3rd February 2022

Thursday night gaming at Simon's came to a conclusion with the 2nd and final game of the evening; Nidavellir.

Google tells me that Nidavellir might mean the wane of the moon and is derived from Norse cosmology.

Protect the dwarf kingdom from the ravages of a dragon by taking on the role of a Elvaland councillor and collecting sets of cards... err... gathering the bravest army of dwarves possible by trawling pubs (I kid you not.).
Where's Sneezy when you need him eh? More like boozy!

What's in a game?

• Player board: There one of these unusually shaped boards for each player.
  At the top of each board is an circular indentation to slot in an 'Elvaland gem'.
  Down the left side are 3 large 'tavern' illustrations for the Laughing Goblin, Dancing Dragon and Shining Horse taverns which are also respectively marked with 1, 2 or 3 flagons and below them are 2 more circular indentations around an illustration of a money pouch
  Finally, each board has 2 columns of numbers that run down the right side, one in green and the other in purple. The green is labelled with a hunter's horn and the purple with a blacksmith's hammer.
• Tavern sign tiles: These 3 largish tiles each have illustrations identical to the tavern symbols found on player boards.
• Trade gem tiles: There are also 3 of these and they go with the tavern sign tiles.
• Elvaland gem tiles: Unsurprisingly these card tiles are styled after gems, they're also number 1-5 and there's a 'special' gem numbered 6.
  Gems are used to break ties during the game.
• Coins: The coins in Nidavellir are generously sized, circular card tokens and there are a lot of them too! They come in 2 types.
  Starter coins: These bronze coloured coins come in sets of 5 and are numbered on with a 0 and 2-5 (There's no 1!) and the 0 coin also has a special action called coin trade which is explained further below.
  There is 1 set of 5 per player.
  Upgraded coins: These coins are numbered 5-25, they are identically sized to the starter coins. Broadly speaking there are 2 each of the lower half of numbers and 1 each of the higher values.
• Cards: Nidavellir also features a lot of cards that come in a lot of types.
  Dwarf cards: These form the bulk of the game's cards and also the sets that players will collect. Firstly they are classified in 2 categories; Age 1 and Age 2.
  In the top-right corner, they will have a coloured rank symbol that may also a numeric bravery value (A.K.A VPs) and beneath that will be a icon that indicates the dwarf's class. There are 5 classes/colours: Blacksmith, Explorer, Hunter, Miner and Warrior.
  Hero Cards: These are basically less common and better versions of dwarf cards. They typically come with some benefit or bonus for the owning player.
  Royal offering cards: There are only a few of these cards which confer some sort benefit on the owning player, they are also categorised by Age 1 and Age 2.
  Distinction cards: There are 5 distinction cards which can be earned midgame and provide a boost or benefit to the owning player.
  Royal offering cards: There are Age 1 and Age 2 royal offering cards that can be used to upgrade coins - more on this below.
• Card holders: The game comes with 4 little plastic card holders that allow the hero and distinction cards to be displayed in a up right more visible position.
• Royal treasure: This is a fancy name for a cardboard rack that has slots to hold all the upgrade coins. To be fair, it does also serve the purpose of allowing players to see which coins have been taken.

The physical components in Nidavellir are all good. The tokens and tiles are all thick and chunky, I quite like the large sized coins, they feel a bit like poker chips.
The cards holders and especially the royal treasure are a nice touch too. However, since they can only be easily viewed from one side, it sort of forces the game to have a strange setup where the card holders and treasure rack are along one edge of the playing area instead of in the centre with all the players along the other edges. 

Nidavellir also makes good use of artwork, most of which appears on the cards, they contain well detailed, good quality illustrations of different dwarfish characters painted in a sort of monochromatic watercolour style along with a dash of a single colour. Usually I'd find this kind of art a bit dull, but here it works and gives the game a distinctive look.

Much of the iconography is clear but some of the hero cards have symbols which are quite small and may also need looking up occasionally.

How's it play?
​Setup

• Royal treasure: Put out the royal treasure rack, filling it with all the associated coins that go on it.
• Distinction & hero cards: Put out all the distinction cards on 1 card holder and the hero cards on the remaining 3 holders. spread out so that everyone can see the information on the left edge of the cards.
• Tavern Tiles: Put out the 3 tavern tiles in a vertical line with the goblin tile at the top, dragon tile below it and horse tile at the bottom, matching the order on the player boards.
  Then place a trade gem tile next to each tavern tile.
• Cards: Shuffle all the Age 1 cards into a face-down deck, do the same with the Age 2 cards.
• Players: Give each player a player board and 5 starting coins.
• Elvaland gems: Finally, take the Elvaland gems as determined by player count, shuffle them and deal 1 to each player face-down. Each should then reveal their gem and place it in the indentation at the top of the player board.

On to play
Nidavellir is an auctioning game that has players simultaneously perform series of 3 blind bids during each round. Once bids are revealed, actions are resolved in an order determined by the bids.

