These are the game totals for April '22.
The numbers all up by 1 compared to March '22.

​Total games: 41
Different games: 29
​First plays: 7

Sunday 3rd on Board Game Arena
Hanabi - 2
Railroad Ink - 22
Space Base - 9
Stella - Dixit Universe - 4
Lucky Numbers - 16

Tuesday 5th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
Raids - 2
Muffin Time - First Play!

Sunday 10th on Board Game Arena
Las Vegan - First Play!
Splendor -17
Loco Momo - 6
Lucky Numbers - 17
Railroad Ink - 23

Tuesday 12th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
Muffin Time - 2
Bang: The Dice Game - 4
Deep Sea Adventure - 4
Tiny Epic Defenders - 3

Friday 15th on Board Game Arena
Boomerang: USA - First Play!
Cloud City - 11
Can't Stop - 14
Stella - Dixit Universe - 5

Sunday 17th on Board Game Arena
Dice Forge - 11
Carcassonne - 7
Potion Explosion - 12
Railroad Ink - 24
Lucky Numbers - 17

Tuesday 19th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
Babylonia - First Play!
Port Royal - 19

Thursday 21st at Simon's
Unlock The Escape Game: Star Wars - First Play!

Sunday 24th on Board Game Arena
Loco Momo - 7
Space Base - 10
Lucky Numbers - 18
Railroad Ink - 25
Can't Stop - 15

Tuesday 26th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
Hellapagos - First Play!
Codex Naturalis - 20

Friday 29th at Farnborough
Port Royal - 20

​Saturday 30th at Wogglecon 3
Century: Eastern Wonders - 4
Sushi Go! - 12
Machi Koro 2 - First Play!
Tiny Epic Galaxies - 6
Quacks of Quedlinburg - 4

30th April 2022

It's a Saturday afternoon and Wogglecon 3 with the Woking Gaming Club is in full swing.

The next game of the day was Machi Koro 2 which is the follow up to the most excellent original Mach Koro and which you can read about here.

Like its predecessor, Machi Koro 2 is a tableau and engine building card game all about constructing a city,

What's in a game?

• Cards: Machi Koro 2 makes use of several types of colour coded cards which are broadly divided into 2 categories, establishments and landmarks
  • Establishments: Each establishment card has various icons.
    Type: In the top left corner of each establishment card it shows its type and whether it can 'combo' off of other cards.
    Activation number: In the middle at the top, each card has an activation number that ranges from 1-12 and the card's colour determines when activation is applicable.
    Action: The lower half of cards contain text explaining how they function when activated.
    Cost: The bottom left corner of each card is the cost to buying it.
    Finally, establishments are further divided into 2 sub-categories, depending on their activation number; these are 1-6 and 7-12, which is displayed on the card backs.
  • Landmarks: Each landmark in Machi Koro 2 is unique but they all share some similar features.
    Cost: Most landmarks have a set of 3 costs, generally rising in value from left-to-right.
    Type: Each landmark will also have symbol determining whether it has a single use or ongoing effect.
    Action: The bottom half of each landmark will also contain text explaining how that card works.
• Coins: The game comes with chunky plastic coins which are definitely and upgrade from the original's card coins.
• Dice: These are 2 typical six-siders.

Components in Machi Koro 2 are all good. The cards are pretty standard cards as you'd expect. The coins feel solid and the dice are slightly larger than usual dice, they're plastic but also rounded, chunky and have a bit of heft to them.

Machi Koro 2 uses an art style that's identical to the original. Brightly coloured stylised almost cartoony illustrations of establishments and landmarks. The colours are very distinct, which is good because colour plays an important part in the game.

There are a few icons in Machi Koro 2, for the different types of establishment and types of effects on landmarks. It's all pretty clear what they mean and it won't provide an problems for players.

How's it play?
Setup

• Drafting area: Sort the cards into their 3 types, then shuffle them into 3 individual face-down decks and place them into a vertical line.
  Draw cards from each deck and place them face-up in a row next to their respective deck. Do this until you have 5 different kinds of card in each row. Any duplicates drawn should be stacked on a single space.
• Coins: Give each player 5 coins.
• First player: Determine a start player.
• Buy-in: Beginning with the first player and proceeding in turn order, each player has the opportunity to purchase 1 of any available card in the drafting area. Any spaces that appear after a card is taken are immediately refilled.
  Repeat this 3 times.

On to play
Machi Koro 2 uses the traditional turn order with the active player playing their turn before the the player to their left becomes the active player.
During their turn, the active player has 3 phases to play through.

• Roll the dice: The active may choose whether to roll 1 or 2 dice.
  This is different to the original where a landmark had to be constructed to unlock the 2nd die.
  The result of the roll is the activation number.
• Activations: When the activation number is declared, all players must look at their own cards to see which, if any are activated - cards with a matching activation number are potentially activated! Thus if the activation number is a '5', any card with a 5 activation may possibly be activated.
  When a card is activated, the action described on the bottom half of the card is resolved.
  Whether a card is activated or not, depends on its colour.
  Red cards: Red cards generally allow you get coins off of other players during the game and are only activated in another player's turn, the active player never actives their own red cards.
  E.g., if any non-active player has 1 or more red cards with a matching activation number it will allow that player to take money off the active player. Only the active player is affected by red cards.
  Blue cards: These cards are activated in any player's turn, thus both the active and non-active players may activate blue cards. Blue cards always earn coins from the bank and are obviously the most activated type of card.
  Green cards: Only the active player may activate green cards. Non-active players cannot activate their green cards. As with blue cards, green cards earn the controlling player coins from the bank. Some green cards are combo cards and earn coins dependant on other cards with the matching type.
  Purple cards: Like green cards, purple cards can only be activated by the active player. Purple cards have a variety of effects, including taking coins from other players, swapping establishments with them and more!
  Landmarks: While landmark cards have no specific activation numbers, if they have an ongoing effect, then they will have some other criteria, that when met will activate the landmark. Criteria include rolling doubles or having having a type of card activated by the roll and so on. Each landmark is unique and they have a wide variety of actions that can be resolved.
  Pity coin: Not an action per se, but the pity coin rule occurs at the end of the activation phase: If after resolving all activations, the active player has 0 coins in their personal supply (Perhaps due to other player's red cards!), then they can take 1 (Pity!) coin from the bank for their troubles to use for purchasing.
• Purchase card: The active player may purchase any 1 single card from the drafting area by paying it's cost. Players may over several turns purchase more than 1 copy of red/blue/green cards, the exception being purples; players may only have 1 copy of each purple.
  Landmark: Each landmark card has 3 costs. The 1st landmark a player purchases costs the 1st value, the 2nd landmark costs the 2nd value and the 3rd landmarks costs the 3rd value. If a landmark card is single-use, it's effect is triggered immediately upon purchase.
• Next turn: Once the active player has bought a card or passed, play progresses to the player on their left who becomes the new active player.

Endgame
When any player purchases their 3rd landmark, they immediately win the game.

