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At the end of March 2021, I posted a round-up of new games from designer Reiner Knizia that included Witchstone, a title from German publisher HUCH! with co-design by Martino Chiacchiera, making this one of only two Knizia co-designs that I know.
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I've now played the game three times on a review copy from U.S. licensee R&R Games, and I've updated the basic description of the game, which I'll repeat here:Quote:Each player in the game has a personal cauldron that bears seven crystals and six pre-printed magic icons, and they share a larger game board that features a crystal ball that shows the entire landscape. Each player has a set of fifteen domino tiles, with each half of the domino being a hexagon; each domino depicts two different magic icons from the six used in the game.If you saw my earlier post, you might have noticed that I left off the start of the description that gives a thematic setting because in practice the thematic setting is pure window dressing. The game "world" is purely one of placing tiles on a personal game board so that you can then take actions on a larger shared board, with the images of witches, wands, pentagrams, and so forth being no more than decorative.
On a turn, you place one of the five face-up dominos in your reserve onto your cauldron, then you take the action associated with each icon depicted on that domino; if the icon is adjacent to other dominos showing the same icon (or the matching pre-printed icon), then you can take that action as many times as the number of icons in that cluster. You must complete the first type of action completely before taking the second action. With these actions, you can:
• Use energy to connect your starting tower to other locations on the game board, scoring 1, 3 or 6 points depending on the length of the connection.
• Place witches next to your starting tower on the game board or move them across your energy network to other locations. As you do this, you gain points and possibly additional actions to use the same turn.
• Move your token around a pentagram to collect points and to acquire bonus hex tiles; you can use these tiles immediately for actions or place them in your cauldron to make future tile placement more valuable.:strip_icc()/pic6148909.jpg)
Pack those tiles tight
• Move the crystals in your cauldron, whether to make room for future tile placement or to gain bonus actions by ejecting the crystal completely.
• Advance on a magic wand to gain points and take additional actions, with the actions being doubled should you currently be the most advanced player on the wand.
• Claim scroll cards that boost future actions or earn you bonus points at game's end depending on how well you've completed the prophecy depicted.
After each player has completed eleven turns — which could equal 40-60 actions depending on how well you've used your cauldron — the game ends and players tally their points from prophecies and other collected scoring markers to see who has the highest score.
I'm fine with such absences, though, because Witchstone delivers what I am looking for in games: challenging choices that bring you into conflict with other players. The conflict, in this case, involves competition for energy paths, for bonus actions, for point tiles, for other bonus actions, for prophecy scrolls, and for still more bonus actions.:strip_icc()/pic6148908.jpg)
Witchstone feels very much like a Stefan Feld design, specifically 2020's Bonfire (which I covered in October 2020) because that game also has you placing tiles in a personal space — ideally generating multiple actions with each placement — so that you can then do stuff on a larger shared board and compete for tiles, cards, bonuses, and so on.
Given the publication dates of these titles, clearly Witchstone and Bonfire were designed independently, but the similarities are surprising. What differs about the games is that in Bonfire you collect target tiles and you must go through a lot of steps to score those tiles — assembling a path, opening gates, moving the guardians, and actually doing what's required on the targets — typically in a game-ending push of actions whereas in Witchstone you pick up points here, there, and everywhere, with the scrolls scoring automatically at the end of play and with the game being more about trying to multiply actions like rabbits in a magic act.:strip_icc()/pic6148906.jpg)
Setting up my final four tile placements — unless I draw something better
My games of Witchstone have been with three and four players, and as is often the case with such designs, players generally did far better in their second and third games compared to their first. You have a sense for how the cauldron tiles might better fit together to generate more actions and which actions you want to take before which other actions and whether an opponent can do the thing that you want to do before you can so that you can build a back-up plan. In the first game, you do stuff to see what happens; from the second game on, you do stuff because you know what will happen.
More thoughts on the game in this overview video:
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Archive for Game Previews
Game Preview: Witchstone, or Experience the Magical Transformation of Two Designers into a Third
03
May
2021
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Mon May 3, 2021 4:11 pm
- [+] Dice rolls
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In a comment on my April 24, 2021 post, someone complained that Rolling Dice — the name of a game in which you roll dice — "might be the most unimaginative name for a game I've ever heard." That user might need to re-assess their statement after checking out the title featured here. Anyway...
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I've written about my love of Steffen Benndorf game designs several times in this space, as with this introductory post about The Game from March 2015 and this long, meditative post on the first three titles in The Game series.
Benndorf designs quick-playing games with a strong wave of randomness that you must try to ride to victory, and I've had great success teaching his games to dozens of people over the years. The rules are short, so you jump into playing right away, and while sometimes the randomness swamps you, at other times things come together for you perfectly — whether through luck, skill, or a bit of both — and you feel a burst of euphoria that sticks with you later, regardless of winning or losing.
His newest release — the 2021 title Everything on 1 Card from his frequent publishing partner NSV — has all the hallmarks described above and most resembles his 2012 design Qwixx because players take turns being the active player and rolling dice, but everyone has the chance on all turns to mark spaces on their personal player sheet based on the die results. As in that earlier game, the challenge is whether you can use the same results as everyone else to either score more points or score quickly and end the game before someone else can score more points.:strip_icc()/pic6133904.jpg)
End of a two-player game, with my wife crushing me
In more detail, on a turn as the active player, you roll the dice up to three times, freezing what you like, then everyone chooses one of their two cards and marks off spaces matching the colors rolled — except that if you can't use ALL of a color, then you can't use ANY of that color. In the image above, for example, I couldn't mark off the single purple space and single green space on the card in the lower middle since the dice show two purple and two green.
(The dice are dual-coded with color and shape to make it easier for individuals with color recognition issues to play the game, but NSV goofed by making the hexagons red and the pentagons orange because both the colors and the shapes can easily be mistaken at first glance. Ideally the pentagon would have been blue and the triangle orange, but that's not the case.):strip_icc()/pic6133905.jpg)
Managed the perfect roll here!
As soon as you complete three or more rows on a card, you score it, then get a new card; the turn that someone completes their fourth card, the game ends, and you tally points on your scored cards and the completed rows on unfinished cards to see who wins.
I've played Everything on 1 Card five times on a review copy from NSV, and it delivers what I expect from a Benndorf design, with you constantly moving toward completion turn by turn, whether via short rows that make you wonder whether you should be completing them at all or through a lucky roll like the one above that locked in 25 points — the maximum score on a card. I run through several turns and discuss the gameplay in more detail in this video overview:
Mon Apr 26, 2021 1:00 pm
- [+] Dice rolls
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After a couple of months away from the gaming table, I'm finally playing games again, me with my COVID-19 vaccination, my fellow players with theirs. We're still playing outdoors while masked for now, but we'll adjust over time.
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In any case, to kick off my weekly video game overviews once again, I chose Block Ness, a quick-playing design from Laurent Escoffier and Blue Orange Games that I've now played six times on a review copy, twice each with two, three, and four players.
Gameplay is reminiscent of Bernard Tavitian's Blokus in that you're trying to place as many of your pieces on the board as possible. You start the game with your shortest — that is, your not-tallest — piece in the deepest part of the loch, with your head on one end and your tail on the other. On a turn, you place one of your pieces orthogonally adjacent to either your head or tail, then move that head/tail to the end of the piece you just placed. If you have no free spaces next to your head, then your head is stuck and can't dive into the water again to surface in a new location, leaving only your tail free to do so.:strip_icc()/pic6121176.jpg)
End of a three-player game
Each player has a set of ten "Nessie" pieces; those pieces come in six heights and different lengths, with your set differing from each other player's set in small, but meaningful ways. You can place a piece that crosses or completely covers a shorter piece (or multiple pieces), but you can't place a piece under an existing piece, and you can't cross someone's head or tail because that would violate the social norms of Scottish culture.
You use a larger or smaller part of the game board based on the player count to keep space limited, so you must ensure that you don't cut off your own avenues for escape when moving around — but if you can cut off avenues that other players might use, then go ahead and do that, as I somehow managed to do in the four-player game depicted below.:strip_icc()/pic6121177.jpg)
Respect the purple wall!
In the end, whoever has placed more of their pieces wins, and if players tie — as was the case in the 4p game above as Orange and I both managed to place all of our pieces — then the player whose head rises highest wins. This rule is a nice kicker on the simplicity of everything else because it makes you hesitate on "wasting" the single tallest piece available to you.
Aside from the smart, simple gameplay, publisher Blue Orange Games has made smart choices with the packaging, dressing up a perfect-information abstract strategy game in bright colors and a fun setting that will likely get it to far more tables than if the design looked like the archetypal "serious" abstract strategy game. Besides, I doubt you could reasonably recreate these pieces in wood in a functional way.
For more thoughts on the game and see examples of play, check out this overview video:
Mon Apr 19, 2021 2:51 pm
- [+] Dice rolls
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Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of virtually hanging with Cole and Drew Wehrle from Wehrlegig Games to learn and play a couple turns of their upcoming 2022 release John Company: Second Edition, which is slated to launch on Kickstarter on March 30, 2021 (KS link). I walked away from that experience feeling many emotions, mostly excited. I knew the game was complex since I had a lot to process — even with expert/designer Cole teaching me — but it also had a smooth flow. I really enjoyed what I saw, and I found myself telling friends about it the next couple of days, getting more and more excited the more I talked about it. Again, my mind was still processing because John Company is quite different from any game I've ever played, though it shared a few similar elements to many games I love.
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Cole kindly hooked me up with the rulebook, which was helpful to read to solidify what I learned from playing those fun, few turns with Drew and Cole. Eventually I reached out to Cole to get access to the latest Tabletop Simulator (TTS) mod for John Company 2E so that I could further explore the game and play it with friends.John Company: Second Edition, published by Wehrlegig Games, is a revamped version of Cole Wehrle's 2017 release John Company, which was originally released by Sierra Madre Games. In John Company, 1-6 players take on the roles of hustling families in the 18th century who are using the British East India Company to gain more wealth and prestige than the other families within the Company. Here's a high-level overview from Wehrle:/pic3567002.jpg)
Quote:John Company begins in the early eighteenth-century, when the Company has a weak foothold on the subcontinent. Over the course of the game, the Company might grow into the most powerful and insidious corporation in the world or collapse under the weight of its own ambition.
John Company is a game about state-sponsored trade monopoly. Unlike most economic games, players often do not control their own firms. Instead, they will collectively guide the Company by securing positions of power, attempting to steer the Company's fate in ways that benefit their own interests. However, the Company is an unwieldy thing. It is difficult to do anything alone, and players will often need to negotiate with one another. In John Company, most everything is up for negotiation.
Ultimately, this game isn't about wealth; it's about reputation. Each turn, some of your family members may retire from their Company positions, giving them the opportunity establish estates. Critically, players do not have full control over when these retirements happen. You will often need to borrow money from other players to make the best use for a chance of retirement. Players also gain victory points by competing in the London Season for prestige and securing fashionable properties.
John Company engages very seriously with its theme. It is meant as a frank portrait of an institution that was as dysfunctional as it was influential. Accordingly, the game wrestles many of the key themes of imperialism and globalization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and how those developments were felt domestically. As such, this game might not be suitable for all players. Please make sure everyone in your group consents to this exploration before playing.
The second edition is extensively revised and is not a reprint.:strip_icc()/pic6067773.jpg)
John Company: Second Edition game board (not final) posted by Cole Wehrle
In more detail, John Company: Second Edition is played over a series of turns (rounds), and the game ends after a certain number of turns based on the scenario you choose to play, or it can end sooner if the Company fails from taking on too much debt or if the Company Standing crumbles. In either case, after a final scoring phase, the player with the most victory points wins.
Before you start a game, you choose a scenario and set up the game board according to the chosen scenario card. Each player takes a player board and components for their family and draws set-up cards that show your family's starting office positions, cash, deeds, shares, etc. In your first game, it's recommended to draw these set-up cards randomly, but once you're familiar with the game, you'll most certainly want to draft the set-up cards.
