8th December 2021 The next game of Wednesday afternoon gaming on Board Game Arena was 7 Wonders: Architects, which is essentially a 'spin-off' of and at least a little thematically similar to the titular 7 Wonders drafting game. Like it's ancestor, 7 Wonders: Architects is all about building one of the world's great wonders and no doubt dabbling in science, politics, religion and warfare while doing it. Caveat: We've only played this game digitally. What's in a game? In the physical game, when players are given/choose wonders to build, they are given that wonder's 'tray'' containing the relevant components for that wonder. However, none of this appears in the digital version
The artwork used throughout 7 Wonders: Architects is very similar to the original game which is both understandable and also pretty good, there's a nice variety of colourful illustration used throughout the cards. The same is true of the game's iconography, it looks identical to 7 Wonders and just like 7 Wonders, there's a lot of it. Most of it is pretty straightforward but players will invariably turn to the rules for an explanation from time-to-time. How's it play? Setup
On to play Play in 7 Wonders: Architects is pretty straightforward with the active player taking their turn before play proceeds to the player on their left.
Endgame The endgame is triggered at the end of any player's turn when the 5th tile for their wonder is flipped, thus completing it. Points come from a variety of sources. Wonder: Flipped tiles on wonders can provide points. Blue cards: All blue cards score victory points. Military victory tokens: These tokens contribute victory points. Progress tokens: These tokens may provide bonus victory points. Cat pawn: Whoever possess the cat pawn at the game end will earn a small amount of victory tokens. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
It's quite impressive how the 7 Wonders: architects manages to distil so much of its parent game into this simpler product and I also like how the mechanic for flipping the wonder tiles works but I'm going to go ahead and say it; I'm pretty certain that I'm not the target audience for 7 Wonder: Architects. It feels a little like a 'entry-level' game that I found a little too shallow. When it comes to a players turn, they are fundamentally only given 3 choices. Take a face-up card from the left, take a face-up card from the right or take a face-down (Unless you have the cat pawn of course.) card from the central area and that's it. I suppose that it can force players to adapt, recognise and try to exploit the available cards to their fullest advantage but I feel that the game lacks the flexibility to see this through, there's no synergy between different card types and all of this makes it hard to create any sense of strategy during the game. In fact, it feels that strategy is reduced to pick a path to victory and hope that the cards which support that strategy appear. That meant it felt my choices had little significance beyond their immediate benefits. So, if I'm not the target audience for 7 Wonders: Architects, who is? Casual or light gamers? It strikes me that the rules have enough complexity to not be immediately accessible and the game's usage of iconography only compounds this - experienced gamers will be used to this, but casuals gamers, not so much. I Feel the game sort of straddles a strange middle ground between rules complexity and light gameplay which is the opposite of what you want and makes it less accessible to casual gamers and less compelling to more dedicated gamers.
0 Comments
19th October 2021 Tuesday evening has come around again and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club. The first game of the night was Unearth; a dice-rolling, worker placement game set after a distant apocalypse where players command a band of 'delvers' searching for lost wonders of the long past age. Basically archaeologists sans the bullwhips and giant rock chases! What's in a game?
For the ruins cards, Unearth uses some distinct eye-catching colour palettes and isometric cuboid artwork to depict the long destroyed structures. For the delver cards, an almost cartoony style is used to illustrate the workers/dice. Overall, I like the art style. The game doesn't make much use of iconography, what there is of it is pretty simple to comprehend. How's it play? Setup
On to play In Unearth, players take turns and are attempting to use delvers to acquire sets of ruin cards, that is place rolled dice on ruins card and also build wonders by accumulating and placing stone. Broadly speaking there can be 2 phases that the active player acts in, the delving phase and the building phase.
