23rd May 2021

It's a Sunday and I'm logged into Skype and Board Game Arena, ready for an evening of gaming.

The first game of the night was Happy City, a cheerful looking, light engine-building card game about building up a city, a happy city no less. 

Caveat: We've only played this game digitally on Board Game Arena.

What's in a game?

• Happy market cards: These 5 starter cards are double-sided, on one side they are white and on the other each one has one of the different colour/symbols. All happy market cards generate 1 income per turn.
• Building cards: These cards have a cost and a symbol/colour for building type, they may also have a income rating and population or happiness rating that ranges from -1 to +3.
  There are 3 'levels' of building cards, the higher the level the better the card, but the higher the cost.
  Level 1: Cost 1-3 coins to buy.
  Level 2: Cost 4-5 coins.
  Level 3: Cost 6-9 coins.
• Dwelling cards: These cards are similar to standard building cards, except they are only dwellings, thus they only have a cost, population rating and the green symbol.
  There are 3 types/levels of identical dwellings.
  Level 1: Cost 1, population 1.
  Level 2: Cost 3, population 2.
  Level 3: Cost 6, population 3.
• Special building cards: These cards have no cost, instead they have a requirement which must be met with colours/symbols.
• Coins: Standard currency.

I can't comment on the physical quality of the components but all the cards are decorated with colourful and interesting illustrations. The art is excellent.
Symbols are clear and easy to read.

How's it play?
At it's core, Happy City is a tableau-building game, adding cards increases income or score. 
Setup

• ​Give each player a happy market card, this should be put with the white side up in the player's area and represents the beginning of their tableau.
  The building cards should be sorted by level, then each deck should be shuffled. All 3 decks should be placed face-down in the central area to form a column.
• The dwelling cards should be sorted by type and placed in 3 face-up stacks, the number of cards in each stack should be equal to the number of players minus one.
• Shuffle the special building cards and place a line of them face-up in the central area, the number of cards used should be equal to the number of players plus two.
• Give each player 2 coins.
• Determine starting player.

On to play
In Happy City, the starting player's first turn is slightly different to subsequent turns, as explained below.

• Income: At the start of their turn, the active player receives coins equal to their income.
• Draw building card(s): ​In this next stage, there must always be a choice of 3 building cards available for the active player to purchase. Thus, since there are no building cards available at the start of the game, the starting player must draw 3 building cards and place them face-up next to the building decks. The player can select cards from any deck.
  In subsequent turns, the active player may discard a face-up building card before drawing more. Thus the active player will always have the option to draw 1 and maybe 2 cards.
• Take action: The active player can choose from 1 of 3 actions.
  Buy a building card: Pay for a building and place it in their tableau.
  Buy a dwelling: Pay for a dwelling and place it in their tableau.
  Pass and gain a coin: Self explanatory.
• Acquire special card: If the active player has cards in their tableau with colours/symbols that meet the the requirements of a special card, then the active player may take that special card as a free action, players can only ever have 1 special card in their tableau.

Once the active player has completed their action, the player to their left becomes the active player.

Expert game
Happy City has 2 levels of play; family & expert. This blog describes the family version.
The expert game differs in 2 ways.
All the happy market cards are flipped to their differently coloured sides and laid out, then the players draft one to become the starting card in their tableau and giving them some choice in how they start the game.
Special buildings also differ; the family Special cards give players a boost to their income, happiness or population. The expert special cards however, are different, they confer different benefits, sometimes variable and situational.

Endgame
The game continues until a player has 10 cards in their tableau, upon which the current round continues until all players have had an equal number of turns.
Each player's score is calculated by multiplying the total value of happiness symbols in their tableau by all the population symbols.
​Highest score wins.

Overall
Gameplay in Happy City gives players the choice between increasing income or accumulating happiness/population. Income will give the player more buying power but happiness/population contributes towards the end score.
Having 3 decks of building cards at different cost ranges is an interesting mechanic when it comes to drawing cards. The player will always have the option to draw 1 or 2 cards, higher level cards will be better, but may prove more risky to draw. E.g., If a player has 4 coins, drawing a level 1 card will be safe as level 1 cards only cost 1-3 coins each, level 2 cards cost 4-5 coins, so there's a risk that a level 2 card will be unaffordable and will have been drawn pointlessly. It can give players a quandary when drawing building cards.
The game's scoring mechanic also adds an extra layer to decisions, failing to pay attention to how the points are spread between happiness/population can lead to lost scoring opportunities.

While Happy City is simple to learn, enjoyable and fast to play, making it a good filler game, it's perhaps also a little too basic for dedicated gamers. After a few games it was fairly easy to spot an optimal strategy to pursue and it became a race to develop that strategy. So I feel that the game doesn't offer a lot of longevity.
Ultimately, because it's such a light game, it's probably a good game for families or more casual players which is probably who the game is aimed at.

We also played the expert level a few times but felt like it added little to the game.
The varied happy markets are nice and offered a little extra strategy but the expert level special cards weren't so good. The problem was that they seemed harder to acquire than the family special cards, which meant they were acquired later in the game and therefore their benefits were limited, we found it wasn't worth specifically trying to get one, getting one by happenstance was fine, but then that sort of makes having a choice of starting happy market card pointless.
We enjoyed the family version more.
​
The family version is a game I'd play, but not too often.

24th March 2021

It's a Wednesday evening and I'm logged into Zoom and Board Game Arena on my PC.

It was time for a game that spanned the ages and the creation of massive monuments and the civilisations they represented. Luckily, it doesn't take that long to play 7 Wonders!

Caveat: We played the game online but have previously played the physical copy. Photos were taken for this blog post.

What's in a game?
​The purpose of the game is for each player to create their own civilisation through the construction of various types of buildings and ultimately create one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World.
7 Wonders is card game played over 3 sets of rounds (or ages). Each age has its own set of cards which are used. There are numerous types of cards, some of these types can be more or less common in different ages.

• Cards: All the different cards share some common elements, such as cost which can be in resources, money or even free. Each card also has its name along its left hand edge (This can be very important in later ages.). Cards also show in small writing what cards they chain with.
  Resource cards: These brown cards represent raw resources such as wood, stone and so on that are foundations of your civilisation. They only appear in ages 1 & 2.
  Goods cards: These are manufactured goods such as cloth or glass, they are important in the construction of advanced buildings for your civilisation. These cards are grey coloured. Like resource cards, these do not appear in age 3.
  Civic buildings: Blue cards are civic buildings such as baths, aqueducts, temples and palaces. Civic buildings score victory points as displayed on each card.
  Science buildings: This is where the games set collecting element comes into play. There are 3 different scientific symbols and collecting a set of all 3 scores victory points but victory points can also be scored by collecting sets of the same kind, 2-of-a-kind, 3-of-a-kind and so on for all 3 symbols. Green is used to represent scientific cards.
  Commercial buildings: These yellow cards represent businesses that allow the player to gain additional resources, goods or money in various manners, sometimes they also allow the player to accumulate victory points.
  Military buildings: Guard towers, archery ranges and training grounds and the like are all red military cards. Unsurprisingly, they increase a civilisation's military strength by 1-3 points. There is no direct combat between different players in 7 Wonders, but there is automatic conflict between neighbouring civilisations at the end of each age.
  Guild cards: These purple cards only appear in age 3, they sort of combine the mechanics of commercial buildings with the scoring of civic buildings.
• Wonder cards: These are not used during play but can be used to randomly determine which wonder board (See below.) each player gets and whether the A or B side is used.
• Wonder boards: As you would expect, there a 7 wonder boards, one for each ancient wonder. Each board is slightly different and also have an A and B side for more variation and complexity but all contain a resource or good they manufacture for the controlling player.
  Nearly all the wonder boards have 3 spaces (One board has 4 and another 2!) at the bottom. When these spaces are filled, they give the controlling player victory points or a special once only or ongoing bonus.
• Conflict tokens: These tokens are valued at +1, +3, +5 or -1 and they modify victory points.
• Coins: Standard currency, comes in 1s or 3s.

