If you want to hear me read this post out loud, you can listen to my Whatcha Been Playing Wednesday segment on Cardboard Conjecture podcast!
Introduction
Civilization building games aren’t something that I explicitly seek out. I’ve played a small amount of Sid Mayer’s Civilization (mostly Civ 4 and 5), and I’ve played dozens of games of Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization on both Board Game Arena and on the Android app. Those two games capture the civilization building gameplay so well, I feel satisfied. I’m never seeking new experiences because that quota has been filled.
Nations, designed by Rustan Håkansson, Nina Håkansson, Einar Rosén, and Robert Rosén, and published by Lautapelit.fi in 2013, is a card based civilization game for 1 – 5 players. In Nations, you’ll take control of a civilization and lead them from the age of antiquity all the way through the industrial revolution.
How to Play
In Nations, you’ll need to balance improving your infrastructure (by purchasing building and military technologies, and employing your citizens on them), with the stability of your nation, and your military might. Completing wonders, hiring advisors, and claiming colonies will provide persistent benefits over the course of the game that could give you the edge. Wars and famine on the other hand threaten to steal away your resources, costing you precious victory points if you end up in a deficit of any resource.
While there’s no direct conflict, there are lots of points to interact with each other. On the Progress board, where all the cards come out, taking the precious cards before others can get to them is an important aspect, as is hiring the limited number of architects to complete your wonders. Whoever has military supremacy gets to go first each round, and should anyone declare war, each other player needs to meet or exceed the might threshold that the warmongering player was at when they declared the war, lest they suffer the ill effects. A way to offset those effects is to maintain your stability, a stable nation is able to weather the effects of the war, for every point of stability a nation has, they lose one item less during a lost war. Every player who lost the war will lose a single victory point, regardless of its stability.
Players take turns preforming a single action during their turn (take cards from the progress board, deploy workers, hire an architect, or pass) until all players have passed. At the end of every round, players produce all the goods from their workers (depending on which technologies they’ve been deployed to), the player order is adjusted, war is resolved, and two historical events happen. Generally, these events involve giving boons to the player with the most of a certain resource (often stability), and a detriment to the player with the least of something (often stability). Ties in this regard are as unfriendly as you can imagine, if you’re tied for ‘most’, no one gets the benefit, and if you’re tied for least, all tied players get the punishment. Finally, a famine happens, in which all players need to discard some amount of food (revealed at the start of the round).
Every two rounds, there’s a ‘book’ scoring, in which each player earns a single point for every other player that they have more book points than. Then, the world progresses into the next age. After 4 ages, the game comes to an end. You’ll earn points for the colonies and wonders you’ve claimed, points for workers on technologies, and for all the excess resources you’ve accrued (1 point for 10 resources, a really terrible trade). Scores in Nations are MUCH lower than other Civ games, the average score is ~35 points.
Review
I think every review and how to play summary I read or watched of Nations before playing said something along the lines of “It’s kind of like a lighter Through the Ages”, which isn’t wrong. Both are card based civilization games. Naturally, games with similar themes and mechanics will get compared against each other. Nations feels lighter and faster than Through the Ages, but not by very much. I will concede that Nations was easier to play, less fiddly than TtA. But in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve only played Through the Ages physically once. During that play I found all the movement of cubes and cylinders and discs back and forth tedious. Nations does a bit better, in that you can only do one thing per turn. You don’t get to the end of a 6-step progress, only to realize you’re a single resource short and need to walk back your entire turn. I enjoy the turn structure in Nations; it creates tension as you need to prioritize what you’ll take with your first action and hope that the second thing you wanted will still be there when the turn comes back around to you.
The iconography in Nations was a bit confusing. Red is good, while black was negative (every accountant just shook their heads in despair). Circle icons only produce at the end of the round, while square icons take effect immediately. Once a player has passed, they’re out of the round. This can allow you to posture yourself as a peaceful, stable nation until your neighbours have passed, then move all your stable government workers into chariot positions, ratchet up your military and declare war in the last moments. Provided there’s a war on the Progress board that you can afford, and no war has already been declared.
Unlike Through the Ages, you won’t see every card in every game, and, there seems to be a much wider variety of cards. With 7 different types of cards in the game, and only a maximum 15 cards coming out every round (in a 3 player game), there’s a chance the card type you’re wanting isn’t going to show itself, or, if it does, doesn’t fit in your strategy well. Sure, the Samurai are powerful warriors, but they have a production cost of -1 gold. If you were already pinched for gold, and they were the only military card that came out that round, you might just be up the creek without a katana.
