How To Play Pyramido: Forgotten Treasures

This is a very simple game. You make a 5 x 4 (or 4 x 5) grid. On your turn you select one of the three face-up tiles from five stacks of tiles. Your also take one of the gems next to that stack of tiles that’ll be used for scoring. Then you choose one of the facedown tiles to flip face up. After that you place your tile into your grid, and it always needs to be adjacent to another tile.

You do that until you complete your 5 x 4 grid. At that point in time you spend your gems to activate the area matching the color of that gem. Or you spend two wild gems to activate an area. And you decide which ones you want to activate.

Because after you complete that first round of building and scoring, you do it again. But now it’s a smaller area you are filling in. You leave the outside rows and columns empty and repeat the process. And you do that until there is a single tile on top.

Whomever has the most points from scoring their gems at the end of the game is going to win.

What Doesn’t Work?

This is an abstract game, so if you wanted theme in the game, it isn’t there. This idea of “forgotten treasures” in the title is just the gems. I think by looking at the game that is pretty obvious, but that’s something I wanted to call out. Because, I think the title does indicate there might be something thematic or adventure like about the game, this is a pure abstract game. Something I normally don’t love, but this is my only negative/word of warning.

What Works?

Turns are great and simple. I love how fast they go. You do need to think about things once in a while. Do I take that slightly worse tile in order to get the better gem for scoring. Or maybe will that come back to me again. But it’s very simple, I grab a tile, grab a gem, flip a tile, and you can take your turn while I place my tile. So the game, even on BGA being played asynchronously is one that can just fly if people happen to be online at the same time.

I also like the scoring in the game. I think that works really well. You activate the area(s) that you want to score by spending gems. But you also can overpay as well. If you pay two extra gems from the ones you collected when playing tiles, you score the ones printed on the tiles twice. So you if create a great area, then it might be worth to activate that one twice versus another lesser scoring area once. But that all depends on you having the right color of gems.

The pyramid building is the final thing that I want to talk about. Because you build up and leave an open row/column around the edge every time that sets up some scoring as well. If I pick and place tiles so that the gems on those tiles are at the edge of the are, they score throughout the whole game, as long as I activate that area. Even if that area isn’t on one of the tiles on top, I can always activate it along the edge. So I might want to focus on building out a specific area.

Who Is Pyramido: Forgotten Treasures For?

I think this is a great game for a lot of people. For gamers, it might be a little bit less thinky than they might hope for an abstract game. But for more casual gamers or people who maybe don’t play many games, this is an easy one to learn. And for those gamers, I do think the game offers a few good decisions each turn which works well. But I could see this as a game that becomes a family holiday favorite or something like that easily.

Final Thoughts on Pyramido: Forgotten Treasures

I enjoy Pyramido: Forgotten Treasures. And you know from some of my other reviews, like Harmonies, that I don’t always love abstract games. But this one works for me. I think it works for a few reasons that I mentioned above. But mainly, I think it works because you need to be a little bit adaptive as you play. But it still lets you come up with a plan for what you want to do and what you want to shoot for as you play the game.

And the game is fast. I think that is also a great element for the game. I said that it’s fast when you play it on BGA. And in person this game would just fly as you play it. So it just works really nicely that way for me as well while giving you a few clever things to think about. Mainly, how do you layer up your pyramid and when do you go from that really big scoring round, or do you just score everything (or as much as you can) once per level of the pyramid?

My Grade: B+
Strategy: B+
Luck: C-

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How To Play Lucky Numbers

Lucky Numbers is a pretty simple game where your goal is to get both your rows and columns into descending order. All players play with a four by four grid. At the start of the game, four numbers are seeded from the top left corner and work diagonally down to the bottom right.

From that point on, you draw a face down clover tile and place it in your board. Or you take a face up clover tile and place it on your board. That is how turns work. Your goal is to get those columns and rows both into descending order. Whoever is the first to complete that wins the game.

What Doesn’t Work?

The game is lucky. I expect you guessed that with a name like Lucky Numbers. But Lucky Numbers is a very lucky game. I draw a tile and I get what I want, that is great. You draw a tile and you don’t, that is unfortunate. And if I draw a one and already have one, well, that means the next person is getting their ideal top left clover. So you may set up another player on your turn.

What Works?

