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Gaming Blog

March '22: The Month in gaming

31/3/2022

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Still working through my back log!

The gaming numbers for March 2022 are slightly lower than February.
Total games: 40
Different games: 28
First plays: 6

Tuesday 1st at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club.
Tiny Epic Galaxies - 5

Thursday 3rd round Simon's.
Lost Ruins of Arnak - 2

Friday 4th at Farnborough.

Team3 - First Play!
Codenames - 4

Sunday 6th on Board Game Arena.
Loco Momo - 3
Codex Naturalis - 19
King of Tokyo - 7
Can't Stop - 10
Love Letter - 56

Tuesday 8th at 
The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club.
Wayfinders - 3

Wednesday 9th round Simon's.
Paleo - 3

Thursday 10th on 
Board Game Arena.
Loco Momo - 4
Via Magical - 9
Railroad Ink - 20
Lucky Numbers - 18

Can't Stop - 11

Sunday 13th on 
Board Game Arena.
Stella - Dixit Universe -
First Play!
Forbidden Island - 12
Happy City - 9

Railroad Ink - 21
Lucky Numbers - 12

Tuesday 15th at 
The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club.
Four Gardens -
First Play!
Regicide - First Play!

Wednesday 16th on Board Game Arena.
Stella - Dixit Universe - 2
Cloud City - 10
Can't Stop - 12
Lucky Numbers - 13

Sunday 20th on Board Game Arena.
Hanabi -
First Play!
Parks - 7
Can't Stop - 13
Lucky Numbers - 14

Tuesday 22nd at 
The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club.
Apollo - 2
Deep Sea Adventure - 4


Wednesday 23rd round Simon's.
Western Legends -
First Play!

Sunday 27th on Board Game Arena.
Carcassonne - 6
Loco Momo - 5
Stella - Dixit Universe - 3
Lucky Numbers - 15

Tuesday 29th at 
The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club.
Tiny Epic Defenders - 2
Jump Drive - 6
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Western Legends - First Play!

24/3/2022

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23rd March 2022

It's a Wednesday night and we're round Simon's for an evening of gaming.

'You see, in this world, there’s two kinds of people, my friend – those who write dodgy blogs about board games, and those who read dodgy blogs about board games. You read dodgy blogs about board games!'

Western Legends is a western themed open-world sandbox board game where players are free to pursue several differing roads to success.

What's in a game?
  • Board: The board displays a map of fairly nondescript desert landscape which is populated with various western features such as Red Fall town or Cliff junction. The entire map is divided up into irregular spaces. Many of these spaces also contain icons which represent different businesses or areas of interest, including general store, sheriff's office, bandit hideouts, prospecting sites and more.
    There are also spaces for various decks of cards and money and across the bottom is a scoring track for VPs (Unsurprisingly called Legendary Points.).
    Along the left edge are tracks for 'Marshal' and 'Wanted' points. These respectively track the fame and notoriety for lawmen and outlaws, a player cannot have a score in both of these tracks at the same time.
  • Player boards: These themed boards track weapons, horses, cash and items for each player's character, as well as damage they've taken.
    The player boards are double-sided but the only difference is the spaces for legendary tokens if you playing with that optional rule.
  • Cards: Western Legends uses quite a wide variety of cards.
    Character cards: There are 12 different character cards in Western Legends, each one based on a historical figure. They are double-sided and the front has a portrait and information on that character's unique ability while the reverse gives a brief biography of the individual plus lists starting location/items.
    Each character also has a set of personal objectives displayed across 4 cards which are used in the optional rules.

    Story cards: These cards are also double-sided. On one side a story card displays a in-game objective and some spaces to place player discs. The flip side of a story card is an action that will be triggered when that card is completed.
    Fight cards: These are used when a player fights an NPC. They each contain a special move and despite there only being 13 of them, each also has a rank from a normal deck of cards such as 'queen of clubs', these ranks tend to be quite high so as to challenge players.
    Poker deck: This is a typical deck of 52 cards, as well as having the usual suits, each one also has a special action that can be triggered. This deck is used both for the special actions and combat.
    Money cards: Western Legends uses cards for dollars.
    Item deck: This deck of cards contains all the cowboy accessories that any player could want; weapons, mounts, whiskey and especially hats! Each item has a cost and a number of these are double-sided and can be upgraded to the improved side.
  • General Store: This is a card holder for the item deck.
  • Tokens: Western Legends also makes use of a wide variety of tokens.
    Cubes: The traditional little wooden cubes that come in player colours and are used for the game's 3 scoring tracks.
    Discs: These wooden discs are used to track story objectives and also come in player colours.
    Wound tokens: These round tokens have an image of a blood drop and are used by players to track damage they have received.
    Gold nuggets: Little acrylic shapes in a gold colour.
    Sheriff's badge: The first player token.
  • Poker chips: Strictly speaking these are just more tokens but they are actually look like poker chips.
    Cattle tokens: There are 2 types of cattle token, used to represent the 2 ranches in the game. These are also double-sided, listing a reward on the reverse (More on rewards below.).
    Legendary tokens: These poker chips are used in conjunction with personal character goals.
  • Dice: There are 2 six-siders in the game, they are not the usual numbered dice though and have a bunch of specific icons that refer to gold and cash instead.
  • Minis: There are 13 plastic miniatures that come with the game, each has it's own look and pose.
  • Plastic rings: There plastic rings in each player colour as well a brown ring (Sic.) for the sheriff and grey ones for bandits. These rings clip on to the base of any miniature.
    It means that any miniature can be used for any character.

The quality of the components in Western Legends is high, the cards, boards and tokens are all well made, the dice are plastic but nicely rounded and finished in a cool looking black and gold colour scheme. I like the gold nuggets and always appreciate the usage of wooden components. The plastic miniatures are unpainted but have a reasonable amount of detail.
While essentially unnecessary, the general store tray is eye-catching and looks great on the table.

The use of art is solid throughout the game and fits the western theme very well, illustrations feature on all the cards and are high quality, the character card portraits are the standout here. The board also looks good, with its map-like artwork.
All-in-all well presented.

Quite a few icons are used in Western Legends, most of it is clear and easily comprehended. Players will probably end up referring to the rulebook on several occasions, however, it's likely that this will be as much to get a handle on rules as to decipher the game's iconography.


