28th January 2020

Tuesday is here and we're at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking to play board games.

Popular opinion states that most restaurant fail in the first year, so running one is hard work (And believe me I know!). What could be harder? Running a whole chain of restaurants! 

That's where 'Food Chain Magnate' comes in. Now you too can know what it's like to run restaurants without all the 'fun' of inconsistent staff, irritating customers, infuriating regulations and interfering local authorities. 

What's in a game?
There's quite a lot to Food Chain Magnate and quite a lot of components too.

• Tiles: Each tile depicts some buildings (Represented by white areas with grid lines.) and roads (Shown in blue.). A number of tiles are placed together to form the main playing area, essentially representing a neighbourhood.
• Meeples: There are 2 types of food (Burgers and pizzas.) and 3 types of drink (Soft drinks, lemonade and beers.), these are represented by very nice wooden meeples.
• Staff cards: All the staff your chains of restaurants could ever need are depicted on these cards. Delivery boys, chefs, managers, HR and err zeppelin pilots? When staff cards are played, they must be placed in a hierarchy. This hierarchy can have up to 3 rows, but in order to have more rows, a player will need more managers to manage the staff in the lower rows.
• Display stand: Amazingly, the game's lid is flipped over and becomes a display stnd for all the staff cards. This is not just a nice touch, it actually saves a lot of room as displaying all the staff cards flat on the playing area would take up so much space.

How's it play?
First; setup.

• The tiles are randomly placed to form the playing area. This will determine the placement of buildings and roads. The number of tiles used depends on the number of players.
• The staff cards are put in their display
• Players are given 3 restaurants and the starting order is determined.
• Each player is given a 'CEO' staff card.

That's pretty much it for setup, let's get to playing.
A round of Food Chain Magnate is played over 7 rounds.

• Staff hierarchy; during this phase, players put down their staff cards (Face down, they are all revealed at the same time.). At the start, players only have a CEO. The CEO can manage 3 other staff (In the row below) and has the ability to hire another member of staff (This new staff card is not immediately put into play.). The CEO can hire staff like chefs etc, but in the long term the player will also need to hire managers, managers will manage other staff (A bit like a CEO.), so if a CEO gets a couple of managers, they can manage 6 staff. Players will also need to hire trainers, when staff are hired, they are at a 'junior' level, training staff make them more effective; managers can manage more people, cooks can cook more, etc. There are a lot of staff that do a lot of different things. Any staff cards that a player has that are not in their hierarchy spend the day at the beach!
• Determine new player order; the order in which players act is recalculated every turn. Basically, the player who has the most 'empty' spaces in their hierarchy gets t choose where in turn order they go (They could choose to go first or last or anywhere in between.). Then the player who has the 2nd highest number of empty spaces goes next etc.
• Actions; in turn order, each player carries out the actions for the staff they have in their hierarchy. Actions include hiring and training. They also include marketing (Marketing creates a demand for food & drink.), getting food & drink, placing new houses (Creating houses creates customers) and gardens (Gardens are attached to houses and increase demand.) and finally placing new restaurants and moving existing ones.
• Supply the demand; players can carry out actions to create a demand for food & drink. Provided a player has generated food & drink, they can try and then supply that demand. How does this work? Well, 'people' from houses will go to the cheapest restaurant selling the food & drink that they want (Players can hire staff to push the price of their food & drink down.), however the further that 'people' have to travel, the more it costs. Every time customers visit a player's restaurant, that player earns money. 
• Wages: Players now have to pay the wages of their staff.
• Marketing campaign: Even though a player may have created a marketing campaign in the 'Actions' phase, the effect of the campaign doesn't kick in until now, so players need to think ahead. There are various different types of campaign that a player can undertake, that have different ranges and areas of effect and can have differing duration. This includes using billboards, mail shots, radio and even planes for advertising.
• Clean up; excess food & drink is discarded and various other end of round actions are completed here. The game includes 'milestones', these are varied objectives to meet, the player who completes a milestone first, gets an in game benefit for it in this phase. If multiple players achieve a milestone in the same phase, then they all get the benefit.

Endgame
​Play continues until all the allotted money from the 'bank' supply is depleted, in which case any remaining money is paid out from the reserve supply.

The player who has accumulated the most money, wins.

Overall
Food Chain Magnate markets itself as a 'heavy' game and it's not kidding.

The aim of the game is to build housing and create marketing campaigns, this generates a demand for whatever particular food & drink the player decides advertise.
Then the player produces the relevant food & drink to fill that demand, this equals profit.

Except it's not so simple.

There is a lot to think here and all of it is important.

How a player structures their company is crucial.  All of the other actions options will become avaialable based on the staff cards that you recruit and play.
A lot to think about.

You need food? Pizza chefs will produce pizza and burger chefs will produce burgers.
You want drinks? You need an errand boy to go and collect them.
Want to be more competitively priced? Get a pricing manager.
Need an advertising campaign. You'll have to get marketing staff.
Want to place more housing? A business developer is what you need.
Your staff need training to be more effective? Trainers are what you need.
You got too many staff? Get more managers!
Need to recruit people even quicker? Recruiters are what's needed.

And so on.

Marketing needs to be targeted. There are different types of marketing that target a player's audience at different 'ranges' and they tend to be of varying length. Players will need to optimise creating their demand.
Advertising can have a real sting in the tail. Because other players can benefit from it too. If one player creates a demand for burgers and another player then opens a burger joint closer to the housing that's been targeted, then the customers will go there instead (Customers have absolutely no loyalty!). Or if another player slashes the price of their burgers, then other restaurants will be ignored.
Sly players will definitely try and exploit other player's marketing.

This brings me to 'pricing'. This is a great game mechanic. Instinctively, players will want to increase prices to generate more revenue. But a player really needs to undercut their opponents, because less profit is better than no profit. Pricing is a real race to the bottom and forces players to make horrible choices - always a good thing!

