Aethermon: Collect is a fast set collection game. All the cards are laid out on a grid, then players take a turn moving the acrylic group marker up and down the rows and columns of cards, collecting the one monster you choose to stop on. Around and Around the game goes until either all players cannot collect an Aethermon in succession, or in the cooperative version, any one player fails to collect an Aethermon on their turn.
Each Aethermon has a value, and many belong to families. Your score at the end of the game is simply the sum of the Aethermon you collect, with a bonus being applied if you managed to collect all the monsters in a single family.
A 4 player cooperative setup
Review
As I mentioned in the introduction, what pulled me into Aethermon: Collect was the art direction. The cover of the two pals, their robot and dog in the forest, ready for a grand adventure, had me sold from the start. The promotional images of the Aethermon themselves on Aethermon Studios website had me absolutely hooked on this franchise.
Aethermon: Collect itself comes in a small box, about as wide as a smart phone, a touch more than half as long, but deep enough to hold the 74 cards with room to spare. It’s travel sized for your convenience!
Everything in Aethermon: Collect is composed of these 60 mm square cards. From the 48 Aethermon cards (6 monsters of 8 elemental families), to the 12 artefacts, to the 14 cards that comprise the ‘rule book’. While I appreciate the convenience of portable size, I strongly dislike shuffling square cards. Furthermore, I harbour significant discontent towards the rules being put onto 14 double-sided cards. It would be far preferable if the rules were presented in a compact booklet instead.
Aethermon: Collect features both a cooperative mode, and a competitive mode, both play modes feature players moving a shared pawn along a grid of cards. In the competitive mode, players are given 2 artefacts, which they can use to break the rules and give themselves a surprise advantage. Players are trying to collect Aethermon and accrue the most points. If you happen to collect all the Aethermon of a family, their points are doubled. It feels painfully straightforward, where the only interesting thing that happens is when someone uses their artefact, and the winner is just the one who used their artefact most effectively.
The Co-op game feels less like a game, and more of a puzzle. Kind of like a Sudoku; the optimal path could be deduced before the first turn is ever taken. Depending on how strongly other people inject their input on other player’s turn, this could be a major problem. However, if you’re not of the min-max persuasion, then there are some fun moments to be had as the game slowly whittles down the choices available to you. You’ll have moments where you’ll take Matchka, which allows Bigfoot to take Fizzig, finishing that family, then Otter flies to the far side of the board to get Wahblaze, then Bear can collect Eleplant which is right next to it. It never makes you feel clever, but there is joy in finding the happy accident moments where everyone managed to get what they wanted.
Whether you play competitive or cooperative, the gameplay is lighting quick and straightforward. I would have no hesitation to introduce this game to my nieces, or use it as a quick casual game to kick off game night, maybe while waiting for others to arrive. Maintaining the grid of cards can be a bit of a challenge, though. If some cards get knocked askew, it can be tricky to know if they’re in one column or the other, which is a major gameplay consideration. I did see in the crowdfunding notes that they’re making a playmat available, but I’m not sure how that will be combined with the box. As with all crowdfunding projects, we’ll need to wait and see.
The Aethermon themselves should be the star of the show. They have dynamic poses, each one has a short biography on the back, and the character designs are top-notch. Their elements mean nothing in the gameplay of Aethermon: Collect, they’re just a way to shrink the deck for the 2 and 3 player game, which is kind of disappointing, honestly. It’s obvious that a lot of work and love and talent went into designing each of these creatures, which then to have them relegated to being functionally nothing but numbers and set collection bonuses, I’m left wanting so much more.
A lot of my negative feelings come from my own heightened sense of anticipation. I wanted so much more than Aethermon: Collect itself is supposed to be. On its own, Aethermon: Collect feels like a missed opportunity. I’m left praying that Aethermon: Collect is just an introduction to a franchise, an amuse bouche to whet the appetites before the real products start to roll out. And I know there is more on the horizon! The game includes a teaser card, promising a Rougelike RPG coming soon, with more details on the Aethermon website, and I’m so eagerly anticipating whatever comes next for Aethermon. I adore the art direction Aethermon Studios has established, and I will eagerly snap up whatever comes next.
