You cool with Nazgûl?

One player is the Fellowship, trying to get The One Ring to Mount Doom to destroy it, while the other is Sauron, commanding his dark forces to stop them in their tracks. In practice the game wouldn’t feel like that at all, were it not for the funky little plastic ‘Quest of the ring’ track that comes in the box. Collecting blue cards with their ring emblems pushes Sam and Frodo along the track towards Mordor if you’re the Fellowship, or the Black Riders in hot pursuit if you’re Sauron.

The Quest of the ring track is one of three different ways to end the game immediately, which means you’ve got to keep your head on a swivel. The closest comparator is the military track in 7W:D, the biggest difference being that whenever the Fellowship advances, they drag the Nazgûl with them, meaning the gap only ever gets smaller. The green cards represent the different races in Middle-earth. Collect six of them, thematically getting their support, and the game ends immediately too. The third and final instant win condition is something entirely new and very different feeling for this series of games.

There and back again

Duel for Middle-earth has a little board representing the world. There are seven interlinked spaces representing everywhere from Rohan to Mordor, and some cards and actions allow you to add units to the board and move them from pillar to post. When opposing units come together, there’s a big ol’ scrap and each loses one at the same time until somebody has nothing left in the space, thereby losing control of it.

Another big difference is the absence of the titular Wonders from the previous games. Instead, we have Fortresses now. Building them is largely the same as in the previous game, but this time completing one lets you pop one of your little wooden fortress pieces on the matching map space, permanently giving you presence there. If either player manages to have a presence on all seven spaces on the map, they instantly win.

I really like the map. It adds a bit more spice to the game which I never realised was missing in 7W:D until I played this game. It’s not just the quasi-area control it adds, either. I like that fortresses are never removed, meaning there’s a good reason to devote your resources and coins towards building them early. It’s a real exercise in plate-spinning, trying to work towards dominating at least one of the three routes to victory while not neglecting something your opponent is working towards. Having three to keep an eye on is great, it’s really reminiscent of something you’d expect in a Reiner Knizia game, like Lost Cities. Not having an even split per player means there’s always a bit of a tussle over at least one of them, which is great.

“The wise speak only of what they know”

If you’ve played 7 Wonders Duel, most of the rest of the game will be immediately familiar to you. The game is split into three rounds, each seeing its cards arranged in patterns on the table. You either take a card and add it to your tableau, paying any due costs, or discard it for coins. Gone are resources on collected cards, instead we’re dealing with skills. Functionally it’s exactly the same thing though. If your played cards provide enough symbols to play a card, you can play it, making up any difference in coins.

You can still chain cards too. If a card from a previous round provides a symbol seen on a later card, you get to play it for free. It’s a really easy game to teach from this perspective. Any time you’re asked “Can I play this card?” you can answer with “Do you have those symbols visible on those cards in front of you?”, and the concept takes root very quickly.

In short, if you’ve played the previous 7 Wonders games then you’ll immediately understand the mechanisms that drive the game. Taking a turn feels the same. Growing your tableau feels the same. Planning for the future feels the same. The biggest diversion is what you do with the things your gameplay creates. It’s not a case of swinging the military in your favour. The Wonders are replaced with fortresses which don’t feel as important, even though they play an important role. There’s no competition between players between rounds based on military strength. It’s about keeping an eye on three different dials and making sure the needles don’t top out in the red unless you’re the one pushing it there.

Final thoughts

In my opinion, Duel for Middle-earth is the high point in the 7 Wonders line. I like some of the expansions for the original games, but those games are better once the expansions are included. In terms of a game, sans expansions, in a small box, The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth is the best. I’m surprised to find myself writing that because when someone takes an existing game and forces it into a spandex fancy dress costume from a popular franchise, it’s an immediate turn-off for me. You can keep your Marvel and Cthulhu cash-ins, it does nothing for me. Yet here I am singing the praises of a game I love that’s wearing Tolkien’s fantasy garb.

The artwork and illustrations are gorgeous throughout, and the rulebook makes things very clear. It’s entirely possible for two non-gamers to buy this hobbity box and learn the game without watching a video. The drama of seeing what cards are revealed when you uncover them is just as exciting as it was in 7W:D, but the variations on a theme of the original game lift it and make it feel fresh and new. As well as the things I’ve mentioned above, there’s a nice little set-collection bonus built-in with the green cards, letting you collect shield tokens with different one-time bonuses.

