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Good Face Bad Face WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count: 2-5 You’ll like this if you like: Skull, Coup, Sheriff of Nottingham Published by: Big Potato Games Designed by: Ed Naujokas This is a free review copy. See our review policy here. Big Potato Games make fun. Boxes and boxes of fun. They have not put their name to a dud yet. Everything they do that I have played has made me happy. Thankfully, there is no crushing exception here. Good Face Bad Face is one of those incredibly simple games that when played, you wish you had thought of yourself. I can teach this is a matter of moments, but it brings so much fun to the table every time I play it. Let's do that right now so you can see how simple and fun this is. Set Up Depending on player count, remove a certain amount of cards from the game. In a two player game you should start with nine yellow 'good' faces and five red 'bad' faces. Shuffle these up then remove another two from the game. In a three player game you start with ten good and five bad. There are 14 good and six bad in a four player game and all 18 good faces and seven bad in a five player game. Shuffle the remaining cards and deal them out equally to each player. If you have done the above right, everyone should be left with five cards each. You are now ready to play. How To Play Choose a first player, they will now choose one to five cards from their hand to play face down. This is then passed to the player to their right. They can take the top card and add it into a face up row in front of them, or pass the deck unseen to the next player. If they take a yellow good face then great, well done them. They are one step closer to winning. You need to have four good faces face up in front of you to win a game. If they do take a good face, they can then choose to take another card if they wish, if there are any left. Or pass the remaining cards to the next player. It's one big game of chicken. Or bluff. Or make your kids cry. However you want to see it. If a player takes a red face they must place that in front of them and sadly end their turn. If they already have red faces in their face up row, simply add this to them. If this is their third bad face then they must now pick them all up and add them to their hand, full of shame and obviously the knowledge that the rest of the group now know a vast majority of their hand is made up of red cards. And no one will touch their next stack! If they had good faces when they added a bad face then all the good faces are returned to your hand to cheers of joy from all other players if they were on three yellows, and the bad face stays as a reminder for your failure! If you later add a good face when you have a bad face you can pick up one bad face and return it to your hand. If the stack comes back to the first player untouched, they must take at least the top card. Here's hoping to started with a yellow! Imagine every other player leaving that alone. And of course, they all get to see this as you flip it over and smugly place it in front of you. People start to form opinions about how other people are playing the game. And this is where the magic happens. This may sound a little complicated but you will get used to it very quickly, and it is all clearly labelled in this handy dandy player guide. And I promise, it will makes complete sense after you play the game once or twice. The games only take a few minutes so you get there quickly. The best way to learn is to play. Is It Fun? Oh my! This game is so much much fun. It is so simple, but also, so incredibly layered. When you pass a stack of cards to the other players you can do so many things with this. Imagine in a four player game. Would you place three bad cards on top of one good hoping each player takes the top card? But what if they don't! How about placing just one bad and three good, hoping one brave player takes the plunge and then scares off the other players leaving the remaining bounty for you. But what if a player sees through your plans and takes all three yellow after seeing another player take the top red knowing that was the end of the bad cards. Opening up a potential clean path for them? Remember, there are only so many cards in a game. You always know a fair few from your own hand and what is face up in front of other players. There is only so many places you can hide in this game. Could you maybe even just lay five yellow hoping only one player takes one card, leaving you with a game winning stack when it makes it back to you. Although, of course, all of this is very much dependant on what you have in your hand. The game also comes with a mini expansion, a bonus set of cards that I wont spoil here. Inside the main box is an envelope that encourages you to wait until you have played the game a few times before you open it. Inside is more fun, but I will leave that for you to enjoy when you play. All I will say here is that it is a lovely touch and simply adds more variety to the game. The only negative with this game is the cards need to be looked after, or maybe even sleeved. They scuff up quite easy and can get bent out of shape with minimal handling. See below. This is after ten games and you can see the scuffing is coming up. In a game where you need to make sure that no card can be identified when face down, this is quite important. I am not overly protective of my games so this is not about being precious. It's about gameplay. I often play with my children (ten and seven) and I have found in this game that I am often warning them a lot about not bending the cards as it will ruin the game. This is a massive shame and frustration for me. I feel the cards could have been made from a better stock so you don't need to worry about this. I hope this is addressed in any subsequent reprints. I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys bluffing games of any style. However, this game is so cheap, but also so fun, I think it is worth a punt for most groups. If you want a new family game to play after dinner, this is it. If you want a game you can enjoy with elderly relatives that offers a simple to teach and understand ruleset, this is it. If you want a fun game to enjoy with mates down the pub, this is it! Although don't spill anything on my cards, ok? I would say this game is as close to a 'must-have' as any game. In terms of the cost, weight, size, and learning curve when compared to the amount of fun you will have with it, this is potentially, pound-for-pound, one of the best games I have in my collection.

