Apparently 2024 is the year that I dive into Valdimr Suchy games. In the last 6 months I’ve played Pulsar 2849, Praga Caput Regni,Evacuation, and now, Woodcraft gets added to that pile as well. With this experience, I’m starting to get a feel for Valdimr’s designs. Medium-heavy euros with tight a tight economy, and an interesting action selection mechanism, and Woodcraft fits that definition incredibly well.
Learning Woodcraft isn’t terrible. I used both the rule book and the Game in a Nutshell How to Play video. Between the two, it wasn’t hard getting started. There were a few non-intuitive things, like the helpers all have production on them, but production doesn’t produce during an income phase. We all expected that would have been the case just due to the terminology, but no. gaining production is completely separate from income. There are a few other tedious rules, such as when you plant wood into your pots, you can take a free cutting action. This isn’t represented anywhere on the boards in a helpful manner, and I completely missed the rule in my excursion to learn the game.
In Woodcraft, players take on forest sprites who love to build beautiful creations out of wood. During the game you’ll buy and sell lumber, grow your own trees, hire assistants, collect tools to store in your attic, improve your workshop, and fulfill contracts. With only 14 rounds (13 in a 4 player game), your real task is to make every action count.
The contacts to fulfill generally have various wood requirements (3 different types of wood in the game, represented by green, yellow, and brown dice), and each wood has a pip value requirement that has to be met exactly. To do this, you’ll probably use the saw to cut a die into two, maintaining the sum of the original die, splice scrap wood to increment the pip value, and even glue two dice together to form a larger die.
It’s surprisingly fun to cleave dice into two, or stitch them back together to fulfill the contracts. Many of the contracts reward you with various goodies, sometimes even including more dice. There’s a great feedback loop of spending money to get resources, using the resources to fulfill contracts, which give you more money. Money in this context is blueberries.
Generally for a first play, I try to dip my toes into every mechanic. That said, Woodcraft is the kind of game where there are 5 different things you want to do, but you only have time to focus on 1 or 2 of them. You cannot do everything in Woodcraft, and the winner is probably going to be the person who does their one thing the best. At the end of our first game, one player managed to earn 3 tools, despite the attic having like, 12 spots to hold tools. Perhaps the next time I play, I’ll really try to focus on the attic and see how well it goes.
Woodcraft feels like a solo game. The interaction comes from someone taking contracts or helper cards before you, claiming public objectives before you, and selecting actions on the action wheel. The further back the action is on the wheel, the better the benefits you’ll receive for taking that action. It’s frustrating when the player right before you takes the action you wanted, gets the bonus benefits for it, then moves it up into the segment of the action wheel that doesn’t give you any benefits for playing it. Beyond that, you’re pretty free to run your own game.
I made a critical blunder in the middle of the game that probably cost me 2 whole turns to fix (representing about 15% of my entire game), which put me squarely into last place. As with most of Suchy’s games, the economy is tight. Every blueberry can be used, and taking an inefficient action can cause a terrible bottleneck that you need to dig yourself out from.
There’s a definite puzzle in the game of Woodcraft, that action efficiency challenge has me wanting to go back and get better. It’s not really a game that you can appreciate at a single play. I feel like the more you understand the levers and consequences at play in this game system, the more you’ll be rewarded with those sweet, sweet chestnuts (Points. Chestnuts are points). And that’s really why this is a first impressions post and not a full review. I have thoughts on Woodcraft, conflicted feelings, but I know there’s a lot more depth to plumb. I just don’t know if I’m going to put forth that investment to get good and find the joy in this tight puzzle.
Last week I talked about 6 Nimmt!, which is a great little card game that needs nothing other than to shuffle the cards, deal them out, and play. Following up on that post, I want to talk about No Thanks, which I have been enjoying immensely lately.
No Thanks, designed by Thorsten Gimmler and first published in 2004 is a single deck of 33 cards, numbered from 3 to 35. The game begins by distributing the tokens to each player, burning 9 cards off the deck, then a single card is turned over. The start player has a choice. To either take the card and any chips that may be on the table, or, say “No Thanks”, and place a chip onto the table, passing play to the next player. Round and round it goes until someone takes the card and all the chips.
The game ends when the deck runs out of cards. Players earn points based on the face value of all their cards, then subtract a point for every chip they have in their supply. The catch is if someone has a sequence of numbers (like 25, 26, 26, and 28), only the lowest card in that sequence is scored. The player with the lowest score is the winner.
