boardgames

Last week saw the arrival of a kickstarter game I backed a couple of years ago, Mercurial!

As a result, I've seen 3 plays of this in the last week; one solo, one 2-player, and one 4-player.

Very much enjoying this title so far! The designer has opted to use iconography on the cards instead of any words. Whilst this slows the initial couple of plays down, you soon learn the language it was designed with and you can begin to intuit cards quite quickly.

Something I forsee possibly being an issue for some people is the lack of player interaction. It falls into the same space as Wingspan in that the only interaction one can really have is drafting a card that another player wanted.

The art is beautiful, vibrant, evocative, and most of the time you feel like you are manipulating the elements as you flip and convert your dice to your needs!

Two plays of Coimbra. Great little euro if you like dice and card drafting and track-based income. Sits somewhere in the neighborhood of Tiletum and Lorenzo Il Magnifico. My only complaint is that the symbology is a little unusual and can take a while to get back into after a break. But maybe it will be easier next time. I lost both plays but really enjoyed it regardless.

One play of Gizmos which is a comfort game, always happy to play and we get though it pretty quickly these days. I found a cool draw engine and got lucky with the draws so I was able to jump ahead and finish with 4 level 3 buildings and a bunch of VP tokens that were doubled by one of these buildings.

A quick play of Rajas of the Ganges: The Dice Charmers which is another comfort one, a roll & write with lots of combos and cool dice drafting. This and the original game have popularized the two-sided scoretrack that Ark Nova uses too.

Picked up the Open Doors expansion for Taverns of Tiefenthal. Punched and sorted it and managed to fit everything into the expansion box (which is smaller than the base one). Studied up on the rules and looking to play it very soon, maybe today.

Online I've been having fun with After Us which is a unique deck-builder with some mild programming elements. When you play your cards you place them next to each other on the table and the way their edges connect determine how you will be able to use them.