If you’ve never played Echidna Shuffle, there are two things you need to know. Firstly, it has the cutest board game pieces in existence. Secondly, it’s incredibly interactive and very mean. Those of you who’ve played it know it’s essentially cutesy divorce fuel. Orbit has a similar feeling in the way that every player can move each of the planets on the board, and that every player needs to visit every planet to win. Simultaneously moving the planets you need towards you, while moving those your opponents need away from them. But you are all doing this at the same time.

Sounds like unmitigated chaos, right? Well, yes, but also no.

Staaaar Trekkin’ across the universe

The Orbit game board looks like one of those scanner screens in the background of an 80s sci-fi movie. Planets on dashed, geometric paths. A grid of triangles covers the entire thing. I’ve been playing with a prototype version of the game, but the first thing that struck me is that it’s not very pretty to look at. The cards are bright and easy to read, but the board is a bit bleh. The really weird thing is that after a few minutes, you don’t even notice, because the board is really functional. The aesthetic brevity (for want of a better word) is a strength instead of a weakness.

On your turn, you play a card from your hand which does two or three things. Firstly, it moves one or more planets along its orbital path. It’s as simple as moving the wooden planet to the next spot on the dashed line. Secondly, it has a number. This is the number of junctions along the network of little triangles you can move your spaceship. Thirdly, you might have an extra icon which lets you do something fun, like reverse the direction of a planet’s travel. Chaotic orbital mechanics ripping entire solar systems to pieces – no biggie.

In the style of so many of Dr Knizia’s games – oh, didn’t I mention, it’s a brand new Reiner Knizia design? – the game mechanisms take a back seat and let the game play itself. Your turn is simple. Play a card, move a couple of pieces around, draw a new card. Choosing which card you play, and what you do with that card is where the joy of the game lives. At first it’s a case of “Well, I really want that red planet, so I’ll move it and then move towards it”, but very quickly the true game pops its head around the door like an intrusive neighbour. So much of Orbit depends on keeping an eye on what the other players are doing, and in turn, trying to second-guess what their next move is likely to be.

Tech? We don’t need no stinking te… oh wait, actually, we do

It’s a space game, so it’s got to have tech, right? It’s the unwritten rule. Orbit has techs to go after, but if the five-course, leather-bound menu of tech options in a game like Eclipse (review here) is your frame of reference, the tech offerings in Orbit are more like a blackboard leaning against a jacket potato van. Cheese, beans, cheese and beans. There’s some point-to-point warping, a pretty cool cannon which lets you zap off as far as you want in one direction. You get a couple of these by visiting certain planets, but in addition to that there are space station tiles strewn about the board. When you visit one it’ll either be a permanent tech for your player board or a warp or cannon for all to use.

Despite tech and powerups being a relatively small part of the whole package, they often become the most decisive part of the game. In the early parts of the game, there’s a feeling of every person for themselves, spreading out and looking for close clusters of planets to ping around, like pinballs trapped in a set of bumpers. It quickly becomes a game of side-eyeing your neighbours and opponents when they get down to one or two planets left to go. I love the way alliances are gossamer thin and last as long as a bubble. One moment Alice and Bob are trying to move planets out of the way of Carol, and then Alice jumps on a planet and only needs one more. Now it’s Team Bob & Carol forever! Or for another turn, at least.

No matter how well you keep your eyes on the space race in front of you, good players will spot an opportunity to use something like a warp to make a crazy play that nobody saw coming. Especially when you factor in being able to gain energy cubes, which you can spend a cube at a time to boost the number of steps you can move. The number of times you get blindsided is equal parts infuriating and amazing. If you start to think you’ve got the measure of the game after repeated plays with the same group you can flip the board over to spice things up. The orbital paths for the planets are different and have branches along the way, and it just messes with the basics enough to keep you thinking.

Modular design

I found after a few plays that even with the other side of the board there weren’t too many variables in the game. I’m a heavy Euro nut. I love it when there are a hundred things to tinker with and see what happens. Luckily, there are some extra modules in the box to keep things interesting.

Yay, good times!

The quickest and easiest is the Prism. The rulebook recommends it with two players, and I have to agree. All it does is add an additional, stationary planet to the board to visit, but it’s extra meat to keep you gnawing at the bone a little longer. The module that’s the most interesting in my opinion is the four-player partnership mode. It’s a bit like playing Bridge, with partners sitting opposite one another. Except the game is nothing like Bridge, but you know, other than that. A couple of bonus tiles like you teleport around the board to get things done.

