Games with an app are fun, but do keep track of the battery! 😉

We hope everyone is doing well and making sure they keep themselves and their surroundings safe. We’ve been doing our best not to see other people and keeping a minimum distance from people during the rare occasions we had to go out for groceries.
Rachel has been working from home for years, so professionally it hasn’t big that much of a change. I’ve been working on changing my classes so they can be given online and it’s been quite a hectic week. This also meant we didn’t get to play a lot of games but what we played is worth talking about.

The first game we played was Ruthless, this deck-building game by Roland MacDonald (who you probably know as the artist behind Undaunted: Normandy) won Best New Cards Game at UKGE in 2018 and it offers a really cool twist on normal deckbuilding. Instead of playing your whole hand in your turn, you just play one card per turn. The game plays over six rounds and at the end of every round, you make poker hands with the cards you played a bought that round to see who has assembled the strongest pirate crew. Even though the turn to turn play seems less explosive as a normal deck-builder, the speed your deck turns into a high power combo machine will make your head spin once you that reaching round 3 or 4. We highly recommend Ruthless if you are looking for a game that can be played in an hour (or less if you’ve played it a couple of times) but does some unique things at the same time.

We made one non-essential trip this week which was to our local gaming store to pick up a big game as a way to financially support them. The game we chose was Mansions of Madness 2nd edition and our first game a great experience. We love Elder Sign, Eldritch Horror and the Arkham Horror LCG but we also agreed that we didn’t need more Arkham Titles in our lives. Luckily, it turns out Mansions leans even more heavily into the thematic side of things and turns the Arkham experience, at least the scenario we played, into a light roleplaying escape room with some combat elements. We went over the estimated playtime over 120 minutes by a lot, so it won’t be something we’ll be able to get to the table often but it is this first scenario is any indication, it will be quite an adventure every time we do. 🙂