The Quest of the Ring plastic track is extremely gimmicky, but you know what? I like it. It’s silly and fun and surprisingly dramatic. Sliding a piece of plastic with a horse drawn on it shouldn’t feel as dramatic as it does. It boils down to this. If you’ve never played the 7 Wonders games and want a quick, easy-to-learn, two-player game, get this. If you’ve already got 7 Wonders Duel and don’t know whether to get this too, it’s a little trickier, but I’d still say yes. It’s about 20 quid, it’s got a bit more going on, and obviously it’s Lord of the Rings. If you like LOTR, then yeah, get this. If you don’t then maaaaybe you could skip this, but it’s still the best of the bunch. This game, along with Watergate (review here) are my favourite small box two-player duelling games right now.

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.

The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth (2024)

Design: Antoine Bauza, Bruno Cathala
Publisher: Repos Production
Art: Vincent Dutrait
Players: 2
Playing time: 30-45 mins

The post The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Those of you who don’t like reading too much will be pleased to know this is going to be a short review, but one which carries as much opinion as ever.

Flower power

Lacuna comes in a cardboard tube. A bit like a big tube of Pringles, but with far fewer calories. I mean, probably, I’ve not studied the nutritional values of wooden flowers, of which there are loads. Flowers are in groups of colours (with different shapes and patterns too, colour-blind players) and at the start of the game they’re sprinkled from the tube on the included cloth. The aim is to spread them across the whole area, and it’s an action not akin to shaking salt on an icy driveway, or fish and chips. It’s an innately enjoyable thing to do, and while it feels like it’s prone to flowers bouncing off the table, never to be seen again, the publishers thankfully saw fit to include some spares. Hurrah!

The game from there is dead easy. Take one of your metal pawns (which feel weighty and gloriously tactile) and put it somewhere between two matching flowers. The only rule is there can’t be anything else along that imaginary line, be it another flower or another player piece. You then pick up the two flowers you intersected and add them to your pile of claimed flowers.

Play continues over the next few minutes until both players have placed all of their pawns. Then we get to the fun bit. The meaty bit. The bit which really makes Lacuna sing and makes you want to say “Okay, okay, I get it now, let’s set it up again and play another.”

Proximal approximations

After all the pawns are out on the cloth playfield and the initial flowers are in neat little stacks beside each player (or a jumbled mess – which type are you?) you both work your way through all the remaining flowers on the table and decide who has one of their pieces closest to it. That person claims the flower and adds it to their collection. As you might guess, sometimes it’s a very close-run thing, which is why there’s a ruler included in the tube. Despite the measuring device being given to you, you’ll still have the occasional disagreement, but that’s okay.

Once every flower has been considered and claimed, the winner is the person who has the majority of the flowers in each colour is considered to have won that colour. The person who wins the most colours wins the game. That’s all there is to the game. Place six pawns each, pick up the flowers and see who won.

Despite the simple gameplay there’s a wonderful, nuanced level of depth to Lacuna. Not to the levels of something like Chess or Go, but enough to make you come back time and again. There’s a surprising amount of strategy involved. Take the act of placing a pawn for example. It can go anywhere along the imaginary line between two flowers to claim them, so you might put your pawn right at the very end, knowing that it sets you up nicely to claim a cluster of nearby flowers at the end of the game, for being the closest.

Wouldn’t you just know it though, your opponent does everything in their power to claim that little posie you had your eye on, so by the end of the game you’re left with a scant single daisy, instead of the bouquet you had your heart set on. You’ll also start noticing what colours the other player has claimed. Once they claim four of one (there are six flowers per colour) type, there’s no point in claiming that colour any more, because you can never win it. Set your sights elsewhere instead and see if you can make it work for you. Simple concepts you can explain to anyone, but ones which feel clever when you employ them.

Final thoughts

Like I said at the outset, this was never going to be a long review. It’s a quick, easy, wonderfully accessible game suitable for just about anyone. What Lacuna does so well is to build on its novelty factors to transform it from just another two-player abstract game, to something that you’ll return to again and again. There are so many clever design concepts used to make sure that’s the case.

