2024 is over and my blogging backlog has not decreased.

2024 was a big in terms of playing board games - more games were played if my counting is correct.

2024
Number of different games played: 178.
Of which were new (To me.): 78.
Total number of gaming sessions: 704.

Compared to '23

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

The number of games played were up by 20 which is nearly 2 a month.
New games to me were 78 which interestingly is almost identical to '23.
Sessions though, is up by nearly 130! This is quite a lot, it means nearly 5 extra game sessions occurred every week! How did that happen?

The top 5 games I played in 2024 were:

1. Tranquility: 50 sessions.
2. Just One, Railroad Ink & Splendor: 35 sessions
3. Can't Stop: 26 sessions.
4. Roll'n Bump: 25 sessions.
5. Sushi Go!: 22 sessions.

50 sessions of Tranquility, nearly once a week! It's easy to understand why; Tranquility is a pleasant, slightly undemanding cooperative experience that we frequently play as a palate cleanser after something more high-intensity. We tend to win Tranquility when we play it but occasionally, it throws a curve ball!
Just one remains popular with us, it's joined by Splendor and somewhat surprisingly (Considering it's disliked by 'someone' we play it with!) by Railroad Ink.
​The list is rounded off by Can't Stop, Roll'n Bump & Sushi Go!, all perennial favourites that are played as fillers or enders.

OK, now on to what's really important - The 'industry defining' 'prestigious' 3 Spellcasters and a Dwarf annual gaming awards.

Game of the year: Daybreak
Sometimes a game comes along that immediately announces its quality and in this instance it's Daybreak, a game about saving the environment. From the packaging and components, to mechanics and theme and even small details like putting QR codes on cards to provide extra info, Daybreak is something noteworthy.
More than that; it's presentation highlights some of the stark obstacles we will all face in the future.

Disappointment of the year: Horrified: Greek Monsters
The excellent formula that powers the original Horrified just doesn't quite work in this iteration. I've played 4 different versions of Horrified and this is easily thematically the weakest.
I never felt I was battling against the monsters of Greek mythology. It felt like what it seems to be; a reskin with slightly different monster mechanics.

Surprise of the year: Sky Team
I'm always a bit wary of 2-player only games, they often seem to resort to direct competition with your opponent.
I'm happy to say that with regards to Sky Team, I'm wrong. 
Sky Team is cooperative dice-placement game where the 2 players take the asymmetrical roles of pilot and co-pilot. 
It has fantastic presentation with mechanics that fit it's theme.

Honourable mention: Things in Rings
Things in Rings is a wacky kind of party game about deductive logic and trying to discover the hidden phrases on 3 cards.
It's a brilliant lightweight game, however, for me it's a semantic nightmare that drives me crazy and is unlike anything else I've played. it means I have to get a copy.

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.

28th March 2023

Tuesday is here again and we're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns for an evening of gaming goodness.

Game of the night is Istanbul.

Ah, Istanbul, home of an ancient settlement and exotic gateway between the east and the west...
...Also a place where frenzied merchants rapidly push wheelbarrows around the bazaar, trailed by assistants while looking to acquire rubies in this worker placement game.

The component quality is good for nearly all of Istanbul.
The game makes good use of wooden components and dice which is always good. All the cardboard tokens and tiles are sturdy enough. The cards are also good.
It's all the quality you'd expect from a modern game.
The only criticism I have is that fitting the extensions into the wheelbarrow feels fiddly and when trying to put in the final extension it can be too tight and wont fit properly. It's a minor oversight that doesn't affect the game experience but it could have been a bit better.

There's unique artwork on all the location tiles. Even though it uses a pretty standard style of illustration, I think it looks good and gives the game a eye-catching presence on the table. I also feel that it's quite suitable, being evocative and colourful without obscuring important information.

Iconography in Istanbul is a bit of a mixed bag. Much of it is easily understood but the occasional icon and in particular, bonus cards will find players leafing through the rulebook for clarification.
This is fairly infrequent though and is a minor inconvenience rather than detrimental

How's it play?
Setup

• Players: Give each player the merchant, assistant, family member tokens and cubes in their colour.
  Wheelbarrow: Each player should take a wheelbarrow tile, then place their 4 cubes on the 4 'empty' spaces on their goods tracks.
  When players gain goods, they move the cube along the respective track.
  You will note at the game start, players can only have 2 of each good. By acquiring extensions, players can eventually hold up to 5 of each good.
• Tiles: The 16 location tiles will need to be put out in a 4x4 grid. This can be done either by using 1 of the 2 predetermined setups or randomly - although there are some restrictions using the random method. Additionally, many of the locations will have further setup.
  • Caravansary: Shuffle the bonus cards into a face-down deck and place them close to the caravansary.
  • Fountain: Each player should create a stack of 5 tokens with the the merchant token at the top and 4 assistants beneath and place their stack on the fountain location tile.
    The 5th assistant token should be set aside for the time being, they can be acquired during play.
    Gemstone dealer: Place rubies on the gemstone dealer location tile as per player count.
  • Markets: Sort the demand tiles into their 2 types. Shuffle each into a face-up stack and place them on to their respective market tiles.
  • Mosques: Sort the mosque tiles by type/colour, then sort each stack by goods cost, with the lowest at the top and highest cost at bottom. Then place 2 stacks on each of the 2 mosque tiles.
    Rubies: Finally add rubies to each mosque as per player count.
  • Police station: Each player should place their 'family member' cylindrical token on the police station location tile.
  • Post office: The post office has 2 rows of 4 spaces, place the 4 mail cubes along the upper row on the post office location tile.
  • Sultan's palace: Place rubies on the Sultan's palace location tile as per player count.
  • Wainwright: Place rubies and wheelbarrow extensions on the wainwright location as per player count.
  • Governor & smuggler: Roll the dice for each, then place their tokens on the location with the matching number.
• First player: Determine a starting player.
  The starting player should take 2 Lira, the next player gets 3 Lira, 3rd gets 4 Lira and so forth.
  Bonus card: Each player should draw a bonus card.

On to play
In Istanbul, players are attempting to acquire 5 or 6 rubies (Dependant on player count.) and the game provides a variety of methods to achieve this.
Istanbul follows the usual turn structure with the active player completing their turn before play progresses to their left.

During their turn, the active player will act in 2-4 phases - depending on circumstances.
The 4 phases always occur in the order shown below.

