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?

• Player board: Dice Hospital's player boards are curiously hexagonally shaped and each contains a number of hexes which represent different departments
  Coloured hexes: There are 3 hexes which are red, yellow and green, they represent critical care, oncology and pharmacy.
  Numbered hexes: There are 3 hexes numbered 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6, they are intensive care, imaging and clinic.
  Wards: There are 4 ward hexes and each has room for 3 patients (dice.), thus 12 patients in total. Each hex also has spaces to place 'treated' patients.
  Nurse's station: This hex is where general nurses are placed at the start of each round.
  Discharge: This is where patients go when things go well.
  Mortuary: And this where patients go when things go bad!
• Department tiles: Players can expand their hospitals by acquiring these hexagonal tiles. Departments improve a hospital's abilities to heal patients. Departments may be colour-specific (Red, yellow or green.) or 'neutral' (Blue.) which is generally number based.
• Specialist cards: Players may also recruit extra workers into their hospitals in the form of specialist and these cards list their specialities. Like departments, specialists may be colour-specific or neutral.
• Administrator cards: Each player will get one of these and they confer some unique benefit or scoring bonus to the owning player.
• Meeples: These nurse shaped meeples (Neeples?) come in 5 colours, white and blue, as well as red, yellow and green which relate to the identically coloured departments. The white and blue are essentially general staff.
• Dice: You won't be surprised to learn that Dice Hospital uses six-sided dice, a lot of them. They are used to represent patients and come in red, yellow and green which indicate the type of treatment they need; critical care, oncology or pharmacy. There are 21 in each colour and 63 in total.
• Bag: Goes with the dice.
• Ambulance tiles: There are 5 of these and they're numbered as such. Ambulances are used to deliver patients to hospitals, each ambulance has room for 3 dice.
  NOTE: The ambulance models seen in the photos here DO NOT come with the base game.
• Blood bag tokens: Provide players with some special actions when used or VPs at the game end.
• Fatality tokens: I'm sure get the idea...

There are some other tokens, but they're not significant to gameplay.

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

• Dice: Put the allotted number of dice into the dice bag and give it a good shake.
• Department tiles: Shuffle the tiles into a face-down stack and deal the allotted amount face-up, (This'll be equal to 1 less than the number of players.).
• Specialist cards: The same as the department tiles:
• Ambulance tiles: Use a number of tiles equal to 1 higher than the number of players. Start with the number 1 ambulance and put them out in sequential order.
• Player board: Give each player a board and 3 white meeples, the meeples should go into the nurse's station
• Administrator: Shuffle the administrator card and deal 2 face-down to each player. Players should which one to keep and discard the other out of the game.
• Patients: Each player should draw 3 dice blindly from the bag and set the faces to 3, 4 and 5 how they see fit, then place them into 3 spaces on one of their ward hexes.
• First player: Determine the 1st player.

That's pretty much it for set up. You'll notice that there's always never quite enough departments and specialists for players to take all of one or the other. Additionally, there's always enough ambulances to give every player a choice between at least 2.

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.

• Patients: The 1st player blindly draws a number of dice equal to the number of dice spaces on all the available ambulance tiles.
  The 1st player then rolls all these dice, any 1s or 6s are rerolled until all dice are showing 2-5.
  The dice are then placed on to the ambulance tiles, placing the lowest numbered dice on to the lowest numbered ambulance and go upwards so that the highest numbered dice end up on the highest numbered ambulance tile. The player to the right of the 1st player (The last player essentially.) may then have the opportunity to rearrange some of them.
  After this and in turn order, each player takes an ambulance tile and adds the dice to their wards. The only restriction here is that the 1st player cannot take the 1 ambulance, which prevents them constantly going first.
  If there's no space for new patients on the wards, then some patients will need to be sent to the morgue!
  ​Finally, a new turn order based specifically on the ambulance numbers is established and a new 1st player is determined, this player also gains a blood bag token.
• Improvements: In this phase, players draft improvements into their hospital and this is where the new turn order becomes significant. In this new turn order, each player takes either a department hex or a specialist card (And appropriate meeple.) and adds it to their player board or play area.
  Furthermore; each player may discard exactly 1 improvement to gain a blood bag.
• Hospital phase: This where arguably, the bulk of the game takes place, this can be played in order or simultaneously.
  Here players take their meeples and puts them into departments to heal patients. how is this done?
  If a meeple is put into the green hex for example, then a green die may be healed. Healing does 2 things, it increases a die's value by 1 (E.G., from 3 to 4.) and moves it to a 'treated' space in the ward. A die may be healed multiple times from multiple sources and if it's value would be taken to 7+, it is then sent to the discharge hex. More on discharging below.
  Improved departments generally allow more than 1 patient to be healed, althohg some allow lesser number of patients to be healed by more.
  There can be restrictions however.
  For example a red department may allow 3 red dice of equal value to be healed by 1 each, but it would have to exactly 3 not less. A neutral department may allow 2 dice with values of 1-3 to be healed regardless of colour.
  Specialists also provide more healing but may be limited. A yellow specialist used to heal a yellow die may also heal a 2nd yellow die.
  The abilities of departments and specialists may be combined. If a green specialist is placed on a neutral department and one of the dice healed is green, then the green specialist's ability would be activated.
  Each department and meeple can only be used once per round.
  Blood bags: These tokens can be spent for 2 effects, firstly, any die can be healed by 1 point, secondly, the colour of a die can changed to either of the 2 other colours. This is pretty useful when used with consideration, especially if activates a a department that could not be otherwise activated.
• Neglect: Now we get to the bad part!
  Any die that were not treated, i.e. not moved to a treated space, has its value lowered by 1. If this would take a die's value down to 0, then that patient dies and the die (sic) is sent to the morgue.
  Every die sent to the morgue by a player earns them a fatality token. Then that die is returned to the bag.
• Discharge patients: During this phase all patients are discharged and score VPs for the player. The discharged dice are returned to the bag.
  Scoring in Dice Hospital is a little unusual and exponentially increases if more patients are discharged at the same time.
  What this means is if 1 patient is discharged, then 1 VP is earned. If 2 patients are discharged at the same time, 3 VPS are earned and so on. If a player manages to discharge all 12 patients at the same time, they'd earn 35 VPs.!
  ​Additionally, if a player's wards are all empty during this phase, they earn a bonus 5 VPs.
• End of round: This is the final phase of the round.
  Players' return all their meeples to their starting spots.
  All patients who were treated are moved back to their untreated spots.
  Any departments or specialists who were not drafted during the improvement phase are discarded to the bottom of their relevant stacks and new departments and specialists are drawn in preparation for the following round.

Play now progresses to the next round, with the 1st player drawing and rolling dice and the dice drafting phase and so on.

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.

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?

