Que?

El Grande is an area control game. The board is a map of Spain which is split into nine regions. During each of the game’s three scoring phases, the player with the majority of pieces in each area scores points based on the scoring marker in the area. Nice and easy so far. Each player has a Court area in front of them with their available Caballeros (cubes in the original, meeples in the new print), and a shared Province area holds all the reserve Caballeros for all players.

On your turn, you play a power card. The cards are numbered 1-13, most of which have a number of meeples printed on them. The lower the card value, the more meeples. In each round there are five action cards on offer, four of which change every round, while the remaining card which lets you move the king is available in every round. The meeples on your power card determine how many you add to your court from the province, and the meeples printed on the action card you pick tell you how many you can play onto the map on your turn. What makes it so interesting is that no one can play the same value as a previously played card in that round, and that each card can only ever be played once.

90% of what makes El Grande so much fun is summed up in that paragraph above. You see, if you play a higher value power card, you get to pick first from the action cards for that round, at the expense of not adding many meeples to your court to actually play to the board. You can play low value cards to get lots of meeples, but you’re likely to be left with whatever action hasn’t already been claimed. The action cards have the ability to really mess things up, so having first choice is great, but at the same time you want to have the meeples to put down, so what do you do? High value card, low value, or somewhere in the middle and hope for the best?

You only have to make that decision nine times in the entire game, but it’s agonising every time, and it’s incredibly enjoyable. A big piece representing the king stands in one of the regions and it has a big influence. You can only place meeples in areas adjacent to the king, and you can’t affect the king’s area at all, so having him stood in a region you’re going to score big in is a huge benefit. This is especially true when you realise that the action cards let you do things like remove other players’ pieces from the board, move any meeples wherever you like, add scoring tiles to regions which either boost or degrade their scoring, or even score regions between scoring rounds.

Castillo

It’s impossible to ignore the cardboard castle – or castillo – standing in one corner of the board. It’s the cherry on top of this delicious cake of a game in my opinion. Whenever you place or move pieces, instead of adding them to the board you can toss them into the castillo, out of sight, but never out of mind. At the start of each scoring round the castillo’s doors open, the meeples within come tumbling out, and it’s scored like a little region of its own. But wait! All players now move those newly freed caballeros to regions of their choice, affecting the majorities just before they get scored.

The genius little twist added here sees players analyse and compute consequences at light speed, resulting in groans and cheers. Before you open the castillo, each player chooses one of the game’s regions in secret on a little dial. Do you dare choose that one region nobody is in, hoping nobody else does the same? Or do you add them to the highest-scoring region to try and pip the others to the post? What if they do the same?? Can you remember how many they put in it? Can you remember how many you put in it?

As the game progresses control swings like a pendulum. The player in the lead at any given time has a huge target on their back, and in my experience, the table turns into a gathering of Grima Wormtongues from Lord of the Rings. Everyone trying to influence the other players to hobble another player, but never for their own benefit of course. No, they’d never do that. They just want to help you, friend.

Ebb and flow, thinking on your feet

The biggest difference between El Grande and many area-control games is the level of strategy involved. Long-term planning in El Grande is difficult. It’s a game of tactics and pivoting in an instant. The action cards push the game along in an unpredictable manner, like pushing a shopping trolley over cobbles. You have an idea of where you want to get to, but there is so much that’s going to happen to you before you get there. Holding on to that 7-point Toledo is great until someone puts the 4-point scoring tile on it. Having a majority of one meeple in a region goes up in smoke because someone gets to the card which lets them move two of yours to another region.

Similarly, there are plenty of options to sneak points and creep around the scoring track. Players often concentrate on the 6- and 7-point regions, but cards come out of the deck which score the 5-point regions instantly. You’ll see chances to add a single meeple to multiple regions in one turn and claim uncontested second places there, mopping up another ten or more points that others didn’t notice. You really need your head a swivel and have to be able to react to what’s going on very quickly.

Some people won’t enjoy that at all. Strategists who are in it to play the long game can quickly find they aren’t having a good time. The wild swinging and the fact that other players can just force you to ditch loads of your meeples from the board or your court is like a poke in the eye to some folk. In my personal experience this is a small minority of players, but it’s something to bear in mind if you know your group well. I’m editing this existing review draft off the back of a weekend convention where I taught the game to eight new players, and only one of them didn’t have a great time. That’s pretty good going as far as I’m concerned.

Final thoughts

I’ve loved El Grande from the first time I played it. It’s a classic for a reason, and this reprint just makes it better in my opinion. The board art is prettier, and while some people might mourn the loss of the old score tile design with its pips, the numbers are more readable. Meeples instead of cubes is good, the Grande piece now looks like someone on horseback instead of a bigger cube, and the king is golden and has a crown. It’s a really nice edition with the kind of care and attention to detail it deserves.

The game itself is essentially the same as it’s always been. Choosing a card and playing it, before putting some little wooden dudes on a board isn’t too taxing, but the decision space in such a simple turn is huge. Aside from what I mentioned above and trying to decide between adding more meeples to your court and turn order, there’s the first player marker. The player who plays the lowest value card each round gets the first player marker for the next, which can be huge. Even when you don’t want to move the king, moving it just to stick it in the corner of the map and limit where the other players can place pieces. There are just so many little needles to stick into the other players.

The level of balance is great. Even in your first play of the game, you’ll get a sense of belief that you can compete with people who’ve played before. It’s a belief that’s justified. You really can compete. El Grande is a game about playing the other players around the table, not wrestling with rules and unknown edge cases. What you see is what you get, and if you can read the other person’s thoughts, you can get one over on them. El Grande is amazing. It’s still amazing, even after all this time. No other game has managed to topple it when it comes to doing what it does. It’s best played with four or five players, but if you regularly have that many people around a table, it’s a must. A masterpiece of a game which deserves a place in your collection.

You can buy El Grande from my retail partner, Kienda, right here. Remember to sign up at kienda.co.uk/punchboard for 5% off your first order of £60 or more.

El Grande (1995)

Design: Wolfgang Kamer, Richard Ulrich
Publisher: Hans Im Gluck
Art: Doris Matthäus, Stefan Sonnberger, Franz-Georg Stämmele
Players: 2-5
Playing time: 60-120 mins

The post El Grande Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Rock, paper, charging horse

Take the Throne has a couple of core concepts that the game is built on.

