10th August 2023

Gaming night round Simon's continued with Flashpoint.

So move aside make way for fireman Sam
Cause he's gonna save the day fireman Sam
Cause he's brave to the core
Sam is the hero next door

Victims to rescue, fires to extinguish, buildings to save. All in a day's work for the brave first responders in Flash Point: Fire Rescue, a cooperative board game.

What's in a game?
Board: Flash Point: Fire Rescue has a double-sided board and each side displays what is ostensibly an apartment.
The majority of the board is given over to displaying this apartment which has a 8x6 overlaid on top of it. There are also icons which indicate where doors may be found - some doors also display '2 cubes'.
Along the outside of the board are spaces to place rescued people (or not rescued people!), fire engine and ambulance tokens etc.
Finally a series of fairly discrete dotted red lines separate the board's map into individual quadrants.

Markers: The game comes with a lot of differing card markers, all of which are round and many of which are double sided.

• Threat markers: These markers are double-sided, respectively showing either smoke or fire.

• Point of Interest markers: There are 18 of these Point of Interest (POI) markers, they are also double sided. One side depicts a '?' while on 12 the other side will show a victim, which could be a person or possibly a pet! The other side on the remaining 6 are blank indicating they are false alarms.
• Door markers: More double-sided markers used to track whether doors are open or closed.
• Action markers: These show a running individual in white against a green background. They are essentially a form of action point currency.
• Heal markers: These round tokens each display a red cross and are used in conjunction with one of the specialist firefighters; more on them below.
• Hazmat markers: These tokens depicts things like fuel cans and aerosol cans and are used to represent explosively dangerous materials in the game.

Hot spot tokens: These round tokens are noticeably smaller than the other tokens and they depict a flame against a black background.

3d firefighters: There's a plastic 3d miniature of firefighter in each player colour.

With card tokens and tiles, plastic models and acrylic cubes, Flash Point: Fire Rescue is a bit of an eclectic mix of components and none of them would considered low quality.
The dice are plastic but roll well enough.
The standout components are probably the firefighter models. They look a little cartoony and stylised but I'm sure that's by design. They don't look like the kind of mini that is meant to be painted and meant to serve as playing pieces.

The artwork and illustrations on the game boards is straightforward and uncluttered which is a good thing as the playing area will become quite busy during play. The same can be said of art that can be found on tokens and tiles.
What looks like fully painted art is used on the specialist cards giving each one an individual high quality appearance.

The game's iconography is all self-explanatory and easily understood. None of it should prove a problem for players.

How's it play?
Note: Flash Point: Fire Rescue comes with 2 modes of play, a simpler 'family game' and a more rules heavy 'experienced game' mode. furthermore, the experienced game has 3 levels of difficulty.
This blog discusses the experienced game which essentially also incorporates the family version.
Setup
Board: Choose which side of the board to use, the 'front' side of the board is considered the easier side.

• ​Doors: A door icon (with the closed door side up) should be placed on all door icons that also display 2 cubes.
• Explosions!: A number of explosions should be triggered on the map, the amount is determined by the chosen difficulty.
  ​This is done by rolling the dice and placing a threat marker (fire side up) on the resulting space, then adding a hot spot marker to the same space.
  Each fire token then 'explodes', more on explosions below but basically, a explosion causes the fire to spread.
• Hazmat tokens: Also determined by difficulty, a number of hazmat tokens are placed into the burning building, again determined by rolling dice.
• POIs: Remove POI markers as required, then shuffle the remaining ones into a face-down stack. Roll the dice 3 times to determine where 3 POI tokens are placed face-down, they cannot be placed on a space containing fire.

Players: Players now choose a specialist card and take the fire fighter in their chosen player colour.
More hot spots!: Dictated by difficulty and player count, even more hot spot tokens are added the map on the board.
Furthermore a number of hot spot tokens are kept to the side to be potentially added to the board during the game.
Firefighters: Players now choose which spaces outside the building to place their firefighters, more than 1 firefighter may occupy the same space.
Vehicles: Players now choose where the fire engine and ambulance start the game.
First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
Flash Point: Fire Rescue uses a fairly typical turn order for a cooperative game. The active player takes their turn (Spending their action points.) and when their turn is over, the board activates and performs its automated actions. After that, the game progresses to the player to the left of the active player.
3 phases are resolved during the active player's turn.
Actions: During this phase, the active player now performs actions by spending the APs for their selected specialist. Available actions include:

• Change crew: Unusually for a cooperative game, if the active player's specialist is at the the fire engine, they may swap their specialist out for one that is currently not being used by spending 2AP.
• Chop: A firefighter always carries their trusty axe and can use it to break through doors and walls which can be useful to create shortcuts but can also possibly represent a risk. It costs 1AP to inflict a point of damage (represented by a black cube) on a door or wall. Usually when a door/wall takes 2 points of damage, it is destroyed.
• Extinguish: Firefighters can fight the fire! The active character may spend 1AP to remove an adjacent smoke marker from the board or spend 1AP to flip a fire marker to the smoke side.
• Move: A firefighter may spend 1AP to move 1 space orthogonally, they can also move through spaces containing fire markers but this costs 2AP per space. Additionally, firefighters cannot end their movement in space containing fire.
  POIs: If a firefighter moves on to a space containing a POI token, it is flipped to reveal whether it is a victim or just a false alarm.
  Move with victim: A firefighter may bring a victim with them when they move but it costs 2AP to move 1 space, furthermore, a victim cannot move through fire.
  Hazmats: Hazmats can cause explosions if caught in fire, so firefighters can try and move them out of the building before that happens. Moving a hazmat token is identical to moving a victim.
• Open/close door: APs can be spent to open and close doors, sometimes this is more beneficial than simply destroying them.
• Vehicles: If the active character is on the same space as a vehicle tile, they can spend APs to move the vehicle. any other firefighter on the vehicle can also move for free.
  Each type of vehicle also has it's own action which the active character may perform.
  Ambulance:  In the experienced version of the game, a victim is only considered 'rescued' when they are brought to a ambulance.
  Fire engine: The active player may spend APs to use a fire engine's hose, although this costs 4APs! It allows the firefighter to extinguish multiple fire and smoke tokens in a adjacent quadrant.
• Pass: The active player may choose to pass instead of spending all their action points. For every unspent AP, the player take an action marker. These may be spent on later turns to gain action points.
  A character may have no more than 4 action markers at any one time.
• End of player phase: Once a character has spent all their APs or passed to retain some of them, their turn is over and the game goes to the next phase.

Advance fire: In this phase, the fire will spread which is done on a basic level by adding a marker to the board and this can have several consequences.

• ​Roll the dice: The active player rolls the dice and will place a new smoke marker on the space as indicated by the result of the dice roll. However, depending on where the smoke marker is meant to be placed, it's probably not over yet...
  • Empty space: If a space has no smoke or fire marker and is not adjacent to one, simply place the smoke marker on the allotted space.
  • Adjacent to fire marker: If the smoke marker is placed orthogonally adjacent to a fire marker, immediately flip it to the fire side. Smoke is never adjacent to fire, it always becomes fire! This is called a flashover.
  • On a smoke marker: If the smoke marker is to be placed on a smoke marker already in play. Do not add the marker, instead flip the smoke marker already on the board to the fire side.
    Potentially, this can then turn any other adjacent smoke markers to their fire side!
  • On a fire marker: If the smoke token were to go on a fire marker already in play, it causes an explosion instead! The smoke marker is discarded and the explosion is resolved.
• Explosion: When an explosion is triggered, fire will expand 1 space in all 4 orthogonal directions from the point of origin, what happens will depend on what is in the space it expands into.
  • Open space: If the explosion expands into a empty space, it stops there. Place a fire marker on that space.
  • Smoke marker: If the explosion hit a fire marker, flip it to the fire side.
  • Fire marker: If the explosion hits a fire marker, it triggers a 'shockwave', this means the explosion continues to the next space and will continue until it encounters empty space or smoke marker.
    Closed doors and walls will also stop a explosion expanding, at least they will until they are destroyed.
• Damage: When fire expands into a space either via flashpoint or explosions, there can be an effect.
  • Barriers: When fire hits a door or wall, it does damage in the form of putting black cubes on it (Much like when a firefighter uses the chop action.), when a door or wall segment takes 2 damage, it is destroyed.
    Destroyed walls and doors (And also open doors.) do not stop an explosion expanding.
  • POI: If the damage hits a POI marker, that marker is destroyed, if it was a victim, that victim is killed.
  • Hazmat: If fire enters the same space as a hazmat token, another explosion originating from the spot is triggered. Exploding hazmat markers also add hotzones to the board.
  • Firefighter: If fire expands into a space with a firefighter, that firefighter is knocked down and moved to the closest ambulance tile.
• Hotzones: When the 'advance fire' roll targets a space with a hotzone marker, another advance fire roll is made after the current one is resolved. It is possible for multiple hotzones and thus multiple advance fire rolls to be triggered.
  Flare up: Additionally, when a hotzone is the target of an advance fire roll, it also adds another hotzone to the board, thus potentially creating a loop of destruction!

Replenish POIs: Once the advance fire roll and all resulting effects have been resolved, the game proceeds to the final phase of a turn - replenish POIs.
There should always be 3 POI markers on the board, if for any reason, there are less than 3, roll the dice and place a POI marker face-down in the resulting space. There are some restrictions, a POI marker cannot go on a spot with for example, in this instance roll the dice again until a appropriate space is rolled.
Repeat this until 3 POI markers are on the board.
Next turn: Once all the required POI markers have been replenished, the turn is over and play progress to the player to the left of the active player.

That's pretty much it for most of the rules, I've skipped some details that go into how some elements of the fire expanding are managed and also the special actions attributed to individual specialists but this about is the gist of it.

Endgame
Play progresses until 1 of the following conditions is met.

Losses: If 4 or more victims are killed, the players collectively lose.
Damage: If all the back cubes are placed onto the board, the building collapses and the players collectively lose.

Rescued!:If the players between them manage to rescue 7+ victims from the fire, they immediately win the game.

Overall
The board displays a recognisable location that firefighters move around to rescue people while it is inevitably filling with fire at a dramatic pace that causes explosions and damage in a race against time.
All of this makes Flash Point: Fire Rescue thematically a strong game.

