20th January 2022
Thursday afternoon gaming on Board Game Arena has reached its conclusion and the final game of the day was Lucky Numbers. Read my blog on it here.
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20th January 2022
The next game on Thursday afternoon gaming on Board Game Arena was Parks. Read my blog about it here. 20th January 2021
Thursday afternoon gaming on Board Game Arena continued with Dice Forge. Read my blog on it here. 20th January 2022 It's time for some Thursday afternoon gaming on Board Game Arena. The first game we played was The Crew: Mission Deep Sea. This was also the time we completed the final mission, mission 32 on BGA and it only took 140 attempts! Overall I found The Crew: Mission Deep Sea to be a fantastic game that punches well above it's weight with compelling and varied missions giving the game long legs. Read my blog about it here.
16th January 2022
The final game of Sunday gaming fun on Board Game Arena was Lucky Numbers. Read my thoughts on it here. 16th January 2022
Sunday evening is here again and we're logged in to Board Game Arena for some gaming fun. The first game of the night was The Crew: Mission Deep Sea. Read my blog on it here. 15th January 2022 It's Wogglecon and the final game of the day was Ginkgopolis. What's a Ginkgopolis? Good question, I guess it means Ginkgo city but what does Ginkgo mean? It's a type of tree, so Ginkgopolis must mean tree-city. In Ginkgopolis, players take on the role city planners in tree-city and attempt to manage it's expansion, both outwards and upwards. What's in a game?
Ginkgopolis has solid components, the tiles and tokens are constructed from suitability thick, chunky card as are the screens, while the meeples and resources are wooden which is always appreciated. The game makes good use of colour, effectively mixing primary colours with green and emphasising the ginkgo tree motif employed throughout. Ginkgopolis' artwork is high quality, character cards are well illustrated with slightly cartoonish, colourful individuals that follow the game's red-yellow-blue and green theme, the same is true of the building cards/tiles which depict various different types of structures. The iconography in Ginkgopolis is a bit strange, there's not too much of it and it's fairly simple to understand. However, due to Ginkgopolis' almost counter-intuitive rules, getting to grips with it took a little time. Nothing too bad though. How's it play? Setup
In the basic flow of actions in Ginkgopolis, players simultaneously put down cards and then resolve them in turn order.
There are 2 ways in which Ginkgopolis can end. If the building tile supply is depleted a second time or if a player has put all resource tokens on to the city. In either case, the current round is resolved and the game goes to scoring. VPs come from various sources in Ginkgopolis.
Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Firstly, one small fascinating thing about Ginkgopolis is how the game almost operates like a machine! Cards played to build something must not be put into the discard pile, otherwise they'll end up going back into circulation and later, players will end with cards in their hands that can't be used to either get currencies or build upwards. Further to this, new buildings must be given a meeple so that players can track which new cards must be added to the building deck as again, it would leave players without cards to gain currencies or build. Get this wrong and like a machine losing cogs, the game will begin grinding to a halt! I don't know what kind of fevered imagination dreamt up this mechanic but it's both convoluted and brilliant! Ginkgopolis' rules are definitely a little counter-intuitive. For example; when you play a card, that's not what you're building but what you're building on top of. Or after building something, getting to keep the card you used to build something. Additionally; it took a little bit for me to wrap my head around the game. Remember: Playing a card without a tile earns currencies. Playing a card with a tile allows a player to build a tile. I would also say Ginkgopolis is little fiddly for beginning player but none of this a dealbreaker, it's more an indicator of how Ginkgopolis feels a little unusual compared to other games I've played and I don't consider this a bad thing. While there are various avenues to follow for scoring, I feel that the biggest source of VPs would come from controlling districts because it's possible to not only score your own resources but those of other players' too! It can be quite hard to plan ahead though due to the card drafting and they'll be times when you'll want to play more than 1 card from your hand. It pushes you to make hard decisions (And hope the other cards come back around.), it means you have to adapt and spot situations you can exploit. It also means watching your neighbours and trying to gauge their objectives. There's quite a lot of player interaction that goes on and putting the right tile into play at the right time can dramatically alter the landscape. There's also an interesting strategy when deciding which tiles to put in the city. Putting a 20-value