November's New Board Games
2 December 2024
Halfway through November I’d only played one new to me game; but then things kind of exploded! My Shelfie was a new favourite for a quick easy to teach game; I think River of Gold was my favourite of the longer games I learnt, though it wasn’t that long or complicated. Path of Civilization is probably the one I’d most like to play again to get the hang of it more. Salton Sea I’m really not sure about yet.
This month I got another chance to try Hamlet, which fell a bit flat when I played it last year, this play was much more fun probably improved by a player knowing the rules before we started. It was my first play of Carcassonne since 2018, I’d wanted to get it to the table again but had forgotten quite how much fun the game was and it was delightful and I won’t leave it so long again. It was the first play of Tiny Towns for a while as well and that fell flat this time. I like the puzzle but I don’t like that a new player can easily end up locking themselves out of the game early as happened this time. And I got to teach new people to play Arkham, though we didn’t get the first tutorial scenario completed I think they liked it, and we played with new(-to-me) investigator decks which seemed stronger than the core ones which I think made a better introduction to the game.
The rest of the post is my first impressions about the new-to-me games I played this month.
Caylus 1303
I didn’t take a pic of the board - just this one of the pyramid I made with my meeples 😍 - as I was playing a game I’d played before. Except the more I thought about it the more wonky that seemed. I played the original edition of Caylus earlier in the year but this edition felt like a big improvement. The iconography was indeed a lot clearer, one of the players in our group of four hadn’t played before but they picked it up swiftly. We didn’t get confused about rules because everything was pretty clearly printed on the board. I liked that the points were secret tokens rather than a track round the board because that meant you didn’t entirely know who was winning until the end which was more interesting. Some things had been simplified in this version and I suspect there are people who will say that the complications make the old version a better game but this was a nicer, clearer experience to play.
Salton Sea
A while ago I bought Red Cathedral because I liked having a lot of game in a small box. This is from the same publisher and is even more game in the same size box. At my gaming groups everyone seems to love this game so I wanted to learn it and figure it out. It took a long time for me to get the hang of what I was trying to do. After having all the mechanics explained to me I found I had absolutely no idea how to find my way into the game or what to do on my first turn. You have a handful of cards that are both your money and your good actions so in order to spend any money you have to choose which actions to throw away and that was a super hard decision to make at first. I do really like those kind of hard decisions in games though they are just hard to figure out straight away.
Whilst I do really like the concept of small boxes with big games in them this one seemed to make a few design decisions that seemed regrettable. For instance, some of the text on the cards is so small you can barely see it when your cards are in your hand, let alone from across the table. I don’t think that’s just me and my aging eye-sight talking either as younger players missed some of the text as well. We found the rule book seemed to be missing a few points that seemed essential to us as well. A look at the BGG forums shows that I think we decided them right but it’s was annoying not to be sure at the time.
The game is about mining for brine and processing it to extract lithium for batteries and energy (I think) which, well, it’s nice to have a theme that hasn’t been done a hundred times before in a board game, and I’m happy to learn stuff from board games, but here the lack of familiarity with the real world mechanics actually meant that the theme could have been about breeding unicorns to process to produce rainbows and I might have had more idea about what was going on.
In conclusion I’m glad I’ve learnt the game and I’d like to play it again to see if I can get a better system going but I’m not sure it’s going to turn into a favourite.
Undaunted 2200: Callisto
I played the original Normandy version of Undaunted earlier in the year and jumped on the chance to try the new space version. This moves the setting from the second world war to the future and instead of nazis I got to play the evil corporate government of a moon of Jupiter (or something like that, I read enough of the flavour text to work out I was probably the bad guys, but yes Callisto is a moon of Jupiter). My opponent was the collective of oppressed workers I think. It’s the same mechanics as the original game though this version has boards for the scenarios rather than tiles which makes the setup quicker. I enjoyed it and I’d happily play through the rest of the campaign.
Path of Civilization
In this game you play four cards each turn to gather various resources and buy a new card each round to replace one of the ones you have, as well as giving you different bonuses. Which makes it sound simple but it took me ages to figure out how the different parts of the game were fitting together. The cards are based on a tech tree, and you have two different kinds of resources to spend. Some give you the points you need to buy stronger cards, others give you the means to buy the leaders and wonders any good civilization needs as well as win wars. I kept finding myself one resource short of being able to buy a better card. It basically took the whole game for me to figure out the pieces but the game is shorter than you’d expect and there’s a lot packed into it. I’d like to play it again now I know how it all works!
River of Gold
This was lovely! Sail boats down a Japanese river and build buildings beside the river for everyone’s boats to collect resources from. You have a handful of cards representing characters like monks, nobles and merchants that give you bonuses when you give them the right resources. Easy to learn. There are wooden boats and the board is gorgeous, decked out with gold foil highlights. Each player has a superpower, mine was to start with extra money and be able to build in any region at any time - usually there’s a die to roll that tells you where you can build on your turn. My character seemed overpowered as I took an early lead that no one could claw back from me, and it turned out the other players had played before and that character had won that game as well. So the strategy element might not be huge here but the theme made for a gentle relaxing game.
Zombies!!!
We played this as it was the only game we had on hand that would let six of us play together at the time. There are competitive and cooperative scenarios for it; we picked a competitive one that meant we were trying to find a helipad to escape from the zombie infested city. I forget exactly how it worked but on your turn you drew a tile to add a new section to the city grid along with some zombies, and then moved both your character and some zombies around. It was looking like it was going to be a long drawn out game until one of the players played a card that meant that the zombies weren’t attacking until their next turn, someone else found the helipad and then another player had no trouble getting straight to it, and no one seemed to be able to do anything to stop them. I suspect we just made bad choices being new to the game but I’m not sure anyone felt much like playing it again.
My Shelfie
Each player takes tiles from the edge of the centre display to place in their Connect 4 style grid representing their shelves. You’re trying to match the various groups of items together to score points, as well as meet individual and group objectives for the layout of your shelves. Simple to understand, easy to play but a really nice game and I love the theme which is basically, organise your Kallax!
boop.
Sadly I didn’t get a photo of this one which was probably the most photoworthy of the games I played this month. It was basically noughts and crosses on a bigger board with a mechanic whereby some of the pieces, which are nice wooden cats and kittens, can ‘boop’ some of the other pieces out of the way. A easy to learn little game with lovely components. You could happily play it with young kids or anyone who likes cats. The quilted board that you put on top of the box in order to have a surface for the cats to push each other off was a great idea!
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