Share and share alike

In the game of Skymines players take on the roles of investors. Four competing businesses have the rights to mine resources from the moon (or asteroids on the reverse side of the board), and by investing in shares in these companies you can help dictate where they expand their reach and how well they do. You do this by playing cards from your deck which dictate which actions you can take each round, and there’s a really cool dichotomy that it throws up.

There are three different types of resources available, and when you play those cards to your available slots for the round you can use them to buy cards from the market. Those cards get more and more powerful as the game goes on, so it makes sense that you’d want to be the first in the queue at the card shop, because the cheapest stuff goes quickly. That’s a good way to play, and you’ll get to cherry-pick the best cards, but then your resource cards are spent.

In addition to the card actions, there are places on the game board where you can place workers. That’s right, we’ve got some good ol’ worker-placement going on. Some of those places on the board where you can plonk your workers reward you for being the person with the most of a particular colour of resource on your board, unspent. So you might have gotten to the card market after all the bargains had been snagged by those camping out overnight on the pavement, but now there are things available to you that nobody else can claim. The ebb and flow of playing or waiting on cards underpins so much of the game and adds a nice balance. You’re not totally screwed just because you’re the last in turn order, and waiting is often the better option.

All of the card play is really just a means to an end when all is said and done. What really matters is which corporation controls the areas on the main board, and how many shares each player owns in those corporations. It’s a power struggle which both informs and is informed by, the actions of the players.

Land grab

If your experience of share-dealing games revolves around trains (e.g. 18xx, Cube Rails), the concept of being part-owner in multiple companies is nothing new. In many of those games, most of the companies are born equal. That is to say, there’s not necessarily any intrinsic benefit of buying stock in one company instead of another. Skymines spices things up a bit by throwing interchangeable share tracks into the mix. There are some suggested layouts included in the rulebook, but you could have any of the tracks next to any of the companies, and each track grants different bonuses as you march your share marker along it.

The further along each track you inch, the more bonuses you unlock. Bonuses include reducing the cost of certain things, granting permanent additions for actions that spend resources, or even adding new worker spaces to visit for actions that might not have existed before. I really like the way the shares work in this game, and I love the fact that they’re not a neutral part of the gameplay. If there’s a track with a power that you particularly want to use, your choice to invest in the company it’s attached to will directly alter the way the game pans out, and how control of the map swings.

Map control is dictated by spending resources to add outposts from your chosen company’s pool out onto the board. They chain outward, always going adjacent to one another, and the number of lines between where you are and where you want to tell you how many points of energy it’ll cost you. Spaces on the map grant bonuses when they’re claimed, and you get some great opportunities to make short-term plans. Get the bonus for doing this thing here, use that bonus over in this other place. Things like that.

The other thing I really want to highlight is the clever card retrieval mechanism. Above your player board are slots where stacks of used cards end up. When you end a round you take one of those stacks into your hand, and all of the cards you’ve just played have to be split among the remaining stacks. It adds a really cool planning aspect to the game. For example, you might choose to deposit all of your energy cards into one pile over the course of a few rounds, then once you pick that stack up you’re ready for a round of covering the board in little yellow buildings (energy is used to expand each company’s outposts and area control). It lets you choose your strategy and gives equal credibility to playing for a little bit of everything or going full min-max.

Final thoughts

Skymines is a blast. I’ve taught it to my regular group and they all had a great time with it. It’s a strange game in as much as there’s quite a lot going on, but it never feels like it’s too much. Contending with the cards you’ve got in hand and building the stacks from your discarded cards would be enough to think about on its own, but it all just works. The crawl of each company’s outposts as they spread out like mould across the moon (it’s made of cheese, right?) gives you this instantly discernible overview of the state of play. This is helped no end by the genius of not making everything in space, black. Even on the side of the board where you hop from asteroid to asteroid using a new shuttles mechanism, space is white. It creates a much nicer table presence, showing off the non-primary colours nicely.

It’s a heavier game than I’d recommend for newbies to modern games, and I think the decision space would probably just leave them with a sour taste in their mouths. A good way to get the hang of the way things work is to take on the AI opponent, named Luna. It’s an easy-to-run automa opponent which you can add into 2- and 3-player games to add some more competition, which is definitely a good idea. You can play Skymines with two players, but it’s at its best with four. I’ve played two-player games where one of the companies didn’t place outposts, and nobody bought shares in it, and it just made competing for space on the moon less competitive, and less fun. The Luna rulebook that’s included is quite creepy too! It’s written as if the AI opponent is talking to you in the first person, explaining how it all works.

