15th June 2021

It's a Tuesday evening at The Sovereigns in Woking and if memory serves me correctly, the first time that I've met up with the Woking Gaming Club have met Since October last year!

The first game of the night was Roll For Adventure, a cooperative, dice roller where players must unite to foil the machinations of a Dark Lord wannabe and save the kingdom!

What's in a game?
In Roll for Adventure, our heroes must join forces to defeat The Dark Lord Saur-errr Master of Shadows; how is this done? By collecting the power stones to activate the magical artefact; how is this done? By making lots of dice rolls of course!

• Dice: Lots of dice! 5 dice in the four player colours and 4 grey bonus dice. These are all normal 6-sided dice.
• Territory die: Another dice! This isn't a normal 6-sider though, 4 faces show each of the game's 4 different types of territory, 1 face shows all 4 territories and the final face shows no territory.
• Territory boards: There are 4 of these double-sided triangular boards, with an A-side and a B-side, A-sides are easier to play than B-sides. Each board represents one of the differing territory types.
  Blue is The Ice Cave.
  Green is The Forest.
  Grey is The Fortress.
  Yellow is The Desert.
  The 4 boards are attached together to form a single larger square board, which becomes the game board and its main playing area and is where the players' heroes go adventuring for power stones (Or, in other words, where dice are used to complete tasks.). The centre of the board contains an area called the Vortex of Oblivion.
  Each board will have its own unique rules for how dice are used to acquire the stones and also has its own damage track.
• Adventure boards: There are 4 of these and they're used in conjunction with power stone tokens to track the players progress. When all the spaces on an adventure board are filled with the tokens, the players will be victorious. The boards have 5-8 spaces and thus are used to manage the game's difficulty.
• Power stones: 8 colourful tokens, used as explained above.
• Skull tokens: These pretty cool 3d tokens are used on each of the damage tracks on the adventure boards.
• Enemy cards: These cards are used to 'attack' the game board, they come in 4 colours that correspond to the colours of the territory boards. They are ranked from 1 to 3.
• Special enemy cards: Not content to just have enemy cards, the game provides special enemy cards that can be used to add extra complexity to the game.
• Master of Shadows enemy card: Yep, the game's Big Bad has a card.
• Hero boards: These tiles are randomly dealt to all players, each one has a special ability the controlling player can use. There are 10 hero boards.

There's a plethora of other components, tokens, tiles and markers including the ominously named Vortex of Resurrection that are also used in the game.

The dice are of the smaller variety, which is fine by me, they're made of plastic and finished in a 'marble' look, their edges are nicely rounded and their dots are indentations and not printed. Good quality dice overall.
The territory die is a larger size and has rounded edges, it has artwork related to the territory boards printed on 5 of its 6 sides, the printing seems to be good quality and doesn't look like it'd rub off easily.
The game's variety of boards and tiles are all printed on thick card, as are the components.
The enemy cards are pretty standard quality cards.
Finally; special mention goes to the completely unnecessary and therefore cool little 3d plastic skulls used to track damage on the 4 territories.

Artwork used on the territory boards is fairly minimalist and functional by necessity as space is given over to holding dice. The palette used for the 4 territories extends to the enemy cards and some components.
The quality of artwork used on the enemy cards, hero and adventure boards is all reasonably good. The bright colours scheme used to represent the power stone is pleasantly eye catching.

All-in-all, the components in Roll for Adventure are all of a good quality.

​On to play
Like a lot of cooperative games, Roll for Adventure alternates between a player's turn and then the board's actions before moving on to the next player's turn.
The basic principle behind a turn in Roll for Adventure is simple: The active player rolls all their available dice and uses one or more of them of the same number, then rolls their remaining dice and so on, until they've used all their dice. What those dice are used for however, is the crux of the game.

