Search Results

Oros WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Azul, Labyrinth Published by: Aesc Games Designed by: Brandt Brinkerhoff Oros successfully funded on Kickstarter, raising close to $300k from just shy of five thousand backers. It is the perfect Kickstarter click bait. It looks great. Offers intriguing mechanisms, and was priced very reasonably at 50 bucks for the base game. But, does it live up to the hype? Let's get it to the table and find out. Set Up First lay out the board. It is double sided, suited for different size games and player counts. Then, using the easy-to-copy guides in the rule book, lay out your starting tiles and volcano pieces. There are various options to give you different flavours of game. Then, give each person a player mat, and all the pieces in their colour. Place your wisdom caps on the bottom line, with three followers on the spaces on the left side of the board, three off the board ready to be used, and the final two on the journey and build spots. Next to your board, place your nine sacred sites tiles and foresight tokens. Finally, lay out all the tiles, arranged into their numbered groups, along with the volcano pieces. If you are playing with two people or solo, you will need to set up the automa mat. Simply take one of the unused god boards, flip it over, and set up the automa cards, shuffled on the top face down, along with the wisdom pieces (minus two) and the followers laid at the bottom of the board. The automa works after all human players have had their turn, and works very simply. Turn the top card over and carry out the instructions top to bottom. The top action will usually be to send a follower to a built site, or to study, add a mountain tile, build a sacred site, or return your followers from study. The middle action sees you move a row or column or remove a tile. The bottom action will score the automa points. How To Play Starting with the first player, players will now take it in turns to carry out three actions. Your first action must be to place one of your followers onto any single island tiles. The tiles will be made up of pieces worth one to four. The islands are one tiles, and have a small amount of land, surrounded by water. You know, like islands! Your next two actions can be whatever you choose from the six available at the bottom of your board. To carry out an action, move a follower onto the chosen space and then carry it out. You cannot move a follower onto a space that already has an existing one there. Planning ahead and deciding which follower to move to carry out an action is as important as choosing what actions to do. You need to ensure you free up the spaces you want to do that turn. You can also carry out the same action more than once in a turn. So you could could move a follower onto journey for example, and carry out that action, then move that same follower off Journey onto another spot, carry that action, and then move any other follower back onto the now freed up follower spot to carry our follow for a second time. All on the same turn. Planning is key. Your plans will all be based around being on the right spot on the board at the right time, in order to maximise your points. A big part of this comes from building your sacred sites. There are three levels to each site. An "L" shaped bottom Monolith piece A two-spaced middle Shine piece. And a single-spaced top Temple piece. You can only ever build on mountains, and only once per mountain. In order to complete all three sacred sites on the same mountain, three separate players will need to build once each. This is why you need a third dummy player for a two-player game. Each player is working alone, and the person with the most points at the end wins. But for the sacred sites, you are in a way working together. Although, you will often take a spot and build where another player wanted too, you need to all at some point in the game have been on the same land tile if you want to build a second or third level sacred site. Building these sites is important as they will allow you to score points, gain wisdom (we will come to that soon) and gain more spaces for your followers to study. The six actions are as follows: Shift. This allows you to move entire rows or columns one, two, or three spaces. Move. This allows you to move one, two, or three tiles as a group one space in either direction. If tiles moved in this way collide with another tile, then new land is formed. This will seem complicated at first but quickly makes sense. A One value land tile hitting a Two value land tile will make a three. Two tiles with a value of Two will make a Four. And two Fours makes a mountain. Later in the game you can unlock a power to make a Three and a Four tile make a mountain. Erupt. During set up, and at other parts of the game such as when the first player gets to the Five or Ten space of the Ascension track, new Volcanoes are formed. You can also build new volcanoes using this action, or erupt existing ones. This is another way to form new land and like the Move action, will come together in your mind very quickly. If a Volcano with a value of Two were to erupt on a land tile with a value of One, then you would simply remove the volcano and tile from the board and replace them with a new land tile with a value of Three. The rule books suggests you look at the volcano's as "pent up land waiting to spill out." if the volcano fills up the land and still have some unused power left over, new land tiles will be formed in any orthogonal space you choose. The only rule is the new line of land tiles must all be in a straight line, until you unlock the power to do otherwise of course! Send or Return from Study. At the end of the game, any follower in study will score you points based on how far you managed to get all your wisdom trackers. Returning them from study during the game is one way to raise your wisdom. When you have unlocked the power to do so, sending followers to study on new sacred sites you have built is also the only way to get new followers onto the board. Journey. This is how you will move your followers when they are on the main board. You can only move to land that is connected, and that shares an edge where land is present on both tiles. Followers can move through spaces where other followers are, but cannot end there, unless there is a sacred site to hold them. Build. This is how you build your sacred sites. You need to be on a mountain space, with a follower present, and have the required sacred site tile. For example, if the base "L" shaped Monolith had been built, you need to two-spaced Shrine tile available by your player board. After you build the site, you will place your worker on that tile onto the site. So, if you want to subsequently move that follower off the tile, they first need to move down from the site. Moving from the top Temple spot will take one action to go down to the Shrine, another to get down to the Monolith, and then a final movement to climb down to the tile itself. It is worth keeping Followers on the shrines though, as when other players build sites on a tile where you have a follower studying you will gain a Wisdom. Benefiting from another players turn. When the first player reaches the top of the Ascension track, each players who have not done so, will complete their final turn in that round, and the final scores are tallied. There is a convenient score pad for this, which is incredibly useful. Players will score for four main areas. First, their final position on the Ascension track. Second, you can unlock points on the Shift, Move, Erupt, and Study spaces on the player board, up to seven for each one. Third, for each follower studying at the end of the game will score you points based on which horizon line you reached. You will see on the board, where the three extra workers were paced during set up, three yellow arrows. If you can get the first five wisdom trackers to this level, you will unlock an extra follower, and then score one, two, or three points for each follower in study. Finally, you will score zero to seven points for each Temple, Shrine, and Monolith you built based on how high your wisdom in each area rose during the game. Moving wisdom up the tracks is crucial to your end game score as you can now see. But they help during the game as well. When you move wisdom trackers up you will unlock new abilities. Winning Oros is largely focused around building sacred sites but how you score from this will vary game to game, based on your strategy with your growth in wisdom. Do you want to get as many followers into study positions and grow your wisdom in the first five tracks to forth level to gain points that way? Would you rather focus on building just one or two type of sites and grow your wisdom on those tracks? Or perhaps, you would like to grow your wisdom in a few of the first five tracks to gain points there? Is It Fun? There are a few elements of Oros that feel interestingly unique. As such, it took me a few games to fully understand the strategy required to do well in this game. My first three games I scored largely the same points. But as I started to understand the movement of the tiles more, I was able to manipulate the board to suit my needs and become more efficient with my turns. But games of Oros move quick, so you either need to learn quick, or play it a few times. You only need one person to get to fifteen on the Ascension track to end the game. When you build a sacred site you will ascend twice. And you cannot ever be on the same spot on the Ascension board as another player. So, if you were to move two spaces from 12 to 14 for example, but someone else was on the 14th spaces, you will instead move to 15 and end the game. As players tend to build at similar times in the game, I found that the score markers will move up together and often benefit from this rule two to four times each game. Meaning you only need to build four or five sites out of the nine you have to end a game. I also mention this as when you first play Oros, I would wager you will think to yourself, "How will I ever score a point?" Everything seems so far away in terms of geography on the board and the amount of actions you will need to get to any point scoring opportunities. But it all changes very quickly, and the game will race away. If you are not efficient with your turns, you will fall behind, and lose. And there is minimal learning time in a solo or two player game, as the Automa knows what it is doing from turn one! I lost my first two games to the Automa. This could discourage people from wanting to play this. Learning how the tiles move can also do that. It initially looks complicated and limited. Players can find themselves adrift in terms of strategy and points, but also in terms of being too far away from the other players to be able to build on the mountains they are building on. However, when you learn all the clever ways you can manipulate the board, you will start to see the genius of Oros and enjoy the process a lot more. Let's tale a look at the board more closely and discuss this. The board is flat, but this is no flat earth! This is a globe. You need to imagine it as such, and see how the edges are connected. Not just with the arrows shown in the four corners. But all edges. When you unlock the ability to move tiles diagonally on the third spot on the Move track, you will start to see how things can change quite radically in a few quick turns. The options are almost endless. Turns can become very clever indeed. This does open the opportunity for some pretty serious delays in the game as people think out their options but the game has a pretty clever way to help with that. We mentioned the foresight tiles during set up. These are six tokens that all look the same on the back. But on the front, three show a number of one, two, or three. The others are blank. This allows you to plan your your three actions prior to your turn, placing these tiles under the spaces you want to carry them out, but face down so other players cannot see what you are up to. They will just see six identical tiles. Now, of course, when it comes to your turn, it won't always work out that you can do exactly what you wanted as other players will have manipulated the board in ways that you perhaps could not have predicated. But most the time, this works out and really does help speed up the game. I also found it a very useful way to remember how many turns I'd had! Some actions can have quite a knock on effect adding new volcanos, tiles, moving wisdom trackers, scoring Ascension points, building sacred sites, etc. It can become very easy to loose track without the use of these markers. The board can get crowded and the spaces are perhaps a little too small, but I found you can stack the followers quite easily like this when needed, which helped a lot! I can also see how the double sided player boards in the deluxe version would be very beneficial as the Wisdom trackers do slide about a bit. It can also be tricky to slide the tiles between each other. When moving a lot of tiles, which happens a lot, I found I was often spending a fair bit of time rearranging tiles I had knocked accidently. Perhaps the Neoprene map sorts this? Other than that, the production here is fantastic, and it all looks great. Each tile is individually designed with some cool little hidden Easter eggs to look out for. The rule book lists them all and you can have fun crossing each one you find off, if you like. The learning curve for the strategy is a little higher than the game first suggests. You can teach the rules pretty easily but you wont be able to learn the strategy for a game or two. This may put some people off and affect their opinion of the game from those first few experiences. But I would encourage anyone who likes clever tile laying games to give this a try. It feels special. The tile movement is unique. When you start to understand this more and can manipulate the board in ways you previously had not seen, it feels great. The satisfaction from seeing your scores rise, the amount of wisdom trackers reaching higher spots, and your ability to enact more efficient moves is all very enjoyable and brings a great sense of reward, win or lose. This is a beautiful looking puzzle to work on. It feels great to develop your understanding and knowledge of this game. I love the multiple routes to victory that you can take. The game does focus around the main task of building sacred sites. But the way you can then build from that and develop your player board and score points is down to you. Each game offers a new set of challenges based on your opponents action, initial set-up of tiles and chosen strategy, and I can see this game being played many more times before it is ever mastered. A challenge I happily accept.

