8th December 2021 The next game of Wednesday afternoon gaming on Board Game Arena was 7 Wonders: Architects, which is essentially a 'spin-off' of and at least a little thematically similar to the titular 7 Wonders drafting game. Like it's ancestor, 7 Wonders: Architects is all about building one of the world's great wonders and no doubt dabbling in science, politics, religion and warfare while doing it. Caveat: We've only played this game digitally. What's in a game? In the physical game, when players are given/choose wonders to build, they are given that wonder's 'tray'' containing the relevant components for that wonder. However, none of this appears in the digital version
The artwork used throughout 7 Wonders: Architects is very similar to the original game which is both understandable and also pretty good, there's a nice variety of colourful illustration used throughout the cards. The same is true of the game's iconography, it looks identical to 7 Wonders and just like 7 Wonders, there's a lot of it. Most of it is pretty straightforward but players will invariably turn to the rules for an explanation from time-to-time. How's it play? Setup
On to play Play in 7 Wonders: Architects is pretty straightforward with the active player taking their turn before play proceeds to the player on their left.
Endgame The endgame is triggered at the end of any player's turn when the 5th tile for their wonder is flipped, thus completing it. Points come from a variety of sources. Wonder: Flipped tiles on wonders can provide points. Blue cards: All blue cards score victory points. Military victory tokens: These tokens contribute victory points. Progress tokens: These tokens may provide bonus victory points. Cat pawn: Whoever possess the cat pawn at the game end will earn a small amount of victory tokens. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
It's quite impressive how the 7 Wonders: architects manages to distil so much of its parent game into this simpler product and I also like how the mechanic for flipping the wonder tiles works but I'm going to go ahead and say it; I'm pretty certain that I'm not the target audience for 7 Wonder: Architects. It feels a little like a 'entry-level' game that I found a little too shallow. When it comes to a players turn, they are fundamentally only given 3 choices. Take a face-up card from the left, take a face-up card from the right or take a face-down (Unless you have the cat pawn of course.) card from the central area and that's it. I suppose that it can force players to adapt, recognise and try to exploit the available cards to their fullest advantage but I feel that the game lacks the flexibility to see this through, there's no synergy between different card types and all of this makes it hard to create any sense of strategy during the game. In fact, it feels that strategy is reduced to pick a path to victory and hope that the cards which support that strategy appear. That meant it felt my choices had little significance beyond their immediate benefits. So, if I'm not the target audience for 7 Wonders: Architects, who is? Casual or light gamers? It strikes me that the rules have enough complexity to not be immediately accessible and the game's usage of iconography only compounds this - experienced gamers will be used to this, but casuals gamers, not so much. I Feel the game sort of straddles a strange middle ground between rules complexity and light gameplay which is the opposite of what you want and makes it less accessible to casual gamers and less compelling to more dedicated gamers.
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7th December 2021 The 2nd game of Tuesday night gaming with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns in Woking was Village Pillage. The life of a villager is full of strife and woe, mostly due to those other pesky neighbouring villages who covet your turnips and hide away their own! Village Pillage is about showing those nasty neighbours who's boss! What's in a game?
Village Pillage is a card game with some tokens, the build quality is standard for a modern game and what you'd expect it to be. The game utilises a strong palette of colours to distinguish the different card types. It also makes use of brash and colourful cartoony artwork throughout the game which suitability fits its not-so-serious theme. All of this makes Village Pillage pleasing on the eye. Village Pillage only makes use of 4 symbols for the 4 card types, there's also some wording rules as well. It's not particularly complex but for a light game, it's not immediately understandable. Having said that it's in no way any kind of game breaker. How's it play? Setup
On to play In Village Pillage the objective is to acquire 3 relics before any other player does. However, each player is only directly competing with their 2 neighbours, that is the players directly to their left and right, this means that in a 4 or 5 player game, there will be 1 or 2 players that you might never interact with. A round in Village Pillage is played more or less simultaneously over 3 phases.
