7th September 2021 Tuesday evening is here and we're at The Sovereigns with the Woking Gaming Club. The first game of the night was Merv. What's in a game?
Despite its busyness, the game board is well illustrated and colourful, artwork on cards is also clear and colourful. For the most part the iconography is clear and easy to understand. Unfortunately, this does not extend to the symbols used to represent the game's 6 actions, these were a constant source of confusion and error. For example; the mosque action uses a minaret symbol but actually involves moving camel meeples along a track, but the symbols with camels on it is used to represent the caravansary! Why? Because the caravansary used camels to move spices! However, in game, the caravansary action only is used to get spices and has nothing to do with camels This means that camels are used to represent spices and minarets are used to represent camels! It verges on the ridiculous. It didn't help that all 6 symbols were the same colour so that it matched the colour theme of the board. How's it play? Setup
On to play Merv is played over 3 years and in each year there are 4 rounds, players have 1 action per round, thus 12 actions in total. Taking actions in Merv are quite unusual, play takes place around the 5x5 grid and each round takes place across 1 side of the grid (Starting on the north side.), then in the subsequent round, play moves clockwise to the next side of the grid and so on, so by the 4th round, a complete circuit will have been completed.
Endgame Once the 3rd year is over and has been scored, there is there final scoring to calculate. Sets of caravan cards score points. Points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Merv has several approaches to acquiring victory points but resource cubes is key to nearly all of them and the resource cube economy is very important. Acquiring cubes may conflict with choosing actions if the building site a player wants to activate produces cubes of a different colour, players will have to make choices and adapt. Having said that, it pays to diversify but it also pays to pursue one one strategy such as the caravansary or mosque track. Completing contracts feels like more of a bonus for sharp-eyed players than a long-term approach. Players also need to consider palace actions, placing workers into the right spaces in halls and moving along the favour track can be a good source of points. Players will need to also look towards defending Merv from attackers, losing buildings also loses the ability to gain resource cubes in later turns and of course loses victory points for the affected player(s). Merv is definitely on the heavier side of board games, but to be honest it didn't feel deep, just fiddly. I never got the feeling that I was making clever plays, instead I got the feeling that Merv was a heavy game made for the sake of being a heavy game. When I took an action, it often felt like I was doing 2 half actions instead of 1 whole one and it took multiple different actions to achieve something. E.g., I would undertake the marketplace action and acquire a good, Was I able to sell that good? No! What about spices, what if I'd acquired spices? Can't sell them either. To sell something, that is to complete a contract, I needed influence, which earned by building walls and also scrolls, which are acquired by visiting the library. Of course I also needed resources cubes. I know that some people will love this idea but I found it unengaging and a little dull and verging on tedious. Merv feels a little dry, unexciting and detached.
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31st August 2021 We're at The Sovereigns in Woking with the Woking Gaming Club for some Tuesday evening gaming. The first game of the night was Raids. Raids is a game about Vikings going around doing what they do, which is raiding and pillaging. What? You say, that's a cliché and Vikings were also explorers, traders, craftsmen and so on, well this game is called Raids, so raiding and pillaging it is; and all for glory! What's in a game?
Artwork on the game board is nice and colourful and the longship board are also good, the art on the voyage tiles is a little drab, a little more colour would make them pop but it's only a very minor quibble. There isn't too much iconography in the game and mostly it's very clear what it means. All-in-all, excellent, top notch production values for Raids. How's it play? Setup
Raids is played over 4 voyages which each involve journeying around the game board. During these voyages, the players will stop at the randomly placed voyage tiles and deal with those encounters.
