to score Yellow from the AAA_BBB. Somehow I placed that one in the middle. I also planned not to score for Gwen at all.

Right in the middle, I realized that I was about to add the 3rd pattern to that goal tiles so I was screwed. However, I realized that I still had a chance to score the yellow from AAA-BB-C. I already got 2 patterns and 3 colors next to that goal so I only needed to add the 3rd pattern without adding more colors. I got very lucky with the tile.

Playing time was 25 minutes.

Adventure of D (Second Edition)

Played this solo, with SCHOLAR as the starting character and Intelegence +1. I also used the starting variant of all locations (with the underline). Still with the lowest difficulty, with 8 cards for the timer. The Castle of Light was right next to the Tower of Death.

First round, I got 2 Yellow cards with a total value of 4 so I visited the Mountain of Mage to meet Master Chvatil to increase the Intelligence into 2. Then I rested on Lake of Hope.

2nd Round. I moved to Swamp of Talis to fight against Goblin Magician. I won and increased my Attack by 1. The village of Dawn was nearby so I ended the round there.

3rd round. I got Blue or Pink card so I learned new skill which was the KNIGHT to mitigate SHOCK. Then I moved back to Swamp of Talis because there was a Rusty Chest there. I got SCROLL OF VISION item to teleport to any location. I had to rest there.

4th round. I moved back to the Village of Dawn to learn a new skill again and this time, learned skill from FIGHTER. This allows me to increase the test card by 1 if I have pink card. That was the only action I could afford.

5th round. Yellow Zombie appeared in the Village of Dawn. I defeated it and got a POTION of INTELLIGENCE. I learned a new skill again while there and this time was from MERCHANT. This allows me to get more Magic when defeating a Shadow if I have yellow card in hand.

Then I moved to Old Village of Dew to participate in ARM WRESTLING CHALLENGE. I won and just get 1 card back. I moved back to Village of Dawn and took a rest there.

6th round. I learned new Skill again and this time from NINJA. With this I could increase the Check 1 during test check by discarding Blue card. This time I moved to Old Village of Dew to teleport to the Castle of Light. There was a Mind challenge there. I won and increased the Intelligence into 3. Full rest in the Castle.

7th Round. I visited the Mountain of Mage again to meet Master Chvatil but there was Foul Wizard there. I defeated that Wizard and increased my Intelligence into 4. With the help from Master Chvatil I increased my Intelligence to 5 so at this time, I was ready to enter the Tower of Death.

8th Round. I could move to the Tower of Death but probably didn’t have enough cards to beat the final boss. So, I used the item to teleport. I entered the Room 1 since I had Intelligence to 5. In the 2nd Room there was Shadow 1 so I defeated it by spending Magic.

In room 3, there was a Shock 1 but the skill from the Knight helped me mitigated that. So, I had Pink 2 and Yellow 2 and beat Elzoof, the Chaos Wizard.

Playing time was abour 33 minutes. I probably should have stopped learning too many skills. to get more time. I got a lot of luck to win this.

Learn more about the game from Adventure of D Review.

Next Station: London

Played this 4 times, still without the extra module. First one scored 113 with 9, 11, 8 and 9 cards. Only connected 6 Tourist spots. Managed to connect 7 spots from the middle but as a result only 2 regions in the 3rd round. The best score was from Pink line, 5 spots of its regions and 6 regions, 2 Tourist spots and crossing river twice, getting me 34.

2nd play scored only 100 with 11, 10, 11, 8 cards. Connected 7 Tourist spots. 4 rounds scored between 14 to 22. So, more cards doesn’t always mean better scores.

3rd play scored 125, with 10, 10, 11, 11 so almost play all cards. But there were moments when I skipped playing the card at all. This time, the Purple scored 30 thanks to connecting 8 spots in the middle and 3 from regions plus 3 times crossing the river. Unfortunately, didn’t connect many Tourist spots that round. Actually, after checking the picture, I probably only scored 119 as I counted 1 region connected too many in the Blue rounds.

4th play scored 131, 9, 10, 10 and 10 cards played. The best round score was only 25, in blue rounds, connecting 5 spots of 1 region and 5 regions, no river crossing. However this time managed to connect the most possible Tourist spots and scored 25 alone from it. Another big score came from spots with multiple lines with 7 spots even if all of them only have 2. The other session only got 5 or 6.

Playing time was about 13 to 15 minutes each session.

Friday

Played this twice, with the Level 2, still with Pirate 52 and 40. In the first session, Robinson died during Yellow phase, 15 minutes. Couldn’t get rid of that Aging card that takes 1 life.

2nd play, I won but Iguess I cheated a bit. I think right before Robinson was about to face the Pirate, Robinson only had 1 Life point or so. So, instead of drawing the next card and couldn’t draw more, I picked the card that gives either life points or draw cards just so I could continue.

Unlike the 1st session, Robinson immediately faced the Wild Animal and
not long after that the Cannibals. That helped him to remove those weak cards early and immediately get strong if he won the challenge.

Got a couple of funny moments where I drew Very Tired card but the challenge only required 0 Fighting points. Finally made a good use of Exchange cards to compensate those limited Life points.

The final score of this cheating was 30 from pirate, 10 from Life tokens, -15 from the leftover hazard cards and no Aging card thanks to the Destroy cards. From the cards I got like 36 points or so.

