I’ve always preferred the fantasy side of fiction. Sci-fi is great and all, but it’s never been my preferred flavour. Doctor Who is a series that I never bothered with until I met a girl who insisted that we watch the entire (new) series together. I quite enjoyed the first time watching each episode, but found the series didn’t hold up during a re-watch (perhaps I was just enjoying the company, not the show). Nevertheless, that girl is now my wife, and being a Whovian is a large part of her nerd identity. This materializes in Tardis socks and a Tardis dress in our closet, 2 Tardis blankets on our bed, and and Doctor Who Fluxx sitting in our date night bag.
How to Play
Each game of Fluxx starts with a single deck of cards in the centre of the table, a starting hand of 3 cards, and only 2 rules. On your turn you must draw 1 card, and play 1 card. Then play continues to the next player. Cards come in various flavours, including Goals, Keepers, Creepers, New Rules, Actions and Reactions.
The goal of the game is to fulfill the active goal card (once someone has played a goal card, that is), which generally involve having a specific set of Keepers and sometime Creepers on the table in front of you. Generally, Creepers will prevent you from winning the game, but there are some specific goal cards that require that you have a Creeper in front of you. As play happens and players put down more rules, the game will spiral out of control until one player manages to achieve the current goal, and declares victory.
Doctor Who Fluxx features characters from across the entirety of the series as keepers and creepers. From the robot dog K-9, to all 12 doctors and various companions and tools, all with associated goal cards. The Cybermen, Daleks, Weeping Angels, and The Master are all working together to prevent you from achieving your goals.
Review
On Fluxx:
Fluxx is a weird beast. By all rights, I shouldn’t even enjoy it, if I stick to my assertions that I don’t like games that are heavy in luck. Fluxx is easy (usually) quick enough that I’m willing to relinquish control and just have a good time.
The majority of the time players win ‘by accident’, drawing the right keeper at the right time is what separates a victory from a loss. Not player choice or strategy. For some, the lack of agency will take away the joy of winning or the sting of losing, but for others Fluxx will just be frustrating. You’ll be close to a victory, the right goal is on the table, you have one of the two necessary keepers, then suddenly someone steals your keeper, or the goal changes, or you draw a Creeper. Alternatively, if you have a row of Keepers and someone plays the correct goal card, you just win.
The odds are, you’ve played Fluxx. If you haven’t, you can play it for free on Board Game Arena or as a phone app. If you have played Fluxx you already know if you like it or not. If you do, great! If not, changing the setting isn’t going to change your mind.
On the Doctor Who setting:
I think die hard fans of Doctor Who, or Whovian’s as they’re often referred as, who have a deep appreciation of the lore, will find themselves somewhat disappointed. Yes, Doctors 1 through 8 exist, along with K-9 and Sarah Jane Smith, but there’s very little specifically for those old characters. They end up just being generic wildcard Keepers with “The Doctor” trait that can be used to fufill several of the goals. Doctor Who Fluxx skews to the newer seasons for specific references, but, even those feel surface level. I do like the small references, like, Captian Jack Harkness can’t die, but there’s little that makes me feel like the characters are anything more than things to fill recipes. There’s absolutely no difference between Donna Nobel and Martha Jones, for instance.
I don’t expect deep cuts to the comic book story lines, nor can I expect every doctor to have 3 specific goals that work with them. The references cater to the casual fan (that’s me!) who vaguely remembers the important bits; one who couldn’t name the characters if put on the spot, but can recognize the references when the cards are played.
Final thoughts:
I enjoy playing Doctor Who Fluxx with my partner. We go to a pub, take in a pint, and casually flip cards at each other. A big part of my enjoyment is the Doctor Who setting, reliving the quotable quotes on the cards, and being seeing my favourite companions (like the Ponds) pop up. I’m indifferent to the Doctors who I never watched (1 – 8), but it doesn’t take away from my enjoyment. I enjoy Fluxx as a system, but I never take it seriously. It’s a fun, random card game that’s effective at passing the time and facilitating activity amongst friends and family.
Should games be reviewed in a vacuum? When I consider a game, should I be looking at it as a product as if no other games exist, or should I be comparing it to similar games? Does this change if the designer of the game already has a similar game on the market? The question of “Do I need both?” comes up often enough, so I assume there are values in the comparisons.
