Pros

• Horror Theme
• Mix and Match Final Girls and Bad Guys
• Solo Game Play
• Thematic Game Play

Cons

• Price
• Solo Only

The Page

Van Ryder Games has been doing Kickstarter and Crowdfunding games for a while. This page doesn’t disappoint in that it tells you what is going on with the game right away. The first thing it does is get you to the table very easily, which I think is one of the cooler features of the game production.

Though, I wish in that section that they talked about the game play. Granted, if you want to watch some good game play, GloryHoundd has a playthrough that they did. And you can watch that down below. The game play isn’t that much further down the page. And they do a good job of laying out everything that you can do. Plus the game is out there, this is season 2, so you can find reviews on it.

This might sound odd, but I also like that the stretch goals are at the bottom of the page. Too many pages have it in the midst of everything, which makes them harder to find. But also too much focus is placed on stretch goals. Here, they are an added bonus, not the main focus of the game. The game is done, and the stretch goals won’t add that much to game play.

The Game

Here’s the GloryHoundd Playthrough that I promised. And I will say it was one of my favorite streams of theirs to watch and to chat in. So subscribe and you can join in the chat live. But let’s talk about game play.

The game has a nice flow to it and an interesting mechanics to your action. You can play cards, but every card takes time. So the more cards you play the more time it takes. And time is used, once you are done taking actions, to purchase new cards. You then use those cards for the next turn, assuming you are alive.

Then the killer attacks based off of the character. But then also based off of a terror card that is flipped. So they activate twice and as they kill off victims they become even stronger. I like that escalation that is tied, in what feels like, into the fear you have of them. On the flip side, you rescue victims, then you can unlock an ability and become stronger.

Back or Brick

This made it to my Top 10 Hyped Crowdfunding Games for Quarter One of 2022. You can see that here. So yes, this is a Back for me. The only thing I’m disappointed in is that I didn’t back this the first time around. That would make it easy to determine what I want to get.

Right now I am backing the game for the Film Debut level. That gives the core box as well as a feature film of your choice. A feature film is one Final Girl and one Killer. So I added on two more feature films. That gives me three Final Girls and three Killers, so nine different combinations. And the randomness of the game should make even a previously played combination different.

What I don’t know is if I’ll keep the pledge at that level. Part of me wants to get Season One or Season Two and just make it simpler. That’s the core box plus five feature films. And that’d be 25 different combinations and give me a lot to play for a long time. But the question is, how much will I play. Because right now the GloryHoundd Playthrough makes me want it all.

But how about for you, is this game a back or a brick?

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Kohaku Game Play

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

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

What Doesn’t Work?

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

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

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

What Works?

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

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

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

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

What Do I Want To See In More Plays?

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

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

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

Kohaku Initial Impressions

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

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

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

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The Game

Aeon’s End is a cooperative deck building game with a couple of twists that I will talk about. In the game you are taking a group of mages (though you can play true solo if you want) up against a nemesis who is threatening the town of Gravehold. You have a few ways to lose, if your mages die or if Gravehold ends up at 0 points. But you also have two ways to win. You can either defeat the nemesis or outlast the nemesis.

It is a pretty traditional deck building game in a lot of ways, but there are two unique things that I want to talk about. First is how you build your deck. Now, I just said it was fairly normal, and well, it is minus the fact that you don’t shuffle your deck. You have a fixed market, meaning you know what will be available, and you buy from that. But as you use cards on your turn, you determine the order they go into the discard pile. That means that you can kind of guess the hand that you are going to be getting when you flip the deck.

The other thing is the turn order. Normally games have you go in a set turn order. If I go first the person to the left of me goes next. Or, the person who is furthest back gets the next turn. Here, it is truly random. In a two player game you have two player one cards, two player two, and two nemesis cards that make up the deck. With a bad shuffle you could have the nemesis going 4 turns in a row as you reshuffle every time you go through all six cards. It gives you some great runs of turns and some bad.

The Beer

Of course there was a beer last night. This time from Tin Whiskers in St. Paul, MN. A Pink Lemonade Dream State, a cream ale with pink lemonade and vanilla. I think that it’s okay, when I bought it, I bought it for the Pink Lemonade in the title, however, it tends to lean more into the vanilla. That works well with a cream ale, but really it’s too sweet for what I want. Cream ales already lean a little bit sweeter than I like in general.

