28th January 2023

Wogglecon 6, a day of gaming at the Bisley Scout Hall continues and the next game of the day is Skulk Hollow.

I didn't know that it turns out that little anthropomorphic fox dudes and giant stone creatures seem to really hate each: Which is what Skulk Hollow is all about in this asymmetrical strategy game!

What's in a game?
Skulk Hollow is a 2-player game where one player takes on the role of a 'Foxen' hero who leads a band of Foxen warriors against a lone guardian who is a literal colossal stony force of nature.
​Each player has their own unique decks, components and gameplay.

• Board: Skulk Hollow uses a modestly sized square board which is divided into a 3x3 grid. Unusually, during play the board is rotated 45' diamond configuration, this all the spaces are actually diamond shaped.
  Each of the 9 grid spaces sort of have their own visual theme. Additionally, 2 opposing corners are the 'start spaces'.

• Green wound tokens: These wooden tokens are used to track damage on the guard board.​
  ​

The component quality in Skulk is excellent.
The tokens and meeples all feel solid and look great. Obviously the massive guardian meeple is the notable standout component, yes, perhaps you could call it a gimmick but it fits thematically.
The use of card boxes is a nice touch of presentation.

The art is equally high quality. Skulk Hollow uses a coloured line illustration somewhat cartoonish style that's colourful, bright, detailed and suits the games slight whimsical (At least as whimsical as 2 factions battling each other can get!) nature.
I've found that anthropomorphic art can be divisive as a style but I think the anthropomorphic character art on card looks pretty good regardless of what your stance is.
The game board also looks great and I like how compact it is.

With regards to iconography, Skulk Hollow uses fair amount but it all seems pretty self-explanatory. Icons for movement are easily understood, as are the icons for actions such melee, leap, etc.
I don't imagine players having any problem understanding the game.

How's it play?
Setup

• Roles: First determine who will play the Foxten hero and guardian.
• Board: Put out the game board, as stated earlier, it should positioned in a 'diamond' orientation.
• Guardian player: The guardian chooses a guardian card box of their choice, then they take the relevant guardian player mat and guardian board.
  The player mat will tell the player how to set up for the game.
  Finally the guardian player takes their action deck and shuffles it into a face-down deck and draws cards to their hand limit - which is determined by the guardian player mat.
• Foxen player: This player now chooses one of the Foxen Leaders takes the Foxen player mat.
  ​The Foxen leader and Sentinel cards are immediately put into play and their respective meeples should be placed on their starting spaces.
  Then all the hero unit cards and order cards should be shuffled into a face-down deck, the Foxen player should then draws up to their hand limit - as determined by their Foxen hero mat.

On to play
Being a 2-player game, Skulk Hollow uses a very traditional turn order with one player completing their turn before play moves over to their opponent and continues alternating between them for the entirety of the game.
Additionally, the Foxen hero player always starts.

During their turn, the player will have a number of actions points (AP) available to them which is determined by which Foxen hero/guardian they chose, although typically this is 2-3 APs.

• Actions: The active player can choose from the following actions.
  • Play card: This is the most common action in Skulk Hollow and there  are a wide variety of actions that can be performed, some common to both players and some unique to each. 
    Gain power: This action is available to the Foxen hero player but only certain guardians. Functionally, it works the same for both players. The player will gain power cubes as listed on the played card. These cubes do not go directly on to either any heroes cards or guardian board, instead they go into a central 'reserve'. More on power later.
    Move: This action allows the Foxen player to move one of their units or the guardian player to move the guardian 1 space. Arrows on the card will indicate how the movement can occur.
    Play hero card: This action is only available to the Foxen hero player. If they have a hero unit card in their hand, they can spend a AP to put it into play. When the card is played, it's pertinent meeple should be placed on the board.
    Use power: This is only available to the guardian player and it allows the guardian to use the power listed on the card and as per it's description on the guardian player mat.
    Guardians have a range of powers but generally they involve dealing wounds to the Foxen heroes.
    Hero actions: Only the Foxen player can use these 3 actions for their units.
    When playing a card, the player choose from the action at the top of the card or the bottom, not both. furthermore, only heroes with a symbol matching the action can use it. Thus, a hero unit must have a boot symbol on their card to use the leap action.
    • Leap: If the hero unit is on the same space as the guardian, they can use the leap action to jump on it! This means their meeple is moved on to the guardian board. Additionally, if a hero unit is already on the guardian board, they can use the leap action to move to a different location, following one of the dotted lines.
    • Melee: A hero unit that is on the guardian board may use the melee action to inflict 1 wound on their current location
    • Missile: This action allows a hero with the missile icon to make a ranged attack on the guardian and they do not need to be on the guardian board to inflict wounds. There are some restrictions including:
      Fire: If a hero has the 'fire' tag, they can only launch a missile attack from a space on the board adjacent to the guardian's space.
      Hurl: This tag allows a hero to launch a missile attack while on the same space as the guardian on the game board.
  • Prepare: This action requires an AP and either player may perform it. It allows the player to discard a card and draw 2 new ones.
  • Spend power: This action does not actually require any APs. Instead it uses a power cube that has been allocated to either a hero or guardian.
    Each cube spent this ways grants the respective player an additional action to the unit/guardian that spend the cube. This allows them to perform an action as displayed on their respective card/board, or to move.
• End of turn: Once the active player has used all their APs, they must do the following.
  Draw cards: The player should draw cards to reach their hand limit. If their current hand is equal to or above the limit, ignore this step.
  Allocate power: If the active player had gained power cubes during this turn, they now allocate them to their units/guardian as they see fit.
  Opponent's turn: Play now progresses to the active player's opponent.

​Additional rules

• Wounds: There are some rules regarding how wounds are manged, which is slightly different for each player:
  • Hero unit: If all the heart spaces on a hero unit's card are filled, that hero is eliminated, it's meeple is removed from play and it's card is placed into the discard pile. Potentially that hero can come back into play if the discard pile is shuffled into a new deck.
  • Foxen leader: If the Foxen leader has all its heart spaces filled, it's pretty bad news for the Foxen player. However, there is something the Foxen leader can do to avoid damage, which is called...
    Banding: Basically, if there are other Foxen hero units in the same game board space as the leader, then the unit(s) take the damage instead, presumably as they throw themselves into harm's way. Thus the leader cannot be targeted when not alone.
  • Guardian: Wounds affect the guardian in 2 ways.
    Powers: On the guardian board, each power's location will have several heart spaces, if all  wound spaces on a power's location are filled, then the guardian player can no longer use that power until they somehow heal at least 1 wound.
    Full wounds: If the guardian board has all it's heart spaces filled, then it's bad news for the guardian player...
• Depleting action deck: If any time a player empties their action deck, they then simply shuffle their discard pile into a new deck.

​Endgame
There are 3 ways the game end can be triggered.

• If the Foxen leader has all the heart spaces on their card filled, they are defeated and the guardian player immediately wins.
• If the guardian board has all it's heart spaces filled, the guardian is defeated and the Foxen heroes player immediately wins.
• Each guardian has their own unique victory condition. If that condition is met, then the guardian player immediately wins.

Overall
Skulk Hollow has asymmetrical and card driven gameplay which presents players with some challenging, meaningful choices and options.

Players will instinctively want to play cards with maximum efficiency to inflict maximum damage but sometimes because of their hand of cards, players won't be guaranteed having the card to make the move they they need and they'll be forced to adapt.
This can be a little frustrating but also makes hand management quite important, sure a player can use a strong card now but sometimes it's worth keeping hold of it for perhaps a more effective use in a later round. It should be mentioned that some of the guardians have smaller hand sizes, meaning they are trickier to play.

Of course, players will also want to watch their opponents, paying attention to which cards they play and when. - There's a bit of higher level play here about tracking opponent's actions, essentially a bit of card counting.

Otherwise it's quite tricky to describe gameplay; with 4 Foxen leaders and 4 guardians, the various combinations will at least to some extent dictate player tactics - as will the actions of opponents. Skulk Hollow feels like it's about playing the player as much as playing the game.

