Artist: Jacqui Davis, David Montgomery, and Beth Sobel
Release Year: 2015
Mechanics: Worker placement
Players: 1-6
Introduction
Viticulture has a storied past. It started out as a project on Kickstarter way back in 2012, long before the platform hosted a deluge of tabletop games that now makes up almost a third of the platform’s revenue.
Once Viticulture was successfully funded and released into the public, the revisions began. The second edition introduced Grande workers and other mechanics are hard to imagine the game without now. The 2014 expansion, Tuscany, ballooned the game by including several new mechanics such as Mamas and Papas that give players asymmetric starting positions, unique buildings that you could build on your farm that provided a unique action only you could use, an extended game board, special workers, arboriculture where you could plant and harvest tomatoes, apples, and olives, a cheese expansion, and even a module that has you offering gifts to a retired Capo. Needless to say, it was a lot.
Not all workers are created equal
In 2015 Viticulture Essential Edition (EE) came out, incorporating some of the most popular modules from the Tuscany expansion into the base game, and throwing the rest away. In 2016 Viticulture: Tuscany Essential Edition was released, featuring 3 more modules from the original Tuscany expansion (Extended boards, structure cards, and special workers). This is the version I’ve played the most, and will be focusing on today.
How to Play
Viticulture is a worker placement game where you’re competing against your fellow vintners as you each grow your meagre vineyards into bustling and prosperous farms. The game begins with an inheritance, your Mama and Papa bequeath you the resources that will lay the foundation for your farm. Each player places their rooster pawn on the turn order track, and then in player order, you can either place a meeple on a space to take the corresponding action, or pass.
It’s not uncommon for people to pass entire seasons, on the Extended board there are 4 seasons, and you only start with 3 meeples. When you pass, you’re unable to place any more meeples in the current season. All those who haven’t passed can continue to play. Once all players have passed, you progress to the next season, and resume taking actions in player order.
As players pass during winter, they recover their workers, age their grapes and their wines, collect any royalties they may have accrued, and choose their spot on the turn order track for the next year. On and on, players take their actions throughout the years until someone hits 25 victory points. At that point, the end of the game is triggered. Players finish the current year, and the player with the highest score is the winner.
Review
Viticulture: Essentials Edition begins by asking its players what actions they want to ignore. Players start with 3 workers, half their maximum capacity, and the main board contains 16 action spots. With only 3 actions available to you in the first year, you need to assess what your Mama and Papa left you to make the best start. Your inheritance may have included some grapes that you can plant on the very first turn, while other farms feature a nice set of trellis, allowing you to spend more time drawing grape cards, hoping you’ll find a variety that can take advantage of your existing infrastructure. No matter what you choose, the race is on!
Viticulture feels like it should be an engine building game. You need money to build up your farm to be more efficient. Money will allow you to train workers, build more supporting structures and bigger cellars, so you can age and produce wine at iridium quality (Cough I’ve been playing too much Stardew Valley cough) and sell it for a huge profit. Because Money is so constraining at the beginning, players may be fooled into prioritizing coin generating actions, thinking their early investments will pay off in dividends, it’s a trap! Excess money isn’t worth anything in the end, and before long you’ll have more money in your coffers than you can reasonably use. Because Viticulture ends the year someone achieves their 25th victory point, good players should approach this as an action efficiency game. There’s no need to plant vines that you’ll never harvest, or build a windmill after all your fields are sown. Each action should be in service of furthering your goal of getting those 25 victory points.
Unfortunately, this is where the luck comes in. Viticulture features 4 decks of cards. Grapes, Orders, and Spring and Summer visitors. The grape and order cards work together, dictating the value of the grape as they come off the vine and goes into the mash tub. You use grapes in the mash tub to create wine. The higher quality the grape, the better the resulting wine will be. The order cards simply request 1 – 3 wines of varying types and qualities to be delivered to the docks in winter, and offer between 1 and 6 victory points, along with some persistent royalties which will generate some coins every year thereafter.
Making a few bottles of very good wine should work out, right?
