F^#@ Hold me closer Snowy Dancer

New character review for Snowflake/Snow Dancer

Frosthaven character review.   All picture taken from this character guide  .

General Overview

The Snow Dancer is nearly a 100% support character.   Variety of ways :  Healing, forced enemy movement, movement buffs, allied attacks, strength buffs, and wards.  If there's a way to make your friends better, Snow Dancer can provide.

Theoritically, you can pitch in on damage.  Dancer's spread a lot of hazardous terrain that you can force bad guys into.  I found this situational at best, and the optimum build relied heavily on the support cards.

But, oh, the support.  After 3 missions I started calling her "everybodies friend".

Decent hit points allows Snow Dancer to take a round of hits, possibly multiple rounds.  10 card hand sounds like a lot, but there's quite a few permanents that totally thin the hand.  Snowdancer is also crazy fast on initiatives, almost always beating the monster attack actions.

Healbot 9000

Two cards launch the Healbot 9000.  

The gathering force top guarantees you'll almost always have the magic you need for the following...

A permanent heal 2, so long as friends stay reasonable close.

There's also 3 more Level 1 heal cards and 5 more oppurtunities as you level.  There's a lot of healing.

Downsides?

The one space reduction of forced movement from Gathering Force cripples the forced movement build (more on that later).   A non-trivial amound of these cards are only 1 space.

Also, this is actually a pretty boring play style.

Hazardous Terrain?

The other thing Snow Dancer does a lot of is drop/move hazardous terrain and, possibly, push-pull monsters into that.

Only 1 card in the initial deck creates hazardous terrain, and there's oppurtunities to get 4 more as you level.

If the players intention is to maximize damage, you'd play Chilling Impact as a permanent and attempt to force move monsters lots.

Healbot vs. Controlled Movement Damage

I found these 100% incompatible.    First off, 3 permanents out simultaneously makes quick turns before rests.  Second, if you're spending magic on healing it's likely not available for damage, and finally the magic generator penalty makes quite a few of your forced move cards irrelevant.

Efficacy?

I do not see any campaign where going with the controlled move build is anywhere close to as effective as the healing build.  Making the push/pulls work is tricky while healing is easy and gives a better outcomes anyways.

Noteworthy Cards

Birds in a Tempest is the signature card of the Snow Dancer.

This card is so good, that the entire adventuring party made mental notes of the initiative immediately after my first time playing it.  It's impossible to down play how useful the additional move and manueverability is.   I nicknamed this card Speed Boost, and not only were turns built around this card, but entire deck cycles.

And it's not like the owls are an awful summon.  But they only ever came out in the final room for XP, or I think once to take some this against a boss.

Cross Winds pairs exceptionally well with Speed Boost.  If your ally has a top and bottom attack chain deployed you use Cross Winds to get him into position.

The attack is a weird throway and I'm not sure I ever used it.  The bottom grant a move turned out more useful than I thought, but the card is in the deck because it's a usefull 11 initiative.

A really good versatile card.   The suffer damage top was situationally great for dealing with high shield guys, and the heal + strengthen always goes over well.  There's other play with hazardous terrain cards, but they all work similarly. :  if you catch a monster in them they suffer damage.

 Never played the bottom, but this was my favorite non-Healbot 9000 healing card.  I acquired an amulet that allows you to add a target to any multi target power, a bunch of allies get wards.  If you have a summoner in the party, he'll love you.

Perks and Masteries

I went all in on support, so rarely attacked.  My modifier deck is almost completely irrelevant, so the first perk I took was the entire room starts muddled (everybodies friend!).  I took the rest perks as well and those were less useful.

There are summons you can use to attack, and if that's the direction you, the heals and wards and strengthens are all great.

The masteries are 'force an opponent move every turn' and 'first one attacked always has a positive condition applied'.  Both of these are doable if challenging.  For the 2nd, you'll likely need Storm Wall on your tank

I didn't bother to try.  I wasn't motivated by 'completion' and practically speaking, since I never attacked there wasn't much use in improving the mod deck.

Verdict

I actually quite enjoyed playing Tiny Dancer.  Yes, the Healbot 9000 is boring.  But you know what isn't?  Having a consistent, positive impact on the party.   The healing, the strengthens, the grant moves, the enhanced moves, all of those proved quite effective (and dare I say, in escape scenarios Tiny Dancer was the most important character in the game).   If this character ever gets re-designed, I'd lean harder into the non-healing buffs, maybe add in some targetted muddle debuffs too.    

F@!#$% Deathwalker Texas Ranger

First Frosthaven character review:  The Deathwalker

All pictures grabbed from this great imgur post on the Deathwalker.  

General Overview

A Deathwalker creates and uses shadows; generally they attack from shadows but they're also used for teleportation or summoning their pets.   Attacks from shadows are generally considered melee, but act as de facto ranged attacks because the attack just needs adjacency to a shadow and not the character figure.

Deathwalkers are low hit point, but have 11 cards so while fragile, they do have endurance.

Broaldly speaking there's two general builds ranged and melee.  Melee consumes more shadows while ranged attacks require more moon.  I went with the melee build.

Melee Build

The melee build relies on shadows, both their summoning and their positioning.  The best attacks are single target 'pop up' attacks (5 attack at L1, 6 attack at L5) that appear within and consume a shadow.  Shadow adjacency is the only thing that matters, this means the Deathwalker figure can be anywhere so long as he has a shadow next to the monster.  Attacking this way also does not provoke retaliation.

Situationally, this build can be the party MVP.   Shadows aren't effected by terrain, the only thing that stops them are walls.  So, a hard to target monster is almost certainly reachable by the Deathwalker.  Also the no retaliation mechanic can also be ridiculously important.

The general hand cycle goes :  Generate a shadow, use the 'pop up' attack, use the supporting cards to generate a new shadow, then manuever for another 'pop up'.

Noteworthy Cards

Every character has several Level 1 or X cards that will stay in the build for the life of the character.  Here's mine.

Call to the Abyss :  This is the only sustainable way to generate new shadow tokens.  The top is my first card played for every mission.  The mechanic is, you 'mark' your target and when destroyed, spawn a shadow adjacent to the destroyed figure.  You may freely move marks when either you or your summons draws an attack card, but only 1 mark may be active at a time.

