Review: Spirit Island

Game Name:	Spirit Island	Published Year:	2017
Game Publisher:	Greater Than Games	Player Scale:	1-4
Game Designer:	R. Eric Reuss	Run Time:	90 - 120 min

In a distant land, yet unexplored lays a beautiful Island where nature still rules. But with the ever-growing colonial powers reaching further at the end of the world it was a matter of time until they managed to find this place.

Welcome to Spirit Island!



In this coop game, each player will play as one spirit of the island representing the embodiment of nature, from the river, plants or thunder to the darkest beings. You’ll be helping the Dahan, the indigenous inhabitants of this Island, to get rid of the colonial settlers and prevent them to taint this paradise. It won’t be easy, and you’ll have to use your whole arsenal of powers to accomplish this.

How it plays?

Game mechanics are relatively simple to grasp. In every round, you’ll start with the growth phase, your spirits will grow progressively stronger as the game goes on. In this phase you’ve got different options depending on your spirit, but they usually end up in some combination of adding presence to the island, gaining energy, power cards or recovering your hand.



Then everybody will select at the same time the power cards that are going to be played this round.  Fast powers will get played next to no particular player order, followed by the invaders turn and finalising with the slow cards. This is where the game gets complex, there are so many strategies, combinations and combos to do that it can be a bit overwhelming on your first game, but this is the beauty of this game’s system. With simple mechanics it manages to get a brilliant card system that will make your brain hurt thinking the best move working together as a group because believe me, you won’t stand a chance if you don’t cooperate with each other.



Each spirit (There are a total of 8 spirits in the base game, 2 extra in the Branch and Claw expansion, and 2 extra available as a promo) has a starting deck of 4 powers each related to your spirit’s nature. Then throughout the game, you’ll get to increase your hand with new powers from a common pool. You have minor powers and major powers, for this you always get 4 cards, keep one and discard the other 3. This makes the game cycle through the deck at a good pace and you can always find something more useful for your spirit’s gameplay. For the major powers you’ll have to discard one of your other power cards, these ones are usually very powerful and will be more useful as the game advances. Also, each spirit has special rules, and innate powers printed on its board that get activated by certain elements.



The invaders follow simple rules, where they ravage, build and explore in this particular order. But you have knowledge of where this is going to happen with s couple of turns in advance. The way this works is, they explore in an unknown place, next turn they build in the terrains they’ve explored and in the following turn they will ravage in those. So you will have to strategize around this.

Wherever they manage to ravage successfully it will place a blight, which hurts you and if these grow in number can be game over at some point. The game will end in victory depending on the fear level of the invaders, as it will change the victory conditions. In general, the more fear, the easier is to win. By increasing the invader’s fear, you’ll also get fear cards that will be very helpful to win the game. You will lose if blight reaches a certain level or the settlers have finished with the invasion and you haven't reached the victory conditions yet.

With the Branch and Claw expansion, you also add extra terrain effects (diseases, beasts, plants, …) plus the events that change the game a fair bit.



If this didn’t sound like enough content already, the game can be tweaked as you want with certain elements. You can add scenarios, which will change the objective for the game quite significantly, you can add invaders behaviours with different levels of difficulty and also you can add blight cards that will make your game unique once the island gets blighted.

Solo game

The game can be played with just one spirit, some people like it more playing multi-handed, but I have to say that I’ve enjoyed all my games with just one spirit. Some are more difficult depending on how the invaders expand as they start slow but gain inertia and become really powerful at the end, but you need to reach that end. Definitely makes for a good challenge every time and with so much variation not a single game will be the same. Otherwise, there is no real difference with the multiplayer game, as it scales really well. For these reasons is one of the most beloved games in the last few months in BGG's 1PG.

Opinion

I am really impressed with this game. I’ve heard people describing it as a mix of Mage Knight meets pandemic, not sure if I would compare it too much with Pandemic. This you get the same satisfying eureka moment when you find the perfect combo to devastate the invaders when all seems lost like Mage Knight has and I love about it, and the ever-growing invaders in your lands, the invasion can spin out of control quite easily like sometimes it happens in Pandemic. But the game definitely stands on its own.

Art is good, the map is not the prettiest, but it makes it really easy to spot everything once it starts getting crowded. Components are nice, and the card quality is good. Every spirit plays really different, and they all feel balanced to me, I was really impressed by that. Don’t get fooled by the colourful artwork, the game is heavy, strategic and will make your brain hurt to win, even in the lower difficulties. But is not unfair and always feels rewarding to win it.

I would recommend getting the Branch and Claw expansion if you like the game, the base game feels complete on its own, but it adds quite cool features to the game that I wouldn’t go back now and has two more spirits to play with! The game was part of a Kickstarter campaign but is easily found in retail (I bought it this way) and there will be another campaign for it later down this year. If you want the promo spirits it was recently in the BGG geekstore and can be bought in the designer's website, though it seems currently out of stock.

Pros: Rewarding gameplay (love the card system with the fast/slow powers), high variability and flexibility for tweaking the difficulty.

Cons: The game is more complex than it seems, this might be a problem for some people. If you suffer from analysis paralysis the game will get very long for you.

You may like: Mage Knight, Start Trek: Frontiers

What are you waiting for then, go get yourself a box full of deadly spirits!

 

A4 Quest Review

Publisher:	Boar & Dice, Thistroy Games	Published Year:	2017
Designer:	Michał Jagodziński, Paweł Niziołek, Jarosław Wajs	Player Scale:	1
Artist:	Paweł Niziołek, Jarosław Wajs	Run Time:	5 – 15 mins

Three things about me you should know in regards to this review.

I love and have loved comic books since I bought a Batman compendium at a car boot sale for seventy-five pence when I was six years old.

My all-time favourite computer game is the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Recently, because of a new job, I’ve been playing and enjoying a lot of solo gaming.

 

[caption id="attachment_2490" align="alignnone" width="4032"] The beginning of your quest[/caption]

 

What do these things have to do with A4 Quest?  Well, if you were to blend them together with some dice and tokens you’ll get something like this game.  And what’s even better is that it’s a Print and Play - but if you fancy a printed version with some bonus content look no further than this Kickstarter.

 

[caption id="attachment_2487" align="alignnone" width="4032"] Three very different quests to choose from[/caption]

 

A4 Quest looks like a comic book, with bulky, exaggerated cell-shaded style characters and landscapes provided by the clearly very talented Mr Jaroslaw Wajs, taking you on a little adventure, or quest if you like, from the top left of one A4 page to the bottom right.  You’ll fight enemies, hunt for food, riffle through treasure chests and explore mini-quests along the way, each time hopefully earning a little experience or some other boost to help and better prepare you to face off against the boss.  And, you do it all with five dice and a few tokens - loose change and a dice app will do the job equally well in a pinch.

