29th July 2021

It's a Thursday and we're logged into Board Game Arena for some gaming entertainment.

The first game was Martian Dice, it turns out that in Martian society abducting humans is a highly popular and competitive past time, players take the role of opportunistic Martians, flying around looking for hapless humans to kidnap as well as those old favourites - cows and errrrr.... chickens? Meanwhile, they'll also have to dodge all those pesky Sherman tanks sent by the US Government to harass them.

Caveat: We've only ever played Martian Dice digitially.

What's in a game?
You'll be unsurprised to learn that Martian Dice is a dice game that comes with 13 standard 6 sided dice. All dice are identical and come with the following symbols on their faces.

• Cow: 1 face on the dice is a cow, a favourite target for Martians. Scores points.
• Chicken: 1 face on the dice shows a chicken. Scores points.
• Human: 1 face depicts a human and a shocked looking one too, presumably in the process of being sucked up by a tractor beam. Also scores points.
• Tank: 1 dice face shows a pesky Sherman tank, the natural enemy of UFOs throughout the universe.
• Death-ray: Finally, the last 2 faces on the dice show death-ray, useful for dealing with tanks.

How's it play?
​Martian Dice is a pretty straightforward push your luck game and players can continue rolling dice until they choose to or are forced to stop.

• Roll the dice: The active player initially rolls all 13 dice. Once dice are rolled, the results can be dealt with as follows.
• Tanks: Firstly, whenever any dice are rolled, all that come up as tanks must be set aside.
• Decisions: Next, the active player must now choose one set of dice to put aside, when deciding on this they can only set aside dice with matching faces and it must be all of them; thus if the active player rolled 3 death-rays and they want to put aside death-rays, they must put all 3 aside and no other dice.
  Additionally, cows, chickens and humans can only be put aside once each per turn, this means the active player only ever has a maximum of 3 scoring opportunities per turn.
  Conversely, death-rays can always be put aside. Players will need death-rays to see off those aforementioned pesky tanks.
  If for any reason the active player can't set aside dice, (E.g., they rolled all chickens and they've already put aside chickens) then their turn immediately ends and they go to scoring, more on scoring below.
• Stop or go: If the active player has put aside all 13 dice, their turn ends and they go to scoring.
  Otherwise they can voluntarily end their turn and go to scoring.
  Or they can roll the remaining dice not set aside again, repeating the steps above.
• Scoring: The first thing the scoring player must do is compare tanks and death-rays that have been set aside, if tanks outnumber death-rays, the heroic US army has repelled the player who scores 0 for that turn. If death-rays equal or outnumber tanks, then superior Martian technology wins the day and the active player is free to abduct their cows, chickens and human.
  The active player score 1 point for each cow, chicken or human dice that they set aside.
  If the active player managed to set aside at least one dice of all 3 types, then they score a bonus 3 points.
• Turn end: Play then continues with the player to the left.

Endgame
The game continues until a player scores 25 or more points, then the current round is concluded.
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
This is usually where I blog about what I think of a game, but with Martian Dice, it's a little trickier. This is because at the time of writing, we've only ever played the game digitally and the version of Martian Dice we played on Board Game Arena appears to be quite broken!
Why?

In a word (Or acronym.); R.N.G. - random number generation. Computers can't actually, truly, generate numbers randomly, they can only do an approximation of it and any game that contains any random element will be affected by this to some lesser or greater degree - and that's probably most tabletop games on Board Game Arena!
So why am I singling out Martian Dice?

In game that's only about throwing lots of dice, when the randomness does go skew-whiff, it can become readily apparent. Look at the examples below.

I don't know the odds of the rolls that occurred above, but they must've have been very long. These kinds of results weren't particularly uncommon either, every few rounds something would pop up that just looked too improbable.
This skewed randomness did however, generally appear to affect all players equally which mitigated it somewhat, but it did alter the way we played the game.

Anyway back to my conclusion.

Martian Dice really only ever gives players 2 decisions to make.
What dice shall I keep?
Should I continue my turn or not?
Luckily, at least 1 of these decisions is generally always a meaningful decision.

Players will only get 3 scoring opportunities per turn, they'll sometimes be faced with the decision of scoring fewer points now and locking out that scoring type or hoping to get a better result later at the risk of getting 0 points. It can put players in a painful predicament - in a good way!

The other key hard decision players will have to make is choosing to put aside scoring dice or death-rays to battle tanks, especially as invariably a couple of tanks will have turned up.
Go for the points now and hope to be able to deal with the tanks later?
Or deal with the tanks now and hope points will turn up on another roll, albeit one with fewer dice?
Perhaps a player will get lots of death-rays early on; they could put them aside to deal with tanks that will appear in later rolls, on the other hand, putting aside this many death-rays lessens the chances of getting scoring results.

