With its roots firmly in the MOBA and Tower Defence genres of video games, Cloudspire aims to replicate the feel of a game like League of Legends, but in a tabletop form. As much as I love video games, I love disconnecting from the screen after a long day at work, which is why this site exists in the first place. Chip Theory Games once again give us an Oscars goodie bag of a game, stuffing a huge box with beautiful neoprene mats, heavy poker chips, and some fantastic storage and setup pieces.

Putting a hex on you

Cloudspire is a game that’s intended to be a long-term part of your collection. A game that you’ll play dozens of times, not once or twice a year before you sell it on. The reason I bring this up so early in the review is because a) it’s expensive, and b) your first game is going to feel a little clunky. Getting used to the game’s phases, options, and the crazy number of Talents available to you (70+) is like learning to ride a bike. Awkward at first, but so smooth and easy once you’ve got it. For a game that’s rated at 4.3/5 on the BGG complexity scale, that’s high praise. Don’t be put off by the weight, thinking it means it’ll be too complicated to be fun.

The game is played on a map made of neoprene tiles. Chip Theory Games clearly have a love of neoprene, and I can understand why. Setting up the map for a game is one of the more satisfying things you can do with something this floppy. The hexes on the tiles represent landscape types, which affect different units’ movement. Movement follows an order of precedence, which means if you can move across water or mountains, you can move through forests and plains too. Using a tiered system of movement restrictions in this way removes one set of rules overhead, as you can quickly learn the precedence, and never have to refer to the rules to figure out where units can move.

The tiles themselves look a little desaturated. You can imagine that if they were made of cardboard instead, they’d be brighter, but in the same breath they’d show wear much sooner. Does that matter? Yes, absolutely. Cloudspire is a game that will have you moving heavy poker chips all over the map repeatedly, over the course of 25, 50, or 100+ plays. Despite being slightly drab, you can read everything you need from the landscape at a glance, which is what matters in a game like this.

Stacking the odds in your favour

If you’ve played Too Many Bones, you’ll be immediately familiar with the stacking mechanisms in Cloudspire. Once again, red chips are used to represent units’ health, but stacking is also used in a couple of other clever ways. When your units leave your fortress at the start of each of the four waves, you can stack hired minions together. The slowest goes on top, restricting the group’s range of movement, but those beneath it can use them as a meat shield. Once the top unit dies, the one beneath it grabs its full stack of health chips and carries on where its freshly-departed comrade fell.

The other use for stacks comes with Spires. Ah yes, spires. I haven’t talked about them yet, have I? The titular spires in Cloudspire are best compared to the towers in tower defence games. They’re built in-place and attack anything stupid enough to get too close, a bit like a lighthouse with a frickin’ laser beam. Whether they’re built on your fortress walls or out in the world, spires can be upgraded by stacking chips under them, improving their strength and range. As they take damage, spires shed upgrades from the bottom of their stacks, so even choosing which order to buy your upgrades is something you can strategise.

I’ve used quite a lot of words explaining how Cloudspire mechanically bridges the digital divide to end up on your table, so let’s have a look at the most important thing now – is it a good game?

New wave

I find that I’m a natural sceptic when it comes to a lot of things. Transitioning one type of entertainment to another (in this case video game to tabletop game) just strikes me as the sort of thing that could easily be a swing-and-a-miss. In Cloudspire’s case, it doesn’t miss. It’s a home run. Taking the battle arena formula and exposing the clockwork that drives the game’s locomotion, doesn’t ruin the experience. Instead, it allows you to play the game at a slower, more tactical pace. Four waves, which translates as four rounds of play, doesn’t sound like enough. It sounds like it’ll all be over before it gets going.

It isn’t. It’s the perfect length for the game.

There are some brilliant aspects which could easily have not made it to the final game, but did, and Cloudspire is that much richer for it. Take the Earthscape tiles for example. little groups of three hexes which you can buy and lay over the existing map, completely altering the paths, and therefore the flow of the game. The fortress uses dials for health and resources, but the spires and units use stacks of chips. Did they have to? No. But in doing so, there’s a fantastic sense of scale of the army headed your way when your opponents set-up their towering deployment stack for the coming wave.

Even with just the four factions in the base game, there’s an insane amount of replay value. The sheer number of talents available through upgrades and items, and the variety of ways to play are great. Imagine taking that empty plastic tray out of the bottom of your box of chocolates, and finding another layer underneath. That’s Cloudspire. Brute forcing your way straight across the map to knock on the door, is just as viable as exploring off the beaten track for new site to build spires. It’s a brilliant game.

