Roll and move? Like Monopoly?? Burn, heretic!

Yeah, yeah, I know, enough punching down on Monopoly. It’s a fair concern to have though, especially as I’ve heard this game described as ‘Lords of Waterdeep crossed with Monopoly’. Those of you recoiling in horror at the thought of playing a game that’s anything like The Landlord’s Game don’t need to worry, because despite your actions being dependent on rolling a die, this game is nothing like it.

Mitigation

Some people can’t bear to play a game that uses dice to decide anything, especially when you’re talking about a single die. At least when you’re playing a game like Can’t Stop, the four dice you roll make heavy use of probability, turning it into a game of considered gambling instead of blind luck. Let’s compare that to River of Gold. In River of Gold you roll your single die to determine what actions might be available in your following turn. In the simplest terms, if you roll a 4, you can move one of your boats four spaces along the river. You could also use it to deliver your collected goods to a customer whose card has the same number on it, or build one of the available buildings in the zone of the river matching the colour and logo of that die’s face.

Your initial impression might be one of mild disinterest. A one-in-six chance of getting what you want? No thanks. That’s where the mitigation comes into play. For starters, you’ve got two boats on the river, not just one. If you play it clever and keep them a little way apart it makes the likelihood of any roll being good. The main way of swaying lady luck if she’s in a fickle mood is through the use of divine favour. Divine favour is just another resource you can collect and spend to change the die roll. Each you spend changes the value by one, and it wraps around from 6 to 1 and vice-versa.

Obviously it’s still a game that someone can get incredibly lucky at and never have to use any favour, while someone else sets the world record for rolling consecutive 1s, and there are some people who just can’t get on with games like that. Those people are better off sticking to games like Lords of Waterdeep with its worker-placement, perhaps. But there are some other things about River of Gold that really set it apart from its D&D-inspired stable mate.

Every space along the river has four buildings adjacent to it. When you dock in a space with your little boat you get the rewards from the pointy end of all of the building tiles that are adjacent. There’s no limit to how many boats can be in each space either, which really sets it apart from Lords. There’s no more choosing what the next-best option is because someone used the building you wanted to. Like Lords, again, the owner of each building gets a bonus when someone – even themselves – visits one of their buildings. One of the things I really like is that each building’s cost is determined by its location, not the building itself. There are some great locations which border multiple river spaces, but you’ll end up paying more than double the cost of somewhere that borders just one.

Boat race

It might not seem like it at first glance, but River of Gold has the feel of a race. There are randomised shared objectives which are first come, first served, and the end of the game is triggered by the last building tile being taken from the available stacks. You’ll find yourself planning to do several different things, but you’re increasingly aware that the end of the game is fast approaching. As with so many other Euro games you’ll never get it all done, so choosing what to chase and what to leave is tricky.

As if there wasn’t plenty enough to think about, each of the six regions of the river has its own progress track to wend your merry way up. There are decent points to be had for doing well on those tracks, as well as one-time bonuses along the way. So it makes sense to fulfil customer contracts that give you discounts on building in that region, right? Or maybe those that give you double points at the end of the game in particular regions. To fulfil those contracts you need resources though, so now you’re trying to work out how you’re going to get those resources and advance up those tracks at the same time, which generally means different building types. But for buildings you need money, money you can only really get by sailing, and…

…phew. The mental gymnastics aren’t venturing into Lacerda or Splotter levels here, but there’s enough to keep your brain on its toes. Not that brains have toes, but you get the idea. All of this is going on while the rest of the players are trying to do the same thing, and everyone is competing for the same communal goals, all the while watching the building piles shrink. Buildings get removed every time someone reaches the end of the river and loops around to the top of the board too.

It all makes for a game which is often done in an hour, and there aren’t too many games being released now that deliver the same amount of game and meaningful decisions in that length of time.

Final thoughts

River of Gold is my new gateway game. It’s that game that I’ll use to introduce new gamers to something a little heavier without getting confusing. Rolling dice is universal. Everyone knows how to do that, and giving new players something familiar is often the key in capturing their attention and making hobby games seem approachable. The remarkable thing is that despite making a game with mechanically simple mechanisms that plays out in an hour or so, there’s enough going on to make it engaging and interesting to nerds like me. I’ll happily play River of Gold with you. In fact, I’m taking it along to my local group tonight as we have a relatively new player and I know it’ll be a hit.

