Artist: Jaroslav Jurica, Marek Loskot, Pavel Richter
Intro
Let me tell you a bit about my mom. Some of my earliest memories of my mother is of her morning ritual; she would sit at the kitchen table, steam pouring out of her coffee mug, and smoke lazily rising from the end of the cigarette gently held between two of her fingers of her left hand. In her right hand she held a pen, and on the table in front of her, a PennyPress puzzle book.
We had dozens of puzzle books in every room in the house.
My mom loves games and puzzles. When she wasn’t doing puzzles on paper at the kitchen table, she’d often be playing puzzle video games. Yoshi’s Cookie (SNES) and The New Tetris (Nintendo 64) were some of her favourites. As a child I also loved video games. Some of my first memories of Tetris were of my mom and I playing The New Tetris in the versus mode. She would mercilessly kick my butt to the curb. The phrase ‘git gud’ hadn’t been popularized yet, but that was the sentiment in our household.
Years later, I got my first job at the local video store. I used my first paycheque to buy a silver Nintendo Gamecube and Tetris Worlds. I practised and practised and practised at Tetris until I felt like I had improved significantly. My mom still kicked my butt, but less badly than before. I continued to practise until I finally emerged victorious! To this day my mom and I adore the memory of Tetris, and hold the versus mode in a special place in our hearts. However, when we play now I grind her into the dirt.
No, this is not candy
Why am I telling you all this? What does my hundreds of hours playing Tetris have to do with board games?
Let me introduce you to: Project L
How to Play
Project L begins with two stacks of tiles, differentiated by their different coloured backs. Next to each these stacks sits four face-up tiles, making up the offer row. Every player is given 2 pieces to begin their game, a single 1×1 yellow square, and a 1×2 green rectangle.
On your turn, you have three actions:
Take a new level 1 piece
Upgrade a piece
Take a puzzle tile (you can have up to 4 unfinished puzzles)
Place a piece on your puzzle
Master action (only once every round) — put a single piece on all your puzzles!
Should you complete a puzzle, remove it from the top of your player board, return your pieces to your supply, and place the puzzle in your scoring pile and take the reward from the top right corner of the (now completed) puzzle.
These tiles are wonderfully thick
Gameplay continues around the table until the black deck of tiles is depleted. Once that happens, you finish the round (so all players receive an equal number of turns), then everyone has one more turn. After that you may continue to put pieces on the puzzles from your personal supply, but at a cost of 1 point per piece placed.
Once everyone has completed their finishing touches, you total your score from your completed puzzles, subtract any points you lost doing the finishing touches and the player with the most points is the winner!
Review
The very first thing I want to talk about is the box cover. Project L‘s box is visually clean and aesthetically striking. The bold blue L on the matte black background stands out on a shelf. The lack of art here creates a mystery, “What is Project L?” you wonder, picking up the box and checking the back.
This is where my first criticism comes in. I appreciate the effect of having a stark black box and it looks fantastic. But I hate that there is no designer credit on the box. In the case of Project L, the people who make up Boardcubator (the publisher) are also the designers and have obviously made the decision to keep all logos and credits off the box. But I don’t like precedent this sets. Iworry that any other designer wanting to work with Boardcubator in the future will be strong-armed into a box cover without credits. Further, I don’t want any other companies using this as an example or an excuse to keep designer credits off the covers of boxes.
Designer and artist credits should not be relegated to the fine print
I get weirdly passionate when it comes to crediting creatives appropriately. I know the history of workers’ rights is rife with owners using every dirty trick in the book to oppress and keep from paying their creatives fairly. I’d hate for my favourite niche hobby to fall victim to terrible employment standards.
Moving on from that criticism, Project L is an excellently produced game. The acrylic tiles are glossy and rounded perfectly. They don’t feel cheap or too light in the hand. A few people have commented that they look like candy, which may or may not be a positive, depending on your proclivity for sweets and the number of small children in your life. The player aids are made of very light card stock, but that’s fine as they exist only to remind players of the few rules in the game.
So many options!
The final component are the pattern boards, which come in black and white and have inset grooves to lock your pieces in place. These tiles are thick, glossy and look fabulous. I’m less of a fan of how they’re rectangular, which also feels like an odd nitpick. I find it slightly tedious to re-orient all the tiles, and having a stack of tiles that isn’t aligned is simply not an option for me.