• Roll the dice: The active player takes their dice and rolls all of them. Now they decide which ones to use, the main restriction being they must use dice of the same value. There are 3 ways these dice can be used.
  Tasks: The active player can put dice on to one of the 4 territory boards, completing the tasks on 3 of these boards will earn the players power stones, the 4th board will earn players grey bonus dice to roll. Each territory board has it's own unique tasks to perform, these are also different between the A & B sides.
  For example; the fortress territory has 3 'subtasks' and 3 'barriers', the players must collectively place 4 dice showing 2 to remove a barrier, 4 showing 3 to remove another and 4 showing 4 to remove the last one. Once all 3 barriers are removed, then the players earn a power stone. Tasks do not need to be completed in one attempt and when players commit dice to a task, they remain on the territory board until it is completed, however, this means that those dice cannot be taken back or used by the player again until that task is completed.
  Enemy cards: Dice can be used to defeat enemies attacking the territory boards, (More on enemies below.). An enemy card is defeated when dice totalling 6+ are placed on that card, this could be a single 6 or a pair of 3s, etc. Once again, an enemy does not need to be defeated in a single action and again, dice remain on an enemy card until it is defeated, in which case the enemy cards discarded out of play and dice used are returned to their respective players.
  Vortex of Resurrection: Dice can be placed on the Vortex of Resurrection, when a value of 10+ is reached, then dice can freed from the Vortex of Oblivion! What does the Vortex of Oblivion do? This is explained below.
  Interestingly, placing dice on the vortex, ends the active player's turn.
• Enemy turn: When the active player has finished their turn, the board will become activated, this will likely cause a series of actions.
  Enemy attack: Reveal the top card from the enemy deck, this enemy card will attack! But before it does so, it will command any card of a lower rank to first attack, thus a rank 3 card will command rank 2 & 1 cards. Enemy cards will attack the territory of their corresponding colour, so a green enemy card attacks the forest territory and should be placed along the forest edge of the board. Special enemy cards have their own rules on where they attack.
  Damage: When a territory is attacked, it takes damage, what does this mean? If an attacked territory has dice from an in-progress task on it, then one or more of those dice will be removed from that territory and placed on the Vortex of Oblivion. The way in dice are removed is unique to each territory.
  If there are no dice on a territory when it's attacked, then the territory itself takes damage and the damage counter is moved along.
  Vortex of Oblivion: Dice are placed here when territories are attacked, they remain here until the Vortex of Resurrection is used to free them.
  Master of Shadows: When the Master of Shadows appears, it's bad news. First of all, every enemy cards in play immediately attacks, then the Master of Shadows attacks. The active player rolls the territory die; if it shows a single territory, then that territory takes 2 damage directly to the territory, no dice are ever removed when the Master of Shadows attacks. If the die shows all 4 territories, then all 4 territories take a point of damage. If the blank face is rolled, the players are lucky and nowhere is attacked.
  Once the Master of Shadows has had their attack, they are shuffled back into the enemy deck, they cannot be defeated by normal methods and will constantly reappear to attack until the players complete their objective.

Play progresses to the player on the left and continues until the endgame is triggered.
​
Endgame
If the damage token for any territory reaches its final spot, the players collectively lose the game.
If at anytime all the players collectively have no dice to roll for whatever reason, then the players lose.
If the players manage to collect the last power stone for their adventure board, then the players collectively win.

Overall
​Roll for Adventure is an interesting combination of cooperative gameplay and some unusual dice rolling mechanics.
A good example is the Vortex of Resurrection: Using the vortex ends a player's turn immediately. Early in their turn, it's possible a player have the double 5 or double 6 which will be high enough to trigger the vortex, but doing so is a waste of a turn (And dice rolls.), however, waiting until a player only has 1 or 2 dice left means that getting a good result for the vortex is tricky.
Roll for Adventure has no 'set aside' rules or mechanics in Roll for Adventure here, after players use dice, the remaining ones are re-rolled and you can kiss those other useful results goodbye. It forces players to make decisive moves about what they have available now and collectively players need to really cooperate in these decisions too as spreading dice too thinly throughout the board can be a costly error, dice stuck on half completed tasks are a problem waiting to happen. Players need to concentrate on a couple of tasks only if possible and maintain the loop of using dice and then getting them back to use in the following turn.
The same is true of enemy cards, if they're not dealt with quickly, they can linger and repeatedly attack the board, particularly lower rank enemy, which will be commanded to attack the most often.
Balancing the need to get power stones and the need to defeat enemies is key, along with mitigating bad luck that tends to accompany cooperative games. The extra wrinkle here is the need to also manage your dwindling resources - dice!
Actions (Or inactions.) will frequently have an impact on the game and that's a good thing.

That's not to say the game is without some criticism.
With 4 double-sided territory boards, Roll for Adventure has 8 subsystems, at least 4 of which must be learned to play the game. In my opinion, this makes the game feel a little overly complex for the experience it delivers, which a shortish, almost abstract experience.
The game's theme doesn't gel entirely well with its mechanics for me. Do the dice represent various actions of the the player's hero? Or are they minions of the hero sent off on different missions? Whatever the answer, it felt a little unengaging, closer to an exercise in comprehending probability than going adventuring.

