Every Night Is Game Night: Kanagawa

May 22, 2017Ruel

I’m playing a board game every day this month and blogging about it (I did a similar challenge last year). Feel free to join me during my Every Night Is Game Night: My Daily Play & Blog Challenge. And tweet me with what you’re playing these days!

Busy with work today, then played a few quick games of Red 7 with my gaming buddies. I wrote up a blog post then realized I’d already written about Red 7 earlier this month, so here’s a look at a game I played yesterday.

Kanagawa is a gorgeous little game released last year by Iello. I like a lot of Bruno Cathala’s games (Mission: Red Planet, Abyss, and Five Tribes, to name a few) and this is another one that I quickly grew fond of.

Players are painting landscapes and earn points for collecting sets of different elements. When a player has 11 or more parts to their painting, the game ends and the most points earned via the collected sets wins.

Each round begins with cards being chosen by each player. There’s a neat push-your-luck mechanism here, as a player can take what’s on the board or pass in order to see what comes next. Then, each player “paints” their items. To paint a card, the player must have that color in their studio and they’re allowed one movement per turn (represented by the little paint brush tokens) to land on that color in their studio.

Each card can also be flipped over into a player’s studio to be used as a color or special action so that the player has more options on future turns.

As each card is placed into a player’s painting, bonuses may occur (if you’re familiar with Splendor, then this is analogous to earning the Noble tiles). If a player has a certain amount of icons in their painting, then they can take the first bonus available or wait until they collect more of that icon to earn a bigger bonus. Again, the push-your-luck mechanism is put to good use here.

I’d recommend Kanagawa to anybody, especially those who enjoyed Splendor but wanted a little more meat to that game. It has similar elements, and the worker placement (using your brushes to paint each section) and push-your-luck mechanisms (trying for the bigger bonuses) make this a nice next-step game.

Every Night Is Game Night: La Isla

May 21, 2017Ruel

I didn’t play a game or blog about it last night. My reason is pictured below:

My wife and I had a date night in L.A., compliments of Yelp. We’re fortunate to both be Elite users and occasionally attend Yelp Elite Events, which are always filled with food, drink, and good times. Last night’s was no exception, with a small group of us stuffing ourselves silly at the hot new barbecue spot in Chinatown, Belle Belle’s Cue.

After feasting on smoked brisket, pulled pork, turkey, and ribs with all the fixings (mac and cheese, creamed corn, potato salad, beans, coleslaw, pickles, and white bread), we were in a food coma the rest of the night. The games remained on the shelf, but we did watch a few episodes of Master of None before finishing it tonight (my spoiler-free reaction here).

Today we ate our leftovers, then I met up with my friend Daryl for some boba and board games. We played Ethnos, Stone Age, Kanagawa, and La Isla. Although the boba shop’s air conditioning wasn’t performing at its peak, it was still a nice break from the 90-degree heat wave.

Most gamers call La Isla a Stefan-Feld-light game and it’s an appropriate description. It’s a point salad game with interesting card play, set collection, and area control. It seems like every time I get this to the table I need a rules refresher, but that’s okay. Game play always picks up after a few turns and a two-player match is about 30 minutes.

In La Isla, players are explorers trying to capture animals that were thought to be extinct (the dodo, for example). Animal tiles are randomly placed throughout the island and players use cards and resource cubes to bring their explorer tokens onto the board. If a player surrounds an animal tile, then they add the tile to their collection. Points are earned each turn (and the end game scoring) based on the animals you have.

Players take four actions each turn and three of those are based on the cards they play (three are drawn every turn). Each card is broken up into three sections: the top is for the first action, the bottom left is for the second action, and the bottom right is for the third. It’s always interesting to choose which parts of the cards you’ll use for each turn. Quite often, you’re giving something up to gain something else.

The first action is placing a card into the player’s card holder. This gives bonuses on subsequent actions. The second action is collecting a resource. The third action is moving one of your explorers. Finally, the fourth action is moving a scoring tracker up a space. If you have that animal type, then you score points.

There are several other ways to score points throughout the game, primarily through the action cards that you place in your card holder during the first action. What I like about La Isla is that the card holder only holds three cards, so your bonuses are constantly changing. The set collection element comes into play as you gather animal tiles. For each complete set of five, you get 10 points at the end of the game.

