What’s the Plot of Dan Da Dan?

Well, the basis of what kicks off the story is there is a boy who believe in aliens. And a girl who believes in ghosts and spirits. The match made in heaven, right? Nope, both of them think that the other is crazy and decide that the other should go to a spot, alone at night, where these events are rumored to have occurred.

That’s the basics of the plot. You likely can guess what happens next for both of them. But that’s the fun of the story to see how that unfolds so I won’t go further into what happens.

The Anime Adaptation

So let’s start out by digging into if this is a good adaptation. I think that the visuals are some of the more enjoyable that I’ve seen in an anime in a while. It leans into elements that make sense to create a stark contrast around. So it is more than just your standard animation which I’m really enjoying. The aesthetic element works as well to demonstrate the plot elements of the story.

And I am watching the dub of it. Cruchyroll seems to be keeping up with it well, so I plan to keep going that way. But the dub works as well. The main two characters are really the voices you’ve heard through two episodes. And I think that they did a solid job finding voice talent for it. The plot and story aren’t going to give them the most room to stretch their voice acting chops, but it’s good voice acting.

Compared to the Manga

But let’s dive in a little bit further. How does it compare to the manga? Is it a faithful adaptation of what happens in the manga?

I think to both of those questions I can say yes thus far. The story for Dan Da Dan’s anime is very much what I remember from the manga. And they are sticking very true to it which I appreciate. There is some room to deviate from it, but not that much in terms of what the story is doing.

And I think because they went for unique visuals that element feels like the manga as well. I’m not sure that the manga as massively changes the tone, at least in the visual sense. But there is almost always a shift that happens. So I think the anime is faithful to what as well.

Should You Watch Dan Da Dan?

I haven’t talked much about the tone of the show. I like the supernatural elements of the story and I think that brings some of the fun. But it is more than just that in Dan Da Dan. There is an enjoyable story, good humor, and you do care about the characters.

That is what I want to see continued in the anime. The groundwork has been laid for it. And they are being very faithful to the manga in the anime. So if they keep it up, it is going to be a fun show. Is it going to be the best anime of all time, certainly not. Is it going to be a bad anime, certainly not. But it has the potential to be a really fun show with really fun characters that is worth most people checking out. And I think that Dan Da Dan thus far has done a good job of not feeling just like another anime.

Are you watching Dan Da Dan?

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

How To Play – The Great Split

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

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

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

What Am I Worried About?

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

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

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

What Have I Enjoyed?

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

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

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

Final Thoughts – The Great Split

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

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

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

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How To Play Quacks of Quedlinburg

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

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

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

What Doesn’t Work?

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

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

What Does Work?

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

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

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

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

Who Is This For?

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

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

What Do I Want To See in Quacks of Quedlinburg

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

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

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

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What Didn’t I Like

So, I have one thing that I want to see how it works more consistently. When I played it was only at two players. I feel like two player play was just fine. Mainly because of the card drafting piece. When you draft, you pick two cards, pass your hand, pick two cards, pass your hand, pick two cards. That means you end up drafting 4 cards. You can manipulate a little bit what the other person gets but you don’t have much variety.

Playing two player I’d almost want to create a dummy hand of six cards or so. That would just make the drafting at two players feel more dynamic. Mainly I felt like I didn’t see enough cards. You are always going to end up being “stuck” with the last two cards. But if someone had a great hand or two great cards, you just don’t see quite enough. I think that with more players, this will be less of a problem.

What I Liked

Drafting

Now, while I did complain about the card selection in the drafting, I do like the drafting quite well. And some of that is because of how it works. You draft eight total cards, but you don’t have to keep all eight of them. In fact, you likely won’t. So even if you are not getting ideal cards one round, you don’t have to keep them all and clutter up your hand. Mainly because you pay for those cards with fish, but you also need fish to entice cats into baskets to get them on your boat.

This creates a really nice tension. Do I potentially get less cats one turn because I want to keep more cards? Or do I have a lot of baskets available so I want to keep a lot of fish around to get a lot of cats in a round. It’s a meaningful choice that can really affect scoring in a lot of ways.

Scoring

And scoring itself, I feel like, is a lot of fun. Because this is kind of a point salad type of game. By point salad, I mean that basically anything you do gives you points. If you put down a global scoring card, probably you’re doing that because it gives you points. Private scoring, more points. Cats of a color next to each other, more points. Rare treasures, more points. Covering up rooms, more points. You can see, there are ton of different point options in there. So while the cards or cats might not line up perfectly with your strategy, you doing everything for points.

What I Want To Try

Firstly, I want to play this game with more people. I am curious to find out if the drafting might just be a little all over the place or if more people helps make the drafting feel more even. I keep on talking about this, it doesn’t ruin the game for me by any stretch of the imagination. There are enough other things to do that work well, but it is something that I wan to mess around with more.

I also feel like there are strategies that I want to try as well. I went fairly heavily into collecting cats. That scored me a fair number of points, but private objectives weren’t one thing that I did much. Again, I didn’t have that many come up for me to draft. How might that change strategy, or could I push even more for cats?

First Thoughts

This is a fun game, I oddly enough get some simple Blood Rage vibes from it. Not that it’s area control, but just that it’s a drafting game that has so much going on with it besides drafting. I think that it’ll end up in that rotation for when I want to play a heavier drafting game but don’t want to go all the way to Blood Rage, or maybe I don’t have the right group for Blood Rage. Isle of Cats is obviously a much cuter theme and going to be more enjoyable for more people.

