18th August 2022

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

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

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

What's in a game?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thematically, HeroQuest is a bit of a strange beast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

16th August 2022

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

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

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

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

Act 1
What's in a game?

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

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

Act 2
What's in a game?

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

Phew, I think that's it for rules!

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

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

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

Act 1
How's it play?
​Setup

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5th July 2022

It's a Tuesday and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Board Gaming Club for an evening of gaming.

​The world of Victorian anthropomorphic railroad magnates is a cutthroat one in this game of acquiring train lines and towns. Buy low and sell high to become the... Raccoon Tycoon!

What's in a game?

• Game board: The game board background depicts a idyllic rural landscape with the beginnings of a burgeoning industrial age.
  The board is broadly speaking divided into 2 halves. The top half has 6 tracks for the game's 6 commodities while the bottom half features spaces and tracks for railroad cards, town cards and building tiles.
• Cards: Raccoon Tycoon has several types of cards:
  Price & Production cards: Each of this type card has 2 halves. The top half with a blue background is for price and pushes up the value of the variously depicted commodities while the bottom half with a red background displays various commodities that the player can produce/acquire.
  ​Railroad cards: These cards feature anthropomorphic artwork, cats, dogs, bears, foxed and of course raccoons.
  In the bottom-right corner is the card's initial price (Railroad cards are acquired via auctioning) while the centre-bottom shows a series of numbers. These are VPs related to set collecting, thus the more copies a player has of a certain set of railroad cards, the more VPs that set is worth.
  Town cards: These cards have smaller illustration that usually depicts some part of the countryside.
  At the bottom of each town card are 2 purchasing costs, 1 is a cost for a specific commodity while the other is for any commodities. The cost for buying a town card with any commodities is always greater that using the required specific commodity.
• Building tiles. These chunky square tiles depict various different types of businesses and industries. They come in 2 types (Basic and Advanced.) are double-sided and one side is the initial version of a building while the other shows the upgraded, improved version.
  In the bottom-right corner on both sides is the cost, initially to buy the tile, then to flip the tile to the upgraded side. Each tile has a special ability of some sort and the upgraded version is always a improved version of the initial building. Bonuses might include gaining extra commodities or selling more of them, discounts to certain costs etc.
  Additionally, some tiles are marked with a 'B' or a 'P' and basically only one of each can be used in a turn.
• Commodity tokens: Raccoon Tycoons uses 6 types of commodity and each has it's own token and colour.
  Coal: These black tokens are shaped in a minecart filled with coal.
  Iron: These are grey anvil shaped tokens.
  Luxury goods: These tokens are green bottles, filled with wine I guess? Wine is certainly a luxury good!
  Manufactured goods: Red cubes are used to represent manufactured goods.
  Wheat: Yellow tokens shaped as bundles of wheat.
  Wood: Brown tokens depicting piles of logs.
• Money: Paper money! Whooo! I like it!
• First player meeple: I don't usually bother to mention any first player tokens when blogging (Because they're just first player tokens.) but this one is a unnecessarily big token. Basically a gimmick and something I wholeheartedly approve of!

Raccoon Tycoon has excellent production values.
Wooden tokens are used for commodities and first player token which is a good move, they always have a quality to them and also look cool.
The cards (And paper money) have a sturdy feel to them while the tiles are satisfyingly thick.

The game's art direction is also equally high.
Anthropomorphic art is used throughout the game and I've found that it's a divisive style which most people do or don't like. Regardless of your view on this, it's undeniable that the quality of the art is high.
The standouts are the railroad cards which use a oil painting style to display whimsical characterful animals in Victorian clothes.
Curiously, the building tiles use a completely different style, instead displaying line illustrated buildings and subjects with mostly flat and barely shaded colours. It's a striking contrast that should theoretically ​be jarring but actually fits quite well.

Icons used to represent commodities on cards are easily understood. Most other game information is relayed via text which is usually very clear.

How's it play?
Setup

• Board: The number of cards and tiles used on the board is dependant on player count.​
  • Railroad cards: Shuffle these into a face-down deck on its allotted space on the board and deal 2 face-up cards on to their spots.
  • Town cards: These cards are arranged into a face-down deck by VP value with the lowest value at the top and highest at the bottom. Thus the lower value cards appear earlier in the game.
    Place the deck on it's spot and deal 1 card face-up.
  • Building tiles: Shuffle the basic tiles and put out the allotted amount into the relevant track and discard any remaining basic tiles. Next; shuffle the advanced tiles into a stack.
  • Commodities: Put out the commodity tokens and use 1 each on their pertinent tracker to display their starting value.
• Price & production cards: Shuffle the cards into a face-down deck and deal 3 face-down to each player.
• Cash: Give each player $10 starting funds.
• First player: Determine the starting player. Following on from this each player claims starting commodities in turn order. The first player takes any 1 commodity of their choice, 2nd player taking any 2, etc, all the way up to the 5th player taking 5 in a 5-player game.

On to play
Players are trying to earn VPs in Raccoon Tycoon, this can be done by collecting sets of railroad cards, acquiring town cards to pair with railroad cards and gaining building tiles which are not only worth VPs but can provide avenues to scoring more VPs.
All of this requires money and commodities, players will need to manipulate the commodities market to maximise the profit gained from selling their own commodities while trying limit the profit of other players.

Racoon Tycoon follows a traditional turn order with the active player resolving their action before play moves on to the player on their left.

• Actions: During their turn, the active player may perform 1 of the 5 following actions.
  • Building tile: The active player may purchase one of the building tiles by paying its cost, which is then placed into their playing area.
    A new building tile is drawn to replace it.
    Note: This action is also used to upgrade a building tile by paying its upgrade cost on the other side and flipping the tile.
  • Price & Production card: The active player may play 1 of these cards from their hand.
    Production: This allows them to acquire exactly 3 commodities from the supply, the icons in the production half of the card indicate which commodities the player can choose from and how much of it they can take.
    Note: Players have a limit of 10 commodities that they can own.
    Price: The value of the indicated commodities rise on their relevant trackers by 1 step.
  • Railroad card auction: The active player may begin an auction on either of the 2 available railroad cards. Their opening bid must be at least equal to the value shown on the relevant card. Others players may then bid or pass on the auction. Once everyone bar 1 player has passed, they win the card. A new railroad is drawn to replace it on the track
    Note: If the active player did not win the card, they can perform another action, this may include another auction.
    Thus the active player's action is not squandered if they did not win the auction.
  • Sell a commodity: The active player may sell exactly 1 type of commodity, however, they can sell any amount of tokens of that type. They earn the listed value on that commodity's tracker per token sold.
    Price crash: Once the commodity has been sold, the value of that commodity drops a number of steps equal to the tokens sold!
  • Town: The active player may purchase a town card, each one has 2 listed costs and the player can choose which one to pay - either the specific commodity cost or a more costly mix of any commodities.
    A new town card is drawn to replace it.
• Next player: Once the current player has resolved their action, play moves to the person on their left.

Endgame
Play continues until one of the following 2 criteria is met.

• The last railroad card is auctioned.
• The last town card is bought.

If either instance, the current round is completed and the game goes to scoring.
VPs come from a variety of sources.

Sets of railroad cards.
Town cards paired with railroad cards.
Building tiles earn 1 VP each.
Bonuses from building cards may also provide additional VPS.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Even without the anthropomorphic artwork, Raccoon Tycoon would be something or a quirky game.
It packs quite a lot of mechanical systems into a single game albeit to a fairly simple level.
A little bit of stock market manipulation, a touch of set collecting, a dash of auctioning and a sprinkling of engine building. It could be a recipe for disaster but in the case of Raccoon Tycoon; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
A large part of this I feel is due to the building tiles. Their unique bonuses both provide some asymmetrical gameplay elements and can also give players a bit of strategic direction.
Raccoon Tycoon is a bit of a balancing act between acquiring cash for railroad cards/building tiles and commodities for town cards. It's hard to work towards both at the same time. Adaptation is important here, as is planning ahead. Players could look to finding ways to raise commodity values to increase profit when selling them later

This brings me to commodity manipulation. There isn't too much interaction between players other than auctioning and commodity manipulation, 
Watching what opponents are doing can prove useful and is something of a higher level of play. I.e., if 2 players are accumulating the same commodity, there's a possibility that one of them will sell it, causing that market to crash. Beating a opponent to the punch so to speak, can cost them lots of cash!

Raccoon Tycoon is fairly rules light and I think seasoned gamers won't have any problems grasping all the systems at work here. For less experienced gamers, the curve will be steeper, I don't feel it's a gamebreaker but I imagine it could be off putting.

While there's enough gameplay to give players thoughtful and meaningful decisions to make and a fun experience, I also found the game to be a little unengaging and uncompelling, I never felt like I was building railroads or towns and despite the unique art style, it didn't feel like it stood out from the crowd.
here's nothing wrong with Raccoon Tycoon but it wouldn't be my first pick for a game, although I'd have no problem playing it if someone else wanted to.

9th June 2022

​Gaming night Aldershot continues with Chariot Race.

As you might have guessed from the title, this game about managing railway companies in the 19th Century on a hex-based map of North America. NO WAIT, THAT'S NOT RIGHT!

Chariot Race is about chariot racing in ancient Rome. That name is sure is confusing!

What's in a game?

