8th September 2022

It's a Thursday evening, it's Aldershot, it's time for some gaming goodness.

​Channel your inner Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and Kevin McCloud as you attempt to build your... Dream Home in this drafting, set collecting game.

What's in the game?

• Game board: This is not really a game board but more of a drafting board.
  There are 2 rows of 6 card spaces each, the first space of each row is dedicated to placing the game's 2 deck of cards.
  Thus the top row is the resource card row and the bottom row is the room card row.
• Home board: These are actually player boards. Each one depicts a 3 level idyllic suburban home.
  The bottom floor depicts a porch or entrance (Which essentially uses up 3 spaces) along with a 'garage' (Which is actually the basement) and consists of 2 card spaces. 
  The middle floor has 5 card spaces.
  Finally, the top floor also have 5 card spaces - giving a total of 12
• Cards: Dream Home uses 2 decks of cards.
  Room cards: These cards all show various rooms you would find in a typical house, bathrooms, kitchens and so on. Room cards are used by players create their home and are colour-coded according to type. There are normal rooms, basement rooms and unique rooms.
  Many types of room cards can be placed adjacent to cards of the identical type. 
  At the bottom of each room card it will display 1 or more numbers, which indicate both the maximum 'size' that room can reach and also victory point (VP) value of that card for reaching the that size if other cards of the same type are placed adjacent to it.
  Resource cards: This type of card provides players with benefits or bonuses, which may be once-only, ongoing or game end VPs.
  There are roof cards, décor cards, tool and helper cards.
• Tokens: These are décor tokens, each one is uniquely shaped according to the resource card it corresponds to and will also display a VP value.
• First player token: I don't usually write about the first player token but this is a fairly chunky wooden styled in the shape of a house.

​Component quality is the usual good standard found in most modern board games. The cards are fine, the board and tokens are constructed from sturdy cardboard. The first player token is chunky and made from wood, it's obviously a bit of a gimmick but it's the kind of gimmick I'm a sucker for!

Dream Home has fantastic artwork throughout. The Illustration used on the home board is good, however, the standouts are the cards and tokens which feature excellent colourful and distinct depictions of home spaces. Interestingly, many cards will feature children hidden among the furniture. This is more than just a aesthetic choice which will be explained below.

Most information is conveyed via text and there's no iconography that needs learning.

How's it play?
​Setup
This is the setup for 4-player games, in game with lower player counts, some cards will be discarded after being placed on the game board.

• Game board: Sort the cards by type and shuffle them into 2 face-down decks.
  Resource row: Place the resource deck on to the leftmost space on the top row.
  Next, leave the 1st space to the right of the deck empty, it's used to indicate the first player token, a resource card never goes here.
  Finally deal 4 face-up cards on to the 4 remaining spaces in the row.
  Rooms row: Put the room deck on the leftmost space on the bottom row, deal 5 face-up cards on to the 5 spaces in this row.
• Player board: Give each player a player board.
• First player: Determine a starting player and give them the first player token.

On to play
Dream Home is played over exactly 12 rounds and players will be putting room cards on to their personal game board to build their home and gaining resource cards.
This is done by drafting pairs of cards from the same column, that is, 1 resource and 1 room card - except for the leftmost space, in which case they acquire a room card and the first player token.

Turn order is slightly different to the usual here: The player with the first player token goes first and play progresses to the left until all players have taken their turn. However, it's possible that the first player token will change hands during a round, consequently, in the following round a new turn order would be established.

During their turn, the active player takes the following actions.

• Take cards: The active player must choose a column and take the resource and room card from that column.
  First player token: If the active player chooses the first column, they only get a room card, however, they also gain the first player marker and will go first in the next round.
• Place room: The active player must place the room card they just drafted with the following restrictions:
  Basement: Basement cards must go on to 1 of the 2 basement spaces.
  Build up: All other room cards must be placed on top of the porch or on top of another room card, this can a basement card or be another room card in the case of placing room cards on the top floor.
  ​Size limit: Players will want to put cards of the same type adjacent to each other to maximise VP scoring but a room cannot exceed it's size limit. E.g., a bedroom can consist of 2 adjacent bedroom cards, a 3rd bedroom card cannot be placed adjacent to that room.
  ​Can't play: If for any reason, the active player cannot play a card, they can place it face-down as an empty room which will score 0 VPs. Empty rooms follow the same placement rules as explained above.
• Resource cards: There are 4 types of resource card.
  Décor cards: When one of these cards is taken, the active player also takes the corresponding décor token. The token must immediately be placed on a room that matches the token and can provide bonus VPs at the game end. When this is done, the room is considered finished, that is, no more room cards can be added to that room.
  If a décor token cannot be placed on a matching room, it is discarded.
  Helper cards: These cards generally provide some sort of bonus scoring criteria during the game end.
  Roof cards: These come in several different colours and when a player acquires a roof, they turn it face-down and place it on their home board's roof.
  These cards cannot be looked at again until final scoring at game end!
  4 Roof cards can score bonus VPs at the game end and more if they are of a matching colour. This means players will need to memorise those colours.
  Tool cards: These usually provide some sort of benefit during the game.
• Next player: Once the active player has resolved the cards they took, play progresses to the player on their left.
• Next round: Once all player's have taken their turn, play progresses to the next round and the following occur.
  Clear board: All face-up cards remaining on the game board are discarded out of play. 4 new resource and 5 new room cards are drawn and placed as per the setup rules.
  Turn order: Whoever has the first player token will be the starting player in the new round. If the first player token did not change hands because nobody chose the left most column, then whoever retained the token will be the starting player again in the new round.

