What we played ... Week 8

Hi Folks!!

I share with you our last game nights of the month.

In the last friday we played:

Criptyd (x2):

We forgot to take the photo for this one. In that night both games were awful, all players were totally distracted, the search for the criptyd became a nightmare, to get an idea we had the need to use unused color cubes to mark the map :(

T.I.M.E Stories - Brotherhood of the Coast.
The mission ends successfully with another murder after do 5 or 6 attempts to do it, we totally forgot a card that help us in the last combats.To avoid spoilers, we did not take the photo for this game.

Extra-Extra:

If you are looking how create a news paper this game could be the best option, with a worker placement system and bidding to do some actions.

The winner

Dice Hospital:

Managing the hospital hiring new specialists, upgrading the hospital  and using dice more effectively to treat patients, that is Dice Hospital, a great game.

Lorenzo Il Magnifico:

A great salad point game and a good engine builder, always trying to use the dice as better as possible to create great combos. Always fun.

In the second Era

At the end

Treasure Island:
To close the night we were looking for the John Silver's treasure.

The treasure was found

And yesterday we played

AuZtralia:

The last game from Martin Wallace, a competitive/semi-coop game in which the players will fight either against the other players and the Old Ones that survived in Auztralia. We are looking for a game with area control, resource management, action point allowance, with good components, simple to teach, and a very fun card system to resolve fights and old one's movements (push your luck). 

In the middle of the journey

I´ll see you in the next post.

What we played ... Week 6

Hi Folks!!

One more week with a lot of games and fun.

We played in the middle of the week NEWTON, and what a game!!!, all my expecting about this game was totally fulled. Is really good, the components are good, the hand management system works well, in every turn you have tough decisions to take, easy to teach, well balance, it´s possible collect a lot of point between rounds, and work for gain more points at the end of the game.

In the weekend, meanwhile waiting for others players our game night started with Le Havre - The Inland Port, the 2 player version for game of Le Havre. Good game, solid, fast, easy to teach, and you never be who win until the final score. To open a game night was a good choice.

Next game was CV, a game card, in that game we try to create our own life history, using cards and dice. The dice are useful to buy card in every turn (2 max), There are 6 different types of cards, 5 of them are useful to set collection (jobs, health, knowledge, relationship and  possessions) and the another one give a special effect one time, these group of cards are separated in 4 stages of life (childhood (starting cards), early adulthood, middle age and old age). The only way to obtain point in this game is make set collection either to fulfill the personal or the common objectives.

Setup + explanation

To finish our game night was played T.I.M.E Stories, the scenario chosen was Brotherhood of the Coast. 

Reading the instructions of the mission

And that was our game week,

I hope that you have enjoyed.

See you in the next post.

What we played ... Week 5

Hi Folks!!!

In our last game night we have new games and a lot of fun.

Treasure Island:

A deduction game where the captain Long John Silver hide a treasure chest and his crew commit a mutiny and question him about the location of the treasure. The game has some bluff, the components are good, one of the problems are the colors in the map are difficult to see, another problem if the players don´t have care could erase older marks in the map from others players. 

Setup

Next, in one table, was played the game of the month.
Chronicles of Crime:

Another deduction game but this one is cooperative, the players will try to solve a crime scene, collecting clues, interacting with witnesses, exploring the crime scene, etc. We don't take a pictures to avoid spoilers. This night was played the tutorial and the Case Nº 01, the final result in both was successful. Was fun see the players exploring the crime scene with the VR glasses in the cell phone, looking around in the "garagem".

Dice Hospital:

Explanation

In the other table was played:
Carpe Diem:

The last Feld's game, this one is amazing, very simple mechanisms (move, pick up and build) but with a lot of strategy between rounds, because at the end of each round, are 4 in total, happen a score point, to do that each player will select 2 adjacent cards to gain points but only if he/she fully meet the requirements of each card. If a player can’t fully meet the requirements of a scoring card, they don’t get any victory points at all and instead lose 4 victory points or will lose points. This game is fast, easy to teach, have a high replay-ability, the components are good, the negative of this game are the back of the 2 different building tiles, both are green and very similar, you certainly will lose some time at the begging or at the end of the game to separate them in 2 different stacks.

Third round

The cities

Azul:
The multi awarded game in 2017.