• Movement: The active player can move their stack of tokens up to 2 spaces during this phase, this cannot be diagonal and when the stack reaches its destination, one of the following must occur.
  • Drop off assistant: The active player takes one of the assistant tokens out of their stack and places it elsewhere on the same location tile.
  • Pick up assistant: If the active player already has an assistant token on the location space they stopped at, then they can add it back into their stack.
  • Pass: If the active player cannot or does not want to drop off or pick up an assistant, then their turn ends immediately unless the active player ended up at the fountain!
• Encounter merchant: This phase is conditional and if the active player ended their movement in a location tile with 1 or more merchants that belong to other players, then the active player must pay those players 2 Lira each.
  If they cannot or do no want to pay, then the active player's turn ends immediately, this does not occur if they stopped at the fountain.
• Action: This phase represents the bulk of gameplay and the active player may now choose to undertake the action for the tile they stopped at.
  There a quite a few actions a player can perform.
  • Black market: When the player's merchant is at the black market, they can gain 1 green/red/yellow good.
    Additionally, they should roll the 2 dice, the result will grant them 0-3 blue goods.
  • Caravansary: The active play draws 2 bonus cards into their hand and then discards 1 bonus card.
    When drawing cards from being at the caravansary location, the active player may choose to draw from the discard pile instead.
  • Fountain: When the active player's merchant is at the fountain, they can recall any number of their assistant tokens back into their stack.
  • Gemstone dealer: Here the active player may purchase a ruby. The more rubies that are purchased throughout the game, the more they will cost.
  • Market: When a merchant stops at one of the 2 markets, they can sell goods matching the demands on the current demand card. The more matching goods they sell, the more they earn. Each of the markets will determine how much the player earns.
    Regardless of how many goods are sold, the current demand tile is put at the bottom of the stack and a new demand tile is revealed.
  • Mosques: When a merchant stops at one of the 2 mosques, they can acquire one of the 2 mosque tiles there.
    To do so, the player's wheelbarrow must be carrying the goods that match was is shown on the top mosque tile. However, acquiring a tile costs only 1 good of the displayed tile.
    Once a mosque tile is taken, a more expensive version will be revealed beneath.
    Players can only have copy of each type of tile regardless of where they acquired it from.
  • Police station: When a player's merchant stops at the police station and if their family member is there, then the player can 'free' their family member.
    Since their family member 'knows how to get stuff', the player can immediately place the family member token on any other space and trigger its action. The family member does not have encounters and does not benefit or is restricted in that way.
  • Post Office: If the active player's merchant stops at the post office, they acquire all the items shown on the 4 uncovered spaces.
    After this, they must slide the leftmost cube on the upper row to the space directly below, thus changing the resources earned by the next merchant to stop here.
    When all 4 cubes are on the lower row, the next merchant to stop at the post office will claim their resources and put all 4 cubes back on the upper row.
  • Sultan's palace: When a merchant stops here, the player can trade goods for a ruby.
    As with the gemstone dealer, the more rubies that are acquired here, the more costly they become to trade for.
  • Tea house: Time for some friendly gambling! When a merchant stops here, the player announces a number from 3-12, then they roll both dice.
    If the rolled number is equal to or greater than the announced number, then the active player acquires Lira equal to the number they announced.
    If the number was lower, then they take 2 Lira.
  • Wainwright: Stopping here allows the merchant's player to buy an extension for their wheelbarrow. Once the 3rd and final extension has been acquired, the player can acquire 1 ruby from the wainwright tile.
  • Warehouses: There are 3 warehouses, one each respectively for green, red and yellow goods.
    If a merchant stops at a warehouse, they can fill the related good on their wheelbarrow to the maximum amount.
• Other encounters: As with the other encounter phase, this is conditional and depends on what tokens are also on the location where the active player's merchant stopped.
  • Other players' family members: If a merchant encounters the family member of another player on their location, they must snitch on them to the cops!
    This earns the active player 3 Lira or a bonus card.
  • Governor: When the governor token is on the same location as a player's merchant, the player can draw bonus card, then they must discard a bonus card or pay 2 Lira.
    After encountering the governor, roll 2 dice and move the governor's token to the location with the number that matches the dice roll.
  • Smuggler: When the smuggler is encountered, the active player may gain the good of their choice, they must then discard a good of their choice or play 2 Lira.
    As with the governor, after encountering the smuggler, roll the dice and relocate the smuggler to the new location.
• Bonus cards: These are not part of any phase in particular and the active player may play any number of bonus cards during at any time during their turn.

Endgame
The game end is triggered when any player acquires the required number of rubies.
​Play continues for the current round until all participants have had equal turns.
Finally, each player will have the option to play unused bonus cards, since Lira and goods act as a tie-breaker this can be important.

Rubies are tallied, highest amount wins.

Overall
I don't know whether it's deliberate or not but there's a slightly cynical thread of humour running through Istanbul. 
It's an amusing facet of the game that merchants are useless without assistants to boss around or how everyone has that one shady cousin who 'knows someone' or 'can get you stuff'.
Thematically, the game is presented quite well.
Your merchant and their little band go from place to place, looking to earn money or get goods in order to eventually gain rubies.

Mechanically, Istanbul is relatively straightforward. While there's quite a lot of tiles and consequently a lot going and a lot to think about and possibly remember, none of it in practice is actually overly complex.
Istanbul presents players with the conundrum of balancing the need to increase their abilities via mosque and extension tiles or trying to acquire rubies.
Broadly speaking, the game game provides some one-off way of gaining rubies but two main avenues to accumulating them - which are by spending goods or spending Lira and then providing several ways to acquire goods and Lira.
It means that Istanbul is a game of planning efficient moves and maximising actions. This is particularly the case when dropping off or picking up assistants. Well thought out play will allow a player to do this without visiting the fountain which requires an entire turn to gather assistants.

While the game is essentially a race without direct conflict between players, there's still some interaction that goes on.
There is arguably a higher level of play where players could try and anticipate the actions of their opponent allowing them to block opponents by putting their merchant on specific locations, forcing other players to pay out to go there or preventing them entering all together. However, this tends to occur by accident more than design.
Another area of interaction is at the markets, the more goods sold a player can sell an once at a market, the more money that player earns but taking longer to do this risks being trumped by another player fulfilling the demand tile earlier.
So players will need to occasionally adapt to situations as needed as well as planning their actions.

Istanbul does a good job balancing varied gameplay, strategy and meaningful decisions with ease-of-play, although I'm not sure I would describe it as entirely suitable for non-gamers but core gamers should have no problems comprehending the game
It also has a novel and clever implementation of worker placement mechanics which provide some satisfying moments when used effectively.

This is a mid-weight game with a somewhat lengthy play time - although it never felt overlong or unwelcome. I found it to be an enjoyable worker placement game. Istanbul   is a game that's definitely worth trying.

12th March 2023

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

'None shall pass.'

Don't worry, I was done with the Monty Python quotes years ago!

None Shall Pass is a cooperative, turn based battle game inspired by the 8bit JRPGs of old where the players take on the roles of 'guards' facing evil monsters 

Caveat: We have only ever played this game digitally.

What's in a game?

• Tiles: None Shall Pass! uses numerous tiles, boards and cards to track both players and monsters.
  Monster board: This board is used to track the health or hit points (HP) and attack strength of whichever enemies appear.
  ​Finally, there's a breach track that goes from 5 to 0 and is used to track time - or lack of it specifically!

• Dice: The game comes with a set of dice in each player colour. There are 3 normal six-siders in each set.
• Tokens: Tokens are used to track enemy monster stats as well as player stats such as HP and XP.

None Shall Pass! draws its inspiration for art from the same source as it draws its inspiration for gameplay - which is turn-based 8bit JRPGs.

I'm sort of conflicted about this art style.
8 bit pixel art has been done to death on a wide range of video and computer games seeking to invoke nostalgia over the last few years and doesn't have much appeal to me anymore. Having said that, it's a fairly uncommon style in board games and gives 'None Shall Pass!' a unique appearance with at least a little charm.

