Star Wars Unlimited Quality Issues

I knew going into this set, though after I’d ordered my boxes, that there were quality issues with the set. Man vs Meeple did a play of the starter decks, droids vs clones, and the cards were miscut. I believe that it was more of a centering issue with that.

But this is really bad. I was talking about it with my wife last night. And the idea that something like this could happen made sense for her, it’s a mass production. But for me, it’s about the quality control and quality assurances that surprise me about it. Especially for a product that is doing well like Star Wars Unlimited.

I play Magic. And I buy some Pokemon cards and One Piece cards. Throughout my history of buying cards, I think I bought 20,000 cards or so. Figure about 13 cards a pack and well, that’s a lot of packs that I opened. I’ve never seen anything like this from any of them. And in fairness to Fantasy Flight, I own boxes from the previous two sets of Star Wars Unlimited. I found 0 issues with those. So it seems like someone wasn’t doing the job as well as they should have in terms of quality control for this set.

If you watch video #2, you hear me talk through an e-mail that I sent to Fantasy Flight on the issue. My hope is that they send me a replacement for that card or refund me the cost of the cards that I got damaged. I fully expect it won’t be the latter. So if they can compensate me with the showcase card, that is solid on their behalf. Plus I plan on selling the card to people who might be interested in collecting weird cards.

Upcoming Streams

Just a reminder on my streaming schedule. It’s not just all my Top 100 Games (of all time).

• Monday night, time varies, I play different small solo games, though I might be looking to start up a campaign again. And generally the streams do start between 8 and 8:30 PM central time.
• Wednesday at 9 PM central is going to continue my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition for another six weeks. After that expect this to be when I play my small games. Only 5 more weeks left of my Top 100 Games, then likely this will switch to smaller solo games and video games.
• Friday at 9 PM central my wife and I are streaming a playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3. Join us for the adventure of Nina and Kaerok and see what choices we make.

The best way to know when we go live, though is to subscribe and click that notification bell. I can’t promise, and in fact it’s pretty unlikely, that I’ll have events to click on ahead of time. Though I do want to get better at it. I hope that you can join a stream and hop into the chat. And let me know what games in this list are your favorite or that you want to try.

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Before I do, the majority of my plays have been on Board Game Arena. That helps with some elements of the games scoring, but also is less easy to maybe pick-up some other elements. So your milage is going to vary because you aren’t me, but might vary more because I have played Castle Combo more on Board Game Arena.

How To Play Castle Combo

In Castle Combo you are making the best three by three grid that you can. When you play out the first card it’s “in the middle” but you can build out the rest of your grid around it however you like so that you end up with a three by three grid. At the end of the game you will tally up your points and see who has the best grid.

Your Turn

So on a turn what do you do? Your turn consists of two parts. The first part is optional and the second part you must do.

The optional thing is that you can move the messenger pawn between the two rows. The two rows are mainly the same, as they are cards that you can buy. Or you can use the messenger to wipe the cards out of the row the messenger is on and refill it.

Bonus and Placing

Then you purchase a card from the row you are in. You might have a discount, or you might not be able to afford it, or it might be what you can pay. If you can buy a card face up, you spend coins for it. If you can’t afford a card, you buy it face down. It won’t be scoring with what the card says on front.

Then you figure out what bonus you get for playing the card. It might be coins which will help you purchase more cards. It might be a discount that will make future cards cheaper of a certain type. Or it might be keys which are the resource that you use to move the messenger.

The game continues until everyone has filled their three by three grid, which will happen at the same round. And then you tally up the scoring that you get from each card in the grid.

What Doesn’t Work?

I think one common challenge, at least early in playing the game, is going to be understanding the symbology. It’s not complex, but there is a fair amount. How is something going to score exactly? Well you need to look some symbols. What do you get, you need to look at symbols. And there is a good amount of variety. The basics of scoring generally are score X points for Y symbol or thing. But that is variable in what that thing might be. So I think for some people it’s going to feel too complex at the start.

There is also some luck involved. Now you can mitigate some of that. The messenger is your friend. But you need to balance spending keys, getting keys, and spending money. So it is tight that way, and sometimes you might find that you just aren’t able to get keys. So now you must buy what is in that row and what is in that row might not be good for you. Or you might have all the keys, but you can only spend one per turn, and you might be short on money. But you put yourself in those situations.

What Works?

So to talk about that last negative, while there is luck, I love the control you get. You decide what you get both for scoring and the bonus. The bonus might be great, but scoring is bad. But I need the bonus because otherwise I won’t be able to buy a card that I hope is going to be there for me next time. I love that back and forth of that in the game. And I think that it works really well and is fun that way.

I also like how fast the game and turns go. Even on Board Game Arena where I generally play asynchronously a game can cruise sometimes. Especially in a two player game, if you both get on at the same time, it is a fast and snappy back and forth with turns. And in person, the choices are not that extreme. You get two choices, activate the messenger and then decide which card to buy. There is one scenario where you gain a third, but it’s very minor and generally very simple.