Endgame
Dream Home is played over 12 rounds and after the last round, the game goes to scoring. There are various avenues to earning VPs.

• ​Room cards: These score points according to their type and size. E.g., a living room consisting of 3 cards will score 9 VPs.
• Décor: These tokens will score points as listed on them.
• Functionality: Players earn points for having certain type of rooms in their home. A home with a bathroom, bedroom and kitchen will earn VPs for example.
• Roof: Players can now look at their roof cards. If a player has at least 4 roof cards on their roof, they score 3 points. If a player can have set of at least 4 roof cards of the same colour then they earn 8 VPs.
  Windows: Every roof card that has a window scores and additional VP.
• Additionally; certain cards can also provide VPs.

Points are tallied, highest score wins. In the case of a tie, the player with home board showing the most children on the cards wins!

Overall
Dream Home strikes a balance between ease of play and depth. Players will be faced with the conundrum of having to build outwards before building upwards.
It might not seem like much but it's unlikely that players will get all the cards they need at the time they need them.
The larger room sets will score more points per card but unless a player gets the right cards at the right time, it's likely that they will have to leave gaps when collecting bigger sets, which can make it tricky to build upwards.

The drafting mechanic also provides players with a meaningful choice. Again, it's unlikely that players will always get the 2 cards they want, often they will need to compromise on which resource and room card to take as well as adapt to circumstances as they are occur.

Finally, the first player mechanic is also interesting. Gaining the first player token feels costly because the player only gets a room card but it can play dividends in the following turn. There will times when going first can be extremely useful.
Conversely going last can be painful as the last player will only ever have a choice of 2 columns to pick from.

None of this is ever too complicated, the sets are never too big and intricacies that can arise from syncing resource cards such as décor cards with room cards is never too complex.

Dream Home also doesn't outstay its welcome. Being played over 12 rounds keeps it moving along briskly and provides a fairly concise experience, unless you're playing with a sufferer of analysis paralysis!

It's fair to say that Dream Home is a lightweight and accessible iteration of the 'draft-and-place' multiple components, set collecting mechanic seen in quite a few games.
This accessibility along with it's top-notch presentation means that it's probably a good game to play with younger participants or more casual gamers.

For me though: While I feel that Dream Home does provide a good experience for younger and more casual gamers, I'm not sure it has long term appeal to more dedicated gamers. I enjoyed the game but it's fairly simplistic nature means I'm not sure how often I'd like to play it.

4th August 2022

It's a Thursday and we're round Simon's for a evening of gaming entertainment.
​
Cascadia: 'A land of falling waters,' generally referring to a large wilderness area in the Pacific north-west of the USA.

In Cascadia players vie to create a diverse landscape of habitats and wildlife in this tile placement game.

What's in a game?

• Tiles: Cascadia uses 2 types of hex tile, however, they all share some common features.
  Each hex space will feature 1 or 2 of the game's 5 habitats and 1-3 of the 5 wildlife types. Finally some hex spaces will have a pinecone icon - usually this is a hex that only has 1 habitat and 1 animal on it.
  Starter tiles: There are 5 of these and they are a little different from the main tile in that they are actually 3 hex tiles combined into 1.
  Habitat tiles: There are about 80 of these tiles.
  The game's 5 habitats are:
  Forest
  Mountain
  Prairie
  River
  Wetland
• Tokens: There are a 100 wooden disc tokens in the game that come in 5 types. Each type represents a different animal/colour.
  Bear/brown
  Elk/earthy brown
  Fox/orange
  Hawk/blue
  Salmon/red
• Bag: A small used in conjunction with the tokens.
• Cards: There are 5 types of card in Cascadia for the 5 wildlife types and 4 cards in each type, thus 20 cards in total. One card will be used from each wildlife type during the game.
  Cards provide different scoring opportunities for each wildlife type as explained below. Additionally each of the 4 cards for all wildlife have slightly different scoring criteria and are rated A-D with A being the easiest to score and D the hardest.
  The different types of card score as follows.
  Bear: Bears score for being solitary or in small packs as determined by their card,  generally they cannot be adjacent to other bears.
  Elk: These score by being in herds, the shape the herd must take will be dictated by the elk card used.
  Fox: Foxes score by being adjacent to different wildlife types.
  Hawk: These score by being in line-of-sight of other hawks, generally they cannot be adjacent to other hawks.
  Salmon: Salmon score by being in a continuous line, the longer the better.
• Pinecone tokens: These are standard card tokens that depict pinecones. After being acquired, pinecones may be spent to trigger a couple of special actions or score VPs at the game end.