Overall
Machi Koro 2 is a that's fairly easy to pick up and play light-to-mid weight game that has a quick playtime.
The game generally presents players mostly straightforward but meaningful decisions about buying cards.

Should a player spread their cards over a range of numbers to get better coverage, or concentrate on fewer numbers but getter pay outs when the numbers come up.
Players will also need to consider what those numbers are. e.g., 6-8 will come up most often - provided players are rolling 2 dice have a good chance of being activated.

Speaking of rolling dice, in Machi Koro 2 players are able to choose to roll 1 or 2 right from the start. This is another decision that players can make, sometimes they'll want to roll certain numbers or avoiding rolling them and using 1 or 2 dice can alter odds of doing this.
Much of this ties in with how the activation numbers are distributed across the cards. A lot of the 1-6 cards will immediately generate cash but the cards that combo off of them tend to be in the 7-12 range. Going to 2 dice was described by a player as 'going up a gear'.
It can be pretty hard to slowly build up cash over rounds to get landmarks because other players can essentially 'nickel and dime' it away, gearing up makes it easier to get big cash in a single roll to avoid this.

And talking of nickel and diming, another strategy to consider is the red card strategy.
Using red cards to fleece other players of their coins is a pretty effective strategy, it denies them coins and earns them at the same time - but you won't make any friends that way!
The downside of this approach is that canny players will try their best to spend all their coins, the game's timing explicitly states that red activations occur before any other, thus if opponents have no coins, you can't collect them with a red since their blues/greens/purples activate after red.
It means that in a quirky reflection of real cities, players will want to be as close to bankruptcy as possible!
Unlike blue/green cards, reds are not guaranteed to generate income.

Machi Koro 2 is a little on the light side (Not that I consider that an issue.) and perhaps a little too quick to end, which may not be to everyone's taste.
One other thing to mention is that there's definitely a dollop of luck to the game, I'm fine with it and actually think it's an important part of the Machi Koro experience but some players will find this off putting.

I do have a couple of relatively minor issues with Machi Koro 2.
In the original Machi Koro, the card variety in the base game was fairly low, when 'The Harbour' expansion was added to the base game, Machi Koro went from being a 'nice' game to a 'great' game.
I feel the same is true of Machi Koro 2 as well. There are only 20 different types of establishment and 10 will be visible right from the start. After playing a few games, players will have more or less seen everything the game has to offer at a basic level and and will habitually fall into familiar patterns or strategies depending how establishments emerge. An expansion would shake that up, I would love to see extra cards for Machi Koro 2.
Finally, the rules for landmarks having actions that all players can activate in their turn is a little inelegant, requiring players to remember what landmarks other players have acquired or be reminded of them by those other players.

​Otherwise, I think Machi Koro 2 an un-taxing (Sic.) fun and breezy game to play that's worth trying if lighter games are your thing.

How does it compare to Machi Koro?
I've heard Machi Koro 2 described as Machi Koro 1.5 and there's definitely a sliver of truth to that. Anyone who's played the original will be familiar with nearly everything in Machi Koro 2. If it's not broken...

So apparently there was also some criticism of the original where it was stated that there was a lot 'whiff' in the early game - where players would roll the dice and nothing would be activated. There was further criticism that the original had too long a play time.
It's clear that Machi Koro has tried to address these issues.

The 3 rounds of buying will allow players to have a better spread of numbers at the start. 
Having to only buy 3 landmarks will also make play quicker (Although the cheaper landmarks are way more expensive than the cheapest landmarks from the original.).

Landmarks with ongoing effects that activate in any player's turn also make the game quicker and can add an extra layer of interaction between players, although I've frequently seen players avoid these cards, instead optioning for once-only landmarks and I sort of feel that way myself.
This is the only thing I see as a possible misstep.

Changes to the game have made the red cards a bit more powerful, there's little opportunity to punish players who buy red cards in Machi Koro 2, other than one of the landmarks (Machi Koro had the publisher card to do this.). I don't think this is too much of change though and YMMV.

So anyway, all of this makes the game clearly quicker to play but I feel that perhaps it's a little too quick. Sometimes (Especially when someone gets a good roll or two.)  a game can be over before players can adopt an emergent strategy.
I never found that the original was overlong.

Don't let this put you off playing Machi Koro 2, it's of a similar quality as they original. Even though I own the first game, I was happy to buy and play the second  and would recommend it to players of the original as well as to people who have never played it.

30th April 2022

It's a Saturday and we're with the Woking Gaming Club for Wogglecon 3, a day of gaming at Bisley Scout Hall.

I played the following games:
Century: Eastern Wonders
Sushi Go!
Machi Koro 2 - First Play!
Tiny Epic Galaxies
Quacks of Quedlinburg

26th April 2022

Tuesday is here and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club.
​
Does Hellapagos mean hell in the Galapagos islands, I didn't see any giant tortoises in the game?

Anyway; Hellapagos is a (Somewhat!) cooperative game about surviving the ordeals of being shipwrecked on what would in other circumstances be a tropical paradise, building rafts and escaping.

What's in a game?

• Game board: Hellapagos comes with a oblong board that depicts an idyllically and cheerfully colourful tropical beach scene with survivors scavenging and hunting.
  There are spaces for completed raft cards and the weather deck.
  Raft track: There's a track to monitor the 6 stages required to build a raft.
  Resource track: Running around the perimeter of the board is the track for food and water.
• Cards: The game makes use of a couple of types of cards.
  Wreckage cards: This deck of cards contains items that players might find when scavenging the wrecked remains of their boat. This might include bottled water, food or even weapons and more!
  Weather deck: This slim deck of cards is used to manage the very changeable weather and rainfall in Hellapagos. Each card will display a number of raindrops to represent the weather.
  Hurricane card: This card goes into the weather deck, when it appears, it's bad news!
  Status cards: Double-sided cards which displayed the poisoned status for people unfortunate to be poisoned and on the flip side show the dead status for really unfortunate players.
  Raft cards: When the players manage to build a raft, they get a raft card.
• Cardholder: A fantastically unnecessary but excellent little card holder for the wreckage deck.
• Wooden balls: Used to manage both hunting for fish and scavenging for wood. There are 6 of them, each one shows 1-3 fish and one is black.
• Bag: This looks like a hemp bag and is used to blindly draw the wooden balls.
• Tokens: There are distinctly shaped tokens for the game's 3 types of resources, a water drop for water, a fish token for food and errr, a disc for wood?

Only the cards are what I would consider average in build production, which is to say, they're fine. The tokens feel suitable chunky, as do the balls and bag (Sic) which are a nice touch. The standout component is the completely superfluous cardholder which displays like the wrecked hull of a half sunken ship.

Hellagapos makes use of excellent bright and colourful artwork throughout, especially on the cards. With thick black lines and lots of colour it has an almost ligne claire quality to it. Furthermore, there's also a lot of humorous subtext to the art. Like the pendulum that makes another player take a one action of their chosen by the card-player (Hypnotises them!) and so on.

There's minimal iconography in the game and what there is, such as water or fish icons ​are easy to comprehend. Actions on the survivor cards are all detailed by text instead.

