Way back in mid 2016 I was in this precarious position of really falling deep into the hobby. My awareness of Kickstarter was ramping up dramatically, and the game that was generating a ton of buzz at that moment was Massive Darkness, designed by Raphaël Guiton, Jean-Baptiste Lullien, and Nicolas Raoult, and published by CMON.
Something in my brain latched onto this project. I’ve always wanted to get into miniature painting (no I haven’t), I’ve been looking for a great dungeon crawl adventure game (No I wasn’t), It’s solo-able, I’ve been searching for a good solo game (No I hadn’t), and surely after many successful Kickstarters, CMON would deliver a quality product, right?
Logically, there were plenty of things I didn’t like about Massive Darkness. From the fairly flat art style to the sign-off at the bottom of every update: “For the Darkness is Massive and full of terrors!”, a cheap and blatant rip-off of the mantra of the Red Priestess in Game of Thrones “For the night is dark and full of terrors.”
Emotionally, on the other hand, I wanted it. I put my money down and then began to pour over the updates and excitedly squeal at the unlocked stretch goals. Once the campaign ended, the waiting began. I stopped fervently hunting for the latest updates, and just let it sit in the back of my mind that one day, the game would arrive at my doorstep.
One day I got an attempted delivery slip in my mailbox, so I biked down to my local post office and handed them the slip. The box I got in return was about half the size of my fridge. I precariously balanced the box on my bike and walked it home. I excitedly and terrifyingly pulled box after box out of that package, not realizing how Kickstarter Stretch Goals really worked. Never before had I seen a game that took up more than one box, and now half a dozen boxes were cluttering up my dining room table.
Massive Darkness is fairly straightforward to play, despite the 30-page rule book. On your turn you have 3 actions, which you can Move, Attack or Interact. There are certain restrictions depending on if you’re in a tile with enemies, or if you’re changes to your abilities if you’re standing in a lighted tile or not, but the core of the game isn’t that complex.
Each adventure in Massive Darkness starts with a dozen decks of cards and a series of rooms laid out as dictated by the scenario you’re playing. Each adventure starts at level one, and as you progress through the dungeon, you’ll reach checkpoints that advance the game up to level 5, making the loot better, and the enemies stronger.
Enemies spawn at the end of each round (usually), or when doors are opened. Whenever a monster is spawned, it’s spawned with a ‘boss’ and their ‘mob’. The whole group acts as one, but it’s an excuse to place 4 or 5 of the goblin minis onto the table at once, and they’re not much other than glorified health markers for the mob. One interesting aspect of the game is that each enemy is spawned with a loot card, and if that loot card matches the type of attack that the enemy does, it’s added to their dice pool when combat happens, making them slightly more unique than just a standard opponent. A downside to this mechanic is when an early game monster spawns in with a relatively decent defense loot, they can become quite difficult for your early game gear to handle.
Combat is managed entirely with dice, and the die that come with Massive Darkness are quite satisfying. They’re large, have well-rounded corners and are brightly coloured. My only nitpick is the limitation of 3 die per colour, giving an attacker a maximum of 6 dice. I just like rolling buckets of dice, okay?? In combat, the attacking player gathers all the attack die (red and yellow) that they generate via their skills and equipment, and all the defence die (blue and green) that their enemy generates (including loot cards) and rolls them all together. The swords and the shields cancel each other out, and the BAM and diamond symbols may trigger any additional effects, depending on the abilities and equipment of the attacking hero and their equipment.
That’s really the crux of the game. Variety comes in the numerous heroes, who all have their own innate abilities, and the ability to mix and match classes with each hero, giving them further unique abilities. Some make sense, like having the warrior character play the barbarian class, but sometimes it’s fun to mix them up, like having the rogue character take on the blood mage class.
