This quarter finally ends my work on the book on cooperative board game design by myself and Christopher Allen. That’s because today marks the hand-off day for Meeples Together, which I’ll be talking about more in the next months. Meanwhile, that means that this was also my last chance to look at co-ops for the book, so whenever one came near me I leapt upon it. There were four more total. I still do plan to play co-ops in the future, as I’ll be starting a long running series of case studies related to the book sometime in the next several months … but it’s a bit of a relief to not have to at this point.
In any case, this is everything I played this quarter that was new to me. As usual it’s rated by how much I like it (or not) as a medium-weight eurogamer. And, there was a lot of middle this month: not the best and not the worst.
The Great (“I Would Buy This”)
Majesty: For the Realm (2017). Sometimes a very simple little game can really hit the spot. This is a simple Dutch-auction game where you purchase colored cards that you place in corresponding places in your kingdom. Most of the cards give you victory points in an exponential progression, increasing the valuation the more tiles you get. Some of the various areas in the kingdom also interrelate in interesting ways. A few of the cards further allow attack of your opponents, defense from their attacks, or recovery of the cards they destroyed.
There’s just enough color to be evocative, and there’s just enough choice to be interesting. It’s also very fast, allowing quick play, and very variable, as each of the locales in your kingdom has two variants for how it works. My only complaints are production related: the box is too big; the scoring components are simultaneously overproduced and not in the right denominations; and the game is overpriced because of that overproduction. Still, it’s on my “perhaps buy” list.
The Very Good (“I Would Keep This”)
Clans of Caledonia (2017). Clans is a classic resource-management game focused on filling orders. It has a number of elements that raise it a bit above the pack. First, it has great components. There are quite a few different bits, for everything from cows and milk to wheat and barrels of whiskey. I almost bought the game when it was on Kickstarter because the bits were so nice. Second, there’s just a tiny bit of supply chain, with a few of the resources being transformed into processed good. A resource-management game that includes a bit of supply chain always gains some additional interest from me. Third, it has a strong geographic element where all of that resource production is spread across a map. Fourth, there’s a nice variety of victory conditions, allowing players to focus on any of these aspects in their gameplay. There’s a bit of AP and some math-y calculation that can drag the game a bit, but otherwise this is a resource-management game that has a bit of innovation to it, so if that’s what you’re looking for, this is a nice release.
Age of Industry Expansion #1: Japan and Minnesota (2011). Age of Industry (2010) was a fun Martin Wallace game from some years ago, itself a revision of his older Brass (2007). They’re both delightful games because they take a unique look at industrial development, and reward players for not just building, but also for making use of what they build.
One of the delights of the Age of Industry revision was that the game had been revamped to now allow for multiple maps. So, the core game came with maps for New England and Germany, then Treefrog released this supplement of maps for Japan and Minnesota.
The Japan map shows how much a new map can revamp a game. It increases the number of cards you can draw from while simultaneously introducing a rule to get rid of cards that tend to clog up mid-game, and also allows players to spend some extra money to immediately grab and use a card. Because of the lack of coal and iron in Japan, some supplies now come in via ships. The result is a very different game, even aside from the changes in the map, and thus the sort of thing that really makes a supplement for a game great.
Transatlantic (2017). A new Mac Gerdts game that reuses the roundel-influenced deck management system from Concordia (2013). This time around, you’re building ships and using them to generate money and victory points. Then, much as is the case with Martin Wallace’s Automobile (2009), you’re waving good bye to your creations as they disappear over the horizon of history. To give the game a bit of depth there’s also a minor bit of “technology”, which mainly affects the final score of your ships.
Transatlantic definitely incorporates some of my core requirements for a great game: it has hard choices; it makes you feel like you could get hurt by what the other players do; and occasionally you find that you lost an opportunity by waiting just a turn too long. The continual obsolesce of ships also creates some neat dynamics that you constantly have to plan for. On the downside, it’s a bit think-y and math-y, as you try to figure out how to best accumulate money, so that you can turn that around into more ships. Oh, and it’s fiddly.
Big fans of Concordia will probably adore having another game with some similarities but pretty varied play. But, I’d pick up Concordia first.
