10th August 2023

It's a Thursday evening and we're round Simon's for some gaming fun.
First game of the night was cooperative, tile-laying game Dorfromantik which is a board game adaptation of a computer game and translates from German as 'village romance' or possibly 'romance of the village'?

What's in a game?
Tiles: Well, this is a tile-laying game, so you're going to get a lot of tiles, in this case hexagonal ones that come in 2 types.

• Landscape tiles: A rural environment is shown on these tiles which will contain 1 or more of 8 different landscape types. These landscapes will include woods, fields, streams, tracks, sheep and so on.
  Additionally, some landscape tiles will feature flags.

Mystery boxes: What are mystery boxes? Well, you'll just have to find out but basically, Dorfromantik has a very light sort of persistent/campaign mode where boxes become 'unlocked' and provide more content to play through in what is a gameplay loop. Suffice to say that 5 boxes numbered 1-5 come with the game.

Score & campaign pads: Usually I don't bother mentioning this kind of component as it's not directly related to the game play. But in this case, how the scoring plays out is important here as it relates to the campaign.
On the left is a column of objectives and targets that can be achieved by completing games, on the right are achievements which can be unlocked in certain ways while in the centre, is an advancement track which can be checked off to unlock more content.
What is this extra content? That's a secret!

The components in Dorfromantik as what we would consider to be average, that is nothing to write home about but the tiles, cards and tokens fell perfectly acceptable: Nothing bad here.

The tiles use bright colours as well as illustrations to display differing landscapes and there's also as surprisingly detailed artwork, especially the village areas which show homes, shops, market stalls and so on. Charming little flourishes of artwork are found throughout the game.
It's crisp art that's clear and easy to comprehend.

Dorfromantik employs a handful of icons to represent different landscape types which are easily recognisable and that's about it. I can't imagine players having any problem here.

How's it play?
Setup
Tiles: Sort the tiles into their 2 types, then shuffle them into face-down stacks and discard 3 landscape tiles out of play.
Task markers: Sort the tokens into their types and shuffle them into face-down stacks.
First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
Dorfromantik is a cooperative game were players are collectively creating a landscape with an eye towards typically maximising the victory points (VPs) they earn. Although they may have other objectives/achievements they might be working towards.
The game follows a typical turn order with the active player taking their action which essentially involves drawing and placing a tile before play progresses to the player on their left.

Draw tile: On their turn, the active player will draw a single tile and place it into the central playing area according to the following rules.

• Less than 3 task markers: If there are 2 or less task marker tokens in play, the active player must draw and play a task tile.
  Thus; since there are no tiles of any sort in play at the game start, the first 3 tiles drawn will always be task tiles.
• 3 of more task markers: If there are 3 or more task markers in play, then the active player draws a landscape tile.

Placing tiles: There are slightly different rules for what happens when landscape or task tiles are placed.

• Landscape tiles: When placing landscape tiles, they must be placed with at least 1 edge adjacent to another tile already in play. It's also possible to place a tile so that multiple edges will adjacent to multiple tiles. Not all landscape types need to be honoured, e.g., it's entirely permissible to place a field adjacent to a village. However, rail and stream connections must be honoured, that is, they cannot be blocked.
• Task tiles: For the most part, task tiles follow the same placement rules as landscape tiles (Except of course for the 1st tile played in the game, which cannot be adjacent to another tile!) but with the added element.
  When a task tile is revealed and played, a matching task marker must be drawn, revealed and placed on to that task tile. This will come into play when 'completing' or 'scoring' that task.

​Scoring tasks: As explained above, task markers will appear on tiles during the game and every task marker has a value of 4-6 for its particular landscape type. This means a task will earn VPs if the players manage to create a closed off or completed landscape containing that marker with a size which exactly matches the value.
E.g., if a forest task marker has a value of 5 and the players create a forest across exactly 5 tiles, then the task has been completed.
When a task is completed, the marker should be immediately removed and added to a scoring area. It is possible to immediately complete a task marker on a task tile if that task tile is played in the into a location which matches is requirements. It's theoretically possible to complete more then one task in turn.

