How To Play Forest Shuffle

In Forest Shuffle you are building out a forest in front of you of trees and creatures of all types. You might be getting butterflies and and beetles or foxes and rabbits, the choice is up to you. But you look to synergize what you are picking to score points.

To play out cards you are putting cards into a discard row and using them as resources. That discard row is filling up and wiping as the game goes along and as you draw cards. Drawing cards and reducing the draw pile is how the game ends. But back to playing cards, you pick a card to play from your hand and then discard the number of cards in the corner to be able to play it.

Trees you just add to your forest in front of you. But if you play down a creature or a feature of your forest, that attaches to your tree. And trees have four sides that you can attach cards to. The foliage, the base or roots and than either side. So you need to balance playing out cards to score with adding more trees.

Then you draw and play cards until you’ve hit the three winter cards. You won’t know when they show up. But once one or two of them show up, you know the game can end any time. When the game ends, everyone tallies up their points and whomever has the most wins.

Why Is It Getting Popular?

Let me start off and say, I like Forest Shuffle. So me asking this question isn’t me not getting why it is. And I think there are a few main reasons for it getting popular.

Firstly, a lot of people play board games digitally now. Not more than who play in person, but when you can play a game digitally, there is not as much of a time restriction. Especially if you can take your turn and then check later in the day to take your next turn. It doesn’t require you to just be sitting there. It is a chance for people

Another thing is that it is a nature theme. Nature theme games are very popular right now. The success of games like Wingspan and Meadow have shown that you don’t need a big nerdy fantasy theme to make people buy game. In fact, that is a turn off for some people. Nature is a more accessible and friendly theme. It might not be why some people game (or the only theme I want) but it does appeal to a broader audience.

Finally, Forest Shuffle is not a complex game. And I say that in a good way. It is one of two games I picked up with the same premise. It is play out cards to form a forest or tableau in front of you to score points. The other one is either version of Ecosystem, regular or coral reef. What you do on your turn is quite simple. However, what you do on your turn determines the points you get. So there are decisions to be made with how you want to score. It is a good game for simplicity of turns and decision making space.

What Might Not Work For You

But let’s talk about what might not work with Forest Shuffle as well. It is a similar mechanism to other games. I called out Ecosystem, but also Meadow you collect cards to build out a line of cards in front of you. Even Wingspan has you collecting birds and putting them into various habitats and scoring based off of that. So the mechanisms are not highly unique.

I think, for some the general mechanisms of those games across the board will not be what you want. For others, you like it, but the question is how many do you need. Do you need a third or fourth game that offers a similar experience to the other games. Now, it is a different complexity level than the ones I mentioned. Forest Shuffle is more complex than Ecosystem but less than Meadow or Wingspan. So it might fill a niche for you.

What I Want To See More Of In Forest Shuffle

Now, I won’t give a full grade on this. I want to see more in this game and I want to know how it will play after a number of plays. I bought the game, so I like it. Let’s just put it at that. But I feel l like it isn’t one I can give a fully grade to yet.

Mainly, how is Forest Shuffle going to play after five plays? I set five a a number, that is just arbitrary. But what I want to see is, if I play it a number of times, how does my strategy change? Can I have a strategy, I think I did the first game, or is it just luck with cards that come out. How do you balance grabbing cards or passing on cards to play out. What is the tempo of that?

There are a good number of cards in the game. And Forest Shuffle offers a lot of different ways to score. My question and this is the case with any game like this, will I see all the cards, and will there be enough variety to keep the game unique? If the game isn’t unique, than is the game going to stay fun to play.

Forest Shuffle could certainly be expanded. I expect if it does well in retail, not just BGA, that it is going to get expansions. More cards to mix in, or like Ecosystem, another box to play with and vary up the scoring as a standalone game. But that is my concern right now.

Do you like Forest Shuffle?

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How To Play Meadow?

In Meadow you are playing down tokens to pick specific cards. These cards have symbols that they need to be played, and a symbol that they give you. So you build up from habitats to small creatures or plants, then cover those with the creatures that eat them or use them for shelter and build up upon that. Eventually trying to get landscapes and items to remember the location by.

Each card is going to give you points, minus the terrain cards, and you are trying to get the most points possible. The player with the most points wins the game.