There's very little iconography in None Shall Pass! and what there is of it, is easily recognised: A heart represents HP, a blue shield means defence and a sword means attack power and so on.
All remaining game information is relayed via text.

How's it play?
Setup

• Players: Have each player choose one of the character classes (Called guards here.) and take their relevant character cards.
  These cards should be put into 3 stacks of 2 cards each and arranged so that the level 1 side is face-up at the top of each stack. The 3 stacks should then be arranged so that the activation numbers run sequentially from 1-6.
  Dice: Each player should take the 3 dice in their colour.
  XP: Each player takes 2XPs worth of XP tokens.
  4 Characters: If there are less than 4 player's, extra characters must be controlled by the players to bring the character count up to 4.
• Monster board: Put out the monster boards.
  Monster cards: Sort all enemy cards by level and shuffle them into face-down stacks. Take 1 card from each stack and create a deck of 5 face-down cards with the level 1 monster on the top, going down to the level 5 boss at the bottom.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
None Shall Pass! is a cooperative game where the players are trying to defeat all 5 monsters in the monster deck.
Each round is broken down into 2 phases.
During the first phase, the players will act in turn order and during the second phase, the enemy monster will counter attack.

• Round start: The following occurs at the start of each round.
  • Reveal monster: At the start of the game reveal the level 1 monster. Additionally, if at the start of any round where there is no monster available (Because the previous one was defeated.), reveal a new monster.
    Monster stats: When a monster is revealed, set the HP and damage tokens  on the monster board to the values as shown on it's card.
    Breach: Set the token on the breach board to '4'.
  • Roll dice: Each player rolls their 3 dice and places each one above the character card with the matching activation number.
  • Defeated character: If a character had taken more damage than their health from the monster in the previous, they are incapacitated. Incapacitated characters are not dead but do not roll dice and instead spend their turn healing.
• Player phase: During this phase, each player performs 1 or possibly 2 actions in turn order.
  • Activate action: The active player can activate an action that corresponds the result of one of their dice.
    Thus if they rolled 1, 2, & 5, they can perform one of the actions on their character cards that respond to those numbers.
    Rolled a 6: If active player has a 6 on one of their dice, they can activate the action for the 6 in addition to the action from another die.
    Triples: If the active player rolled triples, they can activate any 2 actions of their choice or a single action twice!
    Resolve action: Typically, actions will harm the monster in some way by decreasing HP or attack strength, actions will also commonly assist characters. A few actions affect the breach number or gift characters with bonus XP.
    Peril: Once the active player's action(s) have been resolved, they must move the die that used to active the action to the peril board. The die goes on the space indicated by the peril number on the activated skill.
    If a action that was activated has a peril number of '3', the die must go on to space 3 on the peril board.
    Spend XP: Players may spend XP to flip one of their character cards. to the next level at any time, giving them access to improved abilities.
    Each character card can increased to level 4.
    Next player: Once the active player has completed their turn, play progresses to the player on their left.
• Monster phase: Once all players have taken their turns, play then progresses to the monster.
  • Monster action: The monster now activates its action. There are a variety of actions that can occur but usually it involves attacking and damaging characters.
    Target: The monster will always attack the character the furthest up the peril board, if more than 1 character is furthest up, it will target all of them or split damage between them.
    Decrease breach: Move the token on the breach board down a space.
    If the breach token reaches '0', the monster has managed to escape the players. It is removed from the game, a new round begins by revealing a new monster.
    Players do not get XP for monsters that escaped.
    Defeated monster: If the players managed to reduce the monster HP to 0 during the player phase, then the monster phase is skipped entirely. A new round begins by revealing a new monster.
• Next round: Once the monster has had it's action, play progresses to the next round, either by continuing to fight the current monster or revealing a new one.

Endgame
If the players reach the 5th level boss monster and it's breach score is reduced to '0', the player immediately lose.

If however, they manage to reduce the monsters HPs to '0', then the players collectively win!

Overall
With its pixel art style and turn based combat, None Shall Pass! does a good job of invoking its JRPG theme of having the party stand in a row and attacking enemies! None Shall Pass! also manages to seem a little bit like a 'boss-rush' game.
The game also feels a little different to many cooperative games. There's no firefighting in None Shall Pass!, no need to halt the spread of something malignant here, or need to prevent something from being destroyed.

Mechanically, None Shall Pass! is mostly easy to understand.
The game has a good selection of character classes to choose from, all of whom genuinely feel quite different and offer a variety of actions.
The Death Strider who does more damage, the more hurt they become and the Stargazer with their solar and lunar aspects were stand out classes for me.

During their turn, a player will be presented with a choice of 1 or 2 of up to 3 actions from a total of 6 actions and the dice will to a certain extent dictate player choices.
Broadly speaking players will looking to hinder monsters or buff characters in some way or another with maximum efficiency.

Monsters need to be defeated as quickly as possible and every round a monster isn't defeated, it goes to slipping away and loosing XP for the heroes.
While this might not seem so bad, being underpowered when fighting the boss will make ultimate loss more likely.

Players will also need to be mindful of the peril number of their chosen action. Players will need to coordinate who goes to the top of the peril track and make sure they can deal with the incoming monster attack if possible. While getting incapacitated isn't the end of the world, it will mean the character will miss at least 1 following turn.
In fact, players will need to coordinate all of the time to work effectively and play off each others' strengths, strategies for this can radically change according to the mix of characters.

Players will also need to think about how they spend their XP. The power of abilities will be altered by level ups and even the ability to gain XP can be levelled up! This will effect how battles are approached
None Shall Pass! is quite rightfully harsh in this regard, I never felt like I had enough XP and it was always a difficulty, meaningful decision deciding what to upgrade.

However, while playing None Shall Pass! was fun, there was something a little lacking.
​It's a RPG-like game without the storytelling, adventuring, exploration and finding treasure - things I strongly associate with fantasy RPGS. Some kind of quest or story mode would have been a welcome addition. I just wish were was a little more 'meat on the bones'.
Additionally, despite the variety in classes and randomness the dice bring, I'm not too sure how much replayability the game has.
I think there's about 5 monsters each in every level and while that means there will be a lot of combinations that can appear, once you've seen a monster - you've seen it.

We still play the game occasionally and personally I'm happy to do so on those occasions, avoid overplaying None Shall Pass! in my opinion and it'll be an enjoyable experience.

7th March 2023

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

'It's so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.' - Paul Cezanne.

Canvas is a game about creating paintings - well sort of and you actually start with a blank canvas - well sort of!

The tokens are all constructed from suitably thick card stock and feel satisfyingly sturdy. The tuck box is made from the same material used for tuck boxes that contain decks of cards and like those boxes, it's fairly flimsy but unless it's mistreated, it should be fine.
​The scoring cards are made of standard card.

For a game about art, as you might expect, there's a lot of art in Canvas. However, it's all 'patchwork' art that comes in small elements which during the course of the game, players will combine to make their sort of own artwork.
Canvas provides lots of these small pieces of art in a variety of styles and sizes. It's hard to say whether it's good or bad because it's not meant to constitute finished art. Regardless of that, it all looks OK to me. Certainly, there's a lot of bright colour going on, which is something I like.