Four of those dice form your pool of personal “energy”, with each encounter you’ll allocate one of these dice to the task, and taking into account any modifiers, consult the table to see what you’ve won.  Every now and then you’ll need, or just want to, make camp and rest, that’s when you get to have something to eat (spend one of your steaks)  and replenish your dice pool.

 

[caption id="attachment_2493" align="alignnone" width="4032"] The tantalising, teasing treasure table[/caption]

It is a simple game of dice allocation, but it poses some wonderfully taxing questions and puzzles for you solve.  You see, four dice won’t get you very far, especially if you are a dice rolling jinx, and what you do with your higher rolls is normally pretty obvious - kill baddies.  But what about everything that isn’t a five or six?  And that is where this game gets fun, and by fun, I mean challenging.  You’ll plan all your dice out, I’ll hunt here with my four, pick up some steak, I’ll dip into the treasure chest with that five and increase my defence, keeping my six for that enemy in the next cell, using my two to move to the next section.  Phew!  But, oh no; you’ve run out of dice now, you didn’t plan ahead so now you’re stuck with having to rest, miss out on stuff, taking a risk right before your next big fight.  if only you hadn’t hunted, or took the treasure, or whatever…

 

 

[caption id="attachment_2491" align="alignnone" width="4032"] A string of enemies and tough choices in Episode 2[/caption]

 

Something has to give, there is a fundamental cost to doing each action, spending those very limited resources.  On the other hand, you need to keep doing each action to progress, to toughen up and replenish your dice pool and health, you’ll never defeat the boss or some of the tough enemies, without boosting your stats.  Opportunities to bump your character up are tantalisingly frequent tempting you to spend your dice, “Ooooh, look here, a treasure with a plus-three modifier, so my four becomes a seven which means I can get some crystal, and a crystal means I can really kick ass when I get there.

The only time you ever feel like you have enough dice is when you have four, and no sooner does that happen that you get rid of one. Often I find myself questioning Past-Rory’s decision-making abilities, almost allowing myself a “do-over”. Despite the limited selection of action choices, quite wonderfully this game doesn’t get old, choices are never obvious since with each game, each roll of the dice your story changes.

 

[caption id="attachment_2492" align="alignnone" width="4032"] The Knight, ready for adventure!  Packing extra steaks, because...steak![/caption]

 

There is an unavoidable drive forward (it’s in the rules), much like a story or comic you always have to move on to the next cell.  This pace not only ensures a short play-time but creates a brevity and a sense missed moments, passing by opportunities which you’ll no doubt regret later on.  Yay!  You’ve got all the dice you need but none of the bonuses.

 

[caption id="attachment_2489" align="alignnone" width="4032"] Archers suck, Knights Rock and don't get me started on the Paladin[/caption]

 

With four characters (that’s including the recently released Mage) and three adventures, there is plenty of simple variety.  The archer plays very differently to the Knight, who in turn is leagues away from the Paladin, and each adventure ups the ante, ups the challenge, and they all use the same components, giving this game a nice array of play options, complete all episodes with one progressively more powerful character, or try each hero against each story.  None of this will ever take you too long to do, and knowing this gives the game a feeling of being open and malleable.

A4 Quest is a quick game but packs a good walloping punch, or perhaps a sharp jab, to the ol’ grey matter as you weigh each seemingly easy choice against its inherent loss of a die.  A poor roll of the dice is almost as agonising as rolling four sixes, and it’s the choices these dice represent that catch you off guard.  All too soon you’re on your final assault of the boss and you don’t have the attack that you need, and you’re down to one steak and...and...how in blazes did the bottom of the page get there so flippin’ quick?!  I should at least another foot of paper surely!

 

[caption id="attachment_2488" align="alignnone" width="4032"] Fighting the boss is never going to be a walk in the park[/caption]

 

Best of all, this is just the beginning.  A4 Quest is the precursor to something grander, something different, new and fresh in the world of tabletop gaming, which you should pay attention too.  Episodic Gaming.  We’ve all heard of a Legacy game, and maybe even played (or at least started) one or two.  Page Quest Season 1: Mythical Artifacts is the brave, bold new step Board and Dice are taking us.  Using the same mechanics as A4 Quest, Page Quest is a real-world nineties setting of adventure, but with one big difference, your missions; the story, will be e-mailed to you monthly.  You’ll have to wait for the next episode, much like the comic books that this game looks like, you’ll following and developing your story, your character as actual, literal time passes, making decisions about how it develops for you, and only you.  Because here is the other great thing, it’s solo play – (it can be played two-player too though) the biggest trouble I’ve had with my game of Pandemic Season 1 is getting everyone together - I bought Pandemic just before my son was born, now he is walking and talking (one of his first words was Batman, I’m so proud) and I still haven’t finished that game!  I can’t see that being a problem with Page Quest.



Is this the next twist, the evolution of legacy gaming?  Will this be the next big movement in board game mechanics? Maybe.  But, I for one am very excited about it.

This review is based on a Print and Play PDF that I downloaded and printed myself, like a big boy.  

Review: Pax Porfiriana

Game Name:	Pax Porfiriana: Collector’s edition	Published Year:	2012
Game Publisher:	Sierra Madre Games	Player Scale:	1-6
Game Designer:	Phil Eklund, Matt Eklund, Jim Gutt	Run Time:	120 min

¡Bienvenidos a México!

Pax Porfiriana, Latin for "The Porfirian Peace", refers to the 33-year period in the early 20th Century where dictator Porfirio Díaz ruled Mexico with an iron hand until toppled in the 1910 revolution.

Your objective in the game, as a rich businessman of the time, is to topple president Díaz. Being a competitive game, you are going against each other to see who gets the position after him. This indeed not a story of friendship. You can topple in different ways, depending on the actual regime while the topple happens, but you only get 4 chances to do this in the whole game, otherwise, there is a Mexican stand-off at the end and whoever has more gold wins.

How it plays?

The game goes in a sequence of turns until the las topple cards get played. Each player performs all the four phases and then play goes to next player.

The first phase is the action phase. Each player gets to do 3 actions (or 2 if jailed) and there are a lot of options to choose from. You can purchase cards from the market, play or sell cards from your hand, upgrade in play cards, move troops around or speculate in the market.

After this, if there is a headline card in the 0 space of the market it gets played and then the market is restored, moving cards towards the lowest cost and filling up the empty spots. Finally, you get your income based on your enterprises without unrest, extortions and connection cubes.