The cards, tokens and coins are of the usual quality you'd expect, the wonder boards are made of fairly thick grey board and feel sturdy.
The text and icons are all mostly clear (I tended to confuse stone and ore icons, because the ore icon looks like a pile of stone to me.), the symbology used for special rules on cards is also generally clear, the rulebook does a good job on clarifying these in cases of confusion.
I also like how the layout allows cards to be more or less stacked while still displaying pertinent information.
In terms of art quality, the wonder boards are quite large and very nicely decorated in eye-catching illustrations of the 7 titular wonders. Art on the cards are of a similar quality but obviously on a smaller scale.

How's it play?
Setup
7 Wonders is a 3-7 player game but also contains some special rules to allow 2 player games. This blog post talks about the normal 3-7 player game.

• Shuffle the wonder cards and deal 1 face down to each player, after this each player flips their card, revealing which wonder board they take and the card's orientation will display whether to use the A or B side.
• 3 decks must be constructed for each of the 3 ages. Deck size is dependant on the number of players and each will consist of 21-49 cards. Cards display which game size they are suitable for. Finally 5-9 of the 10 available guild cards are added to the age 3 deck.
  These 3 decks are shuffled.
• Deal all of the age 1 cards face-down to all players, each player should now have 7 cards.
• Give all players 3 currency.

And we're ready to play.

On to play
Each player in 7 Wonders is neighboured by a player to their left and right; why this is important will be explained below.
​Each player takes a card from their hand and plays face down in front of them, then they pass the remaining cards clockwise to the next player, the direction of play alternates between rounds.
Once every player has chosen a card, all player then simultaneously reveal their card, plays it and executes one of the 3 actions below.

• Construct building: The most common action, put the chosen card into play, it may be a resource/good or a building, but the rules are identical. Each card has a cost of some sort shown in top left corner. This may be a combination of the following factors below.
  Free: Some cards have to cost and are free to play.
  Chain: If a building name is displayed next to a card's cost and that player has that named building already built in their game area, then the building cost of the currently played card is reduced to zero.
  Money: Players will have to spend money to construct this building.
  Resources/goods: Some cards will require a single or mixture of resources and goods to build. The player must have cards already in their play area that display the relevant resources or goods they need. Thus if building requires 2 wood to construct, the player must have 2 cards in their playing area showing a wood each, or a card with 2 wood symbols, the symbols on wonder boards contribute to this.
  This also where your neighbours matter. A player can also use the resources and goods of one or both of their neighbours, they have to pay for it though; 2 coins for each used. This is unaffected by how a neighbour is using their own resources and goods, also the neighbour cannot refuse to sell resources - after all, money is money!
• Build their wonder: Wonders are built in stages, typically 3 stages. All wonders are built in a linear fashion from left to right.
  Cost: Each stage of a wonder will have a cost similar to constructing a building.
  Place card: Finally, when a stage has been paid for, it is built. The player takes they card they chose earlier and places it face-down underneath the space on the wonder board they just built, never revealing what card was used. Thus, building part of a wonder replaces the normal build card action.
• Gain money: A player may discard the card they chose for 3 currency, this card is always discarded face-down and is permanently out of the game. I guess players do this if they're really desperate for funds.

Overall
​I'm going to nit-pick a couple of things about 7 Wonders.
Set up feels a little long for a game that's quite short, having to sift through all 3 decks at the game start feels irritating, probably because there's 3 decks to construct instead of 1 and if the player count changes between games, then all 3 decks will need to be rebalanced.
The game is quite involved and perhaps a little too complicated for its expected playtime. I found myself frequently forgetting the rule about chaining buildings
Scoring is convoluted, specifically scoring the scientific cards where each symbol will scored twice. I wouldn't be surprised that more time was spent making sure this was correct than the rest of the scoring.

Like other drafting games of this style, early in the game players will struggle to decide what's going to be important to them or not, but by looking at their wonder board, players will see what they need to build their wonder and what benefits it gives them as some guidance.
One interesting feature about 7 Wonders is how players can pay to utilise their neighbours resources and goods and of course, players will want to keep and eye on their neighbours' military forces. It's a nice little spin that adds to the game.
​Since there are 7 ways to score points, players will have a lot of options on which strategy to pursue.
For example, civic buildings give a lot of victory points, but nothing else.
Military strength can score a lot of points (and cost your neighbours a few), but only if you dominate, getting caught in a war of escalation can be distracting and costly.

Quibbles aside, 7 Wonders is a straightforward game to learn that has a quick turnaround and is a fun game to play, players will want to strategize, but the luck of the draw means they will need to adapt to circumstances.
The game always provides players with meaningful choices, which is what you want.

20th October 2020

Tuesday evening in Woking at 'The Sovereigns'.

Time for a boardgame with the Woking Gaming Club.

Tonight's game was 'Ride the Rails'.
Now Ride the Rails looks like a traditional railroad building game set in North America, but it has a few wrinkles that make it play a bit differently.

What's in a game?
Some of the components will seem familiar to any that's played a railroad building game

• Game board: Like all self respecting railroad building games, the board depicts continental North America with a hex map! The map also shows about 50 cities, most are coloured black, but some have other colours related to the rail companies. A scoring track runs around the edge of the board and there's also a section for tracking share price and travel.
• Train meeples: There 27 train meeples in each of 6 colours.
• Passenger meeples: There are about 50 of these. Look closely and you'll that these little meeples are waving their hands!
• Player boards: These player boards track the railroad shares that have been purchased by players.
• Disc components: Used to track turn order, player scores and changing share prices.

There are lots of little components here, all of them are of a good quality, the train and waving passengers meeples are particularly nice.
You may have noticed that I mentioned shares, but there are no components for shares and no money either. Well, more on that below...

How's it play?
Set up

• ​Put all of the share price tracking discs on to their starting spots.
• Put a passenger meeple on each city space in the map.
• Sort the train meeples by colour.
• Give each player a player board.
• Determine starting order.

That's it, pretty simple.

Ride the Rails is played over 6 rounds.

It's important to know that there are only 2 train companies (Red & blue.) available from round 1. The orange becomes available from round 2, yellow from round 3, purple from round 4 and black from round 5. No new companies appear in the 6th and final round.
Additionally, each company has it's own rules for the placement of train meeples.

