How To Play Jump Drive

In Jump Drive you are racing to a point total, generally 50 points, in your empire. Each round you are gaining cards and then playing out cards to build out your space empire. These cards are split into two categories, planets and technologies. Both of them are going to give you more income, cards, and points possibly from playing them. And all of this is done simultaneously.

Turns

On your turn you pick up to two cards to play from your hand. You play either a technology or planet card or you play both. But to play a card you need to have enough other cards in your hand to discard to play them. If you play one card, either a technology or a planet and not two, you draw a card to add to your hand.

If you don’t have enough cards in hand to play a card you can choose instead of explore. When you explore you draw a number of cards to your hand and then discard so you add two new cards to your hand. The number of cards you draw varies depending on how many eye symbols, explore symbols, you have on your cards already in play.

One last thing about the rounds is military. There are military planets that you can conqueror with your military force in the game. Unlike planets where you gain them peacefully, you don’t need to discard cards are for gaining a military planet. Instead, you need to have enough strength in military in play to conqueror them.

Between Turns

Once you play out your planet and technology two things happen. Firstly, you gain points. You gain points for the total number of points that your empire is generating. That means points that you gained from this round and previous rounds.

The other thing is that you gain cards. Like I said, each planet and technology has two main stats. One being your victory points mentioned above. The other is your card draw. Like victory points, you look at your total card draw and draw that many cards into hand. Now, you only are allowed to have 10 cards in your hand at the start of your turn. So if you draw a greater number than that, you discard down to 10 cards.

You continue with this loop of turn and between turn until someone reaches or surpasses the point goal for the game. If multiple players pass on the same turn, which can happen with the simultaneous play, the player with the most points is the winner of the game.

What Doesn’t Work

There is a decent chunk of luck in the game. Now I say that, I think there are some ways that you can work around it and you always have something to do. But if you don’t draw planets and technology that work with the engine that you started, you might need to pivot hard and fast. And even if you do that, it might be too late in the game as the game normally lasts between 6-8 rounds.

The amount of satisfaction from building up your engine is sometimes cut short as well. You might be looking at building out a great engine, but because of the point total is not that high, your engine might just start really working and then the game ends. I think if you want you can play higher, but it still is going to go by very quickly.

What Works

The speed of the game is impressive. Each turn and decision is meaningful. But because of how it limits the number of cards you have in hand, it is limited in what you can do. So I like that the game is very fast. Now that is a negative if you want to build up a great engine. But I like that you play once and it is very easy to shuffle up and play again.

I like set-up for the game. It is just cards and some tokens for points. So it is super fast to the table. And that is going to make it easier to keep around. Now it is even faster on BGA with your turns and figuring everything out. But it is not a game where BGA is doing a ton of heavy lifting getting it to the table, like some others. But instead, this is a very easy and fast game to table in person.

Engine Building

The engine building element is solid in Jump Drive as well. Now, that is the whole game, you build up your engine. And you decide how quickly you pivot from cards/income to points in the game. And you need to do so quite quickly. But if you want to play a game that is just engine building, this is going to work really well for you.

I also like the early game in this a lot. That is where the biggest strength and decision space for the engine building comes in. You need to figure out how to get your engine up and running extremely quickly. If you need to explore a round, it should be in the first two rounds. If you explore after the first two rounds, you might find that you fall too far behind.

Solo Campaign

Finally, I like the solo campaign. Mainly because it is giving you different goals to shoot for in each version of the campaign. It is not super complex, everything you do is pretty easy to keep track of, but it is different each game. Is it much of a campaign, no. But it is a good way to make it into a solo game versus just see how high a score you end up with in seven rounds. It is fun to add just a little bit of extra to what you are doing.

Who Is Jump Drive For?

This is a good filler engine building game. I don’t think it is going to be a game to build your game night around. But I think it is a solid game for when you want a filler game that does a bit more. Often times with a filler game the decision space is very limited. Here is it is pretty limited but not completely limited and what you decide matters. And because it is so fast, it fits in as a filler or a game you play two times in a night. So if you want a filler game with a bit more to it, I think that is a game that can work well.

Final Thoughts and Grade on Jump Drive

Now, I say it in the video, I might sell my physical copy. That is not because I don’t like the game, I think it is fun. But it is so fast solo and asynchronously on BGA, that I might just play it there. But I also think I have a few people I game with who might enjoy the game. So that might keep it around. And I like that even with the expansion is fits in a small box so that means that it takes up less shelf space.

Now, the downside to the game is that sometimes you just end up with a bad game. I mentioned it in what doesn’t work. And it is generally the combination of two things. It is that you have a bad game. But it is also then that someone has a great game. So while you end up with 10 points after six rounds, someone else is past 50 because they got what they needed. This is sometimes frustrating, in a BGA tournament for example, but generally I find it okay because it is so fast to play that I just play again. So for that reason, that luck is a not a big deal to me.