It’s common in Nations to feel a bit starved for resources, especially if a player is being a warmonger. Other players are forced to commit their few workers to keeping up with you in military might, or, keep their stability quite high to offset the cost of those wars. Coupled with famine sucking away your food stores, it can be hard to get ahead in all the different resources. Instead, you may find yourself sucking up the cost of redeploying your workers every round to cover any shortfalls that the round is introducing. It’s tough, but rewarding when you manage to have 11 grain and can move every employee into the mines for a few rounds.
One thing that really impressed me was a tiny touch, every card had a date and a place, showing when and where the item or person depicted on the card was representing. Augustus, 63BCE – 14CE, Roman Republic, the Hanging Gardens, 600BCE, Babylon. Marie Antoinette, 1755 – 1793, France. It felt great having that little historical anchor in this civilization game. Of course, some will complain that it’s not realistic, having Augustus lead a legion of Samurai into the Hundred Years War. And my retort to that complaint is that Augustus would never have fit on a card either, so, whatever!
A disappointment in Nations, is the art and graphic design is pretty dreadful. It’s the kind of art that I would expect to see on someone’s refrigerator. I feel hypocritical saying so, as my art skills are pretty much nonexistent. And maybe I’m spoiled by all the beautiful games that have come out in the last 10 years, but Nations is an eyesore. I would love to see a modernized version of this game be produced with colourful artwork, because I really did enjoy it! Nations was smooth to play, and while the rules were a little hard to wrap my head around, we all agreed that it was quite good! Streamlined and engaging, tense, and exciting. We thoroughly enjoyed playing Nations, and agreed that we absolutely would bring it back to the table soon, especially since Otter missed out on playing this game, and we think he would really enjoy it.
If you have Nations, sitting unplayed on your shelf, and you enjoy games like Through the Ages, but find them just a little too tedious or fiddly to play much, I highly recommend getting Nations to the table. And heck, if you enjoy Nations, but it’s fallen to the wayside in favour of much brighter, flashier, and newer games, this is your reminder that just because a game was published in 2013, doesn’t mean it’s not exciting or interesting. Get Nations back out and make your civilization stand head and shoulders above the rest!
Age of Steam (2002) by John Bohrer and Martin Wallace has a long and storied history, but I’m not privy to the details. The game has been reimplemented by Railways of the World and by Steam: Rails to Riches. There was also a lengthy legal battle between Martin Wallace and John Bohrer as to who owned the trademark for Age of Steam that seems to be resolved now to both Bohrer’s and Marin’s satisfaction.
But let’s not talk about that part of history, let’s talk about the actual game. Age of Steam is a train game in which you and your opponents are trying to develop your train company and delivering goods in the longest way possible. Efficiency will not be rewarded on the free market.
Gameplay begins with players selling shares of their company into the ether. You earn $5 per share you sell, but you’ll need to pay one $1 for every share you’ve sold per round for the rest of the game. You can sell as many or as few shares as you want, but just be aware that you’ll be paying for it every round.
After selling shares, players bid for turn order. It’s a classic rotating bid where players either up the ante, or pass. The first player to pass doesn’t have to pay anything, they get the privilege of going last for free. The final two players will need to pay their full bid, regardless of who actually wins the bid, and all other players will need to pay half their bid rounded up. Around and around players bid until the player order is decided. This is the first point where you’ll regret the number of shares you sold. You lost first place because you ran out of cash, why didn’t you sell more shares??
Once player order has been chosen, players then choose a special bonus for the round. Only one player can choose each action, which makes the player order fairly consequential. The actions are as follows:
First move – the player who chooses first move will get to move a good first, regardless of player order
First build – just like first move, but with the build action
Engineer – Allows the player to build 4 items instead of the usual 3
Locomotive – Moves the player’s link disk up the engine track one space. This allows goods to travel over more stops, and will earn more money in the end.
Urbanization – Allows the player to place a new city on the board, creating a new hub for goods to be delivered to, and possibly spawn from
Production – Allows the player to put two goods cubes back onto the production board, which may have them be placed onto a city during the production phase
Turn Order (pass) – Allows the player to pass once during the next bidding phase.
Every action has the potential to be useless, or, extremely important, depending on the current state of the game. If only you sold more shares, so you could go first and get your pick of the actions
Once all the actions have been selected, the build phase begins. Players can build up to 3 railway tiles leading out from any city. If they connect to another town or city, they own that rail link for the rest of the game. If the rail link just ends in the middle of nowhere, they’ll need to progress it during the next round, or they’ll forfeit ownership of that line, possibly letting someone else claim ownership. This is the second step where you’ll regret the number of shares you sold. You don’t have enough money to build what you want to build! Why didn’t you sell more shares??
