21st July 2023

It's a Friday evening and we're round Simon's for some gaming fun!

​Life finds a way.... to create a tableau of cards with little green cubes and plastic plant stalks in Earth, a engine-building, action-selection game.

I wouldn't call it a barrier to playing the game considering the type of player the game is aimed at but still there are quite a lot learn.
​If I had one criticism, it would be that the 4 colours associated with the 4 actions could be a more contrasting.

How's it play?
Setup

• Fauna board: First decide which side of the fauna board to use.
  For this blog, we'll be using the standard side.
  Fauna cards: Shuffle the fauna cards into a deck and deal 4 on to the pertinent spaces on the fauna board. Either side of the fauna card can be used.
  Ecosystem cards: Shuffle the ecosystem cards into a deck and deal 2 and place them on to their spaces, again, either side can be used.
  Earth cards: Shuffle the earth cards (that is the flora, terrain & event cards) into what will be a quite large face-down cards
• Players: Give each player a player board and tokens in their player colour. The standard side of the player board should be used.
  Cards: Shuffle the island and climate cards into their respective decks. Next deal 2 island, 2 climate and 2 ecosystem cards to each player.
  Players must now decide to keep 1 of each type, they are free to use either side of the cards they were dealt, thus will have a choice of 4 for each.
  Starting resources: The island card that a player chose will dictate what the player's starting resources will be. This will involve drawings a number of earth cards into their hand, some of which will then have to be composted​. When cards are composted, they are placed face-down on to the compost space on a player's board. Players compost cards in 2 ways; from their hand or from the deck.
  Players will then also acquire an amount soil tokens.
• First player: Determine the starting player then give them the first player and active player tokens.

On to play
In Earth, players will be looking to create a tableau of earth cards (which for the most part will be flora cards) to earn VPs as well as create an engine. They will need to acquire and 'plant' cards in a 4x4 grid that will allow them to create growths and sprouts which in turn will also have uses as well as being worth VPs in this very interconnected game.

Earth uses a traditional turn order with the active player selecting 1 of the 4 available actions to perform during their turn as well as trigger additional associated actions. Other players, albeit to a lesser extent will also be able to perform that action as well as triggering their own additional actions.
Even though only 1 player is the active player, it is generally possible for all players to perform their actions simultaneously.
A turn plays out as follows.

• Action Selection: The active player now chooses 1 of the 4 available actions and places the active player token above that action on their player board. This easily allows other players to see which action has been chosen.
  • Plant: This is the green action.
    Play card: This actions allows active player to put 1 or 2 cards from their hand into their tableau by paying their cost in soil.
    Tableau creation: Each player will create a card tableau over the course of the game. A tableau cannot exceed a 4x4 grid. When starting a tableau, the first card can be placed 'anywhere' in the tableau. Subsequent cards must be adjacent to another card, either diagonally or orthogonally.
    Draw cards: The active player then draws 4 cards from the earth deck and keeps 1.
    Other players: All other players plant 1 card as per the rules and draw 1 card.
  • Compost: This is the red action.
    Gain soil: The active player gains 5 soil.
    Compost cards: The active play can compost 2 cards from from the earth deck on to their compost deck face-down.
    Other players: All other players may either gain 2 soil or compost 2 cards from the deck but not both!
  • Watering: This is the blue action.
    Gain sprouts: The active player gains 6 sprout cubes. These must immediately be placed on to available sprout spaces on flora cards. Any sprouts that cannot be placed are lost. Sprout cubes cannot be stored in a reserve or on a player board.
    Gain soil: The active player now gains 2 soil.
    Other players: All other players can either gain 2 sprouts or gain 2 soil.
  • Growing: This is the yellow action.
    Gain cards: The active player takes 4 cards from the earth deck into their hand.
    Gain growth: The active player now gains 2 growth which they can put on to growth spaces on flora cards.
    How growth works: For each growth a player has, they may place a stalk on to the growth space on a flora, if they are completing the last segment of growth, they ass a canopy as sign the growth has been completed.
    Each growth space has 2 numbers associated with it. On the left is shown how many growth segments can be stored there and on the right, how many VPs a fully created growth will score. As with sprouts, any growth that cannot be immediately stored will be lost.
  • Other players: All other players may either gain 2 cards or gain 2 growth.
• Additional actions: What are these additional actions mentioned above? Well, the 4 main actions each have a colour associated with it and when that action is chosen by the active player, all actions on all cards with the matching colour may also be activated by all players.
  Activation order: When actions on cards are activated, particularly when more than one is activated, they are always activated in a specific order, which is left-to-right and top-to-bottom.
  Player board or tableau: If actions on both a player board and tableau are activated at the same time, the player may choose whether to activate the board or tableau first. However, whichever one is activated first must be fully resolved before moving on to the other. The activation order mentioned above applies to both board and tableau.
  Multicoloured actions: Some actions are multicoloured. This means they are activated whenever a red, blue or yellow action is chosen, never the green.
  ​Black actions: A black action is a once-only action that occurs only when the card is first played.
  ​Brown actions: These actions will either have an ongoing effect during the game or provide a end of game scoring opportunity.
• Bonus action: Technically unrelated to colours, each player has the option to spend 3 sprouts to gain 2 soil. This can be done at anytime except during the watering action and prevents players from simply turning sprouts into soil to make room for more sprouts.
• Event cards: These can be played pretty much at any time during the game except in the middle of another action and have a variety of functions. Event cards have no cost but may earn VPs, it's also fairly common for them to lose VPs as well.
  Once played, event cards are discard face-up in the event card pile on a player's board. They are not composted and thus score the VPs found on the front.
• Next player: Once all players have resolved all their actions. The turn is over, the active player passes the active player token to the player on their left who now become the active player.

Endgame
The endgame is triggered as soon as any player plants the 16th card in their tableau. That player should place one of their leaf tokens on to the 7VP spot on the fauna board.
Play then continues until all players have had equal turn and then goes to scoring.

Earth provides players with a wide variety of avenues to score points.

• Base VPs: Score the VP values shown on all cards in play, this also includes cards on the player board.
• Event cards: Score VPs from all event cards in the event card discard pile.
• Compost: Score 1VP per card in the compost pile.
• Sprouts: Score 1VP per sprout on flora cards.
• Growths: Completed growths score their full VP value while incomplete growths score 1VP per section.
• Terrain cards: Calculate VPs earned from terrain cards.
• Ecosystem cards: Each player scores their personal ecosystem card as well as the 2 shared cards.
• Fauna board: Players now add in the VPs acquired from leaf tokens they placed on the fauna board - this includes 7VPs for the player that triggered the game end.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
In Earth, the tableaus that players are creating are literal islands that will expand and grow from their origin point, where different terrains and flora will spread, endure events and attract fauna. Each island will develop its own set of interconnected ecology in the form of its game mechanics and engine.
In this regard, Earth fits its natural world theme pretty well.

​Mechanically, Earth blends tableau building with resource management and action selection.
Whilst not particularly complicated, there are a lot of 'moving parts' to Earth and a lot for players to think about and many ways to score. Soil, sprouts, growth and even cards are all resources that must be managed and all of those bar soil also generate VPs. The game's engine building frequently demands that one resource be spent to gain more of another and so on. Classic engine building stuff.

It means that players need to really think about which cards they will use to create their tableau, this will involve considering not only the abilities on the cards but also their position within the tableau as this will affect how well they 'combo' off of each other.
​Furthermore, players will probably need to think about the plant and habitat types of the cards they want to play and how that effects their scoring opportunities. Terrain cards throw even more into the mix with some often almost random objectives requiring the placement of cards in certain ways or scoring off of hand size or compost size.
With so many ways to score that can arise in diverse combinations, it's kind of hard to describe how to play Earth but players will need to recognise opportunities to exploit when they appear and possibly rethink their approach. There's some flexibility to how an island expands and players may find themselves changing strategies partway through the game to accommodate new goals they have acquired

While Earth has a fairly lengthy playtime, especially with a higher player count, it never feels like it due to how most of the game can played out simultaneously.
It's also definitely not one for beginners and leans towards the heavier end of the difficulty scale. Fortunately, it's not too hard to learn and cards will contain a lot of the information that players need.

For me, Earth strikes all the right notes and is a game I enjoy playing:  It provides a balance between accessibility and depth along meaningful decisions and has a engaging theme. It doesn't hurt that it's filled with fantastic imagery and components that looks great on the table.
Definitely one to try.

15th July 2023

It's a summery Saturday afternoon and we're participating in Wogglecon 8 at the Bisley Scout & Guide Hall for a whole day of gaming goodness!

I always thought dragons were a pretty bad bunch, what with their death-dealing fiery breath and perchance for human sacrifice.
Turns out they're a happy, cosy lot with a passion for artisanal crafting, or at least that's what they are in Flamecraft, a game all about dragons and err.... shopkeepers.

Note: There are some component differences between the kickstarter edition of Flamecraft (Which is what are in the photos.) and the standard version. Basically, the kickstarter edition has higher quality tokens.

So thus, the overall component quality is good. Tokens are colourful, well presented and satisfyingly chunky, as as the metal coins. This version even comes with some tokens trays.
Having said that, I was not particularly fond of the 3d plastic player meeples. While they are chunky, bright and fairly good 3d sculpts, they're also unpainted plastic and essentially monochrome which somehow lends them a sort of drab quality. Ironically, the standard edition comes with screen printed meeples which in my opinion are much  more preferable.
The cards are the pretty normal high quality expected from modern games.

Without a doubt, Flamecraft features excellent artwork and art direction.
It utilises what is known nowadays as a 'cosy' art style. It's a breezy cartoonish style filled cheerful and colourful illustrations and gives the game a happy, positive vibe without being overly busy.
While the game does have a fairly big footprint, the upside is that it has a brilliant table presence.

There's quite a few icons in Flamecraft but many of them are self explanatory, a few might require players to initially reference the rulebook, it's nothing bad and won't prove an obstacle to players.

How's it play?
setup

• Game mat: Roll out the game mat and perform the following.
  • Shop cards: Put out the 6 starter shop cards on any 6 shop spaces on the mat.
  • Shop deck: Right - this one is a bit more involved.
    First sort the shop cards into their 7 types (6 goods and specials.), then shuffle each into its own face-down deck.
    Next draw 1 card from each goods deck, 4 cards from the specials deck, shuffle them together into the shop deck and put them on to their spot.
  • Starter dragons: Take the 6 starter dragons and place them on their corresponding starting shop cards.
  • Enchantment deck: Decide whether to use either the purple or gold cards and shuffle them into a face-down deck. Next, deal 5 face-up cards on to their allotted spaces to create the enchantment card 'market'.
  • Fancy deck: Shuffle the fancy dragon cards into a face-down deck.
  • Artisan deck: Select the number of artisan dragon cards required as per the player count and shuffle them into a face-down deck and place it on its allotted space on the game board. Then deal 5 cards face-up on to their spaces to create their market.
• Player setup: Give each player the dragon meeple and score tracker in their player colour - place the score tracker on the scoring track.
  Fancy dragons: Deal 2 fancy dragon cards face-down to each player who should select one and return the other to the bottom of the fancy dragon deck.
  First player: Determine the starting player. Depending on player count, players later in the turn order will receive some starting goods.