• Populate Taverns: Those dwarves certainly need their liquid lunches.
  From the Age 1 deck draw cards and place them face-up next to each of the 3 taverns, keep adding cards until each tavern has a number of cards equal to the number of players.
• Blind bids: In each round all players must make 3 blind bids using 3 of their 5 coins.
  To do so, they must put a coin face-down on each of the 3 tavern spots on their player board, this will be their bid for the cards at the corresponding tavern tile. Thus a coin put on the goblin space is what the player is bidding to take a card from the goblin tavern tile.
  Each player's 2 remaining coins are placed in the indentations around the money pouch.
• Resolve bids: Once all bidding has concluded, all bids are simultaneously revealed.
  Then, starting with the Laughing Goblin tavern, the player who bid the most on that tavern takes the card of their choice, the 2nd highest bidder goes 2nd and so on until all players have taken a card, it means the turn order will change from bid to bid.
  The same is done with the Dancing Dragon and finally the Shining Horse.
  Ties: If 2 or more players bid the same amount, then Elvaland Gems are used to break the tie and the highest value goes first.
  After a tie occurs, the players who tied must swap gems.
  Trade coin: This is 1 of 2 ways to upgrade coins.
  It occurs when the 0 value coin is used in one of the bids, whoever played it must reveal the 2 coins they put in their money pouch.
  The value of the 2 coins is added together, then a coin equalling that value is taken from the royal treasure and replaces the highest valued coin that was placed in the money pouch which, if it's a starter coin, is discarded out of the game. If it was a upgrade coin, it's returned to the royal treasure.
  A player can only ever have 5 coins and unusually for an auctioning game, the players' bids are never discarded.
• Place card: When a player takes a dwarf or hero card, they must be placed into that player's area in a specific manner.
  All cards of the same class/colour must go into a single vertical column on the right side of the player board. Blacksmith and hunter cards should ideally be on the leftmost cards with their rank symbols lined up with the pertinent symbols on their player board.
  Since there are 5 classes/colours, players will end up with 5 columns of cards.
  Other cards: Cards that do not have a class should be put on the left of the player board.
  ​Rows: When a player puts down a card that creates a row of 5 cards - which is row of one of each class/colour, they immediately take a hero card and add it to their playing area. If that card completes 2nd row, then a 2nd hero card can be taken and so on.
  This ability is triggered any time a row is completed.
• Next round: Once all taken cards have been resolved, play progresses to the next round, more cards are drawn from the Age 1 deck and placed next to each tavern.
  Players then flip their coins face-down again and begin blind bidding again.
• Transforming coins: This is the 2nd method to upgrading a coin. Typically this'll be the result of a special ability or royal offering card and will increase the value of a single coin. So a '+4' would turn a '6' into a '10'. Again, a 10 coin taken from the royal treasure would replace the 6.
• Distinction cards: When the Age 1 cards have been depleted... it's the end of an age! The game then goes to allocating distinction cards.
  There are 5 distinction cards, one for each of the game's classes.
  For every class, all players compare the cards that they have each collected. The player with the majority of cards in that class collects its distinction card and whatever benefits it confers.
  This is done for all classes.
• Age 2: The game now continues as before, except dealing the Age 2 cards to the 3 taverns

Endgame
Play continues until the Age 2 cards are also depleted, then the game goes to scoring.
Each of the 5 classes has it's own way to score VPs, suffice to say; the more cards a player has in a class, the more that set scores.
Bonus VPs which can come from various sources should then also be added in.
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Nidavellir does a good job of mixing set collecting with auctioning.
The set collecting element is  about a mixture of getting the cards you want and sometimes collecting a card just to deny it to another player. Sometimes you'll be completing to build sets and sometimes you'll want to take a card no one else does on the cheap. Pretty standard stuff for set collecting and what you'd expect.

The auction mechanics offer something a little different.
​I have to say I'm not the biggest fan of auctioning games, I don't dislike them and I've enjoyed some of them but they're not really my jam. I've often found bidding decisions could be a little stress inducing, which is probably why some people love them so much! Nidavellir cleverly bypasses some of this with it's auction system because players never lose their bids.
Instead of trying to out bid someone or bluff a bid up, players will be trying to gauge how others will bid.

This requires not only watching what cards others have been collecting and trying to anticipate what they will prioritise in each bid but also paying attention to how they've been upgrading their coins. 
If another player has a coin that's got a higher value, it will never be possible to simply outbid them and it might not be even worth going against them and could be a good time to play that 0 coin and get an upgrade instead. There may also be other times when players want to bid low such as when all the cards in a tavern are not valuable or if they're not valuable to other players.

This means that Nidavellir has 3 avenues of strategy that the player must take into account.
Not only do players have to keep an eye on which dwarf cards to try and acquire, they'll want to think about creating rows as well as columns to earn hero cards which cna prove very useful.
Players will also need use that 0 coin to upgrade coins - which is essentially a form of arms race that can't be ignored - unless a player thinks they can win by being last in every auction!

Nidavellir is a solid game and I can't find anything to fault about it. It isn't particularly complicated but there's definitely enough depth here to keep players engaged and generally give them meaningful decisions to make.
If you like auctioning or set collecting games, it's probably worth a look. If you like auctioning and set collecting games, Nidavellir is definitely worth a look.

31st August 2021

We're at The Sovereigns in Woking with the Woking Gaming Club for some Tuesday evening gaming.

The first game of the night was Raids.
Raids is a game about Vikings going around doing what they do, which is raiding and pillaging.
What? You say, that's a cliché and Vikings were also explorers, traders, craftsmen and so on, well this game is called Raids, so raiding and pillaging it is; and all for glory!

