Istanbul: The Dice Game - Frantically Avoiding Your Engine

Istanbul: The Dice Game
Designed by Rudiger Dorn
Artwork by Andreas Resch
Published by Pegasus Spiel & AEG 2017
2-4 Players ~ 20-40 Minutes
Review written by Jack Eddy

I can’t think of a less interesting naming convention than “_______: The Dice Game”. Think about it; what it’s really saying is “Hey, you know that hit game you love? What if we took the elements you love about it, made it less good, more random, and repackaged it just enough so that you’ll buy it again?”

Yeah, yeah, there are good dice games out there, but I think if you look deep inside, you’ll at least be able to understand where I’m coming from. My dilemma, though? I think I like Istanbul: The Dice game more than it’s bigger, boardyer cousin.

How it Rolls

Fundamentally, this is a game about gathering and spending resources with a limited number of actions, to get the number of rubies needed to end the game. Like Istanbul (The Game, not the City), as you spend your resources to pull rubies from their respective tracks, the costs increase, rewarding players who grab them early. That said, instead of spending resources on rubies, you can purchase sweet, sweet mosques which, while the cultural ramifications are too bewildering for me to comment on, grant you special powers . So your essential decisions come down to either investing in your capabilities or grabbing points.

A turn is super simple: you roll 5 dice, then take 2 actions likely related to those dice. Certain actions rely on combinations of multiple dice, like purchasing rubies from each of the 4 different tracks; the first ruby costs 4 yellow dice, then 5, then 6. And you’re saying, wait a minute? 6 dice? I thought I only had five? Well, it’s a good thing you can spend two matching dice for a a good token of the same color, which can be held for future turns and be spent as that die result.

There are lots of actions that give you various tokens, re-roll gems, or cash that can be spent on the money-ruby track, but the last two big aspects of the game come from the deck of cards and the mosques. The cards are like one time bonuses, and when you spend card results on your dice, you draw that many cards and resolve one of your choice. Sometimes these are duds, requiring you to have certain resources to fulfill their requirements, and in other times they will be exactly what you needed. No matter what, if you can’t do anything with the cards you get a consolation dollar (lira?) but the important part is that this is a random element you can choose to participate in, leaving it up to lady luck.

The Mosques on the other hand are your engine. These can do things like give you extra dice, increase the actions you can take each turn, or give you bonus money or cards that you can reap at the beginning of EVERY SINGLE TURN.

These mosques? They are my downfall…

Flow

Every gamer instinct I possess demands that I invest in my production; get more workers, hone my engine, GET MORE STUFF. And while it’s super rewarding to nab some mosques, this game moves faster than you expect. Both in the actual time it takes to play a game, but also in how quickly you’ll lose your opportunity to nab those cheaper rubies.

Yes, the game does reward you with a bonus ruby for getting 5 mosques, but you’ll tell yourself that at any cost you must get several of these mosques at the beginning of the game, even if it means spending all of your resources that would be perfectly good for acquiring rubies. In a game where 6 rubies can trigger the final round, you don’t have a lot of time to waste.

I love that Istanbul: The Dice Game maintains an abundance of temptation, especially with the limited number of actions per round. The tantalizing cards with their precious and often beneficial awards, the sweet satisfaction of buying some low cost rubies early in the game, and the surge of power through gathering several mosques is divine. Everything about this game is designed to make you feel good, and like your turn comes down to deciding what tasty morsel you want to consume.

A Well Dressed Table

I’m a sucker for aesthetic, and while there isn’t anything particularly striking about this game, I really dig the visual appeal. Where Istanbul proper feels enormous and somewhat cumbersome, with it’s large tiles composing the board, this game is spartan, reserved, and efficient. The vibrant colors, the nice curves, the pretty dice, and the small-yet-chunky mosque tiles all set up a pleasing and concise presentation on the table.

Also of note is that Istanbul: The Dice Game features some fairly easily deciphered iconography. Yes, there is the usual period of incomprehensibility when you first look upon your action sheet, but as soon as you are walked through each action, pretty much every symbol on the cards, mosques, player board, dice, and reference sheets comes together; cohesive, comprehensible, and useful. Where some other games reach for language independence and clumsily falter; this game comes across as refined.

Final Thoughts

Istanbul: the dice game stands apart from its predecessor by reducing it to its barest and most fun bones. While I still think the original’s innovative proximity based worker placement and collection holds merit, the familiar feelings of careful action selection, tactical use of current board state, and the balance between production and development is preserved in this faster playing and easier managed box.

One of my chief fears going into this game was that the overwhelming randomness of dice would undermine strategy and too often result in lucky rolls leading to a lucky winner; but there are so many good options for how to use your dice, and plenty of ways to augment, ignore, and altogether reroll your dice, that each roll feels more like an encouraging challenge rather than bewildering predicament. In each of my many, many plays it has been the players who make smart choices and account for probabilities who win; not just some lucky duck sitting on a throne of fortunate rolls.

That said, the one area that this game really suffers in comparison to its predecessor, is that each game will feel extremely familiar. Sure, the mosques, cards, and dice rolls that appear in a game will slightly change up your game, but there is a familiar arc that you’ll grow accustomed to, and very little about the game will dynamically change from session to session.

Ultimately, this Istanbul: The Dice Game fits solidly alongside games like Splendor and Century: Spice Road; a race to the finish with quick actions in quick turns leading to quick games, except this game delivers meatier choices and more options per turn to play with. In essence, it consolidates the really enjoyable consequential choices of feelings of empowerment of its predecessor, while standing as a completely different beast unto itself. And while I’ve become less enamored with Istanbul since it’s release, feeling the game often takes more setup and analysis for the core experience deserves, the dice game is full of snappy, potent fun worth repeating again and again.

Got questions about the game, the review, or the creative process? Let us know any we may tackle it when we publish our audio version with additional thoughts and Q&A on TCbH Reviews.

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Nyctophobia: Vampire Encounter - Fear of the Dark

Nyctophobia: Vampire Encounter
Designed by Catherine Stippell
Artwork by Peter Wocken
Published by Pandasaurus Games - 2018
3-5 players ~ 30-45 minutes
Review by Josh Simons

Nyctophobia is an odd game. There is something disorienting about the extensively tactile experience, where your touch and memory are forced into cohesion while completely isolated from your vision; it’s intriguing, weird, and even a bit alluring. At least, when you aren’t wearing the provided blackout glasses. But as strange as the cross wiring, synthetic, intentional blindness is, the oddity of Nyctophobia comes down more to design.

What the Phobia is Nycto?

Defined, nyctophobia is the fear of the dark. Immediately, I feel like I should be listening to Iron Maiden’s classic album, Fear of the Dark, but given the theme and feel of the game, a greatest hits album from Type O-Negative would be a most fitting vampiric selection (you music nerds know what’s up) but I’m getting side-tracked.

As far as the Pandasaurus Games catalog is concerned, Nyctophobia is published with two different versions available at retail, The Hunted (mass market release) and Vampire Encounter (Target exclusive), which seem to play the same at their core even if they sport mildly different themes. It comes down to which persona is pursuing the other players in the dark. For this review, Vampire Encounter is the sole version in experience.

In a one versus many style, one person plays the hunter, and two to four people play the hunted. In Vampire Encounter, one of the hunted friends (represented by a cardboard standee and dubbed “The Familiar” per the rule book) has run off into the dark labyrinthian woods with the creature of the night. Your goal is to leave the car, find your friend, and return to the car before any player has two encounters with the vampire. The hunted players are all wearing blackout glasses as they blindly search for clear paths through the trees that block them while trying to locate the foolish Familiar.

I Have A Phobia That Someone’s Always There

At the start of the game, the hunter sets up the modular board either in a configuration from the rulebook, another scenario (soon to be available) from Pandasaurus’ website, or of their own design. North, South, East, and West are predetermined so all players are oriented to the same directions. As a hunted player, you could see the board if you were not playing in the spirit of the game and peeking beneath your glasses, but otherwise you are at the mercy of the hunter. Seeing the board would compromise the game, as the difficulty and challenge come into play from the disorienting blindness.

Playing as one of hunted players doesn’t leave you utterly helpless in the darkness, though.  Each hunted player receives two health tokens, a rock token which can be used in defense against the vampire, and a card that gives them an advantage such as the track star being able to move extra spaces or the cheerleader being able to give her actions to another player. Rocks can also be found in the forest.

On your turn, the hunter (vampire), takes your hand and places your finger onto your pawn to initiate the first portion of your turn, searching. You will explore the perpendicular spaces next to you, hoping you will only find open spaces, your fellow hunted players, or the Familiar. The pawns are differentiated by the indents on the top: a triangle, a gear, a plus, or a slot.

Being that most of us are so dependant on sight, it is completely disorienting to try and play a game designed to deprive you of this oft-taken-for-granted-sense; forcing you to rely on memory, touch, and the teamwork of those you’re playing with. While moving throughout these paths, it is vital for the hunted to communicate which direction they are heading and what they’re finding if there is any hope of finding the Familiar. When you slightly move out your finger to see what’s in the space around you, will you touch a tree, a fellow hunted player, or the dreaded smooth top of the vampire? If at any point you don’t know what you’re feeling, the hunter is to tell you. “That’s a row of trees”, “That’s a rock” “That’s Jack”. “That’s the west edge of the board”, “That’s the car”, “That’s me”.

After you’ve hesitantly determined your surroundings (hopefully with a distinct absence of vampires) you’re required to move two spaces for the movement portion of your turn. Sometimes this can be frustrating as you spend your movements to get yourself into a dead end, from which you’ll have to back track. It can feel like a wasted turn, but it will be helpful to consider it thematic to your nyctophobia.

After the hunted player searches and moves, there are actions that player has an option of doing one of. (1) Sprint, which allows for moving an extra space. (2) Leave the Familiar, which drops them next to you. (3) Hide, in which you flip your pawn upside down, leaving it with a circular divot in addition to your recognizable shape. This makes it so they are out of gameplay and combat. The player ceases to speak because they’re hiding, and if they do speak the noise token is placed on them for the vampire to pursue again. Thematically, it’s fun.  

Hunter the Reckoning

The hunter has no nyctophobia since the role does not have the handicap of blackout glasses and therefore can see. The overwhelming advantage is mitigated by movement determined more by reactive programming than aggressive pursuit. Move towards the location of the noise token that has been dropped during the game, or if the noise token hasn’t been played, move towards the nearest hunted player. A deck of cards which you’ll play from provides variety to each of the vampires turns. The card you play could have you casting a hypnotic spell that moves the Familiar two spaces, or stalking a hunted player by removing the noise token, moving extra spaces, and creepily announcing, “The vampire is near.” If this all seems complicated while you’re trying to lure your friends into your clutches to feed, there is an included variant that simply allows the vampire to move two spaces in order to accommodate players who would prefer a more straightforward experience as the Hunter (great if you want your child to play as the marauding, bloodthirsty vampire). Once the Familiar is found, the cards have intensify effects on them to ratchet up the chase. If you were to cast your hypnotic spell at this point, the vampire would move the pawn of the player currently in possession of the Familiar instead of his own.

Should one of those meddling kids come in contact with the vampire, which happens at a mere physical and deflating touch, combat is initiated. The hunted loses one of their health tokens, may throw a rock in a counter attack (which reduces the vampires movement), retreat and hide. On the mechanics of hiding, the rulebook describes how to hide, but I don’t read any purpose in the function. I’m assuming that the vampire’s movement won’t take them toward a hiding player. It would make sense to play the game that way, but that’s an assumption due to the lack of clarity in the rulebook.  The vampire backs off after taking a rock on the conk.

The game ends when either one of the hunter players recover and return the Familiar to the car, or one of the hunter player loses both of their health tokens.

Blood and Fire Out of the Ashes, and Sharp Nasty Teeth

Where Nyctophobia gets odd for me is that the hunter sets the mood of the experience by stalking, taunting, and claiming to be the terror that flaps in the night. In a way, the hunter is curating the game; they make the jokes or generate the fear, depending on the play style they’re going for. The rulebook does encourage you to get into character if you’re playing as the vampire. You see, Nyctophobia was designed out of the experiences Catherine Stippell had with her uncle, who is blind. She would guide him as they played board games together, serving him as a guide to make the time fun for both of them. It is almost as if the game runs itself, and the hunter player is cooperating with the hunted, yet not quite. It is easier experienced than explained.

What I have seen happen is for whoever is playing the role of the hunter will play it similarly to how they might play any other game. In reality, the hunter is the game master. This is your dark forest to saunter around in. These are your friends and family around the table with blackout glasses on who have put themselves completely in your care, trusting you that they will have fun playing a game that lasts a sightless 30-45 minutes. A poorly focused game can make Nyctophobia out stay its welcome quick.

If a hunter is unfamiliar with the rules of the game, this can make for a dreadful experience. Think back to every time you’ve sat in bored silence as the person teaching a game had to keep leafing through the rulebook. Imagine the slog of that while you can’t see anything. Time. Stands. Still. While. You’re. Waiting. On. What. Will. Happen. Next. It’s more tiresome to experience than reading that. On a side note, if you’re someone who tends to fall asleep during movies, like myself, it can become a matter of internal combat between staying awake and nodding off. With your sight blacked out and a hunter not engagingly moving the game forward at an appropriate pace, the struggle is real. In fact, I started writing this review during a game where I was a hunted player looking beneath my glasses to silently begin typing my thoughts out, just to keep myself alert with an unprepared vampire.

Bloody Kisses

There is so much potential for a genuinely scary and thrilling experience in this game. Unfortunately, though, there are a few things that break the immersive bubble of Nyctophobia’s gameplay. Most of these fall into the production of the game.

My biggest negative is that in every game I’ve played, the pawns will get stuck in the board. Trying to pull a smooth-sided, round-cornered stuck barrel pawn out of a hole that it perfectly fits into, all while you’re blind, breaks so much tension. Sure, the vampire is there to pick up the pieces, but the spooky gives way to fiddly.  

Also, these blackout glasses are constantly worn through your experience as a hunted player. They functionally blind you to the game, but they don’t blind you to the light reflections from around the room to the back of the glasses, making for a very weird and rather uncomfortable sensation. My wife expressed the same concern. As an in-game temporary fix, I closed my eyes to keep from experiencing this. Since, we have opted for using sleep masks instead of the blackout glasses when playing as the hunted. I feel like this makes for a less weird sensory experience.

I feel like the rulebook is muddy. There’s a lot of information. On one hand it over explains some aspects, like how the hide action works mechanically and what rules bring a player out of hiding, while on the other hand, what benefit is there to hiding in the first place? There is enough context that I believe I can see, but that comes from years of gaming experience. To a newcomer, it would be hard to understand why actions are performed, let alone how the game is played. Adding to this difficulty, the long paragraphs of eye-glazing type font don’t make the rulebook any easier to discern, and the way it’s organized does not give a sense of the flow of gameplay.  Pandasaurus Games has made the rulebook available at their website for your perusal.

Finally, is it just me, or was it a missed opportunity to not make these pieces glow in the dark?

Final Thoughts

All right, so a person playing the hunter can make or break Nyctophobia, but is there a game in the box or is it a gimmick? With sight, there is a low complexity game here. Without sight, there is a desperate search in the darkness that can create a sense of hopeless futility, enjoyable frustration, and tense awareness that something may be just beyond your senses. Nyctophobia has the capacity to invoke a sense of suspense or a load of laughs over the hunted players.

Nyctophobia isn’t going to scratch a highly strategic itch for anyone, unless you love the memory aspect of trying to remember the way out, but aside from a few production irritants, there is a partial evening of campy fun to be brought out with the right group of players. It’s in the family game collection for us, as the kids love playing it. If I were going to compare Nyctophobia to a movie, it would be The Blair Witch Project. It’s not for every time you want to play something, but it does fill a niche for when you want the kind of experience it offers. Fear, terror, a little hokey, still fun. Just manage your expectations and don’t turn into a ravenous beast of the night, when it turns out that the vampire without glasses is more lost in the woods than you.

Got questions about the game, the review, or the creative process? Let us know any we may tackle it when we publish our audio version with additional thoughts and Q&A on TCbH Reviews.

Josh Simons is a freelance writer and contributor to The Cardboard Herald. You can follow Josh and his creative projects on twitter, @oldroadcreative.

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Expansion Mini - Terraforming Mars: Venus Next

Some expansions deepen a game while others broaden them. While neither is inherently better than the other, the latter is difficult to pull off well. Yet in spite of some missteps, Venus Next does it well, delivering more Mars (well, actually Venus) without disrupting the core marsy goodness that you love.

What’s New

Venus next adds a new sideboard, a few new corporations, a new award and milestone, and a metric boat load of extra project cards (we use metric to be precise about these things). The new Venus board adds a fourth track to pump up and get sweet, sweet Terraforming Rating, though the Venus board is totally optional as it’s not required to trigger the end of the game; after all, this is still Terraforming Mars - Venus is just like a tantalizing extra nugget for your corporations to gobble up for their exploitative economic and political dominion.

While Venus’ Terraforming rating can be increased by a new standard project, the majority of the action comes from the huge amount of cards largely involving the new “V for Venus!” tag and the unfortunately named floaters. Floaters are resources akin to microbes, though they tend to have more direct synergy with one another, causing them to add, remove, and trigger all sorts of floater-y goodness for a wide variety of effects. These Venus tags and floaters are also the metrics by which you can earn the new milestone and award, which rest upon cardboard tiles added to the Mars board, though the same limitations of funding up to three of each still applies.

The last new thing is the world government phase, where the active player gets to raise one global parameter per round before handing off the first player token for the new turn. This keeps the pace of the game going quick even with the fourth pillar of development, though the player gains no benefits from this form of terraforming.

What’s Cool

Is it bad that I want to start with the look? I complained in my otherwise-glowing Terraforming Mars review that the game’s graphic design was kind of ugly and the color scheme could be appropriately titled “Disco Thanksgiving”. Well, I’m pleased to say that the yellow and blue color scheme just works really well, and the artwork on the cards is pound for pound much better and more consistent than the base game offerings.

Additionally, I really like the cards that interact with Venus. It feels like the Fryxelius really leaned into the thematic resonance between complex real world science and sensible-yet-intricate mechanical impact on the board. The vast majority of the cards seem useful, synergistic with multiple strategies, and fun. I especially like that many of the venus tag cards have pre-requisites of other venus, earth, and sometimes jovian tags; hinting at some cool interstellar exploration, connection, and diplomacy.

I also really like the world government phase as it presents some really interesting choices. If you think your opponents are about to snag a bonus for increasing the temperature, raise it up before they can cross that line. Or maybe you are likely to be the only one playing a forest next turn; put the slider one step closer to the temperature bonus on the oxygen track. Or maybe your cool new corporation gives you bonus cash for increasing the venus track, sounds like you should bump it up! Or maybe you just need one or two more notches in a parameter increased so you can play an important card in your hand. I dig the control and simple-yet-interesting strategic options that this new phase presents (and keeping this long game from becoming longer is a bonus, too).