• Failed tasks: If a task is ever failed (This can be done by closing off an area which is too small or making an area too big.) then it' task marker cannot be scored and is removed from play.

Next Player: Once the active player has played a tile and resolved any associated actions, play progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
The game immediately ends if any player has to play a landscape tile and there are none available.
The game then goes to scoring and VPs can come from 3 sources.

• Tasks: Completed tasks earn VPs equal to their value.
• Flags: As mentioned above, some tiles may possess a flag. If the landscape related to a flag has been closed off or 'completed' then it will earn VPs.
• Rails and streams: VPs will be earned to the single longest stretch of rails and for the single longest stretch of stream.

VPs are totted up and that is the final amount that all the players have collectively scored. However, there's just one more thing:

The end is the beginning!
Now that players have achieved a final score, it's time to look at the campaign pad.

On the left side is the column of objectives which can be completed at the game end and these go from score up to 99 VPs all the way score 400 VPs! Every objective that is completed can be crossed off and earns the players a 'X'.

X's can be used to cross off spaces on the advancement track. As more spaces are crossed off, players will gain access to the boxes of extra content that come with the game. This content provides new tiles and new ways to score VPs as well as more achievements to work towards.
Furthermore, on the right are achievements that can be ticked off which contributes to the overall completion of the game.

Overall
Dorfromantik is a game about creating a beautiful village and the tile-laying mechanic does match up with the theme, albeit a little abstractly.

It's also quite a light game rules-wise, the challenge comes from optimising VPs earned from tile placement and this comes from planning ahead.
There seems to be a basic tactic of creating bunches of 3 of each landscape type so that if a 4 point task marker is drawn, it can potentially be used to immediately close and score a landscape - provided the right type and value of task marker is drawn. Although it can backfire if players calculate size 3 landscape types incorrectly.
As with pretty much all cooperative games, luck can play a big part here and players may be forced to make tricky decisions when things don't go their way.
There's also some tricky, meaningful decisions to be made regarding the rails and streams because players will be faced with conflicting scoring objectives: As well as trying to complete tasks related to those landscape types, players will also be looking to score points for the longest rail/stream.

Dorfromantik includes what loosely is described as a campaign mode. As the game is completed multiple times, players will acquire the means to score higher and higher VPs through unlocks but also will need to score higher to unlock more content in order to score even more VPs. It's a classic gameplay loop.

This brings me to another thing, one of the players bounced hard off Dorfromantik. They just did not like how there was no overt way to 'fail' a game.
While this is 'technically' true, a game can still be kind of failed by not achieving any objectives and getting no crosses, but for them it wasn't enough of a 'failure' for them.
Consequently, we didn't really get to give the campaign mode a good try.
I feel this could be a bit of divisive issue that could put people off what is otherwise a fairly solid tile-placement game.

Another curious aspect is that while Dorfromantik can play with a large player count it feels a bit like a solo game. - That is; a solo game where everybody can potentially contribute to the placement every turn!
The choices and options players face do not change with player count or different players. Players do not have hidden hands of tiles or anything like that which could alter their priorities and the dilemma of where to place a tile never alters from player to player.
The same information is open and available to all players at all times which essentially means players are free to confer during a individual's turn or not. I guess that many minds working on optimal moves can make for some strong decisions - or probably more likely, lead to more bickering!

It's also not a game for single occasional plays and I think it would also definitely benefit from repeated plays as unlockable content changes the game.
Dorfromantik is at the lightweight end of games and could appeal to casual or less dedicated gamers and be used as a crossover game.
If a undemanding, cooperative game is what your looking for, then this could be one for you provided you can find some players to dedicate time to it. Alternatively, you could just play it solo as the game experience is identical but quieter.

18th August 2022

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

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

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

What's in a game?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thematically, HeroQuest is a bit of a strange beast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3rd June 2022

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

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

What's in a game?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

24th October 2021

We've logged into Board Game Arena for some Sunday night gaming.

The first game of the night was The Crew: Mission Deep Sea.

Clearly the lost continent of Mu has fascinated gamers since times immemorial, so what better than a game about discovering the sunken land: Or at least the plot for a very good trick taking game.​

What's in a game?

