![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
More Center Parcs reviews
Mar. 18th, 2020 03:23 pmI have finished another book - This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. People have been recommending this to me for months and I was worried I was going to be disappointed - but it's amazing! It's about two agents from opposing factions, travelling through time to influence the timeline in particular directions. But it's not the kind of book you would assume from that plot synopsis. It's actually an incredibly elegant, eloquent, existential, lyrical, beautiful love story between two people who can only correspond via letters delivered in the weirdest possible ways. The whole thing is gorgeous - bits of it are very funny, there are so many references to things I was never going to get, but I still loved it. And the multiple twists towards the end are revealed in the best possibly way - so that you don't see them coming but they're instantly obvious and very satisfying. Wonderful, wonderful book.
I have also played many more new games and enjoyed all of them.
Alchemists is incredibly complicated and took me a very long time to understand. It involves Dungeon Lords style allocation of workers to various tasks, and the combination of different ingredients to establish how to make particular types of potions. There's a logic puzzle element, resource management, pushing your luck, working out how to do stuff and trying to accrue both points and money. I was appallingly bad at it, and unfortunately we were unable to complete the game so I didn't get the opportunity to properly get to grips with it. I would like to try again at some point, if only to discover whether or not I can even work out how to play.
In Bites, there is a line of different types of food and coloured ants that move down it in various ways so you can collect items. Points depend on which ant arrives at the ant hill in which order, thus determining how much each different item is worth. Each game is different because there are a range of rules cards you can substitute in with different combinations. It was quick to play but intricate in terms of strategy.
Imperial Settlers Roll & Write has a lot going on. You roll dice to determine what resources are available each turn and use them to cross off buildings on your village card, which in turn give you more abilities, bonuses and points depending on their combinations. It was a bit more complicated than I prefer, but interesting.
Honshu involves trick-taking and map-making. You play cards against those of the other players in order to try and obtain the best map piece to add to your district. Map placement is very important, in order to maximise your points total at the end of the game. It's very pretty, very interesting and a lot of fun. We played the two-player version and I'd like to try it with more players as it would change the dynamic considerably.
Edge of Darkness involves building a deck of cards by adding segments into plastic sleeves, whilst also allocating your workers to different locations in order to collect money and points, as well as defending your tower from attack and sending out expeditions to defeat monsters. It took a lot of setting up and a lot of explaining, but I mostly got the hang of it and the final scores were incredibly close, so I think I did okay. I'm not sure I'd be too keen to play it a lot, but I enjoyed it overall.
Gugong is beautifully designed and very interesting. The theme is exchanging gifts with government officials in 15th century China in order to get things done. This involves assigning cards of different values to the action spaces on the board and using worker cubes to complete actions. As always with these kinds of games, it was difficult to achieve everything and I kept running out of cubes or not having the right cards. I did very badly at the start and find it hard to figure out the best way to play, but it came together a bit more in the second half and I was pleased with what I managed to achieve by the end, even though I came last. Definitely one I'd like to play again.
Runika involves allocating different coloured dice on a grid to form patterns that match the cards on display. I wasn't sure I would like it, but I was better at it than I expected and it turned out to be quite fun. I won by quite a margin, getting over half my points in my last turn. I think I would have been annoyed if I was one of the other players as it would have felt like I didn't have enough opportunity to complete my patterns. But this was a lot of fun - challenging, but in a good way.
I have also played many more new games and enjoyed all of them.
Alchemists is incredibly complicated and took me a very long time to understand. It involves Dungeon Lords style allocation of workers to various tasks, and the combination of different ingredients to establish how to make particular types of potions. There's a logic puzzle element, resource management, pushing your luck, working out how to do stuff and trying to accrue both points and money. I was appallingly bad at it, and unfortunately we were unable to complete the game so I didn't get the opportunity to properly get to grips with it. I would like to try again at some point, if only to discover whether or not I can even work out how to play.
In Bites, there is a line of different types of food and coloured ants that move down it in various ways so you can collect items. Points depend on which ant arrives at the ant hill in which order, thus determining how much each different item is worth. Each game is different because there are a range of rules cards you can substitute in with different combinations. It was quick to play but intricate in terms of strategy.
Imperial Settlers Roll & Write has a lot going on. You roll dice to determine what resources are available each turn and use them to cross off buildings on your village card, which in turn give you more abilities, bonuses and points depending on their combinations. It was a bit more complicated than I prefer, but interesting.
Honshu involves trick-taking and map-making. You play cards against those of the other players in order to try and obtain the best map piece to add to your district. Map placement is very important, in order to maximise your points total at the end of the game. It's very pretty, very interesting and a lot of fun. We played the two-player version and I'd like to try it with more players as it would change the dynamic considerably.
Edge of Darkness involves building a deck of cards by adding segments into plastic sleeves, whilst also allocating your workers to different locations in order to collect money and points, as well as defending your tower from attack and sending out expeditions to defeat monsters. It took a lot of setting up and a lot of explaining, but I mostly got the hang of it and the final scores were incredibly close, so I think I did okay. I'm not sure I'd be too keen to play it a lot, but I enjoyed it overall.
Gugong is beautifully designed and very interesting. The theme is exchanging gifts with government officials in 15th century China in order to get things done. This involves assigning cards of different values to the action spaces on the board and using worker cubes to complete actions. As always with these kinds of games, it was difficult to achieve everything and I kept running out of cubes or not having the right cards. I did very badly at the start and find it hard to figure out the best way to play, but it came together a bit more in the second half and I was pleased with what I managed to achieve by the end, even though I came last. Definitely one I'd like to play again.
Runika involves allocating different coloured dice on a grid to form patterns that match the cards on display. I wasn't sure I would like it, but I was better at it than I expected and it turned out to be quite fun. I won by quite a margin, getting over half my points in my last turn. I think I would have been annoyed if I was one of the other players as it would have felt like I didn't have enough opportunity to complete my patterns. But this was a lot of fun - challenging, but in a good way.
