Pastiche: The Birth of a Masterpiece

Ever since I stumbled upon the card game Parade at a convention years ago I have been drawn to simple card games with odd deck structures and hidden depths. While in the U.S we seem to be having an arms race of ever increasing size and complexity of components and the promise of infinite replay value in content, in Japan there is a different revolution occurring. The question Japanese card games repeatedly ask is what is the most you can do with a simple deck of cards. This makes sense since games need to be small. In Japan the solution is not just to buy another kallax shelf from Ikea for your 3 cube filling Kickstarter. Real estate is at a premium. Hence the micro game explosion ten years ago starting with Love Letter. I had backed a recent example of these games, American Bookstore whose pitch itself with cards being negative points unless you had the most of them echoing the risk reward I enjoyed so much in Parade. But this review is not about that game. That will come whenever that boat arrives in port and box threads its way through our current shipping and logistical obstacle course. Instead, in an update to that campaign the publisher mentioned that another game was available: Pastiche: The Birth of a Masterpiece  by designer Rikkati. This had been available as an add-on for the original campaign but I passed on it as English rules were not available. I somehow talked the completionist in me out of it on the justification that I could not play a game without the rules. But now English rules were available, and so off to the store I went…

Two published novels. Other players can now draw from these.

A small note here. The copies are available through a site called Buyee which I hadn’t heard of before. The gist as I understand it is that they buy a game for you locally in Japan and then warehouse it. I had misunderstood and thought that the initial cost I paid was for the game and shipping. Checking some days later when no shipping notification had come there was a note on the site that I needed to pay for shipping and that they would only hold it in the warehouse for X days longer. So I paid a shipping fee equal to the cost of the game itself and a few days later (air mail is very quick) the game arrived. All that to say that while I will gush about this game in a moment the main problem right now is that acquiring the game costs about as much as the game itself, which can understandably be a bridge too far for most sane people. I am not always sane when it comes to board games, and so here we are.

So on to the game itself. This game has been described with two very different themes. One in which you are in academic research and publishing and peer reviewing papers. And another, which is what is described in the translated rule book where you are publishing and reading novels which eventually become a “Masterpiece” once they are read enough times. The latter theme makes more sense in my mind given works of fiction “pastiche” each other all the time (just watch any season of Stranger Things for examples). A better title for the former theme would have been “Citation: Academics Argue about Things.”

Various scoring conditions

In Pastiche players are trying to construct sets of cards which are called novels. Some classics in here include straights, pairs and straight flushes like in poker, but also more odd ones like all evens, cards adding to 49 or having 1 & 13. Speaking of odd ones, this is a relevant time to mention the odd deck structure. Similar to Yokai Septet the deck of story cards is broken into 7 suits, and each of these suits contains 7 cards. However these cards start and end on different numbers, with the first suit number 1 to 7, the next 2 to 8, the next 3 to 9 and so on. This creates a different density of numbers such that certain cards are very frequent (6s 7s and 8s) and others are exceedingly rare, hence the 1 & 13 being a goal given there is only one of each of these. The cards are themed on different novel types: Mythology, mystery, romance, science fiction etc, and so when playing these combinations the other players and I had a lot of fun describing the very strange novels we were creating. Highly recommended, and even more funny when you insist as you read other players “novels” that you had to learn about the science fiction part etc. The theme is light but can be fun here.

The cards themselves are minimalist but appealing.

The actions are write: drawing either one known card from the top of the face up discard or drawing two blind from the deck and discarding one, publish: putting out a set of cards which can eventually score points and read: draw a card from a published novel, either yours or another player’s. If a novel is ever read enough times that there is only one card left that novel becomes a masterpiece and scores the points listed on the novel card. More importantly it can be “pastiched” or copied as if it was a card in your hand, either for free if it’s your masterpiece, or by paying a card to the player you are copying. The flow of the game ends up a bit like Splendor or other engine builders. There are a lot of turns early on writing, and trying to put together one of these combinations, but as soon as any player publishes a novel there are not many more options of what cards are available. When cards become masterpieces it becomes much more possible to build some of the harder combos of cards (11 card straight, 6 card straight flush etc). 

This combined with the unique deck structure creates a really fascinating and interactive experience. Unlike in Splendor there is interaction beyond just passive aggressive euro-style denial.   Players are necessarily using each other’s cards to build their engine. You are helping a player by reading their novel because they are one card closer to scoring it as a masterpiece, but you may need that card for your own designs and that novel is also one card closer to being able to be copied which may also benefit you. What card becomes the last card remaining is also important as a 12 or 3 that can be copied may be essential for those longer straights. Late in the game players are trying to publish novels with as few cards as possible, as these large combos are worth a lot of points but may never become a masterpiece if players have to spend 7 turns reading it. Additionally

The end of a game, novels with one card or “masterpieces” score points depending on the difficulty of the card combo.

players can choose to interact with one player vs another based on who they think is ahead, although given me few plays I am not sure when/how useful this is. When a player reaches 15 points the game end is signaled. This player gets a bonus point for triggering the end, however they have one more turn left while all other players each get two. There is often a flurry of trying to get a last novel immediately published as a masterpiece using the cards out there, or reading the last few pages to make an existing novel become a masterpiece and therefore score.

Overall I was delighted by this game. There are lots of interesting decisions in terms of what combos to go for based on your hand and what’s available from other players. The theme, although light, can be a lot of fun. If you have a chance, definitely check it out. With that said, given the current shipping it can be tough to recommend for all but the most curious. Additionally the box and scoring cards could use a bit better materials. The playing cards themselves are beautifully illustrated and seem durable enough, but the game as a whole is ripe for a  small component upgrade. I do hope that the publisher runs with all of the positive feedback the game is getting in Japan and runs a broader reprint Kickstarter so that more players get a chance to try this wonderful game at a reasonable price.

 

  

Spiel Des Jahres: Game of the Year part 2

12I am a bit belated in writing my Kennerspiel des Jahres (KDJ) follow up, following up on my original post about the Spiel des Jahres nominees. And I must admit, part of that lateness is due to me being pretty disappointed in the nominees. I’ve written many time before how there are always great games among these nominees, and in fact I own nominees or winners from the last 5 years. So to see this year’s slate and not have any of them sound compelling is a bit of a let down. Perhaps, understandably, 2020 was not a great year for games. At a certain level I wonder if publishers held back any games simply due to the world situation. It was not a great time to market a game due to the lack of conventions that typically debut a game with a splash. It was also not a great time to sell games when folks were stuck at home away from their gaming group and likely without an audience to play them with.