• Game board: This board shows a number of landmasses surrounding a central sea area.
  Following the coastline is a dotted line that represents the voyages the Viking adventurers (The Players.) will undertake.
  Also along the coastline are a number of rectangular 'encounter' spaces and 3 square 'village' spaces.
  Finally, there's the start/finish harbour space.
• Voyage tiles: These rectangular tiles represent the various events and challenges the players will encounter during their voyages. On their backs they are numbered 1-4 for the 4 voyages that occur during the game.
  There are various different types of tile.
  Improvement tiles: This type of tile includes, Axes which grant a bonus when fighting monsters and Sails and Hammers, which respectively allow you to recruit more ​Vikings and earn Glory (Victory.) points for Vikings at the game end.
  Glory tiles: These come in 2 types. Pennants allow a player to straight up score Glory points and Goods tiles score Glory points if traded.
  Rune tiles: This is a set collection tile that scores at the game end.
  Port tiles: These can be used to sell Goods tiles. They come in single or double size!
  Event tiles: These tiles allow players Visit (Collect a Viking meeple.) or Pillage (Gain money.).
  Monster tiles: These tiles are a menace to all voyaging Vikings, defeating them earns Glory.
• Harbour tiles: These square tiles each have an objective and are used in conjunction with the Harbour space, players can earn money by completing these objectives.
  Usually these objectives are about collecting the most of something.
• Coins: These metal coins come in a denomination of 1, 3 & 6.

The components for Raids are all universally good, the board and tiles are nice and sturdy, the wooden longship and Viking meeples are great components and the metal coins are an nice touch.
Artwork on the game board is nice and colourful and the longship board are also good,  the art on the voyage tiles is a little drab, a little more colour would make them pop but it's only a very minor quibble.
There isn't too much iconography in the game and mostly it's very clear what it means.
All-in-all, excellent, top notch production values for Raids.

How's it play?
​Setup

• Sort the voyage tiles into 4 stacks according to their number and shuffle them into 4 face-down decks.
  Deal the '1' tiles face-up on to the rectangular spaces on the game board.
  ​Populate the village squares with the relevant number of Viking meeples.
• Put the starting harbour tile on to the harbour space on the board, shuffle the remaining harbour tiles and one face-up next to the remaining stacks of voyage tiles, dealing 3 in total.
• Give each player a longship board.
• Determine a starting order. then distribute Viking meeples to each player according to their position in the turn order.

On to play.
​Raids is played over 4 voyages which each involve journeying around the game board. During these voyages, the players will stop at the randomly placed voyage tiles and deal with those encounters.

• Active player: The active player is whoever is in last place on the current journey and they carry out the following actions.
  Collect: The active player collects the voyage tile for the location they are currently stopped at. Obviously this doesn't count for the first movement since all Longships start in the harbour. More on collecting tiles below.
  Discard: The active player must discard all voyage tiles between themselves and the next player. However, tiles displaying an orange arrow are never removed this way.
  This is clearly to stop a player in last place hopping from encounter to encounter when in last place.
  Movement: The active player must travel onwards, they can travel forward as far as they like and stop at any tile with only one stipulation; they cannot stop at a tile or space with an orange arrow, they can only move past orange arrows, although this may trigger an action. More on this below.
• Combat: If the active player's Longship stops at the same location as another player's, then battle ensues.
  Combat in Raids is essentially an auctioning mechanic.
  Whoever initiated combat must discard 1 Viking meeple.
  The other player may retaliate by discarding 2 Viking meeples.
  Now the initial player may retaliate by discarding 3 Viking meeples.
  This continues until one player chooses to or must flee, in which case they don not discard any Viking meeples and move forward to another encounter of their choice.
  If a player has no Viking meeples, they cannot initiate combat and cannot stop at the same encounter as another player's Longship.
• Collecting tiles: This is never done at the end of a player's movement, but before it on their following turn. It's an important distinction because it allows other players a chance to oust a player before they encounter the tile.
  After collecting a tile, it may go on to the player's Longship board or by the side of it.
  Improvement tiles: These are placed on to one of the spaces on the Longship board.
  Glory tiles: Are also placed on the game board.
  Rune tiles: When Rune tiles are collected, they are put to the side of the Longship board.
  Port tiles: These are also put to the side of the Longship board, furthermore, when collecting a Port tile, the active player may remove 1 or 2 Goods tile from their board and place it next to the Port tile. This means the Goods tile(s) will score at the game end. Additionally, collecting a Port tile gains the active player a Viking meeple.
• Passing tiles: Some voyage tiles and certain spaces on the game board are marked with an orange arrow, players cannot stop at these spaces. Instead they must stop before or after them. Unlike the tiles mentioned above, these tiles are resolved as the active player crosses it.
  Monster tiles: When encountering a monster tile, the active may sacrifice a poor hapless Viking meeple to sail past it or fight the monster. Fighting a monster requires sacrificing the requisite number of poor hapless Vikings to defeat it! However, this means the player can take the Monster tile, place it next to their Longship board and score it at the game end.
  If a player has no Vikings when they pass a Monster tile, then they simply move past it.
  Visit tile: The 1st player to pass a Visit tile acquires 2 Viking meeples, the 2nd player to pass it collects 1. Visit tiles are never collected.
  Pillage tile: The 1st player to pass a Pillage tile acquires 3 money, the 2nd player to pass it collects 1. Pillage tiles are never collected.
• Village spaces: When passing a Village space on the board, each player collects a single Viking meeple.​
• End of voyage: When a player completes a tour of the board and returns to the harbour space, they place their Longship token into the space for their finishing position and the starting order for the next voyage.
  ​Once all players have returned, cash is given out to the player who best meets the objective, then lesser amounts to the 2nd and 3rd best to meet the objective.
• New voyage: Any remaining tiles are removed.
  ​Tiles from the next voyage are placed on the gameboard, Populate the village spaces with more Viking meeples and begin the next voyage.

