Gaming Goals for 2023 – Dusting Off Old Games pt. 2

Gaming Goal – Replay 10+ Board Games that I haven’t played for 2+ years

See pt. 1

• Power Grid
  Would play again
  Compete against other players in auctions to acquire power plants and their required fuels (be they powered by coal, oil, trash, nuclear, or wind) so you can make money by supplying cities in your power grid. It’s got much of the mechanics of many rail building games plus the wrinkle of spending money to get more efficient power plants. Just like many rail building games (I’m looking at you Ticket to Ride) there are plenty of expansions allowing you to power up South Africa or Australia or acquire additional power plants). We played the Australia expansion and that track across the middle was expensive to build!

• Twilight Imperium
  Would play again
  TI has a couple of reputations, including for its complexity and dept and die hard fans. Build a galactic empire, complete with a space navy and technological advances to get the edge on the other empires. Tech advances are achieved by researching prerequisite tech, each empire starts with their own starting set. I admit, I’ve enjoyed that mechanic since first playing Avalon Hill’s Civilization and seen it picked up by many other games. My strategy continues to be choose a tech goal and focus on what is needed to get it. We used some alternate rules for fewer players and alternate roles and it played pretty quickly as these things go.

• Villainous (Disney)
  Would play again
  There’s a thrill to being the bad guy. In this game, each player has their own classic Disney villain who comes with their playing board, their own card deck, and their own hero deck to mess things up. Players move their piece across the board to determine their actions which can include summoning followers, playing cards, or forcing an opponent to play on of their hero cards against themselves. It’s got some wonkiness you would expect in a game with asymmetrical win conditions. Most of them are either get so many special cards into play or acquire X amount of a resource but with the random draw of cards, fickle fortune can bury those needed cards until the end. Their are plenty of sets for a wide range of villainous that can be be brought to the table. Additionally, there are versions for the Star Wars Universe and the Marvel Cinematic Universe if Disney isn’t your thing.

• Island of Dr. Lucky
  Meh, would play it if it was on the table
  I’ve got a complicated relationship with Dr. Lucky. I played the original Cheap Ass Games way back when it came in a paper envelope for less than $10. It’s a cut throat game that requires players to attempt to do away with Dr. Lucky (you’ve got reasons, he had it coming!) by playing murder weapons (some worth more in certain locations) while keeping out of the line of sight the other players who will play fail cards against you. It’s a game of chicken, that if you let other players thwart somebody else in hopes that they will run out of cards to overturn your own attempt on Dr. Lucky. There’s some nice added mechanics in this version like your failed attacks will help your future attacks get stronger, forcing an escalation that brings the game to an end quicker and dulling the edge of being forced to fail multiple times. I also enjoy the flavor of the card text of wacky weapons and random accidents and rife with puns. However, not everyone enjoys that kind of game and some players will willingly sabotage it by not throwing fail cards just to move on to something else.

• Feast for Odin
  Would play again
  This will be at least the second time I’ve played FfO and I think I’m getting the hang of it (though I did still manage to misinterpret one of the ways to score points so I’ve still got some learning curve ahead of me). Gather resources by hunting or raiding, spend them to gain tiles and better ships to score victory points in the end game, all the while making sure you have enough variety of food for the feast each turn. The primary mechanic is worker placement and you can get more workers but it will cost short term to activate that worker and long term by needing a bigger feast. If you enjoy games like Agricola, you’ll probably enjoy this one.