For a lot of board game enthusiasts, Carcassonne by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede was one of the early games that pulled them into this wonderful cardboard hobby. Released in 2000, and with over 100 expansions and versions listed on BoardGameGeek.com, it’s hard to imagine a world without this quintessential tile laying game.
The Meeple, or, My People, have become a ubiquitous icon of the board game community
Mists over Carcassonne is the 2022 cooperative game, utilizing the tried and true tile laying mechanics, but turning the scoring on it’s head and forcing players to collaborate to achieve a score threshold, while trying to keep the ghosts at bay. Does it work? I’m not going to bury the lede here, it absolutely does, as long as you’re already a fan of cooperative games. Read on to find out more!
How to play
Just like in base Carcassonne, players take turns adding a new land tile to the display, creating an ever-enlarging game board onto which you may then place your meeple on terrain features to score points. During Mists over Carcassonne, ghosts will keep appearing, and it’s your job is to pacify them. Together, you must reach the goal tile, i.e. score a pre-determined number of points. But watch out: If there are too many ghosts on the board, or you can’t draw land tiles any more, you lose the game. All players play together against the game. Show each other your tiles and decide as a team where to place them. In later levels especially, you will need to cooperate well!
Each turn, you must execute a set of actions in a specific order. Start by drawing, and placing a land tile adjacent to an existing tile. Then, place ghosts and meeples. Ghosts get placed on the mists, while meeples get placed on the terrain features. And finally, you score points for completed terrain features, and return those meeples to their owner’s supply.
When placing tiles, you must match the terrain of the tile to the same terrain on a tile already in the central play area. Cities to cities, roads to roads, and fields to fields. The exception here are the mists, which can abut non-misty terrains of the same type (a clear road can lead into a misty road, and ditto for fields)
If a newly placed tile contains mist, and if the mist bank it’s added to is completed, then all the ghosts from that mist bank are removed. If you started a wholly new mist bank, then you add ghosts equal to the number of ghost symbols on that tile. If you added to an existing mist bank, making it bigger, then you get to place one fewer ghost to that tile. Managing your ghost supply is important, as if you ever need to place a ghost, and you can’t, then it’s game over!
One more wrinkle to the game is instead of scoring a completed terrain feature, you can choose to forgo the points and instead remove 3 ghosts from any one tile, returning them to the supply.
To win the game, players simply need to achieve the point goal set out by the chapter they’re playing. The first chapter’s goal, is 50 points. Further chapters will introduce castles, graveyards, and impose more restrictions
Review
I recently played base Carcassonne, and was reminded on just how brilliant that core game is. I know everyone will have their own favourite combination of expansions or ways to play, but for me, the base game is sufficient. It’s quick, concise, and competitive.
Mists over Carcassonne retains that lighting quick gameplay and slowly expanding decision space. Now, with the cooperative aspect, you’re no longer hissing at your friends as they try to weasel in on your massive city. Instead, you’re encouraging it, leaving your gates open in the hopes you can double up on your scoring opportunities.
It would be boring if the goal was only to get the highest score. The titular mists bring spectres, determined to bring your city-building ambitions to its knees. Many of the tiles feature mists and require a number of ghosts to get placed on that tile. You place 1 fewer ghost if you’re adding to an already existing bank of mist, and if you manage to complete that mist bank, then all the ghosts from that get removed. It doesn’t sound like much, but the tension of pulling a tile that has the perfect orientation for completing a city, but also has mists that introduce 2 ghosts and your supply only has 3 ghosts left, do you risk busting on having too many ghosts and lose, or place tiles to mitigate ghosts, but end up ignoring the scoring opportunities and possibly lose the game.
Every time I review a cooperative game, I’m compelled to address the ‘alpha gamer’ or ‘quarterbacking’ issue that comes up. Some people have playmates that want to control every aspect of a cooperative game. I don’t have that problem in my group, but Mists over Carcassonne does nothing to address that complaint. If you’re one of the people who struggle with this issue, Mists over Carcassonne isn’t going to change your mind.