Should you happen to draw grapes that require a support structure (the trellis and the irrigation tower), you’ll need to choose if it’s worth building that structure before you can plant that grape, or if you should take another draw from the deck. The difficulty is, other players will be drawing from that deck too, making that action space coveted at the beginning of the game, and if you happen to draw another grape card that has the same restrictions, then 2 turns have now been wasted instead of just one. Thankfully, Viticulture features the Grande worker, who can take any spot, even if all the action spaces are full. This feature really helps alleviate the pain of having the other players take the action spot that you desperately wanted to take
The wine order cards are similar, in that luck can swing the game. It’s unfortunate if you happen to have a very strong red wine production farm, and you find yourself continually drawing white and sparkling wine orders. You can continue to draw cards to mitigate this luck, but in an action efficiency game, every wasted action hurts. It’s difficult to keep up with players who are blessed with lucky draws.
The visitor cards are a different kind of luck. Many will offer benefits and bonuses that can propel your farm higher and faster if used correctly. A great visitor can save you a whole year of actions, allowing you to convert resources that would normally take two or three whole actions to do so, or providing a discount on a structure that you desperately needed, but were one or two coins short. Some visitors are great early in the game, and it stinks when you draw them when you’re approaching the end of the game.
Hope I don’t need to make a rose or sparkling wine any time soon…
I’m not always against randomness in games. The amount of cards available does make Viticulutre feel more varied and replayable. I just end up with a bitter taste in my mouth when I see lady luck bless my opponents while I’m stuck with a handful of useless cards. Milling the deck is not optimal play here.
I’m perpetually fascinated by iterative board game designs. I find it hard to consider a specific edition of a game in a vacuum without considering all the previous versions that came before it. It’s also interesting to consider how the wider board game playing audience reacts to these changes. When two people talk about their experiences playing Viticulture, their experience might not be the same. Once you find your favourite way to play, it can be hard to deviate.
I ran into this ‘problem’ after playing Viticulture: Essential Edition with Tuscany Essential Edition half a dozen times with my friends, but then tried playing the classic version of Viticulture on BoardGameArena and was struck by how significantly the game has changed since its original release. Without going into the nitty-gritty details of all the differences, Viticulture Essential Edition with Tuscany Essential Edition is my favourite way to play. It feels smoother, more varied, and I’ve had a better experience overall. While you don’t need the expansion content to enjoy Viticulture, there may be some modules that sing for you specifically, and it’s easy enough to introduce new players to any amount of the available expansion content. It all integrates seamlessly, to the point where I was surprised to discover all the things that weren’t included in the original game.
I enjoy Viticulture. The setting of making wine in a Tuscan farm feels relaxing and unique. Aside from blocking action spaces, a few of the visitor cards offer ways to interact with your opponents. Either tasking them with giving you something (like 2 cards each), or offering a small benefit to each other player and rewarding you with points for each player who takes advantage. I like this kind of interaction, and I’m glad there’s no way for players to steal wine from each other, or destroy things they’ve built. In a race game, it’s more fun to go faster than your opponents rather than win by dragging them all down into the mud.
Viticulture: Essentials Edition with Tuscany: Essentials Edition is a great medium weight euro worker placement game. There’s mild interaction and luck, which may or may not detract from the experience. It’s smooth, inoffensive, and the setting is great for introducing new adults into the hobby. While this isn’t a MUST-HAVE game for me, I’m glad it exists, and I’m glad someone in my gaming group is quite keen on playing it, as I generally have a good and relaxing time while playing this game.
Artists: Tim Baron, Matthew Ebisch, James Lyle, Kaysha Siemens, Adam Stoak
Release Year: 2014
Mechanics: Cooperative, Set Collection, Hand Management
A copy of Kings of Israel was provided by the publisher for review purposes
Introduction
There’s a knee-jerk reaction that happens every time someone mentions that a piece of media is ‘Christian’. Memories of kitschy messages layered on sub-par productions, fictionalized idyllic stories that lean too heavily into prosperity for the good guys and a lack of danger or consequences is generally what comes to my mind. Some people have complex and traumatic experiences with the church or religion, and will refuse to engage with that media, because no one likes trying to be bombarded with propaganda, especially if they’ve already rejected the message a dozen times.
