Here are the totals for May.
Quite similar to April, but quite a few more first plays.
​
​Total games: 44
Different games: 27
​First plays: 11

Sunday 1st on Board Game Arena
Lucky Numbers - 19
Stella - Dixit Universe - 6
Dragonwood - 10
Codex Naturalis - 21
Azul - First Play!

Monday 2nd Round Simon's
Lords of Waterdeep - First Play!

Tuesday 3rd at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
My Little Scythe - 2
Horrified - 4

Sunday 8th Board Game Arena
Lucky Numbers - 20
Railroad Ink - 26
Martian Dice - 13
Azul - ​2

Tuesday 10th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
Horrified - 5

Friday 13th Farnborough
Codenames - 5
Joking Hazard - First Play!
The Resistance - First Play!

Saturday 14th Aldershot
Flip City - First Play!

Sunday 15th Board Game Arena
Lucky Numbers - 21
Stella - Dixit Universe - 7
Cloud City - 12
Diced Tomatoes - First Play!
Hanabi - 3

Tuesday 17th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
Space Base - 11
Horrified - 6

Wednesday 18th Simon's
Parks - 8
Machi Koro 2 - 2

Thursday 19th Aldershot
Deep Sea Adventure - 6
Switch & Signal - First Play!

Friday 20th Simon's
Valor & Villainly - 2

Sunday 22nd Board Game Arena
Lucky Numbers - 22
Azul -​ 3
Parks - 9
King of Tokyo - 8
Diced Tomatoes - 2

Tuesday 24th at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest - First Play!

Thursday 26th Aldershot
Tiny Epic Dungeons - First Play!
Tiny Towns - 7
Pan Am - 4

​Sunday 29th Board Game Arena
Lucky Numbers - 23
Railroad Ink - 27
Can't Stop - 16
Copenhagen - First Play!
​Fruit Picking - First Play!

Tuesday 31st at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club
Tiny Epic Dungeons - 2

29th May 2022

Sunday gaming on ​Board Game Arena continued with mancala styled game Fruit Picking.

I'm not the fruit picker, I'm the fruit picker's son, I'm only picking fruits 'til the fruit picker comes.
Hmm, it doesn't work...

Caveat: We've only ever played Fruit Picking digitally.

What's in a game?

• ​Game board: This cheerfully colourful board shows the 4 combinations of sets of card to winning the game and there's a central area to put the deck of market cards.
  Finally; along the board's bottom edge are 4 spaces, these are market slots to place 4 market cards. Above each card space is the additional market cost for that slot.
• Player board: As equally as colourful is the player board. It has 8 circular spaces, 7 of which are surrounding a central space.
  The central space is the 'supply space' and only used to store tokens, the space at the top is the 'Harvest House'.
  The remaining 6 spaces are 'farm spaces'​. These 6 spaces are where the main game occurs.
• Farm cards: These are circular cards and are used in conjunction with the player boards. There are 4 identical sets of 6 cards in each player colour.
  Each set contains 5 cards that show 1-3 of 5 different fruits (2 bananas, a pear, a pineapple, 2 plums  and 3 strawberries.), the final card shows 2 waterdrops.
• Market cards: There are 30 market cards. 6 for each type of fruit as mentioned above.
• Seed tokens: There are 18 seed tokens in each player colour.

The boards in Fruit Picking feature a couple rural landscapes depicted with a appealingly stylised illustrations showing idyllic countryside. The fruits are also well illustrated and Fruit Picking has solid art style.

Other than the fruit and waterdrop symbols, there's no iconography in the game and it should not prove any problem to players.

How's it play?
Setup

• First Player: Determine a first player.
• Players: Give each player a player board as well as seed and farm cards in their colour.
  The first player should shuffle their farm cards and randomly place them in the 6 empty spaces on their player board. All remaining players should follow suit and put the same farm cards into the same spaces.
  All players should place their seeds into their supply space. Then from there put 2 seeds into each ​of the first 3 farm spaces.
• Game board: Shuffle the market cards into a face-down deck. Then draw and place 4 cards face-up, putting 1 into each market slot.

On to play
In Fruit Picking, players take turns moving their resources clockwise around the spaces on their board which allows them to active one space to gain more seeds or buy a card.
Play begins with the first player and once their turn is over, proceeds to the left.

• Move seeds: The active player picks one of their farm spaces with seeds and moves those seeds and redistributes them. The number of spaces they are distributed to is equal to the number of seeds in the chosen space.
  Thus if the chosen farm space has 3 seeds, they are moved 3 spaces further on with 1 seed being dropped off in each space for the next 3 spaces. The last farm space to gain a seed becomes activated.
• Activation: Broadly speaking, the active player may choose to resolve 1 of 2 types of activation
  Acquire seeds: The active player gains a number of seed tokens equal to the number of fruit that are in the activated space, they are then placed into that space.
  Buy card: The active player may buy a card from the row of market cards. They can only buy a card with fruit that matches the fruit activated space and must also have enough tokens in their Harvest House space.
  The cost is the number of fruit on the card PLUS the cost on the market slot above which can be an additional 1-3 seeds.
  When a card is bought, cards on the left are slid to the right to fill the blank space and a new card is added on the left, a pretty standard conveyor belt mechanic.
  Exceptions: There are of course a couple of exceptions.
  Water drops: If the activated farm space contains the water drops farm card, then the active player must perform the acquire seeds action.
  Harvest House: If the Harvest House is activated, the active player does not choose an action, instead they perform the move seeds action again and activates a farm card another time. This can be the Harvest House again so it's possible to gain multiple actions (And fill up the Harvest House too!) by reactivating it.

Endgame
Play continues with players acquiring fruit cards until one player has the cards to meet one of the criteria which triggers the game end.
Fruit Picking provides players with 4 ways to do this. A pair and 3 of a kind, 4 of a kind, 3 pairs and 1 of each fruit.
When this occurs, the current round is completed and if the player who triggered the game is the only one to have met any of the criteria, then they win.
In the likelihood that more than one player has met any of the criteria by the end of the last round, then ties are broken by quantities of fruit and seeds on cards.

Overall
Fruit Picking is a lightweight games that has a good mix of logic and luck.

Logically, it's not hard to think several moves ahead if you want. Once farm cards have been distributed on to the player boards, moving seeds and activating farm cards is entirely predictable and only driven by player decisions.
Manipulating the Harvest House action to game more actions is a key tactic, especially as it can be used to quickly fill the Harvest House and used to purchase cards.
Fruit Picking is essentially a race to acquire cards before other players. When cards are drafted, everything can change, which neatly brings me to the next facet of the game

The game's unpredictability comes into play on the market track. As play progresses, cards will come into play randomly, not only that, their costs will also vary, especially as they move along the track.
It means that some times, the cards appearing will play into certain players' strategies and other times, potentially scupper those strategies. Players will have to be prepared to change direction for long term plans when this occurs and adapt their approach according to what is available.

It's something I've encountered in other games and found to be irritating, Fruit Picking is no different. I know that this can be an important element of a game because without some randomizer, it can sometimes very quickly become obvious who's going to win. Even so, it irritates me.

Fruit Picking also sits in a strange place of feeling a bit overlong for a filler game but definitely a bit too light for a main game.

Having said that, it's accessible game that's easy to learn. For people who want something which engages some tactical thinking but is not along time brain burner, Fruit Picking may hit that sweet spot.

29th May 2022

It's a Sunday Evening and we're on Board Game Arena for some gaming entertainment.

Copenhagen; largest city in and capital of Denmark. Few know though, of the cities secret history of builders having ties with errr.... tetromino shapes? At least that's what the game Copenhagen would have you believe... sort of!

Caveat: we've only ever played Copenhagen digitally.

What's in a game?

• Player boards: Each player board is styled to look a little like the facade of a urban townhouse in what I imagine is meant to be Copenhagen.
  Mechanically speaking, each player board is a 5x9 grid which provides 45 spaces, and 4 of these spaces contain shields. Finally, outside the grid is a column of 3 more shields.
• Tetrominoes tiles: Copenhagen comes with tetrominoes tiles in 5 different colours plus white. Strictly speaking, these aren't all tetrominoes as they come in sizes of 2-5 but they are all orthogonally linked square shapes. 
  Additionally, each colour of tetrominoes has it's own 'themed shape'. E.g., all the purple tiles are straights, the red tiles tend to be blocks and so on. Having said that there's some crossover in shape types between colours. The white tiles are the exception here as they are all 1-space tiles.
  They're also somewhat limited in numbers, there are 3 of each size in each colour  except for the 5-space tiles, where there's only 1 5-space tile in each colour. Again, white is the exception in having 12 tiles.
  Finally... windows! All tiles have 1 or more windows on them. As a rule all tiles have 1 space without a window, a 2-space tile has 1 window space and 1 non-window space, the 4-space tile has 3 windows and 1 non-window. Yet again, white is the exception as every white tile has a window on it. Why are windows important? More on that later.
• Facade cards: These cards come in the same 5 colours as the tetrominoes tiles. They look quite busy but in fact, they just show the all the relevant shapes in their particular colour.
• Game end card: A unique card which can trigger 1 of the game's 2 ways of ending.
• Ability tiles: There are 5 types of these square tiles, each type confers a special ability when used. They're also double-sided with a 'used' icon on the flip side.
• Harbour tile: This large tile has spots to place the draw deck and discard pile. Along the outside of the tile are 7 spaces to line up 7 facade cards in a sort of 'U' shape.
• Scoring track: This tiles tracks player scores and slots in adjacent to the harbour tile.