Endgame Play continues until all players have completed the 4th voyage, then scores are calculated. Players can earn Glory points from a number of sources. Pennant tiles on a player's Longship earns straight up Glory points. Hammer tiles on a Longship earn points per Viking also on the Longship. Goods tiles that have been traded earn Glory Points. Sets of Rune tiles collected earn points accordingly. Monsters defeated earn points. Finally, cash accumulated during the game earn Glory points on a 1-to-1 basis. All points are tallied, Highest score wins. Overall
Travelling around the map, players will faced with a central choice on deciding how far to move their Longship? Should a player move slowly to encounter more tiles or rush ahead to a tile they really want? This is of course contextual and players will have to identify what they need and prioritise accordingly. They'll also have to keep an eye out for the behaviour of other players and want to gauge their motivations. The rule where players can only collect tiles at the start of their turn slots into this nicely, possibly allowing other players to fight for the tile and keeping the situation tense. A worker placement game that allows workers to drive off other workers! I also like how the Longship board works, merging aesthetics and mechanics. It's a great visual representation of what players are carrying and crew limitations. The game is in essence a mid-to-light worker placement game with a touch of auctioning and resource management mechanics. Raids fits its Viking theme reasonably well as players sail around, trading and plundering while battling mythic beasts and each other. Having said that, I found the game a little unengaging, maybe a little too abstract. I could sail pretty much anywhere I wanted with generally minimal risk, it never felt like epic adventuring. Combat was fairly rare, mostly players didn't complete too much for the same resources but it felt bland, a quick glance at other player's Viking meeples will tell you if you can be beat them or not and at what cost. I'm also a little uncertain of how much replayability Raids has. Even though it has random placement for the encounter tiles, because they're not really interdependent on each other, it felt like it didn't matter the order in which you might encounter them, especially since I could sail as far as I wanted. I don't think Raids is a bad game, if someone wanted to play it, I'd have no problem joining in (But not too often!), but it's not a game I'd pick. 13th July 2021 It's a Tuesday evening and I'm at The Sovereigns in Woking with the Woking Gaming Club. Where would eurogaming be without Renaissance Italy? The pageantry, the politics, the scheming and the vying for power, you know how it goes: A seemingly limitless mine of game design opportunities. This is where Lorenzo il Magnificio comes in, a game where players control noble families in Florence competing to be the most prestigious, famous and of course.... most pious! What's in a game?
The boards and tiles are suitably thick, the resource cards are of a standard quality as you'd expect. Tokens are all made of wood, which I always like, including the nicely rounded dice. The standout components however, are the family workers, instead of discs, they're these tall cylinder shapes that are easy to pick up. It makes sense as I'm sure they're going to be the components that get handled the most; practical and appealing. Lorenzo il Magnificio features attractive artwork throughout, the boards all display pretty, somewhat stylised art work cleverly produced to incorporate all the game's worker spaces. Art on the cards is little pared back to make room for iconography. Talking of which, all the game's symbols and text was easy to read. Lorenzo il Magnificio has good, solid components and presentation. How's it play? Setup
Lorenzo il Magnificio is played over 3 periods, with 2 rounds per period, which equates to 6 rounds in total. Each round has its own setup phase before the players act in turn order, additionally at the end of every period (2nd, 4th and 6th rounds.) there's an additional step; the Vatican report step. A round progresses as follows:
Endgame Calculate points from the following: Current score plus points for acquired territory cards and character cards, end-of-game victory points for venture cards. The player with the highest military score gains an additional 5 victory points, 2nd highest acquires 2 extra victory points. Finally, every set of 5 combines resources scores an additional point. All points are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Lorenzo il Magnificio sits towards the heavier end of games in my opinion, mechanically speaking, at it's core it's not a particularly complex game, but there's a lot of exceptions and variations to consider when trying to buy those all-important development cards and managing faith and military scores and the resources required to do all this. Don't forget those 2 engines you'll need to build either in order to gain and change those resources, or the abilities that character cards confer or the endgame points that venture cards grant. Like I said, a lot to think about. The game uses 4 types of resource and 3 types of score (Two of which can also be spent at times.) and mixes a few types of game mechanics; there's a bit of worker placement, a bit of engine building and a bit of resource management. Where it throws a spanner in the works though, is the use of dice to randomise the value of workers. A couple of low rolls can force players to change their strategies, particularly when competing for development cards, however, the use of servants can potentially mitigate low rolls, even so, players will have to adapt to circumstances. Furthermore, players have relatively limited moves to play with, each player has 4 workers they can use over 6 turns, giving 24 placements in total, which is why building the engines that essentially get triggered for free is so vital. Synergy and move optimisation are also key to this game. There are several approaches to scoring points in Lorenzo il Magnifcio, although these strategies are down to which development cards are acquired, development cards are the game's most vital element to winning and most actions are in service of getting those cards. However, the game seems a fairly well balanced, nothing felt overpowered or unimportant, decisions always felt meaningful and because of limited moves, these decisions generally felt tricky. If I had one criticism of the game; it's the excommunication tiles, they feel negative, but I guess that's the point of them. If someone wanted to play this, I'd have no qualms joining in. It's not one of my favourites, but it's still enjoyable. If you have a hankering for a heavy-ish worker placement game set in Renaissance Italy, you'll probably like this. 30th May 2021 It's a Sunday and I'm logged on to Board Game Arena on my PC, time for the first game of the night. Monk Tybor Kwelein had spent his life cataloguing the 4 kingdoms of plants, fungi, insects and animals in the pages of the titular Codex Naturalis. Now he is no longer with us, will one-to-four other people take up the mantle and carry on his work in the form of a neat little card game. What's in a game? Codex Naturalis is a card game and unsurprisingly, has a lot of cards. All the cards are about half the size of normal playing cards which is sensible, as otherwise the game would have a massive footprint, most of the cards share some similar features.
