Fruity Geishas

Yesterday saw us dig out Fabled Fruit. It was Jan’s first and my second play of this. I really enjoy the simple turns and the prospect of the game developing through multiple plays by introducing new action cards. The game is short so it really is a race with two players to get fruits converted into juice as quickly / efficiently as possible. Jan won 5-4.

Then today we tried Hanamikoji, which is a great two player card game where you try to gain control of four out of seven geishas or three geishas worth at least 11 points. Each player gets four actions per round after which you check if someone has won. If not, you play another round. Games take between 10 and 30 minutes depending on the number of rounds needed to produce a winner.

I finally got my own official copy yesterday and so Jan and I played this evening. The picture below is the end of round two and Jan (the side closest to the camera) takes the win with four geishas on her side, as shown by the round markers.

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Finished yet?

Last night, Jan and I played one of our favourite relaxing games, Finito. It’s a Take It Easy style puzzle game where the roll of a 20 sided die determines where within a 6×6 number grid the players have to place one of their 12 bakelite discs. The discs are numbered 1-12 and once someone has ordered their discs in correct ascending order within the grid, they win the game (or round). Each round takes 5-10 minutes to play so we normally play three rounds counting up each player’s longest sequence of sequential numbers.

Jan was on fire tonight and, although we both went out at the same time in the first round, she won both of the other two rounds for a perfect score of 36 (3×12). I only managed 22 (12+5+5). Really fun game for up to 4 players.

Star Wars: The Meeple Awakens

Tonight we played Carcassonne: Star Wars Edition for the first time. I was playing Yoda and the force weak with him was. Jan kept beating me every time I tried to attack her planets (and she had quite a few of them). The final score was close but she triumphed 127-122.

The photo is just before final scoring.

Looting the Louvre

Tonight’s game was the fun dice game, Dice Heist, which we played on our Caribbean cruise last year and Jan won it easily. This time, I turned the tables by pretty much ignoring the paintings and going for gem groups. As a result, I ended up winning 50-38.

I also got another delivery today containing Dream Home and First Class: All Aboard the Orient Express. That makes five new games this month already. I need to start playing some more.

dice_heist

Dreaming of Dingos

I received a parcel today containing One Deck Dungeon, The Oracle of Delphi and Dingo’s Dreams.

The rules to the last of these are so short that Jan and I tried Dingo’s Dreams this evening. It’s a neat simultaneous puzzle game played on a 5×5 grid, where you reveal animals each turn and then push tiles in your grid (Amazing Labyrinth style) trying to manoeuvre them into a specific configuration. First to do so shouts “Dingo” (or should that be “Bingo”) and wins the game – or round if you’re playing to a certain number of target wins. Very simple and quick but fun for a really short game. Jan won.

I also noticed this morning that French online retailer Philibertnet had in the last 24 hours managed to get some more copies of Hanamikoji in stock. I’ve been waiting for this for ages so put in an order for that game, the Oink Games version of Twins and iello’s Time Bomb, which is the French version of Don’t Mess with Cthulhu / Tempel des Schreckens.

Three Valentines?

No, not three messages from secret admirers – rather Jan suggesting we play the three different versions of Love Letter that we have. Maybe I should have been suspicious – having scored some brownie points with the red roses this morning – but winning all three games is inconceivable. I hardly ever win so Jan was probably going easy on me.

It was interesting to play the original, Batman and Hobbit versions back-to-back and each has just enough of a difference to make it worthwhile playing in its own right. Good fun!

love_letter

Steam time

I got an English copy of Steam Time today by Rudiger Dorn and Kosmos. I tried it this evening with Jan and it was a very good medium weight game – slightly on the heavier side than Jan prefers but she coped with the rules fine. It’s a worker placement game played over five rounds where you are moving through time collecting and using resources (crystals and steam) to power your airships to conduct expeditions and missions that will give you esteem (VPs) during and at the end of the game. Lots of paths to victory and some forward planning required to optimise your turns – which we didn’t really try to do on this learning game.

Scores were close with me winning 63-58 but that  may have been due to Jan misreading a 9 point mission card that she thought she could use more than once – she had the resources to score it a second time so would then have won. Very good and took us marginally over an hour as a two player game. Four player likely to be around 90-120 minutes.

steam_time

Can I play with Madness?

Jan and I tried a learning game of The Big Book of Madness this evening. I was solidifying the rules in my mind as we were playing so Jan found it hard going and didn’t enjoy it as much as she might have but I thought it was really good.

This is a co-op game where everyone is building their own deck and using their cards to tackle the challenges thrown at the players. It seemed pretty tough even on the easy level and we lost due to running down the Madness card deck in the fifth round of six. However, that may have been exacerbated by the fact that I had ignored that one of the actions was to cure a madness card in your hand and return it to the deck so neither of us ever picked that option.

It plays up to five players and seems fairly easy to try solo so I think this should get played again pretty soon.