The Gamefound Feast

Gothic: A Shadow’s Quest by THQ Nordic

This one is based off of a video game. And THQ Nordic is actually the company who is the creator of the video game, so they are doing their own game. It’s interesting to see them doing it themselves. The only other thing I know like this is when Riot Games made Mechs vs Minions. So I find it cool. I don’t know a ton about Gothic or really anything. But this looks like my type of games, a lot of minis, standees, monsters, and it looks fun. I like a dark gothic setting for a game.

The video game is an adventure RPG, so the board game is going to be like that as well. And that sounds like a lot of fun to me. I like that you play on three different levels in this game, explore the world, get missions and level up in camp, and then if it’s a combat quest, you are going to be doing more tactical combat. It’s extremely interesting to me because this is really my type of game.

Follow the Gothic: A Shadow’s Quest here.

Sword & Sorcery on Teburu

This isn’t a new game, it’s Sword & Sorcery a campaign game that I like. However, Teburu is a digital board for your game. That means that with the app and Teburu you are going to be play it without all the book keeping that was part of Sword & Sorcery. However, I will say, this one isn’t that much for me. I thought that Sword & Sorcery was fine, but I didn’t love it. Maybe it would make it easier, but you’d still have so much stuff to pull out and set-up. But if you’re up for it, it’s going to be good for a lot of people.

And while I’m not going to get it because there is the cost of the Teburu system. But the enemy AI definitely was a bit annoying. So maybe it would make it smoother and make it simpler to get to the table. But like I said, it’s rebuying a game that I sold and it’s buying technology which I’m interested in, for the Vampire the Masquerade game, but less so for this.

Follow the Sword & Sorcery Teburu Campaign here.

The Megan 2.0 Gaming Table from Geeknson

Not a board game, but Geeknson is one of the big board game table company out there. I don’t need a board game table, I have a Jasper from AllPlay/BoardGameTables, and it’s great. So I will just say this, I like board game tables. And I think as long as you get one from a good company, Geeknson, AllPlay, Wyrmwood and others, you are going to get something that’s great and that’ll help.

Follow the Geeknson The Megan 2.0 campaign here.

Empress Deck and Companion Book for 5th Edition D&D by Weird Works

This is going to be an addition for D&D. It’s just going to be a way to mess with things like initiative, and more as well. This sounds like an interesting addition but not something that I feel like I need. It’s basically a custom tarot deck that is going to be able to help with “problems” but it’s something that could be a bit of fun to do. Like I said, though, not going to be for me. The companion book sounds slightly more interesting, but not that much more interesting. It’s going to be some more content with probably how to use the deck.

Follow The Empress Deck & Companion Book here.

Ascendency: Underworld from OneMoreTurnGames

This is an expansion to Ascendancy. This game looks like it has a lot going on with it. Ascendancy is an area control 4x style of game. And it is a game that can play solo. For me, it’s one that I looked at when the first campaign came out. I’m not super sold that it’s going to be a game for me, but there are elements that are really interesting about it. But do I need a huge game like this, maybe? It’s so tough because I want to play games like this, but there is so much.

Follow Ascendancy Underworld here.

Nanty Narking: Rise of Cthulhu from Phalanx

This is bringing back the game Nanty Narking. I know really nothing about this game. It was originally Discworld, then it became Nanty Narking. I don’t know much of anything about the game which is interesting. Mainly because I feel like I know about so many different games. From what it looks like, this is still a competitive game, now the players can lose together with Cthulhu driving madness. I’m not feeling this game too much though.

Follow Nanty Narking: Rise of Cthulhu here.

Dark Rituals Malleus Maleficarum from Maki Games

I am not familiar with Dark Ritual. This is a reprint of the game. It’s a one versus all game and it’s not super interesting to me. Yes, the game is cool and dark looking, but if you like one versus all games then it might be for you. But it’s an easy pass for me.

Follow Dark Rituals Malleus Malefacarum here.

Grimdark Future: Broken Truth by One Page Rules

This is going to be a miniatures game. I know nothing about this setting or system of the Grimdark Future universe. This is the first time that they are doing minis. It’s a miniatures war game which is not my cup of tea. So sure, it’s probably interesting and the minis look very solid. But it’s not for me. If you want a one page rules to get into the game, it’s going to be an easy one to get into as the rules are free online.

Follow Grimdark Future: Broken Truth here.