Players will also need to think about food & drink production, as more and more demand appears, players will need to get better and better at production to meet that demand. Also, as demands get more complex, fulfilling those demands gets equally as complex (A house's demands cannot be only partially fulfilled and must be fully met.).

And don't forget milestones, the benefits they can confer can be very important.

When we played this game, the owner explained to us that he thinks at the start there's a couple of different routes to follow for 'opening moves' that there are 'no brainer' moves (These are to do with milestones.). It seems some of the milestones can be completed in the first couple of turns and only the first player(s) that complete them get the benefit, not following the 'no brainer' moves means a player can lose out on those benefits.

This implies that early moves (Or mistakes really!) can affect the entire game.
I'm not sure how I feel about this? I don't like 'no brainers', because what they do is remove choice from a game. On the other hand, maybe it was overstated. I guess the game would need to be played multiple times to see if this is the case

All of this contributes to make Food Chain Magnate a deep game that requires a lot of forethought and strategy. There is no luck or chance in this game. If you like genuinely heavy games, this may interest you.

For me though, I found it to be a little bit difficult to play the game on all the levels it required and mostly ignored the marketing side. It felt a strangely unengaging game, perhaps it was the theme?

7th January 2020

It's the first Tuesday of the year and we're NOT at 'The Sovereigns' (Which is closed for refitting.), instead we're at 'The Wheatsheaf' in Woking for board gaming.

Tonight, we're playing Taverns of Tief....err?
Taverns of Tiefe... err?
It's a game where you run a pub!

So this game tries it's best squeeze in as many game mechanics as it can.
Deck building - yep. Card drafting - yep. Dice drafting - yep. Dice placement - yep. Resource management - yep. Hidden Role - y... wait no, that's about the only thing missing!

What's in a game?
So Taverns of Tiefenthal comes with some optional extras or expansions, apparently we used all of them in the game we played. So there's a lot of components.

• Monastery board: This is a small central board that serves a couple of purposes. It displays what bonus the players receive in each round. There is also a track that players can move their marker round to get bonuses.
• Player tavern board: Each player has their own tavern, therefore each player has their own tavern board. The tavern board looks like a giant misshapen jigsaw puzzle piece. Each tavern board has extra 'bits' that are attached to it, during play they can be upgraded and are flipped to the other side when this is done.
• Tavern attachments: These tiles are the 'bits' that are added to each tavern: Tables, beer storage, beer supplier, barrel, host/reputation, safe, dishwasher, waitress, cash box and monk. 10 in all and all double sided. These will be explained below.
• Entertainer tiles: Periodically throughout the game, entertainers will arrive in your tavern. If you can give them 'schnapps', they will give you a bonus or ability of some kind. These tiles are double sided, each side confers a different bonus.
• Schnapps tokens: Used to ply entertainers.
• Guestbook board: This tile is a way to earn bonuses when it is filled with signatures.
• Signature tiles: Used to fill your guestbook.
• Deck of guest cards: Guest cards are bought with beer! During the game they will be the 'regular' visitors to that player's tavern. When they appear, they can earn the player money.
• Deck of staff cards: These are bought with money. Staff gives the player extra or bonus actions.
• Dice: Normal 6 sided dice. Lots of white dice and 4 sets of dice in player colours, 1 set for each player.
• Beer mats: These little coasters essentially unnecessary, but are used to hold dice.
• Beer mug marker: This is the first player marker.

They are the most important components of the game.
Many of the game's components are made of nice and thick card stock, including the beer mats. The artwork is quite nice and colour and there's some nice detail on the tavern board and tiles.

How's it play?​
We begin with setup.

• Each player takes a tavern board and the 10 other bits that go with it and attaches them to the board with standard side up.
• Each player is given a starting deck of 10 cards, consisting of 7 guests and 3 staff cards, they are shuffled and placed down as a player draw deck.
• Each player takes the 4 dice in their colour, a beer mat then also takes and places 4 white dice on the mat.
• Take all the guest cards that cost 3 'beer' and place them in a face up stack. The remaining guest cards are shuffled and placed down as the guest deck. Deal 4 cards from this deck and place them face up in a line next to the 3 cost cards. Finally place the stack of 'noble' guests face up at the end of the line.
• All staff cards should be sorted into their different types and placed face up in individual stacks in ascending order of cost.

That covers most of the setup.
Now to explain what does what.
Let's start with the tavern board. Many of the abilities on the board are activated by placing dice of a specific value on them.

• Tables; when guests are dealt from a player's deck, they are placed on the tables spaces. Players start with 3 table spaces. This can be upgraded to 4.
• Beer storage; during their turn a player will most likely generate beer. Any beer that is not spent can be stored on this tile. The beer storage holds 2 beer, this can be upgraded to 5.
• Beer supplier; Any dice which are showing a 1 or a 6 can be placed on this tile to generate beer, each die placed here will generate a beer. When upgraded, each die will generate 2 beer.
• Barrel; a die showing any number can be placed here to generate 1 beer. Unlike the beer supplier, only 1 dice can be placed here. When upgraded, it will produce 2 beer.
• Host/reputation; we used the 'reputation' side of this tile. It has a reputation track, when its marker moves round the track it will earn the player various benefits. When the marker reaches the end of the track, it earns a noble guest card and starts round the track again.
• Safe; any unspent money goes here. It stores 2 currency and can be upgraded to store 5.
• Dishwasher; the dishwasher tile does nothing until it is upgraded. When upgraded, it provides the player with a permanent dishwasher (See below for an explanation of what a dishwasher does.).
• Waitress; this tiles too does nothing until upgraded, upon which it provides the player with a permanent waitress.
• Cash box; a single die showing any number can be placed here to earn the player 1 currency, the upgraded version earns 3.
• Monk; any dice showing a 5 here will advance the players marker 1 space along the monastery track. The upgraded version moves the marker along 2 spaces per 5 placed here.

​Talking of the monastery board. It has several functions.

