7th September 2021 Tuesday evening is here and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club. The first game of the night was Merv. What's in a game?
Despite its busyness, the game board is well illustrated and colourful, artwork on cards is also clear and colourful. For the most part the iconography is clear and easy to understand. Unfortunately, this does not extend to the symbols used to represent the game's 6 actions, these were a constant source of confusion and error. For example; the mosque action uses a minaret symbol but actually involves moving camel meeples along a track, but the symbols with camels on it is used to represent the caravansary! Why? Because the caravansary used camels to move spices! However, in game, the caravansary action only is used to get spices and has nothing to do with camels This means that camels are used to represent spices and minarets are used to represent camels! It verges on the ridiculous. It didn't help that all 6 symbols were the same colour so that it matched the colour theme of the board. How's it play? Setup
On to play Merv is played over 3 years and in each year there are 4 rounds, players have 1 action per round, thus 12 actions in total. Taking actions in Merv are quite unusual, play takes place around the 5x5 grid and each round takes place across 1 side of the grid (Starting on the north side.), then in the subsequent round, play moves clockwise to the next side of the grid and so on, so by the 4th round, a complete circuit will have been completed.
Endgame Once the 3rd year is over and has been scored, there is there final scoring to calculate. Sets of caravan cards score points. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Merv has several approaches to acquiring victory points but resource cubes is key to nearly all of them and the resource cube economy is very important. Acquiring cubes may conflict with choosing actions if the building site a player wants to activate produces cubes of a different colour, players will have to make choices and adapt. Having said that, it pays to diversify but it also pays to pursue one one strategy such as the caravansary or mosque track. Completing contracts feels like more of a bonus for sharp-eyed players than a long-term approach. Players also need to consider palace actions, placing workers into the right spaces in halls and moving along the favour track can be a good source of points. Players will need to also look towards defending Merv from attackers, losing buildings also loses the ability to gain resource cubes in later turns and of course loses victory points for the affected player(s). Merv is definitely on the heavier side of board games, but to be honest it didn't feel deep, just fiddly. I never got the feeling that I was making clever plays, instead I got the feeling that Merv was a heavy game made for the sake of being a heavy game. When I took an action, it often felt like I was doing 2 half actions instead of 1 whole one and it took multiple different actions to achieve something. E.g., I would undertake the marketplace action and acquire a good, Was I able to sell that good? No! What about spices, what if I'd acquired spices? Can't sell them either. To sell something, that is to complete a contract, I needed influence, which earned by building walls and also scrolls, which are acquired by visiting the library. Of course I also needed resources cubes. I know that some people will love this idea but I found it unengaging and a little dull and verging on tedious. Merv feels a little dry, unexciting and detached.
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5th September 2021 Sunday night gaming on Board Game Arena continued with New Frontiers. Galaxies: The New Frontier, these are the games of the website of 3 Spellcaster and a Dwarf. Dodgy puns aside, New Frontiers is a sibling-game to Race for the Galaxy and Roll for the Galaxy and shares the same universe. Players will find many similarities between the 3. Caveat: We have only ever played the digital version of New Frontiers What's in a game? Unlike the previously mentioned games, while New Frontiers is a board game, players of the other games will recognise many elements here.
Like its siblings, New Frontiers uses an abundance of symbols and icons which can be daunting for new or inexperienced players. How's it play? Setup
In New Frontiers, turns are carried out according to the turn order as shown on the priority board. Actions are not simultaneous. On their turn, the active player chooses a single action tile and performs the action on it, all other players may follow, in other words also perform that action. However, there is a bonus that only the active player gets for triggering a tile. Each tile can only be used once per round, thus only 1 player benefits from the bonus a tile may confer. Furthermore, actions are actually performed in the order they are selected, there are no numbered phases in New Frontiers. There are 7 actions that can be chosen, most of these will be familiar to players of Race for the Galaxy or Roll for the Galaxy.
