16th August 2022

It's a Tuesday and were at The Sovereigns with the Woking Board Gaming Club for some gaming goodness.

​Have you ever watched the classic Jaws movie and decided, 'y'know I wanna be the shark going round chomping on hapless swimmers'?
Then this might be the game for you!

Jaws is a asymmetrical game of 2 halves where up to 3 players take on the roles of film's 3 protagonists and 1 player becomes the shark. 
At first the protagonists will seek to defend Amity Island from shark attacks before finally engaging it in a deadly cat-and-mouse game.

Jaws is played over 2 acts (Essentially 2 different games in reality.) and as such, has a lot of double-sided components mostly relevant to each act.
For the purposes of this blog, I'm mostly going to write about each act separately.

Act 1
What's in a game?

• Game board: This is a double-sided board.
  Amity Island: For act 1 on one side is depicted Amity Island, the fictional setting for the film. It looks like Amity Island is modelled after Martha's Vineyard - which is cool as Martha's Vineyard was used for location filming.
  The island is divided into several different areas, Many of which are numbered 1-8 as well as beaches denominated as N,S,E & W. These areas also include features suck as the docks or mayor's office.
• Meeples: Jaws uses quite a few meeples. They are all wooden tokens
  There are meeples not only for Brody, Hooper and Quint but also their boats which have room to hold their respective meeples! - Except for Brody, he has some binoculars to make up for it instead!
  Obviously there's a big meeple for the shark.
• Cards: Only 1 type of card is used for Act 1.
  Event cards: Each event card will list some of the sections on the map where swimmers will appear. E.g, if an event card states NN3, 2 swimmers will in section N and 1 swimmer will appear in section 3. They may also list a special move that becomes available to the 3 crew or hero protagonists.
• Player boards: Player boards are also double sided.
  Each of the 3 crew (Brody, Hooper & Quint.) gets their own player board. These boards list the moves and abilities of each hero, many of which are similar but some of which are unique to each hero.
• Shark board: That's right, the shark gets their own double-sided board.
  The side used for act 1 allows the shark player to track how swimmers they've eaten. It also has spaces to track barrels attached to the shark.
• Tokens: Jaws has several types of card tokens.
  Crew tokens: To go along with their boards, the 3 crew get tokens. Quint gets 2 barrel tokens, Hooper gets a... fish finder token and Brody gets binoculars and 'beach closed' tokens.
  Swimmers: There 16 swimmer tokens in the game, all of them can be tasty treats for the shark.
  Shark tokens: There are 4 'power tokens' that the shark player can use once per game to give them an edge during act 1.
• Action log: This allows the shark player to secretly track their hidden movement, usage of power tokens and also track what information they have to give to the other players.

That's it for the Act 1 components, now on to...

Act 2
What's in a game?

• Game board: The other side of the game is used for Quint's boat, 'The Orca'.
  The Orca: This side of the board shows open sea and has 8 spaces to place the 8 tiles that form Quint's boat in this act. There are also spaces to place the 'Resurface' deck, 3 cards and a discard pile. More on resurface cards below.
• ​Orca tiles: There are 8 tiles used to represent Quint's boat which appears in act 2. They are double-sided, with one side showing the boat undamaged and the other wrecked. 
• Meeples: Act 2 uses the meeples for the 3 crew and the shark, the boat meeples are not used.
• Player boards: The other side of the player boards provide information on the actions that players can perform in Act 2. It also has a tracker for their hit points.
• Shark board: The shark board for act 2 displays the moves the shark player can perform and tracks the shark's (Very High!) hit points.
• Cards: Act 2 uses several of types of card.
  Gear cards: There are general gear cards as well as specific gear cards for each of the 3 crew. Generally they will be weapons and will show many dice are rolled to inflict damage. Although they are also attachable weapons and accessories which negatively affect the shark.
  Resurface cards: These cards will show areas where the shark might resurface to attack The Orca. It also shows how may dice the shark player rolls to attack and how hard it is for heroes to hit the shark back.
  Shark powers: The shark player will have a number of these that they can use to surprise the hero players.
• Tokens: There are tokens for both the crew and the shark.
  Targeting tokens: There is 1 round card targeting token for each player.
  Resurface tokens: There are 2 sets of 3 resurface tokens, each token in a set is labelled A, B or C. They are also round and made of card.
• Dice: There are 3 red six-sided dice that come with the game. They are not typical six-siders, instead of numbers they show 0, 1 or 2 'hit' icons.

Phew, I think that's it for rules!

Component quality for Jaws ranges from average to very good. Things like the cards and tokens are your pretty standard cardboard affair, which is fine.
The dice seem to be made of acrylic and although they're not as nice as wood, they feel quality with engraved icons instead of printed ones.
The wooden meeples are the standout component, particularly the wooden boats for Hooper and Quint, as well the shark meeple inspired by the films iconic artwork and I think they're cool.

As far as I can tell, the Jaws game has a relatively restrained use of photo art sourced from the film which only appears on a number of the event cards and even then it is used sparingly. It's wise decision in my opinion, as too much can make a game look cheap. The game also seems to reference artwork used for the shark from the film but because it's actually art, it looks good.
Otherwise, art used throughout the game is good, the swimmers tokens and player boards all look good.
The best artwork is found the Amity Island side of the game board though, it's an excellent illustration with lots of pretty detail.

There isn't too much iconography and what there is, is easily understood. Most of the rules information on components comes as written text.

Act 1
How's it play?
​Setup

• Choose players: 1 player should be the playing the shark and the other players will be taking on the roles of the 3 crewmates. If there are less players than heroes, then they should split the roles between them.
  Player boards: Give all players their relevant boards, meeples and tokens.
  Brody gets his board, as well as his binocular and beach closed tokens.
  Hooper gets his board, meeple, boat and fish finder token.
  Quint get his board, meeple, boat and 2 barrels.
  The shark player gets their shark meeple, power tokens and action log.
• Player board: Put out the player board.
  Brody: Put the Brody meeple on the Amity P.D. space.
  Hooper: Put the Hooper meeple on his boat and put the boat on the western dock.
  Quint: Put the Quint meeple on his boat and place it on the eastern dock.
  Put all the remaining barrels on the shop space.
• Shark: The shark player should put their marker on the 0 space on their swimmer tracker. They should keep their 4 power moves face-down and hidden from the other players.
  The shark meeple IS NOT placed on the board at the game start.
• Event cards: Shuffle the event cards into a face-down deck.