Endgame
Play continues until all players have completed the 4th voyage, then scores are calculated. Players can earn Glory points from a number of sources.
Pennant tiles on a player's Longship earns straight up Glory points.
Hammer tiles on a Longship earn points per Viking also on the Longship.
Goods tiles that have been traded earn Glory Points.
Sets of Rune tiles collected earn points accordingly.
Monsters defeated earn points.
Finally, cash accumulated during the game earn Glory points on a 1-to-1 basis.
All points are tallied, Highest score wins.

Overall
Travelling around the map, players will faced with a central choice on deciding how far to move their Longship? Should a player move slowly to encounter more tiles or rush ahead to a tile they really want? This is of course contextual and players will have to identify what they need and prioritise accordingly.
They'll also have to keep an eye out for the behaviour of other players and want to gauge their motivations. The rule where players can only collect tiles at the start of their turn slots into this nicely, possibly allowing other players to fight for the tile and keeping the situation tense. A worker placement game that allows workers to drive off other workers!

I also like how the Longship board works, merging aesthetics and mechanics. It's a great visual representation of what players are carrying and crew limitations.

The game is in essence a mid-to-light worker placement game with a touch of auctioning and resource management mechanics.
Raids fits its Viking theme reasonably well as players sail around, trading and plundering while battling mythic beasts and each other.

Having said that, I found the game a little unengaging, maybe a little too abstract. I could sail pretty much anywhere I wanted with generally minimal risk, it never felt like epic adventuring. Combat was fairly rare, mostly players didn't complete too much for the same resources but it felt bland, a quick glance at other player's Viking meeples will tell you if you can be beat them or not and at what cost. 

I'm also a little uncertain of how much replayability Raids has. Even though it has random placement for the encounter tiles, because they're not really interdependent on each other, it felt like it didn't matter the order in which you might encounter them, especially since I could sail as far as I wanted.

I don't think Raids is a bad game, if someone wanted to play it, I'd have no problem joining in (But not too often!), but it's not a game I'd pick.

20th July 2021

I'm in Woking at the Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club.

The second and final game of the evening was For Sale; time for some property flipping and stressful auctioning action.

What's in a game?
For Sale is a card game and comes with 2 types of cards.

• Property cards: There are 30 property cards, unsurprisingly numbered from 1-30.
• Currency cards: There are also 30 currency cards, these sort of represent the money in the game's property market and are worth from $2,000 to $15,000, increasing in increments of $1,000 with 2 of each, along with 2 cards worth $0.
• Coins: Standard card tokens that represent $1,000 or $2,000

It's no surprise that quality of the the cards and coin tokens are pretty standard and as you'd expect them.
Artwork on the property cards is pretty good, colourfully depicting 30 different properties ranging from a lowly cardboard box for the 1 card to an orbiting space station for the 30 card. The currency cards all identically depict cheques of various values
​There's not much else to say here.

How's it play?
Setup

• ​Shuffle the property cards into a face-down deck, depending on the number of players, some cards will need to be blindly discarded.
• Shuffle the currency deck into a face-down deck, as with property cards, an identical number of currency will need to be blindly discarded.
• Dole out coins to each player, the exact amount will also depend on the number of players.

On to play
For Sale is played over 2 phases, in the 1st, players use their money to buy properties and in the 2nd, they use these to get currency cards, essentially flipping the properties for profit.
Phase 1: Buying properties.

• From the property deck, draw a number of cards equal to the number of players and place them face-up in the playing area.
• Players now bid on these properties in an open auction, although players should keep the number of coins they possess secret from other players.
  The starting player begins with an opening bid of their choice.
  Players that follow must put in a higher bid or pass.
  When a player passes, half of the money they bid (Rounded down.) is returned to them and they acquire the lowest valued card from the currently available selection.
  This bidding and passing continues until only one player remains, who pays their full bid for the last card - which will naturally be the highest valued property.
  Now deal another set of cards and start the bidding again.
  ​This continues until all the property cards have been acquired.

That's it for phase 1.
Phase 2: Flipping those properties.

• From the currency deck, deal a number of cards equal to the number of players and place them face-up into the playing area. I guess these cards sort of represent the buyer's demand for properties and the money they're willing to shell out on them.
  Players now bid in order to sell their properties to these buyers, however, this takes the form of a blind auction. Each player now chooses a property from those they acquired in phase 1 and plays it face-down.
  All properties are simultaneously revealed. The highest valued property will acquire the highest valued currency card for its player, i.e. the nicest property attracts the richest buyer. The 2nd highest valued property acquires the 2nd highest valued currency card and so on until all the currency cards have been acquired.
  Deal another set of cards and continue blind-bidding on them until all currency cards have been acquired.

That's both phases done.

Endgame
​Players tally the values of all the currency cards they acquired and any coins that were unspent from phase 1.
Highest score wins.

