In the summer of 1988, I discovered my favorite game for the Nintendo NES. This stealthy game let me take on the role of a secret operative as I infiltrated a secret base, used silenced weapons and gadgets, and uncovered a plot that could devastate the world I was hooked on Metal Gear right from the start. Unlike many other games, I played this one all the way to the end and beat it. Metal Gear left such an impression on me that 37 years later, as soon as I heard there was a board game based on the video game, I could not wait to get my hands on a copy of Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game. 

What Is Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game?

Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game is a cooperative stealth miniatures game for 1-4 players, ages 14 and up, and takes about 60-90 minutes to play. It’s currently available from your local game store as well as online retailers such as Amazon with a suggested retail price of $109.99 for a copy of the game.

Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game was designed by Emerson Matsuuchi and published by CMON, with illustrations by Jose David Lanza Cebrian, Marco Checchetto, Fabio de Castro, Max Duarte, Júlia Ferrari, Mathieu Harlaut, Saeed Jalabi, Sebastian Koziner, Kenneth Loh, Henning Ludvigsen, Aragorn Marks, and Francesco Orrù.

Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game Components

Here is what you get in the box:

• 5 Character figures
• 5 Boss figures
• 12 Guard figures
• 2 Carboard box figures
• 16 Double-sided tiles
• 4 Player dashboards
• 6 Boss dashboards
• 1 Guard dashboard
• 171 Cards
• 225 Tokens
• 1 Boss Tracker
• 1 Rulebook
• 1 Campaign book
• 1 VR Missions book
• 1 Codec book
• 15 Dice

Each character has their own figure. Players can choose to play as Solid Snake, Meryl, Otacon, or Gray Fox. Meryl has a second figure used when she is disguised as a guard. 

There is a player dashboard for each of the four characters. This contain all of the actions a player can take as well as their stats for health an defense as well as the amount of equipment they can take with them. Be sure to pay attention to their unique abilities listed at the bottom of the dashboard. Some of these allow you to inflict additional damage against enemies. The backside of the dashboard contains a biography of the character. 

Enemies are represented by figures as well. There are five reddish boss figures and 12 green guard figures in two different sculpts. All guards act the same despite the two sculpts. 

Each boss has their own dashboard similar to the players’ dashboards. These list the stats for the boss as well as details on how they act during a boss stage. Some have trackers on them as well. The green side of the boss dashboard is used for the VR missions.

The map tiles are used to create the many different maps for the various stages and missions. They are all full-color and double-sided. There are also some smaller tiles used for boss battles or to represent elevators and elevator shafts of small rooms attached to the large tiles. 

The player’s characters can use equipment. Some characters have starting equipment available to them while you can also unlock new equipment by completing the stages and VR missions. (You can also unlock one piece of equipment just by reading the back of the gamebox!)

The guards are controlled by the Guard order and reaction cards. Each stage will let you know how many order cards to use. The red cards are placed beneath the blue order cards. One of them is a game over card, so once you get to the red cards, you don’t know exactly when the mission will end, but that it is close. How these cards are used is explained in the gameplay section of this article. 

Just like the guards, each boss as their own deck of cards which describe the actions they take during their phase as well as how they react to your characters. 

There are also a variety of other cards including Otacon boss system cards, Otacon system cards, Boss stage reference cards, and reference cards for Meryl’s disguise as well as for hacking terminals. 

Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game comes with four different books. The rulebook contains all the instructions for playing the game and serves as a reference. The campaign book has instructions for setting up and playing all 14 stages of the campaign. In fact, for new players, you can get right into the game and play the first few stages without reading the rulebook. The campaign book teaches what you need to know and the first two stages serve as a tutorial. The VR missions book contains six stand-alone missions that are playable by 1-4 players. These are great ways to practice sneaking and once you clear each VR mission, you are awarded with new equipment you can add to your memory box. Finally, the Codecs book has text related to the codec text you may find on dashboards, equipment cards, boss dashboards and cards, and many other places. These codec texts help provide additional story information. 

The game comes with 15 dice in both black and white The white dice have the one pip side replaced with a ‘!’. This is used when checking for noise. Also, the “!” does not count as a 1 when rolling, so when considering combat, it is considered a miss that can’t be modified by a +1 or +2 affect. 

How to Play Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to complete the objectives for a stage of the game. Some stages have optional objectives which can provide additioanls rewards if the players complete them. 

Setup

Setting up a game is fairly straightforward. Each stage has setup directions in the campaign or VR missions books. For this explanation, the setup and gameplay for a sneaking stage is provided. Boss stages are similar but have a few minor differences. Start off by positioning the map tiles as shown in the directions, placing character and enemy figures and tokens as shown. Next setup the player area. After players select which characters they will play as, they place their respective player dashboard in front of them and collect their 4 action tokens, 4 focus tokens, and their character attention token. They then take any starting equipment for their character and any memory box equipment that has been acquired in previous missions. Damage as well as KO’d and Dead guard tokens are placed near the map tiles. Finally, setup the guard dashboard by placing it near the map. Follow the directions in the setup for how many blue and red guard order cards to place above the dashboard along with the guard reaction cards. You are now ready to play. 

Gameplay

Player Phase

Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game is played in rounds. Each round is divided into a player phase and the enemy phase. During the player phase, the players take turns performing actions. They can take their turns in any order, but one player must complete all their actions before the next player goes. To perform an action, players take their action tokens and place them on actions on their player dashboard. Most actions cost one token but some cost two. The same action can be taken more than once, but the cost must be paid each time. For example, a player could use the sneak action four times to move four spaces. (All movement is orthogonal and never diagonal). At the end of their actions, if the player performed any action that has a Noisy icon next to it, they must perform a noise check by rolling one white die for each noisy action. If any of the dice rolled have an ‘!’ on it, then place the characters attention token underneath the player with the blue side up. This means someone heard you.  

Enemy Phase

Once all players have completed their turns, it is now the enemy phase. Draw the top card from the guard order deck. It is divided into three parts. Resolve the card starting at the top and working your way down. The top has an affect for the area. The second part controls any cameras on the map. The bottom area directs how individual guards move depending on whether the guard is in alert, investigate, or patrol mode. Many of the stages require the players to use stealth to achieve their objectives. They want to move around without the enemy knowing they are there because once they guards are on alert, they are all coming for you. Let’s take a look at the three guard modes.

During patrol mode, guards move the number of spaces shown in blue on the guard order card. If they come to a wall, they turn in the direction there is a pathway. If they can turn left of right, they follow the arrow on the card. If they are at a dead end, they turn around and walk in the opposite direction. At the end of their movement, they face in the direction they will move the next round. Finally, if they end their movement on a space with two arrows, they turn in the direction of the arrow on the card, even if they are not at a wall. When moving guards, always start at the top left space of a zone and then move guards in order from left to right across a row of spaces, then going down to the next row, left to right, and so forth. It is important to follow this order since guards towards the bottom of the map may cause an alert, but it will not affect those near the top until their next round since they have already moved for that round. 

If a player has made a noise and places an attention token on the board, the nearest guard will move along the shortest route to investigate it. They also move towards any KO’d or Dead guard tokens in their LOS (Line Of Sight). Once they move onto any of these tokens, they draw a guard reaction card and resolve it depending on what type of token they are standing on. Since players can move off of an attention token on a subsequent turn, by the time a guard arrives, the player’s character may be gone. If a guard ever moves so that a player is in their LOS, they immediately attack. Also whenever a player is in the LOS of a guard, place the red alert side of the attention token under the character. 

If an alert token is anywhere in the active zone, all guards are on alert. When they move, the all move towards the closest alert token following the shortest path. Once a guard reaches the space of an alert token, draw a guard reaction card and resolve it. Usually if there are no characters in sight of any guards, the token is returned to that player and if no other alert tokens are in the zone, the alert is called off and guards continue their patrol movement. 

Line Of Sight

Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game features a unique method for determining LOS. First it is important to note that all guards have an arrow on their figure that points in the direction they are looking. LOS requires two conditions. First check to see if the guard is facing either the row or column the player’s figure is in. If so, then draw an imaginary box that includes both the guard and the player. If there are any obstacles such as walls, locked doors, or objects with red lines around them, anywhere in the box, then there is no LOS. Otherwise, the guard can see the player. Cameras work similarly and the direction they face is determined by the camera token. Guards do not have LOS to players behind them or directly on their left or right flank. As guards move, check for LOS if there are player figures nearby. 

Combat

Combat is also fairly straightforward in the game. If you have LOS, then you can attack with ranged weapons. The guards all carry rifles and they only attack in this manner. The players have close combat attacks that require the player to be orthogonally adjacent to an enemy to attack. To resolve an attack, roll the number and type of dice listed for the attack. Guards always attack with two black dice. Players may attack with white and/or black dice depending on the type of attack. Weapons on equipment cards also have a space for an action token listed with the appropriate dice to roll. Each die represents a chance of getting a hit. You never add them together. Instead, compare the results of each die with the target’s defense value. If the roll is equal to or greater than the defense, then one damage is inflicted on the target. Place a damage token on the player dashboard if the player was the target or next to the guard figure. If a player or enemy ever receives damage equal to or greater than their health, they are Killed in Action. When a guard is KIA, place a skull token on its space and remove the figure. Players may try to knock out guards with close combat attacks. Instead of a damage token, give them a KO’d token. If they receive KO’d damage equal to their health, remove their figure and replace it with a KO guard token with side with two stars face up.  

Game End

The game ends when the players have completed their objectives or if any player is ever KIA or another failure condition has been met. 

Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game

As I mentioned earlier, I was a excited to play Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game. However, I was also a bit apprehensive. Would the designer be able to create a fun game that was true to the original feel and theme. I have enjoyed games by the designer, Emerson Matsuuchi such as the Century series (Century: Spice Road, Century: Eastern Wonders, and Century: A New World) as well as HerStory.  I have also been impressed by CMON’s games. Yet a stealth cooperative game? The miniature figures are very detailed as one would expect from CMON as is the presentation including the organizer to keep all of the components–organized. On the topic of components, they are all great. I really like the artwork on the cards, dashboards, map tiles, and even withing the rulebook and other books.

While the rulebook is not that large, I really appreciated that the first paragraph in the rulebook told me to go to the campaign book to play the first two stages and then come back. Just like many video games will provide a few easy missions that teach you the game as you go, Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game also features something like a tutorial that walks you through the main rules over the course of two games. This gets players right into the campaign. Though the first two stages are only for one player, this provides the basics a player can use to teach others. Most of the stages can be played by two players and the final five stages can be played by up to four players. I actually like playing solo and controlling two or more characters so I can use their abilities together. However, when playing with a group, the VR missions are a great way to play and introduce new layers to the game. These are all stand-alone missions that focus on stealth. They can all be played with 1-4 players and the objectives become more difficult as you add more players. For an additional challenge, you can even swap out one of the guards with any of the boss characters. Not only do you unlock equipment for each VR mission you complete, you also unlock more equipment by defeating the bosses. The combination of the campaign and the VR missions provides not only hours of gameplay, but also different ways to play. 

Cooperative and solo games require a system for controlling non-player characters and Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game has one of the most user-friendly systems for doing this. The guard order and reaction cards provide some variety in the ways the guards patrol as well as interact with the environment. They guards don’t always move the same distance each round and they may turn different directions when they come to an intersection. Plus the double arrows marked on the maps provides another level of randomness. If a guard happens to stop on one of these, they will turn either right or left instead of continuing straight. This keeps players on their toes and several times my perfect plans were disrupted by a guard making a random turn and coming down a hallway towards me.  The guard cards also let you know when to spawn more guards and control which direction the cameras are facing. Unlike guards, cameras are always on and moving into their LOS causes an automatic alert. I am very impressed with the rules that control the enemies so they don’t take up a lot of the player’s time with complexity.

Another area where simplicity is a plus is LOS. In most games with miniatures, there are rules to determine if you can see the enemy and if they can see you. For many games I have played, this has been quite complex and I find myself frequently referring to the rules. Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game makes LOS extremely easy. I already described how LOS is determined. In reading online questions by players, I found that many were overthinking this concept. They were trying to bring in rules from other games they have played. I too found myself with the same issues at first. However, when I went back to the rules and read them as they are–without adding my own interpretation–I found them very refreshing. From that point on, I had no trouble with LOS and after a few games, it becomes second nature. Along those same lines, combat also benefits from simplicity. There are no modifiers to combat for cover or anything. If you can see the target, you can shoot at it. While some games benefit from more complex rules, the rules in this game let players focus on playing the game and experience the tension of trying to infiltrate a heavily secure facility without being killed. 

The more I play Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game, the more I like the game. In some ways the sneaking stages are like puzzles. However, there is no set solution because the patrols of the guards are always different. In addition, there are some cool ways to trick the guards. Players can use the knock action to place an attention token in their space and then move away. This can lure a guard away from their patrol and create an opening. Furthermore, the game is not easy. I played the first stage 3-4 times before I beat it. It also took me a few times to beat the second stage. I barely beat the first boss stage on the first try. This game works great for solo play. It also is a lot of fun with 2 to 4 players since you all have to work together. If one player triggers an alert, the guards all start coming at you. Though this can also allow other players to access areas formerly covered by guards before they moved towards the alert. In conclusion, I highly recommend Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game. For all the many reasons I have mentioned, this game deserves to be GeekDad Approved! I continue to enjoy playing it and introducing it to new people. If you like solo and cooperative games where the game is the challenge and not the rules, then be sure to add Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game to your game collection. 

For more information, visit the Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game page!

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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.

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I’ve been covering a lot of crowdfunding campaigns lately (and have several more queued up between now and April), but as always there are more projects out there that I won’t be able to do full reviews. Here are a few current projects that have caught my attention lately!

New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.

Bullet: Cubed from Level 99 Games

I’ve backed all of the Bullet series from Level 99 Games so far—it’s a fast-paced puzzly game where you’re pulling “bullets” (colored discs) out of a bag and putting them onto your own board. You use powers to manipulate the bullets to form patterns, which clears them from your board and sends them to the next player—but if you don’t clear them in time, you’ll take a hit. There are a whole bunch of different characters to play (I think they’re up to 38 now), and each one has a unique set of patterns and special abilities; some of the heroines have wildly different rules. This latest Gamefound campaign includes two new expansions (Fan and Orange+) with more characters, but the centerpiece is the big storage box that will hold it all—I’m looking forward to having all of my Bullet components in one place!

Northgard: Uncharted Horizons from Open Sesame Games

Northgard: Uncharted Lands was one of our Game of the Year finalists back in 2022; it’s a 4X Vikings game that includes a little bit of deck-building as you explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. This new expansion will add more clans and more creatures, but also introduces some new game modes (including a solo mode). Each clan has its own unique abilities (further distinguished in the Warchiefs expansion), so I like the idea of having even more of those to choose from. I should be getting a prototype of this to try out soon, so hopefully you’ll hear more about this one before the campaign ends.

Drunk Jousting from Roger J. Porter

Last year my friend Roger Kickstarted a little game called Drunk Cowboy: it’s a miniatures shoot-out game where the orientation  and value of the dice determine the direction and distance you move, so everyone is kind of rambling about in random directions, hoping to get close enough to take a shot at the opponents. The game rules are just a little zine and you provide your own dice and miniatures. Drunk Jousting is the sequel and requires some d6 and d12 dice—there are also optional STL files of some miniatures designed by Jaycee Fairclough, though again you can use your own minis. I don’t play a lot of miniatures games, but these little goofy rulesets feel like an easy entry into the genre.

Pizza Roles from Thomas Mathews

Here’s one that we got a pitch for at GeekDad but it didn’t quite fit into our review schedule—but I thought it looked like a fun hidden role game for families. You’re all trying to order a pizza, and everyone has specific toppings they like and dislike—just like real life! Players will use cards to move toppings on or off the order, and eventually the order is placed and you find out who’s happy and who gets stuck with pineapple. There are even some roles who don’t care about specific toppings but just want everyone else to be happy … or unhappy! And, of course, the winner gets to wear the mustache.

Mappa Mundi from Three Sails Studios

This role-playing game is all about exploration and world-building, with no combat. You play as Chroniclers, out to record the changes after a century-long climate catastrophe, and the game lets players add to the story in a collaborative way with the GM. I don’t have a lot of experience with RPGs but I like the approach this one is taking.

Fame and Fable from Owen Davey

In this card game, you’ll build a team of heroes, gather up equipment, and face off against monsters, hoping to earn the most fame. You’ll have to manage a limited number of actions and look for good combos to make the most of your cards, and you can earn bonus fame by completing contracts. There’s also a dedicated solo mode that uses the flip side of the board—reach the end of the fame track before monsters overrun the land. I did get to try out a prototype of this one earlier this year; the artwork is really stunning and the combos allow players to build up for a huge turn, but it also felt sometimes like a lot was dependent on the luck of the draw, whether the cards you needed for your combos were in the market during your turn. It’s a gorgeous game and I’m curious to see how the final ruleset shakes out.

Twisted Realms Trio from Inside Up Games

This campaign is for a trio of games set in the Twisted Realms—you can back for each game independently or get the whole set. Crits & Tricks is a trick-taking game that uses polyhedral dice, and the different suits change the win condition of the trick. Tug of Roar is a two-player battle game: bid on new recruit cards to build up your army, and then resolve battles in various locations. Thieves of Eldris is a hidden-movement game where you’re manipulating character cards in a grid and trying to steal enough gold without getting caught. The game boxes have a cool design that makes them look like books, and the Kickstarter versions have a lot of deluxe component options too.

Ludocene from Andy Robertson

If you’re a long-time GeekDad reader, you may remember Andy Robertson—he was one of our contributors back in the day, primarily covering videogames, and he’s now editor of the Family Gaming Database, based on his book Taming Gaming. He’s launching an app, Ludocene, that helps match you to videogames you may enjoy. The app is built on recommendations from a panel of experts (including some folks I know!), and you can even drill down to specific experts if you find you really like their tastes in games, plus you can sort by platform and other criteria. The app looks pretty slick—not that I really need to add more unplayed games to my Steam library, right? Next I need Andy to build something like this for tabletop games!

Click through to read all of "Crowdfunding Gaming Roundup" at GeekDad.If you value content from GeekDad, please support us via Patreon or use this link to shop at Amazon. Thanks!

Deploy your worker bees, collect pollen, and build the most glorious hives!

What Is Propolis?

Propolis is a material made by bees, a mixture of beeswax and spit and plant substances, to fill gaps in their hives. Propolis—the primary subject of this post—is a bee-themed worker placement game for 1 to 4 players, ages 10 and up, and takes about 15–30 minutes to play. (According to the box, at least—I’ve found it generally takes a bit longer than that particularly if you have more players, but presumably it will get faster as players are more experienced.) It’s currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, with a pledge level of $ for a copy of the game. (The Kickstarter campaign is for two different titles—you can check out my review of Point Galaxy here.) Propolis also includes elements of area control, tableau building, and engine building—but we’ll get to all that later.

Propolis was designed by Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, and Shawn Stankewich and published by Flatout Games with AEG, with illustrations by Dylan Mangini.

New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.

Propolis Components

Note: My review is based on a prototype copy, so it is subject to change and may not reflect final component quality.

Here’s what comes in the box:

• 4 Player boards
• 60 Structure/Landscape cards
• 12 Starting Structure/Queen’s Palace cards
• 16 Solo Mode cards
• 48 Worker Beeples (12 per player color)
• 24 Resource markers(6 per player in 6 different colors)

Kickstarter backers will also get the mini-expansion included, which adds 4 more starting/palace cards and 12 more structure/landscape cards.

All of the cards are double-sided: the bulk of the cards have structures on one side and landscapes on the other. Structures (seen above) are cute little buildings with names like “Marigold Blacksmith” and “Coneflower Bakery.” Each one has the cost to build it at the bottom (a combination of beeples and pollen), and then what it provides at the top. They can generate points, permanent resources, or provide one-time bonuses like extra beeples or pollen. Structures are labeled with a letter from A to D—the typeface is meant to give it that medieval look, but can be a little harder to read at a distance or if you’re sitting at a weird angle from the market.

The backs of the structures are landscape cards—these are where you’ll send your beeples to gather resources. The hex spaces correspond to the five different types of flowers where you can collect pollen. Green circles (showing a bee) are where you can get more beeples, and the grey square spaces are for trading resources. The areas of the cards are distinguished by color and icon, as well as the background illustrations. One thing that I didn’t see anywhere in the rulebook was names for the five different flowers—the yellow ones look like sunflowers and the purple is lavender, but we weren’t entirely sure what to call the others, so mostly we just referred to them by color name. I think it would add just a little more of the flavor to identify the flowers by name.

The smaller set of cards is starting structures and Queen’s palaces. Starting structures are a little basic hive. Each one shows you some number of starting resources at the bottom of the card, and at the top there’s a letter and also a permanent resource—that gives you a discount any time you want to build something that requires that resource. The starting structures all have the same type of scoring: 2 points for a set of two particular letters. It’s likely that you’ll have at least some overlap with other players for the letters that you want, and it’s even possible for two players to have the exact same requirements (though with other differences in the structures).

The backs of the starting structure cards show Queen’s Palaces. Each player may only build one of these at most, and they are the hardest to build—they require beeples and a number of permanent resources, which means you’ll have to build a lot of other structures first instead of just collecting pollen. They’re worth 3 or 4 points each, but the big bonus is that they are a wild letter—at the end of the game you can decide which letter will give you the biggest benefit.

The worker beeples are very cute, and designed so they can be placed standing up or flat. The resource markers are little wooden hexagons, which slot nicely into the player board cutouts so you can track your various resources. The player boards have tracks for all of your pollen, plus a smaller track in the bottom corner for wild resources.

The whole thing comes in a small box—although the game ends up taking quite a bit of space on the table, it’s primarily cards and so it doesn’t take up a lot of space when packed up. The player boards are the largest components, sized to fit in the same box dimensions as Point Salad (and many of Flatout Games’ other titles).

How to Play Propolis

You can download a draft of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to score the most points by building structures.

Setup

The central area is set up with Queen’s Palace cards, the landscape, and a structure market. Set out a number of Queen’s Palace cards face-up based on the player count, and put the rest away in the box. For the landscape, shuffle the landscape deck and lay out 2 or 3 rows of 4 cards each—the number of rows depends on the player count. Finally, deal out 10 structures face-up to form a market. Set the deck nearby.

Each player gets a player board and a random starting structure, which shows their starting resources, marked on your player board. Everyone takes 9 of their beeples into their personal supply, and puts the other 3 near the landscape cards. The starting structures are numbered at the bottom right—the player with the lowest number goes first, and play goes clockwise from there.

Gameplay

On your turn, you take one of these actions: Deploy, Fortify, Retreat, Construct Structure, or Construct Queen’s Palace.

Deploy: choose an empty landscape card, and place up to 1 beeple per space, and then gain those resources. Hexes provide pollen, green circles give you more beeples from the main supply, and grey spaces let you trade pollen for other pollen. Note that you do not have to fill a card, but you cannot place beeples on a card that already has any beeples on it, even your own.

If you place beeples on the last remaining card in a row, you gain 1 wild resource, and then there will be a check for majority at the end of your turn (explained later).

Fortify: Choose any two of your beeples on the landscape and fortify them, and regain those resources/bonuses.

(Note: the rules say to deploy them standing up, and then lay them down when you fortify, but my gaming group all agreed that it’s easier to place a bunch of bees flat and then only stand up the fortified ones—plus it seems to make more sense visually—so that’s what my photos show.)

Retreat: remove any number of beeples from the landscape and put them back into your personal supply. You may leave any number of your beeples on the landscape.

