30th December 2021 Thursday afternoon gaming on Board Game Arena continued with Dice Hospital. Doctor, doctor, please Oh, the mess I'm in Doctor, doctor, please Oh, the mess I'm in Mismanaging your hospital in Dice Hospital will definitely lead to a big mess! What's in a game?
The component quality in Dice Hospital is all round good. The tiles are study and cards are of the expected quality. The game's 60 or so dice are plastic but with well rounded corners and satisfying to roll. Finally, all the meeples are stylised after medical staff, it's a nice touch and appreciated, they're made of wood too! Good stuff. All of the art for the different departments on the hex tiles is quite small but also well detailed and depicts a variety of different medical equipment and hospital furniture, I quite like it. The specialist cards have headshots of doctors, it's sort of average artwork but on the hand, they look like medical staff, what more could you want? Besides, how much more exciting could you make the portrait of a urologist look! We found the game's iconography initially a little confusing but after a couple of references to the rulebook, it was always sorted out. None if it's a dealbreaker. How's it play? Setup
On to play Dice Hospital is played over 6 phases, some of these phases are completed in turn order and some can be completed simultaneously.
Endgame Play continues until 8 rounds have been completed. Upon reaching the end, players calculate their final scores, this includes: VPs for discharging patients over the 8 rounds. +1 per unspent blood bag. -2 per fatality token acquired. Scores are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
As well as randomly determining which improvements appear, I like how the game makes use of dice as both a randomiser and a resource to be managed. Using dice value to gauge health levels and colours to represent different types of malady is innovative and great. There's a lot of good gameplay in Dice Hospital and a lot to like. Figuring out how to strike balance the hospital's different needs, requirements and aspects is a satisfying challenge. In this regard, the game's 2-tier drafting mechanics work well, drafting patients that are easier to heal means going later when drafting hospital improvements, that's a good balancing mechanic with meaningful decisions. There's also a higher level of play at work here, if you can anticipate which patients/improvements other players are looking to acquire, you can either try and either deny them what they want or make it easier to get what you want. For example, if no one else wants a red doctor, then going last in the improvement drafting phase is not a problem. Knowing what and when to draft is probably the single most important aspect of the game, using those combinations of special abilities to heal multiple patients at a time is vital. It's also contextual, depending on the colour of patients and improvements appear and what a player already has in their hospital. Players may find themselves having to reappraise their strategy from turn to turn. Willingness to trash an improvement for a blood bag can also be a powerful play, used right, blood bags can provide much more than a single VP. Luckily, the game provides fairly good opportunities to combo departments and specialists off each other, especially toward the latter half. However, getting that balance wrong leads to sub-optimal play, having to many departments leaves them unused and too many specialists means they just do nothing. Even though it's an abstract dice game, it genuinely feels a bit like you're running a hospital, having to try and find ways to treat and discharge patients before the next influx of unending patient. This is not a coincidence. Players start the game with 3 patients and acquire 3 more every round, this means by the end of the 3rd round, they'll have filled all their wards (Provided they haven't already discharged any patients.), as a consequence, players will need to discharge 3 patients a round just to avoid sending some to the morgue. Thanks to the scoring though, there's a wrinkle here. Discharging patients in drips and drabs doesn't score many VPs. Players will actually want their patient numbers to build up a bit and discharge as many of them at once as possible to optimise scoring. It's a another balancing act and it all combines to make Dice Hospital a good game. If you like worker placement mechanics, blended with a bit mid-complexity, light randomness, meaningful choices and almost engine building elements; then Dice Hospital is worth a try. One I found an enjoyable experience.
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29th December 2021 We're at Simon's for some Wednesday evening gaming goodness during the mid Christmas break. The game of the night was Lost Ruins of Arnak. "That belongs in a museum!" What does? Cliched old one liners! Lost Ruins of Arnak is a game about raiding temples of a long forgotten ancient civilisation on an uncharted island. What's in a game?
