15th March 2022 We're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns for some Tuesday evening entertainment. Four Gardens is a game about you guessed it... four gardens, it's also about spinning a pagoda! I'm not sure if Spinning Pagodas would be a better name or not? Why are players spinning a pagoda? Apparently, the pagoda contains some gods! Who... I guess... like... being spun? What's in a game?
The resource tokens felt like they were wooden and the wooden cubes were pretty standard wooden cube components, which is something I like. The tiles were standard quality card tile and fine, I thought having tiles with little hole to hold resource tokens was a pretty smart move. The card were also pretty standard quality from what I could tell. From the large, eye-catching and rotating pagoda to the tactile resource tokens shaped and coloured identically to their icons in the game; Four Gardens has excellent presentation. The backs of the cards which, when placed together form the panoramic views of the titular feature excellent, colourful and interesting art. Four Gardens features a fair amount of iconography, from the 4 scoring tracks and types of gardens to symbols for resources and different actions available on cards. For the most part, it's instantly understandable and there should be few problems with the iconography. How's it play? Setup
On to play As the name suggests, the objective is to create 4 garden panoramas using the backs of the cards. Four Gardens uses the traditional turn, with the active player acting with play then progressing to the player on the left. During their turn, the active must perform exactly 3 actions. Each action also requires the player to play or discard one of the cards in their hand. There are 4 actions that can be performed, these can be performed in any order the player sees fit. The actions are:
Endgame Depending on the player count, once 8-10 panorama cards have been constructed by any player, play goes into the endgame and the current round is completed. Players calculated VPs earned from the 4 scoring tracks and points they may have gotten from a bonus VP track. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
I'll start by discussing the pagoda - the game's most obvious feature. Is it a gimmick mechanic? Maybe. Does it work well? Definitely. It's also quite a unique mechanic and not something I've seen anywhere else. When used in conjunction with the rule limiting how many resources can be collected on the planning tile, it forces players to really think about how they have to manipulate the pagoda to get the resources they need: It takes an action to empty a planning tile that's been filled unnecessarily and that's an action that could be used elsewhere. I think it's a set of mechanics that works very well. Talking about the pagoda does lead me to one gripe: Which is the rule where all players should sit around the pagoda at 90' angles. Players don't always have the right gaming space to accommodate this and while strictly speaking, it's not necessary as players can remember what side of the pagoda is meant to be facing them, it's inconvenient and finicky. The card-synergy, or more accurately score-synergy is a pretty clever rule, providing players a reason to work towards completing panoramas. The 4 scoring tracks seem a little unnecessary but in practice they work fine. This brings me to the knock-back mechanic. It feels a little harsh that, if a player gets their scoring marker knocked off the board, it can't come back into scoring. On the other hand if a player has reached maximum on a track and other players are lingering at the bottom, it's probably not a priority for those other players, so not that much of a loss. So yes, it feels a bit harsh but it's not game breaking. All of this means players will look to optimise the order in which they play cards to optimise how they increase their scores. Concentrating on increasing scores in 1 or 2 tracks can potentially knock-back other players. Conversely, working towards completing panoramas can earn bonuses which may prove useful elsewhere; sometimes you'll be able to do both but sometimes not and looking for opportunities to exploit these times is vital. The also makes use of a variation of the hand-as-currency mechanic, except here it's used to trigger actions and not to actually pay for something. Despite this difference, it places that same conundrum on players; which is how to choose which card to discard? Obviously, they'll be times when it has to be a card with the action they need but otherwise, it's another meaningful decision to make. In conclusion; Four Gardens is a fairly easy to learn set-collecting game that provides players with enough decisions to be engaging, fun and provides unusual resource gathering and scoring mechanics which makes it feel unique. I enjoyed it and think it's worth a try.
0 Comments
9th February 2022 It's Wednesday night and we're round Simon's for some gaming fun. The evening's game was In the hall of the Mountain King. Ask yourself: What is it that trolls like to do? Live under bridges perhaps; no. Chase goats maybe; no. What about make trouble on the internet; no. What trolls really like to do is dig tunnels (The fancier the better.) and move statues! What's in a game?
