1st May 2022

It's a Sunday and we're logged into Board Game Arena for an evening of gaming.

Azul; not a game about a villainous god-entity from Ghostbusters but actually a game about creating mosaic, decorative wall patterns with multi coloured tiles.
My friend's a plasterer, wonder if he'd be good at this!

Caveat: We've only ever played Azul digitally.

What's in a game?

• Player board: The player boards are double-sided with different shapes on both sides. Most of each player board is taken up by two sets of grids.
  Pattern lines: The left hand grid is a sort of triangular shape composed of rows of squares. The top row has 1 square and each row below increases the count of squares by 1. Thus the 5th and final row consists of 5 squares. These lines are known as the pattern lines
  Wall: The right hand grid is a 5x5 size with coloured/patterned squares. There are 5 types of square and each row has one of each type. Additionally, going downwards, each row has those types of square in a slightly offset position so they appear to 'descend' diagonally. The relationship between the 2 types of grid is key to the game. The wall is where players score VPs.
  Floor line: Along the bottom of the player board is a row of spaces labelled with minus values, e.g., -1, -2 and up to -3.
  Score tracker: Finally, along top of each board is an individual scoring tracker for each player.
• Token mats: There are 9 of these mats and they are each decorated in elaborate swirling patterns.
• Token/tiles: There are 100 tokens which represent the game's wall tiles, 20 each in 5 types with patterns that match the patterns on the square grid on player boards.
  First player token: There is also a first player token, it has no intrinsic value and will actually cost players VPs!
• Bag: The physical game comes with a bag which is used to blindly draw tokens.

The game's only artwork are the patterns which appear on the tokens. It does it's job though, between bright colours and unique images, the 5 sets of tokens look distinctive from one another.

Azul doesn't make use of icons and the relationship between tokens and a player board is clear.

How's it play?
Setup

• Board: Give each player a board.
• Mats: Put out 5-9 mats in a circular shape according to player count. Then place the first player token in the central area between the mats. All of this constitutes the game's drafting area.
• Tokens: Put all of the tokens into the bag and give it a good shake.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Azul, the player's objective is to place tokens on to their respective spots on the wall grid of their player board, which scores them VPs.
This is done by filling in the horizontal lines in the pattern lines grid; players must collect tokens of the type they need and place them in the spaces on the respective horizontal line. Depending on the line, it will require 1-5 tokens to fill a line. When a line is filled, one of those tokens can be placed in the matching space on that line at the end of the round.
All tokens will score 1 or more VPs when placed, tokens can also score again at the game end.

Azul makes use of a traditional turn order, with the active player performing their action (Which will involve taking 1 or more tokens of the same type.) before play progresses to the player on the left.

• Round start: The first player should blindly draw tokens from the bag and place them on the mats until each mat has 4 tokens on it. With 5-9 mats there will be 20-36 tokens used.
• Collect tokens: The active player must draft tokens from one of the mats or the central area (At the game start there won't be anything in the central area to draft.).
  The player chooses which type of token to draft and must take all the tokens of that type from the chosen mat or central area.
  From mat: If the tokens are drafted from a matt, the any tokens remaining on that matt are moved into the central area.
  From centre: If tokens are drafted from the central area and the first player token is also there, then that is taken as well.
  The first player token cannot be played into the lines and instead goes into the floor line. It means that the player will go first in the next round but will lose a point as a consequence.
• Place tokens: Now the active player must place their tokens into the pattern lines grid on their player board. There are several restrictions here.
  • Tokens can only be placed into a single line.
  • Tokens may be placed into any empty line or a line which already contains matching tokens.
    Any excess tokens remaining after filling a line are sent to the floor line.
  • Tokens cannot be placed in a line already containing different tokens.
  • Tokens cannot be placed in a line where the matching token has already been added to the wall grid. I.e., if a line had been previously filled and emptied of a particular type of token, in essence a line can only be used once for each type of tokens and it cannot be repeated.
  • Finally, the active player may choose to put the tokens into the floor line.
• Next player: Once the active player has placed their tokens, play progresses to the player on the left.
• Round end: Play continues until all the tiles from the drafting area have been placed on to player boards, then the  round is over and the following end of round actions occur for each player:
  • Resolve tokens: A line in the pattern lines which has been filled is considered resolved. This means that one of the tokens from that line is placed on it's corresponding spot on the same row in the wall grid, any remaining tokens are returned to the bag.
  • Scoring tokens: When a token is moved to the wall grid, it is immediately scored. How much it scores will depend on it's position relative to other tokens on the wall grid.
    If the token is not adjacent to any other tokens (The very first token placed on the wall grid for example.), then it scores 1 VP.
    If the token has been placed adjacent to 1 or more other tokens, it forms a link with them and scores more. For each horizontal token it is adjacent to in a link, an additional VP is scored. The same is true for a vertical link.
    If multiple rows were completed in the same round, then multiple tokens can be scored.
  • Floor line: Each token that has been placed in a box in the floor ​line costs the VPs listed, this is cumulative. E.g., the first 4 boxes are 1-, -1, -2, -2, if they are filled, this would total -6 VP. Once penalty points have been calculated, return the first player token to the centre and the other tokens to the bag.
• Next round: Whoever had the first player token is now the first player for the next round which they begin by blindly drawing tokens to populate the mats in preparation for the next round.
  Any uncompleted pattern lines carry over into the following round.
  

​
Endgame
When any horizontal line in the wall grid on any player's board has been filled, the endgame is triggered. The current end of round actions and scoring are completed and the game goes to final, bonus scoring.

Bonus VPs can be scored scored by the following:

• Every filled out vertical line is worth 7 VPs.
• Every filled out horizontal line is worth 2 VPs.
• Every completed set of 5 matching tokens (In other words; each filled out diagonal line.) is worth 10 VPs.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
On a rudimentary level, Azul's mechanics involve drafting handfuls of tokens and then placing them on to a board where their relative positioning scores varying amounts of VPs. It's a mechanic (Or a variation of that mechanic.) that have been employed in several other games and I'd say that Azul is a mid-weight iteration of it. As written the rules feel a little opaque and counter-intuitive but in application, they're pretty straightforward.
Where Azul get its weightiness comes from two areas of the rules; how the drafting - particularly drafting from mats works and then where and when tiles should go on the grids.

​As a basic concept, collecting as many tokens as possible to fill out the pattern lines and consequently get tokens on the wall grid is the way to go. However, there's more to it than.
For example, simply collecting too many tokens can sent the excess to the floor ​line and cost VPs, this is more important than it sounds, because as tokens are taken from the mats, it's inevitable that other tokens will build up in the centre and trying to predict this can be very important. Depending on circumstances, a lot of tokens of a particular type may well build up in the centre.
A player may want 4 red tokens for example, should they try and take them in drips and drabs from several mats over several turns or wait for them to accumulate in the centre? Provided of that they do accumulate in the centre, what if too many go to the centre?
There's definitely a higher level of play where watching what other players are doing is important. Quite often it's clear what they're prioritising, what they want or don't want in the next few turns.
​If they have a single token in the 5-space line on the left, it's likely they'll be looking to fill that out. Conversely, if they've already got 1 or more scoring tokens on the right side, they'll be unlikely or unable to use more of those tokens.
Being able to predict other player's objectives will help when making decisions. It can also allow a player to try and deny tokens to other players and curiously, on some occasions force other players to take tokens they don't want.

Players will also want to think about how and when to place their scoring tokens. Putting them down willy-nilly is a sure way to minimise points.
Obviously in order to optimise points, tokens should ideally be put on to the wall adjacent to other tokens. Placing them vertically is a good way to go, since completed vertical lines earn an additional 7 VPs each, unless a player is looking to end the game, in which case they can go for the horizontal line!

