Scythe - Of Mechs and Men

January 29, 2017 Jack Eddy

Designed by Jamey Stegmaier
Art by Jakub Rozalski
Published by Stonemaier Games - 2016
1-5 players - 30 min/player

Scythe is an action selection area control game with asymmetric player powers. Wait… no; Scythe is an engine building game about farming in a wartorn landscape. Hmmm… still not quite right... Scythe is a heavily thematic game about military conquest using primitive mechs in an alternate-history 1920s Europe…

The problem with opening this damned review is that Scythe is all of these things, and more. Everything about this game, from it’s artwork to the mechanics, is intended to blend and subvert traditionally opposing game philosophies. Which would be a problem if the result weren’t so good.

Fit & Finish

The first thing you’ll notice about Scythe is it’s beauty. Long before you play the game, you’ll be immersed in it’s world due to the incredible artwork and quality of the components. Its clear from the get go that Stonemaier wanted this to be a premium package; an object to behold as much as it is meant to be played. Fortunately, it comes across as sophisticated rather than flashy, as each component is both functional and richly thematic. Take the money, for instance. Instead of having uniform designs, each denomination is a coin from a different nation, depicting exchange rates and transitions of currencies during periods of conflict. Even the player’s components are a delightful blend of new and old world ideals, with farming and economic pieces made out of wood while the combat units (your leader and mechs) are beautifully sculpted miniatures that would feel at home in a Cool Mini or Not game.

And let’s talk about Jakub Rozalski's illustrations. Designer Jamey Stegmaier has said that Scythe was directly inspired by looking at a portfolio of Rozalski’s art, and it served to build one of the most interesting worlds realized on a tabletop. Everywhere on the box, the boards, and the cards you can find Rozalski’s sprawling landscapes, dotted with farmers laboring under the watch of their looming iron monstrosities. Which is great because the art captures a blend of perseverance and despair that I find really attractive; kind of like a Steinbeck novel, but with mechs.

The sprawling map featuring gorgeous artwork, paired with beautiful and aesthetically pleasing plastic and wood components make Scythe a damn good looking game.

How it works:
“Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create - this is man.”

The overall concept of the game is pretty straight forward; each turn a player selects one column on their personal board, allowing them to resolve the listed top and bottom row actions. The next turn, they will have to select a different section, resolving a new set of actions. While the individual actions are identical for each player, the pairings are unique on each player board; one player’s move may be paired with building mechs, another player’s may be paired with upgrades.

Players continue to resolve selected actions to expand their control of the board, increase their economic efficiency, and secure military power until someone has reached 6 of the various “triumphs” within the game, each granting a precious star (think: unlocking achievements in a video game, once placed they are permanent). Built all of your buildings? Star. Reached the highest level on the power track? Star. Fulfilled a secret objective? You better believe that’s a star. There are many different triumphs, and when someone earns their 6th the game immediately ends. Players are awarded money for each of their stars, territories, and resources they control; though what’s tricky (and awesome) is that the money each is worth is based on their popularity level; a coveted resource managed throughout the game.

The triumph track showing the 10 achievements that can be "unlocked" to win the game. Winning combat is the only triumph that can be earned twice.

Combat & Control
“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”

Combat gets it’s own section in this review because it’s costs and consequences are pervasive in every decision you make; even if it’s a relative rarity in Scythe. Units are separated between workers and combat units, which includes your starting character and up to four mechs that each faction can unlock. Much like the girls in my highschool, workers flee back to their homebase when you enter their territory, reducing your popularity. But hey, the upshot is that you get to keep the territory and any resources on it. It’s only when you enter enemy space with their combat unit that a fight breaks out.

For those who have played Rex or Tiny Epic Kingdoms, the combat will feel familiar. Each side secretly selects a number from 0 to 7 on their combat dial, which represents the amount of power they will pay to win. Power is a commodity tracked on the board that caps out at 14. Players may also choose to add combat cards of from their hand up to the number of combat units they control, each card granting an additional 2 to 5 combat strength. Then the victor is the player who had the highest total with the aggressor winning ties. And again, the loser’s units retreat to their home.

Combat is one of the weirder aspects of Scythe, and the area I have the most mixed feelings about. I really like that it’s not overly punitive, the losers still have their hard earned units (albeit at home). What I don’t like is that it’s so costly that players tend to only do it if they have an assured victory. Sure, you can’t tell what’s in your opponent’s hand, but you can calculate the maximum they could possibly contribute, match it, and win. BUT that means you spent all your resources, right? So instead, you only pick fights if it’s against someone who is too vulnerable due to lack of power, lack of cards, or both OR you wait until you can end the game by winning a combat and placing your final star. And having someone make one final unstoppable attack, taking away your land, resources, and ending the game with no chance for retribution can feel pretty frustrating. Not unfair, mind you; just not particularly fun.

Ain't no one going to mess with Hawk Lady till unless you can be certain the game will end. Do you really want to leave a vengeful woman sporting both a sword and a hawk as an enemy?

Nuance
“We could live offa the fatta the lan'.”

Combat aside, it’s the little nuances in Scythe that makes it shine. Each player has two personal boards, one is their “Faction Board” which determines their special powers and abilities throughout the game, the other is their “Player Board” which shows the action pairings. At first glance it may seem like the pairings are relatively insignificant, but each game I’ve felt like I’ve controlled a wholly unique civilization with different strengths and economic focus. The action pairings especially impact your choices and opportunities throughout the game. And Scythe is all about taking advantage and chaining those small, turn by turn opportunities.

Another subtle and really cool thing about Scythe is how resources are controlled. Unlike most games where resources are earned and kept in some abstract pile separate from the environment, in Scythe they exist in territories you control and can be moved along with your units. This simple adjustment provides you both a thematic and mechanical ownership of these pieces which organically reinforces a player’s immersion in the game’s story. Furthermore, the presence of resources on the map creates interesting strategic decisions, as opponents may lust after rich, smaug-like piles of wood, wheat, iron, and oil.

And finally, that endgame scoring. Perhaps my favorite mechanism in Scythe is how points are distributed. By increasing the endgame rewards based on an expendable resource, the game naturally encourages balanced play. Suddenly the value proposition of each action is much more fluid; when attacking a player to gain a star may also cause you to drop into a lower reward tier. It’s nuances like these that provide the game with tons of meaty decisions turn after turn.

The pairings of top and bottom row actions made a way bigger difference than I anticipated in the game. Red icons are costs, green are rewards. As you resolve the "upgrade" action, cubes uncover more green icons and can cover up red costs.

Tone
“There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.”

People don’t discuss the tone of games much, but Scythe presents a unique opportunity. Both tabletop and video games are dominated with exciting power fantasies; even the harshest environments are depicted in a thrilling, fun, and empowering way. This contrasts to some of the best fiction ever written, where characters occupy sad, destitute worlds that I would never want to visit. Perhaps that’s what makes Scythe so unique; beyond the high production and tight design, Stegmaier and Rozalski have expertly utilized art and design to craft a fascinating and unique world, but one that is also humorless and grim.

Like the muted browns and greys dominating the box, the strategic choices in Scythe reinforce that it is a cold, unforgiving, and morally agnostic world. Often times your best defensive strategy is to put your workers on the front lines, daring your opponents to attack civilians at the cost of precious popularity. Players are incentivized to consolidate power and make one final aggressive push to end the game. Many of my sessions have ended with a sudden but unstoppable combat, earning a final star and collecting a few extra territories along the way. Like humanity’s worst fears during the real cold war, a sudden offense by either side means the end.

I’m not saying this is bad, in fact the thematic and mechanical tension is one of it’s high points, but it is very bleak. There are no good or bad guys in Scythe; only power, land, and resources. Even if you choose to play peacefully, war will be at your doorstep, influencing each and every decision you make. And that looming threat of attack is pervasive, and perhaps the defining characteristic of Scythe. Players exist in a state of paranoia as they explore and tend their crops, lasting just long enough to prey upon some poor lone mech who wandered too far, like a calf separated from the herd.

NO ONE is having fun in the world of Scythe.  The grueling, oppressive theme  may be thrilling for some, but others may end up feeling like one of these farmers, reflecting on their impending doom. — NO ONE is having fun in the world of Scythe. The grueling, oppressive theme may be thrilling for some, but others may end up feeling like one of these farmers, reflecting on their impending doom.

Final Thoughts
“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”

Overall, I really love Scythe. I think it’s one of the most successful attempts at blending competing American and European gaming philosophies; heavily thematic and confrontational, yet also strategically rich and predictable. Best of all, the mature tone of the game feels organic and delicately interconnected throughout; a true harmony between mechanic and artist design. The game isn’t without flaws; players “turtling” until assured victory over a deterministic combat can be frustrating, and the intense-but-grey world borders on unwelcoming; but the high points by far outweigh the low. Scythe is a satisfying, extremely well produced game, and one I can easily recommend.

Scythe is a big, beautiful, and well designed game. (Bit box, baby monitor, and mug handle not included)

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BONUS: Bits & Pieces on Scythe that didn’t belong anywhere else:

-Solo is really good. The automa design is well crafted, fun, and provides a challenging experience. Bonus that there are several difficulty settings.

-The 3rd party app “Scythekick” (which has Stonemaier’s blessing) is a slick design that helps with endgame scoring, automa management, and random faction & player board pairing.

-I really like the plastic sculpts, but part of me wishes that we could have unique wooden abstractions of each faction’s leaders and mechs. I’m a sucker for cute wooden bits.

-This review was of the base retail edition of Scythe. I do not have the higher end resources, metal coins, or extended board. Those are all great but also unnecessary.

-The expansion “Invaders from Afar” is an easy recommendation if you like Scythe. The base game doesn’t feel incomplete without it, but the addition of two new factions is welcome.

-The miniatures smell like Vanilla Cupcakes. Seriously, check it out!

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-Jack

Want to hear Jack chat with Scythe designer Jamey Stegmaier? Check out podcast episode 7 on our site, iTunes, or Stitcher.

7 Wonders: Duel - A Tug of War For The Ages

January 10, 2017 Jack Eddy

You know what I love? Two player games. You know what is not a good two player game? 7 Wonders. Yes, yes, I know, there are plenty of people out there who LOVE the two player variant, but I just can’t be bothered with it. It’s too much of a hassle to manage the dummy province. Fortunately, 7 Wonders designer Antoine Bauza and his fellow french-game-designer-buddy Bruno Cathala have given the world the incredible 7 Wonders: Duel. Now you and your significant other / house cat / arch-nemesis can finally square off in a card drafting battle for the ages.

