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The Blood of an Englishman Review

In case you didn’t know, there are a LOT of board games out there. Like, a whole ton. Too many, some could argue. Whether or not you agree with that is a debate for another time, BUT there’s no denying that in the deluge of board games coming out seemingly every hour that some games fall between the cracks.

Because of this, every board gamer has their underrated gem, a board game that hasn’t gotten nearly enough attention or buzz. For me? That game is The Blood of an Englishman and like a door to door Mormon, I’m here to spread the word.

The Blood of an Englishman is a two-player asymmetric game designed by Dan Cassar, who is probably best known for Arboretum, a brilliant card game about the world’s most spiteful gardeners planting trees using the blood of their enemies and their enemies’ families (if you’re not familiar with Arboretum, please look it up to see what I’m talking about, it’s amazing). This game, however, is based on the classic fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk where one player takes on the role of Jack and the other as the Giant. As Jack, you’re trying to build beanstalks from numbered cards in ascending order until you top it off with a treasure, like it’s a cherry on the world’s tallest, greenest sundae. As the Giant, you’re trying to get your trademark “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum” chant to appear in some form, because you’re all about your brand.

This asymmetry between the two roles is one of the things that drew me to the game and one of the things that caused me to fall in love with it. But before I start gushing, lemme talk about how the game actually plays so you can see just how said roles work. First thing you should know is that the game is literally just a deck of cards. I raved in my Port Royal review about how I love when a game does a lot with very little components, and that’s certainly the case with TBoaE. This deck of cards is mostly comprised of cards numbered 1-9, with some treasure cards and cards that have different parts of the Giant’s ‘Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum’ slogan on them (told ya, he loves his brand) thrown in. These cards are shuffled and splayed out in five stacks of ten and the entire game revolves around manipulating those stacks to achieve your goal before the other player does.

blood of englishman game — As Sherlock Holmes often said, “The game is afoot! Dibs on Jack.”

Jack can spend three actions on their turn. Those actions can be spent doing the following things: moving cards from the back of a stack to the front, moving cards from the front of a stack to the front of another stack and/or moving a card from the front or back of a stack to their in progress beanstalk. On the other hand, the Giant gets only ONE action to use, but their options are powerful. The Giant can move four cards from the front of a stack to the front of another or even just straight up remove a numbered card from the game entirely. The final action in the Giant’s arsenal is that they can move two cards from the fronts of any stacks to the fronts of any other stacks. This seems head scratching considering that it doesn’t feel as powerful as the Giant’s ‘move four cards’ action and that it can essentially be undone by Jack on their turn BUT it can be a sneaky move to pull out a surprise win.

This difference in the number and type of actions that Jack and the Giant have access to brings me to my first huge positive about TBoaE. This is essentially an abstract strategy game BUT it feels immensely thematic based on how each side feels. With their three actions, Jack feels nimble and quick. Playing against Jack as the Giant, Jack is an over caffeinated gnat, always juuust out of reach as you try to swat it down.

But as swift as Jack may seem, their moves are small and only chip away at the game state, meaning the Giant is always looming large as a threat. Speaking of the Giant, their one move per turn makes them feel slow and lumbering, but the fact that their moves can so drastically alter the game state makes them feel powerful and dangerous.

Again, despite the abstract nature, this makes TBoaE a thematic treat. It also makes the game extremely replayable, as you’ll almost assuredly want to immediately replay the game as the other side so that you can see the differences. And you’ll be happy to find that even though both sides basically boil down to “move cards around stacks of other cards”, they truly do feel different from each other. The fact that this is accomplished through just a deck of cards is a wondrous feat.

That brings me to the actual puzzle that TBoaE brings to the table. Manipulating stacks of cards might not seem exciting, but it is delightfully crunchy. As Jack, you’re trying to weed out which numbers can be used to make your beanstalks most quickly without leaving too many big gaps. Because remember, you need to place numbers in ascending order, which means if you jump from 1 to 5, you’re leaving very little room for error. The Giant can prey on poor decisions in this regard by removing cards from the game. If you don’t plan ahead and leave yourself in a bind where you ABSOLUTELY need a 9 and the Giant is able to discard the last one, you’ve just lost.

Speaking of the Giant, the puzzle for them is a little more opaque but no less fun to try and solve. In fact, the more subtle nature of winning as the Giant leads me to preferring to play that side over Jack’s. It might seem simple enough. You just gotta get Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum next to each other, right? No problem. Well, except that Jack is constantly changing cards around and that it’s very easy for Jack to dig and get something they want while the Giant’s big, clumsy self has much less finesse. Sure, you might get three of the Giant cards next to each other, but getting that last one you need seems like picking up a contact lens with a boxing glove. So you need to be a little more clever in how you get the cards you need. Maybe you get rid of a certain number that Jack needs, knowing that for them to get another copy of said number they’ll need to dig to get it, perhaps unearthing a Giant card in the process. And as Jack takes more and more cards for their beanstalks, the playing field shrinks and shrinks, meaning the Giant’s already powerful moves gain more and more impact with each turn. Patience and guile is required as the Giant and sometimes you have to let Jack’s own brashness and haste undo him in the end (which, again, feels quite thematic!).

The constant back and forth between the two sides creates such an interesting and dynamic puzzle that ebbs and flows throughout the game. It’s like both players are trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle first, but in between turns your opponent elbows the side of the table, causing pieces to sprawl out of position. I hate when people say, “It’s like a chess match!” because it’s a lazy cliché to fall back on…but…uhh, yeah, it’s like a chess match. You need to think at least a couple moves ahead because everything you do leads to a reaction from your opponent which in turn leads to a response from you. As the Giant, for example, you might say, “Hmmm, my opponent is probably going to take that 7 up front so if I remove it, that means they’ll have to dig out the 7 from the back of the other stack which means my Fo card will be brought to the front, which allows me to threaten with my other Giant cards if I move those two cards off the Fe and Fi cards” and so on and so on and so on. It’s deliciously crunchy and packs a great strategic and tactical punch for a game that will probably take you just 20-30 minutes.

The final thing I’ll applaud this game is for its balance. I love 2 player assymetric games, but if one side feels easier to win as, it can be a major bummer. I love Mr. Jack (as seen in my here) but it’s pretty clear that the Investigator should win around 60-70% of the games played. Then there’s Raptor, which is a game I’ll almost certainly review at some point because it’s amazing and one of my favorite games ever BUT it is also a game where one side (in this case, the Scientists) feels easier and more powerful than the other. I’m ecstatic to say that this is NOT the case with TBoaE. I’ve played this game ten times and the record stands at five wins for Jack and five wins for the Giant. So quite literally 50/50. That’s about all you can ask for from one of these games. Now, if I had to make a decision and say which one is a bit easier to play/win as, I would probably say Jack. Jack’s somewhat simpler path to victory feels more streamlined and easier to grasp and the fact that you have more actions than the Giant feels like you have a bit more flexibility if you make a mistake. For this reason, I usually let new players play as Jack when I’m introducing the game to them, but the advantage is so miniscule it’s barely worth mentioning. The win percentages (at least in my plays) speak for themselves.

I struggle to come up with any negatives for TBoaE. The gameplay is superb and thinky, it’s portable and easy to teach, and the art, which I haven’t even mentioned yet, is quite striking. This makes the 6.8 it has on BGG even more perplexing. If you enjoy two player games, particularly those with a healthy dose of asymmetry, or games that infuse deep puzzle-y gameplay in a brief amount of time, I heartily recommend The Blood of an Englishman.

Seasons of Rice Review

Anybody who has read even a few reviews on this blog knows that I love Button Shy. I feel like at this point I should be walking the streets in a Button Shy jumpsuit, like a NASCAR driver with a major sponsor. But what can I say? They make great, unique games and I will gladly take the opportunity to evangelize them whenever I can.

If you don’t know what Button Shy is,it’s an independent publisher who specialize in micro games that are released in actual, literal wallets and they have been on fire the past year. They’ve seen some of their most popular and beloved games released in 2018 and 2019. Games like the excellent Circle the Wagons, a two player tile laying game in the Wild West, Sprawlopolis, a cooperative city builder, and Stew, an amazing mix of push your luck, deduction and bluffing, are all proof that Button Shy is in their publishing prime.

As if those titles weren’t enough, Button Shy is also hot off the heels of their most successful Kickstarter project ever: Tussie Mussie. Designed by Elizabeth Hargrave, she of Wingspan fame, Tussie Mussie is an ‘I Cut, You Choose’ card game based around the Victorian era fad of communicating through flowers. Over 4,000 backers were part of the Tussie Mussie campaign, and I had the fortune to review it here on this blog. Check out my review here and, SPOILERS, the game was awesome.

Naturally, the next game in their Kickstarter line up has some massive shoes to fill. Button Shy’s latest offering is Seasons of Rice, a two player tile laying game set in the world of Cambodian rice farming. Just like with Tussie Mussie, I was lucky enough to get a review copy of Seasons of Rice sent to me, courtesy of Button Shy. Is Seasons of Rice another gleaming jewel in the ever-growing crown of Button Shy’s recent hits or is it a disappointing step back? Thankfully, it’s the former.

As I briefly touched upon, Seasons of Rice, designed by Corry Damy is a two player tile laying game and it’s all about trying to create the best rice paddy farms in Cambodia. Like all Button Shy games, it’s just a deck of 18 cards. The cards are double sided: on one side is an Ancestor which provide bonus points or special abilities while the other side is a landscape illustration that you’ll be building your rice paddies with, featuring things like paths, farmers, houses and roaming buffalo.

The game is played over two seasons: the Wet Season and the Dry Season. The Wet Season incorporates a play and pass card drafting mechanic in the style of Sushi Go or 7 Wonders while the Dry Season has players drafting cards from a display left over from the Wet Season.

First, let’s start with the Wet Season. The two players start with a hand of seven cards and on each turn, players simultaneously choose two cards to play. One of those cards go into the player’s personal landscape, which is what you’re trying to build and expand over the course of the game, while the other goes into a row of cards that will be drafted from during the Dry Season. After this is done, players exchange hands and do the same thing. Rinse and repeat till your hands are empty and you move onto the Dry Season, where players simply alternate taking one card from the display formed during the Wet Season.