After everyone has built, the move goods phase starts. Players take a turn moving a cube from a city, over rail links, until the cube arrives at a city of the matching colour. Every town or city the cube moves through is a new link, and when the cube is delivered, the player earns perpetual income based on how many rail links the cube passed over. Players are limited by their Engine track, which at the start of the game, is only 1, so direct sales only. But as the game goes on and players improve their engines to 5 or 6, a cube can snake through the entire board before landing at its destination, netting the player 5 or 6 income points. And here’s the hook, players don’t have to use their own rail links, you can move a cube over someone else’s rail line. But the player who owns the line will earn the money for that stretch of the journey. For example, if I move a cube over two of my links, then over two of Bigfoot’s rail links, and finally, over one of my own to deliver the cube to a city, I’ll earn 3 income, and Bigfoot will earn 2.
After the goods have been delivered, all players collect their income, based on their location on the income track, then debts come due. For every share you’ve sold, pay $1. For every space on the engine track, pay another $1. This is the third time this round you’ll regret the number of shares you sold. Why did you have to sell so many??
Then, taxes show up. If your income is over 10, it gets pulled back 2 spaces. If the income is over 20, it gets pulled back 4 spaces. This forces players to be cognizant of the growth of their company. It can also lead to a player giving another player a single income space to put them over the threshold of the next tax bracket, pushing them further down the income track.
Finally, dice a rolled and goods are re-seeded onto the board. At the start of the game, goods will be flying out, but by the end, if no one took the production action, players will be scrapping to deliver the last few, possibly unprofitable goods.
And that’s the game! Play continues round after round, regret after regret until after a specific number of rounds (depends on the player count), the game comes to an end. Players earn 3 points per space on the income track, plus one point for every track tile they’ve placed. Players also lose 3 points per share they sold throughout the game.
I quite enjoyed playing Age of Steam, it was tense, interactive, and at times, cutthroat. This was all of our first time playing, so we definitely missed out on some efficiencies. There were a couple of times when we were scratching our heads wondering why someone would ever do something, like take the pass action. Then a few rounds later, had a lightbulb moment where we realized just how powerful that action can be. I think Age of Steam would really shine if we played a few more times, the nuance of track design and understanding how to utilize the towns wasn’t obvious during our first play, I can absolutely see the potential for mastery here.
The first two rounds are tense and tricky as you’re playing with a deficit. You don’t have the ability to increase your income track to break even, let alone earn a profit, forcing you to sell shares next round. Around turn 4 things pivot where suddenly cash is flowing in, and skipping a move good phase to increase your locomotive starts to make sense. It’s mildly painful to make that choice though, do you deliver a 2 link good now, or upgrade, so you can deliver 3 link goods next round? Taking the low-hanging fruit is tempting, but as soon as you see someone deliver a 5 link good and leave you in the dust, the regret in your stomach will double.
I haven’t played any 18xx games, but after playing Age of Steam, I find myself wanting to explore those as well. During this play of Age of Steam, I found myself wishing I could buy other players stock, so they’d have to pay me at the end of the round, instead of buying and selling to the bank. Then I realized, that’s kind of the whole thing with 18xx games. Players generally don’t own a rail line, but they can invest and make decisions based on how many shares they have. I know each game is different and has their own nuance, but I find myself more intrigued by the genre than ever before.
The copy we played was the third edition, published by Eagle Games in 2009 I think? Some things were great, I loved that each player got little plastic locomotives to play with. The map was functional, with plain colours and very little texture to confuse the eyes. My big gripe came from the side boards. The Goods Display and Selected Actions board, and the income track and score board were on good quality cardboard, but were completely grey-scale! The colourful cubes and player disks quickly covered most of the boards, but still, what an eye-sore.
In the days that followed our Age of Steam play, our group chat was pretty enamoured with the game and expressing interest to go back and play it some more. I realized that I owned the Android app version of Steam: Rails to Riches, developed by Acram Digital, so I gave that a play to satisfy my Age of Steam cravings. If you’re interested in the app, you can find it on Android and Steam (and yes, I do appreciate the irony of searching for Steam on Steam).
I’m looking forward to returning to Age of Steam. There’s a level of mastery to be achieved, and a plethora of fan-made maps to explore. I enjoy the anguish of needing to sell shares at the top of the round, then regretting it for the rest of the game. The cat and mouse of bidding for player order, egging on two players locked in a game of locomotive chicken.
Food Chain Magnate is my favourite board game of all time. I get physically excited when pulling this game off the shelf, and before the expansion was announced, I would have argued that it was a perfect game.
I’ve owned the Food Chain Magnate: The Ketchup Mechanism & Other Ideas for a couple of years now, and I’ve had a chance to play through most of the modules at least once. I thought it would be fun to go through each of the modules and briefly talk about how they change the game.