Should you get it

Here’s where we get to the caveats with Venus: Next. Mechanically, it’s sound, but you have to consider consistency. The project deck in Terraforming Mars is already big, and even more so if you are including the corporate era stuff. Add in nearly 50 new project cards and the odds of getting the cards you are used to are drastically lower. So you have to ask yourself, what is it you like about Terraforming Mars? Do you dig sculpting the perfect engine by being able to count on a pretty consistent set of cards seeing play throughout a game, or are you more of the type that likes reacting to what you have and making the best tactical choices given what’s available?

While I appreciate both aspects of the game, I more so fall into the latter camp. The new project cards are useful and diverse, containing many familiar tags and mechanics that we’ve all grown reliant on, while still presenting a few new strategies. And besides, if you don’t want certain cards, you don’t have to buy those projects, which is how Terraforming Mars has always worked. But I have a feeling that some players will argue that more cards dillutes the deck; fortunately drafting, (if you are up for a longer playtime) eliminates the majority of this problem.

What it doesn’t eliminate is poor component quality, though. Apparently a sizable portion of Venus: Next’s early run suffered from some quality control issues, resulting in numerous players complaining about cards being miscut by the manufacturer, slightly smaller than the base game cards, and this is true of the copy sent to me. If I’m being realistic, it doesn’t bother me in practice, but it's still a bummer. The moment I shuffled the venus cards into the main deck, I could feel something was amiss, which led me to the BGG post linked above.

Side by side of a standard TM card (back) and a Venus Next card affected by the issue (front)

Fortunately, the co-publishers of Venus: Next have come up with a solution where you can mail in proof of purchase in the form of a select card and receive a replacement deck free. It’s not the most elegant solution, but an honest one, and I’m happy to see that gamers are able to get the correct width cards.

That said, if you are affected by this and  you don’t want to go through the replacement process, sleeving your cards will eliminate the problem, or, do what I do, play anyway. You may be able to tell that there is a tiny variation in width, but it’s not so much that you can easily tell from feel where cards are placed or if the card on top of the deck is from this expansion or the other content.

So, back to the question of “Should You Get It?”. For me, it’s worth it. I love Terraforming Mars, and the good stuff that Venus Next adds is flavorful and creative, while being overall unobtrusive (albeit unnecessary) to the main game. If you had to get one and only one expansion, I’d recommend the awesome Prelude first (which I happened to have just released a video review for that today as well), but in truth I really love the experience of all the existing content together.

So if you are hungry for more Terraforming and the projects on Mars are getting a little bit stale, or you want to add the strategically interesting world government phase to the game, or you just want this game to be the biggest sandbox that you can possibly get your corporate megalomania thing on, I recommend you check out Venus: Next, an expansion to Terraforming Mars.

A review copy of this expansion was provided by the publisher.

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Samurai Spirit - Taking a Chance on Some Samurai Guys

Samurai Spirit - Taking a Chance on Some Samurai Guys
Published by Funforge - 2014
Designer: Antoine Bauza
Head Artist: Victor Corbella
1 - 7 players ~ 45 - 75 minutes
Review written by Luke Muench

Years ago, Samurai Spirit was one of the first games that I considered getting rid of back in my early days of board gaming. The game felt simple, slow, and ended with us losing without us knowing what we could have done way more often than we liked. It was a frustrating, obnoxious, colorful, mess of an experience.

After some thorough contemplation, I decided to go back into this war between our brave, perilous samurai and the waves and waves of villainous ninja to see just what made this game tick. And what I found… was blackjack.

Having been a blackjack dealer for a time, there was a certain… nostalgia to the game, so I decided to keep it, eventually considering it one of the greatest  co-ops of all time, but the wind’s favor is fickle, and now it’s time to take another critical eye to Samurai Spirit.

Fighting For Your Life
Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster. - Sun Tzu

Samurai Spirit, like most co-op games, tasks players with trying really REALLY hard not to die. Which, of course, like most good co-op games, you will die. A lot. Like, 6 out of 7 times. It’s so brutal that when you pry open the box, the familiar lid-squeak starts to sound more like a taunt - “Really? You’re gonna try THIS again? HAH! Good luck with that.”

The Samurai win the game if all players are able to survive 3 waves of ninjas while also keeping one building intact and one villager alive; that’s a lot of stuff to protect. Like a leaning tower of porcelain vases held together by some twine; eventually, one of them is gonna get smashed, and more will spitefully crash to the ground in the process.

This means every action is vital and must be carried out with precision. Players are forced to collectively manage what few resources they have in hopes of lasting long enough to make it through the hour run-time.

Turns are very simple; on your turn, you will do one of three things:

1. Draw a ninja card to deal with.

2. Pass your power token to another player.

3. Pass

This easy, quick framework leads a lot of players to initially take this game for granted, and if you don't have someone to explain the subtle nuances of this game, you’ll likely find yourself questioning why your friend would hate you so much to make you play such a mindless title.

You will most often (by far) draw cards, each adorned with a few symbols to be mindful of:

1. The number at the top left of the card (commonly 1 through 4) shows that ninja’s strength and how much strain it puts on you if you fight it.

2. The symbol in the bottom left corner of the card illustrates a punishment for fighting this card, assuming it’s at the top of your pile of baddies.

3. The symbol at the top right of the card shows which resource this ninja is attacking, allowing you to defend that resource if you so choose.

4. If there’s fire in the background of the card, that can be bad, but only if this ninja finds itself in the spy pile (which we’ll get to later).

All this information comes together and asks you one question; do you fight this card or defend against it?

Fighting a card adds its value to your combat track; if you combine card values to hit the highest number on your board, you unleash an extra special ability specific to your character and replenish your combat track partially, helping you fight more baddies. Go over this value, though, and you’re forced out of the round, burning down one of your precious fences in the process, allowing the fire to reach ever closer towards your houses.

Defending a resource means that card doesn’t do anything negative to you and you protect that thing from being damaged by your negligence at the end of the round. Each resource can only be protected once each round by each player, meaning that once that slot is filled, you’ll be forced to fight other, potentially worse minions down the road. Plus, if you don’t defend a resource before the end of the round, the team loses one of that resource, making you in part the source of the bad things happening. Nice going, samur-die.

Which cards you interact with each turn of the game will have huge repercussions later on. Fighting a minion early on that does fire damage to the town and choosing not to cover it could force you to burn through your resources quickly. If the first minion you fight in the round is value at “1”, you’ll be incredibly limited in what you can fight after you partially refresh your combat track.

Luck Be A Ninja Tonight
If I should come out of this war alive, I will have more luck than brains. - Manfred Von Richthofen

This is about when you start to wonder “what is the distribution of cards in the deck?”, a question that has an ever changing answer. Samurai Spirit comes with 52 cards with an even number of 1’s, 2’s, 3’s, and 4’s to fill that roster, but only 7 cards are added to the deck per player, meaning there are always at least 3 cards removed from the deck. This results in the first round having a new, deeper meaning as players scope out how many of each card are in the deck, what symbols are more prolific than others, how important it is to defend one thing over another, and so on.

Then, after the 1st round is finished, a 5 value card per player is added to the deck, adding some hulking brutes to scare players, as they can make a serious dent in your fight track. And if you manage to make it to the 3rd round, bosses appear, each 6’s and each with their own brutal and often disastrous negative effects when they are fought.

This also results in players understanding how many turns each player will have roughly; I say “roughly” because card effects and player abilities can alter this in ways that are both positive and negative for the team, mitigating the luck headed in the players’ direction.

Yes, each character has their own crazy special ability that is always active, allowing them to help both themselves and others. On a players turn, they will always be able to use these powers, like being able to pass odd-numbered cards, fighting 2 enemies each round, or killing enemies drawn if their value is the same as what’s already in their fight track. Additionally,  rather than drawing a card, you can lend this ability to someone else, helping them better deal with their turn, which can be critical if they’re low on health or need to get rid of a particularly nasty enemy. That said, lending powers does have a price; the top card that would have been drawn is placed in the spy pile.

At the end of the round, there’s a 50% chance that the card in question has flames in the background, meaning that this arsonist ninja burns down one of the town’s fences, or worse, one of the houses if no fences are left. If there’s no fire though, then no harm no foul. This aspect provides the game with a palpable tension as players wonder if they’re willing to risk putting juuuuuuuuuuuuust 1 more ninja into the spy pile if only to squeak by another few turns.

It’s easy to look at this game and see an insurmountable amount of luck gazing out menacingly, but there are a lot of tools at the players disposal to deal with it, as long as everyone is paying attention. Samurai Spirit was the first game that ever made me feel like a part of a team, with each member having their own powers, roles, and insights into the oncoming threat. Many games have been sent quietly pondering and discussing what each person should do on their turn, almost like a council of elders deciding the fate of the village. One misstep and the whole place will burn to the ground, but with just the right touch, maybe we can make it through the night.

And sometimes that means doing absolutely nothing.

To Pass Or Not To Pass
The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his. - George S. Patton

The final action a player can take sounds ineffective and boring; why would a player voluntarily stop playing the game for a few turns until the round is over? Surely there must be another way?

Well, consider this; it’s the start of your turn. Your combat track is at an 8 out of 9 and you’ve defended all 3 of your symbols to the left of your board. Chances are that you’ll draw higher than a 1, busting you out, forcing you to burn a fence and pass anyway. Better to pass now and not suffer an additional consequence, right?

While that was a more extreme and obvious example, there are a few situations where tactically passing can be the difference between life and death for the team, especially if player death is on the line due to negative card effects.

A player’s health is the last and perhaps most intriguing puzzle of them all. At the start of the game, everyone plays as your average, human samurai guys, looking buff and cool to the touch. If they take 1 damage, whatever, they can shrug it off like bros. But if they take a 2nd damage, oooooooooooOOOOOOOOO, now you’ve made them MAD, so mad that they transform into their fursonas, ranging from a tiger with a 6-pack to a dapper-looking fox. This furification isn’t just to look sexy, though, it increases their fight gauge (allowing them to combat more baddies) and improves their kiai, making it more beneficial to hit your high-mark.

However, you cannot heal either of those two damage points you’ve already taken; once you enter this bestial form, there’s no going back. With 2 remaining health points, you have to be extra careful; lose those and it’s game over for everyone. This means that players will, at some point, want to take damage in order to power up and fight off the bigger enemies later, but they’ll have to do so cautious and intelligently in order to not push themselves too hard.

Some Serious Chinks In the Armor
War does not determine who is right, only who is left. - Bertrand Russel

Now, I wish I could leave it at that. I wish I could say, “Wow, I was wrong, this IS one of the best co-ops out there.” I wish I still liked this game as much as I did way back when.

But here’s the thing, the naked, furry truth of the matter; before this review, Samurai Spirit sat on my shelf untouched for months. Every time I looked at it, considered it, I thought to myself, “No, this isn’t the right time for that.” And it wasn’t, because if anything, Samurai Spirit aggressively rewards devotion, but little else.

The day after I originally drafted this review, I went to a local gaming MeetUp where I attempted to teach five lightly experienced gamers to this co-op, each drawn to it by the beautiful artwork and fun themes. After the first round of play, though, I suddenly grew tired, even exhausted by the experience, and the players looked to be the same way.

In order to have a chance at winning the game, you need to pick your character layout carefully, but often in obvious ways. If I can pass even-numbered cards, then the character who ignores the negative effects of those cards should probably be adjacent to me. So while randomly dolling out abilities is a recipe for disaster, picking them feels more like an inevitability once one person picks the first character.

Throughout the game, I had to explain the rules 5 or 6 times, reminding me of just how many nuances are present here. Cards and characters are covered in icons, each “simple” action has repercussions 5 turns later for other players, and it can be hard to recall who does what in terms of their abilities.

But more frustrating, I began to feel like a reluctant DM. Samurai Spirit is rife with alpha gaming, to its core. All information is public, and often times the game is best when everyone is working together to devise a plan of action to execute on. That being said, new players will have no idea what a good plan looks like, often looking to me for advice. So either I become forced to make most of the moves of the early game to help teach everyone general strategies or I sit back and allow them to figure the system out for themselves, which is no fun for me and can actively frustrate others when they have no clue what to do. There were many instances when people would just tell others what they “needed to do” on their turn, to such an extent where I needed to speak up about how players “needed” to stop quarterbacking.

The final killing blow was when one player in a seven player game was knocked out early in the 2nd round, busting due to an unlucky draw. This meant that he would have to wait out the rest of the round, roughly 20 turns, before he would be able to do anything else. Since the number of cards scales based on player count, games can vary from half hour to a massive 2 full hours slog. And while the game doesn’t have player elimination, it certainly can lead to instances where you sit around doing nothing for almost a half hour, and that, to me, is an unacceptable mechanic in any game.

Now, some may argue that this game may be better at smaller player counts, maybe 3 or 4, and that may be true, but the game clearly sells itself on being a 7 player game, a count that BGG users suggest is the best way of playing the game. While less players can make the game more manageable, it also makes the game much easier, as well as susceptible to the RNG of what cards are excluded from the deck at the start of the game. You might end up with a deck flooded with 1’s or with very few villager icons, making each experience more and more inclined to some unfortunate odds. And ultimately, that still doesn’t remove the barrier to entry, as players need to play the game 3 or 4 times before becoming familiar enough with the game to be competitive without someone guiding their actions.

A Spirited Experience
The two most powerful warriors are patience and time. - Leo Tolstoy

There was a time when I would freely pronounce to the heavens that Samurai Spirit was by and far my favorite co-op game, adorning my shelf in high esteem, but now I have the sneaking suspicion that it won’t last for much longer.

It forces me to scratch my brain in ways I enjoy, makes me genuinely feel like a part of a team, and forces me to think long and hard before acting, but it asks too much. In order to wring out the best experience from this game, I’d need to draft the same team again and again, players of equal interest, dedication, and skill level.. That leads to an inflexibility that, much like the rigid samurai code, leaves little room for fun.

Who Should Get This Game: Those who don’t mind stumbling through the first few games and plays with the same group week-to-week.
Who Shouldn’t Get This Game: Anyone who is bothered by alpha gaming or doesn’t want to think too hard when playing games.

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Salem 1692 - What do we burn apart from witches? More witches!

Salem 1692 - What do we burn apart from witches? More witches!
Designed by Travis and Holly Hancock
Artwork by Sarah Keele
Published by Facade Games - 2015
4-12 players ~ 20-40 minutes
Review by Josh Simons

The year was 2017 and I was just entering a season of KickStarter overload. No, wait. While that’s true, we need to start our journey in 1692. This is the first year of the infamous  Salem witch tryals in Salem, Massachusetts. Accusations are flying in the puritanical night, fueled by subjective spectral evidence and iniquitous behavior. Whether from actual witchcraft, political conspiracy, or plain old-fashioned fear, there’s gonna be a hanging. Or a burning. Or a pressing.

To play or not to play?

Fast forward back to 2017, as I’m considering whether or not to dive into this cardboard world of the witch tryals. The theme fascinated me, however, I realized that slinging accusations of witchcraft may be a bit too macabre to fill out the table for a 4-12 player social deduction game. Honestly, after it came home to my shelf, Salem 1692 sat there for months under a certain shadow of skepticism, largely due to the theme. It’s one thing to squabble over who is or isn’t a werewolf, as werewolves are sort of a general monster trope with a sort of fantastical quality. Witches carry connotations of a deeper darkness. Unchanged by a full moon, but hiding in our midst and acting as mediums to things forbidden. Salem 1692 is much more about ordinary people who have given themselves over to a spirit of fear and turned on each other than any conjuring. In truth, this may reek of the devil’s stench as much as any spellcrafter, but that is a conversation for around the table.

Finally, the opportune time came to learn this game at a big family get together, and now it’s become an oft-requested hit with my family, gamers and non-gamers alike,  with players ranging from age 7 to 67. Salem 1692 has simple roles, few rules, and just enough evidence to go on that your accusations are not completely wild-eyed and baseless. Although, playing in the spirit of mass hysteria would not be out of place.  

What do we burn apart from witches?

At the beginning of the game, there are a few card decks that you’ll be working with. Each of them are clearly differentiated on the backs of each cards for easy sorting.

• First up are the Tryal cards, where each player gets five of them to lay face down on the table, and one of those cards may designate you as a witch. There will be at least one witch in the game.

• Secondly, Town Hall cards, which are role cards passed out amongst each of the players, are randomized and dealt to give each each player their own asymmetric advantage.

• Where most of the card action is going to happen is from the playing deck, which is made up of a majority of accusation cards, but also includes game modifying cards - which cannot be played on yourself  - whose duration is determined by their color.

• Finally, there is the Kill card deck, which mirrors the Town Hall deck, and the witches use it to determine who will be killed during the night.

Each player gets a starting hand of three cards from the playing deck before the dawn phase begins. The game can be played with a non-player moderator, but if you’re game savvy you can also function as the Town Crier while playing the game. Basically, this means you close your eyes and moderate from memory. While it can be cumbersome, especially if you’re also a witch, there is not much to remember.  

Inconceivable Deductions

Upon waking from the dawn phase, the witches will have placed the revealed black cat card in front of a player. The black cat kicks off the start of the game, signifying the first player. This can be tricksy because the black cat is the only card a player can give themselves. Did the witches just curse one of the townsfolk, or did they fake out the townsfolk with a little self-benefitting self-harm? This is the perfect time to pull out your best Vizzini impression. “Am I telling a lie, or telling the truth, or telling the truth to make you think I’m telling a lie which is actually a lie but really the truth?” Spin your tales and the heads of whoever is not on your team.

On your turn, you can either draw two cards from the player deck or play a minimum of one card from your hand on other players. In loose deduction fashion, you start eyeing the other player for who looks the most shifty, unless you are the most shifty, and drop some accusations or evidence of witchcraft in front of another player. When seven X’s collect in front of a player, the town conducts a tryal.

During a tryal, the player who dropped the last accusation gets to pick one of the accused player’s tryal cards to reveal. Maybe you’ll provide an alibi for another player, or put them in the stocks, or powerfully grant them piety or asylum. Where Salem diverges from other social deduction games is that you become an investigator, making attempts to discern the evidence in front of you that seems to lead to a conclusion that is just out of grasp. Many times, you’ll be going on a hunch, but it’s a well-informed hunch. Unless you’re being completely played by a clever witch. I believe this is a prominent aspect that makes it shine for everyone who I have played with.

This dance continues until the conspiracy card is drawn, which was shuffled into the player deck at the beginning of the dawn. The player who drew the conspiracy gets to choose one of the black cat players’ tryal cards to reveal. Then, each player takes one facedown tryal card from the player on their left, allowing the witches influence to spread. This can really tilt the game, because once you become a witch you remain a witch, even if you lose that witch card during a conspiracy.