On a basic level, in Flash Point: Fire Rescue characters navigate a landscape using action points having to balance the need to complete objectives - in this case rescue victims with the need to prevent or slow the spread of fire.
Players of cooperative games will recognise a lot of the mechanics employed here, it presents them with a classic dilemma that can be found in a lot of cooperative games.
There are a couple of unique elements here though.
Hazmat markers provide an extra risk and thus, extra facet to take into account: Should characters try and remove them from the board at the cost of less focus elsewhere, or ignore them in favour of concentrating on other risks?
The spreading fire also provides an unusual extra conundrum to face. While the spread of fire can be halted or even reversed, the explosions that get triggered cause damage that cannot be removed. The same is also true of hotspot markers.
Ultimately, it means that this is not about trying to put out the fires, I don't think that can ever happen and characters can only hope to hold them back long to rescue victims. It makes this a game of maximising effective use of action points and trying to gauge how much risk can be taken by ignoring fires.
As with many cooperative games, luck plays a not insignificant part here in the form of the dice rolls and this is just something the players will need to react and adapt to.

In terms of gameplay I found Flash Point: Fire Rescue a bit of a mixed bag.
The sense of being in a burning is pretty strong and the game has a genuine urgency regarding the spread of fire. It's actually pretty scary to watch as a single dice roll can lead to a series of events and explosions that wreak havoc and damage across the entire board.
But while the mechanics for the fire feel fast paced, the same is not quite true of player actions. Players typically get 4AP per turn and it can seem a little plodding at times, e.g., if a character has a victim they're trying to get out of the building - they'll get to move 2 spaces in their turn and that's it! It felt a little contrary to the atmosphere.
Although maybe that's the point, contrast the speed and danger of the fire with the relative slow actions of the firefighters to create tension? regardless of that, it made the gameplay feel a little 'off'.

I can't fault Flash Point: Fire Rescue and think overall it's a well constructed game but having played a fair few cooperative games over the years, I found the action point system a little uninspiring but that could simply be down to overfamiliarity. It didn't help that despite being mechanically solid and providing meaningful decisions to make, the game didn't quite gel with me. At the same time though, I'm going to reserve judgement on Flash Point: Fire Rescue. I want to give it at least another go or two.

4th August 2023

It's a Friday night and we're round Simon's which means it's time to welcome in the weekend with some gaming goodness.

Load up the Winchester, strap on the peacemaker and head out to the west: Travel over prairies and along dusty long-dried gulches, see the monolithic sights at Monument Valley and encounter zombie hordes in.... Zombicide: Undead or Alive!

A while back I played a few games of vanilla Zombicide, a cooperative survival game of dispatching zombies while completing objectives.
Zombicide: Undead or Alive takes that game and moves the setting into the wild west.

What's in a game?

Tile boards: There are 9 of these large tiles, they're double-sided and placed out together to create the game's playing area. Each side depicts a bird's eye view of one of various old western buildings on a street. The street on each tile is broken down in 'zones' while interiors of said buildings are also displayed with different rooms also being broken down into 'zones'. 
​Train tiles: There are 3 of the oblong tiles. They're also double-sided and one side shows a railway track while the other show a train on the track.

Player board: Each player gets one of these enormous plastic player 'dashboards' with a faux wood finish and they about A5 in size!
Each dashboard has indented spaces and spots to place tiles, character cards, equipment cards as well as tokens. There's even 3 grooves along the top to hold 'backpack' cards upright.

• Adrenaline track: Running along the bottom is a numbered and colour coded 'adrenaline' track that goes from blue to red for when things go from cool to hot! It is used to track a character's adrenaline numerically and 'danger level' according to colour.

Character cards: Each of the game's named 14 playable 'survivors' has their own card with accompanying illustration.

• Class: The card lists which of the 4 'classes' the character belongs to and thus which 'class ability' is available to them. It has a space to place a specific weapon.
  
• Special actions: There's also a track for unlockable special moves (which is colour coded and linked to their adrenaline bar on the dashboard.)
  
• Hit points: Finally, there's a hit point (HP) tracker.

Cards: There's essentially 2 types of mini-sized which cards are used in Zombicide: Undead or Alive.

• ​Equipment cards: This type is broken down into several further different types, each with their own deck.
  Regardless of this, cards will tend to share a lot of common elements.
  E.g., no matter where a weapon card comes from, it will always show whether it's a melee or ranged weapon - and if so, its associated range along with the type of ammo its uses, number of dice rolled when attacking with it, the target number the roll needs to hit and how much damage it does. Finally it shows how much noise the weapon produces.
  Starting weapons: These are the beginning weapons that characters start the game with.
  Classic equipment: These cards can be acquired during the game and will include a fair variety of items to use as well as weapons.
  Bounty weapons: The weapons found in this deck are particularly effective.

Tokens: Lots of card tokens are used in the game.

• Bang/BOOM! token: This double-sided token is used to represent the last sound a player has made and that which zombies might hear. The BOOM! side is always louder than the bang!
• Exit token: Players always need an exit strategy and this card token is good for that!
• Objective tokens: These are styled to look like crates and come in 3 types all of which are double sided. There are 7 red tokens and 1 green and 1 blue and they can be used in various ways as required by the selected mission.

There's an impressive number of components to Zombicide: Undead or alive and they're all of a uniformly good quality. Cards, board, tokens, they're all good but the standouts are the 3d components and the dice.
The models obviously look good but also, the player dashboard with along with dynamite trackers are a nice touch and they all feel suitably sturdy.
The dice are wooden, nicely rounded and the card themed numbering on them are a nice touch.

A colourful and slightly cartoony style is used across the character and zombie cards, it's a humorous style that suits the game's tone well. The main board tiles seem a bit more subdued in comparison and they are perhaps a bit too busy for my liking but it's not detrimental to the game.
The zombie models, being grey risk sort of merging into one dull greyish blob when on the board but wisely, the runners have been constructed in a distinctly different shade of grey that makes them easily spotted against their undead compatriots while the fatties look distinctly different. The abomination is of course, red.

There's quite a lot that goes on during Zombicide: Undead or Alive, fortunately, much of the game's information is provided via text descriptions.
That's not to say there isn't a fair amount of iconography - because there is but it won't be overwhelming to seasoned gamers or players of previous versions of Zombicide; although this version has some differences to the vanilla game, in this case, adding character classes. More novice players will probably find themselves referring to the rulebook early on in the game.
It all shows that attention and care have been put into the components and presentation.

How's it play?
​Setup

• Mission: First decide which mission will be used for the game. It will list how to set up the tile boards and train tiles. It will also determine where spawn points, objectives etc will be placed on the boards.
  Finally, the chosen mission may restrict which characters may be used.
• ​Players: Generally, the game expects 6 characters to be used regardless of the player count. With a lower player count, some people may well be playing more than one character.
  Character: First give each player a character card and it's matching miniature. Also give them the 3d trackers in their colour.
  Dashboard: Give each player a dashboard. They should place their character card onto the allotted space on the dashboard and trackers on their allotted starting positions on the special moves and HP trackers.
  ​Ensure the adrenaline tracker is placed at '0'.

• Starting spots: Character miniatures should be placed on their starting place as per the chosen mission.
• Bang token: Place the bang token on the playing area as per the mission description.
• Cards: Take all the remaining (Non starting cards.) and sort them by type. Shuffle each pile into a face-down deck.
• ​​First player: Determine a starting player.

Onto play
Zombicide: Undead or Alive is a cooperative game in which the players will be attempting to complete an objective and escape the board before becoming zombie fodder!
A round takes place over 3 phases and players will take their turns using an action point system during the 'player phase', while the 'board' will run the 'zombie phase' in which zombies will spawn and chase characters in an attempt to defeat them.
Player phase: During this phase the active player will act in turn order and will have 3 action points (AP) to perform 3 actions, which include the following.

• Move: The active player may spend 1AP to move their character orthogonally into an adjacent zone - this can be outside or indoors. If there is a door adjacent, then the character may enter or exit a building.
  Entering buildings: Some buildings contain 'corpse piles' and the first time any character enters a building with a corpse pile, a corpse pile spawn tile should be placed on it.
  Zombies: Typically, the walking dead complicate things! If a character exits a zone which contains 1 or more zombies, then they pay 1 extra AP per zombie to exit that zone! This means if a character is in a zone with a lot of zombies, they will potentially be stuck there.
  Additionally, if a character has an ability that allows them to move more than 1 zone per AP and they enter a zone with zombies, that particular move action immediately ends.
• Search: If a character is indoors and there are no zombies in their current zone, the player can spend 1AP to search. This allows them to draw a card from the classic equipment deck and add it to their dashboard, they may then 'reorganise' their inventory (More on this below.)
  Unless a character has the 'Townsfolk' class, they can only perform 1 search per round regardless of AP they have.
• Reorganise/trade: The active player may spend an AP to shift equipment cards around their dashboard. A character may also freely discard a card.
  As part of this action, the active player may also trade with 1 other player sharing their zone. This allows the 2 characters to freely exchange cards in any way they see fit. It also allows the inactive character who is part of the trade to reorganise as well.
• Combat: Now we get to the meat (SIC) of the game! Combat is broken down into 2 types; melee and ranged.
  • Melee: A character may attack any zombie who is in the same zone as them, if there are more than 1 zombie, then the character can choose which zombie to target.
    This is done by rolling the dice as determined by whatever melee weapon they are using and if successful, will deal damage.
  • Ranged: Ranged attacks are somewhat more complex, they roll dice in similar fashion, but there are more factors to take into account.
    Line of sight: First, the character must be able to draw a line of sight to their target. Generally, any target outside can easily be seen, even at several zones away unless they're round a corner.
    However, a character can only see 1 zone into a building or out of it, furthermore, if the character is inside, they can only see into any interior zones if they are adjacent
    Range: Even if a character can see a zombie, it must still be within the scope of the ranged weapons range.
    Some weapons have a range of 0-1 which means a target can be hit up to 1 zone away or in the same zone as the character.
    Some weapons may have a range of 1-2, which means zombies 1 to 2 zones away can be it but zombies in the same zone as the character cannot!
    Target priority: Unlike melee (where when faced with multiple zombies in a single zone, the attacker can choose which to attack,) when a character uses a ranged weapon and there are multiple zombies of different types in the same zone, they must attack zombies as per the targeting priority.
    What does this mean?
    It means that certain types of zombie must be targeted before other types first, depending on what type of zombies are sharing the same zone.
    The priority is:
    Abominations/fatties first.
    If there are no abominations/fatties, then walkers must be targeted first.
    Finally, if there are no other types of zombie present, then runners can be targeted. Phew!
  • Damage: Walkers and runners can be destroyed by 1 point of damage and fatties need 2 points of damage to dispatch and abominations require 3 points to be defeated!
    Damage does not carryover from attack to attack. This means that unless a weapon does 2 damage, it cannot destroy a fattier and unless it does 3 damage, it cannot be used to defeat an abomination!
    This also has an added impact on ranged attacks. If a character is attacking a zone with multiple zombies which includes abominations or fatties with a weapon that only does 1 damage, then it will have no effect! They must target the abomination/fatty first but cannot do it any damage - sucks to be them!
    Noise: Guns are noisy and when used, the bang token is usually moved to the zone where the attacker fired from.
  • Adrenaline: Whenever a character defeats a zombie, their adrenaline goes up by 1 and if they manage to defeat an abomination it goes up by 5! Destroying spawn points can also push up adrenaline.
    When the tracker moves into a different colour it unlocks the linked special ability for that character.
    The first unlock is always 1 extra AP when yellow is reached. When it reaches orange, the player gets to pick 1 of the 2 orange abilities to unlock (Not both!) and when it reaches red, they get to pick from one of the 3 available unlocks.