In a nod to the fact that board games were mostly virtual this last year one of the nominees Lost Ruins of Arnak is available on Board Game Arena to play online. For this reason it is the one game of the three nominees that I have tried. But also for this reason, because I don’t love online games, it didn’t make the best first impression. Lost Ruins of Arnak is a very well produced game about exploring ancient ruins, think Indiana Jones. It uses deck building, and old favorite mechanism of mine and worker placement, a less favorite mechanism. Essentially you have two explorer pawns that you place on different ruins sites to get resources, in addition to your deck which also generates resources and the icons used to travel to the different sites with your pawns. The game has gotten a lot of buzz because of the synergies you can create between these two systems, and how well balanced they are. But playing online it all felt like a lot of solitaire resource management and conversion, and it was not terribly exciting. Let me explain. The game has a three tiered system of artifacts. Gems are better than arrowheads, and arrowheads are better than scrolls. You need these resources to defeat monsters that come out when exploring new sites, and to move up your tokens on a research track on the right side of the board. The experience of playing the game online mostly felt like filling out recipes of different resources to do something… not terribly exciting. I could write a whole blog about how much I hate “tracks” in games. There is very little that is exciting about moving a token further along a track, unless that ALSO allows you to do more interesting things in the core of the game. An abilities track that lets you feel more and more powerful? I’m totally on board. A scoring track that lets you get more and more points… that can leave me feeling cold. There is some unlock of abilities here as moving the research track gets you assistants that provide additional powers. But these powers are… often just more resources. Not terribly exciting.

Lost Ruins of Arnak. Site in th emiddle, the track off to the right. The physical components look stunning.

 

I will give it another try in person, as I think these solitaire games are the worst online. The only interaction between players is taking the sites that they wanted to explore with their pawns, or racing up the track more efficiently to get more points. It is a game where I could walk away for the other three players’ turns and not miss much. When it’s online it is doubly easy to do so as there isn’t a live player sitting across from me narrating their turn. This also makes it more difficult to learn as I am not watching the players build these synergistic combos that make the game exciting. It is worth another shot but this is not a way I’d recommend playing it.

Another game that was nominated continues the theme of cooperative games being nominated this year, with 50% of all 6 games falling into that category. Paleo has players trying to survive as cavemen overcoming dangerous obstacles together. The unique approach here is that all players have their own deck of hazards that they are trying to tackle. This removes a common complaint about cooperative games where one player can “quarterback” other players’ turns and dictate what they should do. There is still a good spirit of cooperation however as players can always use their action to help another player tackle their challenge. The game has 7 levels of challenges to work through and some fantastic if overproduced components to give it a great look on the table. The main criticism levelled at the publisher is that the caveman characters that represent players in the game are utterly whitewashed, despite that not being historically accurate or remotely inclusive to a growing board game audience. To their credit the publisher has heard this criticism and plans to address it in any future printings of the game. This is yet another sign that euro-centric board games are becoming less and less acceptable in the hobby. I haven’t tried Paleo but would be happy to give it a shot and explore the unique player deck approach.

A three player game of Paleo, each player has their own deck of hazards to solve.

 

The final game that was nominated is a bit of a technicality, in several different ways. Because it is a German award the KDJ focuses on games released in Germany. Fantasy Realms was released in German in 2020, but actually hit the US market in 2017. In that sense it’s not new and exciting for US audiences, and in fact doesn’t appear to even be in print over here. It is kind of the reverse situation of the currently Germany only Robinhood game nominated for the regular Spiel Des Jahres. The other technicality is that the game doesn’t really seem complex enough for the description of the KDJ, which is “expert game of the year.” In Fantasy Realms you are trying to build a combo-tastic hand of cards to score the most points. Each card has conditions for when it scores, and requires other cards in your hand to score the most points. A Queen for example scores if you have Kingdom cards, and a Knight might score for having other enemy cards to slay. The gameplay is dirt simple with players drawing one card a turn or discarding one card a turn. The only wrinkle is that players can draw from each other’s discards, which is also the only point of interaction in the game, as players try to pay attention to what each other is doing and avoid discarding cards that might help another player’s combo. The scoring of the game can take about as long as the game itself as players need to walk through the conditions on each card to see how it scored points. I am honestly curious to try this one, but it doesn’t seem like it has enough complexity to qualify for this tier of the award. I suppose it’s not terribly family friendly as the scoring and combos get into the weeds a bit, and definitely scratch more of that expert gamer itch, but with the simple gameplay I am surprised to find it nominated here.

Your goal in Fantasy Realms is to build a combo like this, one draw at a time.

If I had to pick a winner I would guess that Lost Ruins of Arnak will take the prize. However, while I will give that one another shot, and wouldn’t pass up a play of the other two, I am not really excited by any of them. Perhaps it was just a bad, year, or maybe my tastes are changing, but it is a bummer to not have a shining star from these nominees.

Knockout City: Pong is back

The joy of pegging someone with a dodgeball is captured in this game.

Some of the first video games were rudimentary versions of pong. Many different companies made stand alien boxes who’s sole purpose was to play this one game where players bounce a ball back and forth using paddles on each side that were controlled with a wheel like paddle. No buttons, barely any frills, just the joy of a simple volley and trying to out-maneuver your opponent. 

These days video games can be a whole lifestyle, and some folks just play one game endlessly. Fortnite, a game about being the last person standing on an island like the movie Battle Royale has become a universe unto itself, used for promotion of recent Star Wars and Marvel movies, as the stage for virtual concerts and containing an evolving storyline of its own that is told in seasons, with real consequences to its virtual landscape. It is difficult to imagine how we got here from the humble days of pong. This week there is a game that was released that bridges the gap, capturing the simple joys of pong but with all of the cultural, visual and business model baggage of the modern era. But in my mind, that connection to the original simple ludological joy of play makes Knockout City worth checking out.

Pong controllers were simple compared to modern day button fests.

Knockout City at the time of this writing is totally free, and on everything under the sun. Here the business model trappings immediately rear their head as the game fights for a critical mass of players right from the start so that there are always people to play with. A multiplayer game without an audience is the video game equivalent of a ghost town, so the game is free till May 30th, the first ten days of it’s release. If you catch this blog the weekend it goes up, I encourage you to try it out, but if not I’d like to describe why it’s worth the investment regardless.

The game is essentially 3 vs 3 competitive dodgeball. You know, that sport everyone but the bullies dreaded in high school gym class that many states or school associations tried to make illegal. Still, despite the bullying baggage it is a refreshing change from games where you try to shoot someone no matter how cartoony the assassination attempt may be. The game is the most fun I’ve had since the other strange alternative sport of Rocket League a few years ago, where players drive cars to… play soccer. The gist of Knockout City is that each player has two health, and every time they are hit by a ball twice, that counts as a knockout for the other team. First team to ten knockouts wins. Players throw the ball using the right trigger, and just like in real dodgeball they can attempt to catch the ball with the left trigger, and consequently throw it back at their assailant. Players can charge their throw to zip the ball faster and there is a great timing element to catching the ball; too early or too late and you end up getting pegged in the face, just like real life. There is a red border that goes up on screen anytime you are being target with a helpful directional indicator to give you a chance to react before getting thwacked from behind. 