On to play
Flamecraft uses a traditional turn order with the active player resolving their turn before play moves to the player on their left.
On their turn a player must visit one of the shops in the village and then they can choose whether to make use of the shop's facilities or enchant the shop.
A turn plays out as follows.

• Visit shop: The active player must visit a shop, furthermore, it must be a different shop to the one they currently have their meeple on.
  If any other players have meeples at the shop the active player visits, then the active player must pay each of them either any 1 good or 1 coin.
  Now that the active player is at a shop, they must choose from the following 2 actions; gather goods or enchant shop.
• Gather goods: This is basically - go shopping! The active player performs the following action and optional actions.
  • Gather goods: The active player must gather goods and acquires whatever is shown in the top left of the shop card which is usually a good but might be something else. Additionally, they also gain a good from each artisan dragon (Which is shown in the top left corner of each artisan dragon.) on the shop and from each enchantment that has been put on the shop - more on enchantments later.
    As well as goods, a player may acquire money or cards from gathering.
  • Place dragon: This optional action allows the active player to place a dragon on to a empty space on the shop card they are visiting.
    A dragon may be placed on to any of the 3 spaces provided they're empty and the dragon card's type matches the type required on the space. When a dragon card is placed, it will trigger the action alongside that requirement.
    Abilities on the dragon card just played are not triggered.
    Filling a shop: If placing a dragon fills the last available space on the shop card, the active player draws a new one from the shop card deck and at the end of their turn, reveals the new shop.
  • Fire up a dragon: The active player may optionally make use of the special ability of one of the dragons already on the shop card - not the one they just played.
  • Shop ability: Finally, the player may choose to use the shop card's own special ability.
• Enchant shop: The other main action a player can perform is to enchant a shop, this also allows them to perform a optional action.
  • Use enchantment: The active player must buy one of the available enchantment cards. The card will list its cost in goods, which can also generally be paid for with coins in place of goods.
    Gain rewards: When an enchantment is bought, it will confer a reward on the active player. This reward may also 'scale up' by paying more goods.
    Place enchantment: The active player must now place the enchantment card on to a shop card. No more than 3 enchantment cards can be placed on any shop card.
  • Fire up dragons: The active play may now choose to fire up all dragons on the shop card they just enchanted.
• End of turn: When the active player has completed their main action and optional ones, the end of turn occurs.
  • Reveal shop card: If the active player drew a new shop card in their turn, it is now revealed and placed on the mat.
  • Check limits: At the end of their turn, the active player can have no more than 7 of each good and must discard if they exceed that, coins do not count as a good and are not subject to a limit.
    A player can also have no more than 6 artisan dragon cards in hand, there is no limit to how many fancy dragon cards they may have.
  • Refill drafting markets: If there are less than 5 face-up artisan dragon or enchantment cards on the mat, they should be restocked from their respective decks.
  • Next player: Play now progresses to the player on the active player's left.

Endgame
The game end is triggered when no more cards can be drawn either from the artisan dragon deck or enchantment deck.
1 final round is played and the game goes to scoring.

Players now reveal and score their 'night' fancy dragon cards.
Players also earn a VP for each coin they posses.
These are totalled with their scores on the scoring track.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Thematically, I'm not sure what to make of Flamecraft. It seems a little mismatched but conversely, it doesn't matter or feel 'off' because of it. Ultimately, the game's theme is its own thing and that thing is about going shopping and managing those shops!

Mechanically, Flamecraft is pretty straightforward, even though it appears to have a lot of moving parts, it's not as complicated as it first might appear.
For the most part, players will be gathering resources and when it comes down to it, choosing from 6 actions - those associated with the 6 goods and artisan dragons, other actions, optional or not don't really change.
Those 6 actions are the core of Flamecraft's gameplay and as well as some pretty standard choices that gain goods or cards, there's some more interesting options here, particularly one that allows the active player to gift goods to another player in return for VPs, something that's appropriately cosy for the game!
These 6 options form the crux of the Flamecraft's meaningful decisions.

Players need to use those decisions to optimise their actions, Flamecraft is all about optimisation. Players will find themselves gathering goods and coins which they will use to buy enchantment cards or fancy dragons which is the most reliable way to earn VPs - and they'll want to do it quicker than their opponents, creating a fast building engine is vital.
The thing is though, that essentially anybody can use any engine because all players players basically have access to all shops, albeit sometimes at a price. Luckily, day fancy dragons with their instant bonuses throws some asymmetrical elements into the mix.

While not really a light game, Flamecraft is fairly straightforward to learn and most players will pick it up quick enough. Although there was a rule that threw me off several times, which was; when an artisan dragon is played on to a shop card, it's special ability is not triggered and instead, the ability on the space it is placed on to is triggered! It felt counterintuitive to me!

Flamecraft is a fun game with an equally fun theme and I'm sure that a lot of people will enjoy it but it didn't quite click with me. I'm not entirely sure why but I felt like maybe the engine building and combo-moves were uninspiring.
This is another one of those games I'd happily play if it was someone else's choice but not one I'd pick myself.

20th June 2023


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

Game of the night was Dice City: Create a city in this engine-building dice game! I don't about you but dice rolling is the best way to build any municipality!

Like most modern games, the component quality in Dice City is good and there's nothing bad here. While the cards are average, the boards and tokens feel sturdy, the tokens in particular are pleasantly chunky and tactile.
I would've preferred wooden dice to the plastic ones provided but they are good quality, having well rounded corners and deep pips.

There's a definitely a bit of a fantasy theme to the slightly cartoony and cheerful art style found in Dice City. It's colourful and eye-catching with a good variety to the art too, illustrations on both the large player boards and cards doing a good job of depicting their subject material with detail but without cluttering up the components. Even the art used on the resource tokens looks easy to see and detailed.
All the this lends the game a vibrant and bright presence on the table.

All the iconography in Dice City is easy to understand and is logical. Players should not have any trouble understanding anything here.

How's it play?
Setup

• Cards: To create the central drafting area, sort all the cards as follows.
  Base cards: First, sort all the lumber mill, mine, quarry and regular army cards into each of their 4 types and place the 4 decks face-up in a row.
  ​Location cards: Shuffle all the location cards into a face-down deck and deal 8 face-up alongside the base cards.
  Bandit cards: Sort the bandit cards into their 3 types and put a stack of each with cards in each stack as per player count.
  Trade ship cards: Sort the trade ships into their 3 types, then put out a stack of each type with cards in each stack as per player count.
• First player: Determine a starting player.
• Roll the dice: Every player should roll all 5 of their dice and place them on their player board accordingly.
  E.g., rolling a 5 on the yellow die means placing it on the 5 column in the yellow row and so on.

On to play
In Dice City each player will spend their turn resolving the 5 dice that have been placed on to their board. Essentially giving them 5 actions; this will give them options to gain resources and then buy cards or trade ships and launch attacks as per the dice results etc.
Dice City uses a typical player order with the active player fully resolving all their dice before play proceeds to the player on their left.
The active player's turn has several phases and goes as follows.

• Dice phase: The active player resolves the dice on their player board one at a time in the order they chose. A die is resolved by removing it from the board, then the active player can perform one of the following actions to resolve that die.
  Use space: Probably the most common action in the game. Once a die is removed from a space, the action on that space may be used. This can provide them gain or trade resources or allow them to generate army strength or gain VPs etc.
  Move die: this allows the active player to move a die elsewhere on their board.
  Reactivate space: Certain events can deactivate a space on a player board (More on this below.) and the active player can use the die removal to reactivate a deactivated space.
  Discard cards: Once per turn the active player may discard any 4 of the 8 location cards and draw new ones to replace them.
  Pass: Also once per turn the active player may pass an action to gain a pass token. Why is that useful? Glad you asked.
  • Additional actions: During the dice phase, pass tokens can be spent to gain extra actions. 2 pass tokens must be spent to gain an extra action, although this can be done multiple times in a single turn. The actions are as follows.
    Gain resource: The active player can gain the resource of their choice.
    Increase army strength: The active player may increase their army strength by +1.
    Force re-rolls: This bonus action forces all other players to reroll one of their dice!
• Attack phase: The active player may have generated army strength during the previous phase and it can now be used during this phase to 'attack'.
  To make an attack, the active player must have an army strength equal or higher than their target's defence value (In which case they can attack!). Furthermore, if the active player's army strength is high enough, it can be split among multiple target to attack them all.
  Army strength does not carry over from round to round and any unspent strength is lost at the end of the active player's turn.
  It should be noted that if a card doesn't have any defence value, it cannot be attacked.
  There are 3 types of attack that can be made.
  Bandit cards: Successfully attacking a bandit card allows the active player to claim it, adding its VPs to the player's total at the game end.
  Resources: The active player may target another player's resources (Which that player must have kept between their turns.), a successful attack will allow the active player to steal 1 or more of them depending on the army strength allocated to those attacks.
  Location: The active player may attack a location belonging to another player. A successful attack on a location will 'deactivate' it, consequently a deactivation token is placed on that location which now cannot be used until the token is removed.
• Building and trading phase: Now the active player can spend resources they have acquired. Unlike army strength, 1 of each of the 3 types of resource can be kept between turns.
  Build locations: The active player may build as many new locations as they can afford. However, when a new location is built, it will cover the current location which will be discarded.
  Trade ship card: Alternatively, resources can be spent to acquire a trade ship card.
• End of turn: Once the building and trading phase has finished, the active player's turn is over.
  Army strength: This reverts to 0.
  Resources: the active player can keep 1 of each resource.
  Pass tokens: Any number of pass tokens may be kept between turns.
  Roll dice: The active player rolls their 5 dice and places them as required on their player board in preparation for their next turn.
  Next player: Play now progresses to the player on the active player's left.

Endgame
​Play continues until one of the following criteria is met.

• All bandit cards have been acquired.
• At least 2 stacks of trade ship cards have been acquired.
• The location deck is empty.
• Optionally: If at least 2 rows of a player's player board has been covered with location cards and none of them contain a deactivation token, then that player may choose to trigger the game end.

Regardless of how game end is triggered, play progresses until all players have had equal turns.
Player now calculate their VPs which can come from the following sources.

• VP tokens.
• Location cards.
• Bandit cards.
• Trade ship cards.

​
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
​Dice City is not the first game to use dice-activations in a engine-building game with a city creation theme and while how the dice work on the board is an unusual mechanic, players will be familiar with a lot of the other concepts presented here.

They will need to adapt to both what their dice results give them to work with and what is available to draft from the location cards. Luckily players have some agency with the results in the form of dice-manipulation which can help but generally, they'll looking for ways to increase the efficiency of their player board and unlike a lot of game of this type, Dice City begins will a fully fleshed out beginner engine. Every die roll will always produce a result of some sort, so players will looking to increase the effectiveness of their results.
Ultimately, players will be looking to do things quicker than their opponents.

Something that Dice City does well is provide 2 clear avenues to accruing VPs - resources that can be used to improve a player's city or to buy trade ship cards, while army strength can be employed to defeat bandit cards or hinder other players' cities.
This adds an element of direct interaction - unusual for a game in this style with the ability to steal opponents' resources and deactivate their locations - especially locations with dice on them!
There's also a higher level of play where players can look at what's effective on an opponents board and target those spaces, even if they don't currently contain a die.
Additionally, a further element of player interaction are pass tokens which can be spent to make opponents re-roll dice.

