Boardgames

[Hot Heart]

Update!

 

First up, Star Trek: Five-Year Mission

 

Pretty straightforward co-op game. You take on the role of crew aboard the Enterprise (the boards are double-sided so you can play as original series or TNG, or mix both) each a unique skill. You then take turns drawing alerts from simple (blue) to tough (red) and try and solve them by rolling and placing dice on the appropriate symbols, with some of the cards introducing detrimental effects. There's a limit to how many of each alert can be out so there's a need to balance long-term and short-term placement since you select which colour of dice you want to take from the collective pool each turn. Thematically, the colours are meant to represent different things (combat, engineering and something) but we just breezed straight past that aspect without much thought.

 

You keep going until you get 10 points off the alert cards (only those that feature the Federation symbol or whatever it is. In the image above it's the glare-y pile). There's some other elements such as receiving/healing injuries, fixing the ship and special abilities on some of the alert cards.

 

Kind of like Star Trek: Elder Sign, I guess, except my memory of Elder Sign is that it can really kick you when you're down whereas this just feels like the worst that can happen here is having not so efficient turns but at least you can usually do something to contribute. It might also appeal more to Star Trek fans, who might pick up on the thematic stuff.

 

Then had a five-player game of Argent: The Consortium

 

It's a bit of a slog going through all the rules (and fitting it on the table) and it's never going to be a quick game, but I still really like it. It gradually escalates as people get more spells, treasures, mages, etc. and discover which are the real endgame conditions to chase. We still played with the basic setup so we didn't get to see some of the most interesting rooms but it still had lots going on.

 

The "scoring" was pretty interesting as we gradually discovered who had earned the favour of each voter and the person most people thought would win just lost it. A couple of us had figured out one guy was chasing "most mana" but we couldn't quite keep up with him and he wasn't close to winning anyway so there's this real need to be efficient with figuring out what spaces are the most rewarding. It still felt quite balanced in that chasing certain things tends to set you back in other ways so really you're looking to just squeak ahead in a given category at the last moment.

 

Anyway, it took a while to play (I don't think it was especially long compared to another worker placement game like Stone Age) but due to the nature of the endgame conditions I think it's a continually engaging experience (unlike Stone Age) and will probably go quicker when everyone's more familiar with the rules.

 

Then we finished up with 6 nimmt!

 

This is actually an old(ish) card game from a German designer (the title translates to "Take 6") probably with it's inspiration from old games like New Market.

 

You have a deck of 104 cards, numbered from 1-104 (I know, right?!) but each one will feature a certain number of bullhead symbols (bear with me). Each person is dealt a hand of 10 cards and then 4 go in the middle. Then each person will pick a card, with all of them revealed simultaneously and then added to the rows based on some simple rules. The cards are placed in ascending order and must go in the row with the smallest difference (e.g. if there's a row with 23 and 37, and someone's played a 42 then it must join the 37 row). The twist is that no row can hold more than 5 cards and, therefore, if a person would ever have to place a card in a full row they must take all 5 cards into a personal "bull pen" and have their card begin a new row.

 

There's a bit of tactical play/risk management in that you might choose to play a card lower than every possible row so that you can then choose which row to replace since some might only have two cards or a lower overall number of bull heads on the cards.

 

A round goes until all 10 cards from each player have been played and then you count up how many bull head icons are present in each player's "bull pen" with the game ending once someone gets 66+ and the winner having the lowest total.

 

It's a neat filler game that provides plenty of "emotional responses" for such a simple ruleset, especially when, thanks to your own calculation, you see someone else eat a huge stack of bull (wait...). It helps that I squeaked the win with some smart risk management (the second round was really tough for me with so many clumped together low numbers). Highly recommended game.

[Hot Heart]

Small update

 

Tried one of my new purchases from Action Phase Games, who made one of my favourite games (Heroes Wanted) but have been publishing lots of neat games lately; this being one of them.

 

Kodama: The Tree Spirits

 

You take on the role of someone trying to please the kodama by growing the bestest tree in the forest and becoming the new "forest guardian".

 

You do this by adding branch cards to your starting trunk and scoring points as you create chains of the different features (clouds, stars, caterpillars, mushrooms, flowers and fireflies). Each player has a trunk with one of the types of feature and take turns adding a card across three seasons made up of four turns. Turn by turn you score for each card based on the new features you add that chain back down the branch to the trunk. There are rules with how you can place a card in that it must connect to a branch without blocking features on that card or overlapping another card and you can't place a branch if it would score you more than 10 points (the idea being that it encourages you to "branch" out and make a beautiful tree).

 

There are also "decrees" for each season (bonus scoring opportunities) and each player gets four kodama at the start for further scoring opportunities. Each kodama has a different scoring condition and you will use three of them across the game, playing one at the end of each season. Essentially, you are trying to rack up points branch by branch but you really need to keep an eye on your kodama in the long-run because they can score you seriously big bonuses. The tree of the player in the photo had a kodama awarding "4 points for every branch card within two of your trunk that has your trunk's feature" and he has 7 of those things, netting a whopping 28 points where most of us were just pleased to maximise the 12 points ones where you score 2 points for each different feature *somewhere* (since there are only 6 different types of feature).

 

Really enjoyable and easy to grasp game with some nice artwork.

 

Next up was Takenoko, which I've actually played before but I think I forgot to mention. It's from Antoine Bauza (Tokaido, Samurai Spirit, Ghost Stories) who really has a thing for Japanese culture, huh.

 

There is a hex board that you build and irrigate but also send a farmer round to grow bamboo and a panda round to eat it. Each player will have some secret objective cards that will score for hex layouts (there are green, yellow and pink types), specific bamboo stack configurations or just collections of different coloured bamboo the panda has eaten. The first to achieve seven gets a bonus 2 point card and then everyone else gets one final turn, and you only start with 3 objective cards (1 of each category)

 

So from turn to turn you will manipulate the board state by moving the farming or panda and other things, with everyone either helping or hindering each other. It's okay but it can be a bit hectic to actually try and figure out what other people are trying to achieve and sometimes you can just get lucky with which objective cards you pull.

 

Then we finished with Legendary Encounters: A Firefly Deck Building Game starting with the "first three episode" run (it treats the pilot as two episodes) since this group hadn't tried it before. I think if you start with this one (as a new player naturally would...) then you might have a bad first impression because the first episode is kind of bullshit. I mean, I know co-op games are meant to be hard but this episode's deck contains one card that can completely fuck you if it winds up near the top of the deck.

 

Like the beginning of the pilot, you are trying to recover salvage before an Alliance Cruiser catches you... except this uses a shuffled deck so the Cruiser might be the first card and most of the three salvage you need towards the end. Which is what happened in our game. The additional problem is that it also adds Alliance Gunships that get stronger with the Cruiser out. It boils down to either not having enough "Money" to recover salvage and repair the utter beating your ship is taking balanced against not having enough "Fight" to destroy the gunships (there is no way you can destroy the Cruiser with your early decks). Needless to say, Serenity got blown up pretty fast.

 

Instead, we moved onto the Bushwhacked, Shindig & Safe run which is really fun. Bushwhacked has you trying to uncover the Reaver survivor as he keeps hiding if you're not quick enough, Shindig has you taking on Atherton Wing (one player managed to use Zoe's cool "Shotgun Blast" which insta-defeats a card it uncovers, except he can't be defeated unless he's hit you first) and had us surviving relentless "Dance" cards that gave us Flaws (character specific things that wreck you) and Safe had us putting out flames (hurting ourselves in the process) and rescuing the two captives... while herding cows and defeating the Grange Brothers.

 

All in all, I still really like it (particularly with my difficulty adjustment tweaks) and it really does become a full co-op experience turn-to-turn as you build your decks and get "co-ordinate" cards that can support people on their turns.

[deanb]

So I brought a few of my smaller games with me; Fluxx, Sabotuer, Gloom, & Mars Attacks Dice. But these games are considered "too complex, what about something like Monopoly" so they've not been played even though I've pointed out the age range on them, that they're short turn around games n such.

However we did play CaH, including my cousins kids and my two younger sisters which brought the average age playing to probably a fair bit loweer than 18. Was kinda funny though I guess, though a degree of "you'll know when you're older" and I guess playing less rude answers since the kids won't undersand to give you points.

 

I also got "Who am I" as a present off my mum, it's a party game, akin to the "name on a post-it stuck to your head" but here you get cards with nose holes so you rest it over your mouth n ask yes/no questions to guess who you are. My youngest brother was a terrible cheat "dropping" his card then making a perfect guess the next turn (super terrible cos despite that I still won).

 

Also I played chess against 11yr old sister, beat her twice. She's fairly new to it though, she'd dug out my old "12 games in one" board earlier in week and still calls them "horses" and "castles".

[Hot Heart]

I received Codenames for Christmas and we got to play that the same day with a large gathering at a family friend's. I think it went down well for the most part. I felt sorry for the player who, when their team pretty much had to try and guess a bunch of words so they wouldn't lose, went straight for the assassin.

 

Also managed to get in some games with the family. First up is Lord & Ladies, which intrigued me from the moment I first found out about it. It's a sort of parodical take on old Victorian upper classes where you start with a Lord or Lady and then take on staff (nannies, gardeners, chauffeurs, etc.) marry suitors and have children, whom you then marry to other suitors and so on. It gets nasty, however, because you can play "Gossip" cards on other players at any time to cause negative effects such as making them lose all their money, having a child discovered to be illegitimate or even having it "discovered" they were having a secret affair with one of the servants whom they then marry. Thing is, Gossip cards don't work on their own; one player plays the first one and then it's up to another player to play an exact copy or the "True" card which confirms any gossip.

 

 

The aim is to end a round with 18 status and it seems fairly balanced between how you attain and hold it (staff, children, awards for most gossip, etc.) and the ultimate winner pipped it with a tie break with 1 more gold. But the greatest thing about this game? The main Lord/Lady cards and offspring cards are effectively easy-wipe "tiles" so you can both name them and draw extra details. One sister delighted in building a family containing Lady Humps, Lady Garden and Lady Lips as well as Lord Vader. We also had Lord Almighty.