The game has really nice plastic pieces for arrowheads, tablets and jewels, along with wooden meeples, magnifying glasses and notebooks, you can never go wrong with wooden components and yet, makes use of unremarkable card tokens for coins and compasses. Yes it's a minor quibble but it's definitely noticeable. The game's cards and tiles are standard quality. From an art perspective, it's all pretty good, cards and tokens all have nice, clear and colourful thematic art. The standout however, is the board, with a pair of lovely landscape images, it's almost a shame that they'll mostly be covered with components during play. The game contains a fair amount of iconography, none of it was particularly unclear though. How's it play? Setup
On to play A round in Lost Ruins of Arnak continues until all players can no longer perform actions (Free actions don't count.) or have passed. The game features a pretty standard turn order that goes clockwise and in their turn, players will get 1 main action and any amount of free actions. A round proceeds as follows:
Endgame When the 5th round is completed, then so it the game and we go to scoring. There are a variety of opportunities to score. Research: Research tokens earn VPs depending where they finished on the research track. Temple tile: Players who reached the temple can score the VPs on these tiles: Idol tokens: each idol token acquired earns 3 VPs. Player board idol slots: Each empty slot on a player's player board earns the VPs it displayed. This means when an idol is slotted for a benefit, the VPs it covers are not scored. Guardian tiles: Each guardian defeated earns the player 5 VPs. Cards: Aretfact and item cards can also earn the owning player VPs. Fear cards: Finally; fear cards. Each fear card a player has deducts 1 VP from their total. Points are tallied, highest score wins! Overall
Hmmm, what to say about Lost Ruins of Arnak. It would only be a slight exaggeration to say that this game is sort of a jack of all trades and master of none. A little bit of deck building, a little bit of worker placement and a little bit of resource management, this game has it all! Joking aside, this, on a basic level represents 3 different approaches to accumulating VPs. That is; buying cards and using cards, visiting sites and moving up the research track. Card will get players useful special abilities and travel points, visiting sites will acquire players resources and going up the research track gets other benefits, including assistants. Players will not want to neglect any of these elements and there's fairly good synergy between different parts of the game, but generally players end up focusing on 1 of them during play. While the game isn't overly complex, there's quite a lot to consider. Personally, it felt like going up the research track was a good way to score big but it's hard to be sure. Another very important factor to think about is turn-economy, there's no set number of turns per round in Lost Ruins and finding ways to get extra main actions is vital. A player who gets 10 actions per round instead of 5 is going to just do better and I have to say, finding way to combo actions into more actions is pretty satisfying. For example, a player might use a card to get resources to move a worker to get different resources to spend on the research which would provide another benefit. Having said that, taking a single main action at a time can feel frustrating, yes it's a combo system, but it's a slow one - unless you're the only player still with actions. I found Lost Ruins of Arnak a fun game, but not a particularly compelling one; it's hard to put a finger on. The game's theme fits it's mechanics well and it has great presentation. I think maybe that all the game's systems, the worker placement and the deck building and so on are all on an individual level, a little uninspiring and bland. The deck building mechanic would never stand on its own for example, neither would the worker placement, on the other hand, they don't need to. So is the sum greater than the parts? The jury's out. When I encounter a game I like, I get the urge to buy a copy and I don't get that with Lost Ruins of Arnak. The game was entertaining but it wouldn't be first choice of mine to play but I happily play it if someone else wanted to. 27th December 2021 Mid-Christmas gaming on Board Game Arena continued with Lucky Numbers. A good Friend Is Like A Four Leaf Clover, hard to find and lucky to have. Well, in Lucky Numbers; clovers make a game easy to learn and fun to play. Caveat: We've only ever played this game digitally. What's in a game?
There's not much to say about the art style, the game looks a little plain but is colourful with a lucky clover theme running throughout. The game's only iconography are the numbers 1-20. How's it play? Setup
On to play The objective in Lucky Numbers is to be the first player to fill in all empty spaces on their board with clover tiles in ascending order. Players take turns acquiring tiles and hopefully placing them on their player boards.
Endgame The first player to place clover tiles on all spaces on their player board, wins! Overall
There's no doubt about it, luck plays an important role in Lucky Numbers, which considering its name is... err... lucky? And that's not a bad thing either. Luck keeps the game fresh, acts as a fairly good balancing mechanic between players of differing experience levels and puts them on their toes. Despite the part that luck plays, there's also strategy to found in Lucky numbers. On a basic level, knowing where to place tiles is critical. After a couple of games players will learn the broad areas that are good placings for a tile but this is also contextual and players will need to pay close attention to the value of the tile in their hand in relation to the tiles already in play on their board. A physical gap between tiles also requires a numerical gap between them, how much of a numerical gap? That depends on those 2 numbers, numbers on nearby tiles, numbers in the central area and even numbers played by other players. Which brings me neatly to other players: There's a slightly deeper level of strategy and gameplay at work here. Players will invariably draw tiles they cannot use and will need to put them in the central area, sometimes though, it will just gift the tile to another player who can find a use for it on their turn. Sometimes it may be prudent to swap if for another tile on the your board to deny it to the other player. Or; if you notice another player swapping out a tile, it probably means they're making a play for something, they may be looking to use the tile they replaced or another tile from the central area in a different space and there may be a way of blocking that play. Even though players are working towards completing their own boards, it really pays to keep an eye on what others are doing and what empty spaces they have on their boards and they're looking for to win. If I had a couple of criticisms, it would be that despite the simple rules, there can be fiddly moments: We've only played the game digitally, but occasionally the game prevents me placing a tile incorrectly (Because I'm not paying attention!). If we were playing a physical, these kinds of mistakes might be missed. Secondly, quite often, if someone is lucky enough to get a good, even spread of 4 starting tiles, it can be too much of an edge, not always but definitely sometimes. None of this is a gamebreaker though. Lucky Numbers nails a sweet spot between replayability, rules-accessibility, randomness and a dollop of strategy. It's a great crossover game that will appeal to non-gamers as strategies utilised in the game are based on cunning and observation, not remembering rules. I wouldn't want to play it too much, but Lucky Numbers is a fun game in short bursts. If you don't mind games where luck can hold a lot of sway, then it's definitely work a look. 21st December 2021 It's a Tuesday, it's nearly Christmas and we're round Simon's for some gaming goodness. Jurassic Park: Danger! is a board game themed after the very first Jurassic Park film from 1993. Is it a good game? 'Your game designers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should...' What's in a game?
