Board Game Journal – February 27 2023

Super quick journal introduction this week. There was only one board game day, our regular day on Board Game Arena. But a couple of super exciting Kickstarter deliveries arrived this week!

For the nostalgia release, I got the Nightmare (or outside Australia Atmosfear) 30th-anniversary edition. This will be a little harder to get to the table, as it has a 3-player minimum. But the deluxe version is beautiful, and I can’t wait to jump into it again in the near future!

20230227 - Board Game Journal - Nightmare Atmosfear - Deluxe Components
Kind of like the Atari 2600 of board games, the nostalgia factor is real

The other delivery is a game I am looking forward to getting back to the table – Final Girl Season 2. I also added the deluxe components from Season 1, and the delivery box is huge!

Being a solo game, you would think it would be pretty easy to get Final Girl to the table. With the amount of setup and teardown, coupled with specific rules refresh involved, this would probably be a dedicated morning to jump into. But what a morning!

It might be a little while before I get the chance to play them, but both I am keen to play for different reasons. But as usual, that’s what I am looking forward to playing. What did we actually play?

Cat Cafe

Being tired, I was hoping for a game we already knew. Something we had yet to play much to still feel like we were playing something different. Recently we gave Cat Cafe a try, and this was quickly suggested.

So, we jumped in and had a lot of fun creating towers for the cat cafe. That is the theme, after all!

20230227 - Cat Cafe - Reminders on how things work is only a hover away
Even wiht tooltips, sometimes you need to see how scores can chain for the rules to click

In the first game, Rabbit took the lead early being the person that remembered scoring combos the best. Cat Cafe isn’t complicated, but there are tactics for building high scores. Alpal and I needed a reminder that the first game quickly refreshed us.

Then for the rest of the games of Cat Cafe, Rabbit continued to mop the floor with us. In most games, there is a fair mix between the three of us for the number of wins. Last week, it was the day of the Rabbit though!

Cat Cafe is quick and fun, and I am still tempted to hunt down the physical version to play on the table with Rabbit. Even if I will likely get my butt kicked – it’s like Cartographers but in reverse!

20230227 - Cat Cafe - Simple but satisying roll and write
Simple but satisfying, with a definite ‘one more go’ quality to the gameplay

King of Tokyo

We were looking to finish off the gaming day with something fun and quick. There was a joke about King of Tokyo being super quick. The last time we played thinking it would only take 15-20 minutes Alpal made it last almost 45!

That said, it had been a while and I was keen to give it another play. I made the comment King of Tokyo should be quick, because the last time we played was during an event with lots of expansions on by default.

This disappointed Alpal and Rabbit, so I turned on every expansion and modification short of King of Tokyo Dark. Let the chaos reign!

20230227 - King of Tokyo - Probably should have read the rules first
After pressing start, I was not expecting drafting. But surely this shouldn’t be too hard!

Well, that’s what I thought would happen. Instead, we had very little idea of what was going on. Starting with drafting powers (which seemed to make sense), only Alpal could play one.

Powers worked sometimes, but not others. Rather than chaos reigning, confusion seemed to have the wheel!

It was still a fun experience and didn’t put me off King of Tokyo at all. It would be nice to know how some of those rules worked though. Maybe I can read up on the rules for next time.

20230227 - King of Tokyo - Little bit of madness going on
We had very little idea what was going on, which made an interesting end to the day

Or I can skip that, and go to King of Tokyo Dark which I have been eyeing for a while. More likely though, I will skip all this and buy King of Monster Island – the new cooperative entry in the King of series!

Kingdomino

Continuing on with fun games we hadn’t played for a while, Rabbit suggested Kingdomino. Everyone quickly agreed, and we jumped into a couple of games.

Describing Kingdomino and making it sound interesting is difficult. It’s essentially dominoes, but instead of matching numbers you match types of land. Multiply the number of connected squares of land by the number of crowns in that land, and that’s how you score.

20230227 - KingDomino - Simple and satisying gamplay
Simple and satisying gamplay

Putting Kingdomino’s gameplay like that doesn’t sound too appealing. But once you see the colourful game, most are tempted to give it a try. Once you give it a try, almost everyone I know is happy to jump straight into another game.

Kingdomino is fun, but sits in an awkward position. It looks great but many assume it’s a kid’s game. It sounds too simple to play for people that like a challenge but has many layers to the gameplay.

Definitely give Kingdomino a try if you haven’t, I suspect you will have a great time.

20230227 - KingDomino - watching the scoring is so satisfying
Watching the scoring at the end of the game is so satisfying on Board Game Arena

What about you?  I hope you got some great games in.  Or are you looking forward to a new one?  Let me know! 

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Until next time,

JohnHQLD

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