Now a new round begins, possibly with a new player order and all the action tiles are now selectable again. Rounds continue until the endgame conditions are met. Endgame Once the endgame is triggered, the current round ends and points are scored. There are 4 ways to trigger the game end. Settlements: A player adds a 7th settled worlds to the game board. Developments: When the 11th or 12th development space on a player's board has been filled with a development. Victory points: When the supply of victory points is depleted. Colonists: When the supply of colonist meeples drops lower than 5. Points come from settled planets and developments bought, some developments offer additional routes to earn point and finally, victory points are counted. Points are tallied, highest score wins! Overall
Players of the previous 2 games will find a lot here instantly familiar. New Frontiers contains the same mix of intricate and mechanical interdependencies between planets and developments that feature in the other two games which allow players to create varied combinations of engine building and combinations. There are a couple of mechanics New Frontiers does differently, particularly the action mechanic, firstly there's no set action order for actions to occur and more importantly, only 1 player can benefit from an action's bonus per round. If a player really needs a bonus action, it can make turn order very important. The existence of a turn order is new as well. When playing New Frontiers, there are a couple of approaches always available to players, building their tableau or acquiring victory point tokens, or maybe getting one of the 9-point developments and working towards exploiting for points in the endgame. However, players will need to adapt to which planets become available to the, as unlike developments which use a drafting mechanic, planet acquisition will be to some degree, random. But here's the thing; the additions New Frontiers brings to the table don't add anything to the game other than extra complexity, there's no extra depth or strategy, just extra resources to manage in place of the hand-as-money mechanic that makes Race for the Galaxy such a good game. Yet somehow, it even seems to have a shorter, less engaging play time? You see, in Race for the Galaxy and Roll for the Galaxy, there are 2 ways to end a game; a player can complete their tableau or deplete the supply of victory tokens, both of which require players to play well or at least fast/better than other players. But in New Frontiers, it's possible to end the game by simply triggering the Settle action multiple times. It felt hugely unsatisfying way for the game to end. Ultimately, New Frontiers is a good game, it has the pedigree of its predecessors, but it's also too familiar and too similar to Race for the Galaxy, which is in my opinion, hands down the better game. I would choose it over New Frontiers every time. 31st August 2021 We're at The Sovereigns in Woking with the Woking Gaming Club for some Tuesday evening gaming. The first game of the night was Raids. Raids is a game about Vikings going around doing what they do, which is raiding and pillaging. What? You say, that's a cliché and Vikings were also explorers, traders, craftsmen and so on, well this game is called Raids, so raiding and pillaging it is; and all for glory! What's in a game?
Artwork on the game board is nice and colourful and the longship board are also good, the art on the voyage tiles is a little drab, a little more colour would make them pop but it's only a very minor quibble. There isn't too much iconography in the game and mostly it's very clear what it means. All-in-all, excellent, top notch production values for Raids. How's it play? Setup
Raids is played over 4 voyages which each involve journeying around the game board. During these voyages, the players will stop at the randomly placed voyage tiles and deal with those encounters.
Endgame Play continues until all players have completed the 4th voyage, then scores are calculated. Players can earn Glory points from a number of sources. Pennant tiles on a player's Longship earns straight up Glory points. Hammer tiles on a Longship earn points per Viking also on the Longship. Goods tiles that have been traded earn Glory Points. Sets of Rune tiles collected earn points accordingly. Monsters defeated earn points. Finally, cash accumulated during the game earn Glory points on a 1-to-1 basis. All points are tallied, Highest score wins. Overall
Travelling around the map, players will faced with a central choice on deciding how far to move their Longship? Should a player move slowly to encounter more tiles or rush ahead to a tile they really want? This is of course contextual and players will have to identify what they need and prioritise accordingly. They'll also have to keep an eye out for the behaviour of other players and want to gauge their motivations. The rule where players can only collect tiles at the start of their turn slots into this nicely, possibly allowing other players to fight for the tile and keeping the situation tense. A worker placement game that allows workers to drive off other workers! I also like how the Longship board works, merging aesthetics and mechanics. It's a great visual representation of what players are carrying and crew limitations. The game is in essence a mid-to-light worker placement game with a touch of auctioning and resource management mechanics. Raids fits its Viking theme reasonably well as players sail around, trading and plundering while battling mythic beasts and each other. Having said that, I found the game a little unengaging, maybe a little too abstract. I could sail pretty much anywhere I wanted with generally minimal risk, it never felt like epic adventuring. Combat was fairly rare, mostly players didn't complete too much for the same resources but it felt bland, a quick glance at other player's Viking meeples will tell you if you can be beat them or not and at what cost. I'm also a little uncertain of how much replayability Raids has. Even though it has random placement for the encounter tiles, because they're not really interdependent on each other, it felt like it didn't matter the order in which you might encounter them, especially since I could sail as far as I wanted. I don't think Raids is a bad game, if someone wanted to play it, I'd have no problem joining in (But not too often!), but it's not a game I'd pick. 3rd August 2021 Tuesday is here and I'm in Woking with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns pub for gaming night. The game of the night was Above and Below. Published by the same company who also produce a game called Near and Far. Left and right, up and down, in and out: wiggle it all about, here and there, out and about, Far and Away and Home and Away! Some great suggestions for naming more games! As the name suggest, the players will concerning themselves with the above ground settlement and exploring the caves below the village. What's in a game?