And that’s all you need to know to play No Thanks. Another game that can go from being in the box to playing in less than 5 minutes, and can support a wide range of players (from 3 to 7). I love games where each players turn is so small. Everyone stays in engaged as they’re constantly making decisions and evaluating the game state.
What separates No Thanks from a game like 6 Nimmt, is that in No Thanks, Everyone has access to the same information. There’s no hands of cards, or hiding how many chips everyone has, or trying to remember who took which card, everything is face up on the table. This makes significant room for goading your friends into making bad decisions. “Come on Otter, take the 33. You already have the 35, once the 34 comes up, you’ll be golden!”
While the excitement in 6 Nimmt is in the reveal of the card everyone chose each round, No Thanks revels in the excitement of the push-your-luck of letting the pot of chips grow and grow as the cards go around and around the table. It’s subtle, but a card that you initially dismissed and tossed a chip in becomes more and more tempting as that pot grows. Not only are the chips worth negative points at the end, they represent a significant amount of power. If you can drain someone of all their chips, suddenly they’ve lost the ability to pass, and you can stick them with a series of terrible cards, driving them into the ground.
Image Credit: Jose Luis Zapata De Santiago (@zapata131) via BGG
Of course, that situation is rare. Thoughtful players won’t allow that situation to happen to them, but it does give No Thanks the feeling of good strategy. When a player wins, it’s not because of blind, dumb luck. It’s because they played well. Whether they made good decisions on which cards to take, or if they just played the other players better, it remains to be seen.
Because a game of No Thanks is so fast, It’s real easy to play over and over again. It’s the kind of game that accompanies good conversation, or just an activity to engage with while you’re spending time with your favourite people. No Thanks is an absolute winner in my book. It’s more approachable than 6 Nimmt, which means it gets played with a wider variety of people. I find that it particularly shines during late nights at the campsite with a big bowl of snacks and some adult beverages as it’s effortless to teach and play. Any game that’s this approachable, and still exciting and fun to play is an easy recommend from me!
I wonder if every gamer experiences an overcorrection in their hobby life. When I first got really into the board game hobby, I wanted to play the biggest, most complex game. The drier and crunchier the game, the more excited I got. But over time, I found myself pulling back. A game having a 4-hour play time is a significant barrier. When the rule book passes 20 pages, I start to shudder and feel exhausted, before a single deck of cards is even shuffled.
Lately, I’ve been quite keen on really light games. The kinds of games that are basically just a deck of cards. Set up is little more than shuffle the deck and deal them out. The one I want to focus on today is 6 Nimmt! by Wolfgang Kramer, and first published in 1994!
6 Nimmt is a single deck of 104 cards. All the cards have a number of bulls on them, which are the points in the game. The dealer gives each player (up to 10 players) 10 cards each, then places 4 face up onto the table, starting 4 rows. Each round, every player will choose a card from their hand, and reveal it simultaneously. The rest is automatic, the lowest played card moves into position first, and the position it takes depends on what’s in the rows. It will sidle next to the card that it’s closest to, keeping true to the rules that the card must be in ascending order, and it is next to the card that has the lowest difference. If a 33 and a 38 are in two different rows, and 37 would go next to the 33, while anything 39 and over would move in next to the 38.
If someone happens to play a card that’s lower than the last card in every row, they instead take the whole row as their ‘score’, and their played card becomes the new start for that row. If a card is being placed in the row, and it’s the 6th card for that row, the whole row is collapsed for that player’s score, and that 6th card becomes the first card in that new row.
Players play all their cards until all hands are empty, scores are tallied, and once someone has 55 points, the end of the game is triggered. At that point, the player with the lowest score is the winner!
While 6 Nimmt! is remarkable in the fact that it can accommodate between 3 and 10 seamlessly, going too big or too small a player count can turn the game into a mad scramble. Portability is a huge boon for 6 Nimmt! As it’s literally just a deck of cards. No tokens or extra bits anywhere to be found. This portability ensures that you’re prepared for impromptu game nights, even if nine unsuspecting victims appear at your campsite.
6 Nimmt’s rules are so straightforward, it takes almost no time to teach a complete novice. The speed at which you get people playing is perfect for those who don’t play many games, and just want to get into the action quickly. The shorter the teach, the less likely people are going to get distracted by idle conversation when I’m trying to impart the rules.
This was a good day
Both strategy and randomness are present in 6 Nimmt. There’s enough luck to smooth out the playing field a bit, but enough strategic depth to give serious players meat to chew on. What really attracts me to 6 Nimmt is the chaos and excitement that is found in the reveal. When players flop over their card and find they managed to avoid a huge number of points by a narrow margin, the whole table gets excited. The last time we played, the #100 card was on the board, and we all were holding our final cards. One player revealed they had the 104 card, another showed their 103. They both exclaimed, one breathing a sigh of relief, and the other groaning at their bad luck. Then I revealed my 102 card, making all the players erupt with laughter as I took the row of points. It may seem small, but unexpected moments like this create memories.