There's certainly a good amount of wooden tokens and meeples here, the acrylic crystals are also a nice addition. None of the other components struck me as being poor quality and they're typical of what is expected in a modern game. There are a couple of minor quibbles though. The pedestal points tokens are a bit small and fiddly to handle The second is a bit of personal grumble - which is that all the carts are brown but depending on where the carts are acquired from will represent different colours. Carts in a player's central area can be used for any colour of statue. But carts from icons on troll cards can only be used to move statutes of a certain colour - which is indicated by the colour of the icon used to acquire the cart! Makes sense... right? Maybe not? Surely it would have been useful to include some carts of the relevant colours? There isn't a great deal of art in the game, mostly on on the spell and troll cards but it's all well illustrated with bold colours and and is fairly varied. There are 4 types (Or clans.) of troll cards and 3 types correspond to the blue/orange/white colour motif that runs through the game and I quite like how those trolls cards have a colour pallet to match it their types. Having said that; the starter cards all feature the same piece of artwork that has been coloured matched to each player colour which is a little disappointing. For the most, the game's iconography is actually straightforward and easily understood. Only the aforementioned issue with carts being a small problem. If the cart icon has a coloured background then a cart that is sourced from that icon can only be used for that colour of statue. Luckily it's not a gamebreaker although it's finicky rule to remember. How's it play? Setup
On to play Play during In the Hall of the Mountain King will have active player performing 4 actions before play moves clockwise to the next player.
Endgame The endgame is triggered when there no coronation tokens left to acquire. The current round is completed and 2 more rounds are played. Players then calculate VPs, a player's VPs may come from the following sources. Score tracker. Statues - depending on their position in the 5 zones and doubled if the player managed to place them on a pedestal. Great hall tokens in a player's network - with or without statues. Pedestal points for placing pedestals. Coronation tokens. Unspent resources; these can earn points. Every 3-of-a-kind scores an extra VP. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Despite having quite a few rule to remember and sounding quite complicated, In the Hall of the Mountain King is actually pretty straightforward in practice and many of the rules are obvious when in action. There's definitely a couple of finicky rules though, and again - it's to do with the carts and pedestals. It feels like an unnecessary complication to have these differently coloured carts to move statues. The rule that restrict pedestals to 1 per colour in each zone also feels a but cumbersome. I know why the rule is there: It encourages competition in a game that otherwise has little interaction between players. Players will want to be the first to get a pedestal as close to the Heart of the Mountain as possible. It locks out completing players and offers a big scoring opportunity. It means that players are put into a balancing act of needing build their tunnel network but also acquire resources to make this expansion happen. Clever placement of tiles will earn players some resources but recruiting trolls is the best way to get them and you'll note that digging and recruiting are pretty much the only 2 mutually exclusive actions in a turn. There's more to tunnel tile placement too, pedestals and thus statues have to go on anchor spots and it's these need to be as close to the centre of the board as possible, sometimes it'll be tricky to get it right, or it'll require not getting something else. Being able to avoid rubble spaces helps as well. Resource management also has more to it. Spending resources from troll cards first is prudent, as is using workshops to change them into other resources - because they go back on to the storage space and not the troll card. It does involve trying to think ahead about what resources can be acquired and what will be needed. This brings me neatly to the Trollmoot/Horde elements of the game, with their overlapping and cascading mechanics for both buying cards and acquiring resources they almost feel like a different game to the tile placement taking place on the game board. I have to say that I like the cascading mechanic, it's simple but provides some interesting decisions for players to make. Building up a Trollmoot, like much of In the Hall of the Mountain King requires a little forethought. If my calculations are correct, the cards in the centre columns will be activated the most. Players will want to identify and prioritise what resources they'll need in their Trollmoot setup. Additionally, deciding where to place a troll card will determine what resources the player immediately. I do also have some concerns about the game, I found using the tunnel tiles, creating pedestals and moving statues more of a chore than satisfying and the game it didn't quite gel with me. I'm also not sure how much value there is in replaying the game. The player and statue starting positions and workshops may vary but mostly the board's resources stay unchanged. And while the card mechanics are good, the cards themselves only vary in which resources they provide. In the Hall of the Mountain King is another one of these games that does nothing really wrong and I've got nothing against the game. If someone else wanted to play it I would happily join in but somehow it's missing that special something that makes me want to play it again. 8th February 2022 Tuesday night games with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns continued with Fantastic Factories. I don't know if factories are fantastic but I guess we're going to find out. What's in a game?
From an art perspective, the game makes good use of cheerfully bright colours. The art itself uses heavily stylised illustrations of both factories and contractors which is fine and suits the game's slightly light-hearted theme. When built, factories provide a varied amount of special actions, consequently the game makes use of quite a varied amount of iconography. For the most part it's straightforward, however, on occasion 2 cards may seem similar but they'll be a small difference between denominated by a single small icon or sometimes they'll just be something I wouldn't say it's any kind of a gamebreaker or that there's too much iconography but for a few turns players will probably end up referring to the rules. How's it play? Setup
On to play Broadly speaking, a round is broken into 2 phases; a market phase which occurs in turn order and a work phase, which can be performed simultaneously by all players.
