24th July 2022

​It's a Sunday afternoon and we're in The Sovereigns for some gaming fun.

With a couple of exceptions, the rules are broadly speaking, identical to vanilla Love Letter. Luckily, these additional rules don't break the game like some other reskins do but by the same measure, nor do they add anything to it and truth be told, can be easily ignored.
Which is something I would do since I've always found the original Love Letter to have the best implementation of the rules.

So is it worth getting Love Letter: Adventure Time?
​
If you've already got some version of Love Letter; unless you're a completionist or a fan of the cartoon then you can skip this.

However, if you're a fan and don't have a copy of Love Letter, it's a fantastic game and you should definitely get one and this version is a good as any.
In fact if you don't have a copy of Love Letter, you should get one regardless!

14th June 2022

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

​I always thought a good leader leads by example and doesn't hide? On the other hand most leaders don't have to contend with 4 feuding factions and the undead!
Hidden leaders is a fantasy themed sort of hidden role (Leader!) game with a dash of social deduction.

How's it play?

• ​Hidden Leaders: Shuffle the leader cards and deal 1 face-down to each player, these should be kept secret until the game end.
• Game board: Put out the following and carry out the following.
  • Buried Emperor: Put the 'Buried Emperor' face-up in the graveyard spot adjacent it's symbol.
    All other cards placed in the graveyard must be face-up.
  • Hero cards: Shuffle the hero cards into a face down deck and place it adjacent to the harbour icon.
    Draw one card for each of the 3 tavern spaces and place them face-up adjacent to the tavern icons.
  • Meeples: Put the meeples on to their starting spot - the '4' space.
  • Players: Now deal 5 hero cards to each player. Each player must then play a hero card 'face-down' into their personal playing area.
  • Wilderness: Now each player must discard 1 card to the wilderness spot. This means each player has a hand of 3 cards.
    All cards discarded into the wilderness spot are always discarded face-down.
  • First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
Hidden leaders is a game primarily about manipulating the 2 meeples on the board because their relative positioning at the game end will determine which faction wins the game and by extension which player wins.
This done by recruiting i.e. playing hero cards into your personal playing to create your own band of heroes.

There are 4 factions.
Black: Undead.
Blue: The Water Folk.
Green: The Hill Tribe.
​Red: The Imperial Army.

The game uses usual a traditional turn structure with the active player completing their action before play progresses to the player to their left.
During the active player's turn, the following must occur.

• Play or discard: The active player must choose 1 of the 2 following actions.
  Play card: The active plays a card from their hand into their personal playing where it will stay (Unless another actions changes this.) and resolves the action on the bottom of the card which typically involves moving the 1 or 2 meeples around. There a great variety of actions that involve moving meeples, taking or putting cards into the graveyard etc and sometimes card will both a bit of both.
  Usually, cards played this way are played face-up.
  Discard hand: If a player does not want to play any card, they must discard their entire hand and thus will have 0 cards in hand!
• Draw cards: The active player now draws cards to get their hand size up to 4. Thus if they played a hero card, they will draw 2 new hero cards. If they discarded their hand, they will draw 4 cards.
  Cards can be drawn from the tavern spots or blindly from the harbour deck as the active player sees fit.
• Discard: Now that the active player has 4 card, they must discard 1 to the wilderness discard pile. Thus, players should always have 3 cards in their hand at the end of their turn.
• Next player: The player to the left now becomes the active player.

Endgame
The game continues until any player has put 5-8 face-up hero cards into play (Dependant upon player count.), face-down heroes do not count for the purpose of triggering the game end. When this occurs, the current turn is the last turn and we go to declaring a winner.