How's it play?
Setup

• Game board: Put out the game board.
  Resources: Put the food and water tokens on their starting positions on the resource track as determined by the player count.
  Raft track: Put the wood token on to the 0 spot on the raft track.
  Raft deck: Put out the raft deck adjacent to the board.
• Weather deck: Shuffle the weather deck and draw 5 cards into a face-down deck.
  Now shuffle the hurricane card into this deck.
  Place the deck (Now with 6 cards.) face-down on to the weather card space on the board.
  Put the remaining weather cards on top off the 6 cards.
  This means the hurricane card will appear somewhere in the last half of the weather deck.
• Wooden balls: Put all 6 wooden balls into the bag and give it a vigorous shake.
• Wreckage cards: Shuffle the wreckage cards into a face-down deck. Deal 3 or 4 to each player as per player count.
  Put the remaining cards into the cardholder.
• First Player: Determine a start player.

On to play
Hellapagos uses a normal turn structure with the active player taking their turn before play progresses to the player to their left.
The game has 4 basic actions a player can perform but because it's a cooperative game, there can be a lot of discussion about moves and strategies among players and later, negotiation taking place.
A round represents 'a day' and plays as follows

• Weather: Any previous weather is discarded and the active player flips over a weather card which will set the rainfall for the day which depicted as raindrops. This might be 0 or all the way up to 3 raindrops.
  In the latter half of the game, the hurricane card may appear, more on this below.
• Actions: Now, starting with the first player, each person takes 1 of the actions below.
  • Catch fish: The active player blindly pulls a wooden ball from the bag, the number of fish displayed on the ball is how many fish they collected and the food token on the resource track is increased accordingly.
  • Collect water: For their action, the active play may choose to collect water. The amount collected will be dependent on the current weather card and thus will be between 0-3. Obviously collecting water when there are 0 raindrops on the weather card is a pointless, conversely, collecting water when there are 3 raindrops would allow them to move the water token up the resource track by 3.
  • Collect wood/build raft: When collecting wood, there is some risk attached.
    First, the active player should advance the wood token 1 space along the raft track.
    After this, the active player must decide if they want to risk collecting more wood. If they decide to collect more, they must announce how much they are collecting (Between 1-5.). Then they must blindly draw that many wooden balls from the bag.
    Black balled!: If any of the wooden balls that are pulled from the bag is the black ball, then the player is immediately poisoned and they do not collect any wood. More on poisoning below. If all the balls are white, they avoided the pesky snakes that inhabit the forest, collecting the full amount amount of wood that they announced and moving the wood token along the raft track and equal amount.
    Building rafts: Once the 6th piece of wood is collected (The wood token reaches 6 on the raft track.) then the active player has finished a raft! Place a raft card on the corresponding space on the board.
  • Search wreckage: The active player can spend their action to draw a wreckage card from the deck.
    There are 2 types of wreckage card; permanent and ongoing. Wreckage cards can generally be played by their controlling player at any time or in response to another player's action or card regardless of what type they are. Although their effect will occur after an announced action. (There are no 'interrupts' here!)
    Furthermore cards can be played face-up to try and intimidate or face-down to bluff as well as kept secret.
    Permanent: Some cards have ongoing effects, to make use of them, they must be played in front of the controlling player. Even though they are permanent
    Single use: These are one-and-done, players can keep these in their hand until they decide to use them.
    Wreckage cards have a broad number of functions, from helping the group to helping (Or harming!) an individual or even influencing voting. 
• Next player: Once the active player has taken their action, play progresses to their left.
• End of round/day: When a players have taken their actions, the following occurs:
  Consume water: Move the water token down the resource track by a number of spaces equal to the number of current players. If this would take the token to lower than 0, then the players have a problem. This means that 1 or more players will need to be eliminated from the game, the exact number will be equal to how much more water would be needed. E.g., if 7 players only have 4 water on the resource track, 3 players would have to be eliminated. This is done through voting (See below.), the game also provides various methods to eliminate players via wreckage cards.
  Consume food: This is mechanically identical to consuming water but for the food resource.
  Check victory conditions: Once water and food have been dealt with, players should check to see if they meet victory conditions.
  New first player: Once a round is over and the victory conditions have not been met, the player to the left of the first player becomes new first player for the subsequent round.
• Voting: This occurs when there isn't enough food or water and a player needs to be eliminated. The first player counts to 3 and all players simultaneously point at the player they want to eliminate. Whoever has the most fingers pointing at them is out!
  If an eliminated player has been hoarding a ration card that would provide the required resource, they can discard if after the vote to save themselves, although they may attract the irritation of other players by hording it in the first place. Alternatively, another player may choose to save them with a wreckage card.
• Poison: A player may become poisoned from searching for wood or eating or drinking bad rations. Regardless of the source, the effect is the same.
  Firstly, a poisoned character cannot participate in voting while they are sick, then in the following round, their only action can be to remove the poisoned status.
• Elimination: If a player is eliminated, then that's it, they're are out of the rest of the game. After this, their remaining wreck cards must be redistributed.
  All permanent cards they had in play - except a gun are discarded from play. The gun is returned to the eliminated player's hand.
  If a player was eliminated by voting, the cards they had in hand are distributed between their neighbours.
  If they were eliminated by another player, then that player gets all the wreckage cards.
• Hurricane: When the hurricane card appears, it marks the beginning of the end. The game will finish at the end of the current round, players must leave on any rafts they've built along with their water and food rations.

Endgame
There 3 ways Hellapagos can end.

• Check for victory: At the end of every round, the players must check if they meet the victory conditions.
  Victory condition: Once water and food have been consumed for the round, if the remaining water, food and rafts are at least equal to the current number of players, then they sail to safety.
  If all players got away, congratulations are in order, it is, in my opinion very difficult to achieve this.
  It's a likely occurrence that eliminating some players freed up resources to escape, if so, then the escapees can be considered the winners.
• Hurricane: When the hurricane card has appeared, players must leave the island at the end of the round if they can. They'll need the requisite water, food and rafts for this as per the victory conditions.
  It means players must be eliminated until their numbers are low enough to allow the remaining player to get away.
  Again, any survivors who get away can be considered winners.
  If players cannot leave the island on rafts for any reason... then see below:
• Total loss: If no players can leave on a raft after the hurricane hits, then everybody loses!
  If all the players manage to starve or die of thirst, goes without saying that it's a total loss.

Overall
There's a lot to unpack with Hellapagos and I'll start with the mechanics.
The write-up is a little long and belies the fact that in play, the game is pretty straight foward to understand and play.
More importantly; it's clear that the game's mathematics have been balanced so that it's very hard to get all players off the island. Which makes sense from a game-perspective, it forces players to consider different late-game strategies.

If say, a group of 6 players had 9 days to get off the island, they'd need the following.
Water: 6 per day +6 to leave -12, which is their starting water. So 48 water.
Food: 6 per day +6 to leave - 10, which is their starting food, so 50 food.
Rafts: At 6 wood per raft, they'll need 36 wood.
In other words 5.4 water per day, 5.5 food per day, 4 wood per day.
If the player split their labour evenly per task, that would mean:
2 players getting 2.7 water per day each.
2 players getting 2.75 food per day each.
2 players getting 2 wood per day each.

