Caverna, 2-Player - A Review

Caverna, the Cave Farmers, is one of the newer games in my collection.  I have been waiting to play it with more than two players before writing a review, but since I have had no luck I thought I would share what I have found so far, and update once I get to play with more players.

Caverna Box Cover

Getting back into Boardgames

This post has been a long time coming.  Every once in a while, life just gets really busy, and in this case the "free" time my wife and I had together suffered, which meant that less board games got played.  A couple of weeks ago we found some time to play again, and some thoughts on that are below.  However, ironically enough, this post then got delayed because we got busy again!

We have a couple of groups of friends that we play board games with, but the majority we play are with just my wife and I.  When the opportunity arises, playing a game is usually my preference, where as my wife will prefer to watch a show together.  Now that things have settled down a bit I am sure we will play more often, but with a couple of new seasons of some of our favourite shows on Netflix, I am sure the TV option will happen more often too.

What really struck me when we went to play again was our choice of games.  It probably doesn't take a genius to figure out that they are among our favourite games, but I really noticed that it was a combination of each of our preferences, plus which games are decent 2-Player games.  What also struck me is which game we didn't chose; Dominion.  I would still rank it as one of my top games, and is also likely still our most played game (the only possible competitor would be 7 Wonders).  My wife has commented a few times that it is no longer high on her list, primarily because she finds the large library of cards (we have a bunch of expansions) adds confusion and adds to the setup time.  Despite a few of our friends having copies of this, it rarely gets played in a group setting, so it has been a while since I last played it.

Crop Cycle - Kickstarter

So this is a shameless plug for a kickstarter game, Crop Cycle. 

This is a game that I had a chance to play before the previous (unsuccessful) kickstarter campaign, and my review can be found here.  I enjoyed playing the game, and I am glad that the current campaign has been successful and I will be getting a copy!  I am also a strong believer in supporting Canadian developed content, and even more so when it is well done.

I also wouldn't mind having the enhanced cardstock (which is a stretch goal), so check it out!

7 Wonders - Cities

Our latest expansion (there is a newer one out there we haven't purchased yet) for the most played games in our collection arrived a couple of weeks ago; 7 Wonders - Cities.

I was so excited about this expansion that I spent time ahead of our first game going through the components, sleeving the cards and reading the rules (again as I had read them online prior to buying it).  One odd thing I found is that I received two less -1 debt tokens than it stated in the rules, and instead got two -1 conflict tokens it didn't mention; maybe just an edition thing?  Anyways, in all the games I have played so far we have never come close to needing all the debt tokens it comes with.  Every thing fit perfectly into the organizer (see post on it here), with still lots of room left.

My wife and I played a game not long after that, with just the base game + cities, with the two new wonders, just to get a feel for it.  I ended up with Petra, while my wife played with Byzantium.  One of the first things I noticed is that my focus on the coins grew very quickly; many of the black cards cost coins, my second wonder stage cost 9 coins, and I was paranoid about the debt cards.  It also didn't help that before we started playing with cities I often found myself with very few coins (something about my playing style, still haven't exactly pinpointed why).  I enjoyed the new flavor that the black cards added, and I appreciated the fact that they added without really changing the game too much.

Our first Cities game (from my wife's side of the board)

Accessories - 7 Wonders

Board game accessories are something that I have looked at a lot of, but I haven't actually bought many.  Now, I am lumping all gaming components that don't come with the game into my definition of "accessory".  To be honest, until recently I have only sleeved a couple of games, and bought a couple of small tackle boxes to organize tokens.

I have been looking into all sorts of accessories for the games I play the most often, but usually end up not getting them as they start to approach the cost of the game or possible expansions to it, and I just can't justify the cost. Recently I decided to actually try one, so I bought an organizer for 7 Wonders from +The Broken Token, and some card sleeves as well.  This is one of (if not the) most played game(s) in our collection and even with just two expansions (Leaders and Wonder Pack) it doesn't fit in the original box anymore.  Since that time I have also purchased the Cities expansion (it is still being shipped) which would have only compounded the problem.

The parts all come pre-cut in sheets, with two small tabs holding each part, which break easy enough.  The resulting parts are then put together using the tabs (into the slots) following the simple assembly instructions that come with it.


Assembly of a token tray

New Games (to me) - Power Grid, Avalon and Camel Up

Games I recently tried

Recently I had a couple of chances to try Power Grid.  We had another family over for dinner and games last weekend, and after the kids were in bed we played a game. This was the first time that my wife and I had played it, and it really helped that our friend has some skill in explaining games, as the concept is different from a lot of the games we have.  It turns out in the end that we had missed a few little rules that may have changed the outcome, but we still got the hang of the game.  We played the US map that night, and then yesterday evening at a guys game night I had a chance to play a 5-player game on the Germany map.