Final thoughts

I love Cloudspire. I can see why it might not be appealing to some people at a first glance though. Euro gamers might not gel with the theme and idea of the game, while Ameri-style gamers might be dismayed at the lack of minis for such cool characters. Give it a chance though, and listen to the players. If you don’t believe me, go and have a look at other reviews too. Gameplay is king, after all, and the gameplay in Cloudspire is slicker than a buttered weasel.

The iconography throughout is clear and simple. You could argue that the numbers on the chips can be hard to read at a distance, but it’s not a deal-breaker. The reference sheets for each faction are great too. Chip Theory Games do a great job of structuring their games well, to break down what could be complex game systems, into digestible chunks. It is a deep, complex game, with tons of scope for strategy, but it isn’t a difficult game. That’s a very important distinction to make.

The straight-up 1v1 competitive game is so good that I’ve not even touched on the other modes of play. You can go have three or four players in a free-for-all battle, team up in pairs to fight, and on top of that there are books for solo and co-operative scenarios. Yes, Cloudspire is a huge box, and yes, Cloudspire is expensive (around £130 at the time of writing). Given how freely people throw sill money at Kickstarter campaigns, and taking into account the huge number of hours of entertainment you can get from this game, I can still highly recommend this game.

Too Many Bones might be the Chip Theory game which gets the most attention, but in my opinion Cloudspire is the better game.

Review copy kindly provided by Chip Theory Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Cloudspire is available from our sponsor – Kienda. Sign-up using this link to get 5% off your first order over £60.

Cloudspire (2019)

Designers: Josh J. Carlson, Adam Carlson, Josh Wielgus
Publisher: Chip Theory Games
Art: Jared Blando, Anthony LeTourneau
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 90-180 mins

The post Cloudspire Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Chip Theory Games, who make Too Many Bones, have a reputation for putting premium games with massive replayability out in the market. Was the hype justified? And maybe more importantly for my readers – is it a good game to get, even if you’re a die-hard Euro gamer? Can you still have fun without farming or running a fishery?

Knucklebones

Too Many Bones? More like Too Many Dice! Jeez, this game has a billion dice in the box. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. It has 130 by my reckoning, but it’s still a lot of cubes to throw. Dice fans, this game is practically pornographic, you’ll love it. Rolling dice, rotating dice, plugging dice into perfectly fitting holes in neoprene playmats – it’s enough to get anyone hot under the collar.

Too Many Bones is an adventure strategy game full of fantasy, steampunk and monsters. Although it’s staged as some kind of grand adventure, RPG-style, in truth the flow of the game is driven through a deck of encounter cards. Yeah, there’s flavour text, and the monsters and Gearlocs (your player characters) have great artwork and feel fleshed-out, but it doesn’t really feel like you’re going anywhere. Each turn of a card feels more like just finding out who’s next for a ride on the pain train.

As you work your way through the encounters, battling creatures and monsters, you unlock abilities in the form of new dice to add to your pool. This part of the game is incredibly satisfying and it’ll really get its hooks in you. Each of the Gearlocs has its own set of custom dice, and the player mats chart the upgrades and skill trees. Winning a fight is pretty cool, but the dopamine release that comes from picking a new dice and plugging it in to its hole, unlocking something new – hoo boy – that’s the good sh*t right there.

Box clever

Too Many Bones is a co-operative game about fighting baddies. It’s a full-on skirmish between the good guys and the bad guys, and it all takes place in a small arena. When I say small, I mean small, there’s only 16 spaces available, arranged in a 4×4 grid. That might sound a bit too compact, but it’s perfect here, because it means no running away. Your movement and placement is paramount in your quest to survive and smite yourself a few monsters. It feels like a fantasy bar fight.

You know, despite what I said about this game not feeling like a proper RPG, the combat and upgrading really feels like a Tactical RPG video game (TRPG). There’s this feeling of choosing how you’re going to upgrade your character, then getting into scraps with increasingly-dangerous monsters, and then upgrading again. Rinse and repeat until you’re ready to square off against the boss monster. In fact, the game stops you from even fighting the bosses – called Tyrants – until you’ve got enough Progress Points (think Levels, in RPGs). This all pulls together just like a video game RPG, with players battling mobs over and over until they feel ready to tackle The Big Nasty. It’s a very satisfying reward loop.