A round consists of 3 actions, which all players will carry out.

• Acquire a share: Each player (In reverse turn order.) can take one share from any available company, thus in round 1 there is choice of 2 companies. When a player takes a share, they take a train meeple of the relevant colour from its supply. These are the same meeples used to build railroads, the more shares that are taken, the less meeples are available to expand the company. It's also worth noting that because there are only 6 rounds, players will only ever acquire 6 shares.
• Build railroads: Going in turn order, each player can build railroads. A player can only build railroads for any companies in which they own shares, but the player can mix the companies they build for. This is done by taking meeples from the supply and either starting at a city or continuing on a railroad. There are rules for which cities a rail company can start from. There are also limits on how many different companies can occupy the same city or hex. Lastly, building through mountains will slow expansion down a little.
• Ride the Rails. Once all players have build railroads, then in turn order, each player can select any meeple in a connected city and move it to any other connected city going thorough as many connections (Cities.) as they want, there is a limitation though. A single journey cannot use the same hex more than once. Then the meeple is immediately scored and removed from the game. Scoring is a little involved. The share value of company is increased for everyone of it's connections used. So if a journey used 3 blue and 1 red connection, the share value for blue would be 3 and for red 1. Every blue share would pay 3 and every red 1, this is for all players for shares that they own. Finally, only the active player earns 1 for each city that was in the journey, this is equal to the total connections plus 1, in the example above, the active player would earn 3+1+1 for a bonus of 5. The share value and journey tracker are then reset to 0 for the next player's journey. The more connections a journey has, the more points are scored.
• New turn order: Once all players have ridden the rails a new turn order is determined based on the players with the lower scores going higher in the turn order.

Players can earn bonus points by being the first to reach certain cities, or being the first to connect the east coast to the west coast.

Endgame
Play continues until the 6th round has been completed. Final scores are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
As you can see, Ride the Rails is pretty straightforward and simple to understand, it also plays quite quickly.
Don't let the simplicity fool you though, there is a fair a amount of depth here.

Firstly; Ride the Rails has the classic dichotomy in which competing players may need to cooperate. If more than one player has spent a turn investing in a certain company, it's to both their benefits to expand that company efficiently.

Being able to gauge which shares will generate the most points is vital to winning, if a player manages to get 2 or 3 shares (Out of their 6) in a rail line that will see a lot of use, they can potentially rake in a lot of points. If a player however invests too quickly in a single company, it can scare off players who might perceive they are helping another player too much. Remember, 2 players can build up a network much quicker than a single player.

Secondly, building rail networks. In the first round, red and blue train meeples can only start in east coast cities and must more or less head west.
Should a player create a meandering network that maximises connections?
Or should they race towards the west coast? No single rail company can cross the entire map, it will probably take the efforts of 3 companies to do that and this will involve crossing the mountains.
This means it's unlikely that more than 2 companies will connect the east and the west. Making this connection first can be very lucrative, it forces other players to either use the rail network you've got shares in, or waste time building a separate network and just like with shares, each player will only have 6 opportunities to build their network.

I think that Ride the Rails is a good game, that has a lot of elements that will be familiar to experienced gamers but actually plays a bit differently.
You buy shares, you just take them and you don't pay to expand a rail network, it just happens. There is no money in the game in fact, money immediately translates into points.

I definitely want to try Ride the Rails again.

13th October 2020

Tuesday is here and we're at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking.

Time for the Woking Gaming Club to play a game and tonight we will be playing 'The Networks'.

This is a game for the budding media mogul inside everybody; create TV shows, hire film stars, fire chat show hosts, stick advert breaks everywhere, well at least during primetime! Fun for everyone.

When we played The Networks, a couple of expansions were also used.

What's in a game?
The Networks is a card game that has some nice additional components.

• Starting cards: Each player is given 3 TV show cards, 1 Star card and 1 Advert card.
• TV show cards: Each show has a production cost/requirements, a possible upkeep cost and a genre. All shows run for 4 seasons and the card will show how many viewers it accumulate have per season.
• Star cards: Stars are everybody from Shakespearean actors to cookery show chefs. Star cards have a hiring cost/requirements and possible upkeep. Stars are hired for up to 4 seasons and can be put on to a show. They add a varying amount to a show's audience for each of those 4 seasons. Some stars will add less audience if they are not put onto a show of specific genre. A talk show host won't add much to a soap opera's audience figures for example.
• Advert cards: Unlike the previous 2 types of card, a player will earn money if they take an advert! Furthermore, if an advert is attached to a show, it will generate money for every season the show runs. Certain adverts will make more money if attached to certain genres.
• Network cards: These cards grant the player a bonus or advantage of some kind, it may immediate, at a certain time or at the game end.
• Player boards: Each player has their own player board. Each player board has 3 spaces on either side. The 3 spaces on the right are used for the 3 timeslots you control (8pm, 9 pm & 10pm.). The 3 left spaces are The Green Room, Reruns and Archive.
• Genre card: Part of an expansion I believe, each card shows the game's 9 genres and also has a bonus track.
• Scoring board: Tracks player's accumulated audience figures and turn order which can change from season to season.
• Tokens: The Networks also includes tokens, including cubes of the soulless little wooden cube variety!
• Currency: Normally I wouldn't bother mentioning a games currency, but The Networks uses little plastic tokens for money, each one looks like a pile of money.

All the cards are very nicely illustrated with cartoony artwork and flavour text that cheerfully spoofs various different TV programs. Our game was played with an expansion that added classic British TV programs, I'm sure you'll recognise 'The IV Crowd', 'Drake's 8', & 'Creepy Puppets Save The World Again'.
All the other components are standard, except the money tokens which are cool.

How's it play?
Setup

• Each player takes a player board and starting cards.
• The 3 TV show cards are put into all 3 slots on the player card. The Star card and advert card are both put into the Green Room.
• Starting player is determined, this also determines starting money for each player.
• All the cards are put into their relative decks and shuffled.

And the game's ready to go.

The Networks is played over 5 'seasons'.
At the start of each season, TV show, star and advert cards a dealt in 3 rows.
Network cards are only dealt out from the 2nd season onwards.
After this, in turn order, players take 1 action each. This continues until there are no more actions that can be performed or all players have chosen to finish for the season, this is called 'drop & budget'.
The actions are:

• Produce a TV show: If a player wants a TV show, they have to pay for it. A TV show must be immediately placed into a time slot, any show that is currently in the chosen slot must be removed and then put into Reruns. Furthermore TV shows may require a star and/or an advert. If a player does not have the required star/advert in their Green Room, they cannot produce it. Some shows allow players to optionally add stars and/or adverts. In either case, any stars or adverts in The Green Room when the show is produced can be added to the show as part of the same action. Each show also has a limit to the number of Stars and Adverts that can be added to it. Finally; the player must put a marker on to the 1st season row on the TV show card.
• Hire a Star: A player must pay to hire a star, the star is then added to the player's Green Room, not added to a TV show.
• Get an Advert: As their action, the active player can take an Advert, unlike acquiring a TV show or star, the active player is paid to take an advert. Like a star card, an Advert cards goes into The Green Room.
• Acquire a Network card: A player can take any available Network card. It's effect may occur immediately or later in the game, or at the endgame. Network cards become available from the 2nd season onwards.
• Move a Star or an Advert: As their action, the active player can move a single star or advert from their Green Room to a TV show. They maybe some other requirements that must be met, otherwise the card might be flipped upside down to it's less effective side.
• Drop & Budget: The active player, as their action can choose to end their turn (Effectively ending their season.). They then choose to either receive either money or an increase in audience figures. The earlier a player does this  - in relation to the other players, the more money/audience they acquire. This also determines the turn order in the next season.

