F@#$ Tokaido

Tokaido

Here we go again!  I usually hold off doing these reviews until I've had a couple sessions where I played this game.  I won't get that luxury with Tokaido, it was pretty much universally panned last night.

The Summary of the Review

This game is average at best.   There's not enough viable options to victory, the popular moves are really popular, some important aspects are ridiculously random, and the movement mechanics are problematic.

Theme

You're on vacation and taking a road trip to Edo.  You stop at several places along the way getting pictures, collecting souvenirs or meeting people.  The player who took the most impressive vacation wins!

The game play doesn't feel vacationy but the art and layout of the board are terrific.  This a beautiful game.

Characters

Everyone gets two characters and you get to pick one.  Each character has some unique power, some kind of exception to the core rules.  And then the powers are balanced by starting money, with the weaker characters getting more starting bucks.

Quick Mechanics

Turn order is determined by a number line.  Player furthest in the back gets to move.  So that means you can move twice if there's empty spots.

When you move, you can move any number of spaces with the restriction that you have to stop at an "Inn" and wait till everyone finishes.

There's about 10 spots to land on and something happens there. From simplest to most complex

Farm : Get 3 monies.

Hot Springs :   Draw a Hot Springs card, this is worth 2 or 3 VP.  

Panoramas:  There's 3 types, add a card to your collection and score by how far along you are (1 point for 1 card, 2 points for 2 cards and so on).  There's also a bonus for completing the panorama first.

Temple:  Donate monies to the temple and score points.  Also there's a bonus at the end based on how generous everyone is.

Village:  you can buy souvenirs here.  You're looking for sets and they score exponentially based on those sets.  You can start a new set before completing an old one.

Encounters:  Draw a card from the encounter deck and immediately resolve.  Encounters may give you money, VP, a souvenir or a couple other things.

Inn:  This is a stop sign and you can't go further until everyone is in the inn.

More on the Inn

You can eat a meal at one of the 4 inns.  You need to pay 1-3 gold, and if you eat you get 6 points!

Some more restrictions.  You can't eat the same meal twice and you can't eat at the same inn twice.  So if you eat Dango  at Inn#1 and draw Dango  at Inn#3, too bad.  Eat something else.  This really only comes up for 1 gold meals.  There's only 3 of them. 

First one into the inn gets the best selection of meals.  Last one in moves out first.

End Game wrap up

So that's basically it.  Move from station to station getting points.  There's bonus points at the end for most souvenirs, most money spent on meals, most encounters and most hot springs visits, as well as the temple points.

So what went wrong?

In the middle of game 1, Mike realized the game was playing him.   Mike started last, the spots available to him were awful and then arranged themselves so that he was first one into the inn several times.  Which meant after the reset, he went last again getting the 5th worst spot.

Driving home, I thought about it some more.  And the game this reminded me the most of was The Game of Life.  Being compared to a 55 year old game is not a good thing.   But there's simply not enough good options.  Everyone playing instinctively tried to optimize the number of turns they got.  Which led to a crowded board, set piece moves and slow realizations that you're going to get hosed at the next inn.

There's not enough money in the game.  Farms and Encounters were taken so fast, so often, that several times during the game, players realized "Well, I'm just not going to eat at the next inn".

There's too much randomness in the game.  Characters, Encounters and Meals are crazy important and there's a ridiculous amount of luck in what you draw.

There is absolutely not enough incentive for arriving at the inn 1st.  Getting into the inn 1st is a round killer, and cheap food does not compensate adequately.

Tactics?

Pick a good character?  The money doesn't quite compensate for the power, it's a long game.  The ones that mess with souvenirs and panoramas look the most powerful, but an encounter character won game 1 and a hot springs character won game 2.  YMMV.

The final spot before an inn turns out to be a really good spot, no matter what it does.  Placing there guarantees you'll be first out the door.  Unless there's a really lucrative alternative, being first for next round is probably worth the 1 or 2 points you punted.

Final Word

I would play this game again to confirm I didn't like it but I'm in no hurry too.  Also, 4 player might change it a lot because it opens up a lot more plays.  But the Last Inn First Out and lucky draws have just killed this game so far.