• Game board: The game board for Lost Ruins of Arnak is quite large and has a full sized illustration of an unexplored, fantastical wilderness landscape. It's also quite busy, with spaces and tracks for a lot of components, cards, workers and more.
  Cards: Along the top are spaces for the 3 decks of the game's different card types; artefact, item and fear cards.
  Card track: Directly below, a card track runs runs across the board and will be populated with varying amounts of artefact and item cards during the course of the game. The card track also displays the game's 5 rounds.
  Research track: Running up the right side of the board is the 'research track'. This track has 2 'paths' that lead to the top, where VPs await the players. Going up the track costs various resources but also confers resources or other benefits, including gaining assistants.
  Sites: The bulk of the board is taken up with unexplored wilderness sites, these hidden locations which will be explored by the players' workers come in 2 tiers, the 2nd tier being harder to 'travel' to, each site has space to put a idol token or a tile on it. Below each site it will display 1 or 2 worker spaces and inside each worker space it will list the cost to travel there.
  Dig sites: Below the tier 1 sites is a another row of 5 sites, these are dig sites, they are not explorable and instead can be used by players to generate the game's 5 resources.
  Double-sided: It's worth noting that the board is double-sided and features an alternate setup on the other side with differing travel costs.
• Supply board: This small supplementary board sits along the bottom edge of the main board and contains spaces for 5 of the game's different resources and 4 sets of tiles.
• Player boards:  These boards depict a picture of a campsite and have spaces for each player's deck, 4 'used' idols slots and and 2 assistants when they're recruited. There's also space to place resources.
• Cards: Lost Ruins of Arnak uses 3 types of cards.
  Starter cards: Every player is given these and they can be used to generate coins and compass resources or scores in the game's 4 types of travel.
  Item cards: These provide some sort of bonus to the controlling player. They are always paid for with money and when acquired go to the bottom of the player's deck. Item cards can score VPs.
  Artefact cards: Unlike item cards, artefact cards go directly into the player's hand and can be immediately played for their effect when acquired. Further usage of artefact cards will cost tablet tokens. Like item cards, artefact cards can earn VPs.
  Fear cards: These serve no purpose other than to bloat the player's deck with useless trash cards. Thus getting them is actually a negative. Fear cards also cost players VPs.
• Tiles: Lost Ruins of Arnak makes use of numerous tiles.
  Temple tiles: These are placed at the top of the research track and provide VPs once acquired by players.
  Idol tiles: These are acquired by players when they first explore sites and confer bonuses and VPs, they can then also be 'spent' to get another bonus.
  Site tiles: When players explore a site location, a random site tile from it's respective tier will be placed there.
  Guardian tiles: Once a site tile has been placed, a guardian in the form of a tile will appear on top of the site tile and cause a headache for the worker there!
  Research tiles: Players will accumulate these as they move up the research track and they confer various benefits
  Assistants: These tiles contain assistants which confer a benefit of some sort on to the player who recruited them. They are also doubles-sided, meaning that assistants can be upgraded (Promoted?).
• Tokens: All of the game's resources are represented by tokens.
  Coins: These card tokens are the game's currency.
  Compasses: These are also card tokens.
  Arrowheads: These are little plastic tokens shaped a little like arrow heads.
  Jewels: It looks like translucent acrylic chunks are used to represent jewels.
  Tablets: Plastic is used for these tokens shaped like ancient tablets.
  Moon Staff: This card token is used to track the game's turns.
• Meeples: Each player is given 2 archaeologist wooden meeples for workers as well as a magnifying glass and notebook meeple in their colours. The magnifying glass and notebook are used to track a player's progress along the 2 research tracks. All the meeples are made of wood.

The quality of components in Lost Ruins of Arnak varies from average to great.
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

• Board: Choose a side of the board to play with, one is hard than the other.
  Cards: Shuffle and put the artefacts and items deck face-down. Also put out the fear cards. Deal 1 artefact and 5 item cards into the card row.
  Idol tiles: Randomly assign idol tiles to all sites, tier 1 sites get 1 and tier 2 sites get 2.
  Temple tiles: These are placed at the top of the research track.
  Research tiles: Place these on their allotted spaces as required or randomly.
  ​Assistants: Shuffle these into 3 stacks so their upgraded sides are face-down.
  Site tiles: Sort the site tiles into their 2 tiers and shuffle each tier into a face-down stack.
  Guardian Tiles: Shuffle these into a face-down stack.
  Resources: Should be placed into their allotted spaces.
• Player board: Each player should get a player board; 2 meeples and 2 research tokens in their chosen colour.
  The meeples go on to the player's board and the research tokens on their designated starting spots on the research track.
• Deck: Each player should take the 4 starter cards in their colour, 2 of which will be coin/funding cards, 2 will be compass/exploration cards and then finally, add 2 fear cards to their deck.
  Now shuffle all 6 cards into a face-down deck.
• 1st player: Determine the first player and deal out resources as determined by the turn order.

Looks like we're ready to go exploring in the... Lost Ruins of Arnak.

​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:

• Draw cards: All players draw cards from their player deck to take their hand up to 5, thus in the first round this would be 5 of the 6 starter cards.
• Actions: Starting with the 1st player and going clockwise, each player must perform 1 main action, they can also perform free actions, generally, everything with a lightning bolt symbol is considered a free action.
  Main actions are:
  Travel: A player can move one of their meeples to a site on the board, provided an available worker spot is there and the player can generate the required travel score to pay the travel cost.
  Generally, the player uses the cards in their hand to pay travel costs, even fear cards provide walking scores
  There are 4 types of travel, these are; walking, land, sea and air.
  Walking is the most basic travel action and can only be used to pay for walking costs. Land and sea scores can pay for their relevant costs or can also be used in place of walking - but not for each other. Finally air can be used for any type of travel. Furthermore a player may spend 2 coins to what amounts to chartering a flight, that is get a point air score, which is essentially the same as any token.
  Additionally, if the player is travelling to either of the 2 wilderness tiers for the first time, they will be required also spend the relevant number of compass tokens.
  So what does travelling do? this will depend on where the archaeologist is travelling to.
  Dig site: Sending an archaeologist to a dig site will allow the player to gain some resources.
  ​Unexplored site: When a archaeologist visits a unexplored site, the player immediately gains the idol token(s) located there, along with whatever benefit it confers. as an aside, when a player initially gains an idol it is not placed in any of the 4 idols on their player board
  Then a site tile of the relevant tier is revealed, placed there and immediately resolved. Usually, it confers some benefit or resource on the controlling player
  After this, a guardian tile is revealed and placed there, as you'd imagine, guardians can be bad news. more on this below.
  Defeat guardian: if an archaeologist is on a site with a guardian, then that guardian can be defeated by spending the required resources. That guardian tile is then placed into that player's area and scores VPs at the game end, guardian tiles also have special abilities which have a one-time use.
• Buy card: The active player may purchase a card from the card row.
  Item cards go at the bottom of the purchasing player's deck and artefact cards go straight into their hand.
• Play card: The active player may play a card from their hand for whatever benefit it confers.
  All card are played into the player's play area.
• Research: The active player may move 1 of their 2 research tokens up their relevant track. Sometimes a track may have multiple routes the player can choose. There are some restrictions though.
  Firstly, a player's notebook token cannot go above their magnifying glass token, secondly, there can be a cost to pay for moving up. However there are also usually a benefit for moving along a track. This is generally the only way to acquire assistants.
  If a player reaches the top of the research track, they have reached the temple and get bonus points accordingly, the 1st player to arrive gets the most VPs, later players earn decreasing amounts. Finally players get to choose one of the temple tiles to take when reaching the temple.
• Pass: If the active player cannot perform any other main action, then they must pass. Alternatively, the active player can choose to pass if they so desire.
  Either way, the player is now out of the round and can no longer undertake any  further actions in that round. This means it's likely that players will have uneven actions in a turn and it's possible that someone could be 'last player standing' and get multiple actions in a row.
• Free actions: There are numerous free actions which players can use, they include:
  Cards: Some cards can be played as free actions.
  ​Idol token: A idol can be 'slotted' to confer a benefit to the player as listed on their player board. Since there are only 4 slots, this can only be done 4 times in a game.
  Guardian tiles: A player may flip a guardian tile over to make use of its once-only bonus.
  Assistant tiles: If a player has acquired an assistant or two, then their benefit can be used once per round.
• End of action: After a player has completed their main action and any free actions, play progresses to the player to the left.
• End of round: When the end of a round is reached, a number of actions occur.
  Return archaeologists: Each player takes back their 2 archaeologists, if they are taking back an archaeologist from a site with a guardian tile, then the poor archaeologist has fled in terror and the controlling player adds a fear card to the discarded cards in their player area for each archaeologist fleeing.
  Shuffle cards: Players take all the cards that they played in the round (Which will be in their play area.), shuffles them and puts them at the bottom of their deck. Thus there is no discard pile in Lost Ruins of Arnak. Players can also choose to discard any unplayed cards into their play area before shuffling them to move back into the bottom of their deck.
  Move Moon Staff: Cards around the Moon Staff are discarded out of the game and the staff moves to the right. This means as the 5 rounds progress, more artefact cards will appear in place of diminishing item cards.
• Next round: The starting player moves to the left and the new round starts with all players drawing cards from their deck to take their hand up to 5 cards.

There are some other rules such as for burning cards (Useful for getting rid of fear cards.) and so on, but that's the gist of it.

