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Furnace - First Play!

20/10/2022

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18th October 2022

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

​The Victorian era; a time of expansion, industrial and otherwise. Become a capitalist! Create your business and run your production line.

What's in a game?
  • Cards: Furnace features several types of cards.
    • Capitalist cards: There are 5 of these, each one is unique and as well as an illustration of the capitalist in question also feature a way in which the owning player can 'break' a rule. Capitalist indeed!
    • Start-up cards: There are also 5 of these starter cards. Each one contains a illustration of a factory, above and below the picture it displays the card's abilities, this will always include the ability to gain (And use.) upgrade tokens.
      Abilities on cards may include production of a certain resource, or a process such as converting one resource into another or selling a resource for money.
    • Company cards: These form the bulk of the game's cards and they are double-sided.
      Basic side: At the top of each company card it will show a production or process ability, this is the compensation effect, more on this later. Next will a picture, usually of a factory, industrial plant or some such.
      Finally, below the picture will be 2 lines of abilities. The 2nd line will be 'greyed out' as it is 'inactive' at this time.
      Upgraded side: The other side of a company card is more or less identical to the basic side except for the compensation effect which is now gone and the 2nd ability line which is now coloured in and 'active', (As a result of the upgrade.)
  • Round tracking tiles: A pair of tiles are used to represent and track the game's four rounds with a sort of replica cog-and-teeth mechanism.
  • Tokens: Furnace has several types of tokens.
    • Resource tokens: There 3 types of resources in Furnace which are represented by shaped wooden tokens.
      Coal: Little black cubes are used to represent coal, OK, cubes are not very coal shaped items but they are little wooden cubes.
      Iron : These blue-grey rectangular cuboid tokens sort of iron-bar shaped and used to represent iron.
      Oil: Yellow octagonal cylinders are used to represent oil or more accurately, drums of oil. 
    • Bidding tokens: There are 4 differently sized bidding tokens in each of the 4 player colours.
      These are discs number from 1-4, additionally, the higher the number, the larger the disc.
      Neutral bidding token: There is also a 'colourless' bidding token that is only used when a particular capitalist card is in play.
    • Player marker token: For each player colour there is a uniquely shaped and illustrated card token. Black gets a top hat (Very dapper.), red gets a wallet (Displays of wealth are so uncouth!), white gets a pair of white gloves (Very suave.) and yellow gets a pocket watch.
    • Money: Circular card tokens are used to represent money which comes in various colours/denominations.
    • Upgrade tokens: There are also circular card tokens. They show a spanner inside a cog.

Component quality ranges from good to very good in Furnace. Cards and card tokens are the pretty standard good quality most games now have while all the wooden tokens are solid and good quality. The bidding tokens in particular standout as really chunky, tactile discs.

Artwork is good throughout the game with a nicely illustrated buildings and businesses.
It makes good use of a varied and colourful palette which helps to differentiate between the company cards which depict a variety of factories or offices and warehouses etc, which despite all being different sort of look a little samey.
Portraits used for capitalist cards are equally good quality.

The game's iconography looks a little daunting but in practice is straightforward and fairly practical. There are essentially 5 resources depicted and some basic mathematics mostly saying how to turn one resource into another and how may times it can be done.


How's it play?
Setup
  • Players: Give each player the following.
    Capitalist cards: Shuffle the capitalist cards into a face-down deck and randomly deal 1 to each player.
    ​Start-up cards: Next, shuffle the start-up cards into a face-down deck and deal 1 to each player. Start-up cards also determine a player's starting resources.
    Tokens: Give each player the player token and bidding discs in their colour.
  • Company cards: Take all the company cards and shuffle them into a deck with the basic side face-up.
  • First player: determine a starting player.

On to play
Note: The rules described below use the 'advanced' variant rules, there's a reason for this which will be discussed further down.
The goal in Furnace is to acquire the most money by the end of the game.
Furnace is played over 4 rounds. In each round players will be bidding for company cards then adding them to their personal production lines. Next they will run their production to produce goods and ultimately generate money which is what wins the game.
The game uses a normal turn order during auction, with the first player bidding first before bidding moving to the player on their left. The production phase can be played out simultaneously.
  • Auction phase: During this phase players will bid on the available company cards.
    • Deal company cards: At the start of each auction phase, the top card on the deck is shuffled back into the deck (To stop 'canny' players from knowing what the first card will be!), then deal 6-8 cards depending on player count with the basic side still face-up in a row. Placing them in a row can be important during the auction resolution.
    • Bidding: The first player bids for one of the company cards by placing any one of their bidding discs on the card they are bidding for.
    • Next bidder: Once the active player has placed their bidding disc, play progresses to the player on the left who can then make their bid.
      • Restrictions: There are however, some restrictions to bidding.
        No same colour: No 2 discs of the same colour may be placed on the same card. Thus, a player can only bid once on a card.
        No same number: If a card already has a bidding disc on it, no other player may bid on that card with a disc that has the same value.
    • Resolve auction: Once all players have placed all their discs, the bids on each card - going from left-to-right - are resolved, this  consists of 2 phases.
      • Highest bid wins: Whoever played the disc with the highest value wins the card, which they will add to their production line in the next phase. If a player wins more than 1 company card during the phase, they are all added to their production line one-by-one.
      • Compensation: It's not all bad for players that put a losing bidding token on a card, instead they get the compensation effect.
        The compensation effect is listed at the top of a company card, it might be produce resources or process them.
        Production: If it's resource production, the losing player(s) gain an amount of that resource multiplied by the value of their failed bid.
        E.g., if a player failed a bid with a 2-value bid on a card which has a compensation effect of 1 oil barrel, they would gain 2 oil barrels.
        If someone failed with a 3-value bid on card with 2 coal as compensation effect, they would gain 6 coal!
        Process: ​Alternatively, a compensation effect may include a process. In this case, the losing player may use that effect as many times as the value of their losing bid.
        Thus a player with a losing bid of 2 and a compensation effect process that allows 2 coal to be turned into 1 iron can use this process twice. Note: This must be resolved immediately, if a player does not have the required resources to complete a process when the auction on it is being resolved, they cannot resolve it later.
    • End of phase: Once all auctions on all company cards have been resolved, play progresses to the next phase.
  • Production phase: During this phase players will add their newly acquired cards to their production line. Then players will run through their production line.
    Unlike the previous phase, players can choose to resolve their production phases one at a time or simultaneously.
    • Production line: First, a production line needs to be defined. A production line is a row of cards that run from left-to-right. The order of cards in a production line can never be changed.
    • Add cards to production line: Each player now add their newly acquired cards to their production line.
      Positioning: Cards maybe added to the start or end of a production line. They may also be placed in between 2 other cards, so long as the relative positioning of cards already played is not changed.
    • Run production: Once a player has added all the new cards to their production line, they must run it with the following stipulations.
      Left-to-right: All production lines start with their leftmost card and work through to their rightmost card.
      A card must be fully resolved (Or as much as a player can or wants to.) before the next card is addressed.
      Top-to-bottom: If card has multiple abilities - which is likely - they will be displayed in lines on the card. Abilities are resolved individually, going from top-to-bottom. An ability must be fully resolved (Or as much as wanted or can be.) before the ability below is resolved. Furthermore, if an ability can be used multiple times, they must all be completed before moving on.
      Upgrades: If a card that has already been used in a production is upgraded, it's new ability cannot be used. If the upgraded card is further down the line, then it's new ability can be used.
  • End of round: Once all players have finished running their production lines, the round is over.
    Play progresses to the next round. Advance the round marker and begin the next auction phase.

Endgame
Once 4 rounds have been completed, the game is over.
Players calculate how much money they have accumulated.

Monies are tallied, most money wins


Overall
Furnace packs a lot of gameplay options into what is in essence quite a small package. The game consists of a deck of cards, some tokens and that's it

Even so, each of the main 2 phases provide players with interesting and meaningful decisions.

There are 2 mechanics to the auctioning and both are unique and present players with unusual options and interactions with other players.
Using bidding discs instead of money in auctions is an interesting proposition. First it means players only have 4 bids they can make and they can't re-bid on the same card if they get outbid. Players will need to determine what's important to them and bid appropriately. Turn order can make a difference here. A player going first who bids their 4-value disc on a card guarantees they will get it. Going later or last in bidding is not necessarily a bad thing to do, it allows a player to see what opponents are going for and bid accordingly.
There's definitely a higher level of play at work here from watching what other players look like they need and potentially taking it or denying it to them. Hate bidding I guess?

Which brings me to the other auction mechanic; compensation. Firstly, compensation works as sort of balancing mechanism, if a player loses a bid, they may still get something for their losing bid. Secondly, it's a mechanic that can potentially be exploited by players to gain resources quickly. A player make take the risk of making a lower value bid on a card, hoping to be outbid for the compensation, of course this can backfire and they may end up with a card they don't want to play.

Talking of playing cards, the next interesting mechanic how cards are played during the production phase.
I'll start by saying that whenever we played Furnace it was always using the 'advanced' variant 'production line' rules. By default the game does not use a production line, instead players just activate cards in any order they choose. In my opinion this makes the game less engaging.
I can't stress enough that the variant rules are vital to what makes Furnace a good game.
Having to think about where to place company cards is compelling and intriguing. Frequently cards will be useful both at the start and end of a production line forcing players to think hard make meaningful decisions in order to optimise their production lines.
Additionally, it's genuinely gratifying to run a production line that has been put together efficiently and ends up generating lots of cash.

Furnace is a game with a quick play time. In fact I found that the game's 4 rounds came to a conclusion all too soon, still having the urge to continue building my engine and that's a pretty good sign of a game I enjoy.
It's also a sign of good design balance; having a 4 round limit forces players to be as ruthlessly efficient as possible with little room for unnecessary moves. 4 round limits are something I've seen in other engine building games too.

So in conclusion; Furnace is pretty easy to learn, has a fast playtime but still manages to present players will a variety options both in auctioning and engine building. If these styles of games interest you, then Furnace is definitely a game to try.
I found it a engaging and entertaining experience.
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Valeria: Card Kingdoms - First Play!

21/9/2022

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20th September 2022

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

Recruit and assemble your citizens (Or heroes really.), build domains and vanquish foul enemies in this fantasy adventure themed dice rolling and tableau building game.

