Number of plays: 2 Designer: Maxime Tardif Release Year: 2023 Mechanics: Tableu building, Card Drafting, Hand Management
A prototype of Earth was provided by the publisher for review purposes
Introduction
Earth, designed by Maxime Tardif and published by Inside Up Games, is an engine building, hand management, tableau building game for 1 – 5 players. In this post I’ll be focusing on the solo mode of play, which takes about an hour to complete. Earth is currently on Kickstarter so if anything I say below interests you, check out their fundraising project here!
How to play
In the solo game of Earth you are pitted against an AI named Gaia who is controlled by a small deck of 6 cards. The setup is mostly the same as the multiplayer game; shuffle the (massive) deck of 360 unique cards, then draw an island, climate, and ecosystem card, which will form your asymmetric starting powers and personal end game victory point goals. These cards are double sided to offer plenty of variety. Four Fauna cards are laid out on the common central board, and two public ecosystem cards give all players further victory points to work towards. After that, you’re ready to start.
On your turn you pick one of the four available actions (Planting, Composting, Watering, and Growing). After taking the benefit the action affords, you activate any cards that have played that contain the same colour as the action you just took. Then Gaia gets a small benefit based on that action.
For Gaia’s turn, draw the top card from her deck and follow the instructions. Most cards will have you adding points to her board while simultaneously giving you a small benefit and activating all the cards in your tableau of a specific colour. A large part of the game is ensuring you’re ready to capitalize on whatever benefit Gaia offers you.
Back and forth you and Gaia play until either you have 16 cards (in a 4 x 4 grid) in your personal tableau or Gaia plays all 6 of her cards twice. Whoever amasses the highest score is the winner.
Review
Earth was a fast game to learn and play. I found it helpful to know some of the design inspirations behind the systems (it was sold to me as cross between Terraforming Mars and Wingspan), but what I didn’t know about was the Puerto Rico-esque action following mechanism where the active player gets to choose an action and gets a big benefit while all the other players at the table get a small benefit. This interaction is simulated well in the solo game, as Gaia will trigger many of your abilities. Knowing what cards still remain in her deck is akin to looking over at another player and estimating which of the available actions they’ll take on.
While it was fairly simple to grasp the rules, I was somewhat overwhelmed with information when I started my first game. Trying to choose the Island card that I would use, and which 2 of the 10 cards in my hand to compost was a bit much. Every plant card has around 7 different features to consider (cost, base points, ecosystems, plant type, tree size, plant cube spots, and potential bonus action), so parsing 10 cards right at the start can be a bit much. In later plays, the shock was nowhere near as bad as I had a deeper understanding of how the mechanics fit together and how to quickly scan the cards for the information I needed.
Designer Maxime Tardif has posted an extensive designer diary talking about how they balanced the cards in Earth (which you can read here). While the value of each card is quite variable based on the goals of each game and other cards that it may interact with, you can be comforted by the thought that even if you throw away a good card, the rest you keep should be somewhat balanced.
Earth has a massive amount of variability ensuring that no two games you play will be identical. With 360 unique plant cards, 32 double-sided ecosystem cards, 23 double-sided Fauna, 10 double-sided Island and Climate cards, every game will have you exploring something new. In one game I focused on building a grove of berry bushes, with each one giving benefits to my other bush plants, while in another game I focused on growing all the trees on my cards to their full height. There’s no obvious single path to victory. Instead, players who are able survey the situation and capitalize on it the most effectively will be rewarded.
I enjoyed my solo plays of Earth. It was relaxing and challenging at the same time. I love the feeling of building an engine, particularly when you happen to get all the right pieces in place and your one action cascades into mountains of points. The AI opponent has four difficulty levels to choose from, so you can make adjustments if you find yourself absolutely trouncing her. The harder difficulties don’t drastically impact how Gaia plays, just how many points she accrues and how much more benefits she earns from each of your actions. I found the Medium difficulty to be the sweet-spot where I had fun and could narrowly eke out a win. I keep looking at the harder difficulties but shying away, waiting for the day where I’m in the mood to get absolutely wrecked by Gaia.
