30th December 2021

Thursday afternoon gaming on Board Game Arena continued with Dice Hospital.

Doctor, doctor, please
Oh, the mess I'm in
Doctor, doctor, please
Oh, the mess I'm in

Mismanaging your hospital in Dice Hospital will definitely lead to a big mess!

What's in a game?

• Player board: Dice Hospital's player boards are curiously hexagonally shaped and each contains a number of hexes which represent different departments
  Coloured hexes: There are 3 hexes which are red, yellow and green, they represent critical care, oncology and pharmacy.
  Numbered hexes: There are 3 hexes numbered 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6, they are intensive care, imaging and clinic.
  Wards: There are 4 ward hexes and each has room for 3 patients (dice.), thus 12 patients in total. Each hex also has spaces to place 'treated' patients.
  Nurse's station: This hex is where general nurses are placed at the start of each round.
  Discharge: This is where patients go when things go well.
  Mortuary: And this where patients go when things go bad!
• Department tiles: Players can expand their hospitals by acquiring these hexagonal tiles. Departments improve a hospital's abilities to heal patients. Departments may be colour-specific (Red, yellow or green.) or 'neutral' (Blue.) which is generally number based.
• Specialist cards: Players may also recruit extra workers into their hospitals in the form of specialist and these cards list their specialities. Like departments, specialists may be colour-specific or neutral.
• Administrator cards: Each player will get one of these and they confer some unique benefit or scoring bonus to the owning player.
• Meeples: These nurse shaped meeples (Neeples?) come in 5 colours, white and blue, as well as red, yellow and green which relate to the identically coloured departments. The white and blue are essentially general staff.
• Dice: You won't be surprised to learn that Dice Hospital uses six-sided dice, a lot of them. They are used to represent patients and come in red, yellow and green which indicate the type of treatment they need; critical care, oncology or pharmacy. There are 21 in each colour and 63 in total.
• Bag: Goes with the dice.
• Ambulance tiles: There are 5 of these and they're numbered as such. Ambulances are used to deliver patients to hospitals, each ambulance has room for 3 dice.
  NOTE: The ambulance models seen in the photos here DO NOT come with the base game.
• Blood bag tokens: Provide players with some special actions when used or VPs at the game end.
• Fatality tokens: I'm sure get the idea...

There are some other tokens, but they're not significant to gameplay.

The component quality in Dice Hospital is all round good. The tiles are study and cards are of the expected quality. The game's 60 or so dice are plastic but with well rounded corners and satisfying to roll. Finally, all the meeples are stylised after medical staff, it's a nice touch and appreciated, they're made of wood too! Good stuff.

All of the art for the different departments on the hex tiles is quite small but also well detailed and depicts a variety of different medical equipment and hospital furniture, I quite like it.
The specialist cards have headshots of doctors, it's sort of average artwork but on the hand, they look like medical staff, what more could you want? Besides, how much more exciting could you make the portrait of a urologist look!

We found the game's iconography initially a little confusing but after a couple of references to the rulebook, it was always sorted out.
​None if it's a dealbreaker.

How's it play?
Setup

• Dice: Put the allotted number of dice into the dice bag and give it a good shake.
• Department tiles: Shuffle the tiles into a face-down stack and deal the allotted amount face-up, (This'll be equal to 1 less than the number of players.).
• Specialist cards: The same as the department tiles:
• Ambulance tiles: Use a number of tiles equal to 1 higher than the number of players. Start with the number 1 ambulance and put them out in sequential order.
• Player board: Give each player a board and 3 white meeples, the meeples should go into the nurse's station
• Administrator: Shuffle the administrator card and deal 2 face-down to each player. Players should which one to keep and discard the other out of the game.
• Patients: Each player should draw 3 dice blindly from the bag and set the faces to 3, 4 and 5 how they see fit, then place them into 3 spaces on one of their ward hexes.
• First player: Determine the 1st player.

That's pretty much it for set up. You'll notice that there's always never quite enough departments and specialists for players to take all of one or the other. Additionally, there's always enough ambulances to give every player a choice between at least 2.

On to play
​Dice Hospital is played over 6 phases, some of these phases are completed in turn order and some can be completed simultaneously.

• Patients: The 1st player blindly draws a number of dice equal to the number of dice spaces on all the available ambulance tiles.
  The 1st player then rolls all these dice, any 1s or 6s are rerolled until all dice are showing 2-5.
  The dice are then placed on to the ambulance tiles, placing the lowest numbered dice on to the lowest numbered ambulance and go upwards so that the highest numbered dice end up on the highest numbered ambulance tile. The player to the right of the 1st player (The last player essentially.) may then have the opportunity to rearrange some of them.
  After this and in turn order, each player takes an ambulance tile and adds the dice to their wards. The only restriction here is that the 1st player cannot take the 1 ambulance, which prevents them constantly going first.
  If there's no space for new patients on the wards, then some patients will need to be sent to the morgue!
  ​Finally, a new turn order based specifically on the ambulance numbers is established and a new 1st player is determined, this player also gains a blood bag token.
• Improvements: In this phase, players draft improvements into their hospital and this is where the new turn order becomes significant. In this new turn order, each player takes either a department hex or a specialist card (And appropriate meeple.) and adds it to their player board or play area.
  Furthermore; each player may discard exactly 1 improvement to gain a blood bag.
• Hospital phase: This where arguably, the bulk of the game takes place, this can be played in order or simultaneously.
  Here players take their meeples and puts them into departments to heal patients. how is this done?
  If a meeple is put into the green hex for example, then a green die may be healed. Healing does 2 things, it increases a die's value by 1 (E.G., from 3 to 4.) and moves it to a 'treated' space in the ward. A die may be healed multiple times from multiple sources and if it's value would be taken to 7+, it is then sent to the discharge hex. More on discharging below.
  Improved departments generally allow more than 1 patient to be healed, althohg some allow lesser number of patients to be healed by more.
  There can be restrictions however.
  For example a red department may allow 3 red dice of equal value to be healed by 1 each, but it would have to exactly 3 not less. A neutral department may allow 2 dice with values of 1-3 to be healed regardless of colour.
  Specialists also provide more healing but may be limited. A yellow specialist used to heal a yellow die may also heal a 2nd yellow die.
  The abilities of departments and specialists may be combined. If a green specialist is placed on a neutral department and one of the dice healed is green, then the green specialist's ability would be activated.
  Each department and meeple can only be used once per round.
  Blood bags: These tokens can be spent for 2 effects, firstly, any die can be healed by 1 point, secondly, the colour of a die can changed to either of the 2 other colours. This is pretty useful when used with consideration, especially if activates a a department that could not be otherwise activated.
• Neglect: Now we get to the bad part!
  Any die that were not treated, i.e. not moved to a treated space, has its value lowered by 1. If this would take a die's value down to 0, then that patient dies and the die (sic) is sent to the morgue.
  Every die sent to the morgue by a player earns them a fatality token. Then that die is returned to the bag.
• Discharge patients: During this phase all patients are discharged and score VPs for the player. The discharged dice are returned to the bag.
  Scoring in Dice Hospital is a little unusual and exponentially increases if more patients are discharged at the same time.
  What this means is if 1 patient is discharged, then 1 VP is earned. If 2 patients are discharged at the same time, 3 VPS are earned and so on. If a player manages to discharge all 12 patients at the same time, they'd earn 35 VPs.!
  ​Additionally, if a player's wards are all empty during this phase, they earn a bonus 5 VPs.
• End of round: This is the final phase of the round.
  Players' return all their meeples to their starting spots.
  All patients who were treated are moved back to their untreated spots.
  Any departments or specialists who were not drafted during the improvement phase are discarded to the bottom of their relevant stacks and new departments and specialists are drawn in preparation for the following round.

Play now progresses to the next round, with the 1st player drawing and rolling dice and the dice drafting phase and so on.

Endgame
Play continues until 8 rounds have been completed. Upon reaching the end, players calculate their final scores, this includes:
VPs for discharging patients over the 8 rounds.
+1 per unspent blood bag.
-2 per fatality token acquired. 
Scores are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
As well as randomly determining which improvements appear, I like how the game makes use of dice as both a randomiser and a resource to be managed. Using dice value to gauge health levels and colours to represent different types of malady is innovative and great.

There's a lot of good gameplay in Dice Hospital and a lot to like. Figuring out how to strike balance the hospital's different needs, requirements and aspects is a satisfying challenge.

In this regard, the game's 2-tier drafting mechanics work well, drafting patients that are easier to heal means going later when drafting hospital improvements, that's a good balancing mechanic with meaningful decisions. There's also a higher level of play at work here, if you can anticipate which patients/improvements other players are looking to acquire, you can either try and either deny them what they want or make it easier to get what you want. For example, if no one else wants a red doctor, then going last in the improvement drafting phase is not a problem.

