Usually, we try to stay away from the dark and gloom of the real world in this comic, but sometimes it just works its way into a comic, sorry! Heinze was still looking for a punchline for this comic and, like in the comic, I couldn’t help but blurt out “real life” and that was not the direction he originally had in mind –  so it’s my bad folks. :’)

Back to the subject of board games, because they are a perfect distraction from the things that are happening in the world right now! We had three game nights with friends last week and we played very different games so it’s been a nice mixture of games.

On Monday night, we didn’t want to watch television but we were a little too tired for anything complicated so we played a few games of Star Realms: Colony Wars. I was once more reminded of how powerful the combination of Blob and Star Empire cards is! Both of us were victorious with that combination of factions. I still try to win with a greater focus on deck management with the Machine Cult, but it hasn’t worked out yet – any tips?

On Thursday, we had some nice contrasting games. We started the night with a game of Décorum – a co-op deduction game in which you’re trying to decorate a house in a way that (literary) checks every player’s boxes. All players have multiple hidden personal goals, like Player 1 doesn’t want anything yellow on the ground floor, Player 2 wants a different color on the wall in every room, etc etc. Quite early in the game, we thought we were so close and that the first scenario was way too easy and that’s the moment things started to go wrong. It took us another 15 rounds to figure out the right configuration, whoops! But we did manage to get there in the end.

After that, we played Innovation for the first time. It’s one of our friend’s favorite games and he had just received the Ultimate edition a few days before so it was a perfect moment to introduce us to the game! Despite Innovation being quite a mechanical game with a little “dry” theme, we both enjoyed the game! There is a lot of room for strategy and it’s a game you can get really good at and I think you can make some really sick combos once you know what you’re doing!

The following day, we played a game we hadn’t played for NINE years: Chinatown! It took me one or two rounds to get back into that “aggressive” negotiation mode with fellow players but after that, it was great fun! Strategically,  I’m not particularly good at the game but I did end up with a completed restaurant, a tropical fish shop, and a laundry place… so I was pleased! But in retrospect, I’ve spent way too much money getting stuff from my fellow players so I came in third, haha. I’ll keep that in mind for next time (which I’ll forget again if it takes another nine years). We ended the night with a light game of Quibbles!

The day after that, we went to friends and even though we hadn’t labeled the night as game night, we did end up playing two games. They have a very impressive collection of Love Letter games and one of those is the Star Wars edition. So far, we’ve only played the original game and the Marvel edition so it’s fun to see how this edition works with two factions and plays around with that element! After that we played another game we had never played before: Gingerbread House. It’s a cute and laid-back family game with a fun combination of scoring methods. Nothing too challenging but just fun to play!

This week, we’ve got “only” two game nights planned, one with Joyride and the other one… we’ll see when we’re there!

In the end, it all comes down to one question— is a game’s box just a container, or is it something more? If it’s not used during gameplay, does it really add value to the experience? For many people, it absolutely does! This might be the key difference between a collector and someone who takes a more practical approach. Of course, storage space plays a big role too. I’ve even seen people store board games in ziplock bags—usually kids’ games—but it’s always fascinating to see how different people organize their collections.

Speaking of BIG BOXES, it was time for more Middara! We’re just very slowly working our way through the campaign for as long as we think it’s fun, and so far, that’s the case! We enjoy the strategic choices but we are slowly seeing a repetitive pattern in the scenarios – but we’re also on the brink of a bigger story plot thing, so the game might introduce new things to spice things up soon.

We don’t often go to things like concerts, musicals, and theater shows, but by chance, it happened that we were invited by friends to go to the Moulin Rouge musical this week, while we already went to another theater show last week. It was a really impressive show and knowing the movie really well, it was nice to see the differences. I don’t think I’ve heard that many different songs in one show – that must have been a nightmare for the legal team, haha. Since we went with friends who also enjoy board games, they brought Kluster and we brought Love Letter as a fun activity while we had to wait for our food at the restaurant.

