Elder Sign - Dice Duels with Doom-laden Deities

Elder Sign
Designed by Richard Launius and Kevin Wilson
Published by Fantasy Flight Games
1-8 players 1-2 hours
Review by Cheyenne Morse

Many games have you wrestling with Lovcraftian horrors, risking life and sanity as you battle creatures from worlds beyond (namely the Public Domain), but my absolute favorite is Elder Sign. Elder Sign is a cooperative dice game in which players try to seal an Ancient One out of the world, using wits, cunning, and a few lucky dice rolls; even as the horrific evil desperately tries to struggle free. Set in Arkham’s Miskatonic Museum, it’s up to players to search each room, battling monsters and crazed fanatics in hope of discovering Elder Signs -  the only thing that can save the world.

How to solve a mystery… (Basic Turn Structure)

Each player’s turn starts by choosing an adventure card. These outline the thematic and mechanical goal for your turn, granting rewards including helpful cards, tokens, or the all-important Elder Signs! The various cards and tokens offer boons to future dice rolls or otherwise help your character as they explore the university.

There are monster tokens as well. Monsters are chosen at random during the game and they get added to the adventure cards to increase their difficulty. These get put into play by various means. Sometimes a card will specify a monster is added but it can also be a penalty for failing to complete a task.  

To succeed in an adventure, the player needs to roll dice and match the symbols on the card within a certain number or rolls. Again, this is where the various accoutrements that you’ve picked up can aid you.

Failure results in penalties; usually causing you loss of health and sanity but it can also add on EVEN MORE monsters or progress the Doom track. As I’m sure you’ve guessed, doom is not good; each step on the Doom Track brings you closer to the Ancient One awakening.

Even victory can demand sacrifice. Some tasks can only be defeated by giving up some health or sanity. No one said saving the world was going to be easy.

One of the coolest aspects of the game is the combined use of theme and mechanisms to create a wonderful sense of apprehension. At the close of each turn, the hands of the clock march inexorably towards midnight, at which time a card is revealed and players react to it’s ghastly effects. Usually this means more monsters or another token added to the doom track, signifying the Ancient One’s impending arrival. There is something both delightful and nerve wracking about having a clock counting down to your doom.

Don’t get intimidated

At first glance this game looks complicated, there are lots of little pieces and a couple decks of cards. Often when I’m trying to explain the mechanics to a new player I inevitably get a look of “How am I going to remember all of this” dismay. But the game has a nice flow to it that quickly feels very intuitive, even to beginners. Keep things simple and just run through a couple mock turns, but really that’d help for teaching just about every game...

Read the Cards

I say this for two reasons. The first and most obvious is that you have to read them to know if there are any special effects that take place during a certain phase of the game; such as when the clock strikes midnight or if you roll a Cthulhu image on the dice. Secondly they almost all have text on them that really helps set the tone. It might describe what you hear or see or it might just creep you out. “Memories flooded my thoughts when I saw the thing. I knew I deserved the awful death that it would bring.”

The art is just fantastic. Every time I play I admire the deep colors and stirring images. The physicality of monsters entering the fray can throw your plans into disarray and force the group to change their tactics. Honestly the art is one of the things that makes this game my favorite.  

Oh no I’ve been devoured!

Once you run out of sanity or health your character is devoured by the very eldritch horror you’ve been trying to contain. When this happens a doom token is added to the doom track and you say goodbye to your player character along with all the sweet loot you’ve gained over the course of the game. Take a moment of silence for your fallen character and then draw a new one out of the pile. This is a mechanic of the game that I really like. The game isn’t outrageously long but it’s not short either and when a couple of bad rolls of the dice can end your life it’s good to know that you won’t spend the next forty minutes watching your friends have all the fun while you’re slowly digested over a thousand years. Everyone is all in until the end.

The Ancient One Has Awakened

You have failed in your attempt to seal the Ancient One away. It has risen up and is ready to devour humanity. What can you do? Mostly you just die. Each Ancient one has different weaknesses and for most of them you can keep fighting. The chances of you winning are extremely slim but you can always try. Unless it Azathoth, then you and the entire world are just devoured. Om nom nom!

Number of players

This game plays the same no matter how many players you have. It can accommodate small to largish groups of players. You can even play the game solo, face to face with all that darkness, alone as madness slowly consumes you. As a nerd and an introvert this pleases me greatly. Sometimes you gotta go solo against some monsters.  

Replay-ability

One of the things that makes this game so great is that it’s a little different each time you play. Since most of the systems in the game are driven by decks of cards, games will feature new and interesting combinations of player characters, adventures, and monsters; all the while maintaining the same overall flow and ease of play.

Overall

This game is super fun to play. It’s the kind of game you can play a lot without getting tired of it. The art is beautiful, there is always a new challenge, and I just love rolling dice. It’s always satisfying!  Now go out there and slay some monsters.

Cheyenne Morse is one half of the Fictional Females podcast, which can be found on iTunes, Stitcher, and www.fictionalfemales.com. This is her first ever board game review! 

Gumshoe Struggles - a Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective review

Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective
Published by Ystari Games - 2012 Edition
Designers: Raymond Edwards, Suzanne Goldberg, Gary Grady
Head Artist: Arnaud Demaegd
1 - 8 players ~ 1 - 2 hours
Review written by Luke Muench

I never understood why people liked Sherlock Holmes. Not the super-popular BBC show, mind you, I mean the character in general. His personality extends little beyond an intense intellect and a love of pipes, puzzles, and violins . His adventures, have something of an expiration date, lacking the same punch on multiple go-arounds. And his world, while filled with a fantastic cast of dastardly villains, can feel constrained and largely unexplored. Holmes feels more like a vehicle for a story than he is an interesting story in and of himself.

Needless to say, I was rather hesitant when first faced with the prospect of Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. It was unlike any game I had encountered before; a game that boasted legacy- and escape room-like elements way before the genres came into their own, that pitted you and your friends against the wits of a man we so often were encouraged to root for, and did so in a world that was potentially as open as the worlds of large-scale video games like Skyrim or Fallout. Yet it was these very reasons of hesitation that eventually coerced me into picking it up, making me wonder if such an experimental idea might work.

Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective has one of the most accessible gameplay systems in the industry. When sitting down to play, your group will select the next mystery booklet from a series of adventures, each mystery leading to the next in chronological order. After being prompted by a brief introduction, including a narrative full of clues and red herrings, players are let loose, allowed to explore as much as they’d like for as long as they want.

Your tools for dissecting each story are the mystery booklet, a London directory, each published newspaper to date (every mystery includes a newspaper that has clues for the current and future cases), a sprawling map, and your own wits. Much of the game hinges on you deducing which locations you need to visit to gather information, looking up the names of people and places in the directory to then lead you to the appropriate paragraphs of dialogue in the booklet. While many of these are false leads or wastes of your time, a few provide hearty chunks of story to be sorted through and discussed liberally. My friend and I clutched desperately to a notebook throughout our escapades, jotting down anything that seemed remotely relevant or worth considering. The map can be occasionally useful, allowing you to trace the pathways of certain characters, deducing who could have been where on a given night. The newspapers often contain pertinent articles regarding the mystery at hand, but sorting through previous editions can lead to some fruitful and insightful discoveries.

In this way, each scenario has the same general flow; regardless of what’s happening, players can do this to their heart’s content until deciding to reveal the end-scenario questions, forced to answer them with what little knowledge you’ve gathered. Its each story and the way they are presented that really makes each entry stand out in my mind. With titles like The Tin Soldier and The Lionized Lions, my friend and I were jittering with anticipation as we opened each book, enthralled in what they might contain. Introductions can give you a vast network of ideas to consider or next to nothing at all, directing you to peruse what resources you have with little direction. Paragraphs of dialogue and observations open you up to the various secrets the tales contain.

Yet what breathes life into this mystery-themed box of choose-your-own-adventure novels is the player interaction. With every piece of new information, we would puzzle out every detail, fine-combing each sentence for some thread of logic to grab hold of, creating lengthy and convoluted conspiracy theories, leading us further and further down a rabbit-hole we were more than happy to be lost in. It felt fantastic to feel so connected to another human being mentally, your minds entangled with the same exasperating quandary that surely had a solution, if only we could find it.

Getting caught up in the tales of Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective was by far the best parts of the experience. The worst were when each scenario came to a close.

After literal hours of searching for answers, me and my friend would finally puts our minds at rest, flipping to one of the back pages to the booklet to see what questions we needed to answer. And while some were to be expected, asking us the circumstances of a murder, others left us profoundly puzzled, referencing people we had never heard of, scenarios that had never reached our thoughts. Slowly we realized that, despite our hard work, we had no clue what had truly happened, a fact that Sherlock quickly and painful made clear. Each game ends with the great detective rattling off a grand speech as to how he solved the case, presenting what little evidence he needed to come to his conclusions, mocking us in the most heartbreaking of ways. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about being outsmarted and learning from the error of my ways. But when EVERY session ends in this way, the game starts to grate at you, make you feel like you’re simply wasting your time.

You can score yourself against Sherlock, seeing how many leads you followed versus his and adding up what meager points you get from correctly answering the questions. Our first game, my friend and I received -5 out of 100 points, which we found hilarious. Despite our outright loss, we knew that this was a special game, one that would test our mettle. It made us ready to take on another challenge, see what more the game had in store for us. By game five, we barely felt there was a chance of us coming close to the right answer. And in that moment, we put the scenario back in the box, closed it, and never looked back.

A few weeks later, I decided to take it upon myself to introduce the game to one of my weekly game night groups. We made an event of it, cooking English-themed dishes and playing some thematic music. I got dressed up for the occasion, acting as the narrator, as I had already played the first scenario and knew most of what was to come. And while the experience was fun enough, it was clear to me that four players began to push the envelope of the player count. A good portion of time was spent while players silently perused the newspaper while others waited their turn, or in chaotic noise as everyone tried to speak their mind at once.

Something else I noticed was how this crew marched to every location they could think of without abandon. While my two-player team carefully selected which handful of places to investigate, these four ran back and forth across the map in search for as many details as they could find, putting me to work as the narrator. And, ultimately, they received the better score of 25 points because of it, having gathered all the knowledge they could before attempting the solution.

While this certainly is a valid strategy, it felt like it undermined the intent of the game. Rather than carefully picking through what you know and slowly moving to a few points of interest, it seems that bulldozing your way through as much as possible will likely get you the better results unless you are a particularly observant player.

The last thing worth noting is just how many typos there are in the game. I’ve heard talk of some that render some scenarios impossible, though I personally didn’t note any, but these can be a pain to slog through, giving pause in the middle of a five-paragraph entry that can throw your train of thought. It’s also rather hard to comment or judge based on this, as there are so many editions of the game in existence that I can’t say if these typos are in every copy universally or just some of the earlier editions.

The best thing about Sherlock Holmes, is that it truly makes you feel like a gritty sleuth in a full realized, lived-in world.

It’s undeniable how unique and worthwhile this game is. With one of the best story-telling structures in tabletop gaming as a whole, Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective will take you on a ride unlike any other. Yet the amount of resilience and patience required will test you, and for some gamers, they’ll wonder if the purchase was really worth the investment. So if I am to recommend this game at all, it’s with a couple of caveats. First, recognize that you will almost inevitably lose at some point over the course of the game, and decide whether or not you will be okay with that. And second make an event of it; make Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective into your own personal movie, a grand narrative for you and your friends to intimately explore and immerse yourselves in this engaging game.

Who should get this game: Narrative-focused players, aspiring investigators, those searching for a free-form adventure.

Who shouldn’t get this game: Those who need structure, the easily deterred by defeat, short-form gamers, anyone who balks at the thought of legacy games.

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

Yamatai: For Queen Himiko’s Smile

Yamatai: For Queen Himiko’s Smile
Designed by Bruno Cathala & Marc Paquien
Published by Days of Wonder - 2017
2 - 4 players ~ 60 - 90 Minutes

Oh, how our expectations can betray us. Back at the beginning of 2017, I listed Yamatai among my most anticipated games of the year. Early previews showcased beautiful art, an evocative theme, great looking components, and above all, a fascinating design team bound to make a sleek, clever game. And crazily enough, like Seuss-ean elephants, they managed to deliver on each of those promises. Yamatai is skillfully crafted and gorgeously realized, like a beautiful mechanical watch, if a mechanical watch also had samurai and boats.  

