27th August 2022

It's a Saturday night and were logged in Board Game Arena for some gaming fun.

Now that I think about it; a crossover game of Dungeons & Dragons and Twister would be pretty interesting.
Unfortunately, that's not what Dungeon Twister is about. Instead we get a 2-player sort of chess-like game about manipulating dungeon tiles and running around them.

Caveat: We have only ever played this online.

What's in a game?

• Tiles: There are several types of tiles.
  • Room tiles: The game comes with 8 large square tiles. Each one depicts a dungeon 'room', although it looks more like a intricate series of corridors and passageways than anything else. There are also items and obstacles such as portcullises and rotation gears.
    On the back of each room tile is a number, this determines the maximum number of tokens that can be placed on that tile during setup. More on this below.
  • Starting line: This long tile is the width of 2 room tiles and they are placed at either end of the playing area to form starting areas. There are spaces to place 4 characters on each tile.
• Screen: The physical game comes with a dungeon master style screen for each player to hide their standees and tokens.
• Tokens: Dungeon Twister uses several types of tokens.
  • Equipment tokens: Players have 6 tokens for their respective equipment.
  • Character tokens: Players have tokens for all of their 8 characters.
    These are generally the classic characters you might find in a fantasy themed game and include, wizard, fighter, thief and so on.
    Different characters has a combat and speed value, additionally, each character also has unique abilities they can make use of that are themed to the character. E.g., the thief character can pick locks and disarm traps.
  • Tracking tokens: There are also a number of tokens used to track certain actions.
• Standees: As well as tokens, The physical game also comes with 8 standees for each player depicting each of the 8 characters a player has on their team.
  Standees can be used in place of their corresponding tokens.
• Cards: Each player has their own deck of 16 cards which consist of the following.
  • Action cards: These confer 2-5 action points (APs) when played.
  • Combat cards: During combat, these are played to grant a bonus of 0-6 combat points.
  • Jump cards: These allow a character to errr... jump! Mostly used to circumvent pit traps.

Dungeon Twister has bright and colourful artwork. The room tiles don't feature much in the way of illustrations but do have clearly delineated features. Artwork on the tokens and standees is that sort of chunky and cartoony fantasy style that has been used on a lot fantasy themed games over the last few years, it's a little bit of an unoriginal art direction - but to be fair, it's a style I quite like, so for me it's good.

There isn't too much in the way of iconography in Dungeon Twister and I don't imagine it would provide any obstacle to playing.

How's it play?
Setup

• Board: Create the playing area by shuffling the room tiles into a face-down stack and while keeping them face-down deal them into a 4x2 grid.
• Starting line: Each player should take a starting line tile and place it along the short edge of the playing era. These are the 2 'ends' of the board.
• Players: Give both players the cards, screen, standees and tokens in their colour. All the tokens and standees should be placed behind the player's screen.
• Starting team: From their selection of 8 characters, both players choose 4 to be their starting team.
  Take the 4 tokens for these characters and place them face-down on the 4 starting spots on the starting line. The standees are not used at this time and each player's selection remains secret to their opponent for the time being.
• First player: Determine a starting player.
• Populate board: Beginning with the first player, each player should alternately put one of their 6 equipment tokens or 4 remaining character tokens on to the face-down room tiles.
  These can go on to any tile, provided it does not increase the number of tokens on a room tile higher than the number shown on the back of that room tile.
  Continue placing tokens until both players have put down all their tokens.

On to play
The objective in Dungeon Twister is to accumulate 5 Victory Points. A player can achieve this in 2 ways; by defeating opposing characters or by getting their own characters out of the opposite end of the dungeon from their starting side.
Players take alternate turns becoming the active player, playing action cards and resolving them. This is done over 3 phases.

