25th April 2023 Tuesday is here again and we're with the Woking Gaming Club and The Sovereigns for a evening of gaming goodness. Pirates; - they're known for spending their time burying treasure and going arrr! Skull King is a trick-taking game all about finding that treasure and going ahhh! What's in a game?
The quality of the cards is exactly the kind of quality you'd expect from a modern game - so pretty good, fairly sturdy cards that look laminated. There's lots of nice pirate themed artwork in Skull King. Most of it is bright and colourful with good quality illustrations. Importantly, the 4 suits all look distinct from one another as do the special/character cards. The 4 suits are easily recognised by theme and colours. The special cards are also easily recognisable. How's it play? Setup
On to play Skull King is played over 10 rounds with players having increasingly larger hands of cards as rounds progress. Furthermore, as the game progresses, players will play more and more tricks. Whoever wins each trick will earn the cards used in that trick - which will equate to points at the end of the round. Skull King is a pretty traditional trick-taking game which uses a traditional turn order with the active player acting before play progresses to the player on their left.
Endgame Once the 10th round has concluded and the VPs for that round calculated, the game is finally at an end and goes to end scoring. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Despite being a bit of a stretch to fit, Skull King's pirate theme is fairly amusing with evocative artwork to match. It's a good looking game. Mechanically, the game is for the most part a straightforward, familiar trick-taking card game, albeit with a handful of special cards that change things up a little. What makes Skull King standout are the scoring mechanics and in particular the bidding mechanic. Players are forced to make a decision based on contextual information such as what is the current round and what cards they currently have in their hand. Then they'll need to try and gauge how many wins and losses they can get from their hand and plan accordingly. Sometimes this will be simple, in the 1st round with only 1 trick being played, it's fairly safe to bid on winning 0 tricks, especially if a player only has a escape card in their hand! As the game progresses though, these decisions will get harder and harder as more and more cards, special and otherwise come into play, making longer rounds a bit more unpredictable. Additionally, the scoring system for bids rewards players who bid high (And manage to achieve it!) while it increases the price for failing big. A genuine risk and reward mechanic. Finally, the bidding mechanic also introduces asymmetrical objective for players, some will be looking win tricks when others are trying lose them. There's also a higher level of play here that involves paying attention to other players' bids. E.g., if an opponent has won all the tricks they bid for and the round isn't over, making them win a trick will scupper the points they get from their bid. However, I'm not so sure how I feel about the bidding mechanic, it definitely adds an extra layer to the gameplay but it's also kind of swingy, hitting a bid can earn a lot of VPs while missing it can lose a not insignificant number of VPs and sometimes this will be very much out a players control. Additionally. the scoring rules feel a bit overly complex and fiddly, this compounded by how the game is played over 10 rounds and needs to be scored 10 times. This brings to my other criticism which is the game feels too long: By my calculations, a total of 55 tricks will be played over the 10 rounds which doesn't seem too bad but actually means shuffling and dealing 10 times as well as scoring 10 times and that all adds up to make the game feel a bit overlong and also finicky. Skull Kings is a (Completely acceptable.) average trick-taking experience that is enjoyable enough but is mired down by excess bookkeeping for a card game. It's not a bad choice for a game I feel its unique elements don't do enough to make the game differentiate itself from the crowd. The pirate theme will appeal to some but wouldn't be my first choice for a trick-taking game.
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9th October 2022 Another Sunday and another gaming session on Board Game Arena. Do the roll and bump and put the trick taking back. Do the roll and bump and put the trick taking back. When the dice are good, so are you. Next time you roll, you know what to do. Do the roll and bump and put the trick taking back. OK, dodgy references to 80's adverts aside, Roll'n Bump blends trick taking, set collecting with a dash of push your luck into a interesting little dice game. Caveat: we've only played Roll'n Bump digitally. What's in a game?
Each of the 4 colours used on cards also have a unique pattern associated with them. This is a good accessibility feature. The joker card is of course the exception, having all 4 colours and all 4 pattern types on it. Otherwise, the game has no artwork. There's almost no iconography to the game either. There's only the 3 types of card to learn and that's trivially easy to learn. How's it play? Setup
On to play Players roll dice to create tricks to place on cards and then claim those cards in which in turn scores them VPs. Depending on the available cards, there are 3 ways this can be done. Additionally, the active player has the possibility of 'bumping' other players' dice. I.e., the other player's dice are removed from the card and replacing by those of the active player! Roll'n Bump uses the typical turn order of the active player taking their turn before play progresses to the player on their left. On their turn, the active player takes the following actions.