• Cards: There are a total of 40 cards used in the game:
  Suits: There are 5 suits. In each of 4 of the suits there are cards numbered 1-9.
  Submarine cards: This is the 5th suit, they are numbered 1-4 and are also trump cards, obviously they depict pictures of submarines.
• Task cards: This deck of 96 half-sized cards contains objectives for players to complete. On the back of each card is its 'value', the card's value may differ for 3, 4 & 5 player games.
• Communication tokens: These are double-sided tokens used for... well communicating, they displayed used and unused on either side
• Distress signal: Another double-sided token, again showing used and unused on either side.
• Captain's token: This is a standee and represents first player.
• Logbook: The game comes with a 'logbook', this serves 2 functions, firstly it provides the game's campaign information and secondly, provides space to record the results of those missions, if you like writing in the book that is.

That's more or less it for components.
Quality-wise, they're all pretty average quality and what you'd expect.
Artwork is repeated across the game's 4 main suits which are colour themed and tend to feature monochrome illustrations decorated in the suit's colour. The trump cards all feature submarines of progressively larger size.
The task deck utilises a fair amount of iconography for objectives, mostly it's fairly clear, sometimes some smaller writing appears on a card to clarify, occasionally the rulebook had to be referred to, nothing game breaking.

How's it play?
Setup

• Cards: Shuffle the deck and deal it all out to all the players face-down, in a 3-player game, 1 player will end up with an extra card which will unused by the end of the game.
  Players must keep their hand secret.
• Captain: Whoever was dealt the 4 of submarines becomes the captain and thus first player.
• Communication tokens: Give one token to each player who should put it on the unused side.
• Distress signal: Put the distress signal on its unused side into the central playing area.
• Campaign play: The Crew: Mission Deep Sea plays over a series of over 30 progressively harder and harder missions which is displayed numerically. Each mission has it's own intro story and may have unique rules such as 1 player taking all task cards etc.
• Task deck: Shuffle the task deck and deal task cards face-down.
  The number of task cards dealt depends on the difficulty of the mission, easy missions have low numbers, getting progressively higher as the missions get harder.
  Thus if a mission has a difficulty of 5, keep dealing task cards until their exact value equals 5, any task card with a value that would take the total value over 5 is discarded. This means the number of task cards that appear in a mission will not very in their objectives but also amount of objectives.
  Now task cards must be assigned to players. There are various ways of doing this and it will vary from mission to mission, sometimes players will have option to pass, sometimes the captain assigns them.
  In order to win the mission, the objectives on these task cards must be completed before players run out of cards, some objectives can be failed, which immediately ends the mission in failure.

Once the task cards have been assigned, then the game's ready to play.

​On to play
The Crew: Mission Deep Sea is a trick-taking game where one player starts a round by playing a card and the others must follow suit. 

• Distress signal: Once all cards and task cards have been allotted out and before play begins, any player can choose to trigger the distress signal. 
  When this is done, every player must pass a card to another player, whether it's clockwise or anti-clockwise is decided by the activating player.
  Once the game has started, the distress signal cannot be used.
• Communication token: Before any round begins, any player may use their communication token.
  When a player chooses to do this, they take a card from their hand and place it face-up in front of themselves and place their token on part of the card. This can be done to communicate 1 of 3 pieces of information about that card.
  Top: If the token is placed at the top of card, it means 'this is the highest value card I have in this suit'.
  Bottom: If the token is placed at the bottom of the card, it indicates that 'this is the lowest value card I have in this suit'.
  Middle: If the token is placed in the middle of the card, it communicates 'this is the ONLY card I have in this suit'.
• Opening play: The first round begins with the captain, after that, each subsequent round begins with whoever 'won' the previous round.
  The starting player plays any card of a suit of their choice face-up into the playing area.
• Following: Now, going clockwise, each player must follow.
  This means that if they can, players that follow must play a card of the same suit. They can choose which card to play if they have more than one, but they must follow suit if they can.
  If a player has no cards of the same suit, they then have other options. They may play any other card of a different suit, this includes a submarine - which is a trump, more on trumps below.
• Taking the trick: Once each player has played their card, the winner of the trick must be determined.
  Whoever played the card with the highest value wins the trick and collects all cards played in that round. A player who had to play a card in a different suit can never win the trick.
  Trump: If a submarine was played, then it trumps a card of any value, only a higher value submarine card may trump a trump. Thus the 4 submarine cannot be beaten.
• Win/lose: Once the winner of the trick has been determined, players should check to see if any of their task cards have been completed or failed.
  If all tasks have been completed, the mission is a success. Some tasks can be completed immediately, some are only completed when the round ends.
  Any failure at all ends the mission.

