From the ground up

When I started writing that opening paragraph I had to choose which games I referenced several times. It struck me that many of the games that spring to mind when I think of two-player fare are spin-offs of existing games. 7 Wonders Duel. Splendor Duel. Cosmic Encounter Duel. Those that aren’t spin-offs are usually small board games or card games. Lost Cities, Battleline, Jaipur, Patchwork, Sky Team, etc. Ironwood bucks both trends by being both a two-player game from the get-go and delivering a full-size board game simultaneously.

Ultimately size doesn’t matter (apparently), but it’s a feeling which permeates the game everywhere. Ironwood is a premium two-player game. Wooden and metal playing pieces in the bog-standard (in fact, only) version of the game you can buy just reinforce that feeling. The setting of the game pits the forest-dwelling Woodwalkers against the industrial mining might of the Ironclad. Both are vying for control of the land of Ironwood and the crystals therein. It’s a pretty cool twist on the ordinary area control game because the two factions never share a space. The Woodwalkers can only stay in the forest spaces while the Ironclad are restricted to the rocks of the mountains, and never the twain shall meet. They just fight where the borders meet.

As is becoming more common in two-player games, the two sides are asymmetric. Each has its own deck of dual-use cards that drive the actions in the game. To paint the game with broad brush strokes, the Ironclad want to create forges in the mountains, harnessing the power of their great drill and building foundations, while the Woodwalkers use visions to locate ancient totems and to escort them back to the outskirts of the forest. It really works, too. Each side feels very different to play, even if the essence of the actions is the same. Movement is movement. Adding warbands is adding warbands. They feel fundamentally different to play as though, and that’s where a lot of Ironwood’s replay value comes from.

Balance

If you’ve played games with a decent level of asymmetry before, you know how important balance is, and how it can often feel missing in your first plays. Ironwood does the same. Woodwalkers – in my experience – felt like the faction who make the early progress, while the Ironclad take longer to build, but then have the potential to snowball later in the game. It’s a bit like Cats vs Birds in Root. The Woodwalkers have a consistent, rhythmic beat to their progress, while the Ironclad feel like spinning up a flywheel. That’s how playing Ironwood felt to me in my first games.

The important thing is the balance, and I’m happy to say that in my experience the game feels very well balanced. I’ve won and lost almost the same number of games as each faction, and while some of that will come down to the quality of the opponent, I feel like any inherent imbalances would have reared their ugly little heads by now. For sure, the Woodwalkers feel easier to do well with, and I’d advise giving them to new players while they learn the game, but with a game or two under your belt, you should have enough of an understanding to make a stand with either faction.

The feeling of a struggle is really well imparted by the game. The unknown locations of the totems mean that no two games will follow exactly the same flow. When combat happens, it uses a system I really enjoy. Each player can play a card from their hand, face-down. The cards are revealed, any bonuses from things like Golems are added, and the damage applied. If the opponent’s attack is higher than your defence, you lose units equal to the difference. However, and this is the fun bit, combat doesn’t end there. Once the punches have been thrown and bloodied noses wiped clean, a second value on the cards is checked – Dominance. As long as you still have a standing unit, you still have skin in the game. The side with the higher dominance can force any remaining losers to retreat, and they decide where to. Spicy!

Final thoughts

I’m really impressed with Ironwood. In every area it could make the effort to deliver something more than the minimum viable product, it does. The components are the sort you’d pay extra for in a deluxe game. The board isn’t tiny just because it’s for two players. It doesn’t feel like a multiplayer game re-imagined for two. The rulebook is, for the most part, excellent too. You can easily learn to play the game without the need for a video. I’m really pleased that Mindclash are offering this ‘Mindclash Play’ line of games, because it’s offering a hand to those who want to play their heavier games without diving in at the deep end.

The card-play in Ironwood is especially good. I love that the cards are used for their actions or their combat values. It forces you to make all kinds of judgment choices all of the time. One really clever part of the game’s design is to give each faction three core cards which are never lost. Even if you wager them in combat, they still return to your hand instead of the discard pile at the end of the round. Why does this matter? The game doesn’t give you enough rope to hang yourself with. You’ll never find yourself with a turn with no actions to take, because you’ll always be able to do the important things. A Splotter game this is not.

It’s worth mentioning that Ironwood comes with a fully-fledged solo bot to play against should you find yourself without an opponent. I tried it out for a game and found it a little fiddly, but far from impossible to run. There are a few flowchart-like actions to work out priority, but on the whole it seemed very smooth. This is a duelling game though, and at its best when you’re sat opposite someone trying to read their mind. It’s easy to learn, offers plenty of strategic and tactical choices, and throws in some clever cardplay and a nice twist on combat. For a touch over £40 when it releases here in retail, for a game that feels so premium, it’s crazy good value. If you have a regular player two, Ironwood is a fantastic game that tickles that part of my brain which Root does for four players. Highly recommended.

Review copy kindly provided by Mindclash Games. Thoughts & opinions are my own.

Ironwood (2024)

Design: Maël Brunet, Julien Chaput
Publisher: Mindclash Games
Art: Villő Farkas, Qistina Khalidah
Players: 1-2
Playing time: 30-60 mins

The post Ironwood Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Lucky for us then nobody is wearing the crown at the moment, as the previous king has apparently popped his clogs. Shuffled off this mortal coil. He is an ex-king. Each of you plays one of his heirs, hungry for power, climbing over one another to be the next monarch. In my head I’m picturing the Trial by Stone from The Dark Crystal, but with fewer Skeksis.

