Lucky Numbers Solo Mode

Let me start out by saying, this isn’t a bad solo mode. But you can tell as I was playing it, I don’t find it great. Mainly because it’s very different from the actual game. And because the puzzles felt like they were lacking. It gives you a target number of moves to do it in, and I think at least once I found a faster way to do it than the game said. So the challenge isn’t there.

I compare this to something like the Relics of Rajavihara which gives you a puzzle each game to figure out. That one the puzzles were really interesting and felt like a challenge. How the game changed up what the blocks did, that felt unique and the game grew with you. In Lucky Numbers as the puzzles became harder the scale of difficulty moved up extremely slowly. So slowly that I don’t know you need anything with fewer than four moves.

That said, I am confident that for some people this is going to be great. And in fact, it would be even better of they had an app that showed you a puzzle to set-up each day. It is going to be a nice like sudoku like thing to get people’s brains working in the morning. That is not what it was for me, though. They were just pretty easy puzzles to track to a solution and it started to get repetitive for myself.

Upcoming Streams

Join me on Monday and Wednesday’s for streams. Right now on Wednesday I stream my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2024 Edition. So come check that out and see what games make the list year. Monday is a wild card day. I plan to play a variety of games that are solo with a mix of some video games like Balatro as well.

Then on Friday is a special stream as well. My wife and I stream Baldur’s Gate 3. Find out what adventures our group is getting up to. We are still early in the game.

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Rogue Angels – The Characters

Let’s talk about the characters and how they differ in this game. It’s another area where I think the game can shine. You see me play with two characters in the game, but there are so many more. There are 16 different heroes that you can play as. And I like that variety in the game because right now I have two pretty different types of heroes.

Taria is my tank of a character. She is best at attacking and can hit from a long distance. Even her movement card that’s stronger is about her moving into range and doing damage. She also has an area affect damage that she can do which makes her better when she finds herself surrounded.

Gia on the other hand, they are more on the stealth and tactical side of the game. Yes, Gia can dish out some damage when need be, but their cloaking and their ability to interact with objects at range really sets them up to be the one who infiltrates areas.

Now, those show two of them like I said before. And right now I’m just playing with two because it makes it easier on me. In the prototype box there are a total of four characters to play. And you might see some or one of them later on. Why, because Rogue Angels is about getting attached and roll playing your characters. But survival is not guaranteed. When you die, you pick a new character. So the campaign continues just with someone new for you.

Upcoming Streams

On Monday I stream at 9 PM Central. That is sometimes a bit hit or miss, but that’s the goal. And I do small solo game plays. That is going to be interspersed with learning to paint. I am not going to be teaching you how to paint, I’m going to be learning myself. So join me on Monday for solo gaming or painting.

On Wednesdays, well, I said that I plan to play at least 10 games of Rogue Angels. This is going to continue how I play my solo campaign games on the channel. My goal, play four different campaigns 10 times each. It’s tricky, but I think that I can do it. That is at 8 PM Central time for the campaign games. The next part of Rogue Angels can be found coming up here.

And if you want to know when I go live, the best way is to subscribe. When you subscribe, click that notification bell and you’ll get an alert whenever I’m going to go live. Follow the link – here – to subscribe.

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Not Every Board Game Needs A…

Campaign Mode

Let’s start off with an easy one. Not every board game needs a campaign mode. And I do think that this is the one where most often it works out fine. Why, because games with campaign modes generally were given a campaign mode at the start of the process. It wasn’t tacked on later. But that’s going to be what I say needs to be done when thinking about a campaign mode, did you plan one from the beginning?

Minis

Let’s tackle another similar one. Does your game need minis?

Again, probably not. I get it that there are a bunch of people out there whose hobby is to buy board games and paint minis. Mine is to buy board games, dream about painting minis, and then play the board games. Not that most painters don’t play them, but there are those who painting is their hobby.

