Beat the 8 Ball

Beat the 8 Ball is a game of timing. In it you have an eight ball that is spinning down a funnel. Your goal is to beat that eight ball and get points. So when it starts spinning you just release your ball and beat it, not that hard. Well, it’s trickier because you need to release it after someone else does, or everyone else and beat the eight ball. If you don’t beat the eight ball you lose points. If you’re the first person to beat it, you get no points.

The gimmick of the game, this big setup of a contraption for releasing the players balls and the funnel for the eight ball is cool. And I like the scoring of the game because it does make there be pressure. There is a skill element or a recognition element to the game. The more you play, the more you’ll know when the eight ball is going to drop. The downside is that this game could go on for a long time. It didn’t take too long for us, but if people are riding that line too closely no one will hit 10 or -10 to end the game. Or at least it’ll take a while.

Diced Veggies

You’re using dice as veggies to complete recipes and score you points in Diced Veggies by Kids Table Board Games (KTBG). To get your veggies you are using a cleaver to cut them off of a block of veggies (dice) in the middle. That’s the gimmick of the game. With the added twist on how you can cut the veggies, mainly that you can’t have more than 10 pips worth on the dice you cut.

Other than that, it’s a pretty straight forward collection game to fulfill orders or recipes in this case. And the recipes are easier or harder and give you a varying number of points. Plus you can play “hype” cards which augment a recipe. So I might have to discard another die to get a bonus four points. Or if all the dice I use on a recipe are the same value it’ll give me more points per die on the card.

My one concern about this game is the longevity of it. That’s probably true for Beat the 8 Ball as well. The game is simple and I’m not sure that the strategy will massively change over time for Diced Veggies. The upside is, it’s really easy to teach, learn, and play.

Fun Facts

Finally a cooperative party game from Repos Productions. I’ve talked about them before because they made Just One and So Clover, to great cooperative party games. While those are more game, more strategy to them, Fun Facts is more like a fun ice breaker than a game. In Fun Facts you put down a number answer to a question, like how seductive are you 0 to 100. And each person on their turn is trying to add it to a row of everyone’s answers so it’s in the right order.

Then you score points for the lowest to highest and all of them in the right order between. And you play that out over eight rounds. The gimmick is the dry erase boards, which nice raised edges so it won’t slide and erase. It’s also that trying to know your fellow players and how they’d rate themselves.

It’s a fun game because the players control the fun. And it’s about the “You’d spend that much to go to a park with actual dinosaurs?”. Or “After that weird look you gave me I assumed I was more seductive than you.” Jokes around the table but also getting to know people. And I think it’ll work longer because a lot of is it controlled by the group of players versus the game.

Final Thoughts on the Board Games with a Gimmick

Sometimes a game has a great gimmick. And sometimes the gimmick is the game. For all of these board games, I do think that there is thought put into the game aspect of what is going on. And that makes it fun. Fun Facts has the least game, but it’s a fun party game. And it has as much game as most party games. The other two give you simple board games to play. And I think that might be a downside, they might be too simple in the long run. But I can say, after playing each game, I’ve had fun with each one.

Which of the board games sounds most fun to you?

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Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Mini Review

So, I like this game, I don’t know that I would put it in a category that I love the game. Some of that is because I think the game works best as a two player game, each player controlling one character. And I find this to be the case with a log of games that can be played solo. If I can directly help you a lot in a game, well, then it means playing solo you always need to know what everyone is doing.

Now, if you watched my play through of Sleeping Gods, you know that didn’t bother me there. But it does here, and I think it’s because that was always finding story, versus the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game being more bookended by story. So when you compare the amount you keep track of in both games, it seems like less work for Sleeping Gods. Or something like Aeon’s End solo is more enjoyable because there is less interaction or can be.

All of that said, I still do enjoy the game. I like the progression. I like figuring out how to make everything work. How do I pull of closing a location when I might not have the best skills to do that? How do I keep my characters alive long enough to get to everything. There are a lot of good decisions in the game. And I give it a solid B grade for me. I will do a full review or maybe a comparison review between 1st and 2nd Editions later.

Upcoming Streams

On Monday I am going to be sitting back, maybe unboxing a game, depends on what I have come in. And then chat about GenCon which will be coming up shortly. The GenCon chat will mainly be about what to expect at GenCon, if you haven’t been before. What events I’m going to, and what I enjoy or maybe enjoy less about GenCon in general.

On Wednesday there is going to be some game play. My plan is either to do Black Sonata, or play Final Girl. If you have a preference, let me know that in the comments below. Right now I am leaning towards Black Sonata just because there are more game plays of Final Girl out there already.

And then the following Monday, before I’m off to GenCon, I will be doing more GenCon coverage. A few more games might show up on the Board Game Geek preview after that Monday, but I hit the road on Wednesday so I can’t cover it then. It might be a longer stream going through all the games for sale or demo at GenCon, at least in theory. There most likely will be more.

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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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