 

It's all great silly fun if you don't take the nastiness of the Gossip cards too seriously (Lord Snoozanne married his nanny!) and sometimes they're just funny in themselves when you force a young Lord to marry the old Butler. Definitely a good joint gift for my sisters, so I'm very pleased with it.

 

Also played How To Serve Man with my sisters and they got into it once they grasped the worker placement mechanic. Plus, had a go with the Epic Spell Wars expandalone, which we didn't mix with my original set (since this was my sister's after she loved the original so much last year); it adds a few new interesting mechanics with blood magic and creatures so you get some more interesting possibilities. I think just a neat little addition like the "Reactions" was also cool since it lets you do stuff even if you die before getting to do your spell... like retaliating and taking down your attacker with you.

 

And a few days before Christmas I played some more games with my regular group, less one player, and took on Burgle Bros. again since that's a max of 4 players (and one friend hadn't actually tried it before). We actually managed to win but it was so close and took a bit of luck with the event cards... and the tool cards... and the building layouts. Not to take anything away from some of our expert planning too. Felt good to finally beat it on the third try.

 

Yeah, take that, game!

[deanb]

https://playtable.xyz/

 

This seems like an adaptation of some of the stuff that was being worked on with the MS Surface (the original table thing, not the tablets). It's quite well priced (especially for the pre-order price) but also seems like you're reliant on a lot of connections with board game makers (which I've a feeling in stuff like this won't happen). Also limits you for many games (e.g Firefly or Betrayal, since they're pretty large). I guess I wish them the best, I just don't see it being much more than a niche product.

[Hot Heart]

Some new things from the past few weeks.

 

Arboretum

 

I'm not sure where to begin with explaining this one. The rules aren't exactly tricky but it also keeps a constant tension of what cards you're keeping and what you're playing.

 

On your turn you take 2 cards, which can be drawn blindly from the main deck or from any player's discard pile; each has their own separate one and you must take the top (you can take two from the same). You then add 1 card to your own arboretum and discard 1 from your hand (these don't have to be the ones you've just drawn). The aim is to build various chains/sets of coloured trees in ascending order (there are cards 1-8 in ten different colours). The trick is that a chain can go in any orthogonal direction and starts and ends with the same colour. There are bonuses for starting with a 1 or ending with an 8 or whatever, and possibly a double bonus for all in the same colour (I forget).

 

The twist is that you'll only score for the chains if, at the end of the game, your unused hand contains the highest value of remaining cards of that colour. The other twist is that if anyone is holding a 1 it makes an 8 that someone else is holding worth 0 or 1 (also forgotten that). It means that all throughout the game you're trying to deduce which chains people might feel confident in or maybe you can trick them by discarding stuff they want or maybe DID HE JUST DISCARD A MOTHERFUCKING PURPLE 5 I WANT THAT

 

Our first game probably went as expected with us fumbling our way through. Long story, short, I held onto some 8s and 1s in a couple of colours just to fuck over the guy who bought it and the guy who was enjoying it, and then lost by a few points to the third player. So. Worth. It.

 

Oath of the Brotherhood

 

My regular gaming group fucking LOVES worker placement games. Which is fair enough, but I've always craved something with more of a twist on the basic mechanics (Argent, Dogs of War). Something a bit mroe involved, with a bit more interaction.

 

Oath of the Brotherhood actually brings some of that but it feels a little lacklustre in other areas.

 

 

You take on the role of pirates vying for a place in the prestigious brotherhood which is mainly done via completing quests, which involves placing your dudes down on spaces and collecting things to later turn in. The interesting twist is that you have these player boards on which you store this stuff that confer certain benefits. Get an equipment token (hook hand) and you could put it on the Pistol space which means that if anyone tries to place a dude next to yours in a space, you can rob them instead of it costing them toughness (needed for entering the same space as an opponent)... unless they put an equipment token on the sword and use their main captain pawn. There's all sorts of wrinkles with being able to get some "double-actions" with your captain pawn or shadowing another dude, or gaining a quick boost in toughness.

 

My particular favourite, however, was the gunpowder which allows you to clear out a space on the board (you know, for when some fuckers take the spaces you wanted). The trick is that many of these powerful little abilities requires discarding the token, which obviously sets you back if you needed them for quests. You have a bit of management of long-term goals and short-term gains. I think if people became familiar with the game there might be more jostling and use of even the passive abilities.

 

There are issues in that some of the way things work feels a little odd. Available missions reset each round so you can't really plan around anything unless you snatch up a bunch early on; the tavern where you can recruit followers never refills between rounds and some feel very circumstantial anyway; exploring and adding new spaces doesn't really benefit the player who performs this action beyond taking the first player token (unlike, say, building things in Lords of Waterdeep) and, if anything, makes it much easier for people to avoid conflict over other spaces altogether. For example, in Lords of Waterdeep it might still be tense trying to get 4 of one thing across 2 rounds in order to squeak out one final quest, but here I had about 4 spaces to get what I wanted and could even plan for 1 extra so I had a back-up plan of bombing the fuck out of any dudes who took my space.

 

It's still enjoyable enough though.

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shadows of the Past

 

I'd been waiting for this game for so long (originally supposed to be a retail release in Jan '16, actually launched as a Kickstarter in Feb '16 and finally delivered to the UK in Jan '17) but it was definitely worth it.

 

TMNT usually disappoints when it comes to licensed games. The publisher wants to cash in on the new cartoon or the latest film or whatever so you end up with a rushed product (the last two video games showed a lot of promise but the lack of polish showed).

 

Anyway, this is a different story. Since the TMNT property got sold to Nickelodeon, IDW had been licensing it to create a really cool new comic series (I highly recommend it). A veteran game designer who had worked with their games division and was obviously a fan, approached them and said something along the lines of, "Get me the licence to make a TMNT board game and I'll give you a masterpiece".

 

This designer was Kevin Wilson, who worked at Fantasy Flight Games for a long time in its heyday and created the DOOM board game as well as the first edition of Descent (along with many other things any board gamer would be familiar with). So, if you've played either of those dungeon-crawl type games you might have an idea of what to expect... except you're not quite there.

 

Rather than taking that framework and just statting out ninja turtles so Raphael is the fighter, Michelangelo is the rogue, etc. he has created a much more dynamic system that is highly accessible and incredibly engaging.

 

Each turtle has their own stats, special moves and unique action dice that give them certain specialities -- Donatello has strong defence, Michelangelo is quick, etc.-- and they each roll their 3 action dice at the start of the round (Raphael actually has 6, but I'll get to that). The icons on these dice govern their actions for the round. Katana are used for melee strikes, shuriken for ranged ones, skateboards for movement and shells for boosted defence; there's also a Chi icon for regaining Focus and health then selecting any other side you want. The really cool twist is that the turtles then line up these action dice so that they are sharing the leftmost and rightmost dice with the turtles on their left and right, so effectively each will actually have 5 dice available on their turn.

 

Why does Raphael have 6 though? Well, that is what demonstrates an appreciation of the property and some cool thematic game design. Anyone who's seen the old TMNT film (or most other incarnation) knows that Raphael is the surly loner. In the IDW comics version he was actually separated from the others for a year, surviving on his own. So he has 6 action dice and doesn't share others' because he learned to rely solely on himself, while they can share his since they can count on him. There's another neat twist in that the only way Raphael can benefit from other turtles' dice is by Leonardo using his Leader ability to swap the placement of any two dice for the round, i.e. Leo reins in his hothead brother.

 

What this dice-sharing system means is that the heroes are always coordinating what they do and trying to make sure people get the icons they need. You can also split up/combine your icons however you wish. So you might have three katana icons which actually gives you multiple options of how to attack. The way melee/ranged work is that you spend these icons and then add your attack stat, which is usually 1 but Raph actually has 2 (which is actually major), so you roll that many battle dice. So with three icons you could combine it all into a 4-dice attack (3 icons + 1 attack), make three 2-dice attacks or a 3-dice attack and a 2-dice attack. You might vary how you spend them because you could have a bunch of weak minions all around or you could have one big tough guy. This system also makes things so much more varied and kinetic than the usual dungeon-crawl affair. Normally, it's the old staple of "two actions" and then you move/attack, move/move or attack/attack. Here you can fucking throw a shuriken at a dude from across a rooftop, jump off a building into a dumpster and run into a group of guys before taking a couple out with a multi-attack special move.

 

... which reminds me. My influence got one of the special move cards renamed. Basically, when the Kickstarter first began I facetiously posted in the designer's thread on the BoardGameGeek forums, "If Leonardo doesn't have a move called Slice & Dice then I'm cancelling my pledge!" Little did I know, this perfect pun had actually slipped right past the designer; I saw the photos of the moves posted by playtesters and there was no one named as such there. Cut to many months later when US backers started to get their copies and I noticed something. So I went on the Facebook group where the designer and IDW participate and jokingly mentioned it...

 

Woop!

 

Anyway, back to the game itself. It's fucking awesome. As a turtles fan is everything I'd want it to be. There are so many great thematic elements and the action begins on turn one as the fight puts masses of thugs and ninja against the turtles (there are 21 standard Foot Ninja miniatures in the game). Everything about the rules is designed for elegance without sacrificing depth. The setup for the scenarios is usually very simple as it's more skirmish than true dungeon-crawl but the adaptability comes from the terrain (grinding along rails, flinging manhole covers, avoiding security cameras). And you have scenario books where things branch and conditions change based on whether the heroes or villain win. There's a cool-sounding one, called "Cat & Mouse", set in the sewer. Here, the villain is trying to KO the heroes while they have to KO minions out of the line-of-sight of other minions (like sneaky ninja!) or knock them into a whirlpool, in order to remove them from the villain's pool of respawning enemies.