This brings me to an interesting facet in the mechanics, scoring the diagonal, i.e., putting all the tokens of 1 type on to the wall grid scores the biggest bonus; 10 VPs but as they are diagonal, they can't score off of each other! Additionally, once a diagonal of a type has been completed, the player can no longer score tokens of that type at all, collecting those tokens will now just incur penalty points in the floor line. Should a player hold off getting the diagonal until later which lowers the risk of sending tokens to the floor line or wait? Waiting will mean risking not completing it at all.

I have to say I'm not fond of mechanics which lose players points especially if it can occur out of their control, it irritates like a unreachable itch and can be a little stress inducing. I find that's the case with Azul as well. 
However, having said that, the truth is; this is what makes Azul a good game and gives it depth. It means that collecting tokens either earns VPs (Or contributes towards acquiring VPs.) or loses VPs. It's always a meaningful decision.

​Other iterations of these mechanics are a little less stressful, brain-boiling and perhaps more accessible. But if depth is what you're looking along with a dollop indirect interaction between players, then Azul is worth a try.

15th April 2022

It's a Friday and we're logged into Board Game Arena for some afternoon gaming.

​Take a road trip across America, visit the landmarks, go wildlife spotting, play some sports, end where you started? Send a postcard (Or write a letter from America.), walk 500 miles, maybe walk 500 more...
OK, enough of the tenuous references. 
​Boomerang: USA combines set collecting and roll and write mechanics into a point salad of a scoring game.

Caveat: We've only ever played Boomerang: USA digitally.

What's in a game?

• Score sheet: This shows a map of the continental United States and a network of connections between 28 different cities or tourist location from coast-to-coast and which are labelled A-Z (With @ and # making up the last 2.). The locations are divided into 7 regions of 4 cities each.
  The sheet also features various boxes for scoring, mostly on the right side.
• Cards: There are 28 cards in Boomerang: USA which as you would imagine is 1 for each location on the score sheet. Each card also features some artwork representing that city or landmark.
  Throw number: In the top left of each card is it's 'throw number' which ranges from 1-7. More on throw numbers below.
  Sets: Each card will have 2 icons pertinent to 2 of the game's sets.
  Landmark: This will be a letter/symbol that represents that city/landmark and matches it's location on the score sheet.

The only artwork in the game appears on the 28 cards and is obviously referencing the locations the cards represent. It's pretty artwork too, with blue skies and bright colours.

Using letters/symbols for cities is a smart move and easily understood. Boomerang: USA makes use of 4 types of sets to collect and each set will feature its own range of icons, it means that the game has a fairly large array of icons. Luckily, it's clear which icons belong to which set and players don't need to reference a rulebook to know what they mean since the game is about matching icons in their respective sets.

How's it play?
Boomerang: USA is played over 4 rounds and uses a drafting mechanic where players pick a card from their hand and then passes the remaining cards to their left, then all chosen cards are revealed (Or not for the first card.) simultaneously. This continues until all cards have been selected and players have acquired 7 cards.

• Setup: Shuffle the cards into a face-down deck and deal 7 to each player. Each player should also have a scoring sheet.
• Drafting: Player's should pick 1 card from their available hand and put it face-down in their playing area, then pass the remaining cards to the player on their left.
  Throw card: The very first card a player selects will be their throw card and is kept face-down until scoring at the end of the round.
  Throw cards are scored as normal but also feature own scoring (Using the throw number no less.).
  Reveal card: The remainder of cards picked during the round are placed face-up. Cards are not actioned until all cards have been picked by players.
  Catch card: The last card a player gets (The one they have no choice about.) is their catch card. As the name implies, this relates to their throw card.
  Once all cards have been played, the game goes to scoring.
• Scoring: Boomerang: USA is a set collecting game with a variety of scoring methods which differ from set to set.
  • Boomerang!: Each player reveals their throw card.
    Then the throw value on their throw card is compared with the throw value on their catch card.
    If the catch card has a equal or higher value than the throw card, they score VPs equal to their throw card.
    Throw, catch, boomerang, geddit!
  • Cities/locations: Players score 1 VP for each location they visit and should mark it off on their score sheet. Players only ever get 1 VP per location.
    There is also additional scoring for locations as follows:
    • Coast-to-coast: When a player visits adjacent locations as per the connections depicted on the score sheet, they should draw a line between the adjacent locations.
      The first player to connect the east coast to the west coast scores 7 VPs, other players can also score coast-to-coast but with diminishing VPs.
    • Regions: On the score sheet, each of the 7 regions contains 4 locations. The first player to visit all 4 in a region scores a bonus 3 VP. Only 1 player can score per region.
  • Americana: Players score for sets of Americana symbols here with slices of American life such as baseball, American football and mom's apple pie, OK, there's no apple pie but you get the idea.
    Scoring Americana is initially easy, each Americana icon is worth a certain number of points, they are all combined to get a score for that round.
    Next Round: The catch with scoring Americana points is that in the following round, the Americana score must be higher than the previous round, otherwise the score is set to 0!
  • Wildlife: There are various types of wildlife worth differing amounts of VPs and players score for each pair of matching animal icons they collect.
  • Activities: There are 4 different types of activity, such as hiking or dining. Players choose any one type only to score in a round, the more cards they've collected of the chosen type, the more they score. So 3 hiking symbols would score 4 VPs but 4 dining symbols would score 7 VPs.
    Once per game: The catch with scoring activities is that each activity can only be scored once per game, so it's one and done and since there's 4 rounds, there will be opportunity to score all 4 activities.
• Next round: Once all cards have been scored, play progresses to the next round: All cards are put back into a deck, shuffled and dealt out again in preparation for drafting again.

Endgame
Once the 4th round is completed and scored, players then total their final score from across all 4 rounds.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
​On a basic level, Boomerang: USA is a straightforward drafting game. It's point salad of scoring mechanics makes the game complex, most of the blog above talks about the 7 ways to score VPs.
Some of the scoring methods have pretty standard elements, collecting matching pairs or 1 kind of set are common, however, restrictions on how these are scored, particularly for Americana activities add an unusual twist.
The throw and catch mechanic is the standout here, presenting players with a clear risk and reward choice right at the start of a round especially when this is when they'll have all 7 cards to choose from.
Play a 1 as the throw card and it's guaranteed to score but is only worth 1 VP.  Playing a 7 as the throw card earns 7 VPS but requires a 7 as the catch card; since player have no control over what their last card will be it's a risky proposition. 

Typical for a game of this type, it's more or less impossible to score well in all categories at the same and the dilemma of what a player should prioritise is what drives the gameplay.
Should a player concentrate on getting locations and regions (Which are another type of set really.) over other sets?
Is it a good idea to have a steadily increasing Americana score over round, or go high then score 0 to score high again?
When is a good time to try and get a good score in a particular activity?
A lot of this will be contextual or unpredictable, it's the nature of this kind of drafting game. Players will probably start a round with no clear direction and will need to adapt to a strategy and recognise what to prioritise as it emerges from whatever cards they pick.

There's also a higher level of play where players can watch their opponents to try and gauge what they're concentrating on and deny it to them: If it looks like an opponent is trying to complete coast-to-coast, a player might chose and play a card with the location needed themselves in order to deny that other player.
Although I'm not sure that denial tactics are that effective though, it's entirely possible blocking a opponent will involve blocking yourself as well.

I felt like the travelling, roll and write element was a bit out of place here, adding extra layers of what seem like unnecessary complexity the game. So while the game has depth thanks to all these scoring opportunities, it actually felt like it was perhaps a little detrimental to the experience, increasing thinking time and inducing some analysis-paralysis as a consequence.

Otherwise I can't really find fault with Boomerang: USA, it's not a bad game by any stretch, it just somehow didn't appeal and seemed a little unengaging. Maybe the theme of being a tourist did quite gel with me?
I feel that there are other mechanically similar games that are a little more accessible and quicker to play.
Obviously, YMMV, a fan of card drafting games who plays them often might find the roll and write part of Boomerang: USA a fresh take in the category.

