22nd March 2021

Monday night gaming on Board Game Arena continues with the final game of the evening; Sushi Go.

Like sushi? Like conveyor belts? Then you'll like this.... probably!

Caveat: This was played online, but has also been played with the physical game, photos are from my copy.

What's in a game?
Sushi Go comprises of a single deck of 108 cards with 8 different types of cards. 

• Chopsticks: Chopstick cards allow a player to sacrifice their action in their current turn to have 2 actions in a later turn. Chopsticks are worth 0 points.
• Dumplings: This is a set of cards, the more dumpling cards a player collects, the more points they score at the end of the round
• Maki rolls: Whoever has the most make rolls at the end of the round scores, 2nd place scores half as many points. Maki roll cards each contain 1-3 maki rolls.
• Nigiri: There are egg, salmon and squid nigiri cards, they score 1, 2 or 3 points respectively.
• Puddings: These cards are only ever scored once, they don't score at the end of any of the rounds, instead they are retained between rounds and are scored at the end of the game (Being puddings obviously!). The player with the most puddings scores points, the player with the least or no puddings loses points! Everyone else in between gets 0.
• Sashimi: This is another set, collect 3 sashimi cards to score points, otherwise 0 points are scored.
• Tempura: Another set, collect 2 tempura  to score points.
• Wasabi: On its own, a wasabi card is worthless when played. However, if during a later turn a player puts down a nigiri card, it must go on the wasabi card and the nigiri card's value is then tripled.

There's not much that can be said about the components, it's a deck of standard quality cards.
The art is clear, distinct and colourful with appropriately themed cheerful faces on all the foods.
My copy came in a little steel tin.
The only component that the game is lacking are scoring counters, as it stands, scores at the end of each round need to be recorded somehow on scrap paper or a phone or something. On the other hand, adding scoring tokens would increase the game's size, making it less of a neat compact little package, so your mileage may vary.

How's it play?
Set up
Shuffle and deal a hand of cards face-down to each player, the hand size depends on the number of players, the remaining cards form a draw deck for later rounds, then the game is ready to begin.

On to play

• Each player looks at their hand and plays one card face-down in front of them. Then they pass the remaining cards, still face-down, to their left (Or possibly right, if using optional rules.).
• Then, simultaneously, all players reveal their chosen card.
• All players pick up the cards passed to them, a new turn starts and the two steps above are repeated.
• Play continues until all cards have been played. Then, except for the pudding cards, all cards are scored. The scored cards are all discarded and not shuffled into the draw deck.
• A new round begins, new hands are dealt to the players and the steps above are repeated.
• Play continues for a total of 3 rounds.

Endgame
Once the 3rd round is over and scored, the puddings are scored.
Scores are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
As you can see from the short length of this blog post, Sushi Go's rules are simple, accessible and easy to learn. The game's depth comes not from rules complexity but from decisions available to each player, which is great game design in my opinion.
The game also fits the theme of having food going round on a conveyor belt remarkably well.

Sushi Go constantly forces players to make decisions and some of these decisions will be gambles, based on the hope that another right card will come around further along the game.
Players will also get the right card at the right time on random occasion, but this isn't perceived as a no-brainer, they're seen as spots of good luck to be exploited.
​
Canny players will try to memorise hands that get passed along, they might also spend time looking at what cards others have put down, trying to predict their decisions. If 2 players look like they're trying to collect the same set of cards, then they're going to be a premium and those players aren't going to pass those cards on.
Then there's puddings, the wrinkle in the rules that produces the pudding war of escalation that forces players to think about what cards might be played in the future rounds and play cards just to avoid losing points!

It makes Sushi Go a blend of calculation and unpredictability. There is no winning strategy, players must adapt to not only the cards dealt to all players but other player's strategies

Sushi Go comes in compact package, is easy to learn, quick to set up and play and enjoyable experience. A great filler game.

21st March 2021

Sunday afternoon gaming continues; I'm logged on to Board Game Arena and Zoom, the second game of the day is Tokaido.

I know several people who have visited Japan but to my knowledge none of them had made the 500km trip along the Tokaido route.
If you like the idea of taking a hike to enjoy hot springs or staying at an inn or looking at beautiful scenery, then maybe this is the game for you.

Caveat: We played a digital version of this game, we have also played the physical version previously.

What's in a game?

• Game board: A faint map of Japan is shown on this very wide game board, it also depicts The Tokaido Road as a line that threads its way east/west along the coast.
  From this line there are many branching lines that lead to symbols that represent what are essentially tourist traps that players can visit, each branching line also displays 1 or 2 dots. Dots determine how many players may stop at a particular location at any given time.
  Apart from the starting inn, there are a further 4 inns along the road that sort of divide the game up into 4 rounds.
  Finally the board has spaces for the 7 decks of cards used in Tokaido.
• Cards: Tokaido uses a lot of cards, mostly for the sets that players will be collecting.
  Souvenir card: When a player stops at a village, they will have the option to buy souvenir cards. There are 4 different sets to collect and each set can have up to 4 cards in it.
  Encounter cards: Players may stop at random encounters along their journey, this means drawing an encounter card and following it instructions.
  Hot spring cards: Unsurprisingly, these cards are collected by visiting hot springs, each card is worth either 2 or 3 points.
  Meal cards: When a player reaches an inn, they will have the option of purchasing a meal which will be worth victory points.
  Sea, Mountain & Field panorama cards: These 3 sets of cards form 3 wide vistas of the relevant terrain type. As you collect the cards for a set in numeric sequence, the vistas widen until the set is completed. 3 cards for the fields, 4 for the mountains & 5 for the oceans.
  That's not all!
  Achievement cards: Players earn additional victory points for various achievements
• Meeples: Your standard wooden player meeples that come in a variety of colours.
• Coins: Standard quality card chits themed to look like Japanese coins.
• Character tiles: Each player is randomly given a character tiles that grants them some unique benefit or bonus action.

All of the components are of a reasonable standard quality. Artwork and the art direction is suitably stylised with a Japanese theme, colourful and looks good. The panoramas in particular look very nice.
Art on the board looks quite minimalistic with white as the dominant colour, consequently the Tokaido route draws the eye's attention. However, the symbols used to represent the different destinations along the route are quite small and look samey despite being distinctly coloured from each other. It was something found to occur on both the physical and online version. This is only a minor gripe.