Endgame Play continues until a player buys their 3rd relic, in which case, they immediately win the game. Overall
There's no denying it, Village Pillage is essentially a glorified implementation of rock-paper-scissors with card, that's not a criticism of it, far from it in fact. Unlike rock-paper-scissors, which is a context-less exercise in determining a winner, in Village Pillage players will have motivations and objectives for their actions, which can and probably will change from round-to-round. Additionally, the outcome a player will get against a neighbour can be unexpected depending on the context of the resolution, sometimes there is no 'winner'. It's important to pay attention to what your neighbour is doing. If they have a lot of turnips, it may mean that they're looking to buy a market card or relic, which means that they may not try and interfere with you right now and it might be safe to grow some turnips of your own. Or it might be a good time to try and interfere with them. Provided, of course, that you have correctly anticipated their actions. Or if a neighbour has no turnips, they may be looking to steal yours and you'll need to prepare appropriately: It's no coincidence that growing turnips gets you 3 but stealing them gets you 4! It funnels players into interacting and conflicting with each other and that's what is at the core of Village Pillage. It seems deliberately quite hard to get accumulate turnips to purchase relics without trying to exploit your neighbour. All of this means that players always confronted with the possibility of having to make meaningful decisions and this is always a good thing. Whilst there are only 4 types of card, the variation within these categories in the market cards keeps the game fresh with just the right amount of unpredictability. While this sort of lightweight, chance driven conflict with other players can be a lot of fun, this kind of confrontational style won't be to everyone's taste. For a light game, I also found the rules a little fiddlier than I'd like; pretty much each card has it own rules for how it resolves against the 4 card times which can slow the game down. The timing rules are unavoidably also a little fiddly. None of this is any kind of deal-breaker and if you want a fairly straightforward, colourful, raucous filler game, then Village Pillage is worth a look. 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?
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
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.
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. 12th October 2021 It's a Tuesday and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club. The first game of the evening was Sushi Go Party!. The big brother and follow up of the excellent Sushi Go!, if you've not read it, check out my blog about Sushi Go! here and then come back. I'm not going to talk too much about Sushi Go Party!, other than where it's different to Sushi Go!. Mechanically, it shares almost exactly the same blend of drafting and set collecting rules as its predecessor. What Sushi Go Party! brings is a bunch of new cards with new ways to collect sets and/or score points. In fact, Sushi Go Party! brings so many new cards to the game, that they can't be all used at the same time and introduces the concept of menus. More on menus below. What's in a game?
The components in Sushi Go Party! are all pretty good, the tiles and board feel sturdy enough and the cards made well enough. The game maintains the same excellent, cheerfully colourful illustrations of cartoonish looking food as it's predecessor. If it ain't broke... There's not much iconography to the game, it's mostly just numbers. How's it play? It plays almost identically to Sushi Go!, the same take-a-card and pass-your-hand and set collecting mechanics played over 3 rounds that made the original so good are found here. Sushi Go Party! only differs in 2 ways. In setup, Sushi Go Party! requires the players to create a menu from the available sets of cards. This consists of the nigiri cards (Which are used in every game.), 1 rolls set, 3 appetiser sets, 2 specials sets and a dessert set. The rules provide a large, varied list of menus to use. I guess there's nothing stopping players from creating or randomly selecting their own menus. After the menu has been finalised, the relevant tiles are placed into the relevant recessed spots on the board so that all players can see what sets will be in the game. Finally, all the sets in the menu are shuffled together into a face down deck and dealt out to players as per the rules. The second difference: In Sushi Go!; the game goes through the deck without reusing it, i.e., at the end of a round, all played cards are scored, then discarded out of the game - except for puddings of course. But in Sushi Go Party!, the played cards are shuffled back into the deck, along with more pudding cards to balance out any that were taken players. Then the reshuffled deck is reused in the next round. It's a subtle difference, but it technically makes Sushi Go Party! a tiny bit more predictable as the composition of cards in the deck will 'reset' from round-to-round. Whereas in the original, once they're played, they're played. Overall
If you like Sushi Go!, you'll like Sushi Go Party!, no doubt about it and if you play Sushi Go! a lot, then this is probably also worth playing, the extra cards go a long way to increasing the game's longevity. But there's something that makes Sushi Go Party! less appealing than its predecessor and I think it's immediacy. Sushi Go! is pretty much the epitome of a quick, pick-up-and-play game; shuffle the cards, deal them out to players and you're ready to go. Clean up after the game end involves collecting the cards and putting them away. Conversely, in Sushi Go Party!; the board must be set up, a menu agreed upon and placed the relevant tiles placed on the board, then the pertinent card sets must be taken from the available sets, only then can they be shuffled and dealt to players. It doesn't end there though, when Sushi Go Party! is over, all cards must be put back into their sets before packing away. Not only that, Sushi Go Party! by necessity comes in a bigger tin, while the original is compact enough to fit in coat pocket. Gone is the portability and convenience. It sounds like I'm dissing Sushi Go Party! but I'm not, it's a great game. It's just that I don't feel the need to play it over the original, it doesn't offer a different enough experience to warrant the extra effort. However, like I said, if you play a lot of Sushi Go!, you should give this a try and if you've never played Sushi Go! or this, then you should definitely try one of them. 5th October 2021 Tuesday night is here and the Woking Gaming Club is at The Sovereigns in Woking. The first game of the evening was Jump Drive, whisk through the Galaxy instead of racing through it! Jump Drive is a streamlined version of the great Race for the Galaxy and like it, shares a setting with games New Frontiers and Roll for the Galaxy. What's in a game? Jump Drive uses 2 different types of cards which will be familiar to players of Race for the Galaxy. All cards have a cost and may also have icons for exploring, genetics or military, they may also powers, victory points or income.
