30th May 2021

Sunday night gaming on Board Game Arena continues with Dragonwood.

Those woods there, there be dragons in those woods, that must be why it's named Dragonwood! There are many monsters to capture, so to assemble brave adventurers, take your cards and take your dice and head off into the forests, there're adversaries to be struck, stomped or screamed at!

Caveat: We've only ever played Dragonwood digitally online.

What's in a game?

• Dragonwood cards: These cards consist of creatures to capture, enhancements to earn and events to encounter.
  Creatures: Acquiring creatures earn victory points. Each card has a picture of the creature it represents and also shows how many victory points it's worth.
  Creatures also have a column of 3 numbers, one number each for the strike, stomp, or scream actions.
  For example:
  Grumpy Troll
  Victory points: 4
  Strike: 9
  Stomp: 11
  Scream: 9
  These values are the target numbers that must be met with dice rolls in order to acquire the card, the higher the victory points, the higher the target numbers.
  Which of the 3 values is used for the dice roll is explained below.
  Enhancements: Unlike creatures, enhancements do not score victory points, instead they give the controlling player a bonus that works towards capturing creatures in some way or other, this may be once-only or ongoing.
  Finally, enhancements cannot be used in capturing other enhancements.
  Events: Events can be beneficial or detrimental and are immediately played when revealed during play.
• Adventurer cards: There are 64 adventurer cards in all.
  60 adventurer cards: Numbered 1-12 in 5 different colours.
  4 Lucky Ladybug cards: Drawing one of these cards is lucky! See below for further info.
• Dice: These six siders are NOT numbered 1-6, instead the distribution of numbers goes; 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4. The mathematically astute among you will note that the mean average when rolling 2 of these dice would be 5, the mean average for 2 normal six siders is 7.

That's it for components.
Well, there's not much that can be said since we've only played it digitally. The art on the carts is bright, cartoonish and pleasant, text is clearly written and easy to read.

How's it play?
Setup

• Dragonwood deck: The size of this deck is dependant on the number of players.
  First remove the 2 dragon cards from the deck and shuffle it, discard the required number of cards and then shuffle the dragons back into the bottom half of the deck.
  Deal a row of 5 cards to form what's called 'The landscape'. If any events are dealt during setup, shuffle them back into the deck.
• Adventurer deck: Shuffle the adventurer cards into a face-down deck, deal 5 to each player, these should be kept hidden.
• Starting player: Determine a starting player

On to play
The objective in Dragonwood is to capture creatures cards which are worth 1-7 points each.
Each turn, the active player will have a choice of 2 actions.

• Reload: This is a fancy word for draw a card from the Adventurer deck. If the Lucky Ladybug card is drawn, discard it to the discard pile and draw 2 more cards. Players have a maximum hand size of 9.
  ​If the adventurer deck is depleted, shuffle the discard pile into a new deck. This is done only once per game.
• Capture a card: Players may try to capture a creature or enhancement, mechanically it's identical and there are 3 ways to do this, all methods are done by playing cards, the more card that are played, the more dice can be rolled. Thus the active player plays their cards and chooses one of the 3 capture methods to use.
  Strike: In order to use strike, the active player must play cards that are all in a straight, e.g., a 4, 5, 6, 7 of any colour, because there are 4 cards being played, that would give the active player 4 dice to roll.
  Stomp: To stomp, all card played must have the same value, so two 9s would give the active player 2 dice to roll.
  ​Scream: This requires the active player to play cards all of the same colour, regardless of their numbers; a 2, 3, 8, 10 & 12 all in green would give the active player 5 dice to roll.
  Once the method has been chosen, the active player rolls the relevant dice:
  Fail: if the result is less than the target number for the chosen method, then the capture attempt has failed! The active player takes the cards they played back into their hand and must discard 1 card.
  Success: If the result is equal to or higher than the chosen target number, then the creature is captured and the cards are discarded into the adventurer discard pile.
  A new card is immediately drawn to replace the captured card, if that card is an event, it is immediately played and discarded, another card is drawn, there must always be 5 cards in the landscape if possible.

Play continues until either both dragons have been captured which case the game ends immediately or the adventurer deck has been depleted twice, which triggers a final set of turns.
Then it goes to the endgame.

Endgame
Players score the victory points for each creature they captured.
The player who has captured the most creatures earns an additional 3 points.
Once points are tallied, highest score wins!

Overall
Decisions are based around how much you want or need to push your luck and when to or when not to try and capture cards, managing this is key to Dragonwood.

If a creature has a value of 10 for one of it's target numbers, then it's not hard to figure out that 4 dice will give the active player a 50% chance of capturing it and they'll need to play 4 cards to do this. 9 or lower and the odds swing in the player's favour, 11+ and well, it's not a push your luck game for nothing!
Sure, someone can play it safe and draw cards to get better odds, but this consumes turns while instead, competitors could be capturing those creatures. A handful of adventurer cards scores nothing at the game's end.
Conversely, rashly trying to capture cards and failing will cost players their adventurer cards, it's a clever little balancing mechanic.
Even though the decision to capture a card or not is a simple, almost no brainer decision, the need to outdo other players generally means it never quite a meaningless one.

We found that acquiring enhancements early on (If they appear early on that is.) could be a big advantage. There are enhancements that add 1 or 2 to capture rolls, it might not seem like much, but in a game about averaged dice rolls, it can swing the odds quite a lot.

It's obvious that Dragonwood is a light game that skews towards younger players and with that in mind, I don't think it's appropriate to be overly harsh on it.
With it's fairly simplistic choices and reliance on randomness, fans of 'heavy' games probably won't find much to engage with here, unless they're looking looking for a undemanding filler for around 30 minutes to allow their brains to cool down between other, heavier games.
However, ​I do think that younger players will find the game enjoyable and dice rolling exciting, casual gamers may also find it entertaining.

30th May 2021

It's a Sunday and I'm logged on to Board Game Arena on my PC, time for the first game of the night.