Overall
​For Sale is a simple game to play, it features two types of auctioning that're easy to understand, however there are a couple of curveballs that that affect the game's dynamic.
Firstly in phase 1; which is an open auction, there's the rule that states when a player passes, they only get half their bid back and the lowest valued card. It means the classic play of trying to run up someone else's bid is a risky proposition, you may well end up running yourself up for a very low value card as well. Even the act of initially bidding may cost a player more than they want to spend, it's something player's need to think about.
All the property cards drawn have to be acquired by players and it may not seem like it, but sometimes a lower valued card can end up generating more profit. Why? Because the value of a card does not necessarily dictate its worth.

This brings me to phase 2; the blind auction. This is where player's sell their properties to get profit, however the profits that players can potentially generate will contextually change from round to round and depends on the currency cards drawn. No matter how much you paid for a property card, when you use it, it will only generate income according to the currently drawn currency cards.
This is where players have to start watching what other players will do and know when to push high or low valued property.

If a $15,000 currency card had been drawn and you know another player has the 30 point property card, you know they're going to play it - it guarantees them the $15,000 card, so is it a good time for you to use a high value card? On the other hand, the 2nd highest might be worth it, or it might be not.
Conversely; in some circumstances, the lowest value cards can have great worth, if all the currency cards drawn are high value, it can be a good time to play lower value cards, remember it's all about profit not value.
A 30 point property card that costs $8,000 and nets a $15,000 currency card, generates a profit of $7,000.
If 1 point property that cost 0 because somebody passed and took it for free is used to get a $8,000 property, then that's $8,000 profit!
This example is extreme and doesn't realistically occur too often, but the principal is sound; if demand is high (Multiple high value currency cards are drawn.), then it's time to push your lowest value properties for maximum profit; capitalism at its finest!
Conversely, if there are fewer high value currency cards out there, playing a high value property at the right time will outbid other players and score the maximum profit.

All this makes For Sale a very situational, essentially contextually-driven game about managing the game's inherent unpredictability and adapting when it's called for. It becomes about not only knowing when to play which cards, but also watching what properties other players have and trying to predict their strategies, which can profoundly effect yours.

I have love/hate relationship with auction games, the unpredictably always worries me and For Sale is more unpredictable than most in my opinion.
Even so, it's an enjoyable game and definitely worth a try, if you're a fan of auction games, you should really try it.

21st December 2019

It's the last Saturday night before Christmas and we're at Matakishi's for some board games. 

This is a game about accumulating stocks in railway companies, running railway companies and paying out dividends.
Yep, this is 'Irish Gauge' and not 1830.

Irish Gauge is a game that simultaneously is the same as and also completely different to 1830.
That is, it shares the same themes as 1830, but is a quite different game.

​What's in a game?
​Irish Gauge components.

• Board: The board is a map that depicts a chunk of Ireland and is covered in hexes (All respectable railway games have hex covered maps.). The map shows cities and towns, as well as difficult terrain. Finally the map shows a 3x8 grid for dividends and info for calculating dividend payouts and managing shares and share order.
• Cubes: 30 Coloured wooden, 10 cubes in each of 3 colours (Little wooden cubes are always welcome in a eurogame.). Cubes serve 2 functions. Firstly they are used to show what goods a city produces and secondly, they are used to dictate the market demand when a player calls for a dividend.
• Bag: The cubes go into the bag.
• Shares: There are 5 companies in Irish Gauge and each company has 2-4 shares. Each share has a 'initial value'. Shares are placed into 5 company stacks, with the lowest value share on the top and the highest on the bottom.
• Train meeples: There are 19 train meeples for each company. 

That's more or less all the components. They are all made to a good standard. There is minimal artwork in the game, but it has a clean and functional look.

How's it play?
​We begin with setup, which is pretty simple.

• Lay out the board and place the 5 stacks of share cards in their allotted places.
• Put 4 cubes of each colour (12 in total.) in the bag and blindly draw out 8 and place them on each of the cities. When this is done add the remaining cubes to the bag.
• Each of the 5 starting companies has a starting city, place 1 train meeple on its respective starting city.
• Give each player 20 currency.

And we're ready to go.

Initial auction
Before normal play commences, there is a 'initial auction' This is where players get to bid on and auction one share from each of the 5 companies.

• Determine a starting player. This player opens bidding on the first share up for auction. They must bid at least the initial value shown on the card or pass. The player can choose to pass.
• Play proceeds to the left. Following players must bid a higher value or pass (Or chooses to pass.). Any player who passes is out of the bidding on that card.
• Bidding continues until all players bar one have passed. That player wins the auction.
• Whoever wins the auction opens bidding on the next card up for auction.
• If every player passes on a share, then the starting player gets the share for free!
• Auctioning continues until all shares have been auctioned.

Now normal play can start. The first player is determined by whoever bought a certain share.
In their turn, the active player can perform 1 of 4 actions, these are: Place track, place a special interest, auction a share and call for a dividend.
Place track:
This is probably the most common action in the game

• The active player can only build a railway line for a company that they have at least 1 share in.
• The active player will have 3 points with which to build a railway line for one company.
• The railway line must connect either to the company's starting city, or some other part of the railway line.
• It costs 1 point to build in a empty hex or empty town/city.
• It costs 1.5 points to build in a hex or town/city that already has another railway line going through it.
• It costs 2 points to build in an empty difficult terrain hex. Only 1 railway line can go through a difficult terrain hex.