First, the victorious faction must be determined, each one has their own winning criteria based on the positioning of the 2 meeples on the track.
Black (Undead.) wins if both meeples are in the black area of the track, that is on spaces 9-12. This is regardless of the positioning of the meeples relative to each other.
Blue (Water folk.) win if both meeples are on the same or an adjacent space on the track - provided of course they are both not in the black spaces.
Red (Empire.) wins if the red meeple is 2+ spaces further along the track than the green meeple, ​so long as both meeples are not in the black area.
Green (Tribe.) wins conversely, if the green meeples is 2+ spaces further along the track than the red meeple, again, 

Next; players reveal their hidden leader cards and face-down hero cards.
The player whose leader is aligned to the winning faction, wins!
It's quite likely that more than player will have a leader aligned to the winning faction. If this is the case, then the player with the most hero cards aligned to the winning faction wins.

Overall
The first thing to mention is the game's asymmetrical winning criteria, it's something I've not seen elsewhere and is key to Hidden Leaders' appeal and informs all of the gameplay and tactics mentioned below.

The objective is pretty straightforward in Hidden Leaders. Players will not only be trying to manipulate the meeples to their own advantage but also trying to deduce the  motives of their opponents from their actions. This will allow players to try and anticipate their opponent's actions to their own advantage.

E.g., a player moves the red meeple up closer to green one which is ahead, is it because they want to bring them together to want the red meeple to overtake the green or do they want to put the meeple in the black area.
In this example, one single move can work towards the winning conditions of 3 factions.

Interestingly, when cards are discarded to the wilderness, it's face-down so others can't try and see which cards are essentially worthless to the discarding player. Further more, players will at least 1 face-down hero.
All of this is compounded by each leader being aligned to 2 factions so it can be hard to try and guess which faction they're supporting.
It's a great use of 'imperfect knowledge' mechanics that will keep players on their toes.

Hidden Leaders is a fairly easy to learn rules-light game, it mixes this accessibility with a higher level of play and depth of complexity that comes from trying to anticipate the actions of opponents that will make players think.
So, while theoretically the game has a reasonably quick play time, some players will spend a lot of time analysing their options and next move. In short; the analysis paralysis can be strong with this one and it seemed to take longer than expected. But that can be down to the players.
It should also be noted that whilst Hidden Leaders doesn't really have direct interaction between players, it definitely has a bit 'take that' mechanics. It's not too harsh to be fair but it's there and I for some players this is a no-no.
Having said all of that, I found the gameplay a little slow, it felt like 1 card-play/actions wasn't quite satisfying enough and it felt like there was a bit too much downtime between turns, although we did play with a player count at the higher end.

Otherwise I can't fault Hidden Leaders. If card games fairly heavy on deductive reasoning and trying to gauge the motives of other players are something you like, you'll probably find this engaging and enjoyable. 

13th May 2022

Friday the 13th! And I'm in Farnborough with work colleagues for some gaming fun.

​Viva la resistance! Will you overthrow the tyrannical oppressive government or welcome your new overlords? Let the cards decide.

Resistance is a hidden role card game that is also the predecessor of Arthurian themed The Resistance: Avalon and as such is mechanically almost identical to that game. In fact ​The Resistance or at least the basic version of it is actually a simpler game than The Resistance: Avalon.

Reading my blog about The Resistance: Avalon will tell you everything you need to know about The Resistance. A full write-up here would be pointless.

There's only 1 notable difference: The basic version of The Resistance only has 2 role cards, resistance fighter and spy. Otherwise the games play identically.

At the start, each player is given a secret role as a resistance fighter or spy. The key thing here is that the spies know who each other are and are trying to sabotage the missions while the resistance fighters are trying to uncover the spies.
The mission leader chooses a team and all players vote on whether to approve or reject that team. When a team is finally chosen, they all go on the mission. This involves the team voting on whether a mission succeeds or not. Resistance fighters must choose  to succeed at missions but spies can choose to either succeed or fail.
​
All of these decisions and voting are done in secret and resistance fighter will need to watch the voting, who votes in what and the outcomes of the voting. Spies will need to be patient, revealing their hand too early will flush them out.
If by then of the fifth mission, the spies have not sabotaged 3 missions, then the resistance wins. If 3 missions are sabotaged

Overall
There's not too much to add here, everything I said about The Resistance: Avalon also applies here, but that was sometime ago and I can't remember exactly what I said. So I'll summarise here.