Endgame
Players collectively win or lose at The Crew: Mission Deep Sea.
Ultimately they win when all the missions have been completed.

Overall
A friend described The Crew: Mission Deep Sea as whist with a twist and that's sort of accurate but barely describes how much of a good game this is.

The task cards are what makes so good, there are 96 of them, providing a vast combination of objectives that can appear. Even if you complete the 30-odd missions in the logbook (Which could take a while!), there's nothing to stop players from just choosing a difficulty and playing!

Players must always pay attention during missions, simple mistakes can very quickly end them and each one will provide a distinct randomly generated challenge to face - and pitfalls to avoid! Players will have to silently co-ordinate their efforts, task cards will force them to learn to exploit all the game's rules to be successful, they'll have to learn that winning a trick is not always the way they should go and at times not having the right suit is the right choice!
I could spend ages going on about how we've played the game but instead i'll say: 

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea packs a lot of gameplay into a little package of what is essentially a couple of decks of cards and a handful of tokens. It's a game everyone should definitely try.

18th May 2021

Lockdown restrictions are easing and we're meeting at Simon's on a Tuesday IN PERSON for the first time THIS YEAR!

​Today's game was Arkham Horror: The Card Game, you too can have fun watching your character's inevitable spiral into madness as they get caught up in unsettling investigations and tangle with unspeakable Lovecraftian ​horrors through the medium of flipping over cards!

What's in a game?
​The first thing to say about Arkham Horror: The Card Game is that it's actually a Living Card Game, what does this mean? It means it's a game that has lots of expansions, extra character decks, add-ons and so on. This is Simon's game and I have no idea what packs were used, but it doesn't really matter for the purposes of this blog post.

​Unsurprisingly, most of the game's components consist of various types of cards.

• Investigator card& mini investigator card: These cards represent the character that a player uses throughout the game. Each investigator has a special ability along with a rating in each of 4 attributes (Willpower, intellect, combat & agility), finally the character will have health and sanity scores.
  The mini card is used in the actual game and placed on locations cards, the main card is kept in front of the player during play.
• Player deck: Each player in the game has their own 30 card player deck that represents a different investigator/character and consists of numerous different types of player cards, including cards unique to each character. All of a player's actions are done through their deck, this means that different characters will not only have different strengths and weaknesses, but they will also employ widely differing strategies when approaching a problem or obstacle.
  Skill cards: These cards will give the investigator a benefit to a specific skill roll and are only played when the player chooses to attempt the pertinent skill roll. Skill cards are discarded after one use.
  ​Event Card: Can be played to give the investigator some sort of situational benefit or bonus, as with skill cards, event cards are discarded after one use.
  Asset cards: Assets can be items, clothes, weapons or even people. When assets cards are played they stay in play and provide an ongoing benefit until destroyed/discarded. There are limits to the number of asset cards a investigator can have in play at any one time.
  Weakness cards: Every investigator has flaws and foibles, these are represented by weakness cards. Every player deck must include them, when they appear, they will hinder the investigator in some way or other.
• Location cards: These double-sided cards represent places that the investigators can go to investigate. Initially, they will be face-down and when an investigator arrives there, they'll be flipped over and the investigator must deal with with whatever is revealed.
• Encounter cards: Inevitably, the players will trigger encounters during play and this being a Cthulhu Mythos game; don't expect them to be pleasant!
• Act cards: This series of cards will represent narrative that drives the characters investigation.
  Agenda cards: As play progresses, so will events in the investigation, represented by the agenda cards.
• Damage tokens: There are 2 types of damage token, for health and sanity.
• Clue/Doom tokens: These double-sided tokens are used to represent clues that the investigators find or the onset of well.... doom!
• Resources: Along with clues, resource tokens are the game's main currency, often spent to activate or track abilities or assets.
• Chaos tokens: Used as the game's randomiser, they range in value from +1 to -8! Some tokens have special symbols that can trigger events in the investigation or investigator abilities.
• Chaos bag: What the tokens go into.

