I’ve always preferred the fantasy side of fiction. Sci-fi is great and all, but it’s never been my preferred flavour. Doctor Who is a series that I never bothered with until I met a girl who insisted that we watch the entire (new) series together. I quite enjoyed the first time watching each episode, but found the series didn’t hold up during a re-watch (perhaps I was just enjoying the company, not the show). Nevertheless, that girl is now my wife, and being a Whovian is a large part of her nerd identity. This materializes in Tardis socks and a Tardis dress in our closet, 2 Tardis blankets on our bed, and and Doctor Who Fluxx sitting in our date night bag.
How to Play
Each game of Fluxx starts with a single deck of cards in the centre of the table, a starting hand of 3 cards, and only 2 rules. On your turn you must draw 1 card, and play 1 card. Then play continues to the next player. Cards come in various flavours, including Goals, Keepers, Creepers, New Rules, Actions and Reactions.
The goal of the game is to fulfill the active goal card (once someone has played a goal card, that is), which generally involve having a specific set of Keepers and sometime Creepers on the table in front of you. Generally, Creepers will prevent you from winning the game, but there are some specific goal cards that require that you have a Creeper in front of you. As play happens and players put down more rules, the game will spiral out of control until one player manages to achieve the current goal, and declares victory.
Doctor Who Fluxx features characters from across the entirety of the series as keepers and creepers. From the robot dog K-9, to all 12 doctors and various companions and tools, all with associated goal cards. The Cybermen, Daleks, Weeping Angels, and The Master are all working together to prevent you from achieving your goals.
Review
On Fluxx:
Fluxx is a weird beast. By all rights, I shouldn’t even enjoy it, if I stick to my assertions that I don’t like games that are heavy in luck. Fluxx is easy (usually) quick enough that I’m willing to relinquish control and just have a good time.
The majority of the time players win ‘by accident’, drawing the right keeper at the right time is what separates a victory from a loss. Not player choice or strategy. For some, the lack of agency will take away the joy of winning or the sting of losing, but for others Fluxx will just be frustrating. You’ll be close to a victory, the right goal is on the table, you have one of the two necessary keepers, then suddenly someone steals your keeper, or the goal changes, or you draw a Creeper. Alternatively, if you have a row of Keepers and someone plays the correct goal card, you just win.
The odds are, you’ve played Fluxx. If you haven’t, you can play it for free on Board Game Arena or as a phone app. If you have played Fluxx you already know if you like it or not. If you do, great! If not, changing the setting isn’t going to change your mind.
On the Doctor Who setting:
I think die hard fans of Doctor Who, or Whovian’s as they’re often referred as, who have a deep appreciation of the lore, will find themselves somewhat disappointed. Yes, Doctors 1 through 8 exist, along with K-9 and Sarah Jane Smith, but there’s very little specifically for those old characters. They end up just being generic wildcard Keepers with “The Doctor” trait that can be used to fufill several of the goals. Doctor Who Fluxx skews to the newer seasons for specific references, but, even those feel surface level. I do like the small references, like, Captian Jack Harkness can’t die, but there’s little that makes me feel like the characters are anything more than things to fill recipes. There’s absolutely no difference between Donna Nobel and Martha Jones, for instance.
I don’t expect deep cuts to the comic book story lines, nor can I expect every doctor to have 3 specific goals that work with them. The references cater to the casual fan (that’s me!) who vaguely remembers the important bits; one who couldn’t name the characters if put on the spot, but can recognize the references when the cards are played.
Final thoughts:
I enjoy playing Doctor Who Fluxx with my partner. We go to a pub, take in a pint, and casually flip cards at each other. A big part of my enjoyment is the Doctor Who setting, reliving the quotable quotes on the cards, and being seeing my favourite companions (like the Ponds) pop up. I’m indifferent to the Doctors who I never watched (1 – 8), but it doesn’t take away from my enjoyment. I enjoy Fluxx as a system, but I never take it seriously. It’s a fun, random card game that’s effective at passing the time and facilitating activity amongst friends and family.
