21st March 2021

It's a Sunday lunchtime and I'm logged on to my PC in the living Room and signed into Board Game Arena.

The first game of the day was Takenoko, a game about gardening in Japan... and pandas.

Caveat: We played this game online, but I own a physical copy which I've set up for the photos.

​What's in a game?

• Tiles: Hexagonal tiles to be precise, they represent plots of land.
  Pond: This blue tile is the starting tile.
  Plots: Plots come in 3 colours, green, pink and yellow. There are 9 in each colour and some of the plots come with hexagonal improvement symbols (more about improvement symbols below.) that confer special rules. The artwork on these tiles is uniformly bright and colourful. The tiles are printed in thick board and feel sturdy.
• Bamboo segments: There are 3 types of bamboo, green, pink and yellow, corresponding to the 3 types of plot. These are designed to stack up, representing the surging upwards growth of bamboo. Unlike the plot tiles, there is NO even distribution between the different coloured bamboo, green bamboo is the most common and pink is the least common.
  They're made of colourful pieces of plastic and are designed to slot into together, it's a little fiddly as the pieces feel slippery but it's not a deal breaker and they do make the game look nice.
• Irrigation tokens: These little blue wooden sticks are used to track which plots have been irrigated or not.
• Improvement chits: These hexagonal little chits confer special rules when placed on a plot, they are identical to the symbols that come printed on some plot tiles. They are pretty standard quality chits with functional art. There are 3 types of improvement.
  Enclosure: The panda cannot eat bamboo on a plot with an enclosure.
  Fertilizer: When bamboo grows on a tile with a fertilizer improvement, it grows twice as quickly
  Watershed: A plot with a watershed improvement does not require irrigation.
• Objective cards: These cards are smaller than typical playing-card sized cards and are standard quality, the art is fairly functional but continues the game's is bright and colourful art direction. Completing objectives is how players earn points. There are 3 types of objective:
  Plot objective: When plots are placed into the game area in a certain manner (For example; 3 green tiles in a row.) and irrigated, it can be claimed as completing the objective, 
  Gardener objectives: To complete a gardener objective bamboo must be grown to a certain height.
  Panda objective: The panda must eat a certain amount of bamboo of certain colours to complete these objectives cards.
• Emperor card: This is the only other card in the game, it is worth 2 points and the player who triggers the endgame will earn it.
• Action markers: Two of these round wooden markers are used by each player to track their actions each turn.
• Weather die: This is a very nice largish wooden die with rounded corners and special symbols on each face.
• Player boards: These boards are used to track player actions and store bamboo, irrigation and improvement token acquired. They are colourful and nicely illustrated.

How's it play?
Setup

• The starting pond tile is placed in the centre of the play area, the panda and the gardener are both placed on it.
• The plot tiles are shuffled and placed in a face-down stack.
• Each type of objective card is shuffled and placed face-down in its own deck.
• Each player takes a player board and 2 action markers.
• One of each objective card is dealt face-down to each player, these should be kept hidden in hand and only revealed when completed.

Now we're ready to go.

On to play
​After a starting player is chosen, play proceeds clockwise.

• Weather die: Other than in the very first round, at the beginning of their turn each player must roll the weather die, this will usually give the active player a bonus of some sort.
  Sun: When the sun face comes up, the active player can take 3rd action in their turn which must be different from their other 2 actions (More on this below.).
  Rain: The active player may place a bamboo segment on the irrigated plot of their choice.
  Wind: The active player may chose to perform 2 identical actions instead of 2 different actions.
  Storm: The active player can place the panda on the tile of their choice, the panda will eat a segment of bamboo as per usual (See below for more information.).
  Clouds: The active player may take an improvement chit of their choice, this can be immediately put on to a plot tile or on to the player's board to be used later.
  ?: If the ? face comes up, the active player can choice one of the 5 other weather results to apply.