Finally players will frequently have to decide whether to push their luck or not. Because of how the scoring mechanism works, it obvious when there's no point pushing on and when it's got a chance to score more points. The question is; is it worth the risk? Sometimes players will have to roll because they've got too many tanks in play, other times - well getting just one of that type a player hasn't got would score 4 extra points! However, if the tanks and death-rays set aside are close in numbers, an unfortunate roll will bust they player.
All of these decisions will of course be contextual, but the game gives players a fairly clear risk/reward choice to make.

Martian Dice is a light, quick to learn and play, luck-based (sic) game, it definitely has some nuance and strategy but it will also appeal to fans of push your luck mechanics.
If you want a game not too taxing on the grey matter and works as a filler, Martian Dice could work well for you. We found it a good finisher at the end of an evening of play.

30th May 2021

Sunday night gaming on Board Game Arena continues with Dragonwood.

Those woods there, there be dragons in those woods, that must be why it's named Dragonwood! There are many monsters to capture, so to assemble brave adventurers, take your cards and take your dice and head off into the forests, there're adversaries to be struck, stomped or screamed at!

Caveat: We've only ever played Dragonwood digitally online.

What's in a game?

• Dragonwood cards: These cards consist of creatures to capture, enhancements to earn and events to encounter.
  Creatures: Acquiring creatures earn victory points. Each card has a picture of the creature it represents and also shows how many victory points it's worth.
  Creatures also have a column of 3 numbers, one number each for the strike, stomp, or scream actions.
  For example:
  Grumpy Troll
  Victory points: 4
  Strike: 9
  Stomp: 11
  Scream: 9
  These values are the target numbers that must be met with dice rolls in order to acquire the card, the higher the victory points, the higher the target numbers.
  Which of the 3 values is used for the dice roll is explained below.
  Enhancements: Unlike creatures, enhancements do not score victory points, instead they give the controlling player a bonus that works towards capturing creatures in some way or other, this may be once-only or ongoing.
  Finally, enhancements cannot be used in capturing other enhancements.
  Events: Events can be beneficial or detrimental and are immediately played when revealed during play.
• Adventurer cards: There are 64 adventurer cards in all.
  60 adventurer cards: Numbered 1-12 in 5 different colours.
  4 Lucky Ladybug cards: Drawing one of these cards is lucky! See below for further info.
• Dice: These six siders are NOT numbered 1-6, instead the distribution of numbers goes; 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4. The mathematically astute among you will note that the mean average when rolling 2 of these dice would be 5, the mean average for 2 normal six siders is 7.

That's it for components.
Well, there's not much that can be said since we've only played it digitally. The art on the carts is bright, cartoonish and pleasant, text is clearly written and easy to read.

How's it play?
Setup

• Dragonwood deck: The size of this deck is dependant on the number of players.
  First remove the 2 dragon cards from the deck and shuffle it, discard the required number of cards and then shuffle the dragons back into the bottom half of the deck.
  Deal a row of 5 cards to form what's called 'The landscape'. If any events are dealt during setup, shuffle them back into the deck.
• Adventurer deck: Shuffle the adventurer cards into a face-down deck, deal 5 to each player, these should be kept hidden.
• Starting player: Determine a starting player

On to play
The objective in Dragonwood is to capture creatures cards which are worth 1-7 points each.
Each turn, the active player will have a choice of 2 actions.

• Reload: This is a fancy word for draw a card from the Adventurer deck. If the Lucky Ladybug card is drawn, discard it to the discard pile and draw 2 more cards. Players have a maximum hand size of 9.
  ​If the adventurer deck is depleted, shuffle the discard pile into a new deck. This is done only once per game.
• Capture a card: Players may try to capture a creature or enhancement, mechanically it's identical and there are 3 ways to do this, all methods are done by playing cards, the more card that are played, the more dice can be rolled. Thus the active player plays their cards and chooses one of the 3 capture methods to use.
  Strike: In order to use strike, the active player must play cards that are all in a straight, e.g., a 4, 5, 6, 7 of any colour, because there are 4 cards being played, that would give the active player 4 dice to roll.
  Stomp: To stomp, all card played must have the same value, so two 9s would give the active player 2 dice to roll.
  ​Scream: This requires the active player to play cards all of the same colour, regardless of their numbers; a 2, 3, 8, 10 & 12 all in green would give the active player 5 dice to roll.
  Once the method has been chosen, the active player rolls the relevant dice:
  Fail: if the result is less than the target number for the chosen method, then the capture attempt has failed! The active player takes the cards they played back into their hand and must discard 1 card.
  Success: If the result is equal to or higher than the chosen target number, then the creature is captured and the cards are discarded into the adventurer discard pile.
  A new card is immediately drawn to replace the captured card, if that card is an event, it is immediately played and discarded, another card is drawn, there must always be 5 cards in the landscape if possible.

