We got Love Letter: Jabba’s Palace to the table! We didn’t actually play though as we were busy talking, oops!

Our usual players were moving house this week, so they were pretty occupied! I was worried this meant that no games at all this week, but some other friends came round for Bonfire Night, and they brought Cascadia.

I haven’t played before, but I have heard of parallels to Calico, and I can see why! I think Cascadia has another layer of gameplay to it that made it a more enjoyable experience for me. Whilst the interactivity was very low (hate drafting being the only way to do anything), it was interesting watching the other players shoot for different objective sets.

Fun time, but took us longer than it should because we kept getting distracted!

It was a week of lighter games for us this week.

We started with 2 plays of Tsuro with 6 players, each of which resulted in 3 players winning! We were surprised how avoidant of conflict most of us were in this.

Secondly, we then played a game of Roll for It! to see the night out. I’ve never played this, but really felt like it needed some rerolls as in Yahtzee or Poker Dice. I spent far too many rounds rolling 1 die waiting for my number to come up only to have to wait for 5 other players to do their thing!

All a learning experience for the next time!

The coins are a worthwhile investment early on, but we managed to get some good objectives that means plenty of points all around!

Ooo I didn’t know this! One of the few times I wasn’t being a rules goblin, so I gave myself over fully to the owner! We only had one Goblin card come up anyway, so nothing too drastic.

Thank you!

We played Cartographers this week as we babbled on for a bit too long without any thought as to what we’d play.

We played it previously as a group about 2 years ago, so it was nice to revisit it finally. A simple flip-and-write game with some element of interfering with other players (namely the player to your left). A nice fun puzzle to share with the other players!

I’m not asking everyone to learn the game off the bat - but if I can point them to someone who’s rehearsed, edited and highlighted important rules before it even hits the table then that’s all I need. Just some level of exposure so I’m not being torn 5 different ways by a Q&A session over which components are what.

It’s not unreasonable to ask your players to do some of the rules legwork if at all possible.

Something I’ve always found difficult about these large games is getting the rules across to the others. My regular group are all gamers - we’ve all dabbled in the bigger games and can parse dense rulebooks. But the onus always falls on one of us to learn the rules and try to teach the others. I’ve sent “How to Play Oath” videos to countless prospective players who see the 30 minutes runtime and give up on the idea. Those that didn’t watch the video said the game only started to click after 4 plays. Which is a hilarious amount of Oath.

Only managed to play Libertalia this week! We picked up Vaalbara a while ago which is oft-described as “Libertalia-lite”.

Can now confirm I agree with that sentiment! The game can be surprisingly nasty with “take-that” mechanics which took me from a healthy lead going into Round 3, to only scoring 1 point and coming 3rd in a 4-player game!

Board state must have been somewhat difficult to read for some folks as they often attacked me for no reason (no actual loss from the card they killed) other than I was ahead from the first two rounds. This maneuevre actually cost the player the game as they’d have won had they denied the other player points instead!

Regardless, I did have fun and the plethora of cards made each new round exciting to see what combos we might pull off!

You’re absolutely correct on Captain Sonar. I got this to the table at our local cafe when we had 8 people, but I think too many members of our group have anxiety for this to land properly. Too much pressure I think!

Flamecraft is an interesting one for me. I feel like you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who says that it is their favourite, however it’s undeniably charming and gets people excited to play it! And that’s good enough for me!

I believe it got picked up for retail, so do keep an eye out!

Because of the very low player interaction, it worked really well still! I scored 71 whereas my partner scored 69 - so it felt competitive also.

We had to cut out 4-player game a little short as we’d started late and it was running on a bit, however I was teaching the rules to the other 3.

Our 2 player game was probably close to 2 hours, but again there was a reasonable amount of rules clarifications from trying to parse the icons fully!

Last week saw the arrival of a kickstarter game I backed a couple of years ago, Mercurial!

