Cartographers - A Fresh Map

Cartographers
Published by Thunderworks Games - 2019
Designer: Jordy Adan
Head Artists: Luis Francisco, Lucas Ribeiro
1 - 100 players ~ 20 - 30 minutes
Review written by Luke Muench

2019 is the year of the roll-and-write. With the success of Welcome To... last year and the reprint having delivered in March, everyone’s been reminded just what a difference a fresh take can make on the often overlooked genre. With 25+ titles announced featuring dice and pencils, it can be hard to sift through them all and determine which ones are worth your time and money. And while we certainly haven’t seen all the year has to offer yet, Thunderworks Games has come out of the gate with a pretty impressive offering, one that has, if nothing more, surprised me in all the best ways.

Note: The copy given to me for this review is a prototype. While these components do not necessarily represent the final product, most of the components will likely be close to what you see here.

Charting Old Territory In New Ways

At its core, Cartographers combines the card-turning flip on the genre introduced by Welcome To with the world-building of games like 30 Rails or Welcome to Dino World to make a comfortably familiar yet thankfully fresh take on all the aspects that make roll-and-writes quick, accessible, Sudoku-esque puzzles. Each round, players flip cards, presenting shapes and terrain types. Players choose from which options are offered, drawing the shape anywhere into their map, in any orientation you like. Each card also has an amount of time allotted to it; once enough time ticks down, the round is over, and players individually score their boards.

Primarily, points come from 4 variable scorecards, each featuring a different type of terrain layout. There are 4 of each type of scoring card, which allows for some nice variety, but what’s perhaps more important is that each scorecard only matters during specific rounds. For instance, in the Spring (round 1), scorecards A and B will be scored, but while B will be scored a 2nd and final time the following round, A will have to wait until the final round of the game, encouraging players to focus on both short- and long-term points.

Additionally, points can be scored based on how many coins a player collects; coins are gathered by either surrounding mountains on your board or by taking options on certain terrain cards that offer you the option to draw a smaller shape but also earn a coin. At the end of each round, every filled-in coin is worth a point.

Lastly, players can score negative points during a round based on the ambushes crop up. When an ambush card is drawn, players are forced to pass their player boards to their neighbors, who go to painstaking lengths to draw the invading baddies in the most obnoxious and inconvenient locations on your board possible. At the end of each round, any square that is both empty and adjacent to an ambushing monster will earn players -1 point.

After 4 rounds, with Fall and Winter offering less time than before, whoever earned the most points is dubbed the Grand Cartographer of their land (whatever they chose to name it), giving them the opportunity to marvel at their map and wonder on what the next adventure might offer.

Journeying Into the Unknown

Despite how the premise and gameplay are fairly straightforward, Cartographers offers a ton of reasons to revisit this game time and again. First, as already mentioned, how you score most of your points will be different each game, and what order they come out in will also change, dramatically altering how you’ll build the wilderness. While trees might have been worth a ton of points last game, this time around, you might choose to focus more on houses or farms, as that goal card plays better to your board state.

Next, there are two different maps you can explore; the first is open, allowing you a lot of space to spread out, plan, and remedy any mistakes you might make. The second, however, features a giant abyss in the center of the board, and while it may help you score certain cards more easily, it makes the end-game much tenser as players struggle to Tetris their pieces into just the right spots.

Then there are the ruins cards, which, when drawn, will force you to draw the following shape on one of the ruins on your board, limiting how you can set your pieces. And while you can cover up ruins whenever you wish, you risk not having a legal place to draw the next time a ruins card is pulled.

And, of course, there are the ambushes. When they come out and where your opponents (or AI) chooses to put the shapes can help form how you’ll want to play the next few turns, working around the unforeseen, adding some excitement to a relatively calm and collected puzzle, but what makes this all the better is that if an ambush isn’t triggered in one round, it’ll carry over to the next round, and the next, until you have 3 different ambushes in the deck waiting to be sprung. There’s a tension that lends itself to making each game more memorable.

Only the Skilled Will Prevail

Assuming you pre-order the game from Thunderworks themselves or find it on BoardGameGeek after the fact, a mini-expansion is available for Cartographers, offering Skills from the Roll Player games that will offer players special actions to pull from.

Each season, players can use 1 of the 3 available skill cards, assuming they are willing to pay to coin cost, meaning that those coins won’t score for any future rounds. Skills can cost anywhere between 0 and 3 coins, most of which offer alternate means of placing shapes on your board, helping you build and expand despite the luck of the draw.

While certainly a nice addition that adds a bit more variety, I don’t find this to be a must-have expansion. Players can often get wrapped up in their boards and forget that the skills are even an option, and depending on when you pay for a skill, it can cost you far more points than you would earn by ignoring it, making the more expensive options very situational. I personally enjoy using them from time to time, especially during solo play, but I’ve certainly gotten better scores overall when I play without them.

Drawing a Conclusion

Roll-and-writes have become one of my favorite genres as of late, but it can be hard to come across quality options; games that can be pulled off the shelf time and time again, feeling fresh and exciting each time and providing just a hint of player interaction to keep the competition tight. Having played this game 10 since receiving my copy, I can all but guarantee that, for me, this game checks all those boxes; I absolutely love this game and would certainly recommend you check this game out, newcomers and veterans alike. There’s something here for everyone, and it’s all done in such a quick and streamlined manner that it’s as convenient as it is fun.

Who Should Get This Game: Fans of roll-and-writes, Roll Player, or good-looking filler games that offer just enough content to keep you coming back for more.

Who Shouldn’t Get This Game: Anyone who prefers more significant player interaction or a non-fantasy theme can give this one a pass.

Note: Cartographers is available for pre-order from Thunderworks Games until mid-July, which will come with the Skills mini-expansion.

First Impressions - Middara: Unintentional Malum, Act 1 - Dungeons and Demons

Middara: Unintentional Malum Act 1
Published by Succubus Publishing
Designers: Clayton Helme, Brooklynn Lundberg, Brennon Moncur, Ian Tate
Head Artists: Stephanie Gustafsson, Alex Hansen, Hector Lujan, Rhett Mason, Jon Nickel
1 - 4 players ~ 60 - 120 minutes per session, 60 sessions
First Impressions by Luke Muench

Board gaming has a reputation to be inaccessible, complex, and a hobby that requires a lot of time and energy to get invested in. In recent years, many publishers have made it their mission to buck that impression, focusing on small, family-friendly titles that can be brought out during holidays or to share with those who’ve never rolled a die before. And yes, typical “gamer’s games” like Twilight Imperium and Terra Mystica have lively, passionate communities to continue to gush and indulge in heavy, complex titles, but they certainly aren’t the prominent focus in the hobby these days.

In walks Succubus Publishing, a company I had never heard of until a few weeks ago when they announced the launch of Middara: Unintentional Malum, a Kickstarter that was funded back in 2015 and will be delivering sometime in the next month or so. Not only is this a game as massive and expansive as Gloomhaven, including standees, minis, and map tiles, it also includes a gargantuan tome that promises an adventure on the level of a Final Fantasy game. In other words, Middara promises the world, and whether it actually delivers will be up to the eyes of the beholder.

Quality and Quantity

One thing is undeniable, the production value here is INSANE. The minis are well-sculpted and look awesome strutting around the maps, but there are standees included if that’s not your thing. The art contained on every card and page is colorful and lively, making me feel invested in the world at hand. The tiles have a nice gloss to them and serve to make each encounter have an interesting backdrop. The books are spiral bound and feel great to handle, never becoming overly cumbersome and some might suspect. And the sheer volume of things you’ll find the box is staggering, literally. My UPS delivery man barely managed to drag it to the door of my 3rd-floor apartment.

Which means that you will need to dig through all those things, which to some will be a blast, like opening a fresh toybox of nicknacks, wondering what each token or card has in store, but others will find this process tedious and frustrating, as they may just want to get to gaming already. But that’s going to take a while because first, you’ll have to understand the mechanics.

Oodles of Rules

Middara is nothing if not thorough, as there’s a lot of gameplay to cover, but I’ll do my best to give you an overview. Middara, at its core, is a storybook with various choices and encounters to interact with every couple of pages. The easiest comparison would be to Gloomhaven, but the story, as the art may suggest, takes a distinctly more JRPG/Anime-esque approach, feeling both brooding and bombastic; stylistic and direct.

The story, which I won’t get into here, is detailed and expansive, with the dialogue reminding me of various manga I’ve read over the years, and it’s enjoyable in its charm, with the main characters becoming quickly likable. It can feel a little awkward to read it aloud, as there are various voices you’ll have to create for each character, but if that’s not your bag, Succubus has you covered, with audio files for each of the reading sections available for download on their site. And if the whole story thing isn’t your bag in the slightest, there’s a list of SparkNotes available as well, giving you the brief bullet points of what’s going on before getting to the next adventure. While I have read a good extent of the story thus far, I decided to check the aforementioned SparkNotes, and they do an admirable job summing up the events at hand, helping to get players to the action.

That action being classic dungeon-crawling magic. On each player’s turn, they’ll move their character through the map generated for that scenario, stumbling upon events, treasures, and other points of interest, while fending off various monsters crawling around the catacombs and towns you’ll visit. Different locales will have different terrain types, which affect how you can traverse the map, how combat is resolved in certain areas, or can force your heroes into some sticky situations.

If you’re not moving, you’re fighting, which has a variety of different custom dice assigned to it, depending on the weapons and abilities your character has and what kind of attack you’re making; melee, ranged, or magic. Oh, and did I mention that said combat also features dodging and countering, potentially interrupting a player’s turn in order to figure out how a combat roll resolves? It can feel a bit overwhelming, at least during your first couple of combats, but once you get the hang of it and start remembering what dice each of your characters tend to wield, it can become second nature.

There’s a wide range of cards, tokens, and items that represent items, abilities, traps, you name it, and it would be unfair to Middara to try to go over them all here, not just because of how expansive it is, but also because it would ruin part of the fun. Like any RPG, discovery is half the magic, and Succubus knows this. One of the games key features is a red decoder which, when used in conjunction with certain passages in the narrative tome, will reveal hidden text and passages, informing players of what interacting with certain tokens or tiles resulted in. Did you stumble upon a new wave of baddies or find a cool treasure? You can’t really be sure until you actually make the choice to check it out, preventing you from accidentally skimming over key info, a very nice touch.

It Gets Even Bigger

You may have noticed that niggling “Act 1” hanging off the end of this game’s title, and that’s largely because this massive box is just the beginning, providing many of the tools for a 3-part narrative adventure. While the game already offers 60 one or two-hour scenarios already, you won’t reach the end of the narrative here, as Succubus is still hard at work putting that together. To some, this will be annoying, especially considering the $100 price tag, but that’s assuming you do make it through the initial content in a reasonable amount of time. Middara is a game meant to take you years to delve through and thoroughly appreciate, where your team gets together once a week to really invest in and discover what lies in wait.

In the coming months, I’m going to see how far I can manage to get in this rather sizable adventure, but my thoughts at this moment? Middara is large to a fault; its rules are thorough and extensive, it box barely containing all the components, its storybook bigger than your average dictionary, and its components towering over those of other games, both in quality and quantity. It can feel a little overwhelming for sure, and it takes up a good amount of space in the apartment, but ultimately it provides an experience that I won’t find anywhere else, and I’m looking forward to going on this adventure will the Succubus crew.

A full review of Middara will go up on our youtube channel in time for their kickstarter to reprint the game, tentatively planned for Summer 2019. In the meantime, check out other recent written reviews here:

The River - Slow & Steady Currents

Published by Days of Wonder - 2018
Designers: Sébastien Pauchon and Ismaël Perrin
Head Artist: Andrew Bosley
2 - 4 players ~ 30 - 45 minutes
Review “Slow & Steady Currents” written by Luke Muench

Travel Log: Entry 37

Jeremiah settled down this evening, down at the edge of the canyon. It was bound to come eventually. I just didn’t think it’d be so soon. Everyone from the crew’s found somewhere to go, moving on to better things, or so they say. I’m starting to wonder if this is the end of my journey too.

If you’re reading this, then heed my words carefully. Know that this life, it ain’t for everyone. It takes a special someone to travel down… The River.

Knowing the Flow

“Sometimes it’s the journey that teaches you a lot about your destination.” - Drake

Those who choose to venture down The River will be tasked with building what structures you can here and there while doing your best to map out this spotty, mismatched land. You and your competitors will cease work when either one crew has built their 5th building or someone’s managed to fill in their map, at which point y’all will see who did the best work.

Being the polite folk that yah are, each day you’ll send one worker out at a time to work shifts in the various workstations in the area. Just remember that you can’t overcrowd most places with more than 2 workers at a time.

Firstly, you can go map out a section of your river, checking to see what sorts of resources it provides and what terrain you’re walking through. Areas can either provide resource production, houses to store them resources, or abilities that’ll help you work faster and earn yah reputation while you’re at it.

When you cover a spot on your board, those resources that you previously found there are lost, leaving you with what newfangled things you managed to stumble upon. Sometimes, after a long day’s work, if you found somewhere nice to stop and rest, one of your workers will decide they wanna settle down rather than press on, the quitters. Your crew will keep moving forward, but you’ll get to do just a little less the next time ‘round.

Once you feel ready, you can head to the quarry, forest, or clay pit to get yourself some stone, wood, or brick. How much you get depends on how many resource icons of that type is on your board, and you’ll get an extra resource if you manage to get there first.

Turkeys, however, they’re a confounding sort. Wild, so they say. If’n you need some brick, BAM, use a turkey. Wood? Turkey. Stone? You guessed it. Going to the farm’ll get you a turkey, but you can also trade in any 3 resources for the turkey at the start of each turn.

Each round, 4 blueprints are laid out for any crew to use if they want. If you think a few folks are eyeing up a particular blueprint, you can reserve it for yourself, and since you’re studying it so close, it’ll cost you 1 less resource to build it. Either way, you’ll need to go to the building depot like everyone else, allowing you to get your building permit. The sooner you get them permits, the more reputation they’re worth, so you best hop to it. Once you’ve built 2 structures, you’ll find that you’ve impressed some onlooker so much they’ll join your little band of misfits as an additional worker.

Now, for whatever reason, whoever's got the white sails on their boat at the start of the day gets crack at whatever they want. Not sure why, if I’m honest. Tradition maybe? If you take the time to do it, though, you can take them sails for yourself and string ‘em up on your own boat, making you first player the next round.

And lastly, you can make some *ahem* modifications to your map, switchin’ it around however you wish to make it look nice and pertty. That’s ‘cause folks like order in the mad, mad world, and if’n you can find a nice outcropping of similar terrain, you can earn yourself more reputation.

Once someone has triggered the end game by building their 5th structure or filling out their river, everyone compares their hard work to see who earned the most reputation.

The Simple Life

“Without music, life is a journey through the desert.” - Pat Conroy

Now, I know what you’re thinking, and yeah, it’s a simple life for sure. Very little exciting or out of the ordinary tends to happen when you’re exploring this rather familiar land, almost like you’ve done it before, see it elsewhere time and time again. Except this time, maybe it’s a bit too easy.

See, there’s no hardships to be found here; everything you do has little consequence in the long term. Mistakes are easily patched up, and there are a lot of ways that folks can catch up if they’re behind, not out of ingenuity or wit, but because The River slows down the work of the best of us to allow the rest to keep pace.

The land looks nice enough, but I’ve certainly see bluer skies and grassier greens in my day. Nothing’s outright offensive or ugly, but that don’t mean it’s all that lovely to look at. All the bits and pieces work fine, but there’s nothing notable or special about it, and some of the odds and ends just seem unnecessary, such as the boat tokens that give you somewhere to place your workers at the start of each round.

Making the Riverbend Peaceful

“Life is a journey that must be traveled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.” - Oliver Goldsmith

If yer gonna make a pilgrimage to this here river, there are a few things you ought to know to get the most outta your efforts. First, make sure you’ve got four competitors to play the game with. This may sound counter-intuitive, but having a few others breathing down your neck breeds better efforts, encourages you to work harder, and learns you how to be a hardier builder. Second, don’t come here expecting anything exceptional. It’s clear that the creator of these fine lands never meant it to be more than a simple affair, inoffensive in its provincial nature. And lastly, this trek is best served to those who’ve never attempted such an undertaking. The wide-eyed young’ll get the most outta what’s here, and perhaps those charged with looking after them.

As for me, I can’t find a reason to stick around any longer. It’s time for me to pack my bags and move on elsewhere, mayhaps returning to the perilous Norse-laden lands of Midgard or the haunting libraries of Ex Libris. Someday I hope to send my little cousins and nephews this way one day when they’re old enough; maybe then I can see the shine in their eyes when they discover the beauty this land has to offer to the new and uninitiated.

Who Should Get This Game: Families and those unfamiliar with worker placement games and can find enjoyment in the pastoral theme. And Varmints.

Who Shouldn’t Get This Game: If you know how the genre works, there’s likely a game out there with a better theme and exciting mechanics that you’ll get more out of.

Want to check out more of our stuff? Check out the youtube page at https://youtube.com/TheCardboardHerald or find other recent written reviews right here:

Keyforge - The Other Side of The Wall

Designed by Richard Garfield
Published by Fantasy Flight Games 2018
2 Players ~ 20-30 minutes per game
Review “The Other Side of The Wall” written by Jack Eddy

In covering games for the past two years, I’ve realized that even in the realm of “good games”, there are games that I don’t like and there are games I don’t get. The first group is easier to articulate my feelings on, usually just talking about what doesn’t click with me and thinking about who it is that could appreciate it. The latter group, on the other hand, is much harder to speak to because, by definition, I don’t really get it. Most recently, Gloomhaven was the big offender, a game which on paper should be absolutely up my alley, yet I just cannot fathom why it is so popular.

