I first played Architects of the West Kingdom as a physical game. Playing online in asynchronous mode is not as good as playing face-to-face. I guess that's true for most boardgames. For strategy games like this, it is still not too bad. There is much you can plan and think about between your turns. You don't have many turns in a game, so the game doesn't go too long. Some games which require much communication between players and frequent negotiations don't work well in asynchronous mode.
My character and player board. I didn't recruit many assistants.
This game I arbitrarily decided I wanted to focus on building the cathedral. I kept collecting resources, and whenever I had enough I went to the cathedral. I was blue. Unfortunately for me three out of four players wanted to compete in cathedral building. I was just one step too slow in becoming the biggest contributor. In hindsight, maybe I should not have been so single-minded. I should have been more flexible and I could have found other ways to help me score points more efficiently.
I don't find the game mechanism in Let's Go! To Japan particularly innovative or outstanding, but I enjoy the game every time I play it. It must be the theme. It just works for me. Or maybe it's because I generally like tableau building games.
Yokohama is also a game with a Japanese theme, and it is by a Japanese designer too. This is a heavy Eurogame, which is not typical from Japanese publishers. With four players, the game is rather challenging. Your opponents' bosses often block you from the districts you want to visit, and their presence mean even to place your workers in those districts it costs you money.
Concordia is by now a 12-year-old game, first published in 2013. I have played the Mediterranean Sea map before, and this was the first time I tried the Italy map.
Perikles is a Martin Wallace game from 2006. Sometimes playing slightly older games reminds me of how elegant and concise game design can be. Compared to many popular heavy games today, Perikles feels almost minimalistic. Yet it is strategic and offers much tension. Your actions are not many, and they are mostly simple. Games can be highly strategic and fun without being all that complicated.
Our first game ended rather abruptly after the first of three eras, because Sparta lost too many battles and was wiped out. That took everyone by surprise. We all underestimated the possibility.
I did poorly in Teotihuacan: City of Gods because I completely forgot I had to pay my workers their salaries at the end of a round. Oops, bad boss! I should have done my rules revision properly.
This was my first time playing Challengers! Beach Cup, but the core rules are the same as Challengers!, just that now you have different card sets to play with. It was a joy playing Challengers! again. The core mechanism is so simple that it's surprising that the game works. This is a deck-building game, but it's something a little different. Your most important decisions are made when you add to your team and remove players from your team. During the actual matches there are few decisions to make. You have to leave it to your team to play well, i.e. it's luck, but mitigated by how you have built your team. I say this makes the deck-building purer.
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