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Surya Van Lierde is pure Eurosnoot and proud of it!
Belgium
Gijzegem
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As one gamer was a bit late, we decided to play a filler fist. One player had Familienbande with him.
It's a Colovini, not my favorite designer, but I'll always give his games a shot.
Play is simple: draw a card, play a card to create a couple or play a card as a child of a couple and score the aspects of that kid. Hope that your secret color comes out on top.
It's very chaotic and has quite a bit of luck. I only managed to win because I drew a card with 3 of my color on it and was able to play that in the 5 row, scoring me 15 points. The other colors could no longer make up the difference before the game was over. But if I hadn't been so lucky, there was no way I could have won.
It's fine, but only because it's as short as it is. Light, chaotic, big luck factor.
Initial rating: 6
We had planned playing a game of Outpost. I'd been looking forward to this, as I liked Phoenicia (since our last play I'm convinced the runaway leader problem will not occur with experienced players). I also own The Scepter of Zavandor but haven't played it yet.
We played with 4, and I was a bit amazed that it goes up to 9!
The rules are very simple: get resources, bid for cards, buy upgrades. Rinse and repeat until someone wins. The variation comes from the cards that come up, just like in Phoenicia. I was very disappointed though that there was a huge runaway leader problem in our game. The first 2 players to get the Titanium ability, got ahead. The one of them that got lucky enough to buy a second one the next round (better resource cards than the other player who was short 2) got ahead even more. And more. And more. All of us tried different strategies to catch up, some where more effective than others, but no one got close. After the game we debated for a while who could have done what to counter this problem, but each solution we came up with, was flawed and would mean you would be at least 1 turn behind that leader. Who is then again at an advantage to keep his leading position as he has more income and thus has more options for increasing that even more.
An other, minor quibble I had with the game is the die rolling for cards. If you roll a D12 and the lowest card on the table is an 8, chances are you'll be rolling the die over and over and over just to get 2 good rolls to replace the cards.
I was also a bit surprised with some of the components. The workers and robots are chose tiny cardboard tiles. I would have liked to have bigger ones, or better, differently colored cubes cylinders. A company that strives to offer the best possible components could have gone just a bit further. As it stands the components are decent but nothing special.
I have to say I'd play this again when offered, and might even request a game to see if our concerns are right, but I was quite disappointed.
Initial rating: 6.5
What I didn't expect, is that we got to play yet an other new title, Takenoko.
I knew this would be a lighter family style game, so I wasn't expecting any deep strategy. Rightly so, which doesn't mean you can't plan ahead or make good tactical moves. The options are simple and interesting enough, the components are quite nice (I don't really care for the panda and gardener figures though, give me wooden bits any time of day  ) and the artwork is appealing.
It's a fine if unremarkable family game that I don't mind playing from time to time, but it's not remarkable in any way shape or form and thus won't be added to my collection.
Initial rating: 6.5
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