For the most part the components are all high quality. The tiles and tokens are sturdy and the wildlife tokens in particular are chunky and tactile.
The pinecone tokens are average quality by modern standard - which means perfectly acceptable.
The same is true of the cards, they feel a little flimsy but since they're only used to display information and won't really be handled much, they too are perfectly acceptable.

The art used on cards is fantastic, having said that, each set of 4 only uses 2 images which are flipped and used a 2nd time, it's a minor quibble but it feels touch cheap.
Art on the tiles is good too but is hard to appreciate since they are relatively small. Importantly, it's also uncluttered, differences between habitats is for the most part very easy to distinguish. Similarly, the wildlife icons are easy seen.

As a minor aside: Prairies are depicted as yellow, which I guess represent dry grasslands. The yellow definitely does not represent desert! And yes; some of the yellow tiles have salmon icons on them, because, believe it or not, prairies can have water features.
If you ever play the game and someone says, 'why are their fish in the desert', then let them know!!
Anyway, back to talking about components.

The iconography is easily understood in Cascadia. It's obvious what the wildlife ​icons represent and the icon for pinecones is equally as obvious.

How's it play?
Setup

• Starting tiles: Randomly give a starting tile to each player who should put it face-up in their personal playing area.
• Cards: Sort the cards by type and shuffle them into 5 face-down decks. Draw 1 from each deck and put them into a face-up row.
  These will provide players will the scoring criteria for the wildlife tokens.
• Wildlife tokens: Put all the wildlife tokens into the bag and give it a good shake.
• Tiles: Select the number of tiles to use as per player count and shuffle them into some face-down stacks, the exact number of stacks does not matter.
• Drafting area: Draw 4 tiles and place them in a row, next draw 4 wildlife tokens and put them in a row adjacent to the 4 tiles.
  ​Thus there will be 4 pairs each of 1 tile and 1 token.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Cascadia, players will draft tiles and wildlife tokens, using them to create a personal landscape by placing tiles adjacent to each other and putting tokens on top of them in order to create habitats and patterns of animals to score points.
Cascadia follows a usual turn order with the active player resolving their action before play progresses to their left.

• Overpopulation: The first thing the active player must do is check the wildlife tokens in the drafting area for overpopulation.
  4 identical tokens: If all 4 wildlife tokens are identical, the active player must remove all of them, put them to one side and draw 4 new wildlife tokens.
  3 identical tokens: If 3 of the 4 tokens are identical, the active player may choose to put the 3 tokens to one side and draw 3 new ones.
  It is possible to trigger overpopulation multiple times dependant on the tokens that are drawn but regardless of this, once overpopulation no longer occurs, return all set aside tokens back to the bag (And give it a good shake!).
• Pinecone tokens: If a player has acquired any pinecone tokens on previous turns (See below for info getting them.) then they can be spent for 1 of 2 actions.
  Take any tile and token: This actions allows the active player to take any tile and any wildlife token, regardless of their positions in the drafting area.
  Remove any wildlife tokens: The active player may set aside any number of wildlife tokens and then draw new tokens to replace them. Rules for overpopulation still apply here.
• Draft: The active player takes one of the 4 pairs of 1 tile and 1 wildlife token and according to the following rules, places them in their playing area.
• Place tile: The active must put the tile with one of it's faces adjacent to the face of a tile already in play. When placing tiles, the habitats on the tiles do not need to match, i.e., you can place mountains next to rivers but's a good idea to do so. Larger habitats score more VPs later on.  
• Place wildlife token: Wildlife tokens can only go on a tile that contains the matching animal icon. E.g., a fox token can only be placed on a tile which has a fox icon.
  If a wildlife token is placed on to a tile with a pinecone icon, then the active player immediately takes a pinecone token and adds it to their personal supply.
• Replacements: A new tile is drawn from a stack and a new wildlife ​token is drawn from the bag to replace those that were drafted.
• Next player: Play now progresses to the player left of the active player.

Endgame
Play continues until all the face-down stacks of tiles have been depleted and only 3 tiles remain in the drafting area, which should also be a even number of player turns.
VPs are scored from several sources.

• Meeting the scoring criteria on the 5 cards.
• Players score VPs for the biggest single grouping of tiles for each of the 5 habitats. If a player has groupings of 2 mountains and 5 mountains, they only score the group of 5 mountains. The bigger the grouping, the more VPS
  Bonus: For each of the 5 habitats, bonus VPs are awarded to the player with the biggest grouping of that habitat and the player with the 2nd biggest grouping.
• Pinecones: Each unspent pinecone contributes a VP.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
The rulebook for Cascadia talks about the real life habitats and biomes that inspired the game and it's obvious that this is one of those games where a bit of extra attention has been put into the details. 

