3rd November 2020

It's a Tuesday and I'm not at the Woking Gaming Club, I am however in Woking, in Simon's converted home-office for what would be the last time I play a game with a friend in person before lockdown 2 began.
It was an unusual setup, two us were in Simon's office and Colin was dialling in via Zoom, able to view the game through Simon's phone which was clamped above the table.

​Tonight we played Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, the little sibling of Gloomhaven. Like Gloomhaven, it's a cooperative RPG with a legacy element.

Caveat: This blog post may differ a little from the ones I normally write. When we played the game, a number of the components were not used, instead they were replaced with an app, it also allowed Colin to remotely log into the app and see the same information we did. Additionally, both other players were very familiar with the game.

What's in a game?
Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion comes with a lot of components and a lot of cards.

• Player board: The game has 4 player boards, one for each of the different character classes. One side has a backstory for the character and other has a illustration and some information on hit points as well as allocated spaces for item cards, discarded, lost and active cards. The artwork here is good and the board high quality and made of thick card.
• Character decks. Each character has their own deck and there are a lot of cards. Only 10 are ever used in a single scenario, but as a character levels up, they will gain access to a wider selection of cards and more powerful cards too, which can be used to construct the 10 card deck. Each card has 2 actions on it, a top half action and a bottom half action (More on this below.), as well as being  numbered from 1-99.
• Combat decks: Each character also has their own combat deck, which are used to modify attack scores during combat. Generally these range from +2 to -2, there are also x2 cards and a 🚫card (Which basically cancels the attack.). As a character levels up, they will have the opportunity to acquire perks​ that remove negative cards and add positive cards to the deck, thus improving their combat effectiveness. Curse and blessing cards can also be temporarily added to a deck for a single scenario.
• Item cards: Characters can buy item cards, these are single use (Per scenario.), once per turn or continuous use cards. These can represent potions, equipment and magic items. There are limits to the number of item cards a character can have equipped in a scenario.
• Objective cards: At the start of each scenario, each player is given 2 objective cards, they pick 1 and discards the other. If the objective is met during the course of play, it contributes towards acquiring perks.
• City cards: In between scenarios, characters may have a random encounter as determined by these cards. They provide the players with an A or B choice that may aid or hinder the characters in the next scenario.
• Map books: There are two coil-bound books that lie completely flat when opened. They contain all of the maps for the scenarios and can be combined for larger maps. Maps can depict starting points. spawning points, objectives, obstacles and dangerous areas.
• Map tokens: There tokens are placed on to the maps and used to represent details on the maps, such as traps, treasures, damaged areas etc.
• Character models: Each character has a model and an upgraded model (For when they reach level 5.).
• Enemy standees: Monsters and enemies are represented by card standee tokens. There are also white and yellow stands the standees go into, yellow stands are used to represent elite enemies.

Those were pretty much all the components that were used. There are enemy combat decks which are constructed for each scenario that determine how combat goes for enemies as well as how and when any special. There are also tokens used to track health for both characters and enemies. Most of this was handled by the app.

What art there is on the components is good and the components are of a high quality.

How's it play?
The game follows the paradigm of an RPG; there are a series of linked scenarios that form a campaign. As characters progress from scenario to scenario, they accumulate experience points and become stronger. Characters are persistent and they and their progress carry over between scenarios.
There are also legacy elements here, decisions that players make during the game will have some sort of effect later on.

Setup
The setup is fairly quick and simple, mostly because the game uses map books instead of tiles.

• The map book(s) are opened at the relevant pages. Any relevant tokens are placed on to the map.
• Players construct decks for their characters and choose what items to equip. They also alter (If needed.) their combat decks, shuffle it and put it face down.
• Enemies are placed into standees and placed on their starting spots.
• Enemy decks are constructed. The game is designed to scale in difficulty according to how many characters will be participating.

On to playing
In each round, the players will choose 2 cards from their deck to play. Enemy behaviour is dictated by the game.

• Choose cards: Each character can perform 2 actions per round - 1 per card played. They can perform 1 top action and 1 bottom action per round, not 2 top or 2 bottoms actions.
• Determine initiative: All action cards are numbered from 1-99. Players can choose from 1 of the 2 numbers on their chosen cards as their initiative. The lower the number, the faster the character acts. Thus players have some choice of when they act. Enemy initiative is determined by the game.
• Carry out actions: All characters and enemies act in initiative order. When a player acts, the character can do both of their actions in any order the player chooses (Regardless of what card was used for initiative.), moreover players don't have to stick to the actions they wanted to use when they initially chose to the cards they played. That is, if circumstances have changed, players have some flexibility in how they respond. Most actions typically involve attacking either in melee or at range and movement. Each class has its own unique abilities such as healing, pushing enemies away or pulling them in, inflicting conditions such as stunning, poisoning etc. Some actions will fill a room with 1 of 6 types of elemental energy and some actions get bonuses if they consume particular elemental energy. Every card also has a basic default move or attack action they can perform. Finally some particularly powerful cards are lost when used (See below for an explanation.). After the actions are completed, the cards are discarded. Enemy actions are dictated by the game.
• Use item cards: Generally, items, equipment or potions can be used at any time as a free action.
• Rest: When it comes to choosing what cards to play, when a character runs out of action cards (Or only has 1 card left.) then they will need to rest. There are 2 types of rest; short and long rests. For a short rest, the player takes their discard pile back into their hand, shuffles tthem and randomly selects a card which is lost. If a player takes a long rest, they retrieve their discarded cards and choose a card to discard: Additionally they regain 2 hit points, however they also have to skip a turn. Cards that are lost, are permanently removed from play for the remainder of that scenario (They cannot be retrieved during a rest.).
• Combat: A card or action will list its damage and range (If applicable.), this is modified by drawing a card from the relevant combat deck. Mostly this will alter the damage by +2 to -2, occasionally it will be doubled or cancelled. As the campaign progresses, cards will be added to combat decks, these include cards which may inflict conditions or generate elemental energy.