Upcoming Streams

So next Monday we are back at 8:30 Central Time. The plan is to stream the Top 10 Games I Haven’t Played on my game shelf. The goal will to then get these games to the table this summer, or this year at least.

Then on next Wednesday we’ll be doing some more gaming. If people liked Aeon’s End, I might use the streams as an excuse to get in a lot of Aeon’s End and really dive into the variety of nemesis that are in the game and the different mages to eventually start streaming Aeon’s End Legacy, the legacy game version. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

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The Games

Like I was saying, these are two small solo games. Each of them plays fast, but they do hit different desires for me when it comes to solo gaming. What makes the two of them different, I talk about that some in the video but I’ll recap here.

Onirim

Onirim is a card game that has you creating a line of cards trying to get three of a color in a row to get dream doors while dealing with nightmares. That is the basics of it then with more rules thrown in as to how you deal with nightmares and and a few cards having special powers.

Onirim is a a solo game that you need to focus on more. The card play isn’t very complex, but when those nightmares come up, you have interesting choices that you need to make. And that can really determine how well the game goes for you. I use Onirim more when I want to have a game I can focus on more. If I need something to do while watching a baseball or football game besides look at my phone, Onirim gives me more to focus in on.

A Gentle Rain

A Gentle Rain is a tile laying game where you are just flipping a tile and putting it into play. The main decision space in the game is where do you put a tile. You are trying to get a spot where all four corners line up so you can put a token in. But of course, you are matching the sides with the different flowers on them, so you need to draw the right tile.

A Gentle Rain doesn’t feel as rushed as Onirim. When I play A Gentle Rain, it is more about the experience of playing the game, flipping around the tiles and seeing what you can find. It is meant to be peaceful as you play it and that comes across. So while Onirim can help me focus, A Gentle Rain can more help you unwind. Both of them are good for clearing your head but in different ways.

So is there a better one? I don’t know that either of them is better than the other. They meet different criteria for what I want to do. A Gentle Rain works better for more people, probably, because the game is simpler. However, it takes up more space. So Onirim is better for focusing and smaller areas. Both travel very well, as well.

The Beer

So no super new beer this week. Just drank more Fantasy Factory. It is a solid IPA that has grown on me the more I’ve drank it. It is a topic I’ve talked about with board games recently and changing taste, The same hold true for alcohol. For some people, they will never like it, and that is fine. Some people won’t want to try any, also fine.

But for some people, that is going to be something that changes over time. IPA’s are a great example of not judging a whole type of beer by one drink. Some IPA’s are extremely better, some of them have a piney taste, others tropical fruits, other citrus, it just depends on the hops. And judging all IPA’s by the extremely bitter is doing a disservice to that type of beer. Or it might be that you won’t like any, but it is worth trying.

Upcoming Streams

Next Monday, I won’t be streaming. But the following Monday my plan is to stream my Top 10 Games I Want to Play. This will be from my collection of games and the goal will be to get all of these games played ideally this summer. It might end up being this year, but we’ll have to see.

I will have a Wednesday stream, looking around at my collection, I think my plan is to play Aeon’s End. It’s a bit of a bigger game, but I want to start playing through all the content that I have for that game. And like Xenoshyft which I played recently, it is one that I talked about on Monday in my Top 10 Cooperative Games. So I really want to play it again after talking about it.

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Then, it just kind of sticks with you as something that looks interesting, and the Kickstarter starts to deliver and you start to hear about the game. Now, it isn’t without it’s issues, it’s from Mythic Games and they are known for bad rule books, in fact, they are sending backers or have digitally sent backers an updated rule book that will be going out with the game going forward. But even with that, people were still enjoying the game. In particular there are two content creators who have done several videos, 3 playthroughs actually, that made me strongly interested in the game, that is GloryHoundd and DrGloryHogg whom I’m talked about before on the channel. I’ll add their videos of them playing the game at the end of the article.

Even with that, it was a Kickstarter game, there were Kickstarter exclusives, and I wasn’t sure if it was coming to retail or not. Then, during Gen Con Online, Mythic Games announced that they were opening up a webstore and selling some of their games, and that Reichbusters was going to be coming, eventually to retail. But through their web store, you could get the Kickstarter version of the game, because they had gotten extras. So doing a little research, I figured out what was Kickstarter exclusive and ordered some of that content, so I have the base game, a terrain expansion that just adds to the look and feel of the game, and one Kickstarter exclusive expansion.