This weekend, we had an Agricola game night! Our friend has the 15th Anniversary edition, and it’s a game we keep coming back to from time to time. We have a special relationship with the game since it was our first serious hobby game that we bought after our apartment on the ground floor got flooded fourteen years ago (but that’s another story). That was in a time when we mostly played games like Munchkin, so it was quite a step up! There is still so much in this game we haven’t played yet and expansions we’d like to try (if we can ever find them) – so we’ll keep playing it! 😉

On Sunday, it felt like an early Spring day and the weather was just lovely. We decided to take a walk and bring Seaside with us to play outside. Seaside is a fun and quick push-your-luck game with lovely wooden tokens! The game area is divided into the sea (a shared central area) and each player’s Seaside. On their turn, a player draws a token from a bag, secretly chooses which side to use, and applies its effect. Blue tokens interact with the sea and can trigger extra turns, while white tokens are placed on a player’s Seaside to help build their stack. Different tokens interact in unique ways—waves flip beaches, sandpipers collect isopods, and rocks attract crabs. When the bag is empty, players stack up their collected tokens, and the tallest stack wins.

This week, we’ve got multiple game nights planned, and we’re looking forward to them. 🙂

Ever since BGstats introduced fancy ways to export images with statistics about played games, we’ve been seeing them around a lot more often and that’s nice! It’s really interesting to see what kind of games people play. And, of course, it’s not about the numbers because they will always be skewed. We can play a very short game like Tinderblox fifteen times (probably more) in the time it takes us to play one scenario of a game like Gloomhaven, for example. BUT whenever we see such a post with extremely high numbers, there’s always a part of me that goes: “WHAT NOW?!” and tries to make the calculation in my mind. Quickly followed by the realisation that lots of people play games online on platforms like Board Game Arena and Tabletopia and log those plays too, and playing a game online goes a lot quicker than IRL and people often play multiple games at once. 😀

Sky Team was still lying around in our kitchen, so we played another game of it—and we nailed it again! The next scenario will add some additional game components, so I’m curious how quickly this winning streak will end, haha.

In the digital realm of games, we had a really cool session of Pulsar. We boarded and took over a Colonial ship that was at least twice our size and then went to some shady planet to illegally transfer the ownership to our crew. If you can ignore the looks and you have a group of friends that likes Star Trek simulation games, this one is quirky but fun.

On Thursday, it was time for game night, and we played a lovely spread of games. We kicked it off with a game of Zoo Vadis. The last time we played it, we were with six players and that is a different experience than four players. It plays well with four, but I think it’s more interesting with more. Nonetheless, still a great short game with an amazing production.

Our friend hadn’t played It’s a Wonderful World yet and was curious about it – your wish is our command! Also, we’re never opposed to playing that again – it’s just such a nice comfort game. We always play the game with the expansions and we think that adds just a little more spice to it. We ended the night with a scenario of Quirky Circuits in which we successfully cleaned the room and returned to our charging station! Not without breaking a vase and taking some weird detours but we made it back in time.

On Friday, Heinze played Kill Team with a friend of which I can’t really tell you anything, except that there are new rules and ladders are now a thing and Heinze didn’t know and that would have changed everything, haha. If you have any questions about Kill Team, drop a comment below this post and I’ll make sure Heinze will reply. 😀

This week, we’ve got a night planned of Middara and a night of Agricola – I’m looking forward to both of those!

We kicked the week off by playing Middara and due to the December holidays it had been over six weeks since we played it. We were a little rusty on the exact rules but, luckily, we still had half a scenario left from last time so we could take our time to familiarize ourselves again with all the combat details. We’ve been playing the game with four characters while we are with three players with the idea that the fourth character is like the backup car from Top Gear and that has been a great choice. We’ve had multiple sessions where one of the characters was knocked out! Enemies can really do much damage if you have some unlucky dice rolls and the player characters are quite squishy in the early stage of the game. No clue if this will change, we’ll see!

