21st March 2021

It's a Sunday lunchtime and I'm logged on to my PC in the living Room and signed into Board Game Arena.

The first game of the day was Takenoko, a game about gardening in Japan... and pandas.

Caveat: We played this game online, but I own a physical copy which I've set up for the photos.

​What's in a game?

• Tiles: Hexagonal tiles to be precise, they represent plots of land.
  Pond: This blue tile is the starting tile.
  Plots: Plots come in 3 colours, green, pink and yellow. There are 9 in each colour and some of the plots come with hexagonal improvement symbols (more about improvement symbols below.) that confer special rules. The artwork on these tiles is uniformly bright and colourful. The tiles are printed in thick board and feel sturdy.
• Bamboo segments: There are 3 types of bamboo, green, pink and yellow, corresponding to the 3 types of plot. These are designed to stack up, representing the surging upwards growth of bamboo. Unlike the plot tiles, there is NO even distribution between the different coloured bamboo, green bamboo is the most common and pink is the least common.
  They're made of colourful pieces of plastic and are designed to slot into together, it's a little fiddly as the pieces feel slippery but it's not a deal breaker and they do make the game look nice.
• Irrigation tokens: These little blue wooden sticks are used to track which plots have been irrigated or not.
• Improvement chits: These hexagonal little chits confer special rules when placed on a plot, they are identical to the symbols that come printed on some plot tiles. They are pretty standard quality chits with functional art. There are 3 types of improvement.
  Enclosure: The panda cannot eat bamboo on a plot with an enclosure.
  Fertilizer: When bamboo grows on a tile with a fertilizer improvement, it grows twice as quickly
  Watershed: A plot with a watershed improvement does not require irrigation.
• Objective cards: These cards are smaller than typical playing-card sized cards and are standard quality, the art is fairly functional but continues the game's is bright and colourful art direction. Completing objectives is how players earn points. There are 3 types of objective:
  Plot objective: When plots are placed into the game area in a certain manner (For example; 3 green tiles in a row.) and irrigated, it can be claimed as completing the objective, 
  Gardener objectives: To complete a gardener objective bamboo must be grown to a certain height.
  Panda objective: The panda must eat a certain amount of bamboo of certain colours to complete these objectives cards.
• Emperor card: This is the only other card in the game, it is worth 2 points and the player who triggers the endgame will earn it.
• Action markers: Two of these round wooden markers are used by each player to track their actions each turn.
• Weather die: This is a very nice largish wooden die with rounded corners and special symbols on each face.
• Player boards: These boards are used to track player actions and store bamboo, irrigation and improvement token acquired. They are colourful and nicely illustrated.

How's it play?
Setup

• The starting pond tile is placed in the centre of the play area, the panda and the gardener are both placed on it.
• The plot tiles are shuffled and placed in a face-down stack.
• Each type of objective card is shuffled and placed face-down in its own deck.
• Each player takes a player board and 2 action markers.
• One of each objective card is dealt face-down to each player, these should be kept hidden in hand and only revealed when completed.

Now we're ready to go.

On to play
​After a starting player is chosen, play proceeds clockwise.

• Weather die: Other than in the very first round, at the beginning of their turn each player must roll the weather die, this will usually give the active player a bonus of some sort.
  Sun: When the sun face comes up, the active player can take 3rd action in their turn which must be different from their other 2 actions (More on this below.).
  Rain: The active player may place a bamboo segment on the irrigated plot of their choice.
  Wind: The active player may chose to perform 2 identical actions instead of 2 different actions.
  Storm: The active player can place the panda on the tile of their choice, the panda will eat a segment of bamboo as per usual (See below for more information.).
  Clouds: The active player may take an improvement chit of their choice, this can be immediately put on to a plot tile or on to the player's board to be used later.
  ?: If the ? face comes up, the active player can choice one of the 5 other weather results to apply.

Once the weather die has been rolled, the active player can then take 2 different actions from a choice of 5, depending on the result of the weather die, they may get 3 different actions or a choice of 2 identical actions.
Actions

• Draw plot tile: The active player draws the top 3 plot tiles, keeps 1 and returns the other 2 face-down in any order they choose. Then they must place the tile they kept down in the playing area; either it must go next to the starting pond tile OR next to 2 other tiles.
  The tile will immediately grow a bamboo segment of its colour if it is placed next to the pond OR adjacent to an irrigation token. This can only ever happen once for a tile.
• Take an irrigation token: After taking an irrigation token, the active player may put it on their board for use later or immediately place it on the playing area as per the rules.
  Other than plots directly adjacent to the pond or with watershed symbols, all plots need to need to be irrigated to produce bamboo.
  When placing an irrigation token, it must either start from the pond tile or continue previously laid irrigation token. When laying this token, it runs along the edge of a plot tile or between 2, however it never runs along the edge of the pond tile.
  The token will irrigate the 1 or 2 plots it touches, as per usual, if this is the 1st time a plot is irrigated, it will grow a bamboo segment of its colour.
• Move gardener: The active player can move the gardener. The gardener can only be moved in a straight line and 'through' the 'face' of the hexagonal plot tile, thus there are a maximum of 6 ways he can move. He can move as far as the active player decides and can cross any number of tiles, he cannot however move through any gaps encountered.
  Bamboo will grow on the plot tile that the gardener stops on, additionally bamboo will also grow on any adjacent irrigated plots of the same colour.
• Move panda: Moving the panda follows the exact same rules as moving the gardener. When the panda stops in a plot tile, he will eat 1 segment of bamboo from that tile if available. The active player takes that segment and places it on their player board.
• Take objective card: The active player may take a single objective card of their choice from one of the 3 objective decks into their hand. Players have a 5-card hand limit.

Free actions
Some actions do not count towards the usual 2 action limit. The active player can carry out any number of free actions at any time during their turn.

• Complete objective: The active player may complete one or more objectives by placing the card(s) out of their hand into their playing area.
• Place irrigation token: The active player may place any number of irrigation tokens that are reserved on their player board, following the normal rules for irrigation.
• Place improvement chit: The active player may place any number of improvement chits that are reserved on their player board, following the normal rules for placing  improvement chits.