Now it seems there is a new wedge driving my relationship with the modern gamer asunder; Keyforge.

So, this is going to be a strange review...article… thingy. If you want more straight forward reviews of whether or not a game is good or bad, check out some of our other stuff on the website or video channel. But for today, we are going to be exploring why I just can’t enjoy Keyforge.

Jack Eddy - A History

Hey. Jethro Tull was cool in the 90’s, OK? They won the heavy metal Grammy over METALLICA.

To talk about Keyforge, we have to talk about Magic, and more specifically, my history with the game. Released in 1993, Magic didn’t really make its way to Alaska until Bosco’s Comics was able to get some shipments shortly after Unlimited Edition release in 1994. It just so happened that my brother Brian and I were die-hard patrons of Bosco’s, being our primary outlet for both X-men comics and fantasy related tabletop games like Warhammer, AD&D and Heroquest.

Throughout the following years, Brian and I held varying degrees of interest in Magic, but both of us maintained independent collections until our adulthood. Brian focused largely on the tournament scene, where he ended up winning a local regional before playing in nationals, with the trip sponsored by, you guessed it, Bosco’s comics (who eventually employed us both). I was more into the casual game, always less disciplined and yet thematically focused than my brother; I cared about the stories on the table. Magic defined my social circle and eventually became a way that I fostered relationships with youth when I worked at my local Boys & Girls Club.

As we got older, our interest in Magic waned. I became more dedicated to AEG’s Legend of the Five Rings, and eventually gave up CCGs in favor of singular boxed board games that make up the bulk of our coverage on the site. I’ve still maintained an interest for constructible card games, even “getting in” at the ground floor with the excellent cooperative Lord of the Rings: The Card Game and the sadly deceased Android: Netrunner, but I’ve never committed to an ongoing and dedicated passion for a card game, or any game really, as I did for L5R and Magic.

I’ve thought long and hard about why it is I like these games and I think it really comes down to ownership, that the deck I’m playing is my deck. From Magic to L5R to LotR to Netrunner, even the preconstructed decks or those who were built based on deck lists online, I had choice and agency; the freedom to make up for their faults, play to their strengths, and adapt them with future card pools. This ownership extended to the thematic aspects of the game, too. Creatures and Samurai that hit the battlefield were heroes storming to my aid, fighting and dying to exert my will, creating unique and fantastic battles with each action.

That is not, and was never intended to be, this game.

Every Keyforge deck has a unique back with the procedurally generated deck name. For what it’s worth, Shadi’s a 10.

WTF is Keyforge?

In a year full of WTF moments, Keyforge stands out as my most perplexing gaming announcement of 2018. After finally wrapping my brain around what the game even was, my reaction was akin to The Who’s infamous reaction to The New Yardbirds - “The New Yardbirds? Yeah, that’ll go over like a Led Zeppelin.” Also like the Who, I was very wrong.

At the time of announcement, my basic understanding was that Richard Garfield of Magic: The Gathering and Netrunner fame was making a new card game for Fantasy Flight where every deck was unique and every card in said deck would be marked so that it could not be used in any constructible format. The concept was baffling. How could anything be balanced if the decks were algorithmically generated? Where is the value in a rigid deck of cards that cannot be reassembled? How could any deck have a distinct personality or convey a story if it wasn’t crafted to do so?

Turns out that I was right about what the game is but largely wrong about what the game would be. Having played several games with multiple decks, it seems more or less balanced. There are even clever mechanics that could aid the underdog if one deck seems particularly strong against another, such as adding a handicap by means of “chains”, limiting a deck’s drawing capabilities. As for the value, the game is just like any other boxed game with no constructible elements, yet I don’t seem to have a grudge against Settlers of Catan for its lack of flexibility or absence of constructible sheep engines.

For me, the most revelatory thing about playing the game was the immediacy of effects and the unconventional game objective. Unlike most card games, players in Keyforge do not have a life total. Instead, you are collecting pools of Aember, which can be constructed into keys if you have six or more at the start of your turn; forge three keys and you win the game. There are few things that mess with your already-constructed keys, but there’s about a gagillion things that mess with your Aember, so you gotta keep on eye on it.

As for the immediacy, your hand refills every turn, cards have no cost, and you can use all of your toys in play…  as long as you activate the house they are associated with (which also happens to be the basic choice that informs tactical play). Every deck is composed of an equal amount of cards from three of Keyforges houses, and each turn, you declare which house you are acting as and can then play and use any cards relating to your house, though creatures and artifacts entering the battlefield has this game’s own version of “summoning sickness”, so that house will need to be reactivated later to get use out of your stompy badasses.

This freedom that has you dumping cards onto the table and slinging spells with reckless abandon certainly sets the game apart, and I gotta admit, it modernizes the distinctively oldschool tropes of Magic and pretty much every constructible card game after it, making it feel both fresh and unique.

So why can’t I enjoy it?

OK, what’s going on. Focus. Man, I wish I had a quesadilla.

Empty Calories

Each turn of Keyforge feels like fast food, filling yet never really satisfying. I’m hard pressed to care about what happens for a multitude of reasons.

The first hurdle is my own attachment issues. If I put “Blogwrath the Barbarian” into play, I want him to be useful, I want to feel so proud of Blogwrath and his incredible capability for murderous destruction. But inevitably, even if I put in Blogwrath and five of his similarly bloodthirsty friends into play, on my opponent’s turn, most of them vanish. There are so many cards and effects that wipe creatures away from the board, and when you do fight in this game, you have your creatures attack your opponent’s creatures directly;  you don’t have a life total to target. This wouldn’t be so bad if there was something that I could choose to do on my opponent’s turn, like elect to defend, resolve some effects, or cast some spells… but nope, I’m at the distinctive mercy of my opponent, so, yeah, whatever. I guess I’ll figure out what I’m doing with the one or two remaining members of Blogwrath’s merry band next turn.

But when I do get a turn where it just so happened that Blogwrath survived, I’m faced with a terrible choice. Do I do fun stuff with the cards in my hand, or do I use Blogwrath? Chances are, I can’t do both due to the house restriction on the cards. There will be times where Blogwrath gets to have his fun, where the cards in my hand match his house, or maybe I have some activated abilities that let me play off-house, but more often than not, I am left to look at the few toys I have left and elect not to use them because the smarter and more prudent thing is to abandon any plans I made last turn and bust out some new cards this turn.

The last thing that really kills Keyforge for me is a bit more esoteric. When I buy a Keyforge deck, I have to trust in the algorithm. I have to trust that this deck is probably going to do okay and have a chance of winning against other decks. Sure, it’ll have weaknesses, but in the hands of a good player this deck will be competitive in a large enough pool. But what if it’s not? What if I just have a less effective combination of cards?

Farewell, my friends.

This last hurdle is purely conjecture based on my own bias, and I have no real data to back it up other than playing 12 or so games. But, there is always going to be a piece of me that wonders “did I lose because I’m bad? Did I lose because I didn't get the right draw? Or did I lose because this deck is objectively worse than my opponent’s?” and that last part, no matter how unlikely, is what’ll always kill Keyforge for me.

I know, I know, you’ll be all like “in Magic you buy blind packs to participate in drafts, which can result in objectively better and worse decks. And what about those pre-con decks that you say you’re cool with?” With the pre-constructed Magic stuff, I’m generally assuming that these decks are tightly crafted and made to face off with one another. Furthermore, whether it’s draft, constructed, sealed deck, or just using pre-cons, I know that even if I’m at a disadvantage, I can re-tool my deck to make it better or more suited to my playstyle.

Stripping that ability from me in a game where I’m still buying blind packs just makes me incredibly apathetic to anything happening on the table. When I pick the best actions to take on a turn, I don’t feel like I’m playing to win, I feel like I’m carrying out an algorithm. It’s fatalistic, but it’s honest.

Apples & Oranges

Let’s back up. Let’s get away from everything you just read. My contrived tale of childhood discovery? Throw it out the window.

The moment to moment in Keyforge is so full of decisions with real impact on the game state. This is a tactical bonanza where you’re constantly shifting with the ebb and flow of new threats and altered capabilities. There is no ramp up, there is no mana-screw. Every turn you are empowered to make full use of a full hand and every card on the table, so long as they fall into one of those three houses. From turn one, you and your opponent are like those rad gang members in the Beat It music video taking swipes at one another; reacting to the shared tension.

There is such a good skirmish game here, where if you block out the comparisons to the past, how decks were created, or the questionably risky expense in buying blind packs, you can see that it is an interesting and bold take on the genre. Maybe not one I care for, but still ambitious and credible nonetheless.

There is a reason why there is such a fervor for this game, and why FFG has made this their follow up to Netrunner; and it isn’t just because it’s an insidious way for people to spend their money. If I ignore the trappings, I can almost taste the succulent fat contained within a well played turn of Keyforge; but like Cypher’s steak, the taste is meaningless when I start seeing through the matrix.

By bringing in Richard Garfield, by selling these as blind packs, by having all of the trappings of an environment full of preconstructed decks without any of the ability to actually construct, FFG invited this comparison, even if it unfairly represents the game to grey-beards like me.

Final Thoughts

It feels strange to acknowledge that my main criticisms of Keyforge are based on what I want the game to be rather than divorcing myself from the past and evaluating the game purely for what the game actually is, but I don’t live in a vacuum, and I have a feeling my sentiment may be shared by at least a couple people out there.

I wish that I could say a perspective shift would endear me to the game more, but I just don’t see that happening. Even when I root for it to convince me otherwise, win or loss, every game of Keyforge has felt somewhat gratifying in the moment, but completely hollow in its conclusion. It may do a lot of things, it just never made me care.

Interested in more Keyforge? Got some beef? We’ll have a Keyforge final thoughts & review Q&A video up on our channel, https://youtube.com/TheCardboardHerald soon.

Other recent written reviews:

Legacy of Dragonholt - Pages in Pursuit of Progress

Legacy of Dragonholt
Published by Fantasy Flight Games - 2017
Designers: Nikki Valens, Daniel Clark, Tim Flanders, Annie Mitsoda, Greg Spyridis
Head Artists: Alex Aparin, Jacob Atienza, Jared Blando, Anna Christenson, Amanda Duarte, David Griffith, Jamie Martinez, Sandara Tang Sin Yun
1 - 6 players ~ 60 - 90 minutes per session, 8 sessions
Review “Pages In Pursuit of Progress” written by Luke Muench

I find myself often neglecting the importance of story in board games. Every board game tells a winding tale of some sort, whether it’s that moment when the traitor reveals themselves, or that power play where your friend takes 5 actions that all chain together into an orchestra of success, or even that time when you forgot your plan mid-game and floundered to figure out what you’re doing. These are the moments that make games memorable, for as mechanically sound as any experience can be, if there’s nothing worth recalling about your time with it, it’s unlikely you’ll put it to the table again.

In this way, Legacy of Dragonholt, being a choose-your-own-adventure style board game, looks to create those moments for you, but in a more controlled, pre-constructed environment built to make you experience a certain emotional progression, with all the traditional aspects of your average fantasy tale, both the good and bad.

On Your Bookmark… Get Set…

As the name suggests, this epic storytelling affair is something of a pseudo-legacy experience, in that you are told a narrative that you will unlikely be able to revisit due to already knowing all the twists and turns that are coming. No, you aren’t destroying components or anything, and I have known others to play through multiple times, but in my experience, there is little to no reason to turn back.

In many ways, this can make your time in Dragonholt feel special; your choices have more weight to them, and your senses are heightened as you try and observe everything you can to deduce the mysteries each page threatens to hold. Is it worth checking behind that bush, or might we press on to more important things? Should we try befriending that local Smithy, or is our time better-spent training at the Guard Station?

When first encountering the city of Dragonholt at the end of your first session, you’ll have the opportunity to open the sprawling map of the land, covered in locations for you to scour through, trigger events, discover trinkets, and just enjoy the pastoral story at work. Many of the choices made page to page are just as much about the story being told as it is trying to improve your chances to conquer whatever obstacles lie ahead.

Time is of the Essence

Each of your 8 sessions with Legacy of Dragonholt will be paced using a time mechanic. When you go to a location and are able to start an event that gains your an item, money, an opportunity, or more in-depth story moment, a “time” passes. When enough time has passed, the day is over and the story provides you with an opportunity end your play session and put away the game until next time.

There are 7 books for you to discover and travel through, with the Dragonholt book being by far the heaviest and most often passed through. The other 6 feature dungeon-like quests that will test your characters’ skills and know-how as you attempt to scale rocky cliffs, find ancient tombs, or even battle a dragon. While most of this will automatically trigger on certain days, some are completely optional and skippable; in my playthrough, 1 of these books went untouched, which felt oddly gratifying. I didn’t do the right things to encounter that particular quest, and so I never had the chance to engage with it, and that’s more than okay, great in some aspects. Sure, I looked up how I would have opened said door after the fact, but knowing that there is content out there special to those who managed to find their way is a neat and exciting feeling that makes my playthrough feel just as special as anyone else’s.

Speaking of choices, Dragonholt offers the opportunity for up to 6 players to collectively make choices in the story at hand. This is waaaaaaaaaay too many people. Like, insane. I’m not sure how it could be suggested, lest as some sinister marketing decision, but much of the book is written to be one person playing through the game, though I adventured with one companion. BGG suggests 3 players at the most, and I would have to agree that any more than that would get out of hand.

Each page, while being covered with lengthy descriptions and conversations, are punctuated by highlighted choices that only 1 player at the table can make. If you’re plaything through solo, this is obviously no problem, but for those of us who would rather have friends by our sides, there is a brilliant sharing system in place. When a player would like to weigh in a choose a specific event, they flip their token, declaring their intent when marching forth. Their token then remains used until all players have had the chance to make a choice, refreshing everyone's’ tokens afterwards.

Choices will often be limited by the skills or abilities your character has, and sometimes by the equipment your team has acquired. This can lead to some frustrating moments where the magic caster is exhausted and we could reeeeeeeeeeeally use a frostbolt right now dude, so maybe if you could just chug an energy drink and help us out, that’d be swell. As the game presses on, though, this becomes less and less of a pressing issue, as characters will occasionally get more skills via XP. It grows clearer and clearer that your decisions don’t have too much weight in the grand scheme of things, mechanically or narratively.

A Forgiving Path

Being a narrative-based story in which players can make lots of choices over the course of multiple sessions, very few moments of true weight or impact are imparted on the players, with many of the necessary story points locked away to certain time slots that cannot be avoided. Similarly, those side quests you do stumble upon give you optional items and a brief glimpse into the undeveloped world of fantasy jargon at play. There’s an illusion of a world here, to be sure, a pale, unsatisfying iteration of your typical Middle Earth clone, but by the end, much of it reduced to unmemorable fantasy pageantry, passing through your ears seamlessly until the next prompt appears.

That’s not to say there aren’t some incredibly rewarding moments, usually some narrative moment off the beaten path, adding a sense of agency and discovery. In my playthrough, we came across a mystic item of power that, sure enough, ended up being an applicable trigger for certain choices, and I went out of my way to use it every chance I had, whether it was a good idea or not. I had this cool thing that I discovered and was now contributing and challenging the world at large. Similarly, some of the more fleshed-out characters have deeper backstories that you can dig into if you choose, learning more about their personal lives and becoming closer with them as each day progresses.

Unfortunately, most of these don’t have “ends” to speak of, trailing off in the background while the main plot grabs your hand and drags you down the corridor you need to follow, because “plot”. It’s jarring, annoying, and made me feel like a child being told what I needed to do rather than being shown what I could do, and left a sour taste in my mouth when all was said and done.

This might be more forgivable if the writing wasn’t as ham-fisted, and as it is, and while there is some charm to that endeared me to the game, it also leads to “mysteries” that you are outright told the answers to rather than having your detective skills play any part in your ability to continue. If anything, I started to deduce what choices my character should or should not take based on how it was framed, predicting the skills I might need to not take damage.

Not that taking damage is a big deal. It is basically impossible for our character to die, both mechanically and from a story perspective. Sure, your health can be reduced to 0, but that just disables one of your 6+ skills, leaving you battered but by no means out of the fight. And the frequency of this even being a problem is very rare unless you are choosing obviously silly or foolish options just to see what might happen.

Lastly, while your character is someone you created at the start of the game, other than what skills you choose to equip at the start, your persona means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. Dragonholt can, for all its charm and whimsy, feel impersonal, ignoring any character work you bothered to do at the start, not that your options are terribly robust.

Worth the Journey

Legacy of Dragonholt is a mixed bag, but a unique one, filled with enough fun and exciting reveals and adventures that it’s worth your time and money, assuming you enjoying reading tons of text. It won’t challenge you, either as a game or a story, and while the concept of a choose your own adventure as a game feels innovative here, it does little to set itself apart from other fantasy settings. So, if you are looking for a challenging game or empowering narrative, somewhere on either end of strategy or role playing, Dragonholt likely will not satisfy; but maybe, just maybe, you are looking for something in between. This game is a campaign long amusement ride through a fantasy land. You may not be able to go off the tracks, but you can throw some switches to explore paths unseen, and if you are looking for a casual and creative way to enjoy a story, then Legacy of Dragonholt may be just the thing.

Who Should Get This Game: Anyone looking for a light storytelling experience with the illusion of agency and the presence of orcs and dragons.