• Turn order; the game is played over 8 rounds and something a little different happens every round, which is all tracked on this board.
• Monastery track: as the player's marker moves round here, they will earn various bonuses.
• Recruit nobles; this table on the monastery board shows the cost (In beer) to recruit nobles.

Now lets go on to what the cards do. Starting with staff cards.

• Beer merchant; when this card is played, it gives the player an extra beer.
• Dishwasher; each dishwasher card played gives the player the ability to increase the result on a single die by 1. Multiple dishwashers allow multiple dice to be increased or 1 die to be increased multiple times. Dice cannot be lowered this way.
• Waitress; each waitress card that is played allows the player to roll an extra die (From their coloured dice.).
• Table; each table card played, grants the player an extra spot to put a guest card.
• Beer supplier; these are different to merchant. They are placed next to the beer supplier tile. Each die used with the beer supplier tile provides 1 extra beer per beer supplier card played.

Now on to guest cards.
Guest cards are acquired by spending beer.

• Guests; guests are recruited by spending beer! When they are placed on your tables, they become extra spots on to which a die may be placed to earn currency. Generally the die which can be placed on a guest is the same as the currency earned. Thus if a guest requires a die showing a 3, it will earn 3 currency. Guests also earn victory points at the end of the game. Some guests also provide a once-only bonus when recruited.

• Noble guests; noble guests always require a 2 to activate and always provide 2 currency. In terms of generating currency, they are amongst the worst guests (I guess it costs so much to please them, players make little profit!), but if more than one noble appears at the same time, then they all go on the same single table and don't take up too much room (They don't like to mingle with the 'rabble' it seems?). The advantage of nobles is that they're worth 10 victory points at the end of the game, which is a lot more than other guests.

​
So at last, finally, we get to how the game plays.
Each round is player over several phases.

• Round set; at the start of each of the 8 rounds, every player will be given a choice of gaining 1 of 2 special actions.
• Deal cards; each player deals cards from their own deck. Staff cards go in specific spots around the tavern board. Guest cards go on to the table spaces. Thus if a player has more table spaces, not only can they accommodate more guests, they have a better chance of drawing more staff cards as well. When all the available tables are filled, the player stops dealing cards.
• Bonus dice: If a player drew and placed any waitress cards in the previous phase (Or they have upgraded their tavern to have a permanent waitress.), they gain a number of bonus dice (In their colour.) equal to the waitresses (Maximum of 3.). These dice are immediately rolled and placed to one side.
• Roll dice; all players roll their 4 white dice and place them on their beer mat. Then in turn order, starting with the current first player, each player removes 1 die and places to to one side. Once all players have removed a die, each player passes the beer mat with the player to their left. Again, starting with the first player, each player removes another die passes the beer mat with the remaining dice to the left. Players continue taking dice and passing beer mats until all dice are gone.
• Place dice; now that players have all their dice, in this phase they choose where to place them. As explained above, dice can be placed on various parts of a tavern board or guest cards in order to activate those actions - provided the number match of course.
• Resolve actions; in turn order, each player resolves their actions, usually this involves generating beer and currency and using them to buy guest and staff cards. Unlike most deck builder games, when new cards are bought they go on top of the player's deck, so they will be played in the next round. Players can also upgrade their tavern, which costs currency. Every time a tile is upgraded, the player gains a noble - which like with other cards, goes on top off their current deck.
• At the end of a turn, all cards that were played (Both guest and staff cards.) are placed into the discard pile and play continues to the next round with a new first player.

That's more or less it for how the game plays.

Endgame
Play continues for 8 rounds. 

Victory points are scored from the cards that players bought
​ Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Taverns of Tiefenthal requires a lot of explanation (As you can see above), but in play is actually quite straightforward.
It's more of a game about optimizing strategies than complex rules.

The game gives you a lot of choices and options. Occasionally these will be meaningless decisions because of how the dice fall, but most of the time you'll have to choose between different actions.
A player will nearly always have more options available than actions to perform them.
​This is makes a good game in my opinion.

There's nothing particularly unique about the game, other than how it blends certain game mechanics together to emulate it's subject quite well. The game's presentation is also very good with well made components and colourful and well produced art.

The game's only drawback is its setup time, there's quite a lot to do. But I think the payoff is worth it as I enjoyed it.

22nd December 2019

Sunday is here at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. 50 Fathoms is still on hiatus so for the final get together before Christmas we're playing board games.

The first game was 'Agatha Christie's Death On The Cards'.
Will the other players learn your darkest secrets? Will you catch the murderer? Or will you manage to get away with murder! Only the cards can decide in... Death On The Cards!

What's in a game?
Death On The Cards uses 3 different types of cards. Secret cards, game cards and the 'Murderer Escapes!' card , game cards are further divided into other cards:

• Secret cards: These contain the kinds of secret most people to keep errr secret? Things like being alcoholic and so on. One of these cards will be 'The Murderer' and another will be 'The Accomplice'.
• Detective cards: These represent different Agatha Christie detectives such as Poirot or Miss Marple. Detective cards are played in sets to reveal secret cards.
• Event cards: These cards allow players to perform actions such going through the discard pile and taking a card or stealing a secret card from another player.
• Devious cards: Devious cards for devious people! Devious cards are not played like other cards. Certain cards make players swap or pass cards from their hands to other players. When a player passes a devious card to another player, that's when a devious card is triggered and the recipient is the target of the cards effect (Hint; it's never a good effect!).
• 'Not So Fast' cards: These cards can be played at any time, they cancel the action of another player.
• 'Murder Escapes!' card: There's only one of these, when it appears... well you get the idea.

All of the cards a illustrated with nice little cartoons and all the text is written in an appropriate font. Giving the cards an authentic feel.

How's it play?
First there's setup, which is a little different depending on the number of players.

