In February, I played 8 different games, but with those 8 games, there were 21 different plays. So that would put my down by 7 plays for the month, plus I believe 1 in January, so down by 8 total. I’ve made up some ground so far in March, I think I’m only 5 behind now after a board game night where we played 5 different games, and a few games during the week as well.

So let’s look at the games that got played in February:

Deadly Doodles – 5 Plays

Deadly Doodles 2 – 3 Plays

I’m talking about these top two together because technically Deadly Doodles 2 is an expansion to Deadly Doodles. This is a dungeon crawling roll and write game. I like it because it’s simple, though the expansion adds in a lot more options on how to play it. You go into a dungeon, find weapons that you need to fight monsters and get treasure. At the end of the game you get points for the number of treasures you’ve made a path on top of, and the monsters you’ve killed and weapons you’ve found. You lose points if you don’t have the matching weapon. The game is quite light and that’s not a major knock against it, it’s nice because I can knock out a lot of games fast when playing solo. And it gives and really works with a theme as you play it. Sure it won’t be the most thematic, but it’ll be more thematic for some people than a lot of roll and write games.

Railroad Ink: Deep Blue Edition – 3 Plays

Another roll and write game, this one is about building out train and road connections on a map. As compared to Deadly Doodles, this one is much more abstracted, but I’m not going to give that a knock against it. This one is a much tougher puzzle than Deadly Doodles as well, the connections and just how you are trying to get the biggest network possible, it makes it a real brain burner. I need to bust out some of the mini expansions in the box as well and give those a try. That’ll be some gaming from at home that I do coming up in March here.

Metro X – 3 Plays

And my third/fourth most played game is a roll and write as well. Metro X is one that I played in January, and I really like it. I realized I was playing it a bit wrong in January, and how I played it this month, it’s definitely more challenging. I like trying to complete routes, it’s an easy to understand concept, especially with Ticket to Ride being a game that a lot of people have played. However, this adds in a great challenge as routes overlap and that can limit how much you can fill in on a given route. It’s definitely a puzzle and has some luck but is a lot of fun. I think how colorful it is, is a good selling point on the table.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon – 2 Plays

So, we restarted Tainted Grail after deciding that we wanted to move to story mode. I wish that the “how to play” scenario was something that multiple people could have played, it maybe would have helped us know our difficulty level. But It’s been a blast playing through it again. We knocked out the first chapter already, and we are going a different way than before. And we even looked at a card that I hadn’t seen before. I love this game so much and the writing in it is so much better than writing in a game that I’ve seen before.

Potion Explosion – 2 Plays

Potion Explosion is a game that I’d bee playing on an app a ton. When I picked it up last month, I knew I wanted to get it to the table quickly. It has been a blast to play my game of it just because you can see the toy factor when it comes to how the game plays on the app, but in person it is so much better. Potion Explosion plays so simply but still offers some strategy and the table presence. I need to break out the expansion next and see how the different professors and added marbles work in the game as well.

Dice Throne Season 1: Treant vs Ninja – 2 Plays

One of my top games of all time, and I was able to get an expansion for it with the Treant vs the Ninja to the table from the Dice Throne Adventures Kickstarter. These were the only two characters that I didn’t have, and I’m really glad I have them now. I got to play once as the Ninja and once as the Treant, both times the Ninja won. But I really like how the Treant has so many interesting choices with it’s sapplings and how you grow them. Do you try to get a lot of them and use them for rolls or smaller abilities, or do you go for the big one which can do extra damage? The games were close, and I feel like I can see how the Treant will be powerful, there is just more to manage. I’ve taken the Ninja up against other characters on Table Top Simulator with the official module, but I want to see the Treant go up against more and see how well I can do with that.

Truffle Shuffle

I blame me getting this game on GloryHoundd and DrGloryHogg’s playthrough of the game. However, I am glad that I did. I got it as well as some actual truffles for Kristen for Valentine’s Day. The truffles were for her, this was for both of us, but we both liked the game. It’s a simple drafting game where you are taking truffles from a massive display and creating power hands. There are a few fun power cards in there as well, which changes things up. You trade in poker hands for coins and the person with the most coins at the end of the game wins. You draft over three rounds, each round you draft from a giant display of truffles until they are gone. There is a good twist on it where you can only put down one poker hand per turn to get coins, so you want to save up for the ones that give a lot of coins but that might mean you end up holding a smaller hand at the end of a round that you need to discard. There is a good push your luck aspect, and all the truffles look extremely tasty.

Which Was the Best?

So, my favorite out of all of these games is easily Dice Throne, I love that game. However, I don’t want to say for sure that it was the best play. I have played Dice Throne a lot before. I really liked playing Truffle Shuffle because Kristen doesn’t love all games, so finding a good one that we both like was a lot of fun. And playing Potion Explosion with the real marbles was just a blast, there is such good toy factor.

What is your favorite out of the games that I’ve played? Are there any of the February games that you want to try?

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Adventure Land

This is one that has been on my radar for a long time. Tom Vasel of the Dice Tower is a fan of this game, but it’s gone under the radar otherwise. The concept of Adventure Land is just intriguing to me because it sounds simple, but the decisions seem meaningful. On your turn you move one of your adventurers down and to the right, to the right, or down, and you are picking up treasure. But the trick is you can never move one back up or to the left. So how do you balance out the movement of a number of adventurers to maximize your points? I think it’ll be a fun game, and I really do think there is a lot of interesting space to strategy in the game.

Marvel Champions – Quicksilver

The latest release in the Marvel Champions line, and of course I was going to run out and pick it up right away. I’m more waiting for the Scarlet Witch to come out which was supposed to be this month but looks like it’ll be in March now. Still, I’m going to be curious to see how they mimic super speed for Quicksilver. They’ve done a good job of surprising me and making other powers work really well. I’m hoping that he’ll be fun to play as well.

Space Base

Space Base has been on my radar for a while. It’s been described as kind of a Machi Koro killer for a lot of gamers. From what I know about it, the game is more complex, though not by a ton than Machi Koro which was really very introductory. I actually got rid of Machi Koro over a year ago, because for an engine building game, it was going to be the first one I pulled off the shelf. To teach engine building I’d use Splendor or Century Golem Edition. If Space Base does have more going on in it, then I’m hoping it’ll be a nice game that feels similar to Machi Koro but that I can pull out after I’ve taught engine building. I’m not sure which theme is more attractive to players, though, building a town or building a space base.

Deadly Doodles 2

Technically this is an expansion. You need the base game to play it. And I got the base game not too long ago, in fact I believe that was when I picked up The Wasp at my FLGS that I grabbed Deadly Doodles as well. So apparently I grab roll and writes when I get Marvel Champions content as well. This is the one that I sat down and played the day that I got it. This expansion just adds more to the game. So in the base game you are just going in, grabbing treasures and weapons and fighting monsters. It’s very simple, the expansion adds in 6 new map boards. The first map doesn’t really add much to what’s going on, but the other maps add more and more to the game so what was a very simple flip and write (or draw and draw as they called it), not becomes more of a complex game. I like how you can tailor the level of the game to the players of the game just with that. I’ve barely started on the content, but I can see there’ll be a lot more, now the only question is do I fit everything in one box, I’m thinking the answer to that will be yes.

Which of these games seem the most interesting to you? I have you played any of them before?

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