Playing time of the 2nd session was about 34 minutes. I probably should try again next time.

Micro City (Second Edition)

Played the competitive variant 2-handed. Also with the Seaport expansion but the card didn’t get used at all. Blue player went first and won with 14 while the Red player only 13. 1st player managed to complete 3 Advantage cards while Red got only 2. For the goal cards, Blue player completed 2 of them while Red 3.

In the last few rounds, Red was having trouble getting resources. I guess Red got stuck and blocked a bit at the corner while Blue was more flexible in the middle.

Playing time was about 50 minutes for playing as both sides. Learn more about the game from Micro City Review.

Isle of Trains: All Aboard

New game. Played the learning session 2-handed. The session took about 76 minutes, running both sides. I guess I was a bit overwhelmed with a lot of icons to check with this Multiuse card system. There is a good chance I missed some rules.

1st Player scored 56, managed to get 2 Map cards but only 1 with the secondary contract. 2nd player only scored 46 with just 1 Map and primary contract. Both had 5 train cars or so with Level 3 engine.

The scoring printed on that map card and the rule were a bit confusing but after checking the forum, I got it. The 2 scores on the back are just the total after completing both primary and chosen secondary contracts.

What I didn’t realize at first was that how important the SPECIAL DELIVERY idea to generate more cards. At the start I thought I could only deliver goods or passengers to the specific destination. As a result, I ended up just waiting for the opportunity. After knowing that, then taking 1 passenger from the bag so I can load it later and deliver along with other things makes more sense. Feels a bit inefficient at first but not bad after accumulation.

Also, I kept discarding building cards because I thought they are for end game scoring only while in fact they offer any kind of resources that I can load on the train. I was under impression that I had to upgrade the train as soon as possible. While I still get points from upgrading but I feel like I didn’t use the load and deliver much.

While upgrading might be good in long term but securing the Map card as fast as possible is also important. Now that I think about it, I think I forgot that I could also load goods on other player’s car. So, not really need to rely on passengers only.

Definitely need to play this again and the solo mode.

Targi

Played the solo PnP variant, just the base game. The objectives were 36 points, at least 10 Tribe Cards, 1 Gold and 1 of any Goods left, and I had to get 3 rows, each with all the same symbols or all different symbols. As the obstacle I had to pay 1 extra resource during any Raid.

I scored 39, completed every objective in the 12th round and the last raid didn’t happen. For some reason I didn’t get any Rider type symbol. A lot of earlier Tribe cards really helped giving discount for the next and other bonuses later. I used the SILVERSMITH 3 times, 2 to trade 4 resource for 3 points and once for 2 resources for 1.

Of course, I used the CARAVAN space a lot. Maybe got lucky that the opponent didn’t go there first.

Playing time was about 65 minutes. Read the full session report here.

Learn more about the game from Targi Review.

Sagrada

Played this twice, one solo variant and the other 2-handed competitive game. In the solo session, the opponent scored 58 while I only scored like 39 or so. Only managed to get 2 sets of all colors and 2 sets of all values. Also only managed to use the tool twice. The player card was Gravitas.

Then I played 2-handed, one with Gravitas and the other with Virtus both had 5 Favor tokens. Red as the 1st player scored only 46 while Green as the 2nd scored 52. Both had 1 Favor tokens left. During the 9th round, 1st player got 2 dice left that they couldn’t place. Luckily the tools allowed players to move some dice and one to flip dice. Even still, that was not enough to win against the 2nd player. 2nd player was lucky to get 3 sets of all colors and 3 sets of all values.

Playing time was 10 minutes solo and 24 minutes 2-handed.

Bruxelles 1897

Played the fan-made solo variant against Victor Horta, standard difficulty. Victor Horta focus was Architecture and managed to built 4 buildings, each 5 points at the end while I only got 3 buildings worth 3 points.

I was focusing on prestige but not until the last round or so I got to release my architect from prison. Even at that point I failed to complete the Area Majority. I was collecting the Artworks as well but didn’t get the end game scoring. Probably, I should have saved more money in the 3rd round so I could score better in the final one.

I scored 45 while the opponent scored 51. Playing time was about 60 minutes.

Pocket Master Builder

Played this the 2-player variant, first time 2-handed. I used translucent plastic cubes instead of wooden cubes that came in the box. The problem is that I didn’t have enough cubes of the same colors and I ended up using 5. Well, it was a bad idea, especially for trying to play both sides. There is a chance I got mixed up between the 2 colors. Combined with the occasional bumping the card, ending up moving the position of the cubes. Scanning between player’s own cubes for workers and their built buildings was not easy.

The session itself ended in a draw I think. About 43 points each. The 2nd player, Yellow, managed to trigger the end of the game and even built 7th buildings while the 1st player only got to 6.

I guess I still forgot that both had Oracle cards that give points relative to the opponent’s progression. At some point, the player already won the majority and should try to beat the opponent on their Oracle card. That was what happened. 2nd Player won the majority for their own Oracle scoring and managed to tie with the opponent’s.

Both sides focused too much on moving the position on the Wall track. Ended up having not enough either cards or cubes. Both spent their reward points to get more cubes a couple of time. The orange player or the 1st didn’t even have enough to push the donkey track.

The 4 x 7 grid only had 8 spots left when the game ended. So, 4 rounds until the end game was triggered plus the final one.

