“Workers of the world unite…”

The first thing I want to talk about is how well the theme is integrated into Factory 42. To set the scene: you and your dwarven workers are manufacturing goods in a government factory. Factory 42, no less. The main board has spaces for you to place your workers to try to fulfil government orders. Factories work on a production line basis and each worker space on the board is resolved in order, so by doing some careful planning, you can make sure the goods you need for manufacturing later in the round are requisitioned and delivered to your warehouses.

More accurately, you can try to make sure the goods are there.

Government being government, some of the things you want might get delayed by bureaucracy. This is represented by the imposing tower on the table. Inside the tower, there are cardboard layers with holes of different shapes and sizes. All of the available materials and goods for the round get dumped into The Tower of Bureaucracy, and as you’d expect, not all of it comes out. Some get tied up in red tape, some go out in the briefcases of management I expect. Whatever happens, it’s a decent analogy for the bureaucratic process. Players of the classic Wallenstein know what to expect.

Whatever the outcome, the goods you’re left with go into the common pool, which is shared by all players for the rest of the round. It’s a theme that’s carried throughout the game, this idea of a dwarven pseudo-communist society. Whatever’s available is available for all players equally. It just depends how quickly you get to the worker allocation space, and whether or not someone decides to take the optional Commissar spot, and that’s where shenanigans can really start to emerge.

“Landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they have never sowed”

The Commissar spot at each action space works to boost or alter each of those spaces, but it’s not mandatory to have a worker placed there. Some are nice, like the Loading space which lets you add extra cubes to the little railcars that carry goods to the players’ boards. Some are less nice. The Trading spot, for instance, requires each player who wants to trade to pay a rosette token to the Commissar, if one is present. You need to pay somebody else just for the right to trade, and that Commissar might have been placed there after you chose to trade.

It’s not just the Commissar spots that can sway the game in this interactive way. Take the Shipping action as a perfect example. You can claim one of the first two railcars on the track which may or may not have lots of useful cubes on them, and then place them on a player board. Note that I said a player board, not necessarily your player board. If you want to scupper someone’s chances you can take that railcar with a paltry single lichen cube and clog up somebody else’s dock! When you take the Requisition action which lets you add cubes to the common pool you might already have stock of the items you need to fulfil this round’s government orders, so why not add a load of useless – but burnable – items to the pool which don’t help anyone else, but help you generate the steam necessary to make things.

The push and pull, and “Oooh you absolute git!” shouts from across the table are great, if interactivity in a euro is your thing, of course. It’s not for everyone, but for me it’s a good thing which takes me back to older, German-style Euros.

Unfortunately, being metaphorically kicked in the shins by the other players isn’t the only frustration you’re likely to face in the game.

“Nothing can have value without being an object of utility”

The quote above from Karl Marx hits particularly hard because of the lack of utility in a lot of different things in the game. There are a lot of examples where design decisions – or lack thereof – really hurt Factory 42. The first place it hit me was setting up for my first game. I was following the setup instructions in the rulebook thinking “I don’t really get some of this, I wish there was a setup picture”, only to find one on the following pages. It’s odd in the 2020s to not find an image on the same page as the instructions. I thought it was odd that there were no step numbers to reference on the setup picture, only to find that there are, they’re just almost invisible. See this image for an example of what I mean.

Update: After feeding this back to the publisher, a new version of the rulebook which makes this much clearer is already in the works and a PDF should soon be available on their website.

I have no idea how this kind of design decision gets past an editor. I wondered if it was maybe just a one-off printing problem, so I headed to the publisher’s website only to find that it’s still the same now, even on version 1.35 of the rulebook. I carried on reading through the rules for each of the different action spaces and saw in the description for the first action – Requisition – where a sentence explaining costs reads: “The cost is also shown on the location”. Great, except that having scoured for the costs on the location and thinking I was just being a bit stupid, it’s just not there. I’m guessing whatever it refers to is now superseded by a reference card, but that’s all it is – a guess.

Update: The above paragraph is being addressed in a new rulebook revision too. I’ve kept my original text in the review, as this is what I was sent to review.

