Lost Ruins of Arnak is a resource management game with a touch of worker placement and deck building for 1 to 4 players, designed by Min and Elwyn, and published by CGE. In Lost Ruins of Arnak, players have two workers, a small deck of cards, and a huge board with various locations for their workers to explore and earn resources, which get spent on the temple track to move your two tokens up to earn more resources and victory points.
It’s a bit awkward because while Lost Ruins of Arnak has worker placement and deck building as mechanics, neither of those mechanics feels like the core of the game. The main board is broken into 3 main sections, the base camp, the level 1 locations in the middle of the board, and the level 2 locations at the top. As an action, players can send their workers to any of the locations to earn resources, but at the start of the game, the central and upper locations are entirely empty, they must be ‘explored’, which means 3 or 6 compasses must be spent before a worker can be put onto that spot, which generally yields more resources than the base camp, but also comes with a guardian to contend with. Guardians are essentially a recipe of various goods that needs to be spent to ‘overcome’ it, at which point it offers the player a small benefit, as well as an idol (which can either be traded in for more resources, or kept for points) If players don’t overcome the guardian before the end of the round, they simply flee, take a fear card (which clogs your deck and is worth negative points at the end of the game), and the guardian remains for whomever wants to adventure there in the future.
Compasses and coins can also be spent to acquire cards from a market row. At the start of the game, there will be plenty of tools and few artifacts available, and as the game progresses the staff slides along, offering more artifacts at a time. The last action you can do is to gain a temple tile. If your temple track marker reached the top, you can trade in a bunch of resources to get tiles that are worth more points.
From that description, you may have noticed that Lost Ruins of Arnak has a lot of ways to gain and spend resources, and that’s all that I feel that this game really is. Get stuff, sell it for more stuff, to get more stuff. I know skilled players find ways to squeeze blood from a stone. They eke out every last resource the game has to offer and manage to just barely pay the costs to gain more and more benefits.
I know my unenthusiastic stance on Lost Ruins of Arnak puts me into the minority of players. It’s rated #28 on the BGG ranking, and it routinely shows up on many top games of all time lists. I can see the joy in the game, it’s a satisfying experience to have the perfect amount of resources and can manage to take another half dozen turns after all the other players passed for the round, running up the temple track head and shoulders above the rest. But for all the other players who are just watching, or if you could have been that player but were missing just a single compass, it can be a painful experience.
I love the artwork, it’s bright, colourful, and vibrant. The guardians look terrifying, and all the cards feature artwork that looks like it’s straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. I can see the joy that other players talk about in Lost Ruins of Arnak, but I don’t really feel it when I’m playing it. I had picked up the expedition Leaders expansion, which adds a very nice layer of asymmetry to each of the players, but even still, it just feels like 2 hours of swapping items, and I need more excitement in my life than that.
I enjoy that there’s variety in the temple tracks, and even more so with the expansion mixed in. But at the end of the day, the whole game just feels like resource swapping. If you can get an action chain going, it’s quite exciting for that player, but for everyone else, they’re just sitting around watching you trade in a compass for an arrowhead, then trade in an arrowhead and a tablet for a movement up the temple track, which earns you a compass and lets you draw another card, that you can then spend for another compass, which lets you buy a card from the market that triggers immediately, and you get the picture.
Lost Ruins of Arnak does a lot, but it doesn’t do anything particularly well in my opinion. Which is a bit of a shame, it’s so popular and gorgeous that I so desperately want to like it and be a part of the club of people clamouring for every expansion. Alas, I sold my copy and will be looking for my next big adventure somewhere else.
Disclaimer: A copy of Wizards & Co was provided by Sinister Fish for review
Designers Flaminia Brasini, Virginio Gigli, Stefano Luperto, and Antonio Tinto have brought us some wonderful games, such as Lorenzo Il Magnifico,First Rat, and Coimbra, as well as some not so great games, like Grand Austria Hotel, and Egizia (This is a joke. These are two of Otter‘s favourite games and I really like harassing him. Egizia is a very fine game). It was this pedigree of designers that I agreed to receive a review copy of their latest game, Wizards & Co, published by Sinister Fish Games.