This drafting system is one of the things I really like about this game. The fact that you must pick two cards, giving one to yourself and giving the other to a communal row for a later round is really unique. It reminds me of games like Biblios and Herbaceous, which feature similar wrinkles on card drafting. You’ll obviously want to take cards that help yourself, but what about the card you’re punting to the Dry Season? Do you choose a card that might come in handy for your landscape later or do you choose something that appears useful to your opponent to block them from using it during the Wet Season? This makes for some real interesting decision making and helps set the tone for the second half of the game.

Of course, the drafting is just small part of the game compared to the actual tile laying. Considering the building of your landscape is what actually nets you the points in the game, you need to be crafty and smart with how you build things out. The rules of placement are pretty typical of the genre. You have to place adjacently and features in one card have to match a feature in the other card. The cool thing about Season of Rice though, is that you can place cards partially adjacent to each other, as long as you’re connecting like features. This is not something I’ve seen before in the genre and it leads to some cool looking landscapes. Being able to stagger the cards also opens things up strategically, allowing you to really get creative with how you form the paddies. This is a very good thing, since I was concerned landscapes would look too similar game to game as a result of the small deck size. Button Shy once again proves that it’s not the size of your deck, but how you use it.

As you build your landscape, you’re working to close paddies up on your farm. Closing paddies means you have a continuous, closed path cordoning off a set of squares in your landscape. You score based on the amount of squares and houses in the paddy as well getting bonuses from the number of farmers and buffaloes toiling away inside of it.

seasons of rice paddy — A paddy farm landscape in progress. An attempt at one, at least.

This means that it’s not simply about building the biggest paddy. A paddy with just two squares but a buffalo and a farmer in it can net you more points than a paddy with three empty squares. Not only that, but players score one point for every closed paddy they have in their landscape at the end of the game. So that means the player who small balls their way through the game, closing lots of small paddies and getting short bursts of points, will also find themselves with a bigger bonus at the end of the game than the person who patiently waited to complete just a few, large paddies. Of course, a well-built large paddy can net you double digit points and can help overcome the fact that you may end the game with just a mere three or four closed paddies. As like any great game, it’s a tight balancing act and the player who more shrewdly builds their farm with the cards available will end up winning.

The last thing I’ll praise about this game is the Ancestors. I very briefly mentioned them earlier as the opposite side of the landscape cards. At the beginning of the game, players have a choice of two Ancestors. Whichever one they choose will give them some sort of scoring condition or bonus ability to be exploited throughout the game. These Ancestors all provide a nice distinct feel to each game and help formulate the type of rice paddies you’ll want to construct. For example, there is Sovannarith, who gives you 4 points at the end of the game if you have more farmers in your landscape than your opponent, promoting a farmer heavy strategy. Then there is Vivadh, who allows you to increase the amount of points gained from buffaloes when they’re combined with farmers in the same paddy. With 18 possible Ancestors to be randomly selected from every game, chances are good you’ll end up with a different one, making Seasons of Rice very replayable for its diminutive size.

seasons of rice ancestors — They say you can’t choose family, but I guess THEY’VE never played this game.

Unfortunately, every review needs to point out some negatives and this is no exception. I think my biggest issue with the game is that it can be tough to parse and visualize how certain cards can fit in your landscape. The game has lots of angles and zig zags and it isn’t quite as easy to see how things will line up and set up for future turns as, say, the roads in Carcassonne or the different types of colored areas in Kingdomino. In pretty much every playthrough I had of this, there was a lot of taking cards and physically lining them up, apologizing to the other player for taking so long as you tried to figure out how exactly the cards can best be used. It’s entirely possible I’m just dumb, but I do feel like the spatial aspect is a bit trickier and not as intuitive as other tile laying games I’ve played.

If you don’t mind a bit of a learning curve with the spatial puzzle of the game, Seasons of Rice is an enjoyable tile laying game with a wonderful and unique drafting system. At just 10-15 minutes per play, you’ll definitely find yourself playing games of this back to back to back. The Kickstarter for Seasons of Rice launches July 9^th and if you want to experience first hand why Button Shy is one of the hottest independent publishers in the industry, I highly suggest you check it out.

Naga Raja Review

As far as overused board game themes go, archaeology is not quite “doing something in Medieval Europe” or “colonizing other countries”, but it’s certainly getting up there. So when I first heard about Naga Raja, a game about rival archaeologists trying to best plunder a temple before the other player, it wasn’t the theme that attracted me. Nope, it was the fact that it was co-designed by my main man, Bruno Cathala.

I’ve brought up Bruno Cathala’s name on this blog more times than Cathala himself would probably be comfortable with. I have reviewed his excellent 2 player game Mr. Jack , one of the first games I truly fell in love with when getting into the hobby, as well as his criminally underrated Hand of the King , a Game of Thrones themed abstract strategy game. He is, as mentioned in those other reviews that you should definitely read if you haven’t, my favorite board game designer, and it’s not even close.

So as I was saying, when I first heard that Naga Raja was being co-designed by Cathala, my interest level went from “meh” to “oh hell yes”. That interest evolved into a need to buy the game upon release, a rarity for me with board games, when I heard the rave reviews it was getting from various media outlets and personalities. And so, when it was finally released about a month ago, I did indeed buy it and I have since got to play it a good number of times. Does this game live up to the hype, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, or is it more Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Well, grab your fedora and your bullwhip and some other Indiana Jones reference and let’s find out!

Naga Raja, designed by the aforementioned Bruno Cathala as well as Theo Riviere, is a two player only game about two explorers entering their own separate temples (at exactly the same time, for some reason) in a race to uncover relics faster than the other. You explore the temple by adding and laying tiles on the 3 by 3 grid in front of you, creating a network of paths that lead to the outer edges, where relics patiently wait to be overturned like clumsy, capsized beetles. The relics all have point values assigned to them and the first player to reveal 25 points worth of relics wins the game. BUT there are three cursed relics, lying in wait. These jerks give you 6 points each, more than any other relic in the game, but if you reveal all 3 at once, you automatically lose. Insert “The Price is Right” horn sound here.

This adventure plays out through tile laying, hand management, and dice chucking, three things I love. The game is played over a series of rounds, with each round beginning with a new tile being revealed. These tiles are all made up of pathways that, when placed into your temple, you’re trying to connect to your various relics. The round is spent trying to win that tile. You win the tile by rolling rectangular dice called fate sticks, with the tile going to whoever rolled the most pips. Don’t worry, there’s more to it than that.

Players will be jostling for this tile by using a hand of cards. And these aren’t just any cards….these are multi-use cards! Fancy, I know! Each card in the game has a top half and a bottom half and which half you’re activating depends on which phase of the round you are playing the card.

The top half features pictures of dice or, as they’re known in this game, ‘fate sticks’. These fate sticks are basically rectangular dice and they come in three flavors: brown, white and green. Brown fate sticks have lots of pips on them, which are good for winning tiles. White fate sticks have a moderate amount of pips, and a chance of getting naga (what the hell is naga, you ask? I’ll get to that!). The green dice are adorably stubby and are mostly naga (again, I’ll get to that, don’t worry!) with very few pips.

The top half of the card is what you’re looking at during the first phase of the round, which is referred to as “The Call of Fate” in the rulebook. Perhaps a little overdramatic, but I won’t fault them for trying to add a bit of panache to what is basically ‘play some cards and grab some dice’. In “The Call of Fate” (I hope you read that in a booming, god-like voice as I just did), a tile is revealed and players will decide what kind of fate sticks they want to roll to try and grab the tile. Players commit cards face down and then reveal. This is where the top half comes in: whatever fate sticks are showing on the top half of the cards are the fate sticks that player will be rolling in an attempt to gain the tile for their temple. So if I play two cards that collectively show three brown sticks and two white sticks, I take those sticks and roll them. After the sticks have been rolled, we enter the “Confrontation” phase. A little less dramatic than “The Call of Fate”, but I suppose “Duel of the Fates” is already taken. I’m hoping I don’t have to pay royalties to Disney for just merely mentioning it.

In the Confrontation phase, players can now use cards leftover in their hands, this time for their bottom half. You see, at the bottom of each card is a special ability that can be activated. In order to do that, you need to pay a naga. See? Told you I’d get back to what the hell a naga is! A naga is a little swiggly line on the sides of some of the fate sticks and if you rolled naga, you can spend them during this phase to cash in those powerful, helpful abilities. If you didn’t roll naga? Tough luck, maybe next round.

There are a wide range of abilities from these cards, such as simply being able to draw new cards, add pips to your current roll, or look at facedown relics to get a better understanding of the layout of your temple. There are some that even let you rearrange tiles on your temple, so that if you made a windy series of roundabouts and dead ends like a drunken civic engineer, you can erase some of those ‘whoopsies’.

There are also some meaner, more aggressive actions, such as the ability to force your opponent to discard some of their rolled fate sticks, a power that lets you rotate tiles in THEIR temple, and the dreaded trap tile. The trap tile is a dead tile that you can stick in your opponent’s temple. It is a dead end that blocks any sort of progress and can really set your player’s temple back a few turns, which also helps you in beginning to play out the hypothetical, “What if my opponent wasn’t my friend anymore?”

Aside from potentially killing friendships, these special actions and abilities are absolute game changers and mean you can never rest easy. If your opponent rolls a lot of naga and has a decently sized hand of cards, they can swiftly sway the game in their favor with a few crafty decisions. This leads to a very tense, tactical feel that helps keep the game interesting down to the last tile.

After the ‘Confrontation’ phase is over, the tile is rewarded to whoever has the most pips on their fate sticks (including any that were added through use of cards) and they place it in their temple. If it connects any relics to one of their temple entrances, those relics are revealed. By that point, if none of the win or loss states have been achieved, then preparation for the next round begins.