Getting both water and food at that rate is pretty hard. Each player would essentially have to get 3 or their chosen resource per day, every day. Since 3 is the top end result players could hope for, it's unlikely this will occur.
Getting 2 wood per day per player seems easy but each player has a 16% chance of being poisoned, this might not seem high but when it does occur, it means that they only get 1 wood and lose their next action. Catching up in a following round mean getting 5 wood, this is a lot more tricky.
Of course players may want to search the wreckage and rightfully so, there are some very useful cards to be found in there, including for example; cards that skip the consume food action among others. On the other hand, it's equally as likely that something which helps a player personally might be found...

Players may want to divide their labour differently as well; when lots of rain appears, it might be good to get more people gathering water and 'get 'ahead' on the water track.
A game like Hellapagos thrives on player social interaction, if people don't engage with it, it won't be a particularly interesting or memorable game.

Ultimately though, players will sooner or later come to a conclusion; there won't be enough resources for all the players to get off the island.

This changes the game in 2 ways.
Firstly, players will begin looking at who to vote off as food and water become scarcer. Players will try to emphasise their own usefulness and see who can be a good target for  elimination during voting.
This is where having a valuable item can keep a player alive. Some ongoing cards are very handy and eliminating the player who controls it, also eliminates the item. Not a coincidence in the rules I think.
Additionally, players may also look to horde rations on wreckage cards, waiting until voting has occurred, allowing others to be eliminated and only using it when they have been voted out. However, other players can look at this very negatively and it can draw their ire.
players are free to form alliances or betray one another, gang up on other players, openly or otherwise and so on.
Needless to say negotiation and voting can become very tense.

Secondly, people will start to realise that when player counts are sufficiently low, that eliminating players after collecting resources can leave the survivors with enough resources to escape the island.
The thing is though; it's likely that they'll be enough food and water to prevent any voting from going ahead. Players will have to resort to 'other methods' to removing opponents.
This is where the game gets brutal and the pistols start getting used.

Hellapagos mixes cooperative game play with a large dose of 'take that' actions. In the early-game it's all pleasant enough but once it progresses on, everything can change.

I, like many other people I imagine, am not a fan of games that have player elimination, luckily for Hellapagos, players won't generally spend too long just watching. It doesn't frequently occur early in the game and once the eliminations start, they don't stop until the game does!
I will also add; if game with lots of direct 'in-your-face' conflict and player elimination aren't your thing, it would prudent to give Hellapagos a miss.

but if this sort of thing is your jam, then with it's 12-player count! Hellapagos is a good game to try.

20th April 2022

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

Unlock! The Escape Game are a series of games drawing inspiration from escape room games and as you'll have gathered from the name, Star Wars: Unlock is a Star Wars themed Unlock! game.

Time to escape Star Wars!

Note: Unlock! games come with 3 scenarios and in the case of Star Wars: Unlock!, we played the Secret Mission on Jedha scenario, one of the harder scenarios and which involved being nasty Imperial spies running round a desert.

What's in a game?

• App: Star Wars: Unlock! is a app-drive game, meaning that a player will need to download the app to a smartphone or tablet.
• Cards: The game is primarily a card game and comes with several different types of colour coded cards. Cards are numbered in the top left corner and also display numbers/letters on their backs. Some cards will also display icons instructing players to discard specific cards. Along the bottom will be further instructions or flavour text.
  Each of the 3 scenarios has it's own deck.
  Starting cards: Each of the scenarios has its own starting cards that will kick off the scenario.
  Object cards: These cards are red and blue, they feature a number in the top left corner and depending on the colour a sort of jigsaw puzzle icon in the top right corner. Red and blue cards can be combined which each other, more on this below.
  Machine cards: Green cards are used to represent machines or vehicles and work in conjunction with the app
  Code cards: Like machine cards, these are used in conjunction with the app. These yellow cards are used in relation to clues, secret numbers and the like.
  Other cards: Grey is used to represent other cards and are used to represent locations or other objects, points of interest and results as required.
• Map: The Secret Mission of Jedha comes with a folded paper map of a desert region and is gridded with coordinates.

Star Wars: Unlock! is a card game with a map, quality wise it's exactly what you would expect of cards and a small paper map, which is to say; perfectly acceptable.

Art-wise, like all Star Wars licensed games I've seen, the quality is consistently high throughout. I don't know whether the art was created specifically for this game or was sourced from what must be a huge archive of art that has been produced and accumulated over the decades but regardless, it's all looks good and has a appropriately Star Wars feel to it

A few icons are used throughout the game, they're pretty clear and self-evident, I can't imagine they would prove an obstacle to players.

How's it play?
Setup

• The deck: Do not look at any cards in the deck and leave them all face-down. During play, players will search for the cards they need via the numbered backs.
• ​Starting cards: Select the starting cards as required and follow the instructions on them.
• App: Launch the app, the timer will begin counting down from 60 minutes.

On to play
Star Wars: Unlock! is all about discovery and deciphering clues which will eventually lead to the scenario's conclusion. Functionally, the game works a little like a gamebook where players would get to choose which numbered paragraph to read, except in this game it's done with numbered cards instead of paragraphs. There's also a bit more to Star Wars: Unlock! than most gamebooks though, especially in relation to how the app is utilised.
It's tricky to describe how the game plays, especially without some sort of spoiler but basically, the players collectively try to solve the puzzles presented to them.
What follows are descriptions for actions players can take.

• Choices: Location cards will frequently display an environment with numbers attached to points-of-interest. Players can simply take the cards with those numbers from the deck to gain further information about those points-of-interest.
• Combining: A red card can be combined with a blue card by adding their 2 numbers together to get a 3rd number, the card for this 3rd number can them be pulled from the deck. There will be times that multiple red and blue cards can be used create multiple 3rd numbers.
• Hidden Numbers: All the cards in Star Wars: Unlock! are illustrated and some of these illustrations may contain hidden numbers. If spotted by players can be pulled from the deck to provide them with something that was secret.
• Machines: When players acquire these cards, their number can be punched into the app which will in turn provide them with a puzzle or problem to solve.
• Codes: Sometimes a card will present the players with a dead-end such as a locked door. Players must find and enter the code into the app to proceed through the door - the app will tell them which card to draw next.
• Coordinates: The Secret of Jedha scenario comes with a map and this is more than just cosmetic. At some point the players will find themselves traipsing around a desert and where they go will be managed by entering the coordinates into the app.
• Penalties: When some cards are drawn, typically red herrings or the result of failing at something, they will require players to press the penalty button on the app, this will usually deduct 1 minute from the countdown timer.

​Endgame
There's no way to lose Star Wars: Unlock! per se, when the countdown reaches 0 it instead simply goes into 'negative time'.
After reaching a scenario's conclusion, the app will then rate the player's collective performance from 1-5.
Computer says you get only 1 Star!

