Saturday i hosted my first game night since the Covid Pandemic started. My friend and I had a few Kickstarter games that have not gotten played so we pulled one from the stack.
Embarcadero(2021), designed by Adam Buckingham(First Design) and Ed Marriott(Scoville), published by Renegade Game Studio(Clank!, Lanterns, Raiders of The North Sea). It takes after the historic embarcadero area of San Francisco where they started constructing buildings on boats docked in the harbour.
Each player in this game commissions boats(which provides resources to build buildings) and then builds buildings(gaining points, money, and influence) on top of the boats, trying to have the influence on each wharf. Building buildings next to your opponents can cut them off from building bigger buildings, and at the same time increases your standing with the city council. The three ways to score at the end of the round is wharf influence, City Council Influence, and one of three randomly drawn end-of-round scoring cards.
Was a dexterity game near the end trying not to knock over buildings, but i love how it looks on the table. After one play i have no cons about it. This was the 3 player side of the board the other side is for 4-5 players, I really want to try it at 5-players next as i can see it getting crazy crowded at each wharf. Poor planning on my part got in my way of winning after leading two rounds i had a abysmal third round where i had planned on building a 6 space building by making sure i had all the resources to build it, not realizing until i went to build it that I had nowhere to put it. I then had to waste 4 actions making space inefficiently. Planning is very important! A keeper for now.
TLDR
Embarcadero(2021): D-Adam Buckingham, Ed Marriott, P-Renegade
3 Players - 2.5 Hours - 2nd Place
After that my roommate joined us and we played his favorite game of all time, Wingspan. Wingspan(2019), designed by Elizabeth Hargrave(Mariposas), published by Stonemaier Games, is a game of serious bird collecting. Add birds by feeding them, have them lay eggs, collect more food, and then collect more birds. in an infinite loop. Each bird provides a special ability when activating actions in different habitats, making this a Tableau Engine building game as the more birds in a single habitat the better the action you will most likely have. End of round scoring, birds and eggs are the ways to score points, along with your hidden end of game objectives which all go along the line of how many birds you have that match a certain feature whether its the size of the wingspan or the type of food it eats.
I went for filling my entire forest habitat to get the most of the collect food action. I didn't have a bad showing as most of my birds where above 5 points(which is high), i still finished second to my roomate, which i expected as much. Still an Evergreen Game for me(Evergreen Games are those that will never leave a collection) Also i have a signed box so never getting rid of it.
TLDR
Wingspan(2019): D-Elizabeth Hargrave P-Stonmaier Games
4 Players - 1.5 Hours - 2nd Place