Starside: Promethean Crusade from Archon Studio

This is another miniatures sure. If I wanted to jump into a miniatures game, there are a lot of options. This is going to be a fleet command game, so that’s different. I do like the idea of a space game I think more as a miniatures game. That said, I’m not diving into playing miniatures game. But with Starside and Grimdark Future there are two solid options for people who want to jump in.

Follow Starside: Promethean Crusade here.

Dare the Unknown: A NASA Board Game from Space Delirium

This one is interesting, this is one that is based on reality. The crazy part is that is truly NASA licensed. You want to bring back your rockets to earth, be the first one to get them back. It is their first board game, though they have done other crowdfunding campaigns. I like that it’s licensed by NASA but it’s not going to be game that I’m super excited for. I do think it’s going to be a nice family weight game potentially or at least that is going to be the target, which is great for a theme like NASA.

Follow Dare the Unknown: A NASA Board Game here.

Fear Itself – Shattered Veil Edition from Pelgrane Press

This is another table top RPG game. I think this is going to be a chance for people to play in their favorite horror films. They say that it’s great for a one shot game. I know it’s not going to be one that I want to back. I like my D&D and I want to keep it at that. And really, I don’t have much time to dive into more when it comes to RPG, D&D keeps me plenty busy. But if you want to play a horror film as an RPG, Fear Itself is going to be great, from the sounds of it, for that.

Follow Fear Itself – Shattered Veil Edition here.

Lying Pirate – Cities of Greed Expansion from Nordic Pirate Games

Okay, first off, isn’t that company name mainly Vikings? I am not familiar with the original game, though it had about 5,000 backers. This is going to add more to the game. The aesthetic looks great to me. The game is going to be party weight game with some deduction to it, which I’m guessing is going to be like a Liar’s Dice elements to the game. The one thing that concerns a little bit about the game, which does have a good BGG ranking, is that the game, as a lighter/party/Liar’s Dice style game is that it’s an hour in length.

Follow Lying Pirates – Cities of Greed here.

Star Realms Conquest from Wise Wizard Game

This is going to be one that you know if you want or not. This is a deck building game. It’s going to be a core set. This is going to be a game that you can jump into at this point if you want. Or you can mix it in if you are already familiar with the game. That’s fun that they keep on giving new launch in points. I need to play more Star Realms before I’d consider backing this one. The nice thing is that this is a pretty small box and that means that it’s easy to get and keep adding to the game that I already have.

Follow Star Realms Conquest here.

Which Excites Me Most?

I think it’s the first one. Gothic looks like my type of game a lot. There are some other fun ones, but with more of a mix of RPG, the table, and then miniatures games, this is one where there were fewer that I was interested in. Ascendancy is probably the next highest for me, or even Sword & Sorcery Teburu, though, like I said, I thought that Sword & Sorcery was just fine. It’s more, I want to get a Teburu game sometime. The Vampire the Masquerade one is probably the spot that I’d jump in at though.

Let me know which one interests you the most.

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There are three main spots that I can think of when it comes to table top gaming. Assuming that you don’t just decide to play something like Ascension on an app because you want more of that real time interaction. Obviously, for conversation purposes you’re going to want to have a webcam ready to chat with.

Tabletopia
This software works on all platforms and you can hook your Steam account up to it. Boasting more than 800 games to play, it certainly will give you a lot of options as to what you can grab.

Tabletop Simulator
Another digital platform, also available with Steam, that you can play a lot of games through.

Zoom/Other Meeting Software
This is the one that I’ve done thus far, but also going to be the hardest to pull off, because I have the streaming set-up for Malts and Meeples, I can go ahead and do a two camera set-up. That means that in a meeting, I’m able to have a camera on myself as well as then one of the table for the game. It’s also trickier because while Tabletopia and Tabletop Simulator have all the pieces for the game, if multiple people don’t own the game, you need something with open information. However, because I played Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game with a friend and we both have it, that meant that the hidden information, what was in our hands, could be hidden because we each had a hand of cards.

I do want to check out the fully online options, but I have to say that I like the Zoom and using the streaming set-up that I did. Mainly because I still go to play with a physical game. And I think that’s a piece that’s always going to be missing from something like Tabletopia and Tabletop Simulator. Now, I don’t think that those are bad systems to use and for a lot of people they are going to be the only thing that they can use because of limitations for their set-ups. Though, a webcam pointed at the game on the table would work, so even if you aren’t able to be “face to face” because of only using a camera, you’d still be able to play with a physical copy of a game.

