29th July 2021 Thursday is here and it's time for some gaming on Board Game Arena. If racing isn't your thing but rolling is, then maybe you'll prefer Roll for The Galaxy to the excellent Race for The Galaxy. Roll for The Galaxy is a follow up to the aforementioned game and both are thematically similar. Both games have the same 5 phases (Although not in the same order!) and both are about are about building settlements and developments to create an engine building tableau in order to win. Mechanically, there are numerous differences though. Roll for The Galaxy uses lots of different dice and dice rolling to manage phases as well as provide workers to build with. Gone is the card-based economy of Roll for the Galaxy. What's in a game?
All the games tiles are made of sturdy grey board and are suitably thick. The currency meeple is a nice little wooden token that matches colour with a dice cup, speaking of which, the cups are made of pretty standard plastic but are easily tough enough to stand up to repeated use. Finally, the victory tokens are made of standard card token chips and are probably the most average component in the game, which is to say the components are all good quality. Anyone familiar with Race for The Galaxy will recognise the art style on the tiles. How much of it is new and how much is recycled from Race, I couldn't say. Ultimately though, it's fairly good artwork. How's it play? Setup
Roll for The Galaxy is played out over 5 different steps, each player carries out each step simultaneously.
Endgame Play progresses until either a player has completed the 12th tile in their tableau, or the supply of victory point tokens has been depleted. Players now calculate the total cost/value of completed tiles in their tableau and victory points accumulated, furthermore; some developments will have criteria that score players additional points. All points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Players of Race for The Galaxy (Like me!) will recognise a lot of familiar theme and ideas in Roll for The Galaxy, it's quite clever how this has been achieved, although there are some differences. For example; in Race for The Galaxy, a player's hand is also their currency, in Roll for the Galaxy though, players have no hand. The game introduces a currency track to replicate this and at first I thought it felt a little superfluous, after all, currency is only used to recover dice from the Citizenry space, then I realised without the need for currency, the decision to choose between a game tile and currency in the Explore phase becomes unnecessary as does the decision to to choose between victory points and currency in the Ship phase. There is no military score, instead military dice provide extra opportunities to develop and settle. Curiously, Roll for The Galaxy swaps the Produce and Ship/Consume phases round and trading is now the 5th and final phase. I guess that this decision was taken to make it a little easier to players to produce and then trade goods in the same round? Additionally, because Roll for the Galaxy is a 5-player game, it possible for all phases to be activated. It's never been possible to activate more than 4 phases in Race for The Galaxy. Finally; constructing developments and settlements is quite different: In Race for The Galaxy, it's a all-or-nothing affair, either you have the cards to pay for a development/settlement or you don't. Roll for The Galaxy allows player to incrementally pay for them, however, this ties up dice in construction, as a consequence players will have less dice and therefore less choices When rolling at the start of the round. But enough of talking about another game, let's talk about Roll for The Galaxy. In Roll for The Galaxy, players will be to some extent at the mercy of the dice they roll at the start of a round. If you're looking to finish constructing a settlement and you get no settlement dice - tough luck! Obviously there are rules to mitigate some of this and furthermore, correct usage of the different types of dice (Provided you get hold of them.) at the right time can be helpful and skew results in a player's favour. But on occasion, players will have to react to dice rolls that just don't go their way! Adaptation is the key here. Even so, it can prove frustrating at times when you can't do what you want to. Additionally, acquiring certain types of dice which may push players into strategies they hadn't considered before, Another aspect to remember when assigning dice, is to pay attention to what other players have been doing, successfully anticipating another player's choice of action can prove useful and provide extra actions to spend. Players must balance the need to acquire developments and settlements with the need to produce and trade, this also means balancing the use of limited resources to construct improvements with the need to have actions. Building an engine is vital, getting the special abilities provided is important, but so is acquiring extra dice to roll, which gives players more choices elsewhere. Players will want to do all of this as efficiently as possible to outpace their opponents In short; Roll for The Galaxy always provides players with meaningful decisions. I'd happily play Roll for The Galaxy again in the future, but given the choice between this and Race for The Galaxy, I'd choose the latter every time. Roll for the Galaxy is a good and fun game but I sometimes find the randomness off putting. If dice games are your thing over card games for some reason, Roll for the Galaxy is definitely worth a look.
