How to Play Aquatica

This, like I said, is a hand management and engine building game where you try and generate the most points. Whomever has the most points at the end of the game, and there are three game end triggers, will win the game.

But Aquatica comes more down to how you use the cards in your hand to generate more cards and complete locations. And, in a lot of ways the game is about how you can combo locations together. Each location has some actions that you can do. They might give you more money or fighting power to get more locations. They might push up past blank actions on locations. Or they might let you score locations that you’ve used all of the actions for. Plus a little bit more.

So on each turn you can play out a single card action. But you chain together as many location actions as you want and makes sense. I say makes sense because you might chain some actions together that you don’t use the benefit. For example, I might not use the fighting power that I get on a turn. But I want to push a card past that to get the benefit I do want or to be able to store it as a treasure.

Here’s Rodney with more.

Chaining Actions

Let’s talk a bit about chaining actions or chaining location actions because I think that is the strongest element of the game. It is the part of the game what you are really puzzling out with the help of manta rays. I didn’t mention manta rays, but they provide actions like the locations do. However, they can refresh when you refresh your hand of cards.

But the chaining of actions provides an interesting puzzle to figure out. You need to figure out which actions, like I said, to push past and basically waste. They might be a waste, but it might help you score more points or score an end game scoring objective faster than your opponents. So there is strategy around it.

And a lot of the locations, you find, take a fair amount to get. But that is again where and why you might skip on a locations actions. I say skip, I mean pass over without the benefit. So you pass over so that you can get what you need to buy or conquer another location. You still need to think about the blank spaces. Because you are not allowed to just pass over a blank space. You need an arrow to do that, so it’s an interesting puzzle.

The Manta Rays

The manta rays are a fun addition to the game. Like the locations they are a resource that you can basically spend for coins, attack power, or to move locations further up. But unlike locations it isn’t a use it and that section or action is hidden. Manta rays flip over and there are a few cards what when you play them flip them back. So there is good interesting with the character cards that you use.

I also like around the manta rays how they help with Aquatica’s end scoring objectives. In that the four you start out with are the scoring markers for when you score the objectives. So the first person to score them gets 8 points, next 5, and than 3 after that. But as a benefit of not scoring, you keep your manta rays around longer. And as long as you can complete all of the objectives later in the game, you keep that benefit going.

The Boring Part of Aquatica

Now Aquatica isn’t all fun and excitement of how you chain your location actions together. You get a main action in the game, and that is playing a card that does, generally one thing or one pretty basic element of the game. It interacts with the main board to recruit a character or get a location. That is about it. There is a bit more, but not that much more.

And even recruiting a character, a new character with a new version of an action is not that exciting. By, because the actions don’t vary much or feel that much stronger than they do with your starting actions. The only reason to recruit more characters is that they are slightly better and you need them for an objective. Otherwise, I think just the basic actions might be about as good.

This element of the game just feels lacking. As you recruit characters it costs money. That cost is from 5 down to 0 and everything slides down. I’m not sure that it’s worth paying more than one or two coins to get something. It’s never worth spending resources which can get locations to go all the way to 5. No card is that much better. So recruiting feels more like a bust of a turn.

Final Thoughts on Aquatica

I want more in this game. I don’t think it’s that often where I complain about a game having too little. And really, I don’t want that much more. I just want the cards for the characters I recruit to feel cooler. They are all so one and done that it doesn’t feel like I’m setting anything up or being that clever about it. And in a lot of ways that is holding the rest of the game back for me.

Why is that when I like the manta rays and the locations? Well, when I flip manta rays and slide up cards, it is all for an action that doesn’t feel that exciting. I complete this great puzzle of sliding cards around to get to 8 conqueror that I use when I play down a card that gets me a location. No points right then, which is okay, a benefit I can use right away, unless it just let’s me buy stuff or conqueror stuff. In which case, I get a great toy for the future with a pretty boring and basic action.

That said, I want to look into the expansions. This game might benefit from them because it might add variety. If it adds variety, then I think the game and the basic character actions might seem more interesting. And I need to play with the king, the powerful characters you can start with. It won’t make the other recruiting feel better, but it might make the game feel more interesting from the start with the actions I can do.

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How to Play the One Piece TCG

If you know trading card games, you are going to know a lot of the basics of this game. Playing out creatures, them not being able to attack the round they come out, spending a resource for them. All of that is present in the One Piece TCG. But it is not just a clone of Magic the Gathering in all that it does. But the basics, plus getting your opponents life down, those do match what TCG’s are known for.

The basics of your turn go, refresh cards. So characters that attack and Don, your purchase power that you used all refresh. Then you draw a card and you draw and play two Don. Then you get to play out cards, attack with cards, and do what you want to do until you say that you’re done.