Place a special interest:

• This allows the active player to turn a town into a city.
• The active player looks in the bag and take out a cube if their choice.
• The active player places the cube in a town of their choice - provided that town is connected to the railway line of a company in which they have at least 1 share.

Auction a share:

• The active player chooses any share to auction and must bid at least the minimum value on the share.
• Play proceeds to the left. Following players must bid a higher value or pass (Or chooses to pass.). Any player who passes is out of the bidding on that card.
• Bidding continues until all players bar one have passed. That player wins the auction.

Call for a dividend:

• When the active player calls for a dividend, the blindly draw 3 cubes from the bag. The 3 cubes go into the 3x8 grid (Along the 3 axis obviously.) These 3 cubes will indicate which cities on the board a playing out.
• If one of each colour is drawn, then all cities pay out. If only 1 or 2 colours are then only those colours pay out. Doubles (Or triples!) count for nothing.
• Then in share order, calculate how much money each company makes. Each city connected to a company's railway line generates 4, each town generates 2. This is the dividend the company pays out.
• The dividend is paid out to the shareholders. If there is only one shareholder, they get all the money. Otherwise it is divided up according to the number of shares owned by players and paid out per share.

Endgame
The game ends when there are no more cubes in the bag, either because of a dividend being called or placing a cube as a special interest on the board.

All players tot up their cash plus the initial value of the shares they own. Highest cash wins.

Overall
Irish Gauge is a railway building game with stocks and shares and companies.
It's actually quite a common theme in board games. But Irish Gauge plays nothing like any of these other games.

It seems like the basic strategy is that players need to build railways, to issue dividends, to buy shares.
Simple, right? Not necessarily.
Whilst players may want to maximise their railway network before calling dividends, to get as much money as possible to have more funds when bidding on shares during an auction.

Waiting a long time to buy shares is a risky move.

Why? There limited opportunities to call for dividends because when the game starts, there will only be 22 cubes in the bag and each dividend uses 3 cubes. So there's maximum of 8 times a dividend can be called - and the last dividend will be with 1 cube! This is of course, provided nobody uses cubes to upgrade towns.

So shares bought later in the game will benefit less because there will be less dividend pay outs. This isn't so bad if you get a shares at the initial value, but that's unlikely to occur. So paying an extra 20 to get a share that only pays out 5 twice is actually a loss of 10!
This means players will want to get shares as quick as possible, but at the same time, it's prudent to wait and see if other players have low funds as this is a great time to trigger an auction, since they may have to pass, giving the active player a share at the initial value.

It's like some sort of horrible balancing act.

There's more as well. If a player thinks they benefit from a dividend more than anyone else, then they might ignore buying shares or improving their network and may just call dividend after dividend and 'run out' the game. However there's a random element to dividends, so they may scupper themselves.

After playing the game a couple of times: It seems to me that how a player places their railway lines is a bit of a 'no-brainer'. But on reflection I don't think this is as much of an issue as I first thought. Perhaps when to call for dividends may seem more vital for the game than anything else - provided the right cubes are pulled from the bag of course.

There's a lot to think about here, which is good.

Finally, Irish Gauge plays as fast as a roadrunner with it's backside on fire.
If you're used to slow and meaty railway games, Irish Gauge may feel quite fresh with it's relatively short play time.

I'm not certain if Irish Gauge will stand up to extended play. But it's worth giving it a couple of plays at least.

16th November 2019

​Saturday night gaming at 'Matakishi's' continues.

The second game of the evening was 'High Society'.

Some people are just obsessed with reputation, luxury, wealth and prestige and will pay anything to elevate it. Well almost anything.
These are the trials and tribulations 'endured' by the aspiring wealthy and privileged, where image is everything.
​
What's in a game?
High Society has broadly speaking 2 types of card.

• Bidding decks: There are 5 of these, one for each player. Each deck consists of 11 cards, with values from 1,000 Francs to 25,000 Francs.
• Status cards: There 16 of these oversized cards. 10 luxury cards that score points(Valued from 1-10.), 3 prestige cards that double a player's final score and finally 3 disgrace cards that lower the player's score in different ways

The version that we played is themed to the 'roaring 20's' in Paris and has gorgeous Art Nouveau illustrations on the status cards.

How's it play?
First give each player a 11 card bidding deck. Then shuffle the status cards to form a deck and determine a starting player.

• Play begins by drawing a card from the status deck and placing it face-up in the centre of the playing area.
• What happens next depends on which type of status card is drawn. If a luxury or prestige card is drawn, then normal bidding begins with the starting player.
• Bidding works in a more or less familiar method: The starting player makes an opening bid by playing one or more cards from their card face-up. Play will then progress to the left, players that follow must raise the bid by playing a card (Or cards.) face-up of a higher value. When it comes to a player increasing their bid, they can only add​ to their bid, they cannot take back a card they already played (They cannot make change). Alternatively, a player may choose to pass, in this case any bidding cards they played are returned to their hand and they are out of the bidding. Play continues until all but one player has passed. The winning player discards all the cards they used in the bidding and collects the status card. Whoever wins the bidding is the starting player for the next status card.
• If a scandal card is drawn, the bidding is slightly different. Members of high society want to avoid scandal. So now players are bidding to avoid taking the card. Bidding works as normal, but the first player to pass collects the scandal card and also collects any bidding cards they played. All other players must discard all cards they used when bidding to avoid the scandal card.