Monk Tybor Kwelein had spent his life cataloguing the 4 kingdoms of plants, fungi, insects and animals in the pages of the titular Codex Naturalis. Now he is no longer with us, will one-to-four other people take up the mantle and carry on his work in the form of a neat little card game.

What's in a game?
Codex Naturalis is a card game and unsurprisingly, has a lot of cards. All the cards are about half the size of normal playing cards which is sensible, as otherwise the game would have a massive footprint, most of the cards share some similar features.

• Starter cards: These cards are double-sided, each side will have 1-4 'visible corners', which is to say these are corners which are 'colourless', 'hidden corners' are corners where the card's art fills the corner.
  Each side will also contain symbols which represent 1-4 of the 4 kingdoms, which may be on the visible corners or in the 'middle' of the card.
• Resource cards: Also double sided; on the 'front' side there will be 2-3 visible corners which may or may not contain kingdom symbols, they may or may not also contain 'objective' symbols. These are a quill, inkpot & manuscript, more on them later. Occasionally, resource cards will score a point.
  The 'back' side of resource cards always have 4 visible corners and a kingdom symbol in the middle of the card.
• Gold cards: As the name suggests, these cards are actually decorated with gold foil and again, they are double sided. On the front they will also have 2-3 visible corners, generally there are no kingdom symbols in the corners, although there may well be objective symbols.
  All gold cards have a requirement in kingdom symbols before they can be played, thus if a gold card displays 3 plant symbols, then the active player must have 3 symbols visible in their playing area before the card can be put down.
  Additionally, all gold cards score points and there are a variety of ways to score.
  Finally, identical to resource cards, the backs of gold cards have 4 visible corners and a kingdom symbol in the middle.
• Objective cards: These are the only cards which are not double sided, the front will show objectives that score extra points at the end of the game if the conditions are met.
  ​There's 2 varieties of objective, some require players having certain resource or objective symbols displayed in their area at the end of the game. The other type requires cards to be placed in specific order and colour, these can be quite tricky to achieve.
• Scoring board: A standard board for tracking player scores.
• Tokens: Standard wooden discs used with the board.

The scoring board and tokens are pretty standard quality game components and perfectly acceptable.
The cards feel very thick and sturdy (Maybe because of the smaller size?) and seem to be made to a high standard, all the gold cards and numerous resource cards are embossed in actual gold foil, which is a really nice touch and despite their small size, most of the cards all have charming, highly detailed monochrome illustrations themed by their colour. Finally, all the cards are coated in a glossy finish.
The only criticism I have is of the small symbols at the bottom of the gold cards, they are quite small and some players have complaint that it can be hard to discern between the symbols, particularly the blue and the green.
Otherwise, these are some of the highest quality card components I've seen and it all comes wrapped up in a compact tin.

How's it play?
Setup

• Shuffle the resource cards and deal 2 into the centre of the play area, the remaining resource cards should be placed adjacent in a face-down deck.
• Shuffle the gold cards and deal 2 into the centre of the play area, the remaining resource cards should be placed adjacent in a face-down deck.
• Deal a starter card to all players, each player can choose which side to use as their starting card.
• Each player now draws 2 resource cards and 1 gold cards from the respective decks.
• Shuffle the objective cards into a face-down deck.
  2 objective cards should be drawn and placed into the playing area face-up, these are common objectives, all players can earn points by completing their requirements.
  2 objective cards should then be dealt to all players, these are secret objectives, each player should select one to keep and discard the other to the bottom objective deck. These cards should be hidden from other players, the owning player can earn points by meeting their requirements.
• Determine a starting player.

On to play
The objective in Codex Naturalis is to create an expanding spread of overlapping cards in their playing area. The basic process of actions to achieve this in Codex Naturalis is simple, a player plays a card, then draws a card, of course there's more to it than that. 

points, this card probably scores the most if you can manage to fill the doughnut hole!​

• Draw card: Once a card has been played, the active player must draw a card, this can be any of the 4 face-up cards or drawn blindly from either the resource of gold face-down decks. A player can never have more than 3 cards in their hand.
  If a face-up card is taken, it's immediately replaced by a card from its respective deck.

The player to the left then becomes the active player.
Play continues one player's score reaches 20 or more, then the endgame is triggered.

Endgame
After the endgame is triggered, the current round is completed, then one final round is played.
After this, players count the score from the cards they've played and then calculates the score they get from completing both common objectives and their secret objective.
Score are tallied and highest score wins!

Overall
Codex Naturalis has simple rules, but also a fairly deep level of gameplay. Despite only having a hand of 3 cards, players are given a wide variety of choices and strategies to pursue when placing cards.

A lot of this comes from the objectives, you'll obviously need to play gold cards to score but it's important not to ignore objectives, scoring from the gold cards will generally put your score into the low-to-mid 20s, but objectives which are scored after the end and can push your score higher, especially since they can be scored multiple times. That everyone has a secret objectives means that the final outcome is not known until the final scoring and keeps the stakes high.
Players must also learn to manage their hands and objectives, there are 4 colours of card, but only 2 of each type of card is ever displayed face-up, it's likely that player's won't always see the cards they need.
Codex Naturalis can also give players agonizing choices because they'll frequently be given the option to cover up a resource or objective symbol with the corner of another card. When that symbol is covered up, it's gone for the rest of the game, forcing players to choose which to prioritise. Only symbols that appear in the middle in of a card cannot be covered.
Finally, because face-up cards never have more than 3 visible corners, players will need to think how to place cards with future placement in mind, the visible corner of a card can be 'locked' by placing another card with a hidden corner adjacent to it. This essentially ends that line of expansion, which can limit options later on.

Codex Naturalis is a little too long for a filler and perhaps a little too short for a main game, which is only a minor quibble really. Otherwise, I found it to be a solid, easy-to-learn, mid-to-light game with good replay value and high production values.
Definitely worth a try.