Legacy Of Yu WBG Score: 9.5 Player Count: 1 You’ll like this if you like: Hadrian's Wall, Ganz Schon Clever, Robinson Crusoe. Published by: Garphill Games Designed by: Shem Phillips I will start this by making a fairly bold statement. This is the best solo game I have ever played. I love Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth, but the set up and tear down is such a hassle. Robinson Crusoe is fantastic, but just a little too hard and a little too long to get a high number of plays in. I adore Nemo's War but like Robinson Crusoe, it takes up just a little too much space and time to be something I can go back to that regularly. These are all brilliant games. But Legacy of Yu is better. Why? Let's get it to the table to find out in this SPOILER FREE review. Set Up Getting Legacy of Yu to the table is so simple. It takes just a few minutes. Simply place the board on the table and then take out all the cards. If this is your first game, this is simple, just unwrap the two packs of cards and sort via the backs. If this is a repeat game, the box stores everything just in the right place for you. Look... You can simply remove this insert and use as storage holders if you like, or decant into separate bowls or just piles on the table. Whatever works for you. Place four Hut cards into the bottom right spaces. Place six canal cards into the six spaces on the right of the canal. Lay out six townsfolk cards onto the top row and one Barbarian card in the far right space. Deal ten townsfolk cards to yourself, placing six in the space in the middle on the bottom left of the board, and the other four will be your starting hand. Place the deck of townsfolk and Barbarian cards at the top of the board, the townsfolk on the left and the Barbarians on the right. Then get the victory and defeat cards. Shuffle the blue and black cards but keep the yellow cards separate. There is one specific to each pile. Then place these two piles, with the yellow card on the bottom of each by the board. Next, place the four purple outposts, the four green Huts and the three orange farms into their designated spaces. Finally, place the flood into the first space on the canal, and the barge onto the second spot. You are now ready to play. Set up for follow up games will change a little as you unlock new cards and rules, but this will be very easily explained as you go. How to Win There is only one way to win Legacy of Yu. You must build all six sections of the canal and survive to the end of the final round when you build the last space. If you achieve this, take the top card of the victory deck and read the designated space in the story book. However, there are three ways to lose, and you will lose some games. If the flood ever moves onto the same space at the barge or off the board, you lose. If you ever have to place seven barbarians on the character spaces, you lose. If you ever need to destroy a townsfolk card and have none left to destroy, you lose. If either of these three things happen, draw the top card from the defeat deck and read the matching section in the story book. Don't despair if this happens, as the game will now give you something to make subsequent games a little easier. New cards, rules, and other surprises that I won't ruin here will be revealed. But, yes! You guessed it, if you win, the game gets a little harder. This is a brilliant balancing mechanic that keeps all the games tight. You will play multiple games until you either win or lose seven games in total and draw the final yellow victory or defeat card. When this is done, the game will show you how to pack it all up, reset, and go again. This took me about 15 minutes to reset after I played (and lost) my first campaign. I won four games and lost seven if you're interested. It was epic. How to Play Each round starts with a Harvest phase where you will take cards and items based on what you have unlocked so far. This is shown clearly on the board. Anything with the yellow sunrise symbol over the blue river icon is taken. It starts off with just four cards, one white worker, a cowrie shell, and a provision, but you can quickly build this up by building farms, and playing cards to boost your harvest in later rounds. Once your harvest is done you can then take actions. And this is solo remember, no waiting around, just crack on. You must use every card in your hand for one of the four available actions, but you can hold back resources and workers for later rounds if you choose. The first thing the cards can be used for is to claim the items or worker shown with the brown background, placing them into your exhaust pile to be shuffled back into your hand later. Or you can discard permanently from the game (just this game, not later games) to gain additional benefits shown in the red background as well as the brown. The cards also show food icons which is the third way to use the card, this will be explained when you open up new rules that I cannot explain here, but it is very simple and becomes a key part of the mid- campaign story. The forth thing you can do with your cards is tuck them into an available space under the board to gain extra benefits in all subsequent harvest phases. You start with just one space to do this, but you can unlock more spots buy building more huts. The workers and resources you gather this way can be used to do multiple things. Your main goal is to build the canals, but you can only do this once per round. To build the canal, discard the required shells and workers shown in the canal card, then remove the card to show the new trading post underneath. Place the barge off the table, to remind you that you have taken this action this round. If you want you can place the barge onto the convenient space on the back of the rule book which also shows the round structure and key icons for the game. I leave this out next to the board as I play. You will then get the benefits shown on the canal card, as well as having to destroy a number of townsfolk cards who were sadly lost during the building process. They are now out of this particular game. But, there is no other way sadly. Health and safety during the reign of Emperor Yao was infamously poor. You must also pay close attention to the Barbarians that are above the board. The first round starts with just one, but more will come. As you remove the canal spaces, icons will appear that mean that more Barbarian cards will be added during later refresh phases. They multiply quickly and you need to stay on top of them to avoid what was for me, the most common way to lose. To defeat them, you must first pay the cost required to reach their location, either one, two, or three provisions. This is clearly shown on the board under the space that the card is located. Then pay the required workers, shown on the card itself. These are exhausted in the process of fighting off the Barbarian. The card is then discarded and you gain the benefits on the right of the card. But most importantly, you have avoided becoming overrun, for now. Along the top row, alongside the Barbarians, will be new townsfolk, eager to join your tribe. The first card on the left is always available for free, you can simply move it down into your exhausted pile, ready to be shuffled back into your hand on a later turn. Or, you could take both the brown and red benefits right away if you discard the card out of the game, but this is a risk. Getting new cards is key as you will go through your deck quickly. Many will fall and you need to try to avoid running out. You can buy other townsfolk cards further along the row for one, two, or maybe even three provisions. If you have the required resource, this is very much advised. The next thing you can do on your turn is to spend workers and provisions to build farms, huts, and outposts. The cost is clearly shown on the board. Simply discard the required resources and move the chosen building to one of the designated locations below the canal. You start with just one location to build in, but as you develop more of the canal, more spaces to build on will appear. This is a very clever way to stop you ignoring other parts of the game and just building all your buildings at the start. Everything is so delicately and expertly balanced. You need to work across all areas at the right pace to succeed. Even the resources are perfectly balanced, and limited to the perfect number. If they run out, they run out. You need to plan accordingly for all things, sometimes spending before you gain if you can see there are none of a specific type left when you are about to get some more. Building farms improves your subsequent harvest turns. Building Outposts means workers can be used more more actions. Building huts allows you to open up new worker placement spots on the board to carry out new actions. You start unsurprisingly with just one spot like this, where you can place a worker to gain a provision. But as you build more huts, you can open spaces to do more exciting and useful things. The final thing you can do on your turn is trade. As above you start with just one trade post, but building more of the canal will open up new, more powerful places to trade. This is a great way to turn one thing into another, and balance your resources to carry out the actions you need to. Once you are done, return the barge to the next unbuilt canal card, if you built this round. Doing this reminds you that you can only build once per round, and keeps your focus on the space between the flood and the barge. Then, for any remaining barbarians that you did not defeat this round, you will now suffer attacks from them. Each card will show the consequence of an attack on the bottom of the card. Generally it will mean you lose one of your townsfolk. But you can bribe most of the barbarians, paying the shown cost of worker or resource instead. It is still a loss, but not as severe. Then, finally, refresh the top row of townsfolk cards and barbarians, adding more based on how many barbarian symbols you have uncovered so far and filling the remining spaces with new townsfolk. You are now ready to go again, with another, hopefully improved harvest round. Keep playing until the victory conditions are met, or one of the many ways to lose inevitably catches up with you, such as the flood catching up with your barge as shown above. The flood moves forward every time you need to draw a new townsfolk card, but your ready pile is empty and you need to shuffle your discard pile. Is It Fun? Legacy of Yu is a brilliant game. It is so well made. So well balanced. So well structured. I cannot begin to explain how much I enjoyed the process of learning and playing this. But, I will try. You know, because this is a review and all. Each game is so tight. I lost a fair few games, but every time, it was close. When I won, it was often the same. Everything is balanced to perfection, and continues to be like this as you play. No matter how good you become as the campaign balances out your wins by making it harder. Or a little easier if you lose. Each game ends with new cards being added. I won't go into the specifics as that will ruin part of the surprise if you were to play this yourself. But what I will say is that when you add news things, you immediately will want to play again. Each game lasts between 20-50 minutes. Quicker, if you lose fast. I did once lose in round two! But no matter the game length, you will always want just one more game. When you are finished with the campaign and draw either the seventh victory or defeat card, the story book will lead you to a little end game story before encouraging you to reset and go again. Resetting took me around 15 minutes. The box storage is designed so well, you can very easily pack it all away and be ready to go again in a matter of moments. As a solo game, the bulk of the experience will be you staring at the board, trying to work out the puzzle of these very limited resources, and multiple ticking time bombs. Processing how best to take your limited actions, and what best way to use the multi-use cards. If you like making tough decisions, you will love this game. It is full of moments like that. Every turn. Every round. Every game. Often, when you carry out an action, it will cause something else to happen. There are so many opportunities for cascading turns in this game. Much like many other games by designer Shem Phillips, you will be overjoyed by the amount of moments that doing one thing will lead to another, and another. But be warned. With the cascading turns, you can get lost and forget to do something if you don't pay close attention. If that sort of thing annoys you, this game may not be for you. I often did this as the campaign developed and new rules opened up. I would often forget that doing "X" would now lead to "Y" and I would neglect to gain my extra benefit. It's up to you during these times if you want to retrospectively claim what you missed, or keep plodding on. But it will happen. I say, don't worry too much when it does. The game itself is a beautifully composed puzzle that I love playing. I would score this individually as an 8. But the campaign on top adds a wonderful narrative and continuing story arc that develops (over the course of 7-13 games, depending on how many you win or lose), that drives up my score to a 9.5. It makes you want to keep coming back for more. This is all contained in the story book and deck. Often you will see a gold turtle icon with a number on. When you do, turn to the section in the book and read what it says. It will often send you to the story deck to add new cards which brings in new rules, characters, and other surprises. It works seamlessly and is very easy to navigate your way through. If you pause between games, the inlay allows you to everything pack away very easily. If you choose to play on, resetting the game takes just a few minutes. And trust me, you will want to keep playing. I found myself playing nine games in a row once. I came up for air a good few hours later, hungry, thirsty, and very much in the need of a big stretch! But very content. After I finished my first campaign, the cards on the left was what I had seen and used. The cards on the right were all unused. And this was with an 11 game campaign. You could be done in 7 if you win or loose every game. There is a lot of content in this game. It has divergent paths, largely dictated by winning or losing and how you lose. Different things will appear each time depending on how you play the game. I lost most games by being over run by the barbarians, so the things that changed in my first campaign helped me with that. But in later campaigns, I found other things were changing based on how I was now doing in the game. It really is very clever and makes you feel you are in safe hands as you play. Something very important to me in a solo experience. I like solo gaming. But I certainly don't love it. But I do love this game. The issue for me with solo games that have some complexity is I feel a little lonely setting it up. Playing a big game just by myself makes me a little sad. Legacy of Yu does not make me feel like that as it sets up and packs away all so quickly and simply. I want a complex, strategic game, ideally with a strong narrative when I play solo, to absorb me and replace the social aspect of multiplayer gaming. But with minimal set-up and tear down. Legacy of Yu does that. I want the game to pull me back, game after game so that I feel a reason to keep going. Legacy of Yu absolutely does that too. Legacy of Yu for me is the perfect solo experience, and the only reason why I score it a 9.5 instead of a 10 is that each experience does not change that much, game to game. It certainly does change. Just not quite enough for me to give it a 10. I would have liked a few more big explosive moments in the story arc to really surprise me. I was expecting them and they didn't come. But you now know this won't be happening, hopefully you can prepare yourself for what this game is all about if you do give it a play. Legacy of Yu is a strategic, almost perfectly balanced solo puzzle that will wrap you up in its delightful style and engaging story and whisk you away to a simpler time. A time that happens to be full of devastating floods and rampaging barbarians.