Once all players have ended their seasons, the next steps occur:

• Balance budget: Certain shows and stars require an upkeep and adverts generate profit. Once these are balanced, you may earn extra money or have to pay some money. If you don't have the money to pay your costs, then you lose audience figures instead.
• Calculate audience figures: Each show will generate audience figures for it's current season, plus any bonus conferred by an attached star. Shows in the Rerun slot also generate audience figures for one more season.
• Age shows: All shows in the Rerun slot are moved to the Archive slot. Then all remaining shows are aged. This is done by moving the marker on the current season row down to the next lowest row. If a show was in its last season, then it is put into Reruns.
• Set up new seasons: Any cards which were not taken from the current season are removed and discarded and an entirely new set of shows, starts, adverts and network cards a dealt out. Thus cards are only ever available for a single season before disappearing. Then the new season begins with the new turn order.

There are additional rules about acquiring shows of certain genres, but that's more or less it for the main rules.
​
Endgame
The game continues for 5 seasons, at the end of the 5th season the shows are still aged. Then a 6th season is scored (No new cards or other actions occur).
​Accumulated audience figures are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
The Networks has some cool design choices that give players interesting decisions to make.

A player can keep going and acquire more stars and adverts for as long as they've got money, which can give them an advantage later on because having these cards in their Green Room means that it's easier and quicker to develop shows. But ending your season early gives you more money/audience, more importantly though, it allows the player to be earlier in the turn order for the following season. So when the new cards appear, that player will get first dibs.

Because the game is very much about card drafting, players really have to think about how they prioritize their actions, as all players will be vying for the same cards.

Players have to try and use their actions as efficiently as possible, there's a fine balance between doing all the actions you want to do and ending your turn quickly.

All in all, The Networks gives players important decisions to make throughout the game and that's a good thing.

10th March 2020

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

The first game of the evening was 'Quacks of Quedlinburg'.
Quacks of QuedlinBurg is not a game about ducks as I thought when I first heard the name.
It's actually a push your luck game about disreputable, dangerous, deplorable and downright dishonest doctors. Actually YOU play the quacks in question trying to create the most amazing and wondrous potions. Amazing and wondrous that is, until they blow up in your face.

What's in a game?
Quacks of Quedlinburg has quite a few components, there is a game board and personal game boards. There are also tokens - and lots of them too, as they are the most important component of the game.

• Game board: The main game board tracks player scores and also tracks the current number of rounds in the game.
• Personal game board: The personal game board is designed to look like a pot filled with a swirling liquid that's just been vigorously stirred, there's a scoring track the follows the lines of the swirling that tracks how many victory points and coins they earn in a round. There're also spots for other components. This board is double-sided for an alternate play style.
• Flasks: There is a flask tile for each player, they are shaped like bottles and are double sided. One side shows the flask as filled, the other as empty.

• Bags: There is a bag for each player.
• Player tokens: Each player receives a rat token and a droplet in their colour. These tokens are made of plastic and are quite chunky.
• Rubies: These are made of translucent acrylic and are 'crystal shaped'  .
• Ingredient tiles. These are used to represent different ingredients that players may gain access to. There are 22 different types of ingredient, depicted in 7 different colours. There are 4 ingredients for yellow, green, red, blue and purple (Arranged in 4 sets of 5 with 1 of each colour). There is 1 black and 1 orange ingredient.
• Ingredient tokens: There tokens for each colour of ingredient (Not type of ingredient.), there are numbered; 1, 2, or 4.  There are also white ingredient tokens numbered 1, 2 or 3.
• Bonus die: A six sided die, but with the numbers replaced by symbols.
• Fortune Teller Cards: A deck of 24 cards that give a one-off bonus when drawn at the start of the round.

The components are all of a good quality. The artwork is colourful and well drawn.
​That the player boards look like pots, flask tiles look like potion bottles and ingredient tiles look like ingredient books shows that some thought, effort and care has been put into the their design. ​

How's it play?
​Setup.

• Set up the ingredients for the game. The black and orange ingredients are used in every game. 1 of the 4 sets (Of 5 ingredients.) is chosen and used as well. Some sets are more 'difficult' to use than others.
• Put out the black and orange ingredient tiles, along with their respective tokens. Then put out the green, red and blue ingredient tiles along with their respective tokens. Put the yellow and purple tiles and tokens to one side for now.
• Shuffle the fortune teller cards and place them down in a face-down stack.
• Give each player a player board (Pot.), a flask tile, a rat token and droplet token. The flask and the rat token go on to their respective spots on the player board. The droplet token goes on to the '0' spot on the scoring track.
• Next give each player a bag, 1 orange token, 1 green token and 7 white tokens (The white tokens consist of 4x1 point tokens, 2x2 point tokens and 1x3 point token.). All of the tokens are placed into the player's bag, which is thoroughly shaken.

Now we're ready to begin.

Quacks of Quedlinburg is played over 9 rounds and something new or different is introduced over several of the rounds.

• At the start of round 2, the yellow ingredients come into play.
• At the start of round 3, the purple ingredients come into play.
• At the start of round 6, each player must add another 1 point white token into their bag.

Now, this is how the first 8 rounds are played.

• ​First a card is drawn from the fortune teller deck and it's action is carried out.
• From round 2 onwards: Determine if players get 'rat-tails' to put into their pot! There are a number of 'rat symbols' on the scoring track on the main board. Every symbol between the player and every other player, means that the other player may place their rat token a space further along the track on their own board, giving them a head start for the round. Essentially a balancing mechanic.
• Then simultaneously, each player begins blindly drawing ingredient tokens, one at a time from their bag and placing them on the scoring track on their board (Starting at the droplet token, 0 at the game start.). The number on the token determines where it goes: If it's a 1, it goes on to the 1st available spot, a 2 goes on the 2nd available spot and so on. Some ingredient tokens have special actions triggered when placed, these actions are carried out immediately.
• Players may continue drawing and placing tokens until either; they choose to stop or they go 'bust'. A player goes bust when the white tokens they drew have a combined value that exceeds 7 (Potion goes boom!).

Once all players have either stopped adding ingredients or have gone bust, play goes on to the next 6 phases.

• In turn order, players who did not go bust can roll the bonus die and acquires whatever bonus the die rolls. Players that went bust skip this phase.
• Some tokens have actions that are triggered in this phase, carry these actions out now, in turn order.
• Players may earn a ruby, depending on where they finished on their scoring track.
• Players who did not go bust score victory points depending on where they finished on their scoring track. Players who went bust, must choose whether to earn victory points or earn coins (See below.).
• Players who did not go bust earn points according to their finishing spot. Players who went bust choose either to earn coins or victory points. Coins can now be spent to buy more ingredients which are added to their bag. Coins cannot be carried over from round to round, use 'em or lose 'em!
• Finally, players may spend rubies to either move their droplet forward on their board (Thus moving their starting spot forward.) or to refill their flask it they used it. 