Knowing what and when to draft is probably the single most important aspect of the game, using those combinations of special abilities to heal multiple patients at a time is vital. It's also contextual, depending on the colour of patients and improvements appear and what a player already has in their hospital. Players may find themselves having to reappraise their strategy from turn to turn. Willingness to trash an improvement for a blood bag can also be a powerful play, used right, blood bags can provide much more than a single VP.
Luckily, the game provides fairly good opportunities to combo departments and specialists off each other, especially toward the latter half.
However, getting that balance wrong leads to sub-optimal play, having to many departments leaves them unused and too many specialists means they just do nothing.

Even though it's an abstract dice game, it genuinely feels a bit like you're running a hospital, having to try and find ways to treat and discharge patients before the next influx of unending patient.
This is not a coincidence. Players start the game with 3 patients and acquire 3 more every round, this means by the end of the 3rd round, they'll have filled all their wards (Provided they haven't already discharged any patients.), as a consequence, players will need to discharge 3 patients a round just to avoid sending some to the morgue.
Thanks to the scoring though, there's a wrinkle here. Discharging patients in drips and drabs doesn't score many VPs. Players will actually want their patient numbers to build up a bit and discharge as many of them at once as possible to optimise scoring.
It's a another balancing act and it all combines to make Dice Hospital a good game.

If you like worker placement mechanics, blended with a bit mid-complexity, light randomness, meaningful choices and almost engine building elements; then Dice Hospital is worth a try. One I found an enjoyable experience.

7th December 2021

The 2nd game of Tuesday night gaming with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns in Woking was Village Pillage.

The life of a villager is full of strife and woe, mostly due to those other pesky neighbouring villages who covet your turnips and hide away their own!
Village Pillage is about showing those nasty neighbours who's boss!

What's in a game?

• Bank cards: Each player will get 1 of these identical cards, each one has space for 3 relics and 5 turnips.
• Starting cards: Each player begins with the same set of identical 4 cards (Marked with an egg symbol?).
  Broadly speaking their are 4 types of card Farmers, Walls, Raiders & Merchants.
  These cards have their name along the top and to the left of the name will be a symbol, this symbol determines what type of card it is.
  At the bottom of the each card it shows how to resolve its effects against the 4 card types.
• Market cards: This small deck of cards represents other cards that can be recruited to your cause. They fit into the same 4 types of as the starter cards but may possess different abilities at the bottom.
• Relic tokens: These are standard round card tokens are illustrated with 1 of 3 kind of relic.
• Turnip tokens: These card tokens are shaped like turnips, at least what pass turnips in the world of Village Pillage!
• Chicken token: Because every game needs a large round card chicken token!

Village Pillage is a card game with some tokens, the build quality is standard for a modern game and what you'd expect it to be.
The game utilises a strong palette of colours to distinguish the different card types. It also makes use of brash and colourful cartoony artwork throughout the game which suitability fits its not-so-serious theme. All of this makes Village Pillage pleasing on the eye.
Village Pillage only makes use of 4 symbols for the 4 card types, there's also some wording rules as well. It's not particularly complex but for a light game, it's not immediately understandable. Having said that it's in no way any kind of game breaker.

How's it play?
Setup

• Starters: give every player a bank card and the same 4 starter cards. Each player should also get 2 turnips, 1 goes in their bank and the other in their 'stockpile'.
• Market: Shuffle the market cards into a face-down deck and deal 4 face-up, this is the game's market.

Now we're ready to go.

On to play
​In Village Pillage the objective is to acquire 3 relics before any other player does.  However, each player is only directly competing with their 2 neighbours, that is the players directly to their left and right, this means that in a 4 or 5 player game, there will be 1 or 2 players that you might never interact with.
A round ​in Village Pillage is played more or less simultaneously over 3 phases.

• Planning: During this phase, each player decides which 2 of their cards to put  face-down, 1 allotted to the neighbour to their left and 1 allotted to to the neighbour to their right.
  Once all players have done this, all cards are revealed and play moves on to the next phase
• Resolution: Once cards have been revealed, they must be compared to the neighbouring cards that were played by other players and resolved.
  Each card lists how it resolves against the 4 different types of cards.
  For instance, the Farmers card allows the owner who played it to gain 3 turnips against all types of card.
  The Raiders card allows the controlling player to steal 4 turnips from their neighbour if the neighbour played either  Farmers or Merchants. But if raider was played against a Walls card or against other Raiders, then the controlling player gains nothing.
  This is done for all cards.
  Village Pillage also has specific rules about timing and when cards are triggered which are very important about how cards are resolved.
  As well as gaining or stealing turnips, cards will allow players to bank turnips (Which makes them safe from stealing.) or buy either another card from the market or a relic token.
  ​Refresh: Players collect their cards and prepare for the following round.

Endgame
Play continues until a player buys their 3rd relic, in which case, they immediately win the game.

Overall
There's no denying it, Village Pillage is essentially a glorified implementation of rock-paper-scissors with card, that's not a criticism of it, far from it in fact.
​Unlike rock-paper-scissors, which is a context-less exercise in determining a winner, in Village Pillage players will have motivations and objectives for their actions, which can and probably will change from round-to-round. Additionally, the outcome a player will get against a neighbour can be unexpected depending on the context of the resolution, sometimes there is no 'winner'.

It's important to pay attention to what your neighbour is doing. If they have a lot of turnips, it may mean that they're looking to buy a market card or relic, which means that they may not try and interfere with you right now and it might be safe to grow some turnips of your own. Or it might be a good time to try and interfere with them. Provided, of course, that you have correctly anticipated their actions.

Or if a neighbour has no turnips, they may be looking to steal yours and you'll need to prepare appropriately: It's no coincidence that growing turnips gets you 3 but stealing them gets you 4!
It funnels players into interacting and conflicting with each other and that's what is at the core of Village Pillage.
It seems deliberately quite hard to get accumulate turnips to purchase relics without trying to exploit your neighbour.
​
All of this means that players always confronted with the possibility of having to make meaningful decisions and this is always a good thing.
Whilst there are only 4 types of card, the variation within these categories in the market cards keeps the game fresh with just the right amount of unpredictability. 

While this sort of lightweight, chance driven conflict with other players can be a lot of fun, this kind of confrontational style won't be to everyone's taste. For a light game, I also found the rules a little fiddlier than I'd like; pretty much each card has it own rules for how it resolves against the 4 card times which can slow the game down. The timing rules are unavoidably also a little fiddly.

None of this is any kind of deal-breaker and if you want a fairly straightforward, colourful, raucous filler game, then Village Pillage is worth a look.

21st November 2021

Sunday evening gaming Board Game Arena continued.

The next game of the night was Chocolate Factory.

Have you ever wanted to own your own chocolate factory? Since pretty much everyone's a fan of chocolate, why not?
Unfortunately, there's no eating chocolate in Chocolate Factory, only a resource-management and light programming game instead.

Caveat: we've only ever played Chocolate Factory digitally.

What's in a game?

• Board: The game's central board has a couple of functions, it tracks rounds, coal values and scores, it also has spaces for the game's sets of cards. Speaking of which...
• Cards: Chocolate Factory uses quite a few different types of cards.
  Factory parts: It makes sense for a game called Chocolate Factory to have factory part cards! These smaller-than-usual cards will be used to manufacture chocolate and are part of the engine building mechanic. There are 2 types of card, A & B.
  Corner shop orders: These represent the wide variety of orders that players can fulfil. Corner shops come in 3 sizes, small, medium and large and respectively have 1-3 tiers of order to complete each. Once fulfilled, they can be replaced with new orders.
  Department store orders: There are 5 department stores in Chocolate Factory that always want the same type of chocolate. These double-sided cards are used to fulfil those orders and each had 9 spaces to track how much every player has provided. Unlike the corner shop orders, these are only scored at the end of the game and the points earned are relative to where players have reached on each card, there are scores for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place.
  Employees: There are 5 different types of employee card that directly correspond to the 5 different department stores that are demanding chocolate. Even though all the department stores want chocolate, players cannot sell it to a department unless they've acquired an employee of that respective store. Employee cards also confer a 1 round benefit to the player that acquired it.
• Player board: The player boards depict each player's factory; which consists of a conveyor belt that runs from left-to-right, the conveyor belt has an entrance and exit as well as 4 spaces; both above and below each conveyor belt space is a factory part space - thus 8 factory part spaces in all. The player boards come come with 3 factory parts already installed.
• Tiles: Chocolate Factory also comes with a fair amount of tiles for each player.
  Conveyor belt tiles: Each player will have 7 of these square tiles which will form their conveyor belt.
  Coal bunker tile: Each player has one of these tiles to store their coal.
  Storeroom tile: This is where each player their chocolate once it's exited their factory. They're not very good storerooms; because while players can store as much chocolate in their storerooms during a round, they can only store 2 pieces between rounds!
• Tokens: There's a lot of chocolate in Chocolate Factory and thus a lot of tokens! For the most part, players will be looking to use their factory to upgrade from one type of chocolate token to another to then fulfil orders. Essentially these are all resources that need to be managed in some way or other.
  Below is the 'order of value' for tokens.
  Bean tokens/Cocoa tokens:
  Chocolate finger tokens/Chocolate chunk tokens:
  Wrapped caramel chocolate/Wrapped nut chocolate tokens:
  Premium boxed chocolate tokens:
• Coal tokens: No, not chocolate but used to power factories.
• Markers: These come in player colours and are used to track various bits of information.