Firstly, each House (player) in the game has an identical hand of five cards. If you’ve read my reviews in the past, you’ll know that I don’t like to deep-dive too much into exactly how a game is played, but you’ll just have to indulge me here, because this bit is important, and underpins the whole game. As a house player, three of the five cards in your hand work in a rock, paper, scissors style.

Anyone playing an Attack card is in contention for the throne, and the current throne holder chooses which will take it from them. Unless, that is, someone plays their Infiltrate card, which takes precedence over an Attack card. The other option is to play a Charge card, which beats Attack and Infiltrate, but only if there’s only a single Charge card played. If more than one player charges, they cancel each other out. The other cards – Feint and Sabotage – just allow you to swap your played card for another at the cost of 1 VP, and force someone else to change their played card, respectively.

A quiet ten minutes on the throne

The second concept is the idea that one player always has the throne. Being in control of the throne is how you’ll net the 8 VPs you need to win the game. When you hold the throne, you get a unique hand of cards to play with: the Crown deck. The Crown cards are completely different to those in the House decks and offer ways to either carve out more VPs or mess about with the other players’ cards.

The Defend card, for instance, means that all Attack cards played get discarded. Pretty cool on its own, but when you realise that Infiltrate cards depend on Attack cards being in play, it’s a double whammy. you’ll only lose the throne now if one player plays a Charge. Alternatively, you might choose to Abdicate and gain another VP, which sounds crazy, but if the House players cancel one another out and nobody claims the throne, you keep it.

The way the asymmetry works is such a nice twist on a game like Love Letter, for example, which is a game I love. Having asymmetry for only one player is something that’s not done that often. The Beast is a game which is a good example of this. To have one player trying to stay afloat while the others clamber over one another, desperate to pop their water wings, is something which gives this game a different feel to others you might already own.

Final thoughts

I had a sneaky feeling I’d like Take the Throne before I’d even played it. The description ticked so many boxes for me. I was right, too. I do like Take the Throne. It’s a great game that will almost certainly be stuffed into my bag for conventions and to start or end game nights with my group. It only takes one game to learn what each of the cards does, and how they interact with one another.

My only real problem is with player count. Take the Throne plays from three to five players, but I don’t enjoy it as much with three. Having only two House players means that the fun of some of the card play is lost. The Attack card is always beaten by Infiltrate and Charge, and Infiltrate is dependent on Attack being played, so why play Attack? I mean, there’s a bit more meta to it than that, but that’s the sort of thing that people say in their first few three-player games. I much prefer the game with four or five players, where it really shines. Multiple Charge cards that cancel one another are more likely, and watching the Throne player agonise over which Attack player gets the crown is great fun.

Take the Throne is one of those games like Coup, Love Letter, The Resistance, Citadels, etc. A small box, a small deck of cards, with the game itself played above the table, driven by the interactions between the players. These games live and die on their “Oh I can’t believe you did that!” moments, and Take the Throne delivers them by the bucketload. You’ll find your own meta develops in your group, and it changes depending on who you play with, and I love that. A cracking little game from another independent UK designer and publisher, and one I’m very happy to recommend.

Take the Throne launches on Gamefound right here in the summer and at a likely price of less than 20 quid, it’s a no-brainer if you ask me.

Take The Throne (2024)

Design: Jon Lanon
Publisher: Deathtrap Games
Art: Joszef Kovacs
Players: 3-5
Playing time: 5-15 mins

The post Take The Throne Preview appeared first on Punchboard.

Share and share alike

In the game of Skymines players take on the roles of investors. Four competing businesses have the rights to mine resources from the moon (or asteroids on the reverse side of the board), and by investing in shares in these companies you can help dictate where they expand their reach and how well they do. You do this by playing cards from your deck which dictate which actions you can take each round, and there’s a really cool dichotomy that it throws up.

There are three different types of resources available, and when you play those cards to your available slots for the round you can use them to buy cards from the market. Those cards get more and more powerful as the game goes on, so it makes sense that you’d want to be the first in the queue at the card shop, because the cheapest stuff goes quickly. That’s a good way to play, and you’ll get to cherry-pick the best cards, but then your resource cards are spent.

In addition to the card actions, there are places on the game board where you can place workers. That’s right, we’ve got some good ol’ worker-placement going on. Some of those places on the board where you can plonk your workers reward you for being the person with the most of a particular colour of resource on your board, unspent. So you might have gotten to the card market after all the bargains had been snagged by those camping out overnight on the pavement, but now there are things available to you that nobody else can claim. The ebb and flow of playing or waiting on cards underpins so much of the game and adds a nice balance. You’re not totally screwed just because you’re the last in turn order, and waiting is often the better option.

All of the card play is really just a means to an end when all is said and done. What really matters is which corporation controls the areas on the main board, and how many shares each player owns in those corporations. It’s a power struggle which both informs and is informed by, the actions of the players.

Land grab

If your experience of share-dealing games revolves around trains (e.g. 18xx, Cube Rails), the concept of being part-owner in multiple companies is nothing new. In many of those games, most of the companies are born equal. That is to say, there’s not necessarily any intrinsic benefit of buying stock in one company instead of another. Skymines spices things up a bit by throwing interchangeable share tracks into the mix. There are some suggested layouts included in the rulebook, but you could have any of the tracks next to any of the companies, and each track grants different bonuses as you march your share marker along it.

The further along each track you inch, the more bonuses you unlock. Bonuses include reducing the cost of certain things, granting permanent additions for actions that spend resources, or even adding new worker spaces to visit for actions that might not have existed before. I really like the way the shares work in this game, and I love the fact that they’re not a neutral part of the gameplay. If there’s a track with a power that you particularly want to use, your choice to invest in the company it’s attached to will directly alter the way the game pans out, and how control of the map swings.

Map control is dictated by spending resources to add outposts from your chosen company’s pool out onto the board. They chain outward, always going adjacent to one another, and the number of lines between where you are and where you want to tell you how many points of energy it’ll cost you. Spaces on the map grant bonuses when they’re claimed, and you get some great opportunities to make short-term plans. Get the bonus for doing this thing here, use that bonus over in this other place. Things like that.

