Review

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Through the First Game – La Granja (Gaming diary: Week 22)

La Granja was available at Spiel 2014 in limited quantities from SpielWorxx. I didn’t buy a copy as I knew I could lend it from a friend. After going through all the purchases I made in Spiel I finally could take La Granja in and test it out. This review is based on the first game I played it. It was a four player game that took around 2h with a rule explanation, all first timers with this game.

Overview and components

Like the BGG descriptions says “In La Granja, players control small farms by the Alpich pond near the village of Esporles on the island of Mallorca. Over time, the players develop their farms and deliver goods to the village. Players are vying to earn the title of La Granja for their country estate!”

The game is played over 6 rounds that are divided into 4 phases. Some of the phases can be simultaneously while some are resolved in turn order. So far nothing new or interesting going on here. Farming in euro games has been before. However, just looking through the components made me want to try it out.

More specifically it was the player board. La Granja has multi-use cards that can be used as fields, farm extensions, market barrows, or helpers. If they’re fields they are tucked under the board on the left side, farm extensions on the right side, market barrows on top and helpers in the bottom.Glory to Rome has this same thing but La Granja makes the multi-use more convenient through components.

LaGranjaPB

There are ton of other components all high quality within the box. Each player has 25 markers and there are lots of other tokens to represent silver, victory points and other statuses. The main board is functional and expresses the feel of the game quite well. One thing I have to mention here is that the iconography in the game is solid and really helps the players to play. After the first turn the player aid is everything you need to refresh what is going on. The other things about the components is that the player markers are used in many situations just to mark the owner and the content. So the marker can be a meat resource or a building depending on the location it is. This allows the component number to be smaller than it could be, see Ora et Labora for the other way to do this. I predict that this way of marking stuff is going to be the norm in future games.

Rulebook and set-up

The rulebook is rather big. 18 pages of rules just to play this simple game. Everything is detailed and pictures are great to convey the rules. I just needed one readthru of the rules + skimming while teaching the game to get them right. This might be because I’m used to reading rules and I enjoy going through new games and after 8 years you pick one of two things how games are played. There are a lot of small things that are in play but there are hardly no exceptions so once you go through a turn with your fellow players you know how to play. Playing well is another thing altogether.

The set-up is simple. Give each player their markers, silver, vp, and a player board. Shuffle and deal four cards. In the main board randomize roofs and available craft buildings, place markers on the board and you are set to play.

Playing the game

I’ll just go through the player aid. There are more than this but I engourage to try the game out so you know what the game holds. Let’s start the explanation by saying that in your turn you have a lot of freedom regarding your resources. You can buy, sell or upgrade your resources as long you have the money. You can also use your trade commodities to gain silver/resources/upgrades or play/draw cards. If you have the trade commodities you can really optimize your game. I mention here that upgrading your resources as an anytime action costs silver but if manage to get an upgrade action you get to the upgrades for free. Upgrading your resources is important as almost each card and craft building requires an upgraded resource.

LaGranjaPAFirst is Farm phase. First each player can place one card to his own farm and then draw back up to hand limit set by the cards. You start with three and each farm extension increases that by one. Then you take income, this can be resources, trade commodity or money depending on what kind of bonuses you have accumulated. Then cards produce resources, olives, grain, grapes and pigs. Pigs only if you have two pigs in your farm already. These three steps can be taken simultaneously and the last step that is the purchase of roof tiles is taken in turn order. Roof tiles are single use bonuses that additionally bring you points. You can get up to 10 points from them, which is around 1/5 or 1/6 of your points.

Then comes the Revenue phase. In this phase dice are rolled. Each player gets to choose two dice in turn order. After you choose your dice you take the action connected to the number. After the two actions tThere is one more dice left in the pool and each player takes that action. The actions are.