Initial Impressions

Now, that is a very simple overview of the game. There is more going on, mainly the campfire and how you select what specific card you take. Both I want to call out here because they are interesting to talk about as well. And both of them I actually enjoy in the game. There is one part of the game that makes it harder for me to get to a full review though. We’ll get to that soon.

Action Tiles

The action tiles are really interesting in how they are used. I call them tiles, it could be arrows as well, or parts of a picket fence, depends on how you want to talk about them. It uses a mechanic that I enjoy in Quadropolis where it gives you a distance, 1 through 4, can where you place your tile, you count that many in. That card is the one that you are taking.

Now, other players can block where you want to go. And later in the rounds, cards will just become in accessible because of how people play. So you need to prioritize getting what you need. But the action tiles aren’t just for getting cards, they each have powers as well, which leads us into the campfire.

Campfire

There is a campfire in the game, not a literal one, but that is another spot you can use the action tiles. In the game each action tile has a special ability. It might be grabbing a card from a deck or from anywhere in the grid of laid out cards. This is great when the cards don’t work for you or the one you want is blocked off. The downside is that you don’t get to play it immediately. Or you can play two cards, or get two roads, which are used for the landscapes.

But there is even more going on. You have scoring tokens that you can put out. Around the campfire are symbols. If you match a combination of two of them, that hasn’t been filled in, so a bird next to a berry for example, you put down a scoring tile. The more you do that, the higher scoring tile you can place. But it isn’t something that always works to do. So it’s a balance of do you want an ability or not? And all this leads into the final thig.

Game Length and Complexity

The first thing to talk about is game length for Meadow. And with that complexity, they really go hand in hand. Meadow is not a game with a ton of rounds, and because of that, you want to optimize your moves. And because you need to optimize and plan out combinations, it can cause AP.

I tend not to get much AP in a game, but in a two player game, in particular, I slow down in this game. And the person I played with did as well. There is a lot going on in this game, and it makes me think I’d prefer it at four versus two. One thing that adds to the complexity and time needed to figure out is a wild tile. It can be any number in a two or three player game. In a four player game you just have one through four. That wild adds in a lot of options. as you can repeat a number or a power.

Who Is This For?

I think that’s an interesting question as to for it’s for. The game is pretty, which might make some gamers think it’ll be too light. On the flip side, it’s going to draw some people in and they’re going to realize it is too heavy. This is not a light game, it gives you a ton of options and a lot of planning that you can do. So I think this is a pretty game for seasoned gamers.

Now, that isn’t a bad thing. I want my games to be pretty. But Meadow reminds me of Calico in some ways. Calico is a very pretty game, a very cute game, but it is challenging. In Calico you can play with most people because it doesn’t give you complex turns. Meadow can give you complex rounds that you need to plan out more carefully. So I think it’s mainly a thing to be aware of.

Final Thoughts on Meadow

I enjoy Meadow. I think that the game play is interesting, I like how you pick your cards. And I really like the artwork as well. My main concern about Meadow and how long it may or may not stay in my collection is the game length.

Like I said, I enjoy the puzzle a lot of this game. I want to figure out how to optimize my turns, but the question is, who do I play it with. When I played it two player most recently, a few rounds 4 player at Gen Con, it was not a fast game. Like I said, I think I prefer it, maybe, at four players just because it limits your choices a bit more. But even that, with more players is going to take a while.

Meadow might be a game that I just play with same people. Which is not a bad thing for the game. Sometimes you find a more complex game and a group to play it with. I think for me, it’s one where I wish, with the artwork, it was easier for more people to play. But once I play it more, I’ll probably appreciate it more for what it is.

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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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Culling Games

This is sort of a Marie Kondo thing that has been everywhere. The idea is to downsize the things that don’t give you joy. Though, people often take it too far. They clear out a ton of things in their lives and then realize that they wanted some of that or have to get some of it again. This is very true in board games as well.

There most definitely is something freeing about getting rid of stuff. Having too much stuff can feel oppressive and overwhelming. And people often get on a roll of culling games or things from their life. With board games people often use the standard of, have I played this recently, which isn’t a great standard. But they do other things as well, do I like other games better that do the same thing is one of them.

Let’s talk about these two standards for culling.

