The Game – Stars of Akarios

So I can only give initial impressions on this so far. There is a lot to potentially look at because there is a lot of game in the box. I’ve done one, kind of two, of three parts of this game. I did a little bit of space exploration, but not really. There is a spot on the map to interact with, but that just immediately takes you into your first combat. Instead, what I’ve done thus far is space combat.

The space combat is intriguing to play. Mainly because positioning has so much to do with it. Get behind an enemy ship, and you get advantage. That can take a miss into a nice success. Or push you over the top to get the damage out that you need to. Or even stay out of the firing arc of an enemy for a turn. There is a lot to think about, and I appreciate that.

At the same time, with that planning, you still don’t feel bogged down with the game. The space combat turns go fast, you have a limited number of actions that you can do. And the dice further limit that. And that isn’t a bad thing, I think it’d make a multiplayer experience work well. For me playing solo, it matters a little bit less, but it makes controlling two characters easier. I thought about just doing one ship, but I’m glad that I have two to play around with. It allows me to try and see more things.

The one initial knock or thing to be aware of is how big this game is. It takes up a ton of table space. It doesn’t seem too large, but it is very large. I think I could play four characters solo. But to get the camera and lights where they need to be, and to show the board, I can’t do that. So know what you’re getting into. It could maybe be scaled down in size slightly. But I do appreciate that it has the giant nature to the game, it makes it feel more epic.

Upcoming Streams

So Monday I had plans to do a Top 10 list, but Etherfields is finally shipped. This is a Kickstarter that I backed probably in 2018 and is now just making it here. Granted, Wave 1 has been out for a bit, but I didn’t pay for two wave shipping. So I don’t even know all of what I have coming with my pledge level anymore. Whatever it is, I’ll be unboxing it.

Then next Wednesday another Stars of Akarios live stream. I put out a question if we should follow orders or not? So there is going to be a poll down below to help decide. Let me know what you think I should do. I’ve seen one of the two ways played on another YouTube channel, so I’m tempted to one direction but vote and let me know.

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The Game

A game of Claim is split over two phases, or hands. In a normal trick taking, each hand scores, but that isn’t the case with Claim. The first hand builds your second hand. You play out cards in normal trick taking fashion, but you play for a card in the middle of the table. Whomever wins the trick takes that card and puts it into their hand for phase two the other player blindly gets a card from the top of the deck.

In phase two, you play out tricks again like normal. However, you play for the majority in a suit. So you want to win more of the five suits than you lose at the end of the game. This is all done with a fantasy theme. So most of the suits have specific rules that go with them. This adds even more of a twist to the game. In the end, the more tricks you can win and the more of the suits you can win, that wins you the game.

What Didn’t I Like?

There can be blow outs in Claim. And honestly, this is fairly true for any trick taking game. Claim actually offers more to mitigate then most of them do. Because you build your phase two hand, you can try and throw the bad cards, low numbered, to your opponent if one is flipped up. But since there is a random element of building that second phase hand half blindly between the two players, someone could get lucky and pull high number cards and dominate. This is a negative, but a small one because the game is extremely fast.

What Did I Like?

Speed

The speed of the game is amazing. I taught the game and we played four times in the span of maybe an hour to an hour and fifteen. When you know the game, you can get through both phases in 10 minutes. I have seen other games that add in twists to trick taking that make it much longer, Claim is extremely fast. Major selling point for me. This also helps with the luck factor negative. I could get a bad pull, but in 10 minutes I can reset and play again, it doesn’t matter as much.

Suit Powers

I also like the powers in the game. Each race has it’s own power and they can really change things up. In the base game, Undead get added to scoring in Phase 1. Dwarves go to the loser of the trick. Knights always beat Goblins if they are played after them. It creates a ton of weird situations. Claim 2 adds more races/suits to the game. You pick and choose which ones you play with, so you can create a ton of possibilities. It reminds me of how Silver does the game thing. I even own three more expansions that give even more variety that we didn’t play with.