This bothers me to absolutely no end
Getting into the gameplay, Project L starts players off with a mere two pieces. The first few rounds of the game you are slow, taking puzzles, maybe taking more 1×1 pieces, or spending all of your actions to finish a single 4 piece pattern. After your first few puzzles and with more than 4 pieces in your personal supply, Project L falls into a predictive pattern. Take puzzles, do master action. Take puzzles, do master action. Repeat. The game lies in your ability to utilize the variety of pieces you have in your supply in a way that doesn’t waste actions or using 3 small pieces where one large piece would fit. Being able to spin multiple plates efficiently is the key to victory here.
During my first play of Project L, someone at my table exclaimed “This is just like Splendor!” which initially I agreed with. It had the same gameplay beats of choosing easy puzzles to build up your engine to effectively to accomplish the much harder goals. But after a few more plays of Project L, I’ve changed my tune. While Project L is reminiscent of other engine building games (like Splendor), it lacks the persistent benefits, which I feel is a very significant part of Splendor’s appeal. In Splendor you can amass a dozen or more gems and just take bigger and bigger cards for free, or at a steep discount. Project L on the other hand only gives you more pieces to play with (with the biggest pieces taking up 4 squares in a puzzle). Having more pieces is absolutely useful, but if you spend too much time just getting pieces, you’ll be left in the dust when it comes to scoring points at the end of the game.
It’s almost impossible to see the pattern on the back of the white tiles
The end of Project L arrives quickly. By the time players start pulling from the harder (or rather, larger) black tiles, everyone generally has enough pieces to play with and have settled into the routine of “take puzzles, master action”. The stack of tiles depletes quickly and suddenly the end of the game is triggered. Everyone gets one last action, then finishing touches, then the game is over.
When you first get your hands on Project L you expect solving each of the puzzles to be the crux of the game, but it isn’t. The game is effectively managing your pieces and actions. I’m glad the turns move quickly between players as it’s painful when you have a perfect plan that relies on a specific puzzle, but it gets snapped up by the player before you, forcing you to reconsider your entire turn. This however, is the entirety of interactions between players; there’s hardly a limit on the number of pieces (I’ve never run into a specific piece running out), there’s no way to slow down other players progress, and there’s no reason to even look at the other players until the game comes to an end. If strong player interaction is important to you, steer clear.
In summary, Project L is a fast, light, puzzle game with excellent production values. I find the latter half of the game a little predictable in that the only actions that seem worth taking are the ‘master build’ and the ‘take more puzzles’ actions. Project L is an excellent game to start or end an evening with, and anyone with a fond memory of Tetris will instantly like this game, even if it’s only due to the colourful pieces.
Designer: James Ernest, Heinrich Gumpler, Paul Peterson
Artist: Like, 25 people. Depends on the version you buy.
Intro
My favourite book of all time is The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, the first book in the Kingkiller Chronicles series. I absolutely love the way master wordsmith Rothfuss has crafted the story. My love for The Kingkiller Chronicles, and a lack of new books in the series has lead to a dangerous situation. In order to satiate my desire for more Kvothe, I feverishly consume nearly everything that is even tangentially related to the world that I’m desperate to return to. It’s that desire that lead me to owning 3 copies of the same game, with the only difference being the artwork each deck of cards features; each featuring a different set of artwork depicting the world of Temerant.
I bought the decks of cards not even considering the game that was being sold to me. Luckily I’m not the kind of person who likes to leave a game unplayed, even one bought solely for the art.
Each deck of Pairs comes with two rule sets. One is the normal rules that applies to all decks and the other is some variant for that specific set of Pairs. I’ve read over a few of the variant rulesets, but I’ve always default back to the normal, push your luck game that I use to pressure my friends and family into buying me treats.
How to Play
A deck of Pairs contains 55 cards. There are ten 10 cards, nine 9s, eight 8s and so on, all the way down to a single 1 card. Each round of Pairs begins by dealing every player a single card. The player who received the lowest card goes first. On your turn you have 2 options, either pass or hit. If you choose to pass, you take the lowest card from any other player and set it aside near you, marking your score and begin a new round by having all players discard any cards they had in front of them. If you choose to hit you simply receive another card and hope you don’t get a pair. If you do happen to get a pair, you keep one of the paired cards as your score, and begin a new round.