The cylindrical ‘box’ means it’s never going to get lost in a sea of rectangles on your shelf. The cloth playmat can just be scrunched-up and stuffed back inside afterwards. Sprinkling the flowers from the tube to perform game setup is enjoyable. The metal pawns are hefty and fun just to hold. All these little things combine to make a game whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If it was the same game but used cardboard chits on a board, it would still have been enjoyable, but nowhere near as joyful to play, and that’s an unusual idea for me to wrap my head around.

Lacuna is a hit with my family and with anyone I’ve ever introduced to it. Will it be the main course of your games night? Probably not. Will it be the quick filler you return to again and again, or the post-Christmas dinner fuel for family interaction on the dining table? Absolutely. Lacuna is a joyful, simple, beautiful game which I’d argue deserves a spot in anybody’s collection for the £20 it’ll cost you.

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

Lacuna (2023)

Design: Mark Gerrits
Publisher: CMYK
Art: Nick Liefhebber
Players: 2
Playing time: 10 mins

The post Lacuna Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Here comes a new challenger!

Playing Fatal Knockout is pretty easy. Each character in the game has their own deck of cards with unique actions, and their own standee that goes on the… well, I guess you’d call it a stage. I’ve played using a prototype copy of the game which uses a totally unique box. The box is actually three boxes: two thin boxes for all the cards and tokens, and a larger covering box to keep it all together. When you play the game, the bigger box flips on its side to double as a background, and one of the thin boxes acts as a stage for the fight. It’s a novel, thematic touch, which I like.

Turns consist of playing a card face-up, and maybe others face-down, before flipping them over and resolving them in numeric order of initiative. Yes, just like Gloomhaven. The cards also have a top and bottom action on them, again like Gloomhaven. Not that there’s anything wrong with using a system like that. On the contrary, in fact, giving players a familiar mechanism to play with can only help when it comes to people learning to play something new. The fact that you can see the first step in someone’s plan (the face-up card) is neat. Are they giving you a sign of what’s to come? Or a bluff? Or a double-bluff??

The actions on the cards do things like move you back and forth across the stage, attack, or add a shield (think of it like blocking in a video game). You use these actions to manipulate both your and your opponent’s positions on the stage, trying to set things up in a way which works best for your character. The Gunslinger likes to use his gun at range, while the grappler likes to get up close and personal, before tossing you around like a bin bag on bin day. All of the actions are super-easy to understand, thanks in no small part to the limited and distinct iconography in the game. It’s a real asset to Fatal Knockout to keep things simple in this way, because there’s nothing worse in a game that’s meant to trot along at pace, than having to stop and consult a rulebook every five minutes.

Duel 1: Let’s rock!

In the days since the Fatal Fury and Street Fighter franchises took off, beat-em-ups have evolved. Most modern fighters have a few characters that play quite ‘vanilla’ and basic, and others who have unique mechanisms. Fatal Knockout mirrors this evolution with characters with varying levels of complexity, and some which have their own something special to set them apart. I already mentioned the Gunslinger. He needs to use his unique bullet tokens to carry out certain actions. The same is true of the Guitarist who uses various different coloured note tokens to do similar things. I like this, it’s a nice touch and a nod to games like Guilty Gear and Smash Bros.

If you’re used to having various meters to build up during a fight, you’ll be happy to see that mechanism employed too. The cards you play on your turns have varying amounts of meter that they fill, and building meter grants you things like shields, and the ability to perform certain moves. Ultimately though, if you take too much damage, you die. I say ‘die’ just because the game is called Fatal Knockout, which sounds pretty final to me!

You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance

Fighting game tabletop fans might be champing at the bit right now, desperate to tell me that this isn’t the first time fighting games have been made analogue. Calm down folks, I know. There are loads of lesser-known fighting games, but a couple of bigger titles spring to mind. Street Masters came out a few years back, but it feels more like a brawler game, like Final Fight or Streets of Rage. The Exceed fighting system is the big one though, and it’s always going to be Fatal Knockout’s biggest competition. I learned Exceed back in 2019, and while it’s great and has some fantastic licences (Shovel Knight, Street Figher, BlazBlue to name a few), it’s trickier to do well at. A good Exceed player is always going to destroy a newbie.

