Search Results

Port Royal Big Box WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count 1-5 You’ll like this if you like: TEN, Quacks of Quedlinburg, Lost Cities. Published by: Pegasus Spiele Designed by: Alexander Pfister Port Royal is one of my favorite push-your-luck cards games, but it has two small issues. First, the art is a little bland. Second, it has multiple expansions that are hard to store together. Well, fret not! There is now a big box version which fixes all these problems! If you like push-your-luck card games and are looking for a new game to add to your collection, then stop reading and get this game. If you are unsure, or have a spare five minutes and like playing spot the typo, then read on! I will cover the differences between this version and the previous ones first, then the actual game itself at the end! First up, lets talk about what's in the box. It's advertised as being BIG after all! Port Royal first came out in 2014*, and since then it has had three main expansions and some promo cards chucked in for fun. The promo was some rather nifty Gambler cards which were previously only available as a door prize at Stadt Land Spielt, then later packaged with Spielbox. This big box has them all! All in one tidy medium sized box, with some considerable art upgrades. *Port Royal was actually a reworking of Händler der Karibik which was also designed by Alexander Pfister as part of his entry into the Austrian Game Designers Competition. He won the top prize with this game and a year later published it in a slightly more polished version as Port Royal. Alexander worked with artist Klemens Franz for this version, and all subsequent versions and expansion. They look good. The cards are functional. But they are a little dowdy. For this big box version, Franz is out, and the Fantasmagoria Creative are in, whatever/whoever they/that is? I cannot find out much about them online, but what I do know is this. The big box reworking is their first foray into board games, and they seem to know what they are doing! Let's first look at the Box art and size. All the boxes for the original print runs are this size shown here, including the expansions. They are perfect for a small card game and stack nicely alone side games like Ganz Schon Clever and The Crew. The new box is bigger and fits everything in perfectly. The art is a little more realistic and evocative of exotic sea port towns too. The two new rule books for the big box version fit the size of the box, rather than being folded up to an inch of their lives and clearly illustrate all the games rules. There is a overview of everything with the basic rules on a double sided sheet. Then a full glossy rule book that covers everything perfectly. The rules to this game are not complicated but with all the expansions included, it is nice to know it has been laid out clearly! Inside the box, you can see how efficient both versions are with space. The big box version has separate compartments for each expansion. There is no labeling or initially obvious place for each one, but you will work it out based on the space required for each deck of cards. The cards themselves are a massive upgrade on the original. Here we can see one of the cards from the Port Royal: Just One More Contract... expanions on the top, with the new art version for the same card on the bottom. Art is always subjective, but think the new style is a lot more appealing. It comes across as more adult to me. More sophisticated and realistic, but also, just better! It seems like a significant upgrade to me. Like early sketches have been replaced by final finished professional artwork. Below you can see the comparison of artwork from the main game for the two main types of cards in the game. The removal of the border and new style is a significant improvement again in my opinion. These are all fairly functional cards. They do not need to give you much information, so the artwork is important. The new style makes me a lot happier! The colours, vibrancy and style are all a significant upgrade from my perspective. However, you can see in the comments below, it does cause issues for people who suffer for colour blindness or deficiency. Being able to see the symbols over the art is a problem for some, particularly the swords over the waves. Worth checking yourself using the two pictures below to find the right one for you. Away from the box, art, and card style, there is no difference here. This is just a collection of all that has been made so far. For the price, if you like the base game and don't have any expansions yet, this is the the clear choice. If you don't own anything yet, this again would be my recommendation. If you have all the original expansions, then it is obviously up to you based on the art and storage advantages. I myself gave away my original game and first expansion to the first person who found the Easter egg* hidden in this review as this big box has more then replaced them. This was the first time I tried the campaign expansion Port Royal: The Adventure Begins... The art for the character cards can be seen below. Again, there is full card art with no borders, realistic character art, and clear, bright, vibrant colours. Port Royal as a game is a simple game to learn as it is to teach; but it is so much fun! Depending on which version you are playing, this is a race game. The first player to reach a certain amount of points will win. Points are attained from buying cards with points on them, or completing missions by trading cards you have bought with mission cards you have found in the deck. On your turn, you will start turning cards over from the main deck. You can stop at any point and buy one character card if you can afford it, or take the money from a ship card. If you ever draw a ship card from a colour you have already drawn, you are bust. You can fight off ships if you have character cards in your possession with swords on, and a popular technique early in the game is to get as many characters with swords as possible. This is because if you ever have four ships of different colours, you buy or take two cards. If you have five colours, you can take three. And with the campaign expansion the Adventure begins, there is a sixth colour where you can then get four cards if you manage to get that far! So, being able to fight of same coloured ships and keep drawing is a hug advantage. Once you have taken the card or cards that you want, any cards that are left unclaimed will then be offered to the other players, one card per person. The other players have to pay you one coin as the active player for the privilege, plus whatever the card costs. It makes sense to push your luck beyond revealing just the cards you want to try and get some secondary plunder from the other players as they come to market on your turn. There are a few other nuances, but this is essentially the game. How far do you dare push-your-luck? Will you turn over just one more card to try and find the exact card you are looking for? Will you find my egg? *This competition has now closed. Congrats to the winner.

There are so many reasons why I love Board Games. But I wanted to focus on one point in this blog. That bit when a game makes sense. I play 100-150 new to me games each year. Exactly 162 so far this calendar year. That is a high amount I would wager compared to the national average. I am certain some people play a lot more. But I presume most would play a fair bit less. Anyway, let’s just all agree for the sake of this piece that it’s a lot. Because the point is, with all those new to me games, plus all the obvious repeat plays of those and other games that I have played before, my gaming itch is never scratched. I have never got to a point where I am not eagerly craving more games. It has led me to wonder if there is something wrong with me! And I have certainly bugged a few people by asking for one more game when everyone else is either ready to go to bed, already asleep or perhaps even gone home. So, I have had a long hard think about what it is about games that I crave the most. To see if I can isolate the core route of my obsession add more of that to my life in other ways. I have thought about what I enjoy most and really tried to narrow that down. I know I like playing new games over older ones. But what is it about playing new games that really gets me going. Well, after much thought I have come to the conclusion that the thing I love most about games is that moment in your first play when the matrix all comes together. You have read the rule book. Maybe watched a video or two. Explained it to your gathered friends or family. And taken a few turns and then your brains clicks. The rules make sense. The strategy starts to sink in. It’s that moment when you move from sort of getting it and knowing enough to take a turn to understanding the math or structure of the game to be able to take a good turn. It’s that moment when I go from partial confusion and sometimes blind panic to clarity. It is a wonderful feeling and I want to explore it a bit more here. Learning a new game can be tough, some rule books are terrible. Not every game has a video made for it. Some rules videos are long and complicated. It is not always an easy or enjoyable process. Rule books for games like Daybreak break the norm though. That is fantastic. Simple layout. Great examples. A nice pictorial introduction before you get into the meat of it. It is a fantastic way to learn a game. Some games use the play along app. Have you tried that? Dized is a very good one I have used a few times. They walk you through your fist few turns and teach you as you play without the need for any reading prior to starting to play. But it does make your first game very much a learning game. Which is fine. And sometimes unavoidable. But it does take some of the fun out of it. It walks you through the process in too much of a formulaic way for my liking, and essentially takes turns for you. It tells you what you can do from a rules perspective, rather than teaching you about your options and why you may choose to take one action over another. Or at the very least, creates a situation where you take turns and make decisions before you know the full game. I don’t like that. I also don’t like that feeling of uncertainty when you play a new game for the first time. Particularly if others around the table that you have taught are confused. If other players are having a bad time because of my poor rule teach, I feel terrible. It is a horrible feeling. It makes me feel guilty. I feel pressured to do something to make it better for everyone. But I am also confused as I don’t quite get the game yet and don’t fully know how to help them. It is one thing to learn and understand the rules. Even if I fully understand the rules, it is quite another thing to help people with the strategy and give them assistance when they show confusion as to what they should be doing. The strategy and structure of constructing a good turn is a very different thing to the rules. Particular in games like Root where every player is working to completely different strategies due to the asymmetric player powers used in that game. I can do that quite well now as I have played it so much, but learning Root takes at least ten games if you want to understand all the factions fully. But when this clicks for me, it feels euphoric. It is a wildly satisfying, beautifully clear, and wonderfully peaceful moment. I feel at one with the game. I can help others if they want me to, and I can construct well informed turns for myself without any confusion. It’s a great feeling and one that I have become utterly addicted too. It is why I want to keep playing new games. And why it seems, that no matter how many new games I play, the itch doesn’t go away. It’s not just that I want to play games. I want to experience that moment of clarity. And of course, that can only truly happen on game one. I need to keep playing new games. I have rather sadly come to realise that I would not be satisfied with finding ten games that I absolutely love; ten games I rate 10/10, that I play over and over. I would have fun with that. Of course I would. It sounds great. But I know deep down, as strange as it sounds, that I would prefer to play a load of new-to-me 7/10 games instead. Just so I can experience the endorphin rush when the game makes sense in my brain. That honestly makes me a little sad. I don’t like this about myself. But it’s the truth. Now that I have recognised this, and I am fully aware that it is unsustainable and a potentially unhealthy obsession, I am trying to work on it. There are several problems with this. I cannot always get hold of that many new games. I don’t have the storage space for any more. And the whole thing feels utterly wasteful and overly indulgent to my personal perspective of right and wrong. I understand this behaviour is not normal and very much something that needs to stop. My house is already overflowing with games. I give a lot away for free, but they often come in quicker than they go out and we are already over capacity. It is causing an unfair stress of my family about what we do with them. This was very much made apparent to me when we re-did the games room and I had to move 700 plus games out of this room. There were stacks of games everywhere. My children’s room. The landing. The living room. Everywhere! You can see some of this carnage in the video below. Where hilariously, you can also here my eight year old daughter on a voice modulator talking to our Cat! And this of course causes a problem. I want to keep playing new games. I would like to play more new games than I currently do. But I cannot keep playing new games at the current rate. Now of course, not every new game that I play is my own copy. A lot of new games that I play are at conventions, friends, or board game cafes. Around 50% this year were played in one of those three other ways. But this still means a couple of new games coming into the house every week. I recently had a big cull. Around 50 games were piled up in the lounge to give away. Most went pretty quickly via a local Facebook group. Perfect. No postage to worry about. I think I will need to do more of these. They will help keep the numbers in my house at a more controllable level. I think I need to try and get to more cafes and conventions. But these all cost money and I do much prefer to play in the comfort and peace of my own home. I find the noise levels in these places sometimes very stressful. And not ideal to my own personal requirements for the perfect environment to learn a new game. Great for a party game or game I know well. But less ideal for when I need to sit and quietly read a rule book. Or try to explain complicated rules to other multiple people. Ultimately, I don’t have a complete solution for it and part of the reason for writing this piece was to noodle it out in my brain a little more as I write it. But also see what others think. I would love to get your opinion on this topic. If you have the same issues. And what you have done about it. Does anyone else find that moment when new games make sense as deliciously addictive as I do? How can we satisfy a never-ending need for something that has a material, physical, and time based demand on our lives? I want to feel more fulfilled and satisfied in my life generally. Don’t we all. And I certainly don’t like the idea that my main hobby is hurting this rather than helping. No matter how much I play!