How's it play?
Setup
Each player is given a meeple and a randomly determined character tile, the 7 decks are prepared and placed on to their allotted spaces on the game board. The starting order is determined at the first inn, then money is then given to players according to the starting order.

On to play
Game play is very simple to understand, the purpose of Tokaido is to travel to the eastern end of the road, having the most pleasant journey, this is done by stopping at the various locations along the way.

• Tokaido does not have a round order per se; instead the player at the 'back' (and the furthest from the end destination) is always the active player, if a player is several spaces behind the other players, it is possible that they can have several turns in a row. At the start of the game the fist player is actually at the back.
• The active player decides how far they want to move their meeple along the Tokaido road, up to and including the next inn stop. They may choose to skip branches and other players.
  They can stop at any open available space along one of the branching routes, if a branch has all of its spots already taken, then the active player cannot stop there. 
• Once the player stops, they carry out the action associated with the type of location they stopped at (See below for more info.).
• Play then continues with the player in last place.

Now we know how to move across the board and stop at locations, but what do those locations do?

• Encounters: When a player stops at a encounter location. they draw an encounter card, this will give the player some sort of benefit.
• Farms: Stopping at a farm earns the active player 3 coins, I guess those farms are wealthier than they look!
• Hot springs: Stopping at a hot spring allows the active player to draw a hot spring card, this immediately score them 2 or 3 points.
• Panoramas: There are 3 types of panorama locations, field, mountain & sea. 
  Panorama cards are not randomly drawn. When the active player stops at a one, they take a panorama card of that particular type. All panorama cards are numbered and the player take the lowest numbered car that they do not already posses, thus, the first time they stop at a particular panorama they always take a '1' card, followed by a '2' and so on until they complete a panorama. Players immediately score points equal to the number on the card they just played.
• Temples: A player who stops at a temple can donate 1-3 coins to the temple for an equivalent amount of victory points that are immediately scored.
• Villages: Upon entering a village location, the active player draws a number of souvenir cards, then they can buy any number of them (Provided they have the funds.), remaining cards are put at the bottom of the souvenir deck. Souvenir cards are put into sets and are scored at end of the game.
• Inns: Including the last inn, there are 4 inns that all players must stop at during their journey. The first player at an inn reveals a number of meal cards and can choose to buy one, the remaining are left available for following players to purchase. Thus the early players have the best choice.
  Meal cards cost 1-3 coins and always immediately score 6 points. You may be wondering why the cost of buying meal cards vary when the victory points they confer is always 6? This is explained below.
  When all the players have arrived at the inn and have purchased a meal card (Or not.), then the next leg of the journey can commence. The player who came in last is still considered behind the other players and goes first and so on.

Endgame
Play continues until all players have reached the last inn.
Souvenir sets are now scored.
Then achievements are scored. There are achievements for completing panoramas first, having the most encounters, donating the most money to temples and so on. One achievement earns victory points for spending the most on meals at inns - which explains the varying costs for meals.
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Tokaido is a fairly straightforward game to play, on the surface the game gives players a simple decision to make - where to stop and what to collect? It's a little more involved though, the question is; how much do you want to visit a certain spot?
As the active player, someone can choose to move their meeple as far as they need to in order to reach a specific spot, however, moving too far means that a player will end up sitting around as other players get multiple turns. Conversely, moving too slowly risks locations being filled with other players. It feels like quite a balancing act.
Generally we found that there's a basic strategy of moving as little as possible in an attempt to maximise the number of turns that are available and just collect what you can.
The games other balancing act is money; knowing when to keep money and knowing when to spend it is important since spending money can earn victory points and it needs to be done as efficiently as possible.

There's minimal player interaction here and generally player's can't interfere with each other. A canny player can try and predict where other players are looking to go (All cards are kept face-up.) and try to get there first but it mostly it hardly seems worth it.

All of this makes Tokaido a gentle, laid back game to play, it sort of fits the theme of talking a walking holiday.
Players used to heavier games may find that they feel like nothing is happening during the game. This may be partially down to playing online.
The online version doesn't feel as good as the physical one. Being able to collect and build panoramas or complete souvenir sets with physical components feels a lot better than when they're collected in the online version. It's a small sense of achievement but a sense of achievement nonetheless.

If you want a light and chilled game to play though, you can do worse than Tokaido.

21st March 2021

It's a Sunday lunchtime and I'm logged on to my PC in the living Room and signed into Board Game Arena.

The first game of the day was Takenoko, a game about gardening in Japan... and pandas.

Caveat: We played this game online, but I own a physical copy which I've set up for the photos.

​What's in a game?

• Tiles: Hexagonal tiles to be precise, they represent plots of land.
  Pond: This blue tile is the starting tile.
  Plots: Plots come in 3 colours, green, pink and yellow. There are 9 in each colour and some of the plots come with hexagonal improvement symbols (more about improvement symbols below.) that confer special rules. The artwork on these tiles is uniformly bright and colourful. The tiles are printed in thick board and feel sturdy.
• Bamboo segments: There are 3 types of bamboo, green, pink and yellow, corresponding to the 3 types of plot. These are designed to stack up, representing the surging upwards growth of bamboo. Unlike the plot tiles, there is NO even distribution between the different coloured bamboo, green bamboo is the most common and pink is the least common.
  They're made of colourful pieces of plastic and are designed to slot into together, it's a little fiddly as the pieces feel slippery but it's not a deal breaker and they do make the game look nice.
• Irrigation tokens: These little blue wooden sticks are used to track which plots have been irrigated or not.
• Improvement chits: These hexagonal little chits confer special rules when placed on a plot, they are identical to the symbols that come printed on some plot tiles. They are pretty standard quality chits with functional art. There are 3 types of improvement.
  Enclosure: The panda cannot eat bamboo on a plot with an enclosure.
  Fertilizer: When bamboo grows on a tile with a fertilizer improvement, it grows twice as quickly
  Watershed: A plot with a watershed improvement does not require irrigation.
• Objective cards: These cards are smaller than typical playing-card sized cards and are standard quality, the art is fairly functional but continues the game's is bright and colourful art direction. Completing objectives is how players earn points. There are 3 types of objective:
  Plot objective: When plots are placed into the game area in a certain manner (For example; 3 green tiles in a row.) and irrigated, it can be claimed as completing the objective, 
  Gardener objectives: To complete a gardener objective bamboo must be grown to a certain height.
  Panda objective: The panda must eat a certain amount of bamboo of certain colours to complete these objectives cards.
• Emperor card: This is the only other card in the game, it is worth 2 points and the player who triggers the endgame will earn it.
• Action markers: Two of these round wooden markers are used by each player to track their actions each turn.
• Weather die: This is a very nice largish wooden die with rounded corners and special symbols on each face.
• Player boards: These boards are used to track player actions and store bamboo, irrigation and improvement token acquired. They are colourful and nicely illustrated.

