7th September 2021 Tuesday night gaming in Woking at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club concluded with Bears Vs Babies! We all know bears are dangerous wild animals, but few realise that natural enemy of bears... are babies and that's where Bears Vs Babies comes in, a completely true, completely educational card game about bears... and that's a fact! What's in a game?
The cards are the quality you'd expect from cards. The playmat is made of cloth andtrictly speaking, it's not necessary, but it's a nice touch. Finally; the furry box, which is a box and furry... The game's artwork is bright, colourful and brash, exactly what a game like this needs. What iconography the game has is pretty easy to understand. How's it play? Setup
On to play The objective in Bears Vs Babies is to accumulate babies cards by errr eating them? This is done by building bear/monsters from the body part cards and chomping down on those babies! The active player has 3 choices in their turn.
Endgame Once all 3 draw decks have been depleted, the game is over. Players count the value of all the baby cards they've collected. Point are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Bears Vs Babies is a pretty straightforward game that's easy to learn and comes with an interesting wrinkle: Deciding when to provoke a baby army (Words I never thought I'd type!) has some genuine strategy to it. Obviously, players will want to provoke when they have the strongest monster army to beat a baby army - that's how points are accumulated. But there are some other plays that can be made. It pays to watch what other players are doing and trying to gauge what baby cards have been put into their respective stacks. If a player knows that a baby army is small for example and another player has a strong monster, provoking the baby army will essentially waste that monster, especially if the provoking player won't be involved. Additionally, provoking a strong baby when not being involved will trash both the baby army and the other players' monsters. But this is also where the game falls down, constantly having discard your monsters as you build them up can feel frustrating, especially when it happens several times in a row. It feels so counterintuitive. It turns an average, light, filler game into a frustrating experience.
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7th September 2021 Tuesday evening is here and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club. The first game of the night was Merv. What's in a game?
Despite its busyness, the game board is well illustrated and colourful, artwork on cards is also clear and colourful. For the most part the iconography is clear and easy to understand. Unfortunately, this does not extend to the symbols used to represent the game's 6 actions, these were a constant source of confusion and error. For example; the mosque action uses a minaret symbol but actually involves moving camel meeples along a track, but the symbols with camels on it is used to represent the caravansary! Why? Because the caravansary used camels to move spices! However, in game, the caravansary action only is used to get spices and has nothing to do with camels This means that camels are used to represent spices and minarets are used to represent camels! It verges on the ridiculous. It didn't help that all 6 symbols were the same colour so that it matched the colour theme of the board. How's it play? Setup
On to play Merv is played over 3 years and in each year there are 4 rounds, players have 1 action per round, thus 12 actions in total. Taking actions in Merv are quite unusual, play takes place around the 5x5 grid and each round takes place across 1 side of the grid (Starting on the north side.), then in the subsequent round, play moves clockwise to the next side of the grid and so on, so by the 4th round, a complete circuit will have been completed.
Endgame Once the 3rd year is over and has been scored, there is there final scoring to calculate. Sets of caravan cards score points. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Merv has several approaches to acquiring victory points but resource cubes is key to nearly all of them and the resource cube economy is very important. Acquiring cubes may conflict with choosing actions if the building site a player wants to activate produces cubes of a different colour, players will have to make choices and adapt. Having said that, it pays to diversify but it also pays to pursue one one strategy such as the caravansary or mosque track. Completing contracts feels like more of a bonus for sharp-eyed players than a long-term approach. Players also need to consider palace actions, placing workers into the right spaces in halls and moving along the favour track can be a good source of points. Players will need to also look towards defending Merv from attackers, losing buildings also loses the ability to gain resource cubes in later turns and of course loses victory points for the affected player(s). Merv is definitely on the heavier side of board games, but to be honest it didn't feel deep, just fiddly. I never got the feeling that I was making clever plays, instead I got the feeling that Merv was a heavy game made for the sake of being a heavy game. When I took an action, it often felt like I was doing 2 half actions instead of 1 whole one and it took multiple different actions to achieve something. E.g., I would undertake the marketplace action and acquire a good, Was I able to sell that good? No! What about spices, what if I'd acquired spices? Can't sell them either. To sell something, that is to complete a contract, I needed influence, which earned by building walls and also scrolls, which are acquired by visiting the library. Of course I also needed resources cubes. I know that some people will love this idea but I found it unengaging and a little dull and verging on tedious. Merv feels a little dry, unexciting and detached. 5th September 2021
Sunday gaming on Board Game Arena reached it's conclusion and the final game of the evening was Love Letter. Read my blog about it here. 5th September 2021
Sunday gaming continued and Forbidden Island was the next game on Board Game Arena. Read my thoughts on it here. 5th September 2021
Sunday evening gaming on Board Game Arena continued with Codex Naturalis. Read my blog about it here. 5th September 2021 Sunday night gaming on Board Game Arena continued with New Frontiers. Galaxies: The New Frontier, these are the games of the website of 3 Spellcaster and a Dwarf. Dodgy puns aside, New Frontiers is a sibling-game to Race for the Galaxy and Roll for the Galaxy and shares the same universe. Players will find many similarities between the 3. Caveat: We have only ever played the digital version of New Frontiers What's in a game? Unlike the previously mentioned games, while New Frontiers is a board game, players of the other games will recognise many elements here.