Fluid Night :  The hard hitting 'pop-up' attack with a situationally useful bottom half as well.  The melee builds best attack until level 5.  Note for the bottom, current card printing says after teleporting to the shadow you discard this card. 

Dark Fog :  Moving Shadows is pretty hard, and this is 100% the best shadow moving card available.  I should have liked the top better, but in practice it was really difficult to get muliple monsters lined up for the AoE

Eclipse :  Mostly used for the 4 move, but the top is really handy when you reach the final room.  The Deathwalker is a little move impaired.  There's a shortage of movement cards, so keep the 4 move ones, they're valuable!

Moving on to the L1 cards that stayed in the deck for a long time, but eventually replaced.

I just replaced Sunless Apparition (aka Skid Marks) at L7 and Skids might find himself back in depending on the scenario.    I have a lot of ... lets call it trauma, with summons based on how useless I thought they were in Gloomhaven.  But the Sunless Apparition isn't a throw away.  So the oppurtunity cost of playing a summons is minimized.  If Skids gets himself killed, well that's half the reason I summoned him:  to take an attack.  With the 96 initiative cost you can do a late-to early action chain easily enough to guarantee an attack.

Still currently in the deck,. but this is the first card out if I sideboard a special scenario dependent card.  Movements decent enough, but my play style of stay in the back rank because I'm squishee makes the poison application rare.   Top throw-away looks good but in practice it's hard to get your money's worth and this is my first card discarded from a damage negation or long rest.

And now for controversy!

This card on paper, looks fantastic.  Potential for a 6 attack, plus an at will bonus to move or attacks on the bottom.  In my experience, it was really difficult to keep more than 1 shadow out at a time, so both the top and bottom were only really useful in the best case scenario.  

Finally, other noteworthy cards for my build.

I really liked restless spirits.   3 attack with a curse, potentially a 6 attack is great.  And so is the Shadow Kamikaze half.  At the very least, it's a 4 shadow move which is very useful, and at its best it's a 'high shield low hit point' monster killer. 

Mostly used for the bottom, but it's a very good throw-away attack too (useful and doesn't consume a shadow!).   Middle campaign, standard start was Call to the Abyss-Fleeting Dusk.

I took both Level 5s.   Medium is a very utility oriented attack, a way to spawn multiple shadows on the same monster kill or a permanently solve your move shadows problem.  

The 2nd pop-up hammer.  Plus a 4 move.  I skipped an L6 card to get both L5s.

Challenges

Managing shadows is really tough.  The permanently in play card that generates shadows, 'Call to the Abyss' works wonderfully in short adventures (2 rooms or less) but really struggles for longer ones.  

It's a combination of factors:

• Lack of simultaneous character move and shadow move - the few cards that move both shadows and the character move neither very far.  This easily leads to either a useless trailing Deathwalker or a useless trailing shadow.
• Lack of an adequate attack that does not consume a shadow - often a Deathwalker finds themselves without a shadow and unable to generate a new one via CotA for several turns.
• Lack of alternate shadow generation besides CotA -  Until level 4, Eclipse is the only other card that summons shadows, and it's a throwaway.  This may ease with card pick ups at L4, L7 and L8.

The upswing is that a Deathwalker regularly feels useless.   They get left behind or have no shadows and it takes several turns to recover.  It's a pretty frustrating experience.

Also, curses and misses are AWFUL.  It doesn't just cost the character an action, it costs 1 + X actions, where X is the level of effort it took to generate the shadow the Deathwalker just consumed.

Ranged attack build

The alternative is a ranged build.  Having not used this build, take nothing as gospel, but more along the lines of semi-educated musings.

I do not like the bottom at all, I feel it's lucky if you get more than 1 wound on a monster.   The top is adequate unless you need the pierce and then it's suddenly great.

I like the range 4 with moon buff quite a lot, the ranged build will mostly use this half but maneuvering shadows is also handy.

This card would stay in a ranged attack build for a long time.  Two targets ranged attack plus a way to mitigate the character trailing the main party problem.

Very good card and also in my melee build.  It's an easy way to re-apply a mark closer to the action and the spend a moon for a curse is a great de-buff.

If I went the Ranged direction, I'd forego two pop-up attacks in the hand. adding an additional ranged attack instead.  Shadows stay longer so the mark and kill target cycle is a lot less important, and now you can use the final perk to greater effect.

Segue to the Masteries

Mastery 1:  Consume 7 shadows in a round

Maximum shadows on the board is 5, so there's the first problem, and you likely need all 5 on the board before even attempting.

You need Strength of the Abyss out; that's your permanently in play consume power.

You need Call of the Abyss out; that's your permanently in play shadow summon power.

You need to play a multi-target attack card and very likely a consume a shadow reaction power (bottom half of Fluid Night).

The order of play, is have SotA and CotA + max shadows out, then with your multi target attack

Mark target 1.

Use as many SotA buffs as necessary to kill target 1 and spawn a new shadow.

Mark target 2

Repeat the SotA buff using all available shadows also killing it for a new shadow.

If your attack gets 3 monsters, you're done, use SotA once again for the 7th shadow consumed.

IF your attack only happens twice, now you need to have Fluid Night out, get attacked, and consume that shadow to avoid damage.

I never attempted this; I didn't want to cripple the mission party arranging the circumstances where this would be viable.  Just having 5 shadows summoned is not a trivial task!  And I don't like SotA as a permanent power shortening my hand cycle.

Mastery 2:  Summon or consume a shadow every turn

This one is easier and I started my attempts at Level 4 with the addition of Fleeting Dusk to my hand.   The good thing with this mastery, is it's just (mostly) playing normally.  You'll likely need to play Eclipse earlier than normal to get 3 shadows out and available for consumption.  Then it's a cycle of alternating using shadows and spawning shadows.  Tricky, but doable and you can't long rest.

I accomplished this at L7 in a 1 room adventure.  I did need help from the party, one turn I was stunned and the Blink Blade killed my marked target, spawning a shadow and saving the mastery.

Final Thoughts

Possibly, a lot of my disenchantment with the Deathwalker comes from my party make up.  The Blink Blade is so effective that his whirlwind of Tasmanian Devil attacks just make any other damage-centric character almost redundant.

