Group board game extras

_posts/2023-12-29-Board-Games-2023.md

@@ -81,21 +81,38 @@ I like maps. I like drawing. I like board games. This is a board game about draw
 
 Here are some other games that are still occupying some of my brain space and are worth a little mention.
 
-- [Inheritors](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/367476/inheritors): In this small box card game you play ascending numbers in colored suits, and your score is the sum of the largest number in each suit. Simple, effective. But then there’s just enough interest in the cycling of cards (discards go into a center market; no number card ever leaves circulation) and some power cards to make it juicy. It has a little bit too much extra fluff, but the core is solid. 
+### Curiosities
+
 - [Dro Polter](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/405537/dropolter): In this game you hold a set of varied small objects in your hand (a ring, a shell, a cube, etc.). A card is flipped that shows some number of those objects, and the first person to (without looking) drop exactly those objects scores a point. Each point is bell you have to _also_ hold in your hand… but if you drop a bell you lose it. First to five bells wins. It's simple giggly fun.
 - [Rafter Five](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/405538/rafter-five): Essentially this game is Jenga in an Oink sized box. It's different of course, with thin cardstock planks holding wooden meeples and treasure chests. Making it more like [Men at Work](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/261114/men-work), actually. Regardless, it's tense silly fun in a small box.
 - [Trash Talk](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/387219/trash-talk): In this game you try to map weird dollar store items to a set of words. Does this tiny slinky map to "level" and the little racecar to "happy", or the other way around? Each time you're correct, add one weird little item to make the next round more challenging. It's very much a game of getting into the head of the clue-giver.
-- [Art Society](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/395375/art-society): Hang paintings on your wall, matching their frame style but not clashing their contents. Each round the paintings are allocated based on a simultaneous bid (with little paddles!). The presentation is absolutely impeccable. A gorgeous game.
-- [Wormholes](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/350689/wormholes): I like this game of making wormholes and making planetary deliveries. But after more plays of it it's become clear that it has a _strong_ runaway leader problem. If someone cracks the code, they're going to be one or two turns ahead of you and you will never catch up. The number of moves per turn is too tight, and the game is rather short. So I guess I need to only play it with people who suck as much as I do at the puzzle?
+- [Lacuna](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/386937/lacuna): Some games are so simple that they feel like they came from an older time. Place your metal tokens to capture flowers, working towards claiming the majority in each flower suit. It's a spatial head to head pub game… minus the fact that I wouldn't want to lay the pretty playmat on a sticky pub table. I was persuaded by [Matt Lees' review](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJM4tGxr5V8) to pick this up before playing it (a rarity for me these days), and I think it will work well as an accessible curio for a broad audience.
+
+### Let's Color
+
 - [Sagrada Artisans](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/369751/sagrada-artisans): Sagrada is a game of drafting dice and filling out your stained glass window with them following certain placement rules. Artisans turns that into a coloring book legacy game. When it's not your turn, you're coloring your page. It completely takes the sting out of anyone's turn running long. We're only a few games into the campaign, but I'm really enjoying the relaxed mutual activity vibe of it.
-- [Meadow](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/314491/meadow): Draft cards and play them in a natural progression, for example from mud fields to worm to bird to wolf. The art is delightful and watching your cards layer is satisfying. If I had to share a complaint it'd be that the point values are maybe too tight, where getting a 2 value instead of 3 value card just twice in the game is probably going to sink you.
-- [Splendor Duel](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/364073/splendor-duel): Splendor is a modern classic. The Duel version focuses it in on two players and adds a little board to make the gem drafting more interesting. It totally works, and the result is a tuned version of the larger game.
-- [Penny Black](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/394961/penny-black): Collect stamps and add them to your collector book in patterns matching your scoring criteria. There's nothing ground-breaking about how this game plays. But the production will leave a smile on your face. The stamp books are adorable, the tiles are clack-y, and the turn tracker is a rubber stamp. It all feels great, even if the experience is a little on the thin side.
+- [Blueprints of Mad King Ludwig](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/376610/blueprints-mad-king-ludwig): In the theme of "games that let you color and draw" (like Cartographers and Sagrada Artisans), this one is more complicated. Each turn your draft a new room to your growing palace, tracing it onto your piece of velum with colored pencils. The complexity is in the different per-room-type special abilities and scoring criteria. We'll see with more plays how that holds up (and smooths out), but is undeniable that drawing a palace floorplan is fun.
+
+### Good for Kids and Adults
+
 - [Castles by the Sea](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/357841/castles-sea): Build sandcastles with wooden blocks, populate them with your little meeples, and then watch the whole thing get knocked over by a bouncing beach ball. It's a great theme, and a lovely rendering of that theme in 3D space. The puzzle is in playing off of existing sand blocks to efficiently score shapes. Given that mental spatial manipulation isn't for everyone, that puzzle may short-circuit some brains. But playing it quick and casual had this one feeling good.
-- [HEAT: Pedal to the Metal](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/366013/heat-pedal-metal): I was told this was the best racing board game… and I can't really refute that. More than anything I've played it captured a sense of speed and risk. Push your deck to its limits and hope that it pays out. I very much enjoyed it, and if I decide to open a slot for a racing game it may replace my critically-beloved-but-no-one-wants-to-play [Flamme Rouge](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/199478/flamme-rouge).