You continue to play like this until someone exceeds the score that ends the game (it’s variable based on the number of players – take 60 points, divide by the number of players, then add 1). The player who exceeds the end game threshold is the loser and they are obliged to buy the next round of treats.
Review
Pairs decks come in a variety of flavours; Fruits, Pirates, Barmaids, three different temarant packs, muses, goddesses, goblins, classic Vegas theme, and so much more! Touted as a new classic pub game, this is a just a deck of cards that you can play literally anywhere. It’s as portable as can be, super easy to teach and casual enough that people can drop in and out at their leisure.
The push-your-luck nature of the game lends to moments where you chew on a knuckle trying to decide if you should pass and take the 4 on the table, or push your luck and hope you just don’t get a 8 or a 10. You’ve seen a dozen 10s already, there can’t be any more left in the deck, right? I love the tension as my opponents are sucking in air through their teeth, hoping someone busts or gives up before their next turn.
Good…
I’ve found copies of Pairs on sale for as low as $5, it ends up being a great thing to give someone after a first meeting. You teach them the game, play a couple rounds, add some stakes, then at the end of the evening, just give them the deck of cards. I’ve run low on stock recently, but I’ve gifted over a dozen decks to friends and acquaintances over the past few years.
I’ve used Pairs as a fast, low stakes game while waiting for others to arrive, or just while catching up with friends you haven’t seen in a long time. Where more involved games would take over the conversation, Pairs can be played by intuition alone, leaving you free to chat or smack talk your opponents, egging them on to take another card when they already have a 7, 8, 9, and 10.
Speaking of stakes, my most recent experience with Pairs was at my Mom’s house, with my aunt and uncle. Five of us were gathered around the table, the evening waning. We were making loose plans for dinner the next day when I pulled the copy of Pairs that I had gifted to my mom years ago. “Alright, whoever loses this game, has to buy wine for dinner tomorrow” I said to them, dealing out the first card to each player. After 15 minutes we were setting chores for the next day, and using a game to divvy out the responsibilities that no one really wanted to tackle. By the end of the night, they were looking into buying their own copy of Pairs.
Damnit!!!
I gifted a copy of Pairs to a friend who was travelling to Germany one year as a small game he could fit in his pocket. When he returned he told me how he was able to teach a pair of people, despite them not sharing a language. He gave them his copy of Pairs when they parted for the night and he remembers the evening as one of the highlights of his trip. There’s something special about a game so simple that you almost don’t even need words to teach with other people. It becomes a catalyst for creating a fun experience with people you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to connect with.
Pairs does offer a ton of rule variations; over 30 to be more specific. I find when adding more rules, Pairs loses it’s light and easy-to-play charm. Suddenly, where there was a light and breezy game, now sits rules that need to be remembered and enforced, bets to hedge and gambles to make. I prefer Pairs when it’s less of a centrepiece and more of a catalyst. A game that you play while hanging out with your friends as something to busy your hands rather than demanding the full focus of the evening. It’s a cute diversion and with a very low price of entry it feels more of a side dish rather than an entrée. Whenever I pull it out, I know we’re going to have a good time full of laughter and light-hearted regret.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been playing Cascadia by Randy Flynn. One evening in particular I played Cascadia, then immediately after played Calico by Kevin Russ. While the two games share some similarities, the biggest thing they have in common is that they’re both published by Flatout Games and AEG. Because these games share a publisher they often get mentioned in the same breath, so I thought it would be helpful to compare and contrast these titles. Hopefully this may help you decide which one is right for you!
Mocha just made himself at home in the Calico box
Cascadia is a tile placement, pattern building, hex grid, drafting game. Calico, on the other hand, is a tile placement, pattern building, hex grid, drafting game. On paper, the only difference lies in the contrast of themes (wild animals roaming Pacific Northwest landscapes vs. cute cats on a colourful quilt). Both have you placing tiles into a personal tableau trying to manipulate a pattern to achieve the most points in order to win.