What's in a game?
  • Player boards: These oblong boards are used by each player to track the game's 3 resources; Gold, Strength, Magic and also Victory Points (VPs.).
  • Tokens:
    • Resource tokens: There are wooden tokens that match the shape and colour of each of the player board's 4 tracks and are used to track them on player boards.
      Card resource tokens: These cards tokens replicate the wooden resource tokens... only in cardboard.
    • Extensions: These card tokens are used to track resources which increase above 10.
  • Dice: Valeria: Card kingdoms comes with 2 normal six-siders. These are plastic dice with indented numbers.
  • Cards: Lots of cards and I do mean a lots that come in several different types.
    • Citizens: These cards represent the heroes that players will recruit to their cause and they share a number of features.
      These include knights, peasants, butchers and so on. Some of these folk don't seem much like the adventuring type but I guess it takes all sorts!
      Activation number: In the top left corner of each citizen card is its activation number. Activation numbers range from 1-8 or can be 9/10 or 11/12.
      There are 2 different citizen cards for each activation number which can be mixed and matched during setup.
      Role: Each citizen has 1 of 4 roles and this is shown in the top right corner. Types include Worker, Soldier, Shadow and Holy.
      ​Cost: On the left side, alongside the citizen's name is the cost in gold to recruit the citizen. Recruiting duplicate citizens usually gets more expensive.
      Abilities: Finally, along the bottom edge of the card are its 2 abilities. One of which is activated in the player's turn and the other which is activated in other players' turns.
      Typically, abilities include gaining some of the game's several resources or changing one resource into another.
    • Starter citizens: These are 3 starter cards which all player begin the game with, this includes 2 citizen cards and a Herald which gives players a consolation resource if they get nothing from activation. More on activation below.
    • Duke cards: Duke and duchess cards are all unique and provide provide players with asymmetrical scoring opportunities.
    • Monster cards: A fantasy adventure game without evil monster to battle wouldn't be very good and Valeria: card Kingdoms features some famous fantasy opponents. Each monster card shares several statistics.
      Location and type: In the top right corner of every monster card is its location, which can be mountains, swamp etc. There are 8 types of location.
      Type indicates how tough a monster is  and goes from minion to boss.
      Strength: To the left of the monster's name is listed it's strength. This how many of which resource(s) must be spend to vanquish it, this is usually just strength but may also include magic.

      Victory points: Top the right of the name it will list the monster's VP reward which will be earned at the game end for defeating it.
      Reward: Along the bottom of the card it will display the immediate reward a player earns for defeating that monster. Rewards can take a variety of forms.
    • Domain cards: As well as slaying monsters, a player's citizen's can also go out and build (Well purchase actually!) domains. All domain cards share certain information.
      Role requirements: Shown in the top right corner are the role requirements to acquire that domain card. E.g., a domain may require a worker and holy role citizen cards or 2 soldier role cards.
      Cost: To the left of the card's name is the cost in gold to purchase the domain card - provided the player also has citizen cards that match its requirements.
      Victory points: To the right of a domain's name is the VPs it earns at the game end.
      Reward: Listed along the bottom of the card is the reward it provides to the player that purchases it. This can be a one-off bonus or a ongoing benefit.
    • Exhaustion cards: These cards simple say exhaustion and are used to track when the game end may occur.

Component quality is the usual good quality you'd expect from a modern game like Valeria: Card Kingdoms.
Card quality is fine as are the card tokens and the player boards.
Wooden tokens for resources are always a welcome addition.
The dice are plastic and feel a little 'square' but they have indented numbers which is good.

Valeria: Card kingdoms features good art throughout. Cards are well illustrated with colourful chunky pictures of heroic citizens and intriguing domains, my favourite though, is the artwork for monsters that brashly depict menacing enemies.

There's quite a lot of iconography throughout the game, from types of heroes and monsters, to terrain types and ability icons.
For the most part, they are fairly intuitive - matching the roles on citizen cards to the requirements on domain cards is obvious but some of the abilities, particularly on  domain cards are a bit esoteric and will require some looking up in the rulebook.

I don't think it's especially beginner or casual friend but ​by no means is it a gamebreaker either.


How's it play?
Setup
  • Players: Give each player the following:
    Player board: Give each player a player board and the 4 resource tokens to go with it. Strength and VPs start at 0, Magic at 1 and Gold at 2
    Starter cards: Give each player their 3 starter cards.
    ​Duke cards: Shuffle the duke cards into a face-down deck and deal 2 face-down to each player. Then each player should select 1 to keep hidden and discard the other out of play.
  • Central playing area: The monster, citizen and domain cards will be set out in 4 rows of 5 stacks per row as follows.
    Monster cards: Sort the monster cards by location and choose 5 locations. Take the cards for those 5 locations and create a row of 5 face-up stacks of monster cards. Each stack should also be sorted by monster type, with the weakest at the top and strongest at the bottom.
    Citizen cards: Decide which citizen cards will be used and sort them by activation number. There should be 10 stacks with 5 cards in each stack.
    Place them into 2 face-up rows of 5 stacks, with activation numbers 1-5 on the top row, while 6-8, 9/10 and 11/12 go on the second row.
    Domain cards: Shuffle the domain cards into a face-down deck. Deal 2 cards face-down into a row of 5 stacks, finally deal 1 domain card face-up on the top of each stack.
  • Exhaustion cards: Take a number of exhaustion cards equal to twice the player count and put them in to the central playing area.
  • First Player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Valeria: Card Kingdoms, players will be rolling dice to activate cards to accumulate resources which in turn can be spent to acquire more citizen cards, domains and monsters.
The game follows the usual turn structure of the active player taking their actions before player progresses to the player on their left.
During a turn, the following phases occur.
  • Dice roll phase: The active player rolls both dice. The result of this roll will determine which citizen cards will activate.
    Reading the dice: The dice are red 2 ways, individually and as a pair.
    E.g., rolling a 2 and 5 means that cards with activation numbers 2, 5 & 7 will activate.
    Rolling doubles like double 4 means that 8 activates and 4 activates twice.
  • Activation phase: Players now resolve citizen cards with activation numbers that match the result the result of the dice roll.
    This means the active player resolves the left hand ability on all their activated cards.
    All other players resolve the right hand ability on all their activated cards.
    No activations: If none of a player's citizen cards activates, the Herald activates instead and this gives the unfortunate player 1 of the 3 resource of their choosing.
  • Action phase: The active player must now perform 2 actions, this can be 2 different actions or the same action twice.
    Spending resources: 3 of the 4 available actions requires the active player to spend resources. In most cases, the magic resource can substitute for other resources provided at least 1 from the original resource is also spent.
    E.g., if a card costs 4 gold, the player must spend at least 1 gold but can substitute magic for any other part of the gold cost.
    The 4 actions are:
    • ​Gain resources: Each action spent allows the active player to gain 1 of the 3 resources.
    • Recruit citizen: The active player can recruit a citizen from the central area by playing their gold cost. This card is immediately placed into their tableau and will be ready to activate in the next roll.
    • Defeat monster: For an action, the active player may defeat the monster on top of any monster stack. They must spend the relevant strength and/or magic to do so. The player immediately gains the reward and the monster card is put into their victory stack.
      VPs from monster cards are not earned at this time.
      Additionally; as monsters are defeated, stronger and stronger monsters are revealed.
    • Build domain: The active player may spend an action to build the top domain card on any stack provided they meet the role requirement and spend the relevant gold.
      The domain card is then placed into their tableau. If the domain provides an immediate benefit, then the player resolves that benefit now. Ongoing benefits will as determined by their description.
      Finally, a face-down domain card is flipped to replace the one just taken.
      As with monster cards, domain cards not earn their VP until the game.
  • Empty stack: Any time that any of the 20 stacks in the central playing area becomes empty, an exhaustion card is put in the empty spot.
  • Next player: Once the active player has taken their 2 actions, play progresses to the player on their left who begins their turn by rolling the dice.

Endgame
Play in Valeria: Card Kingdoms continues until any 1 of 3 game ending criteria is met, which are:
  • All monster cards have been vanquished.
  • All domain cards have been built.
  • All allotted exhaustion cards have been placed into the central playing area.
Regardless of the method that triggers the endgame, play continues until the end of the round and all players have had equal turns.

A player can earn VPs from a variety of sources.
  • VPs from the player's personal board.
  • Total VPs from all monsters defeated by the player.
  • Total VPs from all domains build by the player.
  • VPs earned by meeting the scoring criteria on the player's Duke card.

Points are tallied, highest score wins!


Overall
I'll start by saying I quite like the implementation of the fantasy theme both in presentation and execution. It is slightly abstract but gathering a band of heroes to go off and fight monsters and build domains feels good.

Like many engine and tableau building games, there's a distinct early game in Valeria: Card Kingdoms about players building up their tableau, in this case with citizen cards and a late game about gaining increased resources to acquire monster and domain cards as well as VPs.
However, because players get 2 actions during their turn, there's some opportunity for optimised actions, card synchronicity and thus meaningful decisions. Getting the right citizen card can lead to getting a domain card for example. Getting a good domain card early can be a big boon dependant on its ability.
This means there will be a fairly constant flow of cards being drafted from the central area. Players will find themselves competing to get the cards they want as quickly as possible and is the game's primary form of interaction between players.

In fact: Thanks to every card having an ability that can be activated in other players' turns and also being able to read the dice both individually and as a pair making card activations more common, means the game generally flows quite rapidly. Players will often have something happening outside of their turn.
Like many drafting games, there's a higher level of play here that comes from watching what other players are doing and potentially trying to stymie them. The addition of duke cards messes with this though, providing players with unique and unpredictable objectives.

​​Valeria: Card Kingdoms is a solid iteration of the dice rolling, card activating, tableau building game style and players of those games will be on familiar ground here. To compliment this, there's also a couple of innovative touches to do with reading the dice and card activating that make the game fresh.

Despite its brisk playtime, the game does has a fairly involved setup process and also an abundance of iconography which makes for a slightly steep learning curve.
​Don't that put you off though. Valeria: Card Kingdoms is well worth a try.
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Raiders of Scythia - First Play!

17/8/2022

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17th August 2022

It's a Wednesday afternoon and we're round Simon's for some gaming goodness.

Become a raider in the world of antiquity and attack a bunch of ancient empires by placing meeples on a board!