Uwe Rosenberg has released a lot of games, and if you’ve played several of his game, you’ll start to notice some common trends. The polyomino games like Patchwork, New York Zoo, Cottage Garden, and A Feast for Odin or the farming games like Agricola, Fields of Arle, and Caverna: The Cave Farmers have similar mechanics between them, often evoking similar feels and emotions when they get played.
How to Play
Caverna: The Cave Farmers is a worker placement game. The centre of the table holds the main action board that gets populated with resources every round, and allows you to take actions on your player board to help you scratch a living from the land. Players start with only two workers living in a simple dwelling. On your turn, you place one of your workers onto an unoccupied space on the main board, and take the depicted action.
Your player board has two halves. The left half is a forest, which you can slash and burn to create fields and meadows to grow crops and breed animals. The right side of your board is a mountain, which you can carve into space for furnishings and dwellings, which will give you special powers, or earn you victory points at the end of the game.
At the end of each round, there might be a harvest. During a harvest phase you start by pulling one item off each of your crops, then, you must feed your people. Two food is required for every fully grown worker you have. Then, if you have a pair of animals on your board, they produce a third animal!
At the start of each round, and new action space is revealed, offering new and exciting actions for you and your opponents to take. Once you’ve reveals all the actions spaces, and satisfied the final harvest phase, the game comes to an end, and the player with the most points is the winner.
Review
Look, Agricola and Caverna: The Cave Farmers (hereby just called Caverna) get compared a lot. They’re both worker placement games where you need to build a farm and feed your people. I’ve outlined some of their similarities and differences here, but I’ll be focusing on Caverna as if Agricola doesn’t exist until the end of the review.
Caverna is a big box. With enough components to play up to 7 players, it has heft, and it sprawls, consuming even the largest of tables. I highly recommend having bowls or some other way to manage the tokens, and they are plentiful and get messy when someone’s fingers dive into the neat little piles, sending tiny wooden pieces skittering across the floor. I can’t imagine playing Caverna with 7 players. At an advertised (and generous) 30 minutes per player, that would take all day. The downtime in between turns can be a bit of a problem at 4 players already. In a 4 player game, if I have 30 minutes of ‘game play’ time, that would mean there are 90 minutes of me just watching my opponent hem and haw over which resources they want to take.
I generally enjoy worker placement games, they’re interactive without the daggers. The most you can do to your opponents is take the spot they wanted to go to, which is enough for me to have some trash-talk with my friends, but not enough to inspire ill will. Uwe Rosenberg has mastered the tension of worker placement games, making plenty of spaces lucrative and tempting, and that every space should be taken at least once per game. There’s enough actions to take so that I never feel like I’m wasting a turn, but there are plenty of situations where you really really want to take a specific action space as it would just benefit you so greatly.
Caverna’s resources are varied. There’s wood, stone, ore, rubies, food, gold, dogs, sheep, donkeys, cows, wheat, and vegetables, each as a custom shaped wooden piece. Most of these resources can be found on the main board, flowing into the system and into your personal supply by taking the stockpiles as your action. Rubies are a wildcard resource, they can be converted into almost anything else at any time, making them valuable and perfect for filling in any minor shortfalls you find yourself in. Of course, having this many resources means you’ll frequently find yourself missing one entirely and need to take a whole action to acquire however many of that resource are available on the main board.
One of the mechanics I didn’t talk about above is the ‘expeditions’. Once the smelting action becomes available, you can spend ore to build a weapon for your worker. If that worker is then placed on an action space that allows expeditions, they acquire resources up to their level. This is perfect for acquiring a small amount of a lot of different goods and covering any dearths in the market. Bigfoot just took all the sheep from the board? No problem, I’ll just bring one home from my expedition.
The expeditions open Caverna wide up. Suddenly, missing resources on the player board aren’t a real issue any longer. Fairly quickly, you can get anything you need from a simple expedition. Desperately need a pumpkin? My level 4 worker has got you covered. The expedition spaces are hotly contested, but Caverna does force you to use your workers in reverse strength order, meaning your worker with the best weapon will appear on the board last. You can spend a ruby to play one out of order, however.
The expeditions can grind the game to a halt. If you’re trying to figure out which 4 items you will take from your level 9 adventure, there are a lot of aspects to consider. The rule book says that while someone is considering their expedition loot options, the next player can proceed with their turn. However, in one of my 4 player games, the subsequent players all took their turns, and it made it back around to the player who was still wrestling with his options. It’s a bit of a struggle just watching people think while you wait for your turn. If you or your group are sensitive to analysis paralysis, be wary of this game.
