And that was October 2024

The clocks have gone back and the nights are drawing in. It’s a cosy time of year to play board games.

KICKSTARTER ARRIVALS

October was a good month for Kickstarter arrivals, mostly because one of my most anticipated pledges turned up. UNCONSCIOUS MIND from @fantasiagames is now one of the most gorgeous games in our collection, even with it’s standard components. Throw in those extra Deluxe items and it’s a absolute treat to display on the table.

In between two big Kickstarter arrivals this month, we recieved our copy of MYSTICANA from ButtonShy Games. This is a little more interesting than the usual 18 card wallet games they produce. MYSTICANA still runs on 18 cards, but they form what is called a Foundation deck where several different games can be played. The game came with three games using the base deck, plus two expansions that add six cards each. It also offers the possibilty to create your own games and I think ButtonShy will be releasoing more expansions for it in the future.

Up until this point I’d backed all of Dranda Games crowd funded projects, but EXPLORERS OF NAVORIA was the first one that I had drooled over the art and knew I wanted it before I even knew what the game was about. And, despite a few shipping problems, the game still made it three months early. Which is crazy. I was fortunate to have talked myself out of adding the playmat as this seems to have caused a few extra issues in the delivery process, but I got the base game, the expansion, and the really chonky deluxe components.

NEW GAMES OF THE MONTH

Yes, I’ve played the original KING OF TOKYO. So counting KING OF TOKYO: DARK EDITION as a new play this month might seem weird. But it’s different enough with the new track and it’s also been sat on my shelf for nearly 5 years! And it’s good. Still not brilliant at 2-player (I have the duel version on the way) but it’s definitely the best looking of the series. The ‘dark’ art is awesome and I love the colour of the new dice.

THE RIVAL NETWORKS was a game we were gifted at a board game cafe birthday celebration a couple of years back. I’d always wanted to play the original so when we got this 2-player only version I was quite chuffed. It’s a card drafting game where players are grabbing TV shows to put into one of three slots to score ratings and gain viewers. The most veiwers at the end wins. The game has crazy silly art, joke names for shows and characters, and the play time is nice and short. I enjoyed the play as it was nice and light.

We enjoyed a games day hosted by @boardgamereviewuk and of the 10 games we played, 7 were new to us. First up was CASTLE COMBO, a small box card drafting game that at first looked a little light and family friendly, but it ended up being my favourite play of the visit. You draft from one of two different rows (royalty or villagers) and build out a 3×3 grid over the course of the game. Cards have different colours and also their own scoring rulkes that depend on what else is played where. It’s really clever and has a lot more crunch than I expected.

HAPPY CAMPERS is a very small footprint Roll ‘n’ Write game that sees you roll two dice; one becomes your type (trees, tents, water, etc) and the other becomes your polyomino shape. It also has an interesting mechanic where rolling a double sees you pass your sheet to the player left or right of you and they choose what goes where, which puts a spanner in the works. I ended up winning the game, but half my turns were done by other players (we rolled an unnaturally high number of doubles) and while it was quick fun, it’s probably not a Roll ‘n’ Write I’d rush to play again.

We’ve dabbled in Trick Taking games over the last few months and one thing I’ve found with the genre is that each new release wants it’s own, weird, extra mechanic to stand out and make their it interesting. NOKOSOU DICE has a twist; it adds coloured dice to your hand that can be played in place of your cards. I really struggled with the mechanics of the game and felt like I had no real control over anything I did. The method of the last drafted dice becoming the trump colour and trump number for the round often meant that I proabaly didn’t have those results in my hand. I respected the cleverness of the extras but I also felt like it all just clogged up the game for me personally. I think I’d have found it easier if the final dice colour was the trump but not the number. Not sure.