Catching a ball keeps up its momentum so that your return throw will be even faster

This is where the pong comes into play, as every volley back and forth increases the speed of the interaction. A game of chicken ensues as players test their reaction time and positioning just like the game of yore, except with a lot more zazz. But the simple joy of the volley is there in spades. Every time I get hit by a ball in this game I feel like there was a chance I could have saved myself, and equally every time I land a hit I feel the joy of outsmarting or outmaneuvering an opponent.

I mostly lose but the game is fun enough to keep trying.

This is the shining core of the whole thing. A modernized physics filled game of pong. Everything else layered on top is either to add diversity or nuance to the experience or to monetize it, like so many modern competitive games. Let’s touch on the fun stuff first since the team has built some fun system to add to this core of pong. First there is always a special dodgeball in play to mix up a given match. This could be a sniper ball, that take a moment extra to target but if aimed correctly zips in twice as fast, a cage ball that puts the player who is hit in a ball shaped cage which can then be deviously thrown off a cliff, or the delightful multi-ball that evokes it’s pinball namesake in allowing players to throw three balls rapid fire, right alongside the satisfying pinball sounds. In fact, all of the sound in this game deserves to be commended, from the strange disembodied announcer who apparently emcees these matches from the moon, to the perfect sounds of nailing someone with a dodgeball, which sounds exactly like it should. If these unique dodgeballs aren’t enough to mix it up there is always the ability to turn yourself into a ball and be used by a teammate to take out your enemy. This has the risk reward of being a one hit knockout, if you’re not caught and used to take out your own team. 

The result of all of this flavor is the joyous shouts of success or groans of defeat that make a game like this shine. The game is silly, and it knows it, and this comes through in all aspects. There are different arenas with their own geography to capitalize on, as well as some more nuanced play hidden in the movement mechanics of the players, with the ability to dodge balls completely, tackle the ball out of an opponent’s hands or even lob or curve the ball like in a tennis volley. But time and again it comes back to the heart of pong.

As in most of these games the prize for your success is the ability to make your player character look positively ridiculous. Players unlock different outfits, dances, emotes etc. to customize their visual flair. This part of the game is monetized so players can shell out real money to buy whatever suits their fancy, but it’s entirely optional. Most games of this kind are free and entirely supported through this model, but given that the game will cost $20 after this initial free period, I’m not 100% clear on the eventual business model here. Still, I would argue that the core back and forth game of chicken is worth that $20. There’s plenty of depth here to explore and if it is anything like the other lifestyle games vying for folk’s time I imagine they will add more special dodgeballs, stages, and mechanics to keep the experience fresh. 

I generally avoid these types of games as I don’t find the core loop of many of them to be terribly much fun, but I give this one a try because of all of the buzz I had heard online. I am here to amplify that buzz and encourage you to try it out as well. There is something that is pure and simple fun here like the games of yore. It will certainly leave less of a mark than a traditional rubber dodgeball and I assure you it’s fun for everyone this time, not just the bullies.

Spiel Des Jahres: Game of the Year part 1

It’s that time of year again as nominees for the Spiel des Jahres or German Board Game of the Year were announced on Monday May 17th. A good portion of my collection is made up of winners or nominees for this prestigious award, so I always like to research the current slate of nominees. In a more normal year where I have been out gaming with friends it is also fun to guess at what will be nominated as the award often reflects a game that is hitting the table a lot on board game night. But every once in a while the nominees reveal a game that I hadn’t even heard of, either because it passed under my radar or because it hasn’t hit the U.S. market yet, this being a German award. This year is a little bit different of course as game groups haven’t been meeting with the pandemic, so I am certainly not tuned into what is popular on public game nights. Not only that, but I haven’t played most of these games so I don’t have a super concrete opinion on them, but instead have more of a reaction to what I’ve heard about them. Today I will cover the Spiel des Jahres award which is for lighter family focused games and I will cover the Kennerspiel or expert game award next week. Since I have only played one out of the three nominees I will cover that one in the most depth, and touch on the other two in brief in case they peak your interest.

Micromacro: Crime City is a game that was immediately appealing when I heard the premise. There have been several detective games over the last few years and before. Games like Sherlock Holmes, Detective: a Modern Crime Board Game, and Chronicles of Crime all lean heavily on a narrative structure combined with clues and puzzles to recreate the experience of solving a case like your favorite episode of CSI. Micromacro does away with all of that and just gives you an ENORMOUS map of a city full of devious acts and asks you to solve the crime by reviewing the map. There are some cards for each of the fifteen cases included in the game which will point you to a starting place and help confirm if you found the right thing or what the next step might be. But even using these is optional if you used the advanced rules. The game is just you and your friends, looking over a map and feeling really really clever.

There is some debate as to whether it is even a game. There aren’t really turns or actions or player pieces. It is in some ways a very dark Where’s Waldo. Except unlike Where’s Waldo, which is a static picture in time, Micromacro is a map that is in motion. If a card points you to the beginning of a bank heist you can find the criminal act on the map, but you also find the getaway, and anything that happened after the crime. In this way each crime is a story arc told in the language static image that contains multiple points in time. It is difficult to talk about the game without spoiling it, and like the best mysteries it’s the most fun to discover things on your own. It does have some wonderful moments when played as a group where one person spots something, calls it out and everyone else rushes to see the clue they have found. I personally play it with some clear plastic bingo tokens to track the different steps in the crime and the map looks a little bit like those conspiracy theory peg board by the time we’re done with a case. In a brilliant move the company put a test version of the game right on the box’s cover. If you click on the image alongside this blog you can follow along and solve a case. The full game’s map is positively massive and takes up the whole table, but this mini version of the game is an excellent example of what it feels like to play. The game’s success has already spawned plans for three sequels which will eventually have you solving cases across all the different maps, along with an app, and a more kid friendly version. It’s worth noting, this is not a game for kids, despite the cartoony drawings this city is full of adult themes and would spawn lots of tricky real world conversations.

The cardboard cutaway reveals a building on fire. Robinhood’s board can evolve and change without any stickers.

