May 2023 Meeting

Old favourites continue to be popular.  Both Dune and Terraforming Mars were enjoyed, as usual.

Several games were new to the club - or at least new to me.  

The Yawning Portal is a D&D boardgame, in which servers at a tavern compete to gain points by catering to the different tastes of up to 68 diverse hungry heroes.  Seas of Havoc is a naval combat game with two alternating phases.  Each player has different abilities.   In the combat phase the captains draw on their hand of cards to manoeuvre their ships and fire cannons at their enemies, gaining points.  In the market phase, worker placement is used to gain resources (eg cannon balls) and to buy cards which upgrade the ships' abilities.  

The Expanse is card driven game with a scifi theme.  The aim is to control the solar system.  In War of Whispers on the other hand, players have to be content with mere  world domination,  Players compete to secretly manipulate the strategies of five separate empires, in order to leave the one(s) they are loyal to in control.

    There were several lighter games as well.

Ingenious (also known as Mensa Connections) is a tile laying game designed by  Reiner Knizia , which includes his device of each player scoring on several tracks,  the winner being the one with the highest lowest score.  Scout uses numbered cards to beat the previous player's sets or runs - or to lose a point by taking one of their cards into your hand.  The really frustrating part is not being able to change the order your cards are dealt in.  Azul Summer Pavilions is the third in the series of tile laying games, and perhaps the prettiest.

    Deep Sea Adventure was also played, but I didn't get a picture of it - I was too busy failing to return to the submarine with my heavy cache of treasure before the oxygen ran out.

Next meeting is on Saturday 3 June (not our usual second Saturday).

https://www.meetup.com/leighton-buzzard-board-games/events/xrqlctyfcjbnb/