Excavation Earth WBG Score: 9 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Brass: Birmingham, Power Grid, Bonfire. Published by: Mighty Boards Designed by: Gordon Calleja, Dávid Turczi, Wai Yee Excavation Earth is an intriguing game. When I look at the board and rulebook for this game I see a modern classic euro game that looks fantastic, offers interesting rules and mechanics, and plays incredibly smoothly. When I play it, I see that is only touching the sides of what is a delightfully simple but at the same time, wonderfully complex game. A huge contradiction? Sure. But that is the intrigue of this game. As such, I am baffled by opinions such as this. It leaves me wondering what am I missing? As subjectively and objectively, this is a great game. I can certainly see why it wouldn't be for everyone. It is a little confusing for the first game, and understanding the complexities of the trading mechanic does take a game or two. Not everyone will want to do that. But that's a good thing. We don't all need to enjoy every game. And reviewing this game from an objective view point, this is a great game. No question. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up Lay out the board, and give each person around the table a player mat and the player pieces in their colour. The game comes with the player pieces separated by type, but if you pack away each colour component into its own bag, it's a lot easier to then in later games, just give out the one bag to each player. The mats all show an initiative score on the left side; set the turn order for round one accordingly, placing the turn order markers onto the turn order track on the main board. Each player starts with eight credits. Place the remaining credits into a pool. I find it easier to split the money into two groups either side of the table to avoid people having to over stretch. You will be taking these, and exchanging credits a lot. Shuffle the action card deck and deal six or eight to each player, depending on if you are drafting or not. If you are, players will draft two cards from their hand of eight, passing the remaining six cards to the left. Then take two from these six and pass along again, before finally taking two from the final four, and discarding the remaining two cards leaving each player with six cards. If you don't want to draft, simply keep the six cards you were originally dealt. Each player is then given one of each of the three fuel cards. Then place three, four, or five face up cards into a surveyor forecast row, depending on if you are playing with two, three, or four people, placing the remaining cards in a face down deck next to this row. Next place the mothership board next to the main board with the commander cards next to it. They will be used in round two and three. Place the initiative tokens next to the board, based on player count. All four for a four player, just the one and two token for a two player, etc. Then separate the artefacts by colour, (again it is a lot easier if you packed them away into individual bags!) shuffle each pile and lay them face down off the board by the bottom left. Reveal three or four artefacts based on if you are playing a two or three, or a four player game, and place them into the matching space on the board. The matching space refers to the colour and symbol. So, some may end on the same space. Then reveal two, three, or four more artefacts (again based on player count) and place them into the matching stacks on the bottom left of the board which represents the black market. Next, place all the coloured meeples into their respective tracks on the buyer board, placing this next to the main board. Fill up all the rows removing one wild white meeple and one of each colour for a three player game, returning them to the box. And one wild and two of each colour for a two player game. Next shuffle the buyer cards, remove the top two cards, then use this deck to fill the market queue on the main board. The top of the board shows six space ships coming to earth, with different buyers ready to be on board. Reveal buyer cards to show which buyers are in which positions. Filling in from left to right, front of the queue to the back. Draw three cards for each ship. As new buyers join a queue, they join from the back, pushing the rest forward. Later in the game when a fifth buyers joins, they will push the front buyer off the ship. They return to the buyer board via the Mothership. This is a crucial part of the game as it affects the cost of each artefact and the number of interested buyers. More on that later. Finally, each player will place two of their three explorers onto the first and fourth market space, shown by the symbol on the first and fourth ship, which is located on the top left of the board and the top middle. On each players first turn of the game they will place their remaining explorer, before then doing whatever they choose. So, let's have a look at those choices. How To Play In round one you will skip the preparation phase, so we will come back to that shortly. The game therefore starts with the first of three action phases, where players take it in turns to play cards to take two actions. Although, as we discussed, the first action must be to place your third explorer. I will go through the other available options now. Travel - This is how you will move your explorers around the map. Each card has three fuel icons on it, meaning you can discard any coloured card to move three spots. You can split your movement up between explorers if you wish or move just one of them. Your second options is to discard one of your three travel cards which have two, three, or four movement power. Each Alien race has it's own unique player power and the Dal-Harraii Corp can move one of their explorers for free at the start of each of their turns. Excavate - This is how you will take the artefacts placed on the board and move them onto your player board which acts as your own ships cargo hold. You must discard a card that matches the colour of the region you are in and where you want to remove the artefact from. If you have two explorers in two separate locations but both in the same coloured region, then you could excavate twice with one card for one action. So long as there are available artefacts in both locations, and you have at least two available spaces in your cargo hold. Although, if you are playing as the Kuti Kuti Union, you can take two excavate actions with the same explorer from the same location, or an adjacent one. Pretty handy! When you bring the new artefacts into our possession, you can "take a sample" of each new unique one, that matches an uncovered space on your ships gallery. So if you took an orange artefact with a value of four, you could place a crew cube into the space in the top right of the board shown below. When ever you complete a column, you can draw a new card as a free bonus action and at the end of the game each cube contributes to each row and columns' scoring as shown on the mat. For example, two cubes in the yellow column scores four end game points. Does that make sense? I find myself saying that a lot when I explain this game! Market - This is a fun one, and how you can start to really mess with the game. As we talked about in set up, each of the six ships on the top of the board has different buyers. The colours of the buyers matter, for example, a red buyer only wants red items. The white buyers are wild and want anything. You may want to manipulate this during the game. Also, you will certainly want to modify the current market value of the artefacts you want to sell, or the artefacts you see an opponent is about to sell. These two things are intrinsically linked. The market value is set by number of buyer meeples on the buyer board. The less their the better for that colour. And it will also mean that there are more buyers out in the market. When you take the market action, you play a card matching a market (ship) you want to interact with. Each market has a symbol on it, that is also seen on one space on the map. You must also have an explorer at a matching space on the board. Then you can add one of your coloured cubes to the ship to act as a trader, meaning you can now sell to this ship. Crucial for the next action, sell. But, you can also add a white wild buyer and any other coloured buyer to the buy queue on this ship. Taking them from the buyer board. Meaning you will not only adjust the current value of an artefact by reducing the amount of buyers here, thus increasing its value against the other columns, but also adding a new buyer to the ship you just sent a trader too, increasing the amount of people you can trade with. Lets say you had purple artefacts that you wanted to sell. They are currently valued at two as the joint third most popular colour. But move one purple buyer into the buy queue on a market of your choice, and off the buyer board, and it moves from joint third, and a value of two, to joint second, and a value of five. Any buyers you push off the buy queue when adding the two new buyers on, will be moved onto the mothership. Any buyers currently on the mother ship would then be added back to the buyer board. So, if there were a few yellow and red buyers on the mother ship, purple could then move up to the top spot and now worth nine each. Big swings can happen with this action. But plan carefully. You only have two actions each turn. If you set this up to then sell on your next go, the market could look very different by the time is comes back to you. It is best to do this with one action left this turn, so you can immediately take your sell action before the market moves against you. This sort of planning and how much you enjoy it will largely dictate your enjoyment of this game. Sell - This is how you sell the items you have acquired, and make the credits in the game that act as points. Most credits at the end of the game wins, and you can gain top dollar with this action if you plan right. There are a few steps though, let's take a look. To sell, you must discard a card from your hand. It can be any card, so this is more about deciding what you need to keep rather than what you need to play. Then choose a region you want to sell artefacts from. This doesn't need to match the card you played, just the artefacts you intend to sell. You can then select up to three markets to sell to. The markets need to be ships where there is a matching buyer to the region and type of artefact you want to sell. Remember, whites count as wild. You must also have a trader in any market you wish to sell too. Unless you are playing as the Aquilla Collective who have a special power that allows you to sell to a market that matches the card you played, even if you don't have a trader there. This is a big advantage for this player and one of the best player powers in the game I would suggest. Although, the Gul Cartel rival this power by allowing their player to buy one black market artefact before a sell action as a free action, at the artefacts base cost if you have an explorer in a black market location, (more on that later) which you can now sell. OK, back to the sell action. Once you have selected your market(s), then you need to work out the current sell value of the item you are selling. Multiply this by the amount of artefacts you are selling, then add on two credits for each buyer matching the colour of the artefact you are selling at your selected markets. If you are trading with two markets you will also get a bonus of three credits. And if you traded with three markets you will get a bonus of eight credits. So, if you sold three artefacts across three markets, one at each, and there were six relevant buyers across these markets you would earn up to 47 credits. Not bad for one action! You can then draw a card f you interacted at two markets, or two if you sold to three. Although if you draw two, you can only keep one. But you do get to choose. Think the sell action is over? Think again! You will then take all the buyers involved in the sell and move them to the mothership, adding any existing buyers there back to the buyer board. You will then move one of your traders involved in the trade from the market to the mothership, matching the location of the market they moved from to the space in the mothership. This will become relevant later when we talk about end of round scoring. Finally, discard all artefacts bought back to the box. And that, dear friends, is one single trade action. In round one anyway. Although, there will be an extra step in round's two and three. Phew! Command - This is a nice simple way to get your crew onto the markets as a trader, and/or onto the mothership as an envoy. Unlike the market action, you cannot affect the buyers by adding new meeples to the ships, but you have more flexibility as you simply have to play a card that matches the market or command centre you want to interact with. Rather than also having to have an explorer at the matching location as well. The action is a little less powerful, but a lot easier to do. Smuggle - We have talked a little about the black market already, but let's now get into it. During set up, you would have added artefacts to the black market. The Smuggle action is how you can get to them. First, discard a card that matches the icon of one of the black markets and where you have an explorer present. You can then either offload to the black market one or two artefacts you currently have, gaining credits for the shown value on the tile. Or, you can buy from the black market, paying credits equal to the shown value, plus one. If you take this second action, you can take samples as you would in the excavate action. Survey - This is a very interesting part of the game that not only affects the first player for the subsequent round, but also influences the colour of artefacts that will be