What's in a game?
  • Game board: Raiders of Scythia features a big board that, for lack of a better term is divided into 5 different levels or 'slices'. Each one showing a different scene of a different area of the world with it's own colour palette.
    In the top level players can gain resources, while the 4 lower levels can be - as the name suggests - raided.
    Scythian Village: The top slice depicts the home settlement of the titular raiders.
    There are 8  'spaces' that allow players to perform certain actions.
    Each spot has a place to put 1 worker - some of these are coded to specific colours of workers, there are also places to put starter workers, more on this below.
    Civilisations: The 4 lower slices represent 4 different civilisations that can be raided by players. Each civilisation will have a number of locations that can be raided along with information pertinent to raiding, there are also spaces to place workers meeples and quest tiles.
  • Player boards: Each player board is a long piece of card depicting a campsite in a wilderness setting. Each also contains some game information and places to put 6 cards - 1 hero card and 5 crew cards.
  • Hero cards: There are 8 of these and as well as a illustration, each one provides some sort of special ability or bonus. I guess they are the leaders of your raiding parties.
  • Crew cards: These can be recruited by players for a cost and are a bit similar to hero cards in that they provide a bonus for of the game's 2 actions.
    However, crew cards have hit points and strength and unlike hero card, crew cards can be killed.
  • Animal cards: These cards all depict 2 animals, a eagle at the top and a horse at the bottom. Does that mean these are actually 'eagorse' cards or 'horgle' cards?
    Anyway, they can be assigned to crew cards to confer extra bonuses, these will differ if they are used as a eagle or a horse.
  • Quest tiles: These square card tiles are double-sided. One side depicts some artwork and the other will show a quest that can be completed for VPs.
  • Dice: The game uses six-siders, however as well as featuring numbers, they also contain icons that represent drops of blood. There are a total of 6 dice, 2 each in red, white and yellow.
  • Tokens: Raiders of Scythia uses a large variety of tokens and I do mean large which are divided up into 3 types.
    • Workers: These are worker meeples and come in 3 colours, blue, grey and red.
    • Resources: There are 3 types of resource.
      Silver: Depicted by hexagonal card coins.
      Provisions: These brown tokens look a bit like chocolate muffins which I suppose is fairly appropriate.
      Kumis: These beige tokens are cups of kumis, which is apparently a type of alcohol derived from horse milk. However when I was told what the token represented, I misheard it as houmous! So forever from then on I will think of them as cups of houmous.
    • Plunder: There are 4 types of plunder, they are all represented by chunky hexagonal tokens in four colours.
      Black: Livestock.
      Brown: Wagons.
      Grey: Equipment, which is about vague as it gets, but what the hey!
      Yellow: Gold!
    • Wound tokens: Wait, there's a 5th type of token! Red blood droplet tokens used to represent and track wounds.
  • Bag: Used to blind draw plunder tokens during setup.

Component quality is good throughout Raiders of Scythia, cards and tiles are exactly as you'd expect them to be.
The tokens are excellent, attention has gone into the creation of the provisions and houmous err... kumis and while the plunder tokens are more generic, they are also very chunky and tactile.

So, I think it looks like whoever owned the copy of Raiders of Scythia we played bought stickers that upgraded the tokens with artwork (As you can see from the photos.). I think that otherwise by default the tokens are plain.
This also means someone had to sit down and attach stickers to a lot of token, that would push me into the deep end!

Regardless of this, the game's art-style is excellent. I'm not an art expert but it uses a sort of line illustration with flat shading that shows a lot of detail and is used to great effect on the board as it shows various situations in the different situations without overly cluttering the board.

While there is a fair amount of iconography, it's mostly do with the tokens and is fairly apparent, I don't think that it will prove to be a problem.


How's it play?
Setup
  • Game board: Put out the game board and shuffle the quest tiles into a face-down stack. Place 2 tiles face-up in their allotted spots in the village part of the board.
    Also place quest tile face-down on to their allotted spaces on the other levels of the game board.
  • Plunder: Put all the plunder tokens into the bag and give it a good shake. Then draw and place tokens on all the face-down quest tiles and board spaces as determined by the information for each spot.
  • Workers: Raiders of Scythia begins with workers already on the board. Place worker meeples by their colours on to their allotted spaces on the game board.
  • Player board: Give each player a board in their colour, along with 3 silver, 1 provision and 1 blue worker.
  • Cards: Sort the cards by type and shuffle them into face down decks.
    Animal deck: Draw 3 cards and place them in a row adjacent to their deck.
    Hero deck: Draw a number of hero cards equal to the player count +1 and place them in a face-up row.
    Crew Deck: Also draw crew cards equal to the hero cards drawn and place them in a face-up row alongside the hero cards. Thus, creating pairs of hero and crew cards.
  • Starting player: Determine the first player:
    Now in reverse order with who would be last, each player should choose a pair of 1 hero and 1 crew card and place them on their spaces on each player's board.
    The remaining hero cards should be discarded out of play and the remaining crew card should be put into the discard pile.
  • Crew cards: Now deal 5 more crew cards to every player who should keep 3 of them and discard the other 2.
    Players should now have 1 hero and 4 crew cards on their player board.

On to play
In Raiders of Scythia, players will vying to gain resources which will allow them in turn to raid and pillage which earn VPs, consequently also acquiring plunder which can be used to complete quest tiles which also earn VPs.
Play follows the usual paradigm of the active player taking an action before play progresses to the player on the left.
Broadly speaking, the active player has a choice of 1 of 2 actions each turn.
  • Work: The active player may put their worker on to a spot in the Scythian Village, there's a bit more to it than that though.
    • ​Place worker: The active player may put their meeple on a available spot in the home settlement part of the board provided the meeple's colour matches the colour requirement of that spot. Most spots require a blue meeple but some require a grey one. Then the player can resolve that spot's action.
    • Take worker: The active player now takes a worker of their choice from a home settlement space and resolves that space's action. The worker that the player takes can be of a different colour and this is a way to get one.
    • Actions: The are a number of actions that can be performed, sometimes these also have costs. Actions include:
      Gaining any of the resources types.
      Gaining a crew or animal card into your hand.
      Playing a card to the player board from your hand.
      Using a hero card's special ability.
      Completing a quest.
  • Raid: This is the second action the active player can perform and takes place in the 4 lower parts of the board. Like the Work action, the active player will place a worker, resolve it, then take another worker. However, there are some notable differences.
    • Requirements: The active player must meet the requirements to initiate the raid, this includes:
      Worker: The active must have an appropriately coloured meeple.
      Crew: The active player must have a big enough crew.
      Resources: The active player must have the required resources to initiate the raid.
    • Place worker: The active player may put their on a space they would like to raid. Unlike the home settlement, meeples placed in a raid can never be taken again.
    • Resources: The active player must discard wagon and provision resources equal to the cost as part of the raid.
    • Strength: The active player must calculate their strength; this is done by totting the strength scores of their crew cards, rolling a number of dice as determined by the civilisation they are raiding and how much gold their target has and adding the results to their crew's strength.
      Additionally, the active player may spend Kumis to increase the strength of their raid.
      The final combined strength is then compared to values displayed for that  location which will determine what VPs the active player gains. Generally, the higher the strength, the more VPs are earned.
    • Wounds: According the result of the dice roll and the location attacked, the active player must distribute any wounds they received by adding wound tokens to their crew cards.
      This can be done as the player sees fit. A crew card is only 'killed' if it reaches -1 wounds. Additionally, each wound lowers a crew card's strength by 1.
    • Plunder: The player can take all the plunder tokens from the location they raided.
    • Take meeple: While the meeple placed by the active player cannot be taken, one that was put there during set up can be taken.
      Quest tile: If the location had a quest tile, it should be flipped to it's other side revealing what cost is required to complete the quest and the reward for doing so.
      ​This quest is now available for any player to complete by carrying out the appropriate action in the Scythian Village area of the board.
  • Next player: Once the active player has completed their action, play moves on to the player on the left.

​Endgame
Play continues until only to raid spaces or quest tiles remain on the board. After this, all player get 1 more turn and it goes to scoring.
VPs can come from several sources.
  • Crew and animal cards may provide VPs.
  • Quest tiles will provide VPs.
  • Plunder tokens a player has accumulated will also provide VPs.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.


Overall
​I'm going to start by saying the idea 'of a worker placement game with each player only having only 1 worker' sounds crazy but it works perfectly well in Raiders of Scythia.

There's a clever mechanic at play with the colours of the meeples. E.g., when using the blue meeples to raid, they can't be taken again and players will be taking grey and red meeples instead by by the time player's are doing that, they won't need the blue meeples anymore. Players are never put in a position where they can't use a meeple because of its colour.

Anyway, on to the game.
Players will need to use the village in order to gain resources to raid the civilisation to gain plunder and reveal quest tiles which can then be bought with whatever resources and plunder the player has acquired. Phew!
It's something of a race to do this since once a spot has been raided, that's it, no one can raid that spot again. Action optimisation is important.
Something similar can apply when placing meeples in the village. There can only ever 1 worker on a space and there's some high level play that can be utilised by blocking another player and putting a meeple of your own in spot they want to use first. The same applies when taking a meeple, players can choose not to take a certain meeple just to leave the space blocked.  

Players will also need to take into consideration their crew, not only is it vital in undertaking raids, it also provides players some engine building capacity to their actions.

Finally, the game also provides some opportunities for risk/reward actions during raids as dice rolls are unpredictable.
While it's not possible to fail a raid (Players just gain less or 0 VPs for a bad roll), it's possible to squander resources and kumis for a poor roll. Players will be faced with the choice of raiding earlier with a weaker crew or risk losing a raid to another player by taking the time to increase the strength of their crew.
Furthermore, wounds are also unpredictable, a player's crew cards may take 0 wounds or may take 6 depending on the dice roll, adding the element of risk.

For me, Raiders of Scythia is a good worker placement game. Because players essentially only ever 2 actions per, they need to think about the best way to make use of them, they need to make every decision count. In other words, their decisions are meaningful, which is always a good thing.
I found the game to be a fun experience with a unique mechanic for a worker placement game.
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Raccoon Tycoon - First Play!

6/7/2022

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5th July 2022

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

​The world of Victorian anthropomorphic railroad magnates is a cutthroat one in this game of acquiring train lines and towns. Buy low and sell high to become the... Raccoon Tycoon!