How's it play?
​Setup
  • Players: Players should take all the components in their player colour.
    Character card: Randomly deal 2 character cards to each player, then all players should choose one and discard the other out of this game.
    Miniature: Each player should choose a miniature to represent their character and clip their plastic ring to it's base and put the miniature in its starting location as per the character card.
    ​Player board: Every player should take a player board and put their character card on to it's space, then follow the instructions for the character's starting items and position on the trackers.
  • Board: Put out the board and put the money cards, cattle tokens, dice and gold nuggets on to their allotted spaces.
    Poker deck: Shuffle the poker cards into a face-down deck and put them on their allotted space.
    Fight cards: shuffle the fight cards into a face-down deck and put them on their spot.
    Story cards: Shuffle the story cards into 2 equal face-up decks and place them in their allotted spaces.
  • General store: Put out the general store then put all the item cards in their spaces.
  • Sheriff: Clip the brown ring on to one of the unused miniatures, this is now the game's sheriff and should be put in the sheriff's starting spot.
  • Bandits: Clip all 6 of the grey rings on 6 unused miniatures, these will be the bandits and should be placed in the bandit starting spots.
  • First player: Whoever's character is furthest along the wanted track becomes the fist player. In the likelihood of a tie, determine the first player by other method as seen fit by the players.

On to play
Before discussing how a turn plays out, some rules needed to be explained.
  • Marshal/wanted tracks: These tracks are mutually exclusive and a player cannot have a score on both tracks. A player with a score on the marshal track is considered a marshal and a player on the wanted track is a outlaw.
    Marshal track: As a player progresses along the marshal track, they earn cash and will on occasion earn VPs. Finally at the game end, they will earn bonus VPs depending on their finishing position.
    If at any time a player with a score on the marshal track carries out an action that would increase their wanted score, they remove their marker from the marshal tracker and put it on to the start of the wanted track, they're now outlaws!
    Wanted track: Players on the wanted track cannot move up the marshal track.
    As a player moves along the wanted track they will occasionally acquire a poker card. More importantly, they will acquire VPs every round, the further along the track, the more they acquire!
  • Sheriff: The sheriff can start the game 'inactive'. However, when any player moves on to the wanted track (Which could be right at the start of the game.), the sheriff become active.
    The sheriff can be moved around the board by playing certain cards and if he ends up on the same space as a outlaw character, well, then it's bad news for that outlaw, see below for more information on this.
  • Story cards: Each story card has a criteria and 3 circles. When a player meets that criteria, they put one of their discs on an available space on the story card.
    When all the spaces on a story card are filled - as determined by player count, the card is flipped over, then at the end of the turn it is resolved. completed.
    This will provide some flavour text and a reward for all players who contributed (Put a disc on the card.) to its completion. It will also respawn a number of bandits if they've been captured.
    Finally, the player who filled in the last space and flipped the cards gets whatever bonus is listed on the card..
  • Wounds: Characters have a poker hand size of 5, every wound they take decreases their hand size by 1. When a character has taken 3 wounds, their hand size is reduced to 2. Smaller hand sizes limit a players choices during actions and combat.

Actions
Beginning with the first player and progressing to the left, each player takes their turn. The bulk of active player's turn will consist of 3 actions, which can be taken in any order or multiple times. Most of the actions a player can take will be contextual to their location or proximity to other players or NPCs.
The turn order is a follows:
  • Turn start: Any start of turn effects are triggered now. Then the active player may acquire $20 or 2 poker cards or $10 and 1 poker card. Finally the active player chooses which items to use for their turn.
  • Move: The active player may spend an action to move 2 spaces across the board. alternatively, if they have a mount, they may use the mount's movement of 3-5 instead.
  • Card action: The active player may spend an action to use the ability as described on any card they have in their possession.
    If the card used is a poker card, it's discarded once the action is completed. Character and item cards are not discarded after use.
Contextual actions
There a large number of contextual actions available in Western Legends obviously depending on the situation.
  • PvP: If the active player is in the same space as another player, then they may enter into a fight with that other player. While there are 3 types of conflict here (Arrest, duel and rob.), they are broadly speaking all are resolved the same way. The active play must declare which type of conflict they are initiating.
    Resolving conflict: The active player must play a poker card from their hand face-down, then the targeted player chooses whether to play a poker card of their own face-down, if the targeted player does not play a card, they immediately lose the conflict.
    Players then reveal cards which might have special abilities that are triggered, after this, values are compared and the highest wins!
    There's also some rules for the start of combat and reactions once the fight has been resolved.
    Arrest: To arrest another character the active player must have a score on the marshal track and their target must have a score on the wanted track (Can't arrest someone who isn't wanted!).
    If the active player wins, the wanted player goes to jail and the active player's score on the marshal track increases.
    The wanted player gains a wound and a poker card, they are then sent to jail and lose their wanted score and any cattle tokens they had as well as half their money and gold.
    Duel: If the active player wins a duel, they immediately gain 2 VPs. The targeted player gains a wound and a poker card.
    Rob: If the active player wins a robbery, they increase their wanted score by 1 and can take half their victim's cash or gold as well as their cattle token if they have one.
    The targeted player gains a wound and a poker card.
    Losing: In all instances, regardless of what type of fight it was, if the active player loses a conflict, they gain a wound and a poker card.
  • PvE: Any character may try and tackle a bandit and outlawed characters may try and deal with the sheriff. These conflicts are dealt with in a manner similar to PvP conflicts, except the NPC draws cards from the fight deck instead to generate their value during combat.
    Bandits: The active player may attack a bandit, when this happens, a fight occurs and the active player must play a poker card face-down as per a PvP fight. For this conflict, another non-active player draws 2 cards from the fight deck and chooses 1 to play face-down. The outcome is resolved as usual.
    If the active player beats the bandit, they can gain a marshal point or a VP unless they are an outlaw, in which case they must take a VP.
    If the active player loses, they gain a wound and a poker card.
    No matter if the bandit won or not, it is removed from play for the time being.
    Sheriff: If the sheriff moves on to a space with an outlaw or an outlaw moves into a space with the sheriff (Are you mad!), then a fight breaks out.
    Fighting the sheriff is like fighting a bandit except the sheriff player draws 4 fight cards!
    If the outlaw wins, the sheriff has been driven off and is relocated to the sheriff's office.
    If the outlaw loses, they gain a wound and a poker card, they are also arrested with consequences identical to being arrested during PvP.
Location actions
If the active player is on a space with an icon, they may trigger that action. There several types of location and some have multiple options.
  • Bank: When the active player enters the bank space, they'll be presented with a couple of opportunities.
    Deposit: The active player may spend an action to sell gold nuggets they've acquired for both cash and VPs.
    Heist: The active player may rob the bank. This involves fighting the bank guard. Which is PvE combat as described above, with the guard drawing 3 fight cards.
    If the active player wins the fight, they gain a chunk of change and gain 3 points on the wanted track!
    If they lose, they still get 1 wanted point but also gain a wound and a poker card while fleeing empty handed.
  • Cabaret: Players can spend an action and money here to straight-up buy VPs. that's some partyin' there!
  • Doctor: A player may use an action and pay to remove all wounds, they also gain poker cards equal to the wounds removed.
  • General Store: The active player may spend an action and cash to buy an item or upgrade an existing one.​
  • Herding: If the active player is located at either of the 2 ranches, they may spend an action to acquire a cattle token. Then they need to deliver it onwards  to reap its reward. Where they deliver the cattle token will determine what reward they receive.
    Rustle: Delivering a cattle token to the other ranch will earn the player a wanted point and the reward on the flip side of the cattle token.
    Wrangle: Taking the cattle token to the rail station acquires the player a marshal point, as well as the reward on the flip side.
  • Prospect: When at a prospecting site, the active player may spend an action to search for gold which is done by rolling dice. This will give the player gold nuggets, cash and sometimes nothing.
  • Work: If the active player is at any site with an icon, they can spend an action to acquire some $10.
End of turn
When the active player has finished their 3 actions, the following events occur.
  • Story cards: Story cards are resolved.
  • Wanted track: VPs from being on the wanted track are acquired.
  • Hand size: If the active player has more cards than there hand size, they must discard down to it.
  • Legend points: Check to see if the endgame has been triggered.
  • Next player: Play progresses to the player on the left.