What the flask does?
When players are drawing ingredients from their bag. They can use their flask to return the token to the bag - provided they had not gone bust because of the token.

Endgame
Play continues normally until the start of the 9th round.
The final round is a little different.

When drawing a token from their bags, each player keeps the token in a closed hand and every player opens their hand at the same time. When a player wants to stop drawing tokens they simply keep their empty hand closed until it's time to reveal it. After that they drop out of further rounds of drawing ingredients.

The phases for spending coins on ingredients and rubies on the droplet/flask are ignored because they are pointless at the end of the game.
Instead; every 5 coins and/or 2 rubies will earn the player a victory point.

After this, victory points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Quacks of Quedlinburg is a fairly easy game to learn and easy to play. It moves along briskly too as there's very little downtime and it doesn't outstay its welcome as it's finished after 9 rounds. When I played it, it felt like a lot was occurring in a short game time.

Pulling ingredients out a bag to put into a pot is a brilliant use of the 'push your luck' mechanic. It fits the game perfectly and surprisingly makes it a lot of fun.

Additionally; unlike most 'push your luck' games, going bust does not totally kill a player's turn, they still reap some of rewards of their potion making and they can still carry out most of the other actions.

The engine building mechanic works well too, as players introduce tokens into their bags, it makes going bust a little harder, giving players longer more productive turns.

Combined, the 2 game mechanics always gives the player meaningful and interesting decisions to make, when to and when not to push your luck? What ingredients to buy? And so on.

I liked it and will definitely play it again.

11th February 2020

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

The final game of the night was 'Glory to Rome'.

Glory to Rome is a game about the glory of Rome, well sort of. It's a game about rebuilding Rome after the 'great fire of 64 A.D.'.
Become a leader of Rome by building fountains, villas and statues, even the Basilica! Of course, players also get to build a latrine... glory to Rome indeed. Well... I guess someone has to!

Glory to Rome is an engine building card game which has an interesting central premise; which is that the function of cards change in the context of how they're used. This isn't something new or unique to Glory to Rome, however I've not seen it used as extensively as in this game.

What's in a game
Glory to Rome has a lot of cards and some of these cards serve multiple functions.

Order cards
By far the biggest stack of cards in the game, order cards have multiple uses:

• Building: Each card can be used to represent a building that can be constructed. There are a lot of different buildings and each has a cost (In materials.) and a different function.
• ​Client role: Each card can be used to fulfil the role of a client. There are 6 types of client; patron, labourer, craftsman, architect, merchant & legionary. Client roles are explained below.
• Material: Buildings require materials to be built. Cards are used to represent the materials that must be used. There are 6 types of material; marble, rubble, wood, concrete, stone & brick.

Site cards
When constructing a building, it needs a site to lay the 'foundation' on. There are site cards for each of the 6 different types of material. Site cards are covered in stripes
Jacks
These cards are 'jack-of-all-trades'. They are wildcards.
Rome demands card
This oversized card goes in the centre of the playing area and is a discard pile/pool for order cards. 
Bonus cards
There are 6 bonus cards, one for each type of material. When scoring at the end, the player who has the highest amount of a material in their Vault acquires it's bonus card. Each bonus card is worth 3 victory points.
Leader card
Used to represent the first player in a round.

That's it for cards.

Player board
Player boards (Or camp board.) serve 2 functions. They are a player aid and they also track certain cards and actions the players have played. The boards track influence, clientele, stockpile & vault.

The quality of the components is pretty standard, nothing standout, but by no means nothing bad either.
The art on the cards is minimal, almost simplistic and feels a little bit amateurish. It does however, give the cards a distinct look, is uncluttered and clean looking. I guess it's down to taste.

How's it play?
Setup is pretty simple.

• Place the Rome demands card in the centre of the playing area, deal a number of face-up order cards into the 'pool' equal to the number of players.
• Place the jack cards next to the Rome demands card.
• Create 6 stacks for each of the 6 types of site card, the number of cards in each stack should be equal to the number of players. Excess sites should be placed in 'upside-down stacks', these excess cards become 'out-of-town' site cards. Out-of-town cards require extra foundation cards to be used.
• Deal 5 order cards to each player.
• Determine the starting player and give them the leader card.

​Now we're ready to go.

Whoever is the first player decides to either 'lead'... or think!

• Leading: If the starting player elects to lead, then they play a card from their hand. The role on that card is role that all players can perform in this round. If the starting player plays more than one card of the that roll at a time, then they can perform the action multiple actions. If the starting player doesn't have a card that matches a role they want to play, they can play a Jack as any role or 2 identical role cards as any role.
• Thinking: If a player chooses to think, they are essentially passing and can perform 1 of 3 actions. Take a Jack from the supply, refill their hand back up to 5 order cards, or if their hand is at 5+ cards they take a single order card.

Once the starting player has chosen their action, in turn order the other players decide whether they want to 'follow' or 'think'.

• Follow: To follow the leaders action, a player has to play a card with the same role as that played by the starting player, all the same rules for using Jacks and 'two-of-a-kind' apply.
• Thinking: As above.

Once all the players have chosen their actions, they are then carried out in turn order, starting with the first player.
When all players have completed their actions, all cards that were played as role cards are placed in the pool. Any Jacks played are returned to their stack.
Play proceeds to the next turn and the Leader card moves to the player to the left.

That's the basics out of the way, now on to what the role cards actually do.

• Patron: This allows the active player recruit patrons, this is done by taking an order card from the 'pool' on the Rome demands card and place it on the 'Clientele' side of their player board. What does this do? It'll be explained below.
• Labourer: This action allows the active player to acquire building materials. This is also done my taking an order card from the pool and placing it on the 'Stockpile' side of their player board.
• Craftsman: This role has a choice of actions. It allows the player to 'create a foundation'. The active player takes an order card of a building they want to construct from their hand and plays it in their playing area as the foundation. Out-of-town site cards require 2 foundation cards. Then the active player takes a site card from the matching site deck and places it beneath the foundation with the 'stripes' showing. OR, it allows the active player to build on an existing foundation by playing a card from their hand on to the site as a material (Provided it is the correct material of course.). If this completes a building, the site card is removed from the building and placed on the influence side of the active player's player board. Once a building is completed, it's ability becomes available to the player
• Architect: The Architect roll is identical to the Craftsmen role EXCEPT in one way, when choosing to add a material to a building, it is taken from the active player's Stockpile instead of their hand.
• Merchant: This allows the active player to move a card from their Stockpile to their Vault.
• Legionary: This allows the active player to send out soldiers to get stuff that they need. The active player decides what material they need (For example - marble.) and says, "Rome demands marble". The active player can take a marble card from the pool and place it in their Stockpile, the neighbouring players directly to the left and right of the active player must give them 1 marble card each (Which also goes into the active player's stockpile.), if the neighbouring player(s) do not have the material demanded, they reply with. "Glory to Rome!". Which I guess is board game speak for 'screw you'!