When attacking you pick your target. This is something we see in TCG’s more now like Lorcana and Star Wars Unlimited. You either attack a spent enemy card, one that attacked last turn, or their leader. The math on it is simple, if you hit with more or equal attack power you win and knock out your opponents character or knock down the leaders health by one. After the leaders health has been hit one more time than they had health cards, you win the game or lose.

Unique or Interesting Elements

There are a few areas in the game that stand out that feel different from other TCG’s. I say different, I mean that loosely. It isn’t Magic the Gathering, but it’s close or offers an interesting decision space even if it isn’t always completely unique.

Don Cards

Let’s start with the Don cards. There are a few things that stand out to me about them. Firstly, you always get two into your resource area every turn. Well, I say every turn, there are ten that form your Don deck, so for your first five turns, six if you’re the starting player, you are adding to your Don. As compared to something like Magic the Gathering, One Piece really keeps you from drawing dead in terms of card play and mana by always adding Don cards.

The other thing with Don cards is that they offers boosts as well. Each one gives you +1000 to attack. So, like I said in game play, you need to meet or exceed your opponents health total. The Don are one way to take a weaker character who might never be targeted or attacked with and launch an attack. But it is +1000 for the turn, then it goes back to your pool of resources. And they are only value if you are the attacker.

Charging

Now, the Don cards with their +1000 are balanced by this idea of Charging. Charging is how the defending player is able to boost, or one of the ways, their characters power. Some of the cards, I believe only characters, in your hand will on the side of the card have a charging amount. To use that, you simply discard the card and you get a boost to the character who is being attacked.

I like this decision space in the game. While the Don are a resource that you can use over and over again to boost, charging is not. You use that card once and it goes to your discard. So two things are happening there, firstly, when do you just take an attack. Sometimes you might, even to your leader to save a card with Charge on it for later or to play into your line of characters. The other thing is, when you charge with it, it’s discarded and gone. So the new question is, do I want to play it or not. Two very solid decisions in the game.

Life and Triggers

Finally, I want to talk about life and how that works. I wrote down life and triggers because they tie together so closely, but we’re going to start with life. The leader you play with has a life amount. Generally from what I know thus far, it’s going to be in that five to six range, maybe down to four, but that’d be a powerful leader. So it is a small life pool that you are defending. If you hit your opponents leader six times successfully with an attack, in most cases that is enough to win.

But your life is cards from your deck. So when you build up your life pool, you take cards from your deck, not knowing what they are, and lay them out in the life area. So you might just have taken out some of your best cards from your deck, you don’t know. The cards that become your life are random.

Then, when you take damage, those cards are taken off the life total one card at a time. And this is another area I really like, you add them to your hand. When they go to your hand, they might have a trigger keyword on them. That gives you a special bonus, that you can sometimes use, when it is taken from the life pool. It might be dry an extra card, that’s nice. Or it might be, put this card into play and that is for free versus paying the cost. So it can be useful, at times, to take a damage and go fishing for card with a trigger on it.

Who Is This For?

It’s interesting, I think that Star Wars Unlimited and Lorcana are built more towards casual gamers. One Piece isn’t quite there with them. Mainly because there are triggers on cards that just add to the complexity. And because when it is my opponents turn, I need to pay attention. There are things like charging or events that I need to pay attention to.

On the other hand, it is also much easier than Magic the Gathering. There is no stack of actions that needs to be resolved. So it’s do an action, see if opponent responds and repeat that process through your turn. It’s a singular action and response system. So that makes it much easier.

Overall, though, this game is for fans of One Piece. The game play doesn’t stand out in the starter decks as being the most unique, but for a fan of One Piece, the trading card game is going to work better.

First Impressions of One Piece TCG

Generally, I feel like I want to play it more. The game and system are fun and they work smoothly enough. It’s not as smooth as Lorcana or Star Wars Unlimited, but it is more complex. That to me is the value that you get from playing a game like the One Piece TCG. There is more game there, at least in the starter decks.

And I do want to say, this is only in the starter decks that I’ve played for Lorcana, Star Wars Unlimited, and the One Piece TCG. But for a starter deck, it gave me enough of a feeling of the game to know that I enjoyed it. Deck building is simple, just cards that match your leaders color, so that is not going to be a major part of what you do. But it is just a solid setup where I do want to see a deck that has more cards with triggers or maybe fewer charges, different options or ways to play.

Overall, I like the game. And it is one that I shouldn’t collect more of. But I that ship has sailed. A box of cards is on it’s way. Though, my plan is that is it. I want to know more of what is the game and maybe do a little deck building and play like that. But if you are looking for a new TCG, and Lorana is too simple (and expensive) for you, One Piece is a nice step up.