We are adding Google adverts to WhatBoardGame.com A part of this process is you need to have a privacy policy. Here is ours. We value your privacy Google uses cookies to enhance your browsing experience, serve personalised ads or content, and analyse our traffic. By clicking "Accept All", you consent to our use of cookies. We at What Board Game will not use your data for anything ourselves. We do not collect it. We do not see it. We do not get your data. It goes to Google so they can tailor advertising to make it more relevant. You can get a lot more information about what Google will do with the data they collect here. https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-GB If you have any questions then please do email me. jim@whatboardgame.com

NEON WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count: 2-6 You’ll like this if you like: Dice Throne, Unmatched, Funkoverse Strategy Game Published by: Hobby World Designed by: Ekaterina Gorn, Igor Sklyuev This is a free review copy. See our review policy here. I like card-based fighting games. I like cyber-punk, dystopian, fantasy themes. Helpfully, I also quite like board games. So, this seems like it should be a winner. Designers Ekaterina Gorn, Igor Sklyuev also made Master of Orion: The Board Game, which I have never played but it is a game that always interests me due to its theme and the fact it always seems to be available for such a reasonable price. Anyway, back to NEON. The cover alone intrigued me, and I was excited to try this one to see what new things it brings to the very busy card based fighting genre. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays How To Set Up NEON There are three game modes in NEON: Resurrection, Battle, or Squad. In Resurrection, the fighter with the most points is the victor. Battle is a last fighter standing situation. Squad is a team game where players work together to try and get the most points. The first thing you need to do is decide which game mode you want to play this time. When you have made your choice, shuffle the arena tiles and lay them out in a random order to form a circular arena. Next, assemble the drop ship and place it into the center of the arena. This will take a few minutes the first time, but then you can leave it fully formed. However, it won't fit in the box like this. Taking it apart is difficult as the cardboard connects very tightly, and I feel like I am damaging it each time I do this. A minor frustration for a component that is largely in the game for aesthetic purposes. It looks cool, but what am I supposed to do with it after each game? Moan over. Shuffle the numbered scoreboard tokens and place them in a face-up stack in the ship's central tower. They fit in very nicely and make up a little for the fact you cannot store the thing! The top token will let you know which sector to remove first during the first submerge phase. More on that later. Then shuffle the bot tokens and place one face down into each area. Then place the round tracker sheet next to the arena on the side that matches your current player count. Now shuffle the three equipment decks and place them next to the arena, and for the Resurrection and Squad mode, also shuffle and place the Enhancement deck. Each player now chooses a fighter and takes the cards, tokens, energy tracker clip, and miniature that comes with it. I store all these together in a separate baggy, so you can just give out the chosen bag to each player and it has all their bits. Some fighters have special tokens for unique weapons they alone have access to. I add these all to the bags as well. Take the matching player mat and choose the correct side to use based on the mode you are playing. For your first setup, take note of the top right on the mat, which will tell you if your chosen character should have a special token or not. Each player sets their energy tracker on this mat to three using the energy tracker clip and places their mini onto the drop ship. Each player shuffles their cards, draws three, and places the rest as a face-down draw pile. Finally, place the search tokens, dice, and HP tokens (HP not needed for Battle mode) next to the main arena, choose a leader, and give them the start token, and you are now ready to begin." How To Play NEON The game then runs through four phases in sequence and turn order until the end game condition is met. In Battle, this is simply when there is only one fighter remaining. For Resurrection and Squad, the game ends when the final round is over. All games can also end if all fighters are eliminated. Phase One - Choosing Cards The game starts with each player choosing two cards to use this round. The players will have drawn two cards to their hand during setup, draw a third card so you have three to choose from. The cards are split down the middle and offer two actions per card. You must choose three actions in total per round. To do this, you must use one card to cover half of another. You can do this however you like, rotating cards either way to pick the three actions you want from the six available on your three cards. The cards also have a number on the top which represents your initiative. The lower the number, the earlier you will take your action this round. When you have done this, place the two cards you want to use face down, with one card covering the other half. Place your third card down to be used in the next round. All players will then flip their cards simultaneously to reveal their chosen actions and initiative. Any ties in initiative are broken by the player with the leader token. Phase Two - Actions This is the main part of the game, where in initiative order, all players will now carry out the three actions shown on their cards for this round. The main actions are to move, search, fight or defend. But you can also gain energy or carry out the takeover action to claim the leader token, as well as your own character's unique special actions. Let's go through them all one by one. Defense - If any player plays a defense card, this is activated before any other player takes their turn, irrelevant to initiative. All players who played this action will add one forcefield from their player mat to their miniature on the main board. You can have a maximum of two of these at any one time. They will then also gain two energy. You can never have more than six energy. Attack - This is the main action you will be carrying out during the game. The first thing to do is choose a weapon and target. You can attack the bot tokens as well as other players if you choose to. They will reward you with extra ammunition as shown on the back of their tokens. Each player will have a basic attack shown on their player mat that allows them a limited range and attack strength, but once you have searched you will be able to add more powerful weapons that allow you to roll more attack dice and do damage from a further range. The area you attack from may affect your attack as well, potentially allowing you to spend energy to roll extra dice. Once your weapon and target are elected, roll the dice equal to your weapon's strength and the target's range. Certain powers on the weapon and your player mat will allow you to re-roll one time if you choose. The defending player may have some powers that could force you to re-roll or affect your attack too. This could happen before your roll or after. The defending player will then roll their defense dice. This could be affected by their forcefield, their location, or current gear. Once all modifiers and area effects have been taken into account, all attacks that have not been nullified are then enacted on the defending player who takes one damage for each attack they could not block. In Battle mode, this would mean removing one health token from the defending player's board for each hit. In battle, each token is worth one health point. For the other modes where some health tokens are worth two or three, you will remove one health point. If the target was a Bot and at least one damage was caused, the Bot token is removed from the board and added to the player's mat and can now be used as ammo. In resurrection or Squad mode, if a fighter loses their final health token, they become defeated. If their player mat is on the A-side, then they must flip this to the B-side and move their mini to the drop ship, essentially resetting back to their starting conditions. They can keep two gear cards of their opponent's choosing but can then draw two green, one orange, and one equipment card. If this happens when your player mat is on the B-side, then you are eliminated from the game. In Battle mode, you will already be on the B-side and are simply eliminated. Move - This allows you to move one space to either side of where your mini currently resides. On your first turn, you will be on the drop ship, and you can move from this to the main board for a free action. Note that each sector has its own unique power and this will apply to your fighter as soon as it moves into it. This could be to affect its attack or defense, ignore the damage from submersion (more on that soon) or for the train station, to cause you to immediately travel one more space if you move onto it. Search - Each area can be searched to find new weapons, gear, and ammo. Each area will have a symbol either representing a one, two, or number three sector area. When you search in a new area, you simply need to place a search token to show it has been searched. They can then take either three green, two orange, or one green and one purple equipment card based on which area they searched in. Later, if anyone searches in an area with a search token already present you must pay one energy for each search token currently present. All equipment must be immediately played onto your play mat. There are six different types shown by the icons on the botop left of the card. You can only have one card of each type. If you ever draw a card type that they already have, then you can either simply discard one of these cards or play it on top or underneath the other card with the same icon. This can then be used as ammo for the other card. For example, many weapons have a secondary action that can be activated if you have the right ammo card tucked underneath. The tucked card must be then discarded as this ammo has now been used, but the secondary power will often bring you very useful powers. Takeover - If you don't currently have the leader token, take this from the player who does and add it to your mat. This may affect this round's turn order if there was a tie involving the player who just claimed or lost this token. The player who played this then gains one energy. Gain Energy - Simply gain the shown energy on the card, either one or two. There is also a wild card which allows players to keep their option open and choose what to do on their turn, and either search, move, gain energy, or fight. Phase Three - End Game Check Once all players have played out their actions, then it's time to check the win condition for the mode you are playing. If this has not been met, then move onto the Submission phase. Phase Four - Submission Check the round track sheet and note if one or two areas are being affected this round. This will be shown by either one or two area token symbols being shown for your current round. The current face-up number in the middle of the drop ship will tell which area is being affected first. If you only have one area submerged this round then all players can plan for this as they know what was about to happen. But most rounds have two areas submerged, and this second one will be unknown to all players, so may catch you out. All areas that are submerged are removed from the game area, and all tokens on it and put back into the box. Any players who were on it are moved to an adjacent area and must suffer one damage. They can spend two energy to avoid this, and some areas will help you avoid the damage too. In this way, the area to fight in will reduce each round, and players will be forced into a smaller area. Play will then move onto the next round where these four phases are repeated until the end game condition is met Is It Fun? NEON Board Game Review A good fighting game needs to have clever card play. But a lot of great games already do that. To stand out and deserve a place on your shelf, it also needs to do something new. We have seen a slowly diminishing play area before, Blood Rage being a great example. Multi-use cards with a choice to be made about which part you use set in an Action Queue is also not uncommon in the board game world. Looking at you Gloomhaven. Unique asymmetric player powers and Dice manipulation are, of course, very popular with all genres, particularly in fighting games like this. Dice Throne being a recent example that also does both well. And I really enjoy the sense of exploration in the way you search and find cool new weapons and gear that can make huge differences to your subsequent turns, very much like Robinson Crusoe. But the thing that makes NEON stand out for me is the seamless combination of all these varying mechanisms integrated beautifully into the lavishly ubiquitous theme. The choice of whether this game is for you over similar games in its field will come down to theme. If you like the idea of characters from history battling it out against each other, look no further than  Unmatched. If you want to play with cartoonish minis go for the Funkoverse games. If you want a more dynamic map, with the cyberpunk theme, then maybe NEON is for you. Now, onto that clever card play I mentioned because, to me, it's so interesting. Each round, you will be picking three actions to carry out from the six available to you. Two actions on one card will be available next round, but one action will be taken out of the equation for the foreseeable future when you cover it with one of the other actions. This is a very interesting choice. You're not only thinking about what you want to do but what you are stopping yourself from doing. You must also consider what the other player(s) may be scheming. Like Colt Express, don't want to be firing into thin air. Some players will go for the kill early on, trying to inflict maximum damage to gain an early advantage. Another strategy is to play the long game, build up a powerful arsenal, avoid combat in the early rounds, and then pounce when you are fully tooled up. Trying to predict what other players may be thinking, particularly in a two-player game, is key. If another player moves away from you, out of range, while adding powerful weapons and defensive gear, while you blindly fire into thin air, you may find that in later rounds when it comes to combat, you may be severely outmatched. But of course, all of this comes down to the roll of some dice. You can stack the odds in your favor. Roll more dice. Give yourself re-rolls, and turn near misses into hits. But the fate of your attacks is still not fully in your control. If you do not enjoy games that introduce a chance element of luck like this, this may not be for you. But if you enjoy trying to manipulate the dice gods to look fondly upon you, and nudge the odds to be more in your favor, you may well have a lot of fun with this game. It looks stunning, each game feels unique, and the pace of the game suits my attention level just right! I have seen some comments on BGG questioning the speed turns come about. I can only assume this is in higher player counts with first-time players. Because for me, I find this electric. Choosing your cards can take a moment, but all players do this at the same time. Then carrying out your actions is an individual thing, but watching others do this is fun. So, perhaps this comes down to the crux of if this game is for you or not. If you like the idea of watching this battle unfold before your eyes, you could just fall hard for this game. When my family plays Colt Express, we take it in turns to reveal the cards we all played and then tell a dramatic story as each one is revealed one-by-one. We cheer and boo like a Pantomime. It is the most fun part of the game for us. Watching our choices play out before us in a hilarious series of failures and successes. If that sounds fun to you, then I would suggest checking this out.