As mentioned earlier, Naga Raja contains three things I adore: hand management, tile laying and dice chucking. What’s even better is that it seamlessly integrates all three in a cohesive package that packs lots of tough decisions and cool ‘gotcha!’ moments in just a mere 30 minutes. The multi-use nature of the cards forces you to really make some hard choices. Do you save this card to use its special action when you can really blindside your opponent OR do you spend it for the fate sticks at the top to greatly improve your odds of winning a tile? There are so many times when I want to use a card for the fate sticks but catch myself, knowing that if I’m patient, I can really use the card’s power to great effect. But then there are times where I’m so desperate to get a tile in my temple, I know that I just need to load up on fate sticks, special abilities be damned. Like lots of great Bruno Cathala games, it’s a balancing act, one that requires constant shifting of tactics and trying to read your opponent.

The cards are a treat to look at as well. The art is by none other than Vincent DuTrait, who is one of the most prolific and celebrated artists in the industry right now. I reviewed a game called Rising 5 which featured some of his brilliant art, and Naga Raja is another wonderful showcase for his talents. It’s got a rustic, weathered feel that perfectly matches the theme of archaeology and ancient secrets. Some of the more aggressive cards also have some pretty unsavory masked characters who I would almost certainly not enjoy running into while spelunking a temple.

Naga Raja masked man — OH JEEZ. Uh…hi there…that sacrificial dagger is purely ornamental, right…?

But enough about the cards! That’s only half the game! There is of course the tile laying itself, which plays a huge part considering it controls whether you win or lose. It might seem pretty straightforward. Just speedily connect all the paths along the sides, uncovering your relics and rushing to 25 points first, right? Well, sure, but keep in mind that is a very quick way to accidentally uncover the three cursed relics and to lose automatically. Take it from me, that’s how I lost my very first game. As you play the game more and more, you start to uncover the subtle strategy behind the tile laying portion of the game. You want to win and place tiles that give you versatility in exploring your temple. As I mentioned earlier, it’s possible to create a winding nightmare of a temple, one that is hard to link together without getting some very specific tiles later in the game. Careful planning and cautious exploration of your temple is essential, which feels quite thematic.

You can even set yourself up for turns where one well placed tile can uncover a whole ton of relics. In one game, I found myself down fairly early. My opponent won a ton of tiles so I had to be creative with the few tiles I had won. I managed to use an ability that let me slide an already present tile in my temple to a new space, setting me up for a powerful move if I managed to win just one other tile. I did just that and uncovered three relics at once to push me up to 25 and steal the game at the last second.

No, that little story isn’t me working out my first post for r/iamverysmart. I’m not using that example to illustrate my cleverness, but rather the game’s. The fact that I was able to sneak out a win with limited tiles and a few well played special actions speaks volumes for this game. By that point I had already played the game five times, so to discover a new way to play and win was very rewarding.

The last thing I’ll rave about are the fate sticks. The decision to make the dice rectangular sticks deserves a Nobel Prize in Board Games. They are so incredibly tactile and fun to use and taking a whole handful of them and tossing them onto the table has yet to get old. Sure, the name ‘fate sticks’ is a bit goofy and sounds like something you’d find at a holistic health fair, but these rectangular dice really bring the game together.

I personally don’t have much to complain about with Naga Raja, but there are a few warnings I’d like to put out there. For one, there is certainly a healthy amount of luck in this game. I think the game offers plenty of tools to mitigate said luck, but there will be times when you desperately need naga and get none or you REALLY want to win a tile and get nothing but a bunch of squigglies staring back at you, like the world’s snarkiest plate of spaghetti. If the thought of this happening and having it determine the game frustrates you, Naga Raja may not be for you.

Another factor I want to make known is that this can be a mean game. I touched on it earlier, but there are a lot of aggressive, “take that” style cards in the game, and many of them are pretty nasty. I already mentioned the trap tile that can potentially ruin friendships, but there’s cards that remove dice, force the rerolls of dice, cards that force your opponent to discard cards, cards that allow you to switch relics around (possibly triggering them to get their three cursed relics uncovered in the process!), etc. I am very picky about my “take that” in games and I don’t mind it in this one because it’s so baked into the design. I go in knowing that my temple and plans are going to get tampered with and that I can retaliate with my own ruthlessness, so it’s okay for me. But I know there are many players out there who detest any sort of conflict or negative player interaction and I highly doubt Naga Raja is for them.

If you don’t mind potential moments of luck deciding the game or large doses of “take that”, I think you’ll find Naga Raja a rich, satisfying game of tactics and exploration that will entertain after many plays. It expertly combines different mechanics into a brisk 20-30 minute package. I am quite happy to have Naga Raja in my collection and suspect it will be one of my most frequently played two player games.

Tussie Mussie Review

It’s that time again, everyone. It’s time for me to gush about yet another Button Shy game.

I’ve sang the praises about Button Shy on this blog before. I’ve reviewed both Stew and Sprawlopolis, two games in their extensive library of micro games that I dearly love. If you haven’t read either of those reviews and are unfamiliar with Button Shy, allow me to spread the gospel. They specialize in micro games, games that are small enough to fit in a wallet. That’s not an exaggeration, by the way, they literally come in wallets.

The latest in this line of wallet games is Tussie Mussie, an ‘I Split, You Choose’ card game from Elizabeth Hargrave. If you don’t know who Elizabeth Hargrave is, you probably should. Hargrave is the designer of the recent smash hit Wingspan. Wingspan is essentially the board game equivalent of a piece of toast with an imprint of the Virgin Mary on it because a copy of it recently sold on eBay for over $1,000. If your game sells for 1,000 of anything, you’re probably doing something right.

While I haven’t had a chance to play Wingspan, Hargrave’s name is one of the biggest reasons I was excited to play Tussie Mussie. A collaboration between one of my favorite publishers and one of the industry’s hottest designers? Where do I sign up?? Button Shy was kind enough to send me a review copy and I must say, Tussie Mussie does not disappoint.

Tussie Mussie is about the Victorian era fad of giving and receiving flowers to express feelings. You see, back in Victorian times people didn’t have memes and gifs like we do today, so they had to communicate in other ways. A popular method was by giving bouquets of flowers, or tussie mussies, to each other. The flowers all had different meanings assigned to them, which allowed the giver to communicate certain things. One of Tussie Mussie‘s more subtle but delightful features is that it actually has flavor text on the bottom of each card, displaying the meaning behind that flower. For example, the orchid meant “You are beautiful”, the carnation meant “I do not agree” (which I’m sure led to many a passive aggressive end to arguments), and the hyacinth meant “Please forgive me”.

Nothing says, “I’m sorry for recording over our daughter’s dance recital video with a rerun of ALF” quite like a hyacinth.

This world of flower sharing is explored through Tussie Mussie’s ‘I Split, You Choose’ mechanic. For those unfamiliar with this mechanic, it generally involves the active player grouping sets of things, presenting them to other players and then being the last person to get to choose which set they receive. It rewards players for grouping items in as fair a way as possible so that they don’t get left with meager scraps. It’s a mechanic that feels criminally underrepresented in the industry, with the most popular examples of it being the pizza themed set collection game New York Slice and the beautifully agonizing card game Hanamikoji.

The way Tussie Mussie incorporates this mechanic is wonderfully simple. On your turn, you draw two cards from the deck. These cards all represent different flowers, each with a unique scoring condition or power. You choose one of the flowers to put face up and the other to put face down and give them to the person either on your left or right (depending on what point in the round you’re at). That player chooses one of the cards and you receive the other. Once everybody has four cards in front of them, the round ends and everybody scores their flowers. After three rounds, whoever has the most points wins!

Simple, right? Yes, but don’t let that lull you into thinking you can just sleepwalk through all the decisions. One of the key rules in Tussie Mussie is that the person receiving the flowers can’t look at the face down card. They either take the known commodity of the face up card or try their luck with whatever the face down card is hiding. This transforms Tussie Mussie from a peaceful game of collecting flowers into a fiendish string of devious mind games.

For example, let’s say you have a Red Tulip, which gives you a point for every red card you have. You already have two red cards and your opponent entices you with another red card as their face up offering. What seems like an easy decision turns into a torturous one as every synapse in your brain is shouting, “WHAT ARE THEY HIDING, IT CAN’T POSSIBLY BE THIS SIMPLE”. Do you take the red card, helping to bolster the Red Tulip’s scoring condition? Or do you take the face down card, hoping that you deny something that the giver desperately wanted? It’s not any easier being the person who is doing the splitting, either. Do you hide cards that benefit you, fearing your opponent will take it to deny you? Or do you flaunt it as the face up card, just daring the receiver to ignore whatever bounty you put face down?

It instills a manic sense of paranoia that I never thought I could feel from flowers. I can now see why nobody ever smiled in pictures and paintings from Victorian times. The cruel meta that develops from repeated plays of this game with the same group becomes a game unto itself and as someone who loves that sort of thing, Tussie Mussie more than satisfied.

Another thing I absolutely love about this game is that every flower is different. Yes, many of their powers are similar (things like ‘score for every purple flower’ and ‘score for every red flower’), but it still feels like everybody is plucking flowers from a garden and crafting their own tailor made bouquet. By the end of the round, you feel proud of your beautiful tussie mussie if it nets you a solid chunk of points, while you can practically see the cards wilt and droop when you have a bad round of flowers that don’t synergize well. The unique flowers also means play doesn’t get stale and you’ll start to develop favorites (“An orchid? Why yes, I’d LOVE to have a flower that acts as any color”) and not-so-favorites (“DON’T YOU DARE GIVE ME THAT MARIGOLD”). It’s as if each flower has its own personality, helped by that flavor text I mentioned earlier.

The only plant I’d be worthy of receiving is poison ivy if I forgot to mention this game’s art. The art is done by none other than Beth Sobel, one of my favorite artists in the industry. Probably best known for Viticulture, Sobel’s warm, comforting style perfectly fits this game’s theme. Each flower has its own illustration and you can practically smell the different fragrances waft off the petals as you sift through the deck. I mean no disrespect to the other games in Button Shy’s library, but this is almost certainly their most eye pleasing one to date.

tussie mussie cards — Who needs actual flowers when you have art like this? All I need is a vase to put these cards in and I’m good to go.

