Went to Dice Tower West 2020 to play a ton of games with Eric and his friends. Unfortunately, I was half sick the whole time and due to Covid-19, a lot of Eric's friends canceled.
One thing to say about the convention: it blows PAX out of the water. The library was ridiculously huge and well sorted so it was trivial to find a game. It had classic games, unreleased games, and hard to find games. E.g. Nemesis is out of print and costs $500 on ebay but there were four copies available.
I was sick during the Con so I didn't get to play as many games as I should have.
This is a 4X game where instead of controlling the empires, you have random bets on the empires and indirect control of all battles. It was pretty fun, very fast, and the asymmetry of the empires makes for a huge amount of fun.
There were several times where players took actions to make one or two empires devastate another empire. In a normal game this would clearly be a political/hate mechanic but it didn't feel like it in this game since players have the ability to change their bets (at some cost to themselves). The whole play of this game felt very unique.
The game comes in two versions: one with basic bits and one with enhanced bits. I think getting the enhanced version is required.
We all wanted to play this again before the end of the con but didn't get a chance.
I'll be buying this game.
I never played Sushi Go which is the parent of this game. You roll dice and then draft the dice for points as well as extra actions. The game has a semi-hate mechanic where you can exchange dice with an arbitrary person which was a turn-off for our group.
It's not a bad game but not exceptional. I think drafting dice is significantly more cumbersome than drafting cards. Also, since the dice are public, it removes one of the best aspects of secret card drafting: simultaneous play.
I can't believe they made yet another version of Race for the Galaxy. This game is good and I would play it if someone wanted to, but I don't see why it needs to exist. We have two other games that are just like it.
Some differences in this version:
- All developments are visible and can be bought at any time. This includes the powerful 6 cost developments.
- Worlds can be easily searched for and placed, ready to be built, on the tableau. There is no commitment to building these planets so they can be replaced with others until they are built.
- Phases are not chosen simultaneously. Each player takes a turn to choose a phase followed by all other players.
I think (1) and (2) make the game friendlier to inexperienced players but have the side effect that it's really easy to get the super powerful combinations. The game we played and the other game I watched were easily won by the player who did a dominant military strategy. In Race or Roll, getting all of these synergistic worlds/devs out would have been exceedingly difficult.
A criticism of Race and Roll is that the shipping strategy is much more difficult than the building strategy. Often, if two people setup a shipping tech tree, they can be frustrated by both playing produce or both playing ship simultaneously when they would have been better served by having one produce and one ship. The designers claim that this is not a problem since a good player will never do all building or all shipping but will do a little of one and leach off the other but that doesn't help if you are a novice player. With the new game, phases are chosen sequentially so it is very easy for the first player to choose produce, giving the second player the opportunity to ship.
I think it's worth saying that my criticism of the game was the lone negative voice in the group that was playing. Everyone else in the group, both novices and seasoned players, preferred this game to both Race and Roll.
This is another tight drafting game, probably most similar to Seven Wonders. The difference is that cards produce resources that allow you to build huge cards over multiple turns. It is an engine building game that is easy to be left behind but the game plays quickly so that is not much of a problem.
I loved the theme/art (future, dystopian, 1984 world) but was alone in this opinion.
I don't think anyone was blown away buy the mechanics of the game. I'd give this a below average rating as, I not only wouldn't buy it but would probably not play it again if someone threw it on the table.
This is a high production game that has two separate mechanisms:
- Recruit trolls from a pyramid structure. Higher trolls in the pyramid require you to pay more by "bribing" the trolls beneath them. Adding the new troll to your own pyramid of trolls makes all of the trolls beneath them produce resources.
- Use resources to dig tunnels into the mountain, unearthing statues, getting more resources, special powers, moving statues, making great halls, etc.
There are some other effects such as spells and workshops but these are not central to the game.
The most interesting part of the game is the troll recruitment. The cascade effect when producing is super cool and requires you to make decisions on how to build your pyramid. Also, if a troll has unspent resources when you produce then you do not produce those resources. This gives players the incentive to deplete their troll resources before producing in order to maximize production which results in a nice cycle of production / consumption. This reduces AP a bit and also allows you to better predict what other players might do.
This opinion isn't novel, it's the same one Tom Vassal gave in his review.
The least interesting part of the game is the digging mechanism. The game uses tetris like pieces to expand your tunnel network. This gives me a little bit of AP. Also the game is very fiddly with stones that require axes to cut through, gaining resources, workshops, and all kinds of other things that affect your digging decisions. By the time the game ended I realized I really should have just been focused on getting statues more than anything. Eric mentioned that the theme of "Trolls moving statues to the center of the mountain" makes no sense whatsoever.
Definitely not a buy or a play again but I recommend any designer play the game once. Someone please make a simple game that uses the pyramid mechanic!
