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. 

2nd May 2022

It's a bank holiday Monday and we're round Simon's for some gaming fun.

Waterdeep, famed city in The Forgotten Realms and home to many a adventurer, ready to brave the wilderness in the search for treasure and glory... oh wait... This Dungeons & Dragons setting licensed game is nothing to do with Dungeon & Dragons... It's actually a political-intrigue themed worker placement game!

What's in the game?

• Game board: The board shows a map of the titular city; Waterdeep in some detail.
  Buildings: There 9 basic worker-spaces dedicated the various 'buildings' and establishments throughout the city, such as the Blackstaff Tower and The Grinning Lion Tavern.
  Some spaces such as the Cliffwatch Inn and Builder's Hall have additional spaces associated with them (To place certain types of cards basically.).
  Building sites: There are also 9 blank spots which can have buildings constructed upon them during the course of the game.
  Card spaces: There are spaces for the quest deck & discard pile, intrigue deck and discard pile as well as the the deck of building tiles.
  Round tracker: Lord of Waterdeep is played over 8 rounds, this is tracked with VP tokens - which are then introduced into the game over each round. More on this below.
  Agent tracker: Players gain an additional worker halfway through the game, their workers are kept here until acquired.
  Scoring track: Finally, there's a scoring track which runs the perimeter of the board.
• Player mat: There is a player mat in each of the 5 player colours. Each mat represents a different faction active within Waterdeep, the City Watch or the Harpers for example.
  Mats contain spaces to put acquired resources such as cubes, money or agents. There are also allotted spots to place active and completed quest card and to place a player's Lord card.
• Agent meeples: These come in each player and are the game's workers. Additionally, there is a ambassador and lieutenant meeple which may come into play.
• Adventurers: Represented by little wooden cubes, these are recruits that players will be... err... recruiting to their cause to complete quests.
  There are 4 colours of cube representing clerics, fighters, rogues and magic-users. What, no demi-humans!
• Cards: Lord of Waterdeep makes uses of several types of cards.
  Lord cards: These are the Lords of Waterdeep, the secret rules or the city. There are 11 lord cards and each player will secretly be playing one of them. Lord cards feature some flavour text and a method for earning additional VPs.
  Quest cards: Questing is an important part of Lord of Waterdeep. Quest cards contain illustrations and some flavour text. Each quest card also has a cost to complete, typically it will be a number of adventurers such as 3 fighters and 2 rogues and so on, the cost may include money too
  Each quest also associated with 1 of 5 types such as Warfare or Skulduggery. This also determines which type of adventure it primarily needs.
  Intrigue cards: When played, intrigue provide the controlling player with a once-only benefit of some sort.
• Building tiles: These extra buildings which can be constructed and placed on the boards blank building sites for the listed cost in coins. The provide players with extra locations to place workers and new benefits which can be earned. Any player put a worker there but be warned, the builder gets a benefit whenever another player makes use of their building.
  These tiles are sort of square shaped but with an indentation in 1 corner - which is where players' building control marker goes. (More on markers below.)
• Tokens: The game also makes use of various card tokens.
  Victory points: These hexagonal tokens display what appears to be a ruby.
  Building control marker: These come in the 5 different player colours, when a player constructs a building, they put their marker on the corner of the tile.
  Gold: The game uses curiously shaped square and crescent tokens to represent gold. I guess that's what coins look like in Waterdeep.
  First player marker: This token looks a bit like the rook from a chess set and represents Castle Waterdeep.

For the most part, all the components felt sturdy and well made. The player mats felt a little thin and flimsy but that's probably down to the fact they're quite large and will be perfectly find unless mistreated.

​There's a lot of excellent art throughout the game. I'm not sure if it's been created specifically for Lords of Waterdeep or sourced from the large amount of Forgotten Realms/D&D artwork that's been produced over the decades but either way, it's good quality and generously used on all the game's cards.
The other piece of significant artwork is the map on the board, it's very well detailed, although it does make the board look a little 'busy'. Regardless of this I still quite like it.