• Play action card phase: When an action is played, it is done so face-up and in a stack, so only the last played action card is visible.
  The active player receives a number of APs equal to the value of the action card they played. APs are then spent to carry out actions, APs can be split between characters as the active player sees fit.
• Use APs phase: APs can be spent on the following.
  • Movement: Each AP spent allows a character to move a number of spaces equal to that character's speed, all movement is orthogonally.
    Additionally, there are some restrictions on how a character move or end their turn.
  • Reveal room: If a character is adjacent to a face-down room tile which they can enter, the active player can then spend 1 AP to flip that room tile face up.
    Flipping a room involves sliding it out and flipping it back into position but face- up.
    The active player then places any tokens that were put on the face-down tile during setup on to spaces or their choosing. However, they cannot place tokens of their own colour, instead the opposing player does that!
  • Rotate room: Each room tile will have a rotation gear. If the active player has a character on the same space a rotation gear. they can spin the tile! Each AP spent can spin the tile 90', the room tile will indicate whether this goes clockwise or anticlockwise.
    The corridors on the room tiles have been put there in such a way that they can trap characters or create new passageways when a room tile is rotated. Rotating room tiles can even be used as short cuts.
    Any tokens on a room tile that is rotated, also rotate along with the tile.
  • Combat: If an active player's character ends movement adjacent to an opposing character, the active player can choose to trigger combat by spending 1 AP. A fight can include more than 2 characters if more are also adjacent.
    Combat is resolved by each player playing a ingle combat card face-down. When this done, both are revealed.
    Each player totals the combat value of all their characters who are participating in the fight with the value on their played cards to get a final combat value.
    These 2 final values are then compared, if it results in a tie, there is no effect. Otherwise, whoever has the highest value wins the encounter.
    All participants on the losing side are wounded.
    Wounds: The combat value of a wounded character drops to 0, furthermore, a wounded character no longer take any actions. Healing can reverse all of this.
    A wounded character who receives a 2nd wound is instead killed and removed from play.
    Cards: Finally, the combat cards used during the fight are discarded out of play, except for the +0 card which is always returned to the player's hand.
  • Use ability: Some character abilities require the active player to spend 1 AP to activate them.
  • Use Item: As with abilities, some items require the active player to spend 1 AP to use them.
    • Other rules: Without going into detail, there are rules for picking up and using items, carrying wounded characters and the such. Encountering pit traps and using jump cards to avoid them.
    • Point scoring: There are 2 avenues for scoring points. The first is eliminating the other player's characters which earns 1 VP per elimination. The other is for a player to get their characters out of the other side of the dungeon, this earns 1 VP per escaping character, bonus points can be earned for getting certain characters/items out of the dungeon.
• Recycle phase: When a player has used their last action card, they draw off them back into their hand.
• Next player: Once the active player has completed all 3 phases play moves on to the other player.

Endgame
When any player earns 5 VPs, the end game is triggered. It is possible for the inactive player to score VPs in the active player's turn by winning combat which means the inactive player can potentially trigger the endgame.
In any case, the active player finishes their current turn and the game goes to scoring.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
​Dungeon Twister is a fairly straightforward game but despite this I feel the game is a little cumbersome, there's quite a bit of exception-driven rules here.

For example:
No character can stand on a pit trap space except the thief or except a character with a rope token.
If a thief standing on pit trap is wounded, they are killed, except any character carrying rope will not be killed, except if an opposing character comes and takes a rope - in which case the wound character is then killed.

These are not gamebreakers by any means but they feel counterintuitive and may be obstacles to play. Until players are familiar with the rules, they'll be hunting through the rulebook to get clarifications, it's also likely players may forget some rules even exist!

Players will need to employ quite of lot of tactics in Dungeon Twister and generally that's a good thing. Since there are 2 ways to score points, players will need to constantly assess the viability of both approaches.
It means playing close attention to the positions of all characters, every one of which will have their own strengths and weaknesses. Characters that are strong in combat will tend to slow at movement. Players will need to exploit the strengths and special abilities while minimising exposure of weaknesses. This is especially true of combat.

This neatly brings me to the game's main schtick, that is; rotating room tiles. Well planned use of rotating the tiles can be a game changer, it can trap or free characters, create blockages or short cuts, it can be used to move gear or move a correctly positioned character across the board, etc.
It keeps the gameplay fresh and to a degree, unpredictable. It can be tricky to see the outcome of rotating of all tiles to all position.

