Fresh Plays

I ended up accidentally injuring my finger and it has been painful to type or do anything with my right hand, so I'll have to keep this email brief ...but if you were wondering, yes, I'm still loving painting minis!...even though I'm pretty sure this newfound hobby of mine is the reason my finger is all jacked up.

BOARD GAMES

Oathsworn I finally started playing Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood after hearing great things about from friends over the past couple of years. Oathsworn is a co-operative, story-driven, boss-battler campaign game. You and up to 3 friends play play through a series of chapters. Each chapter begins with a Story phase focused on narrative choices, followed by a Encounter phase, where your characters engage in combat with a challenging boss monster. Each character has their own deck of cards as well as cool item cards to leverage. I'm really enjoying the hand management and the 'Battleflow' cooldown system where the cards you play cycle around your player board before eventually returning to your hand. ...and the push-your-luck combat system where you can use cards and/or dice. ​BGG Link​

Typeset Speaking of push-your-luck, I've been enjoying my initial plays of Typeset despite my mom winning every game so far. In Typeset, you're trying to come up with long words to score points, while avoiding invalid words since they score you negative points. Each round, you draw one (consonant) letter tile, then everyone has to write that letter with a dryerase marker on their player board. Or you can "skip" it and mark it as an error, noting you can only skip a max of 5 times per game. You have a limited number of vowels that you can freely incorporate into your words, as well as a few ways to gain bonus wild letters. Each round, after drawing 5 letter tiles, each player decides if they want to push their luck and stay in for another round, or stop and score their board. It can be risky to continue since you have to play the full next round placing 5 more letters. You might run out of skips and be stuck writing letters on words making them invalid, and thus worth negative points. It feels fresh for a word game, and pushing your luck feels exciting and suspenseful. ​BGG Link​

TOP TRACKS

McEnroe Vels Trio PREVIEW   ​ McEnroe I cannot recall how Vels Trio popped onto my radar, but I've been listening to them since their debut EP. Their music is feel-good fusion filled with awesome sounds and slick beats! One day I hope to check them out live.

Kafal Sviri Bulgarian Voices Angelite PREVIEW   ​ Kafal Sviri My friend Beth and I went down the rabbit hole one night at BGG.Spring when we were sharing songs with crazy vocal arrangements, and I discovered an awesome album from The Bulgarian Voices, after playing Beth one of their older songs. Their harmonies and arrangements are unreal and extremely impressive.

I'm hype to play more Oathsworn, but for now, I'll continue exploring some lighter games with my mom while she's in town. Hopefully, I'll beat her in Typeset soon...but I have at least been whoopin' her nonstop in Odin.

Thanks for reading Squawk 'N' Roll: Fresh Plays!

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