 

Even the villain role (which I am probably stuck with) is a load of fun as they don't use action dice but a deck of cards that activate certain figures, giving them the same sorts of icons and temporary defence boosts. So you get leaders like Shredder as well as tons of minions. And I haven't even mentioned how much better the KO/awakening system is compared to the old methods (it puts an emphasis on getting your allies nearby or to clear out enemies, while sharing shell icons).

 

The only real downsides are on the production side. The artwork and graphic design is generally superb but the actual map tiles look a little too "realistic" for want of a better word and there are all sorts of copy-paste errors in the scenario books. The miniatures are generally quite good (speaking as someone who's not a fussy miniature gamer) but there are some definite scale issues with some of the models. It doesn't bother me too much, but I can understand some people's gripes when looking at the price tag for the game. Although, I believe the standard retail edition comes in at a lower price point than similar products (the aforementioned Descent, or Star Wars: Imperial Assault) and still has a bunch of content.

 

All in all, I'm really pleased with it and can't wait to play more.

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

I have TMNT also and it sure is brilliant. I do wish it were fully co-op 'cause that's easier to get to the table for me. But it's easy enough to solo.

[Hot Heart]

Good news is that the designer is working on full co-op to be included with the next big expansion.

[deanb]

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/03/the-cia-uses-board-games-to-train-officers-and-i-got-to-play-them/

 

Interesting read on the use of board games in the CIA. 

[deanb]

Rhino Hero

Hey long time no play for me. I have actually played a few boardgames since my last jaunt here just nothing new. This was new.

We got this game out since, not sure if you can quite make out the smaller hands, we had a kid playing and this was kid friendly. It's kind of a cross between Jenga and Uno. The Jenga element comes in building up the tower, in patterns defined on the "roof" cards, and the uno from the fact the roof car on the corner usually has symbols for "take two goes" "miss a go" "anti-clockwise", and occasionally to place a little rhino figuring on the roof too which adds a bit of unwanted weight and difficulty to the next persons turn. So you're trying to get rid of as much of your cards while trying to screw over the next person playing with difficult wall placings and such.

It was pretty fun, small box and simple enough rules (the symbols were the only issue but they were so Uno-like most of us got them quite quickly). So if I see it around (seemed quite a niche smaller company though) I'll likely pick it up to play with the younguns.

We also played my shiny new official UK copy of CAH at this event (once the child went home) and it was the first time for a couple there and they loved it. Afraid during rounds they'd just keel over red faced looking like they'd just been dosed with joker poison :P. I'd also been a bit wary bringing it up since the woman across and her family (kid included) were all American and she'd been a bit all "oh bless" n such and had mentioned Apple to Apples (which isn't a thing over here but I know as the family friendly predecessor to CAH so I can guess how it plays). Once the grandad took the kid home I kinda floated the idea for CAH since we were a few drinks in and no kids and it scales up more so than most other games I had and she surprised me being all "OH YES!!".

[deanb]

 

 

I feel this could have been a bit longer and more in-depth than it is, like actually looking at the game some more than just the sort of "making of" element. Still, maybe a channel to check out for boardgame stuff?

[Hot Heart]

So, first, a small update

Mythotopia

It's a Martin Wallace game in the vein of A Study In Emerald & A Few Acres of Snow in that it's got deck-building combined with area control and "two actions per turn". Its theme doesn't exactly leap out at you but the gameplay is solid stuff. Conquer regions to capture the corresponding card and its symbol for improving your military, construction or purchasing power. There are other special improvement cards that can help focus on a certain strategy (an extra build card, an extra ship card, ability to store more cards in reserve, etc.) which you're pursuing based on the VP cards that can change from game to game.

As it was a learning game for all of us, no one was really playing that boldly (except maybe me). The game keeps you fairly reined in with your military strength and building capabilities (invading typcially takes a whole hand of cards) so the best route seems to be to improve your reserve early on (through building cities or the warehouse card) so you can cycle your deck fairly quickly while keeping things open for flexibility. And the military stuff is actually more like bidding where you might be better to concede defeat somewhere in order to take somewhere else. Overall though, enjoyable game and should definitely prove more interesting on future plays.

And now for a MEGA update, which might be a mega mess as I try to recall and write up a day-long game. Sorry.

A game of Watch the Skies was scheduled in town for International Tabletop Day and it's not something you get to experience often, so I jumped at the chance to join the team the regular local group was organising.

If you don't know what Watch the Skies is, then Shut Up & Sit Down did a video of their experience with the first edition (the one we played) as well as with the mega-MEGA 2.0 version.

However, if you don't have time to watch that (understandably) then it can best be described as a sort of "X-COM LARP". The game involves teams of 4-5 people taking direct control of a few major countries, alien factions, the UN and even the Press, where there have been sporadic sightings of aliens but nothing widely known among the general public. Everything plays out over 12 half-hour turns in which the various members of your team carry out their given roles. Your chief of defence will go to the world map and control your units their, your scientist will go off to conferences with all the other scientists and coordinate (or not) on different fields of research, your foreign minister will go to the UN ("CRISIS ALERT!") to get into heated debates about certain crises and other nation's military actions while your head(s) of state will talk to the other heads and be harassed by the press.

My role in all this was the Vice President of the (glorious) People's Republic of China, with it being two heads of state since they are probably the joint most powerful nation in the game. They also are possibly the most "productive" country in the game based on how their Public Opinion: Resource Points scales

That was our control chart and as you can see from the track on the right, where the pen is, you have a purpley Public Opinion track which then awards Resource Points (the red numbers) based on how high that is. It starts at 6, which awards us 12 RP each turn whereas another country might only get 9RP for a PO of 6 (Russia, for example). The control thing is, generally, just a way to track how you're spending your RP each turn and it's so busy than the game is reliant on you carrying out the actual spending of them (there aren't enough "Control" players to come round and check each thing you've assigned). What this means is that you'll talk to your Defence buy and ask how much he wants/thinks he needs to carry out your plans, ask your scientist what they need and what your foreign minister thinks the UN requires/expects, etc.

There are a whole bunch of things to learn with regards to this because the military involves conventional units (tanks, fleets, etc.) as well as advanced "Interceptors" which are special planes developed using covert alien technology and are purely for engaging flying saucers rather than conventional forces. They can also go to anywhere in the world just like that *clicks finger*. In addition to that, you have special agents who can conduct all manner of missions (which is down to the discretion of Control). Each one requires a basic RP expenditure to maintain (depending on where they are) and additional RP can better ensure success by modifying die rolls.

Essentially, every area of the game will stretch your budget, whether it's contributing as a UN member, unlocking scientific upgrades or paying for other possible activities (bribes, visiting the "grey market" for alien tech, sending comms to the aliens, etc.) and it can be a lot to take in. Most of its tactical rather than strategic, although there are long term goals for your team, which is where the simulation aspect takes over.

See, rather than having a specific "scenario" emerge, every single team will have their own principles and agenda (including the aliens), which will obviously affect all their interactions. As China, we were basically trying to be the best at everything. More specifically, we were to ensure alien incursions stopped, fully exploit alien tech to advance our military, and ensure we gained more scientific recognition than Japan and the US. Our guiding principles were essentially to stay friendly with Russia, look to expand our commercial interests overseas and make sure we remain a key player on the world stage. Roleplay and enacting all this is actually very tricky.

The other thing important factor is that you roll to check your Public Opinion at the end of each turn, which is modified by various things going on: (un)successful military actions, press coverage, science upgrades etc. Usually, there's no change but pretty significant events can really impact it, namely the most important one: CONFIRMING THAT ALIENS EXIST. See, suddenly announcing that "oh, by the way, there are actually aliens" puts a pretty severe dent in that nation's Public Opinion and the end of turn roll, so it's not necessarily something you want to do if you can help it...

Session report:

So, the game itself got underway and our immediate approach was to form an Asian Bloc with the other player nations (Russia & India) so that we can both respond to alien incursions within each others' airspace without incurring their wrath. I spoke to India's leader while our President spoke to Russia. India weren't immediately thrilled at the prospect but would run it by their Chief of Defence (generally, a wise deferrment in any case). Straight after that, I'm approached by a member of the Press and asked how we're dealing with Russia despite the fact that I hadn't spoken to them personally; a pattern that would persist for a while... I was then asked my opinion on Japan developing more Interceptors - those being the units designed solely for engaging UFOs - and said that it was within their right to increase spending on defence and recon (really, them putting RP into that would mean they weren't doing so well as a science competitor). With the knowledge that Interceptors aren't really for defence, he pushed me for more and I said that it's a global program that we all pursue so... yeah, it's not a concern to me. He then asked why we were taking military action in Peru. What?!

I had no idea we were taking military action in Peru... which obviously makes me look silly, but I hadn't managed to catch our Chief of Defence for an update. Rushing to him immediately, I found out a lot had been happening already. With Peru as a trade ally, we sent an Interceptor to engage it but our CoD rolled a 6 which is an insta-fail regardless. Fortunately, a couple of other nations had also responded and (I think) shot it down. Either way, Peru (a non-player country) were said to be pissed off but also publically denied that there was any military action. Meanwhile, a whole fuckload of saucers had emerged over both Europe and Russia. Russia, with our help, had chased them all away without conflict while a dogfight had occurred over Europe, with some shot down.

There was stirrings of shit going down between North and South Korea but it seemed more like US and Russian sabre rattling. We simply held strong that we would not tolerate non-Asian countries intefering the region unless requested by that country or it was UN-sanctioned. Looking to strengthen our influence in Asia, we made diplomatic missions to Mongolia and... some other country, I've actually forgotten since it didn't turn out to be that important (we wouldn't anger them if we sent Interceptors there).

Next turn, we had UFOs over China and with help from Germany and France managed to drive off most of them but one got through (CoD rolled another 6) to Hong Kong. We tried to deal with that but our CoD managed to roll a couple more 6s (COME ON!) and some people were abducted. Meanwhile, the Press began to report strange radio signals from the Vatican and then India. It was clear that we were missing a lot of stuff and an alien sighting in Greenland seemed to pass by everyone but me.

At some early stage, we also had a message from the aliens "Hi, kind, pal" which obviously sounded friendly but you can't be too sure.

