25th July 2021

Sunday gaming on Board Game Arena continued with our next game.

If Esther Rantzen ever made board games, it probably wouldn't be this one, for starters, there's no dog that says 'sausages'!

Caveat: We have only ever played That's Life! digitally online.

What's in a game?
That's Life! is all about travelling along a route consisting of a series of randomly placed hexagonal tiles, where the bad ones outweigh the good ones, generally trying to manage those bad situations with a bit of luck and occasionally encountering generosity or greed. Maybe that really is what life is all about?

• Start and end tiles: This pair of tiles mark the start and finish of the route.
• Plus tiles: Plus tiles score points for players when acquired, there are 8 of them, ranging in value from 1 to 8.
• Minus tiles: When minus tiles are acquired, they lose points for the capturing player. There are 18 minus tiles valued from -1 to -10.
• Lucky tiles: These will turn minus values into plus ones, as they may be used to swing a large number of points they can be very powerful. There are 6 of them.
• Action tiles: The 4 tiles are double-sided and are marked gift/steal.
• Meeples: Up to 3 meeples per player.
• Die: Every roll and move game needs dice and this is a standard six-sider.

There's a more complex version of the game we didn't play that involves 'guard' meeples.

How's it play?
Setup

• Take all the plus, minus and lucky tiles, then shuffle them into a face-down stack of 32 tiles.
• Put down the start tile.
• Draw 8 tiles from the stack and place them in line starting at the start tile to form a path, the exact route of the path isn't important.
  Next, place an action tile (Gift side up.) at the end of the path and after the 8th tile.
  Repeat this with the 24 remaining tiles on the stack and 3 action cards to continue the path.
• Place the end tile after the final action tile to complete the route.
• Give each player 2 or 3 (Depending on player count.) meeples in their colour and place them all on the starting tile.
• Determine the starting player.

On to play
The goal in That's Life! is to journey to the game's end, acquiring those scoring tiles as you go while trying to avoiding those minus tiles. How's this done?

• Roll the dice: The active player rolls the die and moves one of their meeples by that rolled amount.

That's it, well OK, not exactly, there's a bit more.

• Picking up tiles: When one of the active player's meeples leaves a tile and there are no other meeples on it, then they MUST pick up the tile (Unless it's an action tile - see below.).
  Tiles picked up by a player are placed into a single stack in the order they were acquired, thus the most recently collected tile will always go on top of the stack.
• Action tiles: If the active player moves one of their meeples off an action tile and there are no other meeples on it, then the action card's gift/steal ability is activated, depending on which face is up.
  Gift side up: The active must give the tile on top of their stack to another player, who places it on top of theirs.
  Steal side up: The active player takes the topmost tile from someone else's stack and places it on top of theirs.
  Flip sides: Action tiles are not collected by players and always stay in the route, instead they are flipped over to their other side.

Endgame
Play continues until all players' meeples have crossed the finish line.
Each lucky tile acquired by a player can now used to convert the score from a minus tile into a plus, then all points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
There's no getting away from that fact that this is a roll and move game, it may give you 2 or 3 choices from that roll, but it still is what it is. 
That's not to say it's all bad, usually at least 1 of the 2 or 3 choices a player is given is meaningful.
Finding a way to linger on a plus tile until other players have to leave (Or getting off the tile before other players even arrive!) will earn victory points and players will obviously also want to avoid the minus tiles. However, minus tiles sort of reverses this, players will look to linger on a bad tile in the hope that another player will land it, allowing them to potentially escape. Furthermore, minus tiles outnumber plus ones 18-to-8; that's more than double, landing on them is inevitable, so is picking them up.
This is what makes the lucky tiles such gamechangers with their ability to mitigate negative penalties, if a player has a lucky tile in their stack, suddenly that big minus tile becomes an asset, provided of course someone doesn't steal the lucky tile in the meantime.
All of this is also largely dependant on what other players do, because they'll also be trying to linger on good tiles and escaping bad ones.

That's Life! is a very easy game to learn and comprehend. I feel that it will have crossover appeal to non-gamers but for us, it felt a little too light and a little too luck-based; because players invariably end up collecting more negative tiles than positive, it ends up lending the game a negative feel - even though generally it will affect all player equally (Maybe life is like that?). It meant we didn't find That's Life a satisfying experience or a compelling game.

25th July 2021

Sunday gaming on Board Game Arena continued with Bang!

The American west could be an ornery, dangerous place; friend or foe, it was always hard to tell, particularly when you all sat in circle and pointed pistols at each other, with nothing else but a spittoon between all of you.

Caveat: We have only ever played Bang! digitally.

What's in a game?