Once the weather die has been rolled, the active player can then take 2 different actions from a choice of 5, depending on the result of the weather die, they may get 3 different actions or a choice of 2 identical actions.
Actions

• Draw plot tile: The active player draws the top 3 plot tiles, keeps 1 and returns the other 2 face-down in any order they choose. Then they must place the tile they kept down in the playing area; either it must go next to the starting pond tile OR next to 2 other tiles.
  The tile will immediately grow a bamboo segment of its colour if it is placed next to the pond OR adjacent to an irrigation token. This can only ever happen once for a tile.
• Take an irrigation token: After taking an irrigation token, the active player may put it on their board for use later or immediately place it on the playing area as per the rules.
  Other than plots directly adjacent to the pond or with watershed symbols, all plots need to need to be irrigated to produce bamboo.
  When placing an irrigation token, it must either start from the pond tile or continue previously laid irrigation token. When laying this token, it runs along the edge of a plot tile or between 2, however it never runs along the edge of the pond tile.
  The token will irrigate the 1 or 2 plots it touches, as per usual, if this is the 1st time a plot is irrigated, it will grow a bamboo segment of its colour.
• Move gardener: The active player can move the gardener. The gardener can only be moved in a straight line and 'through' the 'face' of the hexagonal plot tile, thus there are a maximum of 6 ways he can move. He can move as far as the active player decides and can cross any number of tiles, he cannot however move through any gaps encountered.
  Bamboo will grow on the plot tile that the gardener stops on, additionally bamboo will also grow on any adjacent irrigated plots of the same colour.
• Move panda: Moving the panda follows the exact same rules as moving the gardener. When the panda stops in a plot tile, he will eat 1 segment of bamboo from that tile if available. The active player takes that segment and places it on their player board.
• Take objective card: The active player may take a single objective card of their choice from one of the 3 objective decks into their hand. Players have a 5-card hand limit.

Free actions
Some actions do not count towards the usual 2 action limit. The active player can carry out any number of free actions at any time during their turn.

• Complete objective: The active player may complete one or more objectives by placing the card(s) out of their hand into their playing area.
• Place irrigation token: The active player may place any number of irrigation tokens that are reserved on their player board, following the normal rules for irrigation.
• Place improvement chit: The active player may place any number of improvement chits that are reserved on their player board, following the normal rules for placing  improvement chits.

Endgame
The endgame is triggered after someone has played a certain number of objective cards, dependant on the number of players.
The player that triggered the endgame immediately take the Emperor card and conclude  the rest of their turn normally. Then continuing in clockwise order, every other player has one more turn.
After this, scores are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Firstly I'll mention how the game is uniformly nice, presentation is excellent and component quality is good, nothing to criticise here.

Since there are always objectives to work towards in Takenoko, there are generally always meaningful decisions to make.
The game's player interaction comes from conflicting objectives such as one player getting the gardener to grow bamboo and another getting the panda to eat it.
This is also a game about recognising opportunities and adapting to the card and plot tiles you draw and to a lesser extent the results from the weather die and not about strategizing too much.

There is some strategy regarding the uneven distribution of bamboo (Generally objectives that involve the less common bamboo score more points.) but that's about it. I suppose there could be a high level strategy where you watch what other players are doing and try to anticipate what objectives they're going for and try and scupper them but you'll probably scupper yourself as well in the end.
Optimising your actions per turn seems to be very important.

Takenoko is a relatively simple and straightforward game to play, the concepts behind it should make it a fairly accessible crossover game. For dedicated gamers there might not be enough meat on the bone to satisfy them though.
Ultimately Takenoko is a light somewhat gentle game that you shouldn't take too seriously if you play it. ​If you want something heavy on strategy and direct interaction, it's probably not the game for you. However, if you're in the mood for an undemanding game, it's a reasonable diversion. 

14th March 2020

It's a Sunday night, I'm on my PC in my living, logged on to Zoom and the Tabletopia website.

In Paleo each player controls a tribe of cavemen and is a cooperative card about life & times in a prehistoric times. According to Paleo, our caveman ancestors were pretty obsessed with woolly mammoths, either chasing or running away from them!

Caveat: Paleo was played virtually on the Tabletopia website, so I cannot attest to the quality or lack of regarding the components.

