21st December 2021

It's a Tuesday, it's nearly Christmas and we're round Simon's for some gaming goodness.

Jurassic Park: Danger! is a board game themed after the very first Jurassic Park film from 1993.

​Is it a good game?

'Your game designers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should...'

What's in a game?

• Hex Tiles: The game's playing area is created using hex tiles and is to some degree randomly determined in every game.
  They are decorated with greenery and jungle as well as symbols along their sides to represent cliffs, fences and dinosaurs.
  Start: The start hex is always the same and sits in the 'centre' of the playing area.
  Central hexes: There are 6 inner hexes that surround the starting hex.
  Perimeter hexes: These surround the inner hexes and there are 9 of them.
• Frame: The frame goes around all the hexes and makes it look like an island, the frame also contains 3 hex-spaces including the escape hex!
• Character decks: There are 10 differently coloured individual playable characters in Jurassic Park: Danger! as well as a dinosaur deck for 11 in total. Each deck contains 10 cards.
  All player actions are determined by cards played during the game and each card displays its available action and the related difficulty, a 'boost value' number is also displayed in the corner of some cards.
  Dinosaur deck: The dinosaur deck is a little different, it too contains 10 cards, but each card lists 1 or more actions which will be split amongst the 3 dinosaurs in the game.
• Character mats: These go with the human character decks and therefore there are 10 of them in colours that match the character decks. Each of the human characters will have a special objective that needs to be completed before they escape the island as well as spaces for discarded and burned cards.
  Dinosaur mat: Again, the dinosaur mat is slightly different to the player mat, it tracks the usage of each dinosaur's special ability and also has a discard spot for the dinosaur cards.
• Tokens: The game employs several types of tokens, mostly used to track events, these include:
  Objective tokens: There's 1 each for the 10 human characters, again in pertinent colours, some will be on the board and must be collected by that character's player, some are acquired by different methods.
  ​Fence tokens: A number of the tiles contain electric fence icons, when these are powered up, the fence tokens are used to represent this.
  Activation tokens: Players of the human characters must activate 3 locations in the playing area.
  Lock tokens: Certain buildings can be locked and keeps those pesky dinosaurs out.
  Helicopter token: Get to the chopper to win.
• Die: A single normal six-sider.
• Meeples: Each playable character has their own meeple their own colour and the dinosaur player will have 3 red, fairly large dinosaur meeples.

Except for the character mats which are quite thin, the components for Jurassic Park: Danger! are all pretty solid, the cards and the tiles are pretty much what you'd expect of them. The game comes with a wealth of meeples in 10 different colours, which is cool, it could have come with just provided 4 and no one would have complained but the standout meeples are the oversized dinosaurs which have been illustrated on the sides.

This neatly brings me to the game's art-style, which is a bit of a mixed bag. There's some appealing and colourful art on the tiles but the cards are sort of plain. The game also makes use of photo art of the actors who appeared in the film and it doesn't quite sit right with me.
It's understandable why it's been done, I'm sure the licensing for this came with a not inconsiderable fee and being able to plaster the faces of well known Hollywood personalities may attract extra customers, additionally; use of the film's marketing photos saves on having to commission art work.
Maybe that's it, maybe the use of photos gives the game a cheap feel. Furthermore, the game's actual art clashes with it's use of photos and it feels a little jarring.

Much of the game's iconography is intuitive but the 10 different character decks are all personalised to some degree and each will contain something unique which will probably require referencing the rulebook, none of it is a deal breaker though.

How's it play?
Setup

• Map: Set up the frame and then randomly place the outer ring of tiles inside it, then randomly place the inner ring of tiles inside those! Finally, place the starting tile in the remaining spot in the centre.
  Then place the 3 location tokens on their spots.
• Dinosaur player: Determine who will be the dinosaur player and give them the dinosaur mat and meeples which should be placed on their stating spots.
  The dinosaur player shuffles their cards into a face-down deck and draws 3.
• Character players: The remaining players should either choose or determine randomly which characters they will start the game with an take the pertinent character mat, deck and meeple.
  Then players should their meeples on the starting tile and any relevant objective tokens on their spots.
  Character players keep their entire deck in their hand.

​On to play
Jurassic Park: Danger! plays asymmetrically but has some similarities between players.

• Dinosaur card: The dinosaur player chooses 1 of their 3 cards and plays it face-down, then they draw a card from their deck to bring their hand up to 3 again.
• Character cards: Each character player chooses any 1 of the move cards in their hand and plays it face-down, only move cards can be played.

Once everybody has played cards, the games to the resolution phase.