28th May 2021

It's a Friday night and we've met up at Simon's for some impromptu gaming.

Have you ever had the urge to run around being chased by Dracula? Or The Wolfman, or any other of the Universal movie monsters in a cooperative turn based race against time to defeat them? Then welcome to Horrified.

What's in a game?
Horrified is a cooperative board game in the vein of games such as Pandemic and has some loosely similar rules.

• Board: The main game board depicts what looks like a city but is actually supposed to be a village! It contains a network of roads that link together about 20 suitability inspired locations, such as crypts, museums, docks and laboratories, that's quite a village! It also has a number of linked water based such as a lagoon or a waterfront!
  The board also contains the terror track (Explained below.).
• Monster tiles: There are 6 monster tiles, one for each of the monsters except for Frankenstein's monster and his bride who come as a pair.
  Each tile depicts the special rules for that monster as well as the unique objectives by which it can be vanquished.
  Each tile also has some additional unique game components specific to each board such as coffin markers for Dracula, or the cure for The Wolfman, this includes overlay tiles for some monsters that change a location on the game board.
• Monster figures: The game comes with 7 models to represent the fiendish monsters that the players will be trying to defeat. Among their numbers you'll find Dracula, The Invisible Man, The Mummy and other monsters from the classic Universal movie monsters.
• Character tiles: Just as there are 7 monster models, so there are 7 character tiles. Each character will have a different special ability and 3-5 action points.
• Character standees: Each of the 7 characters will have their own standee.
• Villager standees: No respectable game about nefarious, evil monsters would be complete without hapless villagers for them to prey on. There are 10 villager standees.
• Monster cards: A deck of 30 monster cards used to manage monster behaviour that also serves a countdown timer.
• Perk cards: These cards can be acquired by players and can be played in any player's turn to provide some sort of benefit. There are 20 perk cards.
• Terror marker: Used in conjunction with the terror track.
• Frenzy marker: Used to track which monster is currently frenzied!
• Item tokens: There are 3 types of token, red, blue & yellow, each one is rated in strength from 1-6. Each token also shows in which location on the game board it will appear. Red items are weapons, blue are scientific and yellow are supernatural. Some locations will only get items of one colour, other locations will get differently coloured tokens.
• Draw bag: Used to blindly draw item tokens.
• Dice: 3 identical black 6 siders, but not ordinary ones, 2 sides have an exclamation marks (Power symbol.), 2 have 'hit' symbols and the last 2 sides are blank.

That's it for the most important components, there's no need to list all the small bits that are associated with the monster tiles.
The monster figures seem good quality and stand about 32mm high. All the tiles and tokens are made of suitability thick cardstock, the standees are also fine. The quality of the 2 decks of cards what you'd expect.
​
The game's art is universally good, I particularly liked the board which is eye-catchingly coloured in blue and yellow.
All the art used on the monster components is also excellent, wisely drawing inspiration from its iconic source material, this includes the monster figures which are reasonably sculpted for game pieces and easily recognisable by anyone who knows their universal monsters.
Art on the other tiles, character and villager standees is also good, the same is true for the monster & perk cards.
Item tokens only feature monochrome illustrations and that's fine since the tokens are quite small and there will generally be a lot of them. Besides, just how exciting can you make a clove of garlic or a pitchfork look?

How's it play?
In Horrified, players are tasked with travelling round the board to collect item tokens and use them to complete tasks to make monsters vulnerable, then they can be defeated. All the while, the players must avoid the monsters and also protect the very hapless villagers.
Setup

• Put out the game board and either choose or randomly select 2-4 monsters, depending on the desired difficulty. The tiles must be placed in a specific sequence according to the value frenzy order on each tile, going from left to right and lowest value to highest, the frenzy marker is placed on the tile with the lowest frenzy order. Although it can move to another monster during play.
  Each monster also has it's own unique setup that may require putting overlays or markers on the game board or even the monster tile itself.
  The monster figures should be placed on their starting space.
  Place the terror tracker on the 0 space.
• Shuffle the monster cards into a face-down deck.
• Either choose or randomly select a character tile for each player. Each player should also take the associated standee and place it in the character's respective starting location.
• Shuffle the perk cards into a face-down deck, deal one to each player.
• Blindly draw 12 item tokens from the bag and place them on to their respective locations on the game board.

Now we're ready to go.

On to play
When the active player has their turn, it will be split into a character turn and then a monster turn.
Character turn
Let's start with the character's turn, each character will have 3-5 action points to that the player may spend per turn, they can be spent as follows:

• Move: Spending an action point allows a character to move to an adjacent location. Characters cannot move along the water pathways or to the water locations.
  If a character has 1 or more villagers with them on the same location, then they can drag the villager(s) along with them when they move.
• Guide villager: If a villager is in the same location as the active character, then the villager can be directed to move to an adjacent location for the cost of an action point. Conversely, if a village is in a location adjacent to the active character, then an action point can be spent to bring them to the character's space.
  Villagers are affected by the same movement restrictions as characters.
• Collect: The active player's character may pick up all the item tokens in a location for an action point.
• Share items: For a action point, all characters on the same location as the active player mat share any number of item tokens between themselves.
• Objective: If the conditions are correct; for the cost of an action point, the active character may work towards completing the objective required to make a monster vulnerable, this will require spending item tokens, often the effectiveness of the advance will be increased by higher valued tokens. It's very likely that players will have to take this action multiple times to complete each monster's objective.
• Vanquish monster: It takes an action to defeat a monster once it's objective has been met. The active character must be in the same space as the target monster. It will also require spending tokens as specified.
• Special action: At the cost of an action point, the active character may use their special action.
• Perk cards: it does not require an action point to use a perk card. A perk card can be used in any player's turn.

Monster turn
The monster turn is dictated by the monster card which is drawn. Each monster card has 3 elements to it.