What's in a game?
Paleo is a card game with a lot of different types of cards, the majority are encounter cards (Explained Below) but not all cards and tokens are used in every game.
Paleo uses a base set of encounter cards and also employs a module system which determines which other sets of cards are used, each game uses 2 modules from a selection of 10, this will also affect the games difficulty. The rules suggest combinations to use for easier and harder games ranging from 1 to 7 in difficulty. Ultimately you can even choose your own set ups. Modules can add a narrative flavour to the game as most modules are themed.

• Encounter cards: As the name suggests these are cards that a player's tribe will encounter during a day, there are several different types of encounter cards and when turned over they detail the encounter that tribe has. Each different type of encounter card can be identified by it's own unique illustration, such as a forest on forest cards, a river on river cards and so on. Additionally, there may be extra elements to the illustration, such as a forest containing a woolly mammoth indicating that it is like a mammoth will be encountered. Encounter cards mostly consist of  but are not limited to forest, river & mountain cards and also include:
  Forest: When a forest card is turned over, it is likely (But no guaranteed.) that the tribe will encounter wood & food.
  River: It is likely that players will encounter food & pelts on river cards.
  Mountain: Stone & pelts are mostly encountered on mountain cards.
  Campfire: A campfire will allow a combination of the following actions, crafting, increasing the tribe's size, acquiring a dream card, making a discovery.
  Dreams: These are always beneficial, they sometimes replicate actions on other cards or have their own special action, all are unique.
  Hazard: These red cards always represents danger, be they wild animals, environmental problems or calamities. They can pose a significant threat to members of a tribe
• People cards: These cards form a player's tribe, they each have a number of hearts representing how damage they can take before dying, most also have 1 skill, strength (For fighting/hunting mostly.), awareness (Important to being able to deal with danger.) and skill (Used for crafting). Some come with tokens/tools as well. 
• Discovery cards: The tribes will need to make discoveries in order to succeed, some discoveries are specific to certain modules. These range from learning how to create new types of tools to creating prehistoric art.
• Mission cards: Each module has its own mission card, thus 2 are used in every game, they represent extra requirements that must be met during the night phase.
• Mystery cards: There are 22 of these, which cards are used is determined by which modules are used.
• Meeples: There are 3 types of meeples in the game and they represent the game's resources, food, wood and stone. Food is vital for your tribe, wood and stone are used for crafting.
• Tokens: They represent tools or resources to which a player's tribe has access, There are 3 basic tools that players are always available to craft, torches with confer awareness, flint grants skill and a spear increases strength. Other tokens become available when players make discoveries, they include items that may grant a combination of abilities or will have other affects. Additionally, some tokens are discarded when used and others stay in play permanently.
• Base camp board: This board has spaces for three different decks. the people deck, dreams deck and discovery deck.
• Night board: This used during the night face, it contains the victory and defeat tracks, it also has spots for the mystery and mission cards.
• Discard board: Cards are discarded either face-up or face-down and they are discarded on to this board.
• Discovery rack: This is where revealed discoveries go, I think the physical component is actually a rack that you construct
• Graveyard: Some cards are discarded out of the game entirely, this is where they are put. This is also a thing that is constructed if you have the actual game.
• Victory tokens: There are 5 victory tokens, when all placed together they form a caveman painting and represent winning
• Defeat tokens: 5 skull tokens are used to track defeat, when all 5 are placed on the night board, the players collectively lose.
• Dice: These are custom dice, we didn't use them as some modules don't require them. I believe they determine resources randomly for certain cards/encounters

​I've never seen the physical components other than in photos so can't comment on their quality, however the game's artwork is cheerful and colourful.

Setup

• First choose the modules you will be using. This will determine which mystery, mission & discovery cards are used.
• Put out the people deck & dream deck face-down
• Shuffle the base encounter cards with the modules' encounter cards, then deal the entire deck out to the players as evenly as possible. Each player has their own encounter deck.
• Each player draws 2 cards from the people deck, this represents their tribe, they may also acquire tokens, depending on what people they drew.
• Collectively, the players start with 5 food.