• Game board: This oblong board depicts a oval race track with 3 lanes in a sort of coliseum setting. Each of the corners also shows a 'safe speed' which differs for each lane, the outer one having highest safe speeds. The board also displays 6 starting spaces.
  The board is double-sided and on the 'B' side contains some obstacles to be avoided, providing some more challenge to the game
• Player board: There are player boards in every player colour and each one has 3 columns.
  The left and right columns track damage and speed respectively, while the centre column is 'segmented' and each segment displays a differing number of dice, starting with 1 die at the top and going down to 5 dice at the bottom.
  Finally, at the top is a horizontal 'fate' track that goes from 0-6.
  Additionally, each board also comes with 3 'pointer clips' to track all of this.
• Dice: The game uses non standard wooden six-siders with rounded corners and instead of numbers they depict symbols which represent the following.
  • Speed change: This result makes the player alter their speed by +1/-1/
  • Extreme speed change: This result makes the player alter their speed by +2/-2, however it also inflicts a point of damage on their chariot.
  • Change lane: Allows the player to move their chariot to a different lane. This symbol appears twice on each die.
  • Attack: Allows the player to drop caltrops or throw a spear at another player! Well this is Roman chariot racing.
  • Fortuna: Gives the player a point of fate.
• Standees: The game's chariots are standees constructed from 2 thick card tokens which slot together.
• Caltrops: These are little grey wooden cubes, they don't look much like caltrops but since they're little wooden cubes, I approve!
• Lap tokens: These little double-sided tokens are used to indicated which lap a player is on.

The components for Chariot Race are pretty good, the tokens and boards all feel suitably sturdy while the wooden dice are a nice touch.
Having chariots made of 2 pieces or card seems a little bit of a weird choice perhaps but it's not like it's a dealbreaker or anything and was probably done to keep the cost down.

There's very little artwork to write home about in Chariot Race which may be why I'm blogging about instead?
There are illustrations on the chariot standees but they'll hardly be noticed since they're quite small, especially when placed on the arena/game board.
There's some artwork on the game board as well and it's a fair depiction of a crowd watching the races. Otherwise Chariot Race looks fairly clean and minimalist in a unfussy kind of way, perfectly acceptable in my opinion.

The only iconography that can be found during the game is on the dice, those symbols are self-explanatory and I can't imagine they'd be an obstacle to any players.
Although, I will say that it feels a little odd and counterintuitive that the damage track is labelled 'damage' instead of something like 'health' since 12 on the damage track is completely undamaged and 0 is wrecked.

How's it play?
Setup

• Player boards: Give each player the standee and player board in their colour, along with 3 pointers.
  All players should start with 12 damage, 4 speed and 3 fate.
• Game board: Put out the game board on either the 'A' or 'B' side and determine starting order. Each player should then put their standee in the relevant starting spot.

On to play
In Chariot Race, players are attempting to complete 2 laps of the track, avoid being wrecked and of course, finish first.
This is done by each player in their turn rolling dice and resolving the results.
Chariot Race does not use the usual turn order. Instead it's determined by position on the track round-by-round, whoever is 1st on the track goes 1st, 2nd on the track goes 2nd and so forth.
When the player in last place has gone, the round is over and play returns to the player in the lead at the start of a new round. Of course it's likely the turn order will now have changed.

In their turn, the active player will have several phases they can act in.

• Repair: The active player may spend 3 fate points to repair 3 damage.
  Get wrecked: If, at anytime a player's chariot reaches 0 damage, they are immediately wrecked and eliminated from the game.
• Adjust speed: A chariot's speed score can never exceed its damage score.
  If a chariot took damage during other players' turns (Which is likely.) or overcooked a corner in the previous turn (Also likely!) and the damage drops below the chariot's speed, the speed is lowered to match the damage during this phase.
• Roll dice: The active player now rolls dice, the number they roll is determined by what their speed is on the tracker on their player board in relation to the segments in the centre column. Thus at speed 5, they would roll 5 dice, at speed 8 they would roll 3 dice, all the way to speed 12 where they roll only 1 die!
  ​Re-roll: The player may set aside and/or re-roll any number of their dice once only.
  Spend fate: The active player may spend fate points to re-roll any number of dice - including ones already set aside or change a die to a side of their choice except for the fortuna side.
• Fortuna: In this phase, any dice showing the fortuna icon increase the player's fate score respectively. This occurs after using re-rolls, which means fate points acquired this turn cannot be used to affect this turn's dice results.
• Movement: In this phase, all dice showing the 3 movement icons are resolved and several events may occur.
  +/- speed: Dice showing the speed change icons must be resolved and the player must alter their speed either up or down (Their choice.) as dictated by the dice. As an aside, there's nothing to stop a player using a + result from 1 die and the - result from another to negate each other.
  Regardless of this, once the speed score has been adjusted accordingly, the active player must move their chariot that many spaces.
  Change lane: During movement, the active player may change their chariot's lane a number of times equal to the change lane results they got on the dice.
  Cornering: If the active player's chariot enters a cornering space, that is; a corner with a number, there's a chance the chariot can take damage.
  If the chariot's speed is equal to or less than they number, the chariot is unaffected.
  If the chariot's speed exceeds the corner's speed, then the chariot takes an amount of damage equal to how much they exceeded the corner by.
  Caltrops: If the active player's chariot passes through a space with a caltrop, then the chariot takes damage.
  Ramming: If during movement, the active player's chariot passes through a space with another chariot, then both chariots takes damage.
  The active player cannot end their movement in the same space as another chariot.
• Attack: The active player may use a die with this result for 1 of 2 actions.
  Throw Javelin: Once the active player has finished their movement, they can throw a javelin at another chariot. Javelins have a range of 2 spaces and inflict 1 damage.
  Drop caltrop: The active player may drop a caltrop on to any empty space which their chariot has moved through in this turn.
  Caltrops inflict damage to any chariot that passes over them and are removed from the board when they do so.

This pretty much covers all the rules.

Endgame
Chariot Race is played over 2 laps and there are several criteria which can determine the winner.

If a player's chariot completes their 2nd lap and no other chariot crosses the finish lap, they win the race.
If 2 or more chariots finish the race in the same round, then the chariot that went the furthest past the finish line wins.
Finally, a wrecked chariot cannot win, even if it crossed the finish line first or got furthest past it.

Overall
Chariot Race is a fast playing and mechanically speaking, actually a fairly straightforward game; roll the dice and carry out the resulting actions displayed.
The decisions that players get to make are also fairly straightforward, although their consequences can be significant - which is good. Meaningful decisions are always good.

Player decisions take the form of choosing which dice to keep and which to re-roll, players must choose what to try and prioritise, this will of course be contextual and change from round to round.
The other area where player's will probably be making the most is going to be about speeding up and slowing down. It's obvious that players will want to be fast in the straights but manage their speed through the race's 4 corners.
Managing speed is the game's best mechanic, I like that the faster a chariot goes, the less dice the player gets to roll and consequently, the less options they have.
It feels suitably thematic, not only does it represent having less thinking time at speed but also that this a horse race and players are never entirely in control of them.
Players can find themselves hurtling through corners and taking damage, the question is how fast for how much damage? There's only 4 corners,  so this means it's ok to take damage... right?

This brings me neatly to damage. There's definitely a combative edge to Chariot Race which makes it an usual racing game. Damaging opponents has its benefits.
Firstly; it lowers their maximum top speed, hindering them and secondly, it can lead to their elimination for the game.
It's vital to keep an eye on damage, in the early game players will probably be congenial, but in the late game, that will all change. Having low damage points can make a player a big target, especially if that player is ahead and which others will look to exploit this to put them out of the race.

It does mean that Chariot Race can have a lot of direct conflict and there may well be some 'pick-on-the-leader' tactics going on as well. If this isn't your cup of tea, it's one to probably avoid.
The game also has player elimination as a mechanic, which is something I have little fondness for but fortunately, this is a quick playing game so there isn't too much downtime.

In conclusion though; while it won't set the world alight, it is quick to learn and quick to play, Chariot Race is a fun light game If you like your racing theme with some extra competitive zing and a generous dollop of luck, then this might interest you.

3rd June 2022

We're round Simon's for some Friday night fun.

Apparently, delving into dangerous dungeons in adventuring parties is a hazardous vocation, but in Arcadia Quest, there's loads of them wandering the dungeons!

What's in a game?

• ​Game tiles: There are 9 of these double-sided game tiles. Each one features a 3x3 grid which displays open areas, corridors, rooms and doors etc. Some of the tiles also feature player starting areas.
  They are put together in certain configurations to create playing areas for each mission in the game' campaign.
• Spawn tile: This tile is 5 spaces long and is used to manage monsters and monster respawns.
• Player boards: These come in player colours and each has 3 spaces for Hero cards and beneath each of those 3 spaces are 4 more spaces for that hero's gear.
• Cards: Arcardia Quest makes use of a lot of cards and I do mean that.
  • Hero cards: These oversized landscape cards depict the game's 12 heroes,  listing their names with a portrait and stats (Defence and hit points.) as well as each hero's individual special ability.
  • Quest cards: Every mission in the Arcadia Quest card will have a number of quest cards associated with it. They form the objectives that players must complete in order to win the game.
    There are numerous types of quest, including PvE and PvP, additionally, some provide bonuses for completing them first.
  • Upgrade cards: These represent equipment that heroes may acquire during the campaign. Upgrade cards actually also include starter cards.
    Finally, upgrade cards are divided into several types such as a attack cards, special effects, permanent effect, etc.
  • Monster cards: Monsters are a staple of fantasy themed games and Arcadia Quest is no different!
    You'll find goblins, orcs, trolls and all the typical foes here. Each card lists quite a bit of info about its pertinent monster. Including level, life/over kill value, type and strength of attack and defence, any special abilities and reward for defeating.
  • Death curse cards: Unsurprisingly, these can be bad news for players. They only come into play during campaign play though.
• Tokens: As with cards, Arcadia Quest makes use of a lot of types of token. These are typically made of card.
  • Guild tokens: These small, round cornered tokens come in the colours of the game's 4 player guilds. They are used to track exhaustion.
  • Wound tokens: Illustrated with red hearts and used to track wounds and damage.
  • Death tokens: For when things get worse than wounds!
  • Door tokens: These oblong double sided tokens are used to mark whether doors are open or closed!
  • Exploration tokens: Used in quests, these usually contain rewards for whoever finds them by errr... exploring, although there can be a surprise in these tokens.
  • Spawn tokens: As the name suggests, these rounded oblong tokens are  marked with icons identical to the attack dice and are used to manage enemy respawning.
  • Portal Tokens: For when you absolutely, positively need to teleport somewhere!
• Models: Arcadia Quest comes with quite a few plastic minis. These include 12 hero figures as well as about 2 dozen monster and enemies.
• Dice: The dice used are not the usual six-siders, instead they are split into 2 types. Black attack dice and white defence dice.
  Attack dice: The black dice contain a mixture of 3 symbols, melee hits, ranged hits and critical hits.
  Defence dice: ​Meanwhile the white dice contain a mix of blank spaces and shield icons.
• Campaign sheet: This is used only for campaigns and tracks each player's guild performance over the course of the campaign.