Should games be reviewed in a vacuum? When I consider a game, should I be looking at it as a product as if no other games exist, or should I be comparing it to similar games? Does this change if the designer of the game already has a similar game on the market? The question of “Do I need both?” comes up often enough, so I assume there are values in the comparisons.
Uwe Rosenberg has released a lot of games, and if you’ve played several of his game, you’ll start to notice some common trends. The polyomino games like Patchwork, New York Zoo, Cottage Garden, and A Feast for Odin or the farming games like Agricola, Fields of Arle, and Caverna: The Cave Farmers have similar mechanics between them, often evoking similar feels and emotions when they get played.
How to Play
Caverna: The Cave Farmers is a worker placement game. The centre of the table holds the main action board that gets populated with resources every round, and allows you to take actions on your player board to help you scratch a living from the land. Players start with only two workers living in a simple dwelling. On your turn, you place one of your workers onto an unoccupied space on the main board, and take the depicted action.
Your player board has two halves. The left half is a forest, which you can slash and burn to create fields and meadows to grow crops and breed animals. The right side of your board is a mountain, which you can carve into space for furnishings and dwellings, which will give you special powers, or earn you victory points at the end of the game.
At the end of each round, there might be a harvest. During a harvest phase you start by pulling one item off each of your crops, then, you must feed your people. Two food is required for every fully grown worker you have. Then, if you have a pair of animals on your board, they produce a third animal!
At the start of each round, and new action space is revealed, offering new and exciting actions for you and your opponents to take. Once you’ve reveals all the actions spaces, and satisfied the final harvest phase, the game comes to an end, and the player with the most points is the winner.
Review
Look, Agricola and Caverna: The Cave Farmers (hereby just called Caverna) get compared a lot. They’re both worker placement games where you need to build a farm and feed your people. I’ve outlined some of their similarities and differences here, but I’ll be focusing on Caverna as if Agricola doesn’t exist until the end of the review.
Caverna is a big box. With enough components to play up to 7 players, it has heft, and it sprawls, consuming even the largest of tables. I highly recommend having bowls or some other way to manage the tokens, and they are plentiful and get messy when someone’s fingers dive into the neat little piles, sending tiny wooden pieces skittering across the floor. I can’t imagine playing Caverna with 7 players. At an advertised (and generous) 30 minutes per player, that would take all day. The downtime in between turns can be a bit of a problem at 4 players already. In a 4 player game, if I have 30 minutes of ‘game play’ time, that would mean there are 90 minutes of me just watching my opponent hem and haw over which resources they want to take.
I generally enjoy worker placement games, they’re interactive without the daggers. The most you can do to your opponents is take the spot they wanted to go to, which is enough for me to have some trash-talk with my friends, but not enough to inspire ill will. Uwe Rosenberg has mastered the tension of worker placement games, making plenty of spaces lucrative and tempting, and that every space should be taken at least once per game. There’s enough actions to take so that I never feel like I’m wasting a turn, but there are plenty of situations where you really really want to take a specific action space as it would just benefit you so greatly.
Caverna’s resources are varied. There’s wood, stone, ore, rubies, food, gold, dogs, sheep, donkeys, cows, wheat, and vegetables, each as a custom shaped wooden piece. Most of these resources can be found on the main board, flowing into the system and into your personal supply by taking the stockpiles as your action. Rubies are a wildcard resource, they can be converted into almost anything else at any time, making them valuable and perfect for filling in any minor shortfalls you find yourself in. Of course, having this many resources means you’ll frequently find yourself missing one entirely and need to take a whole action to acquire however many of that resource are available on the main board.