• Take/activate: By spending an AP, the character may interact with an object in the same zone as them, typically this will be regarding a mission objective and will vary depending on that mission.
• Machine: If a character is in the same zone as a 'machine' such as the Gatling gun, or the wagon then APs can be spent to make use of them.
• Make noise: A character may spend an AP to make noise to distract/lure zombies, this means the bang token is moved to their zone unless it has been flipped to the BOOM! side, in which case, it does not move. A bang is never louder than a BOOM! and zombies cannot be lured away from a BOOM!!
• Do nothing: Finally, the player may pass, this ends their turn immediately, regardless of how many APs they may still possess.
• Next player: Once the active player has completed their turn, play progresses to the player on their left.
• End of phase: Once all players have completed their turn, the player phase is over.

Zombie phase: Play now moves on to the zombie phase in which zombies will move or attack character and then more zombies will spawn!

• Activation: Every zombie currently on the board must activate! Players can choose the order in which they do so. When activating, zombies will have 1 of 2 actions available.
  • Attack: If 1 or more zombies is in the same zone as characters, they will attack! When attacking, zombies always automatically hit and each zombie will do 1 point of damage which is dealt to the characters.
    If there is more than one character in that zone, the players may assign the damage between characters as they see fit.
  • Move: Any zombies not attacking must instead move and will move 1 zone.
    A zombie will move towards any character the they see, prioritising a character in the same zone as the noise token. Otherwise they will move towards the largest group of characters they can see.
    If a zombie cannot see any characters, they will move toward the noise token.
    Distance: A zombie will always the shortest route to their destination. In the case of multiple routes of equal distance, players can choose which route the zombie takes. If a mob of zombies is moving along multiple routes, then they should be split between the routes as evenly as possible.
  • Second activation: Once all zombies have resolved their activations, runners get a second activation! This is basically a repeat of the above 2 actions, although a runner may change action.
    E.g., if a runner used it's first activation to move into the same zone as a character, it will use it's second activation to attack. Or if it moved towards the noise token with it's first move and it now sees a character, it will change direction towards that character.
    This also means if it starts the zombie phase in the same zone as a characters, it will attack twice!
• Spawn: In this part of the phase, more zombies will spawn.
  • Danger level: First determine danger level, there are 4 levels and they correspond to the colours on player adrenaline tracks. The danger level will match the colour of the character who is furthest along their adrenaline track.
    I.e., if a character is in the orange part of their adrenaline track and they are furthest along, then the danger level will be orange.
  • Draw cards: Then, beginning with the starting spawn point, draw a zombie card for each active spawn point.
    Generally, the card drawn will be a zombie card. It will list the type of zombie and how many of that type will spawn - it will be colour coded to the danger level. Thus the higher the danger level, the more will spawn.
    Abomination spawn: The abomination its own special rules that occur when its spawn card is drawn.
    Extra activation: Some cards will be activation cards. It means instead of spawning more zombies, those on the board get an extra activation - which means they can move or attack again. This can be bad news!
  • No supply of miniatures: If there are not enough miniatures to put on to the playing area when a spawn card is drawn, then the abomination gets an extra activation.

End of round phase: Once all spawn tokens have been resolved, the game goes to the final phase and the following occurs.

• Bang/BOOM! token: If the BOOM! side of this token is showing, flip it back to the bang side. It's already on the bang side, then move to the zone which contains the largest number of characters.
• New first player: The first player token should be moved to the player to the left of the current first player.
• Next round: A new round starting with another player phase begins

Additional rules: The game also has rules for the Gatling gun, wagon, train and so on. There are also specific rules on how objective tokens are used from mission to mission and there's too many to list here.
If you really want to know, feel free to read the rulebook online, it's only 50 pages long.

​Endgame
There are a couple of other lose conditions that can make the game end badly for the players and which are:
If any time there are 7 active spawn points, then the players lose.
If any character has their HP reduced to 0, then the players lose.

Otherwise play progresses until the chosen mission's win or lose criteria are met in which case the players collectively either win or lose.

Overall
​With it's old western art style and equally styled components, the theme fits well within the frame of Zombicide. Although, it's tricky to think of a setting that wouldn't fit.
The character classes feel right for the theme and work well to differentiate between the characters.

There's quite a lot going on in the game but some of that is down to options and choices available to players. Mechanically, Zombicide: Undead or Alive isn't too complex and wisely, zombies actions are streamlined, although there may well be a lot of zombies to shuffle around the playing area.
Seasoned players won't really find anything tricky to learn.

The only quibble I have with the rules is the targeting priority when performing ranged attacks.
I know why it's there; to stop players targeting runners and using their superior movement to keep out range of all the other types of zombie.
Generally, I consider the runners the most dangerous type of zombie, they can reach characters quicker and attack more often. Tactically, players would likely target runners first if it wasn't for the priority targeting, at least that's what I'd probably do.
Understandable from a game-balance perspective but nonetheless, frustrating.

Because the game is so mission driven, it's hard to give a comprehensive overview of what players will face but in game like this but gameplay-wise, the game has that classic cooperative game structure of slowly, over turns threatening to overwhelm players who will be faced with balancing the need to complete objectives with the need to reduce the burgeoning zombie horde.
It's a fairly common predicament in cooperatives games but it serves this game well by putting the players in situations where they have to make meaningful decisions. Luck also plays a part in games like this and players will need to adapt to manage bad luck - especially if there's a couple of bad draws from the zombie deck.

While the game looks great, particularly so when there's 70 odd zombies that can be stumbling around the playing area, it can feel a little clunky to manage despite the fairly streamlined rules for the zombie phase.
In fact, with it's involved set up it all feels clunky. Playing with 6 characters can also slow it down somewhat with what seemed like lengthy downtime between turns and overall play time.

I don't think this makes Zombicide: Undead or Alive a bad game, there's nothing bad here and if you like the western theme, you'll probably have a fun time with it but for me, it felt like the payoff wasn't worth the effort to get there.​

17th July 2023

It's a Monday and we're logged into Board Game Arena for some online tabletop entertainment.

All around the world, we could make time
Rompin' and a-stompin' 'cause I'm in my prime

Expeditions: Around the World is about going on a world tour in this route building game, not as some rock band but as a tourist.
Not any tourist either! But one who constantly trying to change itinerary of the tour to their chosen destinations. 

Caveat: We've only ever played this game digitally.

What's in a game?

• ​Game board: The board features a map of the world illustrated in lovely detail. Jungles can see seen in Africa, Ayers rock in Australia, the Coliseum in Rome, there's also dolphins and boats in the seas etc.
  The map is also littered with dots in various colours connected by a network of dashed lines.
  Green dots represent 'named destinations', that is places that the players may wish to visit.
  Blue and yellow dots represent hubs which connect to green dots, they also serve other functions which will be displayed below.

• Tokens: Several types of token are used in Expeditions: Around the World
  Player tokens: There are 4 tokens in each of the game's 6 player colours.
  Ticket tokens: There are 40 of these ticket styled tokens.
• Arrows: There are 45 arrows in each of 3 colours, used to direct each of the 3 titular expeditions.

The art for Expeditions: Around the World with its real world references is vibrant and colour and an overall excellent quality.
I imagine it would have a strong table presence.

The game's iconography is kept to an absolute minimum, being limited to 3 colours and dotted lines. Players will have no problem understanding this game.

How's it play?
Setup

• game board: Put out the game board. Shuffle the destinations cards into a face-down deck and deal 6 face-up. If any destination cards are too close to the starting location as per rules, put them to the bottom of the deck and draw replacements.
  These cards constitute common destinations for all players.
• ​Players: Each player should take the tokens in their player colour and 3 ticket tokens
  Next, deal 9-12 destination cards to each player (dependant on player count). 
• First player: Determine a starting player.
• Preparation: Beginning with the first player, each player should one-at-a-time reveal 4 of their destination cards and place one of their tokens at each of the locations relevant to the revealed destination cards.
  Players should keep the remainder of their destination cards secret from their opponents.
  Thus, there will common destinations, while every player will also have hidden and open destinations.

On to play
The objective for players in Expeditions: Around the World is to visit as many of the locations on their destination cards as possible as well as visiting the locations on the common destinations. This is done by directing the 3 different expeditions throughout the map by advancing them along the connections on the game map. It should be noted that the map 'wraps-around', that is, if a expedition goes off the right side of the board, it continues on the left side.
Play follows a traditional turn order with the active player taking their turn before play progresses to the player on their left.
The active player must perform the following actions:

• Advance expedition: The active player must​ advance one of the 3 expeditions. This is done by placing 1 arrow of any expedition on to the board. The active player may advance any of the 3 expeditions, provided there are still arrows of that colour available.
  • Starting arrow: All 3 expeditions start at the same location in north Europe. Thus the first arrow of all 3 always starts there and heads outwards.
  • Place arrow: Following on from leaving the starting location, all subsequent arrows must start from the point of the last arrow of that colour that was played, continuing to create a path for the expedition, albeit with the following rules.
    No backtracking: 2 arrows of the same colour cannot share the same connection.
    Shared lines: However, arrows of all 3 colours can share space on the same line.
    Loop: If, after an arrow is placed, it creates a loop. Immediately place another arrow of that colour anywhere along the route of the expedition (Following the usual placement rules.). That is now the path of that expedition.
  • Resolve location: The newly placed arrow will obviously point at a new location and this must be resolved, how depends on it's colour.
    • Blue: If any expedition reaches a blue location, the active player may immediately place another arrow with the usual placement rules.
    • Green: This colour means the location is a destination and one of the following may occur.
      Common destination: If this destination is one of the 6 common destination cards, then the active player may claim that card. A new card is drawn from the deck to replace it.
      Token: If a expedition has reached a token. The player who owns that token takes it back, places it on the relevant open destination card and essentially claims that location. This can be done out of turn order.
      Hidden destination: If a expedition reaches a destination that matches a destination card a player has hidden in their hand, that player can reveal the card to claim the location. Again, this can be done out of turn order.
      However, that must immediately claim the location before another arrow is placed. It cannot be claimed at a later point in the game (Unless a different expedition also reaches that location.).
    • Red: If a expedition reaches a red location, the active player immediately gain a ticket.
      Speaking of which....
• Tickets: Each player starts the game with 2 tickets and can acquire more. They have various uses and up to 2 can be used during a turn. They can be both be used at the same time or separately, as well as before or after placing an arrow.
  Tickets have the following uses.
  Extra advance: A ticket may be spent to place an additional arrow, this can be for the same expedition as being advanced during the turn or a different one.
  Remove arrow: The active player may spend a ticket to remove the latest arrow placed on any expedition.
  Swap destination card: The active player may use a ticket to swap out one of their hidden destination cards. This is done by drawing 2 cards from the destination deck, keeping 1 and discarding the other along with a card from their hand to the bottom of the deck.
• Next player: Once the active player has finished their turn, player progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
The game end is triggered when either all arrows have been placed on the board or any player scores all their personal destination card. Play continues until all players have had equal turns, then goes to scoring.