Endgame Play continues until one of the decks has been emptied (The joker does not count.), when this occurs, all players immediately claim cards they have dice on and the game goes to scoring. Scoring All cards score in 2 ways, firstly they score their base VPs but then they also score as sets as per their colours: The more cards in a colour set, the more bonus VPs it earns. The joker can be added to any single colour set as chosen by the owning player. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Roll'n Bump is such a pared down game focused on the core of its push-your-luck driven gameplay without almost no 'schticks' that it's hard to find much to write about! It does exactly what it says on the tin. It has fairly straightforward, light rules which can be picked up very quickly, especially since it utilises mechanics which will be familiar in some way or other to many people. Creating straights or sets, rerolling dice twice, it's all common stuff. Roll'n Bump would make a good crossover game. Decision making is also pretty straightforward. Players must recognise and decide when and how to push their luck. Roll'n Bump provides a classic risk-and-reward conundrum; settle for a low-scoring card or risk reducing that score to 0 to potentially score a different, higher value card. Despite the overall simplicity of Roll'n Bump, there is a innovative mechanic to be found in the game; the bonus die. I like how it can give an edge to a player without giving them extra dice to place. Being able to bump other players' used dice from the bonus dice can provide players with meaningful decisions. There will be times when a player might not put a die on a card because it could be used to acquire the bonus die for their next turn. If I had one criticism of Roll'n Bump and considering it's a push-your-luck game, it might be a facetious criticism, it's that there's a lot of luck to the game! Taking some big risks to put some dice on a card only to have another player flippantly bump them with a single lucky roll can be pretty frustrating. Sometimes, someone will win simply because they lucked into a very good roll but that's the nature of the beast and something anyone playing this type of game should come to expect. Roll'n Bump is unremarkable and doesn't really stand out from the crowd however it manages to tick all the right boxes for a push-your-luck trick taking game and offers a solid, simple and fun game without any associated fiddliness. It also has a fairly quick playtime and would serve as a good filler or finisher game which is why we actually play it on a fairly regular basis. If you're on the look out for a push-your-luck, trick taking game, Roll'n Bump is worth considering. 30th August 2022 Tuesday night gaming with the Woking Gaming Club continued with The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine. The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine is actually an earlier iteration of The Crew: Mission Deep Sea which I've already blogged about and the two games are more or less identical. Read about The Crew: Mission Deep Sea here and it'll give a good idea how The Quest of Planet Nine plays. As such I'm not going to do a full write for The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, instead I'll just note one area of difference between the two. Task cards: These are much more straightforward in The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine. All the objectives are exclusively about acquiring certain numbers in certain colours, e.g., blue 7, yellow 2 and so on. Consequently, The Quest for Planet Nine is a bit more straightforward, this makes it perhaps a little easier to play as it does not present players with having to deal with more left-field tasks like 'I can only win the first and last hands'. The upside is that it has greater accessibility and will be easier to play with people who aren't so heavily into games. If I had to choose between this and The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, I'd choose the latter 100% of the time.
It's not that this is a bad game (It's not.), it's just the gamer in me craves the greater variety and challenge Mission Deep Sea provides. If (Like a friend did.) you want something to play with the family over a holiday with some non-confrontational , still challenging but more accessible gameplay, The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine is a good choice. 30th August 2022 It's a Tuesday evening and we're with the Woking Board Gaming Club at The Sovereigns to play trick-taking card Scout. Step right up, step right up friends. Prepared to be entertained and thrilled by the most death-defying, deck-dealing, trick-taking card game you ever set eyes on. What's in a game?