I’ve seen a lot of social media coverage of MLEM: SPACE AGENCY since it’s release, and for some reason it didn’t interest me at all. But after my first play, I was plesantly surprised and really enjoyed it. I don’t think I’d ever own it, mainly becasue it probably isn’t fun at just 2, but I would definitely say yes to a 4-5 player game in the future. I also don’t normally enjoy Push-your-luck games as my brain struggles to gamble and gets deflated when I make the wrong decision. But I enjoyed every turn of MLEM: SPACE AGENCY even if we crashed, and I especially liked the mix of competitive and cooperative (when the dice start rolling, everyone is cheering the active player).

IMPERIAL MINERS uses a clever mechanic of cascading draft, a little similar to how you gather resourses in IN THE HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING. Here you are paying to place a card in specific levels of you mine. You place the card, action the card, and then choose a route to the above ground area, triggering cards along the way on the route. I found the game okay, but it definitily rewards repeat plays as you learn what cards could be drawn to plan better. It also felt extremely solitare, akin to five players playing their own game completely. The event cards are interesting and mix up each round, but after a while I was just triggering the same route and ignoring most of my other mine cards all while struggling to plan ahead. Good, but not great.

TIPPERARY was my biggest disappointment of the day, but not because it was bad. It’s a fun and quick polyomino drafting game where you pick from a choice of two tiles each turn and build out your estate. Each tile has a mix of different square spaces and some come with bonuses if placed against certain other spaces. I liked everything about this game . . . except for two things. First, I felt the game ended just a little too soon. I’ve seen people say this sort of thing about other games in the past and never understood it. But with TIPPERARY I actually felt like I was just getting somewhere and then it was over. While this sounds like a complaint, I guiess it’s kind of a positive as it means I want more. I absolutely could have played this again straight away, but again, it felt like it was missing two or three more rounds. The other issue I had was the draft. The game sees a wheel get spun, and where you player token is becomes your choice of tiles. I feel like it should have gone down the PLANET UNKNOWN route and allowed the active player to pick, meaning you at least get two tile you want from your ten turns. Again, didn’t hate the game. It was more a case of I was dissapointed because potential was there.

PLANTED is a card drafting game with really nice components that plays like SUSHI ROLL with a little extra sprinkled on top. I think it was a great game to end our visit with as it’s mostly a relaxing game with some interacting over drafting plants and a little fun to be had with what you pass to your opponents. Each turn you playing a card to either gather resourses (used at the end of the round to grow your plants), gain tools (helps with gaining more resourses), and decorations (end of game scoring). This is another game that I proably wouldn’t own, but would absolutley say yes to a play.

Now it’s time to talk about ARCS. If there was ever a list of marmite games, this would most definitely be close to the top. I’ve seen people claim it’s game of the year, while others call it an overhyped mess. I’ll admit that I was turned off of the game from the original Kickstarter page, but now the final product has ended up grabbing my attention enough that I regret not backing it. I’ve spent a few weeks hunting down a copy and a restock from Kienda saved the day. So, which side of the fence do I fall on? Well, early impressions see me really liking it. It’s clever, but not too clever. It’s also the Leder Games game we’ll get to the table the most as it’s considerably easier to teach than ROOT or OATH (the later which still sits on our Shelf Of Shame). The trick taking mechanic for action selection is what is garnering most of the hate, but it’s not as bad as people say. It’s absolutly a game where repeat plays are required, because it’s one thing to learn a game, but here you’ll need to ‘learn’ the game. ARCS requires a little commitment to really see what it’s all about and I feel some people aren’t prepared or aware that they need to. I’ve enjoyed the 2-player light combat games and we had a messy and enjoyable full map game at 4-players which was so much fun. While I don’t fall into the Tom Brewster ‘best game ever‘ camp, it’s definitely a game that could step into my top 50 for next year.