Fatal Knockout feels easier to get to grips with, and even a new player can hope to leave a few bruises on an experienced player. This matters. Fatal Knockout isn’t a system in the same way that Exceed is, which means you can buy a box and have fun with it without worrying about picking up more and more expansion packs. More fighters might well come, I’d expect it if the game does well, but it’s not the same expectation as Exceed. The two games play fairly differently too, which is surprising given that they both employ cards for actions, and the idea of jockeying for position on a track. Fatal Knockout doesn’t lean on the same rock-paper-scissors central mechanism that Exceed does. It’s neither better nor worse, just different.

Final thoughts

I like Fatal Knockout. I was always going to like it, it’s a 2D fighting game, but I ended up liking it more on its own merits than for being a nostalgia-fest. I really like the Gloomhaven-style cardplay and the twists and turns it adds. The look on the other player’s face when you move before them, taking you out of range of some hideous throw they were about to, is glorious. I really like the fact that it’s so easy to teach and pick up, because this is a game which will visually and thematically appeal to video game fans. If you’ve got friends like some of the friends I have, you’re all-too-familiar with the eye-rolling that ensues when you start explaining the rules of a game. Fatal Knockout’s simple ruleset doesn’t do this, which is great.

The artwork is very stylistic, and possibly a little too simple? I’m not sure. I know it’s trying to replicate that 16-bit era, but I’d like to see some more detail in the fighters. There’s a lot of white everywhere. I think maybe I’m expecting either pixel art or the illustrations from game artwork, and this is somewhere in between. Remember though, I’m playing a prototype, so all artwork, components, and rules are subject to change.

All in all, Fatal Knockout is a great package, with a low barrier to entry. The quick and easy teach is great, and I love that the booklets give you an idea of how each character plays. Newbies can choose a fighter that’s easier to learn, and once you get the hang of it you can learn those with a bit more nuance to their move-set. The biggest difficulty it’s going to face is going up against Exceed and its licences with the big names in fighting games. But at the right price point, Fatal Knockout delivers an all-in-one, mano-a-mano slugfest, rich with fighting game theme.

Preview copy provided by Crab Studios. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Fatal Knockout (2023)

Designer: Niall Crabtree
Publisher: Crab Studios
Art: Fodsley
Players: 2
Playing time: 5-20 mins

The post Fatal Knockout Preview 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.

“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.

Pointing and painting

If you’ve been into board games for a while, there’s a chance you’ve heard of Basilica before. When it was originally released in 2010 it was warmly received, but failed to make a big splash. For this revised version Portal have given the game a little bit of a spruce up, but the core mechanisms are the same. Even the tile artwork remains unchanged.

The idea of the game is to help build a cathedral between the two of you, taking actions, placing builders, and trying to make the most of the colourful ceilings. You do it by placing a succession of square tiles into one of the five columns on offer, trying to create areas of contiguous colours. If you’ve got more builders in a coloured area than your opponent, you control it, and you get the points when scoring is triggered.

There are two rows of three tiles in the market area. If you take one from the top row you carry out the action on it e.g. place a builder, upgrade one, move a builder. If you take a coloured one from the bottom row you add it to the other tiles, making the cathedral bigger. Any time a coloured tile is taken, the action tile above it flips over, taking its place. If it sounds simple, it’s because it is. Turns are fast and fluid, and there’s nothing obfuscated or overly complicated. It’s perfect for a two-player-only game, where mind games are meant to take centre stage.

Cowboy builder

Let’s get the niggles out of the way first. First is the theme, which is as thin as a partition wall. There’s no feeling of constructing a cathedral at all. This is an abstract game at heart, and any number of themes could have been applied just as easily. Adding flowers to a garden, building a disco floor, or making stained glass windows would have worked just as well. It doesn’t really matter when you get down to brass tacks – it’s just an abstract game that didn’t want to be naked.

The other thing I find frustrating is a practical problem more than a setting or aesthetic one. The two rows of tiles sit in gaps on either side of a centre cardboard bar. The problem is that the gaps only just fit three tiles side-by-side, and when you either take one, flip one to the bottom row, or add a fresh one to the top row, it’s almost impossible to not mess the display up. The original version of Basilica had both rows sat on top of a board, which – although prone to tiles moving – is still preferable to having the whole display and the tiles moving.

Fortunately, those are the only negatives I have with Basilica, and the game itself more than makes up for those shortcomings.

Master mason

The competition over control of areas in Basilica is great. It’s like someone played Carcassonne, loved the Farmer scoring mechanism from it, and decided to make a whole game from it. There are times when you’re sitting pretty, your builders commanding a sea of tiles, and it feels like you’ve got the game in the bag, only for the other player to bring your glorious vaulted ceilings crashing down around you.

There are actions which let you slide builders from one tile to an adjacent one, which can completely swing the board state. The Confuse action lets you take one of your builders back off the tiles, into your supply, while moving an opposing builder to another tile, whereas Disaster actions let you completely remove a tile. The way things swing back and forth is a lot of fun, and it never devolves into complete chaos.

There’s a really clever feature which gives each player a coin to begin with. Most of the actions available have an optional paid action that the inactive player can do, either benefitting from the same action or mitigating the ill effects of others. To take one of these paid actions, that player has to give the other person their coin, giving that person twice the spending power they had before. It’s a really clever idea, and I love the bitter taste of money not going to the supply, but instead to the last person in the world you want to have it.

The two-colour tiles are another little piece of genius that blow the whole game open. There are times when you’ll drop one on the table, linking two previously unconnected areas, and dominating them with builders who otherwise would have had no influence. Again, none of these situations is unforeseeable. Everything is right there, on the table, in plain sight, so when something goes wrong for you, you’ve no one to blame but yourself and your own magnificent ineptitude.

Final thoughts

Basilica finds itself in a pigeonhole I happen to be a big fan of: tactical, rules-light, two-player games full of interaction. I’ve reviewed Targi and Watergate here before, and both have permanent places in my collection. Basilica is another example of how to make a two-player game well. The tile holder/board thing does annoy me, but it’s far from a show-stopper. I just don’t play with it at all now.

Elbowing one another out of the way, actions full of spite, and glorious gloating might not actually sound like a recipe for friendship. In fact, now that I write it, it really isn’t, is it? But between friends, or even better, partners, it’s great. There’s something therapeutic about having an hour put aside to engage in something so competitive with someone you know. Games where you can directly screw someone over, don’t make for good icebreakers with people you don’t know.

There’s a small expansion included which adds a new type of tile, and it offers enough variety to spice things up a bit, without making it any more complicated. Honestly, after playing the base game once or twice, I’d suggest adding the expansion every time you play. My wife isn’t the biggest gamer in the world, but even she was saying how much she was enjoying it during our first play, which makes it a winner in my book. Basilica is a great choice if two-player games are your thing, and you’re looking for something to add to the likes of 7 Wonders: Duel in your collection. I just hope it doesn’t get lost in the Essen noise.

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

Basilica (2022)

Designer: Łukasz M. Pogoda
Publisher: Portal Games
Art: Juan Pablo Fuentes Ruiz
Players: 2
Playing time: 45 mins

The post Basilica Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Designer and self-publisher, Ben Downton (aka Prometheus Game Labs) has created a teeny-tiny little game which promises to give the same experience as a proper big-boy game. The board is tiny, the chits are tiny, and the money’s so small it puts Nusfjord to shame. There’s a good reason for this though. With the international shipping crisis what it is, and costs rising, it means you can get this through your door, internationally, at very little cost.

The question is – do you want Micro Dojo dropping through your letterbox?

Every day I’m shuffling

Not cards in this instance, the shuffling here refers to the way you move around the board. There are four characters/meeples on the 3×3 grid, and on a turn you move one, and carry out the action on the space it moves to. You might get some resources, build a building, or carry out an action or two. Sounds simple enough, but where the game gets its bite is in the fact that you cannot move a meeple that either you or your opponent moved on your last turns.

As well as picking from your restricted options, there’s a really clever bit of forward planning going on. When you move someone to a new space, you open up a space for the other player, and some of the spaces are much better than others. The centre square is the one everyone wants, because it grants you two (two!) actions, whereas the corner squares do things like give you one food, or one coin. Rubbish!

