10th August 2021

We're with the Woking Gaming Club for board gaming night at The Sovereigns in Woking for the second and final game of the evening.

So apparently, if you're a kid, the most important things to you, other than building a fort, is pizza and toys. Welcome to Fort, a game about very fickle personal relationships!

What's in a game?

• ​Player board: Each player gets one of these groovy recessed game boards used to manage various elements of the game.
  Fort track: In a game called Fort, there better be something about forts and I'm not disappointed here. Every player's fort has a level from 0 to 5 and that's what this tracks, it also shows the cost to level up and associated benefits. Increasing their fort levels allows players to gain special cards, including the fabled Macaroni Sculpture Card and confers victory points.
  Stuff tracks: There are 2 stuff tracks in Fort, with 4 spaces each, they allow players to store tokens. One track is for pizza and the other for toys.
  Pack space: As in backpack I guess. Players can store extra stuff here, the bigger their fort, the more they can store.
  Lookout: On the left side of the board is a semi-circular indentation, to which you can send friends to! The bigger the fort, the friend cards can go to the lookout. Cards placed here can provide a permanent action improvement bonus to cards with a matching suit. More on this below.
  Yard: Finally, along the top edge of the board is space marked out as the Yard.
• Friend cards: In Fort there are 2 types of friend, normal friends and best friends! Apart from one specific rule, they're more or less identical and each card will have the following elements.
  Suit: In the top left of every card, its suit is displayed, Fort features 6 suits and a wildcard. Some cards will have 2 suits. These suits are Skateboard, Shovel, Glue, Squirtgun, Crown & Book. The wildcard is a Coin, money counts in any amount I guess!
  Public action: When a card is played, all players can perform the public action.
  Private action: Conversely, only the active player can undertake the private action.
  Public/Private actions are the card's special abilities, they allow to recruit or trash cards, gain resources, etc.
  Best friend cards: Where would you childhood be without best friends, those friends you'll probably never see again when you see again! However, in fort, they'll never leave you, unless of course, you shun them first!
  Friend cards: your general neighbourhood kids, the ones from a few doors down that you occasionally play with.
• Made up rule cards: These cards score players additional victory points during the endgame, provided they meet the required conditions of course. Any made up rule acquired is kept face-down until the endgame.
• Perk cards: Acquiring a perk card confers some sort of bonus or benefit during the game.
• Victory track: This board tracks players' victory points. There also a space along the bottom edge of the board marked as the park.
• Tokens: There are 3 types of token, for the game's 2 currencies - pizza and toys and for tracking tokens for victory point scores and fort levels
• Macaroni Sculpture card: Scores points for the player who acquires it and also triggers the endgame.

The cards and boards are pretty standard, normal quality components, what you'd expect from a modern game.
​The tokens are anything but average, big, chunky and colourful, they're a great addition to the game.
Stylised child-like art is used throughout Fort to decorate its cards and components, normally against a plain but colourful background, fairly effective art in my opinion.

Fort uses a lot of iconography; between the 7 suits on the cards and a plethora of symbols for card actions, there quite a lot to remember and the stylised art used for icons isn't always instantly clear. It's not a gamebreaker by any means but it does add to the learning curve. 

How's it play?
Setup

• Perk cards: Shuffle the perk cards into a face-down deck. Deal a number of them equal to1 higher than the number of players face-up in a row above the victory park. The remaining cards will not be used.
• Made up Rules cards: Shuffle these into a face-down deck
• Player Board: Give each player a player board, the player should also receive the 2 best friends cards displayed on the flipside of the board.
• Park deck: Shuffle the friend cards into a face-down deck, deal 8 to each player. Then deal 3 friend cards face-up in the area below the victory track (The park area.).
• Player decks: All players should shuffle their 8 friend card and 2 best friend cards into a single 10-card face-down deck and draw 5 cards.
• Leader: Determine a 1st player.

On to play
​A round is pretty standard in Fort, the active player plays a card and the other players react. Then the player to the left becomes the active player.

• Clean up: At the start of the active player's turn, any cards placed into the yard at the end of their previous turn that are still there, are then placed into the active player's discard pile. This'll make more sense further down.
  Obviously this doesn't occur in a player's first turn.
• Play a card: It's playtime! The active player can choose to play a single card in front of them.
  Actions: Each card has 2 actions, a public action and a private one. The active player may choose to do either action or both in any order they see fit.
  There is one restriction only, the active player must fully perform 1 of the 2 actions, if they can't, then that card cannot be played.
  Improve action: Certain card actions have a variable effect, in this instance, the active player may also play 1 or more cards of a matching suit to increase the effectiveness of that variable action. Cards that a player has placed in their look out provide a permanent bonus that can possibly be used.
  However, the player must still be able to fully complete an action, if an improvement would make it impossible for the active player to do this, then the improvement cannot be used.
  An example of an action might be 'add 2 pizza tokens to the pizza track', if the active player only has 1 space left, then they cannot fully complete the action and cannot choose to do that action. The excess token could not be discarded.
  Follow: Once the active player has completed their action(s), other players may perform the public action the card played, again they must be able to fully complete the action in order to carry it out.

• Recruit: Once action have been completed, the active player must recruit a new friend card.
  This can come from the park or blindly from the park deck, or from another player's yard. The card goes directly into the active player's discard pile.
• Discard: Cards are either discarded into the active player's discard pile or the yard at the top of their player board.
  Discard pile: The played card and any cards played to improve actions are placed directly into the player's discard pile. Best friend cards are always put into the discard pile, regardless of whether they were played or not.
  Yard: Any card left in the active player's hand - that is cards they did not play, must be placed in the active player's yard.
  This means they are vulnerable to being recruited by other players. That's what you get for ignoring your friends.
  ​Any friend cards left in a player's yard at the start of their turn are send to their discard pile as part of clean up.
  
• Draw: This also means the active player's hand is now also empty. As their final action, the active player now draws 5 more cards.
• Play on: Play now moves on to the player to the left, when a round is completed, first player moves one player to the left.

Endgame
There are 3 ways the endgame can be triggered.
If the park deck is depleted.
If any player reaches 25 or higher on the victory track.
If any player reaches fort level 5, they acquire the Macaroni Sculpture Card.
Once one of these criteria have been met, the current round is completed. Points can come the victory track, fort level, made up rule cards and the Macaroni Sculpture Card.
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
The central theme and premise behind Fort is quite clever and charming. That is that friend cards are literally friends: Don't play a friend card, then that friend may go hang out with another player, although best friends are always loyal and more potential friends may be found at the park.
Building a fort is of paramount importance as are pizzas and toys. Halcyon days!

Fort blends together a bit of deck-building and a bit of drafting. Broadly speaking it provides players with the choice of performing actions to increase their victory points, or build up their fort. One provides points towards winning and the other confers benefits which hopefully helps later on.
Another very important strategy here is to watch what other players put into their yards, some vulture-like scavenging may net the sharp-eyed player's a useful card, simultaneously denying another player of it.
Thus players will also want to play as many of their 5 cards as possible, minimising the risk of losing friends. The better combos a player can generate, the more cards they can play.