We played another game of Katmai: The Bears of Brooks River and we think this upcoming title of Osprey is really charming. The production value is great (the bear portraits are awesome) and if we had to quickly explain the game to other gamers, we’d say it’s a combination of Air, Land and Sea, and Cascadia.

On Friday, we visited friends, and we played a game Barricade/Malefiz because they were surprised that we had never played that before. They picked it up at a flea market a few years back and well… we have all decided that the game is a little better than Ludo but ooooof… it takes way too long for what it is.

But, playing such older games (this one is from the sixties) does make you appreciate the level of games that are available nowadays. We followed Barricade up with a game of Tower Up! We had played the game before with two players but we thought that didn’t really do the game any justice (even though there’s a special two-player map). Playing it with four players made the game way more interesting and we all thought it was a fun and quick game! The only downside was that the different colored roofs were a little hard to tell apart from each other for our colorblind friend when they were part of a tower (between blocks). We might simply add small markings to the sides of the roofs to make it more playable for him. We would compare the game’s difficulty level to Ticket to Ride, so it’s great as a light game or for families.

On Saturday night, we spontaneously visited the monthly game night at De Dondersteen (the game store in our neighboring city) after friends invited us. They recently expanded their store with a board game cafe and the place looked great, almost all the tables were filled up! It’s always great to see a place like this thrive and that people have a place to meet up and play games. We had a lot of fun playing It’s a Wonderful World and then joined another table for a game of Codenames: Pictures. Slowly, the group of players kept growing and we ended the night with a seven-player game of Caution Signs. We still have to find somebody who did not enjoy a game of Caution Signs; it’s so impressive how everybody seems to have a great time even if they have drawing skills or not. That’s why we are really confused that not a single Dutch publisher has picked up this game because it’s guaranteed success with the right marketing.

We’re not sure yet what this week will bring besides one planned game night and a thing I’m really excited about… we’re going to play Xia: Legends of a Drift System again! It’s been way too long! I hope you all have a great week.

Evil villains always like to tell what they are about to do right? And let’s be honest, sometimes it’s also very handy to get your thoughts straight if you sum them up and just think out loud. I tend to do that more with a little more complicated games with a lot of ‘if-this-then-that’ action… sometimes accidentally revealing my strategy, oops.

We played one of those ‘thinkie’-games last week – we (finally) played Seti! I’m glad we had an entire afternoon planned for playing it the first time because punching out the tokens, setting up the game for the first time, and learning the rules took us about 90 minutes. The first two rounds took us some time to learn the lay of the land because there’s a lot to do in this game. In Seti, you’re looking for alien life. You can find three different traces of aliens in three different ways. You can send a probe into outer space and let it orbit a planet or land it on a planet or a moon to find it. You can also scan the galaxy from Earth for traces of aliens. This action has an interesting majority ‘battle’ on the board. Per sector, there are a certain number of data tokens available and when a player uses the scan action, they replace the data tokens with their own player tokens. When all the data tokens in a sector are taken, the player with the most tokens in that sector ‘wins’ that sector and almost always a trace of alien signals.

Although it’s not a cooperative game, players all contribute to unveiling which alien species will encounter during the game. At the start of the game, the identity of the alien species is unknown and once the three slots of evidence have been filled, a species is revealed. This adds an interesting twist to the game! We have only seen two of the five alien species we enjoyed how they offered different rewards for finding alien life traces during the rest of the game.

All in all, we really enjoyed Seti. The fact that you get to upgrade actions by spending the reputation points you gain during the game and the way how action cards can be used in different ways really make sure there’s always a way to get something done and that feels satisfying. We played the game with three players, and we can imagine that the scan action (with the token majority element) will fall flat with two players, and there will be very little confrontation there. The rotating boards that change the positions of planets are a fun element that really messed up some plans during our game. Can’t wait to play Seti again!