One of the mechanics I didn’t talk about above is the ‘expeditions’. Once the smelting action becomes available, you can spend ore to build a weapon for your worker. If that worker is then placed on an action space that allows expeditions, they acquire resources up to their level. This is perfect for acquiring a small amount of a lot of different goods and covering any dearths in the market. Bigfoot just took all the sheep from the board? No problem, I’ll just bring one home from my expedition.
The expeditions open Caverna wide up. Suddenly, missing resources on the player board aren’t a real issue any longer. Fairly quickly, you can get anything you need from a simple expedition. Desperately need a pumpkin? My level 4 worker has got you covered. The expedition spaces are hotly contested, but Caverna does force you to use your workers in reverse strength order, meaning your worker with the best weapon will appear on the board last. You can spend a ruby to play one out of order, however.
The expeditions can grind the game to a halt. If you’re trying to figure out which 4 items you will take from your level 9 adventure, there are a lot of aspects to consider. The rule book says that while someone is considering their expedition loot options, the next player can proceed with their turn. However, in one of my 4 player games, the subsequent players all took their turns, and it made it back around to the player who was still wrestling with his options. It’s a bit of a struggle just watching people think while you wait for your turn. If you or your group are sensitive to analysis paralysis, be wary of this game.
The game length is also deceiving. The first 5 rounds FLY by, taking mere minutes each. The very first time I played Caverna, I texted my (then) girlfriend after 6 rounds and told her to meet me somewhere in 30 minutes. Low and behold, the final 3 rounds take at least 15 minutes each. It makes sense, as the game goes on the number of workers each person has will likely double, and the number of available actions also increases significantly. Not everyone will be bothered by the length of the game, but adjust your expectations accordingly.
I’ve barely touched on the furnishing board. 48 different buildings that are available to everyone from the start of the game. To build these, you need to prepare space in your cave, but they offer game-changing bonuses if chosen correctly. The Seam room provides an ore everytime you obtain a rock, the cooking cave allows you to trade in a vegetable and a grain for 5 food (2 more than they would provide on their own), and parlours, storage rooms, and chambers offer a bevy of end-game scoring opportunities. These rooms never change and known from the start of the game.
Here is where I arrive at why I prefer Agricola over Caverna. Agricola has multiple decks of cards offering various tools and occupations. While luck can hurt, it’s up to you to figure out a way to earn the most points by using the cards dealt (or drafted) to you. Each game is unique and can vary wildly. Caverna takes a more static path, allowing you to pick the strategy you want to change before you even take your first turn. I could see rote openings and meta strategies being developed among Caverna enthusiasts. Caverna lacks the same tension and stress that I enjoy overcoming in Agricola. Never have I even come close to needing a begging tile. Sure, MAYBE giving up a cow would cost me more than 3 points, and it MIGHT make sense to beg instead of slaughter my animals, but I’ve never been in danger. That said, I’ve also never won Caverna, so maybe my own sense of tension is misguided. I generally don’t feel the pinch of resources being taken from me, as I can just go on an expedition to make up my shortfalls, or collect rubies to convert into anything I might need. It’s much more forgiving than Misery Farm
That being said, I do quite like Caverna, just not as much as Agricola. It appears that I’m in the minority, as everyone else I’ve played Caverna with, and have also played Agricola, prefer this cave dwelling experience more. Both games are excellent, and playing either one is well worth your time, but I do not believe that anyone needs to own both. This is a case where you should try both and choose your favourite to own. If you enjoy randomness and variability, seek out Agricola. If you prefer refining your strategy with a more static set up, then Caverna: The Cave Farmers just might be the right game for you.
Once again, I’m confronted with the question, “Should games be reviewed in a vacuum?”. When considering a game, should I look at it from the perspective of when it was released? Should I compare it to similar games, or to the past works of the designer(s)? In the end, I think all I can really do is share how a game makes me feel when I play it, while trying to be fair to the passage of time.
How to Play
The Pillars of the Earth by Michael Rieneck and Stefan Stadler is based on the 1989 novel of the same name, written by Ken Follett. In The Pillars of the Earth, players assume the roles of builders, working to construct a cathedral, and earning victory points based on the resources and labour they commit to the project.