Each of the eleven different resources is a different colour and one of three different sizes. The choice of sizes is actually really clever. There’s a small Spiking bag included that gets loaded with cubes during one particular action, and players can draw cubes blindly from the bag to add to the pool. The bag is too small to get more than a couple of fingers in, but it’s probably enough to tell the difference between a big and a small cube. It’s not a lock-in, but you’ve got a rough idea of what you’re pulling out. It’s a really clever way to utilise the different sizes. The problem comes when looking at the pile of cubes in the common pool and trying to discern what’s there. I’m not colour-blind but even I have trouble telling what colour some of them are at a glance. The reliance on symbols that aren’t on the cubes, and the fact that the resource board (with the symbols) has backgrounds that are slightly different colours to the cubes might make it impossible for colour-blind people to play.

It might sound like I’m nit-picking, but it’s important to understand that Factory 42 is a heavy game. Every little thing which makes an already complex game harder has its impact amplified by that weight. Just trying to work out whether you can do the things you want to if someone doesn’t sabotage you is tricky enough. Trying to make a mental note of how many of which cubes there are because you can’t tell what they are at a glance just makes things harder. Equally, each of the eleven different types has a symbol associated with it which might become intuitive later, but at first need constant reference to a reference card. Eleven is just too many things to have to pair a colour to a symbol, and a symbol to a part of a group of types.

Final thoughts

Factory 42 could be a good game. Maybe even a great game. But in the state it’s in now, there are just too many niggles for me to be able to say that outright. It’s like putting on a pair of walking boots to go for a difficult hike, only for someone to have thrown a handful of gravel into them before you even get going. The rulebook needs heavy editing to bring it up to standard, and there are so many little things you’ll find when you play which suggest it just needed more playtesting, or an experienced developer involved.

The Cyrillic-style backwards Rs, Es, and Ns in the headings in the rulebook. I get it. It looks very ‘Soviet’, but it doesn’t help. The typewriter-style smudged and incomplete typeface used on the tops of the cards is stylistic but difficult to read. When I go back and look at some of the things in the prototypes, like the bold colours of the cubes, it seems like some things have taken a step backwards in terms of function, in favour of form.

All of my grumbles are a real shame because I really enjoy playing the game. The semi-co-op, ‘greater good’ feeling of creating a shared pool of things to fulfil the shared contracts is cool, especially with the way the knives come out when it comes to sharing things. The bureaucracy tower does its job really well, the spiking bag too. I love the way the market prices change every round. The optional modules for inventions and Elven contracts spice things up. The flow of the action resolution and the pain of choosing when to place a worker, and where – it’s all really good. It’s just let down by the barriers to entry.

I understand that there have been plenty of small revisions since the original crowdfunding campaign, but even with those I would still absolutely love to see a v2.0 of Factory 42 with some redevelopment. There’s a great game in here, complex and chewy with a ton of interaction, but it needs a concerted effort to work around the various issues to make it worth it.

Review copy kindly provided by Dragon Dawn Productions. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Factory 42 (2021)

Design: Timo Multamäki
Publisher: Dragon Dawn Productions
Art: Lars Munck
Players: 2-5
Playing time: 90-120 mins

The post Factory 42 Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Literally, dam, because that’s what you’re building in Barrage – dams. Also conduits, powerhouses and elevations, but ‘Coooonduit!’ doesn’t have quite the same ring. It’s a game of worker placement and network-building as you and your friends compete to generate electricity from the limited amount of water flowing downhill. As far as Euro games go, it can be pretty cutthroat and there’s a ton of interaction. It’s a confusing game, for sure, but an excellent one.

Come hell or high water

Barrage puts you in the role of CEOs of energy companies. Your goal is to produce hydroelectric power to fulfil contracts, which in turn score VPs. The board is gorgeous and represents a map, starting at the top in the mountains, moving down into the hills, before finishing up at the bottom in the plains. Four rivers start their journey way up in the headwaters in the mountains, collecting in basins as gravity pulls them ever-onward.

Being the corporate giants you are, and understanding the nation’s need for energy, it’s your job to harness the flow of water to generate electricity by redirecting water through conduits towards powerhouses. It all sounds simple enough, but there’s a problem. There’s a limited amount of water flowing downhill and all of you are competing for it. In order to get enough water through the turbines in your powerhouses you’ve got to build dams on the edges of the natural basins for the water to pool behind. That means if you build dams up in the mountains, you’re going stop – or certainly delay – the flow of water to lower basins.