Play continues until either both dragons have been captured which case the game ends immediately or the adventurer deck has been depleted twice, which triggers a final set of turns.
Then it goes to the endgame.

Endgame
Players score the victory points for each creature they captured.
The player who has captured the most creatures earns an additional 3 points.
Once points are tallied, highest score wins!

Overall
Decisions are based around how much you want or need to push your luck and when to or when not to try and capture cards, managing this is key to Dragonwood.

If a creature has a value of 10 for one of it's target numbers, then it's not hard to figure out that 4 dice will give the active player a 50% chance of capturing it and they'll need to play 4 cards to do this. 9 or lower and the odds swing in the player's favour, 11+ and well, it's not a push your luck game for nothing!
Sure, someone can play it safe and draw cards to get better odds, but this consumes turns while instead, competitors could be capturing those creatures. A handful of adventurer cards scores nothing at the game's end.
Conversely, rashly trying to capture cards and failing will cost players their adventurer cards, it's a clever little balancing mechanic.
Even though the decision to capture a card or not is a simple, almost no brainer decision, the need to outdo other players generally means it never quite a meaningless one.

We found that acquiring enhancements early on (If they appear early on that is.) could be a big advantage. There are enhancements that add 1 or 2 to capture rolls, it might not seem like much, but in a game about averaged dice rolls, it can swing the odds quite a lot.

It's obvious that Dragonwood is a light game that skews towards younger players and with that in mind, I don't think it's appropriate to be overly harsh on it.
With it's fairly simplistic choices and reliance on randomness, fans of 'heavy' games probably won't find much to engage with here, unless they're looking looking for a undemanding filler for around 30 minutes to allow their brains to cool down between other, heavier games.
However, ​I do think that younger players will find the game enjoyable and dice rolling exciting, casual gamers may also find it entertaining.

10th March 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

How's it play?
​Setup.

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

Now we're ready to begin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I liked it and will definitely play it again.

29th October 2019

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

We started the evening with 'Heckmeck' AKA 'Pickomino'.

Have you ever wondered what is a chicken's favourite food? It turns out that a chicken's favourite food is worms. But not just any worms, but roast worms! And not just any roast worms either, but BBQ roast worms! How many BBQ roast worms does a chicken like eating? As many as it can get. How does it get as many BBQ roast worms as it can? By pushing it's luck of course!

That's what Heckmeck is about. Pushing your luck to accumulate as many BBQ roast worms as possible.

What's in a game?
There are 2 versions of Heckmeck, standard and deluxe.
We played the standard version of the game. They use the following components:

• 8 six sided dice, each numbered from 1 to 5, the 6th side depicts a worm. A worm has a value of 5. 
• 16 dominoes, the top half of the dominoes are numbered from 21 to 36, the bottom half show 1-4 worms. The higher the value of the domino, the more worms on it.

The deluxe version includes some extra components and rules.

• 2 extra dominoes.
• 7 'bratworm' tokens.
• 6 different meeples, each meeple grants a special ability to whoever 'owns' it.

All of the components are of a good quality. The dominoes are solid and heavy. The dice are all wooden with rounded corners. The deluxe components are of a similar quality.

How's it play?
First there's setup.

• Place the dominoes in a line in ascending order to form a supply.

Yep, that's it for setup. Now on with the game.

The goal in Heckmeck is to roll and accumulate dice to get a score high enough to claim a domino. But here's a twist, at least one of those dice must have a worm result.
How's this done? Keep reading.