And I like the complexity level of the scoring. I say that the symbols can be a bit. I think that is very true. But scoring is a great puzzle in this game. You need to think a lot about where you place everything and how they will interact. There are some cards that give you points if you don’t have a color banner. So that is a tricky thing, but it’s good points. Do you get that early and try and avoid, but everything you do shapes you scoring strategy.

Who is Castle Combo For?

I think that a lot of people are going to enjoy this game. It’s a great game for casual gamers because you can play it multiple times. I plan on playing it at my next game night, assuming a good player count, and it is one that I can see playing twice. Once as people turn and the next time as people will want to play it again.

For more seasoned gamers this is the warm-up or wind down type of game. It’s that great game for when you want to play something more or are waiting for the last person to show up for a bigger game. It is going to engage you in what is happening. But it’s also not going to take too long or require a lot of setup so it’s a great filler option.

Final Thoughts on Castle Combo

I really love Castle Combo. The game is a ton of fun and really offers some good choices. Plus, it’s fast, and it’s easy setup and get to the table. It’s what I look for a lot in games. I want to play all the big games, but sometimes you just need a smaller game. And I also want to plan out everything in this game and keep on finding myself running short in what I want to do. And I can play it a lot on Board Game Arena as well.

For me the negatives aren’t that bad. And I think in person is going to help make some of the symbols clearer. Online it’s not that bad, but it’s also just a bit more of a pain than to look up some of the symbols. In the box, you just pass around the one cheat sheet, could it be better if there were more, sure, but it’s a minor thing. And that is going to make that initial learning curve a bit easier for players as they can read that on their turn to help make their decisions.

My Grade: A
Gamer Grade: B+
Casual Grade: B+

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What Caught my Eye with Rogue Angels

So let’s talk about the reasons why I am backing this game. It’s another big campaign game, this time set in space, and I already own two games like that, ISS Vanguard and Stars of Akarios. What is it that makes me want to add Rogue Angels to my collection?

Story

I’ve experienced some of the Rogue Angels story and I’ve experienced it somewhat out of order. But the story with this game is just fun. Emil, the designer, refers to it as a Mass Effect style of story and game. One where you are making agreements with different groups, getting back stabbed, possibly turning on groups yourself, and making choices that affect where everything is going.

I really like it when the choices that I make in a game influence that game going forward. That is something that makes Stars of Akarios and Roll Player Adventures stand out to me. Rogue Angels offers that same feeling. I feel like the choices I make, in the end, really do matter and influence how the story goes. Whether it’s in that scenario or throughout the campaign.

Scenarios aren’t Kill Everything

Speaking of scenarios, one of the knocks on Gloomhaven, a game that all campaign games get to compared to, is that you just kill everything. Well, Rogue Angels is not the same game, and Frosthaven even learns from the mistakes so it’s not a kill everything, the follow up to Gloomhaven.

But Rogue Angels actively doesn’t want you to kill everything. Maybe at the end of some scenarios that is the case, but part of the puzzle is that you can’t. Enemies activate in two groups. If you kill all the red enemies, groups are red and yellow, the yellow enemies activate every time. So now you’re dealing with a group that’s harder to avoid because they are coming faster. So even when you want to kill everything, you need to be strategic about it.

Other times you really don’t. For the game reasons as before, the other group might activate faster. But your goal, and you have a limited number of turns, is to move a box of goods in a pick-up and deliver scenario. Now you have bad guys shooting at you, but if you stop to kill them, or have everyone stop to do it, you won’t win the scenario. And that is just a simple example of different scenario types.

Card Play

Card play or something interesting and unique that you do with your character are important for making a campaign game feel different. I think that there are a good number of dice chuckers out there. And I wouldn’t mind another, but I prefer it when a game does something unique. And Rogue Angels offers something different.

You get to play out two cards, or up to, each round, that do actions. It might be as simple as a basic movement or interaction with an object. Those slot into a cooldown track of 0 and immediately go back to your hand. So you could move twice. Or you might, instead, go and pull out your big gun to try and take out an enemy in a single shot. That has a cooldown of four. After four rounds you’ll get that gun back, so make that shot count.

But, if four is two long, you can hurry it along. It cools down one each turn, and then you can also not play a card to cool down again. And sometimes that is the best action, but it isn’t getting you closer to your objectives. Do you wait or do you really need that gun back now?

Dice Modifiers

And basically every card allows you to roll dice. Those dice offer some different bonuses, though not work on all cards. By that I mean that some actions allow you deal damage, interact so much, or move a distance, and you roll the dice and you can increase that. You look for +1 or +2 in those cases.

Other times, you can’t do that. The amount of damage you do is fixed, or the amount of tokens you draw on an interact is fixed. But you still get to roll some dice. Why, you can get back shields, your defense, that way, or you can get movement. It gives you, potentially a bonus.