Who Shouldn’t Get This Game: If you hate reading or want nothing more than to max your stats to take on any foe, you can pass this one by

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Dinosaur Island - Pink Triceratops, Incorporated

Dinosaur Island
Designed by Jonathan Gilmore & Brian Lewis
Artwork by Kwanchai Moriya and Peter Wocken
Published by Pandasaurus Games - 2017
1-4 players ~ 90-120 minutes
Review by Josh Simons

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls; prepare to have… a T-Rex? You have a T-Rex? You can have a T-Rex. Welcome to Dinosaur Island! This is a land of corporate competition, embryonic research, and a balance of whether or not there’s enough salt to taste on your guests. The stars of your prehistoric park are hungry and the only thing that will stand between their stampeding appetites and patrons is your bottom line. You can’t have patrons dying in your park, because how can you get their cold hard cash if it’s digesting inside the gullet of a Spinosaurus? At least, that’s what I thought I was going to get.

Note to the reader: The version of Dinosaur Island presented in this review is the Deluxe Edition from Pandasaurus Games’ first Kickstarter campaign. Some of those components are exclusive to this Deluxe Edition, most notable of which are the metal coins and the dinosaur meeples. The majority of this review will focus on the general experience of Dinosaur Island, Deluxe Edition or not. So just to get the deluxe stuff out of the way, the coins are heavy and awesome and I love them, the deluxe-dinos come in a variety of sauro-shapes as opposed to the normal edition’s purely triceratops meeples, an additional VIP visitor type, and the first player token is, instead of a mosquito-in-amber token, a neon-nineties style slap bracelet, which is nicer than any slap bracelet than I remember from growing up in the nineties. If there’s one thing that can be said for this game, it’s that Pandasaurus was into the retro theme when they made it. It totally feels like a passion project, but not at the expense of a playable game. Though, some of the gears of this machine do feel a bit out of sync.

The boat to Dinosaur Island docked at the port of Isla TableTop in a flurry matrix of green and fuschia. The box art pulls at your curiosity with a combination of contrast and nostalgia. At first glance, it’s easy to surmise that Dinosaur Island is Jurassic Park: The Board Game. You wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but you wouldn’t be entirely right, either.

Dinosaur Island has more going on than DNA spinning in a laboratory centrifuge. Buckle up in your Land Rover, modern consumers of the prehistoric. Check your respect at the towering front gate; it’s coupon day.

A game of Dinosaur Island takes place over five phases. As opposed to getting up close and personal with the teeth of each phase, let’s view them from a safe distance. Before we begin the tour, each player gets two player boards. One is your lab where you keep track of your DNA cold storage and maintain the balance between your park’s threat level and security. The other player board is your actual park; think of this as your own little fossil farm where you need to feed your park security to keep its inhabitants from eating your people while they buy licensed tchotkes and snacks. You aren’t feeding your people; you’re keeping them from being fed on. Maybe.

In addition to your player boards, there are three common boards accessible to all players. One serves for a worker placement areas for your research scientists, while another is used to track player turn order, park excitement level, and victory points. The third is a marketplace for upgrading your laboratories contents or capacities, your parks attractions, your research benefits and capabilities, your parks workers, or your disposable currency.

Off hand, that seems like a lot, but the bottom line is that you’re trying to make your park more exciting so more people will come to it and give your their money, which will be used to invest in your park, hopefully gaining victory points from a variety of means before all but one of the variable game-length objectives have been completed. Phew. You’re going to have to balance more than just your security. It may seem like there is a lot to keep track of (which there is) so the best you can do is forecast and hope for the best; however, as the game progresses, viable strategies for success do emerge.

Game progression and strategy are shaken up from game to game. One of the features toted for Dinosaur Island is variable game length, adjusting between short, medium, and long. Each length set has a deck of cards that game-ending objectives will be selected from, and each set has a similar set of objectives but varying in number. Plot twist cards will also be selected prior to the beginning of the game. This is a cool mechanic which mixes up how each game is played, varying how you will approach your objectives from game to game.

Phases - “Hold Onto Your Butts”

Each of the 5 phases in Dinosaur Island will have you building off the previous one. It takes a lot of cranking to get this park engine going. While I would not call the process fluid, it is not completely unwieldy, either. In Phase 1, you’ll be allocating your research scientists to different tasks like improving your labs DNA cold storage, working up new dino recipes, extracting that sweet sweet dino DNA from rolling those amber DNA dice. You want theme? You’ve got theme. Having amber DNA dice is a really cool attention to detail, even if that emphasis is missed in some other areas. Watch out for any unused DNA from the available pool as that will cause a temporary increase in the threat level of each players park.

In Phase 2, it’s time to equip and improve the efficiency of your park engine. Here you’ll be able to add attractions to your park like rides or restaurants. Maybe you want to upgrade your facility to give you a no-cost security increase each round, or make it easier to produce a dinosaur that will call for that security need due to an increased threat level. Maybe you want to gain a worker or extra bonus to your park by hiring a specialist. If your cold storage is sparse, you can use some of your coin money to add some basic or advanced DNA to your storage with the added bonus of being able to sock it to your opponents by removing from the market that upgrade or specialist that they had their eye on. Not featured on the market board is the option to pass and collect $2. With all the other visual reminders, it’s likely that players may miss this option all together unless they just know the rule. How many times have you taught a game to players and said mid-game, “Oh! You can also do this.” How well is that received? Two rounds of market selections are taken for each player, and you’re on to the next phase.

Phase 3 brings full focus to the buttons and levers of your park. You are the one behind the mirrored glass, working out the technicalities of how your mad science abominations are brought forth, as well as the cages to contain them. During Phase 1, you may have been working the contents and capacities of your cold storage. During Phase 2, you may have upgraded the capabilities of your lab. In Phase 3, you can actually bring those dino recipes to meeple life, among other things. If you’ve upgraded your lab or hired specialists, those upgrades will show up here. This is your opportunity to increase paddock capacities, manipulate DNA, and keep your security level higher than the threat of your park-bominations, assuming you don’t want your paying guests to be eaten. Perhaps a few eaten guests are worth your end goal; you’ve planned for that unfortunate-for-them contingency.

Phase 4. You’ve worked hard to build your paddocks, build your attractions, build your dinosaur engine so that visitors will want to spend money at “Grand Theft Dino: Lost City”, (or whatever you’ve decided to refer to your park as). Your excitement level, which is hopefully increasing as the game progresses, will determine how many visitors come to your park. More exciting dinosaurs, which bring a higher threat level, will bring in more visitors. While most of these visitors will end up giving you their money to ooh and ahh at your collections of prehistoric monsters while munching on a snack they bought from one of your tongue-in-cheek themed food stands, some hooligans will sneak into the park to take up space without paying. This works by drawing a number of meeples out of a bag in the same number as your excitement level. Think of the game Orleans, but with only two meeple options - paying patrons or non-paying hooligans. What’s nice about the drawbag containing hooligans is that there are only a few of them in the bag. This creates some tension when drawing visitors. After all, these patrons line up outside your park and pay you $1 per person, but only if your park has space for them. The hooligans merely take up space that a paying customer could occupy.

Evaluate your threat versus security, and if there’s a gap in favor of the dinosaurs, then the clever girls will be eating your visitors at the Clever Grill. Whatever the gap is between threat and security determines how many visitors you’re going to lose out of your park, and you can better believe the non-paying hooligans are going to slip past the dinosaurs just as easily as they slipped past your front gate. The paying patrons get devoured first, which means that unless the gap in your security is quite wide, only the patrons will be eaten. For however many patrons are left in your park after “dinos on the loose” has been carried out, you’ll gain a victory point. In a nice moment of decision strategy, you have the option of collecting money from patrons at your restaurant locations instead of gaining the victory point. How are you going to tilt your gains from your restaurants to cater towards the future needs of your park?

Phase 5 is simply a cleanup phase, where the player turn order is determined by victory points, items are cleared and brought into the market, new dinosaur recipes are discovered, workers and scientists are returned to their queue on your lab board, visitors - patrons and hooligans alike - are returned to the draw bag, and plot twists are resolved. Plot twists are variable mechanics and bonuses, determined by a few cards from its particular deck at the beginning of the game, that are meant to increase the replayability of the game.

Also note that at the end of each phase, it should be determined if any players have met an objective. These objectives can only be completed once, so multiple players can only claim the same objective if they complete it during the same phase. When all but one objectives have been claimed, the end of the game is triggered.. Complete the final round, collect points from attractions, exhibits, completed objectives, and a pittance of points for your money supply. At 1VP for every $5 you have, it pays to invest that back into your park. It’s easy to overlook the final scoring rule that any paddock you built which does not contain any dinosaurs will cost a hefty 10VP from your final score. Whichever corporation has the highest number of victory points is the winner.  

Components, Kickstarter, and Criticism

Let’s talk about these meeples first. One thing that was difficult for me to grasp on this game was that every meeple in the base game is a triceratops. The Deluxe Edition on Kickstarter sort of addressed this by offering multiple meeple shapes, but every dinosaur recipe was not represented with a corresponding meeple. In fact, some meeples, like the parasaurolophus, did not even have a dinosaur recipe. This felt like a thematic disconnect when I first encountered it. If my park wasn’t going to visually represent my dino-reality, why not simply have pink cubes? Now, having played Dinosaur Island, I see things from a different angle. Your park board doesn’t necessarily function as an exact representation of what’s in it, but in the same way many people within corporations feel like a number, each dinosaur is represented by a corporate logo: the pink triceratops. In this way, Dinosaur Island feels much more thematic in that you are building and controlling your own corporation trying to achieve its bottom line rather than a sprawling park focused on dinosaurs. In other words, you may find the theme of Dinosaur Island difficult if you approach it seeking the wonder of an archeologist rather than the greed of a blood-sucking lawyer.

This is where I feel like the game divorces from its inspiration material. If you came for Jurassic Park: The Game, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that’s how Dinosaur Island comes across at first glance, it may come as a disappointment that the game is more about running a corporation that funds the whole operation. It has dinosaurs in it, but it’s not necessarily about dinosaurs. The bright colors of the graphic design invoke the time period of the 1990’s in America, where everything was eXtreme and in hypercolor. While this isn’t necessarily a negative to me as I see it trying to tap into one of the cultural themes of that era, I do, however, wish it felt more Jurassic than it did 90’s. When a patron gets eaten, there is little sense of loss or even a cost. It feels more tense that you might draw a hooligan from the bag than if you’re about to have a patron lost to a lapse in dinosaur security. The “dinos on the loose” mechanic being such a small part of the round is part of what disconnects the Dinosaur from the Island. Maybe if it didn’t so heavily rely on Jurassic Park as it’s inspiration I wouldn’t feel this way. I wanted at least part of it to feel like Ian Malcolm in the back of a Jeep saying, “Must go faster.” Instead, it’s merely a blip on the radar of going through the phases, and further reinforces the corporate preoccupation of whether or not we could instead of stopping to think if we should.

Your player board is christened with your corporation’s logo and is double cut so that table jostles don’t cause your DNA to come tumbling out of place before it’s ready to be refined. (These have yet to warp in my copy, which can be a problem with these type of boards sometimes.)

The game comes with a punch board of basic coins. These feel so chinzty and small that they’re more like credits than anything monetary. The Deluxe Edition did some with ultra chunky metal coins, which almost seemed to serve more like slammers as this edition also came with a punch board of pogs as a stretch goal. That’s an odd allocation of resources, in my opinion, but I guess it fed into that feel of American culture in the early 1990’s. Anyway, these coins were slimmed down in the later X-treme edition of the game as to not be so chunky. I actually like the heft of them in the Deluxe edition. As for the base gamers? Still getting those basic cardboard credits. If you lean more heavily towards mechanics than theme and components, this will not make any difference for you. For me, components can make or break a game as I like to experience the different weights and textures of them.

One of the features that was touted for Dinosaur Island is the variable game length. This feels like it was extracted from the game length idea used in Dead of Winter, but it is not scenario based. The short game is helpful as a learning game, but feels almost worthless after that. Both the short and medium games give you the experience of almost getting and engine up and running but without any payoff. The long game is where your park can really get going. Personally I would have rather seen the short game utilized specifically as a “learn to play” game, and the rest of the short and medium game cards refined into the long game for greater variability. The short or partial game idea has been used in games like Charterstone and Hail Hydra as a successful learning tool, whereas Dinosaur Island has it as an unsatisfying bite size version of a game if you only have a short amount of time to play. If that’s truly the case, your setup is going to eat that time up, anyway.

Now with three different editions of the game released (two Kickstarter exclusives and one base retail), in addition to the standalone two-player Duelosaur Island, it seems like there were so many ideas that the creators wanted to be put into the game. Perhaps too many. A few things probably could have been left on the cutting room floor to deliver a more consistent experience, while some more functional graphic design (like the lack of a $2 pass reference on the market board) would have been helpful. The flow of the game can feel clunky from phase to phase, sections of the rulebook, such as green, one-time bonuses are unclear, and for a game with so much iconography, the lack of quick reference sheets is perplexing. After several games, Dinosaur Island never felt intuitive, in spite of the relatively low complexity of decision making in the game.

Flash In The Pan or Evergreen?

Unfortunately for Dinosaur Island, I learned to play it the same week that I learned to play the masterful Caverna, which colored my experience with the game. Dinosaur Island has so many cool, trendy, cutting edge elements, but every time I play it I think to myself, “I could have been playing Caverna.” I’m just not sure it has the staying power I want from a game because I’ve never been left thinking about how I could play it better next time.

Ultimately, Dinosaur Island’s cohesiveness and finesse does not live up to the grandeur of its concepts. It feels like a pink triceratops indulging in a bowl of pistachio ice cream topped with jelly beans, licorice, sprinkles, gummy bears, strawberry syrup, and marshmallows. It’s sweet at first, but Dinosaur Island is not a park I would want a season pass to.

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Gizmos - The Purity Engine

Designed by Phil Walker-Harding
Illustrations by H. Cardoso, J Ferrari, G Guimaraes, M Harlaut & S Jalabi
Published by CMON 2018
2-4 Players ~ 30-45 Minutes
Review “The Purity Engine” by Jack Eddy

Gizmos is so clever that it makes me kind of mad. There is a simplicity about the design that makes it feel so obvious; like, engine building as a singular mechanic barely disguised as a game. I have this same reaction with songs sometimes, where a song structure capitalizes on a particular feeling and the tune is really just a platform for repeated delivery of one incredible hook, Gizmos is satisfying and perfectly crafted pop perfection.

The Self Operating Napkin (Gameplay)

Normally I’d start a review by diving into the gameplay, but there is no way you’re going to look at Gizmos and not ask “what’s up with the marbles?”, so let’s tackle that first. Gizmos, much like CMON’s Potion Explosion, comes with a marble “hopper”, where your spherical currency rolls down in a perfectly Rube Goldbergian fashion. This mechanized beast really accomplishes 2 things: first, it randomizes and automates the currency available for selection, and more importantly, it beautifully establishes tone and theme.

In Gizmos, players are rival inventors at a science fair, competing to create the best, albeit ridiculously complicated, contraption. What is the purpose of your contraption? Doesn’t matter! Gizmos rewards players for the complexity and interconnectivity of their machines, who cares if it saves lives or herald’s a new age for humanity?

Really, everything is driven by a player’s action board, featuring 6 columns, 4 of which correspond to the 4 different actions you can choose to take as your turn. You can build, paying marbles of matching colors to acquire a card from the display, reserve a card from the display to be build later on, pick a revealed marble from the hopper and place it in your cardboard circle of holding (much to the anxiety of toddler parents and cat owners everywhere) or “research”, where you take a number of cards from one of the three tiers of decks and either purchase or reserve the card.

That’s it, those are your four actions of which each one fully composes your turn, and one of them is essentially just feeding into two of the others. But what makes Gizmos so devious is that every card purchased is added to one of the columns in front of you, augmenting that column. For instance, a card may make it so whenever you “pick” a marble, you also get a random one from the hopper.

It sounds benign at first, but this upgrade system starts getting out of control in the best sort of ways, creating exciting combos that chain together, so when you “build” you get to pick marbles, and picking marbles lets you draw random marbles, and maybe you have a few cards for your converter and upgrades columns, making it so you can have more maximum marbles and two of your black marbles can be converted into any color in a turn. You get the idea, but the sequence of interactivity can get bonkers in a turn.

Gameplay continues until a player has sixteen gizmos cards or someone has built 3 tier three gizmos, at which time you finish out the round and count points. Gizmos from Tier I and II are each worth their cost in points, but several of the tier III gizmos have some alternate way of scoring. Additionally, some players may have gizmos that pumped out point tokens along the way. From there it’s the simple and clean conclusion of tallying up points and declaring the winner.

Automatic Weight Reducing Machine (Flow & Feeling)

At first, playing Gizmos feels like standard fare, especially if you’ve played similar pick / purchase / reserve games where players are taking 1 and only 1 action on their turns. But once you start adding cards to your machine, you realize just how clever the game is. What used to take two turns starts taking one, what used to net you one currency is now netting three. As the game goes on, there is a real sense of progression and empowerment, but never at the expense of the simplicity that just makes the game work.

And that simplicity will betray your judgment. After my first game I expected that surely the super power synergies associated with archive building were a dominant strategy, but no, collecting and gathering points won the next game. Then, as my attention turned to point generators, a players’ ultra marble fueled madness allowed them to snap up a ton of really expensive cards, showing yet another path for victory. Each card feels uniquely powerful, and in the right situation can be the linchpin of your entire engine, and that is really, really cool.

The thing is, though, that I’m not sure how much of Gizmos is about choosing to pursue a specific engine, or just reacting to whatever is available and it just kind of works out. With only a few categories of cards which are only further diversified by color of marble they react with, most builds fit within just a few available strategies. If this were a bigger game occupying a 2+ hour session, this would be a huge flaw; but in a game that can clock in under 30 minutes for a full table of experienced players, it’s not such a nuisance.

