28th January 2023

Our day of gaming with The Woking Gaming Club at Wogglecon 6 continued with Ligretto.

I don't know what Ligretto is meant to mean but it gets shouted a lot when playing this real-time, abstract card game.

It's time to begin the blog so without any further ado... LIGRETTO!

What's in a game?
There are 3 versions of Ligretto; red, green and blue. They are functionally identical except for the backs, which indicate which decks they are and which set they come from.
A single set of Ligretto is enough for 4 players, having all 3 sets means there's enough for 12 players!
​

• Cards: A set of Ligretto comes with 160 cards, which is 4 decks of 40 cards each.
  Furthermore. each 40 card deck has cards numbered 1-10 4 times, once in each of the game's 4 colours.
  Backs: Each 40 card deck has a slightly different back to differentiate it from the other decks

Well that's it for components.

The cards are the standard quality you'd expect for a modern game.

Ligretto makes great use of colour, the 4 colours are all bright, vibrant and distinctive. Otherwise, there's no illustrations and minimal art for Ligretto, just some detailing. This is by no means a bad thing. Ligretto is an abstract game, trying to fit a theme to it would just feel like shoehorning.
I do have one small criticism that is directed at the backs of the cards which could have have been more distinct from each other.

Ligretto also has no iconography other than numbers, players will have no trouble understanding the game.

How's it play?
Setup

• Decks: Give each player a deck of 40 cards, this should consist of cards numbered 1-10 in each of 4 colours. Thus each player should have all the cards with an identical back.
  Each player should shuffle their cards into a face-down deck.
  Ligretto stack: First, each player should now deal 10 cards face-up into a stack. This is their Ligretto stack.
  Row: Next, each player should deal 3 face-up cards into a row alongside their Ligretto stack.
  Hand: Players should now keep all their remaining cards (There should be 27.) in their hand.

On to play
Ligretto is played simultaneously by all players in real time which means there are no turns or any turn structure.
The purpose is to play as many cards as possible (An as quickly as possible.) before the round end is triggered, which occurs when any player's Ligretto stack is emptied. How is this done - read on.

• Start: To start a round, someone must shout "Ligretto,".
• Objective: Players are looking to play cards to create stacks of the same colour numbered sequentially from 1-10. There are of course some rules and restrictions for this.
  • The first card in a stack must always be a '1'.
  • The next card played on a stack must be the same colour and also the next number in the sequence. I.e., only a green 5 can be played on a green 4.
  • Any player may play a legal card on any stack.
  • Once a stack reaches 10, it is completed, no further cards can be played on it.
• Playing cards: There are several ways a player may play a card providing the criteria mentioned above are met.
  Row: A card may be played from a player's row. When this is done, it is immediately replaced by the top card of their Ligretto stack.
  Ligretto stack: Alternatively, a player may play the top card from their Ligretto stack.
  Hand: If a player cannot play a card from either their row or stack, they must discard 3 cards from their hand face-up into a discard pile. The 3rd card (And only the 3rd card.) they put into the discard becomes available to play.
  If that card cannot be played, then the player must continue discarding cards, 3 at a time until they get a card that can be played.
  If a player's hand of card empties, they must shuffle the discard pile into a new hand.
• Round end: As soon as the last card from any player's Ligretto stack is played, that player must shout "Ligretto stop!" and the round immediately ends.
  Points: Now points are calculated.
  Only cards played into stacks and cards remaining in all players' Ligretto stacks are used for scoring, all other cards are put aside for now.
  • Stacks: Take all the stacks, sort and separate the cards according to their backs. This will indicate how many cards each player has played. Players gain 1 victory point (VP) per card they played.
  • Ligretto stack: Now each player counts how many cards they have remaining in their personal stack. Players lose 2 VP per card they have remaining!
• Next round: All cards are returned to their respective owners.
  All players shuffle their cards then deal a Ligretto stack and row in preparation for the next round.

Endgame
As soon as any player has scored 99 or more points at the end of a round, the game ends.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Speed and reflexes drive gameplay in Ligretto. The objective is pretty simple - play as many cards as possible while emptying the Ligretto stack.
Not only will players have to pay attention for opportunities to play cards, they'll also want to think ahead.
Canny players will keep a sharp eye out for stacks which are 2 numbers lower than cards they want to play so that as soon as an opponent adds a card to that stack, they can immediately add to it themselves.

