PAX West 2016 Indie Game Roundup

PAX West 2016 just concluded on Monday, so for this post I wanted to focus on some independent tabletop games that were on display. There were 2 sections devoted to 10 independent games, some ready for purchase, some in development (one actively being developed as rules were changing over the weekend). I won’t be covering all 10 in this post, but I will cover the ones that most piqued my interest, in alphabetical order.

Breaker Blocks

In this 2-player game, each side is trying to maintain a majority control over 3 circuits, and end the game while maintaining control. You do this primarily by playing blocks of your color that have a certain amount of points associated with them (ranging from 0 – 3). Blocks of 0 power are there to provide spots to hook other pieces into, and blocks of 3 power are always at the end of a circuit (no other blocks can connect to them). Each turn, you will have 2 actions that can be spent on taking pieces from the pool and adding them to your hand, placing pieces you pulling in previous turns on to your side of the main circuits, or rearranging your own blocks. Then there is a pool of special black pieces that both players can pull from. Some allow you to pull any 3 pieces and put them into your hand, and one allows you to rearrange the blocks your opponent played. Finally, there are 4 special black pieces that end the game. When the first of these blocks is played, nothing happens. However, when the second block is played, the game ends. The players then total up their power on each of the 3 middle circuits and whoever has control of the most circuits wins the game.

The games last about 10-20 minutes, and they are simple yet provide depth of strategy. I actually enjoyed it enough that I picked up a copy (as of right now, the creator of the game also laser cuts and engraves each piece, as well as sews and applies his label with ink on each copy of the game). The component quality is great, and I can’t recommend it enough.

Complicated Board Game (The Card Game)

This is a rather silly game about complicated board games. The idea is that you want to be the first person to get all 5 of your pieces (which have been stolen from other games, such as a castle, soldier, hat, etc) out of your hand first. The game starts as a simple tile-placing game, where what you can place next to each other depends on a rock-paper-scissors style of gameplay (hats go on soldiers, sheep are captured by UFOs, etc). However, each turn players can add new rules, which might change the direction that cards can be placed, if they can now be placed diagonally from each other, and even whether it becomes a co-op game with multiple people winning instead of just one. There are also secret objectives, which might be something like “if more than one player wins, then they lose and you win instead”. My wife actually played this after turning it into a co-op game, which meant that while the other team thought they would win, she and she alone actually won.

This is also a very quick game (probably 20-30 minutes), and it is currently in the Kickstarter stage trying to raise money for art work. They are aiming for a spring 2017 release. I would recommend looking this up.

Flapjack Flipout

This is a dex based game all about working as short-order cooks trying to fulfill orders of pancakes. Each turn an order will come in, which might require 2 plain pancakes, a blueberry, and an apple. A bell is rung, and all players frantically flip pancakes until they have enough. To do this, the pancakes are grabbed at random from a center pile, place on their spatula with the side up that tells them what type of pancake it is, then the player starts flipping. If they can flip it so it lands on the spatula and flipped to the other side, then they set it on the table face down. Now they have to remember what they had, and then the process is repeated. If they flip the pancake and it lands on the table or floor, it is discarded face-up to the center.

Once a player feels they have enough to fill the order, they ring the bell and flip the pancakes they think are required. If they flip the wrong ones, they are out that turn, but any pancakes they flipped correctly are added to the order, and now the other players need less pancakes to take the point. Pancakes not used on the turn can be saved for the next round, assuming the player remembers what they have. If they can’t remember, then they can turn them in to get shuffled to the used ones.

There are also several special pancakes, one of which is a moldy pancake. When flipped successfully, the player who flipped it can at any time place it on a stack of another player’s pancakes. Those are now moldy and have to be discarded.

Overall I liked the game, but it proved a bit too difficult for me (I lack coordination). However, if you like dex based games and memorization, give this a shot. I neglected to ask, but I think they are still in development, getting close to done (what we were using looked like prototypes, but good ones).

H.E.A.D. Hunters

The designer behind this game wanted to make the toys on your shelf something you could also play with. So the toy is a game piece used in the game, and its head opens and reveals a set of hex tiles, cards you can play, dice, and a measuring device (string with beads on it). Essentially, they wanted the toy to contain everyone you need to play the game, and they really succeeded on that front.