You see that there are lots of options and moving gears in this game, even if the gameplay is quite easy to pick up there is quite a fair amount of complexity in the gameplay. All the meat in this game is in the cards though, the game comes with 220 cards, and depending on the number of players you will play only with half or a third of the cards, so every game can be very different and it will help keep that game fresh. Also, each player gets a Hacienda card, which will grant a special ability and your initial income.

There are 6 kinds of playing cards in this game. The enterprise cards are businesses that you can purchase are where most of your income will come from. There different kind of businesses, some of them they depend on the kind of regime in play as it affects the mines production and economy, others are more stable and can be improved (but beware as they become juicy targets for others to exploit too!) or depend on other enterprises in play.

The partner cards, they are people that you get for your cause and they are faction related. They will give you different abilities or prestige points.

Troop cards are military units that you can use either to defend your businesses or to extort another player's enterprise.  They are faction related also and most of them they can only be used in one of the 3 regions of the game (Sonora, Chihuahua and USA) as they have jurisdiction. Once you pledge for one of the causes you can have troops as a private army.

Black cards represent defamations, lawsuits, assassinations and other dirty tactics against your political rivals. And orange cards represent bandits, strikers, etc. that will create unrest and steal from your businesses. These two types when used the victim usually gets a reward in prestige points.

Finally, we have the headline cards. These act as events and also include the topple cards. These also can trigger a Depression in the game, if two bear cards are played in a row, and the only way to go back to business as usual is playing two bull cards in a row.

This more or less covers all the interactions in the game, there is one last thing, as I've talked about different regimes but I haven’t explained yet. There are 4 different regimes: Pax Porfiriana, Anarchy, Martial Law and US Intervention. These will affect the income of some of your enterprises and how the topple works as each regime is associated with one kind of victory points. When you try to topple, you will need a number of certain prestige points greater than Díaz basic 2, plus the sum of the opponents with the least points of that kind.

Solo game

As you can see from the gameplay this game doesn't seem very solo friendly as there is quite a lot of interaction between players, but it does have a solo variant that you can play. In this case, you will go against Díaz itself. I haven't particularly played it yet solo, but it does look like it makes a very interesting game.

Also, there is a variant made by Ricky Royal that is highly regarded in BGG's 1 Player Guild, if you want to take a look here are the written rules and the videos of Ricky playing it on his YouTube channel (Box of Delights). Definitely worth to give it a go and I'm particularly looking forward to it.

Opinion

I will start saying that I like Phil Eklund's games, they are very particular designs that are not for everybody and usually, the rules are not easy to digest. Nonetheless, I haven't played one of his game that hasn't been rewarding to learn to play it. They are all science or history based and have very intelligent and interesting mechanics. This one is probably the easiest Phil Eklund game to get into that I have played.

This is the first game in the Pax series, it was highly regarded in the 1 Player Guild and in BGG in general so I was looking forward to playing it at some point. I wasn't disappointed at all. It makes for such an interesting gameplay the whole game. Turns are fast, there is a ton of interaction between players and is a deep game. With so many cards and different types of them, it makes for a lot of variation in the game too, you never know what will happen or what will come out in the market. Things can change a lot from turn to turn too so is quite a dynamic game, and getting that victory condition when the topple card comes is very hard to achieve.

The interaction between players is great, but you need to be careful as when you do something to someone else you usually give them a plus in prestige points, and a point in this game can give you the victory, such a brilliant design. This game feels a bit like a COIN-lite game but more focused on the economy, for those who don't know me, I'm a big fan of GMT's COIN games, they are my favourite system, and the interaction in this game with the factions and between players reminds me a bit of that system, with a bit less complexity and a bit shorter too.

Pros: High interaction between players, very rewarding gameplay and lots of variability.

Cons: The artwork and game pieces are not very attractive, so that may put some people off but it won't matter when they start playing. This is quite common with Sierra Madre games, though they are doing a great job in their new releases to improve the aspect of their games without increasing the price to crazy levels. Looking forward to keeping getting their games.

You may also like: Pax Pamir, Pax Renaissance, GMT's COIN games.

That's all folks, I hope you liked it and hopefully, I've convinced you all to try a Phil Eklund game at some point!

Interview: Tristan Hall, from Hall or Nothing Productions

Hello, fellow gamers!

After a small pause during the holidays, I come with something a bit different than usual. While Rory and I were visiting the UK Games Expo back in early June we decided to do some interviews.

So let me present you Tristan Hall, from Hall or Nothing Productions. The designer of the great "Gloom of Kilforth" and the upcoming "1066, Tears To Many Mothers", also a fellow 1 Player Guild member from BGG and a friend of mine.

After many years of development, he successfully kickstarted his first game, Gloom of Kilforth. Though I remember being part of the campaign and it came close to the end. The delivery of the games was earlier in June this year and he delivered on everything he promised. Great gameplay, immersive stories and one of the best artwork ever seen in a boardgame. A review will definitely come at some point.

No wonder his second Kickstarter, 1066, Tears To Many Mothers run much smoother and reached its goal much earlier and funded in the first days of the campaign, after such a good reception of the first game.

We thought it was a good opportunity to get some insight into the games world from a small designer point of view.

Also, if after reading this you want to know more or even get one of his games, you can still late pledge for 1066, Tears To Many Mothers and tomorrow friday 29th o November, Tristan will launch his 3rd kickstarter with a reprint and an expansion for Gloom of Kilforth. I'll update the article with a link to the campaign :)

And now onto the questions, I hope you enjoy it!

Gloom of Kilforth:

• When reading the synopsis of the game I was immediately reminded of some of my favourite fantasy films of my childhood, namely The Never Ending Story, with its intangible and abstract growing menace – and I appreciate this question is the chagrin of fantasy authors, but I’ll ask it anyway: Can you tell me about any of the direct influences (as well as Tolkien that you’ve mentioned) to this game – from both/either other art forms, books/films/music or other games?

I’m obsessed with stories, and I always have been, so influences can come from anywhere, but if I had to list authors I guess anything by Terry Brooks, Terry Pratchett, Weiss and Hickman, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, even the gritty stuff from Iain Banks (or any of his sci-fi stuff as Iain M Banks) and Irvine Welsh, or the sweeping tales from Dickens or Dostoevsky, all of these have fed into my pools of influence in some way or other.

For films, a key moment in my life was watching Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings when I was 5 - I think it maybe had an even bigger impact on me than Star Wars.  All of Ray Harryhausen’s films blew me away.  Anything fantastical from the 80s like Labyrinth, Legend, Conan, Beastmaster, or any of the cheaper sword and sandals B-movies.