The Way of Things

7 Wonders: Duel adapts the look, feel, and overall flow of the original in a way that creates a satisfying 2 player experience. The game is played over three ages (rounds) in which players take turns drafting “age” cards from the table to earn points and advance their strategies. Unlike the original which had you trading hands of cards to pick from, cards are arrayed in alternating faceup and facedown overlapping rows on the table, forming a shape each round. Only cards that are totally uncovered are available to be drafted, so the cards in the top rows are only accessible toward the end of each round. As facedown cards become “unlocked”, they are flipped up and can be drafted like anything else. Like the original, once you draft a card it can be kept in front of you, discarded to gain coins, or be placed facedown to build one of your four wonders, which are drafted at the start of the game.

Both age and wonder cards have a variety of costs and effects, but generally they all serve one of two purposes; advance your economy, allowing you to purchase more cards; or advance your standing in one of the game’s three victory conditions. Yes, three victory conditions; the heart of 7 Wonders: Duel. You see, the game normally ends at the conclusion of the third age, crowning the player with most points the winner. BUT, if a player possesses six of the seven science symbols, or advances the military track to their opponent’s province, they immediately win the game. This amps up the tension to 11 as you manage short and long term strategies at the risk of instant loss or victory.

It’s important to note that both military and science provide bonuses throughout the game even if you don’t achieve sudden victory through them. Collecting two of the same science symbols allows you to select one of the scientific achievements made available at the start of the game, rewarding you with immediate or ongoing effects. Likewise, the military track causes your opponent to lose coins as you march the shield token closer to their province, and gives you bonus points at the end of the game based on how close to their province you got. This is a really smart piece of game design to incentivize these two types of cards, encouraging players to deviate from their core strategies and always feeling rewarded throughout the duration of the game.

Halfway through the first age, in the center you can see the overlapping array of cards

The Tug of War

By adding victory conditions separate from point totals, Bauza and Cathala have created a savage game of tug of war that fights on three fronts. Suddenly, your opponent’s province is equally as important as you carefully select your card for the turn, taking into account what opportunities you leave available. There will be many turns where you choose to buy or discard a card for money just to deny your opponent a quick victory. Or stranger yet, you may pass on a card that you desperately want because you don’t want to grant your opponent access the cards above it.

Resources will also be a point of contention as you play the game. With each new age cards become more expensive to purchase. While you can always trade coins to the bank in place of resources the cost goes up for each good of that type in your opponent’s province. Again, this reinforces the themes of confrontation and denial that is central to the 7 Wonders: Duel experience. Like a knife fight in a phone booth, the game feels intensely desperate and claustrophobic as you delicately plot each move.

Now don’t get me wrong, this brutal game of push and pull isn’t entirely uncivilized. Unlike most confrontational games, Duel never feels punitive. You aren’t destroying cards or taking holdings belonging to an opponent, you are merely trying to outpace them in one of the three paths to victory. Players who normally shy away from aggressive games will still find joy in cleverly balancing their selections; playing defensively to withstand their opponent’s advances and seeing through to a point total victory at the end of the third age.

The military track and scientific achievements; the two main battlegrounds for instant victory — The military track and scientific achievements; the two main battlegrounds for instant victory

A Tidy Design

I’m happy to report that the aesthetics, iconography, box insert, and components are just as well thought out as each of the game’s mechanics. The heavy cardboard used for tokens gives it a satisfying tactile experience on par with a larger game, the iconography is intuitive and easy to understand once you’ve read through the rules, and the art is vibrant and eye catching. That said, after several games I still can’t recall any specific images from the game aside from the box art. This may be a product of the game’s reliance on set pieces and landscapes rather than characters, but I thought it was worthy to mention that while the art is impressive as you play the game, it’s not particularly unique or memorable.

Also on the subject of components, one of the most commendable aspects of Duel is its replayability. The game comes with a few more wonders, age cards, and scientific advances than you play in any given game. Not so much more that it becomes random and unpredictable, but enough so that you will have a unique experience with each game. Each session I’ve been able to craft unique strategies to the opportunities the game presented to me, which will go a long way in keeping this game fresh after a dozen or so plays.

The nice chunky cardboard coins and beautiful artwork help maintain the theme of the game.

The End of the Third Age

Duel is a strange little beast that strikes a delicate balance between scale and depth. For its tiny box and short play time, the game is both heavily thematic and strategically rich. The paths to victory are aggressive and confrontational without feeling negative and punishing. Players feel both immensely pressured, yet always empowered. These contradictions are what makes Duel such an incredible game, but is also the source of many of the caveats I have in recommending it. If you are looking for a short game that doesn’t take too much brain power after a long day, this isn’t for you. If you are looking for a long, heavy game that you can spend a whole evening on developing your strategies, again, this isn’t for you. And if you want a game that is versatile enough to accommodate a broad range of players, this game is especially not for you. But if you are looking for a strong two player experience that satisfies the “big game itch” in a small package, taking only about 30 minutes of your precious time, this game may be damn near perfect for you.

-Jack

Review - Eldritch Horror

December 19, 2016 Jack Eddy

Did the door always creak so loud? she wondered, moving forward into the dark chamber. Or is the room too quiet? She advanced along a narrow path surrounded on either side by ornate furniture, heaped with her husband’s infernal “research”. She would find him here, somewhere amongst the decrepit piles of cardboard, plastic, and wood. Distantly she could see the faint glow of his lamp. It was her beacon; her lighthouse through the sea of blackness. Her own candle flickered with every step, causing strange geometry to dance about in the shadows. It beckoned her to stray from her course. No. I must do what he could not.

Her eyes burned. She instinctively reached a hand to her face but found no tears. I’m forgetting to blink. She briefly closed her eyes and exhaled. I must not hesitate. I must make it to him. When she reopened them she was momentarily blinded as her eyes readjusted to the stark contrast between light and shadow. She began to step forward, but then hesitated as fear gripped her chest. Where is my beacon? Beyond the reach of her candle there was only inky blackness.

That’s when she heard it, a faint rattle from the abyss. There was a sinister rhythm to the sound which made her heart thrum in agony. As she stood still, it dawned on her that it was growing louder. A voice! she thought Is it him? It was barely a whisper, too quiet to make out words. I must reach him before all is lost. Through force of will, she managed to take one step toward the voice. Then another. The eerie shadows cast by her light mocked every step. She was getting closer. Is it a prayer? The air was thick, the darkness was consuming the light. Finally she reached the end of the hall, and found nothing.

Suddenly, the eerie voice crescendoed into an agonizing wail coming from all sides. She spun, brandishing her candle as both weapon and shield, protecting her from the dark unknown. Everywhere she looked, she only saw the disheveled remnants of madness. The noise stopped; a hand grasped her shoulder.

The terror was petrifying. She could not run, could not scream. “Are you afraid?” he croaked. It can’t be him. She remembered his voice being sweet and soothing This is an imposter! Her hate gave her courage to break free and face her captor, the flame of her candle danced excitedly. It was her husband, his face was withered and gaunt. The hand that had touched her remained outstretched, the other clutched a large, dark box. She swallowed. “Please” she cried, “Please, no more. Come away with me, away from this awful place”.

His face, vacant at first, twisted into a gruesome smile. She felt the courage drip away like the hot wax and tears that burned her skin. Your eyes, she thought. Are you still in there, Jack? After a long pause, he slowly lifted the thing he carried “he awaits within.” She risked leaving his eyes for just long enough to peer at the box. In the darkness she could barely make out ripples of purple and black, and two pale words “Eldritch Horror”.

The candle flickered out. His laughter was the last she ever heard.

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, Eldritch Horror is a sprawling cooperative game based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, produced by Fantasy Flight Game. Players work together to solve incredible mysteries, duel with horrific monsters, and hopefully stop the Great Old One from destroying the world.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because Eldritch is a reimplementation of the now-classic Arkham Horror. While some of the scope and individual mechanics differentiate the two, much of the art, lore, characters, and (most importantly) the feel of the game make it clear that this beast is intended to be a replacement of it’s older brother.

Custom storage solution not included... But I strongly advise that you make one!

A Bit on H.P. Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft is one of the most celebrated horror writers in American history. He wrote dozens of novellas, sonnets, and short stories about cosmic horrors and the vast, terrifying unknown (oh, and cephalopods). While Lovecraft never enjoyed critical success before his untimely death in 1937, his work has since become massively popular. And thanks to 1981’s Call of Cthulhu RPG (designed by Sandy Petersen*), Lovecraft and Cthulhu have long been a staple of the tabletop world.

*Yes, PC gaming historians. That Sandy Petersen.

You don’t have to be a Lovecraft superfan to enjoy Eldritch Horror; in fact, the setting may feel familiar even if you’ve never read his work. From Tannis to X-Files, Supernatural to the Exorcist, Lovecraft’s influence can be felt throughout the “weird-fiction” genre. Players will fight grotesque creatures, receive blessings from elder gods, and make faustian deals with mysterious entities. The theme is a perfect playground for exciting and unpredictable adventures; but there are some real grizzly and provocative moments in this game. I love them, but they may be too much for some people. Bottom line, know what you are getting into.

A Vast World of Horrors

First off, this game is so huge that it seeps into the recesses between time and space. In other words, you need a big table (not to mention a couple of hours) to see it through. The game consists of a massive board, many decks of cards, several “Great Old Ones”, tons of characters, and about a dozen different types of tokens. If ever Fantasy Flight needed to provide an insert, tuckboxes, or some other organizational system to help manage content, it’d be this game. Unfortunately, FFG thrives on the suffering of it’s fans, so prepare to spend some time sorting. If you need help, there are tons of fine folks on the Board Game Geek forums who will be happy to share their hot organizational tips.

Once you get the game in order, the finished setup is a thing to behold. The board is a beautiful, sepia-toned world map, evoking classic globe trotting adventures like Casablanca and the Maltese Falcon. The brightly colored cards and tokens contrast beautifully with the weathered board, emphasizing the game’s sense of scale. The components are all high quality with mesmerising artwork, serving to establish tone and immersion. Even the character standees feature beautiful portraits that are so good that I couldn’t imagine replacing them with miniatures. The production values go far to make Eldritch Horror feel like a deluxe package.

The Madness in Operation

Each game has the same basic structure but fortunately there’s enough variability to keep it consistently fresh and interesting. The main object of the game is to solve a series of mysteries before time runs out and the Great Old One awakens. Depending on which villain you’re facing, that may mean the world is devoured and the game ends, or the game will continue with a new time limit to battle an immeasurably powerful Elder God. Really you just want to solve the mysteries before ever having to worry about that.