In Wizards & Co, players take on the role of wizards, seeking the treasure of the recently deceased high necromancer, packed away in unguarded dungeons. You head to the local big box store Henchpersons & Minions and pick their deal of the day to acquire a preassembled crew of creatures that will help you haul the treasure out. Unfortunately, that preassembled crew was such a good deal, your rival wizards picked the same team, and now you’re all vying for the treasure with the same henchmen.
Wizards & Co kicks player asymmetry to the curb and gives everyone the exact same abilities. The game is out-thinking your opponents to get the most loot and win the game. A game of Wizards & Co. has a number of dungeons in the centre of the table, each one with a number of empty slots. On a player’s turn they can play one or two cards to one or two dungeons, one of those cards can be face down. Then, depending on the number and orientation of those cards, they may draw 0, 1, or 2 cards. When a dungeon runs out of open slots, then a ‘battle’ happens. First, starting from the statue and moving clockwise, each monster activates in turn. Some monsters will stun or destroy other monsters, and if they do that to another minion before it had the chance to activate, they don’t activate at all.
Some creatures offer persistent effects, others trigger when they’re placed, but most activate during the battle phase. After every minion has activated and the dust settles, whoever filled up the dungeon gets to take the enchantment, and whichever player has the most minion power in the dungeon gets to take one of the two treasures. Second place gets the remaining treasure, then, any minions that are sitting at an entrance that has a gem icon, takes one of those gems, and all the minions go to the bottom of their respective players decks.
The deck system is fairly clean in Wizards & Co. There are no discard piles, all discards just go to the bottom of the deck. On one hand, no need to shuffle. But more than once I accidentally picked up my deck of cards instead of my hand, which is probably more of a scathing indictment of my terrible big hand small deck strategy than anything else. It is somewhat unintuitive to remember, “if you played one card face up, draw two cards. If you played one card face down, or two cards face up, draw one card. If you played two cards to the same dungeon, draw no cards”. Thankfully, there is a player aid, but we did have to keep referencing that aid as we played. A potential sticking point for some people.
I have some complaints about the rule book, and how some of the information is laid out, but once you start playing, all the pieces start to fit together. What appears as a light and silly game can actually turn into a cold, calculating puzzle. Because everyone has the same creatures as everyone else, it can turn into a standoff. At first, placing a monster in a tower early seems like a good idea. Lock down the gem you need. However, placing monsters in lucrative spots invites their specific foils, and that damned ogre that bumps a creature from an occupied slot turns what was going to complete your gem set into forcing you to take yet another void gem.
The Cavern of Wonders – I love that the dungeon name changes depending on the combination of the dungeon tile and enchantment
The base game comes with 16 creatures, of which you’ll only use 10 per game, plus another 6 special monsters that only get unlocked for the player who acquires their specific artifact. The replayability of Wizards & Co doesn’t lie in its variability, but in the depth of strategy. Learning how and when to play your monsters is vital, as is a good memory. Counting which foils have come and gone, and understanding when to rush a dungeon versus spreading your forces out.
I’ve done terribly in this game. My memory is so awful, that I laid a face down giant killing hobb in an empty tower, then placed a giant there in my next round, completely forgetting what I had done the turn before. I got bounced out of lucrative spots several times, kicking my units into the void gem spots, decimating my gem horde in the end game. But I still had fun! The reveal of the face down monsters when the tower fills up is exciting, as is when you correctly place a monster in a way that it either kills, or avoids being killed.