Having said all that: The game's balancing kept the outcome in the air all the way throughout and the tension high at the end. If you like cooperative games, Roll for Adventure is worth a look. If you've spent a lot of time playing those coop games where you spend action points to run around a map to perform tasks, this could give you a fresh take on the cooperative playstyle.

30th May 2021

Sunday night gaming on Board Game Arena continues with Dragonwood.

Those woods there, there be dragons in those woods, that must be why it's named Dragonwood! There are many monsters to capture, so to assemble brave adventurers, take your cards and take your dice and head off into the forests, there're adversaries to be struck, stomped or screamed at!

Caveat: We've only ever played Dragonwood digitally online.

What's in a game?

• Dragonwood cards: These cards consist of creatures to capture, enhancements to earn and events to encounter.
  Creatures: Acquiring creatures earn victory points. Each card has a picture of the creature it represents and also shows how many victory points it's worth.
  Creatures also have a column of 3 numbers, one number each for the strike, stomp, or scream actions.
  For example:
  Grumpy Troll
  Victory points: 4
  Strike: 9
  Stomp: 11
  Scream: 9
  These values are the target numbers that must be met with dice rolls in order to acquire the card, the higher the victory points, the higher the target numbers.
  Which of the 3 values is used for the dice roll is explained below.
  Enhancements: Unlike creatures, enhancements do not score victory points, instead they give the controlling player a bonus that works towards capturing creatures in some way or other, this may be once-only or ongoing.
  Finally, enhancements cannot be used in capturing other enhancements.
  Events: Events can be beneficial or detrimental and are immediately played when revealed during play.
• Adventurer cards: There are 64 adventurer cards in all.
  60 adventurer cards: Numbered 1-12 in 5 different colours.
  4 Lucky Ladybug cards: Drawing one of these cards is lucky! See below for further info.
• Dice: These six siders are NOT numbered 1-6, instead the distribution of numbers goes; 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4. The mathematically astute among you will note that the mean average when rolling 2 of these dice would be 5, the mean average for 2 normal six siders is 7.

That's it for components.
Well, there's not much that can be said since we've only played it digitally. The art on the carts is bright, cartoonish and pleasant, text is clearly written and easy to read.

How's it play?
Setup

• Dragonwood deck: The size of this deck is dependant on the number of players.
  First remove the 2 dragon cards from the deck and shuffle it, discard the required number of cards and then shuffle the dragons back into the bottom half of the deck.
  Deal a row of 5 cards to form what's called 'The landscape'. If any events are dealt during setup, shuffle them back into the deck.
• Adventurer deck: Shuffle the adventurer cards into a face-down deck, deal 5 to each player, these should be kept hidden.
• Starting player: Determine a starting player

On to play
The objective in Dragonwood is to capture creatures cards which are worth 1-7 points each.
Each turn, the active player will have a choice of 2 actions.

• Reload: This is a fancy word for draw a card from the Adventurer deck. If the Lucky Ladybug card is drawn, discard it to the discard pile and draw 2 more cards. Players have a maximum hand size of 9.
  ​If the adventurer deck is depleted, shuffle the discard pile into a new deck. This is done only once per game.
• Capture a card: Players may try to capture a creature or enhancement, mechanically it's identical and there are 3 ways to do this, all methods are done by playing cards, the more card that are played, the more dice can be rolled. Thus the active player plays their cards and chooses one of the 3 capture methods to use.
  Strike: In order to use strike, the active player must play cards that are all in a straight, e.g., a 4, 5, 6, 7 of any colour, because there are 4 cards being played, that would give the active player 4 dice to roll.
  Stomp: To stomp, all card played must have the same value, so two 9s would give the active player 2 dice to roll.
  ​Scream: This requires the active player to play cards all of the same colour, regardless of their numbers; a 2, 3, 8, 10 & 12 all in green would give the active player 5 dice to roll.
  Once the method has been chosen, the active player rolls the relevant dice:
  Fail: if the result is less than the target number for the chosen method, then the capture attempt has failed! The active player takes the cards they played back into their hand and must discard 1 card.
  Success: If the result is equal to or higher than the chosen target number, then the creature is captured and the cards are discarded into the adventurer discard pile.
  A new card is immediately drawn to replace the captured card, if that card is an event, it is immediately played and discarded, another card is drawn, there must always be 5 cards in the landscape if possible.

Play continues until either both dragons have been captured which case the game ends immediately or the adventurer deck has been depleted twice, which triggers a final set of turns.
Then it goes to the endgame.

