13th March 2022

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

As the title implies, Stella - Dixit Universe is a offshoot of the game Dixit and while it is different, it does share some elements with its predecessor, mostly notably having artwork on cards which share the same almost abstract, dreamlike quality.
​In fact in the physical version, both games share the same backings for these cards, meaning they're interchangeable between the two.

Caveat: We've only played Stella - Dixit Universe digitally.

What's in a game?

• Dixit cards: Stella - Dixit Universe comes with 84 cards. As anyone familiar with Dixit will know, they all feature distinct, eye-catching and quirky artwork.
• Word cards: There are 96 'word' cards in the game, each card has 2 words for a grand total of 192 words.
• Game board: The game features a tall, narrow board with spaces numbered 1-10, it's not really a game board in the conventional sense though as it's used only to track some numbers.
• Personal boards: Each player will have a board displaying a 5x3 grid that matches the game's card layout (More on this later.), there are 3 'stars' adjacent to each space in the grid which a re used to track scoring.
• Tokens: Various types of tokens are used throughout the game.
  Round tokens: Stella - Dixit Universe is played over 4 rounds, not only do these double-sided tokens track the rounds, they determine which line of cards are replaced at the end of each round.
  Player tokens: Each player has a token, also double-sided, one side is 'light' and displays 2 stars, while the other is 'dark' and only shows 1 star.
• Markers and cloths: While this is not a 'write' style game per se, the physical game does make use of dry-erase markers and wipe-cloths to track player decisions and scores.

As with all Dixit games, artwork on the cards is colourful and fantastic, a wide variety of images and themes filled with lots of weird and wonderful details that allow for multiple interpretations and meanings.
There's minimal art elsewhere.

The game's iconography is also minimal to the point of being almost non-existent.

How's it play?
Setup

• ​Players: Give each player a token and player board in their colour.
• Game board: Put out the game board with the long edge vertical, the numbered spaces increasing as they go up. Put the round tokens on the board.
• Dixit cards: Shuffle the Dixit cards into a face-down deck. Deal 15 cards into a 5x3 face-up grid along the right-side of the game board.
• First player: Determine a first player and give them the first player token.
• Word card: Shuffle the word cards into a face-down deck. Deal 1 face-up and choose which of the 2 words to use.
  This is the word that will be 'used' during this round.

On to play
Similar to its predecessor, Stella Dixit Universe is word association game, but here, the word is chosen by the game.
4 rounds are played during the game and each round has 3 phases. The first 2 phases are essentially performed simultaneously, with the 3rd phases occurring in turn order.

• Word association: Each player now looks at the 15 available Dixit cards and should determine which cards, in their opinion can be associated with the word for the round, players can associate 1-10 cards with the word.
  Then secretly, each player marks their choices down on their player board.
  Once this is done, the game goes to the next phase.
• Count associations: All players declare how many associations they made (But not what they are.).
  Then everybody puts their player token on the matching numbered space on the game board with the light side face-up. If a single player has chosen more cards than anyone else, they should flip their player token to the dark side and they are now considered to be in the dark. This may effect scoring in the next phase.
• Reveal associations: This phase is played out in turn order, starting with the first player.
  The active player must reveal one of the cards they chose by pointing to it in the central playing area. This will have 1 of 3 outcomes.
  Spark: If 2 or more other players also chose the card indicated by the active player then they all score 2 points, all matching players should mark off 2 stars on their player boards adjacent to the card revealed.
  Super-spark: If only 1 other player has also chosen that card - even better! Both players score 3 stars.
  Fall: If no other players also chose the indicated card, then the active player has fallen. This means that they can not score this card or any further cards later in this round, nor can they reveal anymore cards this round. Although other players may still score off their cards.
  In the dark: If the player who is in the dark also falls, then any cards they have already scored this round have their values reduced by 1. Thus their scored cards will only be worth 1-2 points instead of 2-3.
• Next Player: Once the revealed card has been dealt with, the player on the left becomes active and reveals a card.
• Next round: Once players have revealed all their cards or have all fallen, play progresses to the next round and the following occurs.
  Score: Players should record their scores for the round and wipe their personal board cleans in preparation for the next round.
  New Dixit cards: As determined by the current round token, 1 row of 5 cards is discarded and replaced by a new randomly drawn cards.
  New word card: The current word card is discarded and new one is randomly drawn in its place.
  New first player: The first player token moves to the player on the left.
  A new round begins with choosing associations again.