• Dinosaur resolution: The dinosaur card is revealed, it will contain 1 or more actions which the dinosaur player can perform, there is a restriction however,  each dinosaur can only perform 1 action on a card, thus the actions must be spread between the dinosaurs.
  Actions include:
  Climb: This allows the dinosaur to move into an adjacent hex tile that involves crossing a cliff or unelectrified fence. They cannot pass a electrified fence.
  Run: Allows a dinosaur to move into an adjacent hex tile, it cannot cross a tile if it passes a cliff or any sort of fence.
  Sneak: This hides the dinosaur. Basically, it defers movement until the following round, in which case the dinosaur reappears in the same or an adjacent hex, although they still cannot cross electrified fences.
  Significantly, when a dinosaur reappears it doesn't count as a move, so it can be moved again in the same turn with an action card! A double move can be very powerful in this game.
  Special action: Regardless of what actions appear on the played card, the dinosaur player has the choice of using 1 of the special actions unique to each of the 3 dinosaurs. When a special move is used, it becomes locked out for the next round, thus they cannot be spammed.
  Attack: Strictly speaking, this is not an action and occurs automatically when a dinosaur is in the same hex tile as a character (unless either or both are sneaking.). Attacking a character forces them to randomly burn a card. More on card burns below.
• Character resolution: Each character player reveals their card and resolves it, unlike with the dinosaurs, there's a little more going on during character resolution. Characters have moves similar to dinosaurs with a couple of differences.
  Climb: Allows the character to potentially cross cliffs and unelectrified fences into an adjacent hex tile. This is not guaranteed though and the card will display a number such as 4+, which means to successfully climb, the player must roll 4 or higher on the die.
  If the roll is failed, the player may choose to boost the result, see blow for more on boosting. If the player does not boost a failed climb, the card is returned to their hand and not discarded.
  Finally, a character cannot enter a hex with a dinosaur unless it is sneaking.
  Run: A character can move into an adjacent hex provided they do not cross a cliff or any kind of fence. Additionally, the same rule about entering a hex containing a dinosaur also applies.
  Sneak: This defers movement and is functionally identical to sneaking for dinosaurs. As with climbing, a roll is required to sneak and utilises the same rules. After reappearing, the rules about entering a hex tile with a dinosaur applies.
  Free actions: Characters will have free action cards available to them, a free action can be played by the active player at any time during their turn. When used, they are sent to the discard pile.
  Activate: Also a free action, but not related to cards, if a character is in a key building, they may try to activate it, this requires a roll.
  When each building is activated, it will confer it's bonus onto the character players.
  Discard: Once a character's card has been resolved, it is discarded on to the discard space on their mat.
  Burn: If a character card is burned for any reason, it is placed on to the burn pile on the character mat. Cards in the burn pile are permanently out of that game.
  Boost: Some character cards will have a number in the bottom right corner, this is its boost value. If a character fails a roll, then they can choose to burn one or more cards in their hand to add the boost value(s) to the roll.
  Replenish hand: You may have noticed that players may discard or burn cards  and will run out of cards very quickly, but there's a way to draw discard pile back in  hand.
  ​At the end of a round, a character player may replenish their hand: This involves burning their entire current hand and then putting the discard pile back in their hand. Obviously players should aim to only replenish cards when they have few cards in their hand. Remember a player must have at least 1 card to replenish their hand.
  Empty hand: If a player runs out of cards for any reason, then the character they're playing is eliminated (Which is a nice way of saying eaten really!).
  ​Luckily, the game has no player elimination, only character elimination, when this occurs, the player can simply pick another character to play who will join play on the starting tile.

Once all cards have been resolved, play progresses to the next round and players begin by playing cards again.

Endgame
Play continues until 1 set of victory conditions is met.
Character players: For the character players, they have to:

• ​Activate all 3 buildings, when this is achieved, the helicopter token is placed on it's space.
• Complete the character goal for 2-3 characters (Depending on player count.) and those 2-3 character must safely get to the helicopter.

Interestingly, once a character reaches the helicopter, they are safe and out of game but the player can select another character to begin playing.
Dinosaur player: The objectives for this player are much simpler:

• Eliminate 2 or 3 characters.

Which side completes their objectives first, wins.

Overall
Jurassic Park: Danger! is a cat-and-mouse game all about asymmetrical play. Not only do the dinosaur and character players have different rules, the characters will have differences between them. Each character may have different numbers they need to roll for climbing or sneaking, giving them strengths and weaknesses, additionally, they'll have a card or two which are unique to them.

The game does feature some sharp cat-and-mouse gameplay. Due to the limited size of the playing area, a dinosaur will generally never be more than a hex or two away from a character player and this keeps the game feeling quite taut. Players will always have to make meaningful decisions and to make what they hope is optimal choices.
Characters need to coordinate to complete their objectives, sometimes putting themselves at risk to protect others, particularly if that other character is close to something important and they can't afford to procrastinate either, as their decks inevitably dwindle.

The dinosaur player will face tension too. They of course need to prevent the other players from completing objectives. Unlike the character players, their cards cannot run out, so they can be patient. However, since the dinosaur player only ever has 3 cards in hand and limited actions per dinosaur, they're never fully in charge of what they can do, a hand of 3 cards will limit the dinosaur choices and to a degree randomise their actions, the dinosaur player may not get the moves they need when they need them.
​While there are only 3 actions for a dinosaur to use, the way in which they become available is unpredictable - to both sides of the game.

I think the most interesting mechanic in Jurassic Park: Danger! is the character elimination rule. It's adds the potential for some real tactical moves by the character players, e.g., they could choose to sacrifice someone to distract a dinosaur at the right time, brutal, but maybe effective?
This brings me to my criticism of that mechanic: It feels like the game treats characters as just resources to be managed and not people trying to escape. It seemed quite hard to complete objectives, personal goals and get 3 characters out to the helicopter without losing other characters on the way. I know this is just how the game is balanced and not really an issue, especially since it has no effect on winning, but it did detract from the feeling that you're trying to survive. It felt a little unsatisfying.