• At the start of their turn, the active player rolls all 8 dice.
• The player must then keep a 'set' of dice. A 'set' consists of 1 or more dice showing the same face. For example, after rolling the dice the player gets; 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4 & 5. They could choose to keep the 1, the two 2s (Combined value of 4.), the two 3s (Worth 6.), the two 4s (Worth 8.) or the 5. Let's say the player took the two 4s.
• Once the player has chosen a 'set', they put those dice to one side. Then they must choose to stop rolling or continue rolling.
• If the player chooses to continue rolling, they must re-roll the remaining dice and keep another 'set', but this set cannot be the same as a set the player already took. So now the player rolls the remaining 6 dice and gets; 4, 4, 5, W, W, W (W=worm.). The player cannot take the 4s because they have already taken 4s. So they must take 5 or the 3 worms. The player takes the 3 worms.
• The player now has a score of 23, 8 from the first roll and 15 from the second roll  (Remember worms are worth 5.). The player also has at least 1 worm result. So this is enough to get a domino, the player chooses to stop rolling. There are dominoes with the scores of 21, 22 & 23. The player must take the highest domino they can, which in this case is the 23.

Going bust or failing

• If after rolling the dice, the player cannot collect a set because all of the dice are showing numbers they have already collected. Then they have gone bust!
• Additionally, if a player chooses to stop rolling or cannot roll anymore dice and they have no accumulated a high enough score to get a domino, then they have failed!
• Going bust or failing have the same result; the player must return a domino to the supply row and turn the highest valued domino in the supply row face-down. If the player has no domino to return, there is no further action.

Stacking
Stacking is one of the things that makes Heckmeck stand out.

• When a player takes a second domino (And any subsequent dominoes.) they place it on top of the previous domino to form a stack. Thus all dominoes are kept in a stack (Even if it's a stack of 1.) and each player will have a single stack.
• When a player goes bust or fails and must return a domino to the supply, they must return the domino from the top of the stack.

Stealing
Like stacking, stealing is something I've not seen in a push your luck game before.

• If the active player accumulates a score that is exactly the same value as the domino on the top of another player's stack, then the active player can steal that domino and add to their own stack!
  
• That's bang out of order!

Endgame
Play continues until there are no more face-up dominoes in the supply to collect.
Players tally the worms they've collected, highest number of worms wins.

Overall

​Heckmeck is easy to learn and fairly quick to play. It has several excellent mechanics that give players tricky decisions to make.
Choosing which sets to keep is crucial because of it 'locks out' numbers. Do you really want to take that single 5, because that means you can no longer get any more 5s. Decisions, decisions.
The worm mechanic is also cool. Needing to have a worm result is an extra thing that can go wrong. Making a worm worth a 5 is genius, it puts players in the same quandary as rolling a 5. If a worm was only worth 1, taking it when it's only 1 worm would be a no-brainer.
Finally, the stacking and stealing together is another great idea. If players just laid their tiles out in a line, then stealing them would be a bit too easy as the choice would be wider. However, since the dominoes are stacked, stealing is uncommon. When it does occur, it's something that should be taken advantage of!

All of this adds up to make a good push your luck game.
Heckmeck has very quickly become a favourite with nearly everybody I play it with. And deservedly so. 

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.

9th July 2019.

Tuesday is here and so is gaming night at 'The Sovereign' in Woking.

Elder Sign is a co-operative game where the players take on the role of intrepid investigators, driven to uncover the conspiracies that will bring about the end of the world without descending into mind-shattering insanity.

What's in a game?
​Elder Sign is a push your luck game with some dice and a lot of cards.

• Investigation dice: There are 6 of these custom green dice, they are used during investigations.
• Bonus dice: There 2 different red & yellow bonus dice: If you have some sort of advantage during a roll, you may add one or both of these dice to your roll. Not only do they increase the dice they roll, they have better results too.
• Investigator cards: Each investigator card is different, they have different special abilities and stats.
• Location cards: There mundane and 'otherworldly' location cards. The 'mundane' locations are set around a museum. Investigators travel to these cards to solve the events that occur on them.
• Ancient one cards: Cards to represent the cosmic horrors that cannot be named... Except for their names... on their cards? 
• Bonus cards: There are various types of bonus cards.
• Tokens: Lots of tokens, for lots of different purposes.
• Clock: Game turns are tracked by moving the hour hand on the clock.

Investigators
Investigator's have 2 stats, health and sanity. You don't need me to tell you what happens if either reaches 0.
Investigator's also have a unique special ability each and some starting equipment.

Ancient one
The ancient one card contains some pertinent information.
There's a timing track that shows how close the ancient is to appearing.
There's also information on what happens if the ancient one appears and how to fight it.
There's a 'elder sign' track. If the players accumulate enough elder signs, they can prevent the ancient one even appearing.

Location cards
Location cards contain multiple tasks. These take the form of rows of symbols (That match the symbols on the dice).
Each location card lists 'rewards & penalties'.
One of the location cards is the 'museum entrance'. Characters can be placed on this location card to rest & recuperate.

How's it play?
Before playing,  a little setting up needs to be done.