A component I really like is the plastic character tray, with indented slots for weapons and armour. The tray also has a pegboard for tracking health and EXP that you’ll spend on skills. If you’re playing the campaign version of the game, there’s another track to mark your “Micro-XP”, but the campaign rules are trash, and you really shouldn’t bother with them.
The real draw of Massive Darkness is all the big boss monsters. These minis stand head and shoulders above the rest and are usually quite a bit harder to take down. They can either be the core of a scenario (like having to chase down a giant spider before it gets out of the cave), or, they can just spawn in randomly. Usually, they can be defeated, and the sense of accomplishment upon doing so is really quite wonderful.
Each individual scenario usually has a goal for all the players to achieve together, either get through the tunnel, or search a specific space to find an item, then make it to the exit. As the game wears on, the event deck throws numerous baddies your way, but the only ‘timer’ in the game (unless a scenario specifically puts one on you) is the heroes’ health bars. Getting stronger gear and tweaking your character with new abilities based on their class is a fun experience, and the power and strength you feel when you wipe out an entire mob in a single blow is the kind of experience you remember and cheer for.
Massive Darkness isn’t a bad game by any stretch of the imagination. It accomplishes what it promised and delivers a ‘Dungeon Master-free dungeon crawl’ experience. It has exciting dice rolls and makes you and your friends feel like big damn heroes when you emerge victorious! The real problem with Massive Darkness is that shoehorned campaign element I mentioned earlier. The idea of slowing down your character growth by a factor of 5 just so you can try to emulate a sense of epic progression over multiple plays makes the ‘campaign’ element feel cheap and tacked on. Massive Darkness is so utterly satisfying when you play the scenarios as one-offs experiences. This also allows you to play with all the different characters and classes, as the combinations are nearly endless! Locking yourself into one hero and one class for half a dozen games isn’t fun, and I can almost guarantee that at the beginning of the campaign you’ll be looking at the advanced abilities with utter excitement, but by the time you’ve unlocked them, you really just won’t care anymore.
I think Massive Darkness is great when played as a power fantasy, ‘beer and pretzels’ game, if you will. If you come into this expecting some all new mechanics and a deep, rich lore, you’re really better off playing a video game. Massive Darkness does have the ability to craft an emergent narrative as you storm your way through the nests of goblins and slay the massive creatures that want nothing more than to rend your flesh from your bones. Unfortunately, I don’t really have a lot of experiences with games of this ilk, so I can’t speak to how it holds up against some others in the genre. All I can say is that I have a ton of fun when Massive Darkness hits my table, although the set-up ensures that my games are few and far between.
Personally, my favourite experience in Massive Darkness was when I was playing as the ranger and I stood at the end of a long hallway. A massive boss monster spawned behind us and was charging up. I sidled to the end of the hallway, and spent all my actions attacking it. I knocked off less than half it’s health, and it moved two steps forward. I was almost within it’s striking distance, I attacked twice more, the first attack did some decent damage, but the second roll missed entirely. I had one action remaining, and my escape was blocked. On the next enemy phase, that monster would surely grab me by the ankles and smash me into the ground like the Hulk and Loki. I took a deep breath and rolled a massive amount of hits and absolutely no defence for the boss. It came crashing down, dead at my feet. My friend looked over at me and said, “That still only counts as one!”
I also joined The Omnigamers Club on their podcast to talk about The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle Earth. Available on all podcatchers and on YouTube!
I love 7 Wonders Duel, much more than the full 7 player game. In fact, it’s one of my most played games due to the fact that my partner and I played it over and over when it first came out, and it was one of my very first board game reviews on this site! Then we got the Pantheon expansion, and played it even more, falling in love with the new dynamics the expansion brought to the game. I think in total, I have something like 50 plays of the game, making it one of my most played games of all time.
Suffice to say, I was at the very least intrigued with The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth was announced. It’s a retheme and redevelopment of 7 Wonders Duel, and this new game folds in elements from both of the expansions while simplifying and streamlining the whole experience.
