How to Play – Paint the Roses

Paint the Roses is a cooperative game where as a group you are trying to figure out secret objective cards. Basically painting the roses so that you stay ahead of the Queen of Hearts. On each players turn they put down a tile and then the group must guess as to what one of the objective cards are for the players.

How can you do that? Well, when you place down a tile, all players can put down cubes on that tile. The cubes tell how many matches they have for their objective card. So if I put a pink rose next two two other pink roses, and my secret objective is two pink roses, I’d put down two cubes. With the tile I put down and the other two tiles, I have two combinations of two pink roses. Even if the others were also a combination, on that turn I wouldn’t put a cube on them.

Then everyone else, whose turn it isn’t, is trying to figure out what my clue is telling them. Now, if I have an easy objective, they know it’s colors so they only have to look at the tile I played down and find combinations of two colors where there are two of them. Pink and pink in this case. But if I have a medium or hard, it could be shape and shape as well or shape and color.

No matter what you guess the Queen of Hearts moves forward. If you get it wrong, you stay still and she moves forward faster. If you get it right, she moves forward slowly and you jump ahead. The game ends when you’ve either completed the garden, filling in everything. Or when the Queen of Hearts catches you and off with your heads.

What Doesn’t Work?

This is a game that I really enjoy with every play that I’ve had of it. My win rate is a solid 0%, but I’m loving every play of it. If I were to come up with negatives for it, I think for a pretty simple game the teach is less simple. Mainly explaining how the cubes work and that even though I put down a tile, everyone should be checking their objective and putting cubes on it. It feels like the rule that people are apt to forget.

What Works?

I think that the deduction in this game works really well, because it seems simple and can be simple. In my example, I probably set it up so that only one thing had two options on it. But there are times where it might be multiple things. And this is where putting cubes on other people’s tiles comes in. If it could be two pink or a pink and a purple. If you had that card matched something previously, so the previous tile made a pink and purple combination. Players can remember that information to deduce and eliminate the pink and purple to know you have pink and pink.

And just to continue with the deduction. I really like that sometimes giving no clue is a clue itself. I might give a clue and not put a cube on it. So looking at the options I had for tiles, looking at maybe where I have or haven’t placed cubes, information is out there to know what I have.

But to go with that, I also like that the Queen of Hearts is always moving and you always need to make a guess. It wouldn’t make sense to not make a guess, but even if when you get it right, she’s moving forward. And she picks up speed the further you get around the board. That really makes it a fun experience because you feel the pressure as you play the game.

I’ll also say that I like the standard version of the game. There is a deluxe version and if I can find it and upgrade to that at some point in time I might. I’ve played with both, and both are nice. The artwork is nice, but the tiles, the main upgrade on the deluxe version, are amazing. Either way the game is good and looks nice, but the deluxe is a deluxe that is worth it, I think.

Who Is It For?

This looks like it maybe should be for casual gamers. And I do think that some will get it well, but the deduction level in this game is high. This is for the person who really likes the puzzle through problems, figure out what options are available and find those right choices. It can slow down a little bit for players who are prone to analysis paralysis. But your action is simple enough that it shouldn’t spend too much time with that.

For me, I think this if for gamers who like deduction. They don’t mind that it is an abstract game, they care more about puzzling through everything.

Final Thoughts on Paint the Roses

Needless to say, I really like this game. Paint the Roses just offers that good blend of crunchy thinking about a game with simple actions. You pick one of four tiles and place it. But where and how you place it matters so much.

I’m confident that with the right group, Paint the Roses might not be that hard. If everyone just takes easy or medium, no one goes hard. And certain ways that people think will make it easier. But because of those hard cards, you easily can adjust your own difficulty of the game. I like it when a group can regulate for itself that way.

And I do think that no matter which version of the game you get it is a pretty game. The box and the artwork on it is probably one that you could leave out just because it looks pretty. And while I think this game will excel with gamers who like deduction, it isn’t that hard to play for a lot of different types of players.