Players are represented by a diverse cast of characters with their own starting equipment, strengths, weaknesses, and unique special abilities. Cooperatively, they jetset around the world to find clues, solve mysteries, kill monsters, and close a few interdimensional portals along the way. Each Great Old One (GOO?) spreads it’s own flavor of evil across the game, with unique effects, objectives, and challenges. By facing off with only one GOO at a time, it reinforces the unpredictable nature as events unfold, not to mentioned it sets up grudges for future games. (The Black Goat is more of a White Whale in the Eddy household)

Throughout the game the board is populated by various tokens that will aid or hinder your pursuit of the active mystery. Player turns are spent performing a variety of actions, mainly to prepare for challenges or move across the board. Then each player encounters their location. These encounters are where most of the action takes place, either by fighting monsters or resolving cards. The cards come from facedown decks, so you can’t predict what will happen, just that something will happen. Monster or Card, you’ll likely make one or more skill checks by rolling some dice based on your character and other collected equipment, then you are rewarded or punished based on your success. Finally, the mythos deck reveals some global catastrophe, usually having some nasty effect and instructing players what new tokens are added to the board.

The Heart of Darkness

There’s an elegant beauty to this clockwork monstrosity. Turns are quick, skill checks are easy to resolve, and most of the decisions players make are simple to understand but yield large consequences. The bulk of the mechanics are out of players’ hands, existing to automate the systems and propel the emergent storytelling. In a way, Eldritch Horror is more of a “choose-your-own-adventure” story with game elements than a game with a story attached. Sure, the objective is to win but the game is far too unpredictable to anticipate success, let alone what next turn will look like. It’s the micro stories reinforced by the hundreds of components, with beautiful artwork and delightful flavor text that encourage you and your friends to go along for the ride; and you’ll equally savor victories and defeats.

But it’s that unpredictability that is both the game’s blessing and curse. It’s so chock-full of narrative devices that the gameplay can lose focus, undermining player agency. It’s hard to feel strategically invested when you only have a vague idea of what your encounter will be. Sometimes you just have to move into place, hope for the best, and know that whatever happens the game will continue; which will be frustrating if you are looking for a strategic game. Don’t get me wrong, there are important decisions to be made, but the game’s random nature will be a severe turnoff for some people.

I AM PROVIDENCE (Final Thoughts)

I really love Eldritch Horror; in spite of it’s size the game feels welcoming, taking the load off of players and providing them with an experience. I like the wide array of characters to choose from, the variability of the Great Old Ones, the setting and tone are excellent, but I’m most fond of the automated storytelling told through the encounter and mythos cards. Thank goodness that FFG solved their encounter system, making sure that a little unique, unpredictable moment would happen for every player, every turn. Eldritch Horror is a wonderful, more streamlined, and ultimately more effective re envisioning of it’s older brother. You’ll want to return to the game again and again, to face new challenges, try new characters, and see what strange new story unfolds. And like the sleeper beneath the waves, Eldritch Horror awaits you, distantly calling for more.

-Jack

Pro Tips for playing Eldritch Horror

Read to each other! When resolving encounters, make sure that each player reads another’s encounter card, stopping at the skill check or choice. Keeping the results secret maintains the narrative and adds suspense to each roll of the dice.
Get the small box expansions, they’re great! Each one is themed around a new Great Old One, and has a ton of content that can be mixed in with the base game for every play. They serve to add variety without overcomplicating the game. Strange Remnants in particular adds focus tokens, a simple but elegant way to add more options on those turns where other actions don’t seem worthwhile.
Get organized! Like I said in the review, being organized is key in this game. By having a good system in place, you can cut setup down from 30 minutes to 5-10 easy; giving you more time to fight those nasty serpent demons.

Review - Allegiance: A Realm Divided

December 7, 2016 John LS Foster

Allegiance: A Realm Divided

It’s 1996. Someone is at the top of a music chart, a certain style is in fashion, someone famous probably dies, and I barely notice any of it. My attention is elsewhere. A new friend asks if I play “Magic Cards”, which I can only assume means some sort of sleight of hand. He shows me a handful of cards and explains that this type of magic doesn’t require a top hat, but it almost certainly couldn’t hurt. An 11 year old me has just taken his first steps down a long and expensive path that leads to boxes full of paper cards and a wallet devoid of paper money.

Now its 2016. I'm 31 years old and I live with my girlfriend. I have a full time job, a car payment, and a daughter; things have changed a bit since 1996. I find myself with a dwindling supply of time and an ever growing collection of games, none of which I can ever play enough to satisfy the gaming itch entirely. I still have all of the passion of a lifelong gamer, but the time I once devoted to the singular pastime that was Magic has now been spread thin and the number of gaming options I have to choose from has expanded dramatically. About 6 years ago I came to the realization I couldn't sustain a single game hobby that consumed so much of my time and money. In spite of my love for the gripping 2 player duel of cards that Magic offered, I had to let it go. Enter Allegiance: A Realm Divided.

Allegiance is a card game with a familiar premise; play some cards, summon some minions, attack. Players take on the role of fantasy trope characters and do battle using cards for a variety of effects. This is a theme that is more than a little routine in tabletop gaming by now, but Allegiances fleshes it out with vibrant and dynamic art on par with any top tier company in the industry. The art isn’t limited to the cards either. The first step for setup is for the players to choose 1 of 10 large player boards sporting gorgeous murals of the game's characters alongside a bevy of game changing powers. These characters and their powers are where the game gets its flare and the lion's share of its flavor. The rest of the game seems to exist as a framework to let these characters display their talents.

After choosing characters the rest of setup is a brief affair in which the table is set with 3 shared decks from which cards are drawn. Allegiance graciously eliminates deck construction which lets players jump directly into playing without having to invest in a large collection and devote time to preparation. Turns begin with a series of simple upkeep steps followed by an open-ended main phase. On their turn players draw a card from the deck of their choice, ready exhausted cards on the table, accrue gold to pay for cards, and increase the amount they accrue each turn by 1. Players are then free to attack with minions, use active player powers, or pay gold to unlock powers on their player board and play cards from their hand.

With that simple structure and a few basic timing rules to learn you will find yourself diving into play almost immediately. The pace has a steady build in intensity that gradually ramps up due to the ever increasing gold accrual each turn. Shared decks means a level of consistency to every game that doesn't hinder the overall variety. The streamlined rules and ease of setup are definitely features, but if that were all Allegiance had to offer it would be a forgettable experience. Its the characters themselves that take the raw stuff of this game and make magic from it.

The top-notch artwork makes the familiar fantasy tropes come to life on the player boards.

Each of the 10 characters is wholly unique and shapes the play of the user in ways that breed a host of satisfying choices to be made each turn. The powers these characters wield require the same resource to unlock as you might use to field an army to protect yourself, but where an army can be killed and an action card is played but once, character powers operate on a cool down system and are available again and again once unlocked. This confronts you with some truly interesting choices as you consider summoning a defending minion to the table to stop the next wave of attacks or grit your teeth and take the hit so you can unlock the next power at your disposal. Choosing characters means decisions like whether to act as the Necromancer and call forth armies from the discard pile or to become the Ranger and control the battlefield by predicting the attacks of your opponents and laying traps to thwart their intentions. With over 40 possible matchups, Allegiance offers a variety without overcomplexity. You can drape yourself in skull bedecked armor of a Death Knight to decimate the Paladin's blessed armies and wonder how well you will fare when your friend chooses next game to forgo hordes of minions and takes the fight to you as a shape changing Druid.

This all sounds very colorful and make no mistake it is, but while the characters will add asymmetry and intensity to the game, they can't disguise its derivative nature. Allegiance borrows heavily from competitive card games in general and from Magic: The Gathering in particular. Nothing in the rulebooks will redefine the world of gaming in itself, but where this game shines is in the coat of polished lacquer it applies to the old machine that is the 2 player duel.

The core rules here eliminate some of the worst pitfalls the genre has to offer and leaves players with a sandbox to explore their character strategies in. Defined resource accrual means no chance at a bad hand ruining your in-game economy and preventing plays turn after turn. No deck construction means no demands that you keep up with an ever expanding pool of cards and an ever diminishing bank balance. No lexicon of overused keyword systems means only simple rules on simple cards that allow new and returning players alike to explore their character rather than muddle through a hand full of literature each turn. And all of this means no need to hunt for players invested in the same franchise when this single box holds an entire experience and welcomes all levels of familiarity to the table.

I recommend this game to any player who has ever loved like Magic or wanted to experience it, but were put off by the sheer magnitude of such an endeavor. I will remember Magic as my first love in card gaming, but I find now that the games I love best now are ones that offer depth and variety without bloat; games that can be a part of my larger hobby of tabletop gaming rather than being a hobby unto themselves. It may be that as I move gradually into the middle years of my life I have realized that quality doesn't demand excess and I have come to expect more from the games I own. I can safely say that, for me at least, Allegiance delivers on that expectation.

John L S Foster is a contributing reviewer for the Cardboard Herald

Expansion Mini Review - Suburbia: Inc.

December 4, 2016 Jack Eddy

Suburbia: Inc.

What’s New: Bonuses, Challenges, and Borders! Awesome, jaggedy borders!. One bonus and one challenge tile are drawn randomly at the start of the game and placed face up on stacks B and C. Players fulfilling the bonus or challenge when those stacks are available are given rewards. Borders are like super-tiles that function like any other city tile, but you can only build off their interior jaggedy edge, meaning that your city will begin taking strange, OCD defying shapes. Oh yeah, you also get some extra scoring objective circular token thingys, and really interesting city tiles to add some variety to the base set.

Why it’s so good: The bonuses and challenges are an elegant little twist that gives everyone a clear mini objective to follow, or not follow, as they so choose. It nudges them in a direction and helps add value to different city tiles each game.And the borders. Oh boy, the borders. These puppies are what give your city life and character, it tells the story of what your city is, and how it came to be. Not only will it make your burrough thematically different, your city shape will change to become unique and unlike anyone else’s. Overall the expansion just adds so many cool options that are intuitive and consistent with the rules and spirit of the base game; which is amazing because it does that while ALSO enhancing the thematic imagery of expansive, sprawling, unique cities. Now that I own Inc., I can't imagine playing Suburbia without it.

Expansion Mini Review - Lords of Waterdeep: Scoundrels of Skullport

December 4, 2016 Jack Eddy

Lords of Waterdeep: The Scoundrels of Skullport

What’s New: Tons of stuff! An extra meeple for each color, tokens for a 6th grey player, and 2 separate modules that can be combined or played separately. “Skullport” and “Undermountain”. each add new Lords, quests, intrigue cards, an additional location board, and buildings that get mixed in with the base stack.

Skullport adds the corruption track and most of the new content revolves around gaining and losing corruption. The more corruption tokens that are taken from the track by the end of the game, the more negative points each token is worth. lf all players are “dipping in”, these little smurf poops* can be up to -9 points each. Why not avoid corruption you ask? The problem is the skullport locations and buildings and quests provide awesome rewards, and many chances to return corruption to the track.

*corruption tokens are supposed to be blue skulls, but we can all agree they are secretly smurf poops. I bet Gargamel is behind this...