  1. Take a Pig
  2. Play a card / Draw a card / Take one harvest goods
  3. Take two different harvest goods
  4. Take 4 silver
  5. Upgrade / Move in Siesta Track
  6. Instant delivery / 2 silver

LaGranjaBoard

These actions bring two new things to the explanation that are integral part of the next phase. Transport phase is the third phase. At the start of this phase each player chooses one Donkey marker and simultaneously reveals them. These Donkey marker gives player deliveries and Siesta. The Siesta Track is used to change turn order after the reveal. Add the siesta from the previous phase and player in the highest spot in the Siesta Track immediately becomes the starting player.

The transport phase is where you use a donkey to take a resource marker from your player board to a market barrow (card in your player board) or craft building (one of the six buildings in the main board). If you complete a market barrow you get a trade commodity and place a building on the board, if you complete a craft building row you take a bonus.

The Transport phase is the most dependant on turn order and it is also he phase where majority of your points come from. Turn order is important for two things here. If you are the first player to complete a row in a craft building you gain a bonus, this is a small thing as the bonus is 1-2 points. The more important reason is that the buildings on the main board are taken away if a new higher number building is built by an opponent. So if the first player builds a “6” building all buildings adjacent are safe. However for example iif the last player builds a “6” building the adjacent buildings are taken from the map and they’re extra points for that player. The buildings are the main source of difference making victory points and you don’t want to give the extra to your opponents.

The last phase of the game is Scoring phase. You score each your building on the main board and you score 0-3 victory points from the Siesta Track. The Siesta Track is zeroed and new roof tiles are flipped over. After six rounds all your resources are changed to silver and each 5 silver nets you 1 VP. Most VP wins the game.

Thoughts about the game

La Granja is the BEST new (to me) game I played this year and fights for the spots as the valedictorian of the Spiel ’14 class. Two other contenders being Castles of Mad King Ludwig and Imperial Settlers.

I really got into the game by just looking at the player board. I like the multi-use card system and it is executed very well in this game. We made two errors (we took our own buildings when a higher number was placed adjacent and we didn’t take VP from completing a craft building row) in the whole game with 18 pages of rules. This is all because the clear way the game is represented. The iconography keeps the players on a path and I don’t see many ways that player can get away from that path. This is definately a good thing. The rulebook skimming during the game is far less in this game than some of the more poorly developed games (visually speaking).

The game play is fluent and balanced. The balancing might have gone too far as you get points pretty equally from all actions. The balance is not problem but the feeling that whatever you do each player has gained pretty much points equally. Like I said before the only thing I can think that does not have a balancing thing is placing the buildings on the main board. Thus market barrows rise from all others to be the best way to get ahead. To continue this the VP bonuses (Siesta Track, craft buildings) could have taken away to let the competence of the players to shine. An example of point balancing can be found with the Siesta Track, as the victory points from that track usually relates to the point that you don’t make deliveries to the main board and don’t get many victory points from there thus you get victory points being high on the Siesta track. However, when you get your farm going and can make extra deliveries this balance can be tipped for your favor. The conclusion of this whole points balancing is that the games should end with scores within few points of each other. Somehow I could see enjoying a more wide scoring.

While the art helps to relate to the theme, there is a lack of an ultimate goal in this game. In Agricola you want to build you farm and fill all the spaces you have, In La Granja you just collect points to be the best. There is little relation to your farm and your victory points total in this game. You just go through the game optimizing you strategy. For me this is fine as I’m a mechanics first, play to learn from other designers kind of guy. However, if I was to play this for the theme it would be a let down.

The points that I made above should be taken with a grain of salt as those are my thoughts from one game. I really liked the game and the best thing about this game was that it has a lot of replayability and the feeling that I want to play more. I couldn’t see any winning strategies and there could be many winning plans. The many paths to victory is a key to a good euro game. With many meaningful decisions and a duration that is spot on (under 90 min) this one is a clear winner in my books.

PS. I just had to play this game again with my wife and afterwards she was also happy about playing. I’m sure that I’ll get this one on the table a few times more, which makes me happy.