Speaking of balance, this brings me to another criticism, which is my dislike of one-vs-many games. The balancing between one player and several others never seems quite right and I don't see Jurassic Park: Danger! being any different. Multiple brains will always out strategize a single brain.

I have to wonder who this game is aimed at? I think many dedicated gamers, myself included are leery of licensed games and as a dedicated gamer, I personally found Jurassic Park a little underwhelming and uncompelling; a little too light for my tastes. It's something I have any inkling to play again.
More casual gamers will probably be unfamiliar with some of the mechanics here such as card management, the game isn't particularly complex but neither is it particularly accessible.

So I guess we're left with Jurassic Park fans who're gamers!

6th October 2021

Time for some midweek gaming! It's a Wednesday and we're round Simon's.

Valor & Villainy: Minions of Mordak is the game of the evening; an open-world styled, fantasy-themed, RPG-inspired exploration game with one player assuming the role of big-bad Mordak and the others taking on the mantle of heroes.

What's in a game?
Valor & Villainy is fairly involved game that features a lot of components.

• Map tiles: Valor & Villainy uses a variety of map tiles, most of which are randomly placed. These tiles depict the landscape, they also detail encounters that the heroes will come across.
  Starting tiles: These 5 tiles depict; as you'd expect the game's starting area and will be the map's central tiles.
  Region tiles: These tiles are ranked from tier I to tier III on their backs. When the map is created, the lower tiered cards will be closer to the centre.
  Each tile also contains icons depicting what will be found on that tile, which can be minions, ambushes etc.
• Hero boards: There is one of these thick card boards for each of the game's heroes. They are double-sided and on the back, each character's backstory is displayed.
  The front contains a portrait, as well as health and action point tracks. There are also a number of recessed tracks and spots in each board, into which various smaller components can be dropped and represent the characters increase in skills and training. Character's have tracks for melee, ranged and magic actions.
  The board also lists each character's unique ability and at the bottom has spaces for gear and equipment.
• Standees: Each hero also has their own standee.
• Mordak board: The Mordak player also has their own board which is very similar to the hero boards with a health and action tracker and recessed tracks to represent Mordak's increase in ability.
  Mordak possesses 1 extra ability; corruption.
  Procession of horrors tile: This tile slides into place next to the Mordak board and over the course of the game, allows Mordak to accrue power, it also serves as a round counter.
• Mordak standee: Not to be outdone by the heroes, Mordak has his own standee.
• Spell cards: Spell cards come in 3 types as explained below
  Arcane spell cards: These blue spells focus on attacks and tricks.
  Divine spell cards: These yellow spells provide support and healing.
  Void spell cards: These purple spells are used by Mordak and typically for the big-bad, they bring mayhem and ruin.
• Treasure cards: Can be earned by players by defeating minions.
• Loot stash cards: There are used to track minions that have defeated and treasure that's been earned by the heroes and by the Mordak player to track heroes that have been defeated!
• Minion cards: These are different types of enemy that the heroes will fight, they come in 3 classes, Chump, Elite and Boss, each getting progressively tougher.
  Minion cards contain information such as movement, attacks, damage and health levels, each one is also double-sided and can be flipped to the other side to display different stats for a minion when they get wounded instead of outright killed. Some minions will get weaker when hurt, a few will get tougher.
  Like the heroes and Mordak, minions have actions and stats.
• Covers: Each type of minion has it's own cover, used to hide what card is at the top of each minion card.
• Dice: These six-siders come in 3 different colours and are not numbered from 1-6. Instead the colours represent different levels of ability: White is novice, yellow is adept and red is mastery, each colour has a different number distribution, with white having the lowest, ranging to red with the highest.
• Ability tokens: These come in 3 colours that directly relate to skill dice. Players acquire these tokens for their abilities which in turn determine what dice are rolled by that player.
• +1 tokens: Can be acquired by players through rolling well and used for one-off bonuses.
• Initiative token: This double-sided first player token has Charge on one side and Hold on the other.

Valor & Villainy also has various other tokens for specific circumstances and situations including woeful sheep tokens!
The components are all high quality, tiles and tokens are suitably thick and sturdy, as are the standees. The cards are all well made and the rounded plastic dice feel weighty enough but the standout components are the chunky recessed hero boards which feel solid and also fairly practical.

Artwork throughout the game is excellent. The landscapes on map tiles are well produced, clear but also colourful. Character illustrations are bold and slightly-cartoony, it's a style that gets used quite a lot in fantasy-themed games, but it looks good in Valor & Villains.

As you'd expect for a open world game like, Valor & Villainy uses a variety of icons and symbols, particularly on spell cards - which essentially are all different. For the most part, the iconography is intuitive and pretty straightforward to understand.