Micromacro is definitely my pick to win the award, but there are some other innovative games that have been nominated. The Adventures of Robinhood is one of those titles like I mentioned above that hasn’t made it out in English. It will be available in June, but all of the preview information I could find was based on the German version. The game is from a well known designer of another family friendly co-op game The Legend of Andor, Michael Menzel. Players are Robinhood and his band of merry men, and they use unique movement pawns to track their path around and through the town, avoiding guards and other hazards while trying to pass skill checks by drawing tokens from a bag. The odds of success are always changing as players add or remove tokens from the bag depending on their actions. The most unique aspect of the game however is the board. All over the board there are cardboard cutouts where players can flip that portion of the board to its other side. So by the castle for example there may be a circle cut out which, when flipped, reveals a guard. In this way the board itself is reactive depending on the scenario and what the players do. It is kind of like some legacy games where stickers would permanently change the board but with this cut-out method the board can evolve or change back, giving it the exciting changes of a legacy game without the permanence. The game also includes a story book that contains the narrative for each scenario and it provides alternate narrative paths if players fail a mission the first time. I’m curious to check it out when it hits the U.S. market.

Zombie Teenz is colorful fun but I can’t forgive the Z in the name…

The last title is a kid friendly legacy game called Zombie Teenz Evolution. I have to admit to being put off by this title, both because it uses the word “Teenz” with a Z and because of the Disney Channel art style. However if you have kids or teens this seems like an excellent way to try out legacy games. The story of the game plays out via a comic book included in the box and each new chapter has additional panels to add to the comic book as well as new rules and gameplay to keep the game fresh. While I am not a fan of the art style I must admit the game looks like a toy set and is well produced so it will definitely keep a kids attention better than some of the more dry looking games in the hobby. Still, it seems to be the least innovative of the three, despite how well made it is. This is one I will observe from a distance but likely won’t make it into my collection unless I am playing it with my niece and nephew.

That covers the Spiel Des Jahres nominees, I am doing some more digging on the Kennerspiel nominees and will report back with opinions on those in the coming days. The winner or the awards will be announced in just under two months on July 19th. 

Under Falling Skies first impressions

I was first drawn to Under Falling Skies during the beginning of lockdown. Board games with friends looked increasingly unlikely given the circumstances, so I looked into a few solo games to try to pass the time, and maybe get away from the screen a bit. One that caught my eye was the original version of Under Falling Skies. Designed from a sort of minimalist solo design competition where entrants were challenged to create a game that only required nine printed cards, Under Falling skies was designed to do a lot with very little. It was created to be printed on one double-sided sheet of paper, with a few dice and some tokens to round out the experience. The game was nominated for the best print and play award at Boardgamegeek.com in 2019, and won a lot of accolades, but then by chance the designer Tomáš Uhlíř was hired by CGE (Czech Games Edition) and the company took a chance on making this little design into a full blown commercial game. The end production is stunning and tries to make an argument for why you might want to drop $30.00 for a purely solo game. I wanted to share my first impressions as I started to dig into the game.

I narrowly escape defeat getting twelve research points (bottom) to complete the weapon just before the mothership (top) reaches the red skull for game over.
Managing you dice actions is a tricky puzzle

I must admit there is something very Zen about solo gaming. On a lovely Spring day with the birds chirping and the work day over it’s nice to set up a game and not worry about when other players are arriving, how to teach the game, or whether everyone at the table will have a good time. Solo board games are very much like solving a puzzle mano a mano vs the logic of the game itself, as I’ve written about when I first looked into the trend a few years ago. Under Falling Skies is essentially Space Invaders in board game form. There is a mothership sending attack ships towards your city in five columns and you must roll and place dice to defeat the incoming forces, excavate and create new defensive measures, and ultimately research a weapon to take out the mothership before it blows you up ala Independence Day. 

In more detail, you roll five dice on a turn and place them on a room in one of the five columns. The rooms do one of three things: Research the weapon to destroy the mothership, send air strikes to destroy incoming attackers,  or generate power to do either of these things. The brilliant push and pull here is that while higher dice rolls are always better for any of these actions, any alien ship in the corresponding column moves that many spaces towards your city. So if you want to place that six you rolled you have to also accept that the attackers that much closer to landing a hit on your city. Too many of these hits and it’s game over. To counteract this you can place dice in a column as anti-air defense, which subtracts one from how many spaces the enemy ships move. This can be a bit of a war of attrition but plays into another puzzle-y aspect of the game. Incoming ships can only be destroyed by your airstrikes if they land on attack spaces in the sky. So often die placement is a calculation not only of how it benefits you on the ground, but where the enemies end up in the skies. A perfectly timed anti-air die can position that pesky invader just in the right spot to kill multiple ships at once which is incredibly satisfying. Finally you can place a die further underground to move an excavator and unlock new and better rooms for your defense. It is all a giant balancing act and one heck of a brain burner.

The invaders are moving ever closer

To add another wrinkle to this, of your five dice three are grey and two are white. Whenever you place a white die you reroll all remaining dice. This gives flexibility but also adds a timing puzzle on top of the rest. This makes it an excellent solo game, plenty of tension from the impending doom of  attackers and the mothership, the push and pull of powerful dice hurtling enemies ever closer toward your city, and knowing when to use your re-rolls. Additionally the “turn” of the mothership is simple to follow making it not feel like you are playing two different games at once. The advanced game even offers robot dice which will continue activating a room but degrading by one each turn. A four or five die robot is great for a few turns but once it degrades to a one or two it almost becomes a liability as it occupies the space. It is yet another wrinkle to puzzle through in each play of the game.

There’s a whole campaign taking up two third of the box, including comics to set up each story twist.

For additional variability there are four levels of difficulty, and various different cities to play as, each with a unique power. That alone would be plenty but CGE has gone out of their way to pack the box full of replayability. There is a whole campaign with new boards, new gameplay and comics to tell a branching story. As a game launched during the peak of COVID lockdown Winter, Under Falling Skies was primed to be a puzzle that could take months to explore. Ok, so they definitely give you enough game in the box to justify the price, but what do I think?

Well… that’s tricky. I have recently been playing a lot of thematic games like Stationfall which I wrote about last week. I also played my copy of Pax Renaissance solo the other week to test it out, literally playing two hands at once to test out the rules. Under Falling Skies is a more elegant design than either of these games. But with all the puzzling, it did feel a bit like a game of pure calculation. Don’t get me wrong, when you pull of a turn where you blow up three enemy ships in the sky it is an incredible feeling, but it is still not a game that generates stories quite like the games I’ve been playing recently. There is sure to me more story in the box as I dig into the campaign, but a campaign framing the core game can sometimes feel like narrative scaffolding versus the emergent stories that come from some of my favorite games. With that said, I am happy to explore Under Falling Skies more, and I do want to dig into all of the content they’ve put in the box. Part of that is to get my thirty dollar investment back, but otherwise if I am feeling like playing something particularly puzzle-y and Zen I might pull this game out. It’s certainly a beautiful production with gorgeous art, neat plastic ships and tons of variability. But as the world opens up and there are hints of lockdown ending, I am honestly more eager to get to gaming in person again. Perhaps solo gaming is just not for me, but I admire what Under Falling Skies is trying to do.