What drew me to the game, though, besides it being a campaign game? Firstly, the theme, I like the idea of being this team that is going into a bunch of secret Nazi bases, taking out the Nazis but also stopping their experiments, and Nazi zombies and mechs. But what interested me with the theme is that it isn’t just a kick down the door, roll some dice, kick down a door, roll more dice, you have to plan more than that, you are trying to make as little noise as possible, because once they know you’re there, all hell will break loose and it’ll be much harder to win, so you want to push that off as long as possible. I also like that while it is a campaign game, you can also just play in a skirmish mode. So you just want to play a single mission in the campaign, they tell you how to do that, I like it when games do that, and even though Sword & Sorcery isn’t a game I’ve played that way, I appreciate that they do it, and Reichbusters does the game thing. Do I want to play through the campaign, absolutely, but I have a lot of those games, so I like that I don’t have to, and I can pull this out on a smaller game night and play it with people.

So for you, do this game seem interesting? If you are interested in it, check out the videos that are right below, because they do a good job of selling the game and the fun of it.

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One way that you can kind of cut through the clutter that’s in the industry is by using online sources and resources to help determine that games look interesting. I have a number that I use, and I want to talk about some of them there.

Board Game Geek (BGG)

The biggest one that you should know about is BGG. Board Game Geek is basically an IMDb for board games. You can look games up, see the designer, game play time, ratings of the game, player count, how difficult the game is, and more. You can also keep track of your collection and rate games that you’ve played, all of it for free. There are a few nice things with this that help you be able to figure out what board game you might like. First, you can ask for recommendations in the forums. If you do this, ask a specific question and still do research on the games, someone will always recommend Scythe or their favorite game, even if you’re asking for something like Exploding Kittens. But most people will be very helpful with recommendations. Also, each game has recommendations itself, so something like Wingspan, as I mentioned last time, recommends Welcome To… I’d spend some time checking out your favorite (highest rated) and your most played games to see where there’s overlap in recommendations and those would work well for you. BGG does more than that as well, but that’s how you can use it to help narrow down your next purchase.

The Dice Tower

The Dice Tower is one of the biggest reviewing sites/YouTube channels out there. Tom Vasel and Zee Garcia are the main two personalities currently with Mike DeLisio and Roy Cannaday also putting up some content but being more involved in production. The Dice Tower does a few different things that are useful for finding board games that you might like. First and foremost is reviews, they do a lot of them. Now, reviews, I think, can be hard to get a good feel for a game from simply because it’s one persons opinion, and everyone mileage on a game might vary, but both Tom and Zee do a good job with their reviews breaking down what they like and don’t like, and generally you can see what the underlying game is and how it works, even if you don’t agree with their opinion. They also do live shows, board game news shows, top 10 lists, and more, that can be informative. If you like adventure games, they did a top 10 list for that, so you might be able to find more adventure games that you’d like. All of these are useful, but more generally informative versus specifically digging deeply into a game. Finally, there are playthroughs of games, and I highly recommend these. Though they are learning a game most of the time, so they might not seem the most enthusiastic about it, it really gives a good idea of what the game is.

GloryHoundd

GloryHoundd and Dr. GloryHogg are two YouTubers who are on a much smaller scale than The Dice Tower, but they put out a lot of useful content as well. Especially now during Covid-19, they have put out a lot of videos of playthroughs of games so it gives you a very good idea of how they work. But they also have a weekly show where they look at various Kickstarter games, generally four per week and talk about them live with their audience. If you get a good in depth breakdown of a Kickstarter, they do a really good job of it, and they do a good job selling some games to you via their interest in them, or helping point out issues. Now, with that said, they also don’t slam any Kickstarter just point out the issues that they see, and if a game isn’t for them, there are some that they talk about that they aren’t, it’s generally because of their gaming group or style versus something very bad about the game.

Man vs Meeple

Another YouTube channel, this one is a group of four main hosts who do board game reviews, Kickstarter previews, actual plays, and more content. They are very much in the same line of content as The Dice Tower, just doing it on a smaller basis. They do a great job with their Kickstarter previews and just the depth that they go into them. Definitely worth checking out with finding another voice in the gaming industry that is talking about a lot of games. Tantrum House, The Broken Meeple and Roll for Crit.