In this tactics game, you will have a set of cards that allow you to attack or defend as well as some environment cards (that are set out at the beginning of the game) which allow characters to position themselves to get a jump on characters, to use special abilities, or to act as a shield so incoming attacks are less effective. You may also have additional fighters that can attack or prevent the enemy from moving without taking a hit. Each character has 5 health, and it’s possible to do up to 4 damage in a turn, so games are pretty short (not overly so, as up to 4 damage could also be prevented).

I was wishing they would be done with development now so I could buy it right away, but no such luck. They are almost ready for manufacturing, so keep an eye out for this.

Spiredice

The idea behind this game is that each player is a different race with different abilities and ways to score points, but they can only do these things on their own terrain, which is put out by “discovering new lands” (drawing the top disk of your lands pile). These terrains have a die printed on them, and a number on the die. These are places where you can place your dice at the end of each round (the number of dice you have represents the number of turns as one die is placed each round). You can place on other people’s terrains as well, but you have an incentive to place on your own in the form of more points at the end of the game. Each turn you get one action, which could be to discover new terrain, to put up defensive walls, to place your pawn, to place your siege weapon, or to load and fire it (we’ll come back to this). As the game progresses, you will be placing your dice, with an incentive to stack the spires higher and higher as you get more points this way. At the same time, your enemies will be doing the same, and you can watch their point totals increase each time this happens. At some point this will become too tempting, then the siege weapons come out. Right now they look like ballistae, I assume the end product will look the same (side note: it was a cool demo piece, made of a clothes pin, rubber band, popsicle sticks, and spools for the rubber band to wrap around). If a player succeeds in hitting other dice and toppling the spires, they will lower the point total gained by those players, but they may also capture the dice. The area around the terrain is considered “wasteland” and if a die even touches that area when it stops moving, it is captured by the active player. However, the ammunition fired are square blocks the size of a die, so those remain on the board and can be a defensive wall against other attacks (these are also placeable by using a defensive action).

We played this game on Monday, and a new piece had been added that morning, so it is very much still in development. Our first game clocked in at 50 minutes for 4 players, I assume this will come down to about 10 minutes per person once everyone has played a few games. On the bright side, the time seemed to fly by, which is always a good sign.

Thanks For Coming In!

In this game, the active player acts as a venture capitalist, being given an elevator pitch for a new product or company. These could be Yelp, WebMD, Trump University, etc. The active player draws 3 of these company/product cards and chooses the one they want to hear pitched. Players have a hand of cards that have items/people/descriptive phrases on them, and they have to pick a card they will use for their pitch. However, you don’t just play the card, you then have to give the pitch and use the card as part of it. For example, during the game I played, one of the rounds had WebMD as the company, and a player played “ghosts” as the pitch card. The pitch sort of went “You know, WebMD is great, but it currently only markets to live people. What about an untapped market: ghosts. Ghosts could go on, see what killed them, then log on to the forum and warn others about what befell them.”

I thoroughly loved this game and look forward to its release. In other games like this, it seems like the card itself is the joke, but in this game, the joke often comes from the pitch that the players give. It really encourages creativity.

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Well, that’s it for the PAX indie booth roundup. There were others that were also interesting, but these were the ones I most enjoyed and could see myself buying/encouraging others to buy.

More info on the games above can be found at the official site: http://indiemegabooth.com/sponsor-highlight-cards-humanity/

Codenames

Codenames is a game that pits two spymasters and their teams against each other, with the goal of being the first team to contact all of their spies in the field.  How is this done?  By the spymasters looking at a 5×5 grid of cards with a single word on them, and giving clues to their team that point them toward these spies.  Confused?  Let’s delve deeper…

At its heart, Codenames is a team game with a spymaster on each team giving clues to their teammates that correspond to cards on the table.  A clue can be a single word or (in some cases) a proper noun, along with a number.  The number indicates the amount of cards that the spymaster thinks are associated with the clue they gave. 