For other games it would be a combination of the Arkham Horror board game meets the Dungeons and Dragons RPG.

• As an RPG style game, self-generated narrative is an important feature of the game can you tell me a little about how you devised this system, as you say there are few to no games like it.

Basically I wanted to play a fantasy RPG but didn’t have the time, and I wanted it to be solo-playable too.  All the fantasy games on the market were based on combat - fighting baddies and nicking their treasure.  Which is fine, of course, and I probably bought all of them.  But for me, actual RPGs were more about negotiating with strange people, going on amazing adventures, exploring ancient and deadly locations, saving people by going on epic quests, and THEN fighting baddies and nicking their treasure.  And there were no games that seemed to deal with all of that other cool narrative stuff, so I worked hard to include all of those elements in Gloom of Kilforth.

Interestingly, there has been a surge of fantasy games focussed on narrative experiences recently, so it’s clearly not just me who feels this way!

• With the success of this Kickstarter and “similar” projects like The City of Kings and Gloomhaven – where the border between board and RPG is becoming thinner, and of course with the recent and sudden popularity of the Legacy format, what do you think this means for this new genre/style of game?

I think that narrative games are an excellent direction for the industry, and my usual reason for designing games is because they don’t already exist.  If we have a gamut of excellent RPG style adventure games with great storytelling then I can spend more time playing than designing them!

I love campaign games but I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge fan of the Legacy format.  I know there are two schools of thought on this and that the proponents of Legacy games argue that it’s not just a marketing gimmick and that you can’t get the same tension from a game when you know you can just reset it again afterwards.  But after playing through campaigns of renewable campaign games like Kingdom Death compared to say the one-shot experience of Pandemic Legacy, I just don’t think that games where you have to destroy components deliver a better experience.  I also like to come back and play games that I’ve had for decades too.  That said, there is now a movement of ‘green legacy’ style games where you can play through a changing world campaign game but not have to destroy your game in the process.  I think these will offer the perfect balance of experience in the long run, when people realise you don’t have to buy multiple copies of a disposable game instead.

That said, if the market for disposable Legacy games continues to grow too, that’s cool as well.  There’s nothing to stop us all from having our cake and eating it!

• As a member of the 1 Player Guild, I guess it was important for you to include a solo mode.  Were there any notable/specific challenges you faced when designing that mode of play, was it something you had in mind from the beginning?

I have been a solo game player for as long as I’ve played board games, whether it was playing both sides at Tank Battles when I was a child (never enjoyed playing both opposing sides as much though) to developing full solo/cooperative rules for HeroQuest when I was a pre-teen.  I’m a huge advocate for solo play, and though asking for solo rules for games was kind of frowned upon by some of the gaming community ten years ago, today it seems like including solo rules is par for course, which I think is fantastic.  I certainly set out to do that with Gloom of Kilforth from the outset, as I was often frustrated by games that offered solo rules but forced you to play as multiple characters for the game to work.  As an avid reader of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks as I was growing up I always loved the idea of one hero against the world, so that mode of play was built in from the ground up, meaning that the challenge of achieving that was equivalent to me as the challenge of just designing the game in the first place.  If that makes sense.  Which it might not, reading that back...

• The artwork in this game is incredible, just eye-wateringly beautiful, one of the things I love the most about it,and it is used is in the gender neutrality of the card-flipping, as you say in the Kickstarter video, which side of the card is used has no impact on the game, was the inclusion of this extra art etc important to you at an early stage?  

I’ve always thought that being able to play as male or female in a fantasy game was just common sense, and I think that games like this but which preclude one gender or another are senseless.  If it’s a historical game based on real individuals, you might well be limited to a number of characters of a specific gender, but when you’re creating a new world from scratch there’s no reason to hold back in this respect other than the costs involved for the extra art work.

• Your wife Francesca developed a beautiful soundtrack to the game, something very different and unique, can you tell me about how and why that came about?

Francesca is an amazing pianist, and the daughter of a concert pianist so music is in her blood, literally!  She would be playing the piano whilst I was designing the game in the same room and we talked about how cool it would be if she could score the game.  We went through the themes of the game together, the descending Gloom, the heroes against the odds, strangers meeting and joining forces, epic adventures, and Francesca used the art as inspiration too, to develop piano music to go with it.  I wanted just piano for this soundtrack - like Philip Glass did for Dracula.  And what she achieved is spectacular I think.  If you listen to the music whilst playing the game it provides that extra level of immersion and world-building that really draws you in.  Maybe one day she can score the music to the Gloom of Kilforth movie too!

• With the upcoming expansion, "Touch of Death", will it increase the base game contents or will it add new very different mechanics to the game?  

Touch of Death is a stand-alone expansion to Gloom of Kilforth with a focus on the rising undead threat, so it’s effectively the same game system again, but with entirely new heroes, adventures, rewards, and content.  You can either play Touch of Death or Gloom of Kilforth independently, or you can shuffle them both together to create one epic world and double the content of all of your decks of cards!

• Did you consider anything else to further the immersion into the world you created?

We are launching an artbook Kickstarter for Ania’s incredible work on Gloom of Kilforth soon.

• With 8 years in development what was it you set out to do, and how does the end product differ from that?

I set out to deliver a sort of D&D RPG experience in a box, that could be played in one evening, either solo, cooperatively, or competitively.  In that respect I think I’ve achieved my goal.  But the help along the way from play-testers and backers regarding the rules and gameplay has dragged the concept along leaps and bounds, and with the money from the Kickstarter campaign we were able to hike up the quality of the art and components to a level I had honestly never envisioned.  There is nothing else out there like it for the amount of art and content you get in a single box, and seeing it sitting on my local shop shelves next to the highest rated games out there I could not be prouder of what we all achieved together.

• Have your plans changed at all about attempting a retail release for Gloom of Kilforth?

GoK had a limited retail run in the UK through Esdevium, who sold out and oversold almost straight away.  The same happened with our US retailer The Game Steward.  Both retailers have asked for much bigger print runs and we now have international language retailers and distributors interested, so we will be launching a second print run soon going straight to retail.  But we’ll also be running a Kickstarter campaign to attract direct buyers - and there will be something in it for existing owners of the game too, so stay tuned!

1066 Tears to Many Mothers:

• A great name for a game, where does it come from?

In April of 1066 Halley's Comet was in its perihelion orbit and writers at the time said it was four times the size of Venus and shining with a light equal to a quarter of that of the Moon. Many thought it was an evil omen - the monk Eilmer of Malmesbury Abbey wrote about the event:

"You've come, have you? – You've come, you source of tears to many mothers. It is long since I saw you; but as I see you now you are much more terrible, for I see you brandishing the downfall of my country."

