So what would my five games be?

5 Games in the Zombie Apocalypse

The rules for this are as follows. The zombies have eaten all the other games in the world besides these five. And anyone tries to make a game, the zombies eat that game. And any expansions for that game, yeah, the zombies eat those too. So what five base games would I bring from now into the apocalyptic future of zombies eating board games?

5. Aeon’s End

Now, I don’t know which Aeon’s End, there are a few core boxes I could use. Probably War Eternal because that is the one that I’ve played. Though, if it counts as an expansion to the base game, so be it. Aeon’s End is a great deck building game for solo play, and it can play up to four. Now, at four you do less, so I think it’s mainly solo or two player.

But I wanted to have a deck building game, and Aeon’s End jumped off the shelf at me more than others. Plus the solo play is almost a must for a game. Granted, there will be one on the list that can’t be played solo, because I need variety.

4. So Clover

No solo in this one, but So Clover is a great little party game that can play up to 6, I believe. And you’d be able to play with more, just not everyone writing stuff down. Or you could do it in teams. But this is the party game entry on the list.

So Clover has you writing down words that connect two words that can be really separate. It could be turtle and banana. And then those words are shuffled up and the other players need to try and put them in the right spot. It’s a clever idea and it has a nice challenge to it as you play.

3. Cartographers

Technically this can be played solo, but it’s a bit heavier for a roll and write, though not too heavy. And it is more interactive than a lot of roll and writes. Which might sound odd since you can play it solo. But the base game has good game play value in it. And it can play solo, like I said, but also go infinite. That means that it’ll fit almost any player number.

I really like this one too for scoring. Just the different combinations and how you can focus on things is great. Plus you score two things in each season. Including something coming back around at the very end of the game. For all the roll and writes that I own, this one has teeth for decision making, but it isn’t too heavy either.

2. Gloomhaven

I thought about not putting it on the list. And were Frosthaven out, that’d make the list because I haven’t played it. But it is my favorite game. And I still have a lot of characters to play. Yes, I know the story, but there are elements that I’ve forgotten.

And I think that Gloomhaven works well at different player counts. Solo is two handed which is nice, and it isn’t too much. I’ve played at 3 which works well. Gloomhaven is one that I would pull out and play with one group after another after another. And it’s long enough, plus I have a few other games, that I think I’d be interested in that over and over again.

1. Sagrada

I wish this one came with an expansion. But it doesn’t. The expansion I want would be the 5 to 6 player. But I think Sagrada fills that nice family weight game. One that people will be happy to sit down and play. And, honestly, I could make it 5-6 players just by getting a 2nd copy. Maybe not having everything in there, but having most things.

I really like Sagrada for the dice drafting. And the fact that the dice are rolled means that you have variability. Plus you don’t know what is going to be drawn out. I’ve probably played Sagrada 10-15 times and I enjoy it every time. My hope is that it’s one that since I haven’t played with all the tools and with all the windows, it’d generally stay pretty fresh.

Final Thoughts

This is purely crazy situation time but it’s kind of fun. I definitely have some high on my Top 100 games there. Though, So Clover is new to me, but should give you an idea that it’ll be high. The hardest part is trying to figure out how to cover everything and you really can’t. It’s five games.

My closest euro style game is an abstract in Sagrada or the card mechanics in Gloomhaven, but not really even that. So I wanted to pick games that could be flexible and cover a lot of things. But it is hard to do that. I doubt with five games it’d ever be possible.

So what five games would you pick?

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Deck Building

Most people are familiar with games that use decks of cards, from the kids game Candyland to something like Uno or Skip-bo to party games like Cards Against Humanity. All of these games use a communal deck of cards that players draw from to get their hand or to take an action and then they play those cards. It’s a very straight forward concept and you have a deck of cards that is consistent that you’ll be drawing the cards from and you’ll get whatever you get from that pool of cards.

A deck building game builds upon this idea of the deck of cards, but instead of having 108 cards in the Uno deck that everyone shares, instead you have your own deck of 10 or 12 or some number of cards. And when you start the game everyone’s decks are the same. But as the game goes on, you purchase more cards from a pool of cards that are face up to add to your deck. So when you have to reshuffle, now your deck is different than another persons deck.

