I met the boys at the university for games. First up was my second go at Leonardo da Vinci. This one solified my opinion and dropped my rating to six. I can see it’s a good game and I would recommend it to people who like resource optimization games, but I don’t like it myself.

It’s just so frustrating. The game takes some kind of forward planning combined with rather tight resources and little room for error that I just don’t like. I’d like to see someone play the game really well, though — I wonder what kind of scores people get. We were all (except Riku) in mid-fifties or so. It’s a deep game, but in a way I don’t fancy. I could see myself playing this again (I’d like to give the advanced setup a go), but I won’t make the effort myself.

Phoenicia, in the other hand, is a really good game. I had my first go with the board game. It looks nice, but there are some usability issues. Nothing really bad, but things could be a lot better. Still, it’s remarkably good work for a JKLM Games game.

Our game suffered a bit because we had to rush it a bit in the end. The end game flew by and would’ve been more enjoyable with a bit more time. We finished in about 60 minutes (with four players), and I think experienced players can quite easily play the game in that timeframe if they’re not particularly slow. With newbies I’d reserve more time.

It’s good, that’s basically it. Our game was pretty easy, nobody had particular problems with the storage or anything. Riku was in the lead pretty much the whole time and did win the game, but with sharper play, I’m sure one of us could’ve beaten him. I’m hoping to get another session going next week and get Phoenicia on the table again.