I’m a big fan of a publisher taking an established game and making a smaller, portable version of it. Being able to take games like that on holiday, on the train, or even just to the pub for an hour is a real boon. Qawale Mini manages to do just that. It’s the same game you might already know and love, but smaller.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of negative points to consider when you’re deciding whether it should join you backpacking around Europe, or down at the Dog and Duck for a swift jar or two on a Tuesday night.

Stone me! That’s easy

Qawale takes all of two minutes to explain to someone. On your turn you take one of your stones (or wooden pebbles as they are in reality) and put it on top of any other stack on the board, even if it’s just a stack of one. Then you pick that stack up, move around the board orthogonally, dropping a stone from the bottom of the stack onto each space as you go. Possibly filling blank spaces, possibly covering other stones. If you make four in a row of your colour, you win. Go you! Ring your mum and tell her the good news.

Each space on the board is actually a little raised bump with a flat top. It not only makes the game more interesting to look at, but serves a practical purpose too. Because each stack is raised off the board, it makes it easier to get your fingertips under the bottom stone to pick the stack up. It’s a clever bit of the game’s development which I admire.

The board itself is only 4×4, and it means that games don’t last long. You’ve only got 8 stones each, so there’s a maximum of 16 turns in a game, but in reality, you’ll normally finish with a winner before that happens. It reminds me of games like Kamisado, which I previously reviewed. Play the game, win or lose, and setup again a few minutes later. Games like that are great. They never outstay their welcome and give you the chance to try to adapt your strategy again straight away. Qawale is fast, easy, and a lot of fun.

But…

There are a couple of sticking points which, while not enough for me to not recommend the game to you, are things you need to consider. First of all you’ve got the smaller size to contend with. The wooden stones are smaller and lighter than their full-size counterparts which makes them far easier to knock over. They’ve got a lovely sheen on them, but it reduces the friction to a point where the slightest nudge can knock a stack over. If that falling stack knocks over another, forget about it. There’s no way you’ll remember exactly what was where, and in what order. Comparing Qawale Mini to its big brother is like having a stack of Mini Cheddars next to a stack of Rich Tea biscuits. Which is more stable?

This might be a non-issue for you. I’ve got great big strangler’s hands, however, which turns playing Qawale Mini into a mixture of abstract and dexterity all in the same game. The diminutive size of everything also means the whole game is more susceptible to being ruined if someone bumps into your table, or plonks a bowl of chips down next to your pints. It’s not the end of the world, it only takes a few seconds to set up again, but it can be very frustrating.

The other issue I’ve come across is the colours in the game. One player has the light stones, which are nearly white, and the other has the dark stones, which are a dark teak colour. There’s a third set of stones on the board, the neutral ones, which populate the board to get the game going and to later act as blockers, and all-around nuisance pieces. These neutral pieces are a sort of tan colour, and if you’re playing in dim or warm-white lighting they become almost impossible to tell distinguish from the light pieces. Again, it comes down to setting. Qawale Mini is a game to play anywhere, but on the sofa with the lights dim in the evening, or on my son’s bed before he goes to sleep in my case, or a dark pub, and you’ll end up taking a black sharpie to one colour to make marks to make the game playable.

Less than ideal.

Final thoughts

There’s no need for a long review here. Qawale Mini is a quick, easy, two-player abstract strategy game with a ton of scope for tactics. Despite my moans above, I really, really like the game. My whole family really likes it. It’s how we ended up in situations like playing it in bed, which is where both problems happened together.

If you’re looking for a fast, fun two-player abstract game which you’ll normally play on your normal table, go for the normal version of Qawale. It’s really enjoyable and you won’t suffer from the same problems I mentioned above. But if you really want that cute little box and board you can take anyway, Qawale Mini is a great choice. Just make sure you’ll play it somewhere well-lit and somewhere stable.

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

Qawale Mini (2023)

Design: Romain Froger, Didier Lenain-Bragard
Publisher: Gigamic
Art: Uncredited
Players: 2
Playing time: 10 mins

The post Qawale Mini Review appeared first on Punchboard.

When it comes to duelling card games, we’re spoiled for choice. From the 27,000+ card behemoth of Magic: The Gathering to small, all-in-one games like Mindbug. There are a ton of different ways to fight the person opposite you, and it’s not going away anytime soon, as the Disney Lorcana juggernaut proves. Chroma Arcana joins the throng, aiming to separate you from the cash in your wallet. If you’re a designer bringing a new duelling card game to the market, there’s a very important question that I, as Joe Public, have for you.

“Why should I choose your game?”

To answer that question you need to give me some clear, concise reasons that make your game stand out from the crowd. So, why should I buy Chroma Arcana?

Why not both?

The biggest difference between the TCGs (Trading Card Games) like Magic, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh and the all-in-ones like Mindbug is the variety of types, styles, or schools involved. Mindbug lets you slap cards pretty much straight into the battle, while those like Pokemon TCG see you adding cards to a staging area, trying to charge cards up, and balancing the cards in your deck which can fight for you against those that help charge their abilities.

Chroma Arcana brings that same feel of having different schools of magic, or Pokemon types. Each card belongs to a different colour deck. They might not be named as such, but the same feel persists. It might be the ‘red’ deck instead of ‘fire’, but it’s the same idea. Firey things live in the red deck, lifegiving stuff is in the green deck – you get the idea. The concept is great because it lets you build your own custom decks to fight with, but with each of you building from the same decks. There’s no advantage to be gained by buying a ton of booster packs and getting cards that the other person might not have.

At the same time, with the way the different colours’ abilities mesh, it feels like you’ve got an almost open-ended pallette of paints to mix to come up with something special. While I’m on the paint metaphor, and thinking about a mixture of colours, it’s worth noting that approximately 30% of the characters in the game are non-white, and the same proportion are LGBT+. Kudos for being aware enough to even think about doing this, let alone weaving it into the game. Representation matters.

It’s a bit like giving a kid a colouring book but just a few basic coloured pencils to work with. Just because you have some limitations imposed on you doesn’t mean you can’t still create something beautiful, and something more interesting than just having a single grey pencil. That’s the feeling I get from Chroma Arcana.