The scoring board and tokens are pretty standard quality game components and perfectly acceptable. The cards feel very thick and sturdy (Maybe because of the smaller size?) and seem to be made to a high standard, all the gold cards and numerous resource cards are embossed in actual gold foil, which is a really nice touch and despite their small size, most of the cards all have charming, highly detailed monochrome illustrations themed by their colour. Finally, all the cards are coated in a glossy finish. The only criticism I have is of the small symbols at the bottom of the gold cards, they are quite small and some players have complaint that it can be hard to discern between the symbols, particularly the blue and the green. Otherwise, these are some of the highest quality card components I've seen and it all comes wrapped up in a compact tin. How's it play? Setup
The objective in Codex Naturalis is to create an expanding spread of overlapping cards in their playing area. The basic process of actions to achieve this in Codex Naturalis is simple, a player plays a card, then draws a card, of course there's more to it than that.
points, this card probably scores the most if you can manage to fill the doughnut hole!
Play continues one player's score reaches 20 or more, then the endgame is triggered. Endgame After the endgame is triggered, the current round is completed, then one final round is played. After this, players count the score from the cards they've played and then calculates the score they get from completing both common objectives and their secret objective. Score are tallied and highest score wins! Overall
Codex Naturalis has simple rules, but also a fairly deep level of gameplay. Despite only having a hand of 3 cards, players are given a wide variety of choices and strategies to pursue when placing cards. A lot of this comes from the objectives, you'll obviously need to play gold cards to score but it's important not to ignore objectives, scoring from the gold cards will generally put your score into the low-to-mid 20s, but objectives which are scored after the end and can push your score higher, especially since they can be scored multiple times. That everyone has a secret objectives means that the final outcome is not known until the final scoring and keeps the stakes high. Players must also learn to manage their hands and objectives, there are 4 colours of card, but only 2 of each type of card is ever displayed face-up, it's likely that player's won't always see the cards they need. Codex Naturalis can also give players agonizing choices because they'll frequently be given the option to cover up a resource or objective symbol with the corner of another card. When that symbol is covered up, it's gone for the rest of the game, forcing players to choose which to prioritise. Only symbols that appear in the middle in of a card cannot be covered. Finally, because face-up cards never have more than 3 visible corners, players will need to think how to place cards with future placement in mind, the visible corner of a card can be 'locked' by placing another card with a hidden corner adjacent to it. This essentially ends that line of expansion, which can limit options later on. Codex Naturalis is a little too long for a filler and perhaps a little too short for a main game, which is only a minor quibble really. Otherwise, I found it to be a solid, easy-to-learn, mid-to-light game with good replay value and high production values. Definitely worth a try. 2nd April 2021 It was a Friday and I was logged into Board Game Arena on my PC. As the name suggests, Stone Age is a game about the trials and tribulation faced by the inhabitants of prehistoric communities. Caveat: The digital version of this game was played at this time, but we had played the physical version on previous occasions. What's in a game? Stone Age is a worker placement game and at its core takes place on a central game board which is divided into various different locations, into which workers can be placed to activate the associated action. Some locations may contain any amount of workers, others are limited by numbers.