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28th July 2021 We were at The Sovereigns in Woking on a Wednesday for an impromptu evening of gaming. It's a Wonderful World, where you can lead a idyllic, tranquil life, except It's a Wonderful World is anything but! It's a dystopian, industrialised future in which competing factions vie for resources to create the most powerful empires. It's a Wonderful World indeed. What's in a game?
The development cards contain quite a lot of info, but the iconography is consistently clear and they never feel cluttered. The art used throughout the game is consistently good, colour is also well used, making the game bright and eye catching. It's a bit of a shame that when development cards become stacked, the art is no longer visible. so a thumbs up for the presentation. How's it play? Setup
On to play. It's a Wonderful World is played over 4 rounds and each round has 3 phases, drafting planning and production. The planning and production phases occur simultaneously and have no turn order
Endgame Once the 4th round has been completed, player calculate their scores. Some cards will provide a straight victory point score. General/financier tokens provide a victory point each. Finally, some cards have scoring combos dependant on other cards or the general/financier tokens. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
It's a Wonderful World is fairly straightforward to learn and play, in truth, having to collect resources 5 times over in a round actually sounds a lot more fiddly than it is in practice. The game's engine-building, tableau-creating, simultaneous-play, card-game style has some similarities to some other games we've played such as Race for the Galaxy. While it has less depth, it's also more accessible, players will have less trouble creating engines and combos. The game also has a slightly different take on some of these concepts. Firstly there's drafting; what's interesting here is that players put cards they've drafted into their area face-up during the drafting phase face-up for everyone to see. In high-level play, it's possible for players to try and anticipate what their opponents might be looking to use and keep cards they might want from them. Fairly frequently in games (Especially euro-games.) a player trying to screw over an opponent can also screw themselves over, but in It's a Wonderful World, development cards can always be discarded for resources, so sometimes in can be a legitimate move. Secondly; how the timing of resource acquisition meshes with the game's engine building mechanic is interesting and presents an unusual approach to exploiting those engines. For example; if a player completes construction of a development card that required grey cubes, that card goes straight into their empire's stack and if that card then produces black cubes, then the player will get those cubes when the black resource production phase comes round and they can then be used to complete development cards which require black cubes. Knowing when to complete which development card and in which order will greatly increase the building efficiency of an empire. Many engine-builders allow players to do a the perform a wider variety of tasks but the simpler gameplay of It's a Wonderful World has a clear and concise gameplay loop, constructing development cards allows players to gain more resources to construct even more development cards to get even more resources and so on. In round 1, players will probably end up discarding 5 of the cards they drafted for the resources to try and build 1 or 2 of those development cards. This puts players in the classic quandary of deciding what they have to discard and all the cards will be useful in some way. By the time round 4 arrives however, it'll probably be the inverse, players will be discarding only 1 or 2 cards to try and build 5 in a round as their engine gets stronger and stronger. It's a satisfying experience to watch it at work. All of this adds up to make It's a Wonderful World feel different enough to justify it's existence. If you like this style of game, it's definitely work a look, I do and I'd happily play it again. 13th July 2021 It's a Tuesday evening and I'm at The Sovereigns in Woking with the Woking Gaming Club. Where would eurogaming be without Renaissance Italy? The pageantry, the politics, the scheming and the vying for power, you know how it goes: A seemingly limitless mine of game design opportunities. This is where Lorenzo il Magnificio comes in, a game where players control noble families in Florence competing to be the most prestigious, famous and of course.... most pious! What's in a game?