Stationfall Preview

Our ticket off this doomed space station had just walked out the airlock. For some reason the escape pods on this ship require an NDA to activate, most likely because of the sensitive experiments that happen aboard. Some of those sensitive experiments can be heard in the metal containment cell near the bio lab. Meanwhile the head engineer just triggered self destruct meaning that in another 5 minutes everyone on board will be an antimatter explosion firework for his environmental cause. But the joke is on him because one of the maintenance clones just enacted sweet revenge, knocking the engineer out and dragging his body to the only escape pod that doesn’t require an NDA; the one for medical emergencies.

These are the stories generated by just one game of Stationfall  Ion Game Designs latest Kickstarter project. I had the privilege to playtest the game twice in one evening and couldn’t wait to write about my experience. This is by far Ion’s most approachable game yet. For one, it doesn’t have the deep historical or scientific themes that are the Hallmark of their other games. While these games are also great for generating stories as I’ve written about before, the themes can certainly feel dry to some.  But here Ion has a brilliant pitch calling this the party game for serious gamers. What could that possibly mean? After playing it, I have seen the light. Just like a party game, you might not really care who ultimately wins, just that everyone has a good time. But the tools to build stories like the ones above seem nearly limitless. So while it is a game about having a laugh, there is some amazing depth to the mechanics here.

An early turn of the game with the twelve characters on the left and map on the right. The circle sections of the map rotate, important for gravity and how fire spreads…
Legal has left the station

The designer Matt Eklund describes the game as Tactical Intrigue, which… is not a genre that exists, but I can understand the challenge, and why he might have made this label up. Stationfall is a difficult game to categorize. Unlike most Kickstarter projects where it fits into a clean category based on games that came before, this game is a strange animal. The basic setup is this: Players are a character aboard a space station that is going to crash into the atmosphere in 15 minutes. Every minute is one turn in the game, and players are trying to accomplish their characters unique goals before the crash. Some of these are noble, like the Station Chief who wants to go down with the ship and make sure their crewmates escape. Some of these are not so noble, like the engineer who wants to explode the antimatter engine aboard the ship to make an environmental example. Anywhere from one to nine players can join in the chaos and many of the goals are directly counter to each other. There are more than just the player’s characters aboard, however. After all, it takes a whole crew to run a space station. Players also have a secondary objective rescue or doom on of these other characters.

But here’s the rub, no one knows who is what character, and everybody can control ANY given character on their turn. Next to the board all of the characters in a particular game are laid face up and players can place influence cubes on any one of them. Once they have influence over a character they can activate them as long as they have as many or more cubes as everyone else. What ends up happening is that players manipulate many of the different characters in the game to accomplish their goals. After all there’s only fifteen minutes and so much to do!

The space monkey wants all of the shiny things

That secret identity aspect gave me pause, and was one of the reasons I did not initially give the game a closer look. I don’t like the genre of social deduction games where players are either good guys or traitors and a lot of the gameplay involves players arguing and lying to figure out who is on what side. Maybe it’s because people think I am lying no matter what but I often find those kinds of games stressful. But another reason Eklund made up his own genre was seemingly to avoid these comparisons. Stationfall definitely has deduction and you are trying to read the other players actions to determine their real motive. But all of the deduction is in observing their play. There is no detecting lies or community votes or any of the other hallmarks of social deduction. But it DOES have some elements of the genre, like the advantages of obfuscating your real goal, and the joy and power of a well timed reveal. You still have to pay attention to the other players to succeed.

Speaking of a well timed reveal the game rewards players for declaring what character they represent by giving them an additional very powerful ability. This creates a marvelous tug of war. It is often best to be sneaky and not let players realize who you are, but there is always a moment in the game where revealing who you are might give you just enough of an edge to pull off your grand scheme. It also stops other players from using your character and so can protect yourself from someone activating them and putting them in harm’s way. However, once your scheme is out there in the open, you better believe everyone in the game will be actively making sure it doesn’t happen, if they can.

Beware the telepathic rat. It wants to watch the world burn.

There are many other systems to interact with as well, making a rich sandbox to experiment in. In my other game I was playing the astrochimp, an experimental monkey who was born on the space station who just wants to gather all the shiny things and get the heck out of dodge. I had gotten the secret briefcase and the mysterious artifact, but needed to round out my collection of shiny things with a gun. It was possible to print one of these but you needed officer credentials, which an experimental monkey definitely doesn’t have. However if I hacked the main computer and gave myself those credentials I would be all set. The problem was the room with access to the computer was on fire and outside it there was a cryogenically frozen man who had woken up in a bad mood and with a wrench. This is a party game for serious gamers because you are problem solving  your way through complex systems, but laughing all the way there. My monkey never got the gun or got off the ship and I ended the game with zero points. And I had a blast. The computer or digital assistant, by the way, is another character in the game, with possibly devious goals of its own.

Later in the game abandon ship has been triggered the cameras and jammers are off, and the cyborg is knocked out while holding the telepathic rat in the chem lab… which is on fire.

And this is just a snapshot from two games. There are twenty seven different characters of which only a subset are in any given game. Depending on what characters are in the game and what characters players control there are countless ways this story could play out, although all of them end poorly for the space station itself. The best way I can describe it is like a chaotic improvisational episode of Deep Space Nine, minus the license and with quite a bit of added goofiness. The genre of tactical intrigue, although it doesn’t exist, makes perfect sense. Given how chaotic it is, most of your moves are tactical, and it’s difficult to plan with the chaos of the other player’s turns, especially considering that unless you have revealed your identity any other player can control the character you are most invested in. But the intrigue part makes sense as well. You are often trying to be clever or oblique with your actions so that other players don’t figure out your true intentions. The game’s inherent complexity is what gives it enough layers to have these actions remain unclear. But this game is still much more approachable than just about any other game this company has put out. It is much easier to pitch someone on a game where they might be a space chimp than one where they are a Renaissance banker. I am excitedly all in on this new design, and now the challenge will be waiting the six plus months to get a physical copy to play in person. If the stories above intrigue you I highly recommend taking a look.

Why is every board game designed to be the last you’ll ever need?

Four games and eleven expansions worth of Railroad Ink dice.