Like its siblings, New Frontiers uses an abundance of symbols and icons which can be daunting for new or inexperienced players. How's it play? Setup
In New Frontiers, turns are carried out according to the turn order as shown on the priority board. Actions are not simultaneous. On their turn, the active player chooses a single action tile and performs the action on it, all other players may follow, in other words also perform that action. However, there is a bonus that only the active player gets for triggering a tile. Each tile can only be used once per round, thus only 1 player benefits from the bonus a tile may confer. Furthermore, actions are actually performed in the order they are selected, there are no numbered phases in New Frontiers. There are 7 actions that can be chosen, most of these will be familiar to players of Race for the Galaxy or Roll for the Galaxy.
Now a new round begins, possibly with a new player order and all the action tiles are now selectable again. Rounds continue until the endgame conditions are met. Endgame Once the endgame is triggered, the current round ends and points are scored. There are 4 ways to trigger the game end. Settlements: A player adds a 7th settled worlds to the game board. Developments: When the 11th or 12th development space on a player's board has been filled with a development. Victory points: When the supply of victory points is depleted. Colonists: When the supply of colonist meeples drops lower than 5. Points come from settled planets and developments bought, some developments offer additional routes to earn point and finally, victory points are counted. Points are tallied, highest score wins! Overall
Players of the previous 2 games will find a lot here instantly familiar. New Frontiers contains the same mix of intricate and mechanical interdependencies between planets and developments that feature in the other two games which allow players to create varied combinations of engine building and combinations. There are a couple of mechanics New Frontiers does differently, particularly the action mechanic, firstly there's no set action order for actions to occur and more importantly, only 1 player can benefit from an action's bonus per round. If a player really needs a bonus action, it can make turn order very important. The existence of a turn order is new as well. When playing New Frontiers, there are a couple of approaches always available to players, building their tableau or acquiring victory point tokens, or maybe getting one of the 9-point developments and working towards exploiting for points in the endgame. However, players will need to adapt to which planets become available to the, as unlike developments which use a drafting mechanic, planet acquisition will be to some degree, random. But here's the thing; the additions New Frontiers brings to the table don't add anything to the game other than extra complexity, there's no extra depth or strategy, just extra resources to manage in place of the hand-as-money mechanic that makes Race for the Galaxy such a good game. Yet somehow, it even seems to have a shorter, less engaging play time? You see, in Race for the Galaxy and Roll for the Galaxy, there are 2 ways to end a game; a player can complete their tableau or deplete the supply of victory tokens, both of which require players to play well or at least fast/better than other players. But in New Frontiers, it's possible to end the game by simply triggering the Settle action multiple times. It felt hugely unsatisfying way for the game to end. Ultimately, New Frontiers is a good game, it has the pedigree of its predecessors, but it's also too familiar and too similar to Race for the Galaxy, which is in my opinion, hands down the better game. I would choose it over New Frontiers every time. 5th September 2021
Sunday night is here again and I'm on my PC, logged into Board Game Arena for some gaming entertainment. The first game of the evening was Dice Forge, read my blog about it here. 2nd September 2021
We're at The Sovereigns in Woking and the final game of impromptu Thursday evening was Port Royal. Read my thoughts about it here. 2nd September 2021
It's time for some impromptu Thursday evening gaming at The Sovereigns in Woking. The first game of the night was Photosynthesis, read what I thought about it here. 31st August 2021
We're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club for some Tuesday gaming. The final game of the evening was Love Letter, you can read my blog about it here. |
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