Players score a victory point (VP) for each card they have claimed, either from the common objectives or their personal destination cards.
However, in true route-builder fashion, players lose 1VP for each unclaimed personal destination card in their hand.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Expeditions: Around the World is fairly strong thematically with the players actually creating and moving the expeditions along during the game. However, with no player having overall control of any of the expeditions, they've got to be among the most random expeditions ever!

All destinations in Expeditions: Around the World fall into 4 types: Shared or common destinations, open destinations which players had to declare, hidden destinations which players possess and whatever destinations remain in the deck.
Players will need to navigate all this imperfect knowledge to win the game.
Ideally, they'll want to 'steer' expeditions towards destinations that they can score. The problem though, is that they may also be steering them towards destinations that can be scored by opponents. With common or open destinations it's obvious when this is the happening but unsurprisingly, hidden destinations can be surprising.
Common objectives in particular add an extra layer to this and they can be tricky to acquire. Moving close to one might just allow an opponent to swoop in and claim it on their turn. Judicious use of tickets and blue spots is probably called for here!
That's pretty much it for strategy: I suppose there's possibly a higher level of play about watching opponents and trying to guess the destinations they are aiming for and directing expeditions accordingly.

Expeditions: Around the World is fairly light and as result is a straightforward, easy game to learn. Its theme is also easily understood. This makes it a good for non-gamers or younger gamers.

I'm not so sure what more dedicated gamers will make of it.
I found it a little unengaging and unsatisfying and for a route building game - a little frustrating. While it's not uncommon to have a route building game where no one entirely controls the routes, I definitely found it to be a frustrating experience here.
I feel there are other games that do route building better and this is one not for me.

15th July 2023

It's a summery Saturday afternoon and we're participating in Wogglecon 8 at the Bisley Scout & Guide Hall for a whole day of gaming goodness!

I always thought dragons were a pretty bad bunch, what with their death-dealing fiery breath and perchance for human sacrifice.
Turns out they're a happy, cosy lot with a passion for artisanal crafting, or at least that's what they are in Flamecraft, a game all about dragons and err.... shopkeepers.

Note: There are some component differences between the kickstarter edition of Flamecraft (Which is what are in the photos.) and the standard version. Basically, the kickstarter edition has higher quality tokens.

So thus, the overall component quality is good. Tokens are colourful, well presented and satisfyingly chunky, as as the metal coins. This version even comes with some tokens trays.
Having said that, I was not particularly fond of the 3d plastic player meeples. While they are chunky, bright and fairly good 3d sculpts, they're also unpainted plastic and essentially monochrome which somehow lends them a sort of drab quality. Ironically, the standard edition comes with screen printed meeples which in my opinion are much  more preferable.
The cards are the pretty normal high quality expected from modern games.

Without a doubt, Flamecraft features excellent artwork and art direction.
It utilises what is known nowadays as a 'cosy' art style. It's a breezy cartoonish style filled cheerful and colourful illustrations and gives the game a happy, positive vibe without being overly busy.
While the game does have a fairly big footprint, the upside is that it has a brilliant table presence.

There's quite a few icons in Flamecraft but many of them are self explanatory, a few might require players to initially reference the rulebook, it's nothing bad and won't prove an obstacle to players.

How's it play?
setup

• Game mat: Roll out the game mat and perform the following.
  • Shop cards: Put out the 6 starter shop cards on any 6 shop spaces on the mat.
  • Shop deck: Right - this one is a bit more involved.
    First sort the shop cards into their 7 types (6 goods and specials.), then shuffle each into its own face-down deck.
    Next draw 1 card from each goods deck, 4 cards from the specials deck, shuffle them together into the shop deck and put them on to their spot.
  • Starter dragons: Take the 6 starter dragons and place them on their corresponding starting shop cards.
  • Enchantment deck: Decide whether to use either the purple or gold cards and shuffle them into a face-down deck. Next, deal 5 face-up cards on to their allotted spaces to create the enchantment card 'market'.
  • Fancy deck: Shuffle the fancy dragon cards into a face-down deck.
  • Artisan deck: Select the number of artisan dragon cards required as per the player count and shuffle them into a face-down deck and place it on its allotted space on the game board. Then deal 5 cards face-up on to their spaces to create their market.
• Player setup: Give each player the dragon meeple and score tracker in their player colour - place the score tracker on the scoring track.
  Fancy dragons: Deal 2 fancy dragon cards face-down to each player who should select one and return the other to the bottom of the fancy dragon deck.
  First player: Determine the starting player. Depending on player count, players later in the turn order will receive some starting goods.

On to play
Flamecraft uses a traditional turn order with the active player resolving their turn before play moves to the player on their left.
On their turn a player must visit one of the shops in the village and then they can choose whether to make use of the shop's facilities or enchant the shop.
A turn plays out as follows.

• Visit shop: The active player must visit a shop, furthermore, it must be a different shop to the one they currently have their meeple on.
  If any other players have meeples at the shop the active player visits, then the active player must pay each of them either any 1 good or 1 coin.
  Now that the active player is at a shop, they must choose from the following 2 actions; gather goods or enchant shop.
• Gather goods: This is basically - go shopping! The active player performs the following action and optional actions.
  • Gather goods: The active player must gather goods and acquires whatever is shown in the top left of the shop card which is usually a good but might be something else. Additionally, they also gain a good from each artisan dragon (Which is shown in the top left corner of each artisan dragon.) on the shop and from each enchantment that has been put on the shop - more on enchantments later.
    As well as goods, a player may acquire money or cards from gathering.
  • Place dragon: This optional action allows the active player to place a dragon on to a empty space on the shop card they are visiting.
    A dragon may be placed on to any of the 3 spaces provided they're empty and the dragon card's type matches the type required on the space. When a dragon card is placed, it will trigger the action alongside that requirement.
    Abilities on the dragon card just played are not triggered.
    Filling a shop: If placing a dragon fills the last available space on the shop card, the active player draws a new one from the shop card deck and at the end of their turn, reveals the new shop.
  • Fire up a dragon: The active player may optionally make use of the special ability of one of the dragons already on the shop card - not the one they just played.
  • Shop ability: Finally, the player may choose to use the shop card's own special ability.
• Enchant shop: The other main action a player can perform is to enchant a shop, this also allows them to perform a optional action.
  • Use enchantment: The active player must buy one of the available enchantment cards. The card will list its cost in goods, which can also generally be paid for with coins in place of goods.
    Gain rewards: When an enchantment is bought, it will confer a reward on the active player. This reward may also 'scale up' by paying more goods.
    Place enchantment: The active player must now place the enchantment card on to a shop card. No more than 3 enchantment cards can be placed on any shop card.
  • Fire up dragons: The active play may now choose to fire up all dragons on the shop card they just enchanted.
• End of turn: When the active player has completed their main action and optional ones, the end of turn occurs.
  • Reveal shop card: If the active player drew a new shop card in their turn, it is now revealed and placed on the mat.
  • Check limits: At the end of their turn, the active player can have no more than 7 of each good and must discard if they exceed that, coins do not count as a good and are not subject to a limit.
    A player can also have no more than 6 artisan dragon cards in hand, there is no limit to how many fancy dragon cards they may have.
  • Refill drafting markets: If there are less than 5 face-up artisan dragon or enchantment cards on the mat, they should be restocked from their respective decks.
  • Next player: Play now progresses to the player on the active player's left.

Endgame
The game end is triggered when no more cards can be drawn either from the artisan dragon deck or enchantment deck.
1 final round is played and the game goes to scoring.

Players now reveal and score their 'night' fancy dragon cards.
Players also earn a VP for each coin they posses.
These are totalled with their scores on the scoring track.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Thematically, I'm not sure what to make of Flamecraft. It seems a little mismatched but conversely, it doesn't matter or feel 'off' because of it. Ultimately, the game's theme is its own thing and that thing is about going shopping and managing those shops!

Mechanically, Flamecraft is pretty straightforward, even though it appears to have a lot of moving parts, it's not as complicated as it first might appear.
For the most part, players will be gathering resources and when it comes down to it, choosing from 6 actions - those associated with the 6 goods and artisan dragons, other actions, optional or not don't really change.
Those 6 actions are the core of Flamecraft's gameplay and as well as some pretty standard choices that gain goods or cards, there's some more interesting options here, particularly one that allows the active player to gift goods to another player in return for VPs, something that's appropriately cosy for the game!
These 6 options form the crux of the Flamecraft's meaningful decisions.

Players need to use those decisions to optimise their actions, Flamecraft is all about optimisation. Players will find themselves gathering goods and coins which they will use to buy enchantment cards or fancy dragons which is the most reliable way to earn VPs - and they'll want to do it quicker than their opponents, creating a fast building engine is vital.
The thing is though, that essentially anybody can use any engine because all players players basically have access to all shops, albeit sometimes at a price. Luckily, day fancy dragons with their instant bonuses throws some asymmetrical elements into the mix.

While not really a light game, Flamecraft is fairly straightforward to learn and most players will pick it up quick enough. Although there was a rule that threw me off several times, which was; when an artisan dragon is played on to a shop card, it's special ability is not triggered and instead, the ability on the space it is placed on to is triggered! It felt counterintuitive to me!

Flamecraft is a fun game with an equally fun theme and I'm sure that a lot of people will enjoy it but it didn't quite click with me. I'm not entirely sure why but I felt like maybe the engine building and combo-moves were uninspiring.
This is another one of those games I'd happily play if it was someone else's choice but not one I'd pick myself.