As a rule, I'm wary of dexterity, reflex or reaction based games and to be honest, it's not why I like or play board games. In fact, I like board games because they generally do away with those elements.

Which brings me to Ligretto; a real-time, twitch game. This should irk me but because this is essentially a party game and not to be taken seriously, the relative simplicity of the gameplay and brisk playtime prevent it being frustrating.
Ligretto is a fun filler game and its light touch can provide some low intensity entertainment after a more demanding game. It also works as a good crossover game, it can easily be played with families and more casual players. We never played it with it's max player count of 12 but I imagine it would be a quite boisterous affair.

If you don't mind the reflex based gameplay, Ligretto provides a fun experience and something a little different. Worth a try in my opinion.

26th July 2022

It's Tuesday! That means it's time to meet up with the Woking Board Gaming Club at the The Sovereigns.

Time to steal the idol... and escape, Indiana Jones has nothing on this real-time, cooperative dice game, well at least until those crappy rolls inevitably turn up!

What's in a game?

• ​Tiles: The game comes with about 20 tiles, they depict various different kinds of underground sandstone chamber from a top down view. There are several different types of tile but all of them display a number of exits and also show icons of some sort.
  Main tiles: This includes the beginning tile and the escape tile, it also includes gem tiles, more on gem tiles later.
  The backs of each of these tiles feature 2 adventurer icons, also more on icons later.
  Gem depot: This is not a game tile per se and is used to store gems and track the amount which get used.
  Basic tiles: These are the most common type of tile; as well as a pair of icons they also feature an entrance (Stairs.) and exits. They are for the most part empty but some contain 'gem spaces'.
  The backs of these tiles also feature 2 adventurer icons
• Gems: Basic acrylic tokens in translucent green.
• Meeples: There are 5 of these suitably fedora-wearing meeples, one each in every player colour.
• Tokens: Circular card tokens, again in each player colour. These are used to quickly identify which meeple belongs to which player.
• Dice: Lots of dice! 25 to be exact and enough to give each player 5.
  These are not normal six-siders and all the numbers have been replaced with symbols which match the symbols found on tiles. The symbols are:
  Adventurer X2: A green man running away (Presumably from a giant boulder?) while carrying a whip!
  2 sides on each die has the adventurer icon.
  Key: A blue key icon.
  Torch: A red torch icon.
  Gold Mask: A grinning gold icon.
  Black Mask: A leering black mask, the black mask result on dice is bad news.
• Soundtrack: Yep! The game comes with a soundtrack, it serves as the game's countdown timers for the game's 3 rounds and it also plays atmospheric, moody ambient audio!

Escape: The Curse of the Temple has good quality components. The tiles all feel suitably thick and sturdy. The acrylic gem tokens are kind you see in a lot of games which use them to depict gems, they are a sparkly, pleasing shade of green though.
The bespoke dice and meeples are wooden which is always a nice touch.

There's not much art to speak of, the tiles show flagstones and that's about it. It's clear artwork that does not get in the way.

About half a dozen icons are used throughout the game, luckily they most relate to the dice and there's never a need to refer to the rules - which is a good thing since this is a real time game with a countdown.

How's it play?
Setup

• Tiles: Put aside the Start and Exit tiles, then shuffle all the remaining tiles into a face-down stack. Finally shuffle the Exit tile into the bottom 4 tiles in the stack.
• Start tile: Put the Start tile into the central playing area, since it has two doorways, reveal and place 2 tiles from the stack and place them adjacent to the starting tile with the stairs connected to the exit from the start tile.
• Gem depot: Depending on player count, place 7-16 gems on the gem depot tile. 
  Also place 2 gems adjacent to the gem depot tile, these 2 gems can be very important later on.
• Players: Give each player the token and meeples in their colour, then give each player 5 dice for their personal use.
  ​Each player should then place their meeple on to the starting tile.
• Soundtrack: Prepare the soundtrack.