Mechanically, The Resistance is pretty solid with a easily understood set of rules that give opportunities for lying, deception and deduction. There's nothing to fault there.

The quality of the game though, comes almost entirely from the participants.
Players who love to bluff and mess with other players will revel here and be in their element. Whilst those who aren't fans of this type of game are likely to find it slightly uncomfortable, won't enjoy it and thus probably won't play it as well.

So if you're fan of hidden role games and are playing with like-minded people, The Resistance is definitely worth trying. 

12th January 2022

​Wednesday gaming round Simon's concluded with Mascarade, a fairly chaotic hidden role card game.

What's in a game?

• Mask cards: A stable requisite of social deduction games because they are so good at hiding information are cards and Mascarade is no different in that regard. The game makes use of no less than 13 role cards, 12 of which are unique (There are 2 peasant cards.).
  Each card has it's own specific power and without going into detail, these cards frequently allow the active player to take money in some way or other from the bank or steal it from players. Some allow the active player to mess with other players' cards and so on
• Coins: Pretty standard round card tokens representing gold.
• Character tokens: Used to track which characters are in play.
• Courthouse Board: Inevitably, players will get caught bluffing or cheating and must pay a fine on this tile which depicts an official looking building.
• Scenario sheets: Used to track which cards are employed during a game. Not all cards are necessarily played with at the same time in Mascarade and the card-mix will change according to player count - Mascarade plays up to 13.

That's it for components.

Mascarade's components are normal standard you'd expect from a modern game, the game's standout quality are the colourful, detailed illustrations on the mask cards and courthouse board which to me look to have a late medieval/renaissance theme.

The game features a small amount of straightforward easy-to-understand iconography, having said that, the game also features a whole bunch of different roles to try and remember; which are only displayed on player guide cards.

How's it play?
Setup

• Gold!: Give each player 6 gold.
• Cards: Take the cards as required by the player count; shuffle them and deal 1 to each player face-up, so that all players can see each other's roles.
  After this, all cards should be flipped to face-down.
• First player: Determine a 1st player.

That's it, we're ready to go.

On to play
Mascarade's opening is quite unique; the initial 4 turns must always be the exchange masks action, which is understandable as it randomises the cards that were initially shown. After these 4 turns, play proceeds as you would expect, the active player takes their turn, then play progress clockwise.
During their turn, the active player may perform 1 of the following 3 actions.

• Look at card: All cards are kept face-down during the game and the active player can spend their action to look at their card. This is not as futile as it might sound as players can rapidly switch cards around!
• Exchange cards: When this action is selected, the active player takes their own mask card and that of one other player without out looking or revealing either of them. Then, in secret potentially swaps them round, typically this is done by holding the cards under a table so no one can see what's going on. At this point the active player decides which card is returned to who and remember, all of this is done without looking at either of them.
• Use card: The active player announces that their card and are using its power. The active player does not look at their card when they do this and it can be done even if they aren't sure what their card is, they can even outright lie if they want to or think they can get away with it. This will then lead to 2 outcomes.
  Unchallenged: If no one challenges the active player's declaration, then the active player carries the action they announced.
  Challenged: When the active player makes their announcement, any other player may challenge them by announcing that they in fact have that card. Thus:
  Active player; "I have The Queen and I can take 2 gold from the bank".
  Other player; "no, I have The Queen".
  When all challenges have been declared, the active player and all challengers reveal their cards.
  Whoever has the announced card (In this case The Queen.) can make use of its power. Everyone else who revealed a card, be it active player or challenger has to pay 1 gold to the Courthouse Board. It is possible that no player has the announced card!

These are 3 core actions players can perform, obviously, the cards' abilities will modify these to some degree or other.

