And the words, they're everything and nothing

[never-sated]

We finally got the Everdell Big Ol' Box out of our garage and into someone else's hands! I genuinely thought we were going to be stuck with it forever.

And we're getting the Bloodborne Blood Moon box for it! Now I'm just missing Byrgenwerth and Upper Cathedral Ward.

[never-sated]

We don't buy a lot of games anymore because we're almost at capacity.

That said, we really liked Captain's Chair so we were always going to get the new content. We love co-op games, I'm a big fan of Tales From The Loop, and this is my second attempt to acquire the board game (first copy was damaged). Spectacular is a flyer but we really enjoy these sorts of drafting and tile placement puzzle games.

And I mostly know where these are going...

[never-sated]

It was very weird to come out of Flyleaf without any books because July is, in fact, a light month.

However, on the back of the delightful experience with The Lady Vanishes, I took advantage of a Criterion sale to pick up two Hitchcock films that are very much in conversation.

[never-sated]

[never-sated]

Why Sailor Moon Belongs in Mission Control - Reactor

The lead CAPCOM for the Artemis II mission explains how magical girls embody NASA's core values.

[primal-slayer]

Polaris - Princess of Magnetism

[never-sated]

"Every song has an ending, every ending has a song."

We finally upgraded to a family plan with Deezer so my wife has access to a streaming service again. Of course she went to listen to Arcadia and, of course, I did as well.

What a fucking song Forever is. Someone, somewhere has used that line as a fanfic title. Absolutely lights out.

[never-sated]

A change of plans brings us an amusing Hitchcock thriller.

[never-sated]

Fantasy (and sci-fi) month rolls on with Mage Knight and Adventurous. My wife and I both thought we'd played Mage Knight before but we had no logged plays so we'll just call these both new to us.

When Mage Knight came out in 2011, it was one of the first fantasy themed games to use euro mechanisms. In the 15 years since, many more euro games have employed more diverse themes, including fantasy. Still, getting to play as a fantasy character, explore a map, and have battles while employing deck building and hand management sounds pretty cool. Our experience was mixed though. On the one hand, we probably should have been more aggresive, engaging in battles and taking wounds to get fame because we had a hard time leveling up. Being under leveled kept our hand size, armor, command tokens, and deck building limited. Getting enough movement and combat skills in hand was difficult, which made us hesitant to engage in battles (though sometimes we just couldn't win them given the cards available). In any deckbuilder, there is an element of luck to how your cards come out, though modifying your deck can help with that. But we also had a hard time getting enough movement and influence together to buy new cards. It's obvious there are a lot of interesting choices and combo options in the card play. We just had a hard time expanding our options to see more of those choices and combos. We'd both like to give it another try and see if we can have more success in combat and/or card purchases but it wasn't quite what we were hoping for.

Adventurous is a delightful route building puzzle. You start with your ship, 12 route cards, and five marvels. Every turn you draw two route cards and place them in such a way that you have a continuous route and can place a marvel out by having the available encounter symbols that match the marvel's requirement (and none that it doesn't allow). You score points for visible route sections and visible encounters, as long as your under the visible limit for each. As you can imagine, it plays very quickly and has three additional difficulty levels to use as you get better at the game. The art is lovely and evocative of a maritime voyage. This is one I see us getting out when we've got an itch to play something quick but just a bit thinky.

[never-sated]

July is still a light month, which is why I picked up The Handmaid's Tale since we didn't own it. It's also why a crowdfunded book is included in the photo (also because it's cool!).

[never-sated]

[never-sated]

I took an extra long weekend so it was a two film day with an opera in between. It was quite the odd run for the day, in theme and mood.

I should have watched No Other Land much sooner, regardless of how difficult a watch it was. Il barbiere di Siviglia was my first Italian opera and I don't know that it's gone a long way toward increasing my interest but I will persevere, at least for a few more attempts. The General was Buster Keaton physical comedy based on a true Civil War story, except he represented the south so I don't quite know what to do with that.

[never-sated]

We kicked off what I've dubbed "fantasy and sci-fi"month. It was originally "fantasy" month but I wanted to include Captain's Chair so I had to expand out from fantasy. Is there another sci-fi game in the playlist for the month you may ask. No. It's still basically "fantasy" month, just with Captain's Chair. So Captain's Chair was new to us while Heroes of Tenefyr was a replay to see if we wanted to keep it in the collection.