Although the two games sound interchangeable, the gameplay experience reveals significant differences, making these two games unique and anything but interchangeable. The main differences between these two games come from the restrictions they impose upon players. In Calico, you have two tiles in your hand that you can place on your board. After placing a tile on your board there are three more tiles in a central pool that you use to refill your hand. Each player in Calico has a dual layer player board showing all the slots that will be filled over the course of the game. On each board the players have three objectives, which provide options for earning points. While the objectives are not restrictions, persay (you don’t have to place tiles according to the objectives), the player board is. Players may not expand their quilts in any direction they wish. Calico seems to delight in painting you into a corner and forcing you to make the best of a bad situation.
In Calico it’s not uncommon to find yourself in a situation where you’re desperate for a specific tile that makes everything work out just right. The lynchpin of your board requires a green polka dot tile, but because there are 35 other tiles in the game, the odds of that green polka dot tile coming out is rather low; absolutely not something you can rely on. There is also no way to mill through the bag or refresh the offer row; if none of the tiles in the offer row are useful for you, too bad. You now have a useless tile in your hand. Hopefully you can pivot your strategy to make use of it.
Cascadia on the other hand starts with 3 empty ecosystem hexes in front of each player, depicting each of the five animals once. In the centre of the table there are four sets of paired components, each comprised of one ecosystem tile and one animal disc. Each turn you’ll pick a paired set, and add the components to your tableau, adding the ecosystem tile first, then placing the animal disc on an appropriate tile in your tableau. Unlike Calico, there is no player board for Cascadia, so players are free to build their terrain in any which direction.
A second major difference is Cascadia‘s flexibility when it comes to choosing components. While Calico specifically has no options for changing the offered tiles, in Cascadia if you don’t like any of the pairs of land tiles and animal discs, you may spend a nature token to pick any ecosystem tile and any animal disc from the four on the table. If you don’t like the selection of animal discs on the table you can spend a nature token to draw new discs and put the old ones back in the bag. Finally, if the offer row shows three of the same animals, you may choose to wipe the three sets of components and be dealt fresh sets. If all four animal discs depict the same animal, they get replaced automatically.
So far the major differences focus on flexibility – the borderless tableau as opposed to the restrictive player board, and the flexibility to change the components being offered in contrast to the “what you see is what you get” style in Calico. The final difference lies in the variety of tiles. Calico offers a larger variety of tiles, making it rarer to find the specific tile you need. In Cascadia, if you do find yourself in a situation where you really need a specific animal or ecosystem tile, there are only 5 different types of each tile. The odds of a tile that you need showing up are pretty good.
Salmon are overrated
My game group played Calico and Cascadia back to back. Two of the people at the table hadn’t played either game before. After playing both, they reported leaning more favorably towards Cascadia, as it felt less punishing. Personally, I delight in the shackles Calico slaps onto your wrists. I find more joy in squeezing out points from a restrictive puzzle, than bathing in points delivered freely by the system.
While playing Cascadia I found myself mathing out the average number of points per animal token I was taking, with ~3 points per disc being the sweet spot and avoiding anything offering below 2.5 points per disc. In all my plays of Cascadia, this best average score per disc seemed to hover between 2.5 and 3 (except for the one time the hawks were at almost 5 points per disc). Calico on the other hand, obfuscates the final score, making it much harder to accurately gauge just how much each tile is worth, especially because each tile may contribute to three different scoring opportunities (patterns, colours, and the scoring objective on your board).
Cascadia offers replayability with 5 different scoring objectives per animal type giving a wide variety of potential scoring objectives. While variety does not equal replayability, it is a nice touch to explore different objectives. On the other hand, Calico has much less variety in it’s scoring objectives, but I find Calico’s replayability largely comes from making the best of a tough situation in regards to the tiles that are available to you on each turn.
Both games have a significant number of scenarios and achievements to give your game an added objective to reach for. Personally, I’ve really enjoyed playing the Calico scenarios solo and look forward to seeing what Cascadia does to create an engaging solo player experience.
Both Cascadia and Calico are great games, but they have some very important differences that you should know about if you’re only looking to add only one to your collection. I feel like Cascadia would be more of a hit with younger audiences, or when trying to get your nature loving partner over to the table, while Calico is an excellent suggestion if you and your gaming partners are excited over a brainteasing puzzle. If the only thing that sways you is the presence of cats, then Calico is the right choice for you!