First round

The winner's wall

Azul - Stained Glass of Sintra:

And that's all for this week,

We'll see you in the next post

What we played ... Week 4

Hi Everyone,

This week our games nights start earlier ..... more specifically on Monday 😲, and nothing better than play 2 new games:

Architects of the West Kingdom (2018):

Players: 1 - 5 

Mechanisms: Worker placement, set collection

Playing time: 60 - 80 min

Designers: Shem Phillips, S J Macdonald

Beautiful game, like your predecessor Raiders of the North Sea, that have a little different system of worker placement, if you have more workers in one space better is the action, exception the black market and the guilds. The end of the game maybe triggered very fast or very slow depends of the players and their strategies. One of the better things, i think, is that in one action to block the opponents you can kidnap the meeples of one space and later put in the prison. The art work is amazing, the components are very good, definitively i want to play again.

Setup

Dice Hospital (2018):

Players: 1 - 4

Mechanisms: Action point allowance system, dice rolling and worker placement.

Playing time: 45 - 90 min

Designers: Stan Kordonskiy, Mike Nudd

Awesome dice game, highly recommended. I like a lot, very easy to teach and play, it's possible to do great combos. During 8 round you need to heal the most patients as possible in your hospital (dices), the number in the dice represent the health of the patient. In every round each player receive 3 new patients, then choose an upgrade for the hospital or hire a new specialist, then put the specialists to work in the hospital, in this phase only 2 special rules are applicable, at the end if you have a patient with 7 or more you discharge him/her or if you have a patient with 0 he/she die. Every time that you discharge patients from your hospital win reputation. At the end who have more reputation win the game.
Really good game, the components in the retail edition are good, we still see this game again soon.

Setup

One clinic at the end

Next, on Friday we played:
Castell (2018):

Players: 2 - 4

Mechanisms: Area movement, pattern building, set collection

Playing time: 60 - 90 min

Designers: Aaron Vanderbeek

A good puzzle game with the theme of the Catalonia's traditional party, in which people build human towers in festivals. To do that you need to recruit new castellers, to train new skills, and visit the cities where the festival occurs to show your impressive tower. The components are good, the colors of the cities could be more different, to teach this game would be necessary 10 minutes even with regular gamers, it´s possible to choose several ways to win points, have a good replay-ability.

After one Round

One Castell at the end

Montana (2017):

Players: 2 - 4

Mechanisms: Auction/bidding, set collection, worker placement.

Playing time: 45 min

Designers: Rüdiger Dorn
Another game from Rüdiger Dorn, fast and simple, could be a family game but this one have a lot of strategy, In your turn you can do 1 of 3 available actions, hire workers, put the workers to work or build a settlement. But you need workers to obtain resources, but at the same time you need money to pay this workers, and the resources are useful to build. A good and solid euro game, whit good components, have a good replay-ability, each game will be different.

At the middle of the game

Crown of Emara (2018):

Players: 2 - 4

Mechanisms: Action/movement programming, hand management, pick-up and deliver, worker placement

Playing time: 45 - 75 min

Designers: Benjamin Schwer
This one was a good surprise, very simple to teach and play, basically we have 2 roundels, one is the city and the another is the village, and in a turn we do 2 action, one for the card played and another for the space reached by our counselor. In one round we do that 3 times, the games ends after 6 rounds. The theme is good, the players are aspirants to be the successor of the King of Emara, for that each player need to persuade the majority of the newly arrived citizens in the capital to support their claim shall become the future king of Emara, to achieve this, players have to offer proper housing for everyone. This is because we have two markers for points, one for citizens and other for the houses, and in the final score only count the marker with less points. The components are good, i think that have a good replay-ability, the theme is good, solid euro game.

In the setup

At the end

At that's all for the past week, i hope that you enjoyed like us.

We'll see you in the next post.

What we played ... Week 3

Hi folks!!

Another week, and another game night with a lot of fun.

To open a night we played a puzzle game:
Cottage Garden (2016:)

Players: 1 - 4 

Mechanisms: Pattern building and tile placement

Playing time: 45 - 60 min

Designers: Uwe Rosenberg

The first of the Rosenberg´s trilogy puzzle games, in that one the players are gardeners challenged to fill their flowerbeds with plants (tiles), and when one of the flowerbed is full then score it. The game is play in several rounds until the gardener (dice) of the nursery pass to 6, and then will occur the last round. I think that is the easier to learn, is fast, always fun and playable with everyone, there are rules for games with kids.