The small print

Chroma Arcana falls foul of my biggest pet peeve in any of these card duelling games, and that’s the printing on the cards. I’m not a moron, I get it. If you want to put words on cards, but leave room for important symbols and some very pretty artwork (the art in this game is gorgeous), the text has to be small. I just find it frustrating when I can’t read or discern everything I need to know about a card when it’s on the table. My eyesight’s pretty good, but I still have to pick them up to read it.

Those of you familiar with card games are probably rolling your eyes at this point, and I can understand that. It’s not like it’s as small as Pokemon TCG text! Once you’re past those first few learning games, the text becomes mostly irrelevant. As long as you can see the cost to activate something and the icons that tell you whether it’s a ward, a minion, etc., then you’ve got all the information you need. Those learning games are crucial though, as that’s the only time you’ve got to grab someone by the dopamine receptors and go “Look at the thing I made. Play it. It’s fun!”.

The iconography throughout is great, and I like the way the keywords for a card are in a black boxout in the middle of it. It does a great job of drawing your eyes where they need to be. Once you’ve played a few times, you’ll be able to rattle through your games with relative ease, and they move fast, except for when your opponent has a potion card to interrupt your turn. Grrr! Annoying, but a cool feature in these games. Nothing better than pushing a stick into the wheels of your rival’s bike and watching his plans flip over the handlebar.

Final thoughts

I was a little wary of Chroma Arcana before it arrived. I’ve played so many duelling card games now, that I already know what to expect for at least part of how the game will play out. Using colours for the decks is cool, if not unique. Achroma (review here) does something similar. Fun fact: when I was approached to cover this game, I thought it was Achroma at first. Don’t make the same mistake. They’re very different games, and I prefer Chroma Arcana.

Every game I’ve played of Chroma Arcana has felt tight and competitive. Even when I’ve had a go at constructing my own deck – something I’m terrible at – I found that I was able to make something that worked together without too much trouble, which I really appreciated.

The promo copy I was sent was restricted to a smaller number of colours and characters (Egos, in the game’s parlance) than you’ll get in the finished product, and there were a few rough edges that I’m sure will be planed smooth by the time it ends up in your sweaty little mitts. Some of the cards had different names from what was listed in the rulebook, which made deck construction tricky, and the instructions for building your decks for the first game don’t tell you how many cards you should end up with. You’re told to add cards to the deck, but not how many of each. The only reference to how many cards go in a deck (it’s 26, if you’re wondering) is in a boxout on page 15, five pages after it tells you what cards to use. Like I say though, bear in mind this is still a preview of a prototype, and these are the kinds of things that are subject to change.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you my favourite thing about the game! Every time you shuffle your discard pile to recycle it into your draw pile, you lose 1 HP. Sounds small, but I love it. It keeps the pace up, and it means discarding a handful of cards to charge spells comes at a long-term cost. The snappy pace, the beautiful cards, and the (apparent) balance in the cards meant that I really enjoyed my time with Chroma Arcana. It’s clearly a labour of love for the designer, Mo, and it really shows. If duelling card games are your bag, keep your eyes on the Kickstarter project page for when this launches on 27th February 2024.

Preview copy kindly provided by Roc Nest Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Chroma Arcana (2024)

Design: Mo Shawwa
Publisher Roc Nest Games
Art: Ver Fadul, Nadine Jakubowski, Sandra Singh
Players: 2 (1-6 with expansion)
Playing time: 20-60 mins

The post Chroma Arcana Preview appeared first on Punchboard.

For reference, I played the recently-released Korean edition of Kamisado, which might be different to the version you’ve seen or played.

I remember when I got into modern board games 15 years ago, one of the first games I picked up was Hive. It was a revelation to me because I hadn’t played a ‘new’ abstract game, and my experience was limited to games like Draughts, Chess, and Chinese Checkers – all of the standard games people of my age grew up playing. I didn’t realise that people still made new abstract games. From there it led to those games with their names all in capitals: GIPF, DVONN, YINSH. All of them are great games, but they were difficult to relate to non-gamers in the sense of not being able to say “It’s a bit like…”.

Chess? Draughts? Kinda, but not quite

When you look at the Kamisado board it’s obvious that colour plays a big part in the game. It’s not just for the sake of looking pretty. The colours of the squares and the colours of the playing pieces are intrinsically linked. To explain why I need to tell you how the game works, and being able to explain how to play so easily is the game’s greatest strength – its low barrier to entry.

Each of your pieces can move forwards in a straight line, or on a 45-degree diagonal. They can move as far as you like, as long as they don’t move through another piece. Whatever colour square you land on dictates which piece your opponent has to move. For instance, if my piece lands on a red square, you have to move your red piece. If either player gets one of their pieces to their opponent’s side of the board, they win.

That’s it, that’s the whole game of Kamisado explained. It’s that simplicity which makes it so good though. I taught my son how to play it in a couple of minutes, we played a full game in less than five minutes, and then we played again. And again. And again. You get the idea. It’s so immediately engaging and so addictive. It’s a genius piece of game design on the part of Peter Burley. It feels like Draughts on Speed meets the French Military Game (Hare and Hounds if you’ve played Nintendo’s 51 Worldwide Games). It’s a game of simultaneously trying to hold your line while breaking your opponent’s. I love watching Rugby, and it reminds me of that.

Lasting appeal

There’s plenty to keep Kamisado from gathering dust on your shelves. The most obvious thing is the full game, whereby a tile that wins a round gets flipped to a side with a ring around it. These are Sumo pieces, which can only move five spaces, but can shunt pieces directly in front of them. Get three Sumos, you win, or get one Sumo to the other side, you also win.

There’s something about playing the game which just feels good. Each time you move it feels really powerful to be able to slide right the way across the board in one move. This feeling of power is tempered somewhat by the inevitable “Oh no, I can’t go backwards now!” realisation that comes afterwards, but it’s a lot of fun regardless. There’s another nice touch in the box in the form of numbered tiles, which, when drawn, give you alternate setups in the rulebook. It’s only a small thing, but it keeps the game fresh, which is important in a game which can be played 15+ times in an hour.