Mezen WBG Score: 7 Player Count: 1-5 You’ll like this if you like: Candy Crush! Published by: Hobby World Designed by: Nikita Sorokin This is a review copy. See our review policy here Mezen is a new abstract strategy game from first-time designer Nikita Sorokin. It incorporates the traditional Mezen art style into a simple tile-laying abstract game that will draw you in with its mysterious beauty. After being around for a while but without European and US distribution, this has now been fixed thanks to the good people at Arcane Wonders and Hobby World. But how does it play? Let's get it to the table and find out. How To Set Up Mezen Place the main board into the centre of the table. Give each player a set of tiles in their chosen style. Each set should be the same barring the shape of the tiles. Along with the tiles, each player should take their score marker, placed onto the starting place on the main board, and their 50/100 score token. Each player will then arrange their 25 tiles into a randomly assigned five-by-five grid. All tiles are double-sided, either white or black. Be sure to set up the tiles on their white start but do so as randomly as you can. Mixing up the five different animals without looking or choosing is difficult, but I try to talk and look away as I do this. Next, take the deck of goal cards and choose 12 from it with a matching symbol on the bottom. Some cards have more than one symbol. That's fine. Just make sure all 12 you take have at least one matching symbol common to each card. Shuffle these 12 cards then deal ten out face down. Five above the board and five below. Place the other two back into the box. Then reveal the first two cards. Finally, each player takes five amulet tokens from the supply, placing the remaining tokens into a central area. In a solo game, take just two amulet tokens and place one more onto the goal cards for round four, six, eight, and ten. You will get these when you start those rounds. Give the starting player token to the last person to spend time in a forest. You are now ready to begin. How To Play Mezen The first player will now announce one of the five different animal symbols. They will do this by looking at their board and determining which animals cluster together orthogonally the most, or in a way that suits them the most. This decision will be based on the current round's goal and also the next round’s goal that they need to start planning for. The goal cards reward players with points based on the location of the tiles on their grid. Players will therefore, be looking to manipulate their grid each round to score as best they can. The goals vary from looking for specific tiles to be in certain locations, to certain tiles being surrounded by any tile other than the same ones. The light and dark side also matter, as do certain tiles being next to each other. The score for each goal is shown at the top of the card, and you will score this each time you meet that goal's requirements. So for example, for the third goal here on the top row, you will score two points for every fox that is surrounded by any card that is not a fox. As such, if you have a fox next to another fox now, you may want to move tiles so that one of those foxes relocates. This mechanic is executed in a manner more reminiscent of Candy Crush than traditional board games. Once the animal for this round has been declared, players can now move one group of this animal. A group consists of tiles that touch orthogonally, but you can connect two groups using your amulets if you wish. In this way, amulets can also be used to split groups. You do this by placing the amulet onto any tile of your choice, effectively changing that tile to another type and connecting or breaking a group according to your wishes. Above we see three birds in a group. They are taken out and placed next to the board leaving spaces where these tiles were. You must fill these spaces by sliding down the tiles that were above them. Now, fill the spaces now at the top with the tiles you removed, but now flipped to show their other side. When you flip a tile, it will display a different symbol. When you place the tile back into the grid, you will do so in an attempt to maximize your points for this round and the next. Looking at the two current face up goal cards, add your new tules into locations that will help you score as best you can for the next two rounds, but also potentilaly create new groups that will help you in these rounds. Once all players have done this, the current round's goal card is scored. Players will move their markers on the main board based on how many points they have achieved this round. If a player chooses not to score a round, they can do so, and take two amulets from the supply, adding them to their collection instead. The current goal card is then flipped to the blank side, and the next face-down round's goal card is revealed. You should always have two face-up round cards, except for the final round when you will have just the final round's card. After round five, you will score one additional point for all black tiles currently in your grid. After the final tenth round, you will do the same for all white tiles. You will also score one point for any unused amulet token and one point for any tile in any chosen group in your final grid. The player with the most points wins. In a solo game, you are scoring against a target as shown in the rule book. Is It Fun? Mezen Board Game Review I want to like this game more than I do. It looks stunning, and it's so easily taught and played. But there is just a little too much randomness in the game for me. When you choose which animal to group, you do so based on which other tiles you want to affect. However, you won't know which new tiles you will be given to do this because the reverse of each tile is random. There is no pattern. It's not like the reverse of a horse is always a fish. It could be anything. As such, there is a fair bit of luck in this game, which is not really welcome. It would have been so easy for every specific tile to have a common and consistent reverse side. Similar to the game  Shifting Stones where the reverse is consistent and also shown in the handy player aid. This way, you can plan for the round’s goals. In Mezen you must hope a little, and I don't quite understand this mechanical choice. That said, there is a real charm and beauty to this game, and it is very relaxing to play. With the strategy somewhat removed from it, the game becomes a lot less stressful. I feel less in control, but then also worried less about making good decisions. The way that you can slide multiple rows different amounts can leave me in a brain-melting situation. But never knowing for sure what new tiles I will have to replace them with helps relax my brain and encourages me to worry less. But there is some strategy. You get to decide which tiles to group, and being able to use the amulets to increase or reduce these groups is a crucial part of the game. Linking these three tiles like this in the above picture to affect the first three rows will make a huge difference to my grid once this is enacted. Deciding when to use your amulets and how best to do this is crucial to your success. However, there still will be moments, either due to the luck of the tile you just flipped or the next round's goal you revealed, where you may score a lot more points than you had otherwise hoped. This can be fun for you, but potentially frustrating for others. As such, I have found that I enjoy this game a lot more in solo. When I am not worrying about other players getting lucky and the injustice of it not happening to me! There is a question if this game is more style than substance. In terms of the art, I can see this. It is absolutely stunning. However, the components are just cardboard and potentially could have been better with nice acrylic tiles that were placed into a dual-layered board that holds them in place in the grid. That, along with consistent reverse sides, and I think there could have been a 9/10 abstract game here. Maybe that could be fixed for a later print run and a new version of the game? As it is, it is still good. Solid if not spectacular. But a game I can see myself bringing out on a lazy Sunday to relax too. A game I look forward to enjoying when I want my brain to switch off, and melt away into the Mezen art style, and dream wistfully of simpler times.

