The 10x8 is still ongoing, but I figure now would be a good time to give an update on progress. Two games have passed the 10 game threshold: 1846: The Race for the Midwest, and 18Chesapeake. Both games are considered introductory games, but I find them to hold up to repeat play very, very well. 1862: Railway Mania in the Eastern Counties is only one game away from reaching the same threshold. 1862 is my current favorite 18xx game, and has been for about 6 months. There is no question that 1862 will pass the threshold soon, and then keep getting many plays beyond that.
Sitting close with 8 plays are two games that might not actually make it to 10 in the near future. First is 18Lilliput, an introductory worker placement game that I enjoy very much, but I have a hard time finding opponents. The problem with the game is that people expect more 18xx than it is, but if you get over that It is quite nice. That leads me to the question on whether or not it should count, which is not clear.
Second is 1822: The Railways of Great Britain and variants. As much as that series is well loved, 1822 is souring on me. I don't think it is the best auction game, and I don't think it is the best 18xx game. The merger of both is a great idea, but I think I might rather play an auction game followed by an 18xx game instead of 1822. I now regret pre-ordering the title and am looking to sell my copy at cost (Message me if you want it). Maybe I'll come to like it more in the future? It is well loved locally so I expect to continue playing it even if I manage to unload my copy.
Next up at five plays are 18CZ, 18MEX, and 1882: Assiniboia. I am still enjoying all three games and have high hopes that all three can reach the 10 play threshold by the end of the year 18CZ, I think, is the only iffy one just because I seem to like it more than most, so it is harder to get to the table, but we shall see.
That's 8 games, and although there are some if's in there, if all make it to 10 I've completed my challenge. Sitting on the back-burner as games that might replace any of those is which I've only played twice, but once my copy arrives there shall be more. I enjoy that set of games because the minor railroad shenanigans it creates are unlike most titles.
There's also the 1870: Railroading Across the Trans Mississippi from 1870/1850: The MidWest/1832: The South series of games. Of those I've only pre-ordered 1832 but local gamers own the other two. If you add up all three titles, I've played this series 7 times, but counted separately, none have more than 3. If I had a favorite of the three it would be easier to get to my target, but since I love all of them, none are jumping ahead in play count.
That's it. I'll probably have another update when I finish my 10x8, but I will say that in my mind this is absolutely the way to explore the 18xx series. These titles shine on multiple plays. Unfortunately, this has meant less new first impressions of 18xx titles to talk about here, but I'll get some here and there.
Faiyum
I've been excited about playing Faiyum for so long. I heard it described as Power Grid meets Concordia. That sounds amazing. Unfortunately, it wasn't. Faiyum is not terrible, but it's probably the most disappointed I've been in a while.
The good in this good is really good. The card management system is outstanding. It is based out of Concordia but adds some very good ideas of its own. Specifically when you play the action to get your cards back, you don't get all your cards back. You only get the last three cards in the discard stack. If you want more, you have to pay for them. This extra level of strategy is very welcome and it makes card play especially interesting.
The bad is very bad. What you're trying to do in Faiyum is collect a hand of cards that creates a solid engine for points and resources. It's always fun to build an engine. About 20% into the game I had a pretty good engine. So I ran it. Then I ran it again. Then I ran it five more times. It got a little boring. Engine games are more fun when they end just as you finish your engine. Faiyum does not. Playing the same four actions over and over again got very, very dull, but I couldn't find anything that was more efficient.
Near the end of the game, the engines changed and then it got fun again, but the boring middle did too much damage. A word of warning: I've heard other players did not have the same stall experience that I had. It's possible that the cards settled in an unluckily unsatisfying way. But it was so unsatisfying, that I'm unlikely to give it another chance.
Rating: Avoid.
The Transcontinental
The Transcontinental is a worker placement game with a very impressive Tabletop Simulator mod and some very attractive graphics. Before I begin my comments, I do want to point out that I played this game as a four player game. I've been told the game is better with three, but I am unlikely to actually verify this.
The Transcontinental is a fine Worker Placement game. It doesn't fall into the multiple paths to victory trap. The worker spaces are tight, especially early in the game. Although it progresses strangely and the game gets looser and looser as the game approaches the end game; There is fixed number of workers and an increasing number of worker spaces. It has a few twists related to how you can develop spaces into better spaces that only you can use, and how the order of spaces is resolved. Apart from that, nothing else stands out.
Its biggest flaw is that doesn't feel well balanced. Specifically, There are certain actions that when played in the wrong time are ridiculously powerful. The start player gets first dibs on such action, and it can be silly. It took me about half the game to get the victory points that the start player got on a single action. We actually caught up to that player later in the game, but it still felt very wrong.
Worker placement games are all too common, and even if they fix their balance issues The Transcontinental is just noise. Fine isn't even remotely good enough.
Rating: Avoid.
Take The Soo Line, make the companies run a little more like 18xx, and you get Dual Gauge. A game that feels simultaneously very familiar and very new. I'm all sorts of excited for this new system and what it can provide.