As I said above, the rule book isn’t very clear on the details, and there isn’t a comprehensive glossary of icons. This had me flipping back and forth in the book a few times on game night, which could leave some gamers feeling frustrated, but really, that’s my biggest complaint about Wizards & Co. The components are nice, the gems are all shaped differently with screen printed accents, the cardboard is sufficiently thick, the cards feel good in the hand, no complaints on the physical production. The artwork by Miguel Coimbra is colourful and fantastical. Each of the imps, hobbs, giants, and monsters felt unique and dynamic.
woof, that’s a lot of void gems
I also don’t think Wizards & Co. plays particularly well at 2 players. With only two dungeons, it turns into a waiting game. Of course, on your turn if you have cards, you must play at least one, it almost feels like a game of chicken. Slowly adding one face down card to each dungeon until someone is able to fill it on their turn, hoping that the specific foil isn’t present. With more players, you need to take more risks to stake your claims, as the dungeons fill up fast. You don’t always have time to slow roll your creature deployment. Somewhat unintuitively, while a large part of the game is about taking gems, I don’t think they’re the best return on investment. It takes 6 different gems to get 12 points, but a single A treasure is worth 7. But don’t take strategy advice from me, I’ve lost every game I played.
As I said before, the joy in Wizards & Co doesn’t lie in its variability, but in its mastery. Developing a meta strategy among your friends, and finding ways to surprise and counter each other, is a fun experience, and it only gets better as you and your friends become more familiar with the potential that each monster holds. I do hope that Sinister Fish Games has some expansions in the pipeline, as I would love to see more creatures become available to shake up the gameplay. If you have a group that likes to replay the same game multiple times, Wizards & Co. will reward you for that proclivity.
Continuing on from last week, I’m going to look at the characters and bosses that come in Bullet: Palette and share my experiences as I played them! For playing these characters as heroines, I’m going to pit them against Hyper Mode from Bullet🍊, as I find she is the most vanilla boss to run up against. Her quirk is really just “Dump 20 bullets into your bag every round. Good luck!”. As for tackling the bosses, I’ll try to overcome them as Mariel Martin from Bullet❤️, as she’s one of my favourite characters to play as!
Bullet: Palette features four new characters that need to be mixed into a base game to play. The theme for this set is art, as the heroines fight with drawings, paint, sound, and… dice? I’m curious to see how Precursor Die fits into the theme here, but theme isn’t particularly important here. What I care about is how fun and interesting each of these characters are, so without further ado, here we go!!
Bridget Glenn
Right off the bat, a heroine after my own heart. Bridget Glenn is an author, with verdant green eyes and ink spilling over her pages as she writes characters to life. Each of the quotes on her patterns are wonderfully evocative of classic literature. Her quirk is that she can swap which column each colour falls into, and bullets can be moved to any space in a column matching its colour, giving a great amount of flexibility to how bullets can be moved.
I feel like Bridget would be more useful in the competitive mode where (if you have a keen eye and watch your opponent), you’ll have a much better idea of what colours are coming into your sight, otherwise her ability to move which column is getting bullets is not helpful defensively. Offensively, it’s awesome. For 2 energy you can swap column colours, then move a bullet of that colour from anywhere in your sight to anywhere in its column, allowing you to set up your patterns for maximum effectiveness.
I actually feel like Hyper Mode isn’t a great match-up for Bridget Glenn, as she excels at being able to move a bullet to any open spot on the board for just 2 AP, and that’s not really a power you need when you’re getting flooded with Hyper Mode’s bullets
Bridget Glenn cleared Hyper Mode on her second try.
Precursor Die
You know what you need more of in a push your luck game? More chance. If you find yourself agreeing with that statement, Precursor Die has you covered. At the start of each option phase, you roll a die. Some of Precursor’s actions are affected by the number you roll. Precursor’s actions are fairly weak, in that it costs 2 action points to move a bullet a single space, but one of those AP are refunded if you had managed to roll a 4, 5, or 6. Similarly, for 2 AP you can draw another pattern, or draw two and discard one if your die is on the higher side. For a single AP you can re-roll the die, and bringing the precursor part of the name into play, for one AP you reveal as many bullets from your bag as your die number, then return them to the bag, letting you know what’s on the horizon for you.