My Grade: B-
Gamer Grade: C+
Casual Grade: B+
Strategy (out of 10): 5
Luck (out of 10): 6

Now, just a note on luck. I mention twice how it can bite you. Once in my thoughts and once in what doesn’t work. But I only give it a 6 out of 10 for luck. The reason is you need to pivot and sometimes it won’t work. But the option to pivot helps negate some of that luck.

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How To Play New Frontiers

The game is all about building up an engine to generate points. You do that by developing technologies, gathering and converting goods, and settling colonies. To do that you are doing one of several actions in the game hoping to build the best engine to get the most points. And each action is better for you, if you take the action. But everyone get’s to follow along and do it as well, there is just a benefit for you.

The game ends one of several ways. But the most common ways, that I’ve seen, are people settling planets or developing enough technologies. If you push either of them over past their limit the game is wrong to end at the end of that round of turns. Or you might end the game by running out of explorers to settle planets or victory points from the pool.

The Actions

Let’s talk a bit about the actions. They are the core of the game because that’s how you determine what is being done. On each players turn they pick an action to do. And that action generally has a benefit to the player if they are the one doing it.

There is a main core group of actions that you might take. And there are some additional actions as well, but there is what I would consider kind of a central loop of actions. Develop, produce, trade/consume, explore, and settle make up that core set of actions. There are additional actions that move you up in priority order, and add objectives for everyone to score to the game. But those are more minor actions that players take.

Develop

Developing is all about building out the new technologies. If you select that, you get a dollar discount as well, so it’s a benefit to be the one taking it. The technologies help in all of the other areas I’m going to mention. So what they are doing for you really depends on what you want to do in the areas below.

And as you gain more credits you can purchase more expensive and better technologies or discoveries. Including 9 cost ones which can provide a significant amount of your scoring if you’ve built and engine that leans into one of them.

Produce

The production action is kind of what you think it would be. It’s your chance to produce goods. Some of the planets produce goods, some produce windfall goods (only when you settle) and others don’t produce.

The goods come in different varieties. There are more expensive and less expensive goods. Though which good shows up more often on the planets, that I feel like is pretty evenly balanced. The development tiles, though, tend to offer more points or benefits for the less expensive ones.

Trade/Consume

Trade and Consume is all about taking those resources you got and turning them into points and money. You are always able to trade in a good for money. But that is only for a single good, not for as many as you want.

If you want to deal with more that you’ve produced, then you need to be able to consume. Consuming a good is one of the ways where you can gather points. Most goods have planets or development tiles that you can consume a good for a dollar and a point. So it might be less efficient in getting money, but a solid way to get points.

Explore

So how do you get the planets? That’s with the explore action, as you explore them, you aren’t settling them, you’re just finding planets that you want to add to your empire, by which I mean your engine. You pull seven (base game) or eight (with expansion out). And then in turn order, starting from the player who chose the action, you select a planet. The bonus is that the player who chose the action gets to select an additional planet.

Settle

Finally, in that core set of actions is settle. Settling is settling the planets that you’ve explored. Only once a planet is settled is it able to start producing or do you get it’s power. You need explorers to be able to settle. So if you take the settle action you gain a free explorer.

Everyone gets the rest of the options. You might take two explorers. Or the other option is that you can settle a planet. You either need to spend the credits and explorers to settle. Or you need to have enough military and explorers to settle. Planets either take one or two explorers to settle.

Level of Luck

I think that this is useful to talk about. I didn’t mention how you pick which planets are in the pool to explore from. And exploring is where the most luck shows up in the game. You draw out planets, it’s possible for it to lean heavily towards planets that need miliary or completely away from that. If your engine is built in a particular direction, that might not work for what you need.

But that’s about the level of luck. And the game, I’d say, if you explore, or that action is taken maybe 8-9 times in a game, you maybe have a single time where there isn’t something for you. So the luck level is pretty low.

I even have gone with a strategy that is all about developing. With that one, I was barely even needing to explore. My engine was just on the technologies. And those are all face up, so I could come up with a strategy that made a lot of sense and with basically zero luck. Once I was able to produce and consume at all, when other people took those actions, I was set.

Strategy Mix

I like how the game offers different strategies to play around with. For some paths it’s all about gaining military and once you get enough, it’s easy to conquer and settle almost any planet. I also, like I mention above, went with a strategy that didn’t care what planets I got. Generally, though, your starting planet is going to determine your initial leaning. And as long as the first couple of explores support it, it’s very possible to build up different strategies.