Final thoughts

Kamisado is a fantastic game. It’s a game I could buy as a gift for anyone, and know they could get have a lot of fun with it. In a hobby as niche as tabletop games can be, this level of universal appeal is pretty unique. I’ve always seen the little castle-shaped pieces in the older versions of Kamisado, but I’ve got to say that I think I prefer the bakelite tiles that come with the Korean version. The inlaid icons are clean and colourful, and they have that same wonderful ‘clack’ as the pieces in games like Hive, Mahjong or Bananagrams.

The icons on the board and pieces mean that it’s a game which works with any type of colour blindness too, which is great. Anything which keeps our hobby accessible is a good thing. The rulebook seems unnecessarily long when you open the box. In reality, you only need about 10% of the book to learn how to play though, the rest is set up scenarios and details of how to play in competitive situations.

Put simply, Kamisado is my favourite abstract game. The presentation, ease of learning, depth of strategy, and table presence all add up to a wonderful game. If you can get it (which you can in the UK from Burley Games direct), you should get the Korean version. The artwork and presentation are beautiful, and there’s something about the flat, squat tiles which is almost unbearably tactile. What a wonderful game, and one I have no hesitation in recommending.

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

Kamisado (2008)

Designer: Peter Burley
Publisher: Burley Games
Art: Peter Dennis, Steve Tolley
Players: 2
Playing time: 15 mins

The post Kamisado Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Out of my depth

I think it’s best to start with some kind of disclaimer like I did when I tackled Gandhi. I came at that game as a Euro game fan, looking in on the COIN series. With Salerno ’43 I’m doing something similar. I chose this entry in the ZOC games as my first because I did some research. Research which told me this was the smallest map, and the lowest number of units to manage. It’s touted as a good beginner’s game for these reasons, and with the benefit of hindsight, I can see why.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a game suited for wargame newbies like me, however.

I’ll be frank with you and admit that even as someone who’ll happily sit down and learn a heavy Vital Lacerda game like On Mars, I struggled to get to grips with Salerno ’43. It’s not that there’s anything missing in the rules. Everything is in there. It’s just very referential. There’s an example of play at the back of the rulebook, but it still leaves you feeling like you’ve been shoved in at the deep end of a swimming pool after reading the Ikea ‘how to swim’ instructions.

If you’re new to the world of wargames, even just the basic setup can feel quite alien. In a hobby board game you’d expect a list of components, maybe an overview, and then instructions for setup in the first few pages. Setup in Salerno ’43 depends on the scenario you’re playing, and the first time it’s mentioned is on page 23 of a 32 page rulebook. Performing setup relies on some reading between the lines and a little guesswork, but you’ll get there. It’s not necessarily that this style of rules and instructions is wrong, it’s just different, so be prepared for a culture shock.

Swimming to shore

You’d be forgiven for thinking I don’t like Salerno ’43 after that opening salvo. The truth is very different. Salerno ’43 is a great game, once you get your head around the way it works. It’s a scenario-based wargame, based on real events. If you play as the Allies, the game commences with a beach landing, with a long-term goal of forcing your way into Italy. The Axis are just there to try to stem the flow, and to hang on until reinforcements arrive.

It’s a very evocative piece of game design, with so much attention to detail. Take the initial beach landings for example. Uncle Beach was famously where the main resistance came during 1943, and so the dice rolls for the commando units landing there are the only ones that can take any significant damage. The terrain matters, and roads make an enormous difference to how far mechanised units can travel. Rivers aren’t just pretty lines on the map. Infantry slows to a crawl as they wade across, and vehicles won’t cross at all without bridges. It takes some wrapping your head around to have to be able to read a map to figure out your best channels to attack and defend.

If you’re a hex-and-counter newbie, like me, you might think that the stacks of tiny tiles with some numbers printed on them aren’t even as exciting as a meeple, and that’s saying something! The surprising truth is that despite the layer of abstraction on the table, where platoons of men are replaced with small tiles, you get very invested in them. Part of that is the knowledge that they represent real people who fought and died in the conflicts, but as much of it is the attachments you make as you tell your own story.

Push inland

Thanks in part to the smaller number of units in Salerno ’43, losses feel palpable. When one of your commando units is destroyed, it hurts. Not only that, it forces you to sometimes alter your plans very dynamically. Mark’s clever ZOC system creates invisible zones around, and links between, your units. Enemies getting too close have to stop, and woe betide anyone that tries to cross the bonds two of them. This comes to life most noticeably when you’re trying to stop a retreat. Units forced to retreat through a ZOC bond are eliminated.

There are some really clever little things you can do within this system, which take time and repeated play to emerge. A unit surrounded on three sides is effectively useless because those bonds act as fences, penning it in. If another friendly unit moves into one of the spaces, breaking that bond, the trapped unit can sneak out, as if you’ve held the door open with your foot. It all goes towards adding a surprisingly deep, and nuanced level of gameplay.

Combat uses a table of ratios to determine how effective your dice rolls will be. If you don’t like the available outcomes on your 2:1 attack in the table, you can shift a column to the right by throwing in air support, or artillery. When the weather’s bad, you might find things shifting the opposite way. It’s a simple, elegant way to portray combat with just a die and a table on your player aid.

Reinforcements flood the map as the rounds tick by, weather patterns change and affect movement, and the whole thing feels alive. The first time German reinforcements arrive and drive their trucks halfway across the map, using the movement bonuses from roads, is a real eye-opener. I was worried that a game with a standard setup, and what feels like a standard set of first turns, could feel dull quickly. The clever part comes in the small changes that happen in the opening landings, and it can lead to vastly different outcomes and board states.

Final thoughts

If you’ve gotten this far in the review, there’s probably one question that’s prodding your brain. Would I recommend Salerno ’43? The answer is yes, but I need to lay down some caveats first. If you’re an experienced wargamer, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble picking this game up. The smaller map and reduced unit numbers might make the game seem a bit simplified, but Salerno offers up a constricted, meandering maze of mountains and roads which make for stark contrast to the open battlefields of some games. It’s not a game about large-scale combat, it’s a game of shepherding and hindering for the Axis player, and trying to pry open a large, grey walnut for the Allies.