30 years later, 6 Nimmt! remains a masterpiece. It flawlessly blends simplicity with depth, and accessibility with excitement. It never fails to deliver fun, no matter who happens to play, and it does so with an elegance that’s hard to find in the world of tabletop games. 6 Nimmt! is an absolute joy, I recommend it without reservation. And if you ever find me in a pub, there’s a fairly good chance I’ll have this deck of cards nearby.
It’s difficult trying to review a game like El Grande. For one, it’s quite revered. Some of the biggest names in board games call it their favouritegame. El Grande was released in 1995, and to this day still sits in the Board Game Geek’s top 100 games list.
My problem with El Grande has nothing to do with El Grande. It’s a me problem. I generally don’t like area majority games. I struggle to find the fun in gerrymandering, and generally amassing armies and controlling plots of dirt feels more like a pissing contest than an exciting game.
With that introduction, let’s talk about El Grande specifically. El Grande, designed by Wolfgang Kramer and Richard Ulrich, is a 2 – 5 area majority game, where players are playing as Grande’s in medieval Spain. The King’s influence is sagging, and everyone is in a hurry to grow their influence in each of the regions.
In play, Players have a hand of power cards, numbered from 1 to 13, and each card offering a vanishing number of caballeros that will be brought in from the general supply to your court, ready for deployment. In player order, each player plays one of their cards, ensuring they don’t play the same number as anyone who came before them. Then, whoever played the highest card gets to go first. They select one of the 5 action cards along the bottom of the board. Each of these power cards pull double duty. They both have an action on it, and allow you to place a number of caballeros from your court onto the board. Once each player has taken their action card, the round is over and whoever played the lowest number last round starts the next one. A scoring happens every 3 rounds, and after 3 scorings, the player with the most points, wins!
That’s literally it. It’s such a simple set of rules, it’s so clean and pure as far as games go, that if you do like area majority games, El Grande is this brilliant gem. The perfect distillation of an area majority game. It’s real easy to teach, very quick to get started, and while you’re playing, each turn is really smooth. There’s not much for players to forget and get caught up on. It’s a joy to behold!
All the actions in El Grande have consequence. Everything you place out, anything you move or influence, affects everyone else at the table. Sometimes the consequences of your actions aren’t immediately apparent. Like turning one of the lowest scoring provinces with a measly two caballeros on it into the single highest scoring region, and ultimately, drawing the attention of every other player.
This province started with 2 red cubes, then I made it lucrative.
Every decision feels impactful. The power card you put down determines both the turn order and how many caballeros move from the general supply into your court. The action cards determine both the number of caballeros you can move from your court onto the board, and what action you get to take. The province you’re allowed to place in is restricted by where the king is, but many of the actions allow you to bend that rule. Perhaps you’re tied for majority in a particularly juicy region, one of the actions could allow you to slip an extra caballero into that region, or even better, eject an opposing one back to their court.
The actions give flexibility where the placement restrictions of the game give security. I can see why people like this game, it’s really a marvel to behold! It’s so simple and yet so deep, tense and exciting, interactive and yet approachable. To this day, I haven’t seen anyone suggest there’s been an El Grande ‘killer’. It’s elegant, which is particularly spectacular, especially when modern area-majority games seem to be over-complicated and over-wrought in plastic.
And yet, I didn’t have fun. I won the most recent game we played, mostly by focusing on just getting the most caballeros around the board, got an early lead, and held onto it for dear life while the other players tried to buck me from my precious soil. El Grande feels much more tactical than strategic. The only things that REALLY matter are how your units are situated when the 3 scorings happen, everything else is just posturing for that moment.
I also think that El Grande has a run-away leader problem. Once someone has points, you can’t take them away. Someone getting away in the first scoring may paint a target on their back, but each other player still needs to overcome their lead. Something else that isn’t a problem with El Grande, is that experienced players would/should utterly crush inexperienced players. There’s very little you can do to stymie a well-thought-out move.
Unlike a lot of other area majority games, adjacency largely doesn’t matter. The caballeros enter play next to the king, and the majority of the actions give very free movement (when they give movement). Even moving units out of the Castillo is very free (aside from the taboo area of the King).
