The Yellow Meeple's First Impressions:- Week Commencing 26th September 2015

It’s not been the biggest week of gaming, but since I’ve tried a couple of new games and enjoyed them, it’s probably worth a quick fist impression post.

·         Magic the Gathering may not be the sort of game you’d expect The Game Shelf to be playing. Amy played a lot when she was younger, but didn’t enjoy the collectable nature, but since I’ve been playing a lot of Hearthstone, she thought I might like to try it. We picked up the Portal starter set last weekend and gave it ago this week. The starter set dictates your first few turns, which is rather annoying when you’ve both played similar games before, but once we were set free, the game was quick and quite enjoyable. I like the decision making process of whether to attack or save your creatures for defence. I felt like perhaps there were not many combos in the starter set and I’ve been told that a lot of tricks are missing, but I think this will hit the table as a quick two player card game and maybe we’ll try a few starter decks for variety.

·         Abyss has been sitting on the shelf for a long while and I don’t really know why. I didn’t find this game to be too heavy and we really should’ve played sooner! In the game you are trying to add Lords to your tableau to gain victory points and also special abilities. Lords are purchased using Allies which you buy with pearls. Pearls are usually obtained by the active player who reveals Allies from the supply. If other players choose to purchase then you obtain pearls. There’s a good amount of choices to be made in the game, but not too many to cause AP. Plus, on many occasions you participate in your opponents’ turns so there is little downtime. Timing is often key, in obtaining Locations which also boost your victory points and particularly in your decision whether to finish the game. Hopefully I can persuade Amy that this is a good game too because I really want to play this again.

I really want to get some more new games to the table. We have a whole shelf now devoted to the ‘pile of shame’. Some of these games might not be for me and it would be good to know so I can make space for some more new games!