In a game with my friends, one player ended up starting the game as the Chairman and the Director of Trade which gave him a lot of power, and I'm sure that would've been avoided had we drafted the set-up cards.
During each turn, you play through ten phases; these phases are listed on the game board in a logical way, which helps an otherwise complex game flow smoothly. I like that all the phases are clearly laid out on the board versus having individual player aids. This keeps everyone engaged and focused on the game together, which leads to some fun player interaction. Plus, with the board layout, I dig that you can give a high-level overview of the game, then just jump into it, teaching as you go because of the flow of the game phases.I. The London Season phase is skipped on the first turn, but on future turns, you roll a die for each of your family members who have positions within the Company to see whether they get fatigued or retire, and you also pay any expenses for family members who previously retired on a prize space.:strip_icc()/pic6073258.jpg)
My family's play area (non-final art and graphics)
If any of your family members did retire this turn, you can choose a prize on the left side of the board, pay its cost, place your retired family member on the appropriate space, and gain any victory points noted on the corresponding prize.
Retiring family members is one of the key ways to gain victory points in John Company. On one hand, you are losing your position, which might end up going to a different family (one of your opponents), but on the other hand, you're scoring points and gaining the ability to draft prestige cards.
After players have retired their family members on prize spaces, they get to draft prestige cards starting with the player who spent the most total cash on retirements this turn. The prestige card deck has a mix of regular and secret prestige cards shuffled together, and three cards are available to be drafted. Regular prestige cards will be placed face-up, whereas secret prestige cards are always face-down and can be peeked at when drafting.
Prestige cards come in a variety of flavors. There are spouses that increase your family's prestige, which comes in handy during endgame scoring, and some come with inheritances that allow you to discard them for money during the game. There are also enterprises that offer special powers, blackmails with one-time effects, and hidden interests that can potentially get you some extra points at the end of the game.
Since only three cards are available, with more than three players, not everyone who retires will get one. Also, retiring for victory points isn't cheap and comes with an upkeep cost that you need to pay each turn or you lose the points since your family member would go back to your supply. As you can imagine, the decision of how much to spend on retirement is rarely an easy choice.:strip_icc()/pic6073228.jpg)
II. During the Family Phase, you gain one or two children from your supply depending on the round. On your turn, you can enlist a child as an officer-in-training for the military or as a writer in one of the three administrative zones, known as presidencies (Bombay, Madras or Bengal). You can also pay to send your children to the Stock Exchange, which will eventually convert into a share in the Company, or you can return a child to your supply and purchase a deed.
There are shipyard deeds which cost £3 and once they're fitted, they are crucial for trading in India to help the Company earn money at a later phase. There are also luxury deeds, which cost £6 and are worth 2 victory points each while you possess them, and workshop deeds for £2 to £6.
III. Next is the Firms phase, which only applies to certain scenarios if the company has been deregulated. I haven't tried any of the scenarios where firms apply, but it sounds like they'll add an interesting 18xx layer to the game in which players manage firms and can own shares in each others' firms. Once I have a better feel for the "Early Company 1710" scenario, I want to check out what Cole has cooked up for us firms-wise.
IV. In the Buy Stock phase, family members who are on the Stock Exchange track can move into and gain influence in the Court of Directors to become shares in the Company and clear some debt.
If the Company has no debt tokens and a family member is on the "5" space of the Stock Exchange track, that family member slides into the Court of Directors box and is now considered a share for the corresponding family. Otherwise, for each debt token on the Company Standing track, you'll move a family member into the Court of Directors, starting with the topmost space, and remove a debt token for each newly converted share. In either case, afterwards, slide all remaining family members up as far as possible on the Stock Exchange track.
V. The Hiring phase is also skipped on the first round since there won't be any vacant positions at the start of the game. On future turns, players will hire each open position. Each position has its own potential pool of candidates for hiring, and by default, you can't hire your own family member unless all players in the candidate pool agree that it's okay.
For example, if the Military Affairs position is open, the Chairman hires any Commander in a Presidential Army for this position. If there are none, they may hire any Officer, or, if none, any family member in the Officers-in-Training box.
VI. Next, each Company office operates in order following the red ribbon on the game board for the Company Operation phase, or what I like to call, the "greasing each other's palms" phase since you'll be in a position of needing money or favors from people, and/or people will need money or favors from you.
Since doing business in India is risky, most actions will require you to roll dice to do a success check. The number of dice you roll depends on the amount of resources (usually money) that you want to spend. Of all the dice you roll, you use the lowest number to determine the result of your success check: a 1 or 2 is a success, a 3 or 4 has no effect, and a 5 or 6 is considered a catastrophic failure and you lose your job!
The Chairman goes first in the Company Operation phase and can seek debt to increase the Company's balance, with the approval of at least half of the shares in the Court of Directors. Then the Chairman allocates all funds to the offices in the Company. If you're looking to boost your office's treasury, you might want to butter up the Chairman with a sweet deal here and there to get the cash you need.
The Director of Trade can perform a success check to open orders in a region on the map and make up to two transfers to move ships and/or writers. On the map are circles with numbers inside representing orders, and when they're closed and covered with a black discs, that means there's hostility towards the Company and those folks don't want to trade. Therefore, opening orders gives you more potential areas to trade to make more money for the Company. Since the Director of Trade can also shift some ships and/or writers, there lies another opportunity for players to sway, bribe, and negotiate to get the Director of Trade to move something in their favor.:strip_icc()/pic6073263.jpg)
The Military Affairs office can make up to two Army transfers. Then we move to the Presidency offices for Bombay, Madras and Bengal. For each presidency, Governors (if any), then the Commander, and then the President gets to take actions.
The Commanders can attempt to invade a region or open orders in their Presidency's home region or a Company-controlled region associated with their President. If an invasion succeeds, you'll put the corresponding Governor card in the Vacant Offices box for the next Hiring phase.
Meanwhile, Presidents can perform a success check to trade by placing writers in their office out on adjacent open order spaces starting from their home port. If you succeed, you can place one writer per ship in the corresponding sea zone. Then the Company increases its balance based on the orders filled, the President makes £1 for each order filled, and each player takes £1 from the bank for each of their writers you placed on an order.
I enjoy the semi-cooperative feeling of having different players control positions in different offices of the Company, with the understanding that it was usually mutually beneficial to do our best to make more money for the Company, in spite of our own personal motivations.
Additional offices will operate during this phase if they are in play from invasions and various laws being passed. Each office position comes with a card that not only makes it easy to tell who holds which position(s), but also lists the possible actions; on the opposite side, it shows how you hire for that particular position. This is super handy so that you don't need to scrounge through the rulebook as each office operates or during the Hiring phase.
VII. During the Bonuses phase, players may receive some small cash bonuses for their deeds in addition to any special bonuses associated with prestige cards or passed laws.
VIII. Next, in the Revenue phase the Company pays its expenses, the Chairman can pay dividends, and the Company adjusts its Standing. For expenses, the Company Balance is lowered by £1 for each fitted ship, each debt token on the Company Standing track, and each officer and Commander in an Army.
After expenses are paid, the Chairman can pay out dividends to shareholders. Each dividend costs £1 per share in the Court of Directors and is paid by lowering the Company's Balance marker by that amount. Multiple dividends can be paid if the Company can afford it. Each player who has a share in the Court of Directors gains £1 for each of their shares. Then the Company Standing is adjusted accordingly.
The Company's Standing raises one space to the right if two or more dividends were paid this turn, it lowers one space to the left if no dividends were paid, and then it also lowers one space to the left if any emergency loans were taken to cover expenses. This is another interesting effect that reminds me of 18xx. The Chairman could withhold from paying dividends selfishly if it'll give their opponents a cash advantage. Or if the Chairman is trying to intentionally make the Company fail, they can choose not to pay dividends to lower the Company's standing. If timed right, that decision can cause the game to end early depending on where the Company Standing is before this phase.Now's a good time for me to mention when the game ends, each share is worth 1 victory point, but if the Company fails, you lose 1 victory point for each share you have. I find myself always wondering about my opponents' intentions and trying to get ahead of this kind of corruption. Or who knows, maybe I'm in a position of having no shares and it would be poetic to tank the Company and make my opponents lose some points?:strip_icc()/pic6073137.jpg)
Non-final art and graphics
Actually, as you can see in the screenshot to the left, I (green) had no shares in the Court of Directors and also had a lead on the score track, so I might have been thinking about purposely trying to make the Company fail had we continued the game. Maybe Cole and Drew were intimidated by the Walsh family (me) and that's why we didn't finish the game? I'm totally kidding as they pretty much held my hand through the game as I was trying to process everything, but these are things you'll be thinking about when you play John Company, while also being suspicious of your opponents.
IX. During the Events in India phase, players roll the India die and resolve any storms and events in India. The map of India on the game board is divided into eight regions with three sea zones, and if any of the sea zones appears on the event die, that area is subject to storms and each player has to roll a die for each of their ships in the corresponding sea zone. On a 1 or 2 your ship is safe, on a 3 or 4 your ship flips to its fatigued side (or sinks if it was already fatigued), and a 5 or 6 immediately sinks your ship. If a ship is sunk, it's returned to its shipyard and will need to be fitted again to get back out to sea for trading.After resolving the storms, you resolve a number of events based on the number you rolled on the India die. There are seven different types of events with varying effects that could cause orders to open or close in particular regions, or strengthen a region by increasing its tower level, or even help players gain a few bucks for their writers in a particular region. Then there are also crises and rebellions you have to watch out for as well. If the Company previously invaded a region and took control of it, events in this phase can cause the Company to lose these regions from invasions and rebellions.:strip_icc()/pic6073227.jpg)
Event cards & India die from TTS (non-final art and graphics)
In John Company: Second Edition, there's an elephant always lurking around the map of India representing the looming crisis India is always faced with, and it moves around the map depending on these events. Many of the events are triggered based on the elephant's position on the map, while other events will impact the location on the back of the top card of the event deck.
I quite like the event system and the bit of randomness it throws at players to simulate the instability the British East India Company was faced with in India. I found understanding the impacts of some of the events on the overall gameplay to be fairly challenging, but I think it's something that will click better after playing a full game.
X. In the final phase of the turn, Parliament Meets, the player with the Prime Minister card must select a law and bring it up for a vote. Twilight Imperium fans will feel right at home with this phase as it's reminiscent of the TI Agenda phase, but with its own twists.
First, there's a press-your-luck element when the Prime Minister draws law cards. Instead of just drawing one card and voting on it, you can reveal up to three law cards, then decide which to vote on. However, if at any point drawing, you reveal a dilemma card, you have to stop and that becomes the card you vote on.
Depending on the card you are voting on, the Prime Minister moves the marker on the Policy track, and if the law is passed, that particular policy space is resolved. Players can vote to pass or fail the law using cash from their family treasury or you can flip shipyard and workshop deeds to count as votes.
The law cards vary and can impact the game state in many ways. There's a law card that can add regiments to the Company's armies, which will make the armies stronger, but comes with an added expense. Other laws may open up new positions within the Company or help players earn more money. I haven't explored all the law cards yet, but the ones I've seen so far are interesting and can stir up debates and heated conversations in a good way.:strip_icc()/pic6073225.jpg)
Law cards in TTS (non-final art and graphics)
At one point when I was Prime Minister, a dilemma law card came up which we were forced to vote on. If passed, it would've allowed me to fire the current Chairman, so we could re-hire the position on the next Hiring phase — but my friend who was the Chairman and I got into a vote-casting bidding war as I was trying to pass it, and he was trying to fail it. We both spent way too much money being stubborn, but I gave up sooner, so it failed and ended up lowering the Company Standing one space since that was the "if failed" effect of the dilemma and he held onto his Chairman position.