The boards and tiles are suitably thick, the resource cards are of a standard quality as you'd expect. Tokens are all made of wood, which I always like, including the nicely rounded dice. The standout components however, are the family workers, instead of discs, they're these tall cylinder shapes that are easy to pick up. It makes sense as I'm sure they're going to be the components that get handled the most; practical and appealing. Lorenzo il Magnificio features attractive artwork throughout, the boards all display pretty, somewhat stylised art work cleverly produced to incorporate all the game's worker spaces. Art on the cards is little pared back to make room for iconography. Talking of which, all the game's symbols and text was easy to read. Lorenzo il Magnificio has good, solid components and presentation. How's it play? Setup
Lorenzo il Magnificio is played over 3 periods, with 2 rounds per period, which equates to 6 rounds in total. Each round has its own setup phase before the players act in turn order, additionally at the end of every period (2nd, 4th and 6th rounds.) there's an additional step; the Vatican report step. A round progresses as follows:
Endgame Calculate points from the following: Current score plus points for acquired territory cards and character cards, end-of-game victory points for venture cards. The player with the highest military score gains an additional 5 victory points, 2nd highest acquires 2 extra victory points. Finally, every set of 5 combines resources scores an additional point. All points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Lorenzo il Magnificio sits towards the heavier end of games in my opinion, mechanically speaking, at it's core it's not a particularly complex game, but there's a lot of exceptions and variations to consider when trying to buy those all-important development cards and managing faith and military scores and the resources required to do all this. Don't forget those 2 engines you'll need to build either in order to gain and change those resources, or the abilities that character cards confer or the endgame points that venture cards grant. Like I said, a lot to think about. The game uses 4 types of resource and 3 types of score (Two of which can also be spent at times.) and mixes a few types of game mechanics; there's a bit of worker placement, a bit of engine building and a bit of resource management. Where it throws a spanner in the works though, is the use of dice to randomise the value of workers. A couple of low rolls can force players to change their strategies, particularly when competing for development cards, however, the use of servants can potentially mitigate low rolls, even so, players will have to adapt to circumstances. Furthermore, players have relatively limited moves to play with, each player has 4 workers they can use over 6 turns, giving 24 placements in total, which is why building the engines that essentially get triggered for free is so vital. Synergy and move optimisation are also key to this game. There are several approaches to scoring points in Lorenzo il Magnifcio, although these strategies are down to which development cards are acquired, development cards are the game's most vital element to winning and most actions are in service of getting those cards. However, the game seems a fairly well balanced, nothing felt overpowered or unimportant, decisions always felt meaningful and because of limited moves, these decisions generally felt tricky. If I had one criticism of the game; it's the excommunication tiles, they feel negative, but I guess that's the point of them. If someone wanted to play this, I'd have no qualms joining in. It's not one of my favourites, but it's still enjoyable. If you have a hankering for a heavy-ish worker placement game set in Renaissance Italy, you'll probably like this. 27th June 2021 Sunday is here and I'm logged into Board Game Arena. Playing board games is a great way to escape your troubles and ignore what's been happening outside your window and across the globe for the past 2 years and to do that, we chose to play a game about not 1 pandemic, but 4 of them! The first game of the evening was Pandemic. What's in a game?
The components in Pandemic are all of a reasonable quality as you would expect, nothing feels particularly cheap. The pawns are made of plastic and not wood, but that's a trivial quibble. The other markers are constructed of satisfyingly thick plastic. The plastic 3D research stations are a nice touch as are the colourful, translucent, acrylic disease cubes, it also makes them easier to pick up and move - which for the cubes will occur frequently. Artwork on the board is functional more than pretty, which is fine and everything's easy to understand, the same is true of city and infection cards which show locations on the board as opposed to containing illustrations. The small amount of artwork in the game mostly appears on role cards, which each have a good quality unique illustration that depicts their role, event cards also contain some unique artwork. How's it play? Setup
On to play The turn structure for Pandemic is as follows: The active player has their turn, which consists of 4 actions, then they draw 2 cards from the player deck, finally the 'board' has its go. Once all of this has been completed, the player to the left becomes the active player.