Once all five of a players Not A Witch tryal cards have been revealed, or their Witch tryal card is revealed, they are dead and out of the game. A sly witch who passed on their card will look like an innocent. On the other hand, perhaps the townsfolk really did kill an innocent.

The final card in the draw deck is the night card. This resets the round, where the deck is shuffled again, with some new actions taking place. First, all witches open their eyes and decide to which of the remaining players they will kill, and place the Kill card that matches their Town Hall card facedown on top of the deck for an upcoming thematic reveal. Strategically, the witches may choose to kill one of their own if that seems like viable deceptive play. It’s win or lose as a team around here. The third type of Tryal card, which there is only one of and we haven’t talked about yet, comes into play now. The Constable, as long as his tryal card hasn’t been revealed by accusations, places a gavel token on one player to be protected from death during the night. Once all players open their eyes, they have to opportunity to confess by revealing one of their tryal cards, hastening their own demise, to protect themselves from the witches kill decision. The players have the length of a sand timer (included with the game) to make their decision. The Kill card is revealed. Depending on each player’s actions, the witch hunt goes on.

The rounds continue in this fashion until either all non-witches have been killed, all players have become witches, or all witch cards have been revealed.

Throw the Book at Them

I’d be remiss not to talk about the production of this game. Sarah Keele’s artwork is gorgeous, and honestly, that lone portrait of Mary Warren (as featured on the cover of the rulebook) is what drew me to the game to begin with.  The cards, the hourglass, and the gavel token all fit finely inside a faux book box complete with gold foil embossing and a magnetic closure to keep the components from tumbling all out while the game is on its way from shelf to table. Though if you were to sleeve your cards, I’m not certain the magnet would keep the book clasped closed.

As somewhat of a meta aspect, Salem 1692 is the second edition of the game. Originally released as Salem, the game was rebranded as Salem 1692 to integrate it into Facade Games’ Dark Cities line, entry being Vol. 0. The other games in the series, Tortuga 1667 and Deadwood 1876, both have similar faux book boxes designed to be flawlessly displayed on your bookshelf together as a set.  

The rulebook really adds a nice touch of personality, thematically addressing different situations that can come up in a game. Each card is explained, and each character is described, but hidden in the middle are The 5 Laws of Salem. These are a great way to start any game, as the laws lay out topics like if you’re taking too long, other players can flip the hourglass on you and force your hand. If your hand leaves a card once you’ve played it but forgot to use your special ability… too bad! Dead players who speak shall be shunned. Deduction games seem to play better when the players can get into their characters and role play a little bit, but Salem 1692 edges you into that with some rulebook sass.

Weighing the Scales

I enjoy social deduction games. Not that I’m great at them, really. I always end up thinking that I’m coming up with some airtight strategy that will fool the other players, but they end up seeing right through it. With Salem 1692, I like that there are actually shadows and movements that bring other players into suspicion. Someone being handed piety will make you question their alliances, whether they are a witch, a townsfolk, or one pretending to be the other. The tension builds over the day phases, but the game usually does not drag on. It plays to an appropriately satisfying length, not overstaying its welcome. Fortunately, this helps balance out the players who have been eliminated beyond whoever is now taking over the role as the moderator. Really, it’s still enjoyable to watch the game play out from the sidelines.

Whether you want to go for something spooky or remember history so it’s not repeated, Facade Games gives you material to work with. Post game, I’ve found it sobering to open the rulebook and read to the group the short history of each character we played as. Were they the first girl to accuse or be accused in Salem? Were they a ringleader to the accusations? Were they found guilty and killed?

Similar to zombies or vampires or any other horror theme, witch tryals is not going to be up everyone’s alley. For the people that I play with, the fun of the game overcame their reluctance towards the theme. If you’re looking for a game that can accommodate a large group of players, that is accessible to wide mix of players game experience, and also takes up a small amount of real estate on your ever crowding shelf, Salem 1692 is a worthy addition to your library.

Josh Simons is a freelance writer and contributor to The Cardboard Herald. You can follow Josh and his creative projects on twitter, @oldroadcreative.

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Clans of Caledonia - The Greater Cinematic Franz-verse

Clans of Caledonia - The Greater Cinematic Franz-verse
Designed by Juma Al-Joujou
Artwork by Klemens Franz
Published by Karma Games
1-4 Players ~ 90-120 Minutes (shorter for solo)
Review by Jack Eddy

In spite of all of its efforts, I really dig Clans of Caledonia.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s designed to be enjoyed. Games should be designed to be enjoyed! But the DNA that makes up this game isn’t really my jam. Drawing heavy mechanical inspiration from economic euro predecessors like Terra Mystica, Agricola, and The Voyages of Marco Polo, Clans appears to be a dry, complicated, and punishing game of agricultural domination, which it absolutely is. The big difference, though, is empowerment.

The Economy of Sheep (Gameplay)

Clans of Caledonia effectively boils down to producing resources to fulfill orders. Those resources can either be bought from the market with some hard earned scratch, or you can deploy your pieces on the board. There are two types of pieces, ones that produce stuff: wool, milk, wheat, or cheddar* (*money); or there are factories which change your stuff into bigger, better, processed stuff: bread, whiskey, or cheddar** (**the cheese).

Obviously, putting pieces on the board is the sound investment, but this is a game where every penny counts. Deploying pieces is slow and costly, and with only 5 rounds in the game, it’s hard to gauge exactly how beneficial their production will be.

Fortunately, guidance is provided via asymmetric powers. Each player has a clan, and that clan’s powers will often provide general nudges in a direction without entirely dominating a player’s game. Maybe you can buy and sell more goods at better prices, or producing and aging whisky will net you continuous money, or maybe your clan knows the secret and covetted recipe for butter; allowing you to convert milk into hard earned cash at a fixed premium. That said, all of this will usually be in service of allowing you to fill more orders; which is really the major goal of the game.

First off, in order to fill orders, you must have orders, and typically each player can only hold one order at a time. And these orders, requiring various goods including the slaughtering of your poor milk and wool producing livestock, will make up the majority of your points. While each round has its own bonus point award, like 2 points for every deployed worker; the orders give you intangible commodities; cotton, sugarcane, and tobacco. These all score at the end of the game, where the one that players collectively own the least of is the most valuable, setting up a sort of internal economy.

And speaking of economy, the market is by far the most innovative system in Caledonia. Whenever you sell or purchase goods, the monetary value of that good moves up or down. In other words, if you sell tons of cheese, cheese supply is high, which means it will reduce in value. The more people buy wool, the price skyrockets with demand. This imbues you, the player, with the awesome and terrifying power to control the free market, employing it’s whims as an aspect of your economic domination; Milton Freeman would be proud.  

Reaping what you sow (How it Feels)

 This precision of choices and impact on the internal economy sets up a sort of rhythmic deliberation to the game. You have to really commit to what you’re doing and work with the consequences. That isn’t to say that there is a set path to victory, but victory is reliant on you remaining focused on one objective at a time, chaining consecutive actions together. Get my cows placed here; convert milk to cheese there; purchase a wool, slaughter a cow and fill this order, all so I can start focussing on my next objective.

That said, Clans constantly beckons you to change your plans. Can you really pass up a deal if whisky prices are THAT low? Maybe filling your order would get you some points but the current price of cheese is so high that you’d be a fool not to sell! This is compounded by a proximity bonus that happens when you build next to a neighbor. If one of your pieces is placed next to an opponent’s, you can immediately purchase what their piece produces from the market at a cheaper price. This encourages strategic, clustered, and hopefully mutually beneficial placement on the board.

It’s this precision and immediate impact of your decisions that I love most about the game. Every choice has a consequence for everyone at the table, and you are constantly making meaningful decisions as you build, produce, purchase, and fulfill your way throughout the game. There's a really empowering sense of manifest destiny, trusting that every action is leading to  some larger outcome, even if you aren’t always sure what it is yet.

A subjective duality (Art & Presentation)

 When I say that Caledonia looks fine, It’s with a degree of bitterness as I compromise the good and the bad. I’ll start off by saying that I really like how the game looks on the table. A lush green and blue world of hexagons adorned with appropriately vibrant and thematic meepl’lified components. Best of all, the game does a phenomenal job at conveying information in a really succinct, intuitive way. So why the duality?

I’m really not feeling the character artwork in this game. Yes, Klemens Franz is a wildly popular artist in the board game biz, and his presence here lends a sort of legitimacy to the first major release by Karma Games, but it just doesn’t really do any favors for the game. While I’ve never been wowed by Franz’ artwork, I’ve respected the sheer amount of work that he’s produced over the years, including, perhaps most notably, the majority of Uwe Rosenberg’s classic games. But in Caledonia, whether it's the juxtaposition of Franz’ characters against the much less stylized backgrounds, or it’s just not his best work, the characters feel disjointed, uninteresting, and out of place.

Don’t get me wrong, if you are a die-hard Franz head, the characters will fit within the greater cinematic Franz-verse, but their integration into the card and box artwork feels out of place, which is a shame for a game that feels otherwise so incredibly cohesive. Fortunately, this never detracted from my enjoyment of playing the game, it just never amplified it either.

An Invigorating Shot (Final Thoughts)

In a surprise twist that I never expected, Clans turned out to be one of my favorite euros of the last few years. Perhaps it’s because, unlike many of its predecessors that it draws heavy inspiration from, it feels restrictive yet never punishing; there are few things that you can do in the game that will fully derail your ability to participate in the rest of the game; some people will call this too forgiving, I call it fun.

Furthermore, the asymmetric powers are subtle but substantial changes, modifying how you approach the game, making sure that each time it hits the table it feels both familiar yet new. Lastly, it plays fantastic at each player count, never really feeling like you are having the compromise the core loop of the game to seat a certain number of players.

That said this game won’t be for everyone. If you absolutely can’t stand economic euro games, steer clear! This is an abstract game of resource collection and conversion, and no amount of forgiving player empowerment is going to change that.

But if you love games with tons of successive decisions, with loads of depth, skill, and (indirect) player interaction, with adorable pieces and great table presence, Clans of Caledonia is an excellent, and surprisingly approachable, entry point into the world of heavier economic euro games.

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The Tale of Ord (Chapters 3 & 4) - Counting on Venison

The Tale of Ord: Chapters 3 and 4 - Counting on Venison
Designed by Rita Orlov
Artwork by Rita Orlov & Ayodhya Ouditt
Published 2018 by PostCurious
Review by Jack Eddy

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*Note* This spoiler free review is a continuation of our Tale of Ord: Chapters 1 and 2 review that you can find here. If you are completely lost as to what this is, you might want to check out that review first.

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Given our incredible experience with Tale of Ord chapters 1 & 2, we thought ourselves veteran sleuths ready for whatever PostCurious could sling our way; expecting the unexpected and confident that now that we had the hang of it, finishing the remaining chapters would be a breeze! After all, it’s probably just more of the same. Right?

We were so wrong...

The Game is Afoot (Gameplay)

Inside the now-familiar sleek black box, the conclusive chapters of this narrative puzzle adventure lie in wait. We took some time off from chapters 1 & 2, largely because, well, life can get in the way of continuity, but also because we wanted to savor the experience. It’s no joke that solving the first two chapters was among Christina and I’s all-time favorite gaming experiences. When we finally decided to break into it, the objects within were stranger, the visuals were more esoteric, and the writing was more cryptic than ever.

Chapter 3 continues to defy your expectations with gusto by demanding that you unshackle your brain and begin interacting with physical objects more in the way that you approach building a lego set with no instructions; if you haven’t bent, broken, torn, disassembled, and written on three quarters of the components by it’s completion, you did something wrong.

Finally, after two long nights of scrutinizing every last detail like a content starved Song of Ice & Fire Fan searching for clues, we cracked the case and found our way through chapter 3. This was by far the most mentally exhausting of the chapters; thrilling, yes, but you will feel like you need some sleep after making it through a session. Except you won’t, because you’ll be so busy talking about what could possibly happen in the supersized chapter 4 envelope, given everything you’ve seen.

Chapter 4 is… well, it’s exactly what you want it to be. You know how in the best stories (and math classes)  the final challenge is a summary of everything the hero has been learning up until that point, except cranked to 11? That’s what you’re looking at here. The challenges in chapter 4 are a robust, wholistic summary and progression of the whole adventure so far, that will have you recontextualizing and employing clues from each chapter before it. And that’s not even talking about why the envelope is so big.

Suffice it to say, when we read the letter attached to chapter 4, Christina and I both said “No…” in disbelief. “Surely they don’t mean...”. And yeah, they did. I’m not going to spoil it, but the main obstacle, the ultimate finale of the game, is one of the most incredible, intricate, and mind-blowing components that has come across my table, and all the myriad of supporting documents in chapter 4 relate to it.

Chapter 4 also took two sessions, both because of the mental taxation, but also due to us being old fuddy-duddies who have a toddler, jobs, responsibilities, and too-often-ignored bedtimes. That said completing chapter 4 was as satisfying of a narrative and tabletop gaming experience as I’ve ever had, immediately causing us to video call people and gush wildly while desperately trying not to spoil a single detail. If chapters 1 and 2 made a promise, 3 and 4 delivered.

One thing that particularly struck me about these latter two chapters is the breadth of disciplines involved in creating the puzzles, while not really reliant on the players knowledge of those disciplines to solve them. This lent itself well to group dynamics, where people naturally good at spatial arrangement, math, linguistics, or research could best employ their skills, but the logic is never so prohibitively difficult that you'd fail if your team lacked an accountant or philologist. These are STEM activities for adults. 

That said...

Facing the Jabberwocky (Difficulty)

“it seems to fill my head with ideas–only I don’t exactly know what they are!” - Alice, Through the Looking Glass

In our initial review, I encouraged players to avoid becoming lost in the woods by making liberal use of the awesome hint system on PostCurious’ website. Now that we’ve managed our way through the latter half, I’m begging you.

While we clearly loved our time with the game, chapters 3 and 4 were notably harder, and one of my biggest criticisms of the overall experience is it didn’t feel like a natural progression of difficulty when we got to the latter half. In these final four sessions, we more often found ourselves teetering further from the realm of exciting mystery into opaque befuddlement. Fortunately, with rest, perspective, and a heavy dosage of clues, we were always able to steer ourselves back on course, but there were more than a couple times where a clue made me go “There is never in a million years that I would have thought of that!”

And like I said earlier, it’s not because of a lack of knowledge or skill when it comes to analyzing text or knowledge of Norse Mythology; our greatest challenge was often (and still) due to us underestimating the parameters of the game, not employing real world logic and assuming everything is textual information available on paper. The key to solving one particular puzzle was a simple as matching symbols and seeing what the cuts revealed but in spite of solving seemingly far more complex things, the disparity between the objects involved threw us off. Ultimately, it was a minor logical jump that seems so intuitive in retrospect, but without the hints, who knows if we’d ever get there.

Which can be frustrating, you know? I’m a gamer! I want seamless progression that relies on my wits and cunning; taking hints can feel like I’m cheapening the experience!

But it didn’t.  Yes, I wish the puzzles nudged you just a little bit more toward the goals without having to rely on a clue system online, but those “never in a million year moments” were accompanied by a healthy dose of bewilderment at just how clever and nuanced the puzzles were, and for each puzzle that really busted our brain and we needed a ton of help, there were several more that a polite nudge was enough to send us along our path of triumph.

Evidence & Artifacts (Materials)

Straight up, The Tale of Ord is remarkably tight. Whether it’s indicative of mad genuis, black magic, or the combination there-of, it’s astounding at how cohesive the overall experience is. Characters have consistent voices, references are well researched, information is presented in tantalizing ways, and the solutions and resulting narrative developments are wilder and wilder with each puzzle you solve.

More than anything, I appreciate the layering and nuance throughout. Narrative themes are recalled, characters have arcs, puzzles are reliant upon clues within earlier chapters, and your skill at understanding both the sheer mechanics and narrative complexities grows, which deepens the game and really makes the story resonate.

And the quality of materials doesn’t end with the writing, chapters 3 and 4 include a couple physical objects that blew us away. These totems of bewilderment fit so cohesively in the narrative that it gave the experience a real world feeling unlike anything we had done to that point. Describing them further would spoil the fun, so all I’ll say is that they are functional, beautiful, and intricate in ways that showcase the enormous skill, craft, and creativity that went into designing the Tale of Ord.

Honestly, I still can’t believe what was included in that final package.

Disparate Elements (Odds and Ends)

Look, I still think The Tale of Ord’s biggest hurdle is sticker shock. $165 is a big ask for most people, and the masses aren’t used to the idea of spending $165 on a physical product meant to be played once. But for 7 total sessions, 2 or more hours a piece, we managed to have some of the most riveting, memorable, and immersive gaming experiences we’ve ever had, that (much to the annoyance of parents/coworkers/cats/strangers on the street), we cannot stop talking about.

That said, if you are still wanting to know more about what you’d be getting into before throwing down, you can request a free postcard from the publisher that will be a sort of prelude puzzle unto itself.

Another thing to mention is that the experience has shifted slightly, in that the publisher is now sending either 4 monthly packages or all 4 chapters in one shipment (exclusively the latter for international audiences), rather than two at a time as they’ve done until now. Not a huge shift, but my recommendation is that you not binge it. Savor the breaks in between, allow the mystery to percolate and let the suspense build. After all, the narrative tension is what makes the payoff to the puzzles so much more magnificent.

A very late night snapshot commemorating our victory with a particularly mysterious souvenir. 

Ragnarok (Final Thoughts)

The Tale of Ord is so much more than I imagined it could be. I mean, yeah, the game could be summarized as an excellent narrative mystery full of cryptic puzzles to solve,  sounds cool, right? That’s how I labeled it going in, but I found that once I got going, I really had no idea what I was in for.

By the time we were done, our notebook was full of translated runes, numerology, symbology, astrology, astronomy, and so many deer. Yeah, if you weren’t counting on venison going into this thing, you have another thing coming.

Really, it’s the connective tissue binding each chapter that impressed me the most; The Tale of Ord is a nuanced, layered mystery that challenges and empowers players with all the tools to succeed. While I wish that the progression of difficulty were a bit more seamless from chapter to chapter, the level of skill and creativity necessary balance such a complex intersection of fantastic narrative, challenging and clever puzzles, and bespoke materials makes it easy to look past the occasional brain-numbing difficulty; and the sense of triumph at its completion was sweeter than any win I’ve ever had at a table.

If you have a heart for adventure and a mind for mystery, or you love great stories and want to rethink what gaming can be, The Cardboard Herald heartily recommends The Tale of Ord.

*A review copy a the Tale of Ord was provided by PostCurious. You can learn more about PostCurious and the designer, Rita Orlov on their site https://www.getpostcurious.com.

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Azul - The Little Abstract That Could

Azul
Published by Plan B Games - 2017
Designer: Michael Kiesling
Head Artists: Philippe Guerin and Chris Quilliams
2 - 4 players ~ 30-45 minutes
Review written by Luke Muench

People are quick to assume that I fall under the ambiguous and recently somewhat negative label “hipster”. I tend to not like a wide variety of things the general public praises, actively fighting against any residual nostalgia fighting for air at the back on my mind, and I’m often asked why I can’t just “turn off my brain and enjoy stuff”.

