“Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t we?”
The Fifth Season is a fantasy story told via 3 storylines. Essun, a woman, Syenite, an apprentice orogene (Earth Mage), and Damaya, a young, feral orogene. The narrative for Essun is told from the second-person perspective, while the other storylines are written with the present tense. It’s a bit jarring, and is a choice that I didn’t really like, but it didn’t chase me away from the book. The voice of the story is quite casual as well, with narrative lines like ”Back to the personal. Need to keep things grounded, ha ha.” and “Pyramids are the most stable architectural form, and this one is pyramids times five because why not?” (direct quotes). It was a bit of a rocky start, but once I got used to the book’s voice, it stopped bothering me.
What did turn my stomach was the fact that the story starts with a 3-year-old beaten to death by its father and Essun’s husband, and Essun sitting next to its corpse for days. It’s tough to read that as a parent to a 3-year-old child. I suppose that’s the inciting incident for Essun’s story, that she’s going to chase down her husband to save her other child. Oh, also the world is ending due to massive fissures in the north, and ash blotting out the sun. But that storyline doesn’t materialize in this novel. There’s a lot of utter disrespect for the human condition, like a Guardian who casually shatters the bones of a child just to teach the child a lesson. Listen to me, or else. The grimdark aspects are a huge turn-off for me, but that’s more of a personal preference than anything else.
The other two storylines don’t have an inciting incident, they seem to exist to provide context for the world around them. Damaya is on her way to the Fulcrum with a Guardian, and Syenite’s has her leaving the Fulcrum with Alabaster on a mission. Both stories showcase the world as it was, and the oppression that Orogene’s face. They aren’t treated as humans, but as tools at the best of times, despite wielding god-like power.
There’s no real villain for these stories, they just plod along, having things happen until each one reaches its conclusion. The Fifth Season is more of a character focused and world building story than a story about an event. I spent a lot of time just wondering where the story was going? What was the point of all this exposition and exploration. Why are there three characters, who’s stories have vastly different timelines (at one point Essun’s story mentions having 2 months pass, while a whole year passes in Damaya’s story). When it’s all revealed at the end, it’s a pretty cool twist, but it’s a long walk for a short drink of water.
I found a lot odd with this book. The story goes from detailing the nuance of Orogene power, and how they draw heat and feel stone and giving an incredible amount of detail, to flipping over to the obelisks and saying “no one knows what they’re for. They just float around” and an entire underground community with magical geodes that filter the air that “just work”.
I admire the world that author N.K. Jemisin built, and the story she’s telling. The Orogene magic system has a scientific edge to it that I love, the different races are inventive and exciting. The characters reference a history of the world and stumble upon dead-civs that makes the world feel more realized than many other stories I’ve read. But it feels like a prequel. Most of the story is creating the character that is actually going to do something in the next novel, and creating the cataclysm that will eventually tell a story, but The Fifth Season on its own, doesn’t feel like a complete book to me. I know that this is the start of a series, but I don’t know that I really want to continue reading. Personally, I like my books to stand on their own, and this one doesn’t inspire me to continue on with the journey.
I’ve started adding “Board Game Review” to the title of my posts to make it easier for me to schedule my posts according to my schedule, and because it’s surprisingly helpful with SEO, but I feel weird doing it when I’m reviewing a game that is just cards, like Too Many Poops.
I think I should start with the story of how this game entered my collection. My wife was out of town with her friend, and the two of them love to go thrift store shopping. Often, it’s more the hunt that they enjoy, over anything that they actually find, but recently she brought me home a present. A shrink-wrapped copy of Too Many Poops, solely because she knows I love games, and cats. A perfect gift, no?
To play Too Many Poops, players are dealt 2 cat cards and 2 tool cards. A pet shop is established in the centre of the table with 3 cats and 3 tools face up. To begin, all players pick one cat from their hand and plays it face up in front of them to establish their “house”.
On your turn, you must play at a cat card from your hand to your own house, your opponent’s house, or to the ‘wild’, which is just an oversized green card off to the side. After playing one cat, you may play up to two tool cards, and resolve their effects accordingly.
At the end of your turn, draw cards from the pet shop until your hand is back up to 6 cards, and add one poop for every cat in your house to your litter box. Players take turns one after another until one player has achieved 10 points to become the winner. Each cat is worth 1 point, but if you have cats of the same colour in your house, those cats are worth double. However, if you have two rival cats in your house, they’re flipped over to their colourless side and are worth 0 points. If your litter box ever has 10 poops at the end of your turn, then you’ve become overwhelmed with poops, and you’re eliminated from the game.