This neatly brings me to the game's art-style, which is a bit of a mixed bag. There's some appealing and colourful art on the tiles but the cards are sort of plain. The game also makes use of photo art of the actors who appeared in the film and it doesn't quite sit right with me. It's understandable why it's been done, I'm sure the licensing for this came with a not inconsiderable fee and being able to plaster the faces of well known Hollywood personalities may attract extra customers, additionally; use of the film's marketing photos saves on having to commission art work. Maybe that's it, maybe the use of photos gives the game a cheap feel. Furthermore, the game's actual art clashes with it's use of photos and it feels a little jarring. Much of the game's iconography is intuitive but the 10 different character decks are all personalised to some degree and each will contain something unique which will probably require referencing the rulebook, none of it is a deal breaker though. How's it play? Setup
On to play Jurassic Park: Danger! plays asymmetrically but has some similarities between players.
Endgame Play continues until 1 set of victory conditions is met. Character players: For the character players, they have to:
Dinosaur player: The objectives for this player are much simpler:
Overall
Jurassic Park: Danger! is a cat-and-mouse game all about asymmetrical play. Not only do the dinosaur and character players have different rules, the characters will have differences between them. Each character may have different numbers they need to roll for climbing or sneaking, giving them strengths and weaknesses, additionally, they'll have a card or two which are unique to them. The game does feature some sharp cat-and-mouse gameplay. Due to the limited size of the playing area, a dinosaur will generally never be more than a hex or two away from a character player and this keeps the game feeling quite taut. Players will always have to make meaningful decisions and to make what they hope is optimal choices. Characters need to coordinate to complete their objectives, sometimes putting themselves at risk to protect others, particularly if that other character is close to something important and they can't afford to procrastinate either, as their decks inevitably dwindle. The dinosaur player will face tension too. They of course need to prevent the other players from completing objectives. Unlike the character players, their cards cannot run out, so they can be patient. However, since the dinosaur player only ever has 3 cards in hand and limited actions per dinosaur, they're never fully in charge of what they can do, a hand of 3 cards will limit the dinosaur choices and to a degree randomise their actions, the dinosaur player may not get the moves they need when they need them. While there are only 3 actions for a dinosaur to use, the way in which they become available is unpredictable - to both sides of the game. I think the most interesting mechanic in Jurassic Park: Danger! is the character elimination rule. It's adds the potential for some real tactical moves by the character players, e.g., they could choose to sacrifice someone to distract a dinosaur at the right time, brutal, but maybe effective? This brings me to my criticism of that mechanic: It feels like the game treats characters as just resources to be managed and not people trying to escape. It seemed quite hard to complete objectives, personal goals and get 3 characters out to the helicopter without losing other characters on the way. I know this is just how the game is balanced and not really an issue, especially since it has no effect on winning, but it did detract from the feeling that you're trying to survive. It felt a little unsatisfying. Speaking of balance, this brings me to another criticism, which is my dislike of one-vs-many games. The balancing between one player and several others never seems quite right and I don't see Jurassic Park: Danger! being any different. Multiple brains will always out strategize a single brain. I have to wonder who this game is aimed at? I think many dedicated gamers, myself included are leery of licensed games and as a dedicated gamer, I personally found Jurassic Park a little underwhelming and uncompelling; a little too light for my tastes. It's something I have any inkling to play again. More casual gamers will probably be unfamiliar with some of the mechanics here such as card management, the game isn't particularly complex but neither is it particularly accessible. So I guess we're left with Jurassic Park fans who're gamers! 16th December 2021 It's a Thursday and we're round Simon's for some gaming. The game of the night was Le Harve; have you ever had the urge to run a business on the French coast, construct buildings and ships, manage goods, feed your ever expanding workforce and avoid going into debt? If the answer is yes, then maybe, just maybe, Le Havre is the game you're lookng for. What's in a game? Le Havre uses a lot of components, I mean it, A LOT!