So besides the library that they have on the digital gaming set-ups, what are some games that would be pretty easy to play even if everyone doesn’t have a copy of a game? Some of these will be easier than others because they have a smaller footprint, but all should work online.

Pandemic
Sounds like a joke, but it isn’t, because all the cards are face up, you need a single person moving pieces and flipping cards, but the decisions are still going to be able to be made by the person whose turn it is, just maybe with asking a few questions. Pandemic can have an Alpha gamer problem that might be a little bit worse if the alpha gamer is the person who has the game, but that’s not so much a problem with the game as an issue that the alpha gamer has to deal with. And if you use Zoom, the leader can mute the person if they are talking over others.

Quoridor
A simple enough abstract game where you’re racing from one side of the board to another while placing obstacles in the way of your opponent(s). You have a limited number of walls that you can place up, so as long as you can see how many you have left, it would work well online. Again, no hidden information so you don’t need to hide what you have or face a challenge of passing information to someone in secret or acting like you don’t know that information.

Just One
Cooperative games tend to work well, and this is a good cooperative party style game. In it one person has to not see the card being held up to the camera and then picks a number, everyone else writes down a one word clue, any repeated clues aren’t displayed and then the person has to guess. This should work exactly how it does in the real world simply by people closing their eyes at the right point in time. It’s also an easy game for people who might not be gamers to join in on because of how simple the concept is.

Second Chance/Welcome To…/Criss Cross/Cat Cafe/Yahtzee
Roll and writes or flip and writes are simple where you don’t need to be passing around the dice. Even the ones where you do, if they use normal six sided dice, like Yahtzee, most people can find the right number of dice. The trickiest thing is that as a roll or flip and write, you need something to write on. So it would require people to have a printer, but on Board Game Geek you can find a lot of these sheets that you can print off. Or if you have a scanner, you can scan them in and e-mail them so that people can then print them off. While Cat Cafe and Yahtzee might require a little more work, the other three would be simple to play and give you a lot of hours of entertainment. And all of them can play good sized groups.

Scattergories
This one can also play a large group and works as a party style game for more casual gamers. It works because you just need someone to display the list and you can play on a blank sheet of paper coming up with answers. Probably the simplest one to do because someone could just literally type the list into a chat window for everyone to see.

Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game
This is one that I saw people suggesting or talking about on Facebook, I believe in the Dice Tower group. Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game is what it says, a game about figuring out who done it. And it’s an involved and complex game. There’s an online database that you use, you can google things are appropriate times, and you can easily discuss a case and actions over a meeting. You just need one person reading off the case cards and presenting the options, which I think a lot of groups do in terms of dividing up the demands of the game. Plus, you need someone to take notes as to what has been discovered.

Legacy of Dragonholt/Choose Your Own Adventure House of Danger
Story driven choose your own adventure style games work. Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game almost falls into that category, but these are really just reading through things, and House of Danger has a few dice rolls with it but it’s a six sided die so that is going to work for most people because even if people don’t have many games, they probably have a die somewhere in their house.

Small World
Last one on the list, but I’m kind of surprised as I thought about it, that it actually works. The game is simple with just putting down pieces of cardboard to take over areas. So you just need to see how many characters you have left and how many are on each spot on the board. Plus, at times, what combos are available. Yes, you would need to have a single person moving everything around on the board, but that is pretty simple, there just might be a need for some clarifying questions as to what spot to place down your characters.

Now, I’m sure there are a lot more games that could work, and certainly classic games like Chess and Checkers where there is no hidden information would work really well. But those are some that I have sitting on my shelf that jumped out to me as good options for being able to play online. And while for me this will never replace playing games with people in person, during these times, there is certainly opportunity for groups to come together and play games online through one of the ways that I mentioned.

What are some games that you think would work well to play with a web cam? Have you tried out any thus far that have been a big success or a miss?

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There are so many games that you can run in Eberron, and I’ll probably do a series on the setting coming up here soon. But just quickly about the setting, it’s pulp, noir, and magic punk. Magic is in place of technology, but they are more advanced with magical flying ships and magical trains than your standard D&D settings, mainly because we’ve only had The Forgotten Realm to this point, and Ravenloft in The Curse of Strahd.

So, what sort of campaign are we going to be running?

In Eberron the Last War has wrapped up two years ago when the day of mourning happened. This was some massive event that destroyed and contaminated the land of Cyre. At that point in time, because of what is basically a cold war standoff, because no one knows what happened in Cyre to cause the day of mourning, the war stopped. That’s the setting that we’re jumping into.