In truth, I often wish I could find more joy out of the things others do; for one thing, it would mean I’d be a lot happier a lot more of the time. So it’s a pleasant surprise when a game like Azul comes along. While it’s monumental critical acclaim and  2018 Spiel de Jahres win does little to excite me (aside from a sort of minor-academic tickle), the brilliant game hidden within it’s glossy and colorful exterior deserves every bit of it’s acclaim. Azul is downright brilliant; elegant in function and hilarious fun in practice.

And no, I didn’t like it before it was cool.

… Is That It?
“I find your lack of faith disturbing.” - Darth Vader

Azul, in premise, is mind-numbingly simple; each round, you collect colored tiles to try and fill in the pattern on your board. On your turn, you’ll take all tiles of a single color from one of the circles on the table, pushing the remaining pieces to a central pool. Once you start filling a row with a specific color, you cannot fill it with any other color until it’s completed. If, at the end of a round, you have filled one of the left-most rows to capacity with a single color type, you get to place one of those tiles on the appropriate place on your pattern.

Abstract puzzling at its most banal?  Yes, or at least it seems that way on the surface, with every review and picture online doing little to shake that impression. Yet as the praise kept pouring in, I felt it my duty to give it try, if only to have an excuse to talk some sense into the rambling masses. Surely there was some sort of drug coated across these little, shiny squares that had gotten into everyone’s blood-systems, surely there was a noxious gas hidden within each box, brainwashing anyone who dared open it, surely…

Only when you start to handle those tactile little pieces of plastic do you begin to grasp the true mastery and understanding of game design hidden within those cardboard player mats, for there is so much to grasp and grapple with turn to turn it will drive you batty. I don’t think I’ve won a single match of this game, yet I absolutely adore what it does.

Picking and Choosing

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” - Gandalf The Grey

Each decision in Azul impacts everyone at the table, creating a sort of rippling effect where actions have deeper, drawn out meanings that you may not see the full ramifications of until several turns later.

The first and most obvious decision is which color you choose to put where on your board. Do you think you can gather five of them this turn, or are you going to play it safe and just fill in your two-slot row now? Every row is a precision commodity, allowing you to harbor only so many of a given color, but they’re also a perilous restriction. The moment you place a red tile in a row, you are dedicating that row to red until it is completed. You better have a means of doing just that, or else you’re going to be seeing red for many turns to come as you rage over how you can’t just… I just want to put it… Come ON, why can’t I complete this freakin’ row?

The reason is because every other player is aware that you need those last 2 red tiles to get points for that row, and they just so happened to take them, even if it is a subpar move for them. Blocking other players is a huge part of how Azul is played; it’s a mean, cutthroat, often laugh-out-loud hilarious affair.

In one memorable game, I was awaiting my turn to scoop up the last blue tile I needed for my fifth row, which was going to score me a ton of points. As each player when about their business, a drop of sweat dripped from my brow in anticipation. It was only when my neighbor looked at my board did he decide to remove that precious commodity from the table. One. Turn. Before. Mine. And in that moment, I erupted in a flurry of heated exclamations too saucy to be repeated here. And I loved it, every second of it; this game made me feel that intense loss, and all because of the actions I had taken as well as those of my blood-thirsty opponents.

Easy Come, Easy Go

“You never know when some lunatic will come with a sadistic choice.” - The Green Goblin

But the truly evil, the most diabolical players, are those who orchestrate the massive loss of points possible in any given game.

There are two ways of losing points, the first of which may seem quite tame. As players take tiles, any leftovers are pushed to the aforementioned central pool, slowly building until one player can’t help but pull from the tantalizing pot of riches. When they do so, they also receive the first player marker, a prize that is promptly placed in the first of their negative points slots.

This does two things; firstly, it provides small but meaningful factor to consider as you play; will you sacrifice a point to go first next round?. And secondly, removing that first player token is like opening a floodgate, with the other players throwing themselves into that ocean of tiles, now freed from the threat of lost points. Quickly, this becomes a game of chicken as everyone sees how long they can wait before succumbing to the temptation of those five tiles of a kind while also recognizing that if the next player chooses to pull, you’re going last next round, an awful punishment in its own right.

The second and most damaging way of losing points is when, inevitably, players begin to pull tiles that they can’t legally place on their board anymore. In this case, any and all overflow tiles become negative points, splaying out on the bottom of your board like a line of bullet wounds. Take enough and you could lose up to negative fourteen points in a given round. In the immortal words of Phil Swift, “That’s a lotta damage!”

What’s more, forward-thinking players can begin to orchestrate such outcomes, so if you’re not careful, you could be stuck with a pile of eight tiles with no place to go. This past Origins, my buddy Quinn went from being in first place to just barely pulling up in third, as he was forced to take the full negative fourteen points in the final round of the game. It was hilarious, brutal, and engaging for everyone huddled around the table, desperately trying not to be the player who was bound to get skunked.

What’s The Score?

“If winning weren’t important, nobody would keep score.” Al McGuire

If there was one thing that could be defined as “complicated” in Azul, it would be scoring. At the end of each round when adding tiles to your pattern, each tile earns points equal to itself and any additional tiles in the same row and column. So while at the start of the game you’ll be earning single points, towards the end you’ll hopefully have orchestrated a board capable of forking over massive amounts of points.

Additionally, you’ll earn seven points for every completed column at the end of the game and ten points if you collected all five tiles of a given color. Lastly, a completed row will only earn you two points, but this is also the method of ending the game; the moment a single player completes a row, that means that the round you are playing will be the final round, leaving up to the players to determine how long a game will last.

A Winner, Through and Through

“The dude abides.” - The Dude

Azul is a beautiful game that anyone can pick up and play with ease, but with the design and choices that allow for competitive play. It has just enough player interaction to keep everyone on their toes, but each individual has their own little puzzle to solve. The flipside of the player boards, which removes the color restrictions of the boards, allows for some truly crazy and interesting plays, but can easily stump the unobservant player. It plays quickly and easily, facilitating some truly memorable experiences.

If ever there was a flaw, it would be that a single bump against your player board and all your progress can be flung across the room, which has happened to me once before. Yes, there are accessories to fix this, but it’s still an annoying quirk that can hamper your game.

Also, it should be noted that this isn’t the most color-blind friendly game out there, though replacement pieces have been released to better allow for anyone to tell the tiles apart. Still, someone shouldn’t have to pay additional money to play the same game as everyone else.

Yet if these are the only bad things I have to say about it, there must be something special about this compact, unassuming box full of gorgeous tiles and intense, unbridled emotion. Yes, for once the masses were right; Azul is a gem that should be in everyone’s collection. You win this one, society.

Who Should Get This Game: Anyone who can appreciate Azul’s smooth, seamless gameplay and the colorful style.

Who Shouldn’t Get This Game: Those who can’t stand a lack of theme or games that can be particularly mean at times. Hipsters.

Small World - Power Pop Fantasy Disco

Small World
Designed by Philippe Keyaerts
Artwork by Miguel Coimbra & Cyrille Daujean
Published by Days of Wonder - 2009
2-5 Players ~ 40-80 Minutes
Review by Jack Eddy
For Peter

Among the towering giants of the industry, there stand certain iconic games that have managed to straddle the line between niche and mainstream. At first, Small World may seem the unlikeliest of this group (too strategic for the casual, too simple for the core), yet it’s popularity persists, and upon closer examination, it’s not hard to understand why; straddling that line is exactly what Small World is meant to do.

The Score

Small World pits players against one another, vying for control of regions in a landmass fine tuned to be just about 15% too small, meaning that, whether you like it or not, you are bumping heads with your neighbors, which makes sense, since controlling territories nets you coins every round and coins are both a currency and your points in the game.

The first and most important decision you’ll make on your first turn is selecting one of several races on display, determining your abilities and number of units that you can conquer regions with. Interestingly, Small World handles balance of variable powers through a sort of bidding system, where you can take the lowest race on display for free, or drop a coin on each race that you pass up. If you pick up a race that one or more players passed, you get those sweet, sweet coins. Considering that players will return to selecting races several times throughout a game (more on that later), the incentive to pick less powerful races can be substantial.

From there, the core gameplay is unexpectedly simple; on your turn, you can withdraw as many of your units from regions as you like (leaving at least one if you want to retain control), then conquer regions adjacent to you by slamming your units into them. Once you run out of units or decide not to expand, you end your turn, get yer gold, and redistribute your units amongst your controlled territories.

This redistribution is important because, unlike most “area control” games, entering territories (empty or otherwise) just requires you to spend 2 units + 1 for each other piece of cardboard residing there. Is there a mountain token? Spend 3 units. Is there a mountain token and 2 enemy units? Spend 5. If you happen to conquer an opponent’s territory, one of their units dies a horrible (yet honorable) death, while the remainder retreat back to the player so they can be used during future, totally not vengeance-related, conquests.

Harmony

The magic of Small World comes from the variable player powers that you purchase throughout the game. From two shuffled stacks, pairings of fantasy races and abilities are created, each side granting their own abilities. For instance, Flying means you don’t have to obey adjacency, Orcs give you points for attacking players, and Flying Orcs means you have a really nasty problem on your hands.

These combinations present a huge amount of flavor and replayability, which, given the highly stylized artwork of the game, the particularly preposterous combinations are especially welcome. Dragon-Riding Halflings? You bet. Seafaring Ghouls? Awesome. Underground Wizards? Saw them live in ‘72; changed my life. 

Probably the coolest system in Small World is that as you further expand your units, you will begin feeling thin, stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread. At this point, you can choose to go into decline, flipping your units upside down and choosing a new race/ability mashup on the next turn. Your forsaken race will still net you money for controlling a territory, but they are forever immobilized, diminished, decaying until they are eventually wiped out.

N’Sync

For all the fighting, there is a beautiful harmony to Small World; the core concept is simple and easily grasped, and all the powers simply feel in tune, resonating wonderfully in concept and theme. Seafaring races behave identically to everything else EXCEPT that you can conquer the water territories on the board; makes sense! Dwarves have less units, but double the amount of production on mines even while in decline; great!

Within this narrow framework, there is a staggering amount of variability, presenting interesting combinations that are as dynamic and wild as the rich fantasy setting, but it’s so damn intuitive that it never feels overwhelming.

Acoustics & Tone

Everything in this game is flippant, and I love it. From the artwork to the way the powers reference the theme, this game is as much a loving parody as it is an homage to classic fantasy tropes, but done with far more elegance than is typically found in this hobby. Too often, characters in games look like statues, devoid of action and life, evoking no personality, which in turn makes their worlds seem hollow. Not so here; Small World is vibrant, alive, and every character, and even the very landscape, seems to have an (albeit negative) opinion of everyone else.

Furthermore, this flippancy reflects your state of mind in Small World. In many area control games the stakes are high, and if someone brings their dudes to your doorstep, you feel personally attacked. But here, if you lose your region, you get most of your units back and can happily reclaim it or shove off in a different direction next turn. This is one of the reasons that Small World has had such broad success; that in spite of the core concept being full of confrontation, conflict feels fun rather than mean.

To me, this is reflective of a success in the design, and what separates Small World from so many other area control games in the wild. From the mechanics to the artwork, and even to the incredible insert and the way the tokens feel in your hands, everything in Small World feels so intentional, crafted with function and aesthetic in mind.

Sour Notes

For all of it’s saturated beauty, not all is sunshine and violent daisies in Small World. Once you play a few times, you’ll realize that experienced players can bust out a game in 30 to 45 minutes. “But that’s a good thing!” you say, which is true. The problem is that all of the materials that you took out of the box, all of the tokens and maps and cardboard… they can make the game feel much more to contend with than the lighter heart of the game deserves.

Whether it’s after 5 games or 50, it’s easy to start seeing the “variety” that you initially loved as minor riffs on the same song and dance. The races and powers that were so imaginative and thematic are now just abstract calculations for how best to capitalize on your turn. In a world of way more complex and immersive games, it’s easy to become jaded to this Small World.

And while there are way more creative and dynamic powers in the expansions (and believe me, there are a ton of expansions), the addition of new content undermines the elegance of the original design; whether it’s because it just won’t fit into the original, perfectly sculpted insert, or it’s because 15 new races made it so you couldn't keep track of who does what without 6 different reference sheets, the game loses it’s polish, making it a bit too much of a hassle to bother with for the level of experience it provides.

*After owning several expansion, modules, and other Small World paraphernalia, I can definitively say that the Base Game, or maybe the Base Game + a few of the purely race + power expansions is the way to go.

Furthermore, the same things that give Small World such broad appeal hold it back from really shining in any one light. Sure, the conflict is tolerable for people who normally hate combat, but it is still a conflict heavy game. And for people who LOVE conflict? Combat enthusiasts (ninja’s, vikings, Jeffery, etc…) will find the lack of stakes a bit lackluster.

In many ways, Small World feels like a compromise, something everyone can enjoy, but fewer gamers will love.

A Well Crafted Pop Song

That said, there is a comfort to Small World, and it still holds an important role in my collection as well as in my heart.

Years ago, when I first played Small World in my friend Peter’s apartment, it was the biggest looking game I’d ever played. Tons of powers and combinations and tokens, with maps specific to each player count; it looked like the most complicated thing that I’d ever seen. But within a few short rounds, (with my Forest Amazons as the definitive MVP) I had a firm handle on the mechanics of the game and the rest was exploration of strategy and discovery of clever design.

My final conclusion? Small World WAS a huge game, the biggest game ever, something with so many resonant and cool aspects that completely dwarfed (dwarved) contemporaries like Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, and Dominion; yet it never felt beyond my grasp. Unlike other, more nuanced and hardcore games with similar styles of area control, Small World is inviting, approachable, and eases players into foundational concepts that are often completely obtuse for newcomers to the board game world.

The leap from Carcassonne to Cthulhu Wars is a big one, but is much more manageable with Small World in between.

That is the success of Small World, and why it’s remained such a constant touchtone for hobbyists of all types. Inevitably, many people grow beyond it’s grasp, and admittedly, it doesn’t hit my table nearly as often as it once did, but it was invaluable in my gaming journey, and still remains a satisfyingly solid game in my collection that is worthy of returning to a few times a year for a reminder that fun can be simple, innocent, and specific.

Whether it’s with new players, taking their first steps beyond the gateway into the world of gaming, or it’s with longtime friends and gamers who want a polished experience that feels big without the baggage and time that comes along with it, Small World continues to hit the table. And each time I see those unmistakable character designs, gaze over the saturated and yet-unclaimed territories, and select my initial power combo full of potent thematic and strategic implications, I’m reminded that Small World is designed exactly the way that it needed, and needs, to be.

Addendum - Digital Music: While I’m very much a physical components kind of guy, the Small World app is beautiful and resolves the issue of setting up and managing such a big game that otherwise moves so quick. It hasn’t replaced the tabletop version for me, but it is easily one of my favorite tabletop gaming apps that allows the strengths of the game (it’s beautiful artwork and fast/flippant gameplay) to shine.

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Tokaido - I Walk an Overcrowded Road

Tokaido and Tokaido: Crossroads
Published by FunForge - 2015
Designer: Antoine Bauza
Head Artist: Xavier Durin
2 - 5 players ~ 45-60 minutes
Review written by Luke Muench

In 2014, I fell in love over Tokaido.

At the time, I had just started dating someone who I met in college. We warmed up to each other and decided to spend some of winter break with their family in Chicago. Upon arriving, I was surprised with a Christmas present; a copy of Tokaido. We tore open the box and were playing in no time, whether it be with their parents, their brother, or just the two of us.

As the weekend went on, I found that with each movement of our meeples we moved closer and closer together, bonding as we chatted over the game, laughing at our inability to pronounce various words, and finding ourselves unable to see a life without each other.

By the time that relationship ended some two and a half years and a failed engagement later, we had grown tired of Tokaido. We deemed it too simple, too obvious,  a game of style with too little substance. We had tread that road too many times and didn’t want to return.

But something changed when a few weeks back I felt a renewed urge to tour an ancient Japanese Highway. Thus with much more experience granting a new lens, I decided to see what destinations I’d discover in Tokaido Deluxe Edition.

Note: The miniatures and board in these pictures are from the Deluxe Edition of Tokaido; the minis are purely cosmetic and available to owners of the base game through expansions. The extended board, which combines expansion content, as well as the higher quality cards, are the only exclusive pieces of content to this edition.

A Vacation to Remember
“Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!” - Bilbo Baggins

Tokaido pits players against one another in an intense and vicious battle to… have the nicest vacation? It’s a calm and serene theme that tends to take most players off-guard at first, but leads to some funny exchanges. “My vacation’s gonna be the *%&^& best, don’t even THINK about going to the spa again!”

You earn points by doing various activities along the way, each as their own sort of mini-game:

• The store allows you to purchase between zero and three trinkets drawn off the top of the deck. Collecting a set containing each of the four types can earn you up to 16 points.

• The shrine will allow you to make donations; you’ll get one point for each coin donated and up to 10 at the end of the game for having the most coins donated.

• The spa will earn you two or three points depending on the card you draw into.

• The bank will let you replenish your money, earning you three more coins to spend.

• The three panorama locations will allow you to paint parts of their respective landscape; earn points for each section you paint, and get a bonus if you’re the first to finish that panorama.

• The travellers location helps you meet others on the trail, providing you with a random bonus related to one of the other actions.

Each of these actions have their strengths and weaknesses, but how helpful one spot may be over another is dependant on the movement mechanic.

To throw another wrench into your axles, each player has their own entirely unique characters, providing abilities that may buff certain actions, reduce the cost of certain items, or provide additional points in specific categories. These characters also determine how much money each player starts with, establishing how flexible you can be early on.

Hey, Catch Up!
“Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind.” - Lilo Pelekai

Rather than taking traditional turn order, whoever is furthest back on the path takes a turn, taking their pawn and moving it up the path to a spot of their choice, blocking others from using that spot alla worker placement games. Additionally, players can move as far up the path as they choose up until the next tavern, where everyone is forced to stay the night.

This means that some players may get multiple turns in a row if everyone else passes over enough spaces, leaving one person behind. This is further helped by the double spots; some locations can have up to two stopping points, depending on the player count. The first player to reach the destination must take the primary spot, whereas the second person will take the spot jutting out from that location.

Despite having reached that spot second, they are considered further back on the path, and will get to take another turn sooner. This results in players being forced to weigh out their options; do I go to this spot, knowing that someone else will come along and leapfrog over me in a few turns?

Thus, a big aspect of how the game plays out is jockeying for a good position, setting yourself up for strong plays down the road while also keeping in mind that players can block you out of specific locations.

A Super Supper
“May all your bacon burn.” - Calcifer

Tokaido is split into 4 rounds by the various inns you are forced to stay the night at, ensuring that players don’t jump too far ahead of the others while forcing everyone to consider an all too important question; “what am I eating tonight?”