Finally; Skulk Hollow is a 2-player game and I'm always a bit wary of 2-player games as they can revert to a traditional 1-on-1 directly confrontational game, this is definitely the case with Skulk Hollow. While the game is not particularly chess-like, with moving pieces about a board to eliminate your opponent, it does provide something of a chess-like experience and to be honest, it's a playstyle that I'm not personally overly enamoured with. Your mileage will of course vary.

Having said all of that; I like to think that I can recognise a well crafted game when I play one and that's what I think this is.

Thematically, Skulk Hollow is quite strong.
The 'numerous weaker units vs a single giant enemy' gameplay draws inspiration from some classic older games.
While, with its climbing on to, running around and stabbing bits of a colossal monster, it's undeniable that Skulk Hollow also takes some thematic inspiration from a certain videogame and it makes for a entertaining concept to add to a board game.
It adds up to an interesting game, both visually and mechanically.

it is a mid-weight, asymmetrical game that features a lot of player interaction and conflict with moderate tactics and touch of luck. The various combinations of the 2 battling factions also provides a fair bit of replayability.
If you want a 2-player game with those elements, Skulk Hollow is worth a look.

18th August 2022

Broadsword! It's a Thursday and we're in Aldershot for some gaming fun!

According to Wikipedia, HeroQuest was originally published in 1989, which makes me feel very old.
The version that we are playing though, is the 21st iteration.

So grab your staff and pull on your loincloth as we set into vaguely generic fantasy world of HeroQuest in search of treasure.
Alternatively, take on the role of Zargon and oppose the heroes.

What's in a game?

• ​Game board: The game board depicts was is essentially a underground dungeon. It displays rooms of varying size differentiated by colour which are boarded by a perimeter corridor, 4 more corridors go north, south, east, west and sort of divide the rooms into 4 areas along with a large central room.
• Miniatures: HeroQuest is a miniatures heavy game and comes with several types of all plastic miniature.
  • Heroes: There is a miniature for each of the game's heroes; barbarian, elf, dwarf & wizard.
  • Monsters: Enemies abound in HeroQuest and include goblins, orcs, skeletons, zombies and more.
  • Furniture: As well as closed and open doors, there's dungeon dressing for tables, altars, bookcases and so forth.
• Tiles: card tiles are used to represent hidden doors, traps and dead ends among other things.
• Cards: There's also a variety of cards in the game.
  • Hero cards: Each hero has their own card that details their stats, which are
    Attack
    Defence
    Body
    Mind
    Also listed are their movement dice and starting equipment.
  • Monster cards: Each type of monster also has its own card. Monster basically have the same set of stats as the heroes.
  • Spell cards: There are 5 sets of spell cards, 1 set of 15 (Dread Spells) is for the Zargon player. The remaining 4 sets of 3 cards each (Based on fire, earth, water & air.) are for the wizard and elf players.
  • Treasure cards: This is a deck of cards that contain both treasure and booby traps such as wandering monster and the like.
  • Equipment cards: This deck contains various pieces of equipment that can be purchased with the cash the heroes acquire and will improve their abilities and stats.
  • Artefact cards: These cards represent items that are particularly powerful, they cannot be bought but only found in specific dungeons throughout the campaign.
• Game master's screen: This is a 3-panel card panel of the kind that could be found for RPGs and is used by the Zargon player to hide their stuff.
• Quest book: HeroQuest has a 14-part campaign that is detailed in the quest book. There's also space for industrious players to create their own quests.
• Dice: 2 types of dice are used in HeroQuest.
  • Red dice: There are 2 red dice, these are typical six-siders.
  • Combat dice: These are not the usual six-siders. Instead 3 faces show a Skull, 2 faces show a White Shield and the remaining face shows a Black Shield.
• Character pad: A pad of character sheets to be used by players to track the stats and wounds of their characters.

HeroQuest's components are all generally good.
The board, tiles and cards are of an acceptable quality.
The dice are also fine and in a move that pays homage to the original HeroQuest, there still aren't enough of them to split conveniently between the hero players and Zargon player! The game really could do with a few more combat dice!

Probably the biggest components are the miniatures. All the heroes and monsters miniatures come in single colour plastic according to type, heroes are red, goblinoids are green, undead are beige and so on.
I'm pretty certain the sculpts are all new as well, the games has undergone cosmetic changes due to licensing issues regarding the original.
Speaking of sculpts, I found their quality to be... OK. If I were assessing the miniatures exclusive of the game, they wouldn't be good but since they are meant to be part of a game; and in that context they're pretty cool. Especially since I feel that they're designed to hark back to the original style and design, which I think they do a good job of doing.

The scenery and dressing is also a bit of a mixed bag. The scenery in this version is all made of plastic and is much more durable than the original scenery which in part was made of cardboard.
However, that cardboard scenery with its printed artwork was a lot more colourful. The modern scenery in comparison is a just drab, monochrome, grey plastic.

HeroQuest's art is good wherever it appears, mostly on cards and has a brash, chunky cartoony aesthetic that suitably fits the style of the game.

There are a few icons in the game that are easily learned, the Zargon player has to learn a bit more due to having to comprehend the scenarios in the quest book but again, it's not an obstacle.

How's it play?
​Setup
Before any play can begin, one player must decide to take the role of Zargon who is essentially the 'Games Master' in RPG parlance and controls all the enemy forces that oppose the players. Whoever plays Zargon will probably be doing so for all 14 quests presented in the quest book.
Up to 4 other players will assume the role of heroes adventuring through the campaign. Generally, once players have chosen a hero, they will stick with that hero until the end of the campaign. Having said that, there's nothing to stop players swapping or switching around heroes if they so desire.

• Zargon player: The Zargon player should familiarise themselves with whichever quest is being played from the quest book. It will tell them how many doors they need, how much scenery, what and how many monsters, which dread spells to use and so on.
  The Zargon player should gather all the required items and place them adjacent to the central playing area.
  Monster cards: Place these face-up adjacent to the central playing area so they are visible to all players.
  Treasure cards: These should be shuffled into a face-down deck adjacent to the central playing area.
  ​Screen: The Zargon player should keep the quest book hidden behind their screen.
• Hero players: Players should decide which of the available heroes they are using between them.
  Copy stats: Each player should take a sheet from the character pad and copy the stats and information from the hero card for their chosen hero on to the sheet.
  Spells: Whoever is playing the wizard should take 3 sets of spell cards, that is a total of 9 spell cards. The elf player should take the final set of 3.
  The wizard and elf players are free to decide who gets what sets.
• Game board: Place the game board in the central playing area. The Zargon player should place the stairs tile in its appropriate spot as dictated by the quest book. All players should put the miniature representing their hero on the stairs tile.
  Then the Zargon player should read out the quest's flavour text to the other players.

On to play
In HeroQuest, all the hero players will each take their individual turns and then the Zargon player will finally take their turn.
Generally this is done with the player to the left of the Zargon player going first with turns progressing to the left until eventually the Zargon player goes last.

The general flow of play will involve the heroes exploring the dungeon game board (Which is unpopulated at the game start.) and in response, Zargon revealing what the heroes encounter, be it doors, dead ends, traps or monsters and so on.
Once the heroes have had their turns, Zargon can act. This means they can move any visible monsters to attack the heroes. Thus if no monsters are visible on the board, Zargon basically does nothing.