27th June 2023

It's a Tuesday evening which means its time for some gaming goodness with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns.

Indulge in some power dressing with a shoulder-padded jacket while you invest in frozen concentrated orange juice and don't for get to, buy, sell, sell! 

Earn more than all your opponents in Stockpile, a game about manipulating the stock market.

Player board: Stylised after a notepad of sorts. Each player gets one of these in their player colour. These board are large enough for spaces to hold 2 stacks of cards which are marked as 'stock' and 'split stock'.
They are used to store stock cards that players acquire, stock cards stored here are always stored face-down.

Stock ticker tokens: These ring-shaped tokens are used to track the values of each company's stock.

Stockpile's components are all good quality, the tokens, boards, cards and meeples are what you'd expect from a modern game. They seem suitably sturdy.
Using small, laminated cards for cash is a little unusual but it works.

There's some nice use of colour on the main board which consists of some art that depicts it as a a office desk.
For the most part though, artwork in Stockpile consists of logos, either for the 6 different businesses or the game itself. It's fairly straightforward art but it's also colourful, uncluttered and gives the game a vibrant appearance.

A fairly low amount of Iconography is used in Stockpile. There some icons to represent the different companies and indicate changes in stock value but that's about it. It's all self-explanatory and doesn't present a barrier to players.

How's it play?
Setup

• Game board: Put the game board into the central area and place out the money to create a 'bank'.
  Stock prices: Place the stock ticker token for each companies on their starting spots.
  Turn marker: Place the turn marker on its starting spot on the round tracker, player count will determine which spot it goes on to.
• Cards: First sort the cards into their 3 types (Market cards, company cards & forecast cards.) then give each player 1 stock card from each of the 6 companies. Players should place this card on their player board on the stock portfolio side.
  Finally, shuffle each type of card into it's own face-down deck to create 3 decks
• Players: Give each player the player board and meeple in their colour.
  ​Money: Deal starting funds to each player.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

​On to play
In Stockpile, players will first be creating pile of stocks (Stockpiles if you will!), then they will be bidding on those piles. Furthermore, they will be doing this with limited knowledge of what will be happening to the stock prices and what lies in the piles of stock.
Stockpile is played over a number of phases each round.

• Information phase: Deal 1 company card and 1 forecast card to each player, which they should keep hidden. This means each player knows what will happen to the stock price of exactly 1 company during this round.
  Next deal 1 of each type face-up on their respective spaces on the game board, this represents open knowledge that particular company.
  Finally, with the remaining cards, create a face-down stack of each, these will be revealed later.
• Supply phase: During this phase, the stockpiles will be created, one each below a bidding tracks.
  Player count: The number of bidding tracks used is equal to the player count and thus the stockpiles created will be equal to the number of bidding tracks used.
  First card: Draw 1 card form the market deck for each bidding track being used in the game and place it face-up below its pertinent bidding track.
  This creates the start of each stockpile.
  Deal cards: Now deal 2 cards from the market deck to each player. These should be kept separate from any cards they already have on their player board. They should also be kept hidden from other players.
  Play cards: Now, going in turn order, each player should play both of the cards they were just dealt.
  They can be played in any order to separate stockpiles, or the same one.
  However, one card must be played face-up and the other must be played face-down. This means that stockpiles will end up having some sort of mix of face-up and face-down cards.
• Demand phase: During this phase is where most of the game's activity takes place, players will bid for the available stockpiles which were created in the previous phase using the bidding track.
  The following rules apply to bidding.
  Turn order: Bidding goes in turn order with the active player bidding before play progresses to the player on their left.
  Cash only: During bidding, player cannot bid more than the money they currently possess.
  Bids: The active player may place their bidding meeple on any empty space on any bidding track. A player can even choose to immediately bid on the maximum 25 spot if they wish to.
  any bidding track that has a meeple on the 25 space is considered locked and cannot be subject to any further bidding.
  Other bids: However, if another player has already placed a bid on a bidding track, any bid that follows must be a higher value, it cannot match or undercut the current bid.
  ​Outbidded player: When a player is outbidded, their meeple is returned to them, giving them the opportunity to bid again on their next turn.
  There can only ever be 1 meeple on each bidding track.
  Passing: If a player's meeple is still on a bidding track when it comes to their turn, then they skip bidding for this turn. They are not 'out' though and it's entirely possible that the meeple will be returned in a subsequent round.
  End of bidding: When each bidding track has 1 meeple on it, bidding has ended.
  Pay your dues: Players now pay their winning bid to the banks and collect their cards, this includes any face-down cards.
  Trading free cards, regardless of whether they were face-down or not, will have an effect after being collected which will require the collecting player to pay extra money to the bank.
• Action phase: As well as collecting stock cards and being stung my trading fee cards, players may also collect action cards. All action cards collected must be resolved and this is done in turn order.
  Action cards may either push up the value of a company's stock or push it down, the collecting player chooses which company or companies are affected. Once all actions have been resolved, the phase is over.
• Selling phase: During this phase, players may choose to sell shares they control from their player board to the bank. This can be either from the stock portfolio or split-stock portfolio, although stock in the split stock portfolio counts as 2 stocks, so can be sold for double the normal value. The money gained from selling is equal to the stock value of the company whose shares are being sold.
• Movement phase: After the opportunity to sell stocks in the previous phase, it's time to see how their prices will fluctuate.
  First, in turn order, players reveal their company and forecast cards, then the stock's value for that company is altered accordingly - more on this below.
  Next, the stock value for the company with open knowledge is resolved and finally, the face-down company and forecast cards are revealed one-at-a-time and resolved.
  Forecast cards: These do 1 of 3 things to stock value, they push it up or down by the displayed value or they pay out dividends which earns players with that stock money but does not alter its value.
  There are also 2 further effects that may be triggered by changes to stock values.
  Split stock: If a stock's value is moved above 10, the stock is then split.
  This means the value is reset to 5 and any stock players had in their stock portfolio is moved into their split stock portfolio. Thus the value is halved but the stock is doubled, leaving room for growth later.
  Bankruptcy: If a stock's value goes below 1, then that company has gone bankrupt!
  The value is reset to 5 and all players must discard all stock they had in that company from both of their portfolios, ouch!
• Next round: Move the round tracker to the next spot on its track. The player to the left of the current first player becomes the first player in the following round.
  A new round begins with the next information phase.

Endgame
The game ends when the round tracker reaches the end of its track!
​There are now a couple of final phases that must be resolved.

• Majority: For each of the 6 companies, all players count up the shares they have in that company - split stock counts as double. Whoever has the majority in that company earns extra money. Ties earn a lesser amount.
• Sell, sell, SELL!: All players now sell all their shares back to the bank at the final value shown on the game board.

Players will now only be left with money which should now be counted up.

Values are tallied, highest amount wins.

Overall
Stockpile's theme fits its game fantastically, luckily, it's a theme that seems to translate well to gameplay - I guess that says something about real-life stock trading!
Players will find themselves trying to buy low and sell high - and trying to out do each other with a little bit of 'insider knowledge'.

Mechanically, Stockpile is relatively straightforward and uncomplicated. It does that neat trick of blending simple mechanics with quite deep gameplay, this is due to some extent on how players are actually playing each other and not the game!
There are two key ways players interact with each other.
​
Firstly and most obviously is the auctioning element which always brings a lot of factors to think about: How should I bid for something? Can I run up someone else's bid? Etc
The clever twist here is adding the rules for creating the stockpiles especially since half the cards are always played face-down. It can be used to give someone a nasty surprise or hide something you don't want opponents to have. Conversely, cards can be played face-up dissuade opponents from bidding for a specific stockpile or perhaps lure them into buying pile. This is all of course contextual and requires a player trying to keep an eye what stocks their opponents have been buying.

There's definitely a higher level of play that comes from trying to gauge an opponent's motives. Watching which companies shares they are playing cards into into which stack or bidding for. Or, especially during the selling phase, seeing someone ahead in the turn order dump their stock in a particular company might mean they know something that's going down and maybe you want to try and stymie them or perhaps get in on the action.

There's not much more to add really; Stockpile is an easy to learn game that provides meaningful decisions and lots of player interaction, all of which I found a lot of fun.
If auctioning mechanics are not your thing, Stockpile one to avoid but otherwise, it's definitely one to try.

20th June 2023


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

Game of the night was Dice City: Create a city in this engine-building dice game! I don't about you but dice rolling is the best way to build any municipality!

Like most modern games, the component quality in Dice City is good and there's nothing bad here. While the cards are average, the boards and tokens feel sturdy, the tokens in particular are pleasantly chunky and tactile.
I would've preferred wooden dice to the plastic ones provided but they are good quality, having well rounded corners and deep pips.

There's a definitely a bit of a fantasy theme to the slightly cartoony and cheerful art style found in Dice City. It's colourful and eye-catching with a good variety to the art too, illustrations on both the large player boards and cards doing a good job of depicting their subject material with detail but without cluttering up the components. Even the art used on the resource tokens looks easy to see and detailed.
All the this lends the game a vibrant and bright presence on the table.

All the iconography in Dice City is easy to understand and is logical. Players should not have any trouble understanding anything here.

How's it play?
Setup

• Cards: To create the central drafting area, sort all the cards as follows.
  Base cards: First, sort all the lumber mill, mine, quarry and regular army cards into each of their 4 types and place the 4 decks face-up in a row.
  ​Location cards: Shuffle all the location cards into a face-down deck and deal 8 face-up alongside the base cards.
  Bandit cards: Sort the bandit cards into their 3 types and put a stack of each with cards in each stack as per player count.
  Trade ship cards: Sort the trade ships into their 3 types, then put out a stack of each type with cards in each stack as per player count.
• First player: Determine a starting player.
• Roll the dice: Every player should roll all 5 of their dice and place them on their player board accordingly.
  E.g., rolling a 5 on the yellow die means placing it on the 5 column in the yellow row and so on.

On to play
In Dice City each player will spend their turn resolving the 5 dice that have been placed on to their board. Essentially giving them 5 actions; this will give them options to gain resources and then buy cards or trade ships and launch attacks as per the dice results etc.
Dice City uses a typical player order with the active player fully resolving all their dice before play proceeds to the player on their left.
The active player's turn has several phases and goes as follows.