15th March 2022

We're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns for some Tuesday evening entertainment.

Four Gardens is a game about you guessed it... four gardens, it's also about spinning a pagoda! I'm not sure if Spinning Pagodas would be a better name or not?
Why are players spinning a pagoda? Apparently, the pagoda contains some gods! Who... I guess... like... being spun?

What's in a game?

• Pagoda: Although it has to be constructed, the game comes with a 4-level pagoda that spins, that is each floor spins independently - spinning is very important in this game!
  Each roof on the pagoda displays 0-3 of the resource icons. There are 4 sides to each roof and 4 roofs, thus 16 sets of icons.
• Scoring board: There are 4 scoring tracks in different colours on this board, one for each of the game's 4 'gods'.
• Cards: Four Gardens comes with 70 double-sided cards. The front of each card (Called the groundwork side.) displays various symbols and information while the back of each card shows one part of a panoramic illustration.
  Groundwork side: There symbols in the top corners, top half and bottom half. They are:
  God: In the top left corner of each card is the symbol for which god it is associated with and also which track it scores on when completed.
  Dots: The top right corner displays a number of dots, which is info on how the card's position in a panorama, it shows the type of panorama it is and both the number of cards in that particular panorama and where this card goes in that panorama.
  There are 4 'types' of colour coded panorama ranging from 2-5 cards in size.
  Actions: In the top half of each card there will be displayed 2 actions. One action is always a handcart action and the other will be a 'wild' or 'rotate' action. Using  one of the available actions requires the card be discarded.
  Cost: Finally, the cost to construct this card will be shown at the bottom.
  Panorama side: The backs of these cards each display part of a garden landscape, and certain cards can be placed together to form panoramic illustrations of varying size. The top 2 corners also display the same information as the top corners on the other side.
• Tiles: The game makes use of a several types of small tiles.
  Planning tiles: These rectangular tiles each have 4 spaces to hold resources during the game.
  Bonus planning tiles: These square tiles have a single space and can hold a single resource alongside the owning player's planning tile.
  VP tiles: These tiles earn extra VPs.
  Wild resource tiles: This allows the player to acquire more resources as described below.
• Tokens: There are 2 types of tokens in Four Gardens.
  Resources: There are 4 types of resource in the game, each one is delineated by both colour and shape. There are blue water drop, grey stone, brown wood/tree and green plant tokens.
  Score markers: There are 4 scoring trackers in each player colour, these are classic eurogame little wooden cubes.

The pagoda is constructed of fairly sturdy feeling card, each floor can be individually rotated and it felt a little precarious when doing so, having said that, it never felt like it would cause a problem. The pagoda comes in several pieces, has 4 'floors' and has to be constructed. Since I played someone else's copy, I cannot comment on how hard or easy that was. It's definitely the game's standout component though.
The resource tokens felt like they were wooden and the wooden cubes were pretty standard wooden cube components, which is something I like.
The tiles were standard quality card tile and fine, I thought having tiles with little hole to hold resource tokens was a pretty smart move.
The card were also pretty standard quality from what I could tell.

From the large, eye-catching and rotating pagoda to the tactile resource tokens shaped and coloured identically to their icons in the game; Four Gardens has excellent presentation.
The backs of the cards which, when placed together form the panoramic views of the titular feature excellent, colourful and interesting art.

Four Gardens features a fair amount of iconography, from the 4 scoring tracks and types of gardens to symbols for resources and different actions available on cards. For the most part, it's instantly understandable and there should be few problems with the iconography.

How's it play?
Setup

• ​Pagoda: Randomly put together the 4 floors of the pagoda.
• Tiles: Put out the 3 sets of tiles face-up in their 3 stacks. The bonus VPs and 'take wild resource' tiles should have the highest value at the top and be in descending order.
• Cards: Shuffle the cards into a face-down deck(With the garden picture side up.).
  Draw 3 cards and place them 'face-up' in a drafting area.
• Players: The players should organise themselves at about 90' around the pagoda, so they each have a side of it facing them.
  Deal 5 cards to each player and give them a planning tile in their colour. Each player should also place their score trackers on the 4 scoring tracks.
• First player: Determine a first player.

On to play
As the name suggests, the objective is to create 4 garden panoramas using the backs of the cards.
​Four Gardens uses the traditional turn, with the active player acting with play then progressing to the player on the left.
During their turn, the active must perform exactly 3 actions. Each action also requires the player to play or discard one of the cards in their hand. There are 4 actions that can be performed, these can be performed in any order the player sees fit. The actions are:

• Groundwork: With this action, the active player takes a card from their hand and places it in front of them, it is now ready to be 'constructed'.
  There are only 2 restrictions when laying a groundwork card. Firstly, 2 identical cards cannot be both played. Only 1 of each position in any of the panoramas can be played. Players are also restricted to a maximum of 3 groundwork cards under construction at any time.
  It's worth noting that when putting a groundwork card down, it does not have to be the first in a panorama.
• Move resources: The active player must discard a card with the pertinent symbol (Which is all of them to be honest.) to move resources, this allows them to rearrange resources between groundwork cards or from their planning tile. Finally, the active player may discard resources from their planning tile and in fact, this is the only way to do to.
  Scoring: If, once resources have been moved around a card's cost is completed, it is then flipped over, becomes a panorama card and scored. Thus if the card had a blue symbol, the active player's score marker is moved 1 space along the blue track.
  Further scoring: That's not the end of scoring though. When a new card is added to a current panorama, all cards in that panorama are scored again. So if another card was added to the card with the blue symbol, then the active player would score in the blue track again. So it means that the 1st card played in a 5-card panorama would be scored 5 times!
  Completed set: If a panorama is completed, as well as scoring, the active player immediately acquires one of the bonus tiles and if necessary, resolves it.
  Knock back!: Each scoring track only reaches the '10' spot, if scoring would take the active player's marker above 10 on a track, they cannot go any higher. Instead, the scoring markers of all other players are pushed back 1 space instead!
  If a player's marker is then knocked back off the first spot on a track, then they cannot put the marker back on the track and will score 0 for that track!
• Rotate pagoda/collect resources: This is the most complicated action in the game. It allows the player to rotate the pagoda and collect resources if they discard a card with the relevant icon. That icon will also determine which 'floor' of the pagoda is rotated and how resources.
  When a floor is rotated, all the floors above it are also rotated in a similar fashion and it is rotated 90'.
  After this, the active player collects all the resources for the side of the pagoda that are facing them. The icon will determine the order in which the resources are collected. Either from the top going downwards, or bottom going up. This is very important because when resources are collected, they are placed in the active player's planning tile spaces in the order they are collected. If there no spaces available in the player's planning tile, then unplaced resources are discarded. As you can see, the order in which resources are collected is very important.
• Take a wild resource: If the active player discards a card with the wild resource icon, they can take a resource of their choice and place it either on a groundwork card or planning tile space.
  The wild resource tokens functions identically but allows the player to acquire multiple resources.
• End turn: Once the active player has completed their 3 actions they draw cards from either the displayed cards or blindly from the deck until they have 5 in their hand, play then progresses to the player on the left.

​Endgame
Depending on the player count, once 8-10 panorama cards have been constructed by any player, play goes into the endgame and the current round is completed.
Players calculated VPs earned from the 4 scoring tracks and points they may have gotten from a bonus VP track.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
I'll start by discussing the pagoda - the game's most obvious feature.
Is it a gimmick mechanic? Maybe. Does it work well? Definitely.
It's also quite a unique mechanic and not something I've seen anywhere else.

When used in conjunction with the rule limiting how many resources can be collected on the planning tile, it forces players to really think about how they have to manipulate the pagoda to get the resources they need:
It takes an action to empty a planning tile that's been filled unnecessarily and that's an action that could be used elsewhere.
I think it's a set of mechanics that works very well.