Land grab

The main board represents the regions of the kingdom. Having control of one or more regions at the end of an Autumn phase (rounds are broken into Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter) grants you bonuses which help you get towards your ultimate goal, which is having 15 (20 in a two-player game) Influence Points, thereby claiming the crown.

The majority of what happens in the game is dictated by the cards the players use. A card has a strength value which is used during clash resolution (i.e. who wins control of a region), and typically a power or ability too. Already you might be able to see some similarities between this and other games. The first things that sprang to mind for me were thoughts like “Oh, so it’s a bit like Love Letter / Citadels / Vaalbara”, and those comparisons hold some weight, but there’s a lot more going on under the surface in The Old King’s Crown.

Turn order really matters. The first player has to commit to which Location they’re sending their Herald (the big wooden piece) as a statement of intent. It’s up to the other players to decide if they want to go toe-to-toe in the same location or try their luck elsewhere. It’s a small action, but it feels like there’s so much riding on it. Winning a region where your herald is can net you an influence point in addition to whatever the location gives you. If you contest a region where two or more heralds share a location, the winner gets to steal an influence point from the losers.

In a game where you might only need 15 points to win, a well-placed herald can result in a three-point swing, and that’s before you even take the location’s bonuses into consideration. So right away you’ve got these intriguing mind games. Is that herald there because they’ve got cards you’re never going to beat, or are they just full of bluster, hoping to scare you into contesting somewhere else instead?

Being last in turn order actually has a really good benefit, which is just another string to The Old King’s Crown’s bow. The last player chooses the order in which the three region’s clashes are resolved. It might not seem like that big of a deal, but some of the cards you play can have effects which bolster the strength of cards in adjacent regions. Those cards aren’t much use if the cards in those adjacent regions are revealed before your bolstering card, such is the power of choosing resolution order. There is no such thing as a dead action. Everything you do matters.

Follow your own path

Each of the factions in The Old King’s Crown has its own unique player board and despite sharing some common cards and abilities, is asymmetric. Not to the extent of something like Root (review here) or a COIN game like Cuba Libre (review here), but still with differences. Each has its own set of action tiles at the bottom of its boards, and each has its own site of power at the top of the main board, with new action cards to invest in as the game progresses.

It strikes a nice balance here. I know people who won’t play COIN games because understanding how each of four factions operates and wins is daunting. I find teaching those games difficult for precisely that reason. The Old King’s Crown dials those divergences down to a point where everybody has the same win conditions, and everybody knows how the clashes will be fought, but there are enough differences there to keep things interesting.

It’s funny because as a die-hard Euro game fan, wargames are where I’ll usually stray into confrontational, interactive games. This game feels and looks more like a Euro with its deck construction and player boards, yet it’s unashamedly in-your-face. The mind games are fantastic, and even in our first learning game my group found ourselves goading one another, daring rivals not to add their companies (wooden pieces that add to your strength in a region) to a region to ‘see what happens if you don’t’.

I haven’t even mentioned the Great Road kingdom cards yet, which you can claim and add to your player boards for new actions and abilities. You can claim them from the middle of the table, but if one of your opponents has one that you want, or one you simply want to deny them of because it’s such a pain in the ass to play against, you can outright steal it from them. This isn’t a game you can play head-down. You need to know what’s going on with everybody, all of the time.

No man is an island

It’d be remiss of me to not draw attention to the solo mode in The Old King’s Crown. I was dubious of how well it would work at first, knowing how cutthroat and confrontational the game is. Replicating that feeling in an AI deck of any kind is no small feat. However, with the help of solo specialist Ricky Royal, the solitaire mode is very good.

The opponent – dubbed Simulacrum – plays with a special deck and a ruleset that introduces very little overhead into the game. Regular readers will know there’s a dividing line for me, when running the artificial opponent for a game takes more time and brainpower than taking my own actions, and this one happily sits on the correct side of that fence.

Remarkably, the designers have managed to create a solo opponent which not only leaves you free to play in the same way as you would for the multiplayer game, but also seems to have its own personalities. It’s not like the cards are imbued with the souls of players, but it captures the idea of playing against someone who’s got their own intentions, not just randomly pulling cards and plonking things where fate decides. The Simulacrum’s cards have behavioural traits such as plotting and warmongering, and cards played in different phases combine (or not) in a way which feels natural.

Would I buy The Old King’s Crown just to play solo? For me, maybe not. The table talk and tension built by human beings is what makes the game truly outstanding for me. That said, the solo mode is excellent, and if you’d told me it had come from Morten and his Automa Factory, I’d have believed you in a heartbeat.

Final thoughts

I’m so pleased to see The Old King’s Crown get this far. I’ve been bumping into the guys from Eerie Idol games for years now, and the artwork has always caught my attention. The aesthetics and watercolour shades are absolutely gorgeous. We’re really spoiled here in the UK with indie studios at the moment, and the incredible design and art they’re bringing to games. I expect to hear lots of “This is their first game? Really??” once boxes start landing on tables.

Ultimately it’s a glorified bluffing game, but putting it in simple terms like that just highlights how much heavy lifting the word ‘glorified’ is doing. Strategising, adapting, and improvising all play a part. Customising your faction with the Great Road cards. Choosing if and when to invest in your site of power cards. Trying to remember if your rival across the table has already played that low-value card that assassinates your high-value one. Heck, some cards even let you claim other factions’ dead cards from the communal Lost pile and use them against their previous owners.