Have I Played This Game Recently

I don’t like this standard, some of it is because I probably have enough games and expansions to play one game a year without repeats or close to that. But even without that, let’s look back at the past 14 months. How many party games have gotten played, how many social deduction games have gotten played? The answer is, probably not that many for a lot of people. So while people have had time around their house to go through and cull collections, if it is based off of play, there are certain games that just won’t be played.

Taking this logic as well, some games, Heroes of Land, Air, and Sea for example, will get played less often for me. It is a big long game. If it gets played once every two years, that’s often enough for that game, I think. For some people they’d play it more, but for me that isn’t going to be the case. Still, it’ll stay in my collection as a 4X fantasy game.

But let’s go onto a way I like better for culling games.

Do I Have Other Games I like Better, That Do The Same Thing

What does this one mean? Let me give you an example. Splendor is a very simple tableau and engine building game. I think it’s okay, I wouldn’t pull it off the shelf. If I want that engine building experience, I have Space Base, Century: Golem Edition, and Homebrewers that I like better as engine builders. So I will pull them off the shelf first. Now, in all fairness, I haven’t gotten rid of Splendor, but this is an example of one that I could cull. If it wasn’t one that my wife liked a lot and can teach herself, I’d probably get rid of it.

The concept is basically, would I reach for this game on my shelf over other games of the same type? Ask me if I’d reach for a game like Claim over Gloomhaven, no, I wouldn’t. At least most of the time I wouldn’t. But they are two massively different types of games. So compare within a type. Gloomhaven versus Sword & Sorcery is a good example. I wouldn’t pick to play Sword & Sorcery again over playing Gloomhaven again. So I ended up selling Sword & Sorcery.

How Do You Downsize Without Culling?

There’s one main way that you can downsize stuff. And that’s condensing boxes which can be done in a couple of ways. With small games it’s about removing them from the oversized boxes, or moving expansions and everything into fewer boxes. Let’s dive into each of them.

To A Smaller Box

This is one that I actually haven’t done yet, but I could do with a number of games. I know of it more from The Dice Tower where they have a lot of small games in photo boxes, basically hard plastic shells, and then those in larger photo storage boxes, so you can get a lot of small games in.

Going to small boxes works because of how sales and shelf space work. A small game is going to get overlooked more often on a shelf of a store. People will glance over it and buy the bigger game that costs more. So companies smartly so, put stuff into boxes that take up more space and catch more attention.

However, at home, I don’t have all the shelf space in the world. So a game in a bigger box than need be, that eats into how many games I can reasonably fit. Now, that might be a sign to cull some games, but fairly often smaller games getting culled barely helps this situation. Instead, you can store more small games compactly by putting them into photo cases or something like that to free up room.

All To One Box

This is the one that I tend to do, which is look to see how many boxes I can get rid of for my board games. Often times inserts that are well done, or poorly done, will eat up room within a box, and then you get an expansion for a game. The biggest one I can call out for this is Marvel United. They had great inserts, but that means that there were 8 total boxes. By removing inserts and moving stuff around, I easily fit it into 3 boxes. I went from 8 game boxes to 3 boxes. That’s a huge difference when it comes to shelf space.

I am going through my collection to see what I can do that with. I’ve found some other games, all the small expansions for Aeon’s End can fit into their respective big boxes, so that frees up room. But beyond that, eventually I’ll be able to put Aeon’s End into even fewer bigger boxes. Ascension went from 3 boxes down to one by adjusting the an insert, and I can probably even make it fit better by completely removing the insert and creating one of my own for the game.

This is a really easy way for a lot of games to free up a chunk of room. It kind of goes that shelf space thing again. Some games will take up more space if you keep your expansion box. Just condensing down a handful of games frees up a lot of space. With that said, it also means you need to know how and where the expansion stuff is to split it out, which sometimes is easier said than done. So that is a downside, but some games like Marvel United or Sentinels of the Multiverse or even Marvel Champions it doesn’t matter much.

How Do You Downsize Space Without Culling Games?

Are there any other ways that you can free up space, without getting rid of games? A lot of gamer habits, putting sleeves on cards and upgrading games with fancier bits can cause it to take more room. But are there other ways to make games take up less room that you’ve found? I guess trimming boxes shorter so that it more accurately fits what is in side would be a way as well, but I haven’t heard of people doing that. Let me know your ideas in the comments below.