On to play
During Act 1, the shark player will be attempting to eat as many hapless swimmers as possible!
Meanwhile, the crew players will be using barrels both to try and locate the shark and to attach them to the shark. The more swimmers the shark eats, the more advantage the shark player has during Act 2.
The round is broken down into several phases and follows a more or less traditional turn order with each player having a number of action points they can spend to achieve their actions.
Phase occur as follows.

• Event phase: 1 card is drawn from the event deck, it will distribute swimmers to various locations throughout Amity Island's beaches. It may also confer a special rule for this round
• Shark phase: The shark player has 3 action points to spend in this phase and basically has 2 types of actions they can perform:
  • Move: All shark movement is hidden and tracked by noting it in the movement log. For 1 action point, the shark can move a space.
  • Eat: For 1 action point, the shark may eat a swimmer. This is hidden from the other players (For Now.) and also logged in the action log.
  • Power tile: The shark player may play on their power tiles, which they do by playing it face-down. Power tiles are once-only special abilities such as extra movement or extra stealth. Once used, they are removed from play.
  • Declare: Once the shark player has finished their actions, they must declare certain information to the other players. This can be done in any order the shark player sees fit.
    They must how many swimmers they've eaten and at what beaches is was at.
    They declare and name regions they passed through that contains a barrel.
    Finally, they must declare if they used a power token but not which one was used.
• Crew phase: The hero protagonists each get 4 action points to spend in this phase and the player can choose the order in which the 3 crew act. However, a hero must complete all their actions before play progresses to another hero.
  There are a number of similar but also unique actions available to the hero protagonists.
  • Move: All the hero protagonists can spend action points to move. Brody doesn't have a boat and must stay on land, while the other 2 must stay in their boats on the sea.
  • Pick up barrels: Brody can carry and deliver 1 barrel from the shop space. Hooper and Quint can pick up multiple barrels from the sea or docks. Hooper can also deliver barrels to Quint.
  • Rescue swimmer: All the hero protagonists can spend an action to remove a swimmer at their current space from the board.
  • Use binoculars: Once per turn, the Brody player can spend an action use their binoculars while at a beach. If the shark player is at the targeted space, they must reveal their position and put the shark meeple on the board.
  • Close beach: Another Brody ability. If the Brody player is at a empty beach, they may spend an action point to put their 'Beach Closed' token on that beach.
    The next time an event card would place any number of swimmers on the closed beach, flip the token to the 'Opening Soon'. Then if a following event card would add swimmers to that beach, instead return the token to the Brody player. Thus, this action protects a beach from 2 event cards.
  • Fish finder: Once per turn and for an action point, the Hooper player may put their fish finder token into their current location.
    Then the shark player must respond in one of the following ways.
    If the shark is in the same space as the fish finder, they must put their shark meeple on the relevant space on the board.
    If the shark is on a orthogonally adjacent space, the shark player must declare 'nearby'.
    If neither of the 2 above conditions it met, then the shark player must state 'neither'.
  • Launch barrel: Once per turn and for action point, the Quint player may fire a barrel into their space or a orthogonally adjacent sea space.
    If the shark is in the space that was targeted by the Quint player, they must declare the barrel has hit them and add it to their shark board.
    If no shark was in the space, the barrel remains there and acts as a sensor to detect shark movement during the remainder of Act 1 or until it is picked up again.
• Next turn: Once all the crew have taken all their turns, play progress to the next round, beginning with the event phase.

Act 1
​Endgame
Act 1 will immediately end if 1 of the following 2 criteria is met:
Barrels: 2 barrels are attached to the shark by the Quint player.
Swimmers: The shark player has eaten 9 swimmers.

On to play
During Act 2, the shark player will be attempting to either totally destroy The Orca or deal enough damage to the crew to what amounts to eating them. Meanwhile, in turn, they will be attempting to deal enough damage to the shark to defeat it.
Play takes place over a number of phases.

• Resurface options: The shark player draws 3 resurface cards and places them in their allotted spaces on the game board.
  Each card has information on the location of where the shark might attack as well how many damage dice will be rolled, how hard it will be for the crew to attack the shark and finally, if the shark will 'shake off' any attached objects.
• Shark player choices: The shark player now decides on an action.
  Resurface token: From the 3 available resurface options, the shark player chooses which one to use and places the corresponding resurface token face-down in front of them.
  Shark abilities: The shark player may play one of their shark ability cards face-down in front of them. Each one of these cards provides the shark player with a bonus or surprise special move of some sort.
  Once played, a shark ability card is discarded out of play.
• Crew Preparation: Now it's the turn of the crew players to make plans.
  Move: Each hero can move up to 2 tiles on The Orca unless they are in water, in which case, they must spend their entire movement to get aboard The Orca.
  Prepare gear: From their hand, each hero chooses a weapon to use, there are slightly different rules for the 3 weapon types which is explained below.
  Crew players may also use a 'chum' card that forces the shark player to reveal one of the 2 resurface tokens they didn't use which narrows the choices down for the crew.
  Use targeting token: Each crew player now puts down their targeting token on to a space, obviously choosing one of the spaces shown on the resurface cards. There are some rules for this though.
  Ranged: When using a ranged weapon, crew player can put their targeting token anywhere on The Orca.
  Melee weapon: While using a melee weapon, a crew player can only put their token on their own space or a orthogonally adjacent space.
  Attachable weapons: Targeting for these weapons is identical to melee weapons.
• Shark reveal: The shark player now reveals the resurface token they chose and places their shark meeple there.
• Crew attacks: Any crew players who correctly targeted the space that the shark resurfaced in, can attack it.
  The weapon that the player is using determines the number of dice used, sometimes it includes a bonus. The amount of 'hits' results rolled becomes the damage done to the shark. However, the resurface card will have a 'evade' value which is deducted from the damage dealt. If 4 damage is done and the evade value is 2, only 2 damage is done, it's possible to reduce damage to 0 this way.
  Attachable weapons are a little different, they automatically hit the shark and have a ongoing effect until the shark player manages to shake them off with a shake off action on a resurface card.
  To be honest, we found the attachable weapons to be of little value as the shark player generally managed to shake them off almost immediately.
  
