February 2023 meeting

February had another good turnout, despite the heating being off and us all having to huddle in winter coats!

We started off with a good variety of games: Res Arcana, Castles of Mad King Ludwig, and The King is Dead.

I was playing Res Arcana, but got nowhere with it. I'm not sure why. It could have been that my initial set of cards was unlucky and didn't come together into an engine that allowed me to generate resources. It could be that the engine was there and I just didn't see it! The bad luck part would have been mitigated if we'd been drafting cards (or some other selection), but we wisely avoided that for this first teaching game; there's nothing worse than having to make consequential decisions when you have no idea what's a good choice!

So, not the most successful game for me, but I'd be willing to try it again.

The table playing The King is Dead then moved on to Bad Company and the Res Arcana table played two parallel games of Scout before lunch.

After lunch saw another good mix of games: Die of the Dead is always groan-inducing fun, Captain Sonar is a fun team game, Dune Imperium is a heavier one, and I played Pipeline for the first time.

Pipeline is a classic Euro-style game: a dry theme, the game is engine building, and all wrapped up in a very limited budget of actions. We had a lot of fun playing it: the limited number of turns meant it didn't outstay its welcome, and the non-blocking worker placement meant that you could plan out a few actions ahead. But we didn't really engage with a couple of aspects of the game, so I think there's more depth to the gameplay than we managed to explore. One I'll happily play again!

Meanwhile, there were games of Potion Explosion, Architects of the West Kingdom, Codex Naturalis, and a final game of Flamme Rouge (where I was just — just! pipped at the line. Grrr.)

Next meeting

The next meeting on our calendar is 11 March. Please sign up on the Meetup page for the event. We hope to see you there!