I really like La Isla. It’s not the most intuitive game at first, but once you get into it, it’s a simple and quick Feld. Unfortunately, like other Felds, it has cubes and cards and a board whose colors won’t make it easy on colorblind players. Thankfully, I play with some easygoing people who don’t mind helping me out whenever I have color-related questions.

Every Night Is Game Night: Lost Cities

May 19, 2017Ruel

Whenever I play Lost Cities it’s a reminder that I need more Reiner Knizia games in my library. This card game of set collection and hand management plays quickly since each turn consists of two actions: 1. Play a card onto your tableau or the community area, then 2. Take a card from the face-down deck or the community area.

The theme is a nod to going on adventures Indiana-Jones style, but it could’ve been anything. Basically, you’re trying to play cards from five different colors/suits in ascending order, 1-10. There are “deal” cards that you can play first before any of the five suits and these will double the score on that suit.

The game play is smooth and offers tough decisions from the get-go. Players must try to figure out which suits they’re going to play and hope that they have enough of that suit to score points. For each suit you begin, it’s an automatic 20-point deduction. You’ll regain these points as you play those cards from your hand.

Lost Cities is an excellent two-player game that is easy to pick up and play, yet still offers a decent amount of strategy. I’ve been a fan since I first played it and it’ll always have a spot on my shelves.

Every Night Is Game Night: Loony Quest

May 18, 2017Ruel

I had work to finish tonight, so I just stopped by the Thursday night game group for an hour. I just chatted with my buddy Patrick while watching a game of Glory to Rome when a few of the other regulars showed up.

Since I didn’t have much time, we decided to play Loony Quest. It was the first time for most of us and we all had a blast. Loony Quest is a drawing game, but it’s different than any other drawing game I’ve ever played. Each player receives a transparent sheet and erasable pen. A full-color picture of a “world” is placed in the box (which doubles as a score track) and players must draw on their transparencies to complete quests within a short time limit.

What were we drawing? Simple lines connecting a starting position to an end, while also touching the icons for points and power-ups. It’s easier than it sounds, though, since you’re drawing on the transparency. After the time is up, everybody takes turns putting their transparency on the picture to see how they’ve done.

You lose points if your drawing touches a bomb or other obstacle and you gain points for completing quests on the world (such as circling or touching icons). Power-ups give you tokens with special abilities (such as being immune to one bomb) while penalties will hinder your next turn, like forcing you to draw with your off-hand, close one eye while drawing, etc. At one point I was drawing with multiple penalties on me and it was absolutely hilarious.

Looney Quest was like a cool analog version of a video game and it was an insta-like for me. I can’t wait to add this to my game library and it’ll be perfect for my family game nights.

Every Night Is Game Night: Ethnos

May 17, 2017Ruel

Happy to report that Ethnos lived up to the hype; thanks to my buddy Daryl our weekly group got to play it tonight. It’s dudes-on-a-map with set collection and area control, neatly wrapped up in a simple turn structure. Think Ticket to Ride meets Blood Rage, as players either take a card from the face-up supply or face-down deck or they play a set of cards that allows them to place one token on the designated area.

The simplicity of each turn is the big draw for this game and there’s a surprising bit of depth as you try to gain control of the different areas. What makes it so interesting is the rule that whenever you lay down a set, you must discard the rest of your cards (there’s a 10-card hand limit). This ensures that nobody hoards cards and plays the big set; you’re constantly on your toes trying to get the cards you need.

I loved the different powers of the bands; in our five-player game we had six types of characters, each with an ability that allowed you to manage your hand (there are 12 total characters, so every game can be different). For example, the wizards allowed you to draw cards immediately after you played them. The elves allowed you to keep a number of cards in your hand after you played them.

And so on. There were bonuses for certain characters and scoring during the game and after each of three ages.

Ethnos is going to be another big hit for Cool Mini Or Not. The only quibbles I have are the size and blandness of the board, along with the tokens/markers; they stack neatly on each other, but given CMON’s popularity with miniatures I’m surprised they didn’t go all out with a big set of figures.

But maybe this is the new CMON: an elegant game that gives up some of the stellar components in exchange for a much more reasonable price point. I’m sold and I’ve added Ethnos to my wish list.