• Dice phase: The active player resolves the dice on their player board one at a time in the order they chose. A die is resolved by removing it from the board, then the active player can perform one of the following actions to resolve that die.
  Use space: Probably the most common action in the game. Once a die is removed from a space, the action on that space may be used. This can provide them gain or trade resources or allow them to generate army strength or gain VPs etc.
  Move die: this allows the active player to move a die elsewhere on their board.
  Reactivate space: Certain events can deactivate a space on a player board (More on this below.) and the active player can use the die removal to reactivate a deactivated space.
  Discard cards: Once per turn the active player may discard any 4 of the 8 location cards and draw new ones to replace them.
  Pass: Also once per turn the active player may pass an action to gain a pass token. Why is that useful? Glad you asked.
  • Additional actions: During the dice phase, pass tokens can be spent to gain extra actions. 2 pass tokens must be spent to gain an extra action, although this can be done multiple times in a single turn. The actions are as follows.
    Gain resource: The active player can gain the resource of their choice.
    Increase army strength: The active player may increase their army strength by +1.
    Force re-rolls: This bonus action forces all other players to reroll one of their dice!
• Attack phase: The active player may have generated army strength during the previous phase and it can now be used during this phase to 'attack'.
  To make an attack, the active player must have an army strength equal or higher than their target's defence value (In which case they can attack!). Furthermore, if the active player's army strength is high enough, it can be split among multiple target to attack them all.
  Army strength does not carry over from round to round and any unspent strength is lost at the end of the active player's turn.
  It should be noted that if a card doesn't have any defence value, it cannot be attacked.
  There are 3 types of attack that can be made.
  Bandit cards: Successfully attacking a bandit card allows the active player to claim it, adding its VPs to the player's total at the game end.
  Resources: The active player may target another player's resources (Which that player must have kept between their turns.), a successful attack will allow the active player to steal 1 or more of them depending on the army strength allocated to those attacks.
  Location: The active player may attack a location belonging to another player. A successful attack on a location will 'deactivate' it, consequently a deactivation token is placed on that location which now cannot be used until the token is removed.
• Building and trading phase: Now the active player can spend resources they have acquired. Unlike army strength, 1 of each of the 3 types of resource can be kept between turns.
  Build locations: The active player may build as many new locations as they can afford. However, when a new location is built, it will cover the current location which will be discarded.
  Trade ship card: Alternatively, resources can be spent to acquire a trade ship card.
• End of turn: Once the building and trading phase has finished, the active player's turn is over.
  Army strength: This reverts to 0.
  Resources: the active player can keep 1 of each resource.
  Pass tokens: Any number of pass tokens may be kept between turns.
  Roll dice: The active player rolls their 5 dice and places them as required on their player board in preparation for their next turn.
  Next player: Play now progresses to the player on the active player's left.

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

• All bandit cards have been acquired.
• At least 2 stacks of trade ship cards have been acquired.
• The location deck is empty.
• Optionally: If at least 2 rows of a player's player board has been covered with location cards and none of them contain a deactivation token, then that player may choose to trigger the game end.

Regardless of how game end is triggered, play progresses until all players have had equal turns.
Player now calculate their VPs which can come from the following sources.

• VP tokens.
• Location cards.
• Bandit cards.
• Trade ship cards.

​
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
​Dice City is not the first game to use dice-activations in a engine-building game with a city creation theme and while how the dice work on the board is an unusual mechanic, players will be familiar with a lot of the other concepts presented here.

They will need to adapt to both what their dice results give them to work with and what is available to draft from the location cards. Luckily players have some agency with the results in the form of dice-manipulation which can help but generally, they'll looking for ways to increase the efficiency of their player board and unlike a lot of game of this type, Dice City begins will a fully fleshed out beginner engine. Every die roll will always produce a result of some sort, so players will looking to increase the effectiveness of their results.
Ultimately, players will be looking to do things quicker than their opponents.

Something that Dice City does well is provide 2 clear avenues to accruing VPs - resources that can be used to improve a player's city or to buy trade ship cards, while army strength can be employed to defeat bandit cards or hinder other players' cities.
This adds an element of direct interaction - unusual for a game in this style with the ability to steal opponents' resources and deactivate their locations - especially locations with dice on them!
There's also a higher level of play where players can look at what's effective on an opponents board and target those spaces, even if they don't currently contain a die.
Additionally, a further element of player interaction are pass tokens which can be spent to make opponents re-roll dice.

Mechanically, Dice City is pretty straightforward with reasonably light rules that also generally provides players with meaningful decisions to make, both resources and army strength can have multiple uses and will give players options to think about.

I found Dice City to be an OK game and I hate saying a game is OK because it's a bit of a cop-out when trying to discuss games but that's exactly what Dice City is - OK.
Other than the possible direct interaction between players it doesn't do anything particularly different or special or new.
However, having said all of that, it also doesn't do anything badly and is a game that plays well enough to be engaging that I can't fault. Ultimately, while I found the game's presentation to be good, Dice City doesn't really standout for me.

If player interaction is something your big on or find important, Dice City has it and is a worth a look if you want a dice-driven city building game.
Conversely, some people don't like the confrontational element the direct interaction adds to the game. So 

I will happily play Dice City if someone else chooses it but it wouldn't be my first choice.

15th June 2023

Thursday night gaming in Aldershot continues with Formula Dé Mini.
Race around famous F1 tracks in this cut-down version of a classic racing game.

As the name might suggest, Formula Dé Mini is a smaller iteration of classic racing game Formula Dé which is itself re-iterated by Formula D.

I'm not going to do the usual blog for Formula Dé Mini because of it's similarities to Formula D. Instead I'll just list how it differs.

• Track: The tracks in Formula Dé Mini are smaller, not only in physical size but also in scope. The Formula Dé Mini tracks only have 1-stop corners and the track is only 2 lanes wide.

Component quality in Formula Dé Mini is comparable to the original Formula Dé. The boards are well made as are the tiles, cars, tokens and dice.
Using plastic gold discs for life points seems a little strange to me but they're as good as anything else for tokens.

The board features the same fantastic and detailed art that was found on the boards from Formula Dé .

​There's a little bit of iconography on the board but that's about it. Since Formula Dé ​Mini lacks the 6 types of resource from Formula Dé , all the icons and symbols related to those are gone, making this game easier to understand.

How's it play?
Formula Dé Mini retains most of the mechanics from the other games, playing almost identically: Read the Formula D blog for an overview of how it all works.
 
Formula Dé Mini broadly only differs in 2 ways, although many of the optional rules have been removed.

Firstly; the 6th gear is missing which makes sense considering the Formula Dé ​Mini tracks are somewhat smaller and it isn't really needed. It also removes one of the riskier  (And longest to count!) gear dice from the game, making the game slightly less complex.

Secondly, all of the types of resources (Gearbox, brakes, fuel etc.) have been removed and replaced with a single universal resource - the aforementioned life points.
Each car in Formula Dé Mini is given 16 life points at the game start.
Overshoot a corner? Spend life points instead of tyres.
Need to skip a gear? Spend life points.
Collide with another car or take engine damage? Spend life points and so on. you get the idea.
The game becomes notably easier and quicker to manage with a single resource.

Removed rules include those for weather conditions tyres as well for custom cars.

Finally, it's definitely worth mentioning that Formula Dé Mini is completely compatible with both other previous iterations of the game. That means all of the previously published tracks can be used with the Formula Dé Mini dashboards and components. Additionally, if you have the original Formula Dé core game, then the 6th gear dice can optionally also be used in Formula Dé ​Mini with those tracks.
​Excellent!

Overall
It seems obvious that the goal of Formula Dé Mini was to create an iteration of the original that was both easier to learn and faster to play and I think it succeeds at both.

Formula Dé Mini is somewhat easier to learn and play and is also a lot more forgiving in that regard.
The occasional mistake like having a car overshooting a corner by a lot of spaces might well cripple or eliminate that car in the full versions of the game but here, it would instead just cost more life points - although if a car loses all it's life points, it will still be eliminated.
The removal of the multi-stop corners from tracks that come with the game removes one of the more finicky aspects of the rules. This means the remaining rules are reasonably straightforward to learn and several of them are situational and might not even occur during the game.

Is Formula Dé Mini quicker to play? Yes, especially when using the supplied smaller tracks but even when using the 'full-sized' tracks play will a little faster. Reducing the resource management from 6 to 1 resource makes decisions quicker.
Even so, players will be faced with similar decisions to the full games. I'm impressed with how Formula Dé Mini manages to retain the 'feel' of the full sized games.
It's always fundamentally been a game about how much players are willing to push their cars through the corners and how much risk they're willing to take to do so, this hasn't changed. Sure, Formula Dé Mini may take the edge of that risk but it's still always there.

So how does Formula Dé Mini stack compared to the full versions of the game? The answer is; pretty good actually.
When I heard there was a version of Formula Dé ​that removed all the resources, I was pretty sceptical and sort of assumed that it would overly simplify or 'infantilise' the game but that wasn't the case. What you have is genuinely a quicker easier version of the game to play.

On a intellectual level I feel Formula Dé/Formula D is the better, more satisfying game to play.
On visceral level though, I found Formula Dé Mini very enjoyable to play. Some of the more challenging elements are gone but it means you can now blast round the tracks safe in the knowledge that you have some more wiggle room to mitigate those bad dice rolls!
It's an arcade racing game compared to a sim!

If you're looking for a quicker version of the game to play - or a way to introduce Formula D to players, this will definitely do the job.

While Formula De Mini remains long out of print, the still available Formula D utilises these simplified rules in its beginner game.
Alternatively, if you've got the original Formula Dé ​, you can simply acquire a bunch of tokens and play it that way.

I generally wouldn't choose Formula Dé Mini over the other versions but it's still a great game.

8th June 2023

​We're in Aldershot on a Thursday night for some gaming goodness and today's first play is Mint Delivery.
It turns out that somewhere out there mints are big business. There's even somewhere called Mintopia City and it's the centre of mint production!
​Players take on the role of delivery drivers fulfilling orders to the surrounding minty named towns.

How's it play?
Setup

• Map: Take the 9 map cards and placed in their allotted places in a 3x3 grid. This layout is always the same in all games.
• Players: Give each player the truck card and truck meeple in their chosen colour. All players should place their truck on the Mintopia space on the central map card.
  Order cards: Shuffle the order cards into a face-down deck, then deal 3 face-down to each player.
  Then all players can decide to keep any number of those cards, provided their total combined VP value does exceed 6 VPs. For the time being, players should keep their chosen cards hidden.
  All discarded order cards are returned to their deck.
• Orders: Now shuffle the remaining order cards into a new face-down deck.
  ​Next; deal 7 order cards adjacent to each of the 4 towns.
  Then, from each of the 4 decks, reveal 2 cards.
  Players should now reveal the order cards they chose to keep. For the rest of the game, players should keep unfulfilled orders always face-up.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Mint Delivery, players will be looking to acquire order cards and then fulfil those orders by taking the required mints to the required location. Completed orders earn players their respective VP values.
Mint Delivery follows a traditional turn structure with the active player taking their turn and then play progressing to the player on their left.