The rule where a player gets to place their opponent's tokens is quite interesting, it allows canny players to exploit the situation to trap opposing tokens but they will need to remember that a twist of the tile can change everything.

Dungeon Twister provides players with meaningful decisions when choosing their actions and tactics.

​Yet somehow, I found it unengaging. Despite fairly extensive rules and a clever premise, Dungeon Twister felt a bit like a simplistic grid based wargame that involves direct confrontation and to be honest, it's not what I look for in a board game.

Obviously, you mileage may vary, maybe a fantasy themed 1-on-1 combative game is right up your street but Dungeon Twister is not for me.

10th November 2019

Sunday lunch time at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. 50 Fathoms is still on hiatus, so board games it is.

We actually begin the day with a card game. A little 2 player 'Alice in Wonderland' themed game called 'Wonderland'. Yeah... Someone spend a while coming up with that.

What's in a game?
Wonderland is quite a minimalist game. There is a deck of cards for each player and each deck has only 7 cards in it. 7!
Despite the differing artwork, the 2 decks are identical.

• There is a deck for the 'Alice' player and a deck for 'The Red Queen' player.
• The cards in each deck are numbered from 1 to 7.
• Each card will display one or two symbols. These symbols are a 'vial of poison' and a 'cake'. They may be along the short edge or the long edge.

The art on these cards is obviously themed around the book and is quite nice.

The theme though, is entirely replaceable, it could as easily been about cats v dogs or elves v orcs or whatever v whatever.

How's it play?​
The purpose of Wonderland is to place cards down in the playing area (In a 3x3 grid.) to 'win' the rows and columns.

After deciding who will be playing who, each player should take their respective deck.

• Both players keep all 7 cards in their hand.
• Both players will play 3 cards face-down.
• One player should put their 3 cards in a row and the other in a column. This should look like a 'right-angle' shape. Between the row and the column there should be a imaginary 3x3 grid.
• Then taking turns, both players lay down their remaining 4 cards face-up. These can be played in the 'normal' orientation or upside-down.
• Once both players have finished playing their card, we go to the endgame.

Endgame
Rows and columns are 'won' by calculating the value of each players' cards in each row and each column, the player who has the highest value in each row and each column 'wins' it and takes that row or column's face-down card.
However, it's not just the value of the cards that matter here. The poison and the cake play a vital role here.

• If a card has a cake along one side and that side is is pointing at another adjacent card in the 3x3 grid. Then the value of that adjacent card is doubled.
• If a card has a vial of poison along one side and that side is pointing at another adjacent card in the 3x3 grid. Then the value of that adjacent card is reduced to zero. The card is still worth 0 if a cake is pointing at it, zero doubled is still zero.

The player who captures the most face-down cards, wins the game.

Overall
Wonderland is an interesting little game that seems to be about trying to out-predict the other player and ruthlessly take advantage of any error the other player may make.
Playing a card with a cake or poison symbol facing the right way can dramatically change the scores.
There's also an element of bluffing here, as each player essentially has to discard 3 cards and only play 4. This means it not possible to count cards as a player never knows what their opponent has put into their row or column.

Wonderland is a quick game to play and is small and portable.
I don't think it's a game that stands up to a lot of repeatedly play. But has a quick filler for 2 players it's OK. 

6th August 2019

We have arrived at Tuesday evening and thus come to gaming at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking.

Century: The New World is the 3rd and final instalment in the 'Century trilogy'.
You can read my post on Century: Spice Road here.
You can read my post on Century: Eastern Wonder here.
Century: The New World can be combined with the other 2 games to create one massive game, or in other combinations to create a total of 7 games.

Century: The New World differentiates itself from the other 2 games by being a worker placement game. I guess the game board represents plantations or farms and trading posts of the early settlers of the new world.

Whats in a game?
If you've played either of the 2 previous games, you'll be on somewhat familiar ground here and recognise some of the components:

• 4 bowls of wooden cubes: They come in yellow, red, green and brown (See what I mean!). They represent 4 different commodities that can be traded.
• Personal game boards: These boards have spaces for up to 10 trade goods (Yes really!). There is a difference though! These boards have 3 spaces for 'bonus tiles', these are explained later.