On to play
In Escape: The Curse of the Temple players are collectively attempting to explore a lost temple to find the exit and escape before becoming trapped.
It's not so simple though; not only must they find the exit, they'll also need to activate the gem tiles and spaces to make their escape possible.
The game is played over 3 rounds and does not use a typical turn structure. Instead, turns are actually synchronous, in other words, players perform all their actions at the same time and in real time!
This involves all players rolling their dice and resolving their actions simultaneously. How is this all done? Read on.

• Soundtrack: Begin the soundtrack, the clock is now ticking.
• Roll the dice: When a player wants to undertake an action it is resolved by rolling dice, getting a required result will then complete that action. This usually means get at least 2 specific symbols on the dice.
  Rerolls: Players are free to reroll their dice as much as possible (And will have to do so nearly all the time!) to resolve an action. However, that brings me to...
  Black masks: Any time a die gets a black mask result, it becomes locked. A locked die cannot be rerolled or used for anything. When this happens (And it will happen.) the affected player should leave the die showing the black mask. Luckily, we come to gold masks...
  Gold mask: When a die comes up with the gold mask result, the player can use it to unlock up to 2 black mask locked dice. Very useful!
  Set aside: After making a roll, the player may set aside a dice on any face for later use. A player may also change their mind and reroll dice set aside in a later roll.
  A good example of setting aside would keeping a gold mask result in anticipation of getting a black mask later.
  Aid: If 2 or more meeples are on the same tile, they may help each other by contributing die results to the other player's action.
  A player can even use a gold mask of their own to unlock another player's locked dice.
• Actions: There are several actions each player can perform, which they can do in any order as required.
  Move: The player may attempt to move their meeple into an adjacent tile. The tile they are moving on to will show 2 icons that will need to be rolled. Typically this involves a green adventurer and 1 other icon - sometimes another green adventurer.
  After matching the icons, the player can move their meeple into the relevant tile.
  Explore: If the player wants to move their meeple through a doorway that does not yet have a tile, they must get a result with 2 green adventurers on their dice.
  Once this is completed, they flip a tile from the stack and place it adjacent to the doorway they want to go through.
  When adding new tiles to the playing area, the doorway with the stairs is always used to make the connection.
  ​Gems: Some of the basic tiles have space for a gem and number of the main tiles will have 3 gem spaces (For 1, 2 or 3 gems.).
  What's important about gems? Well, they need to be removed from the gem depot tile and put on the gems spaces on the tiles in order to allow the players to escape.
  How is this done? next to a single gem space will be a torch symbol and a 4. As an action, if a player gets 4 torches on the dice, they can move a gem from the depot tile to the space on their current tile.
  For the tiles with 3 gem spaces, 1, 2 or 3 gems can be shifted, however, only 1 of those spaces can be used on a tile. Furthermore, it gets harder to achieve  to move more gems. E.g., it takes 10 torch symbols to shift 3 gems, which is impossible for a single player and requires a group effort - probably with 3 players!
• Turn of fate: This action does not require rolling dice, it does however, require unanimous agreement from all players.
  When this action is triggered, it allows all players to reroll all locked dice. It's a powerful move that can free up a lot of dice but it comes at a cost. One of the 2 gems that were put adjacent to the gem depot tile must be added to the tile, thus making escape harder.
  Since 2 gems were put to the side, this can be done twice in a game.
• End of round: When a gong plays on the sound track, it marks the beginning of the end of the 1st round. All players must return to the starting tile before countdown expires and a door shutting sound plays.
  If a player gets back in time, nothing bad happens.
  If a player fails to get back in time, then they permanently lose 1 die for the rest of the game!
  2nd round: The second round now begins and is basically a repeat of the 1st round, players must again move, explore and shift gems until this time 2 gongs play and must return to the starting tile or suffer the same penalty.
  Even if the exit tile is discovered in the first 2 rounds, at no point can the players use it to escape in those rounds. Which brings me to the 3rd round and the endgame.

Endgame
When the 3rd and final round begins, all players must get to the exit tile and successfully perform the escape action.

• Escape: Obviously this action can only occur in the 3rd round and when the player is on the exit tile. They must then roll their dice to escape.
  The player must get a number of key results equal to the remaining number of gems on the gem depot tile, plus one! I.e., if the gem tile is empty, they still need at least 1 key. If there were 3 gems on the tile, they would need 4 keys.
  What makes this worse is that players cannot help each other in the final escape. Players can only use their own dice, which is why losing dice in the first 2 round can be really bad as can having too many gems remaining on the depot tile.
• Boon: When a player escapes they may give exactly 1 of their dice permanently to another player as assistance.