I am of the Christian faith, but I generally rebel against the media that caters to my religion. It always feels lacking, more of trying to push an agenda or message, rather than focusing on good story for the sake of art. But when the opportunity arose to get my hands on a couple of Christian themed board games, my curiosity was piqued. Are board games subject to the same criticisms that I have for other Christian medias? Read on to find out
How to Play
Kings of Israel is a cooperative game set in the Northern Kingdom of Israel during the reign of its kings up until Israel’s destruction by Assyria. Players represent a line of prophets that are trying to stem the influx of sin and dismantle the golden idols, while also trying to build enough altars to win the game.
A round of Kings of Israel has four phases. The King’s Godliness phase will either bestow a blessing on the players, or a punishment, depending on if the current sitting king is good or evil. After dealing with the event for the round, the Sin Increases phase has players revealing location cards, and distributing black sin cubes. Should a location receive a third sin cube, they also erect a golden idol. If players ever need to put out a sin cube, or an idol, but there are none in the supply, they lose the game. After the sin has been distributed, the Prophet’s Work phase begins. Each player gets four actions. They may move, remove sin or idols, draw resource cards, build an altar, make a sacrifice at an altar, or give resources to another player. Once all players have taken a turn, the End of Round Phase has the starting player card passed clockwise, and the timeline token moves to the next king in chronological order. If the timeline token hits the bottom of the track, Assyria invades and destroys Israel, resulting in a loss for the prophets.
The only way the players can win is if they manage to erect altars. 7 in a 2 player game, 8 in a 3 player game, and 9 in a four player game. There is also a 7 game campaign in the back of the book if you want to challenge yourself to walking up that scaling difficulty ladder.
Review
“Biblical Pandemic” is how I described Kings of Israel when inviting people to come play. The similarities are obvious, there’s plague cubes spreading across the map (although Kings of Israel only features one colour of cubes), and players have 4 actions on their turn where they are trying to move and clear the cubes from the board. What separates Kings of Israel from Pandemic is the resource cards, and how players win. Instead of drawing two cards at the end of your turn like you do in Pandemic, Kings of Israel has you spending your actions to draw cards. Players need to decide if they want to draw cards to the resources they need, or focus their time in clearing sin cubes and dismantling the idols. The former is the path to victory, but ignoring the latter will result in a loss for the prophets.
Kings of Israel is fast to get started, and quick to play. All the decks of cards get shuffled and are ready to roll, no need to separate out cards to ensure an even distribution. This means it’s both quick and random. In my most recent game, I drew a card that had me reshuffle the discard and put it all back on top with only 4 cards in the discard pile, putting each of those locations in danger of getting an idol almost immediately. With a bit of luck and some great blessings, we found it not too difficult to get out of tough situations, making the randomness feel fair.
Beyond the set-up for the decks, each round is quick too. You draw and deal with the blessing or punishment, draw location cards to spread sin, then each player does 4 actions. After all players have taken a turn, the first player card is passed to the left, and you do it all again. As with most cooperative games, if you have players who prefer to discuss every possible option, the game can drag on too long. The rule book says for an “easy mode”, players can play with their cards on the table, but there are no restrictions on communication on what’s in your hand. I’m hard-pressed to figure out why you wouldn’t just play with open hands anyway, as you could just ask “anyone got gold?” each round. Playing with the cards face up on the table just removes a small memory aspect from the game.
The goal of the game is to build altars. To build an altar you need to play a gold, a wood, and a stone card from your hand. There are only 6 of each of those cards in the resource deck, meaning you’ll need to get through the entire resource deck at least once in order to win the game. This lead to players taking their entire turn to just draw cards, milling the deck, trying to run the deck out, so we can reshuffle and get the resources we need from the discard pile into our hands. This is doubly painful when the punishment cards destroy build altars, or force you to discard one of the necessary resources from your hand. I don’t particularly like it when the boring play is the smart play. Sure, you can distract yourself to clear some cubes that may cause a problem next round, but if you don’t mill that deck, you can’t build all the altars, and you’ll lose anyway. Thankfully, that’s not often the case and may only come up as you get down to the final handful of turns.