The game length is also deceiving. The first 5 rounds FLY by, taking mere minutes each. The very first time I played Caverna, I texted my (then) girlfriend after 6 rounds and told her to meet me somewhere in 30 minutes. Low and behold, the final 3 rounds take at least 15 minutes each. It makes sense, as the game goes on the number of workers each person has will likely double, and the number of available actions also increases significantly. Not everyone will be bothered by the length of the game, but adjust your expectations accordingly.
I’ve barely touched on the furnishing board. 48 different buildings that are available to everyone from the start of the game. To build these, you need to prepare space in your cave, but they offer game-changing bonuses if chosen correctly. The Seam room provides an ore everytime you obtain a rock, the cooking cave allows you to trade in a vegetable and a grain for 5 food (2 more than they would provide on their own), and parlours, storage rooms, and chambers offer a bevy of end-game scoring opportunities. These rooms never change and known from the start of the game.
Here is where I arrive at why I prefer Agricola over Caverna. Agricola has multiple decks of cards offering various tools and occupations. While luck can hurt, it’s up to you to figure out a way to earn the most points by using the cards dealt (or drafted) to you. Each game is unique and can vary wildly. Caverna takes a more static path, allowing you to pick the strategy you want to change before you even take your first turn. I could see rote openings and meta strategies being developed among Caverna enthusiasts. Caverna lacks the same tension and stress that I enjoy overcoming in Agricola. Never have I even come close to needing a begging tile. Sure, MAYBE giving up a cow would cost me more than 3 points, and it MIGHT make sense to beg instead of slaughter my animals, but I’ve never been in danger. That said, I’ve also never won Caverna, so maybe my own sense of tension is misguided. I generally don’t feel the pinch of resources being taken from me, as I can just go on an expedition to make up my shortfalls, or collect rubies to convert into anything I might need. It’s much more forgiving than Misery Farm
That being said, I do quite like Caverna, just not as much as Agricola. It appears that I’m in the minority, as everyone else I’ve played Caverna with, and have also played Agricola, prefer this cave dwelling experience more. Both games are excellent, and playing either one is well worth your time, but I do not believe that anyone needs to own both. This is a case where you should try both and choose your favourite to own. If you enjoy randomness and variability, seek out Agricola. If you prefer refining your strategy with a more static set up, then Caverna: The Cave Farmers just might be the right game for you.
Once again, I’m confronted with the question, “Should games be reviewed in a vacuum?”. When considering a game, should I look at it from the perspective of when it was released? Should I compare it to similar games, or to the past works of the designer(s)? In the end, I think all I can really do is share how a game makes me feel when I play it, while trying to be fair to the passage of time.
How to Play
The Pillars of the Earth by Michael Rieneck and Stefan Stadler is based on the 1989 novel of the same name, written by Ken Follett. In The Pillars of the Earth, players assume the roles of builders, working to construct a cathedral, and earning victory points based on the resources and labour they commit to the project.
The main mechanism of The Pillars of the Earth is worker placement, but it has a bit of a unique hook. Players each have 3 ‘master builder’ pawns that all get tossed into a bag. One by one, the first player pulls the pawns from a bag. The player whose pawn is pulled from the bag has a choice, they can either place their pawn onto an action space and pay the associated cost, or, pass. Whether they place or pass, the cost to place is reduced by 1, and the next pawn is drawn. This repeats until all the pawns are removed from the bag. Then, the players who passed take turns moving their pawns out onto the board for free.
I should mention, before the pawn placement phase, each round begins with a draft. 7 cards depicting resources are divvied out to players. Each card requires you to commit workers to them, meaning you can’t just choose the one that gives you the most resources. Sometimes you’ll desperately want both Stone and wood, so you’ll opt to take the cheaper cards first.
Anyway, once the resource cards are distributed, and the player pawns placed, all the actions resolve in numerical order, moving clockwise around the board. There’s an event that triggers, with an associated action space that protects that player from the effects of the event, special visitors who will bestow persistent benefits to the player who selects them, a space to earn points, a place to evade taxes, a space to recruit builders, a resource market, and finally, capping off the round, an opportunity to convert the resources you acquired into victory points. After 6 rounds, the player who earned the most victory points is the winner.