One thing that I really appreciate is that the tier 3 cards, which are by far the most interesting, are changed up from game to game. Though there are well over 30 total, several are removed randomly at the start of the game, adding a level of unreliability and encouraging more diverse gizmo development.

Probably the best thing about the flow is that you are always eager to add to your engine. It’s addictive; there’s an excitement to it. Players remain engaged and care about what opponents are doing because most turns will either affect the currency available (which may react with several of your gizmos) or affect the cards on display (which may be your heart’s desire for the perfect engine). As a product of everyone’s hawk-like vigilance and anxiety riddled anticipation for their turn, play moves extremely fast, with plenty of aggravated (and hopefully good natured) outcries as players change up the board state.

Keep the Flies Off The Babies (Components, Illustrations & Theme)

For a game that is so methodical, the overall presentation does a great job easing the mechanical tension and reinforces the lighthearted, somewhat goofy nature of the theme. The colors, the marbles, the hopper itself; all of these add a welcome sense of levity, reminding players to not take themselves (or their gizmos) too seriously.

Though this levity could easily teeter into tragic frustration if the components weren’t great, and fortunately, the marble gizmo and its associated ilk is solid and satisfying. From the surprisingly solid plastic marbles, to the hopper which rests mostly-constructed in the helpful game insert while not in use, the game is a breeze to play. Heck, even the little circles built to harness your marbles are deceptively simple and really great at holding things in place.

In fact, the only thing I don’t like about the presentation is its illustrations. It’s weird, because the illustrations aren’t bad, by any means, they just feel uninteresting or stylistically ill-suited to the game. Somehow I want the art to be more stylized and exaggerated, or more abstract like hand drawn schematics. As is, they’re totally forgettable. Even after 8+ plays as someone who normally appreciates artistic presentations in games, I would be hard pressed to try and describe any standout illustration.

So, from a macro, “Big picture” perspective, the game looks great, but the individual illustrations do nothing to stop you from reducing the supposed “theme” to pure mechanical function. But in a game all about bizarre mechanical functions, maybe that’s not so bad.

A Simple Way to Carve a Turkey (Final Thoughts)

Gizmos is astonishingly intuitive and surprisingly addictive. With each group I’ve played it with, there’s always a sense of “one more time”, which is good because I’d way rather be left wanting more than less. If there is one thing that I think will be a turnoff for people, it’s that by the time your engine starts operating at a really good pace, the game is just about over. You are having to balance long term perfection with opportunistic acceptability, which for me is great but for others might be frustrating.

But the ease of play, flexibility, and the singular focus that is a well oiled machine capitalizing on one core mechanic very, very well; Gizmos is a fun and fresh take on engine building that stands above many others in this short-form pick / purchase / reserve genre.

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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Tower of Madness - When the Marbles Hit the Floor

Tower of Madness
Published by Smirk and Dagger Games - 2018
Designer: Curt Covert
Head Artists: EJ Dela Cruz, Gunship Revolution, Jen Santos, Brian Valeza
2 - 5 players ~ 30 - 45 minutes
Review “When The Marbles Hit The Floor” written by Luke Muench

I was never a child who had the opportunity to play Kerplunk. I certainly participated in many of the other childhood board games; Parcheesi, Battleship, Candyland, Monopoly, Scrabble, Yahtzee, and so on. Kerplunk was just one of those titles that I never had the chance to try, at least not in a memorable way. And, frankly, I doubt I would have enjoyed it much as a kid; marbles, to me, seemed silly and ridiculous, and I couldn't fathom why people collected them or played with them on the daily. No, Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh were where it was at, and anyone who thought otherwise clearly couldn’t understand the brilliance of those games.

Fast forward to a few months ago, and a title by the name of Tower of Madness was brought to my attention, a game previously named “Ker-thulhu” before being changed for licensing purposes. A “gamers” version of Kerplunk with a Cthulhu theme slapped on it? Not my bag, I thought; I’ve never been one for lighter experiences. Yet the buzz and hype surrounding the title piqued my interest and made me wonder; was I too quick to judge? What magic might hide within this tall perilous tower? And would I find fun held within its walls, or would I just go mad and, as the tagline goes, lose my marbles?

Disclaimer: Tower of Madness was provided by head designer Curt Covert, who I interviewed recently regarding his company, this game, and much more.

Spooky Slimy Tentacles

“They'll smile and scrabble slowly by and drive you so insane.” - Andrew Gold

Tower of Madness has all the makings of your classic Kerplunk experience, but with subtle twists intermingled. Sure, you pull sticks, this time very well made and stylish tentacles, from a tower, causing marbles to tumble to the bottom and eventually resulting in the end of the game, but when you can pull tentacles and which marbles you actually want to gather can make for some interesting situations.

Players may either play with or without special abilities, granting slight buffs or passive effects that can help them fend off the influences of Cthulhu, so long as they remain sane.

Each round, a location card is revealed, indicating a global rule that lasts for the round. On each player’s turn, they roll 5 dice; in order to successfully interact with that location, they must get a 1, 2, and 3. The last 2 dice compose a player’s discovery total, which will allow them to win the location for points, assuming they are the last player to roll the highest value obtained that round.

Additionally, if a player rolls exactly two 5’s on one of their rolls, they will be able to take 1 of 5 powers, which can be used later that round. These may allow you to reroll your dice, give away madness, or prevent someone from pulling a tentacle.

Each roll, players are forced to keep at least 1 die, potentially limiting a player’s options slowly but surely, giving them a creeping feeling of dread as they begin to realize they have no chance of rolling that 1-2-3 set. If this ends up being the case, they are forced to pull a tentacle from the tower, possibly dooming them, and the table, with the various effects of the marbles:

• Blue marbles, when collected, are worth 3 points each at the end of the game, adding to your score value.

• White marbles allow players to draw magic spells, which can do 1 of 2 effects depending on whether the player is mad or sane.

• Red marbles cause players to accumulate madness; if a player collects 4, they have been driven insane.

• Green marbles represent the doom of the universe. If all 3 are pulled, the game ends, as Cthulhu has risen!

Magic spells can be used on your turn and are either take-that effects or self-preservation effects that can be played at moments specified on the card. Depending on whether you are sane or mad, they will do 1 of 2 effects, with the mad side leaner towards more take-that elements.

If you are driven insane by way of red marbles, your objective changes in the game. You are now a cultist, bent on bringing about the apocalypse. You no longer roll any dice, and instead must always remove a tentacle from the tower on your turn. Your goal, and only way to win, is to be the person to pull the person who pulls and releases the last green marble from the tower.

The game ends when either all locations have been successfully navigated or the final doom token has fallen from the tower. Given that the marbles are totally unpredictable, the length of game can be pretty unpredictable, though most games will end after 35 minutes or so.

Building Madness

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.” - Edgar Allen Poe

While the experience may be simple enough, putting it together is not. The illustrious tower can be a bit of a bear to wrestle with, especially the first time you assemble this ominous totem. Don’t get me wrong, the components are very well made (the production quality of this game is rather high), but it can feel a little frustrating to try and get it all to hold together well. Each tentacle has to be inserted in a specific manner, then the marbles need to be carefully laid in the bed on top, but most maddeningly, the roof needs to be placed over the top so players can’t see what’s happening within. While the tower itself has a strong magnet to hold it closed, the roof has a much smaller, flimsier magnet that doesn’t quite line up with the other half, resulting in the roof potentially pushing the tower open again, leading to falling marbles and frantically trying to push the tower closed once more.

Additionally, you have to act carefully when sitting near the game, for a slight nudge can cause marbles to tumble from the tower, potentially resulting in the premature end of the game. I’ve had at least one game end in me and the other players going “... well, that’s it I guess,” which sucks considering the set-up time and slow build up of tension over the course of the game.

When everything is pulled together, though, this game and its device can work like a charm, with such beautiful aesthetics and finely crafted components. Well, except for the location cards. For some reason, the location cards were poorly cut in my copy of the game, with bumps running up and down the deck in a noticeable manner. This may be an issue specific to my copy can be fixed with the careful use of a knife or scissors, but it's a surprising oversight considering the overall package.

Tick Tock, Tick Tock

“I suppose it’s like the ticking crocodile, isn’t it? Time is chasing after us all.” - J.M. Barrie

I think Tower of Madness suffers most when directly compared to Kerplunk, but it’s hard to escape it, consider the game’s history and nature. Kerplunk was, at its core, a very quick, easy game for younger audiences to simulate the same feelings as Jenga, taking only a few minutes to complete. Tower of Madness, however, takes significantly longer, and players can start to feel it after the first few rounds.

Not that length is inherently bad, some people enjoy longer games with novelty concepts, others despise them, I’ve played Tower of Madness with with both. On the one hand, there are those players, like myself, who quickly just wanted to watch the world burn and made it their sole goal to bring about the end of the world. Part of that can be attributed to being rebellious or liking the idea of going against the grain, but another part of it is how much downtime there is between turns. Due to the process of passing the dice, rolling it up to 5 times, potentially pulling a tentacle, and resolving the effects of various spell cards, turns can take a significant chunk of time, which wouldn’t be so bad if players had anything to do or think about on their turn. But, being a press-your-luck style game, there’s next to no planning turn-to-turn, leaving players twiddling their thumbs until they watch excitedly as the next tentacle is pulled.

Similarly, some players just really wanted to pull tentacles. Regardless of the intent, they wanted to have the physical experience of pulling the sticks from the tower and watching the marbles roll as they did in their youth, fueling a sense of nostalgia as well as being an agent of chaos. This can result in players throwing their turns to intentionally go mad and get to what they find to be the fun part of the game, which I can respect. It can be frustrating when you’re playing a game that outright tells you that you can’t do the fun part of the game yet, that you shouldn’t want to do that thing because it won’t earn you points, and that, if you roll well, you might never have the chance to do that thing.

On the flipside, there are definitely those who found the longer, more involved experience more fun and engaging, with the chaos and randomness that Smirk and Dagger games are known for bringing about exciting, silly, and generally raucous moments. Players might intentionally force other players to reroll their dice or just barely get a better discovery roll than the last player, leading to exclamations and laughter throughout the group. When there are moments, the entire table feels it and reacts in some manner, whether it be excitement or annoyance or anticipation. If you can invest yourself in it, Tower of Madness can and will be a ton of fun, providing a specific experience that you can’t find elsewhere right now, and the time that it takes to commit to it can add to that investment.

Who’s Crazy For It?

“I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind. There was something so pleasant about that place.” - Gnarls Barkley

Like with many Smirk and Dagger games, it comes down to how willing you are to let your guard down and pay less attention to the score and more attention to the silliness Tower of Madness enables. It’s light, goofy fun that took GenCon by storm and has been one of the most talked about games in the industry as of late, and for good reason.

Is it for a gamer like me, who values thoughtful strategy and outwitting his opponents? Not at all, but I’m not the game’s audience by any means, and it’s clear to me that when this game works, it nails it. So if this sounds like a fun time to you, give it a shot. Go on. Pull a tentacle. Embrace the madness.

Who Should Get This Game: If you’re looking for a less demanding dexterity game that fuels your need for Cthulhu and silliness, this is your jam.

Who Shouldn’t Get This Game: Long set-up times, long wait times between turns, and little strategy may turn you off this endeavor.

A review copy of Tower of Madness was provided the publisher, Smirk & Dagger.

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Before There Were Stars - Stories in the Sky

Before There Were Stars
Published by Smirk and Laughter Games - 2018
Designers: Alex Cutler, Matt Fantastic, Alexander Wilkinson
Head Artists: Marthy Angue, Lisa Falzon
3 - 6 players ~ 40 - 60 minutes
Review “Stories in the Sky” written by Luke Muench

Few genres of games are so polarizing, so contentious that even their classification as games sparks debate, as storytelling games. While point systems and restrictions can be put in place, most boil down to people sitting around a table spinning vast narrative webs to share with their friends. It’s an acquired taste and not for everyone.

Before There Were Stars embodies everything I think of when I imagine a traditional storytelling game, for better or worse, but if used in the proper context and as a teaching tool, I believe that it can rise above its competition as an intelligent teaching tool that can help shape the imaginations of younger minds.

Reading the Constellations
“The stars we look up to reflect what’s within us.” - Anonymous

In a round of Before There Were Stars, players, in turn order, claim 2 constellation cards, each of which feature a single word or aspect that must be used in your upcoming narrative. Rather than choosing freely, players roll 12 dice each. The results can be used in combination to claim a story card, each of which requires a couple of specific die results for you to claim it. This can occasionally force you to be unable to take the cards you want or are most drawn to, which can feel disheartening, but I suppose that creativity springs forth from limitations.

Once everyone has claimed their cards, each person will have a minute to present a portion of their story. Each round encourages players to focus on a section of what would be considered a traditional legend, mimicking the format of Greek myths and the like. While these are guidelines, much of the game pushes you to follow this strict format.

Some rounds will require that you use cards from previous rounds of the game, which can sound challenging but is often very simple. Many stories will have a couple of cards act as pervading themes or main characters in the story at hand, resulting in those cards being reused round after round.

After everyone has told their tale, players pass colored bags around, dropping colored stars into the bags, awarding the more precious (and higher point value) stars into the bags of the storyteller that you liked most that round.

Keeping Score In Stars
“You can be the moon and still be jealous of the stars.” - Gary Allan

I find that scoring is one of the trickiest and most polarizing aspects of the game. On the one hand, I acknowledge that within the current state of the hobby, for a game to be considered a game there needs to be a system to determine a winner. There will always be those who want to know what the score is or who won. So it makes sense to have the stars system present, as well as keeping it hidden for most of the game in an effort to both disguise and ignore its importance.

But on the other hand… do we REALLY need a scoring system?

This year at the Metatopia convention, I had the chance to talk to one of the co-designers, Matt Fantastic, while we were playing a round of Before There Were Stars. When addressing the scoring system, he explained that his goal was to create a feeling of everyone being a winner by awarding players with colorful stars. At the end of the round, players pour out a bunch of pretty tokens that are meant to make you feel good about how you’ve done, regardless of the points behind it.

In some ways, I admire the aim of this thought and feel that it is a genuine gesture that will work for some. To me, however, the fact that players keep score at all undermines these altruistic goals; by awarding points at all, it puts value on the ideas of winners and losers. Honestly, I agree with the designer and want everyone to feel like they won, so if I were to revisit Before There Were Stars, I would nix the scoring altogether in favor of the end-game awards.

When each game concludes, players receive a token that they award to another player, noting something special or impactful about their story that they related to or appreciated. This encourages everyone to pay attention when everyone else is speaking and gives everyone a chance to feel good about a specific, tangible part of their story. Even someone who feels pretty disappointed in how their narrative came together is shown appreciation for a part of what they made.

Journeys and Their Bright Destinations
“It is not the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” - WIlliam Shakespeare

The thing is, I likely won’t be returning to Before There Were Stars, not because it’s a bad game, but that it isn’t made for me. Rather, this title is clearly tailored to a younger audience. The 1-minute time limit each round, the restricted choice or cards, and the scripted narrative structure are all designed to guide stories in particular ways, helping those who may otherwise not have the confidence or encouragement to tell stories. As a writer and actor, I’ve done my fair share of improv and storytelling, and these confines feel a little too confining to me. Back in 5th grade, however, this would have been a wonderful tool to get my brain moving and forcing me to try what I might otherwise find terrifying.

Families and teachers will get a kick out of putting this on the table and watching kids eyes light up as they engage with and earnestly invest themselves in the stories at hand. It’s colorful and imaginative and helps form stories out of thin air. Many adults, however, will likely pass this one over. I set up this game to play at one of my weekly game nights, but when players realized what it was, they had no interest in participating, asking me to pack it away rather than have them go through the motions.

It’s not for everyone, but if you can find the right audience, Before There Were Stars can transform right before your eyes into a magical experience full of starry-eyed wonder.

Who Should Get This Game: Groups who care more about storytelling than mechanics, Parents or teachers looking to guide younger players through a beautiful storytelling experience.

Who Shouldn’t Get This Game: If you care about score or don’t like being put on the spot, you’ll find this game to be less than enjoyable.

The Unlock! Series & The House on The Hill

The Unlock! Series & The House on The Hill
Published by Space Cowboys
Scenario by Fabrice Mazza
Illustrations by Pierre Santamaria
1-6 Players ~ 60 Minutes
Review by Jack Eddy

Sometimes, you just gotta know what you are getting into. So, let’s start with what the heck this thing is.

The Unlock series, like “Escape the Room” and “EXIT” are singular, one and done puzzle game experiences intended to hit some of the same thrills as an escape room. What sets the Unlock games apart is that they are generally the “cleanest” of the three, simply using cards, an app, and the players’ intuition.

While I’ll occasionally slip into a self indulgent critique of the genre, my main focus in this review is specifically on the Unlock! Series as a whole, as well as my thoughts on this one adventure. Also, because the sense of discovery is about 90% of the joy in this game, I will avoid spoiling any clues or solutions, that’ll be up to you to figure out.

... Phew, exposition DONE.

Field Training - Tutorial

Like the escape rooms that serve as inspiration for these games, most new players will have a mix of two pervasive feelings - excitement and dread. Excitement at the thrill of having to use your wits and gumption to discover secrets, solve puzzles, and make it through the mystery before time runs out; and dread because of the fear of not understanding how things work or knowing how to interact with the game as intended.

This is where Unlock’s first masterstroke comes into play. Every pack comes with a brief tutorial mission, that showcases how cards interact in a straightforward and intuitive way. Just read the text of the top card of the deck, flip it over, then the picture of the room you are in reveals numbers that correspond to other cards in the deck that you can investigate, leading to new cards that can be revealed, simple puzzles to follow, then ultimately, the escape from the room.