Daybreak WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Pandemic, Arkham Horror LCG (Mechanically speaking!). Published by: CMYK Designed by: Matt Leacock, Matteo Menapace This is a review copy. See our review policy here Originally billed as e-Mission, Daybreak is from the design team behind the cooperative board game mega-star, Pandemic. Although this time, Matt Leacock has turned his attention from a Pandemic destroying all of humanity to the impending global climate change crisis that will end human life as we know it. Matt, are you ok? We survived the Pandemic, so it was only a natural next step, right? Hopefully, we survive this! Although it would take some pretty major cultural and attitudinal changes, which thankfully the younger generation seems to embrace. Don't worry Matt, it will be okay! I hope. Goodness, what a mess. Anyway, back to the game. This has been billed as the next big co-op experience, with some phenomenal research and learning opportunities thrown in and I was very excited to get it to the table. But how does it play? Let's find out. How To Set Up Daybreak First, lay out the main board in the central playing area. Place the current round token with the clock side face up onto the first space on the round tracker. Then, place the six planetary effect tokens onto their starting locations on the board. Afterward, place the eight temperature bands along with the die for the Geoengineering and planetary effects onto the bulb of the thermometer on the bottom right of the board. Now, add the tree and ocean tokens based on your player count anywhere onto the map part of the board. Ideally, trees on land and oceans into the water, as this is the real world after all! But it's not essential. Then, place all the other tokens on the table nearby; the game comes with four handy (recycled) containers. One or two per player with a mixture of stuff works well for me. Don't worry about sorting this too much. Now, prepare the card decks by shuffling the global project cards, crisis cards, and local project cards and forming three separate face-down decks. There are also challenge cards, but these are not recommended for your first game as you get to grips with the rules and strategy. I would strongly advise playing two to three games before adding these in, if you want to win. Each player now chooses a world power to play as, taking the chosen reference card and board for this. All are available in a four-player game. With three players, you have access to Majority World, Europe, and the US. Two players choose between China and the US. And in solo, you can pick any you want based on the difficulty you want to play at. You can also vary the number of starting trees and oceans for all player counts to affect the difficulty. It's a good system. Finally, prepare the player boards for each person at the table. Each player takes their five starting local project cards with their chosen world power on. This is clearly shown on the back. These are placed face up above their player board into the five marked slots. Next, they add their energy demand token on the number shown on their reference card and add dirty energy, clean energy, and emissions tokens as shown on their reference card into their respective rows. Then, add resilience and community in crisis tokens to each player's matching areas as shown on your reference card. There are board extenders available if needed later in the game, but start with them in the box or to the side. They may not be needed, and certainly won't be useful during set-up. You are now ready to play. How To Play Daybreak The game is played over six rounds until either the single win or one of many lose condition's is met. You win if you can ever remove more carbon than you produce during the emissions phase. This is called drawdown. You will lose if either any player has 12 or more community in crisis tokens, the temperature rises to the top of the thermometer, or you run out of rounds. Players can play in any turn order they like, as the game moves through five different phases each round: the global stage, the local stage, the emissions stage, the crisis stage, and finally the growth stage. Let's look at them all one by one. The Global Stage The first thing you will do each round is draw crisis cards equal to the current global temperature. This starts with three but quickly ramps up. Place one face up to the right of the board, and place the others face down above this. Next, take the top two global project cards and choose one to keep and one to discard. The one you keep is placed on the top left of the board. This is now available for all players to make use of for the rest of the game or when you choose to replace it with another card in a later round. You can hold four of these maximum, and they are all very useful. Just pick the one that appeals most to you. This is hard to do in round one as you don't have much direction yet, but in later rounds, you will base this on your cards and current requirements. The Local Stage Now all players draw five local project cards. All players can now play in any turn order they wish, or even at the same time as others, but it does make sense to work together here and discuss your plans and actions with each other. It is a co-op game after all, and same cards and actions can help other players. The cards can be played in one of four ways. You will remember during setup you placed five cards above your player mat. This is your project area, and these five cards are active projects. Some give instant one use per round powers, others require certain things to make them possible. These are generally one of two things. Either for cards to be discarded, one of the four ways that cards can be used, or for certain symbols to be present on that card. Each card has a number of symbols on the top right. If you don't have the full quota of symbols, then you can tuck cards with the required symbols behind this, leaving the top part visible so that you can fulfill the requirements of the card. Some cards activate multiple times based on the number of symbols, so you may be able to use the card as is, but tucking more cards behind it will make the activation stronger. This is the second thing you can do with cards. The third thing you can do is place them over other cards to replace the project you are working on. The card you cover is then tucked behind the new card, bringing its own symbols to the party. The final thing you can do with the cards is tuck them under the crisis and global project cards. This will be shown on these cards when relevant, and tucking cards under them affects their powers, either positively or removing a negative. All players can use as many of their cards as they wish to tuck behind other projects, replace existing projects, or discard to activate other cards. You can activate as many projects as you have the resources for. This is the main part of the game that you control and is incredibly satisfying! Building up combos on certain projects and firing multiple actions at a time is wildly gratifying. The Emissions Stage On each player's board, they will have an energy requirement that they would have set during setup, based on their own country's reference card and specific demands. They will also have laid out a number of energy tokens, showing the clean and dirty energy that they create. Players must now check that they create more energy than they need. If they do, all is well. This can include both clean and dirty energy. It just has to be more than their requirements. If they have a deficit, though, they must then take community in crisis tokens to cover the difference. Players then add carbon tokens from the supply to the recent emission area on the top of the main board based on all dirty energy they have on their own player board, and for all emission tokens they have. During the local stage, players will hopefully reduce their dirty energy and emission tokens each round, as well as increasing their green energy to ensure they always meet their requirements, and slowly reduce their carbon footprint. But in round one, this will start badly for you. Once all players have added their carbon to the main board, one player will then move as many of these tokens as they can onto the tree and ocean tokens placed during set up. This represents the earth's natural defenses cleaning our carbon footprint for us. Later in the game, you can do things to increase the amount of carbon you can remove this way. If you have any spaces left over that could have taken more carbon, then you have reached drawdown. Congratulations! Flip the token on the round tracker to show this. Hopefully, you will now win the game! Just one final crisis round to get through. Any carbon on the thermometer from previous rounds can be removed and placed onto whichever leftover tree or ocean tile you have on the main board. But inevitably, and certainly in round one, you will have some carbon left over, and the game will go another round. The leftover carbon must be moved to the thermometer. Based on your player count, you will have access to two, three, or all four spaces for each row. When a row is full of carbon, remove all pieces and replace with one of the temperature bands you placed here during setup. If this ever fills up, the game is lost. Adding more bands could mean your current number of crisis cards increases from the level you had during the first phase. In which case, immediately add one more crisis card face down now to the row to the side of this. The Crisis Stage You now must roll the planetary effect die. The current number of temperature bands will dictate how many times you will need to roll the die. For each roll, move the shown planetary token on the board one space to the right. Each time the token moves over a scale symbol, you must resolve the effect for this particular area. Temperatures rise. More carbon is created. Trees are removed from the board. It's never good. Then, resolve the crisis cards, first with the face-up card, then the face-down ones. Each crisis card will have some way to negate the issues it creates. The crisis cards are bad and force you to lose cards or add community in crisis tokens to their player board. But if you have certain resilience tokens on your player board or have tucked specific cards under these crisis cards, you can reduce these negative effects. If you add enough crisis in community tokens you will notice your ability to draw five cards in the local stage is reduced. And eventually, if you fill this up, the game is lost. The Growth Stage If you have survived all this and the round tracker shows you reached drawdown, then you win! Well done, it's not easy. If you did not get there yet, simply move this down to the next round and go again. Every player increases their energy demand on the player mat to represent their country's growing energy demand. If you reach the final round and have not reached drawdown, this is the final way the game can defeat you. Is It Fun? Daybreak Board Game Review Before I begin, I must say, the rule book for this game is a thing of absolute beauty! The first 13 pages are simple descriptions of the main aspects of the game, how you play, what you need to do to win, and how you lose. It is a brilliant way to introduce the game. More publishers should take note. On to the game. Wow, I love this. The card play is so clever and gives you a real sense of control, precision, and satisfaction in what is otherwise a very chaotic, and sometimes overwhelming experience. It often feels like, in most games of Daybreak, you are way off victory, and that the situation will escalate way before you can take control. But I have won two-thirds of the games I have played, despite all of them feeling like an inevitable slide into loss each time. For me, this was genuinely by the rounds and therefore time running out. I managed to control the other lose conditions quite well, but it was always a matter of time that worried me. However, I have now won four times with two rounds to spare. I mention all this because it's tense, very tense. Even when you win, it will feel tense throughout. Even if you win with time to spare without any of the lose conditions being close, it will feel tense. If I have not made it clear enough yet, it is a tense game. Do not buy this game if you don't enjoy that. But, if you enjoy the tensions cooperative games like this can create and the challenge it creates to fight back, you may well just fall in love like I have. So, why have I given this an 8.5 if I am in love? Surely that deserves a 9 or higher? Well, it is close to that. The card play during the local stage alone deserves a ten. It's amazing. But I feel there are then four other rounds that are more admin and maintenance. You make some choices, but not many, and a lot feels out of your hands. This is fine; don't get me wrong. These phases fly by, and the local phase where you are 100% in control and doing awesome things is the bulk of the game. But this is why it gets an 8.5 instead of a higher score. Now I recognize that in a co-op game where it is players vs. the board you need these rounds. Where the game fights back. Otherwise, what are we all doing here? It just feels a little off balance in terms of what you do and what thw game does for a 9 plus game. But 8.5 is high for me. I don't go that high regularly, so this is all just context. Okay, have I justified that enough? Right, back to why this game is awesome. Other than the tension, beautifully constructed balance between wining and losing, and the brilliant interplay between cards, there is a wonderful sense of camaraderie created in this game. Sounds like a given for cooperatives, but I have found that not all co-ops do this in equal measure. But in Daybreak, it has been present for me in every game in a huge way, from turn one, no matter who I played with or the player count. The game feels hard and almost out-of-reach from the very first emissions phase when you realise the scale of what you all have to collectively achieve. This unites the players against the board in a way that makes the experience better. You feel connected and unified in your goals. You want to help others. You care about everyone's decisions. You celebrate your teams good turns. This is what makes cooperative games great for me. And Daybreak nails this. You may have noticed all the QR codes on the cards. Each of them links back to a webpage that explains how the card works for the game, but also gives you some interesting information on the cards real-world dynamics, consequences, and/or opportunities to help with the climate crisis. There is a huge leanring opportunitiy here. I would buy this game just to donate to a school. What an incredible resournce this is. I would recommend this game to anyone who played and enjoyed Pandemic but wanted that little bit more. Pandemic is a great game and has put board games on the map for so many new fans. It deserves huge respect. But Daybreak for me, and stand by, is a better game. I like the theme way more. I like the look and feel of the art and components way more. And the mechanics and strategy required to do well are so much more satisfying. Pandemic is a legendary game. Could Daybreak reach similar heights? Who knows. But it deserves to.