The soundtrack has a total countdown across all 3 rounds of 10 minutes.

If one or more players are still in the temple when the countdown has finished, then they collectively lose the game.
If all the players have escaped before the time runs out, then the players collectively win!

Overall
I'm going to start by saying that I'm a bit ambivalent towards real time games.
I've played some good ones and can see how they have their place in gaming but for me but broadly speaking, it's not why I like and play board games. I like to think out my decisions and choices at least a little bit.
Add to the mix a push-your-luck dice mechanic and you've a game of a lot of quick frantic rolling. You really don't want to roll those dice off the table!

Having said all of this, I think Escape: The Curse of the Temple is a solid game and there's a lot to like about it.

Firstly, rules and theme mesh together well. Chucking dice as quickly as you can to escape feels good.

The synchronous dice rolling is a clever little system.
Generally real time games are always trying to impress upon players that they're up against the clock, this can be a little jarring in a game where players are having to wait for another player's time to run our and get their turn. By having synchronous actions, it heightens the sense of urgency as everyone is in it together.

Being able to provide assistance another player on the same tile is equally clever. It's an elegant mechanic that also feels organic and makes sense.

This means it would seem like a good idea to have players explore the temple as a group, it would make shifting gems and unlocking dice easier...
But there's a couple of rules that throws a spanner into that strategy.

Firstly; exploring as group can slow down that exploration. Players can't escape if they don't shift enough gems or find draw exit tunnel from the stack.
Secondly; players will want to avoid creating single long corridors, they will need to return to the starting tile twice and the further away they are from it, the further it is to get back.

This will force players to split up or go in pairs or stick close by if they have the option, at least for the first 2 rounds.
This can change contextually when certain tile are revealed or have to be put in play in a certain way or a player get too many locked dice and so on.
Players will have to think quickly and decisively as well as adapt to emergent events.

Escape: The Curse of the Temple obviously has a quick playtime - 10 minutes! That feels a little strange because the setup and explanation time almost feels longer than a single game.
It's reasonably easy to learn, I can't imagine novice gamers struggling to learn the concepts here.
It also not a game to be taken too seriously and leans heavily on luck which is not unusual for cooperative games. Although, even accepting this, a bad run of rolls can sour the experience.
​But treat Escape: The Curse of the Temple as a cooperative, silly, fun, filler of a game and it will be a enjoyable time. So long as your luck is better than mine... much better!

28th January 2022

It's Friday evening and we're round Simon's for a night of gaming.

The game of the night was Apollo.

Houston.... we've had a game here.
One small step for gaming and errr, umm... one cooperative game for gamers?

Anyway, enough of the bad jokes.

What's in a game?
​Apollo is an symmetrical cooperative game where 1 player take on the role of mission control and the other players take on the role of astronauts on the titular mission.

