Jo and I played Vantage today. Minor spoiler on pic 2, but it's literally the first turn of the game, so you might see it. Or not, there are a lot of opening locations.

This is a weird game to discuss. It's impressive, a ton of fun, but also hard to recommend to others. It's an open world game that's focused on exploration. But sometimes you aren't going to find what you need to reach your goal to win. There are alternate ways to win, if you care about winning, but it's really a game that's rewarding to just play and wander. It's also impossible to fail an action, but you can lose the game. Hard to explain, but that's the best I can do 🤣. It's pretty rules light and extremely quick to set up, but there's a lot of confusing situations you can get into. You read one short passage from several different books each turn and pull a lot of cards to use and simulate exploring.

If you are interested in it, I suggest watching a YouTube playthrough. The good news is, there is a TON of content. It's possible you'd get spoiled by something in that video, but this planet is so huge and open, you may never see that part. Only watch it for a short time if you worry about that thing, you'll get a good feel for how it plays at the very least, and to be honest, if you don't think it looks fun,, it's not for you.

Good news for us is we love it. I've played solo, 2, and 3 players (Aleksia joined us once.). It can play up to 6, but that seems insane. While the reading is short, the more players you have, the longer it takes to get back to your turn. I think 4 max, but 2 or 3 has been great. I didn't enjoy it solo as much, but that was because I liked having others to share the experience with.

I tend to enjoy games from @stonemaiergames and this is another great one. But buyer beware, this may be more polarizing than many of their games, or just more polarizing than many games out there in general. But I am loving it.

#BGG #BoardGames #ExplorationGames #FamilyGames #Playing

The rest of the games I've played so far this month:

Kinfire Delve: Scorn's Stockade- Another good Kinfire Delve game. We tried 3 player for the first time because this was our second set. It was really fun that way too, such a great little card game series. We managed to win, which was a bonus.

We picked up Trio and 10 Days in the USA in the clearance section of a local toy store. We had 10 Days when the big kids were younger and figured the 11 yr old would enjoy it now. We were right. Trio is a fun little memory set collection game. While very different mechanics, it kind of feels like Flip 7 for a nice and silly party style card game.

I finally got a copy of Kinfire Chronicles: Night's Fall last week. Jo and I played the first 2 scenarios. We had a blast, even though some terrible luck meant we lost scenario 2 really quickly. It's a fun system that shares some of its bones with the Delve games.

Last game was the latest Stonemaier game Vantage. I tried it solo, which worked well, but I think more players might be better. It's definitely an experience as opposed to a strategy game, and I think more people to share the stories with would be a plus. Not sure I'd want the maximum number of letters, but I think 2-4 might be the sweet spot.

#BGG #BoardGames #BoardGameGeek #CooperativeGames #SoloGaming #PlayingByMyself

Got to play a few games back on July 4th, but never got around to posting about it. I've forgotten some details, but remember my personal opinions.

We started with Endeavor: Deep Sea. I had been wanting to try this one for a while and really enjoyed it. I expect I'll be picking up a copy eventually.

Next I taught Leviathan Wilds. We played terrible and lost even though we messed up some rules in our favor 🤣. But I think it's a great co-op and look forward to exploring it more.

We finished the night with Rolling Heights. Stacking the layers onto buildings was a fun experience and the meeple rolling was definitely unique. I enjoyed it and would gladly play again.

#BGG #BoardGameGeek #BoardGames #CooperativeGames

After a short trip to Minnesota for a wedding, we returned and decided we were ready for a second cat again.

So this is Embryon, or Ember, which was her original pre-shelter name.

She is 3 yrs old and extremely chatty in the few hours she's been here.

The first 3 pics are the significantly better pics of her my wife got once she calmed down, the next 3 are my crappy attempts after we originally let her loose 😁.

#Cats #ShelterRescue #NewKitty

Jo and I tried a new game today, Leviathan Wilds from Moon Crab Games.

Having never played the video game myself, this often gets compared to Shadow of the Colossus. Basically you are climbing these giant Leviathans and smashing these binding crystals to heal them.