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In Point Salad you are going to take turns either drafting vegetables to make your salad or taking cards that are going to tell you how to score. The trick is that you need to take the best scoring cards for you, but when you take a card for scoring, you only take a single card, but if you take vegetables, you take two on the turn. So can you figure what is the best scoring option for you and draft cards so that you can out score your opponents. The game is really that simple, once all the cards have been drafted, then each person scores their salad based off of the scoring cards that they have. The person with the most points wins.

There are a few things that I really enjoy about this game. The first being that the play is really simple. You’re either taking two vegetables or you’re taking a card that is going to allow you to score. People who have played games like Ticket to Ride will have some idea as to how this works because you can either take two normal train cars or a wild train car. So it’s a common concept which is good, because how the scoring works is a bit more unique.

The thing about scoring cards is that it’s the base side of the vegetable cards. So if you don’t take a scoring card from the top of the stack, there’s a chance that it’ll flip down and become a vegetable before you can take it on your next turn. It’s a really nice way to give interesting decisions. In fact, sometimes you have to make the tough decision to take a vegetable instead of a scoring card causing that scoring card to turn into a vegetable. But, even with that decision point, it’s not that hard to make it and turns still move by pretty quickly. For me, this is a really clever way to do the scoring, because everyone is going to have different scoring so you might not overlap on what vegetables that you want, but everyone might want different vegetables.

Another thing is that when you are drafting cards, you put them on the table in front of you creating a tableau. That means that I can see what the person to my left is wanting, and the person to my right can see what I want. Maybe on a turn there’s only one vegetable that I want and no scoring that I want. I can then draft that one vegetable and possibly draft something that the person to my left might want. Now, that’s not always the best strategy, but you can get an idea of what people might want. In fact, the better reason to draft a card might be that taking a certain vegetable will cause a scoring card the person to your left might want to turn into a vegetable, and once it’s a vegetable, it can’t be used for scoring again. So if there are three tomatoes and I want to take two of them, I might take the ones that will get rid of scoring that the person to the left of me wants. So it’s a simple, subtle little thing that can add more into the game. But it’s not a massive part of the game being mean to people, because if you do that, you won’t score as well.

I do have one negative about the game. The cards a little bit flimsy, thankfully the game is cheap so you can play it a couple dozen times and replace it if you want. The other solution would be to get card sleeves, which I might, but because you need to see both sides of the cards, that means that the sleeves have to be clear, which you can find, but those sleeves are often a bit flimsier as well. The box is also about twice as big as it needs to be, but I don’t mind that, because I have space for it. But if space is at a premium for your gaming collection, I could see it being annoying.

Finally, let’s talk about the name. Probably something that I could have lead off with, I’ve been talking about how you are drafting vegetables, and it’s all vegetables that you’d live in a salad, so you get points for your vegetables and they are a salad vegetables, hence point salad. While that is true, point salad is something that is used in board gaming. In board gaming it describes a game that you can get points in a ton of different ways. So point, and how does salad fit in, think about a buffet. At a buffet, you can make a salad and you have 20 different toppings, 8 different dressings, and a few different types of lettuce. So like you can get points in a ton of ways, you can make your salad at a buffet in a ton of different ways. So the name, Point Salad, plays off of this idea of basically everything you do gives you points. And while it doesn’t score you as many points as some point salad games do, if you draft well, basically every card should give you some points.

So, is this a good game? I definitely have more positive things about it then negative. For me, Point Salad is a great filler game, even with a higher player count, the game plays quite fast, and you can play a two player game in 15 minutes. I like the tongue in cheek nature of the game as well with the naming and the vegetables. I also like this game for newer gamers because it’s introduces tableau building and drafting, two things that show up in a lot of games. I think for a gaming group of very seasoned gamers who like heavy games, this won’t be a hit, but for most groups it’ll be good fun.

Overall Score: B+
Gamer Grade: C
Casual Grade: A

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These rankings are the opinion of yours truly, and if you don’t like them, that’s okay. We all have different tastes in games and that is great. There are some games that I’ve only played as a demo, and I felt like I got enough of a feel to put them on the list, thanks GenCon for all the demos. These are living rankings so next year I’m sure that things will change, so I’ll probably be doing another one next year. Thanks to Board Game Geek for letting me enter/rate my collection and games I’ve played. Thanks to Pub Meeple for creating a tool that pulls in those games that I’ve rated and creating a ranking tool. Again, the numbers and names will be linked to Cool Stuff Inc and Amazon if you’re interested in the games.