• Shark attack: Once the crew have had their attacks, it's the turn of the shark! 
  The shark player can attack a part of the boat that they are adjacent to or a member of the crew that is in the water.
  In a similar manner to the crew players, the shark player rolls a number of dice as shown on the resurface card they chose.
  If it is dealt to a crewmate, then that's the damage they take.
  Attacking the boat is a little more complex, each tile 2 numbers, one is the attack value needed to damage the tile and the second larger number is the value needed to outright destroy the tile. Damage does not accumulate and must be applied in a single roll to have an effect.
  Damaged tiles: These are flipped to the other side and have a new value to beat to destroy.
  Destroyed tiles: Are removed from play.
  In either case, any crewmates on a affected tile are put into the water.
  Finally, as a bonus action, the shark player gets a free attack at crewmates who are in the water adjacent to them.
• Next turn: Once the shark player has had their attack, they remove their meeple from the water surrounding The Orca and take back any resurface tokens that were used. The resurface cards are then discarded
  The crew players take their targeting tokens.
  Then a new round begins.

​Endgame
Play continues until 1 of 3 criteria are met.

If the shark's damage exceeds its tracker, it is defeated and the crew collectively win.
If The Orca is totally destroyed, the shark player wins, or, if the damage on all the hero protagonists exceed their tracker, they are all eaten and the shark wins!

Overall
It's been a long time (And I do mean a long time!) since I watched Jaws but I feel the game does for the most part a good job of thematically emulating the movie.
Having Brody rushing around the island kicking pesky swimmers off the beaches and closing them only to have them open and fill with swimmers again felt like the movie. On the other hand, having Brody run around collecting barrels for Quint was strange.
While the shark popping up to attack swimmers before vanishing was cool, Hooper and Quint in their boats playing a cat and mouse game with the shark while trying to rescue swimmers seemed a bit strange. Especially considering the heroes are the cats and the shark is the mouse, which is a bit of a reverse of how the film plays out.
Having said all of that, Act 2 does a excellent job of emulating the protagonist's final confrontation with the shark.

So overall... This is more of a comment than a criticism on the game's theme.

Now, on to game play.
Act 1 presents an interesting cat-and-mouse challenge to the players which will change contextually according to how swimmers are distributed by event cards.
The shark player needs to eat swimmers but avoid spaces that the crew players might target and if possible, avoid the barrels that detect the shark.

Astute crew players will need to balance their efforts between trying to protect beaches with lots of swimmers and also covering lesser used areas. While the busier beaches might provide a target-rich environment for the shark, the shark player may anticipate the crew players protecting those beaches and avoid them for smaller 'quieter' targets.

I get the feeling that if the shark gets a lot of kills or very few, it will have a big influence on who will win in Act 2. Certainly, the shark getting 5 kills (Which is exactly in the middle.) led to a very close finish.

Act 2 also presents a sort of cat and mouse scenario with differing dilemmas for the shark player and the crew players.
The shark player will generally be faced with deciding whether doing damage or avoiding it, often the resurface cards will not allow the shark player to do both. The shark player will may also have the opportunity to target the crew instead of the ship. Eliminating one of the crew can be very beneficial as it lowers the number of attacks the shark may have to face but generally, it's harder and will take longer to kill a crewmate than it is to destroy one of The Orca tiles.

The crew players also face a dilemma. They know the 3 locations where the shark might resurface so with 3 protagonists could target all 3 locations, but this means spreading their firepower and it'll be a tall order defeating the shark this way. So the crew will need to try and anticipate which option the shark player will choose and this require assessing a bunch of contextual elements such as how much damage the shark will do, how high it's evade is and how damaged that part of The Orca is. 

All players will need to adapt to the random circumstances provided by the resurface cards and will probably have to trade off one strategy for another.
It presents the players will meaningful decisions to make, which is always a good thing.

However, there are somethings I definitely do not like about the game.
Firstly, Jaws is a one-vs-many game and I'm not a fan of this game type. Generally the mechanics of one-vs-many games can never balance for the fact that multiple human brains will have an advantage a single human brain. For the most part, it's fairly inherent that 3 players will see more strategies and opportunities than a single player.
Also; when someone is playing the 'one', games can be become a lonely experience since all the other players will be against them.
I can't help but wonder if the shark could have been automated and have the game be fully cooperative.

Secondly, because this is such a asymmetrical game, it means that one set of rules must be learned by the crew players and another by the shark player.
That's not the end of it!
Because there are 2 acts, it means that there are actually 4 sub-games that must be learned.
Luckily, none of the rules are particularly complex or hard to comprehend but even so, it feels like a lot of effort to play a game, then have to learn a new set of rules to continue. More effort than the entertainment the game delivers.

Normally I don't bother blogging about marketing or sales but I have to wonder who this is aimed at? Dedicated games, movie fans?

Most dedicated gamers are with good reason wary of licensed games. They tend to be quick cash-ins with lacking game.
To be clear I don't think that's the case for Jaws, while the rules are light-ish, there's depth of gameplay to found in the cat-and mouse mechanics that pits players against each other. I just didn't find it particularly compelling.

Jaws is a great, classic movie and I'm sure there are collectors of Jaws memorabilia and merchandise but will they care enough about the game to play it. I'm sure it will end up in the collections of those fans but will they be compelled enough to make make the effort to learn and play the game?

If you're really after a Jaws experience and are happy with the game's 2 act structure and cat-and-mouse gameplay. This is by no means a bad game and worth a try.
For me this didn't hit the spot and I have no desire to play it.

24th May 2022

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

Fly as free as a err flying pirate? Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is set in a world of fantastical aerial ships, anthropomorphic heroes and adventurous voyages to find loot and lost treasure.

What's in a game?