Endgame
There are 2 criteria to ending a game.
If a player acquires 13+ gold coins, they win.
If a player loses all their gold, the game immediately ends and the player with the most coins wins.

Overall
For a large part, Mascarade feels like a pretty standard hidden role game, what makes it stand out though is the card-swapping mechanic.
During play, it's likely that players will quite quickly lose track of which character they have and announcing a card can always be risky; now that's what I call a hidden role!
This can of course be remedied by taking the look at card action, but is it worth spending an entire action to do so while other players could be earning money? Maybe it's worth taking a the risk - or bluffing!
Nudging players into this central dilemma is what makes it unique and interesting.
Otherwise, you'll be on pretty familiar ground if you like hidden role games: Trying to work towards your goals while also trying to calculate what other players are doing or which character they have - although the randomness of Mascarade has made that trickier!

It's hard to gauge  a game Mascarade because like many hidden role games, it's quality is dependant on the players involved, as you tend to play the player and not the game.

Like most hidden role games, Mascarade can be a bit divisive. If you don't like this style of games, you can probably give this a pass.
However, if on the other hand hidden role games are you thing and particularly if you like a bit of unpredictability in your game, then Mascarade is definitively worth a try.

19th September 2021

Sunday afternoon gaming at The Sovereigns continued with Love Letter: Batman.

Love Letter: Batman is of course a licensed reskin of the most excellent Love Letter, a game that we've played a lot of in the past.
I'm not going to talk about Love Letter: Batman too much because it differs from the original in only 2 ways - more on that later.
Love Letter: Batman cleverly maps characters from the Batman milieu into the game.
​Batman becomes the guard, which when you think about it makes sense, since he's able to immediately take out enemies if he's smart enough.
The Joker becomes the princess, power in some situations, but liability in others and he's one everyone's looking.
Robin becomes the handmaiden, protecting the player by drawing enemy attacks away with his brightly coloured garb!

The cards in Love Letter: Batman pretty standard quality and are all illustrated with suitably comic book styled artwork which all looks the part.
The game also utilises bat-symbol themed scoring tokens - pretty cool.

The rule changes
Love Letter: batman changes 2 rules from the original.

• 7 points to win: Winning Love Letter: Batman requires players to score 7 points, whereas the original required 7-4 points for 2-4 player games. This ties in with the other change, which is...
• Batman can score extra points: This makes Batman overpowered and well, I suppose this is at least thematically accurate!
  This occurs whenever the active player uses a Batman card to successfully guess an opponent's card and that card was a villain - which it most likely will be as Batman cards can't be targeted this way and the only other hero is Robin. If this condition is met, the active player immediately scores a point.

Those are the rule changes and once again a rule has been introduced which allows players to score points mid-round, it's a concept I really don't like. It ruins the game's tension by allowing players to reach the victory threshold and essentially win the game before the round is over. It's so anti-climatic.
I've heard it said that it this rule makes the game play quicker, but the higher victory threshold for 3-4 player kind of negates that.

Conversely; in classic Love Letter, even if one player is 1 point away from winning and all the other players are at 0 points, until that player has won that final hand to win that final point, it's not over. Yes, it'd be a hard turnaround and a longshot, but it doesn't change the fact that nothing is over 'til everything is over.

Want my opinion? Just play Love Letter: Batman as classic Love Letter. Yes, it does make having this version sort of of pointless, but the classic version is the best version and there's nothing stopping you yelling dinner, dinner, dinner dinner, BATMAN when you play a card.

25th July 2021

Sunday gaming on Board Game Arena continued with Bang!

The American west could be an ornery, dangerous place; friend or foe, it was always hard to tell, particularly when you all sat in circle and pointed pistols at each other, with nothing else but a spittoon between all of you.

Caveat: We have only ever played Bang! digitally.

What's in a game?