Endgame
The endgame is triggered after someone has played a certain number of objective cards, dependant on the number of players.
The player that triggered the endgame immediately take the Emperor card and conclude  the rest of their turn normally. Then continuing in clockwise order, every other player has one more turn.
After this, scores are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Firstly I'll mention how the game is uniformly nice, presentation is excellent and component quality is good, nothing to criticise here.

Since there are always objectives to work towards in Takenoko, there are generally always meaningful decisions to make.
The game's player interaction comes from conflicting objectives such as one player getting the gardener to grow bamboo and another getting the panda to eat it.
This is also a game about recognising opportunities and adapting to the card and plot tiles you draw and to a lesser extent the results from the weather die and not about strategizing too much.

There is some strategy regarding the uneven distribution of bamboo (Generally objectives that involve the less common bamboo score more points.) but that's about it. I suppose there could be a high level strategy where you watch what other players are doing and try to anticipate what objectives they're going for and try and scupper them but you'll probably scupper yourself as well in the end.
Optimising your actions per turn seems to be very important.

Takenoko is a relatively simple and straightforward game to play, the concepts behind it should make it a fairly accessible crossover game. For dedicated gamers there might not be enough meat on the bone to satisfy them though.
Ultimately Takenoko is a light somewhat gentle game that you shouldn't take too seriously if you play it. ​If you want something heavy on strategy and direct interaction, it's probably not the game for you. However, if you're in the mood for an undemanding game, it's a reasonable diversion. 

15th January 2020

It's a Friday evening, I'm logged into Zoom on my laptop and I'm sitting in the living room.

So it's time to play Forgotten Waters, a co-operative fantastical pirate exploration game that we've only played over video chat.

Caveat: I've only played this game over video chat and never in person, I've also never actually seen the physical components for the game. So this blog will probably be a bit different to the usual.

Before we begin
Forgotten Waters is one of this new breed of boardgames that requires an app to play, not just an app to help, but actually required to play.
Additionally, the game has a Remote Play Assistant app available. This app is what has allowed us to play online and in this time of Covid-19 is a welcome feature.

What's in a game?
Because I've never seen the game physically and because the remote play assistant app replaces the need for some components, it's hard to gauge what exactly, is what?

• Character sheets; there are 21 of these, each represents a different type of pirate, for example; the lovesick pirate or the assassin pirate, there is a lot of writing and infomation here.
  For remote play this is replaced with a 40+ page PDF file, players will need to print off the 2 pages for their chosen character.
  Backstory; each character has a backstory, this includes 5 blank lines the player needs to fill in, such as the name of a flightless bird, or a plant or a famous pirate or whatever. These are incorporated into the character's story events which is told during the course of the game and their ending.
  Skill matrix; every character has 6 skills, Explore, Brawn, Hunting, Shooting, Swagger and Navigation. Skills have levels that go up to a maximum of 7, although each characters will have different maximums for them. This is represented as a matrix. As a character improves a skill, spaces in the matrix will be filled in, some of these spaces contain stars, when a space with a star is filled in, it allows a space on the character's constellation to be filled in (See below.).
  Constellation; each character also has a constellation that consists of about 18 spaces, these include 5 breakpoint spaces. Each breakpoint space that is filled in gives the character an event, which in turn give them bonuses. Events also contribute towards the character's ending story.
  Events; when an event space is filled in on a constellation, it triggers an event for the character. There are 5 events in order, each one has an amusing little story and a game bonus for the character.
  Endings; If the players successfully complete their mission, their character will have 1 of 3 possible endings, bad, good or legendary. The more events they completed, the better the ending.

• Treasure cards; these confer special abilities or bonuses to the holders, some are in play all the time and some are once use only. Players can hold up to 4 treasure cards.
• Story cards; functionally similar to treasure cards, these can only be acquired as part of a characters story and are never drawn randomly.
• Standees; standard 2d markers for players.
• Twelve sided dice; standard d12, one for each player in the same colour as a standee. d12s are used primarily for skill rolls, but are also used for other random purposes.
• Misfortune token; these are handed out to players according to negative events. When a player makes a roll, they suffer disadvantage and discard a misfortune token.
• Board; a smallish board marked out with empty blue hexes to represent the open seas.
• Encounter tiles; these hexagonal tiles are placed according to story requirements or randomly drawn for encounters which can be islands, unusual weather or other ships, hexes are numbered.
• Encounter book; this is a wire bound book that folds out flat. A 2-page spread is used for each of the games numerous encounters. One half of a spreads is an evocative piece of artwork, the other half contains the available actions for that encounter and rules that are relevant to those actions.
• Objective tiles; Each story-mission utilises a series of objective cards. As the players complete them, the story will unfold, drawing them ever closer towards its conclusion.
• Ship dials; the player's ship has a set of six  statistics; Hull, Supplies, Discontent, Crew, Hunger and Threat that are managed by these dials.
• Cannon tiles; these double-sided tiles represent the ship's cannons. Cannons are rated from 1-4 in quality and have a loaded and unloaded side.
  The player's ship may have up to 4 cannons.
• Infamy track; infamous pirates react quicker! Its true! All characters have position on this track that rises and falls in relation to other characters according to the choices they make. Turn order is determined by the infamy track.
• Enemy dials; challenges presented by enemies or obstacles are tracked by these dials. An enemy ship would have score for Hull, Sails and Crew for example. An obstacle might be storm that needs to navigated .These would be whittled down by the players during their turns.
• Forgotten Waters app; this app is required for play. It contains all the information and entries on encounters, descriptions and dialogue as well as required spot rules. It also serves a sort of choose-you-own-adventure function, encounters will sometimes give players branching choices to make and this is also handled by the app.
• Remote play helper app; Unlike the other app, this isn't mandatory. It browser based and allows the game to be easily played online, it replaces function of a most of the game's components, except for the encounter tiles.

That's it for most of the components, other than some minor tracking tokens (I think!).
It's hard to talk about the quality of these physical components though as I've never see them other than briefly over video chat.

But I can talk about the apps.

It's clear that the game's developers have put a lot of thought and effort into insuring the quality of the game app. It's very slick with professional voice acting and production qualities, scripting and dialogue is very well written and often witty. There were frequent chuckles at gags that hit the mark more often than not.
I'm not sure what to think though, like many people; the idea of a game needing an app to play sits uncomfortably with me. We all know the question, what happens to the game a few years down the line, how long will the developer support the app?
However, I doubt this game would even exist in this form without the app. The game seems to have hundreds of differing encounters that can contextually change according to the story mission being played. It would require a fairly elaborate book to manage all of this physically, slowing the game down and no doubt adding to the cost.