The press would keep coming at us and asking all sorts of probing questions and, being an isolationist and wary China, I was keeping the responses fairly non-commital although, I had to evade more questions when it had gotten out (the press are free to eavesdrop) that we were developing tech for communicating with the aliens (you can send messages but how much gets through is based on your tech level). Whoops.

Fortunately, we didn't have to worry about keeping secrets as, the next turn, India loudly declared that aliens exist and they have one who is friendly. Regardless, their PO took a huge hit (possibly 3/4) while everyone else's also took a lesser one (we dropped 2 levels) and then another hit for any successful alien landings (the abduction in HK didn't count). India were very close to resigning, at 1 PO, and we offered to help in exchange for access to alien tech (we start with some action cards, one of which is to boost another country's PO by 1) but that didn't seem to go anywhere because of a few other immediate concerns.

The Pope (yes, the Holy See is in the game) sent out an audio-only broadcast that the aliens were good and friendly and that he'd been to visit them. As it turns out, through some odd German involvement, both the German military chief and the Pope had been taken by the aliens and returned. As it turns out, however, they had contracted some kind of "space flu" and voluntarily entered quarantine... except the Vatican City sent a bunch of their own agents who busted the Pope out of Germany and back to the Vatican. This caused a spread of this mysterious ailment across Germany and the Vatican City with many country's scientists then scrambling to develop some kind of cure The aliens also made a very public broadcast, with images, to try and explain that the illness was not intentional.

At his point, we had a few concerns. 1. We were trying to communicate with whoever took our people in HK but had no response, 2. Chinese corps had been accused of supplying uranium to Angola, who were engaged in a conflict with South Africa, who had threatened to use their own nukes, 3. We needed to find some way to stop "space flu" or vaccinate against it and 4. No one was paying attention to Greenland!

While I was off exploring diplomatic routes both regarding a cure for space flu and the situation in Germany, I had directed our CoD to focusing our agents' efforts both on learning more about the alien infiltration in Greenland and making sure what I'd just told the press ("No Chinese corporations have been supplying Angola with components for nuclear bombs") was actually true. Oh, and the world's eyes had turned to us thanks to an announcement that a new "super fuel" had been discovered in Nepal with a coalition of China, India and Russia aiming to exploit it. That, I had to leave our foreign minister to negotiate. From what I could gather, it sounded like a Control or Press-created thing that, in the spirit of roleplaying, they decided to run with and get the players to flesh out. India threw some shade with regards to us moving ground troops into Nepal being a dealbreaker but our foreign minister did a good job and got us 1 extra RP a turn, which is a white token as it's "temporary" and subject to change.

Germany was overrun with other countries and the Press trying to establish what was going on, especially now that an alien player was sat at their table, and a plucky reporter had embarked on a secret mission (which we partially funded) to get into Berlin and report what was going on. Thankfully, this all drew attention away from the fact that Chinese corporations had in fact been helping Angola acquire the resources to build their own nuke and we had some sort of rogue faction within the government. That was not good news. The reporter told us that he managed to explore a bit of the alien base in Berlin where he saw miltary units and mechs (which Control then placed on the world map) as well as processes involving converting our soil and water, i.e. colonisation. This had everyone worried and Control actually had to use a blank piece of paper to represent Germany on the world map as nearly everyone sent units there in some shape or form (we actually didn't).

The President and I had also engaged in some back and forths with the aliens which basically told us they couldn't understand what we were saying and then some other messages: "Us go you" and "Can us build?" which both confirmed my suspicion that the aliens could only use one-syllable words and perhaps 3-word messages. We sat on that because weren't going to let them land while we couldn't deal with space flu or trust them.

In talks with Brazil, who I'd cosied up to as late players (car breakdown meant they didn't join until turn 4) and offered assistance, I discovered they were working on a vaccine/cure for space flu and like those wiley reporters, surmised that they had access to an alien, pushing for them to confess. They were welcoming and, knowing we'd made advances in alien communications, let me join their talks with their captive alien, who spoke in the same manner as the others. The alien seemed friendly and was offering to bring or make food if they needed it. I asked him if they wanted to build and was told "just small".

While all this was happening, Russia kidnapped the Pope (I strongly condemned Pope-napping when asked by a reporter... which made the news) and had a small outbreak in their country (which they contained with martial law) before the Vatican City, with help from the UK and Germany, successfully recovered him. Following our principle of keeping close ties with Russia was tough. How little did I know...

Because then Russia invaded Belarus and Ukraine on their way to Germany, claiming they didn't want these aliens on their borders. Borders they'd just created. By invading Belarus and Ukraine. Well, shit...

As the next turn began, we were informed that aliens were going to be speaking at the UN and a world leader from each country should attend also. With our President engaged in coordinating something else and the meeting about to begin, I followed our foreign minister (I had no idea where the UN actually met at that point) and joined a heated discussion as the aliens were speaking via video link, aided by India's leader. The discussion involved the aliens going to "cold south place" which was their way of describing Antarctica and perhaps leaving Germany. After what I'd heard in Brazil, giving them some land sounded fair, but the empasse came when they refused to give up their weapons and Russia refused to withdraw their forces. Our President also came to join and sensing this wasn't going to get anywhere anytime soon, I left to steer the ship.

It turns out, I avoided the US locking down the UN meeting and moving it to Nevada, which should've worried everyone, except no one, not even the embedded reporter, texted anyone outside to alert them.

I returned to our CoD to find we'd managed to break into Greenland and found some aliens trying to subvert the democratic process and ensure it became pro-alien. This was disconcerting but also fit with the aliens trying to find friendly settlement somewhere. When our foreign minister returned it sounded like things had been resolved and the aliens would be getting a "cold, southern home" and Russia would tone down the aggression.

Except, that was a lie.

Because Russia nuked Berlin and then Germany and the UK retaliated in kind. This was not good news as it made the Global Terror Track (there are milestones which cause drops in Public Opinion and a game ending max of 250) soar waaaay up. It also angered the aliens (those still alive) who delivered a broadcast that we should destroy all tech. Things were starting to get out of hand for us, because we felt we should support Russia but couldn't condone nuclear warfare. We also weren't prepared to destroy all our technology and make ourselves vulnerable. Besides, what tech did we have besides a few things here and there? It's not like the superweapon that Russia kept mentioning.

Except, we were involved in the "superweapon" they kept mentioning, except it was a space station. Thanks to our scientist, we'd made great strides in galactic travel and discovered a renewable fuel. Which was handy since Nepal reneged on a PERFECTLY GOOD DEAL with regards to their superfuel. Anyway, I went to the moon. Which was probably a mistake.

We'd heard murmurs of an alien base on the moon and since we had these space travel capabilities that no one else possessed, we figured we'd try and learn more and since I was somewhat expendable, I should go. I was able to speak directly via video link, in the same monosyllabic manner, but all I learned was that they were pissed off at this intrusion (on our moon!) and just told me to go. They didn't attack, though, so that was good and I looked out to see it wasn't a big military operation, just a small outpost/staging area.

In was a nice break from Russia's attack on Europe. This was a full-scale conflict as Russia invaded the UK only to fail and find their general captured, their scientist defecting to the Vatican and their President assassinated. Yes, assassinated. I would discover that Control had handed out the very rare assassination action cards, which can kill player characters, to some world leaders, including our President. He guessed it was the aliens encouraging regime changes or Control had hinted at that being the reason, I'm not sure, I was on the moon (with Steve). Maybe it's triggered by the Global Terror Track getting that high and needing to rein in players with some in-game justification invented?

So then, with only one official left in Russia, the UN took control of it. This struck our President as the perfect time to negotiate forming some soviet superstate where we also governed Russia (it was the penultimate turn at this point) and gained all their benefits... like, uh, half an irradiated country and a record low public opinion? Either way, I left him to it and with us flying high, unscated and with an abundance of RP, made our agents infiltrated Germany and stole the research into space flu, since Brazil was busy with some other "big science project" and Germany would only provide their samples.

Brazil's big science project turned out to be "Mycroft" an advanced AI that told all countries to allow it access to their systems and it would take care of global defence. Russia's current head of state, the former foreign minister, seemed to know what that signified and said "No, destroy it" while advising us not to allow it access. This is when chaos erupted. The aliens said, "Goodbye" and then all other nations began scrambling and making plans while we sat back and just formed the largest country ever.

End of game.

This is when we got some sort of summary where we discovered more about the other team's goals.

- The aliens had some sort of split where most were waking up mind-wiped, with only a select few leaders left aware of their mission to test humanity as they tried to create a home.

- Brazil didn't realise what Mycroft would actually do and hoped this AI supercomputer would solve things. This attracted the wrath of many people who had played before (a bit metagamey but eh...) and left them in ruins.

- The US was supposed to find out who their most powerful adversary was out of Russia or China and make it their mission to destroy them. I think our early focus on non-military research and Russia's immediate aggressive overtures solved that one.

- The UK was trying to finish ahead of France and Germany in technology, which they sort of managed but got dragged into the whole European conflict, severely weakening them in all respects.

- The Pope joined the aliens on Mars

- France were meant to be altruistic and aid any country they could (hence them helping us with UFOs) but also to join in any of their allies' retaliations (like Germany's). They took the destroy tech warning way seriously and shut down all their computers (after sending an EMP to Brazil), returning themselves to the '50s.

- Russia, umm, just wanted to rule the world? Not actually sure. But their President actually survived two assassination attempts and found safety in the vacant Vatican City while their promoted Foreign Minister also survived an assassination attempt. However, had there been another turn, with our consolidated control over Russia, we would've used our assassination card on him to seize full control.

- Germany's aims were a little unclear but they drove the coup in Russia which put the UN in control. At the end, they opted to upload all EU citizens' (UK not included) brains into computers?

- India were building their own supercomputer but French and German forces invaded and destroyed that base along with everyone in it, including their own men.

- Japan were mostly wrecked by low PO the whole game and a lot of their influence, we would learn, was covert as they seemed to be involved in a lot of major events. They decided to upload their brains into the cloud also.