• Game boards: Apollo uses 2 game boards of differing difficulty. One each for the Gemini and Apollo missions. The Gemini board depicts a flight path orbiting the Earth while the Apollo board shows a flight plan to the Moon and back to Earth.
• Mission packs: There are mission packs for both the Gemini and Apollo missions which each come in a silvery pouch reminiscent of the pouches used to store astronaut food.
  Each mission pack contains a set of double-sided flight stage cards and some experiment cards. These determine some of the challenges that each mission will face.
• Player screen: This is used by the mission control player to hide stuff that the other player should not know about. Inside, is artwork that various mission control systems and displays.
  The screen comes with widgets that can be clipped to it and then flipped up by mission control to alert the other players that comms are down or something else is wrong.
• Mission control board: This board is used by mission control to track how much damage the flight has taken. This is done with 5 sliders that track the module's 5 different systems; flight control, power distribution, life support, communications and experiments.
  Each go from 8 to 0. When the slider is at 8, everything is hunky dory, when it's at the lower numbers, those systems start encountering problems and when it's a 0, it's quite literally a crisis!
  The mission control board also has a space to place the current experiment card.
• Crisis cards: There are 5 sets of five crisis cards, obviously each set relates to one of the 5 systems.
  When a system crisis occurs occurs, a pertinent card is drawn and resolved, either by mission control or the astronauts.
• Crisis puzzle boards: There are 4 of these square boards, each with a slightly different layout. Certain crisis cards may force the mission control player to complete one.
• Tetrominoes: Used in conjunction with the puzzle boards.
• Astronaut board: This board is designed to look like the controls panels on the flight module and is obviously used by the astronaut players, it essentially has 5 spaces to place dice that correspond to the 5 areas on the mission control board.
• Flight damage board: This square board is used to track damage that occurs to the module.
  It consists of 5 'gridded' rows which again correspond to the 5 systems. Each row has 3 spaces which each contain a 'X' symbol and 3 bonus spaces. Finally there's a 6th 'blank' row at the bottom.
• Dice: There are 12 normal six-siders that come with the game, 6 come in yellow and 6 in black.
• Tokens: Apollo makes use of 2 types of tokens.
  Comm tokens: These tokens display COMM on one side and some will display an icon/action on the other side.
  +/- tokens: These double sided tokens are green on one side and red on the other, they also display a '+' symbol and a '-' symbol. These can be spent to modify the results of dice rolls during the game.
• Pawn: There are 2 types of astronaut shaped pawn/meeple (Astreeple?) in Apollo.
  Black pawn: This the experiment meeple and is used by mission control to track the astronauts' experiments
  Red pawns: these 5 meeples can be used by the astronauts to track information.
• Standees: There are Gemini and Apollo standees used to track mission progress on their associated boards.
• First player token: This coaster sized token displays a picture of an astronaut walking on the moon.

Apollo's components are pretty good throughout and it's clear effort and thought has gone into creating some of them.

The boards, tokens and player screen are all constructed of suitability thick card. While the dice are not wooden, they use a old school LCD numeric font for the numbers which is pretty cool, as are the pouches to store the mission cards.

The astronaut board and particularly the player screen feature very well themed artwork that calls back to sixties computer tech. The art on the astronaut board displays various dials and buttons is perhaps a little sparse but is also clean and doesn't interfere with the game element. Most of the player screen is decorated with evocative artwork of of what I imagine is module controls, the inside has some game information but the rest is an illustration of what mission control might look like. Dig the cup of coffee!
The art that depicts the Earth and the Moon is perfectly fine, they look like what they're meant to.
Finally, the flight stage cards are double-sided and as each one is completed, it's flipped over to show an illustration of that actual stage, which is a nice touch.

The game features little in the way of dedicated iconography, all the information is presented clear terms and is easy to comprehend.

How's it play?
Setup
Since Apollo is a asymmetrical game, it has a asymmetrical setup.

• Player Screen: The mission control player must put up the screen in their playing area and clip on the alert widgets on to it.
  Mission control board: Behind the screen they should place the mission control board and set all the sliders to '8'.
  Crisis cards: The mission control player should then sort all the crisis cards into their respective stacks, then shuffle them into 5 face-down decks and place them close to their related systems.
  Dice: the mission control player should take 1 yellow and 1 black dice and place it behind the screen.
  Comms tokens: The mission control player place 2 'blank' comms tokens behind the screen, then shuffles the remaining tokens into face-down stacks.
• Mission pack: Select the mission pack which has been chosen and set out the flight stage cards sequentially in a row.
  Then shuffle the experiment cards into a face-up deck and place the 1st one on it's space on the mission control board.
• Astronaut players: The astronaut players should put the astronaut board, flight damage board and remaining dice in their playing area.
• First player: A first player should be determined among the astronaut players.

On to play
Apollo is played over a number of rounds, each round has its setup and then is played over a number of turns.​ To make matters worse, Apollo is played in real time and each round only lasts 4 minutes.

• Setup: The mission control player tells the astronaut players how many dice they can roll - this is dependant on the life support rating - the higher the better and only the mission control player knows what the actual rating is.
• Roll the dice: One of the astronauts rolls the dice allotted number of dice.
  Assign dice: Dice results 1-5 are placed into their pertinent rows, covering up the 'X' symbols. 6's are put into the bottom row. After this, the 6's can be reallocated to any of the other 5 rows.
  Resolve dice: Any 'X' symbols not covered inflict that much damage to their system. If the flight control row is displaying 2 'X' symbols, the flight control system slider on the mission control board would have to be moved down 2 points.
  Additionally, each die in any bonus spaces, earns the astronauts +/- tokens (These cannot be used to change the results on the damage board.).

