My backlog of games to blog about has not lessened over 2023 - which is not a good thing!

This was also a big year for playing games.
Breakdown follows as:

2023
Number of different games played: 158.
Of which were new (To me.): 77.
Total number of gaming sessions: 577.

2022
Number of different games played: 139.
Of which were new (To me.): 68.
Total number of gaming sessions: 541.

All the numbers are slightly up on '22, looks like I'm hitting peak playing!

​Most played games of 2023

1. Just One: 46 sessions.
2. Can't Stop: 29 sessions.
3. Lucky Numbers: 28 sessions.
4. Bandido: 26 sessions.
5. Roll'n Bump: 20 sessions.

​Lucky Numbers crashes down to 3rd place with a 'mere' 28 play sessions, a far cry from 2022's 60 sessions! Surprisingly, Just One jumps into the top spot and even more surprisingly, Bandido appears in 4th, more on Bandido below.

Anyway - enough of that, I know the real reason you're here; for the influential, industry defining 3 Spellcaster & A Dwarf annual game awards! 

Game of the year: Heat: Pedal to the Metal
It wasn't a hard choice, when thinking about game of the year, this always immediately came to mind.
This 50's/60's themed F1 game manages to provide players with some tricky decisions and risks to take using an elegant implementation of hand management mechanics.
I'm a big fan of a certain other F1 game that's been around in some form or other for years and it seems blasphemous to think it but Heat: Pedal to the Metal is as good as Formula De/Formula D! There, I've said it!

Disappointment of the year: Sushi Go!: Spin Some for Dim Sum
It's not that this game is bad per se, it's just that it does not deliver any particularly new gameplay or as good a experience as its previous 2 iterations. Hard to believe, but it's just a bit meh considering the pedigree it originates from.
It doesn't help that it's central premise (Or gimmick if you're less kind!) also makes the game a bit fiddly to setup, teardown and sometimes play.

Surprise of the year: Bandido
There's a heavy dose of luck that can apply to Bandido and I'm not sure if ultimately it's a good game or not. Even so, Bandido distils a cooperative gameplay experience into a single deck of strangely oblong cards in a package so small it easily fits in a pocket. With rules so simple and intuitive that anyone can immediately grasp play.
I play games with people who have varying levels experience in table top gaming and this has been a big hit with a couple of them, which is why we've played it so much in 2023.

Honourable mention: Joraku Deluxe
Set in Feudal Japan, Joraku is typically what you'd expect it to be; a game amount warring factions vying for influence and control. However, all of this is achieved with abstract, almost minimalist trick taking rules and delivered in a fantastic looking package.

My massive backlog of games to talk about didn't lessen in 2022, only got worse.

2022 was a big year for playing games, bigger than 2021, which I thought was big enough! Below is the breakdown of games I played in '22 versus '21.

2022
Number of different games played: 139.
Of which were new (To me.): 68.
Total number of gaming sessions: 541.

2021
Number of different games played: 78.
Of which were new (To me.): 46.
Total number of gaming sessions: 333.

Why have the numbers gone up so much? Two factors, 2022 saw the end of lockdowns and a full year of playing on Board Game Arena where not only could 5 or 6 games be easily played in an evening, some games could be played multiple times per session.

Most played games:

1. Lucky Numbers: 60 sessions
2. Can't Stop: 31 sessions.
3. Railroad Ink: 27 sessions.
4. Love Letter: 20 sessions.
5. Parks & Loco Momo: 15 sessions each.

Lucky Numbers has eclipsed Love Letter's 2021 tally of 43, which had dropped to 'just' 20 sessions in '22, having suffered from some playing 'fatigue'.
Lucky Numbers, with it's simple, unpredictable, luck based and strategy mechanics replaced Lover Letter as our regular 'finisher' on Sunday nights.

Now on to the industry-defining, glittering, 3 Spellcasters & a Dwarf annual game awards.
These are for games I first played in 2022, not necessarily games that were published in 2022. 

Game of the year: Cascadia
Cascadia is a tile-placement game with fairly simple rules but a wealth of options, strategies and approaches to scoring points. Players have to manage and optimise multiple scoring vectors that use tiles and tokens but rarely do they get to draft both the tiles and tokens they need, forcing them into meaningful, compromising decisions.
What more could you want?

Disappointment of the year: Terminator: Dark Fate The Card Game
This co-operative deck-builder had some interesting ideas but also seemed broken, so much so that we struggled to make any headway into the game. It felt like the game needed more playtesting and balancing.

Surprise of the year: Akropolis
Another tile-laying game! This time one with actual figurative multiple levels of gameplay!
Simple rules, lots of decision and a quick playtime make this game a cracking package.

Honourable mention: Parks
For a long stretch of 2022 I thought that this worker-placement, resource-management game was going to be the game of the year until Cascadia came along.
With limited workers spaces along the hiking trail, players are faced with trying to anticipate their opponents actions while also prioritising their own and gather the resources to buy point scoring cards.
Parks also has some of the best components and artwork I've seen in a game for a while.

20th September 2022

Tuesday is here again and we're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns in Woking.

Recruit and assemble your citizens (Or heroes really.), build domains and vanquish foul enemies in this fantasy adventure themed dice rolling and tableau building game.

What's in a game?

• Player boards: These oblong boards are used by each player to track the game's 3 resources; Gold, Strength, Magic and also Victory Points (VPs.).
• Tokens:
  • Resource tokens: There are wooden tokens that match the shape and colour of each of the player board's 4 tracks and are used to track them on player boards.
    Card resource tokens: These cards tokens replicate the wooden resource tokens... only in cardboard.
  • Extensions: These card tokens are used to track resources which increase above 10.
• Dice: Valeria: Card kingdoms comes with 2 normal six-siders. These are plastic dice with indented numbers.
• Cards: Lots of cards and I do mean a lots that come in several different types.
  • Citizens: These cards represent the heroes that players will recruit to their cause and they share a number of features.
    These include knights, peasants, butchers and so on. Some of these folk don't seem much like the adventuring type but I guess it takes all sorts!
    Activation number: In the top left corner of each citizen card is its activation number. Activation numbers range from 1-8 or can be 9/10 or 11/12.
    There are 2 different citizen cards for each activation number which can be mixed and matched during setup.
    Role: Each citizen has 1 of 4 roles and this is shown in the top right corner. Types include Worker, Soldier, Shadow and Holy.
    ​Cost: On the left side, alongside the citizen's name is the cost in gold to recruit the citizen. Recruiting duplicate citizens usually gets more expensive.
    Abilities: Finally, along the bottom edge of the card are its 2 abilities. One of which is activated in the player's turn and the other which is activated in other players' turns.
    Typically, abilities include gaining some of the game's several resources or changing one resource into another.
  • Starter citizens: These are 3 starter cards which all player begin the game with, this includes 2 citizen cards and a Herald which gives players a consolation resource if they get nothing from activation. More on activation below.
  • Duke cards: Duke and duchess cards are all unique and provide provide players with asymmetrical scoring opportunities.
  • Monster cards: A fantasy adventure game without evil monster to battle wouldn't be very good and Valeria: card Kingdoms features some famous fantasy opponents. Each monster card shares several statistics.
    Location and type: In the top right corner of every monster card is its location, which can be mountains, swamp etc. There are 8 types of location.
    Type indicates how tough a monster is  and goes from minion to boss.
    Strength: To the left of the monster's name is listed it's strength. This how many of which resource(s) must be spend to vanquish it, this is usually just strength but may also include magic.
    Victory points: Top the right of the name it will list the monster's VP reward which will be earned at the game end for defeating it.
    Reward: Along the bottom of the card it will display the immediate reward a player earns for defeating that monster. Rewards can take a variety of forms.
  • Domain cards: As well as slaying monsters, a player's citizen's can also go out and build (Well purchase actually!) domains. All domain cards share certain information.
    Role requirements: Shown in the top right corner are the role requirements to acquire that domain card. E.g., a domain may require a worker and holy role citizen cards or 2 soldier role cards.
    Cost: To the left of the card's name is the cost in gold to purchase the domain card - provided the player also has citizen cards that match its requirements.
    Victory points: To the right of a domain's name is the VPs it earns at the game end.
    Reward: Listed along the bottom of the card is the reward it provides to the player that purchases it. This can be a one-off bonus or a ongoing benefit.
  • Exhaustion cards: These cards simple say exhaustion and are used to track when the game end may occur.