F@#$ Five Tribes

This post is a board game review of the ironically named Five Tribes!  It is irony and not coincidence because a game called Five Tribes only plays four people.!

Final word first so you can skip the boring parts.

4 runs of this game and I am still intrigued.  That alone puts it in the top 20th percentile.  My Gut, which as John Cusack said in High Fidelity, tends to have shit for brains. 

But my Gut says this is a good but not great game.  There's a lot to like, but it just seems to miss...something.

Theme is meaningless

It is so fabricated that it's not really worth mentioning.  So if your thing is theme integration, play Fresco.

Mechanics

First there are the 5 tribes of which we speak, color coded with meeples.

There are also 30 tiles arranged on the board, also with symbols.

The 30 tiles each get 3 random meeples placed on them.  Sort of like this

So the mechanic is, take the pile of meeples off one tile, and move by dropping one on an orthogonal tile until the last meeple is dropped.  The last meeple dropped must match one of the meeple colors on the ending tile.  

So you've moved.  Now what?

Well, first you are awarded all the meeples of the final color dropped on that tile (will always be at least 2), check ownership of the tile and activate the tiles power.

So in order of that last sentence...

Awarded Meeples:  

Each color has its own unique power.   

Yellow gives you end game points, 1 for each yellow dude and tiered points for most yellows.  In a 4 player game, most yellows gets 30 points, 2nd most gets 20, 3rd gets 10 and 4th place gets a rock.

Green gets you trade goods and Fakirs.  

Getting different trade goods gets you points.  It's exponential with a ceiling.  Each good is worth more and more until about the 7th good, and then each subsequent one is worth 10 points.  10 points is a lot, so deal with the ceiling.

Fakirs are kind of a wild card.  They make Red and Blue meeples better, or can be substituted in some White meeple costs.

Red removes a doober from another square.  The more reds you pulled off, the farther they can shoot.  This is handy, as I will explain in the the check ownership section.

Blues award you points immediately.   It's a formula that I'm not going to describe here because, even with context it makes my eyes cross.  Let's just say that a poor Blue play nets you about 2-4 points and a good blue play can net you 14+.

Whites earn you two points each and can also be used later to purchase genies.

no not that one.

no not that one either.

Genies add more VPs than just a white meeple and also grant you some additional power for the remainder of the game.

Check Ownership:

If after moving, you pull the last meeple off the tile you landed on OR you shoot the last meeple off with Red guys, you claim that tile.  Tiles are worth 4-15 VP.   The highest scoring tiles (10, 12 and 15 points) only have a single tile.  The remaining tiles are worth 4, 6 or 8.

Wonder Twin Powers Activate!: 

Whether you claimed ownership or not, the tile you landed has a power that activates.  For clarity sake, each tile has exactly one power, but the powers are duplicated on all 30 tiles.

Two are MUST dos.  If there's a tree symbol, you place an Oasis token on it.  If there's a building symbol you place a Palace token.  The controller of this token gets bonus points.  3 per oasis and 5 per palace.  And yes, multiple oasis and palaces can be on the same tile.

3 are MAY dos.

You MAY pay 3 points to buy any trade good within the first three spots of the trade good queue.  (oh yeah trade goods have a queue.  9 are available per round, order matters)

You MAY pay 6 points to buy any two trade good within the first 6 spots of the queue.

You MAY pay 1 white meeples and 1 Fakir or 2 white meeples to buy a Genie.

Bidding for turn order and Genies

Bidding

You bid points for turn order based on a track.

This is also exponential.  Teal is covering the highest bid possible of 18 points.

Pink is covering the 12 point bid.

then 8-5-3-1-0-0-0

Zeroes are first in, last out.  If you're the first to bid nothing, you will move last this round.  Then everyone fills in ahead of you.

now the order on when you place your bid is randomized for round 1, then based on the subsequent bids from here on out.  In the above pic, next round, Teal will bid first followed by Pink, Black and Orange.