Let’s talk re-playability. There are about 14 full rounds in the game. During that time you’ll draw 4 or 5 blessing cards, and between 10 and 15 sin and punishment cards. Some blessing cards are permanent buffs that can really alter how you approach the puzzle, and the order that the punishment cards can cascade pain upon your game. Add into this 9 ability cards, and I’d argue that the variability in Kings of Israel is fairly high, even though the goal is always the same. Each game will feel different and have you using different tactics to keep the forces of sin at bay, which is something I’m looking forward to.
Now is where I come back around to the theme. I really appreciate that Kings of Israel doesn’t proselytize. At no point does it beat you over the head with scripture, or force the virtues of the church down your throat. The flavour text on every card does contain a relevant verse from the bible, but it’s incredibly small and serves to enhance the theme. I also enjoy that the game doesn’t turn God into a vending machine, doling out blessings and prosperity at every turn. Instead, it shows both sides, his blessings and his wrath. The prophets aren’t universally loved and granted unrealistic divine protection, but are persecuted. To me, this more accurately reflects my experience with the bible, having read it cover to cover a few times. There’s a lot of violence and wrath in that book that seems to be skipped over during Sunday morning sermons and in most Christian media. It’s plain to me that designer Lance Hill has done his homework and handled the theme very respectfully.
As I said before, Kings of Israel is Biblical Pandemic. That phrase alone will tell you enough if you should seek it out or not. I’m looking forward to the next time I have my friends of faith over, as I have no doubt this game will be a hit with them. I think I would have been even more enthusiastic had I played it back in 2014 before the other Pandemic spin-off games Fall of Rome and Rising Tide came out. Kings of Israel is quick and easy to play, making it a great game to play with any collection of people, whether it be you and your kids, or a youth group. Funhill Games also produced some Bible studies if you want to teach more about the Kings, locations, or prophets that are featured in Kings of Israel.
I am so disappointed by Mario Strikers: Battle League. I’m so thankful that I borrowed this from the library and didn’t actually spend any of my hard earned money for this game.
This game starts with such promise. The training mode shows all kinds of cool skills that could theoretically raise the skill ceiling and make this such a great experience. There’s a limited number of characters in the game, but the gear they include allow you to tweak their stats to tailor to your game play style. The stat changes provided by gear is net-zero though, every point added to a stat takes away and equal number of points from another stat, so there isn’t a good reason to dive into it unless you specifically want to make a character over powered in a single stat at the cost of all the others. It’s not an interesting, exciting, or engaging aspect of the game.
No story or challenge mode?
The first round of cups are fairly easy, but fun. Each cup pits you against teams that specifically focuses on one of the 5 stats (strength, speed, shooting, passing, and technique), and the last cup is the “best all around teams”. I should mention, each game is 4 minutes long, and it’s a double elimination tournament with 4 teams. Assuming you don’t lose any games, you’ll finish a cup after only 12 minutes of game play. Of course, it takes a bit longer than 12 minutes with the Hyper Strike animations (which are gorgeous, but repetitive), and the highlight reels, if you choose to watch those.
After beating all the cup battles, you unlock ‘Galactic Mode’, which raises the difficulty significantly. Unfortunately this is where the game breaks down for me. All the opponent AIs are brutal and violent. They’re constantly tackling all of your characters, and are adept at intercepting passes. As a consolation prize for getting tackled when you don’t have the ball, you get an item, which is useful. However, because all four of the opponent AI are turned way up, it highlights how absolutely brain-dead your AI controlled team-mates are. It wasn’t uncommon after two passes for all four of my characters to be tackled, leaving the opposition with a clear shot on my goal. It’s also not uncommon for your teammates to just stand around when you have the ball, not getting clear from the opponents, giving you no opportunity to pass without just handing over the ball.
woo
Mario Strikers Battle League seemingly wants you to control all 4 of your characters together, but doesn’t give you options to do so. The change character button doesn’t cycle through all the characters, but swaps between the two characters that are closest to the ball. When I finally beat all 6 Galactic Cup tournaments, I wasn’t filled with pride. I felt hollow. Empty in my heart where my rage and frustration had been sitting for the last hour. Never did I feel like it was my skill that won the Galactic Cups, just luck. I got the right items at the right time, happened to get a break away, and the same charged shot that had been blocked before now just happens to go into the net.