That's it for the important parts of setup.

How's it play?
Paleo is played over any number of rounds, each round has a day phase and a night phase. The vast majority of gameplay occurs during the day phase, the night phase is mostly for managing what happened during the previous phase.

Day phase
What actions a player can under take will depend on the situation and what encounters they errr.... encounter!

• Sleep: Before choosing an encounter a player may elect to end their day and send their tribe to sleep instead, this means not drawing 3 cards from their encounter deck but discarding the remaining deck face-down on to the discard board. If a player only has hazard cards left, they may want to do this.
  If a player has no more cards left, their tribe must go to sleep.
  When a tribes goes to sleep, that player no longer participates in the remaining day phase and their tribe cannot help other tribes.
• Choose an encounter: Each player draws the top 3 cards from their encounter deck and puts them in a row face-down. Then without looking at them, they choose 1 to encounter and return the other 2 to their encounter deck in any order they see fit.
  Since different types of encounter cards have different backs, players will have an idea of what kind of encounter they will have, but not the exact type. For example, if a player chooses a card with a forest back, it's like (But not guaranteed.) that they'll find food or wood.
  A player's encounter deck also represents the time they have left during the day (More is explained on this below.).
  Before choosing this card, all the players will most likely want to have a discussion about what cards everybody should choose.
• Reveal encounter cards: All players simultaneously turn over their cards, now each player must deal with their encounter.
• Complete encounter: Most encounter cards will have 2 or 3 manners in which a encounter can be completed, all a player has to do is meet the conditions one of these encounters demands and then they will earn it's reward.
  For example, if you reveal a wood card, you may discard 1 card from you encounter deck to gain 1 wood OR discard 2 cards to gain 3 wood.
  Encounters can have varied requirements, a player might need to have a certain strength to fight an animal for example or certain tools
• Ignore: Generally a player can choose to (Or may have to.) ignore a card, unless the card is a danger (See below.)!
• Help: If a card shows an illustration of shaking hands, then that player can choose to help another player and ignore their own card, allowing them to lend the other player their abilities and tools. This option appears on many cards and is a critical strategy to winning the game.
• Danger: Some cards are dangerous, they cannot be ignored and the action must be completed, if the player cannot complete it, then typically their tribe takes damage. All hazard cards are dangerous and some innocent looking encounters will also place a tribe in danger.
• Discard: When a encounter is either completed or ignored it is discarded face-up on the discard board.
  Some cards that are completed must be discarded to the graveyard, they are now permanently out of this game.
  Frequently players will be required to discard cards from the top of their encounter deck, mostly to complete actions. They are discarded face-down on to the discard board.
  Any hazard cards discarded this way inflict damage on the player's tribe, so it's not necessarily a good way to try and avoid them.
• Discovery: Some encounters allow the player to draw a card from the discovery deck and put it on to the discovery rack.
  Frequently a discovery makes a new type of tool available to be crafted by the tribes. Some discoveries can be completed to gain a victory token.
• Craft: Craft encounters give the player the opportunity to craft 1 or 2 tools, this usually requires specific types of resources and crafting ability. 
• Collect people card: Some encounters allow people to be recruited to a tribe.
• Mystery: When completed, the player turned over a card on the mystery deck and has that encounter, which can be beneficial or negative.
• Collect rewards: When an encounter is completed, they player's tribe will gain a reward, usually this is contextual to the card, often its a basic resource - food, wood or stone, sometimes it's a tool. If player's are lucky it might be a victory token.
• Damage: Dangers & hazard cards in particular can inflict damage, this is distributed to people cards as they player sees fit. 
• Death: If a people card loses all it's health, it is discarded to the graveyard and a skull is added to the night board.

Once all encounters have been dealt with one way or another, then players once more draw 3 cards from their encounter deck and choose another encounter to have.
Play continues during the day phase until all player tribes have gone to sleep, the day phase is now over and the night phase commences.