The game makes good use of its cartoony artwork, particularly with the green, grassy landscapes and cloudy blue skies that appear on many of the cards. Buildings and villagers are also well illustrated. Finally, the underground cards have evocative, mildly forbidding artwork. There is little iconography used throughout Above and Below and what there is of it, is easy to comprehend. How's it play? Setup
Beginning with the starting player and going clockwise, each player performs a single action using 1 or more of their villagers, play continues clockwise until all players have used all their available villagers or have passed. After this, the next round begins.
Endgame Once seven rounds are completed, the game goes to scoring, victory points can come from a variety of places. Reputation: Whoever has the highest reputation gets 5 victory points and 2nd place gets 3. Each house and outpost: Regardless of what it is, earns a victory point. House/outpost bonuses: Some houses and outposts will confer additional bonus points, these may be straight up points or situational points, e.g., 1 point per barrel. Advancement tracker: Players earn points for each good on their advancement tracker, depending on where the good is positioned. 2 goods on the 1st space would earn 2 victory points in total, 2 goods on the 8th and final space would earn 12 victory points! The type of good makes no difference here. The advancement tracker can earn a lot of points. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
For the most part, mechanically speaking, Above and Below is a fairly straightforward, unremarkable game. Players use their workers to increase their resources to acquire more workers and buildings create a strategy to earn victory. Pretty standard stuff, not that there's anything wrong with that, no need to reinvent the wheel. Even so, there's some depth here and quite a bit of balancing to perform. There's little good acquiring workers without the ability to rest them which means acquiring buildings with beds instead of other benefits, particularly to ability to acquire goods and so on. This brings us neatly to the merchant track, which is one of the game's two interesting mechanics. Firstly, it more-or-less forces players to diversify in goods in order to reach the higher scoring spots. Secondly, it does something unusual with the game's 8 goods; which is that the rarity of a good has no bearing of it's worth for victory points, position on the track determines a good's worth and this is likely to be different for each player, meaning they may have different priorities for different goods, regardless of rarity. Finally, it gives players a conundrum to navigate: Logically, players will want to put the most common goods on the later, higher scoring spots because, well, there's more of the common goods available to stack up for more points. This means using rarer goods earlier in the track, but rarer goods are harder to come by. So should a player start filling out the merchant track as quickly as possible with whatever they get to reach the later spots? Or should they hold off, hoping to get the scarcer goods and use them to fill the earlier spots. It's an interesting decision to consider. The second interesting mechanic is exploring, Above and Below really stands out from the crowd when exploring the below. The inclusion of a 'lite storytelling' choose-your-own-adventure element with flavour text and all, is both fun and meaningful, presenting players with sometimes story-based choices and risks to take which directly affect what they earn from their exploration. It's cool and a great addition beyond the usual board game fare. It makes Above and Below worth trying. 13th July 2021 It's a Tuesday evening and I'm at The Sovereigns in Woking with the Woking Gaming Club. Where would eurogaming be without Renaissance Italy? The pageantry, the politics, the scheming and the vying for power, you know how it goes: A seemingly limitless mine of game design opportunities. This is where Lorenzo il Magnificio comes in, a game where players control noble families in Florence competing to be the most prestigious, famous and of course.... most pious! What's in a game?
