REVIEW – When you live in a somewhat secluded wooded area like I do, you want to be able to monitor your property when you’re home and away from home. I’ve had multiple security cameras around my house for years, but only in the past year have I “graduated” to PoE cameras, and I love […]

REVIEW – Staying comfortable outdoors has certainly evolved in the last dozen years. Gone are the days of having to start a fire to stay warm. (Fires are still wonderfully inviting and fun, just not efficient.) Ceramic heaters and radiant heaters have been used for a long time, but they are usually large and do […]

REVIEW – I’ve had my two Dell monitors for a while, but I’ve yet to find a monitor arm that fits the weight of my 32″ curved screen. I tried my heavy duty work arms, yet no matter how tight I made it, it would slide down and rest on the desk. The LiftSync Dual […]

REVIEW – I’ve been updating my EDC and talking about it on my YouTube channel for the past few months. My next category to discuss is flashlights and it turned out to be a good choice because I was recently offered the chance to review the SPERAS ARC Ti Titanium USB-C keychain flashlight. Let’s check […]

REVIEW – Fall is here, and the weather has turned chilly at night.  That means Christmas is coming soon, and before I can say “Jingle Bells” it will be time to decorate the house.  While many of the decorations in our house are traditions that have been used for years, we are always up for […]

REVIEW – My first smartwatch was the Pebble, which I found to be instantly invaluable by displaying my notifications right on my wrist and then letting me decide if they were important enough to pull my phone out. For me, this has been the primary function of my smartwatches to this day. Other functions and […]

REVIEW – Look at my fancy coffee maker! The PINKAH Stainless Steel French Press Coffee Maker is a contemporary take on the French Press design that features an innovative leakproof pouring mechanism and a double-walled design that keeps your beverages hot for hours. We love all the coffee things, so let’s learn more. To the […]

REVIEW – Sleeping with a mask on may be the greatest thing I ever learned to do.  I sleep longer because there’s no light to wake me up and I fall asleep faster because it kind of “triggers” sleep.  I can fall asleep anywhere, and it’s so helpful that sometimes if I need a quick […]

REVIEW – 3D printing is fun and challenging. You can download countless free files from sites like Thingiverse and Printables, Cults 3D, and Thangs, or create your own using Fusion 360 TinkerCAD. It takes time, patience, and a love of tinkering, but it can be great fun. Many 3D printing enthusiasts will agree that incessant […]

REVIEW – There seems to be a number of different form factors popping up with projectors recently. Very slim projectors, portable cubes, and today’s variation which looks more like a spotlight than a projector at first glance. The XGODY Gimbal 3 projector looked like a fun projector to try out and looked very portable. Read […]

REVIEW – I previously reviewed The James Brand Carter XL which has been a dependable knife but I also have a penchant for utility knives so when The James Brand sent me their new Palmer Clear utility knife that retails for only $39 I couldn’t wait to try it out. What is it? The James […]

REVIEW – It’s a punch-to-the-gut, sinking, black hole feeling to reach into a pocket, pack, or purse and find your missing wallet. Adding a SwitchBot Wallet Finder is a remedy to a common problem that fits the pocketbook – pun intended!  ???? What is it? The SwitchBot Wallet Finder card is a Bluetooth device that […]

REVIEW – When we lived in Europe, our home had a heated towel bar in the bathroom. It seemed like such a decadent little thing, but as fall turns to winter I recall just how nice it was to step out of the shower and reach for a warm towel. When the Comfier towel and […]

Last week we received Hues and Cues from The Op Games. We recently finished playing through Scooby-Doo Escape from the Haunted Mansion (a fantastic game in The Op Games catalogue designed by Jay Cormier, Sen-Foong Lim, and Kami Mandell that you should absolutely pick up to play with your family) and wanted to give another game from the same publisher a go. I picked Hues and Cues because I’ve been pleasantly surprised by other “test whether our minds think the same way” games such as The Mind  and Wavelength.