Some of these milestones big and add several new components, while others are very small, perhaps only a single employee being added to the corporate structure. These modules can be mixed and matched as you wish, and the rule book offers some suggested pairings, such as “Nightlife: New milestones + Night shift managers” or “Asian Fusion: Sushi + Kimchi + Noodles + Ketchup”. One day I’ll play an epic game with every module included, but until then, here’s my thoughts on each module that comes in Food Chain Magnate: The Ketchup Mechanism & Other Ideas
New Milestones
This was the first thing I saw in this expansion, and upon reading about the new milestones and thinking about the ramifications of the new milestones, I literally started salivating. The milestones in Food Chain Magnate are pivotal, the milestones you acquire will form your strategy, and utilizing the benefits that the milestones offer you. Because of the importance and power of these milestones, it’s pretty common to chase specific ones at the start of the game. The new milestones turn the game on it’s head. Toss every strategy guide you read for the first game, because they’re useless without the old milestones.
Some of the new powers include “Earn $5 for every good marketed”, and “May pay salary with food or drink”, or “No longer needs to fire employees if broke”. Every milestone is unique and could be the crux of their own strategy.
I like this module on its own. Because such a core part of the game is changed, it takes a lot of brain power to keep in mind all the new milestones and abilities they grant. I don’t know if these new milestones would fall into the same ‘problems’ as the original ones, but the new milestones also have the Hard Choices (mentioned below) baked in. If you feel like your gamers of Food Chain Magnate have fallen into a rut, adding in the New Milestones is the perfect solution.
Hard Choices
As I said above, the importance and power of certain milestones lead to some rote openings. Players bee-lined for the milestones that would give them the edge in the game, after all, earning an extra $5 on each good can take the sting off of a pricing war. The first to train someone and the first to hire 3 people in a single round are generally the two that my group chases right off the start.
In a 4 player game, players diverge their strategies fairly quickly and all the milestones get snapped up after just a few rounds. The Hard Choices’ module puts a hard limit on some of the milestones, locking them out after the 2nd round. If you want that milestone, chasing it HAS to be your first action. After round 2, four milestones are removed: First burger / pizza / drink marketed, and the first to train someone. After turn 3, the first to hire 3 people in 1 turn is removed.
I think this module is better suited for lower player count games, where someone could theoretically earn multiple of these milestones. By only allowing players to earn at most one of these milestones, they’re forced to explore alternate strategies. Again, I almost always play at 4 players (although that could soon change as Bigfoot was quite sour after our last game) so this module hasn’t been helpful for me, but I could see it being an interesting addition to a 2 or 3 player game.
6 Players
There are now enough pieces, so 6 players can compete for fast food domination. I don’t know how crowded the board would get with 6 players, but I imagine this would be a very long game. 4 players is the sweet spot in my opinion, but I wouldn’t turn down a 6 player game.
The only thing this really adds is the map is now 4 x 6 tiles, giving players lots of room to throw down new restaurants and making planes slightly more powerful, depending on the layout.
Coffee
Coffee is the most recent module we played with and it was a bit divisive. With the coffee module, you can hire baristas to produce coffee. Customers will stop by either your coffee shops or your restaurants to grab a cup of coffee on their way to their destination. Customers will consume a coffee at every opportunity on their way to their destination, but not consume coffee at their destination. Coffee is sold at the same cost as other goods, including bonuses from gardens or cards.
The baristas produce very small amounts of coffee (producing 1, 2, and 5 coffees as you go up the chain) compared to their cook and chef counterparts, but they can be very powerful.
In our most recent game, I was successful in using the luxury manager to increase the base price of coffee to $20, and sold all my coffee to houses with gardens or parks, earning $40 per coffee. I also happened to be the first player to hit $100, which gave me the CFO bonus, increasing my income by 50%. This meant that by selling only 3 coffees, I earned $180 in a round while the other players engaged in a pricing war that drove the cost of goods into the ground.
The other players complained that there was no good way to combat the coffee strategy, other than moving their restaurants or putting down new, lower numbered houses in the hopes to force me to sell to non-garden houses. The core idea of the game is that players are competing for the demand on the board, the coffee seems counter to the spirit of the game.
I argued that I barely won. Yes, I earned a lot of money from only selling 3 goods, but my ability to produce coffee is severely limited. I think the counter to coffee is to flood the market with demand tiles and make money with quantity over quality. The luxury coffee strategy worked well for the early game, but had the game gone even just one round longer, I wouldn’t have been able to maintain my early lead. Selling 8 pizzas and 10 beers for $7 each with a $5 bonus on the pizzas is a great way to leave me and my 3 coffees in the dust.
New Districts
The new district’s module includes 5 new map tiles that are fairly unique. 2 of the tiles include apartments that have unlimited space for demand, but the demand must be satisfied in full. Other tiles include a house with a garden prebuilt, and another tile features 3 lemonade supply locations.