The problem is that in all that I hoped that Yamatai would be, not once did I think to wish the game would also be fun…

How to Make Queen Himiko Smile:

In the Yamatai Archipelago, fans reign supreme. No, not avid followers of pop culture icons, I’m talking about the kind of fans that a courtesan might whip out upon accusations of dishonor. The game end is triggered by a player running out of buildings, running out of boats in the supply, or like 4 other things running out, but boats and buildings are most likely why the game will end, at which point the player with the most fans wins.

Over the course of the game, players are going to build trade routes represented by ships of all types of colors, surrounding islands in order to build their holdings. While each player has a personal supply of buildings, the boats (both on the board and in the supply) are communally owned, meaning you care not only about how the boats you place help you, but also what opportunities you present for others.

Every turn flows basically the same,  each player collects one or more boats, can buy or sell a boat, places boats on the board, chooses to either build a building or take culture tokens from islands you built boats next to, then you discard down to one boat. Did I say this game is all about fans? I meant boats. This game is all about boats.

There are two things that can make your turn considerably different, and both are by far the coolest things in Yamatai. First, those culture tokens? They can buy Specialists, who grant you permanent ongoing effects ranging from increasing fans from various actions to changing how many boats you can purchase / sell / keep at the end of your turn. While some of these are nice bonuses, others will have a monumental effect on how you proceed with the game.

The other thing, and the most clever aspect of the design, is the fleet selection. At the start of each round, five of ten fleets will be face up, and, in turn order, each player selects one and resolves their turn. These determine:

1. The boats you collect at the start of your turn.

2. Some special boon, like reducing the cost of buildings or moving boats in ways you couldn’t otherwise. (this will largely shape what you do on your turn)

3. Future turn order, with more powerful abilities making you go later next round.

4. How much you hate other players. (Damnit, Jeffrey! Why’d you have to take THAT one?)

Why you gotta do me like that, Jeffery!?

The main puzzle to solve is that buildings (your main source of fans) can only be built when you place boats next to an island, and that island now has the quantity and colors of boats surrounding it, corresponding to a building cards in the display.

The other nut to crack is that, when placing boats, you must either start from an entry point (all on the left hand side of the board) or your first boat must match the last boat in a chain you are continuing. Got it?  Yes, this is just as nebulous as it sounds, but you needed something to agonize over as you selected your fleet token, didn’t you? In truth, it becomes more intuitive after a few rounds, but never to the point where it felt instinctive or natural.

Speaking of Feelings...

Look, I really want to emphasize that this game is really well balanced, clever, and presents you with plenty of choices. But for all it’s efforts, it never really gave me a reason to care about what I was doing.

It’s hard to plan on future turns, since the available fleet tokens, buildings on display, routes to build off of, and specialists rapidly change. The boats, which are tactically oh-so-important at the beginning of a turn, are rendered meaningless by the end, since your ownership ceases once they’re in play. Even the buildings, your only piece of distinct ownership, communicate little more than “Hey bub, you can’t build here”. There are some minor bonuses depending on where you build, and certain specialists can make building placement more important, but largely they feel like derelict silos, devoid of meaning and purpose. So while you may have some choices that will have immediate ramifications, It’s hard to feel like you are ever invested in the game.

But for all the mechanical dissonance, the biggest problem I had connecting with Yamatai was the theme. While illustrated magnificently, the theme constantly butts heads with the mechanisms in the game. Why do ships only start on the left side of the board? Why does this specialist get me more points for money at the end of the game? Why can I only buy one boat per turn? This isn’t an issue of being an abstract game or having a “pasted on” theme, it’s that having an apparent emphasis on theme makes the completely abstract elements feel all that much more counter intuitive, breaking the narrative boundaries of the game.

Fit and Finish like a Cherry Blossom Grove:

Aesthetically though, this game is amazing. The bits are high quality, it is profoundly colorful, and is completely stunning on the table. I also have an affinity for the Days of Wonder house style artwork, which as per their usual standards is top-notch here. Even the insert is superbly designed to keep components in check,(though for me it'll be sadly wasted in the trade pile). 

That said, there are two things about the components that most likely don’t apply to you, but feel worth mentioning. First off, this game will be completely unplayable for many colorblind players. From the buildings to the boats which act as both a component and sort of currency in the game, vital information is primarily communicated via color. The second is that there are only two character/color choices that have enough components for a 2-player game. I totally understand manufacturing limitations, but it feels frustrating that a company as family friendly as DoW couldn’t come up with accessibility options or splurge for a few more chunks of wood.

Final Thoughts

I really wanted to like Yamatai. I think Paquien is a fascinating up-and-comer in the designer world, and many of Cathala’s previous efforts, including Five Tribes (the spiritual ancestor to Yamatai), are among my favorite games of all time. Refusing to accept the facts, I was convinced that the problem was with me. So I played again and again, which only served to further cement my thorough ambivalence toward Queen Himiko’s mood.

That's not to say that that there aren’t cool aspects of Yamatai. It features many original ideas, feeling unlike almost anything else on the market. The way fleet tokens and turn order are selected are an especially great system. But for all it’s clever mechanisms, fantastic visuals, and crunchy decisions, it felt hamstrung by counter-intuitive design and lack of player investment. In the end, Yamatai turned out to be a great puzzle, but for me, never managed to be a fun game.

Expansion Mini - Terraforming Mars: Hellas & Elysium

Terraforming Mars: Hellas & Elysium
Designed by Jacob Fryxelius
Published by Stronghold Games & Fryx Games - 2017

Hellas & Elysium is NOT an expansion. It does NOT expand the game, it does NOT add more mechanics, heck it doesn’t have a single component outside of the double sided board! And you know what?  I’m totally cool with that! For a game as systems heavy as T.M., I was actually a bit relieved when I found out that this new “expansion” is more of an officially produced variant. Like the best remix albums, Hellas & Elysium gives us a new way to enjoy the same great game.

What’s New?

Hellas & Elysium is about as sparse as you can get; a double sided board vacuum sealed with a rule sheet, serving as both reference and sleeve. Both sides of the board are new maps to explore, each with their own unique geography, awards, milestones, and color schemes. As with the colonialists of old, it’s thrilling to see new uncharted land to pillage and sculpt into the industrial paradise that our mega-corporation hearts desire. But to be clear, these are not side boards added to the game, each is a replacement that can be swapped out with the basic Mars board; otherwise setup remains exactly the same.

While the new layouts of mars present fresh opportunities and challenges, encouraging the terraforming process to take shape in different ways, it’s the new awards and milestones that make the expansion come to life. Some, like Elysium’s “Desert Settler” (which grants points for having the most tiles in the bottom four rows), encourage you to interact with the game in ways specific to the map you’re playing on, forcing you to judge the value of investing in a land entirely devoid of precious plants. On the other hand, others like Hellas’ “Diversifier” or “Tactician” (which require that you have 8 different tags or 5 cards with requirements in play), are fantastic ways to completely reassess the cards from the base game that you’ve become so familiar with.

Is it good?

The two things I love most about these boards are the new “achievements” and the color scheme. I know it’s a petty thing to harp about, but back in my Terraforming Mars review I did bring up how garish the “Disco Thanksgiving” pallette was, and it’s amazing how much more cohesive the blue and green point tracks makes the whole game look. As for the awards and milestones, they are brilliantly designed. Simultaneously intuitive yet completely fresh, they revitalize the game by giving much more situational value to your cards. As with the base game, I think the awards and milestones are what create the most tense moments and drive player interactivity in the game.

On the other hand, I’m pretty underwhelmed by the new topography of the boards. Not that they’re bad, mind you. It’s just that it really hasn’t made the game feel any different. Sure, some cards like Capital City will feel more or less powerful depending on the map, but overall it just feels like the same ol’ barren landscape from before. The only reason why these new maps need to exist is so that some of the aforementioned achievements make sense, and even those could have been re-tooled to not rely on the board.

Should you get it?

if you were only on the fence with the original, or were hoping that this expansion would somehow fix the game, you’re out of luck. Hellas & Elysium add exactly 0 new mechanics to the game, instead remixing concepts in place from the start. But, for the diehard Terraformer such as myself, yeah, I think these new boards are great. While wholly unnecessary, they still manage to preserve the purity of a game I love, while giving me totally new ways of enjoying it. If you love Terraforming Mars but your corporate greed is no longer sated by the base game alone, I think Hellas & Elysium is a no-brainer.

Can't get enough TCbH Terraforming Mars content? Check out our base game review, our interview with Stephen Buonocore of Stronghold Games, or our Hellas & Elysium first impressions video on youtube.
 

Cyclades - Auction House of the Gods

Cyclades
Designed by Bruno Cathala & Ludovic Maublanc
Artwork by Miguel Coimbra
Published by Matagot - 2009
2-5 players ~ 60-90 minutes
Review by Luke Muench

There are few genres more polarizing and ambiguous in their definition than what the community has dubbed “Dudes on a Map”. Some have intricate, detailed rulings on movement and attack patterns, using rulers to measure out grand battle plans, full of nitty gritty details. Others are like Risk; long, sometimes tedious ventures that test one’s patience as much as it tests your strategic wiles. It’s not a genre for everyone, and the in-your-face nature of these games aren’t necessarily inviting to those who are unsure of what these games have to offer.

But hark, what’s this? Down from the heavens does Cyclades drift, as if the gods themselves deemed it worthy to be cast in their own image. For truly does Matagot’s first big box mythological extravaganza stand out from the crowd as a wholly unique, invigorating, and inviting package to players of all sorts.

Cyclades is a game that, at first glance, appears like any other “dudes on a map” game. A board dotted with soldier minis of various colors? Check. Dice set aside for combat encounters? You bet. But beside this typical layout is where the game really happens; a rather colorful and elaborate board featuring a mighty pantheon. Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, Ares, and Apollo sit, stoically waiting for players to fight feverishly over them, not with troops, but coin.

At its heart, Cyclades is a bidding game. Each round, players will have a chance to claim one of the gods for themselves, spending their limited pool of coins in attempts to gain their power for the given round. While a seemingly simple task, players who take their turn after yours will have the opportunity to outbid you, forcing you to bid on another god altogether. Timing and planning is a player’s best friend in this vast realm of seas and islands, usually meaning the difference between a victorious military march and the swift and catastrophic destruction of your plans.

This is further compounded by the fact that the order the deities activates in changes round to round at random, meaning that turn order becomes quickly important. While you may desperately need Poseidon’s help, he’s not going to activate until it may be too late. You may want Athena’s help, but she’ll be going first, allowing you to manipulate the board just enough where it might be worth it. This balance of figuring out when to strike and what sacrifices to make only assist in creating an atmosphere of thoughtful strategy.

While each deity provides different abilities and resources, they also allow you to build one of the four structures that combine to form a Metropolis; control two Metropolises at the end of a given turn and you win. This scoring system is simply marvelous in how it can keep all players involved for the duration of the game. Your opponent just built a Metropolis, sure, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t try and march over there next turn and take it for yourself. Or perhaps you’re building a band of Philosophers to erect your own Metropolis in due time. Every single building you build is like a neon sign announcing what’s up for grabs, with the exception that a player’s last island can’t be attacked unless it would win the attacker the game.   

Poseidon and Ares largely control the militaristic portions of the game, but do so in a slow, methodical fashion. In order to invade a given island, you must first invoke Poseidon to build and line up your ships in a manner to create a clear path across the ocean from where your troops are to another location. Only then can you, on a future turn, bid on Ares, who allows you to build an army and actually march those troops to their ultimate destination. This makes combat less of a sudden and jarring experience, instead forcing players to telegraph invasion plans well in advance, allowing others to gather defenses in hopes of discouraging such attempts. Players can also have their ships fight, potentially destroying that once convenient pathway to victory.

Zeus and Athena handle the more passive effects, generating priests and philosophers. Priests make it so a player has to pay fewer coins when bidding, making it much easier to outbid your opponents for a fraction of the cost. Philosophers apply steady pressure to your opponents, as they create a Metropolis once you have gathered four. These act as catalysts for tension, pushing each player to be that much greedier as they struggle for supremecy.