In Hues and Cues, players gather around a large central board comprised of 480 graduating colors of the rainbow surrounded by an x-y axis and scoring table. White and black (which are technically not colors) are conspicuously absent as are shades (mixtures of color + black; e.g., grey) and tints (mixtures of color + white; e.g., cream).  On each player’s turn, they draw a card with four colors and the x-y axis codes of those colors depicted and they select one.

They are in the role of the clue giver. They attempt to convey which one they selected using a one word clue without directly pointing to it, naming its x-y axis, or using basic color references such as “yellow” or “green”. After they’ve provided their clue to everyone, each of the other players gets to select and mark a color on the board with their token that they think is the one to which the clue giver was referring. Then the clue giver gets a second shot at leading everyone to the correct color and this time they follow the same rules except that they can use a two word clue if they wish. Once again, all of the other players select and mark a color. After everyone has finished marking colors, the clue giver lays a 3x3 square cutout over top the board so that the color they were giving clues against lies directly in the middle. Any player who has a marker in that spot gets 3 points, any player who has a marker in one of the surrounding 8 spots gets 2 points for each marker of theirs in that area, and finally, any player who has a marker in one of the 16 spots surrounding the cutout gets 1 point for each marker of theirs in that area. Meanwhile, the clue giver scores 1 point for every marker (of any player)
inside the cutout.

Just as with Wavelength, Hues and Cues reinforced the absolute truth that we all think a bit differently. When I say lilac and imagine the corresponding color, it’s likely that it’s at least a few steps away on the board from the color you imagine. Ditto for emerald and periwinkle. And don’t get me started on apricot, as we had a big debate among 4 players on exactly which color square corresponds to that. Then there are misunderstandings in the clues themselves. In our group this happened when a clue giver said robin and I assumed they meant the dominant color of the bird (orange) but they were thinking of the iconic eggs of the bird instead (a shade of blue). It also happened that time a clue giver said bazooka and I assumed they meant the rocket launcher (brown) and they were thinking of the bubble gum (pink). 

Overall, I think Hues and Cues is a fine party game. My core gaming circle enjoys heavier strategy games, but we often look to a party game to start off our evening and get everyone comfortable before breaking into smaller groups to play the brain busters. Hues and Cues  works well for us in that role. I prefer Wavelength ever so slightly over Hues and Cues so if you’ve only got the budget to add one more party game to your collection I’d lean in that direction, but if you’re open to a couple of games or if you already have Wavelength and want something a little different, pick up Hues and Cues. One thing I really appreciate about Hues and Cues is that its language independent. As long as all players speak a common language, it doesn’t matter what that language is. You could even easily use sign language to give the clues. In this way, it’s especially a great game to bring into your collection if you host international board gamers (I’m looking at you, game cafe owners and Air B&B hosts!). Please note: while it should be obvious, this is not a game for the colorblind.

You can pick up Hues and Cues  at Amazon for under $25.

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Publisher: The Op Games
Players: 3-10
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): ~25 minutes
Game type: party games

Rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Earlier this summer, Tokyo Sidekick arrived on our doorstep from Japanime Games. I knew absolutely nothing about the game before it showed up. Turns out, it's a big game, with a big board, in a big box. Unpacking everything, I was pretty impressed with the breadth of inventory. Check out the pic below from the publisher of the core game components beyond the board and cardboard standees.

My copy also included a comic book giving the origin stories of the heroes, as well as upgraded acrylic standees. The components are well made and I particularly like the acrylic upgrades; you’ll want these for sure if you can get them.

 

Perusing the rulebook, I started to get a good understanding of Tokyo Sidekick. It’s a cooperative game designed by Yusuke Emi where 2-4 players take on the role of heroes and sidekicks who battle against villains, supervillains, and menaces, while also navigating around the central board to deal with incidents as they crop up. There’s a lot going on at once for players to manage, and that’s part of the fun. It feels a lot like playing Pandemic, if the characters we played in Pandemic  were more personable and relatable. 