Firstly the speed of the game is great. Now for the sake of Lucky Numbers this is not the ideal first thing to talk about. But Lucky Numbers is a filler game. And as a filler game, I want it to play quickly and it really does. A turn is simple and generally you just draw a face down tile.

I enjoy as well the puzzle aspect of the game. It reminds me of something like Rack-o, but this is being done over both rows and columns. So there is a familiar aspect to the puzzle. But it is also more than the classic game. I think that is a nice addition to it. And limiting the numbers to 1 to 20 (once in the pool per player) is a nice touch as well. Because with Rack-o you may search for one of three numbers out of 100. Here you play with a much smaller range.

The final element that I want to talk about is when you replace a number you have. I think that is where some of the choice or observance of the game comes in. Mainly, I want to put out a tile you don’t want to use. So I need to think about what I want to do for sure. Because sometimes I might give you the win if I am not careful. So maybe I need to press my luck versus take a face up tile. Or maybe hold off on swapping out a tile until I complete the rest of my board. This could be a negative in a two player game, but only if players don’t plan well.

Who Is Lucky Numbers For?

I think this is a game for people who want a filler. But not your traditional game night filler. I think it’s more of a game for people who want a filler game and play casually. It falls into the camp of games that are easy to teach my parents. They understand Rack-o. Or it is going to be a game that I can play with my kid while he is pretty young. There is no element of the game that is too complex. So it is a wide reaching game, just maybe not a heavier game night filler.

Final Thoughts on Lucky Numbers

I think Lucky Numbers is a fun game. And I see why people generally enjoy it. I also understand why people generally don’t talk about it. Lucky Numbers isn’t going to be anyone’s favorite game on Board Game Geek. But I expect a lot of people will enjoy it for what it is.

Is the game very lucky yes. But it doesn’t hide that fact. Nor is it going to be a thinky game. But if you expect it to be a Rack-o variant that offers more than Rack-o does in terms of blocking people and puzzling out what numbers are still available or not, it is better. It is just not going to be anything more than that. And it is one of those games where it is fine it isn’t anything more. Because sometimes a game should just be simple.

There is a solo mode as well that I want to play. Which is basically set-up the board and see if you can solve a swapping puzzle in the number of turns suggested. I expect that, unless my family loves the game, I’ll play through some of those and move on from the game. But that’s just because I’ll gladly play it but won’t suggest it.

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

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Skulk Hollow is an asymmetrical strategic game where one player takes on the role of foxes who live in the area and the other player ancient guardians that have awoken. The Foxen are trying to disable the guardians while avoiding having their leader perish. To do this, they have to get close enough to the guardian and either shoot them or leap onto them and hack away with their swords. The Guardian, on the other hand is trying to take out to Foxen leader, but they’ll also have some additional objective. It might be getting a certain number of tentacles into play or just taking out a certain number of the foxen heroes. Whomever completes their objective first wins the game.

The game play is pretty simple. Each player has a certain number of cards in their hand and they can play a number, this varies for the Guardians as there are several different ones out of the box that can have varying numbers. These all you to move, attack, maybe heal, leap onto the guardian, or whatever it might be. What’s impressive is that while the Foxen always have the same decks, each Guardian has their own unique deck, and that’s because all the guardians have their own unique ability. Raptra can fly whereas Grak can stomp, so those abilities show up uniquely on the Guardians own deck. Some of the Guardians, and some of the Foxen folk can augment their turn by having spent cards to collect what basically amounts to energy, which can allow them to take various free actions as well by spending the cubes. The game really gets down into a game play where you are trying to guess what your opponent has in their hand and using your cards as efficiently as possible.

I’ve talked some about what makes the two sides asymmetrical and how the guardians all play differently and have different objectives, but it isn’t just them. The Foxen also have the ability to change up their faction. With the Foxen you have the ability to change out your leader. In the base game, they suggest that you go with the Foxen King who has more health than the other Foxen leaders but no special abilities. The abilities of the Foxen leaders can be healing or giving additional moves or pulling cards back from the discard pile. That can change up how the Foxen play as well, and really adds to the replayability of the game. Just out of the box, you have four guardians and four leaders, so you have 32 unique plays of the game with playing both sides once in each combo, which should be plenty to allow you to go back and try a set-up again with it feeling different.

