RogerBW's Blog

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

We began with Keyflower, which we'd played last December and quite enjoyed.

Possibly because some of us remembered how the thing worked, we started to pull apart very quickly.

By the end of summer it was already fairly clear who the winner was going to be.

And in spite of some fairly effective autumn resource grabs that was the way it went.

Less fun than last time? I think so, and not only because I didn't win this one. Several of the more interesting tiles never showed up at all, and I suspect that a larger game would show itself off better. The Monopoly Problem, where it's clear who's going to win quite early on and there's nothing you can do about it, is rare in modern boardgames, but it definitely showed up here.

I've been wanting to play Colt Express for ages, and we tried that next. Another one that's not at its best in a three-player game, with limited space for people to move into and avoid each other, and the mechanic of drawing action cards is frustrating even at the start of the game when you have your full capabilities, never mind later when you have a few bullets in you and you're slowing down. Did you want to run along the roof? Too bad, you've got looting and punching cards. Want to be the shootiest bandit on the train? Tough, no shooting for you. I wonder whether allowing players to discard action cards from the deck before drawing their hand might work better. (You'd get just what you wanted on the first turns, but still have the risk of drawing bullets later on.)

Finally we gave Eight-Minute Empire: Legends a shot.

We played the original Eight-Minute Empire a couple of months ago, and this is clearly close kin, but instead of resources on the cards you get special abilities: extra armies when you build, extra movement or cheaper water-crossings, etc.

"Thank you for flying with Giant Winged Eye. We never forget that you had a choice."

As before, it's curiously lacking in actual battles (and one of the powers renders you entirely immune to being attacked!). Last time I was able to spread out quite a bit in the last turns; this time all the movement cards had been used up, which was frustrating. Have the men all forgotten how to march?

Even so, and especially given its short duration, highly enjoyable. It's not very Empire-ish, but that's life.