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?

F@#$ Point Salad Games

Overcompensating blogger overcompensates with two posts this week.


Today, I examine games classified as 'point salads' in a format I'm calling The Good, The Bad and The Whatever.

Last week, I played 5 Tribes for the 1st time.  And that is most definitely a points salad.  In fact it seems like a majority of the games I've played for the 1st time these last few years are points salad.  Including, but not limited to: Aquasphere, Castles of Burgundy, 5 Tribes, Libertalia, Terra Mystica, etc etc.

In fact, the game I designed (and shelved), Yellow Journalism probably also qualifies as a point salad.

So what makes a Point Salad a Point Salad?

A game in which nearly every move advances your score is considered a points salad.  The 'etymology' is imagine yourself at a salad buffet.  You can take a little of this and a little of that to build your points.

The Good

The best point salads games inherently have multiple ways to win.  I like multiple ways to win.

I mean, I really like that in games.  A one dimensional game is boring.  Most point salads have multiple paths to victory.

A points salad game has lots of moving parts/conflicting mechanics.  It's inherently re-playable, at least a few times.  They are complex and will take a couple runs through to figure out the strategy.

The Bad

Not all, but a good amount of point salad games lead to analysis paralysis.  And not a minor case either.  Too.  Many.  Options.  

The implementation of multiple paths to victory usually fall short.  After only a couple of plays, typically several moves become the pickled beets of the salad bar; no one ever takes them.  This is a huge huge deal for a game built on choices!  If about half the choices are obviously sub-optimal, the game devolves into a race for the other half.

The Whatever

A point salad occasionally has wildly divergent connotation with board gamers.  Seems like a bunch of people have decided there's a lot of people wrong on the internet.

It is a mechanism.  That's it.  

Like...

Most of the games that are ranked high per BGG, that I don't really like are "Area Control" games.  Does that make Area Control games stupid?  No it means that your friendly neighborhood blogger is wrong on the internet.  

But I'm not really wrong either.  I would be wrong if I refused to play a new game simply because one of it's mechanism's is "Area Control" or if I went into said game embittered and waiting for it to suck.

to me, Point Salads, Area Control or whatever kind of mechanisms occur in a board game are like musical styles.  I love punk/ska, but there's plenty of awful punk/ska out there.  I don't like country and western, but there's plenty of really good C&W too.

F@$ Captain America: Civil War

YIKES
YIKES
YIKES

2 months without a post.  Sorry New Years Resolution.


Anyways back with a movie review.

The Verdict first

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.  It is not my absolute favorite MCU movie, but it's easily in the top 5 with Ironman, Avengers 1, and Cap2: Winter Soldier.

The Conception

once again, the Marvel producers conceived this movie well.  It's based on the "Civil War" cross over series, which pits heroes against heroes after the passage of the Super Hero Registration Act.  It's a great story, and to me, it seems like obvious source material for a film.  I speculate that this arc was included in the MCU timeline early on, and a whole bunch of films built to here.

The other thing Marvel does well here, is diverge from the source material as necessary.  The law is an international treaty instead and the story is otherwise really stripped down.

But who cares?  The core of the story is the argument on who should control a 'super heroes' power.

The Writing/Directing/Acting

Writing:  Good for what it was.  Like you're not making Citizen Kane.  I'm going to compare to Mad Max Fury Road here.  MMFR was fantastic because it didn't ever delve into exposition; it kept the story moving and didn't explain stuff when it could show you.  

Now I don't think CA:CW was as good at that as MMFR, but it really didn't have any agonizing slow parts.  

Also, the script gives several characters a chance to shine without derailing the central story line.  That is actually  hard to do (see any number of ensemble films or TV series).  

Directing:  Very very good.  The fight scenes are epic, and the stunts/special effects never look ridiculous.  Again, that is very very hard to do.

Acting:  Again, good for what it was.  The MCU is not casting Olivier, Hoffman or Newman into the key roles.   These films have a knack for getting the actor to buy into the character motivations.

So what specifically did I like about it?

I liked how the previous films shaped the principal characters motivations.  

Captain America :  Wary of organizational interference because of the events of Winter Soldier.  He will not submit to UN control.

Iron Man:  Plagued by guilt from Age of Ultron, confidence in his own judgement shattered, Iron Man wants someone else to hold the reins.

No who's right and who's wrong?  They're both right, they're both wrong.  And that is an interesting dynamic to explore.  

Oh yeah, and the awesome shots and quips.  Antman's big reveal was worth the price of admission by itself, and so was the Spiderman post credits scene.  The final showdown was also epic.