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Through the First Game – Epic Resort (Gaming Diary: Week 51)

Just game played last week. I got a game called Epic Resort from Kickstarter so I anxiously played it. The reason why I pledged for Epic Resort is that it looks beautiful and the them is somewhat quirky and really well suits my tastes. The following review is done after one play.

Overview and components

The setting is that fantasy Heroes are coming to spend a holiday on your resort along with regular tourists. You build attractions to your resort for tourists and Heroes to enjoy. The bad side is that once in a while monsters attack the players resort, plundering, pillagings and killing innocent tourists unless you have a Hero there to rescue them.

Epic Resort is a card-driven game and thus features a buttload of cards. Those cards are regular stock that do their thing. Alongside with regular cards there are oversized cards that are the attractions and then there are resource indicators, tourists and health tokens as wooden tokens. Lastly, some tokens are made from chipboard to mark things. The art work on those components is, like I said, beautiful and makes the game more fun to play. The components really help the theme.

Rulebook and set-up

As the owner I was the one to read through the rulebook. I’m used to read rulebooks and can go through them without problems. This one was little odd. The first two pages went through the components and the way it was done was little unnecessary. It really didn’t help me to understand the game when I first read the rulebook. The components overview was followed by set-up example which was nice and understandable. I like the way how nowadays rulebooks have a bullet point system going through the set-up.

The game play came after that. There was nothing wrong with that. Some of the wordings were quirky or easily misunderstood but overall the explanations were fine. After the game I checked if we played any rules wrong and surprisingly we got them right the first time.

Playing the game

Like said, Epic Resort is a card game and there are a lot of cards. You start the game with three different types of workers, Apprentice, Street Performer and Lazy Peon. It has a Thunderstonesque feeling to it as players start each of their turns with five workers (cards) in their hand and those can be upgraded from a common display. The common display has four changing advanced workers that can be obtained by trading in an apprentice or a street performer. Lazy Peons are there just to piss you off and “fend” of attacks.

The game is nicely structured in four different Phases. In Phase I players place workers from their hand to their attractions. The reason for this is that those attractions have special powers that can only be activated if they’re fully staffed. Additionally, if the attraction is not fully staffed tourists will leave it. Sometimes that is a good thing, as the attractions bring gold when there are plenty of tourists and flair when there are few or no tourists. After all players have placed their workers on the cards each player collects gold and flair shown on the attraction cards.

Phase II is the main portion of the game. This is where you obtain tourists and Heroes from a dock line. Other things to do is buying/upgrading attractions, upgrading apprentices/street performers that have not been placed in an attraction in Phase I or Pass. The player who passes first becomes the first player instantly. Workers and attractions are bought with gold while tourists and Heroes with flair.

Phase III is where the bad things happen. The dock line is replenished from a Main deck, which contains the mentioned tourists and Heroes but also monsters. If an attack card is drawn it is resolved immediately. First you draw a monster card, there are three levels of monsters. The monster attacks one of the players and there are four criteries to see whom it attacks. Monster can attack the first player, player with most gold/tourists or Heroes in their resort. The attack card shows which attraction it attacks on that players resort. If that player has Heroes in his resort he can either dodge the attack or go and beat the attack. If there are nobody defending the attraction, the tourists are slain and if the attraction is empty is is torched. Usually if one attraction is torched twice it is removed from game. If you happen to have a Lazy Peon in your hand you can destroy it to disregard the attack.

Phase IV all workers are discarded and locks (tokens that block actions being activated twice) are taken away from display and attractions. Each Hero that has not done anything during the turn gains one health point and if the Hero has gained enough health it is removed from your resort and placed in you victory points pile. All gold is lost but flair is kept.

The game ends when the monster pile is depleted. Players gain victory points from all attractions bought during the game, rested Heroes and Heroes still on the resort.