What's in a game?
  • Game board: The game board background depicts a idyllic rural landscape with the beginnings of a burgeoning industrial age.
    The board is broadly speaking divided into 2 halves. The top half has 6 tracks for the game's 6 commodities while the bottom half features spaces and tracks for railroad cards, town cards and building tiles.
  • Cards: Raccoon Tycoon has several types of cards:
    Price & Production cards: Each of this type card has 2 halves. The top half with a blue background is for price and pushes up the value of the variously depicted commodities while the bottom half with a red background displays various commodities that the player can produce/acquire.
    ​Railroad cards: These cards feature anthropomorphic artwork, cats, dogs, bears, foxed and of course raccoons.
    In the bottom-right corner is the card's initial price (Railroad cards are acquired via auctioning) while the centre-bottom shows a series of numbers. These are VPs related to set collecting, thus the more copies a player has of a certain set of railroad cards, the more VPs that set is worth.
    Town cards: These cards have smaller illustration that usually depicts some part of the countryside.
    At the bottom of each town card are 2 purchasing costs, 1 is a cost for a specific commodity while the other is for any commodities. The cost for buying a town card with any commodities is always greater that using the required specific commodity.
  • Building tiles. These chunky square tiles depict various different types of businesses and industries. They come in 2 types (Basic and Advanced.) are double-sided and one side is the initial version of a building while the other shows the upgraded, improved version.
    In the bottom-right corner on both sides is the cost, initially to buy the tile, then to flip the tile to the upgraded side. Each tile has a special ability of some sort and the upgraded version is always a improved version of the initial building. Bonuses might include gaining extra commodities or selling more of them, discounts to certain costs etc.
    Additionally, some tiles are marked with a 'B' or a 'P' and basically only one of each can be used in a turn.
  • Commodity tokens: Raccoon Tycoons uses 6 types of commodity and each has it's own token and colour.
    Coal: These black tokens are shaped in a minecart filled with coal.
    Iron: These are grey anvil shaped tokens.
    Luxury goods: These tokens are green bottles, filled with wine I guess? Wine is certainly a luxury good!
    Manufactured goods: Red cubes are used to represent manufactured goods.
    Wheat: Yellow tokens shaped as bundles of wheat.
    Wood: Brown tokens depicting piles of logs.
  • Money: Paper money! Whooo! I like it!
  • First player meeple: I don't usually bother to mention any first player tokens when blogging (Because they're just first player tokens.) but this one is a unnecessarily big token. Basically a gimmick and something I wholeheartedly approve of!

Raccoon Tycoon has excellent production values.
Wooden tokens are used for commodities and first player token which is a good move, they always have a quality to them and also look cool.
The cards (And paper money) have a sturdy feel to them while the tiles are satisfyingly thick.

The game's art direction is also equally high.
Anthropomorphic art is used throughout the game and I've found that it's a divisive style which most people do or don't like. Regardless of your view on this, it's undeniable that the quality of the art is high.
The standouts are the railroad cards which use a oil painting style to display whimsical characterful animals in Victorian clothes.
Curiously, the building tiles use a completely different style, instead displaying line illustrated buildings and subjects with mostly flat and barely shaded colours. It's a striking contrast that should theoretically ​be jarring but actually fits quite well.

Icons used to represent commodities on cards are easily understood. Most other game information is relayed via text which is usually very clear.


How's it play?
Setup
  • Board: The number of cards and tiles used on the board is dependant on player count.​
    • Railroad cards: Shuffle these into a face-down deck on its allotted space on the board and deal 2 face-up cards on to their spots.
    • Town cards: These cards are arranged into a face-down deck by VP value with the lowest value at the top and highest at the bottom. Thus the lower value cards appear earlier in the game.
      Place the deck on it's spot and deal 1 card face-up.
    • Building tiles: Shuffle the basic tiles and put out the allotted amount into the relevant track and discard any remaining basic tiles. Next; shuffle the advanced tiles into a stack.
    • Commodities: Put out the commodity tokens and use 1 each on their pertinent tracker to display their starting value.
  • Price & production cards: Shuffle the cards into a face-down deck and deal 3 face-down to each player.
  • Cash: Give each player $10 starting funds.
  • First player: Determine the starting player. Following on from this each player claims starting commodities in turn order. The first player takes any 1 commodity of their choice, 2nd player taking any 2, etc, all the way up to the 5th player taking 5 in a 5-player game.

On to play
Players are trying to earn VPs in Raccoon Tycoon, this can be done by collecting sets of railroad cards, acquiring town cards to pair with railroad cards and gaining building tiles which are not only worth VPs but can provide avenues to scoring more VPs.
All of this requires money and commodities, players will need to manipulate the commodities market to maximise the profit gained from selling their own commodities while trying limit the profit of other players.

Racoon Tycoon follows a traditional turn order with the active player resolving their action before play moves on to the player on their left.
  • Actions: During their turn, the active player may perform 1 of the 5 following actions.
    • Building tile: The active player may purchase one of the building tiles by paying its cost, which is then placed into their playing area.
      A new building tile is drawn to replace it.
      Note: This action is also used to upgrade a building tile by paying its upgrade cost on the other side and flipping the tile.
    • Price & Production card: The active player may play 1 of these cards from their hand.
      Production: This allows them to acquire exactly 3 commodities from the supply, the icons in the production half of the card indicate which commodities the player can choose from and how much of it they can take.
      Note: Players have a limit of 10 commodities that they can own.
      Price: The value of the indicated commodities rise on their relevant trackers by 1 step.
    • Railroad card auction: The active player may begin an auction on either of the 2 available railroad cards. Their opening bid must be at least equal to the value shown on the relevant card. Others players may then bid or pass on the auction. Once everyone bar 1 player has passed, they win the card. A new railroad is drawn to replace it on the track
      Note: If the active player did not win the card, they can perform another action, this may include another auction.
      Thus the active player's action is not squandered if they did not win the auction.
    • Sell a commodity: The active player may sell exactly 1 type of commodity, however, they can sell any amount of tokens of that type. They earn the listed value on that commodity's tracker per token sold.
      Price crash: Once the commodity has been sold, the value of that commodity drops a number of steps equal to the tokens sold!
    • Town: The active player may purchase a town card, each one has 2 listed costs and the player can choose which one to pay - either the specific commodity cost or a more costly mix of any commodities.
      A new town card is drawn to replace it.
  • Next player: Once the current player has resolved their action, play moves to the person on their left.

Endgame
Play continues until one of the following 2 criteria is met.
  • The last railroad card is auctioned.
  • The last town card is bought.
If either instance, the current round is completed and the game goes to scoring.
VPs come from a variety of sources.

Sets of railroad cards.
Town cards paired with railroad cards.
Building tiles earn 1 VP each.
Bonuses from building cards may also provide additional VPS.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.


Overall
Even without the anthropomorphic artwork, Raccoon Tycoon would be something or a quirky game.
It packs quite a lot of mechanical systems into a single game albeit to a fairly simple level.
A little bit of stock market manipulation, a touch of set collecting, a dash of auctioning and a sprinkling of engine building. It could be a recipe for disaster but in the case of Raccoon Tycoon; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
A large part of this I feel is due to the building tiles. Their unique bonuses both provide some asymmetrical gameplay elements and can also give players a bit of strategic direction.
Raccoon Tycoon is a bit of a balancing act between acquiring cash for railroad cards/building tiles and commodities for town cards. It's hard to work towards both at the same time. Adaptation is important here, as is planning ahead. Players could look to finding ways to raise commodity values to increase profit when selling them later

This brings me to commodity manipulation. There isn't too much interaction between players other than auctioning and commodity manipulation, 
Watching what opponents are doing can prove useful and is something of a higher level of play. I.e., if 2 players are accumulating the same commodity, there's a possibility that one of them will sell it, causing that market to crash. Beating a opponent to the punch so to speak, can cost them lots of cash!

Raccoon Tycoon is fairly rules light and I think seasoned gamers won't have any problems grasping all the systems at work here. For less experienced gamers, the curve will be steeper, I don't feel it's a gamebreaker but I imagine it could be off putting.

While there's enough gameplay to give players thoughtful and meaningful decisions to make and a fun experience, I also found the game to be a little unengaging and uncompelling, I never felt like I was building railroads or towns and despite the unique art style, it didn't feel like it stood out from the crowd.
here's nothing wrong with Raccoon Tycoon but it wouldn't be my first pick for a game, although I'd have no problem playing it if someone else wanted to.
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Machi Koro 2 - First Play!

30/4/2022

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30th April 2022

It's a Saturday afternoon and Wogglecon 3 with the Woking Gaming Club is in full swing.

The next game of the day was Machi Koro 2 which is the follow up to the most excellent original Mach Koro and which you can read about here.

Like its predecessor, Machi Koro 2 is a tableau and engine building card game all about constructing a city,

What's in a game?
  • Cards: Machi Koro 2 makes use of several types of colour coded cards which are broadly divided into 2 categories, establishments and landmarks
    • Establishments: Each establishment card has various icons.
      Type: In the top left corner of each establishment card it shows its type and whether it can 'combo' off of other cards.
      Activation number: In the middle at the top, each card has an activation number that ranges from 1-12 and the card's colour determines when activation is applicable.
      Action: The lower half of cards contain text explaining how they function when activated.
      Cost: The bottom left corner of each card is the cost to buying it.
      Finally, establishments are further divided into 2 sub-categories, depending on their activation number; these are 1-6 and 7-12, which is displayed on the card backs.
    • Landmarks: Each landmark in Machi Koro 2 is unique but they all share some similar features.
      Cost: Most landmarks have a set of 3 costs, generally rising in value from left-to-right.
      Type: Each landmark will also have symbol determining whether it has a single use or ongoing effect.
      Action: The bottom half of each landmark will also contain text explaining how that card works.
  • Coins: The game comes with chunky plastic coins which are definitely and upgrade from the original's card coins.
  • Dice: These are 2 typical six-siders.

Components in Machi Koro 2 are all good. The cards are pretty standard cards as you'd expect. The coins feel solid and the dice are slightly larger than usual dice, they're plastic but also rounded, chunky and have a bit of heft to them.

Machi Koro 2 uses an art style that's identical to the original. Brightly coloured stylised almost cartoony illustrations of establishments and landmarks. The colours are very distinct, which is good because colour plays an important part in the game.

There are a few icons in Machi Koro 2, for the different types of establishment and types of effects on landmarks. It's all pretty clear what they mean and it won't provide an problems for players.


How's it play?
Setup
  • Drafting area: Sort the cards into their 3 types, then shuffle them into 3 individual face-down decks and place them into a vertical line.
    Draw cards from each deck and place them face-up in a row next to their respective deck. Do this until you have 5 different kinds of card in each row. Any duplicates drawn should be stacked on a single space.
  • Coins: Give each player 5 coins.
  • First player: Determine a start player.
  • Buy-in: Beginning with the first player and proceeding in turn order, each player has the opportunity to purchase 1 of any available card in the drafting area. Any spaces that appear after a card is taken are immediately refilled.
    Repeat this 3 times.