That's it for the setup, then the game goes into the round.

• Mission control player: The mission control player has a number of actions they can perform.
  Track flight: The mission control player moves the standee along its flightpath at the end of every player turn and also tracks when it will encounter a flight stage.
  Additionally, when a flight stage is completed, mission control should flip the relevant card over, revealing the picture on the back.
  Track damage: Mission controls tracks all the damage the flight takes, furthermore they can flip up an alert to tell the players something is wrong somewhere. Mission control may also spend comms tokens to verbally provide the astronauts with more information about damaged systems.
  Comms: Some comms tokens will also have icons or action on the flipside which mission control can spend to aid the astronauts.
  Track experiments: Mission control also tracks the astronauts progress on whatever experiment they're on.
  Deal with a crisis: When a system rating drops to 0, mission control must complete a puzzle board to get it up and running again.

The round goes differently for the astronaut players. Starting with the first player, each astronaut player takes a turn going clockwise and a turn consists of exactly 1 action. An action involves moving one or more dice from the flight damage board on to the astronaut board and resolving them
What are these actions and how do they work?

• Allocating dice: Actions usually require several dice and differing actions will have different dice requirements, they might require only yellow or black dice, or even alternating colours, some might require identical or ascending numbers and so on. Some actions (Generally flight stages and experiments.) require a set number of dice to complete, most of these actions can be completed over a number of turns, in this case, they stay on the relevant space until the 
  Other actions scale, i.e. the action gets better the more dice are allocated to it.
• Flight control: This action allows the astronaut players to contribute dice to completing the flight stage goal.
• Power distribution: This action allows mission control to adjust the sliders on their mission control board, this is also a scaling action, so the more dice allocated to the action, the more adjustments mission control can make.
• Life support: Using this action allows the astronauts to gain +/- tokens.
• Experiments: This action allows the astronauts to contribute dice towards completing the current experiment.
• Communications: Performing this action allows mission control to acquire more comms tokens.
• Repair systems: Allocating dice to this action allows mission control to increase the rating of one of the systems.
• End of turn: Once the active player has had their action, mission control moves the standee 1 space along the flight path and the next astronaut player become the active player.
• End of round: The current round ends when 1 of 3 criteria is met.
  All dice have been allocated.
  4 minutes are up.
  The astronauts decide to end the round.
  Regardless of how the round ends, the following round begins with mission control announcing how many dice the astronauts may roll.

Play progresses with the players (Hopefully!) successfully completing the required number of flight stages and experiments

Endgame
During play, if the module passes a flight stage space on the board without completing its requisite task or the flight control rating is lower then 4, then the mission immediately fails.
If the module reaches splashdown without completing the required number of experiments, then the mission fails.

However, if all the flight stages and experiments are completed, then mission is a success and the players win the game.

Overall
The rules for Apollo sound quite clunky in writing but in actual play, they felt straightforward and once players begin performing actions, it becomes quite understandable.  I wouldn't call it a crossover game but I imagine that it would be easy to pick up.

Apollo is quite unusual, being an asymmetrical cooperative game and I think it fits its theme quite well too.
Having that slight disconnect between mission control and the astronauts somehow lends the game a greater sense of teamwork.
Astronauts having to rely on mission control to get information and mission control having to rely on the astronauts to get comms tokens and to be able to make changes to systems means players have to work together.
It's definitely a bit different to the typical cooperative game where players are cooperating but generally sort of off doing their own thing. Another noticeable and welcome difference is how there's no characters running round a global board trying to stop the spread of something here.

​During the game, players will be, broadly speaking, faced with 3 types of obstacle; successfully completing flight stages, successfully completing experiments and firefighting damage that occurs during the flight.
There's a real need to strike a balance between these 3 priorities and players will also have to approach this as efficiently as possible, the flight module moves along the board after every turn and is in essence another countdown timer. It means planning for the known variables of the flight stages, somewhat knowable experiments and also reacting and adapting to unpredictable damage inflicted on the command module and there will be damage!  There are 15 damage spaces on the flight damage board and only 10 dice to cover them, that means at least 5 damage to the systems every round.
Being a cooperative game, Apollo uses the luck or specifically the bad luck that arises from rolling those dice to challenge players.

