Growing up, we joked that my mom not only had a ‘black thumb’, but a black aura. That any houseplant that came into our home was destined to die. This may be because she was a single mother raising 3 kids, or because we grew up in frigid northern Manitoba, but in any case, being unable to care for houseplants was a common joke in our home.
Now that I’m grown and living in a much more temperate zone, some greenery has started to adorn my windowsills. Mostly inspired by my wife, but still, it counts. A few of my friends are enthusiastic gardeners, such as Otter, who I’ve talked about before, has 10 foot tall sunflowers adorning the front of his home, his backyard is abundant with raspberries, and his living room couch fights for space amongst a dozen potted plants. Being in his space, I can really appreciate how having green, living things can make a room feel cozy.
Verdant is a puzzly card drafting game for 1 to 5 players designed by Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, Aaron Mesburne, Kevin Russ, and Shawn Stankewich, and published by Flatout games. The game centres around a market row, with 4 tokens in the centre, and a room card below each one, and a plant card above each one. On a player’s turn, they much choose a token, and one of the two cards next to that token. Plant cards have a verdancy requirement, indicating how much love and care they need to reach their full potential. This can come from items, like the watering can or hand trowel, or from being next to room cards that give the appropriate amount of light to that plant.
If a plant reaches full verdancy, you clear the card of all its tokens and place a single plant pot onto the card, giving it bonus points at the end of the game. The room cards come in 5 different colours, and simply offer victory points if they’re adjacent to the appropriate type of plant. In addition, the tokens that don’t give your plants verdancy are a collection of furniture and pets that you can use to adorn your rooms. If your token colour matches the colour of the room, it doubles the adjacency bonus for that card.
One of the tricks of the game is that you cannot place a plant card next to a plant card, and you cannot place two rooms together. Instead, you’ll make a 5 x 3 chequerboard of cards as you try to maximize the number of plants you can sustain within your tableau.
The challenge here is that board games don’t exist in a vacuum, and it’s difficult to talk about Verdant without also mentioning Flatout Games prior project, Cascadia, especially because they both share the market row draft mechanism, but Verdant throws an extra choice layer on top, making you choose from a room or a plant in addition to the item on offer.
In theory, I feel like I should like Verdant much more than Cascadia. The choices are a bit more complex without adding on much more rules grit, but the breazy simplicity that was found in Cascadia and Calico feels gone here. Perhaps because you’re constrained to the 5 x 3 grid of cards, and you can never place a plant next to another plant, it’s just something more to keep in your head. In Cascadia and Calico, you COULD place any tile anywhere. It was freeing. You’ll do horribly if you place tiles without careful consideration, but you CAN do it, the only thing stopping you from doing so is the allure of victory.
Much like in Cascadia, there’s a fair amount of luck involved. There’s 5 plant types, 5 room types, and like, 8 different animals. Getting the right rooms and the right animals paired next to the plants of the correct time is hugely important. More than once I committed to succulents, because I had 2 next to the associated room, but then a succulent item never materialized to help boost that score. And the only other succulent card that came out that game had the wrong sunlight requirement. If another player just so happens to have the right cards come out for them, they’ll run away with the game, no matter how skilled the other players are.
As always, Beth Sobel’s artwork is incredible, and every gardener I’ve played Verdant with has gushed over the illustrations.
Verdant continues the trend of pleasant themes to lure people to the table. A lush green box, beautiful artwork, and an inoffensive theme of arranging plants and rooms does wonders in engaging those who may only be casting a passing glance at this game. But for me, it’s my least favourite of the trilogy. I utterly adore Calico, and I even quite enjoy Cascadia. It’s not a bad game by any means, but it also doesn’t exist in a vacuum. With these two other GREAT games made by the same company, let alone countless other puzzly tableau building games, I find it really challenging to recommend Verdant, unless you have great affinity for the theme.
Otter and I have had a few arguments about how we each rank and rate the board games we play. We both use Board Game Geek’s collection feature, and add our rankings to each game we play. If you’re unfamiliar with BGG’s system, there’s a 10 point rating scale, and they publish a guideline on how they suggest you rate a game, although admitting that ratings are completely subjective.
10 – Outstanding. Always want to play and expect this will never change.
9 – Excellent game. Always want to play it.
8 – Very good game. I like to play. Probably I’ll suggest it and will never turn down a game.
7 – Good game, usually willing to play.
6 – Ok game, some fun or challenge at least, will play sporadically if in the right mood.
5 – Average game, slightly boring, take it or leave it.
4 – Not so good, it doesn’t get me but could be talked into it on occasion.
