New to Me: Spring 2015 — Resources & More

Last quarter I played a good number of new games and had good success with them. As usual, this is my ratings of these games, which means it’s personal opinion rather than an overall assessment of whether they’re good (or not).

The Great

Eldritch HorrorEldritch Horror (2013). Although it’s only advertised as being “inspired” by Arkham Horror (1987, 2005)Eldritch Horror is pretty much a revision of the cooperative classic. Just like in the original, you have gates opening up and spewing monsters onto the board while investigators stock up on spells and items — while working to stop the Doom Track from dropping to zero and freeing the Great Old One.

With that said, this is a really well-polished revision that looks at Arkham Horror systems like monsters, gates, and money and figures out how to simplify them through abstraction and redevelopment. Much as with Caverna, I think that digging through the systemic changes is a great lesson in game design (which is why I did just that in my last article). The best change is probably in Eldritch Horror’s victory conditions. Each Great Old One has different conditions that must be met to defeat it, as revealed on special Mystery Cards. This makes every game very different; even if you play against the same Great Old One, different mysteries can come up in different orders.

Much as with Arkham Horror, the biggest problem is length. Maybe it’s shorter than the famously long Arkham Horror … but it’s still quite long. Our game took just under four hours, including teach. I’d been hoping the revision would shorten things a bit more than that!

Colt ExpressColt Express (2014). Yes, this game has very cute bits. I mean, how can you go wrong with train cars that you build from cardboard that then act as dioramas for the game? However, the game’s a really fun play too.

Colt Express is a close kin to programmed-movement games like RoboRally (1994) and Space Alert (2008): you’re trying to move around a train, gather loot, and perhaps shoot your compatriots who are doing so too. The twist is that your programmed moves are openly broadcast: you put them out in a pile for everyone to see (except in the rare cases when the train is going through a tunnel). Rather cleverly, when the pile is completed, it’s flipped over, then played out like a recording. Another twist occurs during the replay: you get to make some choices (such as where to move if you played a move card or who to shoot if you shot someone), which introduces some additional self-determination.

I actually found it really hard to get a grip on this game, because the idea of showing the whole table what your programming moves were was really terrifying. But I loved the fact that I couldn’t understand this game, because it showed it was a really new concept. This was my pick for Spiel des Jahres winner, as I found Machi Koro too simplistic (and random) and The Game was an unknown to me.

The Very Good

Glass RoadGlass Road (2013). In short: Uwe Rosenberg releases another resource-management game. With that said, it doesn’t feel anything like Agricola (2007) or the rest. It’s a much shorter and faster resource-based game that’s more focused on tactical decisions than building strategic engines. There are two unique mechanics in Glass Road.

The first is the resource system, and it’s the lesser of the two. The interesting part is that once you get at least one each of the resources needed to build glass or brick, you automatically build glass or brick. This is managed through an elegant dial mechanism. If you look at the picture above, you can see that if the brown (wood) and yellow (baked potato?) resources are advanced from 0 to 1, that frees up a space for the whole dial to advance, which moves the green (glass) counter from 0 to 1. I kind of liked this because it created interesting tactical opportunities, but I kind of found it gimmicky too.

The other unique mechanic is the card play system. Each round you choose a set of five cards and you play three of them one at a time. But, in a Witch’s Brew (2008)–like twist, if other people are holding one of the cards that you want to play, you’re penalized by getting to use less of its capacity (and they’re rewarded by getting to share). This is the mechanic that really makes the game, because it introduce all sorts of player interactions as you try to figure out what other people are playing and in what order, and how you can use that to your advantage (or else how you can avoid getting hurt by it).

Overall, a fast-paced and tense game that also wins points for being very unique in its gameplay.

Staufer DynastyThe Staufer Dynasty (2014). Author Andreas Steding is best known for Hansa Teutonica (2009), and this is clearly in the same category. That sort of means that it’s a soulless euro that Frankensteins together several mechanics, but it also means that it’s a cleverly designed game full of tough resource management and tough decisions.

To be more precise, The Staffer Dynasty feels like a bizarro El Grande (1995). There’s a king, and he controls the placement of cubes, which are used for majority control. But, the game goes well beyond that homage. For one, the king actually controls the cost of placing cubes, and placing those cubes doesn’t only get you majority control points, but also “treasure chests” which tend to grant one-time powers. These twin elements of cost-of-placement and choice-of-powers add lots of interesting tactics to the game.