The other thing I really want to highlight is the clever card retrieval mechanism. Above your player board are slots where stacks of used cards end up. When you end a round you take one of those stacks into your hand, and all of the cards you’ve just played have to be split among the remaining stacks. It adds a really cool planning aspect to the game. For example, you might choose to deposit all of your energy cards into one pile over the course of a few rounds, then once you pick that stack up you’re ready for a round of covering the board in little yellow buildings (energy is used to expand each company’s outposts and area control). It lets you choose your strategy and gives equal credibility to playing for a little bit of everything or going full min-max.

Final thoughts

Skymines is a blast. I’ve taught it to my regular group and they all had a great time with it. It’s a strange game in as much as there’s quite a lot going on, but it never feels like it’s too much. Contending with the cards you’ve got in hand and building the stacks from your discarded cards would be enough to think about on its own, but it all just works. The crawl of each company’s outposts as they spread out like mould across the moon (it’s made of cheese, right?) gives you this instantly discernible overview of the state of play. This is helped no end by the genius of not making everything in space, black. Even on the side of the board where you hop from asteroid to asteroid using a new shuttles mechanism, space is white. It creates a much nicer table presence, showing off the non-primary colours nicely.

It’s a heavier game than I’d recommend for newbies to modern games, and I think the decision space would probably just leave them with a sour taste in their mouths. A good way to get the hang of the way things work is to take on the AI opponent, named Luna. It’s an easy-to-run automa opponent which you can add into 2- and 3-player games to add some more competition, which is definitely a good idea. You can play Skymines with two players, but it’s at its best with four. I’ve played two-player games where one of the companies didn’t place outposts, and nobody bought shares in it, and it just made competing for space on the moon less competitive, and less fun. The Luna rulebook that’s included is quite creepy too! It’s written as if the AI opponent is talking to you in the first person, explaining how it all works.

There are parts of the game I haven’t even touched on, such as the helium and research tracks, both of which also lean heavily on your decision-making. They, like so much else in the game, are just individual strands which, once weaved together, create a brilliant, coherent tapestry of a game. Gah, Skymines is just so much fun. I’m trying to write the end of this review, and I keep daydreaming back to recent games of it, and thinking how much I want to play it again, right now. Skymines slipped past a lot of peoples’ radar when it was released towards the end of last year, which is a travesty. Alexander Pfister creates some incredible games (such as my first-ever review here, Maracaibo), and along with fellow designer Viktor Kobilke, they’ve created one of the best games I’ve played. If you like something that’s really going to massage your brain, and you have a regular group of three or four people, do yourself a favour and get Skymines.

You can buy this game from my retail partner, Kienda. Remember to sign-up for your account at kienda.co.uk/punchboard for a 5% discount on your first order of £60 or more.

Skymines (2022)

Design: Alexander Pfister, Viktor Kobilke
Publisher: Pegasus Spiele
Art: Javier Inkgolem
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 90-150 mins

The post Skymines Review appeared first on Punchboard.

We are phorever people

Ynaros Fallin’ gameplay is concentrated around three main concepts. Controlling land tiles, moving around those tiles, and combat once you’re in range of a rival shaman who needs a good ol’ duffing-up. Most of this is determined by the shadow cards you hold in your hand, which act as a sort of two-colour currency. The yellow player wants to put down yellow tiles to move their yellow shaman and followers around on, and vice-versa for the blue player. Note that the coloured tiles are only used in the Standard rules game. It makes for a really clever way of controlling the landscape and flow of the game. You can move through an opponent’s colour tile, but it’s going to cost you more movement points. Is it really worth it? Is there a better option? You’ll catch yourself asking yourself questions like this constantly.

It’s probably a good point to touch on the different game modes now. The rulebook walks you through the setup and rules of play for what it refers to as the Novice game, where some of the mechanisms are different. You don’t need to place the tiles to walk on, for instance, which is one less thing to worry about. It’s a really cool thing to do because, despite the simplistic look of the pieces and actions, there’s actually quite a lot going on, on a tactical level. Getting used to moving, attacking, and gathering land tiles for your player boards is heavy going if you’re not used to the style of the game. Introducing new players to a game with a simplified version, before going for the full-fat version is a great way to lower the barrier to entry, or to simply enjoy it with people who don’t enjoy deeper games.

Combat follows a similar formula to movement, with players playing cards from their hands with varying power levels, depending on which colours they play. In fact, you even get bonuses to your attack when you put a card horizontally across the top of two vertically played cards, which results in this Stone Henge effect. It feels pretty apt in a game with Shamans flouncing about the place, collecting and using crystals.

Boss drum, in control again

Dodgeball was never really a thing for me when I was at school, but I knew about it from TV and films. The start of a game of Ynaros Fallin’ is like the start of a game of dodgeball, with the really juicy goodies near the centre line, and an implied sense of urgency to get out there and claim them ASAP. In fact, the layout of the board as a whole is really clever. The single hex that each Shaman steps out onto (the Hearth) fans out to cover the width of the land at the middle and then funnels back down towards the opposite hearth.

In most of the player-vs-player games I’ve played, there’s usually some kind of safe zone for each player to bring their units out onto the board. Not so in Ynaros Fallin’. Every hex is fair game when it comes to where you want to move. As a matter of fact, getting your dude to the opponent’s hearth lets you get a new follower into the game, for you to move about and do stuff with, or upgrade a follower into another Shaman! It’s quite an unusual feeling to push your own character so close to your opponent’s base, especially with it bottlenecking the way it does, and a lot of that comes from the concept of Control in the game.

Control’s a really interesting idea. If you can trace a straight line to the other player’s character, you can spend the magic crystals you collect to do various things, like activating some of the player powers they’ve collected for their side. I really like the Control mechanism, because it adds another layer to the board. Not a physical layer, but another layer of observation you’ve got to be aware of. It’s not enough to know where you are, and where you can move to, you have to be aware of the line of sight from you to your enemy.

Onward, ever ever on, Destination Eschaton

I’ve had the prototype of Ynaros Fallin’ with me for long enough to see two full rulebook revisions, which has been great. The people behind the game are still actively working on it, taking feedback and acting on it. It means the game I first played isn’t the same game I’m playing now, and probably not the same game you’ll play when it lands on your doorstep. The changes have all been for the better, creating a streamlined, easy-to-learn game, which is a lot of fun to play.