• Heroes: The hero players can move and perform one of the following actions.
  • Move: A hero can move before or after performing an action. They cannot split their movement.
    Roll dice: The active player rolls the 2 normal red dice and the result is how far they can choose to move in their turn. There are some limits though.
    Orthogonal movement: Heroes cannot move diagonally.
    Other heroes: A hero may move through a space containing another hero but cannot  end their movement there.
    Monsters: Heroes cannot move through spaces occupied by monsters.
    Trap: When a hero steps on to a space with a trap, their movement immediately end and the trap is triggered.
  • Actions: One of the following actions may be performed by a hero.
    • Attack: A hero may attack a monster, this can be melee or ranged.
      Melee: To engage a monster in melee, a hero must generally be orthogonally adjacent to it (No diagonals allowed!), there are some weapons such as staffs that allow heroes to attack to attack diagonally adjacent enemies.
      Ranged: A hero with a ranged weapon can pretty much attack any enemy they can see and is in line of sight. More on line of sight below.
      Roll the dice: The attacking player rolls a number of white combat dice equal to their attack score and each skull result deals 1 wound to a monster.
      Monster defends: When a monster takes 1 or more wounds, the Zargon player rolls combat dice equal to targeted monsters defence. Each black shield result blocks a wound! Any wounds which are not blocked by the defence roll are inflicted on the targeted monster and they lose an equivalent amount of body points.
      Weaker monsters tend to have only 1 body point and will be eliminated by any damage.
    • Cast spell: The wizard and elf may cast 1 spell. Depending on the spell, this can target themselves, an ally or a hostile monster. If cast on a ally or monster, line of sight rules apply.
      Each spell card will describe its effect and once it is resolved, it is discarded from player and cannot be used again in the current quest.
    • Search for treasure: When a hero is inside a room (Corridors cannot be searched for treasure.) and there are no monsters present in that room. The active player may search for treasure, this will have one of several results:
      Draw treasure card: The active player draws a card from the treasure deck. This may result in them receiving gold or potions. It may also result in encountering a wandering monster, which must be fought or triggering a trap.
      Quest treasure: As per the quest book, some rooms will contain a specific item or treasure, usually as part of the scenario.
      Artefact: Also as per the quest book, searching certain rooms will grant a specified artefact card to the active. Artefacts are generally better than mundane items.
    • Search for secret door: Provided there are no monsters in sight, the active player may search for hidden doors. This can be done when the hero is in a room or corridor and searches the entire room and in the case of a corridor all the corridor which is in line of sight.
      If there is a secret door in a room or corridor, the Zargon player must reveal it to the hero players and place a secret door tile on the relevant space on the board:
    • Search for traps: This is fundamentally identical to searching for secret doors except it reveals traps.
    • Disarm trap: If a hero has a tool kit they may attempt to disarm a trap that has been revealed by moving on to the trap space on the board.
      The dwarf hero as his special ability may disarm traps without a tool kit.
      Roll the die: A combat die is rolled, the result will determine if the trap is neutralised or trigged - in this case whoever was attempting to disarm the trap suffers whatever effect it deals out.
• Zargon player: For a large part of the game, the Zargon player will be reacting to player actions in their turns. Revealing doors, traps, monsters and dead ends as they are encountered by the players.
  • Monsters: Monsters are only active during the Zargon player's turn and even then only revealed monsters become active.
    Movement: No dice are rolled to move monsters, instead they have a set number of squares they can move before or after acting. The fastest monsters move 10 spaces which will nearly always outpace heroes!
    Attack: Functionally, combat for monsters is identical to how it works for heroes except as far as I know, monsters do not get ranged attacks. When monsters are adjacent to heroes they can attack them. The Zargon player rolls a number of combat dice equal to the monsters attack value and each skull potentially inflicts a point of damage to a hero.
    Hero defends: Heroes can defend damage by rolling dice equal to their defence value and each white shield result blocks 1 point of damage. Any unblocked damage is dealt to the hero's body points.
    Dread spells: As per the quest book, some monsters may be equipped with dread spells which can be used against the heroes. As with all spells, the caster of a dread spell must have line of sight on their target. Once a dread spell is resolved, the card is discarded out of play.
• Other rules: There are some other rules which also apply in HeroQuest.
  • Line of sight: Both heroes and monsters can see as far as a straight line could be drawn. Thus they can see all the way down a straight corridor but not round a corner.
    For the purpose of targeting ranged attacks, allies do not block each other's line of sight but opponents do block line of sight. Thus a hero cannot target the 2nd monster in a line of monsters and vice versa.
  • Looking: This is a free action and can be used at any time in their turn even in between moving spaces and as often as desired.
    When a hero player decides to look, the Zargon player must reveal any features, traps or monsters which are in line of sight.
  • Doors: Doors always closed when encountered and can be opened as a free action.
    Once opened, doors cannot be closed again
  • Treasure: When the heroes acquire any kind of treasure (Other than that found on a card.) it should be recorded on one player's character sheet.
    Gol coins can be collectively spent at the end of a quest,
  • Traps: Various types of traps are featured in HeroQuest, there are spike traps, pit traps and so on. Generally inflict 1 wound as well as a some other effect (Such as falling down a pit.). Triggering a trap generally ends a hero's movement.
  • Death: Monsters die when they reach 0 body points and the same is true of heroes. If a hero reaches 0 body points, they are killed and their controlling player is eliminated from the current quest.
    Fortunately, new heroes can be recruited in between quests.
  • Potions: Players can discard potion cards out of play to gain their benefits.
    Using a potion is a free action and can be done at any time. They can even be used in Zargon's turn and in fact can be used by a hero player after they reach 0 body points. Needless to say, potions can be lifesavers.

Endgame
Play continues until the hero players complete quest objective, in which case, they collectively win! Otherwise, if all the heroes are instead killed, then the Zargon player wins.
Additionally, if the hero players retreat (By returning to the stairs tile.) for whatever reason then they also lose.

That's not the end!
Once a quest has ended, players can spend their hard won loot and cash to buy equipment. Weapons can increase a hero's attack score and armour can increases defence scores, while daggers and crossbows offer ranged attacks and so on.
When buying equipment, the player who will use it takes possession of the card. Furthermore, once all copies of a certain item are bought from the equipment deck , then that item can no longer be bought. Conversely, consumable items such as potions and daggers are returned to the equipment deck when used.

End Endgame!
If the hero players manage to succeed at all 14 quests, they have won the campaign.

Overall
There's quite a lot to write about here and my thoughts will probably wander, so please indulge me - and let's get started!

HeroQuest was a pretty ground-breaking game in 1989. Published by a mainstream games producer, it offered people who had never played an RPG an accessible slice of the RPG experience and introduced some game concepts to people who had never encountered them before.
It's also a window into how games played 35 years ago and what player expectations were like back then.

For example, a modern game with similar themes to HeroQuest probably wouldn't employ a roll-and-move mechanic.
Another example are rewards and the game's equivalent of levelling up: As explained below, HeroQuest rarely rewards to players - which come in the form of equipment upgrades. These upgrades occur quite infrequently but are quite significant statistically, i.e., going from 2 combat dice to 3 is a big jump.
A modern game would try and find a way to do the opposite and drip-feed players constant but low-impact rewards in what would be called a gameplay loop or moment-to-moment engagement.

HeroQuest occasionally also trolls player, forcing them to deal with multiple traps and putting no reward on the other side.

Mechanically, HeroQuest is actually a fairly straightforward game.
While heroes have 6 actions they can perform, 3 of those are almost identical actions and 1 is very situational. Players will find themselves moving and searching, opening doors and defeating monsters behind them, searching, then moving on.
Rinse and repeat.
While there are definitely some tactics that players can adopt and repeatedly employ, the random placement of challenges - particularly monsters who form the majority of heroes' encounters - means that players will need to adapt to situations and respond effectively.
There's also some randomness to player actions - the roll-and-move mechanic means that heroes may not reach their opponent when they need to and also may not be able to escape enemies when they need to.

The combat system is also straightforward and runs smoothly enough, it does feel quite swingy and unpredictable though but that might just be me grumbling about dice rolls!
We found that the tougher monsters are very hard to wound. Once their defence is high enough, they're generally guaranteed being able to absorb 1 wound from an attack. This means the heroes will need to rely on luck to get 2 wounds in an attack or use at least 4 dice to attack and have a passable chance of getting 2 wounds.
How do the heroes get higher attack scores?

This brings me to equipment. Generally, we ended up equipping the 2 front line fighters (Primarily the barbarian but to a lesser extent also the dwarf.) with weapons above anyone else as well as providing the elf with a crossbow. Getting an attack stat up to 4  and gaining ranged attacks were real game changers.

Getting the right equipment or getting equipment and using it the right way can enhance or change tactics, improve the odds of surviving, winning fights and so on.
What's also interesting is that at the end of a quest, the hero players have the opportunity to buy equipment. However, because the cost is so high, in practice it means they will only get to buy something once after every 2 or 3 quests. It means that the heroes will get maybe 6 or 7 pieces of equipment throughout the entire campaign and will need to choose wisely. 