The game also features a time limit in the form of a 4 minute timer: On paper this might not seem like much time but in play it's perhaps a little overgenerous.
4 minutes to assign 10 dice works out to be 240 seconds for 10 dice or 24 seconds per die, which we did not find much of an issue.

We played the Gemini mission board a couple of times and it didn't present too much challenge for us, there were a definite couple hiccups and dicey (sic) moments but otherwise it was pretty much plain sailing or more accurately, plain err.... orbiting? Mission control never had to reach for the puzzle boards.
However, we are a fairly experienced band of players and maybe for once, the luck went our way this time.
We didn't get round to playing the Apollo mission board which is probably where the meat of the game lies and certainly looks more challenging, so I'm reserving judgement on the game's difficulty.

I'm not certain about the game's replay-ability either, it wasn't boring but at the same time felt a little samey, players are ultimately just assigning dice to tasks, some of which may become quite familiar over multiple plays.

Easy to learn with a reasonable play time and providing some interesting decisions to make, I'd say that Apollo is a good game to play every once in awhile and if cooperative games are your cup of tea, then it's definitely worth checking out this fresh take on cooperative gameplay.

26th November 2019

Tuesday gaming night at 'The Sovereigns' is here.

The first game of the evening was 'Nine Tile Panic'.

Nine Tile Panic is a game that comes in a little box that delivers a lot of stress!
This is a game all about building a city but not just building a city. It's a game about building a city in a strict time limit!
Thinking about it, maybe we should get real city planners to play this game? You won't find any unoccupied roadworks in Nine Tile panic let me tell you.

What's in a game?
'Nine Tile Panic' has few components:

• ​Tiles: 45 double sided tiles, 5 identical sets of 9 cards for each player. The tiles depict different types of roads such as crossroads, T-junctions etc. The tiles also depict dogs, men-in-black, aliens, ufos, burgers, buildings etc.
• Objective cards: 26 cards that have objectives that need to be met each round.
• Order markers: There are 5 of these that are used to rank the finishing order at the end of every round.
• Scoreboard: Tracks scores!

The components are reasonably colourful with simple illustrations.

How's it play?
Before playing, give each player a set of tiles.
Nine Tile Panic is played over a series of rounds. Each round is scored before play proceeds to the following round.
A round goes like this:

• Set out order markers, according to the number of players.
• 3 objective cards are drawn. These objectives tend to be quite diverse and unusual. Each objective has variable levels of success. The better each objective is completed, the more points are earned. An objective might be 'have as many men in black pointing their guns at aliens as possible.
• Players now have to place their 9 tiles down in a 3x3 grid in such a way as to maximise scoring from the objective cards (Both sides can be used.). Players must however, follow this rule: Any roads on the tiles must enter and exit the 3x3 grid and must be connected to each other as required, there can be no 'dead ends'.
• Players can choose when to 'stop' building their city. The first player to 'stop', takes the highest value order marker and turns over the hourglass timer.
• All remaining players have 90 seconds to complete their cities. When a player stops building their city, they take the next highest value order marker. This continues until all players have taken an order marker, or the timer runs out.
• Once the 90 seconds are over, any player who has not claimed an order marker is eliminated. Furthermore, any city that does not meet the criteria for connected roads is eliminated from that rounds scoring.

Scoring:

• Scoring is based on the number of players participating. For a 5 player game, scores vary from 1 to 5, for a 4 player game it's 1 to 4 and so on.
• Each of the 3 objectives is scored separately. The player who has achieved the most of an objective will score the maximum points for it (5 points for a 5 player game.), the second best player to achieve the objective will get the second highest score. This continues until the lowest achieving player receives 1 point. Obviously, players who were eliminated in this round will score 0 (In all objectives.). Ties are settled using the order marker (Highest value wins ties.).
• This is done for all 3 objectives. Thus; in a 5 player game, a player who gets highest in all 3 objectives would score 15 points.
• Once all 3 objectives have been scored, a new round with 3 new objectives will begin.