But despite this, I found Fort a finicky game to play, there's lots of suits to remember, somewhat indecipherable iconography to navigate and occasionally overly-complex actions to comprehend.
The rule about having to fully complete an action in order to perform it all was a sticking point for me. I'm sure it's there's for balancing or a legitimate reason, but it felt so unnecessary and counter-intuitive.
It's frustrating being unable to use a card because it's too powerful and having to discard it into the yard, only to watch another player snatch it up. It turns Fort from what could have been light, breezy and quick, into slow, pedestrian grind instead.
Fort is a mechanically sound game with a strong theme and great presentation but somehow becomes a forgettable experience.

1st August 2021

Sunday night gaming on Board Game Arena has come to a conclusion.

The last game of the evening was Via Magica.
Via Magica - the magic way, what is the magic way? Turns out it's a game of errr.... bingo? Not just bingo, but bingo very loosely inspired by Harry Potter.

Players take the role of a student of magic looking to earn their Certificate of Sorcery, this is done by collecting macguffins to open magical portals; the titular Via Magica.

Caveat: We have only ever played Via Magica online.

What's in a game?

• Portal cards: A deck of 80 cards that represent magic portals.
  Each card has a row of 3-6 open spots which each displays an animus symbol and represents the cost to activate it in animus tokens/crystals Each card also displays a reward that the player will earn once activated, this can be straight-up points, situational points calculated at the end or a bonus such as extra crystals and so on.
• Crystals: These are used in conjunction with portal cards.
• Animus tokens: There are 23 of them that make up the 7 different types of token. The astute among you will be thinking that these numbers do not breakdown evenly - and you'd be correct, all the differently coloured animus' have a different rarity as shown below.​
  Air: X6, grey/white.
  Water: X5, blue
  Earth: X4, brown.
  Life: X3, green.
  Fire: X2, red.
  Shadow: X1, black.
  Wildcard: X2, any colour.​​
• Bag: Used with Animus tokens.
• Bonus tiles: Each of these tiles has a condition, that if met, can give a player bonus points if they claim the tile. Bonus tiles can only be claimed directly after a portal has been activated. They come in 2 types
  Colour of portals: These conditions revolve around activating a particular number of portals of a particular colour(s).
  Number of portals: Players can earn bonus points for the total number of cards they activate.
  However, only one tile can ever be claimed from this category and only at the time the criteria is met! This means that players are racing to claim these tokens, the bonus for activating 4 portals cannot be claimed when opening a 5th!

Since this game has only been played digitally, it's not possible to comment on the quality of the game components.
The artwork on cards in Via Magica is universally good; cheerfully brash and colourfully cartoonish characters dominate the cards. The animus tokens are also bright and colourful.
The game's iconography is easy to read.

How's it play?
Setup

• Shuffle the deck of portal cards and deal 5 cards face-up in to a central row.
• Then deal 6 to each player, face-down. The remain cards become the portal deck.
  Each player keeps 3 and discards the others. The only restriction is that a player can never have any duplicate cards, doubles must be discarded and new cards dealt in their place.
  Each players places their 3 cards face-up in a row in front of them.
• Give each player 7 crystals.
• Put all 23 animus tokens into the bag and give it a good shake.

That's that, now we're ready to play.
On to play
In Via Magica, all players act simultaneously after the active player who assumes the role of Catcher, which is a fancy name for a bingo caller, draws a token.

• The active player blindly draws a token from the bag, announces to all the other players which of the 7 animus types was drawn and places it in the central (not back in the bag.).
• All players now look at their 3 cards.
  • If a player has an open animus spot on any of their cards that matches the animus token that was just drawn, then that player puts 1 of their 7 crystals on to one of those matching spaces. If a player has no spare crystals, then they may take a crystal they have previously placed and move it over.
  • If a player has no open spaces that match the drawn animus, then they do not place a crystal this time.
• If a player has covered all the spots on their card with crystals, then they have activated the portal and should shout WINGARDI-, er no, they shout BING-, er no they shout INCANTATUM!
  They then return all the crystals from the completed card to their supply and put the card in their completed area.
  If the card has a relevant effect, it is triggered now.
  Next they take a card from the 5 available and add it to their row of 3 and a new card is drawn from the deck to bring the central row back up to 5 cards.
  If multiple players completed cards at the same time, then the player who shouted Incantatum first goes first, followed by other completing players to their left and onwards.
  After a portal is activated, a player will automatically earn a Colour of Portal bonus token they are eligible for and may choose to take a Number of Portals token is they want it.
• If a wildcard token was drawn by the active player, they return all tokens back to the bag, gives it a shake and passes it on to the player to their left. That player is now the active player and the Catcher.
  If no wildcard token was drawn, the active player blindly draws another token and play proceeds on.

Endgame
Play proceeds until a player has activated a 7th portal card.
Players now calculate at all the victory points their portal cards confer, end of game bonuses they earn and points acquired from bonus tiles.
All scores are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
There's no denying it, Via Magica is bingo, the manual says as much. The portal cards are bingo cards and the animus tokens are bingo balls, the twist though, is that whilst there are only 7 'numbers', the odds of them coming up are heavily skewed and is what adds a scintilla of much needed depth to the game. Portal cards with more than 1 or 2 rare openings will generally be much harder to complete, it also means that players should complete the 'rarer' spaces first if they get wildcards.

Additionally, there is a little bit of strategy when using some of the lower cost cards; once a player starts a card, they'll generally want to finish it, as a consequence, quite often there's no decision to be made and players will concentrate on the card they started if they can. However, since players initially have 7 crystals, they'll always have at least 1 surplus crystal (Provided they are only 'going' for 1 card a a time that is.), 'loading' a lower cost card with surplus crystals can prove when a draw goes against the player, allowing them to switch a crystal round to a secondary card which may prove beneficial.
Initial and later card drafts will prove important, the basic dichotomy is choosing between point scoring cards and special ability cards, as well as quick-to-complete lower cost cards and higher value more costly ones.
​During play, we found that picking the highest cost cards seemed to be the most successful approach.
Ultimately though, this is a game of luck and luck will be the biggest factor.

Obviously Via Magica has little to engage players of heavier games and personally I found it an unabsorbing experience.
It's unlikely that I'm the target audience though, the simplicity and bingo theme of Via Magica clearly makes it a crossover game that is accessible enough to appeal to non-gamers and which they will find easy to learn.

25th July 2021

Sunday gaming on Board Game Arena continued with our next game.

If Esther Rantzen ever made board games, it probably wouldn't be this one, for starters, there's no dog that says 'sausages'!

Caveat: We have only ever played That's Life! digitally online.

What's in a game?
That's Life! is all about travelling along a route consisting of a series of randomly placed hexagonal tiles, where the bad ones outweigh the good ones, generally trying to manage those bad situations with a bit of luck and occasionally encountering generosity or greed. Maybe that really is what life is all about?

• Start and end tiles: This pair of tiles mark the start and finish of the route.
• Plus tiles: Plus tiles score points for players when acquired, there are 8 of them, ranging in value from 1 to 8.
• Minus tiles: When minus tiles are acquired, they lose points for the capturing player. There are 18 minus tiles valued from -1 to -10.
• Lucky tiles: These will turn minus values into plus ones, as they may be used to swing a large number of points they can be very powerful. There are 6 of them.
• Action tiles: The 4 tiles are double-sided and are marked gift/steal.
• Meeples: Up to 3 meeples per player.
• Die: Every roll and move game needs dice and this is a standard six-sider.