• ​Active player: In their turn, the active player may perform up to 2 actions. This can be the same action twice or 2 different actions in any order they see fit.
  In addition, players may also take a free action.
  The actions are:
  • Fulfil order (Free Action.): If the player has met the order conditions of one of their order cards and is at the correct location. Then, as a free action, they can spend the required mints to fulfil that order! The completed order cards is then flipped face-down.
  • Load/unload mints: If the active player's truck is at the right location, they may load 2/4 mints on to their truck (Up to the truck's 4 mint limit.). They may also unload mints.
  • Move: For 1 action, the active player may move their truck to an adjacent space.
  • Take order: If the active player's truck is at 1 of the 4 towns and they have less than 3 unfulfilled order cards,  they can spend an action to acquire one of the town's 2 face-up order cards. This is done by performing the following steps.
    Add mint: A mint must be added to the order card not being taken.
    Take order card: The player takes the order card they chose - if this has a 1 or more mints on it, then they also acquire the mints, provided it does not go over their truck's storage limit.
    Replace order card: A new order card must be from that town's order deck and placed face-up in the relevant space to replace the one just taken.
  • Upgrade mint: If the active player's truck is at the relevant location, they can upgrade a mint as determined by that location.
    2 white mints can be discarded to gain a green one and 3 whites turned into a red.
• End of turn: Once the active player has completed their actions, play progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
Play progresses until the endgame is triggered by 1 of the following criteria is met:
​
If 2 towns have no face-up order cards remaining
Or.
All 4 towns have no cards left in their face-down decks (Regardless of whatever face-up cards remain).

Play then continues until all players have had equal turns. Players then calculate the VPs they've earned on their completed order cards.

Points are tallied, highest score wins - and is pronounced 'Employee Of The Month​!

Overall
Thematically, Mint Delivery is a collect-and-deliver game and the mint theme is arguably bit extraneous but on the other hand, it's a good a theme as any. The fact that the tokens being delivered look a bit like mints and the game comes wrapped up in a mint tin I think is fairly pleasing.

Mechanically, Mint Delivery is actually quite straightforward, perhaps a little too straightforward. The game's map layout never changes, the 4 towns will always be in the corners, Mintopia in the centre and the factories in the 4 cardinal points. It would have been nice to have some kind of layout randomiser but I imagine space inside that tin is at a premium!
Where the game does offer variety is in how order cards appear and since this is a game about fulfilling orders, that's pretty important.
Mint Delivery is essentially a race to deliver orders and players will need to mix planning the most optimal moves using the cards they currently possess with adapting to changing circumstances as they arise to exploit opportunities as they appear.
There's also randomisation in the form of road conditions which can change things up.
Finally, ability cards offer the opportunity for some asymmetrical play that potentially opens up more choices to players and meaningful choices are always a good thing.

There's not too much more to say really. Mint Delivery is a stripped down, bare bones collect-and-deliver game, if that's what you're looking for and you want it in clever little package, it's worth a try.
It's perhaps a little too long to be a simple filler game and not quite long or deep enough to be the main game of a gaming session but nontheless, I found Mint Delivery to be a fun, light  experience with a fairly quick play time and imagine it will play well with non-gamers.

28th March 2023

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

Game of the night is Istanbul.

Ah, Istanbul, home of an ancient settlement and exotic gateway between the east and the west...
...Also a place where frenzied merchants rapidly push wheelbarrows around the bazaar, trailed by assistants while looking to acquire rubies in this worker placement game.

The component quality is good for nearly all of Istanbul.
The game makes good use of wooden components and dice which is always good. All the cardboard tokens and tiles are sturdy enough. The cards are also good.
It's all the quality you'd expect from a modern game.
The only criticism I have is that fitting the extensions into the wheelbarrow feels fiddly and when trying to put in the final extension it can be too tight and wont fit properly. It's a minor oversight that doesn't affect the game experience but it could have been a bit better.

There's unique artwork on all the location tiles. Even though it uses a pretty standard style of illustration, I think it looks good and gives the game a eye-catching presence on the table. I also feel that it's quite suitable, being evocative and colourful without obscuring important information.

Iconography in Istanbul is a bit of a mixed bag. Much of it is easily understood but the occasional icon and in particular, bonus cards will find players leafing through the rulebook for clarification.
This is fairly infrequent though and is a minor inconvenience rather than detrimental

How's it play?
Setup

• Players: Give each player the merchant, assistant, family member tokens and cubes in their colour.
  Wheelbarrow: Each player should take a wheelbarrow tile, then place their 4 cubes on the 4 'empty' spaces on their goods tracks.
  When players gain goods, they move the cube along the respective track.
  You will note at the game start, players can only have 2 of each good. By acquiring extensions, players can eventually hold up to 5 of each good.
• Tiles: The 16 location tiles will need to be put out in a 4x4 grid. This can be done either by using 1 of the 2 predetermined setups or randomly - although there are some restrictions using the random method. Additionally, many of the locations will have further setup.
  • Caravansary: Shuffle the bonus cards into a face-down deck and place them close to the caravansary.
  • Fountain: Each player should create a stack of 5 tokens with the the merchant token at the top and 4 assistants beneath and place their stack on the fountain location tile.
    The 5th assistant token should be set aside for the time being, they can be acquired during play.
    Gemstone dealer: Place rubies on the gemstone dealer location tile as per player count.
  • Markets: Sort the demand tiles into their 2 types. Shuffle each into a face-up stack and place them on to their respective market tiles.
  • Mosques: Sort the mosque tiles by type/colour, then sort each stack by goods cost, with the lowest at the top and highest cost at bottom. Then place 2 stacks on each of the 2 mosque tiles.
    Rubies: Finally add rubies to each mosque as per player count.
  • Police station: Each player should place their 'family member' cylindrical token on the police station location tile.
  • Post office: The post office has 2 rows of 4 spaces, place the 4 mail cubes along the upper row on the post office location tile.
  • Sultan's palace: Place rubies on the Sultan's palace location tile as per player count.
  • Wainwright: Place rubies and wheelbarrow extensions on the wainwright location as per player count.
  • Governor & smuggler: Roll the dice for each, then place their tokens on the location with the matching number.
• First player: Determine a starting player.
  The starting player should take 2 Lira, the next player gets 3 Lira, 3rd gets 4 Lira and so forth.
  Bonus card: Each player should draw a bonus card.

On to play
In Istanbul, players are attempting to acquire 5 or 6 rubies (Dependant on player count.) and the game provides a variety of methods to achieve this.
Istanbul follows the usual turn structure with the active player completing their turn before play progresses to their left.

During their turn, the active player will act in 2-4 phases - depending on circumstances.
The 4 phases always occur in the order shown below.

• Movement: The active player can move their stack of tokens up to 2 spaces during this phase, this cannot be diagonal and when the stack reaches its destination, one of the following must occur.
  • Drop off assistant: The active player takes one of the assistant tokens out of their stack and places it elsewhere on the same location tile.
  • Pick up assistant: If the active player already has an assistant token on the location space they stopped at, then they can add it back into their stack.
  • Pass: If the active player cannot or does not want to drop off or pick up an assistant, then their turn ends immediately unless the active player ended up at the fountain!
• Encounter merchant: This phase is conditional and if the active player ended their movement in a location tile with 1 or more merchants that belong to other players, then the active player must pay those players 2 Lira each.
  If they cannot or do no want to pay, then the active player's turn ends immediately, this does not occur if they stopped at the fountain.
• Action: This phase represents the bulk of gameplay and the active player may now choose to undertake the action for the tile they stopped at.
  There a quite a few actions a player can perform.
  • Black market: When the player's merchant is at the black market, they can gain 1 green/red/yellow good.
    Additionally, they should roll the 2 dice, the result will grant them 0-3 blue goods.
  • Caravansary: The active play draws 2 bonus cards into their hand and then discards 1 bonus card.
    When drawing cards from being at the caravansary location, the active player may choose to draw from the discard pile instead.
  • Fountain: When the active player's merchant is at the fountain, they can recall any number of their assistant tokens back into their stack.
  • Gemstone dealer: Here the active player may purchase a ruby. The more rubies that are purchased throughout the game, the more they will cost.
  • Market: When a merchant stops at one of the 2 markets, they can sell goods matching the demands on the current demand card. The more matching goods they sell, the more they earn. Each of the markets will determine how much the player earns.
    Regardless of how many goods are sold, the current demand tile is put at the bottom of the stack and a new demand tile is revealed.
  • Mosques: When a merchant stops at one of the 2 mosques, they can acquire one of the 2 mosque tiles there.
    To do so, the player's wheelbarrow must be carrying the goods that match was is shown on the top mosque tile. However, acquiring a tile costs only 1 good of the displayed tile.
    Once a mosque tile is taken, a more expensive version will be revealed beneath.
    Players can only have copy of each type of tile regardless of where they acquired it from.
  • Police station: When a player's merchant stops at the police station and if their family member is there, then the player can 'free' their family member.
    Since their family member 'knows how to get stuff', the player can immediately place the family member token on any other space and trigger its action. The family member does not have encounters and does not benefit or is restricted in that way.
  • Post Office: If the active player's merchant stops at the post office, they acquire all the items shown on the 4 uncovered spaces.
    After this, they must slide the leftmost cube on the upper row to the space directly below, thus changing the resources earned by the next merchant to stop here.
    When all 4 cubes are on the lower row, the next merchant to stop at the post office will claim their resources and put all 4 cubes back on the upper row.
  • Sultan's palace: When a merchant stops here, the player can trade goods for a ruby.
    As with the gemstone dealer, the more rubies that are acquired here, the more costly they become to trade for.
  • Tea house: Time for some friendly gambling! When a merchant stops here, the player announces a number from 3-12, then they roll both dice.
    If the rolled number is equal to or greater than the announced number, then the active player acquires Lira equal to the number they announced.
    If the number was lower, then they take 2 Lira.
  • Wainwright: Stopping here allows the merchant's player to buy an extension for their wheelbarrow. Once the 3rd and final extension has been acquired, the player can acquire 1 ruby from the wainwright tile.
  • Warehouses: There are 3 warehouses, one each respectively for green, red and yellow goods.
    If a merchant stops at a warehouse, they can fill the related good on their wheelbarrow to the maximum amount.
• Other encounters: As with the other encounter phase, this is conditional and depends on what tokens are also on the location where the active player's merchant stopped.
  • Other players' family members: If a merchant encounters the family member of another player on their location, they must snitch on them to the cops!
    This earns the active player 3 Lira or a bonus card.
  • Governor: When the governor token is on the same location as a player's merchant, the player can draw bonus card, then they must discard a bonus card or pay 2 Lira.
    After encountering the governor, roll 2 dice and move the governor's token to the location with the number that matches the dice roll.
  • Smuggler: When the smuggler is encountered, the active player may gain the good of their choice, they must then discard a good of their choice or play 2 Lira.
    As with the governor, after encountering the smuggler, roll the dice and relocate the smuggler to the new location.
• Bonus cards: These are not part of any phase in particular and the active player may play any number of bonus cards during at any time during their turn.