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How To Play Forest Shuffle

In Forest Shuffle you are building out a forest in front of you of trees and creatures of all types. You might be getting butterflies and and beetles or foxes and rabbits, the choice is up to you. But you look to synergize what you are picking to score points.

To play out cards you are putting cards into a discard row and using them as resources. That discard row is filling up and wiping as the game goes along and as you draw cards. Drawing cards and reducing the draw pile is how the game ends. But back to playing cards, you pick a card to play from your hand and then discard the number of cards in the corner to be able to play it.

Trees you just add to your forest in front of you. But if you play down a creature or a feature of your forest, that attaches to your tree. And trees have four sides that you can attach cards to. The foliage, the base or roots and than either side. So you need to balance playing out cards to score with adding more trees.

Then you draw and play cards until you’ve hit the three winter cards. You won’t know when they show up. But once one or two of them show up, you know the game can end any time. When the game ends, everyone tallies up their points and whomever has the most wins.

Why Is It Getting Popular?

Let me start off and say, I like Forest Shuffle. So me asking this question isn’t me not getting why it is. And I think there are a few main reasons for it getting popular.

Firstly, a lot of people play board games digitally now. Not more than who play in person, but when you can play a game digitally, there is not as much of a time restriction. Especially if you can take your turn and then check later in the day to take your next turn. It doesn’t require you to just be sitting there. It is a chance for people

Another thing is that it is a nature theme. Nature theme games are very popular right now. The success of games like Wingspan and Meadow have shown that you don’t need a big nerdy fantasy theme to make people buy game. In fact, that is a turn off for some people. Nature is a more accessible and friendly theme. It might not be why some people game (or the only theme I want) but it does appeal to a broader audience.

Finally, Forest Shuffle is not a complex game. And I say that in a good way. It is one of two games I picked up with the same premise. It is play out cards to form a forest or tableau in front of you to score points. The other one is either version of Ecosystem, regular or coral reef. What you do on your turn is quite simple. However, what you do on your turn determines the points you get. So there are decisions to be made with how you want to score. It is a good game for simplicity of turns and decision making space.

What Might Not Work For You

But let’s talk about what might not work with Forest Shuffle as well. It is a similar mechanism to other games. I called out Ecosystem, but also Meadow you collect cards to build out a line of cards in front of you. Even Wingspan has you collecting birds and putting them into various habitats and scoring based off of that. So the mechanisms are not highly unique.

I think, for some the general mechanisms of those games across the board will not be what you want. For others, you like it, but the question is how many do you need. Do you need a third or fourth game that offers a similar experience to the other games. Now, it is a different complexity level than the ones I mentioned. Forest Shuffle is more complex than Ecosystem but less than Meadow or Wingspan. So it might fill a niche for you.

What I Want To See More Of In Forest Shuffle

Now, I won’t give a full grade on this. I want to see more in this game and I want to know how it will play after a number of plays. I bought the game, so I like it. Let’s just put it at that. But I feel l like it isn’t one I can give a fully grade to yet.

Mainly, how is Forest Shuffle going to play after five plays? I set five a a number, that is just arbitrary. But what I want to see is, if I play it a number of times, how does my strategy change? Can I have a strategy, I think I did the first game, or is it just luck with cards that come out. How do you balance grabbing cards or passing on cards to play out. What is the tempo of that?

There are a good number of cards in the game. And Forest Shuffle offers a lot of different ways to score. My question and this is the case with any game like this, will I see all the cards, and will there be enough variety to keep the game unique? If the game isn’t unique, than is the game going to stay fun to play.

Forest Shuffle could certainly be expanded. I expect if it does well in retail, not just BGA, that it is going to get expansions. More cards to mix in, or like Ecosystem, another box to play with and vary up the scoring as a standalone game. But that is my concern right now.

Do you like Forest Shuffle?

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How to Play World Wonders

World Wonders is a pretty simple game of tile laying. Each round players take turns spending their seven gold. With that gold you buy tiles, roads, towers, and wonders to place on your player board. You can also buy first and second player but in a two player game that happens less.

You need to build roads so that you can place buildings. And when you place buildings you try and get matching colors or specific color combinations to get wonders. All of this is done in ways to optimize your point scoring. And each thing that you buy has a different cost, so how you spend your money matters a fair amount. Especially with wonders that cost the rest of your gold, whether that’s one gold or six.

You score in a number of different ways in World Wonders. Firstly, wonders give you points. Then there are three tracks you can go up on which push you up on your population track. If you reach the top of that population track you get points. Then surrounded buildings, on all sides not by land and those score points. But you can lose points if you take out a loan and then don’t pay them back. The player with the most points wins.

Initial Impressions

World Wonders is another tile laying, polyomino game. And that isn’t a bad thing, though, the market is starting to become very full of them. New York Zoo, Barenpark, Planet Unknown, and that’s barely scratching the surface. So it needs to stand out in a style of game that is becoming more crowded. So, does World Wonders do that?