Component quality is the usual good quality you'd expect from a modern game like Valeria: Card Kingdoms.
Card quality is fine as are the card tokens and the player boards.
Wooden tokens for resources are always a welcome addition.
The dice are plastic and feel a little 'square' but they have indented numbers which is good.

Valeria: Card kingdoms features good art throughout. Cards are well illustrated with colourful chunky pictures of heroic citizens and intriguing domains, my favourite though, is the artwork for monsters that brashly depict menacing enemies.

There's quite a lot of iconography throughout the game, from types of heroes and monsters, to terrain types and ability icons.
For the most part, they are fairly intuitive - matching the roles on citizen cards to the requirements on domain cards is obvious but some of the abilities, particularly on  domain cards are a bit esoteric and will require some looking up in the rulebook.

I don't think it's especially beginner or casual friend but ​by no means is it a gamebreaker either.

How's it play?
Setup

• Players: Give each player the following:
  Player board: Give each player a player board and the 4 resource tokens to go with it. Strength and VPs start at 0, Magic at 1 and Gold at 2
  Starter cards: Give each player their 3 starter cards.
  ​Duke cards: Shuffle the duke cards into a face-down deck and deal 2 face-down to each player. Then each player should select 1 to keep hidden and discard the other out of play.
• Central playing area: The monster, citizen and domain cards will be set out in 4 rows of 5 stacks per row as follows.
  Monster cards: Sort the monster cards by location and choose 5 locations. Take the cards for those 5 locations and create a row of 5 face-up stacks of monster cards. Each stack should also be sorted by monster type, with the weakest at the top and strongest at the bottom.
  Citizen cards: Decide which citizen cards will be used and sort them by activation number. There should be 10 stacks with 5 cards in each stack.
  Place them into 2 face-up rows of 5 stacks, with activation numbers 1-5 on the top row, while 6-8, 9/10 and 11/12 go on the second row.
  Domain cards: Shuffle the domain cards into a face-down deck. Deal 2 cards face-down into a row of 5 stacks, finally deal 1 domain card face-up on the top of each stack.
• Exhaustion cards: Take a number of exhaustion cards equal to twice the player count and put them in to the central playing area.
• First Player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Valeria: Card Kingdoms, players will be rolling dice to activate cards to accumulate resources which in turn can be spent to acquire more citizen cards, domains and monsters.
The game follows the usual turn structure of the active player taking their actions before player progresses to the player on their left.
During a turn, the following phases occur.

• Dice roll phase: The active player rolls both dice. The result of this roll will determine which citizen cards will activate.
  Reading the dice: The dice are red 2 ways, individually and as a pair.
  E.g., rolling a 2 and 5 means that cards with activation numbers 2, 5 & 7 will activate.
  Rolling doubles like double 4 means that 8 activates and 4 activates twice.
• Activation phase: Players now resolve citizen cards with activation numbers that match the result the result of the dice roll.
  This means the active player resolves the left hand ability on all their activated cards.
  All other players resolve the right hand ability on all their activated cards.
  No activations: If none of a player's citizen cards activates, the Herald activates instead and this gives the unfortunate player 1 of the 3 resource of their choosing.
• Action phase: The active player must now perform 2 actions, this can be 2 different actions or the same action twice.
  Spending resources: 3 of the 4 available actions requires the active player to spend resources. In most cases, the magic resource can substitute for other resources provided at least 1 from the original resource is also spent.
  E.g., if a card costs 4 gold, the player must spend at least 1 gold but can substitute magic for any other part of the gold cost.
  The 4 actions are:
  • ​Gain resources: Each action spent allows the active player to gain 1 of the 3 resources.
  • Recruit citizen: The active player can recruit a citizen from the central area by playing their gold cost. This card is immediately placed into their tableau and will be ready to activate in the next roll.
  • Defeat monster: For an action, the active player may defeat the monster on top of any monster stack. They must spend the relevant strength and/or magic to do so. The player immediately gains the reward and the monster card is put into their victory stack.
    VPs from monster cards are not earned at this time.
    Additionally; as monsters are defeated, stronger and stronger monsters are revealed.
    
  • Build domain: The active player may spend an action to build the top domain card on any stack provided they meet the role requirement and spend the relevant gold.
    The domain card is then placed into their tableau. If the domain provides an immediate benefit, then the player resolves that benefit now. Ongoing benefits will as determined by their description.
    Finally, a face-down domain card is flipped to replace the one just taken.
    As with monster cards, domain cards not earn their VP until the game.
• Empty stack: Any time that any of the 20 stacks in the central playing area becomes empty, an exhaustion card is put in the empty spot.
• Next player: Once the active player has taken their 2 actions, play progresses to the player on their left who begins their turn by rolling the dice.

Endgame
Play in Valeria: Card Kingdoms continues until any 1 of 3 game ending criteria is met, which are:

• All monster cards have been vanquished.
• All domain cards have been built.
• All allotted exhaustion cards have been placed into the central playing area.

Regardless of the method that triggers the endgame, play continues until the end of the round and all players have had equal turns.

A player can earn VPs from a variety of sources.

• VPs from the player's personal board.
• Total VPs from all monsters defeated by the player.
• Total VPs from all domains build by the player.
• VPs earned by meeting the scoring criteria on the player's Duke card.

Points are tallied, highest score wins!

Overall
I'll start by saying I quite like the implementation of the fantasy theme both in presentation and execution. It is slightly abstract but gathering a band of heroes to go off and fight monsters and build domains feels good.

Like many engine and tableau building games, there's a distinct early game in Valeria: Card Kingdoms about players building up their tableau, in this case with citizen cards and a late game about gaining increased resources to acquire monster and domain cards as well as VPs.
However, because players get 2 actions during their turn, there's some opportunity for optimised actions, card synchronicity and thus meaningful decisions. Getting the right citizen card can lead to getting a domain card for example. Getting a good domain card early can be a big boon dependant on its ability.
This means there will be a fairly constant flow of cards being drafted from the central area. Players will find themselves competing to get the cards they want as quickly as possible and is the game's primary form of interaction between players.

In fact: Thanks to every card having an ability that can be activated in other players' turns and also being able to read the dice both individually and as a pair making card activations more common, means the game generally flows quite rapidly. Players will often have something happening outside of their turn.
Like many drafting games, there's a higher level of play here that comes from watching what other players are doing and potentially trying to stymie them. The addition of duke cards messes with this though, providing players with unique and unpredictable objectives.

​​Valeria: Card Kingdoms is a solid iteration of the dice rolling, card activating, tableau building game style and players of those games will be on familiar ground here. To compliment this, there's also a couple of innovative touches to do with reading the dice and card activating that make the game fresh.