90 – Carcassonne
First classic game on the list, I’d say. This is a tile laying game that has been around for a long time, though, not as long as games like Clue and Monopoly that didn’t make my top 100. In Carcassone, you are trying to connect roads together and build cities, monasteries, and farms. All of these things give you points and when all the tiles have been played you tally up any final scoring and the person with the most points wins. What’s interesting about this game is that as you complete cities and roads where you have placed a knight or a robber, which are just meeples, you get those meeples back, so you are trying to balance getting a lot of points in a single road or city, and not having all your meeples on the board so you miss scoring.

89 – Dead of Winter: The Long Night
So, this is technically an expansion. But it’s also technically stand alone, so I’m placing it on my list because you don’t need Dead of Winter to play it. In this game, like Dead of Winter, you are protecting your base against zombies, however, they add in a few things, like a bandit module, a building module, and a Umbrella Corporation, I mean Raxxon, expansion. This game adds more to a game that already has a bunch of stuff going on in it, hence why it’s a bunch lower than the original, plus, it’s just hard to beat the original. I’d definitely play with any of the expansions though.

88 – Splendor
We’re going away from a more thematic game and going into a game that is purely tableau building. The “theme” of this game is that you are a gem merchant who is buying single use gems to get other gems that you have all the time, okay, that doesn’t make sense. But that’s what you’re doing in the game. Some of the gem cards that you’ll buy will have points on them, and the first person to 15 points wins. This is a great introductory tableau game that looks nice on the table. The game comes with a bunch of cards but what most people notice are the power chips that represent the single use gems that you’ll be getting early in the game. They are nice and weighty and give the game a good tactile feel. This is game that I’ll always play and have a good time with, there are other games higher on the list that fit a similar niche that I prefer though.

87 – Stuffed Fables
Your girl has had her favorite blanket stolen, and as her fearless stuffed animals, you are going to go into the depths of the world under the bed to get back that blanket without waking up the girl. This is a very cute game with cute stuffed animal minis. It’s what is known as a storybook game where you flip to different pages in the book, depending on what you do, and play through different chapters of an adventure by playing through the little scene that is in the book. Stuffed Fables definitely is focused for children, though feels like it’s a bit too complex for most younger children that the story targets more so. The game looks great though, and because it’s cooperative, you can work together as a group, which would be how you can get younger gamers to play and understand what is going on. Eventually this will be something that I play through with our baby.

86 – Legends of Andor
We’re into one of the first story driven fantasy games on the list. I’ve played this one a few times, and what is interesting about this game is that killing monsters causes the story to progress faster. Each round advances, and eventually you run out of turns, and you’d lose the game, but if too many monsters get to the castle, you lose the game, if you kill too many monsters and use up the rounds, you lose the game. This is a fun fantasy puzzle story game, because beating the monsters isn’t always hard, but knowing when to beat the monsters and when to focus on story elements, it’s a challenge. There are a bunch of different scenarios in the game, all of which seem interesting, and there are a bunch of expansions for it. It’s a big fantasy game, but at the same time, it’s not a complex fantasy game, so it’s a good introductory one for younger gamers.

85 – Lord of the Rings
This is the classic Fantasy Flight game where you play as up to five Hobbits traveling to Mount Doom to throw the one ring in. Yes, you read that correctly up to five Hobbits. If you have five players, one person can play as Fatty Bolger. Who is Fatty Bolger, he’s the hobbit who they invite along after add in Merry and Pippin but who declines, if you’ve read the books you’re apt to remember him. This game feels fairly thematic, but mainly feels like a puzzle as you try and play combinations of cards to advance through different locations before time runs out. It’s not a very heavy game, but there are interesting choices, and anyone can hold the ring, so Sam does, always, because he’s steadfast and hard to move. They made a lot of expansions for it as well. If you don’t want a big card game or a big minis game for Lord of the Rings, this is a fun option.