The main mechanism of The Pillars of the Earth is worker placement, but it has a bit of a unique hook. Players each have 3 ‘master builder’ pawns that all get tossed into a bag. One by one, the first player pulls the pawns from a bag. The player whose pawn is pulled from the bag has a choice, they can either place their pawn onto an action space and pay the associated cost, or, pass. Whether they place or pass, the cost to place is reduced by 1, and the next pawn is drawn. This repeats until all the pawns are removed from the bag. Then, the players who passed take turns moving their pawns out onto the board for free.
I should mention, before the pawn placement phase, each round begins with a draft. 7 cards depicting resources are divvied out to players. Each card requires you to commit workers to them, meaning you can’t just choose the one that gives you the most resources. Sometimes you’ll desperately want both Stone and wood, so you’ll opt to take the cheaper cards first.
Anyway, once the resource cards are distributed, and the player pawns placed, all the actions resolve in numerical order, moving clockwise around the board. There’s an event that triggers, with an associated action space that protects that player from the effects of the event, special visitors who will bestow persistent benefits to the player who selects them, a space to earn points, a place to evade taxes, a space to recruit builders, a resource market, and finally, capping off the round, an opportunity to convert the resources you acquired into victory points. After 6 rounds, the player who earned the most victory points is the winner.
Review
In some ways, The Pillars of the Earth is unique and interesting, and in other ways, it feels very 2006. The main hook of the game, the way actions are distributed by pulling pawns out of a bag, was neat and interesting. It can be both a blessing and a curse to be the first pawn pulled out of the bag. On one hand, you get first pick of any space on the board. On the other hand, you’ll pay dearly for that privilege. Should you feel strapped for cash, and two or three of your pawns come out early, suddenly your fortunes twist from getting first crack at the board, to going absolutely last.
The components of The Pillars of the Earth are pretty good. The mini cards are adequate, the resource cubes are slightly larger than average, and each player gets a handful of human shaped meeples in their colour. The standout component is the main board. While a standard size, it’s beautifully illustrated. Another component that I want to highlight is the 6 cathedral blocks. At the start of each round, you’ll add one block to the cathedral, representing the progress players are making in building this grant project. I feel a bit of dissonance with this aspect, however, no matter how much or how little players contribute, the building will still get built. It can serve as a round marker, but the numbered craftsman cards do a better job conveying that information. Ultimately, the cathedral is whimsical, but pointless.
I almost feel like the cathedral should be built in stages according to the sum of all the players points, sort of like a semi-cooperative game. Perhaps that could be a way to end the game early, if all the resources needed for the church are completed, then the game is over. I’m just speculating here, but I do like games that have a project that all players contribute to, such as Troyes (Sébastien Dujardin, Xavier Georges, Alain Orban, 2010) or Caylus (William Attia, 2005).
Teaching and playing The Pillars of the Earth is fairly straightforward. The rulebook is only 8 pages long and covers all the actions nicely. We did feel the lack of an appendix detailing all the cards when coming against an ambiguity. Like, “player produces one additional stone each round”. Does that mean the player needs to produce at least one stone for this power to trigger? Turns out, no. It’s a minor complaint, but I dislike it when ambiguity on card text forces us to pause our game and consult the forums.
If there’s one aspect that makes me feel like The Pillars of the Earth is an older game, it’s how the game chooses to use randomness. There’s an event each round that gets revealed after the players all place their pawns for the round. One of the spaces available is to protect yourself from the impending event, but you don’t know what that event is going to be, so, you place your pawn in that spot to protect yourself from that randomness? It’s a bit odd. Along the same lines, each round the King demands taxes. Halfway through the complete action phase, the start player rolls a die, and all players need to pay between 2 and 5 gold, depending on that die roll, unless you happened to place a pawn in the King’s Court, then you’re exempt from this requirement. Again, not knowing what you’re mitigating feels very 2006.