In some circumstances, the Deathwalker was a great altenerative:  High retaliation monsters or 4+ room dungeons.   Retaliation because of the way shadows work, and long dungeons because the Blink Blade is a lot less effective if they need to plan for a long trek.

If I were to errata this, I'd add an attack 3 from a shadow that does not consume the shadow that maybe uses moon for a buff; literally a nothing special attack except from a shadow.  Currently all attacks that do not consume a shadow either are ridiculously weak or throw aways.

I'd also re-design some cards to make a Deathwalker more support/control instead of making the paths melee vs. ranged.  There is some movement towards that at later levels but it's a long way to L7.

    

F@#$ Blood Rage

 welcome back to the annual FTG post on Blood Rage, a game released 6 years ago so right in line with my review schedule.

I've previously played Eric Lang's Ankh, which is absolutely a spiritiual successor to Blood Rage, but this was my first time time playing the original.

It's Norse themed.  Ragnoarok is coming and all your clan can do is die gloriously, the player who accumaltes the most glory wins!

Mechanics

part card draft, part area control and part resource management.

There are 9 provinces, 8 of which have a single resource (rage, axes, horns) to acquire through combat.  The center province, has all 3 resources available.

You acquire these through deploying troops (invade action) and then the pillage action.   Pillage triggers a fight within province and adjacent provinces may also send troops to participate.  The winner increases the corresponding resource track

(picture from Board Game Geek)

The card draft:  special upgrades, allied monsters, quests and battle cards you may select.

Area Control :  two aspects of this.  Having the most units in the area makes a fight easier, and also during the quest phase most quest cards read "have the most power in this region"

Gameplay

The good:

Gameplay is very fast, a 4 player game took my group about 90 minutes.

Decisions are not trivial for such a quick paced game.

Large deck of cards make replays different.

If figures are your thing, Blood Rage comes with some cool ones.

For a fighting game, losing battles isn't a horrible loss and at provides a benefit too as your clan gloriously enters Valhalla.  I won a game where I did not win a single battle, because with the right upgrades, losing a battle is benefit enough.  Losing your entire army is not the least bit crippling.

The bad:

there's 3 resources to manage but Rage matters most.  Rage determines how many actions you can take and that just is so much more important than Axes (VPs earned for winning a battle) or Horns (cap of how many units you can have on the board).  Rage matters so much, that the other two tracks might not matter at all.

the upgrades really swing the game.  I won both times we played and both times it was luck of the draw because I got great upgrades and took advantage of what they did.

The undecided:

My table didn't contest the provinces all that much, and maybe that should have happened.  Wins were too easy especially in the Rage granting provinces.

There's some nuance in the central province (Yggdrasil?  the name was based on the tree but I don't remember if it was a heim a burg or a gard) that I don't get.  The game flow is structured so that battle happens later in the round, and can be an epic contest involving 15 to 20 figures.  The defeated lose all units, the victor loses no units, so the winner has a huge advantage next round when the provinces reset as they're already in the super province with a big army.    For sure  not every player should commit their entire army to that fight, but I'm not sure what circumstances determine that.

Final Review

This game is not a favorite, but would play again.  It's fast paced enough that the flaws don't matter much, and the mechanic that losing your entire army is expected and easily recoverable is fun.  I'd maybe like to see a 2nd edition with alternate ways to increase the Rage stat and better card draft balance.  

FTG Top 20 games!

The inspiration

I listened to Boardgame Barrage's top 50 game series, and decided to throw my hat into the ring.  They're way way way more prepared than a guy with a mostly abandoned blog, so I'm only doing 20.

Boardgame Barrage?

So far I like the podcast (after 6 episodes, the 2021 top 50 series and their exploration of Martin Wallace games).  BB's tastes differ from mine greatly, but I don't need a critic to agree with me; I need a critic to be consistent.  The BB table seems to really like crunchy Euro and Party games.

The methodology

Literally, I spent 30 minutes browsing Board Game Geek's top game list, I went to the 1000th ranking but could have stopped at 500.

Some criteria

    

1. I have to had played that game within the last couple years OR played it so much I'm intimately familiar with it.
2. I have had to have played that game enough to get an informed opinion.
3. Games that I consider 'played out' were also omitted.

Rankings were generated into tiers of what I think I like most, then within those tiers subdivided further by a quick gut response "what would I rather play".  So SCIENCE!

Honorable mentions

Furnace

Only one play so far, but I really want to play again.  It's really fast paced with reasonably difficult decisions.  The auction mechanic is very interesting and I watched bidding tactics evolve during that one play through.

Galaxy Trucker

This is played out for me but rarely is there a game I am so bad at so entertaining.  

Notre Dame

Also played out for me.  There was nothing truly novel about this game, but it was well balanced and well designed.

Terraforming Mars : Ares Expedition

Only one play so far.  It's diet Terraforming Mars combined with Race for the Galaxy role selection; all the resources none of the area control.  Still have the million cards to sort through, still have the plants and heat and oceans.  I'd say it's a good way to introduce a n00b to TM. 

Alhambra

I really really like this game, but we're not likely to play it at my table any time soon.

1. My table usually has 5 players, and Alhambra has problems at 5+.  The game situation changes too radically between turns to adequately plan.  I don't mind the chaos, but I have an appreciation as how that is frustrating.
2. So we can occasionally play with 4?  Well you'd think so but there's just a tremendous glut of 4P games that we under play or have never played.  Sorry Alhambra.    

Keyflower

I haven't played Keyflower for probably 5 or 6 years.  I remember liking it, but not really sure why anymore.  We might get back to it in 2022 as we cross the backlog of 5 player games off our list.

20 Arkham Horror 3rd edition

This is a good game, and if not for the existince of Eldritch Horror would be much higher on this list.  As it is, every time I play it I end up comparing to Eldritch.   The one thing it does much much better than EH is it sets up much quicker.

19 Space Base

This is currently 'played out' for me.  But the reason it's played out is because I played it a lot this year.  It's quick, easy and the decisions are surprisingly impactful for a game who's core mechanic is roll 2D6.  It's an excellent choice to close out the night.