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.

How's it play?
Setup

• Clover tiles: Take 1 set of clovers per player and shuffle them face-down into a central playing area. Thus there will be 40-80 tiles used per game.
• Player board: Give each a player board.
• Starting tiles: Each player randomly draws 4 tiles and places them on their board diagonally, going from top-left to bottom-right in ascending numbers.
• First player: determine a first player.

And that's it for 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. 

• Acquire tile: The active player must blindly pick a face-down tile or pick up face-up tile (Provided there are face-up tiles available.) from the central playing area.
• Place tile: Once the active player has a tile, they have to place it on their player board. However, there are some rules for placement, when placing a tile:
  A) Its value must be higher than the first tile to its left and the first tile above.
  B) Its value must also be lower than first tile to it's right and the first tile below.
• Return tile: If the active player cannot put a tile on to their player board, they must return it face-up to the central playing area.
• Swap tile: Alternatively; if the active player cannot place their tile, they can swap it for one on their board - provided the new tile meets the placement requirements above. The tile that was swapped out is put into the central playing area face-up.
• End turn: Once the active player has placed, swapped or returned a tile, play progresses to the player to the left.

Finally, that's it for the rules!

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?

• Hex Tiles: The game's playing area is created using hex tiles and is to some degree randomly determined in every game.
  They are decorated with greenery and jungle as well as symbols along their sides to represent cliffs, fences and dinosaurs.
  Start: The start hex is always the same and sits in the 'centre' of the playing area.
  Central hexes: There are 6 inner hexes that surround the starting hex.
  Perimeter hexes: These surround the inner hexes and there are 9 of them.
• Frame: The frame goes around all the hexes and makes it look like an island, the frame also contains 3 hex-spaces including the escape hex!
• Character decks: There are 10 differently coloured individual playable characters in Jurassic Park: Danger! as well as a dinosaur deck for 11 in total. Each deck contains 10 cards.
  All player actions are determined by cards played during the game and each card displays its available action and the related difficulty, a 'boost value' number is also displayed in the corner of some cards.
  Dinosaur deck: The dinosaur deck is a little different, it too contains 10 cards, but each card lists 1 or more actions which will be split amongst the 3 dinosaurs in the game.
• Character mats: These go with the human character decks and therefore there are 10 of them in colours that match the character decks. Each of the human characters will have a special objective that needs to be completed before they escape the island as well as spaces for discarded and burned cards.
  Dinosaur mat: Again, the dinosaur mat is slightly different to the player mat, it tracks the usage of each dinosaur's special ability and also has a discard spot for the dinosaur cards.
• Tokens: The game employs several types of tokens, mostly used to track events, these include:
  Objective tokens: There's 1 each for the 10 human characters, again in pertinent colours, some will be on the board and must be collected by that character's player, some are acquired by different methods.
  ​Fence tokens: A number of the tiles contain electric fence icons, when these are powered up, the fence tokens are used to represent this.
  Activation tokens: Players of the human characters must activate 3 locations in the playing area.
  Lock tokens: Certain buildings can be locked and keeps those pesky dinosaurs out.
  Helicopter token: Get to the chopper to win.
• Die: A single normal six-sider.
• Meeples: Each playable character has their own meeple their own colour and the dinosaur player will have 3 red, fairly large dinosaur meeples.

Except for the character mats which are quite thin, the components for Jurassic Park: Danger! are all pretty solid, the cards and the tiles are pretty much what you'd expect of them. The game comes with a wealth of meeples in 10 different colours, which is cool, it could have come with just provided 4 and no one would have complained but the standout meeples are the oversized dinosaurs which have been illustrated on the sides.

This neatly brings me to the game's art-style, which is a bit of a mixed bag. There's some appealing and colourful art on the tiles but the cards are sort of plain. The game also makes use of photo art of the actors who appeared in the film and it doesn't quite sit right with me.
It's understandable why it's been done, I'm sure the licensing for this came with a not inconsiderable fee and being able to plaster the faces of well known Hollywood personalities may attract extra customers, additionally; use of the film's marketing photos saves on having to commission art work.
Maybe that's it, maybe the use of photos gives the game a cheap feel. Furthermore, the game's actual art clashes with it's use of photos and it feels a little jarring.

Much of the game's iconography is intuitive but the 10 different character decks are all personalised to some degree and each will contain something unique which will probably require referencing the rulebook, none of it is a deal breaker though.

How's it play?
Setup

• Map: Set up the frame and then randomly place the outer ring of tiles inside it, then randomly place the inner ring of tiles inside those! Finally, place the starting tile in the remaining spot in the centre.
  Then place the 3 location tokens on their spots.
• Dinosaur player: Determine who will be the dinosaur player and give them the dinosaur mat and meeples which should be placed on their stating spots.
  The dinosaur player shuffles their cards into a face-down deck and draws 3.
• Character players: The remaining players should either choose or determine randomly which characters they will start the game with an take the pertinent character mat, deck and meeple.
  Then players should their meeples on the starting tile and any relevant objective tokens on their spots.
  Character players keep their entire deck in their hand.

​On to play
Jurassic Park: Danger! plays asymmetrically but has some similarities between players.

• Dinosaur card: The dinosaur player chooses 1 of their 3 cards and plays it face-down, then they draw a card from their deck to bring their hand up to 3 again.
• Character cards: Each character player chooses any 1 of the move cards in their hand and plays it face-down, only move cards can be played.

Once everybody has played cards, the games to the resolution phase.

• Dinosaur resolution: The dinosaur card is revealed, it will contain 1 or more actions which the dinosaur player can perform, there is a restriction however,  each dinosaur can only perform 1 action on a card, thus the actions must be spread between the dinosaurs.
  Actions include:
  Climb: This allows the dinosaur to move into an adjacent hex tile that involves crossing a cliff or unelectrified fence. They cannot pass a electrified fence.
  Run: Allows a dinosaur to move into an adjacent hex tile, it cannot cross a tile if it passes a cliff or any sort of fence.
  Sneak: This hides the dinosaur. Basically, it defers movement until the following round, in which case the dinosaur reappears in the same or an adjacent hex, although they still cannot cross electrified fences.
  Significantly, when a dinosaur reappears it doesn't count as a move, so it can be moved again in the same turn with an action card! A double move can be very powerful in this game.
  Special action: Regardless of what actions appear on the played card, the dinosaur player has the choice of using 1 of the special actions unique to each of the 3 dinosaurs. When a special move is used, it becomes locked out for the next round, thus they cannot be spammed.
  Attack: Strictly speaking, this is not an action and occurs automatically when a dinosaur is in the same hex tile as a character (unless either or both are sneaking.). Attacking a character forces them to randomly burn a card. More on card burns below.
• Character resolution: Each character player reveals their card and resolves it, unlike with the dinosaurs, there's a little more going on during character resolution. Characters have moves similar to dinosaurs with a couple of differences.
  Climb: Allows the character to potentially cross cliffs and unelectrified fences into an adjacent hex tile. This is not guaranteed though and the card will display a number such as 4+, which means to successfully climb, the player must roll 4 or higher on the die.
  If the roll is failed, the player may choose to boost the result, see blow for more on boosting. If the player does not boost a failed climb, the card is returned to their hand and not discarded.
  Finally, a character cannot enter a hex with a dinosaur unless it is sneaking.
  Run: A character can move into an adjacent hex provided they do not cross a cliff or any kind of fence. Additionally, the same rule about entering a hex containing a dinosaur also applies.
  Sneak: This defers movement and is functionally identical to sneaking for dinosaurs. As with climbing, a roll is required to sneak and utilises the same rules. After reappearing, the rules about entering a hex tile with a dinosaur applies.
  Free actions: Characters will have free action cards available to them, a free action can be played by the active player at any time during their turn. When used, they are sent to the discard pile.
  Activate: Also a free action, but not related to cards, if a character is in a key building, they may try to activate it, this requires a roll.
  When each building is activated, it will confer it's bonus onto the character players.
  Discard: Once a character's card has been resolved, it is discarded on to the discard space on their mat.
  Burn: If a character card is burned for any reason, it is placed on to the burn pile on the character mat. Cards in the burn pile are permanently out of that game.
  Boost: Some character cards will have a number in the bottom right corner, this is its boost value. If a character fails a roll, then they can choose to burn one or more cards in their hand to add the boost value(s) to the roll.
  Replenish hand: You may have noticed that players may discard or burn cards  and will run out of cards very quickly, but there's a way to draw discard pile back in  hand.
  ​At the end of a round, a character player may replenish their hand: This involves burning their entire current hand and then putting the discard pile back in their hand. Obviously players should aim to only replenish cards when they have few cards in their hand. Remember a player must have at least 1 card to replenish their hand.
  Empty hand: If a player runs out of cards for any reason, then the character they're playing is eliminated (Which is a nice way of saying eaten really!).
  ​Luckily, the game has no player elimination, only character elimination, when this occurs, the player can simply pick another character to play who will join play on the starting tile.