I could go into a lot more detail about how combat and actions work as they are a wide variety different conditions and special moves available. But that's the gist of it.

Endgame
A scenario will end when its win/lose conditions are met.

If the players win the scenario they gain experience points, characters gain experience points according to the scenario. Additionally; certain action cards grant characters experience points when played, these are added up as well.
When a character acquires enough experience points, they will level up and gain whatever benefits it confers.

During the game, enemies that are defeated will drop treasure. If characters collect these treasures, they gain gold after the scenario ends.
Gold can then be spent to acquire more or better item cards.

Next, there is an encounter as determined by a randomly drawn city card.

After this, players are given the choice of what scenario to attempt next. This may involve adding a sticker to the map or some other legacy type action.

Overall
There's a lot to think about here.
There's a lot of components to the game too and it might be a bit fiddly. But it seems to me that most of this occurs during setup. I can't imagined how much setup the full Gloomhaven requires without the map books?

The character-gameplay is actually pretty straightforward, simple to learn and goes smoothly enough.
Enemy behaviour may be a bit trickier and it probably pays to have some one who is familiar with the rules (As we did.) when playing.

The action card mechanic was pretty well implemented, it not only gives players options and a bit of flexibility, but meaningful decisions to make.

The rest mechanic is also a good addition, it forces players to act, be decisive and deters them from trying to play overly safe and spend too many turns resting to regain hit points.
Since a character deck only has 10 cards, it means that a plaery will empty their deck in 5 rounds. Then they have to decide to discard 1 card and miss a turn, or discard one at random and continue, which can be a hard decision.
Now you have 9 cards and only 4 turns before facing the same dilemma. Additionally, some cards are discarded when use and so on.
All of this serves to create sense of urgency, a need to complete the scenario before player decks become too depleted. Players will want to minimise the time they waste carrying out long rests.

Combat is a bit of a mixed bag.
There are a good number of special moves, conditions and effects that play a role in combat. The four different characters can feel different in combat because of it.

I dislike the cancel result on the combat deck that waste an attack, I imagine that if a player has set up a powerful move using a card that gets discarded - only to have that entire attack negated, it must feel gutting.
​
I'm not sure how I feel about using individual decks as a randomizer for combat, I can see the appeal of having a customisable individual randomizer for each player, but it seems like having components for the sake of having components. It works well enough, but I'm sure a similar effect could achieved with a single bunch of dice that are collated for individual rolls.

Gloomhaven/Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion are 2 games that are sort of chasing a board game holy grail. These are games that are trying to an give RPG style gameplay and experience, but without a GM.
It's a tricky goal; too simple and it becomes bland and repetitive, too complex and the game gets bogged down in rules, rules exceptions and components.
Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion seems to straddle that line fairly well.

Although as I mentioned above, we did use an app to facilitate play. It did have the advantage of allowing a player to join in a board game where he played over zoom!
Maybe this is the way to go, where an app does the GM heavy lifting, I've seen at least one game that requires an app, no doubt there will be more games that do that.

But this raises the question of legacy, an older game can (And probably will.) be rendered obsolete if the companion app becomes unavailable.

Overall though; I was happy enough to play it and will be continuing with the campaign I joined.

6th October 2020

For the first time in nearly 7 months we're in Woking at 'The Sovereigns'. The last we were here was the 17th March!

The Woking Gaming Club isn't really back up-and-running yet, but a few of us have raised our heads above the parapets to wave the flag and of course; play some games.

The first game of the night was 'Medium', a light word-association card game.

What's in a game?

• ​Medium cards; there are 270 of these, each card displays a single word, written normally and upside down so two people can easily read them at the same time.
• Crystal ball cards; there are 3 of these, each one has an illustration of a crystal ball.
• Scoring tokens; there are 3 types of double sided scoring token, scoring 5-6, 3-4 or 1-2 points. On the other side they are numbered 1, 2 or 3.

That's it for the components, the quality is perfectly acceptable and the small amount of art used in the game is also OK.

How's it play?
Before play begins the deck must be created, the number of cards used depends on the number of players. The deck is shuffled and the 3 crystal ball cards are shuffled into the bottom third of this deck.
6 cards are then deal to each player.
Finally, the scoring tokens are laid out with the scores face down and the 1, 2 and 3 numbers displayed.