-- [The Hunger](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/339906/hunger): You're a vampire. Venture out into the forest, feast upon the townsfolk, and get back before sunrise. But if you feast too hard, your engorged vampire might not be able to roll itself back into bed in time. It felt like similar to Clank but with vampires. I'd give it another play.
 - [Wandering Towers](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/355483/wandering-towers): Wizards are racing around a circuit getting lost in towers on their way to the constantly-moving finish line. The theme is weird. The stacking cardboard towers are great. I had more fun playing this with kids and adults than I expected.
-- [Décorum](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/344554/decorum): It's hard to beat the provided tagline: "a game of passive aggressive cohabitation." Work together to meet both of your shared goals for home decoration… but without communicating directly. It's a cute little puzzle that so far lives in the space of enjoyable confusion.
-- [Blueprints of Mad King Ludwig](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/376610/blueprints-mad-king-ludwig): In the theme of "games that let you color and draw" (like Cartographers and Sagrada Artisans), this one is more complicated. Each turn your draft a new room to your growing palace, tracing it onto your piece of velum with colored pencils. The complexity is in the different per-room-type special abilities and scoring criteria. We'll see with more plays how that holds up (and smooths out), but is undeniable that drawing a palace floorplan is fun.
+- [Penny Black](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/394961/penny-black): Collect stamps and add them to your collector book in patterns matching your scoring criteria. There's nothing ground-breaking about how this game plays. But the production will leave a smile on your face. The stamp books are adorable, the tiles are clack-y, and the turn tracker is a rubber stamp. It all feels great, even if the experience is a little on the thin side.
+
+### Small Boxes
+
+- [Inheritors](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/367476/inheritors): In this small box card game you play ascending numbers in colored suits, and your score is the sum of the largest number in each suit. Simple, effective. But then there’s just enough interest in the cycling of cards (discards go into a center market; no number card ever leaves circulation) and some power cards to make it juicy. It has a little bit too much extra fluff, but the core is solid. 
+- [Splendor Duel](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/364073/splendor-duel): Splendor is a modern classic. The Duel version focuses it in on two players and adds a little board to make the gem drafting more interesting. It totally works, and the result is a tuned version of the larger game.
 - [Radlands](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/329082/radlands): Max Max as a two player card game. Perhaps your wastelanders are bit _too_ fragile, as the board state can be _very_ dynamic. I'd like to spend more time with this one, more than partially influenced by the absolutely incredible art on these cards.
-- [Lacuna](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/386937/lacuna): Some games are so simple that they feel like they came from an older time. Place your metal tokens to capture flowers, working towards claiming the majority in each flower suit. It's a spatial head to head pub game… minus the fact that I wouldn't want to lay the pretty playmat on a sticky pub table. I was persuaded by [Matt Lees' review](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJM4tGxr5V8) to pick this up before playing it (a rarity for me these days), and I think it will work well as an accessible curio for a broad audience.
+
+### Main Events
+
+- [Art Society](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/395375/art-society): Hang paintings on your wall, matching their frame style but not clashing their contents. Each round the paintings are allocated based on a simultaneous bid (with little paddles!). The presentation is absolutely impeccable. A gorgeous game.
+- [Meadow](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/314491/meadow): Draft cards and play them in a natural progression, for example from mud fields to worm to bird to wolf. The art is delightful and watching your cards layer is satisfying. If I had to share a complaint it'd be that the point values are maybe too tight, where getting a 2 value instead of 3 value card just twice in the game is probably going to sink you.
+- [HEAT: Pedal to the Metal](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/366013/heat-pedal-metal): I was told this was the best racing board game… and I can't really refute that. More than anything I've played it captured a sense of speed and risk. Push your deck to its limits and hope that it pays out. I very much enjoyed it, and if I decide to open a slot for a racing game it may replace my critically-beloved-but-no-one-wants-to-play [Flamme Rouge](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/199478/flamme-rouge).
+- [Décorum](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/344554/decorum): It's hard to beat the provided tagline: "a game of passive aggressive cohabitation." Work together to meet both of your shared goals for home decoration… but without communicating directly. It's a cute little puzzle that so far lives in the space of enjoyable confusion.
+
+### Maybes
+
+- [The Hunger](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/339906/hunger): You're a vampire. Venture out into the forest, feast upon the townsfolk, and get back before sunrise. But if you feast too hard, your engorged vampire might not be able to roll itself back into bed in time. It felt like similar to Clank but with vampires. I'd give it another play.
+- [Wormholes](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/350689/wormholes): I like this game of making wormholes and making planetary deliveries. But after more plays of it it's become clear that it has a _strong_ runaway leader problem. If someone cracks the code, they're going to be one or two turns ahead of you and you will never catch up. The number of moves per turn is too tight, and the game is rather short. So I guess I need to only play it with people who suck as much as I do at the puzzle?