• Items: The number displayed at the top of a monster card determines how many item tokens are blindly drawn and placed on to their relevant locations on the board.
• Event: Each card has an event, if it's a villager, then the named villager is placed on the specified location on the board.
  If it's for one of the monsters in the game, then that event is carried out, events for monsters not in the current game are ignored.
• Monster actions: This is the most complicated part of the monster turn and comes in 2 parts.
  The first part lists which monsters are active on this turn (In that order.), obviously only monsters used in the game become active. It also displays if frenzy applies this turn, what's frenzy? More on that below.
  The second part lists how locations they move and how many dice they use in combat.
  Movement: Monsters move towards the closest prey but will target characters over villagers. Only The Creature can use the water paths and locations, the other monsters follow the same restrictions as the characters.
  Combat: If a monster ends it's movement in the same location as a character or villager, then combat ensues, monsters always attack characters over villagers.
  When attacking a character, the active player rolls 1-3 dice as specified.
  Blanks: Every blank that comes up is a miss, good for the character.
  Hits: Every die that comes up with a hit result means trouble the character, a character may discard a item token to negate a hit, multiple item tokens would be needed to negate multiple hits. If a character takes even a single hit, then they are defeated and placed on the hospital space. When a character is sent to the hospital, increase the marker on the terror track by 1.
  Power: Each result power symbol that comes up will trigger the active monster's special power. Probably not good for the character.
  Villager: If a monster attacks a villager, no dice are rolled, the villager is automatically defeated and meets their fate. Hapless! Additionally, if a villager is defeated, then increase the marker on the terror track by 1.
  Frenzy: If the monster card has a frenzy symbol on the monster actions section, then whichever monster currently has the frenzy token on it gets activated, it's possible that a monster may be activated twice!

So that's it for the monster turn, but one last thing needs to be explained.

• Villagers: Villagers are dropped on to the game board by monster cards. Each villager wants to get to a specific location. If an active character manages to escort the villager there, then the player can draw a card from the perk deck.

Overall
Horrified uses some interesting mechanics that set it apart from similar games.
The asymmetrical objectives that need completing for the different monsters is genuinely inspired game design.
Objectives like curing The Wolfman, solving The Mummy's sliding puzzle or proving the existence of The Invisible Man thematically it fits the monsters and mechanically it adds variety and longevity to the game.
The damage mechanic is also an excellent idea; forcing players to choose which item(s) to discard can be a meaningful and painful decision, choosing either to lose an important token that is needed or a high value other token is tough. It also does away with the need to track health or hit points.
Villagers too, are a good addition, keeping them alive can be a burden, but is also vital to keeping the terror track under control. If character manages to escort a villager to safety, then the reward is a perk card. Perk cards can be extremely useful and turn things around when played at the right time, they can be game winners.

Horrified is a little bit less finicky than it's counterparts but that doesn't make it an easy game, whenever we've won, it was only with a couple of actions in hand and when we've lost, it's been by a few actions as well.
Like every other cooperative game I've played, Horrified uses luck - or bad luck more precisely, to provide a challenge to the players, some bad dice rolls or an unfortunate monster card draw can really throw a spanner in the works. Like all those other cooperative games, how players manage the bad luck is important to victory.
Furthermore, every decision has to count, Horrified is a tightly balanced game. Since there are only 30 monster cards, that means that players basically have 30 turns to win, or on average 120 actions to spend. There's scant time to waste.

Horrified is a fairly accessible, fun to play and well presented game. It's one of the best cooperative games I've played and I'm to play it again.

23rd May 2021

It's Sunday evening and I'm logged into Skype and Board Game Arena​ on my PC and it's time for the final game of the day.

Drafting. Rawr! Dinosaurs. Rawr! T-rexes. Rawr!
Draftosaurus has it all, drafting and well... you get the idea. This is a game where scientists have discovered how to clone dinosaurs and now parks of them are opening everywhere, all in a completely non-copyright infringing manner of course!

Caveat: We've only played Draftosaurus digitally online.

What's in a game?

• Player boards: These boards are double-sided and each provide a slightly different game experience/difficulty. The 'summer' side is easier than the 'winter' side.
  Player boards represent zoos and are divided up into 4 different 'areas'; the grassland and woodland regions and left & right sides of the river, each area contains 3 dinosaur pens. There's some crossover between areas, so grasslands will be found on both side of the river for example and every pen is in 2 different areas, there are a total 6 pens. The player boards also have a 7th area called 'The River', this isn't a pen.
  This is true of both sides of the player boards.
• Dinosaur meeples: There are 6 types of differently coloured dinosaur in the game and 10 meeples of each type, including t-rexes!
• Placement die: This is a 6-sided die, each face has a unique symbol.

Artwork on the player boards is colourful and clear.
There's not much more I can say, I can't talk about the physical components which also include a draw bag.

How's it play?
Draftosaurus is about placing dinosaur meeples into the pens, different pens have different requirements, which is explained below.
Setup

• In the physical game, meeples would be placed into the draw bag, the amount is dependent on the number of players.
• ​Give each player a player board, all boards should be placed on the same side.
• Determine the starting player and give them the placement die, they are the current active player.

Draftosaurus is played over 2 rounds and each round consists of 6 turns, thus each player will get to place a total 12 dinosaur meeples. Turns may and probably will play out differently for players other than the active player.