Construct Structure: Spend the resources to build one of the structures from the market, placing it in front of you, and then refill the market with a new structure. Permanent resources on your existing structures act as a discount, and wild resources may be spent as any color pollen. For instance, in the photo above, the Trillium Shop costs 2 beeples, 3 orange pollen, and 3 pink pollen. I have plenty of beeples, and since my starting structure provides 1 orange pollen, I only need to spend 2 from my supply. I only have 1 pink pollen, but I do have 1 wild pollen as well, so that covers the pink cost. After building this, I now have a permanent wild resource that can be used each time I construct.

Construct Queen’s Palace: Build one of the Queen’s Palace cards from the market. Note that Queen’s Palaces may only be build using permanent resources, not pollen from your supply. Each player may only have one Queen’s Palace.

At the end of your turn, check to see if any of the landscape rows has been filled—that is, there are no completely empty cards. (It’s okay if some of the cards have empty spaces, as long as they aren’t totally empty). If so, then you will check for majority to see who controls the row. Count the number of beeples each player has in that row, with fortified beeples counting as 2. Whoever has the majority will get all of their beeples from that row back to their supply, and can earn 1 wild resource if they weren’t the active player this turn.

Then, remove the right-most empty card and discard it. Slide everything to the right to fill gaps, and refill the row from the deck. It’s possible for there to be a tie for majority—in that case, nobody earns a wild resource and no beeples are removed. The tie may be broken on a future turn if somebody fortifies in that row, or retreats some workers.

In the photo above, the teal player just filled the row on their turn, so they earned 1 wild resource for doing so. They have the majority now (8 to 2) but since they’re the active player, they do not earn another wild resource. They’ll clear all of their beeples from this row. The pink/yellow landscape card at the right will be discarded, and a new landscape card will be refilled on the left side of the row.

Game End

When any player has built 10 structure cards (including their starting structure and Queen’s Palace), finish that round so that all players have had the same number of total turns. Then score!

Some structures have a flat score. Some, including your starting structure, score points for specific sets of letters that you’ve built. Finally, there are structures that will score points based on pairs of resources—these count both permanent resources and pollen left in your supply. (If you have wild resources left over, you may count each one as any single pollen.)

You also score your total remaining resources on your board (not permanent), divided by five.

The player with the highest score wins, with ties going to the player with the most remaining resources, and then the most remaining wild resources.

Why You Should Play Propolis

There’s a part of me that wonders if the initial spark for Propolis was a bit of wordplay: “propolis” as a bee’s construction material, “-opolis” as in cities, worker bees and worker placement. Whatever the origins, the results are a clever blend of mechanics that makes this small game feel like something a bit bigger.

Propolis‘ combination of worker placement to collect resources with area control in the fields is an interesting twist on the genre. The area control kind of sneaks in there—at first, you’re just placing bees to get resources you want, and maybe you fortify because you really want another lavender and there isn’t another free space on the board. But as the landscape starts to fill up, you realize that going in one location may give you resources you want, but will give another player a wild resource and their bees. Another location might not have the resource you want, but you could get a whole pile of bees back into your supply. But is it better to wait it out and see if somebody else might earn you a wild resource?

Fortifying can also be used as a stalling tactic when you’re low on beeples in your supply, because it always feels like something went wrong when you have to retreat, taking a turn just to take some bees back. If you fortify enough times, maybe you can wait out somebody filling up a row where you’ll have majority control.

Understanding how the cards will clear out after majority is also important, because it can let players manipulate the landscape a little bit. You can see by the lengths of the resource tracks on the player boards the relative rarity of the different pollens—there are the most yellow spaces, and the fewest purple. Of course, there’s still luck involved, since some cards will end up getting flipped over as structures, in which case they’ll never return to the landscape rows. In some games, I’ve seen players take up positions simply to help particular cards stick around a little bit longer after majority is checked.

The engine building comes into play with the structures that have permanent resources. They usually aren’t worth as many points, but if you can find a structure that has a letter you already want and it provides a permanent resource, it can pay off, especially getting it early in the game. Wild permanent resources are particularly valuable, of course, but they often get snapped up as soon as they appear in the market if somebody can afford them. And, of course, since you can only buy a Queen’s Palace using permanent resources, you’ll definitely need to plan ahead to get the right ones. That part reminds me a little bit of Splendor, where you could decide how much you want to go for tiles that generate more resources vs. tiles that just generate more points.

Another strategy is to go after the points combos. If your starting card gives you points for C-D sets, then finding another structure that also scores for the same letters will let you double up. Or, maybe you hedge your bets: get another card that scores for A-B sets, and now you’ve covered your bases. There are even a few that will score 4 points for A-B-C-D; of course, with a maximum of 10 structures, that means you can only score that card twice, but 8 points is still a pretty good chunk in this game.

Finally, there’s the resource strategy (though it’s probably not a good standalone strategy). Leftover resources are worth basically 1/5 of a point each, but there are a lot of structures that will give you points for pairs. If you can get a few of those buildings and combine them with some aggressive resource collection and also build a few of the permanent resources that match, that could end up being pretty valuable as well.

The game does end up being pretty quick (though I haven’t gotten close to that 15-minute mark—maybe for a solo game?), considering how much is going on. It feels a little different from a lot of the other Flatout Games titles since it’s a little closer to a traditional Eurogame than the puzzly drafting games that they’re known for, but overall I think it’s a solid game for players who like games about building things.

For more information or to make a pledge, visit the Propolis Kickstarter page!

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Assemble your own galaxy by building solar systems and populating them with planets, moons, and other celestial bodies.

What Is Point Galaxy?

Point Galaxy is a set collection game for 1 to 5 players, ages 10 and up, and takes about 30 minutes to play. It’s currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, with a pledge level of $19 for a copy of the game. Although it’s a followup to Point Salad and Point City, it is not an expansion and you don’t need to be familiar with either of those to enjoy Point Galaxy. (The Kickstarter campaign is for two different titles—you can check out my review of Propolis here.)

Point Galaxy was designed by Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, and Shawn Stankewich and published by Flatout Games with AEG, with illustrations by Dylan Mangini.

New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.

Point Galaxy Components

Note: My review is based on a prototype copy, so it is subject to change and may not reflect final component quality.

Here’s what comes in the box:

• 5 Starting Sun cards
• 5 Player Aid cards
• 140 Planet/Space cards
• 24 Rocket tokens
• Scorepad

Kickstarter backers will also get a mini-expansion included that has 4 more rocket tokens.

The bulk of the game is the cards, which are double-sided. The planet side has a slightly lighter background and always has a planet on it; the space side may have a sun, moon, asteroid, or wormhole, though the bulk of the cards are suns. Planets are numbered from 1 to 7 and have either one or two colors (though there are some grey planets with an X instead of a number), and there are five total colors in the game. The suns and moons are just labeled “sun” and “moon,” but each planet has a unique name, which is kind of fun.

Each of the colors also has a particular pattern associated with it, used in a little icon in the top left corner of the card, which is intended to help for those who have issues with color vision. We did find, however,  that sometimes it was a little confusing: the pattern on the icon indicates color, but the larger illustration of the planet in the center of the card often uses a different pattern—because those appear to be associated with the number. It’s possible that some of this may get changed before the final product, though, so hopefully in the finished game everything will be easily identifiable.

The rocket tokens are small cardboard tokens, and each one has a particular scoring condition on the back—for the most part the iconography is easy to figure out, though there is a page of clarifications in the rulebook that goes over all of them in detail.

How to Play Point Galaxy

You can download a draft of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to score the most points by arranging various celestial bodies in your galaxy.

Setup

Shuffle all of the cards together and remove a number based on the player count. Then divide the rest into three roughly even stacks, space-side-up, and reveal two cards from each stack in columns below the stacks, planet-side-up, forming a market of 6 cards.

Mix up the rocket tokens and draw a number based on the player count. Place these face-up near the card market and return the rest to the box.

Give each player a player aid card—one of them is marked with a starting player icon and that player goes first. Give each player a random starting sun card (marked with an S), which is placed on the table in front of them to start their galaxy.

Gameplay

On your turn, you take two cards from the market one at a time and add them to your galaxy (a tableau area in front of you), without flipping them over. Once collected, cards may never be flipped over to the other side. At the end of your turn, flip cards from the stacks to refill the columns as needed.

Your galaxy will consist of a number of solar systems—each solar system can have at most one sun and one asteroids card, and below that a vertical sequence of planets, moons, and wormholes. Whenever you add cards to a solar system, it must go at the top or bottom of the sequence, never inserted in between cards. Any card except asteroids can be used to start a new solar system.

Here’s a look at the various cards and how they work.

Suns: The sun is placed above the solar system sequence, and will score points for things that are in its solar system. For instance, your starting sun will give you points for each set of two specific colored planets.

Asteroids: Asteroids must be tucked behind a sun, and each sun card can only have one asteroids card. At the end of the game, asteroids will score points for the players who have the most asteroids cards.

Planets: All of the planets in your solar system must be in a sequence that goes from lowest to highest or highest to lowest, so once you’ve placed your second planet in a system, all the other planets you add will need to go in the same direction even if there are other non-planet cards in the sequence. “X” planets can count as any number.

Moons: Moons show either one or two colors on them—they will score if they are placed adjacent to planets of the matching colors. (For the two-color moons, they must be sandwiched between planets of those two different colors.)

Wormholes: Wormholes reset the number sequence, letting you create a second number sequence of planets on the other side of the wormhole.

There are two other features that may appear on cards: rockets and research symbols. Every time you have accumulated 5 rocket icons in your entire galaxy, you get to take one of the rocket tokens, which will score points if you meet the conditions by the end of the game.

Research symbols are the little pennants at the top right of some cards, and they are labeled from A to G. You will get points for collecting different research symbols.

Game End

The game ends when there aren’t enough cards to refill the market. (Note that if one of the stacks runs out, divide the biggest remaining stack in half to make a new stack—the game only ends when there aren’t enough total cards in the stacks.) Everyone will have taken 13 turns.

• Suns score based on the specified sets within their own solar systems.
• Asteroids score points based on who has the most, second most, and third most—in case of ties, you add up the points for the tied places and split them as evenly as possible.
• Each solar system will score between 1 and 12 points based on how many different planet numbers are present in that system. Repeated numbers (possible with wormholes) do not score again.
• Moon cards score their points if they are adjacent to the correct planets.
• Score between 1 and 12 points based on how many different research symbols you’ve collected across your entire galaxy.
• Rocket tokens score based on their specific conditions.

The player with the highest score wins, with ties going to the player with the most total rockets.

Why You Should Play Point Galaxy

Point Galaxy sits in a nice spot between the original Point Salad and its immediate successor Point City, going back to the quick-pick card-drafting but providing more complexity in the set collection and scoring options. One of the things that made Point Salad one of our favorites back in 2019 (aside from the dad joke title) was how snappy it was: on your turn, you took one or two cards and that was mostly it. One side had vegetables, and the other had all of the scoring conditions for the veggies, so you had to figure out the balance between getting scoring opportunities and finding the cards to fulfill those conditions. (Not to mention being careful about conditions that would cost you points!)

Point City was a couple steps up in complexity: the card-drafting was from a larger grid and you had to take cards adjacent to each other, and you had to collect resources (one side of the cards) in order to build buildings (the other side of the cards). Scoring opportunities came from some of the buildings, but particularly by completing the civic buildings to get the scoring tokens. I enjoyed Point City but it felt like a big jump from Point Salad.

Point Galaxy goes back to something more like the original card-drafting (the difference is that you always take two cards no matter where they come from), and the sun cards are a little bit like the original scoring conditions. However, the solar systems mean that you have to organize the cards you collect into groups, which can have various effects on the scoring. The rocket tokens are like the civic tokens from Point City: additional scoring opportunities if you can meet their conditions.

Grouping the cards into solar systems means there are more considerations when you choose cards. Ideally, you want to hit 7 unique numbers in every solar system to maximize the points, but you also want to collect the specific features that match the sun. Plus it doesn’t hurt to have a few moons in there for extra points. Wormholes generally aren’t points on their own, but they help you fill in numbers that you skipped over earlier, and may have other features like rockets or research symbols. I like the fact that the more central numbers tend to have fewer bonuses like rockets, where as the numbers at the end, 1 and 7, will often have more rockets—if you play one of those, then you’ve finished off that end of your number line, so the timing is important.

Each player is mostly playing their own game—you can’t directly interact with another player’s galaxy. However, the asteroids are a race for the most, so it’s important to keep an eye on how many asteroids other players have. And, of course, there’s good ol’ hate-drafting, where you can take cards from the market that you know will help your opponents. As in Point Salad, it’s also possible to keep somebody from getting a particular card by taking a different card from that column, so it flips over. Don’t want your rival to gain an asteroid but you don’t have room for one yourself? Take a planet from that column, and the asteroid will get flipped over at the end of your turn. (Of course, if the next card revealed is also an asteroid, then that’s just bad luck for you.)

Since you can start a solar system with just about any card, you can also gamble a little—create a solar system that’s all green and blue planets, and hope that you’ll find a sun that scores for those colors! There are also suns that will score for research tags, rockets, or wormholes, so you can try to build up a system that scores well for the planets and moons first, and wait for the right sun to show up later. As with Point Salad, there are a bunch of different things in Point Galaxy that score points, and it’s hard to maximize all of them at once, so a large part of the game is figuring out how to make do with what’s available on your turn, knowing that sometimes you may have to go in a different direction if the stars don’t align.

Overall, I’ve really been enjoying Point Galaxy and the way it captures a lot of the feel of Point Salad but ramped up just a bit. If you’re a fan of the original, it’s definitely worth checking out!

For more information or to make a pledge, visit the Point Galaxy Kickstarter page!

Click here to see all our tabletop game reviews.

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Disclosure: GeekDad was loaned a prototype of this game for review purposes.

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You and your friends have decided to open a vineyard together, working to put your love and hard work into quality wines, but be careful: even good friends can sometimes get a case of sour grapes!

What Is Vineyard?

Vineyard: A Winemaking Game is a worker placement game for 1 to 4 players, ages 14 and up, and takes about an hour to play. It’s currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, with a pledge level of $50 for a copy of the game. Although the game is marked 14 and up, I think kids who have some experience with worker placement games may be able to pick up on the game (though of course the game is about winemaking, so it may depend on their interest level in the theme).

Vineyard was designed by Roberta Taylor and published by Pencil First Games, with illustrations by Katherine Waddell.

New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.

Vineyard Components

Note: My review is based on a prototype copy, so it is subject to change and may not reflect final component quality. Some cards were modified and can be seen in photos as hand cut printouts.

Here’s what comes in the box:

• Game board
• 4 Friends standees (+ Cat standee)
• 32 Barrel tiles (in 3 levels)
• Cloth bag
• 50 Grape tokens
• 44 Checkmark tokens
• 4 Player boards
• 4 Player Aid cards
• 4 Sets of Player cards (7 each)
• 120 Hearts (30 per player)
• 52 Star tokens (in 1, 5, and 10 denominations)
• 52 Coin tokens (in 1, 3, and 5 denominations)
• 17 Improved Action cards
• 32 Train cards (in 3 levels)
• 13 Truck cards (in 3 levels)
• 4 Apprentice cards (for Irena the Apprentice expansion)
• 4 Cat Reference cards (for Jasper the Cat expansion)
• 12 Goal cards (for Unique Flavors expansion)
• 24 Solo cards (for Aunt Mabel’s Visit solo mode)

Kickstarter backers will also get the Local News mini-expansion (a small deck of cards) included for free.

Overall the components are pretty nice: the colorful card backs don’t have text on them but do have some different illustrations that give some indication what they’re for (and the rulebook also shows the card backs to help you identify them). The cardboard tokens are fine and also easily identifiable, though it would be nice to have a little more contrast or size difference for the victory point tokens. The checkmark tokens, used to mark upgrades on the player boards, are quite tiny and are also easy to bump around on the sheets, so that’s the one piece that would be nice to have some sort of component upgrade.

The standees are plastic with clear bases, and Katherine Waddell’s illustration style looks like something out of a picture book. They look so happy and excited to start a business together. (Little do they know how heated things are going to get!)

That is one comment I had from one of my players, though: the artwork for the game and the story it tells may give you the impression that this is a friendly, cozy game, but—depending on your gaming group—it can also be a very cutthroat experience. I’ve played with one group that tended to be a little more chill and relaxed, and with another group that I’ve learned should probably never run a vineyard with each other.

The cloth bag for the grape tokens is small, but has a flat bottom so that it can stand up and it opens up enough that it’s easy to reach in and grab some tokens.

How to Play Vineyard

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to score the most stars by making sure that your love is included in the wine that eventually gets loaded onto the trucks.

Setup

Set up the main board. Make supplies of the star tokens, coins, and checkmarks.

Shuffle each of the train decks separately, and fill the train spaces with cards from the first level.

Put the grape tokens in the bag and mix them up—randomly draw nine to fill the vineyard spaces, placing them immature side up.

Shuffle each of the stacks of barrel tiles separately and place them to the side. Draw 3 barrels to place in the center of the board, and then one more to place in the leftmost space in the cellar.

Place all four friends on the Paperwork spot. Shuffle the improved action cards and make a market of 4 face-up cards next to the board.

Randomly draw one truck from each level and place them near the Load Wine action. Turn the Level 1 truck face-up.

Each player starts with a random player board and takes the hearts and basic action cards of their color. Everyone places one heart on the barrel in the cellar. Randomly choose a starting player and give coins based on player order (2 coins for the first 2 players, and 3 coins for the rest).

Gameplay

On your turn, you play an action card below your player board and then send the friend to do the corresponding action. The rule is that you must play cards to the friends evenly, so you can’t play a second card on a friend until all of them have been used. The friend also must move on the board, so if Greta is already at the Make Wine spot, then you cannot use her to Make Wine on this turn. The exception to these rules is Paperwork—you may play your second card to anyone if it’s Paperwork, and you may use a character who is already at the Paperwork space to do Paperwork.

Most of the actions on the board have to do with the wine production, which follows this process: Cultivate, Harvest, Make Wine, Age Wine, Load. The final location near the top of the board is Greet.

Some locations have a specific number of spaces (the small ovals) and you may only move a friend there if there is space. Others have a large oval (like Paperwork) and any number of friends can be there simultaneously.

When you Greet, you choose one of the train cards, follow its instructions, and discard it. Train cards are then moved to the right to fill in empty spaces and refilled at the end.

Blue cards are passenger trains and usually give you money based on particular conditions. Red cars are freight trains and give you an immediate action to perform.

Now, let’s get to producing wine!

Cultivate lets you grow the grapes in the field. First, you may do a little bit of manipulation to move grape tokens around, but then you choose either a row or column and flip those grapes to their mature side (if they aren’t already). Grapes come in red, white, and purple, with 1 bunch on the immature side and 2 bunches on the mature side. There are also some tokens that show a sprout on the immature side, and a wild (rainbow) bunch on the mature side.

After cultivating, you add 2 hearts to two of the tokens in the row/column you chose. Each token may only have 1 heart on it.

Harvest grapes to put them into the crush bins. Choose one grape type in the field and collect all of the tokens in one contiguous group (including wild grapes) and move all of them together into one of the three crush bins. Add 1 heart to the bin if you moved up to 3 grapes, and add 2 hearts to the bin if you moved at least 4 grapes. Each bin may have any number of heart tokens on it. (Then refill the field.)

Now it’s time to Make Wine. Choose one of the three available barrels, which show what types of grapes are needed to make it. Choose any of the three crush bins and select grapes to fulfill the requirements, discarding the grape tokens to the side of the board. If there are hearts on those grapes, move them to the barrel. Then, move 1 heart from each player present on the crush bin onto the barrel, and also add 1 of your own hearts from the supply to the barrel. Move the barrel to the leftmost room of the cellar, and refill the barrel tile from the supply.

Some barrels have stars on them—if you make one of these wines, you immediately take that many stars from the supply.

Note that when you Make Wine, you may use any crush bin for any barrel, but you may only take grapes from a single crush bin and cannot combine from multiple bins. Any grapes that weren’t used for the wine remain in the crush bin.

When you Age Wine, you move all of the barrels in the cellar one room to the right (except for the ones in the rightmost room, which don’t move). Each room can hold any number of barrels. Add 1 heart to one of the barrels that was moved, and if you moved at least 4 barrels, add another heart to any barrel that was moved.

Finally, when the wine has been aged enough, it’s time to Load. Choose any barrel from the rightmost room in the cellar and move it off the board next to the current truck card. If the truck isn’t full yet (indicated by the number of barrel icons on the card), then you may load a second barrel.

When the truck is full, then it is immediately scored:

First, each barrel is worth 1 star for every player who has at least 1 heart on it.

Then, the truck card indicates if anyone can earn bonus stars. For instance, the truck shown above will give a bonus point for each barrel that has at least one of your hearts on it. Some trucks will score based on who has the most of something.

Eventually you may run out of other action cards that you can play, in which case you go back to the office and do some Paperwork. First, you get to collect all of your action cards from your player board and earn 1 coin for each card you picked up (including Paperwork). Then, you may spend coins for upgrades, improving your actions or upgrading your abilities.

For 5 coins, you can get an improved action card from the market: these may have different combinations of basic actions, or give you a stronger version of a basic action. When you buy an improved action, you must remove one of your cards that includes the same action icon on it—that card is now out of the game, so you always have 7 cards to work with.

Your player board shows the four friends, each paired with a different action. Below each of these actions is 3 abilities (and the top left ability is already checked). You may spend money to upgrade these abilities, from top to bottom (but you can upgrade whichever character you want). When you take an action using the matching friend, you also get all of the corresponding abilities that you have marked.

Game End

The game ends after the third truck has been loaded and scored. In addition to the stars you’ve collected during the game, you score 1 point for every 3 hearts still remaining on the board, and 1 point for every 3 coins you have left.

The player with the most stars wins, with ties going to the player with the most hearts on the board.

Game Variants

The game includes a couple of built-in expansion modules that you can mix and match.

Jasper the Cat moves around the vineyard—if he’s present at a location when you use the action, you get Jasper’s bonus ability, but each round Jasper might move based on a random card draw.

Unique Flavors gives everyone 3 unique goals at the start of the game—these are kept secret from other players. You may only score one of your three goals, and there are some that score when a condition is met and some that can be scored at the end of the game.

Irena the Apprentice can be used in either multiplayer or solo mode. You may hire Irena for 3 coins when you do Paperwork, and she is an extra action card that goes in your hand. You play Irena together with another card, and she’ll either add an extra heart (for actions that add hearts) or return the other action card to your hand, leaving Irena on your player board—but then she blocks any other cards from being played there until you do Paperwork and retrieve all your cards again.

Finally, if you want to play Vineyard solo, you use the Aunt Mabel’s Visit cards. Aunt Mable will be a competitor, playing cards that move friends around the board to take modified versions of the actions. Your goal is to score more points than Aunt Mabel.

Why You Should Play Vineyard

In most worker placement games, each player has their own workers, and a lot of the game is about jockeying for a limited number of positions on the board to take actions or get resources. Eventually you run out of workers and retrieve them, opening up those spaces for everyone to use.

Vineyard takes a different approach: there are still limited spaces for most of the actions, but instead of individual workers for each player, there are just four workers controlled by all of the players. Instead of juggling a limited number of workers, you are juggling a limited number of actions (according to the cards you have left in your hand), and you’re restricted by needing to evenly distribute tasks to the four friends, and also by the fact that the friend must move to a new space to take an action.

But not all workers and actions are created equal: everyone has a different combination of friends and actions on their player boards. You might get a bonus every time you send Greta to Harvest, while I prefer to use Greta to Age Wine. As players upgrade these abilities, they become more and more invested in using those particular friends to do those specific actions … or to block them.