Turns pass back and forth between players and during the active player’s turn they must do their best using their array of selectable actions (actions that are paid for with energy cards  from their deck) to thwart evil and handle critical incidents that have been revealed. We didn’t find there to be much analysis paralysis during turns. At the end of each player’s turn, during the End Phase, new incidents are added to the board, the player redraws their hand, and circumstances are evaluated to determine whether additional steps grouped under something called “Crime Time” will occur. If it does occur, special effects on enemy cards activate, towns on the map get destroyed, a subset of incidents on the board become critical (if you leave these unresolved on the board for too long, you lose the game automatically), new enemies are revealed from the enemy deck and placed on the board, and new incidents are added to the incident row (to be added to the board on future turns).

What I love most about this game is the detailed descriptions and backstory on every hero and sidekick. Chamaru is my absolutely favorite sidekick to include on my team. Look at his adorable profile!

There’s even a mind map at the end of the rulebook showing the intricate connections between each hero and sidekick in the game. The artwork is lovely too. Sometimes I’m a bit hesitant when a new Japanime game is released because I never know if the artwork is going to push boundaries a bit too far out of the family friendly genre (which is always a shame when it happens because the gameplay is usually solid). Happy to report that while the game isn’t going to win any awards from the feminist corner for empowering representation, it’s nothing too risque; tweens and teens can play this without being scandalized.  Another thing I really enjoy about Tokyo Sidekick is the free lesson in Tokyo geography. All the locations on the board are neighborhoods of Tokyo, like Otsuka, Waseda, or Shinjuku. If you thought Pandemic was good at teaching you world geography, this game is really good at teaching you the areas of Tokyo as you move between them.

The rulebook is very detailed and well written. We didn’t have any trouble understanding the instructions and we weren’t left with any unanswered questions after reading it.

The myriad of hero-sidekick combinations and the variety of enemies in the enemy deck make the game highly replayable. We’ve played a handful of times and have yet to even eke out a win but we never got tired of trying. The first time we played we didn’t stay on top of incidents and then after that we tried to manage our incidents better but were overrun with villains. I’m sure there some clever strategy to score a victory in Tokyo Sidekick, but we haven’t stumbled upon it yet. Which is another plus for the game as far as I’m concerned; there’s no easy win to be had here. You’re going to have to collaborate closely with your team partners and really put your heads together to beat this thing.

This is definitely a game to put on the shopping list, if you’ve not ordered it yet. The Kickstarter for Tokyo Sidekick  just closed the first week in September, but Japanime has already started taking pre-orders for the retail version of the game on their website. If you’ve got tweens, I especially think this is a must-have. The whole family can work together to save Tokyo and learn Japanese geography in the process.

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Publisher: Japanime Games
Players: 2-4
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 75 minutes.
Game type: deck building, cooperative, hand management

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Before the pandemic trapped us all in our homes, I spent many an hour at our local United Action for Youth center in Iowa City volunteering as a board game coordinator. Every month, I’d bring a few games with me and introduce them to the teens who hung out at the center after school. One of the games that got rave reviews from the group is Artsee.  Designed by J. Alex Kevern, and published by Renegade Game Studios, it’s an easy to learn, quick playing card game with a small table footprint for up to five players. Each player takes on the role of an art gallery curator, attempting to build the most prestigious gallery in order to win the game. Galleries are built from individual exhibits (cards) that depict two or three paintings from different categories (abstract, landscape, portrait, or still life). In addition to the paintings, each exhibit also indicates a featured category. Each time an exhibit is played to one of the four columns in a gallerist’s tableau, all opponents of the active player may deposit a meeple, representing a gallery visitor, on each exhibit in their gallery that has the same featured category as the exhibit the active player just laid down. Next, the active player scores points (prestige) for any visitor meeples that were previously located on the top most exhibit of the column they just added their exhibit to. The meeples are removed and returned to the active player’s general supply when this occurs. The active player also scores prestige for the number of  paintings in the column to the left or right (as indicated by the direction of the arrow on their exhibit card) of their just-placed exhibit that match the featured category of the exhibit card. If the player earns enough prestige during their turn (5-9), they may also claim a masterpiece painting token. These tokens are worth prestige at the end of the game during final scoring and also count as another painting of the chosen category when added to a column in the  gallerist’s tableau. Once a player has played an exhibit, earned prestige, and claimed a masterpiece token (if eligible), they draw a card and play passes to their left.