When the first player reaches a respective inn, they draw a certain number of meal cards, depending on the number of players. Each meal, regardless of the cost, is worth 6 points, meaning you need to partake in meals or risk losing a ton of points.

This may sound simple enough until you realize that each time someone buys a meal, the next person will be purchasing from the same pool of options, limiting what they may be able to afford. Additionally, you cannot eat the same meal twice over the course of the game (we, being connoisseurs of the Japanese palette, would not dare to experience the same food twice). he last attendee will get two meager options to select from, but, like the rest of the movement in the game, they’ll also be the first to leave the inn the following round.

All Journeys Must End
“Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.” - Proverb

Once everyone reaches and resolves the last inn, the game concludes, with players adding up their points, but not before a few awards are given. Players who have the most spa cards, friend cards, store cards, and the most expensive food will receive an additional 3 points, potentially pulling you into the lead at the last second.

As you look back on the journey, though, some things can become pretty clear; while Tokaido actively asks you to make choices, those choices aren’t often terribly meaningful. Often, when looking further down the road, there are one or two locations that will stand out to you as your best options. And unless you’re looking to sit around waiting 6 minutes for your next turn, it’s unlikely that you’ll want to jump too far ahead, usually helping to make your next play fairly obvious.

Sure, going on a vacation is supposed to be relaxing, but in my eyes, it should also be interesting. I should want to be there, with the days holding a certain amount of excitement and anticipation for what comes next; Tokaido doesn’t really do that… at least, not in the base game.

A Different Path
“It is our choices that show us what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” - Albus Dumbledore

Tokaido: Crossroads brings a cavalcade of options to the table, turning what was once a rather straightforward, sometimes absent minded game into something worthy of repeated exploration.

While having a bunch of new characters to play with is great, each with their own unique abilities, the real addition here is that every location on the board now has an alternate, optional action you can choose to perform:

• The store now houses legendary items; instead of drawing blindly from a deck, you may select and purchase any single legendary item, either capitalizing on your item card collection or giving you bulk points.

• The shrine is now giving out talismans which you can buy; spend a coin to the bank, and you can choose one of these passive abilities that you can use to buff a future turn.

• The spa has recently been upgraded; pay a coin and you can go to the bath house, awarding 4 points consistently as opposed to 2 or 3.

• The bank now houses a gambling house; spend two coins and see if you earn more than you would normally, just break even, or lose it all.

• The three panorama locations feature some beautiful cherry trees; take one of these and earn 2 victory points and a precious coin.

• The travellers location now provides some long-term goals; pay a coin, and you can select one, potentially earning you a bundle points end-game.

In this way, Crossroads not only provides some flexibility and decision-making, but the options themselves revolve around making meaningful decisions; a stark contrast to many of the luck-of-the-draw base game actions. Not to say the new actions are inherently better than the old ones, far from it, simply that they promote a different way of approaching the game, one that makes Tokaido a far more complete and varied experience.

Some Slight Roadblocks
“Maybe it’s time we all stop trying to outsmart the truth.” Alfred Pennyworth

Tokaido has its faults, sure, but they’re more about how you approach than it is about the content. Even with the added choices brought on by Crossroads, there isn’t an extreme amount of depth to the game. and some victories will amount to a lucky draw. That doesn’t make this a bad game, only one that relies on chance a little more than some, like myself, care for.

Similarly, some character abilities will inevitably be better than others. I don’t mind this all too much, though, as the variety is helpful in providing this game with a bit more staying power.

Make Your Own Path
“You can’t stop change any more than you can stop the suns from setting“ - Shrri Skywalker

For a time, I distanced myself from this game, not because of its content, but what it represented. In my eyes, it was a door someone slammed shut in my face, cutting off a path that I once viewed as a happy inevitability. I was set in my ways, both good in bad, and I saw only one way to move forward. Since then, I’ve found that perhaps this jarring transition is exactly what I needed; life doesn’t always work out for you, and you need to be willing to adapt, work with what life has to offer, and don’t dwell on the things that don’t go your way.

Tokaido is a game about choosing your path, if only for a moment. It acknowledges that you won’t have time for everything in life, and that sometimes you need to make difficult choices about what you want out of it. You may get stymied out of those precious coins or panorama cards you desperately need, but you’ll find other ways of making ends meet. And even when you’re stuck in the far back, there’s only one way to go; forward. It is, at its core, an art piece, and one that I celebrate, keeping it not just as a melancholy journey to travel from time to time, but as a reminder of how far I’ve come and where I’m going next.

Who Should Get This Game: Players willing to embrace the now, people who want a relaxing experience.

Who Shouldn’t Get This Game: Those looking for a complex, involved puzzle or need high level of strategy in their games

PostCurious' The Tale of Ord - A New Type of Gaming...

The Tale of Ord
Designed by Rita Orlov
Artwork by Rita Orlov & Ayodhya Ouditt
Published 2018 by PostCurious
Review by Jack Eddy

Like em’, hate em’, one-and-done puzzle games are here to stay. I mean, the genre isn’t exactly new, but thanks to the rise of exciting experiences both on and off the table, interactive narrative puzzles and mysteries of all sorts have become a revitalized and burgeoning staple of tabletop gaming. The thing is, while fun, these games never really clicked for me, climbing their way out of novelty and truly cementing themselves as a legitimate format, demanding innovation and teasing endless potential.

That is, until I played The Tale of Ord.
 

What is it?

The Tale of Ord is the first adventure being published by PostCurious, a subscription service that sends out installments in the adventure by mail. While it’s easy to draw comparisons with other tabletop adventures and puzzles like Exit The Game and Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective (perhaps with a dash of Where in the World is Carmen SanDiego thrown in for good measure), The Tale of Ord feels altogether like a beast unto itself; exciting and new.

This is going to be a bit different of a review, but then again is a bit different of a type of game... puzzle... mystery tabletop thingy(?). I’ve been sent the first two chapters which I’ll speak to here, and I’ll write a follow up after receiving and playing the next two.

Also, because so much of what makes this game great is the mystery and subsequent sense of discovery, I’m steering clear of spoilers (aside from the basic premise of the story). My main focus will be about my groups feelings navigating these puzzles, the type of experience we had, and help explain just what made this wonderful package so incredibly special.

Ominous Portents

The contents within my stylish and foreboding PostCurious box were three items: Two manilla envelopes labeled Part 1 and Part 2 (each full of all kinds of other stuff), and a branded PostCurious notebook full of blank pages, as if to say “Yo dude, you’re going to need this”. Without reading a single instruction, I was already in the mood for adventure.

The “Read First” attached to each envelope explains what you might need, encourages you to check the contents when you open it, and confirms that the scope of this game extends beyond what’s in the box. Sure, most of the tools are there, but as I’ll explain a bit later, don’t for a single moment think that the experience is confined to the table.

Once we made sure all the components were there, we dived into chapter one with pens, notebook, laptop and french press coffee in hand. One by one, we skeptically looked at each item: cards, clippings, half written journals, diagrams, and most importantly, a letter. More than anything, this letter is the portal between our world and that of the story. Mikhail Soterman, The Chairman of the Emerens institute, is hiring your team of private investigators to help find two missing professors and uncover the mystery of their disappearance.

There is no time limit, there are no rules, there is no structure - You truly are the investigators and you can use whatever resources are at your disposal to solve the mystery; by merely opening the package and reading the letter, you’ve effortlessly entered the magic circle.  

Playing the Game

So what do you get? Again, it’d be a spoiler to even describe it to you; other than to say nothing is meaningless. I was astounded by the skill and effort put into coming up with so many bespoke and wonderful components. And I’m not talking about the structural quality, which is fine, I mean the immersion and sense of place. These things actually look and feel like weird items taken from someone’s apartment.

Some items are overtly cryptic, others may appear meaningless or like they exist strictly for narrative purposes, only to become immensely important later on as you stumble upon some revelation. In our group of three, we went through each item as a group and then naturally gravitated to individual items that each of us would turn our attention to.

This is one of the biggest strengths of the Tale of Ord; even though there is a grand mystery within each chapter, individual puzzles can be solved in parallel. Countless times over our first session, one of us would loudly exclain “guys, guys! Check this out” and we’d excitedly detail a theory for the others’ consideration. Often this led nowhere, but with each attempt, new connective tissue was uncovered. What if the cards mean this? What are those weird numbers? Isn’t this formatting strange?

Our excitement was further compounded when we realized that our freedom to explore beyond the components of the game wasn’t just possible, but was encouraged. The puzzle has a few really smart moments that have you utilize a device connected to the internet, and you begin to see that many of the things referenced in the game are from the real world. Not only did looking into the subject matter of our missing archaeologists help contextualize some of the clues on the table, it did a fantastic job of immersing us in this fiction; we used real world tools, rather than arbitrary game rules, to complete our adventure.

Throughout the three hours it took us to tackle episode one, numbers, ciphers, patterns, metaphors, codes, they all begun to reveal themselves, sometimes leading us to new tools that would let us crack another puzzle, or give us one of piece of the chapter’s overall solution. In both episode 1 and 2 there were each at least three moments that felt like it completely blew the case wide open, offering a deluge of new possibilities to explore. And all of that is great, if you are successful...

Some of the materials from session one with our notes blurred. By the time we were done, we had notes on EVERYTHING!

Staring into the Abyss

The big risk in PostCurious’ formula is that you constantly feel like you are on the precipice of understanding, which is great because it makes success feel so incredibly rewarding. The flipside of that, though, is that the game has you teetering on the edge of failure; tempting you to give up out of frustration. Fortunately, the game does some really smart things in order to make sure that you can grab a foothold.

First off, the components themselves are disparate but offer several context clues as to how they may interact. Either through language use, their dimensions, or even nature of existence, you will have some natural inkling as to how to begin your experimentation.

Next, the PostCurious website has a fantastic system for providing hints for each of the chapters’ puzzles and a way to make sure that your solutions are correct. Remember, in each session there are multiple smaller puzzles that have independent solutions, leading to one overall solution; the ability to check your work before tackling the final beast is a must.

And those hints? There are a ton for each puzzle and each will progressively reveal just a little bit more information each time. With each click, you can check your assumptions and reorient your group. In our first game, we completed the puzzle without a relying too much on the clues, but the second adventure they became a must; making sure we weren’t out in the weeds with our wild theories. They really do a beautiful job of nudging you in the right direction without taking agency and the sense of accomplishment out of your hands.

(Our) Final Countdown

Our group had an absolute blast with both chapters. I think it’s worthwhile to note that while all three of us enjoy puzzles and may occasionally be accused with being clever, none of us would consider ourselves gifted or even particularly inclined to the sort or mental gymnastics that one would associate with decrypting secret messages and assembling three dimensional puzzle boxes.

But that’s what made this experience so wonderful and so rewarding. The game is designed in such a way that encourages experimentation rather than simply relying on base intellect, tantalizing you with clues that inspire an adventurous heart. Each time we finally understood how a puzzle was meant to be solved it was a triumph, a moment of clarity that felt so empowering that we needed to chase the threads to their end.

And the end itself was satisfying, the victory after finishing chapter one left us talking at the table for another hour about how awesome of a time we had. It felt remarkable how clever each puzzle was, seemingly opaque, yet giving you just enough intuitive crumbs that you could see yourself through, resulting in one of the most intense cooperative gaming sessions I’ve ever had.

Our second session was admittedly more difficult. Not only did the challenge seem to ramp up, but one of our teammates was about to move. After about 2 hours of puzzling on the eve of her departure, we hit a wall and decided to finish in a subsequent session, culminating in the awesome final resolution via skype; and I wouldn’t trade how we tackled it for the world.

Our expressions as we solved the last puzzle in chapter 2, witnessing the final reveal. The sense of triumph, excitement, and intrigue was at a 10, in spite of us now operating in two different states.

Overall Thoughts

Again, this game’s greatest strength is that it does such a wonderful job blurring the lines between the game and reality. There are no arbitrary turns, time limits, or action points to confine you. You use time, space, cooperation and creativity to uncover the secrets held within these objects, little artifacts ranging from the mundane to downright bizarre.

That said, I don’t think this is for everyone. Choose carefully what group you do this with, as I think the sense of collaboration of working with a team is a huge part of the experience. Too big of a team and some people may feel like they are just along for the ride, too small and you’ll lose the advantage of different perspectives. I think the sweet spot is 2-4 players, maybe 1 if you are really into puzzles. Speaking of which, if you don’t like puzzles, word games, or cooperative experiences, I don’t think this will be the game for you. Also, The Tale of Ord requires grit; resilience; a sense of defiance to carry you through those moments where it feels like the answer is just beyond your reach. I promise you, whether by hint or hard work (probably both), you’ll get there; but if you have to be able to buck up to push yourself through; it’s worth it.

Finally, there is no avoiding the cost. The Tale of Ord in full costs $160 for 4 chapters. This is atypically expensive in the realm of tabletop gaming when you consider that you will likely only go through the puzzle once. And while it is technically possible to preserve the components for future use, it’s likely you’ll have bent, torn, broken, marked, and otherwise changed most of the components before you’ve seen it through.

But for us? Three gamers hungry for discovery, looking for a fantastic way to spend a couple nights together, the experience was irreplaceable. The Tale of Ord has so far proven to be a masterclass in puzzle design, allowing us to embark on a challenging and rich adventure that all three of us consider well worth the cost. Furthermore, this game has contextualized a new format of tabletop gaming for me; showcasing the limitless possibilities of what narrative-based collaborative puzzle solving can be. And for that reason, I’m on the edge of my seat. I can’t wait for the next chapters and to see what next PostCurious, let alone this entire genre, will bring.

Review copy of The Tale of Ord parts 1 & 2 were provided by PostCurious. You can check out The Tale of Ord at http://getpostcurious.com/ and learn about designer Rita Orlov at https://www.ritaorlov.com/

Special thanks to Jennifer Kelley, part of our trio, for help with photography and gif-ifying our review!

Five Flavors of Merpeople - An Abyss Review

Five Flavors of Merpeople - An Abyss Review
Designed by Bruno Cathala & Charles Chevallier
Artwork by Xavier Collette
Published by Bombyx
2-4 players ~ 60 minutes
Review written by Jack Eddy

I was recently talking with friend and reddit user u/meeshpod about Abyss. It really got me thinking about the core tenants of a designer; little mechanical flourishes that one can often see like signatures imprinted upon a game.

When it comes to Bruno Cathala, one of his greatest strengths is that he is so willing (and often seeks) to work collaboratively with other designers which keeps his output fresh, and Abyss attributes its success as much to co-designer Chevallier as anything else.  That being said, it’s those bits of Cathalian familiarity and occasional subversion that make his games so interesting to me.

We’re no strangers to talking about Cathala and his collabo projects around here, so get your gilly suit on; it’s time to dive into the Abyss.

The Design

“Under the sea you fall up. I know, I know” - Patchface

Abyss is a game of political intrigue in a sunken kingdom of merpeople. You’ll attract supporters, court leaders, and hopefully hold the most political clout by the end of the game. The basic structure is simple; on your turn you can perform one of three actions:

• Initiate an auction that will give you a supporter (your main currency for buying leaders)

• Freely pickup a pile of supporters who were unclaimed during previous auctions

• Buy one lord.

Right off the bat, the framework of the game is classic Cathala; there are a handful of  basic and understandable choices of what you can do, and each of them propel you in some way to victory. The meat of the game is the internal decision process between what you gain, what you miss out on, and what you present your opponents with while taking any turn.

By far, the most risk, player interaction, and the overall heart of Abyss comes from the auction system. When you “plunge the depths” in search of followers, you reveal the top card of the deck. These cards, aside from their amazing artwork, have one of five colors (corresponding to different flavors of merpeople) and a value. This value is both for purchasing lords and a possible source of points in the game.

Once you kick off the auction, each opponent is given the opportunity to buy the newly revealed card by giving you one pearl (which is the game’s secondary currency, largely used for trade purposes). If no one takes it, you can add the card to your hand at no cost, which will also end the auction. But if you choose not to take it or someone else purchased your card, you flip the next card and, again, everyone who has not purchased a card can buy this from you, though the purchase price goes up with each player who’s already snatched a card from your grasps.

This goes on until you choose to keep the most recent revealed card, or the auction slots have filled up, forcing you to take the final card and a consolation pearl. Then, the magic of Abyss begins, as all other cards get divided up into their respective colors (think suits) and put into their respective council piles. On a future turn, an opponent can freely bypass the whole auction-thing and just pick up one of these piles. With each sequential auction, the piles of formerly unworthy 1 and 2 strength followers become more and more tempting to grab, so you have to be thinking not just about what you want, but what you might by freely presenting to everyone else.

The rest of Abyss is about resource management, namely the effective use of your single action turns; choosing when to give up a good deal like a pile of council members for grabbing something that you need, like purchasing lords.

These lords are not only what creates the timer in the game, with 7 leaders triggering the “final round”, but they are also the key to the majority of your points. Every leader falls into one of the merpeople types, which is one of the aspects of the theme that feels most intriguing; each “species” of merpeople also belongs to a societal caste, like the crab people who are exclusively warriors, the mollusk merchants, etc...

In addition to having a cost and point value, most leaders have one-time or ongoing effects, and some of them have keys. The most opaque element of the game happens when purchasing these lords; not only must you pay for them using followers of the matching caste (color), but in some cases you must use followers of their faction plus one or two other colors. If the total of your followers falls short of the leader’s cost, the difference can be made up in pearls. Furthermore, the lowest value follower you use gets “affiliated” with the leader, like their own personal psychophant, and the highest value affiliated follower of each of the five colors adds to your points at the end of the game. Got it?

There are a couple other systems in Abyss; a moree based, push-your-luck infrastructure that feels relatively inconsequential due to the “trigger” only occasionally happening during an auction (though it occasionally presents some meaningful choices), and a system for securing locations. Locations are like point amplifiers, but unlike the lords, their sole purpose is to get you points.

Remember those keys I mentioned? When you get three of them, they unlock one of these locations, which then must cover up the abilities on the lords who gave you those keys, forever locking away their sweet, sweet, mechanical benefit. Just pretend you’re sending your politician out on a diplomatic mission; they still contribute to your strength of influence, but their skills are no longer readily at your disposal. What this means is that you’re again faced with an interesting decision; do you buy the lord you can afford who has a key, locking away your other benefits, or do you wait to buy one without a key, sacrificing the points on the location?

Again, this game showcases some of the design philosophies that has made Cathala such a rockstar in the industry, bridging the gap between casual and core players alike. Every turn  presents only a handful of easily understood options that will in some way affect the state of the board for each other player, but at the same time you constantly feel propelled forward; every turn gives you more tools to play with. Furthermore, by limiting your turn to one action, opportunity cost becomes every bit as important as resource cost. Rarely is there a turn in Abyss where you aren’t desperately wishing you could take two actions back to back.