Some strategies, though, are harder than others. Some of them require specific keywords to really work. You get more points if you own planets with the word “uplift” on them, or you are best at fighting “rebels”. Generally these planets offset their rarity by offering more scoring. But the more specialized it is, the more potential for just a bad draw of planets.

Who Is New Frontiers For?

I think it’s for people who maybe wanted a slightly different experience or another experience like Race for the Galaxy, Roll for the Galaxy, Jump Drive, and Ares Expedition (not in the series of games). If you love the engine building and just want more this one is for you. It also offers a bit slower pace of play than some of the other ones on the list, while still being notably faster than Ares Expedition. But, I guess the simple way to put it is people who like engine building games.

Final Thoughts on New Frontiers

I do like engine building games. I was worried after two plays about the diversity of the strategy of New Frontiers. Then my third game I got set-up to go all in on development and that went great. The game is an interesting balance of trying to do everything, but the further in you get the more focused you want to be.

The one thing that I’d love in this game is to be able to build up an engine a bit longer. I’m not sure how to stretch the game out more, though. I often feel like my engine is just clicking for a couple of rounds before the game ends. Though, that is a nice thing about a good engine building game. You never feel like you’re just taking the same action because it makes the engine run best. Instead once you’re to that point or about to that point the game ends.

And I do like how New Frontiers has multiple end of game triggers. I think that handing out all the victory points path might be the hardest, we’ve seen all the others done. So I like how that works, and I do believe that victory points are possible to do. It just requires building a victory point engine versus a money engine or a settling planets engine.

Do you like New Frontiers?

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

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Catch up on my Top 100 Games (of all Time) 2023 Edition:

100 through 91

90 through 81

80 through 71

70 through 61

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition – 60 through 51

60. Five Tribes

Five Tribes is a classic game at this point. One of the Days of Wonder games that put them on the map and is my favorite of them. This has a mancala style mechanic of picking up meeples and dropping one on each tile you move to. Then you gather the ones that match the color of the last one you place out and that determines what you’re doing, which is basically always getting points.

That’s another feature of the game that is great. You are always getting money, or points (same thing) in this game. No matter what action you do, it is likely to help you. To add to that, the money that you get is also what you use to pay for your turn order. So if you see an amazing move, it be worth paying to go first, but will what you pay offset the points that you get? And that’s part of the puzzle of the game.

Buy Five Tribes

59. Mesozooic

I doubt that Mesozooic will make many or possibly any other Top 100 Lists. Why, this is a light and silly little drafting real time game of making your own Jurassic Park. But it is one that I really like. And I like it because it is fast and silly but still a good time with a little bit of strategy as you draft cards.

You get parts to your monorail system or zoo pens for the dinosaurs as you draft. Then you put them in a four by three grid and because you have one empty spot, you draft 11 cards, it’s basically a sliding puzzle. You then get 45 seconds, I believe, to slide everything around and get it in the order that gives you the most points. Where ever you are at when that time runs out is the zoo you have. So it’s possible to get it perfect, but it’s not that much time, so when to call it good enough is a big part of the game.

Buy Mesozooic

58. Res Arcana

Next up is Res Arcana. Res Arcana is a much thinkier game than the last one, but still not extremely complex. In Res Arcana you are taking your hand of cards, I believe it’s 8 cards, and building a points engine out of them. And the game is basically as simple as that. You do actions each round and when you are done with them all or all you want to do, going turn to turn, you take a special power that will help you the next round of turns.

This game is just a fun puzzle. You can play with the starter decks. I like drafting the cards I get better so that I can try and build up a synergy and get an engine going faster. But either way is fun to play. And Res Arcana is not that long a game which is great as well, so you get your engine going quickly in the game. I like that because it’s like there is a little to no downtime of the engine.

Buy Res Arcana

57. Tesseract

One of the new games, I played this one for the first time at Gen Con and I had an absolute blast with it. It’s a Pandemic like cooperative game in some ways. There is more going on with it, though. The structure of do your turn and then a bad thing happens is very Pandemic like.

The basic “story” of the game is that this Tesseract, a cube of dice has come to Earth. And we’re scientists of different types trying to solve the puzzle of it before it explodes, or implodes I should say, and kills everyone. Our actions are to collect and manipulate dice to get runs and sets and be able to put dice onto tracks matching their color and number. That is how we win, the game wins if the cube is gone, if too many overflows happen (Pandemic outbreaks), and possibly another way, I forget. So it’s a race against time and using your abilities the best you can.

And the dice cube, really is a five by five, I believe, cube. I said four by four yesterday, but think about it, I think it’s five by five. And that dice cube/tower is on a rotating board so that everyone can just turn it to see the other sides. It’s a clever system.