The quality of the cards in scout are average which is to say that they are what you'd expect of a modern game. The tokens feel sturdy and well made. While each card contain smudges of a pair attractive bright colours there's little artwork in Scout, what there is, is either monochrome illustration or stylised and slightly cartoony. It fits the loose circus theme well enough though. Only numbers are utilised in Scout, no iconography related to game play appears which means the game is easily understood. How's it play? Setup
On to play Scout is played over a number of rounds equal to the player count, i.e., if there are 4 players, there will be 4 rounds. Each round will consist of numerous hands of card being played, players will take turns trying to empty their own hands while also accumulating cards and dollars into their own playing area. The game uses a traditional turn structure with the active player acting and play progressing to the player on their left. Broadly speaking, the active player can choose 1 of 2 actions and a round consists of the following:
Endgame When a number of rounds equal to the player count had been finished, the game ends, the final round is scored and we go to final scoring. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Scout packs quite a lot of gameplay into quite a small package. At the heart of it, players are broadly speaking faced with 2 approaches towards a central conundrum: Should a player try and empty their hand or try and build up the size of the tricks in their hand instead? Both have advantages and drawbacks. A player emptying their hand is good because it minimises their losses if the round ends but playing small or single card tricks is a giving other players easy opportunities to score points by trumping them. There's also the fact that a player ending up with for example a single card in their hand can have trouble playing it. If someone else plays any 2 card trick, there's no way a single card can trump it. A player building up the cards and consequently the trick(s) in their hand can be hugely beneficial; playing a trick containing a large number of cards can end a round in that player's favour as not only do they not lose points for cards in card, they earn dollars for having their trick scouted. The big risk is that a round may end before playing the big trick, which could lose them a lot of points. There's also the possibility of working towards both, removing single cards or small tricks from a player's hand may create new tricks. All of this is of course contextual. The cards a player chooses to have in their hand will influence their decisions as well as the actions of their opponents. There's a higher level of play that comes from watching what others do and seeing if they are building up a trick or not - especially of they're scouting from small active tricks. Also quite often, when players also playing single card tricks, they're looking to combine cards into a bigger trick or looking to save a trick for later. The show & scout action is also very important, if an opponent has played a big, using it well can genuinely bring about a reversal of fortune. It means that players are always faced with meaningful decisions, playing and acquiring cards always has an impact. I've seen some criticism that there's a notable amount of luck in Scout - and there's some truth to that but truth be told; so do many games of this type, especially card games. Which is why playing multiple hands of cards over multiple rounds acts as a 'balancer'. There's also a quirk where the game is different according to player count. For starters; game length can dramatically change according to player count: Not only do more players mean there's more turns per round, there's also more rounds to go as well! That being said, Scout doesn't have a particularly long play time. A 5-player game takes in the region of an hour to play out. Hand size also varies quite with player count. In a 5-player game everyone starts with 9 cards, while in a 3-player game each player starts with 12 cards. It means that bigger tricks are more likely occur in games with a lower player count, something that players will want to take into account. Another minor quibble is that it's a little tricky to pick up some of the rules about trumping an active trick with a new trick of the same size. Minor grumbling aside though, I think Scout is an excellent trick taking card game that has a good amount of player interaction, gives players something to think about but can also provide some surprises. If trick taking card games are something you like, then Scout is a game that you should definitely try. 21st August 2022 It's Sunday again and we're logged into Board Game Arena for some gaming goodness. So there's this Noah guy who has to put groups of animals on to his ark but it turns out there's way more species than anyone would have thought! He's quite busy now and has instructed his staff (The players!) to load the more mundane animals on to the ark. How should the players do this? Through the crucible of competitive play of course! Caveat: we've only ever played this game digitally. What's in a game?
Colourful high quality artwork is used throughout Noah and the animal cards in particular look good and depict their subject matter well and clearly. There's not much else to say about it other than it's a style clearly aimed at younger players. There's about half a dozen icons used in the game, the movement icons are pretty self-explanatory, as are the tears. The remaining 5 or so icons for card ability are a little small and will probably have to be looked up in the rules until learned. I can't imagine it being a problem. How's it play? Setup
On to play Noah is played over 3 rounds, the objective in all 3 rounds is for players to empty their hands as quickly as possible and thus, score as few points as possible. This is done by playing animal cards on to the ferry cards. Noah follows a typical turn order with the active player acting, before play progresses to the player on their left.