Is there a thorn on the stem of this beautiful rose of a game? I will admit there is one little issue I had with the game and that is with the scoring phase. The game is quick and breezy as players build their collection of flowers, but it grinds to a halt at the end of each round as everybody needs to score their sets. With each flower possessing its own effect that interacts with other flowers and their own effects, there is a lot of mumbling and poking at phone calculators at the end of each round which clogs an otherwise sublimely elegant game. It’s a minor thing and far from a deal breaker, but it did have enough of an effect that I felt it worth mentioning.

Tussie Mussie launches on Kickstarter on May 28^th and I wholeheartedly recommend that you check it out. It’s a simple but deceptively tricky game that pops on the table despite being just a small deck of cards. If you have yet to try a Button Shy game, this is a fine place to start.

Hand of the King Review

It’s a momentous time in pop culture history. No there isn’t a new Hot Tub Time Machine on the horizon…yet. Nope, as of writing and posting this blog post, this is the week leading up to the last EVER Game of Thrones episode. The series finale will premiere this Sunday and a gaping, dragon sized hole will be left in our lives after it’s gone. If you are reading this 200 years in the future and you have no clue what a Game of Thrones is, it was an absurdly popular show about rich, white people who constantly argued and wanted to kill each other. This sounds like something you’d see on C-SPAN, but it was actually a show on HBO. Also, there were LOTS of naked people.

I am a huge fan of the show and consider it second only to Breaking Bad on my list of favorite shows that I’ve ever seen. So naturally I’m very excited, but also a bit bummed. To honor this finale and the end to one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) shows to ever grace the television screen, I am doing a review of a fantastic Game of Thrones themed board game. This game is Hand of the King, designed by none other than my favorite designer Bruno Cathala. Seeing as how this is a Game of Thrones game, one should assume it’s an epic, grueling 3+ hour game of political intrigue, military cunning and unforgettable betrayals, right?

Actually, it’s just an abstract strategy game that can be finished in under 20 minutes. But that’s okay! The thematic disconnect might seem worrying, but it’s totally fine. Hand of the King is an excellent filler game that packs plenty of thinky moments and exciting swings of momentum. Even if there are far less beheadings and moments of incest (which can only be viewed as a very good thing).

Hand of the King is essentially a set collection card game. The cards in the game represent members of the various houses in Game of Thrones lore, with all the characters illustrated in a somewhat cartoony, hand drawn style that makes me hope that one day we get a Game of Thrones: The Animated Series. These wonderfully illustrated cards are all placed out in a six by six grid that’s referred to as ‘King’s Landing’. The object is to collect a majority of as many families as you can, gaining their banners when you do so. The player with the most banners wins.

How do you collect the cards? By using everyone’s favorite eunuch spymaster: Varys. Varys is essentially the pawn that everyone controls on their turn. He has a card that’s somewhere in King’s Landing. On your turn, you pick one of the four cardinal directions and move Varys in that direction, declaring a House name as you do. When you do, you move Varys to the farthest member of the specified House, picking up any other members of that House along the way. So if you move Varys to the right and say, “Stark”, you’ll move to the right to the farthest Stark and pick up all the Starks along the way. This makes Varys like some sort of Westerosi UFO, abducting the members of all these noble families as he traverses King’s Landing. Considering how brutal the events of the show and books are, being abducted by aliens would probably be sweet relief for some of these characters.

When somebody gets a majority in a certain family between other players at the table, they take the corresponding banner, often times taking it from another player. The interesting thing is it just doesn’t have to be a majority, however. If you even match the tally of someone who is currently holding the banner of that family, you still get the banner. If you take a two Greyjoys and the person with the Greyjoy banner only has two Greyjoys in front of them, you gain control of the banner.

Not needing a clear majority to steal a banner makes things super tense and creates an interesting game of chicken. Taking the banner early on makes you a prime target for other players and unless you collect a wide swath of that family, it’s often not too hard for someone to match you and steal the banner for their own. You’ll always feel vulnerable, no matter the amount of banners you have. This tension makes every decision feel important and you’ll agonize over how best to navigate the grid of King’s Landing on your turn.

Further adding to the torture you feel on each turn is the companion cards. Companion cards are cards featuring other GoT characters who sit off to the side, patiently waiting for you to activate their special power. In order to procure these cards, you need to take the last member of a family off the board. When you do so, you immediately choose one of the companions and activate their power, hopefully helping you swing the tide of the game. These powers are often pretty damn good, making the companions a hot commodity. This creates a new decision to consider: do you focus on bolstering your majorities in Houses you already have a stake in or do you take the last member of a House you have no chance of winning BUT which allows you to snag a companion card?

What makes the companion cards even better are that they have powers that are surprisingly thematic for an abstract strategy game. Take Jon Snow and he counts as TWO members towards any family in your player area. Take Khal Drogo and he not only kills Viserys Targaryen, but also attracts Daenerys Targaryen to your play area, regardless of where she is. Jaquen H’ghar allows you to eliminate three characters off the board, something any show watcher or book reader will be tickled by.

jaqen — A Player understands this reference.

This extra injection of theme helps bring what would otherwise be a fairly abstract game with a healthy dose of personality that fans of the show and books will really dig. The companion cards are also randomized every game, making every play feel different.

The end result of all this is a tense, puzzle-y game that constantly has you and your opponents going back and forth. Banners are lost as easily as they’re won and you’re always worrying about furthering your own interests while avoiding setting up the next player with a nice, juicy move. Sure, you may get what you want by moving to the left and grabbing three Starks but did you just realize that that moves leaves two Greyjoys in sight for the person who currently holds the Greyjoy banner? Playing defensive is just as important as being on the offensive in this game, a classic hallmark of Cathala designs.

Another noteworthy thing about this game is it scales pretty well. The back and forth, tactical nature of the game makes it seem like it would only work at two players, but I’ve played it at three and four and am happy to report that’s untrue. The game is certainly best at two, but three players works just fine and four players introduces a team variant to spice things up. In this team variant, you and a partner square off against the other two players, with both players sharing their banners to form a cumulative score at the end. The best rule, however, is this: table talk is not allowed. The only way you can discuss strategy with your partner is to spend your one and only raven token, which enables you and your partner to leave the room for a brief, minute long discussion on strategy. Not only is this hilarious and prevent one player from running the show for the team, but it’s incredibly thematic and on brand for a GoT game. Using a raven for communication is of course classic GoT and I felt like I was truly a member of a Westeros politics when I spent a raven token, said, “A word, please” to my teammate and then scurried off to the next room to speak in hushed whispers about a big move I saw on the board. I feel like this variant was almost added as an afterthought, and yet the four player games I’ve played of this have been some of my most fun memories with the game.

If you aren’t a fan of abstract strategy games, fillers and/or Game of Thrones, I’m not entirely sure this game will be up your alley. But if you like any one of those things, Hand of the King is a surprisingly satisfying game of tactical tug of war with a modular nature that demands replay after replay. This one has snuck under the radar for a lot of people, probably because it’s a game based on an IP (which is a little ironic, since GoT is one of the biggest IPs ever). But now that do you know about it, do yourself a favor and check it out.

Trapwords Review

In 2015, CGE took the game by storm by publishing Codenames, a word association game developed by game design legend Vlaada Chivatil. Its simple but smart and clever ruleset acted as a gateway for many a gamer into the hobby. Its gargantuan sales numbers and roughly 500 different versions that later got published (don’t be surprised if we ever get to see a Berenstain Bears Codenames) are certainly proof of that. For me, it was my favorite game ever for a while and was easily my most successful game when it came to indoctrinating I mean showing people how much fun board games can be.

So imagine my excitement when late last year CGE released a brand new word association game. That game was Trapwords, another team vs team game of clue givers trying to get their team to guess a certain word. The twist to this one, however, was that the clue giver wasn’t allowed to say certain words (the titular trapwords). So wait, isn’t that exactly what the old mass market game Taboo was? You’d be right, which is why there’s yet ANOTHER twist. The other team comes up with the trapwords and do so secretly, which means the clue giver has no idea what they’re allowed to say and not say.

Welcome to the chaotic but clever fun of Trapwords.

As mentioned earlier, this game shares a lot of DNA with Taboo, a mass market game from the late 90s that involved teams vying to get their teammates to guess words. The rub was that along with that word was a handful of other words that the clue giver could NOT say. If they accidentally or otherwise said one of the ‘taboo’ words, they lost the round. I think there was also a buzzer that you could press to alert the team when they screwed up, but I only have vague recollections because my brain probably repressed it.

Taboo was a decent game by mass market standards, but that’s not saying much. Trapwords takes the serviceable but bland dough of Taboo and injects it with a luscious modern board game custard, making a delicious Boston Crème donut that is far more palatable to hobby gamers (while still being accessible enough for casual and new gamers). As explained earlier, Trapwords is still a game of giving clues and trying to avoid restricted words (in this case called trapwords). The key difference is that the teams are the ones who make those words and the clue giver has no idea what those words might be.

The beginning of every round begins with a huddled session of whispers between teams, as they look at the word the other team must guess and begin debating over what trapwords to use. It’s like a small council meeting in Game of Thrones, but where the arguments are less “Who do we need to ruthlessly assassinate?” and more “Is Jenny more likely to use the word ‘cat’ or ‘stripes’ to describe ‘tiger’?” Then, once everybody is done making their list of words, they hand the cards over to the clue giver and the real fun begins.

The clue givers take turns trying to get their team to guess the word in a certain amount of time. And in that time the clue giver will inevitably sputter and grunt and chug like a Cadillac being driven for the first time since the Reagan administration. They’ll open their mouth, begin a thought and almost immediately close their mouth again when they begin to double guess every word they were about to say. Then when the clue givers finally get going, they sound like a nervous robot trying to work its way through a Turing Test.

For example, someone trying to describe ‘bank’ will likely sound like this:

“It…is..an establishment in which you go to receive reimbursement for things for which you earned said reimbursements and it is often a target of…criminal? Criminal plans to remove these reimbursements from the establishment and god how much more specific do I need to be, please answer it.”