There's a more complex version of the game we didn't play that involves 'guard' meeples.

How's it play?
Setup

• Take all the plus, minus and lucky tiles, then shuffle them into a face-down stack of 32 tiles.
• Put down the start tile.
• Draw 8 tiles from the stack and place them in line starting at the start tile to form a path, the exact route of the path isn't important.
  Next, place an action tile (Gift side up.) at the end of the path and after the 8th tile.
  Repeat this with the 24 remaining tiles on the stack and 3 action cards to continue the path.
• Place the end tile after the final action tile to complete the route.
• Give each player 2 or 3 (Depending on player count.) meeples in their colour and place them all on the starting tile.
• Determine the starting player.

On to play
The goal in That's Life! is to journey to the game's end, acquiring those scoring tiles as you go while trying to avoiding those minus tiles. How's this done?

• Roll the dice: The active player rolls the die and moves one of their meeples by that rolled amount.

That's it, well OK, not exactly, there's a bit more.

• Picking up tiles: When one of the active player's meeples leaves a tile and there are no other meeples on it, then they MUST pick up the tile (Unless it's an action tile - see below.).
  Tiles picked up by a player are placed into a single stack in the order they were acquired, thus the most recently collected tile will always go on top of the stack.
• Action tiles: If the active player moves one of their meeples off an action tile and there are no other meeples on it, then the action card's gift/steal ability is activated, depending on which face is up.
  Gift side up: The active must give the tile on top of their stack to another player, who places it on top of theirs.
  Steal side up: The active player takes the topmost tile from someone else's stack and places it on top of theirs.
  Flip sides: Action tiles are not collected by players and always stay in the route, instead they are flipped over to their other side.

Endgame
Play continues until all players' meeples have crossed the finish line.
Each lucky tile acquired by a player can now used to convert the score from a minus tile into a plus, then all points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
There's no getting away from that fact that this is a roll and move game, it may give you 2 or 3 choices from that roll, but it still is what it is. 
That's not to say it's all bad, usually at least 1 of the 2 or 3 choices a player is given is meaningful.
Finding a way to linger on a plus tile until other players have to leave (Or getting off the tile before other players even arrive!) will earn victory points and players will obviously also want to avoid the minus tiles. However, minus tiles sort of reverses this, players will look to linger on a bad tile in the hope that another player will land it, allowing them to potentially escape. Furthermore, minus tiles outnumber plus ones 18-to-8; that's more than double, landing on them is inevitable, so is picking them up.
This is what makes the lucky tiles such gamechangers with their ability to mitigate negative penalties, if a player has a lucky tile in their stack, suddenly that big minus tile becomes an asset, provided of course someone doesn't steal the lucky tile in the meantime.
All of this is also largely dependant on what other players do, because they'll also be trying to linger on good tiles and escaping bad ones.

That's Life! is a very easy game to learn and comprehend. I feel that it will have crossover appeal to non-gamers but for us, it felt a little too light and a little too luck-based; because players invariably end up collecting more negative tiles than positive, it ends up lending the game a negative feel - even though generally it will affect all player equally (Maybe life is like that?). It meant we didn't find That's Life a satisfying experience or a compelling game.

11th July 2021

Sunday night is here again and I'm logged into Board Game Arena.

"The only constant is change." - Heraclitus' review of Fluxx from about 500 BC!
He knew what he was talking about when it comes to the first game of the evening.

What's in a game?
​Fluxx comes with a deck of just over 80 cards. which is about 50% bigger than a pack of regular playing cards, there 4 types of card in Fluxx along with the basic rules card:

• Basic rules card: Fluxx begins with this card face-up in the playing area, it displays the game's basic starting rules which are; draw 1, play 1.
• New rule: as the name suggests, when a new rule card is played it will change a rule in some way, this may increase or decrease the draw, play or hand limits, it may even change the win conditions etc.
• Goal: These types of card set a game's victory condition when played. Generally there's only 1 Goal card in play at a time, typically goals involve collecting a set of keepers (More on Keepers below.), e.g., the Death by Chocolate goal with requires the Chocolate and Death keepers to win. There are some goals that require certain keepers not be in be in play!
• Keepers: Keepers are cards that you err.... keep in front of you when played, they're basically nouns.
• Actions: When an action card is played it will trigger an event, this may include making players pick up, discard or swap cards or keepers, it may effect turns etc.

In terms of quality, the cards in Fluxx are comparable to that of a standard set of playing cards, which is acceptable.
Large easy-to-read text is used throughout Fluxx, which is a boon considering the kind of game it is.
Cards in Fluxx, other than the action cards it seems, contain some sort of mostly monochrome line illustrations. The artwork is a bit plain, but doesn't detract from the cards or interfere with the clarity of the text. All cards also have a splash of colour which indicates which of the 4 kinds of card they are.
​Its functional more than pretty, but I don't have a problem with that.

How's it play?
Setup

• Set out the basic rules card face-up in the central playing area. For the start of the game, draw is 1 and play is also 1.
• Shuffle the deck and deal 3 cards out to each player, put the remaining cards into a face-down deck.
• Determine the starting player.

On to play

• Draw: The active player draws cards equal to the draw rule, which at the game start is 1.
• Play: The active player must play cards equal to the current play rule.
  New Rule: When a new rule is played, it takes effect immediately, even affecting the active player! A draw/play change is played on the relevant corner of the basic rules card, replacing any card that's already there, which is discarded. Other rules are played next to the basic rules card, sometimes this will cause other new rule cards to be discarded.
  Goal: When played, goal cards are placed into the central game area, generally there's only ever one goal card in play, a previous goal card is discarded when a new one is played.
  Keeper: When the active player plays a keeper cards, it's placed into their personal area.
  Action: Action cards are one-and-done, when played by the active player, their affect is completed they are put into the discard pile.

That's the basics for Fluxx, bear in mind that all of those rules can and will be varied or changed!

Overall
There's not much I can say about Fluxx, it's clearly a light, fun and unpredictable experience which favours opportunistic play. Players will want to keep a sharp eye out for the changes that occur when the situation inevitably shifts from one rule to another, this is especially true since any player can win at any time.
An easy game to pick up that plays quickly (Probably!), This makes it an excellent filler, the version 5.0 rules state that players can just drop in and out, making it a good opener for a longer session of gaming or a finisher.
If you want a quick diversion, it's hard to go wrong with Fluxx

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?

