A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away

For those of you new to the Villainous system, here’s your primer. Villainous is an asymmetric mixture of hand management and action selection. Each player has a player piece known as a mover, and on their turn they move them from their current space on their board to a different one. Each space has four possible actions on them, in various combinations. Once there, you take those actions in any order you like. The first person to achieve their unique goal, wins.

This new Star Wars version will be immediately familiar to anybody who’s played either of the previous games. The iconography is the same, the board layouts are the same, and so is the use of Villain and Fate decks. That’s all well and good, but without innovation, re-skinned games get old, really quickly. Star Wars Villainous mixes things up with a couple of really nice additions. First up, we’ve got a new currency. As well as Galactic Credits (money) to spend, you now also accrue Ambition. With each turn you acquire more ambition, which you can use to activate certain cards. It’s a small addition, but it adds a little more meat to the game.

The biggest and best new addition is the extra blank space on the player boards and the vehicles that go on them. Yeah, that’s right, vehicles. Star Wars vehicles. EEeeEeeeeueuuughhhhhh. That’s the noise of a TIE Fighter, by the way. The first time I played a vehicle to my board and gained a whole new spot to put my mover on felt awesome. Suddenly getting this whole extra space added more to think about, like when Darth Maul lit up the other end of his lightsaber. Yeah, Phantom Menace is a Star Wars film, deal with it.

Great, kid, don’t get cocky

Star Wars Villainous’ asymmetry is simultaneously both its biggest strength and weakness. It’s really cool that whenever you take out a different character to play, the things you have to do are different to the others. General Grievous for instance, needs to collect eight lightsabers to win. How does he collect lightsabers? Killing Jedi, of course. This means he wants people to play his fate cards, as that’s where those cheeky Jedi are hiding. Ordinarily you don’t want people playing your fate cards, as each one covers half of the actions on one of your mover’s spaces. It’s a neat way to flip the game on its head, and it makes the character interesting to play.

On the flip side of this you’ve got the likes of Kylo Ren to play as. Kylo’s a bit of a goth and wants to join the Dark Side to win, which again, means killing heroes. Fighting heroes with Kylo, just like Grievous, is dependent on getting Heroes out of your fate deck and onto your board, but the only way that can happen is by another player using their fate actions. If you’ve got another character like Darth Vader in play, you might find everyone throwing their fate actions their way, just to slow their march to win. While you can mitigate this (Kylo has a Snope card he can draw, which gives a new Ambition action to move towards the Dark Side), it means constantly drawing and discarding your Villain deck, and it’s not much fun.

I guess it’s a bit of a double-edged sword (lightsaber?). Villanous’ cornerstone is the interaction between the players. It’s what makes it so much fun to play, and what leads to all the heated table talk. It’s just awkward when a character depends on that negative interaction, because they depend on being fed obstacles in order to advance their cause. It’s not a deal-breaker, for sure, but it’s definitely something to be aware of.

Final thoughts

It’s almost hard to remember a time before Villainous existed, even though it’s only five years old now. Building on the back of Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars – which I guess is technically all Disney these days – didn’t harm its chances, but it stands on its own thanks to being a good game. If the Marvel version was a slight stumble, then Star Wars Villainous is the franchise standing back up on its own two feet, striking out on an Imperial March.

It’s undeniable that three of the five included villains feel easier to play than the others (namely, Darth Vader, General Grievous, and Moff Gideon), but there don’t seem to be any inherent imbalances, and you’d be right to expect this now with Propsero Hall having so much experience in making these games. I’d be amazed if I don’t see at least one expansion for Star Wars Villainous in the next year. It’s crying out for the likes of The Emperor, Boba Fett, Darth Maul, and Jabba The Hutt.

This might be the point where you’re asking “Which version of Villainous is the best? Which should I buy?”. The answer is simple. Buy the version with the franchise you like best. If you spend your days singing “Let it gooooo”, get the Disney one. If you like nothing more than superheroes in spangly suits, get Marvel. I grew up with Star Wars – my first online nickname for Quake deathmatches was Bib Fortuna – and this Villanous is the best Villainous for me. The additions also lift the game and make it feel gamier.

Villainous isn’t a game to buy if you don’t like any meanness between players. Directly attacking the other players with their Fate decks is a core part of the game. If, however, the idea of getting your family or friends duking it out to see who’s the baddest fills you with hand-wringing joy, it’s a readily available, lightweight way to get it done, and it’s a lot of fun.