I love the various difficulty levels that serve as an on-ramp to the system. At first, all you need to do is earn 50 points. Easy. Then, it introduces two new tile types, castles and graveyards. Then, you’ll need to achieve points in a more even manner (getting 15 points within the first 20 tiles, 50 within the next 20, then finally, 100 points to win the level), then, some ghosts get removed, and so on. The first level levels serve as an introduction to the cooperative game, and one that I wouldn’t hesitate to use to teach my family how to play this system. The castles and graveyards can be a wrinkle too much to begin with, so leaving them out for the first level was probably a good idea.
Much like Viticulture World: The Cooperative Expansion, I loved experiencing a competitive game that I enjoyed with a new mechanic and collaborative twist. While Mists over Carcassonne hasn’t completely overtaken the base game as my default way to play Carcassonne, it dons enough to earn a spot of respect in my heart. If you’re a fan of Carcassonne, or coop games in general, Mists over Carcassonne is assuredly going to be a hit for you.
The Pursuit of Happiness, a game created by designers Adrian Abela and David Chircop and published by Artipia Games in 2015, was pitched to me as “The Game of Life” for gamers. This brought back some nostalgic memories for me, as I have strangely fond recollections of that classic game. Those memories mainly stem from playing the computer version that came in a cereal box when I was a kid. I can vividly remember huddling around the computer with my sisters, engaging in hot seat mode, taking turns with the mouse, and poking fun at the randomly assigned professions we received, and the terrible 1998 3D computer graphics.
Well, you get what you pay for, I suppose!
How to Play
In The Pursuit of Happiness, players are attempting to live the most fulfilling life, beginning with a childhood trait to give you an edge out in the world, you’re tasked with living a whole life, balancing money, resources, and stress, all in an effort to attain the most long term happiness. Each round, players will have a limited amount of time, represented by hour glass tokens, to embark on projects, purchase items and activities, advance their careers, and take on romantic interests, all in an effort to acquire that elusive happiness.
The board has 9 worker placement spots, with 4 of them being dedicated to simply acquiring more of the game’s resources. Creativity, knowledge, influence, and money. One action is called Overtime, where you get 2 more time tokens to work with, but you incur 2 stress.
The four remaining spaces involve you taking one of the 4 types of cards. Project, Items/Activities, Get a Job, and Get a Partner. Each of these cards work in different ways
Project cards come in 3 different styles, basic project, group projects, and one-time projects. With basic projects, you must start at level 1, pay the cost, and reap the benefits. On future turns, you may spend 1 time token to advance to level 2, and so on until level 4 has been achieved. Group projects have you taking the card into your play area, and other players can spend 1 time token to contribute to the group project, enhancing the benefit for everyone who contributes at the end of the around. The one-time projects have you taking the project, and choosing which level to pay for, and then that’s it. You’ll reap the corresponding reward, but you won’t be able to progress this project any further.
The Items/Activities generally cost money, but when you take the card into your play area, you can choose which level you want to start at, and can spend time tokens on future turns to progress deeper into that hobby. Many hobbies require you to pay a resource during the upkeep phase, but will provide you with a benefit for doing so.
The Career is unique in that you can only have one job at a time. When you take the job action, you need to pay the entry cost, and you’ll earn some money. During each upkeep phase, you’ll need to spend time and some resources to keep your job, but you’ll enjoy the benefit of income, hopefully enabling you to do the things you really want. During your turn, you can spend a time token to get a promotion, which allows you to advance to the next level of the same job type that you currently have. You pay the resource cost for the promotion, then search the card row and the deck for the next available card of the same job type, and replace your existing job. The next upkeep will demand more resources and time from you, but your compensation will be higher.
Going on a date allows you to take a partner into your play area, and generally get a small benefit. On future turns, if you have whatever your partner’s prerequisite are, you can spend a time token to progress your relationship. On future upkeep turns, your partner will demand some time tokens, but give you long term happiness in return. If you take a second partner, you immediately get a stress, and will get another stress per partner in excess of 1 during every upkeep.
So that’s the bulk of the cards, you can only have 3 cards active at a time, except for items and activities. If you take a 4th, you immediately incur a stress, and will get more stress if you have more than 3 cards during the upkeep phase. If you want to discard a card, you can, but you’ll incur stress and lose one short term happiness. If you have positive short term happiness, you pay one resource less for projects (but not activities), and vice versa for negative short term happiness. If you rest or relax, you can remove some of your stress, as long as you remain in the same colour area. The only way to go down to the next colour is by getting a heart from one of your cards, which are quite rare.