At the end of the day, coin is all that matters in Cyclades. It’s what you use to buy the buildings you need to create Metropolises, to afford the abilities of each god, to accrue more troops or ships if need be. Other than some slight bonuses, money is the only way you’ll have any chance of victory. Luckily, Apollo is here to help, providing one player with an extra cornucopia to place on the island of their choice. Cornucopias produce one coin at the start of each turn, rewarding those who have settled on plentiful islands or placed their ships on trade routes. Additionally, players can receive monetary donations from Apollo, depending on the state of the board. Most players will only gain a modest one coin hand-out, but those who only have one island left will get a whopping four coins for their troubles. Because of this, I’ve spent some games barely getting by with a single island in hopes of gathering a sizable treasury for the late-game.

I say barely getting by because each island limits how many buildings you can have on it, meaning that it’s near impossible to build a Metropolis with a single island. On top of all this, each building besides Athena’s will give a player the appropriate passive buff. Ares’ and Poseidon’s structures give a plus one buff to any land or sea battles respectively, as long as they take place on or next to the island on which the building resides. Zeus’, on the other hand, provides discounts for creature cards.

Yes, the mythological beasts of yore make an appearance as well, some as gorgeous and gargantuan minis that stomp about the board, making their presence known. Each round, as long as a player doesn’t bid on Apollo, they may purchase one of the creature cards laid out, gaining an immediate boost, potentially stealing resources from others or flying your troops to a specific location. Creatures can be powerful and devastating allies when used correctly, leading to some of the most exciting and gratifying plays of a given game.

As you might have guessed, there is a fairly varied pool of strategies to pull from, allowing players to attempt different methods and ideas with each playthrough in hopes of discovering all the secrets held within Cyclades’ watery catacombs. That isn’t to say this is a complicated game; the rulebook is about four pages long and new players catch on to the basics quickly. But within this simple format, there is a ton of options and ideas to touch upon, only further supported by a few expansions.

Speaking of which, I’ve seen a lot of reviews and blogs claim that Cyclades isn’t good without the Titans expansion, and while I won’t go into too much detail as to what that pertains, I’d like to address the allegation. Titans, amongst other things, adds a new board to play on, one that, rather than being filled with little islands, is comprised of a couple land masses. This, by and large, is an attempt to make the combat of the game much like any other “dudes on a map” game. Rather than being limited by the sea, combat plays more like a game of Risk than anything else. Poseidon’s role in the game is also greatly diminished, although there are some profitable trade routes to place your ships on. On top of this, a new unit that is introduced, the titans, allows players to fight on any player's turn by spending coins. Again, this works to remove the value of what the base game introduced, making it easier to just fight your way to victory.

In other words, Titans takes away much of the unique identity that the base game fosters, turning it into just any other “dudes on a map” game. While some may claim that this is the only way to play the game, I heartily disagree; in my eyes, the grand strategies and ocean voyages are what give this game such a strong and individual identity.

Now, Cyclades certainly isn’t perfect, with a handful of flaws ultimately holding it back. The first and most prominent of these, in my eyes, is how combat is handled. While the number of troops you have present in a fight does matter, each adding one strength to your attack, each player does roll a single die, adding between zero and three to their total strength. As one might expect, this can lead to your battle strategy falling apart due to crummy luck, but a wise player can account for this and bring enough troops or hedge on the odds. This hasn’t greatly affected any of my recent playthroughs, but this is a very real possibility that might put off some players.

The other primary issue comes from the balancing of the various creatures, as there are some beasts that are clearly superior to the others, namely the pegasus. With the ability to instantly transport any number of troops from one island to another island, the pegasus can be a wildly powerful and game-changing card, one that’s often fought over the moment it appears. Due to this, entire strategies can be shaped or around to stymied by the sudden, opportune appearance of the card. Fortunately, Cyclades allows for some self-balancing through the auction system - if there is a very powerful monster available, players will pay dearly to go first. Still, this card has warranted deep discussion on BoardGameGeek and is worth talking about.

But if those are my only concerns about the game, it’s abundantly clear to me that Cyclades is a clear stand-out within the board gaming hobby, having become my favorite game to date over the last couple of years that I’ve owned it. The unique way it handles the “dudes on a map” system makes it a thought-provoking and brain-burner of a game, yet provides a certain accessibility to anyone who tries their hand at it. The theming and artwork is marvelous, the components generally of high quality, and the design is built in such a way to keep me coming back to it time and time again. It is a wholly immersive and rewarding experience to invest oneself in this world of islands and the warriors that inhabit them, and one that I intend on revisiting for the rest of my board gaming days.

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

Love Cyclades? Check out The Cardboard Herald's review with co-designer Bruno Cathala on episode 14 of our podcast. You can listen to all of our interviews by finding The Cardboard Herald on iTunes, Stitcher, or www.cardboardherald.com.

Ethnos - Subverting Fantasy Area Control, One Orc at a Time

Ethnos
Designed by Paolo Mori
Art by John Howe
Published by CMON Limited - 2017
2-6 players ~ 45-60 minutes
Review by Jack Eddy

There are covers, remixes, and mashups; and none of them are easy. Stick too close to the source material, and you’re just needlessly rehashing the past; stray too far away and it becomes unrecognizable, defeating the point in the first place. But the best of ‘em use your very relationship to the original artist, genre, and even period as a means to judo-flip your expectations on their head, letting you enjoy both the new AND old song in a brand new way. This is exactly what Ethnos attempts to do, using the enormous baggage of high-fantasy, area control genre conventions as a means to subvert everything you thought you knew, and it’s awesome.

How to win friends and influence nations:

Ethnos is a fantasy area control game in which players wrestle for dominion over a mystical land. Based on that sentence, what comes to mind? Sculpted miniatures? Dice rolling? Civilization Management? Hours of slogging contemplation only to end in a pyrrhic victory and hurt feelings? Ethnos is a wonderfully elegant, fast-playing abstract game that is simultaneously aggressive and welcoming; basically the opposite of what you’d expect from the box.

Over three ages (rounds), players will use a shared pool of cards to form bands of warriors and influence territories. As each round concludes, they’ll earn points by having the most influence in the various territories and for the size of the bands they’ve played.

To start, randomly pick 6 of the 12 fantasy races to form the draw deck; these will also determine which (if any) extra boards or components will come into play. Players each get one card to start, a market of face up cards is revealed, and the remaining forms the draw pile. Oh, and don’t forget to shuffle in the 3 dragon cards into the bottom half of the deck (more on that later).

And the first age begins! On a player’s turn they may either draw a card (either from the deck or face up market) or play a “band” of cards from their hand, discarding your remaining cards to the market. Bands consist of one or more cards that are either all from the same province (color) or all of the same race. Furthermore, one of the cards must be selected as the “band leader”, which determines which racial ability and which province you are influencing. If the number of cards in your band exceeds the number of influence discs you have in a region, you add a new disc.

Play continues until *GHASP* someone drew a dragon! This signals the beginning of the end of all things. Once three dragons have been revealed, the age is over and players immediately discard their hands and count points. You’ll feel a thrilling desperation as you decide whether to play the cards you have, or push your luck and try to keep drawing, knowing full well that a third dragon could be right around the corner.

This continues for three rounds (two in a 2-3 player game), with the draw deck being reformed at the beginning of each age. While your bands go away, your stacked influence discs remain in like miniature obelisks constructed in your honor; which is important because the regions become more valuable with each new age. There’s a nice ark to Ethnos as you’ll likely be playing bigger, badder bands as the game goes on, further driving the tension and desperation as the third dragon of the third age draws near*. Finally, at the end of the three rounds, points are awarded and a winner is declared.

*coincidentally, “Third Dragon of the Third Age” is the name of my new prog-metal band

How it Feels:

At first glance, Ethnos’ simplicity may be mistaken as a 1 way ticket to dullsville, but in practice it is such an exciting and fresh take on the genre. First and foremost, it solves the “Take that!” problem many people have with area control games. By making players compete over the most influence rather than attacking one another’s pieces, it completely changes the tone of the game; Ethnos is not a battle, it’s a race.

And that’s exactly how it feels! It plays at a breakneck speed. With only a handful of choices at your disposal, you usually know exactly what you want to do on your turn as soon as it comes up… that is unless your awful friends, decide to take that faceup Troll you were after. You care about what players do, what cards they take, what they leave behind, and how they have the audacity to come into YOUR territory! But at the same time, everyone is thrilled when players influence the board so they can feast on the new cards in the market, like wild dogs hungry for scraps.

Again, this anticipation and excitement betrays the plodding thoughtfulness you’d expect out of a “fantasy area control” game. Though it rewards cunning and strategic play, there may be several turns in a row where players blindly draw cards off the top of the deck, hoping against hope to draw ANYTHING that matches another card in their hands. In a lesser game this would feel like a luck-fest, but even bad draws have the versatility to shift your focus, conquering different regions, making otherwise forgotten cards in the market more valuable, or employing the powers of races you had previously dismissed. In Ethnos, you use every part of the board game buffalo.

The Art / Theme:

Let’s get this out of the way, from the archetypical fantasy races to the iconic John Howe artwork, Ethnos looks and feels like it’s set in Middle Earth, exactly like a type of game that it is not. This old school style of hand-drawn fantasy art may be a turnoff to some people, but personally I’m crazy for it. There is something fresh, cool, even challenging about decking out such a modern take on the genre with artwork in such a traditional style. Contrasted with the bizarrely gorgeous influence discs, featuring a completely different palette of hyper-tropical colors, you can’t help but awe in Howe’s mastery of the craft.

As for how the theme resonates? That may be a different story. I can do some creative reasoning as to why each race has it’s ability, but Ethnos is absolutely an abstract game. You don’t feel like you are battling opponents, you don’t feel like you are at some vast entmoot arguing over wars, you feel like you are playing cards and bright plastic disks to gain points. But in a way, this lets players engage with the theme on whatever level they want. Fans of rich fantasy worlds have an evocative land to imagine cultures rising and falling over hundreds of years; and those that roll their eyes when they hear names like “Gil-Galad” and “Bombadil” can focus purely on the strategic elements of the game, not getting hit over the head constantly by high fantasy nonsense.

Versatility / Replayability:

One interesting thing is how well it accommodates different player counts. Since the size of the deck is fixed, the game still moves at about the same pace at 2 players as it does with 6. Lower player counts tend to feel more tense and strategic, focussed on the individual plays, whereas higher player counts feel more explosive and desperate as there could be 5 players risking a dragon between now and your next turn. And while it may seem more reliant on luck, a higher player count means more hands being dumped into the market, broadening options and distracting everyone from that nasty, dragon-filled deck.

As to how it holds up after time; I am still so hungry to play this game again and again. First off, it straddles the line between light and mid-weight very well, making it an easy go-to game as either a main event or opener; but the biggest reason I come back to Ethnos is how dynamically  the races interact and change the feel of each game. Like building a sandwich, the core concept of Ethnos remains consistent, but you get wildly different flavor combinations with each ingredient thrown in. Almost every game I’ve played has seen a different race as the session’s MVP, largely because players underestimated their power from previous games.

Here, at the end of all things:

There are a lot of things that Ethnos is not; It is not heavy, it is not deeply thematic, and it is not a game of war. Yet in an act of defiance, it is still an absolutely fresh and compelling take on fantasy area control games. Whether by intent of the designer or through happy accident, Ethnos dissects a stale genre and completely upends our expectations, both reminding us why we loved our old favorites while still delivering something new.

Who should get this game: Fans of classic fantasy artwork, people who like shorter games, people who love(d) area control games but their group doesn’t like “take-that”, people who delight in simple yet clever systems

Who shouldn’t get this game: People who want to fight, people who dislike luck, people who crave deep strategy, people who hate fun

Spiritual Alignment - A review of Mysterium

We, as a society, are excited by the chance to solve a good murder mystery. Unearthing a fatal incident long passed in hopes of recovering a story lost to time. Gathering data, testing hypothesis, scrutinizing every little detail; we love the hunt. And when a piece of the puzzle falls into place, how satisfying it is knowing you’ve come to that conclusion through sheer cunning and wit.

Mysterium looks to capitalize on this feeling and make a narrative for players to embark on every time they crack open the box.

Set in 1920’s Scotland, Mysterium is an asymmetric co-op experience, one of the first of its kind. A seemingly complex description, what this actually means is everyone is working together, but at least one player will have abilities unique to them.

Each game, one individual will take on the role of the ghost, a sort of spectral Dungeon Master. Determined to not be forgotten, the ghost gives the other players clues each round so that they can puzzle out who the ghost is and how they died before time runs out and the ghost fades away.

