Today’s Shadowrun Sundays post is about board and card games. I introduced my peeps to SJG’s King’s Blood card game. This game is about building a genealogy with marriages and children. You match two different genders of the same color to get a marriage, then see if they have children or other events such as assassinations, exiles, or new connections. There are special character cards you can play which cause your opponents to draw 3 or get skipped or reverse the direction of play. It’s a lot like UNO in that you have to get rid of all your cards before everyone else does. And if you don’t yell “King’s Blood” when you have your last card, you have to draw 3 more cards.
I thought it was kind of fun. I love the manga-like artwork. It’s so “boss.” One player’s reaction was “If we’re gonna play UNO, let’s just play UNO and not some weird other game with extra rules.” He wasn’t too thrilled with the game. Some other members of the group thought it was okay, but we were still learning the rules, so it didn’t go as well as we expected. But there was the thought that once we know the rules better, it might be a fun quick game to play once in a blue moon. Verdict: Lighthearted, quick playing, but not a “WOW” game.
Then we played a couple of rounds of Ticket to Ride Europe. I lost the second round badly. Came in second on the first round. Fortunately, all my routes were along the same line. That made things easy. Here’s the board of our first game (very pretty IMHO).
We’ve played the base Ticket to Ride and Ticket to Ride Europe many many times. Too many times, perhaps. The group is tired of same-old, same-old, so we’re investigating other Ticket to Ride expansions. I think I’m going to pick up Germany and India. Does anyone have any advice on the best expansions for the game? I hear India has slightly different rules that makes connections important and Asia (or Africa) only earns points if you get the coastal routes. Thoughts? Opinions?
I’m also looking at the game Merchants of Amsterdam. It looks interesting. I’d love to hear reviews of it if anyone has some.