Despite its brisk playtime, the game does has a fairly involved setup process and also an abundance of iconography which makes for a slightly steep learning curve.
​Don't that put you off though. Valeria: Card Kingdoms is well worth a try.

18th September 2022

We're on Board Game Arena​ for some gaming goodness.

Use your deductive reasoning to... Break the code, a puzzle-like game of logic and elimination.

Caveat: We've only ever played Break the Code digitally.

What's in a game?

• Tiles: There are 20 tiles in Break the Code and they are numbered form 0-9 twice, one set has black numbers and the other white, except for the number '5' which is green in both sets.
• Question cards: Players ask each other questions to solve the game's central conundrum but are limited to using the questions that appear on these 21 cards.
• Screen: The physical version of the game comes with a screen for each player to hide information from other players, most important of which are the player's own numbers.
  The screen also has 5 columns labelled A-E which will correspond to the player's own 5 tiles during the game.
• Notepad: This is a pad of reference sheets used by players to record the results of questions asked throughout the game. The top part of the sheet lists the 20 numbers on the tiles which can be struck off as they are eliminated.
  Below that is a grid that has a column labelled A-E and rows for each other player, allowing players to cross-reference information about columns and players.

There's little to no art in the game and to be honest, the game is a fairly abstract almost puzzle-like game that doesn't really need it.
Presentation wise, it's clear and easy to understand.

Break the Code also has no iconography unless you count numbers. There's nothing here that would prove an obstacle to players.

How's it play?
Setup
The setup for Break the Code differs some what between a 2 player count and a 3-4 player count.
The setup here is for 3 players.

• Players: Give a screen and a sheet from the notepad to each player, as well as a pencil.
• Tiles: Shuffle the tiles into a face-down stack.
  Depending on player count deal 5 tiles to each player face-down and 5 face-down into a central playing area.
  Players: Each player should now secretly look at their own tiles and arrange them numerically from left-to-right, positioned face-up behind their personal screen so that each number is in a column with a letter. I.e., the lowest number will be in the A column and the highest will be in the E column.
  Central tiles: The tiles in the central area should remain face-down and be revealed until the game is over.
• Question cards: Shuffle the question cards into a face-down deck. Deal 6 cards face-up into the central area.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
The objective in Break the Code is to deduce the value and colours of the 5 tiles in the central area before anyone else. This will be done by asking other players questions (Using the questions on the question cards.) about their own tiles and then by matter of elimination discovering which tiles are in the central area.
Break the Code uses a traditional turn order with the active player resolving their turn before play progresses to their left.
On their turn, the active player can choose 1 of 2 actions.

• Ask a question: The active player picks one of the 6 available question cards and the other player must truthfully answer its question.
  Questions might include:
  'How many odd tiles do you have?'
  'How many of your tiles have a white number?'
  Record result: Once players have given answers, all players should record what has been said on their sheet. Thus, even when it's not a player's turn, they should pay attention to answers given.
  Discard: Once a question card has been used, it is discarded and a new one is drawn in its place.
• Guess tiles: Instead of asking a question, the active player may choose to guess what 5 tiles and their colours are in the central playing area. A player only gets one chance to guess the tiles!
  First the active players writes their guess down on the allotted spot on their sheet. Then, without revealing the tiles, the active player peeks at them and declares whether they were wrong or right.
  Got it right: If the active player has correctly surmised which tiles are in the central area, play continues until the current round is finished, this potentially gives players later in the round a final chance to guess the tiles.
  Got it wrong: If the active player got it wrong, they are out of the game and play progresses as normal but without them! They must continue to truthfully answer other players' questions.
• Next player: Regardless of whether the active player asked a question or made a right or wrong guess, play progresses to the player on their left - unless the active player got the right guess and is also the last player.

Player count
There are a couple of differences in setup and player according to player count.

• 4 player: A 4 player game only differs from a 3 player in 2 regards:
  Only 4 tiles are dealt to each player and the central area. This means the 'E' column is not used in 4-player games.
  The active player must also answer the question they asked.
• 2 player: In a 2 player game, 5 tiles are dealt to each player, no tiles are dealt into the central playing area. Players are now instead trying to guess each other's 5 tiles.
  Additionally, players are not eliminated from play for making an incorrect guess.

Endgame
If all question cards have been used and no one has made a correct guess, all players lose!
Additionally, if all player make incorrect guesses, then again, all players lose.

When a player makes a correct guess, the end of the current round is played out, the game ends and they are the winner. There is a chance however, that other players may also make a correct guess with their last action. In which case, all players who guessed correctly are declared winners.

Overall
There's not much to say about the mechanics of Break the Code, it's a very straightforward game that is essentially a multiplayer puzzle; ask questions and eliminate extraneous numbers until you are left with only the correct numbers.
Since questions are solely based on the available cards it means there can be a need for a bit of lateral thinking and trying to gleam information from awkward questions. I suspect that if players got to ask the questions they wanted, it would end a game quickly or break it!
It's also vital to listen to answers given to other players' questions.

Players first eliminate their own tiles which leaves them with about 10-12 more tiles to eliminate. They must cross-reference multiple answers to get the information they need. E.g., They may learn a player's first tile is a black number, then they may learn it's a odd number, then they may finally learn it's a 1 and so on.
Conversely, players will sometimes get a lot of information quickly, e.g., learning the tile in the E column is green means it must be a 5 and that it is also the highest number a player has behind their screen.
It's this kind of reasoning that drives Break the Code and if that sort of fairly heavy puzzle orientated game play doesn't appeal to you, then this is one to avoid.

Myself; I quite like puzzles but I'm not so sure about a multiplayer one, it's not something I feel lends itself well to multiplayer. I will add that we did play it online and over voice chat which could make it feel somewhat disjointed compared to face-to-face..
Having said that, I did enjoy Break the Code but found once I had 'broken' the code, there was very little motivation to go back to it another time.

8th September 2022

It's a Thursday evening, it's Aldershot, it's time for some gaming goodness.

​Channel your inner Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and Kevin McCloud as you attempt to build your... Dream Home in this drafting, set collecting game.

What's in the game?

• Game board: This is not really a game board but more of a drafting board.
  There are 2 rows of 6 card spaces each, the first space of each row is dedicated to placing the game's 2 deck of cards.
  Thus the top row is the resource card row and the bottom row is the room card row.
• Home board: These are actually player boards. Each one depicts a 3 level idyllic suburban home.
  The bottom floor depicts a porch or entrance (Which essentially uses up 3 spaces) along with a 'garage' (Which is actually the basement) and consists of 2 card spaces. 
  The middle floor has 5 card spaces.
  Finally, the top floor also have 5 card spaces - giving a total of 12
• Cards: Dream Home uses 2 decks of cards.
  Room cards: These cards all show various rooms you would find in a typical house, bathrooms, kitchens and so on. Room cards are used by players create their home and are colour-coded according to type. There are normal rooms, basement rooms and unique rooms.
  Many types of room cards can be placed adjacent to cards of the identical type. 
  At the bottom of each room card it will display 1 or more numbers, which indicate both the maximum 'size' that room can reach and also victory point (VP) value of that card for reaching the that size if other cards of the same type are placed adjacent to it.
  Resource cards: This type of card provides players with benefits or bonuses, which may be once-only, ongoing or game end VPs.
  There are roof cards, décor cards, tool and helper cards.
• Tokens: These are décor tokens, each one is uniquely shaped according to the resource card it corresponds to and will also display a VP value.
• First player token: I don't usually write about the first player token but this is a fairly chunky wooden styled in the shape of a house.