Die Of The Dead WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 2-4 You’ll like this if you like: Ganz Schon Clever Published by: Radical 8 Games Designed by: James Allen, Mark Stockton-Pitt This is a review copy. See our review policy here Die of The Dead was a successful lockdown kickstarter that you can find out a little more about here when I sat down with the publisher near the end of the main game's crowdfunding campaign. Since then, two expansion have been released and the game has picked up a lot of traction. In this review we will look at the main game and the two expansions. So, let's get it to the table and see how it plays. How To Set Up Die Of The Dead For the main game, place the four caskets out in a row, left to right. Keep the lids on, but have the casket on the far left open. Underneath these, place the four casket boards in numerical order, and the four token boards. Place the tokens for each onto these boards. The token boards are double-sided, so make your choice as to which powers you want to have in the game. Next, assemble the Marigold steps. This takes five minutes for game one, but then is a simple process for any subsequent game. Each player now takes a player board and their matching colored dice. The player boards are double-sided, one showing a unique player power. Make your choice if you want to include these or not. Add the City of the Dead board to the main play area and then each player adds their three power souls (the dice with the skulls on) onto this board. Each player now rolls two souls (dice) to determine the starting player. The first player will add a soul into the first casket and one onto their player board. The second player adds a soul to casket one and two. Player three adds a soul to casket one and two and one onto their board. Player four adds a soul to casket one, two, and three. And player five adds a soul to casket one, two, and three and adds one to their board. You are now ready to play. Xolo Expansion Set up If you are adding in the Xolo expansion, there are a few modules you can bring in. Place the Xolo boards under the casket boards if you want to add this. The last player adds the Xolo meeple onto one of the boards, adding one Xolo token to it during setup. Place the other tokens to the side. There are also two new double-sided caskets for space three that you can swap in for variation, and new token dice that you can add to the City of the Dead, one per player Ofrenda Expansion Set Up Each player takes an Altar De Muertos board and places it in front of them. They then add one of their normal dice to the front of the steps, showing the single pip side. Any dice not used in lower than five-player counts are distributed evenly among the players. The unused power dice are added to the City of the Dead board. Players then add one die from their supply to each casket. This will be the scoring die. Note, the caskets are now seen as representing one of the four token symbols. One player now takes a start marker. How To Play Die Of The Dead Starting with the first player, players will take it in turn to take one action. This can be either one of the four actions as shown on the four casket boards. One part of this will benefit them, the other may benefit any player. The first casket is where you can add souls (dice) from your player board to this casket and the game. This can only be souls from your board, though, not your supply. Souls on your board are called prepared souls. Then, if there are at least two different colored dice in the casket, put the lid on and give it a shake. If any ones are rolled, then all caskets move one space to the right, with the casket in the final fourth spot coming back to spot one. The whole game is one big conveyor belt. The second casket is where you prepare souls. This means you can add two dice from your supply to your board. Now shake the casket again and see which player wins. This is the player who has the highest roll. In the event of a tie, it goes to the second-highest dice for the two winning players. Whomever this is can now prepare one soul. Any ones rolled move the caskets one space to the right again. The third casket is where you can remove souls. Shake the casket and remove any duplicates. The player who shook the casket then takes one token. The expansion variants for this offer the chance to add variation by removing all ones and twos, to remove half of a player's dice if you guess correctly who will win when you roll them, or to remove all dice from the winning player, although one of the dice is ascended. More on that soon. But with each of the variants, you now get two tokens. The fourth casket is where you ascend souls. This means adding them to the steps which is how you win the game. Shake the casket and ascend two of the winners' dice. You can then also move the caskets, gain a power soul, or ascend one more soul from this casket. Ascending means placing a die onto the lowest row that you have not placed a die onto yet on the Marigold steps. If there is a depicted bonus on this location on the steps, gain this right away. The bonus spaces will be to either gain a power soul, prepare a soul, or take one of the four available tokens. You can only have one die on each row, and the goal of the game is to get a die to the very top. The first player to do this wins. The tokens can be used whenever a player wants and offer the chance to swap locations of caskets before you roll, peek into a casket, adjust dice values, add prepared souls to caskets, and reshake the caskets. As soon as one player reaches the top of the steps with a soul, the game is over, and that player is declared the winner. You can play with all caskets open if you prefer, and there is a two-player variant where a dummy player adds two dice to a casket every third turn. Xolo Expansion Additional Rules When you choose a casket above the location of the Xolo dog, take the dog meeple and any tokens at this location. At the end of your turn, place the dog back into any location you chose along with one additional token taken from the supply. At any point in the game after a casket is shaken, any player can spend a Xolo token to take the action that relates to the shaken casket. The Xolo token used is placed onto the board you activated. The Xolo powers allow players to add dice from their supply or prepared souls to the caskets, change dice values by one, flip dice to the alternative side, prepare a soul, remove souls from the casket, ascend souls, or gain tokens. The new token dice are gained in the same way as the power souls, and when added to caskets, can gain players additional tokens. Ofrenda Expansion Additional Rules Players are now aiming to ascend as often as they can, rather than just be the first to do so. Players will now on their turn add any dice that are on top of the casket, more on that later, into the casket and give it a shake. They will now draft one die from this casket as their mandatory action. Drafting a die means taking one die from the open casket and either adding it to your player board or, preferably, your Altar De Muertos board. You must pay for this drafted die by placing a die on top of any of the other three caskets. The start player must pay with a power die from the City of the Dead. All other players then carry out an action of their choosing for this casket, either drafting a die for themselves, moving a die from their player board onto the Altar De Muertos board, taking a token, or if there are no dice or tokens, you may ascend one step, but you cannot take the ascend step bonus. After all players have chosen their action, the Altar De Muertos boards completed this round are scored. Scoring lets you ascend more souls up the steps. Altar De Muertos boards are completed when the fourth die is added to a row or column. Scores are tracked using the die placed by the steps, and the scoring die is moved up based on which row or column was completed, as shown on the Altar De Muertos board. Players can also discard three tokens to ascend one step or four tokens to ascend two steps. After scoring, if at least one section from any player was scored, move the caskets one space as per the usual rules. Dice on top move with the caskets. When one player has completed all four sections on their Altar De Muertos board, they ascend one additional step, and the game ends. Otherwise, pass the start marker clockwise and carry on for another round. The player that ascends the most steps is the winner. Solo Varient The Ofrenda expansion also offers a solo variant using the Altar De Muertos board. To do this, remove all power dice from the game, but still put three dice onto the City of the Dead, just use normal dice. During setup, add three different colored dice to each casket and remove the rest from the game. Use just one token of each type on each board. You will always be the start player but can now choose to move dice or take a token as your action. If you move dice, remove a die from the City of the Dead board. Tokens are removed from the game when used. The game ends when the City of the Dead is empty. The goal is to ascend 18 steps for a perfect score, although the rules suggest anything above 12 is good. Is It Fun? Die Of The Dead Before I get into the game itself, I want to touch on the effort the publisher put into honoring the theme and origins of this game. There have been some minor quibbles thrown, rather unfairly, at the game (check the comments section of the Dice Tower review for some), and I thought it only right the publisher had a chance to comment on this. "I completely understand people's concerns about cultural appropriation, which is why one of the first things we did was hire a cultural consultant and a Mexican artist to advise us on the game and tell us if they think any of it would be a cause to retheme. Instead, they both loved the theme, and the fact their culture had inspired a designer halfway around the world, and were eager to advise and guide us as we were designing. Finally, one of our playtesters is Mexican and was also a great help throughout and joined in on the original Kickstarter playthrough video. Ultimately, we did everything we could to ensure we weren't appropriating Mexican culture." Now, onto the game. First up, to address another complaint I have seen about the game, which suggests it cannot be packed away with the insert still in, and even then it is difficult. Above is the box all packed. It's fine. The perfect size, although it doesn't hold the expansion parts. Now, properly onto the game! Die of the Dead plays as well as it looks, and that's saying something! This is an awesome production, both in terms of how it looks and also the thought behind the entire process. As you read above, a lot of thought has gone into the look and feel of this game, with people who understand the significance and importance of the theme the game is based on being consulted and involved in the design to ensure this game is done in the right way. And it pays off. Both in terms of the theme, but also the stunning art design that pulls you straight into this beautiful world. The game plays incredibly fast and can be taught in minutes. The expansions are a simple add. The Ofrenda variant being a little more complex but still can be added with just a few additional minutes added to the teach, and from game one if you wish. The Altar de Muertos board is my favorite addition to the game, but it does feel like a completely different game, rather than a usual expansion. In a good way, this creates a completely different experience. Both the base game and the Ofrenda variant are fantastic games. Turns fly by, and you always feel involved. Players are shaking the casket to try to activate their own dice, but this won't always be the case. Of course, there can be some frustration here, but generally there is enough control in the game to manipulate the rolls, dice, or the casket you choose to ensure you get to do what you want most of the time. The trick is to remember what is in each casket. The rules don't say you can't touch or shake a casket before you choose it, unless I missed that, so we often do that, but all this tells you is that some dice are in there. Not which ones. The player who can keep track of where their dice are the best often wins at this game. The conveyor belt of dice is an interesting concept to play with. The first two caskets get your dice into the game, the third gives you a chance to manipulate what dice make it to the fourth casket. The final casket is where you move them to the steps and get your path to victory moving. In the Ofrenda variant, this is still your goal, but less of a race and more of a battle of efficiency. How many dice can you ascend during the course of the game. I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys playing with lots of dice and has to use them to make clever and interesting decisions. There is some luck involved but not as much as you would initially think. The game looks glorious, moves along at an incredibly fast pace, and offers some interesting choices as you play. I like the solo variant, but it feels a bit too much for me to play solo. Not in terms of the rule set, more the setup. Not that it is a lot, or complicated or time-consuming, more that for solo games, anything more than a paper and pen can be too much for me. But as a solo experience, it is excellent, and one I would recommend to fans of solitaire play. The two player works well too, but I found I was regulalry forgetting to carry out the dummy players actions, but didn't realy think it affected th egame that much. But it was an irritant. But it is still fun and feels like the three, four or five player experience. But three plus is where the game shines for me. More people, more dice, more choices, more competition. This is where I found I had most fun.