Endgame Play continues until the end of age card is revealed, any instructions on that card are immediately resolved, then play continues until all ruins cards have been claimed. Players then score for each set of the same colour they've collected. Sets range from 1-5 cards and score 2-30 points per set. there are also points for sets of each colour collected. Players can then score points from the individual wonders they've built, they also score for building 3 or more wonders. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
The sum of Unearth's parts make it a fairly unusual game. It provides 2 distinct paths to scoring points and neither can be entirely ignored. Set collecting is one way to earn victory points and the card collecting mechanics are quite solid, giving players who fail to acquire a card some sort of other benefit and the range of dice available to players that give them a couple of options is key to this. Players can play for the card or try and play for the stones - the eight-sided die has a slightly better chance of roll higher than a six-sider and four sided die has a 75% chance of rolling 3 or lower, they each give advantage but don't guaranteed success. The other path to victory points - building wonders requires players to both plan ahead and also adapt to opportunities and changes as they appear, collecting stones of a particular colour can always prove tricky, especially if another player is also on the hunt for stone tokens. There are also some restrictions on how stone tiles are placed and depending on what a stones a player is trying to get, placing them may require a small amount of planning and forethought. I found Unearth a little unengaging and I can't quite put my finger on why, maybe it's the game's slightly abstract nature or maybe that it feels like little is ever happening. Very little seems to occur in a player's turn, quite often a player rolls a dice and there's no immediate effect, sometimes they get a stone, sometimes they don't, occasionally they get a ruins card. Often it felt like that despite my decisions, little was in my control. All of this makes the game sort of light on decision making. Players choose which ruins card to gamble a doe on and when to use a delver card, or where to place a stone token when they gain one and that's about it. There's just not that much to it. I can't find much to fault Unearth but then I can't find much to praise it either. It's all a little unexciting. 12th October 2021 It's a Tuesday and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club. The first game of the evening was Sushi Go Party!. The big brother and follow up of the excellent Sushi Go!, if you've not read it, check out my blog about Sushi Go! here and then come back. I'm not going to talk too much about Sushi Go Party!, other than where it's different to Sushi Go!. Mechanically, it shares almost exactly the same blend of drafting and set collecting rules as its predecessor. What Sushi Go Party! brings is a bunch of new cards with new ways to collect sets and/or score points. In fact, Sushi Go Party! brings so many new cards to the game, that they can't be all used at the same time and introduces the concept of menus. More on menus below. What's in a game?
The components in Sushi Go Party! are all pretty good, the tiles and board feel sturdy enough and the cards made well enough. The game maintains the same excellent, cheerfully colourful illustrations of cartoonish looking food as it's predecessor. If it ain't broke... There's not much iconography to the game, it's mostly just numbers. How's it play? It plays almost identically to Sushi Go!, the same take-a-card and pass-your-hand and set collecting mechanics played over 3 rounds that made the original so good are found here. Sushi Go Party! only differs in 2 ways. In setup, Sushi Go Party! requires the players to create a menu from the available sets of cards. This consists of the nigiri cards (Which are used in every game.), 1 rolls set, 3 appetiser sets, 2 specials sets and a dessert set. The rules provide a large, varied list of menus to use. I guess there's nothing stopping players from creating or randomly selecting their own menus. After the menu has been finalised, the relevant tiles are placed into the relevant recessed spots on the board so that all players can see what sets will be in the game. Finally, all the sets in the menu are shuffled together into a face down deck and dealt out to players as per the rules. The second difference: In Sushi Go!; the game goes through the deck without reusing it, i.e., at the end of a round, all played cards are scored, then discarded out of the game - except for puddings of course. But in Sushi Go Party!, the played cards are shuffled back into the deck, along with more pudding cards to balance out any that were taken players. Then the reshuffled deck is reused in the next round. It's a subtle difference, but it technically makes Sushi Go Party! a tiny bit more predictable as the composition of cards in the deck will 'reset' from round-to-round. Whereas in the original, once they're played, they're played. Overall
If you like Sushi Go!, you'll like Sushi Go Party!, no doubt about it and if you play Sushi Go! a lot, then this is probably also worth playing, the extra cards go a long way to increasing the game's longevity. But there's something that makes Sushi Go Party! less appealing than its predecessor and I think it's immediacy. Sushi Go! is pretty much the epitome of a quick, pick-up-and-play game; shuffle the cards, deal them out to players and you're ready to go. Clean up after the game end involves collecting the cards and putting them away. Conversely, in Sushi Go Party!; the board must be set up, a menu agreed upon and placed the relevant tiles placed on the board, then the pertinent card sets must be taken from the available sets, only then can they be shuffled and dealt to players. It doesn't end there though, when Sushi Go Party! is over, all cards must be put back into their sets before packing away. Not only that, Sushi Go Party! by necessity comes in a bigger tin, while the original is compact enough to fit in coat pocket. Gone is the portability and convenience. It sounds like I'm dissing Sushi Go Party! but I'm not, it's a great game. It's just that I don't feel the need to play it over the original, it doesn't offer a different enough experience to warrant the extra effort. However, like I said, if you play a lot of Sushi Go!, you should give this a try and if you've never played Sushi Go! or this, then you should definitely try one of them. 7th September 2021 Tuesday evening is here and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club. The first game of the night was Merv. What's in a game?