added to the board. To take this action, first discard a card. The colour is important, but you can use any card you like. The card you discard will replace one of the face up cards in the surveyor forecast row. The discarded card is placed into the discard pile, so is out of the game for now, but it is relevant in terms of it now not affecting the next rounds preparation phase. Whereas the new card added, will. Plan ahead, choose wisely! Then, add a crew cube of your colour onto the card you added, to show the card has been interacted with and cannot now change. This stops this action being taken too often each round. If you have not taken this action yet this round, you will then claim the next available initiative token, showing your turn order for the next round. Thus, the first person to do this action each round will become the next rounds' first player. If no one does this, the turn order remains as it. But generally, someone does do this, because, as well as deciding the turn order, and the colour of artefacts that will be added next round, you can also draw two artefacts that match the colour of the card you played and buy one for double is price, and place one onto the board now. This is even more juicy if you are playing as the Is'sisinui, as you can draw three artefacts instead of two, and claim one for free. Pass - I will let you figure this one out for yourself. But, once everyone has done this, the round ends. You can pass with cards in your hand if you want to keep certain cards back for a later round. Player will then move to the end of round scoring phase, where using a simple area majority rule, the player with the most envoys in each of the three command areas on the mothership will earn points based on the round you are in. In round one, the leading player gets five credits. In round two, it will be ten, with the second player getting five. And in round three, you will get fifteen if you are in the lead, with the second player getting ten and the third player now getting five. This is clearly shown on the bottom of the mothership, as you can see two pictures above. If this is round one or two, you will then move into the preparation phase. If it was round three, you will tally the final scores based on your credits in hand, and the rows and columns formed on the ship gallery. Most credits win. But, for now, back to the preparation phase. In the preparation phase you will carry out six important actions. First, you need to add the command cards. In round two you will add three white cards, one to each command area. In round three you will flip these over to their yellow side. Now, when you send crew members to become an envoy you can carry out this new action. They are all good, and a fun way to make the sell action now even longer! Second, you will reset the buyer queues meaning you need to remove the front buyer from any market with four buyers. With any market with two, one, or zero buyers you need to add new buyers using the buyer deck, until each market has three buyers. Markets with three buyers already in place will remain as is. Next, resolve the surveyor forecast by adding three artefacts for each card, matching the colours of the cards to the new artefacts. Two will go onto the board, and the final one will be added to the black market. If you managed to plan accordingly, you could now be adding artefacts into regions you are present at, that are worth the most they can be, with traders in markets where those relevant buyers are located. Or, more likely, none of those things just happened! That's a lot of planning to make happen, but you will do it every now and then, and it will feel great. The forth step is to set the turn order for the next round based on the initiative tokens each player gained in the previous round. The fifth step is to deal eight cards to each player and run a draft again. Each player will be left with six cards which they can then add to any cards they had left over from the previous round, and the travel cards which can be added back in, even if played previously. These cards can be used over and over each round. And sometimes more based on command powers. Finally, you will cycle the black market and move the top tile to the bottom, so things stay fresh there. You are now ready for the next round. Is It Fun? This is very much dependant on if you like market manipulation games or not. If you do, I would wager this could be one of your favourite games. It looks great and has a delightfully smooth engine to the game flow once it gets running and all players become familiar with the core mechanics. Excavation Earth has one of the most intricate and intuitive market manipulation systems I have ever seen in a board game. However, this is exactly the opposite of what Tom Vasel said. So, if you don't like this mechanic, or if you are not able to take the time to make this system familiar to you, then it could be a tough experience. I love how the game has multiple moments of cascading events. In that, you often realise that in order to sell at the right price, you need to first manipulate the market. Which means getting your explorer to the right place. But of course, before this, you need to have excavated or acquired from the black market the right artefact. And if you want to sell them, you need traders in the right markets. Lining this all up so that you can sell the right thing at the right time is hard. But when if comes off, oh my does it feel good! And this is this feeling that I encounter at least two to five times each game. It makes we wonder how anyone who gives this a chance couldn't be left with any other feeling than fascination and delight when playing this game. Scoring large amounts of credits feels great too. I don't are if I win or loose. Just give me a few turns where I get to take loads of credits and I will be happy. And doing all this feels hard. Getting all your pieces in the right place isn't simple. Other players will inadvertently, and sometimes quite deliberately, mess with you. It is not a simple process selling artefacts in the distant future. The reward for getting it right is high because the journey is rarely smooth. I adore the way the game looks. And the components are all fantastic. The duel layered boards mean everything stays in the right place, and the colour and iconography in the game is all very clear and easy to understand. The learning curve for game one is high, and it does take a while to teach someone. They will look confused a lot, and it will take a moment to all sink in. But by game two you will be flying. And I found I was not looking at the rule book at all from game three. But it is a process. However, don't be put off if you like the sound of this. My son (10) was able to play this game after a 30 minute teach from me, and he won the first three games. You certainly need to plan ahead, and see the patterns quickly to do well in this game, which he is good at. But Excavation Earth rewards players throughout the game with many moments of joy and satisfaction, that you will have a lot of fun regardless of the final score. I very much look forward to checking out the expansions for this. More to come on that very soon.

I have been reviewing games on here with some great friends for a while now, and I thought it was time I asked for some feedback on what you like. What you don't like. And what maybe we could do more or less of. If you would like to shape the future of What Board Game and my weekend writing work, then this is your chance! Any thoughts or suggestions then please just comment below and I will implement your wishes in the future reviews here. How We Do It Now Our current reviews generally take this shape. A score out of 10 using the same metrics as the BGG score. A link to three similar games so that you can start to place the game within the field of one or more other games you may know. The publisher and designer listed so you can get some context there as to the style of the game. Then the review is laid out with a brief information on the game and any relevant or interesting background I may be aware of. We talk through the set up and the main rules in a brief 'how to play'. Then we talk about our thoughts on the game, what we like and dislike about it. Then finish with our thoughts on who this game may be targeted at. How We Could Do It Talk about set up time. Give our recommended age. Discuss mechanics used. List average game length. Offer our recommendation for best player count. Focus on the components. Talk more about how the game fits in within other games that use similar mechanics. Or something completely different? What are your thoughts? What do you like? What don't you like? I would love to see your comments below.

Betta WBG Score: 6 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Shifting Stones, Sagrada Published by: Synapses Games Designed by: Ikhwan Kwon By Steve Godfrey I’ve kept fish a few times in my life and probably more surprising is that I’ve managed to keep them alive! However if I had to work in a pet shop and was tasked with rearranging the fish into different tanks like a marine flower arrangement, (which is the goal of the game here), I could see myself needing to seek new employment before lunchtime. Lucky for me then I'm dealing with cards and not real fish. How to arrange Betta Lay out the score board, a number of display boards based on player count and randomly place out two of each difficulty of the pattern cards. Everyone takes their Betta cards and discards two back to the tin unseen then draws three cards to make their opening hand. On your turn you’ll place one of your cards onto one of the displays. If you place it on an empty display you score two points. If, when you place a card down, one of the fish on that card creates one of the patterns on the cards then you score that number of points. The fish have to be the same colour and they don’t even have to be your colour. Even if the pattern was already there from another player, as long as a fish on the card you play fits onto that pattern you can still score it. Once a display has no empty squares you can no longer place a card on that display. The game will end when either all displays are full or all players only have two cards left in hand and can’t refill. You will then score points for each Betta of your colour on each display using the chart in the rule book. Most points wins. Something fishy. Betta is one of those fun spatial puzzle games that lulls you in with its seemingly harmless theme. It’s sorting out fish in a pet shop, that’s gotta be nice and chilled right? However, what you end up getting from Betta is a game that will have you scratching your head way more than you expected from the initial outset. Early turns are fairly simple, with no cards really in play all you can do is set some small seeds with the intention of making certain patterns on future turns. As the game goes on you’ll find yourself studying each card in your hand and constantly rotating them over each display trying to make one fit to your advantage by either completing a pattern or at the very least setting one up for the next turn. Betta together. All of the above makes for a decent puzzle but it’s having other players in the mix that will, invariably add that little bit of tension. Setting up a pattern for your next turn or even a few turns down the line is a must if you want to do well. Whilst your cards are made up of the majority of your colours, they also have a mix of other players colours on them meaning that someone else stealing your well set up scoring opportunity is a possibility. That’s not to say you still couldn’t score it, but no one wants to give their opponents points if they can avoid it. This gives the game just enough tension between rounds and enough interaction to keep it interesting. Making those patterns isn’t always as straightforward as it seems. First you need to have a card that has the right colour in the right place. But that card usually comes with another betta that is also going to block another square of the pattern you're making. It makes planning where you can really important. It’s also the reason that you have to swoop in and nab a pattern that an opponent has been building when the opportunity arises. It seems that all's fair in fish and war. Off the hook. The big letdown for me is the cards. They are quite flimsy. They do have a coating on them to stop them wearing but it also seems to make them slippery, which I suppose is pretty thematic when you're dealing with a game about fish. The main issue is that they keep catching together when you go to draw them, separate them at tear down or put them in a pile to go back in the bag. This doesn’t really affect gameplay but it’s more of an annoyance in the practical sense. Whilst my cards aren’t really showing any wear on them I do worry that it won’t take much for them to catch on each other and get bent. The rules tell you that you don’t need to shuffle them before play, which is fair enough as I doubt it’s going to make a huge difference but it’s also a bit of a relief. Where this will become more irritating though is in the solo mode where you will need to shuffle the four decks together and draw fifteen to create your deck for solo play. The solo game is fine but the fiddliness of shuffling those decks together and having to constantly unhook cards from each other and subsequently separating them after your game, meant that I felt the work put into setting up a solo game wasn’t really worth the effort which is a shame, especially if solo is your go to game mode. Despite how much you’ll be analysing how best to play your cards, games of Betta will still be fairly quick and it’ll give you enough of a puzzle to keep you engaged every game. If the theme or the promise of a quick fun puzzle sounds good then this one may be worth checking out.