I hope you have enjoyed my thoughts on Calico vs. Cascadia. If you have any questions or want me to expand on something, please leave a comment below!
Number of Plays: 8 (Plus 30 games on Board Game Arena)
Game Length: 20 – 30 minutes
Mechanics: Hand Management, Set collection
Release Year: 1999
Designer: Reiner Knizia
Artist: Anke Pohl, Thilo Rick, and Claus Stephan
Intro
Once upon a time I had a roommate. He and I had been friends in high school and we had both moved to the same city. During our years as roommates we started playing Chess together. As it turns out, he was the perfect opponent to play head-to-head duel games with. Chess was played often, and Magic the Gathering soon made its way into our lives, along with Yu-Gi-Oh. Cycling between these decks, we were constantly going head-to-head, each of us adjusting our play style to directly combat the other.
Now, I live on the other side of the country from that friend, and have discovered the world of hobby board games. Although I still feel my heart pulled to games that pit one player against another in a head to head competition, I simply don’t have a partner to really throw myself against. My current game group has 4 members, and we prefer to play games all together instead of breaking into 2 smaller groups, making 2 player games not very attractive to us. I’ll often play 2 player games with my wife, but we really don’t like to bear our teeth and claws at one another. Lost Cities by Reiner Knizia is a two player game that doesn’t make you hit the other player over the head, but tasks you with hedging your bets and challenges you to bluff and manipulate the pace of the game to outscore the other player.
How to Play
The goal of Lost Cities is to have the most points at the end of the game, or series of games if you choose to play multiple times in a row (and you probably should). Each game consists of shuffling the entire deck and dealing 8 cards to each player. On your turn you need to play one card, and draw one card.
When playing a card, you can either play it in front of you, or to the discard. If you chose to play it in front of you, it must be placed in a column with the cards of the same colour, and the numbers must be ascending. Each colour has its own discard pile should you choose to play your card there instead. When you draw a card, you can either take the top card from the deck, or the top card from any of the discard piles.
The deck of Lost Cities is comprised of 5 different suits each with the numbers of 2 through 10, with each card being worth their numeric value in points at the end of the game. In addition to those 9 cards there are 3 handshake cards per colour. These cards have a value of 0, but their presence multiplies the final sum of that suit.
The game ends when the draw deck has been depleted. At that time, each player counts up the sum of the cards for each of their expeditions. Each expedition begins in a deficit of negative 20 points. You add the value of each card and the final result is your score for that suit (don’t forget to multiply the final sum depending on the number of handshakes you managed to put down. Yes, you can multiply a negative number). If you manage the herculean task of getting 8 or more cards of a colour down, you get a bonus 20 points for that suit, to be added in at the end, after the multiplication step. It’s rare, but it can happen!
Review
Lost Cities is fairly light in terms of rules overhead. Play one card, pick up one card, try to exceed 20 points for each colour you commit to. It is simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy or boring. Lost Cities presents players with plenty of opportunities to shoot themselves in the foot. If you have a couple of high cards of each suit, do you play them down? If not, they’re just taking up space in your hand that could be used for holding more useful cards. Do you discard the yellow 5 because you have no other yellow cards? What if you inadvertently give your opponent everything he ever wanted?
All these questions slowly build to a crescendo as you and your opponent play card after card, slowly exhausting the draw deck. The tempo and cadence of play changes as each player gets more desperate, searching for the lynchpin card that will allow them to place the rest of their higher value cards that are just sitting in their hand waiting for their opportunity. Jumping from a 4 or a 7 can feel like you’re shutting the door on opportunities for points, but as the deck dwindles and tensions rise you’ll find yourself much more willing to skip over missing numbers to get the best cards out of your hand and onto the table.
When I introduced my wife to Lost Cities, she instantly hated it. With frustration she exclaimed that it was too random and you didn’t have enough options or choices and the deck somehow always seems to screw with you. A few days later she prodded me to play it again. The puzzle of Lost Cities had burrowed into her head. On repeat plays she found the strategies much more satisfying and it has become one her favourite games.
