13th August 2023

It's Sunday lunchtime and that means we're at The Sovereigns in Woking for some gaming diversions.

Being a brave adventurer comes with its risks and drawbacks, like for example; being trapped out at sea in a sea monster's mysterious cave lair.
Luckily, being the industrious adventurers that you are, the dangerous situation you all find yourselves in won't stop any of you from trying to screw over your companions for cold hard cash in this bluffing card game.

What's in a game?
Captain's bottle: This is an actual message in a bottle, it's not a glass bottle and fortunately has very little chance of breaking. Since we never pulled the message out, we've go no idea what it says?

Adventurer sheets: This is a bit of a misnomer to call them 'sheets' as they are fairly chunky and sturdy double sided tiles.
Each 'sheet' represents a individual character on these double-sided tiles. One side has the character in a 'explorer' role, while the other shows them in the 'captain' role.

• Explorer: The explorer side of a adventurer sheet shows a character portrait and their unique special move below it. Most of the tile's space is given over to showing a breakdown of most of cards that appear in the deck - although I'm sure it doesn't show the purses (which have no action).

Cards: There are 7 types of cards in Oh Captain.
4 types have actions in game associated with them. These are the Grappling Hooks, Lanterns, Lizards and Pistols.
Purses are worth gold while Nukha Eggs are essentially booby traps.
Finally. there's a Nomads' Arrival card which triggers the game end.

Tokens: Two types of card tokens are used in the game.

• Gold coins: These round tokens obviously depict some kind of gold coin.

Card dispenser: This neat looking component is a card holder constructed out of thick card and used to hold the game's deck. Thematically, it depicts the game's mysterious but also item laden cave lair.

Component quality is good throughout Oh Captain. The tiles, tokens and card dispenser are all made of suitably thick card and feel nicely robust. Arguably the gold coin tokens are typical for what you'd expect for gold coins, which means they're not bad but average and completely acceptable.
The cards have a laminated feel to them while their back have gold foil finish.
The bottle looks great and is transparent acrylic, it doesn't feel like it would break unless someone purposely tried to do so.

Oh Captain has great presentation. Artwork displayed on the adventurer sheets and cards in particular is clear, colourful and does a good job of portraying the exotic location the game takes place in.
The card dispenser, while unnecessary adds a nice touch to the game and the same is true of the captain's bottle.
It all adds up to make Oh Captain a pretty looking game.

There are only a handful of actions in the game, consequently there aren't too many icons to remember and the items/cards they're associated with are self explanatory, well, except for the lizard, since when do lizards steal money?
anyway, other than the lizard, everything straightforward and easy to understand.

How's it play?
Setup
Players: Players carry out the following set up.

• Captain: Randomly determine who will be the captain at the start of the game. All other players will be explorers.
  Give the captain the captain's bottle and 5 gold.
  Give all explorers 3 gold each.
  Then give 1 Purse card each explorer, this should begin the game face-down. The remaining purse cards are not used in the game.
• Roles: Starting with the captain each player chooses an adventurer sheet.
  Each player then should place their sheet in front of them, with the pertinent side up.
• Cards: First remove the Nomads' Arrival card and set it aside.
  • Next, shuffle the deck of cards and draw 3 cards into a face-down stack, then add the Nomads' Arrival card also face-down, creating a 4 card stack.
  • Shuffle this stack and place it at the bottom of the dispenser, thus the Nomad's Arrival will be one of the last 4 cards.
  • Shuffle the remaining cards and place them on top of the stack of 4 cards in the dispenser.
• Discard pile: Finally, draw 3 cards from the stack and place them underneath the captain's bottle to form the beginnings of the discard pile.
  The captain is free to look at the cards in the discard pile.
• First player: The player to the left of the captain becomes the first player. Give that player the card dispenser.

On to play
Oh Captain uses a more-or-less typical turn order with the active player resolving their action before play moves to the player on their left, except if it's the captain, the captain does not get turns! They can potentially act in other player's turns but are skipped as active player instead!
The active player performs the following phases.
Mutiny.... or not: If at the start their turn, the active player has more coins than the captain, they can choose to mutiny.... or not!

• Mutiny: If the active player does mutiny, they take the bottle along with the 3 cards into their personal area. They also take 1 gold from the general supply.
  The player's turn then immediately ends.
• Loyal.... for now: If the active player chooses not to mutiny (or cannot because they do not have coins), then they pledge their loyalty to the captain.
  This is not just words though and they must pay 1 coin to the captain!
  The active player must now explore.