As a spectator it’s hilarious to watch your friends short circuit and slowly talk like they’re clumsily working their way through a hostage negotiation. As the clue giver, it’s an agonizingly delicate dance of words, like you’re trying to maneuver a minefield but it’s also a raging blizzard so you can’t even see where you’re stepping. At any point your opponents can obnoxiously make a buzzer sound (thankfully this game doesn’t come with an actual buzzer, or else I’d get serious ‘Nam flashbacks), signaling your failure and shame to the entire room and costing your team a chance to move forward.

Which, by the way, is ultimately the goal of Trapwords. I haven’t even mentioned the game has a fantasy, dungeon crawling theme. Your team is represented by a group of adventurers trying to work their way down a corridor before meeting the game’s boss monster. The corridor is made up of room tiles with a number in the corner, denoting the amount of trapwords your opponents can make for that round. Obviously, the number gets higher the deeper you get, culminating in a room with the boss. If you’re in the same room as the boss and your team guesses their word during that round, you win the game. I’ve heard some reviewers complain about the theme, that it has the potential to put off non gamers who will spurn it because it’s too ‘nerdy’. The cutesy, quasi anime cartoon art in the game has also been polarizing and certainly doesn’t change the minds of these detractors.

I personally have no issue with either. I actually dig the fact that this game has a theme, rather than just have you guessing words over and over and moving down an abstract board. It helps make it feel more ‘gamey’ and adds a charming personality to the proceedings that helps show non gamers the twists modern gaming can add, even just thematically and aesthetically, that makes the hobby so great. So while some say the theme is off putting and distracting and unnecessary, I wholeheartedly think the opposite.

Plus, the theme is able to add some variety to the gameplay as well. Remember those bosses I mentioned earlier? Turns out each boss has a special power that makes it harder to guess the words while in the same room as them. As if that isn’t cool enough, the bosses all have two versions of said power: a basic, easier version and the more advanced, difficult version. This not only adds a neat little thematic touch, but also replayability.

Trapwords Bosses — Is this a picture of the bosses in *Trapwords* or of the United States Congress? You decide.

That being said, the game’s other little thematic twist, the Curses, I’m a little less crazy about. Curses are cards dispersed throughout the dungeon that add a little rule that, like the bosses, make it a little tougher on the team while in that room. Sounds great, but it’s all silly stuff like ‘The clue giver must repeat every word after they say it’ (because they’re in a room with a lot of echoes) and ‘The clue giver must say all their clues in one breath’ (because they’re in a room that’s flooding). I enjoy the idea, but most of the curses remind me too much of mass market party games like Quelf (yes, a real game name) and Curses (hey, that sounds familiar) where the entire point of the game is “HA HA HA, I’M WEARING A SHOE ON MY HEAD AND TALKING LIKE MR. T., THIS GAME IS SO WACKY, WE’RE WACKY, HA HA HA”. Maybe I need to lighten up (okay, I DEFINITELY need to lighten up) but this kind of forced goofiness stopped being fun for me in high school (as did a lot of things, honestly).

Luckily these Curses are completely optional and thus don’t negatively impact my view of the game or its theme. And honestly, with enough beer I’m sure even I wouldn’t mind playing with them here and there. I just prefer the bosses much more and what they add to the game’s whimsical fantasy theme.

Outside of the optional Curse cards, is there anything else I’m not crazy about when it comes to Trapwords? Honestly, as someone who just adores these types of games, it’s tough to pick out anything that I really dislike. One complaint I could level, as a nitpick, is that the words come in two flavors: normal and fantasy. Depending on the way you read the cards, you get one or the other. I would have much preferred just basic words throughout, because having fantasy-only words narrows the scope of what the potential words can be. I suppose this is one way in which the theme does get in the way of the game. Another issue I have with the words is the balance is a bit suspect. Some words are waaay tougher to try and get your team to guess than others. Words like ‘monocle’ and ‘spreadsheet’ are darn near impossible when the other team is able to write seven or eight trapwords for you to contend with.

Even this though, I’m forgiving with because no word association game is perfectly balanced. Even Codenames, perhaps still the best of the genre, has this issue. Come on, don’t tell me you haven’t been in situations where the opponent clue giver gets to match ‘pizza’, ‘bread’, ‘ice cream’, and ‘pie’ while you’re stuck trying to link ‘polish’, ‘dolphin’, and ‘moon’. Sometimes you may luck out and some times you might not, but the games are short and silly enough that I doubt you’ll be stewing over it the rest of game night.

All in all, Trapwords is fantastic for anybody who enjoys these types of word association party games. It doesn’t surpass the genre’s greats, such as Codenames, When I Dream (hey, I reviewed that game!), and Decrypto but it comfortably rubs shoulders with them at the company picnic.

The Museum of Fake Artists (MoFA): An Opening Exhibit

Hello, fine guest of distinguished taste! I can tell by your monocle and pipe that you are a consumer of the arts. You are an endangered species, my friend. But, worry not! If you are an endangered species, then this establishment is your wildlife sanctuary…welcome to MoFA!

What is MoFA you ask, while pouring yourself a glass of cognac (or at least I assume because, again, you are a person of fine, FINE taste). Allow me to begin the introduction. MoFA, or the Museum of Fake Artists, is a museum specifically made to house art created during sessions of the wonderful board game, A Fake Artist Goes to New York. What is A Fake Artist Goes to New York, you ask while dipping some crackers in caviar to complement that cognac from earlier because you, again, are just the classiest person? Well allow me to break character to very briefly explain the rules!

A Fake Artist Goes To New York is a party game for 5-10 people that can best be described as Pictionary meets Spyfall. In the game, players are going to be collaborating on a picture together based on a prompt given by a Game Master (who rotates every round). For example, maybe the Game Master wants the players to draw a helicopter. Every player will get a little whiteboard that has the word ‘helicopter’ with the exception of one person who gets a giant ‘X’ on their board. This person is the Fake Artist and their job is to avoid having the other players from sussing out who they are. Once everybody gets their prompt (or ‘X’), they begin taking turns drawing on a piece of paper, adding bits and pieces to the drawing that slowly takes form. At round’s end, everyone votes on who they think the Fake Artist was, based on who added what to the drawing. If the Fake Artist is correctly accused, they still get one more chance to win by correctly guessing what the Game Master’s original prompt was. Thus, this gives the other players incentive to try and draw as vaguely as possible while letting others know that they are aware of what the prompt is (again, much like the aforementioned Spyfall). Okay, let’s get back in character, one moment, just pinning my Van Dyke goatee back on…

Back to business! As one can expect, this very simple rule set not only produces hours of hilarious fun but also some incredible art. That is why the MoFA was built. Such art deserves a place on the internet to shine. After all, the internet offers nothing but the best and brightest!

On this tour of the first ever exhibit of the MoFA, I will show you some art that was drawn during games of A Fake Artist Goes to New York and offer some brief insight into the history of each picture. The backstories are rich and will only make you appreciate these masterpieces that much more.

So if you are ready to begin the tour, you may mount your segway and follow me through the grand doors, into the 1^st ever exhibit of the MoFA!

Picture I

Prompt: Thanos

Ahh, let’s begin with a topical work of art. As of the time of this tour, Avengers: Endgame is just a few weeks away from hitting theatres and moviegoers will soon find out how all the ‘dead’ heroes are brought back to life to satisfy the fact that they all have movie sequels to be apart of. The villain of that story, Thanos, is the subject of this portrait.

One might wonder why there are no defining features of Thanos here. Where is his Infinity Gauntlet and why has it been replaced by a jai alai glove? Why does his armor look more like a wife beater? And has his face been replaced by an old timey diver’s porthole? While I would love to answer these questions, I’m afraid that would spoil the fun of art. It is up to YOU, the connoisseur of these works of art, to come up with your own interpretations. Also, because I have no clue.

Fans of villains will be excited for the next piece in our exhibit. Turns out Thanos is only the SECOND most evil person on display here! Come a bit farther to see…

Picture II

Prompt: Donald Trump

As of the time of this tour, Donald Trump is the current President of the United States. While that still sounds like the opening line to a Philip K. Dick novel, it is the truth nonetheless. Let’s at least get a bit of fun out if it by looking at this not so flattering portrait of him!

There are a couple of details in this picture that the eagle eyed viewer will notice. The two tiny nubs for hands. The shock of orange hair upon a faceless bulb. The knee high wall in the corner that was probably made by Trump himself to model what he had in mind for his Mexico wall for when it never gets built. The not so subtle devil’s tail poking out from behind. I am confident this drawing is such a good representation of our Commander in Chief that you could hang this in the White House tonight and nobody would bat an eye.

Fear not, fans of this piece. The MoFA is this drawing’s one and true home. Let’s move onto something lighter and a much more beloved figure…

Picture III

Prompt: Mickey Mouse

Here is one that the kiddos can really enjoy! As long as they look past the fact that this version of Mickey Mouse looks like it has a water pitcher for a body and a tiny, scrunched up toilet for a head. Otherwise, all the classic Mickey Mouse features are there! The pants with the buttons, the hunk of cheese laying nearby, a musical note hovering above his head to show that our adorable rodent friend is whistling a tune (despite not having a mouth).

This is one piece of art that does give us a bit of anxiety here at the MoFA because this looks SO much like the actual Mickey Mouse, we know it’s only a matter of time before Disney and its army of lawyers lay siege upon us like orcs storming Helm’s Deep. Come to think of it, Thanos is technically Disney property too, right? Oh dear. We’re so screwed. Enjoy this exhibit while you can, it may be our last.

On that note, let’s hurry on over to our next piece of art before it disappears under the crushing heel of litigation!

Picture IV

Prompt: Harry Potter

Yet another masterful representation of a pop cultural icon. In this case, it’s everybody’s favorite boy wizard…just look at that detail! Who can forget that inspiring part of the books when Harry lost his legs and replaced them with a reindeer? If you manage to soak in all the little references and Easter eggs from this picture, don’t forget to play everyone’s favorite game with this drawing: ‘Is That The Sun or Hagrid’s Floating Disembodied Head In The Corner?” You can write your answer on a slip and place it in the bowl next to the donation box at the front of the museum.