Epic

Thoughts about the game

There was something to like here. Lets start with your deck. You start with 13 cards and during the game you only lose cards. The Lazy Peons should be destroyed if you have the chance. The rest of the cards stay the same or they’re upgraded to more advanced workers with some special powers. This kind of thin deck works well with the limited options of advanced workers available. The rotation speed of your deck is two turns and you see most of the advanced stuff very soon in the game. Making the deck building more interesting. There were many advanced workers, was is 16, so each game will be different regarding those.

The game isn’t hard. There are decisions to be made but in your turn you should buy a Hero if possible as they’re the way to score points. If your not able to get a Hero then buy an attraction, those are points also. Towards the end gold became a problem, at least for me. The problem was linked to the whole system of the game. The attractions are in three tiers and you can only upgrade your previous attractions. Attractions cost gold which you get when you have plenty of tourists when you upgraded your attractions and workers you have no use for it anymore and it accumulates. You don’t want that as one of the attack indicators is most gold. This also leads to the point that you don’tdon’t want any tourists in your resort which then leads to the fact that the Main deck is not going fast enough delaying the end game. However, while there is that kind of possibility it is limited to the final quarter of the game and can be further reduced by little bit of planning.

The attacks were not hard to dodge. You just kept your eye on other players and reminded yourself of the four gategories. During the game I was attacked three times while the total number of attack were around 30. As I had the most things to do during a turn I hardly never was the first player and I always tried to spend everything I had I was not subjected to the attacks. The one gategory I could have been attacked was the number of heroes but the tiebreaker starting from the first player I avoided that one also. The effects and implications what the attacks were were fine and nicely thematic.

One thing that irks me is how the game is marketed. Epic Resort is not a worker placement game. You place cards on your tableau which is not same as worker placement. Even if the cards name is a worker card. You could call this game an action selection, hand management game. Why this bothers me is that I’m actively seeking new worker placement games and buy them to test new ideas around that mechanism.

Again, I have to tell you about how nice and wonderful the theme and art is. While I mostly play games because how they’re played I really enjoyed the setting of Epic Resort and the art work really helped in that regard. I’m not in any sense disappointed pledging this game and can see playing this few time more just to see more advanced workers. While Epic Resort didn’t give anything new or spectacular it is a solid euro game that everybody who likes fantasy will enjoy.

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Review: Tile Stacking/Patching

In this blog post I will go through some games with a tile stacking mechanism included. Last week I wrote about cards and I got comments on the SLS forum that why the separation between cards and tiles. There is no difference regarding game play. That is right and I agree. The differences we came up in the forum were that cards are cheaper, it is easier to put cards below each other. Usually cards have more elements in them. However, I think this mechanisms need at least two elements on a tile so it can cross over different tiles beneath it. One rather nice point about this mechanisms is that the difference to tile placement is that the cards/tiles are stacked and can overlap not just adjacent placement and tile on top of another tile.

I also got a lot of comments about games that have this type of mechanisms and they can be found below. Since I reviewed what are the spesifications of this mechanisms I had to drop a lot of games that I had played but were just tile placement games.

From that list the odd one out is On the Dot as it is a “card” game. This game is about matchmaking through visible 4”x 4” cards. You have a “goal card” that shows different colored dots on it. Each player tries to recreate the exact same pattern using his own 4 cards (each player has the same 4 cards). The get there players need to overlay them over each other blocking some of the dots on the cards below. When the first player gets the same dot pattern he wins the round.

pic117881Taken from BGG Ludovic Russo (LudoMC)

Marrakech is also a little different from the rest as the components are rugs. Marrakech is an easy abstract game where you place rugs in a grid according to a moving element. Your goal is to have as much rugs showing at the end of game. Opponents can place their rugs on top of your half-rug in their turn. Basically that’s it. Throw dice, move the Assam then pay if the Assam lands on opponent rug then place your rug so it is touching the Assam square.

pic900275_md

Image Courtesy of Mikko Saari (msaari)
The rest are tile games and quite easily summarized. In each case the placement of the tile must be level. No hanging around other tiles is allowed. Which seems reasonable as it could lead to component malfunctions.