The components for Copenhagen are pretty colourful and bright, although there's barely any art to speak of. 
​
There's also barely any iconography to speak of. The symbols on the ability tiles aren't immediately obvious and will probably require looking up in the rules a couple of times. Other than that though, everything else is easily understood.

How's it play?
Setup

• Harbour tile: Put out the harbour tile, then shuffle the facade cards into a face-down deck. Going clockwise, deal 7 cards face up to the allotted spaces around the harbour tile, then put the deck on to it's space on the tile.
• Tetramino tiles: Put out the tiles as per the player count and arrange them by colour and type.
• Special ability tiles: Put out 5 stacks of special ability tile according to the player count.
• Player board: Give each player a player board.
• First Player: Determine a starting player
• Starting cards: Each player draws cards from the deck as per player count and turn order.

​On to play
In Copenhagen, players take turns either gathering cards or playing them to gain tiles which they put on to their player board to score points.
During their turn, the active player may perform exactly 1 of 2 possible actions.

• Draft cards: The active player takes 2 cards from around the harbour tile. These 2 cards must be adjacent to each other and cannot 'wrap around' the horseshoe shape the line of cards are in.
  Players also have a hand limit of 7 which they must discard down to if they go over.
• Draft tiles: The active may draft one of the tetromino tiles, this is done by discarding a set of cards. if 3 red cards are discarded, then the active player can take a 3-space red tetromino tile, if 5 greens are discard, then they can take the 5 space green tetromino and so forth.
  Placing tiles: Once acquired, a tile must immediately be placed on to their playing board. They must be placed either at the bottom of the playing area, or on top another tile - although overhangs are acceptable and tiles can be rotated in any the player sees fit.

Other rules: Well that's it for the basic actions, there are a couple of extra rules.

• Shields: When a shield on a player's board is covered by a tile, then they get to perform 1 of 3 special actions.
  1-space tetromino: The active player may take and place one of the white 1-space tiles into their playing area. Which if placed on another shield space can trigger another special action.
  Ability tile: The active player may take 1 of the 5 types of ability tile. Players are limited to 1 of each type but they may be activated any anytime in the active player's turn. Once resolved, an ability tile is flipped to its used side.
  Ability tiles allow players to take 3 cards, or 2 cards not adjacent to each other and and so on.
  Reactivate abilities: This final action allows the active player to flip all ability tiles from their used side to their ready side. Obviously, this action becomes better, the more flipped tiles a player has.
• Exhausted deck: When the draw deck becomes empty, all the cards in the discard pile are shuffled back into a new draw deck.
  Additionally, the End Game card is shuffled into the bottom 10 cards of the draw deck. This may trigger the game end, see below for more information
• Scoring: There are 2 ways of scoring; horizontal which requires filling 5 spaces and vertical, which requires 9.
  Horizontal: When a player completes a horizontal line, they score 1 point, if the all the spaces in the line contain windows, they score 2 points instead.
  Vertical: A completed vertical line is worth 2 points, if all the spaces contain windows, it's worth 4.

That's it for the rules.

Endgame
Either one of two ways can trigger the game end.

If the End Game card is drawn (Can only occur after shuffling the discard pile back into a draw deck.) then the game immediately ends.
If a player scores a 12th point then the game immediately ends.

In either case, points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Mechanically, Copenhagen is a fairly light, accessible game; players are either drafting cards or drafting tiles. It's the relationship between those 2 actions that's interesting.

Firstly, there's not many tiles that go into the game, e.g., only 1 5-space tile is available in each colour and only 3 each of the other sizes in each colour, which is all quite deliberate. It takes more cards and thus more actions (And longer.) to get the bigger tiles which are the better tiles but there's the risk a player won't get the one they want.
The bigger tiles are better because of the windows (Or lack of.) on them. Getting a lot of 2-space tiles will mean 50% of filled spaces on a player's board will be windowless, while getting a lot of 5-space tiles means only 20% of spaces are windowless.
Completing a row or column with all windows essentially doubles the points that line is worth and the more windows a player can get on their board, the more likely they are to do this.

This brings me to the next point, other than the 1-space tiles, every tile has a windowless space. This means it's very hard to create lines that all score windows. Players will want to position windowless spaces to minimise their effect and provides players with meaningful decisions to make.

These two factors means that players are faced with a dilemma. Go for the quicker easier to get tiles and probably get a smaller score, or take the risk of losing our by going for bigger, better scoring tiles.
There's definitely a higher level of play that involves watching what cards other players are drafting and trying to anticipate what colours they're going for. This kind of knowledge allows players to adapt to what they think their opponent is doing.

I think Copenhagen is a fairly easy to learn game that has a streak of depth to it. Most people will pick it up fairly quickly.
Having said that I personally found the game a little dull. There's nothing here that I haven't seen elsewhere, it's just packaged differently here.

Copenhagen also played just a little too quickly for my liking (Normally something I'd never criticise a game for!); playing with just 3 people meant that frequently 6 cards were being drawn from the 70 card deck every round, this means the game would reach the end of the deck twice after 20-something cards drafts for each player. It felt like the game is mostly likely to deplete it's deck before a player gets to 12 points. 
To put that into perspective; if a player has 20-something card drafting actions, that in turn gives them the ability to draft around 50 spaces worth of tiles. The quickest way to reach 12 points is to have 6 filled rows, all with windows. That would require filling in 30 spaces at a minimum, this is provided they got the cards and tiles they wanted.

I'm sure there are players out there that would find the challenge of getting to 12 points compelling but for me. ​It meant that I found the game unsatisfying and combined with it's blandness made it average and unremarkable.
I can't really fault the game, it's just a little dull.

26th May 2022

It's a Thursday evening and I'm in Aldershot with friends for some gaming goodness that's been a long time coming!

Is it tiny? Yeah pretty much. Is it in a dungeon? Definitely. Is it epic?... Well, you'll just have to see!
Tiny Epic dungeons is a cooperative tile laying (Or card laying really.) dungeon crawler with players taking on the roles of various heroes who will spend much of their time managing a goblin epidemic before being chased around by the big bad before hopefully defeating it.

What's in a game?