If you’re a board gamer coming at Salerno ’43, looking to take your first step into a world of hexes and tiles, just be realistic about what you’re letting yourself in for. Even the fact that the board is just a folded map – with no actual board – can be a big shock (you can buy mounted boards from GMT). The concept of a unit’s ‘steps’ is terminology you might never have come across, and that’s just the first of many such idiosyncracies of these games. If this sounds like a bridge too far for you, then honestly, you probably won’t have the perseverance to get to the juicy flesh under the thick skin of this game’s fruit.

If you’re still intrigued, then go for it. War games aren’t about glorifying war, and if you take the time to read the supplements in the books, they’re incredibly educational. This is a strategic game which enacts a real-world scenario, and if anything leaves you with a sense of reverence for the people you portray. The gameplay is tight, the player aids are fantastic, and the whole thing is an enjoyable experience. The rules are excellent reference tools, just don’t expect to learn how to play from them. Instead, check out the excellent playthrough of the extended example of play from Stuka Joe and this after-action report from The Players’ Aid, to get some feel for how the game works. It’s a great system, a great game, and I want the rest of Mark’s ZOC games now…

Review copy kindly provided by GMT Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own. All images ©Scott Mansfield .

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Salerno ’43 (2022)

Designer: Mark Simonitch
Publisher: GMT Games
Art: Mark Simonitch
Players: 2
Playing time: 180-600 mins

The post Salerno ’43 Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Poleis station

‘Polis’ means city in greek, and there are lots of these poleis on the map of Greece where the game takes place. It’s a war game, but not one with a ton of cardboard chits, or worrying about attack and defence values. In fact, it looks and feels more like a Euro game. Lots of pushing wooden cubes, resource tracks, and trading – it’s a bit of a Euro-war hybrid. It tells the story of the struggle between Athens and Sparta over the course of nearly 80 years. Athens with its naval presence, and Sparta with its growing army of Hoplites.

Flood a province with enough Hoplites and you can lay siege to any Polis. There’s nothing complicated when it comes to sieges, it’s just a case of rolling a D4 and hoping the result is at most the number of cubes you’ve got there. There is another, sneakier way to claim a Polis, and that’s by sending your Proxenos along. Bribe opponents with silver along the way, then throw more money at the population of the city, and you can incite a civil war. The upshot is the Polis falls under your control, and means you can demand tribune in the future, to collect resources.

One of the things I really like about Polis is how some of the areas behave differently to others. Take Korinthos for example. It sits in the middle of the map, but uniquely has access to the seas on the East and West. It makes for a really handy cut-through, and controlling it feels like a really powerful position. A couple of the Poleis are in neutral territory, and the only way to control and demand tribute is by using your Proxenoi. Touches like this lend a little bit of something to think about, to a game which has a fixed, rigid setup.

Prestige

As Polis is a war game of sorts, you’d expect to battle with your opponent, and you’d be right to expect it. When any region contains many cubes of both colours, there’s a battle, and battles in Polis are pretty cool. Each side takes turns attacking and defending, and the combat is handled with a deck of battle cards. It works nicely, and maintains that layer of abstraction between controlling map and the nitty-gritty of war. It’s a game of control, not combat. The victor in a battle, and anyone who takes a Polis by any means, can expect precious Prestige points in reward.

Prestige is at the core of Polis, as so many of the potential actions you can take are fuelled by it. If you want to move galleys or Hoplites, lay siege, or collect tribune from the masses, it all all costs prestige. Prestige is in short supply, and it creates a game of careful planning. If you’re used to games which throw resources at you like confetti at a wedding, you’re in for a shock. Balancing the few things you own is tricky, and it results in a very unforgiving game.

You can trade the things you have for precious silver and wheat, but access to the foreign markets where trade happens is controlled by whoever controls the seas. This is where building and moving Galleys comes into play, and it adds a really clever, really interesting mechanism into the mix. It’s a real challenge when you’re trying to build your own army and navy, while simultaneously tracking what the other player is doing, and also trying to make sure you end the round with enough wheat and silver. Ending a round with wheat is the only way to feed your people, and to allow the population to grow. More population means more people to train up into soldiers and sailors.

Familiarity breeds contempt?

It’s not unusual for a war game to have a strict, static setup routine. A place for everything, and everything in its place – that sort of thing. Most modern Euro games are the opposite, with a large amount of variance in setup, and often asymmetric playstyles. It could be quite jarring to a Euro gamer coming to Polis to adapt to the rigidity in the game. The only variety in the way the game plays out is by way of a couple of things. Namely, the event cards (of which you’ll see three over the course of a game), and the projects available to build and add to relevant Poleis.

These changes are only very small, however, and it’s not as if the projects change anything about how the game plays. Each player has the same eleven actions available to them for the entireity of the game. There’ll be some people reading this now who have started shaking their heads, assuming it leads to boring games where the first few moves are always the same. And while it’s true that some of the early game is led by the situation you start in, what seems like a weakness is actually a part of the game’s greatest strength.

Balance.

Fran Diaz has created a game with almost perfect balance. I’m sure that having a second edition certainly helps, but there’s no denying how finely tuned Polis’ engine is. Both factions are identical, other than their starting positions on the map, and that one has silver to start, while the other has wheat. It’s a game of strategy, control, action and reaction.

Final thoughts

Polis, in its second edition, is the result of taking a diamond in the rough and cutting it to shape. The polish is evident throughout, most noticeably in the 8-fold, double-layer main board. I’ve played plenty of games with those tantalising sockets for cubes on player boards, but on the main board itself?! Opulent madness.

Now, as much as I think Polis is a brilliant piece of game design, I’m going to do that reviewer cop-out thing and use the dreaded line “But it’s not for everybody.” In my first game, I played along with the rulebook to learn. I got to the end-of-round part only to realise that I had no wheat to feed or grow my population. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I had no prestige, which is an instant loss. Polis is unforgiving. There are no stabilisers, and the only way you’ll learn to play is to ride the bike and fall off a few times.

Polis rewards repeated play. It’s best in the collection of someone who has a regular opponent for two-player games, someone who likes to butt heads on the same field of battle time and again. The actions are elegant, the rules are simple, and they very quickly disappear into the background, leaving the game centre stage. The player aids are more than enough to ensure you’ll leave the rulebook in the box. If you want something with more chaos sewn into its area-control finery, have a look at something like Scythe. If you favour asymmetry and historical battles, then a COIN game like Gandhi or All Bridges Burning is a better option. As an easy-to-learn deep, two-player conflict though, Polis is hard to beat.