I have to mention the presentation too, for good and bad reasons. Let’s get the bad out of the way first. The insert looks fantastic, and if you look at the publisher’s pictures on BGG it’ll look like the game comfortably fits. The truth, however, is that it does not fit. I’ve read that there are some good 3D printable additional pieces which make it fit, but I’ve thrown it in the bin and bagged it all. On the good side though, holy cow is that board pretty. The river has inlaid gold which looks gorgeous. I’m used to seeing that sort of effect on cards, but never on main game boards. The wooden boats are different shapes for each player colour too. They’re small things that don’t affect the game you play, but pay testament to the level of care and production used in the game. Except for the insert.

Once you’re used to the game there are some asymmetric clan cards you can throw in that make things a little more interesting if you’re experienced gamers I’d throw them in right from the get-go. There’s really very little not to like about River of Gold, which is why I’d recommend it to anyone who regularly plays with a group who enjoy more than just hardcore games. The speed at which it plays out, combined with the number of choices available at any given time, and the ease of taking a turn, make for a cracking game that won’t swamp your table or make your bank account cry.

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.

River of Gold (2024)

Design: Keith Piggott
Publisher: Office Dog
Art: Francesca Baerald
Players: 2-4
Playing time: 60-90 mins

The post River Of Gold Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Suckers for worship

The idea behind the game puts you in the position of a worshipper of the great Cosmoctopus. Not much is known about the spacefaring creature, but as devotees, you are trying to bring him to your realm and to prove yourself the greatest, most devout worshipper.

So how does this all work as a game? It’s basically an engine-builder with a bit of point-to-point movement and resource management thrown in for good measure. There’s a 3×3 grid of tiles on the table and the plastic octopus head sits atop one of them. On your turn you’ve got to move the head to an adjacent tile and then collect whatever’s displayed on it. After you’ve done that you can play a card from your hand if you have the resources to pay for it.

Cards fall into one of four types, each with their own effects. Black cards – Scriptures – show a resource on them and give you that as a permanent discount for the rest of the game. Yellow cards – Relics – boost certain actions. It might give you an extra yellow resource every time you gain one for example, which might influence how you play for the rest of the game. Hallucinations are the red cards which give you a one-and-done bonus. Finally, there are Constellation (blue) cards, and these are the ones most of your focus will go on.

Once you’ve played a Constellation to your player area, any time in the future you gain the relevant resource you can add it to the card instead. Fill a card and you get to take a tentacle and add it to your own Summoning tile. Get eight tentacles and you complete the summoning of his most glorious octopusness and win the game.

Putting it all out there

I don’t normally go as in-depth with an explanation of the mechanisms and effects of a game as I have above, but it’s with good reason. If you’ve played any kind of engine-building game before, you know enough to be able to play Cosmoctopus now, which is a testament to how clean and simple the game design is. The designer, Henry Audubon, does this style of game so well. His previous hit, Parks (read my review here), is the perfect example of what I’m talking about.

What I really like in Cosmoctopus is the addition of the point-to-point movement of the octo head. Throwing in the spatial navigation element is great, it breaks your train of thought up enough to keep your brain whirring, without making things so complicated you forget what you were doing. It also gives the game an avenue to make things interesting and trickier once you’ve got the hang of it. Moving to adjacent tiles on a 3×3 grid is pretty easy, especially knowing you can spend resources to move extra spaces. When the layout looks like an S or an O, some tiles can end up quite a distance away.

Little touches like this in a game matter, especially when the game is aimed at new gamers, or fans of lighter games. People who probably don’t have collections of games in the hundreds, who buy a game expecting to play it more than once or twice a year (some of you out there are probably feeling seen right now). A smaller box, cheap price, and varied replayability really matter, and I applaud Paper Fort and Lucky Duck for delivering on it.

Keeping an eye on the time

I want to take a moment to call out something important, and that’s the length of the game. Be wary of how long the game takes. On page 12 of the rulebook it tells you how to play a shorter game by giving all players 3 tentacles to start the game with. If you’re playing it with younger or less-experienced players, I strongly recommend doing this.