On to play
Machi Koro 2 uses the traditional turn order with the active player playing their turn before the the player to their left becomes the active player.
During their turn, the active player has 3 phases to play through.
  • Roll the dice: The active may choose whether to roll 1 or 2 dice.
    This is different to the original where a landmark had to be constructed to unlock the 2nd die.
    The result of the roll is the activation number.
  • Activations: When the activation number is declared, all players must look at their own cards to see which, if any are activated - cards with a matching activation number are potentially activated! Thus if the activation number is a '5', any card with a 5 activation may possibly be activated.
    When a card is activated, the action described on the bottom half of the card is resolved.
    Whether a card is activated or not, depends on its colour.
    Red cards: Red cards generally allow you get coins off of other players during the game and are only activated in another player's turn, the active player never actives their own red cards.
    E.g., if any non-active player has 1 or more red cards with a matching activation number it will allow that player to take money off the active player. Only the active player is affected by red cards.
    Blue cards: These cards are activated in any player's turn, thus both the active and non-active players may activate blue cards. Blue cards always earn coins from the bank and are obviously the most activated type of card.
    Green cards: Only the active player may activate green cards. Non-active players cannot activate their green cards. As with blue cards, green cards earn the controlling player coins from the bank. Some green cards are combo cards and earn coins dependant on other cards with the matching type.
    Purple cards: Like green cards, purple cards can only be activated by the active player. Purple cards have a variety of effects, including taking coins from other players, swapping establishments with them and more!
    Landmarks: While landmark cards have no specific activation numbers, if they have an ongoing effect, then they will have some other criteria, that when met will activate the landmark. Criteria include rolling doubles or having having a type of card activated by the roll and so on. Each landmark is unique and they have a wide variety of actions that can be resolved.
    Pity coin: Not an action per se, but the pity coin rule occurs at the end of the activation phase: If after resolving all activations, the active player has 0 coins in their personal supply (Perhaps due to other player's red cards!), then they can take 1 (Pity!) coin from the bank for their troubles to use for purchasing.
  • Purchase card: The active player may purchase any 1 single card from the drafting area by paying it's cost. Players may over several turns purchase more than 1 copy of red/blue/green cards, the exception being purples; players may only have 1 copy of each purple.
    Landmark: Each landmark card has 3 costs. The 1st landmark a player purchases costs the 1st value, the 2nd landmark costs the 2nd value and the 3rd landmarks costs the 3rd value. If a landmark card is single-use, it's effect is triggered immediately upon purchase.
  • Next turn: Once the active player has bought a card or passed, play progresses to the player on their left who becomes the new active player.

Endgame
When any player purchases their 3rd landmark, they immediately win the game.


Overall
Machi Koro 2 is a that's fairly easy to pick up and play light-to-mid weight game that has a quick playtime.
The game generally presents players mostly straightforward but meaningful decisions about buying cards.

Should a player spread their cards over a range of numbers to get better coverage, or concentrate on fewer numbers but getter pay outs when the numbers come up.
Players will also need to consider what those numbers are. e.g., 6-8 will come up most often - provided players are rolling 2 dice have a good chance of being activated.

Speaking of rolling dice, in Machi Koro 2 players are able to choose to roll 1 or 2 right from the start. This is another decision that players can make, sometimes they'll want to roll certain numbers or avoiding rolling them and using 1 or 2 dice can alter odds of doing this.
Much of this ties in with how the activation numbers are distributed across the cards. A lot of the 1-6 cards will immediately generate cash but the cards that combo off of them tend to be in the 7-12 range. Going to 2 dice was described by a player as 'going up a gear'.
It can be pretty hard to slowly build up cash over rounds to get landmarks because other players can essentially 'nickel and dime' it away, gearing up makes it easier to get big cash in a single roll to avoid this.

And talking of nickel and diming, another strategy to consider is the red card strategy.
Using red cards to fleece other players of their coins is a pretty effective strategy, it denies them coins and earns them at the same time - but you won't make any friends that way!
The downside of this approach is that canny players will try their best to spend all their coins, the game's timing explicitly states that red activations occur before any other, thus if opponents have no coins, you can't collect them with a red since their blues/greens/purples activate after red.
It means that in a quirky reflection of real cities, players will want to be as close to bankruptcy as possible!
Unlike blue/green cards, reds are not guaranteed to generate income.

Machi Koro 2 is a little on the light side (Not that I consider that an issue.) and perhaps a little too quick to end, which may not be to everyone's taste.
One other thing to mention is that there's definitely a dollop of luck to the game, I'm fine with it and actually think it's an important part of the Machi Koro experience but some players will find this off putting.

I do have a couple of relatively minor issues with Machi Koro 2.
In the original Machi Koro, the card variety in the base game was fairly low, when 'The Harbour' expansion was added to the base game, Machi Koro went from being a 'nice' game to a 'great' game.
I feel the same is true of Machi Koro 2 as well. There are only 20 different types of establishment and 10 will be visible right from the start. After playing a few games, players will have more or less seen everything the game has to offer at a basic level and and will habitually fall into familiar patterns or strategies depending how establishments emerge. An expansion would shake that up, I would love to see extra cards for Machi Koro 2.
Finally, the rules for landmarks having actions that all players can activate in their turn is a little inelegant, requiring players to remember what landmarks other players have acquired or be reminded of them by those other players.

​Otherwise, I think Machi Koro 2 an un-taxing (Sic.) fun and breezy game to play that's worth trying if lighter games are your thing.

How does it compare to Machi Koro?
I've heard Machi Koro 2 described as Machi Koro 1.5 and there's definitely a sliver of truth to that. Anyone who's played the original will be familiar with nearly everything in Machi Koro 2. If it's not broken...

So apparently there was also some criticism of the original where it was stated that there was a lot 'whiff' in the early game - where players would roll the dice and nothing would be activated. There was further criticism that the original had too long a play time.
It's clear that Machi Koro has tried to address these issues.

The 3 rounds of buying will allow players to have a better spread of numbers at the start. 
Having to only buy 3 landmarks will also make play quicker (Although the cheaper landmarks are way more expensive than the cheapest landmarks from the original.).

Landmarks with ongoing effects that activate in any player's turn also make the game quicker and can add an extra layer of interaction between players, although I've frequently seen players avoid these cards, instead optioning for once-only landmarks and I sort of feel that way myself.
This is the only thing I see as a possible misstep.

Changes to the game have made the red cards a bit more powerful, there's little opportunity to punish players who buy red cards in Machi Koro 2, other than one of the landmarks (Machi Koro had the publisher card to do this.). I don't think this is too much of change though and YMMV.

So anyway, all of this makes the game clearly quicker to play but I feel that perhaps it's a little too quick. Sometimes (Especially when someone gets a good roll or two.)  a game can be over before players can adopt an emergent strategy.
I never found that the original was overlong.

Don't let this put you off playing Machi Koro 2, it's of a similar quality as they original. Even though I own the first game, I was happy to buy and play the second  and would recommend it to players of the original as well as to people who have never played it.
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In the Hall of the Mountain King

10/2/2022

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9th February 2022

It's Wednesday night and we're round Simon's for some gaming fun. The evening's game was In the hall of the Mountain King.

Ask yourself: What is it that trolls like to do? Live under bridges perhaps; no. Chase goats maybe; no. What about make trouble on the internet; no. What trolls really like to do is dig tunnels (The fancier the better.) and move statues!

What's in a game?
  • Board: In the Hall of the Mountain King comes with a double-sided board and the player count determines which side is used. Regardless of this; both sides depicts a mountain surrounded by wilderness and features a square grid that contains a large number of icons and is divided into 5 zones.
    Heart of the Mountain: This fiery spot sits at the centre of the board and is surrounded by 5 bands of colour which form the game's 5 zones. The furthest zone away is dark grey, the next is light grey, then red, orange and finally yellow which is the closest band.
    Buried resources: Across the board are a number of these icons on spaces.
    Rubble spaces: These spaces will hinder players as they expand through the mountain.
    Start spots: There are player starting spots throughout the dark grey band.
    Statue spots: There are also starting spots for statues littered throughout the dark grey band.
    Workshop spaces: These are empty spaces upon which players can build workshop if they get the opportunity.
    Pedestal track: Outside of the grid is this track which keeps tally of which type of pedestal have been built in each zone. There 3 types of pedestal and thus 15 spaces.
    Score tracker: Finally a score tracker runs the perimeter of the board.
  • Player board: There are one of these long rectangular for each player in their colour and every board contains information on the pricing structure/scoring for tunnel tiles as well as listing turn actions and the scoring for statues/pedestals.
    Along the top row are 4 indicators for card positioning and finally, the central area has a storage space to place resources.
  • Tiles: The game makes uses of numerous types of tiles.
    Gate Tiles: These are small tiles that fit on a single space on the board, there are 4 of them in player colours and they represent the starting spaces for players.
    Great Hall tiles: These square and rectangular tiles of varying size display artwork for different types of rooms, they go from 2x2 up to 4x4.
    Each tile has an altar space which is a blue/orange/white circle. Each tile also displays two different VP scores - more on this later.
    Tunnel tiles: These are sort of like tetramino shaped tiles except they come with a varied number of blocks ranging from 2-5, some of which have holes in them called anchors. They allow players to see the colour of the square and thus the zone beneath the anchor.
    Workshop tiles: These single space tiles will be placed by players on the workshop spaces during the course of play. Workshop tiles have special abilities which can be utilised by players.
  • Cards: There are various types of cards that In the Hall of the Mountain King makes use of.
    Spell cards: Each of these cards contains a spell that will benefit the player who uses it in some way.
    Troll cards: These cards are subdivided into even more types! The top half of each card features a picture of a troll and the bottom half will display resources.
    Starter troll cards: There are 4 sets of the 6 starter cards in each player colour. The starter cards feature 2 rows of resources delineated by a dotted line
    Troll card: The subdividing continues! The standard troll cards are further divided into type 1, 2 and 3. The higher the type, the more resource symbols the card will contain and therefore produce.
  • Tokens: In the Hall of the Mountain King also makes use of various tokens.
    Coronation tokens: There are 2 of these round card tokens, valued at 5 and 3 VPs respectively. As well as scoring for players, they trigger the game end.
    Pedestal point tokens: These small square tokens are used in conjunction with the pedestal track on the board, consequently there are 15 of them, valued from 1-4 VPs each.
    Pedestal reminder tokens: That's right, the game has tokens to remind players to do something and that something is to do with pedestals! These tokens are each coloured blue/orange/white.
    Resource tokens : Yep, In the Hall if the Mountain King also makes use of lots of different types of resources, 7 to be exact.
    Stone: Little grey wooden cubes are used to represent this resource.
    Iron: These are little black wooden cubes.
    Heartstone: These little wooden cubes are red.
    Carts: These brown wooden tokens are actually shaped a little like carts.
    Hammers: Green wooden tokens shaped like... hammers!
    Runes: These are actually translucent acrylic purple gem shaped tokens.
    Coins: Standard round card currency tokens.
  • Draw bag: A bag used to blindly draw pedestal tokens.
  • Meeples: There are 2 types of meeple the game makes use of.
    Statues: There are 3 types of statue in the game, they are coloured blue/orange/white. Blue statues represent ice and at the top, are shaped a little like an ice crystal I guess. Orange represents fire and has a flame shaped top, while the white statues are shaped like a crescent moon.
    Pedestals: Pedestals are identically shaped and come in the same three colours as statues.
That's it for components and In the Hall of the Mountain King uses a lot of them!

