by Garrett X
Another month, another series of entertaining plays. :) There were
96 plays across
37 titles with
8 games
NEW! to me and
3 expansions also
NEW! to me this month. Lots to talk about, so let's get cracking!
Arcane Academy is a Fantasy themed tile placement and hand management game set in the magical world of Gossamyr. You are a student in the Academy of Magic and Sciences competing against your fellow students in a race to complete the most assignments in your final exam for the most prestige (points). You do this by using your will to cast spells and your shards to craft items. Each player starts with a slate, 3 will, 3 shards, and 3 private assignment cards. On your turn you must either CAST (activate and exhaust a tile on your slate to use the actions on that tile plus optionally those of any immediately adjacent linked and unexhausted tiles), or REST (remove all exhaustion tokens from all tiles on your slate and if you so choose you may discard one of your private assignment cards to draw a new one). When casting, the available actions are adding a tile to your slate, collecting shards, gaining will, using an item for its magical power, and completing an assignment. Once any player completes 8 assignments they call out, "Pencils Down!", grab the related card, and then every player including that player gets one final turn. End of game effects of items and spells are resolved, then the prestige points are tallied and the player with the most wins!
The game is fun and easy to play because it is quite streamlined. On your turn you cast or rest. When to cast which spells and use which actions has many nice decision points because of the various tile linkages and the benefits you can get for free. You can combo chain many effects that end up giving you extra turns which end up helping you complete extra assignments and before you know it you're up to 5 or 6 assignments completed with just a few actions. In the way of fun combinations you can say it is reminiscent of playing
Seasons but it's not as 'deep'. You never feel like you want to rest because there is always something interesting you want to do. The race game feeling is also in full effect because you are constantly aware of how many assignments your opponent has completed which puts pressure on you to complete yours faster. The game plays quickly yet it gives you a chance to build up a sort of engine - get resources, produce something (whether a spell or an item), use the thing you've produced, and experience the satisfaction from all of that process. There are too many games that end just as you feel you've got going and you feel unsatisfied when they are over. The game length here feels just right especially as there are some 'take that' cards in the game. They aren't so severe for players to take them personally, but the game doesn't run long enough to make it onerous in any case. I have the feeling that for a 'lucky' game (card draws and drawing tiles from a bag) that there is a fair bit of control. You can use your tiles to cover up tiles that you no longer have a use for or if you just want better connections, you always have 7 assignments to choose from (4 public and 3 private), you always have a selection of 4 tiles, and yeah in both cases you may have rubbish options, but so goes it sometimes! Game materials are a bit of a mixed bag - the shards are really big, chunky, and lovely acrylic crystals, while the exhaustion tokens are just black cubes, and the will dials are cardboard but the connector snaps are too big for them making them very loose. As always with smaller games that they are trying to give a big presence, the box is way too big for its contents which could comfortably survive in the likes of the Kosmos 2 player series boxes. That being said, I liked this one and I'm curious to see if it sticks around for the long haul.
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is a pure press-your-luck dice game. The symmetrically designed board consists of several columns numbered 2-12 and each column is staggered with a number of spots that are commensurate with their probability of being rolled on two dice so the 2 and 12 columns only have 3 spots, while the 5s and 9s have 9 spots and the 7 has 13 spots. Every player has 11 markers in their colour and on each turn must roll four dice, then combine them in pairs to make two sets of results. 3 white markers are given to the active player and marks which results they have taken that turn. Once all three markers are on the board and after every roll they must decide whether to stop or to press onwards. If they decide to press on, then only the numbers where the white markers are placed qualify as results. If the roll is successful then the white markers are advanced up the track accordingly. Once you decide to stop you replace the white marker with your own coloured marker. However, if you don't roll one of the required numbers then all progress is lost and it is the next player's turn. The goal is to race to the top of the columns against the other players and the first player to claim three columns for themselves wins the game!
As a die hard dice game fan [microbadge=29064] I felt it behooved me to finally try this one out as I own a few games that are press-your-luck by nature and have been compared to this one...their granddaddy...and a 'classic'. I thought it would be too simple and not very interesting but in fact it's really quite exciting, a little bit addictive, and a great deal of fun! It's very fun to see your little markers inching up higher and higher, and very demoralising when they're lagging wayyyy at the bottom. :soblue: It reminds me of
Heckmeck um Bratwurmeck in a way but it didn't last long enough for me to get sick of it as that sometimes does. Time will tell if we were just lucky though! I suppose there's something to be said for having the original chunky version, especially the one with the super cute traffic cones, but having seen a real copy in person and how unbelievably large the box is, I much prefer my P&P copy which takes up little space, is very portable, and has that cool race car theme and lovely artwork. While I initially made it just to compare to another game I was evaluating this month, I find it a nice addition to my collection of dice games and I think I'll be hanging on to this one.