Endgame Play continues until either a player has built their 10th card or acquired their 12th good. In either case, the current round ends and 1 more round is played. Players then total the VPs from their buildings and the goods they gained. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
On a basic level, Fantastic Factories is mechanically pretty straightforward; acquire blueprints, acquire resources to build factories, use factories to acquire resources. It's a mid-weight engine building game that provides players with strong card synergy and offers a good selection of choices and avenues to follow for building that engine. I feel for the most part that players will want to focus on blueprints and building them, which is natural as this is what gets resources and VPs. Players shouldn't neglect the contractors who provide instant if transitory benefits for a relatively low cost. Applied at the right time, they can be game changers - provided they're available at the right time! Once again, it's a case of reacting to opportunities as they are revealed. There are a couple of there elements that make Fantastic Factories interesting. Firstly; dice rolling. Players will never be guaranteed getting the results and thus the resources they want. It means that players may not be able to build the card they originally wanted to and will need to adapt and react to the situation as it arises for optimal play. Of course it's always possible to play it safe and have all the required resources before getting a card, it's safer but it's also slower. Secondly; Fantastic Factories makes use of a hand-as currency mechanic. This forces players to think ahead, players may need to get blueprint cards just to discard for another building, or may be forced to discard a blueprint they still want in order to build another, it can be a tough decision. There's also some high level play, where it pays to watch what other players are working towards then wipe the marketplace to deny another a player a card they want. Fantastic Factories is a well balanced game, it's rules aren't particularly complicated and are easy to learn but also have depth that comes from recognising how to exploit the available cards that appear during the game to build their engine optimally and to maximum efficiency. The gameplay is solid and will appeal to fans of engine building games, which I am. so I guess factories can be fantastic! 8th February 2022 Tuesday evening is here and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club for some gaming goodness. The 1st game of the night was Llamaland. A whole land full of llamas, they get everywhere, all over the fields, hills and mountains! What's in a game?
Most of Llamaland's components are good quality, the cards feel a little flimsy but unless they're abused, they should be fine. Otherwise it's all good, the tiles all feel suitability solid and chunky. The tokens are fine, I like how they're the different shaped. The most noteworthy component though, are the cute little llama meeples. The art in Llamaland is nice and colourful, all the tiles are bright and eye catching, the art for the character cards is heavily stylised but I like it. The illustrations used for the llama cards depict them as llama meeples. If you look carefully at several cards, you can see that some of them have slightly different expressions! It's a nice touch and I wonder how often these kinds of detail get noticed? Much of the game's iconography is easily comprehended, however, some of the icons on the character cards can be unclear, this generally applies to cards that confer bonuses for covering other icons because they show the relevant icons being covered and those icons are a little obscure. The blue objective cards will probably require referring to the rulebook to understand. None of this is a gamebreaker though. It's unlikely that players will need to look up anything more than once or twice. How's it play? Setup
On to play LLamaland is played using a traditional turn structure, with the active player taking a turn adding tiles to their estate. Once that's concluded, play moves to the player on the left.
Endgame Play continues until one of the following criteria is met. There are 4 or less land tiles less, regardless of type. There is only 1 type of llama card left. In either instance the game goes into the endgame and play continues until all players have had an equal number of turns, then it goes to scoring. Every llama card acquired earns its listed VPs. A player marker on a objective card that the player has successfully completed earns that player its listed VPs. Unused crop tokens earn 1 VP each. Every 2 unused coins earns 1 VP. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Broadly speaking, Llamaland's gameplay is divided into 3 areas. I'd say that primarily the game is concerned with tile placing mechanics. Much of the gameplay here will be familiar ground. Players cannot predict exactly what tiles will be available when drafting tiles will be available in their turn and will need to adapt to circumstances and look for opportunities. Pretty standard stuff. The unusual element here is building upwards, it adds an extra axis (sic) to the gameplay. It's vital to build upwards efficiently, there's no other way to get resources and players will want cluster desired resources in such a way that it makes covering them quick and easy. The second element is acquiring and placing llama meeples. When placing them, players will not only have to think about completing blue objectives but also trying to not hinder the placement of later tiles. Chances are that players will have more than one objective for placing llama meeples and they'll want to maximise the placing and there's definitely some synergy going on between objectives. Many purple objectives require 4 of a kind llamas and some blue ones require placing 4 llama meeples on the estate in a certain, thus it's possible to work to both objectives together. The third mechanic and one I find interesting is placing markers on objectives. Placing markers later in the game is safer as players will have better idea on what they can achieve, or might already have achieved however, they end up having to put their markers lower value rows. Placing markers earlier though, means players can go for the bigger VP rewards - provided they can complete the objective. When a player puts one of their marker on an objective, they're essentially making a bet that they'll complete the objective. It's a classic risk and reward mechanic. It also makes individual objectives pretty apparent to all players, if someone's just put their marker on the collect 4 potato llamas objective card, it's safe to assume what they'll be going for and others can respond as they see appropriate. Llamaland is a cheerfully colourful game that manages to always provides players with meaningful choices to make and strategies to utilise which I found it an engaging and fun. 3rd February 2022 It's a Thursday and we're round Simon's for a night of gaming. The first game of the evening was My Little Scythe. My Little Pony What does does My Little Scythe have to do My Little Pony? Well... err... nothing... obviously... My Little Scythe is a reskinned iteration of Scythe that has been simplified and pared down to make it more accessible to younger players. I have played Scythe but it was some time ago, long before I started this blog in fact. What's in a game?