Review
In some ways, The Pillars of the Earth is unique and interesting, and in other ways, it feels very 2006. The main hook of the game, the way actions are distributed by pulling pawns out of a bag, was neat and interesting. It can be both a blessing and a curse to be the first pawn pulled out of the bag. On one hand, you get first pick of any space on the board. On the other hand, you’ll pay dearly for that privilege. Should you feel strapped for cash, and two or three of your pawns come out early, suddenly your fortunes twist from getting first crack at the board, to going absolutely last.
The components of The Pillars of the Earth are pretty good. The mini cards are adequate, the resource cubes are slightly larger than average, and each player gets a handful of human shaped meeples in their colour. The standout component is the main board. While a standard size, it’s beautifully illustrated. Another component that I want to highlight is the 6 cathedral blocks. At the start of each round, you’ll add one block to the cathedral, representing the progress players are making in building this grant project. I feel a bit of dissonance with this aspect, however, no matter how much or how little players contribute, the building will still get built. It can serve as a round marker, but the numbered craftsman cards do a better job conveying that information. Ultimately, the cathedral is whimsical, but pointless.
I almost feel like the cathedral should be built in stages according to the sum of all the players points, sort of like a semi-cooperative game. Perhaps that could be a way to end the game early, if all the resources needed for the church are completed, then the game is over. I’m just speculating here, but I do like games that have a project that all players contribute to, such as Troyes (Sébastien Dujardin, Xavier Georges, Alain Orban, 2010) or Caylus (William Attia, 2005).
Teaching and playing The Pillars of the Earth is fairly straightforward. The rulebook is only 8 pages long and covers all the actions nicely. We did feel the lack of an appendix detailing all the cards when coming against an ambiguity. Like, “player produces one additional stone each round”. Does that mean the player needs to produce at least one stone for this power to trigger? Turns out, no. It’s a minor complaint, but I dislike it when ambiguity on card text forces us to pause our game and consult the forums.
If there’s one aspect that makes me feel like The Pillars of the Earth is an older game, it’s how the game chooses to use randomness. There’s an event each round that gets revealed after the players all place their pawns for the round. One of the spaces available is to protect yourself from the impending event, but you don’t know what that event is going to be, so, you place your pawn in that spot to protect yourself from that randomness? It’s a bit odd. Along the same lines, each round the King demands taxes. Halfway through the complete action phase, the start player rolls a die, and all players need to pay between 2 and 5 gold, depending on that die roll, unless you happened to place a pawn in the King’s Court, then you’re exempt from this requirement. Again, not knowing what you’re mitigating feels very 2006.
I try to put myself back in the year 2007, when most people would have played The Pillars of the Earth for the first time. I suspect that back then, the novelties of the worker placement mechanic would have lit some worlds on fire. I find myself wishing that mechanic was tied to a more interesting game. Beyond the pulling the workers from the bag mechanic, the rest of the game is fairly dull. A somewhat generic convert resources into victory points affair. As the game rounds go on, the craftsmen that become available are the same as the ones you already have, but are, just, better. The Stonemason you have at the beginning of the game needs 2 stone to convert into 1 point, while the end game Stonemason will convert a single stone into 2 points. Now, you’re not able to hoard resources all game and just wait for the final craftsmen to show up, which makes The Pillars of the Earth feel less strategic and more tactical. The Pillars of the Earth is not an engine building game, you can never guarantee your income or resource production. Instead, you’ll need to squeeze the most value from the goods and craftsmen that become available to you in order to come out ahead.
In the end, The Pillars of the Earth was a fine game to play. We had fun for the two hours it took us to learn and play, but when we were finished, we all agreed that we wouldn’t choose to come back to it. Compared to all the games that we own and want to return to, The Pillars of the Earth is a bit of a relic of the past. It evoked similar feelings of Caylus (William Attia, 2005), but without the brutality of the provost. I’m glad I played The Pillars of the Earth, but it’s not a game I’ll be clamouring to return to. If I’m thirsty for a worker placement game, I’d sooner return to Agricola (Uwe Rosenberg, 2007) or Viticulture (Jamey Stegmaier, Alan Stone, 2013) first, and I feel the desire to convert cubes into points, I’d much sooner play Century: Spice Road (Emerson Matsuuchi, 2017) or Stone Age (Bernd Brunnhofer, 2008).