• Board: The board for Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is double-sided.
  One side has the 'base' game and depicts a cheerful oceanic panorama of land and flying islands in a colourful palette.
  The other side features the same landscape but lashed by heavy rains and troubled by storms. This side is the more 'antagonistic' side.
  Initiative track: This track has space for 6 cards and also tracks initiative throughout the game's day and night phases.
  Loot spaces: There are 6 spaces for 'loot' and are marked day 1 through to day 6. Each space represents a day of voyaging. Each of the game's 3 voyages lasts 4, 5 or 6 days respectively.
  Reputation tracker: There are 6 spaces here (One for each player.) and it runs from left to right, with the rightmost player having the highest reputation. Beneath each space is a gold value and on the left end is a '-2' gold symbol, while on the right end is a '+2' symbol.
  Loot tile spaces: Not to be confused with loot tokens or loot spaces. These provide special rules when loot tokens are taken and also serve as spaces to place 1 each of the game's 7 loot tiles.
  The actions tend to activate either at dusk or the voyage's end.
• Player cards: There are identical sets of 40 cards in each player colour that depict 40 different pirates and are numbered 1-40 in the top left corner. They also display a name for each character.
  At the bottom it lists the ability of each card in the game's 3 phases.
  Bold, brash and cartoony art is used to illustrate the character cards.
• Reputation tokens: There is one of these bulky octagonal reputation tokens in each player colour.
• Scoring dials: There are 2 dials on each of these and again, they come in 6 player colours.
• Graveyard tile: There is 1 each of these tiles for each player and they display a wrecked ship.
• Loot tiles: These can be used to provide alternate rules for when a loot token is taken.
• Loot tokens: Now I'm a pretty big fan of wooden components but even so, these plastic tokens are very chunky and look very cool - even if they look chewy sweets in colourful wrappers!
  They represent the game's 7 different types of loot; chest, barrel, relic, hook, saber, amulet and map. When a loot token is taken, it will activate it's special rule as per the board or loot tiles in play.
• Bag: Used in conjunction with the loot tokens to blindly draw them.
• Doubloons: Gold doubloons are the game's currency. These tokens are made of card and have different shapes dependant on denomination.

Component quality is solid throughout, cards, tokens and tiles are well constructed but the chunky loot tokens really stand out, even if I have to resist the urge to try and unwrap and eat them.

Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest makes use of excellent use of bright, eye-catching, cartoony art presenting a larger than life setting and characters.

About a dozen icons are used throughout the game, they are all fairly clear and easily understood.

How's it play?
Setup

• Board: Put out the board.
  Reputation track: Take all 6 reputation tokens (Regardless of the number of players.) and randomly put them on the track to determine starting order of initiative. Each player should get 7-12 gold according to their starting position on the track.
  Optional: Players can choose to use the default loot rules on the board or use the loot tiles for a variant on these rules.
• Loot: Put all the loot tokens into the bag and blindly draw loot tokens for each day of the current journey, the number of tokens drawn for each day should equal the number of players.
• Players: Give each player the following in their colour.
  Character deck: This 40 card deck should not be shuffled and instead be in numerical order going from 1-40.
  Scoring dial: Should be set to 0.
  Graveyard: Will come into play later on.

That's pretty much setup done.

On to play
Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is played over 3 'voyages' which have a length of 4, 5 and 6 days. For each day, a player will put a character card into play and this is done secretly.
​Thus over all 3 voyages each player will use 15 character.

• Voyage start: I said earlier that no one should shuffle their character decks. Well now, one player should shuffle their deck, draw 6 cards and show them to all other players.
  Every other player should now take those 6 cards out their deck and put them into their hand.
  This means that all players will have identical hands of 6 cards.
• Play card: Each player now chooses and plays a character card from their hand and plays it face-down.
• Reveal cards: Once all players have put a card down, they are all simultaneously revealed.
  Cards are then placed on to the initiative tracker in numerical order with the lowest value going on the left (And going first!) all they way to the highest on the furthest right (Who goes last.). Ties are resolved according to the reputation tracker.
• Phases: The following 3 phases are played which will trigger various actions which gain or lose players gold, reputation or even character cards.
  • Day: In initiative order (With the lowest value characters going first.) activate each character card's 'day' ability (Provided the character has one.).
  • Dusk: Now in reverse initiative order, each player should remove their character from the initiative tracker and places it in their playing area, if the character has a dusk ability it should now be activated and then they take a loot token from that day's space. If the token chosen activates a rule with a dusk ability, it is also immediately resolved.
    If for any reason a player's character has been sent to the graveyard, the controlling player does not collect the card or a loot token.
  • Night: Players now activate any night abilities on the cards they've placed in their personal playing areas in any order they choose.
    ​Once this is done all cards in a player's personal area are discarded to their graveyard.
    Any loot tokens a player has acquired stays in their playing area until the end of the voyage.
• Next day: Once all night actions have been resolved, play moves on to the next day and any unclaimed loot tokens from the previous day are returned to the bag.
  Each player now puts another character face-down into their area and the 3 phases are resolved again.
• Voyage's end: When the last day in a voyage has ended and night actions for that day have been resolved, then end of voyage actions are resolved. Typically these will be actions related to loot tokens and loot rules, although there are character cards with abilities to be resolved now too.
  Gold: However much gold a player has accumulated on this voyage is now added to their scoring dial and is considered 'banked', this means that if a player loses gold for any reason later in the game, it does not come off of the dial.
  Tokens: All coin tokens are returned to the supply and all loot tokens put back in the bag.
• New voyage: The setup is now done for a new voyage which will be a day longer.
  Loot tokens: All the days for this voyage are now populated with loot tokens following the previous rules.
  Draw cards: The player who initially drew 6 cards at the start of the 1st voyage now draws another 6. All other players also draw the same 6 cards.
  All players will now have 8 cards in hand, 2 from the previous voyage and 6 identical from the start of this one.
  Play now progresses normally for the allotted number days.

Endgame
Play progress until the night actions for the 3rd and final voyage are resolved.
Players compare their scoring dials.

​Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest feels like a complex game but in practice is quite straightforward. In essence, a character card is played and the resolved up to 3 times.
Where the game's complexity comes from is how a character card played interacts with character cards played by other players.