​Component quality is the usual good standard found in most modern board games. The cards are fine, the board and tokens are constructed from sturdy cardboard. The first player token is chunky and made from wood, it's obviously a bit of a gimmick but it's the kind of gimmick I'm a sucker for!

Dream Home has fantastic artwork throughout. The Illustration used on the home board is good, however, the standouts are the cards and tokens which feature excellent colourful and distinct depictions of home spaces. Interestingly, many cards will feature children hidden among the furniture. This is more than just a aesthetic choice which will be explained below.

Most information is conveyed via text and there's no iconography that needs learning.

How's it play?
​Setup
This is the setup for 4-player games, in game with lower player counts, some cards will be discarded after being placed on the game board.

• Game board: Sort the cards by type and shuffle them into 2 face-down decks.
  Resource row: Place the resource deck on to the leftmost space on the top row.
  Next, leave the 1st space to the right of the deck empty, it's used to indicate the first player token, a resource card never goes here.
  Finally deal 4 face-up cards on to the 4 remaining spaces in the row.
  Rooms row: Put the room deck on the leftmost space on the bottom row, deal 5 face-up cards on to the 5 spaces in this row.
• Player board: Give each player a player board.
• First player: Determine a starting player and give them the first player token.

On to play
Dream Home is played over exactly 12 rounds and players will be putting room cards on to their personal game board to build their home and gaining resource cards.
This is done by drafting pairs of cards from the same column, that is, 1 resource and 1 room card - except for the leftmost space, in which case they acquire a room card and the first player token.

Turn order is slightly different to the usual here: The player with the first player token goes first and play progresses to the left until all players have taken their turn. However, it's possible that the first player token will change hands during a round, consequently, in the following round a new turn order would be established.

During their turn, the active player takes the following actions.

• Take cards: The active player must choose a column and take the resource and room card from that column.
  First player token: If the active player chooses the first column, they only get a room card, however, they also gain the first player marker and will go first in the next round.
• Place room: The active player must place the room card they just drafted with the following restrictions:
  Basement: Basement cards must go on to 1 of the 2 basement spaces.
  Build up: All other room cards must be placed on top of the porch or on top of another room card, this can a basement card or be another room card in the case of placing room cards on the top floor.
  ​Size limit: Players will want to put cards of the same type adjacent to each other to maximise VP scoring but a room cannot exceed it's size limit. E.g., a bedroom can consist of 2 adjacent bedroom cards, a 3rd bedroom card cannot be placed adjacent to that room.
  ​Can't play: If for any reason, the active player cannot play a card, they can place it face-down as an empty room which will score 0 VPs. Empty rooms follow the same placement rules as explained above.
• Resource cards: There are 4 types of resource card.
  Décor cards: When one of these cards is taken, the active player also takes the corresponding décor token. The token must immediately be placed on a room that matches the token and can provide bonus VPs at the game end. When this is done, the room is considered finished, that is, no more room cards can be added to that room.
  If a décor token cannot be placed on a matching room, it is discarded.
  Helper cards: These cards generally provide some sort of bonus scoring criteria during the game end.
  Roof cards: These come in several different colours and when a player acquires a roof, they turn it face-down and place it on their home board's roof.
  These cards cannot be looked at again until final scoring at game end!
  4 Roof cards can score bonus VPs at the game end and more if they are of a matching colour. This means players will need to memorise those colours.
  Tool cards: These usually provide some sort of benefit during the game.
• Next player: Once the active player has resolved the cards they took, play progresses to the player on their left.
• Next round: Once all player's have taken their turn, play progresses to the next round and the following occur.
  Clear board: All face-up cards remaining on the game board are discarded out of play. 4 new resource and 5 new room cards are drawn and placed as per the setup rules.
  Turn order: Whoever has the first player token will be the starting player in the new round. If the first player token did not change hands because nobody chose the left most column, then whoever retained the token will be the starting player again in the new round.

Endgame
Dream Home is played over 12 rounds and after the last round, the game goes to scoring. There are various avenues to earning VPs.

• ​Room cards: These score points according to their type and size. E.g., a living room consisting of 3 cards will score 9 VPs.
• Décor: These tokens will score points as listed on them.
• Functionality: Players earn points for having certain type of rooms in their home. A home with a bathroom, bedroom and kitchen will earn VPs for example.
• Roof: Players can now look at their roof cards. If a player has at least 4 roof cards on their roof, they score 3 points. If a player can have set of at least 4 roof cards of the same colour then they earn 8 VPs.
  Windows: Every roof card that has a window scores and additional VP.
• Additionally; certain cards can also provide VPs.

Points are tallied, highest score wins. In the case of a tie, the player with home board showing the most children on the cards wins!

Overall
Dream Home strikes a balance between ease of play and depth. Players will be faced with the conundrum of having to build outwards before building upwards.
It might not seem like much but it's unlikely that players will get all the cards they need at the time they need them.
The larger room sets will score more points per card but unless a player gets the right cards at the right time, it's likely that they will have to leave gaps when collecting bigger sets, which can make it tricky to build upwards.

The drafting mechanic also provides players with a meaningful choice. Again, it's unlikely that players will always get the 2 cards they want, often they will need to compromise on which resource and room card to take as well as adapt to circumstances as they are occur.

Finally, the first player mechanic is also interesting. Gaining the first player token feels costly because the player only gets a room card but it can play dividends in the following turn. There will times when going first can be extremely useful.
Conversely going last can be painful as the last player will only ever have a choice of 2 columns to pick from.

None of this is ever too complicated, the sets are never too big and intricacies that can arise from syncing resource cards such as décor cards with room cards is never too complex.

Dream Home also doesn't outstay its welcome. Being played over 12 rounds keeps it moving along briskly and provides a fairly concise experience, unless you're playing with a sufferer of analysis paralysis!

It's fair to say that Dream Home is a lightweight and accessible iteration of the 'draft-and-place' multiple components, set collecting mechanic seen in quite a few games.
This accessibility along with it's top-notch presentation means that it's probably a good game to play with younger participants or more casual gamers.

For me though: While I feel that Dream Home does provide a good experience for younger and more casual gamers, I'm not sure it has long term appeal to more dedicated gamers. I enjoyed the game but it's fairly simplistic nature means I'm not sure how often I'd like to play it.

The gaming totals for August '22 are below.
Less sessions were played in August, but the variety of games was higher, no doubt partially due to 12 first plays!

Total games: 45
Different games: 35
​First plays: 12

Tuesday 2nd at The Sovereigns with the Woking Board Gaming Club
Wingspan
​
Thursday 4th at Simon's
Cascadia - First Play!
Switch & Signal - 4

Friday 5th at Aldershot
The Crew: Mission Deep Sea - 32
Heckmeck - 12
Trails - First Play!

Sunday 7th on Board Game Arena
Regicide - 9
Splendor - 19
Cloud City - 14
Stella - Dixit Universe - 2
Railroad Ink - 16
Can't Stop - 21
Lucky Numbers - 37

Tuesday 9th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Board Gaming Club
Isle of Cats - 2

Thursday 11th at Aldershot
Dungeon Decorators - First Play!
Love Letter - 59

Sunday 14th on Board Game Arena
Parks - 11
Potion Explosion - 13
Loco Momo - 11
Love Letter - 60
Can't Stop - 22
Lucky Numbers - 38

Tuesday 16th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Board Gaming Club
Jaws - First Play!

Wednesday 17th August - Simon's
Raiders of Scythia - First Play!

Thursday 18th at Aldershot
Heroquest - First Play!