Once you understand how to play Cosmoctopus properly you’ll find you have really fruitful turns. You’ll be gathering up handfuls of resources, playing a card every turn, and most importantly of all, fulfilling parts of multiple constellation cards at once. It’s a great feeling when you get your engine purring like that, but it doesn’t usually happen for most players’ first games. When it’s not firing on all cylinders, progress can be slow growing, and those tentacles can take a long time to emerge from the astral depths.

In my first game with my son, it took ages to get those first tentacles sprouting. Given that turns are pretty snappy, it meant that we had a huge number of turns each with the octopus pinging back and forth on the tiles like a pinball. I could see his interest waning, and I totally understood. If you want to bring new players into the hobby, you might only get one good chance so don’t spurn it because of misguided gamer pride telling you ‘play it properly or not at all’. Basically, get over yourself, play the short game, and make sure everyone has a good time.

Final thoughts

Confession time. When I first saw pictures of Cosmoctopus when the Kickstarter fulfilment started landing on doorsteps, it didn’t fill me with excitement. I committed the cardinal sin of judging a game by how light and thin I assumed it was. I was wrong to do so, because Cosmoctopus has a lot going on in terms of game design and in terms of how important a gateway game it could be for some people.

The simple turns combined with bright visuals and wonderfully tactile pieces are a winner. You can happily teach a table of four how to play in a few minutes and see the cogs turning after just a couple of turns. If your players get on with Cosmoctopus it opens a whole world of possibilities for next-step games. Terraforming Mars and Wingspan become distinctly doable, and from there – well, I’m sure I don’t need to tell some of you how deep and slippery that rabbit hole becomes.

There’s a really clever automa player you can introduce to the game to either play solo, or add to a multiplayer game to turn it into a co-op game instead. It’s really easy to run and opens up the potential to lead players by the hand in co-op games to really help them understand how strategy works.

Heavy gamers are unlikely to enjoy Cosmoctopus as anything more than an occasional filler game, but fans of lighter games, families dipping their toes in the waters of modern board games, and those of you who are part of a group that welcomes new members from time to time will take a lot from it. Just playing with the pieces is enough to bring a smile to your face, and the rulebook’s suggestion to turn the head to look at the next player is genius. I’ve got a lot of respect for Henry’s game design, and Cosmoctopus just deepens it. A clever, engaging, fun engine-builder that delivers on its goals, and then some.

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

Cosmoctopus (2023)

Design: Henry Audubon
Publisher: Paper Fort Games / Lucky Duck Games
Art: George Doutsiopoulos
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 60-90 mins

The post Cosmoctopus Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Rondels in disguise

The first thing you’ll notice after you’ve punched out the million (that might be an exaggeration…) cardboard tulip tokens is the funky interlocking gear wheels. Each player has one, and both of the wheels have actions on them. On your turn you rotate the left wheel the required number of spaces (more on that later), which in turn rotates the right wheel. You pick one of the two actions – or sometimes both – now indicated on the board and do that thing.

Now, being the astute lover of rondels that I am, it didn’t escape my attention that what we’re dealing with here are actually two interlocking rondels. The difference between these and something like my beloved Hamburgum (read the review here) is that instead of moving a pawn around a rondel, we’re moving the rondel itself and letting a printed arrow take the place of the pawn. You might also notice that the spokes of the wheels are raised, leaving recessed segments between them. That’s because as the game goes on you’ll add action segments to the wheel to either boost or replace the pre-printed ones.

You might think it makes coming up with a strategy easy. Add complementary actions to opposite wheels, and every time they cycle around you end up with a supercharged turn. Not so, makker. The wheel on the left has six sections, while the one on the right only has five. Given that you’ll only get to rotate the bigger wheel four or five times at the most, those stars won’t align after their first meeting. It’s actually pretty tricky to figure out which two are going to meet a long way in advance, especially as you don’t know how many segments that wheel is going to turn when it comes to your turn.

Flooding the market

So what are you actually doing in the game with all of these actions? Your biggest priority is growing tulips. Ideally growing them in neat rows of matching colours, while making sure you don’t repeat the same colour in each column. In addition to getting points for complete rows and columns, you’ll also get VPs for tulips of certain colours if you manage to get their associated windmills out on the main board. This is where my ignorance of The Netherlands’ topology and history reared its head. It’s not a country famous for flour or bread, so why all the windmills?