I was so eager to try EXPLORERS OF NAVORIA that we got it to the table the same evening that it arrived. The game is all about drafting cards and gathering resources, but it does both in a really intesting way. To claim a card you first draw two tokens from a bag and then choose one. You can then only take a card from the 1-3 cards that match the token. There are five different card rows. These cards are a mix of resources, income, end game scoring, and more. Once you’ve completed the card drafting phase you then play in reverse turn order and take the tokens back to the town on the map and claim rewards. The game has a really nice flow to it, and the Gateway+ base game is really easy to teach. I do feel like it might get a little too repetative with it’s simplicity, but thankfully we have the expansion which looks to add a few more things like light player abilities, a mix of round bonuses, and a new resource.

While KING OF TOKYO no longer sits near the top of my top 50 games, it still remains a firm favourite. It’s easy to teach and is great for playing 4-6 players. It’s those lower counts that limits how much we play it at home. Well, as the flood of 2-player versions of well liked games continues in 2024, KING OF TOKYO: DUEL has stepped into the ring to improve that 2-player game of monster fighting monster maddness. And it pretty much suceeds. Most of the core gameplay remains the same with chonky dice being rolled and damage being done. Newish to the series are monster powers. Now, straight out of the box, the six monsters have their own abilities based on one of the new dice faces. Also for this version, the scoring has been removed and replaced with a tug of war mechanic using two tracks (Fame and Destruction). I found that they work well and it’s only when you neglect one and your opponent gets lucky and can capitilise that you’ll suddenly find yourself fighting on that arena. There are also ways to manipulate the two tracks, either by changing the length, or adding bonus spaces. Overall it does exactly what it sets out to do and is the version to play when there are just two of you.

While I was super impressed with the art and production on ENDLESS WINTER: PALEOAMERICANS, the game has since settled into a more average rating for me. I like playing it, but have a few issues that keep it off my top 50 list. When Fantasia Games announced that their follow up was a game about exploring psychoanalysis alongside Freud, I couldn’t say I was too insterested. But for some reason I did still end up backing UNCONSCIOUS MIND, and after just one play, I’m sure glad I did. The production is almost beyond anything else we own. The art on everything is so, so beautiful. The components make the game feel like it would cost twice as much as it did. And the gameplay is deep, interesting, but not too mind boggling (no pun intended). It’s basically worker placement as you use ‘ideas’ to carry out actions. But there is a lot going on around that with the slightly complex city board as well as the curing of patients. My only two complaints after my first play are that, one, I felt like the game ended a couple of turns earlier than I was ready for (which I guess is a compliment), and two, it takes a while to get set up. But I can not wait to do it all over again.

WINDMILL VALLEY was a game that didn’t interest me when I first saw it popping up on social media. The action selection boards looked a little gimmicky, and the art on the board gave off a more lightweight experience. But I was definitely mistaken by my first impressions. The sort of reverse rondel action selection is very clever, especially with it’s ability to be upgraded throughout the game. And the board actually works in favour of the theme with bright colours and bold iconography. The game itself revolves around Tulips and Windmills. There’s an action choice at the start of your turn which governs how much you can turn your action wheel. But this action is shared and becomes manipulated by other players on their turns. So some times you find youself having to activate it at a cost, and other times the other players might have done it for you. It’s an extremely tight game with money being particularly tough to come by at times. But the game is much crunchier than it’s exterior would have you believe.

During a visit to Dice, Portsmouth, one of our friends picked TSURO: PHOENIX RISING to play. We’re familiar with the original and I was curious to what could be added to the base game. The manipulation of tiles mid game with a items on the board that you have to pass to collect points definitely makes it more thinky than the original TSURO. There’s still some of that ‘on rails’ going around when you just can’t stop heading off the edge. But the abililty to rotate tiles and taking out opponents makes the game much more tactical. I think I’d definitely prefer this version over the original now.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Playing three games of FINAL GIRL back-to-back
• Completing our 52×1 Challenge for the year.
• Managing to grab a copy of ARCS with a Kienda restock
• A 10 game marathon with @boardgamereviewuk and family
• A fantastic game day with @thoughtsofameeple
• A games day with friends at Dice, Portsmouth