Not only that, but when a law fails, the person who cast the most votes against the law becomes the new Prime Minister — which made Mr. Chairman Director of Trade, and now Prime Minister, even more powerful!
After the law and any policy effects are resolved, the game state is cleaned up with a quick refresh and prepared for the next game turn. As mentioned earlier, the game end after a certain number of turns based on the scenario you play or if the Company fails. Then you'll do some final scoring, and whoever has the most victory points wins.There is so much going on in John Company: Second Edition and I have much to learn, but I wanted to at least share some details on the gameplay as we gear up for Wehrlegig's upcoming Kickstarter launch. I've barely scratched the surface with everything John Company has to offer because it's all still new to me and I am still learning and processing. I'm coming into this with no experience playing the first edition of John Company and minimal experience with this new version, but I'm thoroughly enjoying what I have checked out so far./pic5082606.png)
I love that just about everything is negotiable in John Company: Second Edition, so as you're going through the game phases each turn, if you don't have something you need, you can try to work out deals with your opponents to get it. Shares in the Company, your family's cash, deeds and even children can all be transferred to different players. Each player also has five promise cards — another nod to Twilight Imperium — which can also be used for negotiations.
I feel like I'm constantly on my toes questioning my opponents' motivations and it keeps the game engaging and tense. In addition, there are all these nice touches sprinkled throughout the game, like the period art and the fact that the families, spouses and ships have names on them. It sucks you into the history and theme. I don't think I'll ever forget the moment "Jubilee Paxton" took over the Bombay Presidency after the previous office holder completely failed on the only trade action that would've made the Company money that round.:strip_icc()/pic6073260.jpg)
Tabletop Simulator game (non-final art and graphics)
Between the negotiation, dice rolling, and complexity, John Company: Second Edition won't be for everyone — but if you're intrigued by Pax Pamir: Second Edition and want to experience more of what's up Cole Wehrle's historical gaming sleeves, then I recommend checking out John Company: Second Edition. It will probably take new players a game or two (maybe more!) to fully grasp, but hopefully you'll enjoy the ride as I have and find that it's worth it.
From what I've experienced thus far, John Company: Second Edition has been a blast and as a whole, it's like nothing I've ever played before. It has a ton of layers that are individually not too hard to understand, but when you combine everything, there's a lot to wrap your head around...in a good way. It's challenging and quite fascinating, and I find myself thinking about it a lot. Perhaps what I love most is that it has the potential to create some epic gaming moments like Twilight Imperium, but in its own unique, historically-enriched way.
If anyone recalls, my first BGG News article announced the Kickstarter launch of Cole Wehrle's Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile from publisher Leder Games in January 2020. I'm sure it was obvious at that point that I was a bit of a Cole Wehrle fangirl.
Cole's games always feel different, and they fascinate me. While I love me some Root, I also thoroughly love and appreciate Pax Pamir: Second Edition because the game mechanisms are top notch and it also covers a historical topic with which I was not familiar. Cole's historical game designs are very hooky. They have this cool balance of being super fun and engaging with lots of player interaction, and at the same time, they make me want to dig into the history. John Company: Second Edition is no exception.
I cannot wait to get my hands on the finished version of John Company: Second Edition, but in the meantime, I'll have Oath soon enough to hold me over.
If you're interested in learning about the development of John Company: Second Edition, be sure to check out the designer diaries Cole posted: Designer Diary 1, Designer Diary 2, and Designer Diary 3.
Fri Mar 26, 2021 5:03 pm
- [+] Dice rolls
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David Thompson has a knack for delivering a variety of excellent board games, whether on his own or when collaborating with a plethora of different designers. While some of his releases are gaining much deserved praise, such as War Chest from AEG and Undaunted: Normandy from Osprey Games, both which he co-designed with Trevor Benjamin, several other games he's worked on have remained under the radar.
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In late 2020, I got hip to David Thompson's popular, solitaire wargames Pavlov's House and Castle Itter from Dan Verssen Games (DVG). When I saw DVG launched a Kickstarter campaign for Thompson's upcoming 2021 solitaire wargame Soldiers in Postmen's Uniforms, I had a treat yo'self moment and splurged to go all-in with the Valiant Defense series so that I could add all three of these solitaire wargame gems to my collection. Even though I was good to go, I couldn't help but notice the add-ons, which is the first time I saw For What Remains. I was curious, so naturally I looked it up on BGG and started rummaging YouTube for videos to see what it was all about.
For What Remains initially struck me as an interesting fusion of elements from War Chest and Undaunted: Normandy/Undaunted: North Africa, even though I could tell it was its own beast. It got me excited and I knew I wanted to try it out and let people know about it. It seemed like a game fans of War Chest or Undaunted: Normandy might dig, in addition to fans of skirmish games.
I emailed David who put me in contact with Sarah from DVG, and they graciously hooked me up with a copy of all three For What Remains games so that I could check them out.
For What Remains is a series of three tactical skirmish wargames for 1-2 players in a near future post-apocalyptic setting created by David Thompson with the help of his collaborators, Paul Low and Ricardo Tomas. For What Remains can be played two ways, either as standalone skirmish games or as a campaign with a series of skirmishes linked together to form a larger narrative. In either case, after setting it up, a single scenario plays in about 45-60 minutes./pic582582.jpg)
Each of the three games in the series has its own flavor and narrative within the overall For What Remains storyline, and each game includes two unique factions each vying for control and survival in a post-apocalyptic setting that resulted from a nuclear weapon test that opened a gateway to an alternate dimension known as the Basement. Without spoiling the story, I'll just say...things got weird from there.
• In For What Remains: Streets of Ruin, you have the Freemen Coalition, a loose-knit band of human rebels who specialize in guerilla warfare up against the government military Combine, made of primarily mechs that rule over much of what's left of the world.
• In For What Remains: Blood on the Rails, you have the Echo, a group of humans with psychic powers led by a secretive cabalis rivaling the Soldiers of Light (SoL), some beasty-looking humans who can use mutated beasts and believe the fall of mankind was due to dependence on technology.
• The last in the series, For What Remains: Out of the Basement, includes the biologically developed creatures known as Erthen versus the Order of the New Dawn, which are creepier creatures from the strange subterranean realm, I mentioned above, the Basement.:strip_icc()/pic5542776.jpg)
Even though each game has its own factions and campaign, they are all cross-compatible with each other and have the same rules, so you can combine the components and factions of any of the games together.
When you set up a game of For What Remains, regardless of which particular game you're playing , each player chooses a faction to control, then you pick a scenario, either from the campaign book or one you've created.
Next, you create the battleground using a modular board set-up, which is one of the things that gives For What Remains a lot of replay value. Each game in the series comes with twelve different double-sided battleground mats that you use to create a 3x3 battleground each game. The campaign scenarios give you a specific battleground set-up to follow, but if you choose to create your own scenario, you alternate placing battleground mats with your opponent to create a custom set-up. In either case, the result is a 3x3 battleground with detailed artwork and clean graphic design ready for action.:strip_icc()/pic6055999.jpg)
For What Remains: Streets of Ruin
Depending on the scenario you play, you will likely need to distribute some scavenge tokens (weapons, fuel, etc.) on the board; these are usually worth victory points if you can grab them and keep them in your possession during the game.
Next comes the character selection process, which I found to be the most exciting part of set-up in For What Remains. It's a nice balance of thinky, creative and suspenseful since you're carefully crafting your crew, but you don't know yet what your opponent's line-up will be.
Each game you'll decide on a certain amount of skirmish points to use to "shop" for characters within your chosen faction. Campaign scenarios tell you how many to use, but if you're creating your own scenario, the rulebook recommends ranging from 10 skirmish points (first game/low-level characters) to 30 if you're looking for a more epic experience.
Each of the six factions has five or six unique characters with varying strengths and special abilities that can come into play at one of three different experience levels: Recruit, Veteran or Elite. Each character has a reference card which shows their move (MOV), weapon range (WR), close combat (CC), ranged combat (RC), defense (DEF), and special abilities. In addition, each character has a value associated with its experience level that represents the amount of skirmish points you'll need to spend to purchase and use them for the game. Often more abilities are available the higher the experience level, but as you'd expect, it also costs more.
In the example below, the Death Vine (Erthen faction) would cost 2 skirmish points to bring in as a Recruit, 4 as a Veteran, and 6 as an Elite. Death Vine has a Camouflage and Constrict ability at all experience levels, but also has Hydro Merge if it's a Veteran or Elite.:strip_icc()/pic6056011.jpg)
Death Vine reference card
Before you even hit the battleground, you have interesting decisions to make when selecting your characters. Do you want to have a smaller, but stronger, more skilled group or do you want to have more, but weaker characters, or perhaps somewhere in between? It's super fun to experiment with building your line-up before each game, but I'll warn you, it can definitely make your set-up time run a bit longer depending on how long you mull over these decisions. It never bothered me and my opponents since in all cases we were both taking a while to think things over, so it's not like one person was ever waiting on the other. We pretty much always got sucked in and enjoyed the character selection process.
The other cool thing is that each game comes with two versions of each character, so you can have up to two of the same character in a game. The character counters have a little designator icon on it to distinguish between the two versions.:strip_icc()/pic6056027.jpg)
two versions of Psion (Echo faction)
After you've selected your characters, take character reference cards, counters, action tokens, and ability reference sheets. If you use Recruit-level characters, you use a single counter with an "R" on it, whereas if you use Veteran and Elite characters, you'll stack the lower level counters beneath the main one. This comes into play more when I tell you about getting injured in combat.
For What Remains also comes with nifty booklets for each faction with its backstory, artwork, and details on all of the characters and their special abilities.
The last thing you need to do for set-up is decide where your characters start on the battleground. Typically, you roll a die (d10) and whoever has the highest roll chooses a side and their opponent starts on the opposite side. Deciding where to place your characters also gives you a lot to think about, but I found it never took as long as choosing characters. Between this and the character selection process, you have a lot of interesting and tough choices to make before you even start the battle.Each skirmish in For What Remains is played over a series of rounds until one player wins. Victory will depend on the chosen scenario, which usually has different victory conditions for different factions but oftentimes, you win the game by scoring a certain number of victory points or by defeating all of your opponent's characters.:strip_icc()/pic6056061.jpg)
For What Remains: Out of the Basement
Each round is centered around a clever chit-pull system. Players select action tokens they want to use for the round and place them in a little black sack, which is the action bag. You have three action tokens per character that you keep face-down in your own supply so your opponent can't see them. These action tokens are what you use to determine which characters take actions. Both players secretly place a number of action tokens equal to the number of characters you have on the battleground into the action bag, so if you have four characters, you place four action tokens in the action bag.
Then you draw tokens from the bag, one at a time, and discard them face up to activate characters. When a character is activated with an action token, you can take one action with the activated character. You can move, attack an enemy with close or ranged combat, use a special ability, or pass/forfeit the action.
After all action tokens have been drawn, you recover any action tokens from the exhausted action token area, then place the newly discarded action tokens in the exhausted area. This means that the action tokens you most recently activated won't be available to you until after the next round. Also, the discarded and exhausted tokens are face up, so if you're paying attention you can plan accordingly.This chit-pull system not only has you thinking carefully every turn about which tokens to place in the bag, but it can be incredibly suspenseful as you draw the tokens out of the bag to activate them. This is one of the elements of For What Remains that reminds me of War Chest.:strip_icc()/pic6056088.jpg)
For What Remains: Blood on the Rails
Let's delve into actions a bit starting with movement. When you move a character, you move a number spaces (orthogonally or diagonally) equal to or less than their Move attribute. The battleground mats feature a variety of terrain types (difficult, water, elevated, and blocking) which are represented well graphically, so it's easy to differentiate them. Different terrain types will impact movement, e.g., you need to use 2 Move to enter difficult and water terrain.