Endgame
Once the 4th round has been completed, players should total their scores from across all 4 rounds.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Like it's earlier iterations, Stella - Dixit Universe can be a divisive game, its core mechanic is acutely subjective in nature and it can be a real love/hate thing! Certain types of gamers; those who enjoy the heavier, analytically and mathematically driven games may well be frustrated with a game about trying to guess what other players might think of a particular word. Social skills are important here, it's more about playing the player than playing the game, understanding how they think and what they'll pick.

As with its predecessor, Stella - Dixit Universe uses a mechanism to score more VPs when making a slightly more obscure choice which can trigger a super-spark. I feel the game has the same quirk with the rule as well; players who know each other well will be at a advantage here.

Other than trying to predict what other players will do, there's also a balance between how many associations to make with a word.
Too few and players risk scoring less, while too many could end up costing points, generally it's prudent to err slightly on the cautious side and avoid being the player In The Dark.
It obvious why the rule exists, it's to stop players haphazardly selecting too many words but it's still a little frustrating and also a bit of a finicky rule.

That brings me to the one real bugbear I have with the game and that's the rule with Falling.
If a player Falls, they immediately stop scoring, so if a player falls at their 1st reveal, they score nothing for that round - and worse, other players can still score off them! Conversely, if they fall with their last choice, the damage is minimised.
I know that choices on the order to reveal cards are part of the game and cards which are seen as less risky should be selected fist and the rule offers a genuinely meaningful decision but even so, I found it immensely irritating.

Although perhaps I'm not the best judge, I can be ambivalent with this type of game, it generally doesn't suit my style of play and and maybe I'm a bit too harsh. When I remember to adopt a particular mindset to playing it, there's definitely fun to be had.

Stella - Dixit Universe plays with 6 and veers into party game territory, it's a light crossover game that's pretty easy to pick up and play and will allow non-gamers to get stuck in and enjoy themselves
Treat it as a fun diversion more than a serious game and Stella - Dixit Universe is an enjoyable experience.

13th February 2022

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

Shifting Stones is a light sort of puzzle-themed sliding tile game.

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

​What's in a game?

• Tiles: Shifting Stones features 9 double-sided tiles. On all the tiles, each side is a different colour to the other. Each colour also has it's own illustration. The tiles brea down as follows.
  Black/yellow: 1 tile.
  Orange/red: 2 tiles.
  Blue/purple: 3 tiles.
  Green/grey: 3 tiles.
• Cards: There are 72 cards in Shifting Stones. Each card displays a 3x3 grid in some manner or other and will contain pictures of 1-4 of the tiles in various positions in the grid. Each card also has a VP value, the more tiles on the card, the more VPs.
• Player aids: Normally I don't bother mentioning player aids but in Shifting Stones, they're particularly useful as they show both sides of all 4 types of tile.

There's not much to say about the components. The illustrations on the tiles are nicely detailed and distinctive. However, I found the colours somewhat muted in lower lighting and a little indistinguishable, particularly the orange/red combination. The same is true of the cards.

The game has no iconography other than the tile illustrations.

How's it play?
Setup

• Tiles: Randomise the 9 tiles and put them into a 3x3 grid with the illustrations orientated the same way.
• Cards: Shuffle the cards into a face-down deck, deal 4 to each player.
• First player: Determine a first player.

On to play
Shifting Stones uses a traditional turn order, the active player has their turn and when it finishes, play progress clockwise to the next.
During their turn, the active player perform any number of the score/swap/flips actions in any order so long as they have the cards to perform them. Alternatively, they may skip their turn.

• Score: If the positioning of the tiles matches a card in the active player's hand, they may score it buy placing it down in their playing area.
• Swap tiles: This action requires the active player to discard a card of their choice, then they can swap around 2 orthogonally adjacent tiles.
• Flip tile: This action also requires the player to discard a card and allow them to flip a tile to it's other side.
• End turn: When the turn ends, the active player draws cards until they have a hand of 4 again.
• Skip turn: Instead of acting, the player may skip their turn entirely. This allows then to draw cards and temporarily increase their hand size to 6, giving them more option in the following turn. However, this action cannot be chosen during the subsequent turns. I.e., a player cannot skip turn twice in a row.

Endgame
Play continues until any player has scored (Dependant on player count.) 7-10 cards, after which the current round is completed.

Players add up the VPs of all the cards they've scored during the game.
Additionally, whoever played the most 1 value cards earns a bonus 3 VPs.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
As you can see from the brief write-up, Shifting Stones is a fairly straightforward and accessible game, it could make a good introduction to new players or crossover game.