Some equipment such as consumables seem very expensive for what they provide. During our playthroughs, we never seriously considered buying things like throwing daggers or holy water.

Thematically, HeroQuest is a bit of a strange beast.

It has obvious elements derived from tabletop RPGs such as having a games master, combat screen, dungeons to explore, character classes and stats, scenarios, campaigns and narratives, rolling dice for combat etc but there are also some key differences.

There's no experience points or levelling, instead character improvements happen via buying better equipment.
Also, a key difference for me is the role the Zargon player has, they are part games master but also part antagonist and opponent to the heroes which is different to the majority of RPGs. Why is this significant? Let me explain.

The HeroQuest campaign has 14 quests, it took us a total of 15 attempts to complete all of them, in other words we only failed 1 of the quests, the other 13 were completed successfully at the first try.

I think that in part this is due to the fact that we're all experienced gamers and it feels the game is targeted at the early teenage market so we mostly breezed through it.
(A little more about this below.)
I also think this because the game utilises a 'one vs many' system and I've always felt that it's very hard to balance this type of game fairly, 3 or 4 human brains will always have the advantage over 1 human brain.

This is compounded by the fact that HeroQuest has a campaign.
It means that if the heroes fail a quest, they will invariably have to repeat it again, why is this significant? The purpose of a campaign is to advance through the multitude of quests until the final one can be completed and it can be tedious repeating failed quests, especially if more than once.
When the surprise of knowing what is behind a door is gone, the game can become an exercise in rolling dice over strategy.

Returning to difficulty: I read that it was originally envisioned that the hero players would behave competitively and cooperation between them would make the game too easy.
This of course contradicts the RPG nature of the game and it contradicts the rule book too, which states the players should cooperate and they will collectively win or lose.
Finally, it also contradicts player sensibilities; without cooperation, the wizard in particular for example, has a fairly low chance of surviving a dungeon.

All of this leads me to suspect that either deliberately or accidentally, the game is skewed in favour of the players.
It sort of makes sense because it gives the campaign momentum and keeps events moving forward.
The problem though, is that it can become a frustrating experience for the Zargon player, who in essence has to lose over and over.
It may have been better to do away with having a antagonistic games master role and have a more traditional games master. I get the feeling though that it was done that way to make HeroQuest seem a little more like a 'traditional' board game.
It would have been even better if the game master role could have been automated entirely. I imagine though, that it would've increased the game's difficulty significantly.

Ultimately, I found HeroQuest just about engaging enough to keep my attention, you could never afford to become complacent. Not paying attention was a sure-fire way to get your hero into trouble.
​The campaign does have a narrative, however it's fairly generic and also fairly forgettable.
For me, the pleasure I think, came from the opportunity to play a game cooperatively along with friends.

If you want a light and accessible RPG adjacent experience that's easy to manage without much prep time, you could do a lot worse than HeroQuest.

If you're a parent or adult looking for a way to introduce youngsters to some more elaborate game mechanics and concepts or introduce them to a beginner RPG, then HeroQuest is definitely worth a look in.

16th August 2022

It's a Tuesday and were at The Sovereigns with the Woking Board Gaming Club for some gaming goodness.

​Have you ever watched the classic Jaws movie and decided, 'y'know I wanna be the shark going round chomping on hapless swimmers'?
Then this might be the game for you!

Jaws is a asymmetrical game of 2 halves where up to 3 players take on the roles of film's 3 protagonists and 1 player becomes the shark. 
At first the protagonists will seek to defend Amity Island from shark attacks before finally engaging it in a deadly cat-and-mouse game.

Jaws is played over 2 acts (Essentially 2 different games in reality.) and as such, has a lot of double-sided components mostly relevant to each act.
For the purposes of this blog, I'm mostly going to write about each act separately.

Act 1
What's in a game?

• Game board: This is a double-sided board.
  Amity Island: For act 1 on one side is depicted Amity Island, the fictional setting for the film. It looks like Amity Island is modelled after Martha's Vineyard - which is cool as Martha's Vineyard was used for location filming.
  The island is divided into several different areas, Many of which are numbered 1-8 as well as beaches denominated as N,S,E & W. These areas also include features suck as the docks or mayor's office.
• Meeples: Jaws uses quite a few meeples. They are all wooden tokens
  There are meeples not only for Brody, Hooper and Quint but also their boats which have room to hold their respective meeples! - Except for Brody, he has some binoculars to make up for it instead!
  Obviously there's a big meeple for the shark.
• Cards: Only 1 type of card is used for Act 1.
  Event cards: Each event card will list some of the sections on the map where swimmers will appear. E.g, if an event card states NN3, 2 swimmers will in section N and 1 swimmer will appear in section 3. They may also list a special move that becomes available to the 3 crew or hero protagonists.
• Player boards: Player boards are also double sided.
  Each of the 3 crew (Brody, Hooper & Quint.) gets their own player board. These boards list the moves and abilities of each hero, many of which are similar but some of which are unique to each hero.
• Shark board: That's right, the shark gets their own double-sided board.
  The side used for act 1 allows the shark player to track how swimmers they've eaten. It also has spaces to track barrels attached to the shark.
• Tokens: Jaws has several types of card tokens.
  Crew tokens: To go along with their boards, the 3 crew get tokens. Quint gets 2 barrel tokens, Hooper gets a... fish finder token and Brody gets binoculars and 'beach closed' tokens.
  Swimmers: There 16 swimmer tokens in the game, all of them can be tasty treats for the shark.
  Shark tokens: There are 4 'power tokens' that the shark player can use once per game to give them an edge during act 1.
• Action log: This allows the shark player to secretly track their hidden movement, usage of power tokens and also track what information they have to give to the other players.

That's it for the Act 1 components, now on to...

Act 2
What's in a game?

• Game board: The other side of the game is used for Quint's boat, 'The Orca'.
  The Orca: This side of the board shows open sea and has 8 spaces to place the 8 tiles that form Quint's boat in this act. There are also spaces to place the 'Resurface' deck, 3 cards and a discard pile. More on resurface cards below.
• ​Orca tiles: There are 8 tiles used to represent Quint's boat which appears in act 2. They are double-sided, with one side showing the boat undamaged and the other wrecked. 
• Meeples: Act 2 uses the meeples for the 3 crew and the shark, the boat meeples are not used.
• Player boards: The other side of the player boards provide information on the actions that players can perform in Act 2. It also has a tracker for their hit points.
• Shark board: The shark board for act 2 displays the moves the shark player can perform and tracks the shark's (Very High!) hit points.
• Cards: Act 2 uses several of types of card.
  Gear cards: There are general gear cards as well as specific gear cards for each of the 3 crew. Generally they will be weapons and will show many dice are rolled to inflict damage. Although they are also attachable weapons and accessories which negatively affect the shark.
  Resurface cards: These cards will show areas where the shark might resurface to attack The Orca. It also shows how may dice the shark player rolls to attack and how hard it is for heroes to hit the shark back.
  Shark powers: The shark player will have a number of these that they can use to surprise the hero players.
• Tokens: There are tokens for both the crew and the shark.
  Targeting tokens: There is 1 round card targeting token for each player.
  Resurface tokens: There are 2 sets of 3 resurface tokens, each token in a set is labelled A, B or C. They are also round and made of card.
• Dice: There are 3 red six-sided dice that come with the game. They are not typical six-siders, instead of numbers they show 0, 1 or 2 'hit' icons.

Phew, I think that's it for rules!

Component quality for Jaws ranges from average to very good. Things like the cards and tokens are your pretty standard cardboard affair, which is fine.
The dice seem to be made of acrylic and although they're not as nice as wood, they feel quality with engraved icons instead of printed ones.
The wooden meeples are the standout component, particularly the wooden boats for Hooper and Quint, as well the shark meeple inspired by the films iconic artwork and I think they're cool.

As far as I can tell, the Jaws game has a relatively restrained use of photo art sourced from the film which only appears on a number of the event cards and even then it is used sparingly. It's wise decision in my opinion, as too much can make a game look cheap. The game also seems to reference artwork used for the shark from the film but because it's actually art, it looks good.
Otherwise, art used throughout the game is good, the swimmers tokens and player boards all look good.
The best artwork is found the Amity Island side of the game board though, it's an excellent illustration with lots of pretty detail.

