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.

12th February

It's a Sunday afternoon and we're at The Dice Tower in Basingstoke For Ares' birthday party.

So finally... Cards Against Humanity: the blog post.

Cards Against Humanity has garnered a reputation for being wry, almost satirical humour and capacity to be outrageous.  So is this game offensive and by offensive, I mean does it offend my sensibilities regarding well balanced and sharply honed gameplay... well read on.

How's it play?

• Black cards: Shuffle the black cards into a face-down deck.
• White cards: Shuffle the white cards into several face-down decks.
  Deal 10 white cards to each player.
• First player: Determine a starting player

​On to play
The objective in Cards Against Humanity is to earn 'Awesome Points' which are just victory points (VPs). This is done by answering the questions on the black cards in the most entertaining way, which can be funny, outrageous, offensive and probably even worse!
Each player's turn consists of 4 phases.

• Black card: The active player draws a black and reads it out to all the other players.
• White cards: All players who are not the active player, i.e., all the other players now choose a white card to 'fill-in-the-blank on the black card.
  Players can choose any white card they desire but generally, they'll want to choose something entertaining.
  Once players have chosen a card, they should hand it over to the active player face-down.
• Choose: Once the active player has collected all the white cards, they should read the text on the black card while using the text on each white card to fill in the blank(s) on the black card. This needs to be done for each white card (Or sets of white cards in the case of multiple blanks.). Thus with 4 other players, it will need to be done 4 times. The active player should probably also do this aloud for maximum effect.
  Once the active player has read all the white cards, they pick one that they like the most according to whatever criteria they choose, it could be funny or offense or a mix of the two and so on.
  Once the active player has declared their favourite card, whoever played it should make themselves known and they earn a VP. Usually this is tracked by giving them the black card.
  All played white cards are discard out of play.
• End of turn: All players draw back up to 10 white cards and play progresses to the player on the left who becomes the new active player and begins their turn by drawing a new black card.

Endgame
I always thought that Cards Against Humanity concluded after the 10th black card was won but after skimming the rules, this doesn't seem to be the case and there are several different ways the game could end.
Regardless of this, whenever the game reaches whatever its game ending criteria is, the game ends and Awesome Points are calculated 

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
First of all I'll say; it's sort of pointless to blog about Cards Against Humanity and discuss mechanics or strategies or theme in the way I would normally and that's because it's the epitome of a party game, albeit a very much adult themed one.
That means it's loud and raucously humorous, easy to learn and easy to play. No one really cares about VPs or who wins and yes, it's also potentially offensive. Suffice to say that if you're thin-skinned or easily offended, Cards Against Humanity is probably not for you.

The real question is: Is it fun?
I'm going to say, yes and sometimes very much so. Obviously, much of the game's pleasure derives from the kind of people playing it​. I imagine it's a game that gets a lot of play by drunk participants - there's a good reason why the cards are fairly sturdy. If you're concerned about anything other than basically cracking jokes, probably best to look elsewhere.

Personally, I thoroughly enjoy the challenge of trying to craft the most outrageous answers and listening to other players' answers. I also think most people playing it understand it's just humour doing what humour does very well, which is bringing up stuff that would never be broached in conversation otherwise.

There is a caveat here though: Which is Cards Against Humanity can definitely outstay its welcome.
Initially, we played several times with the 10 black card limit and when that was reached, someone would invariably say: 'Why don't we play through all the black cards.'
The first time was: 'Yeah, cool'.
The second time: 'Oh Okay.'
The third time: I had to stifle an inward groan.

So if you want a shockingly funny and outrageous party game, Cards Against Humanity would be a good choice.
Just play it short intense bursts.

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

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

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

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

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

Most played games:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7th February 2023

Tuesday has come around again, that means it's time for more gaming goodness with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns in Woking.

Horrified: American Monsters is the follow up to the excellent Horrified and you can read my blog on it here.
Like the original, this is a cooperative adventure in which the heroes (In this instance investigators from the Federal Bureau of Paranormal Investigation) stop the encroachment of monsters from American folklore into a town/city.

So how does Horrified: American Monsters game stack up against the original?