Saturday 20th on Board Game Arena
Tranquility - First Play!
Race for the Galaxy - 17

Sunday 21st on Board Game Arena
Forbidden Island - 13
Noah - First Play!
Chromino - 2
Codex Naturalis - 23
Love Letter - 61
Martian Dice - 20
Lucky Numbers - 39
​
Friday 26th at Farnborough
Heckmeck - 13
King of Tokyo - 9
Jump Drive - 10

Saturday 27th on Board Game Arena
Dungeon Twister - First Play!

Sunday 28th on Board Game Arena
Burgle Bros - First Play!
Carcassonne - 9
Loco Momo - 12
Railroad Ink - 17
Can't Stop - 23
Lucky Numbers - 40

Tuesday 30th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Board Gaming Club
Scout - First Play!
​The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine - First Play!

30th August 2022

Tuesday night gaming with the Woking Gaming Club continued with The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine.

The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine is actually an earlier iteration of The Crew: Mission Deep Sea which I've already blogged about and the two games are more or less identical.
Read about The Crew: Mission Deep Sea here and it'll give a good idea how The Quest of Planet Nine plays.
As such I'm not going to do a full write for ​The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, instead I'll just note one area of difference between the two.

Task cards: These are much more straightforward in The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine.
All the objectives are exclusively about acquiring certain numbers in certain colours, e.g., blue 7, yellow 2 and so on.
Consequently, The Quest for Planet Nine is a bit more straightforward, this makes it perhaps a little easier to play as it does not present players with having to deal with more left-field tasks like 'I can only win the first and last hands'.
The upside is that it has greater accessibility and will be easier to play with people who aren't so heavily into games.

30th August 2022

It's a Tuesday evening and we're with the Woking Board Gaming Club at The Sovereigns to play trick-taking card Scout.

Step right up, step right up friends. Prepared to be entertained and thrilled by the most death-defying, deck-dealing, trick-taking card game you ever set eyes on.

What's in a game?

• ​Cards: Scout uses a deck of 45 cards. The cards seem a little longer than typical playing cards.
  Unusually, each card is numbered twice, once at the 'top', then another number upside-down at the 'bottom'. These numbers are for the most part of different value and range from 1-10.
  Cards have small line-art illustrations of various circus trappings and also names of circus players who I suppose performs the acts. 
• Tokens: There are several types of card token in Scout.
  Dollar: These cute little tokens are proportioned like like bank notes, each one represents a dollar which translates to a victory point (VP.).
  Scoring tokens: These are all double-sided, one side has a positive score and the other a negative one, i.e., a +1 point token is also a -1 point token on other side since scores can go into the negative. Different valued tokens are differently shaped.
  Scout & show token: These tokens are shaped like a old style car.
  First player marker: Usually I don't both mentioning first player markers but this one is shaped like a top hat!

The quality of the cards in scout are average which is to say that they are what you'd expect of a modern game.
The tokens feel sturdy and well made.

While each card contain smudges of a pair attractive bright colours there's little artwork in Scout, what there is, is either monochrome illustration or stylised and slightly cartoony. It fits the loose circus theme well enough though.

Only numbers are utilised in Scout, no iconography related to game play appears which means the game is easily understood.

How's it play?
Setup

• Cards: The cards used will be determined by player count. Take those cards and shuffle them into a face-down deck.
• Tokens: Give each player a scout & show token.
• First player: Determine a start player and give them the first player token.

On to play
Scout is played over a number of rounds equal to the player count, i.e., if there are 4 players, there will be 4 rounds.
Each round will consist of numerous hands of card being played, players will take turns trying to empty their own hands while also accumulating cards and dollars into their own playing area.
The game uses a traditional turn structure with the active player acting and play progressing to the player on their left.
Broadly speaking, the active player can choose 1 of 2 actions and a round consists of the following:

• Deal: All the cards in the deck are dealt face-down to the players.
  Keep order: Upon picking up their cards, each player should splay them out from left-to-right and view the numbers.
  Players cannot change the order of their cards. 
  Rotate: Players can however, rotate their cards 180' and use the upside-down numbers.
  This can only be done once at the start of a round.
• Actions: The active player has a choice of 1 of the following 2actions.
  • Show: This action allows the active player to put a trick into play.
    Opening play: If it is the first turn of a round or no trick is in play for whatever reason, the active player must play a trick. This becomes the active trick.
    Trick: To play a trick, the active player must play 1 or more cards from their hand face-up into a central playing area.
    When playing more than 1 card, they must be adjacent to each other in the active player's hand.
    There are 2 types of trick.
    Run: The active player may play any number of cards that increase or decrease in sequence. E.g., a 2, 3 ,4, 5 or a 9, 8, 7.
    Set: The active player may play a set of any size, that is 2-of-a-kind, 3-of-a-kind and so on.
    Trump: If an active trick has already been put into play by another player, the active player can possibly trump it in a couple of ways.
    Basically, playing new trick which has more cards than the current trick will always trump it.
    Additionally, playing a new trick with an equal number of cards as the current trick can trump it if the new trick is the same kind of trick but has higher numbers OR is a set vs a run. I.e., a any 3-of-a-kind will beat any run of 3 numbers.
    Finally, when the active player trumps a previous player's trick, they take all of those player's cards and puts them face-down in their personal playing area, these will score VPs at the game end.
    So, what happens when the active play cannot trump the active trip? This brings me to...
  • Scout: If the active player cannot trump the active trick, they must scout instead. This involves taking a card from the active trick and adding it to their own hand. There are a couple of provisos though.
    Take card: A card can only be taken from either end of the active trick, not from the middle, obviously if there's only 1 card in a active trick, then it is taken.
    Add to hand: Upon taking a card from the active trick, it can be flipped to either orientation and placed anywhere in the active player's hand.
    This can be very helpful as it can be used to fill gaps in blocks of cards.
    Compensation: Whenever a card is scouted from the active trick, whoever played that trick will receive a dollar from the supply as compensation for their performer being poached.
  • Scout & Show: Each player has a scout & show token. Once per round, the active player may flip their token to perform a scout & show action.
    The active player can first perform the scout action as explained above and then also perform the show action also as explained above.
    This is a powerful move, not only does it allow the active player to potentially fill a gap in their cards while decreasing the size of the active trick it also allows them to immediately play a trick. Used effectively, the scout & show action can be a game changer.
• End of turn: Once the active player has completed their action, play progresses to the player on their left.
• End of round:  Play throughout a round continues until 1 of 2 conditions are met.
  Empty hand: If the active player manages to empty their hand, that is, no longer have any cards to play, then the round immediately ends.
  Unbeaten trick: If a player has put a trick into play and it is still the active trick when they become the active player again, i.e., all other players scouted: Then round immediately ends.
  • Round scoring: When a round ends, it is immediately scored as per the following criteria.
    Dollar: Each dollar token a player has acquired (As a result of having their tricks scouted.) earn that player 1VP.
    Trumped tricks: Each card a player has in their personal area from trumping other player's tricks also earns them 1VP.
    Hand: Each card that a player has in their hand will cost them 1VP! 
    Note: If someone ended a round due to playing a unbeaten trick, their hand does not count against their VPs.
    Also; the active trick does not score (or lose.) any VPs.
    Once points for the current round has have been calculated and added to the scores from previous rounds, play progresses to the next round.
• Next round: Gather up all the cards and shuffle them back into a face-down deck and deal them all out to the players again.
  First player: Pass the first player token to the player on the left who will now open the next round by performing the show action.