Endgame
Play continues until someone reaches 15/20/25 Legendary Points (As decided by players for a short/average/long game.) which triggers the game end and all players get one final turn.
After this players tot up their final VP total (Legendary Points.) which comes from various sources.
  • Legendary track: Players get VPs equal to their position on this track.
  • Marshal track: Players on the marshal track gain their final VP bonus.
  • Wanted track: The player who got furthest along the wanted track earns an additional 3 VPs, other wanted players get 1 VP each.
  • Cash: Every $60 dollars accumulated earns a VP.
  • Upgraded items: These will earn extra VPs.
  • Wounds: Wounds actually deduct from a player's VPs.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.


Overall
It might seem from this fairly lengthy write up that Western Legends is complex but this isn't the case. There are lots of options and choices in this open world game that players can take but the implementation of this through the rules is actually quite straightforward.
Western Legends has enough flexibility to give players interesting choices to follow and provide a varied experience but doesn't bog them down with too many rules.

This wide variety of choices provides players with several differing approaches to accumulating VPs and one of the interesting aspects is how these elements interact with each other and nudge players into also doing so.
For example:
Prospecting can be a good way to go, mining and selling gold nuggets earns both VPs and cash (Which can be spent for even more VPs!), provided that the player can get to the bank.
Outlaws will want to steal that gold for themselves (Or engage in other dastardly behaviour.), which in turn increases their wanted rating. For bandits, this is a good thing, because their wanted rating has the ongoing effect of constantly increasing their VPs.
Consequently, it means that players on the marshal track will be motivated to hunt down and arrest outlaws to prevent this occurring.
Players will want to watch what others are doing and if necessary, adjust strategies to respond to other player actions.
Having said that, the open nature of the game means that players could also simply avoid each other and it becomes a race to get to the Legendary Point threshold.
These differing playstyles means it's hard to describe what a typical game would be like to play because there really isn't a typical game.

Western Legends is also a bit of a RPG-adjacent game but handles those elements fairly simply. There are no experience points or levelling-up here, but purchasing item cards serves the purpose of increasing characters' abilities and thus money is a bit of a stand-in for experience points.
Additionally; from story cards and character objectives to tales that arise from emergent game play, ​the game is full of appropriate narrative beats. As a result, the game's old-west theme feels strongly implemented.

If I had a criticism, it's perhaps that the playtime feels a little long, however, I never felt like there was too long spent in downtime between turns.

As far as sandbox games go, I definitely think that Western Legends is one of the better examples. The implementation of the western theme is fun and fits well. If sandbox game are what interests you and you like the old-west theme and presentation, it's worth a try.
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Hanabi - First Play!

20/3/2022

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20th March 2022

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

Hanabi is a cooperative game about lighting a series of larger and larger firework displays. The catch is that everyone must rely on other players to give them clues to do so. Get it wrong though and the show could end early. 
Who thought fireworks could be so stressful, well... other than pets!

What's in a game?
  • Cards: Hanabi comes with a set of 50 cards, 10 in each of five colours; blue, green, red, yellow & white.
    ​The cards in each colour are numbered 1-5. However, the numbers are not evenly distributed. There are three 1s, two each of 2, 3 and 4, while finally, there's only one 5 in each colour.
  • Clue tokens: There are 8 of these round card tokens which are also double-sided, with the white side representing unused clues and the other used.
  • Storm tokens: These round card tokens show lightning one 1 side and there are 3 of them.
Quality wise, Hanabi's components are standard, which are all perfectly acceptable.

All the artwork on the cards are understandably themed after fireworks in their respective colours. For the most part it looks clear but I've found that in dimmer light, the colours can look a little weak. 

Hanabi makes minimal use of iconography, the cards are cleared numbered while 
icons are also used to designate different colours. 2 symbols are used on tokens.


How's it play?
Setup
  • ​Clue tokens: Put out the clue tokens with the unused side up.
  • Lighting tokens: Also put out the lightning tokens but with the lighting side face-down.
  • Cards: Shuffle the cards into a face-down deck.
    Deal cards to players up to their hand size as determined by player count. Players should not look at their cards, they can never look at their own hands.
  • First player: Determine a first player.