My Grade: A
Gamer Grade: A
Casual Grade: C

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Middara: Unintentional Malum Act 1

There are a few things that made me really interested in this, first, it is a campaign game, and I like campaign games a lot. But while it has a dungeon crawl feel to it, it is something that is very different. It blends elements of Sci-Fi and anime in as well, to create a massive world, I’m only backing Act 1 of 3, and Act 1 is basically the size of Gloomhaven with the other two boxes being similar as well.

Now, with Frosthaven on the way, does that change how I feel about Middara since that’ll be another big box campaign style game? And I don’t think that it does. I am getting these campaigns to play with people, yes, but also for playing on Malts and Meeples stream myself. I started doing that with Tainted Grail, and I need to get back to that, but that will happen after a move, so Middara is going to give me another massive campaign to go through if I want, or I can play it with part of a group as well.

I also think that this game does what Gloomhaven tried to do in the expansion, Forgotten Circles. In this game you have parts of the map that aren’t in the original map set-up. This gives the game more of a sense of discovery throughout it’s play. And you can get even more of that with the story which is being added to the Foreteller app so that you don’t have to read it yourself but you can hear voice acting for it.

Really, though, what makes me excited is the setting. This alien world, these humans but not quite humans, I like the power set-up for it and how you can develop your character over time. I think that the setting is just unique and makes for a really interesting game that feels different. I’m going to look at it and try it out when I get it because Act 1 is coming before 2 and 3, and if I like it, I might have to get the other acts as well.

Excitement Level: 9/10

Etherfields

Etherfields is Awaken Realms next big kickstarter after Tainted Grail, and while I went all in on Tainted Grail, because the story and the world building was so unique, I was a little bit more restrained on Etherfields. In Etherfields you are exploring these dreamlike worlds in basically different scenarios. Where the whole thing tells different stories in unique ways.

What I really like about this one is the unique setting again. While I said that Middara was a blend of fantasy, sci-fi, and anime, this one gives off more of an Alice in Wonderland, Through The Looking Glass sort of trip to it, and I think that’s going to be fun as well.

I was also interested because there was deck building in the game as well, and I’m a big fan of deck building games. The deck building is really how you do your actions, and I like that there’s a balancing act in the game where you can spend a card for either the resources or put it in play, but you need to have the resources. This is something similar to Marvel Champions and to a lesser extent Arkham Horror the Card Game, and I really like it in both of them.

Now, I’m a ways out from this one because I knew I’d likely have Middara coming in before it and all of Tainted Grail, so I went with a single wave shipping for Eitherfields, so I probably won’t see that until sometime in mid to late 2021. It’s hard to be too excited about it, and while I think it’s going to be a great game, and I love the look of it, I knew that it was one I was going to be okay waiting on for a while.

Excitement Level: 6.5/10

So which of the two interests you more?

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10 – Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle
Do you want to play through the Harry Potter books? That’s what Hogwarts Battle gives you as you can play from Ron, Hermoine, Neville, or Harry himself as you go up against he-who-shall-not-be-named. Though, you need to deal with the likes of Crabbe and Goyle, Quirrel, and others first. To do that, you need to build up your deck so that you can deal with the threats before the plans of the villains get too tough to deal with and you lose the game. The game grows in complexity as you advance through the various books until you get your NEWT’s and you can specialize your skills even more. And there are more challenges that you need to tackle. There’s even an expansion to add in some of the monsters that live in the forest and Luna as a playable character as well.

9 – Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate
D&D Theme here which is kind of odd to have a game that’s based on an RPG and Video Game. But there’s a game that is actually based on Betrayal at House in the Hill. In this game you’re going to explore the city of Baldur’s Gate and there are odd things going on, crazy events, and omens, and items. Eventually someone is a traitor and everyone is going to have to deal with their betrayal. You get that classic D&D sort of feel as you have all your different character classes that you can play and all of them do something special that makes sense for their class. The cleric heals, the wizard has magic missiles, and it’s a very fun time. While it is a big generic in terms of what people expect from fantasy now, the game is a lot of fun and more balanced than Betrayal at House on the Hill.