Picture V

Prompt: The Big Lebowski

A cult classic movie has been transformed into a magnificent illustration in this piece. Featured here is the main character of the story and everyone’s favorite slacker, The Dude. Also pictured: bowling. No less than three bowling balls are present, just in case one wasn’t enough. Two of them appear to be surgically grafted onto The Dude’s hands because everyone knows that bowling is not just a mere sport, it is a lifestyle. Our artists understood the importance of the game to the movie’s central character and represented it as thus. And in the corner…a…bowling pin, I think? It could be a baby’s bottle, but that would make no sense and clearly there’s no place for that here!

Picture VI

Prompt: Robot (and also Duck, apparently)

A cautionary tale lies behind this tragic Island of Dr. Moreau-esque figure. Half robot, half duck, all abomination. This picture sprang from an unfortunate misunderstanding of the rules. As a handsome narrator explained above, the game involves a Game Master giving a bunch of players a prompt and giving the Fake Artist a simple ‘X’ so that they have no clue what to draw. In this case, the Game Master thought you give the Fake Artist a completely different prompt.

The end result? Science’s biggest mistake. One must admit, the longer you look at it, the more hauntingly beautiful it appears. The juxtaposition between the webbed feet and duck’s bill poking from the unfeeling metal of a robotic exoskeleton has had art scholars debating heavy themes such as existentialism, free will and the merits and pitfalls of an automated society.

Though we’re still not exactly sure what the hell that rubber arm popping out of its chest is.

Picture VII

Prompt: ?????

Nobody at MoFA can explain this picture. We don’t remember the circumstances behind it, what the prompt was or why it even exists. It’s entirely possible it just came to be, born out of the hate and misery that has permeated society today.

What is wrong with this poor creature? Is it smiling? Or caught in the middle of a frown that it knows it’s not allowed to exhibit, lest its master punish it? Its ragged edges reveal a pained past made all the more fearful by its mismatched eyes.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and in this case it’s simply “ahhhh” repeated a thousand times.

And that’s unfortunately the end of this exhibit. MoFA is always looking for more pieces of art to exhibit, and if the curator is able to play more games of A Fake Artist Goes to New York perhaps this haven of art and thought can continue to thrive. For now, we hope you enjoyed your visit and implore you to tell your friends.

Sprawlopolis Review

A month or two ago, I reviewed a game called Stew. Stew is a brilliant little game that combines bluffing, deduction and press your luck and is brought to us by the wonderful publisher Button Shy. Button Shy is a game company that specializes in making hand crafted games that are small enough to fit in literal wallets. I own five of their games from their vast library and while Stew is my favorite of those, there is a very close second. And that game is Sprawlopolis.

Sprawlopolis is a cooperative tile/card laying game where you and your teammates are building a city together. The game, like almost every Button Shy game, is comprised of just 18 cards. Those cards are double sided, with one side containing scoring objectives and the other side being the actual city cards. Those city cards contain each of the four districts in the game (residential, commercial, industrial and parks) as well as a combination of streets snaking through in various directions. The game begins by setting aside three of those 18 cards and putting them scoring objective up. The prompt has a rule for scoring (such as 2 points for every Residential district adjacent to two Industrial districts, to pick an easy example) and a number. You add the numbers of the three cards together and that makes the final score you need to beat for that game. Then, after shuffling the rest of the cards, you and your other budding civic engineers try to make a city that doesn’t completely suck.

(Psst…chances are, it will suck. This game is hard.)

The game plays like many tile laying games, where you simply place cards adjacent to other cards to form a continually growing landscape. But! There is a twist. In this game, you can actually cover parts of already placed cards, even the entire damn thing. This opens things up considerably as you can try to overlap parts that are disadvantageous to your scoring while improving other parts of the city to improve said score. It’s like this game’s version of gentrification, only with much less of the sociological and moral ramifications that usually come with that.

It also leads to some very interestingly shaped cities. The first game I ever won of this, our city ended up looking like a duck.

sprawlopolis duck — I thought this was Sprawlopolis, not Quacks of Quedlinberg! Hahahaha oh god someone help me

The amazing thing about Sprawlopolis is that despite it being a mere 18 cards, the game gives you a lot to think about. You’re not just trying to score based on what the objectives have given you, but you also score based on how big certain blocks in your city are. The biggest continuous area of each district type gets gets one point per block in it. For example, if the biggest area of parks in your city is five blocks big, you get five points for your parks district. This extra scoring mechanism means that even as you’re focusing on the scoring objectives dealt at the beginning, you also have to keep in mind that you want to build up at least one big area of each of the district types. Focusing strictly on the objectives and ignoring the district scoring will rarely result in a win, but the rub is that often times the objectives don’t jive with making large masses of single districts. This creates a great decision space where you’ll be agonizing over how to maximize your overall score. It’s a balancing act akin to walking a tightrope while juggling Molotov cocktails. Also, there are puppies below you as you do so. Do you want to burn a bunch of puppies, you psychopath? Didn’t think so.

There is one more bit of scoring in the game, making it the thick syrup on this stack of scoring pancakes. The streets department of Sprawlopolis must be very lazy and cranky, because for each road in your city you lose one point. Joining together roads to make them longer and therefore less present in your city is the best way to minimize this damage. The worst thing you can do is to have lots of tiny little roads twisting and turning around your city, leading to nowhere like it’s an MC Escher fever dream. But again, trying to build long, continuous roads doesn’t always work with the city you’re trying to build for the objectives. Maybe there’s a great play you can make that will score you some extra points from the objectives but you notice that it will open up two new roads or even break apart a long connected road you had worked so hard on keeping together. As I said, it’s a balancing act and it packs so many great hair pulling moments in what is just a 10-15 minute card game.

When you deal with a microgame like this, one of the biggest concerns is its shelf life. As in, how many times can you actually play this thing before you realize it’s a much more shallow, and repetitive experience than you first thought? No disrespect to microgames, I love them, but it’s definitely a prevalent problem in a genre that is built around incredibly simple rulesets and low numbers of cards/components.

(I’m looking at you Coup and Love Letter.)

I’m happy to report that, maybe more than any other microgame I’ve played, this is not an issue with Sprawlopolis. One of the big reasons why is the different scoring objectives. Not only do the scoring objectives all feel different and varied, but you’re using a different, random combination each time. This, along with the fact that the city cards are all shuffled and come out randomly as well, means that every game of Sprawlopolis is going to feel unique and fresh. Sure, you may run into a couple games where two of the three scoring objectives have been paired together before, but it’s rare enough that it rarely feels stale. I mean, just do the math. With 18 scoring objectives, and a combination of 3 every time you play that’s like…uhh…umm…a LOT of combinations. Yeah, let’s go with that, ‘a lot’.

This also translates into wildly different looking cities every time you play. One of my favorite things about Carcassonne, perhaps the most popular tile laying game in the hobby, is that no matter how many times I’ve played it, the landscape me and my opponents had created always looked different game to game. That is very much the case with Sprawlopolis. I mean, I already showed you that damn duck. Depending on how the scoring objectives shape out, you can end up with smaller more compact cities, larger more sprawling (hey, that sounds familiar) cities or just some downright weird looking ones.

sprawlopolis city example — Well, it’s layout and design still makes more sense than Boston’s.

The last thing I’ll rave about is this game’s solo mode. I have been getting into solo gaming a lot over the past year (probably has to do with that whole ‘no social life’ thing I’ve got gotten on) and Sprawlopolis is easily one of the three best solo experiences I’ve ever played. The gameplay is completely unaffected. The only difference is you just simply keep a hand of three cards at all times since there are no other players to pass cards to. Which is completely fine, as it removes the one fiddly thing about the game anyway (in the multiplayer game you play, pass, then draw one card for a future turn, which for whatever reason has always felt clunky to me). This means the solo experience is just as enjoyable as playing the multiplayer game, something a solitaire game should ALWAYS strive for. In fact, in some ways it’s better, because playing solo means you don’t have to deal with your friends passive aggressively sighing at your placement of a card because you missed something obvious. It’s lack of a long time commitment makes Sprawlopolis the perfect bite sized solo game as well, meaning it’s super easy for me to pull out and kill 15 minutes with. All in all, if you are an avid solo gamer, Sprawlopolis is as good as it gets.

I really don’t have much in the way to criticize with Sprawlopolis. It’s variety game to game, elegant and simple ruleset, addictive solo play and its portability make it a game that anyone should have in their collection. It doesn’t quite beat the tile laying greats such as Carcassonne, Lanterns and Isle of Skye, but it’s damn close to their level. And that’s some high praise if you ask me.

What I Played Last Weekend (3/15/19-3/17/19)

This past weekend was St. Paddy’s Day weekend! That means while everybody else was out and about getting drunk and making terrible decisions, I was also doing that exact same thing. Ahem. BUT. I also played some games this weekend! Five to be exact, and they were all varying degrees of fun. To celebrate this, I’m trying a new type of post where I briefly discuss these games and what my initial impressions of them were. This was the first time I played any of these games, so these are strictly off one play. Therefore, don’t expect my usual scholarly amounts of critique and detailed, well thought out pfft hahaha, even I can’t type that with a straight face! Also, I don’t own four of these five games, so I won’t be doing pictures for this post. My suggestion to fix this is that you read the rest of this post aloud in your best NPR voice and imagine you’re listening to this content through a picture free podcast. What other blog includes such fun levels of audience participation?? Anyway, let’s get on with it.

Game the First: Yamatai

My very first review on this blog was of Mr. Jack, a game designed by my favorite designer Bruno Cathala. I looove his games and he is easily the designer I’ve played the most. You could put his name on a box of used diapers and I’d be interested in playing it. Yamatai was the last of his ‘big’ games that I had yet to play and I wanted to make sure I gave it a shot before its owner (one of my best friends and main board game partner) moved to Japan, damning this game to a life of eternal storage. I went in with tempered expectations, as this is a game that is described with a resounding shrug from most of the board game community. It doesn’t seem like a lot of people disliked it, but you rarely hear people exalting it either. It is what many would call ‘fine’. Do I agree?