While Canvas uses an average-ish amount of iconography, I found some of it to be rather abstract and counter-intuitive.
The bonus silver ribbons and colous are easily understood, but triangle representing shape and a striped box representing texture?
It's also complicated a little further by whatever the scoring criteria are on the scoring cards which seemed not quite as simple as they could be. Players especially need to be aware of the scoring criteria
It's a bit of a steep curve but ultimately not a gamebreaker though and requires some learning.

How's it play?
Setup

• Game mat: Put out the game mat.
  Scoring cards: Either use a chosen selection or randomly deal 4 scoring cards into the 4 spaces on the matt.
  Art cards: Shuffle the art cards into a deck and place them into the tuck box, then place the tuck box on to the rightmost space on the game mat. Deal 5 cards from the tuck into the 5 available spaces.
• Players: Give each player the following.
  Background cards: Give each player 3 background cards, these should be in  transparent sleeves.
  Inspiration tokens: Give each player 4 inspiration tokens.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Canvas, each player is creating 3 paintings - which will be created by layering 3 art cards over a background card. Once a painting is created, it will earn ribbon as per the scoring criteria. Then, once the game is over, ribbons will earn VPs.
Canvas uses a traditional turn order with the active player acting, then play progressing to the player on their left.

During their turn, the active player in basic terms has 2 choices.

• ​Draft art card: The active player may draft 1 of the 5 available art cards into their hand with the following restrictions.
  Cost: The active player may take the leftmost art card for free but any card further along must be paid for with inspiration tokens. 1 token must be placed on every card that is 'skipped'.
  Acquire tokens: Conversely, the active player may collect any tokens on a art card which they draft.
  Conveyor belt: Once a art card has been taken from the drafting track, cards are slid to the left to fill the gap and a new card is added to the rightmost space.
  Max hand: A player can never have more than 5 art cards in their hand at any time. If a player has collected 5 arts, they cannot draft anymore and must instead create a painting.
• Create painting: When a player has 5 art cards in hand, they must create a painting, if they have 3 or 4 art cards, they can choose to create a painting.
  ​Exactly 3 art cards are required to create a painting.
  Creating a painting is technically easy; the active player takes 3 of their art cards and layers them on top of each other in any order they see fit and them places them into one of the sleeves with a background card.
  Score artwork: The active player then scores the newly created artwork.
  The artwork will be scored across all 4 scoring cards.
  Only visible scoring icons can be scored, that is, any that were covered by other icons are not scored.
  ​A painting will earn ribbons of the corresponding colour for meeting each scoring card's scoring criteria. It is possible to earn more than 1 ribbon from a scoring card by meeting it's criteria more than once. Additionally, silver ribbon scoring on actual art cards may provide extra ribbons.
• Next Player: Once the active player has either drafted or created, play progress to the player on their left.

Endgame
Once a player has created 3 paintings, their turns are skipped, once all player have created 3 paintings, the game ends and goes to scoring.

Players should now sort their ribbons by colour.
Each scoring card will determine how many victory points (VPs) its set of coloured ribbons will score.
Silver ribbons earn 2 VPs each.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
​Canvas merges its theme with its central mechanic quite well and I have to say it's a a fairly unique mechanic I quite like that also feels fresh. I also like how the game produces some pretty unusual names for the paintings.

Canvas is in implementation, a fairly straightforward game, it utilises familiar drafting and conveyor belt mechanics commonly seen elsewhere. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a good crossover game as I feel the scoring rules are a little obtuse but gamers should have no problems understanding Canvas.

Where the game's depth comes from is in the creation of paintings.
Players can freely choose to layer the art cards they choose to use how they wish but any scoring icons that are not visible are not scored.
This puts players into a quandary, they will need to not just select the art cards for a painting that provide them the best scoring opportunities but also how to layer those art cards to do so!
Furthermore, over multiple plays, the wide choice of scoring cards will force players to approach game slightly differently. Between this and the variety of art cards, there's a lot of replicability to the game.

Thus players must carefully draft whatever cards they might need as well as think about how to use them.
Synergy between cards is key to optimal scoring but I found it was quite hard to get the mix of icons that I wanted and I'm sure that Canvas is one of those games where players will rarely get the 'perfect scoring' they want.
That's a good thing because it means players will have to choose between choices and are pushed to make meaningful decisions, although I must admit that I found it sometimes veered to being close to frustrating instead of challenging.

There's not much more to say really; Canvas is a game that's quick to pick up and relatively quick to play with a easily understandable theme that meshes well with gameplay that feels a little different to anything else.
It's a game definitely worth trying especially if you're looking for a game that has some unique elements.

5th March 2023

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

​Tranquility: The Ascent is the follow up to the rather good Tranquility and employs similar mechanics, only instead of crossing an ocean, in Tranquility: The Ascent, players are cooperatively climbing a mountain.

Caveat: We've only ever played Tranquility: The Ascent digitally.

What's in a game?

• Panorama cards: These triangular cards are used to form the base of the mountain and thus the base of the playing area.

Tranquility: The Ascent features the same pleasant, colourful and slightly stylised artwork found in its predecessor.
This time however, obviously depicting a variety of harsh hilly and mountainous terrain, up to and including a cold, inhospitable looking snowy peak.
In the digital version unfortunately, much of the art is obscured by large numbers, which is a shame as I quite liked it.

The game uses colours and numbers and other than the illustrations for campfire cards and the like has no iconography. Players should have no trouble at all comprehending Tranquility: The Ascent.

How's it play?
Setup

• Panorama cards: Set out the panorama cards in a row. This row represents the lowest level of the playing area.
• Bridge cards: First, a starting player must be determined.
  ​Then as per the player count, give bridge cards to the relevant players. These cards should be kept separate from other cards for the time being.
• Shuffle cards: Next, add the remaining bridge cards to all the other cards and shuffle them into a face-down deck.
• Deal cards: All cards should dealt out to face-down all players as equally as possible so that each player has their own personal deck.
• Draw hand: If player has a bridge card, then they should draw 4 cards from their personal deck into their hand and then add their bridge to their hand for a total hand of 5 cards.
  Players starting without a bridge card should simply draw a hand of 5 cards.

On to play
In Tranquility: The Ascent, players are attempting to collectively create a pyramid of cards. This is done by playing a row of cards and then playing further rows above and so forth. In total, during a successfully completed game, there will be 9 rows of 44 cards.
The game uses a traditional turn structure with the active player acting before play progresses to the player on their left.
During their turn, the active player has a choice of 2 actions.