It's hard to fault the component quality in Arcadia Quest and nothing feels cheap. It comes with a generous amount of minis
 
The game utilises a chibi art style throughout, this extends to the hero and monster cards as well as the miniatures. The illustrations on the cards and boards is colourful and has a lot of character.
Arcadia is a fairly miniatures heavy game and they're the components that I would say are the the most eye-catching. They're all good quality sculpts and while it's all part of the game's art direction and charm; I have to say I'm a bit ambivalent towards the chibi styling personally.
As an aside; figures are supplied unpainted but haven a paint job.

The game also contains a a fair amount of iconography but it never felt unintuitive.

How's it play?
Setup
​Arcadia Quest can be played as a traditional board game but is clearly meant to be played as a series of linked scenarios, thus the Campaign book will determine the specific setup required, although it will generally involve the following:

• Game area: Set out the the game tiles as determined in the campaign book, this will include adding door, exploration, quest and spawn tokens.
  Each scenario will also employ certain enemies, the miniatures and cards for these will need to be put out as well.
  Quests: A game called Arcadia Quest wouldn't be much without quests.
  Again, the campaign book will determine which quest cards are set out.
• Heroes: Each player should be given 3 hero cards and their 5 starting gear cards. All of which should be placed on their player board.
  Finally, give each player the guild tokens in their colour.
  The heroes should be put out their starting spaces.

On to play
Arcadia Quest follows the typical turn structure with the active player taking their turn, then the player to the their left acting next.
During their turn, the active player has 2 basic options they can choose from.

• ​Rest: The active player may rest all their heroes, this has several potential benefits.
  • Unexhaust cards: During the usual course of their actions, players will exhaust the cards on their personal board, this means they can no longer be used. This action removes exhaustion from cards.
    More on exhaustion below.
  • Rearrange gear cards: When resting, the active player may choose to re-arrange any and all the gear cards in their personal board between their heroes.
  • Resurrection: If any of the active player's heroes were 'killed' they will reappear on their guild's starting spaces.
• Activate hero: Instead of resting all their heroes, the active player may choose to activate exactly one of their heroes. This will result in the active hero performing the following 2 actions in any order they see fit.
  • Move: The active hero may be moved up to 3 spaces orthogonally along the game tiles. Heroes can also 'spend' movement to open doors or use teleporters.
  • Attack: The active hero may attack a monster or even other players' heroes. Heroes have no default attack in Arcadia Quest per se; instead, all attacks come from using the gear/cards they have equipped for that hero and when a card is used in this way it becomes 'exhausted', a token is then placed on the card to indicate this. Thus each of a hero's cards can be used once only until they are rested.
    As well as attacks, gear cards may also provide other or bonus actions.

That's it for basic player choices, there is of course quite a lot more to Arcadia Quest, below are some more details.

• Attacks: Attacks may be melee or ranged and are performed using a number of black dice as specified by the card being utilised to undertake the attack.
  Melee: This requires the target to be adjacent to the active hero. The player rolls the required number of black dice and every die that comes up with a sword is a point of damage to the target.
  The CRIT result also inflicts damage but additionally, allows the attacker to roll an extra black die, it's possible to string together a number of critical hits.
  Ranged: An attack at range requires line-of-sight and functionally is identical to a melee attack except bow results are required instead of swords. Critical results work the same as with melee.
  Defence: It's not all attack in Arcadia Quest and heroes will need to defend from monster attacks and the aggression of other players.
  Heroes may have a default defence value, they may also have defence values on their gear cards, these are all added to together to give them a total defence score. Even if a gear card is exhausted, it's defence value still always contributes to the hero's defence.
  The defending player rolls white dice equal to the total defence value, each shield result, prevents a point of damage.
• Death: When a hero or monster goes to 0 hit points, it's not good news.
  Monster: Reducing a monster's hit points to 0 defeats it and earns the victorious player money.
  Hero: When a hero reaches 0 hit points, they are also dead! Furthermore, all other players earn coins! There's also some good news/bad news!
  The good news is the next time a player rests their guild, the dead hero will respawn at their guild's starting spot. The bad news though, is that respawned heroes get a 'death token', more on these later.
• Monsters: Monsters are essentially reactive in Arcadia Quest and do nothing when left alone. However, when a hero attacks a monster, it will immediately retaliate after that attack if it can. Additionally, if a hero wanders too close to a monster, it will provoke an attack from that monster. Mechanically, attacking and defending for monsters is identical to heroes.
  Hit points work a little differently though. Monsters have a hit point total and a overkill value. Even when a monster loses all its hit points and is killed; it can still counter attack. However, if an attack deals more damage to a monster than it's overkill value, it is insta-killed and does not counterattack. Thus, getting overkills on monsters is a good tactic.
• Spawns: When a monster is dispatched, its miniature is placed on to the spawn tile. When this tile is filled with monsters, they are all potentially respawned on to the spawn tokens on the game tiles. Rolling a pair of attack dice is used to determine where each monster will respawn, although there's a possibility they won't be respawned at all.
• Villains: Basically, villains are tougher versions of monsters.

There's more that goes on in a game than I've explained above but some of it will be specific to certain scenarios and I'm not going to write about it here. But suffice to say, that's the gist of it.

Endgame
Depending on player count, the first player to complete 2/3 quests wins the game, provided at least 1 of those completed quests is a PvE quest. It's not possible to win by just fighting other players.

Campaign
Hang on, there's some more rules-talk after the endgame! When a scenario is completed, players earn rewards as per the scenario, quest cards and other successes in the scenario. These can be used to purchase more cards for the heroes, providing them a route to upgrade or 'level-up'.
If a hero accumulated 1 or more death tokens during the scenario, then that hero will randomly acquire a death curse card, which inflicts some sort of penalty on the hero in the next scenario. Once that next scenario is completed, the death curse card is discarded. If the hero was unfortunate to die again, they would acquire a new randomly drawn death curse card.

Campaign endgame
If players are going through the campaign, then at the end of each scenario, each player's results are recorded on the campaign sheet and they will earn points for events that occurred in the scenario.
The player who has the best overall results at the end of the campaign, wins the campaign!

Overall
It's tricky to describe Arcadia Quest. Mechanically it's a pretty straightforward, player's use the fairly obvious actions on their cards, looking for ways to sync or combo effectively until they need to be refreshed.
Different scenarios will present players with different options, opportunities and objectives. Objectives are always a mixture of PvE and PvP goals and players will need to be aware of retaliation from monsters as well as attacks from other players.

This brings me to something I consider a bit of a bugbear. I'm not a fan of games that mix PvE and PvP elements together, particularly in a game that aspires to be 'RPG-adjacent'.
As someone who's played a lot of traditional RPGs, I find it grates a little because it's not something I want from a RPG. Having said that, the other players who don't have any RPG experience found it all enjoyable, so maybe I'm the outlier,

Otherwise, I found Arcadia Quest sort of average, it plays well enough but I found nothing really engaging about it. It never felt like there was a clever strategy I could employ and there was a kind of inevitability to the gameplay.

You spend your action to fight a monster or fight a player and doing one often meant the other could happen to you. I mean if one of you're heroes has been wounded by battling a monster, what better time for another play to target?
I think this is why completing a PvE quest is mandatory to winning, otherwise the game would descend into total PvP combat. When thinking about it, Arcadia Quest ultimately seems like a mini-heavy, light-strategy skirmish wargame on a board with the veneer of RPG-adjacent gameplay. And truth be told; if I'm after a skirmish game, I feel there's plenty of better alternatives out there.

There's nothing really wrong with Arcadia Quest and if you want a light strategy game (Which let me emphasise is no bad thing.) with accessible rules then it's worth a look. But it's not for me.

29th May 2022

Sunday gaming on ​Board Game Arena continued with mancala styled game Fruit Picking.

I'm not the fruit picker, I'm the fruit picker's son, I'm only picking fruits 'til the fruit picker comes.
Hmm, it doesn't work...

Caveat: We've only ever played Fruit Picking digitally.

What's in a game?

• ​Game board: This cheerfully colourful board shows the 4 combinations of sets of card to winning the game and there's a central area to put the deck of market cards.
  Finally; along the board's bottom edge are 4 spaces, these are market slots to place 4 market cards. Above each card space is the additional market cost for that slot.
• Player board: As equally as colourful is the player board. It has 8 circular spaces, 7 of which are surrounding a central space.
  The central space is the 'supply space' and only used to store tokens, the space at the top is the 'Harvest House'.
  The remaining 6 spaces are 'farm spaces'​. These 6 spaces are where the main game occurs.
• Farm cards: These are circular cards and are used in conjunction with the player boards. There are 4 identical sets of 6 cards in each player colour.
  Each set contains 5 cards that show 1-3 of 5 different fruits (2 bananas, a pear, a pineapple, 2 plums  and 3 strawberries.), the final card shows 2 waterdrops.
• Market cards: There are 30 market cards. 6 for each type of fruit as mentioned above.
• Seed tokens: There are 18 seed tokens in each player colour.

The boards in Fruit Picking feature a couple rural landscapes depicted with a appealingly stylised illustrations showing idyllic countryside. The fruits are also well illustrated and Fruit Picking has solid art style.

Other than the fruit and waterdrop symbols, there's no iconography in the game and it should not prove any problem to players.

