Wu-Bob!

Ghost stories was played on Wednesday night and after a false start (read every haunter and tormentor, not ones on your board, yikes!) things went well. I am very pleased with the look and feel of the game, the artwork is really nice. The plastic ghosts are good and there is enough bits to make a good game without needing hundreds of baggies to keep things organised.

Needless to say we lost. We managed to get about half way through the ghost deck before we forgot to use out yin-yang tokens to flip back some villager tiles. A noobie mistake but we were busy trying to fend off hoards of ghost. The ghosts did seem to appear think and fast and boards were being over run quickly. Mainly due to the black curse die bringing in more spooks.

I also found that we didn't use the villager tiles as much as I though. Probably because we are not really up to speed with what they do. We also missed opportunities with our special powers. I was yellow and didn't use my enfeeblement ability the first few turns as I forgot about it.

I am going to give it a solo try over the weekend, more to get the rules down. I hope to get a bit further through the deck.

Afterwards we played Stone Age, one of my favorite games. Things progressed well with Gornad choosing the action I wanted pretty much every time. Mudhoney struggled but it was his first time and it was getting late. I managed to win the game by a sizable margin. Mainly due to holding lots of cards. They always seem to be the game winner for me.

A good nights gaming, but I always leave wanting to play more games.

Stone Age

I had a package delivery on Friday while I was out and the only item to big to fit through the letterbox that I was expecting was my Santa gift.
I couldn't pick it up until yesterday and resisted opening it for all of.....5 seconds. I kidded myself into finding out as I had a few other games on Christmas lists. I wouldn't want two copies of the same game would I?

A copy of Stone Age greeted me as I ripped upon the box. Fantastic, I love this game and have had a game running on Yucata since I found out about it. Now I have my own proper copy and it should hit the table this week.

Thanks BGG Secret Santa.

Looks like P.O.B. has a new venue, we will be at the Wine Vaults tomorrow night if anyone is in the area and wants a game. Hopefully this venue will last longer than previous ones. Tomorrows games are going back to old school Euros. Puerto Rico is making an appearance along with some others, I am tempted to bring along Caylus as I haven't played it for a while.

Modern Art

I have recently been playing Stone Age on Yucata. I think I first heard about it on the Meeples and Minatures podcast and I kind of brushed it off. I was probably busy with Pandemic at the time.

It's on Beta at Yucata and I have really been enjoying it, I have about 5 games of it on the go at the moment. One of the best things about the implementation is that you can see the board and cards as they really are. I think the board is one of the best looking boards I have seen.

I am a sucker for things that look nice and I am sure if I had seen this earlier a copy would be on my shelf already. I have had a look back over the games and wondered how many I have bought just because they looked good. Suprisingly not a huge amount. Does this mean that I have missed out on some gems or just don't appreciate good board game art.

Dominion is a great game, but I find the art a bit bland but functional. Some companies seem to spend more tiem on the artwork than others. I suppose it's down to cost. After developing a game can they justify pasting on some uber artwork hoping that it will be enough to entice the geek crown into buying it?

So, my top 5 best looking game boards at the moment are probably

1. Stone Age, its new.
2. Formula D, I love the cartoon look of the reprint.
3. Hannible, rome vs Carthage. Sucker for map boards and this is gorgeous.
4. Thebes, works well with the theme and its another map board.
5. Age of Empires III, yet another map.

Any others I should be looking at?