That's pretty much it for components.
​
Since we've only played Chocolate Factory digitally, I can really comment on the qualty of the components.
However, I can say what are there is, is quite nice and colourful, it has an early 20th century vibe to both the art style and subject of the art.
The game uses a fair amount of iconography, luckily for the most part, it was pretty straightforward to comprehend.

How's it play?
Setup

• ​Factory parts: Separate the cards into face-down decks by their A and B types. Shuffle each deck then place the A deck on top of the B deck. Thus the B cards will not appear until the late game.
• Corner shop orders: Sort these cards by their 3 types and shuffle them into 3 face-down decks.
• Employees: Sort these cards by their 5 types and then also shuffle them into 5 face-down decks.
• Department store orders: Put out these 5 cards next to the game board.
• Player boards: Give each player their factory board along with their conveyor belt, storage and coal bunker tiles.
• Starting player: Determine a starting player.

Now we're good to go!

On to play
​Chocolate Factory is played over 6 rounds - Monday to Saturday and each round has 2 phases, a drafting phase which goes twice in turn order and a factory phase which can be played out simultaneously.
Drafting phase

• Coal: First give each player coal tokens which will range from 5 to 10 according to the day.
• Factory parts: Draw factory part cards and arrange according to the number of players.
• Employees: Draw 1 employee from each of the 5 employee decks and arrange as per the number of players.
• 1st draft: Beginning with the first player, everyone will end up taking either a factory part card from the available selection or an employee card.
• 2nd draft: Once the 1st draft is over, there's a second! However, this draft is in reverse turn order, each player drafts another card, except this time it must be from the opposite selection. So each player will end up with a factory part and an employee.

That's it for the first phase.

Factory phase
Each player will now have a factory part and a employee card.
Factory parts are added to the player's board in one of the spaces above or below the conveyor belt spaces, a factory part can be used to replace an already existing factory part.
Employee cards serve 2 purposes, firstly they grant the player some sort of bonus and secondly, they allow the controlling player to sell chocolate to the department store they work for. Unlike factory parts, employees only stay in play for 1 round.

So how does the factory phase work?
The factory phase has 3 shifts and in each shift players first take a bean and place it on the conveyor belt tile that's about to enter into the factory.
Then each player must push their conveyor belt tiles along 1 space from the left to right so that the tile they placed a bean on goes into the factory, it's also possible that a tile will be slid out of the exit on the other side. Anything on that tile is placed into the respective player's storeroom.

Once this is done, the factory parts can be used, each part costs mostly 1 but sometimes 2 coal to activate. A factory part can only be used on resources adjacent to it. For example the basic roaster factory party will turn a bean into coca, a upgrader factory part will change any resource into the next level of resource (E.g., coca into chocolate fingers.). Converters will turn chocolate into wrapped chocolate or boxed chocolate and so on.
There are some limitation here, each factory part can only be activated once per shift.

Once the 1st shift is finished, the 2nd begins, another tile is placed at the entrance to the factory with  a bean on it and then the conveyor belt is pushed along another space and factory parts can be activated (Or reactivated.). Thus the conveyor belt will move 3 times a day.

Selling
When all 3 shifts have been run, players must sell chocolate, they can only keep 2 pieces in their storeroom between rounds, any excess is lost and players think ahead to avoid losses!
Chocolate can be sold to corner shops and each one has their own demands. Like the factory phase, selling can be completed simultaneously.
When selling to corner shops, they have 1-3 tiers of demand that must be met depending on their size and lower tiers must be completed before the higher ones. When a tier is completed it is immediately scored, when all tiers are scored the card is discarded and the player must draw a new corner shop card or any size they want.
Selling to department stores is a little different.
Firstly a player can only sell to a department store that matches the employee they drafted.
Secondly, when fulfilling the demands of a department store, points are not immediately scored, instead a marker in the player's colour is moved along the 9 spaces.

Once selling is concluded, a new round is set up, coal is distributed to players and new factory part and employee cards drawn, then the new round commences.

Endgame
Play continues until the 6th and round is completed, then the 5 department store scores are calculated.
Whoever has completed the most corner shop cards earns a bonus
Whoever has their marker the furthest along scores for 1st place, if the next player is at least half as far along as 1st place they score for 2nd place and if a 3rd player is half as far along as 2nd place, they score for 3rd place.
Furthermore, players can earn a bonus for selling chocolate to 3, 4 or all 5 department stores.
Finally, remaining chocolate and coal can earn points.
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Chocolate Factory gives players several important factors to think about.
Firstly, during the drafting phase, players must prioritise what they think is important to them, do they want a factory part more than an employee, they'll get both, but not necessarily in the ones they want if they wait to the 2nd drafting phase.

Cards that players draft can dramatically change the situation for players. Most obviously are employee cards which determine which department store a player can sell chocolate to. If a player is geared to sell the kind of chocolate a particular department is demanding, then getting the employee that gives you access can be paramount. This is even before considering which benefit the employee card also confers on the controlling player.

Factory parts will form the core of the player's ability to produce and sell chocolate, getting a part that wasn't wanted or needed will force player to reconsider their strategies for at least one round. Unlike employee cards, factory parts can stick around for the entire game, although they can be replaced and since players will acquire 6 factory parts and only have 5 spaces in their factory, it means something will have to go. Where these parts are placed can have a significant impact.
Place them too far to the right and it'll take a while for resources on the conveyor belt to reach them. Put them too far to the left and players risk screwing up their engine.
Putting factory parts in factory is an exercise in optimisation.

Speaking of optimisation, the game has a fairly unforgiving action economy. It's obviously a deliberate design decision, but there's never enough coal. Players start with 5 coal in round 1, they'll have 3 factory parts to activate - and that's over 3 shifts! Even in round 6, when each player can have a full factory, they only get 10 coal each, they'll on average only be able to activate 3 or 4 of their parts per shift.
If forces player to make meaningful decisions which is always good and also makes them think across 3 shifts instead of 1, but it also feels a little frustrating and uneventful when half of the engine you've been building isn't used in a shift and maybe isn't used in the entire round.

Scoring also presents players with choices.

Each round, every player will have the opportunity to score their 3 corner shops and work towards scoring 1 of the 5 department stores.
Corner shops are pretty straightforward to manage, the only wrinkle being that their demands must be met in tier order. It means that players will sometimes need to adapt to changing demands that a corner shop might present.
Department stores are a proposition that's a little more interesting though.
Because scores are based on relative positions between players, it can lead to some interesting outcomes.
E.g., if a player sells just 1 item to a department store and no one else does then they'll get the full reward for 1st place but conversely, if they sell 5 items to a department score and another player sells more, then they'll get less.
This adds an extra option or strategy to the game and unlike some tableau-engine building games, it becomes beneficial to watch what other players are doing and what they're producing and who they're selling it to.
And while I feel that the majority of player's victory points will come from corner shops, department stores can't be neglected. They exist in a sweet (sic) spot where they can tip the balance in a player's favour.

I'm kind of conflicted about Chocolate Factory, it has some solid mechanics that present players with choices, I particularly like how players can chose where to sell their chocolate to maximise their profit.
But parts of it are also a little unexciting, where the effort creating an engine feels greater than the rewards it provides.

I would have no problem playing Chocolate Factory again, but not too often. I think occasionally, it would be a good change of pace

12th November 2021

It's a Friday night and we're round Simon's for some impromptu evening gaming.

“I beg your pardon,” said the Mole, pulling himself together with an effort. “You must think me very rude; but all this is so new to me."

Well, Everdell is new to me, mixing various game mechanics and lush anthropomorphic artwork.

What's in a game?
Everdell is a game that has a big footprint and a lot components.