Monster mats: As with the original game, each of the game's monsters comes with their own mat that manages how to defeat them.

All the components for Horrified: American Monsters are good.
The tokens and tiles feel sturdy while cards are of a normal quality. Because the monster mats are fairly large, they feel a little flimsy but unless you go out of your way to abuse them, they should be fine.
The game uses card standees for both players and citizen which means there's about 20 of them - which is a lot. They're constructed of thick card and will stand up to being handled.
While plastic, the dice with their slightly rounded corners are good quality.
As with the original, each of the game's monsters is represented by a plastic figure in their respective colour. The quality is fairly good, which is to say good enough for a board game.

The game's artwork is high quality with good portraits for the heroes, citizens and monsters. Artwork on the tokens, cards and monster mats also look good and suitably moody.
The game board contains probably the most notable artwork; a eye catching city with recognisable buildings but is importantly, also free of clutter.
Wisely, the game has a sort of mid twentieth century theme to the art which gives it a sort of timeless quality.

Most of the game's iconography can be found on the bottom of the monster cards and generally, the complexity is equal to that of the original. 

How's it play?
Like the original, Horrified: American Monsters is a cooperative game about squaring up to monsters threatening the game's town/city, There's a few differences from the original, most obviously in the interactions with the monsters the manner in which they are rendered vulnerable and defeated
The rules for frenzy work a little differently and the events on the monster cards are tailored for the game and possibly, so are the perk cards.
Otherwise, the game is pretty much identical with its predecessor. I'm not going to blog about at length about the rules or game play.
For that you can just read my original blog.

5th February 2023

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

Nova Luna; the new moon.

No, this is no a game based on those dodgy vampire films. It's a pretty standard draft and tile placement game.

Caveat: We've only ever played this game digitally.

What's in a game?

• Game board: Nova Luna features a 'moon wheel', a sort ring or wheel shaped board. Along the wheel is a 24-space track upon which are displayed different phases of the moon and is used to track player order. Around the wheel's outside are 12 spaces to place the game's square tiles.

• Moon meeple: This token continues the game's moon theme.
• Tokens : There are 21 of these disc shaped tokens in each of the game's 4 player colours.

​The game's only art is found on the moon wheel, there's some fairly detailed styling around the wheel as well all the faces of the moon.
Otherwise, Nova Luna is fairly light on artwork. It does make good use of bold bright colours however, which I like and think makes it look eye catching.

If you understand numbers and coloured dots, then you'll understand Nova Luna's iconography. It's very straightforward and easily understood.

How's it play?
Setup

• Game board: Put out the moon wheel board. Put the moon meeple at the topmost outer space.
• Tiles: Shuffle the tiles into a face-down stack. Then draw and place tiles face-up in all the spaces around the outside the moon wheel (Other than the space with the moon wheel.).
• Tokens: Give player all the tokens in their chosen player colour. Each player should place a token on the topmost space on the moon track.
• First Player: Determine a turn order for the first round.

On to play
In Nova Luna, players will be drafting tiles from the moon wheel and placing them adjacent to each other in their personal play area with the intent of connecting tiles of certain colours to each other in order to complete the objectives or tasks on those tiles.

Nova Luna does not use a traditional turn order, player order is based on the respective position of each player's token position on the moon track. Furthermore, whenever a player takes a tile, their token will move along the track.

• Active player: Whoever is 'furthest' back along the moon track becomes the active player. If tokens from 2 or more players share the same furthest back space, then the token on the top becomes activated.
• Draft: The active player must draft a tile according to the following rules.
  Refill: If there are no tiles left around the moon wheel, the active player must refill the empty spaces. If there are 1 or 2 tiles left, they may choose to refill the wheel.
  Take tile: Then the active player must take a tile. The tile taken must from the first 3 occupied spaces in front of the moon meeple (Empty spaces are skipped.).
  Move meeple: Once the active player has taken a tile, they must move the moon meeple to the space where they just took the tile from.
  Move token: The active player now moves their personal token along the moon track, they move the token a number of spaces as indicated by the time in the top left corner of the tile they just acquired, thus will move it 1-7 spaces along the track.
• Place tile: Now the active player must place the tile they took into their personal playing area.
  Placement: When placing a tile, it must go orthogonally adjacent to another tile, obviously this does not apply to the first tile placed.
• Check tasks: Once the active player has placed the tile, they should check to see if tasks on already placed tiles and also the tile they just placed have now been completed. How are tasks completed? Read on.
  • Task criteria: ​Inside each circle on a tile will be 1-4 dots of varying colour. When other tiles with colours that match those dots are connected to this tile, that task on this tile is completed.
    Note: A set of orthogonally connected tiles with the same colour can all be counted as connected. Thus if a task requires 3 connected red tiles, if  3 reds are connected to each other, then only one of them needs to be connected to the tile with the task.
  • Place token: Once a task has been completed, the active player should place one of their tokens on the pertinent circle to mark it as completed.
    It is possible to complete more than one task at a time and place as many discs as required.