It’s pretty rare that I learn a game digitally. I find it so much harder to learn a game by watching videos on YouTube then starting a game on a website like Boardgamearena.com or Yucata.de and just seeing how it goes over a couple of days. I end up acting like those old point-and-click adventure games, where I just click anything that’s available to click and hope to stumble onto the answer. Generally, reading the rules gives me a framework of how to play, but I find it quite difficult to conceptualize or strategize until I’ve played a game through at least once.
Vikings is a game that I played a dozen times on Yucata.de before picking up the physical edition. The online implementation is great, but like most of us who are ‘in the board game hobby’, given the choice between playing games in a web browser and playing a game in the table, we’ll take the table every time. And I’m glad I did, Vikings by Michael Kiesling is a gem of a game.
How to Play
To play Vikings, each round 12 tiles are laid out around the central spinning wheel. Any boat tiles are placed at the highest available number and any island tile is placed at the lowest available number. Then 12 Vikings are pulled from the bag and sorted into their colours and placed next to each tile. Blue Vikings go among the lowest number, then yellows, greens, reds, blacks and finally greys Vikings are placed at the highest number. At the beginning of the game you’re given coins depending on the number of players and a single island start tile.
On your turn you need to buy a tile and Viking pair, and place the tile into your tableau. The amount you pay for a tile and Viking combo is dictated by the wheel in the centre of the table, from 11 gold all the way down to 0 gold. You can only take the 0 cost tile if the Viking next to that island is the only one of its colour available.
After buying an island and Viking, you need to place the island into your tableau. If you manage to place the island tile in the same colour row as your Viking, you can place the Viking right onto that piece of land, otherwise your Viking has to sit at the top of the board until a boatswain ferries it onto an empty tile. It’s also important to note that the island tiles come in three varieties, start, middle, and end. If you have a start tile in your tableau, then you can put a middle or end tile against it, but you can’t put two start tiles adjacent to each other.
When someone does manage to take the free tile, the price wheel rotates clockwise until the 0 spot is lined up with the next available Viking, thereby making everything else cheaper. If you choose to buy the most expensive tile available, you’ll also get a special tile that offers some significant benefits.
If the tile you take happens to have an invading boat instead of a piece of island, the Viking defaults to sitting on the beach at the top of your board, and the boat is placed along the top row on your tableau. Any boat along the top of your tableau will negate some of your Vikings in that column, rendering them useless.
When I’m teaching Vikings, I feel a bit like I’m teaching Galaxy Trucker. “These blue Vikings are fishermen, they feed 5 Vikings in your commune. You want as many of these as possible. The yellow Vikings are gold smiths, they earn you 3 gold each. You want as many of these as possible. The red Vikings are nobles, they give you two points per red Viking. You want as many of them as possible!” Every Viking has their role, and the left side of the player board will remind of as to what each one does.
Review
Vikings by Michael Kiesling defies expectations. When you hear Vikings, you’ll think exploration, pillaging, and mayhem. In this box you’ll instead find a fast economic game about fiscal responsibility and real estate management. In fact, the only thing that really makes Vikings feel like a Viking game, is the meeples with the horned helmets.
You have a limited amount of money to spend on getting Vikings and limited ways to generate more gold. You need to deal with Vikings of the wrong colour associated with exactly the tile you need so you’ll need to make do. Sometimes in a round there will only be one or two of the coveted starting tiles, forcing you need to balance picking other Vikings and hoping the price for that one tile drops a bit, but not too low that one of your opponents leaps out and takes before you.
The game comes with a couple optional variants, such as bidding for turn order, and advanced tiles that offer a benefit if you buy the most expensive tile available. I rarely use the bidding for turn order option, but I never play without the advanced tiles. They don’t add much to the rules or complexity, but they offer rewards for doing something unexpected, like buying the most expensive tile on the board. Sometimes the cheaper tiles aren’t that appealing it’s really nice to have a reward for spending a bit of coin on the more expensive tiles.
If you run out of money you can opt to use victory points to make up the difference at a rate of 1 to 1. You are never forced to trade points for gold, but if you can if you want. You better make sure that doing so worth your while, as at the end of the game the conversion back from gold to victory points is 5 gold to 1 point.