It's obviously that the game's art direction is meant to emulate the style of a Saturday morning kid's cartoon. It makes use of bright colours and features well illustrated cartoon styled art throughout. The game's iconography is clear, all of the symbols are easily understood. What's in a game? Setup
On to play My Little Scythe is all about victory conditions and the first player to achieve 4 of them will win. The turn structure in My Little Scythe is very traditional, with the active player having their turn and active play moving to the person on the left.
Endgame Play continues until a player has earned all 4 of their trophies which triggers the endgame. Each player who has not earned their 4 trophies now has a further single turn to do so. Additionally, the 1 trophy per turn restriction does not apply during the endgame. In the case of a tie (Which can be likely considering the small scoring range.), whoever has the highest friendship score wins, if the tie still isn't broken, whoever controls the most resources wins and if that's equal, victory is shared. Overall
My Little Scythe has done a good job of paring down the rules of Scythe without really diluting its game experience. Players of Scythe will find a lot here that is familiar. Like Scythe, My Little Scythe is a blend of doing your own thing and competing with other players. This is due to how the trophy mechanics work; players are attempting to complete any 4 objectives out of 8 which generates a lot of routes towards victory. Different players will naturally approach how they can go about winning individualistically. It means that player behaviour can generally be quite varied, players may simply ignore each other, compete for resources or even engage in outright conflict, or any amount of combination of those. However, I feel that acquiring apples and gems is perhaps the most important goal in the game maybe overimportant, they provide the most ways to earning most trophies, competition for them can be stiff, especially with higher player counts. Players in My Little Scythe will want to optimise there strategy dependant on a number of factors, including personality card and resource locations, they can also to pay attention to what other players, trying to predict what they're doing, react accordingly and may have to change their strategy. With it's colourful, cartoony presentation and relatively stripped down rules, it's obvious that My Little Scythe is at least in part aimed at younger players - that's not to say that it can't be enjoyed by adults or doesn't have some crossover appeal. Having said that, I don't think the rules are that simplified, I'd say they're still fairly intricate and could prove an obstacle to younger players, particularly if there isn't an older player present who's familiar with the rules. I'd say My Little Scythe is family-friendly more than kid-friendly. I think it's a fairly good family-friendly game as well and a good introduction for kids or 'non-gamers'. For me though; I'm not sure how I feel about My Little Scythe. It doesn't feel like my kin of game. There's nothing wrong with the game mechanically, nor do I think it's overly simplistic and I'm fine with the theme. I can see how other people enjoy it but I was just unenthused by it and found it unchallenging. To me, It felt like there was synergy lacking between actions I'd have no problem playing it again if others wanted to, but it's not one I'd choose to play. 15th January 2022 It's Wogglecon and the final game of the day was Ginkgopolis. What's a Ginkgopolis? Good question, I guess it means Ginkgo city but what does Ginkgo mean? It's a type of tree, so Ginkgopolis must mean tree-city. In Ginkgopolis, players take on the role city planners in tree-city and attempt to manage it's expansion, both outwards and upwards. What's in a game?
Ginkgopolis has solid components, the tiles and tokens are constructed from suitability thick, chunky card as are the screens, while the meeples and resources are wooden which is always appreciated. The game makes good use of colour, effectively mixing primary colours with green and emphasising the ginkgo tree motif employed throughout. Ginkgopolis' artwork is high quality, character cards are well illustrated with slightly cartoonish, colourful individuals that follow the game's red-yellow-blue and green theme, the same is true of the building cards/tiles which depict various different types of structures. The iconography in Ginkgopolis is a bit strange, there's not too much of it and it's fairly simple to understand. However, due to Ginkgopolis' almost counter-intuitive rules, getting to grips with it took a little time. Nothing too bad though. How's it play? Setup
In the basic flow of actions in Ginkgopolis, players simultaneously put down cards and then resolve them in turn order.
There are 2 ways in which Ginkgopolis can end. If the building tile supply is depleted a second time or if a player has put all resource tokens on to the city. In either case, the current round is resolved and the game goes to scoring. VPs come from various sources in Ginkgopolis.
Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Firstly, one small fascinating thing about Ginkgopolis is how the game almost operates like a machine! Cards played to build something must not be put into the discard pile, otherwise they'll end up going back into circulation and later, players will end with cards in their hands that can't be used to either get currencies or build upwards. Further to this, new buildings must be given a meeple so that players can track which new cards must be added to the building deck as again, it would leave players without cards to gain currencies or build. Get this wrong and like a machine losing cogs, the game will begin grinding to a halt! I don't know what kind of fevered imagination dreamt up this mechanic but it's both convoluted and brilliant! Ginkgopolis' rules are definitely a little counter-intuitive. For example; when you play a card, that's not what you're building but what you're building on top of. Or after building something, getting to keep the card you used to build something. Additionally; it took a little bit for me to wrap my head around the game. Remember: Playing a card without a tile earns currencies. Playing a card with a tile allows a player to build a tile. I would also say Ginkgopolis is little fiddly for beginning player but none of this a dealbreaker, it's more an indicator of how Ginkgopolis feels a little unusual compared to other games I've played and I don't consider this a bad thing. While there are various avenues to follow for scoring, I feel that the biggest source of VPs would come from controlling districts because it's possible to not only score your own resources but those of other players' too! It can be quite hard to plan ahead though due to the card drafting and they'll be times when you'll want to play more than 1 card from your hand. It pushes you to make hard decisions (And hope the other cards come back around.), it means you have to adapt and spot situations you can exploit. It also means watching your neighbours and trying to gauge their objectives. There's quite a lot of player interaction that goes on and putting the right tile into play at the right time can dramatically alter the landscape. There's also an interesting strategy when deciding which tiles to put in the city. Putting a 20-value tile down makes it harder for other players to build over it, they'd have to pay VPs to build a lowered valued tile, or an extra resource to play a 20-value tile in a different colour. On the other hand, keeping a 20-value tile back can give a player the opportunity to build over other higher value tiles later in the game. The building outwards or upwards mechanics provide plenty of scope here. Expanding outwards can be easier (Provided a player gets the right urbanisation cards.) because a player need less resources and will also earn currencies when doing so. The downside is that it's easier for other players to build over your tiles. The opposite is also sort of true, building upwards tends to be costly, but it's also more costly for other players to build over them. Building tiles also puts the related card (And it's bonus action.) in to play in the player's personal area, creating the opportunity to combo actions into bonuses. Players will need to balance the need to acquire currencies with the need to build tiles. However, as the city landscape and a player hand changes, so can the options to do either of these. Adaptation is vital and every decision can be critical This made my choices feel meaningful when playing Ginkgopolis, which is always good. I'd say that Ginkgopolis is a mid-weight tile laying game with some fairly interactive area-control gameplay that gives players interesting and changing options. It took a little time to warm to Ginkgopolis but I enjoyed the game and think it's worth giving a try. 15th January 2022 It's a Saturday and we're at the Bisley Scout Hall with the Woking Gaming Club for Wogglecon, for a day of gaming and hanging with with friends. There are a lot of national parks in the USA and you're about to hike a bunch of them in the first game of the day; Parks. What's in a game?
The quality of Park's components is universally high and it's obvious that a lot of care and attention has been put into the game, this extends even to the packaging and token trays. The cards are fine and the tiles are appropriately thick. The tokens are all wooden, well made and colourful, the individually shaped wildlife tokens are the standout here. Finally, the inclusion of a metal first player marker is pretty unusual but it has a satisfyingly weighty feel to it and is a cool addition. For nearly all of it's artwork, the game sources The Fifty Nine Parks Print Series which as the name suggests, is a project which consists of a picture of each American national park created by a different artist. Perhaps it could be argued that doing this saves on the art budget but honestly, it feels like a great collaboration. As a result the game features excellent and varied artwork throughout, all the park cards and photography tokens are uniquely illustrated, the art also features on all the card backs and even the inside of the box lid! Fantastic! Parks makes use of a fairly wide variety of iconography but for the most part it was easy to comprehend and presented no obstacle to the game. How's it play? Setup
On to play Parks is played over 4 seasons during in which each the players' hikers travels along that season's trail from left to right.