When it comes to attacking, there's ranged combat and close combat, and in both cases, you'll be rolling d10s — which I find to be exciting and fun, but I know some people would feel the exact opposite about it. When you're adjacent to an enemy character, you can use close combat to attack. When you're further away, you can make ranged combat attacks at a distance equal to or less than your character's weapon range and if you have line of sight. Different terrain types can impact line of sight when attacking. The rulebook includes plenty of excellent, helpful examples for players to grasp and internalize the line of sight rules.
To fire an attack, you roll a number of dice equal to your ranged combat value or close combat value, and if at least one die rolled is higher than the target's defense value, the target is injured.
Each character counter has a healthy (front) or injured (back) state. Characters start healthy, so if they are hit from an attack, they flip over and become injured. Then, if they are hit again when injured, the character counter is removed from the game. Veteran and Elite characters start stacked (i.e., a Veteran counter is stacked on a Recruit counter, an Elite counter is stacked on Veteran and Recruit counters), so when they lose a counter, they level down and get weaker skillwise, but stay alive to fight another day.:strip_icc()/pic6056195.jpg)
Abomination healthy (left), injured (right)
If you do lose a Recruit token, it can be brutal since that character is completely out of the game, which likely helps your opponent with their victory condition and it also reduces the number of action tokens you can put in the action bag since you use one per character on the board. Ouch! It's not the end of the world, though, as the game hooks you up with a consolation prize as a catch-up mechanism. Whenever a character is defeated, you gain access to a special one-time use faction action token that you can use to activate any character you wish when it's drawn from the action bag. The faction action token really comes in handy and gives you a lot of flexibility, especially when you're down a character.
Maybe you don't want to move or do a basic ol' ranged or close combat and seeking a slightly juicier action. Each character has special abilities you can also activate as an action. These abilities vary from character to character, so I'll mention a few examples. The Medic has a Medkit ability that can flip an adjacent allied human character counter or her own counter from injured to healthy. The Mindbender has a Telepathy ability that allows him to give an allied character within weapon range a free, immediate close combat, ranged combat, or move action. The Tempest has a Rubble Runner ability that lets him move through difficult terrain and water terrain with no increase to the Move cost.
There are also some characters, like Inferno, who have cool, special weapons. Inferno has a Flamethrower ability that it must use when making ranged combat attacks, and it makes its ranged combat attacks hit all space touching the Flamethrower template.:strip_icc()/pic6056116.jpg)
Inferno's Flamethrower (Combine faction)
There are lots of unique abilities, along with some overlap here and there, where another character in a different faction might have a slightly similar ability. Nevertheless, the character special abilities add a lot of spice to the game and there's plenty of variety in the abilities and characters that is not only fun, but gives you lots of options strategically, and also adds to the replay value.
You continue playing round after round until one player wins the game by achieving the victory condition for the chosen scenario, or you can go with the default victory condition: first player to score 5 points or to defeat all enemy characters. You score a victory point for each scavenge token you possess and also for each character you defeat.
If you're interested in playing For What Remains solo, there's a fairly smooth AI activation system with three different difficulty levels. Each of the characters comes with an AI activation card that has orders you follow by rolling a die when it's activated. You randomly add a certain number of action tokens to the action bag for the AI faction based on the difficulty level. Unlike the regular rules, the AI action tokens are never exhausted, but instead, immediately shuffled back into the AI token supply after an AI character is activated. For skirmish games, I tend to prefer playing with a human opponent, but the solo system does work pretty well if that's your preference.
Regardless of whether you play solo or with two players, the campaign seems awesome for each game. There's a force roster chart for listing your characters, naming them, and tracking their progress throughout the campaign. After completing a scenario, you earn experience points equal to the number of skirmish points used in the scenario, and you can spend them to advance level-up your characters. Each campaign has five different scenarios, and you can dive into any of them, but if you want the full experience, you should play them in order, starting with Streets of Ruin, then moving to Blood on the Rails, and finishing with Out of the Basement.:strip_icc()/pic6056172.jpg)
For What Remains: Streets of Ruin solo game
I mainly played one-off scenarios from each book, but I would definitely like to try a full campaign sometime. I'm impressed with all the love and detail that went into the story and artwork. There's so much narrative all over this game, and it really soaks you in the theme. Kudos to David Thompson, Paul Low, and Ricardo Tomas, who served as a creative lead on the campaign's story.
I thoroughly enjoyed playing all three For What Remains games. The factions and characters are super cool and different, and I love the decision space when it comes to choosing your line-up of characters for a game and also deciding which action tokens to put in the action bag each round. The chit-pull system is great, and I love the element of suspense it brings, especially during tense moments during the game.
There's so much replay value in each game because of the modular board set-up and the options you have when selecting characters. For What Remains is also very accessible and plays in less than an hour. The rules are straightforward, and the rulebook has great examples when it comes to nailing down the line of sight rules, which we found hardest to learn initially.:strip_icc()/pic6056184.jpg)
I love the detailed artwork on the battleground mats and how much the modular set-up changes the feel of each game. I do wish the material was a bit heavier, though, since they sometimes slide out of place when you're moving your character counters around. It probably won't bother most people, but I can't help my OCD sometimes.
I like each game coming with two factions versus having a big super expensive game with all six factions. It allows players to choose their own adventure. You can try one game, then if you're stoked on it and looking for more, there's plenty more to explore with the other two games in the series. Plus, it's fun to mix and match factions and different battlegrounds for added variety...and of course, if you try one and find it's not your thing, there's no need to go all in.
After playing For What Remains, I'll be on the lookout for upcoming releases from David Thompson, and I can't wait to have some me time and delve into the Valiant Defense series when those games arrive!
Fri Mar 19, 2021 3:06 pm
- [+] Dice rolls
WizKids Invites Us to Combo Cursed Items, Build Sci-Fi Arks, and Guide Penguins Around the City
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• In my previous post I mentioned Blitzkrieg! was one of my favorite filler games, but another great filler game that has always been a crowd-pleaser at my game nights is Bruce Glassco's combotastic Fantasy Realms from WizKids. Needless to say, I was curious and excited to play its first expansion, Fantasy Realms: The Cursed Hoard, which is targeted for retail release in May 2021. WizKids was kind enough to send me a copy to check out, along with some of its other new early 2021 releases.
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If you're not familiar with Fantasy Realms, it plays with 3-6 players (or two players with an included variant) in about 20 minutes, and the goal of the game is to make the highest scoring hand of cards using card combos. You have a deck of 53 cards with ten different suits and three wild cards. At the beginning of the game, everyone is dealt seven cards. Then on your turn, you draw a card from the deck or discard area, then discard a card, so you always have seven cards. All cards are discarded face up and spread out such that they are all visible to everyone. The game ends immediately when ten cards are in the discard area, then the player with the highest scoring hand of cards wins.:strip_icc()/pic6025896.jpg)
The Cursed Hoard expansion adds some refreshing flair to Fantasy Realms. There are two parts — Cursed Items and three new suits — that can be added to the base game separately or combined.
When you add Cursed Items, you add a separate new deck of cards to the mix. At the beginning of the game, each player is dealt a Cursed Item card face up. On your turn, you have three options with your face-up Cursed Item: 1) Do nothing, 2) Discard it at the end of your turn and draw a new one face-up in front of you, or 3) Use it.
There are 24 different Cursed Item cards with some that will replace your normal turn and others that you can play anytime during your turn. Each one grants you a unique action that alters the normal rules of play to give you a leg up on your opponents, but using these abilities comes at a price since the majority of them will give you negative points — they are cursed, after all.Many of the Cursed Items allow you to manipulate the main deck of cards, your hand of cards, or the cards in the discard area. For example, if you have the shovel, you can put a card from the discard area on the bottom of the deck which not only slows the game a bit, but allows you to bury a juicy card before your opponents can swoop it up from the discard area. You can also play this particular Cursed Item any time during your turn, including after you discard a card which can be really handy considering discarding a card is one of the hardest decisions you have to make each turn since you're trying to avoid handing your opponents that magical card they need.:strip_icc()/pic6025899.jpg)
Cursed Item — Shovel
Some Cursed Items let you interact with the other players, such as the Larcenous Gloves that allow you to steal a face-up Cursed Item from another player which you must use immediately, after which they draw a replacement, or the Crystal Ball that lets you name a suit and all other players must reveal all cards they have in their hand of that suit.
After you use your Cursed Item, you flip it face down and grab a new one from the deck to put in front of you face-up, so if you choose to play with the Cursed Item cards, everyone will always have one face-up Cursed Item throughout the game, and some players may have one or more face down that will impact their score at the end of the game.
The Cursed Hoard expansion also adds three new suits to Fantasy Realms: Buildings, Outsiders, and Undead. Since the new suits dilute the main deck and make it harder to draw combos, there are some slight rule changes to maintain balance. You start and play the game with an eight-card hand instead of the usual seven, and the game end is triggered when twelve cards are in the discard area, not ten.:strip_icc()/pic6025894.jpg)
Examples of the new suits
The new suits function similarly to the base game cards for the most part, but also add some new twists. For example, the Undead score with cards in the discard area, instead of your hand like normal. These cards make the discard area much more appealing throughout the game for those who possess Undead cards. You're no longer scavenging the discard area to pick up measly scraps your opponents leave, but instead you're anxiously hoping to turn those scraps into a high-scoring combo with your Undead cards in hand at the end of the game. Of course, if you're also playing with Cursed Items, you could have more control over what ends up in the discard area to help you strategize.
Fantasy Realms is easy to teach, plays quickly, and is all about creating satisfying card combos. If you enjoy it, it's not unlikely to want to play back-to-back games every time you break it out, and it's also not unlikely to want to break it out often. Depending on how much you've played it, over time it'll eventually feel a bit same-y, even with the variety of cards and suits in the base game, so the added spice and variety The Cursed Hoard expansion brings to the realm is gladly welcomed. Plus, I really appreciate the fact that expansion is modular and therefore gives you more options for your Fantasy Realms games.• In early March 2021, WizKids released an English-language version of Serge Macasdar's Seeders from Sereis: Exodus which was originally released by French publisher Sweet Games in 2017./pic3251383.jpg)
Seeders from Sereis is a sci-fi themed strategy game for 2-4 players featuring a mix of card drafting, area influence, tableau building, and some engine building as players compete to build the highest-scoring ark using cards in their tableaus. Here's the backstory and high-level overview of gameplay as described by the original publisher:Quote:Seeders from Sereis is a trans-media science-fiction universe that's been created over five years by Serge Macasdar and Charbel Fourel and which contains post-humans, space opera, extensive journeys on space arks, lost empires, exo-biology, genetic evolution, android developments, and more.In more detail, Seeders from Sereis: Exodus is played over four rounds and each round has five phases, with each game taking about two hours to play::strip_icc()/pic6025941.jpg)
Seeders, Series 1: Exodus is the first game of a serial of ten set in this universe. When an unknown force threatens to render their home uninhabitable, the Seeders must build arks — giant colony ships — to ensure their survival. Players work to create the most promising design to be chosen for production. Each turn players draft cards into their hands as cards are laid out on the board. Players strategically place negotiator chips between the cards they want, using their alignment and position to determine who has the most influence over a desired card. Once all negotiators and tokens are placed, influence is calculated and the winners of each card is determined.
Once obtained, cards can be played for points, adding value to your ark, or discarded for resources. Each card represents a different component of the ark — locations, items, personnel — and players will find unique synergies between cards as well as their player color's unique power. Asymmetry and complex interactions add layers of strategy that lead to a unique experience each time you play.
1) In the Preparation phase, you un-tap your once-per-round cards and update turn order.
2) In the Foundation phase, you receive four new Ark cards and draft them, rotating the direction each round. I'll mention that drafting in this phase is considered a variant, but if you're an experienced gamer, you'll more than likely prefer drafting.
