July 18th Weekend Wrap up
It was great having everyone over!
Had some great games get on the table this weekend:
- Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition
- Azul
- Flashpoint: Fire and Rescue
- Five Crowns
- Tiny Epic Galaxies
To start, the new version of Terraforming Mars is very similar but different enough. The overall reviews after the game were mixed, some thought it was easier while others were more meh. The consensus was that it needed to reach the table again to see what it was like without all the distractions (my son brought over his new 8 week old kitten, yea, it was a distraction). My feeling on the game is positive, it's not as meaty as the original but the tracking mechanisms to reduce the "card-watching" helps a lot. Steel and titanium are abstracted into production levels that can be used against and building or space tagged cards. There are no cities on the planet nor trees or special structures, those are now cards that give victory points. Like TM, building your engine is the key and the mechanics for that are mostly the same. The biggest change is that you can't do everything on the turn, you have to select 1 phase and in the game we played, there are times when most people want to do production so you end up with a bunch of people doing production and maybe only one other phase in the turn, definitely a different vibe than TM.
We had 2 games going at the same time so the other group played Azul and Five Crowns. Both games are fantastic lighter games. Five Crowns is a card game that plays like rummy but with a special deck of cards. Azul is a tile laying game. I love them both!
A funny story, I have never played Flashpoint: Fire and Rescue. The owner asked me to find an watch a YouTube video on how to play. Well, I went and found one. You gotta watch this because, in my mind, this was what we were playing because I KNOW NOTHING about the game.
Is that what you expected???? Well, playing by the rules, the game is definitely much harder when you get past the introductory scenario. Has a feel like Pandemic a bit with some of it's mechanics.
The last one we played was Tiny Epic Galaxies. A whole lot of fun but learning the ins and outs has some complexities at first. Definitely worth getting it on the table.
Hope to see everyone on August 6th, If you haven't reserved your spot, get out there and do it!