Mechanically, Dice City is pretty straightforward with reasonably light rules that also generally provides players with meaningful decisions to make, both resources and army strength can have multiple uses and will give players options to think about.

I found Dice City to be an OK game and I hate saying a game is OK because it's a bit of a cop-out when trying to discuss games but that's exactly what Dice City is - OK.
Other than the possible direct interaction between players it doesn't do anything particularly different or special or new.
However, having said all of that, it also doesn't do anything badly and is a game that plays well enough to be engaging that I can't fault. Ultimately, while I found the game's presentation to be good, Dice City doesn't really standout for me.

If player interaction is something your big on or find important, Dice City has it and is a worth a look if you want a dice-driven city building game.
Conversely, some people don't like the confrontational element the direct interaction adds to the game. So 

I will happily play Dice City if someone else chooses it but it wouldn't be my first choice.

8th June 2023

​We're in Aldershot on a Thursday night for some gaming goodness and today's first play is Mint Delivery.
It turns out that somewhere out there mints are big business. There's even somewhere called Mintopia City and it's the centre of mint production!
​Players take on the role of delivery drivers fulfilling orders to the surrounding minty named towns.

How's it play?
Setup

• Map: Take the 9 map cards and placed in their allotted places in a 3x3 grid. This layout is always the same in all games.
• Players: Give each player the truck card and truck meeple in their chosen colour. All players should place their truck on the Mintopia space on the central map card.
  Order cards: Shuffle the order cards into a face-down deck, then deal 3 face-down to each player.
  Then all players can decide to keep any number of those cards, provided their total combined VP value does exceed 6 VPs. For the time being, players should keep their chosen cards hidden.
  All discarded order cards are returned to their deck.
• Orders: Now shuffle the remaining order cards into a new face-down deck.
  ​Next; deal 7 order cards adjacent to each of the 4 towns.
  Then, from each of the 4 decks, reveal 2 cards.
  Players should now reveal the order cards they chose to keep. For the rest of the game, players should keep unfulfilled orders always face-up.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Mint Delivery, players will be looking to acquire order cards and then fulfil those orders by taking the required mints to the required location. Completed orders earn players their respective VP values.
Mint Delivery follows a traditional turn structure with the active player taking their turn and then play progressing to the player on their left.

• ​Active player: In their turn, the active player may perform up to 2 actions. This can be the same action twice or 2 different actions in any order they see fit.
  In addition, players may also take a free action.
  The actions are:
  • Fulfil order (Free Action.): If the player has met the order conditions of one of their order cards and is at the correct location. Then, as a free action, they can spend the required mints to fulfil that order! The completed order cards is then flipped face-down.
  • Load/unload mints: If the active player's truck is at the right location, they may load 2/4 mints on to their truck (Up to the truck's 4 mint limit.). They may also unload mints.
  • Move: For 1 action, the active player may move their truck to an adjacent space.
  • Take order: If the active player's truck is at 1 of the 4 towns and they have less than 3 unfulfilled order cards,  they can spend an action to acquire one of the town's 2 face-up order cards. This is done by performing the following steps.
    Add mint: A mint must be added to the order card not being taken.
    Take order card: The player takes the order card they chose - if this has a 1 or more mints on it, then they also acquire the mints, provided it does not go over their truck's storage limit.
    Replace order card: A new order card must be from that town's order deck and placed face-up in the relevant space to replace the one just taken.
  • Upgrade mint: If the active player's truck is at the relevant location, they can upgrade a mint as determined by that location.
    2 white mints can be discarded to gain a green one and 3 whites turned into a red.
• End of turn: Once the active player has completed their actions, play progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
Play progresses until the endgame is triggered by 1 of the following criteria is met:
​
If 2 towns have no face-up order cards remaining
Or.
All 4 towns have no cards left in their face-down decks (Regardless of whatever face-up cards remain).

Play then continues until all players have had equal turns. Players then calculate the VPs they've earned on their completed order cards.

Points are tallied, highest score wins - and is pronounced 'Employee Of The Month​!

Overall
Thematically, Mint Delivery is a collect-and-deliver game and the mint theme is arguably bit extraneous but on the other hand, it's a good a theme as any. The fact that the tokens being delivered look a bit like mints and the game comes wrapped up in a mint tin I think is fairly pleasing.

Mechanically, Mint Delivery is actually quite straightforward, perhaps a little too straightforward. The game's map layout never changes, the 4 towns will always be in the corners, Mintopia in the centre and the factories in the 4 cardinal points. It would have been nice to have some kind of layout randomiser but I imagine space inside that tin is at a premium!
Where the game does offer variety is in how order cards appear and since this is a game about fulfilling orders, that's pretty important.
Mint Delivery is essentially a race to deliver orders and players will need to mix planning the most optimal moves using the cards they currently possess with adapting to changing circumstances as they arise to exploit opportunities as they appear.
There's also randomisation in the form of road conditions which can change things up.
Finally, ability cards offer the opportunity for some asymmetrical play that potentially opens up more choices to players and meaningful choices are always a good thing.

There's not too much more to say really. Mint Delivery is a stripped down, bare bones collect-and-deliver game, if that's what you're looking for and you want it in clever little package, it's worth a try.
It's perhaps a little too long to be a simple filler game and not quite long or deep enough to be the main game of a gaming session but nontheless, I found Mint Delivery to be a fun, light  experience with a fairly quick play time and imagine it will play well with non-gamers.

28th March 2023

Tuesday is here again and we're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns for an evening of gaming goodness.

Game of the night is Istanbul.

Ah, Istanbul, home of an ancient settlement and exotic gateway between the east and the west...
...Also a place where frenzied merchants rapidly push wheelbarrows around the bazaar, trailed by assistants while looking to acquire rubies in this worker placement game.

The component quality is good for nearly all of Istanbul.
The game makes good use of wooden components and dice which is always good. All the cardboard tokens and tiles are sturdy enough. The cards are also good.
It's all the quality you'd expect from a modern game.
The only criticism I have is that fitting the extensions into the wheelbarrow feels fiddly and when trying to put in the final extension it can be too tight and wont fit properly. It's a minor oversight that doesn't affect the game experience but it could have been a bit better.

There's unique artwork on all the location tiles. Even though it uses a pretty standard style of illustration, I think it looks good and gives the game a eye-catching presence on the table. I also feel that it's quite suitable, being evocative and colourful without obscuring important information.

Iconography in Istanbul is a bit of a mixed bag. Much of it is easily understood but the occasional icon and in particular, bonus cards will find players leafing through the rulebook for clarification.
This is fairly infrequent though and is a minor inconvenience rather than detrimental

How's it play?
Setup

• Players: Give each player the merchant, assistant, family member tokens and cubes in their colour.
  Wheelbarrow: Each player should take a wheelbarrow tile, then place their 4 cubes on the 4 'empty' spaces on their goods tracks.
  When players gain goods, they move the cube along the respective track.
  You will note at the game start, players can only have 2 of each good. By acquiring extensions, players can eventually hold up to 5 of each good.
• Tiles: The 16 location tiles will need to be put out in a 4x4 grid. This can be done either by using 1 of the 2 predetermined setups or randomly - although there are some restrictions using the random method. Additionally, many of the locations will have further setup.
  • Caravansary: Shuffle the bonus cards into a face-down deck and place them close to the caravansary.
  • Fountain: Each player should create a stack of 5 tokens with the the merchant token at the top and 4 assistants beneath and place their stack on the fountain location tile.
    The 5th assistant token should be set aside for the time being, they can be acquired during play.
    Gemstone dealer: Place rubies on the gemstone dealer location tile as per player count.
  • Markets: Sort the demand tiles into their 2 types. Shuffle each into a face-up stack and place them on to their respective market tiles.
  • Mosques: Sort the mosque tiles by type/colour, then sort each stack by goods cost, with the lowest at the top and highest cost at bottom. Then place 2 stacks on each of the 2 mosque tiles.
    Rubies: Finally add rubies to each mosque as per player count.
  • Police station: Each player should place their 'family member' cylindrical token on the police station location tile.
  • Post office: The post office has 2 rows of 4 spaces, place the 4 mail cubes along the upper row on the post office location tile.
  • Sultan's palace: Place rubies on the Sultan's palace location tile as per player count.
  • Wainwright: Place rubies and wheelbarrow extensions on the wainwright location as per player count.
  • Governor & smuggler: Roll the dice for each, then place their tokens on the location with the matching number.
• First player: Determine a starting player.
  The starting player should take 2 Lira, the next player gets 3 Lira, 3rd gets 4 Lira and so forth.
  Bonus card: Each player should draw a bonus card.

On to play
In Istanbul, players are attempting to acquire 5 or 6 rubies (Dependant on player count.) and the game provides a variety of methods to achieve this.
Istanbul follows the usual turn structure with the active player completing their turn before play progresses to their left.

During their turn, the active player will act in 2-4 phases - depending on circumstances.
The 4 phases always occur in the order shown below.

