RogerBW's Blog

Thirsty Meeples March 2019 27 March 2019

Back to the boardgame café. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.

We started the evening with new hotness Wingspan, an engine-builder themed on North American birds. I admit, if it had been birds I knew I'd probably have been more interested. But the special abilities are themed roughly after what the bird is known for, the two currencies of food and eggs made for an interesting balance, and I just barely won, all of which count in its favour… and yet somehow it never really roused my enthusiasm. I wouldn't mind playing this again, and the production quality is excellent, though I see nothing that would cause me to displace a game from my existing over-full collection.

We went on with Bad Maps, a highly chaotic programming game which I'd never heard of before: there are four minions who will be sent stumbling round the island, and each pirate captain plays cards to any of them, with the aim of getting them into first, second or last place in terms of distance from the centre.

I very much enjoyed it. The objective cards (each player gets four, and ends up picking one to score) are a bit random, and can give away a lot of points if one gets the right set, but I still had a good time; not sure how much long-term replayability it'll have, but I'm giving serious thought to buying this at some point.

That was two games in a row that one of us really hadn't got on with, so he picked Star Fluxx next. This was one of the good Fluxx games; it took about twenty minutes so didn't have time to stop being fun.

Lastly, as we were feeling tired, Timeline: British History, which only wasn't a perfect game because I messed up. Ah well.

[Buy Wingspan at Amazon] [Buy Star Fluxx at Amazon] [Buy Timeline: British History at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]


  1. Posted by Michael Cule at 11:50am on 27 March 2019

    As the one who was unhappy:

    WINGSPAN would perhaps (not definitely but perhaps) have worked better as an engine builder if I could have seen how the things I was building modelled something in the real world. Preferably something to do with birds.

    As it was I put eggs out on cards and later used them up to power other things. I got food and used that to do something and every turn there was a different thing I was working to do...

    It was very pretty and doubtless educational but as a game it was less than inspiring.

    BAD MAPS... I can't do that sort of game. I failed at THE STARS ARE RIGHT and the way things shifted in that was a lot more regular than this mess. I was barely able to figure out what I was trying to do and when I had to take what other people were doing to mess me over I just lost all hope. Yes, I tied for first place but without a single clue about how I got there.

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