• Board: The board depicts a map of the Earth with a network of 48 interconnected cities spread across it and split into 4 differently coloured regions, red, blue, black and yellow.
  Outbreak track: As outbreaks occur, a marker moves along this track, when it reaches the final space.... well you get the idea.
  Infection track: As the game progresses, the rate at which new infections appear will increase as tracked on this board. In game terms, it determines how many infection cards are drawn during the infection stage, ranging from 2-4 cards.
  There are also spaces for the infection deck and player decks.
  Finally there's space for the cure markers.
• Role cards: There are 7 differently coloured role cards, as you might expect, each one has it's own role and unique special ability.
• Pawns: There are 7 of these and they correspond to the 7 role cards.
• City cards: There are 48 city cards, one for each city, city cards come in the same 4 colours of their relevant cities
• Event cards: There are 5 event cards, when used, they provide players with a one-off benefit.
• Epidemic cards: These cards increase the game's infection rate and also trigger some other nasty effects.
• Infection cards: There are 48 infection cards, one for each city and in the same 4 matching colours as city cards.
• Disease cubes: These translucent cubes come in the 4 colours to represent the 4 different diseases, there are 24 in each colour and thus 96 in total.
• Research stations: There are 6 of these little 3D models.
• Cure markers: These jar-shaped, double sided chunky plastic markers are used to indicate when one of the diseases has been cured or eradicated.
• Tokens: Used to track outbreak and infection rate.

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.

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.

• Actions: The active player has 4 actions and can spend actions to perform the actions below.
  Move: Spend an action to move to a linked adjacent city.
  Play card: The active player may discard a city card to move to that city or if the card matches the city their pawn is currently on, then it can be discarded to move to any city. This always costs an action and the card must be discarded.
  Research station: For an action point, the active player can move between 2 research station, regardless of their positions on the board.
  Pass card: If the active player and any other player have their pawns on the same city, a player card may be passed between them for an action, provided it matches the location they are on.
  ​Build research station: To build the research station, the active player must discard the city card that matches the city they are on and also spend an action, place a research station token on that location.
  Treat disease: For an action, the active player may remove a disease cube from their current location.
  Cure disease: If the active player has 5 city cards of the same colour and they are currently on a location also has a research station, they can discard those cards and use a action to cure the disease of the matching colour.
  A cured disease can still spread, but is now much easier to cure - an action can be spent to remove all disease cubes of that colour from a city instead of a single cube. Once all the disease cubes for a cured disease have been removed from a board, then that disease has been eradicated and won't return this game.
  Special ability: Some special abilities require the spending of an action to use.
  Event cards: Playing an event card doesn't cost an action, furthermore any player can play one in any player's turn unless a card has been drawn but not resolved.
  Hand limit: It's worth mentioning that all players have a hand limit of 7, any cards above this number must be discarded or possibly played in the case of an event card.
  ​You will have no doubt noticed that needing 5 cards of a single colour out of a hand of 7 means that players will forced to discard other cards frequently in pursuit of their objective. This is par for the course for a Pandemic game.
• Draw cards: Once the active player has finished their 4 actions, they must draw 2 cards from the player deck, if these are city or event cards, then it's all good. If however, it includes an epidemic card, things just went south.
  Epidemic Card: When an epidemic card is drawn, 3 events will be triggered.
  Increase rate: Move the marker 1 space along the infection rate track, this may increase the number of cards drawn during the infection stage.
  Epidemic infection: Draw a card from the bottom of the infection deck and increase the number of cubes of the corresponding colour on the revealed location to 3, if the location already contains cubes, an outbreak will occur (See below for more on outbreaks.).
  Resupply infection deck: Take all the cards in the infection deck's discard pile (Including the one just drawn from the bottom of the deck.) and shuffle them, then place them face-down on top of the infection deck, do not shuffle the unrevealed cards in the infection deck.
  In game terms, this means that cities that have already experienced infection will experience it again before other cities. The pressure is on!
• Infect: Draw a number of cards from the infection deck equal to the infection rate, add a disease cube in the card's colour to each revealed city. Cities cannot hold more than 3 cubes of each colour, if a disease cube would be added to a city that already has 3 cubes in that colour, don't add the cube, instead an outbreak occurs.
  All revealed cards should then be discarded.
  Outbreak: When an outbreak occurs, 2 events will be triggered
  Marker: Move the marker on the outbreak track along by 1 space when an outbreak occurs.
  Expansion: Next, add a disease cube of the outbreak's colour to every adjacent connected city, if an adjacent city already 3 cubes in that colour, then another outbreak occurs, thus multiple outbreaks may and probably will happen, however, a city can only experience 1 outbreak per infection card drawn.

Play then progresses to the player on the left.

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.

30th May 2021

Sunday night gaming on Board Game Arena continues with Dragonwood.

Those woods there, there be dragons in those woods, that must be why it's named Dragonwood! There are many monsters to capture, so to assemble brave adventurers, take your cards and take your dice and head off into the forests, there're adversaries to be struck, stomped or screamed at!

Caveat: We've only ever played Dragonwood digitally online.

What's in a game?

• Dragonwood cards: These cards consist of creatures to capture, enhancements to earn and events to encounter.
  Creatures: Acquiring creatures earn victory points. Each card has a picture of the creature it represents and also shows how many victory points it's worth.
  Creatures also have a column of 3 numbers, one number each for the strike, stomp, or scream actions.
  For example:
  Grumpy Troll
  Victory points: 4
  Strike: 9
  Stomp: 11
  Scream: 9
  These values are the target numbers that must be met with dice rolls in order to acquire the card, the higher the victory points, the higher the target numbers.
  Which of the 3 values is used for the dice roll is explained below.
  Enhancements: Unlike creatures, enhancements do not score victory points, instead they give the controlling player a bonus that works towards capturing creatures in some way or other, this may be once-only or ongoing.
  Finally, enhancements cannot be used in capturing other enhancements.
  Events: Events can be beneficial or detrimental and are immediately played when revealed during play.
• Adventurer cards: There are 64 adventurer cards in all.
  60 adventurer cards: Numbered 1-12 in 5 different colours.
  4 Lucky Ladybug cards: Drawing one of these cards is lucky! See below for further info.
• Dice: These six siders are NOT numbered 1-6, instead the distribution of numbers goes; 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4. The mathematically astute among you will note that the mean average when rolling 2 of these dice would be 5, the mean average for 2 normal six siders is 7.

That's it for components.
Well, there's not much that can be said since we've only played it digitally. The art on the carts is bright, cartoonish and pleasant, text is clearly written and easy to read.

How's it play?
Setup

• Dragonwood deck: The size of this deck is dependant on the number of players.
  First remove the 2 dragon cards from the deck and shuffle it, discard the required number of cards and then shuffle the dragons back into the bottom half of the deck.
  Deal a row of 5 cards to form what's called 'The landscape'. If any events are dealt during setup, shuffle them back into the deck.
• Adventurer deck: Shuffle the adventurer cards into a face-down deck, deal 5 to each player, these should be kept hidden.
• Starting player: Determine a starting player

On to play
The objective in Dragonwood is to capture creatures cards which are worth 1-7 points each.
Each turn, the active player will have a choice of 2 actions.

