Playing with Christmas presents!

With the cold of January biting deep I thought it might be nice to get a couple of the new games to the table that we had received over Christmas. Rob brought along Machi Koro and I really wanted to try out my new copy of exploding kittens.

So first up we tried out Machi Koro. I had never seen anything more than the box art before but it plays very similarly to a combination between Black Fleet and Suburbia. Now I know you are thinking 'Really? that sounds weird' but it is actually very fun and quick. It has the same victory mechanic as Black Fleet where you need to purchase cards to win and every card gives you a new ability so that you can have different strategies each game. Whilst you need to build yourself a city where each building gives you a an ability which either activates when you roll a number, your opponent rolls a number or both. Thus you can choose to build a which steals money constantly from others as they keep rolling 3's or 9's or you can try to create my favourite the explosive city that has little money out turns but if you hit that sweet 8 it spews forth mega-bucks which you can spend on meeting your victory conditions. 

Here is my city - I aimed to go big on 10-12 results to avoid the coffee shops that kept sucking up all my money when I rolled only one D6 (which gravitated towards the 3 result I really didn't want). Sadly I couldn't roll many so relied too heavily on others rolling a 10 to produce money for me.

I really like it as it is quick and yet has a load of expansions in the deluxe box that allows you to quickly alter the game to raise the challenge level once everyone is familiar with the routes to victory.

Next up came another game of Zombicide Black Plague

I am always up for another game of Black Plague so the opportunity to take Nelly (I do love a Redhead) and Baldric (Did you say crazy old codger with a beard? I'm in!) was a no-brainer! We played the third mission which is a six tile map and we did our best but eventually not even a lone Red Zoned Nelly could survive the streaming Zombie Hordes. Ah Co-Op games you do love to give me hope and then crush it with no mercy!

I was then tutored in how to lose at exploding kittens (sadly no pictures). A great quick game with just enough Flux like random to stop you taking it so seriously that you feel bad when your face gets blown off by some evil feline!It worked great at both three and four player (yep Amanda played it!) and I really liked that although it is a game where you just read the card and play it there wasn't so much text that you ever had to worry about the best combination of cards to play. 

After that we played Machi Koro again but this time Amanda joined us so we got to see how it worked at 4 players and it is really nice to see that the reduction of resources really twists the way you play the game without the need to add any new mechanics.

Zombies, city building and exploding kittens makes for another great gaming day.