Despite its busyness, the game board is well illustrated and colourful, artwork on cards is also clear and colourful. For the most part the iconography is clear and easy to understand. Unfortunately, this does not extend to the symbols used to represent the game's 6 actions, these were a constant source of confusion and error. For example; the mosque action uses a minaret symbol but actually involves moving camel meeples along a track, but the symbols with camels on it is used to represent the caravansary! Why? Because the caravansary used camels to move spices! However, in game, the caravansary action only is used to get spices and has nothing to do with camels This means that camels are used to represent spices and minarets are used to represent camels! It verges on the ridiculous. It didn't help that all 6 symbols were the same colour so that it matched the colour theme of the board. How's it play? Setup
On to play Merv is played over 3 years and in each year there are 4 rounds, players have 1 action per round, thus 12 actions in total. Taking actions in Merv are quite unusual, play takes place around the 5x5 grid and each round takes place across 1 side of the grid (Starting on the north side.), then in the subsequent round, play moves clockwise to the next side of the grid and so on, so by the 4th round, a complete circuit will have been completed.
Endgame Once the 3rd year is over and has been scored, there is there final scoring to calculate. Sets of caravan cards score points. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Merv has several approaches to acquiring victory points but resource cubes is key to nearly all of them and the resource cube economy is very important. Acquiring cubes may conflict with choosing actions if the building site a player wants to activate produces cubes of a different colour, players will have to make choices and adapt. Having said that, it pays to diversify but it also pays to pursue one one strategy such as the caravansary or mosque track. Completing contracts feels like more of a bonus for sharp-eyed players than a long-term approach. Players also need to consider palace actions, placing workers into the right spaces in halls and moving along the favour track can be a good source of points. Players will need to also look towards defending Merv from attackers, losing buildings also loses the ability to gain resource cubes in later turns and of course loses victory points for the affected player(s). Merv is definitely on the heavier side of board games, but to be honest it didn't feel deep, just fiddly. I never got the feeling that I was making clever plays, instead I got the feeling that Merv was a heavy game made for the sake of being a heavy game. When I took an action, it often felt like I was doing 2 half actions instead of 1 whole one and it took multiple different actions to achieve something. E.g., I would undertake the marketplace action and acquire a good, Was I able to sell that good? No! What about spices, what if I'd acquired spices? Can't sell them either. To sell something, that is to complete a contract, I needed influence, which earned by building walls and also scrolls, which are acquired by visiting the library. Of course I also needed resources cubes. I know that some people will love this idea but I found it unengaging and a little dull and verging on tedious. Merv feels a little dry, unexciting and detached. 31st August 2021 We're at The Sovereigns in Woking with the Woking Gaming Club for some Tuesday evening gaming. The first game of the night was Raids. Raids is a game about Vikings going around doing what they do, which is raiding and pillaging. What? You say, that's a cliché and Vikings were also explorers, traders, craftsmen and so on, well this game is called Raids, so raiding and pillaging it is; and all for glory! What's in a game?
Artwork on the game board is nice and colourful and the longship board are also good, the art on the voyage tiles is a little drab, a little more colour would make them pop but it's only a very minor quibble. There isn't too much iconography in the game and mostly it's very clear what it means. All-in-all, excellent, top notch production values for Raids. How's it play? Setup
Raids is played over 4 voyages which each involve journeying around the game board. During these voyages, the players will stop at the randomly placed voyage tiles and deal with those encounters.
