Board Games Hitting My Table - 2nd Half November 2024

hey everybody and welcome to another episode of board games hitting my table this is where I take a look back at all the games I've been playing over the last couple of weeks uh this episode covers the second half of November 2024 and I've played some great games but before I get started on those games I want to give a shout out to the show's sponsor kenderc who are my goto online retailer and if you use the link in the show notes or the QR code then you can get 5% off your first order but let's start with one of the highlights which was definitely wallenstein so you can see I have the big big box version of the game here and to be honest I've only ever played the base game so we played a four player game of this area control kind of War adjacent Euro as you are programming your actions to restock your troops to move them around the map to attack your opponents to tax regions for food and money um and it's this has going to be one of the coolest examples of a programming game that you will see out there so many Dynamic moments and a big cinematic kind of um swings in game play so this was a very interesting game because generally this game is split into two halves uh the first half I didn't have a successful time at all I was really trodden down and because I missed out on a couple of food taxing and if you don't pay your food by the end um you can lose some of your Reg and that did happen in quite a brutal fashion but it did mean that in the second half of the game I was somewhat under the radar a bit more um because there wasn't that much incentive to attack me um I managed to control some regions in terms of having the most buildings there um but it wasn't quite enough to um catch up on that ground but I love this one it is actually become one of my favorite games of all time and um you know if I had recorded my top 100 after playing playing this game most recently then I think Wen Stein would have been a lot higher on that list so definitely a highlight and loved every second of wallenstein so let's get that big box out the way uh another big box now we played a three player game of Marakesh so kind of the last big uh failed game at least that's not a uh a reworking this one I always enjoyed it um I always thought it was a little bit maybe a bit too two mechanical to be to become one of feld's great games but I must admit the more I am playing this one uh the more it's starting to solidify itself as one of those greats yes it can be a little bit daunting when you first start but once you see how the the the mechanisms in the game click together it actually does flow quite nicely as you are participating in all these mini games I'm trying to do your best climb tracks and get technology tiles to make you better at things and so on it really interesting how we all go very different um Pathways now I must admit I didn't do very well at all um I did invest quite heavily in those um technology tiles um but I didn't really utilize them to their full benefit which did end up costing me my opponent focused a bit more on the tracks those two staircases in the center and that did end up paying quite you know quite well in return um so know despite that I absolutely loved the um experience so much you can do here so many different options and I'm really glad that Queen put out a new level on that Cube Tower so that some cubes actually get stuck in the tower now rather than always falling falling through which made it an even better game so as I said I was always on the brink of this one being a really good failed game but now I'm quite confident that I would categorize it as a great one because it is is fantastic so that is Marakesh on to some smaller ones now um I had a quick little game session with my girlfriend so these are actually the two only two games that she owns and we played a very quick game of Huga this is like a reworking of before the guests arrive a little set collection game where you're drafting from this grid and then you have limited opportunities to bank those cards now it turned out that my girlfriend was playing the rules incorrectly she was making it harder for herself um so hopefully going forward um she'll Rectify that um also pen a little stacking dexterity game where you're trying to build these shapes as quickly as you can so that's quite a nice little session there uh we played a three playay game of startups so this is one is one of the most overlooked um games from the Oink um or the Oink brand so this one a kind of um economic set collection game where you want to be having the majority in these different companies now normally there are quite fine margins on who wins or loses but this most recent game was fascinating because I think we tied on all but one of the companies meaning meaning that nobody actually won any shares apart from I think me which who won one of the smaller companies and that just managed to swing it in my favor um really streamlined game I love the um the push and pull in this one and that that kind of daringness you need to start participating in the different categories um definitely works better at lower play accounts I think three players is pretty much spot on the money um so yeah I would recommend giving this one to go if you have uh you know you like crunchy games that in a small box very fast and that tailor really well for three maybe four players as well I played a two-play game of patterns so this is the second in the series of the uh the mandala games I know mandala famously one of my favorite two-play games of all time when pattern came along I was hugely impressed how it managed