It seems like every modern game is designed to be the last game you will ever need. A desert island game, an endless buffet, a bottomless ocean of content. Each game is sold to buyers with this promise that if you buy it you and your friends will never be bored and never really have to move on to another game. This occurred to me as the big box of Railroad Ink Challenge I had backed on Kickstarter at the beginning of lockdown arrived in the mail this week. This is a giant box designed to hold four individual games, each of which includes its own thematic expansions, plus a box of 7 more expansions and 2 larger maps to play on. Suddenly I am drowning in dice and have more ways to play Railroad Ink than I’d ever imagined. And if I am being honest, I am not sure I will even play every aspect in this box one time. Of course, I am hopeful. I have grand visions of me and my friends laughing around a table and playing game after game of it, discovering each expansion like a box of chocolates. But here’s the catch. Everyone else has an endless buffet of their own to get to the table. It is very rare, and certainly unpredictable to guess what game will get ten or even five plays in a year. Will Railroad Ink be the one that my group keeps turning back to week in and week out? I kind of doubt it.

It’s possible that this is all exacerbated by COVID. There is a long queue of new games, acquired when there weren’t any game nights to play them, waiting to get their chance in the sun. Shiny things from Kickstarter campaigns keep showing up in the mail, new games keep hitting the shelves, there is an onslaught of great games as I wrote about before. What is the point of an endless buffet if the furthest most people get is the appetizers, and then they ask for the check? I wrote early on that my shelves were full of memories, each game reminding me of a time it was played and the fun I’d had with friends. But now the shelf is mostly a wall of potential experiences versus real ones. As a result, the urge is to skip along the surface of each game like a stone on a lake, touch each game, maybe getting a learning game or two in, but never actually dive in with any depth. It seems counter to what the games were designed for, and I pine for the classics that I wrote about last week. Games that show the entire realm of possibilities on the first play, but which hold up to countless plays.

I admit, it’s a weird rainy day and I might be getting overly philosophical about the whole thing. There are more games than ever, and they are designed to be more replayble than ever, so what is the problem? A shelf full of potential should be exciting, especially as game nights become a thing again and all those games start hitting the table. Isn’t it strange to ask a game to be less? Well, yes and no. I think it’s best to illustrate what I’m grumping about with a bit of an example. A game that I have managed to get to the table, and finish is My City which I wrote about recently. This is a legacy style game where you play through 8 chapters, 24 games in total and you are done with the experience. The game is thirty five dollars, but can often be found cheaper and adds one or two new things a chapter over time. By the time I was done, I had had enough My City for a lifetime and I don’t really need to play it again. 

Modern games are full of bling and have become luxury items

By comparison a game recently went up on Kickstarter called My Father’s Work. For ninety nine dollars this game offers three scenarios, an app driven story with each scenario having a small novel’s worth of writing, a  spiralbound village board that changes based on your decisions, and bespoke components, right down to little glass bottles with real removable corks. The Kickstarter page writes about how you can play through the same scenario multiple times and still not see all that’s in the box. On the one hand, that sounds amazing. On the other, will I even get this to the table 24 times? It’s not exactly a fair comparison, and I know that. The games are completely different in terms of play style and length. But the price is getting steeper. Ninety nine dollars is more than a lot of people would spend on a board game and keeps this particular game out of reach for some. And honestly this price is not a lot compared to other bottomless games where you can spend 150, 200 or even 300 dollars to get all of the content, like the recent Monster Hunter Kickstarter that tops out at $295 before shipping. That includes two base games and four expansions, which you can buy without having even played the game one time

I am not naïve, and I understand the sales pitch. Kickstarter campaigns are all about wish fulfillment. To keep up with the joneses a board game campaign has to convince you that it will wax your car and toast your bread, or at the very least it needs to promise that it will have enough game to last you forever. I have watched the model evolve from its infancy in 2012 to the slick marketing blitz that it is today and I see how the gears turn. My question is why does a game need to be bottomless versus just being good and affordable? If My Father’s Work came out with one scenario, some good old fashioned wooden cubes and meeples and still had the cool spiral bound map, would it be an inferior experience? That sounds like a wonderful 60 dollar game and maybe if I did feel it was played out I would buy an expansion in a few years to mix things up. But this is the old model. The new board game market is made of ruthless and weaponized desire. Renegade will sell you the game and two expansions up front, but only if you catch the hype now. For those of us who are on the hype train, and have the disposable income to spare, maybe this is all gravy. But I do feel like we are rapidly becoming a luxury hobby for the rich, and we are leaving a whole audience behind with this format.

On a different note it is a telling twist that the number one requested feature for My Father’s Work is a solo mode; a way to play it alone. These games are so big and so bottomless that its audience is demanding a way to play it without having to worry about getting a group of friends together. This trend was accelerated by COVID of course, as recent conditions have made it literally impossible to get a group together. But it started before then and puts a ceiling on any game that doesn’t have it as there is a whole audience who will not buy a game unless they know they can play it solo. I am not personally into solo gaming, but I also don’t mean to shame it. If that is how you prefer to play games, more power to you. But if there is an audience who is craving solo modes just to remove another barrier to getting the game played, perhaps there is a different underlying problem altogether. 

Who knows, perhaps I will someday be stuck on a desert island with one of these games and I will be thankful that they are endless. Railroad Ink Challenge does have a solo mode and it might be a nice thing to play over a cup of coffee in the morning. Maybe I’ll explore the depths of all those dice yet.

The board game classics are dying

In the news this week Grail Games, a company started with the mission to bring back old games of renown and give new players a chance to play them, announced a pivot away from doing pure reprints. Earlier this month ZMan games announced a similar move away from reprinting their Euro Classics line. Two companies in short order admitted that while reprinting old classics is very popular from a hearts and minds perspective, it doesn’t make a whole lot of good business sense. The news had me feeling melancholy, while simultaneously trying to track down some of these games now that they wouldn’t be reprinted, and coming up empty.

I’ve been in the hobby long enough to see that in general, if a game is good enough and popular enough, and there aren’t any strange IP rights issues, it will generally come back in print eventually. I have watched the dry spells where a game is very rare and selling for double its market value, to the inevitable announcement of the reprint or new edition several times over now. This makes a lot of sense in some ways, as reprinting a classic can be a more surefire bet for a small publisher. The name recognition and reputation part of marketing is already done for you. Even some supposedly impossible games that are tied up with intellectual properties have made their way back into print, like Dune, a long lost classic that the Herbert estate was fighting a decade ago, but all too eager to make happen with the upcoming movie. But something about the market seems to be changing, and some very solid games that have sterling reputations may linger out of print for a quite a while longer, unable to keep up with the new hotness and Kickstarter bling.

Tigris and Euphrates is mostly an abstract game. The components don’t inspire a lot of excitement.
Who doesn’t want to hang out with this guy?