Precursor Die was much more difficult to use than Bridget Glenn, almost unfairly so. A lot of Precursor Die’s patters were 3 or 4 across, making it extra difficult to clear the edges of her sight. At least Precursor has the ability to move a bullet up, which is uncommon, but not rare, so it’s no consolation. Precursor Die is uninteresting and un-fun to play. I expected more with the die, like being able to better control bullets that match the number, or something. After 3 attempts that just made me feel frustrated, I doubt I’ll ever play as her again.
Shout★
I’m only tangentially aware of idol culture, as much as any anime fan can be without ever having engaged in that side of the fandom, mostly just from seeing Hatsune Miku’s face in ads, her cameos in various video games, and most recently, a Jaiden animations video detailing her obsession. Shout★’s quirk actually reminds me more of nonograms than anything else, but I digress. Each of her patterns have a ‘volume’ requirement, which just means the number of bullets in each column. This can be tricky to control, especially when your bullet bag is utterly full from Hyper Mode’s relentless onslaught. Thankfully, Shout★ has a couple of very useful abilities. One lets you have a +1 or -1 to each volume’s requirement for the next pattern, and the other lets you move every bullet in a single column, either left or right.
While tricky, and requiring careful planning, Shout★ proved her mettle and was able to clear Hyper Mode in a single try. I’m glad the battle ended when it did, though, as I don’t think Shout★ would have survived another round!
Zuri Kasango
The last of the heroines in Bullet: Palette is Zuri Kasango, the graffiti artist that looks like she was ripped straight out of Jet Set Radio Future.
I think Zuri’s whole quirk is really not ideal against an opponent like Hyper Mode. She doesn’t clear any bullets until the end of her Option phase. All of her patters are just bullet requirements. With a hand size of 1, Zuri needs to try and fufill the pattern of bullets in her sight. When she does, she discards her pattern and draws a new one. At the end of the option phase, depending on the number of patterns Zuri discarded, she gets to clear bullets from anywhere on her sight, up to a really impressive 14 bullets if you manage to fulfill 10 patterns.
When Zuri finally does get the opportunity to clear her bullets, every star she clears lets her throw another bullet into the centre, which can result in a full board clear. Zuri’s real downside is really that she just can’t clear bullets during the option phase, which means she does need to survive drawing her whole bag. If she survives, she’s devastating. But that’s a pretty big if.
I like Zuri’s glass cannon. I attempted Hyper Mode 4 time to no avail, but I’m quite keen to come back and try Zuri against other bosses!
Gamemaster Die
Unlike any boss before her, Gamemaster Die has no patterns, a single shield, but 18 shield slots. Each round in which her shield would break (which takes 5 bullets to do so), you roll the die and move the shield token along the dungeon path, and take whatever effect it lands on. Then, for the next round, the intensity is the sum of numbers on the places behind the shield token.
While the game can be over in as few as 3 rounds, provided you always roll a 6, the reality is that this is more of an endurance match than I gave it credit for. There’s no real way to rush the ending. As long as you clear 5 bullets, you’ll roll the die. Clearing more than that is just for fun. Gamemaster Die starts slowly, only adding 6 to 9 bullets in the first few rounds. But as you turn that final corner and get within striking distance of the finish line, suddenly you’re facing a barrage of 16+ bullets each round. Gamemaster Die never felt fair, all you needed to win in this scenario is just a bit of luck.
It took two attempts to clear Gamemaster Die. The first game saw Mariel kicked back to the dungeon spot 3 times before she was overwhelmed in 9 rounds, while the second game was over in the 4th round. Gamemaster Die is a fun boss to fight, if you don’t want the hassle of checking for boss patterns every round.
Shout ★ Live!