• Medium is both a competitive and cooperative game, this means that the active player will partner up with the player to their left.
• The active player and their partner in turn each play a single card facing each other. Thus there will be 2 words displayed. 
• Now both players try to think of a common word between the 2 displayed words (It can't be a word on the two cards.). When they're both ready, they both count down 3... 2... 1... and both say their word simultaneously.
• If the 2 words match; then a number 1 token (Worth 5-6 points.) is placed between the 2 players and play progresses to the next player.
• If the 2 words don't match; then the 2 players must guess again. Except this time they must try and find a common word between the 2 different words they just spoke, not the words on the cards, furthermore they can't use the words on the cards or any previously spoken words as the common word. If the 2nd guess succeeds, then a number 2 token (Scoring 3-4 points.) is taken. If they failed again, they get a 3rd and final attempt using the last 2 words they spoke, the same rules above still apply. Success means a token scoring 1-2 points is taken, failing a 3rd time means they score 0 points.
• Play progresses until all players have been the active player, then all players draw cards to refill their hands.

Endgame
Play continues until the 3rd crystal ball card is drawn, which triggers the endgame. The game then continues until the current round is completed and all players have had an equal number of turns.

Each player then tallies up the scores from the tokens to their left and right​, highest score wins!

Overall
There's not much to say. As you can see from above, Medium is a light game that may appeal to casual players, it is a game that can be quickly learnt.

It's not a deep game either, random chance can play a part and sometimes you'll get 2 words that have no obvious commonality. There is some room for strategy in Medium though. The player that goes 2nd will have the opportunity to play a hopefully suitable second word.

We didn't play the game extensively, but it seemed if a common word wasn't guessed first time, the 2nd and 3rd guesses weren't going to be any better.

It's a strangely stressful game, I think it's because your guess will also affect your partner's score.
Conversely; when it's not your time, observing how other people play is fun.

One potential issue was the scoring, each 'level' of scoring has a 1-point variation in its score and some people are not fond of it. We house ruled it and used the other side of the tokens for scoring, a successful first guess would get 3 points, down to 1 for a successful 3rd guess.

If you like somewhat stressful word-association games, then you might like this. Easy to learn and play, it's a reasonable little filler game.

10th November 2019

Gaming Sunday continues at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking.

Next up was; 'Legends Untold'. Legends Untold is a sort of hybrid card game RPG. The players take on the roles of nascent heroes thrust into adventure by circumstance.
These heroes will form a party and explore either caves or dungeons, whilst the role of 'GM' is played by various decks of cards.

There are 2 Legends Untold games,  'The Weeping Caves' & 'The Great Sewer'.

What's in a game?
Legends Untold packs a lot of cards into a relatively small box. These include:

• Hero cards: These oversized cards are the player characters. They each have 6 stats rated from 1 to 3 and the stats for a dagger (A basic weapon all PC's have.).
• Talent cards: Each PC has access to various talents, these are listed on cards. When talents are used, they become 'exhausted' and are 'tapped' (Turned sideways.). Talent cards are also used to track wounds, when a PC takes a wound, then a talent becomes 'drained' and is flipped over - irrespective of whether the talent is exhausted or not.
• Equipment cards: These cards include cards for weapons, outfits and kits. Players will accumulate these over time. Kit cards can be exhausted like talents.
• Scenario cards: The game has various scenarios and even a campaign. These are all detailed on the scenario cards.
• Location cards: Oversized cards that depict various locations. These cards contain information on lighting, exits, environmental effects and encounters.
• Environment cards: There are lots of environmental cards. Events, discoveries, barriers, foes, obstacles, booby traps and loot.
• Character tokens: These are used to show character status, such as poisoned, unconscious etc.
• More tokens: Tokens for environmental effects, searched areas, supplies etc.
• 4 dice: Normal 6 sided dice.
• Rule books: Normally I wouldn't bother mentioning rule books. But Legend Untold has a 'read this first' booklet which is 48 pages long and an actual rule book that is 60 pages long! There's some repetition between the 2 booklets, but even so, that's a lot of rules.

There are some nice illustrations on the cards, but mostly they pictures are quite small as many cards have a lot of text on them. The other tokens are of a reasonable quality, (Nothing to write home about, but enough I guess, to blog about!). 

How's it play?
​The setup for each game depends on which scenario card is used. The scenario will tell the players the number of card to put into each of the game's decks.

• Location deck. The scenario will list a starting location and any specific locations. Any remaining locations are randomly drawn and added to the location deck.
• Event deck: Event cards are randomly drawn to form the event deck. This deck is used to determine both encounters and the passage of time.
• Barrier deck: Created from the barrier cards.
• Obstacle deck: Created from the obstacle cards.
• Adventure deck: This is created by using foe, discovery, loot and booby trap cards.
• Player's decide on which characters they will be playing and take the relevant equipment and talent card.

And now the game is ready to start.
The game is divided into 4 phases.
Scouting phase

• The players decide who will be 'The Scout' and who will be 'The Guard', remaining players are in 'The Centre'.
• The party should decide whether they are 'sneaking' or not and which exit to take. Each exit is either 'light', 'dark' or 'ambient'. Sneaking takes more time than simply exploring.
• A card from the location deck is turned over.  The location card will have a 'feet' icon, this is the entrance to this location. The card will also have 3 numbers, one each for light, dark and ambient. The player designated as the scout makes a scouting test versus the relevant number. Sneaking adds +2 to this roll. The result of this roll will determine the party's 'readiness', the party will be either 'careless', 'bold' or 'alert'. Each status will have an impact on later actions.