Endgame
Players score the victory points for each creature they captured.
The player who has captured the most creatures earns an additional 3 points.
Once points are tallied, highest score wins!

Overall
Decisions are based around how much you want or need to push your luck and when to or when not to try and capture cards, managing this is key to Dragonwood.

If a creature has a value of 10 for one of it's target numbers, then it's not hard to figure out that 4 dice will give the active player a 50% chance of capturing it and they'll need to play 4 cards to do this. 9 or lower and the odds swing in the player's favour, 11+ and well, it's not a push your luck game for nothing!
Sure, someone can play it safe and draw cards to get better odds, but this consumes turns while instead, competitors could be capturing those creatures. A handful of adventurer cards scores nothing at the game's end.
Conversely, rashly trying to capture cards and failing will cost players their adventurer cards, it's a clever little balancing mechanic.
Even though the decision to capture a card or not is a simple, almost no brainer decision, the need to outdo other players generally means it never quite a meaningless one.

We found that acquiring enhancements early on (If they appear early on that is.) could be a big advantage. There are enhancements that add 1 or 2 to capture rolls, it might not seem like much, but in a game about averaged dice rolls, it can swing the odds quite a lot.

It's obvious that Dragonwood is a light game that skews towards younger players and with that in mind, I don't think it's appropriate to be overly harsh on it.
With it's fairly simplistic choices and reliance on randomness, fans of 'heavy' games probably won't find much to engage with here, unless they're looking looking for a undemanding filler for around 30 minutes to allow their brains to cool down between other, heavier games.
However, ​I do think that younger players will find the game enjoyable and dice rolling exciting, casual gamers may also find it entertaining.

4th April 2021

It's Sunday and I'm logged on to Board Game Arena for some gaming.

The first game of the day was Dice Forge, a game about errr forging dice in a mythically themed way! Also about the hunt for glory to impress the gods, which can in part be earned by rolling dice, which may not seem a glorious undertaking, but who am I to judge.

Caveat: This game was played digitally, but the physical version had been played previously.

What's in a game?
There are quite a few components to Dice Forge, so let's get started with the most important.

• Dice: In a game with dice in the title, you'd expect the dice to be significant and you'd be right!
  Rolling these dice allows the player to earn gold, glory, red gems and blue gems (Sun and moon gems if you prefer.). But these are no ordinary 6-sided dice, on these dice, all the faces can be removed and replaced with new and improved faces! Allowing player to get more money, gems and glory.
• Dice faces board: The game comes with a set of extra faces that players can use that come with their own board!
• Game board: The main purpose of this board is to manage the game's cards. There are 2 rows of spaces for the 2 different types of cards.
• Cards: There are numerous 'sets' of cards in the game and each set contains 4 identical cards. They come in 3 different types of card, red or blue cards and a smaller number of cards that are red and blue.
  Not all cards are used in every game.
• Player boards: These boards track the game's 3 currencies as well as the player's glory score. There are also 2 spaces for the player's dice.
  Gold has a limit of 12, while red & blue gems have a limit of 6. This can become significant in the game.
• Tokens: Little glass cubes used on player boards and on the game board.
• Miscellaneous: There are various tokens and tiles that have special uses, dependant on player actions. These includes tiles that increase the spaces on a player's board or give them a small sub-game to play and so on.

The most significant component here are the dice. Every die can have the all of its faces removed and replaced with new faces.
This could easily have proven a real problem but it's not the case. These components are very well made. A little tool is used to remove faces and new faces fit firmly into the dice with a satisfying click, none of the process of changing faces feels flimsy or too fiddly and its doesn't seem like these components would break under normal usage. Finally, the dice always roll smoothly.
It's important that this element of the game always functions correctly and it does.
The remainder of the components as would be expected are of a good quality.

The quality of the art direction on the cards is good and in particular the art on the game boards is quite eye catching, depicting the card spaces as islands the player must visit, which fits the game's mythic quest theme suitably well.
Player boards have the space for a single piece of colourful artwork but most of the board is taken up by the various tracks, however, they are bright and colourfully highlighted.
Overall, Dice Forge is very nice aesthetically, it does a lot to present it's theme of mythic forging.

How's it play?
Setup

• Hand each player 2 dice with the starting faces clipped in and a player board along with it's accompanying markers.
• Set out the game board, put all the sets of chosen cards face-up in their allotted spaces on the different 'islands'.
• Set out the available dice faces and other tokens.
• Select a starting player.