Talking about the pagoda does lead me to one gripe: Which is the rule where all players should sit around the pagoda at 90' angles. Players don't always have the right gaming space to accommodate this and while strictly speaking, it's not necessary as players can remember what side of the pagoda is meant to be facing them, it's inconvenient and finicky. 

The card-synergy, or more accurately score-synergy is a pretty clever rule, providing players a reason to work towards completing panoramas.
The 4 scoring tracks seem a little unnecessary but in practice they work fine.

This brings me to the knock-back mechanic. It feels a little harsh that, if a player gets their scoring marker knocked off the board, it can't come back into scoring. On the other hand if a player has reached maximum on a track and other players are lingering at the bottom, it's probably not a priority for those other players, so not that much of a loss. 
So yes, it feels a bit harsh but it's not game breaking.
All of this means players will look to optimise the order in which they play cards to optimise how they increase their scores. Concentrating on increasing scores in 1 or 2 tracks can potentially knock-back other players. Conversely, working towards completing panoramas can earn bonuses which may prove useful elsewhere; sometimes you'll be able to do both but sometimes not and looking for opportunities to exploit these times is vital.

The also makes use of a variation of the hand-as-currency mechanic, except here it's used to trigger actions and not to actually pay for something. Despite this difference, it places that same conundrum on players; which is how to choose which card to discard? Obviously, they'll be times when it has to be a card with the action they need but otherwise, it's another meaningful decision to make.

In conclusion; Four Gardens is a fairly easy to learn set-collecting game that provides players with enough decisions to be engaging, fun and provides unusual resource gathering and scoring mechanics which makes it feel unique.
I enjoyed it and think it's worth a try.

20th February 2022

It's a Sunday and we're logged into Board Game Arena for some gaming fun.

I don't know what Loco Momo means but I kind of hope it means crazy fun with cute animals. Hmm, that didn't sound right, how about wholesome crazy fun with animals.
Loco Momo is actually about (I kid you not!) organising the disarrayed wildlife population of the forest for a group photo! 

Caveat: We've only ever played Loco Momo digitally.

What's in a game?

• ​Game board: The central game board displays 4 sets of 4 tile spaces, 16 tile spaces in total.
  A large part of the board is given over to the artwork which depicts a remote looking vaguely mysterious forest backdrop.
• Player boards: Each of these boards has a 5x5 grid of tile spaces, along with some iconography explaining scoring rules. Again the background depicts a forest environment, only this time with a peculiar set of overgrown open-air stands (Or bleachers if you will.) against the vista of a waterfall.
• Tiles: Loco Momo makes use of 105 square tiles that depict 5 wildlife species; bears, ducks, eagles, leopards and rabbits across 3 colours; blue, brown and green.
  It means there are 21 of each animal type and 7 in each colour.
• Bag: Given that we played Loco Momo digitally, there's no bag. But in the physical copy it would be used to blindly draw tiles.

There isn't too much artwork to Loco Momo, just the 2 backgrounds on the 2 types of board and 5 wildlife illustrations.
It's good quality artwork though, a bright palette and bold cartoony style suit the game's light-hearted theme well.

The game's only iconography appears on the player boards. It's not immediately apparent what they mean but quick read of the rules makes them clear.

How's it play?
Setup

• Central board: Put out the central board and randomly populate all 16 spaces on the board with wildlife tiles.
• Player board: Give each player a personal board.
• First player: Determine a first player.

That's it for setup.

On to play
The objective of Loco Momo is for players to fill their boards with tiles to score VPs and the game provides various approaches to achieve this. Although this mostly involves collecting various kinds of sets.
Loco Momo uses the traditional structure with the active player taking their 2 actions -  a drafting action and placing action with play then moving to the player on the left.

• Drafting: The active player chooses to take 1 of the 16 tiles, what happens next will depend on the type of wildlife on the tile that was picked and its colour.
  Bear: If a bear tile was chosen, then all wildlife tiles of the same colour as the bear from the same area as the bear are drafted by the active player along with the bear tile.
  Duck: Starting clockwise from the area where the duck tile was chosen, the active player looks at the other areas until they encounter another duck. Then all the wildlife tiles with the same colour as the duck are taken, along with the duck. If there are no other ducks, then tiles of matching colour are taken from the same area as the duck.
  Eagle: All wildlife tiles matching the colour of the eagle tile are taken from the diagonally opposite area to where the eagle tile was initially taken.
  Leopard: The active player should look at the next area going anticlockwise from where they took the leopard tile and take all the tiles with the matching colour.
  Rabbit: The active player should look one area clockwise form where they took the rabbit tile and take all the tiles with the matching colour.
• Place tiles: The active player will now have 1-5 tiles of the same colour which must be played on to their board.
  The active player may put these tiles into any row on their personal board, however, tiles must always be placed on the leftmost available space. Thus tokens go from left-to-right.
• Repopulate: Spaces that were created on the central board after drafting are now randomly repopulated with more wildlife tiles.
• Next player: The player to the left of the active player now becomes active.

Endgame
Play continues until the 6th round is completed, then scoring occurs.

• The bottom row: (Which I'll call row 1.) scores for each different type of animal in that horizontal row. Scoring goes from 1-14 VPs.
• Row 2: Above the bottom row is row 2, this is scored for the biggest single set of any identical animal in that horizontal row, again scoring from 1-14 VPs.
• Rows 3 & 4: Unlike rows 1 and 2, these 2 rows score vertically. Each vertical matching pair of animals in the same column score 3 VPs.
• Row 5: Tiles in the top row will score by also matching the 2 identical tiles in the same column from the 2 rows below. This scores 4 VPs.
  Thus if all 3 animals in a column match types for rows 3-5, it scores 7 VPs in total.
• Colours: Each row and column that has been filled with tiles of the same colour score an additional 5 VPs each.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
​Loco Momo is a fairly straightforward game, the gameplay strategies are more or less obvious and there's not much to say about it.

During drafting players will look for the optimal method to acquire the most tiles possible or, as will occur on occasion if there's little they want, try to avoid taking tiles.

Then, when placing tiles, players may need to make some meaningful choices.
Sure, it's easy putting down tiles when a player has got the ones they wanted but frequently, this won't be the case and dealing with those wayward tiles is very important.
Players will want to keep scoring opportunities for other tiles/sets open and minimise the damage caused by having to place unwanted tiles.

There's also a higher level of play that involves looking at what's available on the central board and what other players are working towards, then trying to anticipate what tiles they'll be looking to gain from themselves. It might be prudent to try and deny other players certain tiles.
Or if they're not interested in tile of a particular colour, it might be safe take that tile in a later turn.

This brings me to the one niggle I have about Loco Momo, which are the colour scoring rules.
We've only played Loco Momo 3 player and because there are 3 colours of tile, we tend to gravitate towards one colour each with little 'stealing' of other players' colours. Which is understandable as completing columns/rows with the same colours confers nice bonuses and during the late-game completing sets scoring the colour instead of the animal gets more VPs. Consequently it also makes decisions 'easier'.
I imagine with 4 players, this status quo would be shaken up and the game would become more interesting.
Despite the criticism, the game ultimately generally does provide players with meaningful decisions to make.

Games about about drafting sets of tiles and placing them on to a player board are pretty commonplace today.
So does Loco Momo do anything to stand out from the crowd?

I think the answer is... sort of.
Loco Momo is a bit unremarkable but at the same time it's an enjoyably light, easily learnt and accessible example of this kind of game with a reasonable playing time. A good introduction or crossover game
If this ticks your boxes, Loco Momo might be worth a look.

3rd February 2022

Thursday night gaming at Simon's came to a conclusion with the 2nd and final game of the evening; Nidavellir.

Google tells me that Nidavellir might mean the wane of the moon and is derived from Norse cosmology.

Protect the dwarf kingdom from the ravages of a dragon by taking on the role of a Elvaland councillor and collecting sets of cards... err... gathering the bravest army of dwarves possible by trawling pubs (I kid you not.).
Where's Sneezy when you need him eh? More like boozy!