• ​Cards: Tiny Epic Dungeons uses a whole bunch of cards, most of them square shaped.
  In the corner of each card is a tin (sic) icon that indicates type of card it is.
  • ​Room cards: These square cards depict the game's titular dungeon. Each one is a room or a chamber and will have have various ways in and out.
    Typically these rooms contain a challenge or a trap to bother our heroes that they may choose to (Or be forced to!) attempt to overcome. Generally, success at these grants a benefit and a failure confers a penalty. Some will also introduce goblins into the mix.
    Entrance: This is the beginning card.
    Lair: This is where the heroes will find the boss.
  • Encounter cards: These are dungeon rooms that also contain minions. Minions are tougher than goblins.
  • Minion cards: These cards depict minions that characters will encounter. There are 8 of them and they include your standard fantasy monsters such as a troll, minotaur or giant spider, etc.
    Each card has a portrait of the pertinent monster and stats for armour, movement and 3 types of combat. There's also a damage track that runs along the edge of the card.
    Additionally, along the bottom it lists extra actions that can be triggered.
  • Goblin cards: There are 6 of these. Functionally they're almost identical to minions, except much weaker, having only 1 health each. Goblins are easy to kill but also spawn at a quicker rate, if too many are spawned at once... it spells bad news for the players.
  • Loot cards: Players can acquire treasure as they progress through their adventure and loot cards are magic items that confer bonuses on characters. Additionally, some items exist in sets which confer further bonuses if part or all of a set is collected by a single character.
  • Magic spells: Characters can potentially cast spells and these cards are spells that they can acquire.
• Oversized cards: Tiny Epic Dungeons also uses oversized cards or mats as the rules call them.
  • Torch mat: This card depicts a series of steps going downwards and acts a timer track. At the end of every turn the marker moves down a step, if it lands on a step with an icon, then that action is triggered. Generally these spawn goblins or trigger the extra actions of goblins and minions. If the marker reaches the bottom before they players find the boss lair, it's game over.
    This is a double sided card and it's flipped to the other side once the boss has been encountered. It is also downward heading set of stairs with icons on a timing track and again, if the marker reaches the bottom, the players lose.
    Finally along the top and bottom of both sides are spaces to position 4 goblin cards alongside the torch mat. Each goblin space is marked 1-4 and has a associated meeple.
  • Boss mat: These cards depict both the boss's stats and the boss' lair.
    The lair will contain a number of locations that characters may stand to fight the boss, some of which will benefit the characters and some of which will punish them.
    Bosses also have health track marked with one or more octogram symbols that relate to the altar tokens below and combat stats.
    Each boss card is also double sided and the flip side shows 3 rows of spaces for 2-4 heart tokens. More on these later.
  • Hero mats: Now we're talking. Each character in Tiny Epic Dungeons has their own mat which is essentially a character sheet. It shows their name, race and class such as dwarf fighter or wood elf rogue along with a illustration of the character.
    It also lists their health and focus, special moves (And some standard move too.) and numerical ratings for Speed and Armour.
    The final 3 stats; Strength, Agility and Intellect are rated by cubes. More this below.
    Finally along the edge of each hero mat, it has allotted spaces to place weapons, armour, spells and magic items.
• Miniature figures: There's an actual proper 3d plastic figure for each of the characters and they look like they're in the 25mm scale.
• Tokens: There are several types of tokens in the game, they all look they're made of wood.
  Heart & focus tokens: The focus tokens look like tiny lighting bolts that make their icon in game. Red hearts are for heroes and black hearts are for minions!
  Disarmed tokens: These cog shaped tokens also display keyholes and are used to represent neutralised traps. Curiously, they're the largest tokens in the game, noticeable so bigger than most other components.
  Altar tokens: These little black and white tokens have an octagram styled shape and relate to the bosses.
• Meeples: There are a whole bunch of little wooden meeples in Tiny Epic Dungeons.
  Goblin meeples: Should they be called geeples, gobples? Anyway, there are 4 of these and they are numbered, there's 1 for each that matches the icons on the goblin spaces on the torch mat.
  Minion meeples: Each of the game's minions has its own unique meeple.
  Boss meeple: A beeple? Even though there are 6 different bosses in the game, there's only 1 boss meeple which is a tiny (Sic.) omission, having said that and considering all the other components, it would be a bit mean spirited to be critical.
  It also looks styled after the eye of Sauron; which if you're going to only have 1 boss meeple is a pretty good choice.
• Dice: There are 4 dice in Tiny Epic Dungeons, 3 are black hero dice and 1 is a red enemy die.
  They are normal six-siders... well sort of anyway.
  Hero dice: The hero dice are numbered +1, +2 and 3-6. The +1, +2, 3 and 4 all also have focus icons, while the 6 also has a heart symbol.
  Enemy die: The enemy die is numbered 2-5, the 1 and 6 have been replaced with icons for a torch icon and a broken shield.

Tiny Epic Dungeons packs a lot into a small box.
The cards feel a little flimsy and the dice are plastic and feel a bit average but other than that, the components are all good quality.
The character figures are sizable and a pretty cool touch for a game of this proportion, while for the most part the tokens are small (Other than the disarm tokens.), they're still solid and well made.
But for me, the standout components are the meeples, not only are they nicely shaped wooden tokens, they also illustrated. It shows some thought and care has gone into the production.

The use of art is also good throughout the game, portraits of heroes, minions and bosses are all chunky and colourful, utilising a cartoony style that's used in a lot of modern fantasy games, it's a style I like 
Artwork used on the dungeons cards is also pretty good, there's a nice contrast between somewhat grey looking rooms and the colourful dressing and scenery that inhabit them and even the box lid features some evocative art.

This brings me to iconography. It's rare that I'm critical of a game's iconography and this is one of those occasions.
It's just that there's so much of it. A good proportion of it is instantly comprehensible, but a smaller proportion of it is not and a smaller proportion of a lot is still quite a lot!

I know that this is the result of game that is trying to emulate a D&D RPG style dungeon-crawl experience without a dungeon but even so: we played the game several times and I still did not recognised some icons. Between the fairly extensive rules and the extensive iconography, it gives the game a bit of steep learning curve.
Additionally; not only are so many icons, some of them are quite small, icons in the corner of the dungeons cards and the first time we tried to play I didn't notice them!

How's it play?
Setup

• Dungeon deck: Depending player count a mix of room and encounter cards are shuffled into 3 separate decks, Then they are placed into a single stack called the dungeon deck which will result in the early cards being room cards, the middle being a mix of room and encounter cards, while the lair will be close to the bottom of the deck.
• Other decks: Shuffle the goblin, minion, loot and magic cards into 4 face-down decks.
• Boss mat: Shuffle the boss mats and deal 1 face-down. This will be the dungeon's boss encounter.
  On the back are 3 rows of heart symbols that correspond to a 2-4 player count and have hearts equal to the number of players. E.g., the 3-player row will have 3 spaces.
• Torch mat: Put out the torch mat and out the torch token on the first place. Then put the 4 goblin meeples on their respective spots.
• Dungeon entrance: Put the dungeon entrance cards into the central playing area and put an altar token on the entrance, the others will come into play later. Then draw 4 cards from the dungeon deck and place them face-down, alongside the entrance card. This all forms the game's starting area.
• Hero mats: Either choose or randomly allocate a boss mat to each player. Each player should then take a heart and focus token and put them on to their relevant starting spots. Finally, the miniature for each hero should be placed on the entrance card.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

That's pretty much it for the setup.

On to play
In Tiny Epic Dungeons, the players must explore and reveal the dungeon, fighting goblins and acquiring loot and magic until they defeat enough minions in order get into the boss' lair and defeat them.
The dungeon in Tiny Epic Dungeons is always a 7x7 grid in size, with the entrance always being the exact centre of the dungeon.
When it comes to the active player's turn, they can broadly speaking: move, perform exactly 1 'heroic' action and any number of free actions.

• Move: During the active player's turn, they can move their character through a number of cards equal to their speed stat.
  Exploring: If a character's movement would take them on to a face-down card, then the active player flips the card, places it (Honouring all previous room connections.) and must move on to it, they then resolve the revealed the card.
  Encounter: After moving on to a card, it's encounter must be resolved. This might be a ambush by a goblin or minion, a trap or actually nothing! Additionally the card may provide a challenge for the character to overcome.
  If a goblin is encountered, flip a goblin card face-up and place it next to an available space adjacent to the torch mat. Then place that space's meeple on to the revealed card.
  If it's a minion, flip over and reveal a minion card. Put it's meeple on the revealed card and a black heart token on the minion card's health track.
  Expansion: Finally, the active player draws cards from the dungeon deck face-down and places them face-down next to exits from the revealed room. They must adhere to the 7x7 grid limit.
• Heroic actions: Characters may perform exactly 1 heroic action. This occurs after movement and movement cannot occurs after a heroic action. There are numerous different actions available.
  Skill check: A character may need or want to make a skill check. This may be because they want to overcome a challenge, cast a spell perform a search, need to avoid or disarm a trap or something else.
  Regardless of what has invoked the check, broadly speaking, they all function identically.
  All checks use 1 of a character's 3 stats; Strength, Agility and Intellect. Sometimes the nature of the check will determine which is used, other times, the player can choose. Checks also have an numerical value which is its difficulty.
  All stats are rated 1-3, this is how many hero dice the player will roll for the check. Thus a character with Strength 3 will roll 3 hero dice.
  Once the dice are rolled, the player keeps 1 die as their result which is compared to the difficulty of the challenge, if it meets or beats the number, the check is successful. However, there's a bit more to it than that.
  If any of the unused dice show a +1 or +2, then those results can be added to the die that was used, increasing its score.
  Furthermore, any used dice that show any resources are acquired by the player are the check is resolved.
  Combat: Combat is a little different to skill checks and is broken down into melee, ranged and magic, each type relates to 1 character stat.
  When the player rolls their hero dice, they also roll the enemy die at the same time.
  After making their combat roll, the player compares their result with their enemies armour value, every point that exceeds the armour value inflicts a point of damage on the enemy.
  Once the player's attack has been resolved, if the enemy is still standing, then they counterattack using the result of the red enemy die. This is a value that is added to the enemy's combat value and compared to the characters armour value and inflicts damage in the same way as a character attack. Additionally, there are 2 other results on the enemy die:
  The torch symbol deals no damage to the character and instead moves the torch token down 1 step on the torch mat.
  The broken shield result means that the character's armour value is ignored​ and the enemy deals their base damage to the character.
  Rest: As their heroic action, a character may rest. htlyIt may not seem heroic but it is useful as it replenishes some of their health and focus.
• Free actions: Characters may perform any number of free actions, additionally, free actions can be performed at any time, before or after both movement and heroic actions.
  Free actions tend to be support actions that don't have direct effects, some of which are listed below:
  Modify results: A character may expend focus points to alter the results of a skill check/combat roll.
  Research: The active character may spend focus points to acquire spell cards.
  Trigger/modify abilities: The active character may have abilities or loot items which confer benefits, typically these can be triggered by paying it's activation cost.
  Explore: This free action allows the player to reveal face-down cards adjacent to their character's current position. This is fairly costly though and to activate this action, the torch token must be moved 1 space down the torch mat track. More on the torch mat below.
• Turn end: Once a character has finished all their actions, it triggers the final action of the turn, which is to move the torch token down a space on the torch track. This can have no effect or may trigger one of the following 2 actions:
  Enemy actions: If this is triggered, all goblins and minions may move and/or attack the heroes.
  Spawn goblin: When this action is triggered, turn over a goblin card and place it on a relevant space adjacent to the torch track. For goblins spawned in this manner, their meeple is always placed on the entrance card.
• Next player: Play now progresses to the player on the left.