The game does use a fair amount of iconography, for the vast majority of icons, it's pretty clear what they mean and there was minimal need to refer to the rules.

How's it play?
Setup

• Player mats: Randomly deal a player mat to each player. This will be that player's faction/colour for the game.
  Also give each player a number of meeples/agents as per player count and building control markers, all  in their player colour.
  Finally put 1 meeple of each player colour on the agent track.
• Lords of Waterdeep: Shuffle the Lord cards into a face-down deck, deal 1 face-down to each player and discard the rest out of the game. Player's should keep the identity of their lord secret, there's a space to put it under their player mat.
• Board: Put out the game board and do the following.
  Quest deck: Shuffle the quest cards into a face-down deck then deal 4 face-up on to their allotted spaces above the Cliffwatch Inn.
  Building tiles: Shuffle the building tiles into a face-down stack, deal 3 face-up on to the allotted spaces adjacent to the Builder's Hall.
  Intrigue cards: Shuffle the intrigue cards into a face-down deck and place them on their allotted space. Then deal 2 intrigue cards to each player face-down.
  Victory point tokens: Put 3 VP tokens on to each of the 8 round tracking spaces.
• First player: Determine a starting player, that player gets 4 gold, each subsequent player then gets 1 more gold than the previous player. Thus for a 5 player game, the starting gold will go from 4-8 gold.

On to play
Lords of Waterdeep uses the traditional turn structure with the active player taking an action and play progressing to their left.
When someone is the active player, they can act in 2 phases.
Firstly they must take their action, a player can only pass when they have no more agents to play.
finally, the active player may complete a quest if possible.

• Round start: At the start of the first and every following round, take the 3 VP tokens and place 1 each on the three building tiles available to buy.
• Place worker: A player action will involve placing one of their agents on to a space on the board and resolving that space. Several spaces will devoted to acquiring resources, others however, will have more specific actions.
  • Acquire resource: A number of the spaces will simply acquire 1 or more of the games 5 main resources (4 adventurer types and gold.) for the player when they place their worker there. I.e., going to the arena will recruit fighters, going to the tavern will recruit rogues and so forth.
    When resources are acquired, they are placed on to the player's mat.
  • Builder's Hall: If a worker is placed here, then the active player chooses one of the 3 available advanced buildings and pays its cost. The building is then placed into the blank building sites. Finally, the active player puts one of their building control markers in the appropriate slot.
    When a advanced building is drafted from the builder's hall, it is immediately replaced with a new building tile.
    Advanced buildings: there are numerous different types of advanced building that can come into play. Each one provides an extra space to place a worker and will provide the player who built it with a benefit whenever another player uses the building.
  • Castle Waterdeep: When a player puts a worker here, they gain the first player marker for the following round. Additionally, they also draw an intrigue card.
  • Cliffwatch Inn: There are actually 3 spaces here.
    First space: This allows the active player to take a face-up quest card then put it on the active quest area adjacent to their player mat and take 2 gold
    Second space: This allows the active player to take a face-up quest card then put it on the active quest area adjacent to their player mat and draw an intrigue card.
    Third space: With this action, all the currently face-up quest cards are discard and are replaced with 4 more, then the active player takes 1 of them.
    Whenever a quest card is taken, it is immediately replaced.
    Quest cards: When a player gains a quest card, it placed along the left-hand edge of their player mat; until it is completed, it has no function.
  • Waterdeep Harbour: This spot also has 3 spaces.
    Each time a player places a worker here, they may immediately play one of their intrigue cards.
    A player may put multiple agents here but is still limited to playing 1 agent per turn.
    Intrigue card: When an intrigue card is played, it is immediately resolved and discarded.
    There are several types of intrigue card which may benefit whoever plays it or hinder another.
• Complete quest: ​After the active player has placed and resolved one of their workers, they may spend resources on their mat to complete one active quest per turn.
  Once a quest is completed, it grants a reward, this may be a once-only or ongoing benefit. Quests with on-going benefits are known as plot-quests and may provide extra places to put workers.
  When a quest is completed, it's VPs are immediately scored.
  Mandatory quests: These quests are not acquired the usual way, they come from intrigue cards and are actually played on other players. If a player receives a mandatory quest, it must be completed before they complete any other quest.
• Next player: Once a player has put a worker into play and chosen to complete a quest or not, play progresses to the player on their left.
• Next round: When all players have placed all their workers, the current round ends and play progresses to the next round. The VP tokens on the new round's spot on the round tracker are placed on the 3 available building tiles.
  It is possible for a building to have more than 1 VP token if it wasn't built in the previous round.
  5th Round: At the start of the 5th round, each player acquires an additional agent/worker they can use for the rest of the game.