This module is one that I’ve just shuffled into the base stack of tiles and don’t bother separating out. One of the tiles requires the lobbyist to be included, but that’s hardly important. I do like more variety in these map tiles that I’m happy to have them available in every game I play.
Lobbyists
The Lobbyists allow you to change the map by adding roads and parks to the city. The parks act as communal gardens, attaching to several buildings at once. Every building near a park will pay double for their goods. If they have a park and a garden, they’ll pay triple. The roads allow you to make connections, at the expense of a road being closed for a whole round (road work detours, you know how it is).
The first Lobbyist played gives that player a whole extra map tile they can play along any edge of the map, extending it ever so slightly. In the last game we played, the tile was placed down, then a garden was laid on it, allowing a park to hit 3 different houses at once.
The Lobbyists feels more like a situational module. There are some games where I’m DESPERATE for an additional road, and others where I don’t feel the need for them at all. The inclusion of polyomino parks that can double or even triple the cost of a good is quite interesting!
Kimchi
Every dish tastes better with Kimchi, right? That was the logic behind this module, where a Kimchi master produces a single kimchi during the cleanup phase. Then, during the subsequent dinnertime phase, the Kimchi serves as a way to draw someone to your restaurant, bypassing the usual distance + price formula.
Basically, if multiple restaurants could fulfill a house’s demand, but one has kimchi available, that’s the restaurant they’ll choose to go to, no matter the cost or distance. Players can only employ a single kimchi master, so this is a powerful once per round effect, nearly guaranteeing that you’ll have SOME income during the round. This module pairs nicely with the luxury manager, and with coffee, as it gives a player some guarantee that someone will be willing to make the long trek past all their coffee shops to get their burger and Kimchi.
Sushi
Sushi is the ultimate luxury good. Houses with gardens will replace their demands with sushi at a one for one ratio (of both food and drink). This module is a way to stop someone from blitzing pizza to a bunch of garden homes and making out like a bandit. They still serve their low-class pie to the commoners, but the upper echelon of society that inhabit the homes with gardens will prefer sushi if it exists.
That said, houses without gardens will never want sushi, meaning the number of houses you can potentially satisfy after investing in sushi is vanishingly small. Unless you’re in cahoots with a local developer who’s throwing up houses around every corner…
Noodles
Noodles is the wildcard resource in this expansion. Basically, noodles can replace any food and drink, but houses will always prefer their actual demand over noodles.
I’ve played with this module once and saw it work very well. After a marketing blitz and several airplane and radio campaigns, the noodle master was able to satisfy the vast majority of their clients, pocketing them a hefty sum.
Ketchup
The titular Ketchup module is actually just a single milestone that can be added to any game. If someone sells your demand, you now have a -1 distance bonus for the rest of the game.
This can have some significant ramifications. If all else is equal, players will need to drop their prices by 1 just to compete with you. Forcing players to drop their prices to compete is a brutal strategy, as it can take multiple employees to drop the price far enough to ensure they’ll be the ones fulfilling the demand, choking their corporate structure, and they’ll be earning less money turn over turn. With enough pressure and the right mix of milestones, you could force players to start shedding their trained workers.
I don’t know how well of a ‘catch-up’ mechanism this ends up being, and I’m mildly disappointed there’s no ketchup tokens to play with, but it’s nice to know that if someone snakes a demand you generated, you’ll be rewarded with a bonus for the rest of the game.
Fry Chefs
The Fry Chefs are another employee you can hire. Unsurprisingly, Fry chefs goes great with Ketchup, as they work to mitigate price wars. When players race to the bottom on price, it’s nice to have a flat, fixed income that doesn’t drop (but doesn’t scale up either). A restaurant with a Fry chef employed earns $10 per house they sell to (they’ve added fries to their order). This bonus is a fixed income and doesn’t affect the unit price or distance equation in any way.
Night Shift Managers
The night shift managers are another type of managers that you can hire. Like the other managers, they can only report to the CEO (after all, managers managing managers is a ridiculous concept). Unlike the other managers, the Night Shift Managers have no slots, they don’t directly allow your corporation to have more workers per shift. What they do, is allow you to use all of your non-salaried employees twice in a single turn.
This is a great employee to have at the start of the game when your corporate structure is full of non-salaried employees. It’s effectiveness can start to wane as the game goes on and your employees become more specialized, but it’s still a fun employee to include.
Mass Marketeers
The Mass Marketers are relentless. Another single card module, the mass marketer employee triggers a second marketing campaign phase. Further to that, if multiple players play a mass marketer, every one triggers a whole other marketing phase.
This module has the potential to be absolutely bonkers. Demands flooding the market, which in turn, floods the board with cash and sends all players racing to hire enough chefs to satisfy the hungry hordes. Not only can several marketing phases happen within a single round, the duration for each marketing opportunity is only reduced by 1 at the end of the round.