Other rules
There are also some other rules that need covering.

• Defeating enemies: When a goblin is defeated, it's card is put into a discard pile (And thus may be spawned again) and the meeple is returned to it's starting spot on the torch mat.
  It's slightly different for minions: Firstly, minions have a health track that must be depleted before it is defeated. When this occurs, it's black heart token is placed on the heart row on the face-down boss card. Unlike a goblin, when a minion is defeated, it is out of the game.
  Defeating enemies usually gives the players a reward in the form of a loot or magic card.
• Being defeated: If a character's health is dropped to 0, they are knocked unconscious. This means in the player's following turn, the hero must take the rest action and no other actions.
• Boss lair: Even if the lair is found, it cannot be entered until all the black hearts are placed on the back of the boss mat. I.e., all the minions are defeated. Once this is done, characters can get into the boss lair...

That's not quite it, once the lair is opened, the game goes into Act 2 and there's more for the boss.

• Reveal Boss: Flip over the boss mat, revealing the boss.
  Put the boss meeple on it's starting spot.
  Put the black heart tokens that were put on the back of the card on to the health track - it means that the boss will have multiple health tracks!
  Finally, put altar tokens on the cards that spawned minions.
• Torch mat: Flip the torch mat to it's other side and put the torch token at the top of the torch track, essentially resetting the track for the boss fight.
• Lair actions: Characters can move into spaces in the lair and fight the boss, this can inflict penalties or grant bonuses.
  However, at some point, they'll need to get the boss out into the dungeon.
• Damaging the boss: Attacks deal damage to the boss' health tracks like normal. However, the black heart tokens cannot move past the altar symbol(s) until all the alter tokens had been put on top of them. How's that done? Read on.
• NEW ACTION - taunt boss: Characters now have a new free action that allows them to spend focus to get the boss to chase them. When the boss moves on to a card containing an altar token, that token is put on to the relevant space on the boss mat, once all the tokens are there, the boss can take more damage.

Phew, there are some additional rules, such as about acquiring gear and magic etc - but that's more or less the gist of it.

Endgame
In the first act, if a 5th goblin comes into play before any of the 4 adjacent to the torch mat are defeated, then the players collectively lose.
If at any time the torch token reaches the end of the track on either side of the torch mat, then the players lose.
If the players get to act 2 and reduce all the boss's health tracks to 0, they collectively win!

Overall
So, Tiny Epic Dungeons has quite a lot rules, I feel it's not particularly complicated but there's certainly a lot going on and that means that there's a lot to remember in this fairly ambitious attempt to recreate the D&D style dungeon-crawling experience. The question is, does it succeed? Well... sort of.

The thing is, Tiny Epic Dungeons can't hide it's cooperative board game DNA. it utilises a commonplace cooperative mechanic of making the players choose between working towards their objectives (In this case exploring the dungeon, finding and defeating minions and finding the boss lair.) with managing an ongoing, constantly expanding threat (In this case preventing 5 goblins spawning in the game.). Players will be faced with choosing between the two. Furthermore, the constant ticking countdown of the torch track will encourage players not to dawdle and cooperate as much as possible.
Another challenge facing players is placement of dungeon tiles all current passageways must be honoured and the game has a strict 7x7 size. If player don't think a step ahead, there's a risk that a pathway may lead to a dead-end too early, leaving a portion of the 7x7 grid inaccessible.
Mechanically, these are all good, they put players in the position of having to make meaningful decisions. However, they do feel a little un-RPG-ish.

During this early stage of the game we did encounter a noteworthy quirk; one character could not leave the entrance for about a quarter of the game! At the start of their turn, there was always a goblin on the entrance card thanks to spawning from the torch track. Once they defeated the goblin, they could no longer move and by the time of their next turn, there was another goblin on the entrance!

One thing I like is how the game clearly differentiates between the early and late game. When the boss is revealed, everything changes and priorities shift somewhat. Exploration and goblin management become less important and dealing with the boss more so which thanks to the altar tokens requires more than just dealing damage to the big bad.

All of this should serve to make Tiny Epic Dungeons a good game but truth be told - it's all a little unremarkable.
​
Combat feels unexciting, particularly when dealing with goblins again and again, it felt repetitive and frustrating. They're not a threat because they're tough (They're not tough!), they're a threat because the rules say that you lose if you don't defeat them quick enough.
The dice mechanic used is pretty cool though. I like that the unused dice can give a benefit, e.g., not using a 6 as the result of a skill check because as it provides a point of health gives players a meaningful decision to make when choosing which die to use for a skill check.

The dungeon exploration experience it provides is pretty standard and OK but the lengthy rules and having to interpret fiddly icons mires the game in slowness and interfere with the pacing. Even after several play throughs, I look at the icons and think, 'Wait, what does that do?'.
After more play throughs I'm sure that the rules will provide no obstacle but I feel little compulsion to play it again, which is a bit of shame as it looks really nice.

While there's nothing wrong with Tiny Epic Dungeons and I can't find any fault with it, I also can't find a reason to like it.

24th May 2022

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

Fly as free as a err flying pirate? Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is set in a world of fantastical aerial ships, anthropomorphic heroes and adventurous voyages to find loot and lost treasure.

What's in a game?

• Board: The board for Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is double-sided.
  One side has the 'base' game and depicts a cheerful oceanic panorama of land and flying islands in a colourful palette.
  The other side features the same landscape but lashed by heavy rains and troubled by storms. This side is the more 'antagonistic' side.
  Initiative track: This track has space for 6 cards and also tracks initiative throughout the game's day and night phases.
  Loot spaces: There are 6 spaces for 'loot' and are marked day 1 through to day 6. Each space represents a day of voyaging. Each of the game's 3 voyages lasts 4, 5 or 6 days respectively.
  Reputation tracker: There are 6 spaces here (One for each player.) and it runs from left to right, with the rightmost player having the highest reputation. Beneath each space is a gold value and on the left end is a '-2' gold symbol, while on the right end is a '+2' symbol.
  Loot tile spaces: Not to be confused with loot tokens or loot spaces. These provide special rules when loot tokens are taken and also serve as spaces to place 1 each of the game's 7 loot tiles.
  The actions tend to activate either at dusk or the voyage's end.
• Player cards: There are identical sets of 40 cards in each player colour that depict 40 different pirates and are numbered 1-40 in the top left corner. They also display a name for each character.
  At the bottom it lists the ability of each card in the game's 3 phases.
  Bold, brash and cartoony art is used to illustrate the character cards.
• Reputation tokens: There is one of these bulky octagonal reputation tokens in each player colour.
• Scoring dials: There are 2 dials on each of these and again, they come in 6 player colours.
• Graveyard tile: There is 1 each of these tiles for each player and they display a wrecked ship.
• Loot tiles: These can be used to provide alternate rules for when a loot token is taken.
• Loot tokens: Now I'm a pretty big fan of wooden components but even so, these plastic tokens are very chunky and look very cool - even if they look chewy sweets in colourful wrappers!
  They represent the game's 7 different types of loot; chest, barrel, relic, hook, saber, amulet and map. When a loot token is taken, it will activate it's special rule as per the board or loot tiles in play.
• Bag: Used in conjunction with the loot tokens to blindly draw them.
• Doubloons: Gold doubloons are the game's currency. These tokens are made of card and have different shapes dependant on denomination.