If, like me, you didn’t already know, they needed those thousands of windmills to pump excess water from the lowlands. It’s a country that’s famously flat and close to sea level, which means flooding is, and always has been, a real concern. You can’t grow tulips in fields more akin to rice paddies. Before you take a turn you can optionally open the floodgates. The floodgate marker has three spaces, and the space it’s on dictates how far your action wheel turns. At the bottom it’s one segment, the middle is two, and the top is – you guessed it – three. Opening them costs money but rewards you with VPs and allows you to get the actions you want back in range more quickly.

It creates a really interesting tug-of-war between the players, especially when there are more than two players. One person might be desperately trying to get an action back in range, flooding the place with reckless abandon, while the others want to keep the gates closed so they can milk every action on the way around. The longer the gates are open, the more the flood marker moves along its track, and in a nice thematic callback, you can get rewards for using actions to lower it. Turns out all those windmills you’re building aren’t just to make an interesting skyline. Pump water out, get rewarded with money and/or VPs. Living the capitalist dream.

Networking opportunities

One of the things Windmill Valley does really nicely is the way it ties different game mechanisms together. Along with the rondelesque action selection, the bustling market area where you jostle for position and aim to get the most tulips or planting opportunities, there’s also the very pretty main section of the board. It represents adjoining fields of brightly coloured tulips, and at the junctions of each of the roads which separate the fields, there’s a space to build a windmill.

Each windmill that gets built has to be able to trace a path of previously built windmills back to the market in the middle of the board. They don’t have to be your own, but for every windmill that isn’t yours that your path traces, the owner gets a victory point, and they soon add up. As you venture further out from the market the building spaces get more expensive, but offer more rewards, as you take the actions and resources from the adjacent fields. This is all before we even take into account the helper cards which either slot into the top of your board to reward you with things like more powerful actions, or into the bottom to offer more end-of-game scoring opportunities.

Each little piece of the puzzle contributes towards a really tight, enjoyable game with a passive but ever-present level of player interaction. There’s no take-that. There’s no directly screwing someone over, but the consequences of one player’s choices for their own benefit can send out big ripples of annoyance to the others. I love it. I love it when something in a game throws grit in the gears of your plans and you’re forced to adapt, and never has that analogy been more apt.

There’s plenty of scope for mitigation, not least of which being the tool tokens which you can use to increase or decrease the number of steps your wheels move on your turn. Even if you don’t have any tools, you’re never forced to move further than you want to because you can just choose to close the gates for free at the beginning of your turn. In doing that, however, you open the gate – so to speak – for the following players to open it again and add more VPs to their tally.

Final thoughts

Windmill Valley is a really good game. Bang in the middle of medium-weight with enough going on to satisfy heavyweight nerds like me without causing brain burn in less-experienced players. The components are really nicely made and satisfying to play with, even if punching out 200 tiny tulips is a ballache. The rulebook is clear and concise, and the game itself is a doddle to teach. The player aids are great, and the appendix in the rulebook is ideal too. My biggest complaint about the stuff which comes in the box is the sheer size of it all. The board is huge and by the time you add a player board and a set of action wheels for each player, you’re not getting everyone around a 1m x 1m table.

I think Windmill Valley shines with three players. The level of competition around the windmill network is just right and the game doesn’t drag. It’s still very enjoyable with two and four, but I haven’t had the time to take the solo mode out for a spin. The passive interaction is great, and naturally I love the rondel nature of the action wheels. It reminds me of Parks (read my review here) actually in that respect. Racing to the next full rotation and progressing to the next calendar track section (equivalent to the end of the track in Parks) might get you the best rewards, but at what cost? How much will you regret skipping those actions?

My biggest worry for Windmill Valley is how well it finds its audience. I applaud Board&Dice for branching out and diversifying from the heavyweight browns of the T series of games, but I can’t help wondering who is going to choose a game about windmills and tulips. Hopefully, plenty of people do, because I think this is a great example of everything a modern Euro game should be. Clean design, clear rules, bright boards, and just the right amount of mental overhead. I don’t want it to slip between the cracks and get overlooked. After Arborea and Barcelona, Dani Garcia is doing some great things, and Windmill Valley is another fine example of what to expect from him.

Review copy kindly provided by Board&Dice. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Windmill Valley (2024)

Design: Dani Garcia
Publisher: Board&Dice
Art: Pedro Codeço, Zbigniew Umgelter
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 60-90 mins

The post Windmill Valley Review appeared first on Punchboard.