I pine for the previous games. Maybe it’s the nostalgia of my youth, but I remember these games being properly difficult. Where when I lost I wasn’t mad at the AI, but knew that it was my own lack of skill that lost the game. That feeling pushes me to get better, and when I finally overcome the challenge, I’m elated. In Battle League, it’s just frustration and luck.
I’ve won, but I feel empty
What about unlocks? As I said above, once you beat the first 6 cups, you unlock the Galactic Mode, and you unlock the Bushido Armor for each character. Again, Gear is a weak unlock, as it’s a zero-sum benefit.
After you beat each Galactic Mode cup, your only reward is the palette swapped trophy. No new armor, no recognition, and no further game play to explore. Sure, there’s the online mode where you can play against people online, but that’s doesn’t count as content in my eyes. Mario Strikers: Battle League as it stands now, can be completed in 3 to 5 hours of game play. Banging your head against the wall of unfair difficulty can pad out the game time, but it still only took me a total of 5 hours to beat every cup twice cups and explore ALL that this game has to offer solo players, which frankly, is unacceptable.
Actually, doing the math, if I wanted to unlock all the gear for all the characters, I’d need 32,000 coins. So, I technically could keep grinding out matches until I earn enough currency to do so, but AGAIN, gear is nearly pointless. Why even bother?
I feel you, Yoshi
My recommendation: Rent or borrow if you’re really interested. There is not enough content to warrant paying full price, and after just a few hours I’m sure you’ll be hanging up your cleats to do anything else.
Mechanics: Bag Building, Hand Management, Area Control
Players: 2 or 4
Bigfoot and I played War Chest by Trevor Benjamin and David Thompson as it had been on both of our ‘want to play’ lists for a while. I have a strong affinity for two player abstract strategy games, even if they don’t hit the table very much for me anymore. While I don’t think this is going to radically change my gaming habits any time soon, I do think War Chest is special and deserves a closer look.
The theme of War Chest is about as strong as any other abstract strategy game. “In War Chest you take on the role of medieval battlefield commanders, vying to take control of tactical battlefield positions”.
To begin a game of War Chest, each player is dealt 4 unit cards and takes the corresponding unit chips from the box and places them in their own supply. Each player than takes two chips from each unit and places them into their bag, along with their own royal chip. The bag is shaken and the game begins with each player drawing 3 chips.
Basically put, each round you and your opponent will draw chips from your bag, take actions with those chips, then redraw when you’ve both depleted your hands and repeat until one player has managed to lay out all 6 of their control tokens to win the game.
The units in War Chest are what give the game colour and texture. Some have passive abilities, like the Pikeman, who had a stipulation that when a unit attacks it from an adjacent location, they also take a damage, or the Knight who can only be attacked by a unit who has been bolstered.
Some units have restrictions, like the Archer who cannot take the generic attack action, but must use it’s tactic (which allows it to attack a unit two spaces away), and others just have a tactic that you can activate, like the lancer, who can choose move one or two spaces in a straight line, then attack, allowing you to close a wide gap quickly.
War Chest has a lot of push and pull to it. Because you need to have matching chips in your bag to activate units on the board, you’re compelled to fill your bag with as many chips as possible so you can activate your unit more often, but there’s a delay. The unit you’re recruiting chips for won’t be drawn until your bag runs out and you can refresh your bag, where you put all your discarded tokens back into your bag. If you do to have a unit on the board and 3 matching chips in your bag, great, you can start activating that unit frequently, but they’ll have a target painted on their back. Your opponent can see how many tokens you’ve recruited into your bag, and activating a unit requires you to discard a token face up, meaning your opponent knows when a unit is spent and can move in for the kill.
There’s 9 different actions you can do with each chip, which fall under 3 categories. Deploy, where you put your chip onto the board. Maneuver, where you discard a chip to take an action with a matching chip on the board (such as move, attack, bolster, control, or tactics). And finally, you can discard a chip face down to claim the initiative, recruit (move a chip from your supply into your discard pile), or pass.