This was a Descent-like dungeon crawler. To be honest, I can't tell any of these apart. This could have been Imperial Assault or any number of other games.
The one innovation I saw in this one was that the hit points of both the characters and the monsters are noted on a track around the edge of the board. This makes it easy to tell who is close to death.
I made Eric play this one.
It has all the same mechanics of all the Arkham games. I really felt Eldritch, MoM, and Arkham LCG had mechanics that greatly improved the previous games but I don't see what this one adds. There is a modular map but I think LCG and MoM do a better job by limiting vision until the new spaces are explored. The game has story telling aspect which is on par with what you get in Eldritch but not as rich as either MoM or LCG.
I would say the game is probably as good as Eldritch but not any better. Buying any of these games means committing to a zillion plays and expansions, since most of these games hit their stride in the second expansion. Because of this, I definitely wouldn't purchase this game. I guess the audience for this game is the rare player who has exhausted all the previous Arkham games?
Friedemann Friese seems to have a capability to endlessly create these clever little games.
This one has players performing a worker placement action on a set of nine cards. You either use the power of the cards to improve your hand (sets of fruit) or to claim the set of fruit listed on the bottom of the card. The first person to claim three cards wins.
The actions can have a bit of politics/hate in them but they weren't overly bad and didn't trigger my aversion to this mechanic. When one of the nine powers is exhausted it is replaced with a new power which keeps the game fresh. Since only nine powers are available at a time (and you have to pay to go on a spot where another play is on) AP is very low.
This is a "Fable" game which means you can freeze the set of powers and restart the game where you left off. This supposedly makes the game into a legacy game. It looks like a gimmick to me.
I would play this if it hit the table but don't feel the need to own it.
Cooperative trick taking game.
Did you do a double-take after reading that? I sure did.
The deck contains four suits, ten values in the suit, and four cards of a fifth trump suit. Beyond that there are a few counters used for signalling and to keep track of the more difficult scenarios.
There are fifty missions and the first is simply to make sure a particular player takes a particular card (e.g. the green five). There are rules for communication that are very simple. As you progress through the missions, the goals get more and more difficult and require better skill, communication, and luck from the players.
It is unsurprising that by our third mission a married couple in our group got into an argument about what card should/shouldn't have been played. I think this game would scare a lot of people off.
I have never been good at trick taking games and would love to play this game with a dedicated group to get better. The group would have to be prepared to learn and get better while simultaneously being considerate of mistakes of other players. e.g. the game would be ruined by either a player who doesn't try hard enough or a bully.
I think Wolfe and Britta would either love this game or be completely bored with it.
The best description of this game is "Lil' Arkham Horror"
The game includes the intellectual property of all the old Universal Studio monsters: Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfeman, Mummy, Creature from the Black Lagoon, etc. Each player has a unique investigator that has a special power and cooperatively moves around the Arkham-like map, picking up items, staying out of the way of overpowered monsters, and trying to defeat them. Each monster is defeated in a unique way so Dracula requires you to destroy four coffins littered around the city before driving a stake through his heart. Frankenstein requires you to give him yellow (happy) items to show him what it's like to be human. Each monster has a unique way to defeat it.
Our group was feeling cocky so we played with the most difficult setup (four monsters) and were thoroughly crushed. It was fun.
The game is probably a good introduction to cooperative games. It's not very complicated but still interesting to someone unfamiliar with games. I find that co-op games need to be big and complex in order to have any chance of replayability. (Robinson Crusoe, Space Alert, etc.) I'll be passing on this.
Dig Dug the board game with deckbuilding.
The goal of this game is to dig tunnels into Mars. Minerals and artifacts are unearthed which allows you to improve your deck.
The digging is linear which reduces AP and lets the game progress more easily.
The deckbuilding is interesting in that each player has their own private tableau of four face up cards that they can purchase to add to their decks. The stacks of cards to purchase are thematic and tiered so that better, more expensive cards are at the bottoms of the stacks. The board is very interactive and players will often say "I wanted to go there!" so it's nice to have another part of the game (the cards to purchase) that is safe from interaction. Each player's purchasable cards are different which adds a nice asymmetry to the game.
In the end, the game felt a little long. I think it needs to be this long to be able to purchase interesting cards but our group felt we got everything we needed out of the game by the halfway mark.
I probably would not play this game again.
This is a game I've liked for a long time. If Matthew didn't already own it I would own a copy.
We were going to have dinner soon and had just a little time so we decided to play a game someone already knows. I felt that Knizia really improved the deck building mechanic in a few ways with this game and wanted to show it to Eric.
- There is a large tableau of cards but a limit to which cards you can buy at a time. This reduces AP and also adds an interesting decision about when you want to exhaust a deck since the next player will have the opportunity to choose the replacement stack.
- The small deck and small handsize gives you more control.
- There is an abundance of single use cards. This combined with the ability to hold a card until the next turn and the visibility of the map allows for really good one use strategies. This is rare in deckbuilders.
