One live session at N-BGC game night plus online plays at yucata.de, littlegolem.de and mastermoves.eu (maybe two live sessions but it remains to be seen).
I’ve played quite a few games during the summer but haven’t been up to writing about my sessions. Family keeps me busy and it’s hard enough to try to find time to actually play some games now and then let alone to write about them.
This week I managed to take part in N-BGC meeting and we began the night with Lancaster. Idea was that we get it played with 4 players in 90 minutes, like the box says, so that the late comers would also get a game or two in during the session. We weren’t even close of succeeding in it but had fun with the game nonetheless.
Lancaster is a very polished worker placement game which has superb components, well known mechanisms but also some additional flavor which makes it an unique game. As in many worker placement games there’s a lot of interaction involved and situations can change rapidly during the game. There aren’t any mechanisms or phases in the game which would stand out as the best side of the game which is positive in general and rare nowadays in games.
I did not do very well in the game (third) but enjoy the game a lot. The only problem I can see in the game is that it’s very close to be the same game evertime you play it thus there are ways to play which become the norm and without expansions one looses interest in the game eventually. Queen Games has probably seen this beforehand since they’ve put out an expansion for the game that is high on my list of games to buy.
Second game of the night was Mit List und Tücke which is a trick taking game from the year 1999 which is definitely time before the golden age of board games we’re living right now. I had played the game once before a long time ago but rules for the game are not that long of complex and we got a game running in no time.
Mit List und Tücke is a simple trick taking game with a twist and some nasty sides as well. Game is from 1999 so it’s probably not a game you find easily nowadays but if you come accross it give it a try since it’s actually quite fun little trick taking game. There’s four colors, one doesn’t have to follow suit when playing in a trick and higher card played in the suit lead wins the trick. Winner takes one half of the cards in the trick and the player who played the lowes non-trump takes the other half. And this continues until all cards have been played.
Scoring is the most annoying part of the game because players multiply the number of cards of the two suits they’ve collected the most cards during the round and divide it with the number of the rest of the cards. Thus there’s a lot of multiplying and dividing ahead of the players and it really doesn’t feel good compared to the standards which are found from games published at the moment. Still, as said, I like the game and hopefully it’s going to see more plays sooner than later.
Enjoyable session at N-BGC and the games played were fun to play. Coming weeks look challenging since I’ll spend some time in Berlin running a marathon. But lets hope that I’ll get some live games in in September.