Friday morning was the last morning of my visit with Nathan.
Usually I get a whole morning with him before setting off after lunch. But this time I had to leave before lunch so I was back in time for a Teams call.
Leaving earlier meant I was back in time to attend the Fenland Gamers club night. But more importantly able to try Cyclades.
It’s been on my wish list for yonks. I even backed the Kickstarter for the second edition (granted at the $1 level to get me access to the backerkit) last year.
So what did I think of Cyclades?
I enjoyed it.
I liked the bidding mechanic for the gods and your place in turn order for taking your turn. Which then determined where you were next round in the bidding order.
But did I like it enough to buy the second edition?
Now that is a tough question.
I have Kemet (first edition plus expansions), Cry Havoc, and Scythe. Those three were good enough to fight off Inis taking one of their spots. And I did like Inis just not as much as the others.
And I think Cyclades is falling into that same situation. I like it but enough to get rid of one of the three already mentioned? If you asked me to play one of them right now, I think I’d still go with one of the three over Cyclades.
So it looks like I’ll leave it to Ben to buy the new edition of Cyclades and play that when it arrives (Q4 of this year?)
Saturday saw Jeff and myself meet up to try the 18xx roll and write Arabella. Which had arrived that morning.
I’d only heard about Arabella days earlier via a tweet on X/Twitter. It intrigued me. However nowhere seemed to be selling it. Unless I wanted to import it. Luckily there was a copy in the UK going on the bgg marketplace. Which I snapped up.
When it arrived it was still in shrink.
When I read the rulebook I thought wow this is going to be on the heavier side of roll and writes.
There was one hiccup to playing Arabella. When I told Jeff it was an 18xx inspired game he was apprehensive about it. He is not a fan of 18xx games.
I’d never played an 18xx game before. So this was going to be a way for me to dip my toe in to the 18xx water.
For this first game I went against the advice of the rulebook and didn’t use the AI to add a third player. I want to be able to just focus on the game and not have the overhead and distraction of running the AI.
It is interesting that there are no setup adjustments for player count. Well not if you discount the placement of cubes during setup.
Arabella didn’t disappoint.
It is on the heavier side of the roll and writes.
I really enjoyed it and surprisingly so did Jeff.
It had the feel of an 18xx but not the drawback(s) according to him. Particularly the share side.
We both agreed the wooden dice are ok, but would it have hurt to use plastic ones?
The rulebook is ok. Slight grammar errors. Plus it was not clear that the white dice are your starting dice. But I’m giving a little leeway as the designers are east European I believe, and it could just be a translation issue.
The game does start slow as you start to build your railway, but boy does it ramp towards the end.
Arabella is also a very mathy game! Especially when running your trains or calculating the share dividends.
I definitely need to play this with more players. I think it’s going to be a very different experience.
We followed up with a game of one of Jeff’s Christmas presents Star Trek Away Missions.
This is a fun two player Star Trek game. I played the Federation with a ST:TNG crew, whilst Jeff played the Borg.
It was the intro scenario we played.
So basically I needed to complete at least five mission cards over the three rounds to get my objective points at the end.
This is a skirmish like game or shares some of the mechanics. Players take turns activating a character in their squad/team. The game that comes to kind with that activating mechanic is Star Wars Imperial Assault or Last Days.
There is hand management as well to consider not only for your mission cards, but also for m
Because the game is played over three rounds it is very quick.
I liked it and would play again.