I try to put myself back in the year 2007, when most people would have played The Pillars of the Earth for the first time. I suspect that back then, the novelties of the worker placement mechanic would have lit some worlds on fire. I find myself wishing that mechanic was tied to a more interesting game. Beyond the pulling the workers from the bag mechanic, the rest of the game is fairly dull. A somewhat generic convert resources into victory points affair. As the game rounds go on, the craftsmen that become available are the same as the ones you already have, but are, just, better. The Stonemason you have at the beginning of the game needs 2 stone to convert into 1 point, while the end game Stonemason will convert a single stone into 2 points. Now, you’re not able to hoard resources all game and just wait for the final craftsmen to show up, which makes The Pillars of the Earth feel less strategic and more tactical. The Pillars of the Earth is not an engine building game, you can never guarantee your income or resource production. Instead, you’ll need to squeeze the most value from the goods and craftsmen that become available to you in order to come out ahead.
In the end, The Pillars of the Earth was a fine game to play. We had fun for the two hours it took us to learn and play, but when we were finished, we all agreed that we wouldn’t choose to come back to it. Compared to all the games that we own and want to return to, The Pillars of the Earth is a bit of a relic of the past. It evoked similar feelings of Caylus (William Attia, 2005), but without the brutality of the provost. I’m glad I played The Pillars of the Earth, but it’s not a game I’ll be clamouring to return to. If I’m thirsty for a worker placement game, I’d sooner return to Agricola (Uwe Rosenberg, 2007) or Viticulture (Jamey Stegmaier, Alan Stone, 2013) first, and I feel the desire to convert cubes into points, I’d much sooner play Century: Spice Road (Emerson Matsuuchi, 2017) or Stone Age (Bernd Brunnhofer, 2008).
Every year I encourage the members of my regular game group to create a top 100 games of all time. Today I’m finishing the series in which I explore my friends favourite games and specifically look at the games they chose to put onto their top 100 that I dislike.
Hate is a very strong word, and most of these games I would still play. These are games that I would call ‘fine’ and would play if Bear was really keen, but are not games I would ever suggest playing on our game nights.
Todays victim is Bear. He swings much further over to the thematic and direct conflict sides of the spectrum than the other members of my game group. He’s probably the person whos tastes differs the most from mine. He agrees that Food Chain Magnate is a fantastic game, but he detests Galaxy Trucker. All things shake out I suppose.
Terraforming Mars #2
Sometimes I wonder if my distaste for Terraforming Mars stems from a series of poor experiences. Every time I sit down to play Terraforming Mars I struggle to get anything done. More than once I’ve been given a starting corporation that suggests a direction to follow, only to have that direction be a red herring (like starting with the corporation that benefits Jovian tags, only to never see a single Jovian card, even with the drafting variant). The deck of cards is massive, and the number of cards that I see in the game is low and fixed. It’s prohibitively expensive to chase milling the deck. It’s frustrating to be dealt an initial hand of cards, pick a strategy to chase, only for that strategy to be neutered by the luck of the draw.
Further to luck of the draw, many cards have prerequisites that must be met before the card can be played. Thematically, these cards are great! The planet needs to have a certain amount of oxygen before life can be sustained, or it needs to be cold enough for glaciers to still exist so you can melt them, But in a gameplay sense, drawing cards that have already had their conditions surpassed feels lame. You only get 4 cards per turn, and now one of those cards is dead on arrival.
Terraforming Mars is also entirely too long. In my experience, two of the three terraforming requirements rocket up their tracks, completing within a few generations. Then the third one drags along at a glacial pace. I’ve heard that people can finish a game in under two hours, but that has not been my experience. In a game where luck is a significant factor and someone falling behind in an engine building game means catching up feels neigh impossible.