• Movement: The active player can move their stack of tokens up to 2 spaces during this phase, this cannot be diagonal and when the stack reaches its destination, one of the following must occur.
  • Drop off assistant: The active player takes one of the assistant tokens out of their stack and places it elsewhere on the same location tile.
  • Pick up assistant: If the active player already has an assistant token on the location space they stopped at, then they can add it back into their stack.
  • Pass: If the active player cannot or does not want to drop off or pick up an assistant, then their turn ends immediately unless the active player ended up at the fountain!
• Encounter merchant: This phase is conditional and if the active player ended their movement in a location tile with 1 or more merchants that belong to other players, then the active player must pay those players 2 Lira each.
  If they cannot or do no want to pay, then the active player's turn ends immediately, this does not occur if they stopped at the fountain.
• Action: This phase represents the bulk of gameplay and the active player may now choose to undertake the action for the tile they stopped at.
  There a quite a few actions a player can perform.
  • Black market: When the player's merchant is at the black market, they can gain 1 green/red/yellow good.
    Additionally, they should roll the 2 dice, the result will grant them 0-3 blue goods.
  • Caravansary: The active play draws 2 bonus cards into their hand and then discards 1 bonus card.
    When drawing cards from being at the caravansary location, the active player may choose to draw from the discard pile instead.
  • Fountain: When the active player's merchant is at the fountain, they can recall any number of their assistant tokens back into their stack.
  • Gemstone dealer: Here the active player may purchase a ruby. The more rubies that are purchased throughout the game, the more they will cost.
  • Market: When a merchant stops at one of the 2 markets, they can sell goods matching the demands on the current demand card. The more matching goods they sell, the more they earn. Each of the markets will determine how much the player earns.
    Regardless of how many goods are sold, the current demand tile is put at the bottom of the stack and a new demand tile is revealed.
  • Mosques: When a merchant stops at one of the 2 mosques, they can acquire one of the 2 mosque tiles there.
    To do so, the player's wheelbarrow must be carrying the goods that match was is shown on the top mosque tile. However, acquiring a tile costs only 1 good of the displayed tile.
    Once a mosque tile is taken, a more expensive version will be revealed beneath.
    Players can only have copy of each type of tile regardless of where they acquired it from.
  • Police station: When a player's merchant stops at the police station and if their family member is there, then the player can 'free' their family member.
    Since their family member 'knows how to get stuff', the player can immediately place the family member token on any other space and trigger its action. The family member does not have encounters and does not benefit or is restricted in that way.
  • Post Office: If the active player's merchant stops at the post office, they acquire all the items shown on the 4 uncovered spaces.
    After this, they must slide the leftmost cube on the upper row to the space directly below, thus changing the resources earned by the next merchant to stop here.
    When all 4 cubes are on the lower row, the next merchant to stop at the post office will claim their resources and put all 4 cubes back on the upper row.
  • Sultan's palace: When a merchant stops here, the player can trade goods for a ruby.
    As with the gemstone dealer, the more rubies that are acquired here, the more costly they become to trade for.
  • Tea house: Time for some friendly gambling! When a merchant stops here, the player announces a number from 3-12, then they roll both dice.
    If the rolled number is equal to or greater than the announced number, then the active player acquires Lira equal to the number they announced.
    If the number was lower, then they take 2 Lira.
  • Wainwright: Stopping here allows the merchant's player to buy an extension for their wheelbarrow. Once the 3rd and final extension has been acquired, the player can acquire 1 ruby from the wainwright tile.
  • Warehouses: There are 3 warehouses, one each respectively for green, red and yellow goods.
    If a merchant stops at a warehouse, they can fill the related good on their wheelbarrow to the maximum amount.
• Other encounters: As with the other encounter phase, this is conditional and depends on what tokens are also on the location where the active player's merchant stopped.
  • Other players' family members: If a merchant encounters the family member of another player on their location, they must snitch on them to the cops!
    This earns the active player 3 Lira or a bonus card.
  • Governor: When the governor token is on the same location as a player's merchant, the player can draw bonus card, then they must discard a bonus card or pay 2 Lira.
    After encountering the governor, roll 2 dice and move the governor's token to the location with the number that matches the dice roll.
  • Smuggler: When the smuggler is encountered, the active player may gain the good of their choice, they must then discard a good of their choice or play 2 Lira.
    As with the governor, after encountering the smuggler, roll the dice and relocate the smuggler to the new location.
• Bonus cards: These are not part of any phase in particular and the active player may play any number of bonus cards during at any time during their turn.

Endgame
The game end is triggered when any player acquires the required number of rubies.
​Play continues for the current round until all participants have had equal turns.
Finally, each player will have the option to play unused bonus cards, since Lira and goods act as a tie-breaker this can be important.

Rubies are tallied, highest amount wins.

Overall
I don't know whether it's deliberate or not but there's a slightly cynical thread of humour running through Istanbul. 
It's an amusing facet of the game that merchants are useless without assistants to boss around or how everyone has that one shady cousin who 'knows someone' or 'can get you stuff'.
Thematically, the game is presented quite well.
Your merchant and their little band go from place to place, looking to earn money or get goods in order to eventually gain rubies.

Mechanically, Istanbul is relatively straightforward. While there's quite a lot of tiles and consequently a lot going and a lot to think about and possibly remember, none of it in practice is actually overly complex.
Istanbul presents players with the conundrum of balancing the need to increase their abilities via mosque and extension tiles or trying to acquire rubies.
Broadly speaking, the game game provides some one-off way of gaining rubies but two main avenues to accumulating them - which are by spending goods or spending Lira and then providing several ways to acquire goods and Lira.
It means that Istanbul is a game of planning efficient moves and maximising actions. This is particularly the case when dropping off or picking up assistants. Well thought out play will allow a player to do this without visiting the fountain which requires an entire turn to gather assistants.

While the game is essentially a race without direct conflict between players, there's still some interaction that goes on.
There is arguably a higher level of play where players could try and anticipate the actions of their opponent allowing them to block opponents by putting their merchant on specific locations, forcing other players to pay out to go there or preventing them entering all together. However, this tends to occur by accident more than design.
Another area of interaction is at the markets, the more goods sold a player can sell an once at a market, the more money that player earns but taking longer to do this risks being trumped by another player fulfilling the demand tile earlier.
So players will need to occasionally adapt to situations as needed as well as planning their actions.

Istanbul does a good job balancing varied gameplay, strategy and meaningful decisions with ease-of-play, although I'm not sure I would describe it as entirely suitable for non-gamers but core gamers should have no problems comprehending the game
It also has a novel and clever implementation of worker placement mechanics which provide some satisfying moments when used effectively.

This is a mid-weight game with a somewhat lengthy play time - although it never felt overlong or unwelcome. I found it to be an enjoyable worker placement game. Istanbul   is a game that's definitely worth trying.

17th February 2023

It's a Friday and we're at Woking for a night of gaming fun.

Adrenaline, a fast paced head-to-head game inspired by first person shooters.

• Ammo tiles: These smallish square card tiles each display images of  up to 3 ammo cubes in various combinations. Some ammo tiles will display powerup cards.
• Victory points: These large and usually shaped tokens are used to VPs.

Adrenaline uses plastic damage tokens, card ammo tiles, transparent acrylic ammo cubes and skulls; it's an usual mix of materials but it works just fine.
The components are all good quality, the cards are fine as are the tiles and tokens. The plastic components all feel solid.

It's immediately apparent that Adrenaline makes good use of colour. This is particularly true of the game board, where bright colours are used to distinguish between different rooms - this is important for 'line of sight'. The component also look bright and colourful as well as easy distinguish.
The game's art is fairly good if a little underused - illustrations on weapon cards are a little small. Other than that I think the artwork is mostly reserved for character portraits.

There is quite a lot of iconography in Adrenaline, mostly on weapon and powerup cards, the game comes with a separate booklet to explain how they work - which is a little telling. Some of the iconography is intuitive and easy to comprehend, some of it not so much.
Luckily, it's not a gamebreaker and not much of an issue to learn but I do feel it will slow down the game somewhat unless at least 1 person has previously played.

How's it play?
Setup

• Game board: Set up the game board as per player count or as desired.
  Ammo tiles: Shuffle the ammo tiles into a face-down stack. Deal 1 face-up into each space that does not have a spawn point.
  Powerup cards: Shuffle the powerup cards into a face-down deck and place them on their allotted space on the board.
  Weapon cards: Shuffle the weapon cards into a face-down deck and place them in their allotted space. Then deal a total of 9 cards face-up into the spaces adjacent to each of the spawn points.
  Killshot track: Place the skulls on to their spaces on the killshot track. A normal game uses 8 skulls, but less can be used for a shorter game.
• Players: Give each player the board, action tile, damage tokens and model in their colour.
  Put out the player board on the 'normal' side and position the action tile (Also on the normal side.) alongside the board.
  Each player should then add 1 ammo cube in each colour to their player board.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Adrenaline, players are trying to earn as many VPs as possible. This is done by killing and more importantly, damaging their opponents.

During their turn, the active player can perform 2 actions, they can be different or the same action twice. The actions available are determined by what actions are on their action table and which actions have been unlocked on the players adrenaline track.
Broadly speaking, there are 3 types of actions, several actions actually combine different actions

• Move: The basic move action allows the active player to move up to 3 spaces on the board.
  All movement is orthogonally, players may move through doors but obviously not through walls.
• Pick up: Before picking up an item, the active player may optionally move 1 space. Then the active player may pick up an item in their current space. There are 2 types of object that can be picked up.
  Weapon: If the active player is in the same space as a spawn point, they may pick up one of that spawn point's 3 available weapon card and add it to their hand.
  Generally, there's a cost to picking up a weapon - the cost shown in the top left corner. However, when picking up a weapon, the first cost (In brackets, SIC!) is not paid.
  Players may have at most 3 weapon cards in hand.
  Ammo tiles: If there is a ammo tile in the active player's square they can collect the respective ammo cubes/powerup card and discard the tile.
  Players can have a maximum of 3 of each type of ammo cube on their player board and 3 powerup cards in their hand.
• Shoot: Now this what I'm talking about.
  The active player may attack any opposing character in range and line of sight. Generally anyone in the same room or in a room on the other side of a door is in sight. Specific weapons may have range limitations or other special rules.
  Many weapons may allow the active player to spend ammo cubes to have additional effects or damage.
  Once a weapon card has been used, the active player plays it down in front them, it is not discarded.
  • Damage, kills and VPs: The rules for how damage occurs and VPs are earned are fairly elaborate.
    • Damage: Each player board has 12 spaces for damage. When the active player inflicts damage on an opponent, then the active player adds damage tokens of their colour to their targets wound track with the following effects.​
      Marking:  Characters may acquire marks from opposing players during the course of the game. These take the form of damage tokens placed in the marked spot on their player board.
      When a character takes damage from an opponent who has marked them, all that player's damage tokens in the marked space are moved to the wound track!
      First Blood: Whoever first puts a damage token on an opponent's player board immediately earns a VP.
      Adrenaline: As a player's board becomes filled with damage tokens, the associated adrenaline moves become available.
      Kill: When the 11th space on a player's board is filled, their character been killed and points are immediately scored.
      Whoever inflicted the most damage (That is, put the most damage tokens on that player's board.) on the killed player immediately earns VPs equal to the highest visible VP number shown along the bottom row of the killed character's board. 2nd highest token count earns the 2nd highest VP and so on.
      ​Multikills: It is possible to kill multiple enemies in a single action. In this case, the active player earns a bonus VP for each multikill.
      Overkill: If the active player managed to also put a damage token in the 12th and final place, they 'overkilled' the character. This means the target of the attack can 'mark' the active player's character.
      Skull token: Whoever was killed should take a red skull and place it on the highest VP value on their player board. Thus when they are killed again, it will earn other players less VP.
      Once the skull has been taken, whoever got the kill puts one of their damage tokens on the vacated killshot space - this will earn VPs at the game end.
      Respawn: The player who was killed now has to respawn. They remove all damage tokens from their wound track and draw a powerup card. Then they discard any powerup card to respawn at the spawn point indicated on the spawn card they played. All other tokens are unaffected.

• Adrenaline moves: As the player takes more and more damage, some move actions become available.
  Move 2 spaces and pick up.
  Move 1 space and shoot/attack.
  In both instances, the usual rules as explained above apply.
• Reload: Reloading only occurs after the active player has resolved their 2 actions. This is done by spending ammo cubes as per the weapon card's cost. After the cubes are spent, they may take the weapon card back into their hand.
  You will note that since reloading occurs after a player's actions, a weapon cannot be used twice in a single turn.
• Power up: These may be used as described or discarded for the displayed ammo cube, this can only be done when that type of ammo cube cost needs to be paid. Thus a powerup card cannot simply be discarded to gain an ammo cube.
• Next player: Once the active player has completed their actions and reloading, play progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
Once the final skull has been taken from the board, it triggers the endgame.
Depending on the game mode chosen, they are 2 ways the game can end.
Sudden Death
The game immediately ends and goes to scoring.
Final Frenzy
In this game mode, each player gets one more turn. All players use flip their player board and action tile to the other sides, using those moves and scoring opportunities for the final round.

Regardless of how the game end is resolved, the game then goes to scoring.
Players earn points from the following sources.