There's certainly a good amount of wooden tokens and meeples here, the acrylic crystals are also a nice addition.
None of the other components struck me as being poor quality and they're typical of what is expected in a modern game.
There are a couple of minor quibbles though.
The pedestal points tokens are a bit small and fiddly to handle
The second is a bit of personal grumble - which is that all the carts are brown but depending on where the carts are acquired from will represent different colours. Carts in a player's central area can be used for any colour of statue. But carts from icons on troll cards can only be used to move statutes of a certain colour - which is indicated by the colour of the icon used to acquire the cart! Makes sense... right? Maybe not? Surely it would have been useful to include some carts of the relevant colours?

There isn't a great deal of art in the game, mostly on on the spell and troll cards but it's all well illustrated with bold colours and and is fairly varied. There are 4 types (Or clans.) of troll cards and 3 types correspond to the blue/orange/white colour motif that runs through the game and I quite like how those trolls cards have a colour pallet to match it their types.
Having said that; the starter cards all feature the same piece of artwork that has been coloured matched to each player colour which is a little disappointing.

For the most, the game's iconography is actually straightforward and easily understood. Only the aforementioned issue with carts being a small problem. If the cart icon has a coloured background then a cart that is sourced from that icon can only be used for that colour of statue.
Luckily it's not a gamebreaker although it's finicky rule to remember.


How's it play?
Setup
  • Board: Which side of the game board that is used will be dictated by player count.
    Statues: The board must be populated with statues. Randomly choose the colour of the first statue and put a statue meeple of that colour it in any statue space, then randomly select a statue from the remaining 2 colours and place it in the next statue space going clockwise. Finally place the final colour of statue clockwise after the second statue.
    Now that there's a pattern of 3 colours, repeat the pattern going clockwise until all statue spaces are occupied
    Pedestal point tokens: Randomize the tokens face-down and place them in the 15 spaces on the pedestal track. Then flip them face-up
  • Workshop tiles: Shuffle the workshop tiles into a face-down and stack and draw 2 per player plus 1 more and place them out face-up. The remaining tiles have no use in the game.
  • Tunnel tiles: Sort the tunnel tiles by type.
  • Spell cards: Shuffle the spell cards into a face-down deck and deal 3 face-up. These 3 cards are called the spell book.
  • Bag: Put all the pedestal meeples into the draw bag and give it a vigorous shake.
  • Troll cards: Sort the troll cards by type and shuffle them into respective 3 face-down decks, then deal cards from the deck according to their type. When they are all placed, they should form a sort of ziggurat shape so they don't line up in columns, they are known charmingly as the Horde.
    Type 1: Deal 5 type 1 cards and place them in a row at the 'bottom' of the ziggurat.
    Type 2: Deal 4 of these cards and place them in a row directly above the type 1 cards but vertically positioned between the cards from the row below.
    Type 3: Deal 3 type 3 cards and also place them in a row above the type 2 cards, again vertically positioned between the cards from the row below.
    Pedestal meeples: Randomly draw 4 pedestal meeples from the bag and place them on the row of type 2 cards.
    Pedestal reminder tokens: Place 1 of these on each card in the type 3 row.
  • Coronation tokens: Depending on the player count put out 1 or both of these tokens.
  • 1st player: determine a start player.
  • Player boards: Give each player the player board, gate tile and starter troll cards in their player colour
    Gate tile: In turn order, each player should put their gate tile on to one of the starting spots on the board.
    Starting trolls: Each player should shuffle their 6 starter cards into a face-down deck, draw 2 and then should put 1 of the 2 cards into any of the 4 allotted spaces above their player board.
    Now draw another card and again put 1 of them into the 3 remaining spaces. Repeat this until all 4 spaces are filled in a row. This is the beginning of each players Trollmoot and as further cards are added will eventually resemble a pyramid.
    Each player should now have 1 card in their hand and 1 card left face-down.
    Resources: Each player gains the resources listed on the bottom row of the 4 cards they put into their playing area. Once the resources have been gathered, partially slide the cards under the player board so that the bottom row of resources are hidden.
    Bonus resources: The first player does not gain any bonus resources! However, all other player do. They will gain resources from the bottom row of 1 or 2 of the cards they didn't put into their play area depending on their position in the turn order.
    Regardless of whether players gain bonus resources or not, the 2 un-played starter troll cards are discarded out of play.
Phew! We're ready to go now.


On to play
Play during In the Hall of the Mountain King will have active player performing 4 actions before play moves clockwise to the next player.
  • Spells and workshop: The active player may perform one or both of these actions.
    Spells: The active player may spend a rune token to use the ability of any one of the 3 revealed spell cards by placing it on the pertinent spell card.
    Once a spell has accumulated 3 runes, it's discarded and new spell is drawn from the deck.
    Workshop: The active player may make use of one workshop's abilities which is connected to their tunnel network. It can be used as many times as it is connected to any tunnel network - even that of another player.
    Typically workshops allow players to swap around resources, any gained this way are placed into the storage on the active player's board.
  • Dig or recruit: The active player must perform only 1 of the 2 following actions.
    Dig: This involves spending resources to acquire a tunnel tile and place it on the board, there are obviously some restrictions and quite a few rules here.
    ​The cost of purchasing a tunnel tile is equal to the spaces it occupies, i.e., a 4 space tile costs 4 resources. This can be paid in only stone or only iron or only heartstone and not any mix if the 3. Players can trade any 4 resources for 1 of their choice at any time. When a tunnel tile is bought, it immediately scores VPs depending on it's size (Except the 2 space tunnel which scores nothing.) and the type of material used to construct the tunnel. Stone scores the least and heartstone scores the most as indicated in the bottom right corner of the player board.
    Next, the active player must put the tunnel tile on to the board; all positioning of and measuring of these tiles is done orthogonally. A tunnel tile can be rotated or flipped anyway the player chooses but must go adjacent to the active player's gate tile or a tunnel tile connected to the active player's tunnel network. Furthermore, there must always be at least 1 space between the networks of all players - no 2 networks can connect.
    If the tile covers any rubble spaces, the active player must spend hammer tokens equal to the rubble spaces being covered.
    If the tile covers any buried resources icon(s) or a statue meeple, the player gains them. Resources are placed into the storage space on their player board and statues are placed back on the same space on the game board but now on the tunnel tile.
    If the tile has been placed adjacent to an empty workshop space, the active player may place one of the available workshop there.
    If the tile that has been place has an anchor point on it and the active player has a pedestal in their storage then they may put the pedestal on the anchor spot, this can only ever be done just after the tile has been placed. There's a further restriction, each zone can only ever contain 1 pedestal of any colour. Since there are 5 zones, there can only be 5 pedestals of one colour in the game at any time and only 3 (One of each colour.) in each zone. There can be a maximum of 15 pedestals in the game which matches the 15 spaces on the pedestal track. Speaking of which, when a player puts a pedestal on the board, they immediately gain the pedestal point token from the space that matches the zone where the statue was placed and the statue's colour. This should be kept face-down in the players storage and revealed during scoring.
    Recruit: The active player may recruit one of the trolls from the Horde and depending on which level the troll is recruited from, it may cost 2 or 5 coins.
    If a type 1 troll is recruited, it costs nothing, if a type 2 troll from the middle row is recruited, the 2 troll cards beneath it must be bribed​ with 1 coin each, thus 2 coins. If a type 3 troll is recruited, then the 2 trolls beneath them must be bribed and then the 3 trolls beneath the the 2 must also be bribed for a total cost of 5 coins. all bribes are placed on the troll card itself. If a troll card acquires 4 coins, it's removed from play and replaced.
    When the active player takes a troll card, they also get anything on the card, including coins. So for a type 2 troll that would be the pedestal on it and on a type 3 the pedestal reminder token means they can take the pedestal of their choice from the bag.
    After a troll card has been taken, it is immediately replaced from it's relevant deck. For type 2 trolls, new pedestals are randomly drawn from the bag and for type 3, the reminder tokens are placed on them.
    Now the player must put the troll card into their Trollmoot. When doing this, it must go position above 2 other troll cards and overlap their top corners. Thus the 2nd row of a Trollmoot will contain 3 cards, the 3rd 2 troll cards and the top row will contain a single troll card, who become the chieftain of the Trollmoot. When the active player gains their chieftain, they can take one of the coronation tokens if there is one available.
    Additionally, when a card is added to the Trollmoot, it is activated, this means that the player acquires the resources listed on the card. Not only that, the 2 cards beneath the card are also activated and then the 3 cards beneath the 2 are activated and so forth in a cascading effect. This means that when the chieftain card is placed, it will activate all cards in the Trollmoot.
    When resources are acquired this way, they are placed on the troll card that generated them and not on the storage space on the player board. This is important to remember because if a troll card is already contains a resource it produces, then the player does not acquire it.
    This means it's a good idea to use resources on troll cards before those on the storage or to use workshops to cycle resources off of troll cards.
  • Great Hall: The active player may place 1 great hall tile per turn into their network by placing it on top of their tunnel tiles. However, the player's tunnel network must contain an area at least as large the great hall tile to accommodate it. E.g., a tunnel network must contain an area at least 3x3 in to to accommodate the 3x3 great hall tile.
    Every great hall tile has an altar space and 2 differing VP values. The 2nd value is what the tile is worth if a statue of any colour is placed on the altar space
  • Move Statues: The active player spend cart tokens to move statues.
    Cart tokens that come from the players storage on their player board can be used to move statues of any colour.
    Cart tokens that come from troll cards can only move statues that match the colour of the cart icon on that troll card. I.e., the cart token on a troll card with a white cart icon can only be used to move a white statue - even though the cart token itself is brown!
    Each cart token spent allows the active player to move a statue to anywhere on another tunnel tile (Or another space on the same tile - only 1 statue can ever occupy a single space.).
    This can involve putting the statue on a pedestal of matching colour which doubles the statue's VP value.
  • Next player: when the active player has completed all 4 phases, play progresses clockwise to the next player.
Okay, that's it for the main rules.

