Yesterday I had a bloody great afternoon playing boardgames with my friend Jeff.

It’s been a while since I’ve played with Jeff. So it was really great that we could meet up and play a game or two.

After what has become a Sunday gaming thing for me of having a hot carvery roll (this week pork and stuffing) before starting, and a brief catch up. We played some games.

Our first game of the afternoon was Undaunted: Normandy.

Now those with a long memory will remember I had played Undaunted once before with Jonathan back in 2019.

On paper Undaunted should be right up my alley. Deckbuilding, modular board, World War 2 theme, etc. It ticks so many things I like.

But after my original play Jonathan and I were both left feeling a little meh! about the game. That’s despite at the time and since the majority of players loving it.

Yesterday Jeff and I played scenario 2: Montmartin-en-graignes. I was the bad guys, the German Army. Whilst Jeff played the forces of good, the Allies.

I had an enjoyable time playing Undaunted. But I’m still on the fence over it. It doesn’t for some reason rock my world. Which I can’t put my finger on why. As I wrote earlier it should.

Don’t get me wrong I’d play it again. But it’s not a game I’d go out of my way to play it.

Oh the Allies won.

Our second game of the afternoon was a new game to me Claustrophobia with the De Profundis expansion (or parts of).

For this first play I was the humans, which means Jeff was the demon forces.

Jeff chose the Survivors scenario for us to play. Which meant I had to find the exit and get at least two humans to it to win.

I was getting some Sub Terra vibes with the exploring and revealing tiles. I think the scenario helped with that.

But I also felt a Space Hulk like vibe too. With the one vs one, a small team trying to achieve a goal whilst facing off against insurmountable odds.

I like the map tiles being revealed and the demon player choosing the orientation. They can really screw over the human player. Plus the tiles can have a negative, positive, or neutral effect on either players when revealed.

It’s also a game that has gaming moments. Such as Jeff needing a single hit to kill one of my team. Rolling four dice and not a single hit. Oh the banter afterwards.

Our game ended in a draw because I managed to get a human to the exit. Whilst Jeff murdered the remaining three of my team.

How much did I like Claustrophobia? Enough to look into getting it for myself. However even the 2019 reprint is out of print. Which is a shame. I wouldn’t mind a copy in the collection.

Our third and final game of the afternoon was one from my pile of shame, Alhambra the dice game.

I got Alhambra the dice game a few years back now from Jonathan. And it’s sat on my shelf of shame ever since. It nearly got played on my last visit to Nathan. However it never made it to the table. But I did read the rules whilst there. It intrigued me that you had the “core” game, plus a variant that used the tiles from the original game.

However we were playing the “core” game with its two player rules. Which basically adds a third player.

The initial round of the game I wasn’t feeling the game. But then wow!

I really like this version of Alhambra. You have the whole push your luck Yahtzee dice rolling, majority area control, power ups.

Plus on each turn you have a hard decision of which building you are going to aim for. You can’t go for them all. At most you can try and get the majority on five of the six building types. Or you can try and get the top two majorities on one building pushing any other players out of the end of round scoring positions.

You may decide not to even go for a building type because you are too far behind on the scoring track for that building.

Then after round one, three, and five, points are awarded for how far up the scoring track you are for each building.

These are two simple mechanics that combine really well to present some interesting choices as you play.

Jeff romped home with the victory.

I can’t wait to play again, and try the variant using the original game.

I had a great afternoon gaming with Jeff. Who is just as competitive, if not more so than me. So no punches were pulled. However we both had fun.

But this was a rare two player game session. Which meant games we normally don’t get to the table because of the player count got to the table.

I look forward to repeating it soon.

Sunday afternoon saw Charlene, Ben, and Harrison met up with yours truly to play some games!

We started off with Tapestry and both expansions. Yes an “all in” game using the new Tapestry neoprene playmat that Stonemaier sell.

It’s a beautiful mat.

You can see below who played which civilisations. We did apply the appropriate civilisation adjustments from the Arts and Architects expansion.

Now I should really be posting the three minute video of Ben taking one of his goes. But that’d be cruel. But he was beautiful minding it at the time.

In the end Ben’s Futurists ran away with the victory. Falling short of breaking the 300 point barrier. But still a final score of 282 was pretty impressive.

Our second and final game of the afternoon was another Stonemaier game Red Rising.

Back when Red Rising first came out I wasn’t grabbed by what I saw of the game play. At the time I thought the game wasn’t for me.

Reflecting on this I think it was I had one image of what the game would be based on what Jamey had initial described the game as. Which I thought sounded right up my street. Then the actually game play details game out and it wasn’t what I thought. Feeling a little disappointed I decided that this wasn’t a game I’d enjoy. So I never got it.

However now I’ve played Red Rising all I can say is I was wrong. This is very much a game I enjoy.

I liked it a lot. So much so my next order from Stonemaier will indeed include Red Rising (ok I took a break from writing this to order it, along with the playmat!)

This was a lot of fun. How many more ways can I say I liked the game?

I loved that each player had a unique power.

I thought the hand management side was cool. Towards the end I didn’t want to play any cards as I wanted to keep them all. Mainly because they triggered off of each other for end game scoring.

I liked how once you play a card for its ability you then have the tough decision (potentially) of which card to pick up. The card you want may not be in the right column for you to get the reward you want. Then you have to decide which to go for.