I have to admit that I don’t think there’s too much of a difference between having a dummy player accruing points and a point goal to work toward, but it feels more engaging to see Gaia’s board grow alongside your own. I enjoy the feeling of pressure as I see the mess of cubes and trees on Gaia’s board and only being able to guess at just how many points she has and how in the world am I going to surpass her. Sometimes I’d find myself second guessing which action I should take because the benefit I would be providing to Gaia would vastly outweigh the points I would gain.
While the copy of Earth I received from Inside Up Games is a prototype so none of the components are final, I found the production charming. They chose to use hundreds of breathtakingly gorgeous photographs on the cards. I love the height of the tiny trees as they grow off the table (somewhat reminiscent of Takenoko), but take care! I shudder to think about the calamity the would be caused by carelessly bumping the table and knocking everything askew. I’ve enjoyed following the crowdfunding campaign as they reveal more about the final compontents.
One of the features that I’m really looking forward to is the neoprene play mats. Neoprene play mats isn’t something that’s really tempted me before, but I love the gorgeous imagery on these mats, and having a mat to lay your 4 x 4 tableau of cards onto would be a very nice addition.
Earth is a looker, the mechanics are fun and interesting, and it’s simultaneously relaxing and engaging. I enjoy the different difficulty levels that let me choose if I want to push myself to new heights or if I just want to wind down at the end of the day. I’d love to see Gaia get some more decks that could simulate different priorities or change how she acts in some way, but as it stands, Earth is a quality game that I’m excited to explore further.
February 8th, 2022 marked the 1 year anniversary of Meeple and the Moose. I started writing this blog because I hadn’t seen my game group in person for nearly a year, and I was craving 2 things: physical board games, and a broader board game community.These two cravings led to me exploring the solo modes of the board games I already owned, and to write about my thoughts and experiences.
Over the last year I’ve published 50 posts related to board games, mostly reviews and counting down my top 100 favourite games (as of March 2020 when I created the list). I’ve started Twitter and Instagram accounts, neither platforms which I had ever used before, and I’ve played a lot of great games!
When I started Meeple and the Moose it was more of a creative writing outlet; a way to get the itch to write out of my system. I found that I really enjoyed engaging with the wider board game community! I’ve started watching lots of twitch streamers, and commenting on other people’s creative works, and I have enjoyed seeing the responses to the words I’ve been putting out into the world.
Something else I really enjoy doing is tracking my plays and stats regarding board games. I track:
The games played
Who played the games with me
The scores of each player in the game
Where the game was played
How long it took to play the game (rarely, I very often forget to push the start button on the timer)
I’ve often been asked “why do you track these things? Can’t you just enjoy playing the games?” and while the real answer is ‘no, you uncultured swine’, apparently that answer “isn’t good enough” and I’m told to stop “being rude to my mother.”
Before I get into why I track, here’s some stats about my board game plays as of February 2022:
I’ve recorded 1,244 plays of 336 different games
33% of my plays included 4 players
My average win rate is 40%
My H-Index is 17 (I’ve played 17 different games at least 17 times)
I’ve played 54 games 5 times or more
I’ve played 34 games 10 times or more
I’ve played 10 games 25 times or more
I’ve played games with 111 different people
My most played game is The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, followed by Pairs, (36 and 33 plays respectively)
Data doesn’t care about your feelings
The first, and most prominent reason that I track my stats is because humans are so damn bad at intuiting numbers. For example, one of my favourite games is Food Chain Magnate, and I would have said that I had played it at least 20 times. I also would have thought that each game took at least 4 hours to play because it is such a big game that’s full of decisions.
Looking at my stats, I’ve played Food Chain Magnate 14 times, and the average play time is closer to 2.5 hours (I almost always play with 4 players). Knowing that the game will likely be over in 3 hours means that if I want to play it during a weeknight, I have to have the game set up before my guests arrive. Keeping track of these details helps me plan better game nights.
2. Trends interest me, and help me become a better gamer
Have you ever played a game and been unsure of what certain things are worth? You wonder if you should you spend your whole action acquiring three bonus points, or if that is a waste of time. Tracking the final scores in my games helps me be a better gamer and game teacher, as I can tell people what they can expect for the final score. Three points is a big deal in Agricola, but it’s negligible in The Castles of Burgundy.