Vikings plays well at all player counts, but it does feel weird to play several 4 player games, then switch to a two player game. The number of Vikings and islands don’t change, so you just end up accumulating twice as many as you normally would have. It’s full of decisions and trade-offs that make each game feel different and intresting.
Vikings doesn’t coddle you with a catch up mechanism. If you start falling behind you are liable to stay behind. While there’s no way to directly interact with someone, a keen eye can deny someone a crucial component to their community. Thankfully, Vikings doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. With a bright colour pallet and unique spinner in the middle of the table and a 45-60 minute playtime, it’s easy to see why Vikings has is my most played Michael Keisling game. It’s a solid design and it keeps coming back out for more.
A prototype of Draft & Write Records was provided by the publisher for review purposes
Introduction
A great shame in my life is that I never grew up appreciating music. I lived in a very small town and the extent of my exposure to music were some old country cassettes and a bunch of recorders stuffed into the school’s storage. As a teenager I got my hands a few CD’s, like Sum 41’s All Killer No Filler, Green Day’s American Idiot, and The Killers Hot Fuss. I listened to these 3 CDs on repeat on my Sony Discman, but getting new or varied albums was quite a challenge. The closest town with a ‘music’ store was 4 hours away, and at the time, buying new albums was directly competing with my desire to buy books and video games.
As an adult, living in the world of streaming, I spend most of my time listening to Pokémon Lo-Fi remixes while I work, or to the local alt-rock radio station during my morning commute. Unfortunately, music is just background noise in my life, it’s never the focus.
What I’m trying to say here, is that I have no special affinity for musically themed games. But enough about my music history (or great lack thereof), let’s talk about Draft & Write Records by Inside Up Games!
How to Play
In Draft & Write Records players will embark on a weeks long quest to become the most popular band in all the land, or, the most popular band at your table. Each round of the game is structured after a week. On the first day of the week phase, 5 cards are dealt out to each player. Each player simultaneously selects one of the cards to keep, and passes the rest to their neighbour. All players reveal their card simultaneously, taking the associated action depicted on the card.
Players repeat this three more times, until they’ve played 4 cards total. The fifth card is tossed into a common discard pile, then the weekend arrives. During the weekend, all players evaluate the common goals. If anyone achieved them, they record the score on their sheet, and the goal is discarded. After all goals have been evaluated, the goal line is refreshed, and the game continues with a whole new week.
There are 5 different actions depicted on the cards, each action corresponds to a specific section of your player sheet. The centre is building your band, which has you playing musicians, production staff, and backstage staff. Each band member has a point value, and 4 attributes. You record the points and the attributes in a single section. Should an attribute match with an adjacent band member, you create a harmony, allowing you to cross off a section on the harmony track (which can net you bonus actions and victory points.
The Agenda cards refer to a 4 by 4 grid of symbols in the top right corner. You’ll need 4 symbols in a row or column to unlock the bonuses on both sides of the line. The asset cards allow you to cross off matching icons on the asset section, and you’ll earn the bonuses if you manage to cross off the asset on both sides of the bonus.
The releases and the tours sections of the board aren’t actions represented on cards. The only way you can progress in those spaces is by unlocking the associated bonus peppered throughout the board. If you are ever in a situation where you cannot play a card, or you choose not to play a card, you must take a ‘fail’, which will deliver negative points. Too many fails will end the game for everyone.
The game is over if someone fills their fail track, fills their goal track, or, completely fills their band section. The points are tallied, and the player with the highest score is the winner!
Review
Draft & Write Records is coming to Kickstarter on September 27th. As always with anything that gets produced via a crowdfunding campaign, everything is subject to change.
As I alluded to above, I have no affinity for the theme; music has never been a big part of my life. I’ve made a few feeble attempts at learning some instruments, but it’s not a skill I’ve developed.
In Draft & Write Records players are drafting actions to use to fill out their player board. At first glance the board looks big, colourful, and busy, difficult to intuit how all the sections work together. Learning the game from the rulebook was straightforward and clear. Each section of your player sheet operates independently and the rule book walks through them one at a time.
Every round (or week) starts with 5 cards. On your turn, you pick one card, and pass the rest along. All players reveal their choices simultaneously, and take the action listed on the card they chose. After 4 actions, the 5th card is tossed into a central discard pile, and the goals are evaluated.
