29th August 2023

It's a Tuesday evening which means we're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns for a evening of gaming.

Is this a thorough and comprehensive look into the lives of penguins.... or is it a push-your-luck game about dodging sharks and eating fish?

What's in a game?
Tokens: There are 160 square card tokens in Deep Dive!

• Depth: Every token has 1 of 5 'depths' as indicated on the back by 1 to 5 dots as well as differing shades of blue (Both on the front and back.): The darker the blue, the deeper the depth.

Meeples: In each of the colours there are 3 differently shaped wooden penguin meeples.

First player token: This oversized irregularly shaped token serves as both a first player marker and on the opposite side a game end tracker.

The tokens are the standard thick card tokens found in board games today. They are study enough and will last unless treated badly.
The meeples are recognisably penguin-shaped and made of wood which makes them pleasantly tactile components.

Despite their small size, the tokens are well illustrated. Pretty much everything looks like what it should look like.
However, I found the choice to use green and yellows colours for food tokens frustrating. While in the photos and under good light, the difference between the 2 colours is pretty obvious, in the less than idea lighting of the pub we first played in, it made differentiating between those colours tricky. Personally, I feel much better colours could have been used.

There's essentially 4 self-explanatory icons and some numbers used in Deep Dive. Players should have no trouble understanding the game.

How's it play?
Setup
Tokens: First, sort all the tokens by their depth, then add/randomly remove tokens from each depth according to player count as per the rules.
Next, flip all tokens face-down, randomly shuffle them and and arrange them by depth with depth 1 at the top and going downwards to depth 5 at the bottom.
Players: Give each player the 3 penguin meeples in their player colour.
First player: Randomly determine a starting player. Give them the first player token which they should keep in their personal area with the 1st player side face-up.

​On to play
In Deep Dive players take on the role of penguins diving for food while avoiding those pesky but deadly predators.
This is done by flipping tokens, resolving the outcome and then if possible, choosing to continue to flip tokens at deeper depths or take what has been flipped.
The game uses a traditional turn order with the active player taking their turn before play progresses to the player on their left.
During the active player's turn, the following occurs:
Depth: Play usually begins at the shallowest depth and as the player progresses they will go deeper and deeper. The rules below apply at all depths.

• Flip: The active player must flip a face-down token at their current depth according to the following rules.
  • Rock: If the active player has acquired a rock token from a previous turn, they can discard it begin their turn at any depth not just the shallowest.
  • No face-down tokens: If there are no face-down tokens at the current depth, the active player may choose to skip that depth.
  • Some face-up tokens: If there are any face-up tokens at the current depth, the active player may choose to take one of them. This immediately ends their turn.
  • Trapped penguin: If one of the active player's penguin meeples is trapped on a predator token on a particular depth, the active play may skip that depth.
    See below for rules on predators and trapped penguins.
• Resolve: When the active player does flip a token, they must resolve the outcome.
  • Open water: If a open water (Bubbles.) token is revealed, the active player must immediately move down to the next depth and flip a token there.
  • Food/rock: If the revealed token is food or a stone, the active player may choose to:
    Ignore it: In which case, the active player moves down to the next depth.
    Take: If the active player decides to take the food or rock, they resurface and their turn immediately ends.
    More on food below.
  • Predator: If a predator is revealed, The active player must place 1 of their 3 penguin meeples on that predator token, it is now trapped and their turn is over!
    3 trapped penguins: If the active player has just trapped their 3rd penguin on a predator, they now retrieve all 3.
    ​Then they can take 1 face-up food/rock from any 1 of the depths where they had a trapped penguin. Their turn is of course still over.

​Taking food/rocks: When a player takes either of these tokens, the following rules apply.

• Food: When food is taken, the player must place that food in their personal playing area in columns by colour. This is done starting at the top and going downwards
  This means each player will have 3 columns - one each for the 3 colours.
  It is theoretically possible for a player to create a single long column of a single colour but this is not desirable as scoring is done by completed rows of 3 tokens. a completed row must contain a token of each of the 3 colours.

• Rock: As explained above, when a rock is taken, a player can use it in a subsequent turn to dive down to any depth of their choosing.

Next player: Once the active player has finished their turn, play progresses to the player on their left.
​
​Endgame
When all tokens on any depth have been flipped, the game end has been triggered.
Play continues until the first player is reached, upon which they flip the 1st player token over to the last dive side. All players get one last dive and then the game goes to scoring.

• Completed rows: For each completed row (That is a row with all 3 colours.), the player earns the full VPs for all 3 food tokens.
• Incomplete rows: For each incomplete row, the player earns half the VPs for the total of the 1 or 2 tokens in that row.

Overall
Despite its abstractness, the game fits its theme fairly well as you players take on the role of diving penguins!
I've not encountered a push-your-luck game quite like Deep Dive. I've played plenty of games that use dice or cards but I can't think of any that use tokens in this way but it works very well here.

Deep Dive is a good example of a push-your-luck game and there's a clear risk/reward decision mechanic at work: After flipping a token (provided it's not a predator) players will be faced with the decision of taking that token or going deeper which will potentially give them a better reward but also exposes them to the another chance of revealing a predator. The game also employs a classic element of many push-your-luck games where players will be forced to continue when they reveal 'open water.

It's should be noted that mathematically the odds of encountering predators increases as the depth increases - which fits with the risk/reward gameplay.
At depth 1 there are 6 predators tokens out of a total 44 which equates to 13.6% chance of revealing a predator at the game start. At depth 5 there are 11 predators out of 23 tokens which increases it to a 47.8% chance.
It means that if a player gains a stone, it hasn't necessarily made their decisions easier - only changed it! A player can choose to use a stone to go to the deepest depth it they want but the risk is still very high.
Having said that, as play progresses, these odds will change as tokens get revealed over time, allowing a higher level of play to occur where players can observe events and adapt or change tactics.
E.g., if during the course of play 8 predator tokens have been revealed at depth 5 and there's still 9 unrevealed tokens, observant players will know that only 3 predator tokens will encountered in the 9 remaining tiles, giving lower odds of encountering them. As a result players can feel 'safer' going to that depth.

The scoring system also adds some interesting decisions as at times getting a lower value food token of a required colour offers optimal point scoring. This creates asymmetrical scoring objectives between players.

There's not much more to add really. Deep Dive offers both meaningful decisions to take and is a easy to learn game. The rules are very simple and at its core, there's only 4 types of token to think about (Although there are 3 types of food.) and one of those types forces players to dive deeper. The choices a player has are very clear
Along with its theme and brisk playtime, I feel that Deep Dive will have crossover appeal. This can be a good game for casual or less dedicated gamers. it can also be a good filler game.

If I was to be critical I would say despite its quick playtime, it has a relatively lengthy setup: Tokens need to be separated into depths, then turned face-down, then possibly have some added, then shuffled, then have some tokens removed and then play can begin.

It's a minor quibble though and it's well worth it to play this tightly constructed, neat little push-your-luck game.

22nd August 2023

It's a Tuesday evening and we're round Simon's for an evening of games and diversions.

War of the Ring: The Card Game is a bit of a mouthful it's also as the name may suggest a card game version of the War of the Ring board game.
Will this game show its quality or will it be a stinker?

What's in a game?
Cards: Unsurprisingly, there's quite a few cards in the game and broadly speaking, they are broken down into 2 types, Faction cards and Location cards.
Faction cards: These represent a mixture of personalities (such as Sam), items (such as Sting), armies and even events from the story. Most cards have some elements from the list below.

• Scores: Character or army cards might include attack and defence scores for 1 or both of the 2 game's 2 types of conflict. Some cards may also include 'leadership' scores. These are shown along the left edge of a card.
• Paths: Some cards will show when that card can be used in the case of certain characters/cards: E.g., Faramir may not appear early on in the game because he does not appear early on in the story
• Items: In the case of an item, text will show who can use it; only Gandalf can use his staff for example.

The bottom half of each card will also contain text detailing what that individual card does.
Finally, each card will have a relevant, recognisable illustration of its subject matter that takes up the top half of the card.

There are quite a lot of faction cards (120 to be exact.) which in total constitute 4 decks of 30 cards each. 2 decks for each of the game's 2 opposing forces (The Free Peoples & The Shadow.).
​Each of the 4 decks is further subdivided into factions.

• The Free Peoples: The heroes! The Free Peoples consist of the following decks.
  • Aragorn deck: This deck contains the Dunedain and Elven factions.
  • Frodo deck: Dwarves, Rohan, Hobbits and Wizard (Just Gandalf really!) factions are represented here.

Location cards: These oversized cards are also broken down into 2 types; Battlegrounds and Paths.

• Battlegrounds: There are 14 of these cards and they are split evenly into Free Peoples and Shadow battlegrounds.
  As then name suggests, battleground cards represent the sites of various battles that occurred and each is well depicted with a large illustration.
  On the right of each battleground card will show it's defence value and which faction(s) is defending it, as well which faction(s) are attacking it and any special rules. The card's victory point (VP) value is shown in the top left.

Average best sums up the component quality for War of the Ring: The Card Game, which means the cards and tokens are all of a acceptable quality, nothing bad here but nothing to write home (or blog) about really. Unless the components are abused, they should be fine.

However; very good best sums up the quality and style of the artwork used. Fairly colourful, yet moody and evocative of middle-earth, it presents recognisable subjects to anyone familiar with Lord of the Rings.
If I were to be a harsh though, I would say that the art style looks a little 'samey' and similar to art found on a lot of other Lord of the Rings games and merchandising related to the film trilogy (Although characters look nothing like their cinematic counterparts.) but I'm not sure that it's a bad thing,  - it just gives it a consistent presentation will probably appeal to fans of the films and ultimately, I can't fault the presentation.

There's quite a lot of iconography used throughout the game for factions, different flavours of combat and also types of cards, etc.
On top of this, a lot of information is provided via text on the card and the rulebook has a glossary on how the wording works. Players will probably find themselves referring to the glossary a few times early on but it's not a deal-breaker and I'm probably making it sound a lot worse than it is.

Note: The description here is for the 4-player version of the game (Called the trilogy scenario.). 2 & 3 player count games have slightly different rules.

How's it play?
Setup
Location cards:

• Battleground decks: Sort the battleground cards into their 2 types and shuffle each into a face-down deck.
• Path deck: Sort all path cards into their 9 types then create a deck by placing the 3 '9' cards at the bottom then the 3 '8' card on top and so on until eventually the 3 '1's are on the top.

Player setup: War of the Ring: The Card Game is a team based game meaning that it is a 2v2 game. This adds an extra consideration for setup.

• Teams: Players will need to sort themselves into 2 opposing teams.
  On the Free Peoples' team, one player should be the 'Aragorn' player and the other the 'Frodo' player.
  The Shadow players should choose between the 'Witch-king' and 'Saruman'.
• Seating: Ideally players should arrange themselves around the central playing area in alternating order between teams and each player should face their teammate on the opposite side, think like how bridge is played.
• Cards: Sort all the faction cards by type and give each deck to their respective player. All players should shuffle their cards into a face down deck.
  • Draw cards: Each player should draw 7 cards and discard 2 cards (Called cycling here, more on cycling below.).
• First player: For round 1, the Frodo player will be the first player. After this, the first player will change for every round.

Some rules
Before going on to explain how the game plays, it might be an idea to explain some a few of the rules regarding faction cards, specifically, cycling, elimination & forsaking.

• Cycling: Players will frequently be cycling cards. This means they discard a card face-down from their hand to the cycling pile.
  As the name suggests, cards from the cycling deck can eventually be shuffled back into the draw when the draw deck is depleted.
• Elimination: Whenever a player has to eliminate a card, they must discard a card to the elimination pile. Typically, elimination will refer to specific cards. These cards are now out of the game, they cannot come back into play.
  When certain cards are eliminated, they may have actions triggered.
• Forsaking: Sometimes a forsaken action occurs, when this happens a card is placed into the elimination pile.
  However, unlike elimination, when a card must be forsaken, it can be discarded from the players hand OR from any faction card in play OR blindly from the top of the players draw deck.
  As with eliminations, some cards will trigger actions when forsaken, even when forsaken blindly from the deck!