Concordia is a Roman themed city building resource management action selection card drafting hand management kind of sort of deckbuilding game where timing is everything. That's a lot going on in one game isn't it? ;) In reality the game is really simple and smooth playing. Every player starts with an identical hand of 7 character cards. On your turn you play a card and do the associated action. Then it's the next player's turn. That's it! Each character gives you a special benefit and the timing of when to use these characters for their benefits is the crux of the game. You can move your colonists and build houses, place new colonists on the board, receive money from and trade goods with the bank, buy new characters to add to your hand, and produce goods of all of one type across the cities you control. Each of these characters can be very beneficial if timed to perfection but a few stand out to me as [seemingly] very powerful - the Prefect produces goods for all houses in a province so if you are in a region that has been activated by another player you can get goods without doing anything yourself. This means that you'd like to preferably be in regions where other players have houses as well. Conversely you also want to dominate a few provinces yourself so that somebody else doesn't get to piggyback off your action! Everytime a region is prefected the associated good is flipped over and a number of coins are shown on the back side. Instead of prefecting a region a player may use their Prefect to collect all the coins visible over all regions and then flip the tokens back to their goods side. It's an easy way to get a load of dosh all at once because you generally get money from the Mercator who'll give you 3-5 coins, but here if left long enough you're getting 9-10 coins. You also have access to a Diplomat that lets you copy the action shown on the top card of another player's discard pile so you want to save this until something you really need (or have no access to if it's a unique character) pops up. Finally the Tribune lets you take all the cards you've played back into your hand and pays you 1 coin for every card beyond 3 that you've collected. That means you want to play as many cards as possible before using that action, but you might also desperately need some of the actions on the cards in your discard so you want to take them back pretty sharpish as well. Agonising! The game end is triggered when one of the players buys the last character card or builds the last of their 15 houses. They are awarded the Concordia card which is worth 7 points, then every other player gets one more turn and final scoring is executed to determine the winner. Each character card that you have in your possession is associated with a Roman god and determines what your score will be. Points are awarded for cash and the cash value of goods in your storehouse, each house in a non-brick city, each province where you have one of your houses, every type of goods you can produce, each of your colonists on the board, and every specialist type (farmer, mason, smith, vintner, weaver) that you personally own. Player with the most points wins!
I'd been hearing a lot about Concordia over the years. It's one of those games that's always mentioned and recommended when people are talking about elegant games or simple rules with depth of gameplay. Problem is...it just looked so gosh darned boring!!! I picked up a copy near the end of last year because the price [microbadge=28448] was right to experiment ;) and recently I've been struck repeatedly with a powerful urge to buy the expansion maps so I thought I'd better play the base game ASAP! I don't quite know when I got so expansion crazy but frankly it's kind of disturbing. It started off as being a way to extend the life of a game I love or using different bits for variety of gameplay, but now I'm buying expansions even
before I play the base game and it has previously bitten me in the butt when trying to move a game along. You'd think that an expansion would add value to the pot, but people rarely seem to want to add anything more than they would pay for just the base game, and more than once I've had people ask me to just split it off because they didn't care about having it either way, but obviously then you have the risk of being left with an expansion to something you no longer own... :gulp: Tricky! Anyway, to calm the demons I decided to see if Concordia was worth it. My conclusion is that the looks of this game belie how much fun it is. Even though the rules are short, it took us a bit to 'get' what we were meant to be doing, but once we'd got stuck in it was all super smooth sailing and I found it dynamic and exciting because turns are quick and scoring is hidden until the end. In this game you can just concentrate on playing your best game and executing what you want to do without worrying about scoring. That's great for me because my gaming partner has AP and it's not unlike him to sit for a few minutes trying to work out his best options. It's definitely a game I'll be signing up to play on Boite a Jeux at some point in the future to try against other people to see their different approaches to playing it. Probably way more cutthroat than we have, but it's always fun to try my wits against people other than my main gaming partner. I think this will be my last experiment with the 'classic' Eurogame though. Might as well end on a high! I'm always partial to Euros because those types of games are what got me into the hobby, but a lot of the older ones (not that Concordia is even
that old, but it has that sort of 'feel') have fallen flat after I tried to retro-fit them into my collection. It's nice that people still recommend Agricola, Bruges, Carcassonne, El Grande, Notre Dame etc. and have great memories of playing them but having played so many more fun modern games I find it hard to go back to the dusty Euro. I wouldn't say that this one blew my hair back as did
Grand Austria Hotel or
First Class, but it was quite excellent and I'm looking forward to seeing how we interact with it further. More coherent (and relevant!) thoughts on it when I play a different map which most likely won't be too far in the future. ;)
:chalice:
NEW Game of the Month :chalice:
Dice Throne: Season Two – Gunslinger v. Samurai is a standalone expansion that integrates with
Dice Throne: Season One.
Dice Throne is a Fantasy themed dice battling game with variable player powers where players fight for control over the mad king's throne. You each start with your own dice, cards, custom tokens, and 50 health, and your goal is to reduce your opponent's health to 0. This expansion introduces two new characters - the Gunslinger and the Samurai. While I would have liked to try every character in the
Dice Throne: Season Two – Battle Chest, the fact that my gaming partner wasn't too keen on DT to begin with meant that I looked into it more closely and I found that most of the characters were not as interesting to me (or would be to him) as these two. I couldn't imagine that the production could be any more stunning, but
Roxley has surpassed themselves by kicking it up a notch and making Season Two even more beautiful than Season One.
As with anything even remotely similar, the need for comparison arises:
Boards - I think the cutout boards of Season Two look really awesome and the artwork has been made even more vibrant, plus you can really
see the art now because your card upgrade boxes aren't mostly blanking it out. Each upgrade box also has specific artwork which is a nice touch. The only negative is that because the boards are folded they don't lie flat during gameplay. The flat ones from Season One are more sturdy - thicker and immovable, but they don't fold so there's that.
Hero Leaflets - Much better in the Season Two release. The tokens actually fit comfortably on their designated spaces rather than overhanging and they just look better overall.
Cards - The cards from Season Two are prettier but readability was sometimes an issue. The black looks better but the white ones were easier to read. The distribution of cards is the same for the two new characters. More on that later...
Dice - Hmmm...not that good for a dice game in either set. They
look good, but they don't really roll well. They more sort of...
plop...
Storage - Although not as swish as the Season Two GameTrayz, I actually prefer the little containers from the Season One game because you just lift them out and go rather than having to take the lid off and all that (not that it was a hardship mind you, just sayin') :). The GameTrayz were great for storage because you were not likely to find an explosion of tokens all over your game box, but were kind of clunky to use in game because even with only 2 players you already need a fair bit of space for your board and hero leaflet. Finding more space to carve out a niche for a game tray as well...pfft...it was just easier to keep everything stored either on our board or leaflet and the discards next to those. I once tried to keep it next to me for assessment but it wasn't comfortable and drawing my cards out of the deck I kept in there wasn't easy because the sides were too high for that. Better to stick to it for storage and transport.