What's in a game?

• Player board: There one of these unusually shaped boards for each player.
  At the top of each board is an circular indentation to slot in an 'Elvaland gem'.
  Down the left side are 3 large 'tavern' illustrations for the Laughing Goblin, Dancing Dragon and Shining Horse taverns which are also respectively marked with 1, 2 or 3 flagons and below them are 2 more circular indentations around an illustration of a money pouch
  Finally, each board has 2 columns of numbers that run down the right side, one in green and the other in purple. The green is labelled with a hunter's horn and the purple with a blacksmith's hammer.
• Tavern sign tiles: These 3 largish tiles each have illustrations identical to the tavern symbols found on player boards.
• Trade gem tiles: There are also 3 of these and they go with the tavern sign tiles.
• Elvaland gem tiles: Unsurprisingly these card tiles are styled after gems, they're also number 1-5 and there's a 'special' gem numbered 6.
  Gems are used to break ties during the game.
• Coins: The coins in Nidavellir are generously sized, circular card tokens and there are a lot of them too! They come in 2 types.
  Starter coins: These bronze coloured coins come in sets of 5 and are numbered on with a 0 and 2-5 (There's no 1!) and the 0 coin also has a special action called coin trade which is explained further below.
  There is 1 set of 5 per player.
  Upgraded coins: These coins are numbered 5-25, they are identically sized to the starter coins. Broadly speaking there are 2 each of the lower half of numbers and 1 each of the higher values.
• Cards: Nidavellir also features a lot of cards that come in a lot of types.
  Dwarf cards: These form the bulk of the game's cards and also the sets that players will collect. Firstly they are classified in 2 categories; Age 1 and Age 2.
  In the top-right corner, they will have a coloured rank symbol that may also a numeric bravery value (A.K.A VPs) and beneath that will be a icon that indicates the dwarf's class. There are 5 classes/colours: Blacksmith, Explorer, Hunter, Miner and Warrior.
  Hero Cards: These are basically less common and better versions of dwarf cards. They typically come with some benefit or bonus for the owning player.
  Royal offering cards: There are only a few of these cards which confer some sort benefit on the owning player, they are also categorised by Age 1 and Age 2.
  Distinction cards: There are 5 distinction cards which can be earned midgame and provide a boost or benefit to the owning player.
  Royal offering cards: There are Age 1 and Age 2 royal offering cards that can be used to upgrade coins - more on this below.
• Card holders: The game comes with 4 little plastic card holders that allow the hero and distinction cards to be displayed in a up right more visible position.
• Royal treasure: This is a fancy name for a cardboard rack that has slots to hold all the upgrade coins. To be fair, it does also serve the purpose of allowing players to see which coins have been taken.

The physical components in Nidavellir are all good. The tokens and tiles are all thick and chunky, I quite like the large sized coins, they feel a bit like poker chips.
The cards holders and especially the royal treasure are a nice touch too. However, since they can only be easily viewed from one side, it sort of forces the game to have a strange setup where the card holders and treasure rack are along one edge of the playing area instead of in the centre with all the players along the other edges. 

Nidavellir also makes good use of artwork, most of which appears on the cards, they contain well detailed, good quality illustrations of different dwarfish characters painted in a sort of monochromatic watercolour style along with a dash of a single colour. Usually I'd find this kind of art a bit dull, but here it works and gives the game a distinctive look.

Much of the iconography is clear but some of the hero cards have symbols which are quite small and may also need looking up occasionally.

How's it play?
​Setup

• Royal treasure: Put out the royal treasure rack, filling it with all the associated coins that go on it.
• Distinction & hero cards: Put out all the distinction cards on 1 card holder and the hero cards on the remaining 3 holders. spread out so that everyone can see the information on the left edge of the cards.
• Tavern Tiles: Put out the 3 tavern tiles in a vertical line with the goblin tile at the top, dragon tile below it and horse tile at the bottom, matching the order on the player boards.
  Then place a trade gem tile next to each tavern tile.
• Cards: Shuffle all the Age 1 cards into a face-down deck, do the same with the Age 2 cards.
• Players: Give each player a player board and 5 starting coins.
• Elvaland gems: Finally, take the Elvaland gems as determined by player count, shuffle them and deal 1 to each player face-down. Each should then reveal their gem and place it in the indentation at the top of the player board.

On to play
Nidavellir is an auctioning game that has players simultaneously perform series of 3 blind bids during each round. Once bids are revealed, actions are resolved in an order determined by the bids.

• Populate Taverns: Those dwarves certainly need their liquid lunches.
  From the Age 1 deck draw cards and place them face-up next to each of the 3 taverns, keep adding cards until each tavern has a number of cards equal to the number of players.
• Blind bids: In each round all players must make 3 blind bids using 3 of their 5 coins.
  To do so, they must put a coin face-down on each of the 3 tavern spots on their player board, this will be their bid for the cards at the corresponding tavern tile. Thus a coin put on the goblin space is what the player is bidding to take a card from the goblin tavern tile.
  Each player's 2 remaining coins are placed in the indentations around the money pouch.
• Resolve bids: Once all bidding has concluded, all bids are simultaneously revealed.
  Then, starting with the Laughing Goblin tavern, the player who bid the most on that tavern takes the card of their choice, the 2nd highest bidder goes 2nd and so on until all players have taken a card, it means the turn order will change from bid to bid.
  The same is done with the Dancing Dragon and finally the Shining Horse.
  Ties: If 2 or more players bid the same amount, then Elvaland Gems are used to break the tie and the highest value goes first.
  After a tie occurs, the players who tied must swap gems.
  Trade coin: This is 1 of 2 ways to upgrade coins.
  It occurs when the 0 value coin is used in one of the bids, whoever played it must reveal the 2 coins they put in their money pouch.
  The value of the 2 coins is added together, then a coin equalling that value is taken from the royal treasure and replaces the highest valued coin that was placed in the money pouch which, if it's a starter coin, is discarded out of the game. If it was a upgrade coin, it's returned to the royal treasure.
  A player can only ever have 5 coins and unusually for an auctioning game, the players' bids are never discarded.
• Place card: When a player takes a dwarf or hero card, they must be placed into that player's area in a specific manner.
  All cards of the same class/colour must go into a single vertical column on the right side of the player board. Blacksmith and hunter cards should ideally be on the leftmost cards with their rank symbols lined up with the pertinent symbols on their player board.
  Since there are 5 classes/colours, players will end up with 5 columns of cards.
  Other cards: Cards that do not have a class should be put on the left of the player board.
  ​Rows: When a player puts down a card that creates a row of 5 cards - which is row of one of each class/colour, they immediately take a hero card and add it to their playing area. If that card completes 2nd row, then a 2nd hero card can be taken and so on.
  This ability is triggered any time a row is completed.
• Next round: Once all taken cards have been resolved, play progresses to the next round, more cards are drawn from the Age 1 deck and placed next to each tavern.
  Players then flip their coins face-down again and begin blind bidding again.
• Transforming coins: This is the 2nd method to upgrading a coin. Typically this'll be the result of a special ability or royal offering card and will increase the value of a single coin. So a '+4' would turn a '6' into a '10'. Again, a 10 coin taken from the royal treasure would replace the 6.
• Distinction cards: When the Age 1 cards have been depleted... it's the end of an age! The game then goes to allocating distinction cards.
  There are 5 distinction cards, one for each of the game's classes.
  For every class, all players compare the cards that they have each collected. The player with the majority of cards in that class collects its distinction card and whatever benefits it confers.
  This is done for all classes.
• Age 2: The game now continues as before, except dealing the Age 2 cards to the 3 taverns

Endgame
Play continues until the Age 2 cards are also depleted, then the game goes to scoring.
Each of the 5 classes has it's own way to score VPs, suffice to say; the more cards a player has in a class, the more that set scores.
Bonus VPs which can come from various sources should then also be added in.
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Nidavellir does a good job of mixing set collecting with auctioning.
The set collecting element is  about a mixture of getting the cards you want and sometimes collecting a card just to deny it to another player. Sometimes you'll be completing to build sets and sometimes you'll want to take a card no one else does on the cheap. Pretty standard stuff for set collecting and what you'd expect.