• Multiple location cards: Dependant on circumstance, it is possible that multiple battleground cards will be active at the same time. It's also possible to activate and  complete' more than one path card in a round.
  Additionally, it is also possible to 're-activate' battleground cards that have already been completed.

Action step: This is where the majority of gameplay takes place. In turn order, each player takes an action until all players have consecutively passed. The action step ends when this occurs.
Actions include:

• Cycle card: The active player may spend an action to cycle a card.
• Move card: The active player may move a card from their reserve to a location card with the following restrictions.
  • A card cannot be moved in the round it is played.
  • A card cannot be moved to a location it could not be played to.
• Play card: The active play may play a card from their hand. When doing so, they must cycle another card.
  Taking restrictions into account, a card may be played to one of potentially several spots. This could be a battleground, path or reserve.
  Item cards: These are played on characters and will stay with them.
  Event cards: These are resolved immediately and then eliminated.
  A card may have multiple actions depending on where it's placed. These actions may be resolved now or later in the round accordingly.
  • Battleground location: A card may be played to a battleground, provided its faction matches one of the factions involved in the battle.
  • Path location: Provided the card has a path number that matches the current path card, it can be played to that path.
    Note; army cards cannot be played to paths.
  • Reserve: A card can be played to the player's reserve area.
• Use action: The active player may resolve an action to resolve the text on a card in play.
  The actions on a card may differ depending on where it has been played to.
• Use ring token: The active player may flip their ring token to its used side to draw 2 cards.
• Winnow: The active player may eliminate 2 cards in order to draw 1 more.
• Pass: The active player may choose to pass, provided 1 of the 2 following conditions are met.
  Unlike many other games, when a player passes, they are not out of play and may have the opportunity to ! See below for more on this.
  • Carryover limit: each player has a carryover limit which starts at 2. When a player's hand is equal to or less than their carryover limit, they may pass as their action.
  • Less cards: If the active player has less cards than all other players, they may choose to pass.
• End of action step: When all players have consecutively passed, then this step is over.
  Thus if one player passes and others do not, then that passing player will have the opportunity to take an action when it comes back to their turn again or they may pass again.

Combat step: Broadly speaking combat for battlegrounds and paths work in a similar manner.

• Defender: Determine who is the defender and who is the attacker.
  Path: The Free Peoples side is always the defender in path locations and thus the Shadow side is always the attacker.
  Battleground: If the battleground location is a Free Peoples location, then The Free Peoples side is the defender and the converse is true if its' a Shadow location.
• Compare scores: Compare the total value of the attacker's attack icons to the total value of the defender's defence icons.
  If the attacker has the higher value they win, otherwise the defender wins (defender always wins ties).
  Essentially, the attacking icons are cancelled out by the defending icons until they are all cancelled out or cannot be cancelled out. This can be tracked using the combat tokens.
• Aftermath: Once combat has been resolved, all attacking cards are eliminated. Defending cards are only eliminated if they had to be used to to defend, thus, if defence icons on defending faction cards were not needed to cancel out attacking icons, then those cards are cycled, not eliminated.
• Spoils of war: To the victor go the spoils, in this case that means location cards which is slightly different depending on whether it's a battleground or path.
  Battleground: The battleground location card goes to whichever side wins its combat, it will be worth the VPs shown in the top left corner.
  Path: If The Free Peoples win a path card, they gain the VPs displayed in the top left corner of the card. If the Shadow players win the card, their side gets VPs equal to the number of corruption tokens placed on it, these are in essence uncancelled attack icons.

​Victory check step: Once all combat has been resolved, both sides should total and compare their current VPs. If one side is beating the other side's score by 10 or more VPs, then that side immediately wins!
Draw step: The Free Peoples players draw 3 cards while the Shadow players draw 4! Those cheating bad guys!

• New round: The first for the next round should be selected as per the turn order tracker.

​Endgame
Provided the game does not end during the victory check step (It's generally unlikely the game will end this way.), then it will end when combat on the 9th and final path card has been resolved.
Each side scores as per follows:

• Battleground: Each side scores the displayed VPs from the battlegrounds they won.
• Paths: These score differently for each side.
  Free peoples: The Free Peoples gain the listed VPs for each path card they won.
  Shadow: Shadow players score 1VP for each corruption token they placed on a path card that they won. VPs listed on path cards are worth 0 to the Shadow players.
• Corruption tokens: The Shadow players gain 1VP for each other corruption token they earned (other than those on path cards).
• Ring tokens: Each unused ring token at the game end now earns 1VP for its respective side.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.
In the case of a tie, the Shadow side wins! Definitely cheating bad guys!

Overall
War of the Ring: The Card Game feels very appropriate thematically. As with the books, the gameplay is split between the large events and battles while the fellowship makes it's way to Mount Doom through its paths.

It's also quite challenging and at it's heart, this is a auctioning/bidding game.
The cards with their attack and defence values represent bids, winning the auction means winning the battle and the card is the prize.
Where it gets interesting through, is in the mechanics going on around it.

Players are constantly forced into making difficult, meaningful decisions - every time a cards is played, another must be cycled. Players will need to continually assess which cards they can discard and since every card is good, it's not easy.

Battles compound this, every card a player contributes to an attack will be gone from the game afterwards; more hard decisions to make! Even defending cards will invariably be eliminated.
This also has the consequence of making the 'pass' action actually a powerful move.
It might seem counterintuitive but the earlier a player can choose pass, the better it is for them. In many games passing means a player is out the running. Here it means a player can potentially sit back and watch what their opponents are committing to a combat before they have to do so themselves.

Another element to consider is teamwork. Each deck will have its own strengths and weaknesses. Team mates will need to try and coordinate their actions to exploit their strengths and mitigate their vulnerabilities.
There is no secret communication at the table here and chat is open so everyone can hear it. Anything said to a teammate is heard by all.
I guess it means communication between allies will be limited to meaningful eyebrow waggles.

Players must also balance the need to win current conflicts but also retain cards for future battles as over time their options are whittled away. Knowing what to keep for what comes later can be a real game changer. E.g., no matter how powerful a personality is, if can't be played on the current or upcoming path cards, its usefulness becomes somewhat limited.

This ties in with a criticism I have: There were several times during the game where I felt I just could not counter or match the cards played by an opposing player.
I'm not sure if this was down to my opponent(s) knowing the game better and knowing what to keep in hand or sometimes luck playing a bit too much of a role.
Either way it made for a bit of a frustrating experience.
This definitely seems like a game that needs several playthroughs in order to grasp the nuances.

Additionally; we played the game 4-player and the general consensus seems to be that this is the best player count for it.

There's a lot of direct interaction and conflict between players in this game and some people will find that stressful or off putting which means they probably won't get on with this game but if you do like that sort of thing, then here's a lot to like in War of the Ring: The Card Game and it's definitely work a look. Especially if you've got 3 reliable friends who will play it with you several times.

21st August 2023

It's a Monday night and we're logged into Board Game Arena for some gaming goodness.

​Flip those cards! Steal 'em or give 'em away in Color Flush, a lightweight set-collecting card game.

Caveat: we've only ever played this game digitally.

What's in a game?
Cards: Color Flush consists of a deck of 50 cards. They are somewhat elongated and narrow compared to typical playing card proportions. All cards are double-sided and display one of several colours each side, generally they will be 2 different colours but the are cards that the same colour on both sides.

Well, that's it for components!

While there's no artwork to speak of on any of the cards, the colours used are generally bright and vibrant, they also display patterns for each colour which have no doubt been included to improve accessibility.

There are also no icons either. All the game's information is related through colours and the game is flush with those (SIC) (Sorry.).

How's it play?
Setup
Cards: Shuffle all the cards into a deck, there is no back or front, so no face-down or face-up cards.
Deal 7 cards to each player; each player should make sure NOT TO LOOK at the other side of their cards, they should only know the colours of the sides of the cards facing them.
The remaining cards become the draw pile.
First Player: Determine a starting player.

Onto to play
In Color Flush, the objective is to be the first player to have all the cards in their hand (facing them) with the same colour.
Color Flush follows a traditional turn order with the active player completing their turn before play progresses to the player on their left.

On their turn, the active player must perform the 3 actions below, however they can complete those actions in any order they see fit.
Flip: The active player flips one of the cards in their hand to the other side.
Give: Without flipping it, the active player must either give a card to another player or puts it on the draw pile.
Take: The active player must take a card, either from an opponent or from the draw pile and adds it to their hand without flipping it.
Other rules: There are some other rules that also apply.

• Black cards: If a player gains a black card into their hand by any means, then they must immediately flip their entire hand!
• White cards: If a player has any white cards in their hand, those cards are considered wild and can be of any colour,
• Hand size: All players have hand sizes limited to between 4 and 10 cards. This cannot be altered. E.g., if a player has 4 cards in their hand, then a card cannot be taken from them because it would take their hand size down to 3.

End of turn: Once the active player has completed their 3 actions, play progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
The moment any player has cards of only 1 colour in their hand, they immediately win the game.​

Overall
Color Flush is obviously a very abstract game with no attempt to attach a theme to the set-collecting mechanics.
I'm fine with this but I know some people will bounce off this.

From the brevity of the write-up, it's easy to see that Color Flush is a very lightweight game which offers some straightforward if unpredictable mechanics. Players have 3 actions they must perform, the only variation is in the order in which they do so.

This is a game that mixes memory gameplay with a degree of luck: When collecting their set, players will need to remember both what cards they've given or had taken away as well as what on the other side of cards. Then use this information to try and complete a set as quickly as possible. It means paying attention to what other players are doing.
Of course players also have to deal with drawing cards they don't need and particularly, the occasional black card which will quite figuratively change everything!

I can't really fault Color Flush; it's an accessible game with a quick playtime but for my tastes it's a bit too light. Coupled with the randomness of frequently losing cards (Which may or may not be part of the set you're trying collect.) or having your entire hand switched made for a experience frustrating more than fun or satisfying.

Not one for me but perhaps a game that could be considered for younger players or as an entry level game or maybe a party game.

21st August 2023

It's Monday and we're deep into a gaming weekend at Matakishi's and the game of the hour is The Pursuit of Happiness.

Someone once said 'Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.', but in The Pursuit of Happiness, a worker placement game all about your life; it's definitely​ a goal!

Note: The version of the game shown in the photos is the from the 'big box' which have a number of expansions incorporated into it, which add extra card tracks and actions. Also being used are the upgraded deluxe components as well as (I think) the neoprene playmat. 

What's in a game?
​Board: This is a busy looking board packed with a lot of card rows and spaces, all of which combine to display quite a lot of information.

• Card rows: The left half of the board displays a number of rows of card tracks with 4 spaces each.
  Core game: The first 4 tracks which are from the core game are; Project, Item-Activity, Job & Partner.
  Extra tracks: These are Friend, Experience & Community.
• Action spaces: The right hand side lists the game's 12 'actions', 9 of which are from the core game with the additional 3 coming from the expansions.
  Core actions: Study, Play, Interact, Take Project, Spend, Temp Job, Get Job, Start Relationship & Overtime.
  Extra actions: Plan Experience, Dream & Start Friendship are extra actions.
  Each action also has its own unique, humorous and cartoony illustration. 
• Trackers: The board also has a round tracker as well as trackers for stress, rest & time spent, popularity and short term happiness.
  ​A score tracker (Or long term happiness.) runs the perimeter of the board.

The board is very colourful but this is more than decoration, as the actions are colour coded to the card rows. You will see the Take Project action space is the same colour as the Projects card row and so on.

Cards: The Pursuit of Happiness makes use of a lot of different types of cards broken up into decks which correspond with the rows on the board and are also colour coded accordingly.
Thus, there are project cards, item-activity, job and partner cards.
​More on these later.
​Some of the card types are double-sided and come with a cover to keep them hidden during play.
Generally, cards feature a illustration along the top and tend to feature cartoonish artwork depicting their subject matter while the middle and lower parts given over to displaying game information.
As a rule, in some manner or other, cards tend to have a cost associated with acquiring or using them and there's also a reward for paying the cost. Some types of card will also require paying an upkeep to maintain - this may be in the form of resources or hourglasses. Upkeeps also generate rewards as well.
Additionally, there are also Child Trait and Life Goal cards. These function differently.