The Good (“I Would Enjoy Playing Your Copy of This”)
TIME Stories (2015). Co-op #1. This co-op trends toward the roleplaying side of things, because it’s primarily an open exploration of a locale — or if you prefer what many people consider an ugly neoligism, it’s a deckploration game, since you’re digging through a deck of cards, and revealing those cards as you explore. The narrative elements are evocative and form a nice story. The cooperative elements are pretty rudimentary: you can sequentially coordinate to complete a task and you can talk out solutions to puzzles and how to finish the game before TIME runs out.
The brilliant element of this game is in its theming as a time travel game. The time limit is set up so that you’ll probably fail the first time through each scenario, but the knowledge that you’ve attained during that “run” will help you be more efficient the next time through. So, in the best tradition of Groundhog Dog you’ll take multiple runs through each historic time period, tightening up your actions each time until you finally hit upon the precise formula necessary to succeed. It’s a neat conceit and it’s carried out well.
The fact that each scenario can only be successfully played once is of course an issue, as it means that a $25-30 is only likely to support one medium-length afternoon of gaming. But unlike destructive games such as the Exit: The Game series (more on that shortly), you can pass on a scenario to a friend when you’re done.
The Palace of Mad King Ludwig (2017). This new Ted Alspach game is both like and unlike the very successful Castles of Mad King Ludwig (2014). You’re still building a big, chaotic structure out of little rooms, and you’re still getting valuable prizes for correctly completing rooms. But now the rooms come out of a simple draft (really, another Dutch auction) not a full-out auction, and now those rooms go into a shared castle (palace).
I think this is a bit lighter than Castles, but it’s still got plenty of depth, as you’re trying to balance gathering swans, completing rooms, and fulfilling favors. It’s always nice to have that many different goals pulling at you. It’s definitely more aggressive, as you can actively trash other players’ plans. The most innovative feature is probably the moat, which surrounds the palace as you build. It’s very similar to a parallel feature in Carcassonne: The City (2004), but this type of organic boundary is rare enough in a city building game that I’m really happy to see it.
The game I played lagged a bit, which was partially first-time play, partially AP, and partially the fact that the moat-closing end-game condition can seem a lot closer than it actually is. If the game was more spritely on future plays, and really played in the 75 minutes advertised on the box (as opposed to a full two hours), I’d rate it Very Good; heck, I might with three players.
SeaFall (2016). These comments were written after a play of the non-Legacy introductory game, so there should be no spoilers. (However, my overall rating is based on three plays.)
SeaFall is Rob Daviau’s solo attempt at Legacy play based on an original game system. And, to start with, the Legacy play is strong. You develop out the game world as you eXplore, learning what’s on various islands. Your whole game world thus develops in an organic and fluid way from game to game. Meanwhile, you get to make minor adjustments to your ship and your score adds up over time. This elements are all good and are what you’re probably playing the game for.
The eXploitation of the game is fun but unnotable: you collect goods and you drop them off. The eXtermination system has a large random element, which might make the game inappropriate for euro-focused players. There can be a lot of swinginess in the rolls, but as long as you’re expecting that sort of game, it can be a lot of fun. As for the eXpansion: maybe that’ll come in some future reveal, as there is mention of “colonies”, but no rules. Overall, I’d call the core gameplay of SeaFall perfectly acceptable, but not particularly notable. I’ll happily enjoy it when we play again, but I’ll be thinking about how the Legacy of the game is developing.
The game’s main deficit seems to be development. Some people complain about the rules, but I found them perfectly serviceable; however, I can’t speak for the later rules, which even more people have complained about. The Captain’s Log, on the other hand, which contains the narratives is a chore to read and just fades into the background when you try to concentrate on it — which is a pity, as it could have been an Arabian Nights like wonder.
Overall, if you’re looking for an American-influenced Legacy game, SeaFall should be a great choice, despite complaints you’ve heard, and if you’re not looking for that specific combo, you should look elsewhere.