And of course, you might need a +2 to your damage off of two dice and you don’t get it. That’s okay. There is a resource you spend to reroll. Granted that’s a limited resource as well. But if you really need to deal enough damage to take out an enemy or your cooldown track will fill up with damage, it’s a good plan.

Damage Cards

Finally, let’s talk about how you take damage, because I mentioned it above and I really like and dislike it. I dislike it because I take a lot of damage in Rogue Angels, sometimes that is even intentional. Other times, the enemies act in a way that I just can’t avoid them.

But when you take damage it goes into your cooldown track. There are some interesting things it does though. When I play a card to the track if I can’t play it to it’s cooldown slot, I can always go to a higher one. With damage, I just get that card back. So you might get back a really powerful card. But now you are trading that off for having less space in your track to play cards.

And the damage cards also are one of the ways that you can set your difficulty level. They have three different groups of bad things that they can do to you. You pick, as you start to play, what level you want to be at. It might be that you want a more casual story driven experience. So you only play with the first bad thing, and sometimes there isn’t even anything in that section. Or you play on hard core mode, and now you’re dealing with some really rough things. It’s a nice simple system to set your difficulty.

Back or Brick?

You already know that Rogue Angels is a back for me. I said that at the beginning, this is a game that I just have way to much fun with. In fact, it was my #1 anticipated crowdfunding game for the rest of the year. And now that it is live, I am even more excited for it. This is really a great game that has just enough luck an randomness that it might mess you over. But there is also a lot you can do to mitigate that, if you planned it well.

If you like campaign games, if you like fun story, I really recommend checking out Rogue Angels. Again, you can find the Kickstarter project here. Hopefully I haven’t oversold it or built up the hype too much. But don’t just take it from me, checkout other previews out there as well.

And there are more out there. Just two of the previews that I really like. And let me know if you’re interested in backing this game? What drew you in to back it?

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Top 5 Board Games of 2022

5. Village Rails

Village Rails is a game that stands out to be because it takes a concept I like in Village Green and iterates upon it. In Village Green, by a different designer, it is a tough puzzle to crack. With Village Rails you are still filling out a grid of cards completing rail routes, but it’s not as restricting. You decide how much you want to optimize how you score points on the route.

And I think the whole concept of route building is a lot of fun. This distills it into something that’s much smaller than a big train game, and offers more interesting decisions than a game like Ticket to Ride. All with just a deck of cards. You score points for the routes and the engines that you place on them, and it’s really just a clever and enjoyable system.

4. The Isle of Cats: Explore and Draw

This is one that is more built upon another game than my first one. But Isle of Cats: Explore and Draw is a roll and write version of Isle of Cats. The game plays in a much faster time and offers interesting other choices that the board game version can’t because of how it’s set-up. I think I like it better than the big box version, but it is close and I need to play the bigger box more.

In this you are still trying to rescue cats from the island. But you activate a column of three cards each round. Those cards can be cats to place on your boat, same rules for that as Isle of Cats. Or you can get scoring cards which you track which ones you’ve activated on a sheet. The game plays much faster, that is for sure, and offers still a lot of good choices. Plus you have powers you can use to break the rules and optimize a turn, which is fun as well.

3. Ready Set Bet

I own this one now, I own all of them on the list, but it took me a while to get Ready Set Bet. Ready Set Bet is a horse betting and horse racing game. There is an app that can call the race for you, but otherwise, someone does and everyone else is tossing down bets as the race goes on hoping to make as much money as they can.

There is a real time aspect that is needed for this game. It gives you that tension that I can only assume is like being at the track. You are watching trying to get a bet in at the last second on a sleeper who is making a move towards the end so you can win big. But if you hold onto your bets too long, the odds of betting on the favorites becomes worse. It’s a clever, light, and exciting system.

2. First Rat

First Rat is a game that I think the Dice Tower crew talked about well, it looks like it shouldn’t be that thinky a game. But First Rat, a game where you are collecting pieces to build a rocket ship as a rat to get to the moon that is made of cheese, it works really well.

You get a lot of options of how to move and optimize your strategy. But each player can have their own strategy. I pushed up on the lights track because I wanted, when I moved up the main track, it to be even more powerful. To collect resources faster. Other players pushed up for resources faster but had to be okay with getting fewer. There are a lot of fun things to play around with on the system. And the theme makes what is basically a resource collection game so much more fun.

1. Stars of Akarios

Finally, you got to see me play this one on Malts and Meeples. We have Stars of Akarios. An epic, massive, space exploration and tactics game. I love this game because it does so much. You want tactical space combat, it does that. You want to explore a planet, you can do that. And it has choose your own adventure story in there as well.