Which is where we get the title.

• How long have you been working on 1066 TtMM?

The game has been in development for about 5 years.

• As potentially part of the Alt Wars series why start with the Battle of Hastings?

As an English kid growing up this was one of the most fascinating subjects to learn about at school.  Such a romantic notion: Harold as the tragic king fighting for the centuries-long fate of our country, and from a military point of view this idea that the battle could have gone either way at any moment, the whole thing just seemed to write itself into an asymmetrical conflict game in my head.  I loved the idea of making a two player card game like Star Wars LCG or Magic the Gathering but with historical events and characters instead.  And I knew with Ania’s art that we could make history look beautiful in a card game format, rather than a dry hex and chit type affair that lots of war games become - not that there’s anything wrong with those too of course...

• This game so far has picked up two pretty big awards, is this successful enough for you to develop Agincourt?

Award nominations - it’s a big distinction.  But I think people are just as happy that it’s been nominated, especially considering it hasn’t actually even been released yet!  Agincourt was certainly on my list of conflicts/theatres to cover, but as has been pointed out many times, it would pit the French against the English once again.  So I’m convinced now that the second game in the series will be another prominent contender from my list - ‘1565, St Elmo’s Pay’ (Siege of Malta).  And given the success of the 1066 TtMM Kickstarter, I’m confident enough to start development on it as soon as I can.

• Are you planning on doing a retail release for 1066 TtMM, or will you keep it as a Kickstarter exclusive like Gloom of Kilforth?

If the retailers will have it, I’ll sell it.  Gloom of Kilforth did get a limited retail run at hobby shops in the UK and US, and I believe 1066 will too.  But it will be a long time before we’re threatening the shelves of Barnes and Noble, Waterstones or Toys R Us!

• TtMM sees quite a bit of a departure from Gloom of Kilforth, was this born from a desire to create a game mechanically very different, or was i the theme/history that lead the mechanics?  

The history bled into the mechanics of 1066 enormously, and once the main elements fell into place (two armies fighting over the three wedges of troops) it started to come together quite quickly.  Even though it’s an abstracted card game, everything about it is drawn from the history and/or stories of the time, so there are cards for almost anything you can think of that occurred at the battle - the legendary Saxon Hatchet Knight, the stopping the battle for a food break because the bodies were piled too high, the Normans confessing and praying the night before, whilst the Saxons drank and sang, we even have an ‘Arrow in the Eye’ card...

But there’s also an element of needing to prove I’m not a one-trick pony too.  The path of least resistance would have been to release a Gloom of Kilforth expansion straight away, and that will certainly happen soon, but I wanted to show I could design a totally different game altogether, and I think 1066 is, as you say, a clear enough departure.  And wait till you see what’s coming further down the line too.

• Do you think this game will appeal to a different/wider audience then Gloom of Kilforth?  Do you see any risk in creating a game that is mechanically very different?

It was definitely a risk, because we could have got back all the people who enjoyed Gloom of Kilforth by doing an expansion, whereas there was no guarantee that anyone who wanted a 1-4 player epic fantasy adventure experience was going to want a 1-2 player head to head card game based on history.  But I was shocked by the number of backers who came back to support a combination of Ania’s artwork, Francesca’s music, my game designs, and Hall or Nothing as a company I guess.  We also actually drew in more initial backers this time (1,906 backers for 1066 Tears to Many Mothers versus 1,481 for Gloom of Kilforth), I think from the much lower price point, being an established/trusted brand now, and also from the historical element, maybe.  I definitely wasn’t sure we’d reach a wider audience, but I’m delighted that we did.

• After your second Kickstarter for “1066 Tears to many mothers”, as a small independent company producing games, crowdfunding looks like a good system to launch a new game. What are the biggest challenges you faced the first time that you’re doing differently now? What advice would you give to a new designer who is thinking of launching a Kickstarter based on your experience?

Go for it!  It’s a great time for the industry right now, many are calling it the golden age, as people want to escape from screens and spend time with real people and real components around a real table, being sociable, having drinks and snacks and listening to music or whatever.

Make sure your game idea is fully fledged - play-test it a hundred times, and get people you don’t know to play it too.  Take on all the feedback you can, and as long as you put in the time and effort to make your game the best it can be, don’t be put off by too much negativity, because there are games for everyone.  I’ve had to learn the hard way that no matter how beautifully produced, researched or presented your game, there will always be people who will not like it for any number of reasons.  One reviewer said that the art for Gloom of Kilforth was ‘too good’ and broke the immersion for him.  And I recently had a 1066 backer pull his pledge because he found out that Saxon warriors liked to drink ale!  You have to learn to love these differences in people, and realise that for every individual who doesn’t like your game, there will five hundred more who love it.

Platforms like Kickstarter can be incredibly supportive and positive if you keep your backers updated and you are open and honest with them.  But a badly handled campaign with a quiet creator and/or an unfinished game can quickly descend into toxicity.  Stay on top of your project and ask for help when and where you need it.

• Anna Kryczkowska provides the excellent artwork again for TtMM, why have you chosen to retain the same artist, and do you plan to continue doing so?

Have you seen her work??  Seriously though, Ania K is a consummate professional who delivers the highest quality art I’ve ever seen in board games, and in an incredibly quick time frame.  We have a great working relationship too.  Hopefully we’ll get busy enough to require multiple artists to get projects completed, but I would happily continue working with Ania for as long as I’m producing anything creative because she’s a legend

What is next for Hall or Nothing Productions?

For Hall or Nothing Productions Ltd here's a very rough guideline:

• ‘1066, Tears to Many Mothers’ - production underway


• ‘Gloom of Kilforth’ reprint + small GoK expansion


• Ania Kryczkowska Art-book


• Mark Chaplin’s sci-fi epic ‘Lifeform’


• ‘Touch of Death: A Fantasy Quest Game’


• ‘Sublime Dark’ (horror storytelling game)


• ‘1565, St Elmo’s Pay’ (Siege of Malta)

 

That's all folks!

Thanks for reading and special thanks to Tristan for taking the time to answer all our questions!

Review: Sub Terra

Game Name:	Sub Terra	Published Year:	2017
Game Publisher:	Inside the Box Board Games LLP (ITB)	Player Scale:	1-6
Game Designer:	Tim Pinder	Run Time:	45-90 min

What seems to be a small cave expedition with your group of friends for a nice Sunday activity turns out a bit different from what you expected. You find yourselves cut off from the entry point and you need to find another exit before your torches run out of power. But that is not your only problem, you find, quite soon, that something else lives deep inside this cave and is not very friendly...