20th March 2019

It's a Wednesday and Matt has come round my place and we're going to play a 2-player game.

We've chosen to play Fog Of Love again. You can read my initial blog about it here.

After playing it a second time, I don't think my opinion of it has improved at all.

It's a bit of an oddity that feels like it's more of 'story-game' than anything else. The scoring seems extraneous and it be better off being a game plan for fun.

Perhaps it's because there appears to be little variation or breadth in strategies you would want to employ that it all point-scoring feel a bit pointless.

I don't know really, but it makes for a strangely unsatisfying experience.

20th February.

Matt bought a copy of 2-player game Fog of Love round and we had a go.

First impressions: High production values, looks nice, quality components.

The game has a long set-up - particularly for a 2-player game. It has a specific tutorial set up for the first play.

Fog of Love is a game about a relationship between 2 players, how it starts and how it possibly ends. The game is a strange mix of sort of 'area-control and the old TV show 'Mr & Mrs' and is a bit tricky to explain.

So when you play this game, you're meant to narrate your actions in the game as a story. We did it a little bit, but not much.

Before I talk about how the game is played, I think I need to explain what you need to do to win. To win, a player must have the highest happiness. There appear to be 4 ways to gain happiness.

• Fulfilling traits.
• Getting good answers.
• Keeping secrets errrr secret until the endgame.
• Meeting a Destiny.

All of these are explained below.

Traits​
Your fictional relationship with the other player is defined through 6 'personality dimensions', these are such things a discipline, extrovert etc, each personality dimension has a plus and a negative.

At the start of the game you will pick some traits, traits are hidden from the other player and represent most of your goals for the game. Achieving these goals helps you win the game.
Usually the goal of a trait will be to acquire a certain score in a certain personality dimension by the end of the game. This could be something like have +4 in Extrovert or -3 in Sensitivity.
The twist here is that the score is shared between both players. Thus if you put a point in the positive score of a personality dimension and the other player puts a point in the negative score, the total score for that personality dimension will be 0.
Getting the scores you want in specific personality dimensions appears to be the key to victory.

At the start of the game you pick a profession and 3 traits, after this you pick some features which you give to the other player. Features like tall, or slow talker etc. This defines the other players character., it will also change their scores in the the personality dimensions. 

​Both players are then dealt a hand of 'scene' cards. These represent events that couples might have in their relationship., such as going on holiday, buying gifts.
There's loads of them and they come in 3 different flavours. Sweet, serious and drama.

Then play begins.

Questions & Answers
Alternating between the players, each one plays a scene card. A scene card consists of a description of an event and up to 4 different responses that can be given. This is done by reading the card out to the other player.

Cards basically come in 2 types, a question that the other player must answer or a question that both players must answer.

For example:
Question: Holiday in Rome (both players must answer).
There might be 4 answers.
A: Yes for a month.
B: Yes for a fortnight
C: Yes for week.
D: No.

Each answer will give you points in a personality dimension. Different types of answer will give you points in different areas. So saying 'No' might increase your score in 'Discipline', saying 'Yes' might increase your score in 'Extroversion'.

If it's a question both players must answer, then they must do so in secret (using some nice chunky poker chips marked  A-D). Then answered are compared. Generally, if the players answers match, they tend to get some bonus for it.

When answering these questions, you will know what you get if you have to provide an answer as well. But when the question is posed by the other player, you have to try and guess which answer will give you points in the personality dimension that you want to increase (as dictated by your traits).

Play proceeds like this until you have completed all 3 'chapters' of the game. Each chapter has a number of scene cards you need to play.

Secrets
You can also get 'Secret' cards that are hidden until revealed, either during normal play or as part of the endgame. It will give different rewards, dependant on when it is revealed.

Destiny
Finally you have 'Destiny' cards. Both players keep at least 2 hidden destiny cards (but not part of their hand) that they must choose one to play during the endgame. If the criteria on the destiny card is met, then extra points are scored.

​So finally, all relevant points are applied to happiness and the player with the highest happiness, wins!