A simple example of this is Ascension. In Ascension, you start with a deck of 10 cards, eight that give you points to purchase more cards, and two that let you fight monsters. The cards that you buy, some of them allow you to draw more cards when you play them, or get more points for purchasing more cards, or they’ll help you fight monsters. So by the time you shuffle again, you will have two or more different cards than the person you’re playing against, so the hand you’ll draw will be different from a hand of cards that they can draw. The further you get into the game and the more cards that you add to your deck, the more different your deck of cards will be from another players and the more different your strategy will be from another player. The deck building aspect of the game allows players to create a deck that matches how they want to play the game.

All deck building games give you a way to acquire more cards. In Ascension you purchase them, so a card that costs more will mean that you need more points to purchase it, so you might not be able to right away. This tends to be a core mechanic as well of a lot of deck building games is that they build up to you doing bigger and bigger things, but we’ll talk about what that mechanic is known as in a future article.

There are two main types of deck building games. The static market game or the changing market game. Ascension is an example of a changing market game. You have six cards to make your purchase from or to fight if they are monsters. When you purchase a card or defeat a monster, a new card is flipped down into the market form a draw pile and you don’t know what that card is going to be. So a card you want one turn might not be there the following turn, or might not be there at all again in a game. In a static market game you have a certain number of piles of cards, all the cards in those piles are identical so when you buy the top one, you know what the one underneath it is going to be. This allows you, from the start of the game, to determine a long term strategy throughout the game and to really dictate what your deck is going to be capable of doing. Dominion is an example of a static market deck building game. Now, it comes down to preference as to which one you like better. With the static deck it is going to more heavily favor the more experienced player or the player with better long term planning skills, because at the start of the game you can sit down, look at the static market and make your plan. If a changing market, you might come in with a plan but then need to adjust it on the fly, but it’ll keep the game more balanced between more and less experienced players. Neither is really a bad thing, it just comes down to personal preference.

Let’s talk about some deck building games that you might want to checkout if this sounds interesting.

Gateway/Intro To Deck Building Game

Ascension – For me, Ascension is the ideal deck building game, the changing market place means that a more experienced player doesn’t have a massive advantage and while there are some better strategies, it all depends on how the market comes out. It also works well because you are just doing two things with your cards, mainly, you are either buying with the purchasing power on the cards or you are fighting a monster with a fighting power on a the cards. A few cards do a few more things, like draw more cards from your deck but they are generally simple. The theme isn’t really there, but in most pure deck building games, which Ascension is, the theme will be missing or barely there anyways.

Medium Weight Deck Building Game

Clank! – Now, regular Clank! isn’t my favorite way to play Clank!. I like Clank! In! Space! better, but there’s just a little bit more going on than a medium weight deck building game. Clank! again has a variable market and monsters to fight, but you’ve added in some additional elements. It does more of one thing you see in Ascension, which is creating combos based off of who you’ve gotten, and it adds in more than just purchase and fight. You now have the ability to move and you are pushing your luck. Also, good cards might have negative consequences as well. It adds a bit more complexity and a bit more strategy to the game, even with a changing market place.

Heavy/Complex Deck Building Game

Aeon’s End: War Eternal – I had a few options to pick here, but I went with Aeon’s End: War Eternal. A lot of deck building games add to their complexity not so much the deck building aspect, but from additional pieces to the game play. Aeon’s End: War Eternal (or any of the Aeon’s End Games) are good examples of this. The deck building uses a static market, but you are presented with more choices. You have to cast spells at monsters, but to do that you have to purchase more spells, but with your money you also need to open breaches to cast those spells. Plus, all of the Aeon’s End games add in something else interesting, not only is there a lot of strategy to what you get from the market, you also don’t shuffle your deck, you just discard cards, so if you can plan it out correctly you can stack the deck in a particular order to get a lot of well balanced hands or maybe a hand with a lot of purchasing power in order to get a very strong spell. There’s just more to think about, though this game is cooperative so a more experienced player can help and teach a new player to the game.

Now, there are a lot of deck building games out there to choose from and some that fall into the category that I’d qualify as more deck construction games that work off of some of the same principles as a deck building game. Have you tried a deck building game before? Do they sound fun to you?

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In Aeon’s End: War Eternal, you play as breach mages who are trying to hold back giant monsters, nemesis, who are out to destroy the town of Gravehold. You prepare your breaches, cast spells, and buy new cards building up a deck to either outlast these giant monsters while taking out their minions, or to kill the giant monster itself. In the game there are basically always enough things to worry about to use your damage on, to heal Gravehold, and to buy that you don’t feel like you can do everything that you might want to do.