Night phase
The night phase is much shorter than the day.
All tribes must collectively discard an amount of food equal to the number of people cards in all their tribes. If they cannot manage this, a skull is added to the night board.
Furthermore they must also meet the conditions required on the 2 module specific missions. Each one they fail adds another skull to the night board.
Once the night phase is concluded, all the cards on the discard board are put into a single deck, shuffled and dealt out to the players again, then the next day phase begins.

Endgame
Play continues until the players have accumulated all 5 victory tokens, in which case they immediately all win.
If 5 skull tokens are placed on to the night board, then the players immediately lose.
​Some mystery cards may contain alternate ways to win the game.

Overall
First thing I'm going to talk about are 2 interlinked mechanics.

The exploration mechanic of drawing 3 face-down cards and choosing one from the card back is excellent. It feels a bit like exploring, does a player choose to go to the forest or the mountains? They'll have a pretty good idea what to expect but it's not guaranteed. They most likely will get the wood or stone or whatever they're looking for but they might encounter a rockfall or a dangerous animal.
Additionally, players will also get an idea of what's coming in future turns
It's a great mechanic.

The other equally great mechanic is how each player's own deck also represents their tribe's time & energy, completing encounters frequently forces a player to discard 1 or 2 cards from their deck, so when it's depleted - so is the tribe for the day. When the game begins on day 1, players will have 15 cards, so it's possible to burn through a deck very quickly, why is that significant?
Essentially the encounter deck is another resource that needs to be managed. In most games, my instinct would be to gather as much food/wood/stone/resource as possible but in Paleo you sometimes have to fight that urge. You have to ask the question, what resource do I really need?
For example; near the end of a day I had 3 cards left, 2 in my deck and a forest encounter. Turning the card over, I had the option to discard 2 cards for 3 wood, 1 card for one wood or help another tribe. The others didn't need help from me, so I was free to collect wood but collecting 3 wood would send my tribe to bed. Because we knew the top 2 cards on everyone's deck, I knew that another player potentially had a mammoth hunt coming and would probably need help. We didn't need the wood for now so I chose to ignore my card and I also ignored my other 2 encounter cards just so my tribe would be around for 3 more turns to help other tribes if needed. Realising this gave me an appreciation of the game's subtleties.

As well as managing encounters, players will need to ensure they generate enough resources to pass the night as well manage discoveries and crafting.
Creating a few tools gives the game a good sense of progress as it increases the capabilities of a tribe significantly. You can almost feel a the game transition from scrabbling to survive encounters to being able to go on mammoth hunts, it's quite gratifying to complete encounters that had to be ignored earlier in the game.

Like all good games, collectively there were always meaningful decisions to make. Before long we learnt that we needed to communication and coordinate on which encounter cards to keep and when they were then revealed we frequently had to coordinate on which encounters to complete, rarely did all players manage to individually complete their encounters.
For example; if all players for some reason chose mammoth hunt encounters, it would be most likely that all bar one would be ignored. Mammoth hunts generally required a lot of strength thus cooperation but also gave significant rewards, including on occasion victory tokens. Coordination is vital and it feels like players coordinating.

As a result I liked Paleo quite a lot, it's a game I'd happily play again.

21st February 2021

It's a Sunday and I'm on the PC in the living room logged on to Zoom.

Time for the final part of our Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion campaign.
Matt and I came into this campaign in the latter half and now we've reached the conclusion.
Despite the awkward circumstances we made it work, it's been a positive experience and as someone commented, being able to play something during the lockdown was something of a blessing for them.
See what I thought about Gloomhaven here.

5th February 2021

In the living room and logged on to Zoom on my PC.

What better way is there to spend a Friday night other then playing the concluding part of our adventure in Forgotten Waters?
​You can read my thoughts about it here.

29th January 2021

Friday and I was in the living room, logged on to Zoom on my PC.

It was time for another adventure in Forgotten Waters, read my blog about it here.

21st January 2021

It's a Thursday and I'm in the sitting room logged on to Zoom on my PC.

Time for a another question in Forgotten Waters.
Read my blog about it here.