I had a hard time getting my head around some of the nuances and terms in the rulebook, but as with any preview I write, there’s a caveat that nothing is final, and things like the rulebook won’t be finalised for a while yet. While I don’t know exactly what Patrick and crew over at Leder Games did to help with development, knowing that a) they’ve been involved, and b) Pablo and the Eerie Idol team were sensible enough to involve them, is an indicator of the level of polish and quality you can expect.

With an easy-to-follow ruleset that leaves the majority of your brain free to plot and scheme, The Old King’s Crown is just wonderful. It’s the kind of game that you’d imagine would lead to some ‘kill the king’ when someone races ahead, and to some extent that’s true, but for every ally with a hand on your shoulder, you’d better believe they’re holding a stiletto tip at your ribs too. The Kickstarter goes live on October 24th 2023, and you can sign up to be notified of the launch right here. I suggest you do, I think this game is going to be deservingly huge.

Preview copy provided by Eerie Idol Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

The Old King’s Crown (2023)

Design: Pablo Clark
Publisher: Eerie Idol Games
Art: Pablo Clark
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 60-90 mins

The post The Old King’s Crown Preview appeared first on Punchboard.

“From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli”

If you’ve got no idea what I’m talking about, check out the Marines Hymn. I have no particular affection for the USMC, I just know the song and it gets stuck in my head each and every time I take this game off my shelf. I had to share my earworm with at least one of you. You’re welcome.

The Shores of Tripoli is a two-player, event-driven wargame from Fort Circle Games. It’s set on the Barbary coast of North Africa at the turn of the 19th Century. The young American military wants free passage for their merchant ships, while Tripolitania wants their pirate corsairs to keep wreaking havoc. It’s a fast-moving, streamlined game, and it’s great.

Asymmetry

Many two-player games are straight-up duels where both sides are fighting with the same weapons. In Targi (review here) both players have three workers and the same cards to work with. Lost Cities has five colours of cards to collect, but they’re available to both players. The Shores of Tripoli takes a leaf from Watergate’s book (review here) and gives each player not only different actions, but also very different game-winning conditions too.

Playing the game feels like playing a lighter, two-player COIN game. Each player has their own agenda, but there are some big intersections. The Trioplitanians spend a lot of the game amassing their corsairs and trying to bring other African nations into the war to join their navy. They can send the corsairs out on pirate raids to steal gold from merchant ships. Stealing 12 gold coins from the US player wins the game. To go on a raid they can discard any card, roll one die per boat in their fleet, and each 5 or 6 sinks a merchant and steals a coin. It’s a disjointed action in some ways. During the whole raid nothing actually moves, no merchant pieces are removed (they don’t exist), and the corsairs stay in their harbours. That might sound anticlimactic, but it’s simple and slick.

The US aren’t just going to lie back and take it. Each of the raiding harbours has a patrol zone around it, and frigates in those patrol zones get to roll interception checks, potentially taking out Tripoli’s raiders before they get to the open sea. The US aren’t just there to respond though, they have plans of their own to end the conflict. Wiping out the Tripolitanian navy and the navies of their allies, they can force a US-favourable treaty. Failing that, they can take Tripoli by force with a combined naval and land-based assault. Similarly, Tripoli isn’t forced to go for gold either, they can win by a show of force, either sinking four US frigates or wiping out Hamet’s army in the East.

Turn of events

Each player’s deck of cards determines what they can do. Each card can be spent to perform some basic standard actions, but the majority of the time you’ll use them to perform the events detailed on them. Some are reusable and go to the discard piles, while many of them are removed from the game after use. The events are generally pretty powerful, and plenty of them act as reactive boosts for other events. For instance, the US might play a card which boosts their pirate interceptions, whereas Tripoli can catch a frigate in its patrol zone and force it to run aground.

The Shores of Tripoli goes from being good to being great after you’ve played it a couple of times and know which cards are in each deck. The Assault on Tripoli card is potentially game-winning for the US, but can only be played after Fall of 1805, which is right near the end of the game. If you draw it in the first round, it’s not going to do much for you, and there are a few other examples where it feels like you draw the wrong cards. The skill comes in how best to discard them for standard actions, and when.

When you know what cards someone might have in their hand it raises the tension so much. Trying to second-guess what the other person is up to in that classic mind game fashion, and it works so well in The Shores of Tripoli. It’s rare to win a game in the first few years (rounds). Most games are about posturing and misdirection, trying to set things up for the late game, without being too obvious about it. The Tripoli player has cards which let them bring the other African nations into the war, adding friendly corsairs to go on more pirate raids with. The US can bring Swedish frigates into the fray, and Tripoli can call in reinforcements from Gibraltar. Land armies slowly grow as troops reach the coast. There’s a real sense of something epic about to kick off.

Final thoughts

Trying to learn The Shores of Tripoli from the rulebook isn’t the easiest thing. It’s not that the rulebook is badly-written because it isn’t. Everything is in there, and it’s concise and very clear. It’s just a difficult game to explain in words. You really need that first learning game as each side under your belt so you know what to expect, and how the late game plays out. That said, a game of Shores of Tripoli is done inside an hour, so it’s not an ordeal to get those learning plays done.

I really like the long, thin board. It acts as a perfect natural divide for two people sitting opposite one another, and there’s something more meaningful when the Tripolitian player reaches across the map and takes a gold piece from the US player’s side. It’s personal. The layout is a little unintuitive at first. It feels like a game where your frigates would have a number of spaces to move, but instead, they can just move wherever they like on the board. The islands on the north of the board and the coast of Africa on the south just lend to the setting and theme, and it really feels like a struggle for control of a stretch of water.