All in all though, hugely confusing and stressful but a great experience and some funny emergent gameplay. If you get a chance to try something like that, I highly recommend it.

[Hot Heart]

Wasn't really gonna bother continuing updating "my blog" but maybe some people are just reading and absorbing? It's alright practice for reviewing/critiquing anyway.

Let's try and keep it briefer anyway.

Food Chain Magnate

Very complicated, very mean, thinky game where you all run competing fast food restaurants. Each round you structure your company in order to market products to the various local households, produce the items these households require, train your employees and gouge prices to steal customers. Hard to give it a fair assessment after one game, but its biggest problem for me is that it lacks a fun sense of growth/progression. I mean, it's there but every single round is a bloodthirsty battle over selling a couple of burgers or pizzas and there's just too much stuff to keep track of consistently, particularly the marketing that comes in various forms (both in type and token size) and triggers at different times. It seems that every single game (I've seen experienced players sharing scores) suffers from a runaway leader problem, and I think that the claims of being "sandbox-like" are vastly overrated given that the milestone bonuses tend to force you towards 3 main paths in the beginning. Like I said though, there's a lot going on and I couldn't give it a full appraisal after one game.

Concordia

Excellent game that sort of feels like a smart progression of Settlers of Catan. It involves moving colonists around the globe, settling cities and producing/trading goods but the real core of it is the cards. My friends will hate me for saying this, but it's somewhat reminiscent of what I love about Heroes Wanted and its hand management/card timing/efficiency stuff except the decisions and impact are far more generous and easier to grasp here.

The cards dictate all your actions, but the key here is maximising your efficiency with each one (sexy stuff, I know) since, at some point, you'll need to refresh your hand. For example, the "Architect" card allows you to move colonists around and then build in cities next to any of your colonists. You only start with one of these cards and because building is based on certain goods and monetary costs, which will increase dramatically thanks to other players getting their buildings in other cities first, it helps to try and get the most out of each one fast. And the "refresh your hand" action is never that punishing either because it's a card you play that a) gives you money based on how many cards you've already played (1 coin for every one past the third, including itself) and b) gives you the opportunity to gain a new colonist if you have the right goods. And then there's one of the most interesting cards, "Diplomat", which allows you to copy any other player's face-up card (i.e. the last card they played). The whole system not only hangs on that personal efficiency goal but adds in all sorts of layers with what you might choose to play as an aggressive/defensive move against other players. In essence, you can try and make them "blink first" with certain moves like playing the "Prefect" card to produce goods for certain regions and the cities within (e.g. they might just want the bonus good to guarantee they get something but your cities within the region grant you even more goods), or even time it so you produce a bunch of goods when their own warehouse is too full to take any more.

And the other thing is that you can choose how to structure your hand of cards. Early on, I took a "Consul" card that was absolutely crucial for grabbing the other cards I needed without paying the extra cost for more recently revealed ones farther along the line. Plus, I figured an extra Architect and Diplomat would increase my chances of getting the actions I needed. Looking at some of the other cards, I think there's scope for slightly different approaches (I barely used the "Mercator" trade action) which is probably also supported by having the cards increase your scoring multipliers. See, the actual key to victory is by appealing to the various gods which is represented on the bottom of the action cards by what they value. Some will award points for having more colonists, some for certain buildings in certain types of cities (what good it produces) and others are for spreading your stuff all over the map; there's a bit of "point salad" in that you'll want to do a bit of everything but there's definitely a real incentive to pursue cards for more than just the associated action. On top of all that, there's lots of replayability in how the goods tokens and bonuses get sorted across the various cities and regions on set up. Ace game, highly recommended.

Century: Spice Road

If you've played Splendor, you'll have a decent idea of how this plays. It's an easy to grasp game that you could probably play with the whole family where you're collecting and trading spices (coloured cubes) in order to fulfill demands (cards that grant points if you trade in the exact combination of spices).

Each player starts with two cards; one that grants them 2 yellow cubes and one that grants them 2 "upgrade" steps (the spices go yellow>red>green>brown) on one spice, or across two.

On their turn a player can do one of four things:

1. Play a card and perform its pictured action. This will either grant them spices, allow them to trade spices for other ones or upgrade spices. One trick here is that the trade action can be performed as many times as possible from the one card, e.g. if the card says 1 Green can be traded for 2 Reds and 1 Yellow, the player might have 2 Greens they can use to get 4 Red and 2 Yellows or 3 Greens for 6 Red and 3 Yellows, etc.

2. Purchase a market card. There will be a line of cards that allow you to perform the above actions and these are vital for building your "engine" of cards to maximise spice production and conversion. The line order is important because you can take the leftmost one for free but if you want to take any other one to the right, you must place a cube for every card you skip. Obviously, if you take any that have cubes on, you also gain those cubes. Essentially, while players will be trying to find the "best" cards for their approach they also need to weigh up the cost of gaining one. And efficiency is key because another action is simply to...

3. Recover all your cards. That's it. You can regain all the cards you've played to get that engine running again...while you watch some bastard take the card you wanted. Yes, that's because the final possible thing you can do on your turn is...

4. Fulfill a demand card. These are the aforementioned cards with actual victory points on them. There's a little twist in that of the 5 on show, the leftmost pile also has a stash of gold coins while the next to the right has a stash of silver coins. Every time you fulfill the demand in one of those slots, you take the corresponding coin, with gold coins worth 3VPs at the end and Silvers worth 1VP. The game ends once a player takes their fifth demand card and everyone's had an equal number of turns.

And that's pretty much it. Everything flows really smoothly as turns are quick and simple, while it's easy enough to track what people are doing on a basic level as you can see the cubes they have. Even if you thought you had a player sussed out and they surprise you with a trade that puts them into position to grab the demand card you were on track to get, you have the opportunity to change tack. It's surprisingly deep because it's all about timing as well, since you could beat someone to the requirements on a demand card but hold off for other things if you're that far ahead, or wait until it shifts into a coin-grabbing position, etc. I think the only "flaw" is that in my first game I had so many cards that I couldn't track all the possibilities while not wanting to hold up the game and subsequently played the wrong one as a "first step", which put me one turn behind... everything, as other players grabbed the demand cards I wanted.

But, yeah, great simple-but-deep game and I'm looking forward to how it's supposed to link up with the other "Century" games coming in the future.

Edited June 28, 2017 by Hot Heart

[TheMightyEthan]

I enjoy reading it even though I never comment.  Like most of the websites I visit, honestly.

[deanb]

I just haven't had the opportunity to play much new boardgames of late tbh. Boardgame sessions I have had with people it's usually been me providing the games so it's older stuff. Though I've got my Homefront game unplayed so one day I guess I'll get that done.

I have played Food Chain Magnate some time ago, my main memory of it was that it was absolutely stonkingly massive game. Bigger that Firefly in tablespace needed. I'd say if you're designing a boardgame make sure it'll fit on a standard Ikea table. If it overflows on that you'll find your player base drastically reduced.

Can't remember too much on the mechanics, but yeah it was a pain to keep track of everything, and you do usually end up focusing on the one food type and if that goes tits up you're kinda screwed. I wouldn't say it's a game where you don't find the winner until the end, you usually have a good idea by midgame. Why I quite like Abyss, usually you're all within 10 points of each other and the layers to the scoring means that you can't really work out who might be in the lead until the end.

[Hot Heart]

City of Iron

This game is a few years old now (but also saw a 2nd edition released last year) but I'd never played it before since it's one of those "maximum of 4 players" games that don't see many outings in our group. I'm glad I got to try it though, because it's pretty ace.

It's essentially a civ-building game but with a steampunk theme (supported by some nice artwork) and a cool twist on deck building.

Each player controls some sort of nation like Hogmen or Toad Inventors, with the option to use asymmetrical powers/abilities and perhaps an extra card or altered setup, which should mean they specialise in some area.

The most appealing thing I found was that you have a deck of people that can be added to your nation at the end of each round, which are split across two categories: citizen or military. Each player starts with 2 of each and selects the order in which they are placed. This is also key because, unlike most deck builders, you don't shuffle your deck when you need to draw cards but flip the deck straight over, i.e. prior to flipping, you can reorder the discard pile to make a logical draw order.

These cards will provide things like special actions, bonuses connected to other actions or have icons used to pay for other actions. So it's up to you whether you focus on getting Mayors, Explorers, Cartographers to discover new areas and found new towns to support all sorts of goods-producing buildings or whether you build up your military with Iron Soldiers, Wyvern Airships and Spies to conquer other towns (these come from a deck separate to player ones, although you can steal ones other people possess). Everyone has all the same cards available for purchase (with a few extras depending on the nation) but the cool thing is that each has artwork related to that nation.

One of the main focuses and hence its huge presence in the middle of the board, is resources. This isn't wood, stone, etc. but turnips and glow moss and bottled demons, which is a nice if minor change. Buildings will boost a player's standing on these tracks (they don't actually generate spendable resources), with players rewarded points for 1st and 2nd place on these tracks at three points throughout the game, but 1st will also get extra income each round based on the rarity of the resource (all players still get +1 income per any goods-producing buildings they have). The building deck is organised so that the types of goods as well as cost and land requirements (your basic homeland supports 4 terrain types but others require deserts or tropical climates, for example) ramp up after each scoring card and put an emphasis on turn order (which has a bidding mechanic).

There are all sorts of ways to score points based on how you specialise, along with plenty of endgame bonuses, but there is an emphasis on doing a bit of everything and finding a way to make your deck shine.

While I was the "Cresarian Scholars" I pretty much abandoned this concept as soon as I saw no one else was opting to conquer the neutral towns. Three players were fighting over buying certain types of buildings while I was improving my military to take over these weak towns, which was also increasing my card drawing, income and getting 1st or 2nd on many of the resource tracks. We actually missed one of the rules where the left-most available building is ditched whenever a town is conquered, which might have sped up the game and hurt their strategies even more (possibly 3-6 points of my building-based bonuses too...)