15th January 2020

It's a Friday evening, I'm logged into Zoom on my laptop and I'm sitting in the living room.

So it's time to play Forgotten Waters, a co-operative fantastical pirate exploration game that we've only played over video chat.

Caveat: I've only played this game over video chat and never in person, I've also never actually seen the physical components for the game. So this blog will probably be a bit different to the usual.

Before we begin
Forgotten Waters is one of this new breed of boardgames that requires an app to play, not just an app to help, but actually required to play.
Additionally, the game has a Remote Play Assistant app available. This app is what has allowed us to play online and in this time of Covid-19 is a welcome feature.

What's in a game?
Because I've never seen the game physically and because the remote play assistant app replaces the need for some components, it's hard to gauge what exactly, is what?

• Character sheets; there are 21 of these, each represents a different type of pirate, for example; the lovesick pirate or the assassin pirate, there is a lot of writing and infomation here.
  For remote play this is replaced with a 40+ page PDF file, players will need to print off the 2 pages for their chosen character.
  Backstory; each character has a backstory, this includes 5 blank lines the player needs to fill in, such as the name of a flightless bird, or a plant or a famous pirate or whatever. These are incorporated into the character's story events which is told during the course of the game and their ending.
  Skill matrix; every character has 6 skills, Explore, Brawn, Hunting, Shooting, Swagger and Navigation. Skills have levels that go up to a maximum of 7, although each characters will have different maximums for them. This is represented as a matrix. As a character improves a skill, spaces in the matrix will be filled in, some of these spaces contain stars, when a space with a star is filled in, it allows a space on the character's constellation to be filled in (See below.).
  Constellation; each character also has a constellation that consists of about 18 spaces, these include 5 breakpoint spaces. Each breakpoint space that is filled in gives the character an event, which in turn give them bonuses. Events also contribute towards the character's ending story.
  Events; when an event space is filled in on a constellation, it triggers an event for the character. There are 5 events in order, each one has an amusing little story and a game bonus for the character.
  Endings; If the players successfully complete their mission, their character will have 1 of 3 possible endings, bad, good or legendary. The more events they completed, the better the ending.

• Treasure cards; these confer special abilities or bonuses to the holders, some are in play all the time and some are once use only. Players can hold up to 4 treasure cards.
• Story cards; functionally similar to treasure cards, these can only be acquired as part of a characters story and are never drawn randomly.
• Standees; standard 2d markers for players.
• Twelve sided dice; standard d12, one for each player in the same colour as a standee. d12s are used primarily for skill rolls, but are also used for other random purposes.
• Misfortune token; these are handed out to players according to negative events. When a player makes a roll, they suffer disadvantage and discard a misfortune token.
• Board; a smallish board marked out with empty blue hexes to represent the open seas.
• Encounter tiles; these hexagonal tiles are placed according to story requirements or randomly drawn for encounters which can be islands, unusual weather or other ships, hexes are numbered.
• Encounter book; this is a wire bound book that folds out flat. A 2-page spread is used for each of the games numerous encounters. One half of a spreads is an evocative piece of artwork, the other half contains the available actions for that encounter and rules that are relevant to those actions.
• Objective tiles; Each story-mission utilises a series of objective cards. As the players complete them, the story will unfold, drawing them ever closer towards its conclusion.
• Ship dials; the player's ship has a set of six  statistics; Hull, Supplies, Discontent, Crew, Hunger and Threat that are managed by these dials.
• Cannon tiles; these double-sided tiles represent the ship's cannons. Cannons are rated from 1-4 in quality and have a loaded and unloaded side.
  The player's ship may have up to 4 cannons.
• Infamy track; infamous pirates react quicker! Its true! All characters have position on this track that rises and falls in relation to other characters according to the choices they make. Turn order is determined by the infamy track.
• Enemy dials; challenges presented by enemies or obstacles are tracked by these dials. An enemy ship would have score for Hull, Sails and Crew for example. An obstacle might be storm that needs to navigated .These would be whittled down by the players during their turns.
• Forgotten Waters app; this app is required for play. It contains all the information and entries on encounters, descriptions and dialogue as well as required spot rules. It also serves a sort of choose-you-own-adventure function, encounters will sometimes give players branching choices to make and this is also handled by the app.
• Remote play helper app; Unlike the other app, this isn't mandatory. It browser based and allows the game to be easily played online, it replaces function of a most of the game's components, except for the encounter tiles.