The amount of historical research that went into making The Shores of Tripoli is evident not just in the game’s events, but the historical book and designer’s notes that come with the game. It’s fascinating to read Kevin’s insights and motivations too. You get the feeling playing the game as Tripoli that it’s not just a ‘war on terror’, and reading his notes confirms this, which is excellent game design in my opinion. If you’re a fan of two-player games, especially something with some real-world historical context, you must play The Shores of Tripoli. It’s small, fast, clever, and thoroughly entertaining.

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

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The Shores of Tripoli (2020)

Designer: Kevin Bertram
Publisher: Fort Circle Games
Art: Cat Bock, Marc Rodrigue, Matthew Wallhead
Players: 1-2
Playing time: 45-60 mins

The post The Shores Of Tripoli Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Hex encounter

The world of Crescent Moon is some hex tiles laid-out on the tabletop. Each hex has a type, such as fertile, wilderness, and mountains. Some of the hexes have a river running through them, which act as an impassable barrier. Not ideal when you’re one of the factions trying to expand their domain. One tile has a crossing, which acts as a bottleneck and a hotly-contested pied-à-terre.

Using hexes in this way is clever, it allows for multiple layouts, and different layouts for differing player counts. I’ll come back to player count in a bit. It’s a design decision which means the game takes up less space on the table, and more variety without buying additional maps. The landscape types are very visible and obvious, which is something that can be harder to convey in a COIN game, for example.

The biggest initial confusion you’re likely to face is the colours of the units. For the most part, they’re really clear. The Warlord has black pieces, the Caliph is blue, etc. The Sultan, for reasons best known to himself, has green and pale yellow buildings. Not a problem on the face of it, but if you’re playing with five players, the Nomad is in the game, and they have yellow pieces. It’s a shame, as aside from that one visual disconnect of pale yellow and yellow belonging to different factions, it’s the most innately accessible war game I’ve played.

Toss a coin

Crescent Moon shares a lot of its biology with the COIN series of games from GMT Games. It might look different, but once you scrape away the friendly veneer and bright colours, what you’re left with could easily be re-imagined as a COIN game. The concepts of presence and influence in Crescent Moon naturally map to control and support in a game like Cuba Libre. Similarly, there are a series of ‘standard’ actions, which many factions share. Recruiting, moving, assaulting, building: learning how to do the basics for one faction means you can learn another, mechanically, pretty easily.

The biggest divergence Crescent moon has from both Root and a COIN game is the way scoring and goals are handled. Instead of a visible score track with obvious win conditions, Crescent Moon is played over a set number of rounds. Years, in the game’s parlance. Whether you choose to play the short or long version of the game, once the requisite number of rounds are played, scores are tallied and a winner declared. This works because the VP tokens (aptly crescent moon shapes) are stored face-down, and look the same from the back, regardless of their value.

I’m not a fan of this method of secret scoring, not in a wargame setting at least. What makes games like this so interesting are the interactions between the players. Despite everyone having their own aims and scoring methods, there’s usually a bit of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. Some actions are mutually beneficial for different factions, and you get situations where players form temporary alliances to reel in a leader. You can’t do that in a game where you don’t know who’s winning for definite, and it makes alliances hit and miss at times.

Rock the kasbah

I mentioned player count before. The player count for Crescent Moon is its biggest problem. There’s a minimum of four players, and a maximum of five. What do you do if you only have two or three people in your group? You either give someone else an extra faction or two – which can unfairly weight the game in their favour – or you don’t play. There are some of you reading this now thinking “No problem, we always play with four”, and if that’s true for you, then great. For anyone else, it’s a real problem.

In Root, there are options to play with fewer factions, without overly disrupting the game. In Crescent Moon, the different factions are so inexorably linked, and dependent on one another, that it’s not an option. Those links are baked into the game, and so integral to the way the game pans out that each player has Year One objectives to aim for. If you complete them you get VPs that are only available in the first round, and in persuading players to go after them, it helps set up the game state to keep things running smoothly.

The other option for lower player counts would have been AI/Automa opponents, as GMT do with the likes of Gandhi. Granted, it introduces more cards into the game, and more flowcharty decisions to run the bots, but it at least means you can play with two people – or even on your own. I can’t see any obvious reason to not do this for Crescent Moon, other than the overhead of design and playtesting, and it’s a real shame. The game, despite my quibbles, is a really good one. Sadly it’s a game that many people will never buy, because they know they’ll seldom get to play it.

Final thoughts

I have a few issues with Crescent Moon, for sure, but it’s not a bad game. Quite the opposite, it’s actually a really good game, and I think it would be my recommendation for anyone curious about COIN games, but hesitant to dip their toe. The phase structure to each round and finite round limit make it a great option for Euro gamers looking at war games. The player aids are excellent, and I love the way they give advice for new players. It really helps in your first game.

The restrictive player count is where I have a real problem. There are so few games that lock your options to four or five players, and it stands out as a bit of an oddity. To give you an idea of how rare a beast it is, there are only four games in the BGG top 10,000 that restrict you to four or five – and that includes Crescent Moon. I wish they’d just made the extra effort to add AI players. Even if the best experience is with five players, you could still practice, and get some enjoyment out of your game between meet-ups.

If you’ve played Root to death and want something else with that same lop-sided, territorial tussle, Crescent Moon is great. The factions in my – admittedly limited – experience seem really well balanced, and the rules are very easy to follow. It’s also worth trying if you’re tempted by the COIN games but aren’t used to the GMT style of rulebook.