How's it play?
Setup

• First Player: Determine a first player.
• Players: Give each player a player board as well as seed and farm cards in their colour.
  The first player should shuffle their farm cards and randomly place them in the 6 empty spaces on their player board. All remaining players should follow suit and put the same farm cards into the same spaces.
  All players should place their seeds into their supply space. Then from there put 2 seeds into each ​of the first 3 farm spaces.
• Game board: Shuffle the market cards into a face-down deck. Then draw and place 4 cards face-up, putting 1 into each market slot.

On to play
In Fruit Picking, players take turns moving their resources clockwise around the spaces on their board which allows them to active one space to gain more seeds or buy a card.
Play begins with the first player and once their turn is over, proceeds to the left.

• Move seeds: The active player picks one of their farm spaces with seeds and moves those seeds and redistributes them. The number of spaces they are distributed to is equal to the number of seeds in the chosen space.
  Thus if the chosen farm space has 3 seeds, they are moved 3 spaces further on with 1 seed being dropped off in each space for the next 3 spaces. The last farm space to gain a seed becomes activated.
• Activation: Broadly speaking, the active player may choose to resolve 1 of 2 types of activation
  Acquire seeds: The active player gains a number of seed tokens equal to the number of fruit that are in the activated space, they are then placed into that space.
  Buy card: The active player may buy a card from the row of market cards. They can only buy a card with fruit that matches the fruit activated space and must also have enough tokens in their Harvest House space.
  The cost is the number of fruit on the card PLUS the cost on the market slot above which can be an additional 1-3 seeds.
  When a card is bought, cards on the left are slid to the right to fill the blank space and a new card is added on the left, a pretty standard conveyor belt mechanic.
  Exceptions: There are of course a couple of exceptions.
  Water drops: If the activated farm space contains the water drops farm card, then the active player must perform the acquire seeds action.
  Harvest House: If the Harvest House is activated, the active player does not choose an action, instead they perform the move seeds action again and activates a farm card another time. This can be the Harvest House again so it's possible to gain multiple actions (And fill up the Harvest House too!) by reactivating it.

Endgame
Play continues with players acquiring fruit cards until one player has the cards to meet one of the criteria which triggers the game end.
Fruit Picking provides players with 4 ways to do this. A pair and 3 of a kind, 4 of a kind, 3 pairs and 1 of each fruit.
When this occurs, the current round is completed and if the player who triggered the game is the only one to have met any of the criteria, then they win.
In the likelihood that more than one player has met any of the criteria by the end of the last round, then ties are broken by quantities of fruit and seeds on cards.

Overall
Fruit Picking is a lightweight games that has a good mix of logic and luck.

Logically, it's not hard to think several moves ahead if you want. Once farm cards have been distributed on to the player boards, moving seeds and activating farm cards is entirely predictable and only driven by player decisions.
Manipulating the Harvest House action to game more actions is a key tactic, especially as it can be used to quickly fill the Harvest House and used to purchase cards.
Fruit Picking is essentially a race to acquire cards before other players. When cards are drafted, everything can change, which neatly brings me to the next facet of the game

The game's unpredictability comes into play on the market track. As play progresses, cards will come into play randomly, not only that, their costs will also vary, especially as they move along the track.
It means that some times, the cards appearing will play into certain players' strategies and other times, potentially scupper those strategies. Players will have to be prepared to change direction for long term plans when this occurs and adapt their approach according to what is available.

It's something I've encountered in other games and found to be irritating, Fruit Picking is no different. I know that this can be an important element of a game because without some randomizer, it can sometimes very quickly become obvious who's going to win. Even so, it irritates me.

Fruit Picking also sits in a strange place of feeling a bit overlong for a filler game but definitely a bit too light for a main game.

Having said that, it's accessible game that's easy to learn. For people who want something which engages some tactical thinking but is not along time brain burner, Fruit Picking may hit that sweet spot.

26th May 2022

It's a Thursday evening and I'm in Aldershot with friends for some gaming goodness that's been a long time coming!

Is it tiny? Yeah pretty much. Is it in a dungeon? Definitely. Is it epic?... Well, you'll just have to see!
Tiny Epic dungeons is a cooperative tile laying (Or card laying really.) dungeon crawler with players taking on the roles of various heroes who will spend much of their time managing a goblin epidemic before being chased around by the big bad before hopefully defeating it.

What's in a game?

• ​Cards: Tiny Epic Dungeons uses a whole bunch of cards, most of them square shaped.
  In the corner of each card is a tin (sic) icon that indicates type of card it is.
  • ​Room cards: These square cards depict the game's titular dungeon. Each one is a room or a chamber and will have have various ways in and out.
    Typically these rooms contain a challenge or a trap to bother our heroes that they may choose to (Or be forced to!) attempt to overcome. Generally, success at these grants a benefit and a failure confers a penalty. Some will also introduce goblins into the mix.
    Entrance: This is the beginning card.
    Lair: This is where the heroes will find the boss.
  • Encounter cards: These are dungeon rooms that also contain minions. Minions are tougher than goblins.
  • Minion cards: These cards depict minions that characters will encounter. There are 8 of them and they include your standard fantasy monsters such as a troll, minotaur or giant spider, etc.
    Each card has a portrait of the pertinent monster and stats for armour, movement and 3 types of combat. There's also a damage track that runs along the edge of the card.
    Additionally, along the bottom it lists extra actions that can be triggered.
  • Goblin cards: There are 6 of these. Functionally they're almost identical to minions, except much weaker, having only 1 health each. Goblins are easy to kill but also spawn at a quicker rate, if too many are spawned at once... it spells bad news for the players.
  • Loot cards: Players can acquire treasure as they progress through their adventure and loot cards are magic items that confer bonuses on characters. Additionally, some items exist in sets which confer further bonuses if part or all of a set is collected by a single character.
  • Magic spells: Characters can potentially cast spells and these cards are spells that they can acquire.
• Oversized cards: Tiny Epic Dungeons also uses oversized cards or mats as the rules call them.
  • Torch mat: This card depicts a series of steps going downwards and acts a timer track. At the end of every turn the marker moves down a step, if it lands on a step with an icon, then that action is triggered. Generally these spawn goblins or trigger the extra actions of goblins and minions. If the marker reaches the bottom before they players find the boss lair, it's game over.
    This is a double sided card and it's flipped to the other side once the boss has been encountered. It is also downward heading set of stairs with icons on a timing track and again, if the marker reaches the bottom, the players lose.
    Finally along the top and bottom of both sides are spaces to position 4 goblin cards alongside the torch mat. Each goblin space is marked 1-4 and has a associated meeple.
  • Boss mat: These cards depict both the boss's stats and the boss' lair.
    The lair will contain a number of locations that characters may stand to fight the boss, some of which will benefit the characters and some of which will punish them.
    Bosses also have health track marked with one or more octogram symbols that relate to the altar tokens below and combat stats.
    Each boss card is also double sided and the flip side shows 3 rows of spaces for 2-4 heart tokens. More on these later.
  • Hero mats: Now we're talking. Each character in Tiny Epic Dungeons has their own mat which is essentially a character sheet. It shows their name, race and class such as dwarf fighter or wood elf rogue along with a illustration of the character.
    It also lists their health and focus, special moves (And some standard move too.) and numerical ratings for Speed and Armour.
    The final 3 stats; Strength, Agility and Intellect are rated by cubes. More this below.
    Finally along the edge of each hero mat, it has allotted spaces to place weapons, armour, spells and magic items.
• Miniature figures: There's an actual proper 3d plastic figure for each of the characters and they look like they're in the 25mm scale.
• Tokens: There are several types of tokens in the game, they all look they're made of wood.
  Heart & focus tokens: The focus tokens look like tiny lighting bolts that make their icon in game. Red hearts are for heroes and black hearts are for minions!
  Disarmed tokens: These cog shaped tokens also display keyholes and are used to represent neutralised traps. Curiously, they're the largest tokens in the game, noticeable so bigger than most other components.
  Altar tokens: These little black and white tokens have an octagram styled shape and relate to the bosses.
• Meeples: There are a whole bunch of little wooden meeples in Tiny Epic Dungeons.
  Goblin meeples: Should they be called geeples, gobples? Anyway, there are 4 of these and they are numbered, there's 1 for each that matches the icons on the goblin spaces on the torch mat.
  Minion meeples: Each of the game's minions has its own unique meeple.
  Boss meeple: A beeple? Even though there are 6 different bosses in the game, there's only 1 boss meeple which is a tiny (Sic.) omission, having said that and considering all the other components, it would be a bit mean spirited to be critical.
  It also looks styled after the eye of Sauron; which if you're going to only have 1 boss meeple is a pretty good choice.
• Dice: There are 4 dice in Tiny Epic Dungeons, 3 are black hero dice and 1 is a red enemy die.
  They are normal six-siders... well sort of anyway.
  Hero dice: The hero dice are numbered +1, +2 and 3-6. The +1, +2, 3 and 4 all also have focus icons, while the 6 also has a heart symbol.
  Enemy die: The enemy die is numbered 2-5, the 1 and 6 have been replaced with icons for a torch icon and a broken shield.

Tiny Epic Dungeons packs a lot into a small box.
The cards feel a little flimsy and the dice are plastic and feel a bit average but other than that, the components are all good quality.
The character figures are sizable and a pretty cool touch for a game of this proportion, while for the most part the tokens are small (Other than the disarm tokens.), they're still solid and well made.
But for me, the standout components are the meeples, not only are they nicely shaped wooden tokens, they also illustrated. It shows some thought and care has gone into the production.

The use of art is also good throughout the game, portraits of heroes, minions and bosses are all chunky and colourful, utilising a cartoony style that's used in a lot of modern fantasy games, it's a style I like 
Artwork used on the dungeons cards is also pretty good, there's a nice contrast between somewhat grey looking rooms and the colourful dressing and scenery that inhabit them and even the box lid features some evocative art.