How's it play?
Setup

• The starting pond tile is placed in the centre of the play area, the panda and the gardener are both placed on it.
• The plot tiles are shuffled and placed in a face-down stack.
• Each type of objective card is shuffled and placed face-down in its own deck.
• Each player takes a player board and 2 action markers.
• One of each objective card is dealt face-down to each player, these should be kept hidden in hand and only revealed when completed.

Now we're ready to go.

On to play
​After a starting player is chosen, play proceeds clockwise.

• Weather die: Other than in the very first round, at the beginning of their turn each player must roll the weather die, this will usually give the active player a bonus of some sort.
  Sun: When the sun face comes up, the active player can take 3rd action in their turn which must be different from their other 2 actions (More on this below.).
  Rain: The active player may place a bamboo segment on the irrigated plot of their choice.
  Wind: The active player may chose to perform 2 identical actions instead of 2 different actions.
  Storm: The active player can place the panda on the tile of their choice, the panda will eat a segment of bamboo as per usual (See below for more information.).
  Clouds: The active player may take an improvement chit of their choice, this can be immediately put on to a plot tile or on to the player's board to be used later.
  ?: If the ? face comes up, the active player can choice one of the 5 other weather results to apply.

Once the weather die has been rolled, the active player can then take 2 different actions from a choice of 5, depending on the result of the weather die, they may get 3 different actions or a choice of 2 identical actions.
Actions

• Draw plot tile: The active player draws the top 3 plot tiles, keeps 1 and returns the other 2 face-down in any order they choose. Then they must place the tile they kept down in the playing area; either it must go next to the starting pond tile OR next to 2 other tiles.
  The tile will immediately grow a bamboo segment of its colour if it is placed next to the pond OR adjacent to an irrigation token. This can only ever happen once for a tile.
• Take an irrigation token: After taking an irrigation token, the active player may put it on their board for use later or immediately place it on the playing area as per the rules.
  Other than plots directly adjacent to the pond or with watershed symbols, all plots need to need to be irrigated to produce bamboo.
  When placing an irrigation token, it must either start from the pond tile or continue previously laid irrigation token. When laying this token, it runs along the edge of a plot tile or between 2, however it never runs along the edge of the pond tile.
  The token will irrigate the 1 or 2 plots it touches, as per usual, if this is the 1st time a plot is irrigated, it will grow a bamboo segment of its colour.
• Move gardener: The active player can move the gardener. The gardener can only be moved in a straight line and 'through' the 'face' of the hexagonal plot tile, thus there are a maximum of 6 ways he can move. He can move as far as the active player decides and can cross any number of tiles, he cannot however move through any gaps encountered.
  Bamboo will grow on the plot tile that the gardener stops on, additionally bamboo will also grow on any adjacent irrigated plots of the same colour.
• Move panda: Moving the panda follows the exact same rules as moving the gardener. When the panda stops in a plot tile, he will eat 1 segment of bamboo from that tile if available. The active player takes that segment and places it on their player board.
• Take objective card: The active player may take a single objective card of their choice from one of the 3 objective decks into their hand. Players have a 5-card hand limit.

Free actions
Some actions do not count towards the usual 2 action limit. The active player can carry out any number of free actions at any time during their turn.

• Complete objective: The active player may complete one or more objectives by placing the card(s) out of their hand into their playing area.
• Place irrigation token: The active player may place any number of irrigation tokens that are reserved on their player board, following the normal rules for irrigation.
• Place improvement chit: The active player may place any number of improvement chits that are reserved on their player board, following the normal rules for placing  improvement chits.

Endgame
The endgame is triggered after someone has played a certain number of objective cards, dependant on the number of players.
The player that triggered the endgame immediately take the Emperor card and conclude  the rest of their turn normally. Then continuing in clockwise order, every other player has one more turn.
After this, scores are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Firstly I'll mention how the game is uniformly nice, presentation is excellent and component quality is good, nothing to criticise here.

Since there are always objectives to work towards in Takenoko, there are generally always meaningful decisions to make.
The game's player interaction comes from conflicting objectives such as one player getting the gardener to grow bamboo and another getting the panda to eat it.
This is also a game about recognising opportunities and adapting to the card and plot tiles you draw and to a lesser extent the results from the weather die and not about strategizing too much.

There is some strategy regarding the uneven distribution of bamboo (Generally objectives that involve the less common bamboo score more points.) but that's about it. I suppose there could be a high level strategy where you watch what other players are doing and try to anticipate what objectives they're going for and try and scupper them but you'll probably scupper yourself as well in the end.
Optimising your actions per turn seems to be very important.

Takenoko is a relatively simple and straightforward game to play, the concepts behind it should make it a fairly accessible crossover game. For dedicated gamers there might not be enough meat on the bone to satisfy them though.
Ultimately Takenoko is a light somewhat gentle game that you shouldn't take too seriously if you play it. ​If you want something heavy on strategy and direct interaction, it's probably not the game for you. However, if you're in the mood for an undemanding game, it's a reasonable diversion. 

27th October 2020

Gaming night at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking continues in what would the last game of the last meetup before Lockdown 2 came into effect.

The third and final game of the evening was 'Skulls of Sedlec', in what seems to be a game about digging up skulls and then errr... proudly displaying them in a pile for all to see?

Skulls of Sedlec is a microgame that comes from microgame publisher Button Shy who appear to specialise in creating games with 18 cards.
Their games are hand crafted and they aim to release 1 a month.

What's in a game?
As is befitting the name microgame, Skulls of Sedlec is small enough to fit in your pocket. 

• ​Cards: Skulls of Sedlec consists of 18 cards and that's it! Each card displays 2 'layers' of skulls (one in the top half and the other in the bottom.) and each skull is from 1 of 5 'classes'.
• Plastic wallet: The game fits into this tiny wallet, it's not strictly a game component, but it's cool enough to be worth mentioning.

The cards has nice and colourful skulls! There's not more I can really add, that's it - 18 cards.
The wallet is of course a bit of a gimmick, but it's a nice addition and I like it.