Fog of Love is an interesting idea and ok to play. But I'm not sure on it's depth or longevity. There doesn't appear to be any strategy other than trying to use questions (or answer questions) that match your traits as closely as possible. The destiny cards seem very hard to complete and thus irrelevant. You appear to start the game with the same 4 cards every time, I don't know if you can pick up more during play.
​There are apparently other chapters you can play that alter the types of scene cards you can play in different chapters. But I don't know if this add enough to the game.

This game requires at least another play before I settle on a opinion on it.

Because I've been concentrating on Gameblast, my general games blogging has suffered.

This goes all the way back to 6th February.

Matt came round and we played a couple of 2-player games.

7 Wonders Duel is a 2-player only variant of 7 Wonders. It shares a lot of similarity with that game, but where it differs from the original is in card-drafting. That is to say that 7 Wonders Duel has no card-drafting at all, it would be a bit silly in 2-player game.

Instead Duel uses cards laid out in one of several different 'array'.

Imagine the cards laid out in rows in a pyramid shape, each row having less cards as the pyramid rises, until at the top where only one card is laid.
Now imagine the alternating rows being face up and face down.
Now imagine the tops of the lower cards covering the bottom of the cards above.

That's how cards are laid out in 7 Wonders Duel: It requires a little prep, but not as much as it sounds above.

I guess that this is designed to replicate or replace the drafting mechanic.

When drawing a card, you can only draw a card that has no other cards on it. Thus might be forced to take cards you don't want (or are unknown) to get to the cards that you want.

The rest of the game is more or less the same as the full game. The cards you acquire can be used to generate resources to buy other cards to generate even more resources. There are also scientific, civic and military cards to collect, etc. You create wonders and play over 3 ages.

One area where something new is added is winning conditions. Normally you score when the final round us over: Now if you acquire a certain number of scientific advances, then you score a scientific victory. Additionally; the game has a military track, acquiring military cards moves a marker along the track, move the marker far enough and you score a military victory. 
Both of these victories can be achieved before the games traditional ending and add a new dynamic to strategies you can adopt.

Overall, 7 Wonders Duel replicates enough of the original to be similar but is its own thing. However, if I had to choose between the two, I'd choose 7 Wonders every time. Just because it supports more players.

The second 2-player game of the night was Raptor.

Have you ever wanted to play a band of scientists armed with tranquiliser rifles and flamethrowers?
How about a raptor with a taste for human flesh?
If so, then read on.

Raptor takes place on a square-gridded game board with some added scenery. Each player also has their own little board and small deck of cards.

One player takes the role of a group of 10 scientists. This player's objective is to tranquilise either 5 baby raptors, or the mother raptor (which has to be shot with 5 darts).

Player 2 players the raptors. Their objective is to get all of the baby raptors off of the game board, or as is most likely more satisfying, eat all the scientists.

There are 2 types of action in Raptor, those determined by your cards and those determined by your board. Each player has different actions.

Play proceeds as follows:

• Each player draws a hand of 3 cards from their deck of 10 (IIRC). These cards allow you to perform a specific action. Each card also has a numeric value from 1 to 9.
• Each player plays a single card face down, the both players reveals their cards simultaneously.
• If both cards have the same value, both are discarded and no action occurs.
• The card with the lowest number gets to act first and carry out its action, then it is discarded.
• The card with the higher value is not played but is discarded! This earns the card's player a number of points equal to the difference between the two cards. So if you played a card with a value of 7 and you opponent had played a card worth 2: Once they had taken their action you would get 5 points. You personal board will have list of actions that you can spend these points on.

That's pretty much all the rules. 

The card playing mechanic is interesting but potentially frustrating. I seem to remember that some actions are same on both the cards and the board and that each also have a couple of unique actions. I also remember several actions appear twice in the deck, but with higher and lower numbers. If you really want to do something on the card, you play the card with the lower value.
There's also a card that allows you to shuffle your discard pile back into your deck - with a value of one.
There's also a card that does nothing but has a value of 9 - one to play when you hope your opponent is going to play a low value card and you want to do actions listed on your board.

And that's the thing: Your actions may be completely dictated by the actions of the other player. So for someone like me who's a planner it can be frustrating, unless you know all the cards well and have good read on your opponent.