Example of a set of keywords

One of the spymaster cards

 

At its heart, Codenames is a team game with a spymaster on each team giving clues to their teammates that correspond to cards on the table.  A clue can be a single word or (in some cases) a proper noun, along with a number.  The number indicates the amount of cards that the spymaster thinks are associated with the clue they gave.  So if the words BRANCH, LEAF, COCONUT are on the table, the spymaster may say “Tree 3”. 

However, if the spymaster missed the word TRUNK, and their team guesses it, there are 3 potential things that can happen

1. If it was a word assigned to the other team, that team gets a point and the turn is over.
2. It could be a civilian, which is neutral (no point given to either side).
3. It could be the assassin (black square in the image above).  If this happens, the game is over and the other team wins.

Once a clue is given, the spymaster must say nothing and do nothing (a good test of poker faces).  The only thing they can do is set out the team/civilian/assassin markers.

A team can decide to pass at any time, and it’s important that the spymaster still say nothing, because they may be able to give hints as to whether the team chose well or poorly.  Ideally, the spymaster would only ever give hints in the course of the game.

The spymasters share a card between them that shows the grid, which indicates the color of each card, along with which team goes first.  The penalty for going first is that they have to guess 9 correct answers instead of 8.

While this is a team game, it also works really well against an AI opponent.  The game still plays the same, except that each turn the spymaster has to pick a card to mark for the other team (so the other team always gets 1 point each turn).  I have played several games like this, and it’s always fun.

Is this a buy?  It most definitely is.  The price point is very low (I’ve not seen it above $20), and it comes with 200 double-sided clue cards and 40 spymaster cards (that can be turned 4 ways, giving 160 different games just from those cards, even if you use all of the same clue cards).  It also works just as well with 2 people as it does with 10 (and even more, in theory).  There are lots of laughs to be had as the teams try to decipher the spymasters clues, and on the spymaster side, lots of frustration when you give what you think is a clear answer and they go a completely different direction.  Even worse, sometimes they may vocally debate guessing the right word, then dismiss it and choose something different.  It’s also a very quick game, each one lasting no more than half an hour, so it’s perfect as a filler game, or to round out an evening.

I strongly recommend this game.  This has some of the highest value/$ amongst my collection, and I’ve not seen anyone yet who dislikes it.  It’s also one of those rare games in that I can’t really think of any flaws.  All in all, a very solid buy, and a great addition to any game collection.

If this review was helpful and you are thinking about buying this game, please consider purchasing via the link below.

Codenames on Amazon

 

Tammany Hall

In New York City, from the 1790s to the 1960s, a group known as The Sons of St Tammany (shortened to Tammany Hall) made it their mission to help immigrants find homes and rise in politics.  It also became synonymous with corruption (does the name Boss Tweed ring a bell?).

In the board game Tammany Hall, you play as one of the leaders within the political group, helping immigrants settle into different districts, and currying their favor in the process.  The game is split into 16 rounds, and further divided into 4 sets of 4 rounds.  At the end of each set of rounds there is an election; the person who has won the most districts becomes the mayor and earns themselves victory points.  The mayor will then appoint one person to each political office, giving them special powers that can help them win the next election.

Close in shot of the board at the end of the third election phase

 

The board is split into 15 sections (or wards), with some wards closed off early in the game if less people are playing.  In the first 4 rounds (also think of them as years) you can take one action each turn: settle an immigrant and place a ward boss, or place two ward bosses.  So what’s the benefit of doing these things?  Well, immigrants give favors, which can be used during the election phase as additional votes in your favor, and ward bosses are a guaranteed vote.  However, ward bosses are stuck in the ward they are assigned to, while favors can be used in any district where you have a ward boss and at least one immigrant that matches the favor token.  During an election, each player with a ward boss in a ward takes part in a vote (in theory, up to 5 people could be participating in the same vote).  They count up the number of ward bosses in that ward of their color, then announce how many favor tokens they have that could be used in that vote.  Next, each player secretly chooses a number of favor tokens, and once all players participating in the vote have done so, they simultaneously reveal the number of tokens they have staked.  Finally, all favor tokens that were used in that vote are discarded, and all ward bosses are removed from the ward except one from the winning player (this ward boss stays around through the next election, thus acting as an additional benefit for the winner).  If, however, there is a tie, then no one gets the district, and all ward bosses are removed.  Looking at the board above there are also 5 wards that grant additional bonuses.  Two of the wards grant a favor token from any immigrant population.  Two wards grant the ability to place an immigrant of your choice into a ward.  Finally, Tammany Hall itself (center of the board) is worth 2 victory points instead of the usual 1 (more on this below).

