Tabletop Round-up 18/01/16

In addition to the games below I also played Adventure Time Love Letter which is a version of Love Letter with art from the TV show and a few extra rules. Have you ever tried to watch Adventure Time? I tried once and thought I was having a stroke.

Codenames

Players: 7 (Plays 2-8)

Duration: 30 Minutes

Codenames is a simple word game that is getting a lot of plays in the warm-up hour at my weekly game group. The bulk of the game is a few hundred cards each with a different noun on like bug, Spain, fighter, comic etc. 25 cards are randomly chosen and put into a 5×5 grid in the centre of the table and players split into two teams (red and blue). One player from each team is picked as captain and the captains get to see a secret card which is another 5×5 grid with squares coloured red, blue or beige (and one black) which corresponds to the word grid in front of everyone. On their team’s turn Captains have to give a clue consisting of one word that matches some of the clues of their teams colour and the number of clues it matches. For example, the clue ‘Batman 4’ means that the captain is trying to tell their team that 4 cards in the grid match their colour and are related to Batman somehow. The team then tries to guess the full complement of cards. If they make a mistake they have to stop guessing otherwise they keep going until they have made as many guesses as the number in the clue. The team that gets all their words first is the winner unless a team incorrectly guesses the black card in which case they lose immediately.

This game feels like it has been around for years. Like Balderdash and Taboo I am sure I played it with my family when I was a kid but it is less than a year old. The premise is simple and doesn’t require a huge vocabulary (like Scrabble) so anybody can join in this accessible word game. Rounds can be a bit slow if someone is trying to come up with a killer clue (my group are definitely guilty of this) so I would recommend using the egg-timer that comes with it to move rounds along at a brisk pace. The added time pressure makes the game a lot more fun and increases the chance of an awful panic clue that loses a team the game – far more entertaining than a good clue that someone took 5 long minutes of silent thinking to come up with.

Codenames is a solid party game that will inspire a lot of discussion in the right group. The fun wears thin quickly but if you have 15 minutes to fill and at least 4 people then it is definitely worth a punt.

Abyss: Kraken

Players: 3 (Plays 2-4)

Duration: 90 minutes

On the surface Abyss looks like Guillermo Del Toro’s Little Mermaid remake but at its heart it’s a simple game of card collection with a bit of engine-building and auctioning thrown in for good measure. It’s a game I like and my full impressions can be found in a previous blog post but this one is about the expansion called Kraken.

Kraken introduces a few supplementary and a few new features to the game. The first are the new kraken allies that act as wild cards when buying lords. This is a pretty powerful effect as a wild colour can mean that you can get faster access to the lords that you want and so obtain special powers and points even sooner. There is a downside however in that players who take kraken are also forced to take an alternative currency called nebulises. More cash sounds nice but players can only spend them when they have run out of pearls (the regular currency from the base game) and nebulises count as negative points at game end (the player with the most nebulises also gets an additional 5 point penalty).

Bolstering this feature are new neutral lords called smugglers that help players dispose of their dirty currency as well as new lands (the next level of points after lords) that relate to those tainted nebuli. One thing that didn’t come up in our playthrough is a land that lets you plunder a new loot deck which is like a push your luck minigame that can net you a wide variety of points. The loot deck seems like a bit of a novelty but still nowhere near the sea monster part of the original game which ironically does feel like an add-on. I was hoping this would be fleshed out on an expansion but it still feels quite bare.

Due to a sub-par performance by me I am tempted to say that this expansion sucks as hard as the briney blue sea but actually this expansion is a great addition to a good game. It integrates smoothly in the main game without the need for extra boards or bolt-ons and I would easily recommend it to fans of Abyss.

The Grizzled

Players: 4 (Plays 2-5)

Duration: 30 minutes

The Grizzled is a co-op set in the despair and trenches of World War I. Players take the role of friends who join up at the start of the Great War and are trying to stay sane and alive until Armistice Day. The horrors of war are represented a deck of ‘trials’ cards which either depict threats (one or more of bullets, gas, whistle, snow, rain or night) or hard knocks (conditions which hinder the player and represent mental wounds on the soldiers. At the beginning of the game 25 trials cards are placed face down on an armistice card (the trials pile) and the rest are placed face down on a war monument card (the morale reserve). If there are no cards in players hands and the trials pile is empty at any point then players have made it to the end of the war and won but if the morale pile is empty then players have lost.

Each round (or mission) consists of four steps. The first is the Preparation where the mission leader (first player) chooses the intensity number of the mission. Players are then dealt this number of cards each from the trials pile. Then play proceeds to step 2 which is the Mission itself where players take turns to play cards from their hand either into the centre of the table (no-mans land) if it is a threat card or in front of them if it is a hard-knock card. If there are ever three of the same type of threat visible across cards in no-mans land then the players have lost the mission and those cards are shuffled back into the trials pile to be faced again. To stop this happening players can withdraw instead of playing a card which takes them out the mission and stops them from losing the mission if they have the wrong cards. If all players withdraw successfully then the mission is a success and all the cards in no-mans land are discarded from the game.

Players also have two other actions they can play. If a player has a speech token (obtained by passing the first player token at the end of the mission) they can nominate a threat type and all other players can discard one card from their hand that has that threat which is a great way of emptying players hands. The last action is to use their players good luck charm which lets them discard a card from no-mans land that matches their characters threat type. However once that good luck charm is used it can’t be used again unless regenerated.

 

The third step is Support. When players withdraw they secretly nominate a player to give support to. After a Mission is successful players reveal who they gave support to and if one player has received more support than every other then they get to either discard two hard-knocks in front of them or regenerate their good luck charm. If the mission was lost they only get to discard one hard-knock in front of them. Also, if a player has four hard-knocks at the end of this step then they have received too much mental damage and the players lose. Last of all is the Intensify stage where players count up the number of cards in their hands and transfer that number of cards from the morale reserve to the trials pile (to a minimum of 3) making victory further away and defeat ever closer.

I love the mechanics, theme and look of this game but it seems like it was just too easy to win. Maybe I have been beaten into submission by the gruelling Pandemic Legacy campaign I am currently playing through but I generally expect co-op games to present a real challenge. We played a 3 and a 4 player game and we were never really pushed that hard. Admittedly we didn’t play the speech rule correctly (there has been an errata rulebook published) and for the first game we played easy mode (for normal some cards have a symbol on that means you have to immediately play a card blind from the trials pile) but it didn’t feel like that would have made much of a difference. Maybe we stumbled across the winning formula or just got lucky, it’s certainly possible that we drew perfect cards but for lovers of co-op games I would be hard-pressed to recommend The Grizzled. I still like the game and would love to try it 5 player (apparently this is the most difficult player count) but overall I am a little disappointed.

Monday Night Tabletop Round-Up 26/01/15

Small World and Abyss feature again this week so I won’t explain how to play them for a second time but just relay my experience of this particular play. I am worried this might be a bit confusing for some so I will try and include a brief description.

Yardmaster Express

Players: 4 (Plays 2-5)

Duration: 10 minutes

Some games play themselves and Yardmaster Express is definitely one of them. Players draft ‘cargo’ cards and each turn add one to the rear of their train over a set number of rounds. Cards have two sides which feature both a number and a colour and when placing a card, the right side of the previous card must match either the number or colour on the left side of the new card . If a player is unable to make a match then they pick any card and use that one flipped over onto its back. All the backs are the same low number and act as wild cards meaning they will match any colour. Once the game finishes then you add up the points values for each of your cards and get a bonus for the longest run in one colour. That’s pretty much it.

It would probably take more time to explain than to play Yardmaster Express. Reactions from the table were generally muted and it was described as ‘like Dominoes’ and as ‘a children’s game’ which is probably a fairly accurate summation. However as a quick filler to chat over as people arrive it works perfectly and is a nice, light introduction to drafting mechanics.

Bausack

Players: 10 (Plays 2-8)

Duration: 30 minutes

Bausack is all about building towers out of blocks which sounds fun. At first. However you will need a surgeon’s nerves of steel to do well at this dexterity game. At the start a huge assortment of wooden blocks in all kind of shapes and sizes is poured into the centre of the table and each player is given a number of beans (14 each for a 10 player game). The first player picks a block and passes it to the next player who can either add it to the top of his tower or pass it to the next player. The first player to pass has to pay one bean, the second player two beans, the third three beans and so on. If the shape gets all the way around to the player that initially nominated it then it must be used. After the block is used the next player along from the one that nominated previously picks a new shape and the process starts again. When a tower falls over that player is out and the last man/tower standing is the winner.

This game is tough in two ways. First is the decision whether to play or pass. Passing on a difficult shape can leave you short on beans meaning you may be stuck with an even harder shape next time. Secondly when you do have to start placing shapes you need steady hands to actually get it on the tower. Like a lot of these sorts of games it’s definitely a crowd pleaser. Staring at someone trying to balance a wooden egg on a wooden toblerone doesn’t sound very gripping but it certainly is. Even better is watching other players gingerly putting their drinks on the table or eating their meat pies with the daintiest of touches lest their wooden towers topple onto the table. I rarely play this game as I seem to be unable to even balance two cards flat on each other but I gave it a good go and wasn’t first out which was a good result. I even managed to get the hula hoop on the Christmas tree. You don’t see that every day.

Small World

Players: 5 (Plays 2-5)

Duration: 90 minutes

It was back to the competing world of dwarves, elves, ghouls and giants for another game of Small World, a simple game where players pick a race, run it into extinction and then start all over again. After an initial dip a while ago I am very much enjoying repeated games of this dog-eat-dog territory control game. The mix of races and attributes really does give you a fresh experience every time and I am discovering new ways to play it each time. The latest lesson I have learned is that if you think someone is the leader then pick an aggressive race and go for them. The last couple of games have been won by the same guy who, with good consistent scores across each round, managed to slip under our attention and occupy what seemed like half the map by the end. Picking the right race may seem like an obvious choice but if you can keep your in-decline race safe for a while then they can sit and earn you a nice few points each turn that may not seem like a lot but over the course of the game can net you a crushing victory. Next time I play I am going to try and stake a claim on a patch of the board and then protect it with two races. A swift decline race surrounded by a fierce active race may be my path to victory. Fingers crossed.

The other lesson I learned is not to underestimate those elves. Their ability is that if one of their active regions is conquered they don’t lose any units and redistribute them all. This may seem like a very dull power where others give you point boosts or special abilities but effectively it means that they can stretch themselves as thin as they like and not worry about overextending themselves. This turns the game on its head a little as once you get thinned out then you start to think about going into decline but those elves can come back every round. They may look like flower-sniffing dandies but those elves come back fast. Beware.

Abyss

Players: 3 (Plays 2-4)

Duration: 90 minutes

It was my second run at Abyss and now the rules were clear in my head I was hoping to put up a good fight. In Abyss you use cards (callied allies) in 5 different colours to purchase sea lords which net you victory points and special powers. You can also obtain lands which net you score multipliers depending on your lords and allies. On this second time I had a clear strategy which was a cowardly lord rush – a straightforward plan to get any high value ally and then be the first to seven lords which would close the game. I didn’t really care which lords I got but if I could buy one then I would do so as fast as possible before other players could net any multipliers. A crude and boorish strategy … and it worked! Just.

My plan was almost foiled by another player who pulled off a nice combo that netted him two lords in one turn and a land too. Due to my scattershot approach I wasn’t really focussed on clever combos and if the game had gone on another round or two I would have been sunk as I had nothing left over. To be honest it was a bit of a panic strategy (if I can call it a strategy) but by just a few points I managed to stay ahead of the other players surging up behind me.

I probably won’t try this approach again and I only pulled it off due to a lucky start that netted me a host of high value allies at a very low cost. However it is a testament to the game that there is a lot of ways to play even if they are the sledgehammer/nut variety.

Monday Night Tabletop Round-up 08/12/14

This round-up is so late that it’s closer to next game night than the one just gone. I need to write faster or work lazier. It was another good night and apart from another luck-eluding game of Machi Koro I played all new games once more. I hope there isn’t a maximum amount of games that you can remember rules for because if there is then my head might burst!

Click Clack Lumberjack

Players: 6 (Plays 2-9)

Duration: 10 minutes

Some games draw a crowd. People see it and want to play it straight away. Usually either because it looks good or the people playing it are yelling as loud as the game. Click Clack Lumberjack is both. The game is made up of 9 thick discs which stack onto a tree trunk base with 4 pieces of ‘bark’ fitting around each disc. Your goal is to bash the stack (using a very cute little axe) to slide out one of the discs enough so that pieces of bark drop off but not so hard that the stack comes down. You get one point for each piece of bark but lose five for every disc that hits the ground. And that’s it.

This game is just plain silly fun. You get two taps on your go and each tap is fraught with the kind of ridiculous tension that only comes with such foolish dexterity games. It’s so much fun that scoring becomes irrelevant and the spectacle of seeing grown men gently tapping a column of plastic with a miniature axe becomes as ridiculous as it is hilarious. The great thing about having an 18 month old son is that I will be able to buy this claiming it’s for him but really knowing that I will be the one getting it out of the cupboard at every opportunity. I am not ashamed to admit it though. I’m a lumberjack and that’s OK.

Machi Koro

Players: 4 (Plays 2-4)

Duration: 30 minutes

Machi Koro is a city-building game where players roll dice to activate various buildings which generate income for more buildings and so on. The game ends when one player has built four special buildings in their city. In a previous blog I talked about how I hadn’t appreciated how luck-based the card-driven city-builder Machi Koro was and if I played it again I would be a lot more appreciative of it’s random nature but seeing a five rolled time and time again doesn’t feel very random at all! I told myself that the dice must be a funny shape and that all these fives would stop when rolling two dice. They didn’t. The guy that won had bought all the ranches (ie. 5 cards) and proceeded to hoover up income like a tramp on chips. The best part was that I don’t think he was even that bothered to play the game. He dispatched the rest of us in record time thanks to those traitourous little cubes.

So, as a second playthrough I should really try and concentrate on imparting some kind of advanced strategy but apart from building ranches in case of a deluge of fives it’s hard to say. My own strategy was to get a spread of properties to try and get a little bit of income here and there but lean a little bit more heavily on the ones that steal from other players. This fits in with my usual gaming approach where if I can’t think of anything useful to do then I will just try and annoy people. Of course it didn’t work but one day it might.

Pandemic: The Cure

Players: 4 (Plays 2.5)

Duration: 1 hour

With hindsight it seems strange that a dice version of Pandemic hasn’t been created earlier. Smaller dice versions of games can provide a more focussed and portable experience than their bigger brothers and Pandemic is so popular that even an Inuit ice version would sell. Maybe they were waiting for the lucrative stocking filler market but there is finally a dice version of the Dice Tower people’s choice winner and it’s pretty fun. Just as in the original, players are hoping to cure four diseases that are threatening to sweep the earth but instead of a map of the world to move around there are just 6 locations (each representing a continent) each of which has a certain number attached to it. At the start of the game 12 dice are drawn from the dice bag (each in one of the four disease colours with 48 in total), rolled and placed on the corresponding location.

On their turn players roll their 5 custom dice which show what actions they can take. These are move, cure a disease (move a dice from their region to the treatment centre or move one from the treatment centre back to the bag) or collect a sample (take a disease from the treatment centre and put it on their player card along with the dice they used, locking it for now). If players don’t get the rolls they want they can reroll the dice as many times as they like but one of the sides is a biohazard symbol which locks the dice for that turn and moves the infection rate along one space on the infection track. Every 4 spaces on the infection track is an epidemic which means all the dice are taken from the infection centre and a number of dice equal to the infection rate (which starts at 3 and goes up to 5) are rolled and placed back on their matching locations. If more than three dice are placed in a location then there is an outbreak and dice are placed in the next clockwise location potentially causing another outbreak. After 8 outbreaks, too many biohazard rolls or if the dice bag is empty the players lose. In addition, after their turn, players must take dice equal to the infection rate, roll them and put them out potentially causing more outbreaks.

But how to get those cures? Well, those dice you collected for samples are rolled at the end of your turn and if they reach a total of 13 or more then that disease is cured and all dice of that colour on player cards or in the treatment centre are placed back in the bag. Players can also give samples to other players in their location after they take their action to try and bolster dice of one colour with a single player. There’s helpful stuff too. Each infection dice has a plus symbol that when rolled is placed on a CDC tile and can be used to purchase Event cards that benefit the players in a whole variety of ways. On top of this there are various player roles which change their custom dice somewhat to give them extra powers or strengths.

Pandemic: The Cure is a great dice rolling alternative to Pandemic. Using dice sacrifices planning for randomness (which should be obvious in a dice game) but there is a far stronger push-your-luck element in this version. Being able to reroll dice as many times as you like feels great but you may just roll a biohazard symbol when doing it and I had to stop myself from rolling that last dice just because I could. Also, having plenty of crosses in the CDC bank or samples on your card seems like a great result until you realise that you are keeping them out of the dice pool and getting closer to an empty dice bag. Overall I thought this was an excellent game and I can’t think of a better combination of dice rolling and co-operation.

Abyss

Players 4: (Plays 2-4)

Duration: 2 hours

Abyss is a tight blend of auction, engine-building and hand management where players are trying to buy the favours of underwater lords. I have seen some criticism of the theme of this game as it really boils down to a points race but I really liked it. So much work has gone into giving this game a real mysterious deep sea feel from the foreboding artwork to the pearls you use as currency that it would be a mistake to dismiss it.

At the start of the game players are given one pearl and 6 lord cards are placed onto the board from the deck of lord cards. On their turn, players can do one of three things. The first (and most complex) is to plumb the depths. For this, players draw a card from an ally deck (allies come in 5 colours and are numbered 1 – 5 with one being the most common and 5 the least) and place it face-up on the board. Going clock-wise from that player, other players can buy that card for one pearl (the payment goes to the active player) or pass. If all players pass then the active player can take it for nothing if they wish, if they do then their turn ends. If not then another ally card is placed on the board and the process starts again. The difference being that if a card was purchased in the previous round then this card costs one pearl more than the last one. If the fifth card is not bought then the active player must take it but receives a pearl as well. All unclaimed cards are then placed face-down in the centre of the board but separated by colour.

The other two actions are claiming one of the piles of unclaimed cards in the centre of the board (potentially getting a free windfall) or purchasing one of the face-up lord cards using ally cards as currency (making up any difference with pearls). Purchasing lord cards has restrictions in that they require certain colours or combinations of colours of allies. Once the fourth lord is bought the purchasing player receives two pearls and the available lord cards are refilled. All lords are worth victory points but some can give you special effects that can boost your score or mess with the game in some way to benefit you. Some lords have a key symbol and once you have 3 lords with a key you have to claim one of a number of land tiles that can boost your score even higher. The drawback is that you lose any special powers of those three lords. Once a player has seven lords the game ends and points are tallied.

I have probably made it sound more complex than it is because Abyss is actually a very straightforward game. The complexity comes from the flow of pearls between players and the special effects of the lords which you can use to either boost your score or mess with other players. The winning player when we played was getting a free pearl on each of his turn and increased the cost of other lords to the rest of us. This strong early play really had us scratching around for pearls and I had to change my tactics to claiming allies in the discard piles instead of buying them. This ‘bottom-feeder’ strategy felt like a good viable alternative though and added a nice memory element to the game as I had to remember what allies had been rejected.

I liked Abyss a lot. While it did smart to get absolutely smashed by a strong player it was a good game and there was always another strategy to try and get that second place. The only downside to the game was an element that I didn’t explain that involved deep sea monsters in the ally deck but it was so weak that it wasn’t worth going into. Perhaps it will get built upon in expansions but we virtually ignored it. Overall Abyss is a good game and if you get the chance to play it then definitely take it.