The copy I was sent also has the Nebula expansion included, which I believe may be an additional extra. As long as it doesn’t bump the price too much, I’d say it’s definitely worth getting. There’s a navigation tokens module which helps speed the game up, and another that adds ‘nebula’ tiles to the board which is pretty cool. The nebulas bump planets along their tracks faster, while simultaneously blocking player ships from crossing those points.

The best extra though, and by far the coolest, is the Hyper Accelerator Engine Module. It just sounds cool. With this module, once you upgrade your energy capacity to the max you just shove all those tokens off your board and replace them with a gigantic engine tile. The engine means that any card you play that would add energy cubes to your board instead lets you rocket across the board in a straight line, and then use that card’s movement. I really like this module, because it helps with what is my biggest issue with the game, and that’s speeding up the endgame.

Final thoughts

Reiner Knizia is a machine. He just doesn’t know when to stop. Now it’s true that in the past not every game has been a hit, but his recent record is pretty flipping good. This year’s Cascadero (which I reviewed here) is one of his designs and it’s one of my favourite games of the year. Orbit is one of those games where at first you’d be inclined to say “Wait, this is a Knizia game? Really?”. It doesn’t feel like it has any of his hallmark mathematic stitching under the surface. But as you play, you start to feel the familiar player-driven interaction, with the push and pull of players trying to step over one another to get to the top, while simultaneously reaching out for a hand up.

Dyed-in-the-wool Euro gamers might not have a great time with Orbit. So much of the game is out of your direct control, and a lot of what you do is reactive. You can adapt a big strategy to try to steer parts of the game in the way you want it to go, but you have to remember that everybody else is trying to do the same thing. Despite this, and as counterintuitive as it might sound, it’s not a game of random chaos. A good player with good, reactive planning, will normally do better than a bad player.

Even if you’re a Knizia fan, there’s a good chance you don’t have one of his games set in space (although MLEM: Space Agency came out this year, so maybe). If you enjoy his games like the recent remake of Quo Vadis – Zoo Vadis – then despite the vastly different settings and apparent mechanisms, I think you’ll have a good time with Orbit. The same goes for those of you who played and burned out on Echidna Shuffle. Don’t get me wrong, I love that game, but by the end of the game, it can get pretty painful. Orbit feels similar to me but with much more space between the echidnas planets.

Bitewing and Reiner Knizia are doing some really clever stuff at the moment, and Orbit is another fine example. I prefer it with three or four players, for sure, so if it sounds like your groups kinda thing, check it out.

Preview copy kindly provided by Bitewing Games. Thoughts & opinions are my own.

Orbit (2024)

Design: Reiner Knizia
Publisher: Bitewing Games
Art: Vincent Dutrait
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 60 mins

The post Orbit Preview appeared first on Punchboard.

Jungle is massive

The Quest for El Dorado drops you into the roles of expedition leaders. Each is trying to negotiate their way through the jungles, deserts, and lakes, searching for the golden treasure. That landscape is a collection of big, hex tiles, joined at the edges. There are several layouts shown in the rulebook, but there’s nothing to stop you from creating something which fits on your table better. Despite the hexes not being too big, by the time they’re linked, and the card market is on the table, it takes up quite a lot of space.

The best way to describe the game is a mixture of deck-building and racing. Some deck-builders can feel like a race. Dominion, for example, is basically a race to amass points before the last Province card is taken. The Quest for El Dorado, however, is a traditional race. Our intrepid explorers have to play cards that allow them to cut their way through the jungle, aiming to be the first to make it to the gold – and with it, glory. Something like that, anyway.

If we’re honest, the most satisfying bit of a deck-builder is crafting your deck. As in Moonrakers, Aeon’s End, and just about every other deck-building game ever, there’s a card market to visit. In an attempt to keep things thematic, your trips to card-Tesco in El Dorado result in you hiring more people to come on your trip. You might be hiring a Scout to lead your group, but in reality, all you need to know is that he’s a green card with a power of two. You might look at the card art and think about what each card represents, but that’s quickly replaced with a need to just glance at colour and value. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad thing necessarily, it’s just how deck-builders work.

Lean, mean, exploring machine

There are two distinct phases to most peoples’ introduction to deck-building. Phase one is when you buy all the cards, and revel in your glorious collection, like some kind of card magnate. Phase two is when you try to play with all the cards, and realise they don’t work together. It’s this natural turning point that leads inquisitive minds to think “What if I take cards out of my deck, so the cards I want come out more often…?”.

Trimming the fat. Separating the wheat from the chaff. Skimming off the cream. It doesn’t matter which analogy you choose, the result is the same. In El Dorado you’ll inevitably find some value in thinning your deck, and there’s a mechanism for doing exactly that. Visiting a base camp on the map lets you bin some of your cards permanently, but in typical Knizia fashion, it’s a calculated risk. Getting to a base camp means straying off the beaten path. In other words, your deck gets more useful, but it means you’ll often have to travel further.