There isn't too much iconography and what there is, is easily understood. Most of the rules information on components comes as written text.

Act 1
How's it play?
​Setup

• Choose players: 1 player should be the playing the shark and the other players will be taking on the roles of the 3 crewmates. If there are less players than heroes, then they should split the roles between them.
  Player boards: Give all players their relevant boards, meeples and tokens.
  Brody gets his board, as well as his binocular and beach closed tokens.
  Hooper gets his board, meeple, boat and fish finder token.
  Quint get his board, meeple, boat and 2 barrels.
  The shark player gets their shark meeple, power tokens and action log.
• Player board: Put out the player board.
  Brody: Put the Brody meeple on the Amity P.D. space.
  Hooper: Put the Hooper meeple on his boat and put the boat on the western dock.
  Quint: Put the Quint meeple on his boat and place it on the eastern dock.
  Put all the remaining barrels on the shop space.
• Shark: The shark player should put their marker on the 0 space on their swimmer tracker. They should keep their 4 power moves face-down and hidden from the other players.
  The shark meeple IS NOT placed on the board at the game start.
• Event cards: Shuffle the event cards into a face-down deck.

On to play
During Act 1, the shark player will be attempting to eat as many hapless swimmers as possible!
Meanwhile, the crew players will be using barrels both to try and locate the shark and to attach them to the shark. The more swimmers the shark eats, the more advantage the shark player has during Act 2.
The round is broken down into several phases and follows a more or less traditional turn order with each player having a number of action points they can spend to achieve their actions.
Phase occur as follows.

• Event phase: 1 card is drawn from the event deck, it will distribute swimmers to various locations throughout Amity Island's beaches. It may also confer a special rule for this round
• Shark phase: The shark player has 3 action points to spend in this phase and basically has 2 types of actions they can perform:
  • Move: All shark movement is hidden and tracked by noting it in the movement log. For 1 action point, the shark can move a space.
  • Eat: For 1 action point, the shark may eat a swimmer. This is hidden from the other players (For Now.) and also logged in the action log.
  • Power tile: The shark player may play on their power tiles, which they do by playing it face-down. Power tiles are once-only special abilities such as extra movement or extra stealth. Once used, they are removed from play.
  • Declare: Once the shark player has finished their actions, they must declare certain information to the other players. This can be done in any order the shark player sees fit.
    They must how many swimmers they've eaten and at what beaches is was at.
    They declare and name regions they passed through that contains a barrel.
    Finally, they must declare if they used a power token but not which one was used.
• Crew phase: The hero protagonists each get 4 action points to spend in this phase and the player can choose the order in which the 3 crew act. However, a hero must complete all their actions before play progresses to another hero.
  There are a number of similar but also unique actions available to the hero protagonists.
  • Move: All the hero protagonists can spend action points to move. Brody doesn't have a boat and must stay on land, while the other 2 must stay in their boats on the sea.
  • Pick up barrels: Brody can carry and deliver 1 barrel from the shop space. Hooper and Quint can pick up multiple barrels from the sea or docks. Hooper can also deliver barrels to Quint.
  • Rescue swimmer: All the hero protagonists can spend an action to remove a swimmer at their current space from the board.
  • Use binoculars: Once per turn, the Brody player can spend an action use their binoculars while at a beach. If the shark player is at the targeted space, they must reveal their position and put the shark meeple on the board.
  • Close beach: Another Brody ability. If the Brody player is at a empty beach, they may spend an action point to put their 'Beach Closed' token on that beach.
    The next time an event card would place any number of swimmers on the closed beach, flip the token to the 'Opening Soon'. Then if a following event card would add swimmers to that beach, instead return the token to the Brody player. Thus, this action protects a beach from 2 event cards.
  • Fish finder: Once per turn and for an action point, the Hooper player may put their fish finder token into their current location.
    Then the shark player must respond in one of the following ways.
    If the shark is in the same space as the fish finder, they must put their shark meeple on the relevant space on the board.
    If the shark is on a orthogonally adjacent space, the shark player must declare 'nearby'.
    If neither of the 2 above conditions it met, then the shark player must state 'neither'.
  • Launch barrel: Once per turn and for action point, the Quint player may fire a barrel into their space or a orthogonally adjacent sea space.
    If the shark is in the space that was targeted by the Quint player, they must declare the barrel has hit them and add it to their shark board.
    If no shark was in the space, the barrel remains there and acts as a sensor to detect shark movement during the remainder of Act 1 or until it is picked up again.
• Next turn: Once all the crew have taken all their turns, play progress to the next round, beginning with the event phase.

Act 1
​Endgame
Act 1 will immediately end if 1 of the following 2 criteria is met:
Barrels: 2 barrels are attached to the shark by the Quint player.
Swimmers: The shark player has eaten 9 swimmers.

On to play
During Act 2, the shark player will be attempting to either totally destroy The Orca or deal enough damage to the crew to what amounts to eating them. Meanwhile, in turn, they will be attempting to deal enough damage to the shark to defeat it.
Play takes place over a number of phases.

• Resurface options: The shark player draws 3 resurface cards and places them in their allotted spaces on the game board.
  Each card has information on the location of where the shark might attack as well how many damage dice will be rolled, how hard it will be for the crew to attack the shark and finally, if the shark will 'shake off' any attached objects.
• Shark player choices: The shark player now decides on an action.
  Resurface token: From the 3 available resurface options, the shark player chooses which one to use and places the corresponding resurface token face-down in front of them.
  Shark abilities: The shark player may play one of their shark ability cards face-down in front of them. Each one of these cards provides the shark player with a bonus or surprise special move of some sort.
  Once played, a shark ability card is discarded out of play.
• Crew Preparation: Now it's the turn of the crew players to make plans.
  Move: Each hero can move up to 2 tiles on The Orca unless they are in water, in which case, they must spend their entire movement to get aboard The Orca.
  Prepare gear: From their hand, each hero chooses a weapon to use, there are slightly different rules for the 3 weapon types which is explained below.
  Crew players may also use a 'chum' card that forces the shark player to reveal one of the 2 resurface tokens they didn't use which narrows the choices down for the crew.
  Use targeting token: Each crew player now puts down their targeting token on to a space, obviously choosing one of the spaces shown on the resurface cards. There are some rules for this though.
  Ranged: When using a ranged weapon, crew player can put their targeting token anywhere on The Orca.
  Melee weapon: While using a melee weapon, a crew player can only put their token on their own space or a orthogonally adjacent space.
  Attachable weapons: Targeting for these weapons is identical to melee weapons.
• Shark reveal: The shark player now reveals the resurface token they chose and places their shark meeple there.
• Crew attacks: Any crew players who correctly targeted the space that the shark resurfaced in, can attack it.
  The weapon that the player is using determines the number of dice used, sometimes it includes a bonus. The amount of 'hits' results rolled becomes the damage done to the shark. However, the resurface card will have a 'evade' value which is deducted from the damage dealt. If 4 damage is done and the evade value is 2, only 2 damage is done, it's possible to reduce damage to 0 this way.
  Attachable weapons are a little different, they automatically hit the shark and have a ongoing effect until the shark player manages to shake them off with a shake off action on a resurface card.
  To be honest, we found the attachable weapons to be of little value as the shark player generally managed to shake them off almost immediately.
  
• Shark attack: Once the crew have had their attacks, it's the turn of the shark! 
  The shark player can attack a part of the boat that they are adjacent to or a member of the crew that is in the water.
  In a similar manner to the crew players, the shark player rolls a number of dice as shown on the resurface card they chose.
  If it is dealt to a crewmate, then that's the damage they take.
  Attacking the boat is a little more complex, each tile 2 numbers, one is the attack value needed to damage the tile and the second larger number is the value needed to outright destroy the tile. Damage does not accumulate and must be applied in a single roll to have an effect.
  Damaged tiles: These are flipped to the other side and have a new value to beat to destroy.
  Destroyed tiles: Are removed from play.
  In either case, any crewmates on a affected tile are put into the water.
  Finally, as a bonus action, the shark player gets a free attack at crewmates who are in the water adjacent to them.
• Next turn: Once the shark player has had their attack, they remove their meeple from the water surrounding The Orca and take back any resurface tokens that were used. The resurface cards are then discarded
  The crew players take their targeting tokens.
  Then a new round begins.