• The clock is set up.
• Investigator cards are randomly dealt or chosen by player.
• An ancient one is randomly dealt or chosen.
• The entrance to the museum is placed down.
• 6 mundane location cards are laid.

The basic premise of the game is that the investigators complete the tasks on the location cards and to earn resources and elder signs. These can be used to win the game. But in the meanwhile, the clock is ticking...

When a player has their turn; they move their marker to a location card and try to complete one of the tasks on the card.

Each task will contain a number of symbols. The active player rolls the dice, any of the dice results that match the symbols for the current task are placed on to that task on the card. If all of the symbols are matched by dice results, then that task is completed.

If the task is not completed, the player has the choice to fail the task or continue rolling.

If the player chooses to continue rolling, they take the remaining unmatched dice -and discards one- and rolls them again. Thus repeatedly reattempting a task will eventually deplete a player's dice. If a player is ever in a situation where they do not have enough dice to complete a task, then they fail that task.

When a task is failed, voluntarily or otherwise. Then the active player suffers the penalties listed on the location card.
If a task is failed and a 'terror' result has come up on the dice, then the active player suffers an additional penalty.

When a task is completed, all the dice are returned to the active player.
If another task is available on the location card, then the active player may attempt to complete it.
If all of the tasks on a location card have been completed, then that location has been completed! The active player takes the listed reward and returns to the entrance.

When a player completes their turn, the clock advances. When the time reaches a certain point, it will cause the ancient evil to be spawned.

There are more rules:
There are rules for suffering terror.
Rules for monster appearing.
Rules for using weapons, equipment and spells.
Rules for going into otherworldy locations.
Rules for clues.
Rules for environmental effects that affect the game and so on.

Endgame
If the players accumulate enough elder signs, they win the game.
If the ancient one appears, then the players must battle it. This involves rolling dice much like completing tasks. If the players succeed, then the ancient one is vanquished. If they fail to defeat the ancient one, then the players all fail and it's curtains for the earth!

Overall
Elder Sign is a push your luck game.
I played for the first time a few years ago with 2 other players and found it a hugely frustrating experience.
However, when I played it recently with 5 other players, it was a lot less frustrating. I guess watching other players getting luck as bad as mine is cathartic!

As a co-operative game about struggle against cosmic horror, Elder Sign is an OK game. It handles its theme well enough as you investigate the museum looking for ways to impending doom against the clock.

But I have small issue with the push your luck mechanic of Elder Sign.

With a push your luck game, you need a reason to 'settle' and a reason to... well 'push your luck'. The priorities of these reasons may shift according to the situation, but they need to always be there.

But when playing Elder Sign, sometimes it feels like that it's pointless to settle. Player's will suffer the same penalty, regardless of whether you choose to fail or are forced to fail. You only risk suffering terror if you push your luck - and that's not guaranteed. So it feels like there's little reason to not push your luck.
It's a small criticism, I know.

So would I play Elder Sign again? Going by past experience, I feel the game gets better with more play (Although that's true of the majority of games IMHO.) and Elder sign goes up to 8 players!
So with 4+ players, I would try it again.

29th June 2019

​Gaming afternoon continues at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking and we concluded with 'Tiny Epic Galaxies'.
I've written about Tiny Epic Galaxies before here.

23rd June 2019.

Gaming day continues at 'The Sovereigns'.
The next game of the day is 'Celestia'.

Celestia is very similar to another game called 'Cloud 9', in fact both games are designed by the same person.

You can see my thoughts on Cloud 9 here.

​Celestia is a fantasy-themed push your luck game about making a journey. 

What's in a game?

Celestia contains a skyship placing piece that needs to be built. Annoyingly, when constructed, it does not fit in the game box! This means it must be constructed before and then deconstructed after every game session. Otherwise it's quite a nice prop for the game.

There are is a set of 'city' markers and several sets of small decks of 'treasure' cards for each of the cities.

There is also an 'equipment' deck of cards used to 'travel' in the game. Most of the cards in the deck contain symbols identical to those from on the dice (See below.). Some cards are 'power' or 'turbo' cards that give a different benefit.

There are 'event' dice; these are 4 custom six sided dice used to represent obstacles or events that must be overcome during the journey. Each die is identical and has 4 custom symbols on 4 sides and blank faces on 2 sides.

And finally there are 6 meeples for the players.

The components are pretty standard. But I feel I must add that the art on all of the cards and markers is excellent.

How's it play

Before play begins, the cities markers are set out in a specific order (From lowest to highest scoring.). Then the associated smaller treasure decks are placed next to each city marker.