8 – Lord of the Rings
There are a number of Lord of the Rings games, this isn’t the Living Card Game or Journeys in Middle Earth, this is the game that came out in 2000. This one is all about playing cards in a such a way that you can complete legs of Sam and Frodo’s journey to Mount Doom to destroy the ring. It allows you to go on that journey and play as Pippin, Merry, or Fatty Bolger if you’re playing with five players. It’s fairly abstracted but overall a bunch of fun and punishingly hard as you reach towards the end of the game. The artwork in the game is beautiful and fully cooperative, though, there is a Sauron expansion where someone can control Sauron.

7 – Hats
Not all games with an IP are going to have a ton of theme to them. Hats is definitely one of them as you’re trying to create you best collection of hats. Now, that’s all around the Madd Hatter’s tea party and his hat collection and which hats you should be wearing, but it’s really a card based game where you are collecting hats and trying to set yourself up to score the best that you can. It’s a fun abstract game with a vague Alice in Wonderland aesthetic to it, but that’s about it. It’s a fun fast game that has some clever things around it when you consider which hats you’re trying to collect and which you’re playing down that might help your opponent. Definitely a stretch for an IP, but technically it has one.

6 – The Grimm Masquerade
There are a few of these that are using public domain IP’s. The fairy tale characters that you get in this hidden role game are all out there for anyone to use, but they are a theme that has been added to the game from a previous work. In Grimm Masquerade, you are at a masquerade, unsurprisingly, and you are trying to figure out who all the other players are. You do that by giving them gifts and taking a gift for yourself. If you’re Cinderella you want to get a glass slipper, but there is one that is going to be bad for you and if you get that, it outs who you are as a character and you’re out for the round. But you don’t have to just give gifts, you can accuse as well. And if you correctly guess who someone is, you get more points. There’s an interesting amount of strategy to this generally lighter style of game.

5 – Star Wars: Rebellion
Star Wars in a box, this game is all about playing that original trilogy and seeing of the Empire is able to find and destroy the rebel base or if the rebels are able to sabotage the empire’s plans and outlast them. You get to play with iconic characters and write your version of the trilogy. Maybe it’ll be Yavin that gets blown up or Endor. Will the rebels capture Darth Vader, or maybe the Emperor himself will be leading the Death Star into battle. It’s a big game of cat and mouse that takes a while, but it feels like a Star Wars movie each time you play it.

4 – The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game
Probably one of the more abstracted games on the list, the theme still comes through well, especially if you’re familiar with the books. You are taking your team of investigators, combatants, and possibly werewolves to try and solve the case from a given Dresden Files book. Each book has it’s own balance of advantages you can get, obstacles you can overcome, and most importantly cases to solve and villains to beat. If you can solve more cases than there are villains left, you win, but you might be dealing with the final encounter where you can use some abilities, but hope that you got things close enough so that with a lucky roll you can defeat that last villain you need to defeat or solve the last case at the last minute.

3 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game
One of two Lovecraft games on the list, and since you haven’t seen the other one, you know that it is going to be higher. This game allows you to play through scenarios, trying to avoid going insane and be able to solve the mystery presented before you with basically just cards and a few tokens. It has some good mechanics some of the randomness and mechanics, and I really like that you can tailor your experience where if you want to enjoy the story more, you can play on easy, if you want it hard, you can play at an extremely difficult level. It works well, with that, for like I said if you just want to experience the story or for learning the game, being able to play on an easier level.

2 – Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition
The second game on the list based around Lovecraftian mythos and they come back to back. Mansions of Madness just does a better job with it’s app integration for doing the book keeping of moving the story along nicely. In both of the cases, you can play very different types of stories, but they are all set in the Lovecraft mythos, or at least adjacent to it. Lovecraft’s works were less pulp detective than the Fantasy Flight Lovecraftian games are, but it still has some of the theme of the monsters, and a game that is just about madness and dread wouldn’t work extremely well, you need something for the players to do.

1 – Marvel Champions: The Card Game
Top spot goes to Marvel, this game a lot of fun, and it really uses it’s IP well. You have your superhero, Spider-Man for example, fighting Rhino. Well, if Rhino has been hitting Spider-Man too much, he can always flip over into Peter Parker, and Rhino will stop attacking and go back to scheming on his great plan to rob a bank. So it really feels very thematic and you come in with a web swing and kick Rhino to eventually beat him, it feels like you’re playing as Spider-Man. The art helps the theme as well, and even the graphic design on things like the “Tough” and “Stunned” cards have a great comic book look and feel to them.

