Gold'n'Crash
Review Table Top

Gold’n’Crash – BGA Week 3 Review

What’s the next game of the week to learn on Board Game Arena? Well, I picked another two player game, Gold’n’Crash. This one is all about flying blimps, gaining treasure and trying to blow the other persons blimps up. Well, that is what Gold’n’Crash claims that it’s about. So let’s actually spend some time looking at this two player game. Is it one that is worth checking out on Board Game Arena or in person when it comes out?

How To Play Gold’n’Crash

Gold’n’Crash is a two player game where players are trying to gain victory in one of two ways. Firstly, you win by having stored away the most gold (points) when either player gets through all of their character cards. Or the other way to claim victory is to destroy all of your opponents blimps.

The game is played going back and forth with each player taking two of three actions on their turn. And you can take the same action twice. You take a card, you discard a card, or you draw a card. That is how the game works, but let’s talk about the actions a bit more.

Drawing

Firstly, drawing a card is simple. You draw a card from your deck and add it to your hand. There is no hand limit, so it allows you, late game, if you don’t draw good cards to play or you think you have the most points to push the end of the game.

Playing

Next you can play out cards. There are six different types of cards. Some of them are just point cards that don’t have powers. But five of the types of cards have powers. They might draw more cards from you, from the discard pile or your draw pile, or attempt to blow up your opponents ship. There are rules for playing cards. You need to play in the column with the fewest cards. And in the case of a tie, you decide where to play them.

Discarding

Then you also are able to discard cards from your played cards. Each card, minus the point cards, can be discarded. When you discard you trigger a different ability. It might be to add cards to your scoring pile or remove cards from your opponents, or look at the top of your deck and move cards to the bottom of the deck.

You are playing out these cards to bank point cards. Every card has a point value, but there are some cards that have a bigger point value. And there are some cards, above the blimps in the play area, that give you a lot of points. But you need to meet a specific condition, like three green cards in that column, or five total cards, to gather those points. In the end, most points wins, or if you destroy all the blimps you win right there.

What Doesn’t Work

Firstly, it isn’t super obvious what each card type does immediately. You need to know ten different actions between playing cards and discarding. This is not a major issue in the game. It is one of those things where the more that you play, the more you are going to know how the game works and what the cards do. But there is a learning curve to what everything does.

The next thing is that this isn’t a game that is fast. I talked last week about Zenith and how the turns are simple and the game, while it can be a battle back and forth, it moves quickly. This is not that sort of game. Some of it is because of what I mentioned above, there are a lot of powers and abilities you need to know. But even with that, the bigger element is there are just a lot of cards. So while there is variety, you often feel like you are treading water on turns.

Finally, blowing up the blimps, it sounds like fun. But it’s an abrupt end to the game that sometimes you can do nothing about to stop. For a game that wants to be strategic in what you are doing, sometimes there is not really a choice. So the end of the game through the blimp destruction just feels a bit out of place compared to everything else you do, and it comes down so much to the luck of the draw.

What Works

I think that the game has a good amount of strategy to it. It is a game that wants to be a tense and well thought out back and forth game. And there is certainly an element of it. And as you play it more, more strategy is going to emerge as to how you manipulate the board state to your advantage. Because, everything is going to mess around with that board state, on your side of things or your opponents a little bit.

I also like how actions stack. If you play a second brown card to a column, they allow you to store treasures, you get to activate that ability for each brown card. That means you can stack up some good scoring turns. Or you might be able to mess with your opponents board state a lot in a single move. So you might want to plan out your moves that way to try and optimize it. However, since you can only play in the lowest stack, sometimes that isn’t all that reasonable to do.

Who is Gold’n’Crash For?

I think people who want to play a lot of really intense two player games will enjoy this one. Not that I think this is the most intense two player. You compare it to abstracts like Chess or Onitama, this is going to play with more luck in it. But for someone who wants all the powers and abilities, there are going to be a lot in the game. And for someone who maybe wants a game to play in a night, instead of player a two player game twice or more, this one can work for that as well.

My Final Thoughts on Gold’n’Crash

Now, I think that my opinion on this is going to be colored a little bit by the fact it was played right after Zenith. While Zenith is a smooth fast game with a lot of great decisions, Gold’n’Crash is a bit clunkier and clutchier.

And, by clutchier, I mean that it’s harder to get into and get going. I played quite a number of games of Gold’n’Crash to get a good feeling for the game. It wasn’t until I was at four or five plays that I started to really utilize all the abilities all that well. That is not a major negative to the game, but for a two player game, it is going to cause discrepancies between how good players are.

And it is a bit clunkier. You might draw what you need, you might not, but there is less ability to pivot. I definitely played games where I just drew card after card because none of them were worth playing. So it is better for me to build up a massive hand of cards until I get a couple cards that I need for a great turn, than it is for me to just play out cards. That doesn’t feel fun, too many passive turns in the game.

My Grade: C-
Gamer Grade: C+
Casual Grade: C

I think that some people will like this game better. When it comes out, I expect that some people will make it the game they play with their partner in an evening weekly or more often. But generally, I think people will find it kind of middle of the road. It isn’t a bad game, but it isn’t that good a game either.

Send an Email
Message me on X at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here
Support us on Patreon here

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.