Exploring: The active player now draws 1 card from the dispenser and keeping it hidden, looks at it. they should keep it face-down.
They must now offer to sell it to the captain for 1 coin.

• Sell card: When selling the card they just drew to the captain, the active player must tell the captain what type of card it is - which will be 1 of the 4 action cards; grappling hook, lantern, lizard or pistol.
  However, the active player can choose to lie about what kind of card it is and in fact, if they drew a Nukha Egg, they must lie about what the card is, they can never offer to sell an egg.
• Captain's choice: The captain has the choice to buy the card or not.
  • No sell: If the captain chooses not to buy the card, then the game proceeds to the active player's action phase.
  • I'd buy that for a coin: If the captain chooses to buy the card, the following occurs:
    • Payout: The captain gives the active player 1 coin and takes the card.
    • Reveal card: The captain now reveals the card and places it face-up in their personal area.
      • Lie: If the active player was lying, then nothing further occurs. The turn is over and play progresses to the player to the left of the current active player.
      • Truth: If the card is what the active player said it was, then the captain immediately resolves the card's action and then the turn is over. Play progresses to the player to the left of the current active player.
        More on card actions below.
• Action phase: If the captain chose not to buy the card, then the active player must use the declared card's action. The card should not be revealed and the active player cannot use the action that would come from a different card.
  I.e., regardless of whatever the card might be, if the active player told the captain it was a Pistol, they must perform the pistol action.
  Actions: When performing an action, remember the card is not revealed and the active player can must target another explorer, they cannot target the captain (It's good to be the captain!).
• Challenge: Before resolving the action, the player who was targeted by it can challenge the action. When this occurs, the active player must reveal the card (Cards are only revealed in this phase when challenged.) and the following occurs.
  • Lie: If the active player was lying about what the card was, then they must pay a coin to the targeted player and their turn is over.
  • Truth: If the active player was telling the truth, the targeted player must pay a coin to them and the card's action is still resolved.
• Resolving actions: The 4 actions are:
  Grappling hook: Take a card from the targeted player.
  Lantern: Reveal a face-down card in the targeted player's personal area.
  Lizards: Take a coin from the targeted player.
  ​Pistol: Destroy a card in the targeted player's personal area.
  Nukha egg: No effect - although since a Nukha Egg cannot be declared as an action, it can never have the possibility of having an effect?
• Next turn: Once the action for the round has been resolved, the active player's turn is over and play progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
Play continues until an explorer draws the Nomads' Arrival card, in which case the explorer reveals it and the game immediately ends, players now reveal all the cards in their personal area and the game goes to scoring.

Majority
Before final scoring, majority needs to be determined for Grappling Hooks, Lizards and Pistols.
Basically; whoever has the most cards of each type (ties do not count) gains the majority token that corresponds to it.

Players then total all their gold coins, this comes from:

• Gold coins.
• Lantern cards (worth 2 or 3 gold each).
• Majority tokens (worth 4 gold each).

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
​Thematically, Oh Captain is a bit left field; a bluffing game about shipwrecked adventurers trapped in a sea cave who decide - while exploring - to try and steal valuables from and out do each other as they wait for their possible rescue?
It's definitely a bit of a stretch for a bluffing game!

Minor quibble aside, how does Oh Captain fare mechanically? fairly strongly I feel albeit with a flaw.
Like pretty much all games based on bluffing, this is as much about playing the players as it is about playing the game and depending on whether a player is the captain, active explorer or other explorer there's 3 sets of conundrums to consider.

If an explorer doesn't mutiny, they have to draw a card and then consider their options. The mechanic that allows the explorer to potentially sell it to the captain adds an extra winkle here.
When declaring what the item is (or what the explorers says it is) the active player has to try and consider whether the captain will want it or not. If the captain might want a pistol, declaring it a pistol might get the captain to buy. This can be a good or bad thing, depending on whether the active player wants to use a pistol or not and if they would prefer a gold coin for it. Generally, getting cash it good!
Additionally, the active player also has to think about how they would use the card if the captain doesn't want it. Saying it's a lizard in the hope the captain doesn't want it is no god if the active has no need for it themselves.
So sometimes the player will need to lie to try just to try and get the card they want or need and sometimes it'll just be dropped into their hand and of course, there's the Nukha Egg that forces players to lie.