Tactics

My negative was that the game can be random and it can be. But you pick some of that randomness. Phase one allows you to pick and choose what cards you get. At least you pick to some extent. So the decisions you make are important. Especially when you decide what cards to throw away. If a zero goblin is flipped up, I want to lose that one. So how do I throw it away? Sometimes, though, all the good cards play out in phase one, so every card you bid for is a low value. That can mess things up for the players.

Final Thoughts

I like trick taking games. And I like games with a lot of variety. Claim with it’s expansions, give tons of variety. Some games give a lot of variety but take a long time to play so you never see it all. Claim is very fast, so I can create a ton of different combos of races/suits in one sitting. And the two phases work extremely well. It cuts down on randomness and gives the game a unique feel. I think that Claim can work well for most people who like trick taking games. The concept is simple but offers something new, which is rare for a type of game that has so many different iterations.

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

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Pros

• Theme
• Game Play
• Campaign
• One-off

Cons

• Price

The Page

This is a well laid out page, and it does a good job of highlighting the right things. By that I mean that it isn’t only just showing off the minis, sure we get lots of shots of them, but they do hit on game play as well, and they have play through videos up on their page as well. And it’s not just playthrough videos, they have previews, they have how to play videos, and they have them not only in English. Now, I watched some of the ones in English, but I like that they are reaching out to a larger audience by not just having it in English.

And it’s not just in video form, they also have a ton of details on game play on the page as well. It goes through how the boss battles will work. But not just the boss battles, but how character progression goes and more. Reggie Games has created one game before this, but that one clearly went well for them, on the second try and this one they look like they are a long time professional Kickstarter company with the layout of this page.

The Game

I hadn’t checked out much game play until I saw that the Rolling Solo YouTube channel had done a playthrough of a boss battle. That really caught my attention for a few different reasons.

Firstly the card play is very interesting. I like when what you play and what order you play it in matters. Not only can it matter for how you attack and how you do defense, but it can also matter for how the monster will react. The fact that there isn’t so much a monster turn, but monster reactions to what you do is great, it feels really dynamic in how it plays out. Yes, the characters will take some attrition damage at the end of their turns, but it isn’t a big amount of damage like the monster attacking.

I also found it interesting that this wasn’t on a big map, so no fighting through minions, but more than that, no hex or square based movement. It’s simply the monster in the center of the board and four spots around it that characters can move. But it doesn’t lose a tactical nature. Depending on the phase of the monster, you go through various damage tiers, where you can even deal it damage will change, it might be the front and back and then the back and sides.

The drawing of the monsters aggression was really interesting as well. It feels thematic as one character will do a massive amount of damage and the monster will focus on them, but then another player might and the focus will change as time goes on.

Finally, the characters also seem unique. In the Rolling Solo playthrough one of them had a bow and was ranged and could basically pepper the monster with some small bits of damage which adds up over time, whereas the other was more of a tank and drew the aggression. They were able to deal out some bigger hits but not always as consistent damage.

Back or Brick

Right now, I’m leaning towards this being a Back for me, but I’m only in at $2 right now so that I can get access to the pledge manager. What really sold me on this one was the fact that it’s a big boss battler but you can do it in a stand-alone fight as well as a campaign. I have a boss battler that is coming in Oathsworn, but that’s a big epic campaign that has a massive story section as well as boss battle at the end of each story. This one is all about the boss battle, I also am really interested in it because no dice that I remember in the playthrough so while there are random elements it isn’t a purely dice chucking Amerithrash game. The only thing holding me back is the price point, which I get because of all the massive minis in it, so I’ll probably just put more money in during the pledge manager.

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

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Pros

• Looks amazing with the minis and the map
• Elements make sense in what they do
• Price
• Established company
• Solo Play

Cons

• Abstract in nature
• Confrontational

The Page

I’m going to start out by saying my normal thing, this page looks good. An established company like Side Room Games should know how to run a Kickstarter, and they don’t disappoint. And I think they also know what makes a solid looking Kickstarter as well. They have what is generally a pretty abstract game, and they created minis for it, for the elements for the monuments for the gods, and while they didn’t go overboard and make them not functional, they did a good job of giving this game some bling, which Kickstarter games generally need.