• Reload: This is a fancy word for draw a card from the Adventurer deck. If the Lucky Ladybug card is drawn, discard it to the discard pile and draw 2 more cards. Players have a maximum hand size of 9.
  ​If the adventurer deck is depleted, shuffle the discard pile into a new deck. This is done only once per game.
• Capture a card: Players may try to capture a creature or enhancement, mechanically it's identical and there are 3 ways to do this, all methods are done by playing cards, the more card that are played, the more dice can be rolled. Thus the active player plays their cards and chooses one of the 3 capture methods to use.
  Strike: In order to use strike, the active player must play cards that are all in a straight, e.g., a 4, 5, 6, 7 of any colour, because there are 4 cards being played, that would give the active player 4 dice to roll.
  Stomp: To stomp, all card played must have the same value, so two 9s would give the active player 2 dice to roll.
  ​Scream: This requires the active player to play cards all of the same colour, regardless of their numbers; a 2, 3, 8, 10 & 12 all in green would give the active player 5 dice to roll.
  Once the method has been chosen, the active player rolls the relevant dice:
  Fail: if the result is less than the target number for the chosen method, then the capture attempt has failed! The active player takes the cards they played back into their hand and must discard 1 card.
  Success: If the result is equal to or higher than the chosen target number, then the creature is captured and the cards are discarded into the adventurer discard pile.
  A new card is immediately drawn to replace the captured card, if that card is an event, it is immediately played and discarded, another card is drawn, there must always be 5 cards in the landscape if possible.

Play continues until either both dragons have been captured which case the game ends immediately or the adventurer deck has been depleted twice, which triggers a final set of turns.
Then it goes to the endgame.

Endgame
Players score the victory points for each creature they captured.
The player who has captured the most creatures earns an additional 3 points.
Once points are tallied, highest score wins!

Overall
Decisions are based around how much you want or need to push your luck and when to or when not to try and capture cards, managing this is key to Dragonwood.

If a creature has a value of 10 for one of it's target numbers, then it's not hard to figure out that 4 dice will give the active player a 50% chance of capturing it and they'll need to play 4 cards to do this. 9 or lower and the odds swing in the player's favour, 11+ and well, it's not a push your luck game for nothing!
Sure, someone can play it safe and draw cards to get better odds, but this consumes turns while instead, competitors could be capturing those creatures. A handful of adventurer cards scores nothing at the game's end.
Conversely, rashly trying to capture cards and failing will cost players their adventurer cards, it's a clever little balancing mechanic.
Even though the decision to capture a card or not is a simple, almost no brainer decision, the need to outdo other players generally means it never quite a meaningless one.

We found that acquiring enhancements early on (If they appear early on that is.) could be a big advantage. There are enhancements that add 1 or 2 to capture rolls, it might not seem like much, but in a game about averaged dice rolls, it can swing the odds quite a lot.

It's obvious that Dragonwood is a light game that skews towards younger players and with that in mind, I don't think it's appropriate to be overly harsh on it.
With it's fairly simplistic choices and reliance on randomness, fans of 'heavy' games probably won't find much to engage with here, unless they're looking looking for a undemanding filler for around 30 minutes to allow their brains to cool down between other, heavier games.
However, ​I do think that younger players will find the game enjoyable and dice rolling exciting, casual gamers may also find it entertaining.

23rd May 2021

It's Sunday evening and I'm logged into Skype and Board Game Arena​ on my PC and it's time for the final game of the day.

Drafting. Rawr! Dinosaurs. Rawr! T-rexes. Rawr!
Draftosaurus has it all, drafting and well... you get the idea. This is a game where scientists have discovered how to clone dinosaurs and now parks of them are opening everywhere, all in a completely non-copyright infringing manner of course!

Caveat: We've only played Draftosaurus digitally online.

What's in a game?

• Player boards: These boards are double-sided and each provide a slightly different game experience/difficulty. The 'summer' side is easier than the 'winter' side.
  Player boards represent zoos and are divided up into 4 different 'areas'; the grassland and woodland regions and left & right sides of the river, each area contains 3 dinosaur pens. There's some crossover between areas, so grasslands will be found on both side of the river for example and every pen is in 2 different areas, there are a total 6 pens. The player boards also have a 7th area called 'The River', this isn't a pen.
  This is true of both sides of the player boards.
• Dinosaur meeples: There are 6 types of differently coloured dinosaur in the game and 10 meeples of each type, including t-rexes!
• Placement die: This is a 6-sided die, each face has a unique symbol.

Artwork on the player boards is colourful and clear.
There's not much more I can say, I can't talk about the physical components which also include a draw bag.

How's it play?
Draftosaurus is about placing dinosaur meeples into the pens, different pens have different requirements, which is explained below.
Setup

• In the physical game, meeples would be placed into the draw bag, the amount is dependent on the number of players.
• ​Give each player a player board, all boards should be placed on the same side.
• Determine the starting player and give them the placement die, they are the current active player.

Draftosaurus is played over 2 rounds and each round consists of 6 turns, thus each player will get to place a total 12 dinosaur meeples. Turns may and probably will play out differently for players other than the active player.

• Draw meeples: At the start of each round all players draw 6 dinosaur meeples, these should be kept secret by each player.
• Roll placement die: The active player should roll the placement die, the die's result will determine where the other players may place a dinosaur meeple (See below for info.).
  Conversely, the active player can place a dinosaur meeple into any pen they choose.
• Place dinosaur meeple: All players choose a meeple and simultaneously play it, other than the active player, all players must place their meeples as dictated by the placement die.
  ​​Woodland: Other players must place a meeple into 1 of the 3 pens in the woodland area of their board.
  Grassland: Other players must place a meeple into 1 of the 3 pens in the grassland area of their board.
  Left of river: Other players must place a meeple into 1 of the 3 pens that are left of the river.
  Right of river: Other players must place a meeple into 1 of the 3 pens that are right of the river.
  Empty Pen: Other players must place a dinosaur meeple into any empty pen on their board.
  ​Not with a t-rex: Other players can place a dinosaur meeple into any pen that does not contain a t-rex.
  Different pens have different set collecting requirements to score points, one pen requires all the dinosaurs in it to be identical, another requires them to all be different or another only scores for identical pairs and so on, there are 12 different ways to collect and score sets across both sides of the board. Generally, the more you complete a set, the more you score for it.
  Players can choose to (Or may have to!) place meeples in the river, which scores each meeple a flat +1 point.
  T-rexes score bonus points, but depending on the placement die, can cause trouble.
• Pass dinosaur meeples: Once players have placed their chosen dinosaur meeples, every player must pass their remaining meeples to the player to their left.
• Pass placement die: The active player passes the placement die to the player on their left who will become the active player in the next turn.

Play continues until all players have placed 6 dinosaur meeples, then players draw another 6 and play resumes as explained above until another 6 meeples have been placed.

Endgame
Once the 12th and final dinosaur meeple has been placed by all players, the endgame is triggered.
​Players score all of the sets they've created on their board, plus any bonuses or penalties. Highest score wins.

Overall
When playing Draftosaurus, more often than not, players will find themselves having to place meeples into unexpected pens thanks to the placement die. Without this element, the game would be too predictable.
How players deal with, manage and anticipate these these situations is key to victory. Often there will be a conflict between which set to increase or start on and keeping a pen open for another type of dinosaur.
It also pays to try and remember which dinosaur meeples will be coming round.
The winter side of the board makes it harder to collect different sets and provides more challenge but somehow a little less fun?

It's hard to find a lot more to say about Draftosaurus, it's quick, fairly light game to learn and play that's also quite luck based. If you don't like this sort of game, Draftosaurus will probably infuriate you. I think that maybe it's a bit too luck based for me to play extensively.

Not taken too seriously and played as a filler game and Draftosaurus is a reasonable diversion.