Playing time took about 85 minutes, for playing both sides.

Trailblazers

Played the solo standard variant again, with LOOP JUNKIE as the objective. I misread the rule the part where I need to have 3 loops of 2 Camps as just 2 loops and 2 camps. First game I scored 54, 2 loops for Blue and Brown but only 1 for red. In this session I managed to cut off existing line just to make sure I closed the loop.

2nd play, scored 53 as well, but this time 2 Loops for Red, 3 for Brown and Blue. I almost combined the 2 existing loops on Brown then I remembered that the goal was to have 3. In the last turn, I managed to extend the existing small loop with the last 2 cards to get extra 2 points each. Playing L-shape and closing on corners are good combos.

Playing time was about 20 minutes each.

The Isle of Cats: Explore & Draw

Played this again solo with 1 extra advanced solo lesson. Scored only 60 while the opponent got 66. The 1st lesson was 5 points per visible Rat so I had to cover everything. 2nd lesson was 3 points per filled room. This was the reason I was hesitant whether to fill rooms or left them empty. If I fill a room, I avoid losing 5 points but giving the Sister 3. Ended up just filling two rooms.

3rd lesson was 2 points per cat in the largest family. So I had to grow every family evenly. And the Advanced lesson was 5 points per family. So, I couldn’t make too many family.

Got very lucky in the 1st round where I didn’t need to pick any Cats so I could avoid the first 2 colors. However, I took a chance with the Red cats and apparently that was the 3rd color. Turns out that was my biggest family.

I got 5 lessons myself. #2 which is 1 point per common treasure which I got 9. #5, extra 2 points per rare treasure which I got 2. #10 which requires placing 2 treasure next to visible rat so I got 0.

#17 which is 9 points for getting exactly 3 different colors of cats. I got it right. Lastly #20, 10 points for no visible rats.

In the last round there was a choice between getting 1 Rare treasure or 2 Common treasure. The former means getting 5 points. Had I went with the latter, I could get 2 points from the lessons and fill up one more room, avoiding losing 5 points while giving 3 to the opponent.

So, I could get 62 but the opponent was still winning with 69.

Playing time was 40 minutes. This was significantly faster than my previous plays. I guess I got a lot of easier choice that I didn’t need to use the one-time ability to avoid certain columns but instead to draw extra cats.

Horizons of Spirit Island

Played this again with Eyes Watch from the Trees Spirit, with the harder variant. This was the first time I used the drafting rule instead of following the Power Progression card.

It is an interesting variant since you cannot always get card that works with the Spirit. Mostly about the element of the cards. If you choose the card that is not in the Progression card, you will trigger the innate power less. I did find a couple of cards for this Spirit but chose the other 3. If not, then it can make the game more challenging.

Also, using this variant, you need to decide when to start drawing from Major power instead of just following the same order. This means, you probably need to wait until you get a relatively useless card before trying to replace it with the Major Power.

There is additional randomness with the 4 cards drawn. I guess you can just check the top 4 cards first and decide whether to actually use that Growth option or not.

I was expecting the game should be longer because with those drafting, you have to evaluate which of the 4 cards to pick. Somehow I still finished that session in 60 minutes or so, similar to my previous play with the same Spirit.

To be fair, I think I got lucky with the Fear Card. There was a moment where the Invader was about to get 1 City and that Fear Card helped me prevent it. Otherwise, the game could have been longer to finish. Of course, there was also Fear card that did nothing at all.

I won in 7th round, during Ravage Phase of the invader.

The difference was that I felt the Invaders went out of control more compared to previous play. Probably because I didn’t pick the card that works with the Spirit well.

Dale of Merchants

Played 2-handed with Pandas, Macaws and Raccoons. 1st player finished their 8th stack first while 2nd player was left behind with just 5th stack. A lot of take-that from 1st player using the Raccoons while the 2nd player was focusing on the other animalfolks. 2nd player managed to get some revenge but it was not enough to catch up.

Playing time was about 47 minutes. Read the full session report here. Learn more about the game from Dale of Merchants Review.

Miyabi

Played this 2-handed, Blue the starting player and orange the 2nd. Orange won with 274 points while Blue only scored 265. Orange got to 5th level for the Tree (1st row) while Blue managed to get to even 6th level for Bush (5th row). That was also not scoring any Bush majority bonus for the Orange because Orange had no object on that row.

Orange managed to connect a lot of objects with 29 points. Blue tried to focus on the empty space but only got like 20 points. Orange got score from the Zen tile once.

Actually, after checking my pictures, I think Orange player incorrectly placed a domino tile with the Pagoda object on the right most column. The elevation of the foundation was not in the same level. Orange could still place that tile there but it has to be vertically to the Tree row. That means covering one Tree object, losing 2 points for placing in lower level and failed to score 7 of 7 exact objects from that Tree row. Orange lost a couple more from not connecting the Tree objects on the top right column.

So, I guess Blue could have won the game. Playing time was about 53 minutes. Learn more about the game from Miyabi Review.

The Castles of Burgundy: The Dice Game

Played with the Sheet A. Scored 77. Only missed the purple color with just 1 set. Well, I rerolled a couple of turns because I didn’t like the result. Managed to get a lot of silver early whether from Mines or Boats, really helped.

Playing time was about 20 minutes. Learn more about the game from The Castles of Burgundy: The Dice Game Review.