tile down makes it harder for other players to build over it, they'd have to pay VPs to build a lowered valued tile, or an extra resource to play a 20-value tile in a different colour. On the other hand, keeping a 20-value tile back can give a player the opportunity to build over other higher value tiles later in the game. The building outwards or upwards mechanics provide plenty of scope here. Expanding outwards can be easier (Provided a player gets the right urbanisation cards.) because a player need less resources and will also earn currencies when doing so. The downside is that it's easier for other players to build over your tiles. The opposite is also sort of true, building upwards tends to be costly, but it's also more costly for other players to build over them. Building tiles also puts the related card (And it's bonus action.) in to play in the player's personal area, creating the opportunity to combo actions into bonuses. Players will need to balance the need to acquire currencies with the need to build tiles. However, as the city landscape and a player hand changes, so can the options to do either of these. Adaptation is vital and every decision can be critical This made my choices feel meaningful when playing Ginkgopolis, which is always good. I'd say that Ginkgopolis is a mid-weight tile laying game with some fairly interactive area-control gameplay that gives players interesting and changing options. It took a little time to warm to Ginkgopolis but I enjoyed the game and think it's worth giving a try. 15th January 2022 The Wogglecon day of gaming continued with Rolling Realms. They see me rollin' They hatin' Patrollin' and tryna catch me ridin' dirty OK, Rolling Realms isn't about rapping but it is about rolling and is a quirky little roll-and-write mini-game collection. What's in a game?
All the cards in the game feel reasonably sturdy especially since they're laminated. The dice are definitely a nice touch and have been manufactured with rounded corners, they're about as good as non-wooden dice can get. Rolling Realms features almost no art except some stylistically simplistic illustrations on a few cards, which is fine as otherwise it would probably interfere with whole roll & write thing. The game's core iconography which appears across all cards is easily comprehensible, however, each individual mini-game is likely to contain its own unique icons which must all be learned. How's it play? Setup
On to play Rolling Realms is played over 3 rounds and each round consists of 9 turns, which means 9 sets of dice are rolled each round, there is no turn order in the normal sense and players resolve their choices simultaneously.
Endgame Once 3 rounds have been completed, that is 9 realm cards have been used, then the game is over. Players should calculate their results from all 3 round. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Rolling Realms is undeniably unique and inventive, a game about mini-games based on games that the publisher has already released. It's impressive how the mini-games generally manage to distil a game's mechanic and/or them down to a simple, related iteration and one that makes use of numbers 1 to 6! The game comes with 11 realm cards and the publisher has released a bunch of expansions and promo cards go along with it. Rolling Realms balances its priorities quite well and mostly makes player decisions meaningful. Players will naturally want to focus on using dice to gain VPs but neglecting resources will give them lass flexibility later on Because the game uses a randomiser, it's hard to plan ahead, that 6 you really need to earn you those last couple of points on a card might never appear.... That means that players need a dollop of adaptability to manage unwanted numbers and that's when resources come in useful. Particularly useful are the abilities to generate a 3rd die result, it can essentially increase your gains by 50%. It's hard to summarise Rolling Realms because there is a lot of little things going on, but I did enjoy it, the variation provides an interesting challenge and every round brought a new set of challenges. A game that uses a lot of mini-games risks being a mixed bag and couple were a bit more obtuse than the others but there were no outright stinkers. Having said that, it felt like a bit of a chore having to go explain 3 sets of rules to unfamiliar players each round, especially since it seems there will always be this one player who just doesn't get something. I also felt the game sat in weird middle-ground of being a bit too long for a filler but a bit too short for a main game for the night. The box says 30 mins, but that's highly ambitious in my opens. These are minor quibbles though. The mini-games are reasonable light but provides enough depth and definitely variation to keep most players engaged. It's one I'd play again 15th January 2022 It's a Saturday and we're at the Bisley Scout Hall with the Woking Gaming Club for Wogglecon, for a day of gaming and hanging with with friends. There are a lot of national parks in the USA and you're about to hike a bunch of them in the first game of the day; Parks. What's in a game?
