2/19/2025 – Berkshire Gamers Session Report #25-07
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16 at the UNO Park Community Center for a request night….we started with 2-player games and then divided into multiplayer tables.
Our February 26 session will be SPACE themed. Expect to play from among: Sol: Last Days of a Star, Cosmic Encounter, The Crew: the Quest for Planet Nine, Moon, Wormholes, Space Base, Moonrakers, MLEM Space Agency, Terraforming Mars, Galaxy Trucker, Race for the Galaxy, Last Light, Moonrollers, GPS ….and more
Our featured complex game of the week will be Sol: Last Days of a Star led by Tim Peters. If you are interested in playing it, kindly indicate that on your RSVP – if more want in, Sean will randomly select participants.
Sol Last Days of a Star :
https://boardgamegeek.com/
An unusual game that generally plays differently than most board games. Players should be prepared to be thrown into unfamiliar territory, as the game relies heavily on using other players’ resources to advance their score (momentum) as they orbit the star before it goes supernova.
Player Count and Time: Plays up to five. Three to four players is likely the sweet spot. Tim is guessing 120 minutes with set up and explanation. We probably should start early in order to finish so the participants can move onto some lighter space games. Tim can arrive early and set up the game ahead of time.
Elephant Labs official second printing rulebook:
Great Introduction and thorough overview of play:
2/19/2025 @ UNO Park Community Center
IN: Steve, Sean, Tim, Armando, Zach, Matt, Amy, Tony & Rachel, Gus and Nicole, Chris, Rob, Julie, Anna, Kate,
ON OUR TABLES:
2-Player Games
Jaipur (led by Zach) 2009 fast-paced card game, a blend of tactics, risk and luck. On a player’s turn they can either take or sell cards. If a player takes cards, they have to choose between taking all the camels, taking one card from the market, or swapping 2-5 cards between the market and your cards. If a player sells cards, they get to sell only one type of good, and receive as many chips for that good as the number of cards sold. The chips’ values decrease as the game progresses, so speed is of the essence. On the other hand, you receive increasingly high rewards for selling three, four, or five cards of the same good at a time, so patience can be rewarded with bonuses. Players can’t sell camels, but they’re paramount for trading and they’re also worth a little something at the end of the round, enough sometimes to secure the win, so use them wisely.
Compile: Main 1 (led by Tim) 2024 dueling game where players are competing Artificial Intelligence factions trying to understand the world around them. Two players select three Protocols each to test. Concepts ranging from Darkness to Water are pitted against each other to reach ultimate understanding. Play cards into your Protocols’ command lines to breach the threshold and defeat your opponent to Compile. First to Compile all three Protocols grasps those concepts to win the game. The base game includes a dozen protocols and there is a first ‘Aux 1’ expansion which adds Love, Hate and Apathy to the mix. Each protocol has 6 cards of various strengths. Fans of ‘Air, Land and Sea’ should enjoy this game.
Tack 2x (led by Sean) 2025 dice driven nautical area movement game. Players will move dice up and down within a grid to equal the required dice total. Block your opponents, line up your dice, and activate the wind to earn one point per dice. The first player to harness 9 points wins!
Mandala (led by K-ban) opulent 2019 abstract design with a cloth board and colorful square cards….no real theme but every play reveals hidden depth in hand management and area majority/influence. The playmat has seven spaces in front of each player to hold their river of single face-up cards and their cup: the stack of face-down cards which they score at the end of the game. Over the course of the game, players play their colored cards into the two mandalas, building the central shared mountains and laying cards into their own fields. As soon as a mandala has all six colors, the players take turns choosing the colors in the mountain and adding those cards to their “river” and “cup”. At the end of the game, the cards in your cup are worth points based on the position of their colors in that player’s river. The player whose cup is worth more points wins.
Patchwork Express (led by Nicole) 2018 streamlined version of Uwe Rosenberg’s ‘Patchwork’ that takes half the time of the original – by making larger polyomino pieces and a smaller grid board (with no bonus for being first to complete a 7×7 area) while retaining the Patchwork essence.
Multiplayer Games
Century Golem: An Endless World (led by Tony) 2020 stand-alone worker placement expansion to Century Golem that is a blend of engine building, resource management, and set collection. The worker placement is simple yet elegant, allowing for efficient resource gathering. The engine-building aspect is satisfying, as players strategically upgrade their golem abilities. The unique end-game scoring, based on matching collected icons to bonus tiles, adds a layer of strategic planning. The next stand-alone chapter of the Century Trilogy for us to explore is A New World.