Endgame
The endgame is triggered when there no coronation tokens left to acquire.
The current round is completed and 2 more rounds are played.
Players then calculate VPs, a player's VPs may come from the following sources.

Score tracker.
Statues - depending on their position in the 5 zones and doubled if the player managed to place them on a pedestal.
Great hall tokens in a player's network - with or without statues.
​Pedestal points for placing pedestals.
Coronation tokens.
Unspent resources; these can earn points. Every 3-of-a-kind scores an extra VP.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.


Overall
Despite having quite a few rule to remember and sounding quite complicated, In the Hall of the Mountain King is actually pretty straightforward in practice and many of the rules are obvious when in action.

​There's definitely a couple of finicky rules though, and again - it's to do with the carts and pedestals. It feels like an unnecessary complication to have these differently coloured carts to move statues.
The rule that restrict pedestals to 1 per colour in each zone also feels a but cumbersome. I know why the rule is there: It encourages competition in a game that otherwise has little interaction between players.
​Players will want to be the first to get a pedestal as close to the Heart of the Mountain as possible. It locks out completing players and offers a big scoring opportunity.

It means that players are put into a balancing act of needing build their tunnel network but also acquire resources to make this expansion happen. Clever placement of tiles will earn players some resources but recruiting trolls is the best way to get them and you'll note that digging and recruiting are pretty much the only 2 mutually exclusive actions in a turn.

There's more to tunnel tile placement too, pedestals and thus statues have to go on anchor spots and it's these need to be as close to the centre of the board as possible, sometimes it'll be tricky to get it right, or it'll require not getting something else. Being able to avoid rubble spaces helps as well.
Resource management also has more to it. Spending resources from troll cards first is prudent, as is using workshops to change them into other resources - because they go back on to the storage space and not the troll card. It does involve trying to think ahead about what resources can be acquired and what will be needed.

This brings me neatly to the Trollmoot/Horde elements of the game, with their overlapping and cascading mechanics for both buying cards and acquiring resources they almost feel like a different game to the tile placement taking place on the game board.
I have to say that I like the cascading mechanic, it's simple but provides some interesting decisions for players to make. Building up a Trollmoot, like much of In the Hall of the Mountain King requires a little forethought.
If my calculations are correct, the cards in the centre columns will be activated the most. Players will want to identify and prioritise what resources they'll need in their Trollmoot setup. Additionally, deciding where to place a troll card will determine what resources the player immediately.

I do also have some concerns about the game, I found using the tunnel tiles, creating pedestals and moving statues more of a chore than satisfying and the game it didn't quite gel with me.
I'm also not sure how much value there is in replaying the game. The player and statue starting positions and workshops may vary but mostly the board's resources stay unchanged. And while the card mechanics are good, the cards themselves only vary in which resources they provide.

In the Hall of the Mountain King is another one of these games that does nothing really wrong and I've got nothing against the game. If someone else wanted to play it I would happily join in but somehow it's missing that 
special something that makes me want to play it again.
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Fantastic Factories

9/2/2022

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8th February 2022

Tuesday night games with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns continued with Fantastic Factories.

I don't know if factories are fantastic but I guess we're going to find out.

What's in a game?
  • Player board: These rectangular boards contain recessed spaces to assign 3 rows of up to 3 dice each and considered each player's headquarters.
    Research: This is the first row, dice of any value can be assigned here.
    Generate: Dice showing values 1-3 can be assigned here.
    Mine: Finally, dice displaying 4-6 can be assigned here.
  • ​Dice: Fantastic Factories comes with quite a few dice. They're normal six-siders constructed of translucent acrylic with rounded corners and dots.
    There are 5 sets of 4 dice in player colours and a generic set of 8 grey-white dice which players can acquire temporarily.
  • Tokens: The game makes use of various types of card tokens.
    Energy tokens: These round tokens are unsurprisingly marked with lightning bolts.
    Metal tokens: Metal bars are used to indicate these are metal tokens
    Goods tokens: There are 2 types of these token that show 1 or 2 crates and correspondingly represent 1 or 2 goods.
    Tool type tokens: There is 1 each of these 4 tokens and they show a cog, wrench, hammer and shovel. They are used to determine the type of tool required to hire contractors (See below for more on contractors.). Tool type symbols also appear on blueprint cards.
  • Cards: There are 2 types of cards in Fantastic Factories.
    Blueprints: These are the factories that players will build.
    In the top left it lists the cost to build the factory, this will include some combination of energy and metal as well as a tool. Additionally, when a blueprint is discarded, it will generate that tool type.
    In the top right corner it shows the VPs the card is worth when built. 
    Finally, in the bottom half, the card shows what kind of ability that blueprint will have when built, e.g, spending energy to get goods or something along those lines.
    ​Contractors: These cards have once-only abilities that are triggered when the card is bought (Contractor is hired.). Hiring contractors will cost a tool, the exact type of tool is determined by the tool type tokens.
  • First player marker: The game features a wooden first player token shaped like a factory, it even has a pair of polluting smokestacks!
The components in Fantastic Factories are average in quality, which means they're perfectly acceptable, there's nothing poor here. Having said that, the translucent dice look good despite not being wooden, speaking of which, the wooden first player marker is a nice touch.

From an art perspective, the game makes good use of cheerfully bright colours. The art itself uses heavily stylised illustrations of both factories and contractors which is fine and suits the game's slightly light-hearted theme.

When built, factories provide a varied amount of special actions, consequently the game makes use of quite a varied amount of iconography. For the most part it's straightforward, however, on occasion 2 cards may seem similar but they'll be a small difference between denominated by a single small icon or sometimes they'll just be something 
​I wouldn't say it's any kind of a gamebreaker or that there's too much iconography but for a few turns players will probably end up referring to the rules.


How's it play?
Setup
  • Tool tokens: Put out the 4 tool tokens in a line, the order does not matter.
  • Contractors: Shuffle the contractor cards into a face-down deck, then deal 4 face-up with each one in line beneath each tool token.
  • Blueprints: Also shuffle these into a face-down deck and again, deal 4 face-up, this time below the contractor cards.
    Marketplace: Thus this row of 4 tokens with 2 rows of 4 cards beneath also forms 4 columns and is what is called the marketplace.
  • Players: Give each player a player board, 4 dice in their player colour, 2 energy and 1 metal token.
    Finally, deal 4 blueprint cards to each player.

On to play
Broadly speaking, a round is broken into 2 phases; a market phase which occurs in turn order and a work phase, which can be performed simultaneously by all players.
  • Market phase: Starting with the first player and going in turn order, everyone may perform the optional action, then must choose one of the following 2 actions.
    • Optional action: By spending an energy or metal token, the active player may wipe one of the two rows of cards in the marketplace and have 4 new cards revealed.
    • Hire contractor: The active player may hire 1 contractor card by paying it's cost which will a combination of whatever energy/metal tokens it may require plus the tool symbol for the column it's in, the active player does this by discarding a card from their hand with a matching tool symbol.
      When a contractor is acquired, it's ability is used immediately and the card is discarded.
      That's not very realistic, if it was, the contractor would do nothing for 3 rounds and then charge the player again before doing anything!
      OR
    • Gain blueprint: The active player may buy a blueprint much as they would do with a contractor card except they do not need to pay the tool cost. When the active player acquires a blueprint card, it goes into their hand.
  • Work phase: This phase can be carried out by all players simultaneously if they wish.
    Roll dice: The first action that occurs in the work is rolling dice.
    After this, there are several types of action that can be performed during the work phase and players carry them out in any order they choose.
    • Headquarters/basic actions: All 3 basic actions involve assigning the rolled dice to spaces on the headquarters board. The numbers rolled will affect where those can be assigned and what they do.
      • Research: Dice with any value can be assigned to this action. For each dice assigned this way, the player can draw a card from the blueprint deck (Not the face-up cards.)
      • Generate: Only dice numbering 1-3 can be assigned to this action, then the player would acquire energy tokens equal to the value of the dice assigned. E.g., if a 1 and a 3 are placed in generate, the player would gain 4 energy.
      • Mine: Only dice numbering 4-6 can be placed here and each die assigned earn the player a metal token.
        Matched numbers: If a pair of matching numbers are assigned any single basic action, it increases the amount the player gain by 1. If 3 matching numbers are assigned, it would earn the player an extra 2.
        Putting 5 and 5 into research or mine would earn the player 3 blueprints/metal tokens.
        If a player somehow would manage to put 3, 3 and 3 into generate, it would earn them 11 energy!​
    • Build blueprints: Players may build any number of blueprint cards from their hand provided they can meet all the costs, this will of course involve discarding blueprint cards with the identical tool symbol.
    • Activate buildings: Players may activate buildings that have been built in any order they see fit. Each building can only be activated once per turn however.
      Buildings have an activation cost, this might be a resource or even a die and will produce some other resource for the player.
  • Extra dice: Some abilities allow players to acquire extra dice to use, these always come from the supply of grey/white dice, are temporary and will return back to their supply at the end of the round.
  • Next round: Once all players have finished their actions, the first player marker moves to the player on the right and a new round begins with the next market phase.

Endgame
Play continues until either a player has built their 10th card or acquired their 12th good.
In either case, the current round ends and 1 more round is played.
Players then total the VPs from their buildings and the goods they gained.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.


Overall
On a basic level, Fantastic Factories is mechanically pretty straightforward; acquire blueprints, acquire resources to build factories, use factories to acquire resources.

It's a mid-weight engine building game that provides players with strong card synergy and offers a good selection of choices and avenues to follow for building that engine.
I feel for the most part that players will want to focus on blueprints and building them, which is natural as this is what gets resources and VPs.
Players shouldn't neglect the contractors who provide instant if transitory benefits for a relatively low cost. Applied at the right time, they can be game changers - provided they're available at the right time! Once again, it's a case of reacting to opportunities as they are revealed.

There are a couple of there elements that make Fantastic Factories interesting.

Firstly; dice rolling. Players will never be guaranteed getting the results and thus the resources they want. It means that players may not be able to build the card they originally wanted to and will need to adapt and react to the situation as it arises for optimal play. Of course it's always possible to play it safe and have all the required resources before getting a card, it's safer but it's also slower.
Secondly; Fantastic Factories makes use of a hand-as currency mechanic. This forces players to think ahead, players may need to get blueprint cards just to discard for another building, or may be forced to discard a blueprint they still want in order to build another, it can be a tough decision.

There's also some high level play, where it pays to watch what other players are working towards then wipe the marketplace to deny another a player a card they want.