• Role cards: ​A hidden role card game has to have hidden role cards! Bang! has 7 of them. A sheriff, deputies, outlaws and a renegade,
• Character cards: Each player takes on the role of one of the characters as well as a hidden role.
  Each character card displays their number of bullets (Hit points.) and has a special ability.
• Playing cards: Used for a variety of purposes in the game, mostly for attacking other players and there are 80 of them.
  They're 2 types of card; brown cards which are once-only and blue cards, which have an ongoing effect.
• Player boards: Player boards have spaces to place, hidden role, character and weapon cards.
• Bullet tokens: These represent hit points.

Bang! utilises a stylised cartoony art style throughout the game cards which is appealing enough and iconography is clear to read.

How's it play?
Setup

• Hidden Roles: The mix of hidden cards used will depend on the number of participating players, but there's always at least the sheriff, an outlaw and a renegade. Randomly deal each player a hidden role card face-down, the player who gets the sheriff role must reveal their card, everyone else keeps their role secret.
• Characters: Deal each player a character card face-up, players now take the relevant number of bullet tokens for their character, fortunately for the sheriff, they start with an extra bullet!
• Playing cards: Shuffle the playing cards and deal cards out to the players, place the remainder in a face-down deck.

On to play
The main purpose in Bang! is to attack your enemies and aid your allies (If you have any.)! This is is not quite so simple as it sounds though, since it's unlikely that players will know who is an enemies or a friend, at least at the start.
Additionally, you may not even be able to reach you enemies, most attacks in Bang! have a range of 1, this means an attack can only target someone 1 space away, i.e., someone adjacent, there are several weapons have extra range and there're also ways to alter ranges.
A turn in Bang! consists of 3 actions.

• Draw cards: The active player draws 2 cards from the player deck.
• Play cards: The active player may play any number of player cards with the exception of Bang! cards, of which only 1 may be played, Bang! cards are the main form of attacking other players.
  Player cards have various actions from attacks to healing, to stealing cards from other players or forcing them to discard etc. Player cards also provide weapons and gear to players.
  Finally, there are a couple of cards that players can use out-of-turn in reaction to the active player, these are the only cards that can be played out-of-turn.
• Discard: The last action performed by the active player is to discard down to their card limit - which is equal to their bullets/hit points.
  Thus, as a player loses hit points, their hand size shrinks correspondingly, it can be a quite nasty death spiral!

Endgame
In Bang!, play continues until one of three win conditions are met, these win conditions will depend what hidden role players have.
Sheriff/deputies: All outlaws and the renegade must be eliminated for the sheriff/deputies to win.
Outlaws: Eliminate the sheriff and the outlaws win.
​Renegade: Win by being the last man standing.

Overall
​Bang! is a pretty straightforward hidden role game, however, unlike some hidden role games, most of the game's 3 factions will start not knowing who their allies might be, with exception of deputies and the renegade (Who has no allies.).
Players will need to observe other players' behaviour to try and gauge their motives, this is made more difficult because the renegade will be looking help or hinder either of the other factions depending on the situation, adding to this are the range restriction rules that can force players to change behaviour. Additionally, in Bang! actions are card driven, i.e. a player's decisions will be to some degree limited by the cards in their hand; no BANG! card - no attack for example, this can mean even more restrictions on player choices.
We found this made for a slightly unsatisfying experience, particularly since there's a a fairly strict rule on hand size and it becomes a case of use-it-or-lose-it with cards. It didn't help that sometimes it felt like the card play made the game a little futile, managing to play a Bang! card only for your target to immediately heal it made for a negative feeling.

We played Bang! with a lower player count and online; with more players and in-person play I'm sure that it would've been a different experience, a game like Bang! will thrive with more players.

I'm not the biggest fan of hidden role games and I don't think Bang! is a bad game but  I can think of other similar games I'd rather play - including it's later companion game; Bang! The Dice Game.

22nd December 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now we're ready to play.

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

The active player can perform 1 of the following actions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's look at it with 3 players.

