Bad timing

Mrs H has been frowning at me recently because four large parcels have recently arrived – three Kickstarters which arrived within two weeks of each other, and I bought myself something for Mrs H to give to me on my birthday.

Kickstarters

The three Kickstarters were:

Cold City/Hot War 2e

Cold City/Hot War second editions (and the only ttrpgs on this list). I’m prepping a Cold City investigation right now and will hopefully run that in a couple of weeks, when my regular Monday night group completes its current adventure (The Dying Earth).

Having read Cold City, I have Views and there will be a review in due course, followed by an after-action report.

And then I’ll crack open Hot War and run a game of that.

Kavango Lodges

In Kavango, each player has an African conservation reserve and uses card drafting to fill their reserve with animals. It looks gorgeous and plays quickly. Kavango Lodges adds a spatial element the original game lacked.

Since the first edition, the designers have updated almost all the cards, so they created Let’s Go Kavango, a travel version that includes all the new cards but doesn’t use the changed elements. Owners of the original edition can simply swap the LGK cards for their originals, which is a nice idea rather than just having to throw the old cards away.

I like Kavango, but the family don’t like it enough for it to see the table often. It has a solo mode, which means I can scratch my Kavango itch whenever I want. (But that's never as good as playing against a human.)

I’m not sure how often I’ll play Let’s Go Kavango, but we’ll see.

John Company 2e

John Company second edition arrived this week. It’s a monstrous game, quite unlike the board games I normally enjoy, as it’s long and “heavy”. But I was fascinated by the review on Shut Up and Sit Down, and the more I looked into the game, the more fascinated I became.

In John Company, players take the role of families running the East India Company. But you don’t really care whether the EIC succeeds or fails – you’re just looking to extract as much wealth as you can from it and then retire to a fabulous stately home. So it’s an extremely contentious subject, and one I’m looking forward to exploring.

Mrs H has already said she doesn’t want to play it (I would have been surprised had she said the opposite), so I hope to play it at clubs and conventions.

Intriguingly, a roleplaying/megagame version of John Company called The Company Archives is being developed.

John Company has a solo mode, so I can learn how to play it.

The gift

Buying presents is a nightmare. The best advice I’ve heard is, “Ask them what they want and get them that.” After all, I have no idea what gardening/patchwork apparatus Mrs H has her eye on, and she obviously has no idea which games I might be interested in. 

So what we do is when we see something we want but can’t really justify it to ourselves, we buy it for the other to give as a present.

Which is how I know I have Sidereal Confluence heading my way in November.

Sidereal Confluence

Sidereal Confluence is a negotiation game for 4-9 players, with simultaneous play, set in space, and asymmetric powers. It sounds right up my street – lots of players haggling over stuff, alien races that each play differently, and simultaneous play so there’s no tedious hanging around waiting for anyone’s turn.

(And this review from No Pun Included helped.)

I can’t imagine playing this too often at home, so I hope to play it at conventions and clubs. It should be easier to get to the table than John Company…

One-in, one-out

To placate Mrs H, I try to follow a one-in, one-out policy.

I recently sold all my Magic: the Gathering cards, so that gives me a few brownie points for John Company. For Kavango Lodges, I put The Crew into the Oxfam pile (but that was then taken out by my daughter, which I think still counts).

I don’t know what I’m going to do about Cold City/Hot War yet, but at least it doesn’t take up much space on the bookshelf. I don’t think she’s noticed.