So what happens to the players building dams, conduits, and powerhouses further down, when the water can’t get to them? That question is the blood pumping through the beating heart of Barrage. It introduces some of the tastiest interactions in any modern Euro game from the last five years. It’s a game of combining plans with opportunistic swoops to either benefit from someone else’s loose ends, or to just be a pain in the arse.

To run the energy generation action you need three things. You need water behind a dam, a conduit leading away from that dam, and a powerhouse at the other end of the conduit. It brings this timing puzzle with it. You can use anyone’s conduit to channel water to your powerhouse, but if you use one that’s not yours you have to pay the owner for the privilege, and they generate VPs at the same time. You could build the conduit first, but if someone else builds the dam on that space, you can never generate energy, because the water has to come from your own dam. Maybe you see someone with a really good setup near the bottom of the board, but you don’t like that. It’d be a shame if someone else built a tall dam directly above it, wouldn’t it…?

Keeping your head above water

Sticking with the water puns, it’s easy to see how Barrage is a deep game. On top of all of that posturing and planning for the buildings on the map, you’ve got a tight Euro game to manage which overarches everything. Resources are tight, and unusually in these games, reusable. This brings me to my favourite toy in all of board games for the last few years: the Construction Wheel.

Each player has their own wheel which is split into six sections. When you want to construct a building you first have to have the building’s tile available, i.e. it can’t already be on the construction wheel. You place that tile and the required concrete mixers or excavators (your resources) into the top-most section of the wheel, and then rotate the wheel 60 degrees so that the next section reaches the open slot at the top. Any building tiles or resources on that section which is now at the top come back to your supply, ready to use again. The fly in the ointment being that the resources and tile you just used are trapped until that wheel spins all the way around, so planning is key.

To play Barrage well you need to have your head on a swivel, so the saying goes. You need to keep track of what things are available in your supply, what’s happening on the map, how many engineers (workers) you have left, where you could generate power, and importantly, which tiles other players currently have trapped in their construction wheel. Balancing it all is tricky, especially during your first couple of plays because the water flow isn’t as simple as you might imagine. Understanding the difference between a dam and a powerhouse isn’t immediately obvious, nor is the fact that water simply flowing past your powerhouse doesn’t generate any energy, unless you play as the USA, in which case it can.

There’s a reason this game currently has a 4.10 weight on BGG at the time of writing, with 5.00 being the heaviest, most complex a game could be. None of the actions is particularly difficult or drawn-out to perform, but understanding the way the game’s many, many gears mesh together is hard. On top of all of the various ways the actions work together, there’s even more to consider. You’ve got different player boards with different bonuses, different executive officers that grant you unique powers, and variable setup for how much water flows from which headwaters, and when. After your introductory game, you can throw in advanced technology tiles for construction too. Barrage is a big, wet sandbox, designed for repeated play with a group of players keen to explore all the game has to offer.

Final thoughts

Barrage is a game that I wanted to play for a long, long time. The idea of the construction wheel had me hooked on its own, let alone the level of interaction sewn in. When it arrived on boardgamearena.com I got stuck in and enjoyed it so much that I knew I had to have a physical copy of the game. I’m glad I own it now because the production is absolutely gorgeous. The water basins on the board have UV spot marking which makes them shiny and smooth. The excavators and concrete mixers are tiny and ridiculously detailed when something basic would have sufficed. Each player board is dual-layered with places for everything to sit neatly, and that’s despite the fact that each player’s buildings are slightly different. A green powerhouse looks different to a pink one, which looks different to a white one etc. It’s a level of extravagance I really appreciate in a game that’s designed to be played a lot of times, and the sort of thing usually reserved for Eagle-Gryphon’s Vital Lacerda games, like On Mars (review here).

Let’s make no bones about it, there are a bunch of players out there who won’t enjoy Barrage. It’s a tricky game to learn, there’s a lot of stuff going on at any one time in the game, and it can be really mean. If you don’t like games where your plans get knocked into a cocked hat because some swine has built above you, diverting everything past you, you’re not going to have much fun. Most of the time the game isn’t so overtly combative, but it certainly can be, and it’s worth being aware of. This brings me to another relevant point – player scaling. The only difference between a two- and a four-player game is the number of shared action spaces available. The board layout doesn’t change. It means a two-player game has the unspoken option of players choosing to build far apart from one another. In a four-player game, forget it, you’ll be under each other’s feet from turn one.