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

Now lets look at a 6 player game.

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

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

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

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

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

20th October 2019

Sunday lunchtime is here and we're at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. There's no 50 Fathoms this week, so that means board games.

We began with 'Avalon' an 'Arthurian' themed game.
It seems that a reoccurring element in Arthurian themed games is 'betrayal' (Or is it confirmation bias on my part?). Is Avalon any different? Does it buck the trend? In a word; no! Because Avalon is a hidden role game that's all about betrayal.

What's in a game?
Avalon has very few components, but they are of a good quality.

• Character card: There are some personality cards and some nameless minion cards too. Avalon need at least 5 players and supports up to 10! When playing in lower numbers, the personality cards are used. But with larger numbers, the minion cards are also used.
• Voting cards: There are 'yes' and 'no' tokens. one of each is given to all players.
• Quest cards: There are 'success' and 'failure' cards. One of each is also given to all players.
• Game boards: Avalon has a set of small boards, the board that is used in a game depends on the number of participants. Each board contains a row of circles (For the 5 quests undertaken during the game.) and beneath each circle is a a number (This the number of players who must participate in each quest.).
• Result tokens: Marked with 'success' on one side and 'failure'' on the other. Used to indicate the result of each quest.

How's it play?
Because Avalon is a 'hidden role' game it requires quite a bit of setup first. For the games of Avalon we played was 5-player and we used the following 'good' characters: Merlin, Percival, and a loyal servant of Arthur. And the following 'evil characters  Morgana, and the assassin.

• Deal a character to each player face-down.
• Give a pair of voting and quest cards to each player.
• Now we do the hidden role thing, where everybody closes their eyes. Then the following occurs.
• The Merlin player learns who is playing the 2 'evil' characters.
• The Percival player learns who are the 2 magicians (Merlin and Morgana - but Percival does not learn who-is-who!).
• The 'evil' players learn who each other are (Morgana and the assassin).
• The remaining 2 players learn nothing! Poor saps!
• Finally, someone is assigned to be first player (Leader.).

Now we can play.
The objective in Avalon is to go on 5 quests, the 'good' characters want at least 3 of these quests to succeed. Meanwhile the 'evil' characters want at least 3 quests to fail and are looking to sabotage the quests.

Each round is divided into 3 phases, team selection, voting, questing.

Team selection

• Each of the 5 quests requires a certain number of participants to complete.
• The leader will nominate the required number of players to go on the quest, this can include the leader.

Voting
Once the leader has finished nominating players for the quest, everyone will then vote on their team selection.

• During voting, every player decides if they are happy with the team selection or not and votes on it.
• This is done by playing either the 'yes' or 'no' card face-down.
• When everybody has played a card, all the cards are turned up and revealed for all to see.
• If the majority of cards are 'yes', then the quest will go ahead. If the majority of cards are 'no', then that team has been rejected (A tie in voting counts as a rejection.)
• In the case of a rejection, the player to the left of the leader now becomes the leader and the team selection and voting begins again.
• If 5 team selections are rejected in a row, then 'evil' wins the game

Questing
Now that the team selection has been approved, the game moves on to questing.

• Every player that is participating in the quest must play a quest card.
• The player must choose 'success' or 'fail' and plays the card face-down.
• When all the quest cards have been played, they are collected and shuffled.
• All the quest cards not used are also collected face-down and shuffled. This is to prevent players deducting who chose what from the cards not used.
• Finally, the quest cards used for the actual quest are revealed. If all of the cards are 'success' cards, then the quest is successful. If any of the cards are 'failure' cards, then the quest is failed!
• Both quest cards given to the active players.
• The player to the left of the leader becomes the new leader and the game moves on to the next quest.

Endgame
Play continues until:

• 'Good' has successfully completed 3 quests, in which case 'good' wins.
• 'Evil' has sabotaged 3 quests, in which case 'evil' wins.