Fantastic Factories is a well balanced game, it's rules aren't particularly complicated and are easy to learn but also have depth that comes from recognising how to exploit the available cards that appear during the game to build their engine optimally and to maximum efficiency.
​The gameplay is solid and will appeal to fans of engine building games, which I am. so I guess factories can be fantastic!
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Le Havre

17/12/2021

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16th December 2021

It's a Thursday and we're round Simon's for some gaming.

​The game of the night was Le Harve; have you ever had the urge to run a business on the French coast, construct buildings and ships, manage goods, feed your ever expanding workforce and avoid going into debt?
If the answer is yes, then maybe, just maybe, Le Havre is the game you're lookng for.

What's in a game?
Le Havre uses a lot of components, I mean it, A LOT!
  • Game board: The game board is composed of 3 large tiles that are placed down together to form the board. It depicts the titular harbour with a wharf and warehouses and it's a fairly busy board too with a lot of spots and locations.
    Resource spaces: There are 6 spaces for the games 8 resources, wait, did I say 8 resources, since the resource tiles are double-sided that means the game actually has 16 resources. Finally there's a spot for the 17th resource - money.
    Supply spaces: There a row of seven of these circular spaces directly beneath the resource spaces.
    Offer spaces: And beneath the port spaces are 7 offer spaces. As the game progresses, goods will move from the resources down to the offer spaces.
    Special buildings: this is where the special buildings deck goes.
    Building proposals: These are 3 spaces which will contain regular building cards which can be built but not bought.
    Ship spaces: There are 4 spaces for the 4 different types of ship that will appear during a game.
    Round cards space: Finally, there's a space for the round cards, there not actually round but are used to track the game's round.
Picture
The game board... so many resources!
  • Cards: Le Havre uses numerous decks of cards.
    ​
    Round cards/Ship cards: Not all of these are used during a game, depending on player count.
    ​They are arranged in numerical order and are used to not only track rounds, but other events such as harvesting and bringing special buildings into play. They are also double sided and on the other side are ships. When a round is over, the round card is flipped to the other side and becomes a ship available to be bought, thus more and more (And better.) ships become available as a game progresses.
    Ship cards are very useful cards, they allow players to trade resources for cash and also provide food when needed.

    Building cards: These come in 3 types, starter, standard and special and can be bought or used by players. They are functionally more or less identical though. Each card has a cost to buy in some combination of resources and money, it may also have a symbol for it's type. Then the card lists what ability it has, typically this is generate or upgrade resources, although some will construct buildings or ships. 
    Standard cards have a couple of bits of extra info, first, in the top right corner it shows a number, this is the sort order number and determines the order in which cards appear. Finally, at the bottom it repeats the buying info, which will be displayed when the cards are put out.
    Loan cards: If a player runs of cash, then they can take a load card to acquire more money, although this comes at a price...
    Buttery/Player guide: This double-sided card has a buttery on one side and a quick guide to the rules on the other.
  • Tokens: As with cards, Le Havre makes use of a lot of tokens. All of them are made of card.
    Cash: These round tokens represent francs.
    Resources: All of these are double-sided, with the basic resource on one side and the upgraded resource on the other. Resources provide food and energy amongst other things and include.
    Cattle/Meat: Produces more cattle and food on the upgraded side.
    Grain/Bread: Produces more grain and also produces food
    Iron/Steel: Used for building.
    Clay/Brick: Also used for building.
    Wood/Charcoal: Produces energy.
    Fish/Smoked fish: Produces food.
    Coal/Coke: Produces energy.
    Hide/Leather​: Can be sold.
  • Meeples: Each player is given 2 wooden meeples in their colour, a ship which is used in the port and a disc, which is essentially a worker and placed in buildings.
  • Supply tiles: There are 7 of these circular tiles that fit on the supply spaces. Each tile displays an action that must be resolved during the game.

​The art in Le Havre is a bit of a mixed bag. The game board uses fairly simplistic and colourful illustrations that I personally found clear, distinct and looked quite evocative, the same is true of illustrations on the cards. However, the tokens used monochromic artwork which is a little old school. Having said that, it was always clear what they represented.
Which brings me to iconography. Between all the different actions on all the building cards in particular, Le Havre uses a fair amount of iconography. Much of it is straightforward and apparent but some of it will require looking up in the rules. none of it game-breaking though.


How's it play?
Setup
  • Round cards: Take the round cards appropriate for the number of players and place them face-up in numerical order on their allotted space. Round cards come into affect at the end of each round.
  • Supply tokens: Shuffle the supply tokens into a face-down stack and then place 1 of each face-down on the row of supply spaces.
  • Starter buildings: Put out the 3 starter building cards next to the board. These are owned by the town. Furthermore any buildings that are built by players are also owned by the town (Until players purchase them, that is.).
  • Building cards: Shuffle the standard building cards into a face-down deck, then deal the cards into 3 smaller face-down stacks.
    Now turn each stack over and sort it buy its sort order number in the top right corner. Thus certain cards will appear earlier in the game than others. Each of the 3 stacks goes into a space on the board but they do not sit stacks. Instead, spread each stack up, so that the info on the bottom of each card is visible and players can see the cost of upcoming cards. Only the top card in each proposal space are available to be built by players.
    Special building cards: Shuffle the deck of special building card and deal 6 cards face-down into a deck on their space on the board. The rest of the deck will not be used in this game.
  • Resources: Put all the resources into their specified spaces, then place 2 money, 2 fish, 2 wood and 1 clay token into their respective offer spaces.
  • Player: Give each player a ship and disc meeple in their colour as well as 5 cash and 1 coal. Each player's ship should be placed just left of the first supply tile.
  • First player: Determine a first player.

On to play
Acquisition of wealth is goal in Le Havre and money becomes victory points at the game end.
The game is played over a number rounds dependant on the number of players. In each round there are 7 turns, you will note that this means that players will not have an equal number of turns and this is by design.
In their turn each player must perform the supply action and has a single main action they can also perform, in addition the active player can also perform buy/sell actions.
When all 7 turns have been completed, there are some end of round actions to resolve before moving on to the next round.
Free actions: These can be performed by the active player at any time.
  • Loan: If a player does not have the money to pay for something, then they can take a loan card which gives them 4 currency to spend, paying off a loan card costs 5. Every loan card that a player has during the game end will essentially cost them 7 victory points, so you don't want to keep them!
    Additionally, sometimes players with loan cards will have to pay interest to the supply.
  • Buying/Selling: The active player may buy or sell any number of available buildings or ships at any time in their turn, provided they meet the requirements of course. Players cannot buy buildings in the building proposal spaces, because they're not built yet.
    When something is sold, it is at half the cash cost for the building and is sold to the town who will now own it.
Turn actions:
  • Supply action: The active player must perform the supply action. This involves moving their ship meeple on to the first available supply token (Going from left to right.), turning over the tile and resolving its action. Usually this involves moving tokens from one resource supply to it's respective offer space.
    Supply tiles are only turned over once during a game and when revealed stay in the same order for the remainder of the game.
  • Main action: There are 2 main actions available to the active player and they can perform 1 of them only.
    Take offer: The active player take all the resources on 1 offer space which they can use immediately.
    Enter building: The active player may take their disc and place in any available unoccupied building and use that building's ability.
    Available buildings include any buildings owned by the town or the player, furthermore, a disc may be placed in another player's building, but this will incur a entry fee that must be payed to that player.
    Next player: Once a player has completed their actions, play progresses to the player to the left.
A round ends when the player on the last supply token finishes their turn and leads directly into the end of round actions. This involves resolving the actions on the current round card and include the following.
  • Harvest: If this action occurs, players with cattle or grain increase them respectively.
  • Feeding: All players must feed their populations, this requires discarding food, how much is needed depends on the round card and a ship lowers this requirement. Money can be used in place of food and must be used if a player does not have enough food.
  • Construction: A building from the standard or special buildings may be built by the town and now becomes available to be used or bought players.
  • Ship: The round card is flipped over and becomes a ship, it is placed into its relevant spot and can bought by players.
  • Next round: All player ship meeples are placed back at the start of the supply track and a new round begins. Whoever was last in the previous round is the starting player in this one, thus they get a double-turn.

Endgame
When the final round is completed, all players have 1 final main action they can perform, after this, the game goes to scoring.
Now each player calculates their wealth which are victory points. This is done by totting up the following:
Value of all building and ships a player owns.
Cash they possess.
Every loan card a player still possess at the game end deducts from the total.
Scores are tallied, highest score wins.


Overall
When playing Le Havre players will need to pay attention to several areas of the game. Buildings are very important and players will probably spent a significant number of actions on them, not only do they have to think about to what they've built, what the town owns and what it available to build but what other players have built. Being able to make use of other player's building adds an interesting spin on the game.
Players will need to adapt their strategy to the buildings that become available and while there is a ordering number for buildings, it's still no guarantee of the actual order they become available.

That doesn't mean you can risk ignoring ships or acquiring resources of course, food is vital, probably the single most important thing in the game, you'll constantly need food otherwise you'll eventually be plunged into spiralling debt.
Managing all the resources is also key and the game deliberately forces players to make the hard choice between using a building or taking a resource from an offer space. Resources tend to be relatively scarce at the start of the game and player's will want to optimise their strategies.
Generally money can be used in place of some resources but it's essentially sucking up victory points and getting players closer to having to take a loan, something to avoid if you can.


Players will need to also pay attention to the supply track and their position on it and when their turns will come up, as well as when resources will be moved into the offer spaces.

Even though there were some more rules which I skipped over describing, I wouldn't call La Havre a very heavy game. I did find it a little fiddly with the occasional little rule popping up here or there and at the start I did find the game a little obtuse.
​Once you get over that hump Le Havre becomes a mostly straightforward game and proves a challenging game with meaningful decisions to make.

I do have a criticism of Le Havre though - and that's the playtime, it's just too long! This is a known issue too as the rules contain a 'shortened' variant of the game!
A 5-player game is expected to take 210 minutes over 20 rounds, that's 3 ½ hours and quite frankly, that's an underestimation.
Think about it; 210 minutes over 20 rounds is 10 minutes 30 seconds per round and each round has 7 turns, that works out at 90 seconds per turn. Do you think that the kind of players that like this type of game spend just 90 seconds per turn? If every player spends 2 minutes taking their turn instead of 90 seconds, it would add 70 minutes to the playtime. 😭

It meant that the down time between turns felt like it lasted forever and at times was just more frustrating than fun or compelling, which was what I ultimately took away from it.

If you like resource-management games that are slightly on the heavy side, then Le Havre might be worth a look, provided you can commit the time.
To be honest, it's a game that rainy, chilled Sunday afternoons are perfect for.
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Chocolate Factory

23/11/2021

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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
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Everdell

14/11/2021

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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.
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