BlewHedgehog
Member
[*]Jamaica, which sounds like a Puerto Rico style Euro, but which turned out to be sort of like Camel [C]Up with pirates. Eh
Putting aside the fact that I would play Camel Up with Pirates, I hope that your expectations of it being a Euro didn't badly undermine your experience playing. For a game with dice and card drawing, every player is actually working with the exact same tools in order to maneuver around the board. I have never had AstroLad's issue of unintentional combat. Trying to use your hand of cards to cleverly avoid (or initiate) a battle or to sneak through the backdoor to grab a treasure card allow for some surprisingly interesting plays to be made. It's also a racing game where you can finish last and win if you've accrued enough gold. I love it. Long live Camel Up! Long live Jamaica!
My 3-5 many weekly game group has turned into the Caverna and Kemet club. I've fallen into the trap of having new games to play each week, so it's nice to get many plays of the same game where you feel it's worth experimenting and honing a strategy. I scored a 91 in Caverna last time out, which I thought was pretty good! Then I looked at some posts in the BGG forums and realized we're just bad at it and a 91 should almost never win.
Kemet is so fucking good. With the black tiles from Ta-Seti, there are a crazy number of potential strategies. Even if two people both go white-red, for instance, one guy might go on the Crusade plan to get money for winning fights and the other can go straight to Hand of God for an economy plan. My friends will actually text me with some new first turn combo they've been thinking about and the build they would make in order to get there. It has a distinct Magic the Gathering feel with the strategy building and the different strengths between the colors. I hope we do the same thing with Cyclades once Kemet finally begins to show its age.