Endgame
When a number of rounds equal to the player count had been finished, the game ends, the final round is scored and we go to final scoring.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Scout packs quite a lot of gameplay into quite a small package.
At the heart of it, players are broadly speaking faced with 2 approaches towards a central conundrum: Should a player try and empty their hand or try and build up the size of the tricks in their hand instead?
Both have advantages and drawbacks.

A player emptying their hand is good because it minimises their losses if the round ends but playing small or single card tricks is a giving other players easy opportunities to score points by trumping them.
There's also the fact that a player ending up with for example a single card in their hand can have trouble playing it. If someone else plays any 2 card trick, there's no way a single card can trump it.

A player building up the cards and consequently the trick(s) in their hand can be hugely beneficial; playing a trick containing a large number of cards can end a round in that player's favour as not only do they not lose points for cards in card, they earn dollars for having their trick scouted.
The big risk is that a round may end before playing the big trick, which could lose them a lot of points.

There's also the possibility of working towards both, removing single cards or small tricks from a player's hand may create new tricks.

All of this is of course contextual. The cards a player chooses to have in their hand will influence their decisions as well as the actions of their opponents.
There's a higher level of play that comes from watching what others do and seeing if they are building up a trick or not - especially of they're scouting from small active tricks. Also quite often, when players also playing single card tricks, they're looking to combine cards into a bigger trick or looking to save a trick for later.

The show & scout action is also very important, if an opponent has played a big, using it well can genuinely bring about a reversal of fortune.

It means that players are always faced with meaningful decisions, playing and acquiring cards always has an impact.

I've seen some criticism that there's a notable amount of luck in Scout - and there's some truth to that but truth be told; so do many games of this type, especially card games. Which is why playing multiple hands of cards over multiple rounds acts as a 'balancer'.

There's also a quirk where the game is different according to player count.
For starters; game length can dramatically change according to player count: Not only do more players mean there's more turns per round, there's also more rounds to go as well! That being said, Scout doesn't have a particularly long play time. A 5-player game takes in the region of an hour to play out.
Hand size also varies quite with player count. In a 5-player game everyone starts with 9 cards, while in a 3-player game each player starts with 12 cards. It means that bigger tricks are more likely occur in games with a lower player count, something that players will want to take into account.

Another minor quibble is that it's a little tricky to pick up some of the rules about trumping an active trick with a new trick of the same size.

Minor grumbling aside though, I think Scout is an excellent trick taking card game that has a good amount of player interaction, gives players something to think about but can also provide some surprises.
If trick taking card games are something you like, then Scout is a game that you should definitely try.

28th August 2022

It's a Sunday evening and we're logged into Board Game Arena for some gaming goodness.

Burgle Bros is a cooperative tile based bank heist/caper game: Can you sneak through the building, dodge the guards, disarm the alarms, find and crack the safes.
Time to find out in... Burgle Bros.

Caveat: We have only played this digitally.

What's in a game?

• Room tiles: These represent rooms/encounters players will have, there is a wide variety and some will prove useful while many will create obstacles for players. Each one features a black and white line art illustration representing its room. Tiles also have a splash of colour to indicate what kind of encounter they will be. e.g., red means a trap or alarm.
  Numbers: Finally, all room tiles except safe tiles are numbered 1-6, these are used to create the safe combination which must be cracked when trying to open a safe.
• Cards: Burgle Bros uses several different decks of cards.
  • Character cards: There are numerous different burglar characters in the game and each one has a unique ability. Additionally, burglar cards are double sided with a basic and advanced version of each character.
  • Event cards: Certain actions (Or lack of to be precise.) can cause a event card to be drawn and resolved. Event cards can be beneficial or detrimental.
  • Loot cards: This is what the game is all about - getting loot. However, carrying loot always causes a problem of some sort kind!
  • Patrol cards: Pesky security guards patrol the building you're robbing. Patrol cards display a red space on a 4x4 grid which is used determine where guards wander to! The standard game is played of 3 floors and each floor has its own individual patrol deck.
  • Tool cards: When picked up by players, tools can be very helpful to players.
• Tokens: Burgle Bros also makes use of several types of token to represent various situations such as alarms being triggered, door becoming unlocked. etc.
  3 types of token are a little different.
  • Alarm Tokens: There are various types of alarm and each type has their own tokens that get placed on the playing area when the respective alarm is triggered.
  • Stair tokens: These are used to indicate whether stairs go up, down or both - depending on what floor the tokens are on.
  • Stealth tokens: These are vital for players, if a player loses all of them... it's bad news.
  • Wall tokens: These long straight tokens are used to as the name suggests, represent walls on each floor, they determine how players and guards move and may also block line of sight.
• Meeples: It wouldn't be much of a heist game without burglars and of course, guards. The physical game comes with a meeple for each burglar character and 3 guard meeples - one for each of the 3 floors.
• Dice: Burgle Bros uses normal six-siders, which come in 2 colours and each has a different use.
  Red dice: These are used to track both guard patrol routine and the speed they move at.
  Green dice: Players will frequently be called upon to make dice rolls, especially to open safes.

The art direction for Burgle Bros has some unusual choices.
Room tiles have detailed, realistic looking line art illustrations while on the  other hand, characters are depicted with highly stylised and exaggerated cartoony art that looks like it's out of the opening titles of a sixties crime caper movie - which is appropriate.
It's a weird clash of styles but in this instance it actually works quite well.

There are a few icons that are used throughout Burgle Bros but they're all fairly easy to learn, a lot of the game's information is conveyed via text.

How's it play?
Setup

• Playing area: The building is the main playing area of the game and in standard difficulty the building has 3 floors. This means setting out 3 sets of cards - 1 for each floor to create the building.
  Floors: Remove all the 'Safe' and 'Stairs' room tiles from the room tiles deck. Now shuffle the remaining cards and deal them into 3 face-down decks.
  Next add 1 safe and 1 stairs to each deck and then re-shuffle them into a deck again. Finally put out each deck into a face-down 4x4 grid. Thus, you should have 3 sets of 4x4 cards,
  Walls: Put out 8 wall tokens between cards to form walls for all floors as directed by the rules.
• Patrol decks: Sort the patrols decks by floor and shuffle them into 3 face-down decks. Some cards may have to be randomly removed according to player count.
  Dice: Place 1 red die adjacent to each patrol deck. Set the value of each die to 2-4 depending for floors 1-3 respectively. This value determines how many spaces a guard moves during their action.
• Events, tools & loot cards: Sort these into their respective types and then shuffle each into a face-down deck
• Players: Each should randomly draw a character card and decide whether to use the standard or advanced side. give each player the corresponding meeple for that character.
  Stealth tokens: give 3 stealth tokens to each player.
• Guard: Flip over the top card of the patrol deck for floor 1, place the guard meeple for that floor on that tile - do not reveal the tile.
• Burglars: Flip over any 1 room tile on floor 1. This is the entry point for the burglars, a 'goes downstairs' stair token should be placed on that tile. All players should also place their meeple on the entry space.
• Destination: Flip over a 2nd patrol cards for floor 1. It will indicate the room tile that the guard is heading for.
  Red die: Place the red dice (Showing a 2 for floor 1.) on the destination tile. This indicates the speed at which the guard moves.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
​The objective in Burgle Bros is to find and crack all 3 safes, gain 3 loot cards, then escape to the roof, all without being caught by the security guards.
This is done by the use of action points (APs).

In Burgle Bros, the active player spends their APs to perform certain actions.
Then the security guard on their floor moves along their patrol route.
Then play progresses to the player to the left of the active player.
A turn is broadly speaking, broken down into 3 phases.