I’ve barely even touched on the Magic Land tiles you collect from the board, which attach to your player board and give you different one-time or ongoing bonuses. It’s another layer which doesn’t overcomplicate things but subtly alters your choices and strategy. Similarly, I haven’t talked about the clever way the dice work. Having a 6 on the top face of your die means you have six movement points, for instance, but when you’ve moved you just rotate that die down by one, so it becomes a 5. Charging that die value up costs cards and one of your two actions, but reaps long-term benefits. The card-driven play with two actions per turn reminds me of games like Brass: Birmingham, even though the they’re nothing alike.

The components, even in the prototype I’ve been playing with, are gorgeous. I’m used to double-layered player boards as an extravagance, but a dual-layer main board? Not since Polis have I had that pleasure, and I’ve gotta tell you, it feels really nice to play with. It’s small details like this that new games from new publishers need in order to stand out from the crowd in these days of crowdfunding campaigns. I will say that while Ynaros Fallin’ can be played by three or four players, with two players is where it’s best.

If you’re a fan of straight-up duelling games, keep an eye out for Ynaros Fallin’. The people behind it have put together a really clever, easy-to-learn, and highly engaging game which I’ve really enjoyed.

Prototype copy provided by Peekwik Dreams. Thoughts and opinions are my own. All components, artwork, and rules subject to change before fulfilment. Sorry about all the Shamen lyrics too, it got stuck in my head.

Ynaros Fallin’ (2023)

Designers: Luca Sanfilippo, Ugo Tomasello
Publisher: Peekwik Dreams
Art: Swan Keller, Ugo Tomasello
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 45-60 mins

The post Ynaros Fallin’ Preview appeared first on Punchboard.

“Is Brass: Birmingham as good as people say it is?” The answer is yes. A resounding, soot-covered, sing-it-from-the-pits, yes.

Bold as brass

Brass: Birmingham isn’t the first game in the series, as the ‘Birmingham’ suffix implies. In fact, it’s not even the second. It’s the sort-of third. Martin Wallace designed the original game – Brass – which was critically acclaimed, but if we’re being honest, not much of a looker. Around 2016 Roxley Games teamed up with Martin to refresh the game with a new lick of paint and a brand new version. Brass became Brass: Lancashire, and Brass: Birmingham emerged at the same time. The Kickstarter went bonkers, and the original £48,000 target was left in the dust as they raised a cool million quid.

Lancashire is the same game as the original, albeit with some rough edges smoothed off, while Birmingham took the original formula and tweaked it with some new mechanisms and a randomised board setup, which helped it stand on its own two feet. The biggest change came in the art and graphic design, which got a complete overhaul and produced one of the most gorgeous boards in all of boardgaming.

The hallmark of Martin Wallace’s designs is the level of interaction between players. Whether it’s direct mano-a-mano conflict like in A Few Acres of Snow, the hidden role area control of Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, or the auctions of Tinners’ Trail. The same interaction is woven into Brass’ tweed, but with a clever twist. There’s this wonderful feeling of simultaneous competition and co-dependence, as each player tries to carve out their own spot in the Black Country, while relying on the other players to extend the reach of their network for the all-important trading. It’s this networking which leads to the trickier concepts to wrap your head around in Brass: Birmingham.

Brassed-off

Brass: Birmingham only has two main resources to worry about: coal and iron. Despite only having these two, explaining how they work can be heavy going. Both are necessary to build the buildings you want on the board, but consuming them is tricky. Iron can be taken from anywhere on the board, as long as it comes from an Ironworks, before turning to the communal market. Simple. Coal, however, needs a transport connection to a coal source, whether that’s coal on someone’s coal pit tile on the board, or the market.

Brass: Birmingham places huge importance on connections and networks, which are related, but distinct. Your networks are linked tiles of your colour, while connections are any number of networks that intersect, regardless of whose they are. For some reason it feels as if the concept is harder to teach than it ought to be, and I’m not sure why, I just know that in every teach I’ve done so far, that’s the part I’ve had to repeat or clarify the most. Don’t be surprised if, in your first couple of games, people try to build something using coal, only to find that they can’t trace a connection back to the coal market.

I’ve placed emphasis on these foibles because it’s important to understand that when you get past that initial learning hurdle, Brass: Birmingham reveals itself like a drunk Premier League footballer. At its heart, it’s just a case of play a card, then choose whether to build something (cards have either locations or building types), make a transport connection to extend your network, develop an industry, or take a loan from the bank. There’s a bit more to it than that, but understanding those basic actions opens up this wonderful, Industrial Revolution-era playground, just waiting to be explored by you and your friends.

Getting down to brass tacks

Despite the simple actions Brass: Birmingham is as rich and deep as a bathful of balti. Each player has the same set of buildings on their player boards and the same options open to them at the start of the game. It means that although you never know which cards the other players are holding, there’s a good chance they’re eyeing up the same building spots as you. Getting early coal and iron can be a huge boon, as can opening those initial connections to the market spots around the edge of the board. I really like how the iron and coal cubes get placed on your tile when you build them, and it’s only by getting rid of them (used for building) that you get to flip the tile and score the points printed on it. In your first game it seems obvious; get the coal and iron buildings built, forcing others to use the resources on your buildings, so that you benefit from their actions. Points in the bag for doing nothing – nice.

Things aren’t always that simple though, and there’ll be times – especially in the late game – when all of your plans are left in tatters when another player uses the last pieces of iron you were relying on. Sure, you can buy it from the market, but do you have the money? Curse those smug, iron-taking knobheads! (inspired by real events). The dichotomy between wanting to demolish your opponents while depending on them is simply brilliant. It’s another game of not being able to do everything, and choosing which industries you want to focus on is a difficult choice, one made even more awkward when you realise you have a direct competitor sat opposite you.

One of my favourite features is the way the game is split into two eras. The canal era plays out for the first half of the game, and then there’s an interim scoring, and all of the first-era buildings and canal boat network links are removed from the board. It leaves players scrambling to rebuild industry and to forge new, more expensive, rail links between the towns and cities. Not only does it add a nuanced layer of strategy (upgraded buildings don’t get removed, giving somewhere to build from again), but it also acts as a kind of reset point, letting players suddenly strong-arm their way into areas of the map once the domain of someone else. It’s also a really good time to get a cup of tea.

Honestly, sitting here and typing up my notes, I keep daydreaming back to the last time I played, and I find myself wanting to play it again, right now. That’s how much I like this game.