Decision Space

From the ones that I’ve played, I haven’t played all of those listed above, I think that it does. Though, it doesn’t stand out due to complexity of the game. World Wonders is easier than most tile playing or polyomino games. I see World Wonders as a game that I can play with my family. I think once the basic rules are understood, maybe a couple of rounds, my wife will enjoy it, may parents might even enjoy it.

This is a solid and accessible game. And I think it does a good thing with game length as well. More players will make the game longer, but the game turns are simple. Buy a piece and place it, whether that’s a tower, wonder, or road. My only knock on the game is that the player aids, for a five player game, are short a couple. If you provide player aids in a game, provide one per player.

Accessibility of the Game

You see all of the wonders and you expect those to be complex. They are not. There is iconography, but after seeing one or two wonders cards, you understand it. That is a hallmark of a good design. In fact, there isn’t any language to the game which also makes it easier to play and more accessible.

A kid with limited reading ability can play this game. An adult with maybe can’t see a lot of small text would be able to sit down and play this game. Now, the tiles do have little symbols on them. Those would be the hardest element of the game to see. But that information only matters to the player who bought the tile so players can aid each other with that.

World Wonders

Is this a game that sounds interesting to you? If so it will be getting a wider release this year. I think I heard October or November, but with shipping, especially around the holidays or leading up to them, I could see this being a game that release closer to that Christmas and holiday time frame.

Just my initial impressions on it, I think this will be a game that will work for a ton of people. I like the game a lot myself. It’s accessible, it has a good play length, and the toy factor is fun. The pieces are nice quality for the game. But it doesn’t turn the game into a behemoth, so you sit down and play what feels like a normal, but slightly fancier board game.

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Knights of the Hound Table

Knights of the Hound Table is a battling game for two to four players. In my opinion, it’s a two player game, but that’s besides the point. In it, you are building up a deck of cards to get more and better powerful cards. But the crux of the game is not really that deck building, it is playing the cards.

One each round you play out three hounds. One hound you will use for attack, one you will use for defense and the other one is used for it’s special ability. You’re trying to get more attack then your opponent has defense to try and cut down their life total to 0. It’s not that complex a concept.

But what stood out to me is that the decision making space was better than I expected. That’s because I expected a “take that” type of game. And the powers certainly do have that element. But as a battler game, I also expect it. So when I look at my cards, I realize I want to use everything

. And whose power activates first is all off of a singular number. If it is very high, it’s great for attack or defense but your power will activate first. But on slower cards the power is often better. But if your opponent can mess with your hounds too much, it might not matter. So now you have a tough decision less attack or defense to get that faster power or not?

Who Is It For?

I’m changing up how I write the Beyond the Box Cover to be less in depth than the reviews. But I want to keep this in here, because initial impressions do help you know if it might be for you. And I think that Knight of the Hound Table is for casual gamers in a great way.

It gave me a experienced gamer a good decision making space. But for a more casual gamer, it’s not an overwhelming space. You pick for three cards and then you choose which card you add to the deck later, if any. And that space is very tight and limited, which makes it accessible.

I think this game reminds me of a number of other battlers. But while those can either come out of the box with a lot of rules or a million rules if you are Magic: The Gathering, Knights of the Hound Table is much simpler.

Highlights

Now, to build off of what I said above about who it is for, Knights of the Hound Table is simple in what it does. And that is one of the major highlights of the game for me. Turns go quickly, and everyone goes at once. I play my three cards, you play your three cards. The only time we don’t do everything at once is buying cards. But the market is limited, so that is fast as well.

Another thing is the speed of the game. Now, at GenCon I got to demo the game, that is not the same thing as a full game. The full game is less snappy in terms of length, but doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. When I place it in a weight, I think Munchkin for a light card game. But unlike Munchkin which overstays it’s welcome through luck, Knights of the Hound Table offers real decisions every turn.

Finally, I like how simple it keeps the card. I talk about attack and defense but that is a singular thing on the card. There is one number, so you use one for attack and one for defense. And the one on the hound you use for the power determining who activates their power first and who buys first. So one number is used for three things.

Final Thoughts on Knights of the Hound Table

This is not going to be a game for everyone. But I want to call attention to it because I find it really fun. I think a lot of people looking at the game would assume that it’s just another take that dumb game that is meant to sell a lot of copies. Knights of the Hound Table, that is a silly theme. But, in my opinion it is more than that.

And for that reason, I want to call it out. I want people to find this game and dive into a fun and light experience. Yes, it is a game that won’t offer all the decisions all the time. But it balances a few limited decisions every turn to get fast game play. And I want that tradeoff a lot of the time because not every group I play with and not every game I play needs to be 90 minutes or more.