Endgame Play continues until one of the following conditions is met. If the marker on the outbreak track reaches its 8th and final space; the players collectively lose. If, at any time a disease cube needs to be added to the board and none are available in that colour; the players lose. If a player needs to draw 2 cards from the player deck and cannot do so because none or only one is available.... you guessed it; the players lose. If all 4 diseases are cured, then the players immediately win. Diseases do not need to be eradicated in order to win. Overall
Well, Pandemic.... what's there to say about this game? Pandemic is a pillar of modern cooperative games that has been followed up not only by a slew of expansions and spinoffs, but also a number of differently themed games such as Horrified that employ similar mechanics. Some of Pandemic's elements and mechanics may seem a bit trite nowadays, but that's simply because they're part of a game that popularised those mechanics in the first place and is a testament to Pandemic's longevity and influence. Pandemic utilises the tried-and-tested game flow of alternating between player turns and card-driven board actions in a game that is a globe-trotting race against time. In a turn, players are faced with the difficult choice of trying to stem the spread of the 4 diseases or instead trying to interact with the other players and swap the cards necessary to cure those diseases. Ultimately, players will need to find a balance between the two approaches. As with other cooperative games, bad luck may play a major role in Pandemic and mitigating that bad luck is vital to winning. Decisive actions, recognising priorities and acting on them are also vital to success, as are knowing when to use role special abilities. Pandemic is also hard, I think this comes down to Pandemic's rules for swapping city cards between players which requires them to be in that card's city in order to do so. It's unlikely players will be able to collect 5 cards of single colour on their own so coordination between players is vital. We've played a few of the iterations that followed Pandemic and it always felt like this rule has been softened a little. Is that as bad thing, I suspect YMMV? Pandemic does a good job at evoking the feel of a spreading global crisis and the desperate worldwide fight to contain it. I have to admit, considering the events of the past 2 years, we haven't had much compulsion to play Pandemic. Even so and despite the difficulty, I feel that if you like cooperative games, it's still worth playing, it challenges players with making difficult decisions at nearly every avenue and is satisfying to win. 24th June 2021 It's a Thursday evening and we're round Simon's for a couple of games. The first game of the night was Paper Tales. As the name implies, create the tale of building a kingdom and warring with your neighbours over 4 generations or in Paper Tales' terms - 4 rounds! What's in a game?
The quality of the game's components is to the usual standard as you would expect, which is fine. The building and unit cards feature some bright, colourful and stylised artwork which I found quite charming. How's it play? Setup
On to play Paper Tales is played over 4 rounds and there are 6 stages to each round. Other than the drafting in the Recruitment stage, each stage is played simultaneously by players
Endgame Play continues until 4 rounds have been completed. Then players then tally their victory points on the score board with the victory points on their constructed buildings. Highest score wins. Overall
So, Paper Tales is something of a curious beast. It feels like a deliberately small scale game that merges a little bit of card drafting, a little engine building and card combo mechanics with a little bit of resource management. The game broadly presents 2 routes to scoring victory points. Using unit cards with high combat values in war can theoretically score a player 24 victory points and in a game if this scale, that can be a sizable score. The other way to generate victory points is from the abilities that unit cards may possess, maximising the usage of those abilities can require careful consideration. It's also a somewhat challenging game, not that this is a bad thing. That's because when playing Paper Tales, it never feels like there's enough gold to deploy all the cards you want or enough turns/resources to construct buildings you want. There's 5 buildings to construct and only 4 turns, and that's not including upgrades! It's worth noting that decisions made in the 1st round may have a significant impact on options and decisions in the final round. Players are forced to make tricky, meaningful decisions, which is always good. The aging mechanic is unusual and represents the transitory passage of time and is something players need to watch out for, those unit cards are only around for 2 rounds! However, there are also ways for a player to exploit this mechanic to their benefit with card abilities. For a game that only gives players 4 or possibly 5 cards to work with, there's quite often a combo that can be created. Paper Tales has in terms of rounds a quite short playtime, yet somehow feels a little fiddly for a game of this scope and the handful of times we played it, the short playtime made the game feel a little unsatisfactory. It's all about maximising resources and exploiting card combos, but as I said above, because it's a challenging game, it can be hard to optimise your strategies in early plays, i.e., it has a steep learning curve despite it's apparent simplicity. That's not to say it's a bad game, because it's not, but it sits towards the heavier end of a what might be considered 'light' or 'filler' game in my opinion, which is considering what I'd consider it to be. I'd have no reservations about playing it again. It's worth a look, but I think it needs playing at least a couple times before passing judgement on it. 30th May 2021 It's a Sunday and I'm logged on to Board Game Arena on my PC, time for the first game of the night. Monk Tybor Kwelein had spent his life cataloguing the 4 kingdoms of plants, fungi, insects and animals in the pages of the titular Codex Naturalis. Now he is no longer with us, will one-to-four other people take up the mantle and carry on his work in the form of a neat little card game. What's in a game? Codex Naturalis is a card game and unsurprisingly, has a lot of cards. All the cards are about half the size of normal playing cards which is sensible, as otherwise the game would have a massive footprint, most of the cards share some similar features.