Lost Cities has become a staple of my travel games. Considering the whole game is just a deck of cards and a scrap of paper to track the scores, I often find myself sliding it into my bag and suggesting it whenever we have a few moments of downtime. Because it’s fast to teach and and offers a satisfying feeling in your heart when your plans all come together, it’s frequently my go-to pick when I want to introduce someone to board games.
Just this past weekend we were visiting a couple in-laws, and my wife’s uncle asked if I had brought any games with me (apparently my reputation as a gamer precedes me), so I introduced him to Lost Cities. We promptly played 5 games in a row. Each new game had him exploring the strategies and tactics available to the players, and he learned how to control the wax and wane of the deck to his advantage. It was a wonderful sight to behold.
While the winner of a single game of Lost Cities can be determined by how lucky their card draws were, I firmly believe that the better player will come out ahead, more often than not. To this end, it’s suggested to play three games in a row and whomever has the highest cumulative score at the end of the series is the overall winner. I really enjoy playing Lost Cities like this, as some rounds, getting a mere 15 points feels like an achievement, while other rounds you can find yourself breaking 100 points.
Lost Cities rewards the bold, but can also punish those who delve too greedily. The gambling feeling of placing a handshake when you barely have any cards of that colour in your hand can grip your heart in fear, especially when you start coming down to the last 15 cards in the deck, or if your opponent matches your move and starts playing the lower numbers. Your heart rate will rise as your agonize over which card to play, deciding to start another expedition late into the game, math-ing out exactly how many turns remain before the round ends and you’re forced to score your hands.
Lost Cities was released over 20 years ago, and it remains to this day one of my favourite two player games. I love how well balanced it feels, how easy it is to introduce to new players, and how rewarded I feel after playing dozens of games. Other games have been published with the Lost Cities name attached to it (Lost Cities: Rivals, and Lost Cities: Roll and Write being the two most recent), and while they do catch my eye, I haven’t bothered exploring any of these reimplementations or alternate versions. Perhaps one day I’ll embark on that expedition, but for now, I’m going to continue to play and recommend Lost Cities every chance I get.
Artist Heiko Günther, Gabriel Laulunen (II), Walter Pepperle, Klaus Wilinski
Intro
I am not a gambling man. Back when I lived in Winnipeg, I had friends whose idea of a good night out is to go to the casino for a couple hours. They don’t mind losing money as to them, it’s just the price of admission for a evening out, not unlike going to a nice restaurant or out to a movie theatre. Sometimes, when they do win and I see them filled with an unmatched level of jubilation, you almost can’t help but see their point of view. After all, if it brings them joy and they aren’t going into debt, is it all that bad?
I didn’t hang around those friends long enough to answer those questions, but I did confirm that I don’t like going to the casino. It’s not the bright lights, or constant noise of chimes and bells, or the bright flashing screens in dark rooms that irk me. It’s seeing people just drop literally hundreds of dollars into a machine and watch their number of credits slowly plummet to 0. I’d watch as their shoulders would slump, they’d just gather their jackets and meander away. It breaks my heart to see others risk so much and lose it all.
The first time I went to the casino I put $20 into a machine. After 3 spins I won a minor prize, getting $400 back. I promptly cashed out then went to the bar and ordered nachos, which sustained me for the rest of the night. Each time I was subsequently invited to the casino I didn’t feel compelled to gamble again. I was already ahead, I had won and the money was in my pocket. I had no desire to put the money that was in my pocket into one of the machines where I likely wouldn’t be able to recoup my investment. When I sat at the bar and ordered nachos, at least I got something for my money.
Can’t Stop is a push your luck game that sets my heart a flutter. While I don’t gamble in real life, I grin ear to ear when pushing my luck, gambling my progress to get further and further ahead.
How to Play
Can’t Stop’s board consists of 11 tracks, numbered 2 – 12. Each track has a different number of spaces between the start and the top of the track (the 2 and 12 spots only have 2 spaces in-between the bottom and top, while the 7 track has over a dozen). On your turn you roll 4 die, and pair them up in any way you want. After pairing up your die, you can either place one of your three white pawns on the board, or move the white pawns up the tracks that match the number of the paired die.
It’s a long way to the top
After each roll and subsequent move, you have the option to stop your turn and save your progress, or roll again, hopefully advancing further up on the tracks. If you choose to stop, you replace the white pawns with ones of your colour and pass the die onto the next player.