The auction mechanics offer something a little different.
​I have to say I'm not the biggest fan of auctioning games, I don't dislike them and I've enjoyed some of them but they're not really my jam. I've often found bidding decisions could be a little stress inducing, which is probably why some people love them so much! Nidavellir cleverly bypasses some of this with it's auction system because players never lose their bids.
Instead of trying to out bid someone or bluff a bid up, players will be trying to gauge how others will bid.

This requires not only watching what cards others have been collecting and trying to anticipate what they will prioritise in each bid but also paying attention to how they've been upgrading their coins. 
If another player has a coin that's got a higher value, it will never be possible to simply outbid them and it might not be even worth going against them and could be a good time to play that 0 coin and get an upgrade instead. There may also be other times when players want to bid low such as when all the cards in a tavern are not valuable or if they're not valuable to other players.

This means that Nidavellir has 3 avenues of strategy that the player must take into account.
Not only do players have to keep an eye on which dwarf cards to try and acquire, they'll want to think about creating rows as well as columns to earn hero cards which cna prove very useful.
Players will also need use that 0 coin to upgrade coins - which is essentially a form of arms race that can't be ignored - unless a player thinks they can win by being last in every auction!

Nidavellir is a solid game and I can't find anything to fault about it. It isn't particularly complicated but there's definitely enough depth here to keep players engaged and generally give them meaningful decisions to make.
If you like auctioning or set collecting games, it's probably worth a look. If you like auctioning and set collecting games, Nidavellir is definitely worth a look.

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

• Wonder: As you would expect, each of the game's 7 wonders is depicted on a set of 5 double-sided tiles which when put together will display the wonder. one side of each tile shows the wonder under construction and the other side the wonder completed.
• Wonder deck: Each of the game's 7 Wonders also comes with its own deck of cards.
• Common deck: This is the game's 8th and final deck.
• Tokens: 7 Wonders: Architects uses quite a few tokens.
  Progress tokens: These green tokens confer benefits or bonuses on the controlling player during the game, or even victory points.
  Conflict tokens: These are used to track the outbreak of war, they have a peace side and a battle side.
  Military victory tokens: These tokens are gained when winning wars.
• Cat pawn: Meow!

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

• Wonders: Each player takes a wonder. All players should put together their wonder with all the 'under construction' sides up.
• Cards: The common deck should be shuffled into a face-down stack and placed in the central playing area.
  Player decks: Each player should shuffle their own deck and place it face-up between themselves and the player to their left. Thus all players should have a deck to their left and to their right.
• Progress tokens: Shuffle the progress tokens into a face-down stack and deal 3 face-up into the central playing area.
• Conflict tokens: Put out a number of conflict tokens according to the number of players, these should all be put with the peace side face-up.
• 1st player: Determine a starting player.

There's some other trivial setup to complete, but otherwise, we're good to go.

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.

• Cat Pawn: There a several ways for a player to acquire the cat pawn and it can changes hand several times over the course of a game. If a player has the cat pawn during their turn, then they can peek under the top card in the common deck.
• Draw Card: The active player must draw a card from either of the face-up decks to their left and right, or draw blindly from the common deck (Unless they have the cat pawn.), they then put the card in front of them face-up and if necessary, resolve it as explained further below.
  There are several types of card:
  Blue cards: These cards provide straight up victory points. They remain with the player until the endgame
  Green cards: These are the scientific progress cards and come in 3 types. When a play acquires a identical pair or a set of all 3 types, they must discard those cards and draw a progress token.
  Grey cards: These are the game's resources and come in 5 types that will be familiar to players of the original 7 Wonders. Players keep hold of resources until they have acquired the specified amount to build one of the tiles in their wonder. When this is the case, they must discard the relevant resources and build that tile.
  Red cards: As players of the original will know, red cards are military cards. These cards will contain a sword-and-shield symbol which represents military strength and possibly 1 or 2 horns which represent - for lack of a better term, aggression.
  When a player acquires, if it has any horns, then they turn over that many conflict tokens from peace to battle side. If all the conflict tokens are flipped to the battle side then you get war.
  Yellow cards: Gold! That's what yellow cards represent. They can be used as any type of resource with regards to building a wonder, as with resources, they must be used when possible and are discarded when used.
• Progress tokens: When a player takes a progress token due to discarding science cards, they can choose to take any of the available face-up tokens or can draw blindly from the stack.
• Building a wonder: When a player has to discard resources to build part of their wonder, they must start at the bottom and work upwards. Additionally, if they have more than 1 tile which require identical resources, they can choose which tile to build.
  Building a tile means flipping it over to its constructed side, generally this will also confer some kind of benefit on the player.
• War: What is good for? The answer is... apparently victory tokens.
  If at the end of any player's turn, all the conflict tokens are on the battle side, then you get war.
  When war breaks out, each player compares their military strength with that of their 2 neighbours. If the player's military strength is higher than their neighbour's, they get a military victory token, thus it's possible for a player to gain 2 of these during war.
  Once war has been resolved, 2 events occur; firstly flip all the conflict tokens back to the peace side, secondly, all red cards with horns must be discarded by all players.
• Next player: Once all cards and associated actions have been resolved, the player to the left becomes the active player.

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.

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?

• ​Ruins cards: These oversized cards come in 2 types.
  Ruins deck: There are 25 of these cards that come in 5 colours. Each card displays 2 numbers. A claims value in the top left corner and a stones value in the bottom right; more on these below.
  End of age deck: There are 5 of these cards and only 1 is ever used at a time, they only appears at the end of the game. Each card has a special rule that only comes into play when it is revealed.
• Delver cards: Conversely, delver cards are half-size. When acquired by players, they can be spent before an action to confer some sort of bonus or benefit to that action. 
• Wonders cards: The ancient world was filled with now-destroyed wonders and these cards represent those and come in 3 kinds; minor wonders, major wonders and named wonders.
  There is only 1 wonder card each for minor and major wonders (All minor wonders are identical, as are major.) but there are 15 unique named wonder cards.
• Hexagonal tokens: These six-sided tiles come in various types.
  Stone tokens: These are used to rebuild the wonders of the world and come in 5 colours.
  Minor wonders: There are 10 identical minor wonder tokens.
  Major wonders: There are 6 of these identical tokens.
  Named wonders: There are 15 unique named wonder tokens, each one attributed to one of the named wonder cards.
• Bag: Used in conjunction with the stone tiles.
• Dice: These are the workers of the game (The delvers.), there are 4 sets and each set consists of the 5 dice; an eight-sided die, three normal six-siders and a four sided dice.
• Model: This copy of the game came with a curious little model depicting a 3d version of the delvers and appears to serve no function.

​The cards and tokens are all good quality and you'd expect them to be. The dice are plastic and round edged, they roll well enough.
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

• Stone tokens: Place all the stone tokens into the bag and give it a good shake.
• Ruins deck: Shuffle the ruins deck and deal one card face-down to each player, this should be kept hidden.
  Then remove 5 cards, these are not used in the game.
  End of age card: Shuffle the end of age deck, draw 1 face-down and put it at the bottom of the ruins deck, thus it will be the final card drawn from the deck.
• Draw ruin cards: Draw 5 cards from the ruins deck and place in a face-up row.
  Stone tokens: Blindly draw stone tokens from the bag and place on to the face-up ruins cards; the stone value in the bottom right corner of each card will determine how many stone tokens go on each card.
• Wonders: Put out the minor and major wonder cards face-up, put the corresponding wonder tokens in a stack on each card:
  Named wonders: Shuffle the deck of named wonders and draw cards as determined by the player count, put them out face-up and place each card's unique wonder token on top of it.
• Delver cards: Shuffle the delver deck and deal 2 to each player.
• First player: Give each player a set of dice and determine the starting player.