• Draw meeples: At the start of each round all players draw 6 dinosaur meeples, these should be kept secret by each player.
• Roll placement die: The active player should roll the placement die, the die's result will determine where the other players may place a dinosaur meeple (See below for info.).
  Conversely, the active player can place a dinosaur meeple into any pen they choose.
• Place dinosaur meeple: All players choose a meeple and simultaneously play it, other than the active player, all players must place their meeples as dictated by the placement die.
  ​​Woodland: Other players must place a meeple into 1 of the 3 pens in the woodland area of their board.
  Grassland: Other players must place a meeple into 1 of the 3 pens in the grassland area of their board.
  Left of river: Other players must place a meeple into 1 of the 3 pens that are left of the river.
  Right of river: Other players must place a meeple into 1 of the 3 pens that are right of the river.
  Empty Pen: Other players must place a dinosaur meeple into any empty pen on their board.
  ​Not with a t-rex: Other players can place a dinosaur meeple into any pen that does not contain a t-rex.
  Different pens have different set collecting requirements to score points, one pen requires all the dinosaurs in it to be identical, another requires them to all be different or another only scores for identical pairs and so on, there are 12 different ways to collect and score sets across both sides of the board. Generally, the more you complete a set, the more you score for it.
  Players can choose to (Or may have to!) place meeples in the river, which scores each meeple a flat +1 point.
  T-rexes score bonus points, but depending on the placement die, can cause trouble.
• Pass dinosaur meeples: Once players have placed their chosen dinosaur meeples, every player must pass their remaining meeples to the player to their left.
• Pass placement die: The active player passes the placement die to the player on their left who will become the active player in the next turn.

Play continues until all players have placed 6 dinosaur meeples, then players draw another 6 and play resumes as explained above until another 6 meeples have been placed.

Endgame
Once the 12th and final dinosaur meeple has been placed by all players, the endgame is triggered.
​Players score all of the sets they've created on their board, plus any bonuses or penalties. Highest score wins.

Overall
When playing Draftosaurus, more often than not, players will find themselves having to place meeples into unexpected pens thanks to the placement die. Without this element, the game would be too predictable.
How players deal with, manage and anticipate these these situations is key to victory. Often there will be a conflict between which set to increase or start on and keeping a pen open for another type of dinosaur.
It also pays to try and remember which dinosaur meeples will be coming round.
The winter side of the board makes it harder to collect different sets and provides more challenge but somehow a little less fun?

It's hard to find a lot more to say about Draftosaurus, it's quick, fairly light game to learn and play that's also quite luck based. If you don't like this sort of game, Draftosaurus will probably infuriate you. I think that maybe it's a bit too luck based for me to play extensively.

Not taken too seriously and played as a filler game and Draftosaurus is a reasonable diversion.

23rd May 2021

Sunday night game rolls on and I'm logged into Skype and Board Game Arena.

The final game of the night was Forbidden Island: A cooperative race against time to escape a mysterious island about to be swallowed by the ocean.

Forbidden Island is the older sibling of Forbidden Desert, you can read my blog about it here.

Caveat: We played the game digitally but in the past have played the physical game.

What's in a game?

• ​Tiles: There are 24 square tiles, each one has an illustration that depicts a different location or landscape. These tiles are also double sided, one side features full colour, while the other has a monochrome blue and white illustration of the same subject. 8 of the tiles also display symbols that relate to the 4 figurines (More on figurines below.).
  These tiles are used to represent the titular island.
• Flood cards: These 24 cards correspond to the 24 island tiles. Each flood card has an identical image to the island tile it represents.
• Treasure cards: There are 4 types of treasure card that correspond to the 4 elements, fire, earth, water & air. There are 5 of each type, thus 20 in total.
  Also included among treasure cards are special cards, there are 3 types, Helicopter lift, Sandbag & Waters Rise!
• Player cards: Each player assumes a different role in the game, these 6 different coloured cards explain each role's special ability.
• Pawns: There are 6 differently coloured pawns that correspond with the 6 player cards.
• Figurines: There are 4 figurines, each one is a stylised representation of 1 of the 4 elements and are the game's objectives/treasures.
• Standee: Used to track the rising water level and increasing frequency of flooding that occurs throughout the game.

All the components are made to a level of quality that you'd expect from a modern game. The tiles and standee are appropriately thick, pawns are equally solid, the figurines are fairly chunky and weighty.
Eye-catching, good quality artwork is used on the flood cards & island tiles, they also come with suitably evocative names such as Temple Of The Moon, Cave Of Embers, Breaker's Bridge and so on. Art on the treasure cards is also good and matches the nicely sculpted figurines.
All-in-all, the components are good.

How's it play?
Forbidden Island is a race against time to recover 4 treasures (In the form of the 4 figurines.) and escape the ancient island as it collapses into the ocean waves. Collecting treasures is done by heading to certain locations with a set of cards and acquiring them,
Setup

• Create Island: The island is randomly created each game by shuffling the 24 island tiles and laying them out in a sort of diamond-shape with their coloured sides face-up, this forms the game's 'board'.
• Set difficulty: A marker on the standee is used to track the game's constantly increasing difficulty. There are 3 starting 'notches' for the marker that represent the 3 levels levels of difficulty.
• Begin flooding: The island is already sinking into the ocean as the game begins!
  Shuffle the flood deck and place it face-down, then one-by-one draw 6 cards into the discard pile. For each flood card drawn, flip the corresponding island tile to its blue and white side, these locations are now flooded!
• Deal player cards: Shuffle the player cards and deal one to each player, then place the corresponding pawn on it's starting location as indicated by the island tiles.
• Deal treasure cards: Shuffle the treasure cards into a face-down deck and deal 2 to each player.
• Determine starting order.

On to play
During their turn, the active player will have 3 action points to spend on various actions. Once all players have had a turn, then the game gets to have its turn.

• Actions: There are 4 actions every player can perform, additionally each character will have a unique special ability they can use at the cost of an action point. Actions may be repeated.
  Move: Spending 1 action to move orthogonally to an adjacent tile.
  Shore up: For each action point spent, the active player may flip they are on or an orthogonally adjacent tile from it's flooded side to its normal side.
  Give a treasure card: If you or more characters are on the same tile, the active player may use an action point to give a treasure card to one of the close by characters.
  ​Acquire a figurine: Each of the 4 figurines has 2 island tiles associated with it; if the active player is on one of those 2 tiles and has 4 matching treasure cards, then they can spend an action to acquire that figurine.
  Use ability: Each character has a unique special ability such as being able to move other characters, or being able to move diagonally. Each use of the special ability costs an action point.
• Special cards: Of the 3 types special card, 2 make be used by players in any player's turn. The Waters Rise! card is explained elsewhere.
  Helicopter Lift: Can move any number of characters from any one tile to another tile.
  Sandbag: Can be played to shore up any island tile on the board.
• Draw Treasure cards: Once a player has completed their turn, they draw 2 treasure cards into their hand (Max hand size is 5.). If any of the cards is a Water Rise! card, then this spells trouble for the characters, this affects the flood deck and more on this is explained below.