Adventure phase

• When the party enters a new location, it will list what the party must deal with.
• Obstacle: A card from the obstacle deck is turned over. This will results in either a 'trial' or a 'trap'. A trial is a type of 'test', see below for more on tests and traps.
• Enemies: If the party must deal with foes, the party must turn over cards from the adventure deck until a foe card is drawn. When drawing cards from the adventure deck, any loot cards drawn before a foe is drawn is put to one side and will be the reward for defeating the foe. If a booby trap card is drawn before a foe card, it must be resolved.When a foe card is drawn, it must be defeated. See below for combat.
• Discovery: Discoveries are like non-combat encounters. Cards must be drawn from the adventure deck until a discovery card is drawn. If a loot card is drawn before a discovery card, it becomes the reward for successfully resolving the discovery. If a booby trap is drawn before a discovery card, it must be resolved. When a discovery card is drawn, it will take the form of a test, the party can choose to attempt the test or ignore the discovery.

When the adventure phase is completed, the game moves on to the next phase.
Exploration phase

• Each location card may have one or more 'search zones'.
• Barrier: Draw a card from the barrier deck and resolve the card drawn.
• Search: First the party must decide whether to do a 'quick' search or a 'cautious search. A cautious search take time. Draw 3 cards from the adventure deck when searching, any loot cards drawn are treasure that has been found. Any booby trap cards drawn must be resolved.

Rest phase

• The party automatically have a short rest after the exploration phase. This allows them to 'reset' talent and kit cards they used during scouting and adventure phases.
• The party may choose to rest longer in order to 'heal' drained talent cards. It takes 2 time to heal a wound. Negative condition such as fear and poison are also removed.
• If the location card has a campfire, then healing takes half the time.

That's it for what happens in a turn. But how it happens is detailed below.

Time and events
As explained above, the scenario will determine how big the event deck is. A common size is 6 cards.

• When the party uses up time, the top card from the event deck is discarded face-down into the discard pile.
• When the last card in the event deck is reached, it is turned over and the event is triggered. After the event has been resolved, the card is removed from play (You cannot get the same event twice!). The remaining cards in the discard pile becomes the new event deck. Thus the event deck will dwindle in size over time.
• Sometimes the party will get lucky and will gain time. When this happens, a card from the discard pile is returned (Still face-down.) to the top of the event deck. The game even provides a couple of tokens use if there is no discard pile.
• What happens if the event deck is totally depleted? If this happens; then the party can longer choose to take actions that will use up time. If something forces the party to use time, then a PC must exhaust or drain a talent.

Tests
Legends Untold has lots of different types of tests. Lots of them.

• Basic test: This type test will have a pass/fail result.
• Table test: This type of test will have varying degrees of success and failure.
• Staged test: These tests require multiple success to get an overall success.
• Party test: Yeah, as the name suggests, these test require all of the PCs to pass in order to succeed.

not only are there different types of tests. There are different rules for each time. Some can be tried more than once, others can only be tried once. Some tests can be avoided, some cannot. Some will give you a choice of tests that use different stats and will have different success/failure outcomes etc.
Like I said, lots of types of tests.
Traps
There are 2 types of trap. A normal trap which is encountered when drawing a card from the obstacles deck and a booby trap drawn from the adventure deck, either before combat or when searching.

• ​Trap: What happens when a trap is drawn from the obstacles deck will depend upon the party's readiness. If the party is careless, the trap is immediately triggered. If the party is bold, then a test must be made, on a success the trap is avoided, failure means the trap is triggered. If the party is alert, then the party can decide to back to or to make the test.
• Before combat: If a booby trap is drawn when looking for a foe in the adventure deck. Readiness once again makes the difference. If the party are careless, the trap is triggered. If the are bold or alert, the trap is avoided.
• When searching: When searching, the party must decide whether to do a 'quick search' or a 'careful search', a quick search costs no time, but a careful search costs 1 time. If the party are quick searching when a booby trap is drawn, it is automatically triggered, if they were searching carefully, the trap is avoided.

Combat
Combat in Legends Untold occurs over a number of stages.

• Engagement: The party rolls for surprise. Depending on the result, either the party, foes or no one is surprised. Sneaking modifies the the chances of success. If one side does win surprise, it gives a bonus for the first round of combat.
• Ranged combat: PCs may decide to engage in ranged combat if they have ranged attacks. During ranged combat, attacks alternate between the PCs and their enemies (Provided the enemies can launch ranged attacks) until all ranged attacks are resolved. Each ranged attack (For both PCs and foes.) is conducted by rolling against a chart which will give an outcome from a variety of results.
• Melee combat: Any remaining PCs will engage their enemies in melee. Unlike ranged attacks, enemies do not roll to attack in melee. The weapon charts used by PCs determine if an enemy wounds a PC or not.
• Morale: Under certain conditions, enemies will retreat from the fight. PCs can also choose to retreat during this stage of combat.

OK, there are more rules than this. But this is mostly what will occur all the time.

Endgame
Each scenario has its own victory or defeat criteria.
Generally, if all the PCs are knocked unconscious, it's a defeat.
​
Campaign
Legends Untold includes rules and components for a campaign. The campaign is about saving the refugees of an invasion
During the campaign, PCs will increase in level as it progresses. Additionally, the results of a scenario will have some impact on later scenarios in the campaign. This includes rating the players on how many refugees they managed to save.
It's sort of like a legacy game but without being asked to rip up any cards!

Overall
There's a lot to think about here. The game certainly packs a lot of stuff into a small box. But is it good stuff?