Decisions, decisions.

The way Reiner has balanced The Quest for El Dorado is fantastic. I love the way you can plan your route long in advance, and then try to craft your deck along the way. If you’ve played the more-recent Cubitos, you’ll be familiar with the agony of choice you’re given, between the most direct route and the best bonuses. It’s a light game, in terms of complexity, but I’d still probably point newcomers towards Dominion first. Learning how to build a deck while planning a route can prove tricky for younger players. Any mistakes made during crafting your deck feel amplified by your lack of progress in the race.

Final thoughts

I’m a sucker for jungley, adventurey, Indiana-Jonesy themes in games. I loved Escape: The Curse of the Temple, and The Quest for El Dorado conjures up the same feelings for me. On a mechanical level it’s just about growing a stronger deck of cards to cope with more difficult movement requirements. As you’d expect from a Reiner Knizia game, the mathematics behind all of this feel very nicely balanced. As long as you follow the official map layouts or use the principles in the rulebook (or these awesome fan-made maps), you’ll be able to create some unique and varied jungles.

This is a real keeper of a game. It’s not one of those that sits on your shelves for months between plays (I’m sorry, On Mars. I still love you). You could easily play it several evenings in a week and not get tired of it, thanks to the variable setup. I keep harking back to Dominion, I know, but El Dorado offers the same simplicity in rules and mechanical overhead as its forebear. Once you know how to play it, each time it lands on the table it becomes a game of figuring out what you want to do, not how to play, and that’s what all good games should do.

If you’re all about the heavy, brain-burning games, The Quest for El Dorado probably isn’t for you. As a svelte, accessible mix of racing and deck-building though, it’s fantastic. Even though Knizia has created hundreds of games, there aren’t many that I’d consider must-haves. El Dorado, along with Tigris and Euphrates, is a game that I think everyone should have in their collection. Dominion is still on my shelf after 13 years, and I expect The Quest for El Dorado to still be there in another 13. It’s brilliant.

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

The Quest for El Dorado (2017)

Designer: Reiner Knizia
Publisher: Ravensburger
Art: Vincent Dutrait, Franz Vohwinkel
Players: 2-4
Playing time: 30-60 mins

The post The Quest for El Dorado Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Reiner? I hardly knew ‘er

I’m not going to re-invent the wheel here, and write out a huge biography. You can see his designer page on BGG for that level of detail. He’s a game designer who started out with a PhD in mathematics, worked in banking, and then started designing games. The reason he’s so important to the hobby is how influential he was during the first modern board game boom, in the ’90s.

When I called him prolific in the opening paragraph, I wasn’t exaggerating. In the ’90s alone he had at least 115 games published. Let that sink in. That’s nearly a game a month, every month, for ten years straight! Were they all great? No, there’s some instantly forgettable stuff in there, some extra-light roll-and-move games, kids games – all kinds of things.

The good games he made during that time – the really good ones – are very important to modern board games. To illustrate the point, let me tell you that nine of the top 1,000 games on BGG are ones that Knizia had published in the ’90s.

If that doesn’t sound impressive, let me put it another way. Just about 1% of the top 1,000 games on BGG today, are ones that he created before the PlayStation 2 was released.

Slapping on some context

Let’s apply some context to all those facts. Firstly, and most importantly, the board game scene in the ’90s was a wildly different place. Even though Knizia was pumping out games in his sleep, the actual number of new games released every year was much smaller than today. Each year in that decade saw around 1,000 games published per year. In 2021 alone, 5,000 new games were released, and that number looks set to grow in the near future.

Every game released back then had a much smaller market to compete against, so real stand-out games were able to lodge themselves at the top of the BGG charts, once the site launched in 2000. The big unknown in all of what I’m talking about in this article is the BGG ranking algorithm. The numbers and formulae that determine a board game’s rank on BGG is a secret, but it’s generally understood that a big part of it is users individual users’ ratings, averaged when a certain threshold of ratings are submitted for each game.

I believe there must be some level of ranking decay applied too, otherwise older games with very high ratings would almost never get toppled. If that’s true, then it’s not surprising that older games slip. If an older game is out-of-print, and hundreds of new games are riding a wave of social media hype, who is buying and ranking older games any more?

Knizia’s still big, right?