This tutorial is a fantastic 5-10 minute primer for the real experience, and does a great job in amping up the players about what’s to come, and assuage fears of not knowing what to do when you are in the adventure proper.

So let’s talk about what it is you do.

Addition and Abstraction - How the Game Works

Once you’ve downloaded the free Unlock! App, you just put in the name of your adventure, and hit start as soon as you are told to by the text of the adventure’s top card. From there, like the tutorial, your starting room will highlight several items that you can investigate, which in turn correspond to new cards that you can draw.

The basics are that blue and red cards are halves of interacting objects, gold cards are puzzles requiring a numeric solution (entered into the app) and grey cards are typically clues or hide secrets that can be investigated further. Everything is driven by numbers, so for instance, a blue “dead flashlight” card and a red “battery” card can be combined by adding their unique card numbers; find if that number is in the deck, and it might reveal a new “functioning flashlight” card, which itself might be able to be combined with a dark closet, an armoire, or some other puzzle.

Similarly, while some numbers might be highlighted on cards, some of the cards may have numbers hidden in the art, which also prompt you to uncover corresponding cards in the deck, simulating a “closer investigation”. As any good sleuth worth an episode of Scooby Doo knows, a tapestry embroidered with a number 42 is worth a closer look, and the new card might just be the solution to a seemingly unrelated puzzle. Jinkies.

At any given moment, you’ll likely have 4-10 revealed cards in front of players, and everyone will be guessing about what they could possibly mean or how they relate. Fortunately, if you ever get stuck, the app has a clue system where you can punch in the number of a card and get a little more information about it.

One by one, you’ll reveal new rooms, items, objects, and mysteries. There’s a fantastic feeling to seeing the new information revealed, especially as investigators frantically seek to contextualize any new clues among all of the “yet unsolved” clues left on the table. This may sound untenable in a 60 card deck, but thankfully, when a new card is revealed it will often show an X through numbers at the top, prompting you to remove certain cards that will no longer be relevant to the game. Few games deliver such a potent rush of dopamine as you hungrily chew through the mystery one card at a time.

Except when you don’t.  

A Slap on the Wrist

If there’s one thing I don’t like about the Unlock! system, it’s penalty cards resulting from “incorrectly” combining items and objects. You’ll try to combine your # 42 laser pointer and a mysterious statue # 31, seeing that indeed, in the deck there is a card with # 73. GREAT! Then you flip the card only to find that it is a dead end, and you have to apply a 3 minute penalty to your time (helpfully tracked by the app).

I get it. For this to be a game rather than a puzzle, there has to be some sort of stakes and encouragement to make smart decisions, but in a game all about discovery and trial, looking for often obscure solutions to puzzles seemingly created by a mad genius, combining a laser pointer and bust doesn’t seem too unusual. Not only do you have to suffer the realization that it lead to a dead end, but now you have to endure the frustrating humiliation of a 3 minute penalty, subtracting 5% of your overall time. This kind of thing makes people gun shy when they should be overwhelmed with a joy of discovery.  

This wouldn’t be so bad if the hint system were encouraged more, but it’s not even included as part of the tutorial and I have a feeling that most gamers will see the hints as a sort of handicap, reserving it only as a last resort. I wish that the manual or app gave some recommendations or demonstration of the hints so that players had a gauge of when to utilize them, because chances are that if you have gone five minutes without a new discovery, it’s probably time to swallow your pride. At 60 minutes to complete the adventure, you’d hate to know you wasted your time overlooking the obvious.

My recommendation is to trust in your logic and the system itself. If it feels like there are no possible solutions, it means that you have missed something and start using hints; and before you start using your laser pointer on the eyes of various statues willy-nilly, think about what sort of logic could be behind the combination of items, lest you suffer some severe penalties.

The House on the Hill; Probably Not Creepy at All - Scenario Review

House on the Hill is my 2nd game in this series, and one of several “Escape Room in a box” games that my wife and I have played together. The setup, like most, is very thin. Instead the theme comes through the ambience and act of exploration, which is particularly well illustrated and intriguing in this adventure.

As you might expect, you are trapped in a creepy old mansion where your captor has obviously been obsessed with the occult. At first, you’ll interact with relatively benign objects like keys and lock boxes, inputting codes into various dials; soon you’ll be looking over research notes about tarot cards, examining cryptic incantations, and brushing up on your demonology.

I’ll admit, I was surprised when a clue involved a large “666” and references to “the number of the beast”. Not that I’m skittish about such things, but it was much more explicit than I expected. Then again, it’s nothing more salacious than what a high-schooler might draw on their 3 ring binder, so maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised. Still, I’d hate for parents to be caught off guard without a content warning on this ages 10+ box.

The game itself presented several crafty puzzles that, like a good stretch, feels like what you are grasping for what is just barely outside your reach. Only twice did we feel like we had rely on hints to help us re-contextualize clues from the vast array of cards we were tearing through, but there was nothing particularly difficult about the game. The design was tight and it made good use of the Unlock! System, but again, there were a few moments where our experimentation led to a few penalty cards which ultimately proved to be our downfall. By the time we finished, we were still under 60 minutes, but 9 minutes were added to our time through three frustrating penalties, meaning we went over the limit.

Once the time limit expires, the game encourages you to press on, which we did, albeit somewhat diminished. All told, we had fun, but came across a couple relatively opaque puzzles about halfway through that really slowed us down. Once we got ourselves back on track, we were in a slap dash race against time, but we just couldn’t make it under the wire.

As a singular adventure, this was an okay game. Not too difficult in that we were able to finish, but not the tightest applied logic that I’ve seen. There were also a few moments, particularly when looking for hidden numbers that required extra-close examination and card combinations resulting in penalties that felt too obtuse, but overall we were glad we did the adventure.

Some of the puzzles, in particular those at the first and last thirds of the game, were just the right blend of difficulty and enticing details to keep things tense and fun. Wrap that all up in a really thematic horror setting and our overall thoughts were positive. This was a well crafted escape room style game that had us hungry to see more Unlock!.

Bolt, Latch, Lock, and Key - Final Thoughts

By far, the most controversial thing about this new wave of one-and-done games is the resulting waste and lack of replayability. Once you finish the adventure, playing through again would be  a breeze. Maybe if you played these regularly you could store them away, only to revisit them years down the road once time reclaims the memories, and your recollection will betray you enough to keep you entertained, but for the most part, once you’ve done one of these, you are done.

So, is it worth it?

Value is a hard thing to define. In a world where entertainment is an entitlement, it’s hard to gauge exactly what an hour of your time is worth. As a form of pure, unadulterated fun, yes, we had a good evening at less than we’d pay to go to the movies. I think there is solid fun in these games worth the entry fee for 2-4 players. Fewer and you might get lost in the weeds, and more players and you might have too many cooks in the kitchen.

As for the waste, one of my favorite things about the Unlock! series is that it remains in-tact, repeatable, and infectious. While this means that all puzzles are conceptual and they lack the sort of dynamic interactivity that other games that have you punch, break, and tear components might have, these are fully replayable, meaning that you can gift it to a friend, hoping they’ll do the same.

So if you like puzzles and mysteries and you are looking for some disposable yet very entertaining fun, perfect for date night or gaming with friends, the Unlock! Series is a great starting point, and I’m personally looking forward to playing again.

Review copy provided by Classic Toys in Anchorage, Alaska.

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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Barenpark - Pleasent for Even the Grizzliest Players

Barenpark
Published by Mayfair Games - 2017
Designer: Phil Walker-Harding
Head Artist: Klemens Franz
2 - 4 players ~ 30 - 45 minutes
Review “Pleasent for Even the Grizzliest Players” written by Luke Muench

When covering an industry, any industry, it’s easy to get jaded; and tabletop gaming is no exception. We live in a world where products are being created ad nauseum, where games are designed around never-ending expansion cycles and where crucial development time is cut to get the game to the masses as soon as possible. And most of us are more than happy to fork cash over the hype monster for games that we don’t even know if we’ll like because of a name on the box, a recognizable title, a reliable publisher, or we just love how the box looks.

Some time ago on this year’s Tabletop Day, the innocent, baby-faced Barenpark was placed in front of me with little ceremony, pomp, or circumstance. Looking at the box art, I couldn’t help but feel the familiar acidic taste of cynicism boil in my throat as I waited for what was surely a looser version of Patchwork, shoehorned to fit 4 players, with some cute bears plastered on the components.

And you know what? I was right. That’s exactly what I got. And I love it.

Even if the storage solution is a bit atrocious.

Fur Us To Paw-nder

“Forget about your worries and your strife…” - Baloo the Bear

Barenpark couldn’t be a simpler affair, bringing about a tone of ease and relaxation (aside from the occasional curse uttered when you get skunked out of the tile you need).

Each turn, you place a tile you’ve collected on a previous turn on your board adjacent to tiles you’ve already built. These tiles will cover various symbols that, you guessed it, earn you more tiles to place on future turns. Green wheelbarrows get your generic green park tiles, allowing you to fill gaps easily and better maneuver through your park layout. White cement trucks let you grab one of the four types of bear sanctuaries, earning you more points the earlier you draw them. Orange dump trucks earn you the rare specialty tiles, each of which is entirely unique and features strange and interesting patterns. And finally, construction workers will get you an additional plot of land to connect to your park, which will grow to be four tiles large.

So much work to be done…

One symbol, however, cannot be covered; the dreaded manholes. These sit in the middle of your boards, taunting you, laughing maniacally as you attempt to shift your plans around them; small wrenches thrown in your otherwise meticulous machinations. Luckily, these do serve an important purpose; once you fill in a section of your board fully (other than the aforementioned manhole), that spot will be filled in by a high-scoring, glorious bear statue. Similar to the white tiles, the earlier you grab one of these, the more you earn, making long-term planning a constant necessity.

The only other thing to consider is achievements; each game will feature 3 randomly selected scoring options from a pool of 10, providing players will a few more ways to pull ahead of the competition. Parameters include being the first to have 3 bears of a given type in your park, making a continuous water feature throughout your park, or building 2 bear statues in the same turn.

Pun-derstandably Cute

“Wocka wocka!” - Fozzie Bear

For the jaded gamer, a thousand words might come to your (my) snooty mind when taking first glance at this game; shallow, trite, uninteresting... The art is nothing special, though there is a certain charm to the child-like sketches the adorn the central board and the bears meandering through their tiles. The components are sturdy and feel good in hand, but there’s nothing overtly new or exciting about them. For a modern game, there are no embellishments here; this is as bear-bones as it gets.

These piles of tiles won’t last long.

Yet in this way, Barenpark is a comforting, familiar experience. It does little to hide what it is because it clearly knows what it wants to be and succeeds on every level. Each time I pull this out, I know to expect a light, relaxing time building my little park with a few friends, hoping I can eke out just a few more points to stretch ahead of the competition. Other than the occasion inflammatory cry, much of your time spent with this game will be calm and contemplative as everyone works to consider their next 2 or 3 turns.

Now, I mentioned earlier that in a narrow view, Patchwork can be seen as the superior game; it has tighter mechanics, presents many of the same tile-laying concepts at work here, and works to keep an ever-present tension throughout the experience. But you know what it doesn’t have? Bears. Tons of cute little bears and even some non-bears (namely Koalas). If you put a cute little bear cub and a quilt in front of me, I’m sorry, I’m cubbing it up all day.

And you know what else Barenpark has? The ability to play with 4 players. Sure, having a smart 2-player experience is good to have in your collection, but Barenpark is still quite fun at the 2-player mark and is just as enjoyable if not more so at 3 and 4, a flexibility that can go a long way. Game nights don’t often have room for 2-player endeavors, meaning that, particularly in my collection, exclusively 2-player games are rare due to how infrequently they get played. Barenpark both solves that problem and provides that 2-player experience, even if it’s slightly subpar in comparison.

I call it “Bear-adise”".

One of My Bear-y Favorites

“Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.” - Winnie the Pooh

I’ve been meaning to track a copy of this game down for the last year, and I am so glad I finally got my hands on one. Barenpark is one of those games I can always return to without fail, knowing just what to expect with little deviation or surprises from a genuinely quaint, fun time. It’s great to start out or end a game night or to cuddle up on the carpet with your significant other to play at 1 in the morning. It has a theme that appeals to everyone, a puzzle quickly grasped, and a lighthearted tone that takes a lot of the pressure out of the competition. To me, I imagine this title will always have a place in my collection.

Who Should Get This Game: Anyone who doesn’t need brand new ideas to have a good time, finding pleasure in simplicity and a fun puzzle.
Who Shouldn’t Get This Game: If you’re looking for the next big game-changer or hate bears, you can pass this one by.

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.

The Cardboard Herald is funded by the generous support of readers, listeners, and viewers like you. If you'd like to see more content like this, you can support us on Patreon here.

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Fist of Dragonstones: The Tavern Edition - Speculative Bewitchment

Fist of Dragonstones: The Tavern Edition
Designed by Bruno Faidutti & Michael Schacht
Published by Stronghold Games (Tavern Edition 2018)
3-6 Players ~ 45-60 Minutes
Review “Speculative Bewitchment” by Jack Eddy

I love lying in games… even if I’m terrible at it. I can’t help but revel in the sinister pleasure of sewing doubt in the hearts and minds of my friends. You better believe that, even when on the side of the angels, you’ll hear me say “It’s good that you trust me, because I’m certainly a human player OR AM I?” or “Sure, my cart contains 4 chickens. Yes. Chickens. Henrietta, Ezekiel, Trista, and Marge, absolutely and without a doubt NO CROSSBOWS.”

Basically, my only self defense in bluffing games is to lean into how bad of a liar I am, so everything sounds like lies, and seldom are the opportunities for giggly, anxiety-filled bravado so plentiful as when playing Fist of Dragonstones.

Flourish & Bravado (Gameplay)

Dragonstones is a closed fist auction game, where every round, players bid on a sequence of cards one at a time. Want to win an auction? Bid your gold. If there’s a tie amongst bids, boom! A tie-breaker auction is held using silver. All of this is in an effort to rotate your bizarrely dice-like point tracker to it’s 3-pip side, marking you as the victor. Easy.

Well, there’s a little more than that. The cards that you bid on are made up of the Witch (who is  always auctioned first), then an assortment of 7 standard characters and three drawn special characters are shuffled together and resolved one at a time. Characters provide a myriad of abilities, but the majority of them boil down to collecting and spending resources, including the three different dragonstones, which are most often spent in one way or another to acquire points. While these basic types of powers are functional and serve as the mechanical backbone of the game, they are also like tax forms; necessary but boring.

No, Dragonstones shines when it gets weird, which fortunately starts at the top of each round with the witch. When won at the auction, her card grants  the possessor an immeasurably powerful and terrifying black token. This token can be used to bid on any card later in the round to nullify that card’s effects. Since players have to pay any scratch they bid, the fear of bewitchment is a considerable factor for all players.

There are plenty of other weird powers in the deck, too, ranging from permanent effects that let you keep your dragonstone pile secret to being able to discard your card to essentially “restart” an auction. These cards are what breathe life into an otherwise straightforward resource-conversion auction game.

Thus, round after round proceeds, where the same eight standard cards (including the witch) and three newcomer special characters are bid upon until someone collects their third point. There are a few other mechanics, such as the king's favor, which incentivizes the last bid of the round, but the core loop of flip-bid-repeat remains constant.

Betting with a Dragon’s Hoard (Resources)

How often are resources themselves more interesting than what they are used to buy? By far, the most mechanically interesting system in Dragonstones is the various types of resources and how they impact your decisions.

Earlier, I mentioned that auctions are paid for with silver and gold, but I didn’t mention that each can further be divided between common and fairy silver and gold, all of which are kept hidden behind a player’s screen until their inevitable spending.

Fairy gold is your most prominent resource, which is good, because it is both A) magically delicious, and B) a self-replenishing resource that returns to you each round. Common gold and silver also come stock at the start of the game, but lacking fairy-ish properties, they go back to the support once spent. The elusive and impressively cobalt-colored fairy silver likewise returns to you, but is only available through special character cards which may or may not come up in a given game. Apparently, mortals don’t know jack about currency in the world of Dragonstones (which, in this Tavern Edition, happens to also be the world of Dragon & Flagon, also by Stronghold Games).

Due to the divide between returning and losable currency, players are speculating more about inherent values, acceptable losses, and capabilities of your rivals than ever before. In a way, Dragonstones feels as much of a game about investment as it does about auctioning, even if there is no engine to build, an achievement that is actually really cool.

Unfit & Finish (Components)

From a macro perspective, I dig how the game looks on the table. Cards, gems, player screens adornng the table, the color palette, the glass bead dragonstones that would look at home at the bottom of a fishtank, and the hordes of varying color discs biddable at auction (including sparkly and alluring fairy gold and silver colors)... It all evokes exactly what you want, like this is a card game within a magical world, where you and your friends are in a dingy dwarf-run tavern, flipping cards and spilling grog. Upon closer examination, though, the game looks rough around the edges.

Frankly, I’m not a fan of the art style. In a wide, wide world of incredibly illustrated board games, Dragonstones’ artwork ranges from uninspired to downright bad. Fortunately, there is a sense of cohesion to the game, and some of the illustrations (particularly the creatures) are colorful and attention-grabbing. That being said, if you’re already resistant to an overly saturated market of “generic fantasy” games, this artwork will do nothing to change your mind.

Sadly, this C-Grade vibe extends beyond the art. From the somewhat plastic-y drawstring bag, to the wooden blocks used as point trackers, this is not a premium package, which would be fine if not for the box.  