• Player action: The active player has 4 APs they can use to perform the following actions.
  • Peek: The active player may spend 1 AP to flip a orthogonally adjacent face-down tile face-up, revealing what it is. This may seem like a waste of an AP but blundering into unknown rooms is a high risk proposition.
  • Move: An AP can be spent to move the active player's meeple to a orthogonally adjacent tile, regardless of whether it is face-down or face-up, a face-down tile is immediately flipped face-up.
    Once a meeple has entered a new tile, its action must be resolved. There are a variety of effects that can occur. Sometimes nothing will occur, or an alarm may be triggered, a meeple might be forced to stop or make a roll to enter the tile and so on.
    Alarm: This isn't a player action per se but whenever an alarm is triggered, 2 events occur.
    Firstly, the red dice is moved to the tile which triggered an alarm, secondly a alarm token is also added to that tile.
    Note: A meeple obviously may not move through a wall token.
    Going to a new floor: If the active player's meeple moves to a new floor. Flip a patrol card from that floor to reveal the starting position of that floor's security guard, then flip a 2nd patrol card to provide him a patrol route.
  • Hack: Some room tiles contain computers a which can be hacked to remove alarm tokens (More on alarm tokens below.). If the active player is in a computer room, they may spend an AP to add 1 hack token to that room. There are different hack tokens that correspond to the different alarm types.
    Later, when an alarm is triggered, a hack token can be removed to remove a matching alarm token.
  • Add dice to safe tile: If a safe tile has been revealed and the active player is standing on it, they may spend 2AP to place a die on the safe tile. A safe tile may hold up to 6 dice.
    These will be used to crack the safe - which is explained below.
  • Crack safe: If the active player is on a safe tile, they may attempt to open (Or work towards opening.) the safe. The following occurs
    Discover combination: Each safe has a 6 digit combination. Look at the 3 cards in the same row and the 3 cards in the same column to get the numbers for this combination. This may include doubles.
    Roll dice: For the cost of 1AP, the active player now rolls all the dice that have been placed on the safe tile.
    For each result on the dice that matches a number in the combination, that number is 'covered'. A single die result that matches multiple numbers in the combination, covers all of them.
    When all 6 numbers in the combination have been covered, the safe has been opened!
    Note: A safe does not need to be opened in a single roll and the assigned dice can be re-rolled at the cost of another AP.
    The following occur after a safe has been opened
    Tool: When the active player opens a safe, they draw a tool card from it's deck. Tools provide some benefit to the player that holds it.
    Loot: The active player also draws a loot card. Generally, loot cards are a hinderance to the players but are also vital to victory.
    ​Guard: Finally, increase the value on the red guard die for that floor. Thus; if the safe on floor 1 is opened, the red die goes up from 2 to 3. It also means that the guard on floor 3 will have a basic speed of 5 after that floor's safe has been opened!
• Check for events: If the active player has only used 1 or 2 APs during their turn, then they must draw a card from the event deck and resolve it.
  Event cards may prove beneficial to players... or may prove detrimental.
• Move guard: Once the active player has finished their actions and possibly resolved and event card, play moves over to the security guard. There are a number of factors to remember when moving the guard.
  1 guard only: Only 1 guard moves, which will be the guard on the same floor where the active player ended their turn. All other guard do not move.
  Speed: The security guard will move at least a number of spaces equal to the value for the red die for the floor.
  Alarms: Alarm tokens increase the speed of a guard, the more tokens, the more movement they have!
  Destination:​ The guard always takes the shortest route towards the red die.
  If the guard reaches their destination, they will deactivate any alarm tokens there.
  If they still have movement left after reaching their destination, flip a new patrol card, move the red die to the new location and begin moving the guard towards it.
  Catching players: If a guard moves on to the same tile as a player's meeple, that player's burglar has been spotted. The player must discard a stealth token. A player must also discard a stealth token, if they move their meeple on to a space with a guard for any reason. Essentially, this allows the burglar to somehow avoid the guard.
  What happens if a player cannot discard a stealth token? Let's just say it's bad news for that burglar!
• Next player: Once the guard has acted, play progresses to the player on the left of the active player.

Endgame
Play continues until 1 of 2 ending conditions are met.

If a player has to discard a stealth token and they cannot because they've already used them up, then the burglar has been caught, players immediately and collectively lose the game.

If the players manage to open all 3 safes, get the loot and all of the burglars off the top of floor 3, they collectively win.

Overall
First thing to say is that we played Burgle Bros digitally and I felt there was a bit of a disconnect with the game because of this.
In the physical copy, all 3 floors are laid out next to each other but the digital copy required visually switching between them. It means the digital copy can never feel as intuitive as the physical one.

Anyway, on to the game.
Players will need to balance the need to be cautious with the need explore and turn over tiles. Avoiding or neutralising the many alarms is good but so is reaching the objective as quickly as possible.

That's because the real challenge in Burgle Bros is managing the movement and behaviour of the guard. This requires thinking ahead and I mean really thinking ahead! There's almost a puzzle-like logic to it but there's also the potential for a lot of randomness too!
Players will need to anticipate where the guard will go (And when!) and at times try to manipulate the guard by deliberately triggering an alarm and the like.

This is compounded by the fact that the more players there are on a floor; the more a guard may move.
E.g., in a 4-player game, a player may think their meeple is 'safe' but if all players'  meeples are on the same floor (And they will be in the early game.), the security guard will move at least 8 spaces before that player gets to act again, that's enough to cross an entire floor twice! It can become very hard to predict where the guard is going whenever a new patrol tile is flipped over - which can happen often when the guard moves a lot.
I guess the solution to this is for players to get their meeples to other floors ASAP and this will slow down individual guards.

From a gameplay perspective though, this feels a little counterintuitive. It turns what is meant to be a cooperative challenge into 3 sub-games with a only tenuous cooperative link between players.
From a player perspective, it also feels somewhat counterintuitive. For players, the instinct will be to cooperate; opening a safe can be hard and adding dice to it is vital but also expensive in terms if AP. Multiple players will naturally want to quickly contribute as many dice as possible dice to a single safe to help each other open it sooner rather than later.
This is certainly how we played Burgle Bros and in retrospect, that was probably a mistake, it seemed to be that the game punished players for playing this way.

Personally I found it the intricacies of having to deal with so many alarms paired with just too unpredictable guard actions a little futile and frustrating to be enjoyable.

I suspect that Burgle Bros probably plays best at a 2-player count and could be a good couples game if puzzle type gameplay interests you.

27th August 2022

It's a Saturday night and were logged in Board Game Arena for some gaming fun.

Now that I think about it; a crossover game of Dungeons & Dragons and Twister would be pretty interesting.
Unfortunately, that's not what Dungeon Twister is about. Instead we get a 2-player sort of chess-like game about manipulating dungeon tiles and running around them.

Caveat: We have only ever played this online.

What's in a game?