It was easy to see how I could craft my deck in a way that helped me keep a steady flow of everything I needed, while no one dare challenge me on my towns. Because I was drawing 1-2 extra cards compared to the others, I didn't have to waste an action (you get just 3 a round) to draw one if needed. Same goes for increasing my income rather than relying on my Tax Collector card as another action. And I had military cards that gave extra card draws, plus a way of generating "Science", a currency used for buying more advanced cards or buildings. Plus, that last one was actually aided by my "scholarly" exclusive bonuses (a "Genius" for getting 1 Science as a free action plus skipping the gold cost for my Scholar).

That's not to say that the others couldn't improve their card draws (new towns give this automatically) or gain more Science (through academies), plus they could skip Science costs through certain prerequisite buildings as they easily developed larger towns than me; it's just that they were all competing in that department whereas I took over 8 towns compared to 1 each for a couple of other players. While they got endgame bonuses for most distance travelled, I was picking them up for most of 1 resource, most cards, most towns, etc.

Anyway, great game that is probably more competitive if you play it more than once every blue moon and can familiarise yourself with the strategies and cards (you actually show/announce which cards you buy each round so others get a sense of what you have). The only gripe is that it really needed another pass on the proof-reading on the rules to avoid the little confusions and clashes.

[Hot Heart]

Small updates:

Played Century: Spice Road again. Still love it. It's surprisingly deep once you get into the "timing" aspect (e.g. holding off nabbing scoring cards straight away because you can see others aren't close) and I had some cool (as well as lucky) events on my way to a pretty convincing victory without using the 3x upgrade card.

Also did a 5P game of Concordia this time, which changes the dynamic somewhat (more actions to copy with the Diplomat card, money becomes tighter with more players occupying the cities) but still flows just as well. There's a bit too much to keep track of, even your own score (which is only calculated at the end), but it just means you might need to think a couple of turns in advance and give yourself options. Kind of a bum finish as the two players who didn't like it as much conspired to cause a game end earlier than it might have come naturally; kinda soured the whole thing but I don't think it affected the overall outcome.

As for new games tried.

Total Rickall

We only played the basic co-op version to get a handle on how it worked. It translates the episode well in that you are trying to eliminate all the parasites - represented by rows of character cards for all sorts of ones from the episode (Pensylvester, Baby Wizard, etc.) with a secret Identity card tucked underneath - while not killing the Real people, until you exhaust the deck or over half the players feel confident you have only Real people remaining. So you have a sort of minimal discussion allowed, simultaneous action card game where you peek at identities, swap identities, shoot people, etc.

It was okay and we won quite easily (though, we might have discussed a couple of things in too much detail) but I'm a little skeptical about the advanced version where you might have Parasites among the players themselves, with almost everything else virtually the same. One player hates social deduction games like that though, so we didn't try the advanced version.

Lovecraft Letter

Lovecraft-theme version of Love Letter that does more than just essentially reskin the original but also gives it super deluxe presentation. The advantage to this version is that you can play it with even 5 or 6 players but without the problems I'd heard the Premium Edition of the original game featured. This is because of the Insanity mechanic that introduces a risk-reward type element that also runs down the deck a lot quicker. (I can't speak for 6 player but 5 player worked just fine.)

This game has the expected cards (the reskins) but also "Insane" versions that feature the standard effect plus a more powerful effect, which can only be accessed if you have already played an Insane card. For example, the Investigators is the standard "Guess the number of another player's card except for 1" effect but now there are Deep Ones which has that or the Insane alternative of "Choose a player, if they have a 1, they are out. If not, name a number" effect.

The risk element is that by playing any card with an Insane effect, it makes you Insane which means you have to make a "Sanity Check" at the start of each of your following turns. You do this by drawing a card from the deck for every Insane card in your discard. If you draw a regular card, you discard it and carry on as normal but drawing an Insane card will knock you out of the round.

The Sane/Insane condition also comes into play for scoring as any victory you earn either gives you a Sane chip or an Insane one; you need 2 Sane to win the game, or 3 Insane.

However! There is an alternative victory condition: if you discard Cthulhu when you already have two Insane cards in your discard pile, then you just win the whole game. "Fair enough," you think, as that sounds pretty rare. THINK AGAIN BECAUSE THAT'S HOW I WON BITCH.

I think maybe it soured the others on the game somewhat because one player had already won 2 or 3 rounds when I'd not won any, but it was already a pretty amusing round from the off. I had one of the two 8 cards (highest value) which was the Necronomicon (one of this game's two versions of the original's "Princess"). My first turn I used the "compare cards, highest wins" to eliminate someone but no one was quite sure what I had... or never got Investigators... or just focused on the other players. It came to my next turn and I got the "swap hands" card which I had to play since the alternative of discarding the Necronomicon just knocks you out of the round. So I swapped... and got Cthulhu, the other "discard this and you lose" 8 card. "Well, fuck..."

Fortunately, I made it to my next turn, survived the sanity check and got the card that lets you choose a player to discard a card. Bye bye, Necronomicon owner.

I got to my next turn, survived another Sanity check and drew the Libor Ivonis which meant that nothing could knock me out that round, i.e. the player who uses the Insane effect will be there comparing card values at the end of the round, assuming everyone else isn't already knocked out.

Of course, this had already won me the game because the only other remaining player couldn't knock me out (even guessing correctly with Investigators like they did got nothing more than a "Yes) and I just discarded Cthulhu to take it.

So, yeah, I still think it's quite rare because anything besides Libor Ivonis at that point would've lost me the round and it is pretty memorable and cool when it happens but maybe if it turns out to be a regular occurence it would be better to houserule that you get 2 Insane victory chips. That way the player still has to have won or go on to win a round while Insane to actually take the game.

Overall, though, I think it does the job really well.

We also tried Port Royal with the Contracts expansion

It's a fairly simple addition that I thought would just add a few more decision points each turn... or at leat make it more interesting for my friend who always tries to go for all the different colours of ships (usually busting instead).

This is because the contracts reward different elements such as drawing lots of different colours, hiring certain combinations of crew, defeating all colours of ships, etc.

However, our game was ruined by 2-3 lucky turns for one player which basically snowballed for them. They got all 5 colours of ship out on their first turn, which corresponded to two of the four contracts and also netted them a lot of money, which also enabled them to buy 2 of the required crew member for a third contract. Meanwhile, they player who likes to draw loads of cards, busted twice in a row after 3-4 cards.

So rather than a tight little engine-building game it was... minimal risk, maximum reward. I think it really was just another of those "rare occurences" where the contracts and the cards lined up too well for one player, however.

[deanb]

https://techraptor.net/content/fantasy-flight-announces-fallout-the-board-game

 

FFG are making a Fallout board game. Looks kinda neat, though a bummer it's FO3 and FO4 focused. I'm down for giving some 1 player games a shot.

[Hot Heart]

Played some new games with four people last night.

 

First of the new games was Sherwood Forest

 

I picked this up on eBay for £12 way back but never got to playing it because the rules (which are terribly written) made it sound way more complex than I was expecting. It's partly because there's a whole process of how you can negotiate alliances with other players to both occupy a hideout, ready to ambush passing carriages.

 

The theme itself is that you all control bands of (assumably merry) men who loiter in Sherwood Forest, gathering info on the people who will be passing through, buying better equipment for tackling these travellers and donating gold to the church (which you assume goes onto "the poor") in order to gain glory.

 

So it's sort of worker placement in that you can place men down to buy equipment, hire more men and peek at that round's cards which dictate the routes being taken by the merchants, monks or even sheriff (who can really ruin your day) then use your remaining men to pick the best hiding spot for attacking them. The variation to it all is that the cards are chosen one-by-one which could see the sheriff reach you before your intended target or a lesser-value target coming across your path and you attacking them instead.

 

It's decent enough and goes fairly quickly once you've got the hang of it but I think it needs the full player count of 5 to really shine (and my copy appears to even have components to support 6).

 

Then there was Sons of Anarchy: Men of Mayhem

 

I'd heard this was a vastly underrated game from the makers of Firefly and Spartacus and so when I saw it for £15, I jumped at it.

 

In the same mould as its other licensed games it uses familiar game mechanics but does a little more with it and brings the theme to life at the same time. Here, you're the different biker gangs trying to find ways to earn the most money... which is a bit more complicated than it sounds.

 

The board is highly modular (the top 5 sites are always included), which means the types of actions and, therefore, value of certain resources will vary from game-to-game. Some will offer all sorts of ways to sell guns and contraband for money while others will offer more ways to buy guns or lose heat. Our setup was skewed towards buying bags of contraband which you sell during the "black market" phase at the end of each of the six rounds; only the amount you earn for each bag is dependent on the overall total that players are trafficking.

 

It's also got a really cool "heat" system which is all public, so you can gauge whether someone is willing to risk one of their bikers "taking the fall" for bringing guns to a throwdown or exploiting a "hot" site but also give you an idea of who will be selling during the black market phase because different levels of heat limit the amount of contraband you can traffic.

 

And round-to-round, there are "anarchy" cards which can really shake things up by introducing temporary rules, new sites to exploit, end-of-round penalties/bonuses. Funnily enough, this is what happened in the final round of our game...

(Apologies for blurriness)

 

The "Customs Crackdown" meant there would be no black market, which left us with only 3 sites from which to make money. Fortunately, I was first player that round and was already parked on the space where I could sell my contraband. The rest of the round turned into pure chaos of getting into fights just for the sake of a couple of dollars. Of course, the person who won the four-player pile-up for a site where you could sell guns used all his guns in the throwdown...

 

Anyway, yes, it was a heap of fun and there's lots going on from one turn to the next. I think at 5 players it should be even more interesting.

Edited August 13, 2017 by Hot Heart

[Hot Heart]

NEW GAMES!

 

Game of Thrones: Westeros Intrigue

 

Ooh, "intrigue!", you say excitedly. With the background of complicated politics, double-crossing, etc. this could be very interesting. How have they've managed to capture all this in a simple card game?

 

They haven't.

