There is nothing more enjoyable than whilst playing a game you chuckle away to yourself thinking how much fun the game is. Doesn’t happen during every game, although I do enjoy most games we play, but last games night during Macao I was thinking exactly that. It was fun. Seems odd for a game which could be considered pretty dry, lots of cubes, tokens, cards and even 6 colour dice.
After a few turns the aim of the game becomes clear, but any setup which asks you to choose from 6 cards, with no idea of how any of them work, does make the first game a bit of a test – “why did I take this card, its rubbish” – to only go and repeat the same crap choice again next time, despite thinking you wouldn’t.
What I loved about the 2nd play of this was that there are so many cards, and a completely different set of them came up from last time. Despite all the different cards, which can be overwhelming in games like Agricola, all the cards were clear and self explanatory the benefits obvious and allowed you to build up a set of cards which you think may help you in the future – if you can get them activated. Lots of other games, I’m looking at you Race for the Galaxy and Agricola, you struggle unless you are a seasoned player and have knowledge of how the cards work together, and we tend not to become serious about any game we play – even Ticket To Ride after numerous plays we have no idea of the different routes, never studied them, don’t want to, enjoy the game as it is.
The board is well laid out, with four different sections, all of which you need to decide how you will allocated your, sometimes, very limited turns. The number of turns you can have are decided upon a clever dice system which allows you to only collect the number rolled on the 6 dice in later rounds. If the blue dice is a 1, you can place a 1 blue cube in the next round. If the red dice shows a 2, you get 2 red cubes in two rounds time, etc...allowing you to build up a favourable number of cubes as the rounds go on. What we also liked was that any of the players could use any two of the dice, so if you want the 2 red dice you take two cubes, so could your opponents. And there are only 12 rounds, and the game just flies past.
Cubes are used for almost everything you want to do. We were initially concerned that the luck of the dice rolls could hamper the game. However, the more we play it the more we realise that you’ve got to adapt to what is there, or plan much further ahead. It didn’t really matter if you messed up, you get -3 points and move on. It was still fun.
Each card you initially select is kept on a separate board, you don’t get to use them immediately each one has a cost, in cubes, which needs to be paid. The most frustrating part is you cannot keep cubes left over from round to round, so you need to ensure you have all the cubes you need to activate a card all in the same round. There are also only 6 spaces on your board, and if you haven’t activated cards in time your board fills up and you get -3 penalty points. The above all sounds more complicated than it actually is.
Whilst playing rounds go very quickly. Turn over cards, each choose one, roll the dice, pick your cubes, play your cards, move the ship, move up the wall, take village tokens. We found ourselves playing some of the less critical turns simultaneously which kept the speed going and stopped the game dragging on.
The wall is a neat take on game turn. You can use a cube to move along the wall, or three cubes to move 2 spaces, etc. Keeping just slightly ahead of your opponents means you will get to go first and pick that vital card at the start.
I would really like to understand why I enjoyed this game so much. It’s nothing to do with the theme, I don’t care for theme, and most of the time don’t even bother going into the theme with the group I play with. It’s all about the points I say...
I don’t usually care much for Dice games, although Kingsburg is enjoyable but not as meaty as this I would say.
I have no issue with lots of cubes or worker placement games, no placement here, but deciding which area to concentrate on is similar...
Lots of varied cards, can be a curse – one Dominion is enough for me please, you can keep the rest. Agricola, this one goes well with this card, etc, yawn...
It’s just a damn clever design, it all comes together well. One of which I suspect I will be playing for a long time. Refreshingly recommended.
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