Front and centre of the board is the band lineup, featuring a lead singer, 4 musicians, 3 production crew, and 4 backstage staff. Each band member has 4 traits and a point value. If you can arrange your band members in a such a way that the traits alight, you’ll create a harmony, which lets you cross off a matching colour along the bottom of your sheet. This track is worth a fair amount of points, and helps lead to record deals.
Along the right side of the board are two different grids. In the top grid (your band’s agenda) you need to cross off 4 icons in a row to earn the bonuses on either end of the row. On the bottom right is a tablet depicting your bands assets, with a series of bonuses surrounded by icons. If you manage to cross off both the icons surrounding a bonus icon, you earn that bonus.
The joy of the ‘roll and write’ or ‘flip and write’, or now, the ‘draft and write’ genre of games is the ability to earn cascading bonuses. It feels so good when you take your single card, add a musician to your band list, cross off a harmony along the bottom, which gives you a free action in your agenda, which completes a row and a diagonal, gives you a record deal, a tour, and two more harmony dots you can fill in, which can cascade into more bonuses.
Of course, a turn like that can only really happen once per game and requires a lot of set up. Slowly building up your tableau in preparation for this moment can feel painful, but Draft & Write Records is pretty good at doling out little bits of bonuses as you work towards the big combo that will rocket your band into stardom.
It’s important to promote yourself on the radio!
The player deck can be absolutely massive if playing with the full complement of 6 players. You’ll only see 5 cards at a time, and your neighbours can’t affect your game, except for hate-drafting away the exact card you need. Personally, I didn’t feel compelled to scope out my competition’s sheets, or take a card that was of little benefit to me just to keep it out of the hands of my opponent. Most of your game will be spent just looking at your own sheet and trying to maximize your score.
In between each week is a goal evaluation phase. In the centre of the table are 4 goals that all players evaluate to try and earn points. They range from piddly 4 point goals like “Collect 2 piano symbols” all the way up to 24 point diamond goals requiring you hire 6x 1 point crew members. The goals deck is hefty, with 66 different goals in the version I played, which is great for variability and can lead players down lucrative paths they might not have considered before. Many of the goals also offer extra bonuses when they’re achieved, again, potentially triggering cascading bonuses and bringing a smile to my face.
Draft & Write Records feels much bigger and slower to play than many of the other “X and write” games I’ve played in the past, like Railroad Ink, or Cartographers. I enjoy the drafting element as it gives each player a different game to play. Maybe I’ll focus on building out my assets and harmonies more, while another player prioritizes going on tours. I like that our games will be different, and it’s not just giving every player the same choices and seeing who does best with them.
In the end, Draft & Write Records is a fun game to play and achieving the cascading combos triggers a dopamine release that I find incredibly satisfying. If you’re a fan of the “X and write” genre, Draft & Write Records is worth trying, doubly so if you have any affinity for the theme.
Mechanics: Cooperative, Dice Rolling Combat, Variable Player Powers
Players: 1 to 5
A prototype copy of the game was provided for review purposes
How to Play
Familiars and Foes is a 1 to 5 player cooperative boss battling game where you play as an elemental fox familiar on a quest to save the good witches and wizards of Joralee. A game of Familiars and Foes lasts for 4 waves, and pits players against a variety of enemy monsters.
To begin the game, all players chose an asymmetric familiar, and their corresponding spell cards. One will be the basic spells that you can use right from the start of the game, and the other will be the advanced spells that need to be unlocked by completing a variety of basic actions. The back of the rule book has a chart that seeds the board with a number of foes based on your player count, and chosen difficulty level.
To begin a round of Familiars and Foes, players first draw the witch or wizard they’re rescuing. If the element of the sorcerer matches one of the familiars, great! They have access to an extra special power during this wave. If the mage in distress doesn’t have a matching familiar in play, they’re simply discarded.
The foes for the wave are set into their slots, with their health dependent on the number of players at the table. The turn order is set, and the game begins. Players on their turn can either preform a physical attack, cast a spell, or play their artifact.
Physical attacks tables are listed on each player’s sheet, with a varying threshold for successes and failures for each character. One character would hurt themselves if you rolled 6 or under, but would do 4 damage if the die exceeded 16. Another character had easier thresholds, but lower rewards.
