20th June 2023


It's a Tuesday evening and we're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns for some gaming goodness.

Game of the night was Dice City: Create a city in this engine-building dice game! I don't about you but dice rolling is the best way to build any municipality!

Like most modern games, the component quality in Dice City is good and there's nothing bad here. While the cards are average, the boards and tokens feel sturdy, the tokens in particular are pleasantly chunky and tactile.
I would've preferred wooden dice to the plastic ones provided but they are good quality, having well rounded corners and deep pips.

There's a definitely a bit of a fantasy theme to the slightly cartoony and cheerful art style found in Dice City. It's colourful and eye-catching with a good variety to the art too, illustrations on both the large player boards and cards doing a good job of depicting their subject material with detail but without cluttering up the components. Even the art used on the resource tokens looks easy to see and detailed.
All the this lends the game a vibrant and bright presence on the table.

All the iconography in Dice City is easy to understand and is logical. Players should not have any trouble understanding anything here.

How's it play?
Setup

• Cards: To create the central drafting area, sort all the cards as follows.
  Base cards: First, sort all the lumber mill, mine, quarry and regular army cards into each of their 4 types and place the 4 decks face-up in a row.
  ​Location cards: Shuffle all the location cards into a face-down deck and deal 8 face-up alongside the base cards.
  Bandit cards: Sort the bandit cards into their 3 types and put a stack of each with cards in each stack as per player count.
  Trade ship cards: Sort the trade ships into their 3 types, then put out a stack of each type with cards in each stack as per player count.
• First player: Determine a starting player.
• Roll the dice: Every player should roll all 5 of their dice and place them on their player board accordingly.
  E.g., rolling a 5 on the yellow die means placing it on the 5 column in the yellow row and so on.

On to play
In Dice City each player will spend their turn resolving the 5 dice that have been placed on to their board. Essentially giving them 5 actions; this will give them options to gain resources and then buy cards or trade ships and launch attacks as per the dice results etc.
Dice City uses a typical player order with the active player fully resolving all their dice before play proceeds to the player on their left.
The active player's turn has several phases and goes as follows.

• Dice phase: The active player resolves the dice on their player board one at a time in the order they chose. A die is resolved by removing it from the board, then the active player can perform one of the following actions to resolve that die.
  Use space: Probably the most common action in the game. Once a die is removed from a space, the action on that space may be used. This can provide them gain or trade resources or allow them to generate army strength or gain VPs etc.
  Move die: this allows the active player to move a die elsewhere on their board.
  Reactivate space: Certain events can deactivate a space on a player board (More on this below.) and the active player can use the die removal to reactivate a deactivated space.
  Discard cards: Once per turn the active player may discard any 4 of the 8 location cards and draw new ones to replace them.
  Pass: Also once per turn the active player may pass an action to gain a pass token. Why is that useful? Glad you asked.
  • Additional actions: During the dice phase, pass tokens can be spent to gain extra actions. 2 pass tokens must be spent to gain an extra action, although this can be done multiple times in a single turn. The actions are as follows.
    Gain resource: The active player can gain the resource of their choice.
    Increase army strength: The active player may increase their army strength by +1.
    Force re-rolls: This bonus action forces all other players to reroll one of their dice!
• Attack phase: The active player may have generated army strength during the previous phase and it can now be used during this phase to 'attack'.
  To make an attack, the active player must have an army strength equal or higher than their target's defence value (In which case they can attack!). Furthermore, if the active player's army strength is high enough, it can be split among multiple target to attack them all.
  Army strength does not carry over from round to round and any unspent strength is lost at the end of the active player's turn.
  It should be noted that if a card doesn't have any defence value, it cannot be attacked.
  There are 3 types of attack that can be made.
  Bandit cards: Successfully attacking a bandit card allows the active player to claim it, adding its VPs to the player's total at the game end.
  Resources: The active player may target another player's resources (Which that player must have kept between their turns.), a successful attack will allow the active player to steal 1 or more of them depending on the army strength allocated to those attacks.
  Location: The active player may attack a location belonging to another player. A successful attack on a location will 'deactivate' it, consequently a deactivation token is placed on that location which now cannot be used until the token is removed.
• Building and trading phase: Now the active player can spend resources they have acquired. Unlike army strength, 1 of each of the 3 types of resource can be kept between turns.
  Build locations: The active player may build as many new locations as they can afford. However, when a new location is built, it will cover the current location which will be discarded.
  Trade ship card: Alternatively, resources can be spent to acquire a trade ship card.
• End of turn: Once the building and trading phase has finished, the active player's turn is over.
  Army strength: This reverts to 0.
  Resources: the active player can keep 1 of each resource.
  Pass tokens: Any number of pass tokens may be kept between turns.
  Roll dice: The active player rolls their 5 dice and places them as required on their player board in preparation for their next turn.
  Next player: Play now progresses to the player on the active player's left.

Endgame
​Play continues until one of the following criteria is met.

• All bandit cards have been acquired.
• At least 2 stacks of trade ship cards have been acquired.
• The location deck is empty.
• Optionally: If at least 2 rows of a player's player board has been covered with location cards and none of them contain a deactivation token, then that player may choose to trigger the game end.

Regardless of how game end is triggered, play progresses until all players have had equal turns.
Player now calculate their VPs which can come from the following sources.

• VP tokens.
• Location cards.
• Bandit cards.
• Trade ship cards.

​
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
​Dice City is not the first game to use dice-activations in a engine-building game with a city creation theme and while how the dice work on the board is an unusual mechanic, players will be familiar with a lot of the other concepts presented here.

They will need to adapt to both what their dice results give them to work with and what is available to draft from the location cards. Luckily players have some agency with the results in the form of dice-manipulation which can help but generally, they'll looking for ways to increase the efficiency of their player board and unlike a lot of game of this type, Dice City begins will a fully fleshed out beginner engine. Every die roll will always produce a result of some sort, so players will looking to increase the effectiveness of their results.
Ultimately, players will be looking to do things quicker than their opponents.

Something that Dice City does well is provide 2 clear avenues to accruing VPs - resources that can be used to improve a player's city or to buy trade ship cards, while army strength can be employed to defeat bandit cards or hinder other players' cities.
This adds an element of direct interaction - unusual for a game in this style with the ability to steal opponents' resources and deactivate their locations - especially locations with dice on them!
There's also a higher level of play where players can look at what's effective on an opponents board and target those spaces, even if they don't currently contain a die.
Additionally, a further element of player interaction are pass tokens which can be spent to make opponents re-roll dice.

Mechanically, Dice City is pretty straightforward with reasonably light rules that also generally provides players with meaningful decisions to make, both resources and army strength can have multiple uses and will give players options to think about.

I found Dice City to be an OK game and I hate saying a game is OK because it's a bit of a cop-out when trying to discuss games but that's exactly what Dice City is - OK.
Other than the possible direct interaction between players it doesn't do anything particularly different or special or new.
However, having said all of that, it also doesn't do anything badly and is a game that plays well enough to be engaging that I can't fault. Ultimately, while I found the game's presentation to be good, Dice City doesn't really standout for me.

If player interaction is something your big on or find important, Dice City has it and is a worth a look if you want a dice-driven city building game.
Conversely, some people don't like the confrontational element the direct interaction adds to the game. So 

I will happily play Dice City if someone else chooses it but it wouldn't be my first choice.

11th June 2023

​Sunday evening is here again and that means some gaming goodness on Board Game Arena.
Line up those numerical cards in this abstract, lightweight and compact set-collecting card game!

Caveat: We've only ever played this game digitally.

​What's in a game?

• Cards: Line-it uses 2 types of cards.
  • Number cards: There are card numbered 1-100 in Line-it. Additionally they are further subdivided into to 4 colours/suits.
  • Bet cards: These grey, essentially monotone cards are labelled from +3 to +5. They are used as part of the game's push-you-luck betting mechanic.