Overall
Star Wars: Unlock! pulls some clever tricks with how it uses cards and how it combines them with the app to provide some engaging obstacles to overcome.
We're not geniuses by any stretch but nor are thick, so for the most part the scenario was well balanced, we were stumped for a while on a couple of occasions and referred to the app's hint system for a card once.  Otherwise the game was more or less straightforward.
The play time is fairly brisk in Star Wars: Unlock! with players facing with some unusual problems to solve while under the pressure of a ticking clock. 

The box states that 1-6 people can play but I'm sceptical about this. I just don't think that there's enough to do to occupy 4 people, let alone 6! By the the game's very nature, there tends to be a lot interconnectivity between cards and the clues they represent. This means that it's not particularly conducive for solving challenges to split cards between players and as a result, the cards will tend to be be hogged by some players while others are left twiddling their thumbs.
Playing with 3 people might be OK, 2 players and you're golden.

I'm also not a fan of app-driven games and licensed ones even less so: Eventually that game license will eventually and what happens to the apps distribution then?
Having said that, there's little replay value to the game, once all 3 scenarios are completed successfully, players will have no reason to return to the game.

​Putting those (Non game.) criticisms aside, if you like puzzles and problem-solving, then this may well appeal to you and if you also like Star Wars, then doubly so. Especially since it's also a fairly accessible crossover or gateway game the could attract fans who are non-gamers.

19th April 2022

It's a Tuesday and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club.

Mesopotamia; source of much history, a birthplace of the world's early civilisations. Also the source of many board games, one of them being Babylonia.
Take on the role of a merchant dynasty and attempt to create the most lucrative trade routes.

What's in a game?

• Game board: Babylonia's board has an illustrated a map that depicts this part of Mesopotamia, along with the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. It has a hex overlay used to delineate, cities, farms, rivers and ziggurats. A scoring track circles the perimeter of the board.
  Additionally, the board is divided into 3 regions, north, south and central which are marked out and separated by the 2 rivers. This dictates what parts of the board are used in the game as per player count.
  Unusually, the orientation of the map feels unconventional, when viewed from the landscape orientation, north is to the left and south to the right. Only when viewed in portrait orientation are north and south where you expect them to be, it's been rotated '90!
  Obviously this is a non-issue, since I'm used to looking at both board and maps in the landscape orientation, it's a bit counterintuitive for me.
• Ziggurats: There are 5 of these little 3D wooden models.
• Cards: There are 9 of these ziggurat cards, when acquired they provide the owning player with benefit of some sort, this may be a once-only or ongoing benefit. They are numbered 1-9.
  A one-off benefit may be immediately gain 10 VPs and ongoing benefits may include allowing a player to have more tokens on their stand or being able to play 3 noble tokens instead of 2 and so on.
• Tiles: Babylonia uses 2 types of hexagonal card tile, they represent cities and farms. The front of each type shows their scoring criteria, which for farms are straight-up numbers or a city symbol, city tiles will have icons related to the game's 3 types of nobles.
• Tokens: There are 30 of these round wooden tokens in each player colour and they come in 4 types; farmers and nobles. Nobles are further subdivided in to civil servants, merchants and priests. Dang! Even in the ancient world civil servants were a thing, I'm surprised there aren't lawyers!
• Stands: There's a oblong stand with 2 grooves for each player and are used to hold tokens.

Babylonia's components are all good. the cards are actually as chunky as the tokens. The remaining components. the tokens and ziggurats are all constructed of wood and feel high quality. The stands are a nice touch.

The artwork used on the board is good and portrays what I imagine to be a suitably middle-eastern landscape for Mesopotamia. It is perhaps a little too busy and distracts the eye, however, the hexes help to make the layout clear.
The cards all use the same illustration which is a little bland.

For the most part, iconography is easily understood. Only some of the ziggurat cards are not immediately clear and will require looking up in the rule book but that only applies when and if the card comes into play. Nothing that would be a problem or approaching a dealbreaker.

How's it play?
Setup

• Board: Put out the board and place the following.
  Ziggurats: Place the ziggurat models on their allotted spaces.
  Cities and farms: Shuffle the city and farm tiles into a face-down stack and randomly place them face-up on their allotted spaces on the board.
  In games with a lower play count, not all the board is used, consequently not all the ziggurats, cities and farms are used either.
• Cards: Put out the cards numbered 1-7.
  There's a variant where all 9 are shuffled and 7 are randomly dealt to use.
• Tokens: Give each player all the tokens and stand in their colour, they should be shuffled into face-down stacks. Then each player should deal themselves 5 and place them into their stand.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
Babylonia uses a standard turn structure with the active player taking their turn before play moves to the left.
In their turn, there are 3 phases active player must complete.

• Play Tokens: The active player must play tokens, depending on where tokens are placed, there may be immediate scoring. When playing tokens, the active player can choose from 2 options:
  Play any 2 tokens: The active player may put any 2 of their tokens (Any mix of nobles and/or farmers.) on to the board. These may be used on river spaces but must be turned face-down to do so.
  Play 3+ farmers: The active player may put 3 or more farmer tokens and only farmer tokens on to the board. They cannot be used to cover river spaces.
  Placement rules: Some rules and restrictions apply when placing tokens.
  ​In the 1st two turns only 1 or 2 tokens can be played respectively, after this the usual limits apply.
  Tokens may be placed on to any empty hex space. That's is one not occupied by a city/farm/ziggurat or opponent's token. Tokens do not need to be placed next to each other or the board edge or anything like that.
  Farms: Having said that, a farmer token can be placed on a hex with a farm tile if the active player already has at least 1 other token adjacent to that farm. When this occurs, the player token replaces the farm tile which is removed and score - more on this below.
  Scoring: Farms and ziggurats can be immediately scored during this phase depending on where the player put their tokens.
  Farm tile: When a player acquires a farm tile, it is immediately scored. If the tile contains a number, that's the VPs scored.
  ​If it has the city symbol, then the active player gains VPs equal to all the city tiles all players have in their personal areas! (More on acquiring city tiles below.)
  Ziggurats: When a player puts one of their tokens adjacent to a ziggurat, they immediately score VPs equal to the number of ziggurats they have tokens adjacent to. Thus for the 1st time a token is placed adjacent to a ziggurat, the active player gains 1 VP, if they place a token adjacent to a second ziggurat, the would score 2 VPs.
  Multiple tokens adjacent to the same ziggurat do not increase scoring, it ziggurats, not tokens that score.
• Score surrounded cities/ziggurats: When all the land hex spaces surrounding a city or ziggurat are occupied (By any mix of player tokens.), it is considered completed and is scored. Tokens placed face-down in river spaces adjacent to a ziggurat do not count towards completion but do count for the purposes of majority.
  Whoever has the most of their tokens surrounding a city/ziggurat has majority (Which confers extra benefits.), in the case of a tie, no one will have majority.
  Cities: When a city is completed, all players who have adjacent noble tokens that match the icon(s) on the city tile score 2 VP per matching token. Furthermore any matching tokens connected via the players own network of other tokens (Including face-down tokens.) also score 2 VPs each. This can be a good source of VPs.
  Finally, whoever has majority, takes the city tile and places it in their playing area and scores VPs equal to the number of city tiles they've acquired and placed in their playing area. Thus the first city tile acquired earns 1 VP the second gains 2 VPs and so forth.
  If there is no majority, then the city tile is discarded and no one scores it.
  Ziggurats: When a ziggurat is completed, whoever has majority immediately takes an available ziggurat card of their choice and gains whatever benefit it confers. Again, in the case no majority, no one can acquire a ziggurat card via that ziggurat.
• Refill tokens on stand: Once the active player has completed the first 2 phases, they draw tokens from their personal stack to increase the tokens on the stand back to 5.
• Next player: Play progresses to the player on the left.