• 3 secret cards are randomly dealt to each player. Amongst these cards must be The Murderer card and depending on the number of players, The Accomplice card (Both card must not be dealt to the same player.). Players look at their cards but keep their secret card face-down in front of them. Any remaining secrets are put away and not used in the game.
• Deal 1 'Not So Fast' card to each player, shuffle the remaining 'Not so Fast' cards into the game cards.
• Shuffle the game cards and deal 5 to each player. These 5 cards plus the 'Not So Fast' card form each player's hand.
• The remaining game cards form the draw deck. The Murderer Escapes! is placed at the bottom of this deck.
• 3 cards are drawn from the deck and placed face-up in a row next to the draw deck. Whenever a card is drawn from the deck, it can be taken from these 3 cards. When a card is taken in this way, it is immediately replaced with a card from the deck.
• If the game has an accomplice, then all players closes their eyes and the murderer and accomplice reveal themselves to each other.

Now we're ready to play.

• The player who has 'The Murderer' secret card is attempting to get away with murder, they either want to deplete the draw deck, or paralysis the other players with 'social disgrace'.
• If the accomplice is in play, then their objective is to help the murderer. Just as any self-respecting accomplice should.
• All the other players are trying to reveal which secret card is 'The Murderer'. 

The active player can perform 1 of the following actions:

• Play an event card from their hand and do whatever it says on the card.
• Play a set of identical detective cards. Detective cards come in sets of 2 or 3. Different sets can do different things, but generally playing a set will force a player to turn one of their secret cards face-up.

After the active player has completed their action, they can choose to discard any number of cards from their hand, then they draw card to take their hand back up to 6.
Social disgrace
What's social disgrace? When a player has all of their secret cards turned face-up, all of their secrets have been revealed and they're disgraced.
What does this mean? It means that when they become the active player, all they can do is discard exactly 1 card and draw 1 card.
It is possible to come back from social disgrace as there some cards that allow secret cards to be turned back face-down.

Endgame
​How the game ends will depend on the player's role in the game.

• If the murderer secret card is revealed, then that player loses along with the accomplice. All other players win.
• There are 2 ways for the murderer to win.
• If all the other players (Not including an accomplice.) are socially disgraced, then the murder wins.
• If the last card of the draw deck (The 'Murderer Escapes!' card.) is revealed, the murder wins.
• In all circumstances that the murderer wins, the accomplice also wins. Regardless of whether the accomplice is socially disgraced or not.

Overall
'Death On The Cards' plays with 2-6 people and what's interesting is how the game changes depending on the number of players.

With 2 players, there's no secret to who's the murderer. The game is a war of attrition.

Now, for some maths (Hopefully my maths is correct.).

Let's look at it with 3 players.

• There are a total of 9 secret cards in plays and total of 18 cards are dealt to players. This means there are 43 cards in the draw deck (The draw deck has 61 card, not including 'The Murderer Escapes!').
• This means in the worse case scenario, there will be a maximum 43 actions to reveal all 9 secret cards, or a secret card will need to be revealed every 4.8 action.
• Additionally each player will have 14.3 turns before the game ends.

Now lets look at a 6 player game.

• There will be 18 secret cards and 25 cards in the draw deck.
• Therefore there will be a maximum of 25 actions before the game ends. So in the worst case scenario, 18 secret cards will need to be revealed in 25 actions, or 1 secret every 1.4 actions! A lot lower than with 3 players!
• Finally each player will only have 4.2 turns before the game end. 

This means it becomes easier for the murderer to get away with it in bigger game. Now I don't see this as a flaw, but it is definitely something that changes the dynamics of the game.

With 3 players for example, 'Death On The Cards' can be played as a straightforward card game.

With 6 players, it's much harder to capture the murderer. Players will need to form alliances and target suspicious players as quickly as possible. But then, this gives the murderer and accomplice opportunities to bluff, lie, double cross and sabotage their 'allies'. It becomes a lot more like a hidden role game.

Anyway, regardless of the mathematics, the game mechanics fit the theme very well. 'Death On The Cards' can learned quickly and plays quickly too . It's a great filler game and even though I'm not a fan of hidden role games, it's a lot of fun. 
It's definitely worth giving it a try.

3rd December 2019

It's Tuesday at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking with the board game club.

This means board games! And tonight we played 'Wayfinders'.

'Those magnificent men, in their flying machines.'
'They go up tiddly up up.'
'They go down tiddly down down.'

That's enough of that!

Wayfinders is a colourful little game about flying and exploration.
It's also a fairly light worker placement and resource management game.

What's in a game?
Wayfinders is played over a 5x5 grid of tiles:

• Home tile: This is the starting tile for all players and sits in the middle of the 5x5 grid.
• Island tiles: These represent islands that players may explore during the game. There are 3 different types of tile, resource effect, permanent effect and scoring effect tiles. There are 15 of each type for a total of 45. 24 tiles will be used in a single game. Island tiles show what benefit they give, how much it costs to build a hangar and how much it costs to travel to the tile. Finally they show the order in which hangars are built on a tile.
• Hangar board: This board contains 8 different hangars. Above each hanger is a sort of 'raised groove' that holds resources and below each hanger is a space to place worker meeples.
• Resources: There are some quite chunky coloured plastic 5 tokens to represent the 5 types of types of resource: Fuel (Red.), headphones (Blue.), parachute (Green.), propeller (Black.) and tyre (Yellow.). There 12 of each type, so 60 in total.
• Bag: Generally all the resources are kept in this bag and blindly drawn when required.
• Planes: Each player is given a seaplane meeple.
• Hangars: Each player is given 10 hangar meeples.

Apart from the aforementioned worker meeple issue, all the components are solidly made and bright and colourful.

On the island tiles. All the resources are delineated by both colour and symbol except for the resource in the bottom right corner, which is represented only by colour.

However the resource tokens appear to have their symbols printed on them and they may wear off over time and use.

How's it play?
Setup.

• Randomly take 24 island tiles from the 3 types available and shuffle them. Then along with the home tile create a 5x5 grid (With the home tile as the centre tile.).
• Populate the hangar board with resources blindly drawn from the bag. The number of hangars used in a game is equal to the number of players doubled. Each hangar holds 3 resources.
• Give each player the hangers, plane and meeples in their selected colour
• Determine the starting player. Then each player (In turn order.) places a hanger on the home tile. Each player also places their seaplane on the home tile.