This brings me to iconography. It's rare that I'm critical of a game's iconography and this is one of those occasions.
It's just that there's so much of it. A good proportion of it is instantly comprehensible, but a smaller proportion of it is not and a smaller proportion of a lot is still quite a lot!

I know that this is the result of game that is trying to emulate a D&D RPG style dungeon-crawl experience without a dungeon but even so: we played the game several times and I still did not recognised some icons. Between the fairly extensive rules and the extensive iconography, it gives the game a bit of steep learning curve.
Additionally; not only are so many icons, some of them are quite small, icons in the corner of the dungeons cards and the first time we tried to play I didn't notice them!

How's it play?
Setup

• Dungeon deck: Depending player count a mix of room and encounter cards are shuffled into 3 separate decks, Then they are placed into a single stack called the dungeon deck which will result in the early cards being room cards, the middle being a mix of room and encounter cards, while the lair will be close to the bottom of the deck.
• Other decks: Shuffle the goblin, minion, loot and magic cards into 4 face-down decks.
• Boss mat: Shuffle the boss mats and deal 1 face-down. This will be the dungeon's boss encounter.
  On the back are 3 rows of heart symbols that correspond to a 2-4 player count and have hearts equal to the number of players. E.g., the 3-player row will have 3 spaces.
• Torch mat: Put out the torch mat and out the torch token on the first place. Then put the 4 goblin meeples on their respective spots.
• Dungeon entrance: Put the dungeon entrance cards into the central playing area and put an altar token on the entrance, the others will come into play later. Then draw 4 cards from the dungeon deck and place them face-down, alongside the entrance card. This all forms the game's starting area.
• Hero mats: Either choose or randomly allocate a boss mat to each player. Each player should then take a heart and focus token and put them on to their relevant starting spots. Finally, the miniature for each hero should be placed on the entrance card.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

That's pretty much it for the setup.

On to play
In Tiny Epic Dungeons, the players must explore and reveal the dungeon, fighting goblins and acquiring loot and magic until they defeat enough minions in order get into the boss' lair and defeat them.
The dungeon in Tiny Epic Dungeons is always a 7x7 grid in size, with the entrance always being the exact centre of the dungeon.
When it comes to the active player's turn, they can broadly speaking: move, perform exactly 1 'heroic' action and any number of free actions.

• Move: During the active player's turn, they can move their character through a number of cards equal to their speed stat.
  Exploring: If a character's movement would take them on to a face-down card, then the active player flips the card, places it (Honouring all previous room connections.) and must move on to it, they then resolve the revealed the card.
  Encounter: After moving on to a card, it's encounter must be resolved. This might be a ambush by a goblin or minion, a trap or actually nothing! Additionally the card may provide a challenge for the character to overcome.
  If a goblin is encountered, flip a goblin card face-up and place it next to an available space adjacent to the torch mat. Then place that space's meeple on to the revealed card.
  If it's a minion, flip over and reveal a minion card. Put it's meeple on the revealed card and a black heart token on the minion card's health track.
  Expansion: Finally, the active player draws cards from the dungeon deck face-down and places them face-down next to exits from the revealed room. They must adhere to the 7x7 grid limit.
• Heroic actions: Characters may perform exactly 1 heroic action. This occurs after movement and movement cannot occurs after a heroic action. There are numerous different actions available.
  Skill check: A character may need or want to make a skill check. This may be because they want to overcome a challenge, cast a spell perform a search, need to avoid or disarm a trap or something else.
  Regardless of what has invoked the check, broadly speaking, they all function identically.
  All checks use 1 of a character's 3 stats; Strength, Agility and Intellect. Sometimes the nature of the check will determine which is used, other times, the player can choose. Checks also have an numerical value which is its difficulty.
  All stats are rated 1-3, this is how many hero dice the player will roll for the check. Thus a character with Strength 3 will roll 3 hero dice.
  Once the dice are rolled, the player keeps 1 die as their result which is compared to the difficulty of the challenge, if it meets or beats the number, the check is successful. However, there's a bit more to it than that.
  If any of the unused dice show a +1 or +2, then those results can be added to the die that was used, increasing its score.
  Furthermore, any used dice that show any resources are acquired by the player are the check is resolved.
  Combat: Combat is a little different to skill checks and is broken down into melee, ranged and magic, each type relates to 1 character stat.
  When the player rolls their hero dice, they also roll the enemy die at the same time.
  After making their combat roll, the player compares their result with their enemies armour value, every point that exceeds the armour value inflicts a point of damage on the enemy.
  Once the player's attack has been resolved, if the enemy is still standing, then they counterattack using the result of the red enemy die. This is a value that is added to the enemy's combat value and compared to the characters armour value and inflicts damage in the same way as a character attack. Additionally, there are 2 other results on the enemy die:
  The torch symbol deals no damage to the character and instead moves the torch token down 1 step on the torch mat.
  The broken shield result means that the character's armour value is ignored​ and the enemy deals their base damage to the character.
  Rest: As their heroic action, a character may rest. htlyIt may not seem heroic but it is useful as it replenishes some of their health and focus.
• Free actions: Characters may perform any number of free actions, additionally, free actions can be performed at any time, before or after both movement and heroic actions.
  Free actions tend to be support actions that don't have direct effects, some of which are listed below:
  Modify results: A character may expend focus points to alter the results of a skill check/combat roll.
  Research: The active character may spend focus points to acquire spell cards.
  Trigger/modify abilities: The active character may have abilities or loot items which confer benefits, typically these can be triggered by paying it's activation cost.
  Explore: This free action allows the player to reveal face-down cards adjacent to their character's current position. This is fairly costly though and to activate this action, the torch token must be moved 1 space down the torch mat track. More on the torch mat below.
• Turn end: Once a character has finished all their actions, it triggers the final action of the turn, which is to move the torch token down a space on the torch track. This can have no effect or may trigger one of the following 2 actions:
  Enemy actions: If this is triggered, all goblins and minions may move and/or attack the heroes.
  Spawn goblin: When this action is triggered, turn over a goblin card and place it on a relevant space adjacent to the torch track. For goblins spawned in this manner, their meeple is always placed on the entrance card.
• Next player: Play now progresses to the player on the left.

Other rules
There are also some other rules that need covering.

• Defeating enemies: When a goblin is defeated, it's card is put into a discard pile (And thus may be spawned again) and the meeple is returned to it's starting spot on the torch mat.
  It's slightly different for minions: Firstly, minions have a health track that must be depleted before it is defeated. When this occurs, it's black heart token is placed on the heart row on the face-down boss card. Unlike a goblin, when a minion is defeated, it is out of the game.
  Defeating enemies usually gives the players a reward in the form of a loot or magic card.
• Being defeated: If a character's health is dropped to 0, they are knocked unconscious. This means in the player's following turn, the hero must take the rest action and no other actions.
• Boss lair: Even if the lair is found, it cannot be entered until all the black hearts are placed on the back of the boss mat. I.e., all the minions are defeated. Once this is done, characters can get into the boss lair...

That's not quite it, once the lair is opened, the game goes into Act 2 and there's more for the boss.

• Reveal Boss: Flip over the boss mat, revealing the boss.
  Put the boss meeple on it's starting spot.
  Put the black heart tokens that were put on the back of the card on to the health track - it means that the boss will have multiple health tracks!
  Finally, put altar tokens on the cards that spawned minions.
• Torch mat: Flip the torch mat to it's other side and put the torch token at the top of the torch track, essentially resetting the track for the boss fight.
• Lair actions: Characters can move into spaces in the lair and fight the boss, this can inflict penalties or grant bonuses.
  However, at some point, they'll need to get the boss out into the dungeon.
• Damaging the boss: Attacks deal damage to the boss' health tracks like normal. However, the black heart tokens cannot move past the altar symbol(s) until all the alter tokens had been put on top of them. How's that done? Read on.
• NEW ACTION - taunt boss: Characters now have a new free action that allows them to spend focus to get the boss to chase them. When the boss moves on to a card containing an altar token, that token is put on to the relevant space on the boss mat, once all the tokens are there, the boss can take more damage.

Phew, there are some additional rules, such as about acquiring gear and magic etc - but that's more or less the gist of it.

Endgame
In the first act, if a 5th goblin comes into play before any of the 4 adjacent to the torch mat are defeated, then the players collectively lose.
If at any time the torch token reaches the end of the track on either side of the torch mat, then the players lose.
If the players get to act 2 and reduce all the boss's health tracks to 0, they collectively win!

Overall
So, Tiny Epic Dungeons has quite a lot rules, I feel it's not particularly complicated but there's certainly a lot going on and that means that there's a lot to remember in this fairly ambitious attempt to recreate the D&D style dungeon-crawling experience. The question is, does it succeed? Well... sort of.

The thing is, Tiny Epic Dungeons can't hide it's cooperative board game DNA. it utilises a commonplace cooperative mechanic of making the players choose between working towards their objectives (In this case exploring the dungeon, finding and defeating minions and finding the boss lair.) with managing an ongoing, constantly expanding threat (In this case preventing 5 goblins spawning in the game.). Players will be faced with choosing between the two. Furthermore, the constant ticking countdown of the torch track will encourage players not to dawdle and cooperate as much as possible.
Another challenge facing players is placement of dungeon tiles all current passageways must be honoured and the game has a strict 7x7 size. If player don't think a step ahead, there's a risk that a pathway may lead to a dead-end too early, leaving a portion of the 7x7 grid inaccessible.
Mechanically, these are all good, they put players in the position of having to make meaningful decisions. However, they do feel a little un-RPG-ish.

During this early stage of the game we did encounter a noteworthy quirk; one character could not leave the entrance for about a quarter of the game! At the start of their turn, there was always a goblin on the entrance card thanks to spawning from the torch track. Once they defeated the goblin, they could no longer move and by the time of their next turn, there was another goblin on the entrance!

One thing I like is how the game clearly differentiates between the early and late game. When the boss is revealed, everything changes and priorities shift somewhat. Exploration and goblin management become less important and dealing with the boss more so which thanks to the altar tokens requires more than just dealing damage to the big bad.