Review
I want to start with what I enjoyed. I loved the stories that The Pursuit of Happiness generates. Early in one game, bear took on the project “seek funding”, then proceeded to ignore the job cards for the rest of the game, while the charismatic Bigfoot promptly got married and started a family, while also becoming CEO, locking up 5 of his 6 time tokens at the start of every round. The hardworking family man only had 1 time token to do anything, which he ended up spending to get just enough knowledge to maintain his job position until the end of the game. At one point I, while happily married, decided to seek the short term happiness by taking a second partner, stress be damned.
We all found an emergent narrative to justify our decisions, and that’s easily the best part of this game. Joking and laughing with your friends at the ridiculous situations your fictional persona has embarked on. The theme is baked into every card and action, making it easy to understand what you’re doing, or why something behaves in the way that it does (like raising a family gives you less time for activities).
I adore the art in The Pursuit of Happiness. The cartoony style exudes a whimsical charm. One thing that truly impresses me is the inclusivity that comes with the design of the partner cards. The fact that they are double-sided, with identical stats, offers players the freedom to choose the character that resonates with them the most.
On the flip side, learning to play The Pursuit of Happiness can be a frustrating experience. Everything looks similar but acts in different ways, and there are exceptions galore. You can only have 3 cards, except for items. You have to start at Level 1 for projects, except for the one time project. You can jump down to any level in items, but not projects. If you put two time tokens on the same space, you get a stress, except on cards. Every rule has an exception, that makes it a burden to teach and learn.
There are a plethora of decisions on every turn. You have 9 action spots on the board, 16 cards to pick from, resources to manage, and card actions in front of you and other players that you can choose to do on any of your turns. The sheer number of choices is paralyzing, and simultaneously uninteresting. At one point, I was trying to figure out what to do, but realized that I didn’t really want to do anything. None of the actions were exciting, most were just different ways to trade some resources for other resources.
Initially, I was really excited about the push and pull of the stress track. I loved the idea of pushing up to the colour border, only to drop back down, and possibly even earn extra actions from lowering the stress level. But we literally saw a single heart throughout the entire game, making the stress track much more of a detriment. Bigfoot, who only had a single action per turn, was locked in his situation, unable to take a single stress, lest he push into the next colour section and lose his single action that was available to him. It’s easy to fall into a death spiral on that stress track, and I wish there were more ways to play with that aspect of the game.
Finally, the game is fiddly. From all the rules exceptions, to constantly converting resources from one type to another, I was frustrated by needing to turn on 6 cardboard chits to get 8 different cardboard chits in return. “I spend 3 social and 2 money and get 4 knowledge and 3 creativity, but I only have a 5 social, so I need 2 social back”. With conversions happening at nearly every action, this was by far the most annoying part of the game.
The Pursuit of Happiness has merit. As I said above, there’s charm, it generates great stories, and it’s really an experience worth having! But I don’t feel like there’s much depth. The game plays fairly similarly every time, and even when you find ways to buck the system, and avoid taking a job or partner and remain competitive, it’s not particularly interesting. My wife called it Ecclesiastes in a box, nothing really matters, your choices will all lead you to the same place ultimately. In all my plays, the scores between the winner and lose of the game were within 6 points of each other (winning score being around 65 points each time). Yes, you can choose to take on projects, and items, and jobs that strike your fancy, but in the end, you’re left wondering if your choices really matter.
I enjoyed playing The Pursuit of Happiness, make no mistake. But the short term happiness that this game provides just isn’t worth the stress that comes from learning to play it over again, and struggling through the myriad of decisions to arrive at the same destination every time.
A review copy of The One Hundred Torii was provided by Pencil First Games
As a teenager, I was an unabashed weeb. Growing up in a small town in northern Manitoba, I voraciously consumed as much anime as I could get my hands on, which, in the early to mid 00’s, was not very much. I had the local pharmacy special order me in Shonen Jump every month, I would use school computers to download fan translated episodes of manga and anime, distributing them to two others in my school on the down-low. I loved Japan, I wanted nothing more than to speak the language and travel there. Any time I got to choose a project in school, I’d use it as an excuse to learn more about Japan.