• Next player: Once the active player has completed their turn, play progresses to whoever is now furthest back along the moon track. If the active player has taken a tile with a very low number, it's possible that they will still at the back and will become the active player again.

Endgame
There are 2 ways the game can end.

• Tokens: If a player has placed all their personal tokens on tasks in their play area, then the game immediately ends and they win.
• Tiles: If the supply of tiles is depleted, the game ends and the player who has the least tokens remaining, i.e., whoever has completed the most tasks wins the game.

Overall
Nova Luna's new moon/lunar theme is a bit left field and in fact, the rulebook actually describes Nova Luna as an abstract game. However, abstract nature aside, let's discuss the gameplay.

Nova Luna presents two elements that player will need to think about, which are the drafting and then placement of tiles.

The drafting element presents players with some potentially interesting choices.
Taking a tile will likely alter the active player's position in the turn order.
They will generally have the option of taking 1 of 3 the tiles ahead of the moon meeple. When the situation occurs that there are less than 3 they can elect to fill the spaces but may choose not to, instead selecting from the smaller selection if those tiles are what they want.
Players can sometimes manipulate the situation to get more tiles they need as there may be times when the active player could take a tile with a low time value and immediately act again, however, what's to stop a player always doing that?
Well, tiles with low time values tend to have tasks that are harder to complete and require more connections. So there's a bit of a balancing mechanic there.

Tile placement is also very important.
It's vital to try and think ahead when doing this
Optimal tile placement is key.
Players will want to position tiles so that they complete current tasks but also leaves tile edges open to complete tasks later in the game or open to be connected to other tiles later on.
Like a lot of games of this type. It will be tricky to always place the tile you want, when you want and they'll be moments of frustration when this occurs. Sometimes players will to adapt or change tactic.

While I feel that Nova Luna is a game that plays well and I'd have no problems joining a game if someone wanted to play. It is however, also the kind of game I've played a lot before.
The whole draft and place tile gameplay is something that's already been done quite a lot and while some of the mechanics utilised for this in Nova Luna are unique, I don't think it's enough to differentiate itself from other games of its type.

If you've played games similar in gameplay to Nova Luna, you probably won't find much in here that's new.
However, if you're new to this kind of game or looking for a game in this style, then Nova Luna is equally worth considering, it's not particularly difficult to learn and gives players meaningful decisions and choices to balance in a bright and colour package.

3rd February 2023

Friday is here! I'm at the office in Woking for some after work gaming.

As the name might suggest, Formula D is a game based on Formula 1 racing - but with dice! It's also the spiritual successor to the fantastic Formula Dé, a game I played 'back in the day'.
How does it hold up? Let's see.

All of Formula D's components are good quality. The game board and player tiles feel sturdy, as does the player board.
While the cars are quite tiny, they are all well sculpted, colourful and overall look great.
I was a bit sceptical of having player boards with pegs and a groove for the gearstick but in practice works well enough and does away the need for pencils and erasers which were needed for the original Formula Dé.
Perhaps the only criticism would be for the tokens, which are a bit small and fiddly. However, there's no other way to fit them on the track so it's a bit of a necessary evil.

The player tiles feature some nice colourful art with F1 drivers on one side and street racers on the other side. The street racers have definite anime look to them.
But the standout artwork appears on the game boards which feature fantastic illustrations of their locales. A lot detail has been put into the art, you can even see crowds of people.