Endgame Play continues until all players have completed the 4th voyage, then scores are calculated. Players can earn Glory points from a number of sources. Pennant tiles on a player's Longship earns straight up Glory points. Hammer tiles on a Longship earn points per Viking also on the Longship. Goods tiles that have been traded earn Glory Points. Sets of Rune tiles collected earn points accordingly. Monsters defeated earn points. Finally, cash accumulated during the game earn Glory points on a 1-to-1 basis. All points are tallied, Highest score wins. Overall
Travelling around the map, players will faced with a central choice on deciding how far to move their Longship? Should a player move slowly to encounter more tiles or rush ahead to a tile they really want? This is of course contextual and players will have to identify what they need and prioritise accordingly. They'll also have to keep an eye out for the behaviour of other players and want to gauge their motivations. The rule where players can only collect tiles at the start of their turn slots into this nicely, possibly allowing other players to fight for the tile and keeping the situation tense. A worker placement game that allows workers to drive off other workers! I also like how the Longship board works, merging aesthetics and mechanics. It's a great visual representation of what players are carrying and crew limitations. The game is in essence a mid-to-light worker placement game with a touch of auctioning and resource management mechanics. Raids fits its Viking theme reasonably well as players sail around, trading and plundering while battling mythic beasts and each other. Having said that, I found the game a little unengaging, maybe a little too abstract. I could sail pretty much anywhere I wanted with generally minimal risk, it never felt like epic adventuring. Combat was fairly rare, mostly players didn't complete too much for the same resources but it felt bland, a quick glance at other player's Viking meeples will tell you if you can be beat them or not and at what cost. I'm also a little uncertain of how much replayability Raids has. Even though it has random placement for the encounter tiles, because they're not really interdependent on each other, it felt like it didn't matter the order in which you might encounter them, especially since I could sail as far as I wanted. I don't think Raids is a bad game, if someone wanted to play it, I'd have no problem joining in (But not too often!), but it's not a game I'd pick. 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?
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
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.
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?
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
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.
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?
How's it play? Setup
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?
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:
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
Endgame Fluxx boasts that there's 23 ways to win! (Mine also says it's version 3.1.) When any player meets the win conditions, they immediately win, they don't need to be the active player or have a turn to win! 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?
The components in Pandemic are all of a reasonable quality as you would expect, nothing feels particularly cheap. The pawns are made of plastic and not wood, but that's a trivial quibble. The other markers are constructed of satisfyingly thick plastic. The plastic 3D research stations are a nice touch as are the colourful, translucent, acrylic disease cubes, it also makes them easier to pick up and move - which for the cubes will occur frequently. Artwork on the board is functional more than pretty, which is fine and everything's easy to understand, the same is true of city and infection cards which show locations on the board as opposed to containing illustrations. The small amount of artwork in the game mostly appears on role cards, which each have a good quality unique illustration that depicts their role, event cards also contain some unique artwork. How's it play? Setup
On to play The turn structure for Pandemic is as follows: The active player has their turn, which consists of 4 actions, then they draw 2 cards from the player deck, finally the 'board' has its go. Once all of this has been completed, the player to the left becomes the active player.
Endgame Play continues until one of the following conditions is met. If the marker on the outbreak track reaches its 8th and final space; the players collectively lose. If, at any time a disease cube needs to be added to the board and none are available in that colour; the players lose. If a player needs to draw 2 cards from the player deck and cannot do so because none or only one is available.... you guessed it; the players lose. If all 4 diseases are cured, then the players immediately win. Diseases do not need to be eradicated in order to win. Overall
Well, Pandemic.... what's there to say about this game? Pandemic is a pillar of modern cooperative games that has been followed up not only by a slew of expansions and spinoffs, but also a number of differently themed games such as Horrified that employ similar mechanics. Some of Pandemic's elements and mechanics may seem a bit trite nowadays, but that's simply because they're part of a game that popularised those mechanics in the first place and is a testament to Pandemic's longevity and influence. Pandemic utilises the tried-and-tested game flow of alternating between player turns and card-driven board actions in a game that is a globe-trotting race against time. In a turn, players are faced with the difficult choice of trying to stem the spread of the 4 diseases or instead trying to interact with the other players and swap the cards necessary to cure those diseases. Ultimately, players will need to find a balance between the two approaches. As with other cooperative games, bad luck may play a major role in Pandemic and mitigating that bad luck is vital to winning. Decisive actions, recognising priorities and acting on them are also vital to success, as are knowing when to use role special abilities. Pandemic is also hard, I think this comes down to Pandemic's rules for swapping city cards between players which requires them to be in that card's city in order to do so. It's unlikely players will be able to collect 5 cards of single colour on their own so coordination between players is vital. We've played a few of the iterations that followed Pandemic and it always felt like this rule has been softened a little. Is that as bad thing, I suspect YMMV? Pandemic does a good job at evoking the feel of a spreading global crisis and the desperate worldwide fight to contain it. I have to admit, considering the events of the past 2 years, we haven't had much compulsion to play Pandemic. Even so and despite the difficulty, I feel that if you like cooperative games, it's still worth playing, it challenges players with making difficult decisions at nearly every avenue and is satisfying to win. |
AuthorI play, I paint. Archives
February 2023
Categories
All
|