Once all cards have been resolved, play progresses to the next round and players begin by playing cards again.

Endgame
Play continues until 1 set of victory conditions is met.
Character players: For the character players, they have to:

• ​Activate all 3 buildings, when this is achieved, the helicopter token is placed on it's space.
• Complete the character goal for 2-3 characters (Depending on player count.) and those 2-3 character must safely get to the helicopter.

Interestingly, once a character reaches the helicopter, they are safe and out of game but the player can select another character to begin playing.
Dinosaur player: The objectives for this player are much simpler:

• Eliminate 2 or 3 characters.

Which side completes their objectives first, wins.

Overall
Jurassic Park: Danger! is a cat-and-mouse game all about asymmetrical play. Not only do the dinosaur and character players have different rules, the characters will have differences between them. Each character may have different numbers they need to roll for climbing or sneaking, giving them strengths and weaknesses, additionally, they'll have a card or two which are unique to them.

The game does feature some sharp cat-and-mouse gameplay. Due to the limited size of the playing area, a dinosaur will generally never be more than a hex or two away from a character player and this keeps the game feeling quite taut. Players will always have to make meaningful decisions and to make what they hope is optimal choices.
Characters need to coordinate to complete their objectives, sometimes putting themselves at risk to protect others, particularly if that other character is close to something important and they can't afford to procrastinate either, as their decks inevitably dwindle.

The dinosaur player will face tension too. They of course need to prevent the other players from completing objectives. Unlike the character players, their cards cannot run out, so they can be patient. However, since the dinosaur player only ever has 3 cards in hand and limited actions per dinosaur, they're never fully in charge of what they can do, a hand of 3 cards will limit the dinosaur choices and to a degree randomise their actions, the dinosaur player may not get the moves they need when they need them.
​While there are only 3 actions for a dinosaur to use, the way in which they become available is unpredictable - to both sides of the game.

I think the most interesting mechanic in Jurassic Park: Danger! is the character elimination rule. It's adds the potential for some real tactical moves by the character players, e.g., they could choose to sacrifice someone to distract a dinosaur at the right time, brutal, but maybe effective?
This brings me to my criticism of that mechanic: It feels like the game treats characters as just resources to be managed and not people trying to escape. It seemed quite hard to complete objectives, personal goals and get 3 characters out to the helicopter without losing other characters on the way. I know this is just how the game is balanced and not really an issue, especially since it has no effect on winning, but it did detract from the feeling that you're trying to survive. It felt a little unsatisfying.

Speaking of balance, this brings me to another criticism, which is my dislike of one-vs-many games. The balancing between one player and several others never seems quite right and I don't see Jurassic Park: Danger! being any different. Multiple brains will always out strategize a single brain.

I have to wonder who this game is aimed at? I think many dedicated gamers, myself included are leery of licensed games and as a dedicated gamer, I personally found Jurassic Park a little underwhelming and uncompelling; a little too light for my tastes. It's something I have any inkling to play again.
More casual gamers will probably be unfamiliar with some of the mechanics here such as card management, the game isn't particularly complex but neither is it particularly accessible.

So I guess we're left with Jurassic Park fans who're gamers!

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!

• Game board: The game board is composed of 3 large tiles that are placed down together to form the board. It depicts the titular harbour with a wharf and warehouses and it's a fairly busy board too with a lot of spots and locations.
  Resource spaces: There are 6 spaces for the games 8 resources, wait, did I say 8 resources, since the resource tiles are double-sided that means the game actually has 16 resources. Finally there's a spot for the 17th resource - money.
  Supply spaces: There a row of seven of these circular spaces directly beneath the resource spaces.
  Offer spaces: And beneath the port spaces are 7 offer spaces. As the game progresses, goods will move from the resources down to the offer spaces.
  Special buildings: this is where the special buildings deck goes.
  Building proposals: These are 3 spaces which will contain regular building cards which can be built but not bought.
  Ship spaces: There are 4 spaces for the 4 different types of ship that will appear during a game.
  Round cards space: Finally, there's a space for the round cards, there not actually round but are used to track the game's round.

• Cards: Le Havre uses numerous decks of cards.
  ​Round cards/Ship cards: Not all of these are used during a game, depending on player count.
  ​They are arranged in numerical order and are used to not only track rounds, but other events such as harvesting and bringing special buildings into play. They are also double sided and on the other side are ships. When a round is over, the round card is flipped to the other side and becomes a ship available to be bought, thus more and more (And better.) ships become available as a game progresses.
  Ship cards are very useful cards, they allow players to trade resources for cash and also provide food when needed.
  Building cards: These come in 3 types, starter, standard and special and can be bought or used by players. They are functionally more or less identical though. Each card has a cost to buy in some combination of resources and money, it may also have a symbol for it's type. Then the card lists what ability it has, typically this is generate or upgrade resources, although some will construct buildings or ships. 
  Standard cards have a couple of bits of extra info, first, in the top right corner it shows a number, this is the sort order number and determines the order in which cards appear. Finally, at the bottom it repeats the buying info, which will be displayed when the cards are put out.
  Loan cards: If a player runs of cash, then they can take a load card to acquire more money, although this comes at a price...
  Buttery/Player guide: This double-sided card has a buttery on one side and a quick guide to the rules on the other.
• Tokens: As with cards, Le Havre makes use of a lot of tokens. All of them are made of card.
  Cash: These round tokens represent francs.
  Resources: All of these are double-sided, with the basic resource on one side and the upgraded resource on the other. Resources provide food and energy amongst other things and include.
  Cattle/Meat: Produces more cattle and food on the upgraded side.
  Grain/Bread: Produces more grain and also produces food
  Iron/Steel: Used for building.
  Clay/Brick: Also used for building.
  Wood/Charcoal: Produces energy.
  Fish/Smoked fish: Produces food.
  Coal/Coke: Produces energy.
  Hide/Leather​: Can be sold.
• Meeples: Each player is given 2 wooden meeples in their colour, a ship which is used in the port and a disc, which is essentially a worker and placed in buildings.
• Supply tiles: There are 7 of these circular tiles that fit on the supply spaces. Each tile displays an action that must be resolved during the game.

​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

• Round cards: Take the round cards appropriate for the number of players and place them face-up in numerical order on their allotted space. Round cards come into affect at the end of each round.
• Supply tokens: Shuffle the supply tokens into a face-down stack and then place 1 of each face-down on the row of supply spaces.
• Starter buildings: Put out the 3 starter building cards next to the board. These are owned by the town. Furthermore any buildings that are built by players are also owned by the town (Until players purchase them, that is.).
• Building cards: Shuffle the standard building cards into a face-down deck, then deal the cards into 3 smaller face-down stacks.
  Now turn each stack over and sort it buy its sort order number in the top right corner. Thus certain cards will appear earlier in the game than others. Each of the 3 stacks goes into a space on the board but they do not sit stacks. Instead, spread each stack up, so that the info on the bottom of each card is visible and players can see the cost of upcoming cards. Only the top card in each proposal space are available to be built by players.
  Special building cards: Shuffle the deck of special building card and deal 6 cards face-down into a deck on their space on the board. The rest of the deck will not be used in this game.
• Resources: Put all the resources into their specified spaces, then place 2 money, 2 fish, 2 wood and 1 clay token into their respective offer spaces.
• Player: Give each player a ship and disc meeple in their colour as well as 5 cash and 1 coal. Each player's ship should be placed just left of the first supply tile.
• First player: Determine a first player.