I doubt many people have heard of this. But let me know if you are familiar with Knights of the Hound Table. Is it a game that you enjoy? If you haven’t heard of it, did i sell you on trying it?

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But for me the combination of the cover and the designers Hjalmar Hach and Lorenzo Silva and it being a Horrible Guild game put it over the top. In particular, I’ve found that I enjoy most Hjalmar Hach designs. So pair that with an amazing looking cover and a company that I like, I needed to check it out.

How To Play – The Great Split

The Great Split is not that difficult a game to play, though learning it on the fly there are a number of things to think about. It has a particular cadence to the game that you need to teach. But the main premise of the game is that you have a number of tracks that you want to go up on. Depending on the track(s) they score in different ways or give you different bonuses.

So, how do you go up on the tracks, it’s a simple I split, you choose mechanic. By that I mean that I have a had of cards, between five to seven in the game, and I am creating two groups of cards. Then I pass my wallet to you and you pick one of those groups. I get the other one back. At the same time everyone around the table is doing this, so I get a wallet of cards to pick from and pick one of the two groups.

You do that several turns and then at the end of the game you tally up your points. Whomever has the most points is the winner. And I can go into scoring more, but there is some to learn with that, but not too much.

What Am I Worried About?

So a bit of twist on how I normally do it, closer to the review. But I don’t want to fully dive into it, this is more of a first impressions. There are two things that stand out to me that I am curious about with the Great Split though.

Firstly, I wonder about the viability of this game at lower player counts. I enjoyed what the game does a lot, but I played it at 3. I wonder if 4-7 would be better. The game doesn’t really add much time to it the more people you play with. But at 2-3, you won’t see many cards. It adds a different element of strategy to it with how you can play your opponent, but you are going to get more unbalanced scoring.

I also want to know what it’s like to teach the game. I played at the time we were learning the game as well. And looking back on it, I think that I could make it faster and simpler for teaching. But there are a number of things to teach. There are six different sections you need to teach scoring on. At the same time, I think most of the things are pretty simple once you know them. And I don’t think I need to teach some elements of the game as the game suggests that you have someone “run” the game and turns.

What Have I Enjoyed?

I really enjoy the “I split, you choose” mechanic of the game. The game is really just that mechanic which doesn’t worry me too much because you’ll get variety each time you play in the cards you take. But it’s interesting to look at the board of the player you are passing to, the direction doesn’t change, see what they are picking, and try and create a combination where they pick something that gives you what you want plus just a little bit more.

Or it could be that you create a split where either one will work for you, but you’ve split up what they want in order to slow them down. The game seems simple, but you can really give someone what they don’t want to keep some scoring tracks in check if you split stuff up well.

I also enjoy how the scoring works. Now, I won’t go into everything, but some of them are just how far you are up on the track, another has a sliding market, and another is the lowest of two tracks. But I’m more talking about how the game scores each section twice, minus contracts. So the three main tracks twice, once each mid game and once at the end of the game. But mid game you might score books and gems first and then art and nothing, or it might be books and nothing first and then art and gems. So when you score the first time might determine what you push for.

Final Thoughts – The Great Split

This is a very fun experience and I really enjoyed playing it once so far. I wonder how often I will get it played, though, because it is a game that seems to work better with more. And while I do have game nights, I feel like it isn’t one we’ll play all the time. But it fits into the same category, in my opinion as a game like Sushi Go Party or Seven Wonders.

With that, I mean that I can see playing it at higher player counts. And with more players, it is not a game that takes longer to play. I play it with three players, it goes as fast as the slowest player. I play it with 7 players and it still plays as fast as the slowest player. Now, the slowest player might be slower, but that is the restriction. So I really like that about the game. And I like it when I find a big group game that isn’t a party game.

Do you like The Great Split? Is it a game that you want to try? Let me know in the comments below.

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How To Play Meadow?

In Meadow you are playing down tokens to pick specific cards. These cards have symbols that they need to be played, and a symbol that they give you. So you build up from habitats to small creatures or plants, then cover those with the creatures that eat them or use them for shelter and build up upon that. Eventually trying to get landscapes and items to remember the location by.

Each card is going to give you points, minus the terrain cards, and you are trying to get the most points possible. The player with the most points wins the game.

Initial Impressions

Now, that is a very simple overview of the game. There is more going on, mainly the campfire and how you select what specific card you take. Both I want to call out here because they are interesting to talk about as well. And both of them I actually enjoy in the game. There is one part of the game that makes it harder for me to get to a full review though. We’ll get to that soon.

Action Tiles

The action tiles are really interesting in how they are used. I call them tiles, it could be arrows as well, or parts of a picket fence, depends on how you want to talk about them. It uses a mechanic that I enjoy in Quadropolis where it gives you a distance, 1 through 4, can where you place your tile, you count that many in. That card is the one that you are taking.