to keep up that level of quality and um I always put it on par with with mandala which is a huge compliment it been some time since I played this one and just passively was starting to fall down my um my rankings list um this most recent play very quickly and pushed it back up because this game is beyond genius it's an abstract strategy game where you're manipulating this um this bard of these tokens trying to create groups of the same type and just like the original mandala uh the first set you collect is worth fewer points than the last set you collect but of course by the time you get to that last set most of the borders dried up so you're going to get few opportunities to score it um so much kind of cerebral tension in this game it is close to Perfection and I couldn't recommend it enough if you like two-player abstracts that is patterns let's start speeding up a bit um we played a three-play game of furnace another game it had been quite a while since I played very streamlined engine builder with some auctioning or some bidding bidding for these cards and then um running your little engine to try and trans uh kind of uh transmute some Goods into other goods and then hopefully convert that into victory points um I struggled with this one I mean I I love the game I think it's really really cool game um and I'd really like to try the expansion actually but my engine in this um particular game did not go well and I I just got things in the wrong order because I always play the variant where once you've locked a building in place that's where it stays for the rest of the game and I think it makes it that much more crunchy and more interesting but thoroughly enjoyed that play um we Revisited Dragon Keepers um and again nice little reminder why I did like this one because again it had sat on my shelf for some time um this one uh really lovely little game where you are playing um these Dragon cards depending on what this book show so this says you need five Green dragons and you play them from your hand the more dragons you play the more points you get but there is this race element to it as there is a limited pool of points so sometimes you are incentivized to go for those smaller lots of dragons um because you can grab the points before the big chunks or the big um the big cashion even happen so yeah really nice getting that one back to the table and um it's definitely going to be staying around oh excuse me um on some more games now we played a three playay game of flea market just to uh finish off a games night very simple little uh kind of a bidding game but your bidding is fixed based on the roll of three dice um sorry two dice and then you're going to be putting these items up for auction if you've already collected them you'll get some money um so it's all about trying to speculate what will be the the most popular Goods out there and what will be rolled most often so because you're rolling three dice to decide what good comes up for auction then um you know those in that in that kind of 8 9 10 11 12 bracket the more commonly rolled numbers they're going to be worth a little bit more but still really underrated and um I always love playing this one so that is flea market uh a couple more fillers now we played a three-play game of valara a little simultaneous selection game kind of reminds me of citadels or games like that but I think it does a good job of kind of streamlining it um I actually prefer this to libertalia and lialia is very similar but this one just cuts all the fat off and just keeps it down to the cards so that is valbar also played a very quick three-player game of hoba um unfortunately we got one of the rules wrong so it meant the rules were unfair to one of the players so it was a bit of a write off but still one of the most underrated games from a couple of years ago now it's kind of an area control game based on the foundations of sodoku and um it works surprisingly well super fast um as you trying to again populate these different areas full of your tokens but you can't have the same number in the same row column or box as the you know the same number which is a really cool little twist and I kind of wish I invented this one myself so that one is hoba in Nori so this is a game that came at the top of my most recent ranking video um it's a it's a very Charming kind of worker placement game that feels different to other worker placement games of this weight category so you normally worker place b games are that kind of contract fulfillment you know collecting resources cash them in to get x amount of points this one works a bit differently where you are collecting tokens but you're not actually cashing them into complete contracts you are scoring them at certain times and generally when you start stockpiling a certain good you want to be making sure that you are pushing to complete these cars so that those particular resources score again but of course your opponents know that and can start trying to sabotage it or making you put all your effort into doing that so that they're not kind of feeding you and it's really interesting and some good kind of push and pull moments some good um turn a as you don't know where to place your workers and it e even has this cool endgame scoring system where the worker placement spots are assigned a certain color as the game goes on but depending on where they're placed will dictate endgame scoring points um which is a really interesting conundrum so yeah it's it's got a lot going on here for a 30-minute game and yeah I continue to enjoy it so that is Inori and from that same series of the next two games actually uh fairy ring U I played