Let's Take the Shortcut (Review of Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion)

Gloomhaven is king of the hill over at BoardGameGeek (it's the number one ranked game of ALL the games), but then along comes the little sibling. Will the upstart show up their older relation? Or can they cannot compete with the bigger version? 

For those who don't know anything about Gloomhaven, it was created by Isaac Childres and it is BIG. Twenty-two pounds of miniatures (18-ish), scenarios (100-ish), boards (a bunch) enemy standees (like a zillion), and every token and card imaginable (immeasurable). It's a cooperative campaign-style game with some legacy elements (stickers added and whatnot) taking place in a fantasy world created by Childres. You choose one of the starting characters and level up as you progress through the campaign, making choices that affect what happens to your party and what your character becomes. There's a whole lot more, but you can read about that in my review of the original game here.

in 2020, Childres made some kind of deal with Target to bring a scaled down version of Gloomhaven to the shelves, something that more than just hardcore gamers could get into it. Jaws of the Lion was born and contains around 25 scenarios, 4 characters, but still a buttload of enemies to battle and cards to acquire. How does Gloomhaven: Lite compare with the original? Let's find out together.

Don't Cry over Spilled Milk or Zombies (Zombie Kidz: Evolution Review)

This week my daughter was eager to play just one more game of Zombie Kidz: Evolution so that we could open up the very last envelope. So eager, in fact, that when she opened the box she spilled some of the pieces into her cereal and milk. After a few tears and the wipe down of a few pieces, we were ready to go for our final game of the campaign!

It's not often that I have a game that one my kids begs to play, but that was certainly the case here. From when we opened the game Christmas morning to our final envelope opening on January 8th, we played the game a total of thirty times. But, why? Was the draw for her enough to make it a good game? How did it feel for a parent playing it with her? 

First, an overview of the game. You play cooperatively as a group of kids protecting your school from zombies. On your turn you spawn new zombies, move, and then remove/kill/scare- away/insert -your-age-appropriate-verb-here zombies. Your job in an individual game is to get two kids(you can play up to four players) in a entranceway together and lock the gates. If all four gates are locked, you win. If the pool of zombies is empty (i.e. they're all on the board), you lose. Without spoiling anything, as you play the game multiple times and complete missions, you open secret envelopes (13 in total) that change the rules of the game and add more elements. This, to my knowledge, is the first legacy-style game geared towards kids. How successful was it? Let's find out!

Top Ten Solo Games of 2020

It's that time of year again! That beautiful season when Kevin Erskine from BoardGameGeek runs the People's Choice Top Solo Games competition. I believe this is the 6th or 7th year he's put this on and it is a blast! Anyone who wants to can submit their list of up to 20 solo games to Kevin and he'll rank them all based on how many votes they get. There's usually some minor controversy, but Kevin makes it clear that this is for fun! Well, it's not always so fun for my wallet because I want to buy ALL of the games on the list.

As I did last year for my list, I used Pub Meeple's ranking system to help me get started. Basically you upload the list of your solo games (it easily links to your BGG account so this is easy-peasy) and then it puts two games in front of you and you choose which one you like best. You do this a bunch of times depending on how many games you have and voila! You have a list! This becomes my starting point and I tweak and move a bit after I have this last, but it's usually pretty darn close!

When I look at the list I ask myself the following questions: Do I love this game? Do I love to set this game up? I try not to overthink it too much and just have fun with it. So, without further ado, here is my Top Ten Solo Games of 2020!

Master Mapsmith (Review of Cartographers)

I've really been enjoying the roll 'n' write and flip 'n' fill kick that the board game world has been on lately. What I feel like I've been missing, however, is a fantasy-themed one. Well, voila! Cartographers is here! It's not really the battle that I was hoping for - you're actually a cartographer, a mapmaker, scouting and mapping out the lands for your king. You work through summer, spring, autumn and winter, each season bringing with it different objectives and scoring conditions (indicated by random cards each game). You need to be sure to plan for the current season as well as future ones or you'll miss out on some points.

Each season you flip cards from the deck which will give you a terrain type (farmland, water, village, or forests) and a tetris-style geometric shape for you to draw onto your map sheet (the game comes with a pack of 100 of these and they are double sided with an easy side and more difficult side). The objective cards will direct you to place certain terrain types in certain arrangements to score the most points. There are also ruins that you may need to play on sometimes and also mountains. If you surround a mountain completely, you receive some gold. Watch out though - some cards involve a monster ambush! In competitive play, the person next to you will draw this ambush on your sheet and in solo play there is a pattern they follow for placement. Either way, any spaces adjacent to them left unfilled will lose you points at the end of the season.