​Endgame
Play continues until 1 of 3 criteria are met.

If the shark's damage exceeds its tracker, it is defeated and the crew collectively win.
If The Orca is totally destroyed, the shark player wins, or, if the damage on all the hero protagonists exceed their tracker, they are all eaten and the shark wins!

Overall
It's been a long time (And I do mean a long time!) since I watched Jaws but I feel the game does for the most part a good job of thematically emulating the movie.
Having Brody rushing around the island kicking pesky swimmers off the beaches and closing them only to have them open and fill with swimmers again felt like the movie. On the other hand, having Brody run around collecting barrels for Quint was strange.
While the shark popping up to attack swimmers before vanishing was cool, Hooper and Quint in their boats playing a cat and mouse game with the shark while trying to rescue swimmers seemed a bit strange. Especially considering the heroes are the cats and the shark is the mouse, which is a bit of a reverse of how the film plays out.
Having said all of that, Act 2 does a excellent job of emulating the protagonist's final confrontation with the shark.

So overall... This is more of a comment than a criticism on the game's theme.

Now, on to game play.
Act 1 presents an interesting cat-and-mouse challenge to the players which will change contextually according to how swimmers are distributed by event cards.
The shark player needs to eat swimmers but avoid spaces that the crew players might target and if possible, avoid the barrels that detect the shark.

Astute crew players will need to balance their efforts between trying to protect beaches with lots of swimmers and also covering lesser used areas. While the busier beaches might provide a target-rich environment for the shark, the shark player may anticipate the crew players protecting those beaches and avoid them for smaller 'quieter' targets.

I get the feeling that if the shark gets a lot of kills or very few, it will have a big influence on who will win in Act 2. Certainly, the shark getting 5 kills (Which is exactly in the middle.) led to a very close finish.

Act 2 also presents a sort of cat and mouse scenario with differing dilemmas for the shark player and the crew players.
The shark player will generally be faced with deciding whether doing damage or avoiding it, often the resurface cards will not allow the shark player to do both. The shark player will may also have the opportunity to target the crew instead of the ship. Eliminating one of the crew can be very beneficial as it lowers the number of attacks the shark may have to face but generally, it's harder and will take longer to kill a crewmate than it is to destroy one of The Orca tiles.

The crew players also face a dilemma. They know the 3 locations where the shark might resurface so with 3 protagonists could target all 3 locations, but this means spreading their firepower and it'll be a tall order defeating the shark this way. So the crew will need to try and anticipate which option the shark player will choose and this require assessing a bunch of contextual elements such as how much damage the shark will do, how high it's evade is and how damaged that part of The Orca is. 

All players will need to adapt to the random circumstances provided by the resurface cards and will probably have to trade off one strategy for another.
It presents the players will meaningful decisions to make, which is always a good thing.

However, there are somethings I definitely do not like about the game.
Firstly, Jaws is a one-vs-many game and I'm not a fan of this game type. Generally the mechanics of one-vs-many games can never balance for the fact that multiple human brains will have an advantage a single human brain. For the most part, it's fairly inherent that 3 players will see more strategies and opportunities than a single player.
Also; when someone is playing the 'one', games can be become a lonely experience since all the other players will be against them.
I can't help but wonder if the shark could have been automated and have the game be fully cooperative.

Secondly, because this is such a asymmetrical game, it means that one set of rules must be learned by the crew players and another by the shark player.
That's not the end of it!
Because there are 2 acts, it means that there are actually 4 sub-games that must be learned.
Luckily, none of the rules are particularly complex or hard to comprehend but even so, it feels like a lot of effort to play a game, then have to learn a new set of rules to continue. More effort than the entertainment the game delivers.

Normally I don't bother blogging about marketing or sales but I have to wonder who this is aimed at? Dedicated games, movie fans?

Most dedicated gamers are with good reason wary of licensed games. They tend to be quick cash-ins with lacking game.
To be clear I don't think that's the case for Jaws, while the rules are light-ish, there's depth of gameplay to found in the cat-and mouse mechanics that pits players against each other. I just didn't find it particularly compelling.

Jaws is a great, classic movie and I'm sure there are collectors of Jaws memorabilia and merchandise but will they care enough about the game to play it. I'm sure it will end up in the collections of those fans but will they be compelled enough to make make the effort to learn and play the game?

If you're really after a Jaws experience and are happy with the game's 2 act structure and cat-and-mouse gameplay. This is by no means a bad game and worth a try.
For me this didn't hit the spot and I have no desire to play it.

30th January 2022

Sunday and we're at The Sovereigns for a rare afternoon of gaming and the beginning of a day of gaming.

Twirl your moustache and laugh your evil cackle! It's time for Marvel Villainous: Infinite Power, a game about the poor misunderstood bad guys of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

What's in a game?

• Player pawns: The most eye-catching component of Marvel Villainous are the oversized pawns, which are busts of 5 Marvel's villains; Hela, Killmonger, Taskmaster, Thanos and Ultron.
• Token holder: The next most noticeable component is the oversized token holder called the Vault by the in game text.
• Player board: These are long, rectangular boards. At the left end is a portrait of the pertinent supervillain, going rightwards are 4 central spaces or locations and then a 'speciality' space at the other end.
  Each central location contains 4 icons of some sort or other. Some icons will be in the top row of a location and some on the bottom row. There are also spaces to place cards at the bottom of each location or to cover the top row of each location. More on this below.
  Icons represent the actions that will be available for the player to perform.
  Marvel Villainous features asymmetrical gameplay and this is apparent in the player board. They all display broadly similar layout but with different details in the central locations.
• Villain guides: Each villain in the game has their own objective and own manner to reaching it, so there's one of these little guidebooks for each villain and they explain what the player needs to do to win.
• Cards: Marvel Villainous makes use of 2 types of deck.
  Villain decks: There's a unique deck for each villain. Cards have cost to play in the top left corner and if they're allies, they'll also have a strength score in the bottom left. Villain decks contain the following types of card.
  Fate decks: These decks are used to provide extra, unpredictable challenges for the players to overcome. There are actually 6 decks here, as well as decks tailored to target each villain, there's also a common deck.
• Tiles: There are 3 sets of speciality tiles which are used by the Killmonger, Thanos and Ultron player.
• Tokens: These are standard round card tokens and come in 3 types.
  Power tokens: Used as the game's currency to pay for actions and card activations.
  +1/-1 tokens: These double-sided tokens are used to modify characters' strength scores.
  Soul mark tokens: Soul mark tokens! These are actually only used if Hela is being played.

The quality of the components is good, nothing felt flimsy or cheap. The tokens, tiles and cards all felt suitably good, the oversized pawns in particular are chunky but they look suspiciously like they're 3d printed as they're single coloured. Having said that, I don't  see it as a drawback, they are pawns. I found the addition of the 'Vault' token holder a bit strange and unnecessary, not that it's unwelcome, it's always good to have something to organise tokens.

It's clear that the game's art direction draws influence from the Marvel films but wisely steers clear of actually using stills from them. Instead the art looks familiar but also comicbook-like, which means it's mostly brash and colourful. There's a lot of illustrations throughout the cards and none of it seemed bad.

Marvel Villainous uses a fair amount of icons and to be honest they weren't very clear initially but the reference sheet provided meant that it wasn't an issue and after a coupe of turns it was pretty clear.

How's it play?
Setup

• Villains: All players should select a villain. They should then take the relevant pawn, villain cards, player board, tiles and guide.
  The villain deck should be shuffled into a face-down deck and 4 cards should be drawn.
• Fate deck: Take the common event cards and the event cards specific to the villains being used in the game, then shuffle them all into a face-down deck.
• The Vault: Put all the pertinent tokens into the Vault token container.
• First player: Determine a first player.

On to play
In Marvel Villainous, the active player moves their pawn to a location performs an action from that new location, play then progresses clockwise to the next active player.