Beyond that, there were two mechanics that I particularly liked. The first was the turn order mechanic, which rewarded you for taking supplies (moving cubes to your court) and penalized you for taking actions (placing your cubes). This introduced yet another interesting tactical choice every turn. The second was the end-game scoring, which was based on individual cards held by each player. They required the placement of cubes on the board in very specific patterns, which allowed (yet another) interesting tactic, but was also fun.

Nations Dice GameNations: The Dice Game (2014). I’ve never played Nations: The Board Game (2013), though I know it’s a long civ-building game. This takes the same idea to the world of dice, by way of a mashup of the special powers of To Court the King (2006) and the civ dicing of Roll through the Ages (2014).

Basically, you’re rolling dice to get the resources to buy special-power tiles and/or to directly earn victory points. Some of the special powers grant you upgraded dice, and that’s one of the better elements of the game, because the dice are heavily differentiated — meaning that you can specialize quite a bit. I feel like most dice games with variable dice don’t go far enough to make their dice different, so I was really pleased to see one where it was really important what color dice you rolled. There’s also some nice brinksmanship as you’re competing with the other players for the limited tiles, and there’s some nice civ-building, as you construct thematic tiles to improve your position from round to round. It’s a pretty light game, but an enjoyable one.

Red7 (2014). Carl Chudyk has done interesting work with Glory to Rome (2005) and Innovation (2010), so I’m always happy to see something new to him — because I expect it’ll indeed be some newRed7 meets that criteria. It’s a super simple, but innovative card game. In it, you have seven possible victory conditions, with the current one determined by the play of a card of an appropriate color. Each turn you either play one colored-and-numbered card to your tableau or play one card to change the rule or both.

Here’s the catch: you have to be winning at the end of your turn. This simple mechanic makes the whole game fresh and interesting (and tense and nerve-wracking). The result is shockingly thinky (perhaps too much so at times), and it’s pretty random. But there’s real strategy as you determine what to play in which way each turn. (And much more than you’d expect in a 10-minute game.)

ProsperityProsperity (2013). I’m pretty shocked that a serious Reiner Knizia game came and went two years ago with so little fanfare. Maybe things have changed since the early ’00s when people were eagerly waiting for the next Amun-Re (2003).

Anyway, this is a nice resource-building game. You’re focusing your play on several different resources (energy, ecology, money, research, and victory points). You interact with these resources by buying new tiles and building them to your tableau. Here’s the catch: building one resource often costs another. And here’s another catch: you have limited space in your tableau. This all interacts with an income system, which generates income in this five types every five turns, which gives the game even more depth as you trade-off short-term and long-term goals.

There’s a lot of analysis in this game. I felt it easy to frequently get lost in what to do. But, there’s also a solid core that’s wrapped around some simple mechanics. The result is easy-but-deep, which is a nice place for a design to be. And no, it’s not the next Amun-Re, but it’s nice to see a deeper (albeit coauthored) design from Knizia.

The Good

Scoundrels of Skullport (2013). This is an expansion for the Very Good board game, Lords of Waterdeep (2013), and it’s essentially more of the same. You get new worker placement areas, new quests to complete, and new intrigue cards to play. They’re all evocative and create nice variability for the game, but they don’t really shake things up. The one exception is the new “corruption” system, which allows you to take better actions in exchange for taking a penalty. This was a nice addition, but again nothing revolutionary.

I don’t think I’d play Lords of Waterdeep again without this expansion — which affirms that it’s a good thing and shows how little complexity it adds to the game. (However, I’d only use one of the two game systems at a time, to help keep things tight.)

Dead Men Tell No TalesDead Men Tell No Tales (2015). A piratical cooperative game, where the goal is to steal enough treasures from a burning, undead-ridden ship before it explodes in flames.

The mechanics feel like a greatest-hit reel from co-ops like Pandemic (2007) and Flash Point: Fire Rescue (2011), and I think the game’s attention is a little too scattered as a result, but it still works as a whole and it also has some nice cooperative nuances, like action points that can be passed around and items that can be traded. The game is also quite tense as problems stack up just as you’re getting close to fleeing the ship. Finally, a tile-placement system adds a bit of exploration,something that I’d like to see more of in co-op games. So, despite being a bit of a hodgepodge, it’s a bit of fun too.