How's it play?
Setup

• The Map: The 5 starting tiles are put out face-up in same position for every game, then, a number of map tiles are randomly drawn from each tier, although certain tiles (The 3 shrines.) must be included, then tiles in each tier are shuffled, some are randomly drawn and placed face-down around the starting tiles, the tier I tiles go closest to the starting tiles and the tire III the furthest away.
  Once all the tiles are placed, there will be a 5x5 grid of tiles, although in games will a lower player count, they'll be slightly less tiles.
• Heroes: Give each player a hero board and associated standee, along with the requisite components to track health and action points, as well as a +1 token.
  Players' whose characters can cast spells should draw cards from the relevant deck.
• Mordak: The Mordak player should take the Mordak board and set it up in a similar manner to the hero boards.
  The procession of horrors tile should be placed next to the Mordak board and the Mordak standee put on it.
• Card decks: Shuffle the 3 magic decks into 3 face-down stacks, do the same with the treasure deck.
• Minion decks: Shuffle the 3 minion decks into 3 face-down stacks, because these cards are double-sided, the relevant cover should be placed on the top of each minion deck. This ensures the Mordak player draws minions blindly.
• Initiative: Give the initiative token to the starting player.

The game is now ready to begin

On to play
In Valor & Villainy, the hero players are trying to discover the 3 shrines hidden somewhere amongst the face-down tiles to weaken Mordak and the Mordak player will be trying to make it hard for the heroes to find them until he arrives on the map after the 6th round.
Heroes always act first with the starting player beginning, then going left. The Mordak player may then act after the hero players. The Mordak player essentially gets 2 turns to act, 1 for Mordak himself (Although Mordak doesn't have much to do in the early game.) and 1 for minions.
When players take their turns, they will have a number of actions points they can spend to move or act as they see fit, there are also some free actions that can be performed

• Initiative: Who has the initiative token is the first player, they may choose to act first or last, in which case they flip the token to the Hold side.
• Hero actions: Heroes may perform actions, these include the following:
  Scout: This is a free action. When a hero chooses to scout, they flip all adjacent face-down map tiles to their face-up side, this may reveal enemies, loot or trigger ambushes.
  Looting: If a player's character is in a region without enemies, they may loot any treasure as a free action. Treasre is not immediately acquired, instead it is placed on the pertinent loot card and divvied up at the end of the round.
  Movement: For an action point a hero may move to a adjacent tile that is already face-up. Characters may only orthogonally.
  Actions: All hero actions are performed using one of their 3 stats, generally this involves combat.
• Mordak actions: In the early game, there's little Mordak can do to directly confront the heroes, although he can make life hard for them.
• Minion actions: If there are any minion cards on the board, the Mordak player can use them to attack and harass the players. Minions move and attack in much the same way as players.
• Combat: Combat plays a big part of Valor & Villainy:
  Melee: Melee occurs when enemies are on the same tile:
  Ranged: A character who decides to attack at range can only target enemies in adjacent tiles.
  Magic: Characters may spend their spell cards to cast spells.
  Defeat: Combat will generally result in one of the involved parties being defeated.
  Minions: When a minion is defeated, it is out of the game and added to the players loot stash
  Hero: When a hero is defeated, they are out of the current round and the Mordak player adds their standee to their loot stash. The standee is returned after the level-up phase has been completed
• Level-up: Once all players have had their turns, the game proceeds to the level-up phase.
  Throughout the round, any loot players acquired or minions that were defeated are added to the hero loot stash. During the level-up phase, they earn the hero players experience points, the loot can then be divvied up between them as they decide and equipped.
  Similarly, the Mordak player will earn experience points for each hero that was defeated.
  Then players may spend XP to increase their skills by adding ability tokens to their boards, they may also spend XP to increase their action points.
• Next round: The Mordak player moves their standee one space along the procession of horrors and the standee of any defeated hero is placed in the centre starting tile, ready for the next round. The initiative token is passed to the player on the left.

There's a bunch of other, mostly situational rules in Valor & Villainy, I'm not going to go into in further detail, since they don't always apply.

Endgame
Once 6 round have been completed (Or all 3 shrines have been discovered.), the game goes into The Final Battle!
During the final battle, Mordak himself will appear on the map and directly engage the hero players in combat.

Mordak has a large amount of health; 70-100. If the hero players reduce Mordak's health to 0, they win the game.
Conversely, if the Mordak player manages to defeat 3 heroes during the final battle, then the Mordak player wins the game.

Overall
There's a lot of charm to Valor & Villainy's presentation, especially the bold, chunky artwork for characters and minions.
Mechanically, the game is actually quite straightforward, unremarkable even (At least it is for the hero players.), although it does contain a fair amount of exception driven and situational rules. Using cards for minions makes it a little fiddly to move them around and handle, it also looks a little dull and flat (sic) but conversely, it makes it easy to track minion health and combat initiative.

Valor & Villlainy has several quibbles in my opinion
One of the most significant is the game's one-vs-many mechanic, these types of mechanic rarely work well in my opinion. Obviously the game will have been balanced to try and take this into account, but few games can balance the difference between 1 human brain versus 4 human brain and the hero players will always have this to their advantage. It almost feels like the game is set up to advantage hero players over the Mordak player.

The game also has a weird tonal shift thanks to this one-vs-many mechanic. For most of the game, the Mordak player will be a thorn in the players' sides,  a source of constant minor irritation. Then, during the endgame, it becomes straight up, directly confrontational PvP as Mordak appears on the map. It feels weirdly more aggressive.

For the heroes, the game is mostly about managing encounters as they appear, recognising and prioritising threats, then dealing with them using the most efficient method, allowing them the maximum opportunity to explore the tiles.
For the Mordak player, it's about exploiting any opening or weakness that the heroes present, not only defeating heroes but stymieing and thwarting them whenever possible.