23rd May 2021

Sunday night game rolls on and I'm logged into Skype and Board Game Arena.

The final game of the night was Forbidden Island: A cooperative race against time to escape a mysterious island about to be swallowed by the ocean.

Forbidden Island is the older sibling of Forbidden Desert, you can read my blog about it here.

Caveat: We played the game digitally but in the past have played the physical game.

What's in a game?

• ​Tiles: There are 24 square tiles, each one has an illustration that depicts a different location or landscape. These tiles are also double sided, one side features full colour, while the other has a monochrome blue and white illustration of the same subject. 8 of the tiles also display symbols that relate to the 4 figurines (More on figurines below.).
  These tiles are used to represent the titular island.
• Flood cards: These 24 cards correspond to the 24 island tiles. Each flood card has an identical image to the island tile it represents.
• Treasure cards: There are 4 types of treasure card that correspond to the 4 elements, fire, earth, water & air. There are 5 of each type, thus 20 in total.
  Also included among treasure cards are special cards, there are 3 types, Helicopter lift, Sandbag & Waters Rise!
• Player cards: Each player assumes a different role in the game, these 6 different coloured cards explain each role's special ability.
• Pawns: There are 6 differently coloured pawns that correspond with the 6 player cards.
• Figurines: There are 4 figurines, each one is a stylised representation of 1 of the 4 elements and are the game's objectives/treasures.
• Standee: Used to track the rising water level and increasing frequency of flooding that occurs throughout the game.

All the components are made to a level of quality that you'd expect from a modern game. The tiles and standee are appropriately thick, pawns are equally solid, the figurines are fairly chunky and weighty.
Eye-catching, good quality artwork is used on the flood cards & island tiles, they also come with suitably evocative names such as Temple Of The Moon, Cave Of Embers, Breaker's Bridge and so on. Art on the treasure cards is also good and matches the nicely sculpted figurines.
All-in-all, the components are good.

How's it play?
Forbidden Island is a race against time to recover 4 treasures (In the form of the 4 figurines.) and escape the ancient island as it collapses into the ocean waves. Collecting treasures is done by heading to certain locations with a set of cards and acquiring them,
Setup

• Create Island: The island is randomly created each game by shuffling the 24 island tiles and laying them out in a sort of diamond-shape with their coloured sides face-up, this forms the game's 'board'.
• Set difficulty: A marker on the standee is used to track the game's constantly increasing difficulty. There are 3 starting 'notches' for the marker that represent the 3 levels levels of difficulty.
• Begin flooding: The island is already sinking into the ocean as the game begins!
  Shuffle the flood deck and place it face-down, then one-by-one draw 6 cards into the discard pile. For each flood card drawn, flip the corresponding island tile to its blue and white side, these locations are now flooded!
• Deal player cards: Shuffle the player cards and deal one to each player, then place the corresponding pawn on it's starting location as indicated by the island tiles.
• Deal treasure cards: Shuffle the treasure cards into a face-down deck and deal 2 to each player.
• Determine starting order.

On to play
During their turn, the active player will have 3 action points to spend on various actions. Once all players have had a turn, then the game gets to have its turn.

• Actions: There are 4 actions every player can perform, additionally each character will have a unique special ability they can use at the cost of an action point. Actions may be repeated.
  Move: Spending 1 action to move orthogonally to an adjacent tile.
  Shore up: For each action point spent, the active player may flip they are on or an orthogonally adjacent tile from it's flooded side to its normal side.
  Give a treasure card: If you or more characters are on the same tile, the active player may use an action point to give a treasure card to one of the close by characters.
  ​Acquire a figurine: Each of the 4 figurines has 2 island tiles associated with it; if the active player is on one of those 2 tiles and has 4 matching treasure cards, then they can spend an action to acquire that figurine.
  Use ability: Each character has a unique special ability such as being able to move other characters, or being able to move diagonally. Each use of the special ability costs an action point.
• Special cards: Of the 3 types special card, 2 make be used by players in any player's turn. The Waters Rise! card is explained elsewhere.
  Helicopter Lift: Can move any number of characters from any one tile to another tile.
  Sandbag: Can be played to shore up any island tile on the board.
• Draw Treasure cards: Once a player has completed their turn, they draw 2 treasure cards into their hand (Max hand size is 5.). If any of the cards is a Water Rise! card, then this spells trouble for the characters, this affects the flood deck and more on this is explained below.

After every player turn, 'the game' has it's turn, which is done using the flood deck.

• Waters Rise! Strictly speaking, Waters Rise! cards are resolved at the end of a player's turn, but since it affects the flood deck, I'm explaining it here.
  When the active player draws 2 treasure cards, if any of them are revealed to be a Waters Rise! card, then the following occurs.
  Increase flood level: Put the marker on the water level standee up a notch, this may or may not increase the number of cards that will be drawn.
  Shuffle drawn flood cards: All flood cards that have been drawn are shuffled together and placed on top of the flood deck.
  The Waters Rise! card is discarded into the treasure cards' discard pile.
• Flooding: Reveal a number of cards from the flood deck equal to the value that the marker that the water level standee is pointing at, this will be 2-5 cards. Each corresponding tile will be affected as follows.
  Flood: If a tile is 'normal' when it's card comes up, then it is flipped to it's flooded side.
  Sink: If a tile is already flooded when its card comes up, then it sinks! The tile and its flood card are removed from play for the remainder of the game. This can potentially prove dangerous to characters on that tile. Furthermore, characters cannot cross 'gaps' created by sunken tiles, unless it is the diver character.
  After this discard all the revealed cards (That did not cause sinking.) into the discard pile.

That's it for the game's actions, play then progresses to the next player and alternates until the endgame is triggered.
If, during play either of the decks is depleted, simply shuffle the discard pile back into a deck.

Endgame
As a cooperative game, the players collectively win or lose. Forbidden Island has several ways to lose and 1 way to win!

There are 9 'critical' island tiles on the board.
Each figurine has 2 tiles which are used to acquire the it, if both tiles for a figurine sink before it is acquired, then it's game over as there's now no way to get that figurine.
Similarly, if the Fool's Landing island tile (Which contains the helipad sinks.), then there's no way to escape and it's also game over.
If a tile with a character on it sinks, the character must swim to an adjacent tile, if there are no adjacent tiles, then unless that character is the diver, they will meet their water end! If any character is lost then it's game over for all players!
Finally, if the marker on the water level reaches the skull & crossbones, then well.... you get the idea. Glub!
​
Winning; easier said than done!
Any single player must collect 4 identical treasure cards, then must reach one of the 2 island tiles associated with that treasure and spend an action to acquire that treasure's figurine. This must be done for all 4 figurines.
That's not the end though, now all the characters must reach the helipad and a Helicopter Lift card must be played by any player to escape to victory.

Overall
Like other cooperative games I've played, Forbidden Island injects a dose of luck into the gameplay in order to consistently challenge players and how players manage that luck is key to victory.

Broadly speaking the gameplay is; player shores up island - game tries to sink island - player shores up island and so on. Players have to keep the island a safe as possible long enough to survive and get the cards they need to win the game.
It's not as straightforward as it sounds though, the 3 actions points each player is given to do stuff never seems enough. Players have to choose between working towards objectives or saving the island and the clock is always, always ticking.