A friend of my built a tool called Goodat.games that collects game play data submitted to Board Game Geek and finds the average score. I find this site to be very helpful in my journey to be a better board gamer
3. Because it’s fun!
Honestly, I just like looking at the insights page. I enjoy seeing which games are getting played, how many plays I’ve had, and how many different games I’ve experienced over the course of a month, or year. I love looking back and reflecting on the games I’ve played, or having a witty response when someone mistakenly states that they are new to a game. For instance, when one of my friends says “I’ve never played this before” I can retort with “We played it together on March 17th, 2018 at the board game café. You won.”
I also enjoy putting together lists of my favourite games, and it’s very helpful to be able to filter games solely to ones that I’ve played before.
It’s an interesting experience writing about these games as my favourite games of all time. I created this list in March 2021, and now almost a year later, I can see certain games that have fallen and where new games would be added into the list. As I approach the top of my list, the selection of games is fairly rock solid; I don’t foresee any of these games dropping out of my top games as any new games will have quite a challenge bumping these games from their top slots!
Also, 6 of the 10 games on this list have longer reviews available to read, so I won’t spend a ton of time rehashing my points. Click the links to read my full thoughts on these excellent games!
20 – Now Boarding
Now Boarding was the first time that I took my wife to a board game store and she had to talk me into buying a board game (admitly she didn’t have to try very hard).
Now Boarding is a real time cooperative game from designer Tim Fowers, and puts players into the role of airline pilots ferrying passengers across the United States. Players are limited by how far they can travel, how many passenger they can hold, and only knowing half the information during the planning phase.
If you enjoy real time and/or cooperative games, Now Boarding is a hit, but I don’t think it will do much to convert skeptics.
19 – Orléans
Orléans is a clever bag building game by Reiner Stockhausen. In Orléans players are pulling discs from their sac and placing them on their player boards, fulfilling recipes to acquire more discs and gain special benefits depending on the kind of disc they’ve acquired.
Orléans often feels like a race, you’ll nervously eye your opponents player boards trying to ascertain if they’ll be able to snag the bonus tile that you’re gunning for, or waiting for just the right moment to place discs into the central shared board, where they won’t ever come back to your sac, but a well timed placement could net you one of the coveted population tokens that will multiply your final score.
It’s hard to compare Orléans to anything else I’ve played, Becuase it feels so unique. I’ve played other bag builders (Quacks of Quedlingburg and Automobiles), but neither of those games comes close to offering the same feelings as Orléans.
18 – Vikings
Vikings by Michael Keisling is one of those examples of why publishers should have an implementation of their game online to try, because I don’t think I ever would have looked at Vikings twice if I hadn’t played it on yucata.de a dozen times.
In Vikings players take turn buying collections of tiles and Vikings to place in their personal tableus. Each viking has a colour, which indicates which row in can sit and what benefit it will bring to your clan. Associated with each viking is an island tile.
With large and small scorings, a spinning wheel, and raiding boats, Vikings is my favorite game by Michael Keisling, far eclipsing his most popular game, Azul. Vikings is a satisfying economic game that plays in 45 minutes, and seemes endlessly replayable. At the very least I’ve played my copy 16 times, and have logged 30+ more games online.
17 – Lost Cities
Lost Cities by Reiner Knizia is the oldest game on today’s list by nearly a decade. A two player card game with a masterful blend of skill and luck that makes it fun to play with nearly anyone.
My favourite story of Lost Cities is the time I introduced it to my wife. We played a single game, and she lost. Bitter from defeat we put the game back on the shelf, and I assumed it would just be a game I play with others, and not her. But a few days later she brought it up again, that the push your luck and hedging your bets elements had burrowed their way into her mind and she was raring to give Lost Cities another play. Now, it’s one of her favourite games.
Lost Cities is a game that I love playing asynchronously on Board Game Arena. I’ve played 34 games online (mostly against one specific person). If you have a gaming partner in your life, and two player games are something that you’re frequently in search of, don’t pass over Lost Cities!
16 – Super Motherload
I’ve always called Super Motherload a hidden gem, if only because I’ve yet to meet someone other than myself (and my cousin who introduced it to me) who has heard of it, much less played it. Which is a crying shame because Super Motherload is a phenomenal game.