It's a neat and simple system, take a character deck and a role deck (There are several to choose from.), mix them together and start playing. Each Leviathan has its own rules and map in a spiral bound book.

You climb up, move around, face hazards, fall occasionally (Not as bad as it sounds.), and can even find convenient places to rest and refresh. Unfortunately, the Leviathan also will do bad things to you, often making you change your strategy based on that. We had several times where a cleverly timed fall helped us quite a bit. Using the special powers on the cards leave a lot of interesting choices.

There are tons of different combos for the players and 17 different Leviathans, so there is a lot of variety in a fairly small box.

We had a blast, even with just the basic Leviathan and were excited to explore it more in the future.

#BGG #BoardGameGeek #FamilyGames #CooperativeGames #FamilyGaming

Was home feeling under the weather today, so I tried a neat little solo print & play game.

52 Realms: Adventures is a dungeon crawl where you print a map and a character sheet, and provide a deck of cards and a couple of tokens for bookkeeping.

You get a few cards as equipment that help you in combat and moving around the dungeon. You can also get some items that can aid in various ways, and you win if you get to the end and defeat the boss before you get too many wounds or exhaust the deck. You count up your loot for a final score, and that's pretty much all there is to it.

My first play took about 15 minutes, so it's fast, portable, and very simple. Not the deepest game, but fun for a quick diversion. I see why it won the BGG Award for best PnP game, it's a good design.

There are several maps and characters to print too, so there is some variety. I look forward to trying those out sometime in the future.

#BoardGames #BoardGameGeek #PlayingByMyself #SoloGames #CardGames #PrintAndPlayGames #BGG #PrintAndPlay #SoloGaming

We got another game played today, Flip 7.

I had tried it on BGA and wasn't sure why so make gamers were tlaking about loving it. Very random, kind of unbalanced because of the randomness...

But I picked up a cheap copy anyway, at the very least I figured someone in the family might enjoy it

It's a totally different game in real life. Silly push your luck with lots of taunting, a little bit of screw your neighbor but not enough to feel too mean, we had a blast with it. Would definitely recommend for a party game to not be taken very seriously.

#BGG #BoardGameGeek #CardGames #FamilyGames #PartyGames

Sad day for our family today. Minnie, our 22 yr old cat passed. Her health degraded quickly the last week or so and so we made a tough decision to end her pain.

She's been with us for 18 years, where we got her from a shelter, mostly sitting in someone's lap. I teased that she was the most optimistic cat, she always had to stick her head in the groceries to make sure nothing was for her, which it never was 🤣.

She loved people. She always perked up when she noticed we had a visitor. She loved to hang out with the apartment complex exterminator and maintenance man as they performed their duties. She was excited for everyone to come visit her.

We'll miss her 😟.

Jo and I got Galactic Cruise to the table today. Really fun. Theme of running a company with launching rocket cruises comes through quite well.

A ton of things to do, so it feels a little overwhelming at first, but the turns are quick and the actions are simple to do. It's thinky but in a good way.

For a first play it took us just under 2.5 hours, which wasn't unexpected. Time went quickly, especially because of how quick the turns went. We had a good time. I'm excited to try it either solo or with more players.

#BGG #BoardGameGeek #EuroGames #WorkerPlacement #BoardGames

Jo comes over every couple of weeks to do their laundry. So we play games.

Finished our first full game of Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era. You play 3 sessions per campaign, so it's not particularly long (Although our shortest session was almost 4 hours.), but the way they created the game up, you don't really want it to go on for too long, you want to start up and make another run and try new things

We had a fantastic experience. Your characters advance at a nice pace, you have a ton of things you can customize, and the combat and gameplay are fun and engaging.

We played on the easiest difficulty, so we were never in too dire a situation, but it didn't feel ready, even though we were kind of crushing our opponents, a lot of that was after we figured out the best ways to take on each battle.

Can't wait to give it another shot, but I think we might try out some more Dice Throne Missions or Dragon Eclipse next time to try to get some more of those played. Lots of great games have arrived this year.

I do think this one is definitely landing in my top 5, probably even top 3 games.

#BGG #BoardGames #DiceGames #ElderScrolls #ChipTheoryGames