The remote helper does it's job well enough to facilitate remote play and is easy to use, apart from the occasional need to refresh the browser and put everything back in sync, it works perfectly well.
I cannot say enough about how useful it is though. We played a game with 7 players and someone commented how how this was the most people they'd talked to in a year. In these times of self-isolation it has proven to be a godsend.

One minor criticism I have is about the character sheet PDF. It is a slight oversight that it is not form-fillable as it could save on the unnecessary use of paper.

How's it play?
First of all, one of the 5 available missions is selected, this will give the players a series of objectives to aim for, then play can begin.

Essentially, the ship travels from hexspace to hexspace dealing with the encounters that are generated by each space.
Each encounter will have 7 pertinent actions. Players take turns placing their standee on the action they want to perform,
Some actions are mandatory, some can only be completed by one player and others can completed by any number of players.
Additionally, some actions become locked when they are completed whilst others can be repeated.
Some actions are specific to certain encounters or mission objectives and others are generic and frequently appear during encounters.

Players place their standees on the encounter spaces in order of the infamy track, Forgotten Waters utilises a real time mechanic during encounters. If players have not placed their standee/worker in the allotted time, they receive a misfortune token as punishment.

Once all workers have been placed, then actions are carried out but in the order shown on the encounter.

There are a great many different action in the game, related to combat, sailing, exploring, trading, objectives etc.

Often players will be given 2 or 3 sub-choices for their chosen action and sometimes they will have 2 actions they actions they can perform.

Many actions will increase one of the player's 6 skills, frequently this will then require a roll using the relevant skill, generally there are 3 different levels of outcome depending on how high the final roll is.

Once all actions have been repeated, the turn ends. Depending on the situation, players may have the choice of staying and repeating the parts of the encounter which are not locked (Like foraging for supplies, burying treasure etc.) or they have be forced to move on to another encounter.

This continues until the endgame.

Endgame
There are numerous ways to lose.
If the ship's hull, supplies or crew are reduced to zero then it's game over.
If the crew's discontent value increase to or beyond the crew score, then it's also game over.
Finally there's threat rating. Threat can go up and down; the game will on a fairly regular basis call for threat checks, depending on the result this may generate a threat event, this is another type of encounter. The higher the threat rating, the more likely it is that a threat event will be triggered, when one does occur the threat rating is reduced to zero. If four threat events are triggered, then it's also game over.

If all the objectives of a mission are met then the player's collectively win​.
Each character also has an individual ending though, depending on how many stars they filled in on their constellations, this may be bad, good or legendary. Bad endings are usually very bad comical demises for the character, explosions, drownings etc.
​The good and legendary endings are as comical but obviously better for the character.

Overall
​Forgotten Waters is a long game to play, a mission can take 4 or even more hours to complete and the developers are aware of this, all missions come with a natural breakpoint, which can be used a temporary stopping point and then picked up again at a later date.
Mostly the game gives players meaningful co-operative decisions to make and the timer forces them to think quickly.
It's also a well produced, smart game that is entertaining to to play, the app does add to the atmosphere and help with booking.

but I do have some quibbles to do with game balancing.

Firstly; when undertaking tasks, some tasks are more attractive to complete than others. One example, during ship combat:

• A character can choose to Load Cannons, the player can obviously load cannons or get some rerolls, or a mixture of both.
• Or a character may choose to Fire Cannon, this will immediately give the character a point in  their Aim skill, then  they make a roll, if it's high enough, they earn a treasure.

Why would you ever choose Load Cannon over Fire Cannon? Fire Cannon personally earns characters much more. Rerolls are definitely useful, but skill points contribute towards completing constellations, which increase your character's ending and at breakpoints they extra stuff for characters.
Furthermore it exacerbates and perpetuates the imbalance. Once a character starts firing cannons, thus increasing their aim skill, it makes sense for them to continue doing that action, because they're more likely to get better results. So one player can be stuck loading cannons and earning little to nothing and another firing cannons and getting skill points and treasures.
Sometimes it's not so bad because with some actions, multiple characters can perform it but with single-character actions, it can be irritating.
Maybe its deliberate, it certainly can make the infamy track more important for actions that can only be done by one player.
Forgotten Waters is a mostly co-operative game, but it also a little edge of competitiveness as well, players can steal treasures from other players and so on.
Maybe the game wants to force players to choose between what's good for them and what's good for the mission?

Speaking of which, characters seem out of balance. When they earn bonuses, the usefulness of them seems to vary widely, some characters will get permanent items that confer constant bonuses whilst other characters get one-use-only less useful abilities.
Additionally, it appears that constellations are harder to complete for some characters than others for what appears to be no rhyme or reason why.

Luckily they don't affect the game too much, especially since it's co-operative. Other than that I've found it a fun game to play.

6th October 2020

It's Tuesday evening at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking and it's time for a boardgame.

The main game this evening was 'Pan Am', a game about building up airline companies over the years and then watching as they bought out by Pan Am in exchange for shares!

What's in a game?
​This game is set in 'The Golden Age of Air Travel', which I guess covers from the 'inter-war years' to the late 1960's.
This is reflected in the games look and art, which has a cool retro look to it.

• Board; Pan Am's board is a very distinctive looking map. It may seem strange, but it's a map depicting the globe - just displayed from an unusual angle! The board displays a lot of important information. It displays spaces and tracks for workers and share values. It also displays all the available air routes, 4 'lines' of these routes are marked with special symbols
• Hangars; these 4 trays are used to hold the 4 different classes of aeroplanes available.
• Aeroplanes; there are 4 classes of aeroplane, only the first 2 classes are available at the game start. The other classes become available during the course of play. The models used to depict the aeroplanes are quite nicely made. They start with the class 1 aeroplanes which look a bit like a DC10, up to the class 4 model that looks like an early jumbo jet.
• Meeples; each player will have a number of meeples to represent airports and engineers (Engineers are your workers.).
• Destination cards; these cards depict different cities throughout the world that form the game's routes. Cards also belong to a region such as Europe or America. The art on all of these is great, having the look of classic airline posters from the era.
• Directive cards; these cards usually give the player some sort of special action or bonus, sometimes these are dependant on an in game criteria, which sort of gives the player an objective to work for. Even though these cards only have text, they are printed in a typewriter font, which is a nice touch
• Event cards; Pan Am is played over 7 rounds, at the start of each round an event card is drawn, there 4 for each round and the art on them is very good. Event cards look like newspaper front pages from those times. The art is thematically appropriate.
• Player boards: These are simple card boards, they show a brake down of how a round works and give players a spot to place the unused aeroplanes in their air fleet. Most importantly, player boards display the player's income track.
• Pan Am die; this is used to determine the actions taken by Pan Am at the end of each round.
• Pan Am tokens; as Pan Am spreads throughout the map, it will take over any route that it reaches, these tokens are used to track that expansion.
• Money & shares; currency is represented by thick card tokens and shares are bit like paper money.