Let’s talk a bit about the unique deck building. In most deck building games, it doesn’t matter what order you put your cards into your discard pile because you end up shuffling the discard pile when you need to draw cards and are out. But in Aeon’s End: War Eternal and all the Aeon’s End games, it’s a bit different. The order you put your cards in matters because the discard pile doesn’t get shuffled, instead you simply flip it over, so if you’re very good at counting cards, you can set-up your hands so that you always have money (gems) and spells, or you can set it up so that you sometimes get a lot of money so that you can buy the best spell cards. I would say that playing solo makes it a bit trickier to stack your deck like you’d want. If I just had to focus on a single character, I’d likely be able to manipulate it more. But I found that very interesting, and it makes the game seem faster, especially solo, because I’m not having to stop to shuffle all the time.

Aeon’s End does another pretty unique thing, and that is with it’s turn order deck. You could compare it to an initiative track, but you don’t know it, and every time you go completely through initiative the order is shuffled up again. That means, if you are unlucky, you could have the nemesis go four turns in a row because it has two cards in the initiative deck. Now, that would be brutal, but you always have four player cards to the two initiative cards in the deck, so the odds of that happening are pretty low. I can see people not loving this part, but Aeon’s End: War Eternal gives you some more control not shuffling the discard pile, but then takes away control by having you not know the turn order. It’s a good tension point in the game, because the nemesis I played against in the live playthrough wasn’t too difficult, but if the nemesis had taken a few turns in a row, he’d have been much harder.

Finally, the last really unique thing that I can think of right now for Aeon’s End: War Eternal is the casting of spells. The casting one turn and it going off the next turn isn’t unique, but the idea of having to have these breaches open or being focused to cast spells is certainly interesting. And the fact that you can open them in any order is also interesting, though the higher numbered ones give you an advantage with extra damage, but they cost more. So do you want to rush to get one of those done early so that you can do more damage, but if you do that, you won’t be able to build up your deck as quickly.

Another thing that I like in games, but isn’t unique to Aeon’s End War Eternal is that it has variable player powers. Each character stars with a unique card in their deck that no other character has access to, so that starts unique. And their starting deck beyond that is also unique, so one character doesn’t feel like another character. But, to give each character more powers, they have special abilities that they can charge up, and these are themed to the character. One of the characters I played in the Malts and Meeples playthrough had healing abilities while the other did extra damage with their charged power. And each character has an ability themed to whom they are supposed to be in the game. So while the game doesn’t have role playing elements that you get in some of these fantasy games, it still has it feel unique.

I definitely enjoyed this game and it will go into the collection of deck builders that I have. I think it’s different enough and offers enough interesting choices that you can have it with other games from Dominion to Xenoshyft: Onslaught. I really like that the deck building aspect is more than just grabbing points, it gives you some real choices unlike, I feel, Dominion does. The game also feels thematic, which is something that Dominion doesn’t have, you feel like your own unique character which I really like. Looking at my favorite deck builders, having the unique character or starting point that you build a deck for is something I really look for in a deck builder, and something that I consider lacking in Clank! In! Space!, even if the rest of the game is really great.

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

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I was back against last night with some Malts and Meeples, this time I was actually get to a playthrough of Aeon’s End: War Eternal from Indie Boards & Cards and Action Phase.

Aeon’s End: War Eternal is a deck building game where you are protecting your city of Gravehold from whatever Nemesis is attacking it. The first time you play it, they recommend that you play against the Umbra Titan, the easiest nemesis. So I took it on in a two player battle to see if I was able to out last it before it would destroy the foundation of our town.

As for my brew, I had Horizon Red IPA from Summit Brewery. It had been sitting in my fridge for a while, so I feel from what I remember of the beer it wasn’t as bitter as it could have been, but it was still enjoyable to drink.

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Bottoms up!

Trying my hand at this for the first time to see how it goes to unbox something. Also, this was supposed to have gone up on Twitch, but I had issues where it said it was streaming there and it didn’t.

You can find me on Twitch at:

https://www.twitch.tv/maltsandmeeples/videos

We’ll also work on getting Kristen set-up on Twitch for her live streaming of the Sims.

But back to Aeon’s End War Eternal. This is a deck building game that needs no shuffling. Instead, you discard cards into the deck, flip the deck, and start again, this allows you to potentially building up combos into your deck depending on what order you discard the cards in.

It’s also a tower defense sort of game where you are trying to outlast or defeat the big bad monster, but you have to stop their minions and their schemes that are threatening your town. I’m excited to get this one to the table next week and give it a whirl as it seems like a fun take on a deck builder.

Bottoms up!