Final thoughts

Despite the less-than-intuitive differences between the way the only two resources behave, and learning how networks and connections work, Brass: Birmingham is a work of art. From the most literal interpretation of art, with the gorgeous board which has a day and a night side (purely aesthetic), to the abstract notion of a game as art. If game design is an art, then Messrs. Wallace, Brown and Tolman have made something worthy of the Louvre.

The setting isn’t going to appeal to everyone. 18th-19th century industry in the Midlands isn’t exactly the most glamorous setting. This is a dyed-in-the-wool Euro though, which has thick. beige blood running under its oh-so-pretty skin. Theme and setting aren’t the things which sell a game like this to board game fans, and brass is no exception. I love how minimal the game is. In a world of over-produced Kickstarter nonsense, a game with very few wooden pieces – let alone plastic – is wonderful. Using cardboard tiles and boats taken from thin card player mats, with a few orange and black cubes on the board, is like taking a step back 10 or 15 years into the Euro game renaissance. So much so that the little wooden beer barrels feel like an extravagance. In a game where being able to read the board state at a glance is vital, the lack of 3D pieces is clearly a design consideration and it’s one I appreciate.

Brass: Birmingham also scales really nicely for different player counts. It borrows a principle from Martin’s previous games such as Tinners’ Trail, where parts of the board are only really used in three- or four-player games. It keeps things tight and focused in a two-player game, resulting in a game which works nicely at two. I’m having trouble finding fault to balance this review with, to be honest with you. It’s quite a heavy game in terms of strategy and planning, but the game’s ease of learning belies this, resulting in a game like an ogre onion. The more you play, the more layers you uncover, resulting in a game you’ll come back to time and time again.

Essentially, I think every Euro game fan should own Brass: Birmingham. It’s due another print run at the time of writing, and the BGG #1 news has pushed prices up to crazy highs. It’s a thinner box than most, with a small number of components, so don’t pay through the nose just to get on board the hype tram. Be patient, and you’ll have one of the best games ever made for a fraction of the price of many recent Kickstarters. I love this game, and will never turn down a game. It’s simply wonderful.

Brass: Birmingham (2018)

Designers: Martin Wallace, Gavan Brown, Matt Tolman
Publisher: Roxley Games
Art: Lina Cossette, David Forest, Damien Mammoliti
Players: 2-4
Playing time: 90-120 mins

The post Brass: Birmingham Review appeared first on Punchboard.

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.

No, that sentence wasn’t the result of a fever dream or ChatGPT going off the rails. The main mechanism in Micro Bots will feel right at home to players of Gloomhaven.

Tinning your iron

A pun for the solderers there. The first thing that might surprise you in a game with such ambition is that it comes in a mint tin. I mean, it shouldn’t surprise you, it is called Micro Bots after all. But even so, it’s a tiny package. The game is made up of cards which represent the various weapons and upgrades available, the life and energy tracks, and the bots themselves.

Gameplay comprises each player playing a card from their hand face-down. The cards are revealed and played in order of initiative, which is a value printed on each card. There’s a clever mechanism here where each card is either a Weapon or Support type, and gets added to a row on either side of your bot’s card. Some of the actions’ values depend on how many cards are in each row, so there’s a nice tactical nuance in deciding what to play, and when. Support tokens bolster attack and defence values, and are played in secret.

If the Gloomhaven link wasn’t already strong enough, there’s the decision you have to make of when to play your recharge card. When you recharge you can retrieve all of your played power tokens and cards, which is great because you have them to use again, but suffers from the yin-yang balance of having weaker actions again. It’s a clever system which is more like a homage to the all-powerful dungeon-crawler, rather than a blatant rip-off.

Dōmo arigatō, Mr. Roboto

It’s true that a lot of tabletop games require a good imagination to really immerse yourself in what’s happening in front of you. Micro Bots: Duel really stretches this idea to its maximum. The cool thing about robots battling is watching metallic creations using all manner of weapons to send sparks flying, circuitry and shrapnel raining down like confetti at a robot wedding. Stationary cards and a few small cubes tracking values doesn’t quite convey the same thing, so a lot of what’s happening has to happen in your mind.

The same is true of the range track. It’s a great idea. You can push and pull the cube up and down the track to represent the distance between the robots, which in turn changes the defence value. If the bots are far apart, the defender starts with three defence points, whereas two bots close enough to kiss leave you with a single point. That distance isn’t represented anywhere other than the cube on the card, which doesn’t help break that disconnect between what’s happening on the table and what’s happening in your imagination.

This is the inherent problem (if that’s what you want to call it) with mint tin games. The more you condense what your game is, the more sacrifices you have to make with your design choices. As you read those previous paragraphs, you might be feeling slightly deflated about the game, which is why I want to temper the negative with the positive. Yes, there’s a lot of imagination required, but at the same time, we’re talking about a complete, expandable game which you can fit into pretty much any pocket in existence.

Final thoughts

I’ve had a bit of a grumble about the thematic restrictions because for some people it could be a deal-breaker. It’s really important to set expectations in a game of this type. You might not have cool robot minis or a wartorn landscape to battle on, but look at what you do have. The small footprint of the game means you can play it anywhere. It’s the perfect game to play on a train or plane journey, for example. While cost doesn’t usually factor into my review work here, I think it’s justifiable in the case of Micro Bots, because we’re talking about a game that costs £10! Ten Pounds… I’ve been to bars where that would barely buy a pint, it’s crazy cheap.

The presentation and iconography put games with much bigger budgets to shame, and there’s a very short learning period needed. You could play a few rounds, reset, and know that both players know enough about the game to compete on a near-even playing field. That’s a rare feat. I might not have played hundreds of battles, but I’ve played with every combination of the four included bots, and the balance is great. The Power Up expansion adds some nice tweaks to the ruleset by adding power-up cubes to the range track which you can use to power your bot up further, and clever Wildfire cards. If you’re comfortable with the base game, I’d suggest adding in Power Up as soon as possible, I really like the additions.

Micro Bots: Duel is an outrageously cute package. I’ve played other mint tin games, and few of them manage to pack as my punch as this game. The cardplay is sophisticated and could be lifted straight out of the game and dropped into a mini-heavy skirmish game costing £100+ with no changes. It’s a really impressive piece of game design. If you don’t mind playing the battles out in your head, for the sake of £10 I think Micro Bots is a great choice. Definitely grab the Power Up expansion at the same time, which will set you back a further £8. The two new bots on their own keep things fresh, but the added mechanisms feel like the way the game is meant to be played.