• Game board: Everdell's board is a curious circular shape and the central area is called the 'meadow'. Around the meadow with numerous spots to place the game's resources. There also various worker locations dotted across the maps, including some blank worker spaces that will be populated with randomly determined worker locations during the game setup. There also some location for 'events'. More on events later.
  Most of the worker locations earn players some combination of the game's resources and/or cards. E.G., 2 twigs and a card or 1 resin and a card.
• Tree: The game comes with a tree made of gameboard that can be constructed, placed on the board and used to hold various components.
• Basic event tiles: These score point when acquired.
• Resources: Everdell uses 4 main types of resources, berries, twigs, resin and pebbles. These are represented by shaped 3d plastic tokens.
• Meeples: Each player has up to 6 workers they can use, these wooden tokens are shaped in the style of different type of anthropomorphic animals.
• Cards: Broadly speaking, the game uses several different types of cards.
  Critter & construction cards: These are the core of the game and as the name suggests, come in 2 types. In the top left corner is the requirement or cost to play them, just below is the card type and at the bottom of each card it displays what benefit it confers such as victory points and more. There is a wide variety of different benefits available, this may even include extra places to put workers and sometimes these are modified by other cards.
  Special event cards: These cards are a variation on the event tiles above and as such will score when player's meet their requirements.
  Forest cards: These are used on the board to provide randomly generated worker spots in each game.
• Victory point tokens: Standard card tokens.

No doubt about, Everdell has fantastic production values.
The components are well made and the attention to detail for the most part is excellent. In particular, the resources look great as do the individualised meeples. We didn't use the tree but it's a nice touch
Even if the anthropomorphised artwork is not to your taste, it's hard to fault the quality of the artwork and rich, warm colour palettes used throughout on the board and all the cards.
​Iconography is where the game could be improved though. Sometimes, the text used on the critter and construction cards is perhaps a little too small as are the symbols and sometimes, to maintain the game's aesthetic, you'll encounter a small around of tiny writing surrounded by a lot of unused space. Having said that, it's a quibble, not a gamebreaker and doesn't really detract from the game's quality

How's it play?
Setup

• Meadow: Shuffle the critter & construction cards into a face-down deck, then draw and place 8 of them face-up into the meadow on the board.
• Forest cards: Shuffle the forest cards and deal out the allotted amount as per player count face-up on to the blank spots on the board. This means that some of the worker spots are randomly generated each game.
• Events:
  Event tiles: Put out the basic event tiles on to their allotted spaces on the board.
  Special event cards: Shuffle these cards and deal 4 face-up on to their allotted spaces.
• Cards: Determine the starting player; then each player should draw cards from the deck, starting with the 1st player who gets 5, then 2nd gets 6 and thus forth.
• Meeples: Each player takes only 2 meeples in their colour, the remaining 4 will be acquired before the game's 3 later turns. 

Now we're pretty much ready to go.

On to play
The objective in Everdell is to construct the best city, that is the city that scores the most victory points. Players achieve this by playing critters and constructions into their tableau.
​When somebody becomes the active player, they can perform 1 action from a choice of 3 and then player progresses to the player to the left. Players continue performing actions until they have to or choose to stop; in which case the season has ended for them. Everdell is played over 4 seasons.

• Place worker: The active player may place a worker on a available spot. This will allow them to gain a mix of resources, cards or victory points depending on which spot it is.
  Some spots only allow for the placement of a single worker but some allow multiple players to make use of them. Furthermore, some cards that may get played have spots to place workers and acquire whatever benefits the card confers. This means a player may end up placing a worker in another player's tableau!
• Play card: The active player can play a card as their action, cards provide lots of actions or abilities which can be performed, too many to list here.
  Broadly speaking, cards come in two categories; critters and constructions which can also be common or unique. Cards also have a type such as Tan Traveller or Green Production which affect what function the card performs.
  For example Tan Traveller cards have a once-only benefit, but Green Production cards produce something whenever a production phase is triggered.
  Playing a card requires spending the relevant resources, having said that, the game has some synergy between cards and some critters can be played for free if the linked construction is already in the player's tableau.
  Players can play card types in sets to acquire event tiles/cards; e.g. the Grand Tour event can be earned if the player puts 3 destination cards into their tableau.  
• Prepare for Season: Players can continue taking actions until they run out of workers and cards that can be played, when this happens, the player must prepare for the next season.
  This involves taking back their workers plus an additional worker or two from the supply, players may be able to re-activate production cards in their tableau or take cards from the meadow, all depending on the season.

When all players have prepared for season, then the current season is over and play moves to the next one.

Endgame
When the 4th season is completed, then the game is over.
Victory points can be scored from a variety or sources, including cards, tokens and events.
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
It's obvious that a lot of thought and care has gone into the game's presentation and charm. It's one of the best looking games I've seen in a while and I always appreciate the extra effort committed to a game.

Hmmm, what else to say about Everdell; for the most part, it's initially a pretty solid, straightforward game, although it feels a like a bit of a slow burner.
While the game's cards provide players with a variety of approaches choices and plays to make. Having said that, the game's action-economy is actually quite tight, almost too harsh. E.g, in the 1st season, players will only have 2 workers to gain resources in order to play cards, it means players will have to pay close attention to optimising their plays and actions. card synergy can make a big difference.
It gave me the feeling that players will need to know what they're doing from their first action in order to play Everdell competitively.

Additionally, in comparison to other tableau building games, it feels like the tableau in Everdell provides much more limited benefits that lacks the satisfaction putting together a good tableau.
​At best, production cards are reactivated once every other season - or round - but because players have multiple actions in a single season, it means a lengthy gap before those reactivations. This is something players will need to consider when playing cards.
All of this makes the choices in Everdell important - which is the sign of a good game.

Ultimately though, I just found it a little unexciting and unengaging and while it wouldn't be my first choice, I'd have no qualms about playing Everdell again.

19th October 2021

Tuesday evening has come around again and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club.

The first game of the night was Unearth; a dice-rolling, worker placement game set after a distant apocalypse where players command a band of 'delvers' searching for lost wonders of the long past age. Basically archaeologists sans the bullwhips and giant rock chases!

What's in a game?

• ​Ruins cards: These oversized cards come in 2 types.
  Ruins deck: There are 25 of these cards that come in 5 colours. Each card displays 2 numbers. A claims value in the top left corner and a stones value in the bottom right; more on these below.
  End of age deck: There are 5 of these cards and only 1 is ever used at a time, they only appears at the end of the game. Each card has a special rule that only comes into play when it is revealed.
• Delver cards: Conversely, delver cards are half-size. When acquired by players, they can be spent before an action to confer some sort of bonus or benefit to that action. 
• Wonders cards: The ancient world was filled with now-destroyed wonders and these cards represent those and come in 3 kinds; minor wonders, major wonders and named wonders.
  There is only 1 wonder card each for minor and major wonders (All minor wonders are identical, as are major.) but there are 15 unique named wonder cards.
• Hexagonal tokens: These six-sided tiles come in various types.
  Stone tokens: These are used to rebuild the wonders of the world and come in 5 colours.
  Minor wonders: There are 10 identical minor wonder tokens.
  Major wonders: There are 6 of these identical tokens.
  Named wonders: There are 15 unique named wonder tokens, each one attributed to one of the named wonder cards.
• Bag: Used in conjunction with the stone tiles.
• Dice: These are the workers of the game (The delvers.), there are 4 sets and each set consists of the 5 dice; an eight-sided die, three normal six-siders and a four sided dice.
• Model: This copy of the game came with a curious little model depicting a 3d version of the delvers and appears to serve no function.

​The cards and tokens are all good quality and you'd expect them to be. The dice are plastic and round edged, they roll well enough.
For the ruins cards, Unearth uses some distinct eye-catching colour palettes and isometric cuboid artwork to depict the long destroyed structures. 
For the delver cards, an almost cartoony style is used to illustrate the workers/dice.
Overall, I like the art style.
The game doesn't make much use of iconography, what there is of it is pretty simple to comprehend.

How's it play?
Setup

• Stone tokens: Place all the stone tokens into the bag and give it a good shake.
• Ruins deck: Shuffle the ruins deck and deal one card face-down to each player, this should be kept hidden.
  Then remove 5 cards, these are not used in the game.
  End of age card: Shuffle the end of age deck, draw 1 face-down and put it at the bottom of the ruins deck, thus it will be the final card drawn from the deck.
• Draw ruin cards: Draw 5 cards from the ruins deck and place in a face-up row.
  Stone tokens: Blindly draw stone tokens from the bag and place on to the face-up ruins cards; the stone value in the bottom right corner of each card will determine how many stone tokens go on each card.
• Wonders: Put out the minor and major wonder cards face-up, put the corresponding wonder tokens in a stack on each card:
  Named wonders: Shuffle the deck of named wonders and draw cards as determined by the player count, put them out face-up and place each card's unique wonder token on top of it.
• Delver cards: Shuffle the delver deck and deal 2 to each player.
• First player: Give each player a set of dice and determine the starting player.