If you roll your die that can’t be paired in a way that match any of the tracks your white pawns are on, you’ve busted. Remove your white pawns from the board, and pass the dice and white pawns to the next player.
3 and 9, 8 and 4, or 5 and 7?
The first person to get three of their coloured pawns to the top of the board is the winner. Only one person can summit each of the columns, so if you and your opponent are neck and neck near the top of one track and they get to the top first, your pawn is removed from that column, and no white pawns may be placed on those columns going forward.
Review
I, first experienced Can’t Stop on Board Game Arena. They use Can’t Stop as their demo for the platform, and it quickly became one of my most played games. I’ve played over 60 games over the past few years any my enthusiasm hasn’t waned this entire time.
The crux of Can’t Stop is that if you roll the die and the sum any of the pairs don’t match the columns you’ve committed to for this round, you’ve lost all progress for the turn. It’s a race, and one that can be won in a single turn if you’re lucky enough. More often, however, you’ll find that you push your luck one turn too far, and whatever powers that control the dice are swift in their punishment.
Ha, Green keeps busting! Wait, I’m Green…
Can’t Stop is a clever game that will have you shouting and egging your opponents on before long. You’ll be jostling the four cubes in your hand while biting your lip trying desperately to convince yourself that you should take another turn; you should push yourself one step closer to victory! Your friends will cry out for you to end your turn, or if they feel you’re in a precarious position, that you absolutely should roll those dice again. As soon as you choose to roll and the dice leave your hand, everyone holds their breath. The dice settle and you frantically start adding them together, desperately searching for any combination that will move at least one of your white markers and keep you alive for the turn.
Can’t Stop pairs well with my morning coffee
I understand that I am a ris- adverse person and I’ve come to accept it. I’ll never win big at the craps table, and I’ll never win the lottery (after all, in order to win you have to play). For me, push your luck games such as Can’t Stop are a perfect distillation of what it means to gamble. The emotions in the room are powerful when you risk everything and pull off an against-all-odds roll, pushing your white pawns to the top of their tracks. Those are the glorious moments that I remember long after Can’t Stop has been put back into it’s box. Yes, it can feel frustrating when you roll 4 ones after placing all of your white pawns on higher numbers. However the sting of the randomness is quickly eclipsed by the excitement of a fantastic win. Can’t Stop is a great game that can and should be played with everyone everywhere.
Artist: Philippe Guérin, Chris Quilliams, Beth Sobel, Waldo Ramirez
Intro
In this wonderful hobby, lots of games exist with lots of different themes. Do you want to build a bear park? We’ve got a game for that. Feel like managing the fickle demands of fast food customers? Boy do I have an experience for you! We got several games about quilts, and a somewhat unhealthy obsession about sheep. You’d think that after experiencing great games in a wide variety of themes I wouldn’t be so quick to write off a game just because it’s artistic direction does little to incite wonder in my heart.
In Arboretum you are trying to build the prettiest tree garden. But don’t let the beautiful artwork get your guard down. In this Arboretum only those with the strongest botanical skills will survive!
How to Play
Before the game begins the deck is constructed according to the number of players. With 2 players the deck is 48 cards in 6 different suits, 3 players is 64 cards of 8 suits, and 4 players has all 10 species of trees totaling 80 cards. The mathematically inclined among you may have noticed that each suit has 8 cards, valued from 1 to 8.
The game begins by dealing each player 7 cards. You begin your turn by picking up two cards either from the face down deck, or from one of the discard piles (each player has their own discard pile). You then must play a card, and discard a card. When you play a card into your arboretum, it must be placed adjacent to an existing card, in any orthogonal direction. When you discard, it must be to your own discard pile. The next player can then proceed with their turn.
The game ends when the last card is drawn from the face down deck. That player finishes their turn like normal, then all players compete for the right to score. One by one you go through all the suits in the game and reveal how many of that suit you have remaining in your hand. Whoever has the highest sum of cards has earned the right to score the trees in their arboretum.
The player who earned the right to score counts up the number of cards that exist in ascending order, beginning and ending with the suit that is being scored. Numbers can be skipped, but the trees must always be placed in ascending order. If the start or end card is a 1 or and an 8 respectively, you earn additional points. If you have four or more cards in the row and they’re all of the same suit you’re scoring, then each card in that row is worth two points each.