I can see the brilliance of El Grande, which really cements the fact that area majority games are just not for me. The tactility of spreading your influence across the board, biding your time to make a clutch move, the exciting reveal of who had the most units in the Castillo, AND where they’re going to provide support, creating a last minute shake-up in who controls which province. It’s easy to get excited about El Grande! It’s a great game, if you enjoy area majority games.
For me, El Grande isn’t fun. I don’t like spreading my influence around and hoping that the others players won’t take away the thing I’ve chosen to chase. I can see why some people love it, but I just do not find this game mechanic fun. I’m bored during the first two rounds Because only the scoring round matters. I’m exhausted when my whole turn is undone by someone putting the same number of callberos into the same province as me. There isn’t anything objectively bad in El Grande, but this game really isn’t for me.
There are other area majority games that I do enjoy, like Inis or Brian Boru, but in those games, area majority is only a part of the gameplay, there are other aspects for me to focus my attention. The other game that comes to mind is Hansa Tetunica, which I adore, but there’s a bit more of an action efficiency and engine building mechanic that I really enjoy, more than controlling specific areas. Also, once you have your cube or disc in a building, the only thing other players can do is place their own resources in the same spot, they can’t kick you out.
Honestly, El Grande hits like a required reading novel. The kind where educated and experienced people tell you that “it’s brilliant” and you can find dozens of essays dissecting every aspect of the book, but when a student reads it, it’s just another book. What’s so great about Animal Farm anyways? It’s just a bunch of pigs putting on clothes?
Do not take my opinion for El Grande. If you find any enjoyment in area majority games, this is THE ONE to play. A colourful new edition was just released that looks fantastic. Please seek out others who enjoy El Grande and enjoy this game. But please don’t invite me to that game night.
There aren’t a lot of deduction games that I enjoy. At least, competitive deduction games. I really enjoy solo logic puzzles, but when deduction becomes a competition, I freeze up and my brain becomes a puddle. It probably doesn’t help that the people who make up my regular game group are brutally smart, I always feel like I’m playing catch up. It’s probably because they’re SO much older than me.
Sorry, I’m off track. Cryptid is a deduction game by Hal Duncan and Ruth Veevers and published by Osprey Games in 2018. Playing Cryptid is quite straightforward. The concept is there is a Cryptid on the map, and each player wants to be the one to discover it. To facilitate this, all players are given a single clue pertaining to where the Cryptid could be, and when all the clues are collated, only one hex on the board satisfies all players clues.
Players take turns asking each other if the Cryptid could exist in a specific hex. If yes, a disc goes down. If no, a cube goes down. When someone thinks they know where the cryptid is, they announce their search by placing their own disc on that space, then all players either place a disc or a cube. If all players placed a disc, the searching player is declared the winner.
The first thing that pops is Cryptid’s map. It’s eye-catching! Vibrant colours depicting 5 different terrain types, and really, hexes always look good. A handful of wooden landmarks dot the landscape, and getting closer to the board, you’ll find animal tracks in the bear and cougar habitats. Everything is distinct and clear, which is vital, as the last thing you want getting in your way while playing Cryptid is hard to parse information.
The clues that get doled out have to do with proximity. Things like “Within 1 hex of a water space” or “within 2 spaces of a cougar habitat” or “on either swamp, or mountain” Each of these clues gives players a tiny slice of the puzzle, something that whittles the potential spaces down by ~60%. It’s kind of fascinating that with these clues, only a single hex on the board satisfies all the conditions. I keep expecting to find a fault, an instance where there’s more than one hex, but it’s true, every time.
Cryptid should flow quickly. Each turn is simply pointing to a hex, and asking a player “Here?” and receiving your answer with either a cube or disc. Unfortunately, as with any game that has significant cognitive load, player turns can drag on as they sit with their head in their hands trying to figure out the perfect space to ask a question.
There’s risk in asking a question. If the query returns a ‘no’, then you must also place a cube somewhere else on the board, giving all players more information about your clue. If you haven’t figured it out yet, that’s the real goal of the game. Figuring out what everyone else’s clue is, and finding that single hex that satisfies all the clues.
My brain burned while playing Cryptid. I struggled to keep all the other players clues in my head all at the same time. It was also a very quiet game, where we all just sat staring at the board, sometimes grunting as a cube or disc got placed, until finally the search happened, and the cryptid was discovered. But then an explosion of discussion on what we all thought each other’s clue was, made for quite a good experience.
I hold some reservations toward Cryptid that are not its fault. Things like, if a player misinterprets their rule and makes a mistake with their cube, it can completely break the game. Also, if you play with others who are incredibly logical, there’s nothing that’s going to help you overcome your opponents. All the information is right out on the board, and a players’ ability to parse the information is what determines the winner here.