Challenging is another element to think about, when an explorer is targeted by the active player, they'll need to consider whether it's a bluff and challenge it, the outcome for getting it wrong can be costly. As there's only 5 of the Grappling Hook, Lizard and Pistol and 7 Lanterns, there's definitely a slight element of card counting that can be used but since not all cards will be revealed (And 3 have been removed from the game.), there's also some imperfect knowledge at work too, meaning there's generally always a slight gamble when challenging.

The dilemma faced by the captain is a little different, since they don't get a turn, they can only act in other players' turns by buying and using their cards! This can be useful since potentially, the captain could get a lot of actions but there's a cost to this though and if another player lies, then the captain loses money for nothing.
Thus the captain will need to calculate whether the card's action is worth 1 gold to use - provided it is what the active player says it is.

This is where we come to what I feel is a bit of a flaw in the game: As captain, I never felt motivated to needing to buy a card offered to me and generally ended up refusing them..
Take the Lizard card for example, the captain could pay 1 gold to use it, but all it does is allow the captain to steal 1 gold from another player. So ultimately, the captain gains zero benefit from it, sure if the captain feels another player is close to mutiny, it can be employed as a denial strategy but it also gift a coin to another player. All the captain is doing is shifting coins around the other players. This is all provided, it really was a Lizard, otherwise it's just a loss of a coin.
Or the Pistol; the captain could pay a coin to use it to destroy card or just let the active player use it to destroy a card instead.
Why waste a coin to destroy a card?
It might not be the card the captain would want destroyed but a card will be destroyed regardless unless of course it is challenged and proves to be a lie - in which case the captain was wise to not buy it.

I found it quite likely I was being lied to when I bought cards which is mostly why I just stopped buying them altogether - it just wasn't worth the risk.
In a 4-player game, the captain will gain 3 coins per round and if other players aren't gaining at least that many coins per round, they'll never catch up. So why should the captain spend coins for anything?
This is compounded by the rule that prevents explorers targeting captains with cards, I understand why as everyone would pick on the captain but it's even more reason not to buy a card as leaving it with the explorers means they'll just end up attacking and stealing from each other!

It's not entirely 100% the case that it'll go down that way as it's likely that other players will get the majority tokens which would be a 4-coin swing but I feel, unless 1 player gains 2 of them, it won't be enough.

It means that it's generally a no-brainer to just not buy cards and no-brainers are bad because they are the opposite of meaningful decisions - which is bad.

It's a bit of a shame as otherwise Oh Captain is a very nicely presented, fun game to play if bluffing games are your thing.

25th July 2023

Tuesday is here again and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club and it's time for some card-based entertainment.

According to Wikipedia: ​

What's in a game?
​
Cards: There is a set of 10 oversized unique cards in each player colour and each set features the same set of identical cards.
The cards fall into 1 of 2 categories; characters and intrigues, each depicts either a personality or situation, along with a scroll (in player colour) containing text which describes that card's action.
Actions might include acquiring influence tokens or eliminating other cards and so on.
Finally, the back of each set depicts its own in icon in its player colour.

Influence tokens: There are 70 of these circular card tokens. Each point of influence  a represent victory point (VP).

Resolution direction tile: This tile depicts a bloody spear! It is used to indicate the direction of play.

Component quality is at the standard you'd expect from a modern game nowadays. The  tokens are suitably sturdy and the cards look fine. Nothing bad to write about here.

Painted artwork features throughout the cards, it's good looking art and each of the 10 individual card types has its own illustration. The art direction is relatively dark and moody, it fits the game's theme of betrayal and assassination quite well.

Iconography is kept to a minimum in Oriflamme with only a coupe of symbols to content with and most game information is relayed via text. This shouldn't pose any problems for players

How's it play?
Setup

• Players: Give each player a 10 card deck in their player colour.
  Now players should shuffle their cards and discard 3 face-down, other players should not see which cards their opponents have discarded. The remaining 7 cards constitutes each players' (now asymmetrical) hand.
  Each player should take 1 influence token.
• First player: Determine a starting player.
• Direction tile: This tile should be placed in the central playing area and will indicate the direction of play when placing cards and during the resolution phase.

On to play
The objective in Oriflamme is to acquire the most influence tokens over 6 rounds.
Each round is played over 2 phases and importantly, some extra rules will come into player after the 1st round
In the 1st phase players will be collectively creating a row of cards called the 'influence queue' along the direction tile and this is done in a traditional turn order.
During the 2nd phase, the cards will potentially be revealed in 'resolution' order which will likely be different to the turn order from the previous phase. When a card is revealed, its action is immediately resolved.