On to play
The objective in Hanabi is to create a stack of face-up cards for each colour by playing them in numeric order, starting with the 1 and finishing with the 5.
All of this must be done without any player looking at their own cards. Players should hold their cards up with the backs facing them so that all others can see what cards they have.
Players then provide clues to each other and use these clues to deduct which cards to play.

Hanabi uses a standard turn structure with the active player taking a turn before play progresses to the left.
The active player must perform one of the following actions.
  • Give clue: The active player may give another player a clue. This clue will provide exactly one piece of information about that player's cards while also allowing the active to point at the pertinent card(s) in the other player's hand.
    It could be, "You have two yellow cards," or it might be, "You have one five," and so on.
    When the active player gives a clue, they must flip one clue token to its used side. If all clue tokens are flipped, then no clues can be given.
  • Play card: The active player chooses a card from their hand (Which they still can't look at.) and plays it, upon which it is revealed to them. This will result in 1 of 2 effects.
    Correct play: If the card played is the next number in its sequence, then it is a correct play and is put on top of its respective stack. E.g., if the active player puts down a red 3 and a red 2 has already been played, the red 3 goes on top of the red stack. If a colour has no cards in play, then a 1 in that colour will begin that stack.
    Completion bonus: if a stack has it's 5th and final card play, it is completed. As a bonus, if a used clue token is available, it can be flipped back to its unused side.
    Incorrect play: If the card played does not continue the sequence, it is a incorrect play. Thus if the value of a card played is equal or lower than its current stack, it is incorrect. Or if it skips a number, it's also a incorrect play.
    When a card is incorrectly played, 1 of the 3 storm tokens its flipped face-up.
    Regardless of whether the play was correct or not, the active draws card from the deck, taking their hand size back up to 5.
  • Discard card: The active player may choose to discard a card, when this is done a used clue token must be flipped back to it's unused side, a card cannot be discarded if there are no used clues. With is no big deal really, as the active can just give a clue instead.
    The active player then draws a card from the deck, taking their hand size back up to 5.

Endgame
Play continues until 1 of the following 3 criteria are met.
Win: If the 5th card of all 5 stacks are correctly played, the players immediately win the game. They have achieved a perfect score of 25.
Lose: If the 3rd and final storm token is flipped over, the players immediately lose, scoring a big fat 0!
Deck depletion: If play progresses until the last card is drawn from the deck, all players get one more turn.
After this, the game is scored and the players collectively gain a score equal to the value of the top card on each stack, thus the maximum score of a incomplete game is 24.

Picture
5 stacks of fireworks.

Overall
One of the things I like about Hanabi is that it's a small, fairly easy to learn cooperative game that provides a solid challenge, it has a reasonably quick playing time and would work well as a filler game.

What's interesting in my opinion are the mechanics for clues and also clue tokens as they are inextricably linked. The game does a good job of balancing the usefulness of clues with their scarcity.
When giving clues, players will want and need to give clues as efficiently as possible, it takes 2 clues to clearly define what a card (Both colour & number.) is and this uses a quarter of the available clues which is a lot! Frequently that means a clue might need to have a implicit meaning attached. E.g.; the clue, "You have one green," might implicitly mean 'Play that green card!'
Players receiving clues will need to interpret and deduct meaning from the information they have now ​been given, combining it with the information they see in other players' hands before deciding what to do. Sometimes they won't have all the information they want, sometimes they'll need to gamble on a decision.

Flipping clue tokens back to their unused side can be vital to doing well, usually this will involve discarding cards and it also allows players to draw cards and put new options into play. Blindly discarding cards can be tricky though, if a 5 is discarded, there goes the chance to get a perfect score. - Not that getting a perfect score is easy, it's not!
Consequently, it's sometimes a good idea to give players clues about what to get rid off. not keep.

It should also be noted that like many cooperative games, luck can play a big role in Hanabi. If those lower value cards don't until later in the game, players will end up discarding higher value cards to get to them.

Hanabi does have some minor drawbacks though. Having to constantly hold up cards so others can see them feels a like a little bit of a pain. The same is true of drawing new cards and remembering not to look at them.
When a player is given clues about their cards, it can be a chore to remember not only what the clues are but also the location of those cards in their hand. Otherwise that can lead to some pretty devastating plays!
Interestingly, the digital version of Hanabi remembers the clues for players.

I also found Hanabi to be slightly frustrating, although this may be due to the behaviour of other players. It's definitely stressful watching another player not get the hint when they've given a clue.

These are minor quibbles and Hanabi is a unusual and challenging cooperative game that forces players to think hard and logically, provides meaningful decisions and some solid fun: Some big gameplay delivered in a small package.
Hanabi is definitely worth trying.
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Regicide - First Play!

15/3/2022

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15th March 2022

It's another Tuesday evening with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns and we're playing Regicide

Is Regicide a cooperative game about recruiting heroes from a local tavern to go fight epic battles and raid a castle against a series of bosses (Who happen to be regents!), or is it just a deck of cards?

Turns out it's both.

What's in a game?
  • Cards: Regicide consists of a regular 54 card deck of playing cards with the 4 regular suits, and 2 jokers.
    That's it really.

Well... there's not much that can be said here. It's a game that can be played a deck of ordinary cards and that's what it look like.
The official Regicide deck is nicely illustrated with some stylised and quirky fantasy themed artwork but it's still recognisability a standard deck of card.

And the game's iconography, well they're clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades. You get the idea.


How's it play?
Setup
  • ​Castle Deck: Separate all the jack, queen and king cards from the deck.
    Take the kings and shuffle them into a face-down deck, then take the queens, shuffle them and put them on top of the kings. Finally shuffle the jacks and place them on the queens. You'll now have the castle deck, a 12 card deck starting with jacks and going down to kings.
  • Tavern deck: Take the remaining cards and add in jokers according to the player count, then shuffle the cards into a face-down deck, this is the tavern deck.
  • Players: Deal cards to each player from the tavern deck up to the maximum hand size as determined by player count.
  • First player: Determine a first player.