Radlands WBG Score: 9 Player Count: 2 You’ll like this if you like: Keyforge, Hero Realms, Marvel Champions Published by: Roxley Designed by: Daniel Piechnick By Steve Godfrey If, like me, you grew up in the 80s/90s then Radlands could easily sound like the coolest place on earth. Lots of people in bright neon, using words like radical and dude and riding around on skateboards. This game is a stark contrast to that. It’s a post apocalyptic mad max style waste land where water is the most precious resource and gangs will do everything they can to get it. Even destroy each other’s camps. Having said that you do get the neon……which is nice. Rules are rad Each player will receive six camp cards each and pick three to use. For your first game it will give each player a starting set of camps. Draw a number of cards equal to the number depicted on your camps and choose a first player. On your turn first trigger any event cards in the 1 space of their column then move any other events up one space. Draw a card, replenish your three water tokens then play as many actions as you can/want to. You can play a card by paying its water cost and (if it’s a person) playing it in front of one of your camps. Each camp can have at most two cards in a column in front of it. The card you play can’t be used this turn. If the card is an event card then it goes into the event column in the space numbered on the card. Junking a card lets you discard a card in your hand for the junk effect in the top left corner. You can draw another card for the cost of two water or, lastly you can pay one water to take the water silo card into your hand. At any time on a future turn you can discard this card to take an extra water from the supply for that turn only and then this card goes back in front of you to be used again. The last thing you can do is pay the water cost and use the ability of an undamaged card that was played on a previous turn or one of your camps. Your basic actions on cards include injuring an unprotected person. You pick a person at the front of one of your opponents columns and rotate them on their side. Your opponent can now no longer use that cards ability on their turn. It also means that if you hit them again they’re destroyed. The damage action is the same as injuring but this can also be used on bases as well. As long as there are no people in front of a camp you can damage it. Again two hits and it’s destroyed. The water action gets you extra water and the heal action lets you, well, heal a damaged card. Last of all is the raid action. Both players have access to a raiders event which they can deploy using this action. You can even use the raid action to advance your raider event and even trigger it. Once triggered it will damage an opponent's base regardless of any protection. This will, then go back to your supply to be played again when you next play the raid action. Water way, to have a good time. On my first game of Radlands, after an expert teach and an even more expert trouncing of my camps (by the brilliant @gamingoverboard on Instagram) I was asked “do you want to play again?” to which I said no. Not because I didn’t enjoy the game, but because I knew we had limited time and wanted to get in as many different games as we could in the time we had. I could have played him again, at that point I’d already lulled him into a false sense of security by pretending to be really inept at the game and could easily have pulled the old, “Ah ha, I’m not left handed” ruse from The Princess Bride and beaten him handily in the next game…..ahem Of all the games we played that day my one regret was saying no to playing Radlands again. It’d stuck in my mind in the days following and for me, that’s the sign that something has really got my attention. Either that or the trauma of that defeat was still lingering, it’s a gamble really. One thing that I think Radlands does extremely well is having this balance between always giving players a chance to do something useful on their turn, but also making your choices feel limited. As you look at the cards in your hands and the display of cards in front of you it’s easy to be distracted by the fact that you’ve only got three water to spend and then puzzling out how you can do as much as you can with seemingly limited resources. If that was all you could do on a turn then I still think the game would be fun, but could also lend itself to maybe some wasted turns or unspent water that could start to feel like untapped potential (now there’s a water pun I didn’t mean to make but sometime when you break the pun dam there’s no stopping it) there’s been just enough small tweaks that have made those types of turns a little less frequent. The water silo card is such a simple thing, but it makes that last unspent water actually useful for a future turn. Having that card in hand when you just need that extra water could make a huge difference. It could mean that you get to destroy an unprotected base rather than just damage it or trigger that one extra ability that lets you chain some actions together to make a big turn. On their first play I’ve seen people, myself included, grumpily picking up the silo card stating “I suppose I’ll just get the water silo then” as if it’s a waste of time. It’s not long before they start to see the potential in it as they’re happily using it to trigger some card abilities that will take out your base. This is much the same as the raiders card. Both are definitely not something to be underestimated. The biggest thing though is that junk effect and the amount of flexibility it gives you. I think for the most part you can tell in games like this when a card is going to be useful for your strategy or not. So having seemingly useless cards sat in your hand for turns on end can be irritating. Not that there’s a hand limit but it’s just annoying knowing that you can’t use them and then they spend the rest of the game gently mocking you as you hope that they may eventually become useful. The junk mechanic now gives you a reason to discard them and not only that, makes them actually useful for you. Junk effects can also be a godsend if certain card abilities just aren’t coming out for you. Drawing a card and seeing that little repair icon on the top of it, just when you need it can be a saving grace if you're clinging on to your last camp. They’re also good for stringing along a couple of combos here and there and giving you those big turns that are oh so satisfying. Of course the satisfying part is the look on your opponent's face as you start rendering their hard earned cards useless mwahaha. Tug of wa…ter Radlands presents a really great tug of war as you set up your array of post apocalyptic cannon fodder of people and punks (punks are people too) only to have them picked off one by one. It’s going to happen, it’s the nature of the game, but your main goal is for them to survive long enough so you can use their abilities and do the same to your opponent. The real tension kicks in when a camp is left unprotected. When it’s yours all you can do is sit there hoping beyond hope that your opponent doesn’t have something that can damage it, or worse destroy it before your next turn where you’ll be able to throw anyone in front of it to give you that much needed protection. If it’s your opponent’s camp that’s exposed then you're now praying that you’ve got something either in hand or in play that can help you exploit that lapse in defences and give you the edge. Never is this more true in both cases than at the start of the game when no one’s bases are protected. The first few turns are a desperate rush to both get your camps protected and, if possible, sneak in a cheeky bit of damage to a camp. It actually makes for a fun devil's bargain at the start of the game. Sure you could protect your camps, it’s the smart move, but if you’ve got the right cards then it could be all too tempting to stick your post apocalyptic boot in to do some damage and run away like you're playing a destructive game of knock down ginger. This one time at Radlands camp. The camps themselves come into their own as a constant source of actions and a great way of upping the replayability of Radlands. Camps can always be used even if they are damaged. The range of abilities on these camps and the huge range of possible combinations gives the game a great bit of asymmetry and being able to pick from six at the start means you have the potential to tailor each game to how you want to play. You could even get your own devastating engine going with the right set of cards. There is one set of the starting camps that I don’t think is particularly great. Two of them are all about damaging yourself or even destroying your own camp to do more damage to the enemy and as fun as those abilities are, I’m not sure I personally like them as first game camps. I tend to take that particular combination myself if I’m playing with someone new just because I do think you’re best off having at least one game under your belt before you’re confident destroying your own camps. That being said, once you’ve got a grasp of the game then I’d suggest picking your own as soon as possible. “Punks are people too” For a new player I think this is definitely worth a second go. The first game will most likely go to the experienced player so another go straight after, once you’ve got a handle on how you should be playing is worth it if you can. My one real negative would be the alternative end game trigger. If you manage to cycle through the deck twice before one player's camps are destroyed then the game ends in a draw. It’s good that they have an alternative there, but it’s just too long. This happened to me and my daughter on her first game and the game just dragged on as we were locked into this Doctor Strange style loop of damaging each other’s last base and then repairing it again. I can see why Dormammu got fed up and gave in. I’m not sure what the alternative would be as I think just cycling through the deck once would be too quick. Luckily this has only happened once so I can’t imagine it’s going to be a regular occurrence though. In case you were wondering we settled that game with a good old fashioned game of rock, paper, scissors. I lost. But that’s pretty much par for the course these days. Radical, awesome, mega! In a world where great two player games exist (you know your saying that in the voice of the trailer guy) Radlands is a stand out. It’s fun, quick, beautiful to look at and gives you a ton of replayability. Who knew trying to steal your neighbours water would be so much fun! #punksarepeopletoo

This was a free prototype sent to us for our unbiased opinions. The game is coming to Kickstarter soon. You can find out more about that, here. I love card games. I love the simplicity of just choosing a card from my hand and building something from there. The art and theme of Altar is very interesting to me, so I was excited to try this game. The rules are pretty simple, this is all about clever card play. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up In Altar, you play as a God, trying to control humanity. You will do this by building Shrines and discovering Altars in your Realm. I presume, to create a nice comfy place for your followers to bow down in obedience to you? In turns, players will choose a God board, placing it in front of them, adding one inactive Altar (face down) in one of the Altar spaces. In a two-player game each player will chose two boards. Then shuffle the follower cards and deal one to each player equal to the amount of players, plus one. So, four each on a three player game. In a two-player game, each player has two God boards and therefore gets dealt five cards as you treat this like a four-player game. Next place follower cards face up in the middle of the table, again equal to the number of players plus one and five for a two player game. Finally, place all the Shrine and Altar tokens on the table. The number of Shrine tokens varies based on player count. Six for a three player game. Nine for a two or four players. And 12 for a four player game. These are a limited resource as they are very important in the game. You are now ready to begin. How To Play Players will now take it in turns, starting with either the oldest player, or the player using the Ancient God character. On your turn, you will draw a card, either face up from the available cards, or face down from the deck. You will then perform one action. In a two player game, as you control two God boards, you will draw two cards and perform two actions. The three actions available to you are as follows. 1. Play a Follower card. Perform the actions on a card from your hand. Discarding the card and following the text on the card. Some cards let you place Altars, this is how you add them to your Realm (board). 2. Perform a Ritual. Discard three cards from your hand with a star symbol on to build a shrine on one of your God boards. 3. Worship a God. Play a worshiper card from your hand. Any card in your hand with the below worship symbol on can be placed face up next to one of your boards to offer your chosen God protection against certain attacks. (All cards shown have the star symbol on as well that can be used for performing a ritual). Some cards have a free action symbol on, as shown below. These can be played, discarded, and performed as much as you like each turn. If the draw deck runs out, or the final Shrine is used the game will immediately end. But what players are aiming for is to build the required number of Altars and Shrines. You need at least one Shrine to win the game, but you can build more if you wish. If you build one Shrine you will need to have four Altars to win the game. If you managed to build two Shrines, you now only need three Altars. Three built Shrines means only two required Altars. You just need to fill up the spaces on your board. Both boards need to be completed in a two-player game. The first to do this wins. If either of the other two end game conditions ends the game the person with the most Shrines wins. If there is a tie, refer to the God abilities to determine the winner. The Ancient God for example wins draws. The Goddess of Love loses draws. Is It Fun? Altar: Realms of the Gods is all about clever card play. And I love clever card play. The rules and end game conditions are all pretty simple. This is about using the cards is strategic ways to build your Altars and Shrines as best you can. You need to find a balance between defence and attack, whilst not forgetting to make actual progress with your own development. The game ends if the deck runs out remember, so you cannot spend to much time just messing with the other players. There are some very clever options available to you from the cards. I particularly like the Wizard that lets you destroy an opposing players Active Altar whilst adding an inactive Altar to your own Realm. I also find the Seer very interesting in the way that you can force an opponent to discard a card of your choosing, but you can also see their entire hand, thus getting an idea as to their current strategy. Each God has its own unique power too, which brings some interesting asymmetry to the game. It is fun to try each one and see how they interact with the other cards and players in the game. I particular like the Goddess of Death power which allows you to perform rituals with only two cards needed instead of the usual three. She cannot use Clerics to do this, but I found I was able to race along with the power. I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys games that use cards in a clever way. Fantasy Realms comes to mind when playing this game. Not from the scoring or structure. But in the way the cards offer quite interesting and clever options if they can be played in the right combinations and order. Altar: Realms of the Gods looks great too. The art on the cards is stunning and the synergy between the followers and their powers in quite interesting. I will be interested to see how this game develops during its crowd funding stage and look forward to many more games in the future.