Valor & Villainy is a open-world RPG-esque experience where a varied band of heroes, explore, fight monsters, acquire treasure and level up. The ingredients of an RPG are all there, but it doesn't feel quite right and I think there're a couple of reasons why.

There's a lack of storytelling to the game and variety to the encounters, there's randomness when setting up a map and not all tiles will appear in any single game, but they're just encounters, they feel a little bland and there's no sense of travelling, journeying or adventuring.

The normal map (For 4+ players) will have 20 face-down map tiles to scout, to explore all of them will require turning over 3-4 map tiles per round. Scouting tiles is actually a bit of a balancing act and one of the challenges the hero players face. if the heroes scout too slowly, they risk not finding all the shrines, if they do it too quickly, they risk revealing more minions than they can handle at once.
This will require players to head off in different directions and in an RPG you should never split the party!

In relation to combat, it seems the most efficient way for the Mordak player to accumulate experience points is to relentlessly pick on one player until they are defeated, then choose another player to pick on. It feels particularly un-RPG-like where combat tends to distributed amongst all heroes.
Even then, when a hero is defeated, on the next turn, the hero will reappear in the centre tile like it's a videogame spawn point.

All of this adds up to make Valor & Villainy feel disconnected from RPGs.

But for me, by far the biggest problem the game has, is its run time. We played with 5 players in total and a game took somewhere between 2-3 hours to play out. If felt like each player took about 4-5 mins to complete their turn and don't forget that the Mordak player essentially gets 2 turns in a row, 1 for themselves and 1 for their minions which makes a round 25-30 minutes long and that's before adding in The Final Battle. It also meant players had about 20 minutes of downtime between turns.
It's too much, if Valor & Villainy was an exceptional or engaging game, it wouldn't be such an issue, but it's not. It's not a bad game either, it's just slightly bland and slightly average. 

There's nothing wrong with an average game, so long as it doesn't outstay it's welcome.
The effort Valor & Villainy requires to play doesn't quite justify the experience it provides.

11th September 2021

All day Saturday continues, the next game I played at Wogglecon was Betrayal at the House on the Hill.

​What's more fun than exploring the local haunted house with your disparate band of friends. I mean, what's the worst that could happen? It's not like one of them is going to betray you, right? It's not like it's in the game's title!

• Room tiles: There is a starting tile along with another 44 other room tiles. Each tile depicts a room in the titular house, the back shows which of the house's 3 floors it belongs to.
• Dice: Each one of these six-siders is numbered 0-2 twice.
• Event cards: These are the encounters the characters will experience.
• Item cards: Equipment and gear that characters will acquire during the game.
• Omen cards: These don't sound like good news.
• Tokens: The game has a lot of tokens, hundreds in fact and mostly for monsters!
• Traitor's tome: This book is used during the 'haunt' stage.
• Secrets of survival: Also used during the 'haunt' stage.

All of the game's tiles and tokens are constructed of thick and study card, the dice are also good quality. The cards are the expected standard quality.
The character tiles are decorated in monochrome illustrations with one colour - the player's colour. Artwork used on the room tiles is a little plain but unobtrusive. The paintjobs on the models is nice addition. Thematically, it all fits though.
The game's iconography was straight forward.

How's it play?
Setup

• Each player should take a character tile, choose a side and set up their starting stats.
• Shuffle the event, item and omen cards face-down into their respective decks
• Put out the starting room tile - the entrance hall, then shuffle the remaining room tiles into a face-down stack.
• Determine the starting player.

On to play
The objective in Betrayal at House on the Hill is to explore the house until the 'haunt' is discovered and then maybe defeat it!
Broadly speaking, the game is divided into 2 stages, the second stage begins once the 'haunt' has manifested.
On their turn, the active player can do the following:

• Move: The active player may move through a number of room tiles equal to their speed stat.
• Explore: When the active player would 'move off' the edge of the playing area, they draw a room tile, place it and move on to it. Their movement immediately ends, regardless of how far they've moved, then they must deal with the room's encounter.
  This involves drawing a card from either the event, item or omen decks.
  The 'house' in the game actually has 3 different floors which will lead to the creation of 3 different tile-maps.
  Event cards: Event cards may be beneficial or detrimental, at times this will involve making a roll using one of the character's 4 stats which may also result in beneficial or negative outcomes.
  Once an event has been encountered, the event card is discarded.
  Item card: This will a item the character may use and typically confers some sort of benefit on the character.
  Items are kept by the character and their benefit can be used once per the player's turn.
  Item cards are kept by the player.
  Omen cards: These are a bit like event and items cards. An omen card might require a player to make a roll or perform an action, but they are also kept by the player and can be used once per turn.
  Anytime an omen card is drawn, the active player must roll 6 dice, if the result is lower than the total number of omen cards that have been drawn, then the 'haunt' is triggered. More on this below.
• The haunt: After the haunt is triggered, it can fundamentally alter the game. The active player looks at a chart in one of the books, it will determine who is revealed as the traitor and which of the game's 50 haunt scenarios will be played out.
  Traitor: The traitor player takes the Traitor's Tome and must move away from the other players, then they read the haunt scenario that was activated. It will tell the traitor what their objective is and why powers they may have acquired and what monsters they may control.
  Heroes: The remaining explorers now become the heroes, with the traitor out of earshot, they can read about the haunt in Secrets of Survival, learn their objectives and discuss their strategy.
  Turn order: Once all players have finished reading their pertinent information, a new turn order is established. Basically the traitor player goes last in the new order, any monsters the traitor controls go after them.
  Play pretty much continues pretty much as it did previously, heroes and the traitor can still move around, explore and draw cards. Crucially, though, heroes' stats may now be reduced to 0, resulting in their untimely demise.

