Professor Rob

Ticket To Ride: Nordic Countries is good for two players.

I enjoyed all three episodes of criminal. I’ve started watching the German ones as well, which are different cases.

And somehow scored 45 in a game at the weekend.

I managed to score minus 17 on my first game.

Dead Man's Shoes (got it from a charity shop for 50p after watching clips in the "Most Bad Ass scenes" thread). 5/5.

Hasbro trying to be edgy, failing spectacularly.

Did anyone ever get a response from michael with regard to the stuff he was selling?

I PM'd him a while back – he's OK, but needed to take a break from social media (including this place) for a while. He's active in some real-life board game clubs, and enjoying playing 18xx there.

That's amazing.

It's a great film, but it still annoys me that nobody could be bothered to tell De Niro he's pronouncing Hereford incorrectly.

With every Time Stories scenario (at least the ones we've played), the first and second play-throughs are quite enjoyable and interesting, then the third wanes a bit as you re-tread familiar ground but end up falling foul of some random, time-consuming encounter or insta-death, then after that it's just a tiresome chore to get back to where you were, only to go down another dead end and do it all again. We've still got Prophecy of Dragons to go through but after that I think I'm done with it. If anyone wants Marcy Case or Under The Mask (£10 each or £18 for the pair, inc. postage) drop me a PM. Edit: Sold to Hexx.

Thanks for the offer, but I got the weight off BGG (1.8Kg). Should be $15 shipping, plus whatever import duty gets added.

Thanks, chaps. I ordered with the full expectation of having to pay shipping/import duty, so I'm not too fussed. It's a game I really want, and it's still cheaper than the utterly bonkers secondhand prices.

Board game weekend on Steam.

Has anyone here ever participated in GMT's P500 pre-order/reprint scheme? I've just placed an order for 1989: Dawn of Freedom (which is at 380 orders, so is some way off being reprinted), and it looks like the shipping will be free, even to Europe (on the order receipt, the shipping is listed "Euro Friendly P500 Orders via SCG – VAT prepaid to EU"). I was prepared to pay shipping/import duty, but it looks like I'm only paying $44.00 in total, which is very much a bargain. Anyone know if this is correct? If it looks too good to be true, it usually is.

Kickstarter. I’m not sure when the retail release is.

Had the first couple of plays of Awkward Guests. It's a card-driven deduction game (like Cluedo, Mystery of the Abbey, Mystery Express etc), but rather than just crossing cards off that you happen to have seen, you have to use the snippets of information given on the cards to piece together the solution. For example, if you find out that Suspect A claims to have been alone in the Library at the time of the murder, but then later find out that someone else also claims to have been in the Library, then you know one of them is lying (and is therefore the murderer). Or if it's established that nobody passed through the Kitchen, then that means none of the Kitchen implements were the murder weapon. There are many different sorts of clues and you have to establish who commited the murder, which weapon was used, what the motive was, and who the accomplice was – the accomplice is only in the harder levels, and will give false info to protect the murderer. I have to say, it's probably the best game of its kind that I've ever played. It's so much more satisfying than other games in the genre, and gives you a genuine sense of having used deductive reasoning to arrive at the solution. Really looking forward to playing it again.

I'm pleased to say, we managed to play everything except Sushi Go over the course of the two weeks, in addition to EXIT: Pharoah's Tomb. Still not keen on Tides of Time.

Another notable bargain is Cardhu Gold, which seems to cycle round all the major supermarkets one after the other, at £25.

Oh, that’s interesting. I’ve recently taken a shine to Tamnavulin, after it being on offer in multiple supermarkets. It’s a decent dram.

I’d say I enter about three-quarters of them, and have done for the past six years or so. Not a sausage.

To be honest, I played it when I wasn't really in the mood for it, so ought to give it another try.

Going on holiday for the next two weeks, so I thought I'd see how many games I could pack into a reasonably-sized box. I took the insert out of Unlock: Escape Adventures (we have one scenario we haven't played yet), and have managed to fit in: Kingdomino Machi Koro plus Harbour expansion Coup Love Letter Red 7 Intrigue Bohnanza Jaipur Sushi Go Tides of Time Cockroach Poker Unlock: Escape Adventures (Island of Doctor Goorse scenario only) plus a deck of playing cards. There's a couple in the list that I don't particularly enjoy, but other people asked me to take. I reckon I could also fit Port Royal in there, and will probably take out Tides of Time (which isn't that good). Everything fits OK, but it weighs 2.5Kg.

Some great choices there. For easy-to-get-into but fun-to-play-with-non-gamers games, there's also: Camel Up Azul Imhotep Kingdomino There's loads of others too, but they're the ones that came immediately to mind. The Unlock and Exit series of games are also very good to play with non-gamer groups, but they're single playthrough only (and in the case of the Exit series, you end up destroying the components during play, so you can't even sell it on).