Going with something that is more classic noir, our adventuring party is going to start a campaign where they are a team of private detectives or adventurers for hire who are getting called into a situation where they have to find and rescue the love of the damsel in distress. That seems like a straight forward job, but in this setting, nothing is going to seem as simple as it looks.

This is going to be a less combat focused campaign, but when you have air ships and trains racing around the main city of the land of Khorvaire, you are going to have some good settings for those set piece combats. Especially since the Sharn, the city, is built up, rather than built out. You’re doing combat on top of a train that is doing it’s circuit 2000 feet above the ground. Doesn’t matter if you have a sigil of feather fall, it’s going to have run out well before you hit the ground.

I’d layer in the intrigue. And I’d even throw some red herrings into a game like this. I feel like that standard noir and standard pulp. If it seems obvious that it was someone who did it, suddenly they will have an air tight alibi. Or do they, was some magic employed or is something not what it seems. Keep the intrigue high, create multiple cases for the players to be working on at the same time, and then tie them all back together.

There are plenty of bad guys to choose from in Eberron because while there are definitely bad people, the good guys are even more shades of grey, again leaning into that pulp and noir sort of feel. In my campaign, I think that I would make it that one of the Outsiders, who are evil beings and bound beneath the surface in the underdark is influencing the mind of a noble into doing a bunch of kidnappings or things that will improve the outsiders place in the world and give them more influence, and they hope eventually free them.

At the same time, the reason that the outsider and exert so much influence, it’s because there is a cult worshiping that outsider and giving them more power through their worship. So the players are going to have to deal with the cult. Because if they just deal with the noble, the events start up again and the players will realize that maybe there is something greater going on than just this.

And at the same time as that, there is an artificer of some renown who has come to down and claiming to be able to create this amazing magical effect. And they are setting up equipment to show off the newest and latest and greatest thing. But, they are actually part of the cult of the outsider, just from a different location, so working independently to get the outsider freed.

And finally, it turns out that the missing damsel isn’t actually missing, or possibly doesn’t even exist. The person who hired the adventurers is actually part of a secret organization who is trying to keep the outsiders influence from spreading further, but is not allowed to act openly until the time is right. But also isn’t as competent at what they are doing as they should be and they should seem suspicious themselves, to the players.

You can see how you can tangle everything together. In Eberron, you want to set-up a lot of drama, a lot of pulp action and feeling for the players. While this is clearly more of an intrigue sort of game, do definitely have the big set piece combats and make it so that the adventurers and the bad guys can throw people off the edge of high buildings, go adventuring outside of Sharn if need be, meet powerful people, and generally have way more trouble going on than they should. Give it an epic feel, but make it feel different than your normal fantasy.

So as always, would you want to play in or run a game like this one?

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Last night we got into our third game of Pandemic Legacy Season 1.

I make a couple of corrections to mistakes that I’ve made before and try and correct them this time. If you aren’t familiar with Pandemic Legacy, you can find information here on Board Game Geek.

For the malts yesterday, I was drinking Southern Tier 2XSMASH Double IPA. This hoppy beer doesn’t really hit you in the face with the higher ABV, but shows off a good hop profile.

So join me for some Pandemic Legacy Season 1, and bottoms up!

There are two big things to note that we did, since there were two of us, when when we went through and picked events, we always selected, a ticket for yourself and one other person, and only process it if you can get both tickets. This meant that we would get into events with the other person always, and since it was our first year, it’s a good way to get a feel for what is going on and both of us will be able to keep track of it better. In future years, I could see us branching off and doing our own thing, or if we get more people to join us, then we might also see more splitting up on events.

The other thing we did was we had both of us grab the events in our wishlist, so that when the moment came to process everything, we could both hit submit for processing and whomever got onto the wait list higher would make the purchase. Turns out that the other person I’m going with was able to get in about 1000 people higher on the list than I was.

Even with that, there were several events that were sold out that we were interested in. Out of the fourteen or fifteen we had our our lists, by the time we were at the top of the queue, we were down to nine that we could get into. Once the wishlist is processed, we didn’t have to worry about our spots, so we decided to drop two and got down to seven events that we’re doing.

Overall, it ended up costing us $46 for those few events. GenCon charges for the events that you get into because, otherwise, you’d end up with people signing up for a ton of things and then just skipping out on them or doubling up on things and picking whatever one they felt like doing more. While I don’t love dishing out extra cash when I did already for the con itself, I get why, with 60,000 people that you’d need to do that.