After every player turn, 'the game' has it's turn, which is done using the flood deck.

• Waters Rise! Strictly speaking, Waters Rise! cards are resolved at the end of a player's turn, but since it affects the flood deck, I'm explaining it here.
  When the active player draws 2 treasure cards, if any of them are revealed to be a Waters Rise! card, then the following occurs.
  Increase flood level: Put the marker on the water level standee up a notch, this may or may not increase the number of cards that will be drawn.
  Shuffle drawn flood cards: All flood cards that have been drawn are shuffled together and placed on top of the flood deck.
  The Waters Rise! card is discarded into the treasure cards' discard pile.
• Flooding: Reveal a number of cards from the flood deck equal to the value that the marker that the water level standee is pointing at, this will be 2-5 cards. Each corresponding tile will be affected as follows.
  Flood: If a tile is 'normal' when it's card comes up, then it is flipped to it's flooded side.
  Sink: If a tile is already flooded when its card comes up, then it sinks! The tile and its flood card are removed from play for the remainder of the game. This can potentially prove dangerous to characters on that tile. Furthermore, characters cannot cross 'gaps' created by sunken tiles, unless it is the diver character.
  After this discard all the revealed cards (That did not cause sinking.) into the discard pile.

That's it for the game's actions, play then progresses to the next player and alternates until the endgame is triggered.
If, during play either of the decks is depleted, simply shuffle the discard pile back into a deck.

Endgame
As a cooperative game, the players collectively win or lose. Forbidden Island has several ways to lose and 1 way to win!

There are 9 'critical' island tiles on the board.
Each figurine has 2 tiles which are used to acquire the it, if both tiles for a figurine sink before it is acquired, then it's game over as there's now no way to get that figurine.
Similarly, if the Fool's Landing island tile (Which contains the helipad sinks.), then there's no way to escape and it's also game over.
If a tile with a character on it sinks, the character must swim to an adjacent tile, if there are no adjacent tiles, then unless that character is the diver, they will meet their water end! If any character is lost then it's game over for all players!
Finally, if the marker on the water level reaches the skull & crossbones, then well.... you get the idea. Glub!
​
Winning; easier said than done!
Any single player must collect 4 identical treasure cards, then must reach one of the 2 island tiles associated with that treasure and spend an action to acquire that treasure's figurine. This must be done for all 4 figurines.
That's not the end though, now all the characters must reach the helipad and a Helicopter Lift card must be played by any player to escape to victory.

Overall
Like other cooperative games I've played, Forbidden Island injects a dose of luck into the gameplay in order to consistently challenge players and how players manage that luck is key to victory.

Broadly speaking the gameplay is; player shores up island - game tries to sink island - player shores up island and so on. Players have to keep the island a safe as possible long enough to survive and get the cards they need to win the game.
It's not as straightforward as it sounds though, the 3 actions points each player is given to do stuff never seems enough. Players have to choose between working towards objectives or saving the island and the clock is always, always ticking.

The way the flood deck works means that tiles which have already suffered a flood will be more prone to suffering further floods because when a Waters Rise! card appears and refreshes the flood deck, cards that were already revealed are put back on the top of the flood deck, meaning they will be the first to be revealed again.
Obviously protecting the critical island tiles is.... well critical but choosing to protect other tiles is a harder choice. Sure you can allow a unimportant tile at the edge of the board to sink and it won't immediately affect the game, however, when a tile sinks, its flood card is removed from the deck, slimming it down and meaning that flood cards for tiles you are trying to protect will appear more often. Keeping cards in the flood deck can act as a buffer against other parts of the islands sinking, provided you're willing to spend the action points of course....

A hand limit of 5 is also another area of the game which forces players to make decisions, just like action points, the hand limit never seems enough.
It takes 4 cards to gain a figurine, giving player's space for only 1 other card in their hand! Through gritted death, players will frequently have to discard useful cards because they're not useful right now.

To win Forbidden Island, the players will need to cooperate, coordinate and optimise the use of action points, they'll need to make every decisions count and use special cards appropriately and decisively.
Choosing when to let a tile sink or save it, or when and what card to give to another player are all vital decisions and most of the time player's will be forced to make compromises, rarely will their decisions be no-brainers.

I find Forbidden Island to be an enjoyable cooperative game and I'm happy to play it.

Sometimes the luck of the draw can go with and give you a slightly easier time or it screw you over (Nothing like drawing Fool's Landing in the starting 6 flooded tiles, drawing Waters Rise straightaway and watching Fool's Landing immediately sink....).
But if it was always easy or fair, what would be the fun it that?

23rd May 2021

Sunday night gaming continues on Board Game Arena.

The second game of the evening was Splendor.
Read my blog about it here.

23rd May 2021

It's a Sunday and I'm logged into Skype and Board Game Arena, ready for an evening of gaming.

The first game of the night was Happy City, a cheerful looking, light engine-building card game about building up a city, a happy city no less. 

Caveat: We've only played this game digitally on Board Game Arena.

What's in a game?