The first thing I noticed about Too Many Poops was the presence of pooples. Little wooden poop tokens. The next thing I noticed was that the rest of the production was pretty lush for a simple little card game. Each player gets a dual layered tile for their litter box, and a couple of the cards were iridescent. These rainbow cats have no rivals, and can belong to any colour. As a nice touch, the game also comes with non-foil versions of these cats, if you find their sheen distasteful. Another nice touch, they included a full set of rainbow cats, but with the names blanked, so you can add your own felines to the mix.
Playing the game is pretty simple, much along the lines of the incredibly popular Exploding Kittens. You play a cat to yourself to earn more points, or if you happen to have a rival for a cat in your opponent’s house, you can stymie their efforts. The tool cards are fairly varied, with effects that happen right away, or persist throughout the game, along with giving and stealing cats. There’s a lot of directly interacting or messing with your opponents, Nothing you have is safe.
When playing with larger player counts, the game descends into chaos. As more cats are on the table, more people taking turns and playing cats in between every one of your turns, the likelihood of your rival cat being foisted upon you gets exponentially higher. And with more cats in your house means more poops to have to clean up.
This was actually the part of Too Many Poops that I found the most interesting. The more cats you have, the more poops you generate, the more of the tools you take and use are spent mitigating your poop generating engine. It can feel like walking on a tightrope as you balance bringing more cats into your house for the points, but also needing to deal with the waste. That said, if you just so happen to get screwed on the tool cards a couple rounds in a row, there isn’t anything you can do to mitigate it. And other players can’t really affect the cards available to you, except via hate-drafting, and even then they’ll take the tool you wanted, only to have a similar one get revealed on the flop.
Too Many Poops was better than I expected it to be, but that’s hardly praise, as my expectations were in the basement. For fans of Exploding Kittens, Unstable Unicorn, or just cats in general, Too Many Poops offers a fast, chaotic, combative experience with a touch of set collection. It’s not a bad game by any stretch, but it’s best enjoyed with children who giggle every time you say poop. I won’t be bringing this out to my serious game group, but if you have a group who enjoy these kinds of take-that card games, Too Many Poops could be a hit!
I’ve become the guy whose known as “The Boardgamer” amongst my friend groups. I kind of delight when people who are unaware that board games can even be a hobby come to visit, and they open the doors to reveal my board game collection and see them be just a little flabbergasted. “I didn’t even know there were this many board games!” “How do you remember all the rules?” “Which one is best?” are all common statements, once they get over their shock. I thought I would list out my favourite games to play with board game newbies.
I’ll have another list soon with the best card games to play with newbies too! For this list, I wanted to focus on games that feature cardboard prevalently.
Starting off the list is Sagrada by Adrian Adamescu and Daryl Andrews, published by Floodgate Games. One of the key aspects to a game to introduce to a newbie is that it has to be beautiful. You eat with your eyes first after all, and Sagrada is eye-catching with it’s multitudes of colourful dice. It’s also easy to learn, understand, and offers a little bit of brain pain near the end as players who initially thought the game was so easy is confronted with the sum of their decisions. The ability to enjoy that brain pain is what separates gamers from non-gamers in my opinion. If someone can hold their head in their hand, then say “that was awesome, let’s do it again!”, then I know a new gamer has been born.
Wingspan, by Elizabeth Hargrave and published by Stonemaier Games is beloved by many for it’s easy of gameplay, beautiful artwork, and satisfying gameplay. It’s ostensibly an engine building game, but with only 4 actions to choose from, it’s easy to teach. It starts off a bit slowly for some, but there is a great progression that leaves players satisfied with what they’ve built, and it’s real easy on the eyes.
It’s no secret that I prefer Calico to Cascadia, but I know that I’m in the minority. And Calico can be a bit rough as a first experience. Cascadia on the other hand, is really satisfying to play. Designed by Randy Flynn and published by Flatout Games, Cascadia is a tile laying game where the tile you draft and the animal token you get to place are tied together. Each of the 5 animals have different scoring criteria, and the 5 biomes on the tiles score more if they’re grouped together. All these conflicting scoring opportunities create a satisfying experience!
Bruno Cathala makes great games, and Kingdomino is one of the best for introducing to new players. The math of terrain types multiplied by the number of crowns is simple, yet satisfying, and the tile draft of having the less valuable tiles also dictate who picks first in the next draft is a brilliant mechanism. Kingdomino is one of the games that brought my mom into the board game hobby, and for that, I’m thankful!