Jump Drive's art style matches that of the other games in the series and at least some of the artwork is recycled and as I've said before, it's not a bad thing as it lends them all a consistent look. The game's iconography is for the most part straightforward and certainly less intimidating than Race for the Galaxy. How's it play Setup
On to play Rounds in Jump Drive are played out simultaneously over 3 phases and players have choice from 3 actions, 2 of which can be completed in 1 turn.
Endgame When any player's score reaches 50+ VPs, then the game will end with the current round. All players should calculate their VP total. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Jump Drive plays very quickly and the game can be over in a handful of turns; at the start 50 victory points may seem like a lot but thanks to the exponentially increasing scores, players will suddenly find themselves hitting the endgame. They cannot afford the luxury of meandering in their decisions or make frivolous choices. Players must learn to be ruthless with spending their hand of cards, keeping more than 1 or 2 cards back will really slow them down, this is even more true in Jump Drive than Race for the Galaxy as Jump Drive provides players the choice to put down 2 cards a time and that double cost can easily empty a players hand. Sure, it's fine and prudent to play one card at a time but if opponents are putting down 2 at a time instead, they risk streaking ahead and it may be necessary to keep up with them! Jump Drive is not only about engine building, it's about optimisation, players have try an exploit the opportunities given to them instead of searching too hard for them. It's also impressive how Jump Drive manages to distil so much of Race for the Galaxy into a streamlined, more accessible and quicker iteration. Pretty much everything that makes Race for the Galaxy a good game is is present here: The hand of cards as currency, hidden choices, engine building and synergy and so on. Jump Drive is an enjoyable experience, reasonably easy to learn with a quick set up and play time that provides players with meaningful choices, a game well worth trying: If you like Race for the Galaxy, you'll find a lot to like here. 3rd October 2021 It's time for more Sunday gaming goodness on Board Game Arena. The first game of the night was Incan Gold. Brave the temple, get the gold, avoid the traps, escape! Indy never had it so easy! He should something really frustrating - like Incan Gold. Caveat: We've only ever played Incan Gold digitally. What's in a game?
Incan Gold's utilises good, evocative art that suits its theme. How's it play? Set up
On to play Incan Gold is played over 5 rounds of varying turn lengths, in each round players decide whether to continue exploring or run away! Cards are drawn from the quest deck by the first player until everyone has chosen to flee or the game goes bust.