Endgame
The game ends at the end of the 8th round and goes to final scoring. VPs come from the follwing sources.

• Score on the score tracker.
• Every agent/worker a player has on their mat earns them an additional VP.
• Every 2 gold a player has on their mat earns them a VP.
• Lord cards will score VPs according to their individual quest objectives.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Now, I'm by no means whatsoever particularly knowledgeable about the Forgotten Realms setting but it's quite impressive how Lords of Waterdeep manages to marry a worker placement game with the flavour of the setting, or at least a part of it that takes place in Waterdeep. It's not vital to the rules or gameplay but conversely, neither is it jarring or hindering.

The game is all about optimising actions to gain required resources as efficiently as possible to complete quests which must also be acquired while at the same time trying to predict and out manoeuvre other players: Most of the locations that confer resources will only have space for a single worker, making it unlikely that players will get all the resources they want in a single round, prioritising is very important because completing quests is very important, not only do quests provide VPs, they can confer useful benefits as well.

This ties in with the Lord cards which are essentially secret objectives.
Not only may players be competing for certain quest types and their respective resources, there's also a higher level of play where resources and quests can be denied to other players, provided their objectives can be guessed of course.

The advanced buildings is an interesting proposition, it adds an element of emergent strategy to the game, changing the status quo, giving players new options and making them re-asses their plans. Constructing a useful building also has the benefit of earning the builder its bonus and inevitably, it'll be used by other players.

There's not much else to say really, the gameplay is solid if somewhat unremarkable; players of worker placements games will find themselves on familiar ground here which may or may not be good thing - depending on your mileage.
Perhaps the playing time is a touch too long for what it is but none of this stops Lords of Waterdeep from ultimately being an enjoyable game.

If the Forgotten Realms setting doesn't put you off for some reason and you want to try a worker placement game, then Lords of Waterdeep is probably worth a look.

1st May 2022

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

Azul; not a game about a villainous god-entity from Ghostbusters but actually a game about creating mosaic, decorative wall patterns with multi coloured tiles.
My friend's a plasterer, wonder if he'd be good at this!

Caveat: We've only ever played Azul digitally.

What's in a game?

• Player board: The player boards are double-sided with different shapes on both sides. Most of each player board is taken up by two sets of grids.
  Pattern lines: The left hand grid is a sort of triangular shape composed of rows of squares. The top row has 1 square and each row below increases the count of squares by 1. Thus the 5th and final row consists of 5 squares. These lines are known as the pattern lines
  Wall: The right hand grid is a 5x5 size with coloured/patterned squares. There are 5 types of square and each row has one of each type. Additionally, going downwards, each row has those types of square in a slightly offset position so they appear to 'descend' diagonally. The relationship between the 2 types of grid is key to the game. The wall is where players score VPs.
  Floor line: Along the bottom of the player board is a row of spaces labelled with minus values, e.g., -1, -2 and up to -3.
  Score tracker: Finally, along top of each board is an individual scoring tracker for each player.
• Token mats: There are 9 of these mats and they are each decorated in elaborate swirling patterns.
• Token/tiles: There are 100 tokens which represent the game's wall tiles, 20 each in 5 types with patterns that match the patterns on the square grid on player boards.
  First player token: There is also a first player token, it has no intrinsic value and will actually cost players VPs!
• Bag: The physical game comes with a bag which is used to blindly draw tokens.