How's it play?
Set up

• Shuffle the cards and place them into 6 face-down stacks of 3 cards each, arranged in a 3x2 grid.
• There are no more steps, I just added this to justify putting the set up into bullet-point format!

The objective of ​Skulls of Sedlec is to create a pyramid shaped layout of cards. Points are scored depending on how cards are placed in relation to other cards.
The size of the pyramid depends on the number of players but always has 3 layers of cards and thus 6 layers of skulls. Layers of cards are 'offset' (Like bricks in a wall.), this is important when calculating which cards are 'adjacent' to other cards.


On to playing
When 'building' a pyramid, players must start at the bottom and work up, thus there must be at least 2 cards in a layer before a card can be placed on the layer above.

In their turn, a player can perform 1 of 3 actions.

• Dig: The active player can turn over 2 face-down cards, then they take 1 of the 2 into their hand.
• Take card: The active player can take 1 face-up card (If face-up cards are available.) into their hand.
• Play: The active player can play a card from their card into their pyramid. There's a maximum hand size of 2, so if a player has two cards in their hand at the start of their turn, they must play a card.

​​Endgame
Play continues until all cards have been taken and played into pyramids.
Then pyramids are scored, there are 5 class of skull and thus 5 ways to score points.

• Peasant: Each 'peasant' skull in the pyramid scores a point.
• ​Royalty: A 'royal' skull scores a point for each other royal and peasant skull in a layer below it. I guess they like to lord it over other cards.
• Priest: Each layer that has a priest skull score 2 points, additional priest cards in the same layer score 0. Remember there's 6 layers in a pyramid.
• Rogue: A 'rogue' skull scores 2 point for each priest card it is adjacent to. Typically, the church always has all the wealth.
• Lover: When a 'lover' is adjacent to another 'lover' card, they score 3 points each (Collectively scoring 6.), 'lover's' can only be scored once. If a 'lover' is adjacent to 2 other 'lover' cards No extra points are scored. Infidelity's worth nothing in this game!

Points are tallied.
Highest score wins.

Overall

Simple to learn, but lots to think about. Skulls of Sedlec packs a some solid gameplay into a tiny package.

I really like that the face-down stacks of cards visually represent a graveyard and 'digging' turns them over. It's a clever touch and good example of maximising what's available in a game. Less can be more.

The 2 card hand limit is a great mechanic too: It gives players enough choice  to give them tricky decisions, but it stops players from hording cards - making their decisions easier.
Every card can potentially score points, so every decision when playing a card is meaningful and you really can't ask for more from a game in my opinion.

Skulls of Sedlec is a 2 or 3 player game. It's worth noting that that there's an expansion that takes the player count to 4, adds a new class and increases the deck size up to a heady 24 cards! 

A good little microgame that is a perfect filler with some depth. One I'd like to own and that's not just because it comes in a neat wallet (Although it does add to the appeal.).
​
​I'm just glad that the publisher hasn't started numbering their wallet games, that would be too hard on my real wallet!

13th October 2020

Tuesday is here and we're at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking.

Time for the Woking Gaming Club to play a game and tonight we will be playing 'The Networks'.

This is a game for the budding media mogul inside everybody; create TV shows, hire film stars, fire chat show hosts, stick advert breaks everywhere, well at least during primetime! Fun for everyone.

When we played The Networks, a couple of expansions were also used.

What's in a game?
The Networks is a card game that has some nice additional components.

• Starting cards: Each player is given 3 TV show cards, 1 Star card and 1 Advert card.
• TV show cards: Each show has a production cost/requirements, a possible upkeep cost and a genre. All shows run for 4 seasons and the card will show how many viewers it accumulate have per season.
• Star cards: Stars are everybody from Shakespearean actors to cookery show chefs. Star cards have a hiring cost/requirements and possible upkeep. Stars are hired for up to 4 seasons and can be put on to a show. They add a varying amount to a show's audience for each of those 4 seasons. Some stars will add less audience if they are not put onto a show of specific genre. A talk show host won't add much to a soap opera's audience figures for example.
• Advert cards: Unlike the previous 2 types of card, a player will earn money if they take an advert! Furthermore, if an advert is attached to a show, it will generate money for every season the show runs. Certain adverts will make more money if attached to certain genres.
• Network cards: These cards grant the player a bonus or advantage of some kind, it may immediate, at a certain time or at the game end.
• Player boards: Each player has their own player board. Each player board has 3 spaces on either side. The 3 spaces on the right are used for the 3 timeslots you control (8pm, 9 pm & 10pm.). The 3 left spaces are The Green Room, Reruns and Archive.
• Genre card: Part of an expansion I believe, each card shows the game's 9 genres and also has a bonus track.
• Scoring board: Tracks player's accumulated audience figures and turn order which can change from season to season.
• Tokens: The Networks also includes tokens, including cubes of the soulless little wooden cube variety!
• Currency: Normally I wouldn't bother mentioning a games currency, but The Networks uses little plastic tokens for money, each one looks like a pile of money.

All the cards are very nicely illustrated with cartoony artwork and flavour text that cheerfully spoofs various different TV programs. Our game was played with an expansion that added classic British TV programs, I'm sure you'll recognise 'The IV Crowd', 'Drake's 8', & 'Creepy Puppets Save The World Again'.
All the other components are standard, except the money tokens which are cool.

How's it play?
Setup

• Each player takes a player board and starting cards.
• The 3 TV show cards are put into all 3 slots on the player card. The Star card and advert card are both put into the Green Room.
• Starting player is determined, this also determines starting money for each player.
• All the cards are put into their relative decks and shuffled.

And the game's ready to go.