The gameplay continues until there are no more cards left to draw and all player hands are empty.  We found that turns progressed pretty quickly, with little to no analysis paralysis. Prestige bonuses are calculated at game end based on the number of masterpiece tokens accumulated. Each player adds their bonus to the prestige tokens they earned during the game. Don’t forget to also count the prestige on each masterpiece token. The player with the most prestige is the winner. 

While the components for Artsee  are nothing special, the artwork is well done (it’s comprised of reproductions of famous artwork with humorous twists). And it’s true that the art gallery theme seems to be just pasted on.  But at core,  Artsee  is a relaxing and fun little logic puzzle that doesn’t get boring, even after repeated plays. It’s especially fun to play with tween and teens and at under $25, makes an affordable holiday gift.

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Publisher: Renegade Game Studios
Players: 2-5
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): about 30 minutes per game
Game type: card game, set collection

Rating:

Rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Six months ago I didn’t even know what a tower defense game was and now I’ve played two of them several times and have some strong opinions on each one. In this post, I want to talk to you about one of them - Kingdom Rush: Rift in Time. The good folks over at Lucky Duck Games sent me a review copy of the game, designed by Helana Hope, Sen-Foong Lim, and Jessey Wright.

Now I mentioned that this is a tower defense game, but what exactly does that mean? In games using this type of mechanic, one of the primary objectives is to continually defend your assigned sector of the board (i.e. your home base) against incoming threats. This is managed through the use of armed towers, which reign down violence and death on any malicious parties approaching. This mechanism got its start in 1980's video games (source: Wikipedia) and is one of the most popular mechanisms in modern game apps on cell phones and tablets. More recently, it's crossed over into the tabletop board game industry, with the earliest tower defense games appearing in 2013.

Kingdom Rush: Rift in Time was funded on Kickstarter in 2019 to the tune of over a million dollars. It's derived from an app (Kingdom Rush) originally published for the browser and iOS by Ironhide Game Studio back in 2011. There are 58+ million users who have downloaded and reviewed the app on Metacritic so the built-in audience for the board game from the existing app users alone could potentially keep the publisher churning out boxes indefinitely (how long does it take to produce millions of copies of a board game?!). With a retail price approaching $60, even with licensing fee expenses, I imagine it's a lucrative project for Lucky Duck. But is it a good purchase decision for board game enthusiasts who've decided they want to add a tower defense game to their collection?

Well, it depends on what kind of board gamer you are.

Let's dig in a little deeper.

Regular readers know theme is very important to me. Is there a good narrative explaining our roles in the game and a plausible backstory to illuminate how we got into the position we are in and why we are doing what we're being asked to do in the game? For Kingdom Rush: Rift in Time, the answer is yes to both. There's a time mage who has opened up a rift in the fabric of time, hell bent on taking down our kingdom and our job is to stop the mage before they can do so. It's simple yet compelling call to heroism.

The artwork, by Mateusz Komada and Katarzyna Kosobucka, is cartoonish and playful. It definitely has that cell phone app flavour to it.

The components are average for the price point or for a mass market game. And here's where we begin to tie things to what kind of board gamer you are. If you've been playing higher end games lately (those typically with a retail price over $100), the components might feel a bit flimsy and look a bit cheap. They're comprised of colorful cardboard tokens and boards, plastic figures, plastic trays, a handful of wooden meeples, and many (thin) cardstock cards.