All of Shout ★ Live!’s (is that how you pularize that?) patters have the same effect. If you fail to achieve her condition, all your bullets for the next round have a +1. That can be brutal, but on the other hand, the patterns are really not that difficult to meet, at least for Mariel. Shout ★ Live! was a bit boring, with her two static quirks being all that there was to think about during the confrontation. There were no extra conditions to be aware of when a shield broke, which let Mariel dance around her conditions with relative ease.
One try is all it took to silence Shout ★ Live!
The Defacer of Tyranny
The Defacer of Tyranny is a true endurance battle. The goal is to outlast Zuri as her outlandish pattern requirements punish you by placing 5 extra bullets every time you fail to achieve them, and a shield breaks. Unlike most of the other bosses, all you need to do to defeat Tyranny is outlast her pattern deck, while completing some of the patterns and not taking a dozen bullets to the face.
On my first attempt, I failed 3 patterns in a row, which spelled disaster for my run. I was more cognizant of her tricks during the second attempt and still lost. But the third time, I… still lost. But only barely. The fourth time I stood up! Just kidding. I lost again. And again.
Mariel proved to be both helpful and absolutely useless when it came to specific patterns. Being able to leap her across the map was pivotal sometimes, but her inability to slide any bullet just a single space was crippling. I think it’s a testament to how much fun I was having losing, where I attempted this boss 8 times before I came out ahead.
The Loremaster
The Loremaster is a bit of a tricksy bag. On one hand, her patterns are relatively simple to achieve. On the other hand, she has regenerative powers, as in, if you don’t complete the pattern, she regenerates a shield. In addition, every time a shield breaks, she drops two more bullets into your sight, making a shield break just a little bit risky.
She was tricky, and once again, Mariel was both very helpful and frustratingly helpless with certain patterns, but overall, she was a great heroine to take on The Loremaster. It took three attempts to come away with a victory here.
Conclusion
Bullet: Palette features a diverse cast of quirks. From Bridgett’s ability to swap column headers, to Shout’s volume control, I thoroughly enjoyed diving into each one of the heroines, and their boss counterparts, with the exception of Precursor Die. I think Zuri was the bright spot for me in this expansion, both as a heroine and a boss. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Bullet: Palette if someone wanted to add just one of the 4 character expansions into the game. Each character felt unique and I’m more than happy to have them in my box!
Bullet Paw is one of the latest expansions to one of my favourite games of all time, Bullet❤️. While I’ve covered the original game here, and the standalone expansion, Bullet⭐, but I’ve never covered the 3 character expansions, Bullet🍊 and the freshly delivered Paw and Palette. So here I am to start to rectify this situation.
Bullet🍊, Paw, and Palette are all 4 character expansions that you can just mix in with any of the characters that you already have. And as before, every character is both a playable heroine, and a boss to overcome.
Today I’m going to look at the characters and bosses that come in Bullet: Paw and share my experiences as I played them! For playing them as heroines, I’m going to pit them against Hyper Mode from Bullet🍊, as I find she is the most vanilla boss to run up against. Her quirk is really just “Dump 20 bullets into your bag every round. Good luck!”. As for the bosses, I’ll try to overcome them as Mariel Martin from Bullet❤️, as she’s one of my favourite characters to play as!
Beethoven – Heroine
Initially, her patters look incredibly intimidating. Each one has 3 to 5 requirements of specific colours, but after some examination I noticed they’re actually quite friendly in specific ways. Like, the colours always make sense, if the pattern is 5 across, the red will always be in the first column, and the pink will be in the last. In addition, Beethoven’s patters clear 4 bullets instead of the usual 3, making her quite well suited to my specific scenario. Finally, while Beethoven’s ‘move a bullet left, right, or down one space’ costs 2 energy, she does have both ‘move a bullet once diagonally up or down’ and ‘swap two bullets on your board’ for one energy each. This swap does wonders for satisfying some of the cards to maximize the patterns’ effectiveness.
Beethoven overcame Hyper Mode on my second attempt in the 3rd round. I missed the pattern in the first round but accomplished it in rounds 2 and 3. Actually, I managed to bust 3 shields in the 3rd round for a big win.