Buy Tesseract

56. Potion Explosion

Another game with a gimmick is Potion Explosion. Potion Explosion reminds me of an app game where you pop a bubble and it causes the column to drop down. If two (or more) like colors hit again, they pop and so on. That’s what Potion Explosion is, and it’s great with that toy factor. It has a nice dispenser for marbles, and then you’re doing what I said, removing one and letting matching colors hit.

But it adds to that by giving you potions that you can craft. Those potions are then special powers that you can use one time. That’s help you get more marble, ingredients for your potion, and let you brew even more potions. It’s a fun game of optimizing which marble you take out of the dispenser with the powers that you have. Great toy factor, again, but also just a great game.

Buy Potion Explosion

55. Forest Shuffle

Another new one to the list, Forest Shuffle is another game that I got to play for the first time at Gen Con. It’s a nature tableau building game, which, that theme or idea is very popular right now. I like how this one works a lot, though because it’s simple. You play from a handful of cards and are using cards in your hand to pay for the cards you want to play. So each card is dual purpose that way.

But they are also mainly dual purpose (besides trees) in that they have two things on them. It’s part of your forests habitat and ecosystem on the cards. So you put those cards around the trees you have in your forest. And you will show one or the other side. But which one you pick means you miss out on the other for scoring.

The end game trigger is fun as well. Three winter cards are shuffled in to the bottom of the deck. When the third one comes out the game is done. So you might find one and have a bit of time, or it might be ending really quickly after that. So you need to determine when you just need to play out cards versus go digging or picking up cards that might just get stuck in your hand and give you no points.

Preorder Forest Shuffle

54. Grove: A 9 card solitaire game

My most played solitaire (solo) game of the year. Grove is a great game that is a ton of fun as you are building up your grove or orange, lemon, and lime trees. You do this by layering cards and matching the fruit that you are overlapping. And you can’t just overlap any trees, you get one overlap that doesn’t match, and that gives you negative points.

This probably sounds a lot like Orchard another game in that series. And what I’ve described is pretty similar. Where Grove is different is that each game you are playing against a challenge. Or you can choose to do that, but I always choose to do it. You get two challenge cards, they give you bonus points. But they also provide a point total between the two cards that you need to win. So it’s not just beat your high score, it gives you a target, for that game, to beat it.

Buy Grove

53. Century: Golem Edition

Century: Golem Edition is one that has stuck on my list for a long time. It’s not one that I play often, but when I get it played, it’s always a good time. Century: Golem Edition is a game of hand management where you are playing out cards to get gems and transform/trade gems into better gems. Then you use those to get Golems, most golem points wins.

But what I like so much about this game are the quick and snappy turns. My turn is basically one of four things. I play a card to manipulate the gems that I have, whether that’s get more or transform them, get a card from the market, pick back up my played cards into my hand, or get a golem. It’s one thing per turn and the game just flies along because of that, plus it has good decisions.

Buy Century: Golem Edition

52. Arboretum

Arboretum is one of those nature themed games where it looks pretty, and it’s pretty mean. But that’s what makes the game one of my favorites. In Arboretum you are building an ascending order of trees. And you score routes of trees that start and end with the same type of tree, always ascending numerically. Plus if you start with a one and end on an eight, both of those give you bonus points.

The tricky, and where the mean comes in, is that you don’t get to score all of your trees. At least not automatically. You need to have the most, card value wise, of that type of tree to be able to score it. So you might have built up a beautifully high scoring line of maples, but if you have a greater value of maples in my hand than you have, they are worth no points to you. And that is mean, but so much fun and adds in a layer of strategy and depth.

Buy Arboretum

51. Cthulhu: Death May Die

Finally, the last new one for this part of the list, Cthulhu: Death May Die. This is one that I got to play for the first time at CMON Expo, and I just fell in love with it. It’s such a fun game of investigating, trying to stop the ritual, or whatever is going on, but knowing eventually you’ll need to fight a great old one. And when you start, you are not in a position where that is going to be possible.

It only becomes possible as you become more insane. The more insane you are, the most powers you can unlock. There are points on the sanity track where it lets you unlock a new power. So you get to decide which of your three tracks you want to go up on. One is unique to each character, and the others are a combination of generic ones. Like the brawler ability, it might let you hit a whole room with an attack, if you level it up, but it’s always a choice of what to level.

Then, of course, you can still die from insanity. So if you die from what, because you leveled up too fast, you’re out of the game and that messes up things as well. So it’s a ton of fun how it lets you push your luck but not too much with that insanity. And it’s also fun to get more powerful as the game goes on the closer to death you are.

Buy Cthulhu: Death May Die

Upcoming Streams

Let’s run through the stream structure like I normally do. You might already know the schedule but in case you don’t. Wednesday at 8 PM Central I stream either a campaign game, or with this time of year it’s my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition. And join me next Wednesday for games 50 through 41, so hitting the half way point. It goes so fast, and now I have so many games that I want to play.