By using a combination of dice, cards, and resources in a way I’ve not encountered before, Ultimate Voyage feels fresh. It feels different and unfamiliar. The layers of strategy mixed with the unknown all go toward making a game that almost certainly has no counterpart in your collection, so if you’re looking for something different to bolster your shelves, this may well be it.

There’s a lot going on in the game, but I’ll do my best to summarise. Ultimate Voyage is set around the final voyage of Zheng He. He is regarded as the greatest admiral in Chinese history. The game sees you taking the role of one of a number of different characters joining He in his travels. You’ll explore, trade, build, engage in combat, and even diplomatic relations with nations from East Asia to Africa and the Middle East.

Action stations

The core of Ultimate Voyage revolves around the action card system. In a nod to games like Ark Nova, each of the cards above your player board is used for a different action. Sailing, Combat, Building, Trade etc. I mentioned Ark Nova because the position of each card dictates its power. The card on the left has a strength of one, the card on the right has five power. That’s where the similarities end though. Cards can gain power-ups adding +1 or +2 to their actions, and each round sees three deity dice rolled which players share. The dice’s values are applied to three dials on your player board, and by discarding one you can add its value to an action’s strength.

When you use a card you ‘tap’ it by turning it 90 degrees. In an unusual twist though, you can still use that card again in the same round, but a tapped card has a base strength of zero. Enough extras from spent resources and dials means that you can still get some value from it. I really like this idea. You can truly min-max and go for that double combat round to really put the cat among the pigeons.

It’s when the round ends that things take another twist. If you’re used to Ark Nova you know that when a card is used it slides to the left, bumping the others to the right. Ultimate Voyage messes with the status quo a bit. When the round ends and your unspent cards slide to the right, the cards you used slide to the left, but you choose their relative order. So if that Trade card you really wanted to use would be in the first slot by default, you can choose to move it up to the third instead. It’s a really interesting twist which means no more dead turns while you wait for the actions you want to use to increase in power.

The spirit of adventure

This is a game of exploration and adventure. Lots of games offer the feeling of exploration in differing ways. Flipping tiles to see what’s on the other side for example, like in Revive (review here). Exploration in Ultimate Voyage is different and truly random. When you first sail you ship into an unexplored region you roll one of the deity dice to determine its standing. You could get really lucky and find that you immediately have great relations with you – happy days! Or you might roll badly and find that the port is actively hostile. In theory, you could uncover hostile port after hostile port, meaning your next turns are built around trying to do something about them.

Some people won’t like this. They like to know there’s some determinism in proceedings. They like to know “If this port is hostile, it means none of the others will be, so they’re safe to explore”. Personally, I really like this system. It means the map feels different every time you play. Sometimes you’ll be charging through the seas with reckless abandon, other times it’s more like tip-toeing around in a stealth pedalo.

There are lots things you can choose to do while you’re at sea, too, which means the game can get pretty asymmetric, pretty quickly. Although you’re all navigating the same waters and still at the whim of the meteorological gods (each round has favourable winds in one direction, and you may encounter a storm), you might be doing very different things, especially if you choose to lean into your character’s speciality. The Merchant, for instance, begins the game with a boosted trade action. Getting into port and seeing what’s on offer to fill your hold with might be your focus, while the Commander with his +2 combat action is out looking for trouble.

Spoiled for choice

Ultimate Voyage feels more like a 4X game than your standard pick-up-and-deliver. There’s so much going on that you can approach each game differently to see how things work out for you. There’s a big porcelain tower at the starting area of Nanjing, but you don’t have to contribute towards building it at all if you don’t want to. You each have some little wooden buildings to deploy, but as well as building at the ports you visit, you can build on your player boards too to increase your income of troops and porcelain – the game’s two resource types.

You might excel at diplomacy and create tributaries in some of the ports you visit, but like a high-maintenance spouse, they need attention. If you don’t keep a ship in port at the end of a round your reputation with the city deteriorates. No problem, just build more ships. But now you’re building ships when you wanted to be trading and engaging in naval warfare. The game has a sandbox feel to it, letting you play in the seas to figure out your own path to victory. That might not be for everyone, some people like more structure to their games. It’s better to know that ahead of time, which is why I’m telling you now.