The Kickstarter campaign launches on 1st February 2023 – https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/prometheus-gamelabs/micro-bots-duel-and-power-up

Preview copy kindly provided by Prometheus Game Labs. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

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Micro Bots: Duel (2023)

Designer: Simon Beal
Publisher: Prometheus Game Labs
Art: Gong Studios
Players: 2
Playing time: 30 mins

The post Micro Bots: Duel Preview appeared first on Punchboard.

Interesting fact: I used to brew beer. I brewed all-grain, which is starting from the grain, hops and yeast, and ending up with tasty, brown, dancing fuel. The process is fascinating, it’s like real magic, seeing these very basic ingredients transformed into something so crafted and nuanced. Distilled, from Paverson Games and designer Dave Beck, is a board game about another of these alcoholic alchemies – distilling.

In Distilled, you play the role of a character who has inherited an abandoned distillery. Your goal is to return it to its former glory, restoring your family’s name, and earning yourself the title of Master Distiller. To do this you need to start small, making basic spirits like moonshine and vodka, before ploughing the profits back into the business, taking on new staff, buying better ingredients, and investing in new recipes.

Whisky business

The bulk of the game in Distilled revolves around a central market of cards. During the first phase of each round, you can spend your profits on the equipment and staff cards I mentioned before, and more importantly, the ingredients. Every batch of booze you distil needs ingredients; namely water, sugars (grains, vegetables, or fruits), and yeast. Some basics are free, or at least very cheap, but the really good stuff costs more. The better the ingredients, the better the Spirit Points (VPs), and the more money you can make from selling your brew, ready to repeat the cycle again.

It’s not as simple as just ‘buy all the things and make all the money’ however. You get to choose how many of your ingredients go into your washback (picture a massive bath for mixing it all up), and then you add an alcohol card for every sugar card in your concoction. Then they all get combined into a deck, shuffled, and the top and bottom card are discarded back to your player board for use in a later round. If you’re asking yourself “Why?”, I’m pleased to say it’s actually for thematic, as well as gameplay reasons.

The first and last parts of the spirit that’s created during distillation are called the foreshorts and feints respectively, which are taken off and used for future distillations. You’re left with the ‘heart’, which is the bit you want. That’s really good theming and attention to detail for a Euro game.

That’s the spirit

The gameplay function of losing the first and last cards of your spirit deck is what makes Distilled so much fun. It adds in a push-your-luck element, and I love push-your-luck in games. Let’s take whisky as an example. Whisky needs two grain sugar cards. Sure, you can just add two grain cards to your washback, but what happens if one of them is the top or bottom card, and gets discarded? You’re left making some lesser spirit potentially, which in a game as tight as this can feel like a big loss.

The other option is putting in more ingredients than you need, to increase your chances. The problem with this is that any ingredients you used in your spirit go back to the market at the end of the round. So you might buy three cards of an ingredient, only needing two, knowing that if all three are in the spirit, one is wasted. Distilled is full of these tricky decisions, and it’s part of what makes it so much fun to play. Turning over those top and bottom cards creates a feeling of tension not unlike taking that of risky the extra card in Blackjack, when you’re already at 15.

I found it heavy going at first, trying to wrap my head around Distilled’s rules and mechanisms. It’s another classic example though, of a game you should just start playing. The rulebook is thorough and well-written, with great examples, but in isolation doesn’t make as much sense as playing along with it. Once you get going, that deceptively simple gameplay loop of ‘buy some cards, push your luck, reap any rewards, repeat’ is immensely satisfying. It gives me a similar feeling to the one I get when I play The Quacks of Quedlinburg. Everyone starts from nothing, and with good planning and a little luck, you’ll be neck-and-neck right to the end.

Single malt

There’s a great solo mode included, designed by David Digby (Chocolate Factory, Tinner’s Trail). Rather than a beat-your-own-score mode, or an automa opponent, instead it’s a goal-based solo mode, in the same vein as Terraforming Mars. There’s a barrel-shaped pyramid (yes, I know that makes no sense) of goal cards to achieve during the seven rounds the game lasts.

Some of those goal cards are face-down, and flipped when achieve the ones below them, a bit like 7 Wonders Duel. You can’t plan too far ahead, as some of the information is hidden until you’ve completed other achievements. There’s variable difficulty too, so the masochists among you will be happy. It’s not an easy game to begin with, but I can see this adding more life to the game for those who manage to perfect the formula, so to speak.

Final thoughts

I really like Distilled. I like the theme, and I like the way it’s tied into the game so well. I like the artwork and graphic design, and I really enjoy the gameplay. For a debut game, Dave’s onto a real winner here.

Another game this reminds me of is Dominion. That’s no bad thing, because I absolutely love Dominion. I think it’s the feeling of this shared market of cards, working up from the cheap, common ones, to the bigger and better ones. I guess it is a deck-builder in many ways, just with a very transient deck that’s mostly reset after each round. There’s tons of variety in the cards on offer, the characters you play, the geographic restrictions and bonuses offered by those same characters, and the spirits they create. I can honestly say that no two games will play out the same.

There’s something liberating about playing games only on Tabletop Simulator. The tactile niceties and magpie-like being drawn to shiny components is gone. You’re left with the skeleton of the game to pick over, it’s features and foibles laid bare. It really exposes the game for what it is, and I think if you can play a game and enjoy it on TTS, it’s doing something right. In Distilled’s case, it’s doing a lot of things, very well. Dave Beck’s clearly poured a lot of himself into this game, along with Richard Woods and David Digby, and it really shows. It’s a great game with a lot going for it, and it’s an easy recommendation to anyone who enjoys that Quacks-like mixture of strategy and luck, just with less luck involved.

The Kickstarter launches on 6th July 2021 and you can find it here.

Distilled (2021)

Designers: Dave Beck, Richard Woods, David Digby
Publisher: Paverson Games
Art: Erik Evensen
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 60-120 mins

The post Distilled Preview appeared first on Punchboard.

Right from the outset, I should state that I’ve never read the books. Heck, I hadn’t even heard of them. Luckily you’re here for a game review, not a literary one. Red Rising is very easy to learn to play. You could teach someone the turn structure and explain what they’re trying to do in five minutes. Even the setup is fast and smooth. I just timed myself, and from opening the box to having a four-player game setup ready to play took me 2m 11s, and that was even with a quick check of the rules to make sure I’d dealt the right amount of cards. How many of your big box games are that fast?