• Play card: The active player may play an ascent card from their hand into the central playing area with the following provisos and restrictions
  • First card: When the first card on a row (Including the bottom row.) is played, it must be on the furthest left on that row.
  • Adjacent: After the first card has been played in a row, all further cards must be played adjacent to cards on that row with the following restrictions.
    • Different colour: 2 adjacent cards cannot have the same colour, they must be different. This also applies to campfire cards
    • Matching or higher number: When playing an ascent card, it's number must be equal to or higher than the row it is played into.
      I.e., a 1 value card can only ever be played in the bottom row. While only cards with a value of 8+ can be played in to the 8th row. It is OK to place cards with higher numbers into lower rows. E.g., a 6 can be placed on to the 2nd row.
    • Above: A card can be played on a higher row provided there are at least 2 cards directly beneath it.
    • Cost: Once an ascent card is placed, the active player must potentially pay a cost which involves discarding cards equal to the difference between the card they played and the card they played it next to.
      ​If the 2 cards have identical numbers, then the cost is 0.
  • Special cards: The rules for playing special cards a little different.
    • Bridge card: These cards can be used to leave gaps between adjacent cards. However, bridge cards must be covered by ascent cards in order to win the game. Furthermore: when a ascent cards does cover a bridge, they may be a cost for doing so.
    • Campfire: A campfire card can be used to swap for a already placed ascent card, thus allowing the ascent card to be used again. The campfire card's colour must match the card being swapped for.
    • Summit card: The last card played in order to win must be a summit card at the peak.
• Skip turn: The active player may skip their turn by discarding 2 cards of their choice.
• Replenish hand: Regardless of what action the active player took, they must replenish their hand back up to 5 (If possible.).
• Next player: Play now progresses to the player on the left of the current player.

Endgame
If during any player's turn they cannot play a card for any reason and do not have 2 cards to discard, then the players collectively lose.

If a summit card is played and no uncovered bridge cards remain in the central playing area, then the players have reached the mountain's summit and collectively win!

Overall
Tranquility The Ascent is a sibling to the original Tranquility and as such, they utilise the same name, I'm not sure that there's much 'tranquility' in Tranquility: The Ascent though!

Gone is the lonely sense serenity and titular tranquility one might imagine the crossing of smooth mirror-like waters of an ocean would invoke. In its place are the rigours and obstacles of mountain climbing.
A better name would've been Stress: The Ascent or Acrophobia: The Ascent!

Joking aside, Thematically and visually, Tranquility: The Ascent actually works quite well, building upwards gives a nice sense of progress and I'm sure with the physical copy, a completed pyramid would look quite impressive.

Mechanically, Tranquility: The Ascent clearly shares some DNA with its predecessor.
Broadly speaking, both are about playing numbered tiles next to one another and discarding cards according the difference in numbers.
Tranquility: The Ascent changes this up somewhat, adding colour and placement rules to wisely differentiate it from Tranquility and notably, also increase the difficulty a little: The original Tranquility was fairly 'solvable' once the mathematics involved were understood. This doesn't seem the case with the follow up.
Tranquility: The Ascent also does away with that pesky 'start' card from the original!

All of this means the challenges in Tranquility: The Ascent are slightly different.
When playing cards, colours will now need to be taken into consideration as well as numbers and numbers now also have 2 parts to play, both when placing cards and the height of placing them. E.g., using a '5' on the 1st level can be wasteful since it could potentially be also employed on higher levels. However, the addition of campfire and cards adds some flexibility in this regard as do the bridge cards.

While I feel this requires players planning ahead a little more, players must also recognise when to change their tactics as new cards (For better or worse.) appear in their hand. As already stated I feel the changes add to the difficulty a little. This may be to your liking or not.

For me, I prefer the elegance of the original Tranquility and would choose that iteration over this one. I also have a preference for the sea faring theme.

YMMV of course, Tranquility: The Ascent is a smart little game which presents some interesting problems to overcome and if the mountain climbing theme appeals and you're looking for a cooperative game, Tranquility: The Ascent is worth checking out.

Despite first plays increasing by 2 this month, overall playing dipped. I think last month's figure were inflated by Wogglecon somewhat and February was a slightly shorter month.

​First plays: 7
Different games: 23
​Total games: 33

Thursday 23rd Aldershot
HeroQuest - 12

Tuesday 21st at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
Durian - First Play!
Dice Hospital - 9

Sunday 19th on Board Game Arena
Lucky Numbers - 62
Can't Stop - 40
Nova Luna - 3
Just One - 15
Stella: Dixit Universe - 14
Paint The Roses - First Play!

Friday 17th Woking
Adrenaline  - First Play!

Thursday 16th Aldershot
Nine Tiles Panic - 2
HeroQuest - 11

Tuesday 14th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
Wingspan - 8
Machi Koro 2 - 6

Sunday 12th on Board Game Arena
Lucky Numbers - 61
Can't Stop - 39
Roll'n Bump - 10
Railroad Ink - 45
Just One - 14
Nova Luna - 2

Sunday 12th at The Dice Tower, Basingstoke
Cards against Humanity - First Play!
The Resistance: Avalon

Thursday 9th Aldershot
HeroQuest - 10 

Tuesday 7th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
Horrified: American Monsters - First Play!
Celestia - 5

Sunday 5th on Board Game Arena
Lucky Numbers - 60
Can't Stop - 38
Martian Dice - 23
Carcassonne - 13
Nova Luna - First Play!
Just One - 13
Love Letter - 68
​
Friday 3rd Woking
Formula D - First Play!

21st February 2023

Tuesday evening again! We're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns again for some more gaming goodness.

​Durian: The durian is the edible fruit of several tree species belonging to the genus Durio*.
​
Durian is also game about a very, very angry gorilla who runs a jungle fruit shop​, worse than that - he's your boss in this push your luck card game about managing inventory and stock.

*According to Wikipedia

What's in a game?

• ​​Cards: All the cards in Durian are unusually rectangular and come in 2 types.
  Fruit cards: Fruit cards are divided into 2 halves, on each card one half always displays 1 fruit and the other 2-3 of the game's 4 types of fruit - bananas, grapes, strawberries and of course durians.
  

Being exceptionally long, the cards feel a little flimsy but unless they are treated badly, it shouldn't be an issue.
The order board tile and point tokens are made of suitability sturdy card, while the card holders are wooden and I always approve of wooden components.
The bell works well enough but feels a little delicate but again, unless you treat it badly, it shouldn't be a problem and while it's a unnecessary component it's a welcome addition. I've never been one to resist gimmicks!

There's a small amount artwork utilised for the siblings and the different fruits which is quite stylised and cartoonish.
It all looks good enough, the gorillas look a little abstract but the fruits look suitably distinct from each other both in colour and shape

Nearly all of the small amount of iconography used in Durian is straightforward. The 4 fruits are easily understood and differentiated from each other.
The 3 sibling cards all have their own unique icons, which despite being fairy obvious will likely have players reaching for the rule book since they appear so infrequently during the game, which - as explained below is not necessarily a good thing.

How's it play?
​Setup

• Point tokens: Put the point tokens into a single stack or row, starting with the '1' at the top/front and increasing sequentially to the '7' at the bottom/end.
• Card holders: Give each player a card holder.
• Order board: Place the order board into the central playing area.
• Player cards: Shuffle all the cards into a face-down deck.
• First Player: Determine a starting player.

​On to play
Durian is a bit of a curious beast where players are looking to see if the game has 'gone bust' using 'imperfect knowledge'.
The game uses a traditional turn order with the active player taking their turn before play progresses to the player on their left.

Before discussing the rules, it's worth stating that the deck of cards serve both as shop inventory and customer orders. Additionally, the gorilla sibling cards have different functions depending on whether they appear in the inventory or order.