• Role cards: ​A hidden role card game has to have hidden role cards! Bang! has 7 of them. A sheriff, deputies, outlaws and a renegade,
• Character cards: Each player takes on the role of one of the characters as well as a hidden role.
  Each character card displays their number of bullets (Hit points.) and has a special ability.
• Playing cards: Used for a variety of purposes in the game, mostly for attacking other players and there are 80 of them.
  They're 2 types of card; brown cards which are once-only and blue cards, which have an ongoing effect.
• Player boards: Player boards have spaces to place, hidden role, character and weapon cards.
• Bullet tokens: These represent hit points.

Bang! utilises a stylised cartoony art style throughout the game cards which is appealing enough and iconography is clear to read.

How's it play?
Setup

• Hidden Roles: The mix of hidden cards used will depend on the number of participating players, but there's always at least the sheriff, an outlaw and a renegade. Randomly deal each player a hidden role card face-down, the player who gets the sheriff role must reveal their card, everyone else keeps their role secret.
• Characters: Deal each player a character card face-up, players now take the relevant number of bullet tokens for their character, fortunately for the sheriff, they start with an extra bullet!
• Playing cards: Shuffle the playing cards and deal cards out to the players, place the remainder in a face-down deck.

On to play
The main purpose in Bang! is to attack your enemies and aid your allies (If you have any.)! This is is not quite so simple as it sounds though, since it's unlikely that players will know who is an enemies or a friend, at least at the start.
Additionally, you may not even be able to reach you enemies, most attacks in Bang! have a range of 1, this means an attack can only target someone 1 space away, i.e., someone adjacent, there are several weapons have extra range and there're also ways to alter ranges.
A turn in Bang! consists of 3 actions.

• Draw cards: The active player draws 2 cards from the player deck.
• Play cards: The active player may play any number of player cards with the exception of Bang! cards, of which only 1 may be played, Bang! cards are the main form of attacking other players.
  Player cards have various actions from attacks to healing, to stealing cards from other players or forcing them to discard etc. Player cards also provide weapons and gear to players.
  Finally, there are a couple of cards that players can use out-of-turn in reaction to the active player, these are the only cards that can be played out-of-turn.
• Discard: The last action performed by the active player is to discard down to their card limit - which is equal to their bullets/hit points.
  Thus, as a player loses hit points, their hand size shrinks correspondingly, it can be a quite nasty death spiral!

Endgame
In Bang!, play continues until one of three win conditions are met, these win conditions will depend what hidden role players have.
Sheriff/deputies: All outlaws and the renegade must be eliminated for the sheriff/deputies to win.
Outlaws: Eliminate the sheriff and the outlaws win.
​Renegade: Win by being the last man standing.

Overall
​Bang! is a pretty straightforward hidden role game, however, unlike some hidden role games, most of the game's 3 factions will start not knowing who their allies might be, with exception of deputies and the renegade (Who has no allies.).
Players will need to observe other players' behaviour to try and gauge their motives, this is made more difficult because the renegade will be looking help or hinder either of the other factions depending on the situation, adding to this are the range restriction rules that can force players to change behaviour. Additionally, in Bang! actions are card driven, i.e. a player's decisions will be to some degree limited by the cards in their hand; no BANG! card - no attack for example, this can mean even more restrictions on player choices.
We found this made for a slightly unsatisfying experience, particularly since there's a a fairly strict rule on hand size and it becomes a case of use-it-or-lose-it with cards. It didn't help that sometimes it felt like the card play made the game a little futile, managing to play a Bang! card only for your target to immediately heal it made for a negative feeling.

We played Bang! with a lower player count and online; with more players and in-person play I'm sure that it would've been a different experience, a game like Bang! will thrive with more players.

I'm not the biggest fan of hidden role games and I don't think Bang! is a bad game but  I can think of other similar games I'd rather play - including it's later companion game; Bang! The Dice Game.

25th July 2021

It's a Sunday and I'm logged into Board Game Arena on my PC, time for some gaming goodness.

First up is Happy City, read my thoughts about it here.

20th July 2021

I'm in Woking at the Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club.

The second and final game of the evening was For Sale; time for some property flipping and stressful auctioning action.

What's in a game?
For Sale is a card game and comes with 2 types of cards.

• Property cards: There are 30 property cards, unsurprisingly numbered from 1-30.
• Currency cards: There are also 30 currency cards, these sort of represent the money in the game's property market and are worth from $2,000 to $15,000, increasing in increments of $1,000 with 2 of each, along with 2 cards worth $0.
• Coins: Standard card tokens that represent $1,000 or $2,000

It's no surprise that quality of the the cards and coin tokens are pretty standard and as you'd expect them.
Artwork on the property cards is pretty good, colourfully depicting 30 different properties ranging from a lowly cardboard box for the 1 card to an orbiting space station for the 30 card. The currency cards all identically depict cheques of various values
​There's not much else to say here.

How's it play?
Setup

• ​Shuffle the property cards into a face-down deck, depending on the number of players, some cards will need to be blindly discarded.
• Shuffle the currency deck into a face-down deck, as with property cards, an identical number of currency will need to be blindly discarded.
• Dole out coins to each player, the exact amount will also depend on the number of players.