Genies

Genies allow some exception to the core rules.  Like get a free trade good, or your Red guys can shoot two guys off a tile now.  Some require a white guy/Fakir activation and some are just free.  They all give VPs too, in a range of 4-10.

Tactics

zomg.  I am 100% Zoolander at this game.

Routinely, people I think struggled do well and the people I think did well struggle.

A winning score is about 140 points.  You start with 50 to bid with, and the game lasts about 9 turns.   So, the winners average netting 10 points a turn.  The weak scores are somewhere in the mid 120s, so the losers average around 8.

So my obvious weakness is I have no idea how to bid!  That seems important.  Get your net 10 per round.

It seems like green guys and yellow guys cancel each other out.  Like if you go hard to win yellow, there's a good chance you shorted yourself on green and vice versa.   And the practical points ceiling for both of these is around the same.  Green does has a higher maximum, but the opportunity cost for getting there is probably huge.

Loops!  Loops are important.  You can't backtrack on your move but you can visit the same tile multiple times with a loop.  The starting stack of meeples must have 5 minimum to make a loop.

Don't mess with the [10,12,15] stacks if there's 3 colors on them.  If you pick them up, you have simplified the ownership problem in such a way that you're now way less likely to claim these.

White meeples and Genies are problematic.  I'd definitely take advantage of them over the course of the game if I have them to spend and landed on the proper tile.  I'm just skeptical that you can build a strategy around targetting Genies.

So why good and not great?

I actually think this game is just a hair too complex.  The only thing you do is optimize your turn because for most of the game, there will be a 10+ point move out there.  

Now every move changes the board.  If I ever got to the point that I was able to routinely influence my opponents move by what I left this game might be great.   

It just seems like there's entirely too many moving parts to worry about 'good leaves'

F@$% The Marvel Cinematic Universe

This is the definitive ranking of the 13 MCU movies released so far, no arguments are allowed!  Violators of this policy will get their comments replied to with a stern frowny face.  So if you feel as if you can stand the fury of stern frowny face reply...BRING IT

:(

Part 1:   The one's I really liked

#1 :  Captain America:  The Winter Soldier (2014)

I like this one so much because it made Cap interesting.  Cap in the comics was meh.  The frozen for decades story was just ok in the original stories.  He went missing in 1945 and was found ~1965.   20 years is a long time, but you can still see society as it used to be.    70 years and literally everything changes.

Plus, its a great action film with kick ass fights.

#2:   Iron Man (2008)

This has been out so long, and so much has happened that maybe we forget how awesome this was!

Iron Man was a joke!  This was the Marvel Jay-Vee after they licensed away the X-Men and Spiderman.  Except, that RDJ is the perfect Tony Stark, and this was an incredibly entertaining movie!

#3:  Marvel's The Avengers (2012)

You know what this movie did (besides be gloriously fun)?  Redeem the Hulk.   Mark Ruffalo is the perfect Banner.  Serious Hulk is Serious can't carry a movie, because the CGI looks too ridiculous.  But Hulk with a pinch of Comic Relief is the proper amount of ridiculous.

Anyways, the culmination of the MCU's phase 1 was a well conceived ensemble movie.  The writers introduced all the characters before so they didn't have to rehash that again and instead was able to move onto the main story.

#4:  Captain America:  Civil War (2016)

Civil War was a great mixture of fun and serious.

You saw a friendship renew (Cap and Bucky) and one dissolve (Cap and Iron Man).  You saw actual consequences of the fight between the heroic factions.

But this movie also brought the fun.  There were great great moments of actual comic book fun through out this movie.

Part 2:  The mostly good but a cut below

#5:  Avengers:  Age of Ultron (2015)

The critic hive mind gives this one a mostly bad rap.  Yeah it's good, but not great.

In my opinion...this failed the expectations battle.  Avengers 1 was so much fun, how can this be anything but pedestrian?

Also, the MCU has a problem with signature arch-villain let down.  Ultron, Red Skull, and The Mandarin all failed to reach their potential.  In fact, to date the only MCU movie arch-villain worthy of that name is Loki (Purple Man and Kingpin in the Netflix series are both awesome)

And finally, AoU tries too hard with the quips.   By the end of the movie they were eye roll inducing.