3) Next is the Negotiation phase in which the "Wing of Whispers" game board comes into play. You place twelve Ark cards in the appropriate spaces on the game board, then players place their negotiator discs in turn order to bid for Ark cards. Each negotiator will impact the two spaces adjacent to it, so you are bidding on two cards with each disc placed.:strip_icc()/pic6025940.jpg)
Each player has six negotiator discs, each representing a different caste, and the amount of influence cubes you place depends on the negotiator's level of influence and the caste. At the beginning of the game each caste's influence is [1]-[1], meaning you can put one influence cube on each adjacent side when placing the corresponding negotiator disc. Over the course of the game, you can increase the amount of influence of your various negotiator discs, plus you can always add a bonus influence cube(s) whenever the caste of your negotiator disc matches the caste of either card it's placed adjacent to.:strip_icc()/pic6025954.jpg)
After each player has placed five of their negotiator discs and influence cubes based on the caste, then you resolve each card space. The player with the most influence cubes surrounding the card takes the card into their hand and takes one of their adjacent negotiator discs back. If there's a tie, the card is discarded. After all cards are removed from the game board, negotiator discs still on the board can be leveled up: a [1]-[1] becomes a [2]-[1], a [2]-[1] can become a [3]-[1] or a [2]-[2], etc. This allows you to place more influence cubes in future rounds with that particular negotiator disc. If you place a negotiator disc with [3]-[1], for example, you can place three influence cubes on one side and one influence cube on the other.
4) Next in the Integration phase, players use the ark cards they gained from drafting in phase 2 and from using their influence in phase 3. There are two types of ark cards in Seeders from Sereis: units and crews. Units can host up to two crew cards by default and need to be hosted by at least one crew to score during phase 5. There's a variety of ark cards that have different special abilities; some are immediate effects when played, and some you can use once per round. Some cards will grant you prestige points (victory points) when they're played and others will grant you other special effects.:strip_icc()/pic6026206.jpg)
Example of a unit card
During the Integration phase, in turn order you can recycle/discard cards to gain resources, spend resources to add new ark cards into your tableau, activate special abilities, and rearrange your ark by moving crews from one unit to another. You can perform one or more of these actions on your turn and in any order that you want. Since you can't do this phase simultaneously, there may be some downtime depending on how long each player takes.:strip_icc()/pic6026207.jpg)
Example of a crew card
5) Finally in the Prestige phase, you gain prestige points based on the prestige abilities of the cards in your ark/tableau. Pretty much everything you are doing in the phases leading up to this is to maximize the amount of prestige points you'll score. Some cards will score based on the number of cards you have in your ark of a specific type, while others score if you have a majority of a specific type of card.
The game ends at the end of the fourth round, and the player with the most prestige points wins. If you enjoy tableau builders and/or sci-fi themed games, you should definitely check Seeders from Sereis: Exodus out. My favorite part of Seeders was the influence bidding and negotiator disc placement in the Negotiation phase. There are so many interesting decisions that stem from the clever mechanism of placing the negotiator discs and dropping influence cubes. You'll be figuring out ways to get bonuses by matching castes, but also trying to set yourself up to win cards you can combo with others you already have, or trying to defensively deny your opponents from certain cards, then also deciding which negotiators to leave on the board so you can level them up influencewise. WizKids also knocked it out the park with the components here, too; everything from the negotiator discs to the cards to the dual-layered player boards are top notch.
• Did you ever say to yourself, "There aren't enough games with cute little penguins?" Me neither, but after playing Waddle, another early 2021 release from WizKids, I feel like I need more cute penguin games in my life.
Waddle is a light, filler game from designers Raph Koster and Isaac Shalev that plays with 2-4 players in 30 minutes:Quote:Penguins are curious creatures. Flighty though flightless, they move about quickly towards things that appeal to them.In more detail, Waddle is played over a certain number of rounds depending on player count: eight rounds with two players, seven rounds with three players, and six rounds with four players. During set-up, each player starts with four yellow and four red penguins, and an individual deck of 13 scoring cards, which you shuffle and draw four cards from to start the game. Then you lay out a certain number of coaster-looking "places" to create one or two "neighborhoods" depending on player count.:strip_icc()/pic6026086.jpg)
In Waddle, ever-curious penguins visit different places, sometimes in different neighborhoods. Each turn, you move the penguins around the city or bring some new ones in from out of town. Get the penguins to move into the patterns matching your cards to score points. The player with the most points at the end of a set number of rounds wins!:strip_icc()/pic5645598.png)
Four-player layout posted by the publisher
On your turn, you play a scoring card from your hand onto your scoring/discard pile. You cannot play the same card that is currently on the top of any opponent's score pile unless you have no other cards in your hand that you can play. Then you perform a standard action or a special action if the scoring card you play has one.
When taking a standard action, you have two choices: Either you add any number and combination of penguins from your supply to one neighborhood, which is considered the active neighborhood for your turn, or you empty a place of all of its penguins and redistribute the penguins as you wish in the other four places in that neighborhood, or in any places in the other neighborhood. Again, the neighborhood where the penguins are placed is the active neighborhood for your turn.Then you score points based on the scoring card you played. Most of the scoring cards score only the active neighborhood, but some cards consider all neighborhoods when scoring. As I mentioned, there are 13 different scoring cards that score different scenarios such as places with an even or odd number of penguins, places with more yellow penguins than red penguins or vice versa, places with only yellow or only red penguins, etc. Then there's a Copy card that you play to copy an opponent's top card on their scoring pile, and some others that have special actions. So on your turn you are thinking about which card are you can play to score the most points based on your options for manipulating penguins.:strip_icc()/pic6026154.jpg)
Then you draw a card and end your turn. Players continue taking turns placing, moving, and scoring penguins until the final round is completed, and whoever has the most points wins.
Waddle is one of those games that you can play very casually and not overthink your moves for a mellow game, or you can make it more competitive and get really thinky with it. It's cool that you won't ever play all of the cards in your deck in a single game, too, so you don't always know what you'll have to work with or what your opponents have. Plus, there's also a single deck variant to change things up a bit where you shuffle all cards together, instead of having individual decks, and you have the option of drawing cards from the deck or from three face-up cards.
Waddle is a solid filler to play with gamer and non-gamer friends because it's super easy to learn, each game will vary because of the cards, and... it has adorable wooden penguins!
Fri Mar 5, 2021 1:00 pm
- [+] Dice rolls
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In 2020, Friedemann Friese and his publishing company 2F-Spiele invited us all to relax with his uniquely-themed, "after"-worker placement game Finishing Time — but now it's time for us to get back to work in ancient Egypt during the reign of Amenemhet III to impress the pharaoh and develop Faiyum!
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Friedemann Friese's Faiyum is a deck-construction and hand-management strategy game fused with route-building elements in which 1-5 players take on the role of pharaoh's advisors in ancient Egypt, competing to earn the most reputation (victory points) by creating the best card combo-engine for harvesting resources and gaining money to build roads and structures, to gain the respect of the pharaoh./pic927180.jpg)
I picked up a copy of Faiyum for myself the minute I read that it featured "a card mechanism reminiscent of deck-builders and the market mechanism successfully used in Power Grid". I'm generally a fan of board games that include any flavor of deck-building, so it seemed right up my alley. [Disclosure: BoardGameGeek sells Faiyum through the BGG Store to provide distribution for the game outside of Germany. —WEM]
When I unfolded the game board for Faiyum before my first game, I instantly loved its look and feel, and I was anticipating a pleasant gaming experience because of it. The colors are great and it's very well designed and illustrated by Harald Lieske. It also has this charming vintage appeal to it that I dig, which I'm assuming is a result of Lieske's history of contributing artwork to several older classics such as The Castles of Burgundy, La Granja, Arkwright, and many others.Game board set up for a two-player game:strip_icc()/pic6000853.jpg)
The game board is a map of Faiyum with a channel dividing two separate peninsulas which are connected only by a dam, with both peninsulas being surrounded by a lake. There are resource spaces for wheat (yellow), grapes (purple), and stone (gray), clearly identifiable by color and graphics. All three types of resource spaces are considered "undeveloped" at the start of the game. Additionally, the wheat and grape resource spaces are swampy, and therefore covered with adorable, wooden crocodiles. (Googly eyes not included, but highly recommended!) There are also four building sites (brown) and one starting settlement space (red) on the board which are considered "developed" areas in Faiyum.
Off to the left side of the game board is the card market that demands your attention if you want to impress the pharaoh and stand a chance at winning Faiyum. In the vein of Friese's popular classic, Power Grid, Faiyum's card market has four spaces for the current card market where players can buy cards, and four spaces for cards that will be available later in the game so that you can plot and plan accordingly.:strip_icc()/pic6001721.jpg)
The current market (i.e., four lowest) cards with discount tokens:strip_icc()/pic6001728.jpg)
The four highest cards can't be purchased until they slide into the current market
During set-up, you shuffle the main deck of cards into a draw pile, then prepare a "final turns" stack which is seeded with four natural disaster cards that will trigger the end of the game. Each card has a unique, even number on it, and the card market is always sorted in ascending order such that the four lowest cards form the current market and the flour highest cards cannot be purchased until they slide into the current market slots.
The cards in Faiyum are action cards, and they are the heartbeat of the game. You don't have a personal deck of cards from which you're randomly drawing, but instead your cards will either be in your hand or in your discard pile reminiscent of Concordia. There's a variety of different cards you can purchase throughout the game, which keep things interesting — but can also look a little crazy and complicated when you initially skim through them. Even though there are a lot of different action cards to familiarize yourself with, they will click and make sense faster than you'd expect thanks to a few key features in the game.
First of all, there's an awesome card glossary that comes with the game, and it explains every card really well with plenty of excellent examples. I would be very surprised if anyone had a question after checking the card glossary, but regardless, there's more. [Second disclosure: I edited the rulebook, so this is nice to hear! —WEM]
The iconography on the cards is excellent. After you learn what the action is from the card glossary, the images on the card make sense and more often than not, you won't need to look up a lot of cards after a game or two. For example, there's always the main action graphically represented and then at the bottom of each card you'll see the cost for playing the action always has a red background and the benefit always has a green background, which makes the cards easy to parse at a glance. I've played Faiyum only with gamer friends, and they picked it up quickly due to the clear iconography, but I get the impression that even non-gamers can pick it up fairly quickly especially with a good teacher.
On top of the wonderful card glossary and iconography, each card falls into one of four types of actions, and when you understand how one type of action works, I found it easy to grasp how different cards of the same type worked. There are harvest actions to help you gain resources; build actions which allow you to develop Faiyum with settlements, roads, bridges etc.; commerce actions to help you earn money; and "other" actions the feature some different gameplay effects.
For example, everyone starts the game with three Farmer cards, which are harvest actions. Farmer cards allow you to place a worker on an undeveloped resource space adjacent to another space that has a worker on it and gain one matching resource based on the space where the worker is placed.:strip_icc()/pic6000873.jpg)
Examples of harvest action cards
Other harvest actions look and function similarly as you can see above from the following examples: The Senior Farmer works the same, except you gain two matching resources, the Grower allows you to gain two roses (a wild resource) when you place a worker on any undeveloped space adjacent to the channel, and Harvest Hands follows the Farmer rules, but allows you to spend $1-$3 to place 1-3 workers and gain 1-3 resources depending on where you place the worker(s).
Along with gaining resources, if you place any workers on a space that has a crocodile on it when taking a harvest action, you remove the crocodile from the game and gain $1 since you're draining the land and opening it up for development opportunities. There are even cute little crocodile icons on the top corners of harvest action cards as a reminder.The building action cards function just like they sound and let you develop crocodile-free resource spaces by building a variety of different structures in Faiyum. When you build roads and bridges, they create a network connecting spaces and you'll usually gain some reputation from these action cards, plus a bonus reputation each time you build the first direct connection between two settlements, two building sites, or a settlement and a building site.:strip_icc()/pic6001462.jpg)
A key thing to note is that everything built on the board does not belong to a specific player; it is all common property for all players to interact with. This, combined with the card market variation, lends itself to a great deal of variety and some interesting player interaction.