Now, other players can block where you want to go. And later in the rounds, cards will just become in accessible because of how people play. So you need to prioritize getting what you need. But the action tiles aren’t just for getting cards, they each have powers as well, which leads us into the campfire.

Campfire

There is a campfire in the game, not a literal one, but that is another spot you can use the action tiles. In the game each action tile has a special ability. It might be grabbing a card from a deck or from anywhere in the grid of laid out cards. This is great when the cards don’t work for you or the one you want is blocked off. The downside is that you don’t get to play it immediately. Or you can play two cards, or get two roads, which are used for the landscapes.

But there is even more going on. You have scoring tokens that you can put out. Around the campfire are symbols. If you match a combination of two of them, that hasn’t been filled in, so a bird next to a berry for example, you put down a scoring tile. The more you do that, the higher scoring tile you can place. But it isn’t something that always works to do. So it’s a balance of do you want an ability or not? And all this leads into the final thig.

Game Length and Complexity

The first thing to talk about is game length for Meadow. And with that complexity, they really go hand in hand. Meadow is not a game with a ton of rounds, and because of that, you want to optimize your moves. And because you need to optimize and plan out combinations, it can cause AP.

I tend not to get much AP in a game, but in a two player game, in particular, I slow down in this game. And the person I played with did as well. There is a lot going on in this game, and it makes me think I’d prefer it at four versus two. One thing that adds to the complexity and time needed to figure out is a wild tile. It can be any number in a two or three player game. In a four player game you just have one through four. That wild adds in a lot of options. as you can repeat a number or a power.

Who Is This For?

I think that’s an interesting question as to for it’s for. The game is pretty, which might make some gamers think it’ll be too light. On the flip side, it’s going to draw some people in and they’re going to realize it is too heavy. This is not a light game, it gives you a ton of options and a lot of planning that you can do. So I think this is a pretty game for seasoned gamers.

Now, that isn’t a bad thing. I want my games to be pretty. But Meadow reminds me of Calico in some ways. Calico is a very pretty game, a very cute game, but it is challenging. In Calico you can play with most people because it doesn’t give you complex turns. Meadow can give you complex rounds that you need to plan out more carefully. So I think it’s mainly a thing to be aware of.

Final Thoughts on Meadow

I enjoy Meadow. I think that the game play is interesting, I like how you pick your cards. And I really like the artwork as well. My main concern about Meadow and how long it may or may not stay in my collection is the game length.

Like I said, I enjoy the puzzle a lot of this game. I want to figure out how to optimize my turns, but the question is, who do I play it with. When I played it two player most recently, a few rounds 4 player at Gen Con, it was not a fast game. Like I said, I think I prefer it, maybe, at four players just because it limits your choices a bit more. But even that, with more players is going to take a while.

Meadow might be a game that I just play with same people. Which is not a bad thing for the game. Sometimes you find a more complex game and a group to play it with. I think for me, it’s one where I wish, with the artwork, it was easier for more people to play. But once I play it more, I’ll probably appreciate it more for what it is.

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How to Play Land Vs Sea

Land Vs Sea is a simple tile laying game. You have two tiles in hand, and you try and complete groups of land or sea, closing them off kind of like the cities in Carcassonne. But the twist on this is that one person scores for sea sections closed off and the other for land sections. One point per tile used.

Now, this just seems like it’d be all about not closing off your opponents section. But in the basic version of the game, there are X’s on some of the tiles. The person who closes off the land or water mass scores for the X’s on the tiles. So even though I might be giving you points, if you are sea for example, if there are enough X’s, it makes it worthwhile for me to close it.

At the end of the game, the person who has scored the most points is the winner. There are advanced versions of the game, or versions for more than two players, but I haven’t played those yet.

What Doesn’t Work?

I have two issues with the game. One is minor, the other is a bit bigger. So let’s start with the minor one. I think that figuring out the scoring during the game is fine. But I also think that no one will ever play a game where they don’t mess up the scoring sometime. A large land or water mass is just hard to remember if you’ve already counted a tile. It’s not a major issue because scores are high enough it shouldn’t matter.

The one thing for me that is a downside is that as you build out this map, the game slows down. When you start there are two or three options that are good for you. The longer you go, the more options you have, and the slower the game goes. This might be fun for some people. But at that point in time, I want the game to feel like it’s ramping up, or something. And really it’s just the same game as before.

What Works?

Firstly, the scoring works. I like that one player is land and one player is sea. It adds in strategy that you just wouldn’t get if whomever closed off the section could score it. But because of the X’s on the board, it isn’t like you just try and avoid scoring anything at all costs. You want to close stuff off to get points. So the game doesn’t skimp on points which is nice.