For instance, in one game one player started the game with Joe with a bonus for Greet, so he wanted to do that whenever he could because it could give him extra stars. If somebody used Joe for a different action, we all knew that player would send Joe back to Greet as soon as he had the chance. (There was a lot of Paperwork involved.) Sometimes we’d try to take up the Greet spot to prevent Joe from going. Sometimes we avoided using Joe as long as possible or tried to time it so that the player’s Greet card wasn’t available yet. But by the end of the game, Joe had probably spent more time just standing out there waving at trains while the other three friends did the actual work of, you know, making wine.

That was with the group that was more cutthroat, and it’s an example of how intense the game can get. We did manage to make wine and load it onto the trucks, but there were definitely a lot of sour grapes involved! One player would work hard at cultivating grapes and put a bunch of love into some grapes, and the next player would intentionally harvest something else, and then a third would crush grapes but avoid using that one bin that somebody had set up. Thematically, it was hilarious—four friends all trying to make sure that their love and hard work ended up in the final wines, yet each one also trying to leave out as much of everyone else’s love as possible.

Of course, you can also be a bit more friendly to each other, and part of the asymmetry of the player boards is intended to encourage that. Since I get a bonus when Joe goes to Harvest, I’m more inclined to move him, which lets somebody else send him to the actions that they prefer for Joe, and so on. It depends on whether your group is more interested in maximizing their own actions or trying to block somebody else’s. Upgrading the character abilities is also fun for players who like tech trees in games. Ooooh, I can age wine faster now? And load a barrel right away? And add a heart to it?

The actions themselves are mostly pretty easy to understand, which is nice. It does take a little bit of explanation at the start, talking through the process of making wine, but each individual action is generally pretty quick. Plus, just about everything you do will add some hearts to the board, and if you manage to spread your hearts around the various areas of the board, there’s a better chance they’ll wind up in the finished product somehow.

I also really like the way the improved actions work—it doesn’t increase your total number of cards, but gives you cards that have more flexibility. Several of the cards let you do one action, and then do the followup action, like Cultivate then Harvest. Those can be a really good one-two punch that ensures that the hearts you add from the first action get passed through to the next step in the production. There are a couple cards that are a Wild action, which is particularly handy if you want to repeat an action without having to do Paperwork.

The truck cards are like the game’s timer—as soon as each one is loaded up, it triggers the end of that level and you bring in the next level of train cars, wine barrels, and the next truck. Although you get one star for each barrel loaded that has at least one of your stars in it, the trucks also award bonus points if you meet their conditions, so it’s important to know what you’re going for. Sometimes it means trying to get a bunch of hearts into the same barrel, and sometimes you want to spread them out as evenly as possible.

All in all, the shared workers structure of Vineyard makes for a really great system that changed up the way I needed to think about available workers and spaces. It’s an interesting mix of collaboration and competition—it’s hard to make the wine from start to finish on your own, but each step that you’re personally involved in gives you a little more control over what makes it into the finished product. Of course, you can always run out to the train station to greet some more customers for a few bucks—and potentially score some points if you’ve upgraded your friend’s Greet ability!

If you like worker placement games and want to try one with an interesting twist, or if you just enjoy games about making wine, Vineyard might be to your tastes. For more information or to make a pledge, visit the Vineyard Kickstarter page!

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The highly-anticipated Monster Manual (2024) is a Core Rule update for Dungeons and Dragons, and it’s about to hit the shelves (Feb 18, 2025). New, reworked, and re-imagined creatures grace this monstrous tome with 363 pages of monsters, but there is one critical failure in this glam-up — the ability to play bird-themed druids effectively. Read on to see how this plays out, and how you can homebrew quick solutions to help your bird druid come to life.

The First Problem: Direct Nerf

The primary problem with the Monster Manual (2024) for druids is the lack of high-CR (Challenge Rating) beasts with flight speed, including the removal of CR 1 flying beasts. Circle of the Moon druids will feel this hardest, as they can Wildshape into Beasts up to CR 6, but even regular druids have lost access to crucial CR 1 Beasts with flight speed. Currently, the highest CR beast with a flight speed in the new rules is the Giant Wasp with a CR of 1/2. This is a direct downgrade, as the 2014 rules included the Giant Eagle, Giant Owl, and Giant Vulture which have each changed classification, and are no longer Beasts. Giant Owls join the Giant Eagle in the Celestial category, while Giant Vultures are now categorized as Monstrosities.

The full list of re-categorized flying animals (formerly beasts) is as follows (listed by CR order):

• Flying Snake (Monstrosity)
• Stirge (Monstrosity)
• Giant Owl (Celestial)
• Giant Eagle (Celestial)
• Giant Vulture (Monstrosity)

The Second Problem: No New Flying Beasts

With the updated rules allowing druids to Wildshape into creatures with a swim speed as soon as they gain that feature, many players have speculated that the Monster Manual would include new options for flying Druids to make that progression feel more impactful. Unfortunately, there are no new flying beasts to use, meaning players are soft-capped at a CR of 1/2 for flying creatures in the core rules. Even if you expand the search to other resources, there are not any CR 4+ Beasts in the greater published collections to date, meaning players can’t just rely on older publications to fill the gap.

The Third Problem: DM Permission

The last problem revolves around the new Core Rules’ position that DMs have final say over what other sources a player can draw from. This means that the two other options from older resources are shaky at best. This includes the CR 1 Giant Swan from The Wild Beyond the Witchlight and the CR 2 Quetzalcoatlus from Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse. If DMs decline to allow their druids access to these forms, or if the player doesn’t own these books, they continue to be limited by the Monster Manual‘s changes.

The First Solution: Old Statblocks

Players who already have access to the 2014 rules can continue to use the 2014 statblocks for beasts such as the Giant Eagle, Owl and Vulture. This is a fairly significant deviation from the new tuning, however, as CR 1 creatures saw some major reworkings. Iconic traits such as Keen Senses are removed and replaced with features like resistances and spellcasting, and the attacks of these creatures are greatly simplified for ease of use in the 2024 version. But they remain Beasts, have a CR of 1, and are still perfectly serviceable.

The Second Solution: Homebrew

There are a number of ways to approach homebrewing flying beasts for druids to use. Players may want to keep forms they’ve been used to using, or may want more variety, so your strategy will depend on your group.

1. Re-designate some flying creatures as beasts using unaltered 2024 statblocks. Celestials and Monstrosities are likely candidates.
2. Add flying speeds to existing statblocks, such as changing Giant Scorpion to “Winged Scorpion”.
3. Rule that Circle of the Moon players can magically have a flight speed while Wildshaped after a certain level.

2024 Beasts to Grant Flying

The following list is creatures which lend themselves well to both Wildshape and beast-flavored fantasy in your world, regardless of their designation in the Monster Manual (2024). Granting these creatures a flight speed is unlikely to wreck your game, and can create more diversity and satisfaction at your table. Rename them to something thematic and move on. For example, a Lion with a flight speed might be re-named a “Giant Tressym”, and a Giant Constrictor Snake might be a “Giant Winged Serpent”.

CR 1:

• Brown Bear (Appendix A p. 350)
• Lion (Appendix A p. 364)
• Tiger (Appendix A p. 371)

CR 2:

• Giant Boar (Appendix A p. 355)
• Giant Constrictor Snake (Appendix A p. 355)
• Polar Bear (Appendix A p. 367)

CR 3:

• Giant Scorpion (Appendix A p. 359)
• Ankylosaurus (Appendix A p. 348)

CR 4: 

• Elephant (Appendix A p. 353)

CR 5:

• Giant Crocodile (Appendix A p. 356)

CR 6:

• Mammoth (Appendix A p. 365)

2024 Creatures to Designate as Beasts

The following list details creatures who can easily be designated as Beasts without breaking your game. Note that any creature with Spellcasting is not included on this list, as its CR includes that ability and players shouldn’t be able to endlessly cast spells they don’t have prepared in Wildshape. Note, this will only get you a few new options, as there are very few suitable creatures with a fly speed in any official 5e content.

CR 1:

• Giant Vulture (Appendix A p. 361)
• Hippogriff (p. 169)

CR 2:

• Griffon (p. 159)
• Peryton (p. 238)

CR 3:

• Manticore (p. 202)

CR 4+:

No suitable candidates in Core or Expanded Rules.

Suggestions and Best Practices

As with all parts of playing a game, everyone is at the table to have fun. No matter how you choose to flesh out a bird-druid, make sure the DM, the character’s player, and anyone else at the table is having fun. Perhaps the simplest way to move forward is to take the CR 1-3 Monstrosities and Celestials above and designate them as learnable Wildshape options. This doesn’t expand the character’s power too far, and each of their statblocks is included in the Monster Manual (2024), meaning they’ll be easy enough to access without material modification. Whenever possible, it’s best to reduce chances of confusion, so minimally-modified statblocks will often be the best option. Changing a creature type is significantly less likely to break game balance than adding and removing abilities to force something to work.

Hope for the Future

The Dungeons and Dragons team is doubling down on their commitment to make the game as fun as possible for everyone, and have been very transparent that they’ve done their best to ensure this updated material is as backwards-compatible as possible, but that there would be some hiccoughs. My hope is that this problem will be addressed directly by the developers, so players who engage in drop-in games and Adventurer’s League play can play their favorite class fantasy without depending on generous interpretations by the DMs they play with. Best case scenario, I am hoping they will release some official statblocks for beasts to fill in the gaps as free material, so druids won’t need to collect disparate adventures, guides, and collections in order to have a full suite of tools to use.

TL;DR

In the latest update to Dungeons and Dragons, the Monster Manual (2024) has re-designated several crucial birds from the Beast category into other categories. Because of this, the current highest-rated bird available for Wildshape is is the Giant Wasp with a Challenge Rating of 1/2. Since an entire subclass (Druid’s Circle of the Moon) relies on the Beast category creatures to define its iconic powers, this is a direct nerf to druids who prefer bird Wildshapes at any level of play. The suggestions above can help you homebrew some solutions, but we will continue to hope that the developers take action to remedy this soon.

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Bosa, a small town on the coast of Sardinia, is the setting for this engine-building card game in which players draft cards and compete to build the most successful townscape. 

What Is Bosa?

Bosa is a game for 2-5 players, ages 8 and up, and takes about 45 minutes to play. It’s currently available at Barnes & Noble and other retailers for $24.95.

Bosa was designed by Prospero Hall and published by Funko. 

Bosa Components

Inside the box, you’ll find: 

• Cardboard castle board
• 5 cardboard player boards
• 5 wooden score markers
• 15 wooden resource trackers
• 96 building cards
• 20 goal cards
• 70 cardboard coins
• Cardboard coin tray
• 10 cardboad 100 point tokens
• First player token
• 2 envelopes
• Rulebook

All of the components are extremely high quality and gorgeously colorful.

The castle board, used for scoring, is mostly just a grid, 1-100, although it also has a glossary of icons and a reminder of the end-of-season patronage amounts.

The player boards are dual-layer, with indented tracks to hold the resource tokens. This is a very nice added touch, as it nicely holds the token in place while still making them easy to move as needed. The right edge of the baord is designed to provide a template for lining up the buildings, and the whole thing is sized to avoid any confusion as to the number of rows you can have. There’s an icon in the bottom left showing each player’s symbol, but otherwise all of the boards are identical.

The wooden score markers are simply small cutouts of the five player symbols: a camera, a seashell, a sun, a Vespa, and a paint palette. It’s a small thing, but I like that the designers skipped the normal color coding of player pieces and chose thematic symbols instead. The score markers are nicely sized, too–they aren’t so small that they’re impossible to pick up, but they are small enough to fit nicely on the score track on the castle board.

The resource trackers are likewise nicely designed wood pieces. There are five set of three trackers: one fish, one textile, and one pottery for each of the five potential players. The pieces are again nicely sized to fix just right in the tracks on the player boards, being both large enough to not twist in the tracks, while being small enough to fit nicely and only cover a single number at a time, thus elimnating potential confusion.

The building cards are perfect in their simplicity. There are actually four decks of cards: a deck of starting cards, and then a deck for each of the three seasons. The backs clearly denote which deck a card is in, while the front uses a set of simple icons to show what the card does. This section is perfectly sized to allow it to remain visible as you build down, while the rest of the card has nice artwork that makes your townscape seem complete when while you’re still building. 

The goal cards are a set of sqaure cards that show show a number of points and a sentence describing what you need to do to earn the points. I like that they used words here instead of icons; while it’s easy to look up icons, doing so would often accidentally reveal the goal to other players. 

The cardboard coin tray is an ingeniously designed tray that hold together during play and then quickly comes apart to be stored flat. 

The cardboard coins and 100 point tokens are simple, which is why they work so well. Because the points are not secret, the denominations are sized differently, making them easy to tally at a glance.

The envelopes are another really nice touch. The game’s only use of plastic is the coating on the cards. Otherwise, everything is wood or paper. While a lot of games are trying to limit plastic, many overlook storage, meaning that the game might not have plastic components but then require owners to pull out plastic bags to store the game. By providing these envelopes, Funko has remembered that we don’t keep games out on the table permenately, and has provided a non-plastic way to store the components. So, kudos for that.

I also want to mention that the box for the game is nicely sized as well. Everything fits back into the box without having to be a master Tetris player, and yet there’s not a lot of space left over–and thus, not a lot of wasted packaging materials. There’s a cardboard insert that holds everything in place, even when the game is stored vertically.

How to Play Bosa

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is end up with the most points at the end of three seasons. Points are earned directly from cards, by paying for patronage from the castle at the end of each round, and by completing goals. 

Setup

Place the castle board in the middle of the table. All players select a symbol and take the corresponding player board and their matching score marker on the zero space on the castle board.

The cards are separated into the four decks, with each shuffled individually. Then, a number of cards are removed from each season based on the player count: for 2 players, 17 cards are removed; for 3, 12 cards; for 4, 7 cards; and for five, 2 cards. Note that removing cards not only puts exactly the right number of cards in the deck for each season, it also means that there always cards not being used (even with all 5 players), so card counting is essentially impossible. 

Once the decks are shuffled and cards removed, the top four cards from deck one are revealed and placed under the castle board. 

Players take one set of resource tokens and place them on the “1” space on each track on their player board. Players each take a random start card and place it next to their player board, aligned with the top right.

You can choose to play without the goal cards, but once you’re familiar with the game they add extra strategy choices. If used, the deck is shuffled and each player is given 4 of them that they will keep. At the end of the game, however, only 2 cards may be scored.

Assemble the coin holder. Give each player 3 coins, then place the rest of the coins in the holder. 

The player who last visited an island goes first.

Gameplay

On your turn, you will perform three steps.

First, you will take one of the face-up building cards. You can always take any card you wish. 

Second, you will place the card. Each card must be placed immediately adjacent to a card that is already on the board. Players are completing a 4×4 grid. A card placed directly to the right of an exsiting card is simply placed next to it. A card placed below an extisting card should overlap so that only the top half of the previously-placed card is visible. You must build a 4×4 grid, so you cannot expand to a fifth row or column. You also cannot leave gaps: each card must be placed as high on the column and as far to the left on the row as possible. 

Third, you will activate the actions on the row or column where you placed the card. You can always choose whether to activate the row or the column, but you can never do both. All actions are activated top to bottom, or left to right, and while you can choose to skip a card and not activate it, cards must be activated in order. Therefore, the card you placed this turn will always be last. Actions that cannot be performed are simply skipped. 

After you activate the actions, you flip over a new card to refill those available, and the next player takes their turn. This continues until the row cannot be refilled, at which point the season ends. 

The activation phase described above is the core of the game. As you place cards, you want to place them where the actions from the prior cards will have the most effect.

In general, cards do one or more of the following:

• Allow you to gain one or more resources, which you do by sliding the corresponding resource counter up on your player board.
• Allow you to gain one or more coins, which you do by simply taking the coins from the tray, making change as needed.
• Spend coins to gain resources, which you do by returning the coins to the tray and then sliding the resource marker up.
• Spend resources for points, which you do by sliding the resource marker down and then moving your scoring marker.
• Spend resources to gain both points and coins.
• Activate a card somewhere else on our townscape.

Each card is in one of six colors. While the colors don’t matter for the placement rules, many of the cards are able to generate coins or resources based on how many of a particular color you have in your townscape. 

Placement of the cards is critical, as no card may be moved after being placed. You have to carefully consider how the cards will activate, and make sure you have sufficient coins or resources before needing to activate a card that spends those. While it is possible to skip activating any card, each card will at most be activated 7 or 8 times, so you don’t want to waste those chances.

End of a Season

Once the row of available cards cannot be filled, the season ends. Each player will take exactly 5 turns each season, and the person to the left of the starting player will always go last. Once the season is over, all players must pay money towards the patronage at the castle. There is a chart on the castle board for this. Players essentially just tally up their available coins and pay the most they can, getting points in return. Any left over coins are retained for the next round. If a player has fewer than the minimum coins (4), they simply get no extra points.

Then, the remaining cards from the season are returned to the box. The top four cards from the next season are drawn. The player who has the least number of points becomes the starting player for the next round. If there is a tie, the player closest to the prior round’s starting player, working clockwise, goes first.

Game End

The game ends after the third season. Players pay for patronage and score those points one last time. Players also score one point for each resource they have left. They score nothing for remaining coins.

If goal cards were used, players now reveal all four of their goal cards, choose two and score them.

Players can take a 100 point token if they loop around the score board.

The player with the most points wins. If there’s a tie, the player with the most remaining coins win. If there’s still a tie, players share the victory.

Bosa is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play Bosa

Bosa is a deceptively simple game: it takes only a few minutes to set up and explain, and games are less than a hour. And yet, buring inside the game are multiple levels of deeper strategy.

As with any engine building game, placement of each card is the key to success. The first time I played, I thought I needed to be scoring early, so I focused on grabbing cards that gave me points. But by the second season, I realized my mistake: as my townscape grew, I was consistently short on resources, and so I was unable to continue to benefit from those point-scoring cards, as I often had to try to activate them before I had the coins or resources to do so.

The distribution of the cards in the decks is interesting as well, but it’s build around the obvious strategy that early on, you want cards that generate coins and resources, and later on, ones that use those. So, the deck for the first season is mostly geared towards generation, the second is more balanced, and the third, primarily towards spending resources and coins. 

Thanks to my initial strategic blunder, I did lose the first game, but interestingly, I wasn’t blown out. And that speaks to another nice point in the design: the game is very well balanced. There’s an element of luck, of course, in having the card you need available to you is of course an important factor. 

The colors of the cards adds yet another interesting element. As stated above, the colors don’t directly matter much in the game, but some cards allow you to gain a number of coins or resources based on the total number of cards of that color in your overall townscape. So, there are times when it might benefit you to take a slightly less advantageous card because it’s the right color to be a multiplier for another card. 

The game does not have a lot of player interaction–there’s no way to directly influence or change another player’s townscape–but of course picking up a card this turn to deny it to the next player in line is going to be a factor on most turns, particularly in the third season when a lot of really powerful cards are coming out. But, is it really worth taking that card if you can’t really use it, or do you let your opponent have it, because another card that is available is going to help you more? These are the kinds of calls you’ll be making constantly throughout the game.

While the theme is somewhat secondary to the game, the resources chosen are those that the actual town is known for, but the game does have a somewhat serene feel to it, nicely evoking what I think of when I think about a small European beach town.

While we at GeekDad have not adopted an official policy on the materials used in making a game, it is something that we are starting to pay attention to, and the obvious thought and care that when into the components in Bosa is worth calling out. As I noted early, the only plastic in the game is the coating on the cards. Everything else is either wood or plastic. The biggest component is the castle board, but rather than having it be a single piece and thus mandating a bigger box, it is folded into fourths to allow for the smaller overall packaging. And the paper envelopes to store the components is a great touch as well, something that I hope Funko adopts for others of it games.

Overall, Bosa is a great game that’s easy to learn but contains lots of deep strategy, and it’s intentionally small environment footprint and low cost means that you can add it to your collection not only as a game you’ll enjoy and are likely to bring out a bunch, but also one that you can buy with minimal guilt. 

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Talisman: The Magical Quest Game has been around since 1983 with new versions about every decade. The summer of 2024, Talisman: The Magical Quest Game, 5th Edition was released. I previously reviewed this great game. Now an expansion has been released. Rather than just adding more hero characters, spells, and adventures, Talisman Alliances: Fate Beckons also offers for the first time a new way to play the game: cooperatively. No longer do players try to defeat each other. Instead, they must now work together to complete five trials and win the game. 

What Is Talisman Alliances: Fate Beckons?

Talisman Alliances: Fate Beckons is a cooperative expansion for Talisman: The Magical Quest Game, 5th Edition (this game is required to play the expansion) for 2-6 players, ages 12 and up, and takes about 90-120 minutes to play. Players take on roles of different adventurers to explore a magical land, encountering creatures and treasures along the way, working together to achieve their ultimate victory. It’s currently available from your friendly local game store as well as online retailers such as Amazon with a suggested retail price of $33.99 for a copy of the game.

Talisman Alliances: Fate Beckons was designed by Dave Chalker and  Craig Van Ness and published by Avalon Hill.

Talisman Alliances: Fate Beckons Components

Here is what you get in the box:

• 30 Starting game cards
• 1 Doom Tracker
• 1 Doom Tracker token
• 1 Rulebook
• 24 Double-sided strength/craft tokens
• 5 Boxes with 5 figures
• 4 Envelopes with 20 game cards

When setting up the game of Talisman Alliances: Fate Beckons, you remove some of the original spell and adventure cards from their respective decks and add some of the new starting game cards. This consist of 11 new Spell cards. Many of these new cards are for working with other players. There are also 19 new Adventure cards. 16 of these are villain characters which you add into the Adventure deck. 

The doom tracker represents how the world around you becomes more dangerous as the game progresses. When a hero character loses their last life or the game prompts you, such as by a Trial Event, advance the doom token along the doom track. The track adds additional strength and craft to villain character cards, making them deadlier. 

The strength and craft tokens are placed on active villain cards to represent the bonus they receive as the result of the doom tracker.  

The five boxes each contain a figure. Each box can be opened only after you complete one of the five trials. 

Each of the four envelopes are only opened when you complete one of the first four trials. They contain cards that will be added to the game. 

How to Play Talisman Alliances: Fate Beckons

The Goal

The goal of the game is overcome all five trials by defeating the adversary of each trial. 

Setup

When playing Talisman Alliances: Fate Beckons, you setup the game similarly to the base game with a few exceptions. You will remove 10 spell cards listed in the game manual and 26 adventure cards. Then add the 11 spell cards from the expansion along with the 3 adventure cards and then 2-4 villain character adventure cards depending on the number of players. Two talisman cards and the villain cards are then shuffled into the adventure deck. Place the doom tracker next to the gameboard with the doom token on the 0 space. After players have chosen their hero characters, take the gold purchase deck from the base game and shuffle it. Draw a number of these cards equal to the number of players and divide them among yourselves however you wish. Finally, place the trial card on the board with the sealed side face up. 

Gameplay

Gameplay is similar to Talisman: The Magical Quest Game, 5th Edition, with a few exceptions. Fate is shared rather than individual. Since you can only use one fate token per turn, if one player uses a fate token, no others may use one during that same turn. If there are more than one hero character on a space, they can combine their strength or craft to try to defeat an enemy.

Trial events take place whenever you draw or discard a villain character card. The trial card explains what to do when this occurs. Villain cards, when revealed, are placed in the starting space listed on their card. Villains may move as a result of a trial event. When characters encounter a villain, they must attack the villain. The strength of the villain is listed on their card and the strength/craft token added to the card by the doom tracker is added to their values. If defeated by a villain, each hero character involved in the fight loses a life. If a villain loses a fight, they lose one life. Some have more than one life. When a villain loses its last life, the card can be taken as a trophy. Any tokens on the card are returned to the pile and do not add to the value of it as a trophy for trading for increased strength or craft for a player character .

