Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
Underwater Cities – Digital – Coming to Steam…Sometime
Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games announced recently that their roll & write game, Rolling Realms, is coming to Steam soon, developed by Savant Games.
That’s all well and good, but I’m not really a roll & write fan, so this news didn’t excite me very much.
Until somebody actually went to the Savant Games web site and noticed that they are also developing…Underwater Cities!
Underwater Cities is a great city-building card game where you are using cards to build an underwater community of domed cities, using action selection and cards from your hand.
Designed by Vladimir Suchy with artwork by Uildrim and Milan Vavroň, it was published by Rio Grande Games in 2018.
I finally got it to the table last October and loved it so much that I played it twice.
Here’s a picture of the game in action just to whet your whistle, but you can see more of my thoughts (and pictures) in my New to Me – October 2022 post.
This game coming to Steam, especially if it has async multiplayer (and really, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t), would be a godsend and first day purchase for me.
There are only a few screenshots on the Steam page, but they are enough to entice me.
This thing went on my wishlist as soon as I found out about it!
No word yet on a release date (before or after Rolling Realms?) but I’ll keep an eye out on it.
It also reminds me that while I played the game twice in October, I haven’t played it since.
I should rectify that.
Anyway, two pieces of exciting news for your Saturday (after the previous Terraforming Mars post).
How’s your weekend going?
Terraforming Mars – Automa Coming to Kickstarter Soon(ish)
Exciting news yesterday! (I would have posted it yesterday, but too many posts for a Friday already).
Even though Terraforming Mars: Prelude 2 has not even seen a hint of Kickstarter yet (maybe later in the Summer is the last I heard), they’ve already announced another expansion for Kickstarter…kind of.
I saw on Boardgame Geek (which posted this from a Facebook post) that Terraforming Mars: Automa is going to be hitting Kickstarter at some point (presumably after the Prelude expansion?).
Terraforming Mars: Automa is essentially a new solo system for this venerable classic (ok, 7 years isn’t “venerable,” but it feels like it).
Designed by Nick Shaw and David Turczi (Turczi is especially well-known for designing solo systems for popular games, but he says that Shaw designed it and that Turczi just made it better), this will replace the solo mode that came in the base game.
Never having played it solo, I’m not sure how well that worked, but this system will essentially interact with the card deck. The automa will be able to achieve milestones and awards and it won’t be so focused on Terraforming at the speed of light in order to win.
Instead of racing against time, you are playing against actual corporations, which sounds much better.
BGG user “odditie” (who apparently helped playtest it) chimed in to explain a little of how it works.
Read MoreFriday Night shots – House Rules
Happy Friday!
I wasn’t sure what would be happening this week. I haven’t really felt in the mood to write much, which is why nothing appeared until my Cat in the Box review earlier today.
But enough about writing funks. You’re not here to hear about that stuff.
Belly up to the bar and let the music play! Listening to Chaka Khan right now on the iHeart Radio Casey Kasem network.
But I’ll turn it down so we can chat a bit.
This week, how about we talk about house rules?
I can’t imagine how hard it is to write a good rule book. Editing one might be even harder!
Game rule books always seem to be missing something or have some confusing rule or two in them that make people have to ask what they should do when they are playing the game.
An infamous recent example is the Clank in Space rulebook not actually stating what the “Clank” symbol was for when hacking data terminals.
But that’s not what I’m talking about here. (though I should write about that on a future Friday. Hold on while I write that down).
I’m talking about going against the rule book because you think you can do better.
And maybe you can?
I don’t know.
Read MoreReview – Cat in the Box
Trick-taking games are almost becoming a dime a dozen boardgame commodity. There are so many of them out there that there has to be some kind of hook in order to get them noticed.
There’s Brian Boru, for example (which I’ll be talking about in my July New to Me post). This one has trick-taking but also a kind of area control and you get rewards for losing tricks.
The most recent example that I can think of (or at least that I have played, though there is actually another trick-taking game in my July post coming up) is Cat in the Box.
Remember that whole Schrodinger’s Cat quantum mechanics thought experiment?
Imagine that as a trick-taking game.
The game was designed by Muneyuki Yokouchi (横内宗幸) with artwork by Osamu Inoue (井上磨). It was originally published in 2020 (I don’t know who the original publisher was) but in 2022 Bezier Games came out with a “deluxe” edition and that’s what I played.