• ​Placement phase: In turn order and starting the first player, each player will choose and play 1 card face-down into the influence queue.
  First card: The first card played into the queue can be played 'anywhere'.
  Subsequent cards: All cards that follow must be placed to the left or the right of cards currently in the queue; that is at either the start or the end.
  Once all players have placed a card, the next phase occurs.
• Resolution phase: This phase is resolved in resolution order, that is the order the cards have been placed in the queue and thus starts with the 1st card in the queue whose player becomes the active player.
  Active player: When it comes to resolving their card, each player must choose from 1 of 2 options.
  • Add influence: Add 1 influence token from the supply to the card and move on to the next card.
  • Reveal card: The player must flip their card and resolve it, this will trigger one of several effects. Effects must be carried out in full if possible, even if it is detrimental to the active player and might include the following:
    Earn influence tokens: An action may allow the active player to gain influence.
    Steal influence: This allows the active player to take an influence token from a player's personal supply not from on a face-down card.
    Eliminate a card: When any card is eliminated, it is discarded from the queue and the active player earns 1 influence.
    Discard: A card that is either discarded for any reason or action, or eliminated follows the same rules.
    A discarded card is removed from the queue and returned to its owner, the queue is then 'closed up' to fill the gap. If the discarded card was face-down, it is revealed and any influence tokens that were on it are also discarded.
    ​Discarded/eliminated cards always remain face-up for all players to view.
• Next round: When a round ends, it is possible that all, none or some cards to be revealed and for some or none of the cards to be discarded/eliminated: Regardless of this, once all cards have been addressed, it is time for the next round.

Subsequent rounds: After the 1st round has been played out, all following rounds have a couple of extra rules/options.

• Placement phase: As well as putting a card at the start or end of the queue during this phase, players also have the option to put the card face-down on top of one of their own cards, creating a 'stack'.
  Only the top card in a stack is considered in play, everything beneath it is not. If the top card on stack is discarded, then whatever was beneath it is now considered back in play.
• Resolution phase: The following rules now apply during this phase.
  • Add influence: If a card is face-down, the active player may add a further influence token from the supply to the card. Thus, if a card from a previous round was not revealed, another token may added to it and they can continue to accumulate so long as the card remains face-down.
    Influence cannot be added to a face-up card.
  • Reveal card: The active player can reveal their card as normal, if there were any influence tokens on the revealed card are acquired by the active player and the card's action is resolved as normal.
    It should be noted that any actions that target other cards, only ever targets the top card in a stack.
  • Face-up card: If a card was face-up from a previous round, when it's turn comes up in queue, it's action must be resolved as usual, even if it is detrimental to the active player.

Endgame
Play progresses until the 6th round has been completed.
All players calculate the totalled value of their influence tokens.

Point are tallied, highest score wins,

Overall
Oriflamme is a game of power grabbing, hidden motives, ambush and assassination which feels like it's set in a brutal world, a world where the wealthy and influential battle it out and vie to rise to power. In other words, a reasonable facsimile of medieval Europe.
While the game is somewhat abstract, it does feel quite appropriate and fit its theme.

​Mechanically, Oriflamme is pretty straightforward, it might get a touch fiddly when managing stacks but otherwise is easy to learn.

The rules aren't really that important here, this is not about playing the game. It's all about playing the players.
The complexity comes in how the cards interact with each other and their relative position to each other in the queue.
Players will need to watch their opponents, try and gauge their tactics and respond appropriately. They'll also need to watch which cards get revealed and discarded.
Oriflamme does a neat trick here though; by getting players to discard cards randomly it creates asymmetrical hands. Card counters won't be able to know exactly what cards other players can use. This imperfect knowledge means that there always a degree of risk to actions.
Depending on the type of people playing, there may well be some bluffing going on which is entire on par for the game.

With only 6 rounds, Oriflamme has a fairly quick play time, although that is with the caveat of not having players who suffer from analysis paralysis.
It's also a game of 'take that', direct interaction, conflict between players and will likely lead to some boisterous gameplay.
For me, it's something I don't mind in limited quantity but for some people this is can be off-putting and Oriflamme probably isn't for them.

I found Oriflamme to be an enjoyable and engaging game (Albeit with some stress!) that blends a bit of logic and strategy with a dash of luck to create meaningful and interesting decisions that might possibly lead to unpredictable outcomes. This makes it a good game in my opinion.

22nd November 2022

Tuesday is here again and that means we're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns for a evening of gaming.