• VPs: All the VPs players accumulated throughout the game for killing other players.
• Living characters: Remaining, unresolved damage tokens on player boards for characters that are still alive. This is calculated as if they had been killed.
• Killshots: Players also earn points for their killshots, whoever has the most damage tokens on the killshot track gains the most bonus VPs, 2nd most tokens gets 2nd highest bonus VPs and so on.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.​

Overall
I'm always a bit suspicious when a tabletop game tries to replicate a twitch based computer game or uses it for inspiration, thematically or otherwise.
Fortunately, Adrenaline does a pretty good job of abstracting this for a board game.
You run, you gun and you pick up, that's about it!

Line of sight and range rules are kept very simple and consequently very quick.
​Attacking is also quick; play a card - that's the damage it does, some extra resources can be spent to tweak it but that's about it. Some of the situational rules regarding specific weapons are definitely a bit fiddly and may well require referring to the rules, as mentioned earlier it's not to much of an issue though.

Rules for scoring kills are also a bit peculiar but the payoff is that you get a balanced scoring system that rewards attacking multiple opponents and encourages the free-for-all nature of a deathmatch. As they rulebook states, there's diminishing returns in constantly attacking one opponent, since because skulls placed on killed players' boards cover the higher scores, meaning less VPs are earned off them from then on.
It's also worth noting that the damage mechanic is essentially an area control mechanic and that the areas being controlled are other players' damage tracks!

Rules for picking up and reloading are also straightforward and adds an extra layer of decision making to consider. Should a player burn through ammo to press the attack/do more damage or try conserve or gain more ammo.
It creates these moments where attacks are followed by short lulls.
I also like the rule that when a weapon is used, it doesn't come back into play until the following turn. it stops powerful weapons being overused and incentivises players to look for synergy between weapon cards.

Gameplay wise, Adrenaline is very much a game of reacting to what other players are doing and the landscape will change every turn. Especially as in relative terms, the game board is quite small, players will very much be in each other's faces a lot of the time.
Players will look for opportunities to exploit, such as hitting multiple enemies at once (Damage diversification is key to earning VPs.) or minimising exposure to attacks to themselves (Although this can be very hard considering how focused the game board is.).
It goes without saying that Adrenaline is very much an aggressive game of direct conflict and player interaction. If this isn't your sort of thing, then you probably won't enjoy Adrenaline
The game also feels a little like a miniatures wargame game albeit in a very loose way.

I think that's why I found it a little unengaging. Fun and clever but not quite what I want out of a game.
I can't fault Adrenaline, it does what it sets out to do and if if you're looking for a first-person shooter inspired game with lots of aggressive interactive gameplay then Adrenaline is one to consider.

Personally though, if someone wanted to play it, I would do so without hesitation but it wouldn't be a first pick for me.

19th November 2022

It's a Saturday morning and we're at Bisley for Wogglecon 5 'It's a alive!' - a day of gaming goodness and a bit of charity.

Have you ever fancied travelling South American highlands with nothing but a cart of goods to keep you company, going from place to place, hunting for fish, chopping down trees, trading and so forth. If the answer is yes, then maybe Altiplano is the game for you.

How's it play?
Setup

• Game area: Set the central playing area up.
  • Location boards: Randomly arrange the 7 location tiles in a ring shape.
    • Tokens: Sort all the tokens as per player count and add them to their pertinent location tiles. Only food and money do not go on to a location tile.
    • Cards: Add the boat, house and order cards face-up to their pertinent location tiles.
  • Extension strip: Put the extension strip in the centre of the ring.
    • Extension tiles: First sort the extension tiles as per player count, then sort them by type (A, B, C and D.) and shuffle each type into face-down stacks. Finally arrange them into a single face-down stack, with the A stack at the top, going down to the D stack at the bottom.
    • Place extension tiles: Draw and place 5 tiles from the stack along the 5 spaces on the edge of the extension strip.
• Players: Give each player an action board, warehouse board and bag.
  • Meeples: Give each player the meeple, cube and container in their colour. Each player's cube should go on the '0' space on the road location.
  • Role tile: Randomly assign a role tile to each player. The tile should be placed adjacent its location on the player's action board.
    Each player should then take their starting resources as indicated on the tile, goods and food should be placed them into their bag. Money should be put to the side in a personal supply.
    Finally each player should take a brown cart cube from the village location and place it in the topmost space in the movement track on their action board.
• First player: Determine a starting player then each player places their meeple on any one of the 7 location tiles. Now we're ready to play.

On to play
In Altiplano players will be making plans to travel around the location tiles and use their goods to carry out the actions specific to those locations.
This is done over 4 phases:

• Drawing phase: This phase is carried simultaneously with all players drawing tokens from their bag and placing them on their planning spaces.
  At the start of the game, players can only use 4 planning spaces, thus only draw 4 tokens from their bag. However, by moving their cube up the road location, players will unlock more planning spaces which mean they can draw and use more goods tokens.
  Empty bag: If at any time a player needs to draw 1 or more tokens from their bag and it's empty, then they tip the contents of their container into the bag, give it a good shake and continue drawing.
  Taking tokens back: Obviously, this does not apply during the first round but before drawing tokens, a player can choose to take tokens they have previously placed on action spaces but not resolved off of those action spaces. However, these tokens must be placed on planning spaces which consequently lessen the number of tokens they can draw. Money retrieved in this manner is returned to the player's personal play.
• Planning phase: This phase is also performed simultaneously. In this phase players take goods from their planning spaces (Or money from their personal supply.) and place them on action spaces on the board. This includes the movement track and also extension tiles a player may have acquired.
  All actions require specific goods to activate them.
  Most locations have 1 or 2 spaces, except the village which has 3. Some actions require 1 good (And thus may be performed more than once.) while many actions require 2 goods.
  A player may choose not to place all the goods on their action spaces but this would mean they draw less tokens in the following round.
  When placing goods and money, players do not need to complete the action to place them. If an action requires 2 tokens, they can place just one of them even if it won't complete the action. It's a useful way to keep planning spaces free.
• Action phase: This phase represents the bulk of the game's activities and thus has many elements.
  • Turns: Unlike the previous 2 phases, starting with the current first player, actions are carried out in turn order one action at a time. The active player resolves one action, then play progresses to the next player.
    Passing: If a player cannot complete an action, they must pass. Additionally, a player may choose to pass even if they could complete an action. In either case, when a player passes, they are no longer involved in the action phase for the current round.
  • Movement: Movement does not count as an action but can be performed as part of an action.
    Timing: Movement may be performed before or after an action.
    Moving: Each player starts the game with 1 cart cube. A player can slide it to the 'used' side on their movement track to move their meeple up to 3 location either way around the circle of locations.
    Additional movement If a player has put food on to other movement track spaces, they may 'spend' it to move during another action. However they can only move 1 location unless they have acquired additional carts, in which case they can move 3 locations.
  • Actions: There are lot of actions a player can perform and several rules associated with them.
    Location: A player's meeple must be at the action's location in order to perform that action, this includes extension and role tiles.
    Paying tokens: Actions require players to pay the required tokens to resolve them. Other than money, anytime a token is 'spent' the token(s) are not actually spent instead they are put into the player's container and will ultimately end up going back into the player's bag. Only money is actually spent and returned to the central supply.
    Acquiring goods: When acquired, most goods tokens immediately go into a player's container. The exceptions are money which goes into the player's personal supply and corn, which is explained below.
  • Resolving actions: Each location has one or more actions which can be resolved by players.
    • Farm: cloth, food and wool can be acquired here.
    • Forest: cloth, food, glass and wood can be acquired here
    • Harbor: Fish and food can be acquired.
      Boat cards can also be acquired here which allow players to add tokens to their container. A player may choose any available boat card.
    • Market: The market has several actions.
      Sell goods: Some goods can be sold for 1-3 coins each, as with all actions, goods that are sold are actually put into the player's container.
      Buy extension: A player can purchase 1 extension tile per round. The total cost is the cost on the tile plus the cost from it's position on the extension strip. If a extension is bought, it is not replaced until the last phase.
      Order cards: These can be bought here too, which allows the player to choose any available order card.. A player may only have 1 unfulfilled order card at a time.
      Deliver goods: This action allows the player to move goods placed here on to an order card. When a order is completed, it will earn the controlling player VPs during the endgame, generally it will also give the player a corn token, more on these later. 
    • Mine: Silver and stone can be acquired here.
    • Road: Completing the road action may have 1 of 2 effects. Either it unlocks a planning space for a player or it provides them with a corn token, again, more on corn below.
    • Village: The village also has several types of action.
      Buy cart: Players can buy a cart and place it on an available space on their movement track.
      Buy house card: A player can buy any available house card. House cards increase the VP value of the displayed good during the endgame.
      Store goods: This action allows the player to move goods off of the action spaces and into their warehouse. There are however, several restrictions here.
      • No food: Food tokens cannot be placed into the warehouse.
        Same goods: A row can only have 1 type of good in it. Thus if the 1st good in a row is a fish token, all the subsequent tokens in that row must be fish tokens. Additionally, there can only be 1 incomplete per type of good. A row of fish must be completed before a second row can be started.
        Bottom-to-top: When a good is placed in the warehouse, it must be in the lowest available space, either in a new row or an existing one.
        Left-to-right: A good must also be placed into the leftmost open space in the row it is placed into. A row is considered complete when the rightmost space has been filled.
      • Corn: There are several rules regarding corn.
        Store immediately: Regardless of how a player gains a corn token, when they gain it, it must immediately be stored in the warehouse.
        Wildcard: Corn can be used as any type of good for a row that has already been started. E.g., if a player has started a row of fish, it can be added to that row and even complete it.
        If there is no incomplete row to add the corn token to, then it starts it's own row!
        Corn rows takes priority: When storing corn, if there is a row that was started with corn, then corn tokens must go into that row before any other until it's completed!
• End of round phase: Once all players have passed, the game goes to end of round and several events occur.
  New first player: The first player marker is passed on to the player on the left who will be the new first player.
  Reset carts: All carts are put back to their initial positions.
  Manage extension strip: If any extension tiles we bought during the action phase, remaining tiles are slid downwards to fill the gaps and new tiles are added to the gaps now at the top.
  If no extension tiles were brought during the action phase, the bottommost extension tile is discarded, the other tiles are slid down and a new tile is added to the top.
  Now a new round begins with the first phase.

​Endgame
Play continues until one of the following 2 criteria are met.
Any one location becomes fully emptied of all tokens, cards, etc.
Or, a space along the extension strip cannot be filled, i.e., the extension tiles supply has emptied.
In either instance, the current round is completed and 1 further round is played, then the game goes to scoring.

VPs will come from a variety of sources.

• Goods tokens: Tokens can score 0-4 VPs each depending on the type. Tokens on a player's action board, warehouse, in their bag and container all count.
  Tokens on order cards are not counted.
• Warehouse: Each completed row in a player's warehouse will score it's associated VPs.
• Cards: Boat and house cards earn their respective VPs. Completed order cards also earn their VPs.
• Bonus VPs: If a player has house cards, they will earn bonus VPs for the corresponding goods.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
As you can see from the write up so far, there's quite a lot going on in Altiplano and a lot for players to think about.