I also want to call out that while you don’t know how to play from the first two paragraphs, they do a good job of giving you the tone of the game. You have an idea of what might be happening in the game, and sometimes even after reading through the rules section of the Kickstarter page I won’t understand that. And with that said, I didn’t have have to scroll down 70% of the page to find the rest of the rules, they give them to you early, and you have a how to play video you can checkout as well.

The Game

I think that the game itself looks interesting. They do a good job of highlighting the game play, which I like, and the fact that it can be played solo is always interesting to me. However, I wonder a little bit about the solo play on this, they do have a playthrough I can checkout. This game seems like it’ll be better with a higher player count.

For me I get a little bit of a Fae vibe, though this does seem quite different, but just with manipulating things and the idea of worshippers, like I said, I don’t think this is super accurate comparison. But the aesthetic gives me a similar vibe.

Back or Brick

For me, I want to say that this one is a back, but just with Kickstarters and holidays, I don’t think that I will actually back it for financial reasons. I hope that I can pick it up later, because I think this is the type of game that I’d really like a lot. It seems like it’d have both strategy and tactics, which I find to be a good combination in a game. And the look of it is very nice. The one thing that worries about this plan is that it is a KS exclusive, which I believe that there other games might have been as well, so there only might be limited stock later. I do see that they have a retailer pledge, so fingers crossed my FLGS will be getting some copies.

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

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In Second Chance, everyone is getting their own unique starting shape which they have to fill in on the center of their grid. After that, two shapes are flipped which players then get to pick one and add it to their grid, touching a previous one. This continues until someone can’t put one of the shapes on their grid. A card is flipped for only them, giving them a second chance. If they can’t use that, they count up how many empty squares they have, and that’s their score. Other players then continue until someone has either filled up their board or until no one can play a shape. At that point in time, everyone counts up the number of empty spots they have, and the person with the fewest remaining open spots wins.

Second Chance is technically a flip and write, but it falls into the genre. And it falls into a nice spot where people who aren’t board gamers can pick it up quickly. Most people are familiar with the concept of Tetris, and this game has a bit of that feel to it as you try and optimally place shapes. That helps get this game to the table a lot and helps get multiple plays in of the game. The game also plays fast, so that helps keep the non-board gamers attention as well.

As compared to some other games in the roll and write games, Welcome To…, Cartographers, or Cat Cafe, Second Chance is a bit of a simpler game. The strategy of the game basically surrounds deciding if you want to go early with larger shapes in hopes that the smaller ones needed to fill it in will show up later. But that’s a bit more luck based than anything. Now, that’s not much of a knock on the game. It’s 100% a filler game and while there are times that I want to play a bit more strategic roll and write game, the fact that Second Chance can play a larger number of people as well works nicely.

But that is also a knock on the game. I think that it’s very much targeted for the casual gamer, and while that’s great, it isn’t one that gamers who like those heavier decisions are going to love for as long a time as a casual gamer. The tactics are light, the interaction doesn’t exist, and while that’s perfect for that introductory style game, it will feel like you’re doing something similar over and over again the more that you play it. For me, I haven’t found this to be an issue, as I do like a fair number of lighter games, but I can see how it could be. The other thing that helps keep the game from feeling like there isn’t enough going on, is that the game is fast. Once you know how to play, you can play in ten to fifteen minutes. The game definitely doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, even with playing a couple of games in a sitting.

Overall, this is a roll and write (or flip and write) game that I really do enjoy. I personally like some of the bigger roll and write games better, but Second Chance, because it plays so fast and you can play it with almost anyone, because it’s so simple, has a spot on my shelf. It’s one that I can take to a family gathering, or that I can pull out at board game night and get rolling (flipping) in a few minutes without any questions once the rules are taught. If you are looking for that light weight roll and write game, Second Chance is a great choice.

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

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