Friday Night Shots – Games That Grabbed You on First Look

It’s another Friday night, so time for some stream of consciousness writing about a boardgame topic that makes me happy.

What better thing to do on a Friday night?

Tonight, with a little bit of whiskey added to the mix, I’d like to talk about games that just grabbed you when you first saw them.

This isn’t on the first play. Once you’ve played it, you already know whether you like it or not, or at least want to play it again.

No, I’m talking about games where you happen to see it, either in action on a playthrough, or just hearing about it and then doing a little research. You look it up, take a look at how it appears on the table or in the rulebook, and say “I have to try this.”

This isn’t even saying it’s a game that you end up liking (though in the case of what I’m talking about below, that will happen).

You may finally play it and say “you know, I really should probably wear pants to game days.”

Oh, and also “you know, maybe this game isn’t really for me after all. But it looks cool.”

I’ve had this happen a few times in the last couple of years, where I see a game and then just get all excited about it.

Twice in the last couple of weeks!

So I’ll start with those.

(Don’t forget that you can click on a picture to blow it up)

A couple of my friends are aware of this one because I just asked them if they’d try it out with me after I’ve played it twice asynchronously before.

Class of ’89 by Paverson Games is now on preorder and it’s in Alpha on Boardgame Arena.

Wow, does this bring back the nostalgia for me, as it’s right around the time that I graduated high school.

Players are putting together a yearbook splash page for their senior class.

I was in yearbook in my final two years!

You are sending out your team members to various clubs and areas of the school in order to get cool photos, either students, teachers, staff members, or maybe just wonderful banners.

Your yearbook spread is going to be a page of a number of different classes (separated by teachers, and the students must be in alphabetical order) on the left, and then the Wildcat Way tiles (the Wildcats are your school mascot) on the right.

Essentially, this is a game where you are trying to match a bunch of icons together when you put students or tiles into your yearbook.

Each student has half of an icon on both their bottom left and bottom right.

If you put them next to a student who has the matching icon (or first in class next to the teacher and match their icon), you will move up that club’s track.

The clubs are the track movement in the game, so Chris Yi should be happy.

Each space you move up will give you something.

The game goes over four rounds where you are placing three of your four team members, so you essentially get 12 actions.

However, it’s very possible to chain things to get a bunch of different attribute tokens and signatures simultaneously.

I’ve completed one asynchronous game and I’m in three more, so I can’t tell whether I would like this game on the table.

That’s why this is not a “First Impressions” post.

Would it be way too long for what it is? Will it be much too fiddly?

I don’t know!

But I can tell you that right now, I want to play this game multiple times just to see what’s what with it.

Another game that entranced me I’ve actually talked about a couple of times recently, both in a BGG Century post as well as last Friday.

I managed to get one asynchronous game of Bohemians (from Portal Games) in on Boardgame Arena, and I really did enjoy it.

I sucked at it, but it was enjoyable suckage.

This is the game where you are artists in turn of the century Paris, just trying to make your way through the day, doing your art, or just hanging around and fulfilling your desires (which will hopefully fuel your art!) and trying to fend off the hardships that can come your way.

You plan out your day, looking for inspiration, which will maybe make it so you can find new activities, or maybe even a muse to inspire you!

The muses are on the bottom while the activities are on the top.

Your board is where you will plan your day, placing your activities (and possibly your job tile, unless you want to gain a new hardship from not being paid) and trying to link them together.

It’s more icon matching, like Class of ’89!

There are also times of day that are better for some activities over others.

The morning is for art stuff, and you can gain more inspiration when you do those activities then.

The evening is for love and romance! Or just leisure.

You’ll get more inspiration if you do that in the evening rather than starting your morning that way.

Of course, you may draw a Hardship from your deck, which you gain whenever you don’t work during the day.

These things can be assholes.

You are trying to earn enough inspiration to gain achievements, which are both the endgame goal (the first to five wins) and also something that will help you during the day, potentially.

I really enjoyed this one, even narrating my day to myself a la last week’s Friday Night post.

Don’t worry, I did it silently so nobody would think I was truly insane.

Would I enjoy this on the table, or would it just be mindless icon matching and fiddly?

I don’t know!

But I’d like to try and I’m intrigued right now.

How about games where you watch a playthrough and suddenly decide “this is for me!”

That’s happened a few times, many times due to Edward at Heavy Cardboard (though not always).

Resafa (from Delicious Games), though, was his fault.

This one wasn’t on my radar at all until I saw the Heavy Cardboard playthrough.

Then, suddenly, I had to have it.

This is a game about trading in the middle east, but also canal building, getting your workshops and gardens together to have a great place to create your goods.

The mechanisms are really cool (it’s a Suchy game, don’t ya know) and I just adored it.

Much more detail about it in my review, though.

Finally, there’s the awesome elevator card game called Up or Down from Capstone Games.

I admit that I only watched the Boardgame Geek Game Night video playthrough of it because I love watching Deborah Ann Woll play games (I do enjoy their other videos too, but that’s usually when I’m looking for a specific game or if the game itself looks intriguing and I’m browsing for something to watch).

But this is such a fun card game, very simple (except the scoring), easy to teach, and it’s about elevators.

How riveting is that?

Really, it is a lot of fun and my review really highlights that.

I love the fact that you aren’t playing a card that will help build your elevator shaft. You are playing a card to get another card that will help you build your elevator shaft.

I love that you can have three elevators, going in ascending or descending numerical order, and that if you can’t play a card that you gain (or want to play it a different way), you have to scrap one of your elevators.

Though even doing that gets you one point per card, so it’s not all bad.

It’s just a lot of fun, once you get people past the “the more of the same colour, the better for scoring, but they don’t all have to be the same colour” misunderstanding.

There are others, of course.

Edward got me buying way too many games, but also some games have just intrigued me at first glance and made me want to know more.

Did knowing more help or hurt?

For me, it’s mostly helped but I am open to the fact that some games just won’t actually be for me after that initial time that our gazes meet and we decide we have to meet each other.

Wow, I sound like an artist in Bohemians.

Anyway, have you ever had that effect with a game?

How did it turn out?

Let me know in the comments.