For those that haven’t played 7 Wonders Duel, The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle Earth was designed by Antoine Bauza and Bruno Cathala. It’s a two player card drafting game where one player takes on the role of the Fellowship while the other controls the forces of Sauron, and are competing to be the first player to achieve one of the three victory conditions, which include getting the ring into Mount Doom/catch the nasty Hobbitses, have control of every region of Middle Earth, or, gather the support of all 6 races.
Players take turns drafting from a tableau of cards in the middle of the table. You can only take cards that are uncovered, and around half the cards are face down, which only get revealed once they’re fully uncovered. Most of the cards have costs, and if you’re ever lacking in resources, you can substitute a gold coin for one resource at any time. The cards you’re drafting have various benefits. The grey cards offer persistent resources to pay for cards down the road, yellow cards offer money, which is spent for resources you’re missing. Blue cards which advance the ring track, red cards which allow you to deploy troops around middle earth, and green cards which represent the support of a specific race.
There is also a shared display of landmark tiles which either player can purchase. If they do so, they gain the benefits listed on that landmark tile, but do not take a card from the tableau, which is very important if you’re trying to force your opponent to reveal a specific card for you. The game is played over 3 ages, and should the 3rd age come to an end and neither player has satisfied any of the victory conditions, then the player who controls the majority of regions in middle earth is declared the winner.
The theme here is more of a window dressing than anything else. While it’s difficult to imbue theme in a game where you’re just drafting cards, the theme in Duel for Middle Earth falls away really quickly, especially when drafting the red cards, and you just magically air drop soldiers into various regions across the board. That said, the ring track is a clever and thematic way to track 10 steps. That track could have just been a series of steps with each player moving their cube up the steps, but the plastic overlay showing the Hobbits making a break for Mount Doom, and the black rider nipping at their heels feels a lot more exciting.
There’s lots of decision-making in choosing which card to take so you can further your own goals, and which cards to leave for your opponent. A lot of the game can boil down to “I want this specific card” so you count backwards all the turns it’ll take until your opponent reveals that card for you. Or, if the order is off, you have to consider buying a landmark to offset the order of taking cards from the pyramid so you can get the card you need.
Each of the 3 victory conditions are very easy to parse, which helps build tension when one player starts to go a bit heavier into one of those conditions. And part of that tension comes from trying to goad your opponent into overcommitting into one of the victory conditions, but not enough for them to actually win. If you can get your opponent to make sub-optimal moves just to deny you a card, you’ll likely come away with the victory.
Comparing it to 7 Wonders Duel, Duel for Middle Earth has been smoothed to a polished stone. All the wonky rules have been shaved off, everything is easier, and you’re able to calculate anything at a glance. Duel for Middle Earth is fascinating in that it managed to fold in the core aspect of both expansions into a package that feels lighter and easier to play than it’s predecessor. But because the game is smoother, it feels flatter. There’s less texture to grab onto. All of my games really felt largely the same, and I’m much less keen to replay Duel for Middle Earth, unlike 7 Wonders Duel, especially when playing with the expansions.
Because it’s simpler, a single game took me and my partner, like, 15 minutes. We set up, learned how to play, and played it twice within an hour. Not drafting wonders gets players playing quickly, and because the landmark tiles are available to both players, it doesn’t feel like someone has an unfair advantage and you’re just biding your time until they’ve triggered their wonders. There’s also less ‘remove a card from your opponent’ actions, meaning there’s less feel bad moments, but there’s much less ‘take another turn’ options, meaning there are less big, exciting turns
It feels like you’re unable to build an engine, unlike in 7 Wonder Duel. One of my favourite things was to take as many of the yellow cards as possible, so I could trash a card and get, like, 8 coins in one go. It feels like some depth has been lost, there’s less space to play and explore, especially when you include those expansions. The Pantheon expansion specifically, the whole first age is vying for the privilege of drafting which Gods are available to you, and slotting them into spots for you and your opponent to buy them next age. Drafting a God that does nothing for your opponent, and using it to fill their cheapest slot, is really lost.