Ready to play

Next, we split the players in two tables, in the first was played the game of the month
Blood Rage: Another game with new players but the same winner, 👏👏👏👏 congrats Jorge.

The first Era

The battle for Yggdrasil

At the end

And next Cryptid (x3) a good deduction game.

In the other table was played:
Dinosaur Island (2017):

Players: 1 - 4 

Mechanisms: Action point allowance system, dice rolling, set collection, tile placement, worker placement.

Playing time: 90 - 120 min

Designers: Jonathan Gilmour, Brian Lewis

If you like Jurassic Park certainly you like this game. In this game the players need to develop your dinosaur park, they do that in 4 different phases (research, market, laboratory and the park). In the research phase each player have 3 investigator, and they use for look for new dinosaurs or research for DNA from a mosquito trapped in amber (dice) or try to increase their cold storage. In the market phase the player can buy upgrades laboratory or attractions or specialist or DNA, only 2 times. In the laboratory phase the players use all your workers in the lab to gain some things for the park and future rounds. In the park phase the players receive  in the park as many visitors as the level of your excitement of the park and gain money and victory points for each survivor (patron) inside the park. Next occur the clean phase and start a new round. The end of the game is triggered hen there is only one objective card left unclaimed. This game is awesome, the components are very good even in the retail edition, there are a lot of rules in each phase to remember, my recommendation is make a summary for the rules, you will only need one sheet paper. After you were play 2 or 3 rounds, the game will become more easy. There are several ways to gain victory points but the objectives give us a path to follow. The victory points give us a player order in all the rounds, to be the first will be useful but would be difficult to recover he gap between players. Like i said, you choose the path that you will follow.

Setup

At the end

Merlin (2017):

Players: 2 - 4 

Mechanisms: Area control / area influence, dice rolling, set collection, worker placement.

Playing time: 75 min

Designers: Stefan Feld, Michael Rieneck

One of the most criticized games of these designers. This time we played without the king´s favor module, i think this module complicates the game. The idea of the game is easy, the players are knights of the Round Table that wish be the successor of the King Arthur in the throne. But never will be easy, you need repel the traitors, you can use Merlin as ally one time in each round, you need to use you henchmen in the principalities to gain benefits to complete missions. and to do all of this the game have 6 rounds, and in 3 of them the players score points.

This is a easy/medium game with hard decisions to take in every turn about the actions that want to do. At the begging of the round the players will roll all their dices, and would prepare all their movements for the round, because the knights only can move in one direction (clockwise). The players gain points for missions cards and for the 3 score rounds, at the end exist one more scoring. Always in this game the final score is always tight between the players. The components are good, the rulebook is good, and in the next game that we will play we will use the Arthur expansion that arrived the last week.

Third round

And that was our game night this week,

See you in our next post.

What we played ... Week 2

Hi folks,

Everything was ready in the "garagem" to play the game of the month:

But first to open the night we played:
Now Boarding (2018):

Players: 2 - 4 

Mechanisms: Pick-up and deliver, simultaneous action selection

Playing time: 30 - 60 min

Designers: Tim Fowers

This is a cooperative game where all the players are pilots of the same air company, and need to transport passengers between north american cities without a complaints. The game occur in real time, like Kitchen Rush. During this time the players may take a passeger(s), move the airplane or deliver a passenger(s). At the end of this time every passenger delivered  worth money, that would be use to upgrade the airplane, and the players who stayed in the ground start to be furious because the delayed time. The game ends if the company receive 3 complaints or all passengers were delivered. At the end every 2 passengers in airports or airplane count as 1 complaint. In summary, the game is .... a game, nothing special, the rulebook is awful, the components are ok, i don't know but something need to happen when the game is played with fewer players than 5, i don't know why, but the routes for air companies that not are in play are not available for others players at the start of the game, you always need to buy the upgrade for that route. 

One airplane at the end of the game

Next, we split the players in two tables, in one of them only was played:
Kanban - The drivers edition (2014):

Players: 2 - 4 

Mechanisms: Worker placement, action point allowance system, commodity speculation, variable phase order
Playing time: 90 - 120 min

Designers: Vital Lacerda

At the middle of the game

In the other table:
Blood Rage (2015):

Players: 2 - 4 

Mechanisms: Action point allowance system, area control / area influence, area movement, card drafting, hand management.

