This is probably going to be a reoccurring thing if that wasn't clear.
So March saw me fall just a bit shy of the pacing I've had for the year so far. I think were still fine for the total goals at year end because there should be more gaming this summer. I played 27 plays across 22 different games. Of those, 12 were new to me not counting new expansions for games I've already played.
Honorable Mentions
An Age Contrived
This was played at the monthly "lets play those kickstarters" game group I've been attending. Same place we played Last Light last time. I could best describe this one as "a euro game with ameritrash sensibilities." I have this game on my wishlist but to be honest I haven't decided if I will actually pull the trigger because I haven't decided if I actually liked it. I'll republish the texts I sent to a friend that sum up the experience pretty succinctly.
"It would be like if I told you to make a cake and instead of giving you a recipe I just told you what every individual ingredient tasted like. So you taste the raw flour and rightfully spit it out and that's the moment I tell you well, that ones there for structure not flavor. So you smash together some version of a cake based on all the cake youve eaten in your life and its bad and only then do I tell you that you needed specific quantities of each ingredient"
A bit hyperbolic but it summed up our first game well.
World Wonders (Mundo expansion)
Last year we played our way through the legacy game, My City with some friends of ours. In short, My City is a tile layer with tetramino shapes and requires some spacial awareness. About one or two games in my wife as well as one of our friends were over it. 2 of us loved the experience until about the final 6 games of the campaign. We all thought by the end that the game overstayed its welcome and the consensus was "I'm over this genre"
Depsite the wifes protests, I picked up the spacial awareness tile layer World Wonders and its Mundo expansion at Origins last year. I'm glad I did. There are some neat twists to the formula in the open shared market, the "buying out of the round" that comes with purchasing wonders and the actual spatial puzzle. Many of these games work by asking you to fill the grid out more or less completely but this one doesn't. I'm also obsessed with nice Chonky Wood parts.
This is an honorable mention because we've played the base game a few times but just added the expansion in recently.
Apiary
Apiary makes the list because I would play it again but it didn't leave a solid first impression. Unfortunately I blame that on the starting faction I drew at random which pointed me towards a specific resource that was difficult to get and shoehorned me into thinking I needed a specifc strategy to compete. This is the most points I've lost a game by with this group probably full-stop. I'd play it again buy I did take the expansion off my wishlist.
Top 5 of March
5 - Power Vacuum
This was a kickstarter that just delivered. Billed as a trick taker mixed with social deduction. I don't think that's quite what delivered but the game is super unique. We only got one 3 player play in and I would be very excited to play this one again. There are some twists to the formula wrapped in a nice production that make it a good fit for the shelf. There is a much larger discussion on what hidden role and social deduction does for a game but in short, adding a mechanic that allows you to reveal your hidden role early makes for its own subset of mechanical interaction that is super interesting to me.
4 - Black Forest
I liked this. I mostly want to talk about the resource "clock." This is a euro game about making glass. Every time you recieve a basic resource (the resources to the right of the top facing "clock hand") you slide the token representing that resource one space clockwise. You'll notice the number tracking quantity around the center of said clock. Whenever there is an empty space to the right of the clock hand (i.e. there are no tokens in the "0" space) the clock hand must be moved over. This has the effect of increasing the resources to the left of the clock hand while simultaneously depleting all the resources to the right. This happens automatically and is mandatory and will happen mid action. You either understand what I said and it sounds neat or you didnt and this game is probably not for you.
The meat of this is wrapped around a sort of worker placement type mechanic and involves you trading the resources back and forth to have the right resources to buy what you need at that moment. My only complaint so far is that those clocks are dual layer and curled right up. I was the most into the game in our group but I don't think anyone hated it.
3 - Hands in the Sea (2nd ed)
This is A Few Acres of Snow rethemed to the Punic wars. I adore Few Acres so this was a natural fit for me. I think the changes and additions of things like the naval combat and the event deck make it different enough that if you enjoy one there's room for both. I think Few Acres is slightly more polished and is arguably more accessible.
2 - Joyride Turbo
I have a lot of car games for someone who spent a long long time self describing as "not a car guy." Briefly; Thunder Road, Formula D, Heat, Rallyman GT, Rallyman Dirt, Downforce. Of these, I've become obsessed with Heat for my racing fix. Rallyman is solid though more simulationy and less hollywood. Thunder Road captures the chaos well.
Joyride is really fun. It brings enough to the table to make it worth keeping. It is ultimately a mario kart style game with the win condition being the race part. It isn't as easy to teach as thunder road but it isn't as hard as something like a wargame like Gaslands. I had been itching to get into gaslands again but this is much easier to table.
1 - El Grande
Area Control. I love it. I like dudes on a map games. I like twists to genres. This has everything to make me feel like it is a "classic" game even from play one. The actual mechanics are easy enough to follow but the Castillo and accompanying rules add just enough rub to make the game stand out. It wasn't long enough to overstay its welcome but had more depth than a filler game. Just a super solid game all around. I was incredibly disappointed in Ethnos last month but this was a welcome surprise hit.
For housekeeping. Were close to a wargame post. I'm nearly done with the Halo Flashpoint starter. After that I've got some Flashpoint Wave 2 to paint and then I've got my eye on something historical for a little bit. I've been painting a bit here and there but need to do a day of just basing soon to actually finish this stuff off.