The boards and tiles are suitably thick, the resource cards are of a standard quality as you'd expect. Tokens are all made of wood, which I always like, including the nicely rounded dice. The standout components however, are the family workers, instead of discs, they're these tall cylinder shapes that are easy to pick up. It makes sense as I'm sure they're going to be the components that get handled the most; practical and appealing. Lorenzo il Magnificio features attractive artwork throughout, the boards all display pretty, somewhat stylised art work cleverly produced to incorporate all the game's worker spaces. Art on the cards is little pared back to make room for iconography. Talking of which, all the game's symbols and text was easy to read. Lorenzo il Magnificio has good, solid components and presentation. How's it play? Setup
Lorenzo il Magnificio is played over 3 periods, with 2 rounds per period, which equates to 6 rounds in total. Each round has its own setup phase before the players act in turn order, additionally at the end of every period (2nd, 4th and 6th rounds.) there's an additional step; the Vatican report step. A round progresses as follows:
Endgame Calculate points from the following: Current score plus points for acquired territory cards and character cards, end-of-game victory points for venture cards. The player with the highest military score gains an additional 5 victory points, 2nd highest acquires 2 extra victory points. Finally, every set of 5 combines resources scores an additional point. All points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Lorenzo il Magnificio sits towards the heavier end of games in my opinion, mechanically speaking, at it's core it's not a particularly complex game, but there's a lot of exceptions and variations to consider when trying to buy those all-important development cards and managing faith and military scores and the resources required to do all this. Don't forget those 2 engines you'll need to build either in order to gain and change those resources, or the abilities that character cards confer or the endgame points that venture cards grant. Like I said, a lot to think about. The game uses 4 types of resource and 3 types of score (Two of which can also be spent at times.) and mixes a few types of game mechanics; there's a bit of worker placement, a bit of engine building and a bit of resource management. Where it throws a spanner in the works though, is the use of dice to randomise the value of workers. A couple of low rolls can force players to change their strategies, particularly when competing for development cards, however, the use of servants can potentially mitigate low rolls, even so, players will have to adapt to circumstances. Furthermore, players have relatively limited moves to play with, each player has 4 workers they can use over 6 turns, giving 24 placements in total, which is why building the engines that essentially get triggered for free is so vital. Synergy and move optimisation are also key to this game. There are several approaches to scoring points in Lorenzo il Magnifcio, although these strategies are down to which development cards are acquired, development cards are the game's most vital element to winning and most actions are in service of getting those cards. However, the game seems a fairly well balanced, nothing felt overpowered or unimportant, decisions always felt meaningful and because of limited moves, these decisions generally felt tricky. If I had one criticism of the game; it's the excommunication tiles, they feel negative, but I guess that's the point of them. If someone wanted to play this, I'd have no qualms joining in. It's not one of my favourites, but it's still enjoyable. If you have a hankering for a heavy-ish worker placement game set in Renaissance Italy, you'll probably like this. 4th July 2021 It's a Sunday evening and I'm logged into Board Game Arena. the next game of the night is Railroad Ink. Do you spend a lot of time coming and going? Because that's what you'll be doing in Railroad Ink. Caveat: we've only ever played Railroad Ink digitally online. Additionally, we've only played the basic version of Railroad Ink Blue without the rives and lakes dice. What's in a game?
Since we only played railroad Ink digitally, there's not much that can be said about the quality of the components. Neither does the game have any significant artwork to speak of, the boards look bright and cheery, but that's about it. How's it play? Setup
Railroad Ink is played simultaneously by all players over 7 rounds.