All that being said, Going back to 7 Wonders Duel feels super clunky now. Trying to calculate how much you and your opponent would have to pay for every one of the cards gets tedious, real fast. It really highlights just how streamlined Duel for Middle Earth is. While I don’t think Duel for Middle Earth as it stands now will replace 7 Wonders Duel plus it’s expansions for me, I would absolutely use Duel for Middle Earth for anyone who hasn’t played 7 Wonders Duel before. It’s light and easy to play, the perfect game to play on a weekday night, or as a warm-up to a much larger game. Be sure you leave extra time when you pull it off the shelf, however. It’s the kind of game that begs you to play it two or three times in a row. And at the end of the day, the best game is the one that gets played, so that’s one of the highest compliments I can give.
When it comes to getting excited about games, there aren’t many instances anymore where there’s some radical new mechanic that grabs my attention. What ends up capturing my attention is theme and aesthetic. Gorgeous artwork really isn’t enough all on its own anymore, as it seems every game is simply gorgeous, but what can set a game away from the rest is a unique and whimsical theme.
Trolls and Princesses, designed by Pim Thunborg and published by Game Brewer after successful crowdfunding in 2023, has players leading a colony of trolls in their attempt to curry the Troll King’s favour. To do this, the trolls use their trollkraft (troll magic) to entice humans to work their caverns, swap babies, tear down church bells, and kidnap princesses and house them in luxurious caves.
The mechanical hook is that Trolls and Princesses is a worker movement game. You control 5 trolls and on your turn you’ll move them from one action space to another, then accrue action points that can be spent in that location. Every troll in that space gives one action point, plus any humans working that cavern, or if the troll king is present, are more action points. Out in the city, other players trolls will even offer you more action points.
Played over 10 to 12 rounds (depending on the number of players), each round gives each player two turns. A player turn begins by playing a round card, which may put some humans into a specific village, and dictates where the troll king will reside for that player’s turn, then they get two troll movements. A troll movement is moving a single troll from any single action spot (represented by cauldrons) to any other cauldron, then using up all the action points that exist in that location (again, adding up any trolls, humans, troll kings, or outposts that may be in that area). The home cave has 3 main sections, one for mining resource, one for building cave rooms and outposts, and one dedicated to troll power. Each of the villages in town are functionally identical, but the number of people in each village may be different depending on the cards players play.
Mechanically, Trolls and Princesses isn’t any better or worse than any other worker placement game with a tight economy. The game is to squeeze the most efficiency from your limited number of actions as possible, with very limited moments for players to meaningfully interact with each other. The interaction that does exist is mostly positive, as when you go to the village where someone else has gone before you, you get to use their trolls for an extra action point. Beyond that, everything else is a race. The number of bells are limited, the princesses are limited, and the available outposts and changelings are limited. This isn’t a game where you can build absolutely everything though, so the odds of there being NONE of the resource you’re gunning for is low, it is much more likely that the princess will be in the ‘wrong’ village and be beyond your reach without at least a few turns to set yourself up.
A lot of the actions can roll into each other, or pay for themselves in subtle ways. As you buy things from the main board, you cover storage spots on your player board, which offer rewards. Doing things like paying a diamond and two troll power to steal a baby, but that baby covers a spot that gives you a diamond back, letting you roll right into stealing another baby, make the turns feel efficient and exciting. On the other hand, when you need to spend 6 actions accruing resources to accomplish a single goal, and if that goal doesn’t lead into more actions down the road, the game feels like a grinding mess. It’s particularly frustrating when on the very last turn of the day you manage to finagle all your resources together and get your trolls into the right spot to snag that last princess, only to realize you’re missing a bed to store her in.
