Archive for the 'Board Game Review' Category

Augustus is one of this year’s nominees for the Spiel des Jahres (the largest board games award).  It is designed by Paolo Mori who designed Libertalia and (one of my favourite games) Vasco de Gama.  In fact, Paolo seems to be designing more and more at the moment.

Players always have 3 objective cards and each can be completed by placing one of their  legions (meeples) onto each of an objective’s symbols (sword, shield, chariot, etc.)  Each turn, one player (the town crier) randomly draws one symbol from the bag.   Then, every player can place one of their legions onto a matching symbol if they have a vacant one on one of their objectives – the placed legion can be from their supply, or they can move a legion which is already placed on an objective.  So, if a sword symbol is drawn a player can place a legion from their supply, or from another objective, onto an empty sword icon.

There is a known mixture of symbols in the bag and there are more of some symbols than others, i.e. 6 swords, 5 shields, 4 chariots, etc.  Therefore, whilst it’s a random draw, some symbols are more likely to be drawn than others.  There are also 2 wild (joker) symbols in the bag – when one of these is drawn, players can place a legion on any one symbol, plus all of the previously drawn symbols are put back in the bag, and the town crier moves on to the next player. Read the rest of this entry »

The Cave is by the same designer who created the mountain climbing game, K2.  This time players are trying to get the most victory points (VPs) by exploring the depths of an underground cave system, taking the best photos, reaching the deepest depths, and so on.  However, players have a very limited amount of space to carry their equipment like rope, food, water, etc. and must balance what they need for survival and what they need to explore.

All players start at home base and each player has a player board showing the 8 spaces in their backpack where they place the tokens representing the equipment they are carrying.  One of the most important items to carry are consumables (food/drink) because a player must first discard one of their consumables before they do anything else on their turn.  If a player doesn’t have any consumables then they must spend their entire turn moving one tile and can do nothing else and can gain no VPs.  So, miscalculating how long you can stay in the caves before going back to resupply can really hinder you.

The cave system starts with the large home base cave tile in the centre of the table and the cave network will be created as players explore by drawing and adding new tiles.  When the tiles run out, players each get 3 more turns and then the game ends; however, be warned, anyone not back at base camp by the end is automatically eliminated.

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Rattus Cartus is a card game set in the world of medieval plague as is its sibling game, Rattus.  It should make it clear that Rattus Cartus is not a card game version of the original Rattus game as, whilst is uses the same theme and art style, it has its own game mechanics.

The goal is to earn the most victory points (VPs).  At the end of the game, players score VPs based on how much influence they have with each of the 6 different character classes (10 VPs for having the most, 5Vps for 2nd most, and 2 VPs for third most influence).  Some other VPs can be earned during the game too.

The game primarily comprises of character cards (6 types) and building cards (6 types each corresponding to a character).  During set-up 5 random character cards are laid out face-down – each card has 0-4 nuns on it – and these are called the ‘nun’ cards.  At the end of the game, any player who has more rats than the total number of nuns on these 5 cards is lost to the plague and automatically loses. Read the rest of this entry »

Libertalia is by Paolo Mori who designed one of my favourite games Vasco de Gama.  Libertalia is a very different game to Vasco de Gama as it is a simple and relatively quick, card-playing game.

Players are pirate crews who are trying to earn the most doubloons buy collecting booty.  Each player has a set of 30 cards each representing a crew member with a value (1-30), a special ability and a tie-break number.  Each player’s set of cards is the same except the tie-break numbers are different so that no two cards are exactly the same.  Each card’s special ability states if it will be used in the day, at dusk, at night, or at the end of the campaign.  To start the 1st campaign, one player randomly draws 9 cards from their deck, then all the other players draw the same cards.

The game is played over 3 campaigns, each consisting of 6 days when players will play one card each.  At the start of each campaign, booty tiles are drawn at random and placed on each of the 6 days on the board (one token per player).  Most booty tokens are simply worth 1, 3 or 5 doubloons, although treasure maps are only worth 12 doubloons combined if you have at least 3 of them.  There are also cursed booty tokens worth -3 doubloons, as well as saber and Spanish officer tokens which are worth no doubloons but have special effects (see below). Read the rest of this entry »

Rialto is yet another of this year’s game by Stefan Feld (which is a good thing as I like most of his games).

Set in Venice, Rialto is played over 6 rounds – one for each of the Venetian islands on the board.  Players are aiming to score the most victory points (VPs) which are  primarily earned by having councilors on the islands at the end of the game.  Players each have a marker on the Doge track and this splits all ties and determines some order of play.

Each island has 1 connection to each of its 4 neighbouring  islands.  During the game, these 12 connections each get filled with either a bridge or a gondola token.  Each bridge and gondola token has two values on it (one on each end) – bridges have values between 3-6 VPs; whereas, both values on gondolas are always value 1.  This is important because the final VPs gained by players with councilmen on each island are based on the total of each island’s 4 connections’ values.

At the start of each round, several (number of players + 1) rows of cards are laid out each consisting of 6 face-up and 2 face-down cards.  In Doge track order, players select one row of cards, add any extra cards they may have (such as from the previous round), and discard down to 7 cards.  The player may own some buildings which allow them to have more cards to select from, or keep more than 7 cards) but players must pay 1 gold for each building used.  Read the rest of this entry »

Stefan Feld’s games are known for having an interesting mechanic at their heart, which is one of the reasons I look forwards to his games.  Bora Bora is no different and has a dice-placement-action system in the centre of a game that isn’t complicated but it does have a lot of other game mechanics and bits surrounding it.  No specific aspect is complicated, but there is a lot going on, so I’m going to try to discuss each main part one-by-one.