The exploration mechanics are quite good. Choosing to follow light or dark routes both have advantages and disadvantages. I like how the readiness rules interact with traps.

​I like the event deck and how it works. I like how as the event deck gets smaller, events become more common. It gives players the feeling that they are working against  the ticking clock.
Decisions regarding the spending of time become very important.

I like how talent cards are also used as hit points. It removes an extra element of bookkeeping from a game that already has a lot of things going on.
Losing an ability when wounded makes you feel weaker.
When PCs gain levels, they gain additional talent card, thus they also gain more hit points.

But perhaps there are too many character stats and thus tests related to them. More often than not, I found that stats became irrelevant, because across all the characters, they always tended to be someone who gave a +2 bonus.
Not only that, there are so many rules regarding tests, that the rule book is never closed.
I understand need for variety and the need to make all PC stats relevant. But tests could use some streamlining. In my mind more complexity does not equate to more depth.

Combat is equally clunky. It's quite confusing that ranged and melee combat are the same but also different. In melee , it's good that both attack and defence are resolved in a single roll. But why couldn't the same philosophy be applied to ranged combat? I know that the game needs to differentiate between PCs and foes who do and don't have ranged attacks. But I feel that combat needed more work, more testing and more streamlining.

Finally, the setting is quite uninteresting. It's pretty generic and uninspiring. Because of the I found it hard to engage with the game. Perhaps it as the steep learning curve. Or perhaps it's because I've played quite a lot of RPGs over the years

However, it's quite an ambitious game in its own way. I'm not willing to write it off without trying it another couple of tries.

27th October 2019

Sunday at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking and our gaming continues.

The final game of the day was 'Forbidden Desert', the second game in the 'Forbidden series' of co-operative games.

'Forbidden Desert' is a co-operative game of exploration.

The players are a band of adventurers and explorers, scouring the desert (Which I guess is a forbidden?) for the remains of a legendary flying machine. But during your trip, a ferocious sand storm forces your helicopter to crash in the remains of a lost city. The only way to escape the desert is to fly back out of the desert. Your helicopter is a wreck, so your only hope of survival is to find and reconstruct the flying machine before the storm and desert spell your doom!

What's in a game?
'Forbidden Desert' comes in a natty tin box, the game's components are good quality with some nice artwork.

• City tiles: There are 24 of these tiles, except for the starting tile, they are all turned face-down at the start of the game.
• Sand tokens: There's a whole stack of these, they are used to represent the moving sands throughout the city.
• Storm track: As the game progresses, the storm will get more and more violent. This is tracked on the storm track.
• Storm cards: This deck of cards are used to dictate the sandstorm's behaviour.
• Gadget cards: Useful cards that the players acquire during the game.
• Flying machine: The flying machine is a plastic model. The 4 missing parts of it are made of plastic, metal and acrylic. They are weighty and high quality.
• Adventurer classes: There are 6 of these, each class has it's own card and meeple. Each character has their own water track and also has it's own unique ability.

How's it play?
Setup.

• Randomly deal or choose a class for each player. Each class has it's unique ability and water track shown on the pertinent card. Each class also has its meeple.
• Shuffle the location tiles and place them face-down in a 5x5 grid. Hang on, a 5x5 grid has 25 spaces, but there are only 24 tiles? When placing the tiles into a grid, the centre space is left empty. The empty space is the 'eye of the storm'. The starting tile and 3 oasis tiles can be identified even when face-down.
• Place sand tokens on to 8 of the city tiles in a 'diamond' shape. The remaining sand tokens should be placed in a stack close to the playing area.
• Shuffle the gadget cards into a face-down deck.
• Shuffle the storm cards into a face-down deck.
• Set up the storm track, there are different tracks depending on how many players there are. Additionally, the game has several difficulty levels that determine the starting point on the track.
• One of the city tiles is double sided and represents the crashed helicopter. This is the adventurer's starting tile. Place all the meeples on to this tile.

Now, we're good to go.

Player actions
During the active player's turn, they have 4 actions that they can perform (in any order and repeatedly.). These are:

• Move: A player can move their character's meeple left, right, up or down to an adjacent tile, provided there is no more than 1 sand token on that tile. If there is more than 1 sand tile, then the area is blocked by a sand drift and is currently inaccessible. Furthermore if the tile the meeple is currently standing on has more than 1 sand token on it, then the meeple is trapped!
• Excavate: If a meeple is standing on a face-down tile with no sand tokens on it, then the player can excavate and turn it face-up. There are several different types of tile in the game and different actions will occur when they are revealed. Some tiles are blank, so nothing happens. There are the 3 'oasis' tiles, one is a mirage, the other 2 will provide water when excavated. There are 3 tunnel tiles, this allows characters to move between them with 1 action regardless of their locations in the game area, tunnels also provide shelter from the sun. There are 8 'clue tiles', each part of the flying machine has 2 clues associated with it. One clue shows the vertical position of the part and the other for the horizontal position. When both clues are revealed, they are cross-referenced to show the actual location of the part. Launch pad tile, nothing happens when this tile is revealed, but when the players have acquired all 4 machine parts, they must all meet on the launch pad to escape and win the game. Finally any card that displays a 'cog' in the corner allows the active player to draw a gear card.
• Remove sand: As sand tokens build up in the playing area, they will need to be removed for various reasons. For 1 action a character may remove a sand token from their tile or an adjacent tile. The sand token is returned to the sand token supply.
• Retrieve part: When a machine part has been revealed, if a character is on the same tile as the part, they can spend an action to retrieve it.

