new MA! how'd you like it, and did you play the original? I've loved the new stuff but I'm not sure if anything's changed since I tried it

I think it's fantastic. Such a wonderfully silly experience. But I never played the original, so I don't know what's changed.

actually very glad to hear that! one of my reservations was that people who were coming in fresh might not meet it where it is (not you obv, but in general), so I'm glad it hit for you I'll ping you some of the changes, I don't think all of those are Known yet

Yeah, I'd love to hear what's changed.

Final Girl and Mahjong were the only two for me this week.

How do you like phantom ink? I’ve had some good times with that one with @danbullock.bsky.social and @meeplelady.bsky.social among others!

It's good! Always easy to play but makes people feel clever. I prefer some other communication games, but it's such a snap to teach that it really stands out.

Some wonderful gaming this week for me. My sixth grade son and I have been really enjoying Compile. The whole family has been playing High Tide, Chicken!, and Brick Like This!. And I've been exploring in Earthborne Rangers.

My sixth grader loves Compile! She keeps requesting it.

Clank, Otter, Thunder Road Vendetta Carnival of Chaos, Lure, Toy Battle, Faraway

Kniziathon baby!

Wow, well done!

Bit of a hard week parenting wise, but somehow I reminded my daughter how much she loves dice games. And then I finally beat her at Sausage Sizzle, haha.

We’re on the road, so it’s primarily small card games (bottle imp and Hanafuda 🎴), and the occasional match of Curious Cargo.

Flip 7 (a decent time waster), a three hour session of Vantage with my son (which was phenomenal), The Magnificent (pretty great), and Sherlock: The Game is Afoot (pretty bad)

I've been so happy to hear about people enjoying Vantage. I really think it's special.

same. my wife bounced off it really hard, but the other people i’ve played it with have really gotten into it. i think it really is contingent on the proper framing before you start and choosing people to play with that will be predisposed to enjoy the journey it presents.

due to the nature of the game being so isolated, I think Vantage will be somewhat divisive. You may have a great experience completing quests, while someone else at the table may be completely lost, aimlessly wandering around. The game itself though, is a heck of an achievement in design.

totally agree

I keep having to play Fresh Fish, and I keep being dogshit at it

Thoughts on 21x? I've not played it. I was interested in the concept but have never heard anyone talk about it.

I hate it. But I hate doing math.

I love doing math(s), but I don't like it much either :(

I like both math and 21x :-)

OK, we just need to find someone who doesn't like math but does like 21X now :D

I think that will be much harder ;-)

www.spielbar.com/wordpress/re...

Do you suspect it's a good game for someone who does like maths, or is that too hard to say when you're so lost in anti numeric dysphoria?

In my opinion, it's a clever mathematical puzzle (and a lovely production), but not a fun multiplayer game.

Hard to say. This past session saw two players consistently draw 21 right away, so while everyone else was puzzling through it, they just kinda won.

Well that sounds like the blackjack experience!

Thank you for elaborating. It sounds like maybe a smart idea in theory that didn't survive contact with reality.

It’s a horrible little game for the worst kind of people (mathematicians). My friend made it and it’s an absolutely bonkers concept that you will either relish playing or despise, and I think most people will know which going in 😅

I am struggling to parse the tone on this

The first sentence is tongue-in-cheek. I love that it exists, but I don’t feel as clever as I’d like to when I play it 😂

Awesome to see work work work being played. I’m currently getting through my LOK book and loving it.

Got Xylotar for my birthday and it was ridiculous fun. Also played Faiyum. Yes, you are partially responsible for both ;)

Both great games!

When I read the rules to Xylotar, I thought, this will never work...but it did! Unique trick taker for sure with mechanisms and theme...even though the whole polar bear part doesn't play out other than in the story.

Finally tabled some long owned but unplayed games. Was pleasantly surprised by The Last Command - the two deck gimmick was worth it - and whole Fleet Captains was near zero interaction it made my Trekkie self very happy. Rolling Heights needs to be 30 minutes shorter but has that John D Clair flair.

*while One day I’ll proofread before hitting send. But not today.

I'd never heard of The Last Command. Looks neat!

It was one of those random “I demoed it at origins and it stuck in my head” games. Worth checking out. Setup might be too fiddly but the gameplay seems to be there (note I’ve played twice so YMMV).

The hook is that you have one deck that is our hardware - guns, scanners, jammers, etc - and one that is your crew that you play into locations that give you resources at those locations in order to play hardware. It leads to a lot of timing decisions that were interesting and unusual for the genre.

I'll have to see about contacting the designer.

Are you playing extended Wyrmspan for a certain academic expansion or just because?

I'm not sure I'm allowed to say...

Pina Coladice, Scream, Cryptid Cafe: Chef’s Apprentice, and some Micro Macro at the family game night.

We're enjoying Ghostbumpers as long as everybody pushes their luck as hard as possible (which seems to be the winning strat anyway) FSD has a very cool diceplacement system which elevated it from other miniatures games. The others were fun too, especially Dead Cells unlocking cycle.