All the iconography on the track are numbers and arrows and are easily understood. The colours/shapes of the gears are also easy to understand.
However, the icons used on player tiles could be a little clearer, I think more stylised icons would have been more helpful.
Finally the positioning of the resource tracks on the player board could have been done differently to improve usability. Specifically, the gearbox, brake and engine tracks could have been put together, since these are spent when skipping gears - more on skipping gears below.

How's it play?
Setup
The setup and rules description here are for the standard version of the game using the F1 setup

• Players: Give each player a player board, holder and associated pegs and gearstick. Put the standard side of the board into the holder.
  Then give each player a player tile and the F1 car with colours that correspond to their player tile. Position the tile alongside the holder. Place the pegs in their corresponding positions as dictated by their player.
• Game board: Put out the game board with the F1 side-up.
• First player: Determine the order on the starting grid and place each player's car in the relevant spot.
  This can be done by players rolling the black 20-sided die.
  Alternatively, the game has rules for getting qualifying times which involve each player doing a lap in the fewest number of moves and shortest time.

On to play
Formula D does not use a traditional turn order, instead a player's position on the track determines when they take their turn in the round. Whoever is in the lead goes first and becomes the active player, whoever is 2nd goes second and so on, until the last player has had their turn.
Then a new round begins and any changes in position will be carried over to the player turn order.
During a player's turn, they must perform the following.

• Start: This actually only occurs for each player's first action of the game and determines if they get a good start or not.
  The player rolls the black die, a bad start means they only move 1 space, a flying start means they move 4 spaces, in either instance they end their turn in 1st gear. If they got an average start, they move into 1st gear and roll the 1st gear die.
• Change gear: Other than the race start, at the beginning of every turn, the active player must decide whether to stay in the same gear or go up or down a gear. The gear they are in will determine which die they roll for movement.
  Change up: The active player may go up 1 gear.
  Change down: The active player may go down 1 gear, or possibly more.
  • Skipping gears: When going down gear, a player may choose to skip gears, i.e., go down more than one gear. E.g., skipping a gear allows a player to drop from 5th gear to 3rd by skipping 4th. A player may skip up to a maximum of 3 gears, allowing them to go from 6th to 2nd gear for example.
    However for each gear skipped a resource must be spent, they come from gearbox, brake and engine.
• Roll and move: Once the active player has settled on their gear, they must roll the pertinent die and move their car as many spaces as the die rolls according to the following rules:
  Full move: The active player must use all the movement for their car.
  Traffic: The active player's car cannot move through other cars' spaces, they must go around them instead.
  Arrows: If the active player's car moves on to a space with an arrow, they must follow the direction(s) of that arrow when moving on.
  Straights: If the active player is moving their car along a straight, they cannot zigzag to use up movement. Furthermore, they can only do 2 lane changes and cannot go back into a lane they were already in during the current turn. Essentially players should move their car along the shortest route possible.
  Having said that, players can change lanes to avoid other cars or hazards.
  ​Corners: When a car enters a corner, it must end or 'stop' a number of turns in that corner as determined by the corner's details. Thus, a 2-stop corner requires the player's car to end 2 turns in that corner.
  • Overshooting a corner: If a car is in a 1-stop corner (Or only has 1 stop left in a 2 or 3 stop corner.), then they can go through the corner's exit and overshoot the it to some degree.
    For each space a car overshoots the corner, they must spend 1 tyre WP. Additionally, brake WPs can be spent to lessen movement and thus move less spaces.
    If a car needs to make 2 or more stops in a corner and it overshoots, then it is eliminated from play.
• Additional rules: The description above covers the gist of the game but Formula D has numerous situational rules. Many of these are resolved by using the black 20-sided die.
  Contact: If a car ends its movement adjacent to one or more other cars, there is a chance they will make contact. This costs body WPs
  Overrevving: There's a chance that cars in 5th & 6th gears will lose a engine WP when any car in 5th or 6th gear gets a maximum result on their gear die.
  Debris: Certain events can leave debris on the track, if a car has to go over the debris, there's a chance they can loose a handling WP.
  Pits: In a race with more than 1 lap, there are rules to pitting, which allows a car to recover all their tyre WPs.
• Advanced rules: There are a number of optional advanced rules that can be applied to the game. Mostly these are to do with 3 lap races and running a championship.
  ​Custom cars: Instead of having WPs assigned to a car as per a player tile. With these rules, players can assign WPs to the resources as they see fit.
  Tyres: With these rules, just F1, players can choose different types of tyres, such as hard, soft and wets. They can each have an effect on a car's performance, they are also effected by weather.
  Weather: There are rules for different weather conditions such as dry and rainy or changeable weather. Different weather conditions will effect cars differently. Furthermore different types of tyres will behave differently in differing weather conditions.
  I think that's pretty much it for the F1 rules.