There's a recognisable quandary going on with the bag building mechanic.
Players will naturally be looking to acquire tokens to carry out actions but invariably there will be times they end up getting pulled from the bag when they're not needed and unneeded tokens can 'water down' a player's strategies.
Unwanted tokens can of course be left on planning spaces but most players will find that irritatingly suboptimal. Alternatively, they can placed on spaces for action that a player does not immediately want to perform but they will eventually end up coming back  to again though. Another option albeit fairly situational, is to put them on to order cards, although removes the goods from the remainder of the game.
Finally, they can be put into the warehouse, this means those tokens have greater scoring opportunities but again, permanently removes them from a player's container/bag which may or may not be a good thing. layers will have judge the merits of storing tokens contextually - except when dealing with glass tokens. The thing with glass tokens is that they don't produce any other type of token, all they do is produce the most VPs per token, storing them in the warehouse where they contribute to more VPs and declutter a player's bag is a no-brainer and usually I consider no-brainers a bad thing for a board game but I feel this is a deliberate decision on the part of the game - more on that below.

If you've been paying attention (And I'm sure you have!) you will also have noticed that several goods such as a cacao, alpacas and even something that seems that it should be common such as fish cannot be produced from the action board.
So how are these acquired?
There's a couple of opportunities to get them, namely boat cards, extension tiles and possibly role tiles.
However, this brings me to a bit of a bugbear I have with this scarcity mechanic. It means there can be a race by experienced players to get those hard-to-produce goods, particularly cacao which produces glass which can be worth so many VPs. In fact I feel the whole of the forest location is especially strong location since cacao alone is used there for 3 separate actions in the same location. A player who can produce cacao and concentrates on doing so can soon be producing lots of goods at the forest.
Having said that, the game is a bit of a point salad with various avenues to scoring VPs, it's just that I feel going for glass is the strongest way and experienced players will end competing in that tactic.

While the bulk of the game's activity takes place during the action phase, the planning phase is where players will do most of their well... planning. They'll look to optimise there actions to get the most out of their available tokens.
Because players will generally need to move around to perform multiple actions, efficient use of the movement track is important, especially so in the early game when food tokens will be scarcer. A player can move their meeple before or after an action may make it seem unimportant but sometimes players will need to think ahead about where they need to be at the start of the next round.
As well as having to think about movement and balancing their goods with their bags, players will also have to think about gaining extensions, house and order cards, as well as boat cards if they are needed. 
Add to this increasing their planning spaces and acquiring corn to fill out their warehouse and players have lot of ways to approach the game
​
In this regard Altiplano does that thing which presents players with lots of options but frequently not enough opportunity to do everything they want, forcing them to make tricky decisions, which I consider a good thing in games.

Altiplano is a mid-to-heavy game with a longish playtime, it's probably not for beginners and perhaps could be criticised for being a bit over-elaborate although personally I didn't find it that much of a problem
In conclusion; the mechanics blend together to give players choices and essentially problems to solve in optimising their actions. If bag-building style games and resource management are your thing, Altiplano is worth a try.

18th October 2022

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

​The Victorian era; a time of expansion, industrial and otherwise. Become a capitalist! Create your business and run your production line.

What's in a game?

• Cards: Furnace features several types of cards.
  • Capitalist cards: There are 5 of these, each one is unique and as well as an illustration of the capitalist in question also feature a way in which the owning player can 'break' a rule. Capitalist indeed!
  • Start-up cards: There are also 5 of these starter cards. Each one contains a illustration of a factory, above and below the picture it displays the card's abilities, this will always include the ability to gain (And use.) upgrade tokens.
    Abilities on cards may include production of a certain resource, or a process such as converting one resource into another or selling a resource for money.
  • Company cards: These form the bulk of the game's cards and they are double-sided.
    Basic side: At the top of each company card it will show a production or process ability, this is the compensation effect, more on this later. Next will a picture, usually of a factory, industrial plant or some such.
    Finally, below the picture will be 2 lines of abilities. The 2nd line will be 'greyed out' as it is 'inactive' at this time.
    Upgraded side: The other side of a company card is more or less identical to the basic side except for the compensation effect which is now gone and the 2nd ability line which is now coloured in and 'active', (As a result of the upgrade.)
• Round tracking tiles: A pair of tiles are used to represent and track the game's four rounds with a sort of replica cog-and-teeth mechanism.
• Tokens: Furnace has several types of tokens.
  • Resource tokens: There 3 types of resources in Furnace which are represented by shaped wooden tokens.
    Coal: Little black cubes are used to represent coal, OK, cubes are not very coal shaped items but they are little wooden cubes.
    Iron : These blue-grey rectangular cuboid tokens sort of iron-bar shaped and used to represent iron.
    Oil: Yellow octagonal cylinders are used to represent oil or more accurately, drums of oil. 
  • Bidding tokens: There are 4 differently sized bidding tokens in each of the 4 player colours.
    These are discs number from 1-4, additionally, the higher the number, the larger the disc.
    Neutral bidding token: There is also a 'colourless' bidding token that is only used when a particular capitalist card is in play.
  • Player marker token: For each player colour there is a uniquely shaped and illustrated card token. Black gets a top hat (Very dapper.), red gets a wallet (Displays of wealth are so uncouth!), white gets a pair of white gloves (Very suave.) and yellow gets a pocket watch.
  • Money: Circular card tokens are used to represent money which comes in various colours/denominations.
  • Upgrade tokens: There are also circular card tokens. They show a spanner inside a cog.

Component quality ranges from good to very good in Furnace. Cards and card tokens are the pretty standard good quality most games now have while all the wooden tokens are solid and good quality. The bidding tokens in particular standout as really chunky, tactile discs.

Artwork is good throughout the game with a nicely illustrated buildings and businesses.
It makes good use of a varied and colourful palette which helps to differentiate between the company cards which depict a variety of factories or offices and warehouses etc, which despite all being different sort of look a little samey.
Portraits used for capitalist cards are equally good quality.

The game's iconography looks a little daunting but in practice is straightforward and fairly practical. There are essentially 5 resources depicted and some basic mathematics mostly saying how to turn one resource into another and how may times it can be done.

How's it play?
Setup

• Players: Give each player the following.
  Capitalist cards: Shuffle the capitalist cards into a face-down deck and randomly deal 1 to each player.
  ​Start-up cards: Next, shuffle the start-up cards into a face-down deck and deal 1 to each player. Start-up cards also determine a player's starting resources.
  Tokens: Give each player the player token and bidding discs in their colour.
• Company cards: Take all the company cards and shuffle them into a deck with the basic side face-up.
• First player: determine a starting player.

On to play
Note: The rules described below use the 'advanced' variant rules, there's a reason for this which will be discussed further down.
The goal in Furnace is to acquire the most money by the end of the game.
Furnace is played over 4 rounds. In each round players will be bidding for company cards then adding them to their personal production lines. Next they will run their production to produce goods and ultimately generate money which is what wins the game.
The game uses a normal turn order during auction, with the first player bidding first before bidding moving to the player on their left. The production phase can be played out simultaneously.

• Auction phase: During this phase players will bid on the available company cards.
  • Deal company cards: At the start of each auction phase, the top card on the deck is shuffled back into the deck (To stop 'canny' players from knowing what the first card will be!), then deal 6-8 cards depending on player count with the basic side still face-up in a row. Placing them in a row can be important during the auction resolution.
  • Bidding: The first player bids for one of the company cards by placing any one of their bidding discs on the card they are bidding for.
  • Next bidder: Once the active player has placed their bidding disc, play progresses to the player on the left who can then make their bid.
    • Restrictions: There are however, some restrictions to bidding.
      No same colour: No 2 discs of the same colour may be placed on the same card. Thus, a player can only bid once on a card.
      No same number: If a card already has a bidding disc on it, no other player may bid on that card with a disc that has the same value.
  • Resolve auction: Once all players have placed all their discs, the bids on each card - going from left-to-right - are resolved, this  consists of 2 phases.
    • Highest bid wins: Whoever played the disc with the highest value wins the card, which they will add to their production line in the next phase. If a player wins more than 1 company card during the phase, they are all added to their production line one-by-one.
    • Compensation: It's not all bad for players that put a losing bidding token on a card, instead they get the compensation effect.
      The compensation effect is listed at the top of a company card, it might be produce resources or process them.
      Production: If it's resource production, the losing player(s) gain an amount of that resource multiplied by the value of their failed bid.
      E.g., if a player failed a bid with a 2-value bid on a card which has a compensation effect of 1 oil barrel, they would gain 2 oil barrels.
      If someone failed with a 3-value bid on card with 2 coal as compensation effect, they would gain 6 coal!
      Process: ​Alternatively, a compensation effect may include a process. In this case, the losing player may use that effect as many times as the value of their losing bid.
      Thus a player with a losing bid of 2 and a compensation effect process that allows 2 coal to be turned into 1 iron can use this process twice. Note: This must be resolved immediately, if a player does not have the required resources to complete a process when the auction on it is being resolved, they cannot resolve it later.
  • End of phase: Once all auctions on all company cards have been resolved, play progresses to the next phase.
• Production phase: During this phase players will add their newly acquired cards to their production line. Then players will run through their production line.
  Unlike the previous phase, players can choose to resolve their production phases one at a time or simultaneously.
  • Production line: First, a production line needs to be defined. A production line is a row of cards that run from left-to-right. The order of cards in a production line can never be changed.
  • Add cards to production line: Each player now add their newly acquired cards to their production line.
    Positioning: Cards maybe added to the start or end of a production line. They may also be placed in between 2 other cards, so long as the relative positioning of cards already played is not changed.
  • Run production: Once a player has added all the new cards to their production line, they must run it with the following stipulations.
    Left-to-right: All production lines start with their leftmost card and work through to their rightmost card.
    A card must be fully resolved (Or as much as a player can or wants to.) before the next card is addressed.
    Top-to-bottom: If card has multiple abilities - which is likely - they will be displayed in lines on the card. Abilities are resolved individually, going from top-to-bottom. An ability must be fully resolved (Or as much as wanted or can be.) before the ability below is resolved. Furthermore, if an ability can be used multiple times, they must all be completed before moving on.
    Upgrades: If a card that has already been used in a production is upgraded, it's new ability cannot be used. If the upgraded card is further down the line, then it's new ability can be used.
• End of round: Once all players have finished running their production lines, the round is over.
  Play progresses to the next round. Advance the round marker and begin the next auction phase.

Endgame
Once 4 rounds have been completed, the game is over.
Players calculate how much money they have accumulated.

Monies are tallied, most money wins

Overall
Furnace packs a lot of gameplay options into what is in essence quite a small package. The game consists of a deck of cards, some tokens and that's it

Even so, each of the main 2 phases provide players with interesting and meaningful decisions.

There are 2 mechanics to the auctioning and both are unique and present players with unusual options and interactions with other players.
Using bidding discs instead of money in auctions is an interesting proposition. First it means players only have 4 bids they can make and they can't re-bid on the same card if they get outbid. Players will need to determine what's important to them and bid appropriately. Turn order can make a difference here. A player going first who bids their 4-value disc on a card guarantees they will get it. Going later or last in bidding is not necessarily a bad thing to do, it allows a player to see what opponents are going for and bid accordingly.
There's definitely a higher level of play at work here from watching what other players look like they need and potentially taking it or denying it to them. Hate bidding I guess?