While I’ve not yet completed my dream of travel, and my consumption of anime and manga has waned in my 30’s, anything Japanese themed still always grabs my attention. Given the opportunity to marry my love of board games with my affinity for the theme makes for a very happy game night.
How to Play
Designed by Scott Caputo, art by Vincent Dutrait, and published by Pencil First Games, The One Hundred Torii proclaims that life is a journey, not a destination. In The One Hundred Torii, players are trying to earn the most points by expanding the garden, and walking through as many Torii gates as possible, accruing experiences in the form of monument sightings, and interacting with characters.
The game begins with a central tile depicting all 6 monument types. On your turn you can pay monument tokens to enlist the help of one character, then, you expand the garden by placing a tile adjacent to any tile. Each tile has a road on all 4 edges, meaning other than placing adjacent to an existing tile, there are no placement restrictions.
When you place a tile, you select one of the features on the tile and trace the shortest path to another one of those features already in the garden. If there’s a match, you earn a token depicting that feature. If you cross under any red torii gates, you’ll get additional tokens of that feature, and if you cross under any blue torii gates, you’ll earn any feature of your choosing, other than the one you are scoring.
The goal of the game is to earn the most points, and you do so by collecting these feature tokens. When you have 5, you turn them in and take a big 5 point marker of that feature type. Then, when you take 5 more, you turn those in, and flip the point marker over to the 10 point side.
In addition to collecting features, you also get rewards for interacting with the characters. At the start of each round, you can pay feature tokens to enlist the help of various characters. The Poet sits their bottom down on a tile, blocking one feature, allowing you to potentially really extend what the shortest path you’d create. The Samurai sits outside the garden, and prevents a tile from being placed in that spot. The geisha, allows you to place both of your tiles, but you only get to score the second one you place.
The first time you use a character, you take a 2 point scroll representing your interaction with them. If you enlist their help again, that scroll flips over to the 4 point side. And if you were the first person to use a character 3 times in one game, you get a big 3 point bonus.
Gameplay continues around and around, players enlisting help, expanding the garden, and claiming rewards until the tile deck is empty. Then all players take one more round and the player who has the most points is the winner!
Review
The One Hundred Torii features beautifully illustrated art on the cover, and equally delightful art inside. The characters, the tokens, and the tiles are all colourful and pleasant to look at. The cardboard quality is perfect, not thin and cheap feeling, but also not overwrought. The aesthetic of The One Hundred Torii is quite calming, so I feel that an over-done production would actually pull away from the experience.
The box comes with a guide in how to put it away, which I found surprising considering how small the game box is. Usually these guides are reserved for games like Scythe or Anachrony. After punching everything out and trying to follow the guide to pack everything away, I can see why it was included. There are piles and piles of little cardboard chits that have a propensity to scatter everywhere if the box is slightly tilted in the wrong direction.
The gameplay of The One Hundred Torii is simple; enlist the help of one of the characters, then place a tile, and collect your rewards. At first, getting through just one or two gates will feel like an accomplishment. As the game goes on, your actions can give way to other players being able to make even better turns than you, and vice versa. Alternatively, the most lucrative route will get closed off, and you’ll suddenly feel like you’re falling behind.
As the game wears on, the decision space organically grows and shrinks. Someone will place a tile with a monument that you were hoping to cash in on, in the wrong space, making your path go from 5 gates to just 1. But then, as play continues, the paths between monuments grow longer, and opportunities that didn’t exist a moment ago suddenly present themselves to you. Someone just so happens to cover a tile that perfectly assists you in achieving your goals.
Speaking of goals, the goals in The One Hundred Torii are very attainable, meaning players don’t really need to hyper-focus on a specific monument type. There’s fluidity in the achievements, which offers grace in the tile placement. Yes, sometimes your action will be less efficient than your opponents, and yes, sometimes you were kind of hoping to score 4 Inari Statues, but plans change, and you’ll pivot to collecting 2 arched bridges and a lantern this round instead.
The characters that you can enlist allow you to break the rules in perfect little ways. Just enough to get you out of a tough jam, but not too aggressive in that they’re horribly over-powered. They cost you some of your monument tokens every time you want to enlist one, giving you a delightful little push and pull of benefits and drawbacks. The game encourages you to use the same guest 3 times to maximize the points you’ll earn from those actions, but the benefit of doing so is incredibly small, giving you the freedom to diversify your friend group to fit your needs.