84 – Pandemic Legacy Season 2
We’ll see Season 1 higher on the list, but I did enjoy my playthrough, just not as much as the first season. I won’t go into spoilers, because this is a legacy game, but Pandemic Legacy Season 2 has a bit less direction while having a few clear things to do as well. It’s confusing with how I wrote it, but it still tells a good story. I feel like with the story, though, you’re waiting for the twist to happen like there was at some point in time in season one. What is cool about this one is that the mechanics are different, but they still feel like Pandemic. I’ll be playing through this at some point in time on Malts and Meeples, so if you want spoilers, that’s where it’ll be. Even though it’s a story driven legacy game, I feel like there’s plenty that you can play again with it after a bit of time. Downside is that to do that, you need a new version of the game.

83 – Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game
This is a massively bloated game at this point with 20000000000000 different expansions, and that is only using half the characters that Marvel has. In this game there is a villain whom a group of players with hero cards are going to attempt to defeat. It’s pretty standard in how you deck build with a changing market, but it gives you some interesting things like trying to build up enough damage to take out the villain enough times, while also trying to keep a handle on the different henchmen that are coming out. What makes this game tricky is that there are literally too many options now for the game. If you just pick what Marvel superheroes you like, you might end up with a group of heroes that don’t synergize at all, and then the game is going to take way longer than it should be build up the combos that you’re generally looking for in deck building games. However, if you just have the base game, you have enough to keep yourself busy for a while. This is a game that I’ve grown to like more as I’ve played more deck building games.

82 – Arkham Horror 2nd Edition
Yes, this is not the new edition, in fact, the new edition that I’m stoked to try, it’s not on my list, because I haven’t tried it yet. It’s sitting on my shelf just waiting to get played. But this is the massive older version where you are going around Arkham and adventuring and closing gates, fighting monsters, and then probably losing for up to six hours. Like I said, it’s a massive game and that’s without any of the expansions. I’ve really only played this once, and not even my copy, but it was blast, it’s just hard to carve out that much time. I am probably going to keep this game, because it’s the first massive epic game I bought, but also because it seems different enough from the 3rd edition that I probably have room on my self for both. If you like that older grind of a game, this one still holds up well, and there are tons of expansions for it, but you’ll also need a giant table for it.

81 – Dead Men Tell No Tales
I was hoping that this game would replace Pandemic in some ways or be another cooperative option, and I think that it almost does that, but you’ll see where Pandemic falls on my list. In Dead Men Tell No Tales, you are a group of pirates who are going onto a ship that is haunted by ghosts, on fire, and has a skeleton crew, but you’re willing to brave all of that, because the captain will make you walk the plank, and there’s treasure on this burning ship. You take your turn, dealing with fire, taking out those skeletons, trying to build up so you can fight the ghosts, but doing all of that while the ship continues to burn, and you hope that it doesn’t get too bad so that you can’t get to where you need to. It’s like Pandemic in that you have a ton of things that you can do and you never feel like you have enough actions. Or that your actions won’t do anything, and that’s one cool thing about the game, if you only have two useful actions out of your four or five, you can pass your unused ones to the next player so that they can get more done. If you want something that’s cooperative and the theme seems more interesting than Pandemic, I think you’d enjoy Dead Men Tell No Tales.

We’re through another ten, I’m planning that next week, besides Wednesday which will be Halloween focused, I’m going to continue going through my top 100, otherwise it could take a while.

What game from this section looks the most interesting to you? Is there one that you’ve wanted to play? Is there one that would be higher on your own list?

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Machi Koro: Machi Koro is a city building game where you are working on building up enough infrastructure that you can then build the bigger attractions for your city, like a harbor, shopping mall, and other things. The first person to build up all of these attractions wins the game.

Splendor: In Splendor, you take on the roll of a jewel merchant in a race to fifteen victory points. You collect gems to buy cards that give you permanent gems until you can start to buy cards without spending gems.

Century Road: Golem Edition: You’re a miner who is going out and buying and trading gems to be able to power up the golems, which give you victory points. You do so by buying cards, upgrading gems, and getting new gems.

What’s in Common?

The reason all three of these can face off is because they are all about building up your engine. Century Road: Golem Edition is the outlier in that you don’t have a tableau of cards out in front of you, but it falls into the similar engine building category and hand building category. You are building up your card base whether it’s buildings, gems, or mining/upgrade cards, so that you can, while using the fewest expendable resources, get as many victory points as possible on your turn.