On to the game itself: Cascadia has a nice mixture of quick to learn rules and depth of gameplay.
This depth comes from forcing players to make tricky and meaningful decisions. This occurs because Cascadia has 3 axis' of play which will influence players' choices.

The first comes from wanting tiles with specific habitats on them; players may want to expand their forests or rivers for example and will be looking for tiles that facilitate that.
The second axis comes from also wanting tiles with specific wildlife icons. If a player needs a fox token in a certain spot, then they'll need a tile with a fox icon.
The third and final axis comes from getting the actual wildlife tokens that are needed to score the wildlife cards.

​All of this means that it's unlikely that players will get all 3 that they want when picking a single pair which would be a no-brainer, they'll probably end getting 2 of they want and sometimes only 1.
​Players will need to adapt and re-strategize contextually, look to optimise their picks and finding other scoring opportunities. Players will probably have to gamble a little bit on getting what they need later in the game.

Pinecone tokens can of course change things. Used at the right time they can really open up a player's choices, getting any pair can make a difference, as can clearing all wildlife tokens in the drafting area if a player is really looking for a certain token.

Cascadia also has a fairly quick playtime, although it sort of occupies a game length that's way too long to be a filler but a little too short to fill an entire evening. I don't consider that a bad thing, you could just play twice! The randomness in setup and scoring gives it a lot of replayability.

If I had a criticism of Cascadia, it would be that sometimes the card scoring can be a little unclear and finicky. The rulebook does offer elaborations on this, but it's a definite little niggle.

Otherwise though, I think Cascadia is ab excellent tile-laying and set collectiing game.
For me it ticks a lot of boxes that good games should; straightforward rules, some depth for decision making and a brisk playtime.
It's one of those games I frequently like to carry in my board game bag when going to game events, so if I meet someone who's never met played Cascadia, they can try it.
As should you!

5th July 2022

It's a Tuesday and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Board Gaming Club for an evening of gaming.

​The world of Victorian anthropomorphic railroad magnates is a cutthroat one in this game of acquiring train lines and towns. Buy low and sell high to become the... Raccoon Tycoon!

What's in a game?

• Game board: The game board background depicts a idyllic rural landscape with the beginnings of a burgeoning industrial age.
  The board is broadly speaking divided into 2 halves. The top half has 6 tracks for the game's 6 commodities while the bottom half features spaces and tracks for railroad cards, town cards and building tiles.
• Cards: Raccoon Tycoon has several types of cards:
  Price & Production cards: Each of this type card has 2 halves. The top half with a blue background is for price and pushes up the value of the variously depicted commodities while the bottom half with a red background displays various commodities that the player can produce/acquire.
  ​Railroad cards: These cards feature anthropomorphic artwork, cats, dogs, bears, foxed and of course raccoons.
  In the bottom-right corner is the card's initial price (Railroad cards are acquired via auctioning) while the centre-bottom shows a series of numbers. These are VPs related to set collecting, thus the more copies a player has of a certain set of railroad cards, the more VPs that set is worth.
  Town cards: These cards have smaller illustration that usually depicts some part of the countryside.
  At the bottom of each town card are 2 purchasing costs, 1 is a cost for a specific commodity while the other is for any commodities. The cost for buying a town card with any commodities is always greater that using the required specific commodity.
• Building tiles. These chunky square tiles depict various different types of businesses and industries. They come in 2 types (Basic and Advanced.) are double-sided and one side is the initial version of a building while the other shows the upgraded, improved version.
  In the bottom-right corner on both sides is the cost, initially to buy the tile, then to flip the tile to the upgraded side. Each tile has a special ability of some sort and the upgraded version is always a improved version of the initial building. Bonuses might include gaining extra commodities or selling more of them, discounts to certain costs etc.
  Additionally, some tiles are marked with a 'B' or a 'P' and basically only one of each can be used in a turn.
• Commodity tokens: Raccoon Tycoons uses 6 types of commodity and each has it's own token and colour.
  Coal: These black tokens are shaped in a minecart filled with coal.
  Iron: These are grey anvil shaped tokens.
  Luxury goods: These tokens are green bottles, filled with wine I guess? Wine is certainly a luxury good!
  Manufactured goods: Red cubes are used to represent manufactured goods.
  Wheat: Yellow tokens shaped as bundles of wheat.
  Wood: Brown tokens depicting piles of logs.
• Money: Paper money! Whooo! I like it!
• First player meeple: I don't usually bother to mention any first player tokens when blogging (Because they're just first player tokens.) but this one is a unnecessarily big token. Basically a gimmick and something I wholeheartedly approve of!