This is a paid preview. The publisher paid for this preview to be made. The payment did not affect our opinions but we want to acknowledge the payment here. Excited to share this preview video for upcoming Kickstarter Jungla from UAO Games

This is a paid preview. The publisher paid for this preview to be made. The payment did not affect our opinions but we want to acknowledge the payment here. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chriswoolgar/minimize Do you love fun? Are you a fan of clever cards games? Maybe you are looking for something new? Perhaps you have enjoyed games of Fluxx, and are now searching for a family-friendly card game with similar changeable craziness and a fresh style? Well, Minimize could be the answer for you. Minimize has been developed by independent publishers and friends Chris, Jen, and Ryan from Frazzled Wool. Originally from Chesterfield, England, the team started making games during the global pandemic, trying to take something positive from this difficult time. Hitting Kickstarter this summer, Minimize is the first game to be developed by the team, and incorporates a flexible deck of 78 numbers cards, all with number, colour and shape on them. They are designed to be played with the game Minimize but also for potentially many others, including two current official variants, Tokenize and Eradicize. In this review, we will take a look at all three games, Minimize, Tokenize and Eradicize, and talk about what we like about this clever deck of cards. First, let’s talk about the signiture game, Minimize. Minimize. Minimize is a card game where players are looking to minimize their scores in order to win. In this game, less is more! The score is calculated in a rather clever way. It sounds complicated at first but it will quickly become quite intuitive. Your score is achieved by first assessing the range of the six cards in your hand whenever a challenge is made. Your lowest value card is taken from your highest value, to show your range. Say for example, you had a two for your lowest and an eight for your highest, your range therefore is six. You can then subtract one point for any pair of the same number, deduct three points for any set of three, and a whopping five points can be removed for having four or more of the same number. But we are not yet done! Each game has three bonus rule cards chosen at random from 18 different options at the start of the game. They can change throughout, but at each scoring phase, which ever three are face up at that point will affect your score by adding points to your hand. This can range from the Triplet card, which cruelly adds three points for having three of more of the same number in your hand, to the Sixes card which adds a game changing five points for each card with the value of 6 in your possession! Maximum Fun Set-up is a simple process of shuffling the deck and dealing six cards to each player and dividing the rest into three equal draw piles. You will draw three random bonus scoring cards and lay them face up on the table. On your turn you draw from one of the three draw piles separately choosing one existing card from your hand to discard. As you place cards into the discard pile, some will trigger game-changing actions. This can be where all players let the player to their left take one or two of their cards at random, pass your entire hand clockwise, change a bonus rule card, or receive a new challenge token. The challenge tokens are used to try and win the game. Each player starts with one and can use it at the start of their go so long as each player has taken at least three turns. They reveal their score and then each player in turn declares if they have a lower score or not. If they do, they reveal that number to the table. This then is the new score to beat and this continues until all players have declared their position. The player with the lowest score at this point shows their cards to confirm their total, discards their cards and advances to the next round. Play will then continue until the next player chooses to call for a challenge. This continues until all players bar one has gone through to the next round. This process continues until there are just two players left when a final round is played. So, for a four-player game, you would play until one player challenges. The lowest score would advance leaving three players playing until another challenge is called. Then the next player with the lowest advances, leaving just two playing. When the next challenge is called, you would then advance one final player through and the other is eliminated. You would then start a new round with the three players who advanced. Go through the same process to get two players. Then, in the final round the player with the lowest score on the first challenge wins the game. The entire process is fun, fast and feels very fresh. This is a family-friendly card game that plays quickly and is very easily adapted by younger players. I enjoyed this with my family of four, including my five and eight-year old children, who all found the brightly coloured cards very easy to read and understand. They were disappointed if they were ever eliminated but the game is quick enough to just wait for the next game! Each card is designed to simply show a number, colour, and shape. The numbers are shown at the top left and bottom right of each card, the colours are vibrant and the contrasts between the card colour and number font colour is very easy for younger