Space... is it the final frontier? I mean it's pretty large with enough room for separate civilisations to expand without impinging on each other's territory. Except in Cosmic Encounter, it's not! Players take on the roles of one of numerous alien civilisations with the purpose of invading other player's planets in this game of bidding and bluffing.

• Cards: Cosmic Encounter uses a variety of cards.
  Destiny cards: This deck is used to determine who the active player will attack.
  ​Encounter cards: By far the most numerous type of card and form the cosmic deck. As the name suggests, these are used during encounters between players. They contain cards numbered 1-to-40 as well as 'negotiate' and 'morph' cards.
  Artefact and tech cards: These are cards that can also be used during encounters and add extra effects or actions to an encounter.
  Flare cards: Flare cards are specific to each race and pertinent flare cards for the aliens in play are added to the cosmic deck. Unlike most cards, once a player has a flare card for their alien race, it is not discarded when played.
  Reinforcement cards: These can be played after the encounter cards have been revealed to alter the outcome.

The component quality is all good, the tiles and tokens are made of suitably sturdy board while cards are average.
The spaceships are plastic with a nice bit of detail and being able to stack them keeps the game area relatively clutter free.

In terms of art direction, the tiles are colourful and mostly ​space-themed with the planet tiles looking like well, planets. The hyperspace and warp tiles are appropriately cosmic looking.
Artwork is used sparingly on cards with space (SIC) given over to text instead.
For the most part, illustrations are reserved for the alien sheets and used to represent the various different alien races. This artwork is fairly good with a lot of diverse and interesting sci-fi artwork.

Cosmic Encounter has little in the way of iconography, numbers are used on encounter cards but otherwise text is used to convey information.
​Nothing here is tricky to understand

How's it play?
Setup

• ​Players:
  Alien sheet: Shuffle the flare cards into a face-down deck and deal 2 to each player.
  Each player should then take the alien sheets corresponding to the flare cards and choose one sheet for this game, players should take any tokens relevant to the sheet they have chosen.
  Home system: Give each player the planet tiles and space ships in their player colour.
  Each player should put out their planet tiles in a row, they should then stack 4 spaceships on each tile.
• Central playing area:
  ​Warp tile: Place the warp tile in the middle of the central playing area.
  Players should place their colony tokens at the '0' starting spot.
  Destiny deck: Remove cards that would refer to any unused player colours for the game and shuffle the remaining into a face-down deck.
  Cosmic deck: Add the flare cards for the chosen alien sheets to the encounter cards then shuffle them into a face-down cosmic deck.
  Starting hand: Deal 8 cards face-down to each player.
• First player: Determine the starting player.

On to play
In Cosmic Encounter players will be trying to create colonies on other players' home systems in the form of land their spaceships on those planets while also preventing their own system from being colonised.
The game employs a traditional turn order with the active player resolving their turn before the game progresses to the player on their left.
Each turn consists of 6 phases.

• Regroup: The active player may retrieve one of their spaceships from the warp (If possible.) and add it to a planet in their home system.
• Destiny: A card is drawn from the destiny deck and immediately resolved.
  Colour: If a colour card is drawn from the destiny deck, the player with that player colour will be the active player's target for their 'encounter' (Or attack really!).
  In some circumstances, the active player may target one of their own planets if it has been totally overrun by other players.
  Wild: If a wild card is drawn, then the active player must choose which player to target.
  Special: These are unique cards that have specific outcomes. If a special card is drawn, it will contain text to explain how it is resolved.
• Attack!: The active player takes the hyperspace tile and points the er... pointy end at one of the planets in the targeted system. Then they add 1-4 spaceships sourced in any combination from any of their planets to the other end, signifying how many ships they commit to the encounter.
• Alliances: Now the active player who is considered the attacker may invite any number of other players to join with them in the attack.
  ​The targeted player who is now considered the defender may also invite any number of other players to join with their defence.
  Once invites have gone out, the invited players may choose to accept or decline the invitation. If a player is invited to both sides, they must choose one side only or decline.
  Any player that accepts the invitation to form an alliance must commit 1-4 of their ships to their alliance's side by placing them on the hyperspace tile or alongside targeted planet respectively.
• Planning: During this phase both the attacker and defender choose a card and play it face-down.
• Reveal: Now both player simultaneously flip their cards face-up and calculate their values which is the card's value plus the number of spaceships committed to the encounter.
  Usually, whoever has the highest total value wins the encounter, ties go in the favour of the defender. However, there are several ways this can change. 
  Reinforcements: After cards are revealed, reinforcement cards may be played to alter scores, this can be done the attacker, defender or any of their respective allies.
  Negotiate: If either the attacker or defender has played a 'negotiate' card, they immediately lose the encounter but as compensation, they get to take cards from their opponent.
  Double negotiate: If both attacker and defender played negotiate cards, then they get 1 minute of real-time to actually negotiate an actual settlement between them!
  If they fail to reach a deal, then both players lose 3 spaceships to the warp tile.
  Morph cards: When a morph card is played, it 'adapts' to have the same value as the card played by the opposing player, essentially negating it.
  Resolution: Once all cards and special abilities have been taken into account and a winner has been determined, the results must be resolved.
  • Attacker wins: If this is the case, all the defender's ships (And those of their allies.) are placed on to the warp tile.
    All of the spaceships committed to the attack by the attacker as well as allied attacker's spaceships are placed on to the targeted planet. Each respective attacking player gets to advance their colony token 1 space on the score tracker.
    Finally, if the successful offensive was the player's first action, they get a second.
  • Defender wins: If this occurs, all of the spaceships committed to the attack by the attacker and their allies are sent to the warp tile.
    The defender's spaceships are unaffected and those committed by allies are safely returned to their planets.
    The score tracker remains unchanged but allies of the successful defender also get to recover ships from the warp tile and/or draw cards as a reward.
• Next player: Once the active player taken their available action(s), play moves on to the player on their left.