Before you assume this is just Clue with a slight twist, it’s worth noting that the Ghost player must help reveal this information in silence. Using beautifully illustrated cards featuring abstract art, the ghost is trying to guide each player to identify specific cards featuring people, places, and things. While there may be up to eight suspects to choose from (depending on the number of players), the investigators must suss out who is supposed to get which.

Each round, the Ghost picks one or more vision cards from their hand to give to each investigator. These cards, featuring wild and often ominous dreamscapes, will hopefully bear some symbolic clue as to which suspect, location, and murder weapon each investigator needs to identify.While all investigators are allowed to deliberate over which option is correct, ultimately it’s the player who received the clues who must commit to an answer, placing their chunky crystal ball token on the appropriate card.

Additionally, players may vote on whether their friends are right or wrong, earning clairvoyance points if they guess correctly. While not immediately helpful, clairvoyance will allow players to receive more clues in the final and most crucial round of the game.

After all investigators have placed their crystal balls, the Ghost informs them who chose right and wrong. If the guess was correct, that player places that card in front of them, moving their crystal forward so they are guessing within a new category during the next round. If wrong, that player continues in the current category, armed with more information.

If all investigators manage to collect their suspect, weapon, and location cards within seven turns, a final round begins. The Ghost provides a final set of clues based on the clairvoyance earned during the game. The investigators must correctly identify which player’s suspect, location, and weapon tell the story of the ghost’s murder. If the majority of investigators vote for the correct set of cards, the mystery is solved and everyone wins!

… Which immediately leads to the Ghost, after a sigh of relief, exploding in a continuous stream of exclamations, explanations, and general noises of gleeful frustration. For investigators and the Ghost alike, the main source of fun and humor in this game is having a player who knows all but cannot explicitly help anyone with that knowledge, forcefully limited in their means of communication. It’s funny as the Ghost visually struggles with being unable to speak as everyone debates over the meanings of their cards and attempt to deduce the roundabout logic of providing them with such obscure clues.

I can recall one scenario when, after having received three vision cards, I sat contemplating the various details and smaller images hidden in the background of each, trying to find some string of logic amidst the mess of ideas. As I looked up at the Ghost, I noticed him shaking behind his player shield. Whether it was from laughter or frustration, I couldn’t tell, but it was hilarious to the rest of us regardless.

Unfortunately, this just as easily leads to scenarios in which the Ghost can be blamed for everything that goes wrong in the game. Mysterium relies on the Ghost player to set not just the tone, but the pace of the game. On one end, they must provide interesting yet readable clues, and be able to get into the heads of the other players without speaking a word. On the other, they need to do this in a reasonable amount of time.

The first time I played Mysterium, someone who I barely knew took on the role of the Ghost. As we investigators sat perusing the various images spread on the table, the Ghost struggled to come up with even a single clue from his first hand of cards, taking three or four minutes to begin taking their turn. Simply put, the Ghost role is a difficult one, and the wrong player taking on that job can easily ruin a session. I for one swore off the game for nearly a year before returning to it with a group of friends I knew fairly well.

There are a couple of easy ways to prevent this from happening, the easiest of which is to make sure that whoever becomes the Ghost has played the game before. Having a Ghost who can basically run the game at an even pace while also having the knowledge to recognize what clues are useful will allow players to grow comfortable and invested in the idea of the game, potentially giving them the confidence to try the role in a future game.

For the game to run smoothly, the ghost needs to be comfortable making due with what they have and willing to risk handing out imperfect visions. A few games have been hampered by those who second-guess themselves constantly, berating themselves for giving bad clues, and ultimately giving up well before the game has even ended, growing deeply embarrassed. At times, it can feel like there are no good options in their hand of cards, perpetuating this feeling of negativity that ultimately affects the whole table. Some players will never feel like they’re ready to attempt this job, and that’s okay; recognizing this is the most important part of making it a fun experience for everyone.

A flaw that I’ve found in repeated plays of Mysterium is the limited pool of cards provided. There are only 18 of each of the suspect, location, and murder weapon cards, meaning that after three or four games, you’ll have seen every card hit the table in some way. This can lead to a feeling of monotony; at one point, I realized we had seen the same couple of person cards two or three games in a row. When I went to replace them, I was shocked by how we had already seen everything the box had to offer.

This also extends to the vision cards, leading to its own set of issues. The Ghost can end up stuck with a hand of useless cards, forcing them to provide clues that are sometimes useless or downright impossible. It’s frustrating to feel like you can do nothing but give a random card to someone, knowing that they will almost assuredly guess incorrectly. For me, this creates a feeling of false difficulty; there are cards in the deck that I know would be perfect as clues in this situation, but because I didn’t happen to draw into them, it doesn’t matter. It feels like, in this manner, Mysterium works hard to build a puzzle not through its cleverness but through creating situations that obscure the solutions. Yes, I do recognize that being able to choose whatever cards I wanted each time would make the game way too easy, but it still made me feel like I was forced to play sub optimally, deflating the overall experience.

On top of this, repeated plays will result in certain clues become synonymous with specific suspects, locations, and weapons. I’ve found myself holding desperately onto a card dotted with candles until a later round when I can give that clue to the person who needs to get, you guessed it, a candle. The more times you play this game, the easier it will become.

There are some solutions to this; an expansion pack, Hidden Signs as well as a plethora of promotional cards exist to pad out the card counts for vision cards and suspect/location/weapon cards alike. Still not satisfied? Some creative gamers have begun using cards from the game  Dixit in place of the vision cards, which feature similar if not more bizarre dreamscapes. While effective, these are expensive solutions and result in Mysterium becoming a multi-box affair, adding to an already lengthy setup time.

It’s worth noting that, while the game claims to support two to seven players, Mysterium shouldn’t be played with less than four. In the lower player counts, each investigator is forced to try and deduce two different sets of cards. This combined with the fact that there are fewer differing opinions to lead to the aforementioned moments of humor turns the game into a rather bland slog.

For all the potential, Mysterium lacks the concrete structure and variety that I needed, ultimately a game with great aesthetics but lackluster mechanics, like a withered ghost in its own right.

Luke Muench is a freelance writer and the founder & host of the youtube series Budget Board Gamer.

Expansion Mini Review - Tuscany Essential Edition

Tuscany: Essential Edition
Designed by Jamey Stegmaier & Alan Stone
Art by Beth Sobel
Published by Stonemaier Games - 2016
1-6 Players - 60-180 minutes
Review by Jack Eddy

To understand Tuscany: Essential Edition, you need a little context of how we got here. Tuscany: Essential Edition is an expansion to Viticulture: Essential Edition, which in itself is a sort of “remix” of the original 2013 Viticulture and the original, much larger expansion Tuscany. You see, Viticulture and the subsequent expansion both were favorably received and developed a cult following, but some of the systems and implementation were clunky, flawed, or detracted from the overall experience. Smartly, Stonemaier Games decided to re-release Viticulture with some of the best and, more importantly, most critical  elements of Tuscany included in the base set; thus Viticulture: Essential Edition was born. V:EE remains to this date one of the greatest worker placement games ever made.

But the story doesn’t end there. Many elements of Tuscany remained on the cutting room floor, each of which could fall in one of two categories. First were the modules that, for all their promise, just plain didn’t work. This group was retired, doomed to obscurity, never to be printed again. Then there is the other group; the modules that truly expanded on the elegant beauty that is Viticulture, but perhaps deepened the experience too much to include it in the base Essential Edition. It’s the modules in this latter group that make up the now available expansion, Tuscany: Essential Edition.

What’s New?

Tuscany EE contains three new modules to add to your game, Structures, Special Workers, and an Extended Board. The last of these, the Extended board, is probably the most dramatic shift in how the game operates. Unlike the base game where your lazy vintners only had to work during “summer” and “winter” seasons, all action spaces are now broken into a whopping four different seasons in which all players must select actions or pass until the game progresses to the next season. Just like in the base game, workers used in a previous season are not reclaimed until the end of the year, so players are much more considerate about which actions to take and when.

Along with the new seasons, the extended board presents several new actions, a new method of determining turn order, and a small “overworld map” used to show your influence on the surrounding countryside. Turn order is now decided as you pass out of winter, ending your actions for the year. Along with the rest of your upkeep, you select which slot you’d like to take on turn order for the next turn, of course granting better bonuses the further down you go. The regional map is neat though relatively inconsequential; certain actions allow you to place one of your six stars in a region of your choice for a small reward. These stars can be moved later without the reward, but the player with the most influence in each region gets 1 to 2 points at the end of the game, adding a certain area control element to the game.  

Structures and Special Workers (each of which can be played with or without the new board), are new cards that expand on concepts that are core to the base game. Two special workers are drawn at the beginning of the game and assigned randomly to the (frankly adorable) male and female meeples. Now whenever you train a new worker, you can choose to pay extra to bring your male or female special worker into play. These specialists have a variety of effects ranging from mildly helpful to “oh-my-god-the-mafioso-is-incredible!”. Fortunately every player has access to the same two specialists so things remain balanced. Structures are drawn through a variety of actions, that can be built just like any other building in the game. These give players exclusive new actions or ongoing effects that are usually quite powerful.

Should you get it?

This is a tough question to answer. The problem is I actually think that Viticulture: Essential Edition is pretty much a perfect package; it’s approachable yet deep, it’s streamlined yet complex, the theme shines through beautifully, and it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. It’s hard for me to advocate messing with perfection (Would Sgt. Pepper have been better if the fab-four added a couple more songs?). YET, at the same time, Tuscany transforms the game into a deeper, more nuanced experience, gracefully changing a solidly mid-weight game into a meatier cousin, all-the-while managing to not disrupt the core elegance that is so paramount to Viticulture.

I really enjoy Tuscany, it broadens the game and forces players to be much more deliberate with their actions. Each worker has much more purpose, and the sequence of events creates a tighter, more tense game. If I were to identify my favorite aspect (aside from the amazing male & female specialist meeples), it’s the new board with four seasons and how turn order selection is now handled. It’s such a subtle yet incredibly potent change to the game, heightening the drama as you consider when to play and when to pass. Another thing I love is that each module present new ways of approaching the game, making alternate strategies more viable.

So to answer the question at hand - Yes. If you are someone who likes deeper games, or you love Viticulture and feel like you want more, then this is an incredible expansion. On the other hand, if you like Viticulture but the base game is already reaching your limits of complexity, or you don’t like Viticulture and were hoping that this somehow completely changed the core of the game (is that person out there?) then this expansion isn’t for you. Personally, I tend to think of Viticulture and Tuscany as two separate experiences, each catering to different moods, groups, and occasions; and each well-deserving a place in my collection.

Review copy of Tuscany Essential Edition provided by Stonemaier Games

Cthulhu Wars

Cthulhu Wars
Designed by Sandy Petersen
Published by Green Eye Games & Petersen Games - 2015
2-4 Players - 90-120 Minutes
Review written by John LS Foster

It can be said that the function of language is often mirrored by aspects of game design.  We apply order to abstraction and draw the conceptual down into the realm of the literal with words in much the same way the physical elements of a game give form to the idea of a thing.  This figure is my legion; this painted bit of cardboard, my lifeblood; this bold line, the limit of my domain.

Here, now, I set out to define the unfathomable and bind it with words in order that your frail sanity might comprehend a game that deals in elder beings of such scale as to skirt the very boundaries of what reasonable table size can accommodate.  I give to you the first word of binding:

Cosmic

[ˈkäzmik] ADJECTIVE

• of or relating to the universe or cosmos, especially as distinct from the earth

• inconceivably vast

Take a moment to contemplate the above term.  Does it call to you?  Does it compel you?  Does it engender some need in you to own such a game as would be described by this word?  Then you, my friend, are seeking Cthulhu Wars.

Cthulhu Wars is a game set in the Lovecraftian mythos by none other than the mad Sandy Peterson, author of the demonic text “Call of Cthulhu RPG”.  In this game players begin by commanding a group of acolyte cultists for their faction and summoning all manner of monsters; even going so far as to call forth their own particular great old one (elder god) to do battle with other players’ own horrors.  Their battleground; Earth.

In Lovecraft’s writing the horror of the unknown always lay just past the edge of what we can see or understand and the doom of mankind was always one arcane word or aligned planet away.  In the Earth of Cthulhu Wars mankind has long since fallen and all that remains are the disciples of the great old ones who call their gods and monsters from beyond our world through eldritch gates to battle for supremacy against one another.