It feels tight and congested on the board, and the clever rules for moving previously-moved pieces works so well. It’s possible to force your opponent into really sub-optimal turns, which then free up something you really want, just to really twist the blade. It’s really nice to play another game that’s designed solely for two players. There’s a solo mode in the box envelope, which is good, but this is a game that is best played mano-a-mano.

Small margins

VPs are tight in Micro Dojo. Getting seven VPs triggers the end of the game, and there’s no hidden information. The randomly-chosen objectives start off worth one VP each, and end up worth three as you work through them. Scoring an objective is a standard action, and they’re clever point-in-time things. You might win one for having the most food and money when it’s triggered, or having spend the most money on buildings. You both know which objective is next, and you both know which of you would win it, so it’s a case of jockeying for an action space to claim it.

The random objectives, and random buildings that go along with them, mean that every game feels different. It’s the epitome of passive interaction. You can’t directly do something to another player, but indirectly you’re blocking spaces, hoarding resources you know will win you the next objective. It’s got that nice edge to it, in the same way something like Targi does, but in a much smaller, and quicker, package.

I get the impression that if you played this too often against the same person, you could get into a state of being able to practically mind-read the other person, which could sap some of the fun out of it. There’s only so many ways to move on a 3×3 board which doesn’t change, so it’s only really the buildings on offer and the objectives which change. Hmm, if only there was some way to change that… Oh wait, there is!

Loyalty & Deceit Expansion

Loyalty & Deceit takes the base game of Micro Dojo and improves it in every way. As the name implies, there are two additional paths open to you now. One clan, the blue, offers lots more chances to earn points and convert one thing into another, whereas the red clan moves the game into the realms of direct interaction. You can do things with the red buildings like force the other person to lose VPs, or steal resources. The concept might be more Chinese than Japanese, but the two clans have a very yin-yang feel to them.

One of the new actions allows you to increase your loyalty with either clan, shifting your marker up one side of the new overly frame for the main board. Each side has actions and building abilities available if you climb high enough in them, but in a game that doesn’t last too long, you need to decide where your loyalties lie early in the game.

The other big change is the introduction of tiles to overlay on the main board, which means the layout can change every time you play. This is great news, as it really alleviated my main worry about the game getting stale. There’s even a set of cards included with suggested setups, each leading to a different feeling for the game. Flip the frame over, and there’s a longer version of the game which goes up to nine VPs.

Final thoughts

Micro Dojo delivers what it says it does. It’s a proper (for want of a better word) game, in a very small package. I love it when games are designed for just two players, as there’s nothing else for the designer to factor in. No compromises or changes for more or fewer players, just something refined for a duel. It’s light enough to teach to just about anyone, and after a single game most people will be on an even footing. It proves, once again, that a limited choice of options doesn’t equal a lack of room for strategy.

While the base game is fun, and very enjoyable, the way to play it really is with Loyalty & Deceit added. There’s just a bit more to think about, more things to do, and I really enjoy the abilities which affect the other player. Two-player games should have a little bite to them, and bite is precisely what the expansion adds. The ability to change which tiles are on the board really opened the game up for me too, it’s done a lot to keep the game fresh.

Is it going to replace your board games? No. Is it going to impress anyone who sees it on a table at a convention? Probably not. But to have an option that packs this much game into something you can stick in your jacket pocket and take to the pub, or train, or just about anywhere – is fantastic. As I write this, you can get the base game, expansion, fancy triple-layer boards, eight wooden meeples, and some collector boxes to keep it all in, for £20 + shipping. It’s an absolute bargain for what it is, and the Kickstarter campaign is running right now.

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

Micro Dojo (2021)

Designer: Ben Downton
Publisher: Prometheus Game Labs
Art: Ben Downton
Players: 2
Playing time: 20 mins

The post Micro Dojo and Loyalty & Deceit Expansion Review appeared first on Punchboard.

I’m going to kick-off this review by saying that Canopy is gorgeous. I know, I know, the art doesn’t matter if the game is great (looking at you here, Gaia Project), but the rainforest is meant to be beautiful, and full of colour. Artist Vincent Dutrait has done a fantastic job of recreating the hues and romanticised imagery of the rainforest I was hoping to see. It’s a game of gradual tableau-building, but with a fantastic mechanism that’s new to me, and really appeals to that part of my brain that likes to push its luck.