On the whole I felt like I had a better impression of the Season Two set. Breaking it down it sure doesn't look that way though... :what:
I really loved my first few plays of Dice Throne, but my gaming partner was not impressed. He thought it 'too overwrought for what is essentially a simple dice game' and 'kind of a little bit boring'. His opinion duly noted, he wasn't totally against it so he was a good sport about playing matches against me especially because I was super enthusiastic about it. Several matches later my enthusiasm has cooled considerably. There are two strong reasons for this. First and foremost, the games feel very same-y. I have played every single character and while they all
seem to have their distinct personalities, their decks are heavily loaded with cards that are common to every character (18 cards) and for most games I barely got any character specific (14 cards) upgrades or actions and it was not uncommon that I only upgraded one or two of my character powers. I'm tired of seeing Six It, Twice as Wild and Samesies (pretty fitting!) in my cards and having my opponent play the exact same cards. Card drawing is very limited in this game and even with the Shadow Thief that allowed me to draw tons of cards it's the same old Instant Action and Roll Phase cards I've been getting. :snore: That has made me feel like every character is interchangeable and unlike most asymmetric games where I can say that I love playing a certain character or faction because <insert reason here>, it's not clear to me in DT which is the most fun. Secondly, and probably more importantly, I don't feel like there are enough possibilities with the dice. You get all these cool looking powers and multiple options printed on your boards plus access to cards that upgrade them and whatnot which gives you a
semblance of control and the
impression that you can manipulate things but in actuality you still need to roll the same old rot that's printed on the board and cards. There is nothing to make your dice roll better. What the cards generally do is give you an
extra something for the same thing you needed to roll in the first place. There are some cards that include an option for a lesser roll result but they are few and far between - Barbarian 2, Monk 3, Moon Elf 4, Paladin 4, Pyromancer 3, Shadow Thief 2, and for the new guys Gunslinger 3, and Samurai 3. There are just some turns when you can do absolutely nothing with your dice and have to pass which is kind of crappy in this day and age when you're accustomed to always being able to do something on your turn. In this aspect I now have to agree with my gaming partner...boring! It's no fun sitting there watching everybody else play and not having access to the cards or dice to do stuff. When it happens to me I'm miffed, when it happens to him I feel sorry for him. Either way I'm not enjoying myself. Also, while I've won my fair share of our matches most times I have never gotten anywhere close to using my ultimate ability until our very last play. My gaming partner was able to use his a couple of times by dint of rolling 3 of the required die face then Sixing one and So Wilding the other. Figures that the one time I get to use mine he has the Shadow Thief and was able to deflect all damage. :shake: I think it's a super great power to have but kind of lame that you hardly ever see it.
Of note, but certainly not a deal breaker, for what it is the game also seems like it runs a little bit too long. However that's easily adjusted by setting your starting health lower for a quicker game. Other than our very first game when we played at the suggested health of 30 we played all our games at the standard of 50. For me I think 40 would be a good sweet spot. Long enough to try to get an upgraded ability and see your plans come to fruition, but not so long that it outstays its welcome especially if you're playing against a character like the Barbarian who can sometimes heal quicker than you can dish out damage. 'S OK but definitely not something I want to keep. Still a contender for the Best Looking/Best Production of the year though.
Dice Throne: Season One - First Played: Jan '19. After 10 plays, :thumbsdown: Buh Bye!
Dice Throne: Season Two – Gunslinger v. Samurai - First Played: This month. After 2 plays, :thumbsdown: Buh Bye!
Dungeon Petz is a Fantasy themed worker placement game with a bidding element where it's not just your generic fantasy tropes but that of pointy eared imps going into the pet shop business raising a variety of odd and endearing creatures for exhibitions and sale to various dungeon lords. Every round has multiple stages. First you setup the board for the current round which means allocating specified numbers of meat and vegetable tokens in the market, adding cages, pets etc. to the board, then you 'bid' with your imps by arranging them in groups to go shopping where the biggest groups (amongst all players) get to go first, then the next biggest groups and so on, then you arrange your pets in their cages, assign them needs (food, play, magic, anger, poop, and disease), then in the showing off phase you take care of the needs you've assigned to your pet, and show a selected pet or all your pets off at exhibition. Your pets can go through bouts of suffering from hunger or boredom and may even gain mutations and you can lose a pet if you're not careful! From round 3 your pets will have grown up enough that you can sell them, and you must match customers' specific needs to the pets you're trying to sell. A match score is calculated from the needs of the customer and the traits the pets exhibit. You can sell these from either the public platform or on the black market but you get 3x your match score in points from the platform but only 2x on the black market, plus you get the coin value shown on the pet. Finally, in the last phase of the round your pets age, your food decays, and your imps return home. You pass the starting player token to the other player (2 player game) and play on for 5 more rounds. Player with the most points wins!