These battles take place over a series of rounds during which players spend their power points on various actions like creating new gates, summoning monsters from those gates, abducting enemy cultists for sacrifice, and attacking in a frenzy of thrown dice.  Each round begins with a Doom phase during which players score points  for every gate they control and extra points if they spend power to push the ritual marker up one space.  The game ends on the Doom phase where the ritual marker reaches the end of its track or any player has 30 or more points.

This conflict is cosmic is every sense of the word; both vast in scale and calling on beings from beyond our world and our understanding.  To take it in we must further distill its concepts.  The second word of binding:

Grandiose

[ˈɡrandēˌōs, ɡrandēˈōs] ADJECTIVE

• impressive or magnificent in appearance or style, especially pretentiously so

• excessively grand or ambitious

Any discussion of Cthulhu Wars is inevitably drawn into commentary on the scale of the board and its figures.  To gain a thematic sense of the otherworldly power you command, the figures, not mini’s (there’s nothing mini about them), range in size from the average-scale cultists to their gods that dwarf them.  In addition to simply being large, the presentation and detail is impressive and the color choices of the factions is refreshingly vibrant leading to a game that has presence rather than one that just takes up space.

Yes, the figures could be smaller and the map could take up less than an entire table, but the figures are gratuitous in a way that is supremely satisfying and their scale goes beyond the awe and joy they create in the players and ties directly into the theme.

But size and scale are a thin veneer that obscures what lies beneath; gameplay.  To know it further I give you the third word of binding:

Melee

[ˈmāˌlā, māˈlā] NOUN

• A confused fight, skirmish, or scuffle

• A confused mass of people

This perfectly describes both the look and feeling of Cthulhu Wars.  Units of any faction can willingly coexist in all areas on the board and battles are initiated only when a player chooses to do so as an action for their turn.  The reasons for these battles are the gates which provide both power points and victory points and can only be controlled by a cultist.  Only a single one of these can lay claim to each gate one time and they themselves offer no strength in battle and must be guarded by allied monsters to prevent abduction by other factions’ units.

What results is a riot of colors as factions build gates to expand their power and net more points each turn, but also begin to stray into other territories to abduct cultists left unprotected by other units and to lay in wait for other players to leave gates lightly guarded.

This is not to say that Cthulhu Wars is unpredictable by any means.  There is a palpable tension as the board begins to fill with units; players start eyeing one another to see who might consider a sudden attack of opportunity, securing a few extra points in the next turn’s point collecting phase.  Adjusting your actions perfectly to the placement of enemy units, the powers currently available to each player, and which of the 8 possible factions are present in each game can feel like capturing lightning in your hand; dangerously impossible yet transcendent if achieved.

There is also surprising equilibrium in the chaos of the outer gods.  The asymmetry of the game feels tightly balanced and yet each faction feels uniquely powerful.  They push their players towards certain strategies, but requires players to be adaptable and opportunistic or risk being thwarted as other players can just as easily evaluate an enemy faction’s methodology and see the obvious moves coming.

In the end, the blend of heavily asymmetrical factions and quick action-based rounds leads to gameplay that avoids traditional area-control pitfalls.  All of this happens in game that averages close to the box’s 90-minute playtime in an experience that is powerful and intensely strategic.  But power has its foibles and so I give you the fourth word of binding:

Decadence

[ˈdekədəns] NOUN

• moral or cultural decline as characterized by excessive indulgence in pleasure or luxury

• luxurious self-indulgence

This is where we come to a discussion of all things overwrought, overplayed, or perhaps even overpriced.  To guard ourselves against the perils of such decadent madness we must examine the three areas in which Cthulhu wars indulges the darker nature of gaming.

First; Echoes of madness.

Cthulhu Wars is based in the mythos centered around the writings of H.P. Lovecraft.  Does the world need another Cthulhu game; this Cthulhu game?  Are you a disciple of Lovecraft, cosmic horror, or world-ending apocalypse?  Only the individual can answer those questions for themselves, but for my part I can say that whether you can adore Lovecraft, or are completely unaware of him, this game is drenched in theme and takes it to a place that doesn’t dwell so much on the mysterious and unknowable and instead wallows in a sense of inevitable doom.  If calling forth towering nightmares to do battle for the remains of a dead world sounds like your game, then this is it.

Second; The call to sacrifice.

Cthulhu Wars insists that you answer the personal question of value by demanding a rather hefty sacrifice of material wealth for its favor.  The core set with only four (4) factions and a single map will cost you around $200.  The components are of the best quality, but whether this is worth it to you depends on how you view your games.  As one game among a deep collection it might not stand out enough to warrant this price, but if you revel in the idea of owning a game you can fawn over and give it the attention it deserves, then this box comes with every bit of the value the price demands.

Third; The countless hordes.

Cthulhu Wars is pluralized for a good reason.  This isn’t one war you purchase in a single box, but is an endless battle made up of dozens of expansion sets.  The first kickstarter campaign in 2013 launched the core set and no fewer than 3 new faction expansions, 3 map expansions, and a parade of neutral gods and monsters to turn the game on its head.  Since then a second wave of content has been kickstarted and delivered and a third is actively campaigning this July/August (2017).  That doesn’t begin to account for purchasable upgrades like fully sculpted plastic gates.

All of this luxurious excess inherently begs the question “is it necessary?”.  And no, perhaps the core game suffices for some and it is a very complete experience (except the gates, everyone needs the gates to feel whole!).  But if the peculiar madness of Cthulhu Wars finds a willing acolyte in you, with its impressively executed gameplay and the tactile excess of its glorious figures, then I suggest that you purchase the faction expansions, plastic gates, and high priests at very least.  The neutral gods and monsters might overwhelm some who don’t frequent the game often enough, but the factions and high priests add character and variety without rules complication and the gates are absolutely the finishing touch to fully appreciate the Cthulhu Wars aesthetic.  There is much more to appreciate here but I leave you now with a final word of binding:

Terminus

[ˈtərmənəs] Noun

• a final point in space or time; an end or extremity

The wealth of Lovecraftian source material left still untapped and the creator’s passion for the mythos makes me uncertain when or what the final note for this series will be, but here and now we end this written journey into madness.  Is this a game for everyone?  Certainly not.  But, if you can appreciate a game with conflict and asymmetry this is an excellent choice with a play-time that will see it hit the table more often than many games in its genre.  If you enjoy the theme of the Lovecraft mythos, or less specifically the theme of titans of unspeakable origin and unfathomable destruction clashing over our ruined world, then this game delivers.  If you want a flagship game for your collection that you can feel both proud of and just a little guilty for owning, this is it.  And, if you see the hidden truths of the universe as I do and walk the dark path that I tread, then feel free to go all-in during this current kickstarter campaign; it will only cost you most of your savings and just a sliver of your soul, but believe me, I don’t miss either.

John is a freelance writer and occasional co-host of the Cardboard Herald podcast

La Granja: No Siesta - A Pen & Paper Pig Allocation Simulator

La Granja: No Siesta - A game of Pen & Paper Pig Allocation
Designed by Andreas “Ode.” Odendahl
Art by Harald Lieske
Published by Stronghold Games - 2016
1-4 Players - 30-45 Minutes
Review by Jack Eddy

Isn’t it great when a creator just gets the strengths of their medium? I tend to notice it most in music or visual art, like comics and movies, but occasionally a board game nails exactly what I want out of a specific experience. La Granja: No Siesta, a 40 minute dicey distillation of 2014’s La Granja, is perfect for grabbing lunch at your local coffee house. And you’ll need that coffee too, because as the name implies, you’ll have to earn your right to Siesta simple yet delightfully strategic game.

El Juego (Gameplay)

Most of the action in No Siesta happens on a player’s farm and the Siesta track. Farms are basically beautiful scantron sheets that players markup as they spend resources to complete various actions. Yes, your personal pan tableau is a disposable piece of paper that you write on, no this is not a problem, yes, I’ll explain why later. The Siesta track (printed on lovely chipboard,I might add) establishes the clock of the game; as players move along the track, they earn points, unlock more player tokens, and ultimately trigger the end of the game.

Rounds consist of resource production, spending said resources, resolving any triggered effects, and passing the first player pig token. Resource production starts with the first-player-pig-man rolling awesome chunky wooden dice, followed by each player selecting one die to keep. The remaining dice are rolled again and once more each player takes one. At this point the final die rolled one last time and everyone produces resources based on their two dice and the one remaining that was just rolled. The rest of the turn consists of players simultaneously spending resources by checking boxes on their farm and resolving any actions that were fully completed this round.

There are 6 different areas on your board, each corresponding to a distinct type of task. Though they all reward you with points in one form or another, they each have their own costs and effects that dictate why you’d pursue some over others. Roofs give one-time effects, carts allow you to claim special end-game bonus points, helpers... well... they help your farm run more efficiently, and long distance trade rewards big points and a commodity (wild resource). Lastly, your stable and warehouse act as a sort of consolation prize, giving you points for sets of resources that you dumped here because they had no place else to go. This usually happens because your friends Jeff and Tina decided to leave you useless garbage donkeys at the end of the game.  

Oh god, why are there so many donkeys!

Here lies the real tension in No Siesta; though you can take each action several times, once each action is filled out it can’t be completed again. You are forced to make strategic choices about where to put your resources and when. Some actions require resources to be spent in a specific order, others must be paid for all at once in a turn. And since unspent resources don’t stick around from turn to turn (with the exception of one commodity), there are plenty of critical decision points where you will choose to forgo certain aspects of your farm in favor of others. Fortunately, it almost always feels like I have a handful of good options on how to spend my wares, and rarely do I feel like luck was the absolute make-or-break factor in a game.

Los Componentes (Components)

There are going to be some people who scowl in disgust and horror over the limited, single-use farms. While I really appreciate top notch enduring components that I can someday pass on to my little gamer grandbabies, I totally get why Stronghold went this direction and it’s completely fine. Not only do you get a TON of double-sided farms in the box, if you play it so much that you risk running out, just laminate the last four sheets or buy yourself another copy of the game; it’s fairly cheap and you obviously loved it enough to play it 50+ times. Additionally, by making the farms disposable, it allowed for a much less fiddly and more elegant solution to managing resources and paying costs that suits the format really well.

Speaking of the format, most of the components feel perfect for a fast playing, compact game. I can’t emphasize enough how good the larger wooden dice feel, the singular pig token is among my favorite first player markers, and while the art and iconography aren’t particularly memorable, the game is still visually clean, clear, and tonally beautiful (I adore the green and yellow color scheme). The only components I actively dislike are the roof tiles, which at about 1” x .5” in size, I find that my gigantic meat paws often accidentally flip one over. While this can be somewhat frustrating, it hasn’t ever interrupted a game and I can accept it as a necessary evil to maintain the overall very-appealing form factor.

Caminos Alternativos & Uno es el Numero Mas Solitario (Variants & Solo Play)

There are a few variants described in No Siesta’s surprisingly dense rulebook, but the two worth mentioning are the expert helpers and solo play. Unlike in the normal game where each player has their own pool of the same six different helpers to choose from, the expert helpers build a sort of market that players can pick from as they play. I think this is crucial to the game, especially after 4 or 5 plays, as it begins to shift what options are available, encouraging players to plan different strategies instead of relying on what has worked for them in the past.

The solo game on the other hand is clever and well thought out, but I find it’s still a bit more work than it’s worth. What is normally a fast, tension filled game about eagerly anticipating what each new turn will bring, it’s instead a methodical calculation to maximize points before time runs out. The dice rolling in No Siesta feels inherently social as players stare with greedy anticipation as the dice are thrown; the thrill of getting exactly what you wanted and taking the one and only pig that everyone wanted is gone. I’m not saying the solo game is bad or poorly designed, but unlike games like Scythe or Terraforming Mars that create a solo experience that emulates the feel of the multiplayer game, No Siesta becomes a different and somewhat less exuberant beast all together.

La Sensacion (How it feels)

Overall I really like La Granja: No Siesta. It is one of the more compelling small box games that I’ve played, and I think that is in large part made possible because of the sheets of paper. Too often these games are either strategically limited because you don’t want to overload a small game with too many rules and thereby too many components, or you do have a more complex game that has no elegant solution, making a cluttered mess. No Siesta avoids these trappings and manages to be one of the more compelling games that can easily sit 1 to 4 players and deliver a streamlined yet complex experience in about 40 minutes. It’s snappy, intuitive, and above all fun.