The Networks is played over 5 'seasons'.
At the start of each season, TV show, star and advert cards a dealt in 3 rows.
Network cards are only dealt out from the 2nd season onwards.
After this, in turn order, players take 1 action each. This continues until there are no more actions that can be performed or all players have chosen to finish for the season, this is called 'drop & budget'.
The actions are:

• Produce a TV show: If a player wants a TV show, they have to pay for it. A TV show must be immediately placed into a time slot, any show that is currently in the chosen slot must be removed and then put into Reruns. Furthermore TV shows may require a star and/or an advert. If a player does not have the required star/advert in their Green Room, they cannot produce it. Some shows allow players to optionally add stars and/or adverts. In either case, any stars or adverts in The Green Room when the show is produced can be added to the show as part of the same action. Each show also has a limit to the number of Stars and Adverts that can be added to it. Finally; the player must put a marker on to the 1st season row on the TV show card.
• Hire a Star: A player must pay to hire a star, the star is then added to the player's Green Room, not added to a TV show.
• Get an Advert: As their action, the active player can take an Advert, unlike acquiring a TV show or star, the active player is paid to take an advert. Like a star card, an Advert cards goes into The Green Room.
• Acquire a Network card: A player can take any available Network card. It's effect may occur immediately or later in the game, or at the endgame. Network cards become available from the 2nd season onwards.
• Move a Star or an Advert: As their action, the active player can move a single star or advert from their Green Room to a TV show. They maybe some other requirements that must be met, otherwise the card might be flipped upside down to it's less effective side.
• Drop & Budget: The active player, as their action can choose to end their turn (Effectively ending their season.). They then choose to either receive either money or an increase in audience figures. The earlier a player does this  - in relation to the other players, the more money/audience they acquire. This also determines the turn order in the next season.

Once all players have ended their seasons, the next steps occur:

• Balance budget: Certain shows and stars require an upkeep and adverts generate profit. Once these are balanced, you may earn extra money or have to pay some money. If you don't have the money to pay your costs, then you lose audience figures instead.
• Calculate audience figures: Each show will generate audience figures for it's current season, plus any bonus conferred by an attached star. Shows in the Rerun slot also generate audience figures for one more season.
• Age shows: All shows in the Rerun slot are moved to the Archive slot. Then all remaining shows are aged. This is done by moving the marker on the current season row down to the next lowest row. If a show was in its last season, then it is put into Reruns.
• Set up new seasons: Any cards which were not taken from the current season are removed and discarded and an entirely new set of shows, starts, adverts and network cards a dealt out. Thus cards are only ever available for a single season before disappearing. Then the new season begins with the new turn order.

There are additional rules about acquiring shows of certain genres, but that's more or less it for the main rules.
​
Endgame
The game continues for 5 seasons, at the end of the 5th season the shows are still aged. Then a 6th season is scored (No new cards or other actions occur).
​Accumulated audience figures are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
The Networks has some cool design choices that give players interesting decisions to make.

A player can keep going and acquire more stars and adverts for as long as they've got money, which can give them an advantage later on because having these cards in their Green Room means that it's easier and quicker to develop shows. But ending your season early gives you more money/audience, more importantly though, it allows the player to be earlier in the turn order for the following season. So when the new cards appear, that player will get first dibs.

Because the game is very much about card drafting, players really have to think about how they prioritize their actions, as all players will be vying for the same cards.

Players have to try and use their actions as efficiently as possible, there's a fine balance between doing all the actions you want to do and ending your turn quickly.

All in all, The Networks gives players important decisions to make throughout the game and that's a good thing.

22nd December 2019

Sunday is here at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. 50 Fathoms is still on hiatus so for the final get together before Christmas we're playing board games.

The first game was 'Agatha Christie's Death On The Cards'.
Will the other players learn your darkest secrets? Will you catch the murderer? Or will you manage to get away with murder! Only the cards can decide in... Death On The Cards!

What's in a game?
Death On The Cards uses 3 different types of cards. Secret cards, game cards and the 'Murderer Escapes!' card , game cards are further divided into other cards:

• Secret cards: These contain the kinds of secret most people to keep errr secret? Things like being alcoholic and so on. One of these cards will be 'The Murderer' and another will be 'The Accomplice'.
• Detective cards: These represent different Agatha Christie detectives such as Poirot or Miss Marple. Detective cards are played in sets to reveal secret cards.
• Event cards: These cards allow players to perform actions such going through the discard pile and taking a card or stealing a secret card from another player.
• Devious cards: Devious cards for devious people! Devious cards are not played like other cards. Certain cards make players swap or pass cards from their hands to other players. When a player passes a devious card to another player, that's when a devious card is triggered and the recipient is the target of the cards effect (Hint; it's never a good effect!).
• 'Not So Fast' cards: These cards can be played at any time, they cancel the action of another player.
• 'Murder Escapes!' card: There's only one of these, when it appears... well you get the idea.

All of the cards a illustrated with nice little cartoons and all the text is written in an appropriate font. Giving the cards an authentic feel.

How's it play?
First there's setup, which is a little different depending on the number of players.

• 3 secret cards are randomly dealt to each player. Amongst these cards must be The Murderer card and depending on the number of players, The Accomplice card (Both card must not be dealt to the same player.). Players look at their cards but keep their secret card face-down in front of them. Any remaining secrets are put away and not used in the game.
• Deal 1 'Not So Fast' card to each player, shuffle the remaining 'Not so Fast' cards into the game cards.
• Shuffle the game cards and deal 5 to each player. These 5 cards plus the 'Not So Fast' card form each player's hand.
• The remaining game cards form the draw deck. The Murderer Escapes! is placed at the bottom of this deck.
• 3 cards are drawn from the deck and placed face-up in a row next to the draw deck. Whenever a card is drawn from the deck, it can be taken from these 3 cards. When a card is taken in this way, it is immediately replaced with a card from the deck.
• If the game has an accomplice, then all players closes their eyes and the murderer and accomplice reveal themselves to each other.

Now we're ready to play.

• The player who has 'The Murderer' secret card is attempting to get away with murder, they either want to deplete the draw deck, or paralysis the other players with 'social disgrace'.
• If the accomplice is in play, then their objective is to help the murderer. Just as any self-respecting accomplice should.
• All the other players are trying to reveal which secret card is 'The Murderer'. 

The active player can perform 1 of the following actions:

• Play an event card from their hand and do whatever it says on the card.
• Play a set of identical detective cards. Detective cards come in sets of 2 or 3. Different sets can do different things, but generally playing a set will force a player to turn one of their secret cards face-up.

After the active player has completed their action, they can choose to discard any number of cards from their hand, then they draw card to take their hand back up to 6.
Social disgrace
What's social disgrace? When a player has all of their secret cards turned face-up, all of their secrets have been revealed and they're disgraced.
What does this mean? It means that when they become the active player, all they can do is discard exactly 1 card and draw 1 card.
It is possible to come back from social disgrace as there some cards that allow secret cards to be turned back face-down.

Endgame
​How the game ends will depend on the player's role in the game.