Endgame
The heroes and the traitor continue taking their turns until one or the other complete their objective, in which case they win. 

Overall
Mechanically speaking, Betrayal at the House on the Hill is straightforward, especially in the first stage of the game. Players add tiles to the map and deal with whatever randomly comes with it, it's fun, but players are just reacting to encounters, all a bit unchallenging mentally.
When the traitor is revealed, this all changes though.

The heroes will find themselves having to complete their objectives while invariably having to keep out of the clutches of the traitor and their monstrous allies. They'll probably have to collaborate to have a chance of success.
Meanwhile, the traitor will have their own objectives, this may or may not involve capturing or defeating the heroes. The traitor can be sure that the heroes' objective will be bad news for them and will want to thwart them.
Betrayal at the House on the Hill has now become a very tense game of cat-and-mouse.

However, there are number of things about the game that irk me.
I'm not fond of traitor mechanics, nor am I fond of one-vs-many mechanics and Betrayal at the House on the Hill uses both! It's a bit of a put-off for me, obviously, YMMV.

Additionally, when the haunt is revealed, all the players must split up to secretly read their objective and in the case of the heroes; discuss their actions while the traitor sits around waiting. This creates a strange, pace-breaking awkward pause to the game.

Finally, having the playing area actually split into 3 playing areas, one for each of the house's floors feels somewhat clumsy to me, it's not a dealbreaker, but it does take up table-space.

There's nothing wrong with the game, it's just not really for me and isn't a game I'd pick to play.
If the haunted house theme appeals and you're happy to play with traitor mechanics, Betrayal at the house on the hill will probably be an enjoyable experience.

20th October 2019

Sunday gaming at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking continues as there is no 50 Fathoms.

The final game of the day was 'Aye, Dark Overlord!'. A compact and simple 'storytelling' card game about making excuses to your boss. So if you've ever had a job you were really bad at, you'll be right at home.

What's in a game?
Aye, Dark Overlord! is a pure card game and has no other components.

• Hint cards: These cards each contain a picture and a phrase. They are used as the foundation of the excuse that a player will try and pass off.
• Action cards: There are 2 types of action card. 'Pass the buck' that makes someone else the active player and 'Freeze' that allows a non-active player to mess with the active player.
• Withering look cards: These cards are used exclusively by the Dark Overlord player.

All of the art on the cards is comic, cartoony and entirely fitting for this tongue in cheek game.

How's it play?
One player will assume the role of the Dark Overlord, remaining players all take on the role of his inept minions.
The hint and action cards are shuffled and each player is dealt 3 hint cards and 3 action cards.

The premise of Aye, Dark Overlord! is that the minions are returning from some mission that they were tasked with by the Dark Overlord. The mission was yet another failure! Now the Dark Overlord wants to know why it failed?

• The game starts when the Dark Overlord player asks one of minions a question about why the mission failed. It can't just be 'Why did the mission fail?'. It needs to be something like, 'Why did you fail to get the magic ring?', or 'Why did you fail to kill the boy-wizard?'.
• Now the chosen minion player must make up an excuse about the mission. To do this, the player must lay down a hint card. Their excuse must be related in some way to something that is on the hint card they just played.
• The minion player can play more than hint card to make their excuse more elaborate. There is a maximum of 3 hint cards that can be used.
• This takes the form of a conversation (Or interrogation more accurately.) between the Dark Overlord and a minion.

Action cards
As well as hint cards, action cards can be played.

• Pass the buck: The active player can play this card (At the same time as another hint card.), as the name suggests, the active player can use it to try and move the blame to another player. The hint card must be part of the attempt to pass the buck.
• Freeze: This card is also played with a hint card. It is not played by the active player. Instead it's played by another minion player, who interrupts the active player's excuse to add another element or complication. Then the active player has to react or respond to this interruption. As with 'pass the buck' when interrupting the active player, the hint card must be part of the interruption.

The Dark Overlord
Withering look cards are only played by the Dark Overlord player.

• If at any time the Dark Overland is unimpressed or unconvinced by the minions excuse, then the Dark Overlord can give the minion a withering look and and a withering look card.
• There are a wealth of other reasons to give a minion a withering look card, being slow or boring, telling bad jokes, not having a hint card etc.
• If a player doesn't have a pass the buck card, they're very likely to get a withering look card.
• Once a minion has received a withering look card, the Dark Overlord will move to another minion to question.
  

Endgame
Once a minion has received a 3rd withering look card it's game over - and not just for the game! The minion is carted off to the Dark Overlord's dungeons for an 'appropriate reprimand'. All the other minions breathe a sigh of relief.

For the next game, whoever got 3 withering look cards should be the Dark Overlord. 