18 Maracaibo

At first glance, this game looks fantastic.  But the fighting actions may prove too powerful for a 'fighting specialist'.  It could be that the secondary fighters are playing wrong, there's a factional Area Control mechanic that fighting specialists love but everyone else should probably ignore.  Either way, not using the area control mechanic is not the least bit intuitive and the other paths for victory points aren't nearly as efficient.   I'm interested enough to try another couple times, but this barely made this years list. 

17 Everdell 

I've only played Everdell on Tabletopia, and the game is cute enough to make you want to teach your muggle family but complex enough to stop you from trying.

16 Skull King

Trick taking game where the bidding strategies and play have totally evolved.    First we thought decided 'nils' was too powerful, but then we started setting them.  So maybe not?   It's not like I'm good at this game anyways.

15 No Thanks!

The godfather of end of night, unwind games.  about 5 to 10 minutes a round, and you have to play to the personalities; I play with spite and I don't have a chance to win I will for sure bust your inside straight.

14 Trajan

Trajan is probably on the list because I think I'm good at it.  I feel my strength in games is analyzing the board and finding tactical oppurtunities.  That basically is Trajan, and the rondell action wheel proves difficult for a lot of players to manuever.  By my 2nd play through I was quite happy with my manipulations of it. 

13 Tzolkin

Only two plays so far.  This game is one gimmick, but it's a really interesting, unique gimmick.  I haven't come close to figure this out yet but I want to try more!

12 Eldritch Horror

Fantastic coop game where the players are faced with a tug of war between not losing, and making progress towards the win.  Fun fact!  I think trying to keep a crippled character alive is more damaging to the game than just going full speed ahead with him until he dies.  Top of the World Ma!

11 Brass : Lancashire

Cheating to include this and Brass : Birmhingam?  Fine, I'll feel shame.  But the game is radically different.  Lancashire is a spiteful knife fight, and you've got be very sure when you unlock anything.  And when emptying a resource track, overbuilds are common in Lancashire.

  10 Race for the Galaxy

We played Race for the Galaxy etnirely too much.  It's one of the few games that play reasonably well with more than 5 players and at the time, we regularly had more than 5.   It got played out, but it's also been years since we played.  I'd totally play again :)

9  Railways of the World

Steam, as a stand alone game isn't terribly intriguing.  RotW improved on that by better end game scoring, better in game goals, and several differnt maps.  Vastly more replayable than steam.

8  The Crew

Such a clever idea for a game!  Completely cooperative trick taking card game!  That's great but the no talking/communication rule just seals this as a good time.

7  Wingspan

Wingspan was a victim of Tabletopia implementation.  Tapletopia and Board Game Arena have some really clunky implementations so when I find one that works well I tend to stick to this.  We played this a lot last spring, to the point that I got really burnt out.  But it's still a fantastic game that's well paced!

6  Gloomhaven

We ran out of content.  Interestingly, it wasn't the lack of missions that played this game out.  It was running out of new character classes.  When the party was faced with recycling a bunch of guys because no one drew the right retirement goal, we lost interest.  But still, we played this game every week for 9 months.  Hours and hours and hours of enjoyment.

5  Castles of Burgundy

This is the epitome of a game where you can't eliminate luck, but you sure can mitigate it.   Also amazingly paced for the decisions a player must make.

4  Terraforming Mars

Combines the "Drink from the firehose" card selection of Race for the Galaxy with complex resource management.  To me the most intriguing thing is, how much is something worth?  Because it you raise the terraform level, you get more money, so it's worth more isn't it?

3  A Feast for Odin

If this was just worker placement, this game would be dumb.  If it was just tile placement, this game would also be dumb.  But it combines the two into something special.  And the on tableau bonuses!  I've seen games that skip all of them or strive for all of them and both have been amazingly successful or ridiculous failures.

2  Azul

The first time I played Azul I thought it was so brilliantly simple that I got angry at myself for not thinking of it first.   My favorite part of the game is that there is some spite involved; you can hate draft and force an opponent to take a bunch of tiles they can't play and cost them points!

1  Brass: Birmingham

If I do this next year, this is the best candidate to take a big tumble.  Iron Works seems the most powerful industry, but I'm 100% not convinced of that yet.  For one thing, we've let the Iron Monger auto-flip up to the L4 industry in the canal phase; it definitely needs to be more competitive.

F@#$ Brass Birmingham hints, an incomplete and largely incomprehensible strategy guide.

Part 1 :  Broad Strokes

1. There are two ways to score points, canal/rail links and industry VP.  In general, you either want to flip high level industries in canal phase so they score twice OR start with a pile of money in rail phase and claim lucrative rail links quickly.  A hybrid strategy is viable as well, if harder to pull off.
2. Canal phase should set up rail phase:  L1's go away so have a good reason to play an L1 industry.  Auto-Flipping a L1 iron or coal is a very good reason, ineffiecently trading a L1 cotton or manufacturing is not a good reason. 
3. Canal phase should set up rail phase part two:  SPREAD OUT IF YOU CAN!  Rail links and industry cards require you to be 'in network' and it's important to be in multiple regions heading into rail.
4. There is a lot of resource sniping
1. don't leave something you want open (this includes markets)
2. even if you don't leave it open, don't be surprised if it's unlocked and taken anyways

Part 2 : Tactical hints

1. if you are flipping a tile and taking a loan in the same turn, always take the loan first.    The lower rungs of the income ladder are much easier to climb than the higher.
2. Canal's are inefficient.  It's incredibly difficult to escape canal phase without building at least 1 canal, but think carefully before playing one.
3. Coal is great at generating income but is awful for victory points.  In rail phase, don't subsidize rail builds by supplying cheap coal!  Similar to canals, it's incredibly difficult to not play any coal in rail phase but simply auto-flipping a coal mine in rail phase is not an adequate reason  to justify playing that tile.
4. My favorite mechanic in the game is playing with turn order.   So pay attention to what was spent, what you're going to spend.  
5. "Scouting" -  if you have to scout more than once, the game is not going well for you.  Also I think it's better to do it earlier in the round than later.
6. There's no hard and fast rule for Iron plays.  Development is really important in canal phase, but playing Ironworks is incredibly lucrative.  Iron is a game within a game.
7. I have not figured out Clay at all, so take this with a grain of salt.  Even number pottery tiles look like they're there to claim spots and be overbuilt by the next level up.   Only trade them if they're part a multi-trade action.
8. The market bonuses are nice but not vital.  Yes try to get them, but the true benefit is flipping your industry tiles.