Which brings me to the other auction mechanic; compensation. Firstly, compensation works as sort of balancing mechanism, if a player loses a bid, they may still get something for their losing bid. Secondly, it's a mechanic that can potentially be exploited by players to gain resources quickly. A player make take the risk of making a lower value bid on a card, hoping to be outbid for the compensation, of course this can backfire and they may end up with a card they don't want to play.

Talking of playing cards, the next interesting mechanic how cards are played during the production phase.
I'll start by saying that whenever we played Furnace it was always using the 'advanced' variant 'production line' rules. By default the game does not use a production line, instead players just activate cards in any order they choose. In my opinion this makes the game less engaging.
I can't stress enough that the variant rules are vital to what makes Furnace a good game.
Having to think about where to place company cards is compelling and intriguing. Frequently cards will be useful both at the start and end of a production line forcing players to think hard make meaningful decisions in order to optimise their production lines.
Additionally, it's genuinely gratifying to run a production line that has been put together efficiently and ends up generating lots of cash.

Furnace is a game with a quick play time. In fact I found that the game's 4 rounds came to a conclusion all too soon, still having the urge to continue building my engine and that's a pretty good sign of a game I enjoy.
It's also a sign of good design balance; having a 4 round limit forces players to be as ruthlessly efficient as possible with little room for unnecessary moves. 4 round limits are something I've seen in other engine building games too.

So in conclusion; Furnace is pretty easy to learn, has a fast playtime but still manages to present players will a variety options both in auctioning and engine building. If these styles of games interest you, then Furnace is definitely a game to try.
I found it a engaging and entertaining experience.

17th August 2022

It's a Wednesday afternoon and we're round Simon's for some gaming goodness.

Become a raider in the world of antiquity and attack a bunch of ancient empires by placing meeples on a board!

What's in a game?

• Game board: Raiders of Scythia features a big board that, for lack of a better term is divided into 5 different levels or 'slices'. Each one showing a different scene of a different area of the world with it's own colour palette.
  In the top level players can gain resources, while the 4 lower levels can be - as the name suggests - raided.
  Scythian Village: The top slice depicts the home settlement of the titular raiders.
  There are 8  'spaces' that allow players to perform certain actions.
  Each spot has a place to put 1 worker - some of these are coded to specific colours of workers, there are also places to put starter workers, more on this below.
  Civilisations: The 4 lower slices represent 4 different civilisations that can be raided by players. Each civilisation will have a number of locations that can be raided along with information pertinent to raiding, there are also spaces to place workers meeples and quest tiles.
• Player boards: Each player board is a long piece of card depicting a campsite in a wilderness setting. Each also contains some game information and places to put 6 cards - 1 hero card and 5 crew cards.
• Hero cards: There are 8 of these and as well as a illustration, each one provides some sort of special ability or bonus. I guess they are the leaders of your raiding parties.
• Crew cards: These can be recruited by players for a cost and are a bit similar to hero cards in that they provide a bonus for of the game's 2 actions.
  However, crew cards have hit points and strength and unlike hero card, crew cards can be killed.
• Animal cards: These cards all depict 2 animals, a eagle at the top and a horse at the bottom. Does that mean these are actually 'eagorse' cards or 'horgle' cards?
  Anyway, they can be assigned to crew cards to confer extra bonuses, these will differ if they are used as a eagle or a horse.
• Quest tiles: These square card tiles are double-sided. One side depicts some artwork and the other will show a quest that can be completed for VPs.
• Dice: The game uses six-siders, however as well as featuring numbers, they also contain icons that represent drops of blood. There are a total of 6 dice, 2 each in red, white and yellow.
• Tokens: Raiders of Scythia uses a large variety of tokens and I do mean large which are divided up into 3 types.
  • Workers: These are worker meeples and come in 3 colours, blue, grey and red.
  • Resources: There are 3 types of resource.
    Silver: Depicted by hexagonal card coins.
    Provisions: These brown tokens look a bit like chocolate muffins which I suppose is fairly appropriate.
    Kumis: These beige tokens are cups of kumis, which is apparently a type of alcohol derived from horse milk. However when I was told what the token represented, I misheard it as houmous! So forever from then on I will think of them as cups of houmous.
  • Plunder: There are 4 types of plunder, they are all represented by chunky hexagonal tokens in four colours.
    Black: Livestock.
    Brown: Wagons.
    Grey: Equipment, which is about vague as it gets, but what the hey!
    Yellow: Gold!
  • Wound tokens: Wait, there's a 5th type of token! Red blood droplet tokens used to represent and track wounds.
• Bag: Used to blind draw plunder tokens during setup.

Component quality is good throughout Raiders of Scythia, cards and tiles are exactly as you'd expect them to be.
The tokens are excellent, attention has gone into the creation of the provisions and houmous err... kumis and while the plunder tokens are more generic, they are also very chunky and tactile.

So, I think it looks like whoever owned the copy of Raiders of Scythia we played bought stickers that upgraded the tokens with artwork (As you can see from the photos.). I think that otherwise by default the tokens are plain.
This also means someone had to sit down and attach stickers to a lot of token, that would push me into the deep end!

Regardless of this, the game's art-style is excellent. I'm not an art expert but it uses a sort of line illustration with flat shading that shows a lot of detail and is used to great effect on the board as it shows various situations in the different situations without overly cluttering the board.

While there is a fair amount of iconography, it's mostly do with the tokens and is fairly apparent, I don't think that it will prove to be a problem.

How's it play?
Setup

• Game board: Put out the game board and shuffle the quest tiles into a face-down stack. Place 2 tiles face-up in their allotted spots in the village part of the board.
  Also place quest tile face-down on to their allotted spaces on the other levels of the game board.
• Plunder: Put all the plunder tokens into the bag and give it a good shake. Then draw and place tokens on all the face-down quest tiles and board spaces as determined by the information for each spot.
• Workers: Raiders of Scythia begins with workers already on the board. Place worker meeples by their colours on to their allotted spaces on the game board.
• Player board: Give each player a board in their colour, along with 3 silver, 1 provision and 1 blue worker.
• Cards: Sort the cards by type and shuffle them into face down decks.
  Animal deck: Draw 3 cards and place them in a row adjacent to their deck.
  Hero deck: Draw a number of hero cards equal to the player count +1 and place them in a face-up row.
  Crew Deck: Also draw crew cards equal to the hero cards drawn and place them in a face-up row alongside the hero cards. Thus, creating pairs of hero and crew cards.
• Starting player: Determine the first player:
  Now in reverse order with who would be last, each player should choose a pair of 1 hero and 1 crew card and place them on their spaces on each player's board.
  The remaining hero cards should be discarded out of play and the remaining crew card should be put into the discard pile.
• Crew cards: Now deal 5 more crew cards to every player who should keep 3 of them and discard the other 2.
  Players should now have 1 hero and 4 crew cards on their player board.

On to play
In Raiders of Scythia, players will vying to gain resources which will allow them in turn to raid and pillage which earn VPs, consequently also acquiring plunder which can be used to complete quest tiles which also earn VPs.
Play follows the usual paradigm of the active player taking an action before play progresses to the player on the left.
Broadly speaking, the active player has a choice of 1 of 2 actions each turn.

• Work: The active player may put their worker on to a spot in the Scythian Village, there's a bit more to it than that though.
  • ​Place worker: The active player may put their meeple on a available spot in the home settlement part of the board provided the meeple's colour matches the colour requirement of that spot. Most spots require a blue meeple but some require a grey one. Then the player can resolve that spot's action.
  • Take worker: The active player now takes a worker of their choice from a home settlement space and resolves that space's action. The worker that the player takes can be of a different colour and this is a way to get one.
  • Actions: The are a number of actions that can be performed, sometimes these also have costs. Actions include:
    Gaining any of the resources types.
    Gaining a crew or animal card into your hand.
    Playing a card to the player board from your hand.
    Using a hero card's special ability.
    Completing a quest.
• Raid: This is the second action the active player can perform and takes place in the 4 lower parts of the board. Like the Work action, the active player will place a worker, resolve it, then take another worker. However, there are some notable differences.
  • Requirements: The active player must meet the requirements to initiate the raid, this includes:
    Worker: The active must have an appropriately coloured meeple.
    Crew: The active player must have a big enough crew.
    Resources: The active player must have the required resources to initiate the raid.
  • Place worker: The active player may put their on a space they would like to raid. Unlike the home settlement, meeples placed in a raid can never be taken again.
  • Resources: The active player must discard wagon and provision resources equal to the cost as part of the raid.
  • Strength: The active player must calculate their strength; this is done by totting the strength scores of their crew cards, rolling a number of dice as determined by the civilisation they are raiding and how much gold their target has and adding the results to their crew's strength.
    Additionally, the active player may spend Kumis to increase the strength of their raid.
    The final combined strength is then compared to values displayed for that  location which will determine what VPs the active player gains. Generally, the higher the strength, the more VPs are earned.
  • Wounds: According the result of the dice roll and the location attacked, the active player must distribute any wounds they received by adding wound tokens to their crew cards.
    This can be done as the player sees fit. A crew card is only 'killed' if it reaches -1 wounds. Additionally, each wound lowers a crew card's strength by 1.
  • Plunder: The player can take all the plunder tokens from the location they raided.
  • Take meeple: While the meeple placed by the active player cannot be taken, one that was put there during set up can be taken.
    Quest tile: If the location had a quest tile, it should be flipped to it's other side revealing what cost is required to complete the quest and the reward for doing so.
    ​This quest is now available for any player to complete by carrying out the appropriate action in the Scythian Village area of the board.
• Next player: Once the active player has completed their action, play moves on to the player on the left.

​Endgame
Play continues until only to raid spaces or quest tiles remain on the board. After this, all player get 1 more turn and it goes to scoring.
VPs can come from several sources.

• Crew and animal cards may provide VPs.
• Quest tiles will provide VPs.
• Plunder tokens a player has accumulated will also provide VPs.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
​I'm going to start by saying the idea 'of a worker placement game with each player only having only 1 worker' sounds crazy but it works perfectly well in Raiders of Scythia.

There's a clever mechanic at play with the colours of the meeples. E.g., when using the blue meeples to raid, they can't be taken again and players will be taking grey and red meeples instead by by the time player's are doing that, they won't need the blue meeples anymore. Players are never put in a position where they can't use a meeple because of its colour.

Anyway, on to the game.
Players will need to use the village in order to gain resources to raid the civilisation to gain plunder and reveal quest tiles which can then be bought with whatever resources and plunder the player has acquired. Phew!
It's something of a race to do this since once a spot has been raided, that's it, no one can raid that spot again. Action optimisation is important.
Something similar can apply when placing meeples in the village. There can only ever 1 worker on a space and there's some high level play that can be utilised by blocking another player and putting a meeple of your own in spot they want to use first. The same applies when taking a meeple, players can choose not to take a certain meeple just to leave the space blocked.  

Players will also need to take into consideration their crew, not only is it vital in undertaking raids, it also provides players some engine building capacity to their actions.