Thus far it’s mainly been about the game play. But I’d be remiss not to talk about the quality of the game. I’ve been very impressed with the quality of Pencil First games and this game definitely keep the standard high. The Foxen meeples are nice, the cards a great, and the boards for the different Guardians are really nice as is the board of the Foxen lands. But what brings the quality level up a lot is the production quality of the guardians. This could have been a game where they created plastic molds and we ended up with impressively detailed minis, but they didn’t do that, because that wouldn’t have matched the aesthetic of the rest of the game, instead we got wood meeples for each guardian. But they aren’t your classic meeple sculpt, they are amazing and fairly large cut outs that match the shape of the monster board. So it’s a very unique cut that makes each Guardian feel unique, and some of them come with extra wooden pieces as well, such as Raptra with a cloud for when they are flying. This really makes the game pop on the table and gives it a similar aesthetic feel to Root.

Now, the game isn’t perfect. You can get into situations where one or the other side will just slowly bleed until they are gone, but they can prolong the game. This happened in a play that I had and while 40 minutes seems generally accurate for the game, that play took over an hour. There was a bit of teaching to that time, but it reached a point where I was pretty sure I was going to lose as the Guardian, but , not being familiar enough with the game, we just didn’t want to scoop. I think especially with the more basic Foxen leader and Guardian this is more apt to happen because of how the winning condition is combat. So I’d be healing to not be able to do something to then have it taken away to heal again, and repeated for a while. This isn’t a massive negative to me, mainly because, I haven’t found this to be the normal for the game. And maybe with a bit better luck in terms of card draw I could have gotten out of it, but it didn’t happen. Just know that it is possible that sometimes one side could be in a position that it’s nearly impossible for them to come back from but not quite dead and that last little bit can be slow.

Overall, this is a really fun game. I think the rules are simple enough and the strategy/tactics are high enough that it is a good game for both more casual players are board gamers. The look of the game also helps a ton because of how cute the artwork is. One of the artists has worked on Disney projects before, and this has an animated Robin Hood feel to it’s look. I think that’ll help sell people getting the game to the table. Skulk Hollow is a good two player game that has an appeal for most people, I’d think.

Overall Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: B+
Casual Grade: B

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It might be a bad idea to hire a bunch of blind fireworks employees, but that’s the theory behind Hanabi, you, and everyone else you’re playing with, are trying to create the best fireworks show possible, but you can’t see your own hand of cards. In fact, they are facing away from you so that everyone else can see them. On your turn you can do one of three things, you can spend a clue token to give someone a clue about the fireworks that they have, you can either point to all the cards of a certain number of all the cards of a certain color in their hand and let them know what the number or color is. Or you can play down a card onto a firework either start a firework, playing the one card, or to continue a firework, playing the next highest number of that color. Or, finally, you can discard a card to get back a clue token. If there aren’t clue tokens, you can’t give a clue, so hopefully you know what’s safe in your hand to discard or play.

This game has a ton of fun tension to it. Does the person who is coming up know what to do, can you give them a clue that will keep them from discarding the only five of a color and maybe discard a one that has already been played. The mechanics of the game are really simple for the amount of tension that it causes. Sometimes, you think you have the perfect clue, because you want them to know that they have a blue four, but, then you realize that they have more blue cards and they have more fours, so it won’t focus them in on a single card. Or maybe you want to let them know that they can discard a card so you can get another clue back, but is that the best use of your clue to get a clue? But sometimes there might not be a better option.

Hanabi is one of those games that the longer you play it, the better you’re going to get at it, because you’ll know what the better clues are. And, I think that is what really makes Hanabi shine as a game. Mainly because if you can remember where cards are in your hand and previous clues, clues for you can then be built upon. Maybe blue isn’t that useful and four isn’t that useful, but using both will help you get to the blue four, but hopefully will also let people know about other parts of their hand. For example, if they can see the blue five, and the blue fireworks are at a 3, they know that their other blue card isn’t needed. This, however, requires both the clues given to be good and that the person can remember, and while I think that it’s possible to do both, it’s really hard to know since, you don’t know what five cards you have in your own hand perfectly.

For me, this is one of those games that when it gets to the table, because it plays fast, 15-30 minutes depending on number of players and familiarity with the game, it generally gets played a second time, and maybe a third. Now, I can see how this might go over poorly, I’ve played with different groups and it’s gone over well, but especially for a new person into a group of experienced players, they won’t understand the full strategy of giving clues, because of inexperience. If this leads to visible frustration in the more experienced players, I can definitely see that souring the experience for the new player. And if you are a player who would get frustrated, I can understand not wanting to teach it, especially if you are going for the elusive 25 point perfect victory. But generally, this is a game that’ll get played twice and because I haven’t gotten the perfect 25 and no one I’ve played with has, we always want to try and do better the second time.

