A Great Week of Gaming

I'm continuing to roll solo through The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth. I finished the fifth adventure last night and noted a couple of interesting things (spoiler-free).

+ I finally received enough lore to level up some of my weapons and armor. I'm excited to see how they play out in the next adventure!

+ One of my characters received their first title! A seemingly mundane search event turned out to have a huge benefit for a certain race. Well, I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time and now have a new, powerful card in my deck!

- Of my five adventures, one of them was really boring and confusing. I didn't really know what was going on until the very end and then it was too late to do the right thing. That one definitely took me out of the experience of the game.

- Why didn't they just use regular sized cards? I feel like I can't appreciate the art, can barely read the words, and am missing out on feeling immersed in the game and its environment. It's a stark contrast to playing Call to Adventure which has giant sized cards with beautiful artwork on them.

Overall I am enjoying my experience, but I can definitely see the merit behind some of the complaints I've heard/read.

Last night I took a break from solo gaming to try something crazy - playing with someone else! Logan came over - both of our wives were busy - and we got our game on!

First up: Chronicles of Crime. We've played this before in a group of four and it was ok. My biggest problem with the game was that it felt like I was just playing a video game - the board/card stuff didn't really feel necessary to the experience. It's pretty cool and innovative what they've done here, but just not really for me. 

The other problem I had with the four player experience was that you really didn't all feel useful. Only one person can scan a card at a time. Only one person can read the text on the screen at a time. Yes, you discuss the clues and suspects and can decide together where you're going to go next, but it just didn't feel that immersive to me. The two player game was better. There were just less useless people sitting around the table (not that our wives were useless at this game, they're brilliant - we just didn't all feel useful at the same time). Logan and I were a dynamic duo and we solved our crime with 100% success, solving every single piece correctly. I will admit, though, that I don't think I really carried my weight.

After solving the murder/theft, we traded in our detective hats for some fancy explorer ones. The other night we played The Quest to El Dorado with our wives and I really liked it. I'm a big fan of deckbuilders (shocker) and I've really been enjoying ones that involve movement around a map. El Dorado is basically a race. You're all trying to make it to the lost city before your opponents. You want first pick of the treasures! In order to move around the modular hex-based grid, you need to play cards that match the symbol on the space. If you want to move onto a green space with one machete, for instance, you need to play a card with at least one machete on it. If you had a 3 machete card, you could move 3 single machete spaces. However, if you wanted to enter a 3 machete space, you cannot add up 3 single machete cards. You need a card with at least 3 machetes on it. This definitely ups the difficulty. 

As the race progresses, you use your gold to buy more and better cards. There are even some spaces and cards that allow you to scrap cards from your hand for good. If you take a close look at the picture to the right, you can see that Logan kicked my butt. In a four player game you each move one explorer but in a two player game you each get two explorers. Well, stupid ol' Logan boxed me in a mountain range and I couldn't move past him. He then raced off to the treasure, leaving me in the dust. That's two losses in a row for me and two wins for a row for Logan. I will have my revenge!

A really good week of gaming and I've really been enjoying what I've been playing. I hope you enjoy reading about it! Now I'm interested to see if there is a solo variant for El Dorado..