Overall
Aye, Dark Overlord! is a strange beast and I don't know entirely what to make of it.

Mechanically, it's a very, very light game, almost nonexistent.

However, to me it seems that this game has its roots in 'improv' acting or storytelling. Pass the buck seems it's a bit like 'yes, and' and interrupt a bit like 'yes, but', which are improv terms.

Which I think, for a game like this, means you need a particular kind of player for it to work, it just won't work if players don't 'buy in' to it.

Personally, I found it quite hard to 'gel' with the game. Maybe I need to give it another try?

But if you have an interest in the improv side of this game, it may be your cup of tea.

7th September 2019

Saturday evening. Matakishi's. Game night.

Tonight we decided to play another classic board game. This time it was 'Britannia', a game originally published in 1986, over 30 years ago.
Britannia is a historical game of invasion and conquest and when I say invasion and conquest, I really do mean constant invasion and conquest.

In Britannia, players do not play a single nation or tribe or whatever. Instead they play a colour and each colour has 4 nations of varying size. Each colour will have 1 nation that benefits from a 'major invasion', this explained later.

Britannia is played over 16 rounds and centuries of time. The game starts with the Roman invasion (So around 43 A.D..) and end with the Norman invasion (Around 1066 A.D..).
Even though each player has control of 4 factions, the factions do not appear at the same time in the game. They appear when 'historically appropriate' in various turns throughout the game.

What's in a game?

• Game board: A board that has a map of the UK, split into 37 different ancient regions.
• Tokens: There are lots of tokens, lots and lots of tokens. Tokens for each of the different factions, tokens for leaders, tokens for population expansion.

How's it play?
The rules for Britannia are relatively simple. The complexity comes from the interaction with the other players.

Before the game begins we have set up. Each player chooses a colour and is given all the relevant tokens for that colour, the play begins.

• Players do not take turns in the traditional sense. Instead the game dictates the order in which the factions act (Not the players) in a round. Obviously not all the factions act in all of the turns.
• The first thing a faction does is calculate population increase. The faction accumulates 1 token for each 3 areas that they control (Some areas that are considered 'difficult' and only count as a 1/2 for population.). Extra tokens are distributed into areas the faction already controls.
• Second comes movement. Most tokens can move 2 spaces (But when tokens move, they cannot leave 'empty' areas.). Thus placement of tokens is important to expansion.
• Combat is next. If tokens end their movement in the same space as an opposing faction, then combat ensues. During combat, both factions roll a number of 6-sided dice equal to the size of their force. Every result of 5+ eliminates and opposing token. Some factions are tougher than others, they eliminate enemies on a 4+ and are only eliminated on a 6! If combat takes place on difficult terrain, all tokens are only eliminated by a 6. Finally if after the 1st 'round' of combat, no one side has won, tokens possibly have the choice of retreating to a friendly area.
• Finally, overpopulation is calculated. The amount of tokens a faction has on the map cannot be more than double the number of areas that faction controls. Excess tokens are removed from play.

That's a basic overview of the core rules. But there are rules for Roman forts, rules for leaders, rules for sea movement and rules raiding etc.
One other thing worth noting are 'major invasions'. Each player will have a faction that has a major invasion at some point. A major invasion means that the relevant faction gets to turns in a row.

Endgame
Britannia is played over 16 rounds. Scoring occurs throughout the game, but not on every round. In fact not all the factions score at the same time, some factions score on entirely different rounds.

Additionally, when scoring is carried out, different factions score different points for controlling different areas of the board. Which means that different factions may have different priorities. However quite often opposing factions score points for the same regions, invariably pushing them into conflict with one another.

After all the rounds have been completed, points are tallied and highest score wins.

Overall
Britannia is a wargame and as such is very confrontational. It's a game that charts the historic invasions and conquests of early Britain. It turns out there were a lot of invasions and conquests! Players will more or less be in constant conflict with other players and there's no way to avoid it.

Combat is a key component in Britannia: Luckily, the basics of the rules are simple to remember. Mostly players will be looking into how to expand into and hold high scoring areas and this drive most of the game's conflict.

Asymmetrical rules make Britannia interesting and quite unique.

I like how the asymmetrical factions give different players advantage at different times. So for example; whoever has the Romans will gain an early lead, but after that they will have smaller factions appear.
Combined with the asymmetrical scoring that gives different players different objectives means that the end score is always unpredictable.

I do have a couple of minor criticisms of Britannia.

Britannia should only really be played with 4 players. Sure you can play with 3 or 5 players, but it's not optimal.

Britannia can take about 4 hours to play, so it requires quite a time commitment. I guess a millennia of invasions of Britain can't be played out quickly!

But these small criticisms aside; Britannia is an involved but entertaining game to play, provided you don't mind a game about conflict with other players.

29th June 2019

It's a Saturday lunchtime at 'The Sovereigns'.

We should be playing 50 Fathoms, but sometimes life interferes.
So instead we are playing Princess Legend.

Will the Prince find his Princess (Yay!), or will he get the Queen instead (Boo!)! Only you can find out in... Princess Legend.
Princess Legend is a 'bluffing/social deduction/hidden' role card game. Everyone is given a role to play and the 'Prince player' tried to guess who is the Princess.

What's in a game?
Princess Legend is pretty light on components.