• If the murderer secret card is revealed, then that player loses along with the accomplice. All other players win.
• There are 2 ways for the murderer to win.
• If all the other players (Not including an accomplice.) are socially disgraced, then the murder wins.
• If the last card of the draw deck (The 'Murderer Escapes!' card.) is revealed, the murder wins.
• In all circumstances that the murderer wins, the accomplice also wins. Regardless of whether the accomplice is socially disgraced or not.

Overall
'Death On The Cards' plays with 2-6 people and what's interesting is how the game changes depending on the number of players.

With 2 players, there's no secret to who's the murderer. The game is a war of attrition.

Now, for some maths (Hopefully my maths is correct.).

Let's look at it with 3 players.

• There are a total of 9 secret cards in plays and total of 18 cards are dealt to players. This means there are 43 cards in the draw deck (The draw deck has 61 card, not including 'The Murderer Escapes!').
• This means in the worse case scenario, there will be a maximum 43 actions to reveal all 9 secret cards, or a secret card will need to be revealed every 4.8 action.
• Additionally each player will have 14.3 turns before the game ends.

Now lets look at a 6 player game.

• There will be 18 secret cards and 25 cards in the draw deck.
• Therefore there will be a maximum of 25 actions before the game ends. So in the worst case scenario, 18 secret cards will need to be revealed in 25 actions, or 1 secret every 1.4 actions! A lot lower than with 3 players!
• Finally each player will only have 4.2 turns before the game end. 

This means it becomes easier for the murderer to get away with it in bigger game. Now I don't see this as a flaw, but it is definitely something that changes the dynamics of the game.

With 3 players for example, 'Death On The Cards' can be played as a straightforward card game.

With 6 players, it's much harder to capture the murderer. Players will need to form alliances and target suspicious players as quickly as possible. But then, this gives the murderer and accomplice opportunities to bluff, lie, double cross and sabotage their 'allies'. It becomes a lot more like a hidden role game.

Anyway, regardless of the mathematics, the game mechanics fit the theme very well. 'Death On The Cards' can learned quickly and plays quickly too . It's a great filler game and even though I'm not a fan of hidden role games, it's a lot of fun. 
It's definitely worth giving it a try.

16th November 2019

Gaming night at 'Matakishi's' continues.

The final game of the night was 'Ringmaster: Welcome to the Big Top'.

​Step right up! Step right up! Come and see which player can creates the most magnificent circus.
Watch! As players become catastrophically confused by cunning card-plays of weirdness Gasp! As players are perilously perplexed by uncannily unpredictable game mechanics.

Yes Sir! All the fun of the circus!

What's in a game?
Ringmaster is a card and all it has and needs is a deck of cards.
All the cards are illustrated with nice and occasionally humorous pictures. Many of the cards are tongue-in-cheek.
Finally, the game comes with a nifty little draw string to to carry the game in, if you don't want to lug the box about. It's a cool little addition.

How's it play?
First, the deck is shuffled and 3 cards are dealt to each player, the remaining cards from a draw deck. A first player is then determined.
The active player draws a card from the deck and then plays 1 card. 

There are 4 types of card in the game:

• Stars: These cards are played in front of the active player. Star cards tend to give the player some sort of benefit every round.
• Attractions: These are also played in front of the active player.
• Events: When an event is played it is discarded, events can be considered  'one-offs'.
• Sideshows: These cards are played in another player's area and are generally detrimental to them.

Play then proceeds with the player to the left.

I can't really explain much about the rules, because players simply do what's written on the card they're playing.

Endgame
There are no endgame conditions in Ringmaster! OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but the endgame is determined by cards that are played. This means that different players will most likely have different winning criteria.

This makes Ringmaster unpredictable and the game tends to end very suddenly and abruptly.

Overall
Ringmaster ticks the right boxes! Easy to learn, quick to play and fun.
As well as random ending conditions, there are cards that occasionally completely change the game, forcing all players to discard their entire hands or every card they've played etc.
Ringmaster can be random and chaotic, but retains enough strategy to still engage players.

If you've just spent the last 3 hours playing a monstrosity of a game that's made your brains dribble out of your ears. Then Ringmaster makes a great finisher for the evening.

27th October 2019

Sunday at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking and our gaming continues.

The final game of the day was 'Forbidden Desert', the second game in the 'Forbidden series' of co-operative games.

'Forbidden Desert' is a co-operative game of exploration.

The players are a band of adventurers and explorers, scouring the desert (Which I guess is a forbidden?) for the remains of a legendary flying machine. But during your trip, a ferocious sand storm forces your helicopter to crash in the remains of a lost city. The only way to escape the desert is to fly back out of the desert. Your helicopter is a wreck, so your only hope of survival is to find and reconstruct the flying machine before the storm and desert spell your doom!

What's in a game?
'Forbidden Desert' comes in a natty tin box, the game's components are good quality with some nice artwork.

• City tiles: There are 24 of these tiles, except for the starting tile, they are all turned face-down at the start of the game.
• Sand tokens: There's a whole stack of these, they are used to represent the moving sands throughout the city.
• Storm track: As the game progresses, the storm will get more and more violent. This is tracked on the storm track.
• Storm cards: This deck of cards are used to dictate the sandstorm's behaviour.
• Gadget cards: Useful cards that the players acquire during the game.
• Flying machine: The flying machine is a plastic model. The 4 missing parts of it are made of plastic, metal and acrylic. They are weighty and high quality.
• Adventurer classes: There are 6 of these, each class has it's own card and meeple. Each character has their own water track and also has it's own unique ability.

How's it play?
Setup.

• Randomly deal or choose a class for each player. Each class has it's unique ability and water track shown on the pertinent card. Each class also has its meeple.
• Shuffle the location tiles and place them face-down in a 5x5 grid. Hang on, a 5x5 grid has 25 spaces, but there are only 24 tiles? When placing the tiles into a grid, the centre space is left empty. The empty space is the 'eye of the storm'. The starting tile and 3 oasis tiles can be identified even when face-down.
• Place sand tokens on to 8 of the city tiles in a 'diamond' shape. The remaining sand tokens should be placed in a stack close to the playing area.
• Shuffle the gadget cards into a face-down deck.
• Shuffle the storm cards into a face-down deck.
• Set up the storm track, there are different tracks depending on how many players there are. Additionally, the game has several difficulty levels that determine the starting point on the track.
• One of the city tiles is double sided and represents the crashed helicopter. This is the adventurer's starting tile. Place all the meeples on to this tile.

Now, we're good to go.