Dungeon Petz is a game that was recommended to me ever since I started interacting with folks on BGG. The first time was when I was still a relative newbie and I only owned about 17 games. Off and on over the years I see this recommended and people seem to have a good time with it. People have thrown it into the mix when I've asked for recommendations but I had no earthly idea why since neither the style of the game nor the mechanisms present bore any resemblance to what I was asking for! Nevertheless the premise is fun and different and I've looked into it several times but every single time since the beginning I've had the same reaction..."Hmmm...looks a bit complex for me..." Recently I thought that with so many gaming years under my belt that I was ready to tackle this one. Having now played it, well....to be honest....I think those people who recommended this game to me back then were mean and unkind. The rules overhead is simply monstrous and utterly confusing. I never liked long rules from the beginning but even now with several hundred games under my belt when I actually have the coping skills to deal with it it was overwhelming. Why would you recommend this to somebody with so few games and so little experience? :shake:
The best thing about the rulebook is that it is peppered with charming little humourous bits. The worst thing about the rulebook is that it is very overexplained. There is just SO much stuff in there that it makes it tedious to read and learn the game and when you're stuck on a point there is a lot of text which hinders you in finding what you need quickly. It also has a fatal flaw in that there is no 'quick start guide' so when you're new to the game you have to keep flipping back and forth through the rules to get a handle on the round sequences, and if you haven't played it in a while you've got to do exactly the same rather than just look at one condensed sheet. SO many phases, SO many finicky little rules, and clearly a 4 player game hands down. Yeah sure they have wheeled and dealed and used a hammer to knock that square peg about a bit to make it fit the round hole of '2 player' but it's pretty obvious that a game doesn't scale well when you have to make so many adjustments from the basic game. There are dummy players in this one and in addition to remembering your own rules you have to remember rules for the dummy players as well. Let's take what happens when pets age for example...pets in the stalls grow up by one click then get moved upward to the aging pet area. Pets already in that area get discarded and for every discarded pet you add one meat to the meat stall except if a dummy player is blocking a space there then the dummy has 'bought' one of the older pets and in that case you don't add the meat. Huh? Is all of that
really necessary??? :what: I remember being in a discussion one time where I said the dummy players looked fiddly but I was shouted down and told that it wasn't that bad. I shut up about it because I hadn't played it so who was I to judge? Now I've played it...It
is that bad, and it doesn't feel natural them moving about in such a predictable way. I'm sure it
works and it is quite possibly very enjoyable as a 2 player game, but, like my experience with
Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar, it might not be something a real opponent would do and I'm willing to bet that people who have played it with the full complement of players will be able to tell the difference. People play unpredictably quite a lot of the time. It's no fun for me mathing out a game going, "Well I better take this action now because the dummy player will go there next turn" whereas people who love planning out that kind of stuff will surely find their heart's content here. I didn't have a good time with this one
AT ALL and called it quits after round 3 of game 1. This is only the second game in all of my years of gaming that has the distinction of being quit on. I just wasn't having fun and that's 6 hours of my life I'll never get back. Even if we had 'got' it, I honestly don't see that it would have lasted in my collection. It's long, has a lot of [easily forgettable] rules, and a tedious setup, all without significant fun payoff. Even if we did have fun with it, it's not the kind of game we'd want to setup and play on a regular. It's one of those games we'd look at on the shelf going, "Hey that was fun! Errr, but it's kinda long. Let's play something else." and it would sit there and sit there until the comments would take a turn to, "I really want to play that one but it's so long and fiddly and we'd have to refresh the rules which took us ages last time remember?...so, nope!" Then next thing you know 6 months would have passed and we haven't played it. Then by the time you get back to it you'll be re-learning everything from scratch. Life is just too short.
TL;DR Originally themed with adorable creatures and the unique mechanism of managing them as they grow, but ultimately it feels too much like hard work and I already have a complex and mentally demanding job so no need for a new one.
Iquazú is a sort of abstract area control game with some set collection and hand management thrown in for fun. You are trying to hide gemstones in a rock wall behind a waterfall that moves incrementally every so often to show you new places to hide more gems. Each player starts with a different number of cards - the first player 4, the second 5 and so on, and on your turn you must either draw 4 cards then discard down to your hand limit of 12, or place one gemstone by playing cards. To place a gemstone the cards you play must match the colour of the spot where you want to play. In addition you can place your gemstone in any column as long as you can pay the number of cards associated with that column - 1 for the first through to 5 for the rightmost column. At the beginning of the game a box with water drops was placed in front of the last player. If the box is not in front of you then it is the next player's turn. If it is then you place a water drop in the waterfall in the very first empty gap in the rock and then it is the next player's turn. At some point the first column will be filled up with a combination of gemstones and water drops. As soon as this happens the game pauses and there is an intermediate scoring. The player with the majority of gems in their colour in that column gets the number of points shown while others get varying numbers of points. However, one player must always walk away empty handed so in a 2 player game it's all the points or nothing. Then bonus tiles that grant you extra cards, or the ability to do a double move, or just give you straight up points are distributed for the majorities in the rows. Then the water strip from the far right of the waterfall is removed, the waterfall slides over so column 2 is now column 1, the bonus chips are revealed, the water drop box is passed to the next player and the game continues... The game ends with the scoring of the third rock from the right once it's full with bonus tiles being assigned for row majority as usual, and then immediately the last two columns are scored whether they are full or not. Bonus tile points are now added to the players scores, and the player with the most points wins!
On the whole I thought this was a lot of fun. The abstract puzzly nature of the gameplay really appealed to me. The game board is original and absolutely beautiful and I liked trying to compete for the majorities while also trying to gain the special powers to edge ahead. It's not your typical area control/influence game so it works really well with just 2 players and I don't feel like anything was missing. I also liked the flexibility that you weren't necessarily nailed down to the cards you drew but that you could use any two identical cards to sub as one of another colour. I'm definitely interested in playing it a lot more, but it remains to be seen if my gaming partner's gameplay methodology will influence my enjoyment. Already he has mastered the art of grabbing the tie-breaker spots (lowest spot in a column, rightmost spot in a row) and will generally only spend a massive number of cards if he can get the tiles in the row with bonus points. The reason I tend to choose games with a lot of randomness for our collection is that once he gets set in his ways he'll play that way every single time and that's boring for me. And while there's nothing inherently wrong with that style of gameplay, in a way it pre-determines the moves I must make and I don't like getting roped in like that. The only negative from the game itself is that setup is really intricate and both that and the gameplay are a little bit fiddly with the moving about of the various boxes and whatnot. In our case we just keep our pile of gems in front of us and pass the water droplet box when necessary. In a multiplayer game you have to pass the gemstone box that contains everybody's gems clockwise, then when it's time to pass the water droplet box that one goes anticlockwise. :what: Say what now? Nevertheless, so far this is my favourite
HABA 'big boy' game over
Karuba and
Meduris.