Crescent Moon then – a really clever, really good wargame-lite, with an unfortunate dependency on player count. If you’ve got a regular group of four or five, it’s a great choice. If not, just weigh up how often you’ll play against the cost of buying.

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

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

Crescent Moon (2022)

Designer: Steven Mathers
Publisher: Osprey Games
Art: Navid Rahman
Players: 4-5
Playing time: 150-180 mins

The post Crescent Moon Review appeared first on Punchboard.

BCE 44 builds on the infamous events of the eponymous year when Julius Caesar was assassinated on the floor of the Senate, by a group of senators who worried that he had too much power over the empire. In the game, you take the role of one of several famous names from Roman history, such as Mark Antony, Brutus, or Cleopatra. The aim of the game is to retain control when you’re the current Imperium Maius (IM – leader), and to conspire with the others when you’re not, in order to unseat them from their position of power.

“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once”

If you were to pin me down and ask me what kind of game 44 BCE is, I’d have a hard time to explain it without examples. It’s a mixture of worker-placement, tableau-building, and bucketloads of negotiation. Players can send their architects out to help make buildings, each of which provides benefits at different times during the game’s nine phases. You get to spend your different influence cubes to recruit people from the game’s main market, in order to play them for their benefits. It’s when you come to play those cards and influence where the real fun of the game emerges.

Without trying to explain the entire game to you (Jenders Gaming does a great job of this, check out his video), the current IM is trying to retain their control over two of the games three ‘fields’: Military, Politics, and Social. After they’ve collected their income and gone shopping for new friends, they raise their player screen and choose which things they want to play for this round. Then the rest of the players – the Suitors – get a chance to do the same. This is where things get trickier.

While the Suitors can play their own recruits onto their player board, they’re unable to activate them with their own influence cubes. The cubes have to come from one or more of the other Suitors. And so begin the negotiations. Suitors do all of their conspiring openly, above the table. Their common goal is to make sure they take two of the three tiles from the IM, so promises are made to give people your cubes, on the condition they do the same for you. Unlike other games, however, the deals in 44 BCE often aren’t worth the paper they’re (not) written on.

“Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous”

You can probably see where this is going by now. Nobody wants the current IM to retain their power at the end of the round, but everyone wants that same power for themselves. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and other such musing. After the negotiations are finished, each Suitor raises their screen and commits their recruits and influence to their board. It’s not until those screens are dropped, and the truth revealed, that players know if they’re facing a Crying Game moment or not. That is to say, not entirely what they were expecting.

I can’t explain how much fun I have with this mechanism, I really can’t. I love the tension that comes when the Suitors are plotting behind their screens. As a Suitor yourself, there’s a lot of second-guessing going on, especially towards the end of the game. As the IM though, far from feeling doomed, facing a table of conspirators, it’s actually a powerful feeling. You’ve already made your play, you know what you’re hopefully going to get out of the round. You get to sit back and watch the suspicion and duplicity play out in front of you.

“Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot. Take thou what course thou wilt”

44 BCE wasn’t what I was expecting at all. I thought all the weight of the game would be dangled off the single thread of negotiation, but I was wrong. The act of placing workers and buying recruits has the feeling of playing a Euro game, but just as you think it’s moving that way, all of a sudden it pulls the rug from under your feet and places you in a very social, very interactive game that takes place in the promises and lies breathed above the board. Mixing two very different feeling styles of game could have gone horribly wrong – but it hasn’t. The game is suspended on strong, intertwined threads.

During my first play, I found myself thinking that the negotiation was all-important, and that the Euro elements didn’t have much of an impact. I very quickly found that I was wrong. Having a bigger income of cubes, or a bigger limit before you have to discard excess cards and cubes, can be huge. When the rest of the table knows you can potentially have more up your sleeves, their reliance in (and suspicion of) you increases.

More and more buildings enter the game as the three eras play out, which means there’s no real status quo to fall back on. People are going to get more powerful, they’re going to be able to afford better recruits, and the act of usurping the IM stays as difficult as it ever has. There’s a superb level of balance in the game, and at the time of writing, I still haven’t found an over-powered way of playing. When you consider that 44 BCE is coming from a new studio, with unknown designers, it’s all the more impressive.

Final thoughts

I get to play quite a lot of prototype games here. They vary from rough-around-the-edges with plenty of work still to do, to polished and professional. 44 BCE falls firmly in the latter category. I’ve never been one for Roman themes in games, but honestly, I love this game. I’m a convert. The theme is carried through brilliantly, the gameplay is smooth and easy, and the artwork & presentation are gorgeous.

The concept of one-vs-many isn’t new, but the way the one and the many change during the game feels really fresh. It doesn’t feel like a ‘Kill the King’ type of game, where people are working together to take down the leader, because the role of king changes hands again, and again. Instead it’s a game of balancing your own ambitions with those that serve the common good, and it’s really well done. I’m understating it there if anything. This game is really, really nicely balanced, and has plenty of variability in each game’s setup.

While it plays from two to five players, I think the sweet spot for me was with four. I didn’t have a chance in my time with the game to play with five, but I think that would be just as good. Two and three player are both good, but the negotiation element loses a little of its oomph. If you have a regular group though, oh my, are you in for a treat. 44 BCE is an outstanding game. It’s absolutely brilliant, and even though it’s only a prototype, it’s already in my Top 3 games of the year so far. Superb stuff, bravo Gray Forrest Games, take a bow.

The Kickstarter campaign launches on May 24th 2022, and you can check it out here.