The storm
Once the active player has completed their 4 actions, the storm gets to act.
Cards are drawn from the storm deck, the number drawn depends upon how severe the storm is, this ranges from 2-6 cards. There are 3 types of storm card.

• Storm moves: This is by far the most common card in the storm deck. The empty space in the game area represents the 'storm'. When the storm moves, it shuffles a tile into the empty space and creates a new empty where the tile was previously located. Depending upon circumstances, up to 4 tiles can be moved this way. Every tile that is moved this way accumulates a sand token. Sand tokens can build up very quickly.
• ​High temperature: When this storm card is drawn, the adventurers encounter savage heat. If a character is on a tunnel tile, they are safe from the heat. Every character not in a tunnel must lose 1 water from their water track.
• Storm intensifies: When this card is drawn, move the marker 1 space further along the storm track. After moving the marker 3 or 4 spaces, the storm will reach 'the next level' and from the next turn onward an additional storm card will be drawn at the end of a player's turn.

Gear Cards
Gear cards are all beneficial for the players and can be played at any time by the owning player.

Endgame
Losing conditions:

• If at any time, a characters water track reaches the end, then the character dies and the players lose the game.
• If at any time, the storm reaches it's maximum level, the players lose the game.
• If at any time, sand tokens need to be put on a tile and there are none remaining, the players lose the game.

Winning condition:
If the players manage to retrieve all 4 missing parts of the machine, all manage to reach the launch pad at the same time and the launch pad is unblocked. Then the players win the game. As the adventurers escape in their new flying machine.

Overall
Forbidden Desert has essentially 2 timers running, the sand tokens pouring on to the tiles and the strength of the storm (Which also increases the rate in that sand tokens appear.).
Water is a resource that must be managed.

Players are faced with the choice of being prudent to preserve their water levels, acting to manage the sand token levels or having to work towards their objectives. Especially since the storm can move the game area about which can cause big problems or be an opportunity to exploit.
I think the key to doing well in Forbidden Desert are the characters. Each character has their own special ability. Remembering to utilise these abilities and working them into any strategy used vital in my opinion.

​Forbidden Desert is a cooperative game in which the players play against 'the game'.
Games of this type must balance strategy and randomness in order to be good games.
Too much strategy and once the players learn the game's systems, they'll learn to rinse it every time.
Too much randomness and player decisions become meaningless as their fates will be left to the whim of luck.

Forbidden Desert manages to straddle this line pretty well and is one of the better examples of this type of game.

12th July 2019

Friday gaming in lieu of WFRP continues with the 3rd game - 'Pit Crew'

We've all seen it, when a racing car pulls into the pits and the pit crew goes mental changing the tyres and refuelling the car.

Pit Crew is a 'team-based' card game that attempts to emulate this frenzied burst of activity by being a 'real-time' game.
How does this work? Well let's get to it.

What's in a game?
Pit Crew is a team based game and players will be in up to 3 teams of 1-3 people each. Thus the game supports 2-9 players. Components include:

• Game board: Depicting a oval race track.
• Wooden cars: To go on the race track.
• Car sheets: These each depict a racing car, one is given to each team. Each car sheet has 5 numbers, one of each tyre and one for the roof (Which represents fuel in the game.).
• A large deck of cards: Numbered 1-10 in black and white.
• A smaller deck of cards with special abilities.
• 2 Dice: normal six sided dice.

The components are fine, unremarkable and completely functional.

How's it play?
Firstly, all players are split up into teams of up to 3 each.
Each team is given a car sheet and each team is dealt a hand of numbered cards (Split between the team players.).

The objective of Pit Crew is to change the tyres and refuel your car as a team and then race it around the track on the game board. All of this is done in real time!

Changing tyres
To change tyres, the team must play 4 cards next to each tyre.

• The value of the first card must be 1 high or lower than the number shown on the car sheet. Thus if the car sheet has a 7 next to a tyre, the value of the card played by the team must be 6 or 8.
• The value of the second card must be 1 higher or lower than the first card played.
• And so on, until all 4 cards have been played.
• This must be done for all 4 tyres.

Refuelling
In order to refuel the car, multiple cards must be played on the refuelling number on the car sheet. The combined values of all of these cards must equal the value on the car sheet. Thus if the car sheet has a value of 23 for refuelling, then playing a  6, 4, 10 & 3 would equal 23.

Exiting the pits
Once all 4 tyres and refuelling has been completed, the car can exit the pits and enter the race.
However there's a little twist here. The better the pit change, the quicker the car comes out of the pits (The more spaces it moves.).
How is this calculated?
This is where the colours of the cards come in play.
If the cards used to change tyres are of a certain colour combination, then the car gets a bonus when leaving the pits.
The same is the case for refuelling.

Conversely; if the cards played on the tyres or fuel are the wrong numbers, then the car will suffer a penalty when leaving the pits.
If the penalty is bad enough, the car might crash out of the game!

Racing
Once a car exits the pit lane and begins racing, the team rolls a die to move. This rolling is real time and the quicker they roll the dice, the more they can move.
However once all cars have exited the pits, real time rolling ceases. From now on all rolling is done in turn order until the race is completed.

