We’re starting to gain
some momentum in finding people to game with near our new home! We went to Croydon
again last week and attended their larger night on a Wednesday. We met a couple
of nice people and they helped us to win Ghost Stories for the second time!! It’s a bit of a pain that the group is so far
away, so we’re still on the hunt for somewhere closer, but I think we’ll keep
visiting the Croydon group when we can. We’ve managed to cross a couple of
titles off our un-played list of shame this week, as well as trying the
Kennerspiel des Jahres winner, Isle of Skye.
Here’s are Yellow
Meeple’s first impressions;
·
Isle of Skye combines tile laying
and drafting – two mechanics for which there are plenty of examples in our
collection. On a turn in Isle of Skye, each player takes three tiles at random
from the bag and decides which to discard and what price to assign to the other
two. Once all prices are set, each player gets the opportunity to buy one tile
from their opponents. When one of your tiles is bought you get paid as well as
getting back the money you used to set the price. However, the tiles that are
not bought must be kept by the player who priced them and the money used for
pricing must be returned to the bank. Tiles are then placed in a Carcassonne type manner, with different
types of scoring in each round influencing how you might want to connect the
tiles together. The game really maximises player interaction as you have to
think about how much people will want to pay and which scoring opportunities
are your best compared to your opponents. I really enjoyed Isle of Skye and probably simply need to decide if it replaces any
specific game in our collection or gets added on merit alone.
·
Bomb Squad is a game that interested
me because it seemed to add stronger theme to the core mechanics of Hanabi and also added a timed element
which I’ve enjoyed in games of Escape:
The Curse of the Temple. Each player has a hand of cards that they cannot
see, but that are shown to all other players. The players must work
cooperatively to give each other hints so that they play the right cards to
move the bomb disposal robot towards targets, to get through doors, free
hostages and dispose of bombs. The clue giving is limited and players will also
need to discard cards to keep up the robot’s battery levels. The game is super
tense – we only beat the training missions with a few seconds to spare. This one
could be the challenge we need now that we consistently do well in Hanabi or it might just end up too
hectic and random when it gets more complicated in the time limit. I look
forward to trying it some more though and will probably keep it as a two player
experience as I can imagine getting very frustrated when other players make
mistakes or do unpredictable things!
·
Mice and Mystics is the game I’ve
set my heart on as our next two player campaign-style game, something that we’ve
been missing since finishing Pandemic Legacy
together. In Mice and Mystics you play as a team of mice, who take on
different adversaries, such as rats spiders etc. and explore different lands. The
game is very story driven, by a story book which interjects story at different
points in each chapter. Each mouse is unique and in a two player game you’ll
each have more than one mouse to control that has different weapons and
abilities to help heal, move, fight or defend. Our first game was enjoyable,
but I must admit it’s not really because it’s a great game, if anything it
drags on a bit long and not much happens except for a whole lot of dice luck,
but for now the story is pretty charming and that will keep us playing and
perhaps even entice Amy to paint our minis.
Last week we also
found an awesome game shop in Horsham, Surrey and hopefully we can join them
for a Saturday game day soon, as well as checking out a Sunday gaming group in
Brighton this week. It feels like we’re board gaming tourists right now, but I
imagine we’ll find a convenient and friendly group for us to play with soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment