This is my quarterly listing of games that I played for the first time ever. As usual, I’m offering my own thoughts on these game, not a more general assessment of whether they’re good or not. If you like euros more than American games; if you prefer things on the casual-to-medium side of the spectrum; and if you don’t mind controlling some randomness, you might agree.
As you can see, I’ve labeled this the Season of Feld. It’s not that there were a lot of Stefan Feld games out this quarter; it’s that Christmas was just past, and I got Feld for Christmas. So, I got an opportunity to try out some older Feld games that I’d missed … and La Isla finally showed up in local stores too. Mind you, my Great games for the year were Feldless (but I liked the Feld I got).
The Great
Roll for the Galaxy (2014). While we first played this dice-game variant of Race for the Galaxy (2007), one of my friends asked, “Which is better, card play or dice play?” My answer was that dice games tend to be more viscerally exciting (when done well), while card games tend to allow for more depth. That suggests that a dice game could raise itself up to the next level if it combined the raw excitement of dice rolling with the depth of a game with more components … and Roll for the Galaxy is that game.
Generally, Roll for the Galaxy adapts the core ideas of Race for the Galaxy: you explore, you develop, you settle, you produce, and you trade or consume that production. However, it cleverly switches that up by using dice. Your die rolls determine how much you can do of each action. However, in Race for the Galaxy fashion, you only get to actively select one action; you have to guess which actions other players will take to make the rest of your roll worthwhile.
Part of the game’s additional depth comes from a bit of a cheat: you still develop specific technologies and settle specific planets, as revealed by tiles that you draw … and tiles are pretty much the same thing as cards. Nonetheless, the dice are clearly the heart of Roll for the Galaxy, and they have a lot of depth too — such as the fact that you can acquire new dice (with different sets of actions!) from some of your techs or planets.
There’s actually almost too much to talk about in a short overview, but Roll for the Galaxy has a lot going for it, including social gameplay, strategic depth, interesting tactics, fun random rolls, and evocative theming. I don’t usually play new games a lot, but this one has already gotten 5 plays (and I bought a copy).
Castles of Mad King Ludwig (2014). This isn’t the first game where each player builds their own little city (or in this case, castle). However, it does a lot of cool things that most games in the category don’t. First, the castle-building feels kind of free form, because not only is there no grid, but the pieces are a varied in both size and shape. Second, the castle-building is very social because of how the tile purchases work.
Those tile purchases are what make the game go around. Each turn, a “master builder” gets to decide how much each of several different tiles are going to cost. Everyone then buys tiles, with the master builder going last. So, it feels a little bit like a classic I-cut-you-choose game — ala classic San Marco (2001), or even Rialto (2013) which appears further down this list. However, this purchase also feels a bit like an auction. As a game analyst, I like how it fits into an intriguing middle ground.
Beyond that, Castles works great and is a lot of fun. Each person has different incentives to build different things thanks to their personal goals and to valuations created by their own tiles. This not only gives players fun stuff to strive for, but also feeds back into the social framework of the tile pricing, as you can look around and see what people might want or not. My only complaint is that it runs a little long at 2+ hours for 4 players, but it’s 2+ hours well spent. (And this is another well-played game, already having picked up 3 plays and a purchase.)
The Very Good
Trajan (2011). If Stefan Feld were to redesign Mancala and then add on a baroque ton of slightly connected systems, what would it look like? The obvious answer is Trajan. To a certain extent, this is a Platonic Feld game. It’s got the Mancala mechanism of Macao (2009), which is used to activate the six other subsystems of the game. Each of them allows some room for excelling and each of them (of course) allows you to score points. The subsystems include: set collection, which turns into resource shipment; competition to advance along a track; resource collection; and (of course) disaster avoidance. Like I said, Platonic Feld. But it was also sufficiently different from his other efforts, so I was totally happy with that.
I did find this game somewhat frustrating to teach, because there’s a lot to teach and some of the mechanics are just opaque enough that they’ll give people trouble. I also found it took several rounds to figure out what the heck you were doing. But once everyone settled into the game, it was very rewarding. There’s the opportunity to set up a few turns in advance, and there’s a constant desire to do lots of different things, as is the case in all the best games. I felt frequently tense, and when I was done, I immediately wanted to figure out how I could do better next time.
Rialto (2013). If Stefan Feld were to redesign Alan Moon and Aaron Weissblum’s San Marco (2001), what would it look like? The obvious answer is Rialto. Now, Feld doesn’t design a lot of games in the one-hour time frame, so it was nice to find another one to sit next to Bruges (2013). Beyond that, Rialto really does feel a lot like San Marco, and not just for the Venetian theming; you’re selecting sets of face-up cards that have simple powers, and you’re using those (primarily) to achieve majorities in the six main Venetian provinces.
There was quite a bit to like in Rialto. I enjoy the act of balancing several different resources, including meeples, coins, turn order, and wild cards. I also find the card play quite clever, because you’re competing against your opponents, trying to play the most of each type of card. The result isn’t quite as deep as Bruges, which I think is a better game; nonetheless this is an enjoyable release, and fairly different from Feld’s longer, two-hour games in the Alea series.
Onward to Venus (2014). A new game by Martin Wallace usually catches my interest.This one is a pulpy game based on the Doctor Grordbort products, where you’re trying to gain control of mines and factories (so that you can control the planets). Wallace likes to design threaded action games where players one-at-a-time take actions from a large menu. Onward to Venus sort of works like that, but it really innovates the idea. You move around infantry men and ships to take actions, making them a limited resource. And, the actions don’t come from a menu, but instead are revealed by tiles on the planets. So, it’s sort of action-menu, but it’s sort of worker-placement too. There’s a bit of chaos in this game — both based on where the power-tiles are placed and on what special-power-cards you draw. But there’s also a pretty wonderful bit of evocative color.
I’ve really enjoyed the licensed games that Wallace has been doing lately like Discworld: Ankh-Mopork (2011) and A Study in Emerald (2013), because Wallace has a clear gift from creating evocative mechanics that do a great job of matching his underlying theme — something that’s also obvious in the historical games that he designs.
Murano (2014). A city-building game by the creators of Village (2011). Its centerpiece is a pseudo-roundel, where you move ships around the board, and that frees up or blocks actions. However the game really works because it’s a very tight game full of hard decisions, where you never have enough actions or resources. You’re trying to buy city tiles and lay them down in specific locations to meet your victory conditions, but you’re also trying to keep up your money stores, so that you can do all of that. A lot of this sounds like a generic euro, and to a certain extent it is, but the roundel-like mechanism keeps things interesting through its innovation, as does the victory point system, where you’re trying to match up very specific victory conditions on one of the several islands on the board. Definitely a serious gamers’ game that’s not too forgiving of mistakes!
The Good
Cthulhu Wars (2014). Though I love Cthulhu-themed games, they don’t have a very good track record. Too many of them are created by fans who aren’t very good designers. Fortunately, Cthulhu Wars is the game that broke the trend. It’s got a pretty simple game system: you get action points and you use them to move about, to summon cultists, and to fight battles — with the ultimate goal being to control spaces with gates and so earn victory points. However, the game is just dripping with theme, including great Cthulhu miniatures. I also really enjoyed one game mechanic: the spell books. Each player basically has six goals that they must accomplish, giving direction to their game and allowing them to develop special powers as they do so. The system is innovative and accentuates the game’s two biggest selling points: its theming and its differentiation of players. In general, I think the mechanics of Cthulhu Wars work, and the theming brings it far above that level.
La Isla (2014). If Stefan Feld were to redesign his own Bruges (2013) with tighter restrictions on how you could play the cards, what would it look like? By now it should be obvious that I’m going to say La Isla. This is another shorter Stefan Feld game. Here you get three cards each turn — each of which can be used for a special power, as a resource, or to increase the value of a commodity — and then you use each of the three cards to do one of those things. Afterward you use resources to place an explorer, which you’re trying to use to capture animals.
This one may be the simplest of the shorter Feld games I have, but the choice-of-three is constantly interesting and the explorer placement offers another nice bit of tension, because you’re competing with other players and with the game timer. Overall an interesting lighter game that may be Feld’s most likely to appeal to the more casual crowd.
7 Wonders: Babel (2014). I like expansions, and I generally look for them to meet two criteria. First, they should add variability to the game, and second they should make the game either more fun or (at the worst) no less fun. Babel includes two supplements: the Tower of Babel and the Great Projects. I think the first clearly meets these criteria and the second is more questionable.
When you’re building the Tower of Babel you get three tower pieces that you can build instead of taking a regular turn. Each one has a special power that can dramatically change the way the game is played as long as it’s in play. Because of these changes you can actually strategize about these pieces, trying to meet them fit into your overall plans, and because the changes are big, they definitely add variability. I liked this.
When you’re building Great Projects, there’s a project out each turn (more a civic improvement than anything, really not living up to the name). You can choose to pay some resources to build on the project if you building using the appropriate colored card. At the end of each age, builders are rewarded if the Project finished and non-builders are punished if it wasn’t. There’s a little bit of variability here, but it was pretty minor in comparison. There was also a little bit of strategy as you could collect rewards that you could use in the future. I didn’t mind using this set, but I wasn’t thrilled.
Unlike Leaders (2011), neither Babel expansion went into my always-use pile — but unlike Cities (2012), neither Babel expansion went into my never-use pile. I’d happily use the Tower with some frequency [rating: very good!] and the Great Projects for a bit of a change [rating: ok!].This mini-review represents the averaged joint rating.
Gold Ahoy! (2014). A simple tile-laying game where you’re trying to capture treasure chests by building them into paths that you have either exclusive or superior access to. Though it’s quite simple, there’s a surprising amount of tactical choice. Do you build or block? Do you expand territories or cut them off? Do you try to capture the land or the water? The result is very thoughtful, despite playing in 5-10 minutes. A more casual player would surely jump this to Very Good. (After our third play, my wife said, “Again?” and I decided I’d had enough for that night.)
12 Realms (2013). This family-oriented co-op game offers a fun take on fairy tales, anime, and other kids’ literature that’s quite evocative. It’s also got a fairly elegant core system where you expend reusable resources. I think the family audience it’s intended for might love it. Personally, I felt it had some developmental issues, and that it went lighter and simpler than I like for the length. However my biggest problem was with the production. There were a lot of fiddly components and some of them made it very awkward to play the game (like the monsters that didn’t have their special powers listed on the actual tiles). Still, it was Good and I expect the correct audience would rate it higher.
The Meh
Bedpans & Broomsticks (2014). This is an asymmetric game where most of the players play elders trying to escape a care home, while another player tries to capture them. I wasn’t thrilled with the theme, but I was intrigued to see Frederic Moyersoen try another hunter/hunted game, especially one without written movement. Sadly, I found it largely broken. The awful rulebook got things off to a bad start, but even in play, it’s just too easy for a clever hunter to totally clog up the works, and the game can easily stalemate as a result. We gave up after almost three hours of tedious play.