• Tiles: There are several types of tiles.
  • Room tiles: The game comes with 8 large square tiles. Each one depicts a dungeon 'room', although it looks more like a intricate series of corridors and passageways than anything else. There are also items and obstacles such as portcullises and rotation gears.
    On the back of each room tile is a number, this determines the maximum number of tokens that can be placed on that tile during setup. More on this below.
  • Starting line: This long tile is the width of 2 room tiles and they are placed at either end of the playing area to form starting areas. There are spaces to place 4 characters on each tile.
• Screen: The physical game comes with a dungeon master style screen for each player to hide their standees and tokens.
• Tokens: Dungeon Twister uses several types of tokens.
  • Equipment tokens: Players have 6 tokens for their respective equipment.
  • Character tokens: Players have tokens for all of their 8 characters.
    These are generally the classic characters you might find in a fantasy themed game and include, wizard, fighter, thief and so on.
    Different characters has a combat and speed value, additionally, each character also has unique abilities they can make use of that are themed to the character. E.g., the thief character can pick locks and disarm traps.
  • Tracking tokens: There are also a number of tokens used to track certain actions.
• Standees: As well as tokens, The physical game also comes with 8 standees for each player depicting each of the 8 characters a player has on their team.
  Standees can be used in place of their corresponding tokens.
• Cards: Each player has their own deck of 16 cards which consist of the following.
  • Action cards: These confer 2-5 action points (APs) when played.
  • Combat cards: During combat, these are played to grant a bonus of 0-6 combat points.
  • Jump cards: These allow a character to errr... jump! Mostly used to circumvent pit traps.

Dungeon Twister has bright and colourful artwork. The room tiles don't feature much in the way of illustrations but do have clearly delineated features. Artwork on the tokens and standees is that sort of chunky and cartoony fantasy style that has been used on a lot fantasy themed games over the last few years, it's a little bit of an unoriginal art direction - but to be fair, it's a style I quite like, so for me it's good.

There isn't too much in the way of iconography in Dungeon Twister and I don't imagine it would provide any obstacle to playing.

How's it play?
Setup

• Board: Create the playing area by shuffling the room tiles into a face-down stack and while keeping them face-down deal them into a 4x2 grid.
• Starting line: Each player should take a starting line tile and place it along the short edge of the playing era. These are the 2 'ends' of the board.
• Players: Give both players the cards, screen, standees and tokens in their colour. All the tokens and standees should be placed behind the player's screen.
• Starting team: From their selection of 8 characters, both players choose 4 to be their starting team.
  Take the 4 tokens for these characters and place them face-down on the 4 starting spots on the starting line. The standees are not used at this time and each player's selection remains secret to their opponent for the time being.
• First player: Determine a starting player.
• Populate board: Beginning with the first player, each player should alternately put one of their 6 equipment tokens or 4 remaining character tokens on to the face-down room tiles.
  These can go on to any tile, provided it does not increase the number of tokens on a room tile higher than the number shown on the back of that room tile.
  Continue placing tokens until both players have put down all their tokens.

On to play
The objective in Dungeon Twister is to accumulate 5 Victory Points. A player can achieve this in 2 ways; by defeating opposing characters or by getting their own characters out of the opposite end of the dungeon from their starting side.
Players take alternate turns becoming the active player, playing action cards and resolving them. This is done over 3 phases.

• Play action card phase: When an action is played, it is done so face-up and in a stack, so only the last played action card is visible.
  The active player receives a number of APs equal to the value of the action card they played. APs are then spent to carry out actions, APs can be split between characters as the active player sees fit.
• Use APs phase: APs can be spent on the following.
  • Movement: Each AP spent allows a character to move a number of spaces equal to that character's speed, all movement is orthogonally.
    Additionally, there are some restrictions on how a character move or end their turn.
  • Reveal room: If a character is adjacent to a face-down room tile which they can enter, the active player can then spend 1 AP to flip that room tile face up.
    Flipping a room involves sliding it out and flipping it back into position but face- up.
    The active player then places any tokens that were put on the face-down tile during setup on to spaces or their choosing. However, they cannot place tokens of their own colour, instead the opposing player does that!
  • Rotate room: Each room tile will have a rotation gear. If the active player has a character on the same space a rotation gear. they can spin the tile! Each AP spent can spin the tile 90', the room tile will indicate whether this goes clockwise or anticlockwise.
    The corridors on the room tiles have been put there in such a way that they can trap characters or create new passageways when a room tile is rotated. Rotating room tiles can even be used as short cuts.
    Any tokens on a room tile that is rotated, also rotate along with the tile.
  • Combat: If an active player's character ends movement adjacent to an opposing character, the active player can choose to trigger combat by spending 1 AP. A fight can include more than 2 characters if more are also adjacent.
    Combat is resolved by each player playing a ingle combat card face-down. When this done, both are revealed.
    Each player totals the combat value of all their characters who are participating in the fight with the value on their played cards to get a final combat value.
    These 2 final values are then compared, if it results in a tie, there is no effect. Otherwise, whoever has the highest value wins the encounter.
    All participants on the losing side are wounded.
    Wounds: The combat value of a wounded character drops to 0, furthermore, a wounded character no longer take any actions. Healing can reverse all of this.
    A wounded character who receives a 2nd wound is instead killed and removed from play.
    Cards: Finally, the combat cards used during the fight are discarded out of play, except for the +0 card which is always returned to the player's hand.
  • Use ability: Some character abilities require the active player to spend 1 AP to activate them.
  • Use Item: As with abilities, some items require the active player to spend 1 AP to use them.
    • Other rules: Without going into detail, there are rules for picking up and using items, carrying wounded characters and the such. Encountering pit traps and using jump cards to avoid them.
    • Point scoring: There are 2 avenues for scoring points. The first is eliminating the other player's characters which earns 1 VP per elimination. The other is for a player to get their characters out of the other side of the dungeon, this earns 1 VP per escaping character, bonus points can be earned for getting certain characters/items out of the dungeon.
• Recycle phase: When a player has used their last action card, they draw off them back into their hand.
• Next player: Once the active player has completed all 3 phases play moves on to the other player.

Endgame
When any player earns 5 VPs, the end game is triggered. It is possible for the inactive player to score VPs in the active player's turn by winning combat which means the inactive player can potentially trigger the endgame.
In any case, the active player finishes their current turn and the game goes to scoring.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
​Dungeon Twister is a fairly straightforward game but despite this I feel the game is a little cumbersome, there's quite a bit of exception-driven rules here.

For example:
No character can stand on a pit trap space except the thief or except a character with a rope token.
If a thief standing on pit trap is wounded, they are killed, except any character carrying rope will not be killed, except if an opposing character comes and takes a rope - in which case the wound character is then killed.

These are not gamebreakers by any means but they feel counterintuitive and may be obstacles to play. Until players are familiar with the rules, they'll be hunting through the rulebook to get clarifications, it's also likely players may forget some rules even exist!

Players will need to employ quite of lot of tactics in Dungeon Twister and generally that's a good thing. Since there are 2 ways to score points, players will need to constantly assess the viability of both approaches.
It means playing close attention to the positions of all characters, every one of which will have their own strengths and weaknesses. Characters that are strong in combat will tend to slow at movement. Players will need to exploit the strengths and special abilities while minimising exposure of weaknesses. This is especially true of combat.

This neatly brings me to the game's main schtick, that is; rotating room tiles. Well planned use of rotating the tiles can be a game changer, it can trap or free characters, create blockages or short cuts, it can be used to move gear or move a correctly positioned character across the board, etc.
It keeps the gameplay fresh and to a degree, unpredictable. It can be tricky to see the outcome of rotating of all tiles to all position.

The rule where a player gets to place their opponent's tokens is quite interesting, it allows canny players to exploit the situation to trap opposing tokens but they will need to remember that a twist of the tile can change everything.

Dungeon Twister provides players with meaningful decisions when choosing their actions and tactics.

​Yet somehow, I found it unengaging. Despite fairly extensive rules and a clever premise, Dungeon Twister felt a bit like a simplistic grid based wargame that involves direct confrontation and to be honest, it's not what I look for in a board game.

Obviously, you mileage may vary, maybe a fantasy themed 1-on-1 combative game is right up your street but Dungeon Twister is not for me.