The way the flood deck works means that tiles which have already suffered a flood will be more prone to suffering further floods because when a Waters Rise! card appears and refreshes the flood deck, cards that were already revealed are put back on the top of the flood deck, meaning they will be the first to be revealed again.
Obviously protecting the critical island tiles is.... well critical but choosing to protect other tiles is a harder choice. Sure you can allow a unimportant tile at the edge of the board to sink and it won't immediately affect the game, however, when a tile sinks, its flood card is removed from the deck, slimming it down and meaning that flood cards for tiles you are trying to protect will appear more often. Keeping cards in the flood deck can act as a buffer against other parts of the islands sinking, provided you're willing to spend the action points of course....

A hand limit of 5 is also another area of the game which forces players to make decisions, just like action points, the hand limit never seems enough.
It takes 4 cards to gain a figurine, giving player's space for only 1 other card in their hand! Through gritted death, players will frequently have to discard useful cards because they're not useful right now.

To win Forbidden Island, the players will need to cooperate, coordinate and optimise the use of action points, they'll need to make every decisions count and use special cards appropriately and decisively.
Choosing when to let a tile sink or save it, or when and what card to give to another player are all vital decisions and most of the time player's will be forced to make compromises, rarely will their decisions be no-brainers.

I find Forbidden Island to be an enjoyable cooperative game and I'm happy to play it.

Sometimes the luck of the draw can go with and give you a slightly easier time or it screw you over (Nothing like drawing Fool's Landing in the starting 6 flooded tiles, drawing Waters Rise straightaway and watching Fool's Landing immediately sink....).
But if it was always easy or fair, what would be the fun it that?

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.

• Board: A stone age settlement in a wilderness vista is shown on the board, settlement locations are concerned with the advances and inventions and wilderness locations are used for gathering resources. As well as the obligatory scoring track, the board contains the following elements:
  Tool maker: There is only 1 space here for a single worker, using this location allows a player to gain or improve their tools.
  Field: There is also only 1 space herer, this allows a player to increase their tribes agriculture score on the agriculture track.
  Hut: There are 2 spaces here, to utilise the hut a player must place 2 workers on to the 2 spaces at the same time. This allows the player to acquire an additional worker.
  That's right, this is the nookie shed!
  Plains: This is where workers are placed to acquire food, presumably by gathering food or hunting animals. Any amount of workers can be placed here.
  Forest: Workers are placed here to acquire wood. Up to 7 workers can be placed here.
  Clay pit: Players can acquire clay here, also has a maximum of 7 worker spaces.
  Quarry: Used to gain stone, also has a maximum of 7 workers spaces.
  River: Players can place workers here to pan for gold, again, a maximum of 7 workers can be placed here.
  Agriculture track: Used to track the agriculture level of each time. This also represents the advancing knowledge of a tribe and ability to stave off hunger through farming.
• Building tiles: There are 4 spaces on the board for building tiles. Tiles each have a space for a single worker which is used to buy the tile. The cost varies according to the tile, but is always in resources. Tiles score victory points.
• Civilisation cards: As with building tiles, there are 4 spaces on the board for civilisation cards, the cost of civilisation cards is also paid in resources but unlike building tiles, the player can choose which resources to spend. Cost ranges from 1-4 resources and is dictated by which space the card is filling on the board, the leftmost space costs 4 and each space to the right decreases the cost by 1 down to a cost of 1 on the 4th and rightmost space.
  Like building tiles, each card has a single space for a worker, allowing the controlling player to purchase the card.
  Civilisation cards have a variety of benefits, most cards give a one-off bonus, typically resources and most cards can also contribute towards collecting a set for victory points.
• Player board: Each player has their own board, used to store resources and workers. They are also used to display which building tiles and tools they have accumulated, face-down civilisation cards are also placed on the board.
• Meeples: Each player has 10 workers in their colour and starts the game with 5, the remaining workers can be earned during the game.
• Food tokens: Standard round card tokens that are used to represent food.
• Resource tokens: All of the game's 4 resources (Wood, clay, stone & Gold.) are represented by wooden tokens.
• Tool tokens: These double-sided square card tokens show either 1 & 2 or 3 & 4 on their sides.
• Dice: There are 7 dice, used when gathering food or resources.

Components in Stone Age are what you'd expect, the cards, tiles and boards are solid if unremarkable, they do the job and look as if they'll last well, which is all you can ask for. The meeples and the 4 sets of resource tokens in are constructed of wood and are the nicest components.
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

• Give each player 5 meeples and a player board, also give each player 12 food.
• Put all the food and resources on to the game board in their allotted places, food goes on the plains, wood on to the forest and so on.
• Shuffle the civilisation cards and place 4 of them on to their 4 allotted spaces face-up. The remainder of the cards should be placed as a face-down deck next to the board.
• All 28 building tiles should be shuffled into 4 stacks of 7. The number of stacks available in a game should equal to the number of players participating. Each stack used should be placed face-up in one of the 4 allotted spaces for them.
• Determine starting player.

That's more or less it, now the game's ready to go.
Gameplay is broken up into 3 phases, place workers, resolve workers and end of round.

• Place workers: Starting with the 1st player and going clockwise, each player may put meeple(s) into a single location, there are some stipulations though:
  Worker limits: Most spaces limit to the number of workers that can be placed there, obviously this cannot be exceeded.
  No reinforcements: Once a player has placed any number of workers into a location, on a later turn they cannot add any more workers to that same location, regardless of how many open spaces might be available.
  No passing: Players cannot pass and must place all of their workers.

Once all players have placed their workers, it's time to resolve those actions.
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:

• Tool maker: Allows the player to take a tool token or increase a tool token's level. A player may have up to 3 level 4 tools.
  Tools are beneficial when a player's tribe goes gathering food or resources (See below for more information.).
• Hut: Allows the player to take one of their unused meeples and add it to their player board, ready to be deployed in the next round. Players can have a maximum of 10 workers at their disposal.
• Field: Allows the player to increase their agriculture level, (This can be very important, see below.).
• Gather food: The active player may gather food, they take a number of dice equal to the workers they placed on the plains location and roll them. Then divide the result by 2 and round-down, that's how much food they get. Thus with 2 dice, the average result is 7 which would net the player 3 food.
  Tool tokens may be used once per round to increase the value rolled by the value of the tool, which can be very useful.
• Gather resources: Functionally, this is identical to gathering food except it gets harder because the number used to divide the dice roll gets higher.
  Gathering wood requires the player to divide the result of the dice roll by 3 instead, so 2 dice with an average result of 7 would net the player 2 wood. This incrementally increases for all the resources, culminating with gold which requires the dice roll to be divided by 6! 2 dice getting an average of 7 would net the player 1 gold and if they rolled 5 or less (Not that improbable.) then they'd get 0!
  Tools can also be used to increase the value of these rolls.
• Buy building tile: The active player can buy the building tile they placed a worker on by paying its cost as indicated on the tile. This immediately increases the player's score as displayed.
• Buy civilisation card: The active player can buy the civilisation tile they placed a worker on to, paying the 1 - 4 resources as required and placing the card face-down on their player board.