That said, there are still some limitations of the format. After several games, I’ve noticed that a couple of the helpers almost always get picked first, and there tends to be optimum placement of early game resources. While strategies do diverge after a few turns and the expert helpers go a long way to change what options are available each game, I would have liked to see maybe one or two more mechanisms to further change up your options from one game to the next. This is the one area where I think No Siesta has yet to live up to it’s predecessor, as one of La Granja’s strengths was the incredible variety of strategic options at your disposable. Who knows, maybe someday No Siesta will have an expansion that incorporates the awesome card system of La Granja, but that's another review.

No Siesta may be the perfect coffee shop game. Shoutout to Heritage Coffee, my home for lunchtime board gaming in Southeast, AK.

Si Siesta! (Final Thoughts)

Overall, No Siesta’s success is as much about what it doesn’t do as what it does. It perfectly straddles the line of accessibility and complexity, making for one of the most strategically satisfying small box games I’ve played. Sure, some added variability may be welcome in the future, but I would much rather a spartan distillation of a more complex experience than a sad, bloated attempt at packing too big of a game into a small package. No Siesta is a game that I am certain I will keep in my collection, and will eagerly break out again and again, especially when accompanied by a 16 ounce Americano with an extra shot, with room for cream and whipped cream; and I'll need it too, because in the world of La Granja, there’s no time for Siestas.

Review copy of La Granja: No Siesta provided by Stronghold Games

Listen to our interview with Stronghold Games owner Stephen Buonocore on episode 38 of The Cardboard Herald Podcast.

Champions of Midgard - Trolling for Wood with Killer Dice

Designed by Ole Steiness
Art by Victor Perez Corbella
Published by Grey Fox Games - 2015
2-4 Players - 60-90 Minutes
Review by Luke Muench

Luck is a rather polarizing aspect of board gaming as a hobby. Too much of it, and there’s no strategy to the game, players relying on drawing the best cards or rolling dice well, making it feel unfair. Too little, and the game becomes a giant math problem that have one path of least resistance, making all players follow the same strategies, resulting in a boring and tedious experience. All good games, in my opinion, should have some luck injected into them to allow for interesting and exciting moments, but at what point is it too much?

One of the first modern board games I played was Stone Age, a game that focuses on gathering resources to allow your tribe to rise in prominence over time. The problem? Every time you collected resources, you would need to roll dice to see just how much of that important thing you would get. This quickly left a sour taste in my mouth, as more often than not I found myself only getting one or two pieces of wood when I desperately needed four to accomplish one of the goals on the board. Yes, there are ways to mitigate this, such as obtaining tools that alter odds in your favor or spending more workers on an action to roll more dice, but the game still required you to roll to see how well you were doing.

And yet one of my favorite games to date, and one of those games I have fellow players ask me to bring to game nights week after week, is Champions of Midgard, a game that once again involves rolling dice at crucial moments to see if you get the “resources” you need to succeed. So what does this Norse-inspired dice-rolling rampage do that makes it so much more rewarding that it surpasses what made me grow to resent Stone Age?

In Champions of Midgard, players are rival chieftains, trying to prove themselves the most glorious. Whoever obtains the most glory, aka victory points, by the end of eight rounds wins.

Players will primarily do this by violently slaughtering the great and mighty beasts found in Norse lore, from Trolls to Draugr to the Cubs of Fenrir. Each of these creatures provide not just points, but resources and other benefits to allow you to progress on your future ventures that much more easily.

The process of actually fighting these monsters, however, can be daunting and difficult, and like any euro worth its snuff, it forces players to live off of next-to-nothing in hopes of squeaking by with just enough glory to outshine their neighbors. Resources are tight, but with some clever planning and by thinking three turns ahead, you’ll watch as a variety of unique plans collide, often derailing one another in hilarious ways.

At first glance, Champs may be seen as a rehash of every other worker placement game out there, an unhealthy stigma that I admit I suffered from prior to trying it for myself. Each round, players take turns placing one worker at a time on different spots, allowing them to gain the benefits of that spot while preventing others from doing the same for the rest of that round. Many of the spots will allow you to gather important resources, like food, wood, a variety of useful other tokens, cards, and effects, and most importantly, warriors.

Warriors, and how they fight, are what makes this game stand out from the rest. Rather than having players turn in their collected resources for a pre-defined set of points, players may place a worker in front of land-based monsters to claim them as combatants in the second phase of each round. Similarly, players may claim boats and particular locations at the seaside in preparation to set sail to the stronger but more profitable monsters that await on the other side. Then, after all workers are placed and resources are collected, players may dedicate a certain number of dice to each battle.

Determining how many or how few warriors should be sent into a given fight can be one of the most stressful yet rewarding decisions in the game. I’ve spent turns charging into three different battles, spreading my forces unadvisedly thin in hopes of squeaking out an extra five or ten points that round. What further incentivises players to diversify their warriors is that some monsters cannot be attacked by specific types of dice, meaning you’ll need to change your strategies now and again in order to have enough opportunities to earn points.

Players can choose to send no warriors at all, simply claiming the space to skunk other players out of that battle, or they can send up to the maximum of  eight warriors, stacking their chances for success. However, when setting off to sea, where most of the larger valued bounties await, boats have a finite weight they can carry, limiting how many tokens can be on board. Furthermore, warriors need to be fed if they are to make it to their battle, meaning some of those slots will be taken up by food. And let’s not forget that, before any warriors have eaten, a hidden sea card is revealed, potentially dooming some of the passengers. So overstocking in order to be safe or using one of your precious workers to check the hidden card might be prudent, but costly.

Even then, once you get to the fight, you need to roll well enough to take down your target, or have enough reroll tokens to allow the fight to swing in your favor. One-time use effects can also be bought, providing a handful of glory as well as instant abilities that can save you when at the fate of the dice.

Each of the different types of dice represent a different kind of warrior, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Swordsmen are the easiest to obtain, sure, but with three blank sides, there’s a good chance they could miss altogether. Still, they can strike once or twice in a single roll, or block one damage with their shield. Spearmen have one less blank, replaced by another single-hit, and axemen throw away their shield for another double-hit, making them powerful but vulnerable. That’s because for each damage that the monsters do to you, even with their dying breath, you must discard one of the dice you brought on the venture, sending the warriors to Valhalla… or back the dice pool, take your pick.

In other words, every fight is carefully planned for and considered, yet the battles maintain an exciting and invigorating tone, sending a rush of adrenaline through your body when your last spearman delivers the killing blow, netting you twelve points and some useful reroll tokens for your trouble. You’re constantly keeping an eye on your opponents to see what they’re up to, doing your best to stymie them at every turn, because if you don’t, they will defeat you. Not paying attention to who fights the Troll each turn? Well, that could mean you taking negative points due to the townsfolk blaming you for not dealing with it yourself. Deciding to let your friend get the resources they need so you can aim for another one-time use ability? Well, now they have a private boat that gets them points and means they don’t have to fight over the public longboats to head out to sea. Didn’t take the first player token? Now the next person did, meaning you’re going last next round. Every decision is meaningful.

Last match I played of this (a 4-player battle royale), I had a friend who was taking up the rear for a fair amount of the game, only to go on two overseas expeditions at the end of round seven, earning himself roughly 30 points, and ultimately the game. Everyone is always a contender as long as you’re fighting for it, and this game is far from being just about the luck of the roll. Much like Roll Player, Champions of Midgard lets you manipulate and utilize your luck in hopes of getting just what you need.

Now, this review may be coming across as a bit one-sided, but Champions of Midgard is by no means a perfect game, and has some flaws that are worth mentioning. Firstly, this game does obviously have some luck to it, and get unlucky enough and it can be hard to come back from it. This is rare, but certainly a possibility.

Secondly, some of the tokens, particularly the food and wood cubes, feel  pretty underwhelming compared to the chunky and detailed dice. Frankly, none of the components are particularly good, with the insert feeling especially cheap if functional. I’ve since replaced my food and wood tokens with those from Imperial Settlers, a game I didn’t find myself playing nearly as often.

Third, the leaders each player starts with feel unbalanced, with some of their powers feeling much more powerful and flexible than others. One of the leaders, Gylfir the Seaworthy, allows a player to take the resources from the traders space on the board for free each round. While this may be useful, other players can block this spot easily, making the ability overall pretty situational.

Some players might be disheartened to see the score progress over the course of the game. A few matches I’ve played, it became painfully obvious to those paying attention that one player had such a significant lead that very little could be done to stop them. Trolls can give players negative points, but this rarely factors into any significant losses for any player, with most players end the game with zero, one, or two blame tokens.

Lastly, make sure you have a table large enough to handle the gigantic board and numerous tokens featured. This game quickly takes up a ton of space, and those unprepared may find it difficult to find the space to sit everyone comfortably.

With all that being said, Champions of Midgard is one of my favorite games to date. As everyone sweats over every dice roll, whether it be yours or someone else’s, as each person curses you out for taking the precious spot they needed, and as the players quietly stare at the board wondering what they need to give up that turn if only to get a few more points of glory, it becomes clear why this is one of the best euro-games I’ve played in some time.

Champions of Midgard allows you to prepare as much as you want, knowing what resources you’re gathering; you just never know if it’ll be enough to survive the nasty creatures you challenge, presenting a level of press-your-luck that I find endearing and invigorating. It leaves you with more varied and intense avenues of getting points, the theme helping to make your actions feel epic. So while it may only hold the 183rd spot on the BoardGameGeek ranking chart, I’ll take the satisfyingly smart and tight competition of Champions of Midgard over almost any game found in the top 100 any day.

Luke Muench is a freelance writer and the founder & host of the youtube series Budget Board Gamer.

Expansion Mini Review - 7 Wonders: Leaders

7 Wonders: Leaders
Designed by Antoine Bauza
Art by Miguel Coimbra
Published by Repos Productions in 2011
3-7 Players

What’s New?

Though it’s a bit on the nose, I can appreciate that the title get’s straight to the point; 7 Wonders: Leaders introduces and solely focusses on a new set of cards, Leaders. Like an anachronistic Justice League, each leader has a unique power to aid your civilization. From Leonidas, Archimedes, and Hammurabi, to Plato, Cleopatra, and more, this all-star antiquitous assembly will guide your burgeoning nation’s advancement, subtly adding direction and speciality.

Players now begin the game with a little extra gold and draft four leaders per player. At the beginning of each age players can put a leader of their choice in play, discard it for three gold, or (if they have the resource production) can use it to build a stage of wonder. I really appreciate that Leaders have a broad range of effects that are almost always useful though never game breaking. With effects like adding additional military strength, giving discounts on certain types of buildings, or granting bonus points at the end of the game for specific colors, the leaders give you new strategic considerations for cards that you might otherwise pass up.

To round out the expansion, Leaders also has a new Wonder and a few new guilds to integrate with the base game, primarily focussed on interacting with the leaders in different ways. Additionally, because there is more money flowing in the game through setup and card effects, Repos Productions graciously included several 6 value coins, a welcome addition indeed.

Should you get it?

Yes.

Oh, you want to know more? OK, Leaders is easily my favorite 7 Wonders expansion and one of my favorite expansions of all time. It does what I love most about expansions, integrating new concepts that are fundamentally different yet intuitive and at home within the original structure of the game. Aside from a few changes in setup and when you play your leaders, the game flows identically. Granted, Leaders do add a bit more strategic complexity to a game already filled to the brim with cryptic symbology, so I might refrain from including Leaders when playing with beginners or friends looking for a more casual affair. But if you are familiar with and enjoy the base game, it’ll be a snap to add this expansion to the fold.

With 36 leader cards, there are endless combinations of asymmetrical goodness to explore, yet it never feels like the leaders rigidly define your strategy. Furthermore, while I found the base game’s artwork beautiful but ultimately forgettable, Coimbra has managed to inject so much personality into each of the Leaders’ portraits; it really makes the setting and overall theme click with me in a way that the base game never did. This expansion is all about heightening the best things about 7 Wonders, granting more immersion, strategy, and fun. If you like 7 Wonders, I highly recommend this expansion.

Terraforming Mars - Corporate Colonialism in Space!

Designed by Jacob Fryxelius
Published by Stronghold Games & Fryxgames - 2016
1-5 players - 90-120 minutes

They tell you not to judge a book by it’s cover, but what about a game? With Terraforming Mars, I took one look at the box and knew it was for me. The industrial pallette, the brilliant artwork, hell, even the font was captivating. Unfortunately, once I unpacked it’s aggressively mediocre components my heart braced for disappointment. But as it turns out, Terraforming Mars is at its core as beautiful and wondrous as its cover suggests; a game that blends deep systems with a rich and original theme so well that it may be the most immersive strategy game I’ve ever played.