The artistic direction of Trolls and Princesses is fantastic. From the cover art, to the gorgeous art on the Kings cards, it’s evocative of Scandinavian fairy tales. The player boards and components have a separate, more simple aesthetic that works really well for the game. The boards can look really busy, but there are tones of fun details to find, if you’re willing to look close enough.
One of the highlights of the game is just overhearing people talk through their turns. “I’m going to move a troll, and spend a diamond to steal a baby, which comes over here, then with another action point I’m stealing a cow, and hiring a human to work this mine, then for my second turn I’m moving this troll to destroy the cow and put an outpost over here”. My wife giggled at us as we revelled in stealing cows and babies.
At higher player counts, I found myself checking out between rounds. Each turn is fairly involved and insular, that I didn’t really need to pay attention. What mattered more is if my plan relied on collecting a specific cave tile or card, that the market didn’t get wiped in between my turn, which is much more likely to happen in a 4 player game. In my opinion, 3 players is about as high as I want to go in Trolls and Princesses.
Adding onto the high player count experience, the box is woefully low on resources, we ran out of all three resource types (obsidian, gold, and diamonds) in a 4 player game, and ran up against that limit in a 3 player game. There are plenty of x5 tokens in the box, but that’s a poor replacement for just actually having enough tokens to fulfill a reasonable demand. A huge miss by the publisher.
Trolls and Princesses revels in its efficiencies, and rewards repeat plays. Understanding how to roll actions into each other, when to build your engine and when to run it dry are all important considerations that players get better at with multiple plays. While the mechanics aren’t really anything innovative or unique, the theme carries a lot of my enjoyment for Trolls and Princesses. I don’t know if it’ll crack into my top 100, but if you’re in the mood for a medium weight worker placement game, Trolls and Princesses is a whimsical romp and more than an enjoyable way to spend an evening with a friend.
The photos in this review were provided by the publisher, Road to Infamy Games
Cheese! Who doesn’t like cheese? The lactose intolerant, I suppose. But even then, the few friends of mine who have issues with lactose still enjoy cheese, even though it causes them pain later on down the road. I pride myself on my charcuterie boards, and will take any opportunity to put one together. I have a few friends who will casually mention how much they enjoyed my meat and cheese selection, and drop hints that ‘we should totally do that again soon’.
One of the best things to pair with a cheese platter are fun and engaging board games. Therefore, obviously I would be intrigued by a board game about cheese! When Fromage popped up on Board Game Arena, I dove right in.
In Fromage, players run a creamery and are vying for prestige by producing the most valuable and coveted wheels of fermented dairy products. The main play space in Fromage is cheese wheel that rotates players through resources gathering spots and places to showcase your cheese. This wheel limits your placement options, creating a strategic rhythm as you plan for upcoming actions. Each player has 3 cheese tokens available to them, and in this simultaneous worker placement game, you only have the option of placing your cheese workers on the segment that’s currently facing you. Then, when all players have completed their turn, the whole wheel turns a la lazy susan, and you’re faced with a whole new segment.
Now we all know that cheese takes time to make. A well aged cheddar has a depth of flavour that a freshly made cheese just can’t compare against. To simulate the aging of cheeses, your workers only come back to you when they’re facing you. Each of the action spots on the wheel will dictate a specific direction for your cheese worker to sit, so when the wheel turns, your workers will eventually face you, and you’ll be able to collect them and reuse them again.
This whole system is reminiscent of Tzolk’in, although in a much less convoluted way. You’re not trying to time out 5 separate moving gears, there’s just one wheel that spins, and placing workers just means that you’ll have them back in one, two, or three turns. There is an interesting trade-off when making that aged decision too, as you’ll sometimes really feel the need to place a 3 aged cheese in a spot, but doing so will leave you with less, or even no workers for the next turn. Choosing between having actions next turn, and filling up the specific spots to earn points, is a tough trade-off.