Endgame Once the 4th season has been completed, the game ends. Players score points from the parks they've visited (Bought.), they also score a point for each photo they took and whoever has the first player token at the game end scores 1 point for it. Finally; players reveal their year cards, completing the objective on these usually scores 2-3 points. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Parks is essentially a light worker placement game added where your 2 workers only ever head right combined with resource management. It's a game all about planning trips that means that it's about acquiring resources to buy park cards which generally provide the majority of VPs required to win the game. However, it is impossible to fully plan things out. Going from season to season, players will have a good idea what resources and tiles will be available but not where they will appear. It requires adaption and some creative thinking when faced with a different tile layout. Limiting the resources a player can own to 12 is an solid rule, it prevents players hording too much and splurging out big at once. It also makes players think about optimising their strategies. The initial urge in Parks is to travel as slowly as possible to collect as many resources as possible and in the early-game that's not a bad idea but sooner or later, players will need to use them up and that means visiting parks. Remember, players have only 2 hikers and that means they can only use the visit park action on the trail end twice per season (Provided they don't use any other actions on the tile.), this means that players have 8 opportunities to visit parks, yes; there's an advanced trail tile that allows extra buy actions but there's no guarantee where and when it'll appear. This brings me to the worker placement element of Parks. Each player can use their campfire a maximum of 2 times in a season, it means thinking carefully before moving on to a occupied tile, it also means trying to anticipate how other players will move and if necessary, getting there first! Or perhaps moving the other hiker so that whoever is occupying the tile you need may have moved by the following turn. Ultimately it means that players should look to optimise their moves, balance resource acquisition with card acquisition, players might well be competing for the same park card and watching a card you want being taken by another player because you tarried to collect an extra resource can be galling. Players will have the double-obstacle of reacting to both seasonal changes and the choices made by the other players. The game's rules are not over-complex but also provide a fair amount of depth. There's enough interaction between players to force you to pay attention to their choices . Decisions that players face are always meaningful and getting wrong could lose you out. Add to this the game's top notch thematically appropriate production values and you have a small package that delivers a big game. Having said that, it's not without a couple of drawbacks. Most significantly; the game experience can change notably with player count. A 3-player game will feel quite different to 5-player. The hiker count goes from 6 to 10, the tiles become a lot more crowded and it becomes more challenging to do what you want. While in games with 4 or more players an extra basic tile is added into the mix, it doesn't quite alleviate the increased clutter on the trail. Secondly, a 5-player game seems to last around 2 hours and that perhaps feels a little overlong. Parks doesn't outstay its welcome and it's not a game-breaker but it can feel a little long for what it is. Other than that, Parks is well presented, accessible and satisfying to play (At least when you get the park card you want!). It's definitely one that's worth trying. 4th January 2022 It's a Tuesday and we're round Simon's for the first in-person game of the year! 'Here be dragons', is something you don't want to shout in Clank! Instead you'll want to silently tippy-toe around without waking the damn thing up, then steal its stuff and run! NOTE: When we played Clank!, it was with an expansion that took the player count up 6 (Which was useful, as there were 6 of us!) and added characters with individual starting decks. What's in a game?
Clank features good, colourful artwork throughout, the board has a fairly unique look to it and is clearly illustrated, the cards and tokens also feature good artwork with well illustrated characters and monsters. The game uses a fairly small assortment of iconography and it's all easily understood. How's it play? Setup
On to play The objective in Clank! is to grab an artefact from the depths and escape the out of the dungeon alive! A player cannot leave the dungeon without an artefact neither score points. Play progress in traditional clockwise order during Clank! and the active player plays cards from their hand to generate resource pools which they can then utilise to perform associated actions.
Endgame There are 2 ways to trigger the endgame. It can be triggered by the 1st player to acquire an artefact and leave the dungeon or the 1st player to be knocked out. In either circumstance, the player who triggered the endgame places their meeple on the countdown track. Then when they become the active player, all they do move their meeple along the track. This will trigger a worsening dragon attack every round for the next 3 rounds, then on the final round the dragon will knock out all players who are still in the dungeon, regardless of whether they are in the depths or the upper levels. After this, the game goes to scoring, players who did not acquire an artefact or who were for any reason knocked out while in the depths do not score any points! Points may be accumulated from the following sources: Artefacts score 5-30 VPS. Tokens acquired. Card with VP values that players bought. Gold; each gold scores 2 VPs. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Clank! has an unusual mix of deck-building and push-your-luck mechanics and it's the push-your-luck element that interests me the most. Clank! makes use of this mechanic in several aspects of the game. Firstly, there's a definite push-your-luck element to generating clank. Players will obviously want to minimise how much clank they add to the banner and lessen the chances of their cubes being pulled when the dragon attacks. Having said that, lessening the impact of clank may slow a player's progress, sometimes generating clank will give a bonus, the question is; is it worth it? how much do you want to push it. There's also a contextual angle here, if you see other players are generating a lot of clank, that means it should be safer to generate a little bit of clank yourself. If the opposite is true, they you'll need to be even more careful. The most obvious use of push-your-luck is when collecting an artefact. Every player needs to collect 1 but there's quite a spread of VPs. The higher scoring artefacts are found lower down in the depths. Getting one and getting out will be more risky, but more rewarding. Compounding this is the rule that you can't drop an artefact once it's been picked up. There's no hedging you bet here, if you want a higher value artefact, you have to go for it. It's basically stick-or-twist. This also ties in with the game's other aspect of push-your-luck. The countdown mechanic adds an interesting wrinkle to