Despite the straightforward rules, there is actually a bit of depth to be found in Shifting Stones. The game makes use of a hand-as-currency mechanic to pay for actions and getting rid of cards that might prove useful is always a meaningful decision. Players will want to minimise this and find the most efficient way to swap/flip tiles to where they need them to be and hope to score at least 1 card per turn.
At the same time, hanging on to cards too long can earn nothing and trying to plan ahead is likely to be futile, it's too risky leaving things for another round as it players will invariably change the tile positionings, players will need to be decisive and exploit the opportunities that present themselves during their turn.

There's not much more else to say really, there's no noteworthy interaction between players and it's hard to gauge what others are doing, especially since whenever they refill their hand  - which is every turn, they'll be presented with newer options.

Other than I found the game a little bit of a frustrating experience.
Watching other players inadvertently wrecking the positioning I was try to set up between turns wasn't what I'd call much fun. I also found having to remember what was on the flip side of the tiles something of a chore, having to refer to the reference card wasn't much better. If perhaps. there was more engaging core gameplay, maybe I'd would make the effort to remember what's on the other side of the tiles. But there wasn't, so I didn't.

Shifting Stones is straightforward and clearly skews towards the lighter end of the complexity scale, it would possibly make a good filler game. I'm not sure there's enough here to appeal to me though and coupled with the frustrating experience means that this is not one for me.

15th August 2021

Sunday evening is here again and I'm my living room logged into Board Game Arena on my PC for some gaming goodness.

First up was 6 nimmit!. 6 nimmit! is 6 takes in German, it's quite an abstract game and the name will make sense when you seen the rules.

What's in a game?
6 nimmit is a card game and comes with a deck of 104 cards number from 1 to... you guessed it... 104 and that's it for game components. Each card also displays one or more symbols which are endearingly known as ​bullheads. Bullheads are bad.

The cards are normal quality as you'd expect.
There's pretty much no artwork to speak off, other than the symbol for bullheads and colours used to mark out cards which have more than 1 bullhead symbol.
The game has no iconography other than numbers and bullheads and being an abstract game, doesn't need anything else.

How's it play?
Setup

• Shuffle all the cards into a face-down deck.
• Draw 4 cards and place them face-up into a column in the central play area. These form the beginnings of the 4 rows into which players will place their cards
• Deal 10 face-down cards to each player.

On to play
6 nimmit! is played over several rounds and the goal is for players to empty their hand of cards and avoid collecting other cards as much as possible each round, which is not as easy as you might think...
How is this done, well read on.

• Pick a card: Each player chooses a card and plays it face-down in front of them. Once everybody done this, all cards are simultaneously ​turned face-up.
• Lowest first: Whoever played the lowest valued card, plays their card first, play then progresses to the player of the highest card, who goes last.
• Play a card: The active player must play their card on to one of the 4 rows, going from left to right and using the following rules.
  Go higher: When playing a card, it's value must be higher than the card it is placed next to.
  Go closer: Also when playing card, it must be placed next card that is closest in value to it. E.G., if 40 is played, it must be placed next to a 30 instead of a 25.
  Go low: If the card played is not higher than any row, then the active player must take all the cards in a row of their choice and place the played card as the first card in a new row.
  6 takes: If a player would place a 6th card into a row, they instead collect all the cards in that row and place what would've been the 6th card and place it as the first card in a new row.
  Who played the 6th card takes the row; 6 takes - geddit!
• Round end: Play continues until all players have played the 10 cards in their hand.
  Players tally the bullheads they've acquired this round, then all cards are shuffled back into a new deck and a new round is set up.

Endgame
Play continues through rounds until at the end of a round, in which at least one player has accumulated 66 or more bullheads..
Points are tallied, the player who has collected the lowest number of bullheads wins.

Overall
As per the brevity of this blog post, 6 nimmit! is a very simple game to learn, it's also a curious mix of strategy and unpredictability.

The objective is obviously to try and not collect cards, they'll be times that a player will want to play lower value cards to 'get into' a row before it gets to 5 cards, conversely, they'll times they want to play higher cards to go later and hope someone plays the 6th card in a row to clear it out.
Sometimes players will want to play very low and choose which row to take because it's the best of a bad set of choices, the bullheads a row may contain can vary greatly. Also choosing which row to take presents a player with the opportunity to mess with other players.
Watching a row you planned to play a card into vanish and leave a much worse alternative is quite the surprise.

And that's the thing, while some card plays can be much safer than others, it's almost always never 100% safe and it's other players bring that element of aforementioned of unpredictability to the game.

Quick to pick-up-and-play, 6 nimmit! can be a lot of fun with its surprises and reversals -of-fortune, provided you don't find playing fairly randomised games frustrating and you're not too much of a serious gamer.