On to play
​At the start of every player's turn, all players roll their dice and acquire whatever resources are shown on the result, this can be gold, red or blue gems or glory points, these are immediately added to the player's board, any resources earned that exceed the player's space limit is lost.
Even though all player's have rolled their dice, only the active player can act and they have a couple options.

• Purchase a die face: This is done using gold. Most starting die faces have a starting value of '1' and can be replaced with higher valued faces which will obviously give better results if and when they come up. Some die faces will give you a choice when it is rolled such as 1 glory or 1 red gem. The prices range from 2-12 gold.
  It should be noted that some of the die faces cannot be bought and must be acquired by getting cards (See below.).
• Acquire a card: Red gems can be spent to get red cards and blue for blue. Costs range from 1-6 gems respectively. There will also be a set of cards available that will cost 5 red & 5 blue gems.
  All cards are worth glory points, there are some cards that only give glory points. All of these points are kept secret, none of them are added to the player's glory point score on their player board. Additionally, cards may have extra effects.
  Once only: Acquiring some cards will grant the player a once-only bonus such as getting one of the special die faces.
  Once per turn: These cards have an ongoing action that a player can choose to activate when relevant, an example might be the ability to turn some gold into glory or roll a die and gain it's benefit again.
• Take another action: The active player may spend 2 red gems to take an additional action from the 2 above, this can be done multiple times if the player has the required red gems.

Once a player has completed their turn, the player to the left becomes the active player, all players roll their dice again and new active player begins their turn.
Once all players have had their turn, the round is completed.

Endgame
Once 9 or 10 rounds have been completed - dependant on the number of players, then the game has ended.
Players tally the glory on their player boards with the glory accumulated on the cards they've acquired.
Highest score wins.

Overall
Dice forge is a bit of a strange beast - sort of an deck building game that uses dice in place of cards - mostly!

Building up dice is unsurprisingly at the core of the game and is very important early in the game as they provide the games currencies and it presents players with options and choices to make. Not only do they have to decide which of gold, gems or glory to upgrade each time, they must decide how to distribute those upgrades.
For example; a player could choose to load 1 die with their first 6 upgrades - this guarantees that 1 die will get a good result, but they will only get 1 good result per roll, spreading the upgrades over 2 dice lessens the chances of upgraded results coming up but increases the chances of getting 2 upgraded results. This can be more important than it initially seems because they're 3 different currencies to consider as well as acquiring glory points.
​It could have been a gimmick but instead it's an interesting proposition.

Acquiring cards may give a player several advantages, cards always give players glory points, the most expensive cards normally confer the player a lot of glory points. The bonuses that cards give the player don't seem particularly useful but they tend to tip things in a player's favour in other areas of the game. The are some once-per-turn abilities that can prove useful if acquired early enough in the game.
Of course red gems have an additional use and can be spent to gain additional actions, this can prove very useful considering that usually, players only get 9-10 actions per game.

It's hard to sum up how I feel about Dice Forge, modifying dice forces players into making significant choices, which is a good thing and rolling the the dice was undeniably fun but somehow, it all felt a little unengaging? It's possible that an upgraded die face never gets rolled in a game and maybe that's it, devising a strategy that's at the mercy of luck to succeed will never entirely satisfactory? Or maybe I'm just over thinking it?

It's easy to learn and play Dice Forge, however, I feel that in the long-term, the game is a little shallow and repetitive, the available selection of die faces never changes from game to game and the sets of cards all feel samey and interchangeable.

By no means do I think it's a bad game, if you want a mostly straightforward, light, easy-to-play, undemanding and somewhat luck-based game about optimizing dice rolls, then Dice Forge might be a good choice.

29th October 2019

Tuesday night at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking and it's game night at the Woking board game club.

We started the evening with 'Heckmeck' AKA 'Pickomino'.

Have you ever wondered what is a chicken's favourite food? It turns out that a chicken's favourite food is worms. But not just any worms, but roast worms! And not just any roast worms either, but BBQ roast worms! How many BBQ roast worms does a chicken like eating? As many as it can get. How does it get as many BBQ roast worms as it can? By pushing it's luck of course!

That's what Heckmeck is about. Pushing your luck to accumulate as many BBQ roast worms as possible.

What's in a game?
There are 2 versions of Heckmeck, standard and deluxe.
We played the standard version of the game. They use the following components:

• 8 six sided dice, each numbered from 1 to 5, the 6th side depicts a worm. A worm has a value of 5. 
• 16 dominoes, the top half of the dominoes are numbered from 21 to 36, the bottom half show 1-4 worms. The higher the value of the domino, the more worms on it.