It's Euro-Tastic! (Review of Terraforming Mars)

If there were a Euro game that I was going to play and review, it was going to be this one. Not because I love the theme (growing bacteria on Mars? When do I get to stab someone with a sword?), not because I love the artwork (so many neutral colours...), and not because I love moving cubes around (soooooo many cubes). It's because it's the number four ranked game on BGG and EVERYONE in the solo guild says it's amazing! Well, EVERYONE can't be wrong, can they? Even though I'm an Ameritrasher through and through, I can still enjoy cube pushing, right?

Only one way to find out.

First of all, though, let's make sure you know what Terraforming Mars IS. I think that I would summarize it as a hand- and resource- management game with some area control mixed in there. You're trying to make Mars habitable by changing it, increasing the planet's oxygen, temperature, and amount of water. Raising these three also raises your Terraforming Rating (TR) which also increases your income. That's good, because you'll need money to play cards and perform the standard actions that will allow you to increase the big three. The cards include a variety of things from strip mining, crashing meteors into the planet, launching nuclear bombs, and growing bacteria. Different actions will also allow you to increase your income and production of plants, energy, heat, steel, and something else.

That's the gist of how you play. But did I like it?

The Oblivion of Dinosaurs (Review of Dinoblivion)

If you've been following my blog or my reviews at all, you've probably picked up that I LOVE deckbuilders and that Goblivion (check out the review and playthrough) was one of my surprise favourite games of 2019, making its way to my number four solo game of the year. Well, when I heard that the wonderful Jean-François Gauthier was launching a new and improved deckbuilder on Kickstarter, it was a must-back for me! I've had the game for about a month now and it has gotten to the table a lot. That's one of my favourite thing about both of these games is their quick set up and play time. Rather than just making a new Goblivion with a few gameplay and component tweaks, Gauthier created a game that was a completely different type of deckbuilder.

Goblivion feels familiar as a castle defense game. Enemies come closer and closer to your castle and you need to train your troops to take them on. In Dinoblivion, the premise and execution is much different. You are a cave-person tribe attempting to survive in a prehistoric jungle (I don't know how accurate to history this is, but I'm suspending reality a bit because it's a board game). Dangers include dinosaurs, opposing tribes, cannibals, and piranhas. You start off with a deck of ten cards (nine standard and one variable chief card) and you use these to build up your tribe. You need to collect and manage various resources: food, dinosaur pets, and new babies. Food and babies allow you to "purchase" new cards: items and tribes-people, respectively.

The Knights Radiant (Playthrough of Call to Adventure: The Stormlight Archive)

Growing up in an aristocrat's house, Weset's youth was given over to indulgence and excess. When he reached adulthood, however, and reflected back on his life and the priorities of his harsh father, he realized something was missing. He gave his life to religion and joined the Vorin priests, searching for a higher meaning. His father urged him back into the family business by offering him a position of greater authority and control. Reluctantly, he agreed, finding less fulfillment than expected in being an ardent. 

Summer 2020 Update

Wowza! Has it really been so long since I posted last? Time flies when you're playing the same game over and over and over and over... Well, before I get to that, I'm going to start at the most recent news and work my way backward, because it's the most recent news that I'm most excited about!

Cut and Play (Cloud Dungeon)

I was looking for a storytelling or RPG-ish game to play with my seven year old daughter, and so where did I look? That's right, I went to the best source: BoardGameGeek. Whenever I'm having difficulty finding something to play next, I just asked the wonderful BGGers and I always get amazing responses!

One of the games that really stood out to me from their suggestions was one called The Cloud Dungeon. Not only is it a light-RPG for kids, but you also get to cut everything out and colour it! My daughter is very crafty and so I knew that she would love it. I picked up the print and play version for $7 USD and we spent the last three days prepping and playing. I leave for vacation today and so I'd like to gather my thoughts a little bit more before I do a full review, but here are some pictures of the experience!

Starting out on our adventure - my daughter is on fire and I can shapeshift.

Left Him in the Dust (Review of Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated)

While there is a lot of buzz around legacy games these day, there aren't actually that many true legacy games around. A legacy game is one that is a campaign style (multiple sessions connect to each other), but your choices and actions leave a lasting "legacy" on the game. This usually comes about through adding stickers, tearing up cards, and/or writing on boards. I could be wrong, but I believe the first, or at least most well known, of these games is Risk: Legacy. That is not one I've played, but I have played three more-or-less legacy games now: Charterstone, Gloomhaven (see that review here) and now Clank! Legacy. I've spent the last nine months playing through the game with my friends Stirling and Brennan and this past Saturday night we played our last game (read about that here). 