If you want a heavy game that’s deep, thematic, and has plenty of variety and scope for strategy, Barrage is superb. It will break your brain, you’ll get annoyed with the other players around the table, and you’ll find yourself making use of every last resource and coin at your disposal. But you know what? You’ll have such a blast doing it that you just won’t care.

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.

Barrage (2019)

Design: Tommaso Battista, Simone Luciani
Publisher: Cranio Creations
Art: Mauro Alocci, Antonio De Luca, Roman Roland Kuteynikov
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 120-180 mins

The post Barrage Review appeared first on Punchboard.

The original Libertalia game from all the way back in 2012 was often recommended when people asked for ‘Pirate game’ recommendations. Rightly so, too, as not only is it as piratey as a middle-aged man in eyeliner, it’s a darn good game too. The biggest problem it has is with availability. That is to say, it’s out of print and hard to get hold of. Luckily, Jamey and his crew at Stonemaier games came along, picked up the rights from the original designer – Paolo Mori – and brought the game up-to-date with new artwork, cards, and some re-jigged mechanisms.

A day in the life of a pirate

Libertalia is a game about making as much booty (yes, I mean treasure) as you can in classic ‘Golden age of Piracy’ fashion. You do this by sending a pirate to the island each day, reaping the benefits of any powers they have, and then choosing which booty you bring back to your ship. Pirates, in this case, are cards. Each player has the same deck of 40 unique cards, and at the start of each of the three voyages (rounds), you all draw the same random selection from your deck. Each pirate has their own ability/power, and each has a number, which represents its priority on the island.

Once all the pirates are on the board, they’re arranged in ascending numerical order and activated left-to-right for the day phase. You might activate a card that lets you move up the reputation track, remove certain items from the booty space for this turn, or maybe even swap your card out for another. After that’s resolved, you go back along the cards in the opposite direction for the dusk phase, activating any cards with the dusk logo, and choosing tiles from the booty pile.

You know how to play Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest now. It’s not a tricky game, mechanically, which makes teaching it a breeze. Where the game comes alive, the gunpowder behind its cannonball if you like, is the interactions between the players, and the slowly diverging strategies.

All aboard!

Libertalia is like getting on a crowded train. There’s pushing and shoving, trying to be first in the line so that you can be the first to take your daytime action, especially if you have a card that affects the loot available. This is because even if you aren’t playing that loot-affecting card on this turn, you know that every other player drew the same cards as you at the start of the voyage, and could potentially play that card. This feeling of dread gets more diluted as the game goes on, as hands of cards may contain cards from players’ graveyards, or they may carry some from one voyage to the next, but in the first couple of rounds, it’s very apparent.

Then, before you know it, you arrive at the next station on your crowded train – or in Libertalia terms – the dusk phase. Playing a high-number card might mean you go last in the day phase, but hey, look, the train doors are opening, and you can get off first. These folks get the prime pick of the loot available, and when you consider that in most cases loot = money, that can be a big deal. After all, the player who collected the most plunder during the game, wins.

What I’m trying to get across here, despite my poor Tube analogy, is the constant indecision and mind-reading attempts you’ll go through. The tussle on the island part of the board is brilliant. There’s nothing more satisfying than revealing the cards only for someone to see you about to put a teaspoon in their microwave, and to hear the groan (and possible expletives) that head your way.

A corsair, in a sea full of frigates

One of my pet peeves with board games over the last ten years or so is the sheer size of them. By the time you’ve set up the main board, your player boards, the card markets, that expansion board, the novelty bus made out of pewter, and lord know what else, you need a fricking huge table most of the time. Libertalia takes a step back from this trend and packs a game which you can easily fit on your kitchen table.

The feeling of neatness and conciseness goes right through the game. It’s a streamlined, smooth experience, which means that you can be all done inside an hour, even with five or six players. It means it fills a gap which is present in a lot of players’ collections. A satisfying, clever, quick game, with its hold packed full of interaction.