How's it play?
Setup

• Jackpot tokens: Place the jackpot tokens in a row adjacent to the central playing area.
• ​Deck: Shuffle all the cards into face-down deck.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Line-it, players will be drafting cards then using them to create a row of cards (The titular line if you will) and this row must either ascend of descend numerically from left-to-right.
Once a line reaches a 'suitable' size, players can then choose score that line by 'completing' and adding it to their personal 'scoring stack' which represents their victory points (VPs).

A round in Line-it is played using a traditional turn order with the first player acting before play progresses to the player on their left and so on.

• Round start: Draw cards from the deck to form The market. The size of the market is equal to the number of players + 2.
• First Player: A round starts with the first player as the active player.
• Draft card: The active player must draft a card from the market, they can then perform 1 of 2 actions with it.
  • Add to line: This card can be added to the active player's line with the following requirements.
    1st card: Any card can be played as the 1st card in a line.
    Left-to-right: Every card that is played after the first must be placed to the right of the rightmost card, thus the line always goes from left-to-right.
    2nd card: The 2nd card added the line will determine whether the line ascends or descends numerically in value. If the 2nd card has a higher value than the 1st, the line with ascend, conversely, if is lower, the line will descend.
    3rd card onwards: All cards played to the line after the 2nd must continue the 'trend' of the line. Thus must be higher in value in a ascending line or lower in a descending line.
    Jackpot: If a player adds a 3rd card of a certain colour to their line, they immediately draft all cards of that colour that have been stacked adjacent to its corresponding jackpot token. More on how jackpots are created below.
    Bet cards: These do not count as number cards and are not affected by the placement rules above. Bet cards represent a push-your-luck element as players are essentially betting on how many cards they think they can play into their line after the bet card. Thus, the higher the bet card value, the more cards must be played to win the bet but also, the more VPs it's worth. Bet cards come into play when completing and scoring a line.
    Only 1 bet card can ever be placed in a line.
  • Add to hand: Alternatively, the drafted card can be added to the active player's hand.
    Players have a maximum hand size of 2.
  • Cannot play: If for any reason the active player cannot perform either of the 2 actions above, they must immediately 'complete' their line and score it. More on scoring below.
• Additional actions: As well as the actions, above, the active player has 2 further actions available to them which can be resolved at any time during their turn.
  • Play from hand: The active player may add a single card from their hand to their line, this must follow the usual placement rules.
  • Complete line: The active player may (Or may be forced to!) score a line by 'completing' it. This has 2 steps.
    • Bet card: If the active player has a bet card in their line, they must first check if they've won their 'bet'.
      Winning a bet: Every bet card has a value from +3 to +5. If the active player has played at least as many cards after the bet as it's value, they have won the bet! They take the bet token with corresponding value and add it to their scoring stack.
      Losing a bet: If the active has not played the required number of cards, they have lost the bet! They take the bet token with the corresponding value, flips it to the negative side and adds it to their scoring stack.
    • Score the line: The active player discards 3 cards from their line and adds the remaining cards to their scoring stack.
      This means if a line has 3 or less cards, it will score 0 when completed!
• End of turn: Once the active player has completed their action(s), play progresses to the player on their left.
• End of round: Once all players have taken their turns - the round is obviously over and the 2 following steps occur.
  Jackpots: The 2 remaining cards which were not drafted are placed adjacent to their pertinent jackpot tokens and will become available in later rounds for players to gain.
  New first player: The player to the left of the current first player becomes the first player for the next.
  Play will now progress with new cards being drawn to create a new market.

Endgame
The endgame is triggered when there are not enough cards to create a full market at the start of a round. Then the following occurs.
Firstly, any remaining cards from the deck are placed on to their corresponding jackpot tokens.
Then in turn order, each player gets the opportunity to play 1 card from their hand to their line (Increasing their score and potentially gaining a jackpot.).
Finally, all players must complete their current line.

Now players calculate their finishing scores. Each card in a scoring stack is worth 1 VP while bet tokens are worth their displayed values.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Line-it is an abstract drafting game that doesn't attempt to awkwardly shoehorn a tenuous theme on to itself and while I know plenty of players for whom theme is important, I myself have never found the lack of it an obstacle to enjoying a game.
In this regard, some people may be put off by Line-it's lack of theme but YMMV.

Rules-wise, Line-it is a straightforward, easily understood rules-light but luck-heavy game. Players have to draft a card and then choose whether to play it to their line or 'bank' it to play later.
Players will initially look to draft a very low or high card to start a line, giving them the most leeway to create longer lines and players will want to create long lines.
The game's action economy dictates that (Ignoring jackpots.) completing a line after 6 drafts will score 3VPs - which is 0.5VPs per action but completing a line with just 4 cards would score 1VPs and that works out to be only 0.25 per action.
Worse of all, having to complete a line of 3 or less cards would give 0VPs for per action. Something players will definitely want to avoid.

Because of the inherent luck present in Line-it, at times players will have to deal with much less than optimal choices while drafting cards - doubly so when a player is going later in the round and their choices lessen even more.

Of course jackpots throw something different into the mix, sometimes justifying completing a line 'early' to gain those bonus cards. E.G., discarding a line of 3 yellows to gain a yellow jackpot card would earn 1VP which works to be .33VP per action. Having said that, getting 3 cards of the same colour will not be particularly quick, especially if other players can get there quicker.

Bet cards also provide a extra element to think about. Although their usefulness will vary: They can be a good source of VPs in the early game or early in a player's line but conversely be very negative in the late game or of if added later in a players line.
Players will need to think carefully when considering the risk of adding a bet card to their line.

The other element for players to consider is placing a card into their hand. Being able to bank a card can be vital to success. There's a bit of higher level of play in Line-it that can come from storing and playing a card of a certain colour or value can prove advantageous at the right time and sometimes.
Additionally, a player being able to put a card into their hand simply to just to avoid playing it can also be useful.
Wisely, the game limits player hands to 2, otherwise it would be too useful an action.

So while Line-it does give players meaningful decisions to make, the can also be very luck dependant and sometimes players will be faced with nothing but less than optimal choices, particularly when they go later in the turn order and their options dwindle.
The scoring also felt somewhat frustrating, having to discard 3 cards before scoring feels wrong. I know why that mechanic exists - it prevents players scoring short lines of 2 cards or so which is not something you want in a game about creating numerically linear lines of card. Even so, it felt counterintuitive and even unfair!

Another element I found counterintuitive was when I would habitually think, 'I'm going first next round, so I'll draft one of those cards not taken this round' only to see them discarded into their jackpot stacks.
I know this is my fault but again, it felt frustrating and only served to highlight the game's randomness.

I'm probably overthinking it though. Line-it is an accessible game that will probably play quite well with non-gamers. It's also a quick filler game that could be used to begin or end a long gaming session and not something to pour huge amounts of though into.
​If you like a lot of luck in your filler games, Line-it could be for you.
For me though, it didn't have quite enough to engage me. I applaud a game for it's simplicity and accessibility but having said that, I did find Line-it just a bit too simple and random for my liking. 

Component quality is good throughout and there's nothing bad to write about.
The cards are of the standard expected from a modern game and understandably smaller than usual which keeps the game's footprint from getting too large. The frames and coins are all made of sturdy card and also to the standard that is expected from a modern game.
While made mostly of card, the score trackers are both a nice and useful addition, doing away with the need to use tokens to track what is a relatively high scoring game.

The art direction in Village Rails is also for the most part good. It has a watercolour aesthetic that depicts the steam trains of old and bird's eye views of the games 5 different landscapes of yesteryear with nice little touches such as horses in pastures and buildings or patches of garden in villages.
Unfortunately, the art does fall down a bit when depicting the differences between the lake and forest terrain types which should be obviously different but somehow, with a murky mixture of blue-green palettes can be conflated with each other. This brings me to the game's other problem with presentation; iconography.

Village Rails has icons for the 5 different types of 'feature' which can be found on the train lines. It also has icons for the game's 5 different types of landscape but these symbols are tiny and can tricky to spot! Worse still, they can be lost against the noise of a landscape with a dark background. This is compounded by the fact that the cards are small.
It's not a gamebreaker but it is a oversight that can add some unnecessary fiddliness to proceedings.