• Take inventory: Deal 1 card to each player, players should not look at their card. Instead they should place it into their card holder with the front of the card facing the other players. Thus, players should not know what is on their own card.
• Take order: The active player now takes a card from the deck and flips it face-up, then they have to add it to the order board.
  The card must be lined up beneath the order board so that 1 half is beneath the 'X' and the other beneath '✓'. The active player chooses which side of the card goes where.
  The side under the '✓' is the side for customer orders, while the other side is disregarded.
  ​Gorilla card: If a gorilla card is drawn, the active player may use it to turn a previously drawn card 180'.
• ​Check order: Next, the active player must decide if they want to call the angry manager or not.
  Put simply; the active player needs to look at the other players' cards and decide whether they think the order has gone bust or not. That is, whether the there's more fruit in in the order than the inventory (Or not.).
• To call or not to call: The active player is now faced with a decision.
  • Not call: If the active player thinks there's enough fruit in the inventory to meet the orders, then they should pass and play should progress to the next player who then has to take the next order card as explained above
  • Call: However, if the active player thinks there's not enough fruit in the inventory, then they should ring the bell and...
• Call the manager: When the bell is rung, the angry manager cometh...
  The angry manager has to get angry at someone, the question is... who?
  At this point, all inventory cards should be revealed to all players and compared to the order. If any player had a gorilla sibling card as a inventory card, it takes effect now and can change what is found in the inventory. The infinite banana gorilla card means that the inventory has infinite gorillas for example and so on.
  • Not bust: If there's enough fruit in the inventory to fulfil the order then there's no problem and angry manager will get angry at the player who rung the bell for no reason.
    "Why did you disturb me for nothing," the angry gorilla will no doubt yell.
  • Bust: If there's not enough fruit in the inventory to meet the order, then the angry manager will get angry at the previous player!
    "Why didn't you call me," the angry manager will undoubtedly shout.
• Take token: Whoever was the target of the manager's ire must take a point token and place it their personal area.
  When doing so, the player always takes the lowest value token, obviously starting with the '1'.
  This means that the angry manager gets more and more angry the more you call them out!
  • New round: Regardless of who the angry manager got angry with, a new round must begin. Take all the cards and shuffle them into a new face-down deck.
  • First Player: The first player will be whoever is to the left of the player that the angry manager got angry with!

Endgame
The game ends when a player has acquired 7 or more points worth of point tokens. This could from the final 7 point token or a combination of lower valaue point tokens.

Points are tallied, lowest score wins.

Overall
Thematically, Durian could have been almost anything and gorillas running a fruit shop is as good as any, so why not, it suits the game's light nature.

Mechanically. there are a couple of interesting things going on.
Firstly, the way the game employs 'imperfect knowledge' is pretty good. Players will spend their time watching the behaviour of other players, seeing how they play the cards they draw and trying to deduct what is on their own card.
For example: if another players decides to play a card which adds bananas to the order and you can see no bananas on anyone else's inventory cards, then it's generally safe to assume that you're the one with bananas on their inventory card!
Of course, the gorilla cards can occasionally appear in the inventory and throw a spanner into the works. In the above example, the infinite bananas card could change everything.
There's a weird drawback to the rules here though; since the gorilla cards appear fairly infrequently in the inventory. Players won't remember their rules and will ask to look at the rules - it's a clear tell that a gorilla card has been thrown into the mix.

Gorilla cards can also have a big impact on orders. Allowing an order card to be changed round can cause the order to 'go bust' or vice versa.
I will add that the rules feel a little counterintuitive here. In most games, going bust is a bad thing but in Durian it can be a good thing. Ringing the bell at the right time both prevents you getting points and also inflicts them on other players. 

This brings me to the mechanics for scoring. Escalating points works very well here and mostly keeps the stakes high until the game end.
​Mathematically, a game will last at least 3 rounds. If a single player gets 1+2+4 (or some other combination.) that will end the game.
Since, as the game progresses the points given out will increase, it's entirely possible that if a game gets to 7 rounds, a player who was on '0' points may get '7' points, end the game and come last! This is especially so in games with a higher player count (Durian plays up to 7.).
Because the scoring is about giving other players what are essentially negative points, usually at this point I'd criticise Durian for being well... negative but since the game is quick playing and light-hearted I don't feel an issue here.

Durian is a mechanically lightweight game with for the most part only a single decision to make - ring the bell or not.
Where it's depth comes from is in how to get to that decision. Players cannot afford to not pay attention during their opponents' turns, gleaning information from what moves they are making is vital to the decisions a player needs to make when it's their turn.
This is one of those games that's as much about playing the players as playing the game.

I found Durian an enjoyable game with a sometimes agonising central decision to make and this is good thing as it makes that decision meaningful, which is what I look for in a game.
Durian is a bit of party game that also works as a filler. It's style and humorous theme fits it's quick unpredictable gameplay well. It's not a game to take too seriously.
If this is what you're looking for, give Durian a try.

19th February 2023

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

Paint the Roses, it sounds a strange thing but that's what you do when in the kingdom of The Queen of Hearts in this 'Alice in Wonderland' themed cooperative game of deductive reasoning.

Caveat: We have only ever played this game digitally.

What's in a game?

• Game board: The central part of this board displays a cluster of hex-shaped spaces, each space contains a hedge or shrub.
  At the top of the board is a very picturesque palace decorated with a heart motif
  Running around the outside edge is what appears to be a scoring track and at regular points along this track are milestones or breakpoints marked out by white rabbits.

• Models: Not pertinent to the digital version of the game but the physical copy comes with 3d models to represent The White Rabbit, The Gardeners and the The Queen of Hearts.
  Additionally, there are 4 petal tokens that are used in conjunction with The Queen of Hearts and one-by-one are slipped beneath her model's base during the game, increasing her speed - which is not a good thing!
• Bag: This is also only part of the physical game and is used to blind draw shrub tokens.

Paint the Roses' artwork is pretty high quality, Art on whim cards and tiles look good and is easily understood but the standout art is on the game board. It's vibrant, colourful and eye catching, everything I think is good in game artwork.

Only 4 colours and 4 shapes are used in Paint the Roses, these are straightforward to comprehend and there's no other iconography.

How's it play?
Setup

• ​Game board: Put out the game board.
  Place The Gardeners tile on the '0' space.
  Place The Queen of Hearts tile on space '44' (Actually 6 spaces behind The Gardeners.).
  Place The White Rabbit on it's first milestone.
  Place the starting shrubs into their determined starting positions.
• Whim cards: Sort the whim cards into their 3 types and shuffle them into 3 face-down decks.
• Shrub tiles: In the physical game, these tiles would go into the bag.
• Greenhouse board: Randomly draw 4 shrub tiles and place them on the 4 available spaces on the greenhouse tile.
• Clue tokens: Give each player the clue tokens in their player colour.
• First player: Determine a starting player.
  Once this has been done, each player in turn order should draw a whim card from 1 of the 3 decks with the proviso that only 1 player can have an easy card at any time.

On to play
In Paint the Roses, the players are trying to collectively fill all 16 empty spaces on the game board while staying ahead of The Queen of Hearts model.
How is this done? By playing tiles, placing clues on them and using those clues to try and guess what is displayed on other player's whim cards.
Players must keep their whim cards hidden from other players, only revealing them when they are correctly guessed.
Paint the Roses uses a traditional turn structure with the active player completing their actions before play progresses to the player on their left. During the active player's turn, the following phases occur.