But But But But...AoU is paced well, has a diabolical villain and heroes redemption.  Rotten Tomatoes puts it at 77%, which is in Iron Man 2 and Thor 1 territory.  And, that is a disservice.

#6:  Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

I go against the critical hive mind once again!  Rotten Tomatoes score of 91!

I found this movie fun and very much worth seeing.  The Groot thrashing and smile was worth the price of admission on its own.

HOWEVER there is no MCU movie that dissolves into its oft repeated tropes more than GotG

Powerful Maguffin everyone is after?  CHECK

Heroic Redemption story?  CHECK

Band of protagonists able to put aside their differences and come together as a team?  CHECK

Bad Guy who hates everyone for Reasons?  CHECK

Climatic sky battle over a city?  CHECK

#7 Ant-Man (2015)

Honest Trailers basically slammed this as Iron Man retold at 1/64th scale.

And while at least partially true (and 100% funny), it's also overly harsh.  This movie made me care about a character with nearly the lamest powers available.  Shrink small and control insects?  And they made a movie about it?!?!?!?!?

Except Paul Rudd was great.  Micheal Douglas was great.  Evangeline Lilly was great.

So fairly good so far, except that the Yellow Jacket villain was meh.  And they spoiled the best shot in previews.

#8 Iron Man 3 (2013)

This barely makes my good but not great list.  There were infuriating things about it, but the things I liked, I liked a lot.

Like

#1 They got Tony Stark being a hero out of the f@#$ing suit.
#2  Extremis is a great Iron Man story arc.
#3 They got Tony Stark out of the f@#$ing suit.
#4 Ben Kingsley was great as Mandarin
#5 They got Tony...nm.

Hate

#1 Who was the villain really?  Oh wait, it was Aldritch Killian of Advanced Idea Mechanics.  Who else has trouble remembering that?
#2 They made Mandarin almost but not quite completely irrelevant.
#3 The ending.

#3 needs some elaboration.  Action movies in general, but especially Sci-Fi and Super Hero movies have a problem with sequels.  I call it the multiplication effect.  Each new climax has to be bigger and badder than ever.  Sometimes that doesn't work.   The Iron Legion all self destructing, turned an already busy complicated ending into a train wreck of explosion pr0n.

Part 3:  The Meh

#9 Captain America:  The First Avenger

This is the movie most likely to get a frowny face reply!

Here is why the movie is only meh.  The Pacing.

It takes way too long to make Steve Rogers into a super soldier and it also takes way too long to get him to Europe.  

But the setting with the dime store novel pulp tech, the cast and overall homage to the classic 1940s character was terrific.  Which partially redeems this.

#10 Thor (2011)

Thor almost needs to be graded on a curve.  This was a hard movie to get right, things could have gone south in about a dozen places.  Also, the MCU has a lot of movies I consider 'bridge" movies.  Lesser stories told to set up better movies.  Thor did a lot of the set up for Avengers 1.

Overall, I liked pretty much everything with Thor on Earth.  The 'fish out of water' scenes were especially fun to me.

Overall, I didn't like anything in Asgard.  Ok, the background and scenery was beautiful, but the story was dull dull dull.

Plus, Loki is the best Marvel Movie Villain yet.

 

Part 4:  The Not So Much

#11 Iron Man 2 (2010)

IM2 really suffered from the multiplication effect like IM3 but much much worse.  2 villains (Justin Hammer and Whiplash), 4 heroes (Iron Man, War Machine, Black Widow, Nick Fury) and one busy convoluted ending.

Another bridge movie for Avengers 1.  Just for the introduction of Black Widow I'm willing to let bygones be bygones.  But I never have to watch this movie again :)

#12 Thor:  The Dark World

Quick, who was the bad guy?

Quick, what was the plot?

Quick, did anything memorable happen in this movie.

#13 The Incredible Hulk (2008)

If you can't remember anything about Thor 2, but tend to forget that the Edward Norton Hulk was part of the MCU what does that say?