F%#$ Robin Hood and the Merry Men

a request!  My annual post!  

Robin Hood and his Merry Men

The review :  I feel this game is about 10 years too late.   It's...ok.  And if it was published around 10 years ago, when board game choices where much more limited, I'd would have enjoyed it more.  As it stands, it's a middling game in a crowded field and there's just so much more I'd rather play.

Basic Gameplay    

It's a two tiered worker placement.  Generic Workers, "Merry Men", gather resources, build things, other supporting tasks and you can usually count on one of them being being threatened by Villains.  The Hero Worker, does the Robin Hood things.  Rescue Merry Men, win Archery contests, rob carriages, etc etc.

So it's a good theme.  All the Robin Hood tropes are in there, I especially like rescuing the Merry Men as a thematic element.

So what's the problem?

In no particular order

- there are NINE types of resources to collect.  4 of them are typed as Weapons and are little interchangeable with on another, and 3 of them are typed goods and are also a little interchangeable.  But sometimes you need a specific weapon or good, and you're managing nine of them.

- literally everything is random.  Your hero is random, your secret end game goals are random, your Merry Men are random, where the villains move and what they do is random, defeating guards is random, winning an archery contest is random.  Everything is random.

- In the hero phase the board changes too rapidly.  You simply cannot plan ahead because the event/villain deck just alters everything right before every hero moves.

-  Also in the hero phase:  There's this mechanic where if a guard shows up in a location with a Merry Man, you have to ante a good.  Well a hero can go rescue that guy, defeating the guard and claiming the ante.  And then next event card re-arressts him forcing another good payment.  This is just a meteor strike that screws players for reasons.  Yikes.

-  There's this reinforcing loop of building things to score points but they also give you the materials to build more things.  Basically if you don't draw the appropriate Merry Men to gather the proper resources to build something in early rounds, you're also meteor struck.

- circling back to RANDOM, the absolute worst random mechanic is the loot bag.  There's a couple ways to get a draw from the loot bag.  But there's like 40 tiles, and maybe 1/4 of them give two things and the balance gives 1.   I'd probably be ok with it if resources weren't so damn hard to get and so easy to lose.

-  my group did play 5 player which absolutely exascerbated the board change and the Merry Men double jeopardy instances.

Can this be fixed with expansions?

No.  Aboslutely not.  This game is already incredibly busy.  Imagine a Christmans Tree and you hang one too many ornament onto it.  It'll topple over.

Ok smart ass blogger, how would you fix the 2nd edition?

1) 

There's a game concept of active vs. passive Merry Men.  You play a Merry Man into a position that can't be blocked, and this guy remains in play passively.  The benefits are so small that if there's literally any other direction to go, don't play a guy passively.

I think that there should be actual incentive to this passive play, make this a hard choice and not the consolation prize 

2)

Preview the villain deck.  Have some mechanism on the villain deck's back that kind of hints at what it does.  Or  make some kind of timed reveal on what pain is being brought.  Make it so the game isn't playing you.

Ok that's it for my stream of concsious ideas

 

Summary

If theme is important to you, you'll like this game more than me.

If you enjoy chaos, then you'll enjoy this game more than me.

I didn't hate it, I just can name several dozen games I like more.

F@#$ Wingspan

Metaphorically living in a cave!  What's a boy to do but post to his mostly abandoned board game blog!

This year's installment. Wingspan.

Theme

Once again proving that theme matters not one iota to me, this is about birds.

But having said that, a lot of love went into this game.  (both images grabbed from board game geek)

So for me, gameplay still is the biggest factor in my enjoyment, let's take a moment to admire the art work and production.

And the theme has decent integration.  While the general actions a player takes are pretty generic, the reactions on the bird cards are specific to this game.

Mechanics

The core mechanic is engine building.  There's 4 actions to take and 3 paths

1. play a bird (place a bird in card one of the paths)
2. Forest Path  get food (resource used to play any and every bird) 
3. Grassland Path: get eggs (end game VP and a resource to play more birds in the same action path)
4. Wetland Path: get cards (bird cards.)

As you play in an action path, you may trigger the re-actions of any bird in that path.  Let's say you play in the Grassland path (eggs) and you have (in order) a hawk, sparrow and dove played.  You would take the tier 4 reward for playing in the Grassland (3 eggs and the option to trade a food for another egg) then trigger the dove's power, then the sparrow's and finally the hawk's.  The riggered actions vary, quite a bit.  Get food, get eggs, get VP, etc.

odds and ends

• not every bird has a triggered power
• eggs are stored on bird cards, and they have a maximum capacity.
• while actions get better, your total number of actions per round decrease.
• you have 26 actions total

Scoring

Wingspan is a points salad game.  There's four general paths for scoring.

First, each bird has a VP value.   Each bird counts for your sum, and high VP birds are either expensive, useless, or both.  This is usually about 1/3 of your score, and is the only constant scoring mechanic no matter what strategy path was chosen:  every path to victory requirees playing birds.

Second, secret goals.  At the beginning of the game players draw a secret goal they should strive for.  Some birds may grant new goals.    This can be as little as 1/10 of your score and as much as 1/3.  Secret goals are tough, they're probably the toughest socring aspect to focus on.  They're also complimentary to other aspects; work on something else and you'll still get secret points.

Third, on card resources.  Most of the time these are eggs, but many cards have mechanics where you 'tuck' a card or add a token.  Generically, they all score the same.  The only difference is that a player must occasionally spend eggs to unlock the higher tiers along the action paths.  Tucked cards and tokens only are good for VP.  Generally about 1/3 your score, but this has an amazing amount of variance.  In my limited play, I've seen this VP path yield as little as 10% to as much as 50% of the total score.

Fourth, end of round goals.  These are known by every player and vary from "Total number of birds" to "Birds with an egg on them of this specific nest type".  (Nest type being a symbol on the bird card).  Goals VP value increases the longer the game goes on, and is another 10 to 33% factor in your total score.