A game consists of several races. After a race is completed, each team is given a 'bonus' card.
Bonus cards confer random special abilities that can help a team or be used to hinder an opposing team.

Endgame
Once all the races have been run, the team that has won the most races wins.

​Overall
Pit Crew is a small, quick and easy game to learn. Which is good, because stopping to query the rules in the middle of a real time game could prove tricky.

This is the first real time tabletop game I've played and I've always been a bit suspicious of the concept. But Pit Crew was fun. I think this partially because each team plays separately and does not interfere with each other during the real time phase of the race. You have your teammates to consider!

Pit Crew is a cooperative game about completing tasks quickly, but accurately in a team. The Pit Crew theme fits it very well.

I think that Pit Crew is a game worth trying.

9th July 2019.

Tuesday is here and so is gaming night at 'The Sovereign' in Woking.

Elder Sign is a co-operative game where the players take on the role of intrepid investigators, driven to uncover the conspiracies that will bring about the end of the world without descending into mind-shattering insanity.

What's in a game?
​Elder Sign is a push your luck game with some dice and a lot of cards.

• Investigation dice: There are 6 of these custom green dice, they are used during investigations.
• Bonus dice: There 2 different red & yellow bonus dice: If you have some sort of advantage during a roll, you may add one or both of these dice to your roll. Not only do they increase the dice they roll, they have better results too.
• Investigator cards: Each investigator card is different, they have different special abilities and stats.
• Location cards: There mundane and 'otherworldly' location cards. The 'mundane' locations are set around a museum. Investigators travel to these cards to solve the events that occur on them.
• Ancient one cards: Cards to represent the cosmic horrors that cannot be named... Except for their names... on their cards? 
• Bonus cards: There are various types of bonus cards.
• Tokens: Lots of tokens, for lots of different purposes.
• Clock: Game turns are tracked by moving the hour hand on the clock.

Investigators
Investigator's have 2 stats, health and sanity. You don't need me to tell you what happens if either reaches 0.
Investigator's also have a unique special ability each and some starting equipment.

Ancient one
The ancient one card contains some pertinent information.
There's a timing track that shows how close the ancient is to appearing.
There's also information on what happens if the ancient one appears and how to fight it.
There's a 'elder sign' track. If the players accumulate enough elder signs, they can prevent the ancient one even appearing.

Location cards
Location cards contain multiple tasks. These take the form of rows of symbols (That match the symbols on the dice).
Each location card lists 'rewards & penalties'.
One of the location cards is the 'museum entrance'. Characters can be placed on this location card to rest & recuperate.

How's it play?
Before playing,  a little setting up needs to be done.

• The clock is set up.
• Investigator cards are randomly dealt or chosen by player.
• An ancient one is randomly dealt or chosen.
• The entrance to the museum is placed down.
• 6 mundane location cards are laid.

The basic premise of the game is that the investigators complete the tasks on the location cards and to earn resources and elder signs. These can be used to win the game. But in the meanwhile, the clock is ticking...

When a player has their turn; they move their marker to a location card and try to complete one of the tasks on the card.

Each task will contain a number of symbols. The active player rolls the dice, any of the dice results that match the symbols for the current task are placed on to that task on the card. If all of the symbols are matched by dice results, then that task is completed.

If the task is not completed, the player has the choice to fail the task or continue rolling.

If the player chooses to continue rolling, they take the remaining unmatched dice -and discards one- and rolls them again. Thus repeatedly reattempting a task will eventually deplete a player's dice. If a player is ever in a situation where they do not have enough dice to complete a task, then they fail that task.

When a task is failed, voluntarily or otherwise. Then the active player suffers the penalties listed on the location card.
If a task is failed and a 'terror' result has come up on the dice, then the active player suffers an additional penalty.

When a task is completed, all the dice are returned to the active player.
If another task is available on the location card, then the active player may attempt to complete it.
If all of the tasks on a location card have been completed, then that location has been completed! The active player takes the listed reward and returns to the entrance.

When a player completes their turn, the clock advances. When the time reaches a certain point, it will cause the ancient evil to be spawned.

There are more rules:
There are rules for suffering terror.
Rules for monster appearing.
Rules for using weapons, equipment and spells.
Rules for going into otherworldy locations.
Rules for clues.
Rules for environmental effects that affect the game and so on.

Endgame
If the players accumulate enough elder signs, they win the game.
If the ancient one appears, then the players must battle it. This involves rolling dice much like completing tasks. If the players succeed, then the ancient one is vanquished. If they fail to defeat the ancient one, then the players all fail and it's curtains for the earth!

Overall
Elder Sign is a push your luck game.
I played for the first time a few years ago with 2 other players and found it a hugely frustrating experience.
However, when I played it recently with 5 other players, it was a lot less frustrating. I guess watching other players getting luck as bad as mine is cathartic!

As a co-operative game about struggle against cosmic horror, Elder Sign is an OK game. It handles its theme well enough as you investigate the museum looking for ways to impending doom against the clock.

But I have small issue with the push your luck mechanic of Elder Sign.

With a push your luck game, you need a reason to 'settle' and a reason to... well 'push your luck'. The priorities of these reasons may shift according to the situation, but they need to always be there.

But when playing Elder Sign, sometimes it feels like that it's pointless to settle. Player's will suffer the same penalty, regardless of whether you choose to fail or are forced to fail. You only risk suffering terror if you push your luck - and that's not guaranteed. So it feels like there's little reason to not push your luck.
It's a small criticism, I know.