Stepping up from Kingdomino, I’d consider Barenpark,Takenoko, or Arboretum
7 Wonders
7 Wonders by Antoine Bauza and published by Repos was the first time I was scared away by a rulebook. the mere concept of drafting cards was too much for my poor little brain to handle at the time. But having someone teach me how to play is what really unlocked the love for board games that I have today. In 7 Wonders you’re drafting cards around the table, picking one to keep, and passing the rest on. At the end of 3 ages, you’ll stand in awe over the civilization you’ve built. 7 Wonders is a great game that scales up to 7 players, and yet retains a 30 minute play time. It’s become a classic for a reason, and if you’re looking to introduce your family to board games, you can’t go wrong with 7 Wonders.
Stepping up from 7 Wonders, I’d suggest Splendor, Century Spice Road, or Alhambra
And that’s the end of my list for now. Look forward to the card game list coming soon! And if you’re wondering where the games like Catan, and Ticket to Ride were, I’d have to tell you that I’m trying to bring people into the hobby, not scare them away. 😉
Every now and then a game comes along that becomes my obsession for a short period of time. Those obsessions eventually fade as the next game comes along to steal my attention, but rarely one manages to keep my heart and become a comfort game for me. Istanbul was one of the first games that managed to worm its way into my heart and become a seminal classic for me.
Istanbul, designed by Rudiger Dorn and published by Pegasus Spiel in 2014 is a race game. You’re racing the opposing merchants to be the player to earn 5 rubies before the others. Throughout the game you’ll collect coins and resources, and use those to pay for those said rubies, by giving gifts to the mosque, selling at the market, upgrading your wagon, and visiting the gem sellers.
The main board of Istanbul is created by laying out 20 cards in a 4 by 4 grid. Each of these cards are an action space that you’ll utilize in your quest for the fastest rubies. One of these cards is the fountain, where the stacks of player discs begin the game.
The top disc of your stack as a sticker on it, that’s you. The discs below you are your merchants, and when you want to move onto a new action space, you’ll move your entire stack, and drop off a single disc onto the action space to take that action. On your next turn, you’ll leave that disc behind and move your remaining stack to a new action, depositing a disc again. Should you ever take an action a second time by moving yourself onto an action card where you have already deposited a disc, instead of shedding another one, you instead pick that disc up to replenish your stack. I think it goes without saying that if you move onto a new action, and you don’t have any discs to shed, you cannot take that action.
Keeping on with the race motif, almost everything in Istanbul starts out cheap and gets more expensive as the actions get used. The first gem to buy costs 12 coins, the first mosque tiles only require a showing of 2 goods, but by the end of the game, a gem can cost 18 or 19 coins, and those mosque tiles want you to have 4 goods before they bestow their power upon your carriage. It’s wonderfully satisfying to see that an opponent has JUST enough resources to take an action, but getting there first puts it just out of their reach again.
The other point of interaction with your opponents is just being in the space where they want to go. Your merchant existing in a spot doesn’t prevent anyone else from going to the same action, but they do have to pay you 2 coins for the privilege of standing next to you. It’s only right.
So, you run around the board, scattering discs to get coins, goods, and powers, all in an effort to earn rubies. The rubies can be bought directly for just coins or sets of goods, but there are a few extra ways to pick up a bonus ruby. If you manage to earn the favour of both mosque tiles that exist on a single card, you get a ruby. If you manage to completely fill out your cart, expanding your cargo capacity, you earn a ruby. First player to earn 5 rubies, wins the game.
There are two tiles on the board which have you rolling dice to earn goods or coins. The tea house has players say a number, then roll the dice. If your sum is higher than what you spoke, you get your bet. If it’s lower, you get a 2 coin consolation prize. Similarly, the Black Market lets you roll the dice, and if you get more of the luxury blue resource the higher you roll. These push your luck elements of the game can and will alter a player’s fate. If someone chooses to go to those spots and just happens to roll super well, they get a massive head start. That said, if someone goes there and fails two or three times in a game, they’ll be so far behind the other players that they might as well not even be playing. It’s an odd beast, gamble at your own peril.
Istanbul is fast and satisfying. I particularly love the phone implementation, as I can play a full 4 player game against some AI opponents in just 5 minutes. Perfect for when I’m idle, waiting for something to happen. Generally near the end of the game, you can figure out who is 4 turns away from ending it, and you are either in a position to get in their way, or you aren’t, and that’s just that. Thankfully, as long as players aren’t agonizing over their turns, by the time the game gets to that point, it’s over fairly quick. One more boon, because the game is ended by someone collecting their final ruby, there’s no need to count points. It’s just, done, and the player who achieved the goal has won!
