Six Months of Boardgaming

 Haven't done this for a while. New-to-me and otherwise notable games only.

Age of War: OK, but no better. It's samurai themed, but fairly abstract.

Amerigo: Perfectly fine exploration and tile laying game.

Arkadia: Polyomino tile-laying game with some clever variable scoring rules. Good.

Clever Cubed: The third in the Ganz Schon Clever! series. The second remains my favourite so far.

Dead Man's Draw: Nice pirate themed filler.

Dogfight! Rule the Skies in Twenty Minutes!: Played this some more, this time including missions such as bombing and reconnaissance. It's not very good.

Dune Imperium - Uprising: According to those whose judgement I rate, this has replaced the original. I didn't see it as being that much better myself. What I did see was a scam, whereby people are lured into paying full whack again for a game that has a 90% overlap with one they already have.

Evacuation: I really did not enjoy this, indeed I failed to see the point. Other people claimed to like it, so what do I know?

Exit - The Disappearance of Sherlock Holmes: I'd never played an escape room game before, and this was much harder than I was anticipating. Fortunately the players included two of the sons of one of my regular companions, both of whom turned out be much smarter than either their mother or me, and so we managed to solve the puzzle. I'd certainly do others in the series, but only when surrounded by younger and more flexible minds than mine.

Faiyum: We gave this a go with four players and it was proved to be a very good game at that number.

Heat: Pedal to the Metal: A fine, fine game; highly recommended. There's loads of stuff in the base box which I still haven't played with, but enjoyed the circuit from the expansion which we tried.

The Hunt: A very enjoyable asymmetric two-player game about the Graf Spee raiding merchant ships in the South Atlantic at the outbreak of WWII and the Royal Navy's search for it.

Imperial: This is Diplomacy with added cash. We only played it because there were six of us, but it turned out to be well over the heads of most of those taking part. I'd like to give it a go with stronger players.

K2: Climb the world's most dangerous mountain and, if you're lucky, come back down again. I've always enjoyed this and snapped up a second-hand copy of the big box version containing the base game and all the expansions.

Kemet: Blood and Sand: This is an updated version of the original Kemet, which I had played and thought was OK. I was more enthusiastic this time, although whether that's changes in the game or changes in me I wouldn't like to say. 

Lancaster: Haven't played this for years, and ended up teaching it, which wasn't ideal. It's a good game, sort of about the Hundred Years War, but not really.

Magic Rabbit: Likeable, and short, cooperative game where rabbits have to be sorted into numerical order without any communication.

Mesopotamia: Did they carry stones on their heads in Mespotamia? Did they always execute messengers? Reasonably theme free, but nonetheless interesting, pick-up-and-deliver optimization game.

Modern Art: There are four types of auction in this, which was at least three types too many for my brain. I did very badly.

Nusfjord: Will it be wood or will it be fish? Either way money is scarce and the turns you will have throughout the game are even tighter. Difficult to do well against anyone who has played it before.

Obsession: Downton Abbey the board game. I enjoyed it a lot more than the first time I played it. Worker placement with differentiated workers.

The Quacks of Quedlinburg: A popular game that I had never played before and enjoyed when I finally did. Involves push-your-luck and bag-building, both mechanisms which I enjoy.

Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West: Don't worry, no spoilers here. I'd never played a legacy game before, but am enjoying this one. We have played four of the twelve sessions that will make up the whole thing and so far it has exceeded our expectations.

Vegetable Stock: Fun filler.

Wallenstein: Thirty Year War themed, but certainly not a wargame. The main gimmick is a tower into which your armies are poured to resolve combat, but my advice is not to fight if you can avoid it.

World Wonders: Yet another polyomino tile laying game, but with a neat money track concept. It also has nice wooden wonders of the world which get placed alongside your tiles. 

I went to Airecon, the large local boardgaming convention, for the first time this year. It was very good, I caught up with a lot more people than I ever do at wargames shows. The highlight was the bring-and-buy, which is also something that never happens at wargaming shows.