How to make a planet

“Perhaps I seek certain utopian things, space for honour and respect, landscapes not yet offended, planets that do not exist yet, dreamed landscapes.”    - Werner Herzog

Each player is a rival corporation trying to convert Mars’ desolate atmosphere to one that can sustain human life. While this seems like an excellent premise for a co-op, developing mars is no friendly affair; this is a game about colonization after-all, and Mars is an untapped hotbed for economic growth. Each player starts with a unique power, giving them a slight focus as they begin to colonize and grow, and the game ends when the oxygen, temperature, and water levels of the planet have reached their limit. The corporation with the most points at the end claims industrial Martian supremacy and wins the game.

As the game goes on, Mars transforms from a dull, lifeless planet to a lush, verdant world.

The game’s overall flow is simple; rounds start with players drawing several cards and choosing which to keep (paying a few mega-credits per card), then they alternate taking actions that will either develop the planet or further sculpt their engine, until all players have passed. There are a handful of actions that are always available so long as you got the goods to pay for them, but the real backbone of your vast Martian Empire will come from your hand. The cards you play have a huge range of ongoing and one-time effects, such as increasing your resource production, further developing the planet, or offering you new and exclusive actions.

Each time you take an action that increases the temperature, oxygen, or water on Mars, your corporation’s “terraforming rating” goes up, a sort of measurement of industrious prestige that tracks both your points and mega-credit production per turn. Players gain additional points at the end of the game through various cards; the cities and forests they placed on the board; and the awards and milestones that were funded throughout the game. It’s at this point that you’ll survey the massive human achievement that each player took part in, transforming a lifeless wasteland into a thriving and verdant world, only to end up like middle schoolers on every group assignment ever, arguing over who did the most to take home the blue ribbon prize.  

The Feel

“To distill so specific a form from that chaos of unpredictability” - Doctor Manhattan

With over 100 unique cards, independent production of 6 different resources, and many, many ways to develop the planet; Terraforming Mars is a veritable playground of options to explore. While this may sound tough to manage, there is a superb elegance to the game’s design. The synergy between your cards, your corporation, and the development of mars feels intuitive; you rarely feel like you are at a loss for what to do to pursue your goals. Then, as the game goes on, you’ll naturally lean into one or two resource types and strategies, and your corporation will evolve from a lumpy, wet-behind-the-ears generalist to a lean-mean-economic machine. The range of specific and yet effective engines you can build is really astonishing.  

And for being in many ways a classic engine builder, the game manages to inject loads of player interactivity.Take for instance the awards and milestones; one of the most clever systems to spearhead competition that I’ve seen in a modern tabletop game. There are five of each and both must be funded during the game, costing precious money and actions. Milestones, which can be claimed when their conditions are met, are tiny races to have a giant hand or be the forest king (*spoiler* I am always the forest king). Awards are more speculative, as they determine their winner at the end of the game. Players have to gamble that they will end with the most land on mars or have the largest horde of mega-credits.

No one steals the mega-credit award from Smaug.

Ultimately, it’s the thematic resonance throughout Terraforming Mars’ many systems that truly make it so special. Mars is an expansive ecosystem where you really feel the mechanical AND thematic impact of each action. Increasing your plant production allows you to place forests, which in turn make cities more valuable and raises oxygen levels, which then increases your corporation’s government funding, broadening your options so you can continue to grow. The reward feedback and interconnectivity is outstanding and it really adds to the intuitive nature of the game, creating incredible immersion. It truly feels like you are terraforming a planet.

Components

“We earth men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things.” - Ray Bradbury

Remember how I said I braced for disappointment when I opened the box? Yeah… The components were that off-putting to me. The resource tokens were garish, the player boards flimsy, and overall the color scheme could best be described as “Disco Thanksgiving”. It’s not that the artwork is bad, although some people may find the real life photography a turnoff. It’s that the overall aesthetic seems incongruent or ill matching. The best comparison I can make is to edutainment video games from the early 90s, though even they still had more cohesive palettes.

That said, the components are adequate and do their job, and since the mechanisms resonate theme so well, it’s easy to look past some of the stranger design choices. But it’s the mere adequacy that bothers me, there has to be a better way to track 6 different resources than thousands of universal brass, silver, and gold cubes. In a world of outstanding components made with sturdy materials designed so that the game is more elegant, intuitive, and manageable, Terraforming Mars falls short. In truth, I’ve settled into a state of resigned affection toward Disco Thanksgiving, I find it both bizarre and endearing, but the publishers really missed an opportunity to make an incredible game look as good as it feels.  

Solo games… Now not a total pain!

“I’m a Rocket Man... Burning up his fuse up here alone” - Elton John & Bernie Taupin

Solo in Terraforming Mars is so good, it gets it’s own section in the review! In the solo game, you alone are responsible for terraforming the entire planet within a set number of turns. That’s it! It’s brilliantly simple. You don’t have to manage a dummy player, you still have all the options at your disposal, and it requires virtually no additional upkeep between each turn. In a way, solo in Terraforming Mars is a distillation of the best parts of the game; exploring the deep systems and crafting an incredibly efficient engine of economic supremacy. It is tense, fair, and brutally difficult. Between Scythe and Terraforming Mars, I will fondly remember 2016 as the year that I finally came around on solo gaming.  

Terraforming Mars' solo game is still a robust and sprawling experience, full of depth, strategy, and fun. Grab a drink and have yourself some alone time, you won't regret it. 

Final Thoughts

“To boldly go where no one has gone before” - Captain Jean Luc Picard

As intuitive as the themes and mechanics can be, it’s important to stress that Terraforming Mars is denser than my wife’s dark chocolate brownies. The game may sit solidly in the mid-weight Euro camp by measures of game length and difficulty, but it is certainly not a casual affair. There are many people who will find the sandbox nature of the game too freeing, preferring instead a more structured and guided experience. Furthermore, I really feel that it plays best at 1 to 3 players, as turns can occasionally be long with not much to do when it’s not your turn.

But if you enjoy exploring rich systems, love engine building, or have an affinity for the  boardroom-in-space tone of Star Trek TNG, I feel pretty confident that you will really like Terraforming Mars. It is a gripping, intense,and at times even exhausting experience that I am thrilled to play again and again.

7 Years of 7 Wonders

7 Wonders
Designed by Antoine Bauza
Published by Repos Production (2010)
3 - 7 Players ~ 45-60 minutes
(OK fine... 2 - 7 players but I don't like the 2 player variant)

Every now and then a game comes out that revolutionizes the industry. In some cases, the game introduces a brand new concept that establishes a whole genre (think Dominion or Magic: The Gathering), but in some cases it’s just such a damn good game that it becomes the definitive representation of an existing idea. 7 Wonders wasn’t the first game to rely on drafting as it’s core mechanic, but it is THE game known for it. Seven long years of gaming innovation has happened since its 2010 release, so let’s take a look at how the grand-daddy of drafting has held up.

 ...Like Clockwork

As I said, 7 Wonders is a game of drafting. Players represent rival cities in ancient eras, competing for economic, military, and scientific supremacy. Each turn players select 1 card from their hand, then pass the remaining cards to their neighbor. The selected card can be built, discarded for money, or be used to build up a stage of your “wonder”, which is an asymmetric power granting a variety of bonuses at each stage, thematically tying to the classic 7 wonders of the ancient world.  

This “pick a card, play a card” routine continues until the cards run out signifying the end of the current “age”. As each age ends, some cleanup happens where players are awarded points if they have more powerful militaries than their neighbors to the left and right; then new cards are dealt. Three ages are played in total, each with increasingly powerful buildings, allowing for meaty yet nerve-wracking decisions about how to focus your efforts, and worse, what you are leaving available for your rivals. After the third age, players count up points based on the contents of their city and the game is done.

Boom, easy-peasy; 30-45 minutes to play a game. But like the best games, for all it’s simplicity, 7 Wonders hides a rich, strategic underbelly bursting with possibilities that make for an engrossing, and highly replayable experience.

Rainbow in the Dark

Cards and stages of wonders have a variety of costs and effects, but generally they fall into two camps; production (grey, brown, and yellow) or points (green, red, blue, and purple).

Critical to your success in 7 Wonders is ensuring that you can buy the cards. After all, as buildings become more powerful, they also become more costly. Most cards require that your city produces one or more resources, otherwise you have to pay a trade fee to your neighbors (let’s just call them Jeff and Tina) to use resources produced in their stupid cities. Sadly, most cities will never be able to produce all 7 resources, let alone multiples as required by some late game cards, so ultimately you’ll have to rely on Jeff and Tina's stupid cities at one point or another. It’s actually a small but excellent example of the balancing act that 7 Wonders makes you pull. Do you give your opponent money that just helps them out? Or maybe you pick a card that produces resources that you know your neighbor doesn’t produce, in hopes that they will be coming to your doorstep when they need that sweet, sweet silk.

But wealth and production only gets you so far, and in the end, points are the name of the game. Each color represents a different flavor of getting points, allowing you to make some strategic planning and specialize in one or more fields. Red cards add to your military strength, securing points at the end of each age. Green cards represent science, exponentially becoming more valuable with each card collected (Hot Tip! Don’t let Jeff or Tina collect all the green!). Blue cards, while somewhat less flashy than their Christmasy cousins, are a solid investment as they straight up award points listed on the cards themselves. Then purple cards, which are randomly added into the 3rd age deck, award points in a variety of unique ways based on the contents of yours and your neighbor’s provinces.

Moving Pictures

Two things that are woefully underappreciated about 7 Wonders are the look and feel of the game. First off, while there are few individual pieces of artwork in 7 Wonders that are “iconic” and memorable, the game generally has very high quality art and more importantly, a cohesive aesthetic. The drafting mechanic is definitely an abstraction of civilization building, but through the beautiful art, the trade and military struggle with neighboring cities, and the construction of wonders, this game is both engrossing and highly thematic. Some people may argue that abstractions can’t be thematic, but those people (Jeff and Tina) are wrong.  

Jeff and Tina are literally the worst.

Strangely, 7 Wonders also has a kinesthetic physicality that I really like. By no means is it a dexterity game, but players simultaneously picking and passing cards creates an almost assembly-line like rhythm that encourages players to maintain pace and not fall into a pit of analysis paralysis. Everyone conducting the same motion at the same time, turn after turn, makes a communal, almost ritual-like feel that is unique to the game.

Time After Time

I have played a lot of 7 Wonders since it’s release, and one of the most remarkable aspects is how well the game has held up; and there are a few really good reasons for that.

First and foremost, the game is clever without stooping to pretension. For example, by limiting trades and military conflict to your neighbors on either side, the game ensures that you’d have a similar experience whether there are 3 or 7 people at the table. Furthermore, the core mechanic of drafting may seem foreign to new players, but as soon as they’ve taken their first turn and passed a stack of cards to the left, it becomes immediately intuitive; usually giving players a “That’s so simple, why don’t more games do that?” vibe. Even the seemingly complex iconography is easily deciphered beyond your first game, and the box comes with handy reference sheets to make sure players aren’t lost.

But what makes 7 Wonders have a ton of staying power is what it does that other games can’t. It delivers a strategic game of economics and city building in about 45 minutes regardless of player count. Don’t get me wrong, the strategic depth will never rival something like Food Chain Magnate or Brass, but in a world where many people buy games and never find the time to play them, 7 Wonders delivers a fun, approachable, and strategic experience that towers above games that occupy similar play lengths.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

While I’m obviously a big fan of 7 Wonders, I don’t love all of it. Specifically I think the 2 player variant is terrible. Now, in the rulebook it notes that designer Antoine Bauza invited his friend Bruno Cathala to help him design the 2 player variant, which is great because I LOVE Cathala, he may very well be my favorite designer of all time. But the management of a dummy third player is way more work than it is worth and it undermines the general flow and feel of the game. Functionally the 2 player variant works, but I would much rather play a game designed around 2 players. Fortunately Bauza and Cathala teamed up again to make the amazing 7 Wonders: Duel, which far better interprets the formula in a deeply strategic game for 2 players.