Faiyum has a smooth flow to it and moves at a decent pace. It doesn't have any rounds or phases, but instead players simply alternate taking turns, in turn order, until the end of the game is triggered. Continuing with the vibe of simplicity, there are only three actions you can take on your turn, which I found makes it fairly easy to teach and get into for your first game:
1) You can play a card from your hand, either using it for its action or to get money for it.
2) You can buy a card from the current card market, placing it directly in your hand after paying the cost.
3) You can take an administration turn and do admin-y things such as gaining income and refreshing your hand and the card market.
Everyone starts the game with a hand of five cards (three Farmers, Settlement, and Two Roads) and some amount of money depending on turn order. When it's your turn, you can play a card for its action or discard it to gain $2. Regardless of the type of action card, you'll typically be playing cards to gain resources, money, and reputation (victory points) in some form, whether it's from harvesting, building, or taking some other late-game scoring cards. There are also "other" cards mixed in that allow you to do fun different things like take cards from the market at a set price or copy the action on the top of your discard pile.You can instead buy a card from the current market and take the card directly into your hand after paying its cost, which will be discounted if there's a discount token on the card. Discount tokens are placed on all four current market cards at the start of the game, and they're also added to cards when players take administration turns. The cards in the market with discount tokens are usually hot items and timing is very important in Faiyum. You don't want to sleep on a good deal because odds are it won't be available next time it's your turn.:strip_icc()/pic6001482.jpg)
After you take your newly purchased card, you draw a card from the main deck to refill the market. Remember whenever you add cards to the market, you shift them to ensure all cards are in ascending order from the start of the market. This could shift existing cards in the current market making them cheaper in some cases, and more expensive in other cases. Again, it is important to pay attention to the card market and try to catch good deals before your opponents. Of course, there will be many occasions where you unfortunately won't have the funds you need to seize the opportunity, so money is also important to have on hand.
I found the key to doing well in Faiyum is all about gaining cards that can be comboed with your existing cards so you can build the best money, resource, and reputation engine. For example, one game I had a card that allowed me to gain roses, then I was able to get another card that let me convert roses into reputation. Another time, I had the Plantation card that let me build a workshop on a grape resource space to gain grapes and reputation, that I comboed with the Vintner, which let me place a worker on a space with a grape workshop to gain reputation and money.Finding these card synergies is where it's at in Faiyum...and the more card combos you can create and execute, the better you'll do. With the main deck being shuffled every game and different cards coming into the current market at different times, I really enjoyed the mystery of not knowing exactly what my engine would look like each game, but just constantly surveying the card market for good cards, good deals, and good combo opportunities.:strip_icc()/pic6001557.jpg)
Eventually after buying cards and playing cards from your hand into your discard pile, you'll be wanting to get your cards back into your hand. That's when you should plan to take an administration turn. Administration turns have three main steps to them for gaining income, buying back cards from your discard pile, and replacing cards in the current market.
For income, you first (potentially) gain money based on the amount of cards remaining in your hand. It's always $3 minus the amount of cards in your hand, so if you have three or more cards in your hand when you take an administration turn, you won't earn any base income. Then you can remove 0-2 workers from any spaces on the game board earning $0-$2 accordingly. Sometimes this decision doesn't matter too much, but it mostly does. The reason is that if you remove a worker from, let's say, a settlement space, and your opponent has a card in hand that allows them to place a worker on a settlement space to get some goodies, you probably don't want to help them with that — but on the other hand, you may need to clear some workers for your own sake, and it ends up being a tough decision. Finally, you gain the top three cards back from the top of your discard pile (for free).
Next you can optionally buy back additional top cards from your discard pile by spending $1 per card. Your discard pile is never shuffled, and this makes it very important to consider the order in which you play your cards in Faiyum. Buying cards back from your discard pile can get expensive, so if you don't consider the order when you play your cards, you might not be able to afford to pick up some of your best cards, and that would be sad. With this in mind, it's also a good way later in the game to bury weaker cards towards the bottom and just never pick them back up. Although, there's no hand limit, so you could always hold onto the weaker cards and cash them in for $2 by discarding them towards the end of the game, and that might help you buy some juicy, late-game scoring cards.
The last step of your administration turn is to replace 1-2 cards in the current market based on player count. You'll always remove the lowest card(s) with discount tokens on them first, then the lowest cards. The remaining cards in the current market get discount tokens, then you refill the market, always shifting cards into ascending order.
Players continue taking turns, playing cards, buying cards and retrieving cards from their discard pile until eventually, the fourth natural disaster card makes its debut appearance in the card market. When this happens, players can no longer take administration turns, which can be rough if you're not planning for it. In most of my games, I was the one to trigger the end of the game by strategically timing my final administration turn well. This allowed me to swoop up all of my cards one last time and the others were stuck with whatever they had in hand. If you try this at home and make your friends bitter, you didn't hear it from me.:strip_icc()/pic6001258.jpg)
Natural disaster cards in a four-player game
After the end of the game is triggered, players can only play cards, buy cards, or bow out by taking the natural disaster from the card market with the most reputation. In a four-player game, the first player to quit gains 10 reputation, the next player gains 6, then 3, and 0 if you are last. This often adds a bit of tension since it becomes a race to snag the extra bonus points before the end of the game. The player with the most reputation wins the game and is considered the pharaoh's most cunning advisor!
I didn't get to play Faiyum with five players, but I'd imagine it would be a bit wild since the card market would likely change a lot in between each of your turns and therefore it would be harder to plan out your turn. It could be totally fun, though! I'm sure I'll give it a try at some point, but alternatively, I was pleasantly surprised how well Faiyum plays with two. It was quite enjoyable, and there were plenty of moments of tension with the card market. Plus, I really like that you use the full deck of cards for every player count, but with the timing of administration turns, you never really know which cards will end up getting removed from the game and this adds to the variation of Faiyum.
The solo mode is similar to the multiplayer gameplay, so there aren't a lot of new rules to learn if you plan to play Faiyum solo. You can play one-off games and try to beat your best score, or for something a bit more interesting, they've also included campaign challenges. You have seven different goals to achieve, starting with gaining at least 150 reputation in a game, and each time you fulfill a goal, you can unlock a variety of achievements that change the solo rules slightly in your favor.Faiyum is an interesting deck-construction, hand-management game that seems to have a lot of variation from game to game, which I find especially interesting considering you use the same deck of cards each game. I can't really think of a game that feels exactly like it, which is a plus for me. I'm a deck-building fan, which is originally what drew me to it. If there's deck-building of any sort mixed with player interaction on a game board, I'm all ears, so I'm not surprised that I've been enjoying Faiyum.:strip_icc()/pic6001263.jpg)
It's not a very thematic experience, but the cardplay is where it really shines. I appreciate how each game I played evolved completely differently depending on the timing of when different cards appeared in the market, which ones got purchased, and how different players chose to execute the card actions relative to the state of the game board. Plus, creating those rewarding card combos always felt very satisfying. The more you play, the more you'll know the potential of the cards, which could seem like it'll eventually get boring, but when you have no clue when different cards will be available or when they'll be removed from the market from an administration action, you have to be flexible and prepared to readapt your strategy each game.
Then you have the game board being built up differently each game, too, which helps keep each game feeling fresh. For example, one game I placed the first worker on the smaller peninsula and we were off to a tighter start and had a different experience than when the first worker was placed on the larger peninsula.
I appreciate the simplicity of Faiyum. It's awesome that there are only three main actions you can take on your turn, and you can explain the cards as they appear in the market, so it ends up being a straightforward teach and quick to get into with new players. Don't get me wrong, though, because while the game structure is relatively simple, the decision space gets deeper and more complex, the more cards you acquire.
If you enjoy strategy games with awesome cardplay opportunities, player interaction, and/or adorable wooden crocodiles, then Faiyum is worth checking out.
- [+] Dice rolls
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I've played and enjoyed three titles by game designer Arve D. Fühler — Pagoda (covered here), El Gaucho (covered here), and TA-KE (which I still want to cover at some point, despite the game being three years old) — so when German publisher dlp games announced a larger, more involved game from Fühler, I was eager to give it a try to see how it differed from these more streamlined designs.
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In Monasterium, you run a cathedral school and want to place your novices in the handful of monasteries on the game board to increase the standing of your school above all others. At the end of three game years, with each year lasting 2-4 rounds depending on the number of players, you score points for having a plurality of your novices in a monastery (with ties being friendly), for having your novices in chapels (and the more chapels, the better), and (oddly) for having novices in both the chapel and the cloister at a monastery. Maybe they work in tandem to take down all of the other novices, which is why you need them in both places? I don't know.:strip_icc()/pic5956528.jpg)
At the end of year one in a two-player game
Each round plays out in two phases: First, players take turns rolling their dice, choosing all dice of one number rolled, then placing those dice in the appropriate place on the game board. You keep taking turns until all dice have been placed, with one re-roll being possible.
Second, you take turns choosing dice from the board to take actions. You can choose only one 6 (as it's a joker that allows any available action) or up to three dice of the numbers 1-5. If dice of your color are on a space, you must take those dice before you can take neutral dice, and you can never take dice of another player's color.
To start, the actions available to all players are the same, but as you place novices on the game board, you open up other possible actions, so over the course of the game, each player develops their own action menu — which means that a 4 might be great for me while you still have only the basic "claim a rosary" action available to you.
If you clear out all of the novices in a row on your action board, you immediately place the "bonus" novice at the end of that row. Otherwise they have no chance of being freed, which seems somewhat cruel.:strip_icc()/pic5956562.jpg)
My action board at the end of that game;the top of my 1 column should be flipped for bonus points, but the game was over, so I didn't bother
During the game, you score points for placing novices in buildings, for taking actions with certain die numbers (once you place a novice in a cloister to upgrade that number), and for completing rows and columns in your personal stained glass window. You also receive a bonus item for each pane you place, choosing the bonus from either the row or column of that pane.
Beyond that, you are given direction as to what you might want to do thanks to six objectives that are somewhat randomized. (I say somewhat as four of the objectives will always be about placing three novices in particular places in particular monasteries, but the other two will vary a bit more.) Direction is good since that gives you some idea of what you'll need to do first, which means you won't just be doing things for no reason. Well, you might, but you might not realize that initially...:strip_icc()/pic5956574.jpg)
I completed all six objectives and barely squeezed out the win in this 4p game;not shown, the 3p game in which I got smashed
Monasterium, as you might have gathered, is an efficiency game, with you trying to do as much as possible in the time allowed. With more players, you'll generally take fewer turns each round since more people are drafting the available dice, but each year will have more rounds, so things somewhat balance out.
Beyond that, you need a game or two to figure out how to do things better, which is true of nearly all games of this type. In our first game, the winning score was in the high 70s; for our second game, the winning score was 100; and for our third and fourth games, the winner was in the low 130s. It's easy to complain that a game is dumb and you barely did anything and this stained glass mechanism seems somewhat useless, but you might inadvertently be complaining that you are a bad player and just haven't yet understood that.:strip_icc()/pic5956676.jpg)
Almost out of room!
I've played Monasterium four times so far on a review copy from dlp games, twice with two players and once each with three and four, and I talk about the game in far more detail in the video below. As a bonus, here's a second video demonstrating how you can clean up after playing this game in less than a minute!
As for the availability of Monasterium outside of Germany, Reiner Stockhausen at dlp games tells me that he's consulting with U.S. publishers about licensing, and if that falls through, then possibly he can find retailers in the U.S. that can make the game available.
- [+] Dice rolls
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MicroMacro: Crime City by Johannes Sich is an ingeniously simple and engaging design, but before you even get to the experience of being a detective and "solving" criminal cases in this horrible location, you should take a few moments to appreciate the brilliant packaging by publisher Edition Spielwiese:
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The first step toward selling a game is getting people to do more than just glance at the cover. I will confess that I've stalked the aisles at various Target retail stores, watching how people look over the games on display. A surprisingly small percentage of people who scan game covers pick up a game to look at it more closely, and of those who do, few of them turn the game over to look at the back cover and learn more about it.
To avoid this situation, Edition Spielwiese lays out everything about this design on the front cover, starting with this callout bubble that is likely the first thing you see after the central logo::strip_icc()/pic5926824.jpg)
"Who murdered the burger vendor?" Conveniently, the burger vendor is located in the upper-left corner of the box, and that corner is probably the third thing you look at when "reading" the box (depending on your native language, of course)::strip_icc()/pic5926830.jpg)
And what do you notice when you spot the burger vendor? You see him again nearby! Wait, what?! Turns out you're not viewing a static image, but rather an image of the city displayed over time, and you can follow some of the inhabitants to see their story in action.
In fact, you might spot someone else keeping an eye on the burger vendor, too, someone who is following the vendor, perhaps on the suspicion that he's carrying the day's take to the bank...:strip_icc()/pic5926812.jpg)
Seeing where the vendor is headed, you can make assumptions about where he'll be next, so you follow the path and, yep, there he is again, still being followed — and now that creep has a weapon!:strip_icc()/pic5926813.jpg)
What's going to happen ne—:strip_icc()/pic5926814.jpg)
Well, we already knew that the burger vendor was murdered, and now we've seen the crime unfold. What's more, we know where the murderer is now and which direction he's heading, so let's go nab him!
Not all games can be explained this simply and intuitively, but the choices made here are great. Let me point out, though, that MicroMacro: Crime City is, strictly speaking, not a game. I added this title to the BGG database following its announcement by game publisher Edition Spielwiese, but you have no time limits when solving these cases and no points awarded for doing well or deducted for doing poorly.
Still, don't let that minor detail be a distraction from what this design offers, namely hours of entertainment, whether on your own or with others gathered close by peering at the thousands of tiny details hidden in this 43" x 29" 3D city map.:strip_icc()/pic5926880.jpg)
MicroMacro: Crime City includes sixteen cases that escalate in difficulty, with the first case (as shown in the video below) leading you through the details of how to "solve" a case: find this location, answer this question, which leads to another question, and so on. As the cases get more difficult, they cover more parts of the city, introduce new forms of transportation that are harder to follow, and feature characters who are less distinctive. I mean, you can hardly miss the mustache on that burger vendor, which makes it easy to track him, but when you get to the hardest cases, you might have to track someone from behind by the arrangement of bumps on their head.
You need to peek in windows and make guesses as to where someone might have gone or from where they might have started. You can play the cases on "advanced" mode by looking only at the initial situation — a man was found shot in the parking lot of the hardware store — then trying to unravel the case without looking at the question cards. Look for clues, retrace their possible steps, and only when you think you know what happened will you look at the other case cards, trying to answer all of them as you retell the story of the crime. This is a far more difficult way to play!
Once you finish those cases, the rulebook includes teaser sentences for three other cases — e.g., "At the café in the south, a man reports to the police that his handbag was stolen. Where is it?" — and four more cases are available on the publisher's website. Beyond that, you can just spend a long time poring over the map, amazed by the variety of (mostly negative) life exhibited there. What's more, publisher Edition Spielwiese, which sent me a review copy of MicroMacro: Crime City, has plans for additional titles in the line, and I'll write about them in a Jan. 19, 2021 BGG News post.
To see more of the city and follow the details of the introductory case, watch this video, which features lead detective Max Martin:
Mon Jan 18, 2021 4:11 pm
- [+] Dice rolls
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Ahhh, the summer of 2019...I remember it so fondly. Handshakes, hugs, going out to restaurants, and weekly board game meet-ups were all the norm. More relevant to this article, it's also when I bought my first COIN game: Cuba Libre (Volume II), designed by Jeff Grossman and Volko Ruhnke and published by GMT Games.
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In anticipation of playing Cuba Libre, I set it up, ran the playbook, and learned the rules. I even watched The Cuba Libre Story documentary series on Netflix because I was so excited to be fully immersed in its history and theme. I was eager to play it, but could not seem to get it to the table. Months flew by, and I continued to try to play Cuba Libre, but it just never worked out, so I'd continue to think, "One day….one day."Meanwhile, I had plans to join Lincoln and Nikki on GameNight! to play Gandhi: The Decolonization of British India, 1917–1947 (Volume IX), designed by Bruce Mansfield...but then those plans got pushed to the back burner because of the global pandemic. Once again, I thought, "One day….one day."/pic4545781.jpg)
A little over a year after I bought Cuba Libre, I FINALLY got to play it! Even better, I played it twice in back-to-back weeks with the same group of friends — but I played staring at my laptop on Tabletop Simulator. It was not how I envisioned my first COIN game going down, but nonetheless, it was a blast, especially having the opportunity to play it again with the same group. We all understood everything much better the second time and didn't need to refer to the rulebook nearly as often.:strip_icc()/pic5909413.jpg)
My first game of Cuba Libre!
At this point, some of you may be wondering what a COIN game actually is. GMT describes the COIN series as follows:Quote:This series features Volko Ruhnke's game system presenting guerrilla warfare, asymmetric warfare, and COunterINsurgencies around the world — in both historical and contemporary conflicts.COIN games feature multiple (traditionally four) asymmetric factions competing against each other in something of an area-control struggle, but each with their own motivations corresponding to their unique victory conditions. The gameplay is centered around an event deck of cards and an innovative eligibility system to determine turn order each round. It's often encouraged for some factions to form alliances with others, so there's lots of interesting negotiation opportunities as well as tense, chess-like moments as you subtly try to achieve your victory condition at the right time, hopefully without anyone noticing, while also watching out for other players doing the same./pic689941.jpg)
I eventually bought more COIN games — even before actually playing Cuba Libre — thanks to recommendations from Rob Oren and his fan base, one of them being Colonial Twilight (Volume VII), designed by Brian Train, which I spontaneously played with my friend Drew one random Saturday night when the two of us were looking to sneak one more game in for the day. I don't think it's typical to hear "spontaneously played" followed by any COIN game. That made it all the more memorable a night./pic3466068.jpg)
Colonial Twilight is the first two-player game in the COIN series, and historically it covers the French-Algerian War from 1954-62. Neither of us had played it or fully read the rules, but since we both had some COIN experience at this point and a whole lot of COINthusiasm, we were able to just set it up, skim through the rules and playbook, and start playing it in less than an hour.
I had already seen the The Battle of Algiers movie, which someone on BGG or Reddit had recommended, so I was loosely familiar with the history — which helped with diving into the game without reading the historical background details in the rulebook and playbook.:strip_icc()/pic5912410.jpg)
My spontaneous game of Colonial Twilight
The gameplay for Colonial Twilight felt very tense, like Ruhnke's award-winning, two-player card-driven wargame Labyrinth: The War on Terror, but it also felt undeniably like a COIN game with its map, mechanisms, and event cards. I was impressed with how the eligibility system was revamped for two players in Colonial Twilight, so I was naturally curious when I read about GMT's latest COIN release: All Bridges Burning: Red Revolt and White Guard in Finland, 1917-18 (Volume X), the first three-player COIN game. I reached out to Gene at GMT, and they graciously hooked me up with a copy so that I could check it out.
All Bridges Burning is a COIN game for 1-3 players designed by VPJ Arponen that's focused on the Finnish Civil War of 1917-1918. The game allows players to recreate the military and political affairs leading up to and during this historical conflict, and it features gorgeous artwork from Chechu Nieto. Nieto has contributed art for several other games in the series, including Andean Abyss (Volume I), Cuba Libre (Volume II), A Distant Plain (Volume III), Fire in the Lake (Volume IV), Falling Sky: The Gallic Revolt Against Caesar (Volume VI), Colonial Twilight (Volume VII) and Pendragon: The Fall of Roman Britain (Volume VIII), but the pastel textured box cover and beautiful, snowy-looking map in All Bridges Burning especially stand out to me.:strip_icc()/pic5913309.jpg)
Off the bat, I knew nothing about the Finnish Civil War, but GMT, as always, goes above and beyond to include a wealth of historical background details that set the tone and help create an enriching, deep gaming experience. In addition, design notes are sprinkled throughout the rulebook to further demonstrate how the game mechanisms are tightly interwoven with the theme/history. They also go the extra step to include detailed historic notes for every single event card, so there's no shortage of learning opportunities. It's fantastic!
In All Bridges Burning, three asymmetric factions — the Reds (red), Senate (white) and Moderates (blue) — compete to define the shape of Finland after the collapse of Russian Tsarist rule. The Reds represent the Finnish working class and their military support, the Red Guard militias, who are seeking to stage a successful revolt to establish socialist rule in the country. On the other side, the Senate White Guard, acquiring political support from the bourgeoisie and nobility, is trying to suppress the leftist revolt and establish bourgeoisie rule in the country. While the Reds and Senate duke it out, you also have the non-violent Moderates in the mix working to secure the political survival of parliamentary democracy and trying to keep national sentiment even keel enough for post-conflict settlement.All Bridges Burning is played on a map of central and southern Finland which is divided into two types of spaces: towns and provinces. Each space has a population value (0-2) and features Control and Support/Opposition boxes as per usual in COIN games. The Reds or the Senate control a space if their wooden pieces there exceed the combined total of other factions' pieces. In addition, there are five levels of Support/Opposition, ranging from Active Support x2 to Active Opposition x2 that can shift during gameplay and affect victory conditions in addition to commands and special activities.:strip_icc()/pic5913772.jpg)
The factions are represented by (hexbox) cells of their corresponding color, and the Moderates and the Reds have discs representing networks and administrations, respectively. The cells are considered either active if star-side up or inactive when star-side down. In previous COIN games, it's usually bad when your cells are active because they're more susceptible to being attacked, but in All Bridges Burning active cells play a crucial role in gameplay in a different way. Depending on which faction you are, you usually want to have as many active cells as you can dispersed on the map.
You'll also have cubes representing non-player external powers — German troops (gray cubes) friendly to the Senate, and Russian troops (brown cubes) friendly to the Reds, seeking to further their geopolitical aims in Finland while providing some additional military muscle to their respective sides.
Core to all COIN games is the event deck. The event deck in All Bridges Burning is divided into two halves — 1917 event cards on the top half and 1918 event cards in the bottom half — and the entire deck is seeded with four propaganda cards to form a 40-card deck. The deck is prepared such that the first ten cards have a propaganda card seeded in the bottom five cards, stacked on top of another ten cards with another propaganda card shuffled into the bottom five cards, and so on.
When the event deck is good to go, you reveal the top card as the current event and reveal a second card on top of the deck as the upcoming event so that everyone knows which event is up next...with a slight caveat. After four rounds, when you're shifting the fifth event card to be the current event, there's a chance a propaganda card might be revealed. When that happens, you immediately pause "normal" gameplay and resolve a propaganda round, for which you're hopefully prepared.
The event deck not only brings some extra historical flavor and context to the table, but also adds an element of excitement to the game and gives players some enticing options when it comes to making decisions from turn to turn. I'll note that after you set up the event deck, there will be six unrevealed cards leftover (three each from 1917 and 1918) that won't be in the game, so if you ever get to a point that you're familiar with all of the events, this will add some mystery since you won't know which ones are out of play.
In a round of All Bridges Burning, players choose and take actions or pass in eligibility order, spending resources for commands, then eligibility is adjusted and a new event card is drawn. Play continues this way until a propaganda card is revealed, at which point a propaganda round is triggered in which victory conditions are checked, followed by a politics phase, with players gaining resources and support and resetting some things on the board.