Review

Wingspan, is, in my opinion the best points salad game I have ever played.

A flaw with most point salads games is there's always a horrible, inefficient path, that once discovered, experieinced players will do their best to not pursue.  This is the 'pickled beets' of the point salad.  While this doesn't inherently lead to scripted play, it does really cut down on viable otions.  Which I hate.

Wingspan does not have that problem!  Depending on your draw, there are still picked beets.  But what move is pickled beets changes from game to game.

Also, it's reasonably fast paced and after a couple run throughs it clocks in at about 30 minutes per player.  I love fast paced games with impactive decisions.

Tips

In general, bird cards are worth more early and eggs are woth more late.  Seems like every game is an exception...so YMMV.

Even numbered slots aren't great.  Those allow you to trade a food/egg/card for a food/egg/card.  You're not actually gaining anything:  think carefully before you make use these.

Pay attention to end round goals.  It's very hard to win without at least a decent showing here.  But know when to bail, investing several moves to finish third will kill you!

Pay attention to your opponents bird tableau!  Some birds are reactive to your moves, but every single one of them has a once per turn cycle limit.    I'm not saying let this dictate play, but I am make this a tie breaker for your decision if someone else hasn't triggered yet.

F@#$ Geekway to the West

A year between posts? 

Attended my 1st Geekway to the West, here's a brief synopsis on what it is and what I did.

What is Geekway?

Mostly it's a 4-day long board game library.  There are some events and there are some dealers but mostly the convention is check out a game, play it, then return it.

There's two libraries, the standard library and the play and win library.

Play and Win (P&W) - companies have donated games to GttW, in exchange they'll be played all weekend then raffled off on Sunday (final show day).   GttW posts this list ahead of time and these trend towards newer games.

The regular library may have anything.  If the game is newer and highly rated on BGG, don't count on finding it in the library.  (My group did play Azul, but we checked that out at 8AM Saturday.) If it's older, you'll probably find it sometime during the weekend.

What did I play?

New to me designated with *

Feast for Odin
Endeavor: Age of Sail*
Eldritch Horror
Anachrony*
Between the Castles of Mad King Ludwig*
Azul
Terraforming Mars
Roll for the Galaxy*
Vikings Gone Wild*
Space Base*
Micro Brew*

Brief reviews of the new games

Endeavor: Age of Sail - we only played the basic game; there a whole different level.  Base game was fine, not great.  For sure someone at your table needs to have played the base game first before launching into advanced.  Definitely has potential, no final verdict yet.

Anachrony - only played the basic game, and only halfway through.  The rules are a big hot mess.  Watch the how to play video for sure.  After a couple rounds the iconography starts making sense and the game speeds up.  It was painful getting there.  No final verdict.

Between the Castles of Mad King Ludwig - my most surprising find.  It's semi-cooperative.  Your building two castles, one with each neighbor.  Your lowest scoring castle is your final score.  I liked it, would play again.

Roll for the Galaxy - huge disappointment for a top 100 BGG ranking.  It has the luck of the draw of Race for the Galaxy but now adds die rolls.  It was ok, but I never have to play it again.

Vikings Gone Wild - pretty basic deck builder.  Fast paced and light.  Would play again, but this is more in line with an end of night let's not start anything too involved game.

Space Base - Basically this game is Machi Koro with added layers of complexity.  Pretty light and fast paced, also an end of night type game.

Micro Brew - Micro-game.  Very light, very quick but not much going on.  Also, it only plays 2.

My Geekway experience

it was good, but not great.  I'll totally go again, but to make it great I need to do some planning.

1) Research the P&W games.  The P&W games have multiple copies, so you will get to play them.
2) Watch the damn how-to-play videos.  Learning a game on the fly is a chore.
3) Have some more structure.  Just don't show up and wait for the fun to begin.

See you next year Geekway

F@#$ Kingdom Death Monster

Kingdom Death Monster

Summary

Kingdom Death Monster (KDM not to be confused with KMFDM who are also terrifying) is a fantasy horror themed, fully cooperative campaign board game.   The heart of the game is tactical combat, which awards various resources which you can then spend.

Ranking

I guess this is as good as time as any to once again reiterate my views on Board Game Geek's game ranking list.  KDM is #34 and after several sessions, I'm reminded that BGG's list is a flawed review aggregater like Rotten Tomatoes.

A top 100 ranking on BGG means that (in general) enough people found something to like about it in the 18 months or so immediately after it's release.

Positive reviews never expire, so games which were ground breaking at the time linger near the top of the list despite probably being played out.  I recently watched The Dice Tower's panel on Top 5 over-rated games, and half the panel included Puerto Rico, currently ranked #16.   And I think that's because BGG's  rankings don't depreciate.  Puerto Rico was wonderful upon it's release, but it's played out now.  I have no desire to ever play PR again.

What does KDM's ranking mean?  That it does have some things that appeal to people.

 

What it has going for it

So right now, board game's FotM is legacy.  Game materials meant to be marked up with stickers and a sharpie.  Provide enough content within the game to give players a satisfying experience with only one run through of the campaign.

KDM is a step up (possibly down?) from that; it's a campaign.  A similar series of missions in a story, but you don't destroy game components or mark up the board like a single play through.

I find that appealing, because if you FUBAR up a poorly designed legacy game, you either quit playing or buy some kind of refresh kit.  KDM you can just relaunch the campagin.

It also has a nice fantasy horror theme going on.  Vivid descriptions of what the pool of 'survivor' characters face, in multiple areas; you really don't know where the next disturbing image will come from.

And the tactical combat part of the game has more going on than the typical example of the genre.  Which I describe as "move here, shoot that guy and roll dice".

Basic Game Play Run through

The basic plot is you're an amnesiac settlement thrown into a nightmare world and must relearn everything to survive.  Every year in celebration of your continued existence, you stalk and kill a trophy monster, harvesting special resources from it sou you can improve your hunt party.

A turn cycle has 3 phases:  Hunt, Showdown, Settlement.