Getting things done in War Chest is a slow affair. Your bag starts with 9 tokens, two from each of your 4 units, meaning it’ll take 3 rounds before your discard pile goes back into the bag. Assuming you deploy two of your units, that only leaves you with one matching chip for those two units in your bag. That’s only one Maneuver action per bag refresh. It can take 3 or 4 bag refreshes just to get a chip into position. Because it takes so long to do anything, combat feels dangerous. When you have a unit in the line of fire, you immediately start sweating and hoping against hope that you’ll be the first to attack, lest the progress you made with this token is undone with one fell swoop.
On the subject of attacks, when you’re attacked, you remove the attacked chip from the game. Your available chips will slowly dwindle over time. Again, because your opponent can count, they can figure out when they’ve effectively rendered a unit useless. The risk of being attacked can be mitigated by bolstering your units, placing another chip creating a stack. When you’re attacked, the top chip is still removed from the game, but the lower chip remains where it is. Now you don’t need to spend the extra actions returning a subsequent unit to the same position. Again, the push and pull of War Chest shows up, if you bolster, you have less chips in the bag to activate that unit on future turns. Everything is a trade-off.
The goal of the game isn’t to eradicate your opponent, but instead to control 6 points on the board. You control a point by moving a unit onto a control point, then discarding a chip matching the unit on that spot which allows you to place your control token. Once you have a control token down, you can deploy future units from this spot (assuming it’s unoccupied). Should your opponent manage to get one of their units onto your control space, it only takes one control action to remove your token, and install their own.
One of the games that we played, Bigfoot managed to win without attacking me a single time. The threat of combat was enough to keep me back and he managed to get all of his control tokens down. In another game, a single crossbowman was deployed to the board, and with 4 matching chips in the bag, he proceeded to move it into position and cripple my forces with multiple attacks. I had no units that could close the gap quick enough to get in and take out that one devastating unit.
I imagine every unit can be devastating in specific circumstances. While I’m still a beginner at this game, I can see there’s significant depth ahead of me. Like most abstract strategy games, this is best played against a single person multiple times, with both of you learning and growing together. Previous games experiences informing the decisions as you move forward. A unit that was ineffectual in one game can be the clutch unit in another. When a meta forms and develops over multiple plays as you and your opponent sharpen your skills against each other, something special is made. I suspect that as you play War Chest more, you’ll start drafting the starting units instead of dealing them randomly. This would allow you to craft your army in response to your opponent, offering even more strategic decisions.
It would be remiss if I didn’t mention the luck factor. Because you need matching chips in your hand to activate your units on the board, a lot of the game is putting yourself into the best (and potentially dangerous) position, and hoping you draw the correct chip that will allow you to activate a unit that’s in striking distance before your opponent can, or even further, that you can control a location before the unit gets wiped off the map. To me, the luck in War Chest comes across more as risky than anything else. If you’ve found yourself in a potentially dangerous situation it may be worth burning an action to ensure you get to go first after you draw your 3 chips in the next round.
War Chest feels ripe for expansions, and at the time of this writing, two have already been released War Chest: Siege and War Chest: Nobility. Both add more units and vary the battlefield, giving players new challenges to crash against. While I don’t feel ready to add expansions into my game yet, I’m glad to know they already exist.
If you’re looking for something along the same lines as War Chest, I can personally recommend Santorini. It’s a great strategic game with interesting asymmetric gameplay. If asymmetry is not your bag, I’d recommend Hive or Tak. I find such joy when playing these games against players of equal skill. Of course, there’s always Chess and Go if you want to wade into those waters, but with a skill ceiling so high it can be hard to find players of an similar skill.
I was inspired by the Board Games Hot Takes podcast’s recent episode where they discussed the games from the Board Game Geek top 100 list that they haven’t played yet, and discussed 5 of the games they want to play and 5 that they don’t want to play. I feel personally attacked by Tim for not wanting to play Food Chain Magnate, which is my #1 favourite game of all time!