Otherwise the iconography is pretty straightforward, easily understood and shouldn't prove too complicated.

How's it play?
Setup

• Cards: Sort the cards into their 2 types.
  • Railway cards: Ensure that the railway cards all on the same side and shuffle them into a deck with the trip side face-up. 
    Track market: Deal 7 cards from the deck, flipping them so the track side is face-up and  in a row heading away from the railway deck
    Trip market: Then deal 4 cards with the trip side face-up, also placed in a row heading away from the railway deck and adjacent to the track market row
  • Terminus cards: Shuffle the terminus cards into a face-down deck. Deal 3 to each player.
• Money: Give each player their starting money.
• Frames: Give each player the pieces of a frame which they should piece together.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Village Rails, players will be drafting track cards to create train lines within their frame in a 3x4 grid to score VPs, they can also draft trip cards to make those train lines earn even more VPs. Finally, they will be using terminus cards to earn money.
Village rails plays over exactly 12 rounds and uses a typical turn order with the active player taking their actions before play progresses to the player on their left.

In their turn, the active play performs the following actions.

• Drafting: When drafting, the following 2 draft-actions may be performed in any order the active player chooses.
  • Draft track card: The active player must draft a track card. They can take any of the 7 available cards but only the one furthest away from the railway deck is free. If the active player wants to take a card further along the 'line', they must place £1 on each track card they skip.
    When gaining a track card, the player also gains any coins on it.
    Place track card: The track card must be placed be inside the players frame, either adjacent to the inside edge of the frame or orthogonally adjacent to another track card.
    Additionally, track cards can only be placed in the landscape orientation, although they can be rotated 180'. Because of how the tracks are laid out, they will invariably lead the train lines downwards and/or rightwards, eventually going outside of the 3x4 grid. When this happens, that track line is 'completed'. Depending on card placement, up to 2 lines can be completed at a time.
    Completing train lines: If a player completes 2 lines at the same time, they can choose the order in which they are resolved.
    Resolving a line involves calculating the VPs it scores: There are numerous ways this can happen dependant on the features on the line.
    VPs might come from a number of the same landscape type, or a variety of different terrains that the line passes though.
    VPs may come from symbols on the line.
    Some features straight up score VPs.
    VPs are then added to the players score tracker.
    Only 'sidings' are not immediately scored.
    Completed trip cards: If a completed train line also has any attached trip cards (See below.), then they are scored according to their objectives and added to the score tracker.
    Once scored, completed trips cards are discarded to the bottom of the railway deck and a terminus card is played - see below for more info on terminus cards.
    Replace card: Once a card has been taken, the space left is filled by sliding cards away from the deck to fill it, then a new card is drawn and placed closest to the deck.
  • Draft trip card: The active player may choose to draft 1 of the 4 available trip cards. Unlike track cards, this is never free! First they must pay £3 to the bank, then they can take a trip card.
    The trip card furthest away from the deck has no additional cost but if the active player wants a trip card closer to the deck, as with the track market, they must place £1 on each trip card they skip.
    And as with track cards, the player gains any coins on a trip card they acquire.
    Place trip card: Trip cards are placed outside the frame and adjacent to one of the 7 starting train lines - provided it has not already been completed. A trip card cannot be placed on a completed line nor would it earn any VPs for it, so it's a good idea to place trip cards before track cards.
    Up to 2 trip cards can be placed at the start of a train line.
    ​Replace card: Once a card has been taken, the space left is filled by sliding cards away from the deck to fill it, then a new card is drawn and placed closest to the deck.
• ​Terminus cards: Once any train lines have been completed and any associated trips cards have been resolved, the player must place a terminus card outside the frame where the completed train line started (Essentially replacing any trip cards that might have been there.).
  Depending on the objectives on the terminus card, it can score the player £3-£10.
  When a terminus card is placed, the active player immediately draws a new one to replace it. Players should always have 3 terminus cards to choose from.
• Next player: The player to the left of the active player now becomes the active player.

​Endgame
Once all players have taken exactly 12 turns, the game is over.
Each players now calculates VPs earned from sidings and adds it to their score tracker.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Thematically, Village Rails, especially with its artwork, harks back to an age of steam before the existence of personal transport when trains represented an opportunity to go on holiday to the coast or sightsee through the countryside. 

Mechanically, Village Rails is on recognisable ground. 
It's drafting and placement rules, will be familiar to many players, as will the coin-and-conveyor belt mechanic for replacing cards.
The set-collecting, point soring mechanics will also be familiar. Sometimes players will want a set of the same landscape, or alternatively they'll want a variety of different ones on their line and so forth.

Where Village Rails does differentiate itself is in the use of trip cards to add an extra layer of scoring opportunities to the proceedings. Players will now be looking to combo trip cards off the routes they are creating. E.g., a player may be creating a route with only a type of terrain and would look for a trip card that complements that objective.
The game has a fairly wide variety of trips cards, including trip cards that score off of other trip cards.
Interestingly, there are some trip cards that work well on short train lines. It's possible to create a train line with only 1 card that immediately goes out of the playing area and a trip card that requires only 1 type of terrain would score easily off of that line.

Additionally, in the early game, Village Rails also has quite a harsh cash economy. Money is very useful for getting cards that a player needs but is in quite short supply at the start and players can soon run out of cash - and there's only 2 ways to get more - playing terminus cards after completing lines or drafting cards with coins on them.
This presents an interesting dynamic to players: I imagine most players will instinctively want to create the longest most elaborate trains lines to increase their scoring opportunities. Sometimes though, it can be good to complete a line quickly to get an injection of funds which can prove beneficial in the late game. This adds a nice little balancing act to the game, creating short and long term needs.

All of this provides players with more meaningful decisions to make and this is especially true since not only do players only have 12 turns until their playing area is filled. There will only ever be 7 train lines available to be completed, Players will need to optimise the placing of track cards

I don't usually refer to other games when blogging about the current game but it's worth mentioning that Village Rails is a re-iteration of its predecessor Village Green's 3x4 card grid mechanic which Village Rails definitely improves upon.
Where in Village Green a mistake meant leaving a gap in the grid, in Village Rails it means playing a card that scores less optimally. Mechanically the result may be identical but it makes Village Rails feels a little more forgiving, less frustrating and ultimately makes for a better game.

I found Village Rails to be an enjoyable game of its type that squeezes quite a lot into a small package, providing players with interesting options and meaningful decisions to make, albeit with a slightly flawed presentation.
​If you like route-building games with some drafting elements and it's train travel theme, then its one to try.
Finally; I would definitely recommend Village Rails over Village Green, there's nothing  wrong with Village Green but this is the superior game.

9th May 2023

It's a Tuesday and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club​ again.

This means we're in for a rootin'-tootin' time with western themed frontier town building board game Tumble Town.

Tumble Town has quite a few noteworthy components and the single biggest and most important one is the dice: They're well made with nicely rounded corners with deep pips and feel good to handle
The dice tower is a large component and unsurprisingly, it's constructed of fairly sturdy card. I guess it's a bit superfluous but since there will be a lot of dice rolling, it does prove useful and looks reasonably nice as much as a card dice-tower can look.
Also superfluous is the cactus shaped first player token but again, it adds to the presentation
The card tokens are pretty average quality while the cards feel fairly sturdy and have a 'linen' finish.

​The artwork used particularly on the building plan cards looks a western style is thematically good but straightforward which I think it needs to be as it represents the dice/buildings. This makes the artwork look a little repetitive against the fairly nondescript desert background but again, since objects that appear on the background are relevant to gameplay, it's beneficial to have clear, easily interpreted artwork.

Tumble Town uses icons to represent special abilities and scoring opportunities, it also uses colour/shape to represent the different type of building that can be built AND uses letters/symbols to indicate further requirements to constructing buildings.
That's not the end of though! The town boards have icons to do with dice manipulation and placement.
It seems like quite a lot and initially it will probably have players referring to the rulebook or reference cards. Luckily, it's pretty easily learnt especially since the icons don't all apply to the gameplay at the same time with a split between card abilities and building requirements.
Seasoned gamers won't have any problems here.