Preview copy kindly provided by Gray Forrest Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

44 BCE (2023)

Designers: Christian Forrest, Holt Gray, Kelly Forrest
Publisher: Gray Forrest Games
Art: Rumyana Zarkova, William Liberto
Players: 2-5
Playing time: 60-120 mins

The post 44 BCE Preview appeared first on Punchboard.

COIN it in

If you’ve been wargame-curious, there’s a good chance you’ve seen this capitalised ‘COIN’ somewhere. It’s a series of counter-insurgency games from various designers, all published by GMT Games. I guess you could call them wargames, but in my (admittedly limited) experience, there’s very little warfare. There’s no attack and defence values, or tiny numbers on a sea of cardboard chits. COIN games are about influence, control, and upsetting the balance of power. The lifeblood of COIN is an event deck which ticks away throughout the game, offering powerful opportunities, and sobering context to what’s happening on your table.

All Bridges Burning is a bit of an outlier in the series, as it’s one of the rare titles which isn’t built around four different factions. You take control of the Reds, seeking a working class revolution, the white Senate guard, trying to maintain control, or a third, blue, Moderate faction who want political reform. It gives the whole thing a very different feel, and I think it’s a real boon for new players. COIN games can be heavily asymmetric, and keeping track of what the other players are doing, as well as remembering their win conditions, is tough. Reducing that mental overhead by a third for each player isn’t to be sniffed at.

COIN games are strict in that all of the factions need to take part in every game, but at the same time they’re easy-going in that they don’t care how many meat-bags humans are taking part. The automa/AI players – or Non-Players (NPs) to use GMT’s parlance – are controlled with decks of cards and simple flow charts. Heck, you could have all three decks play against each other with no players at all if you really wanted to. The NP turns are super smooth, and mean that you can play a solo game relatively quickly. Solo play is great by the way, just be aware that the victory conditions are slightly different.

A game of two halves

All Bridges Burning has two distinct phases, and each has a markedly different feel. The first half of the game is spent posturing, building support, and doing your best to keep your cards (figuratively) close to your chest. There’s no hidden information at all.

The way these games convey theme still astounds me. For example – when the number of cells on the board reaches a critical mass, the Reds’ revolution begins. The tension this weaves into the game is fantastic. More and more activists spread across the map, vying for control of towns and regions. The white guard swell their numbers in response. You can feel it’s all going to kick off, and it’s a case of when – not if – it happens.

Up until that point, the red and white forces can’t even move around the map, let alone attack. Once the revolution starts, the game swings dramatically. Trains and cannons come into play, and all of a sudden you’re trying to build the foundations for Finland as it moves away from being a Russian duchy, into the 20th century. Russian and German troops are also in the country with their own vested interests, and the players can leverage them for their own goals. The poor Moderates are left trying to keep some kind of balance and political control while the rest of the country tears itself apart. The dichotomy between the two phases is stark, and really engaging.

If it sounds like it’s a long game, then you’re on the right track. You’re looking at something like at least three hours per game, and your first game will probably take twice as long, especially if you’ve never played a COIN game before. If it’s not your first rodeo, you’ll find it easier to pick up, but there are some notable changes from the previous games. GMT have kindly added callout boxes to the rulebook to bring these to your attention. The first you’ll notice is that eligibility order is based on player decisions now, not what’s drawn on the top of the card. It’s also likely you’ll take actions in nearly every round, not just every other.

All things in moderation

While COIN games are all about their asymmetry, it feels different in All Bridges Burning. Using Gandhi as my frame of reference, we had two violent and two non-violent factions. In All Bridges Burning, if you’re the player playing as the Moderates, it really feels like you’re playing a very different game to the others. The Reds and Whites are building up these huge forces across the map, bolstering their positions along the way, and you know that they’re going to spend the slugging it out. The Moderates though, they’re left stuck with six cells to place for the entire game. They can’t engage in combat. They feel less potent than the others.

It’s not a problem if you like COIN games, and you know what to expect, but if you’re playing this with someone new to the series, I’d suggest giving them control of red or white, instead of blue. The actions feel more tangible, and you get a better visual connection between what you’re doing and how it relates to your victory condition.

What I love about these games is the way they force you to make tough choices all the time. Everyone has their standard actions, and some powerful special commands at their disposal, which would make for an interesting game if those were all that happened. The event deck just turns things up to 11, and keeps throwing wonderful distractions out, tempting you off the road to victory. The cards offer all kinds of powerful actions, and all players know which card will be next. Sometimes you just have to pass your turn, delaying your plans, just to make sure you have first dibs on the next round’s card. That can be because you really want that next event, but nearly as often it’s just to deny one of your opponents the chance to do the same.

Hnnnnnghhh! Decisions are tough!

Final thoughts

Okay, I think I’m firmly in love with COIN games. When I first played Gandhi I was daunted, but perseverance rewarded me with one of my favourite games. I wondered whether a second COIN game would feel like more of the same, and it does. Except… it doesn’t. The system feels immediately familiar, the way the game works with its event deck, propaganda rounds, and standard actions. It doesn’t just feel like the same game with a fresh coat of paint though. All Bridges Burning isn’t just set in a different time and place, it also feels like a very different experience to play.

A game like this is never going to have the universal appeal of something like Ticket To Ride or Wingspan, and that’s okay. We’re talking about a pretty niche genre with COIN games, but I think that narrow slice of the board game pie-chart is getting bigger. So while I wouldn’t recommend you buy this to take over to play with the family at Christmas, I would say that if you’re into hobby board games, and are even remotely curious about COIN games, GMT Games, or wargames of any sort, this is a fabulous place to start.