So what are we doing?

Thursday: 3 PM
Role Player Adventures – Role Player is an interesting game where you are rolling up a D&D character, basically, and using abilities to manipulate your stats. The original game to me felt like half a game, but with a name like Adventures, I’m assuming we’re going to use our characters for something, such as adventuring, instead of just rolling them up. This one is also interesting because it’s a prototype of a game that they’ll be coming out with.

Friday:
9 AM
Savage Dresden – Our one RPG on the list, Savage World is the system that we’re going to be playing in, and I don’t know anything about that system. But the world we’re playing in, the the world of Dresden Files, and if you can’t tell, I really like the Dresden Files series, so I’m excited to play an RPG in that setting, though it won’t actually have Dresden in it.
6 PM
Village Attacks – Our most expensive game on the schedule. But this was the game that I really wanted to get into, and the other person I’m going with was excited with as well. And you do get something out of it more than just playing a game. You get a scenario with it, now you obviously need to own the game, which I don’t. But Village Attacks seems fun, because you’re playing the monsters dealing with the Villagers who are coming after you with pitchforks and torches while you just try and live your best life.

Saturday
9 AM
Ice Cool North American Championships – This one is just a bit silly, it’s the penguin flicking game that I really like. However, one that I’m just okay at. But they have a North American Championship there with a chance to go to the World Championship in Latvia. It should be a silly time, I don’t expect to do all that well, but I’ll put some effort into training, plus I can say that I competed North American Championship.
8 PM
Hobbit Drinking with Marc Gunn – I don’t know much about Marc Gunn, but apparently he does nerdy drinking songs. That should be fairly entertaining event to just sit back and enjoy. A good laid back thing after an a morning of competing at penguin flicking.

Sunday
10 AM
Harry Potter Miniatures Game – I know nothing about this game, other than that it’s a Harry Potter game. It seemed like something interesting to checkout on Sunday when things will be slowing down as a lot of people will be leaving early. We’re actually staying around that whole day, so that should be fun. All I know is that I want to be Neville.
2 PM
Marvel Legendary – Now, you know I’m not a huge fan of this game, but it’s a play and win event. So you have a chance to come out of it with something, and the other person is a huge Marvel Legendary fan. I’ve grown to like it a bit more, but it’ll be nice to not have to learn how to play a new game again.

That’s my GenCon schedule. GenCon also does one nice thing, and that’s that you can buy generic tickets. Using the generic tickets, you can get into an event you didn’t sign up for, if there is still room. So I got $6 worth of those, they come in as $2 tickets, so if an event costs $4, I’d need to use 2 tickets. But I feel like that’s a pretty nice schedule for GenCon and I’m really excited for it.

Next article on GenCon will talk about different places or things that I’m thinking about doing around the Con, since we won’t want to be there all the time, or only eat the Con food.

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Worker Placement

Worker placement is a very common mechanic in board games, an in particular in Euro games. It basically means that you’re placing out a piece to do some action or get some resource back. At the end of the game you’ve built up some collection of resources, cards, money, or points. You might like worker placement games if you like games that have a lot of thinking and a whole lot less luck. The luck can come from what cards you’re able to get, but generally you can plan out what you’re going to do for the whole game early on in the game. To me this is a knock on these game, as well as that they are often themed around trading in the Mediterranean which I don’t find exciting. For one of these games, if I’m to enjoy it, the turns have to be fast, and while there doesn’t have to be a plethora of variability in it, there shouldn’t be a single option in the game that is so strong that everyone feels like they need to follow the same path. Games like Puerto Rico have a method to what should be taken when and what actions should be done when, and that isn’t fun to me. However, Charterstone does a good job of having very fast turns with the exception of a few turns that matter the most, and to me, that’s a good worker placement game. You have lots of options, but your turns go fast so that no one is sitting there wondering what to do, and if you are sitting there thinking, you know it’s a big decision.

Deck Builder

This was one of the biggest mechanics in board games for a while with games like Dominion and Marvel Legendary leading the market. Now another mechanic is bigger and I’ll get to it in a minute. Deck Building games have everyone starting out with the same few cards in their own personal decks, then as time goes by you can purchase more cards to add to your deck customizing it so that it plays like you want it to play. In my opinion, something that is purely a deck builder, probably isn’t much of a game. Dominion, the biggest deck builder out there, has a theme that doesn’t matter to the game, and the only thing it has going for is the fact that when people know what they are doing it goes fast. There are other games that make your cards actually mean something like Xenoshyft: Onslaught, Marvel Legendary, or Clank! In! Space!. These games the cards mean more than just giving you an action, a buy, and some money, but they maintain the simplicity of the deck building for the most part.