Of course they are some other components, but they are fairly minor.
The game's components are all good and the game's art direction and quality are worth noting. This shows the game's attention to detail.

How's it play?
Setup
The set up for Pan Am is pretty straight forward.

• Shuffle the destination cards and deal 2 to each player, these are placed face up in each player's area. Deal 4 face up on to the appropriate spots on the board. The remaining cards form a draw deck on the board
• Shuffle the directive cards and deal 1 to each player, the remainder become a draw deck.
• Prepare the event deck, there are 4 cards for each of the game's 7 rounds. Randomly draw 1 card from each of the sets to form a 7 card deck, with the round 1 card on top.
• Give a player board to each player along with their starting aeroplanes, engineers and starting money.
• All airport meeples are placed next to the airport worker track on the board.
• Determine the first player (Last player to fly on a aeroplane.) and we're ready to go.

​Event card
Every round begins by turning over that round's event card. This determines some actions that will occur in the game.

• Event; each card will have a specific event that occurs, this can be quite different from card to card.
• Stock price; the event card may raise or lower the value of shares. An event card may even reset the stock value to a new value.
• Pan Am activity; this is how many times the Pan Am die is rolled at the end of a round for their expansion.

Worker placement
This is where the majority of the game occurs;
Usually placing workers starts with the 1st player, but there is something called priority. This is explained in detail below, but basically any workers that were placed into the directive spaces in the previous round go first in placement order.

There are 2 types of spaces a worker can be placed into. 

• Auction track; These are vertical tracks. All spaces on an auction track have a cost associated with them. The first player putting a worker on to an auction track, it can choose to place it anywhere. Subsequent players must place their worker above any worker already there (Thus outbidding them.), the worker in the lower space must be removed. This means that only one player can benefit from a particular auction track. Additionally, if a worker is placed into the topmost spot in an auction track, no one can outbid them.
• Placement order track; these are horizontal tracks. All workers placed here are put into the leftmost empty space. When they are resolved later on, it is done in order of placement, which is potentially very important.

So we go on to the five different types of worker action available to players. Players can obviously place down their workers in any other, but below is the order in which they are resolved

• A: Airports; this uses an auction track. When a player acquires an airport, they can place on any open city space and it grants them permanent landing rights at that city, it also prevents any other player from placing an airport on that space. Finally an airport increases a player's income by 1.
• B: Destination cards; destination cards use auction tracks. There always 4 different destination cards that can be bid on. Destination cards give players permanent landing rights in the relevant city. They can also be discarded to gain temporary landing rights in other cities (More on this below.). All destination cards are displayed face-up in the player's area.
• C: Aeroplanes; aeroplanes also use auction tracks. Winning an auction for a aeroplane grants the player an aeroplane of that class. Aeroplanes are not unlimited, as the class increases, the amount of aeroplanes available to each player decreases. At the start of the game only class 1 & 2 aeroplanes are available, class 3 aeroplanes unlock on the 3rd round and class 4 on the 6th. Each class of aeroplane has its own auction track. Better aeroplanes are needed for longer flight routes.
• D: Routes; uses the placement order track, this track determines the order in which players can claim routes. A player can claim one route per worker placed in routes. In order to claim a route a player needs 2 things; landing rights for 2 'linked' cities with a route between them and a aeroplane that can fly that route. Landing rights come from having airports or destination cards for relevant cities. Alternatively if a player has a destination card for the same region as one of the cities, then that card can be discarded for temporary landing rights. If a player has 2 destination cards from the same region, then both can be discarded to get landing rights in any city in any region. Finally, every route is rated for length from 1 to 4, the player must place a aeroplane with and equal or higher class on the route to claim it. The aeroplane stays there until the route is bought by Pan Am. When a route is claimed, the player increases their income by the route number. Since only one player may claim a route, going before another player can be very important.
• E: Directives; also uses a placement order track. In placement order, players draw a directive card. Unlike all the other tracks, workers are not removed when the action is resolved. Instead they stay there until the next turn. Then in placement order, they can be placed on the board before the first player begins. Thus if you really need to go first in the next turn, you can use the directives track to do it. Directive cards should be kept hidden from other players until they are used.

That's it for worker placement.

Expansion
Pan Am airlines starts the game in the Miami city space. The die is used to determine how and where Pan Am expands. The number of times the active player rolls it is dictated by the event card.
When the die is rolled, it will show one of two types of action.

• Pan Am symbol; when this symbol comes up, any player may sell any route they have claimed to Pan Am (See below for more info on selling routes.).
• Routes; the die can show a face which will have 2 symbols that match symbols on certain routes on the board. When this happens, Pan Am will travel along the lines with matching symbols. They will claim any routes they reach. If Pan Am reaches a route that a player has claimed, then the player is forced to sell it. They have no choice in this, Pan Am is just too big and powerful to refuse!