Then on Monday I stream at 9 PM Central time. It’s generally a solo game. Though I’ll also do pack openings for things, like I should have a Lord of the Rings Collectors box coming for the new cards. But normally it’s a solo game and a one off for the game like a roll and write, or sometimes a game like Under Falling Skies which was on the list today.

But the best way, if you want to know when I go live or a new video goes up (it’s basically always live), please consider subscribing. You can do that here. And click that notification bell on the channel and you’ll always know when I go live.

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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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100 Through 91

90 Through 81

80 through 71

70 through 61

60 through 51

50 through 41

40 through 31

Top 100 Board Games – 30 through 21

30. A Gentle Rain

A Gentle Rain is what I call a pallet cleansing solo game. All you are doing is flipping tiles and placing them, trying to get four corners to meet so you can put down a disc. If you get all the discs out you win the game. It is pretty lucky, I have won, I’ve also gotten only 4 of the 8 discs out. But it is nice and relaxing to play. The whole point of the game is to have a nice relaxing time.

It’s also nice because while it might take up a bit more space than small solo games ideally do, it is a small box and it plays very fast. So it’s a good little puzzle to play through and have something to think on, but without spending a lot of time or brain power on it. Plus it’s pretty cheap and really good quality.

Out of Stock

29. Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition

I will start by saying, I have yet to play Terraforming Mars. It’s on my shelf and I want to get it played. But Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition drew me in because it looked better. The artwork was really good on it, and when I saw it played, I really liked the mechanics. In particular, I like the action selection, how fast that goes. Each player selects an action and everyone gets to take it but as the person who picked it, you get an extra bonus. Any action that isn’t used is skipped that round. Gives good strategy.

Now, I wish I had backed this on Kickstarter. I did end up buying board overlays because the cubes will slide on the board. That said, the quality of the game is nice and the more you play it the faster you go. I think my first few two player games took around two hours, but by the third, we had the game down to basically an hour. And adding in more people won’t really slow down the game. Really fun engine building board game.

Buy On Miniature Market

28. Aeon’s End Legacy

I really enjoy Legacy games, and Aeon’s End was no exception. I knew I’d likely like it a lot, but you can see how much over on Malts and Meeples. What I wasn’t expecting is how good Aeon’s End Legacy is at teaching you how to play Aeon’s End. The game play is just slick and really enjoyable. And they start you off easy and teach you the game.

In fact, that’s one thing I do and don’t love about the game. I already knew how to play Aeon’s End. So when Aeon’s End Legacy dumbed it down a little bit, there were things that I wanted to do that I couldn’t at the start of the game. But this is an amazing way to learn Aeon’s End. The story is solid and the game play is a ton of fun, plus it’s cooperative which is always a bonus.

Out of Stock

27. Potion Explosion

Now we move onto a game with a ton of toy factor. The main mechanic of the game is pulling marbles from a tray that they roll down. You pick one marble and then like colored marbles that hit you also get, and it can cascade into a lot of marbles. You use those marbles to brew potions that give you points and give you one time abilities.

This game when it’s on the table people notice because of the marble tray and just how different it looks. The game play is solid with more depth than it first looks. Optimizing how and when you use the potions means that you get can give you really powerful turns. So while it is light and fun there is strategy.

Buy on Amazon

26. Sagrada

Sagrada is another game with a great table presence. This one has you making stained glass windows. You draft dice which you then have to place into your stained glass window based off of number or color rules. The game play on this one is pretty simple but getting the numbers and colors you need can be tricky.

I like this game a lot because it works well with family. My parents play board games, but they don’t play a ton of them. A lot of modern board games are going to be too complex, but something like Sagrada they were able to get quite easily. So with it’s great look and ease but interesting game play, Sagrada is a great game.

Buy on Amazon

25. Metro X

New game to the list, Metro X is a roll and write I’ve played on the Malts and Meeples channel before as well. This is about completing bus routes the best that you can. The game play, for me, is a lot of fun because of two things. Some routes use the the same stops. So if I fill that stop in I’m working on completing two or more of the routes. But you always are starting from the earliest spot on a route when you fill in, and you can’t skip. It makes it a really good puzzle.

I also like that the game plays fast. This is a game that might trip some people up to start out with because it is doing some interesting things that might not be intuitive, but when you get into it, it’s quite simple to play. And it comes dry erase already which is a bonus. I wish that the expansion bus routes/maps would come to the US.

Buy on Amazon

24. Roll Player Adventures

This game is actually coming in the mail today. Normally I don’t like to put prototypes on the list, but I had such a great experience with this one at GenCon in 2019, that it has been on the list before. I think I dropped it last year because it was a prototype.