The art in Le Havre is a bit of a mixed bag. The game board uses fairly simplistic and colourful illustrations that I personally found clear, distinct and looked quite evocative, the same is true of illustrations on the cards. However, the tokens used monochromic artwork which is a little old school. Having said that, it was always clear what they represented. Which brings me to iconography. Between all the different actions on all the building cards in particular, Le Havre uses a fair amount of iconography. Much of it is straightforward and apparent but some of it will require looking up in the rules. none of it game-breaking though. How's it play? Setup
On to play Acquisition of wealth is goal in Le Havre and money becomes victory points at the game end. The game is played over a number rounds dependant on the number of players. In each round there are 7 turns, you will note that this means that players will not have an equal number of turns and this is by design. In their turn each player must perform the supply action and has a single main action they can also perform, in addition the active player can also perform buy/sell actions. When all 7 turns have been completed, there are some end of round actions to resolve before moving on to the next round. Free actions: These can be performed by the active player at any time.
Endgame When the final round is completed, all players have 1 final main action they can perform, after this, the game goes to scoring. Now each player calculates their wealth which are victory points. This is done by totting up the following: Value of all building and ships a player owns. Cash they possess. Every loan card a player still possess at the game end deducts from the total. Scores are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
When playing Le Havre players will need to pay attention to several areas of the game. Buildings are very important and players will probably spent a significant number of actions on them, not only do they have to think about to what they've built, what the town owns and what it available to build but what other players have built. Being able to make use of other player's building adds an interesting spin on the game. Players will need to adapt their strategy to the buildings that become available and while there is a ordering number for buildings, it's still no guarantee of the actual order they become available. That doesn't mean you can risk ignoring ships or acquiring resources of course, food is vital, probably the single most important thing in the game, you'll constantly need food otherwise you'll eventually be plunged into spiralling debt. Managing all the resources is also key and the game deliberately forces players to make the hard choice between using a building or taking a resource from an offer space. Resources tend to be relatively scarce at the start of the game and player's will want to optimise their strategies. Generally money can be used in place of some resources but it's essentially sucking up victory points and getting players closer to having to take a loan, something to avoid if you can. Players will need to also pay attention to the supply track and their position on it and when their turns will come up, as well as when resources will be moved into the offer spaces. Even though there were some more rules which I skipped over describing, I wouldn't call La Havre a very heavy game. I did find it a little fiddly with the occasional little rule popping up here or there and at the start I did find the game a little obtuse. Once you get over that hump Le Havre becomes a mostly straightforward game and proves a challenging game with meaningful decisions to make. I do have a criticism of Le Havre though - and that's the playtime, it's just too long! This is a known issue too as the rules contain a 'shortened' variant of the game! A 5-player game is expected to take 210 minutes over 20 rounds, that's 3 ½ hours and quite frankly, that's an underestimation. Think about it; 210 minutes over 20 rounds is 10 minutes 30 seconds per round and each round has 7 turns, that works out at 90 seconds per turn. Do you think that the kind of players that like this type of game spend just 90 seconds per turn? If every player spends 2 minutes taking their turn instead of 90 seconds, it would add 70 minutes to the playtime. 😭 It meant that the down time between turns felt like it lasted forever and at times was just more frustrating than fun or compelling, which was what I ultimately took away from it. If you like resource-management games that are slightly on the heavy side, then Le Havre might be worth a look, provided you can commit the time. To be honest, it's a game that rainy, chilled Sunday afternoons are perfect for. 5th December 2021 Sunday evening gaming on Board Game Arena continued with Carcassonne. You too can wander this French Province, have a hand in building the legendary city, monastries and surrounding country side as well as populating the roads with... errr... highwaymen? What's in a game?
What few components the game possesses, are all solidly manufactured. The tiles and scoreboard are constructed of suitably thick card and the meeples are nice wooden tokens. The artwork found the tiles is for the most fairly small but are well detailed with colourful illustrations, the meeples are also brightly coloured. As the game area is built up over play, it actually looks quite good. In a game all about joining up tiles, the artwork is universally clear and there's never any confusion on how they connect. How's it play? Setup
On to play Broadly speaking, Carcassonne is about about building up the central playing area and connecting the game's features, it begins with the opening player taking and playing a land tile into the central play area next to the starting tile, then continues with the player on the left and so on until the stack of face-down tiles has been depleted.