I haven’t played my copy of the new Calimala yet. I worry it’s going to be too dry for my interests right now (COIN). Entice me!

Ha, I'd personally rather be playing COIN. But Calimala is faster, simpler, and more elegant than any COIN, so... there you go?

Haha I really want to have a pleasant dry euro in my library so I backed this one but then my head went in another direction while it delivered

Yesterday I finally took ancient BGG PNP rec Kaiju Siege off my shelf of shame. I'm not sure I like it, but I played it 3 times in a row. Maybe that says it all. Today I set up my new copy of Harvest which I'm giddily excited to solo tomorrow. Worker placement isn't normally my thing surprisingly!

Do you have Compile Main 2 yet? Kind of a bust for me this week. My brother taught SETI, we got a rule wrong (the discount for landers is if there is an orbiter present, not if you are turning an orbiter into a lander, which you cannot do) and we cut it short after 3 rounds.

Nope. Ever since the dissolution of GtG, I'm not sure who to reach out to about nabbing a review copy. =/

That's the second time I've seen Workworkwork in your lineup. I looked it up online and I still don't understand what I'm seeing. Is it a video game? What's the story, there?

It's the next puzzle book by @letibus.bsky.social, a little bit like his last two, LOK and Abdec. (But also, not at all like them.)

Definitely worth getting then?

I've only finished up two of the book's chapters, so I don't quite know yet, but I've definitely been enjoying it a lot.

I played lok on digital and totally loved it. After watching the tutorial vid for workworkwork, some of the puzzle logic seems better suited as a digital game, would you agree? Or do you think workworkwork has some special charm as an analog experience?

In some ways, sure. I personally like these things as physical books, despite liking Lok Digital quite a bit.

😅If I may interject a bit (the designer here) - WWW would absolutely work as a digital game, I agree, but the main idea of the book for me is finding ways to “work” within an inherently awkward and difficult system - to build your logic-shortcuts toolbox and unlock the puzzles through pure insight.

A digital game would allow for trial and error, bypassing the solving paths that I prepared - if a digital version would ever be made, I’d definitely approach the puzzle design differently and look for friction elsewhere

As a player it felt similar to a physical implementation of a Zach-like… IMO there are lots of Zach-like digital games so it wouldn’t have been as interesting in a digital format. The charm for me was trying to think through it as a physical puzzle.

Thank you, Stu!! Zachtronic games were definitely one of the major inspirations :))

Nice!

I'm a little out of the loop on lightning train but I've seen it hyped up. Is it like a cube rails game?

Nah. It's a bag-building game with some route-building and delivery.

so, no lightning?

For a game with big lightning zaps on the cover, it has a marked shortage of thunderclap.

Not even Thunderclap Newman?

I did some very early play testing of Magical Athlete. Have you played both boards, if so do you have a preference? I preferred the original straightforward board...but that was because there were some loops happening at the time with the more chaotic board, that I believe got cleaned up.

I like both boards, but I especially enjoy how the second board affords new ways to get ahead. We had one player earn like 8 points from looping. Which was super cool!

This week I got good ones to the table, some not that well known. Carrooka, On Tour, Bat Flip Dynasty, and 3 games of Spooktacular by @level99games.com.

Brad is sending me Spooktacular! He showed it to me way back on TTS, so I'm excited to play it in person.

It's a super light game which I kind of enjoy as I tend to play a little bit heavier. The theme is top notch, and with 20 movie monsters to play with, it has just been a constant delight to try new things out, solo and multi. I haven't had this much giddiness with a game for quite a while.

My one big downside is only having one bot monster for solo to play against. I hope the fan made, lvl99 approved (or if lvl 99 decides to work on it themselves) bot-factory develops more. (currently 2 more monster bots have been created that I have seen and will be playing against soon)

Last time you played 21x you said it was worse than having food poisoning 😅 What brings it back to your table?

I need to write about it, haha. I still hate it.

It’s a blessing and a curse being a professional! As a product of my playtesting group I can only beg for forgiveness, but you’ll receive no such apology from the designer 😂

Wow, lightning train just sounds so zany, I'm so intrigued by it!

It's definitely interesting. I'm not sure I like it very much. I was expecting more whiz-bang. Magic or something. It's weirdly "straight" for a game with big lightning zaps on the cover.

Ah ok, well that's kinda what I imagined, so yeah guess that would be a bit of a let down!

I got The Pillars of the Earth to the table (off my SoS), and joined in a game of Galileo Galilei. Oh, and tried High Tide with the Mrs.

High Tide is such a puzzly little game. A really well designed 2 player abstract!

For the first time in a while, my spouse and I broke out Imotep: The Duel. It's a tight, quick game where tempo is (almost) everything. Very satisfying. And the weekend before last, I met some virtual board game friends in person for the first time. Highly recommended.

i did that the weekend before last, too! different group of friends than yours, though.

We got to ramp up Flip 7 to Cascadia to Brass and then wound down with Inside Job 😀