And that's it for the rules.

Endgame
4 cards in the status are coloured green, they are the 3 prestige cards and one of the scandal cards.
When the 4th green card is drawn, the game ends immediately - there is no bidding on the 4th green.
Next is the game's sting in the tail. The player who has the least amount of money in their hand is eliminated from the endgame!
The remaining players total the value of their luxury cards and modify them by any prestige/scandal cards they have. Highest score wins.

Overall
There's a few clever little things to think about here.

Because a player can only add to their bid, players will be faced with tricky choices. If you really want a card a card, do you bid low hoping other players won't try and out bid you? Or do you start with a high bid hoping to discourage others and use less cards. For example: Using a 4 and 6 is worse than using a 10, even though they have the same value, in the first case you're using up 2 cards instead of 1 - and you can't bid if you don't have cards.
Also; there's nothing more infuriating then when you want to push up a bid by 1 or 2 and you've got nothing less than a 5 in your hand.

The endgame mechanic adds an extra level of unpredictability to the game. A game can last anywhere from 3 to 15 rounds. Players will know when there's a chance that the game will end because they'll see that 3 green cards have been played, but they won't know exactly when the end is coming. All of this can affect how you bid.

Finally, there's the player elimination in the endgame. The sting in the tail that constantly niggles and lingers in the back of every player's mind when they're playing.
It doesn't matter how well a player has done in the bidding if they're eliminated for having the least money. It is painful.

All in all, High Society is a quick to learn game that is quite fast to play and makes an excellent filler game. It's mechanics push players into making meaningful and tricky decisions. Other than constant stress, what's not to like?

How's it play?
As always we begin with set up.

• A bidding deck is given to each player.
• The location deck is created by randomly using 3 location cards. A number of assistant cards will be added in as 2 small stacks between the 3 location cards. all of these are kept in a deck face-down on the game board.
• Finally the victim deck is created and shuffled. Then a number of cards are turned face up.

Then play can begin.
Campy Creatures uses blind bidding. The highest bid gets to go first and pick the victim card of their choice.

• Players keep all of their individual deck in their hand at all times.
• Players can choose any one of their monsters to play. The card is played face down. Once all players have put a card down, all cards are revealed and then resolved.
• Generally, the card with the highest number goes first. However, there are special abilities that can change things. Some special abilities a triggered when cards are revealed, some when a victim is captured.
• Thus the highest score gets 1st pick, 2nd highest score gets 2nd pick and so on until the lowest score has to take the last card.
• A new turn begins and new cards from the victim deck are dealt.
• Any cards used for bidding remain face-up on the table, they cannot be used again in this round.
• When the victim deck is depleted, the round is over. The 1st location card is revealed and will have a specific symbol on it. The player who has acquired cards with the most of the matching symbol will acquire the location card (And whatever bonus it entails.).
• The round is scored, all victims (Except assistants.) are returned to form a new victim deck, the extra assistants from location deck is added to the victim deck.
• The next round begins.

Endgame​
Campy Creatures is played over a total of 3 rounds. After the final round, final scores are tallied, highest score wins.

11th June 2019.

Gaming Tuesday continues at 'The Sovereign'

Next up is 'Hit Z Road'.

Have you ever thought about what you would do during a zombie apocalypse?
If your first thought was. "Well, I'd design a game about being in a zombie apocalypse!". Then this might be the game for you.

Hit Z Road is designed to look like a game made by a child during an apocalypse, made from bits and pieces of other games etc. Some of these are other actual real games.
So Hit Z Road is a game set inside the game you are playing. Omg! There goes the 4th wall!

In Hit Z Road you play a small band of survivors travelling through a zombie infested apocalyptic landscape towards a safe haven.

What's in a game?

In particular the art direction of this game is superb. Many of the components are designed to look like they came from other games (some real games and some fake). The rulebook looks handwritten. There also human and zombie meeples.

There are 3 different types of currency/resource in the game, (Ammo, petrol and adrenaline. These will be explained below.). The game plays homage to Fallout by using bottle caps as the different currencies and they look cool. 

You can't fault the production values here.

How's it play?

Hit Z Road is a relatively simple game.

Your band of survivors travel from left to right dealing with the obstacles encountered.

There are basically 3 phases in a round.

Routes

• ​Each turn begins with several different routes being laid out in the playing area. Each route takes the form of 2 cards.
• Each card represents a potential encounter that a band of survivors may come across in the order they are laid.

Auctioning

• Now that the different routes are visible to all players, the auctioning can begin.
• The auctioning process differs to most auctioning games in one very important way. Everyone who participates in the auction has to pay for their finishing bid, even if they are last. This is very important as the order of play is determined by finishing positions in the auction. This also has a profound affect on game play and is explained in further detail below.
• Players bid with their bottle caps. When paying the auction, players can choose which types of repirces they want to use - a bottle caps have the same value for an auction.
• Whoever wins the auction can choose which route they want to take, who comes second then gets to choose their route next and so on until everyone has a route to take.