I’ve talked about this game a lot. I thought that I’d like it, and I do, indeed, like this game a lot. The story is engaging. It isn’t as polished or deep as some, like Tainted Grail for example, but it is a fun story. It has that early 2000’s SyFy channel vibe to it, or something like Farscape which is just fun to play in. And the tactical space combat is so cool and puzzly to figure out. And then you get little breaks with the story and exploring planets before you launch off and try again.

What Are Your Favorite Games from 2022?

I had 16 different board games on the list. And I did exclude Marvel Dice Throne from my rankings because it is just more Dice Throne. But that would be my number one otherwise. I love Dice Throne. But it has been a really good year for games. I don’t on my list have Oathsworn because I haven’t played it yet. I want to play Lands of Galzyr. Just missing was Batman: Everybody Lies the Detective System game and Long Shot the Dice Game. So it has been a story year for games. What is your favorite?

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How To Play Res Arcana?

So, like I said, Res Arcana is an engine building game. You play down cards to produce resources, transform resources, and then use those resources to get points. That is pretty standard for a lot of engine building games. The trick with Res Arcana is that your engine can only become so large.

As you play, you are paying for cards that are going to stay in play. And you are doing that from a deck of eight cards that are your own. There are some places of power and monuments that you can get throughout the game. But generally, your engine is going to be those cards. The game recommends some cards to start with, but after that you can draft them.

So, Res Arcana is less about building out that perfect engine, but figuring, with leveraging the cards you have, how to get the places of power and monuments that are going to be your main ways of getting points. But the cards in your hand will be what drive your engine. And at the end of the round you check to see who has the most points, if no one is at 10 or more, the game goes another round. And that continues until someone is at 10 or more points and at the end of the round the player with the most points wins.

What Don’t I Like?

I am a little bit worried about the card pool in this game and the number of places of power. In the base box there are five places of power, each with two sides, and they can be in any combination. But two games is all you need to see all of the places of power. And the deck of cards isn’t that big either. Yes, I only play with eight a time, but it isn’t a big deck of cards.

And if you play with four players, you see even more of the deck, even if you aren’t building out the engine yourself. I think that this is a very correctible issue, and I already own the first expansion for Res Arcana. But I think it is worth noting that the base box might be a little bit lighter than I’d prefer for some of the main components, places of power and cards.

What Do I Like?

Engine Building

I really enjoy the engine building in this game. Mainly that you activate part of your engine on each of your turns. So even as you get later into the game, turns don’t take too long. Often engine building games can suffer from an issue where as you do more turns take longer and there is even more downtime. And Res Arcana doesn’t fully fix this, I’ll explain in a moment. But in Res Arcana you only activate a single part of your engine.

Where it can create downtime, which is maybe a negative, but doesn’t happen too often, is that if I built my engine to take a lot of turns, I might have more turns in a round than you do. That means, especially in a higher player count game, that you could be sitting at the end of a round for a while. I find, though, that most people’s engines take a similar number of turns.

Places of Power

Next, I like that the places of power change up between games. I know I said it’s a negative, but the places of power offer your biggest point generating engine piece. It’s not that I don’t like the places of power, I just want more. And the expansion does offer two more. So that is more variability. But these places of power really give you a way to focus your engine building. Yes, you are limited to your cards, but figuring out which place of power is right for you is really interesting.

Drafting

I also really like the drafting in the game. I think that with most gamers, I’d draft from the get go. For newer gamers the base cards are good, but it’s more fun to draft. You can, based off of your starting hand of cards, start to figure out your engine. I see what I think is the best card, I take that, and now I hope you pass me something that will build off of it. And I think after a game, even with new players, I’d move to drafting.

Plus, I like that you draft in two groups of four. It’s a minor thing, but it means you can plan less with your drafting. And because it’s fewer cards to start, you can hate draft less, which is a bad plan in this game. And while I don’t mind a little bit of hate drafting, if a game were to encourage it, it would drop it down for me.

Who is it For?

I think that Res Arcana is mainly a engine building game for gamers. It is fast, so it might be a filler engine building game for some gamers, but it’ll still be fun. Res Arcana is just complex enough that I do think a lot of new gamers or people who just play gateway games, it might be a bit much.

That said, while I think the initial teach and game might feel like a lot. I could see it being one that grows for a lot of newer gamers They start to see how all the pieces work together and now the game is a while lot more interesting. It is a game, even for myself, it took playing it to see how all the pieces of the game worked together. The rules do a solid job of teaching the game, but it’s not the easiest to see how it works until you play it.

Res Arcana Final Thoughts

I like this game in my plays. I think I do wonder how long a shelf life it might have. But at the same time, it is basically a filler length game. Though, thinking about it more, it’s a filler that is hard to teach. When I compare it to another engine building game, Homebrewer, I like that theme better, game length is a bit longer, but it’s easier to teach.

Unlike last game I reviewed, Res Arcana is definitely not leaving the collection anytime soon. And some of that is that I think expansions to keep adding to the game and keeping it fresh. Right now I still feel like I want to explore more. And I can see it being a game that grows on me, or fades. But I could see, if I learn how to teach it better, this being a good filler engine builder when we want to play something more, but that’s not too long.

My Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: B+
Casual Grade: C

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My Farm Shop

Let’s just start out by saying that this game compares to Machi Koro, if you’re familiar with that game it’ll help with some of the mechanics. In My Farm Shop you are getting goods to then sell for coins, which are your victory points. You have 10 different areas on your board all which correspond to numbers, 2 through 12 actually with 2 and 12 sharing the same space. These are your farm plots where you can grow things, or where you get your yarn, honey, milk, or eggs. You trade in those goods to get coins, which are your points. But how it works is interesting.

On your turn you roll three dice. You use one of those dice to get a new field. These are the spots where you get your goods or coins. So you can upgrade a spot which gives you an egg to give you two balls of yarn instead. And then the other two dice will activate one of those fields, hence the 2 through 12. There are a set number of cards that go onto the board and as you finish off that pile the game ends. The player with the most points wins.

What Didn’t Work

This game generally works. There isn’t that much randomness to it really for a dice game. And while some people can have better luck, there are ways to mitigate that luck if you want to, which I’ll talk about in what I like. I do think that this game might be too simple for a lot of gamers. I’d put this at a complexity level with something like Splendor. And Splendor is a game that is still in my collection and I’ll play, but has run it’s course for me.

There is more decision space, I think, with how you build your engine up, but it’s not that much more than with Splendor. The choice you make is generally pretty obvious, which is fine. It falls into that category of a nice welcoming game, but one that might have a limited shelf life for a lot of gamers.

What Works

Let’s start with the one thing I teased, the die mitigation. I didn’t talk about it, but there are burlap sacks in the game. Another resource you can get. They are used to modify the dice just for you. So you want card #4 for your engine, but you don’t roll a four, you can reduce a five to a four or a three up to a four. Or a nine is getting activated but you really need to activate eight, so you can spend a burlap sack adjust down to an eight. It makes the burlap sacks important.

I also like that early in the game you can always activate everything. At the end you might have a dead turn, but for the most part what you start with just gives you stuff. Even later in the game, you need to decide how to spend those burlap sacks to try and optimize your engine. So you are always paying attention. If you aren’t rolling the dice, those other two dice still do activate what you have.

The game speed is also very nice. Now, I’ve only played this at two players, it will be longer with more people, but I don’t know it’ll be that much longer. Plus since you are always engaged it makes the game more interesting. And with more people points will be higher because you’ll activate more things, which will be satisfying because it’ll push the points higher. I like it when a game might be longer but rewards you by allowing you to do more.

Final Thoughts on My Farm Shop

This game isn’t going to be for everyone. When I say that it is light, it is a very light game. This is one that I think my wife will like, I think I can play with my parents, and it’ll go over well. The game is easy to teach and easy to play. That said, for heavier gamers, this game is going to be too light. For me, I can see this one getting played with the right groups. It’s also a nice filler sort of game when you don’t want too simple a filler.

Overall, it is a good game. It is also a good game at a good price. There are a fair amount of pieces in the box without it having a $50 price tag, which you’d expect for a box that size. I think that for a casual game night this will be a hit.

My Grade: B-
Gamer Grade: D
Casual Grade: A+

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The Game

This game has you racing to raise the temperature, oxygen levels, and flip over ocean tiles to score the most points. To do this you are playing down cards, in two different ways. The first is to select the action you are going to take. You can develop, construct, activate actions, produce income or draw cards. And they activate in that particular order. But only the ones which had cards played down activate. But on develop and construct, you are playing cards from your hand that do different things. Development cards will improve your production. The other cards can give you a one time benefit or help you build up an engine to get more cards, resources, or points.

As players you build out that engine to raise those two tracks and flip tiles. In the end, you want to play out the most points possible. But if you only focus on driving those three end game conditions, all which need to be completed, early in the game, you can end up without an engine built later. So it is a balancing act of getting points consistently versus a lot at the end.

What Doesn’t Work

Some of the pieces don’t work well in this game. Let’s run through all of them. The ocean tiles are dumb, it’s kind of a carry over from Terraforming Mars. Now, don’t get me wrong, the rewards on the tiles are nice, but the fact they are tiles is dumb. This is a card game, those tiles are just fiddly and annoying. To get to the middle ones you need to push the rest out of the way. Just give me a small deck of cards to put on the scoring board and let me flip one from the top each time to determine the rewards.

Then there are the cubes in this game. Cubes are used to track the oxygen, temperature, scores, production levels and supplies. This isn’t bad, but I have the Target version, so in the Kickstarter version on the player board for production and supplies they have a dual layer board. The Target version is flimsy cardboard. Now, that is me not spending on the Kickstarter, but I will need to upgrade my version later. And the score track and oxygen and temperature tracks, the cubes just don’t fit on them, and that I’d call bad design.