Endgame Once play reaches the game end, final scores for uncompleted features are totted up. This means that an incomplete road (Which has a highwayman on it.) that goes over 2 tiles would score 2 points, monasteries score for partial completion as well at 1VP per. occupied surrounding tile. However, incomplete cities only score half, that is, each tile and coat-of-arms, score 1VP apiece. Finally, farmers are scored; each completed city that connects to a field that contains a farmer scores VPs for the owning player. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Carcassonne is a game that's been around for a while now and I have to admit that in the years since I last played it, my opinion on it has softened a little. Originally I found the randomness inherent to the game when getting a land tile irksome, it felt like it belied strategy and planning. Now however, I can see some mechanical benefit, it forces players to adapt, remain flexible and look for ways to exploit their situation and place tiles in the right places at the right time to gain points or even piggy-back off of other players. Having said that, my opinion on farmers hasn't changed at all! I still find them fiddly to track and score as well being somewhat unbalanced. A well placed farmer, especially early in the game can score the controlling player a lot of VPs, putting one down does lock a meeples out of the rest of the game, which can sometimes be detrimental later, but overall, the sacrifice is generally worth it. It's no surprise there's a 'no farmers' optional rule. One of the things I like about Carcassonne is how it manages to deliver quite a lot of gameplay for such a slim package, just some tiles and meeples - that's it! It means the game has a quick set up time a despite some perhaps fiddly rules, is still fairly straightforward to learn and pick-up-and-play. I think that this gives Carcassonne strong crossover appeal to 'non-gamers' who will quickly learn the game's basic strategies get up to speed. This has no doubt contributed to the game's continuing success and makes it a good introductory game for 'non-gamers'. Carcassonne is a lightweight game and isn't one I'd play too often, truth be told. But it can definitely be fun every once in a while, just don't worry about strategy too much and don't over-analyse it too much either. Play it for the lightweight enjoyment it can provide. 30th November 2022 It's a Tuesday night and we're at The Sovereigns in Woking with the Woking Gaming Club. The main game of the evening was Atlantis Rising. Atlantis; the mythical civilisation swallowed by the seas and lost to time, how did this happen? Clearly it was caused by a band of bumbling table-top gamers! What's in a game?
The quality of the components is as you'd expect from modern games universally good, the game makes extensive use of wooden tokens for meeples, resources and even the Athenian ship, which I like. The addition of glass tokens is also a nice touch and appreciated. From the perspective of art direction, I'd call the art good but not exceptional, it is however, clear and functional when needed, the different terrains are always easily discernible. I'd be remiss if I didn't comment on the board. It genuinely looks unique and eye-catching. It's not a gimmick either and makes sense in relation to the game's mechanics. The game's iconography is straightforward and easy to understand. How's it play? Setup The setup for Atlantis Rising is relatively simple.
On to play Each round in Atlantis Rising consists in a number of phases.
Endgame Play continues until 1 of 2 conditions is met. If all the tiles on the Atlantis map are flooded - including the centre tile, then the players collectively lose. If the players manage to build all 10 cosmic gate blueprints, they immediately win. Overall
Just to clarify, it was the the 1st edition we played, there is a 2nd edition which has some notable changes. Despite its nifty, unorthodox board, Atlantis Rising's central premise will be familiar to players of cooperative games. That is; players will be faced with the choice of working towards completing objectives to win the game or firefighting whatever will cause them to lose, in the case of Atlantis Rising that's 2 sources, the misfortune deck and the Athenian attacks. What Atlantis Rising brings to the table though, is a push-you-luck element. Luck is an inherent part of cooperative games and is used to mitigate players' abilities to out-strategize a game, but these push-you-luck elements add something quite different. When picking an action, players will also have to decide how much they want the resource, card or whatever, playing it safe might not get you what you need or enough of what you need. The same is true when dealing with the Athenians, it requires a lot of meeples to be fully safe from them, but the true number required is never known due to the attack die roll. Sometimes it might better to put a meeple or 2 less, it might be riskier, but it gives you 2 workers that could have a vital use elsewhere. In both instances it's a solid use of risk/reward and it gave me the feeling that it's hard to win the game by playing cautiously and at some points players just have to take risks. Having said that, I do have an issue with the whole Athenian attack mechanic. I really don't like how the players have to collectively commit more and more workers to fighting the Athenians off. It can mean players are making effort to acquire workers simply for this purpose and feels like quite a negative mechanic. I'm not alone in this thought as this was revised for the 2nd edition. This also brings me to another element of the game; as it progress on and more tiles flood, players will get less and less choice where to place their workers. It feels counter to how games - especially worker placement games flow, typically a player's choices and options expand as a game goes on but Atlantis Rising does the opposite, I know that it's part of the game's challenge and players need to work to prevent this but still sort of feels off. Other than these two criticisms, Atlantis Rising is a perfectly acceptable game that cooperative gamers will be comfortable with. Atlantis Rising doesn't stand out from the crowd but neither does it do anything wrong. Personally, I like how it looks, especially watching Atlantis gradually sink! 21st November 2021 Sunday evening gaming Board Game Arena continued. The next game of the night was Chocolate Factory. Have you ever wanted to own your own chocolate factory? Since pretty much everyone's a fan of chocolate, why not? Unfortunately, there's no eating chocolate in Chocolate Factory, only a resource-management and light programming game instead. Caveat: we've only ever played Chocolate Factory digitally. What's in a game?