Rat Hot, Heartland and Sunrise City all use the same premise. Rat Hot is a 3×1 square tile with different elements while the other two are 2×1 tiles with different elements. In all of these games the placement is done by connecting existing elements to the elements found on the new tile. The connection is done either by placing it adjacent to the former or on top of it. With Rat Hot and Sunrise City the connection is with same kind of elements while Heartland the elements must be different. With all three games the scoring is done immediately, Rat Hot and Heartland award points according the the number of same elements in the same group, more being better obviously. In Sunrise City you score the points shown on the tile that you place with extra points from another mechanisms included in the game.

Trio

Rat Hot Image courtesy of Steve Kearon (SteveK2)

Heartland Image courtesy of KAS (kneumann)

Sunrise City Image courtesy of Mark Blanco (Geese)

The rest on the list are hex-based tiles. Taluva and Java is about placement of those tiles in a way that allows the player to put his pieces on the board. With Taluva you have a three hex-tile (kinda pyramid shaped) that player places either to expand the landscape or build upwards. After the placement the only thing that relates to the tiles is height. One of the buildings must be placed on level 3 or higher. Additionally, the placement of the tile can destroy buildings from the game.

pic1650285_mdImage courtesy of Brian Pilnick (Escher0)

With Java you have the same pyramid shaped tiles but also double-hexes and single hexes. In a turn player can place multiple tiles on the field, as Java is an AP game. These tiles have either a city symbol or a rice symbol on them. On the city tiles players build palaces that bring victory points. As with Taluva the height is the only relevant matter on those tiles. As players put their pieces on those tiles the one with most and on highest tiles has the advantage over others. The rice tiles are scored when they’re surrounded and points are once again given to the player in the highest tile.

pic472760_mdImage courtesy of Michael Campbell (Major Sholto)

The one remaining game Poseidon’s Kingdom is different to the rest of these games as each player has his own coral reef. These reefs are made out of double-hexes. In this game you either build your reef or load the big wave. You want to build your reef but you also want to make sure that the wave is loaded in your favour. This game is somewhat similar to Patchistory as the symbols shown on your reef tells you what you can do. During the game it means how fast your figures move, how many dice you take from the board and how many of those dice you can store. If you are not fast enough a shark comes by and puts anegative hex in your reef that block your actions.

pic1132954_mdImage courtesy of Daniel Danzer (duchamp)

Now that I hastily wrote that summary there is something else I noticed. All, except Poseidon’s Kingdom, makes a common board not a player board. Maybe the sample size is just too small but can you come up with some other games that have tiles and you make your own player board out of them. Remember though that cards and tiles are equal in gameplay and there is no difference between them regarding possibilities for game design.

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Review: Card Stacking/Patching

I have been thinking about designing games where you place cards or tiles on top of each other for various effects. I’m not talking about games such as Sid Meier’s Civilization: The Board Game where you place different stuff on the map. I’m talking about games where the same kind of components are placed on top each other, blocking or making the ones beneath obsolote. First I thought about the games I have played with this type of mechanism and then went a little further down the path in BGG. Thus for the review I’m giving you examples from the following games:

Let’s start with Flix Mix, a real-time card-laying game. Each player is dealt equal amount of cards and the point of the game is to get rid of them by placing them on top of a card with similar color dots. At least two of the color dots must match on the previous cards. There is not much more to this game but it illustrates the mechanisms quite clearly. The board and options change with new cards added to the common table.

pic71705Image taken from BGG Piet Lavens (pietlavens)

In Hanging Gardens players are landscape architects who are to create designs for the hanging gardens on behalf of the king. The game is rather similar to Flix Mix but substitutes the real-time elements with an euro game layer.

Regular playing card is divided into six equal sized boxes. These boxes are either empty or contain one out for types motives. The point of the game is to clump these motives in batches of three or more. One card is obtained per round from a display. Start player takes one and then in clockwise order. Start player changes after each round.