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.

• Delver cards: The active player may choose to play 1 or more delver cards for their respective bonuses.
• Roll a die: The active player must roll a die, if they don't have a die available for any reason, then they must take back a die they previously placed on a ruins card.
  Declare: Before rolling any dice, the active player must choose which die to roll and which ruin to put it on to.
  Roll the die: The active player must roll the die they chose and place it on the ruin card they chose! What does this do, well read on.
• Results: What happens when a die is placed on a ruins card depends on what was rolled among other factors.
  1, 2 or 3: If the die result was 1 of these 3 numbers, then the active play may immediately claim a stone token from that card the die was placed on to. If the card has no tokens left on it, then they draw blindly from the bag.
  Completing a claim: After a die has been placed on a ruins card, total the value of all the dice placed on that card, if that value meets or beats the card's claims value (The number in the top left corner.), then that card can be claimed.
  The player who has a single die showing the highest value claims the card, the number of dice a player has on a card has no direct bearing other than possibly in tie-breakers. Players who lose out on claiming a card, acquire a delver card for each die they had placed on the claimed card, so it's not all bad.
  When a card is claimed, a new card is drawn to replace it.
• Building wonders: When a player acquires a stone token, they add it to their play area by placing it next to any other stone token they've acquired and increase their 'tableau'. The objective here is to create 'rings' of 6 stones and then fill the 'space' by building a wonder in the hole. There are however, some requirements.
  Minor wonder: A minor wonder can be placed in a space surrounded by tokens of any colour
  Major wonder: A major wonder must be surrounded by stone tokens of the same colour.
  Named wonders: Each unique named wonder will have it's own requirements to be met, e.g., this may include 3 of 1 colour and 3 or any other colour.
• Next player: Once the active player has completed delving and/or building, play passes to the player to the left.

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?

• Cards: There are about 20 sets of cards in Sushi Go Party! and they are grouped by type such as appetiser, dessert and so on.
  Tiles: Each card also comes with a tile, what're the tiles for? Read on.
• Board: Sushi Go Party adds a thick, chunky board to the game which serves 2 functions:
  Firstly, it serves as scoring track around the outside
  Secondly, in the centre are a number of recessed squares that are large enough to accommodate the tiles mentioned above are named for the types dishes, e.g., appetiser, dessert and so on.

• Meeples: The game comes with 8 colourful plastic pawns.

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?

• Game board: Merv is a busy game and consequently has a busy board loaded with information, spaces and tracks!
  City: The central part of the board is dominated by a 5x5 grid, this is the city of Merv. The grid is considered to have a north, east, south and west side. It's also surrounded by 'wall spaces'.
  Caravansary: This is a 'caravan of camels' where players can go to buy spice.
  Influence track: As players complete certain actions, they move along this track which allows them to acquire different types of spice.
  Library: This is where players can acquire scrolls and as they do so, they will also acquire benefits or bonuses called breakthroughs.
  Marketplace: Players can travel to other settlements to buy various goods. The marketplace contains 4 inner cities and 4 outer cities.
  Mosque: Players can move along this track to acquire benefits and bonuses.
  Palace: Players can send courtiers to the palace to earn victory points - at a cost.
  Favour track: Used in conjunction with the Palace.
• City tiles: These are used in the city.
  Camel market: This double-sided tile sits in the centre of the 5x5 grid.
  Building sites: There are 24 of these other tiles that populate the rest of the city. Players will be able to construct buildings on these sites.
  When activated, building sites provide resource cubes in their colours as well as 1 of 6 actions.
• Caravan cards: This deck of cards is used to represent the 4 different types of spice available to purchase, however the distribution of spices is not equal on the cards, some are rarer. From most common to rare, they are; cinnamon, ginger, juniper & pepper. Caravan cards confer 2 bonuses'
  Doubles: Whenever a player completes a pair, they get a bonus depending on what type of spice it is.
  Set collecting: During the endgame, sets of cards score victory points.
• Contract cards: These represent business or trade contracts which players can complete for victory points and other rewards.
  Completing a contract usually requires a mixture of resources, goods and scrolls. Players will also require a minimum level of influence in order to complete contracts.
  Unusually, goods and contracts are not spent when completing a contract, they are simply placed on the card, which prevents them being used for other contracts.
  There are 6 types of contract card.
• Goods tiles: There 24 common and 24 rare goods tiles.
• Scroll tiles: These represent the world of academia in Merv
• Breakthrough tiles: Earn enough scroll tiles and a player will acquire a breakthrough tile, these tiles confer a bonus or benefit of some kind.
• Upgrade tiles: Used to upgrade buildings that are constructed.
• Scoring tiles: These score points at the end of every year and are acquired from the mosque track.
• Camel meeples: Wooden meeples.
• Resources: Little wooden cubes, now you're talking. They come in 5 colours and represent the game's 4 different types of errr resources? The white cubes are considered wild.
• Wall tokens: These wooden tokens are shaped in the style of city walls.
• Buildings: There are 9 each of these wooden tokens in each of the 4 player colours.
• Wooden disks: Merv has a lot of tracks that need tracking and wooden disks are used to track those tracks! There are 10 in each colour.
• Meeples: Each player gets a Master Meeple and 8 worker meeples in their colour.

Merv has top-notch components; the cards and tiles are all good quality. cubes, tokens and meeples all look good, made of wood and feel solid, the walls are the standout components here and really look nice when set on the on the board and surrounding the city.
​
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

• City: Randomly choose one side of the camel market tile and place it at the centre of the 5x5 grid.
  Shuffle all of the build site tiles and randomly place them in the city, filling out all 24 spaces.
• Caravansary: shuffle the caravan cards into a face-down deck.
  Draw 8 cards and place them face-up in a row along the edge of the board close to the caravansary space. Then place camels on cards according to the number of players.
• Contract cards: Put the contract cards face-up into their 6 respective decks with the highest value card at the top and in descending order, making the earlier contracts more valuable.
• Library: Place the scroll and breakthrough tokens on their Library spaces.
• Mosque: The upgrade tokens go on to the mosque track, as do 4 camel meeples.
• Marketplace: Place a camel meeple on each of the 4 inner cities in the marketplace.
• Tokens: Give each player their meeples, disks and building tokens.
• Player order: Determine starting player.

I'm sure I've missed some steps, but it's pretty much covered.

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.