Much to the annoyance of shelf organizers everywhere, this game comes in a non-standard box size,  slightly wider than your typical square frame. Okay, that’s fine... except the contents of Dragonstones could easily collapse into a much, much smaller box, and there is no attempt of hiding this fact through deluxe custom inserts, functional compartments, or even some cosmetic fluff. As you crack open the game and peer past the ludicrously oversized rulebook, you gaze upon a sea of white cardboard, with all the components cradled snuggly in a narrow gap at its center.

I am not a publisher, and I don’t know all the considerations manufacturing must take, but the fact that this game was not consolidated to a box a third of its size seems both deceptive and wasteful. At a retail price of nearly $50, Fist of Dragonstones does not feel like a good bang for your buck.

May Your Cup Overflow (Final Thoughts)

Overall, Dragonstones was a fairly enjoyable experience. It feels dated, to be sure, but the game was originally published over 15 years ago. This new edition offers a bevy of new characters that spruce up the game and breathe some new life into the game and provide some much needed variety. And because every turn, every player is bidding, the game seems like the perfect platform for the sort of bluffing shenanigans I love. What can I say, I have an attraction to the auction-by-auction interactions spurred by the evaluation of your opponent’s intended actions.

The thing about Dragonstones, though, is that sometimes, you just flat out don’t care about the current auction, or you’ll have overspent on previous cards, leaving you to just kind of hang back and see what happens. Yes, skilled, confident players will generally do better, but oftentimes the sort of tense risk calculation becomes overwhelming and you throw your hand in and say, “well, whatever happens, happens,” or even worse, everyone knows one player has all they need to secure victory and everyone is just waiting for the inevitable, and nothing kills tension like going through the motions and thinking about what game you are going to play next.

Overall, I feel let down, not because it’s a bad game, but because it seems like a waste. There is no other, closed fist auction game quite like it, but between a sometimes underwhelming conclusion and regrettable production, at $50 it’s a hard recommend.

If you are still interested, “The Tavern Edition” moniker is a good fit. There is a sort of languid charm to the game, a filler meant to be merely a good time-waster with friends, a platform for auctions that are as cunningly sinister as they are hilariously dumb.

A copy of Fist of Dragonstones: Tavern Edition was provided by Stronghold Games

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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Welcome To... A Not-so-roll and write!

Welcome To
Designed by Benoit Turpin
Art by Anne Heidsieck
Published by Blue Cocker Games & Deep Water Games - 2018
1-100 Players ~ 25 Min
Review by Chris Douglas

I recently moved about halfway across the US, from Alaska to Arizona, and I can tell you one thing. Starting over in a new town is tough. Sure, things look familiar at first; maybe just slight shifts in ways of life, different people, geckos instead of squirrels, different kinds of restaurants, but overall, it’s just people being people. But then something snaps you back into reality, like the startling burn you get from your car seat after it’s been sitting in the 100 degree sun all day - You realize, small things make big changes, and Alaska and Arizona are NOT the same.

Which is actually my experience with “Welcome To…”. Sure, you got your cute little Roll n’ Write pencils, and yeah, the neighborhood pages have a familiar No Siesta-like vibe, but then it hits you…… Cards. Effects. Roll n’ Write. Wait, what?  No DICE?!?! How can you Roll n’ Write with no dice to roll!?

Welcome To Your Perfect Home!

Something New

In ‘Welcome to…’, Players build a neighborhood utilizing the traditional pencil and paper tools of the Roll n’ Write, though technically, that genre name may not apply. In lieu of rolling dice, players shuffle the address number cards and use the number/color combinations revealed to determine how players’ neighborhood page will be populated and what actions they may take.

During the game, these cards are arranged into 3 stacks. The cool thing is that on one side of the cards you have a number, but the other side has a symbol corresponding to an action. Every round, when the top card of each stack is flipped, the new card “on deck” combined with the action you just revealed makes up the various action/number combos players will select from. You as the player will pick one of these combos, filling in your sheet with new houses, fences, pools, estates…

But wait, there’s a trick to it. You must write the number on a house in one of your three neighborhood rows, but because you are keeping up with the Jones’ you can never write in a lower number than the houses to the left of it, meaning placement and timing all matter, and of course, players must be cognizant of 3 city plans; objectives laid out at the beginning of the game that can be scored when players fill in their neighborhoods as depicted. Failure to be able to place means no action, and actions range from altering numbers and placement restrictions, to giving extra opportunities for points at the end of the game.

Many of these actions relate to the bottom half of their neighborhood page, making several sort of mini-games, keeping up tension and competition with other players. This is a great way to stack victory points for that end of the game comeback! (Sometimes it might be more beneficial to just play for the bonuses). New combinations come up all the time and trying to make each action/number combo work optimally was more brain burning than I expected.

It’s fun to work out how best to completely fill up your neighborhood page and rack up the most victory points, while also imagining your perfect suburban life  (I’ve always wanted a pool and in Welcome To my perfect home all I have to do is flip a card? That IS perfect!).

Ultimately, what I discovered was that the card mechanism is an intriguing (and somewhat refreshing) deviation from the Roll n’ Write norm. As number cards get used up, you can anticipate what number cards could be coming up in future rounds, and being able to utilize various bonus effects in conjunction with their paired number gives players more flexibility, and adds something more dynamic than just rolling and wishing for better numbers to come up. I enjoyed developing my ‘burb and not once during the game did I miss rolling dice.

Open House (Presentation)

At first glance Welcome To comes off a little drab. True to the Roll(Flip) n’ Write genre, there are no characters or special abilities, but feeling the neighborhood grow encourages you to create your own stories, which in turn creates a sort of social player interaction. Who and what is going on in each house, who is building a pool in their backyard, which grumpy neighbors are at each others’ throats and why each of them are putting fences up? The acts of growth, expansion, and bringing your neighborhood to life work nicely in conjunction with the colorful, throwback style of the game itself, elevating the quaintly nostalgic theme.

After several plays, what first felt woefully drab now felt wonderfully kisch, and I’m completely endeared to it’s little slice of blissful Americana.

Components…

There are one hundred neighborhood pages included with the game, and although i’m not sure if I even know 100 people to play the game at the supposed “1-100 player count”, I find myself wondering if even 100 sheets for 50 two player games would be enough……. Fortunately, if you run out of player sheets, the publisher made them available to download and print off their website for free.  

As far as the layout, the components are simple, vivid, and fully functional. I appreciate the nostalgic presentation and I couldn’t stop thinking about being an architect like Mike Brady, and how he would have felt right at home here. I never had an issue identifying the different effects with their associated colors, and everything is color coded and organized nicely on the Neighborhood page. The cards have a glossy finish and can slide around a bit, but this doesn’t kill the overall gameplay at all.

Final Thoughts

We all know that dice rolls can be brutal, even down right malicious! And rolling garbage all night sucks. In Welcome to…. the gripping hope and/or heavy devastation that can come when a crucial number is revealed (or not revealed) makes for some pretty tense excitement. (think: Is it Door number 1, door number 2 or door number 3?) If you’re not too happy about the revealed cards, the effects alleviate the pressure and allow players to strategically manipulate the numbers and bonuses on their neighborhood page for maximum Victory Points.

That said, players who crave lots of interaction in games won’t get their fix in this ‘hood. Focusing on making your neighborhood “perfect” can also make the game feel solitary as you work on your own developing (and hopefully flourishing) township, and because all players see the next available actions and all players have to work with the same number/action combos that are revealed, everyone shares the same fate as far as luck is concerned. The communities you create may start looking very similar after several playthroughs. Though, with loads of ways to score victory points makes for fantastic (and repeated) trips to the Point Salad bar feel both comfortably familiar and refreshingly new.

So if you’re a Roll n’ Write fan that likes nostalgia and stacking points, and if you are interested in an innovative spin on the genre, i recommend checking out Welcome to…..Your perfect home!

Chris Douglas is the host of our conversational podcast TCbH Hangouts.

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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Koi - Fish Out of Water

KOI
Published by Smirk and Laughter Games - 2018
Designer: Bill Lasek
Head Artist: Christy Freeman
2 - 4 players ~ 30 - 45 minutes
Review written by Luke Muench

We, as people, strive for various goals in our lives. To get the dream job, get married, have a house, grow old with your loved ones, and so on. There’s so much to work for in this world, and sometimes it can be hard to choose what to dedicate your time and energies towards.

Little did I know, koi fish know way better than the rest of us. Their goal, according to ancient Japanese legend, is to be the strongest one that ever was, to swim upriver against all odds, and to one day transform into a dragon. A freaking DRAGON. I mean, come on, what more can you ask for?

KOI asks you, the player, to live out that legend, eating various animals to grow strong in hopes of eventually reaching that pinnacle of fishy transformation. The question is, does it build to a spectacular fin-ish, or does it drag-on for far too long?

Disclaimer: KOI was designed by my friend, Bill Lasek, whom I’ve gotten to know over the course of two or three social gatherings. This relationship will not impact my thoughts on the game.
Disclaimer #2: This game was provided for review purposes by Curt Covert of Smirk and Laughter.
Disclaimer #3: No, I’m not sorry for the puns. Thank you for pun-derstanding.

Hungry Hungry Koi Fish
“Don’t fashion me into a maiden that needs saving from a dragon. I am the dragon, and I will eat you whole.” - Anonymous

KOI features a fairly easy and straightforward gameplay loop. Each turn, players will have the opportunity to play as many cards as they wish out of their hand, allowing them to move their fish in specific patterns or place tokens onto the board.

The cards you play  generally have a mixture of black (mandatory) movements and blue (optional) movements giving a slight amount of control over how some of your cards will play out. That said, movements are based around the direction your koi fish is facing, meaning that position and orientation are paramount to your pond-ered strategy. Players will use cards to try and twist and finagle their little pawns between rocks and around other fish, hoping to eat up dragonflies and frogs, awarding players 3 points and 1 point respectively. Seeing as this is the only way for players to earn points, quickly your fishes consumption will draw  the most focus.

Placing tokens, however, can assist in your efforts or thwart those of others. Placing rocks in the board creates obstacles that fish need to make their way around. Lily pads spawn dragonflies each round, creating more ways of earning points. Frogs eat all adjacent dragonflies, screwing other players out of points while also providing small amounts of points themselves. And flowers create shockwaves throughout the pond, pushing various tokens here and there.

If players feel like they don’t have any cards of value in hand, they can always discard as many cards as they wish, drawing back up the same number of cards minus 1. This can, on occasion, allow you to do things when you may otherwise be stuck, but it’s often the least appealing option, even if it means you floundering around for a turn or two.

Players draw three cards at the start of each round barring the first, meaning you’re aware of your steady income from the get-go; it comes down to how you budget and use said cards. Do you hold off and play no cards this turn, banking on a big play in a couple of turns, or are you going to consistently spend all your cards each round? This flexibility can lead to some creative plays that can spice up any turn of the game, leading to some “oh snap!” moments that ripple through the players at the table.

The last little aspect of the game is the weather cards, which are drawn at the beginning of rounds, applying global effects and changing how each player may approach their turn. This can keep things fresh and tend to add cute little additions to your average turn.

The game plays out for 7 rounds, after which whoever has the most points wins. Sounds like a pretty straightforward game, right? And it is… until its not.

Swimming Upstream
“A dragon is not a slave.” - Daenerys Targaryen

It only takes a couple of turns before players start to feel restricted by their hand size and, more importantly, what cards they draw into. It’s completely possible to draw no movement cards on a turn, and just as plausible to draw into movement cards that will force you off in an unrelated and inane direction. Obviously, this is a function of the game, as you can’t just swim where you please, but it can feel frustrating; one player will likely be doing better than another not based on their skill or foresight, but based on what cards they happened to draw into.

In this same vein, a number of cards exist solely to screw with other players, a staple of the Smirk and Dagger repertoire for sure, but when your hand of options are so limited, it can feel like an uphill battle. At the end of the day, obtaining dragonflies and frogs are all that matter, so if you’re not gaining any on your turn, even if you’re preventing others from doing the same, it can feel daunting and uninvolved.

That being said, the Smirk games have always been lightweight in their design, made to be more goofy and fun than competitive, especially the Laughter line of games. KOI is clearly meant to appeal to audiences who aren’t as concerned over winning as I am.

One rule, however, stands out particularly in terms of its complexity when compared to the rest of the game. When the aforementioned flowers force various pieces across the board, each token has its own rules when interacting with other objects, requiring you to flip through the rulebook to a chart listing how each thing should move, sending the game you’re playing to a shuddering halt. This is only made more confusing when you realize that if a flower pushes another flower on the board, that 2nd flower then activates as well, creating a potential cascade of chaos as you try and determine how everything moves and in what order they all move in.

I’ve been forced to reference the rules a surprising number of times when playing through KOI, which is a bummer when the game prides itself on being easy to pick up and play.

For me, though, my biggest issue with the experience was the amount of time it took players to take their turns. See, each player has at least 3 cards each turn that they have to figure out how to chain together. Each card then may have optional movements that you have to choose whether or not to take. Then you have to consider when to drop certain objects on to the board, knowing that it may mess up your movement, provide others with an advantage, or that the timing of this is crucial to allow you to get where you need to be headed. Top this off with the constant question of whether or not to discard cards to try and get better ones, and KOI consistently fostered a feeling of analysis paralysis. For some, this may not be a big deal, but I found it a bit tedious, especially if you have to wait on 3 other players.

Rising Above It All
“You must have a dragon hidden inside you. When you need, you let the dragon out.” - Anderson Silva

Now, this might ultimately sound like a negative review, which admittedly, you have every right to think so, but here’s the thing; I play games primarily to socialize and to outwit my opponents in games. KOI doesn’t really offer me an opportunity to do either. When it comes to socialization, everyone has their heads buried in their cards as they try and math out just how to shift and move their little koi boi across the map. And in terms of outwitting others, it doesn’t feel smart to have an opponent play a card that you had no idea was coming, it just feels a bit random.

So it makes sense for me not to be highly invested in what goes on in KOI; I’m simply not the audience for it.

Other players, however, have had a blast with this title, and I can see why people can and will enjoy this game. It’s silly, has that take-that element to mess with your friends, the art is absolutely stunning.

If there is one thing that I can unequivocally praise about this game, it’s that it has incredible art and components. The sprawling board is lovely to look at, the tokens give it a nice cohesive look as the board gets more and more added to it throughout a game.

So, as long as you can sit back with some beer and pretzels and not take it all too seriously, or you want a beautiful looking game that has some strategy but a simple enough ruleset that kids could engage with, KOI can be a calming time to spend an evening with friends and family.

Who Should Get This Game: Those who are wooed by the production value and don’t mind lighter games

Who Shouldn’t Get This Game: If you’re bothered by luck of the draw, occasionally repetitive turns, or having to reference the rules more than once per game, this might not be the title for you.

A review copy of Koi was provided by the publisher.

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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Sagrada - Compulsions of a Holy Roller

Sagrada - The Compulsions of a Holy Roller
Designed by Adrian Adamescu & Daryl Andrews
Artwork by Adrian Adamescu, Daryl Andrews & Peter Wocken
Published by Flood Gate Games 2017
1 - 4 Players ~ 30-60 Minutes
Review by Jack Eddy

Strictly speaking, puzzles are not inherently games, but some games feature puzzles of varying complexity. Then you got Sagrada, which virtually is one cohesive puzzle spread across a psychedelic landscape of candy colors and glorious stained glass illustrations.

I am not very good at Sagrada - in fact, the first time I played at Dice Tower Con 2017, I had to stop the game three separate times to announce that I had committed the cardinal sin of illegal dice placement, eating the lost points and bearing the shame of what should really be a simple ruleset. But every loss has endeared it to me more and more, and it has been a mainstay of continued enjoyment since it’s release.

Colors and Numbers, Numbers and Colors (Gameplay)

Prepare to blow your mind and build your tableau. To start the game, players are given a slotted frame with a 4 by 5 grid. Cards, depicting the plans for different stained glass windows that players build are slotted into these frames, with many of the spaces depicting certain numbers (representing shades) or colors (representing colors). I cannot understate how cool it feels to slot the window cards into the heavy duty and gorgeously ornate frames.

Throughout rounds, players snake-draft dice that one by one are fit into these tableaus, with the catch that each die must be placed orthagonally or diagally next to another dice in the tableau, and if the space has a color or number restriction, you must honor that restriction. Sounds simple enough, right? The snag is that you can never have dice of the same color or number next to one another.

Again, this sounds benign, but I too was once a fool who failed to realize my folly. The player boards in Sagrada are like nooses that we tie around our own necks, as we become increasingly more restricted, desperate, and futile with each die placed. And I kinda super dig it.

Fortunately, reprieve is given via the tool cards. These offer abilities that can be activated using glass beads allotted at the beginning of the game. The more complex of a window you have, the more beads you are granted. Three tools are drawn for each game, but there are a myriad ranging from broadly helpful, to extremely niche. I appreciate the system, though several games I’ve seen a tool card go entirely unused, which feels like an annoying bit of fluff in an otherwise extremely tight game.

Scoring Glass (Points)

Normally, when teaching and reviewing games, I start with the objective, giving players a goal to work toward and the essential context to grasp the remaining rules of the game. But Sagrada is special. Especially during your first few games, your mental energy will primarily be expelled trying to get dice into your tableau, lest you have nasty empty spaces, costing you points at the end of the game. Additionally, Sagrada has no fixed scoring system, instead, players will have both public and personal parameters drawn during setup.

The majority of your points are awarded primarily for the three public goals, ranging from building rows or columns composed of different colors or numbers, or having pairs of certain dice throughout your board, these give nice little dynamic parameters to work with, though the scoring conditions are never so varied as to make your objective feel very different from game to game.