There are some other situational rules and variants but this pretty much sums up the essence of what goes on in Cosmic Encounters.

Endgame
The first player to reach 5 on the score tracker wins!
Because of alliances and such, it is possible for more than one player to reach the 5 score at once. if this is the case, all those players share the victory.

Overall
​Mechanically, Cosmic Encounter is straightforward, at its core it's essentially a single blind bid auctioning game albeit one where players bid within the constraints of their limited hand of encounter cards in order to win encounters
On a basic level, a player only has to win 5 bids to win the game.

There is of course more to it than that.

It's vital that players will have to exploit the stronger cards in their hand and mitigate the risk from weaker cards. High value cards are obviously useful because they can win encounters but weak cards can also have a use.
A low value card can be used as a bluff or ruse to flush out an opponent's higher value card, potentially altering what a later outcome might be. Or, if a player think's they're going to lose, why not throw the lowest value card into the mix? 
Negotiate cards can also prove useful when a player knows they are going to lose and can be used to not only fill their hand but deplete the cards of an opponent.
Managing the luck of the draw is vital for victory.

The alien sheets can throw some real curveballs into the game and how players behave. Some of the sheets provide some really radical changes to strategies.

For example; in one game I played as the 'Spiff' who have the ability can crash land a spaceship on a planet if they are a part of an attack that loses badly.
It suddenly introduced a whole new dynamic into attacks which involved the Spiff (And I involved the Spiff with as many attacks as I could!) because defending players were now faced with the conundrum of having to worry about winning too big which might mean playing a lower value card instead and the risk of doing that meant that they might just flat out lose if I played a high value card! Choices, choices!

With 50 different alien sheets available in the base game (With more in expansions.) it means there will be a lot of variation in games and a lot of unique interactions from game-to-game. 

The rules for the destiny deck can also throw a curveball into the game.
I feel one of the primary purposes of the destiny deck is prevent a 'pick on a player' tactic and in this regard it does it well.
It also means that game has constant shifting alliances, 2 players have been allies in a previous turn but the destiny deck could quickly have one targeting the other in the next run.

This brings me to the next thing that's really strong in Cosmic Encounter; which is player interactivity.
Players will be bidding and bluffing against each other, forming temporary alliances, looking to exploit their abilities and take advantage of their unique ability and circumstances as they might arise.
I also think that the quality of the experience the game provides will in part rely on the people playing it. If players buy into the somewhat boisterous, confrontational and luck-based gameplay, then it'll be a positive, enjoyable experience. 

I will add that this game has a lot direct confrontation between players and a hefty dose of 'take that' that goes on as well.
If you find this sort of thing unappealing, it's probably a safe bet to say that you won't like this game and to be fair, sometimes I'm not in the mood for this kind of game.

Otherwise, it's hard to find fault with Cosmic Encounter, the rules are quick to learn and presents players which meaningful decisions to make whenever they attack or have to defend - which is reasonably often, they'll also be faced with whether to join alliances or not and deal with the outcome of those decisions.

Cosmic Encounters is a lot of fun to play and worth trying.