Undermountain, perhaps the less interesting of the two, adds new PHAT & FAT quests and big actions. I’m talking 40 point quests, or quests that put all buildings in builder’s hall into play under your control. Undermountain doesn’t change the fundamental play of the game, other than adding the option to go after really explosive actions that require high investment for high reward.

Why it’s so good: First off, this kit is modular without the hassle. Too often modular expansions are a hassle to deal with if they don’t integrate with each other. Not so here. The insert is beautiful and easy to manage and the components for each module are clearly identified, so integrating and separating is a breeze. Both modules compound the interesting options you have in the game.

Skullport adds a risk and reward element which alters the flow of the game in a really cool way. Early on, you amass a pile of corruption, rarely thinking about the consequences, but later you are desperately searching for opportunities to get rid of it. Or maybe you avoid corruption altogether, and try and find ways to force other players to take more? I almost never play without Skullport EXCEPT when I’m playing with Undermountain.

Undermountain is fun for a change of pace, because completing your aforementioned PH/FAT quests feels really, really good. You’ll relish the-deer-in-the-headlights your friends give as you zoom forward on the point track, only to witness them soon do the same. The lack of corruption doesn’t mean Undermountain is without risk, either; there’s a balance in completing a variety of quests, and not getting bogged down with too big of quests with not enough turns or resources left in the game. The big difference with Undermountain’s risk is that it isn’t punitive like Skullport.

For advanced gamers, or those who want more strategic meat on Waterdeep's bones, Skullport has you covered. Alternatively Undermountain adds more variety and tactical options while keeping the barebones, new-player-friendly nature of the base game intact. For those who just want a sandbox to play in, they can play with both. What’s not to love?

Expansion Mini Review - Five Tribes: The Artisans of Naqala

December 4, 2016 Jack Eddy

Five Tribes: The Artisans of Naqala

What’s New: Five tribes get’s a 6th tribe, the purple artisans. They earn you face down treasure tokens, which are either points ranging from 5 to 9, or one time use powers! To accommodate the extra meeples, there are a few more board spaces including an impassible pit, and three tiles that have tiny wooden impassable mountain ranges placed on two of it’s sides. Also there are are a few more Djinns that play off of the treasures and artisans.

Why it’s so good: In base Five Tribes, you either saw optimum moves or you didn’t; there was never much risk in the game aside from turn order bidding and leaving good moves for your opponents. The treasure tokens entice you to consider risks when evaluating your turn, never knowing the exact reward they will net. Fortunately the artisans are inherently worth points, the treasures are never bad, and you get your choice of those drawn, so it never impacts the strategic core of the game. The impassable terrain also present interesting obstacles, causing you to migrate meeples in more interesting ways, making the board feel more dynamic and alive. Also the little wooden mountains are visually striking, making the otherwise drab board pop a bit. Plus, purple is the best color for board game pieces, so I’m happy to play with the artisans.

This is an excerpt from the article "Three Perfect Expansions"

Review - Imperial Settlers

November 29, 2016 Jack Eddy

Imperial Settlers
Designed by Ignacy Trzewiczek
Published by Portal Games (2014)
1 - 4 Players / 45 - 90 minutes
Review by Jack Eddy

I was apprehensive about Imperial Settlers. While the cute, cartoony artwork and reputation as a great asymmetric game drew me in, something about the vast array of cards in front of me made me wary. You see, I really love civilization builders, but I like the physicality of tokens, of real pieces, representing my grand design. Somehow cards just, well, fall flat. Turns out, I’m just a big dummy. Imperial Settlers feels like a board game in spite of 95% of the action happening on cards. And more importantly, it’s also one of the most fun civilization building games I’ve played in ages.

(not) United Nations:

To start out, each player chooses one of four great and iconic nations; Japan, Rome, Egypt, and Barbaria.... Barbariana...Barbary Coast? The United Barbarian Horde (UBH)! Anyway, there are four different factions to choose from, each with it’s own deck of building cards and unique loadout of resource production every turn. At the beginning of the game the factions will closely resemble one another, but as their settlement expands, the asymmetry becomes much more apparent.

Like all self respecting board games, players gain resources to spend on things that let them gain more resources, to hopefully get points; but Imperial Settlers does it with a satisfying Rube Goldberg-esque flair. As players alternate actions to build, resolve card effects, trade in resources, or “raze” (destroy) the cards in their own hands or even in an opponent’s field, you get the sense that you are managing a vast contraption, with each step being one in a long sequence resulting in your victory. This is helped by each individual action being relatively simple. Nothing comes at too high of a cost, nothing is out of reach. You will find yourself wishing you had more resources to do everything, but as long as you aren’t greedy, you’ll have what you need to do almost anything.

New faction and common cards are drawn at the beginning of each round (for the love of god use the common deck draft rules in the back of the rulebook!). Once in play, each card is a building that either has an ongoing effect, grants the player an action they can use, or produces stuff (usually resources, points or cards), The common cards have a wide variety of effects while the faction cards tend to synergize with one another and steer a player toward the strengths of their nation. As your nation becomes more expansive, you’ll become more selective and critical about what to build at any given moment, using the common buildings as a way to augment or enhance your faction’s viable strategies. Most of the faction buildings require you to sacrifice a common building which you’ve already put into play, so again, you are being selective about what part of your machine you are willing to trim.

Some people just want to watch the world burn:

Razing is one of the few, but important, nuggets of player interactivity in the game. Some buildings produce swords, which can used to raze buildings to gain the rewards shown in the upper right of the card. With few exceptions, only common cards in your own hand or your opponent’s field can be razed. The cost to raze your own is cheap at only one sword, but inevitably, you’ll find yourself in a situation with two or more swords and your opponent’s buildings will be a bit more tempting. Destroy the right building, and that perfectly syncopated chain of events your friend was falling may prematurely collapse like oh-so-many dominoes. This may seem overly harsh in what is otherwise a friendly engine building eurogame, but razing opponents is expensive and common buildings are never so vital that losing one is more than an annoyance. You even get to flip the card to use it to build one of their faction buildings; and adorably, they get one wood for their building getting destroyed, presumably from the wreckage.

What’s to love?:

What I really like about Imperial Settlers is that in spite of the well defined factions, the path forward never quite feels obvious. Each round, save maybe the first, I feel like there are many branching opportunities that I won’t see the full consequence until I follow through. I love that. It adds mystery and suspense right up until the end. Speaking of the well defined factions, I like that the synergies make for broader rather than specific strategies; it leaves room to mitigate luck by leaning into whatever you draw into.

I also like the spartan design. (Wait, why aren’t the Greeks a playable faction?). In a tight five rounds with simple actions, it’s easy to teach and understand the game so that everyone is ready to rock within the first handful of actions. Even the cards have a simplistic yet versatile design, begging you to indulge as you consume every part of the buffalo. Every faction building has a banner at the bottom allowing you to “Make a Deal!”. Instead of building it, you can flip it around, tuck it under your player board with just that banner showing, and begin producing those resources each turn. The raze reward on common buildings is just as vital to your strategy as the effect of building it. Every card, whether it enters play or is used for some effect has value to you; it helps keep the decks small and manageable, and reduces the risk of disappointment as you draw cards each turn.

Room to Grow:

I should also mention that this game presents the opportunity for limited deck construction. The base set does not have extra cards, but there are a few expansions at this point that allow you to swap out cards to further define each faction’s strategy.Honestly, I think this was a costly mistake either by the designer or publisher, as many gamers don’t want to deal with the TCG/LCG hassle of building decks. Fortunately, this is entirely optional and the game is completely solid on it’s own.

On the other hand, the game is designed such that it’s exceptionally easy to envision new factions and what their cool powers would be. Already Portal Games has released an Atlanteans set, and an Aztec set is just on the horizon, having had a limited european release at Essen Spiel 2016. I don’t want it to sound like there isn’t more than enough game in the base set, but the option to add new and interesting factions without upsetting the balance or the fundamental rules of the base set is exciting.

Final Thoughts:

It’s really a strange beast. For some, the limited player interactivity and luck of card draw may be a turnoff. For others, the looming threat of attack will be enough to avoid the game. But I feel like Imperial Settler’s really threads the needle, making an engine building euro game with just enough interactivity to make you care about what your opponent is doing, while softening the impact of each costly monkey wrench that they throw at you.

Imperial Settlers is a civilization game with a smirk. From its cute characters to the secret box ninja (yeah, I found you!) to the consolation wood you get when your neighbor blows up your building, the game oozes charm and levity rarely found in this genre. Best of all, you are rewarded for smart and strategic play but the path to victory never feels too obvious. I really like Imperial Settlers, in spite of it’s entire dependence on cards, it really feels like you are building a vast and powerful empire in a short amount of time; and for that, I highly recommend you check it out.

Review - Suburbia

November 21, 2016 Jack Eddy

Suburbia
Designed by Ted Alspach
Published by Bezier Games
45-90 minutes - 1-4 players
Review by Jack Eddy

Welcome to “PowerPoint Presentation: The Game”, where you will visualize, realize, and actualize the city of your dreams! You sir, are you ready to take your life to the next level? M’am, are you finally ready to become your own boss? With our tried and true techniques, you will be able to shape your destiny and find a better tomorrow. How much will this cost? Ten dollars? Ten thousand dollars? Two hundred billion dollars!? NO! Here at PPPTG, we will empower you to build a brighter borough for just a small percentage of your profits. All you have to do is remember to Visualize, Realize, and Actualize!

From its color pallet to its number crunching, playing Suburbia feels like you are doing research for a slideshow presentation at your next regional business conference, but in a good way! Don’t work for a big business with slideshows and investor meetings? No problem! In less than an hour, Suburbia’s very simple and intuitive gameplay will have you ready to wow your family/housecat/reflection with charts, diagrams, investment options, financial figures, maps, and projected impact on local population; and you’ll have fun to boot.

The Initial Investment (Setup)

Setup starts by randomly picking city tiles of the three different levels (A, B, and C) and forming face down stacks, with the end of game “one more round” tile being mixed into the middle of stack C. Basic city tiles are set aside face up, and are always available to be purchased. The first seven tiles of stack A are displayed in the market showing a scale of additional costs, then public goals are drawn. Players each have a player board that forms a border of their city and tracks their income and reputation, then they are given three starting basic tiles, three investment tokens, starting money, and two personal goals; keeping one and discarding the other. Both the public and personal goals award points at the end of the game for having the most or least of some element (money, type of city tile, reputation, etc…); public goals can be earned by any player, the personal goals are kept secret and can only be earned by their player.