The rules for laying a card are clear that you can only place a motive on top of another card. You can break the batches up and create new. Players gain tiles if they make a batch of three or more and when creating a batch with 6 or more motives they gain extra. These batches are marked with wooden temples. At the end of game players gain victory points for having multiples of one type motive.

The game seems to be a solitaire as the only thing you do is place one card per turn. However the mechanism is evolved from Flix Mix to include a expanding board for each player rather than one open board.

pic1033824_mdImage courtesy of André Nordstrand (takras)

After Hanging Gardens I didn’t find any games with a similar mechanism. If there is one please tell me. Let’s continue with cards. Last year Japon Brand published a game called Edo Yashiki that pretty much mixes the two previous games together. In Edo Yashiki players are making a house with four different features to them. The point of the game is to make these features line up vertically or horizontally.

Similar to Hanging Gardens each round one card is obtained. However in Edo Yashiki each player simultaneously reveals one card from a common deck and then in real-time claim one of those cards for themselves. The placement if little more restrictive as players must place the card vertically to the house, they can place it on top of a card or beside it. Also if player had made a straight of at least three of the same feature he cannot break the set. The scoring happens immediately after the placement and each new line formed by the placed card is scored. Three same = 1VP, four same = 2VP, five same = 4VP and above that 0VP. The scoring makes the placing little more strategic as you try to setup yourself for big scores. The game ends when someone has reached 25VP.

pic2259576_mdImage from BGG Tom P (crazylegs)

As with Hanging Gardens Edo Yashiki is rather solitairy as the only thing that connects you to the other players is the real-time distribution of the cards. Some find that fun some don’t.

Last example of card patching is Patchistory. Patchistory is the most complex game that includes this mechanism. This game is a civ-game played in three different eras. In each era consists of five rounds this each player has fifteen cards to place to this own player board during the game. These cards are gained through auction at the beginning of each round.

Each player starts with a start card that has six different features on them. Your civilization powers are shown on the cards and tracked in another board. The auctioned cards are 2×2 cards with multiple features. What is different in Patchistory than in the previously mentioned? Some resources are only gained if activated, the features on the card extend from size 1 to size 4. There is a restriction of the size of your civilization. During the first era players can have a 5×5 grid of cards that expands to 6×6 and then to 7×7 in the third era. There are bad features. Water on these cards do nothing but block your patching. Similarly to Edo Yashiki the cards must be placed vertically on your board which makes the patching sometimes a little challenging. However, features other than water can be placed under another card. Making your board is a nice little brain burner and will affect the outcome of the game.

pic2281984_mdImage courtesy of Daniel Thurot (The Innocent)

I’m stopping here for this week. These games use cards for the patching and range from a real simple real-time game to a complex civ-game. I think the mechanism is solid as players are in charge of their board. Looking through these examples one thing is missing. Patching of a common board. Could there be a game where players patch a board together using cards?

There are those types of games but they use tiles, instead of cards, with a single feature. I’ll talk about them in maybe as early as next week.

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Review: Dice in action selection games

The following is a look into dice and how they can are used in an action selection game. The following games are reviewed for their use of dice that are rolled and then used as an essential part of the action selection process:

I’ve excluded games that use dice purely for resource gathering (e.g. Settlers of Catan, Stone Age) and that have dice to randomize actions (e.g. Brugge, Macao).

Let’s start with the oldest game of the group, Yspahan.

In Yspahan there are 9 dice that are always rolled and 3 dice that can be rolled if paid for. The mechanism here is that once the dice are rolled they are put in order from 1 to 6, and so that the 1s will be at the bottom and the highest rolled number in the top most column. Some numbers in the middle may be missing, meaning that some actions are missing for that turn. The middle actions on the dice board (seen as the middle board on the picture below) are related to the board and how to influence that board where as the bottom and top are for resources.

pic1064882_mdImage courtesy of Dave Dyer (ddyer)

When players take action they take one group of dice from the board. The action players take is always related to the number of dice they take away from the board. The number on the dice is irrelevant.

