Guild of San Marcos Forum

A Local game shop does a black friday 30% off anything you want sale AND they keep more ridiculous hours than the mall so I went and got myself a Ticket to Ride 1910 expansion pack, Saboteur, and Tzolkin (which I have been talking about getting since January). I think the next game on the playlist is either Betrayal or Black Fleet though.

Chatted a bit with the son of a friend of my mother-in-law this holiday weekend and recommended a few cards games his children might enjoy (he takes them to ren-faires and plays stuff like Fluxx, Dominion & the various Catans with them): Frog Juice & Once Upon a Time.

And I told him to check out the 7th Sea stuff over on DriveThruRPG too.

saboteur, once upon a time, hanabi, love letter, and tiny epic kingdoms would be my small game recommendations.

Our resident Sentinels of the Multiverse junkie probably already knows about this, but I thought I should shoot him a link just in case.

https://greaterthangames.com/content/promos-and-oversized-cards-and-more

Sherriff of Nottingham... pure awesomeness.

Splendor isn't bad but every game has been won by whoever goes first. So I think there is an issue or somebody mis-explained some rules somewhere.

last night i went over to play some boardgames with a few of our local guild players...

Played Hare and Tortoise which is a race game where you secretly bet on which animals will win, place and show. options include the Hare and Tortoise (naturally) along with a fox, wolf and lamb. It's got a nice balance.

We played Ankh-Morpork which I enjoyed quite a bit. it's worker placement and has a very interesting variety of card based actions to perform. the one issue I have is that it is very difficult to generate money (mostly being luck of the draw early in the game which leads to the lucky player getting the chance to then control the regions making it easier to earn) but it played well as everyone was very close to victory at the end of the game.

There were also a couple rounds of Sheriff of Nottingham All I am going to say is that my psychology degree finally paid off. Easy and fun bluffing game I highly recommend.

And then we broke out Smallworld... Winner scored 138 and I ended up with...137. Stupid Dragon riding Pygmies...

but the highlight was a game we did not play. an independent game someone bought at a con called Species of Man. It appears to be some sort of archaic style chit based space combat game involving mutated races of people in space flying and fighting in spaceships. the key sales point on this game is the creator's small print flyer/manifesto declaring that his game is very insistent on not using anything that you may have seen in other science fiction games. so there is no hyperspace or teleportation but there is translateral 2 dimensional shifting. and ships have no shields but do have dimensional phase deflectors.

More importantly, unlike other science fiction combat games, this one does not use anything even closely related to actual sentence structure, editing, rules organization or coherent thinking. it does however, list many, many cool things that are not included but will be available in the alleged future expansion edition packages that are planned.

It did offer us a good hour of entertainment as I attempted (yes, attempted) to read the text verbatim from the cadet officers handbook. You good like this game. it bring fun time to table you use for play when game release expansion 4 to add the quality control action to game. (that was sarcasm)

I think I love this game already...

careful, reading the rules will force your brain to abandon several IQ points and inflict sanity loss.

Just picked up Ghost Stories, yet another Bauza co-op game. heard it's harsh... good.

Also tried "Storming the Castle" a Princess Bride game that I guess was alright but no great shakes. If I found it on sale, I might grab it cheap for fun with some kids or dippy grown ups like my cousin.

Mr. Taylor introduced us to Pirate Dice which is fun but an inevitable degeneration into madness. It requires plotting randomly rolled dice to navigate around reefs to reach a treasure but players have chances to disrupt your plans which means you NEVER get to follow your plan and instead end up endlessly drifting the wrong way making no progress.

Just going over "Five Tribes"... The rules tell you that players are to keep their collected coins face down (so the exact amount remains a secret) until the end of the game.

The game contains 2 denominations, 1 and 5. Numbered on the front and border printed on the back. 1's are silver and 5's are gold... On both sides.

Just remember, your total is a secret.

Mysterium...

Part Clue, part Dixit. Set turn limit and all good.

Got two new games from the early Santa this week (well really an expansion and a new game). Expansion is Takenoko Chibis (adding the Mrs. Panda and babies) which we haven't had time to play yet. New game is Tzolk'in I played this at the FLGS during our last monthly game. It was so awesome I bought it right away (or ordered it). Now to introduce it to the locals...

Both have been bumped in the play queue. Bought t'zolkin in Feb and still not playing it.

7th Sea (1st Ed, for now), Star Wars d6, Eclipse Phase, and very occasional Feng Shui.

Currently playing Blood Rage on Lady Bravada's brand new Emissary table from Geek Chic

And yours truly claims the first victory on the table with 114 points. (By using the Loki strategy and losing every battle).

Also, powerfully addicted to the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. My fiancé (I'm engaged!!) is hooked, too. This is convenient for me on game day. B-)