Apiary WBG Score: 9/10 Player Count: 1-5 You’ll like this if you like: Viscounts of the West Kingdom, Viticulture Lost Ruins of Arnak Published by: Stonemaier Games Designed by: Connie Vogelmann This is a review copy. See our review policy here Apiary is the new game from Stonemaier games, something that is always an event for me. To me, there is something special about a new game coming out from this publisher. This time round, Stonemaier are working with a new designer, not just to them, but to the board game world. Connie Vogelmann is entering the market with a bang. The buzz (if you will excuse the pun) around this game is massive. The queue to buy it at Essen was massive, and pre-orders seem to be flying off the shelves. But is it any good? Let's get it to the table to find out. How To Set Up Apiary Lay out the board based on your player count; one side suits one to three, the other is for four or five players. Give each player one of the five available hive mats. Each is very different and will offer a unique experience. You will need a bit of space around your mat as you may build off it. Next, take the planet tiles, shuffle them up, and place them in a face-down stack just off the board on the top left by the Explore area. Then on each of the explore spaces on the main board, add one face-up explore token at random. Place any unused tokens back into the box. Then in the bottom right space here, add the Queenship mini. It comes unpainted, so if you have time, stop the setup, go paint it, ask for my address, wait, check your post, paint mine as well, send it back, then move on to the next step. Now, into the top right of the main board, add the farm, recruit, and development tiles. Place them in three separate stacks face down on their marked locations, then flip three face up into each row. You may want two separate piles for these, especially the Farm tiles; there are quite a lot, and a large stack may have the tendency to fall! Add the yellow Carve tiles into the Carve spaces to fill each spot, then place any leftover tiles back into the box. They will not replenish during the game. Next, place one dance tile onto each blank spot on the Convert section in the bottom right of the board. Add the dance tokens here in a stack. No worries to shuffle these tokens; this is open information. Then place the extra frames, and all the resources into separate stacks by the main board. Finally for the main board, add the seed cards onto the space for these on the research section on the bottom left of the board Now, give each player a set of Worker bees: three cubes in their chosen color, one docking mat in their color, and the seven hibernation tokens in their color. Each player then takes at random one faction tile from the 20 available. For your first game, it is recommended to take one of the starting factions, but after that, try a different one each time. They offer a different end game scoring condition which can be fun to experiment with. Each will list a different amount and value of starting workers too. Add the appropriate amount and value of workers to your active worker space on your docking mat, placing any spare set to level one by the Research area on the main board. Note some faction tiles will give you all four workers from the off. Your faction will also give you a starting allocation of resources shown in the spaces marked with a green circle. Take these from the main pool and add to the spaces on your faction tile. Finally, add one of your player tokens onto the score track on the main board at zero for the first player, and one up for each subsequent player. Place the next cube onto the starting space on the Queen's favor track on the bottom of the main board, and place the third cube on their docking mat. If you prefer, you can deal out all the hive mats and faction tiles, one per player, and let players draft one of each in a snake draft, in turn order. You are now ready to play. How to Play Apiary On a player's turn, they have one of two options: Either place a worker out onto one of the six spaces on the board or bring back all previously placed workers. That's it. Players will continue like this until the Hibernation spaces on the main board are full, or one player has used all seven of their Hibernation tokens. All players will have one final turn, then final scoring takes place. More on that later. You will be able to carry out the number of actions in the area where you place the worker, equal to the number shown on the worker. If you place a worker with a strength of four, you will also be able to carry out that area's bonus action. The six areas you can place a worker on work as follows: Explore - This is where you can control the Queen's Ship, explore uncharted territory, and gain supplies. You can move the strength of all shown workers in the area orthogonally. If there is an explore token, take this and gain the shown benefit, and move it to the space for these on your docking mat. Then place the top planet tile onto this location. The planet tile will show a number of empty spaces which you can fill with any of the basic resources. You will then gain these resources as well. If you move to a planet that has already been explored, simply gain the resources shown there. When you place a strength four worker here, you will be able to carry out the extra action shown on the bottom of some of the planet tiles. This is different for each tile, but all are very powerful and useful to your goals. Some, however, do not have this. Advance - This is where you can add new farms, recruits, or developments to your hive mat to gain in-game points, extra resource storage, and resources, increase your in-game powers, and plan for your end-game points opportunities. Simply place a worker here and then buy the tile you want. The strength of the worker placed dictates which row you can buy from, and a strength four worker will allow you to also gain three victory points. Each tile has a cost shown on the bottom, a mix of basic resources for the farms, pollen for the recruits, and wax for the developments. When you take a tile, shift the remaining tiles to the left and then fill in the blank space on the right, adding the newly acquired tile to your hive mat. Grow - This area allows you to gain new workers, upgrade your faction mat, and acquire new frames for your hive. It will cost one strength to gain one worker, which is always set to strength one here and then placed onto your active pool, costing one pollen. Acquiring a new frame costs two strength, and you can add this anywhere you like to your hive mat as long as it doesn't overlap another space and touches at least one other hex. This costs two basic resources. A strength four worker added here allows you to flip your faction tile, upgrading your end-game scoring condition, generally increasing your end-game point potential. Research - This area allows you to gain new seed cards. You can only ever take one at a time, but a higher strength worker allows you to draw more cards to pick from. A strength four worker here will allow you to plant one of the seed cards into the two available spaces on your hive mat. There are two additional spaces to add a third and fourth card, which are activated when you add additional frames to your hive board. Any seed cards you do not plant can be played at any time on your turn to gain the benefit shown on the top of the card. Convert - This area allows you to convert resources in your position to any other based on the shown ratios. If you place a strength four worker here, you can also create a dance. You can only ever do this once per game, so a second strength four worker simply allows you four conversions. The dances are randomly added at the start of the game and start blank. You can add dance tiles to the blank spaces to create the conversions that suit you. This is a novel and new way to add variation to the classic resources conversation seen in many euro games. Carve - This area lets you gain powerful Carve tiles to add to your hive mat. These will give you new end game scoring conditions that can be huge swings if you get it right. They will cost two or three honey, a resource that is rare and hard to get, and can only be accessed by a strength four worker. The Carve tile is not replaced, so the ones shown at the start of the game are the only options for all players that game. This reminds me a little of the race to the Factory in Scythe. When players place a worker, they will always do so into the available space above each area. If another worker is there, this is bumped to the next space, if available. Or off the board if not. When this happens, if the worker was currently at strength one, two, or three, the worker can move up one strength and be placed onto the owners active pool. Or, the player can choose to keep the workers strength at the current level and place it onto the landing area. This last option may be chosen to avoid the worker becoming exhausted too quickly and being forced to hibernate before the player wants it too. Or because the player wants an extra worker to gain income in an upcoming retrieve action. More on that later. When a worker is bumped from the board on strength four it must hibernate. This means it goes back to strength one and is placed back by the Research area on the main board. The player who owns this worker then must place a hibernation token onto one of the hibernation spaces on the bottom of the main board. This will gain that player a resource as shown on that space, and potentially refresh one of the rows of tiles in the Advance area if the X symbol is also shown. When this area is full or one player has used their seventh hibernation token the game comes to an end. Each player has one final turn and then final scoring will commence. Players will score points for any seed cards they placed under their hive mat during the game, any tiles placed onto their hive mat that show end game points, any fulfilled conditions on the Carve tiles they bought, eight points for filling the hive mat and any additional frames added, your fractions end game ability, your position on the Queens favour track, and any points gained from the area control mini game on the hibernation track. The player with the most points wins. Is It Fun? Apiary Board Game Review Apiary is such a simple game to teach and play but it is full of engaging and rewarding decisions. If you can find a way to make your actions connect in a meaningful way, you will quickly fall in love with this game. That said, I have lost all bar one of the games I have played so far, and I still love it! Finding the right strategy to maximise your efficiencies, get the combo turns you crave, and push up your score can be difficult. There is a lot to piece together in your mind. But the path n learning to do so is an enjoyable one. It feels like a disjointed story or puzzle that you need to find the right order for. But each paragraph or chapter opens enlightening new characters or plot twists, that even if you form into the wrong order, will still bring a smile to your face. The game plays very quickly. Perhaps too fast in your first few games as you need to find the balance between advancing your workers strength and gaining the hibernation bonus and area control points, to having simply enough turns in the game to do all you need to do. This is a very interesting puzzle and creates a very interesting learning curve for your early games. It took me a good few games to understand how to make it work for me. You don't want to fall behind the other players in the hibernation area control points and resource rewards, but you also cannot focus on this too much if one player is going for a quick game, upgrading their workers and hibernating as fast as they can. But you also cannot ignore it, you may be caught short desperately wanting a few more turns to complete your plans. It never feels like there is a bad option in this game, just lot's of good or very good ones. And as you cannot block other workers, unlike in other worker placement games, you won't ever be in a situation where you cannot do what you want, unless you run out of time. That said, other players may take certain tiles you want, or claim spaces on the hibernation spots you wanted, but the main worker placement spaces will always be open to you, even when other players have workers there. If anything, their presence their will help you with additional strength. And herein lies the genius of the game. The way the workers are bumped, and their strength either being increased and placed into active area or hibernation or remaining as is and put into the landing area; this choice is where you will win or lose many games. This is where you will dictate the length and pace of the game. This is where you will control the number of actions you take, and how powerful they will all be. I adore the theme and art, and the component quality, as is always the case with Stonemaier game is top notch. The box and insert is fantastic making set up and tear down very simple. Everything just fits, and it's clear where everything should go. A simple but important point with a euro game like this with lots of moving parts. I would recommend this game to anyone who typically enjoy Stonemaier games, or euro games with clever resource management, or anyone who is looking for a mid-weight game to play with their group that offers meaningful choices and a satisfying process to experience, but in a quick and simple gameplay. This game can be played easily in 30 minutes per player, even from game one. Initially because you may be bumping and hibernating too much, thus ending the game too fast. And latterly as you become more au fait with the strategy and choices. One word of warning. This will not fit you and your group if you do not enjoy asymmetry and variation in games. The different hive mats and faction powers offer greatly different experiences, and it may be you get the perfect tiles for your chosen set-up. Or, of course, it could feel like the game is against you. If this sort of thing would wind you up, you may find this game irritating. However, if you enjoy the challenge of rolling with these variations, and trying to work out each asymmetric set-up and the right way to play with your chosen powers, you may well fall is love with this game. I enjoy this game in solo, like all Stonemaier games, it has a fantastic and rewarding 'automa' to play against. Two and three player is the sweet spot for this game for me, but four works if you are willing for a slower pace. You will have more downtime of course, but a lot more bumping and interaction. I have not played five yet, but presume it will be the same. A slower and longer game, but more interaction. I predict this game is certainly going to end in my top ten for the year, perhaps top five. I have played every day for the last week and have it set up to play again later tonight. It is the sort of game that gets into your head, and makes you want to play over and over to get better at the strategy. Win or lose, it is fun to play. I have been competing more with my previous scores than my opponent in the game, to see if I can get better. I enjoy figuring out the strategy for each asymmetric set-up I get. This is the sort of game I want to play with all my different friends to show them what can be done, and show off the games clever mechanics and rules. I think this could go down as a new Stonemaier modern classic.