The oversized plastic components are all well made; chunky, sturdy and well shaped, they're colourful and pleasantly tactile. The hourglasses in particular are quite huge.
Obviously these are the deluxe components and the base game comes with standard card tokens which are also fairly colourful and uniquely shaped for their individual types. I.e., the creativity tokens are shaped like 2d light bulbs and so on.

The Pursuit of Happiness uses a humorous and cartoony art style, interestingly this is further broken down into 2 further styles.
The cards all feature bespoke colourful cartoony illustrations of their subject matter - e.g., a car for the car etc.
However the board uses a more abstract stickman style against the brightly colour coded backgrounds to represent the game's actions. It's a bit of a curious mix of styles but it works well enough. i like it and it makes the game look good and gives it a good table presence.

There's nearly a dozen icons used in the game, they are mostly self explanatory and will be able to quickly learn them. Players should not have any issues understanding the game.

Note: For this game overview I'm going to limit discussion to the core game. There are numerous expansions for The Pursuit of Happiness and we've played some of them. Broadly speaking they mechanically tend to function in the same way.

How's it play?
Setup
​Board: Put the board into the central playing area.

• Rounds: Place the round marker on round 1 on the round tracker.
• Unavailable actions: Place these tokens on to the Get Job, Overtime and Start Relationship action spaces.
• Cards: Sort the cards into their types, shuffle each into a face down deck and place them adjacent to their pertinent card rows on the board. Since the the Job and Partner cards are double-sided, their respective card covers should be placed on top of their decks to hide the cards.
  • Project and item-activity cards: Deal 4 cards from each deck on to their card rows.
    Life goal cards: Deal a number of Life Goal cards equal to the player count and place them adjacent to the board face-up.
    These provide extra scoring opportunities.
    ​Job and partner cards: While these cards are not placed in the game during setup and are not used during 1st round of the game. They come in to play during subsequent rounds and they are managed as follows.
    Firstly, these 2 types of card are always dealt from the bottom of their decks.
    Job cards: It does not matter which side of a job card is displayed, both side are functionally identical. 
    Partner cards: As with job cards, both sides of partner cards only differ cosmetically. 

Players: Give each player the tokens in their player colour.

• Hourglasses: Players start the game with only 6 of their 9 hourglass tokens.
• Trackers: These should placed on their relevant spaces on the following tracks:
  Long term happiness.
  Short term happiness.
  Stress.
• Child traits: Shuffle the child trait cards into a face-down deck and deal 2 to each player.
  All players should keep 1 and discard the other out of play.
  These cards determine the player's starting resources and also provides each of them a unique ability they can use.

First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
The Pursuit of Happiness is played over 8 rounds and each round represents a different stage of life, starting with being a teenager and going all the way through to old age.
Each round round contains 4 phases, the bulk of gameplay takes place during the Actions phase and in this regard the game uses a typical turn structure with the active player completing their action and play then progressing to the player on their left.
The core mechanic in The Pursuit of Happiness involves acquiring cards and then using them. This will generally involve paying to use but will then provide rewards. Rewards may be any of a number of things, money or the 3 other resources, short term happiness, stress or even long term happiness which equates to VPs.

Slots: Before continuing to how the phases play, 'slots' need to be explained'.
Each player has 3 slots in their personal area and every 'active' Project, Job or Partner cards they acquire in any combination fills 1 of those 3 slots.
If a player has more than 3 of those card types active at the same time, every card in excess of the 3 slots causes the player to lose stress. That's the cost for 'burning the candle at both ends'!
The phases are played out as follows:

• Preparation phase: Preparation for round 1 occurs as part of setup. But from round 2 this phase is resolved. Several events occur during the preparation phase.
  • Game end: Check to see game's end conditions have been met. See below for more info on this.
  • Rounds: As the game progresses through its rounds, certain actions become available and unavailable.
    Round 2: Jobs, partners and overtime become available.
    Round 6 onwards: From round 6 onwards, the players will be in old-age, this will mean gaining stress! 3 stress for round 6 and up all they way to 9 stress for round 8!
    Overtime becomes unavailable in old age.
    
  • Hourglasses: Each player gains hourglasses according to their position on the stress track.
• Upkeep phase: Many elements of the game have ongoing effects and/or costs/upkeeps. This may include, time or money or anything else. These are all managed in this phase.
  If a player cannot or does not want to pay an upkeep, the card in question is discarded out of play and they gain stress and lose short term happiness.
• ​Action phase: This is where the meat of the game takes place and players now take turn placing their hourglasses, triggering the actions for those spaces.
  It should be noted that if a player places more than 1 hourglass on to a board space, it increases their stress on its tracker. This restriction does not affect cards.
  There are 10 main actions and they work as follows:
  • Study: Placing an hourglass on this space earns 3 knowledge for the active player
  • Play: This earns 3 creativity.
  • Interact: Finally, this space earns 3 influence.
  • Take project: Placing an hourglass here allows the active player to draft one of the available project cards. There are 3 types of project card but all project cards have a associated cost and reward in some manner or other.
    Normal project: A normal project will have several 'stages'. When one is taken, the active player must pay the cost for stage 1 and they also earn the stage 1 reward. A black cube is used to track the progress through a project.
    The player may subsequently spend actions later to place hourglasses directly on to the project card, allowing them to pay to work through all the later stages, gain those rewards and ultimately complete the project. This can be achieved over multiple rounds.
    Eventually players will have completed all stages on a project card and it will no longer be considered active for the purpose of filling 'slots'.
    Single round projects: Like normal project cards, these ones have stages or more accurately levels in this case.
    When the active player takes one of these project cards, they pay as they normally would but these cards are discarded at the end of the round, thus the player only gets 1 opportunity to buy it's rewards. Again; use black cubes to track which level was bought.
    Group projects: Like single round projects, group projects only last for 1 round. Unlike the other 2 types of project, these do not have stages, instead they have 'areas'.
    Each area has its own cost and reward and when it is acquired, the active player can put the hourglass used to acquire it on to any of those areas, paying the cost to gain the reward.
    Using later actions the active player may chose to place more hourglasses on to other areas to pay the cost for their reward.
    Furthermore, other players (in their own turns) may also place hourglasses on another player's group project to pay for it's benefit.
    When all the areas on a group project have been completed, that group project is also considered completed. Players who contributed towards the completion will later earn additional rewards according to how much they contributed.
  • Spend: The spend action allows the active player to take a item-activity card. Like a project card, a item-activity card has stages or levels and players can choose which level to 'buy' the card at and gain the relevant reward.
    Item card: When the active player buys a stage of a item card, it cannot be advanced any further. Additionally, some item cards also have upkeeps that must be paid for in later upkeep phases.
    Activity card: These can be paid for like item cards but differently, they can be upgraded to later stages with further actions.
  • Temp Job: Not to be confused with the Job action, this action allows the active player to gain 3 money.
  • Get job: This action allows the active player to take a job card (from the 2nd round onwards) and put into one of their slots. Since they are double-sided, they can choose either side which will have different job titles. Jobs also have types which is significant for promotions.
    When the active player acquires a job card they must pay the recruitment cost and gain the recruitment reward. Additionally, jobs will have a upkeep cost but will provide a upkeep reward. Typically the upkeep cost will include hourglasses (Time at work.) and reward money (Wages.).
    Promotion: Each job has a 'level' of 1-3 and a player can use a hourglass to take the promotion action, this allows them to gain a job of a higher level and the same type.  This is done by taking another available card from the card row. Higher level jobs have more expensive upkeeps but also provide better rewards.
    ​Retirement: When a player reaches level 3 in a job, they can opt to advance to retirement. This essentially ends the job which will no longer have an upkeep but will also pay a pension.
  • Start relationship: Placing a hourglass here allows the active player to take a partner card. They can can use either side as they differ only in identity of the character in the relationship.
    Like other cards, partner card have stages or levels which can be moved through and represent the player's commitment to the relationship, going from dating all the way to raising a family.
    Partner cards have both a upkeep cost and a requirement. Requirements do not need to be 'paid' but the player must have the necessary resources available.
  • Overtime: In certain rounds, overtime will become available to player. By placing an hourglass on the overtime space, the active player may gain 2 more, this is a net gain of 1. Additionally, they must increase their stress on the track.
  • Rest: The opposite of overtime, now that's more like it! The active player may put as many hourglasses here as they want without increasing stress and in fact: every hourglass placed here will lower stress.
    ​More on how stress works below.
• Resolution phase: Once all players have placed all their hourglasses, the resolution phase occurs, this can differ from round to round.
  • First player: The first player for the following round becomes whoever is furthest along the short term happiness tracker.
  • Reset short term happiness: Joy can be all too fleeting and everyone's position on the short term happiness tracker is reset to 0.
  • Group projects: All rewards from group projects are distributed and the group project card is removed from play.
  • Single round projects: These cards are removed from play.
  • Remove hourglasses: All hourglasses are removed from the board and personal playing areas.

Other rules: Here are some of the rules not covered above.
Short term happiness: As well as determining the first player in the following round, a player's position on the short term happiness tracker will affect the costs they pay, positive happiness gives them a discount while negative does the opposite.
Players may also pay short term happiness to discard any number of cards on a card row and refill them
Stress: The stress track consists of 7 differently bands​ with several spaces in most bands and 15 spaces across all bands.
This is a very important tracker. Not only does it determine how many hourglasses a player receives at the start of a round, it also dictates when they shuffle off this mortal coil!
Certain actions will increase stress which moves a player's marker towards the 'red' spaces, this is bad because it will lose them hourglasses, if the marker is moved all the way off the board then the player has met their end and they are eliminated from the game.
Actions that move the marker into the 'green' spaces are good, it provides the player extra hourglasses and longevity. Here's the thing though, a player cannot move bands when decreasing their stress unless they gain a specific reward called Good Health!
Just like real life, Good Health is very good thing and being able to move bands is important. Remember that in old age, players automatically gain 3, then 6, then finally 9 stress. What this means is; if a player hasn't gained good health by the end of round 7, they are guaranteed dying at the start of round 8! Ouch!

Right, I think that's a broad explanation for the rules.

Endgame
Play continues until all players have died - which is a bit of a sobering thought! This will usually occur during the preparation phase when players deal with ridiculous amounts of stress!
Players then count their finishing VPs which comes from 3 sources.

• Long term happiness: These count as VPs.
• Resources: 1 VP is earned from each set of 5 of each of the games resources.
  
• Life goals: Players check to see if they've met any of the criteria on the life goal cards, earning VPs as directed by those cards.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
The Pursuit of Happiness is all about the use of hourglasses, time and the passage of a lifetime.
Players will find themselves quite figuratively spending time at work which will provide money which will allow them buy stuff. Get into a relationship? Raise a family? These require more time.
Between this and having a job, half of your hourglasses will used upkeeping these two! If you ever wondered. 'Where did it all go?' Now you know!
As you might have guessed, The Pursuit of Happiness is a very thematically appropriate game.

While the game is I'd say 'mid-weight' mechanically (At a basic level it's a worker placement game that allows players to gain extra places to use from acquiring cards.). There's quite a lot going on and equally a lot to remember. I wouldn't call it fiddly but it probably take a couple of playthroughs to get a handle on everything.
There's some unique elements of course such as the short term happiness track which something that players will need to keep an eye on and manage as well as the stress track. Both of which can significantly influence the game.

One thing I will note about gameplay related to the stress track, it's how rare cards that grant 'good health' are and how infrequently they appear. I don't think we ever saw more than 1 or perhaps 2 during any single game.
Whoever manages to gain that good health will find themselves in a good position gameplay wise as gaining it and consequently being able to shift into a different band on the stress tracker is a strong play, in fact an almost game winning play as it can give that player and entire extra round.
I feel that cards with cards with good health perhaps could have been a bit more common and other players may well need to remember to use short term happiness to rinse through the decks looking for those cards.

Gameplay wise, The Pursuit of Happiness is about the most optimal placement of hourglasses and management of resources.
Things like project and item-activity cards will when fully maxed out give players VPs but they are also useful for changing 1 kind of resource into another which can be used else where. This lends the game a bit of a engine-building aspect, albeit a fleeting one, since cards can generally only be used a couple of times before being 'completed'. Players will always be looking for the next opportunity to exploit.
​
If I were to be a bit harsh, I would say that The Pursuit of Happiness a bit overlong particularly at higher player counts and that the gameplay is little average and is pretty standard stuff mechanically.
Where it excels though, is in a added storytelling angle the game creates. As a player progress through the rounds (and the years), they'll find themselves creating a bit of story during their playthrough as they acquire cards that add to that story. Did they get a job, what hobbies did they have and so on?
It gives the game a great deal of charm

The result of this is that The Pursuit of Happiness provides a bit of unique game experience and one to definitely give a try.