Component quality is solid throughout, cards, tokens and tiles are well constructed but the chunky loot tokens really stand out, even if I have to resist the urge to try and unwrap and eat them.

Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest makes use of excellent use of bright, eye-catching, cartoony art presenting a larger than life setting and characters.

About a dozen icons are used throughout the game, they are all fairly clear and easily understood.

How's it play?
Setup

• Board: Put out the board.
  Reputation track: Take all 6 reputation tokens (Regardless of the number of players.) and randomly put them on the track to determine starting order of initiative. Each player should get 7-12 gold according to their starting position on the track.
  Optional: Players can choose to use the default loot rules on the board or use the loot tiles for a variant on these rules.
• Loot: Put all the loot tokens into the bag and blindly draw loot tokens for each day of the current journey, the number of tokens drawn for each day should equal the number of players.
• Players: Give each player the following in their colour.
  Character deck: This 40 card deck should not be shuffled and instead be in numerical order going from 1-40.
  Scoring dial: Should be set to 0.
  Graveyard: Will come into play later on.

That's pretty much setup done.

On to play
Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is played over 3 'voyages' which have a length of 4, 5 and 6 days. For each day, a player will put a character card into play and this is done secretly.
​Thus over all 3 voyages each player will use 15 character.

• Voyage start: I said earlier that no one should shuffle their character decks. Well now, one player should shuffle their deck, draw 6 cards and show them to all other players.
  Every other player should now take those 6 cards out their deck and put them into their hand.
  This means that all players will have identical hands of 6 cards.
• Play card: Each player now chooses and plays a character card from their hand and plays it face-down.
• Reveal cards: Once all players have put a card down, they are all simultaneously revealed.
  Cards are then placed on to the initiative tracker in numerical order with the lowest value going on the left (And going first!) all they way to the highest on the furthest right (Who goes last.). Ties are resolved according to the reputation tracker.
• Phases: The following 3 phases are played which will trigger various actions which gain or lose players gold, reputation or even character cards.
  • Day: In initiative order (With the lowest value characters going first.) activate each character card's 'day' ability (Provided the character has one.).
  • Dusk: Now in reverse initiative order, each player should remove their character from the initiative tracker and places it in their playing area, if the character has a dusk ability it should now be activated and then they take a loot token from that day's space. If the token chosen activates a rule with a dusk ability, it is also immediately resolved.
    If for any reason a player's character has been sent to the graveyard, the controlling player does not collect the card or a loot token.
  • Night: Players now activate any night abilities on the cards they've placed in their personal playing areas in any order they choose.
    ​Once this is done all cards in a player's personal area are discarded to their graveyard.
    Any loot tokens a player has acquired stays in their playing area until the end of the voyage.
• Next day: Once all night actions have been resolved, play moves on to the next day and any unclaimed loot tokens from the previous day are returned to the bag.
  Each player now puts another character face-down into their area and the 3 phases are resolved again.
• Voyage's end: When the last day in a voyage has ended and night actions for that day have been resolved, then end of voyage actions are resolved. Typically these will be actions related to loot tokens and loot rules, although there are character cards with abilities to be resolved now too.
  Gold: However much gold a player has accumulated on this voyage is now added to their scoring dial and is considered 'banked', this means that if a player loses gold for any reason later in the game, it does not come off of the dial.
  Tokens: All coin tokens are returned to the supply and all loot tokens put back in the bag.
• New voyage: The setup is now done for a new voyage which will be a day longer.
  Loot tokens: All the days for this voyage are now populated with loot tokens following the previous rules.
  Draw cards: The player who initially drew 6 cards at the start of the 1st voyage now draws another 6. All other players also draw the same 6 cards.
  All players will now have 8 cards in hand, 2 from the previous voyage and 6 identical from the start of this one.
  Play now progresses normally for the allotted number days.

Endgame
Play progress until the night actions for the 3rd and final voyage are resolved.
Players compare their scoring dials.

​Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest feels like a complex game but in practice is quite straightforward. In essence, a character card is played and the resolved up to 3 times.
Where the game's complexity comes from is how a character card played interacts with character cards played by other players.

Everyone starts with the same hand of cards and will acquire a further identical 12 cards during the course of the game.
It means that all players will be using the same 18 cards played over in total 15 actions. But since it's unlikely that all players will make use of the same cards at the same, it means the game encourages players to watch their opponents. Knowing when someone has or hasn't played a certain card can prove very useful. This contextual information can allow players to adapt their tactics and can change the flow of the game.

Additionally; Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest injects a dose of 'take that' into the game, the 40 cards have a varied set of abilities that can be brought to play, including being able to eliminate other characters, pulling cards out of the graveyard, etc.
It's also worth noting that while the 'calm' side of the game board has the potential for some friction between players the 'stormy' side increases this.

The game also provides short and long term goals which require short, mid and long term strategies.
Day abilities on cards give players immediate benefits, but dusk and night abilities can also provide desirable benefits. A player may choose to put a high value character card on to the initiative track so they go earlier in the dusk phase to secure a certain type of loot.
Which brings me to long term strategy, loot is vital here. Loot typically provides benefits during the end of voyage phase and the loot for all days is openly shown on the board which players must take this into consideration during the whole journey. 

All of this means that Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest hits a sweet spot of accessible but tactical game play. Players are always given meaningful decisions to make using a degree of imperfect information.
I found it an engaging game. Definitely one to try.

19th May 2022

It's a Thursday and I'm enjoying an evening of gaming in Aldershot for the first time in actual years! Take that Covid-19!

Cho chooo! Switch & Signal is a cooperative board game about managing train schedules, that's right - you're playing the generously proportion controller and how do you control these schedules. With switches and signals of course!

What's in a game?

• Board: This is a double-sided board, one side features a chunk of western Europe and the other is the continental United States. Mechanically speaking, the European side is the 'easier' to play.
  Railways: Both maps feature a brightly coloured landscape dotted with various cities (In 4 colours.) and the port Marseilles which are connected by criss-crossing railway lines. At the edge of the network are 'deployment points' numbered 2-12
  Switches: Where the railway lines intersect, there are 3 or 4 small circles on the junction, depending on whether it's a T-junction or a cross-road. These circles represent switches and are used to control the flow of rail traffic throughout the game.
  Signals: Along most lines are red-light symbols, there are also red-light symbols at every entrance to every city. These are the game's titular signals and must be managed to keep trains moving along swiftly.
  There are 9 supply spaces to place the game's 3 sets of 3 differently coloured trains.
  There are also spaces to place the game's 2 deck of cards and a 'clock' space for time tokens.
  There are also 3 portraits of 3 different characters, each of these characters are 'helpers' and has a special ability that can be made use of once per game.
  Finally, on the European side of the board there are 8 little spaces in the port of Marseille where little cubes will be delivered to. On the U.S. side, they are split over two different opposite edges of the railway network.
• Trains: These are plastic models of trains and there are 3 each in black, brown and grey. In game terms, each type of train travels at a different speed.
  Each train also has a spot to place a little wooden cube.
• Dice: Switch & Signal comes with 5 six-sided dice including a pair of normal six-siders. These are used during deployment.
  The 3 other dice are coloured black, brown and grey, which correspond with the 3 types of coloured train. These are not numbered normally and each on has a unique distribution of numbers to represent the different movements of the different types of train.
• Switches: These smaller wooden black discs are used on the board and 2 are placed on the small circles on every junction to indicate which way a particular set of junction points are facing. They can be moved around to different circles on the junction change it's alignment.
• Signals: These larger wooden green discs represent green 'go' signals and are placed on the red-light spots on the board to let trains past.
• Cubes: These are the traditional little wooden cubes we all know and love. They represent goods that need delivering to their destination, there are 8 and there are 2 each in 4 colours which correspond to the 4 coloured cities on the board.
• Cards: Switch & Signal makes use of 2 types of card.
  Departure cards: These cards feature pictures of the 3 types of train.
  If trains appear the top half of the card, they will always be 'multicoloured', it shows whether 0, 1 or 2 trains will be deployed on to the board.
  If it's in the lower half, it indicates the type of train that will move this turn.
  Frequently trains will appear on both halves of the card.
  One departure card is the starting departure card and always deploys first.
  Action cards: There are 3 types of this kind of card that allow players to perform their actions. There are switch setting, signal setting and train movement cards.
• Tokens: There are 3 types of tokens in Switch & Signal, they are all the standard type of card token.
  Time tokens: These round tokens each feature a illustration of a old-school analogue clock face and as you may imagine, used to track time.
  Location tokens: There are 11 of these octagonal tokens, which are just numbered from 2-12. These are part of the optional rules to further randomise deployment
  Cover tokens: These rectangular tokens are marked with an 'x' and are used in conjunction with the characters on the board.