I also complain about the component quality, the player boards are woefully thin, and horribly susceptible to being jostled. It sucks to have to chase down an aftermarket tray to keep everything in it’s place. The cubes have a nice shiny metallic paint, but they’re easily scratched and dinged showing their wear very prominently.
When Terraforming Mars comes together, it absolutely sings. It feels good to get an engine running and to take turn after turn, triggering combos and converting resources to realize your objective. I like the tempo considerations, biding your time with actions waiting to see if someone is going to pass or make a run on one of the objectives you have your eye on, and I enjoy the thematic of the game. I love the narrative of bringing Deimos down to massively increase the temperature of the planet at the mild sacrifice of your neighbour’s tree farm. Unfortunately it’s a song I’ve only heard other people talk about.
I don’t begrudge anyone who loves Terraforming Mars, but it’s not a game I enjoy playing, and would opt to play something else that gives me similar feels, such as Earth, Ark Nova, or even Race for the Galaxy (which has a lot of the same complaints, but plays in less than an hour).
Twilight Struggle #5
I can see the brilliant design work that lies within Twilight Struggle by Anada Gupta and Jason Matthews. A Cold War game where one player assumes the role of the USA, while the other leads USSR. The cards take players through the decades with various events and major political upheavals within the time frame. Like many two player only games, I can see how Twilight Struggle can rocket up someone’s favourite game list if you have a willing and eager partner to play over and over with, especially if you’re both exploring and growing at the same pace.
Twilight Struggle‘s multi-use cards are exciting and brutal if you’re caught flat-footed. Knowing which cards can come up is a major part of playing Twilight Struggle well, which makes it a frustrating learning experience. Cards can be played as events or operations, and cards can be ‘associated’ with the USSR or the US, which means if you play a card that’s associated with your opponent’s nation for the operation points, the event still occurs. An aspect of the game is recognizing how to best play the worst cards in your hand, which is painful. I don’t like treading water, or winning wars of attrition.
It feels like a lot of the game is exploiting your opponent’s weaknesses, or push them into making a bad decision. Controlling Defcon, mitigating your opponent’s events, and spreading your nation’s influence across the map are all subjects worthy of their own strategy guides, and getting into each of those systems is a challenge. There are 4 ways for the agme to end, if someone has 20 VP, if either side controls Europe when the Europe scoring card is played, or, if your opponent causes the DEFCON level to reach 1. If none of those three events happen, then there is a final scoring. I’ve only played Twilight Struggle 4 times, but I’ve never seen a game reach the end game scoring phase.
Twilight Squabble reduces Twilight Struggle into a very short rock-paper-scissors game about trying to push your opponent into DEFCON that I enjoy more (mostly because no matter how badly I’m doing, it’s over in a matter of moments. Root is another asymmetric war game that I enjoy more, mostly due to the cutesy woodland aesthetic.
Dominion #28
The grand-daddy of deck builders, Dominion is a game that spawned a new genre of games. Donald X. Vaccarino’s game of buying cards from a central market to put into your discard pile, then re-shuffling the discard pile to become your draw deck was my absolute favourite game mechanic for a long while. Unfortunately for Dominion, I started playing board games in 2014 and games like Clank!, Star Realms, Super Motherload, Paperback, and Concordia hit my table first. By the time I finally got the opportunity to play Dominion, it felt like a step backwards. Also, the people who are willing to play Dominion now are the people who fell into it HARD. With custom storage solutions, half a dozen expansions, and arguments over how to set the initial seed, it simultaneously feels like too much (in terms of variability) and not enough (in terms of complexity).
I’m also not a fan of how static the game state feels. Once the seed is set, you can more or less plan out your strategy from turn one. Unless you’re playing with cards that affect other players, it’s more just you against your deck. I do love the combos the game can generate, and nailing a massive turn is immensely satisfying, but I feel the sun has set on Dominion and I missed the glory days.