Piggy backing off of what I just said, I think that is one of the things that makes this a good cooperative game. And while not all cooperative games do this, I think that this game and Letter Jam which uses a number of similar things to Hanabi, do well is create that score that you always want to better. I assume that you could end up getting perfect scores on both and decide that you’re done with them because you can’t get better, but I think that isn’t that likely to happen or happen often that Hanabi is always going to be a challenge. And the fact that the deck is a random shuffle means that all the games are going to be different, though you’ll go through all of the cards.

Overall, you can tell that I really enjoy this game. I really like cooperative games, and I like that this one comes in a small package. Not only that, but it also does something that is different. People understand the idea of playing cards down in ascending order, but Hanabi is a twist upon that they won’t have seen. I’ve had good luck with this in several settings and player counts. I think it’s better at a higher count because you have more options of clues to give, but at two players it was fun as well. It’s been a while since I’ve played this one, but, now I want to play it again. And because of the time frame for it, it is one that I can pull out and get to the table easier.

Overall Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: B
Casual Grade: B+

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Krosmaster Arena is one of these new games. I tossed 1.0 onto the end of the article title because they do have a 2.0, but this one is generally known as just Krosmaster Arena. This is a gem collecting, gem stealing, knocking your opponents out on a strategical battle map sort of game. It sounds really complicated, and when we bring it back out, we’ll play the full game as it was meant to be played. But they know it’s kind of complicated, so the rules are great and walk you through everything. In fact, they’ll teach you a core concept and then create a little scenario for you in the rule book that you can play so you get the rules down. It then builds upon the previous rules that you’ve learned and you learn how to play it by actually playing it. It’s a really good way to learn the game that more companies should work with.

What makes Krosmaster as enjoyable as it is, and I do enjoy it a lot, is the awesome little figures that you get. These figures are really detailed, and portray the different characters that you can play in the game. The base game starts with eight characters, which, when you play the full game is enough for two teams. Just look and see how great these characters look. Each character has their own special abilities, so that when you select your team, you can really tailor it to how you want to play. This is even brought more to light with the plethora of expansions that they have. Each of these expansions comes with four completely new and unique characters as well, and while they eventually get into the land of a slightly tweaked character, the minis are always amazing to see.

Each of these characters has some key things to look at. The first is their HP, this is how much damage they can take before they are knocked out. They also have AP and MP. AP is action points, and MP is movement points. They determine how much you can do and how far you can move on your turn. The characters then have different attacks, some of them, like Bill Tell, have ranged attacks where they really don’t want to be next to someone, whereas other characters have no ranged attacks and are going to try and keep you from leaving. There are then special rules that allow you to grab someone easier, break away easier, defend better, or possibly do more damage. It makes it really interesting to look at the characters and figure out what you want to do.

The goal of the game is to either be the last one standing, which is what they teach you about as you play, but the main game, you are racing to collect the most gold medallions. You can do this by knocking out an opposing player or you can collect gold pieces. In a last person standing game, you can feel like you might have some characters that are under powered, or don’t have anything useful to do that turn, but now, you have the ability to collect gold coins with them. You can even spend your gold coins, instead of getting a medallion with them, to buy upgrades for your characters.This changes up the dynamic of the game, and makes it less about conflict. However, playing the full game, you are limited to two players, or to players playing on teams with each other.

This is a game, that just for the last one standing style of play, I’ve enjoyed a lot. It’s fun to look at and has some really great pieces. It also is really simple to play if you want to play the basic version of the game, and because of how they created the rules, a little time consuming to learn, but you really learn the rules. And the minis are just so fun to look at, the amount of personality in each one is great. I’d definitely recommend this game, and I think it’s one that a non-gamer could pick up pretty easily, however, someone who is more of a strategist is probably going to have the advantage a lot of the time. It’s also a lot of fun for people to just pick a character and battle it out, so that could be done with up to 8 people if you really wanted, so it can work well for a big old battle royale and then everyone is on much more even footing.

Overall Grade: B+

Casual Grade: C-

Game Grade: B+

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