In order to advance to the inner region, you must unseal the Portal of Power. To do this, you must find two Talismans and then bury them under different Places of Power which are the four corner spaces in the outer region–Tavern, Village, City, and Chapel. To do this, place a talisman card under the board at that space, once two Talisman are buried at these locations, then flip the trial card to the unsealed side and follow the directions. This will reveal the adversary that the players must defeat in order to win the game. 

Game End

The game ends when you defeat the adversary of the current trial. 

Why You Should Play Talisman Alliances: Fate Beckons

Talisman Alliances: Fate Beckons really adds a new dimension to playing Talisman: The Magical Quest Game, 5th Edition. I have always enjoyed playing cooperative games, therefore, it was fun to play a game that has always been competitive in a new way. Since the players work together, this is a great way to introduce new players to the game and help them understand the concepts since that are pretty much the same as the original game with a few exceptions. This expansion also has the feel of a legacy game in that as you complete the first trial, you get to open an envelope and a box. You now have a new hero character you can play as in addition to a new trial card and some additional new cards. By the time you finish the five trials, you now have five additional hero characters you can add to the regular game along with new adventure cards. The rulebook also contains instructions on how to reset the expansion by returning components to boxes and envelopes so you can play the five trials again.

In previous editions of  Talisman: The Magical Quest Game, players received only new characters and cards. I really like how Avalon Hill not only added these, but a new way to play cooperatively. This really adds more to the game than just new choices. This is only the first expansion for Talisman: The Magical Quest Game, 5th Edition, and if it is like the other editions, there will be many more expansions. I hope they do something similar and create a mini campaign where players unlock new hero characters, spells, and adventures. If you already have a copy of Talisman: The Magical Quest Game, 5th Edition, then I highly recommend getting Talisman Alliances: Fate Beckons. You will not be disappointed. However, if you have not played this game yet, start of with the base game and then get this expansion. 

For more information, visit the Talisman Alliances: Fate Beckons page!

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Sam and Frodo desperately race to destroy the One Ring at Mount Doom, relentlessly pursued by the Nazgûl. Will you aid the Fellowship in defending Middle-Earth, or seek to conquer it as the forces of Sauron?

What Is The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth?

The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth is a tableau building, area majority, and set collection game for 2 players, ages 10 and up, and takes about 30 minutes to play. The game reimplements 7 Wonders Duel, but is far from a simple reskin of that earlier title. It’s available to purchase from the Repos Production store on Amazon or from your local game store, and retails for $34.99.

The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth was designed by Antoine Bauza and Bruno Cathala, and published by Repos Production, with illustrations by Vincent Dutrait.

The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth Components

Here’s what comes in the box:

• 69 cards
• 44 pawns
• 18 tokens
• 30 coins
• 7 tiles
• 2 boards
• 2 transparent elements
• 1 helpsheet
• 1 Rulebook

The main game board is a fairly compact map of Middle-earth. There are three win conditions in the game, and one of them is to have at least 1 Unit or Fortress in each of the 7 regions. 

The forces of the Fellowship have gold Units and Fortresses, while the forces of Sauron are grey. The wooden pieces are quite small but easy to handle, and have some lovely screen printing on both sides to add to the visual impact.

There are 7 Landmark tiles, which can be acquired through gameplay. These Landmarks match the regions on the game board, and each one allows for the placement of a Fortress at that particular region as well as various other one-time effects.

Another victory condition in the game is for either Frodo and Sam to reach Mount Doom (if you’re the Fellowship player), or for the Nazgûl to catch up to the pair if you’re playing Sauron’s forces. There is a Quest of the Ring track made out of 4 pieces: Two interlocking cardboard tiles, an acrylic overlay with Sam and Frodo printed on it, and a separate acrylic tracker with the Nazgûl. As Sam and Frodo progress towards Mount Doom, you slide the overlay along the cardboard tiles, and as the Nazgûl moves towards Sam and Frodo, you slide the acrylic tracker along the overlay.

The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth is played over 3 rounds, known here as Chapters. Each chapter has its own deck of cards.

It’s worth discussing for a moment how beautiful this game is. Vincent Dutrait is one of my favorite board game artists, and the illustrations here are a perfect blend of classical and modern design. If he was to do the artwork for an illustrated The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I would happily have those books on my shelf.

How to Play The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to stretch your presence across Middle-earth, rally Races to your cause, or advance the Quest of the Ring in order to win.

Setup

Place the Central board between you and your opponent. Choose who will play Sauron’s forces and who will play the Fellowship, and take your respective Unit and Fortress pawns.

On the Central board, place 2 Fellowship Units on Arnor, and 2 Sauron Units on Mordor.

Assemble the Quest of the Ring track and place it below the Central board.

Create a reserve with the coins. The Fellowship player then takes 3 coins, and the Sauron player takes 2 coins.

Sort the Alliance tokens according to their backs. Shuffle each stack and place them facedown in the notches above the Central board.

Shuffle the Landmark tiles and place 3, faceup, on the table next to a facedown stack of the other tiles.

Sort the Chapter cards into their 3 decks, shuffling each deck separately.

Finally, arrange the cards from the Chapter 1 deck into the central play area according to the illustration shown both in the rulebook and on the side of the box, placing the leftover 3 cards facedown into the discard pile. Each chapter is set up differently; here are the three chapter setups:

Gameplay

Gameplay starts with the Sauron player, then alternates between players. 

On a turn, a player can either take a Chapter card or take a Landmark tile.

Take a Chapter card

You can take any of the available cards (any card that is faceup and not covered by other cards), as long as you pay any associated costs if there is one. You will immediately benefit from a card’s effect. Then either add that card to a stack of the matching color, keeping the effect of the card visible, or immediately discard the card to earn coins equal to the Chapter number currently in play.

There are 2 different types of costs for cards: Coins, and Skills. If Coins are required, pay the number of coins shown when taking the card back to the reserve. Skills are shown on Grey cards, and you must have the requisite number of Skills shown on the card in your tableau in order to take that card. If you don’t have all the Skills shown, you can still take the card, but must pay 1 coin for each missing Skill.

In the example below, to take that card, you must have 2 of the “Ruse” skill and 1 of the “Leadership” skill in your tableau:

There are 6 card colors in the game:

• Grey cards. These permanently provide 1 Skill per symbol shown, and each symbol may be used only once per turn.
• Yellow cards. These give you coins from the Reserve.
• Blue cards. Showing the One Ring symbol, these move your character along the Quest of the Ring track, one space per ring shown. If you move onto or past any bonus spaces on the track, you immediately take the bonus shown.
• Green cards. These represent the Races of Middle-earth that you can ally with. If you ever collect 6 different Race cards, you immediately win the game. Additionally, as soon as you have 2 matching Race symbols, you take the top 2 Alliance tokens, reveal them, and then choose one to take and one to return facedown to its stack. You may now permanently benefit from the effect of the token you have taken. Finally, once per game when you have 3 different Race symbols, you take the top Alliance token of those 3 races, reveal them, and then take 1 while returning the other two facedown to their respective stacks.
• Red cards. These allow you to place Units into the various regions on the Central board. Whenever Units enter a region with enemy Units, a conflict occurs and they eliminate each other on a 1 for 1 basis.
• Purple cards. These only appear in Chapter 3, and allow you to move Units into adjacent regions, cause opponents to lose coins, and remove enemy units from regions.

Beginning in Chapter 2, some cards will have a chaining symbol, in the upper right corner of the card. If that symbol matches a symbol on the left-hand side of one of the cards in your tableau, then you may play that card for free without having the required skills.

Once all the cards from a Chapter have been played, then the cards for the next Chapter are arranged in the central play area and play resumes with the next player taking their turn.

Take a Landmark tile

Much like with the cards, if you can pay the requisite costs for a Landmark tile, you may take that tile and immediately gain its benefits (which also include placing a Fortress into one of the regions on the Central board). Landmark tiles also cost you one gold for each Fortress you already have placed on the map.

In the example above, the Isengard tile allows you to place a Fortress on Enedwaith, discard a Grey card from your opponent’s play area, and move your character 1 space on the Quest of the Ring track.

Game End

The game ends immediately once one of 3 victory conditions is met:

1. Quest of the Ring. The Fellowship wins if Sam and Frodo reach Mount Doom, thereby destroying the One Ring. Sauron wins if the Nazgûl catches Sam and Frodo, reclaiming the One Ring.
2. Support of the Races. If you gather 6 different Race symbols on green cards, you rally support of the Races and immediately win the game. The Eagle symbol that is represented on one of the Alliance tokens may count as 1 of the 6 required Race symbols.
3. Conquering Middle-earth. If you have a Fortress and/or at least 1 Unit in each of the 7 Regions, you immediately dominate Middle-earth and win the game.

If none of these win conditions are met by the end of Chapter 3, then victory goes to whichever player has the most fortresses and units on the map. If both players have the same amount, then it is a shared victory.

The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth

I’m already a Tolkien fan (see my reviews for LEGO sets of Rivendell and Barad-Dûr), so I was predisposed to already like the theme of The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth. What I didn’t know until playing it was just how well the gameplay and theme would mesh to create an eminently satisfying gameplay experience.

Much like its predecessor 7 Wonders Duel, there are 3 different ways to win the game. Each of these three ways is intrinsically tied into the events of The Lord of the Rings. Over the course of the trilogy, support of the races of Middle-earth are won, battles for domination are fought across the land, and Frodo and Sam try to get the One Ring to Mount Doom while pursued by the forces of Sauron – represented here by the Nazgûl chasing the pair across the Quest of the Ring track.

The Quest of the Ring track itself is simply yet elegantly represented. There is an inherent tension in the pursuit of the Nazgûl, as Sam and Frodo can only ever move towards Mount Doom, while the Nazgûl only moves ever closer to the pair. 

With three paths to victory, there’s a lot of consideration towards which cards to take on a player’s turn. It’s a delicate balance between pursuing your own path to victory while making sure your opponent doesn’t draw a card or landmark which guarantees theirs. In one of the games that I played, the key to my victory came from getting my first pair of Race cards, and then drawing the Eagle Alliance token. Then, when I took my fifth unique green Race card, the Eagle token acted as my sixth, giving me the win. Which was a good thing, as my opponent was getting perilously close to filling the map with their units!

The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth is quick to learn, and really does play in about the 30 minutes listed on the box. While there are a lot of symbols on both the cards and the Landmark tiles that may initially overwhelm a new player, they are easy to understand, and there’s also a handy reference sheet that explains every symbol and effect. The game is  swift to set up and put away, thanks in part to a simple yet effective insert in the box. With the speed of both setup and play, it’s easy enough to turn right around and play another game after you’ve completed your last.

There’s really just so much to like about this game. I’ve already gushed about the Vincent Dutrait artwork, which permeates every aspect of the production. The components are high quality, especially considering the affordable price of the box. And while I’m not going to go into detail comparing the two, rest assured that Duel for Middle-Earth is not 7 Wonders Duel with a thin veneer of Tolkien painted over it. While it incorporates some of the same mechanics as 7 Wonders Duel, this game stands entirely on its own, distinct in gameplay and theme.

If you’re looking for a fun, fast, and deeply thematic 2-player game that’s easy to get to the table, then definitely check out The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth. The gameplay is tense yet fun, and deeply satisfying. It’s one of those games that, whether you win or lose, you want to jump right back in for another match. The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth is sure to hit my game table for years to come, and is well-deserving of the title of GeekDad Approved..

For more information, visit the Repos Production website.

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Enter the fantasy world of Gadia with this card game from its stories.

What Is Legends of Gadia?

Legends of Gadia is a card-shedding game for 2 to 4 players, ages 8 and up, and takes about 20 minutes to play. It’s currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, with a pledge level of $25 for a copy of the game. (There are some early bird pledges available at $20, as well as several pledge tiers that include other goodies.) The game’s theme and content are family-friendly and the rules are inspired by traditional card-shedding games, but younger players may need some help learning the different combinations of cards.

Legends of Gadia was designed and published by Su Mon Han of Dream Compendium Design, with illustrations by Cyvii.

New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.

Legends of Gadia Components

Note: My review is based on a prototype copy, so it is subject to change and may not reflect final component quality.

The game consists of a 48-card deck, along with some player aid cards, in a small tuckbox.

The cards feature 12 heroes, with 4 copies of each one—two with a light background and two with a dark background. Aside from their names and numerical values from 1 to 12, each card also belongs to one of three houses (Innocence, Eminence, and Transcendence), and one of four strata. It’s a lot to keep track of, so the player aid is an important reference!

Legends of Gadia is intended to be a card game played by characters within a fantasy novel series, and the card illustrations fit that concept, with an intricate frame and lovely portraits of each hero. The number in the top left corner is pretty easy to see, but it will just take some time to get more familiar with the other notations like the stratum across the top and the house name below the portrait—this last bit is particularly hard to see when you have a full hand of cards, though eventually you may remember that the three houses just divide up the set of 12 numbers in order.

How to Play Legends of Gadia

You can download a draft of the rulebook here. I’ll give an overview of the rules but will try not to get too far into all of the specific details of the card combinations.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to be the first to get rid of all of your cards.

Setup

Starting player is decided by “scrimmage”—everyone draws a random card and high card goes first, and then the cards are shuffled back into the deck.

Shuffle the deck and deal out all of the cards evenly to all the players.

Gameplay

On your turn, you either play a card (or set of cards) that beats the previous person’s play, or else pass. If everyone passes, then the person who last played wins that round and starts the next round.

The simplest hierarchy is in single cards: you can usually beat a single card with any single card of a higher value.

You can also play pairs—a pair will generally beat another pair of a lower value. However, to use a pair to beat a single card, you have to use a pair from a lower House. The designer explained that there’s a “Good Sportsmanship” rule that won’t allow people to form a bigger group to defeat somebody smaller—thus you can go from a single to a pair, but only from a lower House and not a greater one.

Next are Team-Ups, sets of two cards. There are several of these with names like “Nobility” (6 and 7, the Lady and the Lord) or “Soldiers of Fortune” (2 and 7, the Archer and the Lord). They have different effects—some of them let you pull cards back out of the played stack, or reset the stack. Above those are the “Grand Trinity” of Team-Ups, which have a rock-paper-scissors relationship with each other. One thing about the Team-Ups is that most of them have a weakness, allowing you to defeat it using a single card from its weakness.

The advanced rules introduce the Houses and Stratum. The three houses are Innocence (1–4), Eminence (5–8), and Transcendence (9–12). If you have all four cards of a house and they have the same background, then it’s a “full house”—these can usually beat just about any of the other sets, and to beat a full house you’ll need a higher full house. (Note that this is not the same as a poker full house, which is a pair and a triple.)

The Strata cut across the houses: 1st Stratum is 1-5-9, 2nd Stratum is 2-6-10, and so on. A Stratum can be used to defeat a single or Team-Up if it’s from a Stratum one step lower than its target. (Again, there’s a reference to the Good Sportsmanship rule.) However, once you’ve switched to playing Strata, then you defeat a Stratum by using a higher Stratum.

The Jesters (value 3) are also used in special “Chaos” Team-Ups—basically you can beat anything with a pair of 3s, and then play something else to reset the stack.

Round End

The round ends when everyone in turn has passed—the last person to have played wins the round, and performs a card exchange: the player to their right must give the winner their numerically highest card, and then the winner gives that player any other card of their choice. Then a new round begins.

Game End

The game ends when a player has played all of their cards from their hand, winning the game.

Why You Should Play Legends of Gadia

I met designer Su Mon Han at OrcaCon a couple weeks ago, where she was running demos of Legends of Gadia during the convention. She’s a fantasy author, and the characters in her novels play a card game based on some of their folklore about twelve legendary heroes who set off on a quest. She decided to design the game herself and has been playing it and working on it for over a decade, and when she found the artist Cyvii she felt like she finally had the style of artwork to make the game a reality. I sat down for a demo at the con (you can spot me very briefly in the Kickstarter video) and then Su Mon loaned me a deck so I could try it out some more for a review.

Legends of Gadia feels like a card game that has been passed down through the ages, full of lore that’s common knowledge in a fantasy world but may be new to players in this world. That has its pros and cons. When you’re learning the game, it can feel complicated: What are the Team-Ups again? What happens when you play a Chaos Pair? When do I use a lower House instead of a higher House? I imagine it’s a bit like the first time you play poker (Why is a flush called a flush? What’s the river and what’s the flop?). Or maybe the way pieces move in chess originally had some stories to them, explaining why the king moves slowly and bishops move in diagonal lines. But because those games have been around for so long, we no longer refer to the stories and we just remember the terms and the gameplay.

The fact that the sets in Legends of Gadia are all based on some ancient lore doesn’t help you at first if you don’t know that lore (though if you’re into that, there are pledge levels that include a companion book filled with it), but I was also impressed by how quickly players seemed to be picking it up. Even in my own plays, we’ve been referring to the cheat sheet cards (along with a more detailed player aid that Su Mon provided), but even during a single play, my friends had started picking up on some of the names of the Team-Ups. (I do think a more comprehensive player aid is key to learning the game, so I don’t know if the player aid card will get some tweaks to it.)

Lore aside, the base card-shedding mechanic is familiar with only a few tweaks here and there like the card exchange for the winner. The various Team-Ups, while they may seem kind of random at first, do make for interesting decisions when playing cards. Do you look for an opportunity to play pairs, or do you try to form the more powerful Houses and Strata because those let you drop more cards at once? You might think it’s great to play your single 1 if you have the opportunity to start a round because it’s the weakest single, but don’t forget that it can also be part of the Purest Heart, not to mention its place in the Innocence House and 1st Stratum. One of the things I liked most about it is that there is no single play that is absolutely unbeatable—even with the more powerful hands, somebody could play a Chaos Pair and then reset to a single card, starting the process over.

Since there are sometimes opportunities to pull cards from the discard or swap cards at the end of a round, there’s always a chance that you might form a set later. The winner always gets the highest card from a hand during the exchange, but what they choose to give back could also complete a Team-Up. Just because it’s a low card doesn’t mean it may not be powerful with the right companion.

If you like traditional card games, and you’re intrigued by the tarot-like art and the story behind the game, it’s worth checking out! Soon you can dive in and experience a piece of the world of Gadia yourself.

For more information or to make a pledge, visit the Legends of Gadia Kickstarter page!

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Plan out a trip to Tokyo and Kyoto, trying to experience all that the cities have to offer!

What Is Let’s Go! To Japan?

Let’s Go! To Japan is a card game for 1 to 4 players, ages 10 and up, and takes about 45 minutes to play. It retails for $49.99 and is available in stores and directly from AEG. The theme is about trip planning and is family-friendly, though it may depend on how much your kid is interested in Japan and/or the joy of putting together a schedule!

Let’s Go! To Japan was designed by Josh Wood and published by AEG, with illustrations by Chaykov, Kailene Falls, Toshiyuki Hara, Magdalena Pruckner, Erica Ward, and On Yamamoto.

Let’s Go! To Japan Components

Here’s what’s included:

• 160 Activity cards (80 Tokyo, 80 Kyoto)
• Round tracker board
• Round tracker token
• 21 Train tokens
• 20 Wild tokens
• 24 Research tokens
• 16 Walk tokens
• Scorepad
• 4 sets of player components, each including:
  • Player board
  • 6 Favorable Condition tokens
  • 5 Experience tokens
  • 1 Starting Train token
  • 1 Happiness token
  • 1 Stress token
  • 1 Mood token
  • 1 +12 token

The cards are all extra-large, making for plenty of room for the illustrations and a bit of text that wouldn’t be out of place in a travel guide. The game-specific parts of the card are at the top and bottom; when the cards are overlapped, only the top part of the covered card is relevant so it’s a nice way to remember that. The large cards do mean that each player needs a good amount of space on the table, though.

The player boards are tri-fold boards, mostly with a few different tracks, since your cards will be played below the boards. One nice decorative touch is that the backs of the boards have different colors and illustrations (taken from some of the activities). Player color doesn’t really matter in this game since everyone’s just playing on their own boards anyway, but it adds a little bit of extra personality to the game.

There are a lot of different tokens—they’re mostly all easily distinguished from each other, though the favorable condition tokens and experience tokens feature the same icons and are only slightly different in size. 

How to Play Let’s Go! To Japan

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to score the most points by planning activities on the most favorable days and meeting the requirements to experience highlights during your trip to Japan.

Setup

Shuffle the two decks of activity cards separately and place them within reach of all players. Place the round tracker board in the center and place the marker on the first round. Make a supply of the other tokens: train tokens, wild tokens, research tokens, and walk tokens.

Give each player a set of player components: a player board and all of the various tokens. The mood token (wooden disk) goes on the center of the mood track, with the stress and happiness tokens placed at the beginning of each corresponding track. The five experience tokens are placed at the 0 space of your board.

One player should mix up the six favorable condition tokens and place one on each day at the bottom of their board, and then everyone else should arrange theirs to match. Be sure to leave room to play cards below your player board. Set your starting train token and +12 token nearby.

Gameplay

Let’s Go! To Japan takes place over 13 rounds, with players creating a trip itinerary by placing activity cards below their player boards from Monday to Saturday. The cards may be placed anywhere in your itinerary (up to 3 cards per day), but once placed cannot be moved later. At the end of the 13 rounds, players then take their trips as planned, accumulating experiences and scoring points.

At the top of your board is a mood tracker—your mood goes up when you do things that are relaxing or inexpensive, and your mood goes down when you’re exhausted by crowds or strenuous activity, or when you’ve overspent a bit. Whenever your mood hits either end (with the sad face or happy face), move the appropriate tracker one space and then set your mood back to the middle. Your stress and happiness have penalties and bonus points at the end of the game.

Planning Trips

Each round, players will simultaneously draw cards and then play and pass cards as indicated by the round tracker board. For instance, in the first four rounds, players draw one card from each deck (Tokyo and Kyoto), and they will play one card into their schedule and pass the other card clockwise, placing it face-down at the top of that player’s board. Some rounds indicate that you pick up the passed cards instead of drawing from the decks, and in the middle five rounds you play two and pass two. Starting in round 8, you will pass counterclockwise instead.

As you place your cards, you generally want to group cards of the same city, because every time you switch between the two cities, you have to spend a train ticket. Also, you’ll get bonuses for matching that day’s favorable conditions, so there is an incentive to play matching cards on those particular days. Cards are placed overlapping so that the top section of each card is visible; only the last card of the day is fully visible, showing the highlight at the bottom.

If you don’t like any of your options, you may also “go for a walk.” Discard one of the cards from your hand, and then draw a card from either deck and place it face-down in your itinerary without looking at it. You immediately gain a research token. When that time slot arrives on the trip, you’ll reveal the card and decide whether it’s an activity you want to do.

Research tokens may be spent at any time to draw 3 cards, and then discard 3 cards.

Whenever you add the third card in the same day, you check to see how many of that day’s favorable condition icons appear on those cards, which can earn you an immediate bonus. You may only choose one of these bonuses (but you may take a lower tier than what you’ve earned):

• At least 1 icon: Move your mood tracker 1 space to the right
• At least 2 icons: Take 2 research tokens or 1 wild token
• At least 3 icons: Take 1 luxury train token or go on an extra walk

The “extra walk” option lets you draw a card from either deck and place it face-down as a 4th card for that day. This bonus walk does not let you take a research token.

Going on Trips

After the final round of planning, everyone will have a full itinerary, with 3 cards on each day (plus potentially bonus walk cards). Now, it’s time for everyone to take their trips and see how well they scored!

First, check for every time that your itinerary switches between the two cities, and place a train token there (even if the switch happens between days). You have one free train token from setup. Luxury train tokens, gained as a bonus, will give you 2 points and increase your mood when you use them. For all of the required trips that you don’t have enough train tickets for, you must take a regular token from the supply, placing it on the “lose 2 points” side.