Since we've only played Chocolate Factory digitally, I can really comment on the qualty of the components. However, I can say what are there is, is quite nice and colourful, it has an early 20th century vibe to both the art style and subject of the art. The game uses a fair amount of iconography, luckily for the most part, it was pretty straightforward to comprehend. How's it play? Setup
On to play Chocolate Factory is played over 6 rounds - Monday to Saturday and each round has 2 phases, a drafting phase which goes twice in turn order and a factory phase which can be played out simultaneously. Drafting phase
Factory phase Each player will now have a factory part and a employee card. Factory parts are added to the player's board in one of the spaces above or below the conveyor belt spaces, a factory part can be used to replace an already existing factory part. Employee cards serve 2 purposes, firstly they grant the player some sort of bonus and secondly, they allow the controlling player to sell chocolate to the department store they work for. Unlike factory parts, employees only stay in play for 1 round. So how does the factory phase work? The factory phase has 3 shifts and in each shift players first take a bean and place it on the conveyor belt tile that's about to enter into the factory. Then each player must push their conveyor belt tiles along 1 space from the left to right so that the tile they placed a bean on goes into the factory, it's also possible that a tile will be slid out of the exit on the other side. Anything on that tile is placed into the respective player's storeroom. Once this is done, the factory parts can be used, each part costs mostly 1 but sometimes 2 coal to activate. A factory part can only be used on resources adjacent to it. For example the basic roaster factory party will turn a bean into coca, a upgrader factory part will change any resource into the next level of resource (E.g., coca into chocolate fingers.). Converters will turn chocolate into wrapped chocolate or boxed chocolate and so on. There are some limitation here, each factory part can only be activated once per shift. Once the 1st shift is finished, the 2nd begins, another tile is placed at the entrance to the factory with a bean on it and then the conveyor belt is pushed along another space and factory parts can be activated (Or reactivated.). Thus the conveyor belt will move 3 times a day. Selling When all 3 shifts have been run, players must sell chocolate, they can only keep 2 pieces in their storeroom between rounds, any excess is lost and players think ahead to avoid losses! Chocolate can be sold to corner shops and each one has their own demands. Like the factory phase, selling can be completed simultaneously. When selling to corner shops, they have 1-3 tiers of demand that must be met depending on their size and lower tiers must be completed before the higher ones. When a tier is completed it is immediately scored, when all tiers are scored the card is discarded and the player must draw a new corner shop card or any size they want. Selling to department stores is a little different. Firstly a player can only sell to a department store that matches the employee they drafted. Secondly, when fulfilling the demands of a department store, points are not immediately scored, instead a marker in the player's colour is moved along the 9 spaces. Once selling is concluded, a new round is set up, coal is distributed to players and new factory part and employee cards drawn, then the new round commences. Endgame Play continues until the 6th and round is completed, then the 5 department store scores are calculated. Whoever has completed the most corner shop cards earns a bonus Whoever has their marker the furthest along scores for 1st place, if the next player is at least half as far along as 1st place they score for 2nd place and if a 3rd player is half as far along as 2nd place, they score for 3rd place. Furthermore, players can earn a bonus for selling chocolate to 3, 4 or all 5 department stores. Finally, remaining chocolate and coal can earn points. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Chocolate Factory gives players several important factors to think about. Firstly, during the drafting phase, players must prioritise what they think is important to them, do they want a factory part more than an employee, they'll get both, but not necessarily in the ones they want if they wait to the 2nd drafting phase. Cards that players draft can dramatically change the situation for players. Most obviously are employee cards which determine which department store a player can sell chocolate to. If a player is geared to sell the kind of chocolate a particular department is demanding, then getting the employee that gives you access can be paramount. This is even before considering which benefit the employee card also confers on the controlling player. Factory parts will form the core of the player's ability to produce and sell chocolate, getting a part that wasn't wanted or needed will force player to reconsider their strategies for at least one round. Unlike employee cards, factory parts can stick around for the entire game, although they can be replaced and since players will acquire 6 factory parts and only have 5 spaces in their factory, it means something will have to go. Where these parts are placed can have a significant impact. Place them too far to the right and it'll take a while for resources on the conveyor belt to reach them. Put them too far to the left and players risk screwing up their engine. Putting factory parts in factory is an exercise in optimisation. Speaking of optimisation, the game has a fairly unforgiving action economy. It's obviously a deliberate design decision, but there's never enough coal. Players start with 5 coal in round 1, they'll have 3 factory parts to activate - and that's over 3 shifts! Even in round 6, when each player can have a full factory, they only get 10 coal each, they'll on average only