Kingdom Builder: Capitol is a small 2 tile expansion for
Kingdom Builder. If the game board sections with either the harbour or the oracle are in play you place the capitol on one of the castles and at the end of the game you get 1 gold for each of your settlements built next to or up to 2 hexes away from the capitol.
Some time ago I received a large bundle of Kingdom Builder goodies in trade and this expansion was included. I traded away the original version because I deemed it unnecessary and thought it was small enough to get 'lost' and forgotten in such a big bunch of
stuff. Then I decided I'd like to try it out so I P&P'd it by using castles from Spielematerial (
https://www.spielematerial.de/en/castles.html) which I'd already owned for another project. Playing with it included was fine, but not remarkable. In our first game my gaming partner concentrated on that section of the board but I was focusing on all the other scoring goals like the Hermits and Fishermen. I had the option to place there but decided to go for a Paddock tile which works so harmoniously with Hermits with the hope of coming around to it later. As so often happens in KB the opportunity never arose. He won by a point. Then in our second game neither of us used it as it wasn't compatible with our goals and I concentrated on building a steadily increasing line for the Knights and won by a hefty amount (14 points). I think use of this expansion is negligible. It's nice to have if you like a bit of variety, but I think it's going to be hard to remember to use it if it's not directly in your eyesight and even if you do include it in your games you won't necessarily be drawn there when your placements in KB are so critical to your success. Most times you don't want to get locked into certain areas if you can help it!
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is a Fantasy themed worker placement resource collection and management game where you are building huts at the base of Mount Meduris in settlements around the game board, and have to occasionally pay tithes to a wandering druid who is putting the squeeze on you. The game is scaled for the number of players and 2 players get 12 huts, 2 temples, and 3 workers in their colour (you'll always be playing either blue or purple because those are the only colours with enough pieces) while also using the 2/3 player side of the gameboard. On their turn the active player first rolls the die and then everyone complies with what it says - either get one resource of their choice, have to give up one resource of their choice, or gains one resource per worker that they have in the wool, wood, stone, or copper fields. Then the active player has one of 3 options to execute on their turn - collect resources, build a hut, or build a temple. To collect resources you take one of your workers and move it to a different location. If it is the first worker there then you get one resource, if it is the second, you stack it on top of the worker already there and you get 2 resources while the one below you gets 1. In this way other players can benefit on each other's turn during the game with worker stacks reaching a max height of 3. To build a hut you pay in the resources shown on the field where you want to build. If it will be a single hut you pay each resource once. If there is already a hut next to it then it will become a settlement and you must use more materials to build the hut - 2 of each resource for the second hut, 3 of each resource for the third hut etc. Then you take the rune stone for that area even if another player currently owns it. To build a temple you pay in the resources shown on the field where you want to build and pay those only once regardless of how many huts abut that location. You don't get to collect a rune stone, but at game end you score points for every hut in settlements either side of that temple. In both cases of building the druid moves one step towards the game board and once on the game board moves towards the next hut or settlement of huts. The owner of a single hut must pay one of either of the two materials used to build the hut to gain 1 point. The owner of a hut in a settlement will pay either one of those materials to get 1 point, or both materials to get the number of points equal to the number of huts in that settlement. In both cases if nothing is contributed then 1 point is deducted from their score. When the druid crosses the rune river a rune interim scoring is performed and each player gets one point per rune in their possession. As soon as one player has built both temples and all of their huts everybody gets one more turn and the final round begins. The die is placed next to the druid to mark his current position, then he circles the board one final time asking each hut for offerings. Once he reaches the spot with the die then the last offering is requested there. Temple points are added, then players progressively score for the runes they have collected - 1 point for the first rune, 2 points for the second and 3 points for the third etc. So if you have 4 runes you get 10 points. Player with the most points wins!
This is a quite fun abstract-y area control kind of game that keeps you busy collecting the resources, managing them to both build and make offerings to the druid, and thinking about adjacency for point scoring. The stacking of workers is unique and we both like the fact that you have the possibility of getting something on someone else's turn rather than the classic 'screw you' blocking of the traditional worker placement game. It's a cool game, but has a couple of negative aspects the first being that it runs too long for what it is. With 2 players you get 12 huts and 2 temples and the game end isn't triggered until one player has built all of them. The problem with that is that it takes so much time to collect your resources for building and payment that you're not using your turns to build but to gather resources. Then the more you build the more expensive everything gets so you have to spend even more time to collect even more resources. You're not doing anything particularly epic in the last few rounds - just collecting incrementally more points - so there is no harm in cutting out a few rounds. Our last game we tried playing with less player pieces (8) as for the standard player count, but as I suspected would happen you don't have enough pieces to make the necessary [competitive] links. Maybe 10 is the sweet spot? This is just the kind of game I could love if it were 45-60 minutes long. The board is beautiful, and that druid piece is really awesome, but then I ask myself..."If I'm in the mood to play a game for 90 minutes, would I rather this or something like
Unfair/
Yedo?" The answer will always be the latter. While they both
play long, they don't
feel long which is important to our enjoyment of games. When you keep glancing at the clock wondering how long you've been playing a game, or start doing stuff just to do stuff to speed up the end game conditions, then you're playing a game that feels too long. The end game also tends to devolve into a hoarding match which I really dislike. You want to make sure to collect enough resources so that you can get tons of points when the druid comes calling on his final jaunt around the board, but then your opponent also wants to do the same thing so it becomes a game of chicken as to who will sacrifice their resources to build the last hut. In addition to the expense of building you have to budget for the druid's shakedown resources as well so it's not uncommon that for the last 10 minutes all you're doing is collecting resources. Yes, they're finite so they'll run out eventually, but that last bit is really awkward and annoying. Up until that point the game is lots of fun!