F!@#.  Awesome and Epic in the same paragraph.  Time to quit while I'm behind.

F@#$ Eldritch Horror Characters: A partial review

It was a NYR to de-abandon this blog with two posts a month, so sometimes we're going to get a clunker!

So more waxing poetic about Eldritch Horror; this time I attempt to answer which characters you should play with!


First up in my character my reviews, 4 of my favorites.  Look for underrated/overrated soonish as well as what the hell were the designers thinking with the musician and the astronomer?


A disclaimer:  I'm not trying to make judgements on how powerful an investigator is, although they're probably pretty powerful if they are one of my favorites.  My rankings are biased to how fun I have playing them.

#1 Ursula downs.

Stats:  Versatile, no 4's but no 1's either.  She also starts with an improvement token for any stat so she can go several directions, spell caster, fighter gate closer.

Powers:  This is where Ursula excels.  Her action doesn't occur all that often, but when you do get to move along an uncharted and take another action she's lightning fast.

Here passive is so frikkin awesome words can hardly do it justice.  She gets a free focus asset once a turn.  Need a re-roll?  Have one for free!  There are so so many encounters and mythos cards that this helps with!

Gear:  Lame.   The improvement token is nice but her item is free clues requiring a specific encounter type and an additional test.  It's better than no gear at all, but she will definitely need help here.

Final word:  Versatile stats and an amazing passive, Ursula fits into virtually every party.  She excels with the Egypt and Antarctica sideboards because she gets to use her uncharted move action often.

#2 Tommy Muldoon.

Stats:  Versatile, no 4's but no 1's either.  Starts with a will improvement token.

Powers:  Pretty marginal.  The the action is pulling a monster with toughness 3 or less to his location.  Every once in a while that's handy (I'm looking at you Yig!) but it's not something you use constantly.  His passive is also marginal, if he is sharing a space with other investigators they get to ignore monsters when resolving encounters.  Also handy once in a while, but over all pretty meh.

Gear:  Awesome awesome awesome.  Tommy gets the best starting weapon in the game, the Carbine Rifle.  +5D strength once a round.

Final word:  The fact is that I probably over rate Tommy because of his gun.   But way too many games start with a ridiculously powerful monster on a gate or an epic monster mystery.  Tommy allows the party to face those monsters  without turns of asset acquisition.  I say, Tommy, like Ursula fits into nearly every party.

#3 Agnes Baker

Stats:  Spell caster heavy with 4 Lore, but no 1's.

Powers:  Pretty good!  Action test lore-1 to gain a spell.  Passive, spend a health to gain +2 lore when resolving a spell affect.

Gear:  Fairly good.  A storm of spirits spell and a a profane tome.  The tome grants a will reroll during combat and storm of spirits substitutes lore for strength during combat.  Her lore combined with her passive makes her a pretty good secondary monster hunter.

Final word:  The stats combined with the powers make her versatile, and I like versatility lots.   She'll probably have to rest a lot though :).  I don't like her nearly as much as Tommy or Ursula but she certainly has a spot in most parties.

#4 George Barnaby

Stats:  Support.  1 Strength has him fleeing monsters all the time.  Even with weapons and improvement tokens he's only going to be a secondary fighter.  3 lore, 4 influence and 3 will make him a credible gate closer ans mystery solver though.

Powers:  Very good.  He discards debts and detains based on a handshake test.  His passive is spend a focus to add +1 to a die roll.

Gear:  Meh.  A pocket watch prevents delays which is awesome when that happens, but the variance of the delay occurrence means that the watch is only adequate.  Same with the investment.  It takes a reckoning to promote the investment to a funding, and then another to promote the funding to the benefit.  The funding results also vary so wildly that an investment is...meh.


Final word:  My favorite support character.  I like that he's not one dimensional, if you need him to attempt other things he can probably step up.   His power is mostly used for removing debts, but it's actually way way better when you can discard a detain instead.

F@#$ Keyflower

F@#$ Keyflower

What makes a good game as opposed to a meh game?
What makes a great game?
What makes an astonishingly wonderful game that makes it into your personal top 5?

I need to slow down, I've only played Keyflower 4 times (and only once correctly), so I can't put it in my personal best just yet.  But this game certainly has the potential to make it onto my all time favorites list.

Theme:

Build the bestest colony in all the land!

Not the greatest theme integration in the world, but certainly not the worst.    Pretty solid if that's something you look for.

Gameplay:

It's worker placement, with auction/draft and tile placement aspects.  

Everyone starts with some end game tiles.  These tiles are auctioned for round 4, so you know some of what's coming and maybe can plan accordingly.