Decisions, decisions

In Red Rising, you’re playing from a hand of cards to a board on the table. Those cards activate abilities when you play them, and they’re also worth points if they’re in your hand at the end of the game. I’m a big fan of dual-use cards, and I’m delighted to see them in another new game. When you score your hand at the end of the game, the values of your cards are dependent on the other cards you’re holding. Some will give you a big points bonus for being in the same hand as others, some will reduce your score for the same thing.

It makes gameplay really tricky at times, especially if you’re in your first couple of plays. It’s all-too-easy to look at your starting hand and think “wow, these cards are perfect, I don’t want to play any of them!”, but then you realise that by hanging on to those cards (which you’re perfectly entitled to do), you can’t advance in the three scoring areas as fast as you’d like to. Therefore you can’t trigger the end of the game before your opponents have boosted their scores, making holding onto those cards pointless.

That’s infuriating, yet utterly compelling.

Gone, but not forgotten

In many card games you’ll play a card and then it’s lost, gone, sacrificed to the gods of the discard pile. Your only hope of ever seeing it again is if a discard pile gets shuffled and recycled. In Red Rising, however, when you play a card to the top of one of the four locations, it just sits there, teasing you. The gorgeous gold leaf* on the gold cards glinting, teasing you, tempting you. “You want me don’t you? You want me in your hand again“.

*collector’s edition only

Ahem. When you play a card to a location, you get to pick one up from one of the remaining three locations, activating the power that location gives you. So if you’re lucky, you can play that amazing card from your hand, and then watch with your heart in your throat as the other players take their turns, hoping it’s still on top at the start of your next turn. I’m not too proud to say I’ve felt so much relief when a card I wanted did’t get claimed or covered, and it came back to me. “It’s okay, you’re home now, you’re safe, daddy will never let you go again, I promise.”

“Although… you did get me some pretty cool stuff last time…“

Loyalty is a volatile commodity in Red Rising.

Timing is everything

The end of the game in Red Rising is triggered when any single player scores seven in two scoring areas, or when all players score seven in all three scoring areas collectively. I love this player-driven style of end-game trigger, and it’s fast becoming a hallmark of the Jamey Stegmaier games. It’s a device that’s so important to Red Rising, and you can practically feel players getting twitchy when it’s getting close to the end. There comes a point when you need to stop thinking about which cards you want to play, and start concentrating on the cards that will comprise your hand at the end.

It’s not like the feeling of a race to the end, like in Euphoria or Scythe. It feels more like the end of a game of Viscounts of the West Kingdom, where you’re trying to balance maxing-out your own score, while not letting other players do the same, and making sure they don’t trigger it before you’re ready. Dyed-in-the-wool Euro game fans might not like that, if they prefer the rigid structure of a number of turns, but this isn’t a game aimed to appeal to Euro-lovers.

There is some interaction, but the take-that never feels too vicious. It’s more like you’re keeping an eye on what others are up to, and trying to upset their plans by moving, taking, or banishing cards they want.

Solo mode

Automa Factory have been brought back in to add solo play, and it’s the usual polish you’d expect from them by now. It adds an automated opponent named Tull Au Toma. Automa Factory solo games are always easy to run, and this is the easiest one I’ve ever used. For each turn, flip a card, place a card where it says, take a card from where it says, then maybe take a resource. Do that again, and that’s the turn done. It’s really easy to raise or lower the difficulty level, and the bot provides a stern, but very fair challenge.

All that glitters…

Stonemaier were kind enough to send me the collector’s edition of the game. One of the major differences between this and the standard version is what the components are made of. The collector’s edition has metal cubes and pieces, which feel disgustingly satisfying to play with, but the colours on some of them are pretty difficult to tell apart. It shouldn’t be too much of a problem, but you’ll need to be wary of which rocket is which, and whose cubes are whose in the Institute if you’re playing with gold & copper, or pink & purple.

The cards are beautifully printed, and the gold leaf inlaid on the gold cards looks like an extravagance, but really adds to the polish. The colours problem rears its head here, with yellow and gold being very close, and again with brown and copper. If you’re worried about it from an accessibility point of view, you don’t need to. The names of the colours are written on each card. The collector’s edition even comes with card holders for each player. It’s unnecessary, but a nice touch.

Final Thoughts

Your first couple of plays of Red Rising can feel a bit overwhelming. Not because it’s difficult, but the sheer number of cards and colours makes it hard to come up with a plan. There are 112 unique character cards that you play with, and when you’re reading scoring descriptions that say things like they’re worth more points if Roque is in your hand, there’s a little disconnect until you’ve seen Roque and know who that is. I’ve heard some people complain that they think there are too many cards, and that you might need one that you never see. While that might be thing in a game like Everdell, where certain pre-set scoring events are dependent on a specific card, in Red Rising there are always another ten strategies you could be churning over in your brain.

I love how fast the game is, both to setup and to play. Games play out in less than an hour, so a best of three is easily possible in an evening, and you’ll probably want to play more than one game in a session. It’s really enjoyable placing cubes, taking the little helium gems, and sliding your little rocket along the fleet track. When you make a strong play that gives you loads of good stuff, and you just know you’ve screwed your rival at the same time, it’s extremely satisfying. There’s no obvious dominant strategy, which I think speaks to the level of love and attention the designers have poured into the game. The game was clearly a very personal project to Jamey, and all the designer notes in the rule book show just how much care has been lavished on the franchise and game.

Should you buy Red Rising?

Even as someone who has no idea who these characters, castes and locations are, I love the game. If you’re a fan of the franchise, I think it’s an insta-buy (if you haven’t already). Is it worth getting the collector’s edition? Honestly, it probably is. I mean, I wouldn’t feel like I’d missed out on anything with standard version, but the collector’s edition is cheaper than a lot of the standard editions of other Stonemaier Games.

If you’re looking to buy a new card game, and don’t want to pay through the nose for the latest LCG or CCG craze, then yes, you should get Red Rising. Absolutely. Unreservedly yes. I love Red Rising. It’s so simple and fast to play, but there is so much meta-game going on. Balancing what to keep, what to use, and when to use it, is delicious. Changing your mind half-way through the game on the revealing of just one card isn’t uncommon, and making that mental switch from playing cards to crafting a hand is a skill I think you’re only going to master with repeated play. And you will play it repeatedly. Red Rising is very addictive, and more importantly, it’s a lot of fun! If you want to try it out before buying it, you can play it right now on Tabletopia.