The purpose of the game is to reach the last city (If possible.) to score maximum points. But if the skyship crashes along the way, then no points are scored by the passengers.
Players will be given the choice to abandon the skyship early and earn less points.

This is how play goes.

• At the start of the game equipment cards are dealt to each player.
• The skyship is placed on the beginning destination marker. Every player's meeple is placed in the skyship.
• The active player assumes the role of 'Captain' for the round. The captain takes 2 event dice and rolls them (Later on, the further along the journey the skyship is, the more dice are rolled.).
• The other players decide whether to stay aboard or abandon ship. If a player chooses to abandon ship, they remove their meeple from the skyship model.
• When a player abandons the skyship, they take a treasure card from the deck associated with the destination marker the skyship is currently on.
• The value of the card is dictated by the city the skyship was on when the player abandoned it. Earlier cities give lower somewhat scores in a random range (6+ or 9+ for example.). Additionally, the earlier treasure decks also contain power cards. The last cities give a fixed value for each card. When a treasure card is acquired, it should be kept hidden face down.
• Once all the other players have made their choices and abandoned the skyship or not: The captain either must play the equipment cards from their hand matching the symbols rolled on the dice, or announces that they cannot do so. If the captain cannot overcome the event dice, then the skyship crashes! Crunch!
• If the captain plays the required cards, the skyship moves along to the next city marker. And the next player becomes captain. Any player who has abandoned the skyship cannot become captain in the current journey and is skipped if they are next.
• If the skyship crashes, (And believe me, it will, frequently!) the skyship is returned to the first city marker, all players' meeples are put back in it and everybody draws an equipment card.
• If the skyship reaches the last city, this journey is completed. Everybody aboard takes a treasure card (Worth 25 points!). The skyship is returned to the first marker and gets back aboard and each player collects another equipment card.

​Endgame.
When a journey ends for whatever reason and before another begins: If one or more players have accumulated 50 or more points, they must declare it. Then all players tally their points, highest score wins.

Overall
Celestia is an easy to play and accessible push your luck game. It is a competitive game, but there are elements of co-operative play here. Because to reach the further destinations you will likely need other players to co-operate with you. This is doubly true if one player is rushing ahead in the scoring.

Comparisons with Cloud 9 are inevitable, they are both very similar, with similar strategies and mechanics.

But Celestia has a few tweaks that gives it a bit more depth.

Firstly, in the equipment deck, the 4 different types of card required to overcome obstacles from the event dice are not represented in equal numbers. This means it's less likely that certain cards will be dealt into players' hands. And this means that certain types of obstacles are harder to overcome. It's something to pay attention to. 

Secondly, some of the power cards allow you to mess with the other players. Although in this game it seems strangely antagonistic. I've rarely seen these types of card used, possibly because of hidden scores means it's hard to know who to target.

And finally, hidden scores. In Cloud 9, there is a scoring track, so when a player reaches 50+ points, everyone else knows they need to push it in order to have a chance of winning. But in Celestia, with its hidden scores you can never know exactly what another player's score is. You can't afford to be complacent and need to keep accumulating your score.

It doesn't take too long to play either, meaning that it's a nice filler game. It's one to play.

in Deep Sea Adventure each player is a treasure-hunting diver who is looking to score big. The game is played over 3 rounds and the player with the most valuable treasures after the end of the 3rd round is the winner.

Deep Sea Adventure packs a whole lot of push-your-luck fun into a little box.

Whilst this is a competitive game, it sneaks a co-operative little mechanic into the rules which in turn players can try to twist to their own advantage.

The game begins with all the players' meeples in a submarine. Beneath the sub is a winding trail of face down markers. Each marker represents a treasure that can be collected by a diver. The value of the treasures also vary, but the deeper you dive, more valuable the treasure. The more sides a marker has, the more potential value it has.

​Play goes like this:

• During a player's turn, they dive into the deeps. This is done by rolling 2 dice (both numbered 1-3, giving a range of 2-6 and an average of 4) and moving that many spaces down the treasure markers.
• When a diver moves, they 'hop' over other divers (don't count the space the other diver is on), this means that sometimes movement is very unpredictable.
• When a player stops on a treasure marker they can choose to pick it up (and place it still face down in front of themselves). If they do pick it up, it is replaced by a 'blank' marker.
• At the start of their next turn, the player can choose to continue diving for more treasure or turn around and head back to the sub. Rolling both dice to move up or down. Once a diver begins their ascent, they can't turn back down again.

And that's it, that's it for the rules.