The Legends of Andor: The Eternal Frost WBG Score: 8 or10* Player Count: 2-4 You’ll like this if you like: The Andor games, The Adventures of Robin Hood Published by: KOSMOS Designed by: Michael Menzel This is a review copy. See our review policy here This will be a spoiler free review bar one minor spoiler, clearly labelled below and easily avoided if you choose. There have been a number of games in the Andor range. Starting with Legends of Andor which you can see a brief one minute overview of here. Since then, there have been a number of expansions such as 2017 release Legends of Andor: Dark Heroes and stand alone sequel's such as the 2014 success Journey to the North. It has been a bit quiet recently but 2023 saw the release of a new stand alone sequel, Eternal Frost. It uses the same mechanics and ruleset as the previous Andor, but with four new legends to play through, and let's be honest, feels a bit Games of Thronesy! Let's get it to the table to see how it plays. How To Set Up The Legends of Andor: The Eternal Frost Place the main board out with the castle showing and the lake face down. This is the board used for your first game. Then, I suggest you put the main rule book away, you really will not need it at all. And simply follow the quick-start guide instructions. It's very simple and means you learn as you play. You really can just get cracking with it. The main thing you need to do is pick a character and get ready for some adventuring! They are all double sided to offer a variation on gender. How To Play The Legends of Andor: The Eternal Frost Once you are done, take the first legend card and begin reading. This will describe what you need to do next both in terms of the mechanics, rules, but also goals and objectives. It will teach you how to move and fight as you play, which is a lot better than reading it here or in the rule book. Is It Fun? The Legends of Andor: The Eternal Frost Review First up, to manage expectations, it needs to be said, there are four legends in this game. Each legend will be one complete game. Roughly lasting an hour. If you lose one, you will need to reply it until you win. And the final legend has three different endings, dictated by a die role. And you can of course replay the whole thing again very easily. There are also ways to add additional enemies and make the game harder by reading additional red cards when prompted. Or, you can simply avoid them if you prefer. As you play through the game, your main options on your turn are to move or fight. Alternatives will present themselves as you play, but this will remain your primary choice. The game works, like the others in the series, on a game clock. Each movement or single round of combat costs you an hour. And as we all know, there are only so many hours in a day. You will have more than one day to complete your objectives, but at sunset each day, the monsters activate. And if too many make it to your base, the game is lost. Their movement can surprise you as well, as they often jump each others locations and progress a lot faster than you initially thought. Careful calculation of this during the day phase is crucial to your success. Which brings to me to my main concern with these games. The main way to win here seems to be about working out the number of monsters you have to kill. You cannot have too many infiltrate your base, but there is some leeway. But you cannot fight too many either, as it will use up all your time, both in the game clock, but also as it progresses the story too. Each time a monster is banished through battle you must move the marker on the right of the board one space up. When you get to the top the game is over, and if you have not completed your goals you will fail. This moves every night as well, but you can really accelerate the game and hugely reduce your available turns by fighting too much. But, if you can work out the right balance, you will invariably win, subject to a few good rolls. Other than that, there is not too much strategy in the game other than working out the shortest route to certain parts of the board. But the story will make up for this for most of you. However, there are moments when you do something clever that keeps you going. There are ways to spend willpower to gain extra hours. Some items will help with this, as well as clever use of your own character powers. Deciding who will do what, and working together on occasions to fight the harder monsters will greatly increase your chances of victory. And these smart choices will make you thirst for more. I do wish there was a little in the way of dice manipulation, or more special powers though. The game does a great job of creating tension and making the legends all hard enough to make victories feel satisfying. But I think one or two more ways to influence your luck a little more would be interesting. Sometimes, a game can be won or lost by the roll of a single die, or the placement of a random item. This can be frustrating if it causes you to lose near the end of a game, when other than this, you played flawlessly. But this is just because I find repeating legends annoying and a bit of a waste of time. If you enjoy repeating missions, you will love this. On one occasion, legend three, a monster spawned in a random location that was quite a way away from where we were. We had no way to get to it in time and the mission was essentially lost. The location of where the monster spawned was determined by a die roll, so we decided to roll again. We did, the monster spawned somewhere else. We won with ease and plenty of time to spare. This is cheating. Unquestionably. But I did not want to repeat the entire mission based on the roll of one dice. Some of you may enjoy repeating missions. Some may find the above admission of cheating abhorrent! I mention only as this is a key part of if you will enjoy this game or not. Tooling up your heroes is a lot of fun. There are a number of ways to gain additional weapons and items that will aid your cause. It's fun to physically place them on your hero mat as you acquire them, and it works well as a visual aid, reminding you what options you have available to you. Combat works well too. It is a combination of you current strength, added to your highest dice roll, the quantity of which will be determined by your current will power. You must spend an hour of your day as well, so it really becomes a resource management game. Your highest roll plus your strength will then go against the monsters equivalent number, and the difference between the two is removed from the losing players will power. This continues until one players will power is reduced to zero. At which point, if you win, you claim the bonus will power or strength and the monster is banished. If you lose, you lose one strength, but more importantly, have wasted a lot of time. This is all clearly labelled on the board with this clever chart. MINOR SPOILER - scroll down to below the picture if you want to avoid. The monsters you face will mostly be the first three shown on this chart, but the odd bigger monster will appear along the way. Including one of three in the final battle in legend four. This is a minor spoiler I suppose but you pop them all out at the start of the game, and see them. The only thing that is a minor spoiler is that you will only face one of these, not all three. They all offer a quite different final battle experience which does make replaying the final legend worth while. Two of the monsters below will come up, the other is a character you will work with to avoid the picture being too much of a spoiler for anyone who scrolled passed this paragraph. I would recommend this game to anyone who was a fan of the original Andor games. If you haven't played them yet, you do not need to play them in order, although I would suggest you do. If this intrigues you, I would get the first game before getting this. However if you have not played Andor, like the idea of this, and prefer the theme of the eternal frost in this game, then by all means, go ahead and jump right in. This game will not spoil any other game in the series. The story is the main thing that will pull you in. And I love the way the cards that detail the story and your game objectives work so well. The experience is close to flawless as you traverse the four legends. When you get to this encounter token on space 450 for example, read the matching card with the same image. It all works so well. However, there were two moments when the name of the card that was referenced for me to go read was simply wrong. I presume a translation error? It was frustrating to take my head out of the game on these two occasions and have to work out which card they meant. It wasn't hard to do this, there was only one other card it could have been and the names were similar. But in a game all about the story, you want to stay in it at all times. But when you are in the story, which is 99% of the time, it is absorbing, exciting, intriguing, and a lot of fun to play. I am unsure how soon it will be until I try these four legends again, but the four legends in the box were excellent and a 10/10 experience for me. I score this an 8 simply as I ask the question, is four legends enough?

My Island WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count: 2-4 You’ll like this if you like: My City, Kingdomino. Published by: BLAM ! Designed by: KOSMOS This is a review copy. See our review policy here This will be a spoiler free review. My City was a big success for us. However, we stopped on game 21 out of 24. I will finish it one day, but it got a bit samey for us. I gave it a seven on BGG. You can watch me play the first three games here if you want. It's pretty spoiler free as its just the first three games. I liked the idea more than the game I think. My Island has a more interesting theme and it uses hex tiles instead of polyomino tiles which I have found a lot more palatable for my brain. But is it better? Do you need both? Let's get it to the table and see how it plays? How To Set Up My Island Each player will take a board, placed the main side up. The other side is the forever game to play incorporating rules from the first few chapters. Take the tiles with your chosen colour matching the symbol on the top left of your board and one cream cube, which you place on the ten space. Shuffle the deck of cards and place them into a central space. You are now ready to play. This is the forever board side. This can be sued for infinite amount of games once you have finished the legacy side. How To Play My Island Flip the top card and each player will find the matching shape. This shape must be placed onto their board, with at least one hex starting on a beach. Subsequent shapes must touch a matching coloured hex and you can only place tiles onto the outer beach tiles and the inner heath spaces. If you ever cannot or do not want to place a tile you can leave it off your board at the sacrifice of one point. Each time you place a hex with an orange building icon on the beach you will instantly gain one point. And it is this simple for the first game. Keep playing until you deice you stop, which you can do at any point, or the cards run out. At the end of the round you will lose one point for any visible beach space still remaining, so this is your focus for game one. Game two will work almost the same but now you will score three points whenever you place three or more green path hexes next to each other. Game three the paths now need to be five hexes or more long and they will now score you five points. And the next layer of hexes on the pam tree spaces can now be built on. When you are done with this third chapter its time to open the second envelope which will give you new components and rules for the next three games. This continues through for the next eight envelopes and 24 games. The will be new components, stickers to add to your board, new rules, stickers, twists, and did I mention the stickers? There are a lot of stickers! in gams seven to nine I add six stickers all to the same hex! Is It Fun? My Island Legacy Board Game Review It is hard to review this fully without spoiling what is in the envelopes. But don't worry, I wouldn't do that to you. But the pink Elephant in the last envelope sure is unexpected! Don't worry, there isn't really a pink Elephant in the last envelope. It's in the seventh one. The first six games are all pretty simple. New ways to score are added at a nice pace and there is a nice gentle development of the game. Games seven to nine ramp up a bit with some interesting new ways to score and things to achieve that make the decisions you make a little more complex. Game seven was the first time I scored under ten, but this quickly changed as you work out the ways the game now wants you to play. From game ten onwards the game ramps up and the changes feel bigger. There is a nice progression as you go. And the story certainly is interesting. Not what you may expect at all! Is the pay off enough? I would say, no. But do you need a pay off? Set your expectations to developments and changes rather than a massive shock or change and I think you will be happy. People have been spoilt by other legacy games and the way they throw unexpected curve balls that rip up the fundamentals of the game. This won't do that. But you will get new things that will make what you do completely different. Your board will evolve, the things you play on will too. Just have realistic expectations. If you enjoyed My City then get this. You will like it just the same if not a little bit more. If My City wasn't for you, this won't be either. It is very similar with the only real difference being the shapes you are using now. I gave My City a 7. This gets an 8.5. I prefer this style of tile laying over the first games polyominos. But I did also prefer the progression and pace of the game. It is a better experience and one I would certainly encourage you check out.