But not every game needs minis. You, the publisher, just need to make sure that you handle it well. A poorly cut cardboard standee doesn’t cut it. Acrylic standees, those are great, full art, see through so block less of the board, and they look cool. And because they are full art, I don’t need to paint them. Or screen printed meeples, also awesome. It’s about getting away from the grey plastic, but not phoning it in.

Solo Mode

I love a good solo mode. I play lots of games solo. You watch them over on Malts and Meeples YouTube. But not every game needs a solo mode. Does the game make sense to have one?

Let’s start by looking at cooperative games. That basically always needs a solo mode. But, really, it already has a two handed solo mode baked into the game. So even if there isn’t an official one, most cooperative games, unless there is specific hidden information, are easy to be as solo games.

But with competitive games, how much does it make sense to have one? Sometimes the answer is a lot. Without much effort or fundamentally changing the game too much, it works. But if playing the solo mode becomes so much work that it feels like you’re playing another game completely, skip it. Don’t pretend you have a solo mode. If solo mode works great but it’s very different from the multiplayer, congrats you developed a solo game, not a solo mode.

Room for Sleeves

This is the first one where I generally don’t like them. I like a good solo mode, or campaign, or minis. But room for sleeves, that rarely, if every matters for me. And the games I sleeve, in fact, I got rid of the insert for those games because it doesn’t work with sleeves, and I don’t care.

I care more about when you put in so much room for cards that the cards can’t stand up straight. There is so much space that keeping everything sorted doesn’t work.

When I am on a Kickstarter or Gamefound, I see comments asking for rooms for sleeves. I see a lot of them, often from the same few people over and over again. Publishers, most people don’t care about sleeves. And maybe you do. Maybe you want to get room for sleeves in your box. But still plan for the majority of people who don’t sleeve.

Blocks of soft foam are great. You can use them to keep the cards from sliding around. And if someone wants to sleeve, they can sleeve. There is room for that, but for a non-sleever, like myself, I don’t need to hope my cards don’t slide around and shuffle themselves in the box because of how much room there is.

The Same Theme

There are two main areas that I think this shows up. A game having generic fantasy as the theme. Or, and possibly more common, trading goods in the Mediterranean. That is a boring theme, and fantasy done wrong is a boring theme as well. It’s just generic, both of these are just very bland and generic.

You want your game to stand out. And maybe you’re a great enough designer that you don’t need that. You can turn out generic beige euro after beige euro. But most people, that means a game gets lost in a shuffle.

So, be creative in a way that makes sense. There is of course a game that is trading in the Mediterranean with cats instead of people, not creative. But then you have games like Oathsworn, Tainted Grail, Roll Player Adventures, Gloomhaven, and Too Many Bones that create unique fantasy settings. It is possible, it requires more work, but don’t create boring settings and themes.

Different Modes

This might be the same as having a solo mode. Or it might be the same as having a campaign. But it’s more than that. Some games come with six different ways you can play them. Cooperative, competitive, solo, campaign, roll and write, etc. that is just silly.

But rarely, if ever, do I think you should give a game you put out a cooperative, semi cooperative, and competitive mode. Solo or campaign, we went over those, they make sense, at times.

But when I see those other three for a single game and a single campaign, my assumption is, one of them is solid. The other two are probably poor, and the best one isn’t as good as it could be. Too much time went into creating three games in one box, that the game it started as didn’t have time to fully bake.

So when do you do this? I think the answer is never. Now, maybe your game is the exception. But rarely does a game need all of those things. And rarely are all of them ready at the same time. So do what Dice Throne did. I own a ton of Dice Throne. If I wanted to play it cooperatively, they did a separate campaign for cooperative. Make it it’s own thing so that you truly focus on a single game at a time.

What Do You Think Not All Board Games Need?

I think there are more. There are a lot of things and some that I only alluded to. Like, not every game needs a roll and write version of it. Most of them aren’t great. But what do you think I missed, do you have any standouts?

And I find that none of these are hard and fast rules. It’s more about making sure you are on a track and focusing on what the game is actually about. Don’t bog it down because you want to keep up with the Joneses in terms of how board games are made.