players to read. The shapes did sometimes confuse them in the early games, as they are stylised into images. For example, the square could be a dice, bunny in a top hat or a birthday cake. But this was quickly understood and the designs are fun and do add to the experience. Tokenize Tokenize works very similar to Minimize, with the same set-up and play mechanics, but the scoring and end game scenario is different. In Tokenize you are looking to collect sets of three cards. This could be in the form of three of the same colours, numbers or shapes. At the start if each players turn, if they have a set of three in their hand, they declare this and show their cards to all players. This set is then scored, removed from the game and that player then draws three more cards and play continues. Scoring a set is as simple as taking ten points, and then working out the variations to that set based on the current three face up bonus rule cards. This carry’s on until the draw deck runs out. At this point, if in the discard pile there are less than 10 cards there, the game will end immediately. Otherwise, and more likely, the discard is shuffled into three new draw piles and the game continues. If on the third time through the deck the discard pile still doesn’t have less than ten cards then the game ends. This game is perhaps a little easier for younger players to score as the range scoring system has been removed, but it does feel a little less original than the unique style of Minimize. It is a fun way to play with these cards never-the-less, and offers an interesting option for the trinity; playing all three versions at once! Eradicize Eradicize is a game where players are looking to get rid of all their cards. Set-up is similar to the other two games, with than three changes. Bonus rule cards are not used, after each player has been dealt six face down cards, they are then delt a further three face up cards, and each player is given their own colour and shape token to use in the game. On a players turn they can draw from either of the three face up draw piles and then they must play one card. Cards are played into a discard pile and must always be either higher in value than the previous card, or the same colour or shape as their own assigned token. If you cannot lay a card, you must then pick up. Play continues until one player has used all cards in their hand. They must then try to play the three cards they have face up in front of them. The first to do this wins the game. This game feels the lightest of the three and plays a lot quicker. It is most suitable for younger players and I would think this game could be played with children around the four to five mark. The decisions of which card to play; knowing the colour and shape could either help or hinder the following player, adds a nice friendly take-that mechanic to the game. Knowing the three face-up cards for each player also adds an element of competitive fun when you reach the later stages. Summery Overall, I would say Minimize was my favourite of the three current games these brightly coloured clever cards can be used for. I sense many more rule sets will be developed for this, perhaps by the developers and fans alike. The new brightly coloured art will stand out and pop on the table, and I think this game could find some very welcome homes when it comes to Kickstarter later this summer.

This is a paid preview. The publisher paid for this preview to be made. The payment did not affect our opinions but we want to acknowledge the payment here. WWW.UFOWAVEGAME.COM Kickstarter link Fighting the scum of the universe! That’s right! Time to sort out those pesky humans so us Aliens can safely invade! In UFO Wave, the traditional roles are reversed! It’s time to see things from the other side and play as the Aliens. The aim of the game is to score as many points as you can before the deck runs out. This is done by successfully building crop circles, abducting various lifeforms, harvesting samples and many more fun actions. It’s a fast and fun family friendly game full of take-that and hand management and could well be your new favourite post dinner game with your family. I want to believe! Setting up the game is very simple. First you need to separate the decks into the Scan, Plan, Species and Event cards. Deal out five Plan cards to each player and seven face up Scan cards into a row. Then shuffle in two of the Event cards in the remaining Scan deck, and place this with the Plan deck in the centre of the table. And that’s the set up! (Game mat will be available on the kickstarter as an extra) Players will then take it in turns to draw one Plan card and then play as many Plan cards from their hand as they like to facilitate a better and more productive Scan phase. Players then need to make a choice of taking either one Activity card from the face up Scan cards or move a Human card either to their or an opponent’s play area. This continues until the Scan deck runs out, at which point all players total their cards to determine the winner. In Space, no one can hear you scream! In the Plan stage, some cards will allow you to take multiple Activity cards instead of just one. Others will allow you to rearrange the scan row into any order you chose. The order of the cards can be crucial as taking an Activity card that is next to another specific card can have unwanted consequences. If a Human card is next to an Activity card, any player that takes that Activity card alerts that