The deluxe version includes some extra components and rules.

• 2 extra dominoes.
• 7 'bratworm' tokens.
• 6 different meeples, each meeple grants a special ability to whoever 'owns' it.

All of the components are of a good quality. The dominoes are solid and heavy. The dice are all wooden with rounded corners. The deluxe components are of a similar quality.

How's it play?
First there's setup.

• Place the dominoes in a line in ascending order to form a supply.

Yep, that's it for setup. Now on with the game.

The goal in Heckmeck is to roll and accumulate dice to get a score high enough to claim a domino. But here's a twist, at least one of those dice must have a worm result.
How's this done? Keep reading.

• At the start of their turn, the active player rolls all 8 dice.
• The player must then keep a 'set' of dice. A 'set' consists of 1 or more dice showing the same face. For example, after rolling the dice the player gets; 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4 & 5. They could choose to keep the 1, the two 2s (Combined value of 4.), the two 3s (Worth 6.), the two 4s (Worth 8.) or the 5. Let's say the player took the two 4s.
• Once the player has chosen a 'set', they put those dice to one side. Then they must choose to stop rolling or continue rolling.
• If the player chooses to continue rolling, they must re-roll the remaining dice and keep another 'set', but this set cannot be the same as a set the player already took. So now the player rolls the remaining 6 dice and gets; 4, 4, 5, W, W, W (W=worm.). The player cannot take the 4s because they have already taken 4s. So they must take 5 or the 3 worms. The player takes the 3 worms.
• The player now has a score of 23, 8 from the first roll and 15 from the second roll  (Remember worms are worth 5.). The player also has at least 1 worm result. So this is enough to get a domino, the player chooses to stop rolling. There are dominoes with the scores of 21, 22 & 23. The player must take the highest domino they can, which in this case is the 23.

Going bust or failing

• If after rolling the dice, the player cannot collect a set because all of the dice are showing numbers they have already collected. Then they have gone bust!
• Additionally, if a player chooses to stop rolling or cannot roll anymore dice and they have no accumulated a high enough score to get a domino, then they have failed!
• Going bust or failing have the same result; the player must return a domino to the supply row and turn the highest valued domino in the supply row face-down. If the player has no domino to return, there is no further action.

Stacking
Stacking is one of the things that makes Heckmeck stand out.

• When a player takes a second domino (And any subsequent dominoes.) they place it on top of the previous domino to form a stack. Thus all dominoes are kept in a stack (Even if it's a stack of 1.) and each player will have a single stack.
• When a player goes bust or fails and must return a domino to the supply, they must return the domino from the top of the stack.

Stealing
Like stacking, stealing is something I've not seen in a push your luck game before.

• If the active player accumulates a score that is exactly the same value as the domino on the top of another player's stack, then the active player can steal that domino and add to their own stack!
  
• That's bang out of order!

Endgame
Play continues until there are no more face-up dominoes in the supply to collect.
Players tally the worms they've collected, highest number of worms wins.

Overall

​Heckmeck is easy to learn and fairly quick to play. It has several excellent mechanics that give players tricky decisions to make.
Choosing which sets to keep is crucial because of it 'locks out' numbers. Do you really want to take that single 5, because that means you can no longer get any more 5s. Decisions, decisions.
The worm mechanic is also cool. Needing to have a worm result is an extra thing that can go wrong. Making a worm worth a 5 is genius, it puts players in the same quandary as rolling a 5. If a worm was only worth 1, taking it when it's only 1 worm would be a no-brainer.
Finally, the stacking and stealing together is another great idea. If players just laid their tiles out in a line, then stealing them would be a bit too easy as the choice would be wider. However, since the dominoes are stacked, stealing is uncommon. When it does occur, it's something that should be taken advantage of!

All of this adds up to make a good push your luck game.
Heckmeck has very quickly become a favourite with nearly everybody I play it with. And deservedly so. 

24th September 2019

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

The second game of the evening was 'Bang! The Dice Game'. A hidden role game driven by push your luck mechanics. Let's see how this goes?

What's in a game?
Bang! The Dice Game comes in a small portable package. Components include:

• Dice: 5 Custom dice used in the game.
• Character cards: Each player will be randomly dealt a character. Each character  has a unique special ability and hit points (Denominated by bullets in this game.).
• Role cards: This wouldn't be a hidden role game if there weren't roles to hide from other players. There are 3 types of role and they are explained below.
• Tokens: Bullet tokens represent life. Arrow tokens have another use that will be explained below.

How's it play?
First there's set up.