Quality-wise, all of Switch & Signal's components are made to the usual high standard we've come to expect from modern game and nothing feels particularly flimsy. The game makes good use of a wooden components, especially the dice that are nicely rounded and is something I always like.
​The notable components are the little plastic trains which each contain a space to put a wooden goods cube.

The art is good, the boards are colourful and uncluttered with some nice illustrations for various cities. The art on the cards is equally good.

The game's use of iconography is straightforward, easily understood and doesn't prove an obstacle.

On to Play
Setup
This set up is for the European beginning default game, the rules provide options to alter the game's challenge and the U.S. side has some different rules.

• Board: Put out the board and put all the trains on their allotted spaces as per their colours.
  ​Cubes: Put the cubes on to their pertinent city, thus each city will have 2 cubes in its colour.
• Time tokens: Put the 7 time tokens on their space. This number can be varied to make the game easier or more challenging.
• Switch & signals:
  Switches: Switch tokens must be put on all the junctions as shown in the rulebook. In later games, players can choose how to align these junctions.
  Signals: The game uses 8 signal tokens, they too must be placed on the map as shown in the rulebook. 1 is placed on a spot on each city and the remaining 3 are placed on spots on the railway tracks.
  Again, the starting spots can be altered in later games and the number of signal tokens can also be varied.
• Cover tokens: Place the 3 cover tokens adjacent to the 3 helpers.
• Departure cards: Shuffle the departure cards cards into face-down deck, discard 2 and place the remaining 16 their space on the board.
• Action cards: shuffle them into a face-down deck on their allotted space and deal 5 action cards to each player.
• First player: Determine a starting a player.

On to play
The objective in Switch & Signal is to collect all 8 cubes from the 4 cities using the trains and deliver them all to Marseille.
Switch & Signal functions much like a lot of cooperative games; that is the active player flips a card and resolves it's actions on the board. Then the active players takes their action(s).

• ​Departure card: The first departure card in the game is always the same and instructs players to deploy 1 train of each colour.
  After this card, the first thing the active player does at the start of their turn is flip over and resolve a departure card. This will have 2 phases.
  ​Deployment: At the top of card it will show 0, 1 or 2 multicoloured trains. If it shows 1 or 2 trains, then the active player must take many trains from the supply on the board, they can choose any of the 3 colours if they're available.
  Roll the dice: Then for each train, they must roll the deployment dice, this gives a result of 2-12 and the train must be put on the corresponding entry spot on the game board.
  If the active player cannot deploy a train for any reason, the players collectively lose 2 time tokens.
  Movement: The bottom have of the departure card will display 1, 2 or 3 trains, they may have a specific colour or may be multicoloured.
  The active player must resolve the movement of these trains in the order they are shown on the card. Thus if a card shows a brown train, then a black train, the active player must resolve movement for all brown trains on the board then all black trains on the board. The active player may choose the order in which trains of a single colour are moved.
  Additionally, if a multicoloured train is showing, then the active player must move all the trains of a single colour of their choosing. Again, the active player chooses the order in which all the trains in a specific colour are moved.
  Roll the die: When the active player moves a train, they roll the die of the matching colour and must​ move the train that many spaces along the rail track and going through the junctions as they have been set up.
  The dice do not have equal numbers and the numbers are distributed as follows.
  Grey: 1, 1, 1, 2, 2 & 3.
  Brown: 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, & 4.
  Black: 2, 3, 3, 4, 4 & 5.
  You will see that black trains for example; move much quicker than grey ones and will nearly always move the same or more spaces. It's very important to remember this distinction between trains.
  When trains move they cannot pass a red signal (A green disc must be on a red-light in order to pass it.), nor can they pass any other train. If this occurs, then the train stops at the signal or behind the other train and the active player must discard time tokens equal to the movement that was not completed. The only exception is when a train enters a city, in this case, the train will always stop, regardless of its speed at no penalty.
  Additionally: If a train went head on into another train or goes off the board through an entry point, it incurs a loss of time tokens and the train is placed back on the supply.
• Actions: Once the departure card has been resolved, the active player can take their actions, this is done by playing cards from their hand. They can play any number of cards from none to all.
  Cards have the following actions
  Switch setting: The player can play one of these cards to change the alignment of any one junction.
  Signal setting: This card allows the active player to move a signal token from any red-light to another, provided every city always has at least 1 token.
  ​Train movement: As you may have surmised, playing a train movement card allows the active player to move any single train - this is done by rolling its die.
  Wild action: By discarding any 2 action cards, the active player may carry out any one of the above 3 actions.
  Load train: When an unloaded train is in a city with an available cube, the active player may discard any action card to load the cube on to the train.
• Other rules:
  Helpers: Each of the 3 helpers can be used once per game and provide a once-only benefit. When a helper has completed their action, use a cover token to cover their ability.
  Delivery: When a train the port city (in this case Marseilles.), if it carrying a goods cube it's automatically unloaded and the cube is put on its relevant delivery spot. The train is returned to the supply.
  Time tokens: You'll have noticed that when things go wrong, the players will be asked to discard 1 or more time tokens.
  What happens when they run out? Then the players must discard a departure card and then replenish the supply of time tokens. Losing a departure card might not sound so bad but believe me.. it is!
• End of turn: Once the active player has used all the action cards they can or want to, they draw 5 move action cards with a maximum hand size of 10.
  Play then progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
Play continues until one of the following conditions is met.
If the players run out of departure cards and they have to draw one, then they collectively lose.
If all 8 cubes are delivered, then the players immediately win.

Overall
If you play a lot of cooperative games, the basic mechanics will be familiar here:
Turn over a card and resolve it's action which will create obstacles for the players, then have them perform some actions and choose between progressing the objective or mitigating the problems caused by the drawing of cards.
Rinse and repeat.

Something about Switch & Signal feels a little different though. Maybe its because the departure cards are so contextual.
The trains being moved by the departure cards are both the cause of problems for players and also the means to victory. On more than one occasion, we wanted to move a train but didn't want to spend a card to do so, instead we left it to the 'game' and departure cards to do the job for us.
​It's pretty rare for players to want the 'bad things happen' card to actually do something in a cooperative game.

How trains are moved is vital. Not only do players have to move them into cities to pick up goods, they'll need to manage the different speeds they move at. Getting a fast train behind a slower one is a disaster, no two ways about it.
This is exacerbated by the random nature in which trains are deployed on to the board by the dice.

Players will also to manage the titular switches and signals. They'll look to create clear routes with full green lights to the port and funnel trains down that route in the correct order.
It's a real balancing act though, it's hard to get the junction points where you want them and there's are never enough green lights.

I have to say, that when it works, it feels extremely satisfying.
I've never been a train controller but Switch & Signal genuinely makes me feel a little like one as I think about how to prioritise trains and set up routes with minimum card expenditure.

This brings me to a final point about the game. I said earlier that being forced to discard a departure card is not good and I meant it!
Switch & Signal is a well balanced game and it seemed every victory, every loss came down to the wire, came down to the last departure card or two and losing one felt very risky.
I found it a lot of fun.

If you like train-themed games, Switch & Signal is worth a look, how many cooperative trains games are there?
​If you like cooperative games, you really should give this a try. It's blend of familiar and unique mechanics makes it easy to get into yet different to other cooperative games. 

15th May 2022

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

Diced Tomatoes, a game about tomatoes that uses dice - what it says on the tin er... box!

Caveat: we've only played this game digitally.

​What's in a game?

• Dice: You'll be unsurprised to learn that Diced Tomatoes comes with quite a few dice, these are all normal six-siders and come in 3 colours.
  Red dice: By far the most common type, red dice are main avenue for point scoring.
  Black dice: When your tomatoes go rotten, that's when black dice come into play. Typically, one player will 'inflict' them on another.
  Gold dice: The rarest of dice, can be used to earn bonus points.
• Vine tokens: These tokens are double sided, one side shows a blank area and the flip side shows a space to place a 'seed' die. Vine tokens are the beginnings of creating (Or seeding.) a tomato vine. More on this below.
• Star fruit tokens: Used to track bonus points.
• Player board: Used to track karma and to track scoring with 6 locations numbered 1 to 6 to place seeding dice once they're vines are completed.

There's not much art to speak of in Diced Tomatoes, understandably, the minimalist art is red-themed.