Once the first player has removed all their workers, play proceeds clockwise until all players have retrieved all their workers, then the game goes to the end of round.

• Feeding: Firstly, each player acquires extra food equal to their level on the agriculture track and adds it to their player board.
  Then they must feed their tribe. Feeding a tribe requires spending an amount of food equal to the amount workers a player has available, since all players begin the game with 5 workers, this cost will always be at least 5.
  If a player have used all their food and still doesn't have enough, then they can substitute in resources on a 1-to-1 basis (Which can be pricey!), if a player is unwilling or unable to do this, then they immediately suffer a -10 point penalty! That is undoubtedly harsh.
• Restock civilisation cards: If any civilisation cards were bought during the round, slide cards to right to fill the empty spaces, then deal cards from the deck into the spaces now on the left. This is a typical 'conveyor belt' mechanic.

The first player marker move clockwise and a new round begins.

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.

28th March 2021

I'm logged into my PC and Sunday gaming on Board Game Arena continued.

The next game of the day was Potion Explosion, a game about creating magic spells through set collecting and a match 3 mechanic.
That's right.
"Yer a wizard Har," no, no, let's not go there!

Caveat: The digital version of the game was played, but previously we have also played a physical copy.

What's in a game?

• Marbles: the game comes with actual glassy marbles in 4 colours, red, blue, yellow & Black. These represent the 4 different types ingredients used to create potions.
• Dispenser: This is a box with 5 holes on the top and protruding out of one side of it are 5 sloped grooves or tracks. Marbles are poured into the box through the top and then roll out into the tracks to create 5 (hopefully) random columns of marbles.
• Potion tiles: These obviously potion shaped tiles are double sided. There are various different types of potion that have differing effects in game.
  On one side, the main part of the tile/bottle is split into 2 or 3 different coloured segments, each of these segments contain holes which allow the marbles that players collect to sit on the tile.
  ​The other side of potions tiles show the points they score after completion.
• Player board: These large tiles have two recessed curves that allow potions to fit into the recesses, there is also a space with 3 holes to store 3 unused marbles.
  This is designed to look a bit like a worktop with a pair of Bunsen burners and a flask.
• Skill tokens: These rectangular tokens are accumulated throughout the game and earn bonus victory points, they also serve as a countdown timer to end a game.
• Help tokens: Players can take these to receive some help but they also deduct from victory points at the end of the game.

All of the components in Potion Explosion are top notch, the dispenser and the marbles may seem gimmicky but in practice work quite well. The remainder of the components, the tiles and tokens are all made of good quality materials.
The game's art style and theme obviously draw some inspiration from the you-know-who films but that's fine. For the most part there isn't too much art on the components but what there is, is bright and colourful.

What's in a game?
Setup

• Establish a turn order and give each player a player board.
• Fill the dispenser with dice. All 5 tracks should be filled with marbles.
• Set out all the potions that will used (Not all potion types are used in every game), then set out the marked starting potion tiles. The remaining potions should be shuffled and placed into 5 stacks with the uncompleted side up.
• Create a stack of help tokens, size dependant on the number of players.
• Players each take a starting potion one at a time in the order specified and add it to their player board until everyone has two potions.

Now the game's ready to go.

On to play
In Potion Explosion, players use the marbles to complete their potions, these earn victory points. Completed potions can also be used to give the respective player a special action to perform.
Play starts with the starting player and progresses clockwise. The following actions are available to players.

• Take ingredient: The active player must take 1 marble from any spot in any of the 5 tracks in the dispenser.
  Potion explosion: When an marble is removed from a track, the marble(s) above will slide down and hit the marble below (Provided there is a marble below.), if the marbles that collided are the same colour, then this triggers the titular potion explosion. The active player then collects the marbles of the same colour that hit each other, this includes other marbles of the same colour connected to the marbles that connected. Once these marbles are collected, it possible that another potion explosion can be triggered and another and so on. This is essentially a match-3 or in this case a match-2 mechanic.
  Place ingredients: Once the active player has collected all the marbles available, those marbles must be placed on the empty holes on their potion tiles and the colours must match; red marbles must go on to holes on the red segment of a potion and so on. If there are not enough holes for all the marbles the player has accumulated on the potion tiles for any reason, then they can place up to 3 on the flask, these can be used in later turns.
  Any excess marbles must be returned to the dispenser. 
  Complete potion: Once all the holes on a potion tile are filled with marbles, it has been completed. All marbles should be removed and returned them to the dispenser. The tile is removed from the player board, flipped to the opposite (completed) side and placed next to the player board.
• Gain a skill token: If a player successfully completes 3 identical or 5 different potions, then they take a skill token.
  Skill tokens are worth victory points.
• Use potion: A player can use completed potions at any time in their turn, even straight after completing it.
  Potions have various different effects, such as removing or taking certain ingredients from the tracks on the dispenser or stealing another player's ingredients from their flask.
• Take help token: At any time, a player may choose to take a help token, this allows them to take an ingredient from one of the tracks, it does not trigger a potion explosion though.
  Additionally, help tokens deduct from a player's victory point total at the end of the game.

Once a player's turn has ended; if they have completed any potions, then they now take new potion tiles from one of the 5 potion stacks to ensure they have 2 potions at the start of their next turn.
Play continues until the endgame is triggered

Endgame
The game's stack of skill tokens are also used as a countdown time, once the stack is depleted, the endgame is triggered.
Then the current round is completed, ensuring that all players have had an equal number of turns, skill tokens can still be earned and are drawn from remaining previously unused reserve of tokens.
Then victory points from completed potions are scored as are skill tokens, finally points are deducted for every help token taken.
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
When a marble is removed from a track, there's a satisfying little clink sound when the other marbles hit one below that's down to the use of proper marbles instead as plastic components. The designers and publishers have put thought into the look and feel of the game, it shows and adds too the game.

There's a degree of luck when playing Potion Explosion. Sometimes how the chips - or in this marbles fall can have a big influence on a player's turn and how many marbles they get to collect in a turn.
A player draws a single marble from the dispenser in their turn, but really they should always be aiming to raw as many as possible because the game is essentially a race between players to complete potions. Potions can be used to facilitate this and despite feeling counter-intuitive to use, so can help tokens. Being able to remove a marble before drawing one can sometimes turn getting a single marble into triggering a chain reaction.
Players must also be able to adapt to constant changes in the dispenser, there's no point in planning your move until it's your turn. Every time a marble is drawn it will figuratively change the landscape, sometimes dramatically. Keeping your fingers crossed, hoping that no one spots a combo you've seen probably isn't the best of strategies.

Additionally, when a player takes a new potion, they're faced with a choice, do they go for the highest scoring potion, or go for a potion that works towards completing a set, or a potion with specific ability?
Players need to pay attention to the spread of colours of their current uncompleted potion and any new potion they take, repetition of colours between potions can slow a player down. It can be irritating when you draw a handful of marbles in a colour you can't use.

All in all, this gives Potion Explosion a subtle depth that belies it's simplicity and seemingly gimmicky mechanic. Winning requires players recognise when it's best to use potions or exploit the help tokens in order to most efficiently accumulate ingredients, which then in order means that players must recognise which new potions to acquire.
Ultimately players always have meaningful decisions to make and that makes it an engaging game.