However, this is not the end of the story, or blog in fact.
If the 'good' players have successfully completed 3 quests; the assassin player can 'kill' a character. If the assassin kills the Merlin character, then evil wins!

Additionally, as mentioned above, 'evil' can also win during the team selection voting.

Overall
I'm going to start by mentioning that I'm not a particular fan of hidden role games. I think it's because I'm not entirely comfortable with my friends flat out lying to my face!

But I have to say that Avalon is a good hidden role game.
I think that the reason it works so well is because there are 2 'tiers' of play going on at once.
Most hidden role games I've seen have players making deductions based on the results of how things play out. Which for Avalon is the quest outcome

But Avalon has something different, something extra. It also has the 'team selection voting phase', which has open voting for everyone to see. This gives players plenty of opportunity to try and glean each other's motives.
'Good' players will want to try and vote down teams that they suspect contains 'evil' characters. It's hard for a quest to be sabotaged if it contains no evil characters. Conversely 'evil' characters may want to vote down a team that does not contain evil characters.

Finally, the assassin introduces a sting in the tail. The Merlin player will know exactly who the villains are. But they must be careful when selecting or voting for teams. If they're too obvious, then the assassin player may manage to deduce who the Merlin player is, then 'evil' will win.
It's an intriguing idea and a real balancing act for the Merlin player.

So, if you like social deduction, bluffing and hidden role games, Avalon is definitely worth a try.

24th September 2019

Tuesday night gaming at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking continues.

The second game of the evening was 'Bang! The Dice Game'. A hidden role game driven by push your luck mechanics. Let's see how this goes?

What's in a game?
Bang! The Dice Game comes in a small portable package. Components include:

• Dice: 5 Custom dice used in the game.
• Character cards: Each player will be randomly dealt a character. Each character  has a unique special ability and hit points (Denominated by bullets in this game.).
• Role cards: This wouldn't be a hidden role game if there weren't roles to hide from other players. There are 3 types of role and they are explained below.
• Tokens: Bullet tokens represent life. Arrow tokens have another use that will be explained below.

How's it play?
First there's set up.

• Bullet and arrow tokens are placed to form a supply in the central playing area.
• A role card is randomly dealt to each player face-down. Whoever is the sheriff must reveal their card. All other players keep their role hidden.
• A character card is randomly dealt to each player. These kept face up. Each player collects bullet markers equal to what is shown on their character card.

What are the hidden roles?
There are 3 types of hidden role in the game. The number of each role that appears in a game will depend on the number of players, except there is only ever 1 sheriff.

• Sheriff/deputies (The good.).
• Outlaws (The bad.).
• Renegades (& the ugly.).

Each of the different roles have their own objective.

• Sheriff/deputies: If the outlaws and renegades are defeated, then the sheriff and deputies win.
• Outlaws: If the sheriff is defeated, all the outlaws immediately win.
• Renegades: A little unusual here. A renegade player wins if they are the last one alive, even other renegades must be eliminated. And the outlwas must be defeated before the sheriff, if the sheriff is eliminated before the outlaws, then the outlaws win, not the renegade.

And we're good to go. Playing the game is quite straight forward.

• The active player rolls all 5 dice.
• The active player can choose to re-roll any or all the dice (Except for 'dynamite results - see below.).
• The active player may also choose to have a first re-roll. This may include dice not included in the first re-roll.
• The active player can stop rolling at any time. In which case the dice results are dealt with.

29th June 2019

It's a Saturday lunchtime at 'The Sovereigns'.

We should be playing 50 Fathoms, but sometimes life interferes.
So instead we are playing Princess Legend.

Will the Prince find his Princess (Yay!), or will he get the Queen instead (Boo!)! Only you can find out in... Princess Legend.
Princess Legend is a 'bluffing/social deduction/hidden' role card game. Everyone is given a role to play and the 'Prince player' tried to guess who is the Princess.

What's in a game?
Princess Legend is pretty light on components.