If your tastes or budget gravitate toward games at a similar price as Kingdom Rush: Rift in Time, I don't think you'll find anything problematic about the components here and on that criteria, this is a good tower defense game for you. Happy bonus: among the components is a campaign progress map and stickers that allow players to mark their accomplishments as they play through the campaign. As a person who likes to check off boxes, I adore this feature. Kudos to the designers for the thoughtful addition.

I also really appreciated the player aides provided - the summary of steps in a round printed on the hero boards, and the helper cards that detail the various enemies.

  The gameplay is simple enough that it doesn't take long to set up or learn the rules. In each round of this cooperative game, players spawn new hordes of enemies marching on the kingdom, play tower and hero cards to attack the hordes, check to see whether any hordes have been destroyed (and remove them if so, reaping the crystal rewards), move the surviving hordes closer to the kingdom, pick up the surviving tower and hero cards played, and spend crystals to buy more tower cards. Rinse, repeat for every round. The individual monsters within a horde have different rules for engagement (for example, some cannot be attacked by heroes and others are self healing) so players will need to vary their tactics when playing tower and hero cards. Also, instead of playing all your tower cards during a round, you can upgrade one or more of them and pass them to a fellow player to use next round. And instead of activating your hero's attack against a horde during a round, you can restore your hero's health if needed. Mixed in among the hordes are portals that the time mage wants to use to reach and breach the kingdom. If one of these portals crosses into the kingdom, the game is lost immediately. Conversely, for most scenarios included with the game (there are 10 in the base game and several expansions already available and each can be played on varying levels of difficulty, providing plenty of replay) all of the portals must be destroyed in order to win the game. You can also lose the game if enough of the regular hordes breech your kingdom, causing you to run out of kingdom hearts (health).

The rulebook, which is well written and illustrated, suggests playing the game on difficulty level 3, while Tom Vasel (respected reviewer) has recommended playing on difficulty level 1. So we took the middle road during all of our games and played on level 2. Even though we lost our first game because we didn't do enough upgrading of towers (the second portal that came out could only be attacked with towers we didn't own), we didn't feel there were any overly complicated nuances to the game that would take several plays just to learn. You can play this game with your teens and tweens and they'll do just fine. The puzzle aspect of figuring out the best place to establish each tower on the board to maximize the damage to the hordes is an excellent logic puzzle for young and old alike. So we return to our discussion of what kind of board gamer you are. Do you want a family friendly game you can play with your kids? If so, then this is a good tower defense game for you. Do you enjoy board games that don't require a steep learning curve when it comes to strategy? If so, then this is a good tower defense game for you.

To recap, Kingdom Rush: Rift in Time  is an accessible, affordable, family friendly tower defense game and board gamers who value those qualities would do well to pick up a copy for themselves. And of course, with the holiday season upon us, it's a smart choice for gifting as well. I'm glad we own a copy, and I plan to pick up the expansions to play with my kids.

For my friends who exclusively prefer complex gameplay that will take you many games to even begin to master and expensive components with a luxury look and feel, stay tuned for my review of Cloudspire, because that's the tower defense game for your cohort.

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Publisher: Lucky Duck Games Players: 1-4

Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): approx an hour per game

Game type: cooperative, tower defense, tile placement

Rating:

Rating scale:

OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.

OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.

OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.

NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.             

I was so excited when Jamey Stegmaier’s Plans and Ploys  expansion for Tapestry  (published by Stonemaier Games) showed up in the mail. I’d  played a lot of Tapestry games with my social isolation pod (see my review for Tapestry  here) over the summer and I was eager to explore the new Tapestry cards and civilizations promised in the expansion. Beyond these updates, the Plans and Ploys expansion also includes a new game element (Landmark cards), new space tiles, a handy bag for drawing exploration tiles, and landmark place marker tokens which offer an easy way to identify which landmarks have already been claimed just by looking at the central board.