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

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Polis (2020)

Designer: Fran Diaz
Publisher: Devir
Art: Enrique Corominas
Players: 2
Playing time: 60-120 mins

The post Polis Review appeared first on Punchboard.

This is my dubious face

I first heard of Klask a few years back. I was scrolling through Facebook, as people of my age tend to do, and I kept seeing advertisements for the game. There were crowds of people whooping and hollering as two chaps played some game. “Denmark’s national sport!” the tagline proclaimed, which just made me think it was probably all just a bit bobbins.

Fast-forward a few years, and I start seeing the game in the wild. By “the wild”, I mean “people I’ve seen on the internet”. Incredibly, they were all singing its praises, which made me realise a) it’s actually a real thing that people can buy, and b) it’s a good game.

Could it be?

The holy grail?

Something that’s a bit like air hockey at home??

They say the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so it was time to see if it’s as delicious as it sounds. (Terrible metaphor, I know, just go with it.)

Get your damn hands off of my biscuits

Let’s cut to the chase. Klask is awesome. Not just I-was-given-this-game-for-free-so-I-better-say-nice-things-about-it good, but actually, properly, fan-flipping-tastic. The small wooden table fits on pretty much any table, and you guide your black, plastic strikers with magnets under the table. The strikers are used to whack the bright yellow ball around the table, trying to land it in your opponent’s recessed goal. That’s a point right there, sportsball fans.

The other ways to score are having your hapless foe land their striker in their own goal, for what the rulebook calls a ‘klask’, or alternatively, through the power of biscuits. The biscuits in this case are not the greatest biscuit on Earth – the custard cream (fight me) – but small white pieces of plastic, with teeny magnets inside. Get two of these miniature bad boys on your opponent’s striker, and it’s a point. Score six points you’re the winner, and nations will bow before you.

It’s ridiculously simple to teach and understand, and unless you have any serious motor impairments, you should find that you can play Klask with ease.

Cheap thrills

Now, having played on a Crokinole board at a convention, I’m not about to lie to you and tell you that Klask feels as shiny, dense, and substantial as Crokinole, because it doesn’t. In the same breath though, Klask costs less than £50. A decent Crokinole setup would set you back £300+, and it needs a table the size of a Smart Car to play it on. So when you look at the value of these games, Klask is an easy winner.

It makes me enormously happy – smug, almost – to say that Klask isn’t just good in the context of “for a poor man’s crokinole”. It’s just brilliant. There is so, so much emergent gameplay, and no matter how good you might think you are, there are people using tricks you haven’t even thought of, let alone tried. Dribbles, dummies, crazy bank shots, biscuit plays – these are just some of the words you can use during Klask to sound like Joe Sportsguy.

This is where you’d expect to see a review to drop its drawers and reveal its big ‘but’, and list all the negatives about the game. Truthfully though, there aren’t many negatives. You could complain that it’s not hardwood, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s a cheap, mass-produced game. It’s worth keeping an eye on the Teflon discs on the bottom of the strikers, as they can scratch the board. Nothing that’s going to affect gameplay though, just aesthetics. You can buy teflon tape online for a couple of quid, as well as spare bits for Klask.

Final thoughts

Klask is cheap, it’s fun, it’s competitive, and it’s great.

What, you were expecting more here? There’s nothing else to say. If you want a decent dexterity game you can take anywhere, go and buy Klask.

Full disclosure: I’m a lucky boy and Big Potato Games sent me a copy to review. Thoughts and opinions are still my own.

Klask (2014)

Designer: Mikkel Bertelsen
Publisher: Klask
Art: Mikkel Bertelsen
Players: 2
Playing time: 10 mins

The post Klask 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.

There are loads of classic games like Chess, Go, Nine Men’s Morris, Cribbage and Mancala which are still played today, but in this guide I’m going to focus on games from the last 25 years made exclusively for two. These are games which I think should be in your collection not just because they’re great games, but also because you can readily buy them.

Please also note that the ranking is personal to me, not an indication of what’s ‘best’, and that on any given day the order might change, depending on my mood. The important thing is that they’re all great.

5. Lost Cities (1999)

Kosmos Games

This is the oldest game on my list, and it’s a game I still play today. Lost Cities is a Reiner Knizia (Tigris & Euphrates, My City, Ra) classic, where each player can decide whether or not they want to embark on an ‘expedition’ and start laying down cards of a colour on their side of the board. The cards in each of the five suits run from 2 to 10, and each card you play must be higher than the last one played in that colour. The catch is that whenever you start a colour, you start on -20 points, and have to work back up to zero before you start scoring points.

In true Knizia fashion, there are just too many options, and with five colours between two players, someone’s going to get tempted to start a third. It’s a really personal little duel, and I take no end of delight in watching someone start a run of a colour, knowing full-well that I have the 9 and 10 of that suit in my hand. Add to that the multiplier cards which (if you choose to use them) have to be played before you start a run, which will multiply your points – or negative points! – and it’s a brilliant example of pushing your luck.

Lost Cities is an classic, and I’ve had a copy in my collection for longer than I can remember. You can pick it up for less than £20, and it’s great.

4. Jaipur (2009)

Space Cowboys

Jaipur, by designer Sebastian Pauchon (Jamaica, Yspahan) is a card game about trading fabrics, spices and precious gems, hoping to become the Maharajah’s personal trader. You’re both buying cards from the central market, then selling them to earn tokens, which in turn add to your final tally in deciding the winner.

I bought Jaipur in 2010 originally, and played it to death, then bought another copy. It’s safe to say it’s a good game. “F*$king camels” is a phrase you might come to know after a few games, as camel cards are worth nothing, but can be used to trade for goods. If there’s nothing you want from the market, you can pick up all the camels, but there’s something frustrating about having a handful of camels.

Jaipur is really easy to learn, and it gets increasingly tactical as you play it more and more with the same person. You start second-guessing what the other person’s strategy is, and trying to decide what you want to do. Diamonds and Gold are worth a lot, but there’s less of them than leather. Quality, or quantity? The more you play Jaipur, the better it gets.

It’s only around the £15-20 mark, so really it’s a case of whether you have a good reason not to buy it.