How's it play?
​Setup

• ​Drafting area: All the building plans will go into a central drafting area in the centre of the playing area.
  • Plan end cards: Put out the plan end cards in a column with 1 at the top and 3 at the bottom in the central drafting area.
  • Building plan cards: Player count will determine the number of planning cards of each type used.
    Sort planning cards into their respective types, shuffle them into face-down decks and remove cards as required.
    Then place each deck face-down on top of its respective plan end card.
    From each deck deal 4 cards face-up in a line.
  • Dice: Player count also determines how many dice are used. Sort them by colour and remove dice as required.
    Remaining dice should be placed in the central area.
• Players: Give each player the following which should be setup as described.
  • Town board: Select which set of town boards to use and give one to each player.
  • Horse card: Shuffle the horse cards into a face-down deck (That being with the scoring side face-down.). Randomly deal 1 to each player. Players are free to look at their horse card but they should keep the scoring criteria hidden from their opponents.
  • First player: Determine a starting player.
  • Starting dice: Players now draft their starting dice, this depends both on player count and position in the turn order.
    Note: Whenever a player acquires any dice for any reason, they should be immediately rolled.
  • Setup: Players should put their town board in their personal playing area. Then they should place their horse card below the town board at the midpoint between the left and right edges. Finally place the dice that were drafted (And rolled.) on the available warehouse spaces on their town board.

On to play
In Tumble Town, players will be drafting cards and dice in order to construct buildings and create the main street of their western town.
The game follows a usual turn structure of the active player resolving their actions before play progresses to the player on their left.
Each player's turn is broken down into 4 phases.

• Draft card: The active player may take any building plan from any of the rows. They then place the card to the left of their horse card - all unconstructed buildings are placed left of their horse.
  Once a card has been drafted it is replaced by a card from it's corresponding deck unless depleted.
• Draft & roll dice: The active player now takes dice as indicated by the back of the card from the deck of cards on the row where they drafted the card. If that deck is empty, then the plan end card will indicate what dice they can take. If there are not enough dice, then they draft what they can.
  Remember, when dice are drafted, they are immediately rolled.
• Construct buildings: The active player may now construct ​any number of buildings they choose to, provided they can meet the requirements.
  • Requirements: All buildings have 2 types of condition that must be met in order to construct them.
    Shape & colour: Each building plan will display the shape of a building using a number of dice with specific colours. The player must have that number of dice in that colour to construct that building. E.g., a building may need 2 grey and 2 black dice or 3 gold dice.
    Values: The top of the building depicted on the building plan will also display the values that these dice must have. E.g., this might mean all dice must be even or total value of dice must be less than 20 and so on.
  • Poor construction: The active player may create a poorly constructed building if they so choose but it comes with a cost of having to take one or more penalty tokens.
    Ignore colour: The active player cannot ignore the number of dice required to construct a building but may ignore the colour condition. However, EACH die that does not met the required colour means the player must take a penalty token.
    Ignore value: For EACH die that does not match the required value, the active player must take a penalty token.
    Remember, every penalty token acquired loses a player 2VP each.
  • Move building plan: The building plan card of any constructed building should now be moved to the right of the horse to indicate so. Any power it posses becomes immediately available to use. Speaking of powers....
  • ​Powers: All building plan cards have 3 types of 'power'.
    Some powers only activate at the game end. Typically, these provide avenues to scoring VPs.
    Others are triggered only once when the building is constructed.
    Finally, some powers can be used once round. Powers are used during this phase.
    Gold pan: Additionally, players may also use the gold pan abilities. This means a player may discard to 2 dice of the same colour or same number to get 1 or any other colour. They may also discard a single gold die to get a die of any other colour.
• Place construction: During this phase the active play now places the dice used for the constructed building on to spaces on either side of main street on their town board in the shape depicted on that building's plan card.
  Positioning dice on the town board can be important as many spaces will have conditions that if met, will provide bonus VPs.
  Mirroring: It should be noted that buildings can be mirrored - that is the relative positioning of the dice that make up the building can be flipped from left to right - which can prove advantageous to gaining VPs.
  Store/discard dice: Once the active player has finished construction they must store any remaining dice on their warehouse. If they have more dice than warehouse space then they must choose dice to discard until they are at their limit.
• End of turn: Place now progresses to the player to the left of the active player who now becomes the new active player.

Endgame
The end game is triggered when the supply of at least 2 types of dice drops to 2 or less. Play progresses until players have had equal turns, then goes to scoring.

There are a variety of ways to score VPs in Tumble Town.

• Constructed buildings: VPs will be earned from constructed buildings.
• Powers: End of game powers on cards can also score VPs according to their requirements.
• Horse card: Players should reveal their horse can and score it's requirements.
• Penalty tokens: Each penalty token acquired by a player will lose them 2VPs.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.... and they can declare themselves.... The Best in the West!

Overall
Tumble Town is strong thematically. I like how players construct their town from the dice they draft and it visually builds up over the rounds. It also looks quite eye-catching and has a good 'presence'. Just don't play on a wobbly table or with clumsy players!

Mechanically the game is fairly good. It mixes drafting, getting the dice results needed and an element of engine building.

I found use of the warehouse crucial, not only will players need to store dice between turns to construct the larger buildings, players will find themselves looking for buildings that match the dice they have stored. Because being able to draft a building and knowing that it can already be built by dice on the warehouse spaces is both reassuring and efficient.
While having to use whatever the result is of dice that are rolled is not a disaster by any means, there is a degree of luck involved which can stymie a player - although that is mitigated somewhat by being able to alter or manipulate the dice. Additionally, players don't have to construct a building the turn they acquire it, it's entirely possible to construct multiple buildings in a turn.
When it comes to buildings, players will find themselves having to choose between the ones that give them a power or additional resources to improve their engine and point-scorers. It's that classic balancing act between increasing abilities or increasing VP opportunities.
There's also the balance of taking building plans and gaining dice. Tier 1 buildings are fairly easy to construct as they generally only require 3 dice - which is how many dice a player gets to also draft in their turn.
The tier 2 & 3 plans generally require 4+ dice, additionally the tier 3 plans make a lot of use of the gold dice.
Finally, there's also a degree of having to adapt to what dice are available - and consequently the results of what are rolled plus what cards become available.

The game is a bit of a race to draft dice and use them well, it makes efficient play important. In the first game played I managed to construct 6 buildings by the game end which nearly completely filled my town board.
It means that a game can theoretically be completed in as few as 6 turns if the right dice rolls come up! This makes the game play quickly.

I'm not sure how I feel about this relatively short play time. It can feel like the game is over just as it starts to get going and is perhaps a little unsatisfying. But this forces players to think hard about their choices and the aforementioned need for efficiency which is a good thing.
​
While Tumble Town is a sort of light-to-midweight game that has a nice western feel and theme it's probably a bit too obtuse with it's engine building and dice manipulation rules for casual players.
Dedicated games who like those mechanics will find enough depth to engage the grey matter.

It could be argued that Tumble Town is a little gimmicky with its conceit of using dice to actually construct the buildings but it's a fairly unique mechanic as far as I know and I thought it added to the experience and despite the game leaving me wanting it to go on a a bit more, I found it enjoyable.

30th April 2023

Sunday is here again and we're logged into Board Game Arena for some gaming goodness.
Gizmos not about some cute puppet that spawns a legion of malignant sprites, instead it's drafting and engine building game about building gizmos.... through the power of science!

Caveat: We've only ever played this game digitally.

What's in a game?

• Player board: The player boards in Gizmos are very long rectangular boards.
  There's enough room to place a row of 6 cards (Or 6 columns of cards.) which represent the game's 6 facets. Each of these 6 'slots' also has its own associated icon.
  The first slot lists the player's 3 stats - maximum storage, maximum file size and research limit.
  The second slot is for placing 'conversion' cards - more on this later.
  The remaining 4 slots are for placing cards that relate to the game's 4 core actions, - File, Pick, Build & Research.

