Regicide and the travel campaign

As mentioned in the last Smiling Fox episode, I've been travelling this summer. The trip has been amazing but we're here to talk about games 🎲🎲

I got into Regicide shortly before leaving, playing a few games solo and a few 2-player games. I was instantly impressed with how the standard 52-card deck could be used for this type of game. I grew up on card games with rules like "the 5 of hearts is the best card, unless someone has played a club" where there is little or no mnemonic support for players. And yet the royals present some obvious characters, and the suits (numbering only four, and with fairly evocative designs) can be easily associated to memorable concepts. Regicide takes this idea and runs with it beautifully - the rules are a little tricky at first, but the familiar designs of the cards support learning and remembering them. And even without a strong narrative element, the feeling of defeating the Jacks and then seeing the Queens deployed hits the mark just right. Also worth mentioning - the scoring in Regicide is straightforward to track, but there's also a companion app that offloads the arithmetic and is very well designed.

My wife and I are traveling together, and it has been such a nice addition, having a coop game along with us that we can easily break out and play. On top of that, we haven't won a single game. (This is a good thing!) Each game of Regicide is separate. There's no campaign play (though that might be a cool hack), and yet it is so natural to want to beat this thing before we end the trip. Even between games, we'll be walking around an unfamiliar town discussing when is best to play hearts, the only suit without an immediate payoff. I'll be on the lookout in future for other games which are (1) coop, (2) quick to play a full game, (3) tough to beat.

On the roleplaying front, I've been playing a solo game of Midnight of the Century on the trip too. It's been a nice change of pace to play a modern setting (I am old enough to not think of the 1990s as ancient history). I'll write a post about that when my investigator catches the killer (or falls prey to them...)

I should have an episode of Luck Roll out soon after I get back. It is recorded and mostly edited. Looking forward to getting back to Knotte and co.