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Heinze and at least three of our friends are colorblind, so we think lights above a game table are quite important to prevent confusion and unintended errors during a game… and it makes all the difference if we want to shoot a picture for on our Instagram account, of course. 😉

Last week, we celebrated our 12,5 anniversary together and made some fun photos for the occasion. They ended up looking like we’re running a YouTube channel called “Between the boxes”. Surprisingly, a lot of people actually thought that would be a good idea. We love the enthusiasm, but we think there are enough YouTubers that share their views on board games in front of a camera. If we are ever to try and do something more serious with Youtube, it’ll certainly be animated sketches. We might already have plans for that, maybe. Yes, who knows. One day. Tee-hee-hee.

Back to gaming – our biggest gaming surprise of last week was Dice Throne! We picked up one of the boxes of season 2 in a whim at our FLGS. It turned out to be a really fun game and right up our alley of fun games that don’t take over 3 hours to play. I mean, we also enjoy the longer games, but they don’t get played too often. Dice Throne is one of those games that you can easily get on the table and play in like thirty minutes. Oh, and those game trays that come with the game are a true delight.

And, in case you missed it on our social media channels, this is the latest extra comic, sponsored by CoolStuffInc.com:
#020 – Horrible

Are lights above your (gaming) table something you pay extra attention to?

 

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For those who are wondering what the name is of that game with the cute panda… it’s Takenoko! We somehow keep confusing the name with Tokaido. And when we were at Spiel in Essen last year, and Teotihuacan was a big hit, we had another “what was it called again?”-game title with a T to add to the list. Only with the latter, we still can’t remember how to pronounce it, even despite the video that Ella Loves Boardgames made.

I was busy with work last week and only got to play a few games: Cerberus, Century Golem, Charterstone and Chronicles of Crime. Heinze had a week off and also played Eldritch Horror (jealous!) and Keyforge.

I didn’t mention it here yet, but we’re continuing our partnership with CoolStuffInc.com with which we’re really happy. We reach a far bigger audience that has an interest in board games and best of all is that I’m financially able to make an extra comic for their newsletters which I can share with our readers. 🙂

With the continued partnership, we’ve made a little change to our Patreon page. From now on, we’re going to share our weekly comics on the same day on our Patreon page for paying patrons as they are published on CoolStuffInc.com. Speaking of our amazing patrons, we’re at 48 patrons already! That’s so immensely cool and I’m very very grateful for their support.

And, in case you missed it on our social media channels, this is the latest extra comic, sponsored by CoolStuffInc.com:
#019 – Growl

Do you ever mix up certain game titles?

 

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Ahh, one can dream… who knows? Maybe Netrunner will return one day? And if those ships have really passed, we would really love to see an Arkham Files themed movie! 😀 Somehow, some scenes of Fantastic Beasts really gave us those vibes.

Last week we decided to start off with Chronicles of Crime! At first, we didn’t want to start the game before we had finished Detective, but curiosity got the better of us. The tutorial was obviously really easy but explained the game well. One thing we noticed is that the scoring is very forgiving compared to, for example, Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective and Detective. In the first scenario, there was one question we could have answered “better” and we still scored 130/100 points. The second case, we had one question completely wrong and we still scored 120/100 points. The bonus on solving a case relatively quickly seems to be a little bit too high. But nonetheless, we’ve really enjoyed the game and we were (positively) surprised how “dark” the plot was. We’re looking forward to playing the other cases!

ICYMI: The latest extra comics, sponsored by CoolStuffInc.com:
#018 – First Player

What game would you like to see be made into a movie?

 

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It’s almost Valentine! And any board game can be romantic… with a little rhyming skill as we’d like to show with this week’s comic! And who knew that Cragheart from Gloomhaven had a soft side to him? 😉 In 2016, we’ve published our first board game poems which were about Netrunner and Eldritch Horror.

Last Friday there was a board game night at our local bouldering hall! We had a blast and played thematic games like K2, The Climbers and other fun games like Sakura and Dinosaur Tea Party. People were enthusiastic about the game night and they’re thinking about doing this on a more regular basis! Yay! It’s so great to see people get enthusiastic over playing games and having a great time. 🙂

This game night made up for our lack of playing games this week because I was simply too busy with work. We did play a game of Arraial last night and this time we did not forget the 2-player rule to take out eight cards. Last time we played it, we were already wondering why the rounds took so long, whoops!

This week we’ll continue our Gloomhaven campaign and hopefully, Heinze and I manage to squeeze in some more board gaming time.

 

ICYMI: The latest extra comics, sponsored by CoolStuffInc.com:
#017 – Ready to Ride

Share your board gaming poems with us in the comments!

In programming games like Lords of Xidit, there’s a big chance that some things don’t go as planned and that your entire “plan” falls apart.

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Lords of Xidit can be quite unforgiving on this part. If, for example, another player first takes away the last of the units and then walks right up to that enemy you planned to defeat, you end up just walking one step behind that player without getting anything. We personally didn’t really mind, because the rounds play out rather quickly – better luck next time! We really enjoyed our first play, the game really surprised us and we are looking forward to playing it again. The only downside to this game is that it requires at least three players, so we can’t “just” play it whenever we want.

So we managed to squeeze in some board games last week! We played a game of Fog of Love and for the first time, lost the game! David and Roxanne both were really unhappy in their relationship. We’ll see if our characters are more in tune next time we play the game. A friend of ours also brought a game called “Castle Flutterstone”, it meant for children, but that should never stop you from playing something, right? In this dexterity-game, you launch fabric bats at the cardboard castle, or rather, you try to shoot them through the windows. Like this.  It’s fun and silly and will keep you entertained for at least ten minutes. 😉
We ended that night with an amazing game of Clank! in which one of the players delved deeper into the dungeon to grab the most valuable artifact of the game WHILE THE OTHER PLAYERS HAD BOTH LEFT THE CASTLE. And despite this act of foolishness the player managed to escape on the very last turn with only one health left. And… he… won. I would describe that as the best first game of Clank! experience one could have, period.

We also played our second game of Rajas of the Ganges and this game really elegantly fixes the problem of counting up points for 10 minutes after the game is over. By turning the victory condition into a race it retains all the fun of a worker placement game but it adds the excitement of a racing game.

ICYMI: The latest extra comics, sponsored by CoolStuffInc.com:
#016 – Nowhere to run

What was the last game that pleasantly surprised you?
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