On to play
In Unearth, players take turns and are attempting to use delvers to acquire sets of ruin cards, that is place rolled dice on ruins card and also build wonders by accumulating and placing stone.
Broadly speaking there can be 2 phases that the active player acts in, the delving phase and the building phase.

• Delver cards: The active player may choose to play 1 or more delver cards for their respective bonuses.
• Roll a die: The active player must roll a die, if they don't have a die available for any reason, then they must take back a die they previously placed on a ruins card.
  Declare: Before rolling any dice, the active player must choose which die to roll and which ruin to put it on to.
  Roll the die: The active player must roll the die they chose and place it on the ruin card they chose! What does this do, well read on.
• Results: What happens when a die is placed on a ruins card depends on what was rolled among other factors.
  1, 2 or 3: If the die result was 1 of these 3 numbers, then the active play may immediately claim a stone token from that card the die was placed on to. If the card has no tokens left on it, then they draw blindly from the bag.
  Completing a claim: After a die has been placed on a ruins card, total the value of all the dice placed on that card, if that value meets or beats the card's claims value (The number in the top left corner.), then that card can be claimed.
  The player who has a single die showing the highest value claims the card, the number of dice a player has on a card has no direct bearing other than possibly in tie-breakers. Players who lose out on claiming a card, acquire a delver card for each die they had placed on the claimed card, so it's not all bad.
  When a card is claimed, a new card is drawn to replace it.
• Building wonders: When a player acquires a stone token, they add it to their play area by placing it next to any other stone token they've acquired and increase their 'tableau'. The objective here is to create 'rings' of 6 stones and then fill the 'space' by building a wonder in the hole. There are however, some requirements.
  Minor wonder: A minor wonder can be placed in a space surrounded by tokens of any colour
  Major wonder: A major wonder must be surrounded by stone tokens of the same colour.
  Named wonders: Each unique named wonder will have it's own requirements to be met, e.g., this may include 3 of 1 colour and 3 or any other colour.
• Next player: Once the active player has completed delving and/or building, play passes to the player to the left.

Endgame
Play continues until the end of age card is revealed, any instructions on that card are immediately resolved, then play continues until all ruins cards have been claimed.
​
Players then score for each set of the same colour they've collected. Sets range from 1-5 cards and score 2-30 points per set. there are also points for sets of each colour collected.
Players can then score points from the individual wonders they've built, they also score for building 3 or more wonders.
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
The sum of Unearth's parts make it a fairly unusual game. It provides 2 distinct paths to scoring points and neither can be entirely ignored.
Set collecting is one way to earn victory points and the card collecting mechanics are quite solid, giving players who fail to acquire a card some sort of other benefit and the range of dice available to players that give them a couple of options is key to this. Players can play for the card or try and play for the stones - the eight-sided die has a slightly better chance of roll higher than a six-sider and four sided die has a 75% chance of rolling 3 or lower, they each give advantage but don't guaranteed success.

The other path to victory points - building wonders requires players to both plan ahead and also adapt to opportunities and changes as they appear, collecting stones of a particular colour can always prove tricky, especially if another player is also on the hunt for stone tokens. There are also some restrictions on how stone tiles are placed and depending on what a stones a player is trying to get, placing them may require a small amount of planning and forethought.

I found Unearth a little unengaging and I can't quite put my finger on why, maybe it's the game's slightly abstract nature or maybe that it feels like little is ever happening.
Very little seems to occur in a player's turn, quite often a player rolls a dice and there's no immediate effect, sometimes they get a stone, sometimes they don't, occasionally they get a ruins card. Often it felt like that despite my decisions, little was in my control.

All of this makes the game sort of light on decision making. Players choose which ruins card to gamble a doe on and when to use a delver card, or where to place a stone token when they gain one and that's about it. There's just not that much to it.
I can't find much to fault Unearth but then I can't find much to praise it either. It's all a little unexciting.

12th October 2021

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

The first game of the evening was Sushi Go Party!. The big brother and follow up of the excellent Sushi Go!, if you've not read it, check out my blog about Sushi Go! here and then come back.

I'm not going to talk too much about Sushi Go Party!, other than where it's different to Sushi Go!. Mechanically, it shares almost exactly the same blend of drafting and set collecting rules as its predecessor. What Sushi Go Party! brings is a bunch of new cards with new ways to collect sets and/or score points.
In fact, Sushi Go Party! brings so many new cards to the game, that they can't be all used at the same time and introduces the concept of menus. More on menus below.

What's in a game?

• Cards: There are about 20 sets of cards in Sushi Go Party! and they are grouped by type such as appetiser, dessert and so on.
  Tiles: Each card also comes with a tile, what're the tiles for? Read on.
• Board: Sushi Go Party adds a thick, chunky board to the game which serves 2 functions:
  Firstly, it serves as scoring track around the outside
  Secondly, in the centre are a number of recessed squares that are large enough to accommodate the tiles mentioned above are named for the types dishes, e.g., appetiser, dessert and so on.

• Meeples: The game comes with 8 colourful plastic pawns.

The components in Sushi Go Party! are all pretty good, the tiles and board feel sturdy enough and the cards made well enough.
The game maintains the same excellent, cheerfully colourful illustrations of cartoonish looking food as it's predecessor. If it ain't broke...
There's not much iconography to the game, it's mostly just numbers.

How's it play?
It plays almost identically to Sushi Go!, the same take-a-card and pass-your-hand and set collecting mechanics played over 3 rounds that made the original so good are found here.
Sushi Go Party! only differs in 2 ways.

In setup, Sushi Go Party! requires the players to create a menu from the available sets of cards. This consists of the nigiri cards (Which are used in every game.), 1 rolls set, 3 appetiser sets, 2 specials sets and a dessert set. The rules provide a large, varied list of menus to use. I guess there's nothing stopping players from creating or randomly selecting their own menus.
After the menu has been finalised, the relevant tiles are placed into the relevant recessed spots on the board so that all players can see what sets will be in the game.
Finally, all the sets in the menu are shuffled together into a face down deck and dealt out to players as per the rules.
​
The second difference: In Sushi Go!; the game goes through the deck without reusing it, i.e., at the end of a round, all played cards are scored, then discarded out of the game - except for puddings of course.
But in Sushi Go Party!, the played cards are shuffled back into the deck, along with more pudding cards to balance out any that were taken players. Then the reshuffled deck is reused in the next round.

It's a subtle difference, but it technically makes Sushi Go Party! a tiny bit more predictable as the composition of cards in the deck will 'reset' from round-to-round. Whereas in the original, once they're played, they're played.

Overall
If you like Sushi Go!, you'll like Sushi Go Party!, no doubt about it and if you play Sushi Go! a lot, then this is probably also worth playing, the extra cards go a long way to increasing the game's longevity.

But there's something that makes Sushi Go Party! less appealing than its predecessor and I think it's immediacy.

​Sushi Go! is pretty much the epitome of a quick, pick-up-and-play game; shuffle the cards, deal them out to players and you're ready to go. Clean up after the game end involves collecting the cards and putting them away.

Conversely, in Sushi Go Party!; the board must be set up, a menu agreed upon and placed the relevant tiles placed on the board, then the pertinent card sets must be taken from the available sets, only then can they be shuffled and dealt to players. It doesn't end there though, when Sushi Go Party! is over, all cards must be put back into their sets before packing away.
​Not only that, Sushi Go Party! by necessity comes in a bigger tin, while the original is compact enough to fit in coat pocket.
Gone is the portability and convenience.

It sounds like I'm dissing Sushi Go Party! but I'm not, it's a great game. It's just that I don't feel the need to play it over the original, it doesn't offer a different enough experience to warrant the extra effort.
However, like I said, if you play a lot of Sushi Go!, you should give this a try and if you've never played Sushi Go! or this, then you should definitely ​try one of them.

26th September 2021

Sunday evening gaming on Board Game Arena continued with Cloud City.

Travel around Cloud City and defeat Darth Vader and his stormtroopers... oh wait... what? This is an entirely different Cloud City!

Be an architect and build up tower blocks in your model city to create walkways between them in this 3D tile laying game.

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

What's in a game?

• Tiles: There are 48 tiles in Cloud City, including 4 starter tiles.
  Every tile displays 2 building symbols, either adjacent to each other or diagonally opposite each other. Each building symbols is either blue, green or brown.
  The starting tiles are numbered 1-4.
• Buildings: Cloud City makes uses of building meeples (Beeples?), these also come in 3 heights that correspond to the 3 colours. The blue are the shortest, green are at the middle height and the browns are the tallest.
• Walkways: As with the other components, the walkways come in the same 3 colours and are used with the building meeples of the matching colour.
  There are 31 walkways in each colour and their lengths vary from 1 to 8 (1, 2, 3, 5 & 8.) and they are marked as such, this is also their victory point value.