Each player goes through their itinerary one day at a time, scoring the cards from top to bottom. For each card, if there are experience or mood icons on the top of the card, move the appropriate tokens to keep track. The cat symbol on the top right corner is points for that card.

The last card of each day has a highlight of the day bonus at the bottom. Generally, you will score bonus points or earn bonus experience if you have met the requirements already. If you earned wild tokens as bonuses during the planning phase, you may spend them at any time to get any 1 experience per token spent, which can help you fulfill those requirements.

If you have a “walk” card, you may reveal it, and decide which side to use. You may keep it on the walk side, which is worth 1 point and 1 increased mood, as well as 2 points for the highlight if it’s the last card of the day. Or, you may use the activity you discovered on your walk, in which case it scores as if you’d played it that way (but it also still counts as a “walk” in case that is a requirement for later).

Game End

Your score is as follows:

• Scores for each individual day’s activities
• Penalties and bonuses for stress and happiness
• Points for each of your experience tokens on your experience track
• Bonus points or penalties for train tickets
• 1 point per unspent research token

The highest score wins! The rulebook says ties are shared, though if you really want a tiebreaker you can count up the total earned experience.

Let’s Go! To Japan is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play Let’s Go! To Japan

According to the rulebook, Josh Wood (the game designer) had planned a trip to Japan with his girlfriend in 2020, which was canceled because of the pandemic. So, instead, they took their planning notes and turned it into this game about planning a trip, which is probably why playing it feels a lot like flipping through a tourist guide. Each card has a little description of the activity, and the rulebook also includes maps of Tokyo and Kyoto, with several highlights marked on each one.

Let’s Go! To Japan is sort of a programming game: you lay out all of your cards, and then you play through them in order to see how well you scored. However, in this game, there are bonuses to be earned even in the planning phase, by scheduling activities on days that are most favorable for them. For instance, maybe in your setup it turns out that Thursday is a great day for shopping—if you schedule shopping activities for Thursday, that may improve your mood, or give you a chance to get a luxury train ticket.

But those favorable conditions aren’t the only thing to pay attention to. There’s a range of points for the various activities, usually a balance between the number of experience points you’ll earn and whether it will increase or decrease your mood. But the big bonuses are in the highlights of the day, so you want to make sure that the last card of each day is something that you’ll be able to complete. Sometimes it’s something you work toward: you put in a card late in the week, and then hope that you’ll find enough things to fulfill the highlight by the time your schedule is full. But the early days of the week can be challenging, because if you choose a highlight that has a lot of requirements, you may not be able to fulfill that in only 3 cards.

There are a number of factors to balance out: getting your day bonuses during the planning phase, and earning enough experience for your highlights once you take your trip. When you do earn day bonuses, you may have to decide which ones you want, because chances are you’re not sure how many other bonuses you might earn. Research tokens let you dig through the deck to find specific icons; wild tokens give you specific experience points when you need them; an extra walk could be very valuable but is a total gamble—you can’t count on what icons may be on the card until you play out your trip.

On top of all that, you want to manage your trip so that you don’t go back and forth between the two cities too often—and then you don’t have to worry about using bonuses for train tickets. In one game I played, I managed to stay in Kyoto for the entire week, except for one quick jaunt into Tokyo to visit the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building for some sightseeing.

That brings us to the card-drafting aspect of the game. When you’re learning the game, you’re probably mostly paying attention to your own itinerary, choosing whatever cards you think may be best for you and then just passing whatever’s left to your neighbor. But as you get a little more experienced, you’ll be able to take your neighbors’ plans into account as well. If your neighbor is all set up with food/drink cards in Tokyo, then maybe you don’t pass them one more and find a place in your own itinerary for it instead. This is particularly true when you decide to go for a walk, or after you use a research token—those are the only times when you’ll discard a card instead of either playing it yourself or passing it. If somebody is spending a lot of time in one city, pass them cards for the other city so they’ll have to figure out where to spend train tickets.

The setting for Let’s Go! To Japan definitely adds a lot to the experience. If the cards were simply gaining points for collecting abstracted colors or icons, you would still have the same types of scoring decisions to make, but the ending of the game would feel a bit more boring. Usually when we score the game, we have everyone describe what they did on Monday, and then move on to Tuesday together, and so on. It’s fun to see how the different players move through the cities or have shared experiences. In one game, two players just missed running into each other a couple times on the same day, because they both went to the same places but in different orders.

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed playing Let’s Go! To Japan: I enjoy the challenge of plotting out a rewarding schedule, the gamble of choosing a big-scoring highlight that I hope I’ll be able to fulfill, the logistics of making sure I have enough train tickets to get between the cities. Since everyone plays simultaneously, the turns are usually pretty short, but if you get stuck waiting on another player, you can spend the time reading up on the various locations you’ve put into your itinerary and admiring the illustrations. While I haven’t heard any announcements, it would not surprise me if there will be other Let’s Go! games in future set in other locations, but for now I’ll be planning my visit to Japan!

For more information, visit the AEG website.

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The American Wild West has been a popular theme for tabletop games. However, many were often abstract games with a western theme. then in 2018, Western Legends rode onto the scene. This sandbox adventure game let players take on the roles of historical outlaws, law persons, miners, gamblers, and more and compete to become the most legendary. Several expansions added more characters, territory, items, and stories to the game. Now a new game is coming with more stories and exploration set in a time period immediately before the original game. Western Legends: Stories lets player’s create a story for their own character as they explore and tame the wilderness.

What Is Western Legends: Stories?

Western Legends: Stories is an adventure and exploration game set in the Wild West of the 1800s United States for 1-5 players, ages 14 and up, and takes about 90 to 180 minutes to play. It was fully funded on Kickstarter and late pledges are now available. It is $75 for a copy of the core game or $120 for the Deluxe game.

Western Legends: Stories was designed by Hervé Lemaître and published by Kolossal Games, with illustrations by Kenan Anselme, Maxime Erceau, Tony Gimazane and Xin Jun as well as 3D artist Chiara Billo.

New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.

Western Legends: Stories Components

Note: My review is based on a prototype copy, so it is subject to change and may not reflect final component quality.

Here is what you get in the retail pledge:

• 23 Miniatures
• 10 Bullet player markers
• 1 General store
• 5 Player boards
• 1 Scoring board
• 15 Player markers
• 7 Map tiles
• 6 Player cards
• 4 NPS fight dice
• 192 Story cards
• 490 Other cards
• 50 Stones (gold nuggets and pebbles)
• 1 Gold bag
• 20 Place tiles
• 70 Skill tokens
• 38 Other tokens
• 5 Player aids
• 1 Tutorial sheet

The Deluxe pledge also includes:

• 3 Minis (for Automata characters)
• 1 Saloon dice tower
• 1 Exploration notebook
• 5 Cloth save bags
• Story cards for Prologue and Episode 6
• 10 Wooden bullet markers
• 108 Poker chip upgraded tokens

The game comes with 23 miniatures. Six represent the six different characters the players use. Others are for non-player characters you come across during the game as well as bandits. The deluxe version of the game includes 3 additional miniatures for the Automata characters. 

Each player gets a player board. There is a space for the player card of their character as well as spaces for health markers. There are also spaces for injury cards, weapons, mounts, items, money, and resources you collect such as skins, meat, and gold nuggets. 

The game includes six player cards that fit into the player boards that match the six character miniatures. They feature artwork of the characters.

The scoring board is used by all character to keep track of the legendary points they have earned as well as their progress along either the marshal or wanted tracks. There are also spaces on the board for money and injury cards as well as other cards. It is placed at the top of the player area.

There are seven map tiles that fit together like a puzzle to create the playing area. Players begin with just one map tile for the first episode and as the players progress through the episodes, additional map tiles are added as called for by the game. Each tile is divided into areas and spaces with symbols showing actions that might be taken in those spaces. 

Story cards are divided into five episodes. The deluxe version includes two additional episodes. The first cards for each episode include setup instructions for that episode and the rest are used during the game. On one side are tasks which players can complete. Once it has been completed, the player who completed it turns over the card and follows the directions. These cards move along the story of the game. Since only about half of the story cards are used when playing each episode, each time you play the story will be a bit different. 

Western Legend: Stories comes with lots of cards. Four of the main types are Places, Animals, Exploration, and Personality. Place cards explain what actions can be taken at places on the map. When hunting in the forest, players draw two animals cards and then decide which animal they will hunt. The card lists what dice the animal rolls and the results of success or failure for the player. Animals can provide meat and skins or other rewards. Spaces with a ‘?’ on the map tiles can be explored by players. When they perform this action, they draw an Exploration card and follow the directions. They often have two or thee choices for the player to choose from. Finally, Personality cards are used to control the actions of non-player characters which are usually brought into the game through story cards. 

Poker cards not only have that same markings as a deck of cards, but also actions which players can use. These cards are also used for fighting and hunting. Of course, they can also be used when players choose to play a game of poker at the saloon. 

There are different types of item cards in the game. As you play the first episode, only a few items are available at the trading post. Then as you continue through the other episodes, more items are unlocked. In addition, there are several different types of mounts for getting around the map quicker. In addition to the regular items, players can find unique items as they explore and interact with non-player characters or complete story cards. 

As players progress through the episodes, more types of cards come into play. Law cards provide rules for the current episode such as what happens if a wanted character is arrested. Later on there are banks and stagecoaches, wanted murderers to go after, and even special tasks that come in by telegram. 

Players can also develop skills can as they perform certain actions. They collect skill tokens for these actions such as mining for gold, gambling, hunting, and so forth. Earning a skill token also gives a player 2 legendary points which they need to win the game. 

Players’ health decreases by taking injuries. Once they have three injuries, they take a serious injury card which inflicts a negative condition on them.  When they have collected 3 tokens of the same skill, they become legendary and take a legendary skill card which provides benefits as long as they hold it. However if another player earns three skill tokens, they get the card for that skill and the original holder of the card loses a skill token of that type, dropping them back down to two. 

Money can be earned by selling resources, completing actions, robbing people, and so forth. Money is needed to purchase items, mounts, and weapons as well as to complete some tasks. Money cards come in two denominations: $10 and $20.

There are four different colors of six-sided dice, each with different numbers on them. As players fight against bandits, non-player characters, and even animals while hunting, a specific color of dice is rolled for the whatever the player is fighting. This provides four different levels of difficulty with the colors from stronger to weak being black, red, yellow, and then green as the weakest. 

As players explore the maps, they may find new places or even build new places. These are represented on the maps by place tiles. One side is an unconstructed side while the other represents a structure that has been built and is active. 

When players mine for gold, they reach into the gold bag and draw out a number of rocks depending on the action. There are both gold nuggets in the bag as well as pebbles. Gold is kept and can be sold while the pebbles are returned to the bag. 

There are several types of markers used during the game. Bullet markers are placed on the score board to represent players’ progress on both the legendary points track as well as the wanted/marshall track. Small cubes are used on the player boards to show health. Plastic rings are placed around the base of miniatures to represent whether they are players, bandits or other people. Finally, a first player marker designates which player started the game so that once the end of the stories has been reached, every player gets the same number of turns. Wooden bullet markers are included in the deluxe version instead of carboard markers. 

The deluxe version of the game comes with the exploration notebook. It contains pages with pockets for cards. Since many of the rules for a game are contained on the cards, players can insert place, personality, and other cards into this notebook for quick reference. It keeps them organized rather than just placing them on the table. When a player wants to look at the cards, just pass the notebook to them. 

A saloon dice tower also comes with the deluxe version. There is an opening in the back where dice can be inserted and then rolled. 

Western Legends: Stories really needs at least three players for a game. If you have less than that, the game comes with three automata characters that compete against the players. You can even play solo against two automata characters. Each character comes with their own deck of cards. One card explains how the character plays while the rest are drawn one card per turn to instruct the players how to move them and what actions they will take. 

How to Play Western Legends: Stories

The Goal

The goal of the game is to have the most legendary points at the end of the game.

Setup

Start off by placing the scoring board on one edge of the table with the money and serious injury cards on it. Each player then takes a player board of their choice along with bullet markers, a health marker, and a mini base matching the color of their board. Each player also takes a player card and matching miniature as well as a player aid sheet. They place their bullet markers on the scoring board and health marker on their player board.  Food, skin, and skill tokens are placed near the board along with the fight dice. Pebbles and nuggets are placed in the gold bag. Shuffle the Poker cards, Bandit cards, Animal cards, and Exploration cards into separate decks placed near the scoring. Finally, select an episode of story cards and follow the instructions contained on the first card to finish setup for the current episode. It will tell players which map tiles to use, where their characters begin, and what they begin the game with. You are now ready to play. 

Gameplay

Western Legends: Stories is played in rounds in which each player takes a turn. Turns are divided into three phases. The first phase is optional and lets a player move a non-player character (NPC) up to 2 spaces. The Action Phase comes next and let’s players perform two actions. Finally, the end of turn phase has the player check for end-of-turn rewards, rest where they draw two poker cards, keeping one and then returning one to the discard pile, discarding poker cards down to their hand limit, and then ending their turn. 

During the action phase, players can perform a total of 2 actions. There are four possible actions. A player can move their character a number of spaces equal to their movement points. They can choose to rest to add a poker card to their hand. They can play an action from one of their poker cards. Finally, they can interact with a place, a character, or fight a player on their space. Place and character cards contain actions which players may take. For example, you can mine for gold at a gold deposit or play poker at a saloon. 

Game End

The game ends when one of the story decks is empty and there are no new story card decks to place. Players finish the current round so everyone has an equal number of turns and then score to see who has the most legendary points. 

Why You Should Play Western Legends: Stories

I did not receive a prototype of Western Legends: Stories until the Kickstarter campaign was completed. However, I followed the campaign closely and pledged for the Deluxe version of the game. Western Legends is one of my favorite games and I really enjoy it every time I play it. I have all of the expansions and love introducing it to new players. Therefore, I was excited when I learned that Western Legends: Stories was coming. Now that I have had a chance to examine the prototype and play a few games, let me share my experience. 

First off, there was only one prototype making its rounds across the country. By the time I received it, some of the components were worn. Luckily, it stopped at Kolossal Games before it came to me and they printed out some cards that had gone missing. The rules are still a work in progress, but Kolossal released a video of a playthrough of a single player game that helped me fill in some of the missing rules. The prototype only included two episodes but they were enough to get a good feel of the game. When players start out in the first episode, they only have a small amount of money and nothing else. The story cards help give them some direction as they can explore the woods, head to the trading post, or move to the stream and look for gold. Once you complete the task on the story card and turn it over, new things are introduced. I really like how the story system works. The cards within an episode have days on the front. All of the cards with the same days are shuffled and then divided into two or three piles. Once one pile is exhausted, the remainder of the story cards for those days are retuned to the box and the cards for the next set of days are spread out. Therefore, you never use all of the story cards during an episode so when you play it again, it is somewhat different. For example, in one play through we met certain NPCs while in a second play through, we found a different NPC. Some of these NPCs have more than one personality card so as you interact with them, you may cause them to change cards and literally their personality and the way they interact with the players. 

The original Western Legends had a lot of things going right from the start. As expansions were added, there were a lot of possibilities of what to do in this sandbox style game. Eventually the designers wrote a hardcover rulebook with all of the rules organized in one place which really made it easier to play the game. But you had to flip through lots of pages to find what you needed. Western Legends: Stories has the feel of a legacy game in that you don’t start off with everything. Instead, it starts on one map tile with only one or two places. As you find new places or meet new personalities, these cards are added and contain rules for interaction right on them. For example, when you find and build the saloon, the saloon place card explains how to play poker. The Gold Site place card tells you how to look for gold. I really like the exploration notebook in that it keeps all of those cards in one place, so you kind of create the rulebook as you go with only the rules you need at that time. This concept of just-in-time rules really makes this game great for new players and learning as you go. It also provides a great feel of exploring the unknown wilderness. 

While the game still has the feel of Western Legends, it also has some new features that improve on the original. In the past, when a player fought against an NPC such as a bandit, another player drew cards from a fight deck to play against them. Western Legends: Stories now uses the dice which come in four levels of difficulty. This makes it easier for playing solo and also removes the other players from these NPC fights. Depending on the color of dice, you have an idea of what poker card you need to play in order to give you a good chance of winning. The inclusion of skills also adds a new element to the game. Players will want to focus on a few skills so they can earn the legendary skills card. These are great ways to earn legendary points and also customize your characters as you play. For example, by getting the mining skills card, you increase your chances of finding gold. 

I also had the opportunity to try out the two automata characters that came with the prototype and play through the first episode solo. While I did not have the rules for the automata cards, after watching the video, I learned how they play and was very impressed. These characters are quite competitive and they were challenging to beat. Sometimes I want to play Western Legends but don’t have anyone to play against. With the well-designed automata characters, I will be able to play Western Legends: Stories whenever I want. The deluxe version of the game will actually include miniatures for these characters so you can also play as them or against them. 

As I mentioned, the prototype only came with two episodes. Therefore, many of the items and personalities never came into play and I was not able to use most of the map tiles. However, I am glad  so I can explore them when the game is complete and delivered later this year. Though I was not able to experience all of the game, I am very impressed with what I did get to play. The game is well-designed, the cards and artwork are incredible, and the components really add to the game. The final game will come with lots more miniatures and non-player characters and from what I have seen in the Kickstarter campaign, they will add a lot to the game. In fact, when playing the game, sometimes you can forget you are in a competition as you just want to explore and progress through the stories. While the original did have elements of stories as you played as historical characters, Western Legends: Stories really focuses on the stories that players create as they develop their characters into their own western legends. I had so much fun playing the prototype with rules that were still in development, I can’t wait to receive the final game when it ships around August of 2025. If you are a fan of the original Western Legends or really enjoy stories set in the old west, then I highly recommend this game to you. I suggest getting the deluxe version of the game since it includes some more episodes, wooden markers, the saloon dice tower, and the exploration notebook which is a great addition to the game. Even though the Kickstarter campaign is over, you can still make a late pledge and preorder the game. 

For more information or to make a pledge, visit the Western Legends: Stories Kickstarter page!

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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.

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Your people have fled the tyrannical control of UNITY, escaping to the Andromeda galaxy. Using the debris of a precursor civilization, and under constant threat from both raiders and other settlers, it’s up to you to build a new home on the frontier.

In “Reaping the Rewards,” I review the finished product from a crowdfunding campaign. Andromeda’s Edge was originally funded on Gamefound in January 2023, and was delivered to backers in the winter of 2024. This review is adapted from my Gamefound Tabletop Alert, updated to reflect the finished components.

What Is Andromeda’s Edge?

Andromeda’s Edge is a game for 2-4 players, ages 14 and up, and takes 80-160 minutes to play. The standard version of the game is currently available to purchase through Asmodee and various online and local games stores, and retails for $70. I received an all-in Gamefound pledge, which also contained deluxe components and the Escalation expansion. That expansion adds a 5th player, more factions, and a solo mode. As of this writing, the expansion is available but sold out at some sites.

Andromeda’s Edge was designed by Luke Laurie and his son Maximus Laurie, and published by Cardboard Alchemy, with illustrations and model designs by Sergio Chaves.

Andromeda’s Edge Components

Note: as stated previously, I received the Gamefound all-in pledge for the game, which also contains upgraded components. There is an Andromeda’s Edge: Supernova Component Upgrade Kit which contains premium components to bring the standard version of the game to the same level as the deluxe pledge. It retails for $99.99 and can be found at Asmodee and other online game stores.

This review will use the deluxe components, but here’s a look at what comes in the standard version of Andromeda’s Edge:

The contents of the standard version of Andromeda’s Edge contains the following:

• 30 Starships, dice, leaders, and score discs in 4 player colors
• 4 player space stations
• 12 faction cards
• 108 custom module cards
• 15 development standees
• 15 development ability cards
• 20 destiny cards
• 75 tactics cards
• 30 raider and event poker cards
• 1 nebula game board
• 2 side boards (scrapyard/events)
• 25 region hexes
• 28 ship upgrade tiles
• 51 moon tokens
• 29 discovery/supremacy tokens
• 160 resource tokens/markers
• 16 raider standees
• 8 stands for active raiders
• 6 raider dice
• 4 player aids
• 2 rulebooks (main & appendix)

Running around the edge of the board is a score track. The numbers with a magenta background are the three different endgame score triggers that you choose between at the start of your game. At the bottom of the main board is a hex grid where you will build out the planets and Alliance bases. The very top row of that grid is the nebula, which can only be entered by certain ships. At the top of the board are the four different Modules: Science, Industry, Commerce, and Civilization. There are also four matching tracks for players to progress upon, as well as a fifth track, Supremacy, which is increased primarily by winning combats.

There are two additional boards for use by all players, the Event board and the Scrapyard board. The Event board has room for both the Event deck and discard pile. Additionally, there’s a progress track around the perimeter of the board to proceed to events. Meanwhile, the Scrapyard board has a space for ships destroyed in battle, and then another area for ships that have been repaired, known as the Repair Barge.

Each player gets an identical Station mat in their player color. These hold the player’s faction card, resources, moons, and ships. There is also the first Module for each of the Module rows. These mats are double-sided, allowing you to build out your Module rows in either direction.

There are twelve asymmetric factions to choose from in the base game. Each provides an early start on two of the progress tracks, as well as a unique thematic ship upgrade and two player powers. As you can see, with the Deluxe Pledge from Gamefound, the total number of factions grew to eighteen.

One of the factions was a crowdfunding bonus: The Drakanaran Flamekeepers, an homage to another Carboard Alchemy game, Flamecraft. The artwork for this card is even illustrated by Sandara Tang, illustrator of that game.

A game starts with the six Alliance Bases randomly placed on the board, along with a number of Planets based on the player count. The Alliance Bases allow you to take various actions depending on the base, as well as retrieve some of your leaders, which are a required component to developing planets.

Throughout the game, players will land ships on Planet Regions. These planets have moons which may be gathered and turned in for resources and effects, or slotted into Modules to generate resources. Additionally, planets are where players will build Developments, a major source of victory points in the game.

There are five different types of Developments that you can build. Each one is tied in to a different one of the tracks. A planet will indicate what specific development can be built there, as well as the resource cost.

During the course of the game, players can purchase and upgrade various Starships. These ships can be used for taking actions, building developments, and for fighting space battles. At the start of the game, players only have access to their Transports.

Click to view slideshow.

Whenever an Event card is played, a different type of Raider will appear somewhere on the map. Each Raider type provides various rewards for their destruction, and has different abilities. There are multiple Event decks and Raiders, to provide more variety from game to game.

How to Play Andromeda’s Edge

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of Andromeda’s Edge is to develop planets, gain resources, and end the game with the most victory points.

Setup

General Setup

Start by choosing the Event deck and corresponding Raiders that will be used for the game. Then choose whether the game will end when someone reaches 50 victory points, 60 victory points, or 70 victory points.

Shuffle each module deck and place them on their respective spaces. Draw the first 3 module cards of each deck and place them in the designated spaces below the decks.

Shuffle the Moon tokens of each color type and make them into stacks of 3. Place a stack of the matching color face up on each of the planets on the board. Place 1 Nebula moon face up on each Nebula region.

Shuffle the Discovery tokens and place stacks of 5 face down on the 2 spaces on the Science track. Place another stack of 5 face down on the Observatory Discoveries space on the Main board. Shuffle the Supremacy tokens and put 1 each face up on the 3 spaces of the Supremacy track.

Take 2 S-Class Raiders and roll 2 dice to place them on randomly determined Nebula hexes. Both Raiders may share the same space.

Put the Event marker on the space on the Event track matching the player count. Shuffle the Event deck and place it on its space. Stack the Development cards beside the Main board, alongside the matching Developments.