This is a more family friendly, from what I can tell, adventure game. It reminds me of Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, not in game play, but in the idea that you are exploring at a higher level and then you drop out of that into combat, but it’s not a tactical combat. Plus you can bring your Roll Player characters into this game which I really like as a concept too.

Buy on Miniature Market

23. Letter Jam

Most word based games aren’t cooperative, but Letter Jam is. That is some of what makes it on the list. The game play is also really clever as you can’t see the letters that make up your word. They are facing away from you, so through clues you have to deduce what your letters are.

If I were to give the clue, and you can see the letter FR*M where the * is your letter, you can probably guess that it’s FROM so you letter much be O. But had I done F*RM now it could be FARM, FIRM, or FORM. So you need to be clever as you give clues because you want to limit how many letters it could be. And if you give a clue that means you aren’t getting helped so everyone needs to give clues.

Buy on Miniature Market

22. Betrayal At House on the Hill

Buy on Amazon

21. That’s Pretty Clever (Ganz Schon Clever)

Final one on this part of my Top 100 Games of all time is Ganz Schon Clever. This is the last of the Clever trilogy on the list, through the first one of them to come out. I really like Ganz Schon Clever because like Doppelt so Clever and Clever Hoch Drei, this game is all about combos. You fill in one thing, that unlocks something which allows you to fill in, in another spot.

This game also has an app that is really good. I do prefer playing the physical version, but sitting down and playing a quick game is a lot of fun on the app and it works really well. And while the game I think does take longer with more people, it’s still a really good multi-player experience and solo game.

Buy on CoolStuffInc

The Next 10

If you want to catch any of the remaining Top 10’s live, you can check them out and my normal streams on Wednesday at 8 PM Central time. If you subscribe and click the notification bell you’ll know whenever I go live or upload a new video to Malts and Meeples YouTube channel. When I’m not doing my Top 100, you can find me on Wednesday playing board games solo on the YouTube channel. I’ll be streaming next week but then a week off for Thanksgiving and Top 10 will be on December 1st.

Now, I did say I wanted to talk about my streaming times. Through the Top 100 list, I am going to keep my 8 PM Central time on Wednesdays for streaming. However, this might be changing. A channel that I like to watch and be part of their live chat, the GloryHoundd channel is adjusting their schedule. And I know I have crossover viewers from their channel. If they take that 8 PM Central Wednesday spot, I might look at making my main streaming day on Monday. Be aware that change may come.

But what game do you like best out of this part of the Top 100? Are there any that you want to get to the table that you haven’t played in this bunch?

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Let’s Meet the Fighters

Splendor

Splendor is a game all about collecting gems and becoming the best gem merchant in wherever it is set. It is a fairly generic theme, but it works for the game. Splendor, like I said, starts with you collecting gems to buy cheap cards that then give you more gems. However, the gems you get from the cards are permanent and in a tableau in front of you. So you collect more gems, but now you need less to get your next card. And if you can figure it out, you can build up those cheaper cards to then get more expensive cards for cheaper, or for free, and those cards generally give you points.

Century Golem Edition

Another game with gems, but this one is a little bit different. This one gives you a hand of cards that you add more cards to. You are trying to build your most efficient hand play combos of getting gems, and upgrading gems. When you get the right combination of gems, then you can trade those gems in for a Golem. And the golems at the end of the game are worth points. So with Century Golem Edition, you are trying to build up that perfect engine in your hand. Super fast turns and a really fun game.

Homebrewers

Finally, my favorite theme, we have brewing beer in Homebrewers. In this game you are competing to have the best beers in four different categories, ale, stout, porter and IPA. You can brew them and get some base points, but one of the big things in the game is that you can modify your brews. Maybe you have a card with yuzu on it, you can then make a yuzu IPA. That might give you more money, points, or raise you up in another beer. Twice during the year, you are then judged on how good your brews are, player with the most points wins.

Similarities

Al of the games allow you to get better at doing things as the game goes on. In Splendor it is because you have more permanent gems and with Homebrewers you have the ingredients on the beers. Century is a bit different, but you have an improved engine because of the new cards that you’ve add to your hand.

There is also that every game is about points. In Homebrewers you get points for brewing the best beers. Splendor you get points with the cards that you buy. Century Golem Edition, you get points for the golems and coins that you have. They also give the players a chance to catch-up. Though, Splendor is the one where this stands out most. Because the end game in Splendor is triggered by someone reaching a point threshold.

Differences

So, I already kind of talked about one. Century builds up an engine of card play. Homebrewers and Splendor have a tableau. Now even between Splendor and Homebrewers there is a difference. Homebrewers you trigger part of your tableau when you build, Splendor the whole power of the tableau is always available. So the engine building piece itself, while similar that there is one, how they each handle it is different.