• ​​​Move pawn: The active player moves their pawn to one of the 4 locations on their board. They can them perform 1 of the actions displayed there. If the top row of actions are covered by a card, then they cannot be used. Furthermore, a pawn cannot​ move on to it's current space, it must move to a different location, although the player can use the same action if it's both on the location they're leaving and the one they're heading to.
• Actions: Once the pawn has been used, the active player can use one of the available actions.
  • Activate: The active player can spend the required amount of power to activate any card With an activation icon on it to trigger it's ability.
  • Discard cards: The active player may discard any numbers of cards from their hand.
  • Fate: The active player may reveal a card from the fate deck and resolve it.
    ​There are several types of fate card, when a fate card is drawn it never costs power and the active player is free to use it how they wish unless it targets a specific villain.
    Effects: Similar to the villain deck equivalent.
    Events: There are 2 types of event, global and targeted - which only affects it's specified villain.
    ​When an event card is put into play, it will penalise the villain(s) in some way, this is a ongoing condition until the event is vanquished.  As with villains and heroes, events also have a strength score and when they are 'vanquished', they confer a reward.
    Heroes: You can't have villains without heroes. Hero cards can be placed along the top row of a player's locations. Like allies, hero cards have a strength score.
    Items: Also similar to the villain deck equivalent.
  • ​Gain power: This action allows the active player to gain one or more power tokens.
  • Play card: There are several types of card the active player can put into play.
    Ally: As explained above, ally cards have a strength as well a cost. Strength is used when vanquishing, as explained below. Allies are played on the bottom row of a player's 4 locations to assist them in various ways or on an event if ones  is active. Alternatively, sometimes they can be placed on to the top row of opponents' locations (Covering any top row actions on that location.). Many allies also have some sort of special ability, they may have a activation cost though.
    Item: Item cards have a cost and will also have some sort of bonus or special action. Item cards must be played on to an ally. Item cards may have an ongoing effect or a activation cost.
    Effect: These are one-and-done special actions, once played, they're put into the discard pile.
    Speciality: These are the opposite of one-and-done, when a speciality card is played, it's put into it's pertinent space and its effects are ongoing. Sometimes, speciality cards are tied to a character's unique objectives.
    Relocate: When performing this action, the active player is able to change the position of an ally or item card, Usually this is to the bottom row of their player board or to an event.
    Vanquish: This action can be used equally on heroes/enemy allies that are hindering the active player's board or used on an event, the process is more or less the same. This action does require the active player to have allies in the relevant areas.
    To vanquish cards covering the top row of a location, the active player must have 1 or more allies in the bottom row the same location. To vanquish an event, there must allies assigned to it.
    In either case, the strength of the active player's allies is compared the strength of the card being vanquished and if the allies combined strength meets-or-beats the opposing strength, then the target card is vanquished. All cards involved are discarded.
• Draw cards: If the active player has less than 4 cards in their hand, they draw from their deck until they have 4.
• Next player: Play progresses to the plyer on the left who now becomes the active player.

There are some other rules, but that's the gist of how the game flows

Endgame
The first player to complete their objectives immediately wins.

Overall
In Marvel Villainous, players for the most part will be concerned with advancing their own particular objective (Unless they're playing Thanos!) and will look to optimise their plays. Since a pawn cannot stay on the same location for 2 consecutive turns, players will also want to think at least a turn ahead.
Occasionally the opportunity to mess with other players will arise. Players can also employ the fate deck to interfere with opponents as well but this has the chance to backfire. Having said that, players will need to keep an eye on their opponents who might be close to completing their objectives, in which case priorities will no doubt change, forcing players to decide which is most important.

Thematically I think the game is strong and I like the asymmetrical play and objectives, how they follow the storylines from the related films is well done and shows some flexibility and scope in the game's mechanics.

The core mechanics are pretty solid but I did have few issues with the game. The asymmetrical objectives are good, it also didn't feel very well balanced. Certain supervillains had easier objectives to complete, or so it seemed. I'm not 100% on this though
I found the event cards slowed the actions down without adding any noticeable value to the game, they're just added obstacles and resolving them is identical to vanquishing enemies, only with a harder, higher strength to overcome.
Consequently, it probably extended game, making it a little too long.

I also found the game perhaps a little unengaging. I think this is down to how each supervillain has their own deck and that deck never changes. It means the only strategies available are the ones granted to me by the deck and it feels like the game is holding my hand.
There's definitely some card synergy going on in each deck but a hand size of 4 feels like it limits that synergy and is something I feel was a deliberate decision. As result, I'm unsure of the game's longevity.

I feel that the rules are a little fiddly as a result of the asymmetrical elements but ultimately, Marvel Villainous is for the most a pretty straightforward game and looks more complicated on paper than in play. This is no surprise as I'm sure it's a game meant to have crossover appeal.
So, having said all of that however, I'm probably not the target audience here.

​Core gamers probably won't find much to get their teeth into here but for more casual players, particularly those who are fans of the Marvel films, this light-ish game might be some fun.

28th January 2022

It's Friday evening and we're round Simon's for a night of gaming.

The game of the night was Apollo.

Houston.... we've had a game here.
One small step for gaming and errr, umm... one cooperative game for gamers?

Anyway, enough of the bad jokes.

What's in a game?
​Apollo is an symmetrical cooperative game where 1 player take on the role of mission control and the other players take on the role of astronauts on the titular mission.

• Game boards: Apollo uses 2 game boards of differing difficulty. One each for the Gemini and Apollo missions. The Gemini board depicts a flight path orbiting the Earth while the Apollo board shows a flight plan to the Moon and back to Earth.
• Mission packs: There are mission packs for both the Gemini and Apollo missions which each come in a silvery pouch reminiscent of the pouches used to store astronaut food.
  Each mission pack contains a set of double-sided flight stage cards and some experiment cards. These determine some of the challenges that each mission will face.
• Player screen: This is used by the mission control player to hide stuff that the other player should not know about. Inside, is artwork that various mission control systems and displays.
  The screen comes with widgets that can be clipped to it and then flipped up by mission control to alert the other players that comms are down or something else is wrong.
• Mission control board: This board is used by mission control to track how much damage the flight has taken. This is done with 5 sliders that track the module's 5 different systems; flight control, power distribution, life support, communications and experiments.
  Each go from 8 to 0. When the slider is at 8, everything is hunky dory, when it's at the lower numbers, those systems start encountering problems and when it's a 0, it's quite literally a crisis!
  The mission control board also has a space to place the current experiment card.
• Crisis cards: There are 5 sets of five crisis cards, obviously each set relates to one of the 5 systems.
  When a system crisis occurs occurs, a pertinent card is drawn and resolved, either by mission control or the astronauts.
• Crisis puzzle boards: There are 4 of these square boards, each with a slightly different layout. Certain crisis cards may force the mission control player to complete one.
• Tetrominoes: Used in conjunction with the puzzle boards.
• Astronaut board: This board is designed to look like the controls panels on the flight module and is obviously used by the astronaut players, it essentially has 5 spaces to place dice that correspond to the 5 areas on the mission control board.
• Flight damage board: This square board is used to track damage that occurs to the module.
  It consists of 5 'gridded' rows which again correspond to the 5 systems. Each row has 3 spaces which each contain a 'X' symbol and 3 bonus spaces. Finally there's a 6th 'blank' row at the bottom.
• Dice: There are 12 normal six-siders that come with the game, 6 come in yellow and 6 in black.
• Tokens: Apollo makes use of 2 types of tokens.
  Comm tokens: These tokens display COMM on one side and some will display an icon/action on the other side.
  +/- tokens: These double sided tokens are green on one side and red on the other, they also display a '+' symbol and a '-' symbol. These can be spent to modify the results of dice rolls during the game.
• Pawn: There are 2 types of astronaut shaped pawn/meeple (Astreeple?) in Apollo.
  Black pawn: This the experiment meeple and is used by mission control to track the astronauts' experiments
  Red pawns: these 5 meeples can be used by the astronauts to track information.
• Standees: There are Gemini and Apollo standees used to track mission progress on their associated boards.
• First player token: This coaster sized token displays a picture of an astronaut walking on the moon.

