frumious

Cool, sounds good. I've asked a local print shop what the damage would be, I think getting them to print nicely on decent card and then cutting and sleeving is probably quite a good compromise. Maybe the cartoony graphics would help the fear, it seems to approachable! I found that I was certainly not making optimal moves, but I had a lot of fun getting it completely wrong.

Nice! I've got files from here https://gtr.stormtide.net/Instructions, but I got as far as uploading them all to https://www.printplaygames.com/ before losing my nerve. Did you do something like that, or print your own and sleeve, or what? I must admit to having a fondness for the cartoony version now, seems like an underdog having been usurped by the new hotness!

I keep being a bit conflicted about Quacks. I definitely enjoy it while I'm playing it, and I like the idea, but the actual bit where you're pushing your luck seems to end up being "OK I'll stop there, that's boring", or "woohoo, here we go, oh I've exploded, now I'm losing forever". Rarely, "yay, that was a bold and exciting move, now I'm on top". Might be that I've been playing with some quite risk-averse people, and none of us is a tactical master at the purchasing stage. None of that stops the core mechanics being fun though!

Yeah, I've been investigating the various "almost Glory to Rome"s, they all apparently lack a certain something if you're a true afficionado, but I'm not so maybe any of them would do!

Some time ago a friendly and generous forumite was kind enough to sell me a few games, including a couple that I'd not heard of but which came recommended. One of those was Glory to Rome, the slightly naff cartoony version there, packaged in a plastic clamshell thing, and I made the stupid mistake of never getting round to play it, and even worse eventually just passed it on to a friend without looking into it and discovering that it highly regarded in certain quarters, and impossible to get hold off for anything other than megabucks. I regret the error. BUT, at least now I have actually played it! Went to my local games night on Tuesday, and immediately noticed someone setting it up, and they had a spare place and were happy for me to join them. Luckily I wasn't the only one needing teaching. It's definitely a clever design, although I found it quite the brain melter - the way that every card can be used for many different things: buildings for points and special powers resources to build buildings role selection free actions if you install them as "clients" straight victory points if you put them in your vault On at least one occasion I came up with what seemed like a clever play and then realised that I'd already used the card I was going to use during my action to select that action... Also hard to get my head round the subtleties of some of the roles, and the various locations where things can be placed, and how stuff moves between them. The "following" mechanic is nice, you can often have a free go during someone else's go, the way if you can't do anything useful you build up wild card Jacks so that you'll have better options in the future, the way that resources in the pool have directly come from cards other people have played, it all seems to fit together despite being quite unusual in my experience. I didn't do very well, but I did enjoy it a lot! Now I'm looking again into the possibilities for getting my hands on a copy - that original one I stupidly gave away is long gone, and English copies go for £100s. They'll never reprint it it seems - bad blood between the creators seems to have knocked that idea firmly on the head. There's what looks like quite a faithful copy/redraw of the fancier "black box" edition which you can print yourself or send to a pro to get proper cards done, but that's either going to be a massive faff and probably not turn out amazingly, or still cost around $100. But maybe one day... Finally

If you stop paying for Netflix and then come back later, does it keep your lists and likes and current episodes and so on? Not that that would matter too much if you were rinsing the good stuff each time you paid up!

That looks very encouraging! Hard not to be influenced by Duel of the Fates...

Cheeky buggers! They have taken it off the main page, but you can still get to it via the User dropdown in the top right, then Settings and Manage Your Plan. Hope it doesn't disappear from there...

Buried Treasure is (intentionally) a mixed bag in various senses, but I've found many favourites via it, and there are a few nice looking games here: https://buried-treasure.org/2022/02/8-incredible-demos-from-steams-next-fest-2022/

I've seen loads of spectacular gifs of that on Twitter without having any idea how the actual game works!

It's one thing doing a load of "I'm too old for this shit" schtick, it's another to have a lead actor who is painfully obviously actually too old for this shit.

We've started on this, I initially looked at the rules and wondered if there were too many special cards for the littlest frumious, but I think maybe the rulebook just makes a meal of it (surprising lack of iconography on the cards), and of course children do continue to age and level up. Bit of light maths and memory, a hit so far. Love this one, can be chaos! Have got this, but not tried with the bairns, might reprioritise it a bit. Are you sure about that? I don't think we've been playing it that way, there definitely is a rule about "no-one can build an 8th wonder" though. We recently had a second go at Toy Story: Obstacles and Adventures, which I had been a bit cool on after the first time but enjoyed more this time. I think I felt that in the push to make a game out all the franchise characters and events it had all become super generic, and e.g. collecting "insight" in the form of Luxo Jr tokens to solve literally every problem isn't very thematic, but this time everything went a lot more smoothly, the kids understood what was going on better, and fair play to the designers: they've successfully made a decent game where the conflict doesn't involve any kind of actual violence and there are numerous mutually beneficial and satisfying ways for players to cooperate together.

The kids and I like Voidigo quite a lot, cutesy European action roguelite with crazy weapons and baddies and jumping on the baddies. Bit like a cross between Enter the Gungeon and Nuclear Throne and (because you spend a lot of time fighting a big boss who moves around the levels) Monster Hunter. I don't need it twice though, and the others don't appeal a lot.

Consulting my records, in 2021 my two (6 and 9) have enjoyed: Jaipur (2p), Splendor, Castle Panic, Deep Sea Adventure, Ghost Fightin' Treasure Hunters (this is good for a children's game, but I wouldn't want to play it with just adults), ICECOOL (dexterity), Labyrinth, Magic Maze (timed), Space Base, Carcassonne, Dream Home (not quite as kiddy as it looks), Echidna Shuffle (surprisingly good), Gizmos, Santorini, Rhino Hero, Fearsome Floors, 5-Minute Marvel (timed). They won't necessarily have 100% mastered the strategy, but with the more complex ones you can typically have fun on various levels, we often relax time limits, and none of them is that obviously cut-throat (may not be an issue for you, but it is for us!). If I had to pick 5 to take on holiday right now I'd go for the first 5 in the list.

Would anyone like my PGA 2K21 from last month? PM if so.