The One Hundred Torii puts genuine effort into educating players as to what each of the tokens and characters represent. From engaging with a Culture Consultant (Lisa Wilcut) to dedicating 5 pages of their 20 page rule book to detail the significance of everything in the game, to the personal letter by artist Vincent Dutrait crediting his inspirations and detailing the efforts he took to ensure the game looked authentic, alive, and exotic, I appreciate the efforts The One Hundred Torii goes through to pay homage and respect to its theme.
Getting back to the gameplay, The One Hundred Torii is a calm game. Yes, there’s some opportunity to stifle your opponent’s plans by placing a tile in the wrong spot, but there’s so many mechanics available to subvert that kind of play, that the game ends up being a calm, peaceful experience. We had a lovely time just sitting back, placing tiles, and collecting monuments representing the memories that come from strolling through the Japanese gardens.
I quite enjoyed The One Hundred Torii, more than I expected to, considering it’s just a tile laying game. This game is more than the sum of its parts, and I’m glad I got the opportunity to play it. The only thing holding me back from playing it more is the substantial number of cardboard tokens that need to be sorted each time I play. Nevertheless, I appreciate The One Hundred Torii for its gorgeous artwork and simple gameplay, and won’t hesitate to introduce anyone who is looking for a chill game to play while enjoying each other’s company.
Sometimes a game calls to me because of its theme. Racing ramshackle pipe ships through space in Galaxy Trucker, hell yeah! Growing a fast food franchise in Food Chain Magnate? Sign me up. Other games, I play in despite of their theme. Taking on the role of rajas and ranis to improve their estates and collect fame and wealth in 16th century India? Uh, I guess so? And that’s exactly where Inka and Markus Brnad takes us in Rajas of the Ganges.
How to Play
In Rajas of the Ganges, players are racing to accumulate the most money and fame points, with the winner being the first player to have those two tracks meet. The fame track moves clockwise around the board, while the money track travels counterclockwise.
There are 4 main locations to place your workers and take actions. The quarry is where you’ll trade in dice to acquire land to slot into your province, that will earn you fame and resources. The market, allows you to earn money based on the resources that are currently in your province. The River sends your boat flowing up river gently, offering a myriad of benefits depending on the space your boat lands on. And lastly, the Palace, where you’ll either get dice, or, gain a benefit depending on the value of the dice you’re giving up.
Each round consists of players placing their workers in one of the open action spots, paying the required resources (usually money or dice), and taking the action. When all players have run out of workers, the board is cleared off, and the start player moves. Rounds continue until someone’s money and fame tokens cross, then players get an equal number of turns, and the game comes to a sudden end.
Review
Rajas of the Ganges by Inka and Markus Brand is a worker placement game with a plethora of chunky, colourful dice. While at first glance it looks like a dice worker placement game, the dice are actually a resource that will dictate how some of your actions trigger. I do like that the pip value of the die isn’t automatically determinative; there’s good uses for both high and low valued die, you just need to be in a position to utilize those dice when they show up on your Kali statue.
The theme of Rajas of the Ganges doesn’t come through particularly strongly. The board is bright and colourful, each player has a Kali statue and the first player token is an elephant. As someone who knows approximately nothing about 16th century India, sure, the theme looks good. But upon even slight inspection, it starts to fall apart. Like, what do the dice represent? Why are they being used to build palaces and resources in your province? It’s fine, I don’t need an extremely well integrated theme in my euro games, but it’s worth mentioning that the theme isn’t going to inspire a history lesson.
We played the basic game, which means our Kali statues could hold 10 dice, and we only had access to 5 workers throughout the game. Each turn in Rajas of the Ganges is quick and snappy. Simply place a worker, do the action, and then the next player takes their turn. And yet, the opportunity for combos exist. Turns like “place a worker, get 3 money, which earns you one boat movement point which gains 3 fame points, which earns my 4th worker” are incredibly satisfying when they do show up. There are a myriad of different ways to use the dice, from spending the big ones to buy land tiles for your province, to using them for specific actions in the palace. Instead of making you feel like your dice are bad, it feels more like you’re just not in the right situation, which is an important distinction.