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.

• Loan: If a player does not have the money to pay for something, then they can take a loan card which gives them 4 currency to spend, paying off a loan card costs 5. Every loan card that a player has during the game end will essentially cost them 7 victory points, so you don't want to keep them!
  Additionally, sometimes players with loan cards will have to pay interest to the supply.
• Buying/Selling: The active player may buy or sell any number of available buildings or ships at any time in their turn, provided they meet the requirements of course. Players cannot buy buildings in the building proposal spaces, because they're not built yet.
  When something is sold, it is at half the cash cost for the building and is sold to the town who will now own it.

Turn actions:

• Supply action: The active player must perform the supply action. This involves moving their ship meeple on to the first available supply token (Going from left to right.), turning over the tile and resolving its action. Usually this involves moving tokens from one resource supply to it's respective offer space.
  Supply tiles are only turned over once during a game and when revealed stay in the same order for the remainder of the game.
• Main action: There are 2 main actions available to the active player and they can perform 1 of them only.
  Take offer: The active player take all the resources on 1 offer space which they can use immediately.
  Enter building: The active player may take their disc and place in any available unoccupied building and use that building's ability.
  Available buildings include any buildings owned by the town or the player, furthermore, a disc may be placed in another player's building, but this will incur a entry fee that must be payed to that player.
  Next player: Once a player has completed their actions, play progresses to the player to the left.

A round ends when the player on the last supply token finishes their turn and leads directly into the end of round actions. This involves resolving the actions on the current round card and include the following.

• Harvest: If this action occurs, players with cattle or grain increase them respectively.
• Feeding: All players must feed their populations, this requires discarding food, how much is needed depends on the round card and a ship lowers this requirement. Money can be used in place of food and must be used if a player does not have enough food.
• Construction: A building from the standard or special buildings may be built by the town and now becomes available to be used or bought players.
• Ship: The round card is flipped over and becomes a ship, it is placed into its relevant spot and can bought by players.
• Next round: All player ship meeples are placed back at the start of the supply track and a new round begins. Whoever was last in the previous round is the starting player in this one, thus they get a double-turn.

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?

• Land tiles: These square card tokens form the bulk of Carcassonne's components. Generally they depict a bit of green countryside along with a feature of some kind, be it a road, corner or junction, a town, monastery or part of a city. However, some tiles will have more than 1 feature.
• Meeples: Classic wooden meeples as you'd find in a classic Eurogame.  They come 5 different coloured sets of 8. 
• Scoring board: A scoreboard depicted in the game's art-style.

That's it for the game components.

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

• Starting tile: Find the starting tile and place face-up into the central starting area.
• Land tiles: Shuffle all the land tiles into a face-down stack.
• Meeples: Give each player all the meeples in their chosen colour.
• Scoreboard: Put out the scoreboard, every player should put one of their meeples on the zero space - leaving them with 7 meeples each.
• First player: Determine a first player.

That's it for the very simple 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.

• Place land tile: The active player must take a land tile from the stack and add it to the tile(s) already in play, the tile may be rotated to any orientation but the connection must along their edges and must 'honour' the features already in play and 'continue' them, so a road must continue - unless it reaches an 'end' and so on.
• Place meeple: The active play may choose to place one meeple on the tile they just played, where this meeple is played will determine which 'role' it performs.
  Fields: If it's put on a field, it becomes a farmer.
  Monastery: On a monastery it becomes a monk.
  City: In the city it becomes a knight.
  Road: Putting a meeple on the road and it becomes a robber.
  There is 1 limitation when placing meeples though: A meeple cannot be placed on a feature that already has a meeple on it - regardless who owns that other meeple. Thus if a road already has bandit on it and the active player extends the road, they cannot add a meeple to its.
  Having said that, it's possible to place down a tile with a feature so that it does not connect to another (And a meeple is placed on it.), then connect later so that more than 1 meeple 'share' the feature, why is this significant? See below.
• Scoring: Frequently, when a land tile is placed it will complete a feature such as end a road or close off a city. When this occurs, that feature is immediately scored.
  Roads earn 1 VP per tile they go through.
  A monastery is completed when all the 8 spaces that surround it are occupied by land tiles. This earns the meeples owner 1 VP per title, thus when a monastery is completed it always earns 9 VP.
  Each tile a city sprawls through will earn 2 VP, additionally, each coat-of-arms in the city earns a further 2 VP.
  Fields however, cannot be completed and are only score during the game end and their meeples stay in play throughout the entire game.
  Shared scoring: As mentioned earlier, it's possible that more than 1 meeple will occupy a feature. In this case whoever has the most meeples scores the VP, players with less score 0! If players tie for numbers of meeples occupying a feature, then they all gain the VP.~
  Finally, when a feature is scored, all meeples that occupied it are returned to their players, ready to be made use of again.
• Next player: Once (If any.) scoring is completed, play progresses to the player to the left.

Play continues until the entire face-down stack is 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?

• Board tiles: Atlantis Rising comes with 37 double-sided tiles that when placed together form the game board. It's no ordinary looking game board though and when placed together looks like a very unique 6-pronged asterisk or a '*'.
  Each of the 6 prongs or more accurately 6 peninsulas consists of 6 tile segments featuring a different terrain type and each tile within a peninsula will show a number of worker spaces, mostly 1 or 2 and an action that is associated with placing a worker in one of those spaces, 3 peninsulas also reference a number ranging from 3-6. The other side of the tiles depicts the terrain underwater, not a good thing I'd imagine.
  The hills, mountains and forests produce gold, ore and crystal respectively, 3 of the game's 4 resources. These 3 terrains also show dice values
  The 4th peninsula is The Forge and allows players to turn resources into Atlantium, the game's 4th resource.
  The plains allows players to acquire more workers.
  Finally, the library peninsula allows players to acquire knowledge cards.
  The centre tile allows players to gain mystic energy.
• Mystic Energy: Glass beads are used to represent mystic energy.
• Resources: Little wooden cubes are used to represent the game's 4 types of resource. Little Wooden cubes, now we're talking!
• Tokens: These are standard card tokens used in this case to represent courage and mystic barriers. These Atlanteans sure like their mysticism!
• Dice: These are 3 normal six-siders.
• Attack die: Not content with 3 dice, Atlantis Rising also comes with this attack die, it is not a normal six-sider and ranges from 1-4.
• Atlantean navy board: Player may put their workers here to join the navy, why? Well come on, to protect the motherland!
  Along 1 edge of this board is the Athenian attack track, it's value starts at 0 and potentially rises to 12. The Athenian meeple galley moves along this track over turns, making the Athenians more and more dangerous. Speaking of which...
• Athenian galley: This wooden ship meeple represents the Athenian Navy who really and I mean really hate the Atlanteans. Every turn they will attack in greater numbers and must be driven off.
• Cosmic gate blueprint cards: These cards are essentially objective cards that the players must meet to win the game.
  There are 4 decks of cards labelled A-D which have increasing levels of difficulty.
• Misfortune cards: Pretty explanatory really. These cards cause problems for the players and generally cause parts of Atlantis to sink, they represent the chief threat to their chances of success.
  Typically, misfortune cards sink 1 segment in 1 peninsula but some do far worse things.
• Knowledge cards: These cards always provide some sort of benefit to the players can be at almost any time.
• Player boards: These differently coloured boards all have a different roles which confer some a benefit or special ability on the controlling player.
• Meeples: These are classic wooden meeples, they come in colours that match the player boards.
  Grey meeples: These are ordinary citizens of Atlantis that can be temporarily be recruited for a single round at a time.

This that's pretty much it for components.

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.