Behemoth
I like that all of Behemoth’s patterns are references to all the other heroines from Heart and Star. With 20 patters, and very few requirements, Behemoth felt like a cakewalk compared to Beethoven. The quirk here is that Behemoth can remove patters from her discard to clear bullets either from the centre, or from her sight. If you’re sitting at the end of the round, a single bullet away from breaking that next shield, it’s an amazing tool to have in your pocket. Similarly, removing two patterns to clear any bullet from your sight, is wonderfully handy to fulfill the patters that require specific empty spaces, and you just have one annoying bullet in your way.
Behemoth cleared Hyper Mode on her first try, no problems.
Eluros
Emotions are the name of the game for Eluros. She starts every round happy, and when Edelmar is happy, every bullet is considered to be a 4. On one hand, 4’s are usually terrifying, but if EVERY bullet is a 4, then all of your bullets are going to clump up really nicely at the bottom of your sight. And leaning into that effect, Eluros’ patterns all require there to be a 2×2 clump of bullets to activate. Very handy. But when a row has 3 bullets in it, that means ANY bullet of that colour will hit you, which really highlights the push your luck nature of Eluros. You can discard a pattern at any time to change Edelmar’s emotions, which have a variety of effects. When she’s scared, getting hit by a 3 just tosses the bullet back into the centre. Angry Edelmar lets you clear a #2 bullet after using a pattern, and sad Edelmar lets you move #1 bullets to any space on the board.
Eluros fell to Hyper Mode 3 times before I chose to move on from her. I found it very difficult to effectively manage my emotions, and once the board got messy, it was much more difficult to trigger the patterns well. Not to mention, she’s constantly in a pattern deficit as you’re discarding patterns to swap emotions.
Whimsy
Alright, Whimsy is super weird. Moons, Milks, Cookies, a moon exists when a blue bullet is in the bottom row, while a cookie is a pink bullet with an even number, then the patterns are all ‘if a sun is next to a cookie, clear 3 bullets next to a cookie’, or, if milk and money have different numbers, clear 3 bullets in a diagonal line.
Wow, was that ever difficult to wrap my brain around. On the plus side, Whimsy’s ability to draw and cycle patterns was unparalleled, also, often the clear bullets’ ability was separate and distinct from the conditions on the card, so just because you used a cookie on the far left side of your board, doesn’t mean that the bullets you clear are connected to the cookie that fulfilled the condition.
Whimsy does seem powerful if you can grasp the fullness of her power, but I struggled with this heroine. Perhaps with more practise she’ll rise up my ranks.
Beethoven – Boss
Beethoven’s boss patterns are identical to her heroine, in that they are incredibly specific and challenging to overcome. Failing those patterns will deplete your AP, making the next round difficult. Also, Beethoven is dumping 15 bullets into your bag per round, almost as bad as Hyper Mode. On the plus side, you can pet the kitty, which gives you the opportunity to spend 3 AP to put 4 bullets from your current into the centre, taking the pressure off your board, but not contributing to breaking the next shield.
With only 5 health per shield, Beethoven gives you all the ammunition you need to take her down. Mariel made short work of this little kitty.
Chaos Incarnate
Following up on Whimsy’s Thingy’s, Chaos Incarnates patterns draw on the very specific bullet placements to create Milks, Cookies, Suns, Moons, and Dollars, and not having the specified Thingys in your sight causes extra bullets to be placed from into the centre. Furthermore, breaking a shield triggers all Thingys of a specific type to automatically hit you. Extra risky if you fail her pattern, as failure results in two bullets being placed in your sight with no opportunity to mitigate them.
Chaos Incarnate’s fills your bag with an increasing number of bullets every time her shield breaks, but it’s not an unmanageable number. There is a huge element of luck in satisfying her conditions, as sometimes it’s “An even number pink bullet with no star in the bottom row”, which can be really easy, if you happen to draw a pink 2. But when you pull 4 pink 1’s in a row, it’s mildly infuriating.
