This post has been delayed a while, and it's been almost 3 weeks since I played these 2. Hopefully my memories hold up for a decent write up.
Lords of Waterdeep & Scoundrels of Skullport expansions
In Lords of Waterdeep, the players take the roles of different lords, responsible for sending the adventurers out on their adventures. This is done through a fairly normal worker placement mechanic, with only 1 worker allowed on any of the locations, except the harbour and the guildhall, where there are 3 locations each. Each location, including the options in the guildhall provide different resources or rewards, including allowing you to build new buildings that give other options for placement, and collecting quest cards that allow you to spend resources (heroes with the generic Dungeons & Dragons player types) on in exchange for victory points (VP).
The expansions add in Undermountain and Skullport, as well as the corruption track. With these available all game, it makes for a quicker starting game, and allows for some more interesting choices than just collecting 1 or 2 of a single resource, which could be all you were left with quite quickly without them. Skullport adds in the corruption, thanks to it's criminal setting theme, and so some of the options there are seemingly quite powerful, but with each corruption taken, all corruption gets more punishing in the form of being worth negative VP.
Fairly early in the game with only a few buildings constructed
As our game progressed, it became quite clear that corruption wasn't going to be too much of an issue, as a building that allowed 2 corruption to be removed from the game was built, so everyone was going to places in Skullport quickly and regularly, as well as getting rid of the corruption as quickly as they could. We ended with just 5 corruption left in the game, out of ~30 that start on the track. Unfortunately the one player had all of that, but she still did pretty well, having accumulated a lot of points through gathering the corruption in the first place.
The 2 other players that had gathered lots of corruption though had gotten rid of all theirs and ended up being quite a way ahead of the 3 others. Even with this it wasn't as unbalanced and such a foregone conclusion as it sounds, as the player that ended with 5 corruption could have managed to get rid of a couple instead of one of the others at one point and just didn't realise the lack of time remaining. Also, one of the 2 leaders wasn't really in the leaders group most of the game and only got there in the last 2 or 3 rounds and the post game scoring.
End of the game, no corruption on the track (lower left) and all building spots filled
I was coming dead last for much of the game, or second last, which is where I finished, but still had a lot of fun trying to get my quests done and would recommend any that like the Dungeons & Dragons themes, or worker placement games should give this one a go, especially with the expansions, which I think are essential to the game. I have played it without them, and it's good, but with them it is a far better game.
Archer: Once You Go Blackmail...
This game is a re-theming and/or re-implementation of the card game Love Letter taking the ideas of some of the main characters from the Archer TV show. It's play is very much like Love Letter, and still feels very random most of the time to me. I'm not a fan of the show, and I'm not particularly fond of the style of game, but if you enjoy Love Letter, then I think you will enjoy what has been done with it here.
Character names and what they do. My current character is face down
Essentially, this is an elimination game that runs in a very short amount of time, possibly up to 5 minutes each round if it takes a long time. Most games are played until someone has 2 or 3 wins.