Travel

• Now that the routes are chosen, each player must deal with the encounters ahead as indicated in the cards.
• Cards are dealt with one at a time, going from left to right.
• Most cards will contain zombies, some cards will give you victory points. Some force you to spend resources or grant additional resources.
• This is where resources become very important.
• A player can spend 2 petrol bottle caps to bypass the encounter - which is discarded.
• Once an encounter begins, the active player collects any available resources. If there are zombies present the player may choose to spend ammo bottle caps to attack the zombies at range. The player gets 2 combat dice for each ammo token spent. Ranged combat is resolved by rolling the combat dice. Any kill results will kill a zombie. Any bite results are ignored - as are adrenaline related results. Thus ranged combat consumes resources, but represents the safer way to deal with zombies.
• If zombies are still standing after ranged combat, (Or there was no ranged combat.) then plays proceeds to melee combat. For melee, the active player rolls a number of combat dice equal to the number of survivors they control. Adrenaline bottle caps can be used to alter combat here. Some of the dice results allow you spend adrenaline to avoid having a survivor bitten, (And thus killed.). Some allow you to spend adrenaline to dispatch additional zombies and so on. This is how you use adrenaline. If there are still zombies or survivors standing after the affects of the dice have been resolved. The active player rolls the combat dice again.
• The encounters on the cards get harder as you progress. You can even encounter harder zombies to fight. These take the form or other dice that have less beneficial odds for the players.

And that's pretty much it for the rules. The game continues until all the encounters have been played and dealt with. Upon which any remaining survivors reach their destination and points are 
Points are earned in a few ways.

• Points on cards beaten are scored.
• The player with the most survivors earns bonus points.
• The player with the most of each of the 3 resources scores points for those resources.

The player with the most points wins. ​

Overall

Hit Z Road is a fairly simply game (Which is not necessarily a bad thing.) that will give players a couple of meaningful choices to make every turn - which is a good thing. A bad choice of route can cost a lot of resources.

But the game's problem is the auctioning mechanic, to reiterate:

During the auctioning phase, players bid to create a turn order in which to choose which route to take.
Everybody who make a bid, must pay for the bid they made. Thus it's not a good idea to to try and 'run up' another player's bid, (because your own bid and cost would almost be as high.).
The problem here is 2-fold.
Firstly, the player with the most resources can always go first. This means that they can always have the choice of the most optimal route which will gain them the the most (Or lose them the least.) resources. The remaining players will be bidding (And spending resources.) over the remaining sub-optimal routes which are less beneficial. Essentially, they'll end bidding over the scraps.
​
Secondly, when most of the players have either spend too many resources or realised they can't bid against the player with the most resources. Then they'll stop bidding. And when no one bids, the turn order does not change. This means that the dominant player doesn't even need to spend any resources to stay first or continue dominating.

The results of this is that all the players bar one will be put on to the back foot and will find it very hard to get off it.

This ruins the game. I know why it was done - they didn't want auctioning reduced to 'Auction winner goes first, play proceeds to the left'. But still, it ruins the game.

I've looked online and found I'm not the only person who thinks so. I've seen that this is called a 'Runaway Leader' problem.

This is the harshest I've been about a game in this blog. I've played games I didn't like or care for. But I consider this to be a bad game, no two ways about it.

In the end I look at the game's excellent production values and can't help but think. 'Maybe the designers got their priorities mixed up.'.

5th February.

2nd game of the night at 'The Sovereigns'.

Loot is a little card game by Reiner Knizia about chasing wealthy merchant ships with your pirate boats.
Perhaps this game should be combined with Century Spice Road which we had just finished playing!

Loot is a fairly simple looking game with some hidden depth.
Loot has different 4 types of card.

• Merchant Ships, valued from 2 to 8 'gold'
• Pirate Ships, their strength ranges from 1-4 'skull & crossbones and they come in 4 colours.
• 4 Pirate Captains, in the same 4 colours as the pirate ships.
• 1 Admiral.

​Everyone starts with a hand of 6 cards.
During your turn you check for winning battles, (more on this below). Then you draw a card or play a card.
What cards you can play depend on what's already been played.

• You can always play a merchant ship.
• You can only play a pirate ship if there's a merchant ship for them to plunder. If there's more than 1 merchant ship in play, you can choose which to attack, you can even attack a merchant ship you played yourself. If someone else is attacking a particular merchant ship that you want to attack, you cannot play a pirate of a colour they have already played, (so if someone else is attacking a merchant with a blue pirate ship, you can't attack the same merchant ship with a blue pirate). If you've already played a pirate ship, you can another of the same colour to reinforce your attack.
• You can only play a captain on a pirate ship you've played, the captain's colour must match the colour of the pirate it is being played.
• You can only play the Admiral on a merchant ship that you played.

If you can't play a card, you must draw or discard a card, you can never discard a merchant ship.

Right at the start of your turn, you check for winning battles. This involves looking at all the merchant ships in play, if your pirate attack against a merchant is stronger than any other pirate's (or is uncontested), then you claim the merchant ship - all other cards are discarded. If the attack strength of 2 or more players is identical, then there's a stalemate and the merchant has not been captured by anyone.
Pirate captains and the Admiral act as a trump cards and win a battle, regardless of the attacks strength of other players.

Play continues until the deck is depleted. The player that captured merchant ships with the highest combined value of gold wins (any merchant ships in your hand at the end of the game are deducted from your final score).

And that's pretty much it. Good, clean, wholesome, pirating fun. A great little filler game, quick to play and easy to learn. With enough strategy to keep it interesting.