Welcome to Sub Terra, in this survival horror co-op game, you'll be exploring a cave system laying out tiles and trying to survive a multitude of dangers while you all try to make it alive to the exit.

How it plays

Gameplay is quite simple, starting from the player with the first player token, all cavers will take actions, then if any horror is in play it will move towards the closest caver. Next, you draw a card from the hazard deck and resolve it and finally you pass the first player token to the next player. You'll play a certain number of rounds like this until either you're all unconscious or you escape the cave.

[caption id="attachment_1842" align="alignnone" width="4032"] Game setup[/caption]

While setting up the game you will place the exit tile between the last six tiles in the exploration stack, so you have a bit of control on where and when is going to be placed at the end. The tiles are beautifully illustrated and the iconography is easy to identify while playing. The first time a tile is drawn, some of them will represent a potential threat, but it won't trigger until a matching hazard card gets drawn.

 

[caption id="attachment_1832" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Character mats and meeples[/caption]

 

All players have 2 action points they can use in any combination they want from the action list. Some of the actions need to use both points some only use one. You can always try to exert yourself for a third action point, but you will roll for a skill check, if you fail you'll get a wound. Appart from the common actions, all characters have a special ability/action each, there are 8 different characters in the game, each useful in its own way and making for different combinations.

 

[caption id="attachment_1834" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Hazard cards[/caption]

 

The hazard deck is what is going to make your adventure a horror story and acts as your timer for the game. Depending on the number of players or difficulty chosen you'll form the deck with a different amount of cards. There are 5 different kind of hazards: tremors that might hurt you anywhere you are, deadly gas that will stay active in all gas tiles until the next hazard card gets drawn, cave-ins and floods that are very dangerous if you are in one of the tiles where it happens and will make more difficult to move around the cave system. And last but not least the horrors, that will hunt your group down. If you run out of cards, not everything is lost you still have a small chance to make it out running in the darkness, every caver still inside the cave will have to do a skill check if you succeed then you have an extra turn but if you fail, you're dead.

There are different winning thresholds. Gold if everybody makes it out, silver if one caver is left behind or bronze if two cavers are left to the horrors. If 3 or more cavers didn't make it in time then the game is lost for the whole group. And believe me, you'll need to cooperate and organize quite well to make it out alive.

Opinion

The game is easy to play and is taught in a few minutes. It plays quite fast too, with 6 cavers we are playing in around 45-60 min per game now and it's got that addictive factor of one more game because the game is hard and really fun to play, it invites you to keep trying. It took us a few games until only 4/6 cavers made it out, though we had pretty good attempts that almost made it.

Even though the box says Sub Terra plays from 1 to 6 players, you'll need to play with a minimum of 4 cavers, but is not a difficult task as is very easy to keep track of their abilities and their life points. It plays very well solo and in any number of players, though after numerous games in my group we believe the game shines with 6 cavers in play, you have more abilities to deal with the cave, but at least 4 have to make it to the exit.



Production quality is excellent, sturdy cardboard, gorgeous art, and very easy iconography.  Tiles are easily identifiable and once activated the hazard on them the tokens will mark it and differentiate over the ones not active yet. Replayability is very high, as the cave tiles are randomized and the order and number of different hazards are different in every game. There are also a couple of expansions on the way if you still feel like you need more game.

The game also comes with a few extra perks, like a tile holder and the tiles have spots that light up with UV light, same as the die. It makes as a great experience to play it in the dark with a cave soundtrack in the background.

The good: The game plays fast and is hard, a victory will feel like one. Production quality. Simple mechanics makes for a light game that is really fun to play.

The bad: If a player gets stranded and get knocked unconscious early in the game it might be left behind, and makes for a boring game for that person if nobody comes rescue you. with 4 cavers we've found out for this to happen more often as only half of the group has to make it out.

You might also like: Burgle Bros, Pandemic

That's it for Sub Terra review folks!

If you feel adventurous enough I highly recommend it and watch out for the horrors hidden in the darkness...

Brain teasers - Insidezecube review

Today I bring you an article a little bit different than usual. Since I was a kid I've always loved solving riddles and puzzles, it is probably why I enjoy playing games so much nowadays. I've always been a fan of logic riddles. But today I'm going to talk about a different kind of riddles, ones you need other abilities than a quick mind for.

At the UK Games Expo '17, there was a small booth that drew my attention. It was full of very colorful cubes with some kind of inscription on them. They let me try one sample and I was immediately hooked. I purchased one of them and after toying around I got in contact with them to know more about these. I'm talking about the people from insidezecube!



The idea behind these cubes is very simple. You are the ball, and you need to escape the labyrinth in the dark, with just your map. Every labyrinth has several layers and you have a map of each layer where it shows the entries and exits. The exit is on the other side of the cube. You'll move the ball by moving the cube and making it roll, and you'll guide yourself by the sound and hits against the walls.



Simple right? Well, prepare to get lost.  A lot! These things are addictive and in the higher levels, it will take you some time to get to the exit successfully. Yes, they have differents difficulties too.

They've got 6 different levels. Blue is the easiest, with just one way down. Green and orange are the next, which introduces 3-dimensional movement, you're going back and forward between levels. The red and brown they add traps (dead ends) and with the brown, you can't open the cube! And last but not least, for the more intrepid adventurers, you've got the black cube. No map.  No cube opening.  Just you and your senses.

 

[caption id="attachment_1594" align="alignleft" width="300"] The mean family[/caption]

 

They also have 3 different series. The novice series are 5 level labyrinths. The Series 0, which is the original one, has 7 levels. And the 3rd, called the Phantom Series, has an extra ball that is enclosed somewhere in the labyrinth that will mess with your senses. As you can see there is a cube for everyone here.

 



With the exception of the black and brown cubes, you can always open the cube to gain access to the different levels, in case you get lost and want to restart. The assembly is very easy, shaped so the levels can only be introduced one way, and each has an identifier number.

But wait, there is more, one of the questions that I had after toying around with the cube and opening to see how the inside looked, was how about switching the levels to get different labyrinths? Insidezecube had already thought about that. They redirected me to a small webapp with a couple of tools that you're going to love. They have a small questionnaire to help you find the ball if you get lost and don't want to give up and they have one that lets you print different maps.



But the best one of them all is the one that you put the levels you own and it gives you all the possible combinations that have an actual exit. So you're buying the cube but in fact, you have hundreds of combinations with your levels. And if you have two different cubes you can mix and match, just amazing!