Before I begin, some numbers. As of the time of this writing I only own 9 games in the top 100, but I’ve played 71 of them. From the remaining 29 games I broke all of them into two groups, ones that I do want to play (20 games on this list), and ones that I don’t want to play (9 games on that list). Without further ado, lets get on with the list
Games I want to play
Aeon’s End
Aeon’s End by Kevin Riley is a cooperative deck building game that has a couple of unique aspects that really interest me. I should preface this by saying I inherently enjoy deck building games (Like Hardback and Super Motherload to name a few). I think the aspect that Aeon’s End is most famous for, and what has me most interested is the mechanic where you don’t shuffle your discard pile when reloading your deck, making you think about the order in which you discard your cards. I like the idea of being able to plan a strategy and combo, and be sure that you’ll pick up the cards in the correct order.
I also like that Aeon’s End doesn’t feature a card river (like Star Realms or Paperback). While a card river can offer a lot of variety and interesting states of play, I prefer the feel of a designed puzzle. I want my game states to be winnable and not have the cards that work best during the end game appear right at the very start.
Android Netrunner
Richard Garfield and Lukas Litzsinger’s Android Netrunner is a behemoth that I’ve always wanted to get into. Being a two player head to head game it requires you to have a partner who gets equally into it with you, or a small group that you can cycle between. The asymmetric nature of the game, one player taking on the megacorporation and the other taking on the role of the hacker makes me extra excited. Unfortunately I’m not really in a space to dedicate the amount of time necessary to really get into Android Netrunner properly, and I’m not willing to wade into the world of Netrunner enthusiasts and play against strangers online.
If you’re interested in learning more about Android Netrunner, Tom Brewster from Shut Up & Sit Down released a video recently detailing why you should consider playing this game, despite lack of support from the publisher, Fantasy Flight Games.
Mechs Vs. Minions
Mechs vs. Minions was Riot Games foray into the board game space. I’ve heard it was a passion project for a few of their staff members (Chris Cantrell, Rick Ernst, Stone Librande, Prashant Saraswat, and Nathan Tiras are credited as designers), which sees to be true as they’ve only published two games since 2016 (their other game Tellstones: King’s Gambit was released in 2020 to very little fanfare). Mechs vs. Minions is a cooperative action programming game set in the League of Legends universe. In Mechs vs. Minions players are programming their actions far in advance and trying to complete objectives while dealing with the chaos that is combat and damage that can throw your entire plan off one step and send you spiraling off into a corner.
I haven’t played very many action programming games, but they intrigue me. I like chaos and needing to plan out 5 moves in advance, and I delight when plans go awry. The only thing that has prevented me from buying this game is the prohibitive shipping cost that I just can’t justify. I’ve had Mechs vs. Minions on my wish-list for years and apparently my wife has come very close to buying it for me on several occasions, but each time she adds the product to her cart, she balks at the shipping cost. I do have an acquaintance in town who I know owns this game, perhaps one day I’ll carve out some time to play it with him.
Too Many Bones
Much like Mechs vs. Minions‘s sticker shock preventing me from pony-ing up the cash to buy the game, Too Many Bones shares a similar fate. At an eye-watering CAD $200, Too Many Bones is a bit of a white whale for me
Too Many Bones by Josh J. Carlson and Adam Carlson is a dice rolling adventure game for 1 to 4 players where each player controls a unique character with multiple classes to choose from. This box from Chip Theory Games contains no cardboard aside from the box itself, everything is made out of waterproof materials, like plastic or neoprene. I’ve seen more than one person rave about the gameplay and the excitement that Too Many Bones delivers to it’s players, and it’s a system that I desperately want to dive into, but at this point I’m too far behind. The latest crowd funding campaign had a reward tier called “The Ultimate Completionist” that included everything that has been produced for Too Many Bones up to this point, and they were asking for USD $1,100 (a discount of $231 off MSRP). That’s a current that I’m not willing to wade into.
War of the Ring: Second Edition
I wish I had a better reason to want to play War of the Ring: Second Edition by designers Roberto Di Meglio, Marco Maggi, and Francesco Nepitello, but my reasoning is simply because I love the Lord of the Rings. that’s it. I know this is a big, epic 2 player only game and the likelihood of me actually finding a copy is rare, and I generally don’t like direct conflict or war games, but I feel in this case that my love for the theme will overcome my distaste for the mechanics.