Each of the 4 wheel segments earns points in different ways. From pairing your cheeses together on tables, to trying to have a large contiguous area of cheeses, to having an area majority on a tiny map, choosing which of these segments to spend your time in, is an important decision. One that is most likely going to be influenced by the buildings that you draft at the start of the game.
The starting draft is just for blueprints, you still need to gather the building resources, and spend an action to build your blueprints that are on your player board, but getting a good set and building an engine is part of what makes Fromage fun to come back to over and over again. In one game, I built an engine that generated free fruit, then rewarded me with bonus points for using those free fruits. In another, game, I ended up ignoring buildings all together and focused on total map supremacy.
Fromage feels unique, and it boasts lovely artwork from Pavel Zhovba. The pastel colours give it a fantasy storybook vibe that looks unique, and the screen printed tokens have wonderful looking accents. Both the lazy susan public board and the building tiles that go on your player board are dual layered, letting you slot in your pieces, which end up looking really sharp as it fills up. Some of the tokens look different, but are interchangeable, like the building tokens can be barns or silos. When you build a building, putting 4 of those tokens into the slot makes your player board pop. I really appreciate a theme that is widely beloved, as an appealing theme and approachable look is the perfect recipe for getting people to sit down at my table to play a game.
The downside of Fromage, is that those 4 wheel segments don’t change, and each one represents a fairly simple mini-game. Your actions in one wheel do not affect other wheels, everything is quite self-contained. While the worker placement and aging mechanism is clever and neat, I wish the stuff you are actually doing was a bit more interesting. Really what you’re looking at in a game of Fromage is trying to figure out which one of your 3 workers you’ll need for the segment you’re really trying to win hard on, and ensuring that you have the right workers at the right time.
Because of the simultaneous action, the game flows quickly and smoothly, you aren’t often waiting for the other players to finish their turns, nor do you really spend THAT much time planning moves for wedges that aren’t directly in front of you. You aren’t often going to complain that someone stole your spot right before you were going to go there, mostly because you don’t have the option to go there until that wedge slides in front of you. It’s great to engage with a midweight euro game that engages your problem-solving abilities so well, but also doesn’t take two whole hours to play.
Fromage is a beautiful, quick-playing euro game with unique mechanics that should appeal to those looking for a quicker game, without sacrificing strategic depth. However, its self-contained scoring segments and lack of interaction across the wheel might impact its long-term appeal. I’d happily come back to Fromage if friends wanted to play or if there were a new expansion to explore, but I don’t think it’ll be one that I’ll be pulling out when there isn’t a thematic reason to do so. That said, I do really like serving my friends cheese, and if I know they have game playing proclivities, Fromage is an obvious choice when hosting people outside my regular core gaming group.
I tell myself every holiday that I need to create a content calendar so that it’s not October 28th and I’m suddenly looking for a Halloween game to review. One day I’ll get my ducks in a row, but it’s not this day. It also doesn’t help that I’m not a big fan of the entirety of the horror genre. I don’t like scary movies, I don’t read spooky books, despite my birthday being on Halloween, it’s just not my vibe. For me, the holiday is represented by pillow cases full of candy and fun, friendly witches.
While horror is not my vibe, flicking games, certainly are. Flick ’em Up! Dead of Winter is the board game marriage between the disc flicking western, Flick ’em Up! and the narrative crossroads game, Dead of Winter. Flick ’em Up!: Dead of Winter is a cooperative game where players are striving to survive and explore a city of cardboard buildings in 10 different scenarios. The players take on the roles of survivors, each of which is named, has a default weapon, and their plastic figure has a backpack that helps you remember if they’ve been activated this round or not.
A game begins with setup, and I find Flick ’em Up!: Dead of Winter to be tedious to set up. Cardboard buildings are scattered around the table in a specific orientation, various obstacles are placed, then zombies, and survivors also litter the table, all dictated by the scenario you’ve chosen to play. Also, before the very first game, all those components need to be snickered, and buildings need to be assembled, which is not an insignificant time commitment.