• Place tile: The active player must take one of the 4 tiles from the greenhouse board and place on any empty space on the board.
• Place clue tokens: All players then place clue tokens on the tile that was just placed.
  The number of clue tokens a player must place should be equal to the the number of ways the currently placed tile matches the colour/shape shown on their whim card.
  E.g., if a diamond shaped bush was just placed next to a spade shaped and any player had a whim card depicting a spade adjacent to a diamond, then that player must put a clue token on the newly placed tile.
  If the placed tile matches a whim card in more than one way, then clue tokens must be placed on the tile for each match. So if a spade was placed adjacent to 2 diamonds, 2 tokens would need to be placed on the tile
  If there are no matches, then no clue tokens are placed on the tile.
• Guess: Once clue tokens have been placed, the players must collaboratively pick any one of the whim cards and try to guess the symbols on that card. That is they're trying to guess which colour/shapes are shown on that particular card. Obviously, players cannot guess the symbols on their own card!
  • Correct!: If the players guess correctly, the following occurs.
    Discard whim card: The whim card that was correctly guessed is discarded.
    Move The Gardeners: The Gardeners figure should be moved a number of spaces equal to the value shown in the bottom right corner of the card that was just guessed. If this moves The Gardeners past The White Rabbit model, add a petal to The Queen of Heart's base (She will move faster from now on!) and move The White Rabbit to it's next milestone.
    Remove clue tokens: All clue tokens related to the correctly guessed whim card are returned to their player's hand.
    Guess again: After making a correct guess, the players may choose to make another guess, this is not mandatory and can be risky - as explained below.
  • Incorrect!: When a incorrect guess is made, the phase immediately ends.
• Move Queen: Once the guessing phase is over, The Queen moves and there are 2 ways this can happened.
  Correct guesses: If all guesses that were made were correct, The Queen moves her speed which is 1 space plus 1 space per petal under her base, thus she can move up to 5 spaces! That's not the worst though!
  Incorrect guess: If the players made a incorrect guess, The Queen of Hearts moves double her speed!
• End of turn: Once the Queen's movement has been resolved and the game has not ended, the following occurs.
  Replenish whim cards: Any player who discarded a whim cad now draws one from any of the 3 decks, the rule about only 1 easy whim card still applies.
  Replenish greenhouse board: A new shrub tile is drawn and placed on the empty space on the greenhouse board.
  Next player: Play progresses to the player left of the active player, who now becomes the new active player and a new turn begins.

Endgame
If the players manage to place shrub tiles in all 16 spaces and survive to the end of the round - that is; survive The Queen's final movement, the players collectively win the game!

If any time The Queen reaches the same space as The Gardeners or overtakes them; it's off with their heads. The players collectively lose the game.

Once a game is concluded, players can record their score, i.e., where they finished on the scoring track.

Overall
Thematically I found Paint the Roses a little abstract. Having The Queen actually chase the player model around the out of the board was a bit silly (Which thinking about matches the absurdness of the source material.) but also reasonably clever.
While I understand how the theme meshes with the mechanics, it all felt a little... detached.

​Mechanically though, Paint the Roses presents players with very tricky decisions and this is twofold.

Firstly, the active player must decide which of 4 shrub tiles to draft and how they can place it on the board to convey the information on their card. I think that there's also a higher level of play here where the active player can choose to play a tile to potentially help another player to convey information.
Secondly, once a tile has been put down, the players must make a guess. It's likely that this will involve a mix of deduction and also blind guessing. Easy whim cards are well... fairly easy to guess which is why players are limited to one easy card at a time, other cards are no so easy. Its important to successfully guess harder cards because it puts more space between the players and The Queen
There's also the element of trying to guess another card after a successful guess but it's genuinely higher stakes: A successful 2nd guess will give the players more breathing room but a wrong guess means that essentially any progress made from a guess has been lost. Double or nothing really.

These mechanics for guessing feel quite unique but also a little obtuse and harder to comprehend than they should be.
I don't think it helped that we were playing the game digitally and clue tokens were added automatically which sort of distanced us from thinking about what was going on.
I also felt being forced to guess every turn was quite harsh and The Queen advanced very quickly after relatively few failures. I feel that if players make a couple of wrong guesses in the early game, they'll be on the back foot for the rest of it - however long that lasts.

This brings me to the rule with the White Rabbit that increases The Queen's speed is quite interesting - although I'm not sure how I feel about it.
If The Queen has a high speed, an incorrect guess can move her a lot of spaces. It increases the stakes as the game progresses, meaning the players can never afford to be complacent.
The drawback is that it felt frustrating and counterintuitive, like we were being punished for being successful.

Between the difficulty and somewhat frustrating way the deduction worked, I found that I did not enjoy Paint the Roses, which is a shame, I like the idea of a cooperative, logic driven game.
I would definitely be open to trying the game physically as I might chance my stance  when actually handling the game but digitally speaking, this is not a game for me.

17th February 2023

It's a Friday and we're at Woking for a night of gaming fun.

Adrenaline, a fast paced head-to-head game inspired by first person shooters.

• Ammo tiles: These smallish square card tiles each display images of  up to 3 ammo cubes in various combinations. Some ammo tiles will display powerup cards.
• Victory points: These large and usually shaped tokens are used to VPs.

Adrenaline uses plastic damage tokens, card ammo tiles, transparent acrylic ammo cubes and skulls; it's an usual mix of materials but it works just fine.
The components are all good quality, the cards are fine as are the tiles and tokens. The plastic components all feel solid.

It's immediately apparent that Adrenaline makes good use of colour. This is particularly true of the game board, where bright colours are used to distinguish between different rooms - this is important for 'line of sight'. The component also look bright and colourful as well as easy distinguish.
The game's art is fairly good if a little underused - illustrations on weapon cards are a little small. Other than that I think the artwork is mostly reserved for character portraits.

There is quite a lot of iconography in Adrenaline, mostly on weapon and powerup cards, the game comes with a separate booklet to explain how they work - which is a little telling. Some of the iconography is intuitive and easy to comprehend, some of it not so much.
Luckily, it's not a gamebreaker and not much of an issue to learn but I do feel it will slow down the game somewhat unless at least 1 person has previously played.

How's it play?
Setup

• Game board: Set up the game board as per player count or as desired.
  Ammo tiles: Shuffle the ammo tiles into a face-down stack. Deal 1 face-up into each space that does not have a spawn point.
  Powerup cards: Shuffle the powerup cards into a face-down deck and place them on their allotted space on the board.
  Weapon cards: Shuffle the weapon cards into a face-down deck and place them in their allotted space. Then deal a total of 9 cards face-up into the spaces adjacent to each of the spawn points.
  Killshot track: Place the skulls on to their spaces on the killshot track. A normal game uses 8 skulls, but less can be used for a shorter game.
• Players: Give each player the board, action tile, damage tokens and model in their colour.
  Put out the player board on the 'normal' side and position the action tile (Also on the normal side.) alongside the board.
  Each player should then add 1 ammo cube in each colour to their player board.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Adrenaline, players are trying to earn as many VPs as possible. This is done by killing and more importantly, damaging their opponents.