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Ascension X: War of Shadows – Game Play

So let’s talk a little bit about this version of the game versus others. I won’t bore you with the details of how the main mechanisms of the game work. I talk through deck building some at the start of the stream and why I like Ascension. But let’s talk about what War of Shadows brings to the game.

And honestly, it’s not that much, so this will be pretty quick. It brings two things to the game. The first being that it adds in dark and light. This is the biggest change to the game. With the dark and light, depending on which you have more of, you can activate abilities on your cards. Light cards might have a special power if there are more light cards or vice-a-versa. And this is true for the game state when you play that card.

It is an interesting decision that way. I might purchase a dark card so that I can hopefully add a light card to the row and get the added benefits of the light cards I haven’t played yet. It’s not a guaranteed strategy, I might flip another dark card. But it is something to think about as you plan out your turn.

The other new thing is that some cards cost damage. Normally damage is just for monsters. But some cards cost credits or money and then the damage. This creates some interesting situations. It wasn’t a major concern in solo play, but I can see how it’d be interesting in multiplayer. Do I kill a monster but that might lock me out of getting some of the better cards. It adds in another benefit versus cost to weigh.

Upcoming Streams

So let’s start out with the easy one, on Wednesday, tomorrow, I am going to be playing more ISS Vanguard. You can prep for that by clicking the notification bell here. It’s going to be another ship phase, so let’s see how that goes with what I’ve picked up from my discoveries the time before and what phases of the ship that I want to activate this time.

Then on Monday, my plan is to unbox The Isofarian Guard. If you want a preview you can read up on it here. But it is supposed to get delivered today and it’s a big game to unbox. I’m excited to see everything in this solo board game. One that I plan on streaming on Malts and Meeples sometime coming up here, likely after ISS Vanguard. So join me for that to see what the game looks like.

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Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Rules

So, I talked about this a bit at the end of the stream because that play was very fast. How easy is it to learn the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game? My answer would be that it is okay. It is not the easiest game to learn, but it is also not the hardest.

It helps, in some ways that there is a tutorial scenario that you play through. And that it generally walks you through your first turn. But what I wish there was more of, in the rules, were examples on the pages. You get a lot of text, but more examples as you go along. What does a specific action look like. When you fight a monster, write a step by step of how it works. Then the same with acquiring a boon. And then the same with coming up against a barrier.

The rules are just fine. But they could be made great by more examples. Now there is a big example at the end, but I prefer examples throughout. I like it when they show me how to do something, in an example, when I learn it. Not when I am trying to remember everything and might be wondering why they didn’t do a particular step because I’m putting monster combat rules into my check for a boon.

Upcoming Streams

So, two streams for sure coming up. The first being on next Monday. Borrowing from a topic that BoardGameCo did a Top 10 on. I present my Top 10 Crowdfunding that I’d back again. Or, in other words, I can only back 10 Crowdfunding campaigns, which 10 would they be? And come prepared, if you want, with your 10 as well.

And then on Wednesday, game 3 of Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. It’ll be a new scenario this time as I got the win. So new scenario, new location, and some new story to go along with it. Join me at 8 PM on Wednesday for that one.

But I want to talk about an upcoming video(s) that I want to do. I want to start covering more crowdfunding. As I said in the video with Backerkit coming into the mix, it’s going to be easier to miss campaigns. You need to go to Gamefound, Backerkit and Kickstarter to see everything. There are other channels that cover it all, but I want to start doing more coverage as well. I think I know what I want it to be.

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Pros

• Roll and Write
• Designer Pedigree
• Price Point
• Box Art
• Solo Mode
• Game Weight

Cons

• Component Art
• Game Weight

The Page

This is a solid page. This company has put out other roll and write games, Three Sisters and Fleet: The Dice Game, though not all under their own company name. So they know the industry, so they created a solid page for laying out information about their game.