Endgame Noah is played over 3 rounds. After the 3rd round has concluded, players count their finishing scores. Points are tallied, lowest score wins! Overall
Noah is in essence a light trick-taking game and most of the mechanics are pretty straightforward; play a card and try to get that set to 21 but there's a couple of wrinkles in there. Firstly, the rules for all male, all female or alternating animal cards will present players with some interesting conundrums. Players will need to try and think ahead, a card they play early in a round will have a significant effect later. For example if a player only has 1 female card and plays it on another female card, then they won't be able to play any of their male cards on that ferry. Players will also need to pay attention to the tears on their cards, playing cards with high penalty-points is vital to keep a score low. As expressed above, I feel this rule is a bit fiddly but without it, the game would be too simple. Having to think about numbers and colours is what marks the game out as a bit different and forces players to make meaningful decisions Secondly, the mechanic for moving the Noah token can throw a real element of unpredictability and even some 'take that' into the game. A player can move Noah to a ferry that has a weight of '20' for example, making it hard for the following player to play a card on it. It goes both ways though and sometimes, Noah will just by chance be moved to a ferry where the following player cannot play a card. I'm not sure how I feel about this, it adds some much needed unpredictability to the game which prevents players from over planning. However, it veers very close to the frustrating side, fans of heavier games may find this off putting. For me, it was a little frustrating, simplistic and unengaging. Noah is also a quite 'negative' game about not gaining points and having the lowest possible score. Generally, this type of scoring doesn't sit well with me. Having said that, It's fair to say that I'm probably not the target audience here . From its colourful, cheerful presentation, light trick-taking mechanic and easy to setup and learn rules, it's clear that Noah is a family friendly game. It also has a reasonably quick play time that does not outstay its welcome. If you're looking for a light card game with some distinctive gameplay to play with more casual or younger players, then Noah might be what you're looking for. 15th May 2022 It's a Sunday and we're logged into Board Game Arena for some online board gaming fun. Diced Tomatoes, a game about tomatoes that uses dice - what it says on the tin er... box! Caveat: we've only played this game digitally. What's in a game?
There's not much art to speak of in Diced Tomatoes, understandably, the minimalist art is red-themed. How's it play? Setup
On to play Points are scored in Diced Tomatoes by creating vertical lines of 4 dice (Vines if you will.) in either straights or sets of-a-kind. In a turn, the active player takes their actions which will involve rolling and placing dice, which may result in them or other players scoring points.
Endgame There are 2 criteria that can trigger the game end. If there are no dice left in the central pool at the end of the active player's turn, then the game immediately ends. Alternatively, once any player has filled all 6 spots on their scoring board, they score 2 bonus VPs, current round is played out and the game ends. Players now calculate their finishing scores from the following sources.
Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Despite Diced Tomatoes being a fairly light game with an unusual implementation of trick-taking mechanics (In that you don't really take other players' tricks - well you can ruin them instead!), it does give players lots to think about. Firstly players will want to create their own vines. The order in which seeding dice are scored can be very important because getting it right will earn bonus points. This is particularly true for the early scoring spaces. A value 1 seeding die earns 6 VPs when placed on the 1 slot but a value 6 seeding die placed on the 6 slot only earns 1 bonus VP. Secondly, because players can put dice on to the vine tokens and vines of other players, it means that they can try to complete them to gain karma. Alternatively, they can try and mess with other player vines to disrupt their scoring. E.g., if another player has a vine with 3 '1s' which they are intending to put into scoring slot 1, adding a 1 value black dice would complete the vine, but the black die would lower the seeding die's value to 0 - wiping that vine out. Or adding a gold die would add 1 point making the seeding die worth 2 when completed, this means the other player would not gain the star fruit bonus when putting it on scoring slot 1. So while they've gained a VP from the gold die, they've lost the bonus from not matching the scoring slot, collectively losing 5 VPs! So it seems sometimes, players will want to wipe out their own vines to keep a scoring opportunity open! As you can see, Dice Tomatoes provides quite a lot of interaction between players and a quite lot of opportunities for 'take that' moves and depending on how you feel about this style of play, may or may not be your kind of thing. Personally I'm a bit ambivalent about it - especially in a game that's a quick and light filler. One thing I'm not a fan of is having your vines wiped when your score goes above 6. I know why the rules are that way but it feels a bit mean spirited and counter-intuitive to lose points by gaining points. Diced Tomatoes is a not difficult to learn, fairly quick to play filler game. Mechanically it's fairly solid and has a unique spin on trick-taking. I'm struggling to find any genuine criticism but then, I'm also struggling to find any reason to play it again. I feel that the ease in which players can interfere in each other's plans is a bit of a frustration and it left me unengaged. It also feel like it prolongs what could be a short and sweet game. It's not a bad game but there's just other game's I'd rather play. Of course YMMV and maybe you'd get more out of it but Diced Tomatoes isn't one for me. 10th April 2022 Sunday evening is here and we're logged into Board Game Arena for a night of gaming. 'Viva Las Vegan!' Or 'Millions of cabbages, cabbages for me.' 'Millions of cabbages, cabbages for free.' Err... wait...? No... that's enough of that! Las Vegan is a umm.. vegetable-themed trick taking card game? Caveat: We've only ever played Las Vegan digitally and not sure if a English language version is even available in hard copy? What's in a game?