• Atlantis: Create the game board.
• Cosmic gate: Sort the blueprint cards out by their 4 types and shuffle them into 4 face-down decks. 9 cards should be drawn from these decks, the mix of decks used will depend on the difficulty chosen by the players. The 10th and final card is always the power core.
  Thus players will have 10 blueprint cards to complete.
• Atlantean Navy: Set out the Atlantean Navy board and place the Athenian galley on its allotted starting spot.
• Players: Give each player a player board, the allotted amount of starting meeples and a mystic energy token.
• First player: Determine a starting player

Now we're ready to begin.

On to play
Each round in Atlantis Rising consists in a number of phases.

• Place workers: Starting with the 1st player and going to the left, each player places all their workers on to the peninsulas on the Atlantis board or the Atlantean Navy board.
  Some spots will have spaces for 2 workers who may be the same or different colours. Some spots require 2 workers of the same colour.
  When players put their workers on to the peninsulas - which they'll be doing a lot, it should be noted that the spaces which provide the most benefit will also be the ones closest to the sea and at most risk to flooding, why is this significant? read on.
  Finally, when all workers have been placed, who ever put the most on the Atlantean Navy board gains a courage token, more on courage tokens later.
• Misfortune: Once all workers have been placed, it's time for some misfortune!
  Beginning with the 1st player and going left, each player draws a misfortune card and immediately resolves it.
  Most of these cards will flood a single tile in a specific peninsula but some will cause worse problems. When a peninsula is hit by flooding, it's outermost unflooded tile becomes flooded, this is done by flipping it over to the flooded side, any workers on that tile are returned to their owners. If a peninsula is already full flooded, then the active player must flood two tiles elsewhere.
  When all players have resolved misfortune cards, the game progresses to the next phase.
• Resolution: Now, again beginning with the starting player and going left, each player resolves the workers they've placed on Atlantis. How this works will depend on where the workers have been placed. Workers that been placed on the Atlantean Navy board are resolved in the following phase.
  Resources: Acquiring gold, ore and crystal requires the active player to roll a die for each worker they have on a resource space, the result must be equal or higher than the die shown next to the respective space. The further along the peninsula the worker is placed, the lower the number they must roll and the easier it is to acquire the resource.
  It should be noted that some resources will naturally be harder to gain due to higher target numbers.
  Forge: This allows the active player to turn 1 ore into Atlantium for each worker placed. No roll is required and the further along the peninsula, the more Atlantium is acquired for that single ore.
  Library: Workers placed here allow the active player to gain knowledge cards. As with the other peninsulas, the number they can draw/keep depends how far each worker is along the peninsula.
  Recruit: Placing workers here allows the active player to increase their worker count. Unlike other peninsulas with multiple worker spaces, all the spaces here must be filled with workers from a single player.
  Basically the active player sends 2 workers into the bushes and a new worker emerges, you can draw your own conclusions.
  Except at the furthest point on the peninsula only 1 worker is needed and closer to the centre 3 are needed. So I don't know what's going on there!
  Centre space: Finally any number of workers can be placed on the centre space and each worker put here earns the owning player a mystic energy bead.
• Athenian attack: Once all players have resolved their worker actions, it's time for the Athenians to attack!
  How do those pesky Athenians attack? They generate a combat value which comes from 2 sources, firstly from the Athenian galley's position on the Atlantean Navy board which goes from 0-12  and is combined with a roll from the attack die, which gives a result from 1-4.
  Thus if the galley is on the 1+ spot, it will actually generate a value of 2-5, if the galley on the 5+ spot it will generate a value of 6-9.
  Once the combat value is generated, it must be compared to the the number of workers that all the players have collectively put on the Atlantean Navy board. If the number of workers exceeds the value, nothing happens. However, if the value exceeds the workers, then a number of tiles equal to the difference must be flooded. So if the players have put 2 workers on the navy board and the combat value is 4, 2 tiles must be flooded.
• Cosmic gate: The final phase allows each player to build one of the blueprint cards by spending the required resources, players must do this individually and cannot share resources to do it.
  Additionally, when a blueprint is completed, it immediately confers a one-off bonus or benefit.
• Round end: The Athenian galley is advanced 1 space along its track and the 1st player marker passes to the left. A new round begins with the new 1st player placing their workers.

That's it for how a round goes, there are some extra rules though.

• Knowledge cards: These can be used by the owning player at any time so long as it does not interrupt another action or event.
  Each player have a maximum of 4 knowledge cards in their hand at any time.
• Courage tokens: There are 2 ways to use a courage token and with both methods, the token is used along with a worker.
  A courage token can be played with a worker that is placed on a peninsula space. If, during the misfortune phase, that tile is flooded, the worker immediately completes the action before the flooding occurs and is returned to its owner while the courage token is discarded. If the tile is not flooded, then during the resolution phase, when the worker completes their action, the courage token is retained by the player, which is pretty sweet.
  The 2nd use for a courage token is playing it with a worker put on to the Atlantean Navy board. This worker counts as 2 workers when it comes to dealing with the Athenian galley. The courage tokens is discarded after this.
• Mystic barrier: When 1 of these tokens is placed on a peninsula, it will protect that peninsula from flooding once, after which is is discarded.
• Mystic energy: There are multiple uses for mystic energy.
  Resources: If the active player is making a roll to gain resources, each mystic energy spent adds 1 to the roll.
  Transmutation: The active player may spend 2 mystic energy to change any 1 resource for another.
  Cancel misfortune: When a tile is about to be flooded due to a misfortune card, 3 mystic energy can be spent to prevent this, it can be spent by a single player or collectively buy any number of players.
  Unflip flooded tile: 5 mystic energy can be spent to flip a tile back to its unflooded side. This can be spent collectively by any number of players.

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?

• Board: The game's central board has a couple of functions, it tracks rounds, coal values and scores, it also has spaces for the game's sets of cards. Speaking of which...
• Cards: Chocolate Factory uses quite a few different types of cards.
  Factory parts: It makes sense for a game called Chocolate Factory to have factory part cards! These smaller-than-usual cards will be used to manufacture chocolate and are part of the engine building mechanic. There are 2 types of card, A & B.
  Corner shop orders: These represent the wide variety of orders that players can fulfil. Corner shops come in 3 sizes, small, medium and large and respectively have 1-3 tiers of order to complete each. Once fulfilled, they can be replaced with new orders.
  Department store orders: There are 5 department stores in Chocolate Factory that always want the same type of chocolate. These double-sided cards are used to fulfil those orders and each had 9 spaces to track how much every player has provided. Unlike the corner shop orders, these are only scored at the end of the game and the points earned are relative to where players have reached on each card, there are scores for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place.
  Employees: There are 5 different types of employee card that directly correspond to the 5 different department stores that are demanding chocolate. Even though all the department stores want chocolate, players cannot sell it to a department unless they've acquired an employee of that respective store. Employee cards also confer a 1 round benefit to the player that acquired it.
• Player board: The player boards depict each player's factory; which consists of a conveyor belt that runs from left-to-right, the conveyor belt has an entrance and exit as well as 4 spaces; both above and below each conveyor belt space is a factory part space - thus 8 factory part spaces in all. The player boards come come with 3 factory parts already installed.
• Tiles: Chocolate Factory also comes with a fair amount of tiles for each player.
  Conveyor belt tiles: Each player will have 7 of these square tiles which will form their conveyor belt.
  Coal bunker tile: Each player has one of these tiles to store their coal.
  Storeroom tile: This is where each player their chocolate once it's exited their factory. They're not very good storerooms; because while players can store as much chocolate in their storerooms during a round, they can only store 2 pieces between rounds!
• Tokens: There's a lot of chocolate in Chocolate Factory and thus a lot of tokens! For the most part, players will be looking to use their factory to upgrade from one type of chocolate token to another to then fulfil orders. Essentially these are all resources that need to be managed in some way or other.
  Below is the 'order of value' for tokens.
  Bean tokens/Cocoa tokens:
  Chocolate finger tokens/Chocolate chunk tokens:
  Wrapped caramel chocolate/Wrapped nut chocolate tokens:
  Premium boxed chocolate tokens:
• Coal tokens: No, not chocolate but used to power factories.
• Markers: These come in player colours and are used to track various bits of information.