As soon as we unboxed Plans and Ploys, we invited a few of our friends over to give it a go. Our previous social isolation pod had disbanded with the spike in new COVID cases in our state (Iowa: ground zero for the pandemic once the fall semester of school started) and none of the members of our newly formed pod had ever played the base game before. So we weren’t sure whether we should play the base game without the expansion first or if the expansion was straightforward enough to merge into the base game in a way that didn’t prove too complicated for new players to understand. We spent a bit of time going over the base game rules with our friends and then read the rules addendum for the expansion together and decided to jump straight into playing with the expansion. It was a good decision. Everyone got into the flow of the game without any difficulty.

I played the Advisors civilization. This is a new civ from the expansion and I wasn’t sure if I was in love with its special abilities as compared to the other new civs I’d peeked at before we shuffled all the civs and randomly drew for each player.  One point per Tapestry card didn’t seem to amount to much, and at first I didn’t see the power in forcing others to take my Tapestry cards instead of drawing from the deck. But as the game unfolded, I quickly realized that I could use the giveaway power to purge less helpful Tapestry cards from my hand and churn through the Tapestry deck much quicker in search of the really powerful cards. Plus, I could influence my opponents’ behavior by giving them Tapestry cards that would encourage them to favor certain actions over others and then use the knowledge of what they were likely going to do for my benefit. For example, I might give someone a Tapestry card that strongly encouraged military track advancement and then play a Tapestry card myself that allowed me to pick an opponent and a track and copy the opponents movement on that track. Knowing that a specific opponent would likely play heavy on the military track for their next several turns allowed me to be more confident in my bet on that player and that track in conjunction with the track+opponent copy power of my Tapestry card.  Overall, the Advisors are well balanced and constructed civilization, as are all the others from the expansion that I’ve studied closely.

At the beginning of the game, each player was given a Landmark card and building. These are personal goals that allow a player to place a building on their Capital city map once the goal is met. All of the goals are fairly straightforward, but as with other games that feature personal player goals, players have to be careful not to become overly focused on their goal at the expense of general game strategy.

 

All of the new components packaged with the Plans and Ploys  expansion feature the same artwork style and the same quality of construction as those of the base game. The additions integrate very well in terms of gameplay and strategy too. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Stonemaier revealed Jamey had done a Peter Jackson: Lord of the Rings  move with this game, designing everything all at once and just releasing it in separate parts as the base game and an expansion. I especially appreciated the new landmark tokens that saved me from that grumpy feeling that wells up inside of me when I realize someone else has already taken a track landmark I was eyeing. Now as soon as they claim a landmark from one of the tracks, the landmark token is removed, signaling its unavailability. Nice. 

Our game was really close in score as far as everyone could tell for most of its duration. I wasn’t sure I was going to win, but I was having a hell of good time playing the six, count them, SIX, civilizations I’d managed to acquire in the game due to some crafty manipulation of my technology cards in conjunction with track actions. I felt powerful. Very powerful. 

In the end, my husband Christopher won (but not by much) and I came in second. Our newbie players did pretty well at final scoring, especially considering they’d never played before and were playing against veterans.

I loved everything about this expansion. If you haven’t picked up the base game yet, call/email your local game store to reserve a copy (or order online from Stonemaier) and add Tapestry Plans and Ploys  to your order at the same time. You’ll want them both. And if you already own Tapestry, this expansion is calling your name. There’s still time for you to add it to your Christmas wishlist and if no one gifts it to you, you can give yourself a copy (you deserve it after surviving 2020!) when the new year rolls around.

-------------------------------------------------

Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Players: 1-5 (We played with 4)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 3 hours per game
Game type: tile placement, hand management, dice rolling, area control
Retail Price: $27 direct from the publisher https://store.stonemaiergames.com/collections/tapestry/products/tapestry-plans-ploys

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

We’ve had our eye on Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated since its debut in 2019 from Renegade Game Studios. In our house, we love legacy games and we own most of the other Clank! editions, so it seemed like a good fit.

Boy, was it ever! We finally got the game a couple of weeks ago, and immediately fell for it so hard during the first few minutes of the game that we played it nearly every day with our 11 year old twin sons, Max and Locke.