 

 

However, that's not to say it's a bad game. Just throw away any notions you had, based on that title. It's a simple filler game where you have a hand of cards you're trying to get rid of by playing them into a pyramid. The basic rules are that the starting level cannot have more than 8 cards and whenever there are two cards, you can play either of the matching colours above it. The main aim is to have the fewest points, which are earned by cards left in-hand when you have to pass, along with a way to reduce your total by earning a negative points card (in 1-3 values) for being the last person to have successfully placed a card. So, there's a sort of balance between cutting off people's lines of succession (that sounds Games of Thronesy, right?) or getting in at the ground level to try and start a new chain. Also, you'll be wondering whatever happened to that Illyrio guy.

 

Overall, an alright filler to break out every now and then and plays up to 6.

 

Ryu

 

A game about different races who worship some dragon god all racing to build their own version of it. It's a neat concept and has some really nice artwork, especially since each race's dragon is actually represented by 5 tiles that link together to form the finished article. So you get ones that look very robotic to one that is pretty much a tree.

 

 

Other than that, the races are mechanically identical. Each part of the dragon must be built in order A-E and the costs for each stage are the same.

 

The core of the game involves moving around and utilising the 9 various hex tiles, with 4 "neutral" areas that have special actions involving things like flipping hexes, trading cubes for tokens, peeking at other player's cubes and potentially stealing some. The other 5 hexes will be player/NPC islands. They're almost functionally the same, but the non-player ones just have a two-cube draw from a bag rather than a draft between the two players involved.

 

With the player islands, you flip a token that determines whether 4 or 5 cubes get drawn, but these will be divided between the active player and whoever's island it is. With 4, the active player picks 1, the inactive picks 2 and then the active player gets the remaining 1 while a 5-cube draw means the inactive player chooses to split them into two piles of 4-1 or 3-2 but the active player gets first pick of which one to take. This means that the inactive player might put the more desired cube (usually a non-yellow) on its own but get 4 yellows for themselves. It really comes down to paying attention to what cubes people are drafting and which stage of dragon they're at.

 

As it was our first game, I don't think we quite grasped the vital importance of this nor did we all grasp the rhythm of re-flipping our own islands to encourage others to use them again and gain us some more cubes. There's also one element that can throw things a little off-balance but something you could try and prepare for with experience: the white cube.

 

When this is drawn it triggers an auction where everyone chooses however many cubes they want to bid, each worth 1 regardless of colour, with the winner getting to build a piece of their dragon immediately. All cubes used in the bidding (the white cube holder must compete with at least that counting as 1) are lost but there is still recompense for people who didn't get to build their piece in the form of tokens. It adds another factor in those drafting decisions if you can see the bag must be running low and decide to take more yellows in a draft than trying to get the exact colours you need.

 

Overall, it's decent enough and should be more interesting with 5, but it feels a little bit of a letdown if the winner gets to build their last piece thanks to an auction.

 

Medieval Mastery

 

At first, I thought this game would be interesting. It's got some basic area control stuff with some interesting terrain effects along with various player powers in the form of randomly dealt artefacts for giving an extra option on your turn, a pre-battle power and a post-battle power (usually dependent on whether you're attacker/defender, winner/loser).

 

However, if I were to be very unkind to the game, I would describe it as if someone made "a shit version of Cosmic Encounter."

 

Now, it would be okay as a quick game but ours went back and forth for over two hours. I'm willing to believe we had a poor combination of elements with how the terrain and player powers turned out, along with how cards cycled. It happens. It happened with our game of Legendary earlier that evening and it happened before with Port Royal's Contracts expansion a few weeks back.

 

See, the game is fairly simple in that you are trying to control terrain worth points, aiming to get a total of 13 to win. You do this by distributing "knights" (values of die pips) across your forces then advancing into other areas and butting up against other players. The battles are fairly straightforward affairs of each person playing a conflict card (attack value) that is added to the die value for their force(s) before the option to add reinforcements. It's very much like Cosmic Encounter, just with fewer options for player interaction or surprise. I mean, there are the special powers from artefacts as well as cards for fracturing (temporarily disabling) those artefacts, along with cards that mean you roll a die for your card value but it's kept straightforward.

 

It's clear the game is more about choosing which fronts to weaken and leave more exposed to attack in order to buff your "advancing" force (a die that always advances from your castle into any hex adjacent to other ones you control). So, you have this constant struggle between players, where they're thinking through their best opportunities for expanding control without being stretched too thin. And I mean, there was some neat action from the eventual winner where he completely cut off one player's forces in a couple of hexes which meant those die couldn't be used for buffing his invading force but goddamn I had lots of annoying battles.

 

See, I had a cool player power where my invading force could count as exactly the same value as the defender (e.g. I could send a 1-die up against a 6 and have it count the same) which made me best suited to wrest control from the player with 8 knights camped on a 3-point hex (the most valuable and of which there are only two in the game making them essential to victory). However, he had a power that meant I discarded a random card from my hand before battle. On two occasions this cost me a 4 and 5 value conflict card (another player got the same benefit as an attacker, costing me a 5 later on as well) which are the highest set values. Most annoying, however, was that three fucking times I got things to a draw, which defenders count as winning by 1. Every goddamn time I went against them, they happened to have exactly the cards they needed to match me, whether it was enough reinforcements, a die roll or the exact same conflict card.

 

I mean, sure I could've gone after another player this was the player closest to winning, and you really have to player bash here. Plus, eventually I did break through and almost followed it up with a win (stopped by another draw, however)... only for the game to then go on for over an hour after that. It pretty much becomes a game where eventually a point or two here makes all the difference more than any true skill.

 

All that said, I'd be up for trying it again to see if the combination of stuff and luck make a difference, and maybe play to the shorter game end... which I sense could be alarmingly unsatisfying, ironically enough.

 

[Hot Heart]

Just a small update. Received my kickstarter copy of Unmasked: Dracula's Feast which is a neat little deduction game that was cheap enough while filling a decent niche of being quick, simple, with no elimination and no need to be very vocal/argumentative/confrontational.

 

 

The theme is that Dracula has thrown a masquerade ball for a bunch of unsuspecting victims only for a bunch of other monsters to show up, so everyone is trying to figure out who everyone else is. While I didn't take any photos of the game in action, it has some really nice art and graphic design, while the wording keeps things succinct with a minimum of confusion.

 

You all get a different monster/character, with one mystery guest in the middle (which can't be Dracula) and a couple of cards for answering "Yes/No" in secret. On your turn you can do one of three things:
1. Query another player, which means you just ask another player if they are [character] and they pass you a card that says Yes or No, answering honestly.

2. Ask another player to Dance, which they can decline. If they accept, you look at each other's identities in secret.

3. Accuse. You reveal your own character and then place the character reference cards in front of the other players for which of them you think they are, including the mystery guest. Then the other players all put their honest answers using their Yes/No cards in a pile that you shuffle and look at; with the other Yes/No going face-down in another pile. If they're all "Yes" then you've correctly identified everyone. If not, shuffle these answer cards back with the discarded ones and hand them back out to continue playing.

 

The wrinkle is that the characters all have different rules/powers and potentially other victory conditions. For example, Van Helsing just has to identify Dracula when they accuse. Whereas Alucard wins if he is ever mistaken for Dracula during an accusation. The Trickster is fun because they must always answer "Yes" to queries. While the Zombie always accept dances but cannot initiate them and to win only needs to successfully accuse their two neighbouring players.

 

So, yeah, it's a lot of fun trying to figure out if that person is Dracula trying to throw you off the scent by asking someone else if they're Dracula or whether that person's the Zombie because they're focusing on their neighbour's identities or whether they're accepting dances because they're the Boogie Monster. There's enough there to play around with different combinations of roles and it moves along fairly swiftly.

[deanb]

https://mondotees.com/pages/infection-at-outpost-31

 

Mondo, purveyor of fine collectables, are doing a board-game based on The Thing. I'd actually forgot about it but saw a link for something else on their site n was "oh yeah there was that".

 

Bit of a write up here
https://arstechnica.co.uk/gaming/2017/09/review-lies-infection-and-shapeshifting-in-new-the-thing-boardgame/

 

Or a podcast here:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7e3Td1L5xj4SsECSgc0Pym

 

[Hot Heart]

Played a new game, and it's a goodie: Gloomhaven

 

 

This is something my friend got the second edition of through Kickstarter, and was a pretty hyped game. It's a fully co-op, legacy style dungeon crawler. Sort of like a 100+ hours D&D campaign in a huge box.

 

This means that you'll develop your characters in terms of skills and loot, unlock different quests based on what/how you do things, tear up cards and put stickers on a map board. Overall, the meat of the game is a sort of mixture of Descent, with an action card system a little like the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game mixed with Heroes Wanted.

 

The actual combat side of things is actually really cool because while there's sort of a lot going on rules-wise, it's somewhat simplified and all flows really well. I'm sure the later missions will shake things up a little, but I think the general structure must stay the same to keep the pace. Essentially, you are fighting your way through rooms, killing bad guys as efficiently (i.e. as quickly) as possible. This is because of the action system and general paucity of cards your character has.

 

Each character has a set number of cards they take into a mission. Mine was the lowest total of just 8. Each turn, you will usually choose two of these to play (resting is another option), using the top action of one and the bottom action of another while the "leading card" is used for its initiative value (and you don't have to decide which combo of top & bottom until your turn). This usually creates a move + attack combo but there are all sorts of special things going on within that, obviously. You continue doing this, discarding these cards as you go before you either take a short rest at the end of a round or a long rest during the round; which means you shuffle up the discards and randomly "lose" one for the rest of the fight (losing 1HP to mulligan once if you wish). The long rest also helps reset exhausted items and regain 2HP but puts you dead last in initiative order.

 

What all this means is that you only have a limited number of turns to clear a scenario before you are out of cards and become "exhausted", which means you have to sit out the rest of the fight (rather than permadeath, this also happens if you lose all HP). Within that mix of actions there are really powerful options that go straight into the lost pile rather than your discards, really shortening your "lifespan". As a Spellweaver - essentially, a glass cannon wizard - I had numerous cards that did this if I chose to use those effects. SPOILER: I DID. A LOT. "Brightest flame burns the shortest" right?