Raccoon Tycoon has excellent production values.
Wooden tokens are used for commodities and first player token which is a good move, they always have a quality to them and also look cool.
The cards (And paper money) have a sturdy feel to them while the tiles are satisfyingly thick.

The game's art direction is also equally high.
Anthropomorphic art is used throughout the game and I've found that it's a divisive style which most people do or don't like. Regardless of your view on this, it's undeniable that the quality of the art is high.
The standouts are the railroad cards which use a oil painting style to display whimsical characterful animals in Victorian clothes.
Curiously, the building tiles use a completely different style, instead displaying line illustrated buildings and subjects with mostly flat and barely shaded colours. It's a striking contrast that should theoretically ​be jarring but actually fits quite well.

Icons used to represent commodities on cards are easily understood. Most other game information is relayed via text which is usually very clear.

How's it play?
Setup

• Board: The number of cards and tiles used on the board is dependant on player count.​
  • Railroad cards: Shuffle these into a face-down deck on its allotted space on the board and deal 2 face-up cards on to their spots.
  • Town cards: These cards are arranged into a face-down deck by VP value with the lowest value at the top and highest at the bottom. Thus the lower value cards appear earlier in the game.
    Place the deck on it's spot and deal 1 card face-up.
  • Building tiles: Shuffle the basic tiles and put out the allotted amount into the relevant track and discard any remaining basic tiles. Next; shuffle the advanced tiles into a stack.
  • Commodities: Put out the commodity tokens and use 1 each on their pertinent tracker to display their starting value.
• Price & production cards: Shuffle the cards into a face-down deck and deal 3 face-down to each player.
• Cash: Give each player $10 starting funds.
• First player: Determine the starting player. Following on from this each player claims starting commodities in turn order. The first player takes any 1 commodity of their choice, 2nd player taking any 2, etc, all the way up to the 5th player taking 5 in a 5-player game.

On to play
Players are trying to earn VPs in Raccoon Tycoon, this can be done by collecting sets of railroad cards, acquiring town cards to pair with railroad cards and gaining building tiles which are not only worth VPs but can provide avenues to scoring more VPs.
All of this requires money and commodities, players will need to manipulate the commodities market to maximise the profit gained from selling their own commodities while trying limit the profit of other players.

Racoon Tycoon follows a traditional turn order with the active player resolving their action before play moves on to the player on their left.

• Actions: During their turn, the active player may perform 1 of the 5 following actions.
  • Building tile: The active player may purchase one of the building tiles by paying its cost, which is then placed into their playing area.
    A new building tile is drawn to replace it.
    Note: This action is also used to upgrade a building tile by paying its upgrade cost on the other side and flipping the tile.
  • Price & Production card: The active player may play 1 of these cards from their hand.
    Production: This allows them to acquire exactly 3 commodities from the supply, the icons in the production half of the card indicate which commodities the player can choose from and how much of it they can take.
    Note: Players have a limit of 10 commodities that they can own.
    Price: The value of the indicated commodities rise on their relevant trackers by 1 step.
  • Railroad card auction: The active player may begin an auction on either of the 2 available railroad cards. Their opening bid must be at least equal to the value shown on the relevant card. Others players may then bid or pass on the auction. Once everyone bar 1 player has passed, they win the card. A new railroad is drawn to replace it on the track
    Note: If the active player did not win the card, they can perform another action, this may include another auction.
    Thus the active player's action is not squandered if they did not win the auction.
  • Sell a commodity: The active player may sell exactly 1 type of commodity, however, they can sell any amount of tokens of that type. They earn the listed value on that commodity's tracker per token sold.
    Price crash: Once the commodity has been sold, the value of that commodity drops a number of steps equal to the tokens sold!
  • Town: The active player may purchase a town card, each one has 2 listed costs and the player can choose which one to pay - either the specific commodity cost or a more costly mix of any commodities.
    A new town card is drawn to replace it.
• Next player: Once the current player has resolved their action, play moves to the person on their left.

Endgame
Play continues until one of the following 2 criteria is met.

• The last railroad card is auctioned.
• The last town card is bought.

If either instance, the current round is completed and the game goes to scoring.
VPs come from a variety of sources.

Sets of railroad cards.
Town cards paired with railroad cards.
Building tiles earn 1 VP each.
Bonuses from building cards may also provide additional VPS.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Even without the anthropomorphic artwork, Raccoon Tycoon would be something or a quirky game.
It packs quite a lot of mechanical systems into a single game albeit to a fairly simple level.
A little bit of stock market manipulation, a touch of set collecting, a dash of auctioning and a sprinkling of engine building. It could be a recipe for disaster but in the case of Raccoon Tycoon; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
A large part of this I feel is due to the building tiles. Their unique bonuses both provide some asymmetrical gameplay elements and can also give players a bit of strategic direction.
Raccoon Tycoon is a bit of a balancing act between acquiring cash for railroad cards/building tiles and commodities for town cards. It's hard to work towards both at the same time. Adaptation is important here, as is planning ahead. Players could look to finding ways to raise commodity values to increase profit when selling them later

This brings me to commodity manipulation. There isn't too much interaction between players other than auctioning and commodity manipulation, 
Watching what opponents are doing can prove useful and is something of a higher level of play. I.e., if 2 players are accumulating the same commodity, there's a possibility that one of them will sell it, causing that market to crash. Beating a opponent to the punch so to speak, can cost them lots of cash!