Hunt:  the lead up to the combat phase.  A series of events drawn from a deck, about evenly divided among good results and bad results.   In our campaign, the good results seem only mildly good while the bad results aren't catastrophic but usually are a pretty serious set back.  The length of this phase varies, but is directly related to how tough you want the showdown to be.

Showdown:  fighting the monster.  I'll cover combat mechanics in a bit.

Settlement:  Some more events, one random and sometimes one scripted.  Build your economy, unlock new knowledge, make your guys better!   Basically, the fun parts of 4X computer games but on a smaller scale.

So yeah, that's it.  A string of events leading up to the fight, fight a monster to get stuff, use that stuff to make your guys better to fight the next monster.  Repeat.

Combat

The showdown phase has some neat things going on, both with the character's build and with the monster's actions.

The Build

(from BGG's image library link) 

So those squares that may line up from card to card may mean something.  Get red/blue/green squares linked on the tableau with the right gear, and you unlock a power.    So that's pretty cool, and players should definitely work towards that!   Our campaign hasn't found too many worthwhile green box powers, but we're also maybe half way through it.  There definitely may be more coming, which means possibly we're scrambling to get the old gear we previously thought of as useless. 

The Fighting

The boss monster has two decks which govern his play:  Monster actions and Monster hit locations.

The monster action deck doubles as his hit points, you wound the monster and what he does becomes more predictable.  This adds quite a bit of variance to what the monster does; tougher monsters get more and nastier cards.

The hit location deck is another thing players manage.  Multiple hits draw multiple cards and the player may resolve them in any order.  This is important, because the monster may interrupt follow up hits by breaking your weapon or running away.

Those two decks make it interesting.  Especially the hit locations, it's something else to try and optimize while playing.

The Problems

The Truck Tire Problem

I describe some games like this Tommy Boy scene.  

You're driving along driving along driving along TRUCK TIRE.   

Truck tire games abruptly escalate the challenge intensity without a corresponding increase in your ability to meet them.

You fight a monster, you fight a monster BOSS FIGHT TPK!

I find this frustrating; the normal fights are routine, only an occasional set back.  Then the boss fight where literally one round in, everyone knows we're going to lose.

The Resource Drop problem

Gear items need specific parts you can only acquire from a single monster type.  To complete an armor set, the party will need to fight the same monster multiple times.

Ok great in theory, until you need two Lion Pelts and only draw one so you need to fight the White Lion for the 8th time.

There needs to be some mechanism where the 'common' drops become easier to get the more times you fight the same monster.

The events vs fight problem

KDM is a deadly game.  Last time we played several characters levelled up and got some neat abilities.  I asked everyone, why are you getting excited about that?  Your dude's just going to die.

And it's events that are the biggest killer.  A random card just kills the best guy, or a random card kills 3 guys. 

I don't mind that casualties are high.  I mind that casualties are from meteor strikes the party has literally no control over.

Is the price tag the elephant in the room?

Kingdom Death Monster costs around $400, or 4 times a really expensive games or 10 times a mass marketed offering from Rio Grande Games.  You're not buying game play.

1. Lots and lots and lots of plastic miniature models.
2. Seriously, there's enough mini's to create a decently sized Warhammer army.
3. Maybe I'll find another picture to seriously demonstrate how many figures the game comes with.
4. The rule book is a work of art.  Case bound, glossy paper and full of fantastic art.  It's a well put together book that would probably retail for about 75$ all by itself.

So my friends bought this game, not me.  My actual cost is 0.  Having said that, I don't value the mini's or the book that much.  My game experience wouldn't dramatically change if we were using card board figures and plastic stands.

Final Verdict

This game remains worth playing.  I want to know how the campaign ends.  I seriously don't know if I'd want to do another campaign any time soon.

It's a good but not great game that hit a zeitgeist for a subset of board gamers which launched it into BGG's top 50. 

F&^% First Martians. No really.

I bought this game that I was pretty excited about - First Martians

It re-implements the mechanics in Robinson Crusoe (2012) , but this time with astronauts that have recently arrived on Mars.  Robinson Crusoe is a cooperative game where you are stranded on a remote island and have to build up from nothing to accomplish some task before time runs out (like build a signal fire, or elude the cannibals).  It had a little tech tree, and a fantastic mechanic where you had to deal with events that happened or it might have future consequences (like you see signs of a tiger - do you either spend the time to hunt it down and kill it now?  or risk that it MAY show up later...hunting you).  That game was a little clunky in several ways, but thematically it was fantastic.  Very tough though.  You can play it with as many as four people, but honestly it works best solo or two player.  Additional players don't add anything but another mind to puzzle out the best move.  You each technically play a character, but not really.  You assign the resources and actions in the most optimal way possible.  So if you're playing with a group, cooperation has to be at 100%, or you lose.  There's no "you do this, I'll do that, and we'll see who was right."  I usually play by myself, and sometimes with my son, Paul.  He made his own scenario once which we played, and it was actually great.

I love Robinson Crusoe.  More of that is really appealing to me.  My kid likes Robinson Crusoe.  My kid LOVES the ides of colonizing Mars.  As I said, when I heard about First Martians, I was pretty excited.  I'm the bull's eye of the target audience for this one.

I was warned this was a drudge to learn, and they were not kidding.  The second iteration of these rules should be better, more elegant - they even switched to an app instead of a deck so they could give you just the events they wanted, in a logical orders, and manage the "future consequences" seamlessly behind the scenes.  That improves the story telling, but the game is not better.  It's more clunky.  It's more fiddly.  More contrived.  I watched a 50 minute video designed to teach you to play.  I watched it again.  I read the rules.  Then I tried to play the game with Paul (with some success, we won!).  Then I watched the video a third time.  Then I read the FAQ.  I've now spent more than four hours learning the game, I've played it three times, and I'm only marginally confidently that I've got it down.

And that's not even the biggest problem with the game - in Robinson Crusoe, you are building something.  You're fighting back the island and all its challenges, but each turn you have more than you did that turn before.  You're improving your situation.  Maybe you have a pit trap dug to help with food.  Maybe you mapped out part of the island to help with your effort to explore.  The challenge of the game is to accomplish your task in the limited time frame.  In First Martians it's the opposite.  Everything's peachy when you start, but as you try to accomplish your goal, everything is crumbling around you.  And it seems counter to the theme.  For example in the first scenario you're supposed to be making the HUB more like a home, but by the end you're lucky to fall across the finish line amid the cascading malfunctions.  You're just holding things together against all these clocks long enough meet the scenario criteria.  It's dispiriting.  Depressing even.  And hard.  Really hard.  Harder than Robinson Crusoe, which is a game that has a reputation for being on the brutal side.