3 – Likely won’t play this again, although could be convinced. Bad.
2 – Extremely annoying game, won’t play this ever again.
1 – Defies description of a game. You won’t catch me dead playing this. Clearly broken.
The argument that Otter and I have, is that I follow this chart pretty closely, and because of that, the vast majority of the games I rate are a 7 (36.7% of the games I’ve ranked are a 7). I feel like this is fair and true to my feelings on most games, most games that we play end with a “That was pretty good. I’d play it again. Don’t necessarily love it, but I didn’t dislike it.”. The real reason for this, is mostly because our group has played a LOT of games, and we’ve gotten pretty good at figuring out what games we like, and which ones we don’t. If a game doesn’t look like it’s going to grab any of us, it’s not going to see any table time, as time is our most precious resource.
Otter argues that because I rate almost everything between 7 and 10, that I really have a 4 point scale. He, on the other hand, tries to use the whole scale to greater effect. The games that he kinda likes if he’s in the right mood, the 5’s and the 6’s, those drop to the bottom of the scale as 3’s and 4’s, because those end up being the worst games he played that year. Meanwhile, average games languish on the 5’s and 6’s, and there are a couple new 9’s and 10’s every year too.
Now, I should be clear here, these ratings don’t really matter. We’re both totally valid in having our own systems that work for us, as every system has flaws. Like, my system’s flaw is that there are so many 7’s, that it’s hard to differentiate which of those 7’s I like more than other 7’s. The flaw with Otter’s system is that we’ve all been somewhat conditioned to believe that a 6 or below is just bad. Like, if someone told me a game is a 5/10, but reaction would be “ooh, what’s wrong with it?”
This leads me into the second part of this post. Why I don’t have scores in my reviews. I’ve always felt that reducing a review (of anything) to a number, or a binary (like thumbs up/thumbs down, or recommend vs not recommend), doesn’t really get at the heart of a review. For me, a review should be a person’s experience with the product, and a discussion of the merits and flaws. All people have different opinions, but the qualities that make one person run for the hills, might just be what makes another person beam with delight., For instance, I love real-time games, and the stress it produces, but at least half the board gamers I know absolutely detest them. Conversely, games that feature a lot of diplomacy, or bartering, or trading just do not land with me.
And that’s why I don’t like giving a number in my reviews. I’d hate to have a giant 4/10 plastered at the top of a review, and then have someone dismiss the game entirely without reading my reasons why I rated the game a 4/10. A game I think is trash absolutely could be someone else treasure. Terraforming Mars and Grand Austria Hotel are two examples that come to mind, I’ve rated them a 5 and a 4 respectively, but my opinion is very much in the minority.
I try not to, but when I read reviews, I immediately jump to the rating, which ultimately colours my opinion of the content of the review. I subconsciously put a lot of stock into the rating, even though not all 7’s are created equal. Another reason I don’t put ratings in my reviews is because my ratings do change over time. Sometimes, when I rate a game, I’m not in a good mood, or I just had a bad experience with a game. Now, I’m usually pretty good at separating my feelings about a game from my attitude or specific experience at the time, but every now, and then I’m surprised when I like something much more on a repeat play just because the space in which I’m playing a game is different.
Much more often the reverse happens. Where I have a really great session of a game, only for it to fall flat later when whatever silly mood we were in has worn off. Fog of Love is probably the best example of this.
Do you rate the games you play? Do you adhere to BGG’s criteria, or have you defined your own rating scale! Please let me know of all the ways to rank games in the comments!
It’s hard to imagine that Agricola has existed since I was in high school. The things I would have done to have known about Agricola’s existence during the years when I was living with my primary gaming buddy. I can guarantee you, we would have been playing Agricola over and over again, as it feels like the kind of game that you can replay endlessly and just get better and better at.
Agricola (or Misery Farm as many have dubbed it) is a worker placement game about building up your farm and family. You can build fences and stables, expand your home, have kids (cough cheap labour cough), collect wood, stone, reed, and raise sheep, boar, and cows. Just in case you were worried there wasn’t enough to do, you can also work the land and grow grain and vegetables as well.
The end game scoring in Agricola awards you points for how much of each object you’ve acquired over the course of the game, and punishes you with negative points if you ignore them. Being a jack of all trades is key on a farm.
Agricola begins with a small selection of key action spaces, with a new action space getting revealed every round. Each player has 2 workers in their farm. From the start, you are tasked with generating enough food to feed your family at the end of every harvest. The first harvest is 5 turns away from the start, giving you a bit of runway. The subsequent harvests come progressively quicker. By the time you get past the halfway point of the game and the harvest start happening every other turn, you better have some kind of food generating engine rolling, and/or be producing a surplus of food. If you can’t feed your people during a harvest round, you need to beg, which is more negative points. Keep in mind an average score in Agricola is around the mid to low thirties, negative 3 points could represent 10% of your total score, all for failing to generate enough food during a harvest.