So now on to the game.
In Wayfinders, there are only 2 main actions, although the 2nd action has a number of sub actions that can be performed.

1st action, place a worker:

• A player must place a worker on the space beneath one of the available hangars.
• A single player can place up to 3 workers on a hangar space.
• Any number of players can place up to 3 workers on a single hangar space.
• The order in which workers are placed on a hangar does not matter.

The 2nd action has 4 sub actions, carried out in order. First is taking back workers and collecting resources.

• When taking back workers, all workers must be taken back from all hangars that they've been placed on.
• For every worker taken back from a hangar, the active player also gets to take a resource from that hangar.
• If the active player has 3 workers on a hangar, they take all 3 resources. If they have 1 or 2 workers, then they 1 or 2 resources respectively, starting from the top and working down. Then any remaining resources below are slid up the 'groove' to fill the space(s) above.

Now we go on to the 2nd sub action, which is move seaplane and build hangar(s).

• A plane can be moved orthogonally. When a plane enters a tile, the active player must pay the cost (Return the relevant resource back to the bag.) shown in the bottom right corner of the tile.
• If the active player moves on to a tile that has a hangar already on it (From any player.), then the active player does not have to pay the cost.
• The active player can move on to or through as many tiles as they want provided they can pay the cost or they don't need to pay the cost.
• The active player can choose to build a hangar, they can do this before, after, or during their move. Furthermore, they can build multiple hangars during their move. Players can only build 1 hangar per tile.
• When the active player builds a hangar, they must pay the displayed cost. If the active player is the first player to build a hangar on a tile, the resources are paid back to the bank (Go back into the bag.). If they are not the first player to build a hangar on a particular tile, then they must pay the resources to the player that built the first hangar!
• There 3 types of island tile. When a hangar is built by any player (Regardless of order.) then there will be an effect.  A resources effect allows the player to blindly draw a varying number of resources from the bag. A permanent effect grants the player some sort of special ability that is always in effect, such being able to enter certain tiles without paying etc. A scoring effect is bonus way to earn points, that are scored during the end game.

The 3rd and 4th sub actions are just clean up really:

• The 3rd sub action is (If required.) to discard down to 3 resources. Excess resources are returned to the bag.
• The 4th sub action is to refill the spaces in the hangar(s) that become emptied. Since resources slide up the hanger to fill gaps, it's always the lower spaces that gain new resources. This is a variant on the 'conveyor belt' mechanic.

Those are most of the rules, more or less. It's actually quite a straightforward game.
Acquire resources.
Travel.
Build hangars.

​Endgame
The endgame is triggered when a player has 2 or less hangars remaining in their supply.
The current round is completed and scoring commences.
Resource and Permanent effect tiles have a static score.
But scoring tiles tend to have scores dependent on what the player as achieved in the game. For example: A scoring tile might score 3 points for each tile in the same vertical line as itself that the player has put a hangar on to.
Unused resources and workers on the hangar board in the endgame also score.
Final scores are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Wayfinders is a pretty simple game, but there's a couple of interesting things going on in this game.

Acquiring resources is an unusual blend of worker placement and drafting with a dash of push your luck.
Players will probably find themselves competing over certain resources, particularly if that resource is scarce in the hangars.
This can lead to some tricky decisions. A player can keep putting down workers so that when they are returned, the player will get the maximum resources. But if that player needs a certain resource, this delay can lead to them losing that resource to another player.
Or perhaps a player needs a resource that is 3rd in line at the hanger. Do they try and play 3 workers to get at it? Or do they place a single worker and hope that someone takes a resource ahead if it.
Watching where other players put their workers can be insightful.

Whilst there is little direct interaction in Wayfinders, particularly on the tiles. Another reason to watch what other players do, is that when they place a hangar in a tile, that tile becomes accessible to other players for free. This can make it easier to reach tile beyond it and will open up the playing area and also open up more choices and strategies.

Conversely, getting to a tile that may prove popular with other players and putting a hangar on there first is a great way to earn resources as other players must pay to you instead of the bank.
This is a lot more useful than it sounds. After moving a plane and placing hangars, a player can only retain 3 resources. So even if that player maximizes the placement of their workers, they can only start a move and build action with a maximum of 8 resources.
However if during a round other players have to pay out to you to put their hangars down, it's possible to start with a lot more resources.
This can be a great advantage, as being able to put down 2 or 3 hangars in a turn really lays pressure on other players as they'll be forced to play catch up.

Remember, players start with 10 hangars, but 1 goes on the home tile, so in reality everyone starts with 9 hangars. And the endgame is triggered when any player reaches 2 or less hangars left. So a player only needs to place 7 hangars to trigger the endgame.

As well as being a fairly easy game to learn, Wayfinder is a quite short game and playing speeds up over the course of a game as the board inevitably opens up.

Optimizing your actions and taking advantage of circumstances are key to winning. A canny player can end the game abruptly, leaving their competitors in the lurch.

The only criticism I have is that it's a little too long for a filler game, but a little short for a main game.

But that criticism aside, Wayfinders is a easy to learn and fairly fun game to play.

26th November 2019

Tuesday evening at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking continues.

The second and final game of the night was 'Architects of the West Kingdom'.

As an architect it's your job to rebuild the errr.... West Kingdom!
So it appears that in this game, you'll be rubbing shoulders with virtuous members of the clergy and getting 'down and dirty' with shady criminals. The life of an architect, eh?
 
Architects of the West Kingdom is a pretty standard worker placement game, but a worker placement game with a couple of extra little twists.

What's in a game?
There's quite a lot to Architect of the West Kingdom and this is reflected in the components.