There's virtually no art in Cloud City, it's plain but functional and to be honest, I can't where you'd put it.
The games iconography is similarly minimal but easily understood.
I will add that since we've only played Cloud City digitally, it's hard to gauge how it would look with physical components, which could be quite good, judging from the photos I've seen.

How's it play?
Setup

• Cloud tiles: Shuffle the cloud tiles (Not including the starting tiles.) into a face-down stack and deal 3 face-up next to the stack.
• Walkways: Put out the walkways according to colour and length.
• Starting tiles: Determine the starting player and give them starting tile 1, give player 2 tile 2 and so on.
  Each player should put their starting tile down in their own play area, then take and place the matching building meeples on their spaces on their tile.
• Hand: Deal 3 tiles to each player.

On to play
In Cloud City each player will create a 3x3 grid of tiles, buildings and walkways. Points are scored from walkways which are worth points according to their length, thus walkways score 1-8 points each.

• ​Play tile: The active player must play one of the tiles from their hand and it must be played adjacent to a tile that has already been played - which in the 1st round would the starting tile.
  When playing a tile, the player's city cannot exceed the 3x3 limitation, in the early rounds there will be a lot of freedom on where to place tiles but towards the end, locations become limited.
• Place walkways: The player may choose to take walkways from the supply and connect 2 buildings of the same height, they are free to connect them as they are built or later. Furthermore, they can take as many walkways in a turn as they can use.
  There are however, some restrictions; a walkway cannot cross over an empty space without a tile and a building cannot be connected by more than 2 walkways, so no T-junctions or crossroads.
  If the supply has run out out of the walkways a player needs, then it's too bad.
• Draw: The active player must fill their hand back up to 3, they may take one of the 3 face-up tiles available or draw blindly from the stack
• Next: Play progresses to the player to the left.

Endgame
Play continues until all players have completed their 3x3 grid, which always takes 8 rounds. Each player's victory points is equal to the value of the totalled numbers on all the walkway tokens they played.
Points are tallied. Highest score wins

Overall
In some ways, Cloud City is a standard tile-laying game: Put down tiles to create links and score points from them.
However, because Cloud City adds a extra dimension (Sic.) to gameplay, the game has that sweet spot of simplicity of rules but depth of choice. Players can choose to try and create single long paths that score big on walkways or zigzagging small paths that score little but often. Players will also want to utilise all the empty space that their tiles inevitably generate. Managing to have walkways pass over or under others is an efficient way to rack up points. It lends Cloud City a almost puzzle-like quality.
The rule limiting walkways to 2 per building is excellent, a good example of less is more, it prevents players from relatively easily creating a web of walkways and forces them to try and anticipate the direction they will need to take when putting down buildings, getting it wrong can cost points. Ideally, players will want to have a single snaking walkway that goes from building to building.

That brings me to the game's other central mechanic; drafting.
Cloud City employs 2 instances of drafting.
Most obviously, is the tile drafting. Players can choose which tile from 3 to take to replace one they've played or draw blindly. This is a common implementation of drafting in tile placement games.
It's the other type of drafting that's more interesting. Cloud City's rules mean that player's do not need to immediately connect buildings with walkways and this can present players with a conundrum:

If a player does not immediately place walkways on their buildings, they can be taken later and placed in way to optimise scoring. There's a risk though, since there's a limited number of each walkway, particularly the 8 pointers, of which there are only 3 in each colour. Once they're gone, they're gone and to get one later can make a player lose out.
Conversely, players can take and place walkways immediately, this is safer in one regard, but the risk here is that the tiles placed later may provide alternate better ways to score.
This is something that players will always need to bear in mind.

Cloud City mostly presents players with meaningful decisions to make and I found the urge to try and create the perfect network of walkways fairly compelling. It was a enjoyable experience that was easy to learn and played fairly quickly.

21st September 2021

The final game of Tuesday gaming with the Woking Gaming Club in The Sovereigns in Woking was DC Deck Building Game: Heroes Unite, which is both quite a mouthful and not pirate themed game, unless of course there's a Pyscho-Pirate card in there somewhere or something?

So apparently there are several differently themed DC Deck Building Games out there and Heroes Unite is one of them, it is both an expansion to the core game and a standalone game.
​All these deck-builders make use of a game-engine called the Cerberus System.

What's in a game?

• Superhero cards: There are 7 of these oversized cards, each one representing a DC comics superhero such as Hawkman, Nightwing, Booster Gold and each one has a unique special ability.
  You'll notice that there's no playable Superman, Batman et al, that's because they're all already available in the core set. Anyway, who doesn't want to play as Batgirl over Wonder Woman, right?
• Starter cards: Each player begins with the same set of 10 starter cards.
  7 punch cards: Each punch card provides 1 point of currency, called Power in this game.
  3 vulnerability cards: These are basically trash cards, they do nothing but take up room in a player's hand.
  If you've played a deck-builder before, then I'm sure this will all be familiar to you.
• Cards: These cards are bulk of cards in the game, they contain various types of cards such as heroes, villains, superpowers, locations etc. They all function differently, but basically all have a cost (In power) and confer some sort of bonus such as extra power or extra card draws, some also provide a method of affecting other players or provide defence against attacks.
  Many cards will also provide victory points.
• Kick cards: These are slightly more powerful versions of the starter punch cards, the also provide 1 victory point each and are always available to purchase.
• Supervillains: Supervillain cards are a little like villain cards but differ in 3 ways.
  First appearance: When a supervillain card is flipped and revealed, it immediately has a once-off effect, this is ​typically negative and affects all players with an attack.
  Cost: Like other cards, supervillain cards can be bought with power and added to a player's discard stack, however they coast a significantly higher amount of power.
  Victory points: Supervillain cards also provide victory points, as with the cost, they tend to be higher than victory points provided by normal cards.
• Weakness cards: Every weakness card that a player owns during the game end deducts a point from their victory point total. Obviously players don't buy these, but negative events or attacks will force players to take weakness cards.

That's pretty much it for components.
The cards are standard quality playing cards as you'd expect.
It's also no surprise that they're all decorated with fairly high quality colourful comic book styled artwork, although I'm uncertain if it's been sourced from actual comic books.
There's little iconography, most of the game's information is provided via text on cards which is mostly quite clear.

How's it play?
Setup

• Supervillains: Shuffle the supervillain cards into a face-down deck.
• Kick cards: Put these into a face-up deck
• Weakness cards: Also put these into a face-up deck.
• Cards: Shuffle these into a face-down decks and deal 5 of them, these will become the 'line-up', cards that the active player may purchase.
• Superheroes: Either randomly give each player a superhero card or choose one each.
• Player decks: Give a set of 10 starter cards to each player, who should then shuffle them into a face-down deck and draw 5.
• Begin: Determine the start player.

On to play

• Play cards: The active player may play any or all of the cards in their hand in any order and resolve them accordingly. Cards are played in front of the active player and remain in play until the end of their turn.
  Purchase cards: The active player may use power generated to purchase any available cards including kick cards and revealed supervillains, if they have enough power they can purchase multiple cards. However, any cards bought are not immediately replaced, so there are limits to how many cards can be bought.
  Any cards purchased go into the active player's discard pile.
  Card abilities: Card may allow players to draw more cards, go through their discard pile, attack other players, force them to draw weakness cards and so on. These can be resolved in any order the active player chooses.
• End of turn: Once the active player has finished their turn, the following events occur.
  Discard hand: The active player discards any cards they did not play.
  Powers: Any cards with 'end of turn' powers are now triggered.
  Discard played cards: The active player now discards cars they played, these cards are now no longer considered in play.
  Refresh line-up: Any cards that were purchased from the line-up by the active player are now replaced from the deck.
  Draw cards: The active player (Whose hand should be empty.) draws 5 cards into their hand.
  Supervillain: If no supervillain card is visible; which will be the case in the first turn or if the active player just bought (Defeated!) one, then flip a supervillain card over and put it on top of the supervillain deck. The first appearance action is then immediately triggered.
  Next player: The player to the left of the current player becomes the active player.

​Endgame
Play continues until 1 of the following conditions is met.

There are no more supervillain cards to flip over, i.e., there are no more supervillain cards.
Or.
There are not enough cards to fill the line-up with 5 cards, i.e., the deck has run out.
When one of these conditions have been, all players put all their cards into their discard stack.
​
Players then total the victory points they get from cards and deduct 1 point for each weakness card they have.
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
​Hmm, what to say about DC Deck Building Game: Heroes Unite. 