3. Targi (2012)

Kosmos Games

Andreas Steiger might not be a designer whose name you recognise, and that’s because other than Targi, he’s got no other games credited to his name. But in Targi, he made a game that most other designers would have been delighted to create. It’s a game about trading dates and spices, and expanding Tuareg tribes in the desert.

I’m a massive fan of Targi, and I recommend it to just about anyone who talks to me about getting something small, but deep. The board, as such, is a grid of cards, and through clever worker placement you simultaneously claim resources as your own, and try to deny your opponent the thing you think they want.

It’s deliciously tactical, and it’s full of difficult decisions on every turn. Deciding whether to go for something you want, or just blocking your opponent, is agonising at times. It’s such a simple game to play, and I always find it amazing how deep a game Andreas managed to cram into a few cards and chits. If you want to get your Euro game fix in a package that’s cheap, and small enough to take to the pub one night, Targi is an essential purchase. At less than £20, you’d be mad not to.

I wrote a full review of Targi last year, which you can read here.

2. Watergate (2019)

Frosted Games / Capstone Games

Watergate is an asymmetric tug-of-war game set during the height of the Watergate scandal in the US. One person plays as the Nixon administration, the other as the press of the Washington Post. Both players have different goals, and use their dual-use cards to swing momentum towards them, gain initiative, or to uncover evidence. The Post try to use the evidence to connect two informants to Nixon, while he tries to remove evidence and swing popular opinion irreversibly .

It’s designed by Matthias Cramer (Rococo, Glen More II Chronicles), and I love the agony of choice you get on every turn. Your deck of cards gets recycled, like in most other games, but instead of playing a card for its value, and moving evidence or momentum in your direction, you can play some as actions. Some of these actions are really powerful, but might see the card removed from the game. Deciding when to take those actions can really feel like make-or-break time.

The back and forth is fantastic, and the balance of trying to move evidence and momentum onto your half of the board, and trying to complete the spatial link puzzle on the other side of the board is so much fun. Even if the idea of politics in a game bores you to tears, I strongly urge you to give Watergate a try. You can pick it up for a shade under £30.

I wrote a full review of Watergate last year which you can read here.

1. 7 Wonders Duel

Repos Production

My Number One spot goes to the spin-off from the original 7 Wonders game – 7 Wonders Duel. Duel took the formula established in the original game, which worked best from four to seven players, and boiled it down to a two-player game. Antoine Bauza (Takenoko, Hanabi) and Bruno Cathala (Five Tribes, Kingdomino) made a brilliantly balanced game with multiple routes to victory.

7 Wonders Duel plays in about half an hour, and the players create a tableau by purchasing cards from the display, boosting the resources available, and building those famous Ancient Wonders of the World. At the same time there’s a track depicting military strength, and tokens to claim marking scientific supremacy. If you do well enough in either of those areas, you can trigger a win before the game even ends. So while you’re building your own tableau, you need to keep an eye on your opponent, lest they sneakily build an all-conquering army. Denying someone a card is often as important as claiming one for yourself.

The way the cards are laid out in each of the three ages, with some ‘locked’ by those on top of them, and some face-down until they’re unlocked, adds a nice level of strategy to the game. No two games are the same, and it’s really easy to teach the core concepts of the game. I’ve played 7 Wonders Duel a lot of times now, and I still enjoy each game as much as I did before. It satisfies that Euro-loving part of me that loves to see a tableau of resources come together, in a similar way to Splendor.

You can grab 7 Wonders Duel for around £20, and if you ever play games with one other person, you really ought to be playing this one.

Summary

There you have it then. My top 5 two-player games. There are so many great games that I had to cut from this list, and I want to give honourable mentions to Patchwork, Battleline / Schotten Totten, Undaunted: Normandy, abstract classic Hive, and the ever-present Twilight Struggle. The games I’ve listed above though are all fantastic, readily-available, and cheap. You could pick up all of them for around £100, even if you shop at your FLGS (which I urge you to do if you can), and you’ve have a solid collection of small, brilliant two-player games that will last you years.

The reason 7 Wonders Duel pipped the others to the number one spot is because of the expansions. Targi has an expansion, but it doesn’t feel drastically different to play. The two expansions for 7 Wonders Duel (Pantheon, and last year’s Agora) are both great and really add loads of freshness and new things to do in the game, if you find it getting stale for you, or if you just want something a little deeper.

Leave any comments down below, or find me on Twitter and tell me how wrong I am, and which games you’d put in the list instead ;).

The post Top 5 – Two Player Games appeared first on Punchboard.

The idea of Targi is pretty simple really. A desert tableau of cards is placed on the table, and players take turns to place their meeples on the border cards. Doing this blocks players on the same row or column, and then the resources each player gathers for the cards they claim can be spent on tribal cards, which give victory points.

It’s maybe not the most exciting theme to spring to mind for many people, and it doesn’t even have a board. So it must be doing something right to be sat just outside the top 100 on BGG. Maybe it’s the components?

What’s In The Box?

Hmm, well, the components are nothing to write home about. Inside this small box – which is that standard small box size now, like 7 Wonders: Duel – are:

• Two sets of player pieces – three Targi markers and two tribal markers each
• One grey ‘robber’ meeple
• A load of resource tiles – dates, salt, pepper, gold coins and silver cross victory point markers
• 16 ‘Edge cards’, which mark the boundary of the game
• 45 Tribal cards
• 19 Goods cards
• A rule book
• A nice little first player silver tile.

That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with the box contents. In fact, I really like the fact it’s so simple. In the days where setting up something like Anachrony feels like a task in itself, being able to tip a little box onto a table and be up and running in five minutes is a really nice feeling.

The cards are standard issue, the little wooden player pieces like nice with the white and pale blue contrast, and the card tiles for resources are sturdy enough. It’s not going to blow your mind, but you wouldn’t expect it to for a game that costs less than £20. So why should you, or anyone else, bother with this game over countless other small box offerings?

How Does It Play?

Now we’re getting into the good bit, the meat in this sandwich. Because desert… sand… never mind.