Every Night Is Game Night: Patchwork

May 16, 2017Ruel

Today was Tabletop Tuesday, the day when I volunteer as the facilitator of a local high school’s board games club. As the students reminded me today, it’s almost the end of the year so the club is winding down soon. I was a little sad; the kids are great and it’s been an honor sharing my passion for the hobby with them.

We had three different games going on today: Qwixx Deluxe, Indigo, and Lotus. The students were familiar with the first two, so I focused on teaching Lotus. The kids caught on right away, as they always do, and when one of them had to leave early, I took over for her.

While the other students were finishing their games, I taught Patchwork to one of the regular attendees. He’s one of the sharper students and he had the game figured out after a few turns. He seemed to enjoy it so I’ll bring it to next week’s game day.

Patchwork is also one of my favorite games to play with my wife. We both enjoy the puzzle-like nature of building our quilts as well as the race to build up our stash of buttons. In Patchwork, players have a 9×9 grid they must fill up with pieces of their quilt. The pieces are “bought” with buttons before being placed on the players’ grids.

Each piece has a cost (in buttons) and a movement cost. Movement is tracked on a separate board; as players fill up their quilts, their movement takes them closer to the game’s end. Some pieces have buttons printed on them so when a player crosses certain spaces on the board, they earn the number of buttons embedded on their quilt.

After both players have finished moving around the board they tally up their buttons then subtract the number of empty spaces on their quilt. Each empty space is -2 points so it helps to have a large supply of buttons. Games are typically low-scoring.

I love Patchwork and it’s one title I always seem to have on hand for those times when only one other player is ready to get their game on. It’s always a welcome challenge with whomever I’m playing with.

Every Night Is Game Night: Harbour

May 15, 2017Ruel

Two months ago I got Harbour off my Shelf of Shame and it’s a cool little worker placement game. Here’s what I wrote after I started playing it:

Players race to buy four buildings from a common pool first. Each building has a cost payable by one or more goods from the current player. On their turn, a player will send their worker meeple to a building and perform the action(s) listed on it; often, it’s to trade for more goods, which can then be used to buy a building. Players have a home base that they can return to for more actions, as well as travel to an opponent’s buildings to perform their actions (although this costs one good).

What makes Harbour so much fun is the economic mechanism in the game. Whenever a player buys a building, they must “ship” enough goods to pay for it. So, if the player has 5 fish and 3 lumber and the current market has fish at $5 and lumber at $3, then the player can ship those goods for $8 and buy any building up to $8. Then, after the purchase has been completed, the market shifts, with the fish and lumber being worth less, while livestock and stone go up in value.

It’s a neat part of the game, trying to time your purchase just right so that you get the most money for your goods. More often than not, an opponent will buy something and change the value of your goods. Thankfully, there are buildings with powers that allow you to adjust the market to something more to your liking.

After a dozen plays (mostly solo), I still enjoy Harbour. Tonight I played the 20-move solo variant and scored 32 points, which is on the low end of what I usually get. There’s an official solo variant included with the game, but I haven’t played it yet since it seems fiddly: you have to keep track of a dummy player.

It only takes 15-20 minutes to play this variant and just like the regular game, you’re trying to optimize the amount of goods you receive that turn. With the 20-move limit, you need to get those goods ASAP in order to buy buildings. I typically end up with four buildings at or near my 20th move and score somewhere in the 30-point range.

Harbour would be a good introduction to the worker placement mechanism for new gamers and I’d recommend it to more serious gamers as a worker placement filler.

Every Night Is Game Night: Lotus

May 14, 2017Ruel

My family and I celebrated Mother’s Day with a delicious lunch at one of our favorite Chinese restaurants. It was hours of good eats and good laughs and we were wiped out when we got home. Thankfully, my wife and I had enough energy to play a quick game of Lotus, one of my Christmas presents from last year.

Lotus is a card-driven game of area control and hand management from Renegade Game Studios, which has recently published a few stellar titles, including Lanterns, Clank!, and FUSE. I was immediately drawn to Lotus’ artwork, which is gorgeous, and the elegant gameplay. Players have a hand of cards representing flower petals and they can either lay up to two of them down on the table, exchange cards in their hand with their deck, or move one of their guardians (tokens) onto a flower petal. Flowers require a different number of petals to complete them and once they’re complete, the last player to place a petal will “pick” the flower and keep the cards for victory points.