All of this should serve to make Tiny Epic Dungeons a good game but truth be told - it's all a little unremarkable.
​
Combat feels unexciting, particularly when dealing with goblins again and again, it felt repetitive and frustrating. They're not a threat because they're tough (They're not tough!), they're a threat because the rules say that you lose if you don't defeat them quick enough.
The dice mechanic used is pretty cool though. I like that the unused dice can give a benefit, e.g., not using a 6 as the result of a skill check because as it provides a point of health gives players a meaningful decision to make when choosing which die to use for a skill check.

The dungeon exploration experience it provides is pretty standard and OK but the lengthy rules and having to interpret fiddly icons mires the game in slowness and interfere with the pacing. Even after several play throughs, I look at the icons and think, 'Wait, what does that do?'.
After more play throughs I'm sure that the rules will provide no obstacle but I feel little compulsion to play it again, which is a bit of shame as it looks really nice.

While there's nothing wrong with Tiny Epic Dungeons and I can't find any fault with it, I also can't find a reason to like it.

24th May 2022

It's a Tuesday and we're with the Woking Gaming Club in The Sovereigns.

Fly as free as a err flying pirate? Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is set in a world of fantastical aerial ships, anthropomorphic heroes and adventurous voyages to find loot and lost treasure.

What's in a game?

• Board: The board for Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is double-sided.
  One side has the 'base' game and depicts a cheerful oceanic panorama of land and flying islands in a colourful palette.
  The other side features the same landscape but lashed by heavy rains and troubled by storms. This side is the more 'antagonistic' side.
  Initiative track: This track has space for 6 cards and also tracks initiative throughout the game's day and night phases.
  Loot spaces: There are 6 spaces for 'loot' and are marked day 1 through to day 6. Each space represents a day of voyaging. Each of the game's 3 voyages lasts 4, 5 or 6 days respectively.
  Reputation tracker: There are 6 spaces here (One for each player.) and it runs from left to right, with the rightmost player having the highest reputation. Beneath each space is a gold value and on the left end is a '-2' gold symbol, while on the right end is a '+2' symbol.
  Loot tile spaces: Not to be confused with loot tokens or loot spaces. These provide special rules when loot tokens are taken and also serve as spaces to place 1 each of the game's 7 loot tiles.
  The actions tend to activate either at dusk or the voyage's end.
• Player cards: There are identical sets of 40 cards in each player colour that depict 40 different pirates and are numbered 1-40 in the top left corner. They also display a name for each character.
  At the bottom it lists the ability of each card in the game's 3 phases.
  Bold, brash and cartoony art is used to illustrate the character cards.
• Reputation tokens: There is one of these bulky octagonal reputation tokens in each player colour.
• Scoring dials: There are 2 dials on each of these and again, they come in 6 player colours.
• Graveyard tile: There is 1 each of these tiles for each player and they display a wrecked ship.
• Loot tiles: These can be used to provide alternate rules for when a loot token is taken.
• Loot tokens: Now I'm a pretty big fan of wooden components but even so, these plastic tokens are very chunky and look very cool - even if they look chewy sweets in colourful wrappers!
  They represent the game's 7 different types of loot; chest, barrel, relic, hook, saber, amulet and map. When a loot token is taken, it will activate it's special rule as per the board or loot tiles in play.
• Bag: Used in conjunction with the loot tokens to blindly draw them.
• Doubloons: Gold doubloons are the game's currency. These tokens are made of card and have different shapes dependant on denomination.

Component quality is solid throughout, cards, tokens and tiles are well constructed but the chunky loot tokens really stand out, even if I have to resist the urge to try and unwrap and eat them.

Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest makes use of excellent use of bright, eye-catching, cartoony art presenting a larger than life setting and characters.

About a dozen icons are used throughout the game, they are all fairly clear and easily understood.

How's it play?
Setup

• Board: Put out the board.
  Reputation track: Take all 6 reputation tokens (Regardless of the number of players.) and randomly put them on the track to determine starting order of initiative. Each player should get 7-12 gold according to their starting position on the track.
  Optional: Players can choose to use the default loot rules on the board or use the loot tiles for a variant on these rules.
• Loot: Put all the loot tokens into the bag and blindly draw loot tokens for each day of the current journey, the number of tokens drawn for each day should equal the number of players.
• Players: Give each player the following in their colour.
  Character deck: This 40 card deck should not be shuffled and instead be in numerical order going from 1-40.
  Scoring dial: Should be set to 0.
  Graveyard: Will come into play later on.

That's pretty much setup done.

On to play
Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is played over 3 'voyages' which have a length of 4, 5 and 6 days. For each day, a player will put a character card into play and this is done secretly.
​Thus over all 3 voyages each player will use 15 character.

• Voyage start: I said earlier that no one should shuffle their character decks. Well now, one player should shuffle their deck, draw 6 cards and show them to all other players.
  Every other player should now take those 6 cards out their deck and put them into their hand.
  This means that all players will have identical hands of 6 cards.
• Play card: Each player now chooses and plays a character card from their hand and plays it face-down.
• Reveal cards: Once all players have put a card down, they are all simultaneously revealed.
  Cards are then placed on to the initiative tracker in numerical order with the lowest value going on the left (And going first!) all they way to the highest on the furthest right (Who goes last.). Ties are resolved according to the reputation tracker.
• Phases: The following 3 phases are played which will trigger various actions which gain or lose players gold, reputation or even character cards.
  • Day: In initiative order (With the lowest value characters going first.) activate each character card's 'day' ability (Provided the character has one.).
  • Dusk: Now in reverse initiative order, each player should remove their character from the initiative tracker and places it in their playing area, if the character has a dusk ability it should now be activated and then they take a loot token from that day's space. If the token chosen activates a rule with a dusk ability, it is also immediately resolved.
    If for any reason a player's character has been sent to the graveyard, the controlling player does not collect the card or a loot token.
  • Night: Players now activate any night abilities on the cards they've placed in their personal playing areas in any order they choose.
    ​Once this is done all cards in a player's personal area are discarded to their graveyard.
    Any loot tokens a player has acquired stays in their playing area until the end of the voyage.
• Next day: Once all night actions have been resolved, play moves on to the next day and any unclaimed loot tokens from the previous day are returned to the bag.
  Each player now puts another character face-down into their area and the 3 phases are resolved again.
• Voyage's end: When the last day in a voyage has ended and night actions for that day have been resolved, then end of voyage actions are resolved. Typically these will be actions related to loot tokens and loot rules, although there are character cards with abilities to be resolved now too.
  Gold: However much gold a player has accumulated on this voyage is now added to their scoring dial and is considered 'banked', this means that if a player loses gold for any reason later in the game, it does not come off of the dial.
  Tokens: All coin tokens are returned to the supply and all loot tokens put back in the bag.
• New voyage: The setup is now done for a new voyage which will be a day longer.
  Loot tokens: All the days for this voyage are now populated with loot tokens following the previous rules.
  Draw cards: The player who initially drew 6 cards at the start of the 1st voyage now draws another 6. All other players also draw the same 6 cards.
  All players will now have 8 cards in hand, 2 from the previous voyage and 6 identical from the start of this one.
  Play now progresses normally for the allotted number days.

Endgame
Play progress until the night actions for the 3rd and final voyage are resolved.
Players compare their scoring dials.

​Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest feels like a complex game but in practice is quite straightforward. In essence, a character card is played and the resolved up to 3 times.
Where the game's complexity comes from is how a character card played interacts with character cards played by other players.

Everyone starts with the same hand of cards and will acquire a further identical 12 cards during the course of the game.
It means that all players will be using the same 18 cards played over in total 15 actions. But since it's unlikely that all players will make use of the same cards at the same, it means the game encourages players to watch their opponents. Knowing when someone has or hasn't played a certain card can prove very useful. This contextual information can allow players to adapt their tactics and can change the flow of the game.

Additionally; Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest injects a dose of 'take that' into the game, the 40 cards have a varied set of abilities that can be brought to play, including being able to eliminate other characters, pulling cards out of the graveyard, etc.
It's also worth noting that while the 'calm' side of the game board has the potential for some friction between players the 'stormy' side increases this.

The game also provides short and long term goals which require short, mid and long term strategies.
Day abilities on cards give players immediate benefits, but dusk and night abilities can also provide desirable benefits. A player may choose to put a high value character card on to the initiative track so they go earlier in the dusk phase to secure a certain type of loot.
Which brings me to long term strategy, loot is vital here. Loot typically provides benefits during the end of voyage phase and the loot for all days is openly shown on the board which players must take this into consideration during the whole journey. 

All of this means that Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest hits a sweet spot of accessible but tactical game play. Players are always given meaningful decisions to make using a degree of imperfect information.
I found it an engaging game. Definitely one to try.

19th May 2022

It's a Thursday and I'm enjoying an evening of gaming in Aldershot for the first time in actual years! Take that Covid-19!

Cho chooo! Switch & Signal is a cooperative board game about managing train schedules, that's right - you're playing the generously proportion controller and how do you control these schedules. With switches and signals of course!

What's in a game?