Human and that card comes into your play area too. This could be a Sky Watcher, which reduces your hand size by two or a Man in Black, which reduces your end game score by 4. Or many others, none of which you will want. Apart from the Believers card. In the draw phase, whom ever has the most Believers in their play area can draw two cards, picking one and discarding the other instead of just one. There are also Energy cards, which like the Human cards, activate if any adjacent card is played. These can give you positive or negative points, so you need to plan accordingly. You could find a five-point Harvest card is next to a negative one Energy card. Playing a Plan card that lets you move a Scan card or rearrange the whole Scan deck could be quite powerful in this situation. You're not gonna believe what I saw! But the choices don’t end there. Each Plan card has two options. A basic or advanced action. At the start of the game, you will be assigned a Species to play as. Each species has one activity which they specialise in, which allows you to play the advanced option of this plan card for free. For the other advanced options, you need to play the Plan card you want to use the advanced feature of alongside a Craft card. An Alien Ship card of various sizes. This upgrades your action to the advanced option, which are quite a fair bit more powerful. The Premonition card for example changes your turn option from rearranging the top three Scan cards, to rearranging them and claiming one for free. The Terrorize card allows you to claim an opponent’s card at random. The advanced version allows you to look at your opponent’s hand first before you pick a card. Working your hand of Plan cards alongside the Craft cards is a crucial part of the game. The Craft cards can also be used in tandem to rid yourself of the negative Human cards that may be in your play area as the game progresses. Any two Craft of the same type can be used in this way, or any Craft card played with a Shape Shifter Craft will do the trick. Thematically, I see this as the Craft come along and abduct the pesky Humans, riding you of the problem! One day, we might receive a signal from a planet like this The Species that you choose at the start of the game will also allow you to gain an extra two points from a specific Activity. Some aliens prefer to Abduct humans, whilst other may be more interested in Recon missions, or building Crop Circles. Although personally I have always wondered why they would want to do that! The Aliens race powers add a nice little variation and asymmetry to the game. Encouraging players to chase different Action cards in the game. And this is a crucial aspect to this game that makes it work so well. Everything is linked so well to the theme. It is clear to see the subject has been handled with sensitivity and great understanding. Designer Dave Hodrien is the Chairman of a leading UK based UFO group, and its is clear he has made a game around a subject matter he cares deeply about. Having spoken to Dave, it is clear he is passionate about this project. He wanted to create a game that is true to this area, but not limited to others who share his passions. This is a game first, and work has been done to make is fun over anything else. But it stays true to the subject matter and works only with concepts that people interested in this field would understand and respect. I don't have time for your convenient ignorance. After watching the X-Files with my Dad when I was a kid, I have been fascinated in this subject for a long time. I am not sure what I believe, but I do find it hard to believe that in the Universe, in all is mighty and majesty, we are alone. Like Mulder often said, “The truth is out there!” And I have also been one to believe that to be the case. Whether or not anyone knows the “truth” yet, who is to say! But with Rovers flying on Mars, who knows how long it will be until we find out. All the images, cards and events are styled in quite a cartoonish and tongue-in-cheek way, but the game is based on actual experiences from people Dave has spoken too. You don’t need to be interested in Aliens to enjoy this game, but if you are, then I think this research and understanding of the subject matter will shine through for you. The rule book deserves a mention to. It is well written and comes designed in the style of a secret government dossier. This adds to the theme of the game whilst being a well written and simple explanation of the game. It also features information of the designer and artist and subject matter which I always enjoy. Overall, this is a light and fun card game, you could learn and teach in a few minutes to most ages. It works in one to six but shines best at three to four I found. The game plays quickly, not outstaying its welcome, at around twenty to thirty minutes. I would imagine this would be appealing to fans of game such as Exploding Kittens and Unstable Unicorns, and offers a fun and light family card game, with an original and entertaining theme. The game is coming to Kickstarter Summer 2021. This game was a preview copy supplied to me to preview. All opinions are my own. The final Kickstarter version will have a few changes to the preview copy I was provided with: - The Final Box style will be a magnetic flip top box. - The card stock will be increased to 350 gsm - The will be a new sturdy inlay, and the box will be twice as deep to allow for card sleeving. - There will be 6 turn order cards for easy play.