Selling routes
Selling (Or being forced to sell.) routes is not necessarily a bad thing, it can be vital to winning the game.
This is because Pan Am actually offers reasonably good money for a route.
A 1 point route will earn a player 1 per round, thus if a player has it for all 7 rounds it will earn a maximum of 7 throughout the game. Pan Am pays 5 for a 1 point route. So long term, keeping a route earns more, but it's a slow drip of money. Selling to Pan Am gives the player a lump sum that can immediately be re-invested into claiming more routes (Or buying shares.).
A 1 point route is worth 5.
A 2 point route is worth 9.
A 3 point route is worth 12.
A 4 point route is worth 14.
Obviously, there are diminishing returns here, but remember the class 4 aeroplanes will not appear until turn 6 (Unless an event card changes this.) and will only generate income for 2 turns.
When a route is sold to Pan Am, the player reduces their income track by the value of the route and the aeroplane on the route is replaced by a Pan Am token. The aeroplane is returned to the player which is actually very useful. The amount of aeroplanes a player can have is limited to the number of aeroplanes available. Each player only has 1 class 4 aeroplane, so being able to use it, sell the route it's on and then use it again is the way to go.
Players not only get the opportunity to sell routes during expansion, event cards and directive cards can also allow players to sell routes.

Income
Players earn an amount of money equal to their position along their income track.

Buy shares
Players can now buy shares, because this is the airline business, the only shares that matter are Pan Am shares.
Players may buy as much Pan Am stock as they can afford, the price of the shares is influenced by the event card played at the start of the round.
Since there is only ever 7 opportunities to buy shares, it's probably a good idea to try and buy them at every opportunity.

Once all players have bought all the shares they want, the round ends. The first player marker is moved left to the next player and new round begins.

Endgame
In this game, no one cares about the little routes that you create, they only care about Pan Am.
​After the end of the 7th round, players tally up the shares they have bought. Highest number of shares win. Remaining money counts as a tie breaker.

Overall
Pam Am does a good job of blending accessibility, depth and player options.
Very rarely was there a meaningless choice in the game. Most of the time I felt that I could do with an extra worker or two.
Maximising your workers is very important, as is knowing when to bid for something or not. The destination card and class 1 aeroplane auction tracks have a minimum bid of 0. There's potential to get stuff for free when other players have minimal interest in it.

The key to the game I think, is selling routes to Pan Am at the right time, the prices are set a sweet spot of being good but not too good. Generally it's prudent to sell routes to Pan Am, but it's never a no-brainer - and that's a good thing.
Ideally players will want to try and build routes close to Pam Am, hoping to get bought  out. It's almost a counter-intuitive way to play.

Since the game is ultimately all about Pan Am shares, you obviously need to buy as many as possible and the game only gives players 7 opportunities to do this.

Stock prices generally start low in the game and rise continually throughout the game, this can put players in a quandary.
Do you buy shares in earlier rounds when they are much cheaper and run the risk of lacking funds to compete in bidding?
Or do you buy them later, hoping that your early investments pay off and give you more money to buy the invariably more expensive shares.

Finally, it's quite interesting watching as Pan Am unfailingly spreads across the board, consuming everything in its way.

I have the urge to play Pan Am again, that's always a solid indicator of a  good game in my opinion. It's definitely worth trying.

3rd December 2019

It's Tuesday at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking with the board game club.

This means board games! And tonight we played 'Wayfinders'.

'Those magnificent men, in their flying machines.'
'They go up tiddly up up.'
'They go down tiddly down down.'

That's enough of that!

Wayfinders is a colourful little game about flying and exploration.
It's also a fairly light worker placement and resource management game.

What's in a game?
Wayfinders is played over a 5x5 grid of tiles:

• Home tile: This is the starting tile for all players and sits in the middle of the 5x5 grid.
• Island tiles: These represent islands that players may explore during the game. There are 3 different types of tile, resource effect, permanent effect and scoring effect tiles. There are 15 of each type for a total of 45. 24 tiles will be used in a single game. Island tiles show what benefit they give, how much it costs to build a hangar and how much it costs to travel to the tile. Finally they show the order in which hangars are built on a tile.
• Hangar board: This board contains 8 different hangars. Above each hanger is a sort of 'raised groove' that holds resources and below each hanger is a space to place worker meeples.
• Resources: There are some quite chunky coloured plastic 5 tokens to represent the 5 types of types of resource: Fuel (Red.), headphones (Blue.), parachute (Green.), propeller (Black.) and tyre (Yellow.). There 12 of each type, so 60 in total.
• Bag: Generally all the resources are kept in this bag and blindly drawn when required.
• Planes: Each player is given a seaplane meeple.
• Hangars: Each player is given 10 hangar meeples.

Apart from the aforementioned worker meeple issue, all the components are solidly made and bright and colourful.

On the island tiles. All the resources are delineated by both colour and symbol except for the resource in the bottom right corner, which is represented only by colour.

However the resource tokens appear to have their symbols printed on them and they may wear off over time and use.

How's it play?
Setup.

• Randomly take 24 island tiles from the 3 types available and shuffle them. Then along with the home tile create a 5x5 grid (With the home tile as the centre tile.).
• Populate the hangar board with resources blindly drawn from the bag. The number of hangars used in a game is equal to the number of players doubled. Each hangar holds 3 resources.
• Give each player the hangers, plane and meeples in their selected colour
• Determine the starting player. Then each player (In turn order.) places a hanger on the home tile. Each player also places their seaplane on the home tile.

So now on to the game.
In Wayfinders, there are only 2 main actions, although the 2nd action has a number of sub actions that can be performed.

1st action, place a worker:

• A player must place a worker on the space beneath one of the available hangars.
• A single player can place up to 3 workers on a hangar space.
• Any number of players can place up to 3 workers on a single hangar space.
• The order in which workers are placed on a hangar does not matter.

The 2nd action has 4 sub actions, carried out in order. First is taking back workers and collecting resources.

• When taking back workers, all workers must be taken back from all hangars that they've been placed on.
• For every worker taken back from a hangar, the active player also gets to take a resource from that hangar.
• If the active player has 3 workers on a hangar, they take all 3 resources. If they have 1 or 2 workers, then they 1 or 2 resources respectively, starting from the top and working down. Then any remaining resources below are slid up the 'groove' to fill the space(s) above.

Now we go on to the 2nd sub action, which is move seaplane and build hangar(s).