The game board has a bright and colourful depiction of a stone age community on the edge of the wilderness that's quite eye-catching. The player boards have similar, if plainer artwork, again this is fine since most of the time they'll be covered in components. The civilisation cards essentially all use the same piece of artwork with elaborate game iconography providing some variation and the same is true of the building tiles. It's nothing to write home about (Or blog about I suppose?) but is perfectly acceptable. For the most part, the art is good. How's it play? Setup
Gameplay is broken up into 3 phases, place workers, resolve workers and end of round.
Again starting with the first player, they must remove all of their workers from one location at a time from every location they've placed workers and immediately resolve the associated actions as they do so, returning the meeple to the player's board. Players are free to remove their meeples in whatever order they see fit (This can have significant impact on game play.). The following actions are available:
Endgame There are 2 conditions that can trigger the endgame. If any of the building tile stacks have all 7 of their tiles purchased, it triggers the endgame, the current round is concluded and the game goes to the end game and then scoring. At the end of a round, if there aren't enough civilisation cards to fill a 4 spots on the board, then the game immediately ends and goes to scoring. In both instances, tribes must be fed for a final time. Final scores are tallied by adding the score from the victory point track, points that come from sets of civilisation cards and 1 point for each (Non food) resource the player possesses. Highest score wins. Overall
If I have one criticism of Stone Age, it's that the first 3 opening moves in any given round are generally always no-brainers, that's because the tool maker, hut & field locations are such a high priority because they confer very good rewards that would usually be stupid for players to pass up. If you're the 4th player, you won't get a look in unless another player is really desperate for something else or doesn't know what they're doing. I'm not sold on the resource gathering mechanic either, yes it's quite nice but it can leave you at the mercy of the dice rolls that makes low rolls feel frustrating but somehow high rolls not feel satisfying. Otherwise Stone Age is a mid-to-light worker placement game that is fairly easy to learn but feels perhaps a little generic, however, it does provide a fair level of depth. The game manages to generally provide a choice or two too many for players to cover with workers, forcing them to prioritise their actions and making meaningful decisions. An extra worker is good, so is the agriculture required to feed them, the tools can help with gathering resources which are useful to buy cards and tiles and so on. So if you want to play a worker placement game that isn't too taxing on the grey matter, you could do a lot worse than Stone Age. 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?
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:
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.
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.
Event card Every round begins by turning over that round's event card. This determines some actions that will occur in the game.
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.
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
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
Hows it play? Setup
There are 3 ways to place workers in the game, this is dependant on the symbol used on the game board:
And there's still a bit more to go in explaining the game.
Endgame Play continues until the Guildhall has been filled by workers (Different according to the number of players.). When this happens, all players get one more turn and then scoring begins. There are several factors that affect scoring:
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, 26th November 2019 Tuesday gaming night at 'The Sovereigns' is here. The first game of the evening was 'Nine Tile Panic'. Nine Tile Panic is a game that comes in a little box that delivers a lot of stress! This is a game all about building a city but not just building a city. It's a game about building a city in a strict time limit! Thinking about it, maybe we should get real city planners to play this game? You won't find any unoccupied roadworks in Nine Tile panic let me tell you. What's in a game? 'Nine Tile Panic' has few components:
How's it play? Before playing, give each player a set of tiles. Nine Tile Panic is played over a series of rounds. Each round is scored before play proceeds to the following round. A round goes like this:
Play continues until the score limit has been reached. For a 5 player game this is 25 points. Final scores are tallied, highest score wins. Overall
Nine Tile Panic is a small, quick to learn and quick to play game. A game can be 20 more than 20 minutes. The game is supposed to be fun, but it should be called 'Nine Tile Stress!'. Why? Because there will always be that one player who's going to finish their city too quickly just to watch the other players suffer! That's why. Always! You'll be swearing under your breath as any strategy you've concocted will fly out of the window and you'll just be trying to make any city you can! And seriously, that's what makes Nine Tile Panic a good game and fun too. If you have friends who like real time games, you should play this with them. And if you have friends who hate real time games you should definitely play this with them! |
AuthorI play, I paint. Archives
February 2023
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