Sneaky peeks

Between the players there’s a row of cards representing new growth. It’s a forest after all, stuff grows. Cards from the current season’s deck get placed into slots numbered 1-3 of the new growth, and then comes the fun. On your turn, you pick up all of the cards in slot one, decide if they complement what you’re going for, then either claim them and stop, or put them back down, and add an unseen card to the pile. Then you move onto the next pile, and do the same. It means there’s this wonderful situation that’s constantly playing out, whereby you know exactly what the other player is going to pick up if you pass, plus an extra card. But what if that extra card I haven’t seen is amazing?!

This pick-or-pass mechanism is great, it adds a layer of tension, similar to getting to 16 in a hand of Blackjack having to decide whether to stick or twist. Fortune favours the brave… or does it? I really enjoy this method of drafting cards into my own little rainforest, the choice of what I include or exclude feels very personal. It means that whether I do well or not depends on how well I choose my cards, how much attention I’m paying to my opponent, and this little bit of chance from the unseen cards. I hate pure luck determining a game, and I don’t always like perfect information in games, as it can lead to a lot of AP. Canopy has the perfect blend.

The best laid plans

Most of the scoring opportunities in Canopy are constructed around future planning. Different plants have very different scoring mechanisms, and the creatures you bring to your jungle paradise don’t get scored until the third, and final, round. Your tableau of cards is there on the table, so the other player can see exactly what you’re trying to score with. This can lead to something I really like in games – being forced to take the least-worst option.

It tends to happen towards the end of a season, when both players have a good idea of what’s left on the table, waiting to be claimed. Take the beautiful Bromelia for example. Having two of them in front of you scores you 7 VPs. If you take a third, however, it’s now worth -3 instead, and your opponent knows it. The same applies with things like the fire cards. Having two of them is bad news for you, and you’ll lose two plants. Stoke that fire with a third card though, and you both lose one card instead.

Canopy is stuffed full of tricky decisions like this the whole way through. Nothing that can completely swing the game with a solitary card, but you need to build in plenty of mitigation for when your opponent forces you to pick up something you didn’t want. There’s this constant back and forth which is really engaging, and a lot of fun. Intermediate scoring after the first two rounds means you don’t get to the end of the game with no idea how well you did, in the way games like Concordia spring it on you.

Final thoughts

I’ve got a carefully curated collection of two-player games. The majority of the time I get to play a game, it’s with one other person, so I want the experience to be as much fun as possible. I’ve added Canopy to the collection, because it’s a great game which feels different to most of the others it now sits alongside (my favourite two-player games are here by the way).

For a two-player card game, it takes up quite a bit of space on the table, but that’s no bad thing, as it looks gorgeous. The rules are really simple to understand, the game moves fast, and it all (just about) fits in a really small box. If you enjoy it, I’d recommend sleeving the cards. There’s a lot of shuffling during setup, and the majority of the game revolves around picking some cards up off the table, looking at them, putting them back down, then repeating with the next pile. The cardstock is really good, but I can imagine it could start to wear after a while.

I normally like to add some caveats in my reviews, because not every game is for everyone, but I’m finding it hard to really come up with any for Canopy. It’s a game you’ll be able to pick up for a shade over £20, it’s got a ton of different cards, plays out in half an hour, and I’m honestly not sure who could find the theme offensive. Maybe if you got savaged by a tree frog as a child or something? Tim Eisner has put together a cracking little game in Canopy, that I have no hesitation in recommending.

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

Canopy (2021)

Designer: Tim Eisner
Publisher: Weird City Games
Art: Vincent Dutrait
Players: 2
Playing time: 30 mins

The post Canopy Review appeared first on Punchboard.

It’s just a phase

Playing Godtear is much easier than the thick rulebook would have you believe at first glance. You’ll either move, reinstate a fallen comrade, or use one of the skills on your characters’ cards. That really is all there is to it. The rub, of course, comes in how exactly you choose to use those abilities.

