Got to play two new games at my job's monthly boardgame event yesterday.
Alchemists
I picked this up on Thursday and was really excited to bring it in and get some people to play. I set everything up for a four player game before we got started and a couple people came and looked at it, and were super intimidated. Ended up only playing a two player game, and it took about three hours, since it was a learning game.
It plays very much like a Vlaada game, and I really dug it. There were times I thought I had my deductions wrong, but I wasn't. The app interaction is really cool, and the first time I made a potion, it really felt like I accomplished something, even though I was just taking a picture of some cards. It was also really cool near the end debunking the other guy's theories, because I had more information at that point.
I definitely want to get this back to the table with more players. It looks really daunting, but after the first couple turns, it's very intuitive. There aren't a ton of different actions to take, and I really liked the mechanic of the later player(s) putting their cubes first, and then the first player takes their actions, allowing them to foresee things and make actions more difficult (or worthless).
Vanuaatu
I hadn't really heard of this one before, but didn't have anything to do after lunch, so I jumped in. This is a pretty solid worker placement game that has a ton of blocking. It has an "island" theme where you are fishing, collecting shells, bringing in tourists, etc. It works well, but could be replaced with almost any other theme and still have the same game. This one's all about the mechanics.
Each round starts with a role selection (a la Puerto Rico), and then the players get to put down their workers. You've got five workers, and you go around the table three times (2/2/1) to put them out. When doing the actions during the round, you can only take your actions where you have majority, and previous players break ties. There were a couple rounds where I screwed myself out of a couple actions because I didn't break the tie, and I had to do an action in an order that I did not intend.
I definitely enjoyed this as well, but not sure how often I'd play it. This has a three minimum, and most of the time I play outside of these gaming events is all two-player stuff.