13th August 2023

It's Sunday lunchtime and that means we're at The Sovereigns in Woking for some gaming diversions.

Being a brave adventurer comes with its risks and drawbacks, like for example; being trapped out at sea in a sea monster's mysterious cave lair.
Luckily, being the industrious adventurers that you are, the dangerous situation you all find yourselves in won't stop any of you from trying to screw over your companions for cold hard cash in this bluffing card game.

What's in a game?
Captain's bottle: This is an actual message in a bottle, it's not a glass bottle and fortunately has very little chance of breaking. Since we never pulled the message out, we've go no idea what it says?

Adventurer sheets: This is a bit of a misnomer to call them 'sheets' as they are fairly chunky and sturdy double sided tiles.
Each 'sheet' represents a individual character on these double-sided tiles. One side has the character in a 'explorer' role, while the other shows them in the 'captain' role.

• Explorer: The explorer side of a adventurer sheet shows a character portrait and their unique special move below it. Most of the tile's space is given over to showing a breakdown of most of cards that appear in the deck - although I'm sure it doesn't show the purses (which have no action).

Cards: There are 7 types of cards in Oh Captain.
4 types have actions in game associated with them. These are the Grappling Hooks, Lanterns, Lizards and Pistols.
Purses are worth gold while Nukha Eggs are essentially booby traps.
Finally. there's a Nomads' Arrival card which triggers the game end.

Tokens: Two types of card tokens are used in the game.

• Gold coins: These round tokens obviously depict some kind of gold coin.

Card dispenser: This neat looking component is a card holder constructed out of thick card and used to hold the game's deck. Thematically, it depicts the game's mysterious but also item laden cave lair.

Component quality is good throughout Oh Captain. The tiles, tokens and card dispenser are all made of suitably thick card and feel nicely robust. Arguably the gold coin tokens are typical for what you'd expect for gold coins, which means they're not bad but average and completely acceptable.
The cards have a laminated feel to them while their back have gold foil finish.
The bottle looks great and is transparent acrylic, it doesn't feel like it would break unless someone purposely tried to do so.

Oh Captain has great presentation. Artwork displayed on the adventurer sheets and cards in particular is clear, colourful and does a good job of portraying the exotic location the game takes place in.
The card dispenser, while unnecessary adds a nice touch to the game and the same is true of the captain's bottle.
It all adds up to make Oh Captain a pretty looking game.

There are only a handful of actions in the game, consequently there aren't too many icons to remember and the items/cards they're associated with are self explanatory, well, except for the lizard, since when do lizards steal money?
anyway, other than the lizard, everything straightforward and easy to understand.

How's it play?
Setup
Players: Players carry out the following set up.

• Captain: Randomly determine who will be the captain at the start of the game. All other players will be explorers.
  Give the captain the captain's bottle and 5 gold.
  Give all explorers 3 gold each.
  Then give 1 Purse card each explorer, this should begin the game face-down. The remaining purse cards are not used in the game.
• Roles: Starting with the captain each player chooses an adventurer sheet.
  Each player then should place their sheet in front of them, with the pertinent side up.
• Cards: First remove the Nomads' Arrival card and set it aside.
  • Next, shuffle the deck of cards and draw 3 cards into a face-down stack, then add the Nomads' Arrival card also face-down, creating a 4 card stack.
  • Shuffle this stack and place it at the bottom of the dispenser, thus the Nomad's Arrival will be one of the last 4 cards.
  • Shuffle the remaining cards and place them on top of the stack of 4 cards in the dispenser.
• Discard pile: Finally, draw 3 cards from the stack and place them underneath the captain's bottle to form the beginnings of the discard pile.
  The captain is free to look at the cards in the discard pile.
• First player: The player to the left of the captain becomes the first player. Give that player the card dispenser.

On to play
Oh Captain uses a more-or-less typical turn order with the active player resolving their action before play moves to the player on their left, except if it's the captain, the captain does not get turns! They can potentially act in other player's turns but are skipped as active player instead!
The active player performs the following phases.
Mutiny.... or not: If at the start their turn, the active player has more coins than the captain, they can choose to mutiny.... or not!

• Mutiny: If the active player does mutiny, they take the bottle along with the 3 cards into their personal area. They also take 1 gold from the general supply.
  The player's turn then immediately ends.
• Loyal.... for now: If the active player chooses not to mutiny (or cannot because they do not have coins), then they pledge their loyalty to the captain.
  This is not just words though and they must pay 1 coin to the captain!
  The active player must now explore.

Exploring: The active player now draws 1 card from the dispenser and keeping it hidden, looks at it. they should keep it face-down.
They must now offer to sell it to the captain for 1 coin.

• Sell card: When selling the card they just drew to the captain, the active player must tell the captain what type of card it is - which will be 1 of the 4 action cards; grappling hook, lantern, lizard or pistol.
  However, the active player can choose to lie about what kind of card it is and in fact, if they drew a Nukha Egg, they must lie about what the card is, they can never offer to sell an egg.
• Captain's choice: The captain has the choice to buy the card or not.
  • No sell: If the captain chooses not to buy the card, then the game proceeds to the active player's action phase.
  • I'd buy that for a coin: If the captain chooses to buy the card, the following occurs:
    • Payout: The captain gives the active player 1 coin and takes the card.
    • Reveal card: The captain now reveals the card and places it face-up in their personal area.
      • Lie: If the active player was lying, then nothing further occurs. The turn is over and play progresses to the player to the left of the current active player.
      • Truth: If the card is what the active player said it was, then the captain immediately resolves the card's action and then the turn is over. Play progresses to the player to the left of the current active player.
        More on card actions below.
• Action phase: If the captain chose not to buy the card, then the active player must use the declared card's action. The card should not be revealed and the active player cannot use the action that would come from a different card.
  I.e., regardless of whatever the card might be, if the active player told the captain it was a Pistol, they must perform the pistol action.
  Actions: When performing an action, remember the card is not revealed and the active player can must target another explorer, they cannot target the captain (It's good to be the captain!).
• Challenge: Before resolving the action, the player who was targeted by it can challenge the action. When this occurs, the active player must reveal the card (Cards are only revealed in this phase when challenged.) and the following occurs.
  • Lie: If the active player was lying about what the card was, then they must pay a coin to the targeted player and their turn is over.
  • Truth: If the active player was telling the truth, the targeted player must pay a coin to them and the card's action is still resolved.
• Resolving actions: The 4 actions are:
  Grappling hook: Take a card from the targeted player.
  Lantern: Reveal a face-down card in the targeted player's personal area.
  Lizards: Take a coin from the targeted player.
  ​Pistol: Destroy a card in the targeted player's personal area.
  Nukha egg: No effect - although since a Nukha Egg cannot be declared as an action, it can never have the possibility of having an effect?
• Next turn: Once the action for the round has been resolved, the active player's turn is over and play progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
Play continues until an explorer draws the Nomads' Arrival card, in which case the explorer reveals it and the game immediately ends, players now reveal all the cards in their personal area and the game goes to scoring.

Majority
Before final scoring, majority needs to be determined for Grappling Hooks, Lizards and Pistols.
Basically; whoever has the most cards of each type (ties do not count) gains the majority token that corresponds to it.

Players then total all their gold coins, this comes from:

• Gold coins.
• Lantern cards (worth 2 or 3 gold each).
• Majority tokens (worth 4 gold each).

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
​Thematically, Oh Captain is a bit left field; a bluffing game about shipwrecked adventurers trapped in a sea cave who decide - while exploring - to try and steal valuables from and out do each other as they wait for their possible rescue?
It's definitely a bit of a stretch for a bluffing game!

Minor quibble aside, how does Oh Captain fare mechanically? fairly strongly I feel albeit with a flaw.
Like pretty much all games based on bluffing, this is as much about playing the players as it is about playing the game and depending on whether a player is the captain, active explorer or other explorer there's 3 sets of conundrums to consider.

If an explorer doesn't mutiny, they have to draw a card and then consider their options. The mechanic that allows the explorer to potentially sell it to the captain adds an extra winkle here.
When declaring what the item is (or what the explorers says it is) the active player has to try and consider whether the captain will want it or not. If the captain might want a pistol, declaring it a pistol might get the captain to buy. This can be a good or bad thing, depending on whether the active player wants to use a pistol or not and if they would prefer a gold coin for it. Generally, getting cash it good!
Additionally, the active player also has to think about how they would use the card if the captain doesn't want it. Saying it's a lizard in the hope the captain doesn't want it is no god if the active has no need for it themselves.
So sometimes the player will need to lie to try just to try and get the card they want or need and sometimes it'll just be dropped into their hand and of course, there's the Nukha Egg that forces players to lie.

Challenging is another element to think about, when an explorer is targeted by the active player, they'll need to consider whether it's a bluff and challenge it, the outcome for getting it wrong can be costly. As there's only 5 of the Grappling Hook, Lizard and Pistol and 7 Lanterns, there's definitely a slight element of card counting that can be used but since not all cards will be revealed (And 3 have been removed from the game.), there's also some imperfect knowledge at work too, meaning there's generally always a slight gamble when challenging.

The dilemma faced by the captain is a little different, since they don't get a turn, they can only act in other players' turns by buying and using their cards! This can be useful since potentially, the captain could get a lot of actions but there's a cost to this though and if another player lies, then the captain loses money for nothing.
Thus the captain will need to calculate whether the card's action is worth 1 gold to use - provided it is what the active player says it is.

This is where we come to what I feel is a bit of a flaw in the game: As captain, I never felt motivated to needing to buy a card offered to me and generally ended up refusing them..
Take the Lizard card for example, the captain could pay 1 gold to use it, but all it does is allow the captain to steal 1 gold from another player. So ultimately, the captain gains zero benefit from it, sure if the captain feels another player is close to mutiny, it can be employed as a denial strategy but it also gift a coin to another player. All the captain is doing is shifting coins around the other players. This is all provided, it really was a Lizard, otherwise it's just a loss of a coin.
Or the Pistol; the captain could pay a coin to use it to destroy card or just let the active player use it to destroy a card instead.
Why waste a coin to destroy a card?
It might not be the card the captain would want destroyed but a card will be destroyed regardless unless of course it is challenged and proves to be a lie - in which case the captain was wise to not buy it.

I found it quite likely I was being lied to when I bought cards which is mostly why I just stopped buying them altogether - it just wasn't worth the risk.
In a 4-player game, the captain will gain 3 coins per round and if other players aren't gaining at least that many coins per round, they'll never catch up. So why should the captain spend coins for anything?
This is compounded by the rule that prevents explorers targeting captains with cards, I understand why as everyone would pick on the captain but it's even more reason not to buy a card as leaving it with the explorers means they'll just end up attacking and stealing from each other!

It's not entirely 100% the case that it'll go down that way as it's likely that other players will get the majority tokens which would be a 4-coin swing but I feel, unless 1 player gains 2 of them, it won't be enough.

It means that it's generally a no-brainer to just not buy cards and no-brainers are bad because they are the opposite of meaningful decisions - which is bad.

It's a bit of a shame as otherwise Oh Captain is a very nicely presented, fun game to play if bluffing games are your thing.

10th August 2023

Gaming night round Simon's continued with Flashpoint.

So move aside make way for fireman Sam
Cause he's gonna save the day fireman Sam
Cause he's brave to the core
Sam is the hero next door

Victims to rescue, fires to extinguish, buildings to save. All in a day's work for the brave first responders in Flash Point: Fire Rescue, a cooperative board game.

What's in a game?
Board: Flash Point: Fire Rescue has a double-sided board and each side displays what is ostensibly an apartment.
The majority of the board is given over to displaying this apartment which has a 8x6 overlaid on top of it. There are also icons which indicate where doors may be found - some doors also display '2 cubes'.
Along the outside of the board are spaces to place rescued people (or not rescued people!), fire engine and ambulance tokens etc.
Finally a series of fairly discrete dotted red lines separate the board's map into individual quadrants.