• A plane can be moved orthogonally. When a plane enters a tile, the active player must pay the cost (Return the relevant resource back to the bag.) shown in the bottom right corner of the tile.
• If the active player moves on to a tile that has a hangar already on it (From any player.), then the active player does not have to pay the cost.
• The active player can move on to or through as many tiles as they want provided they can pay the cost or they don't need to pay the cost.
• The active player can choose to build a hangar, they can do this before, after, or during their move. Furthermore, they can build multiple hangars during their move. Players can only build 1 hangar per tile.
• When the active player builds a hangar, they must pay the displayed cost. If the active player is the first player to build a hangar on a tile, the resources are paid back to the bank (Go back into the bag.). If they are not the first player to build a hangar on a particular tile, then they must pay the resources to the player that built the first hangar!
• There 3 types of island tile. When a hangar is built by any player (Regardless of order.) then there will be an effect.  A resources effect allows the player to blindly draw a varying number of resources from the bag. A permanent effect grants the player some sort of special ability that is always in effect, such being able to enter certain tiles without paying etc. A scoring effect is bonus way to earn points, that are scored during the end game.

The 3rd and 4th sub actions are just clean up really:

• The 3rd sub action is (If required.) to discard down to 3 resources. Excess resources are returned to the bag.
• The 4th sub action is to refill the spaces in the hangar(s) that become emptied. Since resources slide up the hanger to fill gaps, it's always the lower spaces that gain new resources. This is a variant on the 'conveyor belt' mechanic.

Those are most of the rules, more or less. It's actually quite a straightforward game.
Acquire resources.
Travel.
Build hangars.

​Endgame
The endgame is triggered when a player has 2 or less hangars remaining in their supply.
The current round is completed and scoring commences.
Resource and Permanent effect tiles have a static score.
But scoring tiles tend to have scores dependent on what the player as achieved in the game. For example: A scoring tile might score 3 points for each tile in the same vertical line as itself that the player has put a hangar on to.
Unused resources and workers on the hangar board in the endgame also score.
Final scores are tallied, highest score wins.

Overall
Wayfinders is a pretty simple game, but there's a couple of interesting things going on in this game.

Acquiring resources is an unusual blend of worker placement and drafting with a dash of push your luck.
Players will probably find themselves competing over certain resources, particularly if that resource is scarce in the hangars.
This can lead to some tricky decisions. A player can keep putting down workers so that when they are returned, the player will get the maximum resources. But if that player needs a certain resource, this delay can lead to them losing that resource to another player.
Or perhaps a player needs a resource that is 3rd in line at the hanger. Do they try and play 3 workers to get at it? Or do they place a single worker and hope that someone takes a resource ahead if it.
Watching where other players put their workers can be insightful.

Whilst there is little direct interaction in Wayfinders, particularly on the tiles. Another reason to watch what other players do, is that when they place a hangar in a tile, that tile becomes accessible to other players for free. This can make it easier to reach tile beyond it and will open up the playing area and also open up more choices and strategies.

Conversely, getting to a tile that may prove popular with other players and putting a hangar on there first is a great way to earn resources as other players must pay to you instead of the bank.
This is a lot more useful than it sounds. After moving a plane and placing hangars, a player can only retain 3 resources. So even if that player maximizes the placement of their workers, they can only start a move and build action with a maximum of 8 resources.
However if during a round other players have to pay out to you to put their hangars down, it's possible to start with a lot more resources.
This can be a great advantage, as being able to put down 2 or 3 hangars in a turn really lays pressure on other players as they'll be forced to play catch up.

Remember, players start with 10 hangars, but 1 goes on the home tile, so in reality everyone starts with 9 hangars. And the endgame is triggered when any player reaches 2 or less hangars left. So a player only needs to place 7 hangars to trigger the endgame.

As well as being a fairly easy game to learn, Wayfinder is a quite short game and playing speeds up over the course of a game as the board inevitably opens up.

Optimizing your actions and taking advantage of circumstances are key to winning. A canny player can end the game abruptly, leaving their competitors in the lurch.

The only criticism I have is that it's a little too long for a filler game, but a little short for a main game.

But that criticism aside, Wayfinders is a easy to learn and fairly fun game to play.

26th November 2019

Tuesday evening at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking continues.

The second and final game of the night was 'Architects of the West Kingdom'.

As an architect it's your job to rebuild the errr.... West Kingdom!
So it appears that in this game, you'll be rubbing shoulders with virtuous members of the clergy and getting 'down and dirty' with shady criminals. The life of an architect, eh?
 
Architects of the West Kingdom is a pretty standard worker placement game, but a worker placement game with a couple of extra little twists.

What's in a game?
There's quite a lot to Architect of the West Kingdom and this is reflected in the components.

• Game board: As you'd expect for a worker placement game, there's lots of spots to place workers. There's also a couple of card tracks, a 'Cathedral track, a 'Guildhall track' as well as a virtue track. Interestingly there's also tax stand and a prison.
• Tax stand: There's a cardboard cut out basic 3d building that is used to represent the tax stand. When certain taxes are paid, they go directly into the tax stand. This is only 3d building in the game, it's bit unnecessary, but it's a nice touch.
• Reward cards: When a player contributes to the construction of the Cathedral, they earn a reward.
• Apprentice cards: Used with one of the card tracks. Apprentices grant the owning player some sort of bonus when acquired.
• Building cards: These cards contain 'plans' for buildings that players can build.
• Multiplier cards:
• Debt cards: These are double sided cards, one side represents being in debt (Not a good thing.) and the other side represents having paid that debt off.
• Black market cards: These cards are also double sided and represent resources that can be acquired via the black market. one side represents 'small' and the other 'large' markets.
• Resources: There are 6 kinds of resources in this game: Clay, wood, stone, silver, gold & marble.
• Player boards: These are double sided. One side is for the standard game and the other for the variable.
• Meeples: Every player gets 20 meeples to use as workers.

The cards are quite nicely illustrated. The artwork on the board is even nicer, depicting the different buildings and areas that workers 'use'. It's clear some effort has gone into the artwork.

Hows it play?
Setup

• Determine the starting player.
• Give each player a personal board, 20 meeples and currency dependant on starting order.
• Give each player 4 building cards. Each player keeps 1 card and passes the remaining cards to the player to the left. This is repeated 4 times.
• Each player puts a marker on the starting spot of the virtue track.
• Construct the tax stand and put 4 coins into it.
• Fill the card tracks with apprentice cards.