What a Finish! (Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated)

Last night we finished our Clank! Legacy campaign and wow, what a finish! About half or our games were spent socially distanced - two through video chat and three in my garage - with me moving all of the pieces. Talking about Clank! Legacy without spoiling anything is SO HARD but I'm going to do my best because I really do want you to play this game on your own.

This last game added some new twists that we hadn't experienced before nor expected. We had to completely change our strategy, but we still wanted to work together to get the best outcome possible for the end of our campaign as a franchise of Acquisitions Incorporated. It was a wild game, but we had a solid plan and we were happy with our outcome. Brennan won again with a ridiculous score. That means (without giving away the exact number of games in the campaign) that he won about 60-70% of the games, I won 25-35% of the games, and Stirling had won 5-15% (are those ranges big enough that you can't tell how many games we played?). So, a not uncommon occurrence in our campaign - Brennan either thoroughly tramples us or we leave his deceased body in the depths of the dungeon (three of his losses were 0 point losses - neither Stirling or I had any of these).

BUT THEN!

END OF CAMPAIGN SCORING!

Wow, this did not go how I expected. I had an idea of what sorts of things would be added up or counted towards the final score and I was sure that Brennan would win the campaign but that I had a slight chance to catch him. Well, obviously, I don't want to give any specifics away, but I was stunned by the scoring categories and results! Who won our campaign? STIRLING DID! Wow! Yes, of course, winning games was important and was counted, by there were a lot of other factors that I didn't think about that ended up giving Stirling the victory. Wowza!

A wild finish to a wild game! Take a look at my final review, coming soon!

The Father's Day Escape (Bandido)

Father's Day comes at a strange time because it comes right around the same weekend as my anniversary (June 18 - nine glorious years!) and my daughter's birthday (June 20 - seven years old this year!). It feels relatively unimportant compared to these days. This year it was even more so because we had my parents and grandparents over Sunday morning for donuts and coffee to celebrate Ardyn's birthday (we had my wife's family over on her actual birthday).

Well, all of this build up to say that my wife did not forget about me! I got some basketball socks, french fry seasoning, chocolate, a key chain made by my kids, and a pocket-sized gem of a game - Bandido! It was only two days before when we were walking around Indigo and I pointed out this game to her saying that it would be the perfect little stocking stuffer or something. She told me later that she had needed one more little thing for my gifts and was going to give up on finding something and just give me some cash to buy what I wanted. When I told her about this game, she went back and picked it up the next day!

Focused Attack (Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated)

Another night of a Clank! Legacy and another wild and unique experience! We played the same strategy we've been playing for quite a while, but again, things did not turn out the way we expected! We're nearing the end of our campaign (I'm trying not to give away exactly how many games there are) and so the steaks are high. Brennan has won like 60% of the games thus far, so Stirling and I are playing catch up. Or, at least, we're playing to try and stop Brennan from winning. Here is the aftermath of our garage gaming session. If you don't want spoilers, don't zoom in, but I doubt you'd see anything anyway. Except maybe you could count how many chips were left in the bottom of Brennan and Stirling's bowls. As much fun as it is to be in charge of shuffling every deck, moving every piece, adding in every secret, it'll be nice to not have to do EVERYTHING anymore. Brennan is an ER nurse, so he's playing it pretty safe in terms of contact with others, so it could be a little while still. So what happened to make this session so wild and unique? Well, let me tell you!

Playtesting Makes Perfect (Donisi)

After a bit of a break from Donisi, the last few weeks have seen Aaron and I getting back to the grindstone. Aaron is doing his part, working on card and character art (see one pictured here) as well as a teaser trailer that will be coming out soon (keep your eyes open for that!). My main job has been the same as it has been for most of the last few months: playtest, playtest, and playtest. Here's a little rundown of my process lately.

Play through a mission with only one character. See how it feels. Too hard? Too easy? Do certain parts of the mission seem too hard or too easy? If something feels off, I'll make an adjustment. The adjustments I go to first are (1) number of enemies spawned and (2) location of spawn points. I'm not going to be changing the maps much at this point and the cards are pretty set, so this is the best place to do the tweaking. With this current mission, I actually tried completely changing the types of enemies that you'd face. It was a fail, so I went back to my original plan and tweaked the story instead.

Time to Move? (Review of Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition)

Roll 'n' Writes have been all the rage lately and one of the more popular series are the Railroad Ink ones. They have two versions out currently (Blazing Red and Deep Blue) and there are two more on Kickstarter right now (Lush Green and Shining Yellow). I'm a relative newcomer to the Railroad Ink game, playing Deep Blue with my family during the winter and getting Blazing Red for my birthday in April. In my review I'm going to talk about both games as the base dice are the same and it's just the expansion dice in each version that are different. I'll talk about those separately.