I love the fact that all factions in All Bridges Burning need to be mindful of all of the moving parts on the board. There are very achievable conditions where none of the players win. The German and Russian supporting troops can win, but if they tie, nobody at all wins. Maybe that sounds terrible to you, but I love it. It keeps everyone aware of everything that’s going on, and it means towards the end of the game you could end up taking sub-optimal turns, just to avoid losing to a force who don’t have anyone controlling them!

All Bridges Burning is a fantastic game, and for now, it’s the COIN game I’d recommend to get started with. It’s Tosi hyvä.

Footnote

I know the way I talk about this game makes it sound like I have a very flippant take on what was a bloody civil war. A war in which nearly 40,000 Finns lost their lives. It’s important to acknowledge that while this is a game, it’s also a simulation of real-world events that happened. GMT, and their designers, have a real respect for the history, and manage to handle things with due sensitivity. The background and events are all explained in great detail, and at no point is it made light of. All Bridges Burning models what happened, and what could have happened. There’s no laughter to be had. It’s a tactical simulation, and if anything, leaves you with a profound sense of the scale of suffering a nation went through. It’s an educational, yet still enjoyable, experience. There’s further reading available from the rulebook, and all research is fully referenced throughout.

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

All Bridges Burning: Red Revolt and White Guard in Finland 1917-1918 (2020)

Designer: V P J Arponen
Publisher: GMT Games
Art: Chechu Nieto
Players: 1-3
Playing time: 180-360 mins

The post All Bridges Burning Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Where’s the rest of it?

That was my first thought when the box landing through my letterbox. And yes, I mean letterbox. Cryptid: Urban Legends is a much, much smaller game than the original. One which happily fits in your pocket. If you’ve been interested in the game, and wanted to keep it all a surprise, there’s a couple of things you should know.

Firstly, yes, it’s a much smaller game. There’s no board at all, just cards and some marker tokens. Secondly, this puppy is two-player only. The original game was for three to five players (although there’s a decent official two-player variant too, Cryptid fans), so you can tell right from the get-go that this is a very different beast cryptid. The thing I want to touch on first, is that Urban Legends isn’t a deduction game.

*gasps of astonishment*

Cryptid: Urban Legends is an abstract, asymmetric puzzle game, and it’s a tricky one.

Finding Mothman

The cryptid (it’s definitely Mothman) is trying to escape the city. I’m not sure why, maybe it overstayed its welcome at the local Premier Inn or something. The scientist is trying to capture the cryptid by placing sensors around city blocks, and narrowing options down to only one space they could be hiding in. That might sound like deduction, but in reality, it’s more like forcing Checkmate in Chess. The sensors are just coloured cubes, and the game consists of trying to build patterns of cubes if you’re the cryptid, and destroying patterns if you’re the scientist.

In each turn you play a card from your hand which lets you move the cubes from one side of the city block, to the opposite side. There are three different ways to move them, which can result in a lot of different ways to shift the balance one way or the other. The city blocks are square cards laid-out in a two-row checkerboard pattern, and in each round the cubes shift from one side to the other, some cards get removed, others added, but it’s essentially just shifting them back and forth.

The one major plus point this gives the game is that it has a tiny footprint. You could play this on a train, in a pub, or maybe on the head of someone much shorter than you. It’s also a much shorter game than its forebear, which is good, because if you enjoy the game, you’re going to need to play it lots of times.

Box of illusions

Cryptid: Urban Legends is a bit of a mystery in its own right. When you open the little box and take out a few pieces and a small number of cards, it looks simple. The rulebook is tiny and friendly-looking too. But there’s something about learning the game that is almost indescribably difficult. Not that it’s so difficult you’ll never understand it, more that it’s very hard to pin down exactly what is so difficult. I mean, there are three actions you can take in the entire game – what’s so difficult about that?

The difficulty is something which can only be overcome through repeated play. Its trickiness is the result of needing to understand your own win condition, your opponent’s, and how best to manipulate the space in front of you to win. I read parts of the rulebook three or four times while playing my first game, just to try to hammer home what I needed to do.

If you come into Urban Legends expecting a two-player, abstract, tug-of-war, I think you’re going to love it. If you’re expecting clues, a process of elimination, and some real gosh-darned deduction, you’re going to be disappointed. One thing’s for sure though, and that this game is an attractive little creature. The cubes and discs are irresistibly tactile, and Kwanchai Moriya’s artwork is – as always – fantastic.

Final thoughts

Cryptid: Urban Legends’ biggest problem is its name. A lot of people are going to see the name in online stores, think “Oh boy, more Cryptid!”, and feel a sense of disappointment. That’s a result of the original game being so good, and this new upstart being so fundamentally different to its parent. While Urban Legends isn’t a deduction game, what it is, is a fantastic two-player duel, which really rewards time invested in it.

It’s one of those games that feels like playing a classic, you know? They’re not great comparisons, but it’s like playing Chess, or Hive. It’s mano a mano abstract strategy, with a pretty coat of paint. The more you play, the more you learn, and the more you play against the same person, the bigger the meta game becomes. When you start being able to second-guess your opponent, it transforms from “How the hell do I play this?”, to “What’s that sneaky bugger up to this time??”.