The scoring board and tokens are pretty standard quality game components and perfectly acceptable. The cards feel very thick and sturdy (Maybe because of the smaller size?) and seem to be made to a high standard, all the gold cards and numerous resource cards are embossed in actual gold foil, which is a really nice touch and despite their small size, most of the cards all have charming, highly detailed monochrome illustrations themed by their colour. Finally, all the cards are coated in a glossy finish. The only criticism I have is of the small symbols at the bottom of the gold cards, they are quite small and some players have complaint that it can be hard to discern between the symbols, particularly the blue and the green. Otherwise, these are some of the highest quality card components I've seen and it all comes wrapped up in a compact tin. How's it play? Setup
The objective in Codex Naturalis is to create an expanding spread of overlapping cards in their playing area. The basic process of actions to achieve this in Codex Naturalis is simple, a player plays a card, then draws a card, of course there's more to it than that.
points, this card probably scores the most if you can manage to fill the doughnut hole!
Play continues one player's score reaches 20 or more, then the endgame is triggered. Endgame After the endgame is triggered, the current round is completed, then one final round is played. After this, players count the score from the cards they've played and then calculates the score they get from completing both common objectives and their secret objective. Score are tallied and highest score wins! Overall
Codex Naturalis has simple rules, but also a fairly deep level of gameplay. Despite only having a hand of 3 cards, players are given a wide variety of choices and strategies to pursue when placing cards. A lot of this comes from the objectives, you'll obviously need to play gold cards to score but it's important not to ignore objectives, scoring from the gold cards will generally put your score into the low-to-mid 20s, but objectives which are scored after the end and can push your score higher, especially since they can be scored multiple times. That everyone has a secret objectives means that the final outcome is not known until the final scoring and keeps the stakes high. Players must also learn to manage their hands and objectives, there are 4 colours of card, but only 2 of each type of card is ever displayed face-up, it's likely that player's won't always see the cards they need. Codex Naturalis can also give players agonizing choices because they'll frequently be given the option to cover up a resource or objective symbol with the corner of another card. When that symbol is covered up, it's gone for the rest of the game, forcing players to choose which to prioritise. Only symbols that appear in the middle in of a card cannot be covered. Finally, because face-up cards never have more than 3 visible corners, players will need to think how to place cards with future placement in mind, the visible corner of a card can be 'locked' by placing another card with a hidden corner adjacent to it. This essentially ends that line of expansion, which can limit options later on. Codex Naturalis is a little too long for a filler and perhaps a little too short for a main game, which is only a minor quibble really. Otherwise, I found it to be a solid, easy-to-learn, mid-to-light game with good replay value and high production values. Definitely worth a try. 23rd May 2021 It's a Sunday and I'm logged into Skype and Board Game Arena, ready for an evening of gaming. The first game of the night was Happy City, a cheerful looking, light engine-building card game about building up a city, a happy city no less. Caveat: We've only played this game digitally on Board Game Arena. What's in a game?
Symbols are clear and easy to read. How's it play? At it's core, Happy City is a tableau-building game, adding cards increases income or score. Setup
In Happy City, the starting player's first turn is slightly different to subsequent turns, as explained below.