Bag Builder

This is a subset of a Deck Builder in some ways. Instead of building up your own deck of cards you are either separately or jointly building up a bag of tokens, cubes, dice, whatever it might be, so you are drawing randomly from that. Clank! In! Space! adds this as an addition to it’s game as you’re trying to not make too much noise so Lord Eradikus doesn’t get you. Basically it’s the same thing as a deck building mechanic, just with the other possible elements.

Roll and Write

This is the biggest one out there right now and most of you probably have heard of a game that does this from a long time ago, and that’s Yahtzee. While Yahtzee is the original, it has definitely progressed beyond that at this point. Now you might be building railway lines or you could be doing city planning, but based off of what the dice say, that gives you an idea of what to fill in. Personally, I still enjoy Yahtzee and I haven’t done anything else in this mechanic, but I am tempted to pick one up sometime soon. These sorts of games tend to be fairly simple and easy to teach so they are a good faster game that you can pull out with a lot of different levels of gamers and often with larger groups as well.

Drafting

Now, I split up deck builders and bag builders, but with drafting, this can be a lot of different things. Most of the time people are going to know of card drafting, but there are games where you draft dice. What I like about drafting is that the games can range from simple games like Sagrada and Sushi Go! Party to more extensive games like Blood Rage. So it’s a mechanic in games that is pretty easy to build up to the more complex games because you have a lot of different steps along the way. With drafting, I also like the fact that it makes you make a decision. It might be obvious, like you need another eel in Sushi Go! Party otherwise you’ll lose three points, or it might be tough, because you don’t want to pass the eel to the next person getting your cards because they need the eel to score seven points, but you’re also not sure that there’s going to be another eel coming to you. Or in Blood Rage you have to determine what you want your strategy to be, do you want to get points for winning battles or maybe do you want to get troops onto the map faster, it allows you to customize your playing style.

Action Points

This is a mechanic that can be overlooked a little bit because most games that have it, like Blood Rage, also give you other mechanics that are just as interesting. However, Action Points are another one of my favorite mechanics in a game because it forces you to make tough decisions again. How many points do you want to spend to move a troop into a territory to try and take it in Blood Rage, or do you want to spend points to upgrade your troops? Something might cost two points versus one point, so is it better to do a one point action twice or a two point action once? You have a limited resource that is counting down faster than you want it to, and you never feel like you have quite enough to do everything you want, so you have to make a tough decision at some point in time. Blood Rage is a game that really focuses on this, though the drafting can dictate how important that is for you.

Hand Management

In some ways like a deck builder, hand management could be you determining and selecting different cards to be in your hand. But it can also be determining when you might play a card from your hand that might be identical to everyone else’s hand of cards or how you diversify your hand. Two games come to mind when I think about hand management that I have and they both do it in different ways. In Not Alone as the survivors of a wreck on an alien planet, you have a certain number of places you can go, so you have to determine where you want to go to avoid the alien and hope that everyone doesn’t go to the same spot or talk to determine a strategy so that you don’t all go to the same spot. But with your identical hand, you are now debating through a lot of different options that everyone has. Or in Gloomhaven, your hand is your life, if you lose cards from your hand too fast, you might die before the scenario is done. So do you use the card for the amazing ability to help kill off the monsters faster to complete the mission or do you use more basic abilities so that you can survive longer in a scenario if the scenario isn’t going fast.  Both of these games keep a good tension between using your cards or holding onto your good cards.

Area Control

Area Control is another mechanic I like, it often means that if you control a certain area you get a benefit. This is another mechanic that Blood Rage uses, as you are trying to have the strongest force in an area to pillage it and gain the improvement from the area or to complete a quest that you have. There are also some games that are more focused on area control and it is if you control all the areas you can win the game. Risk, while not a great game, is an area control game. I enjoy these game generally because they encourage conflict for all players because you can’t let anyone get too powerful. While Risk is pretty lucky, games like Cry Havoc, Blood Rage or Smallworld cut down on the luck aspect while allowing the game to flow nicely and quickly through combat or through control. That can be a downside with area control games is that the combat causes the game to bog down and you end up spending all of your time on combat or on a few turns, leaving other people waiting.