Circle the Wagons

Played this twice, 2-handed. First one with SMALLTOWN CHARM, BOOM OR BUST and ONE TOO MANY scoring. 1st player scored 22 from territory while 2nd player scored only 13. 1st player -1 for having more Beer, 4 points for having 7 Mines, while 2nd player got 5 for exactly 2 mine objects.

The Smalltown Charm requires comparing each territory between players. Player with the least of each territory type gets points equal to the difference. 2nd player got 8 points for water, 5 points for snow, 1 point for desert, 6 points for mountain. 1st player got 3 for yellow, 7 for green.

So, 1st player won with 35 and 2nd Player got 32 points.

2nd play with HAPPY COWS, FORTIFIED and BADLANDS. 1st Player took the card with 3 Fortress as the starting card of course. 10 points for 1st player territory and 18 points for 2nd player.

7 points for 1st Player for that 4 Fortress, nothing for 2nd. 1st player only had 2 guns between desert so 8 points while only 1 gun for 2nd, so 4 points. 2nd player got 4 Cows that were not on or adjacent to Snow, so 8 points while 1st player only got 1 or 2 points.

So, final score was 30 points for 2nd player, 27 points for 1st Player. 2nd Player WON!

Playing time was about 20 minutes each. Learn more about the game from Circle the Wagons Review.

Pandoria Merchants

Played the solo variant again. Still not sure about the scoring. I scored 72, maybe plus 34 from Monuments and Relics. The part that I wasn’t sure was whether to reset the score every territory that affects the Troll’s score or to just continue, compound from round to round. If it is the latter, the Troll only scored 55. However, if the former, the Troll scored 270. This was with the easiest difficulty.

I think there were a lot of moments that I forgot to get extra bonus from Buildings that I’ve built. Maybe they would become Monument and I lose the benefit anyway so I kind of forget it. I casted 3 spells overall. Early in the game after getting 5 Golds or so, there were a couple of turns when I didn’t get any Gold at all. Not even the Craft to replace it. Like 20 turns or so. So I guess I had to use 6 as 2 or Gold. No money means cannot buy any card to build or cast spell.

Playing time was about 90 minutes.

Castellion

Played this twice with the Basic Mode, standard difficulty. Hopefully I actually completed the requirements correctly this time. However, the first one was a bit frustrating after keep pulling those Traitor tiles to the point I just return it and pick something else which happened a couple of times. I only had like 4 or 5 tiles left. 2nd Ordeal was 2 squares and 2 horizontals and the 3rd one required 6 squares.

Then I played again and this time was very lucky to not pull any of those traitors. I even had a lot of tiles left. 2nd Ordeal was 2 verticals and 2 squares, which then helped the 3rd ordeals which was 6 verticals.

Somehow, I have a feeling that having Towers as the last Ordeal requirements makes the game easier because you can just add tiles from the top. If it is square or 2 x 2 and try to change a long one at the bottom, that requires a lot of movement with that orange which depletes the tiles.

Playing time took about over 20 minutes for the 1st one and about 15 for the 2nd. Maybe I should just try the expert mode next time.

One Deck Dungeon: Forest of Shadows

Played with Warden again, this time in REALM OF VENOM with Poison Elemental as the dungeon’s boss. As usual, I played as if I have unlocked all of the campaign bonuses. I chose the Basic and Savvy Focus of talents.

At the start of the game, I thought I played the game with Standard difficulty. Then I realized, I made a mistake with the number of items that I can add to the character. So, instead of restarting, I continued with the lower difficulty where I start the character with Level 2, immediately getting 1 black die and 1 potion token.

Got 8 encounters in the first floor after about 26 minutes. Another 8 on 2nd floor in 27 minutes and 10 on the 3rd after about 32 minutes. It took just 2 rounds to beat the final boss.

Near the last few encounters of the 3rd floor, I felt like I didn’t need to finish the encounter other than to generate more potions. I think there was one encounter where I could get potion skills which I didn’t use. I did use the starting Basic Potion to increase the value of 2 dice by 1 each in the final boss fight.

As usual, at the start, got very bad roll, suffered a lot of hits and even poisons, combined with perils that required colors other than yellow which was Wardens strongest.

Even before the 2nd floor, either I got enough good dice and skills or just rerolled out of frustration, I could complete all of the challenge boxes without suffering any consequences. Maybe at that point, I stopped using the skills from the Campaign’s talents.

Playing time was about 90 minutes. Learn more about the game from One Deck Dungeon: Forest of Shadows Review.

Siege of Valeria

Played this 3 times still just the base game but all 3 with events. First one was a loss with 2 Siege Engines left. 2nd one also a loss but with 1 Siege Engine left but it was a Breach Tower, already with an enemy on it.

3rd time I won but I kind of cheated. I checked both CHAMPION and EVENT DECKS and put cards that I thought would help me at the top. There were moments where I also rerolled the dice just to get the better value even though I had a lot of cards that allowed me to increase the value.

For the last Siege Engine, I got lucky (or another cheating) to find the Champion that can move those Siege Engine closer so I could finish it. Getting the 2 Champions that can reused 2 dice of each color definitely helps.

Playing time took almost 60 minutes for each session. Read the full session report for the last session here.