On to play
In Regicide, players must coordinate actions in order to prevail, however, they cannot communicate with each other.
During their turn, the active player uses one or more cards in their hand to attack the current enemy before then using more cards to resist the enemy's counterattack.
Play then continues to the next turn and the player on the left.
  • Enemy: Reveal the top card from the deck, this will be the current enemy. Obviously the players will face 4 jacks before facing 4 queens and then ultimately 4 kings.
    All enemy's have 2 stats, Attack and Health, the higher the suit, the higher the values of these stats.
    Attack values go from 10-20.
    Health varies from 20-40.
  • Attack: The active player may attack the current enemy by playing a single card from their hand next to the enemy. The attack's strength is determined by the card's value and thus goes from 1-10, this is how much damage is done to the enemy's health. Additionally, each card will also have a special power depending on its suit that is triggered during the attack.
    Clubs: A club deals double damage to enemy's health.
    Diamonds: This allows players to re-fill their hands from the tavern deck according to the value of the diamond card that was played.
    Hearts: Playing a heart repopulates the tavern deck with cards from the discard pile.
    Spades: If a spade is played, it lowers the current enemy's attack score by its value.
    Other rules: Below are the other rules that apply during the attack.
    Immunity: The current enemy will be immune to the power that matches its suit. Thus the queen of clubs will not take double damage from any clubs that are played. Immunities can be removed by jokers; see below for more information.
    Animal companions: The aces are animal companions and have a value of 1. This might not seem good but animal companions may be played with another card.
    This has 2 effects. Firstly it increases the value of the other card by 1, secondly it also triggers the animal companion's suit power. Thus a 5 of clubs accompanied by a ace of spades would do 12 damage and lower the enemy's attack by 6.
    Combos: If a player has cards with matching values, then they can be played as a set and their values added together, provided that combined value does not exceed 10. The max value of a combo would be 5+5.
    A combo also triggers all the suit powers of the cards involved. So theoretically, the 2 of every suit could be played for a combined value of 8 that would do 16 damage, put 8 cards into the tavern deck, deal 8 cards to players and lower the enemy's attack by 8!
    Joker: A joker can only be played on its own and has a value of 0. When played, it removes the current enemy's immunity. It also immediately ends the current turn, skipping the enemy's counterattack. The active player may then choose who gets to be the next active player which can be very useful.
    Yield: Players may choose not to attack, not play a card and instead endure the enemy's counterattack. Why would a player do this? If a player does not have enough cards to both attack and defend, they're going to want to yield and defend instead.
    Vanquished enemies: When the current enemy has their health reduced to 0 or less, they are defeated.
    The defeated enemy card and all cards played against them should be put into the discard pile (This is the only time cards are placed into the discard pile.), the current turn ends a new enemy is drawn from the castle deck. Thus the active player immediately begins a new turn against this newly revealed enemy by playing a new attack card.
    This means once an enemy card is defeated, it can be used by the players. This is very useful since the enemy cards are considered to have a value of 10-20.
    However; if an enemy was defeated by their exact health (Reduced to exactly 0 and not lower.), then that enemy card is placed on top of the tavern deck, not in the discard pile.
    Getting an exact defeat on a enemy card is a really powerful move because it immediately puts a strong card in possession of the players.
  • Defend: Now the enemy can counter attack! When this happens, the active player must discard one or more cards which must have a combined value that is at least equal to the value of the current enemy's attack. Thus a queen has an attack of 15, therefore the defending player must discard cards which have a combined value of at least 15.
    Don't forget that any spades that have been played will reduce the enemy's attack and if the attack value has been reduced, then the defending player doesn't have to discard any cards.
    If a player can't prevent all of an enemy's attack, it's not good news!
  • Next player: Once the active player has dealt with the enemy's attack, play progresses to the player on the left.

Endgame
Play progress until 1 of 2 conditions are met.
If the players defeat the 12th and final enemy, then they collectively win.
If at any time a player cannot discard enough cards to cover an enemy's attack, then the players collectively and immediately lose.


Overall
On a basic level players are faced with 4 choices when attacking and how to use the 4 suits and their respective abilities when playing Regicide is vital. The advantages of each ability are contextual and players will need to learn recognise when to use which suit. Suffice to say, players will need to make use of all the suits appropriately.
Of course it's not as simple as I'm making it sound. As with all cooperative games, luck plays an important part here and players will frequently find themselves lacking the cards they want, the immunity rule can also well and truly throw a spanner in the works too.
This forces them to make tricky decisions or find other approaches to how they attack and or indeed manage defence.

It should also be said that Regicide is a very hard game, very hard! I heard someone state that players can expect to win about 1 in 6 times but I feel this is an underestimation of the game's difficulty. We've played it numerous times and never won, we barely ever made it to the kings! Not only is the game hard off the bat, it just gets harder and harder!
I would argue that the Regicide is too hard, which would be my one gripe with it. Although it's entirely possible that there's some strategy that we overlooked.

​​Regicide has a fairly quick playtime which is in part due to it's brutal difficulty curve and could be a good filler game, although bear in mind that it definitely tests the grey matter.

It's a fascinating game that condenses a fair chunk of cooperative gameplay into a deck of 54 cards and gets a lot out of it. The rules are as impressive as the game is ruthlessly hard.
Regicide is a game worth trying if only to experience how such a game plays, just so long as you don't mind losing.
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Four Gardens - First Play!

15/3/2022

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15th March 2022

We're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns for some Tuesday evening entertainment.

Four Gardens is a game about you guessed it... four gardens, it's also about spinning a pagoda! I'm not sure if Spinning Pagodas would be a better name or not?
Why are players spinning a pagoda? Apparently, the pagoda contains some gods! Who... I guess... like... being spun?

What's in a game?
  • Pagoda: Although it has to be constructed, the game comes with a 4-level pagoda that spins, that is each floor spins independently - spinning is very important in this game!
    Each roof on the pagoda displays 0-3 of the resource icons. There are 4 sides to each roof and 4 roofs, thus 16 sets of icons.
  • Scoring board: There are 4 scoring tracks in different colours on this board, one for each of the game's 4 'gods'.
  • Cards: Four Gardens comes with 70 double-sided cards. The front of each card (Called the groundwork side.) displays various symbols and information while the back of each card shows one part of a panoramic illustration.
    Groundwork side: There symbols in the top corners, top half and bottom half. They are:

    God: In the top left corner of each card is the symbol for which god it is associated with and also which track it scores on when completed.
    Dots: The top right corner displays a number of dots, which is info on how the card's position in a panorama, it shows the type of panorama it is and both the number of cards in that particular panorama and where this card goes in that panorama.
    There are 4 'types' of colour coded panorama ranging from 2-5 cards in size.
    Actions: In the top half of each card there will be displayed 2 actions. One action is always a handcart action and the other will be a 'wild' or 'rotate' action. Using  one of the available actions requires the card be discarded.
    Cost: Finally, the cost to construct this card will be shown at the bottom.
    Panorama side: The backs of these cards each display part of a garden landscape, and certain cards can be placed together to form panoramic illustrations of varying size. The top 2 corners also display the same information as the top corners on the other side.
  • Tiles: The game makes use of a several types of small tiles.
    Planning tiles: These rectangular tiles each have 4 spaces to hold resources during the game.
    Bonus planning tiles: These square tiles have a single space and can hold a single resource alongside the owning player's planning tile.
    VP tiles: These tiles earn extra VPs.
    Wild resource tiles: This allows the player to acquire more resources as described below.
  • Tokens: There are 2 types of tokens in Four Gardens.
    Resources: There are 4 types of resource in the game, each one is delineated by both colour and shape. There are blue water drop, grey stone, brown wood/tree and green plant tokens.
    Score markers: There are 4 scoring trackers in each player colour, these are classic eurogame little wooden cubes.
The pagoda is constructed of fairly sturdy feeling card, each floor can be individually rotated and it felt a little precarious when doing so, having said that, it never felt like it would cause a problem. The pagoda comes in several pieces, has 4 'floors' and has to be constructed. Since I played someone else's copy, I cannot comment on how hard or easy that was. It's definitely the game's standout component though.
The resource tokens felt like they were wooden and the wooden cubes were pretty standard wooden cube components, which is something I like.
The tiles were standard quality card tile and fine, I thought having tiles with little hole to hold resource tokens was a pretty smart move.
The card were also pretty standard quality from what I could tell.

From the large, eye-catching and rotating pagoda to the tactile resource tokens shaped and coloured identically to their icons in the game; Four Gardens has excellent presentation.
The backs of the cards which, when placed together form the panoramic views of the titular feature excellent, colourful and interesting art.

Four Gardens features a fair amount of iconography, from the 4 scoring tracks and types of gardens to symbols for resources and different actions available on cards. F
or the most part, it's instantly understandable and there should be few problems with the iconography.


How's it play?
Setup
  • ​Pagoda: Randomly put together the 4 floors of the pagoda.
  • Tiles: Put out the 3 sets of tiles face-up in their 3 stacks. The bonus VPs and 'take wild resource' tiles should have the highest value at the top and be in descending order.
  • Cards: Shuffle the cards into a face-down deck(With the garden picture side up.).
    Draw 3 cards and place them 'face-up' in a drafting area.
  • Players: The players should organise themselves at about 90' around the pagoda, so they each have a side of it facing them.
    Deal 5 cards to each player and give them a planning tile in their colour.
     Each player should also place their score trackers on the 4 scoring tracks.
  • First player: Determine a first player.

On to play
As the name suggests, the objective is to create 4 garden panoramas using the backs of the cards.
​Four Gardens uses the traditional turn, with the active player acting with play then progressing to the player on the left.
During their turn, the active must perform exactly 3 actions. Each action also requires the player to play or discard one of the cards in their hand. There are 4 actions that can be performed, these can be performed in any order the player sees fit. The actions are:
  • Groundwork: With this action, the active player takes a card from their hand and places it in front of them, it is now ready to be 'constructed'.
    There are only 2 restrictions when laying a groundwork card. Firstly, 2 identical cards cannot be both played. Only 1 of each position in any of the panoramas can be played. Players are also restricted to a maximum of 3 groundwork cards under construction at any time.
    It's worth noting that when putting a groundwork card down, it does not have to be the first in a panorama.
  • Move resources: The active player must discard a card with the pertinent symbol (Which is all of them to be honest.) to move resources, this allows them to rearrange resources between groundwork cards or from their planning tile. Finally, the active player may discard resources from their planning tile and in fact, this is the only way to do to.
    Scoring: If, once resources have been moved around a card's cost is completed, it is then flipped over, becomes a panorama card and scored. Thus if the card had a blue symbol, the active player's score marker is moved 1 space along the blue track.
    Further scoring: That's not the end of scoring though. When a new card is added to a current panorama, all cards in that panorama are scored again. So if another card was added to the card with the blue symbol, then the active player would score in the blue track again. So it means that the 1st card played in a 5-card panorama would be scored 5 times!
    Completed set: If a panorama is completed, as well as scoring, the active player immediately acquires one of the bonus tiles and if necessary, resolves it.
    Knock back!: Each scoring track only reaches the '10' spot, if scoring would take the active player's marker above 10 on a track, they cannot go any higher. Instead, the scoring markers of all other players are pushed back 1 space instead!
    If a player's marker is then knocked back off the first spot on a track, then they cannot put the marker back on the track and will score 0 for that track!
  • Rotate pagoda/collect resources: This is the most complicated action in the game. It allows the player to rotate the pagoda and collect resources if they discard a card with the relevant icon. That icon will also determine which 'floor' of the pagoda is rotated and how resources.
    When a floor is rotated, all the floors above it are also rotated in a similar fashion and it is rotated 90'.
    After this, the active player collects all the resources for the side of the pagoda that are facing them. The icon will determine the order in which the resources are collected. Either from the top going downwards, or bottom going up. This is very important because when resources are collected, they are placed in the active player's planning tile spaces in the order they are collected. If there no spaces available in the player's planning tile, then unplaced resources are discarded. As you can see, the order in which resources are collected is very important.
  • Take a wild resource: If the active player discards a card with the wild resource icon, they can take a resource of their choice and place it either on a groundwork card or planning tile space.
    The wild resource tokens functions identically but allows the player to acquire multiple resources.
  • End turn: Once the active player has completed their 3 actions they draw cards from either the displayed cards or blindly from the deck until they have 5 in their hand, play then progresses to the player on the left.

​Endgame
Depending on the player count, once 8-10 panorama cards have been constructed by any player, play goes into the endgame and the current round is completed.
Players calculated VPs earned from the 4 scoring tracks and points they may have gotten from a bonus VP track.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.


Overall
I'll start by discussing the pagoda - the game's most obvious feature.
Is it a gimmick mechanic? Maybe. Does it work well? Definitely.
It's also quite a unique mechanic and not something I've seen anywhere else.