That's pretty much it for components.
​
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

• ​Factory parts: Separate the cards into face-down decks by their A and B types. Shuffle each deck then place the A deck on top of the B deck. Thus the B cards will not appear until the late game.
• Corner shop orders: Sort these cards by their 3 types and shuffle them into 3 face-down decks.
• Employees: Sort these cards by their 5 types and then also shuffle them into 5 face-down decks.
• Department store orders: Put out these 5 cards next to the game board.
• Player boards: Give each player their factory board along with their conveyor belt, storage and coal bunker tiles.
• Starting player: Determine a starting player.

Now we're good to go!

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

• Coal: First give each player coal tokens which will range from 5 to 10 according to the day.
• Factory parts: Draw factory part cards and arrange according to the number of players.
• Employees: Draw 1 employee from each of the 5 employee decks and arrange as per the number of players.
• 1st draft: Beginning with the first player, everyone will end up taking either a factory part card from the available selection or an employee card.
• 2nd draft: Once the 1st draft is over, there's a second! However, this draft is in reverse turn order, each player drafts another card, except this time it must be from the opposite selection. So each player will end up with a factory part and an employee.

That's it for the first 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.

• Game board: Everdell's board is a curious circular shape and the central area is called the 'meadow'. Around the meadow with numerous spots to place the game's resources. There also various worker locations dotted across the maps, including some blank worker spaces that will be populated with randomly determined worker locations during the game setup. There also some location for 'events'. More on events later.
  Most of the worker locations earn players some combination of the game's resources and/or cards. E.G., 2 twigs and a card or 1 resin and a card.
• Tree: The game comes with a tree made of gameboard that can be constructed, placed on the board and used to hold various components.
• Basic event tiles: These score point when acquired.
• Resources: Everdell uses 4 main types of resources, berries, twigs, resin and pebbles. These are represented by shaped 3d plastic tokens.
• Meeples: Each player has up to 6 workers they can use, these wooden tokens are shaped in the style of different type of anthropomorphic animals.
• Cards: Broadly speaking, the game uses several different types of cards.
  Critter & construction cards: These are the core of the game and as the name suggests, come in 2 types. In the top left corner is the requirement or cost to play them, just below is the card type and at the bottom of each card it displays what benefit it confers such as victory points and more. There is a wide variety of different benefits available, this may even include extra places to put workers and sometimes these are modified by other cards.
  Special event cards: These cards are a variation on the event tiles above and as such will score when player's meet their requirements.
  Forest cards: These are used on the board to provide randomly generated worker spots in each game.
• Victory point tokens: Standard card tokens.

No doubt about, Everdell has fantastic production values.
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

• Meadow: Shuffle the critter & construction cards into a face-down deck, then draw and place 8 of them face-up into the meadow on the board.
• Forest cards: Shuffle the forest cards and deal out the allotted amount as per player count face-up on to the blank spots on the board. This means that some of the worker spots are randomly generated each game.
• Events:
  Event tiles: Put out the basic event tiles on to their allotted spaces on the board.
  Special event cards: Shuffle these cards and deal 4 face-up on to their allotted spaces.
• Cards: Determine the starting player; then each player should draw cards from the deck, starting with the 1st player who gets 5, then 2nd gets 6 and thus forth.
• Meeples: Each player takes only 2 meeples in their colour, the remaining 4 will be acquired before the game's 3 later turns. 

Now we're pretty much ready to go.

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.

• Place worker: The active player may place a worker on a available spot. This will allow them to gain a mix of resources, cards or victory points depending on which spot it is.
  Some spots only allow for the placement of a single worker but some allow multiple players to make use of them. Furthermore, some cards that may get played have spots to place workers and acquire whatever benefits the card confers. This means a player may end up placing a worker in another player's tableau!
• Play card: The active player can play a card as their action, cards provide lots of actions or abilities which can be performed, too many to list here.
  Broadly speaking, cards come in two categories; critters and constructions which can also be common or unique. Cards also have a type such as Tan Traveller or Green Production which affect what function the card performs.
  For example Tan Traveller cards have a once-only benefit, but Green Production cards produce something whenever a production phase is triggered.
  Playing a card requires spending the relevant resources, having said that, the game has some synergy between cards and some critters can be played for free if the linked construction is already in the player's tableau.
  Players can play card types in sets to acquire event tiles/cards; e.g. the Grand Tour event can be earned if the player puts 3 destination cards into their tableau.  
• Prepare for Season: Players can continue taking actions until they run out of workers and cards that can be played, when this happens, the player must prepare for the next season.
  This involves taking back their workers plus an additional worker or two from the supply, players may be able to re-activate production cards in their tableau or take cards from the meadow, all depending on the season.

When all players have prepared for season, then the current season is over and play moves to the next one.

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.

• Map tiles: Valor & Villainy uses a variety of map tiles, most of which are randomly placed. These tiles depict the landscape, they also detail encounters that the heroes will come across.
  Starting tiles: These 5 tiles depict; as you'd expect the game's starting area and will be the map's central tiles.
  Region tiles: These tiles are ranked from tier I to tier III on their backs. When the map is created, the lower tiered cards will be closer to the centre.
  Each tile also contains icons depicting what will be found on that tile, which can be minions, ambushes etc.
• Hero boards: There is one of these thick card boards for each of the game's heroes. They are double-sided and on the back, each character's backstory is displayed.
  The front contains a portrait, as well as health and action point tracks. There are also a number of recessed tracks and spots in each board, into which various smaller components can be dropped and represent the characters increase in skills and training. Character's have tracks for melee, ranged and magic actions.
  The board also lists each character's unique ability and at the bottom has spaces for gear and equipment.
• Standees: Each hero also has their own standee.
• Mordak board: The Mordak player also has their own board which is very similar to the hero boards with a health and action tracker and recessed tracks to represent Mordak's increase in ability.
  Mordak possesses 1 extra ability; corruption.
  Procession of horrors tile: This tile slides into place next to the Mordak board and over the course of the game, allows Mordak to accrue power, it also serves as a round counter.
• Mordak standee: Not to be outdone by the heroes, Mordak has his own standee.
• Spell cards: Spell cards come in 3 types as explained below
  Arcane spell cards: These blue spells focus on attacks and tricks.
  Divine spell cards: These yellow spells provide support and healing.
  Void spell cards: These purple spells are used by Mordak and typically for the big-bad, they bring mayhem and ruin.
• Treasure cards: Can be earned by players by defeating minions.
• Loot stash cards: There are used to track minions that have defeated and treasure that's been earned by the heroes and by the Mordak player to track heroes that have been defeated!
• Minion cards: These are different types of enemy that the heroes will fight, they come in 3 classes, Chump, Elite and Boss, each getting progressively tougher.
  Minion cards contain information such as movement, attacks, damage and health levels, each one is also double-sided and can be flipped to the other side to display different stats for a minion when they get wounded instead of outright killed. Some minions will get weaker when hurt, a few will get tougher.
  Like the heroes and Mordak, minions have actions and stats.
• Covers: Each type of minion has it's own cover, used to hide what card is at the top of each minion card.
• Dice: These six-siders come in 3 different colours and are not numbered from 1-6. Instead the colours represent different levels of ability: White is novice, yellow is adept and red is mastery, each colour has a different number distribution, with white having the lowest, ranging to red with the highest.
• Ability tokens: These come in 3 colours that directly relate to skill dice. Players acquire these tokens for their abilities which in turn determine what dice are rolled by that player.
• +1 tokens: Can be acquired by players through rolling well and used for one-off bonuses.
• Initiative token: This double-sided first player token has Charge on one side and Hold on the other.

Valor & Villainy also has various other tokens for specific circumstances and situations including woeful sheep tokens!
The components are all high quality, tiles and tokens are suitably thick and sturdy, as are the standees. The cards are all well made and the rounded plastic dice feel weighty enough but the standout components are the chunky recessed hero boards which feel solid and also fairly practical.