Apollo's components are pretty good throughout and it's clear effort and thought has gone into creating some of them.

The boards, tokens and player screen are all constructed of suitability thick card. While the dice are not wooden, they use a old school LCD numeric font for the numbers which is pretty cool, as are the pouches to store the mission cards.

The astronaut board and particularly the player screen feature very well themed artwork that calls back to sixties computer tech. The art on the astronaut board displays various dials and buttons is perhaps a little sparse but is also clean and doesn't interfere with the game element. Most of the player screen is decorated with evocative artwork of of what I imagine is module controls, the inside has some game information but the rest is an illustration of what mission control might look like. Dig the cup of coffee!
The art that depicts the Earth and the Moon is perfectly fine, they look like what they're meant to.
Finally, the flight stage cards are double-sided and as each one is completed, it's flipped over to show an illustration of that actual stage, which is a nice touch.

The game features little in the way of dedicated iconography, all the information is presented clear terms and is easy to comprehend.

How's it play?
Setup
Since Apollo is a asymmetrical game, it has a asymmetrical setup.

• Player Screen: The mission control player must put up the screen in their playing area and clip on the alert widgets on to it.
  Mission control board: Behind the screen they should place the mission control board and set all the sliders to '8'.
  Crisis cards: The mission control player should then sort all the crisis cards into their respective stacks, then shuffle them into 5 face-down decks and place them close to their related systems.
  Dice: the mission control player should take 1 yellow and 1 black dice and place it behind the screen.
  Comms tokens: The mission control player place 2 'blank' comms tokens behind the screen, then shuffles the remaining tokens into face-down stacks.
• Mission pack: Select the mission pack which has been chosen and set out the flight stage cards sequentially in a row.
  Then shuffle the experiment cards into a face-up deck and place the 1st one on it's space on the mission control board.
• Astronaut players: The astronaut players should put the astronaut board, flight damage board and remaining dice in their playing area.
• First player: A first player should be determined among the astronaut players.

On to play
Apollo is played over a number of rounds, each round has its setup and then is played over a number of turns.​ To make matters worse, Apollo is played in real time and each round only lasts 4 minutes.

• Setup: The mission control player tells the astronaut players how many dice they can roll - this is dependant on the life support rating - the higher the better and only the mission control player knows what the actual rating is.
• Roll the dice: One of the astronauts rolls the dice allotted number of dice.
  Assign dice: Dice results 1-5 are placed into their pertinent rows, covering up the 'X' symbols. 6's are put into the bottom row. After this, the 6's can be reallocated to any of the other 5 rows.
  Resolve dice: Any 'X' symbols not covered inflict that much damage to their system. If the flight control row is displaying 2 'X' symbols, the flight control system slider on the mission control board would have to be moved down 2 points.
  Additionally, each die in any bonus spaces, earns the astronauts +/- tokens (These cannot be used to change the results on the damage board.).

That's it for the setup, then the game goes into the round.

• Mission control player: The mission control player has a number of actions they can perform.
  Track flight: The mission control player moves the standee along its flightpath at the end of every player turn and also tracks when it will encounter a flight stage.
  Additionally, when a flight stage is completed, mission control should flip the relevant card over, revealing the picture on the back.
  Track damage: Mission controls tracks all the damage the flight takes, furthermore they can flip up an alert to tell the players something is wrong somewhere. Mission control may also spend comms tokens to verbally provide the astronauts with more information about damaged systems.
  Comms: Some comms tokens will also have icons or action on the flipside which mission control can spend to aid the astronauts.
  Track experiments: Mission control also tracks the astronauts progress on whatever experiment they're on.
  Deal with a crisis: When a system rating drops to 0, mission control must complete a puzzle board to get it up and running again.

The round goes differently for the astronaut players. Starting with the first player, each astronaut player takes a turn going clockwise and a turn consists of exactly 1 action. An action involves moving one or more dice from the flight damage board on to the astronaut board and resolving them
What are these actions and how do they work?

• Allocating dice: Actions usually require several dice and differing actions will have different dice requirements, they might require only yellow or black dice, or even alternating colours, some might require identical or ascending numbers and so on. Some actions (Generally flight stages and experiments.) require a set number of dice to complete, most of these actions can be completed over a number of turns, in this case, they stay on the relevant space until the 
  Other actions scale, i.e. the action gets better the more dice are allocated to it.
• Flight control: This action allows the astronaut players to contribute dice to completing the flight stage goal.
• Power distribution: This action allows mission control to adjust the sliders on their mission control board, this is also a scaling action, so the more dice allocated to the action, the more adjustments mission control can make.
• Life support: Using this action allows the astronauts to gain +/- tokens.
• Experiments: This action allows the astronauts to contribute dice towards completing the current experiment.
• Communications: Performing this action allows mission control to acquire more comms tokens.
• Repair systems: Allocating dice to this action allows mission control to increase the rating of one of the systems.
• End of turn: Once the active player has had their action, mission control moves the standee 1 space along the flight path and the next astronaut player become the active player.
• End of round: The current round ends when 1 of 3 criteria is met.
  All dice have been allocated.
  4 minutes are up.
  The astronauts decide to end the round.
  Regardless of how the round ends, the following round begins with mission control announcing how many dice the astronauts may roll.

Play progresses with the players (Hopefully!) successfully completing the required number of flight stages and experiments

Endgame
During play, if the module passes a flight stage space on the board without completing its requisite task or the flight control rating is lower then 4, then the mission immediately fails.
If the module reaches splashdown without completing the required number of experiments, then the mission fails.

However, if all the flight stages and experiments are completed, then mission is a success and the players win the game.

Overall
The rules for Apollo sound quite clunky in writing but in actual play, they felt straightforward and once players begin performing actions, it becomes quite understandable.  I wouldn't call it a crossover game but I imagine that it would be easy to pick up.

Apollo is quite unusual, being an asymmetrical cooperative game and I think it fits its theme quite well too.
Having that slight disconnect between mission control and the astronauts somehow lends the game a greater sense of teamwork.
Astronauts having to rely on mission control to get information and mission control having to rely on the astronauts to get comms tokens and to be able to make changes to systems means players have to work together.
It's definitely a bit different to the typical cooperative game where players are cooperating but generally sort of off doing their own thing. Another noticeable and welcome difference is how there's no characters running round a global board trying to stop the spread of something here.

​During the game, players will be, broadly speaking, faced with 3 types of obstacle; successfully completing flight stages, successfully completing experiments and firefighting damage that occurs during the flight.
There's a real need to strike a balance between these 3 priorities and players will also have to approach this as efficiently as possible, the flight module moves along the board after every turn and is in essence another countdown timer. It means planning for the known variables of the flight stages, somewhat knowable experiments and also reacting and adapting to unpredictable damage inflicted on the command module and there will be damage!  There are 15 damage spaces on the flight damage board and only 10 dice to cover them, that means at least 5 damage to the systems every round.
Being a cooperative game, Apollo uses the luck or specifically the bad luck that arises from rolling those dice to challenge players.

The game also features a time limit in the form of a 4 minute timer: On paper this might not seem like much time but in play it's perhaps a little overgenerous.
4 minutes to assign 10 dice works out to be 240 seconds for 10 dice or 24 seconds per die, which we did not find much of an issue.

We played the Gemini mission board a couple of times and it didn't present too much challenge for us, there were a definite couple hiccups and dicey (sic) moments but otherwise it was pretty much plain sailing or more accurately, plain err.... orbiting? Mission control never had to reach for the puzzle boards.
However, we are a fairly experienced band of players and maybe for once, the luck went our way this time.
We didn't get round to playing the Apollo mission board which is probably where the meat of the game lies and certainly looks more challenging, so I'm reserving judgement on the game's difficulty.

I'm not certain about the game's replay-ability either, it wasn't boring but at the same time felt a little samey, players are ultimately just assigning dice to tasks, some of which may become quite familiar over multiple plays.

Easy to learn with a reasonable play time and providing some interesting decisions to make, I'd say that Apollo is a good game to play every once in awhile and if cooperative games are your cup of tea, then it's definitely worth checking out this fresh take on cooperative gameplay.

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.