This is what I love about Lotus: the area control for each flower is based on each card’s icons. Players have icons on their cards representing the number of influence they have on the flower and there are “wild” flowers that can be played onto flowers, but they do not have any icons. When a flower is complete, the player with the most influence receives a special power or a token worth 5 victory points. Remember the guardians? If a player has a guardian on the flower, then it’s worth 1 additional point.

The special powers are a terrific feature of the game. Normal hand limit is 4 cards, but when a player unlocks the Enlightened Path card, they can hold up to five cards. There’s an Elder Guardian worth 2 influence points that can also be unlocked, as well as an Infinite Growth that allows players to place 3 or more petal cards at a time.

Lotus is one of the best-looking games you’ll see being played. As the flowers are laid out, it really looks like a garden growing on your tabletop. Unfortunately, that beauty is fleeting: once a flower is completed, it’s taken off the play area into piles of victory points. It’s better than your standard filler game, with more depth than expected, and one that I’ll never turn down an opportunity to play.

Every Night Is Game Night: Octo Dice

May 13, 2017Ruel

I had a great day today: my wife’s hula performance was excellent, as always, and our daughter was back from college and was able to catch the show. Then I spent a few hours at the inaugural Comic Con Revolution in Ontario, California, and had a blast amongst all of the cosplayers and comic book fans. I even managed to find an independent game publisher hawking his wares.

Finally, after catching the main event of UFC 211, I played a solo game of Octo Dice, which I wrote about for Geek & Sundry. It’s an underrated roll-and-write game from AEG, set in the Aquasphere world of Stefan Feld’s game. While it plays nothing like the original, it offers some fun changes on the Yahtzee formula. Here’s how I summed up the game on G&S:

Like the classic Yahtzee, players roll and write on their score sheets as they collect sets of particular items. However, after each roll, a player must “lock” two dice, meaning they can no longer re-roll them and must mark them on their score sheet.

Each die has a few icons and number and color combinations. These match up with the sets that players attempt to score such as crystals, research, labs, bots, and submarines. Players must also roll at least two octopods per turn or else lose two points.

It can be played solo, even though you lose the fun follow action from the multiplayer game. Still, it’s a quick roll-and-write and offers plenty of interesting decisions, due to the push-your-luck factor. Which dice do you keep after every roll and re-roll? It seems like every time I try to focus on a particular action, the dice rolls force me to re-think my strategy. I like that.

One thing I forgot to mention in my original article was the poor production of the dice. They’re light wooden dice and the painted icons rub off easily. It’s such a bummer because the score sheets were full-colored and double-sided; outstanding in every way that the dice were not. Perhaps that’s why Octo Dice has been overlooked. Replace the dice with big, chunky, King of Tokyo-style dice and I’m sure the game would receive the attention it deserves.

Every Night Is Game Night: Friday

May 12, 2017Ruel

Today, of course, is the perfect day to play Friday, a superb solo deck building game. Friedemann Friese, best known for Power Grid, published Friday in 2011 and it’s frequently found on best solo games lists. I got my copy last October and I’ve played it 20 times, including tonight, and I still find it challenging.

In Friday, you’re helping Robinson Crusoe survive on the island, gathering knowledge and resources to fight incoming pirates. The game is played in three main rounds with two final rounds of pirates if Crusoe survives (a big if). There are two main decks of cards: hazard cards and fighting cards. You first draw two hazard cards and decide which one to fight, then draw the amount of fighting cards indicated on the hazard card. If your total fighting points are equal to or greater than the hazard card’s fighting card, then you win the fight and turn the hazard card around and add it to your fighting cards (each hazard card has fighting abilities that are “unlocked” if you win a fight). Many fighting cards include special abilities to help you in your battles.

Losing fights, though, is the key to optimizing your deck. For every point that you lose in a fight you may spend a life point (Crusoe starts with 20 life points) and destroy (“trash” for you Dominion fans) a card. This is where Friday is tough; you need to preserve your life points while also destroying the weaker cards in your deck.

Every time you go through your fighting card deck, you’ll shuffle in an “aging” card which is always negative fighting points. For such a small game, Friday definitely packs in a lot of obstacles to your success. Even if you survive the first three main rounds (which get progressively harder, of course), your deck must be lean and mean to defeat both rounds of pirates.

Friday isn’t easy, but it is immensely satisfying when you finally break through for that first win, and every win after that; just don’t get use to doing it.

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