Hmmm, that’s a tough question. In terms of gameplay and mechanisms, there’s actually a lot I love about Yamatai. For one, I love it’s unique take on route building. In the game, you and the players are building chains of boats that circle around islands and the colors of the boats dictate your ability to build buildings on said islands. This effectively means the routes and networks double as a sort of currency in the game. This creates a very puzzley game where you’re trying to build a route of boats that you can reap benefits from while not leaving things open for your opponents.

This balancing act of helping yourself while playing defense against the others is a trademark of Cathala design, something seen in games like the aforementioned Mr. Jack, Hand of the King (a lesser known and grossly underrated work of his, built around the Game of Thrones IP), Five Tribes, 7 Wonders Duel and, maybe my favorite game of his, Raptor. It’s alive and well in Yamatai and that lends itself to some satisfying but exhausting brain burn. I chortled when I watched the Dice Tower and they said this game was heavier than Five Tribes, perhaps Cathala’s heaviest game, but they weren’t kidding. I legitimately had a bit of a headache from this game when we were finished because the decisions have so much weight.

So if this game offers such a hefty but satisfying puzzle to chew on, why am I conflicted on it? My biggest gripe was the downtime and length of the game. I played this with just two players and it still took us about two hours to finish. Two hours of this kind of puzzling is draining and led to me being somewhat burned out by the end. Again, it literally gave me a headache. But the bigger sin was the downtime. With two players, you take two turns per round versus one turn in the other player counts. That sounds like it’d be great and would actually reduce downtime but I think it might have made it worse. My reasoning is because trying to puzzle out not one but TWO turns can reeaaally bog you down in AP. It’s made worse towards the end of the game when every move is precious and players are popping off endless amounts of special abilities they’ve racked up throughout the game, lengthening turns that much more. I wish I could see if downtime is less of an issue in a 3 player game, where players only get one turn.

As it stands, Yamatai is a game that I would say is not in the same echelon as Cathala’s greatest games, but it definitely isn’t bad. I’m glad I played it, but it’s not necessarily a game I need in my collection, especially with Cathala’s other games on my shelves. So, yeah, uh, *shrug*

Game the Second: Sunset Over Water

This is the one game on the list I DO own and therefore a game that I might review some day. With pictures, even! So I’ll keep this one short.

This is a set collection game where you and your opponents are rival painters trying to find the best landscapes and just paint the crap out them. These landscape pictures are placed in a grid that players need to navigate by selecting action cards from a hand of three. The cards have a wake up time, a movement allotment and an amount of paintings that you can remove from the grid on your turn. Earliest wake up time goes first, and that player moves according to their restrictions and picks up paintings along the way.

You’re essentially trying to grab paintings that have certain symbols on them to satisfy commission requirements which are the main source of points in the game. I played this at two players and found it to be both a leisurely walk through the forest, enjoying the beautiful sights while collecting sets, and a cutthroat race to the finish, where I could practically see the artists sharpening the ends of their brush handles into makeshift shivs as they undercut their opponents at every turn. It’s nice to have a game that manages to be both laidback and tense at the same time and I really enjoyed it. I’m a big fan of fillers of this type, so it was nice to not be disappointed.

As I said, there’s a good chance I do a full review for this game so I’ll save all my hilarious observations for that post. Onward!

Game the Third: Clacks

When I first saw this game in a game store, I saw the tower on the cover that looked like an oil derrick and assumed this was some sort of Euro about running an oil business and trying to be the best damn oil tycoon this side of the Mississippi. Turns out, it’s an abstract puzzle game set in the Discworld universe that’s about lighting towers to send transmissions. Close enough, right?

One notable thing about this game is its both a competitive and cooperative game. The game includes rule sets for both modes and both have their own unique spin on the core mechanism in the game. That’s always a worrying sign for me because I assume (perhaps unfairly) that if the game includes multiple modes that the designer spread themselves too thin and lost focus, thus resulting in a half baked pie that has both pumpkin filling and raspberries crudely smashed into the crust with a hammer.

I can’t speak for the competitive mode because me and my friend only played cooperatively, but I’m happy to report that the cooperative mode was actually pretty fun. Fun enough to the point that I scratched my head throughout, wondering how they even made a competitive version of the game. It seemed as if it was made from the ground up as a cooperative game and that’s about all you can ask from a game sporting more than one way to play.

The gameplay in Clacks is basically just a big puzzle. It’s made up of grid of tiles with tokens on them which have a lit and unlit side on them. You and your teammates have a message you need to transmit and those messages are made up of letters which have a specific pattern of lights that need to be made in the grid. If you match the pattern of lights with a letter, you mark it as transmitted and move onto the next letter.

This is done by playing tiles which have MORE patterns on them, which show a specific shape in the grid that you can affect. When you play the tile, you choose an area of the grid matching the shape and flip over all tiles in that area. What’s lit is now unlit and vice versa. These tiles all have symbols on them indicating ‘stress’ which in the cooperative mode stands for the amount of spaces a figure called the Post Master moves on the board. The object is to transmit the message before the Post Master makes it to their destination.

And that’s literally the game. You manipulate the grid, trying to get the lights in the shape of the patterns needed to transmit a letter, perhaps even hoping to get more than one letter in one turn. This is waaay easier said than done, though, as you’ll find you’ll be constantly undoing the work you’ve done on previous turns. It’s like a puzzle in a Jonathon Blow video game, only without all the pretentious poetry. But you know what? It’s actually pretty fun. While I wished there was a little more to the game than just literally cooperatively solving a puzzle, I had a good time trying to work out with my friend how the hell to send the message in time (turns out the answer was: we wouldn’t!).

This is the board game equivalent of sitting next to a friend and completing a sudoku together, so if that doesn’t sound appealing to you, you may wanna find a more thematic cooperative game than Clacks. But for someone who loves a good puzzle, it’s worth checking out (though this may be horribly out of print? Not entirely sure).

Certainly better than the raw pumpkin and raspberry pie Frankenstein’s monster I expected it to be.

Game the Fourth: Tybor the Builder

Ahh, now HERE’S a game! Without a doubt my favorite of the weekend, this is a game designed by Alex Pfister, my second favorite designer (and hey, look, he just happened to design the game I reviewed last week, Port Royal, please read, I need to eat). In this game, players are drafting in a “Play and Pass” style seen in popular games like Sushi Go and 7 Wonders. For those who don’t know how it works, players have a hand of cards, everyone simultaneously picks one, plays it, then passes the hand to the next person.

The cards players are drafting in this game are people in your village and they can be used in one of three ways. You can put them above your little player board to make them a citizen, where they provide symbols for end game scoring and (usually, but not always) a discount on purchasing buildings in the future (more on that in a bit). You could also play them as a worker, where you place them to the right side of your board. They sit there patiently, with their strength number proudly displayed until you send them off to work when you do the third action. And that third action is you can build a building, which requires you to discard the card you just played and then to spend workers in your work force with a strength equal to the cost of the building you’re trying to buy. If you are building something that needs 8 strength, you need to spend workers worth at least 8 combined strength.

It’s incredible that a game that essentially has only three decisions with each card can be so satisfying and fun. When you’re looking through your hand, you’re thinking about every possibility of those three actions with all the cards. This card gives you a symbol you could really use for the endgame, but they also have a ton of strength. Do you use them as a citizen or worker? Similarly, you’re looking at what buildings you want to build and what cards can provide discounts as citizens. Citizens with a specific card color on their side provide a discount of one strength for that color building for the rest of the game, creating a simple, Splendor-esque bit of engine building in the game. And then there’s the buildings themselves, which all provide a various amount of points, end game bonuses and even the occasional special action to immediately use.

Like I said, I can’t believe that a game this simple has latched its hooks into my brains so thoroughly. The blend of long-term strategy and cunning tactics in a package that you can finish in a breezy 20-30 minutes makes this such an addictive little filler. I’m already depressed that I don’t have any way to play this game since the only copy was my friend’s who, again, is literally going to the other side of the planet. I will definitely look into importing a copy of this game, as it doesn’t look like there is a North American release in the cards (hahahah).

Onward!

Game the Fifth: Korrigans

I end the list with maybe the weirdest but most appropriate game on here. It’s weird, because it’s basically a kids game about leprechauns which is not generally the type of game I seek out. But it was very appropriate for this past weekend because, again, St. Paddy’s Day. What better time to play a game of leprechauns/korrigans riding woodland critters around verdant and colorful fields, seeking out a pot of gold? The only thing missing is drinking a keg of Guinness and way too many unanswered 3 a.m. texts to friends you haven’t seen in years quoting Boondock Saints.

In the game, everyone has two figures representing their leprechaun-esque creature. On your turn you simply move to an area on the board that you’re legally allowed to based on the companion tokens you have. If you have a rabbit token, you can move to an adjacent area with a rabbit symbol. If you have a mole symbol, you can move to any area on the board with a mole provided you’re already on a molehill. There are some other critters with equally simple rules which you can use for the rest of the game once you find a token of theirs. Which is pretty much the core of the game: when you enter an area, you take a look at the pile of tokens in the area, secretly pick one and put the rest back. Most of these tokens are gold, but some are critters to provide you more movement versatility.

Eventually the pot of gold appears and everyone gets one last turn to spend their critters (permanently, this time) to get to the pot. Get there with one and you get a bonus 10 points. Get there with BOTH and it increases to 15. So the basic conceit of the game is do you take gold tokens for guaranteed points or critter tokens to solidify your chances of making it to the gold? Not exactly Vital Lacerda style choices here, but like I said, it’s essentially a few notches above kid games.

There is some fun decision making to be had as you’re trying to map out the best and most efficient route to get to areas with a sizable pile of tokens to sift through while also keeping close to where the pot of gold can potentially appear, but if you’re looking for something to offer more than just goofy way to kill thirty to forty minutes, you’ll likely be disappointed. I will say that when you combine the facts that it was St. Paddy’s weekend, that I was drinking Guinness, and that we had some traditional Irish folk music playing in the background, I actually enjoyed my time with Korrigans. I wouldn’t say no to it being in my collection strictly for the purpose of playing it during St. Paddy’s Day. I know it’s not exactly a sterling recommendation to say, “I would definitely play this exactly once a year” but hey, that’s more than I play Captain Sonar!