Cryptid is a pretty little puzzle. There isn’t much variety to the gameplay, each time you shake up the map and drop new landmark locations, but that’s about it for discovery. It’s the kind of game that can be likened to a Sudoku, it’s a great puzzle, but every time you come to this game, it’s going to give you the exact same experience. That’s not a negative, but it will feel worn after several plays in quick succession.
It’s kind of fascinating to read some of the BGG forums, where people claim to have written a python script that can reliably find the Cryptid within just 2 turns. If you were inspired, you could train yourself and figure out the key to this puzzle. I’ve also seen a lot of people who have created deduction sheets to lessen the cognitive load of keeping each player’s clues in your head. Personally, I feel that the choice to omit deduction sheets from the game was intentional. Most of the game is happening inside your head, the workout of deducing the location is a huge part of the experience. Relegating that whole part of the game to paper turns Cryptid from a cerebral puzzle, to a checklist.
As I said above, deduction games are not my forte. Cryptid is an excellent game for those who like deduction puzzles. At the end of the day, I’d happily play Cryptid again, but it’s not one that I’ll ever be requesting to play. I much prefer Alchemists, where if my deductions fail, there are more game elements for me to focus on. I can still publish my findings, and in the event of catastrophe, poison a student for my own enjoyment.
SCOUT by Kei Kanjino and published by Oink Games has got to be one of the most widely popular little box of cards Oink games has published so far.
Each card in SCOUT is double-sided, with different numbers on either side. Each round begins by dealing out the whole deck to all players (with certain cards removed in less than full player count games). When you receive your cards, you are not allowed to re-arrange them in your hand. What you can do, is choose to use the top or bottom side of your hand, flipping the entire collection of cards over in one movement.
Each turn, players either Scout, or Show. When you show, you pick a set of cards from your hand (either cards of ascending or descending value, or, a collection of identical numbers) that are adjacent to each other, and place them on the table, making it the ‘active show’ Each subsequent player may either Scout, which has them taking one card from either end of the show and adding it to their hand, giving the player whose show is being picked apart a victory point, or, play a competing show by playing cards from their hand with more cards, or higher value cards, than the current show. If you beat a show, you take the defeated show into your play area, to count as points after the round is over.
Once per round, players can perform a special “scout and show” action, which allows them to pilfer a card from the existing show, then, immediately play their own show.
The round ends when either someone has no cards left in their hand after a show, or, every other player scouts after a show. The cards left in your hand are negative points, while the cards you’ve collected from beaten shows are positive points.
SCOUT is a brilliant little game. It’s light and easy, so anyone can get into it, but it’s not too light that it becomes mindless. I like the first moment where you get your hand, and you try to figure out which way you want to keep your hand. Which side has more immediate Shows, and which one has the potential for a much longer show. Both are important, and the importance can vary wildly depending on the player count.
Because the round ends if your show gets back around to you, in a 3 player game a show of just 4 cards could bring the round to an end, if the other players are unlucky enough. Speaking of luck, there is a pretty large element of luck in that you can get really hosed on how the cards are dealt out to you. If that bothers you, stay away from SCOUT, there is no way to mitigate bad luck. That said, there is strategy to be plumbed, which has kept me engaged throughout all my plays.
I don’t know what exactly what parameters need to exist for me to decide that luck is okay, but in the cast of SCOUT, I’m fine with it. There are no stakes, no lost time or wasted game nights when I get boned by bad luck. Just reshuffle and play it again, no biggie.
I love the hand management aspect of the game. It’s so satisfying when you can play strategic Shows to have the remaining cards in your hand fall perfectly into place. Similarly, when you have a 3,4,5,7,8 in your hand, and your opponent plays a 6. The moment when you can scout and show and drop a massive 6 card run onto the table gets the whole table exclaiming. That said, there is tension in hording a handful of cards. Sure, you might play a 6 card run next turn, but when the player before you drops their final 4 cards from their hand and saddles you with a bunch of negative points, it stings!
I could talk negatively about the theme of poaching circus staff from each other, but I don’t really feel like this criticism takes away from the enjoyment of the game. If the names and professions were scrubbed from the game, and they were just numbered cards, I’d be totally fine with it.
SCOUT is a great game, and one that I recommend without recommendation. Its tiny box makes it easily portable, its light ruleset allows nearly anyone to sit down and start playing after 90 seconds of rules. It’s fast, allowing players to hop in and out as needed. SCOUT will be one of the few games that I’ll be bringing on my travels this summer, and I’m sure more than a few new fans will be created.