Your final source of points derives from secret cards distributed at the beginning of the game, each showing a color of dice. Upon completion, you gain points equal to the number of pips show on those colors, which is often close to half of your points. While I dig the asymmetry, this is probably my least favorite part of the game. Sure, with 90 dice in the bag, chances are that reds are going to roll evenly throughout, but what happens when they don’t? Or when you can’t reasonably place another red?

Unlike the rest of the game where you feel like you are making smart choices based on how the dice roll, your secret points are instead at the mercy of those dice. This won’t entirely make or break a game, but I wish the secret objectives were a bit more varied and flexible. This goes doubly so with lower player count games where only half or three-quarters of the bag are rolled, meaning that your precious red dice could sit unused at the bottom of the bag..

Honestly, if playing with two players I suggest removing an equal distribution of the 30 you don’t use, so you have a guaranteed even distribution of what’s left in the bag, but here, at The Cardboard Herald, we are in the business of reviewing rules as written, hence why I’m belaboring the point. Granted, even at two players the game is fine without houserulling, but in a game so much about manipulating a tight puzzle, it’s best if you can count on certain tools to work with.

Solitary Confession (Solo Mode)

Everything I just said about imbalance when it comes to the personal scoring conditions? Throw it out the window because in solo you get TWO private objective cards and can pick the one you want to use at the end of the game. Sagrada solo is an abstract puzzle clocking in at about 20 minutes that is delightful, easily repeatable, and addictive.

Basically, you play as normal except that there are only two public objectives, four dice are drawn to draft from every round, and you can once per game per tool card burn a dice from the pool matching the tool’s color to activate its ability. This isn’t just about the tool though, because the objective in the solo game is all about scoring more points than the unused dice, excluding those burnt on these tools.

It’s a gripping race that is emblematic of what I love in a solo game; low hassle, well automated, and both familiar and cleverly distinct compared to the multiplayer experience. If you are at all into crossword puzzles or Sudoku, or want to dip your toes into solo for the first time, consider giving Sagrada’s solo mode a shot.

Depicting Creation & Glory (Presentation, Components & Accessibility)

Sagrada is easily one of the most beautiful games that I’ve ever played. Colorful, eye-catching, and abstract, each array of dice on a tableau looks like a piece of art. Without fail, every new person I’ve introduced to the game has first and foremost commented on it’s beauty, both in visual presentation, but the heavy duty, tactile pieces and the conceptual design.

The flip side of this singularity is that Sagrada is uncompromising in it’s presentation, which limits the accessibility far more than most modern games. The translucent dice that add so much to the stained glass theme? Completely indistinguishable apart from color, making it hard to imagine color blind players being able to play. Similarly, the slots for dice are just so perfect for holding your wonderful bit of psychedelia together, but heaven forbid you (like me) have to use your fat fingers to slot a single die in a tight space, desperately trying not to bump surrounding dice.

I could suggest a multitude of options that would possibly improve the accessibility of this game, both for visibility and fine motor skills / fat finger syndrome, but I feel like in this one instance, those recommendations might be in vein. Sagrada looks and feels so special as is, that it’s hard to imagine that any compromises to fix these issues wouldn’t somehow disrupt it’s delicate beauty (though it is a shame that a solution equally as elegant that felt more inclusive wasn’t found).

Revelation (Final Thoughts)

Sagrada is my kind of puzzle; instantly intuitive, infinitely infuriating. It’s the kind of game that makes you feel clever and inept all at the same time, and the joy comes from  the self satisfaction of figuring out your own window with a light touch of player interaction through drafting. And the 45-60 minute playtime (even shorter for 2 players!) makes it the kind of game where sessions typically end with players clamoring for just one more play.

For all my criticisms, Sagrada, more than almost any other game I own, feels singular and complete, which makes those very criticisms easy to forgive. If you dig constructive puzzles or strikingly beautiful games, then I highly recommend this work of art.

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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Swimming In Dice - First Impressions of Tidal Blades

Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef
Launched on Kickstarter by Druid City Games - 2018
Designers: Ben and Tim Eisner
Head Artist: Lina Cosette, David Frost
1 - 4 players ~ 60 - 90 minutes
First Impressions written by Luke Muench

Kickstarter, while being a norm of the board game industry for a few years now, is still a difficult and occasionally oppressive storefront to explore. With so many projects launched and so few dollars to spend, one must be weary of vapid designs, manipulative campaigns, too-good-to-be-true promises, and shady stretch goals. While the Tidal Blades Kickstarter flirts with some of the now-traditional practices that I’ve grown to resent kickstarter for, Druid City Games presents themselves as earnest creators who are   respectful of potential buyers, in efforts to create an exciting and well made game to explore.

Which would be much more speculative if I couldn’t definitely tell you, yeah. The game is good.

This past weekend at the Metatopia gaming convention, I had the chance to play a demo version of the game, courtesy of game designer Ian Moss, who is slated to work on the follow-up game in the series, Tidal Blades: Rise of the Unfolders, alongside Jon Gilmore. And while I only had the chance to give the game one playthrough, I was impressed by the ideas, style, and overall experience Tidal Blades brought to the table.

Riding the Tidal Waves
“The best surfer out there is the one having the most fun.” - Phil Edwards

At its core, Tidal Blades merges worker placement, resource management, and dice building mechanics to create a wonderfully unique gaming blend that is only accentuated by the engaging theme. Players are tasked with proving themselves to be the champion and protector of the island by pushing themselves through various challenges, all while attempting to fight off monsters, impress the elder of the island, and upgrade their gear to better take on the ever-escalating danger.

The setting is a seaside island surrounded by gorgeous Pacific Island and reef motifs that looks unique alongside the other games on your average board game shelf. You could categorize it as fantasy, sure, but it steps away from the usual shitck of elves and dragons and gives us a taste of a new, fascinating vision of what the fantastical can be.

In proper worker placement manner, players are only given 5 rounds to make the best of what few actions they have access to, as well as whatever pitiful resources they can manage to scrape up in that time. Turns are simple yet agonizing; players choose one spot for their hero to journey to, exhausting the resources on that spot, activating that location’s ability, and potentially taking on a challenge played from their hand.

Above all else, players are trying to build their dice in interesting and strategic ways. Players start with a couple of white, basic dice that represents all 4 symbols evenly, leaving two remaining sides for a wild and a blank. Dice are rolled most often to try and complete the aforementioned challenges, collections of symbols, that must be completed in the three  specific testing ground.

So it stands to reason that the better your dice are, the easier it is to complete these challenges, right? But the game gives you a hard choice - When you upgrade one of your meager white dice, it changes to a specialist die, either blue or red, each favoring half of the symbols. This means that for the 2nd and 3rd dice levels, you have greater potency, but less flexibility, forcing you to consider what challenges you want to attempt and how to better balance yourself within all 4 symbols. The final dice level allows you to choose a die the specializes in a single symbol, possibly providing 2 of that symbol on certain rolls. This system of fine tuning your pool to it’s ultimate specificity feels harsh, deliberate, and awesome.

The other resources players handle are fruits and shells. Shells protect players’ dice from the dangers of the island, as each time you roll for a challenge, you must also roll a danger die, which could destroy some of your dice for good. On the other hand,  fruit, being nutritious and all, allows you to roll more dice than normally possible, as is dictated by your Focus level.

That’s right, players have stats that they can upgrade and customize over the course of the game. The easiest way to do this is through completing challenges, giving you bumps in the associated symbols, though there are some other means of going about this. Focus dictates how many dice you can roll a turn, Spirit the strength of Stunt cards, Synergy expands your character’s tableau of abilities, and Resilience lets you upgrade more dice between rounds.

This leads us to the various locations, each of which ties into a particular theme and mechanic that will help you on your journey. The Chronosseum, for instance, focuses on allowing you to draw stunt cards, which will get you various boosts to your stats, dice, and more based on your Spirit level. And the Drosaka Ring has a market where you can spend your fruit to get other currencies, often at better prices than elsewhere. The Lamara Stadium earns players with a number of resources based on where the boat that surrounds the stadium is moving to when you get there.

These 3 locations are where you’ll be able to complete challenges, with each challenge forcing you to be at a specific board. Your rewards will be amplified, however, if the Elder is there to watch you. Each round, he moves from board to board, making it more profitable to complete challenges in a certain area while also making it more difficult to fight with your opponents for the limited free spots.

The other two locations, however, allow anyone to use their spots as many times as desired, and neither have any challenges specific to them. The Citadel of Time helps players reclaim their dice or gain some extra resources, all while being the only way to get more challenges. Tired of going to Drosaka Ring, or looking to upgrade a particular stat? Here, you can choose from a line-up which challenges are most helpful to you, letting you plan for the turns ahead.

And along the Fold looms the impending threat of monsters as they lurk ever closer to the islands. At the end of each round, monsters will attempt to invade the protagonists’ homes, causing chaos and damage. Players can attack them, using their dice to deal hits and gain points, but any dice used in this manner are lost to the sea, meaning players will be making sacrifices to succeed.

Lastly, the Champion Board tracks another method of earning points; as you accomplish feats before the Elder, as well as accomplish various tasks around the islands, you will gain levels on the track, gaining you bonus points and extra resources between rounds.

Oh, and did I mention character cards? Each character has a pool of cards that builds into a personal tableau over the course of the game. If a player upgrades their Synergy stat enough, they will get to draw into 2 player specific cards, keeping only 1 of their choice while effectively removing the other from the game, meaning each game can play out differently depending on how you draw into said cards, not to mention which character you choose.

This all culminates into the final scoring, awarding points based on the Champion Board, damaged monsters, the levels on your stats, the challenges completed, set bonuses for varying your challenge locations, and a secret goal card that each player gets, which are player specific and randomized at game start.

Scouring the Murky Depths of Kickstarter
“The cure for everything is salt water; sweat, tears, or the sea.” - Isak Dinesen

As I alluded to earlier, kickstarter is in a weird place these days. Within our hobby it’s in vogue to hate on Kickstarter, yet project after project proves successful, and some of the most beloved games in recent years such as Scythe, Gloomhaven and Spirit Island all found their start on the big KS..  

Much of this reaction is that many of us have been burned by at least one KS project, and there are a number of companies who have taken advantage of the platform to pump out games that fund each year within minutes. Tidal Blades, in some ways, shares that identity, having been funded in 45 minutes and created by an established (albeit it newer and smaller) game company, but Druid City Games has made efforts to run about as  transparent and consumer focused campaign as one can expect to find.

Many of the stretch goals are unlocked day to day instead of relying on consumer funding or engagement, acting as natural reveals already implemented in the game rather than additions created solely to boost sales. The only stretch goals that are influenced by backers’ dollars are those that make the components higher quality. The information provided is expansive and in-depth, providing a feeling of confidence and trust. And what Kickstarter exclusive content there is are either aesthetic upgrades or better means of storing the game.

In earnest, I do feel like this is an example of a Kickstarter done right, presenting a strong product while treating buyers with respect and appreciation.

My Thoughts In a Conch Shell
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” - John Kabat-Zinn

While my time with Tidal Blades was brief, it certainly left a strong impression on me. The decisions and options at play are deep and varied, offering a wide variety of avenues and options to choose from. This is only compounded by the distinct characters, each with their own options and card pools to pull from. Turns are simple, with each action being straightforward, but how you chain the turns and use your actions wisely is what makes a competitive game that, in my experience, ended in tight scoring.

The art speaks for itself, but wow, even in prototype form, this is a game to marvel and appreciate. I couldn’t help but look over the character boards in awe, sort through the various cards, and be stunned by the bright colors and distinct visuals at play. It certainly helps that there are a ton of components to show off the skill at play, but any one piece, when isolated, is stunning on its own.

There’s a ton of stuff in the box, though, and I can easily see the game’s girth teetering from astonishing to overwhelming, especially when you first set it up. Dozens of dice, tokens, and cards need to be sorted, organized into different locations, and laid out in specific manners depending on the board they are associated with. Also, with 5 boards for players to interact with, personal player boards, the character tableaus, and each person’s dice pool, this game takes an exorbitant amount of space, struggling to fit on your average table. It’s manageable, but daunting.

The same could be said of your first few turns dipping your toe into this ocean of choices. It’s never so much as to leave you completely dumbfounded or caught in a nasty case of analysis paralysis, but there’s enough at play to make you at least double check your calculations before commtiting to your move.

My biggest concern is game end; while much of the build-up to the final turn is malleable and will certainly vary game-to-game, certain end-game actions seem inevitable. It feels like a no-brainer to spend all your dice fighting monsters for your last action, or at least to some extent on your last turn, since leftover dice don’t earn you any points.

Also, Tidal Waves presents a comfortable loop of gathering resources until you can complete your challenges, then get more, rinse, and repeat. While I don’t have any issue with this core loop, I can see some people growing bored with a lightly repetitive system, even if there’s a fair amount of variety within.

All in all, I had a great time with Tidal Waves and would certainly like to revisit it in the future. The systems are rich and robust, the world fleshed-out and unique, the art gorgeous and inviting, and gameplay fun and involving. I can’t ask for much else from a board game experience at the end of the day, leaving me pleasantly surprised and excited to see where the world of Tidal Blades goes next.

Full disclosure - Jack Eddy, chief editor of TCbH is a backer of Tidal Blades but did not commission this article.

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Board Game Boost Accessories - Pete's Got You Covered

BoardGameBoost Accessories Website
Creator: Pete S.
Review written by Luke Muench

Back in June when I attended the Origins board game convention, I was playing a particularly rousing match of Azul with some close friends in a nearby bar. I found myself neck and neck with a couple other players, and in my excitement and slight inebriation, I bumped my player board, sending my tiles and scoring maker flying. While I did the best that I could to recall where everything was, there was no way of truly recovering my progress  and I felt rather tilted for the rest of the match.

I wish this was an uncommon issue, but a lot of board games come with flimsy boards prone to these mishaps, with players losing hours of progress to some slamming their shins against a table leg. Luckily, a man by the name of Pete saw this problem and chose to do something about it, creating his own Etsy page to sell various wares to try and help solve this problem, and addressing the occasional storage issue, too.

Here, I’m going to be looking at a few of these products that were given to me for review purposes, discussing any assembly, the quality of the materials, and how well they work when playing.

The Game That Started It All - Azul Overlays

Among all of Pete’s offerings,  I was immediately drawn to these overlays (largely due to my aforementioned plight), and man, can these be useful. Sold as two separate sections that can be clipped together, you can purchase either the overlay for the scoring half of your board, the tiles half of your board, or both. Assembly is as simple as popping out pre-cut sections and pulling paper tabs off the overlays. Some will be frustrated by the effort of getting a grip on said paper covers, but it becomes easier with some practice and patience.

The sections for the tiles are cut well for the size of the tiles, although some can feel a little tight around the shape of a tile. Still, I never had an issue with placing or removing my pieces, nor was I ever worried that anything would get stuck together. The scoring section fits the black cubes well and has notations of the point value for each square, making it easier to calculate your score at the end of a game.

As one might expect, this accessory can greatly help in keeping your player board tidy and safe from careless accidents. Some players found them to be cumbersome, though, as they are loose sitting on top of the board rather than be attached in some manner to the board itself. This can be a nuisance, but the board does its job well. Even when it does shift, all you have to do is realign everything as opposed to desperately trying to remember 20 pieces of scattered information. Personally, I find that the bottom half of the overlay is worth its weight in gold and can be very helpful for travel games to maintain your overall board state, though you will have to remove the game insert to make the components fit.

Note that some of the BoardGameBoost products do include backboards, such as those for Terraforming Mars, and while I did not receive any of these, I have used them in the past that and found them to be high-quality and incredibly useful.

Not A Vastly Different Experience - Vast: The Crystal Caverns Overlays

Similarly, the Vast: The Crystal Caverns overlays did stellar job of keeping individual player boards protected and well arranged. In fact, some were easier to read at a glance due to having the indents instinctively show players how they could interact with their boards. There are overlays for both the base game and expansion, and you can buy them in sets, meaning you only need to buy those that you feel like you need. All roles except the Cave, Cave Ghost, and Goblins have boards available.

Special indents are made in boards unique to their roles, such as the Thief for the square tiles, or the Vile Ghoul for the circular pieces, giving the overlays a unique look while also making it easier to remove some of the more awkwardly shaped pieces from the boards. It’s also worth noting that each board is labelled, so it’s simple to associate which overlay is coupled with which board.

Much of the same pros and cons can be reiterated here as was with the Azul overlays, but it can definitely feel like these can be very useful depending on the roles, especially component heavy characters like the Dragon. A couple of the boards, such as the Shadow Unicorn, have so few aspects to them that they barely feel worthwhile, but this is rare and somewhat subjective. If you love Vast as much as I do, these will likely be a helpful asset to have on hand, especially with newer players.

The Ultimate Storage Solution - CaddyMax

Called “the gamer’s gaming accessory” on the website, CaddyMax is a seriously useful and versatile item that can make putting away some of your complex and involved games a breeze. It’s also the most hands-on item in the BoardGameBoost catalogue, requiring some assembly, but it’s nothing too complicated, and the provided YouTube video makes the process fairly simple. This is further helped by small tabs that are made to be broken off, giving you easily handles to pull the protective paper covers off the pieces.

CaddyMax is completely customizable, from the size of the sections within the base of the container to the colors adorning it. This allows you to get a piece that looks nice while also being accommodating to the style and color palette you want to work with. It’s not overly large, meaning that it won’t be a good fit for every game, but its insides are roomy enough to hold a variety of items. While at first I wanted to use this with Vast: The Crystal Caverns (which worked rather well), I ended up sticking this in my copy of Gaia Project, which desperately needed a system to separate out the various little pieces generated throughout the game. Now, it’s far easier to find what I need in a given moment, and it’s way simpler to set up, one of my least favorite parts of the game.