Much like I knock the art components some, I do think that the page looks a little bit less polished than it could. Now, some of that is that there are a lot of companies out there doing amazing jobs and spending a lot of time and money on the pages. I don’t really need a company to do that, but it is going to make a smaller roll and write game look even smaller with the page that it has.

The Game

Motor City, much like Three Sisters and Fleet: The Dice Game, looks like a game with a ton going on in it. There are multiple sheets, which I’m okay with. I like that the sheets are at least double sided, so I’m not going through my sheets twice as fast as I would normally. Plus, I’d likely laminate some sheets so that I can replay forever.

My concern after seeing reviews for Three Sisters and having played Fleet: The Dice Game is about the weight of this roll and write. Two sheets means a lot to keep track of. At the same time, I keep on considering buying a very heavy roll and write, Hadrian’s Wall. The question I ask around heavier roll and write games is how many do I really need?

Back or Brick

You might be able to guess where I am landing with this one, for me this is a Brick. And some of that was after watching the preview that BoardGameCo did for it. I’m not too concerned about it being too complex for me, but I also don’t think it’s a roll and write I’d teach others. I have a number of roll and write games I generally play solo, so do I want another. I decided on no, because I like Fleet: The Dice Game, but it didn’t blow me away. Maybe it’ll grow with more plays. And I looked at Three Sisters, but I’m glad I didn’t back it.

But let me know your thoughts, is Motor City a Back or Brick?

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Pros

• The aesthetic
• Abstract/simple to teach game
• Toy factor
• Solo Mode on Kickstarter

Cons

• Abstract game
• Triangle Box
• Funding Level
• Price

The Page

Breaking Games is another one of those Kickstarter companies that has previous projects. I don’t throw in it as a pro anymore, because a lot of the games I talk about are the ones that already have an established base and knowledge of Kickstarters.

But they do a good job on the page. However, there are a few things that stood out to me on the page. Firstly, the funding level is really high. I don’t doubt with something that has electronics like Kroma does that it costs a fair amount to make. And in particular, it costs a lot to make only a few of it. So the higher funding level means that they can keep the price down.

With that said, the price is not cheap. Shipping is actually really good but $79 for the game and the two added things from the Kickstarter are a solo mode, I like, and a triangle box, I don’t like. This is an abstract game that if you get a copy of it you’re probably in for about $85. I’m not sure that the toy factor and uniqueness of the game is going to make up for that.

But in terms of the information, they do a good job of laying it out. I don’t have to search hard to find the information that I want on the game. They have a playthrough and a number of previews for it. So you can get a good idea if you like the game or not.

The Game

The game itself has some really cool things going on in it. It is a pretty simple game, though. You draw a tile from a bag and you put it onto the board. But you can stack the tiles up two levels so that these translucent tiles have light shining through them. So if you stack blue and red you get purple or red and yellow you get orange. And each player has their own combination color that they are trying to create the largest area of.

That is how the game works, but the game takes it up a level because of that light and the translucent tiles. It really makes it something more interesting and unique to do with creating colors. However, is that enough for this game? I honestly don’t have that much more to say about the game than the solo mode looks interesting. It seems to be challenged based as you draw things out of the bag and are trying to create the certain shapes, I’m assuming. So that is fun that they added it.

Back or Brick

I’m cutting to the chase, this is a Brick for me, and I want to play the game. So how does that work. It’s an $85+ abstract game, and that is just too steep. I’d pay $40 + shipping for this game so that is almost half of what it is going to cost to get the game. However, the concept of the game is really cool. This is a game that would be perfect to put on a demo table in a game store at a mall. People would see it and stop. You’d be able to sell it for $50+ if people could get their hands on it.

I hope that this game funds. I don’t think that people who back it will be disappointed that they got it. For me, the price is just a little bit too steep. But I suspect that Breaking Games needs to Kickstart it first so that they can create the initial product to get it into those game stores and do the business this game can do. I also think that this would be a good gift for someone who likes those lighter abstract games, but just not for me.

How about for you, is this game a Back or a Brick?

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