Scythe: Rise Of Fenris WBG Score: 9.5 Player Count: 1-5 You’ll like this if you like: Scythe, Pandemic Legacy, Jurassic World: The Legacy of Isla Nublar. Published by: Stonemaier Games Designed by: Ryan Lopez, DeVinaspre, Jamey Stegmaier. Scythe is a huge game within the board game hobby. Currently ranked 16 on BGG, it is beloved by many within the community. Scythe launched Jamey Stegmaier into the stratosphere, and has seen a number of popular expansions made for it. You can read about one here, where I cover Invaders from Afar. An expansion I suggested was not as essential as this one. This review will be spoiler free, so there is only so much I can say or show. But this is a campaign game that develops over a series of eight games. It can be fully reset and played again, this is not a legacy game. Or the various components can be added into individual games of Scythe as different modules as you see fit. It also introduces a cooperative version of Scythe but this is not the exciting bit. I want to cover the campaign. The campaign is full of twists and turns, and I would hate to ruin that for you. But this review will give you an idea of how it plays and help you decide if this is for you or not. I will mark any part that has anything close to minor spoilers so you can move on if you like, but they will all be at the end in the "Is It Fun?" section. With that said, let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up First you need to decide how you want to play this game. You could just open everything up from the off and add any of the eleven modules within this box into a game of Scythe right from the beginning if you wanted. The rules explain how to do this, but to cover that would be full of spoilers. As such, I will focus on the campaign mode, where these modules are revealed one at a time across a series of eight differing games of Scythe. Some are full games close to what you may be familiar with. Others can end a little quicker, and play with differing set up and in game rules. But that is spoiler territory, so I will leave it at that. For your first game, set up the game as you usually would. The only real difference is that you will add one of the personal objective cards next to the triumph track to add an extra way to place a star. Other than this, the first game plays pretty much as any game of Scythe would. To play Rise of Fenris though, you will need to read through a few pages of extra rules and narrative text to explain the background of the setting. If you want to get a flavour for this you can read the first two pages below. If you want to keep that a surprise until you play, the below text should be small enough without clicking to enlarge to avoid! There are four more pages of this which if you really want to get into, you can check that out here, from page 8 onwards. Careful not to read any other pages beyond this though if you want to avoid spoilers. Inside the box you will find a number of tokens and boxes. Do not look at the tokens as this will easily spoil things to come, and definitely do not open any boxes. The game will clearly let you know when you are meant to do this. But it will look like this before you open anything. Don't worry, no spoilers here. But inside these boxes, oh my! How To Play When you are ready, turn to the first chapter of the game on page 14 of the rule book and complete the final part of the special set up for this first game. This adds new tokens to the board that I will not go into here, but that will determine the effects of the next game in a huge way. You wont know this until you finish the first game, so I won't spoil that here. The rest of game one works just as a usual game of Scythe. Just ask Rodney if you need some help with that. Scythe it is way to easier to learn than you first think, and you should not let the size of the box or the amount of components worry you. I promise it is a fairly simple game once you get the hang of things and it plays oh so smoothly. When you have finished the first game, you will start to log your progress on one of the below sheets. These are paper, and there are loads in the box. You won't feel like you are ruining a nice laminated rule book. On this sheet you will log you wins and loses across the eight games. Your wealth, (your final score) which accumulates over the eight games and can be spent on various upgrades such as the Perks and Mods that I won't go into, again for fear of spoilers. (But they are awesome!) In the Triumph log you will mark which stars you were able to place in each game, and these then accumulate over the eight games to earn you more money that can also be spent on upgrades. And that is all I can say about this without spoiling the game. Below I will explain what I liked and did not like about the eight game campaign experience. I will keep spoilers to a minimum, but avoid the below paragraph if you want to experience it fresh. All I will say before I leave some of you is that it was a truly wonderful experience that breathed new life into Scythe. It made me appreciate the different ways you can play the game a whole lot more, made me a better Scythe player (mainly from playing it eight times in a few days), and the experience of playing the eight games was an absolute joy. The surprises the expansion bring are all brilliant. And the way they are integrated into the game is just fantastic. But more of that below. Is Is Fun? Oh my goodness, yes! I played the eight games over the course of two days, with a two day break in-between (forced by other life priorities otherwise I would have happily done thi sis two days straight). I did not want to rush it, as I wanted to savour the experience, but it was just too good! After each game I just wanted to play another to use the new things we had gained, and to find out what was coming next. I loved the story the game is built around. It is very well written, absorbing, and wonderfully interwoven into the fabric of the Scythe universe. For me, this is some of the best narrative writing in board games that I have experience so far. From the 11 modules in the game, I would say there are now four to five that I will regularly use in every stand-alone game of Scythe that I play. This game massively increases the replayability of Scythe well beyond the campaign itself. I would love to tell you more about the treats and surprises we found in the boxes of this expansion but it would ruin it for you. All I will say is none of them disappoint. All of them make the game different, better, and more interesting. This is one of the best expansions I have ever played. It makes Scythe, a game I love, better in ways you cannot really imagine. The Rise of Fenris is a masterpiece within the board game world.

Tiletum WBG Score: 9 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Trismegistus, Tekhenu, Tabannusi. Published by: Board&Dice Designed by: Simone Luciani, Daniele Tascini The "T" series are a group of games, all made by the same design team, all beginning with the letter T. They consist of some modern day big hitters and all do something interesting with the mechanics used. The design team are not without their own recent controversy. You can read more about that here. Tascini has since apologised for his actions and the publisher released an excellent statement on the matter here. From this, I was left unsure what to do about reviewing this game. But decided in the end to go ahead with it. Ensuring I covered three points. I wanted you to have the above background. So you could decide if you want to read on. I wanted to make it clear that there are many people involved in the production of this game that do not deserve to be punished by one person's actions. I, and no one associated with WBG tolerate any form of racism or discrimination in the slightest. I find these situations abhorrent. With that said, it is your choice if you want to read on. Anyone with a view on any way I could handle this better I would welcome your feedback. Set Up Set up in Tiletum does take a while, but after a few games you will have it down to around five minutes. (At a push!) I will go through every step here. First, lay out the main board and give each player their own player board along with all the pieces in their colour. I sort all the colour pieces into individual bags to speed this up. On the player board, each person needs to place five house pieces at the top of the five houses on the left side of the board, leaving the far right space alone. Then place one house into Tiletum on the main board, and the other two by the side of your board. Next place five columns onto the first five spaces on the top right of their board. The remaining two are left by the side of the board. Each player will take one of each resource and gold depending on their position in the game. One gold for the first player, three for the second, five for the third and six for the forth. All pieces by the side of the board are available for use in the game. All piece's on the board need to be unlocked before they can be used. Then on the main board, lay out the action wheel and action tiles around the dice action wheel at the top left of the board. For your first game, you don't need to use the action tiles. These just add more variety when you want it, replacing what is printed on the board. Then shuffle the bonus tiles with the compass symbol on the back and lay one around each dice space, and one onto each space on the map side of the board. Avoiding any spaces based on player count. This is clearly marked on the board. Then place one below the King track. Also by the king track, place one marker for each player on the zero space. Place one marker per player on the 10 point space, and the final one on the turn order track according to player order. Also by the king track, shuffle and lay face down three corruption tokens, leaving the rest in a face down pile. Next, shuffle the contract and character tiles and place one onto each space on the bottom left of the board. Leave the rest in a face down pile by the side of the board with the remaining bonus tiles too. Next to these place out all the resources sorted into type. Then shuffle the construction cost tiles and place one below each Cathedral space on the main board. Then lay out the Cathedral pieces in ascending order of value. Place these into each space, bar the one with the "X" on the construction value. This Cathedral won't be made this game. Next, shuffle and place three town tiles and four fair tokens at the top of the main board. This shows where the four fairs will be, the first is always at Tiletum. And what the fair will reward in end of round points. Then place the fair order tokens onto the board matching the cities the fairs are in to remind players during the game. A nice touch. Finally, each player will place their Architect and Merchant token into Tiletum and one dice of each colour for each player is placed into the cloth bag. You are now ready to play. See, easy huh!? How to Play Starting with the first player, the dice are pulled from the bag and rolled, then placed in groups into their designated locations into the dice action wheel. Then flip the far right corruption token and move every player piece here back the number of spaces shown. Either zero, one or two. Then the main action phase now begins where players will take it in turns to take one dice from the action wheel. The colour, number, and location all matter. The colour will determine what resources they get. Blue dice make Iron. Pink make food. Yellow make Gold. Light Grey make Wool. And Grey make Stone. The number on the dice will determine the quantity of resource they get. And the location on the action wheel will determine the type and number of actions they can then do. You will notice that the number of resources and actions will always add up to seven. If you take five resources you will have two actions. One action will get you six resources, etc. It's a clever way to balance this drafting process out. The locations around the action wheel will determine what you can do. When you take a dice, you can take the token if you want to if it's still there, then claim the resources and action available. But what do all these actions offer you? The top right King space lets you move on the King track. Simply moving right into positive points by the number of actions you have. The Merchant space lets you move your merchants on the main board, take a token from the space the merchant is at, or build a house at the space the merchant is at. Similarly, the Architect lets you do the same but with Pillars. Move the architect, build Pillars with the architect or take tiles with the architect. The character space lets you take a character from the character track and add it to your board. They all cost one action point. Or, you can discard them all and refresh the layout. When you take one, you will place it into one of the four spaces on the right of your player board, your store house. All tiles you gain are always placed here. You can only ever have four at once, hence why sometimes you may not take one. Using character action points is how you move them from here onto your main board. Taking your turn in the right and most efficient order is key. On the left side of your board you have six houses. Five with empty spaces for characters to move into. The bottom row costs one action point to move a character into. The middle row costs two action points, and the top row on the far left house costs three actions points. As you move characters over, you have to ensure they are the same type for each house but different across each other house. To complete a house and take the house piece off the board for later use, you must fill each character position and the basement space with a different crest for each household. The crest costs a certain amount of food, shown on the player board, and reward a different bonus each time. Moving crest can be done at any time. When you complete a house you can move a house and pillar from your supply onto any town currently without one of your houses/pillars on the map. You can also move your merchant and architect to any space, gain two resources and five points. So, well worth doing! You will also increase your power in the action wheel selection in the chosen power of the characters in your house. Based on the symbol on the character you will move your bonus action point marker, based on the size of the house, to the matching action space on the action wheel to the symbol on the characters in the recently completed house. This will increase the number of actions when you choose dice from the space on the action wheel in subsequent turns. The top right of your player board is where you will place your contracts when they are fulfilled. You will get these using the contract action on the action wheel above. They cost a different amount depending on their location on the row. This action also lets you exchange resources in a one for one ratio. You will also get one bonus resource the first time you do this each round. When you take these contracts they will go into your storehouse on the right. Then for a free action at any point, when you have the required resources shown on the contract, you can move it onto the left most available space above, claim the points on the tile and space you are placing it on, and take the pillar that was there. This is one of the main ways to score in the game. The final action is the jester action which lets you copy any other action. If you have more than one action, you must copy the same action each time. When you take a dice in this phase, you will take the resources, carry out the actions, and place the dice into the bottom right of your player board. Each player will do this three times each round. When each person has done this, you will then move into the King phase. In the King phase, players will score points based on their current position on the king track. Anywhere to the right of the starting zero space and you will score positive points. The furthest right will take first place in the turn order for the next round. Anyone to the left of the zero starting position will score negative points, but then move back to zero for the next round. Then you will move to the Fair phase where you will score points based on the current fair in the current round. You can only score if you have a house and/or your architect in the current fair town. Each fair scores differently and can include points for the amount of pillars or houses currently built, the amount of contracts completed, or the number of crests on your player board. Finally, you move into the clean up phase where you will replenish action tiles taken from the action wheel and king track, shuffle all the corruption tokens and replace three more face down, return all the dice to the bag, rotate the action wheel one space clockwise, and then start a new round. There are a few bonus action that can be done at any point such as completing a contract. You can also always spend two gold to gain one other resource. Spend two gold to change a dice face up or down by one before you take it. You can spend food to move your crest to a building. Use any helper tokens you may have previously taken which can give you extra actions or resources. And finally, you can help construct a Cathedral for any space where you have a pillar. These cost a various amount of Stone as depicted on the tiles placed at set up. When you do this, take the top Cathedral token and add the points shown on the tokens. The game will go like this for four rounds, until the end of the fair scoring phase in the forth round, when the game will end. Players will then total their points based on in game scoring, one point for each group of four unused resources, points for the number of houses built multiplied by the number of pillars, and finally, points for all completed houses on their player board. It is zero for one or two rooms, five points for three, ten for four, 20 for five and 30 points for all six rooms completed. Well worth trying to do well here. Most points wins. Is It Fun Playing Tiletum is a wonderful experience. Sure, the set-up and rules may sound like a lot, but I have covered every detail here and I hope you got through it ok. And it really does play very smoothly. The rule book is excellent and offers good visuals and pictures. I would just take note of the extra actions shown on page 19 under "Tasks." These are all quite crucial, but seem like an after thought in the rule book. As you play Tiletum, you will very quickly get into the swing of the game. I was able to teach my nine year old in under ten minutes. It is an easy teach, and the board layout makes everything very simple. But I appreciate it may not sound or read like that! But it really is very simple. The look of the board can be a bit drab. But the colour of the player pieces all really pop against this beige background. Making it a lot easier to see where you are, what your points are, and plan your next move. And planning moves in Tiletum is a wonderful thing. Combination turns is something very popular in games. Having a turn that feels like it is one action cascading into another feels great. Sometimes in games that offer this it takes too long to build up to these more juicy turns. It can also be quite a complex process to carry it out. Tiletum gets this right perfectly. You will be 'combo-ing' very quickly in this game. Taking food resources as you claim a pink dice, using these to move a previously claimed Crest token over to complete a house, which gives you more resources needed to complete a contract. All of which gives you more points, more houses and pillars on the board, and the chance to move your pieces. All before you have even taken you main action this turn! Sounds fun doesn't it? Points will rack up very quickly. You can get into the high hundreds and double hundreds by game two as you learn the game, and develop your strategy. And all this is done in just four rounds of three turns. That is just 12 times you get to do something. But each turn can end up being quite impressive as you have seen. Which leads to the only real negative point for me in this game. Downtime between turns can be long. In a two player game this is fine. But in a higher player count the wait can be frustrating and I would not recommend this game for anything over two players for this reason. It is not even a case of players taking too long or being struck with analysis paralysis. It's simply that some turns take a while to do. Which is juicy, satisfying and oh so fun for the player doing it. But a bit annoying for other players as you never quite know when they are done, and it does take a while. But in a two, this game is a euro dream! If you are a fan of euro games in general, this may be one of your favourite new experiences at a game table. There are some question marks around this games longevity. There are a few variations at set up, but none will really change how the game feels or flows. You will essentially have a very similar experience each time you play this. However, as that experience is so good, I do not think this is a problem. It is ok for some games to just do one thing very well, and focus just on that. Tiletum is very much in this bracket, and I salute it for doing so. Too much is made on variation between games. Play a different game if you want a different feeling. I am very happy for Tiletum to keep rewarding me each game with a delightful, crunchy, combination filled game experience where I score hundreds of points and feel good about myself. Sure, some games you want to feel different each play. Narrative led games especially. But for a strategy lead euro, it's ok for me if each game feels the same if the game itself is good. I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys Euro games, has enjoyed the previous T games, and is looking for more of the same entertainment. It does not offer anything that is incredibly new/ Although I think the dice drafting is very clever in the way it is linked to the number of actions. But what it does do, it does very well. The game is potentially problematic due to one of the designers past actions, but I tried to look beyond this for this review. Personally, after not playing his games for a year, I am now ready to play these games again. I do not necessarily accept his apology, but I do not have all the facts, and I was brought up to forgive. I myself am not perfect, and feel everyone deserves a chance to educate themselves, better themselves, and understand how to be a better human.