Player actions
During the active player's turn, they have 4 actions that they can perform (in any order and repeatedly.). These are:

• Move: A player can move their character's meeple left, right, up or down to an adjacent tile, provided there is no more than 1 sand token on that tile. If there is more than 1 sand tile, then the area is blocked by a sand drift and is currently inaccessible. Furthermore if the tile the meeple is currently standing on has more than 1 sand token on it, then the meeple is trapped!
• Excavate: If a meeple is standing on a face-down tile with no sand tokens on it, then the player can excavate and turn it face-up. There are several different types of tile in the game and different actions will occur when they are revealed. Some tiles are blank, so nothing happens. There are the 3 'oasis' tiles, one is a mirage, the other 2 will provide water when excavated. There are 3 tunnel tiles, this allows characters to move between them with 1 action regardless of their locations in the game area, tunnels also provide shelter from the sun. There are 8 'clue tiles', each part of the flying machine has 2 clues associated with it. One clue shows the vertical position of the part and the other for the horizontal position. When both clues are revealed, they are cross-referenced to show the actual location of the part. Launch pad tile, nothing happens when this tile is revealed, but when the players have acquired all 4 machine parts, they must all meet on the launch pad to escape and win the game. Finally any card that displays a 'cog' in the corner allows the active player to draw a gear card.
• Remove sand: As sand tokens build up in the playing area, they will need to be removed for various reasons. For 1 action a character may remove a sand token from their tile or an adjacent tile. The sand token is returned to the sand token supply.
• Retrieve part: When a machine part has been revealed, if a character is on the same tile as the part, they can spend an action to retrieve it.

The storm
Once the active player has completed their 4 actions, the storm gets to act.
Cards are drawn from the storm deck, the number drawn depends upon how severe the storm is, this ranges from 2-6 cards. There are 3 types of storm card.

• Storm moves: This is by far the most common card in the storm deck. The empty space in the game area represents the 'storm'. When the storm moves, it shuffles a tile into the empty space and creates a new empty where the tile was previously located. Depending upon circumstances, up to 4 tiles can be moved this way. Every tile that is moved this way accumulates a sand token. Sand tokens can build up very quickly.
• ​High temperature: When this storm card is drawn, the adventurers encounter savage heat. If a character is on a tunnel tile, they are safe from the heat. Every character not in a tunnel must lose 1 water from their water track.
• Storm intensifies: When this card is drawn, move the marker 1 space further along the storm track. After moving the marker 3 or 4 spaces, the storm will reach 'the next level' and from the next turn onward an additional storm card will be drawn at the end of a player's turn.

Gear Cards
Gear cards are all beneficial for the players and can be played at any time by the owning player.

Endgame
Losing conditions:

• If at any time, a characters water track reaches the end, then the character dies and the players lose the game.
• If at any time, the storm reaches it's maximum level, the players lose the game.
• If at any time, sand tokens need to be put on a tile and there are none remaining, the players lose the game.

Winning condition:
If the players manage to retrieve all 4 missing parts of the machine, all manage to reach the launch pad at the same time and the launch pad is unblocked. Then the players win the game. As the adventurers escape in their new flying machine.

Overall
Forbidden Desert has essentially 2 timers running, the sand tokens pouring on to the tiles and the strength of the storm (Which also increases the rate in that sand tokens appear.).
Water is a resource that must be managed.

Players are faced with the choice of being prudent to preserve their water levels, acting to manage the sand token levels or having to work towards their objectives. Especially since the storm can move the game area about which can cause big problems or be an opportunity to exploit.
I think the key to doing well in Forbidden Desert are the characters. Each character has their own special ability. Remembering to utilise these abilities and working them into any strategy used vital in my opinion.

​Forbidden Desert is a cooperative game in which the players play against 'the game'.
Games of this type must balance strategy and randomness in order to be good games.
Too much strategy and once the players learn the game's systems, they'll learn to rinse it every time.
Too much randomness and player decisions become meaningless as their fates will be left to the whim of luck.

Forbidden Desert manages to straddle this line pretty well and is one of the better examples of this type of game.

15th October 2019

Tuesday evening has rolled around again and we're at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. This can only mean it's games night.

Our game of the evening is 'Gold West'. A game for rootin' tootin' prospectors and quite possibly outlaws and bandits.

What's in a game?​
There are quite a lot of components in Gold West. The general game components are:

• Game board: The game board contains a lot of information. As well as a scoring track, it has 3 precious metal delivery tracks, a 'boomtown' area and most importantly a hexagonal map area, a river sits in the middle of the map area (Will be explained later.).
• Hexagonal map tiles: These hex tiles are actually composed of 7 hexes, each hex on a tile has a colour. There are 4 colours to represent the 4 different types of terrain in game.
• Resource tokens: On one side it depicts a 'mining shovel and pick' in the colour of one of the 4 terrain tiles. On the other side of the token it depicts 2 or 3 resources.
• Resource blocks: Little blocks that represent the 5 different resources that are used in Gold West. These are wood and stone, and the precious metals gold, silver and copper.
• Boomtown tiles: These are placed on the boomtown area and earn players points.
• Contract cards: These cards represent contracts that can be fulfilled by players and earn them points.
• Stagecoach meeples: These are used to track deliveries of precious metals

As well as game components, there are also several components for individual players. These include:

• ​Personal game board: There are also 4 'influence' tracks (One for each of the 4 terrains.) and a 'supply' track on the board. There is also space for player tokens.
• Tents: These are little tent shaped meeples that sit on the player's board until used, there are 10 tents.
• Influence token: These disc shaped tokens sit on the player board until used.

That's more or less it.

Use metals
So now that resources have been moved out of the supply track, they must be used. There are 5 resources and 3 of them are precious metals - gold, silver and copper. In this stage, the precious metals are 'spent'.

• Metals can be spent to purchase contract cards, this will earn victory points. Contracts can also confer additional bonuses such as moving a stagecoach along a delivery track.
• A player can spend metals to place an influence token on to a tile in boomtown. These tiles can be used to earn points, provided they player meets the conditions on the tile.
• A player can deliver metals 'back east'. This moves the stagecoach meeples along the 3 delivery tracks (One for each metal). These points are immediately scored. The delivery tracks also have 'break points' which earn whoever gets there first earns a bonus points token.

Any 'unspent' metals are discarded at the end of the turn. But you can always deliver them, so they are never actually wasted.

Build camp/settlement or loot
After using metals, the active player has to build a camp or settlement, or loot. This is done using wood and/or stone resources that were bought out of the supply track along with the metals.