Players will look to use their cards to generate currency that allows them to buy more cards that generate even more currency, eventually acquiring the most powerful cards confer extra abilities and grant victory points.
It's pretty standard deck-building fare which contains mechanics and elements that will be familiar ground if you've played other deck-builders, which is to say the core mechanic is pretty solid, enjoyable fun and generally always provides players with meaningful choices to ponder.

However, the game adds a few new elements to the traditional formula.
The addition of a line-up mechanic is a definite positive, it forces players to adapt to whatever cards become available instead of falling back on tried and tested strategies.

Even so. it's still quite easy to quickly create combos and it can be very satisfying to do so; but perhaps it's too easy
I was told Ant, the game's owner that sometimes a player gets to build up momentum much quicker than other players and they end up creating more and more combos, allowing them to (In Ant's words.) 'steamroller' their opponents.

Heroes Unite also provides a slightly greater focus on targeting players and attacking, both by players and supervillains! It lends the game a slightly different, more antagonistic feel and offers a extra avenue to strategy to pursue.

It's hard to fault Heroes Unite but at the same time and apart from the theme, it doesn't really stand out from the crowd.
​
If you don't own a deck building game and fancy getting one, you could worse then getting Heroes Unite, it's a good a place to start as anywhere.
If you want a superhero themed deck builder, then this is worth a look.
If you want a DC Comics superhero themed deck builder, then it's definitely worth a harder look.
If you want a DC Comics superhero themed deck builder where you play as side-kicks and 'B-listers', then this really is the game for you!

12th September 2021


Up from the depths.
Thirty stories high.
Breathing fire!
HIS HEAD IN THE SKY!
GODZILLA!
GODZILLA!
GODZILLA!
….and Godzoo- OK, that's going too far.

Take on the role of a kaiju as they rampage against each other for the right to flatten  Tokyo!

• Power cards: These cards grant monsters powers. Some powers are once-only and discarded when used, some are always active and others can be triggered by certain criteria. Additionally, some power cards will target other players' monsters, normally to detrimental effect.
• Dice: These are not the usual six-siders, the numbers 4, 5 & 6 are replaced with a monster footprint, lighting and heart symbols.
  There are 6 black dice and 2 green ones. Mostly, players will use the black dice, some power cards allow them to use the extra 2 green dice though.
• Energy cubes: Translucent, green acrylic cubes.
• Tokens: Standard cardboard disc shaped tokens, used to track some of the power cards' abilities.

That's it for components, they're all solidly made; the monster standees and boards are thick and sturdy, it doesn't feel like the dials will fall off any time soon. The tokens, cards and acrylic are exactly what you'd expect them to be.
​The dice are very well constructed and feel satisfying weighty to heft, which is good because they be getting a of of use.
The boards, cards and standees are lavished with brash, colourful and cartoonish art, it's comical style perfectly fits both the game's style and over the top theme.
The game has little iconography which is easy to understand.

How's it play?
Setup

• ​Give each player a standee and matching monster board, each player should set the health to 10 and victory points to 0.
• Set out the main board, dice, cubes and tokens.
• Shuffle the power cards into a face-down deck and deal 3 face-up.
• Determine a starting player.

On to play
​In King of Tokyo, players take turns rolling and re-rolling dice, then using those results to try and gain some benefit to work towards their objectives. During play there will always be a monster inside Tokyo, while the others are outside, in a 5+ player game, there can be 2 monsters inside Tokyo.
A turn goes like this.

• Dice: The active player rolls the 6 black dice.
  Rerolls: After the 1st roll, the active player may choose to set aside any number of dice and reroll the remaining. They may choose to set aside 0 dice or all of them (Although this would end their rolling.).
  They may then reroll those remaining dice that were not put aside; after this roll, they may put aside any number of those dice, they may even add back in dice they put aside in the previous roll.
  Finally, the active player may have a final 2nd reroll (3rd roll in total.) of the dice not set aside. Now the results on all the dice must be resolved.
• Results:
  3-of-a-kind: If the active player got 3-of-a-kind for the numerical results, then they score victory points for that base number. If they rolled 1, 1 & 1, then they score 1 point, if they roll 3, 3 & 3, they would score 3 points.
  Getting more matching numbers, increase the score per matching die. Thus getting a result of 2, 2, 2, 2, & 2 would earn the active player 4 victory points.
  Footprint: The footprint stomps enemies! Each footprint does a point of damage.
  If the active player is outside Tokyo, the damage dealt to the monster inside Tokyo, if the active player is inside Tokyo, the damage is dealt to every monster outside Tokyo!
  If a monster has it's health reduced to 0, it is eliminated from the game.
  Heart: For every heart result the active player has rolled, they are healed 1 damage, however, monsters inside Tokyo cannot heal.
  Energy: Each energy result gains the active player 1 energy cube.
• Buy power card: Once the dice have been resolved, the active player can spend their energy cubes to buy 1 or more power cards.
  Alternatively, the active player may spend 2 energy to clear away the 3 available power cards and replace them with 3 new ones.
• Next player: Play proceeds with the player to the left.

Rules for Tokyo

• If a Tokyo space is empty, the active player's monster must enter it.
• A player earns a victory point for entering Tokyo.
• A player beginning their turn in Tokyo earns 2 victory points.
• A player's monster cannot leave Tokyo, they can only yield it to a player who has just damaged them.

Endgame
Play continues until one of two conditions are met.
A player has reached 20 victory points - in which they immediately win or all monster bar one have had their health reduced to 0, in which case the last monster standing wins.

Overall
King of Tokyo is a push-your-luck game with a difference, most other games of this type task players with essentially beating the odds and doing so more efficiently than other players, getting to whatever the victory criteria is first. But King of Tokyo has an extra wrinkle, in King of Tokyo, players can target and eliminate other players, I'm not a fan of player elimination but it gives the game an extra approach and dimension to gameplay. Not only that, players will look to prioritise different results at different times, if they're low on health; they'll want hearts. If there's a power card they like the look of; they'll want energy.

The rules for getting into Tokyo compliment this well.

Getting into Tokyo works for scoring points or attacking enemies.
There's an inherent risk to do so, because it makes that player the central target. Managing to stick it out in Tokyo however, earns the player 2 victory points per turn, which on the surface might not seem like much but is actually 10% of the required victory score. Additionally, being in Tokyo is the best way to dish out damage to all other players, hit them hard enough and they'll probably want to heal instead of attack, giving the player in Tokyo more time, because sometimes, attacking the player in Tokyo is a risk. A canny player might yield Tokyo to another player who is low on health because it then puts them on the spot!

Throw the usage of power cards into the mix and King of Tokyo becomes an enjoyable blend of strategy, risk and reward and push-your-luck mechanics. Furthermore, players will need to adapt to the unpredictability the game sends their way.

King of Tokyo is a easy to learn, light and fun game not to be taken too seriously, it's perhaps a little too long for a filler game but is definitely worth trying, especially if you're a fan of push-your-luck games.

7th September 2021

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

The first game of the night was Merv.

What's in a game?

• Game board: Merv is a busy game and consequently has a busy board loaded with information, spaces and tracks!
  City: The central part of the board is dominated by a 5x5 grid, this is the city of Merv. The grid is considered to have a north, east, south and west side. It's also surrounded by 'wall spaces'.
  Caravansary: This is a 'caravan of camels' where players can go to buy spice.
  Influence track: As players complete certain actions, they move along this track which allows them to acquire different types of spice.
  Library: This is where players can acquire scrolls and as they do so, they will also acquire benefits or bonuses called breakthroughs.
  Marketplace: Players can travel to other settlements to buy various goods. The marketplace contains 4 inner cities and 4 outer cities.
  Mosque: Players can move along this track to acquire benefits and bonuses.
  Palace: Players can send courtiers to the palace to earn victory points - at a cost.
  Favour track: Used in conjunction with the Palace.
• City tiles: These are used in the city.
  Camel market: This double-sided tile sits in the centre of the 5x5 grid.
  Building sites: There are 24 of these other tiles that populate the rest of the city. Players will be able to construct buildings on these sites.
  When activated, building sites provide resource cubes in their colours as well as 1 of 6 actions.
• Caravan cards: This deck of cards is used to represent the 4 different types of spice available to purchase, however the distribution of spices is not equal on the cards, some are rarer. From most common to rare, they are; cinnamon, ginger, juniper & pepper. Caravan cards confer 2 bonuses'
  Doubles: Whenever a player completes a pair, they get a bonus depending on what type of spice it is.
  Set collecting: During the endgame, sets of cards score victory points.
• Contract cards: These represent business or trade contracts which players can complete for victory points and other rewards.
  Completing a contract usually requires a mixture of resources, goods and scrolls. Players will also require a minimum level of influence in order to complete contracts.
  Unusually, goods and contracts are not spent when completing a contract, they are simply placed on the card, which prevents them being used for other contracts.
  There are 6 types of contract card.
• Goods tiles: There 24 common and 24 rare goods tiles.
• Scroll tiles: These represent the world of academia in Merv
• Breakthrough tiles: Earn enough scroll tiles and a player will acquire a breakthrough tile, these tiles confer a bonus or benefit of some kind.
• Upgrade tiles: Used to upgrade buildings that are constructed.
• Scoring tiles: These score points at the end of every year and are acquired from the mosque track.
• Camel meeples: Wooden meeples.
• Resources: Little wooden cubes, now you're talking. They come in 5 colours and represent the game's 4 different types of errr resources? The white cubes are considered wild.
• Wall tokens: These wooden tokens are shaped in the style of city walls.
• Buildings: There are 9 each of these wooden tokens in each of the 4 player colours.
• Wooden disks: Merv has a lot of tracks that need tracking and wooden disks are used to track those tracks! There are 10 in each colour.
• Meeples: Each player gets a Master Meeple and 8 worker meeples in their colour.