• Board: This is a double-sided board, one side features a chunk of western Europe and the other is the continental United States. Mechanically speaking, the European side is the 'easier' to play.
  Railways: Both maps feature a brightly coloured landscape dotted with various cities (In 4 colours.) and the port Marseilles which are connected by criss-crossing railway lines. At the edge of the network are 'deployment points' numbered 2-12
  Switches: Where the railway lines intersect, there are 3 or 4 small circles on the junction, depending on whether it's a T-junction or a cross-road. These circles represent switches and are used to control the flow of rail traffic throughout the game.
  Signals: Along most lines are red-light symbols, there are also red-light symbols at every entrance to every city. These are the game's titular signals and must be managed to keep trains moving along swiftly.
  There are 9 supply spaces to place the game's 3 sets of 3 differently coloured trains.
  There are also spaces to place the game's 2 deck of cards and a 'clock' space for time tokens.
  There are also 3 portraits of 3 different characters, each of these characters are 'helpers' and has a special ability that can be made use of once per game.
  Finally, on the European side of the board there are 8 little spaces in the port of Marseille where little cubes will be delivered to. On the U.S. side, they are split over two different opposite edges of the railway network.
• Trains: These are plastic models of trains and there are 3 each in black, brown and grey. In game terms, each type of train travels at a different speed.
  Each train also has a spot to place a little wooden cube.
• Dice: Switch & Signal comes with 5 six-sided dice including a pair of normal six-siders. These are used during deployment.
  The 3 other dice are coloured black, brown and grey, which correspond with the 3 types of coloured train. These are not numbered normally and each on has a unique distribution of numbers to represent the different movements of the different types of train.
• Switches: These smaller wooden black discs are used on the board and 2 are placed on the small circles on every junction to indicate which way a particular set of junction points are facing. They can be moved around to different circles on the junction change it's alignment.
• Signals: These larger wooden green discs represent green 'go' signals and are placed on the red-light spots on the board to let trains past.
• Cubes: These are the traditional little wooden cubes we all know and love. They represent goods that need delivering to their destination, there are 8 and there are 2 each in 4 colours which correspond to the 4 coloured cities on the board.
• Cards: Switch & Signal makes use of 2 types of card.
  Departure cards: These cards feature pictures of the 3 types of train.
  If trains appear the top half of the card, they will always be 'multicoloured', it shows whether 0, 1 or 2 trains will be deployed on to the board.
  If it's in the lower half, it indicates the type of train that will move this turn.
  Frequently trains will appear on both halves of the card.
  One departure card is the starting departure card and always deploys first.
  Action cards: There are 3 types of this kind of card that allow players to perform their actions. There are switch setting, signal setting and train movement cards.
• Tokens: There are 3 types of tokens in Switch & Signal, they are all the standard type of card token.
  Time tokens: These round tokens each feature a illustration of a old-school analogue clock face and as you may imagine, used to track time.
  Location tokens: There are 11 of these octagonal tokens, which are just numbered from 2-12. These are part of the optional rules to further randomise deployment
  Cover tokens: These rectangular tokens are marked with an 'x' and are used in conjunction with the characters on the board.

Quality-wise, all of Switch & Signal's components are made to the usual high standard we've come to expect from modern game and nothing feels particularly flimsy. The game makes good use of a wooden components, especially the dice that are nicely rounded and is something I always like.
​The notable components are the little plastic trains which each contain a space to put a wooden goods cube.

The art is good, the boards are colourful and uncluttered with some nice illustrations for various cities. The art on the cards is equally good.

The game's use of iconography is straightforward, easily understood and doesn't prove an obstacle.

On to Play
Setup
This set up is for the European beginning default game, the rules provide options to alter the game's challenge and the U.S. side has some different rules.

• Board: Put out the board and put all the trains on their allotted spaces as per their colours.
  ​Cubes: Put the cubes on to their pertinent city, thus each city will have 2 cubes in its colour.
• Time tokens: Put the 7 time tokens on their space. This number can be varied to make the game easier or more challenging.
• Switch & signals:
  Switches: Switch tokens must be put on all the junctions as shown in the rulebook. In later games, players can choose how to align these junctions.
  Signals: The game uses 8 signal tokens, they too must be placed on the map as shown in the rulebook. 1 is placed on a spot on each city and the remaining 3 are placed on spots on the railway tracks.
  Again, the starting spots can be altered in later games and the number of signal tokens can also be varied.
• Cover tokens: Place the 3 cover tokens adjacent to the 3 helpers.
• Departure cards: Shuffle the departure cards cards into face-down deck, discard 2 and place the remaining 16 their space on the board.
• Action cards: shuffle them into a face-down deck on their allotted space and deal 5 action cards to each player.
• First player: Determine a starting a player.

On to play
The objective in Switch & Signal is to collect all 8 cubes from the 4 cities using the trains and deliver them all to Marseille.
Switch & Signal functions much like a lot of cooperative games; that is the active player flips a card and resolves it's actions on the board. Then the active players takes their action(s).

• ​Departure card: The first departure card in the game is always the same and instructs players to deploy 1 train of each colour.
  After this card, the first thing the active player does at the start of their turn is flip over and resolve a departure card. This will have 2 phases.
  ​Deployment: At the top of card it will show 0, 1 or 2 multicoloured trains. If it shows 1 or 2 trains, then the active player must take many trains from the supply on the board, they can choose any of the 3 colours if they're available.
  Roll the dice: Then for each train, they must roll the deployment dice, this gives a result of 2-12 and the train must be put on the corresponding entry spot on the game board.
  If the active player cannot deploy a train for any reason, the players collectively lose 2 time tokens.
  Movement: The bottom have of the departure card will display 1, 2 or 3 trains, they may have a specific colour or may be multicoloured.
  The active player must resolve the movement of these trains in the order they are shown on the card. Thus if a card shows a brown train, then a black train, the active player must resolve movement for all brown trains on the board then all black trains on the board. The active player may choose the order in which trains of a single colour are moved.
  Additionally, if a multicoloured train is showing, then the active player must move all the trains of a single colour of their choosing. Again, the active player chooses the order in which all the trains in a specific colour are moved.
  Roll the die: When the active player moves a train, they roll the die of the matching colour and must​ move the train that many spaces along the rail track and going through the junctions as they have been set up.
  The dice do not have equal numbers and the numbers are distributed as follows.
  Grey: 1, 1, 1, 2, 2 & 3.
  Brown: 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, & 4.
  Black: 2, 3, 3, 4, 4 & 5.
  You will see that black trains for example; move much quicker than grey ones and will nearly always move the same or more spaces. It's very important to remember this distinction between trains.
  When trains move they cannot pass a red signal (A green disc must be on a red-light in order to pass it.), nor can they pass any other train. If this occurs, then the train stops at the signal or behind the other train and the active player must discard time tokens equal to the movement that was not completed. The only exception is when a train enters a city, in this case, the train will always stop, regardless of its speed at no penalty.
  Additionally: If a train went head on into another train or goes off the board through an entry point, it incurs a loss of time tokens and the train is placed back on the supply.
• Actions: Once the departure card has been resolved, the active player can take their actions, this is done by playing cards from their hand. They can play any number of cards from none to all.
  Cards have the following actions
  Switch setting: The player can play one of these cards to change the alignment of any one junction.
  Signal setting: This card allows the active player to move a signal token from any red-light to another, provided every city always has at least 1 token.
  ​Train movement: As you may have surmised, playing a train movement card allows the active player to move any single train - this is done by rolling its die.
  Wild action: By discarding any 2 action cards, the active player may carry out any one of the above 3 actions.
  Load train: When an unloaded train is in a city with an available cube, the active player may discard any action card to load the cube on to the train.
• Other rules:
  Helpers: Each of the 3 helpers can be used once per game and provide a once-only benefit. When a helper has completed their action, use a cover token to cover their ability.
  Delivery: When a train the port city (in this case Marseilles.), if it carrying a goods cube it's automatically unloaded and the cube is put on its relevant delivery spot. The train is returned to the supply.
  Time tokens: You'll have noticed that when things go wrong, the players will be asked to discard 1 or more time tokens.
  What happens when they run out? Then the players must discard a departure card and then replenish the supply of time tokens. Losing a departure card might not sound so bad but believe me.. it is!
• End of turn: Once the active player has used all the action cards they can or want to, they draw 5 move action cards with a maximum hand size of 10.
  Play then progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
Play continues until one of the following conditions is met.
If the players run out of departure cards and they have to draw one, then they collectively lose.
If all 8 cubes are delivered, then the players immediately win.

Overall
If you play a lot of cooperative games, the basic mechanics will be familiar here:
Turn over a card and resolve it's action which will create obstacles for the players, then have them perform some actions and choose between progressing the objective or mitigating the problems caused by the drawing of cards.
Rinse and repeat.

Something about Switch & Signal feels a little different though. Maybe its because the departure cards are so contextual.
The trains being moved by the departure cards are both the cause of problems for players and also the means to victory. On more than one occasion, we wanted to move a train but didn't want to spend a card to do so, instead we left it to the 'game' and departure cards to do the job for us.
​It's pretty rare for players to want the 'bad things happen' card to actually do something in a cooperative game.

How trains are moved is vital. Not only do players have to move them into cities to pick up goods, they'll need to manage the different speeds they move at. Getting a fast train behind a slower one is a disaster, no two ways about it.
This is exacerbated by the random nature in which trains are deployed on to the board by the dice.

Players will also to manage the titular switches and signals. They'll look to create clear routes with full green lights to the port and funnel trains down that route in the correct order.
It's a real balancing act though, it's hard to get the junction points where you want them and there's are never enough green lights.

I have to say, that when it works, it feels extremely satisfying.
I've never been a train controller but Switch & Signal genuinely makes me feel a little like one as I think about how to prioritise trains and set up routes with minimum card expenditure.

This brings me to a final point about the game. I said earlier that being forced to discard a departure card is not good and I meant it!
Switch & Signal is a well balanced game and it seemed every victory, every loss came down to the wire, came down to the last departure card or two and losing one felt very risky.
I found it a lot of fun.

If you like train-themed games, Switch & Signal is worth a look, how many cooperative trains games are there?
​If you like cooperative games, you really should give this a try. It's blend of familiar and unique mechanics makes it easy to get into yet different to other cooperative games. 

2nd May 2022

It's a bank holiday Monday and we're round Simon's for some gaming fun.

Waterdeep, famed city in The Forgotten Realms and home to many a adventurer, ready to brave the wilderness in the search for treasure and glory... oh wait... This Dungeons & Dragons setting licensed game is nothing to do with Dungeon & Dragons... It's actually a political-intrigue themed worker placement game!

What's in the game?