Super Motherload was the first time I encountered a deck building game with a board element. The cards in your hand facilitate the players digging tunnels and acquiring ore, which allows you to buy more cards for your deck.
Super motherload is a charming game with an excellent production by roxley games. Its been in my collection nearly from my beginning in the hobby board game space, and I can’t imagine it leaving any time soon.
15 – The Castles of Burgundy
The Castles of Burgundy is easily Stephen Feld’s most popular game, and is my favourite product from the prolific designer. The Castles of Burgundy has players rolling dice influence which actions they can take per round. While luck is always a factor when dice are involved, there’s an impressive amount of luck mitigation employed.
I want to play The Castles of Burgundy much more than I actually get to play it. It’s much more taxing and I’m always surprised at just how long it can take to play. But I can’t understate how satisfying it is to play. I recently reviewed The Castles of Tuscany, which takes a lot of the ideas from The Castles of Burgundy and streamlines it down. I found that it lacked the opportunity for big combos that brings me so much joy when I play The Castles of Burgundy.
14 – Arboretum
Arboretum is the Sudowoodo of board games. At first glace, “oh, just some trees. No big deal” then WHAM, a rock throw has just ko’ed your pidgy.
What I’m trying to say is that Arboretum looks beautiful and plesent and the kind of game you’d play with your mother during afternoon tea, but the reality is that it’s hard and brings out a sharp side in your mother than you didn’t even know existed.
Players be warned, Arboretum is great, strategic, and deep, but may leave you with the feeling that someone needs to get cut.
13 – Sagrada
I’ve reviewed Sagrada twice! The solo mode and the multiplayer game. Long story made short, the solo mode is kinda boring, but the multiplayer game is a great time. I prefer playing the full compliment of 4 players best, so every single die comes out and you aren’t sitting there absolutely wrecked by the chance of none of the colours you needed coming out of the bag.
Sagrada is a quick and easy game, perfect for finishing off a game night or something to play while you wait for the rest of your guests to arrive. And the translucent die are beautiful to boot!
12 – Paperback
Paperback is the wonderful deck building take on Scrabble. Gone are the long turns, agonizing over where you can fit your perfect word, and instead you can stress over the decision of buying letter cards (that allow you to make bigger and better words), and buying wild cards (which don’t contribute to your ability to buy more letters, but offer end game points).
The point in which you pivot from buying letters to snagging the wild cards is all important
11 – Burgle Bros.
The third Tim Fowers game in todays post is brought to you by Burgle Bros, and one of the few that I haven’t already taken the time to post my full thoughts and opinions on. Honestly, the reason I haven’t is just because I didn’t want my blog to turn into a Tim Fowers love fest so early on.
Burgle Bros is the game my family asks to play the most. ‘did you bring that heist game?’ they ask. We make a special effort to play it at least once when I return to my homeland. Burgle Bros pairs well with friends who can embrace the heist movie tropes, a sense of humor at the absurdity of a chiuawawa locked away in a safe, and a thematic sound track to keep everyone in the mood.
Burgle Bros feels familiar to fans of the cooperative games that came before Burgle Bros, which can make it easy to teach. The complaint I often hear is that the guards are hard to manage, but I disagree. They follow some specific rules and as long as someone at the table knows how they work, they can guide the rest of the players through the experience.
Not that I’m particularly well travelled or cultured, but I had never heard of a Tuscan castle before. I visited English and Dutch castles in my youth, and like most things, if I haven’t experienced them, I just assume they don’t exist.
The Castles of Tuscany is Stefan Feld’s 2019 follow-up to one of his most popular games, The Castles of Burgundy (2011). I won’t get into the specifics of what makes these two games different, because I’ll dedicate a whole article to that in the future. Make sure you’re following me on Twitter and Instagram to be notified when that article is live!
Overview
Disclaimer: The rulebook contained several ambiguities that required clarifications from the community FAQ. Publisher Alea has revised the rulebook (available here) which changed some rules; most notably, the ‘draw two cards’ action is now ‘draw three cards’ by default.
The Castles of Tuscany is a 2 – 4 player game that usually plays in under an hour. In The Castles of Tuscany players will collect tiles representing towns, villages, and monasteries and place them into their lands surrounding their castle, collecting special benefits to accrue points. The neat twist on scoring in The Castles of Tuscany is that there are 2 score tracks and two types of points that you can earn: green points and red points. During each of the 3 scoring phases, you gain red points equal to the number of green points you have. This means that a green point you earn at the beginning of the game will score you 3 red points by the end. At the end of the game the player with the most red points is the winner.