When used in conjunction with the rule limiting how many resources can be collected on the planning tile, it forces players to really think about how they have to manipulate the pagoda to get the resources they need:
It takes an action to empty a planning tile that's been filled unnecessarily and that's an action that could be used elsewhere.
I think it's a set of mechanics that works very well.

Talking about the pagoda does lead me to one gripe: Which is the rule where all players should sit around the pagoda at 90' angles. Players don't always have the right gaming space to accommodate this and while strictly speaking, it's not necessary as players can remember what side of the pagoda is meant to be facing them, it's inconvenient and finicky. 

The card-synergy, or more accurately score-synergy is a pretty clever rule, providing players a reason to work towards completing panoramas.
The 4 scoring tracks seem a little unnecessary but in practice they work fine.

This brings me to the knock-back mechanic. It feels a little harsh that, if a player gets their scoring marker knocked off the board, it can't come back into scoring. On the other hand if a player has reached maximum on a track and other players are lingering at the bottom, it's probably not a priority for those other players, so not that much of a loss. 
So yes, it feels a bit harsh but it's not game breaking.
All of this means players will look to optimise the order in which they play cards to optimise how they increase their scores. Concentrating on increasing scores in 1 or 2 tracks can potentially knock-back other players. Conversely, working towards completing panoramas can earn bonuses which may prove useful elsewhere; sometimes you'll be able to do both but sometimes not and looking for opportunities to exploit these times is vital.

The also makes use of a variation of the hand-as-currency mechanic, except here it's used to trigger actions and not to actually pay for something. Despite this difference, it places that same conundrum on players; which is how to choose which card to discard? Obviously, they'll be times when it has to be a card with the action they need but otherwise, it's another meaningful decision to make.

In conclusion; Four Gardens is a fairly easy to learn set-collecting game that provides players with enough decisions to be engaging, fun and provides unusual resource gathering and scoring mechanics which makes it feel unique.
I enjoyed it and think it's worth a try.
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Stella - Dixit Universe - First Play!

13/3/2022

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13th March 2022

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

As the title implies, Stella - Dixit Universe is a offshoot of the game Dixit and while it is different, it does share some elements with its predecessor, mostly notably having artwork on cards which share the same almost abstract, dreamlike quality.
​In fact in the physical version, both games share the same backings for these cards, meaning they're interchangeable between the two.

Caveat: We've only played Stella - Dixit Universe digitally.

What's in a game?
  • Dixit cards: Stella - Dixit Universe comes with 84 cards. As anyone familiar with Dixit will know, they all feature distinct, eye-catching and quirky artwork.
  • Word cards: There are 96 'word' cards in the game, each card has 2 words for a grand total of 192 words.
  • Game board: The game features a tall, narrow board with spaces numbered 1-10, it's not really a game board in the conventional sense though as it's used only to track some numbers.
  • Personal boards: Each player will have a board displaying a 5x3 grid that matches the game's card layout (More on this later.), there are 3 'stars' adjacent to each space in the grid which a re used to track scoring.
  • Tokens: Various types of tokens are used throughout the game.
    Round tokens: Stella - Dixit Universe is played over 4 rounds, not only do these double-sided tokens track the rounds, they determine which line of cards are replaced at the end of each round.
    Player tokens: Each player has a token, also double-sided, one side is 'light' and displays 2 stars, while the other is 'dark' and only shows 1 star.
  • Markers and cloths: While this is not a 'write' style game per se, the physical game does make use of dry-erase markers and wipe-cloths to track player decisions and scores.
As with all Dixit games, artwork on the cards is colourful and fantastic, a wide variety of images and themes filled with lots of weird and wonderful details that allow for multiple interpretations and meanings.
There's minimal art elsewhere.

The game's iconography is also minimal to the point of being almost non-existent.

Picture
Some examples of Stella - Dixit Universe's distinctive Dixit cards.

How's it play?
Setup
  • ​Players: Give each player a token and player board in their colour.
  • Game board: Put out the game board with the long edge vertical, the numbered spaces increasing as they go up. Put the round tokens on the board.
  • Dixit cards: Shuffle the Dixit cards into a face-down deck. Deal 15 cards into a 5x3 face-up grid along the right-side of the game board.
  • First player: Determine a first player and give them the first player token.
  • Word card: Shuffle the word cards into a face-down deck. Deal 1 face-up and choose which of the 2 words to use.
    This is the word that will be 'used' during this round.

On to play
Similar to its predecessor, Stella Dixit Universe is word association game, but here, the word is chosen by the game.
4 rounds are played during the game and each round has 3 phases. The first 2 phases are essentially performed simultaneously, with the 3rd phases occurring in turn order.
  • Word association: Each player now looks at the 15 available Dixit cards and should determine which cards, in their opinion can be associated with the word for the round, players can associate 1-10 cards with the word.
    Then secretly, each player marks their choices down on their player board.
    Once this is done, the game goes to the next phase.
  • Count associations: All players declare how many associations they made (But not what they are.).
    Then everybody puts their player token on the matching numbered space on the game board with the light side face-up. If a single player has chosen more cards than anyone else, they should flip their player token to the dark side and they are now considered to be in the dark. This may effect scoring in the next phase.
  • Reveal associations: This phase is played out in turn order, starting with the first player.
    The active player must reveal one of the cards they chose by pointing to it in the central playing area. This will have 1 of 3 outcomes.
    Spark: If 2 or more other players also chose the card indicated by the active player then they all score 2 points, all matching players should mark off 2 stars on their player boards adjacent to the card revealed.
    Super-spark: If only 1 other player has also chosen that card - even better! Both players score 3 stars.
    Fall: If no other players also chose the indicated card, then the active player has fallen. This means that they can not score this card or any further cards later in this round, nor can they reveal anymore cards this round. Although other players may still score off their cards.
    In the dark: If the player who is in the dark also falls, then any cards they have already scored this round have their values reduced by 1. Thus their scored cards will only be worth 1-2 points instead of 2-3.
  • Next Player: Once the revealed card has been dealt with, the player on the left becomes active and reveals a card.
  • Next round: Once players have revealed all their cards or have all fallen, play progresses to the next round and the following occurs.
    Score: Players should record their scores for the round and wipe their personal board cleans in preparation for the next round.
    New Dixit cards: As determined by the current round token, 1 row of 5 cards is discarded and replaced by a new randomly drawn cards.
    New word card: The current word card is discarded and new one is randomly drawn in its place.
    New first player: The first player token moves to the player on the left.
    A new round begins with choosing associations again.