CacaoCacao (2015). This is a clever little tile-laying game where you place worker-tiles to take advantage of jungle-tiles, and also to force the placement of new jungle-tiles. It’s pretty simplistic: tiles can let you buy and sell cacao, earn points in a few ways, or compete in majorities, but that’s about it.

As with many games of this sort, the gameplay ends up being a tactically-fought war of slight advantages. It’s fun and it’s light, but it’s a bit more random than I’d like, because some tiles are clearly better than others and you can have large advantages or disadvantages based on when they’re drawn.

Mystery Rummy: Escape from Alcatraz (2015). A new Mike Fitzgerald Mystery Rummy game after a decade is cause for celebration and this one is … good enough. These games have always taken standard Rummy gameplay, spiced them up with more strategic action cards, varied the gameplay just a bit, then added a mystery theme on top. Escape from Alcatraz does the same, with one big twist: sets (“escape plans”) melded to the table have to be scored (“foiled”) in order to earn points at the end of the round. I’m not convinced Alcatraz is as good as my preferred Mystery Rummy games, and I’m not convinced that it’s newcomer friendly because of its fiddliness, but it’s nonetheless a fun variant for fans of the series.

Nicht Die Bohne! (1999). It feels a bit odd discussing a game that’s 16 years old, but as I always say, these posts are about games that are “new to me”. This is an old bean-trading game from Amigo that’s never been published in the US. Each turn, the starting player openly puts out a bean for offer, then everyone else secretly puts out a bean offer, then they’re all revealed. Afterward, the starting player takes a bean of his choice, and then that player chooses … and eventually the last player gets what the starting player offered. The beans themselves can be valued or they can be a negative multiplier or they can be a zero … and that’s pretty much the game.

This is a perfectly enjoyable, somewhat clever, and somewhat shallow game. I enjoyed the play, I felt like I got better as I went, and I’d play it again. However, it also showed me how much German games have changed in the last 15 years. I mean, I still think of them as abstract and mechanic heavy, but this one’s in a different league. It’s built on one mechanic, and there’s essentially no theme here. Though I enjoyed my play, I like where German games have gone, leaving behind releases like this for ones with more depth and more color.

The OK

TemporumTemporum (2014). I’m a fan of time travel games and I’m a fan of Donald X., so I was excited to see this new release. And, it’s clearly recognizable as a Donald X. game, with its very abstract mechanics combined with evocative cards. But the thrill didn’t extend to the game.

Temporum’s main problem is that it’s a pretty simplistic money-and-card collection game. You have to build up stores of each so that you can use the card to transform the money into victory conditions. It’s not very exciting.

Sadly, I also found the time travel theming uninspiring, primarily because it doesn’t seem very relevant. At its core its ideas are pretty cool: you move markers around to chart the “true” path through time across several possibilities. This defines the action-cards that are available for play. But it turns out that the actions are so simplistic and repetitive that changing their availability doesn’t feel important, so the whole cool premise of the game is undercut.

Nonetheless, Temporum was a perfectly fine game, and it contained one other pretty elegant mechanism: you can gain special powers from your scoring markers as they temporarily control majorities in different eras, while moving forward in time. It wasn’t enough to make the game another Kingdom Builder (2011) though.

Flea Market (2015). Ah, Leo Colovini, wherefore art thou great abstracts? This is a really basic die-rolling game. A random item goes up for sale and people roll dice to try and buy it. High roll gets to purchase it first, if he wants to pay that much money, and if not the next person gets a chance. The twist is that each player gets to reroll one of his dice if he wants, to slightly control what price he offers. Later, players get to resell their item if it’s rolled again. This is a clever variant of an auction, and it contains interesting questions of valuation and return. But the game is really simplistic and it’s really random. Though it’s intended as a filler, and its weight and depth are fine for that, I have other fillers I’m more likely to play.

The Meh

Backstab (2015). If Mystery Rummy adapts class Rummy to a modern game, then Backstab does the same with War. It’s an encounter-based adventure game where you play cards from your hand to defeat encounters, but you also can backstab opponents, allowing you to face-off with your cards against theirs. The game is pretty light and pretty random, but it falls apart because of how you beat up on the losers when you realize they don’t have defensive cards. It’s still probably fine for super-light filler play, especially for roleplayers who’ll appreciate the cool old-school artwork.

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