all this, dramatically altering player priorities and objectives. If the countdown is triggered by another player, you'll find yourself wondering whether you can get one last scoring token before heading to the top or not - probably better to run? The penalty for getting caught in the depths is catastrophic and that 20 VP mastery token is pretty good. Conversely, if you're the player who has an opportunity to escape the dungeon and trigger the countdown, should you do it? Or should you try and get more points? It might seem like a no-brainer, but is it? Chances are the first player to get out didn't go too deep and got a lower value artefact. The combined value of a mastery token and a 5 point artefact is still less than the highest value artefact and I'm sure this is no coincidence, I put it down to well balanced scoring. Rushing to get out and put pressure on other players may work or it may not. The deck-building aspect in Clank! is light-ish and fairly straightforward, which I think is a good thing because it can have quite the influence on a player's turn. There's little in the way of card combos and mostly all the cards stand on their own. The only trash cards (And they're not really trash.) are the secret tomes, which score 7VP at the game end but otherwise clutter up a deck. This brings me to perhaps the only niggle I have about the deck-building and Clank! In most deck-builders, it's all about buying more cards, either to improve your deck or score you points and Clank! is unlike those deck-builders. In Clank! your needs may change from round to round; in a particular round you may want to move a lot, in the next you may want fight points and sometimes, the cards may just not give you what you need. Sure, in most deck-builders, the cards will screw you over but somehow it can feel worse in Clank! It can be frustrating when you don't enough quite have the movement you to reach an artefact for example and feels like nothing is going on. It's not a dealbreaker though and I guess learning to adapt as much as possible is key. Otherwise, Clank! is hard to fault. Colourful with an interesting theme and mechanics, not too tricky to learn, reasonably fast to play and with a dramatic endgame. What's not to like. If you like deck-builders or push-your-luck games or both, Clank! is worth a try. 29th December 2021 We're at Simon's for some Wednesday evening gaming goodness during the mid Christmas break. The game of the night was Lost Ruins of Arnak. "That belongs in a museum!" What does? Cliched old one liners! Lost Ruins of Arnak is a game about raiding temples of a long forgotten ancient civilisation on an uncharted island. What's in a game?
The game has really nice plastic pieces for arrowheads, tablets and jewels, along with wooden meeples, magnifying glasses and notebooks, you can never go wrong with wooden components and yet, makes use of unremarkable card tokens for coins and compasses. Yes it's a minor quibble but it's definitely noticeable. The game's cards and tiles are standard quality. From an art perspective, it's all pretty good, cards and tokens all have nice, clear and colourful thematic art. The standout however, is the board, with a pair of lovely landscape images, it's almost a shame that they'll mostly be covered with components during play. The game contains a fair amount of iconography, none of it was particularly unclear though. How's it play? Setup
On to play A round in Lost Ruins of Arnak continues until all players can no longer perform actions (Free actions don't count.) or have passed. The game features a pretty standard turn order that goes clockwise and in their turn, players will get 1 main action and any amount of free actions. A round proceeds as follows:
Endgame When the 5th round is completed, then so it the game and we go to scoring. There are a variety of opportunities to score. Research: Research tokens earn VPs depending where they finished on the research track. Temple tile: Players who reached the temple can score the VPs on these tiles: Idol tokens: each idol token acquired earns 3 VPs. Player board idol slots: Each empty slot on a player's player board earns the VPs it displayed. This means when an idol is slotted for a benefit, the VPs it covers are not scored. Guardian tiles: Each guardian defeated earns the player 5 VPs. Cards: Aretfact and item cards can also earn the owning player VPs. Fear cards: Finally; fear cards. Each fear card a player has deducts 1 VP from their total. Points are tallied, highest score wins! Overall
Hmmm, what to say about Lost Ruins of Arnak. It would only be a slight exaggeration to say that this game is sort of a jack of all trades and master of none. A little bit of deck building, a little bit of worker placement and a little bit of resource management, this game has it all! Joking aside, this, on a basic level represents 3 different approaches to accumulating VPs. That is; buying cards and using cards, visiting sites and moving up the research track. Card will get players useful special abilities and travel points, visiting sites will acquire players resources and going up the research track gets other benefits, including assistants. Players will not want to neglect any of these elements and there's fairly good synergy between different parts of the game, but generally players end up focusing on 1 of them during play. While the game isn't overly complex, there's quite a lot to consider. Personally, it felt like going up the research track was a good way to score big but it's hard to be sure. Another very important factor to think about is turn-economy, there's no set number of turns per round in Lost Ruins and finding ways to get extra main actions is vital. A player who gets 10 actions per round instead of 5 is going to just do better and I have to say, finding way to combo actions into more actions is pretty satisfying. For example, a player might use a card to get resources to move a worker to get different resources to spend on the research which would provide another benefit. Having said that, taking a single main action at a time can feel frustrating, yes it's a combo system, but it's a slow one - unless you're the only player still with actions. I found Lost Ruins of Arnak a fun game, but not a particularly compelling one; it's hard to put a finger on. The game's theme fits it's mechanics well and it has great presentation. I think maybe that all the game's systems, the worker placement and the deck building and so on are all on an individual level, a little uninspiring and bland. The deck building mechanic would never stand on its own for example, neither would the worker placement, on the other hand, they don't need to. So is the sum greater than the parts? The jury's out. When I encounter a game I like, I get the urge to buy a copy and I don't get that with Lost Ruins of Arnak. The game was entertaining but it wouldn't be first choice of mine to play but I happily play it if someone else wanted to. 16th December 2021 It's a Thursday and we're round Simon's for some gaming. The game of the night was Le Harve; have you ever had the urge to run a business on the French coast, construct buildings and ships, manage goods, feed your ever expanding workforce and avoid going into debt? If the answer is yes, then maybe, just maybe, Le Havre is the game you're lookng for. What's in a game? Le Havre uses a lot of components, I mean it, A LOT!