Like 18xx games, Dual Gauge divides rounds between stock rounds and operating rounds. In stock rounds players buy a share of a company (No selling, and no buying more than one share - like The Soo Line). In operating rounds companies operate, with the player who owns the most stock acting as president. Companies buy and run trains and stations for hopefully profitable amounts of money for the shareholders, but they can also withhold and keep the money for future growth. As the game progresses older trains rust and get removed from the game, forcing players to buy new more expensive trains. This should all sound very familiar to any train gamer.
Dual Gauge changes things by making the purchases of trains and stations cost share price drops instead of money. Additionally, although money produced by a company is divided by the number of shares (Please don't buy my company!), the amount that stock prices rise is also proportional to the number of shares (Please buy my company!).
The end result of this is a game that contains all the painful 18xx goodness of deciding when and how many trains to buy and which routes to run, while also keeping the Cube rails shared incentives. All in 90 minutes. Add to this the fact that the two maps provided give very different experiences and there's more coming and I'm all in.
Rating: Wishlist!
Switch & Signal is a cooperative logistics game about managing switches and signals to force trucks to pick up and deliver cubes. The last train game I played about managing switches and signals is Switching Tracks. I love Switching Tracks!
In Switch & Signal, players are trying to manage a myriad of trains on the board and try hard none get stuck behind signals or other trains. They do this by playing cards that move switches (so trains move to the right places) and signals (so trains don't get stuck in a location without moving). Unfortunately trains arrive in unplanned locations and you have to keep changing your plans to take new trains into account. It's a fun little puzzle. It reminds me a little bit of the old air traffic controller games.
Despite this, I did have a lot of fun playing Switch & Signal. It is satisfying when you get your trains to line up correctly; And it is frustrating in a good way when a new train shows up in the wrong place and ruins your plans. I had some concerns about replayability, but the game comes with two maps and all sorts of variants. I suspect this game can hold it's own for double digit plays.
If I was into these middleweight cooperative games, I would probably run out and get this. I'm not usually into cooperative games, however, and as such I'm not entirely sure If I need to add it to my collection, but I'll certainly play it.
One warning: This game suffers massively from the alpha gamer problem. If your group suffers from this type of malady, then stay away. It might actually be best at a single player count.
Rating: Play Again!
Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion
It's Gloomhaven in a bite size piece. Except not all that bite sized. There's 25 well crafted missions here including a five mission tutorial that has to be the best I've ever seen in a game like this.
I might argue that this is actually better than Gloomhaven. It's clear the designer has learned some lessons; the missions are tighter and better designed. Furthermore, setup, done with a book instead of with piles of tiles is as easy as it gets. In two minutes I can have the next scenario all ready for me. This is so much better than the twenty it takes with Gloomhaven.
About the only thing I miss from Gloomhaven is the ability to unlock new characters partway through the Campaign. It isn't a death knell, however. The characters provided are interesting enough, and if you have Gloomhaven you can mix and match characters from this game and that one (And Frosthaven).
If someone who's never played Gloomhaven would ask me which game they should get, I would recommend this one first. That's saying something.
Rating: GET IT NOW!
Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Mummy's Mask – Base Set
A few months ago, I gave a first impression of Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Core Set, which is essentially the second edition of the series. Since then I finished that and started the only available adventure path expansion Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Path. Partway into it, I discovered that the adventure book was misprinted and I had to stop playing until I got a replacement.
Paizo is way behind on support so while I wait I decided to go back and play this one older game, which has gotten praise as the best of the series.
Much of my criticism and praise of Pathfinder the Card Game remains true. There are many flaws, but Pathfinder has a truly outstanding card management system. The way your character develops based on the cards in its deck, as well as the decisions that players have to make on which cards to discard and when are glorious. Regardless of anything I say negatively, this system is the reason I keep coming back to Pathfinder.
There were a number of improvements done to the system in the Core set that I really miss. Specifically two stand out. The first is the adventure book. The new series has a book that digs a little deeper into the story and sets you up nicely for each mission. This version and all that came before it only has a single card which leaves little room for storytelling.
The second is the rule that disallowed more than one card type per encounter. Without this rule, the final battle in every scenario is nearly trivial, just like it was in the first two Pathfinder games. Also, it overall seems quite a bit easier than the new set, which some people like, but I've always enjoyed the bigger challenge.
On the other hand, The Mummy's Mask does a few thing right, and maybe even better than the new edition. First: The theme. The Egyptian/Pharaoh/Tomb theme in Mummy's Mask is fantastic. I absolutely love it. The Core set and subsequent expansion doesn't really have a good theme apart from generic fantasy. I'm tired of generic fantasy. I hope they move away from this again in future expansions.
Second, the scenario variety. The original game got boring with every mission being nearly the same. Core changed it and made many missions vary from each other, but not as much as Mummy's Mask, which seems to have the best variety of all of the ones I've played. They seem to have regressed a bit here.