Endgame
Play continues until 1 of the following 2 criteria are met:
A player has no tokens on their stand.
Or
There are only 1 or 0 city tiles left on the board.
In either case, the game ends immediately!

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
If you were to look at a game of Babylonia in progress, you'd be forgiven for thinking that with all these tokens in play at the same time that it's a complicated game but it's not.
From the rules write up above there's not too much to learn but like all good games, there's a lot to think about.
Right from the start Babylonia provides players with meaningful decisions to make and several paths to scoring VPs which can be prioritised. Often these will vary in value contextually and in relation to other decisions. There will be short term and long term goals.

Take ziggurats for example, a player may put tokens next a number of different ziggurats to score points as efficiently as possible but may also choose to concentrate on a single one in order to secure a card. However, taking too long to gain majority on a Ziggurat may lose you some actions.

Cards themselves will change in importance, those with continuous ability will be most exploitable in the early game and those with once-only bonuses will be important in the late game - provided of course, that someone else hasn't beaten you to the punch. 

Farms and cities have an interesting relationship, getting cities quicker than other players can earn a lot of VPs when some farms are scored or more city tiles are acquired. But city tiles need to be surrounded to score - unlike farms which can score immediately. Sometimes It may also take more actions to surround a city; if it looks like a player is going to get majority in a city (Or ziggurat actually.) other players wont be incentivised to complete it early for another player's benefit.

Finally, there's the network of tokens that players will create, their trade routes. Finding ways to connect nobles to matching city tiles on other parts of the board can be a good source of points. Especially if a noble can be connect to multiple cities, a city can only be scored once so getting another use out of already played token is useful.
It's here small token plays can have big outcomes.
Sometimes players will want to put specific nobles into player or sometimes use farmers for rapid expansion. All of this is dependant on what tokens get drawn though. It's likely that something will not go to plan thanks to other players. Adapting to circumstances can also be important.

Paying attention to what other players are doing is also vital since - apart from what's on a player's stand - everything is open. It means that it's likely that getting majority will eventually become a race as players' objectives clash and anticipating those objectives can make a difference.

With straightforward rules and a brisk playing time, Babylonia is fairly accessible but also provides players with meaningful decisions.
I enjoyed it and would recommend it.

15th April 2022

It's a Friday and we're logged into Board Game Arena for some afternoon gaming.

​Take a road trip across America, visit the landmarks, go wildlife spotting, play some sports, end where you started? Send a postcard (Or write a letter from America.), walk 500 miles, maybe walk 500 more...
OK, enough of the tenuous references. 
​Boomerang: USA combines set collecting and roll and write mechanics into a point salad of a scoring game.

Caveat: We've only ever played Boomerang: USA digitally.

What's in a game?

• Score sheet: This shows a map of the continental United States and a network of connections between 28 different cities or tourist location from coast-to-coast and which are labelled A-Z (With @ and # making up the last 2.). The locations are divided into 7 regions of 4 cities each.
  The sheet also features various boxes for scoring, mostly on the right side.
• Cards: There are 28 cards in Boomerang: USA which as you would imagine is 1 for each location on the score sheet. Each card also features some artwork representing that city or landmark.
  Throw number: In the top left of each card is it's 'throw number' which ranges from 1-7. More on throw numbers below.
  Sets: Each card will have 2 icons pertinent to 2 of the game's sets.
  Landmark: This will be a letter/symbol that represents that city/landmark and matches it's location on the score sheet.

The only artwork in the game appears on the 28 cards and is obviously referencing the locations the cards represent. It's pretty artwork too, with blue skies and bright colours.

Using letters/symbols for cities is a smart move and easily understood. Boomerang: USA makes use of 4 types of sets to collect and each set will feature its own range of icons, it means that the game has a fairly large array of icons. Luckily, it's clear which icons belong to which set and players don't need to reference a rulebook to know what they mean since the game is about matching icons in their respective sets.

How's it play?
Boomerang: USA is played over 4 rounds and uses a drafting mechanic where players pick a card from their hand and then passes the remaining cards to their left, then all chosen cards are revealed (Or not for the first card.) simultaneously. This continues until all cards have been selected and players have acquired 7 cards.

• Setup: Shuffle the cards into a face-down deck and deal 7 to each player. Each player should also have a scoring sheet.
• Drafting: Player's should pick 1 card from their available hand and put it face-down in their playing area, then pass the remaining cards to the player on their left.
  Throw card: The very first card a player selects will be their throw card and is kept face-down until scoring at the end of the round.
  Throw cards are scored as normal but also feature own scoring (Using the throw number no less.).
  Reveal card: The remainder of cards picked during the round are placed face-up. Cards are not actioned until all cards have been picked by players.
  Catch card: The last card a player gets (The one they have no choice about.) is their catch card. As the name implies, this relates to their throw card.
  Once all cards have been played, the game goes to scoring.
• Scoring: Boomerang: USA is a set collecting game with a variety of scoring methods which differ from set to set.
  • Boomerang!: Each player reveals their throw card.
    Then the throw value on their throw card is compared with the throw value on their catch card.
    If the catch card has a equal or higher value than the throw card, they score VPs equal to their throw card.
    Throw, catch, boomerang, geddit!
  • Cities/locations: Players score 1 VP for each location they visit and should mark it off on their score sheet. Players only ever get 1 VP per location.
    There is also additional scoring for locations as follows:
    • Coast-to-coast: When a player visits adjacent locations as per the connections depicted on the score sheet, they should draw a line between the adjacent locations.
      The first player to connect the east coast to the west coast scores 7 VPs, other players can also score coast-to-coast but with diminishing VPs.
    • Regions: On the score sheet, each of the 7 regions contains 4 locations. The first player to visit all 4 in a region scores a bonus 3 VP. Only 1 player can score per region.
  • Americana: Players score for sets of Americana symbols here with slices of American life such as baseball, American football and mom's apple pie, OK, there's no apple pie but you get the idea.
    Scoring Americana is initially easy, each Americana icon is worth a certain number of points, they are all combined to get a score for that round.
    Next Round: The catch with scoring Americana points is that in the following round, the Americana score must be higher than the previous round, otherwise the score is set to 0!
  • Wildlife: There are various types of wildlife worth differing amounts of VPs and players score for each pair of matching animal icons they collect.
  • Activities: There are 4 different types of activity, such as hiking or dining. Players choose any one type only to score in a round, the more cards they've collected of the chosen type, the more they score. So 3 hiking symbols would score 4 VPs but 4 dining symbols would score 7 VPs.
    Once per game: The catch with scoring activities is that each activity can only be scored once per game, so it's one and done and since there's 4 rounds, there will be opportunity to score all 4 activities.
• Next round: Once all cards have been scored, play progresses to the next round: All cards are put back into a deck, shuffled and dealt out again in preparation for drafting again.