Finally, the game also provides some opportunities for risk/reward actions during raids as dice rolls are unpredictable.
While it's not possible to fail a raid (Players just gain less or 0 VPs for a bad roll), it's possible to squander resources and kumis for a poor roll. Players will be faced with the choice of raiding earlier with a weaker crew or risk losing a raid to another player by taking the time to increase the strength of their crew.
Furthermore, wounds are also unpredictable, a player's crew cards may take 0 wounds or may take 6 depending on the dice roll, adding the element of risk.

For me, Raiders of Scythia is a good worker placement game. Because players essentially only ever 2 actions per, they need to think about the best way to make use of them, they need to make every decision count. In other words, their decisions are meaningful, which is always a good thing.
I found the game to be a fun experience with a unique mechanic for a worker placement game.

5th August 2022

It's a Friday and we're in Aldershot for some gaming!

​When you go into a national park, you may find yourself hiking along trails.
Which is a slightly tortured segue into how Trails is actually a follow up to the excellent Parks game and shares some similar concepts.

So let's hit the errr... trail and see how it stacks up?

What's in a game?

• Tiles: Trails uses 7 rectangular tiles, which broadly speaking come in 2 types.
  Trailhead & Trail End: These 2 tiles are used to mark the start and end of the hike. Along the top of both of these tiles are several of icons.
  Finally, both of these tiles are double-sided, which sides are used is determined by player count.
  Trail sites: There are 5 of these and they are also double-sided, with one side showing day and the flip side showing night.
  Each trail site features a icon at the bottom that indicates the action associated with it. The night side always has improved versions of those actions.
• Wildlife die: This is not a normal six-sider, instead each side has an icon that relates to one of the 5 trail sites, the 6th and final side is a wild action symbol.
• Canteen tokens: There is 1 canteen in each player colour, one side shows a full canteen and the other, an empty one.
• Sun token: This cheery token depicts a stylised sun, it has an arrow and is used to track the setting sun.
• Resources: Little wooden cubes are used for the game's 3 types of resource.
  Acorn: Red cubes are the acorn resources.
  Leaf: Uses green cubes for resources. 
  Rock: Has grey resources.
• Meeples: Trails uses a handful of wooden meeples.
  Hikers: There's 1 hiker meeple in each player colour, They are sort of hiker shaped and so should be called heeples?
  Bear: A black bear meeple, should it be a beeple? This is also known as the wildlife token. Encountering a bear on a hike usually spells trouble for the hikers but the bear in Trails is a lot more friendly.
• Badge cards: There are about 40 badge cards in the game. Each one has a cost, shown in the middle and a benefit shown at the bottom. This might be VPs in some form or other at the game end or one-off bonuses such as resources.
  ​Most badge cards also have a 'type' which is shown in the top left.
• Photo cards: As well as containing pleasant artwork, photo cards display 2 pieces of information; how many VPs the card is worth and how many 'bird' icons it has.
  More on what 'birds' mean below.
• Bird trophy token: Features a picture of a bird! It's used in conjunction with the 'birds' scoring.

​
For the most part, component quality in Trails is good.
The wooden meeples look and feel good as does the die.
I also like the wooden resource cubes, although I'm not a big fan of the colours which I feel are a little too muted and sometimes in poor light, the grey and the green colours can feel hard to distinguish.
I also found the player colours a little muted too.
All the tiles and tokens are constructed of thick card and feel weighty.
However, I would describe all the cards as average in quality and perhaps a little flimsy. It's not really an issue though, Trails is not a card game and they won't be handled much so should stand up to repeated handling.

Without a doubt, all the art in Trails is excellent.
Much of it is sourced from the Fifty-Nine Parks art project which also provided the same art for Parks and will be familiar to players of that. So even though Trails is reusing artwork, it doesn't matter because it's such good quality.
Having said that, a lot of images are heavily cropped and the fact they're all on relatively small components means they just don't look as impressive.
Original art appears on the badge cards in the form of a series of quite stylised images. It's a different style to art that appears on the tile and photo cards but I have to say I think it looks good.

All the main icons which appear on the tiles and die are easily understood.
It's not quite so obvious with some of the rewards on badge cards and players will need to refer to the rules and clarifications on occasion. It's nothing game breaking though.

How's it play?
Setup

• Game board:
  Trail sites: Take the 5 trail site tiles, shuffle them and place them randomly into a  line with the day side face-up.
  Trail head & end: Put the trail head tile on the left end of the row of trail site tiles 'at the start' and put the trail end tile on the right, 'at the end'.
  Sun token: Position the sun token with its arrow pointing at the rightmost icon on the trail end tile.
  Wildlife token: Place the bear token on the middle tile of the 5 trail sites.
• Badge cards: Shuffle the badge cards into a face-down deck. Draw 2 cards and place them face-up adjacent to the trail head, also draw 2 cards and place them adjacent to the trail end.
• Photo cards: Shuffle the photo cards into a face-down deck.
• Players: Give each player the hiker meeple and canteen token in their colour, the canteen token should be on the full side.
  Also give each player 1 resource cube of each type.
  Deal a badge card to each player face-down, players should keep this hidden from their opponents.
• First player: Determine a starting player.
  Players should put their meeples on their starting tile, which will be dependant on player count. All meeples should start facing the other side of the row of tiles, facing is important in Trails, i.e., the direction they will be hiking.

On to play
In Trails, players will travel back and forth along the path, taking photos and accumulating resources which they will use to buy badge cards.
The game follows a typical turn structure with the active player resolving their turn before play progresses to the left. As their action, the active player can move their meeple and resolve the tile it lands on.

• Move hiker: The active player may move their hiker 1 or 2 spaces forward in the direction it is facing.
  Canteen: The active player may use their canteen (Flip it from the full side to empty.) to move their hiker as many spaces forward in the direction they are facing as they want.
• Actions: The active player must now resolve the action of the tile to which they moved their hiker.
  All 5 of the trail sites have an action and also a improved version of that action on the night side. The trail head and end tiles also have actions.
  The actions are as follows.
  • Acorn: When a hiker lands on the tile with the acorn symbol, the controlling player takes an acorn resource cube from the supply.
    Improved action: The active player takes 2 acorn cubes.
  • Leaf: The player takes a leaf token.
    Improved action: The player takes 2 leaf tokens.
  • Rock: The player takes a rock token.
    Improved action: The player takes... you guessed it... 2 rock tokens.
  • Exchange: The active player returns a resource cube of their choice to the supply and take 2 cubes of a different type.
    Improved action: When taking 2 resource cubes, they take 1 each of both other types.
  • Take photo: The active player may spend a resource cube to take a photo.
    When doing this the active player may either:
    Draw 2 cards from the deck, keep 1 and discard the other face up, or.
    take the top card on the photo discard pile.
    All photo cards acquired should be kept face-down until scoring at the game end.
    Improved action: Taking a photo no longer costs a resource.
    Empty deck: If the photo deck ever becomes empty, flip the discard pile over to become a new draw deck, the cards are not shuffled.
  • Trail head: Upon reaching the trail head, several actions may occur.
    Turn around: The active player should turn their hiker 180' to face back to the other side of the trail.
    Fill canteen: If the active player's canteen was empty, they should flip to the 'full' side.
    Acquire badge cards: The active player may acquire either or both badge cards adjacent to the trail head by spending the required resources, they may also purchase their secret badge card. It is therefore possible to buy up to 3 badge cards upon stopping on the trail head.
    Additionally, bonus resources acquired from gaining a badge can be used to purchase one of the remaining badge cards. 
  • Trail end: There are also several actions that will occur when a hiker end on the trail end.
    Turn around: The active player should turn their hiker 180' to face back to the other side of the trail.
    Sun action: The active player can resolve the action that the sun token is pointing at.
    If the sun token is above either the trail head or end, then the action will be one of the icons at the top of the tile. If the token is above one of the trail tiles, then that tile's action will be performed. E.g., if sun token is above the leaf tile, the active player gets a leaf resource.
    Move sun token: Once the sun action has been resolved, the sun token is moved 1 space to the left. In the case of the trail head or end icons, it moves to the next icon (Or off the tile.).
    If the token is above a trail site, then it is moved to the tile on the left. That trail site is then flipped from day to night.
    Eventually, the sun token will move over the trail head and then off the final icon, which will trigger the game end.
    Acquire badge card: This identical to acquiring a badge card at the trail head except the cards adjacent to the trail end can be gained.
• Wildlife: If the active player's hiker lands on a trail site which also contains the bear meeple, they should roll the wildlife die, then move the bear to the tile indicated by the result and resolve that tile's action. Thus if the photo icon comes up on the die, move the bear on to the photo tile and immediately resolve the photo action - this could either the day or night version.
  If the bear result comes up on the die, then the active player may choose to move the bear to any of the 5 trail sites and resolve that tile's action.
• End of turn: Once the active player has completed their action(s), they should perform the following:
  Check resources: A player can only have 8 resources in total in hand, if they have too many, they must discard down to 8.
  Replace badge cards: Any cards acquired from either of the end tile must be replaced from the deck,
  Furthermore, if the active player bought their secret badge card, they should draw a new secret badge card from the deck. Players should always have a personal hidden badge card.
  Next Player: The player to the left now becomes the active player and begin their turn by moving their meeple.

Endgame
When a player take as sun action that moves off the last leftmost icon on the trail end, they resolve that action as usual and take the sun token.
Play progresses normally, until the player to the right of sun token holder has completed their action, upon which the game ends. I.e., once sun has taken the sun token, all other players get 1 more turn.

Players now calculate their VPs.

• Cards: VPs will come from badge ​card and photo cards
• Bird token bonus: Now all players count up how many bird icons they have across their badge and photo cards. Whoever has the most birds, gains the bird token which is worth 4 VPs.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
I'm not over fond of comparing one game to another, a game should be taken on it own merits but in this case, there might be some value in doing so.
Parks and Trails come from the same family of games and as such share some thematic elements. Both are about hiking along tiles, collecting resources to acquire photos and cards, as well as using canteens for a bonus.
However, Trails differs in several ways as explained below.

Unlike it's predecessor, hikers from multiple players can happily coexist on the same space so the stress and need to try and anticipate where other players' hikers will go is gone, as the tactic of trying to block other players.
It makes the game a little lighter (By no means a bad thing.) and focuses players on getting badge cards (Which are the game's biggest source of VPs.) and players will encounter something of a conundrum here.
They may have the urge to collect as many resources as possible which can be prudent but at the same time, they'll want to reach the trail head & end tiles quickly to get a certain badge card before other players. Trails is a game about optimisation especially since there are only 3 types to manage - although that 8 cube limit can be punishing.

I also like the addition of the day turning into night mechanic, not only is it visually pleasing to watch the sun set, it adds some momentum to the game, upping the ante by giving players more resources and making it easier to get more badge cards. Players that have done well in the early game are not guaranteed victory.

So is Trails a sufficiently different game to Parks to warrant having both? I would say yes. I bought copies of both and I'm glad I did.
Trails felt like an easy game to learn and despite the fairly lengthy rules writeup above, is a reasonably light game that requires a little less brain power and also a little less directly competitive. Although for a lighter game is has a reasonably long play time - far too long to be considered a filler game.
That's a minor criticism though and ultimately, Trails is a fun experience and is worth trying.