Markers: The game comes with a lot of differing card markers, all of which are round and many of which are double sided.

• Threat markers: These markers are double-sided, respectively showing either smoke or fire.

• Point of Interest markers: There are 18 of these Point of Interest (POI) markers, they are also double sided. One side depicts a '?' while on 12 the other side will show a victim, which could be a person or possibly a pet! The other side on the remaining 6 are blank indicating they are false alarms.
• Door markers: More double-sided markers used to track whether doors are open or closed.
• Action markers: These show a running individual in white against a green background. They are essentially a form of action point currency.
• Heal markers: These round tokens each display a red cross and are used in conjunction with one of the specialist firefighters; more on them below.
• Hazmat markers: These tokens depicts things like fuel cans and aerosol cans and are used to represent explosively dangerous materials in the game.

Hot spot tokens: These round tokens are noticeably smaller than the other tokens and they depict a flame against a black background.

3d firefighters: There's a plastic 3d miniature of firefighter in each player colour.

With card tokens and tiles, plastic models and acrylic cubes, Flash Point: Fire Rescue is a bit of an eclectic mix of components and none of them would considered low quality.
The dice are plastic but roll well enough.
The standout components are probably the firefighter models. They look a little cartoony and stylised but I'm sure that's by design. They don't look like the kind of mini that is meant to be painted and meant to serve as playing pieces.

The artwork and illustrations on the game boards is straightforward and uncluttered which is a good thing as the playing area will become quite busy during play. The same can be said of art that can be found on tokens and tiles.
What looks like fully painted art is used on the specialist cards giving each one an individual high quality appearance.

The game's iconography is all self-explanatory and easily understood. None of it should prove a problem for players.

How's it play?
Note: Flash Point: Fire Rescue comes with 2 modes of play, a simpler 'family game' and a more rules heavy 'experienced game' mode. furthermore, the experienced game has 3 levels of difficulty.
This blog discusses the experienced game which essentially also incorporates the family version.
Setup
Board: Choose which side of the board to use, the 'front' side of the board is considered the easier side.

• ​Doors: A door icon (with the closed door side up) should be placed on all door icons that also display 2 cubes.
• Explosions!: A number of explosions should be triggered on the map, the amount is determined by the chosen difficulty.
  ​This is done by rolling the dice and placing a threat marker (fire side up) on the resulting space, then adding a hot spot marker to the same space.
  Each fire token then 'explodes', more on explosions below but basically, a explosion causes the fire to spread.
• Hazmat tokens: Also determined by difficulty, a number of hazmat tokens are placed into the burning building, again determined by rolling dice.
• POIs: Remove POI markers as required, then shuffle the remaining ones into a face-down stack. Roll the dice 3 times to determine where 3 POI tokens are placed face-down, they cannot be placed on a space containing fire.

Players: Players now choose a specialist card and take the fire fighter in their chosen player colour.
More hot spots!: Dictated by difficulty and player count, even more hot spot tokens are added the map on the board.
Furthermore a number of hot spot tokens are kept to the side to be potentially added to the board during the game.
Firefighters: Players now choose which spaces outside the building to place their firefighters, more than 1 firefighter may occupy the same space.
Vehicles: Players now choose where the fire engine and ambulance start the game.
First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
Flash Point: Fire Rescue uses a fairly typical turn order for a cooperative game. The active player takes their turn (Spending their action points.) and when their turn is over, the board activates and performs its automated actions. After that, the game progresses to the player to the left of the active player.
3 phases are resolved during the active player's turn.
Actions: During this phase, the active player now performs actions by spending the APs for their selected specialist. Available actions include:

• Change crew: Unusually for a cooperative game, if the active player's specialist is at the the fire engine, they may swap their specialist out for one that is currently not being used by spending 2AP.
• Chop: A firefighter always carries their trusty axe and can use it to break through doors and walls which can be useful to create shortcuts but can also possibly represent a risk. It costs 1AP to inflict a point of damage (represented by a black cube) on a door or wall. Usually when a door/wall takes 2 points of damage, it is destroyed.
• Extinguish: Firefighters can fight the fire! The active character may spend 1AP to remove an adjacent smoke marker from the board or spend 1AP to flip a fire marker to the smoke side.
• Move: A firefighter may spend 1AP to move 1 space orthogonally, they can also move through spaces containing fire markers but this costs 2AP per space. Additionally, firefighters cannot end their movement in space containing fire.
  POIs: If a firefighter moves on to a space containing a POI token, it is flipped to reveal whether it is a victim or just a false alarm.
  Move with victim: A firefighter may bring a victim with them when they move but it costs 2AP to move 1 space, furthermore, a victim cannot move through fire.
  Hazmats: Hazmats can cause explosions if caught in fire, so firefighters can try and move them out of the building before that happens. Moving a hazmat token is identical to moving a victim.
• Open/close door: APs can be spent to open and close doors, sometimes this is more beneficial than simply destroying them.
• Vehicles: If the active character is on the same space as a vehicle tile, they can spend APs to move the vehicle. any other firefighter on the vehicle can also move for free.
  Each type of vehicle also has it's own action which the active character may perform.
  Ambulance:  In the experienced version of the game, a victim is only considered 'rescued' when they are brought to a ambulance.
  Fire engine: The active player may spend APs to use a fire engine's hose, although this costs 4APs! It allows the firefighter to extinguish multiple fire and smoke tokens in a adjacent quadrant.
• Pass: The active player may choose to pass instead of spending all their action points. For every unspent AP, the player take an action marker. These may be spent on later turns to gain action points.
  A character may have no more than 4 action markers at any one time.
• End of player phase: Once a character has spent all their APs or passed to retain some of them, their turn is over and the game goes to the next phase.

Advance fire: In this phase, the fire will spread which is done on a basic level by adding a marker to the board and this can have several consequences.

• ​Roll the dice: The active player rolls the dice and will place a new smoke marker on the space as indicated by the result of the dice roll. However, depending on where the smoke marker is meant to be placed, it's probably not over yet...
  • Empty space: If a space has no smoke or fire marker and is not adjacent to one, simply place the smoke marker on the allotted space.
  • Adjacent to fire marker: If the smoke marker is placed orthogonally adjacent to a fire marker, immediately flip it to the fire side. Smoke is never adjacent to fire, it always becomes fire! This is called a flashover.
  • On a smoke marker: If the smoke marker is to be placed on a smoke marker already in play. Do not add the marker, instead flip the smoke marker already on the board to the fire side.
    Potentially, this can then turn any other adjacent smoke markers to their fire side!
  • On a fire marker: If the smoke token were to go on a fire marker already in play, it causes an explosion instead! The smoke marker is discarded and the explosion is resolved.
• Explosion: When an explosion is triggered, fire will expand 1 space in all 4 orthogonal directions from the point of origin, what happens will depend on what is in the space it expands into.
  • Open space: If the explosion expands into a empty space, it stops there. Place a fire marker on that space.
  • Smoke marker: If the explosion hit a fire marker, flip it to the fire side.
  • Fire marker: If the explosion hits a fire marker, it triggers a 'shockwave', this means the explosion continues to the next space and will continue until it encounters empty space or smoke marker.
    Closed doors and walls will also stop a explosion expanding, at least they will until they are destroyed.
• Damage: When fire expands into a space either via flashpoint or explosions, there can be an effect.
  • Barriers: When fire hits a door or wall, it does damage in the form of putting black cubes on it (Much like when a firefighter uses the chop action.), when a door or wall segment takes 2 damage, it is destroyed.
    Destroyed walls and doors (And also open doors.) do not stop an explosion expanding.
  • POI: If the damage hits a POI marker, that marker is destroyed, if it was a victim, that victim is killed.
  • Hazmat: If fire enters the same space as a hazmat token, another explosion originating from the spot is triggered. Exploding hazmat markers also add hotzones to the board.
  • Firefighter: If fire expands into a space with a firefighter, that firefighter is knocked down and moved to the closest ambulance tile.
• Hotzones: When the 'advance fire' roll targets a space with a hotzone marker, another advance fire roll is made after the current one is resolved. It is possible for multiple hotzones and thus multiple advance fire rolls to be triggered.
  Flare up: Additionally, when a hotzone is the target of an advance fire roll, it also adds another hotzone to the board, thus potentially creating a loop of destruction!

Replenish POIs: Once the advance fire roll and all resulting effects have been resolved, the game proceeds to the final phase of a turn - replenish POIs.
There should always be 3 POI markers on the board, if for any reason, there are less than 3, roll the dice and place a POI marker face-down in the resulting space. There are some restrictions, a POI marker cannot go on a spot with for example, in this instance roll the dice again until a appropriate space is rolled.
Repeat this until 3 POI markers are on the board.
Next turn: Once all the required POI markers have been replenished, the turn is over and play progress to the player to the left of the active player.

That's pretty much it for most of the rules, I've skipped some details that go into how some elements of the fire expanding are managed and also the special actions attributed to individual specialists but this about is the gist of it.

Endgame
Play progresses until 1 of the following conditions is met.

Losses: If 4 or more victims are killed, the players collectively lose.
Damage: If all the back cubes are placed onto the board, the building collapses and the players collectively lose.

Rescued!:If the players between them manage to rescue 7+ victims from the fire, they immediately win the game.

Overall
The board displays a recognisable location that firefighters move around to rescue people while it is inevitably filling with fire at a dramatic pace that causes explosions and damage in a race against time.
All of this makes Flash Point: Fire Rescue thematically a strong game.

On a basic level, in Flash Point: Fire Rescue characters navigate a landscape using action points having to balance the need to complete objectives - in this case rescue victims with the need to prevent or slow the spread of fire.
Players of cooperative games will recognise a lot of the mechanics employed here, it presents them with a classic dilemma that can be found in a lot of cooperative games.
There are a couple of unique elements here though.
Hazmat markers provide an extra risk and thus, extra facet to take into account: Should characters try and remove them from the board at the cost of less focus elsewhere, or ignore them in favour of concentrating on other risks?
The spreading fire also provides an unusual extra conundrum to face. While the spread of fire can be halted or even reversed, the explosions that get triggered cause damage that cannot be removed. The same is also true of hotspot markers.
Ultimately, it means that this is not about trying to put out the fires, I don't think that can ever happen and characters can only hope to hold them back long to rescue victims. It makes this a game of maximising effective use of action points and trying to gauge how much risk can be taken by ignoring fires.
As with many cooperative games, luck plays a not insignificant part here in the form of the dice rolls and this is just something the players will need to react and adapt to.

In terms of gameplay I found Flash Point: Fire Rescue a bit of a mixed bag.
The sense of being in a burning is pretty strong and the game has a genuine urgency regarding the spread of fire. It's actually pretty scary to watch as a single dice roll can lead to a series of events and explosions that wreak havoc and damage across the entire board.
But while the mechanics for the fire feel fast paced, the same is not quite true of player actions. Players typically get 4AP per turn and it can seem a little plodding at times, e.g., if a character has a victim they're trying to get out of the building - they'll get to move 2 spaces in their turn and that's it! It felt a little contrary to the atmosphere.
Although maybe that's the point, contrast the speed and danger of the fire with the relative slow actions of the firefighters to create tension? regardless of that, it made the gameplay feel a little 'off'.

I can't fault Flash Point: Fire Rescue and think overall it's a well constructed game but having played a fair few cooperative games over the years, I found the action point system a little uninspiring but that could simply be down to overfamiliarity. It didn't help that despite being mechanically solid and providing meaningful decisions to make, the game didn't quite gel with me. At the same time though, I'm going to reserve judgement on Flash Point: Fire Rescue. I want to give it at least another go or two.

10th August 2023

It's a Thursday evening and we're round Simon's for some gaming fun.
First game of the night was cooperative, tile-laying game Dorfromantik which is a board game adaptation of a computer game and translates from German as 'village romance' or possibly 'romance of the village'?

What's in a game?
Tiles: Well, this is a tile-laying game, so you're going to get a lot of tiles, in this case hexagonal ones that come in 2 types.