Endgame
Once the 4th round is completed and scored, players then total their final score from across all 4 rounds.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
​On a basic level, Boomerang: USA is a straightforward drafting game. It's point salad of scoring mechanics makes the game complex, most of the blog above talks about the 7 ways to score VPs.
Some of the scoring methods have pretty standard elements, collecting matching pairs or 1 kind of set are common, however, restrictions on how these are scored, particularly for Americana activities add an unusual twist.
The throw and catch mechanic is the standout here, presenting players with a clear risk and reward choice right at the start of a round especially when this is when they'll have all 7 cards to choose from.
Play a 1 as the throw card and it's guaranteed to score but is only worth 1 VP.  Playing a 7 as the throw card earns 7 VPS but requires a 7 as the catch card; since player have no control over what their last card will be it's a risky proposition. 

Typical for a game of this type, it's more or less impossible to score well in all categories at the same and the dilemma of what a player should prioritise is what drives the gameplay.
Should a player concentrate on getting locations and regions (Which are another type of set really.) over other sets?
Is it a good idea to have a steadily increasing Americana score over round, or go high then score 0 to score high again?
When is a good time to try and get a good score in a particular activity?
A lot of this will be contextual or unpredictable, it's the nature of this kind of drafting game. Players will probably start a round with no clear direction and will need to adapt to a strategy and recognise what to prioritise as it emerges from whatever cards they pick.

There's also a higher level of play where players can watch their opponents to try and gauge what they're concentrating on and deny it to them: If it looks like an opponent is trying to complete coast-to-coast, a player might chose and play a card with the location needed themselves in order to deny that other player.
Although I'm not sure that denial tactics are that effective though, it's entirely possible blocking a opponent will involve blocking yourself as well.

I felt like the travelling, roll and write element was a bit out of place here, adding extra layers of what seem like unnecessary complexity the game. So while the game has depth thanks to all these scoring opportunities, it actually felt like it was perhaps a little detrimental to the experience, increasing thinking time and inducing some analysis-paralysis as a consequence.

Otherwise I can't really find fault with Boomerang: USA, it's not a bad game by any stretch, it just somehow didn't appeal and seemed a little unengaging. Maybe the theme of being a tourist did quite gel with me?
I feel that there are other mechanically similar games that are a little more accessible and quicker to play.
Obviously, YMMV, a fan of card drafting games who plays them often might find the roll and write part of Boomerang: USA a fresh take in the category.

10th April 2022

Sunday evening is here and we're logged into Board Game Arena for a night of gaming.

'Viva Las Vegan!'
Or
'Millions of cabbages, cabbages for me.'
'Millions of cabbages, cabbages for free.'

Err... wait...? No... that's enough of that!
Las Vegan is a umm.. vegetable-themed trick taking card game?

Caveat: We've only ever played Las Vegan digitally and not sure if a English language version is even available in hard copy?

What's in a game?

• Cards: Las Vegan comes with 40 cards numbered 0-9 in 4 different vegetables/colours/suits.
• Cabbage machine cards: There are 12 of these double-sized cards which are used for scoring. Each one displays either a numeric value or a set of vegetables. Cabbage cards essentially represent scoring criteria. Thus if a cabbage machine displays the number 3, it means that cards with 3 on them will score. What they score is determined by casino chips, see below for more on casino chips.
  Golden cabbage machine card: Another scoring card displaying scoring options for Min and Max.
• Casino chips: The game features 4 double-sided casino chip tokens that sport a number on each side ranging from -3 to +1, obviously these numbers are skewed towards the negative.
  Golden chip: This chip is golden and is also double-sided, displaying -3/-4 respectively.
  Casino chips are used to determine the scoring on the cabbage cards, i.e., casino chips determine what meeting the scoring criteria will actually end up scoring.
• Cabbages: What is it with cabbages? Not satisfied with cabbage machines, Las Vegan also has cabbage tokens, which are the game's victory point tokens.

There's fairly minimal art throughout Las Vegan. The cards feature illustrations of vegetables on a slot machine reel and the cabbage machine cards show either vegetables or numbers across 3 reels.
Nothing bad but also nothing to write home about.

There's no iconography to speak off, just plain and simple numbers as well as the icons for the 4 types of card.

How's it play?
Setup

• Cabbage tokens: Give 15 cabbage tokens to each player.
• Cabbage machine cards: Shuffle the cabbage machine cards into a face-down deck and deal 3 face-up into the central playing area, then put out the golden cabbage machine card.
  These are the cards that will be scored in this round.
• Casino chips: Take all 5 casino chip tokens and flip them. The sides that come face-up will be used for scoring in that round.
• Cards: shuffle the cards into a face-down deck and deal all of them face-down to the players.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
Las Vegan is played over 1-4 rounds, each round follows the typical turn structure for a trick taking game, with the first or active player playing a card and the player to the left the 'following' that play.

• Opening card: Whoever is the first player can play any card from their hand. As you'd expect for a trick taking game, this set the suit for the trick.
• Follow: The next player must 'follow suit' and play a card from the same suit as the starting player if they can, otherwise they can play any card from any other suit.
  This continues until all players have played a card.
• Take trick: Whoever played the highest value card in that turn's suit takes the trick!
  Trump: However, if someone plays a '0' card of a different suit during a trick that will trump the highest value card and win instead.
  Take cards: Whoever won the trick should take all the cards and place them into their own face-down pile as a reminder of how many tricks they've taken. Players cannot look at any of these cards during the remainder of the round.
• Number 7: When a player collects 1 or more '7' value cards after winning a trick, they must place one of the casino chips (For each '7' they took.) on to a cabbage machine card, there are some restrictions here though.
  A casino chip cannot be flipped over to it's reverse side.
  Only 1 casino chip can go on a cabbage machine card and cannot be moved for the remainder of the round.
  The golden casino chip can only go on the golden cabbage machine card and it must be placed on the Min or Max space. None of the other casino chips can go on the golden cabbage machine card.
• Next Trick: The player who won the trick becomes the first player for the next trick.
• End of round: When all players have played their cards, the round is over and several events occur.
  ​Scoring: Each of the 4 cabbage machine cards is scored for all players, depending on the value of the casino chip that was placed on it.
  E.g., If the cabbage machine card with a '5' has a -2 chip on it, that means players lose 2 VPs for each '5' card they've taken during the round. If the card with 3 green vegetables has a +1 on it, it means that every 3 greens scores a VP.
  The golden cabbage card: This works a little differently, the scoring only affects the player who took the least/most tricks - depending on where the golden casino chip was placed and since that coin has a score modifier of -3 or -4, they'll always lose that amount of VPs.
  Got to say; there's nothing golden about that!
  New setup: The three cabbage machine cards are removed from play and 3 new ones are dealt from the cabbage machine card deck, the golden cabbage machine card is used in all rounds.
  All the casino chips are collected and flipped again in preparation for the next round.
  The cards are all collected and shuffled into a face-down deck and dealt out to the players again.
  Whoever took the last trick becomes the start player for the new round.