Rolling Solo

This channel is a bit more specific, as the name would imply. One of the bigger trends in board gaming has been solo gaming as of late, and not just because it becomes more of necessity with Covid-19. Adam Smith, the sole person who runs the channel, does a lot of game play, set-up, and Kickstarter preview videos. If you are a solo gamer, there are a number of channels you can check out with it, but I really appreciate what Adam does, because he goes into a lot of detail. You’ll get a very good idea of what the game is like and how it’s going to play and if it’ll be right for you. Definitely someone to see if their tastes mesh with yours if you’re a solo gamer.

Watch It Played

Now, I am keeping Watch It Played a channel by Rodney Smith, now working Pair of Dice Paradise and Chaz Marler, but Rodney does his content a bit differently. Mainly, Rodney does rules videos. So while you won’t get an opinion on the game or often anymore a playthrough of a game you do get precisely how a game is played. Through this you can often tell if a game is going to work well for you or not, or at least see if the mechanics make sense compared to what you normally play. I highly recommend it for learning how to play a game, I think in some ways, for finding a game, you need to be pretty familiar with games to get an idea if it’ll be your type of game or not by just watching a rules overview.

Now, those are just some of the resources that I use. There are others like No Pun Included, Shut Up and Sit Down that are out there and many many more that you can checkout and find out good information. I will say, with reviewers, be careful, find someone who has similar taste to yourself. I personally don’t put much weight in No Pun Included’s reviews because we have vastly different gaming tastes and I don’t get the information that I need on my style of game from them. Sure, it can be interesting to see a dissenting opinion but there are a lot of people who put a lot of stock in it. So know the types of games that the reviewer likes and understand that a review is an opinion piece and find the one that matches up with you, it might be No Pun Included, it might be Tantrum House, it might be The Dice Tower or someone I haven’t even mentioned, but find what works for you.

Do you have a favorite YouTuber or website for board game information?

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

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After a week off, I was back at it with Pandemic Legacy Season 1. How did I fair this time as I tried to save the world from diseases and drink a beer? Spoiler, the beer was drank.

Pandemic is a game where you are trying to cure the world of various diseases. However, in the Legacy version of the game, things are turned on their head, and you have to deal with even more problems. You can find out more of a description in the first Pandemic Legacy video on Malts and Meeples, or over on Board Game Geek.

Yesterday’s beer was from Destihl Brewery out of Normal Illinois. It was a blonde ale with a lot of fruits called Hawaii Five Ale. It’s a solid beer, but the peach in there is the most prominent fruit flavor and the others are kind of lost in there. I wish the flavors would be more distinct, or that the peach was balanced better with the rest of the flavors, or maybe not even there.

Bottoms up!

How did the latest game in Pandemic Legacy go? As we get closer to the end game, has anything new been revealed that will change the game going forward?

Pandemic Legacy Season 1 is a board game where you are trying to cure diseases. But as a legacy game the rules change and what you are trying to do in the game changes. You place stickers on the board, destroy cards, and unlock new rules, eventually you end up with a game that is unique from anyone else’s copy of the game. You can find more information on it over at Board Game Geek.

As for my my malt yesterday, I was drinking Fresh Haze from Deschutes Brewery. I really like most of Deschutes beers and their hoppy beers are some of my favorites. Fresh Haze is good, though I’m not always the biggest fan of hazy beers.

Bottoms up.

What’s going on in the world in this game of Pandemic Legacy? We had some surprises come when we played last time. How will that affect our game going forward?

Pandemic Legacy is a game where you are trying to cure diseases on a changing board that is unique to your game play. In the end, your game is going to look different than any other copy of the game. You can find more information about this game on Board Game Geek.

As for my beer yesterday, I drank Into It from Modist Brewing out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is a Raspberry and Lime Lager. An interesting taste up front, but it ends up just finishing like a lager, which was kind of disappointing.

Bottoms up!

I’m back again with my fifth solo played game of Pandemic Legacy Season 1. Pandemic Legacy is a cooperative board game where you are fighting back diseases, but, as a legacy game, that means that the board and cards can have permanent changes made to them, so in the end, your game will look different than any other Pandemic Legacy game.

For more information on Pandemic Legacy, check out Board Game Geek.

To go along with that, we always have an interesting beer to try. Last nights beer was from Evil Twin Brewing. It’s an interesting beer, the Sour Sun Saft, an IPA with black currant and mint. Not one that I’d highly recommend, but it was a unique flavor to try.

Bottoms up!