These guys from neighbouring France have a great idea in their hands, they started it with a crowd funding and have created a small community around these cubes. They have challenges, people interchanging their cubes and an excellent website full of resources to keep you coming back. I know I'll be waiting first in line for their next evolution in the series. If you're interested in giving it a go, you won't be disappointed. If your local shop doesn't supply on these cubes you can always purchase directly from them with very reasonable prices.

 

[caption id="attachment_1596" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Mortal phantom series 0 (before I got irremediably lost)[/caption]

 

For the moment I'll try to find my way back in the phantom mortal cube again before I go completely insane in that labyrinth... Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

I hope you enjoyed the article. I love this kind of puzzles, and they also deserve a mention in the game's world. They are excellent to bring along on a trip or as a gift.  There are hundreds of great ideas out there. If you like the labyrinth cubes, you might also like these ones too.

 

[caption id="attachment_1597" align="alignleft" width="300"] Kepler's Planetary Puzzle[/caption]

 

I love to get them when I visit the Science Museum in London, a great souvenir if you ask me. The latest one I got was the Kepler's Planetary puzzle from the Great Minds series (I love to challenge my colleagues to solve this under a timer).

 

 



You also have reimplementations of classics like the mix of a Sudoku with a Rubik's cube! (only for the faint of heart and looking for a brain burning experience!) from the people at Vcube.

Thanks for reading and take a look at the innovative great ideas from insedezecube!

Hoplomachus: Origins - Review

Game Name:	Hoplomachus: Origins	Published Year:	2015
Game Publisher:	Chip Theory Games	Player Scale:	1-2
Game Designer:	Adam Carlson, Josh J. Carlson	Run Time:	15-30 min

 

“Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant”

Introduction

The Hoplomachus series brings us back to ancient times, to fight as a group of gladiators in the Roman arena games. There are currently 3 games in the series, but I will talk about the more recent one released, Hoplomachus Origins. On this one, instead of playing in the arenas of Rome, you’ll be playing in 3 different arenas of other civilisations trying to gain fame to finally make it into the greatest arena. This game differentiates from the other two in the series as the fight conditions change and it incorporates a drafting mechanic at the beginning of the game.

How it plays



The first part of the game corresponds to the drafting. The two players will have to choose, one at a time, the gladiators and tactics they wish to use for their combats. There are different gladiator houses that you can choose from and you can mix as you wish. You will choose a total of 8 chips, and in every combat, you will use a maximum of 6. You’re also limited to use only one champion per combat, though you can draft multiple if you wish, these are more powerful gladiators.

There are two different kinds of chips you can choose from. Gladiators, which have different abilities depending on their class, and different stats. There is a wide range of abilities in the game, ranging from basic attacks of different kinds to alternative attacks or passive abilities. This is one of the most interesting parts of the game as depending on the different mix of abilities you have in combat you’ll have different strategies. The other kind of chips are tactics, these are special abilities you can deploy in a fight to temper with your opponent or aid you, but at the expense of taking the space of a gladiator.



Once the draft is done, the fights begin. You will play on the 3 arenas, but at in a randomly chosen order. Every arena has a different objective. In the Atlantis Arena, the first gladiator deployed will be your leader, which will have double the life, and the objective is to kill the other leader. In El Dorado arena, both teams have a treasure chest, and your objective is to carry it to the other side of the arena. And the third arena, Xanadu, you’ll need to control the centre of the arena, where at the beginning of the round you’ll score a point for every gladiator you have in those hexes and whoever gets to 6 points first wins the fight. Alternatively, you can always win by killing all the gladiators from the other team.

The fights play with a very simple set of rules: deploy, move, attack. In a player’s turn you will be able first to deploy a gladiator and/or tactic, then you’ll be able to move all your gladiators deployed in previous rounds and finally attack with those gladiators. Then is the other player’s go. As you can see the gameplay is very simple, but there is a lot of strategy behind your choices, as the fights are brutal and fast to play, every decision matters.



As a handicap for the winner, the player who’s lost will choose one of the chips in the opponent’s pool and will eliminate it from the game. Also as you are running a house of gladiators you will earn and lose reputation as you keep winning or losing. This reputation will hold for all your games of Hoplomachus Origins, and will modify the drafting rules at the beginning of every game just for you. This is a very cool addition to the game, that you don’t need to use if you don’t like it, but is a very cool system to compare scores with your friends, and remain in the top of the reputation chart will be a real challenge, as for every 10 reputation a harder handicap will come in effect.

The solo game



The game comes with specific solo rules, in the form of 20 different trials. In the solo game, you will face different challenges against special champions. You will only draft 6 and the rules for drafting will be different for every trial. These start quite easy but will rapidly increase in difficulty and will be a real challenge in the latest ones. The premise of the solo game is that once you win a trial you can go to the next one, and if you fail you can attempt it once more or you will fall to the previous trial. The opposing team will follow some simple AI rules to move and attack, plus the champions will act depending on the dice rolls.

Opinion

The game system is very simple, so is very easy to explain and get going, but there is so much strategy in those combats with all the different abilities, that makes every game unique and very challenging to master. There is a lot of interaction between the different gladiators that you can exploit in your favour. Fights play in 5/10 min each, so is very fast to play, and it makes for a very interesting game in such short gameplay time. Just using this game, you have 33 different skills, not counting the different basic attacks. The game comes with a total of 20 Gladiators from 5 different schools, plus 8 tactics. But the good thing is that if you own the other games you can mix the units to have a bigger pool for the draft, increasing the choice and replayability of the game even further, which is already big. The solo mode is very well implemented and makes for a challenging and very entertaining game that plays fast and is quite different even if you replay the same trial.



Component wise, this is very high quality, the games are not cheap but they are worth every penny, not just for such a good gameplay but you get top notch components. All the information is displayed in the heavy poker chips and the art is quite good. The arena maps are on neoprene mats with very cool art. This game is the cheapest of the 3 in the series so it makes a good entry point if you are interested. The games can only be purchased from Chips theory games website directly, they do that to keep the cost down as and now they support EU friendly shipping with very reasonable prices. The box is quite big and it comes a bit empty, but they will probably release more content for it in the future, plus there are already a few mini expansions that are compatible if you want to increase the pool of gladiators.

The good: Lots of strategy and tactics involved in the game and it plays fast with simple game mechanics. The components are very good quality. The solo game is excellent. The house reputation is a neat addition to the game.

The bad: The price is high, you get quality, but it might put some people off. For me is worth it, and this is the best entry point being the cheapest of the three. It will take a few games until you see some abilities in play and start forging your tactics.

You might also like: Hoplomachus: The Lost Cities, Hoplomachus: Rise of Rome and Too Many Bones.