In Clank! Legacy: AI, designed by Andy Clautice and Paul Dennen, players take on the role of employees at a small organization. At the beginning of the legacy campaign, the organization is in the process of applying to become a franchise of Acquisitions Incorporated, a megacorp famed for its for-profit adventuring services. We loved the narrative and appreciated the touches of authenticity,  like the franchise charter agreement.  We’ve played through other legacy campaign games over the past year where the narrative fell flat at times (I’m looking at you Aeon’s End Legacy), but Clank! Legacy: AI doesn’t suffer from that problem. Every game session (mission) introduces new and compelling twists in the ongoing storyline and is able to hold our interests. And the gameplay - including choices, restrictions, and goals-  makes sense within the narrative universe Clautice and Dennen have constructed for us. We found that the narrative so captured our kids attention that they were better about staying in the game each mission long enough to explore the terrain to everyone’s satisfaction as compared to their more typical race to the finish behavior when playing the standard edition of Clank! .  I was very pleased with that aspect of this edition as I really enjoy exploring the far reaches of the board.

The game mechanisms here are based on those in the base game (primarily deck building and point to point movement), with players descending into lower depths on the central board, tasked with obtaining rewards and escaping to safety before the game ends. But the legacy edition of this midweight strategy game introduces additional non-player characters, rewards, perils, and side quests as play unfolds. Spaces on the board have narrative icons indicating passages, from the Book of Secrets, which are to be read when a player lands on the space for the first time. These passages will often direct players to apply stickers to the game board, cards, or the rule book.  They may also reveal new game components such as additional cards or tokens. Clank! Legacy: AI  also utilizes both sides of the central game board, providing a lot of real estate for legacy modifications.

I didn’t notice a lot of analysis paralysis during our plays of Clank! Legacy: AI. The requirement to play all cards each hand coupled with the movement restrictions on the board provided only a few reasonable options to choose from each turn in terms of movement. Occasional delays were seen when players selected cards to recruit using skill points, but even then, it was never more than a few moments of hesitation. Each game session wraps up in a couple hours or less.

The components (the central board, the cards, cardboard tokens, etc) are of average quality for the price point. Our franchise board (where you deposit clank, hold market items for purchase, track dragon rage, and track player damage) arrived slightly warped and seems to have warped further as it has sat out on our game table (we’ve had some wild temperature swings here in snowy Iowa), but otherwise everything arrived in and remains in excellent condition.

The artwork (implemented by a full team of artists, including Clay Brooks, Anita Burrell, Derek Herring, Raul Ramos, Nate Storm, and Alain Viesca) is on point. It reinforces the narrative, is kid-friendly, and is generally unobtrusive, which is just what I’m looking for in this price range. It also blends seamlessly with the artwork in the base game, so when the legacy campaign is finished and players want to mix components of this game with the base game, it works visually.

The rulebook was generally clear and we didn’t need to look up much online, although we did have a few questions about some of the language on the cards that we didn’t feel the rulebook addressed (and we also couldn’t find a clear answer online, so it might just have been a brain block unique to us).

Every aspect of Clank! Legacy: AI  has been well planned and executed by Clautice and Dennen. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed playing this edition with my family and I’m hoping they’ve got additional legacy campaign expansions in the works for this IP as I can’t wait to see what they come up with next. Solid storytelling, from start to finish.

   -------------------------------------------------

Publisher: Renegade Game Studios
Players: 2-4 (We played with 4)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 90 minutes per game
Game type: deck building, point to point movement, legacy, campaign
Retail Price: $75-100

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

During the early reign of King Charles III (Charles the Simple) in West Francia, the area was besieged by Viking invasions, while the memory of the previous and frequent Saracen incursions was still fresh in the minds of the general populace. The Saracens were Muslim - mostly Berbers from Africa – and had only let up on the Franks because they’d been pushed back by the Vikings. The local nobles were left largely to fend the Vikings off on their own.