Visualize, Realize, and Actualize! (Gameplay)

Each turn you add a new tile to your city or invest in a tile you already own. Basic tiles are available for purchase so long as some are left in the supply, tiles in the market can be purchased face up, or flipped over and used as lakes. No matter what type: lakes, market, or basic, you pay the listed cost plus the additional cost based on its position in the market, then place it next to another tile in your city so the magic can begin. You see, when a tile enters play, you resolve the effects on it, then you resolve the effects of every other tile if applicable. For instance, when you put down a tile that gives you “+1 income for each adjacent office”, that means all current and future adjacent offices will trigger it’s effect. This makes for real meaty, strategic decisions, yet they are never so complex that you will be overwhelmed.

The alternative to playing a tile is placing an investment marker on a city in your burrough and discarding one tile from the market. The cost of the investment is the cost of the invested tile plus the additional cost from the discarded one, then BAM! The immediate and ongoing effects of the tile are doubled for the rest of the game. If played correctly, this can make for some dramatic end-game turns.

The rest of your turn plays out by gaining or losing money and points based on your current income and reputation, sliding down remaining market tiles, and drawing a new one from the first available stack. There’s a bit of a balancing act in gaining points; the population (point) track has several red markers that once passed, you lose an income and a reputation. If your burrough’s population increases too fast, your income will dry up making it difficult to buy future tiles.

Projected Impact on Population (thoughts)

Suburbia hits on so many things that I love about board games that it’s hard (though not impossible) to find flaws in the design. It’s strategic yet approachable, it has really nice tactile pieces that form a cohesive theme, it feels rewarding when you make smart decisions, the whole thing usually plays in about an hour, and overall, the game just flows beautifully.

I admire the economy of decisions in the game. Every turn from beginning to end, you almost always resolve the same basic action: pick a tile and play a tile. Yet by combining effects based a wide variety of factors (colors, subtypes, adjacency, tiles in your own burrough, tiles in everyone’s burrough,etc...) each one has it’s own strategic value worth consideration. As your burrough grows, you feel like you are building an intricate machine, eventually chaining multiple effects per placement. Yet it never feels so overwhelming that it is hard to understand the immediate and future impact of your decisions, which helps the game move along at a quick pace.

One of the best and most important aspects of Suburbia is the distribution of bonus points at the end of the game, awarded for achieving public and personal goals. Not only does it give you direction as you expand your burrough, they increase tension through interactivity and hidden information. All of a sudden, you care about what your opponents are purchasing, hoping to compete with them for the public rewards and potentially deny them their personal reward. These goals give a tension and versatility to Suburbia that so many games lack, since the importance of each tile may differ based on the public and personal goals distributed at the beginning of the game. It helps that the game comes with a huge stack of these, so you’re unlikely to see the same setup twice.

Did I mention how much this game just looks like a powerpoint presentation? This may be a turnoff for some players, but the commitment to a theme unlike anything else in the hobby is commendable. The muted colors of the central and player boards provide strong contrast for the bold and vibrant city tiles as they enter play, helping to quickly assess the impact of tile effects. By sticking with low-detail on the tiles, it reinforces the intentional abstraction, you feel like you are in an office studying the zoning of a city as you plan each addition. Even the shape of the boards reinforces the business presentation theme, recalling graphs and charts as you set up for play. All of this could have turned out ugly and jarring, but somehow by leaning into this style, it brings a real charm and uplifting spirit to the game.

For all I love about Suburbia, there are two problems worth noting. First, the game can feel a bit fiddly, especially when tracking the effects of tiles toward the end of the game. You may find yourself sliding your income, reputation, and population tracks several times a turn, and if you lose track of what you’ve already done it’s hard to find your place. Second, because the goals can be such a driving force in your decision making, some tiles may be rendered worthless as it clogs up the market, only existing as an obstacle to getting tiles that are actually worthwhile. Though the useless tile will eventually be used for a lake or get discarded, it feels funny to occasionally have a tile that everyone agrees is just a bad move. I can’t think of any obvious solutions to these problems without fundamentally changing the design, and they’ve never impacted my enjoyment of the game, but they are somewhat clunky and cumbersome elements in an otherwise supremely elegant game.

The Payout (tl;dr)

I love Suburbia. From its idealized, late 90s tech company vibes to the sense of empowerment you have as you grow your burrough. Even the act placing the bold, bright, hexagonal city tiles into place feels satisfying. I especially love the variation between games it brings. Between your randomized stacks of city tiles and public and personal goals, each game will flow in a different direction, though there is enough consistency that the central thrust remains the same. It is not a heavy game by any means, sitting on the lighter side of medium weight gaming (whatever that really means now). There is enough strategic merit to keep veteran gamers entertained, while being approachable enough that newer players in the hobby should be able to grasp it quickly. Bottom line, Suburbia is an excellent game.

Review - The Voyages of Marco Polo

November 17, 2016 Jack Eddy

The Voyages of Marco Polo
Designed by Simone Luciani & Daniele Tascini
Publisher Z-Man Games (English Edition) - 2015
Review by Jack Eddy
Players: 2-4 - Time: 2 hours

Every now and then something comes along that seems perfectly tailored to my exquisite tastes. Maybe it’s a band that sounds like Led Zeppelin meets Queens of the Stone Age, or it’s a show that somehow combines the whimsical fairytale storytelling of The Princess Bride with boisterous showtunes. Maybe it’s even a game that combines asymmetric player powers with dice-worker placement all complemented by adorable tiny wooden camels! As I write this, I’m chomping at the bit for all of these heavenly concoctions. Tragically though, it’s these perfectly crafted amalgams that can occasionally lead to the greatest of disappointments.

Who are you? (Who, who. Who, who?):

Off the bat, players draft character cards that will dictate how you play the game. These cards give you fantastic and unique game breaking powers, the kind that most asymmetric games only dream of, each wildly different than the rest. You really feel like you can lean into these abilities and craft a strategy unique to that character, yet the powers feel carefully planned, elegant and simple. This is the true achievement of Marco Polo, maintaining a delicate balance while managing a huge variety of character powers.

Setup continues with some relatively meaningless secret objectives that grant points if you visit certain locations on the map. I don’t mean that they are worthless, those points can be valuable, but this is one system that feels tacked on and arbitrary, as if the designer knew that players would be aimless throughout the game if they didn’t have some reward for traveling. It’s a startling contradiction to the deeply satisfying and thematic game powers I mentioned above.

From Soho down to Brighton:

Your mobile command center in all it's glory.

Each round, players roll their dice and alternate assigning them to use actions on the board. Like most worker placement games, if you take up a spot, others can't freely go there. In many circumstances you can go to an occupied spot by paying money, but again, it's so expensive that even when necessary, the cost is discouraging. Most actions are more powerful with higher numbered dice, other actions require multiple dice placed at once to activate. The main flow of the game is collecting resources that allow you to move to new cities or fulfill orders, which give you **rewards!™** (points, resources, orders, movement, etc...) allowing you to do it again. As your merchant lands on new locations, you may gain access to new actions or receive more **rewards!™** on this future turns, which lets you move… and fulfill more orders… for more **rewards!™**.

Since it is unlikely that you will visit every location on the board, you are frequently deciding which path to take. Not only does the movement action cost resources, but most paths on the board have additional costs, making it prohibitively expensive to journey across. Do you spend your whole turn scraping together the resources to get where you want to go, or just change plans and go somewhere else or fulfill some orders because you have the resources available?

That’s the challenge of Marco Polo, constantly deciding if it’s even worth it to stick to a long term plan. If you want to make it to the other side of the board, you need to have tons of camels, money, gold, sponges*, poops**, high rolls, and the action spaces to be available at just the right time. Every action must result in a small but meaningful advancement toward your goals; goals that may or may not materialize because the game did not line up perfectly. Everything is part of a sequence of events leading to a much greater but also at the same time disappointing payoff, because it rarely feels like you are investing in anything, you are just gaining money to spend money, getting a few points along the way.

Speaking of money, there are several currencies in this game that are necessary to manage if you want to accomplish anything. Every turn is an exercise in measuring immediate costs and rewards, and careful calculation of the various resources is the most critical key to success.As you struggle to have exactly enough of each type of resource without waste, you will soon “see through the matrix”, and each chit, token, pawn, and hut might as well become variables in equations to get points. It’s unfortunate, because the game really does have a beautiful art direction with fun, thematic components.

No one knows what it’s like to be the bad man:

All the camels in the world, and still I felt like I couldn't get anywhere...

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the game is bad, it’s just a type of game that undermines my favorite aspect of it. I want the character powers to make me feel powerful, like I can really dig in and work toward a longterm strategy; yet throughout the game I always feel disempowered and unable to get the things I want. Almost always I’d settle for the easiest and most immediate way to get points, and it usually results in a higher standing at the end of the game. The far off cities on the end of the map, which seemed so welcoming and adventurous at the beginning of the game, just become dreams of the past as I settle for mediocrity. By the end of the game, my merchant is a jaded vagabond, occasionally roving from town to town, scooping up whatever opportunities he can before wandering on.

I will say this for the game, it’s a tight ship. There are so many ways of getting resources and mitigating unlucky rolls that the dice are rarely the problem. The player powers and victory point cards given at the beginning of the game line out a direction for you to go in. It’s just that everything is prohibitively expensive, I never feel like I get to play how I want to play. I never feel like I’m building an engine that makes it easier as I go. In life we work towards goals that may be challenging, but we hope that what we gain will assist us to meet even more challenging goals. In Marco Polo, you will struggle from beginning to end, and your rewards seldom ease the pain as you start all over again. There was no arc, and that just isn’t fun to me.

There are people who will love this game; it’s a heavy euro that somehow got squished down into a mid-weight form. The production value is excellent: the artwork is evocative, the symbology is pretty clear, and the components are great (especially those camels!). The game feels very competitive and balanced, which is an accomplishment considering how varied and game-breaking the player powers are. It is a meaty brain-burner of a game, with critical decisions to make, but by making everything so costly that you can’t truly lean into your role, it just never inspired me to enjoy the struggle.

View our "Check This Out" video on The Voyages of Marco Polo to see what's in the box

Review - The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game

November 10, 2016 Jack Eddy

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game
Designed by Nate French
Published by Fantasy Flight Games
45-60 minutes
1-2 players (3-4 with two base sets)

I love The Lord of the Rings. Like, really love the Lord fo the Rings. I mean, I may not speak fluent sindarin, but if you need someone to annoyingly contextualize every scene during your next viewing, rambling something about appendices and silmarillions, I’m your guy. Fortunately for me, the last 50 years of tabletop gaming has seen some great (and truly awful) takes on the setting. The problem is that many of these games, even the really good ones, are like the books themselves; long, unwieldy, and too broad of scope for most people to bother with. FFG’s The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game defies these expectations, attempting to pack an engaging cooperative, strategic, and thematic adventure into a 60 minute timeframe. And incredibly, it works.