The game's only artwork are the patterns which appear on the tokens. It does it's job though, between bright colours and unique images, the 5 sets of tokens look distinctive from one another.

Azul doesn't make use of icons and the relationship between tokens and a player board is clear.

How's it play?
Setup

• Board: Give each player a board.
• Mats: Put out 5-9 mats in a circular shape according to player count. Then place the first player token in the central area between the mats. All of this constitutes the game's drafting area.
• Tokens: Put all of the tokens into the bag and give it a good shake.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Azul, the player's objective is to place tokens on to their respective spots on the wall grid of their player board, which scores them VPs.
This is done by filling in the horizontal lines in the pattern lines grid; players must collect tokens of the type they need and place them in the spaces on the respective horizontal line. Depending on the line, it will require 1-5 tokens to fill a line. When a line is filled, one of those tokens can be placed in the matching space on that line at the end of the round.
All tokens will score 1 or more VPs when placed, tokens can also score again at the game end.

Azul makes use of a traditional turn order, with the active player performing their action (Which will involve taking 1 or more tokens of the same type.) before play progresses to the player on the left.

• Round start: The first player should blindly draw tokens from the bag and place them on the mats until each mat has 4 tokens on it. With 5-9 mats there will be 20-36 tokens used.
• Collect tokens: The active player must draft tokens from one of the mats or the central area (At the game start there won't be anything in the central area to draft.).
  The player chooses which type of token to draft and must take all the tokens of that type from the chosen mat or central area.
  From mat: If the tokens are drafted from a matt, the any tokens remaining on that matt are moved into the central area.
  From centre: If tokens are drafted from the central area and the first player token is also there, then that is taken as well.
  The first player token cannot be played into the lines and instead goes into the floor line. It means that the player will go first in the next round but will lose a point as a consequence.
• Place tokens: Now the active player must place their tokens into the pattern lines grid on their player board. There are several restrictions here.
  • Tokens can only be placed into a single line.
  • Tokens may be placed into any empty line or a line which already contains matching tokens.
    Any excess tokens remaining after filling a line are sent to the floor line.
  • Tokens cannot be placed in a line already containing different tokens.
  • Tokens cannot be placed in a line where the matching token has already been added to the wall grid. I.e., if a line had been previously filled and emptied of a particular type of token, in essence a line can only be used once for each type of tokens and it cannot be repeated.
  • Finally, the active player may choose to put the tokens into the floor line.
• Next player: Once the active player has placed their tokens, play progresses to the player on the left.
• Round end: Play continues until all the tiles from the drafting area have been placed on to player boards, then the  round is over and the following end of round actions occur for each player:
  • Resolve tokens: A line in the pattern lines which has been filled is considered resolved. This means that one of the tokens from that line is placed on it's corresponding spot on the same row in the wall grid, any remaining tokens are returned to the bag.
  • Scoring tokens: When a token is moved to the wall grid, it is immediately scored. How much it scores will depend on it's position relative to other tokens on the wall grid.
    If the token is not adjacent to any other tokens (The very first token placed on the wall grid for example.), then it scores 1 VP.
    If the token has been placed adjacent to 1 or more other tokens, it forms a link with them and scores more. For each horizontal token it is adjacent to in a link, an additional VP is scored. The same is true for a vertical link.
    If multiple rows were completed in the same round, then multiple tokens can be scored.
  • Floor line: Each token that has been placed in a box in the floor ​line costs the VPs listed, this is cumulative. E.g., the first 4 boxes are 1-, -1, -2, -2, if they are filled, this would total -6 VP. Once penalty points have been calculated, return the first player token to the centre and the other tokens to the bag.
• Next round: Whoever had the first player token is now the first player for the next round which they begin by blindly drawing tokens to populate the mats in preparation for the next round.
  Any uncompleted pattern lines carry over into the following round.
  