• Game board: As you'd expect for a worker placement game, there's lots of spots to place workers. There's also a couple of card tracks, a 'Cathedral track, a 'Guildhall track' as well as a virtue track. Interestingly there's also tax stand and a prison.
• Tax stand: There's a cardboard cut out basic 3d building that is used to represent the tax stand. When certain taxes are paid, they go directly into the tax stand. This is only 3d building in the game, it's bit unnecessary, but it's a nice touch.
• Reward cards: When a player contributes to the construction of the Cathedral, they earn a reward.
• Apprentice cards: Used with one of the card tracks. Apprentices grant the owning player some sort of bonus when acquired.
• Building cards: These cards contain 'plans' for buildings that players can build.
• Multiplier cards:
• Debt cards: These are double sided cards, one side represents being in debt (Not a good thing.) and the other side represents having paid that debt off.
• Black market cards: These cards are also double sided and represent resources that can be acquired via the black market. one side represents 'small' and the other 'large' markets.
• Resources: There are 6 kinds of resources in this game: Clay, wood, stone, silver, gold & marble.
• Player boards: These are double sided. One side is for the standard game and the other for the variable.
• Meeples: Every player gets 20 meeples to use as workers.

The cards are quite nicely illustrated. The artwork on the board is even nicer, depicting the different buildings and areas that workers 'use'. It's clear some effort has gone into the artwork.

Hows it play?
Setup

• Determine the starting player.
• Give each player a personal board, 20 meeples and currency dependant on starting order.
• Give each player 4 building cards. Each player keeps 1 card and passes the remaining cards to the player to the left. This is repeated 4 times.
• Each player puts a marker on the starting spot of the virtue track.
• Construct the tax stand and put 4 coins into it.
• Fill the card tracks with apprentice cards.

Now we're ready to start. But first one of the differences in to normal worker placement games needs to be explained.
There are 3 ways to place workers in the game, this is dependant on the symbol used on the game board:

• First, when placing a worker, the player may have to pay some currency (In the form of tax.) to do it. Depending on where the worker is placed, this currency may go into the tax stand or supply.
• Small circle: Only a single meeple can occupy a small circle at any one time.
• Large circle: Any number of meeples from any number of players can occupy a large circle at any time. Furthermore, the more workers a player places into a large circle, the more they get out of it. If a player puts a worker into the 'forest' region, they will gain 1 wood. If on a later turn they place a 2nd worker into the wood region, they will gain 2 wood, 3 wood for a 3rd worker and so on. Other players' workers do affect each other.
• Guildhall: When a player creates a building, they must place a worker into the Guildhall, this worker is now out of the game.

Now we know how worker placement works, it's time to explain what all the buildings and areas do:

• Black market: The black market consists of 3 small circles. Using a black market space allows a player to carry out the action shown below the 3 circles. This is either acquire the good(s) shown on either the small card stack or large market card stack. Or the player can acquire a apprentice or building card. No matter they choose to do, the must lose 1 virtue when using the black market.
• Cathedral: Players can 'contribute' to the building of the cathedral. This is done by paying the cost and moving their piece up the track, this also grants the player a reward card and whatever benefit it confers. At the end of the game, the further up the cathedral track a player is, the more victory points they acquire during the endgame.
• Town centre: The town centre has a large circle. Amusingly, the town centre allows you to capture workers belong to other players (Or even your own!) and place them on your personal board. Each worker a player has in the town centre allows them to capture all the workers of a single colour on a space. Putting more workers on the town centre allows the player to capture even more workers. Why would a player want to capture workers, well see below.
• Guardhouse: Has a large circle. There are several different actions you can perform when putting a worker on the guardhouse. Firstly you can put workers you've captured in prison! For money! That's right, capturing workers and imprisoning them is a way to make money. Secondly, if the active player has workers in prison, they can release them back on to their personal board. Thirdly, pay money (Or get a debt card.) and lose 1 virtue to take back workers from another player's board. Finally, the active player can pay off a debt card.
• Quarry, Forest, Mine & Silversmith: These 4 locations all have large circles and are used to acquire resources. Placing workers on the quarry gets the active player clay, forest gets wood, mine gets stone or gold and silversmith gets silver.
• King's storehouse: Has a large circle. Placing workers here allows the active player to buy virtue and/or marble with resources.
• Guildhall: Putting a worker here allows the active player to play a building card (Provided they also pay the resources required.).
• Workshop: Has a large circle. Placing a worker here allows the active player to recruit an apprentice. There are 2 tracks of 4 apprentices. To recruit apprentice further along to the right of the track, you either need to have more workers in the circle, or pay. The track behaves like a conveyor belt, so when an apprentice is taken, cards slide to the left to fill the gap and new cards are added to the right.
• Tax stand: Has a large circle. As stated above, money will be paid into the tax stand. If the active player places a worker here they can take (OK steal actually!) all the currency in the tax stand. Doing this costs 2 points of virtue.

Overall
There are a couple of interesting mechanics in Architects of the West Kingdom, particularly how they interact with each other.

Being able to put multiple workers into a space to gain increasing results seems overpowered. But when a player puts a lot of workers into a single space, they can just become a target for another player to capture. Obviously when capturing workers, players will want to do it as efficiently as possible, because there's money to be made when putting them in prison.
If a player can predict their opponent's moves, stealing their workers can really screw with them.
Another thing to consider is that players have no way to get their workers back other than having them captured by other players or capturing them themselves.
Being able to manage your workers in this way can avoid those pesky debt cards, which themselves are a clever little addition to the game.
The virtue track, black market and cathedral also add an extra element that helps differentiate the game.

I enjoyed this game, I think it's fairly good.Generally I felt like I always had options and meaningful decisions to make. Which all I really want from a game.
​
If you really like worker placement games, you'll probably like Architects of the West Kingdom. It's just different enough to justify its existence.
Or, if you don't own any worker placement games and you want one. You may want to consider this game, 

29th October 2019

Tuesday night gaming at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking with the board game club continues.

The final game of the night was 'Grand Austria Hotel'.