The order in which these elections take place is dictated by arrows on the board, so you always know which wards are coming up and in which order, so you can plan ahead and pick your battles.  Once all elections are done and points granted for winning wards (each ward is worth one victory point, with the ward containing the building Tammany Hall worth 2), the mayor for the next 4 rounds is the person who won the most wards (with total number of favor tokens as the tie breaker).  They automatically get 3 more victory points, and get to choose which player holds which office until the next election.  Each office grants certain powers, such as the ability to move immigrant cubes around, and to lock down wards so nothing can be added or removed.  After the election, favor tokens will be handed out for the player with the most immigrants of each nationality in their wards.  So if one person has more Irish cubes in a ward they “control”, they get 3 favor tokens of the corresponding nationality.  If two or more people tie, each person gets 3 tokens.

Once the election phase is over, the new rounds begin.  However, instead of just the one type of action they had before (adding ward bosses and immigrants), two more types of actions are introduced: Office powers and Slandering other players.  On a given turn, a player performs the ward boss/immigrant action, but additionally they can use the powers assigned to their office (examples of these powers are given above) and they can take a slander action. 

At the start of the game, each person is given 3 slander tokens.  For each token a player has left at the end of the game, they get one victory point.  However, if you decide to use one, you choose a ward where you have a ward boss and there is an opponent’s ward boss.  You discard a slander token and one favor token that corresponds to a cube of the same nationality in that ward, then you remove one of the opponent’s ward bosses.  Additionally, you can spend two more of the same type of favor token to remove a ward boss in an adjacent district that belongs to the same opponent (so for 1 slander token and 3 favor tokens, 2 ward bosses of the same color can be removed).  The idea is that the ward boss starts a rumor, and it spread throughout the immigrant population.

And that’s it, you do this over 16 rounds with elections every 4 rounds, slowly filling the board with immigrants, staking your claim to certain wards and trying to prevent your opponents from doing the same.

Would I recommend it?  Yes, but with a caveat.  This is probably not the type of game that everyone will love, some may even groan when seeing it come out.  I’ve only played this game with 5 or 6 different people, and while everyone seemed to like it, they are also the type of people who like bluffing games and don’t mind/like butting heads.  This game has only a sliver of luck involved (in the form of which immigrants can be placed, a group of these are pulled randomly from a bag and made available for placement into wards), so you have to have really good strategy to do well.  That also introduces another potential issue.  If you have a group of people who have played it before, they are almost certainly going to do well and the new players are going to be treading water, not sure what to do.  This can be an intimidating game for new players, since they don’t know how the game flows or what they need to do to be successful.  At the same time, in the last game I played, a new player was complaining about this several times over the course of the game and in the last round he made a power play that shot him from fourth place to second.

I have a fairly large game collection, and this game is unlike any others I have.  It also tends to go fairly quick (for 5 players it’s about 2 or 2.5 hours), and since it’s split into 16 rounds, each person doesn’t have much downtime between turns.  Since each player can play into any ward (with a minor exception due to the lockdown power granted by one of the offices), it tends to keep people engaged as they want to know who is placing into which areas.

In summary, if you have a group of friends that like bluffing and zero-luck games, and you want something different in your collection, I’d recommend this game.  This shouldn’t be the first game you buy, but it’s worth having around.

If this review was helpful and you are thinking about buying this game, please consider purchasing via the link below.

Tammany Hall on Amazon

Sushi Go

It’s Friday night. You and some friends have decided to eat at a conveyer belt sushi restaurant.  Unfortunately, the belt is moving so fast you can only grab one thing at a time.  Everyone is ravenous, not listening to each other, just grabbing what they like best.  The chefs are doing their best to refill the belt, but between these gaps, you get to talk to your friends about how good each of your meals are, and darn it, you just feel like the others are having a better meal.  But what they forget is that you are grabbing dessert each time it comes around, and you are going to stuff yourself with delicious pudding while they are left with nothing.

