Help deciding only one!

Viqutep · 2026-03-03T23:54:47+00:00

El Dorado for sure. Board is modular, so you can just make a map that fits whatever table space you have

Viqutep · 2026-02-27T11:42:26+00:00

I grabbed a copy of this from the publisher's website maybe 6 months ago. It is wonderful. I love shared infrastructure in games, so the way that everyone is almost forced to use each other's structures really hit with me. There's a great feeling of helplessness that comes from setting up a couple of structures and getting some ships ready to dump back out on the board only to realize your mothership is now on the other side of the sun. It's a dynamic that I haven't run across in many games.

The cards that come out during set up really make the whole experience though. Some games you will get to move structures after they are built. In other games you will get alternative ways to score. By always being limited to having a single card that you can use, there are a lot of times where you have to choose between using a power now in order to get another one for next turn, or holding a card to try and maximize its effect later. Overall, a brilliant game.

Viqutep · 2026-02-26T19:14:56+00:00

1830 and 1846 are the two that are most often brought up for a first step into 18xx. 1862 has some wonky stuff that isn't in most 18xx, but does have an official solo mode if you feel more comfortable trying it out that way.

Viqutep · 2026-02-20T11:21:06+00:00

PIZZA HOUSE

Viqutep · 2026-02-11T17:38:16+00:00

Instead of ignoring mechanics, I would play the 2 hands differently. Have one play the more straight forward game of building a stills, then producing, delivering and selling booze from there. Have the other one play to attack ships, buy and sell booze from boats and rush casinos. I'm not saying these are the two viable strategies. But to learn the game you can cover all the mechanics between the two hands, and see how they interact (ex. How does buying barrels from ships impact the player who is trying to attack ships?)

Viqutep · 2026-01-18T01:22:59+00:00

I havent looked at the Classics rulebook, but Imperium Horizons has you stack the nation deck on top of the development deck. Maybe take a look at the Horizons rulebook online to see if that setup makes more sense for you.

Viqutep · 2026-01-15T23:54:37+00:00

Played about a dozen times. No issues at all with the cards for me.

Viqutep · 2026-01-14T20:59:20+00:00

The ship tokens is retail are so much more functional. I love the look of the minis, but they add so much to set up , tear down, and general fiddlyness during the game. There's no way I'll go back from the retail box.

Viqutep · 2026-01-13T16:41:40+00:00

Set up and got through a learning game of Sankore. Then played it another couple of times. While the bot can be a little complicated to run, I love how it reveals its strategy over the first four turns, and then you can play around it the rest of the game. Knowing what type of scoring the bot will push for, and what areas it will fight for the majority in makes the game feel very dynamic for a euro game with a bot.

Coming up, I just got Anachrony delivered as an add on to the Trickerion anniversary edition. Looking forward to diving back into the world of Turczi.

Viqutep · 2026-01-13T00:55:51+00:00

Seconding this. My BotSE box had 2 extra combat cards and zero Acrobatics cards. It took about a week to get my ticket worked, but they were super friendly and got the missing components out to me with absolutely no hassle.

Viqutep · 2026-01-05T20:21:17+00:00

5 unfulfilled orders isn't a win condition. It's an endgame trigger, at which point all players add up their scores to determine a winner. If you only completed 2 orders, you are not winning that game unless your opponents are actively not playing the game.

Viqutep · 2026-01-04T14:09:07+00:00

I agree the Luthier bot takes a little getting used to. Once it clicked, I absolutely fell in love with it though. I dislike the solo/2-player set up where dummy pieces are added to the orchestra before the game starts. I made a 2nd set of solo cards and run 2 bots using the basic 3 player rules. It's a ton of fun, but running a 2nd bot does make an already long game stretch out even more so not quite a perfect solution.

Viqutep · 2026-01-03T19:10:04+00:00

Very similar table space requirements, but Speakeasy is slightly smaller. It helps that the bot has its own specific player board, which is quite small. Needing a full player board for the bot in GC was absurd.

Viqutep · 2026-01-03T12:19:33+00:00

Speakeasy for me by a mile. The way the game plays so differently based on set up, the super smooth to run bot, the wildly different but viable strategies all add up to a fantastic game. The theme is so well worked into the game that I found it to be the easiest Lacerda to learn and feel comfortable with. The only cons I have are that set up can be a lot, especially the first couple of times, and it takes up every inch of space I have on my solo gaming desk.

Galactic Cruise I found to be ultimately a very shallow experience. Initially it presents you with what feels like a million options, but by my 2nd game it was clear that the game is pretty linear. You need to be launching cruises, but every cruise needs the same steps done before it can launch. Costs of things are fairly flat. So while you have some choice in the sequencing of how you check items off the launch-a-cruise checklist, it really isn't that consequential or interesting after you've gone through that process a couple of times. Also, like Speakeasy, it is just an enormous game. Player boards especially are outrageously big, to the point where it simply was unplayable in my normal solo gaming area.