The art in Le Havre is a bit of a mixed bag. The game board uses fairly simplistic and colourful illustrations that I personally found clear, distinct and looked quite evocative, the same is true of illustrations on the cards. However, the tokens used monochromic artwork which is a little old school. Having said that, it was always clear what they represented. Which brings me to iconography. Between all the different actions on all the building cards in particular, Le Havre uses a fair amount of iconography. Much of it is straightforward and apparent but some of it will require looking up in the rules. none of it game-breaking though. How's it play? Setup
On to play Acquisition of wealth is goal in Le Havre and money becomes victory points at the game end. The game is played over a number rounds dependant on the number of players. In each round there are 7 turns, you will note that this means that players will not have an equal number of turns and this is by design. In their turn each player must perform the supply action and has a single main action they can also perform, in addition the active player can also perform buy/sell actions. When all 7 turns have been completed, there are some end of round actions to resolve before moving on to the next round. Free actions: These can be performed by the active player at any time.
Endgame When the final round is completed, all players have 1 final main action they can perform, after this, the game goes to scoring. Now each player calculates their wealth which are victory points. This is done by totting up the following: Value of all building and ships a player owns. Cash they possess. Every loan card a player still possess at the game end deducts from the total. Scores are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
When playing Le Havre players will need to pay attention to several areas of the game. Buildings are very important and players will probably spent a significant number of actions on them, not only do they have to think about to what they've built, what the town owns and what it available to build but what other players have built. Being able to make use of other player's building adds an interesting spin on the game. Players will need to adapt their strategy to the buildings that become available and while there is a ordering number for buildings, it's still no guarantee of the actual order they become available. That doesn't mean you can risk ignoring ships or acquiring resources of course, food is vital, probably the single most important thing in the game, you'll constantly need food otherwise you'll eventually be plunged into spiralling debt. Managing all the resources is also key and the game deliberately forces players to make the hard choice between using a building or taking a resource from an offer space. Resources tend to be relatively scarce at the start of the game and player's will want to optimise their strategies. Generally money can be used in place of some resources but it's essentially sucking up victory points and getting players closer to having to take a loan, something to avoid if you can. Players will need to also pay attention to the supply track and their position on it and when their turns will come up, as well as when resources will be moved into the offer spaces. Even though there were some more rules which I skipped over describing, I wouldn't call La Havre a very heavy game. I did find it a little fiddly with the occasional little rule popping up here or there and at the start I did find the game a little obtuse. Once you get over that hump Le Havre becomes a mostly straightforward game and proves a challenging game with meaningful decisions to make. I do have a criticism of Le Havre though - and that's the playtime, it's just too long! This is a known issue too as the rules contain a 'shortened' variant of the game! A 5-player game is expected to take 210 minutes over 20 rounds, that's 3 ½ hours and quite frankly, that's an underestimation. Think about it; 210 minutes over 20 rounds is 10 minutes 30 seconds per round and each round has 7 turns, that works out at 90 seconds per turn. Do you think that the kind of players that like this type of game spend just 90 seconds per turn? If every player spends 2 minutes taking their turn instead of 90 seconds, it would add 70 minutes to the playtime. 😭 It meant that the down time between turns felt like it lasted forever and at times was just more frustrating than fun or compelling, which was what I ultimately took away from it. If you like resource-management games that are slightly on the heavy side, then Le Havre might be worth a look, provided you can commit the time. To be honest, it's a game that rainy, chilled Sunday afternoons are perfect for. |
AuthorI play, I paint. Archives
March 2024
Categories
All
|