There's fairly minimal art throughout Las Vegan. The cards feature illustrations of vegetables on a slot machine reel and the cabbage machine cards show either vegetables or numbers across 3 reels. Nothing bad but also nothing to write home about. There's no iconography to speak off, just plain and simple numbers as well as the icons for the 4 types of card. How's it play? Setup
On to play Las Vegan is played over 1-4 rounds, each round follows the typical turn structure for a trick taking game, with the first or active player playing a card and the player to the left the 'following' that play.
Endgame Las Vegan can end in 1 of 2 ways. If during scoring at the end of any round, any player's cabbage tokens (VPs.) reaches 0 or lower, it ends the game. The game will also end at the end of the 4th round regardless. Once the game has ended, players tot up their remaining cabbage tokens. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
The first thing to talk about is the scoring and particularly the casino chips. The values on the chips go from -3 to +1 and obviously skew heavily towards the negative, it's even worse than that though. There are 4 double-sided chips and +1s only appear on 2 of the 8 sides (Although in some regard this is quite logical as most numbers only appear twice across the chips.), thus it's skewed both in value and probability. The golden casino chip is negative on both sides. All of this means thhat this is a game about how little you lose, minimising your losses and not really how much you accumulate. Las Vegan appears to be themed ont slot machines and one-arm bandits and maybe this is part of that theme; 'The house always wins?' Even so, it all seems negative and doesn't feel like fun. Despite my reservations about the scoring, the casino chip mechanic itself is pretty interesting. When a player gets the opportunity to deploy a chip, they'll want to try and remember what cards they and the other players have taken. E.g., if the '3' cabbage machine card is in play and a player knows an opponent has taken several 3's, they may want to put a big negative on that card to hit them. Conversely, a player may try and use a +1 if they've collected 3s this round. This is also affected by when 7s appear. The earlier that 7s appear, the more of a gamble it is using the casino chips, if they appear later, it's a lot easier to predict scoring. It's also that chips might appear right at the start or end of a round, or several may appear in single trick. Players will need to calculate and adapt when using the casino chip, remembering plays opponents make made will be helpful too. There's not too much to say about the mechanics for the actual game, which are very straightforward and about as basic as a trick taking game can get - and that's not a bad thing, it makes the game accessible and easy to learn, as well as playing fairly quickly . Las Vegan could be a good filler or finisher for the day. Having said that, the scoring mechanics feel a little clunky, counterintuitive and unnecessarily fiddly. The game's depth comes from strategies that will emerge once casino chips are starting to get played on cabbage machine cards and then players will look to how they can manipulate or win or lose tricks to optimise their scores. For me; I found the game's simplicity a little unengaging, a little too run-of-the-mill while the depth the scoring brought to the table (sic) did not add enough to make me want to play more. The negative scoring also left me feeling frustrating. Not a game for me. 24th October 2021 We've logged into Board Game Arena for some Sunday night gaming. The first game of the night was The Crew: Mission Deep Sea. Clearly the lost continent of Mu has fascinated gamers since times immemorial, so what better than a game about discovering the sunken land: Or at least the plot for a very good trick taking game. What's in a game?
Quality-wise, they're all pretty average quality and what you'd expect. Artwork is repeated across the game's 4 main suits which are colour themed and tend to feature monochrome illustrations decorated in the suit's colour. The trump cards all feature submarines of progressively larger size. The task deck utilises a fair amount of iconography for objectives, mostly it's fairly clear, sometimes some smaller writing appears on a card to clarify, occasionally the rulebook had to be referred to, nothing game breaking. How's it play? Setup
On to play The Crew: Mission Deep Sea is a trick-taking game where one player starts a round by playing a card and the others must follow suit.