Northgard : Uncharted Lands (led by Matt) 2022 is a game of conquest and exploration set in the age of vikings. Each player controls a Viking clan, looking to achieve victory by reaping glory in various ways of controlling the most prized territories of this new continent. The game focus is on streamlined rules and mechanisms, allowing for a fast-paced and smooth rhythm of play. Each turn, players alternate their actions to adapt their strategies to their opponents’ moves and the expansion of the board. Fame (i.e., points) can be earned by exploring, fighting, and controlling and developing territories. The various corresponding actions are played through the cards that the players have in hand. At the end of each turn, they have to choose a new card to improve their personal deck as their clans develop new tactics and technologies. The game also requires clever management of resources to build new buildings, improve your warriors’ effectiveness, better your hand of cards, and upgrade your clan’s specificities. The winter phase makes this management more difficult as players have to feed their units to keep them healthy and happy. The pace of the game is set by the players as the game ends after seven turns, but can also be cut short at any time if one of them is in control of three closed territories hosting certain types of buildings. It is based on the universe of the Northgard video game.
Pies (led by K-ban) 2024 unique trick-taking card game that is a reimplementation of 2015’s Plums. Each round consists of six tricks (five in a five-player game). One card is played by each player, with the person playing the highest-value card drafting one card from the trick into their display, with others following in order of descending card value, with the last player also receiving a Plum card. Special actions can be triggered at this point, allowing players to steal fruit cards or call the dog to protect their fruit from other thieves! At the end of the game, the player with the most valuable pie mixes wins.
Middle Ages (led by Armando) 2024 4X set collection and drafting game played over 16 rounds that reimagines Mark Andre’s (Splendor) “Majesty: For the Realm”, using the drafting system that was popularized in KingDomino and interlocking tiles instead of cards. Players draft fields, farms, villages, forts, markets, barracks, churches, and palaces. Each tile features its own scoring system as well as income, yet is linked to others. Players can see available rows of tiles to draft, as well as events 3 turns ahead.
Faraway (led by Sean) 2023 runner up Light Game of the Year as voted by BGG users. Players will play square cards as a row of 8 in front of them, from left to right. These cards represent the regions they will come across while exploring the lands. Characters on these cards will grant players victory points, but only score VPs if later cards fulfil the conditions they demand. At the end of the game, players walk back the same way, scoring cards in the opposite order you played them. There lies the heart of the gameplay. Throughout the game, the cards you play will serve both to set new objectives, and to meet the ones you played previously. On each turn, players select one region card from a hand of 3 and a clever priority system governs replenishment drafting. The first play in this 30-minute gem of a filler will likely make your head implode, as you wrap your brain around simultaneously thinking both forward and backwards on your journey to score VPs. The second play is generally one of those ‘aha’ moments when things click.
Things in Rings (led by Tim) 2024 party deduction game where one player is designated to be ‘the Knower’ and places the rings in the center of the table to form a triple Venn diagram. The Knower knows the different logic rules for each Ring and will facilitate the game. All other players start with a hand of five object cards. Depending on the Ring, the logic rules will be related to different characteristics, like spelling, grammar, physical properties, cultural relevance, or industry. On player’s turns they place an object card from their hand into the Venn diagram. If it fits that ring’s rules, place another card. If it doesn’t fit the rules, “The Knower” moves the card to the right area. The player then draws a replacement card with the point of the game being to get rid of all of one’s cards. The idea is to figure out the Rings’ logic before one’s opponents? Cards can be played in the overlapping spots of the Venn diagram, or even outside it completely!
Steve
16 at the UNO Park Community Center for a request night….we started with 2-player games and then divided into multiplayer tables. Our February 26 session will be SPACE themed. Expect to play from among: Sol: Last Days of a Star, Cosmic Encounter, The Crew: the Quest for Planet Nine, Moon, Wormholes, Space Base, Moonrakers, MLEM Space…
16 at the UNO Park Community Center for a request night….we started with 2-player games and then divided into multiplayer tables. Our February 26 session will be SPACE themed. Expect to play from among: Sol: Last Days of a Star, Cosmic Encounter, The Crew: the Quest for Planet Nine, Moon, Wormholes, Space Base, Moonrakers, MLEM Space…