If you’re somebody who played or owns the original Libertalia, the artwork and presentation might come as a bit of a shock. It’s a very different feel and style to its forebear, and while I think it’s an improvement, your mileage may vary. The new reputation track is a much better way to break ties than the old silver number in the original game, and I really like the individual score-tracking chests instead of the score track.

Final thoughts

Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is a great game. It’s one of the few games outside of the social deduction genre which gets better and more interesting with higher player numbers. It plays up to six, and six doesn’t feel like too many. Things get busy, sure, but in a game that thrives on the interactions it generates between the players, it’s a welcome thing, not a problem. If you’re after something more ship-focused, take a look at Merchants and Marauders, or Maracaibo (one of my earliest reviews here!)

The included solo mode plays really nicely, and in all honesty, I’d rather play solo than with two. That might sound like an odd thing to say, but I think two is the weakest player count for the game. Somewhere from four to six players is the sweet spot. I’ve not even touched on the ‘stormy’ side of the board, or the different loot tiles which keep the game fresh, and even more fiercely competitive.

Stonemaier Games have done it again, packing some really nice components into a game which you’ll spend less than £45 for. I’m so pleased that there’s a successful publisher out there now actively working to bring out-of-print licences back to life, and not just copying the original verbatim. Working with Paolo to improve the original was a great idea. Quick, stylish, pirate fun, which excels with a bigger player count. Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest comes highly recommended.

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

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.

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Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest (2022)

Designer: Paolo Mori
Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Art: Lamaro Smith
Players: 1-6
Playing time: 45-60 mins

The post Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest Review appeared first on Punchboard.

My God, it’s full of stars

The first thing players of the original Gravwell will notice is the new artwork. One of my favourite board game artists, Kwanchai Moriya, was brought in to spruce things up, and it looks gorgeous. It keeps a similar aesthetic, but the cards which drive the gameplay look clearer, and I prefer the look of the game board.

If you’ve never played Gravwell before, it’s a cross between a race game and a tug of war. Each player chooses a card from their hand and plays it face-down. The cards are flipped, then resolved in alphabetical order (each represents an element). The majority of the cards pull you towards the nearest object – be that another ship, or a piece of space junk – while a few push you away.

This is where the game gets interesting. The card you played may have moved you towards the next ship, just a couple of spaces ahead, and slingshotted you off towards victory. However, if that next ship played a card with a symbol that gets resolved before yours, they might have moved away from you, leaving the nearest object as a piece of junk floating behind you. Gravity doesn’t care which way it pulls, so off you go backwards, careening through space, back towards the start. Imagine the frustration, and smug satisfaction in your opponents face.

Form an orderly queue

The guts of Gravwell: 2nd Edition are built around one of my favourite mechanisms – action queuing. You’ve probably experienced it in at least one game, from Gloomhaven and Dungeon Lords through to Colt Express and 6 Nimmt!. In an action queue, players play their cards face-down, then when they’re flipped, some value on them gives them an order to be resolved in. Trying to guess what the other players are going to do, and then choosing your own counter-move, is as frustrating as it is exciting.

There’s a small amount of magic that happens when everyone’s played their chosen cards. When the cards are flipped, everyone’s eyes scour them so fast it looks like people watching a table tennis match. I love the sounds of delight and despair when everyone figures out what’s going to happen next, it’s real tabletop chemistry.

At first glance it might look like it’s just a game of chance, but once you figure out how it all works, you soon realise that the game is about the people around the table. It’s pure mind games. From the second round onwards, the new hands of cards are chosen in a drafting system, and if you’ve got a good memory you’ll know four of the six cards that other players have. Trying to remember them definitely helps, but it’s hard to do, which I think lends to the fun of the game. That’s what Gravwell is – a fun game.

Vive la difference

There are a few key differences between the original version of Gravwell, and this second edition. First of all, each ship has four special ability cards. These get charged when certain things happen in the game – ending your movement next to a piece of space junk, for example – and give you one-off special actions and abilities. I like these, they add a small amount of asymmetry to the game, which makes things really interesting, and means you can make tactical plays as well as just racing.

The second and third main changes work together really nicely. The first is a new fuel card type, the multipoint repulsor. These cards push every other object on the board away from you, but they only come into play at higher player counts. Higher player counts is the other big change, as Gravwell: 2nd Edition now supports up to six players! If you’ve played with the chaos of four before, this takes it to a whole new level.