You can even create semi-alliances with the other players, offering support for their combat encounters in return for… well, I’ll leave the details up to you. The point is, that it’s very unusual for this style of game of throw-in semi-coop parts to what’s unfolding on the board, and I respect the heck out of the designer for trying something different.

The biggest downside to all this variability and different ways to approach the game is that it’s pretty tough to learn. Working out the strength of an action and how that can be applied to the various actions adds a mental overhead. I recommend approaching your first play as an exercise in pulling levers and pushing buttons and seeing what happens, because it won’t be immediately apparent how to build a strategy.

Final thoughts

Ultimate Voyage is a unique game. A contract-fulfilment, area control, pick-up hybrid which would feel like more like a 4X game if there was PvP combat. The card system is a really nice tweak to something that feels immediately familiar if you’re used to Ark Nova, but with much more scope to do unusual things.

It plays from one to four players, but for me this is a game which thrives with more people. It works with two, and it’s still enjoyable, but it’s better with three and four. I think that comes down to the way the map gets limited with two players. It has you block out half the map so that you can’t visit lots of places. I appreciate that it keeps the action in a smaller, more concentrated area, but it also means you never venture as far west as Africa and the Middle East, and you don’t quite get that same feeling of heading out on a grand voyage.

All of that said, what Leonard and his team have created as a debut game is very impressive. A big vision, and a really unusual setting and theme which feels exotic and fresh to me. I’ve played so many games set in and around European history that the introduction to Zheng He and his stories is very welcome. Take all I’ve said here with a small pinch of salt because it is still in a prototype form, and even in the short time I had the game here there were several amendments and changes made.

If the setting and the idea of a game that does something differently to most other games you’ve played appeals to you, keep an eye out for Ultimate Voyage when it on the preorder site.

Preview copy kindly provided by Little Monks. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Ultimate Voyage (2025)

Designer: Leonard To
Publisher: Little Monks
Art: Faangoi
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 60-120 mins

The post Ultimate Voyage Preview appeared first on Punchboard.

My favourite pieces of classical music tend to either start or end strongly. With that in mind, this preview of Paverson Games latest title – Luthier – will start like Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, starting with a headline. Luthier is a great game. A pipe organ cuts the silence. The blind bidding clack-clack-clack of the worker disc placement adds a rich, bright counterpoint to the by-the-books Euro format of collecting resources to fulfil goals. A toccata to its fugue, if you will. The result is a clean, competitive, engaging game. Heavier than medium-weight, without being too difficult to teach or pick up, but with a richness that rewards repeated play. Again, much like Bach’s piece. We all know how it starts, and the more you listen to it, the more you appreciate what comes after that familiar early exposition.

Booze and music – a festival?

I previewed Dave Beck’s previous game, Distilled, a long while ago. I really like that game, so I was excited to see an earlier prototype of Luthier back at the UK Games Expo in 2023 (show report here). It was little more than black squares on white paper at that time, but the mechanisms sounded really clever, and I loved the unusual theme. The promise of Vincent Dutrait’s artwork gave me confidence, and that confidence was rewarded when I saw the near-final prototype at this year’s UK Games Expo. Luthier is beautiful. Rich colours, gorgeous illustrations, and some pretty fantastic iconography.

The game places you in the role of a famous musical instrument-making family from the past. Your goal is to gather the materials you need, before crafting the finest musical instruments you can, fit for performances at the orchestra in the middle of the board. At the same time, art is imitating life through the patrons in the game. These are rich, powerful people who, if you can keep satisfied, will reward you with gifts. If you manage to fulfil all of their demands, their card ends up tucked behind your player board with ongoing bonuses for the rest of the game.

You might think you can just choose to ignore the patrons and concentrate on something else to build points, and while you technically can, you probably don’t want to. If you let a patron’s cube move all the way to the right as the rounds progress, they get tired of you and leave your family’s business, clobbering you with a loss of VPs (prestige points in Luthier’s parlance) in the process. This happened in reality. Patrons rewarded the arts for performances and productions, they invested in the families and their crafts.

In Luthier you have a game where your main goals and main source of points come from the various places these artisans touched with their craft. Patrons have a place on the board (the salon) where you can compete to add them to your family’s board. Instrument designs come from another contestable market. Performances are fought over in the same fashion, likewise repairs. All go towards your score, and all are involved in one of the main aims of the game, to claim First Chair for each instrument in the orchestra pit.