Expert game Happy City has 2 levels of play; family & expert. This blog describes the family version. The expert game differs in 2 ways. All the happy market cards are flipped to their differently coloured sides and laid out, then the players draft one to become the starting card in their tableau and giving them some choice in how they start the game. Special buildings also differ; the family Special cards give players a boost to their income, happiness or population. The expert special cards however, are different, they confer different benefits, sometimes variable and situational. Endgame The game continues until a player has 10 cards in their tableau, upon which the current round continues until all players have had an equal number of turns. Each player's score is calculated by multiplying the total value of happiness symbols in their tableau by all the population symbols. Highest score wins. Overall
Gameplay in Happy City gives players the choice between increasing income or accumulating happiness/population. Income will give the player more buying power but happiness/population contributes towards the end score. Having 3 decks of building cards at different cost ranges is an interesting mechanic when it comes to drawing cards. The player will always have the option to draw 1 or 2 cards, higher level cards will be better, but may prove more risky to draw. E.g., If a player has 4 coins, drawing a level 1 card will be safe as level 1 cards only cost 1-3 coins each, level 2 cards cost 4-5 coins, so there's a risk that a level 2 card will be unaffordable and will have been drawn pointlessly. It can give players a quandary when drawing building cards. The game's scoring mechanic also adds an extra layer to decisions, failing to pay attention to how the points are spread between happiness/population can lead to lost scoring opportunities. While Happy City is simple to learn, enjoyable and fast to play, making it a good filler game, it's perhaps also a little too basic for dedicated gamers. After a few games it was fairly easy to spot an optimal strategy to pursue and it became a race to develop that strategy. So I feel that the game doesn't offer a lot of longevity. Ultimately, because it's such a light game, it's probably a good game for families or more casual players which is probably who the game is aimed at. We also played the expert level a few times but felt like it added little to the game. The varied happy markets are nice and offered a little extra strategy but the expert level special cards weren't so good. The problem was that they seemed harder to acquire than the family special cards, which meant they were acquired later in the game and therefore their benefits were limited, we found it wasn't worth specifically trying to get one, getting one by happenstance was fine, but then that sort of makes having a choice of starting happy market card pointless. We enjoyed the family version more. The family version is a game I'd play, but not too often. 2nd April 2021 It was a Friday and I was logged into Board Game Arena on my PC. As the name suggests, Stone Age is a game about the trials and tribulation faced by the inhabitants of prehistoric communities. Caveat: The digital version of this game was played at this time, but we had played the physical version on previous occasions. What's in a game? Stone Age is a worker placement game and at its core takes place on a central game board which is divided into various different locations, into which workers can be placed to activate the associated action. Some locations may contain any amount of workers, others are limited by numbers.
The game board has a bright and colourful depiction of a stone age community on the edge of the wilderness that's quite eye-catching. The player boards have similar, if plainer artwork, again this is fine since most of the time they'll be covered in components. The civilisation cards essentially all use the same piece of artwork with elaborate game iconography providing some variation and the same is true of the building tiles. It's nothing to write home about (Or blog about I suppose?) but is perfectly acceptable. For the most part, the art is good. How's it play? Setup
Gameplay is broken up into 3 phases, place workers, resolve workers and end of round.
Again starting with the first player, they must remove all of their workers from one location at a time from every location they've placed workers and immediately resolve the associated actions as they do so, returning the meeple to the player's board. Players are free to remove their meeples in whatever order they see fit (This can have significant impact on game play.). The following actions are available:
Endgame There are 2 conditions that can trigger the endgame. If any of the building tile stacks have all 7 of their tiles purchased, it triggers the endgame, the current round is concluded and the game goes to the end game and then scoring. At the end of a round, if there aren't enough civilisation cards to fill a 4 spots on the board, then the game immediately ends and goes to scoring. In both instances, tribes must be fed for a final time. Final scores are tallied by adding the score from the victory point track, points that come from sets of civilisation cards and 1 point for each (Non food) resource the player possesses. Highest score wins. Overall
If I have one criticism of Stone Age, it's that the first 3 opening moves in any given round are generally always no-brainers, that's because the tool maker, hut & field locations are such a high priority because they confer very good rewards that would usually be stupid for players to pass up. If you're the 4th player, you won't get a look in unless another player is really desperate for something else or doesn't know what they're doing. I'm not sold on the resource gathering mechanic either, yes it's quite nice but it can leave you at the mercy of the dice rolls that makes low rolls feel frustrating but somehow high rolls not feel satisfying. Otherwise Stone Age is a mid-to-light worker placement game that is fairly easy to learn but feels perhaps a little generic, however, it does provide a fair level of depth. The game manages to generally provide a choice or two too many for players to cover with workers, forcing them to prioritise their actions and making meaningful decisions. An extra worker is good, so is the agriculture required to feed them, the tools can help with gathering resources which are useful to buy cards and tiles and so on. So if you want to play a worker placement game that isn't too taxing on the grey matter, you could do a lot worse than Stone Age. 24th March 2021 It's a Wednesday evening and I'm logged into Zoom and Board Game Arena on my PC. It was time for a game that spanned the ages and the creation of massive monuments and the civilisations they represented. Luckily, it doesn't take that long to play 7 Wonders! Caveat: We played the game online but have previously played the physical copy. Photos were taken for this blog post. What's in a game? The purpose of the game is for each player to create their own civilisation through the construction of various types of buildings and ultimately create one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World. 7 Wonders is card game played over 3 sets of rounds (or ages). Each age has its own set of cards which are used. There are numerous types of cards, some of these types can be more or less common in different ages.
