These are some older boardgames which I recently played with my old friends Allen and Han, all played on BoardGameArena.com.
Jaipur is a 2-player card game. It has been a while, but the game is still as enjoyable as I remember. It is always tempting to take multiple cards from the centre row, but then you are always anxious whether the new cards which refill the row present an even better opportunity to your opponent. There is always the tension of collecting more to redeem a greater reward, or redeeming quickly before the juiciest rewards are claimed by your opponent.
Blood Rage is my weakness. I really suck at playing this game. We've played this some years ago, and I did poorly. Now, I am doing just as poorly, if not worse. It isn't really a complex game. I have no idea why I can't even play this half decently. I think I have some kind of mental block when it comes to this game. It's not because of the battle theme. I'm not against wargames. I have no idea why.
I had played a lot of Agricola in the past, but it had been a while, so I was a little rusty. This was my farm in the early game. I had two cattle, but I couldn't breed them because I did not have enough space. In fact the cow had to live inside my house. Not exactly hygienic.
Needing to analyse fourteen occupation cards and minor improvement cards was a little overwhelming. Gosh I was rusty. However there was also sweet nostalgia. Eventually I only managed to use a small subset of my cards.
One thing I am annoyed with is how they have changed some of the names of the worker placement spots. "Plow" is now called "Farmland". "Sow and bake bread" is now called "Grain utilisation". Seriously?! "Plow and sow" is now called "Cultivation". I find this frustrating. Why not keep things simple and straightforward? Okay, maybe this is the grumpy old man talking. He is incapable of letting go of the past. "Family growth" is now called "Wish for children".
This was my farm near game end. I had wanted to upgrade my house to a clay house, but I didn't manage to gather enough clay. So we still lived in a wooden house by game end.
Caverna is a reimplementation of Agricola. Some aspects were changed and simplified, several things were added. This was the early game.
I have played the physical game. There were many game components to manage and it was quite a lot of work. You have so many options that it is exhausting to go through them one by one. The upside is you can try different buildings every game so there is much replayability.
Family members in Caverna don't score as many points as those in Agricola. They only score 1 point each, compared to 3 points in Agricola. However it is still useful to have more family members. You get more things done. I (red) worked hard on making kids, and I managed to reach the max of 6 family members. Han focused more on arming his family members. He had three armed family members and I had only one. Only armed family members can go on adventures.
By the end of the game all of my forest and mountain spaces were developed. I did not have to lose any points from undeveloped spaces. One cute thing about this game is your dogs can help to guard sheep. So some sheep can be left in the fields as long as you have enough dogs taking care of them.
Puerto Rico was once the #1 game on BGG. Many years ago I bought it because it was #1. At the time I had not played many Euro style games. My favourite games then were games like Axis and Allies. When I first read the rules of Puerto Rico, I was confused. This is it? This is the #1 game? It seems too simple. Where is the excitement? Later as I learned to appreciate Euro games, I understood the fun in Puerto Rico.
Han beat us by a large margin. He had two large buildings. He had four quarries, which gave him deep discounts on buildings.
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