After playing, Eric mentioned that he liked the fact that the whole board is visible which gives players a very tangible sense of the progress of the game.
Both Eric and Tom showed an interest in buying this game. The game now has two expansions.
This was a playtest of an unpublished game. I don't think it's appropriate to comment on the game in public.
This is a tight two player game with the slogan "World War Two in 20 Minutes".
It has a bag drawing mechanic and allows players to participate in a number of theaters of war. As battles are completed, victory points accumulate until there is a winner. Players can improve the chits they draw from the bag by placing in tech spots, increase the size of their hand by playing in industry spots, and reduce the size of the other player's hand via bombing.
Our game was a little skewed. Eric focused on bombing me and I didn't sufficiently react so soon lost the game by having a zero hand size. I assume better play would prevent this from happening.
I thought the game was tight and clever but the theme didn't really come out. I have a hard time thinking of a world war two battle without a map.
Eric thought the game was fun but imagined it would lose replayability after a few plays.
I don't play many two player games so I'll definitely pass on this one.
This is a giant, semi-cooperative game that takes a group of players through the plot of Alien. It was probably folly to try to learn and play this at a Con but we got through most of the rules and played enough turns to get an idea for the game.
I think it does a great job giving that nervous, claustrophobic feel of alien. The game is hard, the aliens are practically unstoppable, and you're not sure if you can trust your shipmates.
A couple notes:
- There needs to be an alpha player who has internalized all the rules.
- The characters are very distinct. Not only do the characters have unique starting items but they have custom decks that allow them to take unique actions.
- Slime and contamination add junk cards to your deck to slow you down. When you get contaminated you don't know whether or not your infected. You have to go to the med bay and use a "decoder" to see whether or not you're infected.
- Noise is a first place mechanic which can attract aliens adding the tension.
- Hidden objective cards allow players to choose to be either good (personal) or bad (corporate). The decision has to be made by the middle of the game.
There's a ton more stuff. I find the whole thing to be a love letter to Alien and can't wait to get it and find a group to play it with. I doubt the game has much replayability. I could see playing it two or three times and that would probably be enough. There are a couple expansions out but who knows if they are any good. They were funded by kickstarter stretch goals.
Now I just have to wait for a reprint and hope the quality is decent.
I'm not sure which day we played this game. Eric had played it before and taught the game to Suzie and I.
In the same way that King of Tokyo made a modern game out of Yahtzee, this game is credited with making a modern game out of Bingo.
There are two parts of the board that are connected by a central action:
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There are two decks of cards. One contains engine building cards and one contains victory point generating cards. Some actions bring these cards into you hand and some actions allow you to play cards. Card movement is slow so don't expect to draw an play cards every turn.
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The central action is a bag of resource chits. One player continually draws these resources allowing all players to possibly advance the building of one of their played cards. This is the equivalent of marking a letter on your bingo card. Once a particular "end" resource is drawn, the bag is refilled and passed to another player.
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When a card scores a player yells "Eco" and the game is paused while the player takes an action. This action involves adding to a central, common hexoganal savannah map. Hexes can be added, mountains and forests can be added, animals can be added or migrated to surrounding hexes. Scoring actions allow players to earn VP based on the state of this map.
Some reactions to the game:
- The central board is gorgeous. The hexes are simple but the red mountains and green trees look great.
- Cards in the tableau can be a little fiddly. They are rotated as they are used up which can make it difficult to read the card. I didn't mind this but the other players did.
- None of us knew how the engine worked so we basically played whatever cards we had. I have no idea if there are synergies that an experienced play can hope to achieve (like Race for the Galaxy) or if it's a shot in the dark. (like Wingspan)
- If resource is drawn that you can't use (or don't want to use) then you can advance a card that lets you either draw a card, play a card, or get a worker. More workers allow you to have more simultaneous cards that are in use. This is a nice mechanic that makes sure a player always has something to do when a tile is draw.
- Some cards are just resource converters. It would be interesting to see how these could be made into a well run engine.
My final thoughts on this are a bit mixed. I am not so enamored with this that I would go out and buy this immediately. On the other hand I'm intrigued to play the game some more and see what good engines can be built.
I wonder how much randomness is in the game. If the randomness of the resource draw dominates the game, then the complexity of the cards may just get in the way. However, if a skilled player can draw and play the right cards to generate a powerful engine then I would probably like the game. I also like the central area that everyone is messing with. That could lead to lots of surprises.
We rushed this last game before I headed to the airport.
The game is a simple drafting game. There are several types of land you draft. These land types allow you to draft monsters for victory points. Other types of cards give you one shot and persistent cards to tweak the rules a bit. The game has the distinctive "go broke, take a loan" mechanic that Garfield seems to love.
The production and art of the game was excellent but no-one was wowed by the mechanics.
Would not purchase, would not play if it hit the table.