The gameplay mostly consists of moving, which is achieved by choosing a survivor and flicking a movement disk. You’re often trying to get into a building, which requires flicking that disc between the two supports of the building, but more often involves crashing into a wall or ricocheting directly into a zombie’s grasp.
Flick ’em Up! Dead of Winter uses the 10 scenarios to scaffold the players into more interesting and complex items. When you first start playing, you’ll only have a basic handgun, which is just a single disc that you flick at zombies. And sometimes, you can shoot with TWO guns. Crazy, I know. There’s also the shotgun and sniper rifles. The shotgun is a cardboard stencil that you press 4 mini discs into, and flick them all out in one mighty motion. The sniper is another stencil with straight sides, which should assist in long range shots. In addition to guns, there are silent melee weapons to offer some tactical considerations for your turn.
On the subject of noise, most of the actions in the game can trigger a zombie reaction. Any loud action, or a quiet action when the next closest zombie is standing, triggers a zombie rush. A zombie tower is placed behind the closest zombie, and that zombie is placed upon the trap door on the top of the tower, If it was a loud action, the next two closest zombies join in the rush as well and are placed on the trap door. Then, the support is pulled away, and the zombies fall toward you, damaging anyone they hit.
Flick ’em Up! is a dexterity game. No amount of planning or strategy is going to change the fact that you can’t nail a shot that’s 6 inches away. The physicality of the game is simultaneously what makes it a joy to play, and utterly frustrating at times. The little shotgun pellets that seem incapable of knocking over a zombie, or playing on a different table surface, making all of your shots either way too strong, or pathetically weak.
You’ll need to commit to your shots. A gentle tap to a zombie’s leg won’t cause any damage, you need your bullet to barrel that monster down. But also, playing on a table or surface that doesn’t have walls does mean you’ll spend a fair amount of time looking for that stray bullet that flew off the table and bounced off the wall. Not a game I recommend playing when you have a curious 10-month-old roaming the floors.
The artwork is cartoony, colourful, and goofy, despite the zombie theme. All the characters and zombies are bulky plastic pieces, and are lacking in heft. It’s a bit unsatisfying to hold, but I suspect at least part of that is taking into consideration that these zombies need to be relatively easy to knock down, which is aided by their abnormally large flailing limbs raising their centre of gravity. All this goofyness brings a light-heartedness to the game, which is welcome, as the vibe isn’t so much of “we’re being hunted”, it’s more of a “let’s kill these zombies”. A rip-roaring hack and blast adventure of slaying monsters while sometimes, optionally, chasing an objective. In the same breath, the zombies can be quite terrifying. A missed shot means 3 zombies barreling down on you, and trying to provide backup has the potential for friendly fire in the back.
I love dexterity games. I really do. And I want to love Flick ’em Up! Dead of Winter. But it’s just so damn fiddly. So many rules on who is standing and who has fallen, being too close to zombies, what’s silent and what’s loud, constantly needing to stand terrain back up because of a knock on effect, and the absolute tedium of setup make this game such a pain that I rarely ever play it anymore. On my first play, I spent so much time flipping back and forth in the rule book trying to remember how everything worked together, that I pined for a rule summary on the back of the book. Just something to help my game along, even a little bit.
At higher player counts, the game feels like it drags. The number of survivors doesn’t change depending on player count, so 5 survivors in a 4 player game means you’ll probably only be taking one activation per round. And if you miss, it’s a long wait until your next chance to act. Really, I wouldn’t recommend this game at 4 players, and would even hesitate at 3 players.
Flick ’em Up!: Dead of Winter can be a blast if you’re a dexterity game fan with patience for setup and a penchant for precision flicking, However, the game’s fiddly components, annoying rules, and long setup can easily overshadow its charm. If you’re up for the challenge, set it up on a bordered table and keep the player count low to maximize your enjoyment.