Games I don’t want to play
Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion
I have a bit of a rant about why I don’t like Gloomhaven, which I’ll include when I finish Bigfoot’s Trash Taste post, but the crux of my issues with Gloomhaven are that your hand is functionally the timer for the game. The options available to you dwindle as the game goes on, feeling like a noose tightening around your neck. Your hand is being depleted quicker and quicker and you need to complete the objectives. Most of the scenarios I’ve played end not because we take too much damage, but just because we run out of time, this actively punishes you for exploring.
Most of your strongest actions will burn the card instead of sending it to the discard pile, which means to do a big cool thing, you just straight up remove the card from your supply for the rest of the scenario. it’s that fundamental aspect that I dislike, I feel like I’m being punished for doing the big cool thing or for exploring, and that’s not how I like my games to feel. If I’m playing a combat-centric game, I want to be a big damn hero, not a rag-tag adventurer just barely making it out of each encounter alive.
In case you were wondering, I’m also not a fan of the Souls-borne genre of video games either.
Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 & 2
My experience with Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 kind of soured me on the rest of the Pandemic Legacy games. I didn’t like the consequences of a bad game, if a city (or cities) fall because of unlucky card flips, that city was much harder to work around and more likely to be a pain in the butt in subsequent games. I felt disincentivised to branch out and try new characters; the ones we’ve been using all game have gotten several improvements and until they’re lost forever, there’s was no real reason to deviate.
Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 is Otter’s favourite game, and I’m sure he cringes every time I slander it (actually when it’s written, it’s libel. But it’s not libel if it’s the truth). I don’t know if the follow up games resolve my issues with the system, but I’m not willing to commit myself to 12 – 24 more plays to find out.
Twilight Imperium: Any Edition
Twilight Imperium is the holy grail for some people. It’s a big event game that requires a lot of planning and scheduling to even get to the table, as it’s best when played with 6 players. Twilight Imperium is a game of galactic conquest, with lots of variability, and a epic saga emerging from the gameplay.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone talk about Twilight Imperium without regaling me with the glorious details of the rise and fall of their opponents during the game. While it sounds like an epic and amazing experience, I just don’t have the spoons to play a game that routinely takes longer than 6 hours to play, especially a game that has as much direct combat as Twilight Imperium. My actual nightmare would be to sit down at the table, get beaten in a combat in the first hour, and spend the next five hours trying to do anything while knowing there’s no chance of a comeback.
I’m envious of those who can prioritize and commit to playing Twilight Imperium at all, let alone more than once, but I know myself and I know I would enjoy myself so much more by just playing 4 different 2 hour games over 1 epic 8 hour space opera.
On Mars
I have a love/hate relationship by games designed by Vital Lacerda. They’re usually big, complex, and thematic games that simulate a facet of life, like building a car in Kanban or robbing a bank and evading the police in Escape Plan. In these games each individual turn is simple and straightforward, but there are half a dozen interlocking mechanisms and mechanics that you need to be intimately familiar with to succeed.
On Mars looks to stay on the same track as the rest of Lacerda’s designs, clocking in at a 4.66 out of 5 on BGGs complexity rating. While sometimes all I really want to do is to sink my teeth into a complex game, I’m at a stage of life (parent to a toddler) where the thought of a brain burning game just exhausts me. Maybe when I’m all growed up and have spare time again I’ll go on a massive Lacerda binge.
I will say that I absolutely adore Ian O’Toole’s cover for this game. It looks absolutely stunning!
Eldritch Horror
Somewhat ironically my birthday is October 31st, and I generally dislike the entirety of the horror genre. Eldritch Horror by Corey Konieczka and Nikki Valens looks to be a fine game; a streamlined version of Arkham horror where players embark on a cooperative adventure working to solve mysteries and protect the world from the Ancient One. I just have no love for the entirety of the Cthulhu mythos. If horror, mystery, and Cthulhu is something you enjoy, I’m sure Eldritch Horror is a treat. unfortunately I am not, so I am repelled.