I also already want more cards in the game. I haven’t played it a ton of times, but we ran through all the cards in the first game and had to reshuffle. Now, not a major issue, but I wouldn’t mind a few more cards already. There are some cards dependent upon temperature or oxygen levels, so those aren’t played as often.

What Works

Engine Building

For me the engine building works really well. Being able to produce so much and really target different types of production to either play more cards, or make points somehow is a lot of fun. And it is a tactical engine building game. There is enough randomness in the cards that you get that you need to be able to pivot. Maybe you are getting a lot of planets to start but then draw cards that need heat, you’ll need to pivot. I like that style of engine building because I can’t go in with a single set strategy, like say Dominion.

Corporations

I also like the corporations. Any game where you start out different from everyone else, that’s fun. And I like the different types of corporations. I have played with one where I got a ton of credits but not that great a secondary power. I also have gone with one that gave me starting production in plants but way fewer credits and a solid power. So you can really decide between a wide variety of corporations when you start to tailor your game play.

Simultaneous Play

So, one thing I didn’t talk about was t hat each phase, the ones that are activated anyways, everyone does. So if I do development and you do research, we both get to do both of them. But when you play down a phase you get an extra benefit. So if I am the one who played down development, we can all play a development card, at the same time, but I get to play mine for three less cost wise. This simultaneous play really keeps the game moving. Terraforming Mars Ares Expedition isn’t the fastest game, but there is never downtime.

Is This Game Good?

I really like this game. I covered some issues but they are generally production issues. And the thing with cards, I don’t know all the cards, and I haven’t played all of them myself in my plays. I just can see myself picking a strategy and fishing for my favorite cards eventually. But the game itself is a ton of fun. I like engine building a lot, and this gives me that. I like games with little to no downtime, and I get that. And I like games that make me think about what my opponent is doing.

Going back to the picking of actions. I can decide to trigger another phase if I think you will trigger the one I want. If you need money and I need money, maybe I do research to get more cards because I’ll get money when you trigger production. So there isn’t player interaction of a negative variety, but if I’m smart I can leverage what you are doing or likely to do, to my advantage.

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

I think some gamers will want this game to be more like Terraforming Mars was. It’s not bad that it isn’t, but that’ll be the complaint. And for casual gamers, there is still a lot going on. It’s really fun though, and I’d recommend it for someone who is looking to take a step into some more complex games.

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Why To Not Sleeve

Cost, sleeves aren’t cheap for your cards. Especially for a massive game like Marvel Champions that is always coming out with more content, or a deck builder like Dominion which has a ton of expansions and is all cards. For Dominion, the cheapest that I found on SleeveYourGames.com is about $100. And those are cheap sleeves that a lot of people wouldn’t consider using.

It also makes it trickier to shuffle. I am a big person, 6’4″ so I can shuffle a large deck of cards. Sleeves add so much size to the cards. So not only is it trickier to shuffle, but it’s trickier to store. A sleeve doubles the size, maybe more of the cards. Boxes with inserts might no longer fit the cards. That leads to more cost as you need a new box to store everything which can be a fairly cheap cardboard card box or an expensive wooden box.

Why To Sleeve

It keeps the cards nicer. And it allows you to smash shuffle if you want versus other shuffles. But think about all the fingers that get on the cards. Especially for a collectible card game (or trading card game as they go by now), you can have cards that are worth large amounts of money. So getting a sleeve for a $100 card, that can help protect your investment.

But what about regular games, why would you sleeve. Some it could still be money wise, the game is out of print. But games like Dominion, Marvel Champions, Sushi Go Party, or others where you are handling the cards often can last longer sleeved.

When Do I Sleeve

Honestly, I don’t sleeve much, but when I do sleeve I look for a few things. First, with collectible card games, I tend to sleeve those. Not because I am so worried about the resale value of my cards, but because when I’ve gotten good cards, expensive cards for Magic decks, I don’t get them in mint condition. Without them being sleeved I could then tell, or anyone could, when those cards were showing up.

Next is the quality of the cards or how much the cards are handled. Right now I am sleeving Marvel United. The card stock on those cards is thinner and while I have 85 or something different characters to use, I want to make sure that the cards stay in good shape. They won’t get shuffled much, but the characters who are played will get handled a fair amount, so the thinner card stock will benefit from a cheap sleeve.

I also consider how much the cards are handled. There are two games that I need to sleeve because of how much they are handled. The first is Love Letter. The card quality isn’t super high, there are very few cards, and they are handled all of the time. The same goes for Sushi Go Party, some cards, the nigiri, are handled all the time in every game. That means that those cards will show more wear and tear faster. I could also see that happening in Point Salad as well.

Should You or Shouldn’t You?