Now we're ready to start. But first one of the differences in to normal worker placement games needs to be explained.
There are 3 ways to place workers in the game, this is dependant on the symbol used on the game board:

• First, when placing a worker, the player may have to pay some currency (In the form of tax.) to do it. Depending on where the worker is placed, this currency may go into the tax stand or supply.
• Small circle: Only a single meeple can occupy a small circle at any one time.
• Large circle: Any number of meeples from any number of players can occupy a large circle at any time. Furthermore, the more workers a player places into a large circle, the more they get out of it. If a player puts a worker into the 'forest' region, they will gain 1 wood. If on a later turn they place a 2nd worker into the wood region, they will gain 2 wood, 3 wood for a 3rd worker and so on. Other players' workers do affect each other.
• Guildhall: When a player creates a building, they must place a worker into the Guildhall, this worker is now out of the game.

Now we know how worker placement works, it's time to explain what all the buildings and areas do:

• Black market: The black market consists of 3 small circles. Using a black market space allows a player to carry out the action shown below the 3 circles. This is either acquire the good(s) shown on either the small card stack or large market card stack. Or the player can acquire a apprentice or building card. No matter they choose to do, the must lose 1 virtue when using the black market.
• Cathedral: Players can 'contribute' to the building of the cathedral. This is done by paying the cost and moving their piece up the track, this also grants the player a reward card and whatever benefit it confers. At the end of the game, the further up the cathedral track a player is, the more victory points they acquire during the endgame.
• Town centre: The town centre has a large circle. Amusingly, the town centre allows you to capture workers belong to other players (Or even your own!) and place them on your personal board. Each worker a player has in the town centre allows them to capture all the workers of a single colour on a space. Putting more workers on the town centre allows the player to capture even more workers. Why would a player want to capture workers, well see below.
• Guardhouse: Has a large circle. There are several different actions you can perform when putting a worker on the guardhouse. Firstly you can put workers you've captured in prison! For money! That's right, capturing workers and imprisoning them is a way to make money. Secondly, if the active player has workers in prison, they can release them back on to their personal board. Thirdly, pay money (Or get a debt card.) and lose 1 virtue to take back workers from another player's board. Finally, the active player can pay off a debt card.
• Quarry, Forest, Mine & Silversmith: These 4 locations all have large circles and are used to acquire resources. Placing workers on the quarry gets the active player clay, forest gets wood, mine gets stone or gold and silversmith gets silver.
• King's storehouse: Has a large circle. Placing workers here allows the active player to buy virtue and/or marble with resources.
• Guildhall: Putting a worker here allows the active player to play a building card (Provided they also pay the resources required.).
• Workshop: Has a large circle. Placing a worker here allows the active player to recruit an apprentice. There are 2 tracks of 4 apprentices. To recruit apprentice further along to the right of the track, you either need to have more workers in the circle, or pay. The track behaves like a conveyor belt, so when an apprentice is taken, cards slide to the left to fill the gap and new cards are added to the right.
• Tax stand: Has a large circle. As stated above, money will be paid into the tax stand. If the active player places a worker here they can take (OK steal actually!) all the currency in the tax stand. Doing this costs 2 points of virtue.

Overall
There are a couple of interesting mechanics in Architects of the West Kingdom, particularly how they interact with each other.

Being able to put multiple workers into a space to gain increasing results seems overpowered. But when a player puts a lot of workers into a single space, they can just become a target for another player to capture. Obviously when capturing workers, players will want to do it as efficiently as possible, because there's money to be made when putting them in prison.
If a player can predict their opponent's moves, stealing their workers can really screw with them.
Another thing to consider is that players have no way to get their workers back other than having them captured by other players or capturing them themselves.
Being able to manage your workers in this way can avoid those pesky debt cards, which themselves are a clever little addition to the game.
The virtue track, black market and cathedral also add an extra element that helps differentiate the game.

I enjoyed this game, I think it's fairly good.Generally I felt like I always had options and meaningful decisions to make. Which all I really want from a game.
​
If you really like worker placement games, you'll probably like Architects of the West Kingdom. It's just different enough to justify its existence.
Or, if you don't own any worker placement games and you want one. You may want to consider this game, 

22nd September 2019

Sunday lunchtime at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking. Unfortunately 50 Fathoms is still on hiatus. Instead we shall play some board games.

The first board game of the day was 'Roll Player'.

Have you ever enjoyed creating characters for an RPG more than playing them? Then maybe, just maybe, Roll Player is the game for you.

Roll Player is sort of a set collecting, dice rolling, worker placement game that's all about creating what is ostensibly a D&D character.
The main of the game is that players use dice to generate their stats, but it's not a case of just rolling the dice.

What's in a game
The components for Roll Player are of a good quality. 

• ​Dice: There's a lot of dice in Roll Player. 73 in fact, in 7 different colours.
• Dice bag: To go with the Dice!
• Character sheet boards: These are the equivalent of a character sheet. One for each of the classic D&D PC races such as human, elf, dwarf etc. Like a D&D character sheet, the player boards contain a lot of information. Such as racial stat modifiers for all 6 D&D stats (And space for 3 six sided dice for each stat!). Spaces for character class info, alignment and backstory too.
• Character class tile: This tile goes on the relevant space on the character sheet board. These represent the classic D&D character classes. One will be randomly given out to each player. They are double sided and have 2 classes on each. Character class dictates what values your stats you need to have to score points. They will be different for each character class. Each class also has a unique special ability.
• Alignment tile: This goes on the space for alignment and is randomly determined. Players earn points for getting their alignment to match the target on the tile. The alignment tile is a 3x3 grid that depicts all 9 alignments. A marker is used to show what the character's current alignment is.
• Backstory tile: This is also randomly determined. It gives players an additional target to match, which in turns a player more points. This is based on the colour of dice.
• Initiative cards: These are used to determine the order in which players buy cards from the market. They are numbered from 1 to 5.
• Market cards: Every round, players will have the opportunity to purchase cards drawn from the market deck. Market cards include weapons, armour, skills and traits.

6th August 2019

We have arrived at Tuesday evening and thus come to gaming at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking.

Century: The New World is the 3rd and final instalment in the 'Century trilogy'.
You can read my post on Century: Spice Road here.
You can read my post on Century: Eastern Wonder here.
Century: The New World can be combined with the other 2 games to create one massive game, or in other combinations to create a total of 7 games.

Century: The New World differentiates itself from the other 2 games by being a worker placement game. I guess the game board represents plantations or farms and trading posts of the early settlers of the new world.