All that said, Mariel sorted out Chaos Incarnate on her first try. On to the next challenge!
Elurophobia
Elurophobia (fear of cats) features a ghostly silhouette from all four characters in Bullet: Paw, and all 5 of her patterns are nearly identical, with slightly different effects. First, she has a fear card that offers a restriction on a certain number every round. Afraid of Beethoven, for example, causes you to get hit every time you clear a 4, while Afraid of Whimsy makes it impossible to move 3’s for the round. Elurophobia’s patterns, on the other hand, are a boon. If you can make a 2×2 square on your board, then one of the numbers will clear an extra bullet, so long as that square of bullets persists on your board.
I think the real danger of Elurophobia is that every time one of her shields breaks, you’re forced to place an increasing number of bullets into your sight. In the final round, I broke her last two shields in one attempt, and just had to cross my fingers that I would survive the onslaught of 9 bullets getting placed in my sight. Thankfully, Elurophobia only took two tries to overcome.
Mems
And last, but not least, is the wordy Mems. Mems’ whole theme revolves around fears. Spiders, ghosts, and the like. All of her patters are utterly trivial to complete, but when they’re satisfied at the end of the round, something bad happens. And you can’t even be sure what bad thing is going to happen, because you flip over the next pattern and apply that effect instead of the one that’s face up throughout the round.
Mems slow rolls the game. With 6 shield per round, and only 7, 8, then 9 bullets coming in each round, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to shatter two shields in a single round. Thankfully, the two times I failed to avoid the pattern, the flip had something that didn’t affect me at all. I can see Mems being a challenge, but I got lucky and won on my first try.
Conclusion
Bullet: Paw adds 4 unique characters, each one special in their own way. I don’t think any of these new characters are an instant favourite, nor do I really dislike any of them (maybe Whimsy). I don’t think I’d be comfortable giving any of these characters to a new player, but that’s not why you buy an expansion to a game. I liked the unique spin each of these new characters brings to the game, but I wouldn’t say that Paw is a MUST-BUY expansion by any means. Really, if you’re a fan of the system and want to play with new toys, Bullet: Paw is a no-brainer. But if you are looking for something to breathe new life into this system, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. Paw gives players more of what they already have, which is exactly what I want out of an expansion. Double bonus points if you really like cats, I suppose!
Disclaimer: A copy of Kinfire Delve: Callous’ Lab was provided by Incredible Dream for review purposes.
Back at it again with the third entry in the Kinfire Delve series, this time with Roland and Valora diving into Callos’ Lab.
Kinfire Delve: Callous’ Lab plays exactly like the previous two boxes, Vainglory’s Grotto and Scorn’s Stockade. It’s the same setup, the same core rules, but with two new heroes and a whole new well deck, it offers some fun and interesting twists on the system that I’ve come to know and love.
Firstly, Callous starts with 10 progress points on his card, and if these progress drop to 0 before you reach the bottom of the well, it’s an instant game over. Several of the challenge cards in the well will add and remove progress from Callous, as well as some of the exhaustion cards will siphon progress away.
I switched to using dice instead of the progress tokens
The two new characters, Roland and Valora are both wonderfully unique. Roland, can feed card draws into his partner by boosting her actions with specific symbols, as well as having a few key cards that scale up dramatically, depending on the contents of his discard. Valora on the other hand, excels at dropping extra progress on challenges you aren’t currently attempting, setting up for an easy success on her next turn.
Roland and Valora complimented each other beautifully. Their synergy made it fun to play as the two of them, feeling like both characters were helping each other, instead of the usual tank/DPS combo, where one player constantly has to set up the other, and the DPS player gets to have all the fun.
As before, the art direction by Katarzyna Redesiuk is still absolutely stellar. The back of every card has a full, gorgeous art piece on it, and the Callous’ Lab’s theme of scientific horror feels cohesive throughout the well deck, leading right into Callous himself, who is a tall, dark brute with gems and crystals growing out half of his head.