I also like that the tiles are two sided. That means that even though you only have two tiles in hand, you have a lot of options. Now, I just said that there were too many options, but that’s on the map. I don’t mind having options in my hand. It’s just trickier when those options are also on the board with so much to look at. But double sided tiles means that you can look and think about options but not too many options in your hand. And you can maybe bluff your opponent.

Who Is This For?

I think the people who like a fairly easy game to get into, it at it’s basic level is a gateway game or an inviting game. It is also going to be a game that works well for couples or a date night. Or people who really like that head to head abstract game.

Final Thoughts on Land vs Sea

I need to play this one more, and in particular with some of the other rules in place. But I suspect my opinion might not massively change on it. Why, because it’s an abstract game that lends itself to going slower and slower as you play.

In my head, I put this game kind of in the same category as Calico. Some of that is the tile shape, but some is also because there is that abstract puzzle piece to the games. But with Calico, when you get closer to the end of the game, it moves faster. Fewer choices and you know what you want to do. In Land vs Sea, it just gets slower and slower and slower as you play. Decisions might matter more at the end of the game, but the game suffers with that slowdown.

But let me know if you think I’m missing something in the game? Or what do you think of Land vs Sea. It’s one I plan on coming back to, to try at least one more time, but I”m not sure if it’s for me.

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How To Play Quacks of Quedlinburg

Quacks of Quedlinburg is a bag building push your luck game. You are a quack doctor who is putting together a potion. But if you get too much of the wrong ingredient in there, it is going to explode. You start out with mainly the wrong ingredient and then as rounds progress, you buy more ingredients to add to your bag. You decide, though, when you want to stop pulling out more ingredients.

The game really shines in the different books that you have. Basically books that determine what different ingredients do. So as you buy different ingredients you can start coming up with a lot of different strategies. Some of them are static, orange pumpkins are always just 1, purple and black scale with players but are consistent cross games. The rest of them, they can be different and you play certain sets of them.

In the end, it is the person who gets the most points that is the winner. And I’ll talk about some more specifics in things that work or don’t work as well.

What Doesn’t Work?

This is a pretty straightforward game. I don’t think that I’ve figured out a combination yet on anything yet, though. But for some gamers, this is going to be a little bit too straight forward. So I wonder with the combinations that I have if I’m going to want more of them? Or less so will I want to play more, I likely will, but will I want to play them over and over again? Is it solvable even with the push your luck element?

But I really don’t have much that I don’t see messing up this game. The push your luck, if you’re risk adverse might be a turn off for some people as well. But the basics of it, and how you bust, make the whole thing quite easy to understand what you have left and what you might pull.

What Does Work?

I really like the different powers of the different ingredients and the different combinations that you can have. Now they do come in groups, which makes sense, I’m sure that it is balanced per each group. But in the base box, that is three different groups. And some of the reason why I’m not doing a full review yet, is that I’ve only played with one of those groups thus far in my two plays. And I know that they’ve released bigger expansions, but it’d be easy enough to just release another set of these tiles to play with and add those in.

I also like how the incentivize the push your luck element. It’d be easy enough to just play it safe and stop early each time. But only the person who goes the furthest without having their pot explode rolls the bonus die. And not all things on the die are equal. Two points is objectively better than a pumpkin, but depending on your strategy, it might be similar. But it really does make a difference if you get that roll.

The rat tails are also a clever idea in the game. Basically, if someone drops behind in score, there are rat tails on the scoring track. However many they are behind the leader, they get to put a rat into their pot ahead that many spaces. It’s a nice catch-up mechanic that means even if you pull poorly and bust, next round you have a way to catch back up.

Finally, I like the fortune teller cards. When we pulled, they were basically all positive. Now, I can see some people not loving them, because some of them are a bit random. You draw out tokens and the high or low total gets one bonus, everyone else gets another. But it generally felt like they were good no matter what I got, which I appreciated. It’d have been a chance to do mean stuff to the players, and they didn’t seem to do that much.

Who Is This For?

When I played it, and some other games recently that I’ve gotten, it felt like a gateway game. And that isn’t a bad thing. But it did ask the question of myself, what gateway games might get replaced because of this? So I do think that if you have a lot of gateway games but play heavier, this might not be the game for you.

However, The Quacks of Quedlinburg is going to be a game for a lot of people. I think that just in the ingredients that you can buy there is enough variety for a more seasoned gamer to mess around with strategies. But the game play itself is simple enough that a new player will be able to pick it up.

What Do I Want To See in Quacks of Quedlinburg

Going forward, I want to play around with the other collections of books in there. There are three that I haven’t played with, so that’s a lot of variety. Plus, I want to see if it feels different with more players. The game play is generally solitaire. What I buy doesn’t change what you buy. But some of the ingredients, black actually, changes a bit on different players. And how does the rat mechanic feel with more players.