• A camp can be built with a stone or a wood resource. When building a camp, the active player selects a hex which contains a token showing its resources (Not the mining side.) and takes the token and replaces it with a tent meeple from their board. The active player then turns the resource token back over to the mining side and places it on the first available space on the relevant influence track on their board.
• A settlement can be built with a stone and a wood resource. Just like with a camp, the active player takes a resource token, but instead it is replaced with an influence token and a tent on top of the influence token. The active player turns the resource token to the mining side and places it on the relevant influence track, but places it one space further along the track. Thus building a settlement instead of a camp earns more influence.
• If the active player has no stone or wood, then they must loot instead. This is done by taking a resource token as explained above, but no tent or token is placed in the hex and it is left blank. Instead a tent it placed into the 'bandit camp' area on the main game board and incur penalty points at the end. Furthermore, the resource token is discarded and not placed on to a influence track.
• When a resource token is taken from the main game board, any adjacent hexes that have unrevealed resources, have those resources revealed.
• When a resource token is taken either by building a camp or settlement or by looting, then the active player takes the displayed resources and places it in one of the 4 boxes in their supply track. Now since putting the resources in the lowest box will cause headaches when moving them up, why would you ever do it? The answer is points, those boxes are numbered from 0-3 for a reason; that's how many points the active player immediately receives when putting resources into a box in the supply train.

Just with precious metals, any unspent wood and stone resources are discarded at the end of a player's turn.
This means that having more than 1 stone or 1 wood is a waste as these will be discarded. A player only needs a stone or a wood, or a stone and a wood.

That's it for a player's turn, it seems like a lot, but in play it's pretty straightforward.

Endgame
Gold West is played over 11 rounds, players have ten tents to use and there's a further round with no tents. Then we get on to scoring, points are scored in the following ways:

• Each of the 4 terrains types will earn points for the player who has the most influence tokens in the pertinent influence track. 2nd place earns a lesser amount of points. This is done for all 4 terrain types, not all of the terrain types earn the same points.
• Boomtown tokens are scored, there are a large variety of ways these can be scored.
• Bonus tokens are scored.
• Each player earns points for the single longest contiguous line of camps/settlements that they have placed on the map.  
• Finally points are deducted for tents placed into the bandit camp.

Scores are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
There's a lot to like about Gold West.

The supply mechanic is equal parts infuriating and brilliant. If you put your resources in the lower boxes and have trouble getting them out effectively, it's only your own fault for being greedy for points. But if you're able to manage the flow of resources well, it's a good source of points.
Talking of points, Gold West presents players a good variety of ways to score points. There is always a way to accumulate points, it's a question of optimisation and individual strategy. Players are always given meaningful choices on how to approach scoring. Even if a player fails to bring out a stone or wood resource, they still have the open to loot.
I also like how resources become revealed as players build camps and settlements on the map. It's a nice touch.
The game is also a nice looking game, I like the stagecoach meeples and there's something pleasing about looking at the game map covered in lots of tent meeples.

​All in all I liked Gold West.

How's it play?
So we begin with setup.

• Shuffle the citizen deck and deal 4 to each player.
• Deal 5 more cards from the citizen deck in a row. This row is called 'the forum'. The remaining citizen cards form the citizen deck.
• Shuffle and deal 5 afterlife cards in a face-down deck next to the citizen deck.
• Give some currency to each player.

Now we're ready to go.

• The starting player rolls the 3 four-sided dice.
• The active player must play a card from their hand.
• The active player may choose to play a 2nd card, provided it is identical to the first card played. They must pay to do this.
• Resolve any special ability on the card(s) just played.
• The active player then places 2 cards from their hand into the forum and takes 3 cards from the forum in their hand. If they has played 2 cards earlier, then they take an additional card from the citizen deck into their hand (Hand size is always 4 cards.).
• Finally, a card is played from the citizen deck into the forum (To replace the extra card the player took.).
• Play progresses to the left.
• Once all players have had a turn,  the 'first player' moves to the left, who rolls the dice again to begin a new round.
• Once the citizen deck is depleted, the game ends. Scores are tallied, highest score wins.

Afterlife cards
There's no mention of afterlife cards, what do they do?
Well when a 'priest' citizen card is played, the active player take a afterlife card and keeps it face-down in their area.
Afterlife cards provide the opportunity to gain extra points during scoring.
Players can only have 1 afterlife card each. If a player acquires more afterlife cards, they draw another one and keep one of the two. The other one is shuffled back into the afterlife deck.
The dice
Dice are rolled every round, what for?
Certain citizen cards make use of these vaguely pyramid shaped dice.
For example:
The 'noble' card will earn the active player currency equal the result of all 3 dice (The dices' values are lowered after this.).
The 'baker' citizen card can buy up to 3 bread tokens at a cost equal to the highest single dice.
Bread tokens
Talking of bakers, what do bread tokens do?
After acquiring bread tokens, the are placed on citizen cards that have been played to increase their value in the endgame scoring.
Additionally, bread tokens on your 'farmer' citizen cards will protect them from being 'enticed away' by pesky 'soldier' citizen cards.

Endgame
Once the citizen deck is depleted and all players have had an equal number of turns, we go into scoring. There are 5 ways to score:

• Each citizen card is worth points, the more important the citizen (In the social hierarchy.), the more points the card is worth. Thus the 'Pharaoh' card is worth is more than a farmer.
• Bread: Every card that has a bread token on it will score points. Generally cards further down the social hierarchy score more for bread (I guess they need it more?).
• Majority: There are 9 types of citizen card in the game, whoever has the most of each type score points for it. The scoring her is the exact opposite of the social hierarchy scoring. Because their are 9 'farmer' citizen cards in the game, who ever has the majority of 'farmer' cards will score 9 points. Conversely there's only 1 'Pharaoh' card and it's only worth 1 point.
• Currency: Each 3 of the currency scores a point.
• Afterlife card: Points can be scored provided the conditions (If any.) can be met on the card.

Overall
Iuni is a game with some interesting mechanics.
Having to return 2 cards to the forum during every turn forces players into making some hard decisions, because not only are you discarding cards which may be useful, you're also giving other players the opportunity to take them.
The dice are also an interesting idea and not something I've seen before in this style of game. The randomness can throw a real 'curve ball' into players' strategies.

Once players have gotten their heads around the slightly unusual way the game works, it's quite quick to play and would be good as a filler or finisher game.