But on the other hand, it’s the ebb and flow of your very capabilities that feels completely new and fresh, which is the magic of a collaborative design. I’m not saying that each designer’s contribution to the game is easily distinguishable, and in fact, I’m betting that the authors work was much more organic, but it’s like listening to Clapton. Whether it’s guesting on the White Album, listening to Derek and the Dominoes, or maybe picking up a John Mayall the Bluesbreakers Album, there are little identifiers and signature that showcase the artist’s contribution, let alone their taste for collaborators, woven into the whole.

The Presentation

“I’ve got whosits and whatsits galore” - Ariel

Abyss is by far one of the best produced games in my collection, and the publishers Bombyx made a big deal of that when it came out. This is best seen through the box-art, which, like a 90’s X-Men comic book, comes in several different variants, one for each of the different factions in the game. Already, the publishers are establishing that even the retail edition of this game has a degree of collectability, that it’s artwork is so good that it should come in five different versions; encouraging players to hunt down their favorite, and it at minimum worked on me (I picked the one with the mysterious squishy mages)! This is further emphasized by the fact that the face of the box has no text, just the beautiful yet alien portrait gazing back at you from the… well... the Abyss.

And this production carries through the rest of the game. The cards are large, vibrant, and high quality. The locations are on super chunky cardboard that feel like they are less locking away the powers of your leaders and more casting them to the depths of the ocean for eternity. The pearls though… the publisher had the audacity to include a spherical currency. These pearls are no doubt a frustration for many people, due to their penchant for hitting a table and scattering like marbles, but the little cups supplied by the game do just fine. It’s worth mentioning that there are few things sweeter than the sound of another player dropping a pearl into your cup at the auction, rattling around as it settles into the depths of your purse.

Come to me mt sweet.

For all of the rich theme, gorgeous illustration, and high quality components, there is little resonance between the setting and mechanics of the game. The only real connective tissue is that each caste of lord has a general type of ability, such as squidly politicians manipulating the lords in play, the clammy merchants getting you pearls, and the aquatic equestrian farmers just getting you PHAT POINTS. This is a prime example of a “pasted on” theme, which caused a bit of a stir when the game first came out.

Somewhere in the minds of gamers, they thought Abyss was going to be more. Something more than a handful of actions that you can take on your turn. Most of the time, big production values are reserved for robust games with numerous interweaving systems, and all kinds of mechanics designed to connect the theme to the game. The amazing production set up expectations that were impossible to be met, all for daring to put such a premium look on a relatively lightweight game; but I love it.

For me, the production in Abyss is so strong that even with a very abstract connection to the theme, it feels extremely immersive. Something about the game’s visuals and physical presence  is so enchanting that you suspend disbelief and begin to postulate reasons why things are the way they are, even if the design seldom helps your reasoning. And for that, I’d say that the presentation of Abyss is an absolute accomplishment.

Final Thoughts

“We would be warm below the storm, In our little hideaway beneath the waves” - Ringo

Abyss is no doubt a game that’s going to stick in my collection for a long time. It’s fast, intelligent, and beautiful. Furthermore, I think this is a shining example of the designer’s best traits, utilizing competing player desires and opportunity costs as the main fulcrum in which all decisions in the game rest on while presenting some advanced strategy and trickery that is not typically seen in Cathala’s solo designs.  

That said, not everything is pure elegance. The push your luck seems under utilized, and the way that affiliated followers attach and then score feels counter intuitive every time that you play; but the areas in which the game succeeds far outweigh any shortcomings, and have helped it remain one of the most interesting, and thought provoking, specimens in the sea.

The Nordic Shuffle - Raiders of the North Sea Review

The Nordic Shuffle - Raiders of the North Sea
Published by Garphill Games - 2015
Designer: Shem Phillips
Head Artist: Mihajlo Dimitrievski
2 - 4 players ~ 60-90 minutes
Review written by Luke Muench

The worker placement genre is rather crowded these days. With titans like Agricola, The Manhattan Project, and Viticulture towering over the competition, it can be hard to make any newer titles stand out from the pack. So when Raiders of the North Sea hit the scene with a recently overused theme of being vikings (they’re totally the new zombies), one couldn’t blame anyone from passing it by. In fact, most people did until Renegade Games recently re released the title under their banner, providing it with some much needed buzz.

Which is a good thing, because this game is not only polished, not only beautiful, not only well-paced, but this elegant design may be one of my favorite worker placement to date.

Your goal as a would-be viking is to pillage as many villages with the spillage of much blood… age. The victor is whoever gathered the most glory, but this can be obtained through a few avenues, which we will get to… But first!

There is much work to be done, young Norse childling, for you have barely two silver pieces to your name and a gaggle of crewmates unprepared for the voyage. So how does one go about obtaining such important wares?

On your turn, you place a meeple and remove a different meeple, taking both actions in order.

This simple loop is the crux of this game, making every move a dance to try and figure out how to do the actions you want, in what order, how to stymie your opponents in the process, and gather what meager scraps you can find before racing to the seas to take on whatever awaits on the other side.

What adds to the puzzle as that there are three meeple colors that do not indicate player ownership, but rather the actions they can do. Later in the game, you may find yourself taking a sub-par move if only to get that grey or white meeple you need for a specific move on your following turn.

When placing a meeple, each location either earns you resources or allows you to spend resources for even better stuff. In other words,  this is a game about hoarding as much as you can before spending it all on a single grand voyage:

• The Gatehouse allows you to draw two cards from the deck of crew members, allowing you to use them at either the Town Hall or Barracks.

• The Town Hall let’s you have access to a card’s one-time ability, allowing you to steal from others or potentially change the board state, before being discarded.

• The Barracks, on the other hand, let’s you recruit said card as a member of your ship for (for a nominal fee of silver upfront), providing a passive buff for being on board.

• The Silversmith earns you silver pieces, the Mill bags of food, and the Treasury let’s you discard a card for two silver or two cards for a piece of gold, a rare and useful resource.

For once you have enough crew members to pilot the ship and food to feed them, you can spend your entire turn taking your meeple and placing it on a location across the sea, gathering points through your military might, collecting various resources, and earning a meeple of varying color to use on your next turn.

Yes, there are different meeples, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The black meeples you start with can gather silver pieces more easily from the silversmith and are required for some of the lower level raids, but the gray and white workers will help you earn more food, cheap gold, and even give you access to standard spots in town you couldn’t otherwise reach.

The first of these is the Armory, the sole way of earning victory points on the red points track, representing military might. By spending silver or iron, you can make your way up the track, earning both end-game points and strength to add to your dice rolls when on raids.

Depending on the location you raid on a given turn, you may be able to earn a variable amount of point dependant on the strength of those you’ve brought to the fight. Each crew member contributes anywhere between 1 and 4 strength naturally, while some may have abilities that help the process along. In addition to this, you’ll be forced to roll dice (dependant on the location you are raiding) during the more trying tests of viking-ness. This allows you to potential hit higher and higher strength values, earning you even more points. Lastly, every point of armor you’ve acquired is added to your total, potentially providing the last few points needed to gain the bigger bonus.

The other of these two exclusive locations is the Long House, providing two options. The first allows you to spend a cow to gain two food; simple enough and an efficient use of one of the weaker (albeit tastier) forms of loot you can obtain on a raid. The other let’s you spend an assortment of silver and loot to earn Offerings, which are tucked away and add to your score at the end of the game.

There are a few different kinds of loot one can earn:

• Cows are worth ½ a point a pop if saved until the end (and can only be cashed in as a pair) but can, as mentioned, be slaughtered for some quick (and yummy) food.

• Iron is worth 1 point is saved and can upgrade your Armor.

• Gold is worth 1 point but must be spent to reach some of the grandest and most daunting of raids.

• Valkyries are not collected, but rather fought, defeated soundly in battle but killing one of your own crew members in the process. Each defeated Valkyrie adds to the black victory track, gradually earning you up to a whopping 15 points.

The game concludes when either two of the three Fortress areas (the most difficult of them all) have been emptied, all the Valkyries have been fought, or the Offering pile runs out, making it an experience that ramps and slows down just as it needs to, feeling like a natural progression.

All of this is accompanied by a gorgeous, cartoony art-style, metal coins that come in the box, and a sprawling board to race across, making each game a joy to look at as well as to play. The rules are succinct, only a few pages long, and help explain the game well enough. The box is smaller than most, allowing for it to fit nicely on the shelf without it feeling like it takes up too much space. All in all, production quality is high, and it makes the game feel that much more rewarding.

Now, when I first came across this, I wondered to myself, “Do I reeeeeeeeally need to buy this? I already own Champions of Midgard after all.” There have been a number of comparisons made between the two titles; both are viking-themed worker placement games with great art and production, and each have two expansions that were released on Kickstarter at the same time.

But beyond those superficial attributes, these games feature dramatically different takes on worker placement, with their own unique mechanics, visual identity, and overall game cadence. Ultimately, they each scratch different itches in a way that leaves me happy to keep both on the shelf.

If there was a complaint I had for Raiders of the North Sea, it would be that some games can drag a bit. If people are building slowly or trying to capitalize on as many raids as possible, it may take some time for anyone to gather the resources to tackle enough Fortresses to trigger end-game. Additionally, some of the cards have take-that mechanics that can put a sour taste in one’s mouth.

This is only compounded by the random nature of the crew deck, with each card having between 3, 2, and 1 copies contained in the deck, the highest rarity attributed to heroes that, while only one can be equipped, provide tons of points that can feel kind of unfair. This can easily be remedied if it bothers you, though; I’ve personally removed the heroes from the crew deck, which greatly reduces the luck-factor of what you draw into, as there are duplicates of every other card in the deck.

Raiders of the North Sea is, in my eyes, a must-own game for any fan of worker placement games, far outpacing predecessors like Stone Age while doing enough different from its competition to feel wholly unique and exciting each time it hits the table.

Who Should Get This Game: Those who appreciate an elegantly designed, visually beautiful, and well crafted worker placement game.

Who Shouldn’t Get This Game: Those who will grow tired of the repetitive nature of the game after an hour or so.

A Quest-ionable Adventure - Tiny Epic Quest Review

Tiny Epic Quest
Published by Gamelyn Games - 2017
Designer: Scott Almes
Head Artist: Miguel Coimbra
2 - 4 players ~ 1 hour - 1 and ½ hours
Review written by Luke Muench

For me, it’s become nearly impossible to disassociate Tiny Epic Quest from the Legend of Zelda franchise. The art style and theme are obviously inspired by the Hyrulian realm, with faux Triforces appearing on occasion. The various items feel like they’re ripped straight from an N64 cartridge, including a fairy, boomerang, and rupee-shaped gem. The dungeons are often simply referred to as temples in passing conversation. And, most importantly, it retains the light-hearted, puzzley feel that the games have always maintained.

That being said, these two entities are wildly different. If Ocarina of Time is a operatic romp through a world-ending, time-turning adventure, Tiny Epic Quest is more of a cutthroat race to see who can be the best damn hero of them all. Ideally, that hero will be you, but more often than not, the decision isn’t really up to you.

By far the most polarizing aspect of this game is the learning curve. Tiny Epic Quest is not for the faint of heart, and I’ve seen fans of Zelda and Tiny Epic series alike walk away disappointed. The various minute details can feel overwhelming, and the press-your-luck aspect is the most finicky I’ve seen to date. It doesn’t make this a bad game by any stretch, but it makes it an acquired taste, one you’ll have to play at least two or three times to really appreciate.

At the start of each of the five rounds, the first player gets to select one of five movement patterns, each allowing you to move one of your three meeples across the board. No, you are not simply one hero, but a kingdom sending out a band of adventurers in your stead; hoping to stop the world from falling into chaos around you. So, after a player selects, each player will get to, in turn order, apply that movement type to one of their meeples, sending them running, flying, or sailing across the randomly generated map in hopes of reaching one of five destinations:

• Castles act as your starting location and  hub; healing those who stop there for one point of health or magic. Additionally, if you choose not to move on a given turn (idling), you may gain the same bonus if one of your meeples is standing on a castle.

• Goblins are the bouncers of this fantasy world. At first, they appear green, unaggressive and content to sit unbothered. If they are not defeated in a given round, however, they become red with anger, forcing players who move past them to spend a magic in order to do so. Those who land here intend to fight them in the press-your-luck phase of each round, which occurs after all movement as concluded.

• Magic obelisks allow you to learn spells on the spell track. A player can learn up to three spells in a round, but only if you survive long enough in the press-your-luck round and if you have a meeple on the appropriate icon. Each spell that you learn increases your max magic by one.

• Grottos act as one-time buffs, giving the player who lands on it an immediate ability that will affect their board state in some manner, such as shifting around your other meeples, gaining resources, or providing buffs prior to the press-your-luck phase.

• Lastly, you can delve into dungeons to obtain legendary items, each of which provide you four victory points. This is the only location at which there is a limit to meeples, as only two unique meeples can remain on these spots.

Ah yes, quests. Each round, three quests are shown face-up, either asking that you move your meeples in a certain way or complete certain dungeons. Upon completion, you will get a certain bonus. For dungeons, you will always get an item of a given type, whereas any other quest will get you health, magic, or some other useful ability.

Once four of the five movement cards have been selected, it’s time to delve into the various obstacles your characters will be facing, represented by dice, to see if they survive. When it’s your turn to roll, you may either choose to continue or pass. When passing, most of your meeples will return to your castle, depending on where they are located, healing you for one health or one magic each. Additionally, this is when most of your tasks are officially completed. Spells and dungeons are only completed once you pass, meaning you always have to remain on your toes.

But you’re not going to pass, are you? There are things do be done, and who cares if you die in the process?!? … Well, you do, honestly. Death nullifies most the hard work you’ve done that round (other than quests and killed goblins), reduces your spell level by one, and sends all your meeples back to your castle, restoring your health and magic to six and three respectively. This can be a huge loss, and will easily lose you the game if you aren’t careful.

In order to press your luck, you get to toss five dice into the box lid ONCE, and once only. Whatever results you get are what they are, which can give the game an air of, “Welp, I guess that’s that.”

Don’t lose all hope yet though, for this is a community press-your-luck game; the dice you roll will affect the others around the table. Due to this, there are a specific order in which symbols resolve:

1. Red goblin faces will do one, two, or three damage to players, depending on how high the community magic is. When rolling multiple, the player who rolled them gets the first, then passes the next to the following player in turn order, then so on. Luckily, players can spend two magic to block the full effects of a single die-face, providing mystic hoarders some longevity.

2. Magic symbols regenerate magic up to a point. Once the magic level has gotten too high, they become dead dice. Just like the red goblins, these are passed around the table, spreading the love along with the pain.

3. Mushrooms accelerate the spell level for that round, establishing how much damage red goblins do, if magic can be produced or not, and whether or not a spell can be learned when a player passes. The higher the level, the harder it becomes for everyone to survive, especially once mushrooms start doing one point of unblockable damage.

4. Finally, the last three faces resolve simultaneously, and are accessible to all players. Every player can use each icon once. Scrolls and torches are what enables players to progress through dungeons. Goblin punches allow you to deal a single damage to a goblin you’re fighting. Each defeated goblin increases your max health by one.

Once every player passes, meeples are returned to castles, a quest is removed depending if any weren’t completed that round, undefeated goblins are flipped to their red side, and the movement cards are reset.

Play continues like this for five rounds until scoring; points are the summary of your quests completed, goblins defeated, spells learned, and legendary items earned. Do none of a specific task and you’ll receive negative points, encouraging you to diversify. There are some interesting choices in what you go after, too: pound for pound, goblins give you the most points, though they are by far the most difficult to earn; contrast this with spells which are easy but ultimately less valuable.

If you haven’t already noticed, there is a ton of stuff going on here, meaning that teaching this tiny game a bit of an epic chore. This is summarized beautifully in the incredibly awkward way that movement works and the far too busy board. Since two locations are on a given card, it needs to be clarified that movement are from card to card, and then you can stop on one of the two sides of said card. Additionally, you cannot move from one side of the card to the other side, potentially locking a meeple out of a particular action. Couple that with the amount of symbols present, and it all gets to be a bit much.

The components of Tiny Epic Quest are a mixed bag. The card quality are solid across the board, the little attachable items are cool to look at, and all the art looks stellar. That being said, the itemeeples, a word I still cannot say with a straight face, look cheap when compared to their wooden brethren. Also, the items, while neat to look at, are incredibly irritating to use in practice. With so many little pieces and places to contend with on the board, even attaching tiny plastic items to meeples or keeping track of your health becomes a test of your dexterity, making what should be fun and fanciful fiddly and frustrating.

Yet the real nail in the coffin, for me, is the fact that, at the end of the day, there is a single, obvious strategy that works best, one that the very mechanics of the game practically forces on the player; spreading out your meeples so that each is working on a different icon type. Not only does this consistently allow you to complete every task you aim for, it ensures you don’t get any negative points end game. It can be tempting to try for getting three goblins every round, but the likelihood of getting the rolls you need before being forced to pass is very slim.

Unfortunately, this means that every game feels almost identical, barring a handful of moments when the rush of uncertainty hits you, begging the question of if you can roll well enough to get out with all your stuff intact. After having played this game seven or eight times, each game has left me with an uncertainty over how much fun I really had with the game.

At the end of the day, I feel similarly to this as I do to Five Tribes; both are casual, light-hearted games disguised behind confusing and visually dizzying mechanics that you can overthink with little to no payoff. It’s nice to look at, but I don’t have any deep desire to pull it off the shelf again any time soon.

Who Should Get This Game: Those who love the Zelda theming, press-your-luck, and can handle the amount of mechanics at play.

Who Shouldn’t Get This Game: Those who are expecting a short game out of a small box, are easily overwhelmed visually, and who look for variety game to game.

Luke Muench is a regular contributor to The Cardboard Herald and host of the Budget Board Gamer youtube channel.

Carcassonne, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mega Castle

Carcassonne
Designed by Klaus-Jurgen Wrede
Published by Z-Man Games
2-5 Players ~ 30-60 minutes
Review written by Jack Eddy

I am terrible at Carcassonne. Sure, it’s one of those evergreen gateway games that is friendly and approachable for the whole family. I mean, yeah, I know some of the "hot strats"; how to seize the moment-to-moment opportunities to get quick points. But something about drawing tile after tile turn after turn urges risky behavior in me, driving me to press my luck in this not-really-a-press-your-luck game. In the end I think it comes down to the fact that I am a sucker for the mega castle.

Tile Laying 101

There are two main things you need to know to get your Carcassonne on. First - this is a tile laying game where all players are building the expansive, beautiful, and cutthroat French countryside, populated with winding roads, breathtaking castles, and serene monasteries. On your turn, you draw a tile and place a tile which must connect to at least one tile already in play. The catch is that like sides must always match like sides. The open face of your castle can never butt up against a wandering road.