There are a lot of fun games with good IP’s on them that don’t have to be a generic fantasy or sci-fi setting. A lot of these games, while some are a bit more complicated are going to be good things to get people who maybe aren’t big game players who really love a theme. I think that all of these are fun games, and I really wish, looking at the list, that I had some time to play some of them right now, but thankfully some of them, Marvel Champions, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle can be played solo, or with Lord of the Rings, my wife enjoys that game as well. There are a lot of good games with IP’s now after it just being generic roll and move games.

What are some of your favorite games with an IP?

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10 – Marrying Mr. Darcy
As I was creating the list, I was surprised to see this game make the list. It’s down a ways in my top 100, no spoilers for this fall when I do my top 100 again, but it is really an interesting theme. First, there’s the Pride and Prejudice theme, I’m actually a little bit surprised that we don’t have more games based off of Jane Austen, I’m not sure how they’d work, but I’m surprised. Then it’s a game about marriage, now there are some party games about marriage, but this one isn’t about guessing trivia between married couples, it’s about marrying off your character from Pride and Prejudice to your most preferred suitor. It’s a light hearted game that is pretty simple but enjoyable and pretty good at not going too long.

9 – Hanabi
Hanabi has an interesting them of fireworks. That’s not one that you really see in board games, but beyond that it is a fun game because it has some really interesting mechanics. You are trying to create lines of fireworks by color going from one to five. But you can’t see your cards in your hand, they are facing away from you, using clues, you have to work together to discard the right cards, to get more clues, put down the correct number on the correct color, and give clues. The trick is giving good clues because your clues need to be either pointing out all the cards in someone’s hand of a color or of a number and hope that they infer the right order. It’s a fast game, but it’s very challenging.

8 – Photosynthesis
Now, some would argue that this isn’t a completely unique theme, there are other games out there that are about trees, but it’s still a pretty uncommon theme. And how it handles trees is really interesting and the pieces are cool and board is amazing. In Photosynthesis, you are trying to grow trees to harvest to get points. The theme is fairly abstract, but it works, because there is a sun that rotates around the board. So you get light points to spend to plan seeds, grow trees, and score points, and how you get points if based off of how many of your trees are getting sunlight and the size of those trees, because if you have a larger tree behind a smaller tree, both trees get sunlight, but smaller tree or same size tree, they can be blocked in the shadow and not get you any light points. It’s an interesting strategy game that offers a lot of tough choices and has a bit of a cutthroat element as you try and position your trees to get light and block off other people. Really fun, easy to teach, and has a lot of depth.

7 – Hats
The hat part of the game Hats is what gives it a more unique theme. There is also an Alice in Wonderland theme on it with the Madd Hatter’s tea party, but that’s a pretty common theme in games. But the idea of hats and which hats are on the table scoring points is unique. It’s also very clever. In most card games, you are using your hand of cards either to give yourself points if they are good or your opponent points if they are bad. Here there’s a middle step. When you play a card, you are putting it onto the table in one of six spots and taking the card that was already put there and placing it in front of you for scoring. So you’re giving your opponent a potential card for scoring, but it’ll only score if there is a card of that color out on the Madd Hatter’s table. So you have to think about how your opponent can use the cards that you have to set-up their scoring and hopefully play them in such a way that the table ends up favoring you at the end. A lot of strategy in this game, though some luck especially at higher player counts. It is really quite abstract, but it works for a theme because of the Madd Hatter and hats.

6 – Cartographers
So there are a lot of games out there where you’re building a world or a city. Something like Carcassone pops into my head or a game like Suburbia where you are building a city. In Cartographers, you are making a map, not to build out a land and score points by putting people on it like Carcassone, but because you are mapping the far off reaches of the land. How it works is interesting as well, this is a flip and write game where each player is filling out their own map, so at the end it looks different for everyone. But you are either given one type of land with one of two shapes to put it in, or two types of land with one shape to put one of those two land types in. Or, there are monsters. Filling in the land is pretty normal, it has a Second Chance vibe to it, but monsters are very different as one of your opponents will decide where the monster goes on your board. It’s very clever that way, and the scoring is good as well. You score two things each season and it rotates, so in Winter you’re scoring one thing that you scored at the beginning of the game in spring. Not the only game to do this, but does it well, and the map making theme is great.