Everyone starts with the same hand of cards and will acquire a further identical 12 cards during the course of the game.
It means that all players will be using the same 18 cards played over in total 15 actions. But since it's unlikely that all players will make use of the same cards at the same, it means the game encourages players to watch their opponents. Knowing when someone has or hasn't played a certain card can prove very useful. This contextual information can allow players to adapt their tactics and can change the flow of the game.

Additionally; Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest injects a dose of 'take that' into the game, the 40 cards have a varied set of abilities that can be brought to play, including being able to eliminate other characters, pulling cards out of the graveyard, etc.
It's also worth noting that while the 'calm' side of the game board has the potential for some friction between players the 'stormy' side increases this.

The game also provides short and long term goals which require short, mid and long term strategies.
Day abilities on cards give players immediate benefits, but dusk and night abilities can also provide desirable benefits. A player may choose to put a high value character card on to the initiative track so they go earlier in the dusk phase to secure a certain type of loot.
Which brings me to long term strategy, loot is vital here. Loot typically provides benefits during the end of voyage phase and the loot for all days is openly shown on the board which players must take this into consideration during the whole journey. 

All of this means that Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest hits a sweet spot of accessible but tactical game play. Players are always given meaningful decisions to make using a degree of imperfect information.
I found it an engaging game. Definitely one to try.

7th December 2021

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

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

What's in a game?

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

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

How's it play?
Setup

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

Now we're ready to go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

21st November 2021

Sunday evening gaming Board Game Arena continued.

The next game of the night was Chocolate Factory.

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

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

What's in a game?

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

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

How's it play?
Setup

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

Now we're good to go!

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

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

That's it for the first phase.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scoring also presents players with choices.

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

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

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

21st September 2021

It's a Tuesday and I'm at The Sovereigns in Woking with the Woking Gaming Club.

In honour of Talk Like A Pirate Day, the first game of the evening was Jamaica, a game of pirate racing.

However, before we move on:
"My wife's gone to the West Indies."
"Jamaica?"
"No, she went of her own accord!"

With that out of the way, let's continue.

How's it play?
Setup

• Game board: Put all the treasure tokens on to their allotted spaces on the board, then shuffle the treasure cards and remove 3, place the 9 remaining cards in a face-down deck on to their space on the board.
  Put out the dice on their spaces.
• Player decks: Give each player a player deck and put the corresponding ship on to the start/finish space.
  Each player should shuffler their decks into a face-down deck and draw 3 cards.
  Give each player a player board.
• Start player: Determine the start player, who becomes the Captain.

Now we're ready to to begin.

On to play
​In Jamaica, the Captain rolls the dice and assigns them to the game's 2 different phases per turn. Each player then chooses 1 of their 3 available cards to play and then performs the day and night actions on those cards. how effective those actions will be are determined by dice rolled and allocated to day and night.

• Captain rolls: The player who is The captain rolls the 2 normal six-siders, then they assign 1 die to the 'day' phase and the other to the 'night' phase, they are free to consult their hand of cards before doing so.
• Play cards: Once the dice have been allocated to the 2 phases, each player must play one of their 3 available cards face-down in front of them. Once this is done, all cards are revealed.
  Actions: Starting with the captain, who becomes the active player, all players perform their 2 actions. The day action is fully completed first, then the night action is completed.
  There are 2 types of action - movement and loading with a total of 5 different actions.
• Loading: There are 3 loading actions for the 3 types of resource - food, gold and gunpowder, they all function identically.
  The active player loads a number of resources into their hold equal to the dice for that phase. If they are loading food as the night action and the die for the night phase is a 3, then they load 3 food tokens.
  Holds: There are however, some restrictions on loading. Resources must be loaded into empty holds, if the active player has no empty holds then they must discard all the resources from a hold to make room, furthermore, the resource being discarded cannot match the resource being loaded.
• ​Movement: There are 2 types of movement.
  Forward arrow: The green arrow pointing right represents forward movement, this allow the player's ship to move forward a number of spaces equal to the dice on the pertinent space. E.g., if the die on the morning space is a 4 and the played card has a green arrow for the morning action, then they can move forward 4 spaces.
  Back Arrow: The red arrow that points left represents backwards movement. The player must mover their ship backwards a number of spaces equal to the relevant die!
  Stopping: Once a ship has ended its movement, the player must deal with the space they have stopped at, this can be detrimental if player's aren't careful. There are 3 types of space.
  Port: If a player's ship ends movement on a port space, they must pay the cost shown in gold.
  At sea: If the player's ship ends movement on a space where they are at sea, indicated by the squares, they must pay the cost in food.
  Can't pay: In either instance above, if they active player cannot pay the cost of the space they have ended movement on, they must move their ship backwards until they land on a space where they can pay the cost, or on to a pirate lair where there is no cost, see below for more info.
  If a ship does not move this turn because they played a card with 2 load actions, then they do not have to pay any cost.
  Pirate lair: If player stops at a pirate lair and there's a treasure token there. They can discard the token to draw a treasure card. If the token here has already been taken then nothing happens. In both situations there's nothing to pay.
  Combat: What happens if a ship moves on to the same space as another ship, glad you asked; see below.
• Combat: When a ship moves on the same space as another ship, then combat ensues!
  The player who moved on to an already occupied space is considered the attacker, the player who was already there is the defender.
  The attacker decides how many gunpowder tokens they want to commit, rolls the combat die and adds the 2 values together, this is their combat strength.
  The defender then decides how many gunpowder tokens to commit and rolls the combat die, adding the 2 values together to generate their own combat strength.
  Whoever has the highest combat strength; wins (See below)! In the case of a draw, nothing happens.
  Star: If the star result is rolled, it can dramatically change the outcome of combat.
  If the attacker rolls the star, they immediately win the combat, the defender doesn't even get to roll!
  If the defender rolls the star, then they win the combat regardless of the attackers combat strength.
  The winner: The winner of combat may chose 1 of the following 3 actions.
  Take resources: They winner may take all the contents from one of the loser's holds.
  Plunder treasure: the winner may take one of the loser's face-down treasure cards.
  Curses: The winner may give one of their cursed face-down treasure cards to the loser, curses indeed!
• Next player: Once the active player has completed their 2 actions, play progresses to the player to their left until all players have completed their actions. All players draw another player card and the compass token moves 1 player to the left and a new round begins.