If you were to get one item from BoardGameBoost, the CaddyMax is an easy recommendation Though the overlays can be helpful, they are game specific and won’t necessarily please every audience. This, I feel, has a place in any gamers collection and is a much-needed commodity in a hobby that lacks good storage solutions often.

All In All - Final Thoughts

Pete isn’t the first to work on products like this, but he’s by far one of the smartest in my eyes. The products that he makes are of high quality but made affordable. The turn-around time for orders are quick and communicative. The resources he provides are easy to follow. And I see these products lasting users a very long time. If you’re looking to support an indie business while getting some fantastic accessories for some of your favorite games in the process, BoardGameBoost is one of the best.

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Pocket Mars - Earth Attacks!

Pocket Mars - Earth Attacks!
Designed by Michał Jagodziński
Art by Jaroslaw Wajs
Published by Grey Fox Games
15-30 Minutes ~ 1-4 Players
Review by Jack Eddy

Mars is so hot right now. Well, at least metaphorically speaking. With no shortage of Mars related games on the horizon, Grey Fox Games has elected to take the tiny-yet-mighty approach, competing with the likes of the Tiny Epic series in a small scale game with relatively big impact. Fortunately for us, it rarely loses scope, almost always maintaining a good balance of meaningful decisions with compact, bite-sized fun.

Shipping Up To Boston (Gameplay)

This game is an act of shifting your seven dudes / dudettes from Earth to Mars. Doing so triggers the end of the game, though scoring accounts for a bit more than “LOL ME FIRST”. The play area contains 5 martian buildings, a deck of cards to draw from, each player’s spaceship, and Earth - the home of derelict meeples anticipating their great journey.  

In one of the more clever card systems I’ve recently seen, the meat of the game is found in the project cards. At the end of any player’s turn, all players must always have four cards - two in hand and two face-down in front of them, making up their “prep module”. While the front of the cards show a strength, color (suit) and two abilities, their backs also reveal their color, which corresponds to the five different buildings. It’s actually kind of cool that even while shuffled together, the back of the card communicates a tiny bit of information from the draw pile, letting you know what color card is “on deck”.

On a player’s turn, they can take one action, usually playing a card for it’s “discard” effect, or putting it into play from their prep module for it’s “put into play” effect. When put into play, the card is placed in a stack near the corresponding building color, and if the strength of your card exceeds the last played one in the stack, BOOM! You put a dude from your ship into that building. Whether your strength exceeds or not, you resolve both the effect of the building and the card.

There are a few other actions, too, including pitching cards to gain energy (a resource needed for some actions), or even putting a card into play from another player’s prep module. You don’t know it’s strength or ability, but this is a great way of both messing with your opponents plans and resolving the effect of the building, though the player whose card you jacked gets to resolve the card’s “put into play” effect.  

And thus, play continues. Occasionally effects will interact with other cards you have in hand or increase or decrease your energy (the one tracked resource in the game), but for the most part, the abilities and effects of the game involve changing an astronaut’s placement from earth to the ship, from the ship to a building, from a building to another, or from the standard “1 Star” side of a building to the more exclusive “2 Star” side of a building, which matters for bragging rights and scoring.

Finally, players get points at the end of the game for astronauts on buildings (more for being on the 2 star side), consolation points for your poor saps still on your spaceship, then bonuses for having dudes in each of the 4 occupiable buildings and having 4 dudes in one of the buildings. Oh, and a tiny bit of extra points for ending the game with the most energy.

Winds Coming Down From Olympus Mons (Flow & Feeling)

There’s something really industrial about this game’s rhythm. Like some futuristic robot factory, everything is in sort of a limbo until it is moved from one holding chamber to another. Colonists going from earth to ship, ship to mars, building to building, side to side. This mechanical swing extends to the prep modules too, always checking to see that you have a total of 4 cards, then refilling your module; deck to hand, hand to module, module to play.

And don’t get me wrong, this rhythm is one of the things that I like the most about this game. It’s not that you are programming your turns, but it makes the turns themselves very fast, intuitive, and feel like you are always gauging your long term goals versus what you have on hand in terms of availability.

I also really like the sort of “every part of the buffalo” vibe to the components. Each card is multi use, and every card is used, apart from the player specific spaceships and reference cards if playing with less than four players.

Though this isn’t a particularly interactive game, the player interaction that is there is direct, but never to such consequence that it feels “mean”. Sometimes you’ll deviously shift an opponent out of their two-star location, only to shift yours in, reaching the maximum occupancy. Other times you might foil their plans by utilizing a card from their prep module.

Notably, this mechanical nature is also indicative of how little the theme is integrated into the game. While the visuals are actually pretty awesome (including the super rad box art), the game quickly boils down to colors and numbers, emitting virtually no thematic resonance to the visuals (including the super rad box art). That said, the presentation is great, with good table presence, bold colors, and surprisingly great artwork and iconography.  

It’s Lonely Out in Space (Solo Mode)

In a world of great solo modes, Pocket Mars is merely passable. I was really hoping that this could be a great travel solitaire type of game, but it lacks the type of elegance that I really need for this small scope. In fact, that’s why solo runs at such a contradiction to the really enjoyable flow of the standard game.

In solo mode, you are playing against the Devious Automatics company, who is launching their own duders into play. Functionally, their prep module acts as a loading dock for your upcoming cards, as anytime that you need to draw cards, they must come from this prep module. What’s left in their module determines where their units go and how they activate buildings, though  the building have different abilities when activated by the automated player, and must be referred to in the 5 dedicated pages in the rulebook for.

Furthermore, the rules for the solo mode have such terrifying language as “You must optimize the placement of the DA Colonists so as to maximize the DA’s final score as best you can.” If there is one thing I hate about automated players, it’s when they aren’t automated.

It’s not all bad though, there are some great aspects of the solo game. The way time runs out by pitching cards each turn creates a snappy pressure, and the strategy involved in deciding how to interact with the DA’s prep module adds a new dimension to the basic gameplay; but overall it never felt comfortable or second nature, reaching the sort of ease that is so appealing about the multiplayer game.

Liftoff (Final Thoughts)

Pocket Mars is going to adorn my office shelf where it will be perfectly suited for lunchtime play. Fast, snappy, and easily portable to our local coffee joint; this scope of game is exactly what I’m looking for in a small box game. I like that it encourages player interaction, but allows you to more or less focus on your strategy; each turn isn’t dramatically consequential, but chaining sequential turns together you can realize your Martian dreams.

Aside from solo, If there are some criticisms, it’s that the rulebook, at a whopping 19 pages long, is too dense for what this game is, and should have been condensed for easier learning and navigation. Furthermore, I feel like repeated play day in and day out could get stale as their aren’t any branching strategic paths such as asymmetric abilities or engine building, so this might not be the ideal game to tide you over on a longer vacation, tempting as it’s small stature might be.

But, like I said, it is a game I plan to keep. Abstract and mechanical, vibrant and eye-catching, this game delivered exactly what I wanted it to. Pocket Mars is full of smart, intuitive choices and bite sized Martian fun.

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.

Review copy of Pocket Mars has been provided by Grey Fox Games.

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Orbis - The Game of God-Like Hubris

Orbis - The Game of God-like Hubris
Published by Space Cowboys - 2018
Designer: Tim Armstrong
Head Artist: Davide Tosello
2 - 4 players ~ 45 - 60 minutes
Review written by Luke Muench

Board games allow us to live many fantasies, but one of the most tantalizing is the dream of being able to do everything. We, as people, have been trained and encouraged to accomplish goals, to create and build, to fulfill our dreams into physical reality. In this manner, Orbis understands that innate desire and uses it against us in devious and ultimately effective ways.

The Rules of Creation

“For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything.” - Hebrews 3:4

Orbis tasks each player to create their own universe, complete with a unique god. The goal? Have the most Creation Points, aka CPs after 15 turns, giving you just enough time to erect your grand pyramid. Pyramids are composed of 5 layers, each containing fewer and fewer tiles until your deity stands tall atop the lands, looking down on… oh… oh jeez… yeah, that did NOT turn out well, did it?

Much of this abstract tile-laying experience relies on both extensive planning for various opportunities and tactically reacting to new tiles as they are flipped. On their turn, each player must draw a tile from the 9 that are available, resulting in a cascade of effects.

Firstly, players take whatever worshipers are on the tile they are claiming. Worshipers act as a non-descript currency used to pay for the tiles that you place throughout the game and resolving effects on said tiles. Additionally, when claiming, let’s say, a blue tile, a blue worshiper is placed on each tile in the market. This creates a loop of determining how to manage your own resources without leaving too much good stuff for everyone else.

Then, taking the tile in hand, the player must pay it’s cost, ranging from 0 to 6 worshiper cubes. This can be daunting, especially when you have 5 different colors to work with, but its helped by being able to exchange any 3 identical worshipers for 1 of your choice at any time, allowing you to plan for flexibility if need be.

Placing the tile, though, that’s the tricky part. If you’re placing in your first row, sure, whatever, put it wherever you want. Once you have 2 tiles to support it, yeah, you can put a tile in your 2nd row, and so on. But here’s the kicker; you can only put a tile in an upper row if one of the tiles below it is of the same color. In other words, you’re building a system that relies on you focusing certain colors in the long-term in order to build a system that earns you points and doesn’t leave you with less than optimal options.

Tiles earn you points in several ways, like building matching tiles around one another, destroying worshipers from the board or your personal supply, or by collecting the most temples by end game. Each color has its own rules, giving you the opportunity to plan in a variety of ways, suiting your playstyle. Want a lot of cost mitigation late game? Start grabbing some yellow tiles. Want to build a steady stream of a single color? Blue might be your go-to. Each provide unique yet familiar options that allow you to mix and match as you see fit.

But perhaps you can’t pay the hefty cost, maybe you find yourself unwilling or unable to place a tile. Well, then you’ll just have to flip that tile over, revealing the barren Wilderness. This tile is a wild, thus able to go anywhere on your board and counting as any color for placement and points purposes. However, each Wilderness tile provides you with -1 CP, cutting into your end-game scoring. This creates a certain balance, as players have to question how willing they are to spend the CPs in order to have better flexibility, maybe getting more points in the long-run thanks to the sacrifice.

Lastly, one has to consider when they intend on taking their god; similar to the Nobles in Splendor, a number of these are randomly selected and laid out to the side of the board, each with their own scoring parameters. Rather than taking a land tile, players can choose on their turn to reserve their one god tile, which will earn them 1, 2, or 3 points if their manage to fulfill the provided objective. Some require you to collect certain tiles, others sacrifice worshippers, and some giving you few points but a passive buff to their game. These buffs are minor, but can add some guidance to a game that can sometimes feel difficult to tell the best path forward.

Hubris Begets The Fall

“Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling.” - Proverbs 16:18

While Orbis ultimately naturally limits your options as the game goes on, there’s a feeling of wanting to do everything from the start. You have 5 slots in your bottom row, meaning you can entertain all 5 colors at some point in the game before cutting down on your selection. And often players try doing just that, misunderstanding the ideas within the game mechanics. Yes, you can totally spread yourself thin for the sake of flexibility, but you can inadvertently restrict yourself. Blue and green scoring tiles rely on particular board layouts, often requiring those colors to take a specific form to allow for them to be scored successfully.

Rather, Orbis rewards those who focus on 2 or 3 colors, allowing you to tap into certain aspects without taking on too much. Your ability to do this, however, is often dictated by the flop of the tiles. When each color is available and whether or not you can realistically afford said tiles can leave players in a very literal no-win situation, which is never fun to experience.

In this way, this game courts a dichotomy of careful planning and praying for the right things to come out at the right times, which works most of the time but can lead to some difficult moments that have turned certain players off from the get-go. It’s not a fun feeling to have your game come to a screeching halt as you scramble to make something good of a crummy situation. And yes, to some degree this can be blamed on poor planning, but even the most thoughtful players have fallen prey to it, especially on their first go around.

What’s more,if each player tries to focus on 2 particular colors, inevitably it leads to 1 player getting completely skunked in a 4 player game, as 5 colors need to be spread out amongst the players. If competing for a particular popular color, you can find yourself adrift and without a chance for recovery. Playing with 3 or 2 players helps this issue dramatically, but also limits the flexibility of the game.

If At First You Don’t Succeed…

“Do not gloat over me, my enemies! For though I fall, I will rise again.” - Micah 7:8

I think what was most telling about my experience with Orbis was, no matter how frustrated a player may have gotten or how awry their plans may have gone, every single players ended up saying, “Yeah, I’m gonna want to play that again” Space Cowboys have presented a puzzle that has clearly keeps players entranced, wanting to delve further into its simple design to determine just how far one can dive.

Like a the colorful love child of Kingdomino and Splendor, Orbis remains an appealing and intriguing riddle.It is a finite experience, one that will likely become tired with overexposure, but it makes you think in creative and satisfying ways that good abstracts tend to, working your brain while letting you relax with some friends. If you find yourself in need of another gripping head-scratcher to adorn your shelf, this is a game you should certainly consider.

Who Should Get This Game: Anyone looking for a clever, thoughtful Rubixcube of a game that’s grown tired of classics like Splendor.

Who Shouldn’t Get This Game: If you’re easily frustrated by rules or need a deep theme to carry you through a game, you can pass this one by.

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.

Review copy of Orbis has been provided by Space Cowboys.

The Cardboard Herald is funded by the generous support of readers, listeners, and viewers. If you'd like to help support, you can find our Patreon here.

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Warigin - Warigin Never Changes

Warigin - Warigin Never Changes
On Kickstarter Through: 3-Headed Dog - 2018
Designer: Christian Sauer
Head Artist: Anna Kersten
2 - 3 players ~ 15 - 30 minutes
Review written by Luke Muench

I’ve always found Kickstarter to be a difficult and confusing place. Sure, you have your crazy success stories like the infamous Scythe, but just as often you hear public outcry about big companies looking to take advantage of the ravenous, deep-pocketed masses. From humongous and gimicky Cthulhu statues to publishers launching kickstarters without the appropriate rights to their licenses, Kickstarter is no stranger to controversy.

Luckily, Warigin is neither of those things, instead it’s a quaint 2- to 3-player dudes-on-a-map game being released by a small group of dedicated people looking to make their dream a reality. It’s a resh change of pace to see such a well-meaning project come into the spotlight, and you can tell the team are invested in what they’re doing here.

Hydra Has Nothing On Me

“Cut off one head, two more shall take its place.” - The Red Skull

Warigin is a 2 vs. 1 game in which a team of players control the forces of hell as they attempt to topple the forces of heaven. The game ends when any player’s fortress falls, with the winner(s) being the team with their fortress(es) intact.

Each player has a group of forces which they secretly place on the board at the start of the game, composed of 1 strength regular soldiers, and mightier 2 strength heroes. The different units are identified by swords printed on the bottoms of the wooden figures provided.

Whether you are the hero or the villains, each round plays very similarly; after an event is revealed and satisfied, each player may play a card from their hand and must move figures on the board. The heavenly player gets 3 actions whereas the two hellish players get 2 each. Cards vary from take-that elements that remove enemy forces from the board, to passive buffs for your soldiers, to ways of reviving fallen figures. Movement is simple, as a figure may be moved 1 hex, and each figure can only be moved once per turn.

If a figure is moved into a hex occupied by an enemy, a battle occurs. The bottoms of both figures are revealed, showing whether or not they are a soldier or a hero. Then, each player rolls D8’s based on their figure’s strength; whoever rolls higher wins, with attackers winning ties. There’s also a more deterministic variant included that gives each player a deck of cards with values 1 through 8 to use in battles instead of dice.

And… well, that’s about it. Warigin is a small, concise, simple experience that knows that it’s trying to do and aims for it guns ablazin’. But does it work as well as it wants to?

Would I War-Again?

“I am sure that you will never end war with wars.” - Nancy Astor

If I’m being frank, dudes-on-a-map games have never been my cup of tea, and this game did little to change that opinion. Much of the game is left to the roll of dice and the hope that you can maintain enough figures to get by. Many of the cards in your hand do simple things, such as removing units from the board, so they never feel like they lead to clever or interesting plays. And while you have different types of units on the board, heroes feel more overpowered in combat than they do “special” in an exciting or interesting sense, crashing through enemy forces some days and rolling snake eyes in combat another day.

That being said, this may be a fun beer and pretzels game for some, or be a satisfying strategic abstract war-game with a gothic theme, as long as you want rules-light, straight forward experiences. The gameplay is fast in simple in a laid back kind of way, and people who can get behind the theme might find themselves engaging with it. There aren’t too many 2-player dudes-on-a-map games either to my knowledge (though I don’t focus too much on that style of game), so this might fill that niche for those who are looking for it.

Warigin is a neat experience for those who like the visuals they see and find the premise appealing, but what you see is what you get. If this doesn’t sound like a blast to you, it probably won’t be, plain and simple. That said, clearly enough people are invested in the idea, seeming as it has already reached its funding goal as of writing this review.. I wish Three-Headed Dog nothing but the best as they move forward with this passion project.

Who Should Get This Game: Couple looking for a light, simple war game to share with close company.

Who Shouldn’t Get This Game: Those put off by the dudes-on-a-map genre or the small playcount.

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.

Review copy of Warigin has been provided by 3 Headed Dog. You can find the kickstarter page for Warigin here.

The Cardboard Herald is funded by the generous support of readers, listeners, and viewers. If you'd like to help support, you can find our Patreon here.

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