Rural Marketeers
The Rural Marketeers adds in a highway off ramp and 4 giant billboards. A separate tile (called the rural area) is placed off to the side, away from the main map, and the only thing a rural marketeer can do is place a single giant billboard next to the rural area. The rural area acts as one giant house, sort of like the apartment buildings in the New District Modules.
The first rural marketeer played gets the honour of placing the highway off-ramp, which dictates where the rural area can enter the board (and the distance to other restaurants). Like the apartment buildings, there is the potential for the demand to grow so great that no one can satisfy it, which is mildly annoying.
Honestly, I haven’t found much purpose for the rural marketeers, but it might just be because I’m biased in that I like the new district modules and the apartment buildings they provide.
Gourmet Food Critics
The gourmet food critic is a new type of marketeer. While the other marketing abilities are based of proximity to the marketing event, the gourmet food critic simply markets to every house with a garden. Parks, apartment buildings, and the rural area do not get marketed to.
Movie Stars
In the base game, ties are frequent, making player order and hiring a brigade of waitresses to lure customers into your restaurant. The Movie Stars allow you to control the ties more effectively. Each player can only have 1 movie star in their employ, but when playing a movie star, you’re able to choose your play order before any other player. In addition to that, during the dinner time phase, if there’s a tie that has to be broken by the number of waitresses, the tie is automatically won by the player with the highest tier movie star.
This is one of the few modules I haven’t played with. I can see why where they’d be useful. Quite often players may be tempted to leave a couple slots empty so they can go first or last, as being first can be crucial when breaking ties. Now, as long as you have a B-list movie star signing autographs at your tables, you can be sure of your preferred order of play.
Reserve Prices
The reserve prices module replaces the initial bank reserve cards. In the base game of Food Chain Magnate, the bank reserve cards allow players to seed the bank with $100, $200, or $300, theoretically allowing them to plan for a short or longer game. In reality however, most games end around 8 or 9 rounds regardless of the status of the bank. Several players putting in a high number MIGHT extend that game by a single round.
The new reserve cards now modify the base price of goods, either slashing them in half, or doubling them entirely. knowing which way the base price is going to go can be massively powerful. Flooding the market with demand and ensuring you have the chefs in place to satisfy demands from every corner could be the key to victory. Of course the opposite holds true, if you and another player are in a pricing war, lowering your costs $3 or $4 per good, having the base price of the item plummet to $5 can kill your strategy. You can’t make payroll on a handful of $1 hamburgers!!
Final Thoughts
I really love Food Chain Magnate, and I love the variety of modules this expansion offers. I adore exploration, and this enables me to play my favourite game in a dozen different ways. A big challenge is that the base game was so tight, so finely tuned that adding in these modules can upset the balance. Before playing with any of the expansion modules, I rarely saw the luxury manager come into play. But now she’s become a common card in our games. In a similar vein, with alternate ways to make money (like coffee, fries, sushi, noodles, and kimchi), pricing wars have all but vanished.
I think Food Chain Magnate: The Ketchup Mechanism & Other Ideas is an excellent expansion if the base game is something you absolutely adore, but are tired of rote strategies dominating the meta of your table. If you have a gaming partner (or partners) who are equally as enthusiastic about exploring the strategies of each module, and how they interact with each other, this is a must buy. If your group is only humouring you and playing Food Chain Magnate because it’s your birthday, then these modules are probably better left for another day.
As of this month, my blog will be 2 years old, so I think it’s time I start looking back and revisiting some of the games I talked about in the beginning. As time goes on, our gaming tastes change and I feel value in looking back at what I was keen on, and how much staying power a game actually has. It’s one thing to say ‘this game is eminently repayable’, but how does it actually fare when the rubber hits the road? When put to the test against all the other games, and it no longer has that ‘new game shine’, does it come back? Did my interest wane? Here’s where we find out.
Now, not all of these games came out in 2021, but they were new to me in 2021. So, here we go!
#10 – Regicide
Designers: Paul Abrahams, Luke Badger, and Andy Richdale
What made it special: An engaging cooperative game that uses a standard deck of 52 cards.
Thoughts over 2022:Regicide came to Board Game Arena, and I played it about a half dozen times during my lunch breaks. It’s amazing how a game using a generic deck of cards can evoke strong feelings of tension and peril. I love the ebb and flow of cards as you crush through the royal family, sending each one to their grave.
Regidice is also on Board Game Arena, which is an interesting take on the Regicide system. I found Regidice to be a bit less interesting, but still fun none-the-less. Both games require that you maintain a sense of momentum. If you stumble and falter, you’ll be overwhelmed quickly.