​Next is the player board.
The player board has 4 sides and each side has a function.

• Influence: All players start with 2 influence. Finishing buildings gives a player more influence. The more influence a player has, the more cards they can store in their Vault and Clientele sides of their game boards. Influence also counts as victory points at the end of the game
• Clientele: Patrons are stored in the Clientele side of their game board. Patrons stored here give the player extra or free actions. If a role is chosen by any player and a player has a client with that role in their Clientele, then when it's their turn they can perform that action without playing a card, they can also perform that action even if their chosen action is to think. Or if they play that role card, they get an extra action of that type.
• Stockpile: Cards are stored here as material, from here they can be moved to buildings, or to the Vault.
• Vault: Cards stored (Actually hidden.) here count towards victory points at the game end. The number of cards (Not the value.) that can be stored in the Vault is limited by a player's Influence score.

There are 44 different types of building, all of them have some sort of special ability that can influence the game.
I think that is more or less it for most rules.

Endgame
There are several criteria that trigger the end of the game.
Play continues until all site cards for all materials have been used, out-of-town site cards do not count towards this.
The deck of order cards is depleted.
The catacomb building is completed.
The Forum Romanum is built and the player who built it has at least one of each type client in Clientele and one of each material type in their Stockpile. If this occurs, then that player wins an outright victory! Victory points are not tallied!

When any of these conditions are met the game immediately ends and points are tallied (Except in the case of a Forum Romanum victory.).

Players score 1 point for each Influence point.
​Players score the cards hidden in their Vault.
Players score bonus cards for the materials in their Vault.

All victory points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Glory to Rome is pretty straightforward to learn once you get your head around the central premise that your hand represents, people, buildings, materials and more.
Like other games that use similar mechanics, it forces players to make difficult decisions on what cards to use for what.

Glory to Rome is an engine building game on 2 tiers.
How cards are placed on the player board on the Clientele side is essentially building an engine. Giving players extra or bonus actions.
Placing buildings is the other way of building an engine.
Together they give players quite a few options to explore.

The game's owner stated that certain cards can break the game, but that wasn't my experience when we played it. Upon looking at some cards after the game ended, I could see what he meant though.

Glory to Rome also asks players to watch each other and see what they do and in particular, what they put in to the pool. The pool is the best source of cards - provided it has what you need and you have the cards to get them.
​
Glory to Rome  is perhaps a little too long to play for what it is, but otherwise it's a fun game.

9th February 2020

It's a Sunday and we're at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. There's no 50 Fathoms this week as 3 players are absent.

Instead we are playing 'Puerto Rico'.

William Shakespeare wrote:
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.​

Well if you happen to play a plantation owner in Puerto Rico, you will play 7 roles, I dunno about 7 acts though.

What's in a game?

• Game board: Not really a game board speaking conventionally, it's used to display all the game's buildings that available to be purchased by players and to store money.
• Player boards: Each player has their own board. These boards have 12 'city' spaces and 12 'plantation' spaces. There is a spot marked as 'San Juan'. There's also a spot marked with a 'windrose' 
• Role cards: There are cards for the 7 different types of role in Puerto Rico.
• Building tiles: There are a total of 49 buildings, 44 standard sized buildings and 5 large buildings. Each building has 1 to 3 little circular spaces for colonist markers.
• Plantation tiles: There are 5 different types of plantation, corn, indigo, sugar, tobacco and coffee. There are 58 of these tiles, but they are not distributed equally amongst the goods, there are slightly less of the more valuable plantations (Tobacco & Coffee) and slightly more of the less valuable plantations (Indigo & Sugar). Each tile has a little circular space for a colonist marker.
• Quarry tiles: Used to indicate quarries (Explained below.), there are 8 of them.
• Colonist markers: Little wooden discs used to represent colonists.
• Colonist tile: Used in conjunction with colonist markers.
• Goods tokens: Little wooden tokens to represent the 5 types of goods that the plantations produce. There are 50 of these tokens, like the plantation tiles they are not distributed evenly amongst the 5 types of goods.
• Trading tile: This tile has 4 spaces on it for 4 goods (When they are traded.).
• Ship tiles: There are 5 tiles to represent ships, they can store cargo. Each ship has a different amount of storage space, this range from 4 to 8 spaces. Although only 3 ships are ever used at one time.

There are also victory point markers, cash and a first player card, but these are self-explanatory.
The quality of the components is mostly quite good.
What artwork there is in the game is OK, but it's not particularly memorable or interesting.

How's it play?
As always, we begin with setup. It looks quite long, but it's actually straightforward. 

• Put out the game board and place all the building tiles on their allotted places on the board.
• Put all of the money on the bank space on the game board.
• Shuffle all of the plantation tiles face-down and then put them randomly into 5 stacks, Put these stacks in a row next to the board. Then turn over tiles from the stacks face-up. There should a number of face-up plantations equal to the number of players +1.
• Place the quarry tiles in a stack face-up next to the row of plantation stacks.
• Put out the trading tile next to the game board.
• Put out the Colonist tile, place a number of colonists on the tile equal to the number of players. The remaining markers form a supply of colonists (The number used varies according to the number of players.)
• Put out 3 ships, the ships used depend on the number of players.
• Put out victory points chips, the number used depends again on the number of players.
• Put out all 7 role cards.
• Give each player a player board, some starting money and a starting plantation. This too is dependent on the number of players and turn order. Money and goods are stored on the windrose on a player's board.
• Finally determine a starting player.

In Puerto Rico there are 2 ways to earn victory points; by shipping goods out and buying buildings.
Each round, in turn order, each player will assume 1 of the 7 roles and carry out the action associated with that role. When a player chooses a role, all players can the also carry out that action, but the player who chose the role can do it's bonus action instead. When players chose a role, they take the relevant role card from the display.
The roles are:

• ​Settler: Starting with the active player, each may take a plantation from the available face-up tiles and place it on an empty space on their board. Once all players have taken their action, remaining plantation tiles are removed from play, new plantation tiles are drawn from the stacks and placed face-up. Bonus action; the player may take a quarry instead of a plantation (And place it on to an empty plantation space.).
• Mayor: Starting with the active player, each player takes a single colonist marker from the colonist tile, continue going round and doing this until all the colonists have been removed from the tile. Players can now place these colonists on to their plantations, quarries and buildings as they see fit. None of these can become active until at least 1 colonist is placed on them. Excess colonist markers are placed into 'San Juan' and can be moved out San Juan to fill empty spots during this action too. Once every player has take their colonist(s), the colonist tile is refilled, the number of markers placed on the tile is either; equal to all the empty circles on all the players' buildings (Plantations & quarries do not count.) or equal to the number of players - whichever is highest. Bonus action; before taking a colonist from the colonist tile, the active player may take an additional from the supply.
• Builder: Starting with the active player, each player may build (Buy.) 1 building from the game board. The cost for each building is shown on the tile, for each active quarry the player has in their plantation area, the cost is lowered by 1, thus the cost can be lowered to 0, although there are limits on how discount quarries confer. Once bought, the building tile is placed on to the player's city area. Bonus action; the player who chose this role can deduct a further 1 from the building cost.
• Craftsmen: When the Craftsmen role is chosen, starting with the active player, players may produce goods. To produce goods, a player must have both plantations and matching production buildings that are active. Furthermore, there must be at least as many colonists in the production buildings as in the plantations to produce all the goods. The exception is corn, that needs no production buildings All goods produced are placed on the windrose on a players game board. Bonus action; the player may produce 1 extra good of any good that they can already produce.
• Trader: Starting with the active player, each player may trade 1 good for money. The player takes the good from their windrose and places it on a space on the trading tile. Only 1 good can be traded and the same good cannot be traded twice. Nor can goods be traded if there are no spaces on the trading tile. Once all trading has concluded, if the trading tile has all 4 spaces filled with goods, then the goods are all removed. If there is at least 1 space available, then  no goods are removed. Bonus action; the player who chose the Trader role earns an extra coin for their trade.
• Captain: When the active player chooses the Captain role, then players must load all of their goods on to the 3 ships, however there are strict rules on how this is carried out. In turn order, starting with the active player, each player will load 1 type of good on to a ship, they must load as much of that type of good as possible. All of these goods must be loaded on to the same ship. If a ship already contains the type of good that the player is loading, then those goods must be loaded on to that ship. If no ship already has those goods, then they can be loaded on to an empty ship. Goods cannot be loaded on to ships that already have a differing type of good. If a ship is already completely loaded with the type of good a player is trying to load, or there are no empty ships, then that kind of good cannot be loaded. Play continues in turn order with players loading (Or not!) 1 type of good at a time until players have had the opportunity to load all their goods (Or not!). Players earn 1 victory point for each good they load - regardless of what type it is. Victory points are taken from the supply. Any player who has any goods left over when loading has ended must discard all of those goods except each player gets to keep a single good. Then, any ships which are full 'leave Puerto Rico' and a replacement ship arrives, essentially, the ship is emptied of its goods and is now an empty ship. Any ship that still has any space in its hold, remains how it is (Phew! It's not a complicated as it sounds!). Bonus action; the player who chose the Captain role gains an extra victory point when loading goods.
• Prospector: When the active player chooses this role... nothing happens! Really, nothing happens. Bonus action; the player who chose Prospector takes a coin from the supply (And possibly more - see below.).

Once all players have chosen a role for the round, a coin is placed on to any role card that was not selected in that round. A role card can accumulate multiple coins if it not chosen for consecutive round. If that role is taken in a later round, that player also acquires the coin(s). Since there are more role cards than players, coins will always be placed on at least 2 different role cards.

Players return their role cards and the next player in turn becomes the new first player and a new round begins.

There remains one last thing to discuss - what function do buildings serve. Firstly, they earn player points. Some buildings are necessary to process goods. Other buildings confer bonuses when trading and shipping or allow players to 'break the rules' in some way or other. Finally, the 5 large buildings give extra victory points according to the conditions on each individual large building tile.

Endgame
There are 3 manners in which the endgame can be triggered.

• When a player places a building into the 12th and final space in their city.
• All the victory points in the supply are taken (Extra points are still recorded for the remainder of the round.).
• There are not enough colonist markers to sufficiently fill the ship tile after the Mayor action has been executed.

If any of these conditions are met, play continues until the current round has ended.

​Players then tally their scores, highest value wins.

Overall
​​Puerto Rico is not a complicated game, but it is a fairly involved one and the rules are fairly detailed. The game has minimal 'downtime' as it allows players to act in other player's turns. This keeps players on their toes, being able to take advantage of another player's role is key to optimising strategy.

It's also a game of very little luck. The only random element is drawing the plantation tiles, everything else is down to player actions and choices.

Talking of choices, the game mostly provides players with useful and meaningful decisions to make. There's always the balancing act caused by there being one too many actions that players will want to do, pushing them into making tricky choices.

The trading and shipping rules give Puerto Rico a little bit of a competitive edge. Players need to watch what each other are doing, because as mentioned above, a decision that the active player makes can aid another player.

Since the trading tile and ship tiles are not emptied until full and even then only at the end of their respective actions. Players can screw each other (And themselves to be fair.) by initiating trading or shipping at particular times, this can and probably will deny certain players the benefits of trading or shipping. After all there are 5 types of good, but only 4 spaces on the trading tile and 3 ships.

Since the game has 2 ways of scoring points. There are broadly speaking, 2 strategies for winning.
These are; accumulate victory points by shopping goods out, or buy buildings and accumulate victory points that way.
In the few times, we've played it recently, it seems to be that acquiring buildings might be a better way of accumulating victory points. Perhaps the trading approach has a harder learning curve?
This is about the only negative I can think about the game.

But other than this, Puerto Rico is a game that rewards thoughtful play and that's always a good thing.

28th January 2020

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

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

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

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

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

How's it play?
First; setup.

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

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

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

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

The player who has accumulated the most money, wins.

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

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

Except it's not so simple.

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

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

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

And so on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7th January 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

How's it play?​
We begin with setup.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Endgame
Play continues for 8 rounds. 

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

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

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

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

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

21st September 2019.

It's Saturday evening round at Matakishi's and that can only mean games night!

​So here we have 'Machi Koro Legacy​'. As the title suggests, this is a legacy version of the very good Machi Koro game.

Spoilers!!!
Don't read any further ahead if you want to play Machi Koro Legacy!

What's a legacy game?
Glad you asked. A legacy game's unique feature is that it is actually a series of play-throughs of the same game. After each game concludes, something changes, is added or removed from the game and that change carries over to the next play-through of the game. Thus you have (In theory.) a game that constantly changes and evolves according to player input.

Machi Koro Legacy is played over 10 games. We played games 1-5 in one night and in total all 10 games were played over 3 evenings.
I'm going to blog about all of the games in this post. Since at the time of writing, these blog posts are about a month behind the actual plays.

If​ you don't know anything about Machi Koro, you can read my blog about it here.
Have you read it?  Good! Now you know all about Machi Koro.

The Basics
The original Machi Koro has 2 expansions, 'The Harbour' and 'Millionaire's Row'.
Generally we play Machi Koro with The Harbour.
​As you would expect, the core mechanics of Machi Koro remain unchanged for the 'legacy' version.
If you didn't actually bother reading my blog about the main game: Here's a quick recap.

• The objective of the game is to purchase all the landmarks first. This is done with money.
• Money is accumulated by building up your city and profiting from this.
• In game terms, building up your city is done by purchasing 'establishment' cards from the available choice of cards in the main game area, called the 'market'. These cards are all numbered from 1-12.
• At the start of the active player's turn, they roll 1 or 2 six sided dice. Every card in the active player's city that has a matching number will then probably earn them money.
• Now the player can spend any money they have.
• There's bit more to it, but that's enough to be getting on with.