Player Setup

Each player chooses a player color, and receives a matching Station Mat, Starships, Leaders, Track Markers, and dice. Players place 3 of the Transport Starships on their Station Mat.

Players are dealt 2 random factions. Choose one, gaining the resources on the back, then place the Faction Card face up on the Station Mat. Each player then takes their unique faction Starship Upgrade and sets it beside their Station. Shuffle the neutral Starship Upgrades, and deal 1 of each type to each player. Place these beside the Station Mat, as you will not start with any upgrades.

Place the Track Markers on the first space of each track, and then advance 1 on each track as indicated for the track bonuses on the Faction Card.

Each player places 1 Leader on each Alliance Base, then rolls two dice and places Leaders in those Nebula Regions. 1 Leader is placed on the Station Mat.

Shuffle the Tactics cards and deal 3 to each player. Then place the deck near the Main Board.

All players roll all 6 of their dice, and compare results. The player with the highest value die left after ties are discarded is the first player. Each player places the Victory Point marker on the Victory Point track, on the number matching their player number.

Gameplay

Turn Sequence Steps

Launch Turn Step 1: Launch

Note: Only Starship with the Voyage keyword can travel into the Nebula regions.

If a player has no Starships in Andromeda, then they will be making a First Launch. First launches must be to a region without any Starships in it, if possible. You may only launch to a region in which you can perform the action in step 2.

Launch Turn Step 2: Action

Where you launch to will determine what action you can take:

• Planets. Take the top Moon token from the planet, and place it on one of the four Moon spots on the Station Mat. If all the Moon tokens have been taken, receive whatever resource is shown on the planet.
• Nebulae. Take 1 Nebula Moon token, if available. Then, take the Prescience action, looking at the top 2 cards from the Event deck, and then placing one card on top of the deck, and the other on the bottom.
• Alliance Bases. If you have a Leader at the base, place it on your Station Mat. Then, take the action as indicated on the base. Some of these actions include spending resources to draw Tactics cards, repairing a Module or Starship, building a Starship, purchasing Modules, and building Developments.

Building Developments is one of the main ways you will earn Victory Points during a game of Andromeda’s Edge. To build a Development, you must have a Transport on the planetary region you want to develop, the number of indicated resources as shown on the Planetary Region, and the number of Leaders on your Station Mat required for the type of Development. If you have all of these, then when you have either launched to the Development Office Alliance base, or have activated the “Architect” module on your Station, you may develop that planetary region by taking the following steps:

• Pay the development cost.
• Take the development miniature as indicated on the planetary region and place it on top of your transport. Attach the indicated number of leaders to the miniature. Note: That transport is now permanently part of the development.
• Take the matching development card and follow the immediate scoring instructions. Advance on the track shown on the card, and gain VP equal to the number of leaders both in the developed region and in all adjacent regions. Each card also has a 1 time free use ability.

Launch Turn Step 3: Raiders Strike

If any Raiders are within range of the active region, then 1 Raider as chosen by the active player will move into that region and a battle will ensue. Unless they are a “swarm”-type Raider, only 1 Raider can be in a region at any time.

Launch Turn Step 4: Battle

Battle will only occur during this phase, and only in the active region, following these steps:

• Escalation. In turn order, players may move any of their ships into the active region that are in range.
• Diplomacy. In turn order, each player may play 1 Diplomacy card, or pass.
• Battle Preparations. In turn order, players may play “battle preparations” Tactics cards. Players then determine how many dice they will roll, up to a maximum of 6. Players get an additional die for each of their Developments within range 1 of the active region, and can also spend energy to add dice. There is also Targeting, which allows you to re-roll any dice that are rolled at a number that is lower than the number of ships that player has in the active region.
• Roll Battle Dice. Players roll all their dice, and may make any Targeting re-rolls.
• Outcome. Each faction compares dice results, going from highest to lowest. The player with the highest result with no ties wins. If a player wins, then they move up 1 space on the Supremacy track, and if they have also defeated a Raider, they gain the reward indicated on the Raider card. Losers gain benefits from the “Tactical Operations” on their Station Mat.
• Damage Ships. All losing faction ships in the battle are damaged. If a Starship has a shield, then that shield is damaged and the Starship receives a Damage marker. If the Starship does not have a shield, or has a previously damaged shield, then that Starship is destroyed and moved to the Scrapyard.

Return to Station Turn Step 1: Activate Modules

When you have no more Starships left to launch, or before that point if you choose, you will Return to Station. One at a time, you will take back each of your Starships from either the Main Board or the Repair Barge, and place them on Modules to activate them:

1. Choose an undamaged Module attached to the Station to activate. Modules may each only be activated once during the Return to Station.
2. Place either a Starship or an Energy on the Module. For the first time placing on each row, a Starship must be used, but for subsequent modules in the same row you may use either a Starship or an energy.
3. Perform the action on the Module, spending any indicated resources to gain the benefits. If you have slotted a Moon token between two modules, then you must have activated both modules on either side of that Moon token to gain the Moon token’s resources.

You may activate as many Modules as you have Starships and Energy, or may choose to stop earlier. Additionally, the Science Module only needs one Starship placed, and then the entire row is activated.

Return to Station Turn Step 2: Return All Starships and Discard Used Energy

All of your Starships are returned to the Launch Bay on your Station Mat, and are fully repaired (including any in the Scrapyard). Any Energy used to activate Modules is discarded back to the supply.

Free Actions

Players have a number of actions they can take throughout the game in addition to the above main actions. They are:

• Playing Tactics cards. When indicated on the card.
• Slotting a Moon token. Place on either a Moon slot on a Module, or on the alternate activation spot in Tactical Observations.
• Use a 1-time Development card ability (your turn only).
• Use a Discovery or Supremacy token (your turn only).
• Recruit a Leader from a region occupied by one of your Starships (your turn only).
• Abandon a moon. Take a Moon token from your supply on the station and discard it to gain that benefit and/or resource (your turn only).
• Collect free resources. If an Event card or other effect places free resources into regions, you may gather them with your Starships in those regions (your turn only).

Event Track

When you purchase Modules, you will also progress on the various tracks. Each track, at different spots on them, also has Event indicators. When you reach those spots, or when indicated by certain cards, you will progress on the Event Track.

When the end of the Event Track is reached, an Event will occur. First, the active player will draw the next region from the stack and place it on the Main Board, adjacent to at least 1 existing region. A stack of 3 moons of the appropriate color will be placed face-up on the region.

Then the active player takes the event marker to remind them to take the remainder of the steps at the end of their turn.

When their turn is over, the active player will reveal the top card in the Event deck and carry out the effects in this order:

1. Scoring. Each player gains VP equal to their position on the track shown on the card, minus 1 VP for each damaged module on their Station.
2. Raider. The Raider type indicated on the Event card is placed on the board, according to the placement rules for that specific Raider.
3. Special Effect: Follow the instructions as written. For example, for the Entropic Reversal card, each player in turn order can immediately take 2 repair actions.
4. Reset Event Track. The active player places the Event marker back at the appropriate starting space on the Event Track, and discards the Event card.

Progress Track Benefits

Advancing on the Progress Tracks provides both immediate and endgame scoring benefits. Each one also provides different, unique benefits:

• Science Track. 2 spaces have stacks of Discovery tokens. When you reach those spaces, you may look through the stacks and secretly choose 1 token to keep and use either immediately or as a free action later.
• Industry Track. Several spaces on the track allows the player a free Starship upgrade. Choose one of your upgrades and slot it onto your Station Mat. If you do not yet have that type of Starship, you may also build one for no cost.
• Supremacy Track. If you are the first to reach one of the Supremacy tokens, you may take it and use it then or later as a free action.
• Commerce Track. The higher you proceed on this track, the more leftover resources are worth during endgame scoring.
• Civilization Track. You can increase the size of your maximum hand size, which begins at 5 cards.

Game End

The endgame is triggered when any player reaches or surpasses the space on the VP track chosen at the start of the game. The Event track is no longer used from this point onward, and each player (including the active player) gets one additional turn after the active player has finished their turn.

Final Scoring

• Tracks. Each player gains VP for the positions of their markers on the 5 Progress Tracks.
• Developments. Each player gains VP for their Developments depending on the position of their marker on the particular track corresponding to each Development.
• Damage. Players lose 2 VP for each damaged Module.
• Vault Bonus. Depending on the position on the Commerce Track, players will earn between 0-2 VP for each leftover resource, including Tactics cards.
• Civilization Modules. Each player gains rewards as indicated on their undamaged Civilization Modules.
• Leaders. Each player receives 1 VP for each Leader still on their Station Mat.

Whoever has the highest score wins. Tiebreakers are most Modules, and if there’s another tie, then most resources.

Andromeda’s Edge is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play Andromeda’s Edge

At the conclusion of one of my games of Andromeda’s Edge, a friend of mine commented that this was the best “quick” alternative to Twilight Imperium that he had ever played. Of course, quick is a relative term: We had still played for over 3 hours. But for those of you that have played Twilight Imperium before know, getting through a game of that is an all-day event.

This isn’t to say that Andromeda’s Edge plays like Twilight Imperium. Yes, both games are set in space, and both games have elements of what we call a 4X game: explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. But if anything, Andromeda’s Edge plays more like a Luke Laurie predecessor game, Dwellings of Eldervale. And that’s a good thing.

Andromeda’s Edge and Dwellings of Eldervale: The Inevitable Comparison

Many, including myself, are calling Andromeda’s Edge the spiritual successor to Dwellings of Eldervale, another popular Luke Laurie game. I reviewed Dwellings in 2021, and awarded it with GeekDad Approved. Several of my fellow game reviewers around the Web have already given point-by-point comparisons between Andromeda’s Edge and Dwellings, so I see no need to reiterate information you can easily find via a Google search.

Andromeda’s Edge is definitely not just Dwellings of Eldervale with a space theme slapped on. While both games share the same DNA, Andromeda’s Edge represents an evolution in the game mechanics present in Dwellings. Building a strong engine and progressing on all the tracks is fundamental to a player’s success, and requires a lot of advance planning as well as adjusting to the changing state of the game.

As such, it is a much crunchier game than Dwellings of Eldervale, which unfortunately means it can also slow down a game when someone who is prone to A.P. (analysis paralysis) is faced with all the choices available to them. However, this issue is hardly exclusive to Andromeda’s Edge, as it will turn up in any game that has tough choices for players to make.

A lot of people will ask, “I already have Dwellings of Eldervale, should I back Andromeda’s Edge?” or, “Which of these two games should I get?” My response would be that you don’t necessarily have to choose between the two games, unless you are tight on money or shelf space. Although both Andromeda’s Edge and Dwellings of Eldervale are structurally similar, they do ultimately scratch a different itch. Andromeda’s Edge stands on its own as the heavier, more complex cousin to Dwellings of Eldervale.

Final Thoughts on Andromeda’s Edge

I’ve really enjoyed my time with Andromeda’s Edge. As opposed to the aforementioned Twilight Imperium, this game is faster and easier to both teach and play. But even though it’s quick to pick up on the gameplay, there is a lot going on in Andromeda’s Edge that you’ll need to keep track of. During one of my games, an Event card had a certain Raider, the Korrugan Smugglers, make its appearance on the Main Board. One of my opponents decided he wanted to defeat this Raider right away, and did so. Unfortunately, in his bloodlust, he had momentarily forgotten the special rule for the Korrugan Smugglers, which reduces the cost of resources for developing regions while it was on the board. He ended up proverbially shooting himself in the foot, as he wasn’t able to make a Development that turn as he’d originally hoped.

The asymmetry of the different factions really works to the players’ benefit. With just two unique player powers and one unique Starship upgrade per faction, there’s a nice bit of variety to keep gameplay fresh without too much additional information that could have been overwhelming. None of the powers are overly strong, either, but instead provide some nice thematic flavor to each faction and encourages different styles of gameplay. For example, one of the factions I played, the Pulsewar Refugees, actually gets rewarded for losing a battle.

Much like in Dwellings of Eldervale, when you lose a battle, it’s a drawback but not overly punishing. You will also receive a reward, which is either to draw a new Tactics card, or to take whatever resource or benefit of a Moon that you have slotted into Tactical Operations. In one of my games, I had slotted in a Moon that gave me a card and 2 VP every time I lost a battle. So it’s no surprise for that game, I was looking into jumping into just about every battle I could!

The dice system of combat is refreshingly simple, and I really like the Targeting mechanic, which potentially allows you more re-rolls the more ships you have in the region. This is also a subtle (or not-so subtle) suggestion for players to commit more ships to a battle.

The use of Tactics cards can definitely be a game changer for battles. I had moved my heavy cruiser into one region where an opponent had just one of his transport ships, and during the escalation phase he moved in four other, powerful ships. But before we could fight, he played a card that allowed him to leave the battle, and gain victory points by doing so.

The Gamefound campaign offered two different versions of the game: a standard version and a deluxe (the all-in pledge is the deluxe version with add-ons). Essentially the deluxe version adds a single-player mode called UNITY, a fifth player, more miniatures, and custom-designed Game Trayz. The Game Trayz help to not just organize the components, but get the game to the table faster. The deluxe Edition was intended to be exclusive to Cardboard Alchemy crowdfunding and direct sales, so will not be available at retail stores. However, gamers wanting to bling out their standard copy of Andromeda’s Edge can do so with the additional purchase of the Supernova Deluxe Upgrade Kit. Here’s a look at some of the upgrades:

Andromeda’s Edge is a thoroughly enjoyable game that provides players with a wealth of strategic choices towards how to pursue victory. The downside to all those choices is that an experienced player will likely have an edge over first-time players. But because of the ease in learning the game, newer players should be able to readily catch up to more experienced ones in subsequent plays.

It’s a big game, and will likely be the only one you’ll play on a game night thanks in no small part to setup and teardown. But the Game Trayz for the Deluxe edition help out quite a bit with cutting down that time, bringing the focus importantly on the gameplay. Andromeda’s Edge is a fun, rewarding experience for players. I anticipate it making a regular appearance on my game table.

For more information, visit the Cardboard Alchemy website.

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Can the detective puzzle out the serial killer’s motivation before it’s too late?

What Is Intent to Kill?

Intent to Kill is a murder mystery game for 2 to 4 players, ages 16 and up, and takes about an hour to play. It’s currently seeking funding on Kickstarter as part of 25th Century Games’ 2025 Import Collection, which includes 11 different titles from around the world that you can mix and match. Intent to Kill is available for a $40 pledge. The game seems to be designed with 2 players in mind; you can play with more players by putting them on teams of 2 and they just make decisions together, but there is still only one murderer and one detective in the game.

The age rating is primarily for the subject matter—the game is about a serial killer, and although there aren’t any explicit illustrations of violence, there are references to different motives that have creepy illustrations of environments and tools belonging to the murderer, so parents should use discretion and check it out before playing with younger kids.

Intent to Kill was designed by Arthur Khodzhikov, with illustrations by OWL Agency. It was published by Hobby World, who provided my review copy, and is being imported by 25th Century Games.

New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.

Intent to Kill Components

Note: My review is based on the Hobby World edition from 2023; the Kickstarter edition will include an upgrade pack that replaces the cardboard standees and tokens with wooden tokens, and also includes player screens and 2 more scenarios.

Here’s what comes in the box:

• Game board
• 8 Building markers
• Detective marker
• 24 Evidence tokens
• Surveillance token
• 54 Civilian cards
• 5 Crime Scene cards
• 14 Detective cards
• 24 Motive cards
• 14 Murderer cards
• 9 Social Group tokens
• Notepad
• 2 Pencils
• 4 Memo cards

The game board is a large 4×4 grid showing a city map, with a name for each block (Business Center, Richmond, Old City, etc.). There’s room for some cards along one edge, and a turn order reminder at the bottom.

The civilian cards are long, narrow cards that are primarily a portrait of the civilian, with all of the game information at the bottom of the card: the occupation and social group, gender, age, and build, and height. The shape of the cards is a little odd and it can feel a bit like you’re shuffling a stack of bookmarks, but they’re designed to fit three to a square on the game board. The cards are double-sided with a color illustration on one side and a black-and-white version of the same portrait on the back. I like the style of these: they remind me of the covers of old pulp mystery novels, and it’s a pretty diverse group of people overall. The social groups do include things like “outcasts” and “criminals,” so the game still has some stereotypes, though.

Most of the other cards are standard-sized cards. As mentioned earlier, there’s no actual murder depicted, but there are references to it, like a hand holding a bloody cleaver. One thing in particular that seems like it might have gotten lost in translation is a motive card called “Killer.” The rest are things like “Vigilante,” “Robber,” “Cannibal,” and in the game they are the restrictions on which civilians the serial killer can target, so it feels strange that one of these is simply the word “Killer.” From the illustration and rule, my guess is that it may mean “Assassin.”

The notepad has a grid for taking notes about their line of questioning, to keep track of the answers the murderer gives them. The murderer also gets a sheet but primarily uses just the bottom strip of it to note down their own identity for reference, unless they also want to make notes about which questions they’ve been asked to try to keep their lies straight.

The buildings are cardboard standees, and are placed in the top corner of a block. There are two of each building, and they differ both in color and shape so they’re easily distinguished. I like the fact that the icons on them evoke the building type, but also serve as reminders of what the building actions are.

The memo cards are player aid cards, covering both modes (Logic and Intuition) and providing a reminder of the Detective’s actions.

How to Play Intent to Kill

You can download a copy of the rulebook here. There are two modes (and plenty of variants), but I’ll start with the Logic Mode, which is the recommended way to learn the game. I will also explain the rules as a 2-player game, but if you have teams of 2, they just share components.

The Goal

The detective needs to identify which civilian is the murderer and what their motive is. The murderer needs to evade capture long enough to kill five victims.

Setup

Each player gets a note sheet and a pencil. The four building markers are placed on the board according to the map setup (there are variant map setups at the back of the book) and the crime scene cards are placed on the right edge of the board in numerical order.

Shuffle the civilian cards and make a stack of 20 cards at random, returning the rest to the box. The murderer shuffles the civilians and draws one secretly—that is the murderer’s identity. The murderer draws a second card and writes them down as the person of interest (for a first game, you can omit the person of interest because it complicates things). The murderer records the identities and characteristics of their own identity and the person of interest on their sheet, and then shuffles the cards back into the deck.

The civilian cards are then laid out on the board: two in each of the corner blocks, and one each in all the remaining blocks. (The position of the cards within each square doesn’t matter.)

Choose 6 of the motive cards and give each player a set of the same ones. The murderer shuffles theirs and draws one, writing it down on their sheet—this is their motivation. Then they shuffle the cards back together, and both players can lay the motive cards out on the table for reference.

The murderer takes the social group tokens, shuffles them and draws 3 tokens secretly. They choose one to keep face-down and write it on their sheet and put the other two back in the game box. The one they keep are the supporters—this social group will lie to the detective. The remaining 6 tokens are placed in a face-down stack at the bottom corner of the board.

The detective gets the surveillance token, and places their marker (the car standee) in any block.

Gameplay

The game will last 5 or 6 rounds, and each round has three phases: Murderer, Detective, and City.

Murderer Phase

The murderer chooses two civilians to intimidate, turning them to the black-and-white side. These civilians will no longer talk to the detective. You may not intimidate a civilian who is currently in the detective’s block.

Then the murderer chooses a victim: they must fit the murderer’s motive card and cannot be in the same block as the detective, and they cannot be the murderer’s own identity. For instance, the Sadist cannot murder intimidated civilians, and the Spy can only kill victims that are in blocks with buildings. (Note that the murderer’s identity card doesn’t need to be in the same location as the victim—they’re very sneaky.) The murderer removes the victim’s card and places it on the right edge of the board, and places the corresponding crime scene card across the block where the victim was killed.

Once during the game, the murderer may choose not to murder anyone and just announces that they are done.

Detective Phase

The detective moves their marker to the new crime scene. If there are any civilians left in that block, the detective moves them to adjacent blocks—but civilians may not enter any crime scenes. If there is no legal space, then the detective can move them anywhere on the board (but only 3 civilians per block).

The detective takes two different actions from these options: question civilians, use police station, use diner, use hospital, or use fire station. While investigating, the detective can also spend up to 2 movement points to move orthogonally around the city.

The detective may question all of the civilians at their location as long as they are not intimidated. Each civilian is questioned independently and you ask a “yes” or “no” question about the murderer’s gender, age, build, or height. (The game narrows down the potential answers to 2 genders and 3 each of the other characteristics.) The murderer must answer honestly except if the civilian being questioned is the murderer’s own identity, the person of interest, or from the murderer’s supporter social group.

The four buildings each have their own unique actions that can be used if the detective is in the same block:

• Police station: put the surveillance token on a civilian in this block or an adjacent block.
• Diner: question one unintimidated civilian in this block or an adjacent block.
• Hospital: flip an intimidated civilian in this block or an adjacent block to their color side.
• Fire station: take a random token from the social group stack: you may move every citizen from this social group 1 space and then shuffle the token back into the stack.

The surveillance token allows the detective to do a bonus action at any time after it has been placed on a civilian (even on a future turn). Remove the token and then ask the murderer: “could you murder this person right now?” The murder must answer honestly. This helps the detective determine the motive.

City Phase

Any civilians in the same block as the detective are flipped back to their unintimidated side.

The murderer draws a random token from the social group stack and reveals it to the detective. The murderer now moves every civilian from this group one space (if possible). Then the detective does the same thing, drawing a different token from the stack and moving all those civilians. Then both tokens are shuffled back into the stack. If there are no cards matching a drawn token, that player may choose any group to move and that token is returned to the box instead.

Game End

At the end of the round, if the fifth murder has been committed, the game will end. The detective must name which civilian is the murderer and what their motive is; if they are correct, they win. Otherwise, the murderer wins.

(The detective may try to guess before the fifth murder, but it is much more difficult.)

Variant Rules

The intuition mode uses some more of the components, giving both the detective and the murderer additional abilities but also requiring a bit more leaps of intuition for the detective. The murderer gets a choice of two cards after each murder, while the detective must collect evidence tokens and get to the right location to get their action cards. The action cards are one-time-use cards that give the player some sort of advantage.

There are also some more variations for experienced players, as well as scenarios that start the board with a particular layout and indicate which motives cannot be used. These also have some new rules, and each comes with a brief story to provide a little more narrative background.

Why You Should Play Intent to Kill

I received a copy of Intent to Kill from Hobby World last spring and tried it out, but then found out that it wasn’t actually available for purchase in the US, so I wasn’t sure whether to write about it. I happened to see an announcement that 25th Century Games would be including it in their Import Collection campaign, so I figured this would be a great opportunity to share. I haven’t played any of the other games in the collection, so I’m just focusing on this one title.

Intent to Kill is a cat-and-mouse hunt, with one player trying to get away with murder(s), and the other trying to piece together the who and the why. It’s a logic puzzle, but with some twists. As I said at the beginning, the game is marketed for two to four players, but I think it really works best with two. I’ve played with three, where two people play as the detectives, but if you have two murderer players then the detectives can hear any of their discussions, which may give away more information.

The detective has two puzzles to solve and they’re mostly independent of each other, so let’s break it down a bit. The motive is actually the easier of the two, because the facts are more obvious there: there’s no lying about which civilian was killed or where it happened, so the detective’s job is to see what all of the victims have in common. Each game, there’s a set of possible motives that serve as restrictions for the murderer: the Maniac needs all victims to be the same gender, the Vigilante cannot murder victims near the detective, and so on. It’s up to the detective to connect the dots between the different crime scenes.