And that’s my recap of the games I played for the first time this past weekend. I kinda wish I started doing this type of post earlier, because the friend I keep referring to in this post was one of the main source of new games to play and with him moving to Japan, the influx of new gaming experiences is going to dry up. I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to do another one like this any time soon, but hopefully I can because this was pretty fun. Hope you liked it too, because my pathetically fragile ego depends on it. Cheers!

Port Royal Review

Arrgh! Welcome to Port Royal, matey! It be here that you do trade with merchants, hire a crew and try to score 12 points before anybody else, just as the real pirates did, y’arrghhh.

(If I was Shut Up and Sit Down, I’d have said all that dressed in full pirate garb but seeing as how I can’t afford a pirate costume, have no talent and do written content instead of videos that traffic lots and lots of viewers, I’ll guess I’ll drop the pirate act and continue the review as normal.)

If you have spent a good amount of time in the hobby, then there is a good chance you know the name Alexander Pfister. He is one of the hottest designers in the industry at the moment, being the mastermind behind heavy Euros such as Mombasa, Great Western Trail and, most recently, Blackout: Hong Kong. Great Western Trail in particular launched his career to the stratosphere, a game that comfortably sits in the top 10 of BGG’s top 100 and is considered a must play if you’re into Euros and cows (I wonder what that Venn Diagram looks like).

For me though, Pfister’s best work is his lighter fare. I’m talking games like Broom Service, a pick up and deliver game of witches delivering potions that has a wonderful social dynamic, Oh My Goods!, one of the most satisfying engine builders I’ve ever played despite it being just a deck of cards, and Isle of Skye, a Carcassonne-esque tile laying game with an ‘I Cut, You Choose’ bidding twist. However, as good as those games are, my absolute favorite Pfister game is Port Royal, a push your luck tableau builder that is one of my favorite games of all time. Seriously. I know, because I once made a list of my top 100 games once because this is my life now.

Port Royal whisks you away to the titular port where you’ll play the role of the world’s nicest, non violent pirate and try to build a crew that can net you gold, complete missions and, most importantly, count as victory points to win you the game. It’s all played with just a single deck of cards, which is the first thing that I’ll rave about. I am beginning to really gain an appreciation for games that do a lot with very little in terms of components, and this is a prime example of that.

A player’s turn is split into two phases: the Discovery Phase and the Trade & Hire phase. In the Discovery phase, you draw cards from this deck one at a time. The cards are mostly gonna be one of two things: ships that can be traded with or crew members who can be hired to enter your tableau. You can stop at any time and enter the next phase of your turn, or you can keep drawing, adding cards to the ever growing display.

But be warned: this wouldn’t be a push your luck game without some sort of risk involved. Then it would be just a push your patience game or push your table space game. Nope, the ship cards I mentioned earlier all have one of five country’s flags on their card and if at any point there are two identical flags in the harbor, you bust. You completely forfeit your turn, everything you’ve drawn is discarded and the next player starts their turn. No one said a pirate’s life was going to be fair or easy. Haven’t you even seen Captain Phillips?

But let’s say you wisely end your turn before your head is taken off by a couple of cannonballs from British ships. You enter the Trade & Hire phase, which means you can now take a look at the display of cards you’ve made and take some for yourself. Here’s the twist: the amount of cards you can take is dictated by the amount of unique flags present on ships in the harbor/display. If you have 0-3 flags present, you can take one measly card. But if you have four of the five flags present? You can take two. If you managed to reveal all five of the countries’ flags without busting, you can take a whopping three cards, which can be a big game changer.

And herein lies the push your luck element that drives the draw phase. The moment a flag is present in the harbor, you’re sweating bullets. Losing a whole turn is rouuugh, and you’ll be double guessing every draw from the deck. Every time you bust you’ll be cursing yourself like Chris Farley in that SNL skit where he hosted the talk show, calling yourself an idiot and asking why you didn’t just stop drawing and go to the next phase. But when you manage to get four or five flags in the harbor, you feel like a pirate god, Blackbeard meets Jesus as he walks on water to do business with the myriad of merchants docking into port.

So let’s talk about the Trade & Hire phase, which replaces the push your luck found in the first phase with card drafting and tableau building. As mentioned, you take the cards you’re allotted, but what to choose? If you take a ship in the harbor, you gain the number of coins printed on the card. Alternatively, you can use coins gained from ships to hire crew members, who give victory points and a passive ability throughout the game. For example, there are sailors and pirates who give you swords which allow you to swat away low level ships in the Discovery phase like the annoying gnats they are, mitigating your risk of busting. There are Mademoiselles, who give you a coin discount on hiring any future crew members. There are Governors, who allow you to grab an extra card during the Trade and Hire phase. There are more I won’t bore you with, but suffice to say that there are enough characters and powers to allow a wide breadth of options and to cultivate a game flow where multiple players can follow their own strategies. What’s also cool is that these crew members’ abilities stack when combined with other cards of the same type. So if you manage to get four Mademoiselles in your crew? That is a four coin discount on all purchases, my friend.

Port Royal Mademoiselle — Though now you’re becoming less pirate and more pimp, which is a bit disturbing.

But guess what. When you’re done taking cards from your display, everybody else around the table has a chance to grab a card from the display too! If that makes your blood boil like a Republican complaining that welfare is just lazy people making money off your hard work, don’t worry. If the players opt to take a card on your turn, they pay you one coin for doing business on your turn. So you can pump the breaks and let go of the Reagan bobblehead you were gripping in rage, bud.

This brings me to one of the things I really like about Port Royal: positive player interaction. Positive player interaction is where the decisions of other players can positively interact with things you’re doing on your own and not enough games feature it. Most games that feature interaction with players do it in a more negative and conflict heavy manner, where you take things from other players and destroy things they’ve built. I have no problem with this, area control is full of that and it’s one of my favorite types of games. But positive interaction is perhaps even better because it leaves things people feeling…uh, positively.

It’s nice to have a game where somebody does something and you can say “Thanks! That actually kinda helps me out!” instead of “I hope, when you least expect it, you stub your toe on something really hard.”

There are even crew members that have powers built around the idea of other players doing things. Take for instance, the Jester (ah, that old pirate archetype) who gets a coin whenever anyone busts on their turn OR if there are no cards left in the display by the time it comes to their turn to draft.

Port Royal Jester — Some men just want to see the world burn.

Then there is the Admiral, who gets you two coins every time the display has five or more cards when it’s your turn to draft. Meaning when you see somebody drawing card after card, you’re greedily rubbing your hands in excitement like a goblin for the payout that your Admiral(s) will give you. Sure, it’s not all a happy go lucky montage of everyone high fiving and patting each other on the back. This isn’t a cooperative game after all. There are times when opponents will take a card you really needed, but it’s rarely back breaking and never feels like they’re out to get you. Ultimately, this constant positive player interaction, from the aforementioned crew members to the payouts you get from players drafting on your turn, make a pirate game less about plundering treasure and ship combat and more about fair trade in a peaceful port town.

(Hmmm…maybe the theme is kind of thin here. But who cares, anything pirates and nautical is awesome in my book.)

The next thing I want to rave about is how many avenues to victories there are in this game. I have played this game more times than I can count and I’ve seen almost every strategy employed and each one has worked at least once. I’ve seen somebody go heavy into Mademoiselles so that they could buy whatever they wanted in the last portion of the game since everything was so cheap. I’ve seen somebody go heavy on swords so that they were able to fend off any ship that they drew from the deck, allowing them to search for the exact card they needed. I’ve seen somebody load up on Admirals and get so much gold that they were like a pirate Jeff Bezos. Any strategy is effective, it all comes down to how smart you are when you’re pushing your luck and pulling the trigger at the right time for the cards that will help bolster your tableau and push you to victory. This certainly isn’t a super deep game but seeing this many paths to victory in a game that is just a deck of cards and plays in less than an hour is always heartening.

Seeing as how this is one of my top five favorite games ever, I don’t have much to complain about. My only issues with this game are from the publishing side of things. I have the Steve Jackson Games copy, which was the version that was published in North America. The first problem with how they handled publishing this game is the box art. The box art is a detailed painting of a frowning pirate locked in a rigid action figure pose, sword in one hand and flintlock in the other. Not only does this dour looking pirate ready for combat mislead the player into thinking this is a more traditional pirate game of swordfights and ship raids, the art doesn’t match the art in the game AT ALL. Klemens Franz, who is easily one of my favorite artists in board gaming, supplied the illustrations for the cards and his warm, cartoony style is literally the opposite from the art on the cover, which is dark and dim with muted colors. The box art also looks incredibly generic, like it should be the front page of a menu at a pirate themed restaurant in Ocean City, Maryland.

Port Royal cover — Definitely looks like the kind of place that has 2 and a half stars on Yelp.

The second sin that SJG committed with this game is even more egregious because it actually has ramifications on the game going forward. The European version of the game has expansions available, but they are completely incompatible with this version because: A) The cards are different sizes and B) the ships in the North American version have specific countries tied to their flags (as I mentioned a couple of times before) while the European version has flags that are simply colors. These two things mean that the European expansions can’t be played with the North American copy, making it feel like I have the inferior version. It wouldn’t be that big a deal, but according to comments on BoardGameGeek, SJG has no intention of publishing the expansions themselves. So yeah, that sucks.

Aside from these unfortunate publishing decisions for the North American version, there’s nothing I can criticize about this game. The push your luck is addicting, the tableau building allows for forging your own strategy and creating your own unique crew, and it’s all tied together by the wonderfully endearing Klemens Franz art. I’ll end the review with a quick story. I actually just played this game a few weeks ago, and there was a point where I looked over at my opponent who was just a few points away from the game winning twelve. I looked at the gold he had, looked at the gold I had and did the math to discover there was no way any of us could stop him from winning on his next turn. I was incredibly bummed. NOT because someone besides me was going to win. Nope, I was bummed because that meant the game was going to be over. I love this game so much I literally became depressed when it ended. If ‘this game is so good it’ll make you sad,’ isn’t a glowing recommendation, I don’t know what is.