Sylvion

Played with all expansions but not the Ravage pawn, first time with The Elements. From the drafting, I got 33 cards, only 1 Betrayal cards, 3 Extraordinary Feats, Doves, Elephants and Fish.

I had all 4 squirrels, 3 owls, 3 elephants, 1 hedgehog, 1 stag, 1 whale and 1 fish. 7 Fountain cards and 8 tree cards. So, the Fish instant win was already impossible. The instant win from Doves was probably still possible with the 3 Owls to have 16 cards in hand but I didn’t get it. The Elephant card was very useful to remove all element cards.

I won the game. Only got hit once and that was from the Element since nothing stood in its way. No other hit from the regular elements. I think I managed to only use the Geyser once. I did utilize those squirrels to a good use, preparing for the next two rounds.

Playing time was about 60 minutes, including the drafting.

Aleph Null

Played this for the first time, 3 times. 1st one was a loss after I sacrificed the Baphomet card with that Vitrol. 2nd play managed to have 4 cards left in hand and 1 from deck when summoning Baphomet. Still a loss and there was a chance I forgot to sacrifice the Candle during Hour IV. 3rd session was another loss after getting rid of all Candles and realized that I had no other card to generate that Magical Power.

Playing time was about 20 minutes, 30 for the first, the learning game. This feels similar to a game from Japan called Fish, Farewell, Forever but I haven’t played that one. That one is just cards though.

More pictures of that session and the unboxing on my IG: https://www.instagram.com/p/CzHNCIDS-C2/

Bamboo

Played with the fan made solo variant again. Scored 51 while the opponent scored only 36. The opponent didn’t get to take a lot of Food tokens during the last round losing like 5 points. On the other hand I spent too much action for getting Food tokens, especially after getting that Ookami Spirit.

I think I got all 7 different Spirits. Had equal number of Home tiles between left and right side, so no penalty from it.

I’m still not sure about whether I run the opponent correctly. This feels weaker than how I played previously and shorter since the opponent did less action.

Playing time was about 72 minutes.

Let’s Make a Bus Route: The Dice Game

Played the solo version again with the Mars Map. This session, the first time I tried the advanced variant with only 4 white dice. Scored only 166. 88 from the Blue as the first part and only 78 from the Pink. This definitely makes the solo variant tighter than when play with 5 white dice.

There were a lot of moments that I couldn’t use the dice for passengers. Even if I could use them, the other die for the movement was a short one so I didn’t move farther in either part. I had to actively sacrifice the filling passengers just to move.

It managed to push me to eventually use those one-time abilities. Even though the rerolling were not still that helpful.

This is just my first impression of this variant. While the game becomes more challenging but it feels the fun part relies more to random dice roll. I said that I couldn’t fill passengers a couple of times during the game but at the same time, the other option didn’t give me interesting movement. For example, if I roll a red, which only move 1 space, I couldn’t use it to fill my board because I already activated all of those abilities.

I rarely had only red face die as movement in the regular mode. This makes the choice as either suck or less suck, instead of equally good.

Again, this was still just initial impression. I need to play more. Playing time was about 42 minutes.

For Northwood!: A Solo Trick-Taking Game

Played 2nd time, with the Advanced variant. My starting allies were Lady of Eyes, Prince of Leaves, Jack of Claws and Lady of Flowers. They helped me get through all 7 rulers but not the last one.

All of them helped me against the Prince of Claws to get 6 tricks. About 2 or 3 other, I got a huge help from Lady of Flowers when I had only 1 card left which was a 1, I discarded that with her help.

The last ruler, the Baron of Flowers, I needed to win 7 tricks. Technically, I already failed my first attempt but I just retried. Prince of Claws and Queen of Leaves helped me with the 2nd attempt. The queen had the ability to activate the current ruler’s ability that allowed me to discard cards with a value of 1 to 3. The Prince allowed me to draw more cards until I got the card with the matching suit as the ruler since I needed more cards to win 7 tricks.

Playing time was about 30 minutes.

Rush M.D.

Played this 3 times solo. For the first two, I played with the objective to treat at least 24 patients with 5 of them being hospitalized and started with 9 Medical points in hard difficulty.

Failed in the 1st one in the last round after admitted the 3rd hospitalized one. That one didn’t get any treatment and the condition got worse from Serious to Critical losing my remaining 4 medical points. However, if I went with the normal difficulty requirement, I succeeded. Scored 56 and with 6 medical points left.

2nd one, retry that same objective. Succeeded with exactly 24 patients, scored 55 points and with 6 medical points left. There was one Outbreak but I was lucky that it got resolved immediately.

3rd play I chose a different objective where I had to treat 9 Hospitalized and 7 Outpatients in hard difficulty in order to win. I got 9 Hospitalized and 11 Outpatients treated. One Outpatient didn’t get treatment but was only in Mild condition, down to Serious during the last round. Scored 62 points with 12 Medical Points. This one I didn’t lose any Medical points but instead gained a bit thanks to that Yellow cards.

Playing time of each session was about 40 minutes.

Roll Camera!: The Filmmaking Board Game

After my failed attempt in September session, I decided to play with just single role, THE DIRECTOR. The Script was BLOODY BLOODY MEMORIES. Managed to get exactly 2 Red (Violent) Scenes and 3 Yellow (Sentimental) Scenes.

