Game 135: Planet

 

This was a birthday gift to me this year, um, actually for my most recent birthday, which was "last" year now that it's 2023.  How is it that it's already FEBRUARY 2023?  Wasn't it just 2022 like yesterday?  I am so far behind on my blogging!  It used to be that I was too busy with work to maintain my blog, but now that I've retired (as of December), I'm too busy writing books and starting up a YouTube channel and trying to get back in shape.  So my gaming blog continues to languish.  Alas  .  .  .  but we do continue to PLAY games, and that's the important thing! 

I first played this game with some of my colleagues earlier last year, and really liked it, so it ended up on my birthday list.  I've played many games that involve building some sort of domain, but all previous ones had been on a flat surface.  The fact that the building here is in 3D really intrigued me.  The polygonal terrain pieces reminded me a bit of Catan at first, but it's really nothing like Catan.  It seems to me a bit like Kingdomino in terms of taking turns choosing pieces and deciding where to place them in order to maximize points, but it's not exactly like that either.

There are various cards that are available each round that have are involved in determining your goals and counting points at the end based on the placement of pieces.  If I recall correctly there's also a person goal.  To be honest, we've only played this once -- right away when I got it for my birthday. The school year started 2 days later; it was my first semester back in-person after 2 years of teaching remotely, and I just let go of everything else other than my teaching for months after that.  I really liked this game, but I do remember that "somebody" took a lot of time each turn trying to work out the "perfect" strategy based on the cards on the table, so I think we all got a little frustrated and have gravitated toward other things since then.  I pulled it off the shelf again recently and am hoping to play it again soon.  I really like the quality of the construction and the feel of the pieces and the idea of building a 3D terrain rather than a flat one.  The pieces are magnetic, and they stay on very well.



The game is downstairs on the counter, so hopefully I can get someone to play it with me again soon.  I do have pictures of some other games that we've "newly" played that I need to post about yet.  We've also had some gaming that I usually post under the label "BONUS" (game nights with friends and extended family and games that we don't yet own), but I've spent some time in recent weeks/months just playing instead of taking pictures of everything, and that's been kind of nice too.  One game we played a lot over Christmas was Ransom Notes, which was a positively hilarious experience - couldn't stop playing that.  If we play again, that's one I'll need to get pictures of!


 

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