Ok, there's a bit more.

• At the start of a player's turn, if they are carrying one or more treasures, then they must lower the sub's oxygen level by the number of treasures they are holding.
• Oxygen level? WTF is that? Did I forget to mention the sub's oxygen level? Well, the submarine has an oxygen level that is communally shared by all the divers. When the oxygen level reaches zero, all the divers not back in the sub will.... well you get the idea.
• After rolling the dice to move, the number of treasures carried is also deducted from the dice result. Carrying treasures will slow divers down, possibly down to zero movement.
• Thus carrying treasures consumes oxygen and slows movement. A potentially lethal combination.
• A player does not score points for the treasures they collect until they safely return to the submarine. If they don't make it back to the sub, then the treasure's are dropped and to the bottom of the track and pile up in piles of three. When a treasure plie is picked up, it only counts as one treasure for purposes of movement and oxygen, even though it actually be three treasures. Very tasty if you can get to it!
• After every diver has returned to the sub, or as is more likely the oxygen runs out. Then the round ends. All the blank markers are removed (thus the trail is shortened and the deeper treasures become more accessible). The oxygen level is set back to max and the next round begins. There are 3 rounds to a game.

And that really is it for the rules. Deep Sea Adventure is all about pushing you luck.

Pushing your luck in picking up treasures (so tempting to pick up one extra treasure, just one little treasure - it won't make much of a difference, right).

Pushing your luck in movement. The hop mechanic can prove helpful or can push you way too deep into the depths.

Finally, pushing your luck with the communal oxygen supply. This is the game's best mechanic. This is what turns it from a 'OK' game into a 'good' game. The communal oxygen means that you have watch what the other players are picking up. It forces you to try and think a whole round ahead.

When playing Deep Sea Adventure, there comes a point when oxygen starts to matter. For a couple of turns, no one picks up treasure. Everyone wants something a little better and is willing to dive a little deeper to get it. But then, it all changes, as treasures are picked up, oxygen is used up. The change may seem quite subtle, but can actually be quite dramatic. No oxygen being used, to suddenly 4-5 every round.  Being able to spot and react to this change is key to winning in my opinion.

In a six player game, at some point every player will have picked up at least one treasure, that means six points of oxygen will be used up before your next turn. That's about a quarter of all the available oxygen.

Some players will try and load themselves with treasures to burn up oxygen as they return to the sub, (this is in itself a risky strategy as it also slows movement - several times I've seen loaded down players one or 2 spaces away from the sub and not move at all until the oxygen runs out).

All of this means that you can never be complacent about the oxygen supply and this Deep Sea Adventure is good fun and a good game.

17th April 2019

It's 'kebab night' round at my place. What's kebab got to do with gaming?

Well Matt has bought his copy of Kingsburg round to my place for us to play we did!

Kingsburg is a dice/worker placement game where each player has their own board to track personal advances.
It is a fantasy themed game that casts the players as provincial advisors who are seeking to influence the king, battle with invading armies and gain personal power.

Kingsburg is played over 5 'game' years and each year has 4 seasons and 4 'inter-seasonal' phases as well. So a total 40 'phases'. Although in reality players only get to do stuff in 3 seasons a year. So players only get 15 'actions' per game.

How does it play?
Each year is divided up into 8 phases. I'll describe the even phases and then the season phases - 3 of which basically function identically.
Phases 1, 3, 5 & 7 are events.
Phases 2, 4, 6 & 8 are spring, summer, autumn and winter respectively. Player actions all occur in the first 3 seasons. Something different occurs during winter. During winter... there is war. Which is about the stupidest time to wage war. Maybe the designers are fans of Game of Thrones (Urggh, felt a little dirty mentioning that!)

• Phase 1 - Bonus die; the player with the least amount of buildings gets a bonus die (explained below). It's a strange thing to start a game with. But there you go.
• Phase 3 - Victory Point Reward; the player with the most buildings at this stage gains a victory point.
• Phase 5 - Extra Action Marker; the player with the fewest buildings gets the marker - which they can only use in the next season. This allows them to do one of the following: Influence an advisor that has already been influenced or in the building phase, build an extra building.
• Phase 7 - Recruitment; players have the opportunity to spend resources to increase their military strength in the face of upcoming war.