Artwork throughout the game is excellent. The landscapes on map tiles are well produced, clear but also colourful. Character illustrations are bold and slightly-cartoony, it's a style that gets used quite a lot in fantasy-themed games, but it looks good in Valor & Villains.

As you'd expect for a open world game like, Valor & Villainy uses a variety of icons and symbols, particularly on spell cards - which essentially are all different. For the most part, the iconography is intuitive and pretty straightforward to understand.

How's it play?
Setup

• The Map: The 5 starting tiles are put out face-up in same position for every game, then, a number of map tiles are randomly drawn from each tier, although certain tiles (The 3 shrines.) must be included, then tiles in each tier are shuffled, some are randomly drawn and placed face-down around the starting tiles, the tier I tiles go closest to the starting tiles and the tire III the furthest away.
  Once all the tiles are placed, there will be a 5x5 grid of tiles, although in games will a lower player count, they'll be slightly less tiles.
• Heroes: Give each player a hero board and associated standee, along with the requisite components to track health and action points, as well as a +1 token.
  Players' whose characters can cast spells should draw cards from the relevant deck.
• Mordak: The Mordak player should take the Mordak board and set it up in a similar manner to the hero boards.
  The procession of horrors tile should be placed next to the Mordak board and the Mordak standee put on it.
• Card decks: Shuffle the 3 magic decks into 3 face-down stacks, do the same with the treasure deck.
• Minion decks: Shuffle the 3 minion decks into 3 face-down stacks, because these cards are double-sided, the relevant cover should be placed on the top of each minion deck. This ensures the Mordak player draws minions blindly.
• Initiative: Give the initiative token to the starting player.

The game is now ready to begin

On to play
In Valor & Villainy, the hero players are trying to discover the 3 shrines hidden somewhere amongst the face-down tiles to weaken Mordak and the Mordak player will be trying to make it hard for the heroes to find them until he arrives on the map after the 6th round.
Heroes always act first with the starting player beginning, then going left. The Mordak player may then act after the hero players. The Mordak player essentially gets 2 turns to act, 1 for Mordak himself (Although Mordak doesn't have much to do in the early game.) and 1 for minions.
When players take their turns, they will have a number of actions points they can spend to move or act as they see fit, there are also some free actions that can be performed

• Initiative: Who has the initiative token is the first player, they may choose to act first or last, in which case they flip the token to the Hold side.
• Hero actions: Heroes may perform actions, these include the following:
  Scout: This is a free action. When a hero chooses to scout, they flip all adjacent face-down map tiles to their face-up side, this may reveal enemies, loot or trigger ambushes.
  Looting: If a player's character is in a region without enemies, they may loot any treasure as a free action. Treasre is not immediately acquired, instead it is placed on the pertinent loot card and divvied up at the end of the round.
  Movement: For an action point a hero may move to a adjacent tile that is already face-up. Characters may only orthogonally.
  Actions: All hero actions are performed using one of their 3 stats, generally this involves combat.
• Mordak actions: In the early game, there's little Mordak can do to directly confront the heroes, although he can make life hard for them.
• Minion actions: If there are any minion cards on the board, the Mordak player can use them to attack and harass the players. Minions move and attack in much the same way as players.
• Combat: Combat plays a big part of Valor & Villainy:
  Melee: Melee occurs when enemies are on the same tile:
  Ranged: A character who decides to attack at range can only target enemies in adjacent tiles.
  Magic: Characters may spend their spell cards to cast spells.
  Defeat: Combat will generally result in one of the involved parties being defeated.
  Minions: When a minion is defeated, it is out of the game and added to the players loot stash
  Hero: When a hero is defeated, they are out of the current round and the Mordak player adds their standee to their loot stash. The standee is returned after the level-up phase has been completed
• Level-up: Once all players have had their turns, the game proceeds to the level-up phase.
  Throughout the round, any loot players acquired or minions that were defeated are added to the hero loot stash. During the level-up phase, they earn the hero players experience points, the loot can then be divvied up between them as they decide and equipped.
  Similarly, the Mordak player will earn experience points for each hero that was defeated.
  Then players may spend XP to increase their skills by adding ability tokens to their boards, they may also spend XP to increase their action points.
• Next round: The Mordak player moves their standee one space along the procession of horrors and the standee of any defeated hero is placed in the centre starting tile, ready for the next round. The initiative token is passed to the player on the left.

There's a bunch of other, mostly situational rules in Valor & Villainy, I'm not going to go into in further detail, since they don't always apply.

Endgame
Once 6 round have been completed (Or all 3 shrines have been discovered.), the game goes into The Final Battle!
During the final battle, Mordak himself will appear on the map and directly engage the hero players in combat.

Mordak has a large amount of health; 70-100. If the hero players reduce Mordak's health to 0, they win the game.
Conversely, if the Mordak player manages to defeat 3 heroes during the final battle, then the Mordak player wins the game.

Overall
There's a lot of charm to Valor & Villainy's presentation, especially the bold, chunky artwork for characters and minions.
Mechanically, the game is actually quite straightforward, unremarkable even (At least it is for the hero players.), although it does contain a fair amount of exception driven and situational rules. Using cards for minions makes it a little fiddly to move them around and handle, it also looks a little dull and flat (sic) but conversely, it makes it easy to track minion health and combat initiative.

Valor & Villlainy has several quibbles in my opinion
One of the most significant is the game's one-vs-many mechanic, these types of mechanic rarely work well in my opinion. Obviously the game will have been balanced to try and take this into account, but few games can balance the difference between 1 human brain versus 4 human brain and the hero players will always have this to their advantage. It almost feels like the game is set up to advantage hero players over the Mordak player.

The game also has a weird tonal shift thanks to this one-vs-many mechanic. For most of the game, the Mordak player will be a thorn in the players' sides,  a source of constant minor irritation. Then, during the endgame, it becomes straight up, directly confrontational PvP as Mordak appears on the map. It feels weirdly more aggressive.

For the heroes, the game is mostly about managing encounters as they appear, recognising and prioritising threats, then dealing with them using the most efficient method, allowing them the maximum opportunity to explore the tiles.
For the Mordak player, it's about exploiting any opening or weakness that the heroes present, not only defeating heroes but stymieing and thwarting them whenever possible.

Valor & Villainy is a open-world RPG-esque experience where a varied band of heroes, explore, fight monsters, acquire treasure and level up. The ingredients of an RPG are all there, but it doesn't feel quite right and I think there're a couple of reasons why.

There's a lack of storytelling to the game and variety to the encounters, there's randomness when setting up a map and not all tiles will appear in any single game, but they're just encounters, they feel a little bland and there's no sense of travelling, journeying or adventuring.

The normal map (For 4+ players) will have 20 face-down map tiles to scout, to explore all of them will require turning over 3-4 map tiles per round. Scouting tiles is actually a bit of a balancing act and one of the challenges the hero players face. if the heroes scout too slowly, they risk not finding all the shrines, if they do it too quickly, they risk revealing more minions than they can handle at once.
This will require players to head off in different directions and in an RPG you should never split the party!

In relation to combat, it seems the most efficient way for the Mordak player to accumulate experience points is to relentlessly pick on one player until they are defeated, then choose another player to pick on. It feels particularly un-RPG-like where combat tends to distributed amongst all heroes.
Even then, when a hero is defeated, on the next turn, the hero will reappear in the centre tile like it's a videogame spawn point.

All of this adds up to make Valor & Villainy feel disconnected from RPGs.

But for me, by far the biggest problem the game has, is its run time. We played with 5 players in total and a game took somewhere between 2-3 hours to play out. If felt like each player took about 4-5 mins to complete their turn and don't forget that the Mordak player essentially gets 2 turns in a row, 1 for themselves and 1 for their minions which makes a round 25-30 minutes long and that's before adding in The Final Battle. It also meant players had about 20 minutes of downtime between turns.
It's too much, if Valor & Villainy was an exceptional or engaging game, it wouldn't be such an issue, but it's not. It's not a bad game either, it's just slightly bland and slightly average. 

There's nothing wrong with an average game, so long as it doesn't outstay it's welcome.
The effort Valor & Villainy requires to play doesn't quite justify the experience it provides.