this one at four players for the first time and it works very well at four players and I I was very lucky in this uh most recent game um as people just kept on landing on my best mushrooms and giving me loads and loads of points so I think I doubled my best score um in this most recent one so this is again super Charming uh family w game I would definitely put it up for like the spill de jars or something like that um as you are drafting these cards placing them in front of you you know all these cards are different mushrooms that score in different ways um and then the cards will also have a number on them which will show how many spots your fairy moves around and where it lands is going to give points to the person whose mushroom that is and if you have a matching mushroom you'll also get those points or get your own points depending on how well you've invested in that particular mushroom super cool very fast um it works great for a variety of different audiences and that is fairy ring going to stay around and the final game that I have here is from our same series tower up so I kind of wish I held off a little bit before recording that ranking um and reviewing video um because Tower up was third on that list in retrospect now I've played it some more I might even put it at number one I think it's a fantastic game um It's a Kind super streamlined um and I can't really overstate that uh it's a game where you're trying to build up these towers um and trying to score these public objectives and trying to have your roof on top of each of the different buildings at the end of the game um but I like the the pure system here of trying to just draw a card and that dictate which bricks you can take or start a new building but when you start a new building so say for example I started here um I would start the uh the new plot using different colored bricks than the adjacent ones but I would have to spend a brick for each of the adjacent buildings so that's not a good example but if I put it say here I'd have to spread a brown brick here and a brown brick here and always build up those um those buildings which will link back to your player board where you'll be climbing these tracks for endgame scoring um it's again it's so pure um it's super fun and the board quickly gets swallowed up by the other players I think the first few times I played this I think the goals I chose were maybe a bit too easy and everybody had access to them but when I played the slightly more complex um objectives that decision- making became so much more palpable and um you know despite feeling Breezy because the rules are so straightforward you really do need to prioritize prioritize your actions get the right breaks and get in the right places at the right time because again as soon as someone's surrounded you'll no longer be able to um build on that building because again you don't actually increase the building by going on there you only increase it by going adjacent to those particular plots so this one I think it has again potential to be an evergreen um I'd be extremely proud of myself if I designed this game so you know Sebastian palan I think his his um design ethic really does shine through in this one I'm not too familiar with the other guys so I apologize not for giving you credit either um but this one yeah definitely going to be a long a longterm keep it in my collection and again I really wish I did um maybe play it a couple more times before releasing that review because it is way better than I make it out to be so that is Tower up uh the only couple of other games I played were um friends games where we played a game of Thunder Road Vendetta um three player game uh know this isn't my style of game I I did release a review recently um it's not for me it's too wild it's too random um and I kind of question where the game is yeah there are some funny moments but it does become a little bit tedious keep rolling the dice to see what happens um but it's fast enough that it doesn't really bother me no I'd play it happily anytime it's just not really something I'm going to Advocate um and the second game we played was um Nauticus or sorry N I think it's Nauticus which is an older Kramer game uh and this one I really do like it's probably my favorite game that um my friend owns it's uh old school Euro where you are trying to build up these ships a bit like Shipyard and bigger ships are worth more points to give you more bonuses but the smaller ships are great because they can give you quicker bonuses um you are basically yeah populating the ships with sales and stuff like that and goods scoring points in set collection um has a really cool action selection system that works a bit like um you know Puerto Rico um Twilight Imperium you know that action selection system it comes through nicely and all in all it's just a a very well-round rounded Euro that I would actually like to have in my own collection so um it's a it's a really solid one that I think is um kind of faded Into Obscurity but it is still really worth visiting if you like your old school Dusty Euros so that is Nauticus so that's it really that's all the games that I have played you can definitely play some really good ones the highlights mostly being um Marakesh wallenstein um I put patterns up there as well but also love playing some other familiar favorites such as you know flea startups everything ready it's been a really good um few weeks but hopefully you've enjoyed the video if you have please be sure to hit like And subscribe to the channel and check out my other content too but for everybody else I'll see you next time on chairman of the board bye-bye