I've been hammering away on playing the unplayed games in my collection and wanted to highlight a couple of the better ones in a post.
Honourable Mentions
Fellowship of the Ring: Trick Taking Game
We play a lot of trick taking games. (My current favorite is Fishing). FoTR:TTG is a co-op trick taker similar to the crew. It has a campaign that introduces new mechanics slowly. We played the first 4 chapters in one go. Each chapter has you playing a relatively basic trick taker with the catch that each player has specific objectives. As an example you may need to win a specific number of tricks or not have won the most tricks. Its quick, its snappy, the art is great.
Rallyman Dirt
I will do a full write up some day on the Rallyman games but I really adore them. Push your luck racing games that offer a fair amount of strategy and a non-overwhelming amount of luck. I do see a place for both Rallyman GT and Rallyman Dirt and I quite like some of the additions to Dirt from a bookkeeping Quality of Life perspective. Solo mode works great but without a "par" track time I have no idea if I'm doing well unless I play a race multiple times. I prefer this one with people but the staggered start times make me want to put GT on the table instead.
Top 5 of February
5 - Hansa Teutonica
Hansa Teutonica (acquired through that collection) is more of a "dry euro" than what I tend to table. On the surface it's a route builder like something like Ticket to Ride, though theres a lot it brings to the table that make it a much meatier game. Each route will contribute points and help with a players overall strategy but specific routes will allow players to upgrade their player boards to make each turn more effective. Couple that with a super simple but effective "route blocking and player bumping" system as well as a scoring system that rewards players for being near the action, this is an incredibly interactive game for its looks. This did not go over at all with my usual group but I'd play it again in a heartbeat with players into this sort of thing.
4 - Wayfarers of the South Tigris
This is one of the Garphill Renegade Games Historical "Worker Placement" Games I've become very obsessed with. Our 10 x 10 includes the ...West Kingom Trilogy this year but this is the first of the ... South Tigris set. Mechanically this is quite the step up from our last foray of Paladins of the West Kingdom but I found the game super interesting. It's effectively a tableau builder with a game timer of a central board that includes a sort of "race to the finish." Your turn consists of placing a single die, placing a single worker, or resting to recover your played dice. It has the usual Garphill feel of passing the same tokens back and forth but I found this one considerably more involved than Architects, Raiders of Scythia or Legacy of Yu. I'm excited for the expansions as well as the other two in the serious (which i believe on bgg have even higher weights.)
3 - Last Light
Last Light is a 4x with a promised play time "a fraction of Twilight Imperium." I've never played a board game 4x but I have some familiarity with the genre. After watching How to Play videos I was worried the game looked quite uninspiring on the table. The board is quite bland and it has quite the "pile of plastic" look to it.
In practice the game was a heck of a lot of fun. We played twice in a row. The game is simultaneous (which frankly I don't like at all) but it capture the essence of a "big game" without all of the hassle of getting a "big game" to the table. I think of the headache of tabling the Blighted Reach Campaign for Arcs and some part of me just wants to put this on the table instead.
All of my positives of this are what I love about gaming, the puzzle, the trash talk, the comradery, the physicality (the board literally spins around the center at differing rates) and the shared experience and emergent story telling.
All of my cons come down to the same time play. I quite literally had no idea what the player on the other side of the table was doing until it was too late. I would love each player to say what theyre doing but it all just sort of happens and then its too late. The scoring is incredibly tight and it has some ability to recover from a bad start. I was the one who hit the 20 points to trigger endgame and I ended up losing by 3. It does "suffer" a bit from "bash the leader" mechanics but I think the right (communicative) group can over come this.
I played a friends kickstarter deluxe copy but already have the retail edition on my shelf of shame from last year which means I don't need to run out and get this one haha.
2 - Slay the Spire
Aside from having to sleeve 500 cards before I could play, Slay the Spire (the boardgame) mimics Slay the Spire (the less board game) so very well. Adding a coop mode as well as rebalancing the numbers a bit to make it a bit more accessible without needing to bust out a calculator makes this a great table presence. I enjoyed it a bit more than my non-video game playing wife did but I think it was a solid enough deckbuilder that she enjoyed it enough to start act 2. I really am impressed with how well the game translates to the table and am looking forward to playing more. The unlocks and upgrade system are solid and seem to allow for a full reset which I appreciate. The components are wonderful and the core gameplay loop is fun. I really really love roguelikes and roguelite games so to see it translated so well is just wonderful. I felt similarly about Dorfromantik but this really takes the cake.
1 - River of Gold
This reminds me a lot of when I first started board gaming and all I knew was big Fantasy Flight component heavy monster games but I didn't yet know there was a lot more to the hobby. I mean that positively I think as I remember those days with a fond nostalgic glimmer. River of Gold sees players sailing down a river based of a die roll and either building new buildings, moving their ships, or deliver orders. The single roll of a die each turn means your options are limited but not in a way that made me feel that my decisions were locked. The components are really lovely and although the iconography was a bit dense at first it clicked pretty early on. There actually a lot of meaningful decision making but the turn by turn choices are not overwhelming at all. I definitely want to play more of this. It was on my wishlist but out of stock everywhere when I tried to pick it up late last year, so when I saw stock I jumped on it.
I have not done much in the way of painting this month or non board game hobbying. We did a fair amount of cleaning and reorganizing this month though and I partially blame that. I did paint crossbones for MCP and got most of the way through Clea. I also got most of the way through one of my first Display Kits for the year, a Troy McDevitt Dr. Doom figure. I did pick up a couple of historical things in the form of Nam 68 and a few 3d prints from 3D Breed as well as some stuff for Chicago Way.