15th June 2021

It's a Tuesday evening at The Sovereigns in Woking and if memory serves me correctly, the first time that I've met up with the Woking Gaming Club have met Since October last year!

The first game of the night was Roll For Adventure, a cooperative, dice roller where players must unite to foil the machinations of a Dark Lord wannabe and save the kingdom!

What's in a game?
In Roll for Adventure, our heroes must join forces to defeat The Dark Lord Saur-errr Master of Shadows; how is this done? By collecting the power stones to activate the magical artefact; how is this done? By making lots of dice rolls of course!

• Dice: Lots of dice! 5 dice in the four player colours and 4 grey bonus dice. These are all normal 6-sided dice.
• Territory die: Another dice! This isn't a normal 6-sider though, 4 faces show each of the game's 4 different types of territory, 1 face shows all 4 territories and the final face shows no territory.
• Territory boards: There are 4 of these double-sided triangular boards, with an A-side and a B-side, A-sides are easier to play than B-sides. Each board represents one of the differing territory types.
  Blue is The Ice Cave.
  Green is The Forest.
  Grey is The Fortress.
  Yellow is The Desert.
  The 4 boards are attached together to form a single larger square board, which becomes the game board and its main playing area and is where the players' heroes go adventuring for power stones (Or, in other words, where dice are used to complete tasks.). The centre of the board contains an area called the Vortex of Oblivion.
  Each board will have its own unique rules for how dice are used to acquire the stones and also has its own damage track.
• Adventure boards: There are 4 of these and they're used in conjunction with power stone tokens to track the players progress. When all the spaces on an adventure board are filled with the tokens, the players will be victorious. The boards have 5-8 spaces and thus are used to manage the game's difficulty.
• Power stones: 8 colourful tokens, used as explained above.
• Skull tokens: These pretty cool 3d tokens are used on each of the damage tracks on the adventure boards.
• Enemy cards: These cards are used to 'attack' the game board, they come in 4 colours that correspond to the colours of the territory boards. They are ranked from 1 to 3.
• Special enemy cards: Not content to just have enemy cards, the game provides special enemy cards that can be used to add extra complexity to the game.
• Master of Shadows enemy card: Yep, the game's Big Bad has a card.
• Hero boards: These tiles are randomly dealt to all players, each one has a special ability the controlling player can use. There are 10 hero boards.

There's a plethora of other components, tokens, tiles and markers including the ominously named Vortex of Resurrection that are also used in the game.

The dice are of the smaller variety, which is fine by me, they're made of plastic and finished in a 'marble' look, their edges are nicely rounded and their dots are indentations and not printed. Good quality dice overall.
The territory die is a larger size and has rounded edges, it has artwork related to the territory boards printed on 5 of its 6 sides, the printing seems to be good quality and doesn't look like it'd rub off easily.
The game's variety of boards and tiles are all printed on thick card, as are the components.
The enemy cards are pretty standard quality cards.
Finally; special mention goes to the completely unnecessary and therefore cool little 3d plastic skulls used to track damage on the 4 territories.

Artwork used on the territory boards is fairly minimalist and functional by necessity as space is given over to holding dice. The palette used for the 4 territories extends to the enemy cards and some components.
The quality of artwork used on the enemy cards, hero and adventure boards is all reasonably good. The bright colours scheme used to represent the power stone is pleasantly eye catching.

All-in-all, the components in Roll for Adventure are all of a good quality.

​On to play
Like a lot of cooperative games, Roll for Adventure alternates between a player's turn and then the board's actions before moving on to the next player's turn.
The basic principle behind a turn in Roll for Adventure is simple: The active player rolls all their available dice and uses one or more of them of the same number, then rolls their remaining dice and so on, until they've used all their dice. What those dice are used for however, is the crux of the game.