• Bullet and arrow tokens are placed to form a supply in the central playing area.
• A role card is randomly dealt to each player face-down. Whoever is the sheriff must reveal their card. All other players keep their role hidden.
• A character card is randomly dealt to each player. These kept face up. Each player collects bullet markers equal to what is shown on their character card.

What are the hidden roles?
There are 3 types of hidden role in the game. The number of each role that appears in a game will depend on the number of players, except there is only ever 1 sheriff.

• Sheriff/deputies (The good.).
• Outlaws (The bad.).
• Renegades (& the ugly.).

Each of the different roles have their own objective.

• Sheriff/deputies: If the outlaws and renegades are defeated, then the sheriff and deputies win.
• Outlaws: If the sheriff is defeated, all the outlaws immediately win.
• Renegades: A little unusual here. A renegade player wins if they are the last one alive, even other renegades must be eliminated. And the outlwas must be defeated before the sheriff, if the sheriff is eliminated before the outlaws, then the outlaws win, not the renegade.

And we're good to go. Playing the game is quite straight forward.

• The active player rolls all 5 dice.
• The active player can choose to re-roll any or all the dice (Except for 'dynamite results - see below.).
• The active player may also choose to have a first re-roll. This may include dice not included in the first re-roll.
• The active player can stop rolling at any time. In which case the dice results are dealt with.

24th September 2019

Tuesday evening is here and we're at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking for games night.

It was an evening of several short games.
We begun with 'Sushi Roll', this game is a follow up to the rather good 'Sushi Go!'. Will Sushi Roll live up to expectations? Let's see.


What's in a game
Sushi Roll comes in a largish box and a whole bunch of components. These are solidly made and of a good quality.

• Dice: There are 30 custom dice. There are 5 different types of dice. Nigiri dice, maki dice, appetiser dice, pudding dice and 'specials' dice. Specials dice have symbols for wasabi, chopsticks and menus.
• Dice bag: For the dice!
• Conveyor belt tiles: There are 5 of these. One of them has a red outline.
• Personal game boards: There are also 5 of these. One of them is given to each player. They basically explain the game and show the results of all the dice and how they are scored.
• Tokens: Lots of tokens. Scoring tokens, pudding tokens, chopstick tokens and menu tokens. Lots of tokens!

How's it play?
We begin with set up:

• Give each player a player board, 2 chopstick tokens and 3 menu tokens.
• Shuffle the conveyor belt tiles and deal one out face-down to each player. They are then turned face-up and whoever has the tile with the red outline is first player.

22nd September 2019

Sunday lunchtime at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. Unfortunately 50 Fathoms is still on hiatus. Instead we shall play some board games.

The first board game of the day was 'Roll Player'.

Have you ever enjoyed creating characters for an RPG more than playing them? Then maybe, just maybe, Roll Player is the game for you.

Roll Player is sort of a set collecting, dice rolling, worker placement game that's all about creating what is ostensibly a D&D character.
The main of the game is that players use dice to generate their stats, but it's not a case of just rolling the dice.

What's in a game
The components for Roll Player are of a good quality. 

• ​Dice: There's a lot of dice in Roll Player. 73 in fact, in 7 different colours.
• Dice bag: To go with the Dice!
• Character sheet boards: These are the equivalent of a character sheet. One for each of the classic D&D PC races such as human, elf, dwarf etc. Like a D&D character sheet, the player boards contain a lot of information. Such as racial stat modifiers for all 6 D&D stats (And space for 3 six sided dice for each stat!). Spaces for character class info, alignment and backstory too.
• Character class tile: This tile goes on the relevant space on the character sheet board. These represent the classic D&D character classes. One will be randomly given out to each player. They are double sided and have 2 classes on each. Character class dictates what values your stats you need to have to score points. They will be different for each character class. Each class also has a unique special ability.
• Alignment tile: This goes on the space for alignment and is randomly determined. Players earn points for getting their alignment to match the target on the tile. The alignment tile is a 3x3 grid that depicts all 9 alignments. A marker is used to show what the character's current alignment is.
• Backstory tile: This is also randomly determined. It gives players an additional target to match, which in turns a player more points. This is based on the colour of dice.
• Initiative cards: These are used to determine the order in which players buy cards from the market. They are numbered from 1 to 5.
• Market cards: Every round, players will have the opportunity to purchase cards drawn from the market deck. Market cards include weapons, armour, skills and traits.

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.

29th June 2019

​Gaming afternoon continues at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking and we concluded with 'Tiny Epic Galaxies'.
I've written about Tiny Epic Galaxies before here.