It doesn't take much imagination to realise that this is a game about running a hotel. That's right, keep those restaurant customers happy. Manage all those hotel rooms. Maintain the prestige of your establishment. All the fun!
Joking aside, Grand Austria is pretty good game. The rules are fairly straightforward to learn, but there's a lot of things to think about and take into consideration. A lot of things! 

What's in a game?
Grand Austria Hotel has a lot of components. They are all quite colourful and well made.

• Game board: The main game board has a few things going on. A scoring track, a prestige scoring track and a turn track. Space for 3 objective cards, space for 3 prestige reward/penalty tokens and finally 5 spaces for guest cards.
• Action board: The action board determines how many of the 6 the game's actions will be available in any particular given turn.
• Dice: These are normal six-sided dice to go with the action board.
• Personal hotel board: A hotel board is given to each player. The board displays a money track, 3 spots to place guest cards in your restaurant and a place for food and drink. There are also 20 hotel rooms that come in 3 different colours, blue, red and yellow. These hotel rooms are also grouped into sets of 1 to 4 rooms. These boards are double sided, one side is identical for all players, the other is different for all players.
• Room tiles: Used to indicate if rooms in a hotel are; not ready, prepared or occupied. There are the same 3 different colours as the hotel rooms
• Staff cards: Staff cards that can be bought by players. They give a benefit or advantage, staff cards can be a one-off, once per turn or always active. Some staff cards provide bonus points during the endgame instead.
• Guest cards: Guest cards are acquired by players. They have a need. If the player fulfils that need, then the player is given a reward. Then the guest will go into a prepared room that matches the guest card's colour. Guest cards come in 4 colours, blue, red, yellow and green (Green is a wild colour.).
• Turn order tokens: Actually very important in this game.
• Little wooden cubes. Yep, it's a quality game if it has little wooden cubes! They come in 4 colours to represent the food and drink needs of guests in restaurants. Brown is for strudel, white is for cake. Red is wine and black is coffee.

How's it play?
We begin with setup.

• Give out the hotel boards. ​Players decide on whether they want identical of unique hotels and use the relevant side.
• Shuffle and place 3 objective tokens on their relevant spaces on the board.
• Shuffle and place 3 prestige reward/penalty tokens on their relevant spaces.
• Shuffle the guest cards and place 5 on to their relevant spaces on the board. The remaining cards will form a draw deck.
• Shuffle the staff cards and deal 6 to each player. 
• Give one of each of the 4 coloured cubes to each player to put on to their hotel board.

Turn order
The turn order is a little unusual in Grand Austria Hotel. Every player gets 2 turns in a round. All players are given a token with 2 numbers on it - which is when their turns will occur.
Turns proceed clockwise until all players have had their first turn, then goes back anticlockwise so that the last player was also the first player.
In a 4 player game, the first player will have a token that shows '1/8' and the fourth player will have a token showing '4/5'.
Actions
The first thing the active player can choose to do is to take a guest card from the main game board. Depending on which card is taken, the active player may have to pay for it. 
The further the card is to the left, the more it costs. Gaps in the row are replaced by sliding cards from the left to the right and adding new cards on the furthest left. This is a 'conveyor belt' mechanic.

Action board
Actions in Grand Austria Hotel are determined by dice. The number of dice used depends on the number of players. In a 4 player game, 14 dice are used. The first player rolls all the dice and and places them as required on the action board.

There are 6 columns on the action board. After the dice have been rolled, they are placed in their relevant space. If 3 1's have been rolled, they are placed into the '1' column, this is done for all 6 columns.
​
This determines both the effectiveness and number of each action that can be performed. The more dice there are in a column the more effective that action is and the more often it can be performed. Every time an action is performed, a die from that column is removed. If a column has no dice, that action cannot be performed (Unless performing the 'copy action' action!).
The 6 actions are:

1. Take food: For each die in this column a food (Cake or strudel.) cube can be taken by the active player and placed on to their customers in their restaurant or into their kitchen area. However there's a twist here. The active player can never take more cake than strudel. Thus if there were 4 dice in the column, the active player 2 of each, but not 3 cake and 1 strudel.
2. Take drinks: This is identical to taking food, except it applies to wine and coffee cubes. For drinks, the active player cannot take more coffee than wine.
3. Prepare rooms: For each die in this column, the active player may prepare a room on their hotel board. This means they can place the relevant number of room tiles with the 'prepared' side up on their hotel board. Depending on which rooms are prepared, they may be other requirements such as cost.
4. Gain prestige/money: Gain prestige or money equal to the number of dice in this column. 
5. Recruit staff: The active player may pay to recruit a staff card from their hand. The number of  dice in this column deducts from this cost.
6. Copy action: Finally, copy action - as the name suggests, allows the active player to copy any of the 5 other actions. The dice used to determine how effective this action is comes from this column.

One other choice the active player can make is to 'pass'. When a player passes, after all other players have taken both their actions, the remaining dice (Minus 1 die.) are re-rolled and put back on the action board according to their new numbers. Then the players who passed can now act.
Additional actions
As well as the actions listed above, players can perform some extra actions.

• Increase action dice score: The active player can pay to increase the action dice in a column on the action board by +1 for their next action only. This can only be done once per turn.
• Serve customers: The active player can pay to move up to 3 food and drink cubes from their kitchen to customers in their restaurant.
• Use staff card: If a staff card that has a 'once per turn' ability, the active player can use it.
• Move guest: A guest in your restaurant can be moved to their room, provided that their needs have been met and there is a prepared room for them. When they are moved into a room, the room tile is flipped to occupied. As mentioned above, the rooms on a hotel board are grouped into sets, when all the rooms in a set are occupied by the active player, they receive a reward of money, prestige or points.

That's pretty much it for actions.

Endgame
Grand Austria Hotel is played over 7 rounds, thus each player has 14 turns to use.

Prestige is scored at the end of rounds 3, 5 & 7. During prestige scoring, before prestige is scored each player's prestige score is lowered by 3, 5 or 7 in each related round. Prestige points translate in victory points, but if a player's prestige points are too low, that player will lose victory points instead.
Additionally, if a player is above the prestige threshold, they get a bonus, if they are below, the receive a penalty. This depends on the 3 prestige reward/penalty tokens that were placed on to the main board.
 