Raccoon Tycoon is fairly rules light and I think seasoned gamers won't have any problems grasping all the systems at work here. For less experienced gamers, the curve will be steeper, I don't feel it's a gamebreaker but I imagine it could be off putting.

While there's enough gameplay to give players thoughtful and meaningful decisions to make and a fun experience, I also found the game to be a little unengaging and uncompelling, I never felt like I was building railroads or towns and despite the unique art style, it didn't feel like it stood out from the crowd.
here's nothing wrong with Raccoon Tycoon but it wouldn't be my first pick for a game, although I'd have no problem playing it if someone else wanted to.

29th May 2022

Sunday gaming on ​Board Game Arena continued with mancala styled game Fruit Picking.

I'm not the fruit picker, I'm the fruit picker's son, I'm only picking fruits 'til the fruit picker comes.
Hmm, it doesn't work...

Caveat: We've only ever played Fruit Picking digitally.

What's in a game?

• ​Game board: This cheerfully colourful board shows the 4 combinations of sets of card to winning the game and there's a central area to put the deck of market cards.
  Finally; along the board's bottom edge are 4 spaces, these are market slots to place 4 market cards. Above each card space is the additional market cost for that slot.
• Player board: As equally as colourful is the player board. It has 8 circular spaces, 7 of which are surrounding a central space.
  The central space is the 'supply space' and only used to store tokens, the space at the top is the 'Harvest House'.
  The remaining 6 spaces are 'farm spaces'​. These 6 spaces are where the main game occurs.
• Farm cards: These are circular cards and are used in conjunction with the player boards. There are 4 identical sets of 6 cards in each player colour.
  Each set contains 5 cards that show 1-3 of 5 different fruits (2 bananas, a pear, a pineapple, 2 plums  and 3 strawberries.), the final card shows 2 waterdrops.
• Market cards: There are 30 market cards. 6 for each type of fruit as mentioned above.
• Seed tokens: There are 18 seed tokens in each player colour.

The boards in Fruit Picking feature a couple rural landscapes depicted with a appealingly stylised illustrations showing idyllic countryside. The fruits are also well illustrated and Fruit Picking has solid art style.

Other than the fruit and waterdrop symbols, there's no iconography in the game and it should not prove any problem to players.

How's it play?
Setup

• First Player: Determine a first player.
• Players: Give each player a player board as well as seed and farm cards in their colour.
  The first player should shuffle their farm cards and randomly place them in the 6 empty spaces on their player board. All remaining players should follow suit and put the same farm cards into the same spaces.
  All players should place their seeds into their supply space. Then from there put 2 seeds into each ​of the first 3 farm spaces.
• Game board: Shuffle the market cards into a face-down deck. Then draw and place 4 cards face-up, putting 1 into each market slot.

On to play
In Fruit Picking, players take turns moving their resources clockwise around the spaces on their board which allows them to active one space to gain more seeds or buy a card.
Play begins with the first player and once their turn is over, proceeds to the left.

• Move seeds: The active player picks one of their farm spaces with seeds and moves those seeds and redistributes them. The number of spaces they are distributed to is equal to the number of seeds in the chosen space.
  Thus if the chosen farm space has 3 seeds, they are moved 3 spaces further on with 1 seed being dropped off in each space for the next 3 spaces. The last farm space to gain a seed becomes activated.
• Activation: Broadly speaking, the active player may choose to resolve 1 of 2 types of activation
  Acquire seeds: The active player gains a number of seed tokens equal to the number of fruit that are in the activated space, they are then placed into that space.
  Buy card: The active player may buy a card from the row of market cards. They can only buy a card with fruit that matches the fruit activated space and must also have enough tokens in their Harvest House space.
  The cost is the number of fruit on the card PLUS the cost on the market slot above which can be an additional 1-3 seeds.
  When a card is bought, cards on the left are slid to the right to fill the blank space and a new card is added on the left, a pretty standard conveyor belt mechanic.
  Exceptions: There are of course a couple of exceptions.
  Water drops: If the activated farm space contains the water drops farm card, then the active player must perform the acquire seeds action.
  Harvest House: If the Harvest House is activated, the active player does not choose an action, instead they perform the move seeds action again and activates a farm card another time. This can be the Harvest House again so it's possible to gain multiple actions (And fill up the Harvest House too!) by reactivating it.

