Yeah, it was about a time already to have some nice and decent meaty games to be played.

I actually played Ora et Labora some time ago already - but seems I have forgotten to mention it. I actually liked this game, very nice decent eurogame. Same designer as with Agricola, but I like Ora et Labora more. More choices to make and different strategies available. Definitely would like to try again after first play.

Another game I tried for first time was Evo (second edition). As I had played previously Cyclades then bidding mechanics was nothing new (although Cyclades was the one who borrowed the mechanics from Evo, not the other way) and the game play was also quite simple - everybody was trying to move to the currently safe areas. Some dinos were successful, some were not. I happened to get 'killer babies' mutation from auction and this seemed a bit overpowered - my babies had better combat win chance than with regular dinos, so thanks to it I was able to win get a second place with quite a large margin. I dunno... an average family game. Perhaps I would play it once more...

Recently I finished reading the fifth (and currently last) book in Game of Thrones series so I decied to give one more try to Game of Thrones boardgame, second edition this time. From first edition I had only vague meh-memories, so I wanted to see if anything is different with 2nd Ed. Actually there was... or I don't know if it was the players or the game but it was pretty interesting. A bit longish (5 hrs with 6 players) but there was tension until the last battle of last turn - and that was also where the victory was gained, no earlier. So it was better than 1st Ed, but it's still "Diplomacy Light"... and I'm not very fond of Diplomacy.

And finally... the creme de la creme... Brass. First we played it with 4 players. This was one of the rare cases when the winner was clear already before he took his first move - and he won by large margin. Brass does not forgive the mistakes and after making one you can only hope that your opponents make some... or you're doomed.

Next two games we played were 2-player games with unofficial 2-player map - but damn, this map (and rules modifications) works like a charm. Very tense and interesting game play and with 2 players one game takes a bit more than 1 hour to complete. I was beaten both times by my wife, so it must be a good game :) Anyway, Brass can be added to the list of excellent 2-player games being a lot meatier than usual cardgames.