12th July 2022

Another Tuesday is here and it means we're at the The Sovereigns with the Woking Board Gaming Club for an evening of gaming fun.

In Vino Morte (In wine there is death!) is a much more depressing phrase than in vino veritas but is this a more depressing game?
​Well... since it's about poisoning your friends to death, I'll let you decide...

What's in a game?

• Cards: The game uses a deck of 16 cards; half depict a bottle of wine and the other a bottle of poison.

That's it for components, this is going to be a very short full game blog!

The cards are a standard quality you'd expect from a modern game. Like all games from Button Shy Games, this comes packaged in a wallet.

The 2 pieces of artwork used for In Vino Morte have a sort of flat colour illustration style, it looks bright and pleasant.

There's no iconography or text in the game and it's only 2 images contain a bunch of grapes or a skull & crossbones. It's all self explanatory.

How's it play?
Setup

• Dealer: Determine which player should be the dealer and give them all 16 cards.

On to play
Each round, cards representing wine will be dealt out to all players and may or may not contain poison.
The objective is to avoid drinking the poison and stay alive and last player standing is the winner.

• Deal cards: The dealer does not shuffle the cards, instead they keep all of them in their hand and decides which cards to give out.
  The dealer should then give 1 card face-down card to each player, including themselves.
• Drink or swap: Starting with the player to the left of the dealer, in turn order, each player must choose whether to drink the wine or swap their card.
  Drink: If the player chooses drink, they must flip their card and deal with the consequences.
  If it shows wine, then they survive the round.
  If poison is on the other side, then that player is eliminated from the round... Ohhh... nasty!
  ​Swap: With this choice, the player swaps their face-down card with any other player who also has a face-down card.
  Neither card is revealed at this time.
• End of round: Play continues until each player except the dealer has chosen to drink or swap - the dealer never makes the choice.​
  Then, one-by-one and in turn order, each player - ending with the dealer - flips any card that's face-down and is either safe if it's wine or eliminated if it's poison.
• Next round: The first player to the left of the dealer who is still in the game collects up all 16 cards and a new round begins with the new dealer giving out cards to the remaining players.

Endgame
Play continues until only 1 player remains and they are declared the winner.

Overall
There's not much I can say about In Vino Morte other than it's probably the most unalloyed, unfiltered bluffing game I've played.
It's simplicity and accessible rules make it a game of guessing and second guessing, players must try and anticipate what their opponents' motives will be.

However, there's definitely a peculiar quirk and asymmetrical gameplay at work here.
When a player is the the dealer, they'll have the opportunity to notably alter the playing time. E.G., The more poison cards the dealer doles out, the more players will be eliminated. A bold dealer could give out poison to all other players and see where it goes for example! I imagine it will present dealers with some intriguing propositions.

In Vino Morte also has player elimination which is something I'm not fond of and usually consider a bad thing. Luckily, the game is almost a spectator sport and even when you're knocked out, it's still fascinating to watch how the remaining rounds will play out. It helps that it's also a pretty fast game to get through.

With a quick play time and easily understood rules it can make a great little filler or party game, especially since it plays up to 8 - provided of course that the players like this type of game.

If you don't like bluffing games, then this is one to avoid; but if you do, then you'll probably love In Vino Morte and it's definitely one to try.

19th September 2021

Sunday afternoon gaming at The Sovereigns continued with Love Letter: Batman.

Love Letter: Batman is of course a licensed reskin of the most excellent Love Letter, a game that we've played a lot of in the past.
I'm not going to talk about Love Letter: Batman too much because it differs from the original in only 2 ways - more on that later.
Love Letter: Batman cleverly maps characters from the Batman milieu into the game.
​Batman becomes the guard, which when you think about it makes sense, since he's able to immediately take out enemies if he's smart enough.
The Joker becomes the princess, power in some situations, but liability in others and he's one everyone's looking.
Robin becomes the handmaiden, protecting the player by drawing enemy attacks away with his brightly coloured garb!

The cards in Love Letter: Batman pretty standard quality and are all illustrated with suitably comic book styled artwork which all looks the part.
The game also utilises bat-symbol themed scoring tokens - pretty cool.

The rule changes
Love Letter: batman changes 2 rules from the original.

• 7 points to win: Winning Love Letter: Batman requires players to score 7 points, whereas the original required 7-4 points for 2-4 player games. This ties in with the other change, which is...
• Batman can score extra points: This makes Batman overpowered and well, I suppose this is at least thematically accurate!
  This occurs whenever the active player uses a Batman card to successfully guess an opponent's card and that card was a villain - which it most likely will be as Batman cards can't be targeted this way and the only other hero is Robin. If this condition is met, the active player immediately scores a point.