23rd June 2019.

Gaming day continues at 'The Sovereigns'.
The next game of the day is 'Celestia'.

Celestia is very similar to another game called 'Cloud 9', in fact both games are designed by the same person.

You can see my thoughts on Cloud 9 here.

​Celestia is a fantasy-themed push your luck game about making a journey. 

What's in a game?

Celestia contains a skyship placing piece that needs to be built. Annoyingly, when constructed, it does not fit in the game box! This means it must be constructed before and then deconstructed after every game session. Otherwise it's quite a nice prop for the game.

There are is a set of 'city' markers and several sets of small decks of 'treasure' cards for each of the cities.

There is also an 'equipment' deck of cards used to 'travel' in the game. Most of the cards in the deck contain symbols identical to those from on the dice (See below.). Some cards are 'power' or 'turbo' cards that give a different benefit.

There are 'event' dice; these are 4 custom six sided dice used to represent obstacles or events that must be overcome during the journey. Each die is identical and has 4 custom symbols on 4 sides and blank faces on 2 sides.

And finally there are 6 meeples for the players.

The components are pretty standard. But I feel I must add that the art on all of the cards and markers is excellent.

How's it play

Before play begins, the cities markers are set out in a specific order (From lowest to highest scoring.). Then the associated smaller treasure decks are placed next to each city marker.

The purpose of the game is to reach the last city (If possible.) to score maximum points. But if the skyship crashes along the way, then no points are scored by the passengers.
Players will be given the choice to abandon the skyship early and earn less points.

This is how play goes.

• At the start of the game equipment cards are dealt to each player.
• The skyship is placed on the beginning destination marker. Every player's meeple is placed in the skyship.
• The active player assumes the role of 'Captain' for the round. The captain takes 2 event dice and rolls them (Later on, the further along the journey the skyship is, the more dice are rolled.).
• The other players decide whether to stay aboard or abandon ship. If a player chooses to abandon ship, they remove their meeple from the skyship model.
• When a player abandons the skyship, they take a treasure card from the deck associated with the destination marker the skyship is currently on.
• The value of the card is dictated by the city the skyship was on when the player abandoned it. Earlier cities give lower somewhat scores in a random range (6+ or 9+ for example.). Additionally, the earlier treasure decks also contain power cards. The last cities give a fixed value for each card. When a treasure card is acquired, it should be kept hidden face down.
• Once all the other players have made their choices and abandoned the skyship or not: The captain either must play the equipment cards from their hand matching the symbols rolled on the dice, or announces that they cannot do so. If the captain cannot overcome the event dice, then the skyship crashes! Crunch!
• If the captain plays the required cards, the skyship moves along to the next city marker. And the next player becomes captain. Any player who has abandoned the skyship cannot become captain in the current journey and is skipped if they are next.
• If the skyship crashes, (And believe me, it will, frequently!) the skyship is returned to the first city marker, all players' meeples are put back in it and everybody draws an equipment card.
• If the skyship reaches the last city, this journey is completed. Everybody aboard takes a treasure card (Worth 25 points!). The skyship is returned to the first marker and gets back aboard and each player collects another equipment card.

​Endgame.
When a journey ends for whatever reason and before another begins: If one or more players have accumulated 50 or more points, they must declare it. Then all players tally their points, highest score wins.

Overall
Celestia is an easy to play and accessible push your luck game. It is a competitive game, but there are elements of co-operative play here. Because to reach the further destinations you will likely need other players to co-operate with you. This is doubly true if one player is rushing ahead in the scoring.

Comparisons with Cloud 9 are inevitable, they are both very similar, with similar strategies and mechanics.

But Celestia has a few tweaks that gives it a bit more depth.

Firstly, in the equipment deck, the 4 different types of card required to overcome obstacles from the event dice are not represented in equal numbers. This means it's less likely that certain cards will be dealt into players' hands. And this means that certain types of obstacles are harder to overcome. It's something to pay attention to. 

Secondly, some of the power cards allow you to mess with the other players. Although in this game it seems strangely antagonistic. I've rarely seen these types of card used, possibly because of hidden scores means it's hard to know who to target.

And finally, hidden scores. In Cloud 9, there is a scoring track, so when a player reaches 50+ points, everyone else knows they need to push it in order to have a chance of winning. But in Celestia, with its hidden scores you can never know exactly what another player's score is. You can't afford to be complacent and need to keep accumulating your score.

It doesn't take too long to play either, meaning that it's a nice filler game. It's one to play.