What was Played?? Week 48

Hi everyone,

One more week with a lot of games and fun and two nights with a lot of news.

The first one we played in the middle of the week was a new one:
Forum Trajanum (2018)

Emperor Trajan plans to have a monument built for eternity: the Forum Trajanum.
Players: 2 - 4 

Mechanisms: Tile placement, variable player powers.

Playing time: 60 - 120 min

Designers: Stefan Feld
Feld did it again, a solid and smooth game, with a simple mechanism, turn two cards, chose two tiles from the colony keep one and pass the other, receive other tile, chose one and take the benefit, then build one tile in your colony and send envoys or gain points. Repeat this by three rounds and the player with more points be admitted to the small circle of illustrious and mighty personalities surrounding the Emperor. Good artwork, good components with the exeption of the cards, there are very thin.

After one round

My colony at the end

In the second night the opening game was:
Battle Line (2000):

Two opponents face off across a 'battle line' and attempt to win the battle by taking 5 of 9 flags or 3 adjacent flags
Players: 2  

Mechanisms: Hand managament, Set collection.

Playing time: 30 min

Designers: Reiner Knizia
A good game for 2 players, where the flags are won with 3 card making pokers hands (straight flush, three of a kind, flush and straight) using a troop and tactical cards, I like this one more than the Lost Cities.

At the end of the game

Azul - Stained Glass of Sintra (2018):

Already talked about this game three weeks ago, it have a great view and good components but i think still prefer the first Azul. Maybe because this one have a complex system scoring, every time that a pattern is finish your score points and because the "glazier" conditions the placement of the glasses (it is only possible to place glasses underneath or to the right of it). We need to play more to take a final decision.  

At the end of the game

One window at the end

Brikks (2018):
Already talked about this roll and write game, a good puzzle game with a lot of luck due to the mechanism of rolling dices, it is always difficult to predict the next piece. Easy to teach and play this is one of my favorites actually.

Gùgōng (2018):
China, 1570. China is under the reign of the Longqing Emperor, of the Ming Dynasty. He inherited a country in disarray after years of mismanagement and corruption. He resided in the Forbidden city, which was the seat of many emperors under the Ming Dynasty. The country was already famous for its very intricate bureaucracy, but this also led to a lot of corruption. Even though the penalties for corruption were very high, the highest Officials of the Forbidden City would pretend to uphold the ban on corruption, by accepting gifts of petitioners, and returning one of seemingly lower value. Players take on the role of powerful Chinese families trying to gain influence and power by exchanging gifts with Officials.

Players: 1 - 5 

Mechanisms: Action / Movement Programming, Deck / Pool Building, Hand Management, Set Collection, Worker Placement.

Playing time: 60 - 90 min

Designers: Andreas Steding
A good game with a great artwork, very clever mechanism with using cards to do actions. You need to use a cards and assistants in a very smart way. A game that is resolved in the little details, with few points collected during the game, where each action should always be the best option. In my opinion this game was good, i think that have a low replay-ability, because in every game will try to do the same no matter which tiles are in the tableau.

At the end of the game

And that´s all folks!

See you in 15 days.

What was Played?? Week 47

Hi everyone,

The last week the people joined in the "Garagem" to played games in 2 different nights.

The first night, in the middle of the week and have been played 2 new ones games:

1.- Teotihuacán - City of Gods (2018):

Teotihuacan: City of Gods it´s a game played in three eras in which each player commands a force of worker dice, these dice could grow in strength with every action. On your turn, you can do one of these two option, take a normal turn (move a worker around a modular board up to three spaces and do something in that space) or unlock all your locked workers for free. At the end the player to gain most fame is the winner.

Players: 2 - 4 

Mechanisms: Area movement, point to point movement, set collection, tile placement, variable player powers, worker placement.

Playing time: 90 - 120 min

Designers: Daniele Tascini, Dávid Turczi

Notes: A game of the well knowns Daniele Tascini (T'zolkin, The Voyage of Marco Polo) and Dávid Turczi (Anacrony, Kitchen Rush, Cerebria), a very strategic and solid game, always with a toughs decisions to take, high replay-ability with different levels of difficulty, good components. In summary an excellent game that entered in the collection, actually, one of my favorites.   

At the end of our 3 players game

2.- Brikks (2018):

Brikks can be viewed as tabletop Tetris, with each player trying to place falling blocks into their grid to score the most points. As soon as you can no longer place a quadromino in your grid, your game is over and proceed to final score (lines with 8, 9 or 10 "X"+ point bonus track+ left over bombs + 1 point per 2 activated, but unused energy points).
Players: 1 - 4 

Mechanisms: Dice rolling, pattern building, tile placement

Playing time: 20 - 30 min

Designers: Wolfgang Warsch

Notes: In fact, Tetris and Roll-and-Write games are on fire. This year Wolfgang Warsch published four small games (The Mind, Illusion, Ganz Schön Clever and finally Brikks) all of them are easy to teach and play, all can be played with different levels of difficulty to support the entry of new players to the hobbie. For this one in specific, maked me remember when i have played tetris in the arcade. The main diference between boths games is that in the arcade you knew which was the next quadromino, in the board game the next quadromino is defining by rolling dice. The components are normal, everything in this game is logic. In sumary, it´s a good game to open or close a game nighta several times.

One of the play-mat at the end of the game

In the weekend only 2 games was played:

1.- Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King (2015) (x2) one play with the expansion "Journeyman (2017)" and the another without this expansion.

In this game the players are chieftains of famous clans and want to build their kingdoms to score as many points as possible during five rounds. In the end, the player with the best kingdom, becomes the sovereign of the island.

Players: 2 -5 

Mechanisms: Auction/Bidding, Set Collection, Tile Placement

Playing time: 30 - 50 min (75 with the expansion)

Designers: Andreas Pelikan, Alexander Pfister
Notes: A great game, one of my favorites, i feel sorry for not being able to play more games with the auction/bidding mechanic (Yunnan, Tramways, Five Tribes). This game is easy to teach and play, has a high replay-ability, good components, i don´t see any negative for this game.

Game end with the expansion (4 player game)

2.- The Mind (2018):

In sumary, the game is a deck of numbered cards (1-100) and the players will try to discard cards, without talk, in ascending order, trying to complete the levels associated to a numbers of players.
Players: 2 -4 

Mechanisms: Hand management, cooperative play.

Playing time: 15 min

Designers: Wolfgang Warsch
How i said before, a little game, very easy to teach and play, with a little bit of tension because the players can´t talk, like Brikks a good for open or close any game night. 

At the beginning

And that´s all, this was a our week of games,

See you next week.