Playing time: 60 - 90 min

Designers: Eric M. Lang

Always a excitement game, trying to win glory for several paths (deaths, quests etc), but in this night we use wrong one card and that change everything in the game, mostly the final score, where the players end up with a lot of difference points, nothing normal for this game. But the most important thing was the people really enjoy the experience and certainly in the next game this mistake don´t be happen. I do not know what else I can say about this wonderful game that has not been said.

At the end of the first Era

At the end of the game

Reef (2018):

Players: 2 - 4 

Mechanisms: Hand management, pattern building.

Playing time: 30 - 45 min

Designers: Emerson Matsuuchi

One of my favorite games of 2018, where the players build a reef using cards, the cards have 2 parts, the upper part show which coral pieces will be pick up, and the bottom of the card give to us victory points if we might build the pattern shown, this occur in several rounds until one of the colors of the coral pieces runs out.It´s always fun see the people try to management the hands of cards (in the hand and in the market) and program which the future patterns to be built to gain the maximum possible points. In summary a perfect game to play fast at any time, easy to teach, components are very good.

The first round

The winner Reef

Port Royal (2014):

Players: 2 - 5 

Mechanisms: Card drafting, press your luck, set collection

Playing time: 20 - 50 min

Designers: Alexander Pfister
To close a game night this was the chosen one. Very simple game where the luck with the cards is´t everything. We are sorry because we forgot to take a photo .... was the emotion of the game.

The winner hand

And that´s all for this week, we´ll see you in the next post.

What we played .. Week 1

Hi everyone,

Is the first friday of the year that means is the first game night of this year, and what a night ..... only new games was played.

To open the game night:
1.- NOCH MAL! (2016):
Players: 2 - 4 

Mechanisms: Dice rolling, 

Playing time: 20 min

Designers: Inka & Marcus Brand
Another roll & write game, maybe the first one that was published of this type, like Ganz Schön Clever or Brikks. This one is really cool, in every turn all the die are rolled and the active player choose a two dice (number and color) and next, the others players may combine the rest dice as they wish (1 number + 1 color), if possible, no matter if they choose the same combination, to finish the current turn all the players risk in their players mat their choice.

At the end 

The winning score

2.- CRYPTID (2018) x2
Players: 3 - 5

Mechanisms:

Playing time: 30 - 50 min

Designers: Hal Duncan, Ruth Veevers
This is a deduction game like Tobago but without cards, and the players don´t pick up in treasures, instead they must find the location of the Cryptid. At the beginning every player receive 2 clues, the clues works like in Tobago (the cryptid is in one terrain, at one, two or three spaces from a terrain/structure). The game runs in turns where the active player can question another about their clue or may risk to say the location of the Cryptip.
The most impressive thing in this game, no matter which map is play or the number of players, always exist only one solution. Really good game easy to teach, and could be used with new players.

The end of the first game

3.- Underwater Cities (2018):
Players: 1 - 4

Mechanisms: Hand management, modular board, route/network building, worker placement

Playing time: 80 - 150 min

Designers: Vladimír Suchý
Another hit of Vladimir Suchý (after games like Pulsar 2048, The last will, etc). In this one, due to the high level of pollution in the world, humanity was forced to build underwater cities to live. A good and solid eurogame, with an action system (working placement) that's works well but it's very important to always play in first in every round to take the action that you really want for your strategy before another player do it and block the action spot. The hand management system allow you create a better "combos" when an action is deployed. A really good game, maybe a little longer at least for 4 players. Exist several strategies to win the game, but you really need to be focus in your strategy trying be little different of the others players to gain access to all actions that you need in every turn.

Another new in the "Garagem", we are going to select 1 or 2 games to play all fridays in a month (depend of the number of players), and we will called "The Game of the Month". This system was created because eather every week there are always new games, with lot of new rules in some cases, or because we go to play games that was played once and we need to refresh the rules. With this new system we are trying to not explain rules every week, play the games faster, and make the most of the game in every week. This month the game chosen was Blood Rage.

And that's all folks for this week.

We´ll see you in the next post