One Fowl Swoop WBG Score: 7 Player Count: 2-6 You’ll like this if you like: Dino Dump, Uno. Published by: Homegrown Love Designed by: Homegrown Love I am always on the look out for independent designers doing great things. When I saw the art on the cards for One Fowl Swoop from Etsy seller Homegrown Love, I was keen to try this game myself and give it some of its own homegrown love. The game itself is a simple twist on a classic card game, but dressed up to the nines with beautiful art from Elizabeth Shaw. But does this game live up to its fine looks? Let's get it to the table and find out. Set Up Split the deck into the two types. Most are the regular bird cards but there are also the Forgotten Flock cards, which have a different colour frame. Shuffle both decks separately and then deal 20 of the regular cards to each player. The rules suggest to lay them all out on the table and let each player take 20 cards but I found this to be unnecessary and slowed the start down. Each player then places four cards face down in front of them, without looking. They can then arrange the remaining 16 cards in their hand however they please, and must place four face up over the four face down cards. You are now ready to play. If you want to include the Forgotten Flock cards, simply deal two of these to each player, replacing two regular cards so that each player still has 20 cards in total. How To Play Starting with the youngest player, players will now take it in turns to play one card, face up into the central discard pile. The idea of the game is to get rid of your cards. As such, if you have more than one of any number, you can lay all the cards down at once. If you ever lay cards so there are four of the same cards now in a row in the deck, you can "burn" the pack. This means you can remove all the cards from the pack, and then have another turn. You have to lay a card lower than the current face up card. If you are ever in a situation where you cannot do that because you only have higher cards in your hand, this is when you may want to play one of your Forgotten Flock cards. Otherwise, you will have to pick up the entire pack and add it to your hand. The Forgotten Flock cards offer opportunities to force the next player to miss their turn, draw extra cards, or even offer you a second turn yourself. Any time a player is laying on top of one of these cards, the pack is considered reset and you can place whatever you choose on top. Once all the cards from your hand are played you can then start to use the four face up cards in front of you. When these are successfully in play, you are then into the final stages. Cards must now be played blind from one of the four face down cards. If the card you play is legal, great! Onto the next player. But if it is not, then you must pick up the deck along with the card you just played, get through these, and then go back to your remaining face down cards. As soon as someone plays their final card, they are declared the winner of that round. Any cards remaining in the other players hands are totalled and tallied as their running minus score. The game continues until someone has inadvertently reached 500 points, at which point the player with the lowest score is the overall winner. Of course, you could just play one round, or best of three, or however you like really. Or, like me, just stop and admire the stunning card art. The final rule in the game is the Swoop cards. Any card like below, with the S symbol instead of a numerical value, can be played onto any other card to burn the deck. Is It Fun? One Fowl Swoop is a endearing game, that looks stunning, plays quickly, and offers a lot of fun for a family card game experience. It does not bring anything new to the table in terms of mechanics or game play, but what it does bring is a lot of charm and elegance. I have a lot of games in my collection. Many of which would be considered "better" than this game. But I have fond myself reaching for this small box a lot over the last few weeks. There are times, (many recently I have found), when I want something simple, light, and fun. Something that requires zero explanation but still brings a smile to the face of my loved ones around the table. One Fowl Swoop does this. If you don't currently own any of the variations of this game, then I would urge you to check this one out. Why not support a small independent designer who is clearly putting a lot of themselves into their work. I hope the people behind this game get the encouragement and motivation to keep making games, and I look forward to seeing what they bring out next.