Endgame
Las Vegan can end in 1 of 2 ways.
If during scoring at the end of any round, any player's cabbage tokens (VPs.) reaches 0 or lower, it ends the game.
The game will also end at the end of the 4th round regardless.
Once the game has ended, players tot up their remaining cabbage tokens.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
The first thing to talk about is the scoring and particularly the casino chips. The values on the chips go from -3 to +1 and obviously skew heavily towards the negative, it's even worse than that though. There are 4 double-sided chips and +1s only appear on 2 of the 8 sides (Although in some regard this is quite logical as most numbers only appear twice across the chips.), thus it's skewed both in value and probability.
The golden casino chip is negative on both sides.

All of this means thhat this is a game about how little you lose, minimising your losses and not really how much you accumulate.
Las Vegan appears to be themed ont slot machines and one-arm bandits and maybe this is part of that theme; 'The house always wins?'
Even so, it all seems negative and doesn't feel like fun.

Despite my reservations about the scoring, the casino chip mechanic itself is pretty interesting.
When a player gets the opportunity to deploy a chip, they'll want to try and remember what cards they and the other players have taken. E.g., if the '3' cabbage machine card is in play and a player knows an opponent has taken several 3's, they may want to put a big negative on that card to hit them. Conversely, a player may try and use a +1 if they've collected 3s this round.
This is also affected by when 7s appear. The earlier that 7s appear, the more of a gamble it is using the casino chips, if they appear later, it's a lot easier to predict scoring. It's also that chips might appear right at the start or end of a round, or several may appear in single trick.
Players will need to calculate and adapt when using the casino chip, remembering plays opponents make made will be helpful too.

There's not too much to say about the mechanics for the actual game, which are very straightforward and about as basic as a trick taking game can get - and that's not a bad thing, it makes the game accessible and easy to learn, as well as playing fairly quickly . Las Vegan could be a good filler or finisher for the day.
Having said that, the scoring mechanics feel a little clunky, counterintuitive and unnecessarily fiddly.
The game's depth comes from strategies that will emerge once casino chips are starting to get played on cabbage machine cards and then players will look to how they can manipulate or win or lose tricks to optimise their scores.

For me; I found the game's simplicity a little unengaging, a little too run-of-the-mill while the depth the scoring brought to the table (sic) did not add enough to make me want to play more. The negative scoring also left me feeling frustrating.
Not a game for me.

5th April 2022

It's a Tuesday and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club for some gaming goodness.

'I enjoyed Muffin the Mule.'
'You can get locked up for that.'

No wait, this isn't about Muffin the Mule, its about Muffin Time.
'I enjoyed Muffin Time.'
Not sure that sounds better? (Apologies for the old Goodies joke.)

Muffin Time is a light, off-beat party game that's easy to pick up and player with supposedly 20 minute play time.

What's in a game?

• Cards: Muffin Time features a lot of cards in 3 types and that's it, there are no other components.
  The types are:
  Action cards: These blue bordered cards are played during the active player's turn, generally they benefit the active player or punish other players, frequently in the form of acquiring extra cards or forcing opponents to discard them.
  Counter cards: Green bordered counter cards can be played at any time and can affect other players' card plays.
  Trap cards: What do these red bordered cards do? They're played face-down and trap other players!

The cards are finished in a sturdy-feeling plastic coating and will probably stand up well to a lot of use.

The game utilises comedic and cartoony black-line illustrations with a dash of bright colour for the borders and card titles that suitability fits the game's style.

There's no iconography in Muffin Time to speak of and the game's filled with unusual or unique cards and rules exceptions. Consequently, all cards contain specific text on how they function.

How's it play?
Setup

• Cards: Shuffle the cards into a face-down deck and deal 3 to each player face-down.
• First Player: Determine a starting player.

That's it for setup, barely worth the bullet points!

On to play
The objective in Muffin Time is for a player to acquire exactly 10 cards at the start of their turn.
The game uses a typical turn order, at least it does at the start with the active player acting and play progressing to the left.
There are 2 phases to each turn.

• ​Trap: The active player may play a trap card in this phase. Trap cards are always played face-down and contain a specific condition and a penalty, when this condition is met by another player, the trap card is revealed and that player suffers the penalty, typically the penalty involves discarding cards.
  A trap might be triggered by putting cards down on the table or laughing at a joke on a card and so on.
  A player may have up to 3 trap cards in play at any time.
• Action: In this phase the active player can perform 1 of the following 2 cards.
  Play card: The active player may play a card from their hand and then resolve its action.
  Draw card: The active player may draw a card from the deck.
• Next player: Once the active player has had their turn, play progresses to the left.

Other rule

• Counter card: A counter card can be played at any time, even another player's turn and multiple cards can be played, including by multiple players.

Endgame
Play continues until any player has acquired exactly 10 cards in hand, upon which they must immediately shout 'It's Muffin Time!'
If, when that player becomes the active player they still have exactly 10 cards, then they win the game!

Overall
Despite being a rules-light game, there's a couple of interesting elements at play in Muffin Time.
Firstly and most obviously, are the trap cards: They require players to pay attention to the behaviour of their opponents in order to trigger traps. However, there's also a higher level of play at work, where participants can try to induce other players into falling into their traps, such as my aforementioned attempts to get the other players to yawn. It add an unusual and interesting facet of playing the player and not the game to the mix.

Secondly, is the action economy: Play a card or draw a card, it's a simple rule but it has an interesting effect. Essentially, playing a card gains the player whatever benefit that card gives them but it also loses them that card from their hand, thus making their goal 1 step further away. Does the benefit of playing it outweigh the cost? The answer will always be contextual, especially since some cards do stuff that's just funny and players will end up playing them just for the sake of playing them. The same quandary is actually also true of counter cards.

The core gameplay is highly situational, it requires players to adapt to unpredictable turns of play and exploit events as they occur with the cards they have in hand. This is not a game of planning ahead too much.
It's also bit of a silly game with some silly card actions such as 'Last player to stand up discards 2 cards.' There are also cards that may change the win condition, turn order etc.
If this sort of thing is an anathema to you, Muffin Time is probably one to skip.

Otherwise there's not too much to add about Muffin Time really. it's an easy to learn, pick and play party card game that can be a lot of fun if you don't take it too seriously and allegedly has a 20 minute play time and can be a good filler or finishing game.
I say allegedly 20 minutes because circumstances and certain card plays can dictate otherwise - games can go on considerable longer, is that good or bad? Muffin Time can be very enjoyable but it can also outstay its welcome. So, YMMV.

Don't let that put you off though. I feel that Muffin Time is good party game when played with the right mindset and is worth trying.