In short, too much complexity without enough payoff for a difficult game that's theme can be kind of a downer.  Still, I'm too invested to give it up.  I'm gonna try again tonight.  I'm 1 for 3 on the intro scenario, and that's on the "easy" setting.  There are several more one off scenarios and a couple campaigns that I want to try.  I'll keep you posted.

F%$@ Gloomhaven Nightshroud aka Moon Guy aka Notinda Face

Retired character, so here we go with another character breakdown/review.  This review assumes you know how to play Gloomhaven.  YMMV

Broad Strokes: 

Don't take my moon

The moon guy is versatile.   He's not a great tank, but he can take a hit.  He's not the best support, but he'll throw lots of curses into the bad guys deck.  And he just flat out kills monsters, given the right magic.

There looks like two main paths you can go by with this guy; try to make him invisible as often as possible or try and make moon magic as often as possible.  I went with the latter, because it looked like I could make moon more reliably.

There's two movement cards that make moon; well there more than that, but the ones you will use to make moon most often are Smoke Step (L1) and Prepare for the Kill (L2).  The attack section on both these cards are adequate, but you're not really trading off a lot by using these to move and make your moon.

There are reliable ways to make yourself invisible, but the trade off's I deemed too severe.

Examples:

L5 card, Black Arrow's bottom half is turn yourself invisible, then spend a moon and perform attack 3, range 3.  Which can totally stack with some other invisibility style cards; but you don't move, there's usually better uses for your moon, and the top card half is attack 4, range 4, muddle and curse your target.

L8 card, Lurking Rain.  Top half is attack 5, add poison, muddle and wound if you're invisible.  Bottom half move 3, turn invisible.  Which is great, and I almost took that instead of the L9 card.  But the other L8 card, Gloom Darts is simply amazing.  Attack 3, Range 4, poison and curse your target.  Spend a moon and target 3 bad guys instead.

Don't take my moon

So why is making moon better?   These cards

L1 Spirit of the Night:  Attack 3, or spend a moon and kill a normal unit instead.  NOT A THROWAWAY
L1 Empoweing Void:   Move 2, spend a moon and all attacks you make this round are doubled.  NOT A THROWAWAY
L6 Swallowed by Fear:  Attack 2, or spend a moon and any other magic to kill and elite.  NOT A THROWAWAY (see the theme yet?)
L8 Gloom darts: covered above, but also NOT A THROWAWAY
L9 Angel of Death:  Top half Attack 4, or spend a moon and kill all normal units.  This is a throwaway.  Bottom half, Move 5 jump, spend a moon and kill an adjacent normal unit.  This half is not a throwaway.

There's other ways to spend moon, but those are the must haves in the deck.

Tactics: 

Don't take my moon

Use your execute powers as soon as and as often as you can.  Then make moar moon so you can use them again. 

You're the assassin, you're the guy who maneuvers to get to the high shielded guy so your team doesn't have spend 6 attacks chopping him down.

And while you're waiting for that to cycle back through, you zap all the monsters with curses.

Your gear choices probably won't be optimized to go toe to toe with 5 baddies so watch your aggro.  It's not as critical as it is for true squishees, but no shield and no armor equals no damage mitigation.

Perks:

Ok here's the bad news.  The Nightshroud probably has the worst perks in the game.  There's not a single +2 damage card available and your make moon and turn invisible cards are very likely to be buried in a stack of muddles and +1's

In a big way this doesn't matter, because your two best attacks don't even flip a card.

My Gear:  

Don't take my moon

Boots of Striding, or Dashing if possible.  Besides perks, if there's a single weakness to this character it is that he is totally move impaired.  Enhanced movement boots are an absolute must buy. 

Stamina potions, Major and Minor if they're both available.  I regularly used these as soon as I could to get my executes and my preferred moon generators back in my hand.  Must buy.

Cloak of Invisibility:  After making it my first purchase, I'm calling this a maybe right now.  I think the pouch robe would be just as effective.

Minor Mana Potion:  I bought this initially mostly because it was cheap and I had the pouch slot available.  I ended up using it more often to generate mana for my team mates than for me.

Scroll of Power (? name is probably wrong):  You use this on your allies attack and he gets +1 to all attacks made with that action.  I replaced the mana potion with this.

Poison Knife and Wounding Sword (I know these names are wrong):  In theory these were great, add a wound or a poison to a melee attack.  In practice not so much.  I was either killing guys outright or attacking at range.  I looked and looked and looked, and couldn't find any weapons I liked better.  I did consider taking the retaliation shield at one point though.

Hawk Helm:  Add +1 to all your ranged attacks this round.  I really liked this one too, because of Gloom Darts.  Probably not worth taking prior to that.

Moon Earring:  This, or the other upgraded refresh item pouches are probably a must buy too.  So you can get your boots back.  Seriously though:  Boots and knife and sword and helm refreshed with one pouch item.

Gear I'd consider instead:  

Don't take my moon

Any kind of armor or shield.  Invisibility was occasionally brilliant but that's not really how my moon guy ran.

The cursed helm:  Name is also 100% wrong.  This is the helm where you can bring back all your throwaway items by putting a curse in your deck.  I'd try to run an invisibility character with the Harry Potter cloak with this card.

On his retirement mission we unlocked the wand of make moon.  Thanks game!  

Card Upgrades:

I upgraded 3 cards total.  Smoke Step movement, +1 to +2.  Prepare for the Kill movement twice, +2 to +4.  And finally, Dancing Shadows movement +3 to +4 (on attack card half).  Dancing shadows was only upgraded because I had 45 retirement gold left and nothing else to spend it on.

Final words:
 

I'd really like to see someone take a swing at an invisibility build.   There's several cards that give you enhanced damage, or status effects if you're invisible.  But the make moon build was very effective.

Don't take my moon