Petrichor is a card driven action selection and area influence game. Gameplay is simple and streamlined - on your turn you can either play a card or pass. These cards all have weather related actions (frost, sun, wind, and rain) and you use these actions to set yourself up for gaining influence on the board and competing for majority on the crop tiles of your choice, as well as voting on the type of weather you want to see happen. Those are the basics. However, there are so many more interesting things here that I'll let the capable Paul Grogan do the talking in this instance:
Youtube VideoThis is a game that I just had to try out because of its unique premise. You're a cloud! :) Definitely very imaginative. :thumbsup: It was easy enough to learn from the rulebook with a few sketchy areas helped out by Paul's video above, and both of our plays went smoothly. Weirdly though...I thought the first play was much more interesting than the second - lots of clouds merging and overflowing, plants sprouting, growing, and harvesting. Both times we played the short version of the game (4 rounds vs 6) so they were both on equal footing, but I just felt like we had a lot more going on in game one...either that or because it was brand new
everything seemed special. The second game played much more straightforward and it's really silly to say but at the end I felt like I'd seen all there was to see. Ridiculous right? At only 2 plays in while still getting to grips with the rules/strategy/flow of the game? Surely not! While the game scales per the number of players by using a limited number of crop tiles, I still felt the area influence aspect at 2 players was a bit weak. I thought there were too many tiles to be really effective at muscling in, but at the same time I realise that if there were less tiles the game itself would be a lot less interesting. It's an awkward spot to be in. One other thing is that for me
personally I don't care too much for voting on the weather. I would rather some kind of weather just...happened. Now obviously I've got to 'read the room'. This is a strategy gamer's paradise and this is obviously a game meant for them rather than for me (fun seeking family gamer type) so for people who don't like randomness and like to plan everything down to the ground it's just what the doctor ordered, but for me I wished it would've been a bit more unpredictable and therefore exciting. I've been looking forward to this game for so long now that it's definitely going to get more plays especially at the 'normal' level of 6 rounds, but at present if I were looking to play this style of game I'd be running to
City of Spies: Estoril 1942 with open arms.
Piepmatz is a set collection card game where you are trying to collect birds and birdseed. For the 2 player game there are a few modifications. You play with a card that shows 2 bird perches, remove all the 3+ cards from the game, and remove all the birds of one species. Each player starts with a hand of 4 cards and proceeds to play a card to one of the two perches above which there is a bird feeder with seeds. Each perch starts off with one bird 'sitting at the perch' while any cards added to that row are considered birds 'sitting on the ground'. When you play a card you compare the strength of the total number of bird cards on the ground to the bird at the perch. If the strength of the birds on the ground is greater you take a birdseed card based on the difference, add the bird at the perch to your collection, resolve any of the bad cards that might have been associated with the seed card you took, move the highest value bird on the ground to the perch, and then repeat that process until the strength of the bird at the perch is higher than those on the ground combined. This is the most productive way to add birds to your collection and if you set it up correctly you can gain multiple birds and seed cards on your turn. If the strength of the birds on the ground is lesser you may play a bird from your hand to your collection directly provided that the strength of the bird is equal to or lower than the one you just added to a row. If you can wangle it there are times you might even be able to add strength 5 birds! Then you draw back up to 4 cards, replace any seed cards taken, and it's the next player's turn. Play continues in this way until you can no longer draw from the birdseed deck and carries on until all players have had an equal number of turns. Then each player discards 2 cards from their hand, adds the other 2 cards to their collection, and proceeds to score. Every pair of birds (one male and one female of the same species and strength) gets 5 points, for species majorities only the player who holds the majority per species gets to count their points (shown as eggs on the cards) while all other players score nothing, and finally add the points of the seed cards you've collected. Player with the most points wins!
I track the releases of
Lookout Spiele and so it was that round about this time last year I became aware of this title. It's a game that I was considering adding to my collection a while back because I have a love for little card games, but I talked myself out of it for various reasons and decided not to get it after all. I guess there is something to be said for not being an Early Adopter because lo and behold along comes an egg shaped parcel for this Easter. S(T)weet! ;)
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I thought it was a decent little card game even though it took us a minute to wrap our heads around the game process. It's a lot simpler than the rulebook makes it seem! The potential combos you can make with the cards is very cool, but if you have an AP player that wants to math out everything turns can be slow. The game seems well balanced because even when one of us goes for the high cards and therefore gets less combos, the other still has a competitive score from having been able to take multiple cards on their turn rather than being miles behind. You have to think about a lot here - the cards to play and collect especially when collecting for pairs and majorities, plus planning for dealing with the bad cards like the crow which chases away one of the birds out of your collection and the squirrel that randomly steals two of your seed cards. It turns out that it's a bit too thinky and mathy for my liking, but maybe that could just be unfamiliarity with the game talking. I generally like my set collection games to be easier to explain and flow a bit smoother. The cards are very drab and plain, but the bird art is detailed and very lovely. We both thought the egg case was really cool which probably bumps it up in our estimation. No doubt it'll be a chore to store, but there's always room for something different in a collection. It was a pleasant way to spend time but I don't know that it was necessarily
outstanding and I own a LOT of 'pleasant way to spend time' type games. Maybe something exceptional will be revealed to me on future plays, but for now I thought it was just OK. Recently a few games have emerged as "clever little card games that I respect and admire the design of but have no desire to play".
Hanamikoji and
Birdie Fight! are the current members of the club. Will this one join the flock? Or can it soar above? Time will tell...