Endgame
Play continues with players acquiring fruit cards until one player has the cards to meet one of the criteria which triggers the game end.
Fruit Picking provides players with 4 ways to do this. A pair and 3 of a kind, 4 of a kind, 3 pairs and 1 of each fruit.
When this occurs, the current round is completed and if the player who triggered the game is the only one to have met any of the criteria, then they win.
In the likelihood that more than one player has met any of the criteria by the end of the last round, then ties are broken by quantities of fruit and seeds on cards.

Overall
Fruit Picking is a lightweight games that has a good mix of logic and luck.

Logically, it's not hard to think several moves ahead if you want. Once farm cards have been distributed on to the player boards, moving seeds and activating farm cards is entirely predictable and only driven by player decisions.
Manipulating the Harvest House action to game more actions is a key tactic, especially as it can be used to quickly fill the Harvest House and used to purchase cards.
Fruit Picking is essentially a race to acquire cards before other players. When cards are drafted, everything can change, which neatly brings me to the next facet of the game

The game's unpredictability comes into play on the market track. As play progresses, cards will come into play randomly, not only that, their costs will also vary, especially as they move along the track.
It means that some times, the cards appearing will play into certain players' strategies and other times, potentially scupper those strategies. Players will have to be prepared to change direction for long term plans when this occurs and adapt their approach according to what is available.

It's something I've encountered in other games and found to be irritating, Fruit Picking is no different. I know that this can be an important element of a game because without some randomizer, it can sometimes very quickly become obvious who's going to win. Even so, it irritates me.

Fruit Picking also sits in a strange place of feeling a bit overlong for a filler game but definitely a bit too light for a main game.

Having said that, it's accessible game that's easy to learn. For people who want something which engages some tactical thinking but is not along time brain burner, Fruit Picking may hit that sweet spot.

29th May 2022

It's a Sunday Evening and we're on Board Game Arena for some gaming entertainment.

Copenhagen; largest city in and capital of Denmark. Few know though, of the cities secret history of builders having ties with errr.... tetromino shapes? At least that's what the game Copenhagen would have you believe... sort of!

Caveat: we've only ever played Copenhagen digitally.

What's in a game?

• Player boards: Each player board is styled to look a little like the facade of a urban townhouse in what I imagine is meant to be Copenhagen.
  Mechanically speaking, each player board is a 5x9 grid which provides 45 spaces, and 4 of these spaces contain shields. Finally, outside the grid is a column of 3 more shields.
• Tetrominoes tiles: Copenhagen comes with tetrominoes tiles in 5 different colours plus white. Strictly speaking, these aren't all tetrominoes as they come in sizes of 2-5 but they are all orthogonally linked square shapes. 
  Additionally, each colour of tetrominoes has it's own 'themed shape'. E.g., all the purple tiles are straights, the red tiles tend to be blocks and so on. Having said that there's some crossover in shape types between colours. The white tiles are the exception here as they are all 1-space tiles.
  They're also somewhat limited in numbers, there are 3 of each size in each colour  except for the 5-space tiles, where there's only 1 5-space tile in each colour. Again, white is the exception in having 12 tiles.
  Finally... windows! All tiles have 1 or more windows on them. As a rule all tiles have 1 space without a window, a 2-space tile has 1 window space and 1 non-window space, the 4-space tile has 3 windows and 1 non-window. Yet again, white is the exception as every white tile has a window on it. Why are windows important? More on that later.
• Facade cards: These cards come in the same 5 colours as the tetrominoes tiles. They look quite busy but in fact, they just show the all the relevant shapes in their particular colour.
• Game end card: A unique card which can trigger 1 of the game's 2 ways of ending.
• Ability tiles: There are 5 types of these square tiles, each type confers a special ability when used. They're also double-sided with a 'used' icon on the flip side.
• Harbour tile: This large tile has spots to place the draw deck and discard pile. Along the outside of the tile are 7 spaces to line up 7 facade cards in a sort of 'U' shape.
• Scoring track: This tiles tracks player scores and slots in adjacent to the harbour tile.

The components for Copenhagen are pretty colourful and bright, although there's barely any art to speak of. 
​
There's also barely any iconography to speak of. The symbols on the ability tiles aren't immediately obvious and will probably require looking up in the rules a couple of times. Other than that though, everything else is easily understood.

How's it play?
Setup

• Harbour tile: Put out the harbour tile, then shuffle the facade cards into a face-down deck. Going clockwise, deal 7 cards face up to the allotted spaces around the harbour tile, then put the deck on to it's space on the tile.
• Tetramino tiles: Put out the tiles as per the player count and arrange them by colour and type.
• Special ability tiles: Put out 5 stacks of special ability tile according to the player count.
• Player board: Give each player a player board.
• First Player: Determine a starting player
• Starting cards: Each player draws cards from the deck as per player count and turn order.