#9 – Project L
Designers: Michal Mikeš, Jan Soukal, and Adam Spanel
What made it special: Polyomino puzzles plus Splendor-like engine building puzzle, with candy-like pieces
Thoughts over 2022: I played this once with my mom in May, and we both really enjoyed it. It’s a great little game with great production quality. The little pieces are super colourful, and satisfying to slot into the double layered tiles.
One thing to note, I had hoped to pick up the expansion(s) for Project L, but following the crowdfunding campaign of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, publisher Boardcubator announced they were shutting down. I don’t know what that means for the future of Project L, or the availability for expansions, but I suppose we’ll see!
What made it special: Cooperative trick taking with limited communication
Thoughts over 2022: During 2021’s Black Friday sale, I picked up the follow-up The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, and I found I enjoyed that version quite a bit when playing with a group that doesn’t gather together regularly. The Crew: The Search for Planet Nine is a game that I look forward to playing with my regular group as we plod our way through the quest book, but not one that I would necessarily pull out for a casual game night.
#7 – Cascadia
Designers: Randy Flynn
What made it special: A lovely tile placement, pattern building, hex grid, drafting game.
Thoughts over 2022: I haven’t revisited Cascadia since September 2021. I have played Calico a few times (which my mom said was her favourite game that she played when she came to visit) and I think I still prefer Calico, although it seems I’m in the minority.
Cascadia has received a lot of acclaim over 2022, including winning the prestigious Spiel des Jahres! Congratulations to Randy Smith and Flatout Games!
#6 – Beyond the Sun
Designers: Dennis K. Chan
What made it special: It’s a big, interesting tech tree! That changes every game!! That you get to control!!!
Thoughts over 2022: Beyond the Sun is another game that I keep playing on Board Game Arena, which is really exciting. I’m impressed with the variability of each game, and playing it again in person during Cabin-con was one of my highlights of the weekend!
I’m eagerly awaiting an expansion to Beyond the Sun to ratchet up the asymmetry and give us more excuses to return to this wonderful game!
#5 – MicroMacro: Crime City
Designers:Johannes Sich
What made it special: It’s Where’s Waldo, but you can follow people’s actions backwards and forwards through time! Everything is happening all at once!
Thoughts over 2022: My partner and I have played through MicroMacro: Crime City – Full House, and thoroughly enjoyed it. There’s no way around it, it’s exactly the same, just, more of what you’ve already seen. I just got game #3 in the series, MicroMacro: Crime City – All In. I do enjoy this system, and I continue to be invested, if only to see what the whole city will look like with all 4 maps stitched together.
What made it special: A tile placement, pattern building, hex grid, drafting game. BUT WITH CATS!
Thoughts over 2022: Calico remains one of my favourite pattern building tile laying games. It’s simple to play, but has sharp teeth that can make you regret the very first tile you place in your double layered player board. I like how bright and colourful Calico is, and the variety in the patterns you need to build and the objectives that are slotted right into your board.
I played Azul: Queen’s Garden in 2022, and halfway through reading the rulebook I looked up at my friends and said “This is kinda like Calico!”. That framing helped learn Azul, but as soon as we were done, I think we all agreed that we would much rather play Calico.
What made it special: One of the few legacy games we’ve actually completed.
Thoughts over 2022: The first few chapters of My City filled me with excitement and wonder. Just what would we be discovering in each of the envelopes. As the chapters wore on, mechanics came and went, the forest got cut back to make room for more tiles, and we delved too greedily and too deep.
In the end, My City was a great game, but the campaign ended on a whimper. No great climax, no revolutions to the gameplay, just small twist after small twist until the engine sputtered and finished.
I enjoyed my time with My City, but I just wish then ending was a bit more exciting. A bit more impactful. Nevertheless, I’ll be playing both My Island and My City Roll and Write as soon as they become available to me.
#2 – Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated
Designers: Andy Clautice and Paul Dennen
What made it special: Lots of discovery and humour sprinkled throughout the gameplay
Thoughts over 2022: Near the end of 2021, we played Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporatedfour times in a single day. Early on, it becaome clear that my goal wasn’t to win any specific games, but to hit as many story encounters as possible. I mourned when I failed to complete a goal before it’s time limit was reached and we had to read the ‘failure’ text.
Over 2022, Bigfoot chose to bow out of the campaign. Fair enough, he wasn’t enjoying himself, and our hobby time is too precious to waste on playing games we don’t like, even for the sake of the group. So Clank! Legacy has become the game we play when Bigfoot is unavailable to us.
We still haven’t finished it, but we’re close, I think only 2 plays remain. I’m hoping the campaign ends on a very exciting note, but playing a game once every three months makes it hard to remember the narrative continuity.
#1 – Bullet❤️
Designers:Joshua Van Laningham
What made it special: A very clever push your luck, puzzle-y, pattern matching game with an excellent solo boss battle mode.