See, that’s what I thought. But then I started to think – which of his games have I bought, or played, lately? Lost Cities has been in my collection forever, and I recently picked up the roll and write version (which is great). The same goes for Heckmeck, it’s evergreen for me. But what about other people? Do they buy and play his games? There was only one way to find out – to Facebook!

I’m a member of a great UK-based board game group on Facebook called Board Game Trading and Chat UK (BGT&C UK), so I asked the folks there. In particular, I wanted to know how long people have been in the hobby, and how many Reiner Knizia games they own. Over 200 people responded, and the results confirmed what I’d already guessed. Here are the headlines.

• Over a third (35%) of respondents who took up the hobby since early 2019 have never bought a Reiner Knizia game.

• Nearly a quarter (22%) of respondents who have been into board games for longer than 3 years, own six or more Reiner Knizia games.

The replies on the poll told the same sort of story. Recent gamers had games like My City or The Quest for El Dorado. None of them are buying the classics such as Tigris and Euphrates, Samurai, or Ra. There’s a very good reason which explains some of that – they’re out-of-print and very hard to get. Even if they weren’t though, would they stand a chance against the Gloomhavens and Ark Novas of the world?

Are the games that good, or is it nostalgia?

I asked myself more questions at this point. Am I just looking at his games with rose-tinted glasses, in the same way some people convince themselves VHS and audio cassettes were best? Have games just moved on in recent years, leaving everyone’s favourite bowtie-wearing German irrelevant? This is a tricky one, because it’s always going to be subjective. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and all that jazz. Personally though, I have to say yes – yes they’re still great games worth your time. I carry Lost Cities in my work bag, just in case an opportunity presents itself, and at GridCon last year I played Heckmeck. His games are still in my regular rotation.

Ra, Medici, Battle Line, Keltis, Modern Art, Amun-Re – they’re all great games, and would fit in at most modern games nights. They just don’t get the exposure they deserve any more, and that lack of popularity perpetuates a vicious circle, which sees the games not getting reprinted. Just last year, both Z-Man and Grail Games dropped their plans to print new and old Knizia games, because they just weren’t selling as well as they’d hoped.

Sad times for old farts like me. Sad times also for anyone new to the hobby, hoping to catch up on some classics.

Hype has so much to do with which games people play now. We get bombarded on all fronts of social media with new games. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook are full of people getting onboard with the latest hotness, and it’s changed the way people choose and buy games. Reiner’s games don’t normally go near Kickstarter, which means making a dent in a potential buyer’s consciousness is harder than ever.

Playing Knizia games in 2022 and beyond

So what does this year, and indeed the future, have in store for Knizia fans like me? Well, it’s a mixture of good and bad news really. The bad is the issues I mentioned above, with the difficulty of getting his out-of-print gems. People who got into board games during the pandemic are going to struggle to get hold of a copy of Tigris & Euphrates without paying through the nose for a second-hand copy, and the same goes for most of his other big box games.

He will, inevitably, keep producing new games, the majority of which will come through traditional channels. My Island for example, the follow-up to 2020’s My City, is due later this year, and is sure to do well. The small box classics like Lost Cities, High Society and Schotten Totten are seemingly always available, and thoroughly recommended as ways to sample some of his design, if he’s new to you.

The most exciting news, as far as I’m concerned, is that Alley Cat Games have picked up the reprint of Amun-Re. Alley Cat make really nice productions, and have already proven they can handle reprints of older titles, with last years revamp of Tinners’ Trail. Now that the rights for the older games have been handed back to the original owners, I hope we see other publishers picking them up, and refreshing them for a new audience.

To wrap-up then – yes, Reiner Knizia doesn’t have the same prominence as he did 20 years ago, nor does his name have the same clout when it’s printed on a box. Writing him off would be a mistake though, and there is still a vast trove of his games to play, to get acquainted with his work. In fact, you can do it for free, right now. Follow this link to his free print-and-play of a great dice game – Decathlon.

I’m glad our hobby has Dr Knizia in it, it’s a brighter, better place for it. Long may it continue.

Author’s notes

Hey folks, I just wanted to take a few lines to cover a few things. Firstly, yes, this entire article was spawned by – and makes constant reference to – the BGG rankings. I know that not everyone agrees with their rankings, or finds them important, but they’re undeniably a strong marker for popular opinion.

Secondly, this post isn’t meant to knock the good doctor in any way, or suggest he’s not designing good games. The man’s a genius as far as I’m concerned, and there are games of his that will stay in my collection forever.

Finally, I’m particularly pleased with the heading “Reiner? I hardly knew ‘er”. The bonus wordplay in there is ‘er’ being the German pronoun for ‘him’. I amuse myself, if no-one else.

The post Reiner Knizia – Staying Relevant 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.