When you play with more than four, you can choose to start from the inside and work outwards, as is the norm, or flip things on their head and work from the outside, inwards. It’s not too different at first, but when you get to the third round or so, and ships start crossing paths, it’s galactic mayhem, and it’s hysterical. You’ll need reminders of who is going in which direction, but that’s okay. Playing Gravwell is meant to be a fun experience. It’s a light-hearted game which gets people talking and laughing, and it’s a great social lubricant (for want of a much better expression).

Final thoughts

Gravwell: 2nd Edition is really good fun. It’s much lighter than games I’d usually go for, but that’s one of its biggest strengths. I could take this to a family gathering, and teach everyone how to play in five minutes. It’s also a great game to start or end a regular games night with. It’s not too taxing, it plays out in about half an hour, and you can chat while playing. I recently took it to a local convention, and universally people enjoyed it.

It’s worth saying that it’s a far better game with three or more players. You can play with two, but it’s a really dilated experience. What makes the game fun is the chaos of ships and objects pulling each other hither and thither, and when there’s only two of you and a couple of pieces of junk, space feels too empty. One silly thing that I really enjoy is the way people count out their spaces when they move. Everyone – and I mean everyone – I’ve played with does that thing we all did with Monopoly or Snakes & Ladders, where you pick your piece up and tap out every step on the board. There’s no need to, because every fifth space has its number printed on it, but it’s a game that makes you feel like a kid again.

I’ve played enough times now for my cards to show the first signs of wear, which goes to show how much I enjoy it. It also shows that I really ought to sleeve the cards. Gravwell: 2nd Edition would make a brilliant addition to a fledgling collection of board games, and the super-cool minis and gorgeous board mean anyone and everyone can find something to enjoy. If you enjoy games like Jamaica, you’ll love Gravwell.

Review copy kindly provided by Renegade Game Studios. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Gravwell: 2nd Edition (2021)

Designer: Corey Young
Publisher: Renegade Game Studios
Art: Kwanchai Moriya
Players: 2-6
Playing time: 30-45 mins

The post Gravwell: 2nd Edition Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Office politics

It’s safe to say this is a game with its tongue firmly in its cheek. You could say the whole thing is a caricature of office life, but honestly, in some ways it’s not a million miles from the truth. The aim of the game is to suck up to the three bosses, each of whom has a corner office on the grid board. Once you’ve done that, and collected your certificates of achievement, it’s a race back to the start to be the first one to their performance review, and a juicy promotion.

The problem is, you’re not the only one who wants the promotion, and you can be darn sure the other players will stop at nothing to get there ahead of you. All’s fair in love and office politics, right? In fact, there’s a deck of cards used in the game called ‘Office politics’. You can spend your company influence to play them, doing things like spreading rumours about the others, stealing the credit for someone else’s work, working overtime, or even sucking up to your superiors. Each of these either boost you, or hinder someone else in some way.

Stepping stones

As I mentioned right at the start, Sysifus Corp is, at its heart, a racing game. The difference between this and other racing games, is the lack of a track. You all start in one corner of the board, visit the other three corners, and then head back to the starting space. The problem is, there’s no route between each square. That’s where the project cards come in. These square cards have some light-hearted, corporate-esque flavour text on them, but importantly, they also have sticky notes around some of the sides.

A sticky note is like a Post-It note, but with less copyright infringement.

If two sticky notes are adjacent, you can move from one card to the next. There’s this feeling of trying to lay your project cards ahead of you, like stepping stones, while trying not to open up routes for the other players. There’s no set route, you can go wherever you like, and visit the bosses in any order. But it’s this idea of not helping the other players where the fun really begins in Sysifus Corp.

Have you got a rival who’s got a clear route to the next boss? Let’s just play a card, and turn the next square, so his route is broken. Maybe another player is perilously close to getting to the performance review and winning the game. It’d be a real shame if you played a card and swapped your place with hers, wouldn’t it? If you’ve ever hooted with devilish glee when your blue shell hit your friend in Mario Kart and cost them the race, you’re going to love this game.