What’s Different?

Thematically they are different, but that’s generally going to be the case.  You could even argue that Century Road: Golem Edition and Splendor have a bit of overlap, but mechanically, what makes them different from each other. In Machi Koro, there’s more interaction on other peoples turns with the buildings that you can buy. Even on someone else’s turn, you can be generating income. This make Machi Koro feel a bit more interactive. Along with that, Machi Koro has a die roll that determines what sort of money you get each turn, based on the buildings you have, so while there is strategy in building up your engine that gives you the money, there’s also some luck involved with the game. This is a nice balancing factor for the game. Splendor on the other hand is much more straight forward, the only “take that” sort of aspect to the game is that you can reserve a card to take it away from someone else. There’s some strategy as to what gems you take early game as well, and the extra points from the nobles who can become your patron is unique to this game as compared to the other two. Century Road: Golem Edition is definitely the most unique of all these games. Whereas in the first two you have a tableau of cards in front of you that assist you every turn in either getting money or buying more gems, you are building up your hand of cards and playing them down. The reason that it can fall into this category of games is because you are still building up your engine, and there isn’t the randomness of the draw that you get from a game like Dominion. Century Road: Golem Edition, when you buy cards and pick up the cards you’ve already played, you can have access to all of your cards to play, which is similar to both Machi Koro and Splendor.

What Stands out in Each Game?

Machi Koro has a mechanism with the die roll to determine what money you get that I really like. It means that there isn’t that much downtime for players during the game, because at the start of each person’s turn, they roll the dice, and it’s possible that you’ll collect money. It’s also interesting, because you can diversify with the cards that you have so you get less money more often, or there’s a strategy of going for a lot of cards of a single type to get a lot of money less often.

Splendor is probably the most straight forward of these games and the easiest to teach. Also going for it are beautiful components. The cards have a great finish to them and feel nice. While the artwork is a bit generic Euro game artwork, they are nicely done. Along with that the expendable resources are heavy duty poker chips and they are very nice.

Century Road: Golem Edition has the component piece as well. The gems in the game are great and the coins that aren’t used all that often in the game are still metal. The oversized cards allow for very nice artwork and have a nice feel to them. Along with this, the hand management and hand building aspect to the game are pretty unique for games that I’ve played. I know that it isn’t a unique concept totally, but for what I’ve played, it is pretty unique.

What’s a Weakness in Each Game?

With Machi Koro, I’d say that one weakness is that where you sit matters some. Not because you might miss out on something, but restaurants are on strategy to getting money in the game. But because of how the money is paid out, it’s possible that you could buy up some restaurants and because someone is sitting to your left who has the same ones, you won’t end up seeing much money and they could see a lot.

Splendor on the other hand doesn’t have a seating issue because the interaction is non-existent. That’s not the issue with the game though, the game itself is a little bit too generic. The theme of being a gem trader could be replaced with almost anything and it would make just as much sense. It’s a little bit like the Dominion of deck builders where the game is fun, but thematically there’s nothing that ties it together. This also means that there isn’t a ton of diversity in strategy for the game either.

Century Road: Golem Edition’s weakness is probably that it’s the heaviest of these games. Whereas the other two are very simple and light to teach, Century Road has a bit more going on with the game. You need to think a whole lot more about the engine that you are creating in this game as compared to the others since it is in your hand, and you might want to use a certain card in your hand every turn, but that isn’t possible so there’s more planning out your engine since there isn’t that availability.

And the Winner is:

Century Road: Golem Edition

This game has the components like Splendor while having a more interesting game play than either of the other two. While it is a bit more complex, it is far from being a heavy game and the complexity helps create diversity in strategy. The gems and metal coins and the artwork on the card, everything in that aspect is on point with the game as well. And while there is possibly the least ability to have a “take that” sort of strategy in Century Road: Golem Edition, that’s abated in making the game interesting just by the hand building aspect that has a good puzzle like feel.

Now, just as a word of disclaimer, I have all three in my collection and I don’t think that any will be moving out. Machi Koro and Splendor have a nice value of being very easy to teach to people and still enjoyable to play. I could see eventually getting rid of Splendor and completely replacing it with Machi Koro, but right now all are enjoyable.