Each character has their own set of spells, although the basic spells are all pretty similar. On your turn if you chose to play a spell you simply select which one you’d like to cast, pay the required mana, and roll the die, hoping to earn a success by exceeding the threshold, which is different for each spell. Again, higher risks mean higher rewards. If you manage to land a hit using a basic attack, each other player at the table had the opportunity to pile on, using the Ballyhoo mechanic. They pay a single magic point, then flip a coin. Heads, they deal two damage. Tails, they take one damage. If the Ballyhoo succeeds, the next player can pile on too. The Ballyhoo either continues until all players have piled on, or someone fails the coin flip.
At the beginning of the game, each familiar draws an artifact card that offers a powerful onetime bonus. On your turn, you can choose to use your artifact, but then it’s gone for the rest of the game. Each player also has a special ability that they can use 3 times during the game. Again, once those charges are gone, so is the ability.
Play continues from character to character as dictated by the turn order tracker, until it finally reaches the enemy. All the foes that are still alive at this point roll a die, and act according to their table.
Once all the foes are defeated, players restore their magic points to full health, and proceed with the next wave. Finish 4 waves and you’ve won! If all players have their health points reduced to 0, the Familiars have failed.
Review
I was not prepared for how adorable Familiars and Foes was. This game exudes charm and character. I absolutely adore the art all over everything. The Familiars are cute, and I desperately want their pushes to adorn my shelves, the enemies are charming and clever, and the little artist flourishes left me absolutely charmed. Even the Familiars’ Familiars, the frogs, are adorable. I’ll say it loud and proud right now, I would die for Spike.
The copy I got to play is a prototype copy, and the designers assure me that every component that I had my hands on will be upgraded during the course of their crowdfunding campaign. Everything physical was fine, but I am looking forward to higher quality card stock. The tarot sized cards I got were a little bowed during my first play, which is only slightly disappointing. All the cards sit on the table for the entire game, meaning the bending isn’t a big deal, but it’s a minor annoyance with the physical production.
That being said, I love the large cards. It makes it easy to read the text from across the table, and gives the artist lots of room to display their charming foes. Seriously, Familiars and Foes art direction has absolutely charmed me. The heroes, the villains, everything is a joy to look at.
The gameplay is fast and simple, which is good for a game you plan on playing with your family. On your turn you choose to either do a physical attack, or cast a spell, then roll the die to determine if you were successful or not. In some cases, a low roll would see you suffering self-damage, while high rolls would deal critical hits.
The spells each character can cast are listed on their player sheet, and generally ask players how much risk they’re willing to take on, in return for how much damage they want to deal to the foe. The choices are straightforward and simple. Once you’ve made your choice, you roll the die and let fate decide if you made the right choice or not. There are precious few chances to re-roll a bad result, meaning sometimes the game might be a cakewalk, while other times you’ll find yourself getting crippled by the first Foe.
I’ve often talked about how I like progression in games, how I want to get stronger as the game goes on instead of trying to just survive a series of attritional battles. In this regard, I wish there were ways to earn more artifacts during the gameplay instead of only having one at the beginning. That said, I do enjoy the achievement system that unlocks your stronger spells. It’s also a helpful teaching tool, reducing the number of actions each player needs to consider at the start of the turn, and gives players a reason to try all their basic actions first, before giving them the real juicy attacks. I also appreciate that each witch or wizard you manage to rescue offers a boon to their corresponding familiar, potentially giving you a game-saving benefit.
I’m a fan of the Rougelike genre. Rogue Legacy, Enter the Gungeon, Wizard of Legend, and Slay the Spire are some of my favourite video games. Familiars and Foes has aspects that remind me of those rougelike games. Each time you set the game up, you’ll be in for a different combination of monsters and different artifacts that can drastically change how you will approach the wave. I really enjoy this variability, and I am looking forward to seeing more foes, more artifacts, and more familiars, hopefully in the form of stretch goals or future expansions. I would like to see the asymmetry in the characters expanded on even further, or having different ‘advance spell builds’ available for each Familiar to increase the replayability.
I enjoyed Familiars and Foes more than I expected. The charming art captured my heart and helped build a narrative in my head. The game-play is simplistic; choose an attack and roll a die to see if you hit, but I’m okay with that. I’m sure this would be a hit with my 6-year-old niece, even if she needs an adult to help her manage the game system. The cute art draws her in, the simple rule set doesn’t scare her away, and the pure joy that comes from rolling the die and scoring that critical hit is unparalleled. Familiars and Foes is a great cooperative game to introduce younger members of the family to the joy of board games.