Variable Player Powers

This one is and isn’t a mechanic in my opinion. I think though it is worth calling out here as there are some people who love it. Basically, variable player powers means that each persons role in the game is going to be different. While there might be a lot of overlap, everyone has something that they can do that is unique to them. In Root, each player plays a different faction of woodland creatures, and you can see in my review of it how it works generally, but they do things in a very different way from other people having very unique player powers depending on which faction you pick. Or in Smallworld, you are taking different race and power combos. Those are extreme examples of a lot of variability, but a game like Cry Havoc, everyone is basically doing the same thing, you have slightly unique player powers. It can run a fairly large range that way from completely different powers to similar roles but slightly tweaks. Another example of that lesser change is Pandemic where people can all do the same actions, but each person also has their own unique thing they can do, and you may or may not use that unique power on a given turn.

What are some mechanics you like? What are some that I’ve forgotten as I’m sure there is a number I haven’t touched on. Are there any mechanics that you’ll actively avoid?

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This is a very pretty game as you try and get rituals started. The board has a ton of colors on it and while that can make things look busy on the board some times, in this case it helps keep things clear. There are also a lot of druid figures in the game that work very nicely in the game. Oddly enough, the fae creature artwork might be the best artwork of the game, but that artwork is hidden for the game because you don’t want people to know what color you want to get points.

There are a few interesting mechanics in this game. The first being the interaction of the hidden roles with scoring in the game. In a lot of games with hidden roles you score based off of that role and you’re trying to make it not that obvious who you are going for, and because the scoring happens for every color in a ritual. If you think that someone might be a certain color you could try and cut them out of rituals, and that guessing aspect is part of the game. But you’re also trying to hand out points evenly enough that people can’t guess which color you are. Also, if you can cause rituals to happen, you get points for kicking off the ritual.

Along with that part of the game, the action that you can take on your turn is interesting. All you do on your turn is move a druid from one location to another location until a group of druids is separated from the rest of the druids, and that’s when a ritual happens. However, things can go poorly in the ritual for the druids depending on certain conditions. If every color is present for the ritual you remove one druid of each color, so you have to think about that, but the more druids in a ritual, the more potential points that you can get. It’s a balancing act of giving out as many points as possible, creating the best rituals for your color, and trying to keep your opponents from scoring points on a good ritual.

Beyond that, with rituals, you have to think about where you are completing your ritual. There are certain bonus cards for rituals that you go through in order that adds points into the ritual. So you can add additional points to the ritual itself if it’s on the favored terrain, or bad things will happen if it’s on the cursed terrain for the various point cards. Those cards also give you more points at the end of the game, so you are trying to cause rituals to get a number of them, but you don’t want to cause rituals to happen that could potentially be bad for you.

For me, this game hits a nice balance of strategy and randomness. Because you, especially at the start of the game, don’t have any idea what color people might have, you can start out rushing for completing rituals to get the point cards, but you can also accidentally be setting someone up with that. And as you get further into the game, the turns take longer as your thinking through what might be happening and how to maximize your remaining points so that you end up ahead. The game has a good balance of pushing your color ahead while also causing you to give points to other colors at the same time.

Overall, I think this is a very well done game and one that is quite pretty to look at. The only thing that I very odd about the look is that the board wraps, and I don’t mean that the board goes the pacman run from one side to the other, I mean that the paper on the cardboard on two sides doesn’t have a border to show the edge of the board, but instead wraps around the edge of the board. It made me feel like it was missing another board or so. Beyond that, though, the game has a nice blend of strategy and deduction to it. If you can figure out what colors other people might have, then it becomes purely strategy, but really, you’re going to have a best educated guess. When I played it, both the other person and I thought each other was the same color so that adds to the fun of the game, trying to guess. I also like this game because there aren’t that many rules and while it could be an abstract game, the theme doesn’t add much to the game play, but adds to the look of the game. This game ends up being one that is easy to sit down and learn or easy to pick up and teach to people who might not be heavy into board gaming.

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

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PS. I should mention that this is a re implementation of Clans. Basically the same game.

Splendor is one of those wonderful games that falls in the sweet spot of having just enough strategy involved to keep it engaging, but not so much that it’s overwhelming. It’s for a small group of players (2-4); if you’re looking for something in-depth and challenging, this isn’t the game for you, but it’s a great one for a little friendly competition on a laid-back evening.