All Bridges Burning is divided into two phases, starting with the pre-war build-up and shifting into the actual war. The shift to phase 2 can happen in two ways, either when Reds and Senate cells on the map total 27+ or after the second propaganda card is resolved.The "Sequence of Play" area is your guide for turn order and action-taking throughout the game. To someone who's never seen or played a COIN game, it might appear to be a daunting, mathematical flow chart of sorts, but it makes a lot of sense when you understand how it works. In fact, it's one of my favorite aspects of the COIN series and the three-player version is incredibly clever and smooth!:strip_icc()/pic5915478.jpg)
Eligibility (turn) order is decided randomly during set-up, but after that it's based on what players choose. The first eligible faction gets the pick of the litter when choosing their move. They can execute a limited command, a command with special activity, trigger the event, or pass. Depending on which option they choose, the next eligible faction will have three choices, then the third eligible faction will have two choices. For example, if the first eligible faction decides to take the event, the next eligible can either execute a command (w/ special activity), a limited command, or pass. The only action that moves your marker to the ineligible box is when you take a command w/special activity. In four-player COIN games, the event cards themselves have faction icons in a certain order which dictates when you'll get to choose an action or pass, but when you take any action, you're ineligible for the next event. In All Bridges Burning, you could potentially take the event back-to-back turns, although I doubt your opponents would just let that happen.
After all players have taken a turn or passed, eligibility is adjusted based on the letters on the actual boxes. This is what determines eligibility order for the next round.
With this eligibility system, challenging choices arise. If you're first up, maybe you pass because you really want dibs on the upcoming event card? But then that leaves the current event open for one of your opponents, which could be harmful to you. Sometimes you have to sacrifice what you wanted to do to protect yourself from something else. Or what if the current event is way too juicy for the next eligible player, so you decide to defensively take the limited command to make sure no one gets to trigger the current event this turn. Or what if you really need to take a full command with a special activity because you know the propaganda card is likely to appear soon, but doing so makes you ineligible for the next turn. There are so many interesting decisions that spawn from this innovative eligibility system. I think it's awesome how the COIN eligibility system was adapted for three players in All Bridges Burning; it feels balanced and flows seamlessly.
Only one player can choose the current event each round. Event cards will have one or two options you can leverage to change the state of the game without needing to spend resources. There is plenty of variety when it comes to the events in All Bridges Burning, and depending on which faction you are playing, certain events could be extremely beneficial to you, while others won't pertain to you at all. There are events that allow players to gain resources and capabilities, or take resources away from opponents, execute commands, update Opposition/Support, add or remove cells from the board, and so on. I find it to always be exciting when a new upcoming event is revealed so that you can weigh your options and plan accordingly, and of course, anticipate when the next propaganda card might be coming.:strip_icc()/pic5915648.jpg)
Event card examples
When you're not jumping on an event card, most of your turns will be spent executing commands. Usually commands cost one resource per space and you use plastic pawns to mark which spaces you're "activating". When taking the standard command, you can optionally execute a special activity as well. Because of this and the fact that you can impact multiple spaces and potentially have a big turn, you will be ineligible on the next turn. Whereas if you take a limited command, you'll be able to perform a command in only one space with no special activity, so you will be eligible on the next turn. Again, this is all super clean and easy to keep track of in the Sequence of Play area of the game board.Each faction has its own list of commands (actions) that are summarized in a menu-style player aid which is always super helpful in COIN games. The player aids have a summary of all three factions' commands so you can easily follow what your opponents are doing and better understand how each faction works. The Reds and Senate have the same commands and special activities for the most part, with some slight variations on how they play. The Senate also has two additional special activities that the Reds do not. Then the Moderates pretty much have their own politics-focused commands, though they do have Rally command in common to the other factions.:strip_icc()/pic5915860.jpg)
To give you a little more insight on the commands, all factions have a Rally command which allows you to put more cells (dudes) on the map and build up your forces. The Reds and Senate have an Activism command which mainly allows them to either reduce Polarization (which is helpful for victory conditions) or activate/deactivate enemy and friendly cells, which will help execute other commands, prevent your opponents from executing certain commands, in addition to helping gain support during the propaganda rounds. During an Activism command, the Reds can also potentially Agitate to create more opposition in spaces they control with an Administration disc, which is helpful for their victory conditions.
The Reds and Senate have a Terror command which helps remove enemies in addition to increasing Polarization. You'll place terror markers of your faction's corresponding color on the space and this makes the Rally command more expensive for your opponents, but applies to the Reds and Senate only. The Moderates just don't have time to be bothered with the Reds and Senate's petty terror antics.
The Reds and Senate have Attack and March commands, but these cannot be used until the game hits phase 2, so there's a lot of build up in phase 1, then as soon as phase 2 hits, gloves are dropped and it's on. These two commands are pretty common in COIN games from what I've seen, and they function exactly as they sound. March lets you move cells into an adjacent space and Attack lets the Reds and Senate battle each other to remove enemies. When it comes to the Attack command, there's a whole procedure to follow to determine the attack strength and it will feel a bit tedious initially, but after you go through it a couple times and follow the handy player aid, it isn't very complicated at all — just lots of different modifiers to consider. I'll also note that German and Russian troops in the battle location will fight, too, and impact the attack strength.
When it comes to the Moderates, in addition to the Rally command, they have a Message command that allows them to move and hide their cells while optionally carrying either News or the Personality token. The News tokens represent important pieces of information and are placed on the board in phase 2 by German landings and when attacks send defenders to prison. The Moderates really want to grab news and take it to their personality to benefit their cause via the Personality special activity, which helps the Moderates resolve political issues and in turn, help meet their victory conditions.The Moderates also have a Negotiate command which lets them deactivate enemies and optionally shift polarization and a Politics command which helps them advance political issues, which is tracked on the Political Display and not only impacts the Moderates' victory conditions, but also the cost of Agitation which is one of the main ways the Reds and Senate shift Support/Opposition. It definitely lends itself to some fun negotiations since the Senate and Reds players will want the Moderates player to choose their respective cubes when adding cubes to the Political Display.:strip_icc()/pic5915848.jpg)
Regardless of which faction you are, never underestimate the power of passing in a COIN game. Passing lets you gain a resource, which is helpful and sometimes absolutely necessary so that you can fund future commands, but more importantly (in most cases) it will give you an eligibility advantage for the next turn which can be powerful and critical at times based on an upcoming event or other happenings on the board.
Once you get into the 1918 event cards, the Germans begin taking actions when an event card has a "German Action Phase" banner. There's a straight-forward flowchart you use to determine what action the German troops will take; they'll either land on random Landing Sites on the board, attack, march, or do nothing. However, if the Senate player takes the Coordinate special activity, they get to place the Coordinate marker on the German eligibility cylinder and decide all the details for the German action phase.
I mentioned Polarization above a few times, and I feel it's important to hone in on the Polarization track since it's something unique to All Bridges Burning. The Polarization level represents the level of national unity between the factions, and all factions can manipulate the Polarization level when executing various commands and events throughout the game. This is something all players have a vested interest in considering since Polarization impacts events, commands, and special activities, in addition to each faction's victory conditions.:strip_icc()/pic5915873.jpg)
As with all COIN games, each faction in All Bridges Burning has its own unique victory conditions tied thematically to their historical motivations. The Reds need to build up enough opposition to the bourgeois rule, keep Polarization on the lower side, and make sure they're not over-leveraging the support of Russian troops. The Senate need to gain enough town populations back under Senate Control and similar to the Reds, they need to keep Polarization on the lower side in addition to keeping their German vassalage level down. Meanwhile, the Moderates need to gain an abundance of resources and accumulate political will by organizing into networks and resolving political issues, while also keeping Polarization at a moderate level.
Timing is everything in COIN games. Each time a propaganda card is revealed and resolved, the first step is checking to see whether any faction meets its victory conditions, and if so, the game ends. If not, the game will definitely end after the fourth and final propaganda card is resolved. In either case, if a single faction has met its victory conditions, it wins. In a tie, the faction that reached the highest victory margin wins the game. There's even a chance that Russia and/or Germany will come out as the winners, so be careful! The fact that you have to set yourself up to be winning at the time a propaganda card reveals keeps every player engaged with what their opponents are up to. You'll often have to work together to hold someone back, and it creates a three-way tug-of-war at some moments in All Bridges Burning. You have to strategize smartly, keep your plans to yourself, and think a few steps ahead of your opponents.
If you're planning to play All Bridges Burning solo or with two players, you'll be happy to know the game includes slick non-player decks that are way more streamlined than the older, intimidating flowchart non-player system. I fumbled my way through a solo game after playing multiplayer only once and got crushed. Even with the added efficiency of having the non-player decks, it's still a complex game and you'll probably make mistakes like I did until you get familiar with the game and how each faction works. I will admit, I took the shortcut and bypassed the non-player examples of play in the Playbook, and that probably would've primed me better. Regardless, I would definitely revisit All Bridges Burning anytime if I'm looking for a heavy, thematic solo experience packed with tough decisions and plenty of complexity to stimulate my mind — but realistically, I'll probably mostly play with three players because I thoroughly enjoy the player interaction.:strip_icc()/pic5913770.jpg)
Me getting whooped in my solo game as the Senate
I've played only a couple of games of All Bridges Burning, a couple of games of Cuba Libre, a game of Colonial Twilight, and a half game of Liberty or Death and I am by no means anywhere near an expert when it comes to understanding COIN games — but from what I have experienced so far, I think they're awesome!
I won't sugarcoat it; they definitely all require a decent amount of time and energy, as well as several plays to fully grasp, especially if you're new to the series/system. But I find the experience of learning and playing these games so fulfilling and fun, that the time and energy investment is 100% worth it. Of course, due to their complexity, they are a bit challenging to get to the table, especially during pandemic times, but All Bridges Burning is pretty accessible with its smaller scale map and the fact that you need to learn only three factions instead of four.
I think that gamers, especially heavy gamers who love or are curious about asymmetrical gameplay should give one of these games a whirl. Most of my friends who love COIN games don't come from a wargame background; they're eurogame game fans like me — and if you're into Root but haven't explored the COIN series yet, I suspect you'll dig it, especially if you enjoy historical board games. After all, Root was inspired by the COIN series.
In 2020, I dipped my toes into 18xx and the COIN series for the first time. Having played multiple games in each, I appreciate how much easier it is to get into other games in their respective series after you've played one. After I finally played Cuba Libre, for example, I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to jump into Colonial Twilight.
From a design perspective, I'm fascinated by how the eligibility system, the event cards, and the asymmetric factions all work together, blended with mechanisms that are tied so well to the historical themes. I also love that all the COIN games share familiar elements, but no two games are the same. There's always some variety and twists on mechanisms, and of course each game has a completely different setting.
The COIN series is continuously evolving in terms of gameplay, but also in terms of themes, historical or otherwise. I'm stoked to check out the upcoming releases which I'm sure will continue to bring fresh edge to the series: People Power: Insurgency in the Philippines, 1983-1986 (volume XI and the second three-player COIN game), China's War: 1937-1941 (volume XII) from COIN guru Brian Train, and the highly anticipated, Red Dust Rebellion (volume XIII) which is the first futuristic-themed game in the series.
I mentioned how Joel Toppen's Comanchería came onto my radar and got me into historical board games in my Zenobia Award post from November 2020. Well, it is also the reason I initially discovered the COIN series. I told my friend Hector about Comanchería when I was learning it, and he asked me whether it was a COIN game. I had no clue what a "COIN" game was at the time, but I'm glad my curiosity led me to this series and I'm looking forward to exploring it further!:strip_icc()/pic5915966.jpg)
My most recent Tabletop Simulator game of All Bridges Burning, where I won as the Moderates
Fri Jan 15, 2021 1:00 pm
- [+] Dice rolls
