Went to a local board game convention this past week, spent all Thursday evening through Sunday evening playing non-stop board games.
Ok, so I actually stopped for sleep on Thursday and Friday nights. But not Saturday night; that was literally non-stop.
Anyway, of all the things (old and new) that I played, I was pretty enamored with Oracle of Delphi; played it 3 times. It's Stephen Feld's newest game, and for those of you who don't like Feld because you don't like point salad...
It's a Feld game with no victory points!!
See you get "prestige points" instead; totally different! Ok, no, I'm kidding, there literally are no points; no score.
The game is a race to complete 12 tasks before your opponents. Felt like Temporum in that way. So it's still a Feld game, and you can tell if you know his stuff. It takes some mechanics from Castles of Burgundy in terms of dice usage and action selection. But it's definitely not just a clone of anything.
So it has a variable map/board setup that gives a lot of different options. Not just like Catan where you change which type of hex goes where; but the actual shape/layout is varied and random. You could have a game where the map is a long skinny corridor if you wanted. The basic idea is that you are sailing around this world, fighting monsters, picking up and delivering goods; discovering new islands, etc. Somewhat minimal player interaction; though by taking a good you are depriving your opponents of that good.
Other games I played include a bunch of Dominion games that went from about 2:30am until 6:00am on Saturday night. A mix of Base (2nd), Intrigue (2nd), and Empires. Each game had a Landmark, and I lost or tied instead of won 3 out of 4 games due to not paying enough attention to it. Landmarks are important.
I also finally learned/played Merchants of Venus. It was the original edition from way back when; I hear that the newer publishing messes a lot of stuff up. It was fun, but long.