Once all types of trees have been scored, the player with the highest score wins. If two players tie, whoever has the most tree types present in their arboretum is the winner. If the players are still tied, both players must plant a tree. Whichever tree is tallest after five years is the victor.
Review
Arboretum is a deception. The calm nature theme and gorgeous art does a lot to impart a sense of ease and calm before the game starts. There’s a couple of nuances that are often left uninternalized when explaining how the game works for the first time. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen eyes glaze over when I begin to describe how the scoring works. I’ve always emphasize that you have to earn the right to score, but more than once we’ve played a whole game only to get to the end and a new player didn’t realize you needed to hold cards back in their hand in order to score it, meaning their perfect row of 7 Blue Firs went unscored.
The mechanics of Arboretum pulls your heart in multiple directions. Cards in your hand are worth nothing if you don’t have any cards of the same suit on the table. Cards on the table earn you nothing if you don’t have enough left in your hand at the end of the day. You have a limited hand-size, but you also need to hoard cards of your chosen suit so you can not only build an arboretum worth scoring, but also have cards left in your hand that will win you the right to score. You’ll often be tempted to dump cards that you don’t need, but you know that every card you throw away has the potential to be incredibly valuable to the other players.
The need to keep cards in your hand is directly at odds with earning points from your cards on the table. While it might seem obvious that you could just keep an 8 in your hand and be confident that that you’ll win the right to score, Dan Cassar saw you coming from a mile away; if someone has the 1 value of that species in their hand, it turns the value of your 8 card to 0. This twist encourages you to keep your eyes on the cards that have been played. If the one is already on the table, suddenly the 8 is more powerful. On the other hand, if the 8 has been played, holding the 1 in your hand means almost nothing. And when hand space is a valuable resource, you don’t want useless cards clogging up your hand.
My copy of Arbortetum is the 2018 deluxe edition published by Renegade. This edition boasts stunning art by Beth Sobel and impressive holo-foil cards. The way the light reflects off the foil faces feels at odds with therest of the aesthetic; the gaudy reflections feel audacious and unnecessary. Speaking of unnecessary, this edition comes in a wooden box at least three times too large. I pulled the deck, rulebook, scorepad, and velvet bag out of the strangely nice smelling box and tossed all the components into a plastic photo box. With a smaller footprint, comes portability. Arboretum is now a top pick when I’m packing games for travel.
One of the best features of this game is the unique scoring mechanism. It creates a tense push-your-luck element that makes the decision to place and discard every card significantly more stressful. In my experience one of the suits ends up being the universal junk tree that everyone is happed to jettison from their hand, and in doing so, the remaining suits are much more sought after and hotly contested. The final reveal of cards left in your hand at the end of the game is a tense chapter. While you usually have one suit for which you have counted cards in such a way that leaves little doubt you will be able to score, the other suits are more of a mystery. It is always exciting when someone has just the right cards to deny the other player a big scoring line (unless, of course, it was you that was the one denied). This chapter of the game elicits cheers and groans from everyone at the table as each person is invested in the outcome of each scoring.
Arboretum’s end game always approaches much faster than I expect. On average, the number of cards in my tableau normally sits around 11, not leaving much room for error, especially if I diversified and now need to have 3 or 4 different suits in my hand. On the other hand specializing in just one or two types of trees is only a solid strategy if you want to be in second place. Fortune favours the bold, after all.
Because Arboretum is just deck of cards, I pick this game to travel with me almost every time I embark on some kind of adventure. The complexity of the scoring mechanics causes me to hesitate when it comes to teaching new players. I have absolutely no issue teaching this to someone who professes themselves to be a gamer, but Arboretum is not a game that I would push on people whos gaming experience lies entirely in Rummy and Spider Solitaire.
Arboretum is the kind of game that gets lodged into your mind and keeps you thinking about it for hours after the deck has been packed away. You are left wrestling with the idea that if you had just done this one thing, or discarded that other card, then everything would have been different. I love when a game sticks with me after I’ve left the table, and in my experience most people are itching for a second go after they have had time to stew about their first experience.