• Landscape tiles: A rural environment is shown on these tiles which will contain 1 or more of 8 different landscape types. These landscapes will include woods, fields, streams, tracks, sheep and so on.
  Additionally, some landscape tiles will feature flags.

Mystery boxes: What are mystery boxes? Well, you'll just have to find out but basically, Dorfromantik has a very light sort of persistent/campaign mode where boxes become 'unlocked' and provide more content to play through in what is a gameplay loop. Suffice to say that 5 boxes numbered 1-5 come with the game.

Score & campaign pads: Usually I don't bother mentioning this kind of component as it's not directly related to the game play. But in this case, how the scoring plays out is important here as it relates to the campaign.
On the left is a column of objectives and targets that can be achieved by completing games, on the right are achievements which can be unlocked in certain ways while in the centre, is an advancement track which can be checked off to unlock more content.
What is this extra content? That's a secret!

The components in Dorfromantik as what we would consider to be average, that is nothing to write home about but the tiles, cards and tokens fell perfectly acceptable: Nothing bad here.

The tiles use bright colours as well as illustrations to display differing landscapes and there's also as surprisingly detailed artwork, especially the village areas which show homes, shops, market stalls and so on. Charming little flourishes of artwork are found throughout the game.
It's crisp art that's clear and easy to comprehend.

Dorfromantik employs a handful of icons to represent different landscape types which are easily recognisable and that's about it. I can't imagine players having any problem here.

How's it play?
Setup
Tiles: Sort the tiles into their 2 types, then shuffle them into face-down stacks and discard 3 landscape tiles out of play.
Task markers: Sort the tokens into their types and shuffle them into face-down stacks.
First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
Dorfromantik is a cooperative game were players are collectively creating a landscape with an eye towards typically maximising the victory points (VPs) they earn. Although they may have other objectives/achievements they might be working towards.
The game follows a typical turn order with the active player taking their action which essentially involves drawing and placing a tile before play progresses to the player on their left.

Draw tile: On their turn, the active player will draw a single tile and place it into the central playing area according to the following rules.

• Less than 3 task markers: If there are 2 or less task marker tokens in play, the active player must draw and play a task tile.
  Thus; since there are no tiles of any sort in play at the game start, the first 3 tiles drawn will always be task tiles.
• 3 of more task markers: If there are 3 or more task markers in play, then the active player draws a landscape tile.

Placing tiles: There are slightly different rules for what happens when landscape or task tiles are placed.

• Landscape tiles: When placing landscape tiles, they must be placed with at least 1 edge adjacent to another tile already in play. It's also possible to place a tile so that multiple edges will adjacent to multiple tiles. Not all landscape types need to be honoured, e.g., it's entirely permissible to place a field adjacent to a village. However, rail and stream connections must be honoured, that is, they cannot be blocked.
• Task tiles: For the most part, task tiles follow the same placement rules as landscape tiles (Except of course for the 1st tile played in the game, which cannot be adjacent to another tile!) but with the added element.
  When a task tile is revealed and played, a matching task marker must be drawn, revealed and placed on to that task tile. This will come into play when 'completing' or 'scoring' that task.

​Scoring tasks: As explained above, task markers will appear on tiles during the game and every task marker has a value of 4-6 for its particular landscape type. This means a task will earn VPs if the players manage to create a closed off or completed landscape containing that marker with a size which exactly matches the value.
E.g., if a forest task marker has a value of 5 and the players create a forest across exactly 5 tiles, then the task has been completed.
When a task is completed, the marker should be immediately removed and added to a scoring area. It is possible to immediately complete a task marker on a task tile if that task tile is played in the into a location which matches is requirements. It's theoretically possible to complete more then one task in turn.

• Failed tasks: If a task is ever failed (This can be done by closing off an area which is too small or making an area too big.) then it' task marker cannot be scored and is removed from play.

Next Player: Once the active player has played a tile and resolved any associated actions, play progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
The game immediately ends if any player has to play a landscape tile and there are none available.
The game then goes to scoring and VPs can come from 3 sources.

• Tasks: Completed tasks earn VPs equal to their value.
• Flags: As mentioned above, some tiles may possess a flag. If the landscape related to a flag has been closed off or 'completed' then it will earn VPs.
• Rails and streams: VPs will be earned to the single longest stretch of rails and for the single longest stretch of stream.

VPs are totted up and that is the final amount that all the players have collectively scored. However, there's just one more thing:

The end is the beginning!
Now that players have achieved a final score, it's time to look at the campaign pad.

On the left side is the column of objectives which can be completed at the game end and these go from score up to 99 VPs all the way score 400 VPs! Every objective that is completed can be crossed off and earns the players a 'X'.

X's can be used to cross off spaces on the advancement track. As more spaces are crossed off, players will gain access to the boxes of extra content that come with the game. This content provides new tiles and new ways to score VPs as well as more achievements to work towards.
Furthermore, on the right are achievements that can be ticked off which contributes to the overall completion of the game.

Overall
Dorfromantik is a game about creating a beautiful village and the tile-laying mechanic does match up with the theme, albeit a little abstractly.

It's also quite a light game rules-wise, the challenge comes from optimising VPs earned from tile placement and this comes from planning ahead.
There seems to be a basic tactic of creating bunches of 3 of each landscape type so that if a 4 point task marker is drawn, it can potentially be used to immediately close and score a landscape - provided the right type and value of task marker is drawn. Although it can backfire if players calculate size 3 landscape types incorrectly.
As with pretty much all cooperative games, luck can play a big part here and players may be forced to make tricky decisions when things don't go their way.
There's also some tricky, meaningful decisions to be made regarding the rails and streams because players will be faced with conflicting scoring objectives: As well as trying to complete tasks related to those landscape types, players will also be looking to score points for the longest rail/stream.

Dorfromantik includes what loosely is described as a campaign mode. As the game is completed multiple times, players will acquire the means to score higher and higher VPs through unlocks but also will need to score higher to unlock more content in order to score even more VPs. It's a classic gameplay loop.

This brings me to another thing, one of the players bounced hard off Dorfromantik. They just did not like how there was no overt way to 'fail' a game.
While this is 'technically' true, a game can still be kind of failed by not achieving any objectives and getting no crosses, but for them it wasn't enough of a 'failure' for them.
Consequently, we didn't really get to give the campaign mode a good try.
I feel this could be a bit of divisive issue that could put people off what is otherwise a fairly solid tile-placement game.

Another curious aspect is that while Dorfromantik can play with a large player count it feels a bit like a solo game. - That is; a solo game where everybody can potentially contribute to the placement every turn!
The choices and options players face do not change with player count or different players. Players do not have hidden hands of tiles or anything like that which could alter their priorities and the dilemma of where to place a tile never alters from player to player.
The same information is open and available to all players at all times which essentially means players are free to confer during a individual's turn or not. I guess that many minds working on optimal moves can make for some strong decisions - or probably more likely, lead to more bickering!

It's also not a game for single occasional plays and I think it would also definitely benefit from repeated plays as unlockable content changes the game.
Dorfromantik is at the lightweight end of games and could appeal to casual or less dedicated gamers and be used as a crossover game.
If a undemanding, cooperative game is what your looking for, then this could be one for you provided you can find some players to dedicate time to it. Alternatively, you could just play it solo as the game experience is identical but quieter.

8th August 2023

Tuesday is here again which means we're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns for some gaming entertainment.

What's in a game?
​Tiles: If you've played Kingdomino, then you'll be on very familiar ground. The rectangular tiles resemble dominos in that they display 2 halves (Or tile spaces.) and each half will display 1 of several types of terrain - although some dominos will contain the same terrain twice.

• Resource icons: These are new to the game and and most tiles will also display resource icon on each half in white which corresponds to its terrain type. I think only the desert landscape has no icons.
• Score multiplier: Some halves of the tiles will contain flame icons, these are score multipliers and go from 1-3.
• Volcano: Some halves will contain a volcano and volcanos display 1-3 craters. This is a new mechanic and more on it later.
• Numbering: The other side of each tile is numbered from 1-48.

Starter tiles: These are half the size of the dominos.
Standees: These are card standees depicting tents that go with the starter tiles.

Totem tiles: Kingdomino Origins are introduces 2 slightly different ways to play and one method uses totem tiles which provide bonus victory points (VPs) at the game end.

Caveman tiles: Also new to Kingdomino Origins are caveman tiles which are used in the other method to play the game and provide extra scoring opportunities. They are slightly smaller than starter tiles and each one depicts a caveman of sorts as well as icons related to their scoring. 

Cave board: More of a large tile than a board, this is used in conjunction with the caveman tiles to display the market of caveman tokens available to be drafted and has space for the caveman tile stack as well for 4 of face-up tiles. Below that are icons which relate to the cost of drafting tiles.

Tokens: Kingdomino Origins uses 2 types of token:

• Resource tokens: These are quite small wooden tokens which display screen printed illustrations. There are 4 types of token

Caveman meeples: There are 2 of these in each player colour.

The component quality here is comparable to the original Kingdomino, which is to say they're pretty good quality and the game has the same chunky plastic coated tiles and standees tokens found there.
The new tokens are also good quality The new tiles are equally sturdy feeling and plastic coated.
The resource tokens and caveman meeples are wooden and display screen printed artwork, they look excellent: Although arguably, the resource tokens are on the small side, making them a bit too fiddly to handle for their own good.
Only the fire tokens are what would be considered average being a pretty standard card tokens but even so, they're still perfectly acceptable.

Kingdomino Origins is a bright and colourful game which is something I always like. The art style used on the tiles and fire tokens has a cheerful cartoony look to it and makes it easy to distinguish between the different landscapes.
The illustrations used on the wooden components are essentially monochrome but the effect is good and it adds to the appearances the resources and meeples.

There isn't too much iconography that appears in the game. Some of it's pretty self-explanatory as it refers to the flame tokens or resources. However, the icons for resources are outlined in white which can make it a little tricky to see against the background of the icy landscape.
The most complicated iconography appears on the caveman tiles as it shows what can be scored off the tile and how it is scored. It's not overly complicated but will probably result in instances of turning to the rule book - nothing too bad though.

How's it play?
Kingdomino Origins is a follow up to Kingdomino and for the most part shares very similar rules. I'm only going to briefly detail those rules and will list differences.
Having said that, it does also introduce 2 new game modes - Totem and Tribal which respectively add the totem and tribal tiles to the game.

Setup
Discovery mode
This is basically what this game calls the classic Kingdomino game.
Kingdomino Origins can be played like classic Kingdomino and features the same drafting and tile-laying mechanics to create a 5x5 grid in order to score points.
Read about classic Kingdomino here first. The only difference between the two being the addition of 'Volcanos'.

• Tiles: Shuffle the tiles into a face down stack. Unlike Kingdomino, no tiles are removed when playing with lower player counts, instead tiles are discarded after drafting.
  Players: Give each player the starting tiles, standee and meeple in their player colour.
• Volcanos: When a tile displaying a volcano tile is drafted, the active player will also acquire a fire token. Fire tokens have 1-3 flames which correspond to the craters on volcanos.
  The active player then places it on any empty tile 1-3 spaces away from the volcano they just played and it adds a 1-3 point multiplier ​to the chosen landscape type.
  Note: The bigger the multiplier less further away from the volcano it can be placed.

Totem mode
Setup for this mode is almost identical to discovery mode except it uses the resource tokens and totem tiles for extra scoring.

• Resource tokens: When tiles are revealed during the drafting phase, resource tokens which match the icons on that tile are placed on to it.

​Tribe mode
The 3rd and final game mode add a little more complexity with a whole new 'layer' of scoring added to the mix.

• Caveman tiles: Unlike the previous 2 game modes, the tribe mode uses the cave board and caveman tile.
  Shuffle the caveman tiles into a face-down stack, then draw 4 and place them face-up on the cave board. this is a drafting area.
• Resource tokens: As with totem mode, resource tokens are placed on tile and can  be acquired by players but now, they have the option of using resources to acquire caveman tiles.
• Totem tiles: The totem tiles are NOT used in tribe mode.

Onto play
Discovery Mode
This mode plays almost identically to the original Kingdomino. It features the same gameplay of drafting tiles and selecting a new one, then adding them to a personal playing area to create landscapes and score those landscapes according to their size and the multipliers they contain.
Volcanos simply add extra multipliers which players can add to their personal area.