Playing with the right group

I’ve had a lot of fun with Sysifus Corp. I’ve played it with my immediate family, my in-laws, and a couple of friends. We all know each other really well, and we all enjoy the banter and competition that comes from a game like this, or the aforementioned Mario Kart. However, I probably wouldn’t take this along to a games club night where there might be people I don’t know well. Plenty of people don’t like confrontation, or screwing other players over, so this game could leave a sour taste in their mouth.

The same goes with playing with family, or younger players. My son loves games, but hates losing. We tried playing a house rules game where we couldn’t play any cards that directly attacked another player, and while it works, it feels like ripping the soul out of the game. Sysifus Corp is a game that’s at its best when players are shouting and laughing, groaning and sniggering. Just bear that in mind before you pull the trigger and buy it.

When it comes to player count, it’s pretty good against one other person, especially if you know them well. The game really comes to life with three or four players, and you need eyes in the back of your head to keep track of what’s going on. There’s a great feeling of trying to hinder the leader without putting yourself in the spotlight. Using the Mario Kart metaphor again, it’s like staying in second place and just waiting for that blue shell to go flying past, leaving you free to claim victory.

Final thoughts

Sysifus Corp doesn’t look all that exciting when you set it up. The player boards are really nicely done, but the main board feels a bit soulless and grey. But when you start playing, you realise that’s just a part of the over-the-top corporate feel, and it actually helps the game. It’s a racing game, and it’s a really good racing game, and it’s a real boon that any decoration just gets out of the way, and lets you concentrate on who is where, and what they’re doing next. In the same way that Chess doesn’t need an illustrated board.

I can’t comment too well on longevity, although I know that some racing games can become routine when the players know all the tricks. What Sysifus Corp has going for it though, is a big selection of office politics cards, only some of which gets used in any one game. Cards can combo-up when played, so using different sets to start with can result in really different feeling games.

I know the theme will leave some people cold, but I’d urge anyone to try it if they can, or at least give it the benefit of the doubt. I really enjoy a race with plenty of needle, plotting and ruining someone else’s day. Sysifus is a well-made, balanced, riot of a race game, and I’ve had loads of fun with it. Wonmin has made a great game, and I love seeing another brilliant design from an independent studio.

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

SPECIAL OFFER!

Pegasus Games have provided me with FIVE discount codes for Sysifus Corp. If you head to https://www.sysifuscorp.com/ and buy the game direct, you can save 20% of the cost. Not too shabby. It brings the cost down from $39.99 USD to a shade under $32 USD. In order to claim a code, comment below and I’ll give the first five people a discount code.

Please don’t ask for a code if you don’t intend to use it.

Sysifus Corp (2021)

Designer: Wonmin Lee
Publisher: Pegasus Games
Art: Wonmin Lee
Players: 2-4
Playing time: 45-60 mins

The post Welcome To Sysifus Corp Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Marvel Villainous is an asymmetric strategy game, where players assume the roles of one of five big bad guys from the Marvel universe – Ultron, Hela, Taskmaster, Killmonger, and the one even your dad has heard of, Thanos. Through card management and action selection, they’ll be trying to achieve very different win conditions, and declare themselves the biggest, and baddest of the lot.

Snobbery? Me?

Okay, I’ll admit it. When I first saw the buzz around the original Villainous game, I felt my inner snob talking to me. “A mass-market Disney game? Don’t even think about it, we like beige, complicated games with questionable box art“. I was curious because a lot of people were playing it, and the minis and artwork looked great, I just wasn’t sure there’d be enough game there to keep me interested.

Time passed though, I did some reading, and when the chance came to get Marvel Villainous: Infinite Power (to give it its full name, which nobody uses), I decided to come at it with an open mind. The theme is great, and fans of the comics and films will really appreciate the actions of each and every one of the hero and ally cards. When you’ve got a franchise as big an powerful as Marvel in your hands, you want to make the most of the lore and characters given to you, and Ravensburger really have.

Master of your domain

Each player has their own board, which represents their villain’s domain, and a deck of cards which is unique to them. On your turn you move your (gorgeous) villain pawn to a different space on the domain, and then carry out as many of the available actions on that space as you want. Those actions are usually choices such as take some power tokens (the game’s currency), play a card, or vanquish one of the heroes that one of the other players has put on your board. You draw back up to the hand size limit, and it’s the next player’s turn. The action selection is actually a sneaky way to introduce rondels to your group. It might not look like one, but it’s a four-space rondel with a three-space movement range. Board game smarts, right there.