5 – Century: Golem Edition
This one was interesting to put on the list, mainly because Century: Spice Road, exists, and that has the most generic theme of moving cubes around and trading spices, this literally 90% of Euro games right there. All Century: Golem Edition is, is a retheme of that game. So it goes from a very generic theme to a unique theme about golems just by a retheme. In this game you are going out and mining gems and then trading gems around various market places (all by playing cards from your hand), in order to get certain combinations of gems to be able to power up golems and get points. The game is really simple and slick to play. It’s like Splendor in some ways but a step up in complexity. You are doing one of a few things on your turn, you can play a card to get or swap gems, you can get more cards for your hand, you can take all your played cards back into your hand, or you can get a golem. The game ends when someone has 5 golems, and everyone adds up their points, and most points wins. The art and the gems just make this pop on hte table though.

4 – Homebrewers
There are a few games out there about brewing, but it’s a very small number, so I picked the one that I have had a lot of fun with. Homebrewers is all about brewing your best beer so when it comes to Summerfest and Oktoberfest, you are ready to wow the judges and take home the gold, and get the most points. To do this, you’re rolling dice to take actions. What really makes this game so much fun to play, though is brewing the beer. You could brew a generic beer and it wouldn’t do that much for you, but you can add in flavors to make your beer better and that might give you more points, more money, or even help help improve the quality of another beer with the techniques that you’ve learned. But, as a player, would you really want to drink a nutmeg and cherry IPA? So it’s always fun to see what weird beer you can make. This game is also a lot of fun because it’s a good engine building game, but it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome.

3 – Sagrada
Stained glass windows, seems like there wouldn’t be many games out there on this, and there aren’t, but there is another. Sagrada is my preferred one, though as it just pops on the table and offers a good puzzle as you try and draft the right dice in order to be able complete your stained glass window. Each round someone draws two times the number of players, plus one, dice and rolls them, then going around, you draft dice and put them into your window. However, there are rules as to how they can be placed, you can’t have the same number orthogonally adjacent to the same number (up down, left right) nor can you do that with color. Beyond that, there are certain spots where you have to put a color or a number, so you have to think about that as well. Sagrada looks amazing on the table and is actually really easy to teach and play. I’ve had great success with this game with all sorts of groups of people.

2 – Hanamikoji
Hanamikoji was one of the first games I thought of when doing this list. Mainly, there aren’t many games that would dare handle a theme such as Geisha. But Hanamikoji does, and even though this a very abstract game, it handles it well. Hanamikoji is all about the winning the favor of various Geisha by giving them gifts. To do that, you and your opponent each have a had of cards and have four actions per round you can take. You can either save a hidden card for winning favor at the end, you can discard two cards that won’t be used to win favor, you give your opponent the choice of three cards, and they pick one to place on their side for winning favor and you play the other two, or you create two sets of two cards and your opponent picks one of those for their side to win favor and you get the other. This game really is all about making your opponent make tough decisions for you so that you are able to manipulate the cards you can see to win the favor of the Geisha. You either want to win the favor of 11 points worth of Geisha or of four Geisha. The game is really fast, very thinking, and it forces a lot of tough decisions. I’d highly recommend this game as a two player game.

1 – Icecool
Penguin High School, I dare anyone to find a game that has that theme on it, besides Icecool 2. In this game you are flicking around student penguins who are skipping class in order to get fish to eat. Each round, someone is also the hall monitor. If the hall monitor catches, runs into, a student who is skipping class, that student has to give the hall monitor their hall pass, which gives the hall monitor points. But for each fish that the student gets they get a point as well. A round ends when either the hall monitor has caught all the students or a student has gotten their three fish. Then after every person has been the hall monitor once you count up your points, most points wins. It’s fun though because of the silly theme, but also because you’re flicking around little penguins, and not only that, you can jump them over walls if you flick them right, or spin them and ricochet through multiple doors, if you line it up right, there are just lots of fun things you can do.