Endgame Once all 7 rounds have been completed, the game goes to scoring. Railway: Each player scores their single longest unbroken railway line, gaining 1 point per connected square. Road: Each player scores their single longest unbroken road, also at 1 point per connected square. Centre: Each of the 9 central squares on the grid scores the player an additional point for a railway or road that runs through it. Exits: Each player scores their single biggest network of connected exits, it scores differently to railways and roads and there's a chart to calculate this. Generally each exit in the network scores 4 points, except if you manage to connect the 12th and final exit, which scores 5 instead! Dead end: Each player loses a point for each route that is a dead-end, i.e. does not connect to anything or does not connect to the edge of the grid (does not necessarily need to be one of the 12 exits though.). Final amounts are tallied, highest score wins! Overall
Railroad Ink is a game that hits that sweet-spot between rules-simplicity and depth-of-choice that has good potential crossover appeal to non-gamers. From the relatively short length of this blog, you can see that it's an easy game to learn, consisting mostly of; well, drawing what you see! However, it also gives players lots of choices, all of which will have impact right from the start of the game. The game's grid has 49 spaces and the maximum that can be filled in (In a basic game!) is 31, enough room to manoeuvre and also enough room to commit error. Players must try to maximise networks and connections and also minimise their potential losses. This involves equally trying to anticipate what they need and also adapting to rolls that don't give them that. It's a game of shifting optimisation. Railroad Ink has a lot of randomness and for gamers who like strategizing, this can be an anathema, but in Railroad Ink, the randomness is partially mitigated because it more or less affects everyone equally, i.e., everyone uses the same dice results. Obviously one player may be luckier than another if the rolls go their way, but it never feels like the dice are treating you worse for you than any other player. Ultimately, despite the dice rolls, it feels like player decisions are still of paramount, finding a way to use a route die that initially seemed bad can be satisfying and it's this blend of randomness and decision-making is what I like about Railroad Ink. 27th June 2021 Sunday is here and I'm logged into Board Game Arena. Playing board games is a great way to escape your troubles and ignore what's been happening outside your window and across the globe for the past 2 years and to do that, we chose to play a game about not 1 pandemic, but 4 of them! The first game of the evening was Pandemic. What's in a game?
The components in Pandemic are all of a reasonable quality as you would expect, nothing feels particularly cheap. The pawns are made of plastic and not wood, but that's a trivial quibble. The other markers are constructed of satisfyingly thick plastic. The plastic 3D research stations are a nice touch as are the colourful, translucent, acrylic disease cubes, it also makes them easier to pick up and move - which for the cubes will occur frequently. Artwork on the board is functional more than pretty, which is fine and everything's easy to understand, the same is true of city and infection cards which show locations on the board as opposed to containing illustrations. The small amount of artwork in the game mostly appears on role cards, which each have a good quality unique illustration that depicts their role, event cards also contain some unique artwork. How's it play? Setup
On to play The turn structure for Pandemic is as follows: The active player has their turn, which consists of 4 actions, then they draw 2 cards from the player deck, finally the 'board' has its go. Once all of this has been completed, the player to the left becomes the active player.
Endgame Play continues until one of the following conditions is met. If the marker on the outbreak track reaches its 8th and final space; the players collectively lose. If, at any time a disease cube needs to be added to the board and none are available in that colour; the players lose. If a player needs to draw 2 cards from the player deck and cannot do so because none or only one is available.... you guessed it; the players lose. If all 4 diseases are cured, then the players immediately win. Diseases do not need to be eradicated in order to win. Overall
Well, Pandemic.... what's there to say about this game? Pandemic is a pillar of modern cooperative games that has been followed up not only by a slew of expansions and spinoffs, but also a number of differently themed games such as Horrified that employ similar mechanics. Some of Pandemic's elements and mechanics may seem a bit trite nowadays, but that's simply because they're part of a game that popularised those mechanics in the first place and is a testament to Pandemic's longevity and influence. Pandemic utilises the tried-and-tested game flow of alternating between player turns and card-driven board actions in a game that is a globe-trotting race against time. In a turn, players are faced with the difficult choice of trying to stem the spread of the 4 diseases or instead trying to interact with the other players and swap the cards necessary to cure those diseases. Ultimately, players will need to find a balance between the two approaches. As with other cooperative games, bad luck may play a major role in Pandemic and mitigating that bad luck is vital to winning. Decisive actions, recognising priorities and acting on them are also vital to success, as are knowing when to use role special abilities. Pandemic is also hard, I think this comes down to Pandemic's rules for swapping city cards between players which requires them to be in that card's city in order to do so. It's unlikely players will be able to collect 5 cards of single colour on their own so coordination between players is vital. We've played a few of the iterations that followed Pandemic and it always felt like this rule has been softened a little. Is that as bad thing, I suspect YMMV? Pandemic does a good job at evoking the feel of a spreading global crisis and the desperate worldwide fight to contain it. I have to admit, considering the events of the past 2 years, we haven't had much compulsion to play Pandemic. Even so and despite the difficulty, I feel that if you like cooperative games, it's still worth playing, it challenges players with making difficult decisions at nearly every avenue and is satisfying to win. 4th June 2021 It's Friday evening and we're logged into Tabletopia. This evening we will be playing the first part of Pandemic Legacy: season 0. Time to battle the Soviets to save the world during the height of the 60's cold war. Caveat: we've only played this game digitally online. Caveat No. 2: This is a legacy game and we only played the prologue, so I'm not going to blog about it at length. What's in a game? Season 0 is a prequel to the other Pandemic Legacy games, none of which I've played. If you've ever played a Pandemic style game before, then a lot of this will be familiar to you.