During their turn, the active player can perform 2 actions, they can be different or the same action twice. The actions available are determined by what actions are on their action table and which actions have been unlocked on the players adrenaline track.
Broadly speaking, there are 3 types of actions, several actions actually combine different actions

• Move: The basic move action allows the active player to move up to 3 spaces on the board.
  All movement is orthogonally, players may move through doors but obviously not through walls.
• Pick up: Before picking up an item, the active player may optionally move 1 space. Then the active player may pick up an item in their current space. There are 2 types of object that can be picked up.
  Weapon: If the active player is in the same space as a spawn point, they may pick up one of that spawn point's 3 available weapon card and add it to their hand.
  Generally, there's a cost to picking up a weapon - the cost shown in the top left corner. However, when picking up a weapon, the first cost (In brackets, SIC!) is not paid.
  Players may have at most 3 weapon cards in hand.
  Ammo tiles: If there is a ammo tile in the active player's square they can collect the respective ammo cubes/powerup card and discard the tile.
  Players can have a maximum of 3 of each type of ammo cube on their player board and 3 powerup cards in their hand.
• Shoot: Now this what I'm talking about.
  The active player may attack any opposing character in range and line of sight. Generally anyone in the same room or in a room on the other side of a door is in sight. Specific weapons may have range limitations or other special rules.
  Many weapons may allow the active player to spend ammo cubes to have additional effects or damage.
  Once a weapon card has been used, the active player plays it down in front them, it is not discarded.
  • Damage, kills and VPs: The rules for how damage occurs and VPs are earned are fairly elaborate.
    • Damage: Each player board has 12 spaces for damage. When the active player inflicts damage on an opponent, then the active player adds damage tokens of their colour to their targets wound track with the following effects.​
      Marking:  Characters may acquire marks from opposing players during the course of the game. These take the form of damage tokens placed in the marked spot on their player board.
      When a character takes damage from an opponent who has marked them, all that player's damage tokens in the marked space are moved to the wound track!
      First Blood: Whoever first puts a damage token on an opponent's player board immediately earns a VP.
      Adrenaline: As a player's board becomes filled with damage tokens, the associated adrenaline moves become available.
      Kill: When the 11th space on a player's board is filled, their character been killed and points are immediately scored.
      Whoever inflicted the most damage (That is, put the most damage tokens on that player's board.) on the killed player immediately earns VPs equal to the highest visible VP number shown along the bottom row of the killed character's board. 2nd highest token count earns the 2nd highest VP and so on.
      ​Multikills: It is possible to kill multiple enemies in a single action. In this case, the active player earns a bonus VP for each multikill.
      Overkill: If the active player managed to also put a damage token in the 12th and final place, they 'overkilled' the character. This means the target of the attack can 'mark' the active player's character.
      Skull token: Whoever was killed should take a red skull and place it on the highest VP value on their player board. Thus when they are killed again, it will earn other players less VP.
      Once the skull has been taken, whoever got the kill puts one of their damage tokens on the vacated killshot space - this will earn VPs at the game end.
      Respawn: The player who was killed now has to respawn. They remove all damage tokens from their wound track and draw a powerup card. Then they discard any powerup card to respawn at the spawn point indicated on the spawn card they played. All other tokens are unaffected.

• Adrenaline moves: As the player takes more and more damage, some move actions become available.
  Move 2 spaces and pick up.
  Move 1 space and shoot/attack.
  In both instances, the usual rules as explained above apply.
• Reload: Reloading only occurs after the active player has resolved their 2 actions. This is done by spending ammo cubes as per the weapon card's cost. After the cubes are spent, they may take the weapon card back into their hand.
  You will note that since reloading occurs after a player's actions, a weapon cannot be used twice in a single turn.
• Power up: These may be used as described or discarded for the displayed ammo cube, this can only be done when that type of ammo cube cost needs to be paid. Thus a powerup card cannot simply be discarded to gain an ammo cube.
• Next player: Once the active player has completed their actions and reloading, play progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
Once the final skull has been taken from the board, it triggers the endgame.
Depending on the game mode chosen, they are 2 ways the game can end.
Sudden Death
The game immediately ends and goes to scoring.
Final Frenzy
In this game mode, each player gets one more turn. All players use flip their player board and action tile to the other sides, using those moves and scoring opportunities for the final round.

Regardless of how the game end is resolved, the game then goes to scoring.
Players earn points from the following sources.

• VPs: All the VPs players accumulated throughout the game for killing other players.
• Living characters: Remaining, unresolved damage tokens on player boards for characters that are still alive. This is calculated as if they had been killed.
• Killshots: Players also earn points for their killshots, whoever has the most damage tokens on the killshot track gains the most bonus VPs, 2nd most tokens gets 2nd highest bonus VPs and so on.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.​

Overall
I'm always a bit suspicious when a tabletop game tries to replicate a twitch based computer game or uses it for inspiration, thematically or otherwise.
Fortunately, Adrenaline does a pretty good job of abstracting this for a board game.
You run, you gun and you pick up, that's about it!

Line of sight and range rules are kept very simple and consequently very quick.
​Attacking is also quick; play a card - that's the damage it does, some extra resources can be spent to tweak it but that's about it. Some of the situational rules regarding specific weapons are definitely a bit fiddly and may well require referring to the rules, as mentioned earlier it's not to much of an issue though.

Rules for scoring kills are also a bit peculiar but the payoff is that you get a balanced scoring system that rewards attacking multiple opponents and encourages the free-for-all nature of a deathmatch. As they rulebook states, there's diminishing returns in constantly attacking one opponent, since because skulls placed on killed players' boards cover the higher scores, meaning less VPs are earned off them from then on.
It's also worth noting that the damage mechanic is essentially an area control mechanic and that the areas being controlled are other players' damage tracks!

Rules for picking up and reloading are also straightforward and adds an extra layer of decision making to consider. Should a player burn through ammo to press the attack/do more damage or try conserve or gain more ammo.
It creates these moments where attacks are followed by short lulls.
I also like the rule that when a weapon is used, it doesn't come back into play until the following turn. it stops powerful weapons being overused and incentivises players to look for synergy between weapon cards.

Gameplay wise, Adrenaline is very much a game of reacting to what other players are doing and the landscape will change every turn. Especially as in relative terms, the game board is quite small, players will very much be in each other's faces a lot of the time.
Players will look for opportunities to exploit, such as hitting multiple enemies at once (Damage diversification is key to earning VPs.) or minimising exposure to attacks to themselves (Although this can be very hard considering how focused the game board is.).
It goes without saying that Adrenaline is very much an aggressive game of direct conflict and player interaction. If this isn't your sort of thing, then you probably won't enjoy Adrenaline
The game also feels a little like a miniatures wargame game albeit in a very loose way.

I think that's why I found it a little unengaging. Fun and clever but not quite what I want out of a game.
I can't fault Adrenaline, it does what it sets out to do and if if you're looking for a first-person shooter inspired game with lots of aggressive interactive gameplay then Adrenaline is one to consider.

Personally though, if someone wanted to play it, I would do so without hesitation but it wouldn't be a first pick for me.