I’m posting about a game every day in September! Here’s a link to yesterday’s post.

Tonight I solo-ed Architects of the West Kingdom. This game surprised me last year; I’d liked Raiders of the North Sea (even better with the expansion) from the same designer and artist team, but Architects is the better game. The solo game features an Automa-style deck, which does a good job of simulating an opponent.

What appeals to me most about Architects is its wide-open feel. You’re never really blocked from any space and the more workers you have on a space, the more actions/resources you get. One of my favorite mechanisms is related to this: you can capture your opponents’ workers and hold them hostage. If you want you can then send them to prison for money, where your opponents can waste an action to bust them out. Or, if they can’t wait, they can rescue them from your player board by paying the cost.

It’s a solid worker-placement game that one was one of my favorites last year. For new gamers I’d recommend Raiders of the North Sea (without the expansion), but for veterans I’d play Architects.

The photo above is from a game I played with my friends Amanda, John, and David. We got together one warm summer afternoon to help David get closer to his goal of playing the Top 100 BGG games in 100 days. That’s a lot tougher challenge than blogging every day for a month.

I’m posting about a game every day in September! Here’s a link to yesterday’s post.

I backed the Gentes: Deluxified Edition Kickstarter last February and after a few delays, the game arrived earlier this year. I’d never played the original non-fancy version, but knew of Stephen Risthaus’ reputation as designer of Arkwright.

Tonight I played a solo game in about 45 minutes, which is about how long it usually takes me. In Gentes (apparently the Latin pronunciation uses the G sound like “giant,” but here in Southern California my friends and I use the H sound from the Spanish word for people) you’re building your civilization through three eras, with points coming from various sources. You’ll train your population, build monuments, and establish cities throughout the Mediterranean.

The game is a solid midweight Euro for up to four players and I like it all player counts. At its heart Gentes is an action selection game and I love the use of time as a resource in Gentes. For every action you take you’ll usually pay some money, but you’ll also pay time, which is represented by little hourglasses. These take up space on your player board so that you’ll eventually run out of room to perform actions each age due to the action tiles and hourglasses clogging up all of the spaces.

To me it feels like a reverse worker placement mechanism. You take the action tile and if you’re the first one to do that particular action you get the better “price” for it while others that follow you have to pay either more money and/or time. You’re not blocking your opponents, but in a way you are since you can take the cheaper actions and force them to spend more time/money, leaving them fewer open spaces for more actions.

Like other Euros you’re trying to be as efficient as possible, unlocking ongoing abilities that get you cheaper actions, either in price or hourglasses or in being able to take the action without using one of the tiles. There’s a lot more to the game, but it’s this time and money management that I really enjoy trying to balance.

The game has flown a little under the radar, probably because it originally came out in 2017. Everyone who’s seen the Deluxified version loves it and I was impressed by it as well. There are chunky wooden meeples to track your population, metal coins, and an awesome Folded Space insert to keep everything organized.

I was fortunate to play Gentes with my friends John and Monique at Strategicon last weekend and even though I hadn’t played it since the last con in May, I was able to get through the teach and the game ran smoothly. Gentes is such a solid design and every one of my gaming friends has picked it up right away and enjoyed it. I was happy that John and Monique did, too.

I’m posting about a game every day in September! Here’s a link to yesterday’s post.

I scored a German copy of Thurn and Taxis last weekend at Strategicon and I brought it to game night tonight. After my first game I understand why it’s so highly regarded. It’s basically a next-step Ticket to Ride, featuring simple-and-familiar player turns with more depth and strategy.

In Thurns Und Taxis you’re creating postal routes in 16th-century Bavaria. The game is based on the historical Thurns und Taxis royal family, who were instrumental in building the postal service in Europe.

Ticket to Ride fans will feel right at home with the open market of cards, the map of connected routes, and the colorful pieces on the board. On your turn you draw a card, then play a card in front of you. You’ll eventually build a tableau of cards that represent your current route. If it’s at least three cards, then you can turn them in and place your post offices on cities matching your cards in one province OR in one city matching your cards per province. There are carriage bonuses from three to seven if you’re able to convert the appropriate route length.

What I liked are the optional abilities that four different characters give you once per turn: resetting the available cards, taking two instead of one card, playing two instead of one card, or claiming a carriage bonus even if you’re one or two short.

It’s a neat game of network building and offers a deeper layer of strategy than TTR. You don’t block your opponents from routes since any number of you can have a post office on any city; what you’re trying to do is efficiently place your post offices to maximize your scoring. It has a race element to it since the faster you complete routes and fill up provinces with your post offices you’ll receive higher bonuses.

Thurn Und Taxis was an instant hit for me and it seemed like my gaming group enjoyed it, too. It won the Spiel des Jahres back in 2006 and for my money it still holds it own today.