So would I play Elder Sign again? Going by past experience, I feel the game gets better with more play (Although that's true of the majority of games IMHO.) and Elder sign goes up to 8 players!
So with 4+ players, I would try it again.

25th June 2019.

Tuesday night gaming beckons at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking.

The evening was kicked off by the word game 'Just One'.

Just One is probably the best cross-over game ever. This is a co-operative party games that anyone can learn and easily play.

What's in a game?

​​The game comes with the following components.

• Deck of cards with 5 words written on one side on all of them.
• Plastic name/card display stands.
• Dry wipe pens and (With dry wipe erasers.).

That's it, all these components are plain and purely functional. It's like someone made a game out of the crap left over at then of a conference or something similar - well except for the deck of cards!

How's it play?

Firstly the deck of cards is shuffled and 13 cards are dealt face-down into it's own separate draw deck. The remaining cards can be placed back in the box, they are not needed for the game.

• A name/card stand and a dry-wipe pen/eraser is given to each player
• The 'active' player draws a card from the 13 cards and (Without looking at it!) places their card stand with the 5 names facing away.
• The active player then chooses a number from 1 to 5.The 5 names on the card each correspond to the numbers 1 to 5. Thus if the active selects '2', then word 2 on the card becomes the 'selected' word.
• The other players must use their dry-wipe pens to write clues on their on their own card stands to help the active player guess the word.
• However, the other players can only write one word as a clue - as the name suggests 'Just One'!
• The clue must be written in secret from ALL other players. When all the other players have written down a single-word clue each. Then the clues are compared to all other player's clues (All clues must not be shown to the active player.).
• Any doubles are all removed from the round.

So if the word is 'Cat' and the clues are 'Sylvester' 'Meow' and 'Whiskers', then all 3 clues are permissible.
If the clues were 'Sylvester', 'Sylvester' and 'Whiskers'. Both iterations of 'Sylvester' would be erased and removed from the round and only 'Whiskers' would be left.

• After any eliminations are dealt with, the remaining cards are shown to the active player. The active player should try to guess what the selected word is from the available clues.
• The active player can choose to make a guess or pass.
• If the active player chooses to pass. The card is placed into discard pile.
• If the active player makes a guess... and gets it wrong: Then the card is placed into the discard pile and another card is drawn from the draw deck and is ALSO discarded in the discard pile.
• If the active player makes a guess... and gets it right: Then the card is placed into the scoring pile.
• The player to the left of the active players becomes the next active player
• Play continues until there are no cards left.
• All the cards in the scoring pile are tallied up a collective score is generated. The higher, the better. 

Overall

My only gripe about this game, is in the selection of words. Some types of words are a lot easier to get clues for.

Example
'Cat' for example is easy, I can think of lots of possible clues.
'Panther' on the other hand is a lot harder to think of clues for. I think of 'Black', but that's about it.

Just One also has a little more nuance to it than what you would expect.
The rule about removing duplicate clues is what makes the game in my opinion. Going for an obvious clue risks having 2 or more clues removed from the game! But going for something too obscure risks muddling the clue.

But overall all, Just One is party game that's for up to 7 players, that is also co-operative and is easy to learn.

What's not to like?

28th May 2019

Tuesday gaming continues at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking.

I had told Matt how brutal and unforgiving Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth was. But he remained pretty skeptical about it and was intent on trying the game.

We played it 3 times, 3 times... How did it go, it chewed us up and spat us out like so much cheap flavourless chewing gum.

"Well, it's your funeral." Is what I should have said to Matt. In reality it was all the players' funerals.

You can read my thoughts about it here & here.

14th May 2019.

Tuesday has rolled around again and that can only mean gaming night at 'The Sovereigns'

First game of the night is Mysterium'. Mysterium is like a ghostly version of Cluedo.

It's quite unusual in that it is both an asymmetrical and co-operative game.

One player takes on the role of the ghost of a murder victim.
All the remaining players assume the roles of psychics or mediums.
The game takes place during a 'seance' in which the ghost will feed all the other characters with confusing and strange imagery, hoping they will figure out the murder

The ghost player knows who their murderer is and is trying to communicate this to the other players.

What's in a game?

The ghost player sits behind a screen which contains information pertinent to them. The ghost player also keeps a deck of cards behind the screen.

Each of the other players is given a character to play in the form of a character portrait printed on what can only be described as sort of 'pocket'. The art for the characters is good and makes them look suitability exotic for people that can communicate with the dead. Each player is also given a meeple.

Markers are set out for the 3 different clue types. These represent the classic Cluedo cards for person, location and weapon.

The game also has a vintage looking clock which serves as a turn counter.

Before the game starts the ghost player determines who the murderer and suspects are.
The in line with each respective clue marker they layout a number of cards (dependant upon difficulty). Thus next to the person marker, they would lay the murderer, suspects and innocent people. Next to the location marker, they would lay the murder site, suspected sites and unrelated sites - and the same for the murder weapon.

And now you're pretty much ready to go.

16th April 2019

Welcome to Tuesday night gaming at 'The Sovereigns'.

We kicked off with a return to 'The Lost Expedition' after last week's drubbing we were eager for a better result. - Which we got! Score!
You can read my blog post about The Lost Expedition here.