It plays 3-5 players, though there is a 2-player variant.
How does it work?
Let’s take a look!
Read MoreLiberty or Death – Storage Solution With Rails on Boards
I’m really enjoying these plastic storage tray solutions from Rails on Boards/Cube4Me, and I’m enjoying writing about them!
I have just about finished with the trays that they sent me to come up with some solutions for, though I am short a few card trays.
But no matter!
Some of the smaller trays that I couldn’t find a use for (with the games I own, not that they’re useless!), I decided would work really well with Liberty or Death, that illustrious COIN game from GMT Games about the American Revolution.
I was a bit torn, thinking at first that I should use one of the 20-compartment deep trays, but it just seemed a bit crowded.
I then tried two of the 12-compartment ones, one of the deeper 15 mm trays and one 8 mm depth.
But that was really sparse, and didn’t have a place to put the pawns and dice. I ended up using a spare split card tray for those.
Finally, I looked at everything again and made a decision.
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – One And Done Games
It’s Friday again!
That was fast (that could be because I’m not writing this on Friday, since I’m actually out playing games tonight!)
Grab a seat, and I hope you don’t mind the Delerium playing on the speakers. The volume’s not high.
Can I get you a drink?
Let’s talk a few minutes about one and done games.
What does that mean?
Those games that you play for the first time (hey, they’re “new to you!”) and after playing it, you just think “eh, I don’t need to play that again.”
Factory Fun is the perfect example of that for me.
Ew.
But there is a bit of a nuance to this question, at least how I’m going to address it here.
It’s not just “I don’t like that game, I’m never playing it again.”
There’s also the response to that.
What do I mean?
More after the break…
Read MoreAces of Valor After Action Report – British Short Campaign – Mission 2
Sorry it’s been a couple of months since the first mission report from the new solo WWI aircraft game, Aces of Valor.
It’s not because I didn’t want to!
Things just got ahead of me.
Like other German fighter pilots!
How to play this very fine narrative game was detailed in my review of it, so I won’t go into much of that.
Just to recap from Mission #1, though, I chose the Short Campaign (8 missions) for the British, and this is Mission #2.
Would there be a Mission #3?
Let’s take a look.
Read MoreThe Last Hundred Yards (Volume 3) – The Solomon Islands – Storage Solution With Rails on Boards
Having already used the excellent Cube4Me plastic storage trays for the first two volumes of The Last One Hundred Yards (from GMT Games), it was a no-brainer that when I finally had some extra trays, I would create a set for the third volume, The Solomon Islands.
As I said in the posts about the other two volumes, this is a game system that almost calls out for storage.
The game faces players off in intense battles in the Pacific islands between Japanese forces and US Marines.
Each side’s pieces are divided into companies and if you put all of the Japanese or American infantry into one bag, you would be doing a lot of sorting during setup.
If you don’t, then you’d have lots of baggies!
As with the other two, Cube4Me comes to the rescue.
Read MoreNew to Me – June 2023
June has been a busy month, and not seemingly conducive to getting new board games played.
We missed a Sunday game day (Father’s Day) and for two of the other three Sundays, our main “new games” guy wasn’t able to come.
However, we maximized that one date to get three games in and we had another day where another guy brought a game that I had been wanting to try for a while.
Add a new solo game to the mix and we have five new to me games in June!
I’ve learned to try and get multiple new games in when I have the chance, at least until I’ve played a few. After that, game days can concentrate on old favourites.
I don’t want any more of these monthly posts to only have one game in them.
However, the Cult of the New to Me members were not necessarily happy with me. All of the games were from 2022 or 2023.
Who knew that Good Old Joe was a board gamer?
Hey, one of the games is a reskin of a 1998 game.
Doesn’t that count?
So without further ado (all of my ado was dug up by some nitwit evolutionist and sent to a museum anyway), let’s get started!
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – Game Length
(This was supposed to go out last night, but instead it’s going out tonight. Pretend it’s still Friday, ok?)
It’s another Friday, and it’s vacation time!
Yes, I am off of work for an entire month, not returning until July 31.
But since it is Friday, let’s belly up to the bar and talk about another game-related topic that doesn’t require a whole lot of brain power (or coherency).
That subject would be game length.
What kind of game length are you good for?
I struggle with this one quite a bit.
But first, let’s take a break.
Read More
Dude! Take Your Turn! 