Endgame
The first car to cross the start/finish line after completing the prescribed number of laps, wins! Second across the line finishes 2nd and so on.

Overall
I'll start by mentioning that while not part of the base game, there are 6 map packs for Formula D, each providing 2 additional tracks to the game. generally each pack features a street racing track as well as a real-world inspired circuit.
​It should also be noted that Formula D is almost identical to earlier iterations of the game, this means the game is fully compatible with all the racetracks from those previous games. This is fantastic, because if like me, you have a bunch of tracks from Formula Dé, it greatly increases the longevity of the game.
I'm sure it was deliberate on the part of the producers of Formula D and was a wise move.

I've seen Formula D criticised for being too luck based but without that element of luck, there's no risk and risk is at the heart of what makes Formula D so good.

You see, as a racing game, Formula D is not really a 'simulation', I mean how could it be? However, one thing it does emulate very well is the feel of having to 'push the envelope', how racers try to take it to the edge, how they take risks and how players in Formula D will also need to take risks, or more precisely, when to take risks
Unlike many games, playing too sensibly or prudently is a sure way to finish second in Formula D!

This all ties in with what Formula D is all about - which is managing corners, specifically the gear and consequently the speed of a car when it goes through corners.
This is not quite as simple as it sounds though: ​Ideally, players will want to be in as higher gear as possible for optimal movement at all times. However, players will need to be mindful of their resources, overshooting corners by too much or too often (Especially early in a race.) can have ramifications later. Sometimes overshooting will have an advantage, sometimes it won't it'll just be a waste of WPs.
This is all contextual of course, depending on a car's position relative to a corner, players will need to adapt their tactics to racing through that corner, even the position of opponent's cars can effect the players behind.
Players will also need to be wary of 2 or 3 stop corners and resist the temptation entering the corner in too higher a gear and too fast: In real racing, sometimes going into a corner slower means coming out faster, this can hold true in Formula D too.

Another time a player may take a big is when an opponent is ahead in a corner.
E.g., if that opponent ahead exits the corner in 3rd gear to avoid overshooting, the player behind may want to risk taking going up a gear and exiting in 4th. It's a real advantage to exit corners in a gear higher than your rivals. If you look at the distribution of numbers on the dice, the maximum speed on a gear die is generally the lowest speed on the next highest die.

In terms of negatives, player elimination is a thing here (I'm not a fan of player elimination.) and players can crash out and be sat twiddling their thumbs. Although this sort of thing generally only might occur when approaching the end of a race and back markers push hard to try and get on the podium.
Playing time can also potentially be an issue. Races can last 1-3 laps and you can expect a race to on average last 1 hour per lap. If you decide to play a full race, don't be surprised to lose an entire afternoon or morning to the race. Which is not necessarily a bad if that's what you want.
Also, with it's small components and 6 resources, Formula D can be a little fiddly.

Quibbles aside, Formula D is a fun, game and it's satisfying when you manage pull if risky manoeuvres and manage to fly from corner to corner. There's also a genuine, palpable surge of pleasure when you go into 6th gear, roll that 30-sided die and blasting down that straight.
Formula D is mid-weight game that fits it theme well and presents players with conundrum of when and how much risk to take. Who would have thought roll-and-move mechanics could be so well implemented.
Formula D is a game I have played a lot in its various iterations and I've always enjoyed it. If you want a racing game with a strong thread of push-you-luck running through it, then this is one to try.