Thoughts over 2022: Suzanne Sheldon said it best when she said “some games spark“. A spark game is one that captures both your mind and your heart. They feel fresh and excite you!
Now, I might be struggling with burnout, but sometimes, it can feel like board games sort of, blend together. Nothing stands out, nothing really elicits that joy that I felt when I was really getting into this hobby. Bullet❤️ is a game that sparked for me.
In 2022, I picked up Bullet⭐️ and mixed both sets together. This has become one of my go-to solo games. The evenings where I don’t really want to sit in front of a screen, or if I only have 30 minutes to kill before moving on to something else. Every character is unique, and each character doubles as a boss mode to crash against. I love exploring this puzzle and this system.
I did play the multiplayer game a couple of times, but found it a little lacking. It’s real-time and tense (which I love), but it’s extreamly heads-down. During the real time phase of the game, I have no idea what my opponents are doing. Not until I pop my head up and see the mound of bullets they sent my way.
If someone was equally enthusiastic about Bullet❤️, I wouldn’t hesitate to play it with them over and over and over again. Until that person makes themselves known in my life, I’ll be content with the solo mode.
It’s the start of a new year, and with every turning of the calendar comes a deluge of people taking this opportunity to set goals and challenges for the coming year.
As board gamers, I believe something we share is a love of creating rulesets and then trying to excel within the rules we’ve made. With that in mind, there are various challenges that people partake in. Things like the 10×10, the 5×10, the 1×100, the H index, The Alphabet challenge, the Play a game every day of the year, and playing a set of games that share an attribute, such as publisher, designer, or even publication year. We use these challenges to encourage ourselves to interact with our hobby in different and interesting ways.
Some of the challenges available on the BGStats App
I think many people who would call themselves board game enthusiasts or hobbyists have identified a problem with our hobby. We love discovery, we’re always ‘chasing the new hotness’, we fall victim to the ‘cult of the new’, terms which showcase our desire to play the latest and greatest games. An unfortunate side effect of always chasing the newest games, is many great games fall to the wayside. Games that we spend our hard-earned money on, expend the effort to learn the game, only for it to languish with a single play in our statistics.
That’s where the concept of a challenge comes in. In a “Play X Games Y Times” challenge, you pick X number of games you enjoy but want to play more, and set a goal. Maybe it’s a game you recently got and are really excited to explore, or it’s an old favourite that just hasn’t hit the table very much, this is a good way to lead your decision-making when it comes to your hobby time. Instead of hemming and hawing over your entire board game collection trying to pick one game from the dozens that you own, you now have a pre-vetted list of games you want to tackle.
I attempted a 10×10 challenge (play 10 games 10 times) a few years back, and while I was unsuccessful, I saw the value in attempting it. Getting a game to the table 10 times gives you the opportunity to see depths that you may have missed before, and there’s a joy in plopping a game down that everyone already knows how to play and is comfortable with, especially if you’re always learning and exploring new games.
My current pile of unplayed games
The H-Index challenge is similar to a “Play X Games Y Times”, in that you’re trying to play games a number of times, but the values are linked. Like, for an H-index of 8, you’ll play 8 games 8 times. I’ve had an H-index tracker on for a few years, and I’m currently sitting at 23. One more game of Crokinole, and I’ll achieve 24, then I’ll need to play my top 24 games again to push it up to 25. It’s an interesting way to view your games played, but a bit more nebulous than a hard value, such as a 10×10.
For some, they want to explore games that they might not otherwise pick. That’s where “Play all my Unplayed Games” challenges, or “Play Every Game in my Collection” come in. Games that you bought years ago that you always wanted to get back to, but always end up slipping just shy of actually getting played, this is their time to shine. This challenge is also great as a preface to a great cull. Maybe a game that you loved in 2016 just isn’t doing it for you anymore, and it’s time for that game to leave your collection.
Games that are leaving my collection
For some, setting a challenge might be for them to refocus their attention on the hobby they once loved. Setting a “Play a Game Every Day of the Year” challenge is about intentionally choosing to play a game, instead of wasting hours mindlessly scrolling through social media or otherwise squandering your time. A similar challenge is to pick a friend to play X number of times with, this can encourage you both to prioritize spending time together, and gives you an activity to engage with.
All of this to say, challenges can be a fun way to interact with your board game hobby, but it’s important they’re approached with intention. Just throwing 10 random games onto a 10×10 challenge can become a drag, and it’s important not to prioritize the challenge over your enjoyment of the hobby. If playing board games is something you do for fun, or to relax, it’s important not to turn your play time into a grind. Setting a challenge can be a great way of getting you out of a rut, or to discover games that you may have forgotten about. Whatever you choose to do, just have fun!