• Roll the dice: The active player takes their dice and rolls all of them. Now they decide which ones to use, the main restriction being they must use dice of the same value. There are 3 ways these dice can be used.
  Tasks: The active player can put dice on to one of the 4 territory boards, completing the tasks on 3 of these boards will earn the players power stones, the 4th board will earn players grey bonus dice to roll. Each territory board has it's own unique tasks to perform, these are also different between the A & B sides.
  For example; the fortress territory has 3 'subtasks' and 3 'barriers', the players must collectively place 4 dice showing 2 to remove a barrier, 4 showing 3 to remove another and 4 showing 4 to remove the last one. Once all 3 barriers are removed, then the players earn a power stone. Tasks do not need to be completed in one attempt and when players commit dice to a task, they remain on the territory board until it is completed, however, this means that those dice cannot be taken back or used by the player again until that task is completed.
  Enemy cards: Dice can be used to defeat enemies attacking the territory boards, (More on enemies below.). An enemy card is defeated when dice totalling 6+ are placed on that card, this could be a single 6 or a pair of 3s, etc. Once again, an enemy does not need to be defeated in a single action and again, dice remain on an enemy card until it is defeated, in which case the enemy cards discarded out of play and dice used are returned to their respective players.
  Vortex of Resurrection: Dice can be placed on the Vortex of Resurrection, when a value of 10+ is reached, then dice can freed from the Vortex of Oblivion! What does the Vortex of Oblivion do? This is explained below.
  Interestingly, placing dice on the vortex, ends the active player's turn.
• Enemy turn: When the active player has finished their turn, the board will become activated, this will likely cause a series of actions.
  Enemy attack: Reveal the top card from the enemy deck, this enemy card will attack! But before it does so, it will command any card of a lower rank to first attack, thus a rank 3 card will command rank 2 & 1 cards. Enemy cards will attack the territory of their corresponding colour, so a green enemy card attacks the forest territory and should be placed along the forest edge of the board. Special enemy cards have their own rules on where they attack.
  Damage: When a territory is attacked, it takes damage, what does this mean? If an attacked territory has dice from an in-progress task on it, then one or more of those dice will be removed from that territory and placed on the Vortex of Oblivion. The way in dice are removed is unique to each territory.
  If there are no dice on a territory when it's attacked, then the territory itself takes damage and the damage counter is moved along.
  Vortex of Oblivion: Dice are placed here when territories are attacked, they remain here until the Vortex of Resurrection is used to free them.
  Master of Shadows: When the Master of Shadows appears, it's bad news. First of all, every enemy cards in play immediately attacks, then the Master of Shadows attacks. The active player rolls the territory die; if it shows a single territory, then that territory takes 2 damage directly to the territory, no dice are ever removed when the Master of Shadows attacks. If the die shows all 4 territories, then all 4 territories take a point of damage. If the blank face is rolled, the players are lucky and nowhere is attacked.
  Once the Master of Shadows has had their attack, they are shuffled back into the enemy deck, they cannot be defeated by normal methods and will constantly reappear to attack until the players complete their objective.

Play progresses to the player on the left and continues until the endgame is triggered.
​
Endgame
If the damage token for any territory reaches its final spot, the players collectively lose the game.
If at anytime all the players collectively have no dice to roll for whatever reason, then the players lose.
If the players manage to collect the last power stone for their adventure board, then the players collectively win.

Overall
​Roll for Adventure is an interesting combination of cooperative gameplay and some unusual dice rolling mechanics.
A good example is the Vortex of Resurrection: Using the vortex ends a player's turn immediately. Early in their turn, it's possible a player have the double 5 or double 6 which will be high enough to trigger the vortex, but doing so is a waste of a turn (And dice rolls.), however, waiting until a player only has 1 or 2 dice left means that getting a good result for the vortex is tricky.
Roll for Adventure has no 'set aside' rules or mechanics in Roll for Adventure here, after players use dice, the remaining ones are re-rolled and you can kiss those other useful results goodbye. It forces players to make decisive moves about what they have available now and collectively players need to really cooperate in these decisions too as spreading dice too thinly throughout the board can be a costly error, dice stuck on half completed tasks are a problem waiting to happen. Players need to concentrate on a couple of tasks only if possible and maintain the loop of using dice and then getting them back to use in the following turn.
The same is true of enemy cards, if they're not dealt with quickly, they can linger and repeatedly attack the board, particularly lower rank enemy, which will be commanded to attack the most often.
Balancing the need to get power stones and the need to defeat enemies is key, along with mitigating bad luck that tends to accompany cooperative games. The extra wrinkle here is the need to also manage your dwindling resources - dice!
Actions (Or inactions.) will frequently have an impact on the game and that's a good thing.

That's not to say the game is without some criticism.
With 4 double-sided territory boards, Roll for Adventure has 8 subsystems, at least 4 of which must be learned to play the game. In my opinion, this makes the game feel a little overly complex for the experience it delivers, which a shortish, almost abstract experience.
The game's theme doesn't gel entirely well with its mechanics for me. Do the dice represent various actions of the the player's hero? Or are they minions of the hero sent off on different missions? Whatever the answer, it felt a little unengaging, closer to an exercise in comprehending probability than going adventuring.

Having said all that: The game's balancing kept the outcome in the air all the way throughout and the tension high at the end. If you like cooperative games, Roll for Adventure is worth a look. If you've spent a lot of time playing those coop games where you spend action points to run around a map to perform tasks, this could give you a fresh take on the cooperative playstyle.