This is the basic idea behind Sushi Go, a quick and cute card drafting game. The game consists of 3 rounds, at the start of which you will be dealt a hand of cards.  You will select a card, and pass the rest to your left.  Simultaneously, everyone reveals their chosen card, then you repeat the process until you have no cards left in your hand.  You then count up points for cards played (except pudding, which is counted at the end of the game), discard all cards except pudding cards, then another set of cards is dealt out, and the next round is played.  After the 3 rounds are played, a final scoring round occurs where everyone counts up their pudding cards, and the person with the most gets 6 points, and the person with the least loses 6 points.  If two players are tied, they either split the bonus or split the penalty.

There are 8 types of cards:

-Sushi Roll: These cards have a certain number of sushi roll symbols on them (ranging from 1 to 3). At the end of each round, the person with the most gets 6 points, and second most gets 3 points (ties are split).

-Tempura: For every two tempura cards, you get 5 points. A single card nets you 0 points.

-Sashimi: For every three sashimi cards, you get 10 points. 1 or 2 cards nets you 0 points.

-Dumplings: These award points as follows:

-1 dumpling: 1 point

-2 dumplings: 3 points

-3 dumplings: 6 points

-4 dumplings: 10 points

-5 or more: 15 points

-Nigiri: There are 3 types of Nigiri cards:

-Squid: 3 points

-Salmon: 2 points

-Egg: 1 point

Wasabi: the next nigiri card played is worth triple the value (wasabi can’t be played on cards that were previously played)

-Pudding: These are played then kept in front of you for the duration of the game. As mentioned above, these score you points at the end of the game

-Chopsticks: Once you’ve played these, they stay out in front of you for the duration of the round (they don’t carry over between rounds). On a later turn, you can say “Sushi Go!”, put the chopsticks back in your hand and play 2 cards instead of 1.

For those that have never played a card drafting game before, a big advantage that it provides is the ability for everyone to be involved in the game at all times. A game like this or Seven Wonders (review to be posted in the near future) doesn’t increase in time as you add players, so you can scale up or scale down the number of players without fear of the game going too long or people reaching for their cell phones due to boredom.

Would I suggest this game? For me, this is a perfect time-filler game.  This works well for times when you need a quick game, and most people will probably enjoy the cute illustrations.  This is also a great game to introduce people to the hobby of board/card gaming.  I know of about a dozen people in my groups that have played and love the game, and they are a very diverse set of people (as far as the types of games they enjoy).  I have a feeling it will make it to the table more frequently than some of the games I own, just because it is so quick and light.

On the downside, there isn’t as much strategy in a game like this, versus a game like 7 Wonders. You do still get a fair amount of the same risk-reward gameplay as in 7 Wonders, and this is a much better game for new players (faster to pick up and not as much of a penalty when playing against veterans of the game).

All in all, I would say this is a solid buy. This is well worth adding to your collection.

If this review was helpful and you are thinking about buying this game, please consider purchasing via the link below.

Sushi Go on Amazon

 

Lords of Vegas

I’m going to start this review by saying: go buy this…now…stop reading and go buy this.

Not convinced?  Okay, fair enough, I guess I can explain why.

In Lords of Vegas each player is a casino developer in Las Vegas, when it was just a set of parking lots and motels.  The goal of the game is to be the most powerful developer, through shady backroom deals, aggressive expansion, and taking over other people’s casinos.

The game board is split into several blocks of undeveloped Las Vegas real estate.  Each block is divided into several squares, so one block consists of 6 squares, another 9, etc.  You are then dealt 2 cards which give you property somewhere on the board.  It also tells you how much starting money you have.  Once this is done, the rest of the cards are dealt into 4 stacks, with the Game Over card put on top of the 4^th stack, and the other 3 placed on top.  This means that you will not see one-quarter of the cards in each game.  Once the Game Over card is drawn, the game ends immediately, and the winner is determined by victory points (with money as a tie-breaker).