Review copy kindly provided by Ravensburger UK. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Star Wars Villainous (2022)

Designers: Prospero Hall
Publisher: Ravensburger
Art: Uncredited
Players: 2-4
Playing time: 60 mins

The post Star Wars Villainous Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Jungle is massive

The Quest for El Dorado drops you into the roles of expedition leaders. Each is trying to negotiate their way through the jungles, deserts, and lakes, searching for the golden treasure. That landscape is a collection of big, hex tiles, joined at the edges. There are several layouts shown in the rulebook, but there’s nothing to stop you from creating something which fits on your table better. Despite the hexes not being too big, by the time they’re linked, and the card market is on the table, it takes up quite a lot of space.

The best way to describe the game is a mixture of deck-building and racing. Some deck-builders can feel like a race. Dominion, for example, is basically a race to amass points before the last Province card is taken. The Quest for El Dorado, however, is a traditional race. Our intrepid explorers have to play cards that allow them to cut their way through the jungle, aiming to be the first to make it to the gold – and with it, glory. Something like that, anyway.

If we’re honest, the most satisfying bit of a deck-builder is crafting your deck. As in Moonrakers, Aeon’s End, and just about every other deck-building game ever, there’s a card market to visit. In an attempt to keep things thematic, your trips to card-Tesco in El Dorado result in you hiring more people to come on your trip. You might be hiring a Scout to lead your group, but in reality, all you need to know is that he’s a green card with a power of two. You might look at the card art and think about what each card represents, but that’s quickly replaced with a need to just glance at colour and value. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad thing necessarily, it’s just how deck-builders work.

Lean, mean, exploring machine

There are two distinct phases to most peoples’ introduction to deck-building. Phase one is when you buy all the cards, and revel in your glorious collection, like some kind of card magnate. Phase two is when you try to play with all the cards, and realise they don’t work together. It’s this natural turning point that leads inquisitive minds to think “What if I take cards out of my deck, so the cards I want come out more often…?”.

Trimming the fat. Separating the wheat from the chaff. Skimming off the cream. It doesn’t matter which analogy you choose, the result is the same. In El Dorado you’ll inevitably find some value in thinning your deck, and there’s a mechanism for doing exactly that. Visiting a base camp on the map lets you bin some of your cards permanently, but in typical Knizia fashion, it’s a calculated risk. Getting to a base camp means straying off the beaten path. In other words, your deck gets more useful, but it means you’ll often have to travel further.

Decisions, decisions.

The way Reiner has balanced The Quest for El Dorado is fantastic. I love the way you can plan your route long in advance, and then try to craft your deck along the way. If you’ve played the more-recent Cubitos, you’ll be familiar with the agony of choice you’re given, between the most direct route and the best bonuses. It’s a light game, in terms of complexity, but I’d still probably point newcomers towards Dominion first. Learning how to build a deck while planning a route can prove tricky for younger players. Any mistakes made during crafting your deck feel amplified by your lack of progress in the race.

Final thoughts

I’m a sucker for jungley, adventurey, Indiana-Jonesy themes in games. I loved Escape: The Curse of the Temple, and The Quest for El Dorado conjures up the same feelings for me. On a mechanical level it’s just about growing a stronger deck of cards to cope with more difficult movement requirements. As you’d expect from a Reiner Knizia game, the mathematics behind all of this feel very nicely balanced. As long as you follow the official map layouts or use the principles in the rulebook (or these awesome fan-made maps), you’ll be able to create some unique and varied jungles.

This is a real keeper of a game. It’s not one of those that sits on your shelves for months between plays (I’m sorry, On Mars. I still love you). You could easily play it several evenings in a week and not get tired of it, thanks to the variable setup. I keep harking back to Dominion, I know, but El Dorado offers the same simplicity in rules and mechanical overhead as its forebear. Once you know how to play it, each time it lands on the table it becomes a game of figuring out what you want to do, not how to play, and that’s what all good games should do.

If you’re all about the heavy, brain-burning games, The Quest for El Dorado probably isn’t for you. As a svelte, accessible mix of racing and deck-building though, it’s fantastic. Even though Knizia has created hundreds of games, there aren’t many that I’d consider must-haves. El Dorado, along with Tigris and Euphrates, is a game that I think everyone should have in their collection. Dominion is still on my shelf after 13 years, and I expect The Quest for El Dorado to still be there in another 13. It’s brilliant.

Review copy kindly provided by Ravensburger UK. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

The Quest for El Dorado (2017)

Designer: Reiner Knizia
Publisher: Ravensburger
Art: Vincent Dutrait, Franz Vohwinkel
Players: 2-4
Playing time: 30-60 mins

The post The Quest for El Dorado Review appeared first on Punchboard.