At the end of the 7th round, points are scored from various sources, such as staff cards, occupied rooms, remaining food, drink & money, objectives and prestige tokens.
Any guests left in your restaurant loses points.
All points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
So Grand Austria Hotel is a game about acquiring customers, fulfilling their needs and  preparing rooms for them in your hotel.
The game is quite a balancing act as it forces players to juggle preparing rooms and fulfilling the needs of their customers.
Players also need to pay attention to the prestige track, as failing to acquire enough prestige can be seriously detrimental.
The bonus objective can earn quite a lot of points.
Money too can be a problem, it's quite hard to accumulate money and is also something you need to think about.

Whilst there's a lot going on in this game, the rules aren't too complicated.
Optimising strategies is really important here. But the available actions and their effectiveness is unpredictable.
So Grand Austria Hotel forces players to both think ahead and be adaptable, whilst providing players with lots of meaningful decisions.

These are things that make Grand Austria Hotel a good game.

How's it play?
So we begin with setup.

• Shuffle the citizen deck and deal 4 to each player.
• Deal 5 more cards from the citizen deck in a row. This row is called 'the forum'. The remaining citizen cards form the citizen deck.
• Shuffle and deal 5 afterlife cards in a face-down deck next to the citizen deck.
• Give some currency to each player.

Now we're ready to go.

• The starting player rolls the 3 four-sided dice.
• The active player must play a card from their hand.
• The active player may choose to play a 2nd card, provided it is identical to the first card played. They must pay to do this.
• Resolve any special ability on the card(s) just played.
• The active player then places 2 cards from their hand into the forum and takes 3 cards from the forum in their hand. If they has played 2 cards earlier, then they take an additional card from the citizen deck into their hand (Hand size is always 4 cards.).
• Finally, a card is played from the citizen deck into the forum (To replace the extra card the player took.).
• Play progresses to the left.
• Once all players have had a turn,  the 'first player' moves to the left, who rolls the dice again to begin a new round.
• Once the citizen deck is depleted, the game ends. Scores are tallied, highest score wins.

Afterlife cards
There's no mention of afterlife cards, what do they do?
Well when a 'priest' citizen card is played, the active player take a afterlife card and keeps it face-down in their area.
Afterlife cards provide the opportunity to gain extra points during scoring.
Players can only have 1 afterlife card each. If a player acquires more afterlife cards, they draw another one and keep one of the two. The other one is shuffled back into the afterlife deck.
The dice
Dice are rolled every round, what for?
Certain citizen cards make use of these vaguely pyramid shaped dice.
For example:
The 'noble' card will earn the active player currency equal the result of all 3 dice (The dices' values are lowered after this.).
The 'baker' citizen card can buy up to 3 bread tokens at a cost equal to the highest single dice.
Bread tokens
Talking of bakers, what do break tokens do?
After acquiring bread tokens, the are placed on citizen cards that have been played to increase their value in the endgame scoring.
Additionally, bread tokens on your 'farmer' citizen cards will protect them from being 'enticed away' by pesky 'soldier' citizen cards.

Endgame
Once the citizen deck is depleted and all players have had an equal number of turns, we go into scoring. There are 5 ways to score:

• Each citizen card is worth points, the more important the citizen (In the social hierarchy.), the more points the card is worth. Thus the 'Pharaoh' card is worth is more than a farmer.
• Bread: Every card that has a bread token on it will score points. Generally cards further down the social hierarchy score more for bread (I guess they need it more?).
• Majority: There are 9 types of citizen card in the game, whoever has the most of each type score points for it. The scoring her is the exact opposite of the social hierarchy scoring. Because their are 9 'farmer' citizen cards in the game, who ever has the majority of 'farmer' cards will score 9 points. Conversely there's only 1 'Pharaoh' card and it's only worth 1 point.
• Currency: Each 3 of the currency scores a point.
• Afterlife card: Points can be scored provided the conditions (If any.) can be met on the card.

Overall
Iuni is a game with some interesting mechanics.
Having to return 2 cards to the forum during every turn forces players into making some hard decisions, because not only are you discarding cards which may be useful, you're also giving other players the opportunity to take them.
The dice are also an interesting idea and not something I've seen before in this style of game. The randomness can throw a real 'curve ball' into players' strategies.

Once players have gotten their heads around the slightly unusual way the game works, it's quite quick to play and would be good as a filler or finisher game.

How's it play?
As always we begin with set up.

• A bidding deck is given to each player.
• The location deck is created by randomly using 3 location cards. A number of assistant cards will be added in as 2 small stacks between the 3 location cards. all of these are kept in a deck face-down on the game board.
• Finally the victim deck is created and shuffled. Then a number of cards are turned face up.

Then play can begin.
Campy Creatures uses blind bidding. The highest bid gets to go first and pick the victim card of their choice.

• Players keep all of their individual deck in their hand at all times.
• Players can choose any one of their monsters to play. The card is played face down. Once all players have put a card down, all cards are revealed and then resolved.
• Generally, the card with the highest number goes first. However, there are special abilities that can change things. Some special abilities a triggered when cards are revealed, some when a victim is captured.
• Thus the highest score gets 1st pick, 2nd highest score gets 2nd pick and so on until the lowest score has to take the last card.
• A new turn begins and new cards from the victim deck are dealt.
• Any cards used for bidding remain face-up on the table, they cannot be used again in this round.
• When the victim deck is depleted, the round is over. The 1st location card is revealed and will have a specific symbol on it. The player who has acquired cards with the most of the matching symbol will acquire the location card (And whatever bonus it entails.).
• The round is scored, all victims (Except assistants.) are returned to form a new victim deck, the extra assistants from location deck is added to the victim deck.
• The next round begins.

Endgame​
Campy Creatures is played over a total of 3 rounds. After the final round, final scores are tallied, highest score wins.

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.