On LCGs…

Before we get to the game itself, this is a “Living Card Game”. That means two things: First, you probably won’t get the full enjoyment out of this game unless you are willing to construct a deck; and second, the base set is more like a starter pack, trying to get it’s hooks into you so FFG can sell you more and more cards down the road. Fortunately, LCGs sell fixed packs of content with full playsets of cards and there are ample resources online to help you construct decks, or even provide card lists for you. So if you can get past those two hurdles, then keep reading and let’s see if this game is worth the proposed addiction.

Book I: The Fellowship of the Rules

The Cards Set Out:

Bag of tokens for damage, progress, and influence. Yes. I like the Lord of the Rings so much that I handmade a custom bag using a map of middle earth as material.

Players each control up to three heroes that start in play. The player decks have the various equipment, events, and allies that will aid their heroes in conquering (or more likely suffering brutal defeat) in each game’s quest. Heroes belong to one of four factions (colors), and produce resources that can purchase cards in hand matching their faction. The four preconstructed decks that come with the game correspond to the factions, but to have any success beyond the first quest, players will have to start combining decks and colors to balance their respective strengths and weaknesses.

The game starts with setting up the quest and the encounter deck. The quest, usually separated into three stages, dictates the types of enemies, locations, and events in the encounter decks, and also explains the special rules and objectives to win the game. Encounter cards are in groups of 10-20 cards with a Symbol that can be used in different quests, the quest simply shows a collection of symbols and you shuffle those cards together. I really love that, it’s simple and clever. It makes the world come to life, seeing little bits from a previous quest crop up again, but comboing in new and strange ways. For instance in one quest you may use the Spiders, Mirkwood, and Dol Goldur encounter cards, but in another, you’d use the Dol Goldur, Sauron, and Gundabad Orc cards. You actually feel like you are exploring the world, becoming more familiar with the inhabitants and locations even as you are making new discoveries.

The Game Goes South:

The gameplay largely consists of encounter cards being revealed and players finding ways to discard them through exploration or combat. Encounters left in the staging area increase the “shadow” in play, making it more difficult to succeed when questing. This is another beautiful example of mechanics successfully conveying theme, you really feel the pressure as Sauron’s dominion grows more vast and powerful each turn. Players manage a dangerous juggling act as they choose whether their characters (heroes and allies) will quest, defend, or attack. By questing, you advance the story and discard location encounters, but leave yourself vulnerable to attack. By focussing solely on combat, the players defeat enemies and are well defended, but Sauron’s strength grows and eventually causes the end of the game.

Book II: The Two Towers of Theme

The Treason of Comfort:

One of the challenges that card games face is maintaining a consistent and cohesive art direction. Fortunately, FFG must have prioritized art as one of the main pillars of design. Simply put, it’s beautiful; the landscapes are sweeping, the villains are looming and dangerous, and the heroes are valiant. In spite of the dozens of artists to work on this game throughout the years, they still manage to capture the essence of Tolkien’s stories. It’s exactly what you expect out of a high quality Lord of the Rings game; but... it’s not very original.

The base set in particular is heavily influenced by the great John Howe, one of the premiere Tolkien artists working today. Howe’s artwork is iconic, he was a consultant on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, he’s illustrated many releases of Tolkien’s work, he is the basis for most modern interpretations Middle Earth. As much as I love this style, I feel like it’s a missed opportunity to bring to life Tolkien’s world with a fresh vision. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the game suffers for it, in fact, some styles could have been far worse than what we got, it just feels very safe in an otherwise bold game.

The Ring Goes to the Player on Your Left:

The best thing about this game is that the mechanics reinforce the theme, and the theme reinforces the mechanics. Of course sometimes your cards will contradict the story (what is Bilbo doing in the Gap of Rohan?), but that’s OK! It’s a sandbox, a Middle Earth “What If?”. The important part is that the characters feel thematically appropriate and true to how they would behave in the stories. Aragorn is a great leader who is strong and flexible; Denethor has farsite and can peer into the darkness, but little willpower to go on; Eowyn has incredible force of will allowing you to push forward in quests. And because the game has a sense of urgency due to the accruing shadow, you are rewarded for bold action, even if a character will meet their demise.

Speaking of which, did I mention this game was hard? In my first 10 games, we won 3 times. It wasn’t until we began messing around with deck construction that we saw through the matrix and understood how we could tailor our decks to the challenges of each quest. Soon, we were analyzing our losses like football coaches, strategizing where we needed to be more aggressive or more defensive, swapping certain cards out like players on a field, and reattempting each quest we failed. I love that the game encourages players to retool their deck after losing a game. Not only does it encourage a deeper understanding and participation with the game, but the cooperative nature alleviates most of the pressure of deck building.

Book III: The Return of the Reviewer

The War of the Wallet:

Let’s get back to that LCG bit from earlier. If you are still on the fence about this game, I strongly encourage you to check this game out. It is one of, if not my favorite game based on Tolkien’s work (Middle Earth Quest holds a special place in my heart). But should you buy into it? That’s another story. The base set alone has 4 half size player decks and 3 quests which range from easy to near impossible with the provided decks. There is just enough in there to mix up the decks and start coming up with clever combinations, but once you’ve beaten the quests, you aren’t really left with much to do. Because you have such a small pool of cards, rerunning the quests doesn’t provide the thrill that it once did, and the quests themselves will start to become predictable and stale. This game doesn’t have the simplicity of Pandemic or Ghost Stories, so replaying the game with only slight variations can become a chore without letting it rest for a while in between.

SO, if you are going to get this game, I recommend also getting one or two deluxe expansions soon after so that you have a greater variety of cards to play with (Tales From the Cards has an excellent guide to which expansion packs to buy). Not only will the new quests be a breath of fresh air, but trying out vastly different decks on the quests you’ve already beaten will make them come to life again. It’s a hard sell, though. You are spending time, money, and energy that could be put toward playing more, different games. But if you are a Tolkien nerd like me, you have interest in a game that plays equally well with 1 or 2 players, or you are really into coop games and deckbuilding, this really may be a perfect platform to really sink your teeth into, like gollum and that fish in the opening of Return of the King *shudders*.

The End of the Review-age:

Fantasy Flight wants to sink it's teeth in you like a fish from the fishing pool, nice and cool.

Wow, that was a bit longer than I expected. I guess sometimes you open a new document and there’s no telling where your fingers may take you. I adore this game, it breathes to life the rich and vast world of Tolkien’s writing, while maintaining the excitement of the groundbreaking movies that brought the Lord of the Rings into the mainstream. You and your teammates will take bold risks and pull through against great odds, and when you become comfortable tooling around with your deck, it becomes just as rewarding to lose as it is to win. Each turn is a satisfying strategic puzzle, with just enough information withheld that there is never an obvious or perfect solution. In spite of so many cards, the quests themselves maintain an elegance in how they are set up and constructed, so it never feels like a chore to play.

My only disappointment with the game is that the base set feels like an incomplete product, and instead (as intended) it is a platform to expand upon. I wish FFG would just release a new base set that comes with double the amount of content in the current one, providing more deck building options and a greater variety of quests right out of the gate, but maybe a satisfying self-contained set would go against their intended business model.

In spite of that, I highly recommend this game to anyone who cares deeply about this universe, who wants a little more strategic “oomph” in their cooperative games, and especially for couples who may be interested in constructing decks without the pressure of competing directly against one another. Both as a huge Tolkien nerd, and as someone who has played hundreds of hours of CCGs and LCGs; this is one of the finest card games to ever be released.

Review - Mystic Vale

November 1, 2016 Jack Eddy

Mystic Vale
Designed by John D. Clair
Published by AEG - 2015
2-4 players – 45 minutes

You can’t copyright a game mechanic. Unlike the tech industry, board gaming allows you to take the best parts of other designs and implement them in new clever ways, often improving on the original. And yet, there is a certain prestige that comes with being the first to popularize a feature. Games like Dominion and Pandemic are modern classics, in part by the strength of their designs and the continued support by their publishers, but also because they popularized certain genres and specific mechanics that hundreds of games can trace their lineage to. AEG’s 2016 release Mystic Vale chases that prestige through its innovative card crafting system. Though the game is structured like a deck building game, the centerpiece of the design is it’s clear upgrade cards, which are overlaid and combined in a sleeve to create powerful combinations. But innovation alone is not enough to become a classic, a game also has to be fun.

In Mystic Vale, each player is a druid tending to the wilds, aided by spells, spirits, and beasts. Players compete to gain shards, upgrades, and vales to have the most points by the end of the game. Shards are tokens produced by a variety of card effects that are simply worth points but they come from a limited pool that when emptied triggers the end of the game. Upgrades are the clear plastic cards that are added to your deck, producing valuable resources, points, or abilities when they come up in future turns. Vales are beautifully illustrated landscape cards that most often are only worth points, and exist outside of your play area, though occasionally they will aid you in some way during future turns. Both Vales and Upgrades have multiple tiers of strength and cost, with each tier shuffled into a separate stack, and a certain number are made available to purchase at a time.

Each turn, players put into play cards from the top of their deck until a third corruption symbol is visible. The card containing the third symbol will be placed face up on top of their deck, conveniently referred to in the game as your “on deck” card. Only the resource production and abilities of cards in your field (not on deck) will be resolved, but there is a push your luck element. If you want your on deck card to be part of your field, gaining it’s effects and resources, you can “push” and move it into play and reveal the next card of your deck. If you ever show a fourth corruption symbol between your on deck and field cards, you spoil (bust) and your turn is over. There is a slight consolation to spoiling, in that you will reactivate a token that can be spent for one additional money on a future turn. From there, the rest of your turn consists of resolving any abilities on your cards, then spending your money to buy upgrades and magic to buy vales. Upgrades are slotted into cards currently in play as you discard them, vales are put to the side, then you begin setting up your play field as your opponent begins their next turn. As with almost all deck building games, if you run out of cards to draw, your discard pile is shuffled together to recreate your deck, which now contains the upgrades you purchased on previous rounds.

Visually, the game looks really great on the table. The clear cards are interesting, the vales are vibrant, and the card backs have some really incredible designs. I’m not kidding, I’m stunned by how beautiful the card backs to the player cards and vales are, which is in stark contrast to how drab the blank spaces on your cards are. When you end up with a horde of cards in front of you, and most of them are the same generic pale green, it detracts from how cool the rest of the game looks. Fortunately the empty spaces become less and less as you go on. Unfortunately, most of the upgrades and the setting as a whole feels like an abandoned pitch for a Magic: The Gathering expansion. Quickly you will stop looking at the artwork as it provides absolutely no thematic connection to what the card does, and you will begin seeing your deck as a collection of resources. This may be familiar to fans of the deck building genre, but in a game with an interesting theme in concept, the implementation could have been done much more skillfully. In spite of the game being all about living things, nothing about the game feels alive.