Endgame
Play continues until the score limit has been reached. For a 5 player game this is 25 points.
Final scores are tallied, highest score wins. 

Overall
Nine Tile Panic is a small, quick to learn and quick to play game. A game can be 20 more than 20 minutes.

The game is supposed to be fun, but it should be called 'Nine Tile Stress!'. Why? Because there will always be that one player who's going to finish their city too quickly just to watch the other players suffer! That's why. Always!
You'll be swearing under your breath as any strategy you've concocted will fly out of the window and you'll just be trying to make any city you can!

And seriously, that's what makes Nine Tile Panic a good game and fun too.
If you have friends who like real time games, you should play this with them.
And if you have friends who hate real time games you should definitely play this with them!

12th July 2019

Friday gaming in lieu of WFRP continues with the 3rd game - 'Pit Crew'

We've all seen it, when a racing car pulls into the pits and the pit crew goes mental changing the tyres and refuelling the car.

Pit Crew is a 'team-based' card game that attempts to emulate this frenzied burst of activity by being a 'real-time' game.
How does this work? Well let's get to it.

What's in a game?
Pit Crew is a team based game and players will be in up to 3 teams of 1-3 people each. Thus the game supports 2-9 players. Components include:

• Game board: Depicting a oval race track.
• Wooden cars: To go on the race track.
• Car sheets: These each depict a racing car, one is given to each team. Each car sheet has 5 numbers, one of each tyre and one for the roof (Which represents fuel in the game.).
• A large deck of cards: Numbered 1-10 in black and white.
• A smaller deck of cards with special abilities.
• 2 Dice: normal six sided dice.

The components are fine, unremarkable and completely functional.

How's it play?
Firstly, all players are split up into teams of up to 3 each.
Each team is given a car sheet and each team is dealt a hand of numbered cards (Split between the team players.).

The objective of Pit Crew is to change the tyres and refuel your car as a team and then race it around the track on the game board. All of this is done in real time!

Changing tyres
To change tyres, the team must play 4 cards next to each tyre.

• The value of the first card must be 1 high or lower than the number shown on the car sheet. Thus if the car sheet has a 7 next to a tyre, the value of the card played by the team must be 6 or 8.
• The value of the second card must be 1 higher or lower than the first card played.
• And so on, until all 4 cards have been played.
• This must be done for all 4 tyres.

Refuelling
In order to refuel the car, multiple cards must be played on the refuelling number on the car sheet. The combined values of all of these cards must equal the value on the car sheet. Thus if the car sheet has a value of 23 for refuelling, then playing a  6, 4, 10 & 3 would equal 23.

Exiting the pits
Once all 4 tyres and refuelling has been completed, the car can exit the pits and enter the race.
However there's a little twist here. The better the pit change, the quicker the car comes out of the pits (The more spaces it moves.).
How is this calculated?
This is where the colours of the cards come in play.
If the cards used to change tyres are of a certain colour combination, then the car gets a bonus when leaving the pits.
The same is the case for refuelling.

Conversely; if the cards played on the tyres or fuel are the wrong numbers, then the car will suffer a penalty when leaving the pits.
If the penalty is bad enough, the car might crash out of the game!

Racing
Once a car exits the pit lane and begins racing, the team rolls a die to move. This rolling is real time and the quicker they roll the dice, the more they can move.
However once all cars have exited the pits, real time rolling ceases. From now on all rolling is done in turn order until the race is completed.

A game consists of several races. After a race is completed, each team is given a 'bonus' card.
Bonus cards confer random special abilities that can help a team or be used to hinder an opposing team.

Endgame
Once all the races have been run, the team that has won the most races wins.

​Overall
Pit Crew is a small, quick and easy game to learn. Which is good, because stopping to query the rules in the middle of a real time game could prove tricky.

This is the first real time tabletop game I've played and I've always been a bit suspicious of the concept. But Pit Crew was fun. I think this partially because each team plays separately and does not interfere with each other during the real time phase of the race. You have your teammates to consider!

Pit Crew is a cooperative game about completing tasks quickly, but accurately in a team. The Pit Crew theme fits it very well.

I think that Pit Crew is a game worth trying.