​
Endgame
Play continues until a ship reaches the start/finish, upon which the current turn is completed and the game goes to scoring. There are 4 sources of scoring.
Players score points according to where their ship finished, the start/finish scores 15 and points go downwards from there. If a ship failed to pass the -5 space, then they lose 5 points.
Every gold token a player has on their player board scores a points.
Treasure cards score their points and cursed treasure cards deducts from the player's score.
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
In Jamaica, players must balance the need to load resources with the need to move along the game track, doing too much of one or the other will probably be detrimental. They'll need to judge when it's the right time to move with the right amount of resources. The rules limiting how players fill their holds forces players to make decisions about what they carry on their ships.
Players will also need to mitigate bad rolls and unfavourable cards, e.g., playing a red arrow backwards move when the die shows a 1.

At the same time it's also a good idea to keep an eye out for other players. If another player is 3 spaces away and one of the dice rolled a 3, there's always the risk that opponent will end moving on to your space, provoking a fight, which could prove costly. Perhaps it might be a good time to load some gunpowder...

Obviously, all of this is to some extent is influenced by the dice rolls, having all the gold in the world wont help if a player can't reach a port! It means players will need to adapt to this randomiser and change strategies when the dice - and sometimes the captain don't give player the results they need.

Jamaica is a cheerfully colourful game with fairly light programming game where players 'only' have to think 2 moves ahead, with a theme that fits well with the mechanics. Jamaica also has elements of resource management and a touch of player interaction and conflict. It's an easy to learn programming game that is fun to play, particularly if you like a little bit of jostling between players and generally presents them with meaningful choices to make.

27th October 2020

Tuesday evening is here and I'm at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking with the Woking Gaming Club.

Time for the first game of the evening; Karuba.

​Have you fancied yourself as an explorer just landed on some unmapped jungle island? Well in Karuba you control not just 1 explorer, but 4! All in a rush from beach to jungle in order to find temples, treasure and ultimately glory first before everybody.

What's in a game?

• Player boards: All player boards have 30 spaces in a 6x5 grid. Half of the grid's perimeter is bordered by the beach and the half by the jungle. Each half of these perimeter's is numbered (In increments of 10.) from 10 to 110, these numbers represent compass degrees. There is little artwork here, but what there is, is nice enough
• Path tiles: Each player has 36 identical numbered tiles. Each tile shows a path or a junction. Some tiles will also display a gold or diamond symbol.
• Meeples: Each player has identical tokens, 4 sets of an explorer and a temple, in 4 colours. These are nice wooden tokens.
• Gold and diamonds: Shiny and translucent little plastic tokens are used to represent gold nuggets and diamonds.
• Scoring tokens: There are 4 sets of 4 scoring tokens in the same 4 colours as the meeples. Iin each set of tokens they are worth from 2 to 5 points.

There's not much to be said about the components. The meeples are good classic wooden tokens and the gold and diamonds are a nice touch too. The rest of the components are well made and sturdy.

How's it play?
Set up
The set up for Karuba very straightforward, if a tiny bit time consuming.

• First choose 1 player as a 'caller'.
• Starting with the caller and clockwise order, each player will put a single explorer down in a beach space numbered from 10 to 110 on their player board, at the edge of the grid. All other players must also put down an explorer of the same colour on the same space on their own player boards. Then the player puts down a temple in the same colour as the explorer, but in one of the jungle spaces numbered from 10 to 110 instead; the only restriction is that it cannot be less than 3 spaces away from the same coloured explorer. Again all other players follow suit. Continue until all explorers and temples have been placed. All players should now have all their meeples in identical spaces.
• The caller is given their set of 36 tiles, these should be shuffled and placed into a face-down stack.
• All remaining players should place their tiles face-up in numerical order around their board so that they can be easily found.
• Gold, diamonds should be placed in an easily accessible spot for all players.
• The amount and value of scoring tokens used will be dependant on the number of player. 1 face-up stack in each colour should be created, with highest value token on top and lowest at the bottom. All 4 stacks should placed in a spot easily reached by all players.

Now were're ready to go.

Gameplay for is very straightforward. Players are trying to move their explorers to the temple of the same colour. Unsurprisingly, this is done by laying tiles and moving the explores along the paths that are created.
Karuba has no turns, everyone makes their choices at the same time.

• The caller will have a stack of face-down tiles. They turn over the top tile and announce the tile's number to all other players. The other players should then find and pick up their matching tile. Now all players have to make 1 of 2 decisions: Lay tile or discard tile to move explorer.
• Lay tile: If a player chooses this option, they must put the tile on to a grid. There is only one rule; tiles cannot be rotated, the number in the corner of tile must always be upwards. Other than this, any placement is ok, you do not have to connect it to another tile or path, you can create dead-ends or block other routes off or send a route off the grid, remember the only player you can screw over... is yourself. Finally if the tile has a gold or diamond symbol on it, then place a corresponding token on to it.
• Discard tile to move: If a player discards a tile, then they can move an explorer along a number of tiles equal to the number of exits on the discarded tile. Thus a straight or bend confers 2 movement points, a T-junction confers 3 and crossroad -4. There are some rules here: Only 1 explorer can be moved, the movement points cannot be split between explorers, an explorer cannot pass through a tile that is already occupied by another explorer nor can they end the round there. If an explorer moves on to a tile with a gold or diamond token on it, the player can choose to pick it up, picking the treasure up ends the explorer's movement irrespective of any remaining movement points.
• Once all players have finished playing a tile or moving explorers. A new round begins and the caller draws another tile.
• When an explorer reaches their temple (By moving off the grid and onto the temple's space.) they collect the topmost scoring token in the same colour as their explorer/temple. If two or more players reach the same coloured temple in the same turn, they all score according to the topmost token, players who take the lower value tokens also take diamonds to make up the difference.

Endgame
Play continues until one player has moved all 4 of their explorers to the relevant temples, or as is more likely until the caller has depleted their entire stack.

Players add the points of all the scoring tokens they've collected and the gold and diamond tokens, gold is worth 2 points and diamonds 1 point.
​Highest score wins.