As I said before, Most of the deck builders I really enjoy have a board component that gives me something to do with my cards, like Super Motherload, and Clank!. If I want a pure deck builder, Paperback or Hardback are my go-tos, but only if I want to get stomped on by my partner who is crazy good at both those games.
Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game #33
I’ve only just watched the Battlestar Galactica TV series, solely because the first time I played Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game (hereby referred to as BSG:TBG) all the other players were making references to the plot lines, spouting quotes from the show, and making thematic decisions. I had chosen to play Lee Adama (Apollo), and was playing him like a chaotic warmonger with a death wish, which the other players told me was ‘wrong’ and didn’t fit the characters profile
As a game, BSG:TBG is fine. It’s long, fairly complex, and difficult. In BSG:TBG, it not about building an unstoppable force, and more about limping across the finish line. Add to that, I’ve never been a fan of bluffing games, as I feel guilt when I accuse someone and they fire back, offended that I would dare cast suspicion their way, even if it turns out I was right all along. The gameplay of BSG:TBG is mediocre and random. You spend cards to test skills, draw more cards, and try to make your way to Earth. If someone cast suspicion on you, you may just be thrown into the brig, which saps the fun out of the experience. Also, this is a long experience, 3 – 4 hours total. And it’s somewhat deflating when you spend 2 hours as a human, trying to do your very best only to become a cylon halfway through and now need to sabatoge the last two hours of work you’ve put into the experience.
I’m a fairly conservative person (in temperament, not politically). I’m content to sit in my chair for two hours and quietly contemplate our choices with rational discussion. A victory is celebrated with a muted “sweet” and a betrayal is greeted with a quiet “dang”. Having several people of my temperament does not make for a good social deduction game. We have a fried who lovesBSG:TBG, and has the perfect temperament to play. My enjoyment doesn’t come from the game mechanics, but from watching this loose cannon fire off accusations from turn one, boisterously proclaim that everyone is a Cylon, and hoot and holler when a big moment happens. It’s the other players that create the fun in BSG:TBG, not the game itself.
What do I enjoy that’s similar to BSG:TBG? Eclipse is a space war game, but no cooperative. I enjoy the Pandemic spin-off games or Burgle Bros. if I’m looking for a cooperative experience, but they don’t t have any hidden traitors (although I can’t think of a single game that I enjoy that has a hidden traitor element).
Backgammon #39
It’s roll and move. Come on. It’s not that intresting.
Actually, my mom and I play Backgammon every now and then and it’s surprisingly enjoyable, but only because we razz each other. Bear swears up and down that Backgammon is best when playing with stakes and using the doubling die to make a single game count for more. Being risk-adverse, I’d rather not put anything other than the time it takes to play a game on the line. It can be exhilarating when all hope is lost but a lucky double 6’s roll cinches a come-from-behind victory. But over-all, it’s a game about rolling dice and moving your discs. The player who rolls better will win, unless they do something reckless like leaving their single pawn unprotected in their opponents house, in which case, they deserve the loss.
It’s pretty rare that I learn a game digitally. I find it so much harder to learn a game by watching videos on YouTube then starting a game on a website like Boardgamearena.com or Yucata.de and just seeing how it goes over a couple of days. I end up acting like those old point-and-click adventure games, where I just click anything that’s available to click and hope to stumble onto the answer. Generally, reading the rules gives me a framework of how to play, but I find it quite difficult to conceptualize or strategize until I’ve played a game through at least once.
Vikings is a game that I played a dozen times on Yucata.de before picking up the physical edition. The online implementation is great, but like most of us who are ‘in the board game hobby’, given the choice between playing games in a web browser and playing a game in the table, we’ll take the table every time. And I’m glad I did, Vikings by Michael Kiesling is a gem of a game.
How to Play
To play Vikings, each round 12 tiles are laid out around the central spinning wheel. Any boat tiles are placed at the highest available number and any island tile is placed at the lowest available number. Then 12 Vikings are pulled from the bag and sorted into their colours and placed next to each tile. Blue Vikings go among the lowest number, then yellows, greens, reds, blacks and finally greys Vikings are placed at the highest number. At the beginning of the game you’re given coins depending on the number of players and a single island start tile.