Monikers: Monikers-er WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 4-16 You’ll like this if you like: Charades, most party games! Published by: CMYK Designed by: Alex Hague, Justin Vickers This is a review copy. See our review policy here What more is there to say about Monikers? It's one of the best selling and popular party games ever made. Like many games of this ilk, it's the polished and published version of something many if you may have played at home already, simply with paper and pen. You probably had a great time with it, and for me, the question may be less about if this game is any good, and more, do you need to pay for it? Well, to answer that, let's get this new standalone expansion to the table, and see for our selves. How To Set-Up Monikers: Monikers-er As you might expect in a party game this is very easy to set up. Simply split into two teams, grabs some cards and begin! Now, the official rules has a set number of cards based on player count, but obviously this is up to you based on how long you want to play for. But you can give each player this amount of cards, they will then choose four to eight from this, depending on player count, and these are then shuffled into the one deck used in the game. If you want to make the game suitable for younger players simply remove the cards with the pumpkin symbols shown on them. How To Play Monikers: Monikers-er Now, taking it in turns, teams will have one player from their team try and describe as many cards as possible to their team in one minute from the chosen deck of cards. Players are trying to guess what is written on the card, and the describer can say anything they like to make them guess correctly, other than the words on the card. It's up to your group how strict you police the clues and the answers that are given, the rule book suggests you err on the side of fun! Teams will take it in turns to play like this, one minute rounds, until the deck is extinguished. There are no limits to how many passes you can make, the game suggests you don't worry about that too much, and just try and keep the game moving. Keep the game fun! Teams will score points based on the cards they managed to complete and the score shown on the bottom of each card. Harder cards reward with bigger points. Then, the fun really begins! In round two, the teams will continue to do the same thing, but now they can only use one word! It sounds a lot harder than it is, but of course the cards you are using are the same from round one, so you already know all the answers. But can you remember them? Don't worry if not. Just shout out random answers from round one until you stumble onto the correct one! There is no limit to how many answers you can try. In the final round, players now have to use the power of charades to direct the teams into the right direction. It is hilarious, often terrible, sometimes genius, but always fun! It is always enjoyable to see the call backs from the things players said about the cards from the previous rounds. It always amazes me how certain things now associate with almost unrelated words, simply from the links made in the previous rounds. There are a few expansions out there with some ideas for a crazy fourth round. When we used to play this with paper and pen we then did a fourth round with sounds only, or "just the eyes!" Which trust me, can work! It's up to you how far you want to take it! Is It Fun? Monikers: Monikers-er Board Game Review If you are unsure if this is fun, perhaps this won't be for you. But, if by now you are itching to play this with your family or friends, I would suggest you do not hesitate and just get it. Sure, you could play on your own with paper and pen, but the game is not expensive and the production is very good. Having a published version like this full game takes away the need for players to have to write out the answers to start with, which can be tedious, and lead to some dreary people on occasions. Monikers also brings in very interesting cards, other than just celebrities, which was how I used to play it. Phrases, words, films, places, all sorts of wierd and wonderful things come up. And interestingly, at different point scoring options too. Each card also explains what the word is too, so if you are unsure, you can pass, or quickly read the description and that may help give inspiration for what you want to say or do. There is some value to having a full published version. As such, I would encourage everyone to buy this. If you enjoy party games, and especially have fun with the loud shouty, belly-laugh ones, then this should be in your collection. Buy any version. They all offer a lot of the same. This expansion is the newest, and has 330 new cards in the deck. You can play alone, or add to other versions. Whatever you want. There are some cards that may not be suitable for younger players, but they are clearly marked and easily removed if you want a family friendly version. But they are not that raunchy or anything to be worried about.

Ancient Knowledge WBG Score: 8.5/10 Player Count: 2-4 You’ll like this if you like: Tapestry, 51st State. Published by: IELLO Designed by: Rémi Mathieu This is a review copy. See our review policy here Ancient Knowledge is from first time designer Rémi Mathieu. It blows me away when new designers are able to create such deep and rich game experiences. Or maybe there were just a load of failures that never made it to BGG!? Either way, Rémi Mathieu has created a thing of absolute beauty with Ancient Knowledge. The game, I think, looks stunning. But how does it play? Let's get it to the table and find out. How To Set Up Ancient Knowledge Each player takes a board and places it in front of them, leaving space either side and above for more cards to be placed. Shuffle the main deck of cards and deal each player ten cards, from this they will choose a starting hand of six cards, and discard the other four. For someone's first game it is advised to give them a starting deck of six cards, shown by the symbol on the bottom right of some of the cards. Next, lay out the three technology tracks on the board, placing three cards from the level one deck onto the first two tracks, and three cards from the level two deck onto the third. Finally place the tablet tokens into a central area, decide who will be the first player and give them the first player token, and you are now ready to play. How To Play Ancient Knowledge Players will take it in turns to carry out two actions until the end game trigger occurs. This is when one player has 14 or more cards in their 'past.' I will explain that in a bit. Play continues until all players have had the same amount of turns, which could mean no more turns, depending on which player triggered this, and then final scoring occurs. Players are looking to play Monument play cards into their play area to score points, and trigger various card combos to increase their turn efficiencies. On each players turn they can carry out two actions, this can be any combination of five options. Two are very simple and just involve getting cards. You can either take one card from the top of the pile, or if you have cards in your 'past' you can rotate them 90 degrees to draw two new cards. Another option is to take one of the nine face up cards on the tech tracks adding it to the right of your board. The cards from the first two tracks help with your in game powers and abilities, whilst cards from the bottom track help with end game points. Another option allows players to discard a card to remove negative points in the shape of knowledge tokens, more on that later. The final two options are to play Monument cards to the top of your player board or to play an Artefact onto your board. Playing Monuments is the main part of the game and how you will gain most of your powers and points. This is a tableau building engine builder, although your tableau keeps changing and your engine has movable parts. This is the genius of the game! When you play an Artefact card, simply lay it down into one of the five spaces on your player board. You can never have more than five of these cards in play at once, and you can only remove them if a card has specific instruction to do so. Otherwise, they remain in play and offer in game powers at various stages of the game. The main action is to play the Monument cards. Each Monument card has one of three different symbols. Either the blue Stone Henge, the red Pantheon, or the green Chichén Itzá symbol. (Yes, I googled that!) They also have a number in a circle, showing which location above your board they must be placed. You can discard a card from your hand to place them into a different location if you chose. For each card you discard you can move one column. Unless it has a padlock symbol on, in which case it has to go to its specific location. Each card will show a number next to a Knowledge symbol. Sometimes this will be zero, in which case you don't need to worry, but otherwise, you must place the shown number of Knowledge tokens onto the card as you place it. If these are not removed by a certain point, they will score you minus points at the end of the game. Once a player has carried out their two actions, play moves to the Timeline phase. This is when all cards with the Timeline symbol are activated. Cards such as the ones shown below will now allow players certain powers such as to change their hand of cards or remove Knowledge tokens. Play then moves to the final Decline phase, in which all Monument cards in the active rows move left one column. Any card in the number one spot will move into the players 'past' which means they are now stored vertically to the left of the player board. This is where cards can later be rotated 90 degrees to excavate and draw two cards. Some cards have a specific power that is activated before they are put into the past, look out for cards such as the below with the Decline symbol, and carry out the required actions before you move them down. Any remaining Knowledge tokens on cards that are put into the players past are moved onto the space for them on the players board. They will count as negative points during final scoring. Play will then move to the next player. When one player has seven or more cards in their past, the middle Tech track is flipped from a one to a two side, and players now have access to more level two tech cards. This allows players to plan for the final scoring in a more efficient way, whilst acting as a reminder to all players about the stage of the game they are in. When someone reaches seven cards in their past, typically you will be two thirds through the game. Give or take. Whenever a player has 14 or more cards in their past, the end game triggers. All players continue until they have all had the same number of turns, then final scoring begins. Player will score points for all Monument cards in their past based on the cards score, as well as for any additional scoring some cards offer. They will also score for the level two tech cards, and an additional one point for any card still in their active Monument row. They will then subtract any Knowledge tokens on their board and total their final score. Is It Fun? Ancient Knowledge Board Game Review Ancient Knowledge is an incredibly slick and well oiled machine. There are so many cards. Soooooo many. 144 in fact. But you will fly through them, even in lower player counts. Through the course of every game I have played I have always found a way to manipulate my hand to get what I wanted. Sometimes it takes some time. But you have a bit of time in this game. And you can always build for later scoring opportunities even when you don't have everything you need right now. Or if you don't quite know what you will get! The ways you can combo the cards together to do this is incredibly satisfying. They are flexible, numerous, but powerful. The only negative I would say is that knowing the deck and how the cards work together is a big advantage. It would be hard to play this evenly with players who have a mixed experience of the game. However, when teaching this, I have gone through 20-30 cards briefly during the teach to try and accelerate each players understanding of the deck and this does help new players to catch up. Teaching the game is a breeze. It takes a few minutes. So, I think it is worth spending time on the deck for new players to over come this new player disadvantage. It feels like there is so much control in this game. There are so many options available to you in terms of what strategy you employ. Will you go big on the tech cards, or work to get your Artefacts down early to increase your powers as you play? Perhaps you will focus on building Monuments early to control the pace and length of the game? The cards themselves have multiple options too. Either cards that score high but have bigger things that need to be done that are harder to fulfil in order to score. Or cards with lower scoring opportunities, but can be scored quickly and easily. There are a few cards in the deck that directly attack another player, which works fine in a two player game, but in higher player counts it feels off. You will typically attack the leading player, but that is not always apparent. So, it feels unfairly targeted and spiteful at times. These cards can be easily burned in the game for other uses, or simply removed before you start. Although it is not easy to find them. However, I would say this game is perfect at two players anyway. The game can be a little slow with three or four. Especially if it's with players new to the game and still learning the deck. If you plan to play with the same three or four all the time, then fine. Players can make their choices quicker when they know the deck. But the downtime between turns can be long with newer players, as people check their cards out. As discussed, there are a lot of ways to cycle the deck and get new cards. You need to read each one when you get it to understand if it will work for you or not. This can be frustrating to watch and wait for. Especially if you have planned out your turn and know you can get it over in seconds. Some turns do fly by, whereas others have combos and knock effects, and can run for a lot longer. Especially if you have a lot of Timeline powers. This is fine with two players, but can drag a little with more players. The card art is stunning and the theme is interesting, but in truth, as I play, I do not really consider the card art or theme at all. In this respect, the game reminds me a little of Tapestry. Another combo-tastic civilisation style game, that has amazing art, but feels more mechanic led than thematical as you play. But I do not care about this for either game as it is just so much fun to play. Finding a group of cards that work well together and score well for me is incredibly satisfying. Starting each game and staring at that big deck of cards feels exciting. I am anxious to find out which cards I will get my hands on, and enjoy the process of trying to find a group of cards that will push me to victory. I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys games where cards allow them to do clever things. I think you need to think hard about the player count you will play this at. 2-4 is all fine, but not so much for the higher player counts if you are playing with new people all the time. It has the perfect mid-weight crunch I love in games. An hour or so, depending on player count, but a meaty and satisfying experience. With minimal rules and simple set up. This game delivers a lot with mainly just cards. Well worth checking out.