One of the main draws of Rajas of the Ganges is the mechanism in which the game comes to an end. With the money track and the fame track running opposite to each other, it’s a race to be the first one to have your tokens cross, but how you achieve that is up to you. Whether you chase a dozen buildings for ultimate fame, pull in vast amounts of money, or settle into a combination of both, you’re going to be tempted to build an engine, but in reality, this is a race. It doesn’t matter how far you can push your fame and wealth tokens past each other, the only thing that matters is that they pass. Once someone’s tokens pass, the endgame is triggered. Players sitting between the player who achieved this feat and that start player can place one more worker, then that’s it! To make this even more tense, the money track can fluctuate up and down. More than once I found myself single money away from getting a bonus resource because someone else took the slightly cheaper action spot right before I did. Frustrating, but also, exciting when you manage to do the opposite; collect the perfect amount of coin to trigger your next benefit, catapulting you into the lead.
As I mentioned above, the dice in Rajas of the Ganges are a resource, and a precious one at that. You need dice to do most of the actions in the game. What becomes a challenge is getting more dice into your supply. The palace offers spots to trade a whole worker for a single die, or, trade in one die for two others of a different colour. For some reason, that trade option feels so much stronger, but in any case, you’re still only netting one die. If you find yourself in a situation where you’ve run completely out of dice (because you just bought a province tile that needed 9 pips, which would be a minimum of 2 dice), you’re going to then have to spend 3 or 4 whole actions just acquiring dice while watching your opponents get further and further ahead. And in a tight race game, that can feel absolutely brutal.
It’s kind of amazing how well Rajas of the Ganges scales up at the end of the game. Several rounds go by and one or two players have gotten their fourth worker, then all of a sudden it’s “I earn 7 money and 8 fame points” and you realize that the other players are in striking distance of ending the game. Rajas of the Ganges doesn’t outstay it’s welcome, it takes 15 minutes to learn and an hour to play the basic version. The Navaratnas version introduces a fair bit more control over the bonus resources you can obtain, which I can see lead to some turns dragging as players try to consider all the permutations of their choices, but I was pretty happy with the basic version.
Rajas of the Ganges isn’t the kind of game that takes half a dozen plays before players ‘get it’, which is great, but it also doesn’t offer anything that really makes you want to come back. It’s fast to introduce new players, and it offers substantial strategies and choices right from the get-go, but it’s missing a satisfying hook or spark that makes me want to come back to a game over and over again.
Rajas of the Ganges is an enjoyable game to play. It offers a relaxing and attractive game, and makes you feel clever and special when you manage to chain off a combo and snag a worker a whole round before the other players. The strategies feel variable and powerful, and the extra modules give players even more control, if they feel like they want them. I hate how difficult it is to acquire more dice, considering how many actions require you to have them, but it’s hardly a criticism that should prevent you from playing this game. There are a lot of great mechanisms here, and they’re integrated with each other wonderfully. While Rajas of the Ganges didn’t hit a home run with me, I can absolutely see how some people fall in love with this charming dice game.
Disclosure: A review copy of Gloomhaven: Jaws of the lion was provided by Cephlofair Games
Introduction
If you had asked me my thoughts on Gloomhaven two months ago, I would have pointed you to my post on Bigfoot’s Trash Taste, where I boldly speak about how I find Gloomhaven frustrating and how I didn’t enjoy the dozen times I sat down to play it. So when the opportunity from Cephlofair Games to get a review copy of the smaller follow-up game, Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion came up, I was surprised to find myself compelled to revisit the Gloomhaven system.
I recently wrote more in depth about the full sized Gloomhaven, the 21 pound big red box full of mystery, anguish, joy, and frustration. I talked about how a negative first impression soured my opinion of the game for nearly 5 years, only to have it slowly turned around by the digital implementation. So when Jaws of the Lion showed up at my door, I roped a couple of friends (Bear, from my regular weekly game night and his partner, Lynx) into playing with me. Bear has some experience with role-playing games, and his wife, an avid gamer in her own right, enjoys combative games. If there’s a throat nearby, she’s keen to punch it, but neither had played any Gloomhaven before.