Gizmos' only art appears on the gizmo cards and although it seems quite small, it is varied and detailed, appropriately depicting various scientific activities in bright colours.
In fact Gizmos makes good use of bright colour throughout on iconography and components.

With regards to iconography, there is a fair amount of it but for the most, it's intuitive and easily understood, some of it however, will have players looking up the rules, especially regarding the picking and drawing of resources. 

How's it play?
Setup

• Players: Randomly give each player a player board and starting card which should be placed in it's appropriate slot under the board (As dictated by the icon in the cards top left corner.).
  Also give each player a storage ring.
• Dispenser: In the physical version of the game, marbles will be placed into the dispenser, they then randomly trick out to form a row of 6 marbles.
• Gizmo cards: Sort the gizmo cards by level and shuffle them into their respective face-down decks. Then remove 20 cards from the level 3 cards.
  Next deal cards from each deck with 4 level 1 cards at the bottom, 3 level 2 cards in the middle and 2 level 3 cards at the top. Thus creating a sort of pyramid shape with 9 cards in total in the central playing area.
• First player: One of the player boards is marked 'first player board'. Whichever player received this board will be the first player.

On to play
Players are attempting to accumulate VPs in Gizmos and they come from 2 sources, the cards and by acquiring VP tokens.
This is done by drafting resources and cards, then building cards to gain cards and resources at faster rate to build more cards and so on!
Gizmos uses a typical turn order with the active player taking their action before play progresses to the player on their left.

• Stats: Before describing actions it's a good idea to explain what the stats do. Furthermore, all of the stats described below can be upgraded by playing the relevant gizmo cards. E.g.,  The maximum storage for energy can be increased from it's starting value of 5.
  Maximum storage: This is how many energy marbles a player may have in their storage ring at any time. The starting value is 5.
  Maximum file: This determines how many gizmo cards a player can have 'archived' at any time. More on archiving below.
  Research limit: Players can choose to draw cards from the face-down decks and potentially build or archive them. This stat determines how many cards they can draw.
• Actions: During their turn, the active player can perform 1 of the following 4 actions. 
  • File: The active player may draft a card from the central playing area and 'archive' it alongside their player board.
    The player's maximum file stat determines how many cards they can have archived at any one time.
  • Pick: This action allows the active player to draft 1 of the 6 resources from the resource line and place it in their storage ring, provided it does not exceed the maximum.
  • Build: This action allows the active player to build a gizmo card by paying its cost. This can be taken from the central playing are or the player's personal archive.
    When a gizmo is built, it should be placed under the slot that matches its type. Convertor cards go beneath the convertor slot and so on. This will upgrade the slot it is placed under. Thus placing a gizmo card under the pick action may allow the player in later turns to pick more resources when they chose the pick action.
  • Research: The active may draw 1 or more cards blindly from 1 of the 3 face-down deck and then immediately build it, archive it or discard it.
• Additional rules: there are some other rules that should be noted.
  • Upgrades: When upgrade gizmo cards are built, they will increase a player's limits.
  • Combos: When one of the 4 actions are activated by the active player, all the cards built beneath it can be activated in any order to provide extra actions, thus creating combos.
    Combos will allow the player to gain extra energy resources or cards or even VPs etc.
  • Convertors: These can be activated when certain actions are activated by the active player. Essentially they work a little like combos however, while combos usually acquire extra resources or cards, convertors, as the name suggests will turn one thing into another, such as turning blue energy resources into red.
• Next round: Once the active player has completed their action and activated the cards they can or want to, play progresses to the player on their left.

​Endgame
Play continues until one player has built a total of 16 gizmo cards OR built 3 level 3 cards.
In either case, play continues until all players have had equal turns. Then players total their VPs from the cards they've built and any VP tokens they've acquired.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Gizmos' theme about building gizmos for a science fair is fairly light and perhaps a little unexciting but appropriate. It's also a game that's all about building an engine to trigger combos.

Players will look to find the most effective and efficient way to pick energy and build gizmos through upgrades, arguably the 2 most important actions in the game: Although it's probably not a good idea to neglect upgrading other stats or actions. Increasing energy storage and conversion is especially useful as it allows the player to manage their energy resources with greater flexibility and in fact, some gizmo cards require 6 energy to build! - Forcing players to upgrade their maximum storage.
A lot of the decision making this will involve will be contextual, depending on how energy resources appear and are drafted by other players. As always in these situations, players will need to adapt to circumstances (Which is why energy conversion and storage is so useful.). The same is also true of gizmo cards. This can lead to some unusual combos appearing.

Gizmos other 2 actions, file and research feel a little surplus to need and maybe just pad the game out unnecessarily a bit.
There's a higher level of play regarding the file action that involves watching opponents, seeing which energy resources they are going for, anticipating what gizmo card they might be aiming for and hate drafting that gizmo with a denial strategy but conversely. However, those other players will probably archive cards they want to build before beginning to accumulate the energy requires which sort of makes attempting to hate draft moot.
Research also feels less useful, essentially when researching, the player is making a bit of Hail Mary play, hoping to find a gizmo card that matches the energy tokens they possess but for whatever reason cannot use to build a currently available gizmo card.

These are minor drawbacks though and players are generally not required to use them. Otherwise, Gizmos is a fairly solid engine-building game with a slice of drafting. It hits a pleasant sweet spot of blending fairly straightforward rules that are fairly quick to learn  with hefty and frequently meaningful decisions to make.
Worth trying if you like this kind of game.

9th April 2023

Sunday night on Board Game Arena means gaming goodness.

Ruffle your feathers, flap you wings and squawk for this err... bird and fruit themed set collecting card game.

Caveat: We've only played this game digitally.

What's in a game?
Cards: Toucan consists of a deck of 70 cards, broken down into 3 types.

• Fruit cards: These form the bulk of the game's cards.
  They each depict 1 of a selection of different fruits with a colourful illustration.
  Furthermore each type of fruit displays its own set-collecting rules as shown on each card.

Tucano features colourful and bright cartoony illustrations throughout.
It's a nice art style that works well with cheerfully anthropomorphic fruit and stylised birds that suits the game's lightweight nature.

The game's only iconography are the 3 symbols found on the toucan cards and icons used for set collecting scoring on fruit cards.
All of these are easily and quickly explained and understood.

How's it play?
Setup

• Cards: Separate all the toucan cards from the deck and put them aside.
  • Shuffle all the remaining cards and deal them into 2 face-down decks.
  • Now take the toucan cards and shuffle them into one of the 2 decks, ensuring it all remains face-down.
  • Finally, take the other deck and place it on top of the deck with the toucan cards.
    ​Thus all the toucan cards will be in the lower half of the deck.
• Columns: Deal 3 cards face-up into the central area to form the beginnings of 3 columns. Then deal another card face-up into the middle column.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play.
In Tucano, players will drafting cards from a column in the central area and add to their personal area with the aim of collecting sets which will in turn score them maximum victory points (VPs).

Tucano uses a traditional turn order with the active player resolving their turn before play moves on to the player on their left.
The active player will perform the following.

• Draft: The active player picks any 1 of the 3 available columns and adds all the cards in that column to their personal area.
  It's a good idea to sort cards by type at this point.
  Toucan cards: If one of the cards that were drafted is a toucan card, its action must be immediately resolved.
  Joker: If one of the drafted cards is a joker, it does not need to be assigned to a set until the game end.
• Refresh: Once the active player has finished their turn, a card each is added face-up to the 3 columns - including the empty one.
  Next player: Play then progresses to the player to the left of the current active player who then becomes the new active player.

Endgame
Play continues until the deck has been depleted and there's only 1 column of cards left in the central area.

At this point, any players with a joker card may choose which set to add it to.
Sets are then scored.

​Most sets will score according to how many cards a player has collected of that set.
However, some sets score based on how many cards a player has collected in relation to other players. In this case whoever has the most cards will score the larger amount and all other players with cards in that set will score the lesser amount.
It is possible in some circumstances for sets to lose players VPs!

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
I guess toucans collecting fruit is a good a theme for a set collecting game as any! 