First a little background on the games that got the axe. A lot of them were classics by Reiner Knizia from the late 90s and early 2000s. Tigris and Euphrates used to be a top ten game… 20 years ago. Samurai, Through the Desert, Ra. All of them were games with one mechanism and very few rules but extremely deep gameplay. None of them were ever lookers, even with the reprint treatment. A tile laying game about conquest in Mesopotamia, an Egyptian auction game, even the candy colored camels of Through the desert. These all looked nice and more modern than their 90s counterparts, but nothing that would turn heads. Ironically Grail Games was also deep in the old Knizia back catalog with games like Medici a Mediterranean auction game from 1995 and Stephenson’s Rocket an early train and stocks game. These were even more lavish productions but still were some pretty old and unexciting themes. Every one of these won great renown back in its day but those that were in the hobby back then likely already have them or have played them a lot, and it’s just hard to convince someone lured into the hobby by beautifully produced games to try out something that looks… old.

How can older games compete with the new hotness? Pictured here is Brew which as of this writing is number 1 on BGG’s hotness list.

I have always defended these more dry themes, like I did in my diatribe about every game needing a bored looking dude on the cover, but for my part I didn’t track down any of the games I’ve listed above. They certainly flowed into my circle of friends, so they’re around and I am relieved that they’re in the collective library. But they didn’t set the world on fire. The gaming market is increasingly crowded, and reprints of older games just don’t seem to make a splash anymore. People look at me like I’m crazy when I describe the theme of some of the games that are in my library. They would rather play the beautiful game about birds, or the adorable wargame about woodland animals. The hobby has grown tremendously since the mid to late 90s and sometimes these classic themes just don’t cut it anymore.

Through the Desert is a more colorful older game, but still not terribly exciting.

But this makes me sad. Even though I am part of the problem. Even though I didn’t spend a cent on these games. I held that copy of Samurai at least ten times at Zombie Planet, but something kept me from making the purchase. I still mourn the simplicity to depth ratio of these old games. As I mentioned above, all of these games did one thing, and did it well. They were not circuses of different mechanisms like so many modern games. They had more in common with a classic game like chess. Easy to learn the basics, and hard to master. Hopefully other companies will pick up the publishing rights to these games, or at least push forward new simple games, maybe with newer themes and more appealing art.

Reiner Knizia for his part is doing as well as ever. He is still publishing new games that get nominated for awards each year, and some of his more recent designs sit on my shelves like The Quest for El Dorado or My City which I wrote about the other month. And he is still designing games like it’s the 90s to a large degree. The recent title Babylonia seems to have some similarities to the now out of print Tigris and Euphrates. Maybe I am the crazy old man shouting at the clouds at this point, insisting that the kids play the boring looking tile games. But mostly I am just hopeful that the legacy of these games lives on. If any of these games do peak your interest I encourage you to seek them out before they become even harder to find. That or we can all wait till the cycle begins anew and maybe a reprint happens after all. With good games, life finds a way.

Winter Kingdom first impressions

To say I am a fan of Kingdom Builder is an understatement. It is one of two games in my library that I have over 100 plays in, the other being another Donald X. Vaccarino design, Dominion. In my game group we used to joke about having “league night” like a bowling league because of how often on a game night we would play two or three games of Kingdom Builder. It is in essence my favorite game, because of the variety it offers, (I am not sick of it at all even after 100+ games) and the simplicity of play. So it is with some trepidation that I approached its sequel, Winter Kingdom. A sequel to a favorite of any kind of media faces very tough odds and huge shoes to fill. Not only due to the strengths of the original but a build up of insurmountable nostalgia. Due to covid I haven’t gotten as many plays of this in as I’d like, despite receiving it in October. I remember foolishly thinking things might be back to normal by then and I’d have plenty of chances to play it that Fall. Hopefully the hope is more justified now, but I have gotten enough plays for an initial impression.

First however, an overview of the game is in order, with some inline comparisons with its predecessor. Winter Kingdom at its core uses the same engine of Kingdom Builder. You draw a terrain card each turn and place three houses on that terrain, attempting to match one or more of the three varying scoring goals for that game. Winter Kingdom has slightly upped the complexity at a base level here by having six terrain types instead of the original’s five, and by including four immovable fort pieces that players can play instead of a house, which count for all purposes as two houses. Additionally while the original game had a lot of natural boundaries created by water terrain which could not be bypassed in movement or played on without special powers, in Winter Kingdom there is ice, which, while not represented in the terrain deck, acts like any other terrain instead of being a barrier. In summary, which will become a repeating theme, Winter Kingdom is much more open than Kingdom Builder. This openness is only then increased by tunnels on each board that allow players to move a piece from one board to another once a turn. A main criticism of Kingdom Builder was that if you had some particularly bad luck with the card draw you could end up stuck in one area of the board and have your whole game sabotaged. There were ways to mitigate this, but Winter Kingdom eliminates this complaint. If you get stuck in this game it is because you played poorly, not because of luck.

Winter Kingdom in play
six terrains instead of the original five

The other drastic changes are the boards, which are seven hexes now, double sided and always in play vs the square single sided boards of the original. This provides tons of variability. Each board might be in a different position, orientation or flipped to a different side each game. But most importantly the variable powers of the original are no longer tied to which board is in play. Instead players each have a hand of five powers that they can pay to put in play. More on that economy aspect in a moment, but this is probably the biggest change compared to the original. For one thing it makes the players asymmetrical as each will have five entirely different powers. But it also removes another luck driven aspect as a good card draw in the original might put you next to one of the more useful powers printed on the board. Here you have a sort of puzzle with your five powers, but no player can deny you access or beat you to the punch like in the original game. Additionally these powers can be upgraded. Here again the game is much more open.

Economy cards drive different ways to earn money each game

In addition to these tweaks on the original formula the game includes an economy system and twist cards that are entirely new. The economy system has one of eight cards that dictates how money is made in a given game. This money is critical for playing the aforementioned powers, and gives players another thing to think about when placing pieces vs just how to score the most points. Two games with the same set-up but different economy cards would play out very differently. There is a powerful super move that players can do with five gold that allows them to use any ability 3 times in a row, which means that money is always useful, even if you have the powers and upgrades that you would like for a particular game. The twist cards are varying conditions that tweak how a given game will play. They are essentially the cherry on top of a variability sundae.

Kingdom Card dictate the scoring goals for the game. Winter Kingdom has many more than its predecessor right out of the box.