To hide the motive, the murderer needs to make each civilian fit as many possible motives at once. If you’re careful, you may be able to keep all of the possible motives in play for the first few cases, choosing victims that don’t break the rules for any of the motives. The detective has one other primary tool in this situation: the surveillance token. Using the police station lets you put a surveillance token on a civilian, and then you may ask the murderer whether that civilian could be murdered right now. If you think the murderer wants all the victims to be of different social groups, then choose a duplicate and do some surveillance—if the murderer says yes, then that helps you eliminate a motive.

What’s a little trickier is using the city phase to move civilians around. If you suspect the murderer won’t kill anyone in the center city blocks, then moving civilians into the center makes it harder for them to find a victim. If you think they need their victims to be alone in a block, then group people together. (Of course, the murderer also gets to move civilians during the city phase, to help position their potential victims in the right place.)

Then there’s the next puzzle: which of the civilians is the murderer? Unlike some other mystery games, the location doesn’t actually matter—this isn’t a hidden movement game, but a logic puzzle. Each of the civilians is a unique combination of gender, age, build, and height, so if you can determine all of the characteristics, you’ll know who it is. Also, since you only use 20 of the cards in each game, there are times when you may not need all four characteristics to pin down the identity. If there’s only one tall medium-build male on the board, then you don’t need to figure out what his age is.

But, of course, finding out the characteristics isn’t easy, because some of the civilians can lie to you. The murderer themselves and the person of interest, as well as anyone from the murderer’s supporter group. As the game progresses, the detective will see some of the social group tokens (during each city phase and by using the fire station), which eliminates some of the groups from suspicion—but of course the murderer and person of interest may be in different groups. Also, there are two of the tokens that were removed from the stack entirely, so even if you do manage to see all six tokens in the stack, you still only have a 33% chance of knowing which group is lying for sure. Trying to piece together who you can trust requires a lot of redundancy, asking multiple people from the same group, checking with other groups, and comparing answers.

Meanwhile, the murderer has to find ways to keep their identity hidden, and they have many tools to do so. Intimidating civilians prevents the detective from questioning them, so you can intimidate the honest ones, or maybe you can intimidate some of your own supporters (or yourself!) as a bluff. The detective always moves to the newest crime scene automatically, so you can try to set things up where your supporters will be nearby for questioning. And since the detective can question everyone in a single block for one action, the murderer generally wants to split people up to make it less efficient.

As the murderer player, I tried to choose a character to frame, and whenever I lied, I tried to lie consistently in a way that would point to that specific civilian. Of course, that mean choosing one early on who wasn’t going to be a victim. I’ve also made the mistake of being careless with my first few victims and then setting it up in a way that I had to target my own supporters, which meant I had fewer civilians who could lie about my characteristics.

There is definitely a bit of luck in the initial setup: for instance, if there just aren’t very many of the three social groups that the murderer draws at the beginning, then they may not have a good choice, which means it’s harder to hide their identity. Some of the motives seem a little easier to figure out than others, too. Overall, I would say the game does favor the murderer, though—with only 5 or 6 rounds, the detective can have a hard time pinning down the identity and may have to make a 50-50 (or worse) guess at the end.

If you like logic puzzles and the challenge of reading your opponent, and you aren’t turned off by the serial killer theme of the game, Intent to Kill may be right up your alley. The different modes and rules variants give you a lot to explore, but even just the base setup provides a good challenge each time. I haven’t yet gotten to try everything yet but even thinking back about it while writing this review made me want to get it back to the table again.

For more information or to make a pledge, check out the 25th Century Games 2025 Import Collection!

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Build your way to the top in this 3D city building experience

What Is Stack City?

Stack City is a competitive game for 2 to 4 players, ages 14 and up, and takes about 75 minutes to play. It is planned to launch on Kickstarter in February, and currently the pledge level has not been set for a copy of the game. It is the first game from designer Quinn Biesinger and I was provided with a preview copy to review before the Kickstarter. In Stack City, you and your competitors take turns placing building pieces on a gameboard, following various placement rules. As the city takes shape, more powerful buildings come into play that increase your income and ultimately give you economy points to win the game. I first played Stack City at the SaltCON board game convention in Layton, Utah, and was excited to try it out with my game group before it hits Kickstarter.

Stack City was designed by Quinn Biesinger and will be published by WHM Games.

New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.

Stack City Components

Note: My review is based on a preview copy, so it is subject to change and may not reflect the final component quality.

Here’s what comes in the box:

• Central game board
• 4 Player pieces in 4 separate colors
• Building permit cards in 4 separate colors
• Actions cards
• 12 Enterprise cards in 4 separate colors
• 4 Starting Enterprise cards in 4 separate colors
• 3 Utility cards
• 1 Key to the City card
• Paper money, in 1, 3 and 5 million denominations
• 19 Enterprise buildings – 3 white and 4 of 4 separate colors
• 2 Condemned building markers
• Gray city building pieces in 1 and 2 space variants

The game components in the preview copy were 3D printed, so had the familiar ridges that you get with 3D printed objects. The quality was good enough to understand the buildings and the final products should be similar.

The board is black plastic injection molded to the right shape, and is a nine by nine grid that you can place the building pieces on. The inner seven by seven grid is used for the buildings, and the outer squares running around that are used as the score track for your pieces during the game. There are stickers on the outer edge of the board showing how much money you collect in rent based on the location of your piece.

The enterprise buildings are a combination of a card and a building token to place on the city board. The card describes the benefits the card gives you each turn, as well as the cost of purchasing the card, and there is some flavor text on the back talking about the building. There are four enterprise cards used as the starter buildings for each player and the rest are set up in a reserve area and can be purchased throughout the game. There are also three utility building cards that are set up in the enterprise area that you can purchase as well.

The enterprise cards are purchased and built with building permit cards. There are four different colors of these cards, and you will need to acquire and trade them in order to purchase and build your enterprises. The action cards are black-backed cards that offer various actions, money, building permits and other perks throughout the game. There are several negative action cards that must be played immediately and can impact you and the other players. The functions of the cards are pretty self-explanatory, and there are pages in the manual dedicated to explaining how to use them if there are questions. I did feel that it took a few plays to really get the feel for the different types of cards.

One confusing area that becomes more clear with play, is that there are building permit cards, and then there are building permits that you can obtain as action cards. This can be somewhat confusing, because you can trade building permits, but not action cards, so you will want to keep them separate. But now that you are keeping them separate, it can be easy to forget you have the action card version, and you may miss some enterprise building purchases. As mentioned, with a few plays, you develop your own method of remembering what cards you have.

The money is pretty standard, and comes in denominations of one, three and five million dollars. In the preview copy I played, I appreciated the heavier feel of the money. It was not the flimsy monopoly money we all know, and I hope the paper quality can be kept into production.

Overall, for a preview copy of a game from a first time developer, I was happy with components and iconography. I think there is room for tweaking some art and design pieces for better consistency, but this does not detract from gameplay. There was no component organization in the box I had, so I hope that will be something included in the final design, so all the plastic pieces aren’t just rattling around in the box.

How to Play Stack City

The Goal

In Stack City you are playing as one of four enterprises building your city. You are vying with the other players to place your buildings and obtain new enterprise buildings that you can build throughout the game.

Setup

In order to play Stack City you will need to set out the board game and set up the enterprise building area. You line up the cards according to their value, and put their associated building on top of them. Also tuck a random action card under each enterprise building. You will get this action card when you purchase the building! The building permits are set next to the board, along with action cards and the money.

Each player is randomly assigned the color they will be playing, and takes their starting enterprise building and card. There are variants presented in the manual for two and three player games, which include shrinking the play area, and in the case of a two player game, removing some of the more expensive enterprise buildings.

Gameplay

Stack City is played through a series of rounds until one player achieves 32 points, indicated by their player token reaching the 32 spot on the game board. The first turn involves each player taking the building permits, money, action cards and houses awarded to them by their starting enterprise card, placing those on the board (including their enterprise building, which must be placed on top of a gray common building) and moving to the next player.

Subsequent rounds start out similarly, with a few additional steps added. Each turn is composed of three phases – Rent Phase, Reward Phase and Action Phase. In the Rent Phase, the player collects the amount of money indicated by the location of their player piece on the game board. There are stickers along the outer edge that grant you between three and seven million in rent each turn.

Once you have collected your rent, you start the Reward Phase. In this phase, you gain rewards indicated by the number tiles on the top of your enterprise cards. These rewards can be different colored building permits, money, action cards and houses. You collect the quantity shown in preparation for your action phase. Houses comes in two sizes – a one square house and a two square complex. You choose your houses and complexes based on the total number of buildings your enterprise cards give you.

Finally, you are into the Action Phase. There are several things you can do in this phase, depending on what you are holding. The first task you are likely to complete is placing your common buildings you were awarded during the Reward Phase. There are placement rules for these that are covered in the manual with some good examples. Ultimately, common buildings can only be stacked four tall, and you may run into some placement problems later in the game.

You can also buy and place one enterprise building per turn during the Action Phase. Each building has a building permit and possibly monetary cost listed at the bottom of the card. If you are able to purchase the building, you can take it and its associated card and bonus action card. You then immediately place the building on the game board. The placement rules for enterprise cards are explained in the manual as well. Take note that if you cannot place an enterprise building due to no suitable locations being available, you cannot purchase it this turn!

You can also buy action cards for the value in millions listed on their back. Any action cards you buy or acquire may not be used the turn you get them. Cards that you had when you started the turn can be used. These include cards that allow you to build another common building, or steal a building permit from another player. Action cards have no value at the end of the game, so you will want to play them often!

Finally, you can trade or buy building permits with other players or the permit office. If you need a certain color building permit and you don’t have it, you can purchase one permit per turn for four million dollars. You can also trade two permits of any type for one permit of another type with the permit office once per turn, allowing you to turn those unusable permits into ones that you need. You can also trade with other players, trying to obtain the permits you need through trades of permits and money. You cannot trade action cards, and you can make as many player trades each turn as you like.

As you build your buildings, you will be moving your player token along the scoring track, one spot for each square you have built on this turn. Before you end your turn be sure you have moved your token appropriately, because that dictates the amount of rent you will collect at the beginning of the next turn.

Game End

Play proceeds in this manner until one player reaches the 32 spot on the score track with their player token. Once that happens, you will complete the current round and end the game. You will want to keep track of where players are on the scoring track, because it will alter your strategy at times.

Once the game is over, the player that is further along the score track takes the Key to the City card, worth 2 economy points. All players add the economy points given to them by their enterprise cards (indicated by the number in the diamond at the top right of the card). If you have leftover money and building permits, you add those up, dividing by five, and add that to your final result. This is an area that does need some clarification in the manual, so I assume that will happen at the Kickstarter proceeds.

Why You Should Play Stack City

I enjoyed playing Stack City with the designer at the SaltCON board game convention when I was first introduced to the game. As with any game, there was some initial confusion, especially with the building permits and how they looked. As with most games though, after playing a few rounds it became much more clear and I was better able to balance building permits and action cards as building permits. I really don’t like mixing card types in my games, so I had to come up with my own method for managing one type of card in two locations.

When I got the game to review, I had forgotten about that feeling, and as I set up the game, I was worried about experiencing that again. But it didn’t happen. I think after reading the manual, setting up the game, and coming in closer contact with the game components, it felt more natural. Granted, there were still a few times I forgot I had a building permit with my action cards, but overall, it flowed much better.

Stack City is a good game to play that is accessible to all levels of gamers. It isn’t going to offer the deep complexity some gamers want, but it is easy enough to play, and easy enough to teach, that it fills a great spot for my gaming group. We played through several times and everyone enjoyed it, especially how it seems to build and then become much more strategic toward the end. By that time, people were invested enough that everyone was excited to see the outcome. The pacing of the game always felt very natural as well. In the plays we did do, we found that the pink player usually ended up in the top and the blue player usually ended up in the bottom, so perhaps some more balancing will be done as the game goes toward production.

Overall, I would encourage you to take a look at Stack City and see if you think it is for you. While a bit lighter on the strategic side, it offers a good tactile experience and a good paced game.

For more information or to make a pledge, visit the Stack City Kickstarter page!

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Ravensburger delivered on another big Disney Lorcana release at the end of 2024. This new release, Azurite Sea, is similar in scope to the previous Shimmering Skies. Cards in this set bring Big Hero 6 and Rescue Rangers, among others, to the ever growing roster for the Disney Lorcana trading card game. 

What Is Disney Lorcana?

Disney Lorcana is a trading card game for 2-6 players, ages 8 and up, and takes about 20-30 minutes to play. While there are rules for multiplayer games, Disney Lorcana will likely most often be played with just 2 players, similar to other trading card games. As with most TCGs (trading card games), each player will need a deck of at least 60 cards to play. A pre-made starter deck for a single player retails for $16.99, while booster packs containing 12 random cards are $5.99. Disney Lorcana is sold directly from Ravensburger, from the Ravensburger store on Amazon, and at many local game stores and big box retailers.

Disney Lorcana TCG: Azurite Sea Products

As with Shimmering Skies, Ravensburger sent me several of the Azurite Sea releases to take a look at. With this release, rather than having a card portfolio available individually, they’ve gone with a collector’s gift set.

Stitch Collector’s Gift Set

In addition to a very nice card portfolio, the collector’s gift set also contains 4 Azurite Sea booster packs, and a Stitch promo card.

I’m using the portfolio to hold and organize all of my Azurite Sea cards from the booster packs. The Stitch Collector’s Gift Set retails for $49.97, and is available on Amazon or from your local games store.

Azurite Sea Illumineer’s Trove

The Azurite Sea Illumineer’s Trove is fundamentally the same as the one released for Shimmering Skies, but with Azurite Sea artwork and content. It comes with 8 Azurite Sea booster packs, a lore counter, 6 card dividers, and 6 damage counter dice.

The Azurite Sea Illumineer’s Trove retails for $49.99, and is available on Amazon or at your local games store. It’s great for holding your decks, and gives you some nice gameplay upgrades with the damage dice and lore counter.

Disney Lorcana TCG: Azurite Sea Single Player Decks

Decks in Disney Lorcana may be composed of no more than two colors. As with all of the Disney Lorcana releases, these preconstructed decks are each made up of two different colors of cards. Each box contains 1 starter deck of 60 cards (including 2 foil cards), 11 tokens, 1 Rules sheet, and 1 booster pack of 12 randomized cards.

The single player decks retail for $16.99 each and are available from the Ravensburger store on Amazon or at your local games store. They are ready to play right out of the box.

Booster Packs

Ravensburger didn’t send me any individual booster packs. However, each of the Single Player Decks includes a single booster pack,  the Illumineer’s Trove comes with 8, and the Stitch Collector’s Gift Set has 4. Each booster pack contains 12 randomized cards. Single booster packs retail for $5.99, and can be purchased on Amazon or at your local games store.

If you read my last Lorcana article, you’d know that I’ve had very poor luck acquiring any “Enchanted” rarity cards. I’m sad to say that my losing streak is unbroken. I opened 18 Azurite Sea booster packs of 12 cards each, for a total of 216 cards. Out of those, I got 4 Legendary, 11 Super Rare, and 19 Rare. The remaining cards were all commons and uncommons.

Disney Lorcana TCG: Azurite Sea

Despite my total inability to luck into an Enchanted card, I still love Disney Lorcana. The game is very easy to pick up, and if you’re a Disney fan, all of the beautiful original card artwork will make you very happy. Ravensburger continues to plumb the Disney film and television catalogue, bringing forth both popular characters and some pretty deep cuts. This is a trading card game where you can be perfectly happy playing the preconstructed decks, or you can try to create your own decks, mixing and matching cards just as in any other TCG.

For those that like to go the collectibles route, each booster pack contains an additional, randomly selected art puzzle card. If you collect all 9 unique cards, you’ll put them together to form an original piece of Azurite Sea artwork featuring Stitch from Lilo and Stitch, and Jim Hawkins from Treasure Planet.

Much as with Shimmering Skies, the Disney Lorcana release of Azurite Sea is another solid set of products that’s great both for beginning players and those already invested in the game. Now, if I could just luck into some of those Enchanted cards…

For more information, visit the Disney Lorcana TCG: Azurite Sea webpage.

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As we’re winding down on the 50th anniversary celebration of Dungeons & Dragons, I’m reminded that there are still plenty of ways to still celebrate this milestone. As I reported on back in July, one of my favorite companies, Beadle & Grimm’s, was going to be releasing dice sets that recalled some of the most famous Advanced Dungeons & Dragons modules. It took a bit of time for the dice sets to release, but now that they’re here, B&G sent me a copy of their Expedition to the Barrier Peaks dice set to see how it came out.

For those of you unfamiliar with the adventure module, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks stands out in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons history as being the first adventure module to incorporate science fiction elements. Set in the fantasy world of Greyhawk, the adventure centers around an alien spaceship that had landed many decades ago, but had been buried by an earthquake and only recently been uncovered.

D&D Classic Module Dice Sets: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks

Beadle & Grimm’s has released 6 limited edition sets, each representing a different classic adventure module:

• Ravenloft
• Tomb of Horrors
• Vecna Lives!
• White Plume Mountain
• Temple of Elemental Evil
• Expedition to the Barrier Peaks

Each of the sets has the following features:

• Felt-lined book-style collector’s box (4.6″ wide × 6″ tall × 1.75″ deep)
• Standard set of seven resin dice and an exclusive, oversized d20 themed to each adventure
• Two-inch collectible metal coin commemorating the adventure and the 50th anniversary of D&D
• Four collectible cards with artwork from and information about each adventure and its legacy

Each dice set costs $38.25, and are available from the Beadle & Grimm’s webstore. You can also purchase a collector’s set of all six dice sets for a discounted price of $229.50 at the time of this writing, thanks to a 15% off holiday sale.

The boxes for the D&D Classic Module Dice Sets are designed to look like books:

The exterior of the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks dice set faithfully recreates the cover for the original adventure module, as you can see from the back of the case:

The lid of the box is magnetic, a welcome inclusion that keeps the items inside safe from tumbling out. Speaking of what’s inside, this is what it looks like when you open up the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks Dice Set:

Embedded in the front cover is the metal commemorative coin. The coin is double-sided, with the front representing the repair robot from the adventure:

While the back commemorates the 50th anniversary of D&D:

Next up is a series of four collectible cards. These feature artwork from the adventure on one side:

While on the other side of the cards, there is information about the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks module:

Under the cards you’ll find a set of resin dice, colored to match the adventure. 

The translucent d20 bears an etched silhouette of a repair robot in lieu of the “20”.

You’d think that would be all…after all, those are the contents advertised for the set. However, this is Beadle & Grimm’s we’re talking about, who love to throw in little surprises. So if you lift out the insert holding the dice and cards, you’ll find a little something in the bottom of the dice set:

It’s a recreation of the android boxing and wrestling instructor! Ironically, in the original module this illustration is numbered incorrectly for the encounter…there may have been a few editing issues back in the day.

All in all, the D&D Classic Module Dice Sets: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is a delightful homage to the original glory days of Dungeons & Dragons. It’s a product that, like so many others from Beadle & Grimm’s, will look great on your shelf when not in use. And while the set is largely commemorative, those dice are eminently usable in a tabletop RPG game. 

If you’re looking for a good way to celebrate the 50th anniversary of D&D, then look no further than one of the limited edition Classic Module Dice Sets. With Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, it not only celebrates the past of a classic adventure module, but looks ahead to the modern reworking of said adventure. My only regret is that Beadle & Grimm’s didn’t send me the complete collection of Classic Module Dice Sets…a problem that can be easily rectified with my credit card while they are still available. 

For more information or to make a purchase, visit the Beadle & Grimm’s webstore!

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Vikings have landed in Greece, setting off a conflict between the pantheons of Greek and Norse gods. As demigods, you will play a role in these clashes of the gods, shaping the landscape.

What Is Divinus?

Divinus is a tile-laying legacy game for 2 to 4 players, ages 12 and up, and takes about 45–60 minutes to play. The game has 12 scenarios to play through, after which you can play in “eternal” mode. Divinus retails for $69.99 and is available in stores and directly from Lucky Duck. The game requires a free companion app (available for both iOS and Android). The theme involves a war between Greek and Norse gods and has a lot of mythology-inspired stories; there are stories of battles and war but similar to what kids may have already read in mythology books.

Divinus was designed by Filip Miłuński and published by Lucky Duck Games, with illustrations by Matijos Gebreselassie, Ferdinand Ladera, Karolina Nazakato, Wilson Nugraha, Anna Perci, Rio Sabda, and Cezary Szymański.

Divinus Components

Since Divinus is a legacy game, a lot of the components are in boxes and will be revealed over the course of the campaign. I’ll try to avoid most spoilers while still giving you some sense of the types of components included and their quality, which means I will show some of the components and stickers and refer to some of the story, but will avoid giving specific details.

Here’s what you first see when you open the box:

• Game board
• 12 Scenario boxes
• 78 Map tiles (39 with sacred places on back, 39 with factions on back)
• Tartarus box
• Sticker Sheets envelope
• 4 Demigod boxes

The game board is double-sided—the back side is for use with an expansion. The background illustration shows Greece on the left, with Mount Olympus floating above, facing off against Viking ships and a mystical Norse portal on the right. (Sorry, I don’t know my Norse mythology as well so I don’t know the name of it!) There are lots of spaces outlined on the board for the various tiles and cards that will be used during gameplay.

The scenario boxes are tuckboxes, labeled on one edge with a Roman numeral representing the scenario number, and they have different thicknesses. The majority of these hold a few cards that you’ll use for that scenario, but there are a few other components included as well: some stickers and meeples, for instance, that will be explained when you get to those parts of the game.

The Tartarus box is a larger box with a lid, and it’s where you put cards that have been “permanently” removed from the game. You don’t tear them up as you do in some legacy games, because there’s a chance that they may be re-used in the “eternal” mode after you complete the campaign, but basically things that go into this box are gone for the duration of the campaign.

The demigod boxes are larger tuckboxes, each with a character portrait and a few empty spaces on the front and back. There’s a spot to write your name (or your character name), and then spaces where various stickers will be placed as you play.

Contained in the demigod boxes are 24 dice, 6 per player. The dice pretty large, chunky dice with numerals on them rather than pips.

The sturdy envelope contains about a dozen sticker sheets, and there are two types of stickers. Some of them—like stickers that will be added to the rulebook as new rules are unlocked—are regular stickers, intended to be permanent once applied. The rulebook has huge sections and even entire page spreads that just have blank boxes with reference numbers, ready for new rules. It also has several pages in the back with more details about specific cards, icons, etc., with a note not to read those sections until you’re directed to. I did feel like some of the pages could have just been marked with a “do not read until” notice rather than having page-sized stickers to apply later, since that’s just more materials and makes those pages extra thick.

The more interesting sticker types are the ones that will be applied to your dice and to the tiles and game board. The stickers themselves are thicker, almost like cardstock, and the sticker backing is a transparent plastic. I’m not sure exactly what sort of adhesive these use, but they’re intended to be removable later—for instance, you can modify your dice when you earn stickers, and later if you want to change a face that already has a sticker on it, you remove the old sticker before adding the new one. For the most part, these stickers have worked as intended and we haven’t had a problem with them coming off accidentally; we did have some larger stickers that were applied to the main game board that started curling and peeling up on the corners a few scenarios after they were applied, though.

The game uses a mix of regular-sized cards and half-sized cards. There are also a few meeples (including a larger meeple to mark the first player) but most of those don’t appear until a few scenarios in, so I won’t give much more detail other than to say that they have a nice amount of detail and have both color and shape differences to tell them apart.

How to Play Divinus

Divinus is played over the course of 12 scenarios, and scores will be accumulated and tracked by the app over the entire campaign.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to win favor with the Greek and Norse pantheons; the player with the most favor in each pantheon will also be that pantheon’s favorite, which can confer certain bonuses for the next scenario.