Everyone starts with 8 secret and random Meeples in the 3 base colors:  Red, Yellow and Blue.

The round one tiles (Spring in game turns) are revealed.  I don't know the total number of tiles included, I think it's 12 total, and the amount you lay out is based on how many people are playing.

Tiles do something for you when you play there.  You get base resources (Iron, Stone, Wood), you get a wild card resource (Gold), you get more meeples, you can move resources around, and some other stuff.

You can bid on them to purchase or activate them with your meeples.

First the bidding.

One of the unusual things about this game is that it uses table position to track who has bid on what, and not player color.  The tiles are hexagonal and you place the meeples corresponding to where your sitting.  Here's a picture to show that

The tile in the foreground is currently going to the head of the table, and the one in the background is going to the player to his right. 

So meeple color.  That's a worker "suit".  First one to play on a tile, either by activation or by bidding determines that tiles suit for the round.  So both highlighted tiles are suited Yellow.

So high amount of workers wins the tile, and at end of the round bring it back and place it in your tableau.

Oh yeah you can also bid on incoming boats.  In the above picture those tiles to the left with stacks of meeples on them are the colonists arriving this round that you can use next round.   You bid like normal on boat draft order, with the earlier selections usually getting the boats with the more doobers loaded on them. 

Next, tile activation

To activate a tile, you place a worker on it.  Here's another pic courtesy of board game geek (like the above).

So 1st activation costs 1 worker.

2nd activation costs 2 workers.

3rd and final activation costs 3 workers.

So in the above pic, both tiles with doobers on them have been activated twice, and you can tell that because there's 3 total guys one each hex.  

Meepless used this way are recycled by the tile's owner for next round.  So whoever owns those 2 tiles above is getting 6 dudes!  Meeples used for winning bids aren't recycled.

So that's the game play.  You can do two things with your workers.  Bid on tiles or activate them.

Wait, What?

The genius of this game lies in the tiles.

First, you can upgrade them.  They give better rewards and victory points upon activation.  Like get moar resources or move moar stuff.  It's a game of competitive cooperation; you've spent your turn upgrading your tile which makes it more appealing, and now have to wait for the turn to come back around for you to use it yourself.  Good chance you won't get the cheap activation.

Second, some careful though went into which round should certain tiles appear.  Round 1 is pretty heavy on resource production.  Round 2 is kind of a hybrid round, a little resource production, a little utility, and a little meeple recruitment.   Round 3 is victory point heavy, and round 4 is all victory points all the time.

Third, I haven't even talked about the Green suit!

The Green Suit

The Green suit isn't trump, it's just a regular old suit except rarer.

You have to specially recruit Green Meeples using the in-play tiles.  

Now, because they are (usually) so rare, bidding on something with a green is akin to marking your territory.  If someone wants to over bid you with two green, that represents a substantial investment for that there tile.

Games within Games

I count two major ones and another two minor ones.

Playing on tiles is a game within a game.  You get the stuff, but you're setting up your opponent better for next round.  Upgrading is the same way in reverse.  You're making it more appealing to play there, which means people will, blocking you out of the cheap moves.

Managing your green guys is a game within a game.  So you've recruited a green guy, now what?  Well if you bid with him this round he's gone.  If you use him on one of your own tiles, well you've successfully recycled him but also spiked that tile so no one else will ever play there.  Or if you just save him, you deny yourself another move.

End Game Boats are a minor game within a game.   The end game boat draft gets you VPs in varying ways.  One of the VP boats grants exponential boats based on how many boats you own; the only way to get more than one boat is to bid on one during round 2.   Those boats seem limited.  They give you some useful utility but can't be upgraded or played on.  They are truly not worth much unless you get a bunch AND the exponential boat.

Gold is a minor game within a game.  Just having gold on hand is worth a VP.  But you can wild card gold of any basic resource type.  Is that wild card worth it?  Probably!  But if you're using two gold as wild cards on one upgrade it probably is worth your while to go acquire an Iron, Wood or Stone.

 

Tips

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've won once and had two solid games out of the four played so far.  But that's completely just based on good tactical plays and no underlying strategy.

I think you need to look for good value.  Like a 1 meeple play on your opponents upgraded tile is almost always going to benefit you more than him, so look for those.  

Keep disciplined on early round bids; given the fog of war (because next rounds tiles won't revealed until this rounds is complete), it's hard to justify anything but a green meeple recruiter being worthy of a 3 bid.

Keep doubly disciplined on Summer boats.  They have neat powers, but the lack of an upgrade to VPs and no playing on them is a really big trade off.

If you can, save a stack of one color for late in the round.   Play them on your own tiles because they're coming right back too ya.