In the end Charlene triggered the end of the game and got the victory.

This was the deluxe version of the game, and as usual the component quality was very high.

Monday was a gaming morning with Diego.

Our first game of the morning was Long Shot the dice game.

I really do like this game. I needed a game like this in my collection. If there was a choice between this and Camel Up, this would win hands down every time.

Next up we learnt Silver and Gold.

Wow. This is a fun, quick, flip and write.

It’s definitely not even close to being a heavy roll/flip and write.

This is a nice little filler game. Yep twenty – thirty minutes to play. That quick.

Diego just pipped me to the win.

Finally our morning of gaming was finished off with a game of Splendor Duel, and a big thrashing by Diego. Yep my streak of having never won a game of Splendor in all its forms continues.

A distinct lack of wins the last two days. But still had great fun playing with friends.

Yesterday morning on what was meant to be a day off but saw me doing a four hour shift in the afternoon, did see me playing some games with Diego and Ben in the morning.

Our first game of the morning was a brand new game that very few people have played called Rock Hunters.

For the record, and so you can make an informed opinion about my words on Rock Hunters. I know and am friends with Rock Hunters designer and creator Byron. He also sent me a copy of the game for free.

The first thing you need to appreciate about Rock Hunters is that it’s a hand made game by Byron. He makes each copy himself. This is not a game from an big publisher.

Given that the production values are very high.

Just look at the photos above. You get a laser cut box using the same sort of wood material that other companies use for game inserts.

I don’t even have to sleeve the objective cards, which is a good job as there is no room for sleeved cards. The cards are laminated.

One change I’d make to the components is to colour code the space ships so it’s easier for players to identify and remember which is their ship.

Before I’d opened up Rock Hunters I had no idea what sort of game it was, or really the theme.

So reading the rulebook (more on that in a moment) it turned out to not be what I was expecting. I was not expecting a game about mining asteroids in space. Or one that had elements in common with war gaming, X-Wing, etc.

When I was reading the rulebook (which doesn’t take long) there were one or two questions about the game that came to mind about playing it. Such as rolling a die to determine the number of actions you take on a turn. Would the game benefit from a movement ruler? Plus there was player elimination.

I did think the rulebook needed it’s layout changing so that setup was at the start, then a summary of a turn, followed by more detailed explanations of the actions that could be taken during a turn.

As you can see in the photos I took during our games I used my starfield playmat. Yeah the one I got to use with my space themed games like Xia, Outer Rim, etc. I think it added to the theme of the game.

Setup sees players taking turns placing asteroids on the play area, followed by placing an opponents space ship. Apart from the placing an opponents ship, placing the asteroids is similar to in war games where the players are placing terrain.

I love the karma rule here, where if an opponent positions your ship in a really nasty position then you get to return the favour to their ship.

So on your turn you can either move your ship, turn your ship 45 degrees, or fire your ships laser. The number of times you can do these is determined by the number of actions you get from that die roll. But the thing you have to remember is you have to spend at least one action on doing a move.

So if you only have a single action all you can do is move your ship. Which was one of the concerns I had from reading the rulebook. Just how would this feel, especially if you kept rolling low, or worse ones? With turns being fairly quick this doesn’t last long, and didn’t present an issue. Maybe I was over worrying.

A movement ruler would have been real handy. However we found that the provided dice were approximately a ship length (just under) and handy for judging a single move. We also found that the objective cards were also approximately three ship lengths. Which was super handy for checking if a ship was in range of an asteroid or opponent for shooting/mining.

We did think that the odd contract (see below for an example) were too difficult in comparison to the majority and should have been a collect or destroy. It’d allow players to pivot during a game if they hit a streak of die rolls that give them a result opposite to the one they are going for.

At the moment these two examples would require a player to mine and destroy ten or twelve asteroids compared to six of other objective cards. Unless you house ruled the above suggestion.

We also came upon the situation of what happens when ships collide? After a brief discussion we house ruled both ships took one damage.

Which reminds me, we did have player elimination when Diego rolled a five (he had already taken damage from me) and destroyed his ship when he was too close to an asteroid when mining it.

This was less of an issue than I thought it’d be as games were pretty quick.

The game was much quicker than I thought it’d be. We played two games in an hour. Each taking roughly thirty minutes.

We really liked Rock Hunters. I really liked it.

It looks fabulous on the table. It’s quick to learn and play. And it’s fun.

I love the war game/X-Wing light feel this game has.

I can’t wait to play this some of my other friends who I know will love this game.

Our second game of the morning and my last before heading off to work was Trekking Through History.

This was also a new game for me.

It too has mechanisms that I’d seen in other games, especially the player at the back on the action tracker takes a turn until they are no longer at the back. Think Tokaido, Glen More, for this.

I liked this a lot.

I love the art style, it has a great insert, high component quality. I mean other games would use lots of cardboard tokens. Not Trekking Through History. This games gives you pimped out plastic tokens.

There are some great decisions to make when choosing a card from the trade row. Do you go for a card to fill up spaces on your player board for the score, or to continue your trip through history (the longer the trip the more points), or does it’s time cost mean you have to take something cheaper.

This might have ended up in my Amazon basket. Yep I liked it that much.