There are parts of the game I haven’t even touched on, such as the helium and research tracks, both of which also lean heavily on your decision-making. They, like so much else in the game, are just individual strands which, once weaved together, create a brilliant, coherent tapestry of a game. Gah, Skymines is just so much fun. I’m trying to write the end of this review, and I keep daydreaming back to recent games of it, and thinking how much I want to play it again, right now. Skymines slipped past a lot of peoples’ radar when it was released towards the end of last year, which is a travesty. Alexander Pfister creates some incredible games (such as my first-ever review here, Maracaibo), and along with fellow designer Viktor Kobilke, they’ve created one of the best games I’ve played. If you like something that’s really going to massage your brain, and you have a regular group of three or four people, do yourself a favour and get Skymines.

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.

Skymines (2022)

Design: Alexander Pfister, Viktor Kobilke
Publisher: Pegasus Spiele
Art: Javier Inkgolem
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 90-150 mins

The post Skymines Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Alex was kind enough to give me some of his time to answer a few questions. He’s one of my favourite designers, and Maracaibo was the first review I ever published here, so I was over the moon when he agreed to talk to me. Anyway, enough fawning, on to the questions and answers.

Interview

ME: Hi Alex. First of all, thanks for taking the time to talk to me. Whereabouts in the world are you at the moment, and how are things going with the pandemic, and returning to normal?

ALEX: I’m in Vienna, Austria and things become much better now. Restaurants, hotels and theatres were closed the last several months, but will open in 2 weeks. I think Austria made it quite well through the pandemic. I could not live test games during the last months but I got to learn Tabletop Simulator and it worked fine.

ME: It’s good to know things are on course for getting back to normal for you. Are you managing to play games at the moment, with lockdowns and the pandemic still causing disruption for gamers? Which games are you playing most?

ALEX: Funnily I even played more games than I did before. As we couldn’t meet anymore I started to play games with a friend online, so talking via zoom and playing games. There I found old games I missed at the time they were released. And I must say, I really enjoy it! I played Through the Ages, Hawaii, Stone Age etc. But also my last years release “Monster Expedition“, which I really love as a fast dice game with some very nice decisions.

ME: I love Stone Age, and you’re right, there are so many games out there, and so many pass us by. I’m a fan of mid to heavy euro games – which game do you think is underrated or unknown, that people like me should play?

ALEX: I know exactly what you mean. So many great games out there. I can’t tell you any underrated gems, because I usually only play published games once. Mostly I test my own games. However I played Underwater Cities several times, it’s great. But you probably know this already, it sold very well.

ME: Underwater Cities is a great game, yes, I really like Vladimir Suchy’s games. Let’s talk about your games now. The settings you use in your games seem to vary a lot. Pirates, cowboys, mines, witches, islands, modern cities – they’re all in there. Where do you get inspiration from for your new games?

ALEX: It’s different from game to game. Several games were started 15 years ago. This doesn’t mean that I worked on them for long, but I started it, put it away, then years later worked again on it for some months, and then put it away again. It’s not very efficient, and these were my older games. Some are pirate themed, because as a teenager I liked the computer game “Pirates!” a lot. My latest game together with Arno Steinwender is CloudAge. That one took about 3 years. I wanted to have a more modern theme.

ME: It seems like hand management and set collection are two of your favourite board game mechanisms? What other mechanisms do you like the most, and could we see them in your future games?

ALEX: Everything with cards. I think almost all my games except Isle of Skye have cards in them. So yes, keeping cards in your hand is great as it reduces the subjective downtime as you have something to plan with. I also like rondel games and a nice map as game board. My next game will also have a great map but people can build on it via tiles.

ME: With Great Western Trail getting a second edition, other than the new artwork, what other main differences are we going to see, compared to the original game?

ALEX: No big differences, only some small tweaks, e.g. some buildings might change a tiny little bit. I like to listen to the community. Of course they don’t speak with one voice, but some feedback will be worked into the game.

ME: The solo game in Maracaibo vs Jean (the automa opponent) is great. Will you be adding an automa player for the second edition of Great Western Trail?

ALEX: Yes, but it won’t be designed by me. There is a great fan made solo version out. It’s based on another fan made solo version. Both designers gave permission for it to be included and got contracts. Knowing that there was a well-received solo version out, I felt it would be pointless to make my own one.

ME: The two follow-up titles, Great Western Trail Argentina and New Zealand are really interesting. Are these going to act in the same way as getting new maps for an existing game, or are they going to play in different ways?

ALEX: Think of it like different maps in Ticket to Ride. Each one will have some new elements, but will have the same core rules.

ME: Does this mean the new Great Western Trail games will be staying at the same level of complexity as the original?