Almost half of the worker placement action spots in Agricola generate some kind of resource: wood, clay, stone, reed, grain, vegetable, sheep, boar, or cow. A major component to Agricola is that every round, each of those spaces generate and stockpile their resource. If those resources don’t get picked up by someone, they continue to generate goods, making those spots even more attractive in the next round. It can be agonizing trying to decide if you want to take the juicy 9 wood that have built up over 3 rounds, or if you really need to play a new occupation card before someone locks that spot down. Can you do both? Will someone steal all that wood out from under you?
Another component to this game that makes it amazing replayable are the two types of cards that are either dealt out or drafted at the start of each game. There are more than 100 of each of the minor improvement cards and occupation cards, and both give your family special bonuses and powers once they’ve been built or claim. The minor improvements are tools that players are using to gain extra resources or to break the rules of the game. The occupation cards generally cost food to play (except the first one’s free), but these give you persistent powers, with things like “Every time you go fishing, get an extra food” or “any time you take wood from an action space, you may leave one wood behind and take two food instead” or “Your people can eat rocks.”
I understand the theme here is that you’re trading your rock sculptures for food, but I choose to believe that I’m feeding my family a plate full of rocks.
Each player receives 7 of each type of card at the beginning of the game, and it’s up to them to separate the wheat from the chaff. Each player needs to figure out their own synergies and make the occupations and improvements they were dealt work for them, as there’s absolutely no way that any player can play all their cards. When just dealing out 7 of each type of card to each player, there is the chance that someone will be dealt some amazing combo that allows them to become the king of the swamp. I find that the draft variant is more satisfying, in that all players get to see more cards, and have more opportunity to build towards something, rather than trying to make sense of the lot they were dealt.
Now, Agricola is called misery farm for a reason, and the first half of the game is tense as you’re trying to get your farm up and running from scratch. Gain and Vegetables grow every harvest, and having more than one animal after feeding your family will result in getting more animals, so it’s in your best interest to invest in these industries early to reap the rewards over several harvests.
The challenge is that everyone is trying to get their farms running in the same way. And you’ll be damned if your neighbour gets those 3 sheep one turn before the harvest. Likewise, everyone is contesting for the limited number of resources that are being generated each round. Sure, you got the sheep, but did you get the wood you needed to build a fence to keep them?
Agricola does still make me bury my head in my hands as I try to map out how to get an engine started from nothing. Trying to optimize and maximize my few turns in the early game to set myself up for success in the late game is crucial and difficult but satisfying. It’s a tense game, with the penalty for playing poorly utterly punishing. With all this tension and misery, when you manage to come out the other side victorious, it’s blissful. You feel like you’ve overcome a significant challenge, you earned a victory, not stumbled into one.
I could ramble on and on about how much I adore Agricola. It sits as #8 on my favourite games of all time list for a reason. It’s utterly satisfying to play, it’s engaging, and exciting, even 17 years after its original release. I highly recommend Agricola, for multiple plays. Uwe Rosenberg crafted a brilliant modern classic board game that stands the test of time. There is always room on my table for another game of Agricola.
That Time You Killed Me is an abstract strategy game for 2 players, designed by Peter C. Hayward and released in 2021. It’s kind of like chess, but with more murder. Murder by squishing. Squishy murder.
As the story goes, you’ve invented time travel! Yay! Except someone else is claiming that they also invented time travel. And they’re going to kill you to keep you silent. Unless you kill them first to silence their claims. Unfortunately, because time is all wibbly wobbly, there are several copies spread out amongst the timelines, so you’re gonna have to do a lot of murdering before the job is truly complete.
There are 3 zones of play, the past, the present, and the future. Each player starts with one pawn in each zone. The goal is to manoeuvre your pawns and push your opponent into the wall until you’re the last pawn standing on two of the three zones of time. Players can only focus on one zone at a time, and only one pawn be active during a turn. Each turn, a single active pawn can take two actions. Those actions include moving orthogonally in their current zone, or jumping forward and backward through time, popping up on other zones and creating copies of themselves.
That Time You Killed Me has 4 chapters in the box, and we have so far only played with a single chapter. The first box introduces seeds which can planted for an action. When a seed is planted, it grows over time. From a seed grows a pointy murder bush that is immovable and kills all who are pressed against it. Moving forward in time it blossoms into a mighty tree that is felled with the slightest touch and crushes anyone on the other side.
