Not yesterday, but the Saturday before that, there was a board game get together that I went to. Here is the list of the games that I played, in order of when I played them that night: Welcome to... the Moon (both sides), Stone Age, Isle of Skye, Khôra, and Taverns of Tiefenthal.
Welcome to... the Moon is made by the same people that made the Welcome to... game, and has tons of similarities. Albeit I've never played the original, so this is the first one form them I've played. It's a flip and write, kind off like roll and write, but instead of rolling dice you flip over three stacks of cards to get three unique number and symbol combinations. You pick one of the three to write down on your board (using dry erase markers on an erasable sheet) to either launch your rocket on side a, or fly to the moon on side b. Although I guess there are even more cards with duel sides for even more variety. The cool thing about this game is that in theory you can play with as many players as you want, an even do it online via Skype, because it's all simultaneous.
Stone Age is the obit one of these games that I've previously played. Although I've only played on Board Game Arena and not in person, so this is the first time I've played in person. It's a worker placement game, where most of the spots have you gather resources. For each maple you've placed on the spot you roll one die, and then divide the number you get by either 2, for the most common resource, up to 6, the rarest resource. Super simple to understand. You can also place workers to build buildings or get cards with those resources. And, like other games, you can get more workers, but each round you have to feed your workers or risk the consequences.
Okay, confession time. You ready to hear my confession? A long time ago my family asked me for recommendations on games to get for Christmas. One of the games proposed to me was this one, Isle of Skye. I persuaded them against it, because I said it was too much like Carcassone. I thought that at the time, but my confession is that I now regret that. If only I could go back and change my mind on what I said, because this game is great and I do recommend it. Too late now, I guess, but I just needed to get that off my chest. Anyway, in this game you are pricing tiles to sell, buying other players' tiles, making your own personal land, and has multiple different goals that get you points that change every game and throughout the game. Great fun.
Khôra was a really fun civilization building game. I only have two gripes. The first is that one of the action selection tiles that remains face up in front of you the entire game has the bust of a naked female chest on it. I had to use a tile to cover that up while I was playing. Anyway, the other one minor complaint is that it seems like in this game if you don't go for military you can't win. One of the things I love about 7 Wonders, and other civilization building games such as Tapestry, is that you can go any route and still have a shot at winning. In Khôra though, it seems like if you don't do military you cannot win, no matter how awesome you do in culture or economy or anything else. But besides those two minor gripes it really was a fun game that I had a great time with.
Taverns of Tiefenthal is made by the same person that made Quacks of Quedilisomething. I like Quacks much better. This one was fun, but after playing it I would never want to buy it. If someone brought it and asked me to play it I totally would though. There's this weird kind of deck-building element to it, and you can upgrade different parts of your tavern, and the two main currencies are beer and coins. Beer buys better customer cards, and coins buys better equipment cards. The only real player interaction was passing dice around at the beginning of the round, and that's really it. Unlike Quacks where you have your neighbor's exploding cauldrons, rat tails, and black moths. Anyway, everyone else loves this game much more than I do, so maybe I'm wrong, but that's where I stand.
Okay, so wrap up time. All five games were really fun. My least favorite is probably Taverns. My most favorite is probably Isle of Skye. Welcome to... the Moon and Khôra tie for second favorite, with Welcome to... the Moon being the lighter game and Khora being the heavier game. Then comes Stone Age, which after a few plays becomes repetitive. And there you have it.
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