Endgame Play continues until 5 rounds have been completed. Players count points from the 3 types of treasure they might've acquired and any artefact cards they collected. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Incan Gold is a very focused push-you luck game, a couple of cards may be added or removed to the quest deck every round, but broadly speaking the quest deck is split 50/50 between treasures and hazards, flipping a card is like flipping a coin. It really is pushing your luck. There are also some other interesting things going on in Incan Gold. At the start of a round, the length of the exploration into the temple will have already been determined by shuffling the deck and there's no way for players to alter this. It means the game's 'luck' affects all players equally, if one player got further into the temple than all the others, it because they had the guts to push their luck further. Conversely, if a player went bust when others got back to camp, then they foolishly pushed their luck too hard! Of course, there will be occasions when both approaches may prove beneficial and players will have to judge when it's a good idea to return to camp or not. The artefact rules add a wrinkle to the game; acquiring an artefact can earn a lot of points, especially in games with higher player counts where treasures are split between more people. This of course means outlasting all the other players and surviving, adding a game of 'chicken' to Incan Gold. Using cards to secretly choose whether to continue or retreat is the final interesting rule for various reasons. Treasure on the path is split between all retreating players, so sometimes, retreating when it's obvious to retreat may not be the optimal strategy, as those treasures will get split amongst all retreating players. Pushing your luck here may prove beneficial, depending on how much treasure you've already got, but other players are thinking the same thing... When an artefact appears, it can add an extra element to this, how far is a player willing to push their luck to get the artefact? Is it worth retreating to collect treasure on the path instead? Can an opponent be bluffed into going too far. Are the other players going to fold? If a player's behaviour and motives can be predicted, it can be exploited. While a round will have a limited number of turns before it busts, a player doesn't have to reach the end, they need to be last explorer exploring. Incan Gold is a game with just 2 decisions, but there's always risk and reward behind those decisions, it can give players tricky and meaningful decisions to make. We've only played Incan Gold digitally and it's a game that employs a significant amount of randomness, something which computers are not very good at handling. It can lead to weird or erroneous results appearing in games, so it's hard to discern if our experience of the game was influenced by this not. We found Incan Gold to be a frustrating experience. The push-your-luck element of the game felt too harsh, too punishing to be fun. The 2nd hazard card seemed to pop up far too often and players frequently busted very early. Eventually we ended up barely turning over any cards before returning to camp, it seemed the most efficient move to make. It felt like the risk far outweighed the reward and it made for an unexciting experience, one we didn't feel like repeating. 26th September 2021 Sunday evening is here and I'm logged into Board Game Arena for some gaming goodness. Similo: Fables is one of several different Similo games, as you may have surmised from the title, Similo: Fables is themed after folklore and fairy tales. Caveat: We've only ever played this game digitally. What's in a game? Similo Fables comes with a deck of 30 cards. Each card depicts a character from fairy tales, folklore and other fantastical stories, characters such as the 'Three Little Pigs', 'Cheshire Cat' and 'Cinderella'. The artwork on the cards is stylised and cartoony as well as bright and colourful. It suits the game's light tone well Similo: Fables uses no iconography to speak of. How's it play? Setup
On to play Similo: Fables is a co-operative game where the glue-giver and guessers must work together. The objective is for the guessers to guess which one of the 12 displayed characters is the secret character from clues given by the clue-giver and eliminate the other 11. How is this done? Read on:
Endgame During any of the games 5 rounds, if the players eliminate the secret character card, then the game is collectively lost by all players. If the game reaches the 5th round and they correctly eliminate the final false card, then by matter of elimination, the players will left with the secret character as the last card, in which case all the players collectively win. Overall
From the brevity of this blog, you can see that Similo: Fables is a game that manages to be both easy-to-learn and also co-operative, 2 game elements that quite often don't easily sit together. While the game is uncomplicated, it has some inherent depth that derives from it's interpretive/deductive mechanics which essentially means that with these sorts of game mechanics the players provide the depth. The clue-giver must agonise about how to give the best clue and try to anticipate how the guesses will receive it. In turn, the guessers must agonise about which cards to eliminate and try to gauge what the clue-giver was thinking. These are all meaningful decisions, which is always a good thing. Although it has to be said, that the more players know each other, the easier games like this become. I also like how the stakes increase every round, more and more cards will need to be eliminated and with a dwindling selection to chose from, it gets easier to make a game ending mistake. This keeps the tension high. Similo: Fables didn't quite deliver the gameplay we were looking for though; truth be told, it was perhaps a bit too light for us. Having said that, from observing the artwork, it seems that the game is targeted at younger players and for them, I think it's a good game, promoting creative thinking and especially with its co-operative nature, where everyone wins or everyone loses. I also think it's can be a good party game for non-gamers to play. 19th September 2021 Sunday afternoon gaming at The Sovereigns continued with Love Letter: Batman. Love Letter: Batman is of course a licensed reskin of the most excellent Love Letter, a game that we've played a lot of in the past. I'm not going to talk about Love Letter: Batman too much because it differs from the original in only 2 ways - more on that later. Love Letter: Batman cleverly maps characters from the Batman milieu into the game. Batman becomes the guard, which when you think about it makes sense, since he's able to immediately take out enemies if he's smart enough. The Joker becomes the princess, power in some situations, but liability in others and he's one everyone's looking. Robin becomes the handmaiden, protecting the player by drawing enemy attacks away with his brightly coloured garb! The cards in Love Letter: Batman pretty standard quality and are all illustrated with suitably comic book styled artwork which all looks the part. The game also utilises bat-symbol themed scoring tokens - pretty cool. The rule changes
Love Letter: batman changes 2 rules from the original.