The other side of the creation coin, is un-creation. For an action, you can unplant a seed and remove the bush and tree from the next two timelines. With a limited number of seeds in the game, you may find yourself hording seeds on your side of the board to prevent your opponent from erecting a murder bush right in the path of future you. Time is fickle like that.
That Time You Killed Me has all the things that make an abstract strategy game great. The feeling of being smart when you lay a trap and lure an opponent in, the mental stress as you puzzle out several permutations before deciding on which one would be best to progress. But the game also greatly benefits from the fact that designer Peter C. Hayward is an actual author, and he flexes his narrative muscle to great effect here. That Time You Killed Me is a delight to behold, from the story and context given in the rule book, to just how the game has this emergent narrative as your clones fall backwards in time to suddenly squash an unsuspecting pawn.
Seriously, the narrative element is strong, and gives flavour to the entire game. I so enjoy this over other abstracts like Hive or Santorini where there is a theme, but it’s fairly pasted on. Here, the theme works with the mechanics, even if sometimes it’s a bit weird.
I’m incredibly excited to check out the other boxes to see what the game has in store for us. On one hand, it’s already fairly mind bendy when you are considering all the moves you can make on one board, plus the time travel element of jumping boards. Adding more complexity on top of 3d chess will make my brain hurt, but it’s a hurt that I’m so looking forward to.
The real challenge for me will be finding more opportunities to play two player games.
Content Warning: Assault, violence, dysphoria, transphobia, homophobia, deadnaming, bullying, cheating, use of slurs, suicidal thoughts, self-harm, public outing.
Stay Gold follows Pony, a senior finishing his high school experience at a new high school in Texas. A trans boy who has decided to go stealth, meaning he will keep his identity a secret. He left his old school because he was only known as ‘the transgendered one’. It’s difficult rebuilding yourself when everyone remembers who you used to be.
On the first day, Pony locks eyes with Georgina, a popular senior cheerleader, and there’s instant attraction between them. This is further accelerated when they find they are in every class together. Pony has to navigate the minefield of being honest and disclosing his identity with his desire to remain stealth for his final year of high school.
I liked that the story was told from first person of the two main characters, flipping back and forth between their perspectives. It felt good being inside the heads of both main characters. The author is trans as well, and many parts of this story felt real and personal. There was a lot of focus on how Pony felt when he was being mis-gendered, or when people would ask for his real name. “Pony is my real name” would be his response.
I felt like it was less of a book for trans people, and more of a book for those who have trans loved ones. There were some info dumps about some aspects of queer culture that anyone with basic experience would know, but having the internal dialogue of the main character is illuminating. A flippant aunt who dead names their niece, then hand-wave away the transgression, would benefit from this point of view. People who need to learn how important it is to recognize someone’s new identity.
Pony’s decision to be stealth is met with criticism from his best friend, out-and-loud Max, who pushes Pony to be more visible, and Pony’s sister Rocky, who has escaped Texas and moved to New York and found a community of like-minded individuals. Pony’s trans-ness causes friction with his father, who perpetually dead names and mis-genders him, causing more anxiety.
Stay Gold drives home the message of why trans people come out. Pony recalls how being forced to do things as a woman were pure agony, and even with the added complexities of navigating lies-by-omission, bathrooms, and painful binders, still feels right and good living in their own gender. Stay Gold serves as a really great introduction into the trans experience. It doesn’t go as deep into those issues as I would have liked, but we all have to start somewhere.
Near the end of the book, two characters are outed as lesbians at the homecoming dance. Pony announces that he’s transgender as a show of solidarity, and is promptly jumped in the bathroom, landing him in the hospital. What follows is the fairy-tale response. The perpetrators are thrown in jail, Georgina is moved by his bravery and chooses to throw her cares about her image to the wind, the community rallies behind Pony, raising thousands of dollars toward the top surgery he desperately needs, and even being named the homecoming king following a quick re-count. His father accepts his identity, his friends stick by his side, and a rally is thrown in his honour at the school.
I know I’m jaded, especially by events like the death of Nex Benedict, who was jumped in the bathroom, and later died, the world in general is failing to handle non-conforming people. The fairy tale ending just soured my experience on the book. It was a good read up to that point, but my disbelief flew out the window as everything resolved so perfectly for Pony. I understand why, it’s a comedy, not a tragedy. I wish the world would support people who have experienced such trauma with the immediate and fervent action that Stay Gold poses. Alas, I can’t really fault a romance story for being idyllic, can I?