This is a prototype version sent to us for our thoughts. No money exchanged hands. If you want to find out more about this game you can head here. Racing games often suffer from one of two problems for me. They are either too complicated to be fun, or too simple to be interesting. A few games recently have found a nice middle ground, but I am always intrigued to look at new games in this field. Classic Rally is pitched as a strategy race game mixing hand management and dice rolling to bring the thrills and spills of car rallying. That is certainly something that gets me excited! let's get it to the table to see if it lives up to that billing. Set Up The set up and rules for Classic Rally seem complicated at first, but everything comes together smoothly and works in a very intuitive way. There is a suggested starting track set up for your first game, but you can lay the modular track tiles in any way you like. Sticking to just a few simple rules to avoid certain types of track being next to each other. There are a lot of different types of cards in the game, but they all make thematic sense. There are toolkits to fix your car, fog lights and wet weather tyres. To set up your vehicles, players will take it in turns to choose from the various options of modifications. You control two cars. One to race with, and a second support vehicle that can supply your main car with additional fuel and accessories when you share a space with it. How To Play The race works by players taking it in turns to roll three dice. Two are regular D6 than can hamper your modifications, and the other one controls the weather. This will either be sunny, rain, fog, or rain and fog. If you have the right tyres and fog lights, this won't make any difference. But if you risked it in set up to carry more fuel, poor weather may force you to deactivate certain features of you car. During set up you can choose two unique upgrades to your vehicle that will allow you to move an extra space when overtaking, on straight lines, when on a corner, or on each turn if you picked to be light weight. However, this power also has it's downside as it can be disabled in its own unique way if you ever roll a seven with the dice. The only other purpose of these two D6 is they disarm one feature for any dice that shows a single pip. So, if you have the light weight upgrade and you roll a seven with a six and one, you will need to disarm both of your features. Once the dice are rolled, players can then play fuel cards to move one space on the track. You can play as many as you like, but must stop on a Hazard space, or if you want to fuel up at a service station, exchange cards with your support vehicle, or pick up one of the three checkpoints. Your support vehicle can move one space each turn without the use of fuel cards, and careful thought into how you move this car and where you can cross paths is crucial if you want to win the race. The game is won by the first player to pick up their three checkpoint markers and cross the finish line. Players will also have access to one joker card, dealt at random at the start of the game, which will give them a one time use power. This could be to take cards from their support vehicle even if they are not on the same space, take any card (bar the Toolbox) from your opponents board, disable all feature cards on your opponents, or fix any malfunction or breakdown on your main race vehicle. The final cards you have access too are the Rood Book cards which have to be used at intersections. At the start of the game you will be dealt two straight on road book cards, one turn right card and one turn left card. They have to be used when you move on from an intersection if you have them, meaning a careful route needs to be planned at the start of the race, otherwise you may be forced to turn right when you want to turn left. Is It Fun? Classic Rally certainly hits the sweet spot of racing games, being strategic, quick, fun, tense, and not overly complicated. We found we were able to finish two player races within 20 minutes, perfect for games like this. I don't want them to be too complicated and long, but I do want them to be enjoyable, accessible, and make me want to race again when done. Classic Rally certainly does that. In a four player game, I can see this getting closer to the 45-90 minute game advertised on the box. It quickly becomes very intuitive as to what you need to do, but that does not take away from the strategy. This is a race game. But the core mechanic to me feels like a hand management game. Do you stock up high on fuel to give you long range? Or cover your self for inevitable hazards and tool up with the necessary kit? I often found that the second strategy is more likely to bring you success. Hazards are unavoidable in this game, and they all slow you down. Flat tyres, fuel leaks, power failures... There are many hazards that could all bring your race to an abrupt halt unless you have the right kit on your boards. Stock up too much on fuel sacrificing the required accessories and you will pay. But, without fuel you cannot move. There is a balance here. You need to have your support vehicle moving into the right spot at the right time to refuel at the right time to make that burst for the line. The tension created from this duel car movement is very interesting, and crucial to both the success of this game, and making it stand out from the obvious alternatives within this field of games. This is certainly a game I enjoyed playing. It created a beautiful tension every game. Across six games, all with different set ups, tracks, and opponents, I won three and lost three, but was never sure of victory or out of any race. Speaking to all the players I tried this with, they all felt they were going to win the race up to the final few turns. And this is why I think this game deserves your attention if you are a race game fan. A race game with a runaway leader is a failure for me. A game like this that feels more luck based that a strategic experience will always flop. Classic Rally succeeds in both these areas, it looks great, and delivers tense, enjoyable race experience that focuses your mind on your cars and cards from the beginning to the end.

Rear Window WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count: 3-5 You’ll like this if you like: Codenames, Mysterium, Decrypto. Published by: Funko Games Designed by: Prospero Hall Rear Window is a classic film released in 1954 from legendary English director, Alfred Hitchcock. I studied at University, and hated it. I am a fan now, its an amazing film! But as an impatient 20-year old, it was a little slow for me. I preferred The Simpsons version. I now get that the pace builds the tension and is often why so many people regard this film so highly. To attempt to convert that into cardboard form intrigued me. Could it be done? Well, you're about to find out in the next few paragraphs. But if you're impatient and want to know now, the answer is yes. And in a really good way too. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up Now, this is a lot. But all comes together easily and it much easier to do than it sounds. One player will play as the Director, and the rest of the players will act as The Watchers. More can be the Director if you prefer, this is a good way to incorporate younger players into the game in a stress free way. Set up the screens for both sides of the table, separating what each group can see. Next, place the four day boards between the two groups of players, with the first "day one" board face up in the top left, and the other three face down in numerical order forming a large square. Give the solution board to the player acting as The Director and ensure they place it face down in front of them in the same orientation as the main game board. Upside down if necessary. The Director will also take one of each of the Resident tokens, the three Cut tokens, four wooden cubes, the Trunk box, and then shuffle the Window cards, placing them into a face-down deck in front of them. Lay down the four Watcher placards so the Watchers can access them easily along with the Investigate token and the pointer token by the four day boards. These Watcher placards give the Watchers four very interesting special powers. More on that later. Then give the Watchers the two Murder tiles and four of each of the Resident tokens. The Watchers will now choose 12 of the Attributes, taking the five tiles for each, placing them face up next to the day boards. One of the Watchers will then take one of each of the Attribute tokens, adding one Murder tile, and will pass them to the Director face down, with a little shuffle. From these 13 Attribute tokens, the Director will draw four at random. Meaning that the Murder token is only in the game roughly a third of the time. They will then place the four selected tokens face up onto the attribute spots on the Solution board. The remaining tiles are placed into the Trunk box, hidden from all players. Do not reveal to any of the Watchers what four Attributes are in the game. Especially if the Murder tile is in the game or not. The Director will now choose four residents to live in the four apartments, placing their tokens face up onto the four Resident spots on the Solution board. You can pick any four you like, it doesn't affect the game. There are some Attribute tiles that add additional Resident tokens. These are the purple tokens and clearly identified. They add additional complexity to the game when you are ready for that. I would say from game three and onwards once a few people have had a chance playing on either side of the table. Then, place any remaining tokens into the Trunk box and set it aside. Finally, the Director will draw eight Window cards to start the game with. You are now ready to play. Phew! In all seriousness, this all takes under five minutes, there are just lots of little steps, but it is all very intuitive. How It Plays The Director will now look at the eight drawn Window cards and assess how they could work for the four chosen Resident and Attribute tokens in the game. If the murder token is in the game then the Director is aiming to give good clues, but avoid the Watchers correctly guessing there has been a murder. They need for the Watchers to correctly guess six or seven spots on the final forth day, but not correctly guess the murder tile is in the game. The Watchers need to correctly guess seven or eight spots, including the Murder tile. If the Murder tile is not in the game it is a little easier, and everyone wins if all eight spots are guessed correctly at any point. This is achieved by the Director placing the eight cards they have into the eight spots on the face-up Day One board. There are two spaces for each of the four apartments. You are looking to match the images on the cards to the characters and characteristics on the chosen tokens in the game. This can be done a few ways, but due to the lack of communication aloud between the Director and the Watchers, this needs to be learned through the game. You could use matching colours from the cards played to the characters in the game. They all have one main colour associated with them. Some cards literally show the residents in the game. This can help a lot. But what if the character is doing the opposite of what their Attribute is for this game? You don't want to confuse people. The cards all show a lot of detail. Various objects, items, and scenarios are all depicted. You need to try to find the ones that work best for each Attribute/Resident combination. Each round, the Director can choose to place two cards face down. This would be for two reasons. Perhaps some of the cards just do not work for the Attributes and Residents. Or, maybe there has been a Murder and the Director wants to keeps a few things hidden. However, remember those four special powers the Watchers have with the Watcher placards? Well, one of them allows the players to choose one day and flip over the cards played face down. So, in as much as card that links to the Attributes and Resident of one specific apartment, a card flipped over, that can now be viewed gives clues as to which Resident/Attribute are not selected for this Apartment, and most probably, the game. Another power allows the Watchers to discard a face down card from the current day, and make the Director replace with a new face up card. The Director can then draw one more card to their hand to replace this for the next round. The Directors can also one of their three Cut tokens to discard as many cards a they like, and replace them with new ones. I have found that these will generally all get used, but three cut tokens is enough as long as you don't try and be too specific. But give your Watchers some credit, they have four days to guess after all. After all eight cards have been placed by the Director the Watchers will now openly discuss their thoughts as to what the Director is trying to tell them. The Director can listen to this, but not comment. It will give them clues and hints as to how to help the Watchers in later rounds. When ready, the Watcher will then place their guesses down onto the board as to which Attributes and Resident the Director was trying to allude too. The