This week in development
My business cards arrived! I’m glad I went with Moo as they came in a nice little box and I’m really pleased with the quality.
I’ve been having thoughts about how I would approach designing a euro-style game. What kind of mechanics I might want to include and how I’d want things to be different.
At the very least, I’d try to go for an uncommon theme (see below for a good example).
This week in games
I actually had three separate sessions of gaming this week, like an absolute madman.
The first was on Wednesday, as usual. We started off with Pot de Vin. This was my first experience of a trick-taking game (unless Pi Mal Pflaumen counts?) outside of vain attempts at trying to understand Hearts when I was a kid.
It was good, but I wasn’t enthralled by it. I think it needs a few more plays before I’ll really understand how to play it well.
We finished off with some good, old Bring Your Own Book. Always a winner, though I miss playing it with a bigger group. Three isn’t quite enough.
Had a great session of games on Saturday (not least because I won all but the last game 😮 ).
Started off with a 2-player game of Ethnos. Alex got a nice load of points in the first age, thanks to some orc bingo, but I think playing single cards to get that meant he got less points for bands, which gave me the win.
Then it was on to Condottiere. I thought I had it in the bag early on, but Alex stopped me getting a 4th adjacent region and kept things going.
Then we moved on to Bretagne. Neither of us had heard of it before, but Alex got it cheap of eBay and it looked interesting.
It’s a worker placement game about building lighthouses in Brittany. Low interaction, but you can work on lighthouses together, so end up helping each other out.
Lots of moments of “I do this … wait, I can’t do that … uhhhhh …” A bit confusing, but enjoyable and an uncommon theme.
Then Oz turned up, so we took the chance to try some 3-player Ethnos and Condottiere which went great. Ethnos is a lot more about controlling the regions with more players. So while Oz managed to get out a 6-strong band, for max points, I had a hefty lead by the end thanks to controlling the best regions.
Finished of with just me and Alex playing Noxford. This is the one I lost. I think I focused too much on trying to undo what he did, rather than making good moves for myself.
On Sunday afternoon, a couple of drinks in the pub for Oz’s birthday, turned into going back to his house to play games.
Started off with Grimm Forest (there was 7 of us, but people teamed up). It was fun, but I think it’s very overproduced for what it is. It could easily just be cards and some tokens. Especially considering most of the miniatures didn’t get used in our game.
Then we played some Spyfall, where I definitely think the drinking contributed to how bad we all were at working out who the spy was. My crowning achievement was working out where we were, and then almost immediately forgetting it and giving an answer that outed me as the spy.
We finished off with some Tsuro, which is a lot more chaotic with 7 people. I almost won the first game and then failed miserably in the second.
This week in everything else
I got new internet installed this week. It’s super fast, but apparently won’t let me connect to anywhere via FTP? Still looking into how to sort that out.
In other “good but also not good” news this week, my laptop has once again gone in to be repaired. I haven’t yet heard back from them whether it will be repaired or outright replaced. Fingers crossed for the latter and I never have to deal with this problem again …