I love the flavour text on so many of the cards, and the life it breathes into the world. Snippets of context of Roland and Valora bantering, or warning each other. Callous egging his foes on, it’s masterfully done and makes me care about the theme.
As I said before, the gameplay of Kinfire Delve is just stellar. Every action is tactical, every decision needs to be weighed and the risks, calculated. You aren’t able to complete a challenge every single turn, so timing your blows to moments when you can suffer them are important, as is choosing when to let loose your cannon to smash through a particularly nasty scenario, even if it costs you your best cards.
Part of the joy in Kinfire Delve is the discovery, and each of the different boxes have plenty of content to discover. Because the goal of the game is to get to the bottom of the deck, and so many of the challenge rewards are just discard 1-5 cards, you only really see 25% of the deck in each play. Every time you go through, you’ll have a new combination of challenges that may or may not work together to ruin your run.
Kinfire Delve: Callous’ Lab succeeds in being an excellent standalone expansion for the rest of the series. The characters feel unique, the challenge of this well feels completely different from what you’ve had to face before, the exhaustion cards are distinct from previous sets, and I loved my experience with this box as well. Now the only thing left for me to do is to start mixing and matching characters to see which parings absolutely sing and which characters travel amongst sets the best.
When I think of Bonsai, the very first thing that comes to mind is Mr. Miyagi from the movie ‘The Karate Kid’. A Japanese Karate master, quietly pruning his little tree, and eventually the bonsai becomes a lesson for Daniel about inner peace.
Daniel: “But how do I know if my picture’s the right one?” Miyagi: “If come from inside you, always right one.” Also: “Close your eyes, concentrate. Think only tree…”
Bonsai, the Japanese art of tray planting, has a long and storied history. It’s culturally significant with thousands of years of development, but put simply, it’s the art of growing a plant in a pot, and carefully sculpting the tree as it grows to achieve a specific aesthetic. Now, I’m no arborist. Most of the plants that come into my possession end up worse for wear, which is why I turn to board games to satisfy my plant growing desires.
Designed by Rosaria Battiato, Massimo Borzì, and Martino Chiacchiera, Bonsai is a tile placement game for 1 to 4 players. Bonsai starts each player with a pot with a single wood hex buried in the dirt. A small deck of cards sits on the left side of a small board, then 3 cards are turned face up. Each turn consists of a player either taking a card from the board, potentially also taking plant tiles, depending on what slot that card was in, or to take the tiles from their supply and place them on their tree. Game play continues until the deck runs out, scores are calculated, and the player with the most points is the winner!
One of the nasty hooks of Bonsai is that at the start of each game, 3 public objectives are laid out, with 3 levels of accomplishment. These objectives are things like “have 6, 9, 12 wood tiles on your bonsai”, and the restriction is that the moment a player achieves an objective, they have to choose to either claim the achievement, or renounce it. If claimed, it’s worth end game points, but they are now ineligible for any of the higher achievements. And of course, once an objective is claimed by a player, no other player may claim the same objective.
This aspect gives Bonsai some teeth, players need to make the tough decision to renounce an objective and risk someone jumping ahead and claiming the top objective right out from under you.
Other than that, Bonsai is a tranquil game. Tiles come in and out from your supply, the cards you pull increase the number of tiles you can put out at a time, the number of tiles you can hold, and offer more endgame victory points. No one can affect your tree, nor can they steal the tiles you’ve already collected. The most interaction in the game comes from someone sniping the card you were hoping to take the next turn, or claiming an objective a turn before you were going to.
Bonsai is a short and sweet game. Barely any hard feelings between competitors, which makes it a great game for date night, or with players who are conflict averse. Bonsai isn’t complex, nor does it ask a lot of your brain. It’s a simple game, perfect to play after a long day of work, and at the end of the short game each player is treated to a beautiful and unique tree, adorned with a multitude of flowers and blossoms.