It’s kind of amazing that I enjoy Istanbul as much as I do, considering how much I value discoverability in my games. Specifically with Istanbul, once you’ve played it, you’ve seen everything that’s there. But I find so much joy in running through game after game of Istanbul. And I’m not even seeking the mastery here, like I would be in Chess, I’m just enjoying the tight race that Rudiger Dorn has designed. Every turn feels like it has good decisions to make, and the action selection mechanic of dropping discs is super satisfying, especially when you can make it through a whole game without needing to go back to the fountain. I recommend Istanbul without reservation, and even more so when you add the expansions, but I’ll talk about those another day.
The following pictures contain content from the Arcs Expansion, during my webhost move, some photos were lost.
I like having control. If you’re already familiar with Arcs by Cole Wherle and Leder Games, that should tell you how this review is going to go.
In Arcs, Players are controlling space faring factions as they bump elbows with each other and vie for victory points. The core action selection mechanism is a twist on trick taking. Each chapter of the game deals each player 6 cards in 4 suits. Each suit has access to 2 or 3 different actions, and the numerical strength of the card is inversely related to the number of actions that card can provide.
Each round of the game starts with the player who has initiative. That player plays a lead card, and may choose to Declare and Ambition. The ambitions are how victory points are scored, and the ambition the lead player is allowed to declare is entirely based off the numerical value of the card. Declaring an ambition also reduces the numerical value of the card down to 0, which is quite important for the players who will be following.
The lead player takes however many actions that the card they played allows them to take, then the next player takes their turn. They can choose to Surpass (play a card of the same suit, but higher value), Copy (play a card face down to take a single action that the lead card has access to), or Pivot (play an off suit card, and take a single action that the card has access to. Any player can also play a second card face down to seize the initiative to go first next round, unless the initiative has already been seized this round. If initiative wasn’t seized, then whoever played the highest surpass card takes the initiative for the next round.
That’s the basic rules of how Arcs plays. I won’t really get into the details of what each action does, or battle, or the nuance of the ambition markers, because those aspects aren’t at the core of what I want to talk about. My experience with Arcs was a frustrating one. From the context above, you may have noticed that what you can do is almost entirely dependent on which cards you were dealt at the start of the round. I think everyone at our table every round said something to the effect of “This hand is awful!”. The ambitions you can declare are dependent on the cards you have, the actions you can play are dependent on the cards you have, if you’re void in a suit, the only way you can access those actions are if someone leads with a card of that suit, and you copy them, taking a single action.
A game of Arcs isn’t about doing what you want. Arcs doesn’t support players who have a grand strategy and goals that they want to accomplish. Arcs is about tactics, it’s about being opportunistic. Action efficiency means something entirely different in the context of Arcs, it’s not about how many actions you get. It’s about having that one or two REALLY GOOD actions that enable you to score an ambition. It’s about sneaking in to get a majority in the 11th hour, it’s about positioning yourself to have the chance to do things in the future. You need to be on your toes in Arcs.
And that’s all well and good, but ultimately, it’s not the type of game that I really enjoy. I mostly enjoy dice combat games like Eclipse. I like mean games like Food Chain Magnate, but I do not enjoy the feeling of being handcuffed. I don’t like being cut off from core actions entirely, just because I was dealt a hand of manoeuvre cards.
The last chapter of Arcs I played, I was dealt 5 manoeuvre cards. The actions available to the manoeuvre cards are to Move, or Influence. I felt entirely out of the game, because those to actions have absolutely nothing to do with the ambitions. And because I had 5 of the 7 manoeuvre cards, I was fairly certain that a manoeuvre card wouldn’t be lead. My whole round was a series of copy actions, taking a single action of whatever the lead card is. Unable to plan, unable to score, I felt dejected. Perhaps that hand of that calibre is an anomaly, but it cemented my thoughts that I prefer games where I can do the core actions of the game.
That last chapter ended in quite the upset, too. One player had a near monopoly on Fuel, so he put two tokens on the Tycoon ambition. The other two players manoeuvred and raided his cities, stealing nearly everything he had. On the final turn, one of the players took a single tax action, gaining a material, and the majority on both of the ambitions that were declared that round, and went from 7 points to winning the game entirely. The whole table was floored at the sudden change of fortunes. As I said above, opportunistic.
Make no mistake, Arcs is not a Bad Game. It’s just not a game for me. I prefer to have more control over what I can do, instead of putting my fate into the heart of the cards.
I do plan to embark on the campaign expansion with my friends. I look forward to what kind of crazy situations Cole Wherle has crafted for us. I don’t think it’ll change my mind and my preferences towards games that let me plan out a strategy. But with an updated mindset of what action economy means in the context of Arcs, I look forward to those great moments of upset and triumph.