I have really mixed feelings about Mystic Vale. The concept of the game is solid and the card crafting system is intuitive and fun, but the trappings are clunky and it lacks the elegance that I was hoping for. As you shuffle your cards together it’s nearly impossible to ignore that certain cards are thicker and heavier, alerting you to your most powerful cards. The push and spoil systems are interesting at first, but it can lead to explosive turns with 10 or more cards in front of you, which you will have to count and resolve several different resource types, abilities, and effects. There is an inconsistency to these huge turns as well, so you may be deciding on what course to take for two or three minutes, while your opponent watches, already aware that their meager turn will last about 10 seconds with virtually no resources. It feels unpredictable, and almost always in a bad way.

The upgrade and vale cards are mixed bags as well. As I said earlier, I really like the feeling of power that comes as you customize each card and see it enter rotation again. The upgrades each take up a third of the card’s real estate, so it can fill in empty top, middle, or bottom sections on your sleeved deck card, making for some very powerful combinations. But because the cards are revealed from randomized decks for each tier, certain upgrades you want won’t fit right on your cards this round, or you will decide to buy upgrades that aren’t optimal only to see what you really wanted flip up so that your opponent can purchase it. You are still making meaningful choices in the game, but I wish there were ways to cycle cards in the store more frequently, allowing you to attempt different strategies and combos thoughtfully, rather than taking only the best of what you can get.

This leads to the biggest problem with Mystic Vale; it is really easy to establish a runaway leader. Every game I’ve played has had a significant disparity between first place and everyone else. Without player interactivity to knock them down or some sort of rubber banding to catch back up, it is pretty obvious who is going to win by the last third of the game. I’m hoping in more plays that more subtle strategic decisions become apparent that can balance out the game more, but this will be the most significant deciding factor I have in whether I keep this game in my collection or not. Fortunately, the game moves pretty quick, and whether you are receiving optimal cards or not, you always have the substantial joy that comes from optimizing your deck, witnessing it grow more and more powerful with each turn.

I don’t hate Mystic Vale, in fact, I actually look forward to playing again and experimenting with different approaches to see if it changes up the game a bit. But it is a clunky, uneven experience and while the card crafting system is novel, here the implementation lacks depth. I can’t help but feel that a second edition of Mystic Vale, one with a bit more player agency and interactivity could round this out to an excellent product. But with money, space, and time being such a limiting factor for most players, I’d wait till someone else does it better. After all, you can’t copyright a game mechanic.

Review - Kingdom Builder

October 30, 2016 Jack Eddy

Kingdom Builder
Designed by Donald X. Vaccarino
Published by Queen Games - 2011
Players: 2-4
Time: 30-60 min

My little brother lives and grew up in Germany. In spite of him being in the center of the modern gaming renaissance, he has virtually no experience with modern tabletop games. On our last visit, I decided to pick up a game that we could play together at night, which posed certain challenges: the game had to be relatively language independent, it had to be simple and approachable for him, and it had to be satisfying for my wife and I who were veterans of the hobby. After days of fruitless searching in the smaller villages we toured, we finally found a department store carrying hobby games and puzzles. There, with it’s electric yellow box shining like a beacon, we found Kingdom Builder.

Kingdom Builder is a competitive game for 2-4 players. Players take turns drawing a card and placing three settlements down spaces that match the terrain on the card, and if possible, they must build adjacent to their existing settlements. This is the clever golden rule of Kingdom Builder that governs the strategic choices you make. Because you are restricted to building adjacent if possible, you try to find ways of ensuring that it becomes impossible to place adjacent, freeing you up to place anywhere on the board. This is key to securing high value spots and gaining location tiles.

A chief feature of this game is that each quadrant (more on that in a bit) has certain locations granting powers for players to move settlements, place new ones, or in some other way alter their gameplay. These location tiles are reusable, and a valuable asset in sculpting your kingdom. Eventually, players amass an array of special powers, and are able to do a myriad of actions that are both powerful and unique to them. Once a player has placed all of their settlements, the round finishes, and players count points to determine the winner. The thing is, points are awarded different each game.

During the setup of Kingdom Builder, you randomly assemble four of the eight 10 x 10 boards, and make one of the most beautiful game maps in the industry. Then, three scoring cards are drawn, detailing how players will score points at the end of the game. There is a clever variety of scoring conditions, ranging from simply one point for each settlement next to certain board features like mountains or water, to the much more complex three points for each settlement on the quadrant that you have the least settlements on.

This variety makes Kingdom Builder really stand out among other so called “gateway” games. While the core gameplay remains consistent, the ever changing combination of board and scoring conditions ensure each experience will be a fresh puzzle. Every board comes with it’s own unique layout and special powers, creating exciting new ways to reach your goals. Because the game moves so quickly, our group often made it to the end of one game and immediately drew new score cards and rotated the positions of two boards to have a completely new experience.

A photo from one of our first games in Germany.

One thing that can’t be understated is how beautiful and evocative this game is. The colors are vibrant and alive, and upon closer examination there are tiny elements within each space giving that board unique character, inviting players to imagine the story of a bridge across a river, or worn path through the woods. Additionally, the scoring cards have gorgeous art, hinting at a familiar yet at the same time exotic (and possibly mystic) medieval land. These tiny features have no bearing on the gameplay itself, but it really helps wrap players in a snuggly thematic comforter, even if the game itself imposes no narrative and is otherwise a complete abstraction.

At first glance, Kingdom Builder is a simplistic game with little choice; you draw one card, you play three houses, rinse, repeat. But once you scratch the surface, you are left with a game that has players making meaningful decisions every turn, balancing immediate benefit with long term strategy and mitigation of luck. By no means is the game perfect, some turns you will draw a terrain card that will give you no benefit for the duration of the turn, and if you are wanting a game that has in your face player interaction or a heavily thematic game, this game may not be for you. But as my wife and I toured Germany, exploring the countryside, visiting cities, monasteries, and castles, I couldn’t help but feel like each game of Kingdom Builder itself was too, a sense of peaceful exploration and discovery. It is a versatile game, excellent for people just exploring the hobby, and seasoned fans of middle weight euros. I truly love this game, and while my tastes and interests in games has changed over the years, my love of Kingdom Builder has remained evergreen.

Review - The Grizzled

October 27, 2016 Jack Eddy

The Grizzled
Designed by Fabbien Riffaud and Juan Rodriguez
Art by Tignous
Published by Cool Mini or Not (CMON)
2-5 players - 30 minutes

World War I always fascinated me. It occupies a space somewhere between the “romantic” wars of old, and the modern warfare that dominates pop culture today. Don’t get me wrong, all war is tragic, but something about the sheer brutality mixed with the ambiguous motivations of the first “Great War”, makes it challenging to tell satisfying stories set during this time. Though when someone does manages to capture the period’s unique mix of hope and despair, the comradery, and the conflict between old and new as the world forever changes, the stories told can be magnificent. From Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” and Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”, to the recent indie video game “Valiant Hearts”, many stories depicting or inspired by World War I have had a significant impact on me. So when I heard that Cool Mini or Not was publishing a tiny little card game focussed on “Le Poilu” (french infantrymen during World War I), I was immediately interested.

The Grizzled is a cooperative card game where each player is a french soldier during World War I. Their mission is to survive the horrors of war until the armistice is reached, represented by emptying all of the cards in the threat deck and players’ hands. The game subverts your expectations of a game set during war; players aren’t trying to win missions, earn glory, or beat the bad guys; the players win by keeping each other alive.

Each round, players draw threat cards depicting various combinations of the horrors of war. Some are lasting effects called “Hard Knocks” that handicap your soldier in significant and terrible ways; others show the dangerous trials that soldiers must undergo. Players take turns playing these cards, hoping to empty their hands. Tension ramps up as each card is played, because if three of the same trial are visible, the “mission” (round) is a failure, and all trials in play are shuffled back into the deck. If players manage to withdraw, either by being out of cards or choosing to pass, the mission is a success and cards in play are discarded. It may seem obvious that players should pass, however for each challenge left unfaced in hand, a new card is moved from the morale pile to the threat pile. Time is ticking as the weight of the war bears down hard on the soldiers, and if the morale pile is ever emptied, the players lose.

Everything in the game feels spartan, perhaps intentionally so, to reflect the soldiers themselves. There are a few other mechanics that flesh out the game just enough to provide meaningful choice without needless clutter, each reinforcing the game’s opposing themes of brotherhood and despair. This is where The Grizzled is most successful. Without ever attempting to simulate combat, the game breathes to life a story that is relatively unexplored in the hobby. You want to see the war through to the end and persevere for your comrades, even when you believe that it is truly hopeless. And it will feel hopeless. The grizzled is hard, very hard. Even when you manage to succeed at a mission, watching cards add to the threat deck is disheartening and it may elicit some heroic if not desperate behavior in future rounds.

“I actually had a genuine emotional reaction looking at a particular picture in the rulebook showing the soldiers as young men enlisting together, it made me reflect on my own life, innocence, and the friends that I’ve lost.”

The artwork in the game accentuates the storytelling and themes magnificently. Having spent several years overseas as a child, I grew up with a healthy obsession with Asterix comics, so it may be that I’m just a sucker for French cartoons. Here, French political cartoonist Tignous manages to use simplicity to his advantage. By keeping his characters and landscapes cartoonish and approachable you are able to better appreciate and empathize with the soldiers as each tragedy befalls them. You don’t see the violence happen but you feel it more acutely than if it had been depicted in highly realistic detail. He set up the pieces, your imagination fills in the gaps. I actually had a genuine emotional reaction looking at a particular picture in the rulebook showing the soldiers as young men enlisting together, it made me reflect on my own life, innocence, and the friends that I’ve lost. Tragically, Tignous was murdered in the Charlie Hebdo shooting on January 7th, 2015, shortly before the release of The Grizzled. While it isn’t important to the quality of the game itself, something about his loss at the hands of a terrorist seems poignant to the games messages of peace and brotherhood.

Ultimately, the biggest challenge The Grizzled faces is it’s lack of diversity between games. It reaches a similar arc during each playthrough, and while it is a satisfying and intense thematic experience, it is not an incredibly dynamic one. Each game will be a familiar puzzle, and by your third or fourth game you will have seen all that the game has to offer. For me, that’s good enough, the game is meant to be compact in both physical size and scope. The new elements it brings to the table for both the cooperative and push your luck genres are excellent, and I hope to see them adapted more in the future; and at this stage in my gaming life I definitely would rather play a game that is too sparse rather than one that is too bloated.