Personally, I don’t get sleeving every game. That is a lot of money to keep a board game nicer. In the case of something like Dominion, there are a ton of cards total with all the expansions. And if you want expensive sleeves for the base game and all the expansions, it would cost a lot. Plus any new expansions you need to match-up the sleeve type. So there is a tipping point, when would it be easier to replace the game versus sleeve it. Sushi Go Party is on that edge as well. I maybe can get a new copy cheaper than I can sleeve it all.

So I do not believe you need to sleeve all of your games. If that makes you feel better about it, go for it, but some games, definitely don’t need them. Even something like Gloomhaven that has a ton of cards, I played the full game and the few cards that are shuffled often were still fine at the end of the game. So consider how often you use and shuffle each card in the game, the more often you do, the more likely sleeving it is something you could consider.

Let me know if you sleeve your games? Do you do it for board games or just TCG’s (trading card games)? What are your preferred sleeves?

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The Premise

The Characters

The Bosses

The Guilds

The Levels

The Boards

Cards vs Dice

Now, this one is going to be a little bit less about how they’ll work in the game, instead I’m going to be talking about why I am considering both in the game.

Cards

I think the biggest advantage to cards is that cards remember. It’s an interesting concept that was brought up in Oathsworn Kickstarter campaign that I hadn’t thought about it, but cards remember what you’ve drawn before. You have a discard pile, so say you want it to be like a six sided die, you roll the die, you could get a one six times in a row. But if you use six cards to match that and you have a discard pile, drawing from it six times will always get you the one and always get you the six, in fact always get you every number. So you know that you’ll do average sometimes, but if you get the one and two out of the way with your first two draws, you know that you’ll have only good and average draws left.

Dice

On the flip side of this, dice don’t have that memory. In my example above, I say that you could roll a one six times in a row. Well, you could roll a six six times in a row as well, which is something that the cards can’t do if you have six cards. So while the dice might be unlucky, they can also be lucky and give you options to push for something better with knowing that you always have a shot at a six, not that a six is already sitting in the discard pile.

Now, a game like Oathsworn actually has both. And you can do a blend of both of them, if you are “rolling six dice” you could roll three dice and draw three cards. So if you know that the deck is just going to be average, you could get your few successes that way, and then push for some critical successes while risking more the other way.

So what is going to work the best for my game, is it dice, cards, a hybrid, what is it?

I’m thinking of doing a hybrid, but probably not like you’d think. I’m not going to pull straight from Oathsworn and copy that people can pick one way or another. I’m going to keep the dice and cards separate but I’m thinking that I’ll use them for different things.

In the boss battles, I want to use combat modifiers like they have in Gloomhaven. But I want to build upon that. In boss battles, which I’ll talk about soon, I want to build up this massive pool of damage and have people work and attack at the same time. On their (all players) turn, each player, separately of the others decides what move/skill they’ll use. They all move and do their thing, and you flip X number of modifier cards based off of your skill. But you can build up in your deck modifier cards that can trigger more cards to be drawn by other players if they are using a certain type of attack or skill.

The other option would be to use dice for combat modification. You’d still use your skills and get some damage and successes based off of that, but there’d be a symbol on the dice, so let’s say you’d have a 3+ on one side of the die. The 3 would be your modifier and you’d give an extra die to another player for their modification of their attack. This would be simpler to implement, I think, but I like the idea that you can customize your modifier deck more than you can customize the dice that you can roll, at least at a reasonable cost.

Instead, I want to use dice for the level events and for the players using their skills to complete the level part of the game. If player X goes on a quest and they have to face a challenge, they look at their stat and get their base number, they look at their skills and use any keywords on those skills, and that builds their die pool and you roll that to determine how well you do on that quest. Or you might be talking with an NPC or another PC and have to persuade them of something.

But, I actually am now moving away from this idea as I put it down on paper because, I want there to feel like there’s more tension in what you’re doing and I also want to reward buffing up stats and having a weak stat. My plan has been to limit the number of events on a floor, let’s say that’s seven, and you can stay for ten rounds, but no new events will come up, before you have to fight the boss, I want to do something different. I want to, now that I’m thinking about it, have players draw a hand of modifier cards, seven in fact, to spend throughout their time on the floor. You will still get your base stat total, and you will get bonuses of +1 per keyword based on the skills your character has, but you can, if you choose to, modify it with a card from your hand. However, those cards you spend will not be in your modifier deck when it comes to the boss battle. And sometimes you’ll know the number that you have to beat, farming for XP by killing monsters, you’ll know your target number, of maybe you have an agility of 8 plus a piercing bow and silver arrows that give you +2, and you can kill the werewolf with a 7, so you don’t need to spend a modifier card, but if you have a -2 in your hand, you’d spend it, reduce your success to a 8, which is greater than 7 and now you don’t have that negative. But maybe you want to get the fabled Sword of the Unending Flame as you know that’ll help boost your damage and you need to get a 14, so you spend a two +2’s to get there, now those are out of your deck for this floor, but now you have a sword that might do 2 more base damage than your previous sword in fire damage for the rest of the game, so it might have been worth it to spend those two +2’s.

