Been a bit busy with personal things, but here’s a double post about board games. I’ll have another post about a five new sodas I saw at my grocery store.

Lords of Waterdeep

I’ve played this game (and its expansion) at my friend’s house before and I liked how simple the game seemed. It’s a basic worker placement game where you have to earn points by completing certain quests and various other things like establishing buildings. The buildings are where a worker can be placed, you recruit a fixed number of agents in these buildings (or not, sometimes you can do other things) to complete quests with. That’s the gist of the game without digging into too much detail. I think it’s about a medium on the learning curve, there are a lot of things to set up before you can start the game.

King of New York

King of New York is a sequel to King of Tokyo and it’s a bit more complex than the original game. The basic rules are still the game, either be the last monster standing or be the first monster with 20 victory points. I can’t remember too much about the game, there are the 5 boroughs of New York, with Manhattan being similar to Tokyo City in the other game. Each borough has buildings for you to destroy for victory points or health, but defeating them will cause tanks or airplanes to attack you. I liked the simplicity of King of Tokyo, but this game was a bit too chaotic for me.

Codenames

Bonus content, this game wasn’t played at Games on Tap but I’ll make a mention of it here. We played Codenames, a very popular game that came out last year.

There are 2 teams, each with a spymaster, and they have to contact undercover agents on their team. The spymasters have a grid that shows which agents on the 5×5 board belong to which team, including innocent people and the assassin. They take turns giving clues to their team, trying to contact as many agents as possible each turn. Agent names may or may not be directly related to each other or it could possibly be related to an agent on the other team.

I find it hard, conceptually, to play this game with less than 6 people. It’s possible with 4 people but it really benefits with the discussion between 2 people to decipher clues from spymasters. It’s also fun to see how compatible you are with other people, at least on an intellectual level. When I played with my cousins, I was thinking too complex for some of them and was able to find unwanted hidden meanings in some terms — which cost us the game.

Manilla

A favourite of mine and becoming a favourite for the gaming group. It’s a mix of gambling, worker placement, speculation into one very intense game. You’re essentially trying to get the most coins at the end of the game and you earn them by being risky with your worker placement. The higher the risk, the higher the reward. There are certain safe bets that can sometimes earn decent payouts, but to earn those spots, you pretty much have to win an auction at the beginning of each round which can get costly.

Sheriff of Nottingham

My cousin mentioned this game to me and I liked the idea behind it. It’s a pure bluffing game. You’re trying to smuggle goods into town but the sheriff stops you. You can choose to bribe the sheriff and hopefully make it into town with contraband. Everyone takes turns being the sheriff twice and it’s fun to see the game evolve. Our game was mostly honest players, everyone trying to get into town with properly declared goods. I was probably the only one trying to stir the pot too often.

Sodas

I just discovered Just Craft Soda, a local brewery that makes sodas with interesting flavours. I have 4/5 of the flavours sampled around work and I have one left to send around before I make a post.