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 first saw this game at UKGE, where it featured as one of my top 5 independent games. I was so excited when I saw the theme of this game. A 70s cop action film. A maniac on the loose, killing at random. It's my job to either keep doing this and escape, or catch the perp and stop the rampage. I was in from the very beginning. But now I have my hands on the game, does it deliver? I was recently lucky enough to get my hands on a prototype copy of the game before it went to crowdfunding and I was not disappointed. The game oozes 70's crop drama. I love the look and feel of every part of this production. But how does it play? The good news there is it plays very well! Like all good hidden movement games, this game creates tension from the first turn until the very end. No matter which side of the table you are sitting, you will feel the game is balanced on a knife edge, (in most games) until the final turn. The game works using many of the classic mechanics seen in hidden movement games such as Scotland Yard and Mind MGMT with one player acting as the Stinger. A criminal on a killing rampage. Their presence is unknown to all players bar the one playing as the Stinger of course, but at certain points in the game, they need to reveal an area they are in. And sometimes, when they make a kill or the cops call use their intelligence, their exact location. The board is a sprawling representation of San Francisco in the 1970s. It looks stunning. But can be a little daunting for the players acting as the cops at the start. But this quickly changes as players tool up, and close the net on the Stinger. The game is beautifully balanced to deliver exactly what you want from a game of this ilk. Tension. The rounds work simply with players taking it in turns to either move, heal, or draw or play a card. Also, for the Stinger player, they can declare a hit, if on the previous round they managed to finish on a space where one of their targets were. Or for the cops, they can share inventory. In-between the Stinger taking an action and the cops, the hunch tracker is moved. There are four spaces for this, and each time in lands on the bottom location, the player acting as the Stinger must reveal the district they are currently in. The cards will allow players to gain better weapons, equipment, and assist them in their mission. Either as the Stinger, to make three successful hits. Or as the cops, to stop the Stinger. Once three hits have been carried out, the Stinger then needs to move to one of the four harbour spaces on the north east of the map to win the game. The cops need to block, stop, or kill him before an escape is achieved. Everything works incredibly smoothly in Go Ahead Punk! The hidden movement category is not cluttered, but it is starting to get that way. I feel you need to stand out with clever new mechanics, such as Mind MGMT or offer smooth satisfying gameplay in a new and intriguing theme. That is exactly what this game does. For anyone who is looking for a new game in this category, this is the one I would recommend if you want something simple. This replaces Scotland Yard for me. The theme is just so much better. The ability to develop your characters equipment and weapons is a lot more fun. The game works perfectly in a two player, with the cop player controlling all of the three cops. This does not slow or change the game at all. It does take away from the table talk, which is often hilarious in a game like this. But everything runs as it should with no rule changes. But in a three or four player, this game shines. As the Stinger, listening to the other players discuss where they think you may be, or where they hope you are moving to is a key part of the game, entertaining, and often down right hilarious. As the cops, having someone to bounce ides off makes the game feel a lot more enjoyable. You feel less isolated or confused at the start. And despite having no more actions than if you played on your own, it does feel like you have a better chance of victory with more people playing on your side. I have experienced some amazing finishes, often with the Stinger making it to the port, but with no extra movement left to get away from the port and win. This gives the cops one final chance to try and find, stop, and kill the Stinger. Usually at this point, all the cops are close as the net has narrowed, and you can get a final three or four player shoot out to act as a perfect climax to the game. Can the cops stop the Stinger. Can the Stinger survive one final assult and get away to freedom? The theme may not be for everyone. There is a mass shooter in the game after all. That may not work for some. I would totally understand that. All I will say is the 70s theme softens all this. It takes it out of a contemporary situation, and makes it feel more like an old movie where you just know the guns are fake. However, if you lived in San Fran, or maybe just do not like games about guns and death, this may not be right for you. But if this theme does work for you, then I think you could end up having hours of fun with this game. With the right group of people who enjoy hidden movement games, Go Ahead Punk! has the tools to deliver top drawer gaming moments of laughter, screams of frustration and joy, and tension right to the final turn. I would recommend anyone who is a fan of this mechanic to check out the Kickstarter page, which you can do so here.