ALEX: Yes, they will have the same complexity. But this is still work in progress, so this might change.

ME: In addition to the new versions of Great Western Trail and the Maracaibo expansions, do you have any other new games at the prototype stages? If so, can you give us some hints about the settings, and what kind of game we might expect?

ALEX: My next game will be a heavy game like Maracaibo or Great Western Trail. It’s planned as an Essen release, so October. But it’s not announced yet by the publisher, so I can’t say more about it.

ME: That’s extremely exciting! I’m looking forward to learning more about it. Thank you so much for your time, Alex. Is there anything else you’d like to say while you have our attention?

ALEX: We have such a wonderful hobby: Nice people and many, many great games every year. I’m grateful to everyone taking a closer look at my releases. Thanks for the interview.

ME: It was my pleasure. Thanks, and auf wiedersehen.

I just want to say thank you again to Alex for his valuable time. Exciting times ahead with new Great Western Trail games, an automa included for solo play, and a new heavy game this year! If you’ve never played one of his games, you really should. There’s something for everyone, from light to heavy, and you can find a list of them here.

The post Interview with Alexander Pfister appeared first on Punchboard.

Knowing it’s by renowned Austrian designer Alexander Pfister is a big plus. He’s more famous for his cow-centric smash Great Western trail, and you can really see the similarities between the two games. Racing laps around the board, choosing how many spaces to move, deciding when to use cards for currency, and when to save them.

What’s In The Box?

Maracaibo is a table hog. Even on a 3ft x 3ft table, expect to be pushed for space, but I think it’s justified. The board is really pretty, full of Caribbean islands and blue seas, jungle to explore, tracks for doubloons and VPs, space for story cards, quests, combat tokens, and a large track showing your influence over the competing nations.

Each player gets a ton of wooden pieces; a ship, ship crew, an explorer, cubes to track progress, and a seemingly endless supply of little wooden discs which act as both goods when you trade, and ship upgrades.

There are a lot of cards. A standard deck of ‘A’ cards are in use every game, with around half the deck of ‘B’ cards, along with any relevant story cards, and admiral cards (personal objectives which will influence how you play), to name a few.

The board and all card tokens are high quality, as are the wooden pieces. The player boards are thinner, but that’s to be expected if you’ve played anything from Castles of Burgundy to Terraforming Mars.

How Does It Play?

On every turn players move their ships 1-7 spaces around the board. Stopping at a city space lets you trade goods, which means you discard one of the cards in your hand with a matching symbol, and move a disc from your player board to the main board. There are lots of extra actions and rewards on your own player board, each covered with two discs, so clearing them by trading means you can do more each turn. Alternatively, you might stop at a village space, which lets you build cards from your hand, granting you permanent and end-of-game bonuses, or discard your hand in exchange for money. Or you may have upgraded your player board or bought cards which give you some new village actions.

You might want to move only one or two spaces per turn to maximise what you can do, but here’s the rub. If you move more spaces each turn, firstly you can get more than one village action per turn, but secondly whoever reaches the last spot on the lap – the finish line – triggers the end of round for everyone. The penalty for coming up with complicated plans is that you might never see them through to fruition.

There’s a lot going on at any one time in Maracaibo. You can pay for your cards in-hand can to add them to your tableau, but also used as goods to trade with to upgrade your ship, and they can also be used as items to claim quests. Maybe you want to increase your combat rank in order to fight with France, England or Spain to fight with them and increase your influence, aiming for VPs at the end. Maybe you concentrate on moving your explorer through the jungle and picking up bonuses that way. There’s a lot of variety in the way you approach the game.

Final Thoughts

Maracaibo comes with a story/legacy mode which is brilliantly implemented. It adds new cards to buy, and using tiles overlaid on the board to add new locations, hazards and quests. It completely changes how you approach your games, and can be instantly reset to its vanilla state for a fresh game. The solo mode works with an automa opponent called Jean, who plays with a deck to randomly choose what they do each turn. Even this deck can be customised to make the game easier or more difficult. It’s a strong challenge and a great solo option.

It’s a brilliant game of balancing your own plans and those you think the other players might be doing. You can build engines which give you great bonuses, but if someone guesses what you’re up to, they can race around and trigger a round end and reset all the ships back to the start and deny you the chance to finish them. I classify Maracaibo’s difficulty as medium-heavy weight, so not one to introduce new players to Euros, but once you understand the rules you’ll almost never need to look at the instructions again. It’s beautifully intuitive and all the information you need is right there on the table in front of you.

Maracaibo may not the cheapest game in the world, but it’s well worth the investment if you enjoy a chunky Euro and want a good solo game.

The post Maracaibo Review appeared first on Punchboard.