Overall

Despite the simplicity of the rules, Karuba gives players lots of decisions to make nearly all the time.
​
The most common of these is whether to play a tile or discard it for movement.

This is a very elegant mechanic, the best tile to build paths with is the crossroads, because it gives you the most options. But the crossroad is also the best tile to discard for movement, as it give you most movement. 

Early in the game, you'll obviously be wanting to play the tiles more often to build up your paths, but you can't afford to play them willy-nilly. A meandering path is something players will want to avoid.
You may end up putting tiles in seemingly unconnected, random places, hoping to get the right tiles later on!
Players have limited rounds in Karuba and will want to build their paths as efficiently as possible. The game has an absolute maximum of 36 rounds.

If you look the photo of my gameboard from the end of the game. All 36 tiles were drawn. This means  I played 19 tiles, which means I moved 17 times, whilst I managed to get 3 explorers to their destination, the blue explorer barely managed to leave their starting spot.

Movement may also provide difficult decisions.
For example; you may have an explorer who is just 1 step away from a treasure or a temple but have just drawn a crossroads tile which grants you 4 movement, using it on 1 movement can be a waster. Do you use it to move another explorer to maximise it's value, or do you use 1 movement to complete an objective and waste the rest of the movement?
Also, when moving explorers, players will need think ahead a little, a badly placed explorer can block their colleagues, meaning it might require an entire round to clear the path.

Only towards the end of the game, when I had connected everything up and reached 2 temples, did the decisions become no-brainers. But because the game is played simultaneously and other players were more or less in the same situation: There was little downtime between rounds, which passed very quickly.

Karuba is a quick game to play anyway, if a player spends 1 minute deciding their move, the game has a play time of 36 minutes.

The only small criticism I could level at Karuba is that there is no interaction with other players. Not a problem for me personally, but it can be for others.

Otherwise I thought it was a good game.
Quickly and easy to learn, quick and fun to play.

​Anybody can learn and play Karuba. It's such a visually driven game that players should quickly comprehend what they need to do.

It's a game that's definitely going on my list.

24th November 2019

Sunday at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. The 50 Fathoms hiatus continues, so it's board games instead.

We began with 'Tsuro: The game of the Path'.
And that's what Tsuro is, a game about paths, quite figuratively. It's also quite abstract and there's not much to say about the theme.

What's in the game?
The game comes in a small package.

• Board: The board depicts a 6x6 square grid. Along the outside the perimeter of the board, each grid square is marked with 2 'entry' paths that lead into the board.
• Path tiles: There are 35 of these square tiles. Each side of a tile has 2 entries/exits and a total of 4 paths that enter/exit the tile. The paths on the tile twist and turn so that the 4 paths can enter and exit in many different combinations.
• Player markers: These are designed to look like stones.

The board and tiles are well made but pretty much standard components. However, the player makers are quality; the game could have easily used tokens are markers, but the game goes ahead an extra step in providing little 3D stone (Plastic actually!) player markers.

How's it play?
Set up is quick and simple.

• Shuffle the tiles and randomly deal 3 to each player forming a hand. The remaining tiles become a draw stack.
• Give each player a player marker. Now each player places their marker on one of the entry paths on the board's perimeter.

​Now the game can begin.

• The active player places a tile from their hand on to the board on the grid adjacent to their marker. The tile can be placed in any of the 4 orientations.
• Then they move their marker along the path that they have connected to. If this connection causes them to leave the board, then that player is eliminated from the game. A player cannot deliberately make their marker exit the board, but may be forced to do so due to circumstances. When a player places a tile, it may move another players marker and cause it to exit the game - eliminating that player. Furthermore, placing a tile may cause one marker to crash into another marker, in this instance, both markers are eliminated from the game.
• Finally, the active play draws a new tile to bring their hand back up to 3 tiles.

As you can see, the rules are simple and straightforward.
Endgame
Play continues until one of the following conditions are met:

• Only 1 marker remains on the board, in which case that player is the winner.
• If, for some mind boggling reason, players manage to place all the tiles down and there are 2 or more markers still left on the board. Then all remaining players share a tied victory.
• If all remaining players are eliminated at the same time, then those players all share a tied victory. ​

Overall
Tsuro is a small game, quick to setup, quick to learn and quick to play.
It is essentially a light 'programming' game that requires a small amount of scrutiny and forethought to try and predict your moves.
The real danger in the game however, comes from the other players, it's impossible to predict what tiles they will play and its impact on you. Essentially you can't rely on planning more than 1 move ahead and have to adapt to other player's moves as they occur, this is particularly true later in the game as the board becomes fuller and options become smaller.

All this unpredictability makes Tsuro fun, as long as you don't try and think too much about what moves you can make.
Additionally, Tsuro plays with up to 8 participants, combined with it's accessibility make it a good choice for party games and fillers. 

4th June 2019

Tuesday night and it's game time at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking with the board game club.

Does the idea of game about slowly growing trees excite you? If the answer is yes, then  Photosynthesis is the game for you!


What's in a game?

All of the components of photosynthesis are made from card. All of the of the tokens, even the trees. There are no plastic meeples or soulless wooden cubes here.
And even though this is the case, they are still good components. When a bunch of trees are all on the playing board. It looks impressive.

In photosynthesis there is a main playing board and a sun marker to indicate the direction of the sunlight. Additionally, each player has their own board that contains most of the seeds and trees needed to play the game.
Players also start with some seeds and trees that are not on the player board that are 'available' to use. There is an important difference between the two that will explained a little further down.

How's it play?

The premise of Photosynthesis is to plant seeds, grow the seeds until they become the largest possible trees and then score points from those trees.
 
In a normal game, play continues until the sun has completed 3 revolutions of the board. It takes 6 rounds to complete 1 revolution. Thus players each have a total of 18 turns to win the game.
Each round consists of 2 phases.
Phase one.

• The first phase allow players to collect 'light points', (This is the game's currency that allows players to carry out actions). Collecting light points is an intriguing process, it's dependant on the position of the sun.
• This is indicated by the sun marker, which will placed in 1 of the six positions around the board and indicates the direction of the sunlight.
• Any tree in sunlight earns its player light points, (The bigger the tree, the more points it earns.).
• However, trees cast shadows in the opposite direction of the sunlight, (The bigger the tree, the longer the shadow.). Any tree caught in a shadow does not earn light points. There is one exception, if the tree caught in the shadow is bigger than the tree casting the shadow, then the bigger tree will earn its full points.

