Played a bunch of new (or new-to-me) games this weekend. Some quick first impressions in order of positivity to negativity, approximately. (And, a few photos: https://goo.gl/photos/dSUA8xLwLuS5QpzJ6 )
7 Wonders Duel is great. It captures the feel of 7 Wonders in a 2-player game quite well. I like 7 Wonders, but my +Felix Rodriguez (who I played against) is not a fan, but we both enjoyed Duel.
Isle of Skye is a very good tile laying, price-setting game. Definitely recommended with some cleverness in the pricing mechanics and the city-building feel.
Flip City is a nice melding of push-your-luck, city-building and deck building. I like games that effectively synthesize across genres and this succeeds.
Minerva is an interesting resource/production game with a couple novel mechanics. I thought I had dug myself a bad strategic hole by saving too many actions to the last round (having more actions than other players makes them more expensive) but it turned into a satisfying come from behind win.
Artifacts Inc. is a fun, thematic dice game of archaeology. It seems to have multiple interesting viable strategies and good interlocking strategies. A bit much downtime even with only 4 players, but not bad.
Spinderella is a really cool clever-physical-mechanism kids game with spiders, ants and magnets. In the end, extremely appealing mechanism and components, but sort of straightforward and random gameplay. But so cool.
Tides of Time is a beautifully illustrated microgame reminiscent of Microcosm or Fairy Tale. I'm not sure I'd need it in addition to those two, but it executes well on the drafting/cards scoring off each other mechanic.
Kraftwagen has a great action selection/turn-taking rondel-like mechanic going for it and is a nicely constructed system game with a somewhat novel sell-things-to-buyers-for-points mechanic, but it has a bit of a winner-take-all quality that I don't love, and the rest of the game didn't make up for that. The old-timey art also just doesn't do it for me.
Cubist is a cool dice-based building games. You could very much think of this as "Advanced Blueprints" if you know that game. It definitely adds some good strategy but has some annoying sharp edges where players can lose the value of large resource commitments. In the end, I prefer Blueprints, but if you feel Blueprints is too light/filler-like, this might be a good candidate.
Beasty Bar is cute, if a bit random and fun.
Samara is a fine game with the calendar/clock action mechanic but the strategy and choices didn't feel as interesting as I'd have hoped.
Lift It! is a weird dexterity building game with hooks and things strapped to your head. Definitely worth one play, not so sure about more.
New York 1901 was very disappointing given positive things I'd heard. In the end, it felt like a fairly mundane placement/influence game.
7 Wonders Duel is great. It captures the feel of 7 Wonders in a 2-player game quite well. I like 7 Wonders, but my +Felix Rodriguez (who I played against) is not a fan, but we both enjoyed Duel.
Isle of Skye is a very good tile laying, price-setting game. Definitely recommended with some cleverness in the pricing mechanics and the city-building feel.
Flip City is a nice melding of push-your-luck, city-building and deck building. I like games that effectively synthesize across genres and this succeeds.
Minerva is an interesting resource/production game with a couple novel mechanics. I thought I had dug myself a bad strategic hole by saving too many actions to the last round (having more actions than other players makes them more expensive) but it turned into a satisfying come from behind win.
Artifacts Inc. is a fun, thematic dice game of archaeology. It seems to have multiple interesting viable strategies and good interlocking strategies. A bit much downtime even with only 4 players, but not bad.
Spinderella is a really cool clever-physical-mechanism kids game with spiders, ants and magnets. In the end, extremely appealing mechanism and components, but sort of straightforward and random gameplay. But so cool.
Tides of Time is a beautifully illustrated microgame reminiscent of Microcosm or Fairy Tale. I'm not sure I'd need it in addition to those two, but it executes well on the drafting/cards scoring off each other mechanic.
Kraftwagen has a great action selection/turn-taking rondel-like mechanic going for it and is a nicely constructed system game with a somewhat novel sell-things-to-buyers-for-points mechanic, but it has a bit of a winner-take-all quality that I don't love, and the rest of the game didn't make up for that. The old-timey art also just doesn't do it for me.
Cubist is a cool dice-based building games. You could very much think of this as "Advanced Blueprints" if you know that game. It definitely adds some good strategy but has some annoying sharp edges where players can lose the value of large resource commitments. In the end, I prefer Blueprints, but if you feel Blueprints is too light/filler-like, this might be a good candidate.
Beasty Bar is cute, if a bit random and fun.
Samara is a fine game with the calendar/clock action mechanic but the strategy and choices didn't feel as interesting as I'd have hoped.
Lift It! is a weird dexterity building game with hooks and things strapped to your head. Definitely worth one play, not so sure about more.
New York 1901 was very disappointing given positive things I'd heard. In the end, it felt like a fairly mundane placement/influence game.
Felix Rodriguez - 2015-12-07 17:46:18-0500
I love that my review of Kraftwagen is nearly the same as yours except replacing didn't with did.