There's also a lot of components to deal with the legacy element of the game. How's it play? Setup The setup for Pandemic Legacy: season 0 will differ for each scenario as they have their won objectives, but will include the following:
Players of other Pandemic games will recognise most of the play mechanics. There are some other elements, but mostly during their turn, the active player will have 4 actions points to spend and their turn goes as follows:
Endgame Each mission will have it's own unique objectives to complete, when they are all either completed or failed, the mission immediately ends. Missions will also immediately end if the following criteria is met: Cards cannot be drawn from the player deck. There are no more agent figures that can be used. There are no more incident markers that can be used. If the mission ends and there are any incomplete objectives, they are marked as failed. Then players will be rated as succeeding, adequate or failing, this will have an affect on later missions. Incidents that occurred during a mission will impact the board for later missions as well. There are 12 missions played over a period of 12 months, making it a busy year. There will also be numerous other actions will occur with regard to further missions, this being a legacy game. Overall
I'll start by saying that I know some people gush over legacy games, but I've not really played much of any legacy games and I'm pretty ambivalent towards them. I understand the appeal of an evolving game where player decisions have an impact on further games over time. At the same time, I'm so sure about a game where you have to play it 12 or 20 times to get the most out of it. Anyway; since I've not played the legacy components of Season 0, I'm not really going to blog about them, instead I can write my thoughts about the general mechanics of the game. If you've played a Pandemic style game, then a lot of this will be familiar. It has the same, recognisable gameplay elements of racing against time and having to make difficult meaningful decisions to balance completing objectives with firefighting the spread of in this particular incarnation, Soviet agents. Like all cooperative games I've played, mitigating bad luck is a key component to succeeding. Reskinning Pandemic's mechanics for Season 0 could have been lazy and bad, but actually, they work and fit the theme pretty well, the changes introduce interesting concepts, although some of the changes only apply to long term play. The addition of teams is an inspired change, instead of running around and doing actions myself, I could instruct teams of agents to do it, provided they had the correct aliases of course. Not only did it give players and extra decision to manage, it made me feel more of a spymaster than a spy, which I found quite appealing, it gave the impression that more was going on at any one time, it made the game feel bigger and that's good. These changes differentiate Season 0 from Pandemic, but is it enough of a change to justify owning both? For me, as an owner of the original Pandemic; I'd say no. Would I play someone else's copy? Probably. I have to say it would cool to have seen the agent mechanics employed in a standard spy-themed Pandemic game. If you're a big player of legacy games and can commit to them, it's definitely worth a look. If you're also a fan of Pandemic, it might also be for you. 28th May 2021 It's a Friday night and we've met up at Simon's for some impromptu gaming. Have you ever had the urge to run around being chased by Dracula? Or The Wolfman, or any other of the Universal movie monsters in a cooperative turn based race against time to defeat them? Then welcome to Horrified. What's in a game? Horrified is a cooperative board game in the vein of games such as Pandemic and has some loosely similar rules.