But I am still backing more stuff on Kickstarter, getting more ships, and even a cool looking Isle of Cats roll and write. And if the game sounds interesting, maybe consider backing it as well. Normally I wouldn’t talk too much about a big box, but checkout that big box in the Kickstarter. It isn’t needed, but the set-up of the game can be a bit slow. The insert in the big box is supposed to help make getting it to the table faster, and I feel like that’ll be nice.

Do you like Isle of Cats?

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I’m going to start with Tainted Grail which I’ve just started playing. I did an unboxing and some game play on the Malts and Meeples Youtube Channel, so I’ll have the videos in here at the bottom so you can watch them. But I’ve only done about 30-45 minutes of game play in the videos and I’ve done the learn to play scenario that comes in the box to teach you the mechanics so you don’t need to read the rule book fully in order get the game onto the table.

Tainted Grail is a massive story driven game where you are playing in the land of Avalon. This isn’t some grand Arthurian adventure, though, Avalon is a land between realms which King Arthur and his knights fought for and claimed inch by inch, and that was 500 years ago. They erected Menhir, statues that can drive back the Wyrdness that corrupts the land, but now the Menhir are starting to fail and the land of Avalon is being claimed again by the Wyrdness. So, you’re some adventurer who was tasked with going out and finding a way to save Avalon? Not quite. There were more heroic people than you out there and they went off first to make it to Kamelot, but they haven’t come back. You’re part of the b team, those who weren’t quite good enough to go the first time, and you’re just hoping to find some answer.

What drew me into this game originally was the setting. The grim fantasy nature of trying to survive this darker version of Arthurian Legend just seemed fascinating. It wasn’t the standard sword and sorcery (not just the game, but that genre of fantasy) fantasy setting where you were epic heroes, in this game, you’re just barely more than being some guy. So while you are going to be the main character of the story, you might not be considered heroic to those in the lands. Plus, the fact that this is so driven by the setting and the story in the setting is awesome. There is so much text, I’m not sure how many total different location cards there are, but there are a ton of them, and the exploration journal is massive in which you read story. Compared to some other campaign games that I’ve played, this one is much more focused on the story.

But let’s talk a little bit about how the game works. During the day, you have a certain number of action points that you can take that then reset every day. You can either move around, explore a location or do some sort of special action. The game has a fun mechanic where you can push yourself for more actions on a given day, but that tires you out so you can’t do as much the following day. It’s one of those mechanics that makes sense in the game thematically because it makes sense in the real world. If you push yourself too hard one day, you’re not going to be up for doing as much the next day. What I also like about the things you can do during the day is that they aren’t that difficult, you’re mainly going to be moving and exploring locations. The rules for those things are straight forward.

Let’s talk a little bit more about exploring. Exploring really drives the game as it helps you figure out where you need to find things and brings the story together. When you explore a location you get to delve into the massive book that contains all of the story, and the book is massive. And with exploring, you might be able to do several different things, or if you have certain statuses or are a certain character, it’ll unlock different things for you. For example, in my first play, had I been playing Maggot instead of Arev, I could have done something different at the second location I explored. Or when I took an exploration action in the first day, I ended up getting a status for it. The fact that the story will branch and change depending on the statuses that you have, and because of choices you make, you might get a different ending to the campaign, that is awesome, and a testament to the writing that Awaken Realms put into the game.

I think that the other thing I should talk about is the encounters. This, being such a story driven game, seems like it should have some more focus on dice rolling, kind of the normal ameritrash style mechanics. But, we don’t have those at all. Combat and Diplomatic encounters is really focused on an interesting card play mechanic. When you go into an encounter, you draw a hand of cards and you play them down chaining symbols together. These, depending on the move can give you more damage or could allow you some card draw or another affect like ignoring damage in an attack. It makes combat and diplomacy much more of a puzzle to solve, and there are a lot of times when you don’t need to solve the puzzle, you need to escape and taking an opportunity attack is going to be better than taking damage, especially if you’re low on food, because when you’re dead, you could restart to the last save point, or you could just need to restart the game. This is a mechanic that some people might not love, but I think it has a bit of a Gloomhaven feel, mainly for the fact that you’re using cards, but it’s really about creating this combat or diplomacy set-up where it can chain into what you need.

So I’m already able to talk about a lot of stuff, because the mechanics are well thought out and I have already experienced a number of them, but since it’s such a story driven game, I want to get through Chapter 1 before I really determine how well I like the game. Right now, through the limited play and tutorial, I have it rated as a 9.5-10 out of 10, and I think it’ll stay around there, but will the grim nature of the story eventually wear out it’s welcome, we’ll have to see. I believe that Awaken Realms is going to do some sort of retail release, because this game was a kickstarter and if you didn’t get in on that or the late pledge, you can’t get back in on it between waves, but if you like heavy story driven games where the story really matters, I’d say that Tainted Grail is going to be solid for you, like it is for me. The combat/diplomacy might be a bit trickier to get into, because it’s different than your normal ameritrash mechanics.

If you were part of the game and have played your kickstarter copy or gotten your kickstarter copy, what do you think of the game so far? If you weren’t part of the kickstarter, with reviews and the game getting talked about, what do you think about it? Do you wish you’d gotten it?

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

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