The quality of Park's components is universally high and it's obvious that a lot of care and attention has been put into the game, this extends even to the packaging and token trays. The cards are fine and the tiles are appropriately thick. The tokens are all wooden, well made and colourful, the individually shaped wildlife tokens are the standout here. Finally, the inclusion of a metal first player marker is pretty unusual but it has a satisfyingly weighty feel to it and is a cool addition. For nearly all of it's artwork, the game sources The Fifty Nine Parks Print Series which as the name suggests, is a project which consists of a picture of each American national park created by a different artist. Perhaps it could be argued that doing this saves on the art budget but honestly, it feels like a great collaboration. As a result the game features excellent and varied artwork throughout, all the park cards and photography tokens are uniquely illustrated, the art also features on all the card backs and even the inside of the box lid! Fantastic! Parks makes use of a fairly wide variety of iconography but for the most part it was easy to comprehend and presented no obstacle to the game. How's it play? Setup
On to play Parks is played over 4 seasons during in which each the players' hikers travels along that season's trail from left to right.
Endgame Once the 4th season has been completed, the game ends. Players score points from the parks they've visited (Bought.), they also score a point for each photo they took and whoever has the first player token at the game end scores 1 point for it. Finally; players reveal their year cards, completing the objective on these usually scores 2-3 points. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Parks is essentially a light worker placement game added where your 2 workers only ever head right combined with resource management. It's a game all about planning trips that means that it's about acquiring resources to buy park cards which generally provide the majority of VPs required to win the game. However, it is impossible to fully plan things out. Going from season to season, players will have a good idea what resources and tiles will be available but not where they will appear. It requires adaption and some creative thinking when faced with a different tile layout. Limiting the resources a player can own to 12 is an solid rule, it prevents players hording too much and splurging out big at once. It also makes players think about optimising their strategies. The initial urge in Parks is to travel as slowly as possible to collect as many resources as possible and in the early-game that's not a bad idea but sooner or later, players will need to use them up and that means visiting parks. Remember, players have only 2 hikers and that means they can only use the visit park action on the trail end twice per season (Provided they don't use any other actions on the tile.), this means that players have 8 opportunities to visit parks, yes; there's an advanced trail tile that allows extra buy actions but there's no guarantee where and when it'll appear. This brings me to the worker placement element of Parks. Each player can use their campfire a maximum of 2 times in a season, it means thinking carefully before moving on to a occupied tile, it also means trying to anticipate how other players will move and if necessary, getting there first! Or perhaps moving the other hiker so that whoever is occupying the tile you need may have moved by the following turn. Ultimately it means that players should look to optimise their moves, balance resource acquisition with card acquisition, players might well be competing for the same park card and watching a card you want being taken by another player because you tarried to collect an extra resource can be galling. Players will have the double-obstacle of reacting to both seasonal changes and the choices made by the other players. The game's rules are not over-complex but also provide a fair amount of depth. There's enough interaction between players to force you to pay attention to their choices . Decisions that players face are always meaningful and getting wrong could lose you out. Add to this the game's top notch thematically appropriate production values and you have a small package that delivers a big game. Having said that, it's not without a couple of drawbacks. Most significantly; the game experience can change notably with player count. A 3-player game will feel quite different to 5-player. The hiker count goes from 6 to 10, the tiles become a lot more crowded and it becomes more challenging to do what you want. While in games with 4 or more players an extra basic tile is added into the mix, it doesn't quite alleviate the increased clutter on the trail. Secondly, a 5-player game seems to last around 2 hours and that perhaps feels a little overlong. Parks doesn't outstay its welcome and it's not a game-breaker but it can feel a little long for what it is. Other than that, Parks is well presented, accessible and satisfying to play (At least when you get the park card you want!). It's definitely one that's worth trying. |
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