Qwixx: Connected is a double scoreblock expansion for the popular
Roll & Write game
Qwixx where you are rolling dice and crossing off numbers. Here, in a departure from the norm, each player gets a different sheet of paper from A-E in both versions in contrast to all having identical sheets. One block is Version A: The Steps where certain numbers are surrounded by a black border. Crossing off those black bordered numbers count by the points table for another scorebox just like red, yellow, green, and blue. The other block is Version B: The Chain where certain numbers are circled and attached to another number by a link...like handcuffs...and if you cross off one of the numbers you automatically have to cross off the other number regardless of if you've already passed that spot or if that row has already been completed.
I think both versions are fun in their own way and fit in nicely with the
Qwixx family. The Steps feels kind of like
Qwixx: Big Points with an additional way to score points. It's cool, but not distinctive. You're just more invested in trying to get specific numbers so that they can count for you twice - once for the row, and again for the scorebox. The Chain is more exciting because the mechanism is new, and it's also frustrating because now you can be screwed over by not grabbing the opportunity to take certain numbers at the right time. The number of times that my gaming partner grabbed his head in his hands and said, "Ugh, I really regret not taking that one..." or "Ugh, I regret taking that now..." Already I'm calling it The Chain,
A Game of Regrets. :D Deliciously brutal!!! Of course the other side of the coin is that you can skip a certain number in a row knowing that you're most probably likely to get the chained number further down and be able to cross it off anyway. Will you get it? Or won't you? Lots of tension. Super!
Games:ninja::ninja::ninja:WatchLast year I felt very accomplished fine tuning my collection and would like to continue that trend this year. To that end I'll select a few games every month to put in the hotseat under a spotlight and pass my judgment on whether they should be staying :thumbsup: or going :thumbsdown:.
5 games were under scrutiny this month:
Balloon Pop! - This is a cute and fun yet fairly nondescript press-your-luck
Roll & Write game. You roll some dice, you circle some numbers, you hope not to break your balloons. There's nothing wrong with it as such, it's just OK. I'm happy to play it most times as it's only a 5 minute game but it really doesn't add anything special to my collection, and it's not very memorable when it's away from the shelf so I'd prefer to move it along. Harmless.
First Played: Dec '18. After 7 plays, :thumbsup: survivor...for now :meeple:
Boxcars - I love dice drafting games so I had fun with this one the first couple of times we played it, but with so many Roll & Writes gracing my table this year it was getting a little fuzzy in my mind so it was time to bring it front and centre. It's still fun, but it settles around the middle of my pile of R&Ws at present. There are a couple of things that will keep this around for the near future - I like how each train has different requirements like filling up the grain boxcar requires 1s, 2s and 3s but filling up the livestock boxcar requires your results to add up to 21. It provides a creative alternative to the 'write things in boxes' R&W. Also unique in this game is how the dice pool works. After the previous player has finished their turn, the next player takes all the dice they have used plus any from the pool that they wish to re-roll and rolls those dice. In that way, you are evaluating the dice pool in conjunction with your personal scoresheet. I can't see it being a regular to the table, but more of an interesting distraction on occasion. Passable.
First Played: Aug '18. After 4 plays, :thumbsup: survivor...for now :meeple:
Carcassonne: Amazonas - While this is definitely the prettiest of the
Carcassonnes I've played, the gameplay leaves something to be desired both for 2 players and just in general. For 2 players you've just got way too many options to make area control any kind of threat to the other player. What generally has happened is that we each build up our own jungle on our 'own' side of the river and then just draw and place tiles accordingly. At the same time, options in the game are limited because when you draw an Amazon tile you
must place it so that it extends the river and every one of those tiles triggers an Amazon scoring. That gets really annoying in a few ways. First, the scoring rewards the player in the lead and as that might not necessarily be you, you're just giving points away. Secondly, it limits your options for tile placement because there are usually a few different orientations you can use to make that tile useful to yourself. Finally, it makes the river stupidly long and takes up a lot of table space while not really adding anything to the gameplay. The 'race' along the river seemed like a good idea but I'm over it now. It's just not very good with only 2 players. I'll give it a few more tries because it was a gift from my brother-in-law and I don't generally get rid of gifts but this might be my first exception. A pleasant pastime but no form of Carcassonne has ever been very exciting to me anyway. Tolerable.
First Played: Nov '18. After 4 plays, :thumbsup: survivor...for now :meeple:
Extra! - This was never a show stopper from the get-go. Filling up the rows is ponderous and overwhelming and it feels like you'd never get past the negative zone, plus it's especially dice dependent once your extra numbers are locked in so sometimes you're forced into just starting to cross rows out late in the game. I don't feel excited to play it, and I don't feel that it's fun to try to get past the dividing line. I just feel...trapped...and frustrated. The fact that you usually score negative points in the game just adds to that depressing feeling. Even when I win I feel like there is a pall hanging over me. It's also very solitaire and the rules say you pass the dice between players but really it doesn't matter who rolls because you are are all using the same results anyway. It's a bit of an attempt to keep everybody engaged I guess. Dice cannot be manipulated at all so I didn't care what my gaming partner was filling out on his sheet as it didn't affect me in the slightest plus each player has his own end game timer. The end game usually pans out that one of us is constantly rolling alone several 'rounds' in a row because we still need to finish up an extra column while the other is sitting there twiddling their thumbs. :snore: My gaming partner likes it so I'm willing to give it a few more goes but I'm not keen on keeping it and probably won't. Dreary.
First Played: Aug '18. After 5 plays, :thumbsup: survivor...for now :meeple:
JellyBeanstalk - This is a really fun concept of a game - a fairytale Jack in the Beanstalk scenario with a brilliant mechanism where you roll some dice, 'climb' up a beanstalk, and collect delicious jellybeans! Unfortunately it didn't work as well in execution because it needs standardised components to do the job properly. I've held on to it for ages creating it in different ways and hoping to make more of it than it presented initially especially because the artwork is really lovely, but it's one of those games that hangs around in a collection taking up space because you think it's cute, or that you think you like, but you don't really play it...except maybe once in a blue moon. Lacking.