Endgame Players collectively win or lose at The Crew: Mission Deep Sea. Ultimately they win when all the missions have been completed. Overall
A friend described The Crew: Mission Deep Sea as whist with a twist and that's sort of accurate but barely describes how much of a good game this is. The task cards are what makes so good, there are 96 of them, providing a vast combination of objectives that can appear. Even if you complete the 30-odd missions in the logbook (Which could take a while!), there's nothing to stop players from just choosing a difficulty and playing! Players must always pay attention during missions, simple mistakes can very quickly end them and each one will provide a distinct randomly generated challenge to face - and pitfalls to avoid! Players will have to silently co-ordinate their efforts, task cards will force them to learn to exploit all the game's rules to be successful, they'll have to learn that winning a trick is not always the way they should go and at times not having the right suit is the right choice! I could spend ages going on about how we've played the game but instead i'll say: The Crew: Mission Deep Sea packs a lot of gameplay into a little package of what is essentially a couple of decks of cards and a handful of tokens. It's a game everyone should definitely try. 15th August 2021 Sunday evening is here again and I'm my living room logged into Board Game Arena on my PC for some gaming goodness. First up was 6 nimmit!. 6 nimmit! is 6 takes in German, it's quite an abstract game and the name will make sense when you seen the rules. What's in a game? 6 nimmit is a card game and comes with a deck of 104 cards number from 1 to... you guessed it... 104 and that's it for game components. Each card also displays one or more symbols which are endearingly known as bullheads. Bullheads are bad. The cards are normal quality as you'd expect. There's pretty much no artwork to speak off, other than the symbol for bullheads and colours used to mark out cards which have more than 1 bullhead symbol. The game has no iconography other than numbers and bullheads and being an abstract game, doesn't need anything else. How's it play? Setup
On to play 6 nimmit! is played over several rounds and the goal is for players to empty their hand of cards and avoid collecting other cards as much as possible each round, which is not as easy as you might think... How is this done, well read on.
Endgame Play continues through rounds until at the end of a round, in which at least one player has accumulated 66 or more bullheads.. Points are tallied, the player who has collected the lowest number of bullheads wins. Overall
As per the brevity of this blog post, 6 nimmit! is a very simple game to learn, it's also a curious mix of strategy and unpredictability. The objective is obviously to try and not collect cards, they'll be times that a player will want to play lower value cards to 'get into' a row before it gets to 5 cards, conversely, they'll times they want to play higher cards to go later and hope someone plays the 6th card in a row to clear it out. Sometimes players will want to play very low and choose which row to take because it's the best of a bad set of choices, the bullheads a row may contain can vary greatly. Also choosing which row to take presents a player with the opportunity to mess with other players. Watching a row you planned to play a card into vanish and leave a much worse alternative is quite the surprise. And that's the thing, while some card plays can be much safer than others, it's almost always never 100% safe and it's other players bring that element of aforementioned of unpredictability to the game. Quick to pick-up-and-play, 6 nimmit! can be a lot of fun with its surprises and reversals -of-fortune, provided you don't find playing fairly randomised games frustrating and you're not too much of a serious gamer. 16th July 2019 It's a Tuesday and the 3rd and final game of game evening at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking is 'Honshu'. Wikipedia describes Honshu as 'the largest and most populous main island of Japan'. Honshu the game describes itself as a 'trick-taking, map building card game set in feudal Japan'. So, there you go! What's in a game?
How's it play?
The objective of Honshu is to lay down map cards to create your province. When laying a card, generally the objective is to lay cards in such a way that matching terrain types are next to each other. First thing though, is set up.
Trick-taking
Play continues for 3 turns. Then before the 4th turn, players pass their 3 remaining cards to the player to their left. Once the 6th turn is completed, the players will have run out of cards. 6 new cards are randomly dealt to each player and play continues. After the 9th turn has been completed, players pass their 3 remaining cards to the player on their right. After the 12th turn, the game is over and we go to scoring. Endgame So once the 12th turn is over, it's time to score. There are several different terrain types and each type scores differently.
Overall Honshu is a small game that packs a lot in. It has a trick-taking mechanic that can be exploited to good use if you're canny, as well a a drafting mechanic. Which is quite interesting. The map-laying phase gives the player quite a lot of flexibility when putting map cards down, so you get a lot of choices and decisions to make. Honshu reminds me a little bit of 'Isle of Skye', both games are broadly divided into a acquisition phase and a map laying phase. Both games give players options for strategies (And both games allow you take another player's map tile/card!). Honshu is a little simpler, but quicker to play. And like Isle of Skye, I think Honshu is a good game and definitely worth trying. |
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