On your turn you need to buy a tile and Viking pair, and place the tile into your tableau. The amount you pay for a tile and Viking combo is dictated by the wheel in the centre of the table, from 11 gold all the way down to 0 gold. You can only take the 0 cost tile if the Viking next to that island is the only one of its colour available.
After buying an island and Viking, you need to place the island into your tableau. If you manage to place the island tile in the same colour row as your Viking, you can place the Viking right onto that piece of land, otherwise your Viking has to sit at the top of the board until a boatswain ferries it onto an empty tile. It’s also important to note that the island tiles come in three varieties, start, middle, and end. If you have a start tile in your tableau, then you can put a middle or end tile against it, but you can’t put two start tiles adjacent to each other.
When someone does manage to take the free tile, the price wheel rotates clockwise until the 0 spot is lined up with the next available Viking, thereby making everything else cheaper. If you choose to buy the most expensive tile available, you’ll also get a special tile that offers some significant benefits.
If the tile you take happens to have an invading boat instead of a piece of island, the Viking defaults to sitting on the beach at the top of your board, and the boat is placed along the top row on your tableau. Any boat along the top of your tableau will negate some of your Vikings in that column, rendering them useless.
When I’m teaching Vikings, I feel a bit like I’m teaching Galaxy Trucker. “These blue Vikings are fishermen, they feed 5 Vikings in your commune. You want as many of these as possible. The yellow Vikings are gold smiths, they earn you 3 gold each. You want as many of these as possible. The red Vikings are nobles, they give you two points per red Viking. You want as many of them as possible!” Every Viking has their role, and the left side of the player board will remind of as to what each one does.
Review
Vikings by Michael Kiesling defies expectations. When you hear Vikings, you’ll think exploration, pillaging, and mayhem. In this box you’ll instead find a fast economic game about fiscal responsibility and real estate management. In fact, the only thing that really makes Vikings feel like a Viking game, is the meeples with the horned helmets.
You have a limited amount of money to spend on getting Vikings and limited ways to generate more gold. You need to deal with Vikings of the wrong colour associated with exactly the tile you need so you’ll need to make do. Sometimes in a round there will only be one or two of the coveted starting tiles, forcing you need to balance picking other Vikings and hoping the price for that one tile drops a bit, but not too low that one of your opponents leaps out and takes before you.
The game comes with a couple optional variants, such as bidding for turn order, and advanced tiles that offer a benefit if you buy the most expensive tile available. I rarely use the bidding for turn order option, but I never play without the advanced tiles. They don’t add much to the rules or complexity, but they offer rewards for doing something unexpected, like buying the most expensive tile on the board. Sometimes the cheaper tiles aren’t that appealing it’s really nice to have a reward for spending a bit of coin on the more expensive tiles.
If you run out of money you can opt to use victory points to make up the difference at a rate of 1 to 1. You are never forced to trade points for gold, but if you can if you want. You better make sure that doing so worth your while, as at the end of the game the conversion back from gold to victory points is 5 gold to 1 point.
Vikings plays well at all player counts, but it does feel weird to play several 4 player games, then switch to a two player game. The number of Vikings and islands don’t change, so you just end up accumulating twice as many as you normally would have. It’s full of decisions and trade-offs that make each game feel different and intresting.
Vikings doesn’t coddle you with a catch up mechanism. If you start falling behind you are liable to stay behind. While there’s no way to directly interact with someone, a keen eye can deny someone a crucial component to their community. Thankfully, Vikings doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. With a bright colour pallet and unique spinner in the middle of the table and a 45-60 minute playtime, it’s easy to see why Vikings has is my most played Michael Keisling game. It’s a solid design and it keeps coming back out for more.