Each individual turn in The Castles of Tuscany is quick and smooth. You can only do one action per turn (although if you have a marble you can spend it to take a second turn). You maychoose from the following actions: take a tile from the centre and put it into your supply, pay two cards from your hand to play a tile from your supply into your province and gain the special benefit of the tile, or draw cards into your hand.
The ‘timer’ for the game comes from the number of tiles each player takes. When a player takes a tile from the offer row they must replace the tile they took with one from their own stack. When the first player depletes their first stack of tiles, the first scoring is triggered. When a player depletes their second stack, the second scoring is triggered, and when one player runs entirely out of tiles, the game ends.
Review
A new game from prolific designer Stefan Feld and being the successor to a wildly popular game means The Castles of Tuscany had some big shoes to fill. And the quick summary is, The Castles of Tuscany is easier to teach and faster to play. It feels streamlined and smoothed, almost as if it’s been finely developed by someone who has been making board games for decades.
Because it’s so smooth and streamlined, the gameplay flows well. Turns come and go quickly, leaving little downtime between turns. In my experience, because players only get one action per turn there is very little action paralysis.
Due to turns being so short, I found each individual turn to be somewhat unsatisfying. It may take several turns to queue up anything of value. This is especially true during the first few rounds of the game. It takes two cards of the same colour to play a matching coloured tile, so it’s not unheard of to spend two or three turns in a row just drawing cards, hoping you get the correct ones. You can always spend two cards as one card of a different colour, but my instinct refuses to let me do something so inefficient.
Restricting players to only one action per turn means that you can generally see what other players are planning on doing. You can afford to defer specific actions, safe in the knowledge that your plans won’t be foiled by a sudden rug pull. Of course, it’s important to notice when a player has a stone and they are able to pull off a double turn, both placing a tile and snagging the last blue tile available, much to your own chagrin.
The Castles of Tuscany is a perfectly fine game. The component quality is nice, the rules aren’t too onerous, and it’s easy to pick up and play. I find it lacking the punchy moments where you’re able to build up to big exciting moves. “I play this tile, which gets me this tile, and I use a stone which lets me play this tile, which gets me six points” is about as exciting as it gets. Now, not every game needs to have moments where the whole table leaps to their feet, hooting and hollering (especially when the baby is napping), but the entire experience of The Castles of Tuscany feels subdued.I enjoy that play time is less than an hour, which means that The Castles of Tuscany is more likely to get played than some of my other more exciting, but longer board games, but in the end it falls short of the expectations that were heaped upon it.
Rogue Angels: Legacy of the Burning Suns was pitched to me as if Mass Effect had a board game baby. What a hook! My interest was immediately roused, but I was also skeptical. Comparing your game to a critical juggernaut like Mass Effect is quite the gamble; if it fails to deliver on the rich narrative that made Bioware’s space opera such a beloved experience among millions of players, myself included, then you’re setting everyone up for disappointment.
The longer, more technical description of Rogue Angels is that it’s a cooperative sci-fi legacy game containing a strong narrative with multiple paths, tactical combat with fluent turns, action management and asymmetric abilities. If that description catches your attention, read on as I detail my experience with the first couple missions.
The preview box I received contained 3 characters to whet my appetize (over 20 characters are promised to be included in the full game). Players assume the role of a rag-tag crew of freelancers or mercenaries as they traverse the stars and interact with various characters and factions. Missions can vary from gun blazing all-out battles, to stealthy subterfuges. As each mission progresses, players may be forced to make choices that directly impacts how their story develops.
The introductory mission has players escaping a hanger as they’re being hunted by guards of the Hellfire faction. The mission is broken into small chunks, giving players room to explore each of the main mechanics of Rogue Angels one-at-a-time before submerging themselves into the system. This method offers the person tasked with teaching the rules a very easy on-ramp to the system. The introduction goes as far as to take away all the players equipment at the start so no one gets overwhelmed by the myriad of options their cards present.