Last time, I was kind of waiting for the scenes and the right dice roll to show up. Apparently that can lead to horrible experience. So, this time, with the Director’s special power, I tried to dig through the Scene deck, removing those that didn’t match up with the script hoping to find the right one. I also tried to use that Idea/meeting more often and even replace idea cards.

Here is the funny part of that session. Like up to 2/3 of the game I was trying to hit the lowest quality film. Then I realized that at the same time, I had been trying to fulfill the script which can increase the Quality at the end. So, near the end of the game, I had to find a way to boost it up just to get the NOT BAD Quality.

I thought I couldn’t make it but I guess I got a good idea cards. There was also moments where the 3 Problem cards were not affecting my progress so I could just let them piled on and removed them with just 1 Idea card.

I almost run out of money and time and when I thought I could use the Director’s ability to compromise the quality for the time, I actually had to move the quality up. One of the problem card was actually helping me by increasing the quality at least to the START point. It was really lucky.

Well, that was my experience when playing the game. When I wrote that session report, I realized that I forgot to adjust the money where I should have paid the cost to shoot a scene. Had I played the game correctly, I actually lost the game on 16th round after shooting that 4th scene and had no money left at all. Even though by the end I had some money left.

Playing time was about 78 minutes. Read the full session report here.

October 2023

On BGG, here are the links to each weekly report for October, Week 1, Week 2, Week 3 and Week 4.

Fleet

Played the solo variant against the 2 Captains. I managed to buy license for Lobster, Cod, Tuna and Processing Vessel plus the Fisherman’s Pub. Launched a total of 8 boats, scored about 60 points.

Captain T.C. scored the next highest with 48 points. I was lucky that in 9 turns, Captain T.C. only launched 3 boats with 5 Regular Licenses and 1 King Crab.

Playing time was about 30 minutes.

Learn more about the game from Fleet Review.

Snake: The Board Game

Played the online version twice against 1 more Snake. 1st one, I got lucky when both Snakes got cornered but the opponent died first. I guess same goes with the 2nd but I didn’t expect it would end that point.

Play the game here: https://snaketheboardgame.com/

Rescuing Robin Hood

Played solo with 2 characters, LADY CHRISTABEL and MAID MARIAN. Managed to reach the 5th day. Maid Marian stormed the Nottingham Castle first but unable to completely defeat the first line of Defense.

Lady Christabel then finished the job but failed with the 2nd line of Defense. She had the total Brawn (Red) attack of 28 against 7 Red Soldiers. Unfortunately, the total Red Soldiers power was over 30 so they failed to even Rescue Robin Hood.

Even if they managed to rescue Robin Hood, they wouldn’t be able to defeat the Sherrif even with the Robin Hood’s leadership.

Probably should have made a better plan as who goes first storming the Castle and the group of characters to bring along.

Playing time was about 80 minutes.

6×6 Tales

Played as the Elf again. Scored 527 points of Fame. Up until the last day of 2nd week only managed to get 25 Fame points and probably 2 of the Castle Quest. Completed the map in the 3rd week, 2nd day. Finally defeated the Magic Mirror in the Abandoned Tower on Day 3 Week 3. I got lucky because the Cave Dungeon was discovered to be next to that Tower. So the day after that, explored that Dungeon and managed to survive going through all 8 rooms.

I guess a did a bit cheating by misinterpreting the rule about Kaboom and Rush Scroll. I forgot again that I could only change the square I was currently on not to change from the other side. This also happened with the last session. Well, also a couple of times when I rerolled the result because I didn’t like the result.

Playing time took about 3 hours. That length was mostly for the drawing part and keep checking the events.

The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine

Played 2-handed with the 2-player variant, mission #33 and #34. Won the #33 but mostly because I let the 3rd player only won one trick instead of the other player. #34 was where the Commander had to win the first and last trick and no player can win 2 tricks more than the other. I tried like 5 times and failed all. The closest one was the 2nd try where I managed to distribute the wins but the Commander failed to win the last trick.

Playing time was about 10 minutes each session.

The Castles of Burgundy: The Card Game

I actually played this solo 4 times. Lost the first 3, won the 4th one.

First session, the opponent scored 9 points in 3rd round. I guess this was kind of my poor play. I only managed to score 8 points after selling 5 goods at the end of the round.

2nd session, the opponent scored 5 points in 2nd round and I had none at the end of the round. About 10 minutes.

3rd session, the opponent scored 24 points in 4th rounds. I only got 20 points.

4th session, the opponent scored 24 points in the last round. I got 35 points. The opponent was the 1st to scored the 7 colors, I got none actually. I guess I felt kind of lucky that while the opponent got triplets of 2 colors first, they also start collecting those colors again which they didn’t complete. The opponent had 5 completed triplets and another 5 sets with 2 cards each, ready to score.

I completed 5 sets, sold 7 goods, got a set of 3 different animals, won 1st time of 4 colors. Completing the Yellow sets early was very helpful as I didn’t need to waste a turn just to get 2 Workers like in previous sessions. I even managed to get a total of 6 Silvers and 3 Workers left. In the last turn, spent 3 Silvers to convert those leftover Silvers and Workers into 2 points.

Playing time were about 25 to 30 minutes each, except for that 2nd session.

Read the full session report here.

Learn more about the game from The Castles of Burgundy: The Card Game Review.

Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion

Played Mission #13 still with Hatchet and Red Guard. Changed the deck of each a bit but it felt like I missed a couple of combos. Not enough card to ignite the element to be consumed by the cards I actually brought to the mission. I should have looked at the mission a bit to pick better equipment.

Both characters managed to complete one of their personal objectives. I also need to learn using the equipment better, related to how often I will do long rest. So need a bit calculation. Red Guard did short rest once to pick up the card right away in the last few rounds.

As usual, probably missed a couple of rules here and there. Even forgot to resolve one or 2 attacks from the enemies. Normal difficulty but might as well considered as the lower difficulty.

Playing time was about 150 minutes. With the setup like an hour the day before and maybe another half an hour to put them back in the box.

Read the full session report here.

Trailblazers

Played this 3 times solo, all with WILDLIFE WHISPERERS objective where you need to have 15 Animals showing on the card without being overlapped.

1st session scored only 37 with 13 animals, 2nd session scored 44 with 15 animals. In 3rd session, scored 52 with 15 or 16 animals. Playing time was about 20 minutes each.

Friday

Played this 3 times with the Level 2 difficulty. 1st one only got me to Red Phase, running out of Life Tokens. The 2nd play I managed to defeat the 1st Pirate that required 40 Fighting Points before the 52 one. Run out of Aging cards, had only 5 cards left against the 2nd one. I think had I chosen the 52 first, that would have been easier and possible to beat both. The 3rd one only got me to Yellow Phase.

Each session took almost 30 minutes each.

Unreliable Wizard

Played with the 3-card map again. Started with Monk and another Blue card. Met the Hero after 2nd Enemy and the Princess after the 5th. The 2nd Spell Book was found like the 2nd before the Final Boss. I was lucky not got killed before that. During the Final Battle, the Hero got killed but managed to defeat Tera with just 5 Life Points left.

Playing time was about 30 minutes. This was significantly lower than previous plays which took about 45 to 60. This time I didn’t need to check rules. Hopefully played it correctly.

Old Town Road

Played 1 session. This was the first time I got every kind of Poker sets.

1st Straight: 3 points
Flush: 4 points
Pair: 11 points
2nd Straight: 11 points
3rdStraight: 12 points
4th Straight Flush: 12 points
3 of a Kind: 7 points
Bonus for All Sets: 10 points
Total Score: 70 points

Playing time was about 20 minutes.

Café

Played this twice. First one scored 20 and the 2nd one 21. Still no significant improvement from previous plays.

Each session took about 20 minutes. Learn more about the game from Café Review.

Mobile Markets: A Smartphone Inc Game

Played 2 handed, Yellow vs Red. Red won with 158 while Yellow scored only 139. Actually, I let Red used the same Planning phase all 5 rounds, without changing anything, including the price while Yellow tried to constantly change the position. I think Yellow only went 2nd place in one of the turn by setting the price higher. The other rounds Yellow was mostly lower or the same.

Apparently Red managed to do well, I guess Yellow was played not very well. Yellow bought 2 Tech Cards that are essentially cancelling each other. Both players got 2 Game Ends bonuses.

The interesting moment in this session was Red got a card to trade Progress tokens into Production and increased the production up to 13 in the last round. Yellow went first and sold 9 while Red only sold 8. Yellow on the other hand tried to get more score for having as many Feature cards as possible.

Almost every round Yellow sold more phones. One round didn’t get the bonus thanks to the Event. There was one other round where both tied. Eventually, Yellow didn’t get much profit for selling too low. Up to 3rd round, Yellow was always ahead in score. Starting from 4th, Red caught up.

Maybe next I should try where Red stays with 5 and Yellow chooses higher price always.

Playing time was about 90 minutes.

Horizons of Spirit Island

Played with just 1 Spirit for the first time and playing as Eyes Watch from The Trees. I actually played the game twice. First one with the normal difficulty setting. I think I made an error but I don’t remember what. Since it took significantly shorter compared to 2 Spirits, with about 60 vs 180 minutes, I decided to play again with higher difficulty setting. Turns out I made 1 huge error.

There was a card that allows me to push I explorer which I used to prevent Build Action. However, I forgot that I couldn’t push that Explorer to another land with an Invader. Sadly I didn’t realize it during the game and just continued. Had I played correctly, the issues can compound where the Invader could have done Build action and add a City which prevented me from winning that easy.

While writing my session report, I noticed that I had a chance to fix that mistake in the following round and I could have still won the game in that same 7th rounds, just in the next phase. Hypothetically, I still won but it kind of ruined my enjoyment.

This made me realize, even by playing a single Spirit, I can still make a lot of mistakes… This time, luckily was not a big deal. Maybe I could get better by sticking with the same Spirit for awhile instead of changing from game to game.

Read my full session report here.

One Deck Galaxy

Played against the Preservation Authorities for the first time. First using Felisi the Scientist. Misunderstood about how to resolve the Event cards. Got 2 or 3 Encounters at the same time very early triggered the Escalation a lot. Lost the game after 6 or so rounds.

Played the 2nd time again, still lost after trying to remove some resources constantly. I had a feeling that the Scientist and this was a bad match.

Played the 3rd time but this time with PlumPlim the Botanist. I won but I cheated by drawing the Event cards and resources that were less punishing to me instead of randomly. All of three plays used the highest one-time boosts.

That third play took like 90 minutes.