The text and icons are all mostly clear (I tended to confuse stone and ore icons, because the ore icon looks like a pile of stone to me.), the symbology used for special rules on cards is also generally clear, the rulebook does a good job on clarifying these in cases of confusion. I also like how the layout allows cards to be more or less stacked while still displaying pertinent information. In terms of art quality, the wonder boards are quite large and very nicely decorated in eye-catching illustrations of the 7 titular wonders. Art on the cards are of a similar quality but obviously on a smaller scale. How's it play? Setup 7 Wonders is a 3-7 player game but also contains some special rules to allow 2 player games. This blog post talks about the normal 3-7 player game.
On to play Each player in 7 Wonders is neighboured by a player to their left and right; why this is important will be explained below. Each player takes a card from their hand and plays face down in front of them, then they pass the remaining cards clockwise to the next player, the direction of play alternates between rounds. Once every player has chosen a card, all player then simultaneously reveal their card, plays it and executes one of the 3 actions below.
Once all players have completed their action, everyone picks up their new hand of cards and play continues as described until all players have used 6 cards each, the 7th card is never used and is discarded out of the game. The game has reached the end of the round, now conflicts are resolved.
Endgame Once conflict has been resolved for age 3, the game is over only scoring is left. Victory points can be scored from a variety of sources, once these are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
I'm going to nit-pick a couple of things about 7 Wonders. Set up feels a little long for a game that's quite short, having to sift through all 3 decks at the game start feels irritating, probably because there's 3 decks to construct instead of 1 and if the player count changes between games, then all 3 decks will need to be rebalanced. The game is quite involved and perhaps a little too complicated for its expected playtime. I found myself frequently forgetting the rule about chaining buildings Scoring is convoluted, specifically scoring the scientific cards where each symbol will scored twice. I wouldn't be surprised that more time was spent making sure this was correct than the rest of the scoring. Like other drafting games of this style, early in the game players will struggle to decide what's going to be important to them or not, but by looking at their wonder board, players will see what they need to build their wonder and what benefits it gives them as some guidance. One interesting feature about 7 Wonders is how players can pay to utilise their neighbours resources and goods and of course, players will want to keep and eye on their neighbours' military forces. It's a nice little spin that adds to the game. Since there are 7 ways to score points, players will have a lot of options on which strategy to pursue. For example, civic buildings give a lot of victory points, but nothing else. Military strength can score a lot of points (and cost your neighbours a few), but only if you dominate, getting caught in a war of escalation can be distracting and costly. Quibbles aside, 7 Wonders is a straightforward game to learn that has a quick turnaround and is a fun game to play, players will want to strategize, but the luck of the draw means they will need to adapt to circumstances. The game always provides players with meaningful choices, which is what you want. 14th March 2020 It's a Sunday night, I'm on my PC in my living, logged on to Zoom and the Tabletopia website. In Paleo each player controls a tribe of cavemen and is a cooperative card about life & times in a prehistoric times. According to Paleo, our caveman ancestors were pretty obsessed with woolly mammoths, either chasing or running away from them! Caveat: Paleo was played virtually on the Tabletopia website, so I cannot attest to the quality or lack of regarding the components. What's in a game? Paleo is a card game with a lot of different types of cards, the majority are encounter cards (Explained Below) but not all cards and tokens are used in every game. Paleo uses a base set of encounter cards and also employs a module system which determines which other sets of cards are used, each game uses 2 modules from a selection of 10, this will also affect the games difficulty. The rules suggest combinations to use for easier and harder games ranging from 1 to 7 in difficulty. Ultimately you can even choose your own set ups. Modules can add a narrative flavour to the game as most modules are themed.