Those are the rule changes and once again a rule has been introduced which allows players to score points mid-round, it's a concept I really don't like. It ruins the game's tension by allowing players to reach the victory threshold and essentially win the game before the round is over. It's so anti-climatic.
I've heard it said that it this rule makes the game play quicker, but the higher victory threshold for 3-4 player kind of negates that.

Conversely; in classic Love Letter, even if one player is 1 point away from winning and all the other players are at 0 points, until that player has won that final hand to win that final point, it's not over. Yes, it'd be a hard turnaround and a longshot, but it doesn't change the fact that nothing is over 'til everything is over.

Want my opinion? Just play Love Letter: Batman as classic Love Letter. Yes, it does make having this version sort of of pointless, but the classic version is the best version and there's nothing stopping you yelling dinner, dinner, dinner dinner, BATMAN when you play a card.

10th December 2019

It's a Tuesday evening in Woking and we're at 'The Sovereigns' with the board game club.

The first game of the night was 'Cockroach Poker'.
Now I mean this in a good way: But Cockroach Poker is quite possibly the most horrible game of all time.
It's a horrible game all about horribly lying and bluffing.

At the end of one game a player said to me. "Can we please now play a game where we don't all hate each other!".

That sums Cockroach Poker pretty nicely.

What's in a game?
Cockroach Poker consists of nothing more or less than a deck of 64 cards. There are 8 types of card (All based on types of 'horrible' creature.) and 8 copies of each type.
Because my blog demands a bullet-point list, i thought I'd list what's on the cards.

​All the cards are well illustrated with stylised pictures of all the 'creepy-crawlies'. The art hasn't skimped on either, there could have been just 8 illustrations for the 8 types. But they are different pictures for each card, so 64 in total.

How's it play?
Setup: Deal out the entire deck to all players. Players must keep their hand of cards secret.

Cockroach Poker is a game about trying to guess whether the other players are speaking the truth or lying through their teeth

• The active player takes any card from their hand, places it face-down on the playing area and pushes it towards another second player. When doing so, the active player must state what creature is on the card. This statement can be true or false.
• The second player now becomes the active player. Without looking at the card, the must now make a choice, accept the card or pass the card.

Accepting the card:

• If the second player chooses to accept the card. Still without looking at the card, they must state whether they think the first player was telling the truth or lying (Whether the first players statement is true or false.).
• The card is then flipped face-up.
• If the second player correctly surmised whether the first player was truthful or lying, then the first player must place the card face-up in their own playing area.
• If the second player failed to gauge the whether the first player was speaking truthfully or not, then the second player places the card in their playing area.

Passing the card:

• If the second player chooses the pass the card, they (And only they.) can now look at the card.
• As in the first step, the second player must push the card (Still face-down.) to another third player and state what creature is on the card. Again, this statement can be true or false, the active player is not required to honour the statement made by the first player. Thus the second player can contradict the first player.
• Now the third player is faced with the choice to accept or pass the card and the above steps are repeated.
• A card cannot be passed to a player who has already received it. So if a player is the last person to receive the card, it sucks to be them! They cannot pass it on and must try and guess if the player who passed it to them is telling the truth or lying.
  
• Play continues until a player has put the card in their playing area. In this case they become the active player, chooses a card pushes it to another player again, starting the process anew.
  

Endgame
Their are 2 ways the game can end.

The game will immediately end when any player has put the 4th card of a single type into their playing are.
Or when any player must play a card to another player, but has no more cards in their hand. 

In both cases, when this occurs, that player is the loser and all other players are winners!

Overall
Cockroach Poker is a clever little bluffing game. Telling the truth is equally bad for players as lying, so there's no 'easy' get-out by telling the truth.

Having a card pushed towards and trying to guess whether your 'friend' is lying or not can be a stress. But when a player chooses to pass the card, it doesn't get them out of hot water. It just changes the source of the stress, now players are hoping that their opponents are can't see through their statement.

I've also seen players counting the number of cards that have already been played before making a choice. But it doesn't matter because the whole deck has been dealt out to players!

Not only is the game negative and horrible, so is the end. The game only plays to the first loser and everybody else wins! No one wants to be the sole loser!

So in summing up: Cockroach Poker is a horrible, horrible game and everyone should play it.

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.