It doesn’t take a genius to guess that a game called Las Vegas Royale might have something to do with the gambling center of the world. As a Euro game fan, I’m used to games that have a very thin theme, but the theme on Las Vegas Royale is thinner than a Downing Street party excuse.

Topical humour. Can’t wait to see how that one ages in a few years time.

Dice, dice, baby

The concept behind Las Vegas Royale is so simple, it’s amazing it wasn’t used years before the original Las Vegas game. Each player rolls their handful of dice, picks one of the face-up values, and puts all their dice matching that number onto the casino with the same number. The casinos, in this case, are cardboard tiles around the central dice tray that comes with the game. Each casino has two, randomly chosen, money cards next to them. The person with the most dice in a casino after all the dice are placed, wins the higher value card. Second place gets the lower value card.

Reading that back, it doesn’t sound that exciting. It sounds like Heckmeck with dice. The piece of utter genius that Rüdiger Dorn injected into this game’s lifeblood is what happens with ties. Tied numbers of dice count for nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. The dice just get removed. When that happens it can mean that someone who left a single die their gets the big money, while everyone else is left licking their wounded pride.

That all sounds pretty simple, right? Fun for a round or two, then it goes back on the shelf to gather dust. Wrong. Las Vegas Royale’s simplicity isn’t a weakness, it’s its greatest strength, and it’s why I love the game so much.

Do one thing, and do it well

My wife and son aren’t the biggest board game enthusiasts in the world. The chances of me getting them to even consider playing a heavy Euro or something like that, are non-existent. Although it means I don’t get to play as many games with them as I’d like to, they make for an excellent litmus test. I setup Las Vegas Royale one night, and despite the obligatory eye rolls, we played. Well, slap my ass and call me Susan if they didn’t love it! We immediately played it twice more, and again on the following nights too.

Rüdiger seems to be able to turn his hand to any style of game, at any weight, and he’s sorely under-appreciated. Las Vegas Royale is a perfect example of this. I’ve introduced the game to other, experienced gamers who had never played it, and they’ve loved it too. The mechanisms in the game are so simple to teach, and so easy to understand and interpret. The gameplay is almost entirely emergent, and it’s so fast to come to the surface.

The lack of real theme, and the abstraction of what you’re doing in the game, make it something that literally anyone can enjoy. If you get tired of the main game, there are some neat ways to keep it fresh, too. There are a set of expansion tiles included in the box, which you can add to the lower-value casinos to expand them with new actions, and Vegas-related minigames. In my experience, some of these are better than the others, but there’s nothing to stop you having house rules about which stay in the box.

Final thoughts

Las Vegas Royale deserves a place in everybody’s game collection. If you’ve got family or friends who don’t like “Those complicated games you always try to get us to play”, this is the perfect game to get them playing something different. On the other hand, even the most hardcore of hardcore wargamers need light relief sometimes. Las Vegas Royale delivers this in spades.

I think the biggest problem the game has is with the name and styling. The original Las Vegas had one of the bright and cheery Alea boxes of the time, but this new version is sleek, black and gold, and very different to look at. There’s no immediate connection to the previous game, if you’ve played and enjoyed it and would be keen on an updated version. The other difficulty it faces is the fact that Lords of Vegas exists. Okay, it’s very hard to get hold of, but when you mention ‘dice game’ and Las Vegas in the same sentence, Lords of Vegas is the one you’ll get pointed towards.

These things notwithstanding, Las Vegas Royale is an excellent game. Simple rules, addictive gameplay, and one of those rare games that gets better the more players you have. Playing with three is fun, but playing with five is absolutely brilliant. Lightweight, quick, easy, and pretty much guaranteed to get anybody playing.

Review copy kindly provided by Ravensburger. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Las Vegas Royale (2019)

Designer: Rüdiger Dorn
Publisher: Alea / Ravensburger
Art: Antje Stephan, Claus Stephan
Players: 2-5
Playing time: 30-45 mins

The post Las Vegas Royale Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Monster, monster

Eric Hall’s famous catchphrase doesn’t really cover it when you look at the cast of Horrified. It reads like a Who’s Who of classic movie monsters, and it’s a nostalgic glance backwards into horror films that the game tries to capture. In the same way as many of Ravensburger’s themed games do, Horrified streamlines the formulas that many heavier boardgames use, to deliver a family-friendly box of tricks. Asynchronous player abilities, pick-up-and-deliver, action selection, spending action points – it’s all in there, but presented in a way that doesn’t feel as complex as the mechanisms might sound.