Basic setup for a 4-player game

 

Each turn, the active player will draw a card, which tells them which property they now own, as well as which casinos pay out (more on this later).  Each player gets their money and victory points (both if applicable), then the active player has several things they can do.  They can do any and all of these actions as often as they want, as long as they have the money to do so, and follow some restrictions on certain actions.  These actions are:

Build: You can turn one of your spaces into a casino, or join it to an existing casino.  When building a casino, pay the amount on the space, choose a tile from the available stock, then place one of your dice in the space with the die side shown that matches the one on the board.  There are 5 colors in the game, each with its own theme (and each with 9 tiles and 9 cards of that color).  The color you choose helps determine if you get paid, score victory points, and whether you are joining the space to an adjacent casino, or as a separate one.  Joining an existing casino requires that you build the same color as the casino you are joining.  If you are adjacent to an existing casino, but you build yours in a different color, they are treated as two separate casinos.

Sprawl: If you are the pit boss in a casino (also covered later), you can sprawl to an adjacent empty space.  To do this, pay double the amount listed for the space, take an available tile of the same color as the casino you are sprawling from, then place it on the board.  If someone else gets that property later from flipping a card, they suddenly take ownership of the space by replacing your die with one of theirs (keeping the same die face).  In this way, they could potentially become the new pit boss.

Remodel: Don’t like the color of your casino?  You can remodel the casino, changing each tile from one color to another (assuming you are the pit boss).  The entire casino must be remodeled, not part of it, so there must be enough tiles of that color available in the stock to do this.

Reorganize: This action allows you to reroll all dice in a casino.  This is the most likely way that the pit boss changes hands in the game.  A reorganization can only be done once per die per round, so you can do multiple reorganizations in a turn, but you can never roll the same die twice.

Gamble: Need more money to build more casinos?  Want to deprive another casino owner of some cold hard cash?  Gambling allows you to put up some money at another player’s casino (where they are the pit boss), and roll 2 dice.  Roll the right numbers and you get your money doubled.  Roll a 2 or a 12 and they have to pay you double.  But roll the wrong numbers, and you lose your stake to the House.

As I mentioned above (thanks for bearing with me), each casino has a pit boss.  This is the player that has the highest die in a casino.  Only one person can be the pit boss of a casino, so if there is ever two people tied for highest die, a roll off occurs until one person is victorious.  As the pit boss, you can use the Sprawl and Remodel actions, but most importantly, you are the only one that scores victory points from the casino.  So to go back to the beginning of each round, the active player draws a card, and takes their spot.  Then, the color of the card is examined, and any casino that matches the color of the card gives the people in the casino money (one million dollars per pip shown on their dice, yes, one million, this is Vegas after all).  However, the pit boss also scores victory points.  They score one point for each tile in the casino.  It’s good to be the boss.

Scoring in this game is also a bit different.  As you can see below, the first 8 spots are normal, but then there is a 2 between the 8 and the 10 spot.  This is a “gate”.  To clear the gate, you must be able to score 2 points at the same time.  Since each casino is scored separately, to clear that gate you must be the pit boss of a 2-tile casino.  And the point value on the gates increases as the scoring track increases, which prevents one person from running away with the game.  In effect, this keeps morale up among those with a lower score, and also requires that the leader continue to make new deals or try riskier strategies to stay ahead.

So how do you choose which color to build?  Well, there are several reasons you might choose one color over another.  Usually it comes down to the odds of drawing another card.  Since there are 9 cards of each color, if there are 5 red cards out but only 2 of silver, then you would usually want to choose silver, as the chance of drawing another silver is much higher than red.  If, however, someone has built a lot of red and you have a spot that will give you the pit boss of a large red casino, it might be worth doing that.  There are also 3 Pay the Strip cards, which give a few extra opportunities to score points and money (the Game Over card is also considered a Pay the Strip card, but in practice we only hand out points as money is just a tie breaker and often there is not a tie for 1^st place).  For the Pay the Strip cards, any casino that can connect to a square along the center of the board gives players money/points.  Any casino not touching it is left out.

Trading can also be a big part of this game, and change the course of the game as a result.  Trades can only be made for things that can be done right now (so no trading for future actions), but almost everything can be traded.  If you trade properties that includes a spot that is built on, the person getting the property replaces the die with one of theirs, keeping the same die face shown (so if you get a property that shows a 5, you put your die in with the 5 side shown).