The asymmetry, and the changing, randomised city cards add a nice feeling of freshness into Urban Legends, which is something I think will be more appealing to modern games fans. If you enjoyed something like Mr Jack Pocket, I think you’ll really enjoy this. I wasn’t remotely confident in what I was doing until at least five games in, and by way of levelling any skill imbalances, the Cryptid definitely feels more difficult to win as.

In summary, Cryptid: Urban Legends is a very clever, very tricky, two-player abstract puzzle. It’s very cheap, it looks great, it has a tiny footprint, and there’s an astonishing amount of strategy available for a game with three possible actions. It’s an easy recommendation if you have a regular player-two living with you, just don’t expect it to feel like Cryptid.

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

Cryptid: Urban Legends (2022)

Designers: Ruth Veevers, Hal Duncan
Publisher: Osprey Games
Art: Kwanchai Moriya
Players: 2
Playing time: 20-30 mins

The post Cryptid: Urban Legends Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Vast: The Mysterious Manor is Leder Games’ follow-up to 2016’s Vast: The Crystal Caverns. It follows in the same vein of being an asymmetric adventure for between one and five players, but does so with a few big tweaks. Gone is the sprawling crawl through the caves. Instead it’s a lock-in at Spooksville central – the mysterious manor.

Battle royale

Maybe it comes as no surprise to find that a Leder Games’ title is an asymmetric game, after all, they’ve got form. The first Vast game, Root (review here), Oath – as far as I’m concerned it’s Leder and GMT who are the masters of balanced asymmetry. The Mysterious Manor has a very different feel to something like Root, and it comes from the wildly differing goals each role has.

The paladin, macho bugger that he is, wants to kill the giant spider. The spider, however, wants to raise the terror level and then escape, leaving everyone else shaking in their boots. Then we’ve got the skeletons, tunnelling in from the manor’s grounds, raiding the armouries, and trying to take out the paladin. Then, there’s a mysterious warlock who can move through walls, and looks to curse and dominate the various treasures and poltergeists. Finally, you can play as the manor itself, through its manifestation, the wraith. If the manor performs enough rituals, it wins.

Root has different ways to play and gain VPs, but the players are all racing along the same track to win. In Vast: The Mysterious Manor, the wildly different goals really make it feel like you’re playing as your characters, not just trying to be the first to a number. I found it adds to the immersion and experience, and gives the game a really tense, exciting feel.

Forewarned is forearmed

The biggest problem with The Mysterious Manor is the same one that’s evident in every asymmetric game I’ve played: It’s very difficult to play well if you aren’t familiar with all of the other characters in your game. There’s nothing that can be done about it, it’s the price to pay if you want a game in that style with any level of depth to it. This is a bit of a non-issue after your first game, but it’s worth bearing in mind for your first game, if you’re playing with people who’ve no idea about it.

Each player gets a great player aid, and I love the player boards. Each role’s turns are explained really clearly on each one, and it means if you don’t play for a while, you can play again without needing to re-read the rules. It’s great for playing an unfamiliar character too.

Understanding the rock-paper-scissors interaction of the roles makes for a really tight game. In true “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” style, you’ll find yourself racing to help others when it looks like a player is close to winning. Is the paladin one hit away from finishing off the spider? No worries, the manor can rearrange the tiles on the board. This kind of interaction means that I’ve not played a single game yet where one player has raced away with the win.

Something for everyone

The different characters in Vast: The Mysterious Manor do something really clever. Each plays so differently, and some are more complicated than others to play effectively. If you play a game of Root with less-experienced board game player, you’d probably give them the Cats, as they’re the most intuitive to understand. In the same way, in The Mysterious Manor, they’ll probably play as the Paladin first, for the same reason.

While Root feels like a war game though, this game doesn’t. If you’ve got a member of your group who doesn’t like games where players attack one another, teach them how to play as the Manor. The Manor’s goal is basically a series of spatial puzzles, which has them moving tiles and trying to create polyomino shapes, more reminiscent of games like Patchwork and Silver & Gold.

I love how this game still plays really well with differing player counts. It’s undeniably best with four or five players, but a two-player stand-off between the paladin and spider is still great fun. There are some combinations of roles that just don’t work with smaller play counts, but the rule book explains which combinations do.

Final thoughts

Vast: The Mysterious Manor’s biggest problems are always going to be Root and Oath. They’re both incredible games, but that fanfare leaves Vast like the last kid to get picked for a team in P.E. It’s a real shame too, because The Mysterious Manor is a brilliant game. I think I might even prefer it to Root.

It does some really wonderful things. The enclosed manor board really makes it feel like you’re stuck in a haunted house. The theme permeates everything in the game too. The way the giant spider can split into several spiderlings and scatter, then reform at any of those new locations is great. The Warlock can ignore walls and float about at his leisure, and the army of skeletons lay the house under siege and sneak in for weapons and attacks. You’ll initially feel like the paladin is the hero of the game, the main protagonist, but you quickly feel like everyone else has their own good reason to win too.

Your first few games will feel clunky, but just ploughing on rewards you with a terrific game, laced with fleeting alliances and tons of ‘Oh wow!’ moments, when someone’s turn flips the game on its head. I urge you not to assume Vast: The Mysterious Manor as Root’s poorer sibling. It’s so much fun, and so well balanced. There’s a ton of life and replay in the box, and it deserves more love. Get your spooky on, and venture into the haunted house, you won’t regret it.

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

Vast: The Mysterious Manor (2019)

Designer: Patrick Leder
Publisher: Leder Games
Art: Kyle Ferrin
Players: 1-5
Playing time: 60-120 mins

The post Vast: The Mysterious Manor Review appeared first on Punchboard.