More Lion and Gazelle? You can read the previous comics here: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5 and #6 here!
Mammal deception! It’s been about two months, so we thought it was time for another Lion and Gazelle comic!

Take backsies can be a pretty controversial topic. We’re quite laid-back, especially if other players and we play a game for the first or second time or if a mistake breaks the game for a player or really frustrates them. Some players we know are really stern and even have the rule that if you place something on the board, it’s stuck there and you’ve made your move. I guess it’s a way to speed up the game time but it can also take the fun out of it, especially if you’re not very familiar with a game.

Speaking of games we were not very familiar with… we’ve played a lot of new games this past week! First of all, there was a pre-production copy of Galactic Renaissance which we were and now are very excited about. It’s a game with a lot of different mechanics but they all fit snugly together. A fun one is that players have no discard pile and cards go directly to the bottom of your deck and you’re not allowed to shuffle your deck (unless instructed of course). We know Aeon’s End also does this, but this is the first time we’ve encountered a game that does this. The fact that you somewhat know what cards are going to be unreachable for a while makes for interesting tactical choices and makes discarding a card a more difficult choice. The game also has deck-building, exploration, area control, and a fun portal system that connects different planets together. We hope to play it again soon to see how it plays now we know how to avoid some easily made mistakes.

We played Mantis Falls, quite an unknown title. Like Dead of Winter, it’s a ‘sometimes cooperative’ game with hidden roles for two to three players. This game is hard! And not that it’s very complex but it’s hard to beat. The fact that you never really know if the other player will betray you during the game adds to the tension. Players travel over the road that will offer challenges that need to be overcome or they’ll be wounded. It’s an interesting game but we really need to play it again now we know what to expect and now we know how hard it is to reach the end…

Our copy of Birds of a Feather came in the mail and that game is a (little) stunner! I think the art of the cards is just gorgeous, the artists really did a great job. The game itself is nice and simple and not something I’ve played before. You play a card from your hand and you check if the habitat of that bird card is the same as any other cards that are already on the table (lingering birds) and the ones that are being played by other players that round. At the end of the round, the played bird cards replace the lingering birds and in the next round, you play a new card! You have a checklist on which you cross off all the different birds you spotted and you try to spot as many different birds as possible during the game to score the most points. It’s not a complex game but it’s nice and entertaining and there are some drafting rules to make the game a little bit more tactical. 🙂

Heinze also played Millennium Blades this weekend! Since I didn’t, I can’t say too much about it, but I do know that he was impressed by the level of detail that has gone into the game but also that he was really happy that he never bought a copy himself because it would be way too hard to get to the table. If you’ve never heard of it, Millennium Blades is a collectible card game simulator. During the game, players play multiple games and compete for tournament prizes, build and upgrade their decks, trade cards with other players, and even ‘crack open’ random boosters. It’s quite spectacular.

We also played our second game of Artisans of Splendent Vale (still so much fun!), we cracked another case of Suspects and we played a game of Sniper Elite. It was quite a lovely spread this week! And in case you missed it, we posted an extra comic last Thursday about Blueprints of Mad King Ludwig!