Last week, we also played Seasons, which is always fun and we played two games with our young niece, Rhino Hero: Super Battle and Loopin’ Louie and honestly, you can’t go wrong with those two. We’ve just discovered that our niece of almost six is just very good at Loopin’ Louie and we were not. This week, we hope to play Rival Cities and we’re finally going to continue our Middara campaign and we have a game night planned on Friday!

Heinze’s favorite color in board games is yellow, it’s often the brightest and thus best seen if you’re colorblind (besides black and white of course). And speaking of yellow… we bought our very first car last week and it’s yellow (you can see it at the end of the recap video)! It might sound strange to people that this would be our first car, but we have managed well without one for the last fifteen-plus years. We live in a bigger city with okay train connections and shared vehicles, which combined with most of our friends and other activities that are quite close by made it very doable! But times are changing, public transport is getting more and more expensive and less reliable and circumstances need us to go to certain places more often. Besides the practical aspect, we both really enjoy driving so we’re also excited about the spontaneous freedom it offers. But enough about our giddy first-car enthusiasm! We also played some games this week.

We hadn’t played Calico in a few years and we were totally up for a ‘cozy’ game, once again falling for its cute looks only to discover it’s a very mean puzzle game. I do appreciate the game design, even though I ruthlessly failed to score two of my three design goals because of unlucky tile draws…

We also played our first game of Battalion: War of the Ancients. We only played the recommended ‘first game’ setup and the game and might need to try it again. The game has an interesting mechanism with order tokens you get to spend to take different actions with your units or you can lose them when your units are taking hits in battle. Once all of your tokens are used up (this could take multiple rounds), you need to rally to retrieve order tokens and draw a card from your tactic deck. Once your deck runs out of cards you’ve lost the game! We made the mistake of not sacrificing any units to prevent losing order tokens at the beginning of the game. Because we didn’t do that, the game felt really restricting and that’s not a thing I enjoy very much. But then again, I’m also not the biggest fan of sacrificing things right from the start so I might have to admit it’s just not a game for me. Heinze did find it very interesting and I’m sure some of our friends might also enjoy it. 🙂 You can play this light war game with two or four players (then it becomes a team game) and it takes around 30-45 minutes.

On Friday we played the game I’ve been excited about ever since we picked it up at SPIEL – Gibberers: The Word Game of Language Invention and Civilization Development! In this co-op game, you develop your own language and it’s fantastic. During the first phase of the game, you build your language with eighteen words. A few are mandatory like yes, no, I, and know – the rest is up to you! After you’ve done that, you’re going to practice using your new language by introducing yourselves. Then, you continue to the game part of Gibberers. One player (the mentor) draws a card and has five English words from which they can pick one. The mentor will have to think up how it would translate to the new language and write that down (without revealing the English meaning). Then, the mentor has to describe the meaning of this new word to the rest of the group (the students)… only using the new language! The students can also only communicate in the new language at this point so the game becomes hilarious. There are mechanisms for the students to ask for hints and the mentor can add one supporting word. During the three phases, the words will become more complex but you’ll also add more words to your vocabulary. Our group really enjoyed the game and we had a great time and it is surprising how well it went. We didn’t win the game because we thought the mentor meant ‘voice’ instead of ‘speech’ in the last round but it was darn close. Since the game is not available anywhere at the moment, we’re really hoping this will be picked up by a publisher that can distribute it in Europe and the US. Because we would love this jewel of a game to be available to a larger audience.

This weekend, we played a few smaller games. The cute little dice game Sausage Sizzle!, the deceivingly tiny box drafting tableau-building game Moving Wild (which requires a really big table), and Splendor Duel. We’ll see what this week will bring us, we have at least one game night planned that we’re looking forward to.

Another year has passed—where did the time go?! We hope we’ve made you smile a few times this past year. We’d like to wish you all a lovely holiday period and the very best for the new year! Thank you so much for reading our silly comic.

~ Rachel & Heinze