I have a tenuous relationship with the games designed by Alexander Pfister. On one hand, I generally dislike Great Western Trail, Blackout Hong Kong, and Maracaibo. On the other hand, two of his co-designs, Broom Service, and Isle of Skye are some of my favourite games ever. While I’ve learned to steer clear from his bigger euro games, I hold out hope that I’ll continue to find joy in his smaller games.
Port Royal is a card game for 2 to 5 players originally published in 2014, although I played the big box edition with art by Fantasmagoria Creative and published by Pegasus Spiele in 2022. In Port Royal, players are trying to extract as much value out of a series of Caribbean mariners as possible to hopefully win the award of most prestigious company.
I’m actually not sure what the players are supposed to be, the theme does no service to the gameplay. The gameplay is a straightforward push your luck game, where the active player flips over cards one at a time until they either choose to stop, or they reveal two ships of the same colour. If the active player chooses to stop, they can take 1/2/3 cards (if they revealed 0-3/4/5 different colour ships), then every other player gets a chance to buy one of the revealed cards, but must pay the active player a coin for the privilege of doing so.
The goal of the game is to reach 12 or more points the quickest, and points mostly come from the crew you hire. Most of the crew members will give you special abilities while they’re in your tableau, such as earning extra money for specific colours of ships, or offering you more card picks, or giving you bonus income if the card market has 5 or more cards when you start your turn. The ships on the other hand, just give you money and are discarded. There are also tax cards, which make players with 12 or more coins lose half their money, and expedition cards that sit off to the side until someone trades in the prerequisite crew members to claim the expedition. Around and around players play until someone hits that 12 point threshold, and after all players had the same number of turns, the player with the most points is the winner.
The fact that Port Royal is naught, but a single deck of 120 cards is really clever. Every card has a coin on the back, and when you take coins, you just draw them face down from the top of the deck, ensuring no one can really be counting cards. This also means when the deck runs dry, and you shuffle the discard to form a new deck, you’ll be likely be seeing new cards that were drawn face down the first time around.
That said, I did not find the game itself to be particularly engaging. More than once someone flipped two ships of the same colour after just 2 or 3 card draws, busting their turn. Money felt fairly hard to come by if your turn busted, as the active player was most likely to take the highest value ship, and taking the lower value ships on their turn means you’re just feeding them more money. Managing how much money you hold is a delicate balance, as having 12 or more puts you at risk of just losing half of it, which is the equivalent of at least 2 turns of taking ship cards. The crew cards themselves cost as low as 3 coins, but as high as 9, meaning if you want to hire a crew on someone else’s turn, you need to have 10 or 11 coins, lest you find yourself at risk.
I see small trappings of engine building in Port Royal, but they didn’t come to fruition during our play. Yes, you can hire multiple traders to get extra value out of those ships, if they come up and are available on your turn. Also, having traders of a colour is a sure-fire way to ensure that the other players don’t let ships of that colour make it to you on their turns.
Luck is a major factor in Port Royal. Having the right cards come out at the right time is key to your victory. It doesn’t even need to be the right cards, it can just be cards that you can afford, or a ship to earn you money. As I said in the paragraph above, if you have a merchant to earn you bonus money if the right colour ship comes out, hopefully you’re lucky enough to draw that ship before you draw two of the same colour and lose your whole turn. I get that this is a push your luck game, but I never really felt excited drawing cards and seeing crew members that I couldn’t afford and ships of the wrong colour flip up.
Port Royal is a clever deck of cards with good flow. It’s easy to teach and understand how to play, but my issue lies in the fact that there are so many more push your luck games that I’d rather play. Incan Gold, Can’t Stop, and The Quacks of Quedlinburg all come to mind. Port Royal failed to create any stand up moments. Every time someone busted it was just a shrug, an “oh well”, and pass the deck to the next player. At no point did I feel tension or excitement. There were no real stakes, nothing exciting to be gained or lost. A ho-hum yawn of an experience.