I like the way turns take place. There are two distinct phases to every turn. In the first part, each player usually positions their forces on the battlefield, and may use a skill or two to buff their allies. The second phase sees each player taking turns to move units and attack, instead of moving all of them at once. The distinction between the two won’t become clear until your first game, but you’ll some come to appreciate the tactical nuance of the preparation part, which is known as the Plot Phase. It’s like gangs squaring up against one another in West Side Story – or Anchorman, depending on your frame of reference.

The second – or Clash – phase comes next, and it’s where the best-laid plans come unwound. It’s equal parts planning and improvisation, because you can almost guarantee things won’t happen the way you expect them to. Units get dispersed, Champions fall, and people place their banners on the Godtear objective spaces, which is where the big points come from. Whether those points translate into VPs is another matter.

Tug o’ war

VPs in Godtear don’t come from knocking lumps out of the other player. Each round of the battle is a tug of war, trying to move the turn token closer to your end of the ladder on the side of the board. Some actions might only move it one space towards you – eliminating an enemy model for example. Finishing the turn with your banner on an objective space though, and there’s four steps up for grabs.

If you end the round with the token on your side of the ladder, you claim it and flip it, and claim the VPs on the back of it. The points for the middle rounds are worth more than the start and the end, which gives you plenty of opportunity to come up with all manner of plotting and scheming. It’s a really nice system, and it’s something I haven’t come across before. It’s a nice twist on the usual battling systems where you’re either looking to kill everything, control the map, or a bit of both.

The wildly different asymmetry of the different warbands makes things really interesting. Some have small units with the intention of swarming the enemy, whereas some focus on defense and controlling the banners. While it leads to some really interesting match-ups, it means you’re unable to play effectively unless you’re familiar with your warbands, and those of your opponent. If you aren’t, you’ll get thumped by someone with experience. Godtear is a game you need to get into in order to do well.

Room to grow

Godtear is as much a system as it is a game. With the starter sets you get a couple of warbands, a double-sided board, and all the tokens and dice you need to play. Expanding your game comes in the form of buying new standalone warbands, which all come with a champion, units, a banner, and the skill cards they need. They’re reasonably expensive, at £24.99 a throw, but its still cheaper than big-box expansions.

If you’re wondering why you might want lots of warbands, it’s because games aren’t limited to one squad squaring-up against another. Each player can have up to four groups of champions and followers to make up their army, but I’d probably go for no more than three. It leads to a really packed, tense battlefield, but for every extra group each player controls, the amount of thinking and the length of the game grows exponentially.

I really like the idea of combining sets and controlling huge warbands, but I think to get the most from it, it needs to be your kind of game. Needing to know what each different champion and group of followers can do, and how best to counter them, is a big undertaking. Personally I find it stressful, and I find myself over-analysing every single move, just like I did with Spirit Island. Your mileage may vary.

Final thoughts

There’s a lot to like about Godtear. It’s clearly had a lot of time and care lavished on it, from the gorgeous minis, to the balance between very different units. I’m particularly fond of the need to only buy one starter set to have everything you need to play. The idea is clearly for players to build up collections of champions and units, learn how best to use them, then see how you fare on the battlefield.

It could be pretty costly to build up a big collection, but then that’s true of any mini-based battle system. Personally, I like the fact that combat is dice-based. They’re custom dice which are loaded in such a way that not too much randomness is introduced, but just enough to give you tricky choices to make at time. Weighing up your options and deciding whether to take a chance is a great feeling for me, but purists who want perfect information might not like it.

If you think your group would like this sort of game, I think Godtear is a great option. The biggest problem Godtear has, is making a dent in a crowded market. There’s a lot of competition out there from the likes of Super Fantasy Brawl, Mythic Battle Pantheon, and Steamforged’s own Skytear, to name just a few. I haven’t played those games yet, so I can’t comment as to how Godtear compares, but what I can tell you is that it’s a streamlined, fast-playing skirmish game which I’ve really enjoyed. The non-linear scoring with the apex coming halfway through the battle is a nice touch, the components are gorgeous, and it’s a very easy teach. I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a tabletop skirmish session.

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

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

Godtear (2019)

Designer: David Carl, Alex Hall, Steve Margetson
Publisher: Steamforged Games Ltd
Art: Thomas Lishman, Doug Telford
Players: 2
Playing time: 60-120 mins

The post Godtear Review appeared first on Punchboard.