I've heard it said that it this rule makes the game play quicker, but the higher victory threshold for 3-4 player kind of negates that. Conversely; in classic Love Letter, even if one player is 1 point away from winning and all the other players are at 0 points, until that player has won that final hand to win that final point, it's not over. Yes, it'd be a hard turnaround and a longshot, but it doesn't change the fact that nothing is over 'til everything is over. Want my opinion? Just play Love Letter: Batman as classic Love Letter. Yes, it does make having this version sort of of pointless, but the classic version is the best version and there's nothing stopping you yelling dinner, dinner, dinner dinner, BATMAN when you play a card. 11th September 2021 Wogglecon was drawing to a close and the final game of the day was co-operative word-puzzler Letter Jam. What's in a game?
The numbered token are bright and colourful art-wise and while simplistic, the setup cards are pleasant enough. Otherwise, there's pretty much no more art, but this is a word game, how much art is needed? The game has practically no iconography that needs learning. How's it play? In Letter Jam each player is given a 5-letter word in the form of 5 face-down letter cards. Then the players have to collectively guess their individual words by looking at the clues given by other players and filling in the gaps. Setup
On to play
Endgame Discussion and cluegiving continue until one of the following 2 conditions are met. There are no more clue tokens or players are happy with their deductions and want to guess their words. Now all players take their 5 cards and keeping them face-down, rearrange them to spell the word they were originally given. Once this is done all players simultaneously reveal their words. If everyone has spelt a word, then everyone wins! Interestingly, it does not have to be the word that was given, so long as it's a real word, it counts! If one or more players hasn't spelt a word... well... there's always next time. Overall
Letter Jam is a pretty clever little game that will tax players' grammatical and spelling abilities. Players will want to try and spell out distinct or unusual words so that there's less ambiguity for other players who will then have a better opportunity to guess their own letters. Ultimately though, players will probably end up having to employ deductive reasoning and make educated guesses and hope for the best. If you're an analytical player who sees all the possible variations in a situation, you'll probably end up overthinking Letter Jam. There's not much more that can be said about Letter Jam, the game's depth doesn't arise from mechanics, it comes from players' abilities to spell words. Letter Jam is a light game to play, has a lot of replay value and plays up to 6. If I have any criticism of Letter Jam, it might that the game feels a bit too overlong for what it is and rules are slightly fiddly. Otherwise it's mostly straight forward to learn and the game will have crossover appeal to non-gamers and is a reasonably fun cooperative game to play. 15th August 2021 Sunday evening is here again and I'm my living room logged into Board Game Arena on my PC for some gaming goodness. First up was 6 nimmit!. 6 nimmit! is 6 takes in German, it's quite an abstract game and the name will make sense when you seen the rules. What's in a game? 6 nimmit is a card game and comes with a deck of 104 cards number from 1 to... you guessed it... 104 and that's it for game components. Each card also displays one or more symbols which are endearingly known as bullheads. Bullheads are bad. The cards are normal quality as you'd expect. There's pretty much no artwork to speak off, other than the symbol for bullheads and colours used to mark out cards which have more than 1 bullhead symbol. The game has no iconography other than numbers and bullheads and being an abstract game, doesn't need anything else. How's it play? Setup
On to play 6 nimmit! is played over several rounds and the goal is for players to empty their hand of cards and avoid collecting other cards as much as possible each round, which is not as easy as you might think... How is this done, well read on.
Endgame Play continues through rounds until at the end of a round, in which at least one player has accumulated 66 or more bullheads.. Points are tallied, the player who has collected the lowest number of bullheads wins. Overall
As per the brevity of this blog post, 6 nimmit! is a very simple game to learn, it's also a curious mix of strategy and unpredictability. The objective is obviously to try and not collect cards, they'll be times that a player will want to play lower value cards to 'get into' a row before it gets to 5 cards, conversely, they'll times they want to play higher cards to go later and hope someone plays the 6th card in a row to clear it out. Sometimes players will want to play very low and choose which row to take because it's the best of a bad set of choices, the bullheads a row may contain can vary greatly. Also choosing which row to take presents a player with the opportunity to mess with other players. Watching a row you planned to play a card into vanish and leave a much worse alternative is quite the surprise. And that's the thing, while some card plays can be much safer than others, it's almost always never 100% safe and it's other players bring that element of aforementioned of unpredictability to the game. Quick to pick-up-and-play, 6 nimmit! can be a lot of fun with its surprises and reversals -of-fortune, provided you don't find playing fairly randomised games frustrating and you're not too much of a serious gamer. |
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