In summary, dice are used to randomize actions but are also used as an action multiplier and target space for the actions.

Let’s continue with two more modern games, Madeira and Troyes. Both of these have dice that don’t belong to any player and are distributed to the players during play.

Madeira has 12 greenish blue and 4 black dice that are used during the game. These are not your ordinary D6s but D3s. From those 12 dice depending on player number only 6, 9 or all are used (3x player number). At the start of round these dice are grouped in threes and rolled to be auctioned off. The rulebook states that higher number are always better. Auction, or more accurately picking, is done in turn order and player in the first position gets to choose which group he takes. After the auction player has those three dice to be used and an option to use a pirate dice. The pirate dice are also rolled to show 1-3.

What does the number then mean? The game board is divided into three areas marked 1 – 3. Those areas have either one or two action locations. To take an action you have to match or exceed the dice number with the locations area number. One dice at a time. There is a possibility to modify the dice higher by paying a valuable resource. Otherwise, the only other thing dice are used is to determine the cost of a building. This is done by rolling all dice in an action location and deducting that number from 10. The remaining number is the cost of the building.

pic1949446_mdImage courtesy of Chris Norwood (kilroy_locke)

In Troyes there are 18 dice in three color (red, white and yellow) that are used by the players. The distribution of those dice are pretty fluid as it is one action to place your worker on a space which allows you to modify the owner of one dice at a time. At the start of turn you have some income which is then spent to pay the dice. This has a nice balance between high action count/low income and vice versa. Also player can use other players dice if he just pays that player. That is a real grievance and highly annoying when you’re low on actions. Red dice are used to block attacks and are useful with military cards, while white are used for religion and yellow for civic cards.

How dice are then used in action selection? The dice are rolled at the start of turn, usually having high numbers is better. Player can use up to three dice for an action and the action is usually on a card, that card has a division on it. You sum the numbers on the dice and divide it by 2 to 5. The number you get is the number how many times you take the action depicted in the card. Note, that player must pay for the card before he can use the action (places a worker on it), this brings another layer to the game.

However, the division mechanism gives another nice balance between good/ok/lousy actions as you can do the lousy action multiple time but the good actions only once or twice. Thus having a higher number is good. There are actions which use matching the number and dice together but they’re in the minority.

Dice in action selection games can be common and then distributed as pointed out in Madeira and Troyes. Having specific dice always costs and the game balances the poor picks by giving either money or bonuses.

pic1915371_mdImage courtesy of mr K (Korosu_Itai)

Next look at games with fixed number of dice per player. In this blog post those are two Feld games: Bora Bora and The Castles of Burgundy.

The Castles of Burgundy just might be the finest example of a balanced dice matching game. There are only two dice in use per player which are rolled at each turn. There are 25 turns in the game in which one player uses both of his dice and then the next player and so on. There is a randomizing dice which indicates the starting player and notes where to place a goods tile at the start of turn.

There are three different actions in which you must match the dice to the number on the board. You can sell good which you have gained or buy or place a building on the player board. The player board has a hex grid map with number 1 – 6 evenly spaced out, you have buildings that are randomized in the common board in spaces with 1 – 6 and there are goods that are numbered 1 – 6. Each action is equal in power, there is no bonus for having a higher number and the dice are very easily modified. The game has a +1/-1 tokens that are very useful in some cases.