I also want to see how well it works for my game group. I have a few gateway games that I might put it over for myself. But is it going to be a game that my group likes. I could see a couple of players potentially being a bit more risk adverse and the game not working as well for them.

What are your thoughts, do you like The Quacks of Quedlinburg, do the expansions add stuff that’s worth getting?

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Kohaku Game Play

Like I said in the introduction, Kohaku is very easy to play. You draft tiles, two of them that are adjacent. One is going to be a koi tile and one is going to be a feature tile. The koi don’t give you points themselves, unless they have a coin on them. Instead, as you place them out into a tableau in front of you, you place koi near features to help them score points. For example, a feature might give you two points for each red or yellow koi next to it or three points if they are both red and yellow.

After a number of rounds, I believe 14 in a two player game, you tally up your score. There are six, I think, different scoring features, some just being five point turtles, to more complex ones scoring for all of a color in a row and a column. At the end of the game, the person with the most points is the winner.

What Doesn’t Work?

For what this game is, there are very few things that don’t work. And what I am going to say doesn’t work is kind of a nitpicking. But the game comes with amazing acrylic tiles that have the koi and features, more on them later. But when they are shipped, there is a film on them, this is to protect them when being cut. That hurt, like fingers legitimately hurt after taking all of those off the fronts and backs in probably an hour and a half of time. So it’s trick to get to the table to start.

Then my one real complaint is the scoring track. All the scoring is done at the end, and they give you a little neoprene mat where you draft your koi and features from with a score track at top. The track doesn’t have a zero, it goes 1 through 9 and 10 through 90. If you know that, you can count it correctly. If you don’t, you’ll score it wrong going straight from 1 to 9. This would be better with a 0 on the track. But even then, it’d be much better as a score pad.

You can watch a good playthrough of this game over on GloryHoundd YouTube channel, which I have below.

What Works?

Firstly the aesthetic of the game is amazing. The tiles are beautiful. The neoprene mat, while I have issues with the scoring is very nice. And they made it as pretty as it is without taking away from the functionality of the game. You can easily see how many baby koi or dragonflies are on tiles. The scoring tiles all have their scoring printed on them. You don’t wonder what is going on as you play.

Play is also very fast. Can you spend time figuring out your perfect move, sure, but you are taking two tiles from a total of twelve. And even in that you are limited because you need to select adjacent tiles, and only orthagonally not diagonally. Plus the game is a lighter game, so it’s not one that is meant to be maxed out to the highest point total possible. I’m sure some people will, but it isn’t a game that should be.

Weight wise it reminds me of Calico, a simple game to play with a lot of scoring. The scoring in Calico restricts what you can do or what you need. It does in Kohaku as well, but because you are always drafting a feature, you open up more spots and ways to score. And through three plays, it seems like almost all the scoring tiles are about equally as good. Turtles being the worst, but being a guaranteed five points no matter what.

The game is also fast in play time. Fourteen rounds, two turns per round, took us maybe 20-25 minutes per game. For a game that gives you a good choice each turn, that is really fast. And while I don’t need to be engaged in my opponents turn, I often am. Not because they can mess me up too much, just because I can start to plan while the person before me goes.

What Do I Want To See In More Plays?

Firstly, I want to try this at a higher player count. I played Kohaku three times, but it was all at two players. And it works very well at two players, but I’m curious to see how it plays with more people. I didn’t strategize too much with blocking my opponent at two player. But I think that’d be even less of a thing with more players.

I like that Kohaku seems to let you focus more on building out your own tableau to score points versus stopping your opponent from getting stuff to score points themselves. If you try and block, you likely will tank your points too much. Instead, when you choose between two equally good things, you maybe choose the one that hurts your opponent more.

I also want to see how well this holds up over a lot of plays. I’ve played it three times in a row, and because it is so fast had a great time with it. But after 10 plays will it start to feel the same or not? I think that it could, but also I think that it might not matter as much. For example, Splendor generally seems the same to me and I got tired of it. But Splendor also takes longer. This feels as easy as Splendor but faster, and I think more interesting in the choices I make.

Kohaku Initial Impressions

This is a fun game. It is a simple game. I actually almost brought it up to family Christmas because it is a family weight game. And I could see my family liking this game because it is a pretty game to get to the table. Is this a game that I’m always going to want to play, unlikely. But I think it’ll have a spot on my shelf for a long time.

It really comes down to the scoring. While the koi and features determine some of your direction, you can try lots of different scoring ways. And to me, that experimenting with the game makes it a lot of fun. Like I said, that might end eventually with more plays. But it is a game that fits a nice niche. Games like this stick around longer because they play so well with a wide number of players.

Have you played Kohaku, what are your thoughts on it? Is it one you want to try?

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