As a result, I’ve seen 3 plays of this in the last week; one solo, one 2-player, and one 4-player.

Very much enjoying this title so far! The designer has opted to use iconography on the cards instead of any words. Whilst this slows the initial couple of plays down, you soon learn the language it was designed with and you can begin to intuit cards quite quickly.

Something I forsee possibly being an issue for some people is the lack of player interaction. It falls into the same space as Wingspan in that the only interaction one can really have is drafting a card that another player wanted.

The art is beautiful, vibrant, evocative, and most of the time you feel like you are manipulating the elements as you flip and convert your dice to your needs!

We were on holiday this week, so had to pack quite light.

We played a single game of 6-player In Vino Morte as we waited for food. This game is still insanely easy to bring to any table and is guaranteed fun for 10 minutes at a time!

We also took along River Wild, another Button Shy game. This was a great brain-burner to play with my morning coffee, even if I didn’t so particularly well at all!

My partner’s parents brought along Greed, a push-your-luck dice game from the 80s. Whilst it felt like it did drag on a bit long, there were some interesting rolls that kept things interesting! Probably liked this more than I should have purely because I won!

And finally, we cracked out the deck of cards to play Sevens. A simple staple, not too much to say here!

Agreed!

Thanks for the discussion (and lesson) to get me thinking more about the game!

Great, thanks for clarifying!

I’m afraid that this is probably still prevalent here (wasn’t looking for it, but I do recall a few feelings)! Depending on your prediction, you may only be looking to win one or two tricks, and if you’re positioned in seat 3 or 4 from the trick leader, you often find yourself having to play high beat the first few players only to be trumped by seat 5.

I also wonder if the prediction mechanic aims to keep the leader rotating so as to mitigate seating bias. You’re unlikely to get stuck with 1 leader that keeps trumping the hands as most people are aiming to win 1-3 tricks.

Interestingly, our games have always been won by players that just had 1 extremely good round. In other words, I suspect there’s an element to try and optimise the round in which you lead.

I’ll do my best to answer in my limited experience, but before I do, can I just get some clarification on what you mean by ‘Seat Binding’? A quick Google suggests you’re referring to advantage based upon where a player is seated in the turn order - is that it?

Second week in a row that we brought Cat in the Box to the table, but this time with the full capacity of 5-players!

We’ve now had a few plays of this game, and I think it’s been cemented as one that we actually need to add to the collection. It’s had us howling and shouting at each other like no other game has for a while, but it’s light and snappy enough that you don’t feel like never speaking to these people again!

Last night, we played Greed with my partner’s family. This dice rolling game has you banking dice to try and race to 5000 points. Each roll must score points, or else you’ll bust for the round and accumulate nothing. Not a complicated game, and very little decision making space (to keep rolling, or to keep scoring?), but it was fun! I’m probably saying that because I won at my very first play of it.

This morning, I brought River Wild to the table. This is a solo game in which you’re trying to create “protected lands” to score points. Additional objectives are printed on cards which score bonus points if met! As with all Button Shy games, there’s fewer than 20 cards, which means the game is tight and doesn’t take too long.

Most of our group was busy this week, so it was a 2P session with my partner. We got around to trying Unmatched: Cobbles and Fog. Neither of us had played before, so things got a bit messy with the rules a couple of times. Production quality is great - everything looks fantastic. The game may be a little lighter than I’d like, but seemed quite balanced at least! To compare, I think closest game I can think of is Dice Throne, but I think the dice throwing/manipulation does something a little more for me than the maneuvering of Unmatched. Still, fun was had!

My partner and I also received Dead Letter Society, a TTRPG about vampiric society pen pals writing letters to one another. We’re in the process of making our characters to give it a go! I’m interested in using this game to connect with a friend that a couple of hours away, so this should be a good way!

This week, we’re aiming to get Skyrim: The Adventure Game to the table again as we’ve got a hankering for massive table presence and fulfilling quests!