The legacy game
I can't really blog about the game in my normal format because the components and rules change throughout the game. So I'll just go through it as best as I can. I'm not going to extensively talk about the original, I'll try to just talk about any differences between 'original' and 'legacy' versions.​

Personal game board
This is immediately different. In legacy, each player is given a game board that has the following:

• Space for your settlement's name: Thus the tiny village of Townopolis was born.
• 4 tick boxes. 2 of these tick boxes are immediately ticked. These determine how many cards a player will will start the game with. In original, players start with the same 2 cards, a Wheat Field and a Bakery. But in legacy, each player is given a number of cards (Called Town Square cards.) from which they choose their starting cards. Initially players start with 2 cards, but as the boxes are ticked, they will start with 3 then 4 Town Square cards.
• A row of 3 spots for cards, with '5', '15' & '25' beneath them. These spaces are for landmark cards, which are put out at the start of a game. As each game is completed, the card on the '5' space is discarded and the other 2 landmark cards slide 1 space to the left into the cheaper spaces. A new landmark is then placed into the '25' space. There's also a 'communal' landmark card that is placed in the main playing area, this landmark is changed for every game. To win a game, players must buy all 4 landmarks. This is a bit different from original,.
• Triangular grid: On the right side of the board is a triangular grid. Players may spend actions 'filling' a triangle instead of buying cards. Filling in a triangle normally takes 2 or 3 actions. Triangles that are 'filled in' earn the player another new thing to the game - diamonds. What are diamonds (See below.)?

Diamonds
Diamonds are a new currency introduced in Legacy. Players can start a game with diamonds or acquire them during play. Some landmarks and cards can use diamonds for a benefit. But the main use of diamonds is to spend them to re-roll dice rolls.

Double sided establishment cards
These are an entirely new type of game introduced in Legacy.
When a game is concluded, a new type of card is added to the market from the next game onward. These cards are 'double sided'. One side tends to be blue/green and the other red or occasionally purple. The player who just won the concluding game gets to choose which side is used, these cards have tick boxes which can ticked to indicate which side was initially chosen.
During later games, it is possible that a stack of double sided cards can be flipped over to their other side. If this occurs, then it also affects all copies of that card in players' areas! (See below for how 'flipping' can occur.)

Traveller die
Another new introduction to legacy is the 'traveller die', a blank six sided die. What's the point of a blank die you may ask? Well, it doesn't stay blank for long. As games are completed, stickers are added to die. The traveller die is now rolled along with the normal dice. The following stickers are added to the traveller die: Turtle, yokai and moon princess
There 3 travellers each have their own little figure that moves along cards as dictated by the rules for the traveller die.

• Turtle: 2 turtle stickers are added to the traveller die. The turtle travels along the player's establishment cards. When the turtle result comes up on the traveller die, the turtle will move along player cards a number of times equal to the result on the normal dice roll. When the turtle stops on a card, it's owner is given money equal to the card's cost. The turtle always starts the game on a card belonging to the player who has won the least number of games.
• Yokai: When the yokai appears, 2 more stickers are added to the traveller die. Generally the yokai is 'mischievous', but in the end becomes a 'nice guy'. The yokai always starts on the fishing boat card stack in the market area and moves along card stacks in the market area. When a yokai result comes up, the yokai moves along a number of card stacks in the market area equal to the dice roll. When the yokai stops on a 'double sided' card, then that card is flipped to its other side. Additionally, any card the Yokai is currently standing, cannot be bought by any player. Eventually the yokai learns the error of his ways and becomes 'nice'. This means that when he stops on a card he no longer flips or blocks it and players are given money from the bank if they have that type of card in their personal play area.
• Moon Princess: When the moon princess appears, 2 final stickers are added to the last 2 blank spaces on the traveller die. The moon princess starts the game on the wheat field card stack in the market area. Like the yokai, the moon princess moves along card stacks in the market area. When the moon princess is standing on a card stack, then the active player can buy a card from that stack for free.

The sea
Another new addition to legacy that appears later in the game is 'the sea'. This is depicted by placing 3 cards in a column in the market area along side the establishment cards. Then, each player receives a boat figurine in their colour and a 12 sided die is introduced into the game. What does this all do? Well, read on:

• Sea travel: The 3 cards used to depict the sea have 10 locations on them, each location is also numbered from 3 to 11.
• If players want to travel the sea, they put their boat at the bottom and travel upwards, starting at 3 and ending at 11. It uses their action for their turn to do so. There are 2 modes of transport available to them. Sailing and rowing.
• Sailing: In order to sail further, the active player must roll the 12 sided die and get a result higher than the number on the next spot that they are headed to. Thus it is possible to fail sailing. Failure can also see the ship go backwards.
• Rowing: To move forward by rowing, the active player simple spends money equal to the number on next spot they are headed for. It costs, but there's no chance of failure.
• Some of the later spots give the players who reach them bonuses such as a free card from the main playing area, cash, an extra go, Etc.
• In the game that the sea appears, the communal landmark requires a player reach the final spot on the sea before they can buy the communal landmark.

Islands
When the sea has been introduced, islands are next. Islands work in the following way.

• 5 island cards are placed face-down in a row in the playing area.
• Each island corresponds to spots 6-10 on the sea track.
• When a player's boat reaches a relevant spot they can look at the corresponding face-down card. They do not reveal it to other players and put it back still face-down.
• Once the player has looked at a face-down island card, they can decline from taking it or choose to take it. If they do take it, then they return back to the start of the sea track.
• If a player takes an island card, it cannot be used immediately. It can be used from the start of the next game onward. It is permanently added to a player selection of cards.
• When a player starts a game with a island card in their possession, they can use it as a town square card, therefore it counts against their town square card limit.
• Even though an island card counts as a town square card, it is not considered a normal card. It cannot be activated by a dice roll, nor does the turtle travel on to it.
• Island cards work by allowing the active player to spend diamonds to acquire cards of a particular type as a free action before they roll the dice. The type of card they can buy is dictated by the island card. Thus a player can get 2 establishment a turn or a establishment and a landmark etc.

The moon
During one of the latter games, the players will acquire rockets for their ships and in the 10th and final game, they will travel to the moon in an endeavour to return the moon princess home.

• The moon card is added to the top of the sea track to form a new track - I guess the moon track?
• Journeying to the moon is identical to journeying in the sea (If only it was so in real life!) except the moon card adds an extra 3 spots to journey along
• None of these spots can be reached with a roll of the 12 sided die. Players must spend money to reach the moon (Space programs are expensive!).
• The final communal landmark require a player reach the moon in order to buy it.

Right that's about it for what's in the game and rules. I've missed out some bits about some cards being removed from play and so on, but that I think is most of it.

The 11th game
Once the 10th game has concluded. The remaining cards can be used to make up a new game of Machi Koro. Having a functioning game afterwards is a nice touch.

So that's it. As I explained earlier, this is the only legacy style game I've played. And to be honest, in regards to Machi Koro, I don't think it adds much to the experience of playing it.

Sure, it adds some interesting ideas to the mix and it was nice seeing new cards. But it also adds a whole lot of unnecessary stuff too. Additionally, the changes that occur throughout the games feel very small, the choice that the winner makes after every game feels inconsequential.

I don't regret playing Machi Koro Legacy at all; it provided us with 10 games and 3 evenings of entertainment. But during those games I never felt that I was playing something superior to the original.