So, this list dug further into my top 100 than most. I like a lot of games that have a fantasy or sci-fi theme, but even games like Lost Expedition which is about exploring or Point Salad which is about food, those are themes that are done pretty often. I think with that I did a solid job of finding games that have out there themes. If you’re not a big sci-fi or fantasy fan, these games might tick that theme box for you. What are some interesting, unique, themes that you’ve found? Are there any from the list that you want to try?

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Hats was one of the games, going into GenCon that I was really excited to try and definitely knew I wanted to pick up. There were a few different things that drew me to the game. The first was the Alice in Wonderland theme. The idea of Hats is that you’re at the Mad Hatter’s tea party and you are trying to get the best collection of hats. I have liked the theme on other games, mainly Parade, which might have an Alice in Wonderland theme, but like this game also be a primarily abstract game. The next was that I got to watch a play through that Man vs Meeple did on their Youtube channel. In it the game seemed like it was a lot of fun, but as importantly, and the last thing that drew me to this game, the game seemed simple but challenging.

Hats, like I said, is a game with an Alice in Wonderland theme, but really it’s an abstract puzzle. In the game, you have a hand of cards that you are using to swap with the cards on the Mad Hatter’s table. There are seven different suits in the game, numbered 1-6. You can swap the cards out, as long as the card you’re replacing is the same color or has a smaller number than the card that you’re playing. You then place the card you took in front of you, and that will be what you end up scoring. The tricky part of the game comes with the fact that you only score the colors on the Mad Hatter’s table. So, if you have three blue cards, and the blue card on the table is in the first spot, you get three points, one for each card. If there is also a blue in the six spot on the table as well as the one spot, you still get three points, because you always score the lower numbered spot. And it’s possible that you’ve collected a couple of pink cards, because they are in the six scoring spot, so it’s going to score you twelve points, but one of your opponents on their turn, seeing that you’ll be getting a lot of points from it, can potentially swap out that pink card, as long as they have a higher number.

In most card games, you know which cards are going to be used to score form your hand. In something like Uno, you know that you want to get rid of high numbers. In Hearts, you know you don’t want to take hearts of the queen of spades. In Euchre, you know you want to take so many tricks. You can plan how you are going to use your hand to score or not score points. In Hats, your hand probably won’t be the majority of your points. You’re going to be taking the cards that were dealt to the table originally, and what your opponent is playing. So you have to think about what cards on the table you can use to score, and what cards you can put down so your opponent doesn’t score. And as you get more information about what your opponents are taking, you have to consider more what you want to grab yourself and what you want to try and take away from your opponents.

There are two final ways which you score in the game. Sometimes you can’t play a card, you don’t have the right colors and you have low numbers. The game realizes that this sucks, so it gives you two options. At the start of every turn, you can discard a card to draw a new one, as long as there are still cards to draw. But if you still can’t play, you can play a hat card face down, and that’s worth a single point. The other way to score is the more interesting way. At the end of the game, you still have a card in your hand. You add up your total in the color, say I had three blue cards the 1, 3, and 4, I would add that up and I have 8, and then I subtract the blue card I kept in my hand from them. Hopefully I kept the 2, and I’d score 6 points, but I might have kept the 6, in which case I’d score to points. Black Hats shouldn’t be a big strategy in someones scoring, scoring off the table is basically always better, but if it’s late in the game, and you can’t play or don’t want to help an opponent, it’s a valid strategy. But the scoring based off of the last card in your hand, that can be huge. I’ve seen people get over 10 points, and I’ve seen people get negative points from it.

They’ve done a great job with components and theming of the game. I did say that this is an abstract game, and this is really an abstract game. But it works with the theme, and the cookie is amazing, the board and art are beautiful, and the scoring pad is a dry erase board. My only complaint about the quality of the game is that the dry erase marker that they sent with the game doesn’t have an eraser. Fortunately, I have a lot of dry erase markers with erasers, so I can swap in one from what I bought for roll and write games that I’ve laminated. But if you don’t have that, you’re always going to need an actual napkin or something to clean off the scoring sheet. It seems like a pretty obvious oversight, but not anything that really knocks the game or the ability to play the game.