 

However, the Spellweaver has a pretty cool ability on one card that is to regain all lost cards. Of course, this being the first game, I'm not sure I really nailed that element because, while I'd burned through my big cards to decent effect, I used it before having lost any cards through a standard rest action. HOWEVER, somehow, I just about made it to the end of the scenario while pulling off a few awesome multi-kills and sparing two teammates from death with some handy heals along the way.

 

And that's something I really loved within the structure. I mean, I hated that feeling of being rushed when playing Mice & Mystics but the way it works in Gloomhaven really maintains a great deal of tension and escalates beautifully. While I had a big start, slow middle and big finish, everyone else was pulling out the big guns towards the end and doing really cool stuff.

 

The enemies themselves are controlled through a really cool AI system that has the basic ruleset which is then modified by their own action cards round-to-round, which usually saw them swarming a single lead hero but also do stuff like get some extra defence and counter-attacks. Note: we played with them 1 level more difficult simply because we were playing with 5 instead of 4 and it worked just fine. Areas got a little crowded but they would have been with 4, really...

 

Overall, it's really enjoyable and I haven't even touched on the personal quest stuff (you can retire your characters and begin new ones) or the little explorer goals that can sort of run contrary to the party's needs (e.g. mine was to open a door... which would usually mean I was the glass cannon charging into the lead) or even the cool little stuff on action cards like side effects such as charging the battlefield with certain elements which can then boost other actions or gaining exp just for performing certain actions (this is partly why I was burning my big cards early on). It all means that it's a sort of co-operative puzzle meets dungeon crawler but the personal and team elements mix together so there's no way you can get bogged down in team-talk or suffer from an alpha player. And there's no dice! The closest thing is an attack modifier deck which sort of simulates a D20, with simple +/-1s and 2s, 0s, a miss and a x2, along with an implementation of 5e's advantage/disadvantage system. Great stuff.

Edited November 19, 2017 by Hot Heart

[Hot Heart]

I have played some new games.

 

Contrast

It's sort of like Dixit but a little simpler. There's the deck of weird picture cards that tend to defy exact description, except now players each have 6 cards split into two contrasting symbols. So there's tall/small, light/heavy, red/green, blue/yellow, round/square, wide/thin from which players will simultaneously and secretly be selecting one symbol to describe the image in the middle (so you have to orient your card the correct way and flip it like a page) and if a symbol has a majority, all those players earn a point. The twist, however, is that before selecting a symbol, each player has to shuffle those 6 cards and exclude 2 of them to be put in front where everyone can see what is not available to them; giving things a more tactical layer.

 

For example, there was something extremely green on the picture and I was the only person who didn't have their red/green card available... so everyone conspired to fuck me over that turn.

 

However, because of how you "share" victories as the majority each turn, it meant 3 of us all won while the game owner lost.

 

Firefly Adventures

 

This is a tricky one. It's from the people who designed such great games as the original Firefly: The Board Game, Spartacus, Homeland and Sons of Anarchy and it's equally ambitious but also hamstrung by its terrible rulebook (like the original Firefly).

 

Firstly, there's something neat about how it packs away with the buildings arranged neatly in the box as compartments. I also quite like the graphic design as I did on the original Firefly game and I think the artwork is a lot nicer than seeing photos again (or the god awful Legendary art). I think that was done in aid of expanding upon what was in the show and film without being tied down to existing assets.

 

And the style of game itself is cool. There are 4 missions with this base game (more in expansions and online in future) with varying objectives but the essential feel is that of a heist. Not an action film style one (necessarily) but with a more subtle Ocean's Eleven-style approach. It's got miniatures and fighting but the other skills and equally as valid and, sometimes, more useful. See, you don't start off as a team, running in and killing all the people. In fact, the goons (collective name for the groups of thugs and cowboys) don't even care about your presence as long as you don't do anything suspicious in their line-of-sight.

 

So, each member of the Serenity Crew (Inara and the other 3 passengers to follow in a couple of expansions) has their default skill points (actually the same set up layout as in the Firefly game) which make some of them better at fighting, talking or doing techy things. They also have various actions that cost units of time to perform. This is because there is a time limit on each job and the last person on the timeline gets the next turn. Within this, characters have two modes: Casual and Heroic. Casual means you can wander around safely, albeit a little slower and are represented by a casual grey miniature (or a very casual one). Heroic means you flip over your character card and switch to the green miniature who's usually pointing a gun or looking more active. In this mode, you can move faster, get some cooler actions and "brawl" (except for Kaylee). It's also the mode that will attract the attention of any goons who see you at the end of your turn. There are also guns for shooting people and all sorts of equipment you got in the old game, usually with the same skill points but altered effects. The uplink is useful because it lets you move goons, which is super useful if you're trying to break into somewhere without being spotted.

 

It all sounds great and it works for the most part, but there are little niggling things that add up as you play. Even something as basic as clarifying when you've run out of time: is it as soon as the first person (Crew or Goon) reaches the end of the time track or the last Crew member? The movement rules allow diagonals but don't clarify if this is allowed across the corners of buildings (they mention it's forbidden for doorways). There are crates that can be picked up, awarding cash or equipment, but it doesn't say specifically how that works: do you have to be adjacent or on the space?

 

Another potentially off-putting thing might be how the totality of your character's actions within a mission could feel insubstantial. Like, in our game, Kaylee got into a building, hacked a terminal (to get us some intel tokens that really helped us) while Wash got through a locked door and scored some extra cash and Jayne helped move and kill some goons while tanking the associated heat. Meanwhile, Mal got into an extended brawl in a doorway, lost and then spent the rest of the game, healing and then moving a few squares while Zoe ran round half of the edge of the map (for scenario reasons where casual crew couldn't be too close together) with the odd bit of help moving Wash (they both have actions to move each other on their turns. Cute) and healing Mal.

 

It's also a little weird how the starting equipment works. You have a sort of shop phase where you can buy stuff to help, using your starting funds ($3k for one-off or $2k if starting a three-mission "campaign") except you only see 5 at a time (you buy and draw or reset the line for $200) and there are 40 cards in there, with only a few guns. This means that, like us, you could be sending Mal, Zoe and Jayne into a mission without a firearm only able to brawl. I mean, it's not as if you're supposed to go in itching for a fight, since you do really want to be inconspicuous... but it feels wrong. (To be fair, we could have bought Vera, but that was nearly half our funds and we prioritised better equipment for our objectives).

 

I think the worst thing is the fiddliness because you have two options with the goons. Each has a stat and action card with a generic "Thug" or "Cowboy" version on one side and a unique version on the other (matched to the look of their miniature). However, if you use the generic versions, you could have multiples of "Thug" on the timeline so you'd have to remember which is which... but if you try and solve this by using the individual name plates, it means you have to memorise each miniature or keep flipping the cards to check who is who. And if you use the unique versions, you need to keep flipping over a card to see the default actions they perform.

 

I'm sure, with time, it becomes easier to learn the basics and speed up gameplay but there are minor, niggling issues. Overall, I had fun, it doesn't outstay its welcome and it's just different to anything else I have. Not sure I can say the same for the person who played Mal...

[Hot Heart]

Got to try my newest game

 

Empires of the Void II

 

Really great 4X-lite game that feels a little like "Scythe in Space" except more thematic and open-ended while only slightly more complex.

 

You each control a different race seeking to stake their claim in a new galaxy. You start with your Worldship (a cool miniature with a base that carries tokens) a star ship and a basic unit. From there, you can generally do what you want: attack planets to take control, ally with alien forces to gain special abilities and recruit them to your forces, complete deliveries, research technology, build different types of structures.

 

What holds it all together is the power cards you get that might lead you towards focusing on certain elements, alongside "Empire cards" which are unique bonus scoring opportunities. And it all flows rather well as an active player chooses a new action each round (shown in the top-right of the board) then everyone else either "follows" that action, pays a few action points to select any other action or refreshes, which gives them their income, resets their action point track and gets them up to their hand limit of action cards. Combat is simplified like Scythe, but with more variation. You select 3 units, roll dice equal to the total they provide, then added the highest rolled number to the power provided by those units before selecting a power card to add. Recruiting different races can boost your effectiveness here. One player (who won) got a bunch of tough cyborgs which meant he usually started with 12 power (2 each from then and then a 6 because he was rolling 6 dice) before even playing a card.

 

The research and building elements are fairly simple. Buildings removed from your player board then reveal further benefits (cities increase income, bases increase hand limit, academies give you more action points) while goods you collect go on these tracks to cover up costs or unlock technologies (usually at least 2 unique to each race).

 

What really makes it, is a) how beautiful it all looks and b) the amount of variability and thematic elements. The game comes with 9 different basic planets (and 1 special scenario one), each with its own design and theme (desert planet with lizard creatures, aquatic world, cyberpunk nightmare, etc.) You use 8 of them in each game, which builds the power deck different ways (each has 7 related cards) and then you have 5 different event cards for each (using 1 each per game). These are all themed things that can open up cool new opportunities or spring horrible surprises. They're all guaranteed to come out each game (because the card deck is the game timer) and cause things like a dimensional gate, which means you can travel from that planet to anywhere else on the board or a prison break that you can help resolve. One puts out a killer beast that you can move around but thay will have to wait for another game. Even the power cards themselves reveal things like inter-planetary rivalries. Just lots of cool little touches.

 

If anything, my only complaint is that it didn't go on longer. I mean, it did take a few hours with set-up and teaching but that will speed up as time goes. It's mainly because the power card deck is the timer and it's constantly being used when attacking neutral planets as well as players drawing from it. I guess it just means you have to make every action count, and it ensures it doesn't go on interminably like some 4X space games I've heard of. Plus, it doesn't have that "sudden ending" thing that people hated about Scythe (ours actually made for a prolonged ending because of when we ran the deck down).