​
Endgame
When any horizontal line in the wall grid on any player's board has been filled, the endgame is triggered. The current end of round actions and scoring are completed and the game goes to final, bonus scoring.

Bonus VPs can be scored scored by the following:

• Every filled out vertical line is worth 7 VPs.
• Every filled out horizontal line is worth 2 VPs.
• Every completed set of 5 matching tokens (In other words; each filled out diagonal line.) is worth 10 VPs.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
On a rudimentary level, Azul's mechanics involve drafting handfuls of tokens and then placing them on to a board where their relative positioning scores varying amounts of VPs. It's a mechanic (Or a variation of that mechanic.) that have been employed in several other games and I'd say that Azul is a mid-weight iteration of it. As written the rules feel a little opaque and counter-intuitive but in application, they're pretty straightforward.
Where Azul get its weightiness comes from two areas of the rules; how the drafting - particularly drafting from mats works and then where and when tiles should go on the grids.

​As a basic concept, collecting as many tokens as possible to fill out the pattern lines and consequently get tokens on the wall grid is the way to go. However, there's more to it than.
For example, simply collecting too many tokens can sent the excess to the floor ​line and cost VPs, this is more important than it sounds, because as tokens are taken from the mats, it's inevitable that other tokens will build up in the centre and trying to predict this can be very important. Depending on circumstances, a lot of tokens of a particular type may well build up in the centre.
A player may want 4 red tokens for example, should they try and take them in drips and drabs from several mats over several turns or wait for them to accumulate in the centre? Provided of that they do accumulate in the centre, what if too many go to the centre?
There's definitely a higher level of play where watching what other players are doing is important. Quite often it's clear what they're prioritising, what they want or don't want in the next few turns.
​If they have a single token in the 5-space line on the left, it's likely they'll be looking to fill that out. Conversely, if they've already got 1 or more scoring tokens on the right side, they'll be unlikely or unable to use more of those tokens.
Being able to predict other player's objectives will help when making decisions. It can also allow a player to try and deny tokens to other players and curiously, on some occasions force other players to take tokens they don't want.

Players will also want to think about how and when to place their scoring tokens. Putting them down willy-nilly is a sure way to minimise points.
Obviously in order to optimise points, tokens should ideally be put on to the wall adjacent to other tokens. Placing them vertically is a good way to go, since completed vertical lines earn an additional 7 VPs each, unless a player is looking to end the game, in which case they can go for the horizontal line!

This brings me to an interesting facet in the mechanics, scoring the diagonal, i.e., putting all the tokens of 1 type on to the wall grid scores the biggest bonus; 10 VPs but as they are diagonal, they can't score off of each other! Additionally, once a diagonal of a type has been completed, the player can no longer score tokens of that type at all, collecting those tokens will now just incur penalty points in the floor line. Should a player hold off getting the diagonal until later which lowers the risk of sending tokens to the floor line or wait? Waiting will mean risking not completing it at all.

I have to say I'm not fond of mechanics which lose players points especially if it can occur out of their control, it irritates like a unreachable itch and can be a little stress inducing. I find that's the case with Azul as well. 
However, having said that, the truth is; this is what makes Azul a good game and gives it depth. It means that collecting tokens either earns VPs (Or contributes towards acquiring VPs.) or loses VPs. It's always a meaningful decision.

​Other iterations of these mechanics are a little less stressful, brain-boiling and perhaps more accessible. But if depth is what you're looking along with a dollop indirect interaction between players, then Azul is worth a try.