With that in mind, over the past month we’ve made our way through the first 5 scenarios for Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. Before I really launch into how our games went, you might be asking yourself: “What exactly is Jaws of the Lion and what makes it different from Gloomhaven?” While Gloomhaven is a massive box with a ~100 scenario campaign, 17 playable characters, more than 30 different monsters, and dozens of map tiles to create wildly different scenarios, Jaws of the Lion is a much smaller box. Containing only 4 playable characters, 16 monster types, and a comparatively straightforward 25 scenario campaign. The goal of Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion was to provide an easier way for gamers to get introduced to the Gloomhaven system. The first 5 scenarios are a tutorial that introduces the rules of the game gradually, instead of all the information overload that the full Gloomhaven game is. The setup for each scenario is simplified in Jaws of the Lion, due to the map tiles being replaced with a spiral bound scenario book that features artwork specific to each scenario.
How to Play
Here’s an extremely quick how-to-play. At the start of each round, you’ll play two cards from your hand. The number in the centre of one of the cards will indicate your initiative, that will dictate the turn order. On your turn, you activate the top action of one of your cards, and the bottom action of the other card. Every card for every character is different, and using your abilities to synergize with each other is key to victory. As you gain levels, you’ll have more cards to choose from, but the number of cards you can take into each mission is static, based on your character.
Most missions in Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion are comprised of ‘kill everything’, and most actions involve moving and hitting. Each attack has you flip a card from your own attack modifier deck, which you can upgrade and modify as you accomplish tasks and gain levels.
Now, that’s basically it, but there are a ton of rules and nuance in Gloomhaven that are important to understand fully before you can understand the situations well enough to play through a mission well!
Review
Introducing Bear and Lynx to Gloomhaven via Jaws of the Lion was a treat. The tutorial structure introduces the very core mechanics with special, tutorial cards that include helpful text boxes of how to read the icons and apply the effects of the card. The enemies have one static ability, making it easy to plan your approach, and it feels like any group could stumble through this mission and come out the other end unscathed.
The subsequent missions add in all the elements that make up the full Gloomhaven gameplay experience. More cards, burning (or losing) cards after a powerful effect, experience points, gold, elements, modifier decks, monster attack decks, blesses and curses, pushing and pulling, status conditions, losing a card to negate damage, and so on. The training wheels come off and the tutorial launches the player into the full Gloomhaven experience. There are so many things going on in a regular Gloomhaven game that introducing someone to the full experience is quite a challenge. This, step-by-step approach worked wonders. At no point did any of us feel overwhelmed by rules. Each mission stretched our brains like pizza dough until we filled the pan. Gently, working each corner one at a time, careful not to tear our precious brains by roughly forcing too many rules in at one time.
The setting and story is dark and brooding. It starts with a missing husband, and very quickly you stumble into occult rituals and dark sacrifices. Unnatural abominations and living corpses are featured early on. That said, the gameplay is entirely combat; you’re trying to kill your opponents. If violence and malevolence turns you off, the narrative is going to leave a sour taste in your mouth.
I’m not sure what else to say about Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. If you’ve played Gloomhaven, it’s more of the great gameplay that you’ve come to expect, albeit a bit of the extraneous bits trimmed off the edges. If you’re new to the system, the tutorial is an excellent on ramp to the system. Once you’ve learned the whole game, Jaws of the Lion might feel a bit too streamlined for your liking. The four characters synergize extremely well together, and that’s by design. You don’t need to spend significant time and effort crafting each of your characters and decks, so they’ll work together. In the same breath, the missions feel easier than the base game. We’ve come close to losing only once, and that might be a byproduct of the built-in synergies of the 4 classes that come in the box.
At the end of the day, if you’re interested and inexperienced in Gloomhaven, you cannot go wrong with Jaws of the Lion. It’s cheaper to acquire, faster to set up, and guides you into the experience. I can absolutely see people completing the ~20 missions that come in the campaign, then launching themselves into the full game, only to really appreciate the guard rails that Jaws of the Lion has for its players. Those guard rails are helpful for some people, but restricting for others. Treating Jaws of the Lion as an epilogue for a group that actually managed to complete their Gloomhaven campaign may feel a bit unsatisfying. It lacks the long term goals and discovery that I think takes the experience up to the next level.