And while the theme is an obvious difference, I think it’s worth pointing out that Century Golem Edition and Homebrewers feel like they have more theme than Splendor. If we go back to the clean versus messy games article I wrote this week, Splendor is the cleanest. This isn’t that it is massively more clean in game play than the others, but just that all of them a very neat and tight games, Splendor just removes more theme while doing that.

The Battle

They come out swinging, Splendor gets ahead with some fast and simple moves getting Homebrewers into a corner. But it, like in a button mashing video game, just seems to be doing the same basic moves over and over again. Homebrewers and Century Golem Edition get the upper hand knocking Splendor out of the ring.

Homebrewers and Century Golem Edition keep on duking it out in the middle of the ring. Every time Splendor tries to get back in, they dump it back out. The battle, in the end comes down to the two of them. Century Golem Edition keeping some cards back and changing up their moves. But Homebrewers builds up several solid sets of moves to keep pace… and the winner is…

Homebrewers

Homebrewers just beats out Century Golem Edition, though, it is really close. Both are engine building games and both are a lot of fun. I think that I just like the theme of Homebrewers better. It is fun to sit down and play that game, and it plays fast, and at the end talk about what weird beers you’ve made and if you’d try them. Both are really good games though. And I know a lot of people really like Splendor, but to me, I’m kind of done with that one. It was fun, but I know how it plays out most of the time now, so I don’t need to play it again.

Which do you prefer?

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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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So, what did I get?

Terraforming Mars & Prelude Expansion

Terraforming Mars is the #4 right now on the Board Game Geek games list. That is super high, and the concept of Terraforming Mars has always interested me. So why for such a popular game am I getting to it now? Well, it looks bad. There’s no other way to put it, the tiles look pretty boring, there are a lot of cubes, nothing, when I look at the game says play me. It says, I am a dry and boring game. Now, from the game play, I think it’ll be a very interesting engine building game.

And it is an engine building game. I tend to like engine building games. The reason that I did get an expansion, Prelude, for it, though is that the engine building is apparently a little slow in Terraforming Mars. Prelude creates a variant way to play that jump starts that. Now there are a whole lot more expansions that I might get after I’ve played, but only that one for right now. And there is an amazing tile set that was Kickstartered a while ago that I can track down, maybe, later to make the game look better.

Res Arcana: Lux Et Tenebrae

So this is an expansion for Res Arcana. I needed a small thing to get me to the free shipping. And this actually seems like a really good expansion. It adds in a few things, allows you to play with five players, and helps with scaling of the game. Not sure that scaling is much of an issue, but it’s nice to have that option to play with more. Mainly this seems to add in more of what was already there for Res Arcana. Another engine building game and one that I really need to play because it seems unique.

The Bloody Inn

This game is one I’ve wanted to play for a long time. With how Zee Garcia from The Dice Tower and the Brothers Murph, from the Brothers Murph, describe it sounds like a lot of fun. You all run your own Bloody Inn where you know it is easier to just kill the people and steal their money than make an honest living. In the game you hide bodies and bribe police to look the other way. It sounds morbid but also kind of silly.

The theme will help sell The Bloody Inn to some people, and I know it did to me. I don’t mind dark humor, especially since this is such an absurd concept. I could be running an inn and just making money like normal, but no, it is easier to kill the people, steal their money, and hide them away in your in. That makes no sense, but sounds like a lot of fun.

Which Sounds Most Interesting?

While I think that The Bloody Inn might be the one that gets played the most for me. I really want to try and play Terraforming Mars. I know it is a bigger game, but the concept of competing to terraform Mars seems really cool. It is also a game that must be solidly put together, so I want to dig into the mechanics. Sure, it might not be for me with all it’s cubes and drab looks in the end, but I really do want to give it a try and see how it is.

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Heaven and Ale

This is a game that normally wouldn’t be the type of game that I gravitate towards. It’s a Rondel (I’ll explain) and more of a puzzle euro game all about getting your timing right, but the theme is beer. And I like beer, and I play games while drinking beer, so beer making while drinking beer seems right to me. So what’s a rondel. a rondel is basically an action path that you can go on that is circular. Depending on the game, you can go as far ahead as you want, but most of them limit how far you can go. When you go ahead, that means that you can’t go back, so say I can skip over two actions, that means, if I can move ahead three and there are ten spaces, it’d take several rounds before I could get back to one of those actions that I’ve skipped, 3 or 4. So you have to think how much it’s worth moving head and how much it makes sense to hold back. It’s a different direction than my normal theme forward games, but I like the puzzle aspect that it brings to it.