Director will then tell them how many of their eight guesses were correct placing one of their four black cubes onto the corresponded number on the day board. They cannot say which ones are correct, just how many. However, one of the other Watcher placard special powers offers the chance to ask the Director to place a token on any chosen Attribute or Resident guess placed by the Watchers on any previous day. The token will either say YES or NO, indicting if the guess made by the Watchers was correct or not. The final power gives the Watcher the chance to ask the Director to place an arrow pointing to the specific part of one card that they wants to draw attention too. This is a great way to be implicate with a particular clue, and avoid the Watchers going down the wrong path. Once a day has been finished, the Director will flip over the next board, and start placing the next set of eight cards into the eight spaces. The Watchers will guess again, hopefully making some progress from the previous round until the fourth and final round when the Director can then reveal all, and tell the story of the game. Is It Fun? Oh my goodness, yes! I love this game. I'm a fan of deduction games, and enjoy a cooperative experience like this. I am a fan of the movie, and love the way the designers of this game have integrated the theme. So, it's worth taking all that into account when you read on. However, what I have found when playing this game with different types of people, generally speaking, everyone gets caught up into the experience, no matter their thoughts on all of that! Sure, they may not all love it. But everyone I have played this with has certainly "got into it." There is some frustration from both sides of the game. For the Director, if they don't get the "right" cards, then it is tough, Although, I found the agonising choice when I played this role to be a massively enjoyable part of the game. But I understand how it can be tough being forced to lay a card you think will confuse people when you don't want to. The good thing, is if this isn't for you, you can try the Watcher role instead. However, that role isn't without its own frustrations for some of the players I played this with. The main one being that the game won't be solved in round one. And some people get very frustrated when they cannot figure out the clues right away. I mean, it could be! But that's unlikely, and would be down to a fair bit of luck. But when you play Rear Window you need to understand the goal is to get it correct by the fourth day. Use the full extent of clues available to you, matching up cards across multiple days to eliminate certain things, and make your guesses. If you can play like this, you will enjoy the process. If you get impatient and frustrated that you cannot get it all correct with one or two guesses, then it may be a frustrating experience or you. For me though, the game has a beautiful tension that develops through the game, just like the film. OK, that's ridiculous. it is not "just like the film"! Of course it isn't. How could it be? But it certainly does the film justice, and honours the core source material. As you play through the four days, the tension builds in a beautiful way. I would say I have won 80% of the games I have played. The few we lost were close affairs, and often when the Murder token makes the game a little more unpredictable. But generally, the game ramps up in a delicious and beautifully balanced way. Teasing a potential fail but delivering a satisfying, crunchy, and rewarding victory for all at the final seconds as the credits begin to roll. Which brings me to my only issue with this game. When you lose, it sucks. As I said, you don't lose this game very often. But the occasions you do, the game ends very flat. Everyone just feels a bit crap and the burst balloon of an ending does leave a sour taste in your mouth. You want a pay off for the effort you have all collectively made. When one half loses when the Murder token is in the game, this is fine. One side loses, but another wins, and banter can ensure. But the collective lose when the Murder is out the game is a bit rubbish. But like I said, it happens rarely, and makes the wins all the more sweet. But yo do need to bare this in mind. As the Director, if I see a lose coming, I will offer some guidance and help, well outside the rules of the game, to avoid the feeling a lose brings. Overall though, Rear Window is a brilliant adaptation of a very good movie. It stands on its own for people who have not seen the film, and brings something new to the hobby outside of obvious comparisons to games like Mysterium. If you have Mysterium already, do you need this? Well, that's up to you. If you love Mysterium, and like the idea of this theme, perhaps this would get more plays. If not, then maybe Mysterium is enough for you. If you have neither, and want a game in this genre then I would seriously consider Rear Window. But then, a Murderer would say that.

Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 2 You’ll like this if you like: Disney Sorcerers Arena, Funkoverse, Smash Up Published by: Restoration Games, IELLO. Designed by: Noah Cohen, Sam Crane, Rob Daviau, Adil M. Geresu, Justin D. Jacobson, Brian Neff Restoration Game take old favourites that need a fresh coat of paint, and bring them back to life for the modern era. The Unmatched series did this for the 2002 classic, Star Wars: Epic Duels. A popular, but out-of-print and hard to get game. The Unmatched series took the same idea, but tidied up the ruleset, and opened it up to characters from all over the world of books, film, and TV. So far, we have had Marvel characters (of course) Buffy, and Coble & Fogg to name a few. And now, Unmatched brings us Houdini vs. The Genie. The legendary and very real escapologist. And, errr... The Genie? Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up Usually with an Unmatched game, you will need to choose which characters you want to fight with, but if you just have this set, it's simply one each. That makes for a very good and full game though, don't worry. But you can mix-and-match with other sets. Pick your character and take their mini, cards, and health dial. Be sure to take the little token for Bess (Houdini's wife in real life) if you play as Houdini. Shuffle your cards and deal yourself five for a starting hand. The youngest player now places their mini on the spot marked with a "1" and the other player places their mini onto the "2" space. It's worth noting the board is double sided. Both sides are essentially the same, except one is designed for people who suffer from vision deficiencies or colour blindness. Nice touch. Note your characters special power, movement range, and if they attack with ranged movement (in any space of the same zone) or Melee, right up in your grill. You are now ready to play. How to Play On your turn, you will have two actions to do one of three things. You can either move, called Maneuver, or play a card from your hand to fight, called Attack or take a special action, called Scheme. When you move, draw a card into your hand then move your fighter up to your maximum along adjacent spaces. Adjacency in this game is shown by connected lines between spaces. Your maximum movement will be shown on your character card. You can boost your movement by discarding a card from your hand and adding the extra spots shown in the small circular boost area on the middle right of each card. It is worth noting that other than a few cards that have a special power that will gain you additional cards, moving is the only way to draw a card in this game. There will be a few turns that you will move just for the opportunity to draw a card. Some boost powers give you extra benefits such as being able to to draw extra cards or recover health. Houdini can boost his movements to move to any space on the board without another fighter on it. The game also has secret passages on the board which are all seen as adjacent to each other. Large figures from other version of Unmatched cannot fit through these. This makes moving in this version of the game very interesting. You can get very far away from your opponent, but they can equally catch up quickly! To attack, simply declare who the attack will be made on and play a card from your hand. Attacks will either be melee in which case you must fight an adjacent fighter, or ranged, in which case you can target any other fighter in the same zone as you. This depends on if you play as Houdini or The Genie. Other fighters in other versions will bring other powers. Zones are shown by the coloured circles, so you could find a ranged attack has quite a long distance threat. You need to watch out if you are playing as Houdini, and use Bess where you can to protect yourself. Once you have chosen and declared who you are attacking and played a card face down attack card shown by the red explosion symbol, the defending player can decide if they want to play a defend card or not. The defends card are blue and show a shield. However, some cards work for both attack and defence so look closely. Combat is then resolved, sorting through immediate effects first, then during combat effects along with the actual combat, shown by the strength of the cards played, followed by the after combat effects. Combat is won by the attacker if they managed to deal at least one damage. It is won by the defender is they managed to block all damage. The effects can be quite effective and things can turn around very quickly. I played one game as Houdini where I successfully defended the attack but lost my final health due to The Genies after combat effect; but was able to recover four health with my own after combat power. It was quite the show! The Scheme action lets you play the cards with the yellow lightning symbol on. These give you a variety of benefits such as drawing more cards, adding extra actions, or forcing your opponent to discard cards. They can be quite powerful but each deck only has a few in. Players will take it in turns like this, moving, scheming, and attacking, until they reduce the other players Heroes health down to zero. Defeating Bess is a tragic loss, but not one worthy of victory in this game! At this point, the game ends. The winner is declared. Outrage at that final awesome card your opponent beat with you ensues. And you will most probably rack 'em up and go again. It all happens quite quickly. It's around 10-20 minutes per game I have found. Is It Fun? Playing Unmatched feels very much like many other games in this field. Disney's Sorcerers, Arena, Dice Throne, Godtear and Funkoverse all make use of similar mechanics in this busy market place. It's a;l;l about clever card play and ~unmatched certainly holds its own in this arena. But you need to do something different to stand out. I have also recently previewed two excellent new games that use this style too, Fatal Knockout and Merit. So, what does Unmatched do to deserve its place in your collection? If you are after a two-player skirmish game that is! I would suggest two key things. The characters and the movement. There are a lot of cool licenced characters in Disney's Sorcerers, Arena, Dice Throne, and Funkoverse but they are all from recent films. Mostly animated or comic book films. Unmatched is bringing characters from all parts of literature and from throughout history. It feels more grown-up. There is something "mature" and sensible about these minis and characters when compared to the colourful standees of Disney's Sorcerers, Arena, or the bobble head toys in the Funkoverse games. Nether is better or worse. It just helps you make a choice for what will better suit you. But the main stand-out feature for Unmatched is the movement. It is a little more subtle in these games and a lot more important. In Unmatched, movement is a key part of the game. I find that I am moving most turns. Probably three quarters of my turns will involve a movement. In Disney's Sorcerers, Arena and Godtear I find it is more of a race to the middle action zones, and then a brawl ensues. In Dice Throne you obviously don't move, and just assume adjacency all game. In Funkoverse you often move to claim flags and certain action points. But the movement is neither clever or interesting. In Unmatched, the movement is a key part of the game. The zones, and with this version, the hidden tunnels, offer clever opportunities to spring up and make sneak attacks. Running away is an actual viable opportunity as you can gain some serious ground when needed. The battle id more of a dance than a slog. Both ways to play are fun. They both allow for a great game to happen. Again, this is just a point of difference, and with Unmatched, this is certainly an area that it stands out in. I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys two player skirmish games, but is looking for something that feels a little more 'after-hours'. Unmatched offers more of an adult theme and style that works well when the lights are low, dinner is long finished, and the small hours approach. If you want a duelling game to battle your friends and loved ones and would like for the characters to be more 15 (or R for my American friends) than PG, Unmatched could be the one for you.