• Happy market cards: These 5 starter cards are double-sided, on one side they are white and on the other each one has one of the different colour/symbols. All happy market cards generate 1 income per turn.
• Building cards: These cards have a cost and a symbol/colour for building type, they may also have a income rating and population or happiness rating that ranges from -1 to +3.
  There are 3 'levels' of building cards, the higher the level the better the card, but the higher the cost.
  Level 1: Cost 1-3 coins to buy.
  Level 2: Cost 4-5 coins.
  Level 3: Cost 6-9 coins.
• Dwelling cards: These cards are similar to standard building cards, except they are only dwellings, thus they only have a cost, population rating and the green symbol.
  There are 3 types/levels of identical dwellings.
  Level 1: Cost 1, population 1.
  Level 2: Cost 3, population 2.
  Level 3: Cost 6, population 3.
• Special building cards: These cards have no cost, instead they have a requirement which must be met with colours/symbols.
• Coins: Standard currency.

I can't comment on the physical quality of the components but all the cards are decorated with colourful and interesting illustrations. The art is excellent.
Symbols are clear and easy to read.

How's it play?
At it's core, Happy City is a tableau-building game, adding cards increases income or score. 
Setup

• ​Give each player a happy market card, this should be put with the white side up in the player's area and represents the beginning of their tableau.
  The building cards should be sorted by level, then each deck should be shuffled. All 3 decks should be placed face-down in the central area to form a column.
• The dwelling cards should be sorted by type and placed in 3 face-up stacks, the number of cards in each stack should be equal to the number of players minus one.
• Shuffle the special building cards and place a line of them face-up in the central area, the number of cards used should be equal to the number of players plus two.
• Give each player 2 coins.
• Determine starting player.

On to play
In Happy City, the starting player's first turn is slightly different to subsequent turns, as explained below.

• Income: At the start of their turn, the active player receives coins equal to their income.
• Draw building card(s): ​In this next stage, there must always be a choice of 3 building cards available for the active player to purchase. Thus, since there are no building cards available at the start of the game, the starting player must draw 3 building cards and place them face-up next to the building decks. The player can select cards from any deck.
  In subsequent turns, the active player may discard a face-up building card before drawing more. Thus the active player will always have the option to draw 1 and maybe 2 cards.
• Take action: The active player can choose from 1 of 3 actions.
  Buy a building card: Pay for a building and place it in their tableau.
  Buy a dwelling: Pay for a dwelling and place it in their tableau.
  Pass and gain a coin: Self explanatory.
• Acquire special card: If the active player has cards in their tableau with colours/symbols that meet the the requirements of a special card, then the active player may take that special card as a free action, players can only ever have 1 special card in their tableau.

Once the active player has completed their action, the player to their left becomes the active player.

Expert game
Happy City has 2 levels of play; family & expert. This blog describes the family version.
The expert game differs in 2 ways.
All the happy market cards are flipped to their differently coloured sides and laid out, then the players draft one to become the starting card in their tableau and giving them some choice in how they start the game.
Special buildings also differ; the family Special cards give players a boost to their income, happiness or population. The expert special cards however, are different, they confer different benefits, sometimes variable and situational.

Endgame
The game continues until a player has 10 cards in their tableau, upon which the current round continues until all players have had an equal number of turns.
Each player's score is calculated by multiplying the total value of happiness symbols in their tableau by all the population symbols.
​Highest score wins.

Overall
Gameplay in Happy City gives players the choice between increasing income or accumulating happiness/population. Income will give the player more buying power but happiness/population contributes towards the end score.
Having 3 decks of building cards at different cost ranges is an interesting mechanic when it comes to drawing cards. The player will always have the option to draw 1 or 2 cards, higher level cards will be better, but may prove more risky to draw. E.g., If a player has 4 coins, drawing a level 1 card will be safe as level 1 cards only cost 1-3 coins each, level 2 cards cost 4-5 coins, so there's a risk that a level 2 card will be unaffordable and will have been drawn pointlessly. It can give players a quandary when drawing building cards.
The game's scoring mechanic also adds an extra layer to decisions, failing to pay attention to how the points are spread between happiness/population can lead to lost scoring opportunities.

While Happy City is simple to learn, enjoyable and fast to play, making it a good filler game, it's perhaps also a little too basic for dedicated gamers. After a few games it was fairly easy to spot an optimal strategy to pursue and it became a race to develop that strategy. So I feel that the game doesn't offer a lot of longevity.
Ultimately, because it's such a light game, it's probably a good game for families or more casual players which is probably who the game is aimed at.

We also played the expert level a few times but felt like it added little to the game.
The varied happy markets are nice and offered a little extra strategy but the expert level special cards weren't so good. The problem was that they seemed harder to acquire than the family special cards, which meant they were acquired later in the game and therefore their benefits were limited, we found it wasn't worth specifically trying to get one, getting one by happenstance was fine, but then that sort of makes having a choice of starting happy market card pointless.
We enjoyed the family version more.
​
The family version is a game I'd play, but not too often.

18th May 2021

Lockdown restrictions are easing and we're meeting at Simon's on a Tuesday IN PERSON for the first time THIS YEAR!

​Today's game was Arkham Horror: The Card Game, you too can have fun watching your character's inevitable spiral into madness as they get caught up in unsettling investigations and tangle with unspeakable Lovecraftian ​horrors through the medium of flipping over cards!

What's in a game?
​The first thing to say about Arkham Horror: The Card Game is that it's actually a Living Card Game, what does this mean? It means it's a game that has lots of expansions, extra character decks, add-ons and so on. This is Simon's game and I have no idea what packs were used, but it doesn't really matter for the purposes of this blog post.

​Unsurprisingly, most of the game's components consist of various types of cards.