Totem mode
This mode introduces a couple of extra concepts to the game.

• Volcanos: Totem mode introduce 1 extra rule regarding volcanos and fire tokens: If a fire token is placed on to a tile space with a resource token, that resource token is destroyed and discarded out of play.
• Resources: When a player acquires a tile, they also acquire the resources on it. Resources stay on a tile until the game end unless destroyed by fire.
• Totems: A player who has the most tokens of any single type of resource, also acquires its related totem tile. A player may have more than 1 totem tile and it is also possible for a totem tile to change hands over time if an opposing player later gains more of type of resource.
• Game end: At the game end, it is scored identically to the discovery mode with the addition of a couple of extra scoring criteria.
  Resources: each resource token on a tile earns an extra victory point.
  Totems: Whoever controls a tile gains its listed value as bonus VPs. Thus totems are worth 3-6VP each.

Tribe mode
This mode introduces a touch more complexity to the game (Although there's not much complexity to begin with!).

• Volcanos: As with totem mode, fire can destroy resources, fire can also destroy a caveman tile.
• Caveman tiles: After drafting a tile, the active player may choose to also spend any 2 different resources from the resources in their playing area to acquire any 1 of the 4 available tiles.
  Alternatively, they may spend 1 each of all 4 resource types to go through the face-down stack and take a caveman tile of their choice, shuffling the stack into a new face-down stack.
• Placing caveman tile: After acquiring a caveman tile, the active player must place it on their playing area. A caveman tile can be placed on any empty tile space, that is a space with no tokens or resources on it.
• Game end: At the end, the games scores as per Kingdomino.
  Caveman tiles will score additional VPs as per their scoring criteria., usually this will be dependant what is found on the tile spaces surrounding them.

Overall
A prehistoric caveman setting is as good a theme for a game of Kingdomino as any. The landscapes have been suitably 'reskinned' and the resources are appropriate (Who knew mushrooms were so important to cavemen....).

I like how Kingdomino Origins keeps the original game in here along with the other modes.
​Mechanically, the base game here is almost identical to the classic Kingdomino so there's not much I can add here in that regard.

The 2 other modes (particularly the tribe mode) provide something slightly different to the game. Namely, alternative avenues to VPs and this is done without changing or impacting the game or to it's detriment - which is good. Often these additions don't actually add anything to a game.

​Why are these extra scoring methods good?
Typically in Kingdomino, the best way to score VPs is to create the biggest possible piece of a single landscape type then add as many multipliers to it as possible. The challenge essentially comes from doing this as effectively or efficiently as possible.
The new modes reward players for having more diverse landscapes and gives them scoring alternatives.

Totem mode gives players the opportunity to gain totem tiles which score extra VPs. Sure if a player gets a lot of tiles of a single landscape they'll probably get the totem for it but at the cost of allowing their opponents to get the other ones.

Tribe mode is where this is most apparent because in order to gain caveman tiles, players need 2 different resources which can only come from different tiles and if they want to go through the stack, they'll need 1 each of all 4 resources!
Then when placing cavemen tiles on to their playing area, they'll need to consider the positioning to maximise the scoring opportunity.
While I admire the elegance of classic Kingdomino, I think this is an excellent iteration of the rules which results in an alternative way to score VPs that provides players with more meaningful decisions to make and only a negligible increase in complexity.

If you've already got some version of Kingdomino or other, I'm not sure I could recommend this unless you're a completist or you really like it and want to see how the gameplay has evolved.

However, if you've never played Kingdomino before, this is definitely a good version to give a go.

6th August 2023

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

Time to set things up in Setup, an abstract tile-laying, set-collecting game

Caveat: We  have only ever played this game digitally.

​What's in a game?
Board: Setup features a board within an almost Octagonal shape and which contains 12 interconnected square spaces. At each of the 4 orthogonal edges of the board are 2 spaces which are both 'coloured' in 1 of the 4 player colours. Thus, each player 'controls' the 2 spaces in their player colour.

• Scoring track: Running around the board's perimeter is a scoring track that has 3 different 'finishing' spaces dependant on player count.

Card tiles: Setup makes use of tiles which are a bit like cards; hence the name!
Unlike a normal deck of cards, there's an extra suit here - Star.
Additionally, each suit goes from 1-10 with no 'picture' tiles. With one of each tile, there's a total of 50 tiles.

Bag: In the physical game, there's a bag that comes with the game.

Meeples: There's one each of these in the player colours
​Tile racks: Also only in the physical version are tile racks again in all player colours which players use to hold and hide their hand of card tiles.
​
Setup is a pretty abstract game and there's no conventional artwork to speak of. It's a fairly colourful though with cheerfully ​bright compnents.

There's also little to be said about the iconography - if you understand a deck of cards, you'll understand this. Nothing here would prove a problem to understand.

How's it play?
Setup
Time for the setup for Setup!
Card tiles: Put all the card tiles into the bag and give it a good shake!
Board: Put the board into the central playing area, blindly draw 4 cards tiles and place them into the 4 central most spaces on the board.
Common hand: Draw another 4 tiles and place them face-up in a row adjacent to the board. This is the common tiles, more on that later.
Players: Each player should select a colour from one of the board edges (Ideally the edge closest to the them.) and take the meeple and tile rack in the matching colour.

• Meeple: Place the meeple on the starting space on the scoring track.
• Tiles: Each player should blindly draw 4 tiles and keep them hidden on their tile rack.

First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
Setup is essentially a set collecting game, although technically, player don't collect sets just score them. This is done by playing tiles to create sets which can be 2-of-a-kind, 3-of-a-kind etc or runs, e.g., 3-4-5-6 and so on.
Setup uses a traditional turn order with the active player resolving their turn before play progresses to the player on their left.
​During their turn, the active player will have 1 of 2 basic options open to them.

Play tiles: The active player may play any number of tiles from their hand and also from the common hand on to the board provided the tiles played create at least 1 set.
When placing tiles on the board, the active player may place one on top of an existing tile if they so wish.

• Sets: A set consists of at least 2 connected tiles (Tiles can be connected in potentially 8 directions.) and sets can include tiles that are already on the board.
  There are 2 types of set. 
  Runs: A run consists of numerical sequence of connected card tiles with the same suit. Thus, 2-of-clubs, 3-of-clubs and 4-of-clubs would be a set of 3 tiles.
  Same number: 2 or more tiles of the same numerical value but different suits can be a set. The 7-of-diamonds, 7-of-hearts and 7-of-spades would be a set of 3.
• Scoring: Once the card tiles have been placed, scoring can occur. 1 victory point (VP) is scored for each tile in the set, this is regardless of who played it.
  E.g., if a previous player had placed 2 ones and the active player connects another one, then the active player would score all 3 ones!
  Additional sets: It is possible (and probably likely) to create more than 1 set when placing card tiles and in this case, all sets are scored! However, a card tile can only ever be scored once per round regardless of how many sets it is a part of.
  Bonus points: If the active player creates a set that uses a card tile in any spaces controlled by other players, then those other players score 1VP per space they control that was used.
  Advance meeple: Players now advance their meeple by 1 space on the score tracker per VP earned.
• Refresh hands: The active player draws card tiles from the bag to take their hand size back up to 4. The same is done for the common hand.

Exchange tiles: The other main action the active player can choose is to swap out any of their current card tiles instead of placing. Players will generally only do this if they can't play any tiles but may also do it if they are looking to create an opportunity to make a bigger set later.
They remove any number of tiles from their hand and draw replacements from the bag. their discarded tiles are returned to the bag.
End of turn: Once the active player has completed their action, play then progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
Whichever player crosses the finishing line on the score tracker first, wins!
Depending on the player count, the finishing line could be 23-31 spaces along the tracker.

2v2 game: I should note add there is a 2v2 team variant of the game that plays almost identically if a team based game interests you.

Overall
As far as theme goes, Setup is clearly an abstract game and doesn't have or need a theme.

Setup is pretty straightforward and it's core mechanic will be familiar to many players; collecting sets of matched values or numerical runs - it's a mechanic that's often been employed.
Players will looking to both play their own tiles with maximum efficiency and also exploit card tiles played by their opponents but without giving them bonus points if possible.
It will mean players will need to keep an eye out on the potential to score multiple sets as a time.
Being able to play a card tile on top of another tile adds a interesting dynamic as it can change things up a bit.
Finally, players may also want to consider exchanging tiles or not. It may be possible to create bigger sets by holding off but then there's also the risk of losing access to useful tiles on the board if they get covered.
Otherwise I think that's pretty much it for mechanics and strategy

This is a lightweight game that has a quick-ish play time and could be a good introductory crossover game or one for younger players except for the scoring.
Yes, tiles which are played can be scored multiple times as part of multiple sets and also trigger bonus scoring but also can only be scored once per turn.
It's not particularly demanding to track all of this but it's a just little fiddly for what the game delivers.

While the mechanics employed are tried and tested and provides meaningful decisions to make, it's also quite unremarkable with bare bones gameplay. There's nothing wrong here but I just can't find a reason to recommend it other than to someone that might want a basic set collecting game if they didn't already got one.

4th August 2023

It's a Friday night and we're round Simon's which means it's time to welcome in the weekend with some gaming goodness.

Load up the Winchester, strap on the peacemaker and head out to the west: Travel over prairies and along dusty long-dried gulches, see the monolithic sights at Monument Valley and encounter zombie hordes in.... Zombicide: Undead or Alive!

A while back I played a few games of vanilla Zombicide, a cooperative survival game of dispatching zombies while completing objectives.
Zombicide: Undead or Alive takes that game and moves the setting into the wild west.

What's in a game?

Tile boards: There are 9 of these large tiles, they're double-sided and placed out together to create the game's playing area. Each side depicts a bird's eye view of one of various old western buildings on a street. The street on each tile is broken down in 'zones' while interiors of said buildings are also displayed with different rooms also being broken down into 'zones'. 
​Train tiles: There are 3 of the oblong tiles. They're also double-sided and one side shows a railway track while the other show a train on the track.

Player board: Each player gets one of these enormous plastic player 'dashboards' with a faux wood finish and they about A5 in size!
Each dashboard has indented spaces and spots to place tiles, character cards, equipment cards as well as tokens. There's even 3 grooves along the top to hold 'backpack' cards upright.

• Adrenaline track: Running along the bottom is a numbered and colour coded 'adrenaline' track that goes from blue to red for when things go from cool to hot! It is used to track a character's adrenaline numerically and 'danger level' according to colour.

Character cards: Each of the game's named 14 playable 'survivors' has their own card with accompanying illustration.

• Class: The card lists which of the 4 'classes' the character belongs to and thus which 'class ability' is available to them. It has a space to place a specific weapon.
  
• Special actions: There's also a track for unlockable special moves (which is colour coded and linked to their adrenaline bar on the dashboard.)
  
• Hit points: Finally, there's a hit point (HP) tracker.

Cards: There's essentially 2 types of mini-sized which cards are used in Zombicide: Undead or Alive.

• ​Equipment cards: This type is broken down into several further different types, each with their own deck.
  Regardless of this, cards will tend to share a lot of common elements.
  E.g., no matter where a weapon card comes from, it will always show whether it's a melee or ranged weapon - and if so, its associated range along with the type of ammo its uses, number of dice rolled when attacking with it, the target number the roll needs to hit and how much damage it does. Finally it shows how much noise the weapon produces.
  Starting weapons: These are the beginning weapons that characters start the game with.
  Classic equipment: These cards can be acquired during the game and will include a fair variety of items to use as well as weapons.
  Bounty weapons: The weapons found in this deck are particularly effective.

Tokens: Lots of card tokens are used in the game.

• Bang/BOOM! token: This double-sided token is used to represent the last sound a player has made and that which zombies might hear. The BOOM! side is always louder than the bang!
• Exit token: Players always need an exit strategy and this card token is good for that!
• Objective tokens: These are styled to look like crates and come in 3 types all of which are double sided. There are 7 red tokens and 1 green and 1 blue and they can be used in various ways as required by the selected mission.

There's an impressive number of components to Zombicide: Undead or alive and they're all of a uniformly good quality. Cards, board, tokens, they're all good but the standouts are the 3d components and the dice.
The models obviously look good but also, the player dashboard with along with dynamite trackers are a nice touch and they all feel suitably sturdy.
The dice are wooden, nicely rounded and the card themed numbering on them are a nice touch.