The second thing you need to know is that to score points, you gotta employ your little posse of wooden workers, commonly called “meeples” (speaking of which, the now ubiquitous term meeple was coined by Alison Hansel in reference to these Carcassonne figures). When you place a tile, these duders can be set on a road, castle (actually called cities, but let’s be honest, they are totally castles) or monastery, or laid down in the grass, so long as that feature is not already claimed by another player (ie. the road you are connected to doesn’t already have some dude). Aside from the farmers lying down, whenever a feature is “completed” (castle walls surround the town, roads have two ends, or monasteries have been completely surrounded), your meeple is removed and you score points based on the size of the feature.

But here’s the thing you REALLY need to know about Carcassonne, and the secret sadistic nature hidden just underneath the game’s pastoral pleasantries; in the right hands, this is a game of sabotage and hostile takeovers. If you build a road with your meeple, spending time to carefully curate a nice long stretch of 9 tiles, and I have an unrelated road with my own meeple that I manage to connect, now we both get those points. Thanks! I hardly needed to do a thing! Alternatively, let’s say you are working hard on this beautiful castle, your own little sanctuary in the countryside. I can drop down a tile in there, or even nearby, that makes it nearly impossible to complete; condemning your poor worker to isolated doom.

And speaking of doom and the end of all things; the game ends when a the final tile from the pool is placed, at which time the farmers and incomplete features are scored. Whoever has the most farmers in a field (connected green area), gets 3 points for every castle bordering that field. The thing is that in Carcassonne, there may be several fields due to well distributed infrastructure, relying on roads and castles to divide the landscape -OR- there could be only two or three MEGA fields, and the farmers in control get all the dough. As is true in real life, it is true in Carcassonne; do not underestimate farmers.

I see fields of green

But great gameplay on its own does not imbue cardboard with the longevity and acclaim that Carcassonne has enjoyed. This game has a spectacular table presence, looking more like a puzzle or patchwork quilt than a snappy strategy game, which has undoubtedly played it’s own part in converting new gamers to the hobby. As you’re nearing the end, the minimalist and abstract design is breathtaking, with patterns familiar but wholly unique to each game that you play.

And while this may be the prototypical “dry euro” theme so often vilified in the hobby, I think that’s missing the point. The simplistic, elegant, and most importantly, abstract theme is what makes this game so damn approachable. For those who want die hard competition, the theme is thin enough for you to “see through the matrix”, and begin considering each turn as a number of points and possibilities. On the other hand, less competitive types may enjoy the simple pleasure of watching the peaceful and welcoming landscape develop before their eyes. Either way, the look of the game facilitates the type of experience players want out of it.

I tend to get crafty with the games I love the most. Here's an early example of some player bags I made and a razorblade's attempt at making a custom insert for the 6 mini expansions.

Why I love the Mega Castle

But here’s where my aforementioned struggle comes in. Sure, not everyone is going to want to play full contact Carcassonne, but the advantages for being cutthroat are tempting. In a game with three complete carebears, one scheming opportunist can really take advantage of everyone else’s hard work. Personally, I fall somewhere in between. I won’t hesitate to connect our two features if it’s convenient, but rarely will I make it an object of strategy. No, I focus on the Mega Castle.

You see, unlike the other features in Carcassonne, castles have a unique property. They score 2 points per tile that comprises your castle and an extra two points for each pennant* housed within the castle, but only if completed during the game. The castles suddenly drop to half their value at final scoring if they remain incomplete, meaning you take great risk and great reward for completing a castle.

And there are few things in this hobby as satisfying, nor as terrifying to witness, as someone completing their 10+ tile mega castle. Rocketing 20-30 points in one shot can be devastating, but it relies on so many things going right; your opponents not finding a way to sneak in, you drawing into the right tiles, there being enough tiles in the game to reasonably accomplish your monumental goal…

But that’s the awesome thing about Carcassonne. It’s so simple and encourages you to take risks because it intends to be a friendly game that wants ALL players to succeed. Heck, my version of the game even has a rule that when you draw your tile, you are to reveal it to all players and as a group discuss where the best possible placement is. Carcassonne is as idealistic and naive as the peaceful and universally prosperous depiction of 18th century French country life; and I really dig that.

No, my castle won’t always succeed, but at least I’ll always get some points. And sure, I’ll claim other features as sensible because I want to win, but Carcassonne is one of the few games in my collection that understands that winning can be a secondary goal to having fun, and the fun of the game is what you make of it. With very limited tools, the game throws me into a sandbox and says “knock yourself out, kid”. So whether I’m looking to risk it for the biscuit with a big point win, or I’m just looking for the tabletop equivalent of doodling, I’m always happy for a game of Carcassonne. After all, I can always find comfort and purpose in my pursuit of the Mega Castle.

I See Felds of Burgundy - Castles of Burgundy Review

Castles of Burgundy
Published by Alea - 2011
Designers: Stefan Feld
Head Artist: Julien Delval
2 - 4 players ~ 60 - 75 minutes
Review written by Luke Muench

At first glance, Castles of Burgundy is not a terribly appealing game. With a box cover that can’t help but force your eyes to glaze over, a pile of tiny, finicky pieces that you have to constantly reorganize, move around, and reset, an art style that isn’t particularly appealing, and a theme that’s as thin as the player boards, I could understand why a person might pass on a game of this. For a long time, I avoided the title like the plague, despite its status as one of the top ten games of all time on BoardGameGeek.

Fifteen games later, and this is perhaps one of my favorite board games of all time.

Seriously, Castles of Burgundy grips you from turn one and pushes you to make intelligent, thoughtful, and rewarding choices each and every turn, but never to the point that it feels overwhelming. With just enough luck to keep things from getting predictable, and enough ways to mitigate said luck so you rarely feel burnt, this design makes each session a memorable experience.

Each player starts the game with a castle, presumably filled to the brim with dark red tapestries and rugs, and a straightforward goal; fill your board with as many tiles as possible. Much like any tile-laying game, you have to build off of your starting tile, and different colors dotting your board indicate the tile type that can be placed there.

The game is separated into five rounds, with each round composed of five turns, with players completing two actions each turn. So, from the very start you’re aware that you have exactly 50 actions unless you play tiles or spend silverlings to activate more. (silverlings being the pre-eminent method of rushing your opponents base as they were busy focussing on harvesting vespene gas)

Before a round commences, everyone rolls their two dice; the determining factors of their actions. Then, in player order (dictated by your seafaring level), each individual may spend their dice in one of four ways; taking a tile from the board in your reserve, placing a tile from your reserve onto your board, selling a set of goods, or taking two workers.

To take a tile from the board, one must spend a die, taking said tile from the area that corresponds to the number on the die used. Depending on the number of players, there are a limited amount of tiles in each section, and once they’re taken, they won’t be replaced until the following round, pressuring you to rush to the tiles you’re desperately lusting after, even if no one else wants it.

This pressure is made all the more prevalent when you realize that, after five turns, the board will be completely wiped for the new round. So, within the next moves, you NEED to find a way to get that precious four-sheep tile, or, regardless of if anyone else wants it, it will be lost to the ether, potentially replaced by an awful two-chicken tile. Let’s be honest; four sheep are WAY better than two chickens.

Now, you can’t just place your tiles on your player board! That would be uncouth. Shame on you for even considering such a thing. We are nobles after all, meaning all of our tiles need to first be placed in our reserve. But not too many at once; we aren’t greedy after all. No, only three tiles can be held in your reserve at any time, meaning that, once again, you feel the tension of how far you can push yourself before you need to start moving those tiles to your board. Just like how you first obtained them, players send a die to place their tiles onto a spot that matches both the color of said tile and the number on the die, like a precious little puzzle piece.

Being the upstanding people we are, we pride ourselves on our collection of lands, so much so that just how quickly we gather them could mean how well our kingdoms will ultimately be scored. First, those who complete a colored section will receive points based on how many tiles are contained in that section and what round it is. So, in the first round, completing a tiny one tile gray section will earn you 11 points; one for your single tile and ten because it’s the first round. On the other hand, building up a six tile section until finishing it in the fourth round will earn you 25 points; 21 for the tiles and four because of the round.

On top of this, if you are so lucky as to be the first the collect all your tiles of a single color, you will earn a burst of bonus points, dependant on the player count, with whoever completes that color second earning a smaller amount of points. Thus, the hierarchy of “oh-god,-I-need-to-get-that-tile-NOW” came into being, and it was good. At least, for whoever is really good at optimizing their moves.

A large part of this is taking workers, tokens that can modify a die-roll by +1 or -1, thus widening your options turn-to-turn extensively. Are you going to take a tile, or spend any single die to hoard two more worker tokens to try and get the modifiers you need down the road? Quickly, players realize how precious these resources can be, fending off the RNG* demons and their nasty results. This also makes it so getting two of the same number isn’t immediately terrible, depending on the board state.

*RNG being Random Number Generation. To go down the RNG rabbit hole, please see here

The last action, selling goods, allow you to spend a die to sell a pile of goods from your board of the same number. In doing so, you will both get points based on the number of goods collected and a silverling.

“What are silverlings?” you may ask. Well, just the best and most precious currency in the lands of Burgundy. Two of these bad boys will allow you to purchase from an exclusive store in the center of the board, selling tiles only obtainable through this action. What’s more, this is a FREE action, meaning you get both a difficult-to-obtain tile, potentially with little competition, while also getting an extra action out of your turn.

Now, there’s a lot to unpack here already, but wait! We haven’t even talked about each of the tile types and what they do:

• Castles, immediately after being played, allow you to take any action as if you played a die of any value.

• Mines generate one silverling at the end of every round.

• Ships adjust the player order and allow you to take all the goods at a single location.

• Livestock gives you straight points, which can be built upon if you consistently obtain the same livestock type in a contiguous area.

• Buildings provide points, extra workers, or may allow you to immediate take or play tiles of specific types. You may only have one of each type of building in a given colored section (“town”).

• Knowledge gives you special abilities, ignoring rules, empowering certain actions, or providing bonus points for collecting specific buildings over the course of the game.

Needless to say, Castles of Burgundy is a game of deep, thoughtful strategy that feels rewarding regardless of whether or not you win. Much of this boils down to the fact that,no matter what your point total is, you built your little board. That’s YOURS, and more often than not, you’ll feel attached to it, proud of what you’ve made. It’s an aspect that keeps you invested, regardless of the score.

But even still, the scores are often incredibly close, within a handful of points of one another. At certain moments, it may appear that someone has the lead, but someone will inevitably complete a massive seven-tile section that will bring them barrelling up the points track as if they just activated a jetpack fueled by their patience and the smug looks they give everyone else present.

That said, this same mechanic can cause despair in the hearts and minds of a newer player. If, within the first few turns of a game, a player sees that they’re already 20 points behind, some might throw in the towel then and there, not understanding the general flow or pace of the game. And, for some, I can appreciate why they might feel that way, but I also know that this can rob people of having a fantastic gaming moment of leaping from last to first in a single action.

Similarly, others will see the bland artstyle, dominated by uninteresting structures and washed-out colors, and walk away from the table, requiring only the best of art to adorn their games. And, in some ways, I can see where they are coming from. Castles of Burgundy isn’t a pretty game, but its art has grown on me over time, with a certain rustic feel all its own.

The number of tiles present may also send some running, as the box “insert” is abysmal, and with very few, see-through baggies being included, it becomes a chore to organize and randomly select the tiles each round without investing in some form of organizational system. The lack of felt bags is a HUGE oversight, and makes the game less enjoyable until a satisfactory solution is found, a task that shouldn’t be put on the players.

And there are those who will hear just how many rules and details there are, paw through the rules briefly, and rush back to the safety of Codenames, and that’s equally valid. While the play cycle is rather simple and never burdens you with too many options, the details to keep in mind can feel overwhelming. This can be particularly prevalent with the building and knowledge tiles, as each have more unique and specific rules. After the first few games, these will become easily identified, but when you first pull this out, they can feel like hieroglyphics.

Castles of Burgundy isn’t a perfect game. No game is. But it’s perhaps the perfect game for me; a game that consistently challenges me mentally, features elements of luck manipulation, is easy to teach but difficult to master, provides a unique experience every game, and is a joy to play with any of its player counts. It’s a game that is clearly well-loved by the community, and with good reason. What the game lacks in flavor and style, it more than makes up for with one of the best gaming experiences to date.

Who Should Get This Game: Those who are looking for a deep, engaging puzzle that rewards patience and attention to detail.

Who Shouldn’t Get This Game: Those value aesthetics and theme over a tight gameplay system, easily overwhelmed by choice and rules.

Luke Muench is a regular contributor to The Cardboard Herald and host of the Budget Board Gamer youtube channel.

Ex Libris - Being Shelfish Has Never Been More Fun

Ex Libris
Published by Renegade Games - 2017
Designers: Adam P. McIver
Head Artist: Jacqui Davis
2 - 4 players ~ 45 minutes - 1 and ¼ hours
Review written by Luke Muench

Roughly translated, the Latin phrase “ex libris” means “from books,” a concept that permeates the very being of the board game of the same name. Every detail shows a passion for the medium, an understanding of what makes such narratives special, and masterfully channels that passion into a gaming experience that tells a story.

Ex Lirbis is a worker placement game in the same vein as Harbour in which players work to build the most elaborate, organized, and varied library in the kingdom. I say “kingdom” because the theme is set squarely in a fantasy world, although not your typical dwarves-and-elves type setting. Rather, ghosts, gelatinous cubes, and Sasquatch help curate your libraries, immediately injecting character and humor into the experience at large.

At the start of the game, each player gets to select a library, receiving two standard workers and one special worker associated with their library. These figures present variable powers that may change how you play the game, with some effects being aggressive in screwing over your neighbors while others work hard to simply maintain your own shelves manageably.

Then, a variety of locations are laid out on the board, and it’s off to the bookstores! On your turn, you simply place one of your workers at a location, either one of those randomly revealed or your personal library. If you go to your library, you may either draw a card or shelve a card, whereas the other locales will provide a variety of effects. Each of these can be boiled down to instant actions that resolve immediately, or delayed actions which resolve at the end of the round.

At the end of each round, all locations are discarded except for that with the lowest number associated with it, becoming a permanent location. Then, a new set of locations are added, meaning each round presents one more option than the one before. Once someone builds their library to a certain size, depending on the player count, one more round is played through, and the game concludes with scoring.

The Building Process

To shelve your first card, you place it on the table, declaring defiantly, “THERE! My library grows ever larger!” And then you have to place the next card, and you remember that it must be place adjacent to any that you’ve already placed. Your library is refined, and thus well organized, so you can’t place cards willy nilly! Alphabetical order is key, and any cards misplaced will be ignored at the end of the game.

Alright, so you’re starting to expand your great compendium empire after realizing you can only have three levels of shelving, an important detail when considering your alphabetization, and things couldn’t be going better… except now you notice that the books you’ve gathered consist almost exclusively of Monster Manuals, and that just won’t do. For one, your library needs to contain all sorts of books, presenting a variety of tomes. Due to this, at the end of the game, players will receive points based on the type of book they have the least of multiplied by three.

Well, any type of book except for those accursed BANNED books. Depending on the game, one type of book will be considered the least popular in town, and must be purged from the collective unconscious, such as Historic Volumes. Screw history! We CLEARLY don’t need that information anymore. Because of this, you will lose one point for each banned book in your library. This sounds easy in theory, but considering there are between two and four books on every card you’ll be placing, sometimes you’ll find yourself placing that card to fill in an empty spot or because the other books on that card provide enough points to make up for the negatives.

“How is this possible?” you may ask. Well, when there is banned books, there are also prominent books, because people in this town are OBSESSED with learning the dark arts from corrupted codices. For the player who has the most of these at the end of the game, they will receive fifteen points, with second place earning nine points and third place earning four points.

Additionally, everyone has their own secret focus, establishing that, by collecting as much of a specific type of book, they will receive points equal to that number of books times two.

Lastly, if you’re going to have a library filled to the brim with books, you best have the stable shelves to support your collection. For your largest contiguous block of books shelved from top to bottom, players receive one point for each book included in that section.

And he puzzled and puzzled ‘till his puzzler was sore.” - Dr. Seuss

A Real Page-Turner

As you can probably tell, there is a lot going on in Ex Libris, and while that might be off-putting to some, I find that this makes for one of the most engaging board game puzzles I’ve come across in some time. Sure, there are a lot of factors to consider, but they are generally thematic and easy to remember. And much like games such as Castles of Burgundy, throughout the game you are building your own collection, so at the end of the game, win or lose, there’s a certain satisfaction over the final result.

The art and theming are marvelous, immediately eye-catching. I was stunned by how many people were immediately on board with a game whose tagline is “build a library,” but most of those I talk to find the concept exciting. The whispy, mystical images associated with the different location tiles look awesome and add to the lighthearted, bright atmosphere the game looks to convey. Each of the characters have a ton of personality to them, encouraging me to try a different one each time I play. The books are all clearly defined by color and symbol, making this game accessible to the colorblind, and all 510 books catalogued on the 152 cards have their own titles, often utilizing wordplay or parody that make them gratifying and hilarious to read, with players often taking breaks just to chat over their favorites.

Similarly, the production of this game is fantastic, with a bunch of unique components that make the game feel high-quality. The two components that stand out most in my mind are the meeples and scoreboard. While there are the standard meeples of each of the colors, each character has their own customized meeple associated with it, making them particularly visually pleasing and satisfying to place.

And this game is built to last, too. The scoreboard (formatted thematically like an inspectors clipboard)is a dry erase board, meaning you’ll never run out of scoring sheets when playing. The location tiles are made well, the cards are of good stock, and there’s even a board that, while unnecessary, acts as a thoughtful reminder of the various scoring rules of the game. And the sides of the box are designed to look like the binding and sides of a book! The attention to detail here is downright astounding.

On top of all this, for those who like playing board games locked in their attic avoiding all human contact, there’s a solo mode that pits you the unorganized mess of a public library that the town has been tolerating for years. While there is the feeling that luck plays a bigger role here and that certain characters, even those set aside for the solo game, are useless in this mode, it’s still fun to build your library and see if you can’t out-book the discard pile. This is helped by the very easily implemented difficulty system, allowing you to modify how hard your opponent will be by discarding more or less cards at the start of each round.

A Couple of Caveats...

Now, I could sing this game’s praises for a while (see above), but there are a handful of issues that can be found within the confines of this generally tight experience. First, some of the variable abilities feel a bit better than others. Sure, all abilities are limited to the one specialty meeple, but due to the general categorization of powers into two departments (help yourself or hurt others), it can feel like some abilities are stronger at their respective category than others. That being said, I don’t really mind this much, and am looking forward to the opportunity to play this game a ton more to find which characters I prefer.

Next, the fact that the game has lots of intricate and situational rules, you’ll be referencing the rulebook regularly even after your first few plays. Between each set of tiles needing to be explained, the character abilities occasionally needing clarification, and some steps vacant from the initial game setup explanation, I still find myself looking through on occasion to remind myself of some of the smaller details.