​On to play
In Copenhagen, players take turns either gathering cards or playing them to gain tiles which they put on to their player board to score points.
During their turn, the active player may perform exactly 1 of 2 possible actions.

• Draft cards: The active player takes 2 cards from around the harbour tile. These 2 cards must be adjacent to each other and cannot 'wrap around' the horseshoe shape the line of cards are in.
  Players also have a hand limit of 7 which they must discard down to if they go over.
• Draft tiles: The active may draft one of the tetromino tiles, this is done by discarding a set of cards. if 3 red cards are discarded, then the active player can take a 3-space red tetromino tile, if 5 greens are discard, then they can take the 5 space green tetromino and so forth.
  Placing tiles: Once acquired, a tile must immediately be placed on to their playing board. They must be placed either at the bottom of the playing area, or on top another tile - although overhangs are acceptable and tiles can be rotated in any the player sees fit.

Other rules: Well that's it for the basic actions, there are a couple of extra rules.

• Shields: When a shield on a player's board is covered by a tile, then they get to perform 1 of 3 special actions.
  1-space tetromino: The active player may take and place one of the white 1-space tiles into their playing area. Which if placed on another shield space can trigger another special action.
  Ability tile: The active player may take 1 of the 5 types of ability tile. Players are limited to 1 of each type but they may be activated any anytime in the active player's turn. Once resolved, an ability tile is flipped to its used side.
  Ability tiles allow players to take 3 cards, or 2 cards not adjacent to each other and and so on.
  Reactivate abilities: This final action allows the active player to flip all ability tiles from their used side to their ready side. Obviously, this action becomes better, the more flipped tiles a player has.
• Exhausted deck: When the draw deck becomes empty, all the cards in the discard pile are shuffled back into a new draw deck.
  Additionally, the End Game card is shuffled into the bottom 10 cards of the draw deck. This may trigger the game end, see below for more information
• Scoring: There are 2 ways of scoring; horizontal which requires filling 5 spaces and vertical, which requires 9.
  Horizontal: When a player completes a horizontal line, they score 1 point, if the all the spaces in the line contain windows, they score 2 points instead.
  Vertical: A completed vertical line is worth 2 points, if all the spaces contain windows, it's worth 4.

That's it for the rules.

Endgame
Either one of two ways can trigger the game end.

If the End Game card is drawn (Can only occur after shuffling the discard pile back into a draw deck.) then the game immediately ends.
If a player scores a 12th point then the game immediately ends.

In either case, points are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Mechanically, Copenhagen is a fairly light, accessible game; players are either drafting cards or drafting tiles. It's the relationship between those 2 actions that's interesting.

Firstly, there's not many tiles that go into the game, e.g., only 1 5-space tile is available in each colour and only 3 each of the other sizes in each colour, which is all quite deliberate. It takes more cards and thus more actions (And longer.) to get the bigger tiles which are the better tiles but there's the risk a player won't get the one they want.
The bigger tiles are better because of the windows (Or lack of.) on them. Getting a lot of 2-space tiles will mean 50% of filled spaces on a player's board will be windowless, while getting a lot of 5-space tiles means only 20% of spaces are windowless.
Completing a row or column with all windows essentially doubles the points that line is worth and the more windows a player can get on their board, the more likely they are to do this.

This brings me to the next point, other than the 1-space tiles, every tile has a windowless space. This means it's very hard to create lines that all score windows. Players will want to position windowless spaces to minimise their effect and provides players with meaningful decisions to make.

These two factors means that players are faced with a dilemma. Go for the quicker easier to get tiles and probably get a smaller score, or take the risk of losing our by going for bigger, better scoring tiles.
There's definitely a higher level of play that involves watching what cards other players are drafting and trying to anticipate what colours they're going for. This kind of knowledge allows players to adapt to what they think their opponent is doing.

I think Copenhagen is a fairly easy to learn game that has a streak of depth to it. Most people will pick it up fairly quickly.
Having said that I personally found the game a little dull. There's nothing here that I haven't seen elsewhere, it's just packaged differently here.

Copenhagen also played just a little too quickly for my liking (Normally something I'd never criticise a game for!); playing with just 3 people meant that frequently 6 cards were being drawn from the 70 card deck every round, this means the game would reach the end of the deck twice after 20-something cards drafts for each player. It felt like the game is mostly likely to deplete it's deck before a player gets to 12 points. 
To put that into perspective; if a player has 20-something card drafting actions, that in turn gives them the ability to draft around 50 spaces worth of tiles. The quickest way to reach 12 points is to have 6 filled rows, all with windows. That would require filling in 30 spaces at a minimum, this is provided they got the cards and tiles they wanted.

I'm sure there are players out there that would find the challenge of getting to 12 points compelling but for me. ​It meant that I found the game unsatisfying and combined with it's blandness made it average and unremarkable.
I can't really fault the game, it's just a little dull.

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.