Setup

Set up the game board by shuffling each of the two tile stacks separately, placing them in their designated spaces on the board, and then revealing tiles to fill the 12 numbered spaces on the board. The spaces on the left (1–6) are filled with the tile stack on the left, and the spaces on the right (7–12) are filled with tiles from the right. Tiles are marked on the back with a player count—if you have fewer than 4 players, you will remove some tiles from the game.

Each player gets their demigod box and dice. Note that depending on the player count, you may not use all of your dice. Everyone rolls their own dice to form a dice pool.

That’s the basic setup—but the app will also give you further instructions based on the scenario. For instance, in every scenario there will be a clash of gods and some quests; the god cards are placed in the spaces below the tiles on the left and right, and the quest cards are placed across the top center area of the board.

Gameplay

On your turn, you either explore (spend dice to get a tile) or rest (take all your dice back and re-roll them).

To explore, you may use any number of dice from your pool, adding and subtracting the values, to make a number from 1 to 12. Place your dice on that space on the board and take the tile, adding it to your map.

Your map has maximum dimensions of 4×4, and whenever you place a tile, it must connect to an existing tile (after your first one), with the terrain types matching up. There are three terrain types: water, plains, and mountains. In addition, there are some symbols on the tiles: factions that represent Greek, Norse, and Barbarian warriors, and some swirling ovals surrounded by crystals, which are sacred places.

You are also allowed to overbuild, stacking a tile on top of another tile, as long as it still matches all of the terrains connected to it. Each spot on your map may only be overbuilt once.

In each scenario, the gods have specific scoring requirements and will award favor to the top two players who meet those requirements. There are also quests, which will give favor to the first player to achieve them. For instance, in the first scenario, the three quests (shown above) require you to collect 3 of the same faction symbol on plains terrain on your map. Completing a quest usually also triggers a story element in the app, letting you add a location sticker to a map tile. In future scenarios, when anyone explores a tile with a location sticker on it, they can scan it with the app to continue the story, and it will give rewards to the player who explored it and the player who initially established the location (by placing the sticker).

If you cannot claim any tiles with your dice or don’t want to, you can rest: take all of your dice from the board and any left in your pool and re-roll all of them. If you removed dice from the board, refill those spaces with tiles from the corresponding tile stacks.

As you play, you use the app to keep track of various things—for instance, when somebody fulfills a quest, there is a spot in the app to mark that, which will then provide a little bit of narrative and some rewards.

Game End

When a player fills their 4×4 map, you finish that round so that everyone has had the same number of turns total. The game also ends if everyone rests two times in a row (though this is rare). Use the app to indicate that you’ve completed the scenario.

Favor awarded by the two pantheons are tracked separately, so you will end up with two scores, one for each pantheon. Score as follows:

• 1 favor if you completed your map
• 2 favor for the player who completed each god’s requirements the best
• 1 favor for the 2nd place player for each god’s requirements

The player with the highest total favor wins, though each pantheon also will announce its favorite—the player who had the most favor specific to that pantheon. (Note that you cannot be the favorite of both pantheons even if you have the highest score in both, in which case you will have to choose one.) As the campaign progresses, there will be other things that will score favor.

Why You Should Play Divinus

Lucky Duck Games is known for its hybrid digital-analog games, like Chronicles of Crime and Destinies. Many of these make use of your device’s camera to scan cards or items, but the app also contains the story itself. In Divinus, the camera is optional (you can just enter the location sticker number manually if needed) but the app tracks a lot of other necessary information for the game. Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi, is the narrator for the game, and much of the story is told by her (and the voice narration is pretty good, too), but there are also times where you’ll hear from other gods of the two pantheons.

Aside from keeping the scores for each game and the overall campaign, the app also remembers things like who completed a quest to establish a location, and it’s the only way to find out things like sticker rewards. The cards themselves tell you how much favor you will gain for meeting requirements, but anything that relates to getting new stickers is hidden away in the app, only revealed when it’s time.

While the basic game that I’ve outlined above is fairly simple, each scenario includes a different pair of gods, each with their own particular requirements to meet, plus new quests to complete—and generally you only have that scenario to complete the quest or it goes away to Tartarus. Later scenarios had secondary gods as well, giving you more scoring options but also pulling you in multiple directions. While there is an overall score for each game, there are benefits to focusing on either Greek or Norse favor so that you can become the favorite.

The tile-laying part of the game is an interesting puzzle. You get bonus points if you can complete your grid of 16 tiles, so generally players will want to explore if they have any dice left that will add up to an available number. However, because of the quests and the gods’ scoring requirements, sometimes you really don’t want to take the tiles that match your numbers. Or it may be that placing a tile will leave a space that is much harder to fill later on. As the campaign progresses, though, players gain access to artifacts and other game mechanics that let them manipulate things to their advantage, whether it’s affecting the numbers on the dice or rearranging map tiles.

Although you’re each building your own map and can’t really mess with somebody else’s map directly, there’s still a good amount of player interaction because of the shared tile market, as well as the competition for favor. Since everyone’s unused dice are public knowledge, you can look around the table and see what possible numbers everyone has. If you look around and see that the next two players each only have a single “3” left, taking the “3” tile means that they’ll have to rest instead of exploring. If a quest involves collecting tiles with Greek faction symbols on mountains, that makes those tiles more sought after. Ultimately you often try to strike a balance between tiles that will make your map easier to complete and tiles that help you fulfill other quests or requirements.

We are currently about halfway through our campaign, and I can tell from the rulebook that we still have a few more mechanics to unlock, but the rulebook is close to complete—and there are still a whole lot of stickers left on the sticker sheets (but I try not to look at those too closely). The one joke we made about Divinus was that it’s The Sticker Game. There were a couple of scenarios near the beginning where new rules were still being introduced where I would spend several minutes consulting the app to find all the new stickers to apply to the rulebook before we could start playing. Now, I usually fire up the app ahead of game night so I can check if there are long lists of stickers that need to be found before we can start playing.

If you enjoy map-making and tile-laying games, Divinus is a cool spin on them with a good amount of story woven into the game, as long as you don’t mind a game that has you referring to an app throughout the session. Divinus makes good use of the app for tracking certain things and making some of the rewards a surprise; it probably would have been possible to make a totally analog version, but it would require a hefty storybook and rules appendix to replace the app.

I’m curious to see where else the campaign takes us, and I know there are already  two expansions: Shadow of Yggdrasil, a Norse-themed prequel that makes use of the back of the board, and Pandora’s Box, a Greek-themed expansion with a few standalone scenarios. There are also recharge packs available in case you have played the campaign and want to reset it. Because the game uses glue-free stickers for the playing components, a lot of the components can be cleared off and reused.

To order a copy of Divinus, visit the Lucky Duck Games website!

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Seaside is a clever little game you can take to the beach.

What Is Seaside?

Seaside is a press-your-luck game for 1 to 5 players, ages 8 and up, and takes about 20 minutes to play. It retails for $29.99 and is available in stores and from Hachette Boardgames USA.

Seaside was designed by Bryan Burgoyne and published by Randolph, with illustrations by Fanny Saulnier. It is distributed in the US by Hachette Boardgames, who provided the review copy.

Seaside Components

Inside the box you’ll find:

• Cloth bag
• 70 Wooden disks
• Player Aid

The box (which you can see in the image at the very top of the post) has a little cut-out so you can see the bag inside—you’re intended to pitch the box and just use the bag both as storage and for playing the game. It’s a nice, sturdy canvas bag with a drawstring (with a wooden disk strung on it). The only downside is that if you store the player aid and rulesheet in the bag with the tokens, it can get a bit beat up, as you see in the photo above.

The wooden disks are nice and chunky, and about as big around as a 50-cent piece. (Does anyone still use those?) There are seven different illustrations on the disks, and each disk has two different illustrations on the front and back. Each disk also has a little wavy shape on the edge with an icon as a reminder of what action that particular disk does.

The game is both about the seaside and intended to be played at the seaside. Since it’s just wooden disks in a canvas bag, you really can take this just about anywhere including the beach.

How to Play Seaside

You can download a copy of the rulesheet here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to collect the most disks by the time the bag runs out.

Setup

Setup is incredibly simple: put the bag on the table.

Okay, if you’re playing with fewer players, you remove some number of tokens from the bag first and set them aside, but it’s meant to be a rough number rather than something you have to spend a lot of time counting. With two players, you remove about half of them. With three players, you remove 15 to 20, about two handfuls.

The player who most recently put their feet in the sea goes first and takes the bag.

Gameplay

On your turn, you draw a disk from the bag, look at both sides secretly, and decide which side to play. Each of the illustrations has a particular effect. Disks you collect are placed in front of you, and disks that are put into the “sea” are placed in the center of the playing area.

The isopod, shell, and crab all have a blue border with a circular arrow—if you choose one of these, you put it in the sea and draw a new disk.

Sandpipers eat isopods: if you choose a sandpiper, you may collect any number of isopods from the sea, put them in a stack, and put the sandpiper on top. However, sandpipers don’t like to share! You may only keep a stack of sandpipers if it’s the largest stack you have, and any smaller stacks are discarded from the game.

For example, in the photo above, there are only 2 isopods in the sea. However, I already have a sandpiper stack with 3 isopods in it. If I play this new sandpiper on my turn, it and any isopods I collect will be discarded because it’s less than 3 isopods. You may, however, keep stacks of the same size.

Beaches are where you find shells. Each time you play a beach, you may take shells from the sea equal to your total number of beaches. In the photo above, I already had one beach and one shell. When I play a second beach, I can take two more shells from the sea.

If you play a wave, you choose one of your beaches to flip over. (You may look at them before deciding.) Whatever the back is, you play it as if you had drawn and chosen it. In the photo above, this beach flips over to reveal a crab—which means I throw it into the sea and draw another disk.

Rocks make homes for the crabs. Each time you collect a pair of rocks, you take all of the crabs from the sea, plus one crab from another player of your choice. In the photo above, there were 4 crabs in the sea and I stole one from another player, giving me 5 crabs total.

After you’ve finished resolving actions, pass the bag to the next player.

Game End

The game ends immediately when the bag is empty.

The player with the most waves collects all the rest of the disks in the sea. (If tied, split them as evenly as possible and discard any remainders.)

Scoring is easy: Stack up your disks and compare your stack to everyone else: the tallest stack wins! (Ties are shared.)

Solo Mode

The solo game is pretty easy: you use all of the disks and play as normal. However, the game ends immediately if either of the following happens:

• You add the 7th disk to the sea.
• You collect a 7th beach, wave, sandpiper, or rock—do not resolve the ability.

When the game ends, collect all the tokens in the sea if you have at least one wave.

Compare your score to the chart to see how you did!

Seaside is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play Seaside

I first got to try out Seaside last year, when Hachette Games was still making decisions about games to add to their 2024 lineup, and I really enjoyed it. With a very simple set of components—just some wooden disks in a bag—Seaside provided a quick but compelling press-your-luck game. Although games without boxes always make for some tricky storage issues on my regular shelves, I do appreciate the way that the canvas bag and wooden tokens really allow for a game that can be played anywhere, and it seems particularly appropriate that you can play this game about the beach at the beach. (That’s not true of many other games with outdoor themes!)

The mechanics are very simple—pull out a disk and decide which side you want to use. In many cases, you’ll get multiple draws per turn, because some of the disks go into the sea and you draw again. But there’s always a trick to what you put into the sea, because there’s no guarantee that you’re the one who will get to collect them.

If you’re building up beaches, you want a lot of shells in the sea, because those start to snowball. If there are enough shells, you’ll collect one with your first beach, two more for your second beach, and three for your third beach (assuming you don’t sacrifice any beaches to waves). But if other players see that you’re building up beaches, they may avoid putting shells into the sea.

The sandpipers and isopods are another tricky pair. Each sandpiper can take any number of isopods from the sea, and at first you might think there’s no downside to just collecting all of them. However, you only get to keep stacks of the same size—if you get a really big sandpiper stack, you may never get to add any more because all the others just go away as soon as you collect them. Is it worth it to take a smaller stack so you may be able to get a second stack later? It’s a gamble either way.

Every time you draw a disk that includes a “put in the sea” option, you get to ask yourself: is the other side the best I can do, or should I throw this into the sea and take another chance? If you’ve got one rock already and you draw a rock, do you just finish your crab house and collect what’s there, or do you hope you’ll get a few more crabs into the sea and still find another rock? I love that each disk only offers two options, but those options can still feel consequential.

The ease of scoring at the end—stack all your disks and slide them to the center—is great, and the fact that every disk has the same value is intuitive when learning the game. (Solo mode is slightly more involved since you have to count your score.) The stacks then make for easy cleanup because you just toss everything back into the bag, ready to pack it up … or play again!

One funny side note is that the French name for the game is Littoral, which is also an English word with the same meaning: related to a seashore or lake shore. It is at once both a perfectly appropriate word that encapsulates the theme exactly, and also one that most American audiences would not appreciate at all, particularly since it’s pronounced the same way as “literal.” Fortunately, the folks at Hachette were able to convince Randolph that Seaside was the better name for the US version, or else we’d have a lot of confused game store employees trying to look for a word game … about the beach?

If you enjoy press-your-luck games and especially if you’re looking for a game that can travel with you to the beach, on camping trips, or picnics, Seaside is an excellent choice!

Visit the Hachette Boardgames website to order a copy.

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How well do you know your fellow adventurers? This party game will put you to the test!

In “Reaping the Rewards,” I review the finished product from a crowdfunding campaign. Adventure Party was originally funded on Kickstarter in June 2023, and was delivered to backers in spring and summer of 2024. This review is adapted from my Kickstarter Tabletop Alert, updated to reflect the finished components.

What Is Adventure Party?

Adventure Party: The Role-Playing Party Game is a cooperative role-playing party game (uh, as the title says) for 3 to 8 players, ages 14 and up, and takes about 20 to 60 minutes to play. It retails for $39.99 and is available in stores or directly from Smirk & Dagger Games.  Although the game is recommended for 14 and up, I think kids who love telling stories—especially if they have any familiarity with the traditional swords-and-sorcery role-playing worlds—can join in.

Adventure Party was designed by David Smith and Travis Winstead of Winsmith Games and published by Smirk & Dagger Games, with illustrations by Grafit Studio and graphic art by Curt Covert.

Adventure Party Components

Here’s what comes in the box:

• 12 Character screens
• 8 20-sided dice
• 49 Magic Item cards
• 32 Adventure cards
• 6 Scene Transition cards
• GM stand
• 43 XP tokens (in 1, 5, and 10 denominations)
• 50 Personal Glory tokens (in 1, 2, and 5 denominations)
• 8 Valor tokens
• Character Sheet pad
• Soundtrack and Turn Order guide

The character screens are small tri-fold screens that have a character portrait on the outside, and then some player aids on the inside—a reminder of what your roll could mean, and some skills and items that your character can use. They’re used to hide your die roll from other players, though you’ll need to hold them in place if you’re going to roll the die against them or it’ll just knock them over.

The character sheets are optional, but they let you personalize your character a bit—give yourself a name, your motivation for adventuring, and circle some traits. Are you calm or aggressive? Humble or boastful? There’s also space to record your most epic success and your most bitter failure, along with the date and score for that game.

The magic item cards include things like the Hammer of Smashiness, the Horn of Summoning, and the Armlet of Blasting. Each one has an illustration and a brief description of what it can do. Role-playing fans may notice that there aren’t any stats on these (or on the character screens)—but you’ll see why. These items are more for the narrative flavor rather than adding or subtracting specific values from a die roll. One nice touch is that many of them have descriptions that may help you come up with stories when things go wrong, too.

The adventure cards are oversized cards, each with a short description of a scenario and sometimes a few optional setup instructions. There’s also a nice illustration to help set the scene. The GM stand is a little cardboard dragon standee used to display the adventure card on the table.

The dice are standard sized, translucent, 20-sided dice in 8 different colors.

The soundtrack guide is a single large cardstock sheet: one side includes a turn order summary that can be used as a player aid, but most of the card includes suggestions for using the free PocketBard app to play both ambient sounds and special effects. They all use the “Fantasy Essentials” and “Seafaring” sound libraries, which are free, though PocketBard also has more libraries that can be purchased. For instance, for the “Fight Inn” scene, the recommended soundscape is “Town” with the “Combat” setting at about 1/4. The app also includes on-demand sound effects, so my kid enjoyed adding shouts and crashes during a fight, splashes when people fell into the sea, and so on.

How to Play Adventure Party

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to score experience points (XP) as a party by correctly guessing each other’s rolls. You can play either a single adventure or up to three, depending on the number of players and length of game desired.

Setup

Give each player a character screen, a die, two magic item cards, and a valor token. Everyone rolls their die, and whoever rolls highest will serve as the first Guess Master (GM). Optionally, you can also give everyone a character sheet to fill out—this isn’t necessary, but can give people more of a personalized version of the character, as well as providing a space to write down their “most memorable deeds.”

Put the item deck, XP tokens, and glory tokens nearby as a supply. If playing more than one adventure, shuffle the transition cards and keep them handy.

Gameplay

The GM draws the first adventure card and reads it aloud, and then places it in the stand so everyone can see the image (and can reference the story as needed). The player to their left will be the first active player.

The active player chooses one of their item cards, and then describes a plan for what they will do, using the selected item and any additional skills their character has. The plan should describe what they’re attempting to do and their desired outcome—though keep in mind even success should not end the scene because there are more players. You can’t kill the monster outright, but you could deal a heavy blow.

The active player rolls the die behind their screen, and then describes the results of their attempt based on the die roll. In case you’re not familiar with role-playing games, a “1” is an epic failure, the worst possible outcome, and a “20” is a critical hit, where everything you did goes right. In the middle, a 9 is just barely a failure, and a 10 is just barely a success. In Adventure Party, note that with a “1” none of the players can be killed (though you can be injured), and a “20” can’t end the scenario entirely because everyone needs to have a turn.

Once per game, you may spend your valor token to reroll the die.

Once you’ve described the results, the GM may ask one clarifying question, allowing you to elaborate with some additional details. Then, all players secretly set their dice behind their screens to indicate what they think the active player rolled.

When everyone has set their guess, reveal the GM’s guess and the active player’s roll. The GM’s guess earns XP for the party as a whole: you earn 5 XP if the guess is exactly correct, subtracting one point for each number away from the actual roll. So if the actual roll was a 13 and the GM guessed 15, they would earn 3 XP. (If you’re more than 5 away from the roll, you earn 0 XP.) Place XP in a common pool for the whole party.

Then, reveal the rest of the guesses. The rest of the players can earn glory points for themselves: 2 glory if your guess was correct, and 1 glory if you were 1 away.

Then, the player who just completed their action becomes the new GM, and it’s the next player’s turn to describe a plan and roll their die. The last active player (who was also the first GM for this adventure) gets to wrap up the adventure—this is when it’s okay to slay the dragon.

If desired, you can play another adventure—the full game is 3 scenarios for 3–6 players, or 2 scenarios for 7–8 players. Re-roll to pick the starting GM for the next adventure, discard the used items and draw new ones for everyone, and then the new GM draws a transition card to help fill in the story to the next adventure.

Game End

The game ends when all adventures are completed. Add up all of the XP earned and compare it to the chart to see how your party ranks, from Embarrassing to Legendary. The player with the most glory gets to announce the ranking, and then tell everyone how your party will be remembered for all time.

Tavern Rules

The finished game includes a quick start page on the front of the rulebook that uses “Tavern Rules,” and makes it a competitive game instead of cooperative. It’s fairly similar in structure, except that everyone just earns personal glory points for guessing within 2 of the actual roll. The adventurer earns glory equal to the highest amount earned by any of the guessers, and you just play one full round where everyone has had a chance to be the GM.

Adventure Party is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play Adventure Party

There’s a team-based party game from 2019 called Wavelength (which I backed on Kickstarter); you take turns giving clues so your teammates can make a guess—via a cleverly engineered dial—where the needle falls on the scale. You draw a card at random that tells you the two ends of the scale, so it could be something like “hot” to “cold” or it could be something harder like “not a sandwich” to “sandwich.” There’s a bunch of different cards, and the fun comes from the challenge of figuring out what sort of clue to give your teammates so they’ll turn the dial to 64% on a scale from “round” to “pointy.” (Bert’s head? A dull pencil?) It’s fun to see how everyone interprets your clue, and there’s a particularly satisfying feeling of triumph when somebody nails the guess exactly right.

Adventure Party has some similar vibes, where the scale is always “failure” to “success” with a range of 1 to 20, but instead of giving just a phrase or a word, you get to tell the story of your encounter with a kraken or an undead dinosaur. How do you indicate the subtle differences between rolling a 14 and a 15? The ends of the spectrum can be pretty easy to identify from the story, but when you have a middling failure or a middling success, it gets a lot trickier. Unlike an actual RPG where epic fails are to be avoided whenever possible, in Adventure Party it gives you an opportunity to tell a really funny story.

One of the things that surprised me most was how close we were able to get with our guesses. In the times I’ve played so far, we’ve had quite a few that were right on the nose, and many more that were just 1 away. (Though we did have some complete misses as well.) Everyone gets a chance to guess—the GM earns XP and the other players earn glory—so that keeps everyone engaged and thinking about it. The clarifying question can also be really useful and helps the player understand a little bit about how the GM is thinking about their story and vice versa.

I mentioned that it does help to have some familiarity with RPGs, but it’s not required. I’m more RPG-adjacent myself, and I feel like I know a good bit about the main concepts, but not a lot of the specifics. The little character screens give you some pointers if you need help: for instance, you know the Druid can shape-shift into animals, but you don’t need to know anything about what’s required to cast it or what the restrictions are. Basically, if you’ve read or watched or played just about anything with a fantasy setting, you can probably imagine enough to figure out your role in the narrative.

The story-telling itself is a pretty key ingredient, though, and that’s what I think could make or break the game for your group. While you don’t all have to be amazing fabulists, there’s a difference between saying “I shoot my bow at the kraken but missed” and “I take aim with my Bow of 100 Arrows, picking just the right moment to hit the tentacle wrapped around the mast, but just as I release the string, a wave crashes over the side of the boat and my arm swings wide, sending the shots into the open sea.” Both can get the job done, and give your GM a chance to guess your roll, but the game really shines when everyone’s tales are fun to listen to. My players had a mix of experience levels with RPGs and it seemed to work well, with some stories more elaborate than others. As with many things, you can get better with practice, too—and I imagine that those who play a lot of games together will improve their ability to guess the number rolled.

One of the fun things about Adventure Party is that low rolls can actually be a good thing. Sure, in an actual RPG you want to roll well on all of your actions, but low rolls in this game can help you tell a fun story—and are sometimes easier to guess! For instance, there was one story where I tried to use my Charm of Giant Growth to enlarge an arrow that one of my fellow adventurers had shot at an attacking kraken. But I rolled poorly … so in my story, the charm enlarged the kraken instead, with disastrous results.

I really enjoyed the prototype of Adventure Party, but it only had three adventure cards in it, so it’s really fun to see a much wider variety of potential scenes, and it also has a few more character options, too. I think it’s a nice blend of role-playing and party game, and could serve as a nice entry point for people new to role-playing. My 11-year-old plays a lot of games but hadn’t really played RPGs back when I had the prototype, so it was fun to see her exercising her improv muscles to describe her portions of the story. Now she’s joined a D&D club at school, and I like to think that games like Adventure Party were good practice for describing her actions. If your group loves telling stories and you like the RPG setting, it’s definitely worth checking out.

To order a copy of Adventure Party, visit the Smirk & Dagger website!

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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.

Click through to read all of "Reaping the Rewards: ‘Adventure Party: The Role-Playing Party Game’" at GeekDad.If you value content from GeekDad, please support us via Patreon or use this link to shop at Amazon. Thanks!