When playing, players are broadly speaking, faced with 3 choices during their turn which on the surface is not a lot.
However, Tucano does a clever thing is by having some sets earning increasing VPs, some sets intermittently scoring VPs and some losing them - and then having columns that get longer.
Invariably, when a column contains a card that loses VPs; players will initially ignore that column, this means that over the rounds more cards will be added to that column, making it more appealing to draft.
As a result; sometimes players will have no-brainers on what to draft but sometimes they will have to choose between columns which will add negative cards to their collections. They'll be looking to minimise the negatives and hoping to get rid of them at some later point.
Which brings me to the toucan cards, these wisely appear in the latter part of the game - where they'll have the most impact. The right use of toucan cards when they appear can be a real game changer (And also frustrating!), particularly when giving cards to other players: In the right circumstances a player can remove a negative from one of their collections and add it to an opponent's!

There's not more to add. Tucano is a pared down, fairly simple set collecting game and I'm pretty certain I'm not the target audience here.
Even as a filler or short game, I'm unsure it offers enough depth for seasoned players. Personally I found it a fairly shallow experience and the mechanics of the toucan cards a little frustrating.

Conversely though, just from the appealing, colourful art, it apparent Tucano is squarely aimed at younger players.
Its simplicity makes for a accessible game and a great way to introduce set collecting mechanics to budding future gamers and for family gaming.

1st April 2023

We're at Wogglecon 7 for a day of gaming fun. Second game of the day was Sagrada which means 'sacred' in Spanish.
Gaming and Wogglecon are definitely sacred but is Sagrada all about creating stained glass windows through the medium of dice-placement, albeit with dice that look quite glassy!

The most noticeable component of Sagrada are the bright colourful dice. They are well made, rounded and translucent with a 'gem' type finish.
Usually I have a preference for wooden dice but can see why the game uses this type as it's a great fit the stained glass window theme.
The player board with it's recessed grid works well when used with the window pattern cards which slide smoothly into place and dice which happily set in their spots.
The cards are the standard you'd expect off of a modern game and the inclusion of glass beads is a nice touch.

The game's art direction continues the theme of stained glass windows. There's lots of brightly coloured glass panes shown on the player boards and round tracker. White much of it is just abstract shapes, it's very colourful without obscuring important detail.
It also lends the game a eye catching quality all of which I like.

For the most part, the game's iconography is easily understood.
Some of the objective cards and tool cards might require explanation or looking up in the manual but this doesn't really affect the flow of play and isn't an issue.

How's it play?
​Setup

• Player board: Give each player a player board.
  Window pattern cards: Give each player 2 pattern cards. Each player should then choose 1 to keep and discard the other out of play. The chosen pattern card should then be slid into the player's board, this will display the pattern cards colours and numbers through the board.
  Favour tokens: Give each player a number of favour tokens as indicated by the pattern card they took.
  Private objective card: Shuffle the private objective cards into a face-down deck and deal 1 each to every player, players should keep this card hidden from their opponents.
• Public objective cards: Shuffle these into a face-down deck and deal 3 into a central playing area.
• Tool cards: Shuffle the tool cards into a face-down deck and also deal 3 face-up into the central area.
• Dice: Place all dice into the bag and give it a good shake.
• Round tracker: Place the round track into the central playing area.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Sagrada, players will be placing dice on to their player board in an attempt to match the criteria on the public/private scoring cards while also meeting the requirements dictated by the pattern cards.

The game utilises something of a typical turn order but during each round every player will have the opportunity to draft 2 dice; although only 1 at a time.

• Round start: At the start of a round, whoever is the first play should take the bad and draw out a number of dice dependant on player order. This amounts to 2 dice per player plus 1 more. Then the first player should roll those dice and place them into the central playing area.
• Drafting: Each player will have the opportunity to draft 2 dice, first in turn order and then in reverse turn order.
  ​First player: Drafting always commences with the first player beginning as the active player. They perform their action(s) then play progresses to the player on their left and so on.
  Once the last player in the turn order has completed their turn, the order of play reverses, mean the last player now goes first with play progressing to their right and the first player going last!
  This means the first player has their 2nd action last while the last player has 2 actions in a row.
• Active player: Whenever someone becomes the active player they have the option of performing the following 2 actions in any order they see fit.
  • Draft die: The active may draft 1 of the available dice and add it to their window with the following placement rules.
    • Pattern requirements: Any die placed on a player's window must match the requirement shown on the pattern card. Thus a green die (Of any value.) must go on a green space and a die showing 4 (Of any colour.) must go on a space showing a '4'.
    • First die: The first die a player places in their window must be along the edge or in the corner.
    • Subsequent dice: All other dice placed in the window must now be adjacent a die already in the window, the can be diagonally or orthogonally.
    • No matches: When placing a die orthogonally adjacent to another die, it must be a different colour and number. A blue die cannot be placed orthogonally adjacent to another blue die. A '2' cannot be placed adjacent to another '2'.
  • Use tool card: The active player may choose to spend a favour token to utilise the ability on any of the tool cards. This can be be performed before or after drafting a die.
• End of round: Once the round has been completed; that is each player has had the opportunity to draft 2 dice, then the round has ended and the following occurs.
  Round tracker: Take the remaining die or dice and place them on the spot for the current round on the round tracker. All of these dice are now out of play.
  New first player: The player who drew the dice should pass the bag to the player on their left who now becomes the first player for the following round.

Endgame
Play continues for 10 rounds whereupon the game ends and goes to scoring.
VPs can be accumulated from several sources.

• Public objective cards: Players will score VPs by meeting the criteria of the public cards, it is possible to score a card multiple times.
• Private objective card: As with public cards, players can score VPs from their private cards, this too can be done multiple times.
• Favour tokens: Every unspent favour token is worth 1 VP.
• Empty spaces: Players actually lose VPs for spaces on their window no containing dice. Each empty space will cost the player 1VP.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Using translucent, glass-like dice to represent details of a stained glass window is a cool nice idea that fits thematically. It doesn't hurt that it all looks quite pretty when finished.

Mechanically, Sagrada is straightforward - drafting and placing dice to try and match objectives. The challenge facing players however, comes from managing the obstacles that will impede them.
Players will have to take into account both the requirements of their pattern board when placing dice and the placement rules and how they interact with each other.

E.g., placing a red die on a blank space orthogonally adjacent to a red space on their pattern board will mean now that no die can be placed on the red space - because it will be adjacent to the already placed red die.

Leaving spaces empty like this will cost players VPs.
It means players will need to anticipate which dice they place to avoid pitfalls such as this. They will need to pay attention to not only which dice they draft but since they draft 2 dice per round, the order in which they are drafted.
Additionally, players will need to manage having to draft dice they might not want at that time. This can be difficult because of the rule's placement restrictions.
There's also definitely a higher lever of play here that comes from seeing what dice other players will need and trying to gauge which opponents will take which dice and react appropriately.

There's not much more to say about Sagrada.
I guess some people may not like the low amount of interaction between players which only occurs when drafting dice but I don't have an issue with it. I will add that Sagrada sort of feels a little like a puzzle to solve than a game in itself and some people may not like this aspect. Again, it doesn't bother me.

Sagrada is easy to understand with its 'draft and place' mechanics but presents players with a not insignificant challenge: Since the game is played over 10 rounds and players can get 2 dice per round, it is possible to entirely fill a window but I don't think that is a simple proposition.
It feels kind of unremarkable as a game because it is so straightforward without bells and whistles or any gimmicks but in practice provides a solid, enjoyable gameplay experience which taxes the braincells a little and pushes players to make tricky decisions. 

7th March 2023

Tuesday evening is here again and we're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns.

'It's so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.' - Paul Cezanne.

Canvas is a game about creating paintings - well sort of and you actually start with a blank canvas - well sort of!

The tokens are all constructed from suitably thick card stock and feel satisfyingly sturdy. The tuck box is made from the same material used for tuck boxes that contain decks of cards and like those boxes, it's fairly flimsy but unless it's mistreated, it should be fine.
​The scoring cards are made of standard card.