Endgame
The game end is triggered when any player acquires the required number of rubies.
​Play continues for the current round until all participants have had equal turns.
Finally, each player will have the option to play unused bonus cards, since Lira and goods act as a tie-breaker this can be important.

Rubies are tallied, highest amount wins.

Overall
I don't know whether it's deliberate or not but there's a slightly cynical thread of humour running through Istanbul. 
It's an amusing facet of the game that merchants are useless without assistants to boss around or how everyone has that one shady cousin who 'knows someone' or 'can get you stuff'.
Thematically, the game is presented quite well.
Your merchant and their little band go from place to place, looking to earn money or get goods in order to eventually gain rubies.

Mechanically, Istanbul is relatively straightforward. While there's quite a lot of tiles and consequently a lot going and a lot to think about and possibly remember, none of it in practice is actually overly complex.
Istanbul presents players with the conundrum of balancing the need to increase their abilities via mosque and extension tiles or trying to acquire rubies.
Broadly speaking, the game game provides some one-off way of gaining rubies but two main avenues to accumulating them - which are by spending goods or spending Lira and then providing several ways to acquire goods and Lira.
It means that Istanbul is a game of planning efficient moves and maximising actions. This is particularly the case when dropping off or picking up assistants. Well thought out play will allow a player to do this without visiting the fountain which requires an entire turn to gather assistants.

While the game is essentially a race without direct conflict between players, there's still some interaction that goes on.
There is arguably a higher level of play where players could try and anticipate the actions of their opponent allowing them to block opponents by putting their merchant on specific locations, forcing other players to pay out to go there or preventing them entering all together. However, this tends to occur by accident more than design.
Another area of interaction is at the markets, the more goods sold a player can sell an once at a market, the more money that player earns but taking longer to do this risks being trumped by another player fulfilling the demand tile earlier.
So players will need to occasionally adapt to situations as needed as well as planning their actions.

Istanbul does a good job balancing varied gameplay, strategy and meaningful decisions with ease-of-play, although I'm not sure I would describe it as entirely suitable for non-gamers but core gamers should have no problems comprehending the game
It also has a novel and clever implementation of worker placement mechanics which provide some satisfying moments when used effectively.

This is a mid-weight game with a somewhat lengthy play time - although it never felt overlong or unwelcome. I found it to be an enjoyable worker placement game. Istanbul   is a game that's definitely worth trying.

19th February 2023

It's Sunday evening again and we're logged into Board Game Arena for some gaming goodness.

Paint the Roses, it sounds a strange thing but that's what you do when in the kingdom of The Queen of Hearts in this 'Alice in Wonderland' themed cooperative game of deductive reasoning.

Caveat: We have only ever played this game digitally.

What's in a game?

• Game board: The central part of this board displays a cluster of hex-shaped spaces, each space contains a hedge or shrub.
  At the top of the board is a very picturesque palace decorated with a heart motif
  Running around the outside edge is what appears to be a scoring track and at regular points along this track are milestones or breakpoints marked out by white rabbits.

• Models: Not pertinent to the digital version of the game but the physical copy comes with 3d models to represent The White Rabbit, The Gardeners and the The Queen of Hearts.
  Additionally, there are 4 petal tokens that are used in conjunction with The Queen of Hearts and one-by-one are slipped beneath her model's base during the game, increasing her speed - which is not a good thing!
• Bag: This is also only part of the physical game and is used to blind draw shrub tokens.

Paint the Roses' artwork is pretty high quality, Art on whim cards and tiles look good and is easily understood but the standout art is on the game board. It's vibrant, colourful and eye catching, everything I think is good in game artwork.

Only 4 colours and 4 shapes are used in Paint the Roses, these are straightforward to comprehend and there's no other iconography.

How's it play?
Setup

• ​Game board: Put out the game board.
  Place The Gardeners tile on the '0' space.
  Place The Queen of Hearts tile on space '44' (Actually 6 spaces behind The Gardeners.).
  Place The White Rabbit on it's first milestone.
  Place the starting shrubs into their determined starting positions.
• Whim cards: Sort the whim cards into their 3 types and shuffle them into 3 face-down decks.
• Shrub tiles: In the physical game, these tiles would go into the bag.
• Greenhouse board: Randomly draw 4 shrub tiles and place them on the 4 available spaces on the greenhouse tile.
• Clue tokens: Give each player the clue tokens in their player colour.
• First player: Determine a starting player.
  Once this has been done, each player in turn order should draw a whim card from 1 of the 3 decks with the proviso that only 1 player can have an easy card at any time.

On to play
In Paint the Roses, the players are trying to collectively fill all 16 empty spaces on the game board while staying ahead of The Queen of Hearts model.
How is this done? By playing tiles, placing clues on them and using those clues to try and guess what is displayed on other player's whim cards.
Players must keep their whim cards hidden from other players, only revealing them when they are correctly guessed.
Paint the Roses uses a traditional turn structure with the active player completing their actions before play progresses to the player on their left. During the active player's turn, the following phases occur.

• Place tile: The active player must take one of the 4 tiles from the greenhouse board and place on any empty space on the board.
• Place clue tokens: All players then place clue tokens on the tile that was just placed.
  The number of clue tokens a player must place should be equal to the the number of ways the currently placed tile matches the colour/shape shown on their whim card.
  E.g., if a diamond shaped bush was just placed next to a spade shaped and any player had a whim card depicting a spade adjacent to a diamond, then that player must put a clue token on the newly placed tile.
  If the placed tile matches a whim card in more than one way, then clue tokens must be placed on the tile for each match. So if a spade was placed adjacent to 2 diamonds, 2 tokens would need to be placed on the tile
  If there are no matches, then no clue tokens are placed on the tile.
• Guess: Once clue tokens have been placed, the players must collaboratively pick any one of the whim cards and try to guess the symbols on that card. That is they're trying to guess which colour/shapes are shown on that particular card. Obviously, players cannot guess the symbols on their own card!
  • Correct!: If the players guess correctly, the following occurs.
    Discard whim card: The whim card that was correctly guessed is discarded.
    Move The Gardeners: The Gardeners figure should be moved a number of spaces equal to the value shown in the bottom right corner of the card that was just guessed. If this moves The Gardeners past The White Rabbit model, add a petal to The Queen of Heart's base (She will move faster from now on!) and move The White Rabbit to it's next milestone.
    Remove clue tokens: All clue tokens related to the correctly guessed whim card are returned to their player's hand.
    Guess again: After making a correct guess, the players may choose to make another guess, this is not mandatory and can be risky - as explained below.
  • Incorrect!: When a incorrect guess is made, the phase immediately ends.
• Move Queen: Once the guessing phase is over, The Queen moves and there are 2 ways this can happened.
  Correct guesses: If all guesses that were made were correct, The Queen moves her speed which is 1 space plus 1 space per petal under her base, thus she can move up to 5 spaces! That's not the worst though!
  Incorrect guess: If the players made a incorrect guess, The Queen of Hearts moves double her speed!
• End of turn: Once the Queen's movement has been resolved and the game has not ended, the following occurs.
  Replenish whim cards: Any player who discarded a whim cad now draws one from any of the 3 decks, the rule about only 1 easy whim card still applies.
  Replenish greenhouse board: A new shrub tile is drawn and placed on the empty space on the greenhouse board.
  Next player: Play progresses to the player left of the active player, who now becomes the new active player and a new turn begins.

Endgame
If the players manage to place shrub tiles in all 16 spaces and survive to the end of the round - that is; survive The Queen's final movement, the players collectively win the game!

If any time The Queen reaches the same space as The Gardeners or overtakes them; it's off with their heads. The players collectively lose the game.

Once a game is concluded, players can record their score, i.e., where they finished on the scoring track.

Overall
Thematically I found Paint the Roses a little abstract. Having The Queen actually chase the player model around the out of the board was a bit silly (Which thinking about matches the absurdness of the source material.) but also reasonably clever.
While I understand how the theme meshes with the mechanics, it all felt a little... detached.

​Mechanically though, Paint the Roses presents players with very tricky decisions and this is twofold.

Firstly, the active player must decide which of 4 shrub tiles to draft and how they can place it on the board to convey the information on their card. I think that there's also a higher level of play here where the active player can choose to play a tile to potentially help another player to convey information.
Secondly, once a tile has been put down, the players must make a guess. It's likely that this will involve a mix of deduction and also blind guessing. Easy whim cards are well... fairly easy to guess which is why players are limited to one easy card at a time, other cards are no so easy. Its important to successfully guess harder cards because it puts more space between the players and The Queen
There's also the element of trying to guess another card after a successful guess but it's genuinely higher stakes: A successful 2nd guess will give the players more breathing room but a wrong guess means that essentially any progress made from a guess has been lost. Double or nothing really.

These mechanics for guessing feel quite unique but also a little obtuse and harder to comprehend than they should be.
I don't think it helped that we were playing the game digitally and clue tokens were added automatically which sort of distanced us from thinking about what was going on.
I also felt being forced to guess every turn was quite harsh and The Queen advanced very quickly after relatively few failures. I feel that if players make a couple of wrong guesses in the early game, they'll be on the back foot for the rest of it - however long that lasts.

This brings me to the rule with the White Rabbit that increases The Queen's speed is quite interesting - although I'm not sure how I feel about it.
If The Queen has a high speed, an incorrect guess can move her a lot of spaces. It increases the stakes as the game progresses, meaning the players can never afford to be complacent.
The drawback is that it felt frustrating and counterintuitive, like we were being punished for being successful.

Between the difficulty and somewhat frustrating way the deduction worked, I found that I did not enjoy Paint the Roses, which is a shame, I like the idea of a cooperative, logic driven game.
I would definitely be open to trying the game physically as I might chance my stance  when actually handling the game but digitally speaking, this is not a game for me.