Papillon

A game about butterflies, because I only have Mariposas so I clearly need more games about butterflies, but this one is very different. In this one you are drafting rows of flower plots, and placing it so you have matching sides together. You then are trying to create large areas to score as well as set it up so that you can get butterflies, and place them on beautiful looking 3D flowers for an area control aspect of the game. This game has an amazing look on the table, and I think the complexity of the game is right for a large variety of gamers. The theme is also very friendlier than a lot, people will like butterflies more so than sci-fi or fantasy. Now obviously butterflies won’t be a theme that draws everyone in, but it won’t push them away as well.

Boomerang

Have I said recently that I like roll and writes, in fact, there’ll be a bonus roll and write at the end. But Boomerang is one that I had heard about a while ago and just don’t know a ton about. This one is a bit more a flip and write than a roll and write, but you have a bunch of different cards you use to fill in things on your board. The game looks pretty simple, pretty fast, and like it should hit the table. It is also different because compared to a roll and write, or flip and write, this game has card drafting in it. Card drafting, or drafting in general, is a great mechanic. I like that I now have several games that are flip and write, some that are unique rolling and writing and others more classic rolling and writing, plus games that have big boards, flicking, and now I’ll have a drafting and writing game as well.

Foodies

Another game that I’ve had my eye on for a long time. Foodies looks like a fun fast engine building game that is going to be on a weight similar to something like Homebrewers, where there is a bit more going on than the likes of Splendor, but easy enough to learn. In Foodies you are buying foods to build up your menu, and you place them into a grid, then you’re rolling dice and depending on what is rolled you can activate different spots and get different things, like money, or victory points, whatever it might be. What I like about this one is that it keeps you engaged even not on your turn. If someone else is rolling, you still get to activate on your menu board what was rolled. And the dice adds in some variability, but they didn’t want you to get nothing for an empty spot, so you might get a coin if it’s rolled as compared to more if you have a menu item there. The art is nice and the theme is great for this one.

Xenoshyft: Onslaught – Game Night Kit #1

Don’t ask me what’s in this, but it was $4 and more content for Xenoshyft: Onslaught, a game that I really like. I’ve almost pulled the trigger on this several times, but I was debaging if I needed a mini expansion, turns out when it’s $4 I do. It basically adds in a few new equipment cards and things like that to add even more variety to the game and a way to set-up some special things. I think it’ll be a fun edition to a game that I really need to get to the table again.

Finally, the bonus one.

This one came because I had some games to sell, in fact, we’re going to have a new post also coming today called Point of Sale which is what I am selling back to my FLGS because I don’t need it on my shelf anymore, and why.

Twice as Clever!

I’ve recently been on a kick playing the Ganz Schon Clever app a lot, and I’ve actually gotten in five games of Ganz Schon Clever as well. But Twice as Clever! is the follow up to Ganz Schon Clever and there’s actually a third out now as well. While Ganz Schon Clever is fun and simple, Twice as Clever adds in a whole lot more challenge to the game while keeping the mechanics very similar. The new additions are a lot of fun and create a really good time playing in the app. I need to get this one to the table soon as well.

Which is your favorite of these games that I ordered?

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Pros

• Established company
• Engine Building
• Expansion and base game
• Good price
• Quality components

Cons

• No base game only level

The Page

I like the page, you can tell that they are an established company and they know what they are doing. Because it is a previous game as well, they can really highlight the game with images of something that’s not a prototype and have quotes from reviews without it feeling like it’s a preview instead of a review.

Now, when looking at the pledge levels, so me there is one glaring missing level. That’s one just for the base game. Clearly they don’t need it to make this game happen as they are fully funded, but for myself who would want to budget more in terms of games that I get, I don’t know I need the expansion as the base game seems interesting enough to me.

The Game

This game seems really interesting, I like how it feels almost like a cross between Splendor and Century. It is that small little engine building game that generally works really well with my group.

I think the game play is very simple, but clever in how you can work on building up an engine. The start of the game goes “slow” but as you get further and further in the more you can do and the faster you can complete the cards, which is what you want in a good engine building game.

Back or Brick

Now, generally what I’ve said has been glowing about this game, and if I weren’t on a bit of a board game budget right now, I’d probably lean towards this being a back, but for me, this is a brick, because I really want there to be a base game only level pledge. It really feels like they are probably missing out on a solid chunk of change because of it. And the base game with expansion is $60, the expansion by itself is $18, so that puts the base game at $40-45 range, which when you get under $50, it makes it more tempting as well. So this is a brick for me, though, I know I’m probably in the minority on that. If/when this comes to retail, and right now places like CoolStuffInc and Miniature Market are sold out, I’ll likely just pick up the base game.

How about for you, is this a back or a brick?

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