A deck of 8 cards. They are actually coasters and not traditional playing cards in size. Each card has a colourful portrait on it. There 3 types of character on the 8 coaster.

• The Honest: There are 3 'honest' characters. The Prince, the Princess and the Fairy.
• The Dishonest: There are 3 'dishonest' characters. The Queen, the Guard and the Siamese.
• The Neutral: There are 2 'neutral' characters. The Maid and the Spy (A spy neutral, hmm, OK.).

​A bunch of tokens to track scoring.
And that's it!

How's it play?

Set up.
The amount of coasters that are used in a game is equal to the number of players plus 1. Thus if you play with 4 players, the game would be played with 5 coasters.
​Princess Legend is played with a minimum of 3 players and 4 coasters. The Prince, the Princess, the Queen and the Maid are always used in all games. The other characters will be used dependant upon the number of players participating.

Every player will play the role of the Prince. The Prince's role moves clockwise round the table in every round.

Firstly, the Prince coaster is given to the player in the Prince role in this turn. The coaster is kept face-up as everyone knows who is the Prince.

Secondly, the remaining coasters are shuffled and dealt face-down to the remaining players. One coaster is placed into the middle of the playing area is played by nobody.
Once dealing has finished the Prince must close their eyes, then all the other players must reveal their roles (Now only the Prince does not know what everybody else's roles are.). Then all the players (With their eyes open.) are satisfied that they've seen everyone else's role, they turn their coasters back face-down again, the Prince can open their eyes once more.
Now play can commence.

Let's do this thing!
The Prince's objective is to guess which player is the Princess (Or if it's the coaster in the middle). To do this, the Prince must ask the other players questions.
However, the objectives of the other players will be different. Other players will want to get the Prince to pick a certain face-down coaster. Each player's objective is different according to their role.

• Princess/Fairy players also want the Prince to find the Princess.
• Queen/Guard/Siamese players will want the Prince to wrongly choose the Queen.
• Maid/Guard players will want the Prince to wrongly select any role except the Princess or Queen.

However, there is a limit to the questions that can be asked. The Prince can ask each player only one question each (In any order.). When all players have answered a question, then the Prince has one final question that they can ask anyone.

Not only is the Prince limited to the number of questions that they can ask. They are also limited in what the question can be. There are only 3 questions that can be asked. They are:

• Where is the Princess?
• Who are you?
• Who is that (Pointing to another player or the coaster in the middle.)?

How the players answer this question is dependant on what role they have.

• Honest characters (Princess/Fairy) must answer honestly.
• Dishonest characters (Queen/Guard/Siamese) must always be dishonest and lie.
• Neutral characters (Maid/Spy) may choose whether to tell the truth or lie.

Once the Prince has made their guess on who is the Princess, all the other players reveal their roles. Then we see who has scored a point in this round.

• If the Prince successfully guessed who was the Princess; all the honest characters earn a point for their players.
• If the Prince wrongly selected the Queen; then all the dishonest characters earn a point.
• If the Prince wrongly selected any character other then the Princess or the Queen; then the neutral characters earn a point.

Endgame.
Play progress until each player has played the Prince 1, 2 or 3 times (Depending on number of players).
Then points are tallied. Highest score wins.

Overall?
Generally, I dislike bluffing/hidden role games. But this is one of the better ones I've played. I like how your put into random, shifting teams each round and then trying to work with your temporary colleagues.

Princess Legend also seems to differ to many other hidden role games: In most hidden role games, your role is hidden from all other players. But in Princess Legend, your role is only hidden from the Prince.
I think that this makes the game a little less intense, a player only has to deal with questions from one other player and even then, there's a maximum of 2 questions to answer.
And those answered are never really challenged, because the Prince play must use logic and reasoning to try and figure their choice. When a player lies to the Prince, figuring out it's a lie will provide information in itself.

So I think Princess Legend is a 'tolerable' hidden role game - which for me means it's quite good - for that sort of game.