As you throw the dice multiple times during the game each number should be well represented and you will get the actions you desire. The goodness of his game (as a two player game) comes from the competitiveness of the players and well executed combos that the dice allow. For the first game it is a mindful but it gets better after a game or two.

pic919792_mdImage courtesy of Ravensburger

In Bora Bora players have three dice which they roll at the start of turn. Depending on player number there are 4 to 7 different action tiles which are used in the game. The action selection is done in turn order by placing one dice on an action tile. With higher number you have more choices for your actions. The actions (Helper, Temple, Build, Man / Woman, Expand) and how the relate to the number are as follows:

  • Expanding is done by numbered routes and the dice must be equal or higher
  • Man / Woman tile is taken with equal or lower number than dice
  • Helper means that player has trade points up to the number on the dice
  • Temple means placing a priest on space with equal or lower value than dice
  • The dice indicates the highest possible value hut that can be build

The innovation in Bora Bora is how other players can place their dice on the action locations. It also gives a lot of blocking moves as the second and third and so on, must place a dice with a lower number than any previous dice on an action location. This gives a nice balance between come first take what you want or come first take some but block others. There is a blue god in the game which lets players to use any dice to take an action but as far as modifying dice there no such thing present.

pic1557084_mdImage courtesy of Daniel Danzer (duchamp)

The final three games I’m going to look through are Kingsburg, Alien Frontiers and Euphoria

Kingsburg is a pretty straightforwarded action selection game with dice. Each player has three dice at the beginning of the game and cannot permanently have more than that. Players can have extra dice to roll once in a while. There are five turns in the game and each turn player roll their dice three times. Only the sum or sums are important in this game. First, the player who rolled lowest becomes the starting player and turn order then goes on ascending roll sum. Placement goes one action at a time, after all dice are placed take the rewards.

The game give you a nice board with 18 different action locations. The action is selected by placing a dice or multiple dice matching the sum of them. Higher the number better the rewards. As with three dice the number sums should be around 10-11 the action selection is tight thought process as no other player can claim a number which has already been taken. Do you take one high number or multiple lower numbers? Glance towards the opponent dice usually reveals what you should do in this game. There are also multiple ways to modify the dice. There a basic +2 tokens which can be used once per roll or through an action you can gain a +1/-1 token. These token are invaluable as with higher player number the places fill up fast.

pic1634707_mdImage courtesy of Eric Kouris (styren)

Alien Frontiers on the other hand has a lot of different ways to use your dice. For starters you start with three dice but at the end of game can have up to seven dice at his disposal (well 8 if you count the relic dice). Alien Frontiers is rather different as one player uses all his dice before the next player takes his turn. Anyway, at the start of turn player rolls his dice and then starts to ponder what to do with them. As there are no dice modifiers you have to deal what the roll brings you (edit 26.9.2014). The dice can be modified with Alien Tech cards and those bring another level of involvement to the game.

The actions revolve around matching the dice. You can just place a dice on one action. In other you need to match a single dice, or you can use a pair of dice with same numbers to take an action. There is also an action that requires three same numbers or a sequence of three. There is a lot of going on with the dice in this game and I must add something that hasn’t been seen many times in games.

pic916599_mdImage courtesy of Chris Norwood (kilroy_locke)

One of the newest additions to dice action selection games is Euphoria, which brings the idea of dice knowledge to a new level. Before Euphoria I haven’t seen many or at all games that gives workers some sort of wisdom. You start Euphoria with two dice and during the game can have up to four. You take your actions one at a time with the number you rolled as the dice can not be modified. Well, there is not a lot of actions that require dice mods. What I meant about the wisdom is that thematically the dice believe they’re in Euphoria but once they gain enough knowledge one of them leaves you.

Further, if any time you roll over 15 with all your dice or have available dice over 15 you lose one worker. Knowledge is bad for you, in Euphoria it is something players gain through actions and is also used as a resource. But what the dice do in Euphoria? Not much as there is only one action that relates to the number of the dice. There is one type of resource gathering which relates to the sum of all dice in that particular action. The sum of below 5 means different things as sum between 5 and 8 or over 8. Mechanically this means that coming later to an action you gain more.

pic1983861_mdImage courtesy of Chris Norwood (kilroy_locke)

Summary of these games:

Summary

If you’re interested in dice games then check out the games below. It is a short list of new games coming out in Essen 2014.

Next time I take on a mechanism I will look at a much more narrow game material. This one went rather long. Hopefully you stayed until the end. Give me a comment what you think about this post.