 
Seasons

• Phase's 2, 4 & 6 - spring, summer & autumn. This is where most of the game takes place.
• Every player rolls their 3 dice (and bonus dice, if they have any), this determines order of play AND which advisors they can possibly influence.
• How does this work. Let's say that it has come to my turn. On the 3 dice I rolled a 3, 4, 5. How do I use them to influence advisors. You will remember that earlier I explained how the game board has 18 advisors numbered from 1-18. I simply put dice equal to the value of an advisor on to that advisor's space.
• I could all 3 dice on space 12 (3+4+5=13).
• I could put the 3 on space 3, the 4 on space 4 and the 5 on space 5.
• Or the 3 on space 3 and the 4 and 5 on space 9 (4+5=9).
• Or any combination of the dice.
• If you have any bonus dice, they can be played with your other dice, but never alone.
• You can only influence 1 advisor at a time regardless of how many dice you do or do not use and play goes around the table in the turn order. Furthermore an advisor can only be influenced by one player at time. Only dice from one player may occupy a space at a time.
• So if you have a 5 and an opponent has a 5 amongst their dice, you may want to place your dice first, locking theirs out!
• Play continues until all dice have been placed (or discarded).
• Then going in order of the advisor numbering, each player space-by-space take their Resources for each of their dice.
• Resources include, gold, wood and stone. As well as military strength, bonus tokens and the opportunity to look at the invading army card, (More about this later). Once all the resources have been collected, then play progresses to the next phase.

​

• The next phase is building.
• Each province sheet has 5 rows of 4 buildings.
• You can construct buildings in any row. But only the left-most building can be built. Thus if you want the 4th building in a row, the first 3 must be built beforehand. The last building in a row tends to be pretty good.
• Buildings have a cost in gold, wood and stone. Unusually here, stone is the most valuable and hardest to acquire resource: Gold and wood appear twice in the first 6 spaces. But the earliest space in which stone actually appears is 7. This means that it requires at least 2 dice to get stone, (barring usage of a +2 token or special ability off of a building you have built). This feels strangely counter-intuitive and is probably a deliberate design decision.
• Once constructed, a building will give you some sort of benefit, these can be one off like victory points or some sort of continuing in game benefit.

 

• The final season (and final phase of the year) is winter.
• Every winter without fail, one of the kingdom's enemies will attack, zombies, orcs or whatever. And every province must join the battle.
• How's this done? It's pretty simple actually. First a die is rolled and it's result is added to every player's military strength to give a final score.
• Each year has 5 different invader cards, one of these is randomly revealed and will have a type of enemy and a military strength. Each player compares their strength to that of the card
• If the player's strength is higher, victory. And to the victor, go the spoils. In Kingsburg, this will probably be a victory point or two or some resources.
• If the strength scores tie, then the enemy is driven off and there's no reward or loss.
• If the player's strength is lower, then they lose. This will mean losing something. This might be resources of even a building (losing a building must really suck).
• That's all ther is to it! Well, there's 2 other things worth noting about the battles.
• At the end of each year, every player's military strength is reset to zero. Those supposedly loyal soldiers never hang around for more than a year.
• The strength of the invading armies increases year after year.

And that's it for a general overview of the rules. As always I've left some stuff out.

How does it play?

Well... Well it plays... OK.

I'm trying to think of something I liked about Kingsburg and something I hated. I came up with zero for both. It's just... sort of... OK.

So the central mechanic is interesting, but seems quite weird. Being quite luck based, sometimes it could be infuriating. But conversely (and strangely), frequently it would feel like it didn't matter what I rolled, because there would be multiple routes to get what I needed.
I found this strange mix of sometimes needing luck and sometimes luck not mattering not very compelling.

Constructing a building doesn't feel like an accomplishment much of the time, nor does it feel like the bonuses it grants change the game much.
It's fairly straightforward to construct the first and maybe second buildings in a row, but because of the slightly haphazard way in which you gain resources, planning for the buildings further along is much trickier and your well-laid plans can easily be scuppered by a bad dice roll. The later buildings can be much more useful, but by the time you get to building them, the game will 80% over, thwarting their usefulness. You really need to plan to get these  buildings, but the game seems to scupper plans. Quite often your forced to choose between trying to save resources for even longer to get a building, or giving up on it and getting something else instead.

Choice is always good as I've said in this blog before. But the choices here tend to be about choosing between the least undesirable option. It feels negative and leaves a little bitter taste in the mouth.

War in the winter season seems not so well thought about. Quite often I would completely ignore/forget about it and the dice roll alone was enough to defeat enemies in the first couple of years. During the 3 other seasons, you would probably get some military strength as a by product of playing. So I never felt the need to invest in military strength.

Overall, I don't think Kingsburg is a bad game by any stretch and if asked if I wanted to play it, I wouldn't immediately say 'no'. But I might ask what else they had to play.