Harmony

Luthier is a strange one in some ways. As with many other Euro games, the theme strikes me as one that could have been replaced with something different relatively easily. We could be furniture makers making beautiful pieces and selling them. We could be painters creating masterpieces and vying for space in galleries. We could even be toymakers trying to be front-and-centre in Hamley’s window in London.

That said, however, the theme is integrated so well in Luthier that I don’t want a different one. I’ll admit I found a slight disconnect with the way the instruments just end up in First Chair, as do performance tokens. The performers themselves are never referenced or attributed, which felt odd at first, but then I realised I need to take a step back and understand that the entire game is viewed through the luthier’s lens. Their role starts and ends with the creation and repair of the instruments in their workshops. The instruments are used in the performances, but who uses them isn’t the focus of the game. Our main focus is to rough-out instruments before finishing them and creating things of beauty.

It all works so well together. The resources are limited to just three different types: animal products, wood, and metals. Removing the mental overhead needed to think about lots of different types of resources and manage any potential upgrade paths for them is an overlooked piece of game design in my opinion. At any moment in the game you can look at your player board, count the cubes in three colours, and know exactly what you can and cannot afford to do. This gives you the laser focus you need to concentrate on your strategy and your path to victory.

All of this is pulled together with the worker disc placement, which is my favourite part of the game. In turn order, each player places a disc at a time at the various spots on the board. Some of them are on your player boards, whereas the rest are shared spaces on the main board. All players can go to each space as many times as they like, but the interesting part is that each worker is a disc with a value printed on it, and they’re placed face-down in a stack. Each stack is resolved to determine turn order, with the highest value getting first pick of the cards at each respective market. In the event of a tie, which is common as all players start with a 1, 3, and 5 value chip each, it’s first-come, first-served.

It’s great. It adds drama three or four times to every round of the game in a way which is usually reserved for lighter, party-style games.

Final thoughts

If you haven’t guessed by now, I like Luthier a lot. It’s a looker for sure, and even with the early prototype, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was an Eagle-Gryphon game. It all feels premium. Vincent and Guillaume’s artwork is beautiful on the cards and the boards, and there’s nothing that feels out of place or confusing. It’s a game of threes, which pulls it all together nicely too. Three different resources, three types of instruments, and three types of performance. Maybe the future holds an expansion which adds to these, I don’t know, but as the game comes it feels like does enough without muddying the waters.

The hidden bidding worker placement doesn’t feel that important in your first game, which makes it easy to overlook its importance and its impact on the game. Once you make the connections though, it all hits you. The points from the public goals, each of which has different levels of completion (a bit like Ark Nova, a review of which you can read here), are dependent on completing certain types of patrons, or having instruments in different areas of the pit, or different numbers of rare instruments crafted, etc. When the cards you need to complete these goals appear in the market, the competition can be furious. Do you make a big statement and place your 5-chip in the Salon straight away to claim that patron? Or do you just slip your 1-chip there creating a false sense of competition, hoping the other players wage war for those cards while you quietly craft two instruments instead? How well do you think you can read the poker faces of your friends and family?

There’s more that I don’t have the time or space to tell you about in detail, for the sake of not turning this into a wall of text. The three tracks to move along for asymmetric boosts. The starting abilities and resources of each family being different. The dance you play in trying to keep your patrons satisfied while still competing on the main board, not only to keep them, but to keep their gifts coming. The only negative I really found during my time with the game was the ‘standard’ two-player game. It blocks some spots in the pit off and reduces the number of cards in the market to keep things competitive, but the drama and tension of the worker bidding doesn’t feel as juicy. The reason I put standard in quotes though is because you can add in the solo bot as a third player, which I recommend doing. There’s more to do in order to run the bot, but the competition is better. I much prefer playing at three and four players though. I love the metagame that takes place above the table between you and your friends.

There are still tweaks to come to the game between now and its release, but even in the state it’s in now, Luthier is a brilliant game. Music to my ears, like clapping along to the Radetzky March at the end of the New Year’s Day content from Vienna. Bravo!

Luthier launches on Kickstarter on July 16th 2024. You can sign up for updates or to back it here – Luthier Kickstarter page.

Luthier (2025)

Design: Dave Beck, Abe Burson
Publisher: Paverson Games
Art: Vincent Dutrait
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 90-120 mins

The post Luthier Preview appeared first on Punchboard.

“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.