In the end, if you're a pathfinder fan, Mummy's Mask is worth getting. I would except for one painful thing, the reason that I got rid of the original game. The huge sized box, and the too expensive system of required expansions. Core dramatically changed this with a smaller box and the promise of multiple expansions being cheaper and fitting in the same box. I hope they fulfill that promise (and not with more generic fantasy sets), because the oversized box containing a single campaign setting doesn't work for me.
Rating: Play Again!
Carnegie
The best thing about Carnegie is how original it is. I keep trying to think up games that are similar and I'm coming up blank. There are parts of other games, but the whole of it is very much unlike anything I've played. Having said all that, I'm going to explain Carnegie using other games. This probably means this will be useless to all of you, but I don't care, I'm enjoying the challenge.
Carnegie uses the worker placement/movement mechanism of Xavier Georges earlier game Royal Palace. Despite the fact that this is actually his lowest ranked game, I love his worker placement/movement mechanism and it is my favorite game of his. It also contains a central board where players are trying to block each other and connect parts of the US together. This part reminded me a little of Franchise. Thirdly, Carnegie has an action selection board that determines what action all players will play, very much like Puerto Rico but without the benefit for choosing an action.
The game mostly involves placing your workers in spots where you will benefit from whatever action your opponents decide to do. Your decisions on which action you take depend not just on what helps you, but also what helps your opponent. Carnegie is a wonderful merger of emerging alliances and tableau building. It is a great start to 2021, and I cannot wait to dig into this more.
My only complaint is it's length and complexity. It could be up to three hours at high player counts. Playable in a night, but somewhat intimidating. I can get my game group to play this, but not anyone else. It's a tricky place to be because there are so many good games at this complexity level. Worth it.
Rating: Wishlist!
Gods Love Dinosaurs
Gods Love Dinosaurs is a filler with teeth. This tile laying game requires players to carefully balance prey, predator, and dinosaurs to maximize your points. Too many prey and you won't get enough points. Too many predator and they will eat your prey and starve. Too many dinosaurs and they will eat everything then starve. Maintaining a balanced ecological system is hard, but a lot of fun.
In case you thought this was simply an ecological puzzle, players, based on which tiles they took, get to decide which animals have to eat and breed. If I see my opponent has an imbalance, I can start pushing against that imbalance, and hurt her. This can be a mean game, hence the teeth.
The idea of balancing an ecosystem is such a magnificent idea for a game. I wouldn't mind seeing more games playing with this concept. Or at least, playing more Gods Love Dinosaurs.
Rating: Wishlist!
Karuba
Karuba is one of those multiplayer puzzle games where there is no interaction, except for comparing how well you solved the puzzle versus other players. Similar to Take it Easy!. As a general rule, I have never been a big fan of this type of game. I much prefer games with more direct player interaction.
In the game you have to make a path from your meeples to their corresponding color destination using tiles, and also move those meeples to your destination. When you draw a tile, you can place it or discard it to move your meeples. If you're me, you wait too long to move your meeples and then lose even though you have a perfectly nice path built.
I like this dual use of tiles, which makes for bad draws to not feel so bad as long as you plan for them. Karuba might be one of the better examples of this genre. It isn't enough for me to run out and pick it up, but I certainly won't be too sad when this is suggested.
Rating: Play Again.
Darwin's Journey
Darwin's Journey is a worker placement game. It represents everything I dislike about modern worker placement games: Multiple paths to victory with only incidental player interaction. Lots of hard to describe actions that provide great complexity, but low depth. Tracks, but pretty looking so we don't realize that they are just tracks. It also adds randomness in the location that gives workers their ability to go to special locations. If you don't have access to the nice areas, too bad.
Also, with so many moving parts, explaining and understanding the game is a chore. You have to understand everything. Don't even think about slacking off in the beginning of the game. This game provides little catch up mechanism tied to a system where the start player gets massive benefits.
Luckily I don't plan on explaining this to anyone. It's been a long time since I've had such a strong negative reaction to a game.
Rating: Avoid.
GAME SESSION OF THE MONTH
Babylonia
My first impression review of Babylonia, which I wrote over two years ago, was somewhat negative. I didn't like that this Reiner Knizia game had a higher point salad component that what he usually creates.
I stand by my criticism, as I absolutely think it is valid. However, I will retract my conclusion as I now think Babylonia is fantastic. Most of the scoring of Babylonia is done by having large contiguous lines of your pieces that connect to the scoring centers. You want to get this huge line of pieces connected all over the map while blocking off your opponent from doing the same.
Where the point salad happens is that there are also all these different scoring opportunities all over the map. It could have been simplified some, but I now realize that the whole purpose of these scoring opportunities is to force players to make separate groups all over, which then makes the process of getting your pieces all connected much more interesting.
It reminds me a little bit of 1867: The Railways of Canada and how you are trying to get your minors both in a good spot to make short term points but also connected so you can make a high scoring major company later. Except, you know, Babylonia takes half an hour to play, not four.
Personally, I think Babylonia is every bit as good as Through the Desert if not more so. It highlights connections and not surrounding areas, which might not be as deep an option, but it is also so fast, dynamic, and wonderful. Long live Knizia's Tile Laying quintilogy!