On to play
For Sale is played over 2 phases, in the 1st, players use their money to buy properties and in the 2nd, they use these to get currency cards, essentially flipping the properties for profit.
Phase 1: Buying properties.

• From the property deck, draw a number of cards equal to the number of players and place them face-up in the playing area.
• Players now bid on these properties in an open auction, although players should keep the number of coins they possess secret from other players.
  The starting player begins with an opening bid of their choice.
  Players that follow must put in a higher bid or pass.
  When a player passes, half of the money they bid (Rounded down.) is returned to them and they acquire the lowest valued card from the currently available selection.
  This bidding and passing continues until only one player remains, who pays their full bid for the last card - which will naturally be the highest valued property.
  Now deal another set of cards and start the bidding again.
  ​This continues until all the property cards have been acquired.

That's it for phase 1.
Phase 2: Flipping those properties.

• From the currency deck, deal a number of cards equal to the number of players and place them face-up into the playing area. I guess these cards sort of represent the buyer's demand for properties and the money they're willing to shell out on them.
  Players now bid in order to sell their properties to these buyers, however, this takes the form of a blind auction. Each player now chooses a property from those they acquired in phase 1 and plays it face-down.
  All properties are simultaneously revealed. The highest valued property will acquire the highest valued currency card for its player, i.e. the nicest property attracts the richest buyer. The 2nd highest valued property acquires the 2nd highest valued currency card and so on until all the currency cards have been acquired.
  Deal another set of cards and continue blind-bidding on them until all currency cards have been acquired.

That's both phases done.

Endgame
​Players tally the values of all the currency cards they acquired and any coins that were unspent from phase 1.
Highest score wins.

Overall
​For Sale is a simple game to play, it features two types of auctioning that're easy to understand, however there are a couple of curveballs that that affect the game's dynamic.
Firstly in phase 1; which is an open auction, there's the rule that states when a player passes, they only get half their bid back and the lowest valued card. It means the classic play of trying to run up someone else's bid is a risky proposition, you may well end up running yourself up for a very low value card as well. Even the act of initially bidding may cost a player more than they want to spend, it's something player's need to think about.
All the property cards drawn have to be acquired by players and it may not seem like it, but sometimes a lower valued card can end up generating more profit. Why? Because the value of a card does not necessarily dictate its worth.

This brings me to phase 2; the blind auction. This is where player's sell their properties to get profit, however the profits that players can potentially generate will contextually change from round to round and depends on the currency cards drawn. No matter how much you paid for a property card, when you use it, it will only generate income according to the currently drawn currency cards.
This is where players have to start watching what other players will do and know when to push high or low valued property.

If a $15,000 currency card had been drawn and you know another player has the 30 point property card, you know they're going to play it - it guarantees them the $15,000 card, so is it a good time for you to use a high value card? On the other hand, the 2nd highest might be worth it, or it might be not.
Conversely; in some circumstances, the lowest value cards can have great worth, if all the currency cards drawn are high value, it can be a good time to play lower value cards, remember it's all about profit not value.
A 30 point property card that costs $8,000 and nets a $15,000 currency card, generates a profit of $7,000.
If 1 point property that cost 0 because somebody passed and took it for free is used to get a $8,000 property, then that's $8,000 profit!
This example is extreme and doesn't realistically occur too often, but the principal is sound; if demand is high (Multiple high value currency cards are drawn.), then it's time to push your lowest value properties for maximum profit; capitalism at its finest!
Conversely, if there are fewer high value currency cards out there, playing a high value property at the right time will outbid other players and score the maximum profit.

All this makes For Sale a very situational, essentially contextually-driven game about managing the game's inherent unpredictability and adapting when it's called for. It becomes about not only knowing when to play which cards, but also watching what properties other players have and trying to predict their strategies, which can profoundly effect yours.

I have love/hate relationship with auction games, the unpredictably always worries me and For Sale is more unpredictable than most in my opinion.
Even so, it's an enjoyable game and definitely worth a try, if you're a fan of auction games, you should really try it.

20th July 2021

It's a Tuesday evening and after a blip, I'm back in at the Sovereigns in Woking with the Woking Gaming Club.

The first game of the evening was the awesome Pan Am, read my thoughts about it here.

18th July 2021

The final game of gaming Sunday on Board Game Arena is Happy City.

Read my blog about it here.

18th July 2021

It's a Sunday evening and gaming continues on Board Game Arena.

Next is Railroad Ink, read my blog about it here.

18th July 2021

Codex Naturalis was the next game of the evening on Board Game Arena.

Read my blog about it here.

18th July 2021

Another Sunday means more gaming on Board Game Arena.

The opening game of the evening was Love Letter, read my blog about it here.

18th July 2021

It's a Sunday evening and I'm logged into Board Game Arena for some more gaming fun.
The first game of the night was Fluxx, read my blog about it here.