• Place meeple: When a player takes their turn, they place their Master Meeple on one of the 5 spaces on the currently active side of the grid and activates one of the 5 building sites in that column/row. When this happens, the following occurs.
  Build: If there is no building on the activated site, then the active player must put one of their buildings there.
  Resources: The active player gains a resource in the colour indicated on the site they activated, furthermore they also gain resources from any sites of the same colour in the same column/row, provided those sites also have buildings. Thus it pays to position buildings in certain ways over turns to be able to generate multiple resources at a time as the game progresses.
  If those buildings belong to other players, then those players additionally acquire resources.
  Then one of the following is chosen.
  Deploy soldier: The active player may place one of their soldiers on to a tile with a building that is not already protected, this protects the building and earns them influence. What is protection for? More on this later.
  Gain favour: Move a space along the favour track at the palace.
  Action: The player use the action on the activated site, actions are the main staple of Merv and players will be using them most of the time.
  Camel market: If the active player has chosen the middle space of the 5, then they can access the camel market tile. The active player may use one of the tiles 4 special abilities by placing a camel meeple on the abilities' space, alternatively, they may collect all the camel meeples previously placed on the camel market tile.
• Actions: There are 6 types of action in Merv.
  Caravansary: This action allows the active player to purchase caravan cards by spending resource cubes, they will also acquire camel meeples if they're on the purchased caravan card.
  Caravan cards come in 4 types, the number of different types a player can hold at any time depends on how far they've travelled along the influence track.
  Every pair of caravan cards earns the player a bonus and sets earn victory points at the end of the game.
  Library: When a player takes the library action, they can spend resources to purchase scrolls. For every 2 scrolls a player acquires, they also acquire a breakthrough.
  Scrolls also have uses elsewhere.
  Marketplace: This grants the active player access to the marketplace which consists of 8 cities, this requires establishing a camp in one of the 4 inner cities. The first player to do this acquires the camel on the city.
  Once a camp has been built, the player can spend resources to buy goods from that city, they may also buy goods from adjacent cities by spending the required goods and a camel meeple. In later actions the player can expand their network of camps and thus do away with the need to spend camels to reach those cities.
  Camels spent this way are placed on caravan cards in the caravansary.
  Mosque: There are 4 camel meeples on the mosque track and taking this action allows the active player to move them. They may move as far as they want, provided they can pay the cost in resource cubes for each move. Every time a player advances along the track, it earns them a bonus; this might be a building upgrade, scoring upgrade and so on.
  Palace: The palace consists of 2 elements; the 4 halls and the favour track.
  Moving up the favour track scores victory points for the active player.
  Each of the 4 halls has 3 spaces and a cost, paying the associated cost allows the player to place meeples in these halls, which will score the player victory points at the end of every year for either scrolls, spices, good or buildings on mosque building sites. Points are earned by spending the advancements made on the favour track.
  Wall: This action allows the active player to build walls around the 5x5 grid, they can build as many segments in action as they can afford in resource points.
  Walls provide protection to the buildings they shield and also earn the player influence.
• Complete contract: If a player has the required mix of influence, resources cubes, goods, spices and scrolls, they may complete a contract in their turn and immediately score the contract's victory points.
  Completing a contract generally requires multiple actions, fortunately completing a contract itself is a free action.
• End of round: At the end of the round a new turn order may be established for the following round.
• End of year: Once the 4th round has been completed, the year has reached its end, but it's not quite over. There are still a couple matters to conclude.
  Invasion: In years 2 & 3, the Mongol horde invades and every unprotected building is destroyed! Although players may bribe the Mongols to leave a building alone with a resource cube matching the site's colour.
  End of year scoring: At the end of each year players score points, these come from several sources.
  Buildings: Each building scores the player a point.
  Scoring tiles: Scoring tiles acquired from the mosque track score points.

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!

• Game board: This board shows a number of landmasses surrounding a central sea area.
  Following the coastline is a dotted line that represents the voyages the Viking adventurers (The Players.) will undertake.
  Also along the coastline are a number of rectangular 'encounter' spaces and 3 square 'village' spaces.
  Finally, there's the start/finish harbour space.
• Voyage tiles: These rectangular tiles represent the various events and challenges the players will encounter during their voyages. On their backs they are numbered 1-4 for the 4 voyages that occur during the game.
  There are various different types of tile.
  Improvement tiles: This type of tile includes, Axes which grant a bonus when fighting monsters and Sails and Hammers, which respectively allow you to recruit more ​Vikings and earn Glory (Victory.) points for Vikings at the game end.
  Glory tiles: These come in 2 types. Pennants allow a player to straight up score Glory points and Goods tiles score Glory points if traded.
  Rune tiles: This is a set collection tile that scores at the game end.
  Port tiles: These can be used to sell Goods tiles. They come in single or double size!
  Event tiles: These tiles allow players Visit (Collect a Viking meeple.) or Pillage (Gain money.).
  Monster tiles: These tiles are a menace to all voyaging Vikings, defeating them earns Glory.
• Harbour tiles: These square tiles each have an objective and are used in conjunction with the Harbour space, players can earn money by completing these objectives.
  Usually these objectives are about collecting the most of something.
• Coins: These metal coins come in a denomination of 1, 3 & 6.

The components for Raids are all universally good, the board and tiles are nice and sturdy, the wooden longship and Viking meeples are great components and the metal coins are an nice touch.
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

• Sort the voyage tiles into 4 stacks according to their number and shuffle them into 4 face-down decks.
  Deal the '1' tiles face-up on to the rectangular spaces on the game board.
  ​Populate the village squares with the relevant number of Viking meeples.
• Put the starting harbour tile on to the harbour space on the board, shuffle the remaining harbour tiles and one face-up next to the remaining stacks of voyage tiles, dealing 3 in total.
• Give each player a longship board.
• Determine a starting order. then distribute Viking meeples to each player according to their position in the turn order.

On to play.
​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.

• Active player: The active player is whoever is in last place on the current journey and they carry out the following actions.
  Collect: The active player collects the voyage tile for the location they are currently stopped at. Obviously this doesn't count for the first movement since all Longships start in the harbour. More on collecting tiles below.
  Discard: The active player must discard all voyage tiles between themselves and the next player. However, tiles displaying an orange arrow are never removed this way.
  This is clearly to stop a player in last place hopping from encounter to encounter when in last place.
  Movement: The active player must travel onwards, they can travel forward as far as they like and stop at any tile with only one stipulation; they cannot stop at a tile or space with an orange arrow, they can only move past orange arrows, although this may trigger an action. More on this below.
• Combat: If the active player's Longship stops at the same location as another player's, then battle ensues.
  Combat in Raids is essentially an auctioning mechanic.
  Whoever initiated combat must discard 1 Viking meeple.
  The other player may retaliate by discarding 2 Viking meeples.
  Now the initial player may retaliate by discarding 3 Viking meeples.
  This continues until one player chooses to or must flee, in which case they don not discard any Viking meeples and move forward to another encounter of their choice.
  If a player has no Viking meeples, they cannot initiate combat and cannot stop at the same encounter as another player's Longship.
• Collecting tiles: This is never done at the end of a player's movement, but before it on their following turn. It's an important distinction because it allows other players a chance to oust a player before they encounter the tile.
  After collecting a tile, it may go on to the player's Longship board or by the side of it.
  Improvement tiles: These are placed on to one of the spaces on the Longship board.
  Glory tiles: Are also placed on the game board.
  Rune tiles: When Rune tiles are collected, they are put to the side of the Longship board.
  Port tiles: These are also put to the side of the Longship board, furthermore, when collecting a Port tile, the active player may remove 1 or 2 Goods tile from their board and place it next to the Port tile. This means the Goods tile(s) will score at the game end. Additionally, collecting a Port tile gains the active player a Viking meeple.
• Passing tiles: Some voyage tiles and certain spaces on the game board are marked with an orange arrow, players cannot stop at these spaces. Instead they must stop before or after them. Unlike the tiles mentioned above, these tiles are resolved as the active player crosses it.
  Monster tiles: When encountering a monster tile, the active may sacrifice a poor hapless Viking meeple to sail past it or fight the monster. Fighting a monster requires sacrificing the requisite number of poor hapless Vikings to defeat it! However, this means the player can take the Monster tile, place it next to their Longship board and score it at the game end.
  If a player has no Vikings when they pass a Monster tile, then they simply move past it.
  Visit tile: The 1st player to pass a Visit tile acquires 2 Viking meeples, the 2nd player to pass it collects 1. Visit tiles are never collected.
  Pillage tile: The 1st player to pass a Pillage tile acquires 3 money, the 2nd player to pass it collects 1. Pillage tiles are never collected.
• Village spaces: When passing a Village space on the board, each player collects a single Viking meeple.​
• End of voyage: When a player completes a tour of the board and returns to the harbour space, they place their Longship token into the space for their finishing position and the starting order for the next voyage.
  ​Once all players have returned, cash is given out to the player who best meets the objective, then lesser amounts to the 2nd and 3rd best to meet the objective.
• New voyage: Any remaining tiles are removed.
  ​Tiles from the next voyage are placed on the gameboard, Populate the village spaces with more Viking meeples and begin the next voyage.

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.