To put that into some kind of context, I was able to teach this game to my (then) eight-year-old son, who in turn taught it to my wife, who bounces hard off of games that come across as complicated. If you’re an experienced gamer, you might think that making games feel simpler would inherently shorten their potential lifetime, or speed up the time it takes you to tire of a game. To be honest, you’d be right to some extent with Horrified, too, but it does not go softly into that good night.

The beast must die

Co-operation is the order of the day in Horrified, and the players need to work together to take down whatever variety of abominations they’re up against. Monsters for each game can be picked at random, or by following recommendations from the rulebook. Each have their own specific way of moving, their own actions to try to take you down, and their own ways to be defeated. What this all adds up to is a game where people need to talk, and decide who’s best suited to do which thing.

It all leads to some interesting conversations you’ll never have had before. “Okay, you distract Bride of Frankenstein over there, I’m going to take this villager up here, then she can try to move the boat closer to the Creature from the Black Lagoon”. The actions you take are really easy, and the player aids help as visual reminders, but you shouldn’t need them once you get up-and-running. If you’re a fan of co-op games, this one falls somewhere between Forbidden Island and Pandemic in terms of complexity.

Horrified does a really good job of capturing the ‘us against them’ feeling you’d expect. You can tailor it to make it as easy or as difficult as you want, based on the number and choice of monsters you want to face. Each monster has a really different way it needs to be dealt with, and each player character is slightly different to the others, in the same way you’d expect from one of the Forbidden series. It means you can keep things fresh, and cater to all abilities.

Fake blood

In a game like Horrified, you’d hope for plenty of theme. You won’t be disappointed. The monster minis look great, especially if you have the skills (or know someone) to paint them up. The board is bright and colourful, a feat made all the more impressive when you consider it’s set at night. The designers have done a really good job of making it feel like each monster has its own personality. The Creature is evasive and slips along the river, Dracula uses his Transylvanian charm to lure a player to him. It’s nice, because it means each game feels interesting and different.

One of my favourite moments in the many games I played with my wife and son, was the point where I realised I no longer had to help him understand what the best moves would be for us to make. No, I wasn’t Quarterbacking, I was gently leading, there’s a difference, promise. I could see the cogs whirring in his head, and the strategising emerging. He started telling us what to do, taking a lead on the monster smashing, and it was a lovely moment.

Final thoughts

Horrified is a really decent co-op game. The theme is fun, the monster minis are great, and it’s relatively easy to teach and play. The design house behind it – Prospero Hall – continue to put out really clever and engaging games. It’s gotten to the point now where I can play a Prosper Hall game, and it feels like a Prospero Hall game. That’s a compliment, not a negative, as they have a knack of taking the mechanisms from much heavier games, and tailoring them for a different audience. A wider audience.

There’s a ton of replayability, and I think families especially will get a lot of enjoyment from it. When the game arrived and I set it up for the first time, we sat down and played it. My son wanted to set it up immediately after for another game with different monsters. After that game was over, we had another. I think we played it something like five times over one weekend, which is unheard of for us.

I usually like to highlight any problems or shortcomings in my reviews, but there’s really not much to pick Horrified up on. It’s a great game, and like other recent games in Ravensburger’s range (e.g. Back to the Future: Dice Through Time, Villainous, Jaws), it’s a really good stepping stone between the really light games most families have, and the heavier, hobby games, that people like me enjoy. Would I always pick it off the shelf if asked to choose a game? Probably not, I like things a little more dense, but in the same breath, I’ll never turn down a game of Horrified. It’s monster magic.

Review copy kindly provided by Ravensburger UK. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Horrified (2019)

Designers: Prospero Hall
Publisher: Ravensburger
Art: Prospero Hall
Players: 1-5
Playing time: 60 mins

The post Horrified Review appeared first on Punchboard.

A couple of years ago the publisher, Alea, and Stefan got their heads together and decided to revamp the game. They gave it a fresh lick of paint, bundled in the seven mini-expansions that got released after the original’s release, threw in another one, and that’s what I’m looking at here, the Anniversary Edition.

Why am I covering it now?

Expectations these days are high. When people tear the shrink off of a new game, they’re expecting high-quality components, deep, interwoven mechanics, custom meeples, legacy envelopes, and all that jazz. So if you’re new to the hobby and you open Castles and see a few dice, a small board, thin player mats, and vast supply of tiny cardboard hexes, you could be forgiven for feeling underwhelmed. If a game is good though, it doesn’t matter, right? That begs the question: is The Castles of Burgundy still good?