LEGO not included! Some of the photos will include Lego. Let me make it clear; this game does not include any Lego! Simon put together Lego minifigs that looked like the premade character deck portraits. Why? What else is a boardgamer going to do during lockdown.
All of the tokens and cards are made to the typical quality that are expected from games nowadays.
From the cards that I did get to see, they contain a lot of high quality artwork. Iconography is generally easy to read.

How's it play?
In Arkham Horror: The Card Game player's take the role of characters investigating into the Cthulhu Mythos through the form of scenarios and campaigns in a RPG-esque experience that shares the same setting as the seminal Call of Cthulhu RPG.
Setup

• Player decks: Players construct 30 card decks using the available cards. There some restrictions on what cards are used at any time specific time and some cards have levels and must be 'bought' with experience points.
  Alternatively there are several premade character decks that can be bought, which is what we used.
  Player decks are then shuffled and each player draws a hand of 5 cards.
• Resource tokens: each player takes 5 resource tokens.
• Populate chaos bag: Put the pertinent chaos tokens into the chaos bag, not all tokens are used in every scenario, this means that results drawn from the bag will alter according to the scenario's requirements.
  Interestingly; during campaign play, the same spread of tokens is used in the bag throughout the campaign, however, in-game events can cause tokens to be permanently added or removed from the bag, having a ongoing effect during the campaign.
  It's a clever mechanic in my opinion.
• Create scenario location: By placing the location cards face-down the game area is created, they are put in a certain order, such as a 3x3 or 2x3 grid or whatever and is dictated by the scenario. A scenario might take place in a nightclub with cards representing different rooms, a university campus with cards for different facilities or even a town with cards for different buildings.
• Construct act deck: Specific act cards are placed face-up stack in a particular order as dictated by the scenario. 
• Construct agenda deck: Agenda cards placed face up in a stack as dictated by the scenario. 
• Construct encounter deck: Again dictated by the scenario, the encounter deck is however, shuffled and placed face-down.

Overall
Arkham Horror: The Card Game has some interesting gameplay dynamics, the exploration and investigation elements blend quite well the unpredictable changes brought about by the changing of the agenda and act decks. Players can't take anything for granted as twists and unexpected events occur. Challenges and enemies provided by the encounter deck are varied and interesting.
Finally, I like how the chaos bag works, I like how it's stacked against the characters and playing skill and event cards is how tests are overcome, it's suitably pessimistic. I also like how the bag's effect on gameplay can be tailored and can evolve over a campaign. It's a nice mechanic.

This brings me to the campaign play, campaign scenarios seem to feature at least 3-4 outcomes that influence the next scenario with interesting changes, which is pretty good.
Characters also earn experience points from scenarios, these points can be used to buy better cards to swap into the player deck, progressively making characters better.
Being a living card game, there are a lot of accessories, expansions and extra campaigns available to purchase, these can extend the game

Rules-wise, there are a lot of rules in Arkham Horror: The Card Game about specific situations and events. Despite this, as a game it's actually in some ways fairly straightforward, player's have three actions to perform per round, that never quite feels like enough, which makes you have to prioritise and try to come up with optimal strategies, which is a good thing.
However, like other games I've played that try to provide GM-less RPG-like gameplay, the game gets fiddly and complex when managing 'GM' elements and this seems to be where the bulk of the rules are applied, especially to enemy behaviour.
It seems like a lot of effort for what somehow ultimately feels a little bit like average gameplay. The rules and glossary run to over 30 pages, in contrast, there're Cthulhu Mythos inspired pen and paper RPGS that have lower page counts.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy playing Arkham Horror: The Card Game because I did, I'm just glad that I played with someone familiar with the game.