Setup and Gameplay

The edge cards are all numbered, and form the outer border of a 5×5 grid on the table. They always go down in the same order. Then five goods and four tribal cards follow the pattern in the rule book and fill in the space in the middle, to make our 25 card desert. The grey robber meeple goes on card number one, and each round moves onto the next card, blocking it from use.

Players take turns to place their three tribe meeples on the outer border cards, alternately. They can put them anywhere they like, as long as they meet the basic rules:

• You may not place on a corner ‘raid’ card
• You may not place on a card where any other meeple is, including the robber
• You may not place your meeple directly opposite one your opponent’s

That last one, about not playing opposite, that’s where the tactics stem from, Once all the meeples are placed, the players place their tribal markers (little round wooden discs) on the cards that mark the intersections of their meeples, like in the picture below.

Now the first player (the first player marker switches between the players at the start of each round) retrieves their pieces, taking whatever goods or actions are on the cards. For the edge cards, that can be as simple as taking a pepper or salt, or maybe using the trader to sell three identical goods for a gold coin. There are lots of options, I won’t go into all of them here. For the cards in the middle, it depends what kind of cards they’re retrieving.

Building Your Tribes

Goods cards from the middle just give you the resources shown, and then go onto the discard pile. Tribal cards, however, are different. Each has a cost on the top, a number of goods and/or coins. If you can pay those goods, you can place it in front of you. In the lower corner, the victory points are shown.

Your tribal cards can be laid out in a grid of three rows of four cards, always adding from the left. Any effects on those cards are instantly added to the game, so for example you might have one that says any time you add another Oasis card to your display, you pay one less resource. If, at the end of the game, your rows of cards have four matching types (there are Oasis, Well, Targi, Camel Rider and Tent) in, you get an additional four VPs. If all four in a row are all different, you get an extra two VPs instead,

If you can’t pay for the card immediately, you can keep one card in hand. To play it later, you need to have the resources and place a meeple on the Noble edge card. Unless, of course, you’re holding it just because you don’t want the other person to have it. But you wouldn’t be that sneaky, would you?

This is where the competition comes in, and makes the game come alive.

Competition Time!

Everything in the game is public knowledge, so both players can see both players’ tribal tableau and resources. Placing your meeples and blocking rows, columns and intercepts is a fine balancing act between claiming the things you want and stopping the other player from getting what they want. When you consider this is essentially a Eurogame, the level of interaction – if not direct – is really high.

You constantly need to be aware of what tribal cards are up for grabs, what resources the other person has, what powers their cards might grant them to change the cost or effects, what kind of tribal cards they might be after for their tableau. And all the while you’re trying to do the same for yourself. Just to top things off, when the robber gets to a corner card, there’s a raid, and both players have to give up increasing amounts of goods or victory points to the thieving grey git.

The end of the game is triggered by either the robber completing his lap of the edge cards, or one player adding the twelfth card to their display. Players count up the VP tiles they have, the VPs from their tribal cards, any bonuses for rows, and finally any bonuses your tribal cards might give you (e.g. ‘you get one VP for every two well cards in your display). The player with the most, wins.

Final Thoughts

Targi packs a lot of game in a small box. It’s one of those gems that’s really easy to learn, and as soon as those first couple of turns are over, the rules disappear into the background, leaving the players to play the game. That might not make much sense to you, but compare it to a really heavy Eurogame like Paladins of the West Kingdom, or Bonfire, and see how many times you need to plan your moves ahead with the help of the rulebook. With Targi, the (small) rulebook can stay in the box for the entire game.

The gameplay is gloriously simple, but offers so many tactical choices with every single placement. The internal conflict in the late game, trying to decide whether to get something you need or to stop your opponent getting something they really need, leads to some really interesting decisions.

This is a game where you’ll spend a lot of time going ‘Ooooh you $@*&, I wanted that!“, or helpfully suggesting they might need that thing on that card, because you’ve secretly got your eye on something you don’t want them to block.

It’s not a game dripping with theme, after all it’s some cards on a table which are meant to represent a barren desert, so it’s probably not going to appeal to people who like a load of minis marching around slaughtering one another. But once you abstract the game from the theme, it’s a fiercely competitive, closely-fought battle of strategy, misdirection and optimal play.

I’m a massive fan of Targi, and I only wish I’d bought it sooner than this year. One thing’s for certain though, I’ll always have a copy in my collection, and I’ve already got the expansion on my wishlist. If you’ve got a regular ‘player two’ it’s a must-have in my opinion. Andy Steiger, the designer of the game, has also released a solo variant which makes a good alternative if you find yourself on your own and wanting to play. You can download it here.

The post Targi Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Watergate – Some Background

It’s important to give a little bit of background here, because the theme is so deeply ingrained in the game. Watergate, better known as the Watergate Scandal, was a scandal between 1972 and 1974 in the US. At its heart the Nixon administration paid five people to break into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, and then continuously tried to cover up its involvement. Two reporters from The Washington Post (Woodward and Bernstein), among others, uncovered evidence of the involvement, and eventually Nixon was forced to resign, and nearly 50 members of his administration were convicted.

It was an enormous national scandal and the media vs politics ruckus that ensued is still the subject of films and books to this day.

Now you’ve had the (very) short version, let’s have a look at the game.

What’s In The Box?

Watergate comes in a small box, and in that box is a small board, two decks of cards, a bag full of small evidence tokens and some wooden markers. That’s all there is, and that’s all it needs really. It’s a game for two players only, and happily sits on a small table between the players, which is the way it’s designed to be played.

The board is nice and sturdy, with really nice artwork and graphic design. I love the cards, they have a lovely soft finish and are slightly larger than standard playing card size. In Watergate the cards are the game really, so I’m happy so much attention to detail is paid. The photographs of the real people are included on each card, along with clear iconography, and some really nice flavour/history text on each one.

It’s nice to have a black cloth bag included too, for blind drawing of the evidence tokens. The publisher could have taken the cheaper option that many do, and told you to place them all face-down on the table, but they didn’t.

The rule book deserves a special mention. Not only does it have really clear instructions and setup diagrams, with examples of every rule, but it has bios of everyone involved in the game, and a well-researched history of events.

You could easily take this with you anywhere, and I could see it being a great one to take to the pub for a few drinks with a friend.

How Does It Play?