Space Base WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 2-5 You’ll like this if you like: Dice Forge, Lords of Vegas, Machi Koro. Published by: Alderac Entertainment Group Designed by: John D. Clair John D. Clair is a bit of a legend in the board game industry. He has made some huge hitters in recent years. When a game comes out with his name on the box, a lot of people pay attention. Including me! Back in 2018 Space Base came out to critical acclaim. It replaced Machi Koro for a lot of people in the light weight tableau-builder category. Quite a feat at the time. But does it stand the test of time? Does it deserve a place in your collection now in 2023? Let's get it to the table and find out. Set Up Give each player a command console and the 12 starting cards in their chosen colour. Each player will now lay these out on their board running one to 12, left to right. Each player will then place a yellow, green, and blue cube onto the starting space on their credit, income, and victory point spaces. Move the credit space up five spaces the five spot. One player then needs to sort the rest of the cards by the four types. There are level one, level two, level three, and colony cards. Shuffle each type separately and then deal out all of the colony cards face up, and six each of the others into a shared tableau. Leave the remaining cards for the three levels in a face down pile next to each relevant row. Then pile the clear resources cubes into a space in the middle of the table along with the two dice. Finally, each player will draw the top face-down level one card and reduce their current energy level according to the cost of the card they drew. This is the yellow number in the top left space. Then look at the grey number on the top right, and replace the matching card on their command console, sliding the replaced card rotated 180 degrees under the board in the corresponding space so that only the top red section is now visible. The player who drew the card with the highest starting sector takes the first player card and all other players will gain additional resources. The second player gains one credit. The third player gains two. The fourth and fifth player would gain one income. The game can now begin. How To Play In Space Base, players are racing to 40 points. As soon as this is triggered by any player, finish the current round so all players have the same number of turns. Then the player with the most points, wins. You can score over 40 points, despite there being no position for this. The rules suggest you use a clear charge cube to track this. On each players turn they will roll the two dice. They can then activate the middle section of any matching card or cards. For example, if you rolled a four and a five, you could activate the four and the five, or the nine, the total of these two dice. The abilities you can trigger this way are generally extra credits, income, or points. Your starting cards will be weak, but you can upgrade quickly. And you will want to upgrade because each card you replace is rotated and placed under your board, so that you now have more passive powers. These come into effect on every other players turn. If in the above example when the first player rolled a four and five, all other players with a red passive power shown in a tucked card in either the four, five, or nine position can now activate that abilities. Again, generally to get credits, income, or points. In Space Base, all players are playing, all of the time. There is minimal downtime. However, once the active player has rolled their dice and activated their active powers, they can then spend their credits to buy more cards if they choose. Which does take a moment or two. Any bought card is immediately placed onto the active players command console and the replaced card is tucked. No matter how many credits were spent, the credit marker moves down to the space above the location that the income marker is currently at. You always have to spend all available credits, but only to the point at which your income is currently situated. For example, if you buy a card worth five but you have ten credits, you need to move your credits down to zero. But if you have four credits, you would stop there. There are some cards with special abilities, such as mimicking the abilities on the cards next to them or in other locations on the command console, the chance to get new cards, or some that need to be charged up by placing charge cubes on them, and then rewarding you with bigger powers. One even wins yo the game! But I have never seen that card work! Players can also spend their credit to buy the colony cards. These reward you with instant points, but then lock down an area on your board. You cannot use that number again, or replace that card for the rest of the game. They are worth going for, but ideally not in the first third of the game, or in the more common spaces. Is It Fun? One of the most enjoyable aspects of Space Base is its dynamic and fast-paced nature. The game possesses an unexpected speed that catches players off guard, resulting in a thrilling, quick, and entertaining game. At the start, when you have just one passive ability, you are more often than not unable to enact any passive abilities on other players turns. But this very quickly changes and the game races ahead. Although, some do complain about the slow start, I couldn't disagree more. But you can speed it up by given players extra credits or cards to begin with if you prefer. In addition to its speed, the game is designed to give players a constant sense of progression, which keeps them engaged and invested throughout the game. You start with limited abilities but these also quickly change. You will generally upgrade one card each turn, and turns are quick. It wont be long before you feel the game has moved on a lot. It's incredibly satisfying to see the fruits of your labour come to life, making every roll of the dice all the more exciting. The game's design makes it challenging for any one player to pull ahead significantly, creating tight and intense games where every move counts but all players feel like they are in with a chance of victory right until the end. On occasion, one player could fall behind if they focusing on developing their income when another player goes for early point. But this development in their engine will mean they can catch up. Overall, Space Base is very simple game that can provide hours of entertainment for all of the family. It has a number of excellent expansions, include a campaign one I am intrigued by. There is a lot of longevity in this little box.

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.