The monster figures seem good quality and stand about 32mm high. All the tiles and tokens are made of suitability thick cardstock, the standees are also fine. The quality of the 2 decks of cards what you'd expect. The game's art is universally good, I particularly liked the board which is eye-catchingly coloured in blue and yellow. All the art used on the monster components is also excellent, wisely drawing inspiration from its iconic source material, this includes the monster figures which are reasonably sculpted for game pieces and easily recognisable by anyone who knows their universal monsters. Art on the other tiles, character and villager standees is also good, the same is true for the monster & perk cards. Item tokens only feature monochrome illustrations and that's fine since the tokens are quite small and there will generally be a lot of them. Besides, just how exciting can you make a clove of garlic or a pitchfork look? How's it play? In Horrified, players are tasked with travelling round the board to collect item tokens and use them to complete tasks to make monsters vulnerable, then they can be defeated. All the while, the players must avoid the monsters and also protect the very hapless villagers. Setup
On to play When the active player has their turn, it will be split into a character turn and then a monster turn. Character turn Let's start with the character's turn, each character will have 3-5 action points to that the player may spend per turn, they can be spent as follows:
The monster turn is dictated by the monster card which is drawn. Each monster card has 3 elements to it.
Endgame Horrified has 2 ways to lose. If the marker on the terror track reaches 7, then everyone flees the village in errrr, well terror! If, when it comes to a monster turn and there're no monster card to draw, then time has run out and it's game over! Monster overrun everything. Players win the game by completing the objective for each monster and then vanquishing all monsters. Overall
Horrified uses some interesting mechanics that set it apart from similar games. The asymmetrical objectives that need completing for the different monsters is genuinely inspired game design. Objectives like curing The Wolfman, solving The Mummy's sliding puzzle or proving the existence of The Invisible Man thematically it fits the monsters and mechanically it adds variety and longevity to the game. The damage mechanic is also an excellent idea; forcing players to choose which item(s) to discard can be a meaningful and painful decision, choosing either to lose an important token that is needed or a high value other token is tough. It also does away with the need to track health or hit points. Villagers too, are a good addition, keeping them alive can be a burden, but is also vital to keeping the terror track under control. If character manages to escort a villager to safety, then the reward is a perk card. Perk cards can be extremely useful and turn things around when played at the right time, they can be game winners. Horrified is a little bit less finicky than it's counterparts but that doesn't make it an easy game, whenever we've won, it was only with a couple of actions in hand and when we've lost, it's been by a few actions as well. Like every other cooperative game I've played, Horrified uses luck - or bad luck more precisely, to provide a challenge to the players, some bad dice rolls or an unfortunate monster card draw can really throw a spanner in the works. Like all those other cooperative games, how players manage the bad luck is important to victory. Furthermore, every decision has to count, Horrified is a tightly balanced game. Since there are only 30 monster cards, that means that players basically have 30 turns to win, or on average 120 actions to spend. There's scant time to waste. Horrified is a fairly accessible, fun to play and well presented game. It's one of the best cooperative games I've played and I'm to play it again. 23rd May 2021 It's Sunday evening and I'm logged into Skype and Board Game Arena on my PC and it's time for the final game of the day. Drafting. Rawr! Dinosaurs. Rawr! T-rexes. Rawr! Draftosaurus has it all, drafting and well... you get the idea. This is a game where scientists have discovered how to clone dinosaurs and now parks of them are opening everywhere, all in a completely non-copyright infringing manner of course! Caveat: We've only played Draftosaurus digitally online. What's in a game?
There's not much more I can say, I can't talk about the physical components which also include a draw bag. How's it play? Draftosaurus is about placing dinosaur meeples into the pens, different pens have different requirements, which is explained below. Setup
Endgame Once the 12th and final dinosaur meeple has been placed by all players, the endgame is triggered. Players score all of the sets they've created on their board, plus any bonuses or penalties. Highest score wins. Overall
When playing Draftosaurus, more often than not, players will find themselves having to place meeples into unexpected pens thanks to the placement die. Without this element, the game would be too predictable. How players deal with, manage and anticipate these these situations is key to victory. Often there will be a conflict between which set to increase or start on and keeping a pen open for another type of dinosaur. It also pays to try and remember which dinosaur meeples will be coming round. The winter side of the board makes it harder to collect different sets and provides more challenge but somehow a little less fun? It's hard to find a lot more to say about Draftosaurus, it's quick, fairly light game to learn and play that's also quite luck based. If you don't like this sort of game, Draftosaurus will probably infuriate you. I think that maybe it's a bit too luck based for me to play extensively. Not taken too seriously and played as a filler game and Draftosaurus is a reasonable diversion. |
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