Endgame
Once the 4th round has been completed, players should total their scores from across all 4 rounds.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Like it's earlier iterations, Stella - Dixit Universe can be a divisive game, its core mechanic is acutely subjective in nature and it can be a real love/hate thing! Certain types of gamers; those who enjoy the heavier, analytically and mathematically driven games may well be frustrated with a game about trying to guess what other players might think of a particular word. Social skills are important here, it's more about playing the player than playing the game, understanding how they think and what they'll pick.

As with its predecessor, Stella - Dixit Universe uses a mechanism to score more VPs when making a slightly more obscure choice which can trigger a super-spark. I feel the game has the same quirk with the rule as well; players who know each other well will be at a advantage here.

Other than trying to predict what other players will do, there's also a balance between how many associations to make with a word.
Too few and players risk scoring less, while too many could end up costing points, generally it's prudent to err slightly on the cautious side and avoid being the player In The Dark.
It obvious why the rule exists, it's to stop players haphazardly selecting too many words but it's still a little frustrating and also a bit of a finicky rule.

That brings me to the one real bugbear I have with the game and that's the rule with Falling.
If a player Falls, they immediately stop scoring, so if a player falls at their 1st reveal, they score nothing for that round - and worse, other players can still score off them! Conversely, if they fall with their last choice, the damage is minimised.
I know that choices on the order to reveal cards are part of the game and cards which are seen as less risky should be selected fist and the rule offers a genuinely meaningful decision but even so, I found it immensely irritating.

Although perhaps I'm not the best judge, I can be ambivalent with this type of game, it generally doesn't suit my style of play and and maybe I'm a bit too harsh. When I remember to adopt a particular mindset to playing it, there's definitely fun to be had.

Stella - Dixit Universe plays with 6 and veers into party game territory, it's a light crossover game that's pretty easy to pick up and play and will allow non-gamers to get stuck in and enjoy themselves
Treat it as a fun diversion more than a serious game and Stella - Dixit Universe is an enjoyable experience.
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Team3 - First Play!

5/3/2022

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4th March 2022

It's a Friday and I'm in Farnborough with some workmates for some evening games.

The first game of the night is essentially 3 Wise Monkeys: The Game, known as Team3, although I'm not certain any of us are particularly wise?

What's in a game?
  • ​Blocks: Team3 comes with 2 sets of 5 chunky plastic blocks shaped like tetrominoes. These blocks are used to construct the shapes shown on blueprint cards.
  • Cards: The game has a 2 sets of square cards:
    Role cards: There are 3 role cards in the game, The Architect, The Supervisor and The Builder. Each role is illustrated by one of the three wise monkeys.
    Blueprint cards: There are 70 blueprint cards and each one displays a shape configured from the tetrominoes. The blueprint cards are divided into 3 decks labelled with 1, 2 or 3 stars which represent easy, medium and hard difficulties.
    Finally, each blueprint has a that shows the cards orientation.
  • Plastic standee: A little plastic stand to hold a blueprint card.
There's not much to say about what few components there are to the game.
The blocks are made of sturdy colourfulplastic and feel very tactile, handling and playing them feels quite satisfying. Otherwise, the cards are pretty standard quality.

The game's art is monochrome and only appears on the role cards. The 3 illustrations are slightly cartoony looking but also fairly good.

Other than the images on the blueprint cards, there's no other iconography in the game.


How's it play?
Team3 can be played cooperatively as a team if 3 or competitively as 2 teams of 3. The 2 play styles are practically identical, the only real difference being how the blocks are allocated.
For the purposes of this blog, I'm going to describe the competitive game and point out how the cooperative game is different.

Setup
  • Teams: Divide the players into 2 teams of 3.
    Cooperative: There is only 1 team of 3 in cooperative.
    Roles: Choose or randomly assign a role to each player. The 2 people playing architects should sit next to each to each other.
  • Blocks: Give 1 set of blocks each to the builders.
  • Blueprints: Sort the blueprint cards into their relevant types and shuffled them into face-down decks.
  • Draw card: For the competitive 2 team game, only the 1-star cards used.
    Draw a card and place it on standee, position it so that only the architect players can view the diagram.
    Cooperative: In the cooperative game, the team decide which difficulty of blueprint to yse.
No the teams are ready to go.

On to play
Both teams play simultaneously and have the objective of putting together their blocks in the shape/configuration shown on the card which was drawn. However, there are some complications to this...
  • The Architect: The only player on a team that can see the blueprint card is the architect.
    The architect must describe the configuration to the supervisor but without using words or sounds! The architect can speak no evil and can only use gestures to explain what needs doing. The only time the architect can speak is to confirm their team has completed the shape.
  • The Supervisor: Since the supervisor cannot be spoken to, they hear no evil. Using the information provided by the architect, the supervisor in turn, must tell the builder how to put the blocks together verbally.
  • The Builder: The builder can see no evil and therefore must keep their eyes closed for the entirety of the game! The builder must actually put together the blocks by following the verbal instructions from the supervisor.
  • Point: Whichever team puts their blocks together to match the blueprint first wins a point!

Endgame
The team that reaches 6 points first, wins. Although this limit is fairly arbitrary and players can choose whatever score limit they want.

Cooperative
In the cooperative game, the team gets 3 minutes to complete a blueprint, if they take longer, they fail.
3 minutes might seem a lot, but the 2 and 3 star difficulties get much more complex.

Picture
A completed blueprint.

Overall
There's little strategy that can be adopted when playing Team3, that's not a criticism though, Team3 is sort of a hyped version of charades that's all about communication and interpretation between teammates. As with actual charades, players will probably very quickly adopt some standard gestures to represent certain things.
It's also worth adding that the game comes in 2 versions Green and Pink, which can be combined to support up to 4 teams of 3 players.

There's not much more to say about the Team3 really. It's a light party game that is easy to learn and will have a lot of crossover appeal, it's not something to be taken seriously. If you looking for deep gameplay, look elsewhere.
With the right people though, Team3 can be a fun diversion or a good filler game.
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