Whats in a game?
If you've played either of the 2 previous games, you'll be on somewhat familiar ground here and recognise some of the components:

• 4 bowls of wooden cubes: They come in yellow, red, green and brown (See what I mean!). They represent 4 different commodities that can be traded.
• Personal game boards: These boards have spaces for up to 10 trade goods (Yes really!). There is a difference though! These boards have 3 spaces for 'bonus tiles', these are explained later.

29th June 2019

​Gaming afternoon continues at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking and we concluded with 'Tiny Epic Galaxies'.
I've written about Tiny Epic Galaxies before here.

7th May 2019

​It's a Tuesday, so naturally that means gaming down at 'The Sove...' er.. wait?
The Sovereign has its family dining area fully booked out and they didn't bother informing us? Marvellous! By that I mean crappy. So we need an alternative venue...

It's a Tuesday, so naturally that means gaming down at... 'The Wheatshef' in Woking.

The evening started off with 'Tiny Towns'.

Tiny Towns has a plot about being tiny animals building a town. It's strange because it's a meaningless addition to the game. Yes, it's a game about building a town, but whether it's tiny or not makes no difference.

What's in a game?

Game board: Each player has their own 4x4 playing board, in Tiny Towns you are building your own individual town and not a collective town.

Wooden cubes: Yes Tiny Towns is obviously a soulless cube pushing Euro. So the game comes with an abundance of wooden cubes in 5 glorious colours.

Buildings: Tiny Towns is always played with exactly 7 different types of buildings, no more, no less. What these buildings are will change from game to game. But there are 7 different shaped and coloured wooden blocks used to depict what buildings are used in the game.

Monuments: This is the 8th type of building in the game. Each player will have a single monument block to represent which monument they posses - all monuments are unique and generally confer some sort of bonus on the player

Cards: The game has a stack of oversized cards that represent both normal buildings and monuments.

Hammer: The game has a wooden hammer, used to represent who is the first player and thus also the round's 'master-builder'.

So all the components are placed in the centre of the gaming area and each player takes a game board.

The cards are used to determine which buildings will appear in this game. The cards need some explaining. Each of the 7 building types has 4 different cards (except the Cottage - there's only 1 cottage card).

• Cottage: Cottages score points only if they are 'fed'.
• Red buildings: These are farming buildings and they feed the cottages. The different types of red buildings do this in different ways. For example The Granary will feed cottages in the surrounding 8 spaces. The Greenhouse will feed a contiguous line of cottages.
• Grey buildings: These are small structures such as wells or sheds. They tend to score points depending on their position in relation to other building types.
• Orange buildings: These are religious builds like an Abby or a Temple. They tend to score points dependant on their relative position to cottages. Or in the case of The Cloister their isolation from the cottages.
• Green buildings: These are social gathering places like The Feast Hall or a Tavern. Intriguingly, they tend to score points based on the number of green buildings are built.
• Yellow buildings: These are commercial establishments such as a Bakery or a Tailor. They tend to score points based on their position in relation to other buildings.
• Black buildings: Services & Industry. These are Trading Posts or Warehouses. Black buildings don't score you points, but do allow you to have a little more control over building materials.

That explains what different cards there 

Finally, there are the monument cards: 2 monument cards are dealt to each player at the start of each game. Each player will discard one monument and keep the other one (hidden until played).
Each monument is unique, they can give you a 'one-off' or ongoing benefit. They can give you points. When played well, a monument can help you a lot.

How's it play?

Constructing buildings is the name of the game. How is this achieved? Each building card will have a multicoloured 'tetris-like' shape on it. Generally this is always the same for each building type. Cottages always have 'L' shapes, yellow food producing buildings  are always have a 2x2 square and green social buildings have a 'T' shape. However the colours of the shapes on the cards are different for each of the 4 types of each building.

To construct a building, you must place cubes on your personal board that match the configuration as depicted on that card.

For example: To build an Inn requires 3 blocks in a straight line and their colours must be 'yellow, grey and blue'.
The inn can be built from left to right, or up or down. As long as the 3 cubes are in a straight line and the middle cube is grey and the end cubes are always yellow and blue, then a tavern can be built (if you choose).

Then, to build it, the 3 cubes are removed from your board and a green building meeple is placed into one of the spaces vacated by the 3 cubes - and that's it. Well, that's not it, but that's a summary of the most important rule.

So this is how a turn goes.

1. The starting player is given the Hammer and is the 'master-builder' for this turn. As the master-builder, they get to select the colour of cube everyone must take in this turn. That's Right! Most of the time players will not get to choose the colour of their cubes! Only where to place them on their board!
2. Every player must put that cube somewhere on their board.
3. Players may choose to construct a building. They may construct none, one or more buildings at the same time.
4. Once all players have finished placing cubes and building. The hammer is passed to the left and that player becomes the master-builder in the next turn. That's all the rules.

Endgame
When a player can no longer place a cube on their board, they are eliminated from the game. Eventually they'll only be one player left and they can continue playing until they too cannot place any further cubes.

Then scores are totted up and a winner is declared.

Overall?

So, thinking about this game. I feel that there are two distinct levels of play.

The basic level of play involves maximising the placing of the cubes you receive. It is possible to place cubes in such a way that they can be used for more than one building. Especially since you do not have to construct a building if you have the cubes in the right place. This allows you to keep cubes 'in play' to be used for alternate buildings. It can give you strategies and options.

Then there's the higher level of play. Looking at the choices of the other players and trying to anticipate their strategies. Not necessarily to try and mess with them, (You'll mess with the other players accidentally more than anything else) but just to improve your own strategies.

Overall, I like Tiny Towns, it always gives you meaningful choices to make (Even if those choices are not entirely of your own making - which makes those decisions even more important!) and I think that's a good thing.

Tiny Towns also has a mechanic that I've never seen before - I always like that.

Play time is fairly brisk, a game seems to take no more than an hour. The first time I played Tiny Towns, everyone was up for a second game straightaway.

The one significant criticism I have of Tiny Towns is that it has player elimination. That's something I don't like. Luckily it seems that when players are eliminated, it's close to the conclusion of a game.

So, one grumble aside. Tiny Towns is a good enough game for me to get a copy of it.

30th April 2019

The last day of April is a Tuesday, so this means gaming in Woking at 'The Sovereigns'.

We played Kingsburg. You can find my thoughts about it here.