be able to activate 3 or 4 of their parts per shift. If forces player to make meaningful decisions which is always good and also makes them think across 3 shifts instead of 1, but it also feels a little frustrating and uneventful when half of the engine you've been building isn't used in a shift and maybe isn't used in the entire round. Scoring also presents players with choices. Each round, every player will have the opportunity to score their 3 corner shops and work towards scoring 1 of the 5 department stores. Corner shops are pretty straightforward to manage, the only wrinkle being that their demands must be met in tier order. It means that players will sometimes need to adapt to changing demands that a corner shop might present. Department stores are a proposition that's a little more interesting though. Because scores are based on relative positions between players, it can lead to some interesting outcomes. E.g., if a player sells just 1 item to a department store and no one else does then they'll get the full reward for 1st place but conversely, if they sell 5 items to a department score and another player sells more, then they'll get less. This adds an extra option or strategy to the game and unlike some tableau-engine building games, it becomes beneficial to watch what other players are doing and what they're producing and who they're selling it to. And while I feel that the majority of player's victory points will come from corner shops, department stores can't be neglected. They exist in a sweet (sic) spot where they can tip the balance in a player's favour. I'm kind of conflicted about Chocolate Factory, it has some solid mechanics that present players with choices, I particularly like how players can chose where to sell their chocolate to maximise their profit. But parts of it are also a little unexciting, where the effort creating an engine feels greater than the rewards it provides. I would have no problem playing Chocolate Factory again, but not too often. I think occasionally, it would be a good change of pace 12th November 2021 It's a Friday night and we're round Simon's for some impromptu evening gaming. “I beg your pardon,” said the Mole, pulling himself together with an effort. “You must think me very rude; but all this is so new to me." Well, Everdell is new to me, mixing various game mechanics and lush anthropomorphic artwork. What's in a game? Everdell is a game that has a big footprint and a lot components.
The components are well made and the attention to detail for the most part is excellent. In particular, the resources look great as do the individualised meeples. We didn't use the tree but it's a nice touch Even if the anthropomorphised artwork is not to your taste, it's hard to fault the quality of the artwork and rich, warm colour palettes used throughout on the board and all the cards. Iconography is where the game could be improved though. Sometimes, the text used on the critter and construction cards is perhaps a little too small as are the symbols and sometimes, to maintain the game's aesthetic, you'll encounter a small around of tiny writing surrounded by a lot of unused space. Having said that, it's a quibble, not a gamebreaker and doesn't really detract from the game's quality How's it play? Setup
On to play The objective in Everdell is to construct the best city, that is the city that scores the most victory points. Players achieve this by playing critters and constructions into their tableau. When somebody becomes the active player, they can perform 1 action from a choice of 3 and then player progresses to the player to the left. Players continue performing actions until they have to or choose to stop; in which case the season has ended for them. Everdell is played over 4 seasons.
Endgame When the 4th season is completed, then the game is over. Victory points can be scored from a variety or sources, including cards, tokens and events. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
It's obvious that a lot of thought and care has gone into the game's presentation and charm. It's one of the best looking games I've seen in a while and I always appreciate the extra effort committed to a game. Hmmm, what else to say about Everdell; for the most part, it's initially a pretty solid, straightforward game, although it feels a like a bit of a slow burner. While the game's cards provide players with a variety of approaches choices and plays to make. Having said that, the game's action-economy is actually quite tight, almost too harsh. E.g, in the 1st season, players will only have 2 workers to gain resources in order to play cards, it means players will have to pay close attention to optimising their plays and actions. card synergy can make a big difference. It gave me the feeling that players will need to know what they're doing from their first action in order to play Everdell competitively. Additionally, in comparison to other tableau building games, it feels like the tableau in Everdell provides much more limited benefits that lacks the satisfaction putting together a good tableau. At best, production cards are reactivated once every other season - or round - but because players have multiple actions in a single season, it means a lengthy gap before those reactivations. This is something players will need to consider when playing cards. All of this makes the choices in Everdell important - which is the sign of a good game. Ultimately though, I just found it a little unexciting and unengaging and while it wouldn't be my first choice, I'd have no qualms about playing Everdell again. 6th October 2021 Time for some midweek gaming! It's a Wednesday and we're round Simon's. Valor & Villainy: Minions of Mordak is the game of the evening; an open-world styled, fantasy-themed, RPG-inspired exploration game with one player assuming the role of big-bad Mordak and the others taking on the mantle of heroes. What's in a game? Valor & Villainy is fairly involved game that features a lot of components.