That's it for most of the components, other than some minor tracking tokens (I think!).
It's hard to talk about the quality of these physical components though as I've never see them other than briefly over video chat.

But I can talk about the apps.

It's clear that the game's developers have put a lot of thought and effort into insuring the quality of the game app. It's very slick with professional voice acting and production qualities, scripting and dialogue is very well written and often witty. There were frequent chuckles at gags that hit the mark more often than not.
I'm not sure what to think though, like many people; the idea of a game needing an app to play sits uncomfortably with me. We all know the question, what happens to the game a few years down the line, how long will the developer support the app?
However, I doubt this game would even exist in this form without the app. The game seems to have hundreds of differing encounters that can contextually change according to the story mission being played. It would require a fairly elaborate book to manage all of this physically, slowing the game down and no doubt adding to the cost.

The remote helper does it's job well enough to facilitate remote play and is easy to use, apart from the occasional need to refresh the browser and put everything back in sync, it works perfectly well.
I cannot say enough about how useful it is though. We played a game with 7 players and someone commented how how this was the most people they'd talked to in a year. In these times of self-isolation it has proven to be a godsend.

One minor criticism I have is about the character sheet PDF. It is a slight oversight that it is not form-fillable as it could save on the unnecessary use of paper.

How's it play?
First of all, one of the 5 available missions is selected, this will give the players a series of objectives to aim for, then play can begin.

Essentially, the ship travels from hexspace to hexspace dealing with the encounters that are generated by each space.
Each encounter will have 7 pertinent actions. Players take turns placing their standee on the action they want to perform,
Some actions are mandatory, some can only be completed by one player and others can completed by any number of players.
Additionally, some actions become locked when they are completed whilst others can be repeated.
Some actions are specific to certain encounters or mission objectives and others are generic and frequently appear during encounters.

Players place their standees on the encounter spaces in order of the infamy track, Forgotten Waters utilises a real time mechanic during encounters. If players have not placed their standee/worker in the allotted time, they receive a misfortune token as punishment.

Once all workers have been placed, then actions are carried out but in the order shown on the encounter.

There are a great many different action in the game, related to combat, sailing, exploring, trading, objectives etc.

Often players will be given 2 or 3 sub-choices for their chosen action and sometimes they will have 2 actions they actions they can perform.

Many actions will increase one of the player's 6 skills, frequently this will then require a roll using the relevant skill, generally there are 3 different levels of outcome depending on how high the final roll is.

Once all actions have been repeated, the turn ends. Depending on the situation, players may have the choice of staying and repeating the parts of the encounter which are not locked (Like foraging for supplies, burying treasure etc.) or they have be forced to move on to another encounter.

This continues until the endgame.

Endgame
There are numerous ways to lose.
If the ship's hull, supplies or crew are reduced to zero then it's game over.
If the crew's discontent value increase to or beyond the crew score, then it's also game over.
Finally there's threat rating. Threat can go up and down; the game will on a fairly regular basis call for threat checks, depending on the result this may generate a threat event, this is another type of encounter. The higher the threat rating, the more likely it is that a threat event will be triggered, when one does occur the threat rating is reduced to zero. If four threat events are triggered, then it's also game over.

If all the objectives of a mission are met then the player's collectively win​.
Each character also has an individual ending though, depending on how many stars they filled in on their constellations, this may be bad, good or legendary. Bad endings are usually very bad comical demises for the character, explosions, drownings etc.
​The good and legendary endings are as comical but obviously better for the character.