Have the games that have come since improved and refined the core mechanics and made something similar, but better? Should I still buy this game in 2021?

Yes. Yes you should

The Castles of Burgundy is a classic for a reason. And yes, it is a classic, it must be, it says so in the rule book.

Admittedly, it does look dated on the table now, even with the colourful redesign, but the game is still so good, and so much fun to play. I’ve taught this to non-gamers and fans of heavy games alike, and everyone has picked it up quickly, been able to employ some kind of strategy, and had a good time filling their little board with tiles.

I’ve heard some people saying that they don’t like the redesign, they don’t like the abundance of colour. I think it’s mostly purists who like the muted colours of the older Stefan Feld games like the original, or Notre Dame, so don’t let that put you off.

What makes it so special?

At its core, Castles of Burgundy is very simple. You roll a couple of dice, then either pick up a hex tile from the area matching one of the numbers rolled, or lay a previously claimed one onto your board, into a space with a matching number. The bigger the area you manage to fill, the more points you score. For the first half of the game you’ll find yourself concentrating on your own little kingdom, planning out what you’re going to build, and where.

As the game gets going though, and score markers start advancing around the board, you start to get aware of what the other players are doing on their boards. In part, because they’re taking tiles you had your heart set on, but also because you can start to play more tactically. Maybe taking that pasture full of cows denies them that amazing giant pasture that would have scored them 20 points, or maybe claiming a boat you can’t possibly use, just to make sure you stay ahead in turn order. Choices, choices.

In my opinion, nothing has nailed the medium-weight tile placement Euro game better than Castles of Burgundy, even now. The combination of simple turns (rolling two dice and taking two actions), and the strategic gameplay that emerges more with every play, make it a fantastic gateway game. I can teach this to new players and watch them enjoy building their board, while I work at more involved strategies, and the scores still don’t look like there’s a runaway winner. It works at all levels of experience.

The Negatives

My only criticisms really are the same as in the original version. The iconography on some of the tiles is a) tiny, and b) hard to decipher. Sure, once you’ve played it a few times, there’s no problem, and they’ve made a huge improvement by adding player aids which explain them better. For those first few games though, keep the rule book to one side to refer to it.

The other thing is organising the tiles. If you don’t add some opaque bags to draw tiles from, you need to create face-down stacks of each colour before the game starts. Not the end of the world, but a small annoyance.

There’s a lot of game in the box. The expansions really are mini-expansions that only change small things in the core game, but they do add new hexes and mechanics. There are also so many double-sided player boards in the box that it’s impossible to create a strategy that would cover all of them. I’ve owned the original since it was released, and I still play it, and I still enjoy every game, regardless of it being two, three or four players.

Speaking of player count…

Before I finish, it’s worth mentioning that there are two (count ’em) new ways to play The Castles of Burgundy now. First up, there’s a Team mode, where two player boards are joined together to make a huge Duchy to fill up. I’ve not had a chance to play that way yet, thanks to our friend Covid, but I can see how it’ll be good fun.

Secondly, and probably more importantly in our lockdown lives at the moment, there’s a solo mode. It’s not an automa-style game versus an AI player. Instead it’s a puzzle, trying to fill the specially-designed boards within the 25 turns you get in the game. It’s a really fun, engaging puzzle, far more entertaining and worth playing that some of the beat-your-own-score variants I’ve played. It’s tough though, I still haven’t completed it.

Final Thoughts

The Castles of Burgundy really is a classic, and it’s excellent. Stefan Feld’s designs are usually brilliant, and this is no exception. It’s one of his lightest games, in terms of complexity, but I think it’s his most fun. I still love it, ten years on, so much so that I’m going to keep this and the original in my collection. This isn’t the view of someone with rose-tinted spectacles who misses the simpler, pre-Kickstarter days of board games. This is the view of someone who enjoys good games, and knows one when he plays one. In my opinion, nobody has taken the core mechanics of this game, and bettered it.

There are a lot of lesser games you could be spending your £40 on, so if you’re after a bona fide classic that’ll keep hitting your table, I highly recommend The Castles of Burgundy.

Designer: Stefan Feld
Publisher: Alea, Ravensburger Games
Art: Antje Stephan, Claus Stephan
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 60-90 minutes

Review copy provided by Ravensburger Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

The post The Castles Of Burgundy Review appeared first on Punchboard.