First Played: Oct '16. After 7 plays, :thumbsdown: offski!
:star:
Most Played :star:
Kingdom Builder (7 plays) (2 w/
Kingdom Builder: Capitol [microbadge=621]
NEW!). This is an awesome abstract territory building and area control game that is the same yet different every time you play. The variety comes from the sheer number of boards that are placed out that can also be oriented differently, and even though you are playing the same game, you really aren't because of the objectives. One game you might want to be hugging the mountains (Miners), or have a large cluster of your settlements (Citizens), while in another you'd want to have them separate (Hermits), while in yet another you want to strive for control over the four different regions of the board (Lords) so you want to have fingers reaching out everywhere. It's a quick playing cool puzzle every time you play. Easy to get to the table, and still very good with 2 players even though it's mostly an area control game.
The Rest...x6Seasons (w/
Seasons: Enchanted Kingdom) [microbadge=2136]
Swordcrafters Expanded Edition [microbadge=2136]
x5Azul: Stained Glass of SintraKingdomino [microbadge=2136]
x4Dice Throne: Season One [microbadge=2136]
Ohanami [microbadge=8086]
x3Castle Panic [microbadge=2136]
Cottage Garden [microbadge=8086]
Flowerpower [microbadge=8086]
HanamikojiMeduris: Der Ruf der Götter [microbadge=2136]
NEW!Seikatsu [microbadge=8086]
Spirits of the ForestThe Legend of the Cherry Tree that Blossoms Every Ten Years [microbadge=8086]
Viceroy [microbadge=2136]
x2Arcane Academy [microbadge=2136]
NEW!Balloon Pop! [microbadge=45583]
Birdie Fight!Boxcars [microbadge=621] [microbadge=45583]
Can't Stop [microbadge=621]
NEW!Carcassonne: AmazonasConcordiaNEW! :chalice:
Dice Throne: Season Two – Gunslinger v. SamuraiNEW!Extra! [microbadge=621] [microbadge=45583]
Iquazú [microbadge=2136]
NEW!PetrichorNEW!PiepmatzNEW!Qwixx: Connected [microbadge=45583]
NEW!x1Dungeon Petz [microbadge=2136]
NEW!Haru Ichiban [microbadge=8086]
JellyBeanstalk [microbadge=621] [microbadge=2136]
Lord of the Rings [microbadge=2136]
Spring [microbadge=621] [microbadge=8086]
Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails[microbadge=2136] Fantasy
[microbadge=621] Print & Play
[microbadge=45583] Roll & Write
[microbadge=8086] Spring Related Games
[microbadge=2136][microbadge=2136][microbadge=2136]
Fantasy Tracker[microbadge=2136][microbadge=2136][microbadge=2136]
This year I've set myself the modest goal of playing
50 unique Fantasy themed games. The connection might be tenuous at best so don't take it too seriously. It's just for fun! ;)
Added this month:Arcane Academy - Set in the magical world of Gossamyr, you are a student in the Academy of Magic and Sciences competing against your fellow students in a race to complete the most assignments by casting spells and crafting magical items in your final exam to gain the most prestige and to become the class valedictorian.
Castle Panic - Fend off hordes of goblins, orcs, trolls, and their bosses that are slowly encroaching on your castle with the sole purpose of destroying it.
Dungeon Petz - Along with the rest of your imp family, raise a variety of odd and endearing creatures for fun and profit (exhibitions and sale) to various dungeon lords.
Iquazú - Help the Inox people of the Land of the Waterfalls hide their gemstones in the rock wall behind the Iquazu waterfall to avoid theft from the evil Rhujas.
JellyBeanstalk - Grow a magical beanstalk and collect its jellybeans. Strive for the golden jellybean, but beware the bean bugs!
Kingdomino - More about the adorable whimsical artwork (a lad facing off against a giant spider in the forest with a wand, and a long bearded wizard manning a potions lab in the middle of the swamp) than any sort of theme that comes through, here you're building up a little kingdom with strategically linked terrain types to gain the most points.
Meduris: Der Ruf der Götter - Build settlements to live in while you harvest the rich resources of the land around the base of Mount Meduris, and temples to honour the ancient Celtic gods while you also need to factor in satisfying the needs of a wandering druid that comes begging for some of your bounty.
Viceroy - Construct your pyramid of power containing laws and various characters such as the Huntress, Corsair, Druid, Pixie, and Paladin in order to achieve dominion over the fantasy Kingdom of Laar.
Total:31/50In keeping with the Fantasy theme of this year I'm trying to have some of our communal viewing entertainment Fantasy themed as well. This month we've been watching:
Series - Charmed (original), Eureka a.k.a. A Town Called Eureka, Grimm [/series end]
Fantasy Films - The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Other Films - The 10 Commandments (1956), Ben Hur (1959)
:meeple:
Livin' in the Past :d10-2::d10-0::d10-0::d10-9:
It's also my goal to play 10 games from 10 years ago:
:gg::gg::gg:
Milestone Tracker:gg::gg::gg:
Last year I achieved 76 nickels, 30 dimes and 2 quarters. As I continue to shave the edges off my collection and pursue repeat plays of our evergreen games, I am hoping to reduce those nickels and increase my dime and quarter totals this year. Let's see how I get on!
New Nickels: Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra, Cottage Garden, Flowerpower, Hanamikoji, Kingdomino, Ohanami, Seikatsu, Spirits of the Forest, The Legend of the Cherry Tree that Blossoms Every Ten Years
[YTD 25]New Dimes: Dice Throne Season One, Kingdom Builder, Seasons, Swordcrafters
[YTD 6]New Quarters:[YTD 1]