Setup
How's it play? Paleo is played over any number of rounds, each round has a day phase and a night phase. The vast majority of gameplay occurs during the day phase, the night phase is mostly for managing what happened during the previous phase. Day phase What actions a player can under take will depend on the situation and what encounters they errr.... encounter!
Play continues during the day phase until all player tribes have gone to sleep, the day phase is now over and the night phase commences. Night phase The night phase is much shorter than the day. All tribes must collectively discard an amount of food equal to the number of people cards in all their tribes. If they cannot manage this, a skull is added to the night board. Furthermore they must also meet the conditions required on the 2 module specific missions. Each one they fail adds another skull to the night board. Once the night phase is concluded, all the cards on the discard board are put into a single deck, shuffled and dealt out to the players again, then the next day phase begins. Endgame Play continues until the players have accumulated all 5 victory tokens, in which case they immediately all win. If 5 skull tokens are placed on to the night board, then the players immediately lose. Some mystery cards may contain alternate ways to win the game. Overall
First thing I'm going to talk about are 2 interlinked mechanics. The exploration mechanic of drawing 3 face-down cards and choosing one from the card back is excellent. It feels a bit like exploring, does a player choose to go to the forest or the mountains? They'll have a pretty good idea what to expect but it's not guaranteed. They most likely will get the wood or stone or whatever they're looking for but they might encounter a rockfall or a dangerous animal. Additionally, players will also get an idea of what's coming in future turns It's a great mechanic. The other equally great mechanic is how each player's own deck also represents their tribe's time & energy, completing encounters frequently forces a player to discard 1 or 2 cards from their deck, so when it's depleted - so is the tribe for the day. When the game begins on day 1, players will have 15 cards, so it's possible to burn through a deck very quickly, why is that significant? Essentially the encounter deck is another resource that needs to be managed. In most games, my instinct would be to gather as much food/wood/stone/resource as possible but in Paleo you sometimes have to fight that urge. You have to ask the question, what resource do I really need? For example; near the end of a day I had 3 cards left, 2 in my deck and a forest encounter. Turning the card over, I had the option to discard 2 cards for 3 wood, 1 card for one wood or help another tribe. The others didn't need help from me, so I was free to collect wood but collecting 3 wood would send my tribe to bed. Because we knew the top 2 cards on everyone's deck, I knew that another player potentially had a mammoth hunt coming and would probably need help. We didn't need the wood for now so I chose to ignore my card and I also ignored my other 2 encounter cards just so my tribe would be around for 3 more turns to help other tribes if needed. Realising this gave me an appreciation of the game's subtleties. As well as managing encounters, players will need to ensure they generate enough resources to pass the night as well manage discoveries and crafting. Creating a few tools gives the game a good sense of progress as it increases the capabilities of a tribe significantly. You can almost feel a the game transition from scrabbling to survive encounters to being able to go on mammoth hunts, it's quite gratifying to complete encounters that had to be ignored earlier in the game. Like all good games, collectively there were always meaningful decisions to make. Before long we learnt that we needed to communication and coordinate on which encounter cards to keep and when they were then revealed we frequently had to coordinate on which encounters to complete, rarely did all players manage to individually complete their encounters. For example; if all players for some reason chose mammoth hunt encounters, it would be most likely that all bar one would be ignored. Mammoth hunts generally required a lot of strength thus cooperation but also gave significant rewards, including on occasion victory tokens. Coordination is vital and it feels like players coordinating. As a result I liked Paleo quite a lot, it's a game I'd happily play again. |
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