Railroad Ink is a perfect game for solo players or for those who like to do their own thing and not affect or alter what anyone else is doing. Each player is basically building their own railroad tracks and roads without interfering with each other. I believe the current Kickstarter versions do have more player interaction, but these first two do not. In the game you roll four dice (or six, adding two of the expansion dice) and draw the roads and railways pictured (you must include all four dice on each round - the expansion dice have different rules depending on the scenario). Your goal is to connect the exit arrows on the side of the boards to each other. The more of these you connect, the more points you score! You also score points for your longest road and railroad, for building in the middle nine squares, and you lose points for any dead ends. If you're playing with an expansion, you can gain more points depending on the scenario it puts you in. Winner is the player with the most points after 7 rounds (6 with expansions).

Transportation Planner (Playthrough of Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition)

Bert Grundleson couldn't screw this up. He had begged and begged his boss for the chance to be the transportation planner for the new town of Macmontham. He was well aware of the fact that he didn't deserve this opportunity, that his boss had only relented because of his special ability to be incredibly persistent and obnoxious. But that didn't matter! He was given the job and if he made it work, this could be his (train) ticket to the top!

After weeks of planning, it was time for the project to get underway. Engineers, architects, construction workers, everyone was hired and on-site.

BOOM!!!

What was that? 

A meteor just exploded into the ground, less than a hundred metres from some tracks and roads.

The Dead Winner (Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated)

Hands down, our ninth game of Clank! Legacy was our collective worst. In a total reversal of the last bunch of games, Brennan perished in the depths of the underworld, not even able to collect an artifact before he was gobbled up. Even though he's won the most games, he's now the only player to die with zero points (and he's done it twice). Stirling was the only one of us that made it out in one piece, but due to the reckless pace he had to set to get there, he ended up with only around 60 points. That means that I, even though I was killed, won the game! I managed to crawl above the deep line before I was taken by the dragon and so I still scored my 77 points. Hurray for me! I move past Stirling into second place with two wins. He has one and Brennan is kicking our butts with six wins. 

So what happened? Why did game nine see our lowest scores yet when we had our highest in just the last game? Well, let me tell you!

Why did I let these clowns into my garage?

Piggy Power! (Harvest Dice)

We've chosen our close friends and neighbours, Clarke and Tara, to cohort with (I may be using that word wrong, but I hear it on the news all the time). Basically, they're the only family that we're really spending time with, going into their house, and playing together. Canada is slowly opening things up again, but we're still trying to be careful and safe.

On Victoria day we got together for a little appetizer potluck. Nothing like pizza bagels, chicken wings, and spinach dip to bring people together! I, of course, brought at least one game along in case the four kids were playing well enough that we could get a game going. This time I brought along Harvest Dice, which is a super simple, super cute roll 'n' write game. 

We Made a Game! (Dungeon Bounty)

It's been hard to hold off on posting this one until it was absolutely ready, but the coolest thing about the last few weeks has been that Aaron (my co-designer) and I made a game! We, like many people out there, have been spending a lot of time at home lately. We've both been missing game night and while I've been working hard to make Clank! Legacy still work with my game group, I was aching for an easier way to do it.

So, Dungeon Bounty was born! Using a standard deck of cards and our PDF, you can delve through the dungeons alone or with one other player. In the co-op or versus mode, each player needs their own deck of cards and you can play it in person, sitting side by side or six feet apart, or via your favourite video conferencing program.

Natal Day News

We all know that birthdays are different this year, so I don't want to try and focus on that. I currently have more board games than I have time to play as it is, but I do like trying new things or adding to my collection, so I did end up with some new games for my birthday or purchased/printed right around the same time. Here's what I've been picking up and playing.

My only real board game gift was Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition. Logan and Jenn (brother-in-law and his wife, regularly gaming chums) have the Deep Blue Edition and I've played that with them a few times and really enjoyed it! It's my favourite kind of competitive game - one where you can't hurt or hinder anyone else. Those type of games are not for me. This game is basically a solo game that you can play alongside others and compare scores. Basically, you roll dice that show a variety of railroad tracks and/or roads. Using a dry erase marker, you add these paths to your board, trying to connect as many as possible and score as many points as possible. This is a very easy to pick up game, but there is a lot of choice and strategy in how you lay out your paths. It's amazing how two people can have the same dice and come up with such different arrangements! Really like this one, excited to try the mini-expansions that come in the box.