The game is a balancing act in a couple of different ways. Your focus is always going to center around your domain, as that’s where you play your cards to build towards your win condition. Allies, items and effects all get played from your hand, usually at the cost of some of your power tokens. At the same time though, you need to keep an eye on what your nefarious neighbours are up to. Everyone knows everyone else’s win condition, because they each have a reference card. So when you’re dishing out heroes from the fate deck – which then sit in other players’ domains, blocking actions and adding negative effects – make sure you’re hindering the person you think is doing the best. That’s not as easy as it sounds though, because if you’re playing cards to scupper someone else, you’re not working towards winning.

Variety is the spice of life

I really like how different each villain is. One game you’re playing as Taskmaster, who needs to use his items to power-up four of his allies to a strength of five. Then the next game you’re Ultron, and he’s got his own set of special tiles which go on his play area. As you advance through the game, these tiles get flipped, give you a new perk, and show the next challenge on the road to victory. It’s variety like this which stops the game getting stale. If you’re bored of chasing the infinity stones as Thanos, go take on Black Panther as Killmonger instead.

The way the fate deck works is really clever too. Firstly, it changes every game. The standard deck of fate cards gets shuffled with the specific fate cards of the villains in the current game, and it means you’re going to see very different cards and heroes rearing their do-gooding heads each time you play. There’s also the option of removing the Event cards from the fate deck, which makes for an easier, faster game. That kind of flexibility in difficulty is a great touch, because this game is probably going to be out of some people’s comfort zone. If you want your friends to come back for a second game, lowering the difficulty is a great way to make the game more approachable, and ultimately more fun.

There are so many ways the five villains can be combined with four players, you’re never going to play the same game twice. That’s a lot of replay value for a game that you can pick up for around £30. It’s a game that’s begging for an expansion, so here’s hoping Ravensburger give it the same treatment they did with the Disney version.

Final Thoughts

I’m pleasantly surprised by Marvel Villainous. More than surprised, I’m actually really impressed. I was worried it would be very light in terms of strategy and choice, but it really isn’t. There’s plenty of scope to play with a strategy from the start of the game once you know the characters, but it really needs a first play before everyone gets what’s going on. I really like the asymmetry, and although I’ve not played with every combination at lots of different player counts, the balance seems to be very good.

As a big Euro game fan, player interaction isn’t something I deal with often. 99% of the time in a Euro, interaction is indirect, but In Marvel Villainous you’re actively targeting the other players, sometimes even coming up with agreements to join up and take on someone close to winning. Just don’t expect those alliances to last very long! I really enjoy the interaction, it makes a real change for me, just remember the golden rule that everyone is friends again after the game.

I want to give the rule book a mention too. This game could have been pretty tricky to explain, and very easy to explain badly, but the rule book is excellent. The terminology is consistent, the examples are great, and the important card types are colour-coded throughout, so you can easily learn the game without a video.

Who is Marvel Villainous for?

If you are either new to the hobby board game scene, or hoping to use this as a gateway game to bring in some family or friends, I recommend using the Omnipotent game mode, so that all of the Event cards are removed. They’re great once you know the game, and add in some conditions that affect one or all of the players and give you another thing to work towards, sometimes forcing you to work together.

I think this is a great game for families with children at least ten-years-old. My eight-year-old son gets the idea, but finds the strategic planning tricky. Games can last for quite a while too, so it’s not great for people with short attention spans. I also think it’s at its best with more than two players. A lot of the enjoyment comes from the back and forth and ‘how could you?!‘s, so the more of you sharing banter, the better. There isn’t a set number of rounds, it’s just a race to meet your victory condition first. One player wins, the others don’t, and that’s an ending befitting a game where the goal is to become the ultimate villain in the universe.

If you’re a fan of all things Marvel, it’s a fantastic game which really captures the feel and aesthetic. With two, it’s pretty good, with three or four players though, Marvel Villainous shines like an infinity gauntlet loaded with stones.

Designer: Prospero Hall
Publisher: Ravensburger
Art: n/a
Players: 2-4
Playing time: 60-90 minutes

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

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