Board Game Summary – 2023.01

My boardgaming for the first month of 2023 was not too shabby. I travelled a lot, so I didn’t get to play as much. In return, playing with new groups was exciting. I also got to play more new games.

Games	Numbers of Plays
Dune: Imperium (with IX and Immortality)	7
Point Salad (Eevee Edition)	4
Sidereal Confluence	2
Great Western Trails: Argentina	2
Garden Nation	2
Terra Nova	2
Paladins of the West Kingdom	1
Cartographers	1
Clans of Caledonia	1
Wayfarers of South Tigris	1
Mosaic	1
Revive	1
Silk	1

This is the new expansion to Dune: Imperium, following Rise of IX. This expansion introduces the following main changes:

• The Bene Tlailax Board: This includes a research track that gives various bonus and a few opportunities for comboing and a Tleilaxu Track which gives 2 intrigues, some spices, and most importantly, 2 VPs.
• The Tleilaxu card market: This creates an additional way to get new and more powerful cards.
• The graft mechanics. This allows you to play two cards at the same time, one of the newly introduced graft card and any another one.
• A Family Atomics token per player: This allows you to refresh the Imperium Row. A very welcoming change.

This also results in replacing the Dune, the Desert Planet starting cards with the new Experimentation cards, with the same symbol. Honestly, this feels good since Dune, The Desert Planet was quite bad, and previously you kept it mostly for shipping.

Comparing to Rise of IX, Immortality feels to me less subtantial of an expansion. Rise of IX changed Dune: Imperium from an okayish game to a really good game and completely changed the way we played the game. Rise of IX also managed that with not actually introducing a lot of new things to learn.

Rise of IX also fixed two major part of Dune: Imperium: Exceed of Solari at the end of the game and making Spacing Guild more attractive. Immortality is more of introducing newer ways to apply previous strategies. There are more combos you can pull off and more ways to score points to make the game more aggressive. But it feels more satisfying comparing to the refreshing feeling that IX brought.

But with both Rise of IX and Immortality, the Emperor track is still not as exciting as the other three. They don’t particularly tie to any strategy and are more of a venue for scoring VPs. It was a bit of a disappointment on this aspect and what I hope most for future expansions.

Overall, it is still a good expansion and there are enough new contents to explore for quite awhile.

Point Salad (Eevee Edition)

It’s Point Salad but with Eevee. It’s inherently indefinitely better.

Sidereal Confluence: Trading And Negotiation In The Elysian Quadrant

This game’s name is already a mouthful and for the longest time, I pronounced the name as side-real. The ignorant. I will call it SC from this point on just to save my meager fingers.

The easiest way to describe the game will be Chinatown, but in space, with asymetrical symbiotic factions, tableau building, and loads of replayability. It might feel weird from that descriptions and that I should just describe the game separately, but there is no denying that the feeling when playing is very similar. The game has a very high level or interaction, but it can also get very very mathy. I haven’t seen another game that let you count the point to the 1/6 percentage. But from my own exprience, being good at maths doesn’t make you a good dealer. On the other hand, a good dealer who is bad at math might get the deal they want, but not the one they need. It balances out in a way.

I enjoyed the game more than I think I would, and would recommend it for any fan of negotiation and economic games. One note: The game is mostly language independent, which means if someone teaches you the factions, you can start playing just by understandings the icons, and there are only a few.

Terra Nova

The game promises a simpler version of Terra Mystica and it actually delivers it. I won’t play it over Terra Mystica, not because it isn’t good, but just because it would give too much of an ick to actually play Terra Mystica. But simpler rules, playable within 45 minutes, and quick setup time, I can see Terra Nova a gateway to heavier games.

Mosaic

Twice played, the game so far has been a bit of a disappointment, not because it’s a bad game per se. It’s just that the game length is a bit too much for such a simplistic game, while the setup is a bit pitnicky too. Even if we become used to the game and can wrap it up at about 10 to 15 minutes per players (which will make the game shine), it would feel a bit too much given the setup time.

Wayfarers of South Tigris

Wayfarers is a good game for people who do not mind a lack of interactivity. However, I could not help but feel a bit samey, after Paladins and then Viscounts. Even the comboing, while still satisfying, seems to borrow too much from Architects. The question is, how much is too much of similarity? On the good side, the playing time seems to be more manageable than Paladins, and with more plays, I would say this can be a good 2p game (30 – 40 minutes per game).

Silk

Neither bad nor good, the sin of this little game is that it seems forgetable despite having quite a unique theme and some unique mechanics. It could have gone in two different directions: a bit more streamlining of the bumping mechanics, or a bit more complexity to make it more strategic. Either way, it can still be a good filler game, if all players know how to push the game to end within 30 minutes. Any more than that, Silk would have overstayed its welcome.

Garden Nation

Another game that might suffer from never being able to end, Garden Nation still manages to be quite exciting. Comparing to Silk, the big difference is that though the game allows you to take a step back to delay the game and hope for a bigger return, it is just so exciting and thrilling to just move forward. A very simple yet very satisfying game, albeit can get samey after a few plays, Garden Nation can totally earn a spot for a quick area control game in between heavier games of the game day.