Players of Splendor play as Renaissance-era jewel merchants who are trying to purchase the most possible jewels, in order to gain the most recognition — and even attract some noble patrons. To set up the game, three rows of four cards are laid out. Each subsequent row features gems of higher value and more potential victory points (or prestige points, as they’re called in this game). During each turn, a player may collect gem chips (either three different ones or two of the same kind), spend chips to purchase a gem card, or reserve a card that they plan to save up for and purchase later.

The goal, of course, is to buy as many gem cards as possible — once bought, cards give you permanent purchasing power, meaning that you’ll need to collect fewer and fewer chips as you go in order to purchase more cards. Many cards also have prestige points, which are crucial to collect — the first player to reach 15 prestige points is the winner.

The strategy comes into play in each of these stages. For example, there are only so many chips to collect, so you’ll need to collect a good amount before others do — but on the other hand, cards give you permanent buying power, so sometimes it’s better to purchase a lot of low-value cards at first, which will enable you to purchase higher-value ones later. And then there’s the matter of prestige points; the cards that have them typically cost more, so you’ll need to purchase lower-level ones to be able to afford them, or choose cards to reserve for later — but take too long saving up, and other players might get to the 15-point goal faster than you do. Finally, there’s the noble patrons to consider — to get them to pay you a visit (and thereby receive prestige points from them), you’ll need to accumulate certain amounts and combinations of the different gems. But again, focus too much on them, and other players might use a quicker strategy to rack up prestige points. See what I mean? While it’s not a complex game, there’s still a lot to consider as you play, and it’s fast-paced enough that you have to decide on your strategy quickly, and may have to be prepared to switch gears partway through.

And beyond the enjoyment factor of the game, the sheer aesthetics of it are fantastic. The card illustrations are gorgeous, the setup of the game is visually appealing, and the jewel chips have a wonderful weight and sheen to them. This ain’t no Pretty, Pretty Princess — this is a game about jewels that not only manages to not be cheesy but is a success in beautiful, elegant game design.

While not necessarily a great choice for the hardcore gamer, Splendor is easy to pick up, fast to play, and just plain delightful.

Overall Grade: A+

Casual Grade: A

Gamer Grade: B

However, we’ve had a bit of a “spring cleaning” mindset with our games lately, and have been trying to break out games we’ve been meaning to play but just haven’t had the time/right circumstances/right group for. The most recent game we chose for this venture was the one Peder gave me for Christmas — Hanabi!

Hanabi is a cooperative card game for 2 to 5 players. The Japanese word “hanabi” means “fireworks,” and as you can see by the cover, that’s the theme of the game. The object is to work as a team to build your fireworks by placing a sequence of cards from 1 to 5 for each of the five colors in the deck, without mixing up the order or the color. You have to do this before the fuse runs out (that is, before the fuse tokens are gone), or the fireworks will explode before you can build them!

You might be thinking that, with such simple rules, this game must be way too easy — but think again! The gameplay of Hanabi is unique not only because it’s a card game that’s cooperative, but also because of how you handle your cards — each player must hold their hand of cards facing out, so that no one can see their own cards, but so that all of the other players can see everyone else’s.

To figure out when and where to place the cards, players can give each other clues about what’s in their hands by spending hint tokens. Players can then give others hints one at a time, either about what color or what number the cards in their hand are. However, there are only ten of these tokens, so you run out quickly. And once they’re gone, you’ll have to discard cards to get them back.

That’s where the strategy of the game comes in. You want to use the hints to tell other players what they have so that they know what to do next, but if you use up your hint tokens too quickly, then players will end up having to either discard a card blindly, potentially getting rid of one of the rarer higher-numbered cards, or they’ll have to just guess what to put down next and have a pretty slim chance of getting it right.

The game is played until the fuse tokens are gone, or until all five sequences have been completed as far as possible. The goal is to collect as many points as you can by the end of the game. The highest amount you can get in one game is 25 — so far, we’ve made it to 20. Which is pretty good for only having played it a couple of times, I’d say!

I really enjoyed this game — so much so that it’s well on its way to becoming one of my favorite card-based games. As I’ve mentioned before, cooperative games are my favorite type, and this one is a great take on that style. Beyond that, Hanabi’s rules are simple and easy to pick up quickly, and there’s the perfect amount of strategy to keep things interesting without leaving strategy-impaired me feeling like I’m in over my head. You can play a round in about half an hour, and it requires hardly any setup, so it’s a great one for getting a game night started, or just for playing a fun, laid-back game with a few friends.

Overall Grade: A

Gamer Grade: B+

Casual Grade: A

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