Game Over, Green won due to money tiebreaker

 

So would I recommend this game?  If the first paragraph is any indication, yes I would.  It’s a game that lets you feel rather clever, and can punish bad decisions, but not overly so.  There is a fair amount of chance in this game (as any game about Las Vegas should), depending on how dice rolls during reorganizations go, which cards are drawn, etc.  However, the luck can often be offset by making the right play or the right deal at the right time.  It is a bit heartbreaking when it gets back to your turn, you have everything you need to complete your plan, just to find that the card you flipped on your turn undoes everything you worked toward.  It’s bound to happen, you just have to quickly bounce back and work on plan B (even if that means developing plan B on the spot).

If you don’t enjoy games where you are directly confronting the other players at the table, this would not be a game for you.  Also, if you don’t like games that involve making deals with other players, you may not like this game.  However, if those don’t apply to you, I’d highly recommend this game.  This is one sits fairly high on my list.

If this review was helpful and you are thinking about buying this game, please consider purchasing via the link below.

Lords Of Vegas on Amazon

Kingdom Builder

Imagine you are tasked with creating a kingdom from a patch of land, but you have the following obstacles to overcome:

1. Each time you build, it has to be on a given type of land (grass, forest, etc).
2. You have to build to match the whims of some random people that all want something different.
3. You are competing for this land with up to 3 different builders.

This is the premise of Kingdom Builder, a game that will test your ability to think on the fly more than to think several moves ahead.

Each turn will find you playing the one (and only) terrain card in your hand, building 3 buildings (all buildings are identical) on terrain that matches the card, then discarding the card and drawing a new one. On your first turn, you can place anywhere on the board that matches your terrain card, after that, you must build adjacent if possible.

This might sound like a boring game, and it would be if this was it, but that is only the core mechanic in the game. It changes with villages.

For each game of Kingdom Builder, 4 boards are chosen randomly and arranged on the table to make a 2×2 playing board. Each board will contain different villages, and during setup 2 tiles that match the village are stacked on each village space (so 2 harbors are placed on the harbor village, 2 taverns are placed on tavern villages, etc).  When you place a building next to a village, you get to take 1 (and only 1) token from the village.  On subsequent turns, these can then be used as bonus actions.  These actions range from building on grassland or dessert, to things like moving an existing building onto water (which is the only way you can build on water).

Typical setup for a 2 player game (apologies for the glare)

Each game also has a random set of 3 citizens, which give points at the end of the game depending on what they require. One citizen might require that you build next to water, another in a straight line across the board.

 

 

Finally, there are castles. These give you points if you have at least one building adjacent at the end of the game (all points are earned at the end).  Typically castles don’t score you a lot of points on their own; however, several citizen cards wants you to interact with castles, so for games that include these citizens, the castles become pretty crucial.

The game continues around the table until one person has built all 40 of their buildings. Once this occurs, the round is finished and scoring takes place.

Above is an example game that has been completed (again, apologies for the glare).  The 3 village tokens on their own in the lower left are what blue accumulated during the game.  Orange actually acquired their tokens late in the game, and even with less buildings placed and less tokens (and received later than Blue received theirs), Orange won with a commanding lead.  As an additional note, the score board in the upper left of the image is actually the back of one of the board tiles, each of the 8 tiles has that printed on the back. In my mind, this is a great use of resources, since you will never play with all 8 tiles, there is no need for a separate board.

Would I recommend the game? The answer is yes.

The game flows quickly since you have a set of rules that constitute valid placements. This helps speed up gameplay as your hand is often forced and your choices become limited.  The box says it takes 45 minutes, and we found that to be pretty accurate.  It’s also not a complicated game, so it works as well for people who are new to board gaming as it does for people who are seasoned veterans.

That’s not to say this game isn’t without flaws. It’s possible to get stuck in one area of the board if you draw the wrong cards (and with certain citizens, this can destroy any chance of a good score).  Also, while the game goes fairly quickly, it’s tough to plan ahead even with one card, as you can’t know for certain where the opponents will play.

Even with those flaws, since it’s so quick, if you have a bad game you can likely fit a second one in right away and make up for the bad streak on the first one. For these reasons, I highly recommend this game.

If this review was helpful and you are thinking about buying this game, please consider purchasing via the link below.

Kingdom Builder on Amazon