For a game about art, as you might expect, there's a lot of art in Canvas. However, it's all 'patchwork' art that comes in small elements which during the course of the game, players will combine to make their sort of own artwork.
Canvas provides lots of these small pieces of art in a variety of styles and sizes. It's hard to say whether it's good or bad because it's not meant to constitute finished art. Regardless of that, it all looks OK to me. Certainly, there's a lot of bright colour going on, which is something I like.

While Canvas uses an average-ish amount of iconography, I found some of it to be rather abstract and counter-intuitive.
The bonus silver ribbons and colous are easily understood, but triangle representing shape and a striped box representing texture?
It's also complicated a little further by whatever the scoring criteria are on the scoring cards which seemed not quite as simple as they could be. Players especially need to be aware of the scoring criteria
It's a bit of a steep curve but ultimately not a gamebreaker though and requires some learning.

How's it play?
Setup

• Game mat: Put out the game mat.
  Scoring cards: Either use a chosen selection or randomly deal 4 scoring cards into the 4 spaces on the matt.
  Art cards: Shuffle the art cards into a deck and place them into the tuck box, then place the tuck box on to the rightmost space on the game mat. Deal 5 cards from the tuck into the 5 available spaces.
• Players: Give each player the following.
  Background cards: Give each player 3 background cards, these should be in  transparent sleeves.
  Inspiration tokens: Give each player 4 inspiration tokens.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Canvas, each player is creating 3 paintings - which will be created by layering 3 art cards over a background card. Once a painting is created, it will earn ribbon as per the scoring criteria. Then, once the game is over, ribbons will earn VPs.
Canvas uses a traditional turn order with the active player acting, then play progressing to the player on their left.

During their turn, the active player in basic terms has 2 choices.

• ​Draft art card: The active player may draft 1 of the 5 available art cards into their hand with the following restrictions.
  Cost: The active player may take the leftmost art card for free but any card further along must be paid for with inspiration tokens. 1 token must be placed on every card that is 'skipped'.
  Acquire tokens: Conversely, the active player may collect any tokens on a art card which they draft.
  Conveyor belt: Once a art card has been taken from the drafting track, cards are slid to the left to fill the gap and a new card is added to the rightmost space.
  Max hand: A player can never have more than 5 art cards in their hand at any time. If a player has collected 5 arts, they cannot draft anymore and must instead create a painting.
• Create painting: When a player has 5 art cards in hand, they must create a painting, if they have 3 or 4 art cards, they can choose to create a painting.
  ​Exactly 3 art cards are required to create a painting.
  Creating a painting is technically easy; the active player takes 3 of their art cards and layers them on top of each other in any order they see fit and them places them into one of the sleeves with a background card.
  Score artwork: The active player then scores the newly created artwork.
  The artwork will be scored across all 4 scoring cards.
  Only visible scoring icons can be scored, that is, any that were covered by other icons are not scored.
  ​A painting will earn ribbons of the corresponding colour for meeting each scoring card's scoring criteria. It is possible to earn more than 1 ribbon from a scoring card by meeting it's criteria more than once. Additionally, silver ribbon scoring on actual art cards may provide extra ribbons.
• Next Player: Once the active player has either drafted or created, play progress to the player on their left.

Endgame
Once a player has created 3 paintings, their turns are skipped, once all player have created 3 paintings, the game ends and goes to scoring.

Players should now sort their ribbons by colour.
Each scoring card will determine how many victory points (VPs) its set of coloured ribbons will score.
Silver ribbons earn 2 VPs each.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
​Canvas merges its theme with its central mechanic quite well and I have to say it's a a fairly unique mechanic I quite like that also feels fresh. I also like how the game produces some pretty unusual names for the paintings.

Canvas is in implementation, a fairly straightforward game, it utilises familiar drafting and conveyor belt mechanics commonly seen elsewhere. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a good crossover game as I feel the scoring rules are a little obtuse but gamers should have no problems understanding Canvas.

Where the game's depth comes from is in the creation of paintings.
Players can freely choose to layer the art cards they choose to use how they wish but any scoring icons that are not visible are not scored.
This puts players into a quandary, they will need to not just select the art cards for a painting that provide them the best scoring opportunities but also how to layer those art cards to do so!
Furthermore, over multiple plays, the wide choice of scoring cards will force players to approach game slightly differently. Between this and the variety of art cards, there's a lot of replicability to the game.

Thus players must carefully draft whatever cards they might need as well as think about how to use them.
Synergy between cards is key to optimal scoring but I found it was quite hard to get the mix of icons that I wanted and I'm sure that Canvas is one of those games where players will rarely get the 'perfect scoring' they want.
That's a good thing because it means players will have to choose between choices and are pushed to make meaningful decisions, although I must admit that I found it sometimes veered to being close to frustrating instead of challenging.

There's not much more to say really; Canvas is a game that's quick to pick up and relatively quick to play with a easily understandable theme that meshes well with gameplay that feels a little different to anything else.
It's a game definitely worth trying especially if you're looking for a game that has some unique elements.

5th February 2023

It's another Sunday evening and we're logged into Board Game Arena again for some gaming fun.

Nova Luna; the new moon.

No, this is no a game based on those dodgy vampire films. It's a pretty standard draft and tile placement game.

Caveat: We've only ever played this game digitally.

What's in a game?

• Game board: Nova Luna features a 'moon wheel', a sort ring or wheel shaped board. Along the wheel is a 24-space track upon which are displayed different phases of the moon and is used to track player order. Around the wheel's outside are 12 spaces to place the game's square tiles.

• Moon meeple: This token continues the game's moon theme.
• Tokens : There are 21 of these disc shaped tokens in each of the game's 4 player colours.

​The game's only art is found on the moon wheel, there's some fairly detailed styling around the wheel as well all the faces of the moon.
Otherwise, Nova Luna is fairly light on artwork. It does make good use of bold bright colours however, which I like and think makes it look eye catching.

If you understand numbers and coloured dots, then you'll understand Nova Luna's iconography. It's very straightforward and easily understood.

How's it play?
Setup

• Game board: Put out the moon wheel board. Put the moon meeple at the topmost outer space.
• Tiles: Shuffle the tiles into a face-down stack. Then draw and place tiles face-up in all the spaces around the outside the moon wheel (Other than the space with the moon wheel.).
• Tokens: Give player all the tokens in their chosen player colour. Each player should place a token on the topmost space on the moon track.
• First Player: Determine a turn order for the first round.

On to play
In Nova Luna, players will be drafting tiles from the moon wheel and placing them adjacent to each other in their personal play area with the intent of connecting tiles of certain colours to each other in order to complete the objectives or tasks on those tiles.

Nova Luna does not use a traditional turn order, player order is based on the respective position of each player's token position on the moon track. Furthermore, whenever a player takes a tile, their token will move along the track.

• Active player: Whoever is 'furthest' back along the moon track becomes the active player. If tokens from 2 or more players share the same furthest back space, then the token on the top becomes activated.
• Draft: The active player must draft a tile according to the following rules.
  Refill: If there are no tiles left around the moon wheel, the active player must refill the empty spaces. If there are 1 or 2 tiles left, they may choose to refill the wheel.
  Take tile: Then the active player must take a tile. The tile taken must from the first 3 occupied spaces in front of the moon meeple (Empty spaces are skipped.).
  Move meeple: Once the active player has taken a tile, they must move the moon meeple to the space where they just took the tile from.
  Move token: The active player now moves their personal token along the moon track, they move the token a number of spaces as indicated by the time in the top left corner of the tile they just acquired, thus will move it 1-7 spaces along the track.
• Place tile: Now the active player must place the tile they took into their personal playing area.
  Placement: When placing a tile, it must go orthogonally adjacent to another tile, obviously this does not apply to the first tile placed.
• Check tasks: Once the active player has placed the tile, they should check to see if tasks on already placed tiles and also the tile they just placed have now been completed. How are tasks completed? Read on.
  • Task criteria: ​Inside each circle on a tile will be 1-4 dots of varying colour. When other tiles with colours that match those dots are connected to this tile, that task on this tile is completed.
    Note: A set of orthogonally connected tiles with the same colour can all be counted as connected. Thus if a task requires 3 connected red tiles, if  3 reds are connected to each other, then only one of them needs to be connected to the tile with the task.
  • Place token: Once a task has been completed, the active player should place one of their tokens on the pertinent circle to mark it as completed.
    It is possible to complete more than one task at a time and place as many discs as required.