How's it play?
Setup

• Dice: ​Give each player 11 red dice, 2 black dice and 1 gold die to put into their own personal supply.
• Board: Give each player a board and a put the karma marker on 3.
• Vine tokens: give each player 3 vine tokens which should be placed face-up.
• First player: Players roll their golden die to determine the starting player.
• Dice pool: Now all players pool their dice into a central supply that all players can use.

On to play
Points are scored in Diced Tomatoes by creating vertical lines of 4 dice (Vines if you will.) in either straights or sets of-a-kind.
In a turn, the active player takes their actions which will involve rolling and placing dice, which may result in them or other players scoring points.

• Vine tokens: If the active player has any face-down vine tokens, then they are flipped face-up. Obviously, this will not apply in a player's first turn.
• Roll the dice: The active player must take 3 dice from central supply and roll them. They can choose any combination of the 3 available colours, however only red dice can be used as seeding dice (More on this below.), so at the start it's a good idea to choose 3 reds. Later, players may choose to put black or gold dice into the mix.
  Additionally, in later turns, players will probably have dice 'passed' to them, which means they get more to roll.
• Place dice: Once the dice are rolled, the active player places them according to the following rules. Furthermore, the active player must place dice if they can, even if this means benefitting another player, although they will most likely do this to try and hinder other players instead.
  • Seeding dice: A red die of any value may be placed on to a empty face-up vine token. This is the start of that particular vine and that die becomes the seeding die, which is also it's 'value' and will be the VP's that are earned when the vine is completed.
    Thus; if a '4' is placed on to a vine token, that die will be worth 4 VPs when the vine is completed.
  • Add to a vine: If a vine token already has a seeding die on it, then dice can be added to that vine with the following provisos.
    • Matching: If the die being placed is the same value as the seeding die, then it can be placed above or below the seeding die. This means that this vine has become a 'matching set' trick.
    • Straight: If a die is exactly 1 higher or lower than a seeding die, then a higher value die can be placed above the seeding below and a lower value die will go below.
      When a die is added to a seeding die is this fashion, this vine becomes a 'straight' set.
    • Continue set: If a vine has 2 or more dice on it, then only dice which continue the trick can be added to it.
      So, if a vine has 2 '5' dice on it, then only 5's can be added to it to continue the matching set.
      If a vine has a straight, then that straight must be continued by adding lower value dice to the bottom or higher value dice to the top.
    • Black and gold dice: Every black die is placed on a vine lowers the value of the seeding die by 1.
      Conversely, every gold die on a vine increases the seeding die's value by 1.
      If the value of a seeding die ever drops below 1 or rises above 6, then that vine is wiped clean and becomes empty!
    • Other players: It will be likely at some point or other that the active player will not be able add dice to their vines. In this case, they must add dice to the vine token/dice of another player, even if it scores that other player points.
      There is a benefit to finishing another player's vine though, which is karma, more on this below.
    • End turn and pass dice: At the end of their turn, any dice the active player cannot place on either their own vines or those of another player must be passed on to the player on their left who will roll them in addition to the 3 dice they pick and roll in their turn.

​That's it for the basic flow of a turn, there are some other rules.

• Karma: All players start with 3 karma and can accumulate up to 12 during their turn, however, only 6 karma can be carried over from turn to turn.
  Karma is acquired by completing other player's vines and can be used to change the value of dice in some way or other and may even be used by a player to wipe one of their vines clear of all dice. Why would a player want to do this? Well more on that later.
• Scoring: Once a vine has accumulated 4 dice, it is immediately scored. This applies to all players, thus it is possible for players other than the active player to score points.
  VPs: When a vine is scored, the player takes the seeding die and places it on the first available scoring space on their player board, so the 1st seeding die to score goes on the '1' space, the 2nd seeding die would go on the 2nd space and so forth.
  If there were any black and/or gold dice on the vine, the seeding die's face is changed accordingly. E.g., a gold die on the vine would turn a '1' into a '2'.
  A seeding dice on the scoring board is worth it's face-value in VPs, a die showing a '4' would be worth.
  The other 3 dice are returned to the central pool.
  Bonus points: If the value on a seeding die matches the value of the scoring space it is put on to, then the player earns bonus points. So if seeding die with a value of '3' is places on the 3rd scoring spot, it will earn bonus points; how many bonus points?
  ​Basically, it increases the spot's VP score to 7 for each matching die/spot. This is tracked with the star fruit tokens.
• Flip vine token: Once a vine is scored, the now empty vine token is flipped 'face-down' and no seeding die (For better or for worse.) can be played on it until it is flipped over in the owning player's turn.

Endgame
There are 2 criteria that can trigger the game end.
If there are no dice left in the central pool at the end of the active player's turn, then the game immediately ends.
Alternatively, once any player has filled all 6 spots on their scoring board, they score 2 bonus VPs, current round is played out and the game ends. 

Players now calculate their finishing scores from the following sources.

• Points come from seeding dice on the scoring track plus a possible 2 bonus points.
• Star fruit tokens.
• Remaining karma score
• Remaining red dice on vines.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Despite Diced Tomatoes being a fairly light game with an unusual implementation of trick-taking mechanics (In that you don't really take other players' tricks - well you can ruin them instead!), it does give players lots to think about.

Firstly players will want to create their own vines. The order in which seeding dice are scored can be very important because getting it right will earn bonus points. This is particularly true for the early scoring spaces. A value 1 seeding die earns 6 VPs when placed on the 1 slot but a value 6 seeding die placed on the 6 slot only earns 1 bonus VP.

Secondly, because players can put dice on to the vine tokens and vines of other players, it means that they can try to complete them to gain karma.

Alternatively, they can try and mess with other player vines to disrupt their scoring.
E.g., if another player has a vine with 3 '1s' which they are intending to put into scoring slot 1, adding a 1 value black dice would complete the vine, but the black die would lower the seeding die's value to 0 - wiping that vine out.

​Or ​adding a gold die would add 1 point making the seeding die worth 2 when completed, this means the other player would not gain the star fruit bonus when putting it on scoring slot 1. So while they've gained a VP from the gold die, they've lost the bonus from not matching the scoring slot, collectively losing 5 VPs!
So it seems sometimes, players will want to wipe out their own vines to keep a scoring opportunity open!

As you can see, Dice Tomatoes provides quite a lot of interaction between players and a quite lot of opportunities for 'take that' moves and depending on how you feel about this style of play, may or may not be your kind of thing.
Personally I'm a bit ambivalent about it - especially in a game that's a quick and light filler.
One thing I'm not a fan of is having your vines wiped when your score goes above 6. I know why the rules are that way but it feels a bit mean spirited and counter-intuitive to lose points by gaining points.

Diced Tomatoes is a not difficult to learn, fairly quick to play filler game. Mechanically it's fairly solid and has a unique spin on trick-taking. I'm struggling to find any genuine criticism but then, I'm also struggling to find any reason to play it again.
I feel that the ease in which players can interfere in each other's plans is a bit of a frustration and it left me unengaged. It also feel like it prolongs what could be a short and sweet game.
It's not a bad game but there's just other game's I'd rather play.
Of course YMMV and maybe you'd get more out of it but Diced Tomatoes isn't one for me.

14th May 2022

It's a Saturday and I'm in Aldershot after a impromptu get together with some friends.

Flip City AKA Design Town is a light and uncomplicated push-your-luck deck building game about developing a city.

What's in a game?

• Cards: All the cards in Flip City are double-sided and one side shows a 'basic' building such as a convenience store while the flip side shows the 'upgraded' version, which in this instance is the shopping mall.
  It's easy to tell which side is which, the purchase cost only appears in the top right corner of the basic side. Other than that, cards list their special ability at the bottom and 'flip cost' in the bottom right corner (More on flip costs below.), while in the bottom left it lists whether the card confers coins, VPs or 'unhappiness' (Which is a bad thing, again more on unhappiness below.)
  Residential area: The residential area is the game's 'starter' card and is the only card that does not have a purchase cost. The key thing to note about the residential area is that not only does it generate unhappiness, it forces the player to play it!
  It's essentially a trash card and after flipping it to the other side, it can be flipped again to put it into another player's discard pile.
  Other cards: There are 5 other types of card that come with the game including the expansion. They represent businesses or amenities that can be found in a city. All are double sided and there are about 10 copies of each type.

The cards are all the standard quality you'd expect from a card game.

The game uses brightly coloured stylised art throughout and I always like this kind of artwork and I think it looks good here.
additionally, the cards can be placed next to each to make a city landscape. Yes, it's unnecessary but it's a nice touch and shows some extra thought has gone into the presentation.

Flip City uses some iconography, but all of it is clear and easily learned or understood.