Overall, I like this game a lot. I think that it’s challenging, even though I’ve probably played it eight times. I think that there’s good strategy to it, but you have a single action, playing a card to the table, and taking the one you played it on for scoring. So it’s a simple yet tricky game, and a fast game. The game says 20-30 minutes, and I think most of the games I’ve played have gone 10-15. Granted, that is two players, but with the full four players, I think that time frame seems accurate to maybe a little bit long. If you want a game that you can teach fast, have some interesting choices, and play multiple times, Hats is a very good game for that.

Gamer Grade: B
Casual Grade: B+
Overall Grade: A

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Winter Tales is a fun, simple, storytelling game that isn’t really all that much of a game. You are split into two teams, one team is controlling some winter characters who are trying to keep the world forever winter but never Christmas, and the other side is trying to bring around spring. You are playing with different fairy tale characters ranging from the Tin Man and Mad Hatter to Alice and Snow White. These characters are placed on specific seasons, so you get to pick who you want from your team. The general idea after that is that you are trying to play your cards telling a story where you are searching for a lost artifact or spreading around propaganda or whatever your quest might be. These cards have fun little sketches on them that you get to interpret however you want, they look like a bunch of stick figures standing in a circle, are they a cult of winter or is it a spring dance to welcome in the new season? Or there’s a shadow in the window that is watching you or is it a banner cheering you on as you go to try and find your lost love? If you succeed or not comes down to if there are more winter cards played or more spring cards played when the story wraps up. This means that the actual mechanics of the game are pretty simple for the most part. But that’s not the real point of the game, the real point of the game is to get creative juices flowing and to tell an epic story of two sides battling against each other.

Now, that sounds super simple, and you can play it that way, but the more you play it, I think there would be a subtle strategy that comes out. This is because there are some things that you can do to stop other characters from joining in on a story. If you are on the winter side you can spend your cards to battle a character who is moving past you, if you win, they stop moving and can’t join the story. Or if you are a member of the spring rebels, you can  set traps to keep the winter characters from being able to make it to join into the story. There are also special abilities that each character has, so do you play your character that can only draw 3 cards but can move two spaces for free or do you draw that extra card so you can have the other person join in on a story later? Finally, there are even more special abilities than that, abilities that might be at a certain location, we didn’t play with these as they are optional to the game, but they can certainly add complexity to the game.

So, if it’s just a storytelling game, is it better than Once Upon a Time or Gloom? I’m not sure about Gloom. Gloom has a great mechanic and idea where you are trying to kill of your characters, but it’s definitely better than Once Upon a Time. Winter Tales has a lot more theme to it, and you have the gritty fairy tales gone wrong feel to it that really allows you to jump into what is going on. The theming is just done so well and the artwork while simple at times on some of the cards is beautiful on the board and on the characters that you play. And even the simple artwork on your story cards really helps lead you into a story without forcing you to go in an exact direction. What keeps it from being better than Gloom is that like Once Upon a Time you can run into the situation of how long can you go telling your story between playing cards? They say in the rules that a card should be played every couple of sentences, but it’s more of a suggestion. Games that are storytelling games where you have to play cards as you are telling the story should have a hard and fast rule of every two sentences, and one per run-on sentence to keep it moving. This would add an additional challenge to the game.

Would I recommend it? Yes, I think that I would. It offers a lot of replayability, and while I might lean towards Gloom over this game, this game without an expansions allows you to play more people,  up to seven. It means that you can pull it out at a larger game night and get everyone involved in the storytelling. It plays smoothly, the rules are easy to follow, and they give cheat sheets for every player on how turn order goes, how battles and traps work, and how the storytelling phases go. Overall I nicely designed game that is fun but is a storytelling game, so that will be my last caveat that if you are playing it with people who can’t tell a story, even with prompts, then it’s going to fall flat.

Overall Score: B

Casual Score: B+

Gamer Score: C- (because it’s not a complex game with a ton of strategy to it)

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I enjoyed the first Alice in Wonderland that was made with Mia Wasikowska. So I’m curious to see if this one is also visually entertaining and kind of fun.