A deck of 8 cards. They are actually coasters and not traditional playing cards in size. Each card has a colourful portrait on it. There 3 types of character on the 8 coaster.

• The Honest: There are 3 'honest' characters. The Prince, the Princess and the Fairy.
• The Dishonest: There are 3 'dishonest' characters. The Queen, the Guard and the Siamese.
• The Neutral: There are 2 'neutral' characters. The Maid and the Spy (A spy neutral, hmm, OK.).

​A bunch of tokens to track scoring.
And that's it!

How's it play?

Set up.
The amount of coasters that are used in a game is equal to the number of players plus 1. Thus if you play with 4 players, the game would be played with 5 coasters.
​Princess Legend is played with a minimum of 3 players and 4 coasters. The Prince, the Princess, the Queen and the Maid are always used in all games. The other characters will be used dependant upon the number of players participating.

Every player will play the role of the Prince. The Prince's role moves clockwise round the table in every round.

Firstly, the Prince coaster is given to the player in the Prince role in this turn. The coaster is kept face-up as everyone knows who is the Prince.

Secondly, the remaining coasters are shuffled and dealt face-down to the remaining players. One coaster is placed into the middle of the playing area is played by nobody.
Once dealing has finished the Prince must close their eyes, then all the other players must reveal their roles (Now only the Prince does not know what everybody else's roles are.). Then all the players (With their eyes open.) are satisfied that they've seen everyone else's role, they turn their coasters back face-down again, the Prince can open their eyes once more.
Now play can commence.

Let's do this thing!
The Prince's objective is to guess which player is the Princess (Or if it's the coaster in the middle). To do this, the Prince must ask the other players questions.
However, the objectives of the other players will be different. Other players will want to get the Prince to pick a certain face-down coaster. Each player's objective is different according to their role.

• Princess/Fairy players also want the Prince to find the Princess.
• Queen/Guard/Siamese players will want the Prince to wrongly choose the Queen.
• Maid/Guard players will want the Prince to wrongly select any role except the Princess or Queen.

However, there is a limit to the questions that can be asked. The Prince can ask each player only one question each (In any order.). When all players have answered a question, then the Prince has one final question that they can ask anyone.

Not only is the Prince limited to the number of questions that they can ask. They are also limited in what the question can be. There are only 3 questions that can be asked. They are:

• Where is the Princess?
• Who are you?
• Who is that (Pointing to another player or the coaster in the middle.)?

How the players answer this question is dependant on what role they have.

• Honest characters (Princess/Fairy) must answer honestly.
• Dishonest characters (Queen/Guard/Siamese) must always be dishonest and lie.
• Neutral characters (Maid/Spy) may choose whether to tell the truth or lie.

Once the Prince has made their guess on who is the Princess, all the other players reveal their roles. Then we see who has scored a point in this round.

• If the Prince successfully guessed who was the Princess; all the honest characters earn a point for their players.
• If the Prince wrongly selected the Queen; then all the dishonest characters earn a point.
• If the Prince wrongly selected any character other then the Princess or the Queen; then the neutral characters earn a point.

Endgame.
Play progress until each player has played the Prince 1, 2 or 3 times (Depending on number of players).
Then points are tallied. Highest score wins.

Overall?
Generally, I dislike bluffing/hidden role games. But this is one of the better ones I've played. I like how your put into random, shifting teams each round and then trying to work with your temporary colleagues.

Princess Legend also seems to differ to many other hidden role games: In most hidden role games, your role is hidden from all other players. But in Princess Legend, your role is only hidden from the Prince.
I think that this makes the game a little less intense, a player only has to deal with questions from one other player and even then, there's a maximum of 2 questions to answer.
And those answered are never really challenged, because the Prince play must use logic and reasoning to try and figure their choice. When a player lies to the Prince, figuring out it's a lie will provide information in itself.

So I think Princess Legend is a 'tolerable' hidden role game - which for me means it's quite good - for that sort of game.

14th May 2019.

Tuesday has rolled around again and that can only mean gaming night at 'The Sovereigns'

First game of the night is Mysterium'. Mysterium is like a ghostly version of Cluedo.

It's quite unusual in that it is both an asymmetrical and co-operative game.

One player takes on the role of the ghost of a murder victim.
All the remaining players assume the roles of psychics or mediums.
The game takes place during a 'seance' in which the ghost will feed all the other characters with confusing and strange imagery, hoping they will figure out the murder

The ghost player knows who their murderer is and is trying to communicate this to the other players.

What's in a game?

The ghost player sits behind a screen which contains information pertinent to them. The ghost player also keeps a deck of cards behind the screen.

Each of the other players is given a character to play in the form of a character portrait printed on what can only be described as sort of 'pocket'. The art for the characters is good and makes them look suitability exotic for people that can communicate with the dead. Each player is also given a meeple.

Markers are set out for the 3 different clue types. These represent the classic Cluedo cards for person, location and weapon.

The game also has a vintage looking clock which serves as a turn counter.

Before the game starts the ghost player determines who the murderer and suspects are.
The in line with each respective clue marker they layout a number of cards (dependant upon difficulty). Thus next to the person marker, they would lay the murderer, suspects and innocent people. Next to the location marker, they would lay the murder site, suspected sites and unrelated sites - and the same for the murder weapon.

And now you're pretty much ready to go.