How's it play?
Setup

• Starting cards: Each player gets a starting hand of 9 cards consisting 4 residential areas, an apartment (Which is a flipped, upgraded residential area) and one each of the 4 other types of card (Not including the office which is a 'mini-expansion.).
  These should be shuffled into a deck with those cards face-up. Players must be careful not to inadvertently flip their decks.
  The remaining residential area cards are not used in the game.
• Other cards: Sort all the other cards into their individual types with the 'basic' side face-up and create a deck of each type and place them in the central area. Thus there will be 4 or 5 decks (If the office expansion is included.) in the central area.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
Each's active player's turn will consist of up to 2 phases, a play cards phase in which they play as many cards as they want or go bust and a buying phase.

• Play cards: Unlike other deck-building games, players in Flip City do not have a hand of cards.
  Instead they draw cards one-at-a-time from their deck, immediately resolving it before deciding to draw another. This means that players will always know what the first card will be at the start of their turn and what card is next during their turn.
  The twist here though, is that sometimes, when certain cards are revealed after a  drawing card, the players will be forced to play that card.
  Stop: The active player may choose to stop drawing cards any time they choose unless a revealed card forces the player to draw and play it.
  Go bust: If at any time, the active player plays cards that display 3 or more unhappiness symbols, they go bust and their turn immediately ends.
• Buying phase: Provided the active player has not gone bust, they may potentially perform one of the following three buy actions. The amount they have to spend will be equal to the combined value of coins on the cards they played.
  Buy a card: The active player may buy a card from the supply and add it to their discard.
  Flip a card: the active player may pay the cost to flip a card in their discard pile to its other side.
  When a card is flipped, it may immediately trigger an ability or it will change the cards ability when it's next drawn.
  Develop a card: If the active play can afford both costs, then they can buy a card from the supply and flip it before putting it into their discard pile.
  
• End of turn: Once the active player has completed their turn, all the cards they played are put into their discard pile. 
• Next player: Once the active player has either gone bust or completed their buy action, play moves to the player on their left.

Endgame
Play continues until 1 of 2 winning criteria is met.

• Points: If the active player has played cards that score 8 or more VPs, then they win the game.
• Cards: If the active player has played a convienece store and at least 17(!) other cards, then they win the game.

Overall
Flip City describes itself as a microdeckbuilder and it's not really wrong. Most deck-builders come with a supply-market of 10 card types or so but Flip City makes do with 4 types (5 if you include the micro-expansion), although they are double-sided, so there are actually 10 types of card. Even so, it's a very compact feeling game.

For me however, where Flip City differentiates itself from other games of its kind is the implementation of a push-your-luck mechanic.
It works well here, especially in conjunction with meeting the winning conditions, essentially forcing players to continue drawing cards and pushing their luck until they either have 8 VPs or 18 cards in play.
As a result, Flip City is a little different to many deck-builders, which at their core are more-or-less about creating cash-generating engines to purchase cards that will earn them more cash during the early-game or VPs during late-game play.
In Flip City, generating cash is still important because it allows players to acquire more cards but some of those cards will have to work towards being able to draw 8 VPs or 18 cards.

Flip City is a quirky, charming, fairly light and quick to play pocket-sized deck-builder that presents players with some meaningful paths to winning and choices as well as some unusual game play and a nice little risk-and-reward mechanic.
Given it's light nature, I'm not sure how the game will hold up to repeated play but that's sort of missing the point. This is a fun filler game that is good to ply every once in a while.
It's worth a try and if deck-builders are you thing, then this will probably appeal to you. 

13th May 2022

Friday the 13th continues and we in Farnborough for some more after work gaming goodness.

Many games have small components that could be considered choking hazards, that however is not the case with... Joking Hazard, a game inspired by the Cyanide & Happiness comic strip.

What's in a game?

• Cards: Joking Hazard has a deck of 250 cards.
  Most cards feature a black border and some features a red one.
  All the artwork is inspired by Cyanide & Happiness artwork and each card is a single panel of that style of cartoony art and usually features 1 or more stickmen, often dong something offensive - which will be no surprise to anyone who's read the strip.

That's it for the components.

There's not much more to say about the cards, they're quality is pretty good, considering the game's origin, the artwork is exactly what is expected and the game uses no iconography.

How's it play?
Setup

• Cards: Shuffle the cards into a face-down deck and deal 7 cards to each player.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
Individual cards in Joking hazard essentially have no context and this is a game about putting them into  context by constructing jokes out of 3 comic panels, only the comic panels will be to some degree randomly created.

• Draw card: The active player draws a card from the deck. If it has a black border, then it will be a normal round. If it's a red-bordered card, then it becomes a bonus round.
• Normal round: The active player puts the card face-up into the central playing area.
  Add card: Then the active player takes a card from their hand and places it to the left or the right of the first card, creating the first 2 panels of the comic strip.
  Other players: Each other player then chooses a card from their hand which will become the 3rd panel of the strip and plays it face-down to the right of the first 2 cards. Basically creating the punchline.
  Judging: The active player reveals the face-down cards one-by-one. When they've read all the card, they choose the card which created the 'best' or 'funniest' joke and that player is awarded a point.
• Bonus round: When a bonus round occurs, the active player puts the red-bordered card into the playing area face-up.
  Unlike a normal round, the active player does not add a 2nd card.
  Other players: Now the other players add 2 cards in any order they wish in front of the card to create a comic strip.
  Unlike the normal round where the other players create the punchline, in a bonus round they create the set-up and the red-bordered card becomes the punchline.
  Judging: As with a normal round, the active player decides who has created the best or funniest gag and awards them a point.
  
• Draw cards: Once judging for the round is over, all players draw back up to 7 cards in hand.
• Next player: Play progress to the person on the left who now becomes the active player.

Endgame

The first player to win 3 points, wins!

Overall
Joking Hazard is an accessible party game that can be played by up to 10 participants and is equal parts mildly amusing and mildly offensive. Well... as offensive as the Cyanide & Happiness comic it's based on. So I guess if you're easily offended, you might want to give this a miss.

From a gameplay perspective, you would be forgiven for thinking Joking Hazard is just the same as other 'you be the judge' games. However, Joking Hazard differs because individual cards have no context. There is no statement A and answer B. The players create context themselves, which gives the game a slight edge.

Is it any good though? The answer is; sort of, which to be honest, is not a good answer really and a bit of a cop-out.
But the truth is; this games clearly sits in the domain of beer-and-pretzels. If you're going to be playing it with a bunch of slightly dour-faced gamers who usually play 6 hour empire building, resource managing, epoch spanning games, no one's going to enjoy this.
However, if you play it with some work colleagues or non-gamers who's only understanding of games is 'Is it like monopoly?' then they'll probably have a blast, especially if they've had a drink or two and that's who the game is targeted anyway.

13th May 2022

Friday the 13th! And I'm in Farnborough with work colleagues for some gaming fun.

​Viva la resistance! Will you overthrow the tyrannical oppressive government or welcome your new overlords? Let the cards decide.

Resistance is a hidden role card game that is also the predecessor of Arthurian themed The Resistance: Avalon and as such is mechanically almost identical to that game. In fact ​The Resistance or at least the basic version of it is actually a simpler game than The Resistance: Avalon.

Reading my blog about The Resistance: Avalon will tell you everything you need to know about The Resistance. A full write-up here would be pointless.

There's only 1 notable difference: The basic version of The Resistance only has 2 role cards, resistance fighter and spy. Otherwise the games play identically.

At the start, each player is given a secret role as a resistance fighter or spy. The key thing here is that the spies know who each other are and are trying to sabotage the missions while the resistance fighters are trying to uncover the spies.
The mission leader chooses a team and all players vote on whether to approve or reject that team. When a team is finally chosen, they all go on the mission. This involves the team voting on whether a mission succeeds or not. Resistance fighters must choose  to succeed at missions but spies can choose to either succeed or fail.
​
All of these decisions and voting are done in secret and resistance fighter will need to watch the voting, who votes in what and the outcomes of the voting. Spies will need to be patient, revealing their hand too early will flush them out.
If by then of the fifth mission, the spies have not sabotaged 3 missions, then the resistance wins. If 3 missions are sabotaged

Overall
There's not too much to add here, everything I said about The Resistance: Avalon also applies here, but that was sometime ago and I can't remember exactly what I said. So I'll summarise here.

Mechanically, The Resistance is pretty solid with a easily understood set of rules that give opportunities for lying, deception and deduction. There's nothing to fault there.

The quality of the game though, comes almost entirely from the participants.
Players who love to bluff and mess with other players will revel here and be in their element. Whilst those who aren't fans of this type of game are likely to find it slightly uncomfortable, won't enjoy it and thus probably won't play it as well.

So if you're fan of hidden role games and are playing with like-minded people, The Resistance is definitely worth trying.