• Game board: The board shows a map of the titular city; Waterdeep in some detail.
  Buildings: There 9 basic worker-spaces dedicated the various 'buildings' and establishments throughout the city, such as the Blackstaff Tower and The Grinning Lion Tavern.
  Some spaces such as the Cliffwatch Inn and Builder's Hall have additional spaces associated with them (To place certain types of cards basically.).
  Building sites: There are also 9 blank spots which can have buildings constructed upon them during the course of the game.
  Card spaces: There are spaces for the quest deck & discard pile, intrigue deck and discard pile as well as the the deck of building tiles.
  Round tracker: Lord of Waterdeep is played over 8 rounds, this is tracked with VP tokens - which are then introduced into the game over each round. More on this below.
  Agent tracker: Players gain an additional worker halfway through the game, their workers are kept here until acquired.
  Scoring track: Finally, there's a scoring track which runs the perimeter of the board.
• Player mat: There is a player mat in each of the 5 player colours. Each mat represents a different faction active within Waterdeep, the City Watch or the Harpers for example.
  Mats contain spaces to put acquired resources such as cubes, money or agents. There are also allotted spots to place active and completed quest card and to place a player's Lord card.
• Agent meeples: These come in each player and are the game's workers. Additionally, there is a ambassador and lieutenant meeple which may come into play.
• Adventurers: Represented by little wooden cubes, these are recruits that players will be... err... recruiting to their cause to complete quests.
  There are 4 colours of cube representing clerics, fighters, rogues and magic-users. What, no demi-humans!
• Cards: Lord of Waterdeep makes uses of several types of cards.
  Lord cards: These are the Lords of Waterdeep, the secret rules or the city. There are 11 lord cards and each player will secretly be playing one of them. Lord cards feature some flavour text and a method for earning additional VPs.
  Quest cards: Questing is an important part of Lord of Waterdeep. Quest cards contain illustrations and some flavour text. Each quest card also has a cost to complete, typically it will be a number of adventurers such as 3 fighters and 2 rogues and so on, the cost may include money too
  Each quest also associated with 1 of 5 types such as Warfare or Skulduggery. This also determines which type of adventure it primarily needs.
  Intrigue cards: When played, intrigue provide the controlling player with a once-only benefit of some sort.
• Building tiles: These extra buildings which can be constructed and placed on the boards blank building sites for the listed cost in coins. The provide players with extra locations to place workers and new benefits which can be earned. Any player put a worker there but be warned, the builder gets a benefit whenever another player makes use of their building.
  These tiles are sort of square shaped but with an indentation in 1 corner - which is where players' building control marker goes. (More on markers below.)
• Tokens: The game also makes use of various card tokens.
  Victory points: These hexagonal tokens display what appears to be a ruby.
  Building control marker: These come in the 5 different player colours, when a player constructs a building, they put their marker on the corner of the tile.
  Gold: The game uses curiously shaped square and crescent tokens to represent gold. I guess that's what coins look like in Waterdeep.
  First player marker: This token looks a bit like the rook from a chess set and represents Castle Waterdeep.

For the most part, all the components felt sturdy and well made. The player mats felt a little thin and flimsy but that's probably down to the fact they're quite large and will be perfectly find unless mistreated.

​There's a lot of excellent art throughout the game. I'm not sure if it's been created specifically for Lords of Waterdeep or sourced from the large amount of Forgotten Realms/D&D artwork that's been produced over the decades but either way, it's good quality and generously used on all the game's cards.
The other piece of significant artwork is the map on the board, it's very well detailed, although it does make the board look a little 'busy'. Regardless of this I still quite like it.

The game does use a fair amount of iconography, for the vast majority of icons, it's pretty clear what they mean and there was minimal need to refer to the rules.

How's it play?
Setup

• Player mats: Randomly deal a player mat to each player. This will be that player's faction/colour for the game.
  Also give each player a number of meeples/agents as per player count and building control markers, all  in their player colour.
  Finally put 1 meeple of each player colour on the agent track.
• Lords of Waterdeep: Shuffle the Lord cards into a face-down deck, deal 1 face-down to each player and discard the rest out of the game. Player's should keep the identity of their lord secret, there's a space to put it under their player mat.
• Board: Put out the game board and do the following.
  Quest deck: Shuffle the quest cards into a face-down deck then deal 4 face-up on to their allotted spaces above the Cliffwatch Inn.
  Building tiles: Shuffle the building tiles into a face-down stack, deal 3 face-up on to the allotted spaces adjacent to the Builder's Hall.
  Intrigue cards: Shuffle the intrigue cards into a face-down deck and place them on their allotted space. Then deal 2 intrigue cards to each player face-down.
  Victory point tokens: Put 3 VP tokens on to each of the 8 round tracking spaces.
• First player: Determine a starting player, that player gets 4 gold, each subsequent player then gets 1 more gold than the previous player. Thus for a 5 player game, the starting gold will go from 4-8 gold.

On to play
Lords of Waterdeep uses the traditional turn structure with the active player taking an action and play progressing to their left.
When someone is the active player, they can act in 2 phases.
Firstly they must take their action, a player can only pass when they have no more agents to play.
finally, the active player may complete a quest if possible.

• Round start: At the start of the first and every following round, take the 3 VP tokens and place 1 each on the three building tiles available to buy.
• Place worker: A player action will involve placing one of their agents on to a space on the board and resolving that space. Several spaces will devoted to acquiring resources, others however, will have more specific actions.
  • Acquire resource: A number of the spaces will simply acquire 1 or more of the games 5 main resources (4 adventurer types and gold.) for the player when they place their worker there. I.e., going to the arena will recruit fighters, going to the tavern will recruit rogues and so forth.
    When resources are acquired, they are placed on to the player's mat.
  • Builder's Hall: If a worker is placed here, then the active player chooses one of the 3 available advanced buildings and pays its cost. The building is then placed into the blank building sites. Finally, the active player puts one of their building control markers in the appropriate slot.
    When a advanced building is drafted from the builder's hall, it is immediately replaced with a new building tile.
    Advanced buildings: there are numerous different types of advanced building that can come into play. Each one provides an extra space to place a worker and will provide the player who built it with a benefit whenever another player uses the building.
  • Castle Waterdeep: When a player puts a worker here, they gain the first player marker for the following round. Additionally, they also draw an intrigue card.
  • Cliffwatch Inn: There are actually 3 spaces here.
    First space: This allows the active player to take a face-up quest card then put it on the active quest area adjacent to their player mat and take 2 gold
    Second space: This allows the active player to take a face-up quest card then put it on the active quest area adjacent to their player mat and draw an intrigue card.
    Third space: With this action, all the currently face-up quest cards are discard and are replaced with 4 more, then the active player takes 1 of them.
    Whenever a quest card is taken, it is immediately replaced.
    Quest cards: When a player gains a quest card, it placed along the left-hand edge of their player mat; until it is completed, it has no function.
  • Waterdeep Harbour: This spot also has 3 spaces.
    Each time a player places a worker here, they may immediately play one of their intrigue cards.
    A player may put multiple agents here but is still limited to playing 1 agent per turn.
    Intrigue card: When an intrigue card is played, it is immediately resolved and discarded.
    There are several types of intrigue card which may benefit whoever plays it or hinder another.
• Complete quest: ​After the active player has placed and resolved one of their workers, they may spend resources on their mat to complete one active quest per turn.
  Once a quest is completed, it grants a reward, this may be a once-only or ongoing benefit. Quests with on-going benefits are known as plot-quests and may provide extra places to put workers.
  When a quest is completed, it's VPs are immediately scored.
  Mandatory quests: These quests are not acquired the usual way, they come from intrigue cards and are actually played on other players. If a player receives a mandatory quest, it must be completed before they complete any other quest.
• Next player: Once a player has put a worker into play and chosen to complete a quest or not, play progresses to the player on their left.
• Next round: When all players have placed all their workers, the current round ends and play progresses to the next round. The VP tokens on the new round's spot on the round tracker are placed on the 3 available building tiles.
  It is possible for a building to have more than 1 VP token if it wasn't built in the previous round.
  5th Round: At the start of the 5th round, each player acquires an additional agent/worker they can use for the rest of the game.

Endgame
The game ends at the end of the 8th round and goes to final scoring. VPs come from the follwing sources.

• Score on the score tracker.
• Every agent/worker a player has on their mat earns them an additional VP.
• Every 2 gold a player has on their mat earns them a VP.
• Lord cards will score VPs according to their individual quest objectives.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Now, I'm by no means whatsoever particularly knowledgeable about the Forgotten Realms setting but it's quite impressive how Lords of Waterdeep manages to marry a worker placement game with the flavour of the setting, or at least a part of it that takes place in Waterdeep. It's not vital to the rules or gameplay but conversely, neither is it jarring or hindering.

The game is all about optimising actions to gain required resources as efficiently as possible to complete quests which must also be acquired while at the same time trying to predict and out manoeuvre other players: Most of the locations that confer resources will only have space for a single worker, making it unlikely that players will get all the resources they want in a single round, prioritising is very important because completing quests is very important, not only do quests provide VPs, they can confer useful benefits as well.

This ties in with the Lord cards which are essentially secret objectives.
Not only may players be competing for certain quest types and their respective resources, there's also a higher level of play where resources and quests can be denied to other players, provided their objectives can be guessed of course.

The advanced buildings is an interesting proposition, it adds an element of emergent strategy to the game, changing the status quo, giving players new options and making them re-asses their plans. Constructing a useful building also has the benefit of earning the builder its bonus and inevitably, it'll be used by other players.

There's not much else to say really, the gameplay is solid if somewhat unremarkable; players of worker placements games will find themselves on familiar ground here which may or may not be good thing - depending on your mileage.
Perhaps the playing time is a touch too long for what it is but none of this stops Lords of Waterdeep from ultimately being an enjoyable game.

If the Forgotten Realms setting doesn't put you off for some reason and you want to try a worker placement game, then Lords of Waterdeep is probably worth a look.