Which is your favorite of these three games?

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The Contenders:

First, why are these two battling right now? Both of them have a common mechanic between them, in that they are card-drafting games. You are passed a hand of cards, you select one, all players reveal cards at the same time, and then your hand of cards passes to the next person and the process is repeated. But one of the games is about picking out your meal at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant, and the other is about building the seven wonders of the ancient world. So the themes are very different, but mechanically, there are a number of things that are similar about these games. Like I mentioned, they use card drafting, but there is also an aspect of set collection in each game.

7 Wonders

7 Wonders has you building one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. You build up a tableau in front of you and your wonder, getting resources, buying those you don’t have, getting goods, studying, building military might, and building up your wonder. There is a cornucopia of points in this game, as well; you score points at the end of the game based on the sets of buildings you have, different things you’ve studied, your military might (in fact that’s at the end of each age), and other things. The big upside of this is that you can focus in on a few different areas and have a chance of winning. However, you do need to diversify some; otherwise, you won’t be able to get quite enough points to win. But if you try to do everything at once, you likely won’t get large enough chunks of points to win.

Sushi Go! Party

Sushi Go! is about putting together the best sushi meal you could possibly have. Maybe you want some maki, miso soup, and green tea ice cream — while you can get this combination of foods in this game, it might not give you the most points. The game is played in three rounds (similar to 7 Wonders’ three ages), in which you try to collect sets of different things to get the most points possible. If you have three sashimi, for example, you will score 10 points at the end of the round, but if you have only two, you get no points. Or if you have two tofu, they’re worth 5 points, but if you have more, all your tofu are worth 0 points. Desserts are scored after the meal, and are the only thing you keep between each round. It makes sense as a meal, since you eat your dessert at the very end.

Compare/Contrast

The card drafting is a huge similarity between these two games, but there are a few differences, too. In 7 Wonders, you are drafting from a new set of cards each round, whereas most of the cards in Sushi Go end up going back into the pool of cards to draft, and only the desserts see their numbers reduced as you go. In 7 Wonders, if you get off to a poor start, it is harder to catch up for that reason, and makes the card drafting a bit more tactical. There’s also the set collection aspect to both of them, as you are looking to collect a variety of buildings that can stack off of each other in 7 Wonders, as well as collecting the various studies and gaining military might. In Sushi Go!, there can be a bit more variety in the set collection because sometimes you don’t want a big set of cards. Having more than two eel cards isn’t a bad thing, but it doesn’t do you any good; you just want to have two eels for sure so that you don’t get negative points. Compare that to tofu, which I mentioned above, where you don’t want more than two of them, or they become worthless.

Another big difference is the variability in both games. In 7 Wonders, the variability from game to game comes in the number of players, using more cards with more players, and which wonders are being built. If you consistently are only playing with two people, the cards you are drafting from are going to be the same. In Sushi Go! Party, you have a wide variety of different rolls, appetizers, entrees, specials, and desserts to combine and choose from. While it isn’t endless and you can repeat stuff fairly quickly when building out which ones you are using, you have a very large number of combinations.

The Results

Who wins? Sushi Go! Party

While these are both great games, I’m giving the win to Sushi Go! Party. There are two big reasons for this — the first is that I think the variability in the game is higher. Now, if you are playing 7 Wonders with a varying number of players, you do get to see more cards, but if you buy it to just play in a group of four people, you will quickly learn what those cards are. Because of this, there are more defined strategies for every game of 7 Wonders than there are for Sushi Go! Party. The second reason is that I see Sushi Go! Party as more accessible for new players. There aren’t as many mechanically heavy bits, and the artwork is cute. It’s going to be easier to get to the table with a wider group of players. If you want something that is more mechanically challenging, I’d recommend 7 Wonders as a great other option for card drafting. I honestly don’t think there is a wrong choice for picking one or the other of these two games, though. Finally, I’ll leave you with one important thing as a comparison between the games — if you just get the basic Sushi Go! game, you lose all of the variability that is in Sushi Go! Party, and 7 Wonders immediately becomes the better game. However, Sushi Go! Party is a cheap game for what you get, so it is definitely worth the money.

Who is your winner?

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