I like The Grizzled. It manages to convey powerful emotions through playing the game itself, which is rarity and should be valued. It also subverts an overused theme and manages to tell a compelling and beautiful story about one of the most brutal wars in human history. The gameplay itself is simple and will be a turnoff to people who dislike smaller games, but it is a satisfying and difficult experience that is easy to teach new players. From a purely gameplay perspective, The Grizzled is a good game but not a great one, though I think that misses the point. It tries to be more than just a game, and for that, I’m rather fond of it.

Review - Caverna

October 27, 2016 Jack Eddy

Caverna
Designed by Uwe Rosenberg
Published by Mayfair Games
1-7 players
30 minutes per player

Coke vs. Pepsi, Puma vs. Adidas, Aang vs. Korra; these are bitter rivalries that have raged on for centuries. Today, in the board game industry, there are similar feuds that divide gamers into separate camps, ending friendship, distancing lovers, and causing tables to be flipped worldwide. Chief among these warring idols are Agricola and Caverna. Like Romulus and Remus, the two games were brothers who complemented each other, who made each other stronger by covering the other’s weaknesses; and yet through minor ideological differences, a rift began to grow between them, and soon all of gamedom was taking sides. I remain an objective critic, merely reviewing each game on their own merits. Someday I may do a comparison, perhaps once I’ve secured a high tower and armed thugs, but for now, each will have it’s turn in the spotlight. Today, we start with the younger of the brothers, Caverna.

Caverna is a worker placement game where each player controls a family of dwarven farmers, competing to be the most prosperous family at the end of 12 rounds. There are two boards to focus on, the central action board and your personal tableau* , which you will develop and customize as the game goes on. You raise livestock, sew fields, send your workers on adventures, build buildings, and expand your family, hopefully achieving a self sustaining eco system that provides resources in abundance by the end of the game. Finally, points are awarded based on the animals, vegetables, and various buildings in your cavern.

If you were to buy Caverna, the first thing you’d notice is it’s huge, heavy box. The cover art is welcoming enough, but the sheer heft of the game as you drop it on your table makes it feel like an ancient grimoire stuffed with complex mysteries and dark secrets. As you unpack the box you will notice hundreds of tokens, tiles, cards, meeples, sheeples, and even donkeeples. One of the reasons this game is so dense is it’s designed to seat up to 7 players; there are different action boards based on the number of players, there are 7 sets of player tokens, and there are enough resources, tiles, and tableaus to accommodate such a huge number of players. Don’t panic, but it is imperative that you spend some time and sort out the pieces and develop a system to pack and unpack the box if you want to play the game with any regulatory.Once you’ve taken that all in, the number of components you’ll use in your average 2-4 player game is less than half of what has been provided, and the rulebook and rules of the game are both pretty simple and easy to follow if you have any familiarity with worker placement games.

Caverna, like most of Rosenberg’s games, is a very tight operation. Every action you take must be meaningful to your progress or you will suffer. Fortunately, it is forgiving enough that you have many paths to go, so almost always there are good actions to take; even if the one you really wanted was already taken by your smarmy traitor of a spouse. You have to play with deliberation to get enjoyment out of Caverna, or else the game can and will penalize you. At the end of several of the rounds, there will be a “harvest phase” where players grow crops and new animals are born, but you must also pay food for each of your workers or suffer starvation, which subtracts from your points at the end of the game. There are many ways to efficiently obtain or produce food throughout the game, but you have to account for it or you will always feel like you are chasing food at the last moment, scraping the leavings that no one wanted, or worse, eating all of your vegetables or animals before they have a chance to be planted or reproduce.

The game is aesthetically charming. I enjoy watching my herds of tiny wooden sheep grow, imagining my dogs shepherding them around the field, and to see my recently planted pumpkins and wheat stack, showcasing the crops they will yield in a few short rounds. The mechanics also feel very thematic, it is very easy to understand why certain steps must be taken and why you receive the rewards for doing so. The components themselves reinforce the theme well, though the artwork isn’t something that I particularly love. It’s not without it’s charm, it just feels vacant and it lacks style. This is the same artist who has worked on many other Rosenberg games, so if you’ve played Le Havre, Agricola, or At The Gates of Loyang, you know what you are getting into. That said, I applaud the effort throughout all of the components to maintain a cohesive theme, something many euro style games don’t even try for.

The only emotion I’m reading is the donkey’s sinister gaze at the cauldron. Dark magic perhaps? — The only emotion I’m reading is the donkey’s sinister gaze at the cauldron. Dark magic perhaps?

The smartest bit of design about Caverna, and what separates it from many other games that occupy the same space, is that it presents all of it’s options at the beginning of the game. While certain action spaces will appear in different orders in later rounds, the game is predictable, and all of the paths to victory are laid out for you from the moment you start the game. Without this, there would be no need for Caverna to exist, it’d be just another medium-heavy weight euro game about dwarf farming (and lord knows we don’t need another dwarf farming game…). There are no asymmetric powers, no ability cards in hand; you have the same opportunities as each other player, but then you begin investing and branching out in various directions through the developments, adventures, and buildings you choose.

Bag not included, but very warranted. The Animeeples are among my favorite components ever created.

Fortunately, the game feels balanced enough so that you feel like you can explore creative strategies. It wants to reward you for the aspects of the game you like the most. Do you like sheep? Get the cuddle room and build some stables! Do you want to farm? There are buildings that make your produce worth more points or yield more food when eaten. Occasionally there will be times where you broaden your focus, either an action space as accrued so many resources that it’s too valuable to pass up, or you want to invest in a secondary strategy. The unfortunate side effect of this is that occasionally you will also see an action space that is too valuable to your opponent to pass up, and you will consider taking it to prevent them from succeeding. This doesn’t feel good, and it’s the one aspect of the game that I really dislike. Not that I avoid conflict in games, but everything else about Caverna wants you to feel empowered, and I feel like I’m taking away from the most fun and enjoyable aspect of playing if I intentionally throw a cog in another player’s plan if it doesn’t provide my own farm some benefit.

I like Caverna. I find it fun to play, though it can sometimes be hard to predict how fruitful the path you are going down is; but that’s not why I play. The game is most fulfilling when set your mind on a strategy and focus on it. At the end of the game, you look down at your empire of dogs and sheep, your home is furnished with wool shops and cuddling rooms, and you feel satisfied knowing that you accomplished what you set out to do. I should say that I prefer to play Caverna as a two to three player game, and find that it drags a bit at four; the idea of playing a seven player game is ludicrous. By making the game accomodate so many, it is significantly more expensive and the amount of components in the box makes it tough to set up and take down if you don’t have a good storage system in place. But, if you want a sandbox to play in where you experiment with various strategies, and the farming theme is appealing to you, this game may be perfect for you.

Review - Blood Rage

October 27, 2016 Jack Eddy

Let’s get this out of the way up front. This is a review of the base copy, retail edition of Blood Rage. This isn’t the fancy kickstarter edition, there are no exclusives, expansions, or extras. And you know what? It’s fine! Totally does not feel like it is missing anything.

In my estimation, 95% of the internet's questions about this game just got answered. For the rest of you fine folks, let’s get cozy and talk about a delightful game involving some rather spicy vikings.

In Blood Rage you control a faction of Vikings trying to earn glory before Ragnarok, the viking apocalypse. Glory is earned primarily through winning battles, completing quests, upgrading your stats, and having your units present in the region that blows up at the end of the round. Yes, your spicy vikings died, but at least they died in a glorious inferno. They’re cheap anyway, you’ll get them back.

The game takes place over 3 ages (rounds) which starts with drafting cards from that age’s deck. Blood Rage really showcases how great drafting can be because each time you pick a card, you are handing a fistful of equally awesome cards to your opponent. When the hand comes back to you, your fears are confirmed, someone took those spectacular cards that you’d never want used against you. Your insides give a quiver of unease and anticipation because you know what you will inevitably face... and that's how everyone feels at the start of each round!

A player's faction board is slotted with various upgrade cards drafted each round.

Players alternate taking actions including upgrading their faction, recruiting and moving units, and most importantly, pillaging. Pillaging is neat because you initiate battles against the region rather than specific other players.Once you declare a pillage, players can send in troops from adjacent regions until everyone passes or there are no spaces left. At that point, if there are two or more players at the pillage, a battle takes place. Battles are elegant and fierce; select a card from your hand, resolve its effects, add its value to your unit strength, and highest total wins.. That’s it, clean and simple. Oh, and every viking who lost is sent to Valhalla. Oh, and tied players both lose. Everyone dies!

What I like most about Blood Rage is it circumvents two barriers that many people have with “combat” style area control games. First, like Patrick Swayze in Road House, your spicy vikings are vagrants, never really having a place to call their home. Because of this, you always feel like the board is a play area you are entering, not specifically trying to control; you don’t feel burnt when you lose your “home turf”. Second, units are cheap and you have enough control through the cards you draft and the upgrades you pick to adjust to a playstyle that suits you. If you hate combat, you can pick cards that gain you massive points through losing battles and having units in valhalla! Blood Rage wants to empower you to find clever ways of getting points within its overall simple systems.

Any person who walks by a table with this guy on it will have to stop for a second look.

Speaking of what Blood Rage wants, the game clearly aims to make an impression on the table. The production quality and artwork of the game is through the roof. Every aspect of the game has gorgeous artwork dripping with theme, the iconography is intuitive and smart, and the monster minis stand like tiny behemoths on the table, impressing your friends and intimidating your enemies. Even the basic units for each faction has a few different sculpts, and the detail is at times awe striking. You will want to pick up and examine each mini closer. But… the game’s thematic and artistic elements aren’t without their issues.

It feels like Eric Lang finished his incredible game design then handed it to a hormone addled 15 year old to add some last minute polish. Every woman depicted in Blood Rage is wearing what looks to be battle lingerie; the men are hulking brutes of testosterone, whose chests scream to the world “Might makes right!”; the use of “rage” as your currency in the game; and even the title of the game “Blood Rage” feels preposterous. The elegance of the game and the incredibly grim yet intriguing world it presents is undermined by including such over the top elements. When I played it for the first time, I was taken aback by how much this broke the theme for me. Eventually, I realized I could let the ridiculous schlock taint my otherwise fun experience, OR I could embrace the whole game as a tongue-in-cheek affair. I reconciled it all by deciding that it really doesn’t matter much when spicy little vikings are fighting tooth and nail, only to blow up like lemmings running off so many cliffs. Somehow I think Alice Cooper would be proud.

Overall, I think Blood Rage is a brilliantly designed game. It is fast, fun, tightly balanced, and in spite of all players having identical factions at the beginning, you can branch out in interesting and rewarding ways. Players are given lots of options without being overwhelmed, and you will feel like you are making meaningful decisions every turn. I do wish the game were a little less silly in its adolescent view of a culture, war, and the human body. But when I choose to view the game as a little self aware, then it’s a bit easier to embrace my spicy vikings and enjoy what has been one of my favorite games of 2015.