Actualol Newsletter - July 2022 (Patreon)

Hey there gaming pals,

Calling in from the home of football, and new home of the European Championship. Last night we watched England Women’s team win in the final against Germany. 

(The Shard lit up to celebrate, with the Tower of London in the foreground)/

It's the first time an England football team has won something in my lifetime! But back to games that we can win ourselves…

This month saw my review of Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest, and in this newsletter I give my thoughts on the new hidden movement game, Sniper Elite. And share a painful board gaming crisis!

We had a great chat on the Actualol Discord the other day about meanness in games, and what level of take-that or interaction turns a game from fun into unpleasant. If you’ve not yet joined the Discord - please come along!

Actual Life

With heatwaves and Serena catching Covid, this month has been quiet for gaming, so we made up for it by playing a day of couples games, as I begin the self-appointed weighty task of ranking them.

We kicked things off with a few games of Santorini, which for such a simple game I find the strategy to be surprisingly opaque. I tend to just do a bunch of stuff for a few turns, then as it heats up I get clearer on what I should do. 

And does anyone else dismiss playing with loads of the Gods and dismiss playing them because they just don’t sound fun? There’s so much choice, I always feel like if I keep reading I’ll find something better!

Then we moved onto Caesar, which is fast becoming a favourite. Later on, we played it’s older brother Blitzkrieg - but Serena much preferred the simplicity and non-destructive nature of Caesar.

I got close but couldn’t quite catch Serena in Fugitive. We finished with13 Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis. I hadn't played in so long that we played it wrong! I only realised after re-watching my video today, because something had felt off. So frustrating!

Gaming Crisis

I have a dilemma, and I want to know what you’d do in my situation…

A big part of me thinks I should sell my once prized copy of Battlestar Galactica and all three expansions. 

It was one of my first purchases when I became fully obsessed with games, and I was so excited to open it up and explore it. I even painted the miniatures and I hate painting miniatures!

I’ve only played it a handful of times over the years, because it’s such a commitment, and almost every time has been tempered with a “well, it would have been better if we'd had a cylon in the first half”, or “if they hadn’t been so obviously a cylon” - making excuses for a fragile game I wanted to be better. There is an amazing game in there, but I’m not sure I have ever had it.

And playing the recent reimagining “Unfathomable”, stripped of the theme I loved, meant I couldn’t ignore the game’s flaws any longer.

I still dream of playing the perfect game of BSG, with four invested players, but I honestly don’t know four people who would play it anymore.

I am proud to be a ruthless curator - I will ditch a game from my collection if it so much as threatens me with a mediocre time. But I’m getting all sentimental over Battlestar. The cardboard still has that Fantasy Flight smell from the day I bought it. The wooden insert I painstakingly glued together, the minis I learnt how to dry brush for, and every card I sleeved.

I am sentimental for a younger me, whose excitement was so strong it would blind him to faulty mechanisms, who wasn’t jaded by years of reviewing games. And I’m hungover from drinking tequila to the England team, which isn’t helping.

My buddy Pankaj says that it’s acceptable to have a game on your shelf that you know you will never play. Like keeping a book you loved. But that’s never been my style.

Usually, selling a game doesn’t have to be forever - but with BSG, I know that I’ll never be able to get another copy. On the other hand, if I do sell it I could make £200 or more.

What would you do? I’ve asked the question in the Actualol Discord if you want to join in the discussion.

Actual Games

Sniper Elite is a new hidden movement game, a genre I’m so fond of that I once made a whole video about it.

One player is the elite sniper, with certain secret checkpoints on their map to check. The others play cooperatively, each controlling an officer and some minions that must hunt the sniper down and *sharp intake of breath” kill them. The sniper can also shoot at the hunters, often to get them out of the way if they’re blocking their path. But anyone killed will respawn elsewhere on the map.

There’s a lot to like about the game. For example, if the sniper chooses to move faster, they will alert any hunters they ran past  - which is similar to the noise mechanism in Nuns on the Run. I like that the game feels streamlined, and it’s shorter than most hidden movement games - the sniper takes a maximum of 20 turns.

It reminds me most of Specter Ops, in that both sides have special powers. But it feels less complicated, without losing any of the drama.

My hesitation is with the game’s deduction. I usually prefer the slow build-up of information and tension that you get in Letters from Whitechapel and Mind MGMT, whereas in Sniper Elite, that just isn’t there. Instead, you can go from zero information to their exact whereabouts in one turn, which is jarring, and makes you feel like you didn’t do anything to deserve it.

I’m worried that the game relies too much on the “gathering intel” action, which un-thematically tells you if the sniper is in your entire sector. Much like Specter Ops did with its motion detector, and Fury of Dracula does with Mina Harker’s Psychic Bond. They are all cheap ways to reignite the chase, when the trail has gone cold. And the reason it’s gone cold is because the deduction in the game is too loose.

I’m also worried that I’m being far too critical. It is a fun, clean hidden movement game. That is a very rare thing indeed. I need to play it more before I give my final verdict, that much is certain.

New Arrivals

• Dead Reckoning
• Village Rails

Song of the Month - Want Want by Maggie Rogers

Video of the Month - Did People Used To Look Older? - Vsauce

Now Watching - The White Lotus, Ragnarok (Netflix)

Now Reading - Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

Have a great month!

Actually yours,

Jon