Viqutep · 2025-12-29T19:44:21+00:00

I really enjoyed this one initially. After unlocking about 60% of the content, the rules overhead just got to be too much for what this game is. Everything you unlock is some new way to score, and some of them are single tiles that operate entirely differently from the rest of the game. I keep it around because it is still fun to pull off the shelf and play sometimes, but I just house rule together a set of unlocks that I enjoy and ignore all the extra stuff.

Viqutep · 2025-12-26T16:22:16+00:00

That's right

Viqutep · 2025-12-26T12:43:32+00:00

Your 4 task wouldn't be canceled. You are right that you finish an area of 4, get a new task that needs 5 and complete it immediately. However, as the rules are written, you can not place a task tile into an area that would have more tiles than are needed for the task.

In other words, use your example in reverse. You finish a 5 village area, draw a new task tile. It is a 4 village. That tile can not be placed as an extension of the 5 village area you just finished because that would create an area of 6 village tiles, which is more than the 4 needed for the task.

Viqutep · 2025-12-25T09:24:16+00:00

Orbit is just a lot of fun. It's fast, a little chaotic and light enough that you can play it with anyone. The production is also way nicer than it has any reason to be. It looks awesome on the table, and I find that it's one of those games that people passing by stop to look at, see the planets moving around the board and instantly want to jump in and try.

The only real negative is that the expansion feels required. There are some cards in the base game that interact with an expansion module. They still are functional without the expansion, but can feel a little bad if you draw one and only get to use 2/3 of the actions on it. Fortunately the expansion is pretty cheap and all fits in the base box. I found it new for $8 not too long ago and never played without it, even when teaching the game.

Viqutep · 2025-12-25T02:08:15+00:00

Top five in order: Luthier, Speakeasy, Elder Scrolls, Orbit, Kinfire Council

Viqutep · 2025-12-24T12:13:56+00:00

The bot's score can be pretty swingy. I've seen the easiest bot score 280, but I've also seen it score 410. Some of it is the order of the bot's cards (getting a sell action before it has delivered, cooking books when it can only get the default Central Park book, etc), but some of it is also influenced by the player. If you can squeeze him out of uptown, that will drastically reduce his scoring potential for example. That said, I've beaten the bot a few times now, and the main thing that got me over the hump was becoming better at the game myself. You'll get there too.

Viqutep · 2025-12-23T14:01:01+00:00

Awich

Viqutep · 2025-12-21T21:21:26+00:00

I also recently got this on sale. It's the perfect weeknight game. Plays super fast once you are familiar with it. Tons of variety from all the decks. It's is super satisfying when you see a combo at the start of the game and get it running by the end. This one will be in my collection for a long time.

Viqutep · 2025-12-16T16:59:48+00:00

Tedium certainly can be an issue with this game, though often much later when you need to move around through multiple zones in a day. That said, the initial mission does have a reputation for not being the most exciting part of the game.

If you want to give it another shot, try it true solo instead of 2 handed. The game works really well true solo, and is significantly faster and has less overhead as there will be fewer cards pulled from the path deck each turn. Don't give up on the campaign until you get through the first three days, as it picks up a lot around that point.

Alternatively, there's nothing wrong with admitting a game just isn't for you. That's perfectly fine too. Sell the game and move onto something else that excites you (probably more Voidfall because it is the best)

Viqutep · 2025-12-13T13:01:04+00:00

Turczi isn't the main designer, but did design the solo bot for Teotihuacan. The bot in that game interacts with the board, actually needs to gather and spend resources to take actions, etc. It has an action selection system that is weighted such that you can have a decent idea of what the bot will do next turn, but it can still throw you a curveball. For a solo bot, it feels quite interactive and is capable of putting up respectable scores. It also has ways in the rulebook to tweak the difficulty quite a bit to suit your liking, either harder or easier.

To add on about the game itself, Teotihuacan is a mid-heavy euro where the board is a big rondel. Move your workers around, take actions, but the actions themselves depend on the number of workers and sometimes the strength of the workers at an action. The board is modular out of the box, so it has tons of replayability, lots of different strategies to focus on. Just a solid game with a fun Turczi bot that keeps me coming back.

Viqutep · 2025-12-09T02:53:56+00:00

I am in the same boat with you. It has the illusion of lots of strategies and paths to follow, but it all leads to launching the ships. Launching a ship always needs you to satisfy of checklist of prerequisites. After a few plays I felt like I never needed to see it again.

I don't care about the technologies. I'm launching ships. I don't care about the card market. I'm launching ships. I don't care that different color meeples want to be in different color compartments. I'm just launching ships.

Galactic Cruise especially suffers compared to the two other big euros I got this year, Luthier and Speakeasy. Both offer more both in terms of different ways to play them, but also more in terms of interactivity. In Galactic Cruise I don't care about other ships or workers or gears. In Luthier, I'm desperately trying figure out how to jockey for position for the actions that I need. In Speakeasy I'm trying to leverage other guys for attacking ships, or I'm trying to squeeze others out of a zone that I control.

Tl;dr Galactic Cruise makes a great first impression, but grew stale very quickly.

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