The mission begins by simply moving a single character adjacent to a point-of-interest, and continues by having other players interact with a door and a console. Interacting with objects, like trying to pick the lock on a door, or hack into a console, is achieved by drawing tokens out of a bag, and trying to match 3 colours together. This may take several actions as tokens of the wrong colour are returned to the bag. Finally, the mission gives you all your equipment back, and introduces enemies. This has players managing interacting, attacking, and moving simultaneously. At the same time, players are managing the scripted behaviour of enemies. Finally, players have arrived at the full Rogue Angels experience.
The core of Rogue Angels gameplay is the card action system; each card has a cost, and when you play a card for the action, you slot it into the appropriate spot under your player board. At the end of each of your turns, you ‘rest’, which slides all your action cards one slot to the left. Any cards that happen to fall off the track are returned to your hand and are able to be used again.
In addition to playing cards to the action row, most cards allow you to roll dice to accent your action. The die can boost the listed effect of the card, regenerate your shields, or offer you extra movement. Initially I was worried about the potential for bad die rolls to screw me out of achieving victory, but in Rouge Angels, dice are only ever positive; they always enhance your card actions. In some situations you may be really hoping to get a specific benefit, but the base effect(s) of your card will always trigger, and that’s a really nice feeling. No critical misses here!
One more aspect to the card play is some cards can gain even further benefits based on the personality of the one the wields it. As your characters go through the campaign and make choices, they’ll gain personality tokens. These personality tokens can be played to enhance a card action, and can change how a card functions significantly.
Rogue Angels is quite forgiving. Should you have multiple potential targets during an action, you get to roll any applicable die, see exactly how well you did, then get to decide who you want to target. The gameplay is very flexible.
The Rogue Angels rulebook is extremely intimating, clocking in at 44 pages long. I found that there are several pages of examples, walking you through how every action works and covering many of the edge cases that we experienced during the first few games. It was a lot of pages to get through, but I found a fairly straightforward rule-set underneath.
The other (massive) book involved is the Campaign book. At the time of writing the campaign has 8 missions, and is already over 100 pages long. Every mission has several checkpoints and updates where the stated goal may suddenly change, or you and your players are forced to react to an unexpected event. It makes for a lot of reading, but once you get past the initial shock factor of just how many pages exist for this game, there’s a well executed system for progressing the mission without interrupting gameplay too dramatically.
My initial impressions of Rogue Angels: Legacy of the Burning Sun is that it’s a deep game – much deeper than I initially expected. I can tell that designer Emil Larson LOVES the universe that he has created, going as far as to create a Wiki to aid the players in submerging themselves in the lore. The campaign book is already over 100 pages long and filled with story and dialogue. The full version of Rogue Angels is advertised to have a spiral bound book containing a large number of maps, making the game fast to set up.
While playing Rogue Angels I kept thinking about Gloomhaven. While I’m not proclaiming that this is going to be the next Gloomhaven, the best way I can describe Rogue Angels is if Gloomhaven and Mass Effect had a board game baby, this would be it. If you know either (or even better, both) of these games, you’ll know that this is high praise.
It’s difficult to tell just from the demo missions I played, but I do have very high hopes for the story and legacy aspects. All the groundwork has been laid for the consequences and call-backs that made Mass Effect so popular. I would love to see the decisions we made early in the campaign return and affect players later in the game. The systems seems to be in place for this to happen, but I didn’t experience any payoffs during my short playthrough. That being said, I have only scratched the surface of what Rogue Angels has in store for it’s players.
I played Rogue Angels solo. While there is a lot of reading, the action stays on the table for the bulk of the playtime. It’s quite easy to manage three different characters when playing solo, and I would recommend playing multiple characters, as each one is quite different and has wildly different strengths and weaknesses. The enemy AI is straightforward, and I enjoyed seeing the different stratagems or rules to control the enemies in simulating different situations, such as patrolling, a disorganized attack, or tactical retreat.
I am excited to see where this project goes and what Emil Larson has in store for players. I eagerly anticipate seeing the project grow and evolve, and cannot wait until I get my hands on the full-fledged product. I’m sure I can easily sell this experience to a couple of my sci-fi loving friends to form a crew and dive deeply into this excellent system. The gameplay is smooth, and the story has hooks that will have you and your friends eager to play again.