Approaching Dawn: The Witching Hour (2017). Co-op #2. What a cumbersome name! This is another deckbuilding game, but with a few twists. I previously talked about the deckbuilding, which was interesting for the way that it penalized players for taking new cards, by giving them the very corruption that they’re trying to avoid.
However, the best aspects of The Witching Hour are surely in the co-op design. Whenever you play cards to ward off the demons that are assaulting you, you’re harming your friends! Similarly, there are secrets in some of the games, which are the type of personal incentive that works great in cooperative games because it takes focus away from the collaborative goals, but these ones are even nastier than usual because they tend to once more require harming the other characters. Overall a co-op design where you’re constantly hurting the group is a pretty intriguing one.
There’s also some nice variability in this game thanks to a series of scenarios, some of which use dramatically different components (like those secrets). However, that means that there’s a huge amount of fiddliness in the number of components. In fact, the game itself is quite fiddly and can go well over its alleged play time as a result. That’s the main thing that holds it back from being Great.
Diamonds Club (2008). Sometimes a “New to Me” game is quite old. There’s a good reason for this one: it was only ever released in a single German edition by Ravensburger, which I find pretty remarkable because it’s a big-box Rüdiger Dorn game that was SdJ recommended.
I find Diamonds Club most interesting as yet another example of Rüdiger Dorn’s design focus on abstract grids integrated (usually) with financial systems. So there’s The Traders of Genoa (2001) where movement around the grid kicks off negotiations and Goa (2004) where a grid is the basis of an auction system and Louis XIV (2005) where the grid is used to manage majority-control token placement. Published just three years later, Diamonds Club feels like a missing cousin, because it uses its abstract grid to determine the cost of actions that players are purchasing, with costs going up as adjacent actions are purchased.
The rest of the game is the usual muddle of resource collection and usage, with some tight constraints on purchase availability and order that keep things interesting. Overall, the game felt a bit unforgiving and math-y (which seems to be my word for the day), which was what kept it from being a winner from me personally, but I could see why it got some accolades when it came out.
Thornwatch (2018). Co-op #3. This new game from Lone Shark, which is Mike Selinker & company, is another tactical combat co-op, like Ulisses Spiele’s Aventuria. It very similarly focuses its play on card management, and using cards to power up abilities, which players then fire off. The big difference is that Thornwatch sets its combat on a two-dimensional battlefield, and this makes all the difference. There’s a lot of opportunity for clever tactical moves because of the variable powers, and the scenarios really play to that. We played through two scenes in our game, and they each felt quite distinct, even though they use the same combat system.
Thornwatch also tries to be a roleplaying-game-in-a-box, and I’m not sure how successful it is here. Most of this is through a system where the adversarial overlord player rewards players for roleplaying. It felt peculiar to my group as a board game element, but more casual players who are looking for a roleplaying replacement might love it. Nonetheless, the result is definitely much more on the storytelling side of things than Selinker’s own Pathfinder Adventure Card Game is.
The other advantage of Thornwatch is the handsome fantasy theming based on art from Penny Arcade. I must admit, I’m not a fan of the Arcade because I find it abrasive, but the Thornwatch comic is beautiful, and the game makes good use of it.
The OK (“I Am Willing to Play This if You Ask”)
Exit: The Game — The Pharaoh’s Tomb (2016). Co-op #4 This is one of the major game lines based on physical escape rooms, the others being Escape the Room and Unlock! Here, a picture book and a set of cards work together to reveal puzzles that must be solved. In The Pharaoh’s Tomb the ultimate goal of all the puzzles is to come up with three-digit numbers, which sounds pretty simple, but the puzzles are quite thoughtful and take real effort. The game also thankfully contains clues that you can use if you get stuck. You’re scored in the end on your time and on how many clue cards you used. We came out with 80 minutes and 3 cards, which gave us six out of ten stars. (And, those cards were really necessary, because one got us going on the right path for the whole game and the other two provided hints for stuff that we never would have figured out.)
Overall, The Pharaoh’s Tomb was exciting and adrenaline-pumping and gave us a real sense of accomplishment, but it also really pushes you to mar and destroy your components, making it a totally one shot game that you can only throw away at the end, and $15 is a bit expensive for a one-shot gaming experience.