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

Image Credits

¹ Tim Chuon

Red Rising (2021)

Designers: Jamey Stegmaier, Alexander Schmidt
Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Art: Jacqui Davis, Miles Bensky, Justin Wong
Players: 1-6
Playing time: 45-60 minutes

The post Red Rising Review appeared first on Punchboard.

What’s In The Box?

There’s not much of a box to speak of, as you might expect with a game that’s designed to fit in one hand. There are a few different versions available, but the one I have comes with plastic cards, a magnetic clasp box, and a small faux-leather wallet with the Palm Island logo on.

There are two sets of the cards in the box, so you can play some of the two player games, which are mostly just direct competition for points. Along with these there are a few cards with rules and feats reminders, and a small instruction booklet.

The components are really nice. I love the magnetic box, and the little wallet could genuinely be used to take a copy in your pocket anywhere, anytime. The plastic cards in this version are divisive; some people love them, some hate them. I fall into the former group. I like knowing these will never wear out or get sweaty or dirty from being clasped in someone’s hand. The downside of the plastic is that it makes them pretty slippery. Great for shuffling and slotting cards into the deck, hard to keep hold of at times.

How Does It Play?

Palm island is essentially a resource management game, mixed with city-building, in a quite abstracted way. The premise is you’re put in charge of a budding island, and need to build it to be thriving.

To set up the game you set the round marker card to one side, and then shuffle the deck. There’s a mark in the corner of every card to help you orient it the right way. The round marker card goes at the back, then you take the assembled deck in your non-dominant hand, and you’re ready to go.

Each of the cards represents a building in your fledgling island community. The aim of the game is to score as many points as possible over eight rounds, and the way you do that is by upgrading the buildings. To upgrade a building, you need resources, so where do you get those resources? From the cards themselves.

Turn…

Each of the cards that can be used as resources have a number of symbols on the top of them, representing one or more of the different resources in the game: fish, logs or stone. To store a card’s resources you check the card to see if there’s a cost to bank it, pay the cost if so (more late on paying), and then turn the card 90 degrees clockwise (assuming you’re holding the deck in your left hand. You place that card – still rotated – at the back of the the deck, and the resources you’ve banked are now visible to the side. If you were to bank a second card, the same thing happens but the card is slid slightly to the right, so you can see all of your resources.

Any time a card is either discarded or upgraded, it gets put on the back of the deck, and so the resources slowly make their way forwards. If they ever reach the front of the deck, they’re discarded to the back, so you need to plan to spend them.

…Turn…

For each turn (see what I did there?) you look at the top card on the deck and decide what you want to do with it. You;ll either bank it as a resource, or upgrade it. Banking some resources when the cards have been upgraded might mean that you have to spend one to bank three for example. Usually these banked resources though are spent on upgrades.

…And Turn Again

Each card in Palm Island has four parts. The cards are double-sided, and each side has a top and bottom half. Shown on each card is the cost to upgrade it, and the action you carry out when you upgrade it. The action will either rotate it 180 degrees, so the top is now the bottom and vice-versa, or to flip it over. If it costs resources to do this, those resources are just rotated back upright wherever they are in the deck.

If you decide not to use the card on the top of the deck, you can look at the one beneath it and play that one instead, but if you don’t want to play either, the top one is discarded to the back of the deck. Once you’ve got through the whole deck, the round indicator card comes to the top. It has an arrow to show whether to rotate or flip it so that the next number shows, and it goes to the back of the deck. Once the eighth round is done, it’s game over. You add up the stars shown on your upgraded cards, and that’s your final score.

Getting certain scores or winning with certain conditions can unlock feats, which give you different ways to play future games. Not really a legacy game, but certainly enough to keep things fresh for a while and add a challenge,

Final Thoughts

Palm Island packs in way more game than it has any right to. It’s only a few cards, but really manages to capture that feeling that bigger games can, one of producing resources, growing your town, upgrading and keeping things balanced. It’s hard though, really pretty difficult to score well in. It takes a couple of rounds just to learn the order of the cards that are coming up, so you can start planning which resources you’re going to bank, and what you’re going to spend them on.

Initially it can feel like an unfortunately shuffled deck is going to ruin any chance of doing well, but with a few plays under your belt you start to realise that you can influence the order, and make things work for you. Don’t like that those two cards are right next to one another? Hold one, and play the one underneath, then do the same thing again, and now you’ve got a card gap between them. And it’s small moves like that, that can make all the difference.

It’s such a satisfying game, it makes me smile and feel cosy just to play. There are so few card and board games that you can curl up in a big chair and play, but this is one. And it doesn’t feel like a compromise to play it, it’s not a case of “I want to play in bed, I’ll compromise with something light and a bit rubbish“, you can play a thinky, clever game – anywhere. It even comes with little divider cards, so you can save your game at any point to continue later. You might wonder why you’d bother with that, a full game only takes 15 minutes. But remember that you can take this anywhere, so you may have started a game while waiting for the kids to come out of school, or waiting at the dentist before you get called in, so it’s a small but really welcome addition.

A Slippery Customer

The plastic cards are awkward at first to just keep hold of. There’s very little friction between them and they feel slippery together. It’s a double-edged blade though, as despite them being harder to hold than standard cards, they’re also really easy to shuffle, and really easy to slip them around when you’re spending resources or moving cards to the back of the deck. I have lost a game I was going to score well on however (no, really) when my deck essentially exploded when I sneezed, but that’s only once in dozens of plays.

The reason I’m highlighting it is just to make anyone aware of the potential problem if they’re thinking of picking up the plastic card version. If you’ve got small hands or any kind of problems with your hands or motor control, it could be a problem. For the rest of us though, it’s just a case of playing a few times until you get the feel for it.

In closing, given the fact this will barely take up any space in your collection, if you can find it for a reasonable price and have lots of small windows to play something, I think you should definitely pick up Palm Island. There are lots of versions around, so check which one you’re getting and what it’s made of. The feats, additional cards, and two-player modes – both competitive and co-operative – give the game a longer lifespan than you’d expect too. An exceptionally well-designed and implemented little game.

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