I didn’t have a lot of juice for RPG improv tonight so we gave Minerva a spin.
It’s very nice! Elegant tile layer game from the guy who did Trains, I guess. Never played that but that’s the reason I backed this.
It’s pretty tightly designed and not at all difficult, but like many games in this space it’s grindy and…hmm…not dramatic?
I was thinking about that amazing feeling you get from some games where the mechanisms suddenly click and some enormous, exciting new idea gets revealed. Multiple card combos in Dominion, say, or a string of tech tree upgrades in Forbidden Stars, whatever. I love it when games do that. Minerva didn’t seem to on first play, but it’s still quite nice.
Then again, winner Jonathan Perrine blew us out of the water. By lots. Kind of embarrassing. Maybe he saw the OMG combos and big reveals.
I’m a fan of Minerva and Hisashi Hayashi. He has designed many innovative, and clever games.
I have the bilingual edition of Minerva, and find that it has many cool combos that you can try to exploit. Even the solitaire variant is fun, although it’s just a beat your own high score solitaire game.
boardgamegeek.com – Hisashi Hayashi | Board Game Designer | BoardGameGeek
I might need to fiddle with the solitaire just to see if there’s more, dunno, synergistic play to be had. It feels like there has to be.
Paul Beakley it’s not the deepest game certainly, but I found it fun. I’ve not played it much though.