This can also lead to this game being a little much for those learning, especially if no one at the table has tried it before. This is a game best experienced like 7 Wonders; you need to play it at least once to fully grasp the games mechanics and ideas, then played again to be competitive, with each subsequent game allowing you to learn more and more. While I love this progression in games, that first time may be hard for some.

Lastly, you will see every location in the game every time you play, guaranteed, meaning that there will be no mystery to come back to each time you play. While I find the puzzle, abilities, and random setup to be enough for me, others may be put off by the fact that the same conundrum dominates the game rather than a sea of new.

The Bookend

But I’ll tell you what, I don’t think I’ve played such a polished, refined, intelligent, and downright fun game in a very long time. Ex Libris is, hands down, my game of 2017, easily. The quality of components included, the depth of the ideas at hand, the amount of humor and personality injected into the experience, it all just brings me back to it, makes me want to play more and more, makes me want to play it solo, something that I generally do not enjoy doing whatsoever. If you have not given this a try, I highly recommend giving it a chance, to at least see this book for more than its cover.

Who Should Get This Game: Puzzle-lovers who want to be swept away by the production quality and depth contained in a concise and memorable game.

Who Shouldn’t Get This Game: Those easily overwhelmed by rules who find eurogames to be tedious and boring.

Luke Muench is a regular contributor to The Cardboard Herald and host of the Budget Board Gamer youtube channel. You can also hear Luke's Champions of Midgard review as well as behind the scenes deliberations on our recent episode of the TCbH Reviews podcast.

Bull Moose: 1912 Election Game

Type: Deck Management / Card Driven
Time to play: 60 – 90 minutes per game (Teaching: 5 – 10 minutes)
Best played with: 3-5 players (Best with 5
Review by Robert Crowter-Jones

Wanting that authentic American election experience? Found a game that was limited to two players but a group of 3-5? Well perhaps the solution is a slightly less well known 1912 election – where the US splits between Prohibition, Socialists, Progressives and the two traditional Democrats and Republicans. This election year is known as the Bull Moose election and that’s where the game takes its name.

Bull Moose then is a multiplayer fast paced deck management game with a series of really interesting mechanics. The aim of the game is to win the most votes in the electoral college at the end of 7 rounds of campaigning. In each round you will have a hand of four cards which you will play for either Action Points or for their Events. If you go for the points you will have your traditional move and support options for your candidate – shifting around the board and building support. You can also use these action points to drop cubes in one of the special benefits for the end of the game!

If you use the events though, you might travel long distance through the railway or use the text event on the card to trigger a benefit for your party. The events are normally worth more than the action points, but you have to be in a specific location to trigger it. Using your points to enable these events and combining this in an efficient balance is key. Watch out though – well tracked plans can be taken apart with some cards allowing the player to remove other players’ cubes!

So you start the game with 28 cards – 7 rounds of 4 cards. However, the first really interesting mechanic at play here is that at the start of each round you draw 8 and select the four to be brought to your hand. That’s important because you can keep pushing cards down the deck to manage your hand now and your future hands. Also, you know where you need to start the next round to trigger the events! This foreknowledge of your campaign plan is instrumental to success – moving across the South with the right cards can shift your points by 40+ in a single turn as can taking a key state like Pennsylvania or New York.

The second really interesting mechanic at play here is the trade off between placing cubes on the map and the three special end game events. Firstly, cards with the newspaper allow you to play cubes into empty states at the end. Will there be states left empty, or will players exploit events to cover the map? Pushing for this early will put others off, but leaving it late allows a better cost/benefit analysis! Likewise, the senate seal cards allows you to grab swing states at the end or at least contest them. Tricky to know if these will be worth while, but there will be some medium sized points to be taken here. Lastly, if you are the player who loses cubes from other players’ cards then you get a benefit of voter sympathy – a benefit to place the difference between your losses and the second highest losses on any space on the board.

So forecasting and late game manipulation are key in this game; but there’s a core mechanic at play here that makes this game manageable and effects the player strategies. How do you win a state? Well at the end of the game you contest a state if you have more than half of the lead player’s total support – i.e. if the Republicans have 3 cubes in Texas, the Democrats have 2 and the Socialists have 1 … here the Socialists are below half of the lead and eliminated but the state is contested between the Republicans and Democrats. Contested? Throw the cubes in a bag and draw out the winner!

This is absolutely core to the game – you will try and position to push other players out of key states, and then make late game gambles to put yourself back in the race for your opponents highest value states! That means the end game is a probability distribution and at this point I have to admit that this is great and upsetting. Sometimes this is just going to go horribly against you. You are competing across the map and winning very little. The short answer is that’s just going to happen sometime and you need to factor that in when considering this game. The long answer is that perhaps you could have pushed your cubes to be more than double other players and therefore won the state outright. Even if you push out the third player in the state, this moves the odds significantly in your favour – perhaps even moving you from a minority to a majority.

If all of that isn’t exciting enough, there’s one last big mechanic to mention. At the end of each round of four cards there is an asymmetric power for the players. That could be moving support cubes, placing new support cubes or breaking ties across the map. These powers are meaningful and playing to their advantage is really important.

Other than the probability distribution at the end, this game has good balancing mechanics and an ability for the group to chase down a leader, but it’s not a simple ten our of ten. It scales well, but the game can become a little frantic with more players as there can be a few players who lose cubes and two other players who rush away with the lead. Also the cards feel broadly balanced, but some powers will feel slightly unbalanced. Now I don’t think they are unbalanced, but I understand that the perception can creep in for any asymmetric game and this is know different.

Last notes;

• If you like election games, and don’t mind a luck factor at the finish – this is a good and scale-able game
• If you hate that late game shift, having worked hard on your plan, then you are going to struggle to enjoy that last 5-10 minutes
• If you win – take another faction and try again!

This review comes with authorization from Robert Crowter-Jones, the writer behind Elusive Meeple. Elusive Meeple provides reviews and strategy tips for old and new games, for players just starting to explore them or thinking about purchasing them

Telestrations - For the Stressed Doodler in All of Us

Telestrations
Published by: USAopoly
2 - 8 players ~ 15 - 30 minutes
Review written by Luke Muench

Party games have, categorically been my least favorite genre of board games to date. Games with no sense of strategy like Battle Wizards and Cards Against Humanity actively bore me to tears, Codenames has far too much downtime in-between turns to keep my attention, and some titles like Monikers and Dixit feel less like games and more like excuses to sit around the table with friends.

My blatant distaste for party games is so palpable, that I sometimes sit out on them at my Friday night gaming group, knowing that my inclusion in the roster of players will simply dampen the mood and game experience. Simply put, I wear my heart on my sleeve, so when I’m having a bad time with a game, everyone knows it. And I’d rather wait patiently for a game I’ll have fun with than bring down the mood during a game they love and I loathe.

So it’s a rare sight when, three Friday’s in a row, I come bounding into the room with the same marvelous, gut-busting, absurd party game that consistently brings a smile to my face. (Some in my group may even assert that it’s rare to see said smile on my face period, but that’s another issue). And it’s not just the fact that it’s a party game that makes that makes my mirth so unusual, it’s that it’s Telestrations; not a game of skill or logic, not of mind-bending puzzles and thoughtful choices, but of awful, AWFUL drawing and the stupid words that are eventually associated with them.

Telestrations brings the best of drawing games to the table, overthrowing the likes of Pictionary and it’s ilk for a far more rewarding and consistent experience. The gameplay loop is simple; at the start of the game, each player gets a word or phrase, either one they come up with or randomly chosen from the provided cards. Everyone has until the provided sand timer runs out to draw that word/phrase before passing their pad on to the next player, while receiving a new pad as well. Then, with only the newly drawn picture to reference, each player must write what they think the word or phrase that is associated with the picture is. This loop occurs a few more times, depending on the number of players around the table, until you finally receive your garbled mess of a pad back.

At which point everyone gets to tell the confusing, often hilarious narrative of how their train-of-thought was taken in the wrong direction and the person three seats away from you took your original premise and threw it right out the window. As you turn each page, showing everyone the drawings and reading the ridiculous things people wrote, it’s hard not to crack a smile at least once. Phrases like “wine stack,” “Egyptian xylophone,” and “Harry Potter and the Whatever” have since become memes within our group, due to their absurdity and how off-base they were from the original ideas.

Now, understandably, there are some caveats to a game like this. First, the dry erase markers provided are kind of terrible. Within the first couple months of owning the game, at least half of them have died. These can fairly easily be replaced, but it’s still kind of a pain, especially when it’s been a month and a half and you still CONSISTENTLY forget to go out and get some. This has resulted in some silly games where, due to the reduced number of markers, some people give themselves the handicap of only having as much time as the fastest player who has a marker provides them. Still, this is a small irritation that I wish had been rectified.

Secondly, this is the epitome of a game that’s only as good as the players around the table. If you have a stellar group of inventive, goofy, and generally amiable folks, you’ll have a great time. And while this can be said for just about every game, here that is especially important, as one bored or unpleasant player can put the kibosh on everyone’s stories, not just their own. (see above, where I normally elect to sit out of party games to not poop on said parties)

Caption: Yoda’s Looking a Little… Under the Weather

And third, there are seldom occasions where the stories are obscenely boring, often when people pick words that are far too easy. This can often stem from the cards provided, as a word like “bird” is fairly easy to translate in a consistent and understandable manner. I personally make up a word/phrase for every single prompt I do, but some players who have analysis paralysis when making such decisions rely on the sometimes drab and unexciting cards.

Still, these are less of negatives and more of points of note. All in all, when Telestrations gets rolling, it’s fast-paced, hilarious, a great exercise in storytelling, and one of the best icebreakers to start off a game night. And it’s a game, I’ve found, that you can’t just play one game of, players requesting at least three before moving on to something else. Simply put, Telestrations is, in my eyes, the exception to the rule, the best of its kind, and is worth everyone at least giving a chance to see if they find the magic in it that so many others already have.

Who Should Get This Game: Those who frequently hold parties or events and need a good way to break the ice.
Who Shouldn’t Get This Game: Those who dislike simpler games where the points don’t matter and there’s very little “strategy” to be had.

Luke Muench is a regular contributor to The Cardboard Herald and host of the Budget Board Gamer youtube channel. You can also hear Luke's Champions of Midgard review as well as behind the scenes deliberations on our recent episode of the TCbH Reviews podcast.

Five Tribes - Merchants and Djinns and Viziers, Oh My!

Five Tribes: The Djinns of Naqala
Published by Days of Wonder - 2014
Designers: Bruno Cathala
Head Artist: Clement Masson
2 - 4 players ~ 1 - 1 and 1/2 hours
Review written by Luke Muench

It’s hard not to turn the corner of a BoardGameGeek page without seeing the name “Bruno Cathala” written reverently, and with good reason. A designer that’s helped create some of the most noteworthy games in the industry, including Shadows Over Camelot, 7 Wonders: Duel, Kingdomino, and, my personal favorite, Cyclades. So it goes without saying that Five Tribes was a title that immediately grabbed my attention; with such a talented man at the reins and a unique and colorful theme, it was hard not to get pulled into the experience, and it’s clear that I’m not the only one. As of writing, the title stands as the 48th highest ranked game of all time, and has spawned multiple expansions and promos.

Yet, as time has stumbled forward, I’ve found myself growing less and less interested in bringing it to the table, and when I do bother to bring it out, it ends with a certain frustration, a light irritation in the back of my head. It’s a thought that prods at my mind, asking, “Why did you ever like this game in the first place, and what about it irritates you so?” And while it’s a disappointing question to ask, I think it’s worth exploring.

It’s not unusual for modern games to iterate on the classics, but Five Tribes is unique in that is one of the few games to adapt the core concept of Mancala, whose mechanics have surprisingly gone untouched over the years. The main crux of each round is bidding for turn order with victory points, followed by players picking up a handful of meeples and procedurally dropping them, one at a time, on adjacent tiles, creating a breadcrumb path leading to your ultimate destination. Once you reach your final tile, you pick up the meeple you dropped and all matching meeples, a requirement being that at least one meeple of the same color must be on that last spot. Each color of meeple acts as a form of currency, interacting with the various systems and forming the strategic core of this “kitchen sink” style of game.

By that, I mean that are a bunch of loosely connected ways of getting points, each more or less sectioned off from one another:

• The yellow meeples are viziers, which rewards the player who has the most at the end of the game. Each vizier is one victory point alone, but your collection provides an additional ten for each opponent who has less than you.

• Elders, the white meeples, are used to pay for djinns, mystical entities who provide players with game-breaking abilities and beautiful art. They’re also worth two points each if you keep them, but that’s highly unlikely, as most djinn provide at least four points plus their ability at the cost of two meeples.

• Green meeples are merchants, allowing you to scoop up and collect goods from a market. Successful set collection can result in a massive 72 points, encouraging you to get the rare cards while they’re available. You can also obtain snake charmers this way, acting as a currency for different card effects or obtaining djinn.

• Blue meeples are builders, rewarding players by giving you some extra cash immediately. By multiplying the blue meeples you pick up by the number of blue spaces surrounding and including your tile, players can earn a lot of victory points, giving you more victory points to bid with as well.

• Finally, assassins, the red meeples, allow you to kill meeples off the board or those that your opponents have collected, allowing you some control over the board state. More often than not, these will be used to claim territories.

Oh, that’s right, territories. Each tile represents a different location, each with their own victory points and abilities. When you end a turn on a specific tile, two things happen. Firstly, if you claimed the final meeple on that tile and it isn’t already claimed, you get to place one of your camels on that spot, earning that many points. Secondly, that tile provides the player with an ability. Some are mandatory, such as placing palm trees and buildings on that tile, earning the owner of the tile more victory points. Others are optional, such as buying a djinn or goods from the market. These tiles act as the only way of obtaining these resources, meaning they will often be fought over in some capacity.

The game ends when either a player runs out of camels or there are no more legal moves in the board, at which point the humongous pad is pulled from the box and points are arduously scored over the course of five minutes while everyone else cleans up. Whoever has the most points wins. Which, frankly, is a rather boring and anticlimactic way to end any experience, bringing a halt to all the action to do some lengthy arithmetic. It’s an aspect that wore on me over time with 7 Wonders as well, making the end results feel somewhat underwhelming.

Regardless, there is a lot going for Five Tribes. Each game feels different due to the djinns and market cards that appear, as well as the randomized board set-up, changing the game dramatically. There are a huge variety of ways to score, and it just feels like an enormously complex game.

Emphasis on “feels.”

See, for all its technicalities and the thoughtfully laid plans that you can lay out, Five Tribes is a game of randomness with a layer of thought lightly draped overtop. First, the bidding system presents itself as interesting and intense, as players are asked to spend precious victory points to vye for their place in the que. Yet, due to the enormous number of options in the early game, most players choose to bid zero coins if possible, as there’s almost no value to picking a certain move over someone else. I’ve seen players win solely from bidding nothing and saving up their money while selecting from what moves are leftover.

And even when you do bid for turn order, there’s the issue of the board state. Much like Potion Explosion, Five Tribes is a game in which every action you take affects the actions of others in an immediate way, resulting in pre-planning becoming moot. You may have the perfect move laid out, but unlike Cyclades, you get one bid, and if you’re outbid, you don’t get to set your bidding marker elsewhere. This causes players to be forced to take tediously long turns after their initial choice is completely stymied, either by someone else taking that same move or placing meeples in a way that makes it impossible.

Then there’s the issue of the meeples themselves. Beyond making this game impossible for the color-blind to play, the meeples are not made equal in the slightest. Blue and green meeples feel particularly weak due to a reliance on uncontrollable aspects of the board state, whereas Viziers (yellow meeples) can practically guaranteed 30+ points endgame if a player gets enough traction early on. Assassins can easily be exploited to snipe extra territories, but are rarely used otherwise. This leaves the elders, by far the meeple type that I’ve seen fought over the most, with the board being devoid of them within the first three rounds. I can’t say I’m surprised; the djinn look amazing and feel awesome when you start collected them in front of you… until you realize how little they do.

Most djinn do one of two things; give you a lot of points and a very situational action or give you a handful of points and a powerful action. There are a couple of exceptions, but they are few and far between, often interacting with a very specific mechanic in the game. This leaves many of the djinn feeling interchangeable, despite the beautiful art and emphasis the game puts on them. After the first few games, I would often ignore them for dominating territories, by far the most rewarding aspect of the game in my eyes.

By far, the most enjoyable part of Five Tribes is finding fun ways to manipulate the board, embracing the best parts of Mankala. Not only is it satisfying to make clever and seemingly powerful moves, but it also pushes the game forward, both in terms of scoring points and satisfying one of the endgame conditions.

That being said, every aspect of this game is miniscule. Five Tribes stands out through its visuals and theme, but to some gamers, the sheer quantity of systems and possibilities will be completely overwhelming. Due to this, most games I’ve played require that players take a ten minute sabbatical in order to take their turn, deciding between the seemingly infinite combinations of movement.

To combat this, Bruno Cathala has been quoted in the comments section of Shut Up and Sit Down to encourage players to just guess at what the best move is and have fun with it. And to some, that’s more than enough, but for me, that speaks to an experience that you don’t learn from. At the end of each game, I never feel like I obtained any insight or knowledge that I can carry over to a future playthrough. The set-up results in a randomness that makes me hesitate, and the inability to plan ahead makes each turn feel like it drags.

That being said, this game is fantastic in its presentation and functionality, and it has every right to be where it is. I know many people who gush about this game, because they aren’t looking to learn or improve game to game. They just want to have fun, and that’s perfectly okay.

Hilariously enough, TCbH’s founder Jack and I are very opposed on our thoughts on Cathala’s games. While I can’t stand Five Tribes any longer (a game he continues to adore), I have fallen in love with the depth and intelligence of Yamatai, a game that improves upon everything I’ve seen here and makes it a brain-burning delight of an experience (you can find Jack’s woefully misguided opinions on Yamatai here). And honestly, I think that speaks to Cathala versatility as a designer, capable of making games that appeal to all sorts of players.

Components for the expansion - Artisans of Naqala.

Five Tribes, at its core, is a beer and pretzels game disguised behind a complicated veil. It presents a lot of smart and heady ideas, but encourages you to just take a risk and have fun with it. The expansions simply include more of the same, adding a new type of meeple and a bit more randomness, embracing the essence of what the game is. Much like a djinn, the game’s strategy is somewhat ethereal, a wisp of energy everyone is attempting to grasp before it slips back into a dirty old lamp, and drawing players into the world of Naqala again and again.

Who Should Get This Game: Those who value aesthetics, theme, and fun over the nitty gritty of a game’s strategy.

Who Shouldn’t Get This Game: Those looking for a deep, complex game that challenges them every time it hits the table.

Luke Muench is a regular contributor to The Cardboard Herald and host of the Budget Board Gamer youtube channel. You can also hear Luke's Champions of Midgard review as well as behind the scenes deliberations on our most recent episode of the TCbH Reviews podcast.