We own Inperium Horizons but have yet to play it so the system in Captain's Chair was new to us. Perhaps we're slightly better prepared to play Imperium Horizons now. We'll find out later this year. As for the theme, my wife is a big Trek fan while I've seen very little of any of the shows. For our first play, we played the solo cadet mode, no bot, just learning Picard's deck. I think, given the variation in captains and their decks, that this is a good way to get comfortable with a new deck (and in our case to learn the general flow of the game). The game plays in phases and, in cadet mode, you're playing 11 total rounds. You are, as with pretty much all board games, trying to score as many points as you can. The Resupply phase allows you to activate any resupply operations on your deployed cards. The Control phase is when you can take control of locations you have at least three away teams and/or ships on and two more than your opponent. The Action phase is the heart of the game, when you use your three (or potentially more) actions to play cards and use activations on deployed cards. The Clean-Up phase is exactly what it sounds like. Scoring all happens at the end of the game when you add glory you've gained, points printed on cards you control, points based on your diplomacy, science, and military track multipliers for each card you control with multiplier scoring, and potentially points for your captain's mission (only on the advanced side of their board). Like many deck builders, this game wants you to modify your deck, set up card synergies, and combo together as many actions and activations a turn as you can. There's a lot to consider with each card you play, both short and long term. We had a great time with the game and really started to get the hang of it midway through. We enjoyed it so much that we've preorder the expansion and new standalone box and are looking at storage and component upgrade options.

Heroes of Tenefyr is a very straightforward deck builder/dungeon crawler with a fantasy theme. You start with a deck of 0 and 1 power cards and work your way through levels of the dungeon gaining defeated enemies as new, more powerful cards. As you clear dungeon levels, you gain additional rewards that often help you modify your deck or prepare for the next dungeon level. You can choose to face the dungeon boss at any point but they will be triggered after a certain number of dungeon exits. Defeating the boss is the only way to win the game. We started out feeling really good about our chances. We were cruising through the early dungeon levels, until we weren't. A lot of enemies have special powers that make your life harder: reducing your power, increasing their power, reducing your card draw, adding more cards to the dungeon level, and so on. We got to the highest levels and were running into lots of negative cards that forced us into the boss fight that we promptly lost on the first phase. I honestly didn't think we'd keep this game but the push your luck element coupled with just enough interesting deck building choices means it will be sticking around, at least until we need the space.

[never-sated]

I haven't been watching much of the World Cup because supporting FIFA and a world cup partially hosted in my home country doesn't seem like the right thing to do.

However, I did turn on the Croatia v Portugal match last night to watch what was likely Modric's last international match. I was immediately struck by the thought that Jota should be there. But he never will be again.

Oh he wears the number 20...

[never-sated]

So, unlike my profoundly wrong impression of June, July is ACTUALLY a light month.

[never-sated]

I've never read Roadside Picnic but I've played Shadow of Chernobyl and am interested in the subject matter generally. I also made it through Solaris so I know what I'm getting into with Tarkovsky. I'm very curious to see what he does with the material.

[never-sated]

Water month, as we dubbed it, was a big success and ended on a high note. Underwater Cities and Flip Voyage were both new to us, though we have played Fliptown which is a similar design to Flip Voyage. We've played and enjoyed other games by both Vladimir Suchý and Steven Aramini as well so we felt good about these picks.

Underwater Cities is, mechanically, quite straightforward. You have three actions tiles to use per round and twelve actions slots on the board to choose from (plus one that can't be blocked). You also have three cards that must be played along with the your action tiles. If the card color matches the action color, you can take the immediate action on available on the card or claim the card for it's power. Some cards provide an additional action you can use your action tile on. This can be especially useful when action slots get blocked. The cards can also provide ongoing effects or end-game scoring. You want to build connected cities and support structures to produce resources and score points. You can also upgrade structures for better production. It's a clever game where planning and timing are crucial. We didn't score that well our first play but this is a game that will reward repeated plays. As soon as we finished, we were already looking at our other options to improve our score.

Flip Voyage is a lot like Fliptown, but more streamlined. It's a flip-and-write. There are four phases, three of which are dictated by your card selection. Every turn you draw three cards. These are from a standard 52 card deck. The suits indicate the four areas on the board you engage with and the number determine what you fill in within the selected area. The remaining card determines your ship's movement on the grid. End game is triggered when your stars and your notoriety (movement total) cross, then there are a few additional end game calculations to tally your final score. Like most and-writes, the way to be successful is to pull off combos allowing you to fill in additional selections as often as possible. There are three in-game goals to worked toward as well that provide additional stars. It's not complicated but we always enjoy these sort of combotastic and-write games. The 20,000 Leagues theme is fun too and the card art aligns nicely.