The components are all high quality, tiles and tokens are suitably thick and sturdy, as are the standees. The cards are all well made and the rounded plastic dice feel weighty enough but the standout components are the chunky recessed hero boards which feel solid and also fairly practical. Artwork throughout the game is excellent. The landscapes on map tiles are well produced, clear but also colourful. Character illustrations are bold and slightly-cartoony, it's a style that gets used quite a lot in fantasy-themed games, but it looks good in Valor & Villains. As you'd expect for a open world game like, Valor & Villainy uses a variety of icons and symbols, particularly on spell cards - which essentially are all different. For the most part, the iconography is intuitive and pretty straightforward to understand. How's it play? Setup
On to play In Valor & Villainy, the hero players are trying to discover the 3 shrines hidden somewhere amongst the face-down tiles to weaken Mordak and the Mordak player will be trying to make it hard for the heroes to find them until he arrives on the map after the 6th round. Heroes always act first with the starting player beginning, then going left. The Mordak player may then act after the hero players. The Mordak player essentially gets 2 turns to act, 1 for Mordak himself (Although Mordak doesn't have much to do in the early game.) and 1 for minions. When players take their turns, they will have a number of actions points they can spend to move or act as they see fit, there are also some free actions that can be performed
Endgame Once 6 round have been completed (Or all 3 shrines have been discovered.), the game goes into The Final Battle! During the final battle, Mordak himself will appear on the map and directly engage the hero players in combat. Mordak has a large amount of health; 70-100. If the hero players reduce Mordak's health to 0, they win the game. Conversely, if the Mordak player manages to defeat 3 heroes during the final battle, then the Mordak player wins the game. Overall
There's a lot of charm to Valor & Villainy's presentation, especially the bold, chunky artwork for characters and minions. Mechanically, the game is actually quite straightforward, unremarkable even (At least it is for the hero players.), although it does contain a fair amount of exception driven and situational rules. Using cards for minions makes it a little fiddly to move them around and handle, it also looks a little dull and flat (sic) but conversely, it makes it easy to track minion health and combat initiative. Valor & Villlainy has several quibbles in my opinion One of the most significant is the game's one-vs-many mechanic, these types of mechanic rarely work well in my opinion. Obviously the game will have been balanced to try and take this into account, but few games can balance the difference between 1 human brain versus 4 human brain and the hero players will always have this to their advantage. It almost feels like the game is set up to advantage hero players over the Mordak player. The game also has a weird tonal shift thanks to this one-vs-many mechanic. For most of the game, the Mordak player will be a thorn in the players' sides, a source of constant minor irritation. Then, during the endgame, it becomes straight up, directly confrontational PvP as Mordak appears on the map. It feels weirdly more aggressive. For the heroes, the game is mostly about managing encounters as they appear, recognising and prioritising threats, then dealing with them using the most efficient method, allowing them the maximum opportunity to explore the tiles. For the Mordak player, it's about exploiting any opening or weakness that the heroes present, not only defeating heroes but stymieing and thwarting them whenever possible. Valor & Villainy is a open-world RPG-esque experience where a varied band of heroes, explore, fight monsters, acquire treasure and level up. The ingredients of an RPG are all there, but it doesn't feel quite right and I think there're a couple of reasons why. There's a lack of storytelling to the game and variety to the encounters, there's randomness when setting up a map and not all tiles will appear in any single game, but they're just encounters, they feel a little bland and there's no sense of travelling, journeying or adventuring. The normal map (For 4+ players) will have 20 face-down map tiles to scout, to explore all of them will require turning over 3-4 map tiles per round. Scouting tiles is actually a bit of a balancing act and one of the challenges the hero players face. if the heroes scout too slowly, they risk not finding all the shrines, if they do it too quickly, they risk revealing more minions than they can handle at once. This will require players to head off in different directions and in an RPG you should never split the party! In relation to combat, it seems the most efficient way for the Mordak player to accumulate experience points is to relentlessly pick on one player until they are defeated, then choose another player to pick on. It feels particularly un-RPG-like where combat tends to distributed amongst all heroes. Even then, when a hero is defeated, on the next turn, the hero will reappear in the centre tile like it's a videogame spawn point. All of this adds up to make Valor & Villainy feel disconnected from RPGs. But for me, by far the biggest problem the game has, is its run time. We played with 5 players in total and a game took somewhere between 2-3 hours to play out. If felt like each player took about 4-5 mins to complete their turn and don't forget that the Mordak player essentially gets 2 turns in a row, 1 for themselves and 1 for their minions which makes a round 25-30 minutes long and that's before adding in The Final Battle. It also meant players had about 20 minutes of downtime between turns. It's too much, if Valor & Villainy was an exceptional or engaging game, it wouldn't be such an issue, but it's not. It's not a bad game either, it's just slightly bland and slightly average. There's nothing wrong with an average game, so long as it doesn't outstay it's welcome. The effort Valor & Villainy requires to play doesn't quite justify the experience it provides. |
AuthorI play, I paint. Archives
February 2023
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