July 2024 meeting

July was a busy meeting with plenty of people around and quite a few new games. We started with games of Daybreak (sneakily shipped from the US ahead of the UK retail release — a birthday splurge!), Scout followed by Bad Company, Wyrmspan, Ark Nova, and Quantum.

Daybreak micro-review

Daybreak was new to us, but it's a game I've been wanting to play for a while. It's the latest game from Matt "Pandemic" Leacock and Matteo Menapace. This one is about the global climate crisis, and how solving it is possible if we just co-operated and set about solving it.

The base four-player game chugged along nicely. I think the basic game is aimed to be on the easy side of things, as we were able to solve global warming with a bit of time spare. That also meant we weren't having to use the co-operative features of the game that much; instead, each player was concentrating on what they could do individually. The game has all sorts of features to increase the difficulty, so I expect that more of the game will become apparent when the pressure piles on. It's a game I'm keen to play again, and my copy is already in the post!

Back to the event

The games started in the morning were ones that took a bit of time to play, so didn't finish much before breaking for lunch.

The afternoon saw another wide range of games played. We had Spirit Island, Isle of Cats, Architects of the West Kingdom, and the tail end of Ark Nova.

After all that, we had Dune Imperium, Rome in a Day, Port Royal, Terraforming Mars Ares Expedition, Azul, Marvel Splendour, and The Crew.

Rome in a Day was a fun and quick little game where you build a city form hex tiles, looking to get the largest regions you can. The wrinkle is that the hexes you're given each round are split between you and your neighbour, and it's your neighbour who chooses who gets which tiles! That leads to a fun bit of mind games where you're trying to predict what they want and hence keep more of the good stuff for yourself.

All in all, a good day with a lot of new games and new people.

Next meeting

Our next meeting is on 10 August. As always, dates are on our calendar and the next meeting is on Meetup. Hope to see you there!