There’s some really clever game design in here to keep things feeling sharp. You can’t just keep smacking little things until you’re overpowered, as there’s a round limit. The Tyrant’s got to shuffle off this mortal coil within a pre-set number of rounds, or you lose. Each Tyrant has a different time limit, which in turn dictates the length of the game. This is great, as you can choose to play a shortish game of an hour, or really make an evening of it and play out an adventure that lasts two or three hours.

The small play area is the other thing which keeps playtime down, and forces your hand to an extent. There’s none of these ‘give them a quick poke then run away’, kiting antics. Take a couple of steps in any direction and you’re likely to feel a wall at your back. At the same time, the close confines mean you can work between yourselves to keep anyone with ranged weapons or healing abilities, behind your tougher Gearlocs.

Abstraction

What really strikes me about Too Many Bones is how it takes this action battle formula, but turns it on its head. If this was a video game, all of the focus and glitz would be poured into the fights. Elaborate graphical effects, combined with Leeroy Jenkins style action and hilarity. The abilities and tech trees you invest are only present in hotbars on the side of the screen, or upgrade screens after fights. In Too Many Bones, the player mats are where your interest lies. The rows of dice tracing your progress from grenadier newbie to lord of explosive stuff, for example, are really satisfying. There’s a big illustration of your chosen Gearloc, and you feel a huge investment in them. Combat, on the other hand, feels very abstract.

There’s no visual extravagance on offer when it comes to the fights themselves. There aren’t even any minis on hand. Absolutely everything from hit points to the biggest, fiercest Tyrant, is represented by poker chips. They’re nice, heavy chips (apart from the health ones, unless you upgrade them), and have pictures on them, but they’re still just poker chips. All of the action, if that’s what you want to call it, is moving piles of chips around a 4×4 grid. A grid that doesn’t even make an attempt to add scenery to proceedings.

It can be quite underwhelming to start playing your first game of Too Many Bones. To see all of the lore, and these amazing characters and baddies, and to have it all transmuted into rolling dice and moving poker chips around. If this sounds like it would be you, I urge you to go into the game with an open mind, and take it as it comes. If you do that, you’re going to have a brilliant time with it. Too Many Bones is very, very good.

Final thoughts

I probably could have just said “Too Many Bones is great, go buy it”, and saved you five minutes of your life. It’s hard to articulate exactly why it’s great. Is it the ridiculously high production values? No, but it’s nice to have. Is it the beautifully refined close-quarters tactical skirmishing? No, but it’s really well done. How about the clever character investment and skill trees? Again, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. What Too Many Bones does so well, however, is to take this individual pieces of silk and filigree and to sew them together like an artisanal dressmaker, with not a seam in sight. The whole is so much more than the sum of its pieces.

My worries about dice imbalances, with my Euro hat on, were completed unfounded. Yes, you can get bum rolls when they land on the bones symbols, but these get invested into the Backup Plan section of your player mat, meaning you can save them up for something really useful. Sometimes your Backup Plan will swing the fight at a crucial point, and you’ll be grateful for every last one of the polished turds.

There are loads of expansions and extra characters available for Too Many Bones, and initially it sounds like the included four Gearlocs and seven Tyrants would get old, quickly. They don’t though, the way different characters interplay, and the different tactics you need for each encounter really keep things feeling fresh and exciting. Even if you just stick to one Gearloc for your first few games, there are so many ways to tailor their skills that no two games will feel the same. There’s a ton or replayability in the base box.

I’m not going to lie to you and say “Even if you don’t like combat and direct interaction, you’re going to love this”, because you probably won’t. It is what it is. But if you enjoy strategy, and if you’re even remotely curious, you’re going to have so much fun with it. Josh and Adam Carlson have created a beautiful, rich, vivid game. A game that eschews all of the RPG cruft of something like Gloomhaven, and boils it down to a dice-flinging explosion of instant action, with a boss fight crescendo which will see your table cheer or groan collectively. Too Many Bones is brilliant. Pretty expensive, but for once, you really get what you pay for.

Review copy kindly provided by Chip Theory Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Too Many Bones (2017)

Designers: Josh J Carlson, Adam Carlson
Publisher: Chip Theory Games
Art: Josh J Carlson, Anthony LeTourneau
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 60-180 mins

The post Too Many Bones Review appeared first on Punchboard.