Finally it’s worth noting a few numbers vs Kingdom Builder. The base game contains 18 scoring conditions vs the original 10, and 25 upgradeable abilities vs the original board-printed 14. There is a LOT of game in this box, and even if it never gets any expansions, it contains the variability of Kingdom Builder plus two expansions right on day one. But what the heck do I actually think of the game itself? Even if there is mathematically “more” game than Kingdom Builder, is that better? Well, yes and no. For someone who has played Kingdom Builder over 100 times, this is like candy. It is an evolved and more in depth game with more moving parts to keep track of.  In the few plays of it I have had, I have often been stuck in a sort of first gear, still thinking strategically like it is another game of Kingdom Builder and being out-maneuvered by friends who are taking advantage of the whole system. I am excited to explore it more and try to hit top gear in this new and broader system.

Twists multiply the variability of the game to eleven.

With all that said, I do still believe there is a place in the collection for its predecessor. For one thing, it is a simpler and more family friendly game. The original won a Spiel des Jahres and had a lot of hidden depth despite reviewers deriding it as “too simple” at the time. I will still happily play it any time, and it still holds up even through 100 plays. It is certainly the better introductory game. There is also a different feeling to the game by comparison. It is more narrow and possibly a tighter experience. Players are fighting over the powers, there is less flexibility in terms of terrains and with a lack of the caves I mentioned above. There is also inherently less space and more boundaries with the water vs the ice, in addition to there being nearly 100 more spaces to play on. Don’t get me wrong, Winter Kingdom still seems to have some of the confrontation of the original, but it has a different feeling.

It is too early to tell which will ultimately be my favorite, but I am very happy to have a favorite classic of mine iterated upon with Winter Kingdom. It feels different, but I have barely scratched the surface. I am very wary of more complex versions of games I already love, because they often lose the immediacy and simplicity that made the original great. Thankfully I can report that that is not the case here. I look forward to really kicking the tires when there are more frequent game nights, but for now it really does seem like a different evolution with tremendous variability and depth.

John Company 2nd Edition: The human factor behind empire and colonialism

Designer Cole Wehrle lives a dual life. By day he designs and develops games for Leder Games with candy sweet fantasy themes that have serious depth and teeth hiding just below the surface. Root for example is an adorable woodland war game that has cats that represent the German war machine, birds that capture old monarchies and the Woodland Alliance that captures  revolt and guerilla warfare. But sure enough most people see the adorable wooden cats and are eager to sign up for a complex war game with considerable rules overhead.

By night however Wehrle runs Wherlegig Games with his brother Drew. In these games the themes are deeply rooted in real world events in history. In particular Wehrle’s historical focus is the various messes created by colonialism, and more importantly the “why” behind how those historical situations evolved. There are no cute meeples here, and none of the peanuts-esque art of Kyle Ferrin to lure folks in. I can tell you that it is much harder to sell someone on playing Pax Pamir 2nd edition about The Great Game in Afghanistan than pulling them into Root. My partner keeps asking to learn the latter and has expressed negative interest in ever trying the former.

Root is much more approachable for the casual observer, but hides a rather complex game beneath the cute exterior

But these games are worth playing, even if the theme sounds like a college history class you didn’t sign up for. For one thing, they expose parts of world history that are barely a footnote in most folks’ education. The most exposure I ever had to The Great Game, where Great Britain and Russia used Afghanistan as a site for a proxy war between enormous imperial powers, was in reading the novel Kim by Rudyard Kipling. You might know him as the guy who wrote The Jungle Book. But here in Pax Pamir 2nd edition is a literal simulation of what happened, and more importantly, why. Unlike reading a dry textbook in that aforementioned college class, you play a game and see the strategic reasons why historical events occurred.

While the theme is not exciting the production of these games is no slouch. For what it lacks in enticing woodland meeples Pax Pamir makes up in spades with a cloth map and beautiful resin coalition markers. Wherlegig has found an audience for these niche games on kickstarter that has enabled them to produce top of the line games for a relatively small market.

While it doesn’t have cute animals, Pax Pamir is still a beautiful table presence.

The next on the docket for Wehrle’s night operation is John Company 2nd Edition which is on Kickstarter now. It is a game about collectively running the British East India Company together with up to 6 players. Here again is a dive into a topic I know almost nothing about. I mostly remember the British East India company as a footnote to the Boston Tea Party  that everyone in the U.S. learns about during class on The Revolutionary War. But it was a major force and is responsible for a lot of the terrible toll of colonialism in India in the service of prestige in London and turning a profit. It’s an uncomfortable role ultimately to put players into. In Pax Pamir you were somewhat empowered as tribes who are manipulating the imperial powers, but here, while you do have power, you are definitely not the good guy. However, in order to win the game you have to wheel and deal and exploit the various nations in India. In order to win you will need to understand the actual why of what happened during history.

Families with individual portraits give John Company 2nd Edition a more personal feel

John Company is first and foremost a negotiation game. Players are working together to run one company, but only one player wins. In this way it is a sort of semi-cooperative game. The lens that the game sees this through is family. Each player takes on the role of a prominent family and your individual playing pieces are little unique wooden portrait tokens. The game plays with all the other suspects of empire and trade games: power, money, stocks, ships and armies. But it’s approach to focus on the families that drove all of those other aspects is fascinating. And in fact, you use those family members as the main way to win the game. Each turn a family has children which are then invested into various aspects of the company. Yes it’s weird to talk about investing children, but as a game built around family, your children are literally a resource to use to gain the upper hand in the company. You may have them become investors holding shares in the company or send them of to India as trade clerks hoping for a promotion, or have them join the military as an officer hoping to become a general. Everything is about using your family members effectively to make sure you run certain aspects of the company or are at least in a position to benefit the most from its success. And everything on the table is up for negotiation, including your family’s children who you can trade as wards to other players.

In recent history there have been some monumental blunders by publishers in the board game industry that have kind of swept away the negative impacts of colonialism. GMT’s debacle with The Scramble for Africa highlighted the focus on power fantasy first without consideration of the consequences of those actions. Shifting the focus from empire to the human element that drove the East India Company gives the game a more insightful view of the machinations of colonialism. This human element also gives the game an almost satirical slant as well, if not a cynical view of the affair. All of the hell caused in India boils down to prestige and retiring well in London, true to the actual historical actors. You may give your son Nathaniel as a ward to another family for a vote that will keep you in control of the prime minister in order to set your other family member up to retire to a castle from his director of trade position. There is no purity at winning this game as it invites you to roleplay the corruption in its very mechanics. All of Cole’s historical moonlighting shares this commonality of placing the player in the morass of very messy history. And I personally cannot wait to sink in and learn more about the East India Company than I ever knew before. The game is pricey at $80 on the Kickstarter campaign, but it costs less than a college course or text book on the same subject and could possibly teach you more if you  are someone who learns by doing. If such a dry theme is not for you, then Wehrle’s day fair may be much more up your alley, although each game hides depth for days; cute woodland animal or not.