A colourful and slightly cartoony style is used across the character and zombie cards, it's a humorous style that suits the game's tone well. The main board tiles seem a bit more subdued in comparison and they are perhaps a bit too busy for my liking but it's not detrimental to the game.
The zombie models, being grey risk sort of merging into one dull greyish blob when on the board but wisely, the runners have been constructed in a distinctly different shade of grey that makes them easily spotted against their undead compatriots while the fatties look distinctly different. The abomination is of course, red.

There's quite a lot that goes on during Zombicide: Undead or Alive, fortunately, much of the game's information is provided via text descriptions.
That's not to say there isn't a fair amount of iconography - because there is but it won't be overwhelming to seasoned gamers or players of previous versions of Zombicide; although this version has some differences to the vanilla game, in this case, adding character classes. More novice players will probably find themselves referring to the rulebook early on in the game.
It all shows that attention and care have been put into the components and presentation.

How's it play?
​Setup

• Mission: First decide which mission will be used for the game. It will list how to set up the tile boards and train tiles. It will also determine where spawn points, objectives etc will be placed on the boards.
  Finally, the chosen mission may restrict which characters may be used.
• ​Players: Generally, the game expects 6 characters to be used regardless of the player count. With a lower player count, some people may well be playing more than one character.
  Character: First give each player a character card and it's matching miniature. Also give them the 3d trackers in their colour.
  Dashboard: Give each player a dashboard. They should place their character card onto the allotted space on the dashboard and trackers on their allotted starting positions on the special moves and HP trackers.
  ​Ensure the adrenaline tracker is placed at '0'.

• Starting spots: Character miniatures should be placed on their starting place as per the chosen mission.
• Bang token: Place the bang token on the playing area as per the mission description.
• Cards: Take all the remaining (Non starting cards.) and sort them by type. Shuffle each pile into a face-down deck.
• ​​First player: Determine a starting player.

Onto play
Zombicide: Undead or Alive is a cooperative game in which the players will be attempting to complete an objective and escape the board before becoming zombie fodder!
A round takes place over 3 phases and players will take their turns using an action point system during the 'player phase', while the 'board' will run the 'zombie phase' in which zombies will spawn and chase characters in an attempt to defeat them.
Player phase: During this phase the active player will act in turn order and will have 3 action points (AP) to perform 3 actions, which include the following.

• Move: The active player may spend 1AP to move their character orthogonally into an adjacent zone - this can be outside or indoors. If there is a door adjacent, then the character may enter or exit a building.
  Entering buildings: Some buildings contain 'corpse piles' and the first time any character enters a building with a corpse pile, a corpse pile spawn tile should be placed on it.
  Zombies: Typically, the walking dead complicate things! If a character exits a zone which contains 1 or more zombies, then they pay 1 extra AP per zombie to exit that zone! This means if a character is in a zone with a lot of zombies, they will potentially be stuck there.
  Additionally, if a character has an ability that allows them to move more than 1 zone per AP and they enter a zone with zombies, that particular move action immediately ends.
• Search: If a character is indoors and there are no zombies in their current zone, the player can spend 1AP to search. This allows them to draw a card from the classic equipment deck and add it to their dashboard, they may then 'reorganise' their inventory (More on this below.)
  Unless a character has the 'Townsfolk' class, they can only perform 1 search per round regardless of AP they have.
• Reorganise/trade: The active player may spend an AP to shift equipment cards around their dashboard. A character may also freely discard a card.
  As part of this action, the active player may also trade with 1 other player sharing their zone. This allows the 2 characters to freely exchange cards in any way they see fit. It also allows the inactive character who is part of the trade to reorganise as well.
• Combat: Now we get to the meat (SIC) of the game! Combat is broken down into 2 types; melee and ranged.
  • Melee: A character may attack any zombie who is in the same zone as them, if there are more than 1 zombie, then the character can choose which zombie to target.
    This is done by rolling the dice as determined by whatever melee weapon they are using and if successful, will deal damage.
  • Ranged: Ranged attacks are somewhat more complex, they roll dice in similar fashion, but there are more factors to take into account.
    Line of sight: First, the character must be able to draw a line of sight to their target. Generally, any target outside can easily be seen, even at several zones away unless they're round a corner.
    However, a character can only see 1 zone into a building or out of it, furthermore, if the character is inside, they can only see into any interior zones if they are adjacent
    Range: Even if a character can see a zombie, it must still be within the scope of the ranged weapons range.
    Some weapons have a range of 0-1 which means a target can be hit up to 1 zone away or in the same zone as the character.
    Some weapons may have a range of 1-2, which means zombies 1 to 2 zones away can be it but zombies in the same zone as the character cannot!
    Target priority: Unlike melee (where when faced with multiple zombies in a single zone, the attacker can choose which to attack,) when a character uses a ranged weapon and there are multiple zombies of different types in the same zone, they must attack zombies as per the targeting priority.
    What does this mean?
    It means that certain types of zombie must be targeted before other types first, depending on what type of zombies are sharing the same zone.
    The priority is:
    Abominations/fatties first.
    If there are no abominations/fatties, then walkers must be targeted first.
    Finally, if there are no other types of zombie present, then runners can be targeted. Phew!
  • Damage: Walkers and runners can be destroyed by 1 point of damage and fatties need 2 points of damage to dispatch and abominations require 3 points to be defeated!
    Damage does not carryover from attack to attack. This means that unless a weapon does 2 damage, it cannot destroy a fattier and unless it does 3 damage, it cannot be used to defeat an abomination!
    This also has an added impact on ranged attacks. If a character is attacking a zone with multiple zombies which includes abominations or fatties with a weapon that only does 1 damage, then it will have no effect! They must target the abomination/fatty first but cannot do it any damage - sucks to be them!
    Noise: Guns are noisy and when used, the bang token is usually moved to the zone where the attacker fired from.
  • Adrenaline: Whenever a character defeats a zombie, their adrenaline goes up by 1 and if they manage to defeat an abomination it goes up by 5! Destroying spawn points can also push up adrenaline.
    When the tracker moves into a different colour it unlocks the linked special ability for that character.
    The first unlock is always 1 extra AP when yellow is reached. When it reaches orange, the player gets to pick 1 of the 2 orange abilities to unlock (Not both!) and when it reaches red, they get to pick from one of the 3 available unlocks.

• Take/activate: By spending an AP, the character may interact with an object in the same zone as them, typically this will be regarding a mission objective and will vary depending on that mission.
• Machine: If a character is in the same zone as a 'machine' such as the Gatling gun, or the wagon then APs can be spent to make use of them.
• Make noise: A character may spend an AP to make noise to distract/lure zombies, this means the bang token is moved to their zone unless it has been flipped to the BOOM! side, in which case, it does not move. A bang is never louder than a BOOM! and zombies cannot be lured away from a BOOM!!
• Do nothing: Finally, the player may pass, this ends their turn immediately, regardless of how many APs they may still possess.
• Next player: Once the active player has completed their turn, play progresses to the player on their left.
• End of phase: Once all players have completed their turn, the player phase is over.

Zombie phase: Play now moves on to the zombie phase in which zombies will move or attack character and then more zombies will spawn!

• Activation: Every zombie currently on the board must activate! Players can choose the order in which they do so. When activating, zombies will have 1 of 2 actions available.
  • Attack: If 1 or more zombies is in the same zone as characters, they will attack! When attacking, zombies always automatically hit and each zombie will do 1 point of damage which is dealt to the characters.
    If there is more than one character in that zone, the players may assign the damage between characters as they see fit.
  • Move: Any zombies not attacking must instead move and will move 1 zone.
    A zombie will move towards any character the they see, prioritising a character in the same zone as the noise token. Otherwise they will move towards the largest group of characters they can see.
    If a zombie cannot see any characters, they will move toward the noise token.
    Distance: A zombie will always the shortest route to their destination. In the case of multiple routes of equal distance, players can choose which route the zombie takes. If a mob of zombies is moving along multiple routes, then they should be split between the routes as evenly as possible.
  • Second activation: Once all zombies have resolved their activations, runners get a second activation! This is basically a repeat of the above 2 actions, although a runner may change action.
    E.g., if a runner used it's first activation to move into the same zone as a character, it will use it's second activation to attack. Or if it moved towards the noise token with it's first move and it now sees a character, it will change direction towards that character.
    This also means if it starts the zombie phase in the same zone as a characters, it will attack twice!
• Spawn: In this part of the phase, more zombies will spawn.
  • Danger level: First determine danger level, there are 4 levels and they correspond to the colours on player adrenaline tracks. The danger level will match the colour of the character who is furthest along their adrenaline track.
    I.e., if a character is in the orange part of their adrenaline track and they are furthest along, then the danger level will be orange.
  • Draw cards: Then, beginning with the starting spawn point, draw a zombie card for each active spawn point.
    Generally, the card drawn will be a zombie card. It will list the type of zombie and how many of that type will spawn - it will be colour coded to the danger level. Thus the higher the danger level, the more will spawn.
    Abomination spawn: The abomination its own special rules that occur when its spawn card is drawn.
    Extra activation: Some cards will be activation cards. It means instead of spawning more zombies, those on the board get an extra activation - which means they can move or attack again. This can be bad news!
  • No supply of miniatures: If there are not enough miniatures to put on to the playing area when a spawn card is drawn, then the abomination gets an extra activation.

End of round phase: Once all spawn tokens have been resolved, the game goes to the final phase and the following occurs.

• Bang/BOOM! token: If the BOOM! side of this token is showing, flip it back to the bang side. It's already on the bang side, then move to the zone which contains the largest number of characters.
• New first player: The first player token should be moved to the player to the left of the current first player.
• Next round: A new round starting with another player phase begins

Additional rules: The game also has rules for the Gatling gun, wagon, train and so on. There are also specific rules on how objective tokens are used from mission to mission and there's too many to list here.
If you really want to know, feel free to read the rulebook online, it's only 50 pages long.

​Endgame
There are a couple of other lose conditions that can make the game end badly for the players and which are:
If any time there are 7 active spawn points, then the players lose.
If any character has their HP reduced to 0, then the players lose.

Otherwise play progresses until the chosen mission's win or lose criteria are met in which case the players collectively either win or lose.

Overall
​With it's old western art style and equally styled components, the theme fits well within the frame of Zombicide. Although, it's tricky to think of a setting that wouldn't fit.
The character classes feel right for the theme and work well to differentiate between the characters.

There's quite a lot going on in the game but some of that is down to options and choices available to players. Mechanically, Zombicide: Undead or Alive isn't too complex and wisely, zombies actions are streamlined, although there may well be a lot of zombies to shuffle around the playing area.
Seasoned players won't really find anything tricky to learn.

The only quibble I have with the rules is the targeting priority when performing ranged attacks.
I know why it's there; to stop players targeting runners and using their superior movement to keep out range of all the other types of zombie.
Generally, I consider the runners the most dangerous type of zombie, they can reach characters quicker and attack more often. Tactically, players would likely target runners first if it wasn't for the priority targeting, at least that's what I'd probably do.
Understandable from a game-balance perspective but nonetheless, frustrating.

Because the game is so mission driven, it's hard to give a comprehensive overview of what players will face but in game like this but gameplay-wise, the game has that classic cooperative game structure of slowly, over turns threatening to overwhelm players who will be faced with balancing the need to complete objectives with the need to reduce the burgeoning zombie horde.
It's a fairly common predicament in cooperatives games but it serves this game well by putting the players in situations where they have to make meaningful decisions. Luck also plays a part in games like this and players will need to adapt to manage bad luck - especially if there's a couple of bad draws from the zombie deck.

While the game looks great, particularly so when there's 70 odd zombies that can be stumbling around the playing area, it can feel a little clunky to manage despite the fairly streamlined rules for the zombie phase.
In fact, with it's involved set up it all feels clunky. Playing with 6 characters can also slow it down somewhat with what seemed like lengthy downtime between turns and overall play time.

I don't think this makes Zombicide: Undead or Alive a bad game, there's nothing bad here and if you like the western theme, you'll probably have a fun time with it but for me, it felt like the payoff wasn't worth the effort to get there.​