Before I played it, I’d heard Watergate described as ‘Twilight Struggle Lite’. Twilight Struggle, if you don’t know, is one of the best two-player games ever made, which has a tug of war of power through playing cards. It’s also very deep and needs a lot of concentration. So when I heard that comparison, I was a little worried, as I’ve played Twilight Struggle, and it is brilliant, but it’s hard to learn and doesn’t easily win over new players.

Now that I’ve played it, I can happily say that while I can see why it got that comparison, it’s nowhere near as dense, and that’s a good thing.

Setup

The board is placed between the two players, with the player taking the role of the newspaper editor having the board facing them, and the Nixon administration (referred to as Nixon) viewing it upside-down. Each player has a deck of cards unique to their side, and these cards are what drive the game.

The board itself features a cork pin board design for most of it, with a web of strings and pins on it, much like you’d expect to see in a film when they uncover someone’s secret research into a subject. Strings linking people. places and things – that sort of thing. On the right-hand side of the board is a research track, with a zero space in the middle, and five steps on each players’ side. To the side of the board is an Initiative card which always points an arrow to one player or the other. Whoever it points at draws five cards each round, and plays first, and the other draws four cards instead.

The bag of evidence tokens and seven tiles representing potential informants or supporters sit on the table next to the board. Setup takes five minutes at most, which means you can get into playing really quickly, unlike something which needs a lot or preparation like Paladins of the West Kingdom.

Playing The Game

Watergate is an asymmetric game. Nixon has to gain five momentum tokens to win, while the editor has to link any two informants to Nixon on the board, by placing connected evidence tokens on it. On your turn you play a card from your hand, and each card has two parts. The top part of the card lets you move any evidence token of a matching colour towards you by the number of steps written on the card, or you can choose to move either the round’s momentum token, or the initiative token towards you instead.

The bottom of the card has more specific options, and these are usually Events. Each event marks a change in the game and usually that card is then removed from the game, instead of going onto your discard pile. These events can see informants being added to the board, tokens being drawn blind from the bag and placed on the board, or even preventing the other player from playing their own events in that round. The payoff for losing a card permanently can be huge, but has to be balanced with losing whatever power that card had for moving tokens instead, so it’s a really nice balancing act.

Players play their cards one after another, and this is where the beauty of the game comes to the fore. It’s this magnificent tug of war, where the three evidence tokens, the initiative marker, and the momentum token are constantly pulled between each player’s sides of the board. If you manage to get any item to the fifth and final space on your side of the research track, you instantly claim it. The round ends when both players have no cards left, and whichever tokens are on your side of the board, you get to keep.

This all sounds pretty straightforward, and even writing this now it sounds simple even to me, so let me give you an example of the sorts of things running through your mind for every card of every round of the game.

Difficult Decisions

Let’s put ourselves in the role of the editor, and let’s say we’re a couple of rounds into the game. Nixon has grabbed two of the five momentum tokens he needs, and we’ve managed to add one of the blue informants to the board. Our goal, as editor, is to link our informants – on the outside of the web – to Nixon, in the centre. We can see there’s a blue evidence token on the research track this round, which would go a long way towards making that link.

The thing is though, we can see the momentum token is already two steps towards Nixon. If the round ends and it’s still there, he gets it and is another step closer to victory. So should we focus using our actions to drag that little red token back to our side of the board, to scupper him? Or should we concentrate on moving that blue token towards us? Or maybe we should pull the initiative token towards us more. That has the benefit of giving us more cards in the next round, and whoever wins it at the end of a round gets to place their evidence tokens on the web first.

At the same time as we’re running over all these options, Nixon is doing the same thing. That momentum token would be really good for him, but in the same breath, if he were to take that blue evidence token, he could flip it to its black side and place it, blocking links for the editor.

On top of all of that, every card has it’s special actions and events, and the entire time neither of you knows what the other is holding, or the order they’re going to play them in. Tense stuff. So much of this game is about reading your opponent. In your first games you’re paying attention to the mechanics of playing, but you soon find yourself watching the other player’s eyes and trying to read the subconscious exposure of their plans.

“Is she looking at that evidence token? She is! She keeps looking at that space on the top of the evidence board, she wants to block me I bet…“

As soon as either player accomplishes their goal the game ends immediately, and the loser starts setting it up for another game, demanding instant revenge. That’s not in the rule book, it’s just what happens.

Final Thoughts

That’s all there is to Watergate. It’s not a very complicated game, but goodness, it’s a deep one. I love the constant ebb and flow, watching the pieces pulled back and forth on the track like a ageing armchair in a messy divorce. You might not desperately want or need it, but you’ll be damned if the other person’s getting it! Just as you think you’ve worked out a strategy for the current round, it’s almost guaranteed the other player will do something that ruins your perfect plans.

The theme is so thick and heavy in this game, that I’d really recommend immersing yourself in it, just to add to the overall atmosphere. This is a site about games, not films, but I highly recommend watching All The President’s Men (Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford) if you haven’t seen it (or even if you have). If that doesn’t get you itching to play this, nothing will.

I can see the comparison to Twilight Struggle, but it’s not a good one in my opinion. Twilight Struggle’s cards see each player playing events beneficial to their opponent in their own turns, whereas the cards in Watergate really only benefit yourself, so there’s seldom the choice of “What’s the least worst option here?”, which is what Twilight Struggle excels at. There isn’t too much to keep track of in this game. Both of you can see the evidence board, and know the state of play. Both of you know who has the most cards, and both of you can see who’s going to win what at the end of the round. The only secret is what colour the evidence tokens are each round, as Nixon draws them and looks at the colours. The substance of the game comes in choosing what to do with that information.

I wasn’t really aware of Matthias Cramer before Watergate (although now I realise he’s also the designer of the Glen More games), but he’s come up with something really special here. It’s simple enough in its mechanics to teach to almost anyone, very quickly, but it will take a long time to get really good at. What I absolutely love about this game is how after just a couple of plays, those mechanics disappear. That’s something which in my experience only happens with great two-player games, they become a vessel, a method for one person to compete with the other on a level playing field. The game, as such, is each player trying to outsmart the other, and it’s brilliant.

I highly recommend Watergate for anyone that has a regular ‘player two’. Its clever play, quick setup and portability make it an instant modern classic in my opinion.

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