OVERVIEW
The game is set on a Pacific island and players place huts, gain tribe members, build buildings, make offerings to the gods, and so on.  The game lasts 6 rounds and the winner is the player who finishes with the most  victory points (VPs).  Many VPs are earned during the game, but there are also lots of bonus VPs that can be awarded at the end of the game (although, as you’ll read later, these are quite tough to achieve).

Each round players first roll their 3 dice and then take turns placing one at a time on one of the action tiles allowing them to perform the appropriate action.  Next, players use the ability of one of their man tiles and the ability of one of their woman tiles.  Then, the status track (scoring VPs and determining  turn order), temple track (scoring VPs and a bonus for one player) and jewelry purchases are all resolved.  Finally, players must complete or discard one of their 3 objective tiles before taking a new one.  (All unclaimed man and woman tiles, objectives and jewelry are cleared from the board and new ones added for the next round.) Read the rest of this entry »

Le Havre: The Inland Port is a 2-player only game linked to the larger, original Le Havre game.  I haven’t played the original Le Havre so will be reviewing this game on its own merits without comparisons.  It’s a simple game with depth, but it’s also unusual so I shall explain how it plays.

The Inland Port is played over 12 rounds and the winner is the player with the highest total value of cash and buildings (which each have an end-game value).  Each round consists of a fixed number of actions (3 actions to start increasing to 9 actions by game’s end) and players take turns taking 1 action to either buy or use 1 building.  At the start of each round, some buildings are added to the market.

Players each have two boards in front of them.  One is their warehouse – a grid with 4 resource markers (clay, wood, grain, fish) where the total of each resource is the marker’s row number (multiples of three) plus the marker’s column number.  When a player gains or loses resources, they move the markers in specific grid directions – this may sound unnecessary but is a clever system and I’ll explain why later.

The other player board is the main game mechanic which shows a circle divided into 6 sectors where buildings are placed once they have been bought.  The circle has an arm like a clock’s minute-hand with 6 values around the part at the circle’s centre (0, 2, 3, 4, 4+1 and !) – these 6 values each match up to the circle’s 6 sectors.  At the end of a round, players both advance their clock hand by one sector so the values  in the centre now point at the next adjacent sector – as a result a building that was next to the zero will now be next to the 2; a building that was next to the 2 will now be next to the 3, and so on.  Any building now next to the ! symbol is immediately sold for half of its value. Read the rest of this entry »

As you would expect, K2 is a game about climbing the mountain K2.  Players each have two climber meeples and score points based on how high their climbers reach; however, any climbers that perish only score 1 point no matter how they had ascended.

Each player has an identical set of 18 cards and each turn they pick 3 of the 6 cards from their hand.  Cards can be climbing cards (values range from 1 to 3) or acclimatisation cards (used to increase your climbers’ health).

Once selected, all players reveal their 3 cards simultaneously.  The player with the highest climbing total must take one of the 3 face-up risk tokens.  These tokens range in value from 0 to 2 and the player must pay that cost with movement points, acclimatisation points, or their climbers’ health.   A new token is revealed to make a total of 3 for the next round.

On their turn, players allocate each of their 3 cards to either of their climbers to move them, pitch a tent, or increase their health.  If a climber’s health goes above 6, it always goes down to 6 at the end of each turn, which adds a nice limit so climbers are never too far from the chance of perishing.

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Oddville is a eurogame with a city building theme and a very compact game design.  By that, I don’t mean its physical playing-size on the table; instead, I mean that the game mechanics are neatly compressed.  As a result, Oddville contains a clever, inventive design with more game than you may expect from a relatively short game.

During the game player’s gain resources, money and characters as well as construct buildings  so they can score the most victory points (VPs).  The game ends as soon as any player places their 6th worker in the city.

Each player has their own deck of 4 action cards.  On their turn, a player can play 1 action card which allows them to either gain the cash shown, or gain 1 of the resources shown, or gain 1 building from the 6 building cards on display (the card affects the price).  The cards range from strong to weak and the player gets these cards back once they have used all 4, or they can spend cash to get all used ones back (but the more cards still hand, the greater the cost).

When a player chooses to gain one of the resources on their action card, they place one of their workers on the lowest market price for that resource (which are limited in number) and pays the price.  The worker on the board shows the player has that resource until they spend it when building.  The game scales with 2 players as there are fewer cheap resources available. Read the rest of this entry »

In Goblins Inc, players are goblins creating giant war robots that will fight each other.  First, players are placed in random teams – these teams will change after the first fight and new robots are built by these new teams for the second (final) fight.  The players who build a robot that wins a fight score victory points (VPs), plus players get individual VPs for their own hidden agenda cards.  Before any building takes place, players draw 7 cards from their hidden agenda deck – just before the fight, players will choose just 4 of their 7 cards which will score them VPs once the fight is over.  Hidden agenda cards award VPs based on (a) destroying specific types of tiles on the opponent’s robot, or (b) specific types of tiles not being blown off of your own robot), or (c) predicting which side will win.  (Yes, you can predict the opponent to win and help it happen too).  The player with the most VPs after two fights is the winner.

For each robot fight, players first need to build their robot by adding 20 tiles to their 5×5 grid – the centre space is always the cockpit and 4 spaces (determined by a card each fight) must remain empty.  Tiles show engines, weapons, decorations and armour, plus they also show the underlying bodywork too.  When building, you can place tiles on any empty grid space; however, if any tile is not contiguously connected by bodywork before the fight starts then it will fall off. Read the rest of this entry »