So now that all the players have calculated their light points, play proceeds to the next phase.
Phase two.

• In this phase players can spend some or all of their light points to carry out various actions.
• Actions include planting seeds, growing trees or scoring trees. As well as acquiring seeds or trees.

​That's it for the basic rules. There are, however a few other rules to remember which are very important.

• Even though players will have multiple light points and can perform multiple actions. Only 1 action can originate from a space on the game board per turn. Therefore players cannot plant a seed and grow it into a tree in a single turn. Nor may they use a tree as a point of origin to plant a seed more than once per turn.
• Seeds and trees on the player board are not 'available' to use. Only the seeds and trees off of the board can be placed on to the main game board. Players must light points to purchase seeds and trees, in which case the are taken off of the player board and then become 'available' to be used.
• When a player grows a seed into a small tree, or increases the size of any tree; they replace whatever is on the game board with its relevant 'upgrade'. Thus a seed is grown into a small tree is removed and replaced with the small tree. The seed is returned to the player's board, (It does not go to the 'available area.). If there is space available on the player board, then it is discarded and permanently removed from the game.

​All of these rules basically serve one purpose - to slow the game down. And that makes complete sense, this is a game about growing trees after all. It forces players to think a few turns ahead.
It takes time to score points. A tree can only score points when it is a 'large' size. It takes 4 actions to plant a seed and then go to a small, medium and large tree. Then it takes a 5th action to score it.
Furthermore it will take more actions and light points to 'buy' the seed and 3 different sized trees from the player board in order to do this.

Overall

Photosynthesis is a peculiar beast: It's a little bit like a worker placement game with trees earning light points from their positioning and it's a little bit like an area control game, where larger trees will shut out surrounding smaller ones.

It's simple to learn but forces players to adopt a 'ent-like' mentality towards the games varied choices, strategies and occasional hard decisions. It's slow place means players cannot burn light point to do one thing quickly. Sometimes it's possible to speed events by sacrificing seeds or trees, but this can be tricky choice as it's permanent. I'm sure there are ties when it is prudent to do so. But slow and steady, that's the way to go.

I think all of this good and makes for a good game. I'm sure Treebeard would agree!

19th March 2019.

Another Tuesday and another evening of gaming fun at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking.

Tonight we played in a 3 player game of 'K2'.

K2 obviously refers to the mountain K2. People on the internet who claim to know more about mountain climbing than me (and that's not hard, I know nothing about mountain climbing) state that K2 is harder to climb than Everest.

With that in mind, it's best that I conquer K2 from the confines of a board game sitting in a semi-comfy chair.

In K2, each player controls 2 climbers. The higher a climber goes, the more points they score at the end of the game (provided they're still alive at the end). Each climber scores, so your final score will be the combined score of both.

Climbers only have 1 stat for you to worry about and manage. That stat is 'acclimatisation'. If this drops to 0, then the climber dies.

The game rules are quite straightforward.

Each player has their own personal deck to draw cards from to create a hand of cards. There are basically 2 types of card.

• Cards that grant you varying amounts of movement, sometimes up or down or sometimes in both directions. Playing a movement card will allow a climber to move that much in a turn.
• Cards that increase your acclimatisation. Playing one of these increases their acclimatisation score

Climbing to the top is simple, when you move one of your climbers to a new space on the mountain, it will have movement and acclimatisation cost that the climber must pay.
Thus; if you have played a 3-point movement card and you moved a climber to a space that costs 2 movement, you would still have 1 movement left.
At the end of a turn, climbers may gain or (most likely) lose acclimatisation points dependent on their position on the board.

There you go, rinse and repeat until you reach the top. Simple, right.

Tuesday 15th January.

Another evening in 'The Sovereigns' with Woking Board Game Club. 

On this evening we played 'Lords of Xidit', a game where you 'program' in your next 6 actions. The game is a fantasy themed 'pick-up-and-deliver' game, tasking you with recruiting heroes to fight against monsters as they appear on the board.
Cities (used to recruit heroes) and monsters appear randomly on the game board. Although, you can always see what the next tile is going to be. So astute players can take advantage of this when programming their moves.

What really makes this game stand out is the end-game scoring mechanic, which will influence how you play the game.
Throughout the game you will accumulate three types of 'scoring'.
These are; wealth, influence & reputation. Whenever you defeat a monster, there are rewards to be had in all 3 categories, but you can only choose to take 2 out of the 3 rewards.

Why does this matter, because scoring is done by rounds of elimination.

In the game we played:
In round 1, the player with the lowest wealth was eliminated.
In round 2, the player with the lowest reputation was eliminated.
In round 3, the player with the highest influence won the game.

But the order in which the elimination rounds occur is randomly determined at the start every game. So the rewards you need to choose will be determined this.

Furthermore, each of the 3 types of scoring is accumulated differently.

Wealth is kept hidden behind each player's personal screen and has no limit. Wealth is scored on a 1-to-1 basis. The higher, the better.

Reputation scoring is done in areas of the board which can be contested by all players, only the top 2 players in an area score for its reputation. Each player is limited to 20 reputation markers. A player's reputation score is calculated by adding up from all the areas where they can score.

Influence markers are placed on specific spots on the board, only one player can ever have influence in that spot. The most markers that a player can be placed in a single spot is 4. Players have 15 influence markers. Influence markers are scored in a 1-to-1 basis.

So all of this means that your approach to the game will need to adapt to the random placements that occur.

The only problem with this is that really you require at least 4 players to play the game properly, playing with 3 people requires you have a 'dummy' player that is added. And the game does not play for to at all.

We played it with 4 players and I enjoyed it (not just because I won ;)), I think everyone did.
The game was also enhanced by Andy B painting all the heroes prior to playing.

I'm not a particular fan of programming game, but I do think this is a good game: It plays well and the turns don't seem too long or too complicated.

Not only that. It's only a TENNER on Amazon at the time of writing. - my copy is waiting for me at the post office. I'm off to get it right NOW!