• Investigator card& mini investigator card: These cards represent the character that a player uses throughout the game. Each investigator has a special ability along with a rating in each of 4 attributes (Willpower, intellect, combat & agility), finally the character will have health and sanity scores.
  The mini card is used in the actual game and placed on locations cards, the main card is kept in front of the player during play.
• Player deck: Each player in the game has their own 30 card player deck that represents a different investigator/character and consists of numerous different types of player cards, including cards unique to each character. All of a player's actions are done through their deck, this means that different characters will not only have different strengths and weaknesses, but they will also employ widely differing strategies when approaching a problem or obstacle.
  Skill cards: These cards will give the investigator a benefit to a specific skill roll and are only played when the player chooses to attempt the pertinent skill roll. Skill cards are discarded after one use.
  ​Event Card: Can be played to give the investigator some sort of situational benefit or bonus, as with skill cards, event cards are discarded after one use.
  Asset cards: Assets can be items, clothes, weapons or even people. When assets cards are played they stay in play and provide an ongoing benefit until destroyed/discarded. There are limits to the number of asset cards a investigator can have in play at any one time.
  Weakness cards: Every investigator has flaws and foibles, these are represented by weakness cards. Every player deck must include them, when they appear, they will hinder the investigator in some way or other.
• Location cards: These double-sided cards represent places that the investigators can go to investigate. Initially, they will be face-down and when an investigator arrives there, they'll be flipped over and the investigator must deal with with whatever is revealed.
• Encounter cards: Inevitably, the players will trigger encounters during play and this being a Cthulhu Mythos game; don't expect them to be pleasant!
• Act cards: This series of cards will represent narrative that drives the characters investigation.
  Agenda cards: As play progresses, so will events in the investigation, represented by the agenda cards.
• Damage tokens: There are 2 types of damage token, for health and sanity.
• Clue/Doom tokens: These double-sided tokens are used to represent clues that the investigators find or the onset of well.... doom!
• Resources: Along with clues, resource tokens are the game's main currency, often spent to activate or track abilities or assets.
• Chaos tokens: Used as the game's randomiser, they range in value from +1 to -8! Some tokens have special symbols that can trigger events in the investigation or investigator abilities.
• Chaos bag: What the tokens go into.

LEGO not included! Some of the photos will include Lego. Let me make it clear; this game does not include any Lego! Simon put together Lego minifigs that looked like the premade character deck portraits. Why? What else is a boardgamer going to do during lockdown.
All of the tokens and cards are made to the typical quality that are expected from games nowadays.
From the cards that I did get to see, they contain a lot of high quality artwork. Iconography is generally easy to read.

How's it play?
In Arkham Horror: The Card Game player's take the role of characters investigating into the Cthulhu Mythos through the form of scenarios and campaigns in a RPG-esque experience that shares the same setting as the seminal Call of Cthulhu RPG.
Setup

• Player decks: Players construct 30 card decks using the available cards. There some restrictions on what cards are used at any time specific time and some cards have levels and must be 'bought' with experience points.
  Alternatively there are several premade character decks that can be bought, which is what we used.
  Player decks are then shuffled and each player draws a hand of 5 cards.
• Resource tokens: each player takes 5 resource tokens.
• Populate chaos bag: Put the pertinent chaos tokens into the chaos bag, not all tokens are used in every scenario, this means that results drawn from the bag will alter according to the scenario's requirements.
  Interestingly; during campaign play, the same spread of tokens is used in the bag throughout the campaign, however, in-game events can cause tokens to be permanently added or removed from the bag, having a ongoing effect during the campaign.
  It's a clever mechanic in my opinion.
• Create scenario location: By placing the location cards face-down the game area is created, they are put in a certain order, such as a 3x3 or 2x3 grid or whatever and is dictated by the scenario. A scenario might take place in a nightclub with cards representing different rooms, a university campus with cards for different facilities or even a town with cards for different buildings.
• Construct act deck: Specific act cards are placed face-up stack in a particular order as dictated by the scenario. 
• Construct agenda deck: Agenda cards placed face up in a stack as dictated by the scenario. 
• Construct encounter deck: Again dictated by the scenario, the encounter deck is however, shuffled and placed face-down.

Overall
Arkham Horror: The Card Game has some interesting gameplay dynamics, the exploration and investigation elements blend quite well the unpredictable changes brought about by the changing of the agenda and act decks. Players can't take anything for granted as twists and unexpected events occur. Challenges and enemies provided by the encounter deck are varied and interesting.
Finally, I like how the chaos bag works, I like how it's stacked against the characters and playing skill and event cards is how tests are overcome, it's suitably pessimistic. I also like how the bag's effect on gameplay can be tailored and can evolve over a campaign. It's a nice mechanic.

This brings me to the campaign play, campaign scenarios seem to feature at least 3-4 outcomes that influence the next scenario with interesting changes, which is pretty good.
Characters also earn experience points from scenarios, these points can be used to buy better cards to swap into the player deck, progressively making characters better.
Being a living card game, there are a lot of accessories, expansions and extra campaigns available to purchase, these can extend the game

Rules-wise, there are a lot of rules in Arkham Horror: The Card Game about specific situations and events. Despite this, as a game it's actually in some ways fairly straightforward, player's have three actions to perform per round, that never quite feels like enough, which makes you have to prioritise and try to come up with optimal strategies, which is a good thing.
However, like other games I've played that try to provide GM-less RPG-like gameplay, the game gets fiddly and complex when managing 'GM' elements and this seems to be where the bulk of the rules are applied, especially to enemy behaviour.
It seems like a lot of effort for what somehow ultimately feels a little bit like average gameplay. The rules and glossary run to over 30 pages, in contrast, there're Cthulhu Mythos inspired pen and paper RPGS that have lower page counts.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy playing Arkham Horror: The Card Game because I did, I'm just glad that I played with someone familiar with the game.

10th May 2021

Monday night gaming is on the cards, I'm logged into Zoom and Tabletopia and ready to go!

We played Architects of the West Kingdom, read my blog about it here.

22nd April 2021

Lockdown restrictions are beginning to ease here in the UK and people can now meet up outside, so for the first time since I can't remember I'm meeting up with friends in real life!  It's a Thursday evening and we're at a pub; The Cricketers in Horsell, Woking.

The air got a mild chill as the sun went down and between all the chat we managed to play a game of Sushi Go. Read my thoughts about it here.