• Next player: Once the active player has completed their turn, play progresses to whoever is now furthest back along the moon track. If the active player has taken a tile with a very low number, it's possible that they will still at the back and will become the active player again.

Endgame
There are 2 ways the game can end.

• Tokens: If a player has placed all their personal tokens on tasks in their play area, then the game immediately ends and they win.
• Tiles: If the supply of tiles is depleted, the game ends and the player who has the least tokens remaining, i.e., whoever has completed the most tasks wins the game.

Overall
Nova Luna's new moon/lunar theme is a bit left field and in fact, the rulebook actually describes Nova Luna as an abstract game. However, abstract nature aside, let's discuss the gameplay.

Nova Luna presents two elements that player will need to think about, which are the drafting and then placement of tiles.

The drafting element presents players with some potentially interesting choices.
Taking a tile will likely alter the active player's position in the turn order.
They will generally have the option of taking 1 of 3 the tiles ahead of the moon meeple. When the situation occurs that there are less than 3 they can elect to fill the spaces but may choose not to, instead selecting from the smaller selection if those tiles are what they want.
Players can sometimes manipulate the situation to get more tiles they need as there may be times when the active player could take a tile with a low time value and immediately act again, however, what's to stop a player always doing that?
Well, tiles with low time values tend to have tasks that are harder to complete and require more connections. So there's a bit of a balancing mechanic there.

Tile placement is also very important.
It's vital to try and think ahead when doing this
Optimal tile placement is key.
Players will want to position tiles so that they complete current tasks but also leaves tile edges open to complete tasks later in the game or open to be connected to other tiles later on.
Like a lot of games of this type. It will be tricky to always place the tile you want, when you want and they'll be moments of frustration when this occurs. Sometimes players will to adapt or change tactic.

While I feel that Nova Luna is a game that plays well and I'd have no problems joining a game if someone wanted to play. It is however, also the kind of game I've played a lot before.
The whole draft and place tile gameplay is something that's already been done quite a lot and while some of the mechanics utilised for this in Nova Luna are unique, I don't think it's enough to differentiate itself from other games of its type.

If you've played games similar in gameplay to Nova Luna, you probably won't find much in here that's new.
However, if you're new to this kind of game or looking for a game in this style, then Nova Luna is equally worth considering, it's not particularly difficult to learn and gives players meaningful decisions and choices to balance in a bright and colour package.

11th December 2022

It's a Sunday evening and where logged into video chat and Board Game Arena for some gaming fun.

More space, more empires and more final frontiers. 
Cosmos: Empires is a galactically-themed tableau building where plays rush to build their cosmic empire - or least increase their empire's production - all very capitalist!

Caveat: We've only ever played this game digitally.

What's in a game?

• Cards: Cosmos: Empires uses a single deck of card.
  Each card is illustrated with some sort of space-themed vehicle or construct.
  In the top left corner of each card is the 'purchasing' cost
  Along the bottom it lists the card's 'type', 'activation number' and 'production value'.
  Some cards will also have one of various types of ability, this may well also include some text to better explain how the card works.
• Dice: The game uses 2 4-sided (d4), pyramid looking dice numbered from 1-4.
  There are also a few 8-sided (d8) dice which have no direct gameplay use but are instead used to track certain cards.
• Currency: The game uses 'credits' as its currency.

I have to say I found the illustrations to be pretty good sci-fi themed artwork and could easily see them on classic 70's sci-fi book covers. Having said that, I did also find some of the artwork was a little too busy for a card game, there were bright spots that drew the eye from important information for example and perhaps the text could have been a bit clearer.

While there are a few icons, it's not overwhelming, some information on card abilities are displayed on the cards themselves, sometimes player's will want to refer to the rules for clarification. I would not consider it a problem as Cosmos: Empires is pretty straightforward.

How's it play?
Setup

• Cards: Shuffle the cards into a face-down deck, then deal 10 face-up into a central drafting area.
• Players: Give 8 credits to each player.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Cosmos: Empires, players will be generating credits which will be used to buy cards from the drafting area.
These cards will have various actions that can be used to the player's benefit with the ultimate aim of increasing currency production.
When a player reaches a certain threshold of currency production, it will trigger the game end.
Cosmos: Empires mostly follows the typical turn structure with the active player performing their actions before play progresses to the player on their left. However, it is likely that 'inactive' players will have their cards activated outside of their turn.
The following occurs during the active player's turn.

• Roll dice: First the active player rolls the 2 4-sided dice and add their values together generating a number from 2-8.
  Note: It should be noted that it's possible for the active player to change the result of the dice roll during their turn. More on this below.
  • Activations: Now all players who have cards with matching activation numbers can activate those cards and produce the listed amount of credits for each activated card's production value.
• Actions: During their turn, the active play can perform any 2 actions from the following. A player may also pick an action to perform twice.
  • Shift result: The active player may use an action increase or decrease the result of the dice roll by 1. This will have the result of changing which cards are activated.
  • Build card: This is another way of saying the active player may buy a card  from the drafting area and add it to their tableau.
  • Cycle a card: The active player may spend an action to discard a card from the drafting area to the bottom of the deck and gain 2 credits.
• Card abilities: If a card has an ability, it can be activated by the active player during their turn without using an action, it's essentially 'free' to use a card ability.
  Furthermore, if the active player 'builds' a card, its ability can be immediately used.
• Next player: Once the active player has completed their 2 actions, play progress to the player on their left.

Endgame
Play continues until any one player has combined production value (Not credits.) on all the cards in their tableau of 30 or more.
At this point the endgame is triggered, the round continues until all players have had even turns.
All player then calculate their finishing combined production value.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Cosmos: Empires is a tableau building game that seems to me to have been designed to be a more streamlined, quicker playing, simpler, more accessible game that's a little different to other games of this type.

The strategy in Cosmos: Empires is relatively straightforward; acquire as many cards as quickly as you can, while some cards do combo off each other and getting those cards is good. It's also a goof idea to just get many cards as you can and hope dice rolls go your way.

You see; typically in tableau building games there's ​an early game element about building up the tableau then a late game element about using that tableau to work towards whatever the winning criteria.
Cosmos: Empires eschews this paradigm because it's winning criteria is about accumulating production value and all cards provide production value. It means that acquiring any cards works towards winning.
​The impact of this is that can create a sort of situation where a player will get some cards that quickly earn them a lot of production/credits which can be used to get even more cards (Especially the case when a player can build 2 cards per turn.) to get more even more production/credits in a self perpetuating cycle.
Now this might sound like a good thing and the kind of you'd want in a tableau builder?

The issue is that it can put one player into a unassailable lead where they not only constantly outproduce other players' production but consequently, they also constantly outpace the production increases of other players. A uncatchable double whammy!
This can be exacerbated by the fact that all cards activate in all players' turns. Quite often activations will end up benefitting whoever is in the lead simply by virtue of them having more cards.
Sure, players can shift the activation numbers but I found in order to not to give the leader benefits, I also had to deny them to myself. It felt very negative.

I genuinely admire any game's attempt to pare back rules, provide more elegant gameplay and quicker playtime and this is the case for Cosmos: Empires but it results in a game that feels somewhat unbalanced.
Additionally, I found Cosmos: Empires a little bland, it didn't feel like there's much variety in the mix of cards and it didn't feel particularly engaging. I'm not sure it would stand up to repeated playing

Although, having said all of that, I might not be the best target audience.
Cosmos: Empires might serve as a good entry the tableau building game type and if you want a straightforward, uncluttered, quick playing iteration of it, Cosmos: Empires might tick those boxes.