The only other bad thing I can say about the game is that it can be a pain to set up and learn out of the box without someone guiding you through the game. With so many new symbols being thrown at you, the need to set up the decks correctly for the number of players, and the unique mechanics that are pretty seldomly used in other games, this is one that I’d recommend learning from another player or at least watching a learn to play video online. Just remember that it’s totally worth it and once you are a turn or two in, it’ll all make sense.

While the game feels intuitive as you play more, 7 Wonders can feel like a lot to manage for an inexperienced player, a feeling intensifies exponentially as you add more expansions as shown above. Bottom line, learn from someone else, and start people on the base game alone and you'll be in great shape!

Final Thoughts

Innovation attracts imitation, which often leads to improvement. This is why so many of the most iconic and important games of this hobby seem stale after a few years. On the other hand,  7 Wonders blended drafting and abstract civilization building in such a powerful way, that it left very little to improve upon. 7 Wonders remains the preeminent drafting game of this hobby 7 years in, and remains a fresh, strategic, and thematic experience fit for newcomers and veterans of the hobby. While it is far from my favorite game in my collection, it is one of the most flexible and consistently enjoyable. For it’s broad appeal, unique and unparalleled mechanics, and overall fit and finish, 7 Wonders remains one of the most easily recommendable games in my collection.

For more 7 Wonders goodness, check out:
7 Wonders Duel Review
Interview with Bruno Cathala (co-designer of 2 player variant and 7 Wonder Duel)
7 Wonders Broken Token video review

Expansion Mini Review - Kingdom Builder: Marshlands

Kingdom Builder: Marshlands
Designed by Donald X. Vaccarino
Art by Oliver Schlemmer
Published by Queen Games - 2016

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What’s New?

Like previous expansions, Marshlands adds new content meant to seamlessly integrate into the base game, with new rules only applying when the Marshlands components enter play. This approach works well for Kingdom Builder, further expanding the limitless combinations of player powers and scoring conditions present in any one game. The most prominent feature of Marshlands is the new terrain type, Swamps. Shuffled into the terrain deck are five cards that when drawn let a player build on the depicted “classic” terrain OR swamps. Otherwise, swamps are off limits; that is unless you use any of the billion special powers throughout KB and its expansions to manipulate your settlements.

The more fundamental change is how bonus tiles work. Like most other boards in Kingdom Builder, each of these have two locations that provide bonus powers. In times past, a player could grab a rocket camel from each rocket camel depot and be done with it. Not so here! If you manage to grab the same tiles from two different locations, you get an ultra-super-MEGA bonus power; either altering how your two tiles work or granting an additional ability. These abilities are dramatic, and will strike fear into the hearts and minds of your opponents when you manage to collect one. Take for instance the Temple. Alone, it allows you to remove a settlement to place a fourth during your build next turn, but with both Temples, you can ignore adjacency during your first normal placement on all future turns! These powers are no joke.

Aside from that, Marshlands comes equipped with a handful of new Kingdom Builder Cards (victory point conditions), and a new board feature, palaces. The new cards are pretty wild and have a big impact on gameplay, such as Scouts which eliminates all terrain cards of a type and grants points for building next to that terrain. Palaces on the other hand add a nice bit of elegant player interaction. Unlike castles in previous sets, which score 3 points to each player who built adjacent to them, each palace scores a player 5 points if they have the most adjacent settlements. This stops players from late game “boop-ing” several castles for a giant point gain with minimal effort.

Should you get it?

If this were a $5 promo pack with just the new Kingdom Builder cards, I’d say it’s a must buy and easily the strongest addition to the base game; the new scoring conditions are fun, balanced, and at times weird. As it stands, I think this is still a solid expansion with perhaps the most “global” changes to Kingdom Builder, but not everything is perfect.  

I don’t particularly care for the new ultra-super-MEGA powers in the game. They tend to dominate a game’s focus, seducing players with their promise of unlimited power. Not every game is won because of these powers but it feels disheartening when your opponent unlocks one.

Kingdom Builder thrives on variety, and fortunately it self-regulates surprisingly well for the many variables that occur during setup. While I don’t love everything about Marshlands, I think it does the best job of any expansion so far to overall flesh out the game’s variety, which is really what makes Kingdom Builder so great.

Expansion Mini Review - Scythe: Invaders from Afar

Scythe: Invaders From Afar
Designed by Jamey Stegmaier
Art by Jakub Rozalski
Published by Stonemaier Games - 2016

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What’s New?

While it reports to increase the player count to 7, to me Invaders from Afar is all about beefing up the variety of content in Scythe; a game already exploding with hundreds of beautiful cardboard, plastic, and wooden bits. The stars of the expansion are the two new factions, Togawa Shogunate and Clan Albion, but the two new player boards, $50 coins, and handful of new automa cards are a nice bonus.  

Mechanically, the expansion seamlessly integrates into the game. The only new rules are specific to the two included factions, otherwise the game operates identically, which is a relief. While I love new mechanisms, expansions that change core gameplay risk making the game feel bloated and can make it a bear to teach new players. Not so here, there’s pretty much no reason not to play with the expansion once you have it.

That said, both new factions feel fresh and unique compared to their base set comrades. Both factions have four tokens that their character can place on the board as they move to new territories. For Albion, each territory with one of their tokens counts as two territories when scoring at the end of the game. For Togawa, the tokens are four different rearmable “traps” that are flipped when an enemy enters their territory, sapping the opponent of their money, cards, popularity or power. There are a few other things that make these factions unique, like their riverwalk abilities and how they can upgrade to move between their tokens; but bottom line the new factions are easily understood, balanced, and interesting.

Should you get it?

If you are a fan of Scythe and want lots of variety, this should be right up your alley. The presentation fits right in with what you’ve come to expect from Scythe, sporting the same level of detail in the miniature sculpts, balanced mechanics, and the beautiful illustrations of Jakub Rozalski throughout. Both stylistically and gameplay-wise, I think Albion and Togawa are the most interesting of the now 7 factions; not to mention the green and purple-ish player pieces look great on the board.

Overall, Invaders is a really solid addition to Scythe but nothing about it feels mandatory. The higher player count may be a selling point to some, but I still feel Scythe plays best in the 2-4 player range. And by limiting all new rules to the two included factions, this feels more like DLC characters in a fighting game rather than an overall update. But if you think Albion and Togawa look intriguing then I say shell out the cash and get it! While Invaders From Afar doesn’t fundamentally change Scythe, it really rounds out the variety in the game; keeping it fresh, alive, and interesting.
 

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Listen to Jack talk with Scythe designer Jamey Stegmaier on episode 7 of The Cardboard Herald podcast.

A Game of Thrones: Hand of the King - Come Into My Castle

Designed by Bruno Cathala
Art by Mihajlo Dimitrievski
Published by Fantasy Flight Games - 2016
2-4 Players - 15-30 Minutes

Prologue: A Stark Contrast
“And now it begins,” said Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning.
A Game of Thrones has two types of fans, really. There’s the first type, casually following the books or show, enjoying the rich story full of political intrigue and family drama; these fans see the characters for what they are, happily accepting the world presented to them. Then the other type, hiding in dark recesses of the internet, dawning tinfoil hats and whispering about time traveling fetuses, bolt-on skin, dancing wolves, and hidden harps. These are the fans who dedicate hundreds of hours scrutinizing every word George Martin ever wrote, trying to puzzle out the story BEHIND the story. It’s this latter audience that will be intimately familiar with the artwork of Mihajlo Dimitrievski, a prolific fan who has done bright, colorful, cartoony artwork for just about all 7 million major and minor characters in A Song of Ice and Fire, frequently used in wikis, fan-sites, and theory videos.

So you can imagine my surprise when Fantasy Flight Games teamed up with celebrated designer Bruno Cathala to release a game fully illustrated by Dimitrievski. Mouth agape, the tinfoil hat slipped right off of my head…

King's Landing, all set up

How the Game is Played
"In King's Landing, there are two sorts of people. The players and the pieces." - Petyr Baelish
Hand of the King is an abstract tactical game that is easy to learn, teach, and play. King’s Landing is set up by shuffling 36 cards together and laying them out in a 6 x 6 grid. 35 of these cards are characters that players collect, each belonging to one of seven powerful houses in Westeros; the 36th card is Varys, the political mastermind that players will move on their turn. Setup is finished by drawing the 6 companion cards that will be available during the game.

The game flies by as each player takes a turn moving Varys. You announce a direction and a house, then move in that direction to the furthest character of that house, gaining control of that character and strengthening your influence. If you tie or gain the lead for most members of that house, you take control of that house’s banner. If you take the final character of a house, you get to select a companion and resolve it’s ability, some of which are super situational though others are universally good.

Characters from the story with no house alignment are made into companions.

Play continues until there are no legal moves at which point the player with the most banners wins! This sounds really simple (and it is) but there are still some tricky decisions to be made. Do you focus on one house early on, or make sure you have a few cards of each house so you can jump on some late game opportunities? Do you take a card you don’t need just to finish a house just to take a companion? Some houses have more cards than others, so you may choose to lock in smaller houses early, or perhaps avoid them entirely.

While I’ve had fun each time I’ve played, by my third game I was wanting more. More strategic options, maybe each banner to grant you certain powers, but this game doesn’t offer more. The few variants in the rules are fun, but again, somewhat shallow. In truth, your decisions almost always comes down to what will be the least beneficial to your opponents. It’s a bit like cat and mouse, except you are all cats trying to sabotage one another while the mouse gets away.

But that’s OK, because the game doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. There is relatively no downtime, it’s easy to understand your options, and you will always gain a new character on your turn. This creates a forward momentum that keeps everyone engaged, which is a feat for such a small box game.

Epilogue
“No,” Ned said with sadness in his voice. “Now it ends.”
Look, Hand of the King is not a revolutionary game. It won’t change the industry, and honestly, I don’t think it’ll have a lot of staying power for most gamers deep into the hobby. While the theming is great and it makes for a good “lunch hour” game, it’s hard to recommend it to the “hardcore” crowd against deeper games like Citadels, The Grizzled, or Harbour.

That said, I think this is the perfect game for the casual gamer or Game of Thrones enthusiast in your life. The gameplay is solid, the components are sturdy, and the artwork is beautiful. Fans of the show will be delighted to see the cute Disney-esque representation of their favorite murderous nobles. Most of the companion powers are funny and thematic, and there’s nothing like using a late game Ilyn Payne to kill Ned Stark.  Even cooler, the cast of characters and companions have some surprisingly obscure picks, giving even the snobbiest fan something to talk about.

Overall, I really think Hand of the King is a good package; just not one designed for Cathala’s typical audience. I will gladly stuff it into my non-gamer friends’ lobstered-mail-greaves next Christmas. Because I’ll never get them to come to the dark side and play a 3 hour sesh’ of A Game of Thrones: The Board Game, but I’m certain I can get them to play round after round of Hand of the King, and we’ll have plenty of fun doing it too.

Want to hear Jack talk with Hand of the King designer Bruno Cathala? Listen here.

Scythe - Of Mechs and Men

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

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

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

Fit & Finish

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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-Jack

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

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

Designed by Antoine Bauza and Bruno Cathala
Published by Repos Production (2015)
2 players - 30 minutes

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

The Way of Things

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

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

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

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

The Tug of War

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

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

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

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

A Tidy Design

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

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

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

The End of the Third Age

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

-Jack

Review - Eldritch Horror

Designed by Corey Konieczka and Nikki Valens
Published by Fantasy Flight Games (2013)
1-8 Players - 2-4 hours

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_______________________________________________________

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

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

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

A Bit on H.P. Lovecraft

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

*Yes, PC gaming historians. That Sandy Petersen.

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

A Vast World of Horrors

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

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

The Madness in Operation

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

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

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

The Heart of Darkness

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

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

I AM PROVIDENCE (Final Thoughts)

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

-Jack

Pro Tips for playing Eldritch Horror

• Read to each other! When resolving encounters, make sure that each player reads another’s encounter card, stopping at the skill check or choice. Keeping the results secret maintains the narrative and adds suspense to each roll of the dice.

• Get the small box expansions, they’re great! Each one is themed around a new Great Old One, and has a ton of content that can be mixed in with the base game for every play. They serve to add variety without overcomplicating the game. Strange Remnants in particular adds focus tokens, a simple but elegant way to add more options on those turns where other actions don’t seem worthwhile.

• Get organized! Like I said in the review, being organized is key in this game. By having a good system in place, you can cut setup down from 30 minutes to 5-10 easy; giving you more time to fight those nasty serpent demons.