That’s it for my review of Hoplomachus Origins folks.

I’ll see you around in the arena and don’t expect mercy!

Jesus

 

Review: Comanchería - The Rise and Fall of the Comanche Empire

Game Name:	Comanchería: The Rise and Fall of the Comanche Empire	Published Year:	2016
Game Publisher:	GMT Games	Player Scale:	1
Game Designer:	Joel Toppen	Run Time:	60-360 min

“Warriors are not what you think of warriors. The warrior is not someone who fights, because no one has the right to take another life. The warrior, for us, is one who sacrifices himself for the good of others. His task is to take care of the elderly, the defensless, those who cannot provide for themselves, and above all, the children, the future of humanity.”

 Sitting Bull (c. 1831-1890),

Hunkpapa Lakota

Introduction

 This is the second game in Joel Toppen's "First Nations" series. Let’s go back in time to North America, XVIII^th - XIX^th Century, the Native Americans dominated a large part of the lands. With this game, we’re going to focus on the story of the Comanche people, the Lords of the Southern Plains. This game is a full solo experience and with it, you will see their struggle against the different Colonial powers of the time. Your objective in the game is to develop your culture and military power and meet the historical period check at the end so your legacy survives.



How it plays

The game plays in sequence of phases, cycling through them in every turn. This will make advance the time at th end of each turn and trigger at some point a passage of time (a jump to the next generation of your people).

It gives you an option to play from 5 different scenarios, each one contemplating different historical periods of different length and ranging from the easiest difficulty to the hardest.

Every turn you play it will emulate from 6 months to two years and every Passage of Time will be a new generation on the tribes, also known as Comancherías.

[caption id="attachment_1114" align="alignleft" width="300"] Historical period cards[/caption]

There are 4 historical periods in total in the game, and they can be linked together through the different scenarios. However;  each time you get to the end of the time period, you’ll need to pass a victory check, if you succeed you can continue to the next period as indicated in the scenario. If you fail then is game over immediately. Another way to lose is if both your culture and war counters are at zero at the same time.

[caption id="attachment_1115" align="alignright" width="300"] Player aids with the sequence of play[/caption]

The sequence of play is very detailed in the player aids, and once you get the pace of the game you won’t need anything else to play. The first phase is the “War column phase” if there are any enemy war column in play they will move and act based on the war card information drawn that turn.

Then, it will be your turn to act. You have 3 basic action trees to choose from.

[caption id="attachment_1116" align="alignleft" width="300"] War deck[/caption]

The first tree is the Actions tree that will let you use the Comanche bands you have available at your Comancherías to hunt buffalos, move around the plains, raid enemy tribes or settlements and trade. This will drain your bands, as you use them for the different things they’ll lose strength.  The second tree is the Culture tree allowing you to increase and advance the culture of your people. The final tree is the Planning tree, which lets you refresh units and it will update the leadership of your Comanchería.

[caption id="attachment_1110" align="alignright" width="300"] Draw chits[/caption]

The 4^th and last action possible it will usually trigger at points throughout the game, (under some conditions you can take the action voluntarily), this action is called the Pass

age of Time. This action, though taken very few times during the game, will be critical for your success, and preparing well for it will determine if you win or lose the game. It is with this action that you might meet the conditions for a victory check but also is your option to grow the Comanche Empire.

After the player has taken all their actions you’ll move into the last phase, the operation clean up. This is where the AI will take its actions, such as deploy war columns, hunt, settle or recover (there are 10 different possible actions in total). This phase will prepare the map for the next round of the game too.

[caption id="attachment_1112" align="alignleft" width="300"] Development decks, one for each historical period[/caption]

At your disposition during the game you'll have different kinds of resources, some of them you can gather like buffalos or horses, others more powerful like guns you can only trade for them. As you keep playing you'll have options to acquire development cards, which have powerful events that can turn the balance to your side in difficult moments or culture cards that will shape the culture of your people and give you permanent abilities.

Opinion

[caption id="attachment_1109" align="alignright" width="300"] Culture cards[/caption]

The game is a brilliant example of a great solo design. The rulebook is very well done and not very extensive with 20 pages, with plenty of examples, design notes and cultural and historical references. With all that the learning curve is steep, there is a lot going on in this game and decisions matter. The first couple of games you’re probably not going to know what to do but you’ll learn over time from your errors, and this makes a great experience for me.  It is both difficult and rewarding at the same time. Like most of GMT games, this one comes with a playbook, where the designer walks you through a few turns doing the different actions of the game with lots of explanations, this will be your first stop in this game as it will keep telling you which rules to read at the same time you’re playing the game. If this is not enough for you, the designer has done a very good job with a few youtube videos where he goes through this playbook and gives you additional insight into the choices he makes.

[caption id="attachment_1108" align="alignleft" width="225"] The AI engine[/caption]

The AI is very simple to run, and its decisions will adapt to the state of the board in a very straightforward manner; it is a brilliant design. The chit pull system of the game makes things very interesting, as you’ll try to push your luck to get those success chits, but as you keep drawing them the proportions of the enemy action chits will increase. So how much the AI will act this turn will mostly depend on how far you want to go, a reaction for every action, again, brilliant.

The replayability of the game is high, you can play the same scenario a few times and not a single game will be the same. You can also choose to go through different paths via your choice of culture cards during the game, plus the development deck will be randomised every game. He is also very active and helpful on the game’s forums at BoardGameGeek. The game is very challenging, I still haven’t attempted the most difficult scenarios as I still struggle with the easier ones, so it will give you plenty of hours of entertainment before you even think of attempting the great challenge of a full campaign of this game. The production is excellent as with most of GMT’s games, thick counters, mounted board and artwork are thematic and gorgeous.

The Good: The game is challenging, the game system is brilliant and engaging, lots of meaningful decisions to make.

The bad: Might be difficult to get into it to some people due to the uniqueness of the system, but if you struggle and you’re still interested; keep watching those videos, once you get the hang of it, you’ll see how rewarding it is. Even if you know how to play you’ll still need to go through the player aids regularly to apply the process correctly, this might put some people off too.

You might also like: Victory Point Games state of siege series

That’s it for my review on Comanchería folks!

This is a game that every solo gamer should at least try once if not own, and I believe it will appeal to not only wargamers but to any gamer due to the uniqueness of the system. This is a keeper for me and as far as I am concerned I will follow Joel Toppen’s future games closely.

I hope to see you around in the Great Plains.

Jesus

[caption id="attachment_1164" align="alignnone" width="700"] Coffee Coolers Meet the Hostiles, by Howard Terpning[/caption]