Yin Yang

Played 2-handed. Red Player won with 69 points while Blue only got 54 points. Red even managed to destroy some of the Temples just to randomize the coins multiple times. I guess Red was lucky enough to almost get points from all of the Achievement Tiles. Red as the starting player for the most part got the advantage of leaving those Disaster tokens to block the Blue movement. I think Blue had one or 2 turns where they waste a turn a bit with increasing the Yin value and get the first player instead of doing movements.

Playing time was about 90 minutes.

Villages of Valeria

Played 2 handed. Red, the first player scored 36 with 12 cards, triggering the end game while Blue scored 34 with also 12 cards. Both only recruited twice each.

Playing time was about 45 minutes. Learn more about the game from Villages of Valeria Review.

The Blob that Ate the City

Played this twice. First one scored only 109 while the second one after trying to connect the other part of the Growth, scored 111, not that different.

Playing time was about 18 – 26 minutes.

Nautilion

Finally played with the last expansion for the first time, the HEROIC ACTION along with previous ones. I managed to flip all 3 cards, completed all of the objectives. Only 1 Mage with a Crew but all 3 Mages. Technically I lost the game in the last round since the Phantom reached the Happy Isle first but I cheated and rerolled the dice.

Playing time was about 40 minutes.

Peloponnes Card Game

Played the solo variant again. Scored 23 points from Population and 27 from Buildings. The opponent only got 18 or 19. This was using the Level 1 with 3 extra buildings I can buy. I probably should try the harder variant.

Playing time was about 52 minutes.

Read the Full Session Report here. Learn more about the game from Peloponnes Card Game Review.

Regicide

Played solo session twice. The first one only reached like 2nd or 3rd King after losing the 2 Jesters. The 2nd one forced me to play Jester very early like 2nd Jack. However, I managed to not use the 2nd one until I won the game.

Playing time was about 30 minutes. Read the Full Session Report here.

Let’s Make a Bus Route: The Dice Game

I’ve played the Mars Map before for solo mode but this time I played 2-handed. Blue player as the starting one only scored 73 while Pink player scored 99. Blue suffered a lot after spending all of the chances to change movement directions. At one point, Blue couldn’t move at all. However, Blue could have used the two-time ability that they have activated before to reroll.

Playing time was about 51 minutes.

Siege of Valeria

A new game. I got a couple of plays but it seems I misunderstood a couple of rules which makes the game harder. Played twice with events because a lot of people said that the base game was easy. Lost badly both times. Played 3rd time without the event and just slightly better.

One of the rule mistake was I thought getting more dice was temporary but apparently that was permanent until a Siege engine forces you to return it. it was essential to win. Played the 4th time and still lost but significantly better with 2 Siege Engines left. I think I still made mistake with the Champion where I forgot to discard the one with one-time ability and just flipped them instead.

That last play took about 50 minutes while the other 3 were about 20. I guess I was being more careful when taking actions, tried to figure out the best combos.

For Northwood! A Solo Trick-Taking Game

First play of this, using the introductory setup. I managed to win the right trick from all 8 rulers. From the 3 allies, I used 2 of them a lot with a few for the 3rd. Didn’t use the last one that move the Ruler at all. Replaced that one with one of the ruler but I didn’t use their ability as well. I guess I need to try with the full variant next.

Playing time was almost 30 minutes.

Goblins vs Zombies

Played this game 3 sessions, with the boss mode against the Elf Hero Zombie. Finally won the last one with 4 zombies ready to enter the village. In the first one, the Boss card actually got lost because of the Backup action.

Playing time was about 20 minutes each session. Learn more about the game from Goblins vs Zombies Review.

Pocket Master Builder

Played the solo variant again. I think I got 45 points but then lost 4 after flipping 4 Landmark cards. So, I didn’t get better compared to my last play.

Playing time was about 61 minutes.

Castellion

Played this 3 times with the Base Level. Even after cheating a lot, I still made mistake for that last one.

This was still trying to learn to figure out the strategy. It feels the game is more strategic than it appears. You have to make the overall plan right from the start based on those 3 objectives. This is to minimize changing the board too much between one objective to another. There are potential of combos I need to explore more with the green.

I need to try again but this one is very challenging compared to the other Oniverse games. Not just about winning but to play correctly.

Playing time of the last session was about 22 minutes.

Aerion

I finally had a chance to revisit this and write full session report like for the other Oniverse games. Played with all of the expansions, with the Stone Clouds set in higher difficulty. Maybe also for the Factory and Flagship.

This was the first time I managed to complete all of the objectives including destroying the Hellkite. The play session took about 85 minutes, with about 67 turns.

Read the full session report here: Learn more about the game from Aerion Review.

Final Words

So, those are all of the games I played. Hope that entertains or helps to give some idea what kind of tabletop games we can find on the market.

Some are new and some are older games. The complete list of the older games and my reviews about them can be found from this list.

I keep saying that these tabletop games can be a good way to spend some time without looking at the screen of our gadget. If we do have someone close, that we can play with, there are other games where we can play cooperatively or competitively but with a lot of player interaction.

The game can be very fast or like a filler type or it can take hours to play. Some games can also be played in solitaire mode and they are still more engaging than other entertainment activity. Some may say, it’s like a workout for the gray matter of our brain.

Thanks for reading.

 

Mark M.