Overall
​Forgotten Waters is a long game to play, a mission can take 4 or even more hours to complete and the developers are aware of this, all missions come with a natural breakpoint, which can be used a temporary stopping point and then picked up again at a later date.
Mostly the game gives players meaningful co-operative decisions to make and the timer forces them to think quickly.
It's also a well produced, smart game that is entertaining to to play, the app does add to the atmosphere and help with booking.

but I do have some quibbles to do with game balancing.

Firstly; when undertaking tasks, some tasks are more attractive to complete than others. One example, during ship combat:

• A character can choose to Load Cannons, the player can obviously load cannons or get some rerolls, or a mixture of both.
• Or a character may choose to Fire Cannon, this will immediately give the character a point in  their Aim skill, then  they make a roll, if it's high enough, they earn a treasure.

Why would you ever choose Load Cannon over Fire Cannon? Fire Cannon personally earns characters much more. Rerolls are definitely useful, but skill points contribute towards completing constellations, which increase your character's ending and at breakpoints they extra stuff for characters.
Furthermore it exacerbates and perpetuates the imbalance. Once a character starts firing cannons, thus increasing their aim skill, it makes sense for them to continue doing that action, because they're more likely to get better results. So one player can be stuck loading cannons and earning little to nothing and another firing cannons and getting skill points and treasures.
Sometimes it's not so bad because with some actions, multiple characters can perform it but with single-character actions, it can be irritating.
Maybe its deliberate, it certainly can make the infamy track more important for actions that can only be done by one player.
Forgotten Waters is a mostly co-operative game, but it also a little edge of competitiveness as well, players can steal treasures from other players and so on.
Maybe the game wants to force players to choose between what's good for them and what's good for the mission?

Speaking of which, characters seem out of balance. When they earn bonuses, the usefulness of them seems to vary widely, some characters will get permanent items that confer constant bonuses whilst other characters get one-use-only less useful abilities.
Additionally, it appears that constellations are harder to complete for some characters than others for what appears to be no rhyme or reason why.

Luckily they don't affect the game too much, especially since it's co-operative. Other than that I've found it a fun game to play.

So.... that was 2020. Interesting times....

Time to see how Covid-19 has affected my board game playing in 2020.

Total number of different games played: 29. 
Of which were new (To me.): 13.
Total number of gaming sessions: 49.

Game sessions played does not mean the number of times a game was played, short games might have been played several times in single session.

Unsurprisingly, the numbers are well down on 2019.
In 2019 I played 77 different games over 171 sessions, about 3 times as much. The difference would be even starker if it didn't include Gloomhaven: Jaws of The Lion which was played for 10 sessions/scenarios of the campaign were played.

The 5 most played games of 2020 were.

1. Gloomhaven: Jaws of The Lion: 10 sessions.
2. ​Death On The Cards: 4 sessions.
3. Heckmeck/Pickomino: 3 sessions.
4. Century: Eastern Wonder, Concordia, Love Letter, Noctiluca, Puerto Rico, Port Royal: all 2 sessions each.

Hopefully, it will pick up some time in '21.

Now it's time for the highly prestigious, world-beating 3 Spellcasters and a Dwarf 2020 game awards!
These are not necessarily for new games, but for games I first played in 2020.

Game of the year: Pan Am.
I only got to play Pan Am once but it was enough to convince me of the game's quality.
A game with an interesting theme of basically selling out to Pan Am. It's balance of depth, rules complexity and interesting use of several differing game mechanics led to some rock solid gameplay. Well made components, art and production qualities complete the package

Surprise of the year: Skulls of Sedlec.
18 cards is all it takes to play Skulls of Sedlec, a game that cleverly uses game mechanics to match its theme of er.... digging up graves!. Easy to learn and quick to play with some interesting decisions. It packs a lot into a game  that's one third of a deck of cards and delivered in a little wallet.

7th January 2021

Thursday night and I'm in the living room and logged into Zoom on my laptop.

It's the next scenario for Gloomhaven: Jaws of The Lion.
Read my blog about it here.

29th December 2020

Christmas has passed and year's end beckons. It's a Tuesday evening in the living room, logged on to Zoom on my laptop.

Time for the final gaming session of 2020 and another scenario of Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion.
Read my blog about it here.