Merv has top-notch components; the cards and tiles are all good quality. cubes, tokens and meeples all look good, made of wood and feel solid, the walls are the standout components here and really look nice when set on the on the board and surrounding the city.
​
Despite its busyness, the game board is well illustrated and colourful, artwork on cards is also clear and colourful.

For the most part the iconography is clear and easy to understand.
Unfortunately, this does not extend to the symbols used to represent the game's 6 actions, these were a constant source of confusion and error.

​For example; the mosque action uses a minaret symbol but actually involves moving camel meeples along a track, but the symbols with camels on it is used to represent the caravansary! Why? Because the caravansary used camels to move spices! However, in game, the caravansary action only is used to get spices and has nothing to do with camels
This means that camels are used to represent spices and minarets are used to represent camels! It verges on the ridiculous.
It didn't help that all 6 symbols were the same colour so that it matched the colour theme of the board.

How's it play?
Setup

• City: Randomly choose one side of the camel market tile and place it at the centre of the 5x5 grid.
  Shuffle all of the build site tiles and randomly place them in the city, filling out all 24 spaces.
• Caravansary: shuffle the caravan cards into a face-down deck.
  Draw 8 cards and place them face-up in a row along the edge of the board close to the caravansary space. Then place camels on cards according to the number of players.
• Contract cards: Put the contract cards face-up into their 6 respective decks with the highest value card at the top and in descending order, making the earlier contracts more valuable.
• Library: Place the scroll and breakthrough tokens on their Library spaces.
• Mosque: The upgrade tokens go on to the mosque track, as do 4 camel meeples.
• Marketplace: Place a camel meeple on each of the 4 inner cities in the marketplace.
• Tokens: Give each player their meeples, disks and building tokens.
• Player order: Determine starting player.

I'm sure I've missed some steps, but it's pretty much covered.

On to play
Merv is played over 3 years and in each year there are 4 rounds, players have 1 action per round, thus 12 actions in total.
Taking actions in Merv are quite unusual, play takes place around the 5x5 grid and each round takes place across 1 side of the grid (Starting on the north side.), then in the subsequent round, play moves clockwise to the next side of the grid and so on, so by the 4th round, a complete circuit will have been completed.

• Place meeple: When a player takes their turn, they place their Master Meeple on one of the 5 spaces on the currently active side of the grid and activates one of the 5 building sites in that column/row. When this happens, the following occurs.
  Build: If there is no building on the activated site, then the active player must put one of their buildings there.
  Resources: The active player gains a resource in the colour indicated on the site they activated, furthermore they also gain resources from any sites of the same colour in the same column/row, provided those sites also have buildings. Thus it pays to position buildings in certain ways over turns to be able to generate multiple resources at a time as the game progresses.
  If those buildings belong to other players, then those players additionally acquire resources.
  Then one of the following is chosen.
  Deploy soldier: The active player may place one of their soldiers on to a tile with a building that is not already protected, this protects the building and earns them influence. What is protection for? More on this later.
  Gain favour: Move a space along the favour track at the palace.
  Action: The player use the action on the activated site, actions are the main staple of Merv and players will be using them most of the time.
  Camel market: If the active player has chosen the middle space of the 5, then they can access the camel market tile. The active player may use one of the tiles 4 special abilities by placing a camel meeple on the abilities' space, alternatively, they may collect all the camel meeples previously placed on the camel market tile.
• Actions: There are 6 types of action in Merv.
  Caravansary: This action allows the active player to purchase caravan cards by spending resource cubes, they will also acquire camel meeples if they're on the purchased caravan card.
  Caravan cards come in 4 types, the number of different types a player can hold at any time depends on how far they've travelled along the influence track.
  Every pair of caravan cards earns the player a bonus and sets earn victory points at the end of the game.
  Library: When a player takes the library action, they can spend resources to purchase scrolls. For every 2 scrolls a player acquires, they also acquire a breakthrough.
  Scrolls also have uses elsewhere.
  Marketplace: This grants the active player access to the marketplace which consists of 8 cities, this requires establishing a camp in one of the 4 inner cities. The first player to do this acquires the camel on the city.
  Once a camp has been built, the player can spend resources to buy goods from that city, they may also buy goods from adjacent cities by spending the required goods and a camel meeple. In later actions the player can expand their network of camps and thus do away with the need to spend camels to reach those cities.
  Camels spent this way are placed on caravan cards in the caravansary.
  Mosque: There are 4 camel meeples on the mosque track and taking this action allows the active player to move them. They may move as far as they want, provided they can pay the cost in resource cubes for each move. Every time a player advances along the track, it earns them a bonus; this might be a building upgrade, scoring upgrade and so on.
  Palace: The palace consists of 2 elements; the 4 halls and the favour track.
  Moving up the favour track scores victory points for the active player.
  Each of the 4 halls has 3 spaces and a cost, paying the associated cost allows the player to place meeples in these halls, which will score the player victory points at the end of every year for either scrolls, spices, good or buildings on mosque building sites. Points are earned by spending the advancements made on the favour track.
  Wall: This action allows the active player to build walls around the 5x5 grid, they can build as many segments in action as they can afford in resource points.
  Walls provide protection to the buildings they shield and also earn the player influence.
• Complete contract: If a player has the required mix of influence, resources cubes, goods, spices and scrolls, they may complete a contract in their turn and immediately score the contract's victory points.
  Completing a contract generally requires multiple actions, fortunately completing a contract itself is a free action.
• End of round: At the end of the round a new turn order may be established for the following round.
• End of year: Once the 4th round has been completed, the year has reached its end, but it's not quite over. There are still a couple matters to conclude.
  Invasion: In years 2 & 3, the Mongol horde invades and every unprotected building is destroyed! Although players may bribe the Mongols to leave a building alone with a resource cube matching the site's colour.
  End of year scoring: At the end of each year players score points, these come from several sources.
  Buildings: Each building scores the player a point.
  Scoring tiles: Scoring tiles acquired from the mosque track score points.

Endgame
Once the 3rd year is over and has been scored, there is there final scoring to calculate.
Sets of caravan cards score points.
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Merv has several approaches to acquiring victory points but resource cubes is key to nearly all of them and the resource cube economy is very important. Acquiring cubes may conflict with choosing actions if the building site a player wants to activate produces cubes of a different colour, players will have to make choices and adapt.
Having said that, it pays to diversify but it also pays to pursue one one strategy such as the caravansary or mosque track.
Completing contracts feels like more of a bonus for sharp-eyed players than a long-term approach.
Players also need to consider palace actions, placing workers into the right spaces in halls and moving along the favour track can be a good source of points.

Players will need to also look towards defending Merv from attackers, losing buildings also loses the ability to gain resource cubes in later turns and of course loses victory points for the affected player(s).

Merv is definitely on the heavier side of board games, but to be honest it didn't feel deep, just fiddly.
I never got the feeling that I was making clever plays, instead I got the feeling that Merv was a heavy game made for the sake of being a heavy game.
When I took an action, it often felt like I was doing 2 half actions instead of 1 whole one and it took multiple different actions to achieve something.

E.g., I would undertake the marketplace action and acquire a good, Was I able to sell that good? No!
What about spices, what if I'd acquired spices? Can't sell them either.
To sell something, that is to complete a contract, I needed influence, which earned by building walls and also scrolls, which are acquired by visiting the library. Of course I also needed resources cubes.
​I know that some people will love this idea but I found it unengaging and a little dull and verging on tedious. Merv feels a little dry, unexciting and detached.