The reason for moving away from the dice there is that while dice build tension of a good roll versus a bad roll, you need some resource or something to mitigate them. I’m looking to build a better tension than just that, I want players to be able to specialize some in what they’ll do on a floor, but I want to keep some of that puzzle feel, resource management that is more interesting than just rolling some dice. It has a whole new tension when knowing that you’re spending a good modifier or maybe even a modifier that can combo for another player to get something done. And I’ve given examples where the player knows their target, talking to an NPC who might have a skill for you, for all that you know, you might not know your target number that you’re shooting for, so you have a 5 in charisma, and you know that lore and silver are the keywords, do you’re at a 7, the person handling the book then tells that you can modify it if you want, what do you do, does it matter that much for you, or are you still looking for something in particular. And you’ll have some idea that with a 9, you’ve seen some really good thing things happen, but you can possibly go down to a 5 and still get a quest, so do you risk it.

I think that by now you’ve noticed a key for what I’m going for when creating this game. I want all the decisions to feel meaningful, I want all of them to have some tension to them. Fighting a rabbit might not have that much tension, but spending a card to beat it, that might. And the decision to go to the forest to fight the rabbit, that means you gave up a chance to do something else.

So, in the end, I guess the answer is cards. Do you like the idea of using the modifier cards are both a draw and flip from the top for a boss combat as well as then a more determined resource from your hand on the level?

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So, most people are going to be somewhat familiar with the idea of an escape room. They have been something very popular in the US at least over the last handful of years and have been a concept for longer than that starting in 2007. The idea of these are that you and a group get placed into a room with a time limit on how long you have to escape. You need to work together to find clues, solve, puzzles, and get out of the escape room. These are generally themed around something, maybe you are trying to get out of an asylum or you are doing a jail break.

They’ve taken this over to board games in a few different ways and series of games. Some of the games are intertwined stories that expand over time as you go. Others are one off games that pit you and a group against a certain amount of time or will give you a score based off of how long it takes and how many clues you use. In these games you have things like ciphers to break, numbers leading to the next thing hidden on cards, in images, and so many more different puzzles.

Players in these games work together to solve these puzzles, it might be somewhat on their own, but generally there is free communication and collaboration around the table as you try different solutions and race against the time. Fairly often that means that these games could play an infinite number of players, but since everyone needs to see what is on the cards, there is limited real estate to do that, so more than a handful starts to become a little bit cramped.

But let’s look at some games in this style:

Gateway Game

Unlock – This is a series of games that aren’t connected except around mechanics. In these games you are using cards to find items, figure out puzzles and get to the next room so that you can eventually escape. It might be something like escaping from Oz or a submerged submarine or a haunted house. What these games do different than some is that you buy them as a one off or in a set of three. And each is playable once by the same group, but they aren’t destructive in nature. What I mean by that is not pieces need to be modified to solve any of the puzzles. It also uses an app integration for the timer and for entering in codes to see if you can unlock some doors or open a safe. This allows them to create some nice thematic tension with a sound track for the game you are playing.

Medium Weight

Exit – Now, there isn’t a massive difference between Unlock and Exit, both of them are pretty light weight, Exit is just going to have you stretch your brain more because you have more puzzles and more almost disconnected puzzles in it. Along with that, Exit is a destructive game. That means that you might end up pulling apart some of the box to get something or cutting up a piece of paper in order to able to easily solve the puzzle. The reason I say that this is medium weight versus Unlock’s gateway level is because that you can’t just focus directly on the puzzle, you have to go over everything because you don’t know where a clue to solve the puzzle might be hidden so it stretches the brain more but can be more frustrating as well for that reason, but if Unlock seems to easy, Exit is a slight step up.

Heavy Weight

TIME Stories – Now, I actually, again, don’t think that TIME Stories is too heavy, and there might be some people who disagree with this being an escape room game, but it certainly has a lot of the elements of it. You’re trying to figure out what is going on in a timeline after you and your team are sent into the past, future, another dimension, to stop something that is about to royally mess up the timeline. Your memories and knowledge are put into a body there so you can blend in, You go on runs trying to solve the case, and if you run out of time with the event happening the TIME agency can send you back in again, equipped with the knowledge that you have to try and solve it again. For this reason TIME Stories, while once you complete the case is basically a one and done, has a longer playing time and more game that you can get out of it. It’s also is easier to play over multiple sessions because you can more easily save between the runs that you make. Overall, not an extremely complex game, but it has more moving parts than the others do.

There are a lot more Escape Room games out there or games that have a similar feel to them. I did a Board Game Battle recently between TIME Stories and Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game, and while there are similarities, TIME Stories has more of an escape room feel versus Detectives more deductive feel. What are some of your favorite escape room style board games? Do you like escape rooms in real life, if so, how do the games compare to the places?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

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