In Paladins of the West Kingdom, players assume the role of these unnamed nobles (most likely Dukes), working to keep the region safe and spread their faith (historically: Christianity).  I really enjoy this theme, and in fact, playing the game nurtured my interest in the historical kingdom of West Francia.  That’s why I can tell you that while the rulebook notes that the King lends his Paladins to the nobles to aid them in their quest, I’m giving all the credit for the loan to the designers, Shem Phillips and S J MacDonald.  Paladins are a fictional group of knights in French lore (think of them as similar to the Knights of the Round Table in British lore),  or alternatively, a translation of the Frankish royal title of Palatine Count, which was a noble that focused mostly on judicial and governing matters and was not known as a knight.

I’ve won a few and lost a few games of Paladins. It’s a worker placement game that incorporates card drafting.  At the beginning of every round, players draw the next three Paladin cards in their deck and choose one to play for the round, one to put back on top of their Paladin deck to draw during the next round, and one to put at the bottom of their Paladin deck. Each Paladin boosts faith, influence, or strength (usually more than one of these), and also provides a special benefit. If you’ve got players prone to analysis paralysis, this is where they may get stalled, especially in the first few rounds. After Paladins are selected and put into play, workers for the round are selected by each player and put into their personal resource supply. You have many stations on your player board to place your workers during the round,  and when you do so, your moves are independent and walled off from your opponents (they cannot tamper with your player board or placement of your workers on it). However, there is one area on the general board (the King’s Favour card area) where you can also place your workers and those spots are competitive. Also contributing to player interaction – some of the stations on your player board where you place workers allow you to move resources (monks and outposts) from your player board to the main board, consuming a competitive spot that provides a placement reward. And all the resource cards on display around the main board – the townsfolk you can hire, the walls you can build, the outsiders you can attack or convert, the tavern cards you draw workers from, and the suspicion cards you gain $$$ from, are all lucrative items for which players must compete. So we’ve got a good mix of independent action and player interaction in Paladins.  There are not a lot of opportunities for  “take that” behavior in this game, other than perhaps timing your draw of suspicion cards to trigger an inquisition when you know your opponents will suffer a penalty and be forced to take on more debt.

Strategy Tips: [1] Don’t be afraid to take on debt. It’s not too hard to flip debt cards for additional victory points and the income generated from the suspicion cards + the usefulness of the criminal workers are worth the increase in debt. [2] As with all worker placement games, look for opportunities to get more workers. For example, try to recruit any townsfolk that provide workers as a reward for other actions. [3] Attacking outsiders is a reliable way to get provisions and build influence, which are prerequisites for building the wall, which in turn give more strength and allow you to attack more outsiders. When paired with the townsfolk card that provide a bonus worker for every attack action, it’s a powerful combination.

Giving the game more intellectual weight, worker placement on your board and the actions workers trigger often have additional requirements beyond number and types (i.e., colors) of workers. The actions triggered by worker placement may be constrained by your strength, faith, or influence level. And some spots or actions triggered by placing workers in those spots require money or provisions. All of these prerequisites can be gained as rewards from prior actions triggered by various worker placement, so much of the game is finding the most efficient ways to obtain prerequisites associated with the series of actions you’d like to take as the game progresses. I worried this decision making would be a weak point for analysis paralysis (I’m a pretty good candidate for testing potential AP, as I’m prone to it) and while there can be a bit of that during the game, nothing excessive was logged during our plays.  

The artists (Shem Phillips on graphic design and Mihajlo Dimitrievski on illustrations) have printed helpful indicators next to each placement location on boards and cards to identify any prerequisites as well as rewards. It’s an example of how the designers have worked with the artists to layer meaningful game information into the layers of artwork. In fact, all of the symbols implemented across the game components are really quite helpful. Bonus: once you familiarize yourself with them in one of the West Kingdom games, you’ll have learned them for the entire series as the artists reuse the same symbols in all three titles.

Beyond the iconography, the illustrations and other artwork are lovely. As with the iconography, the same style of artwork is implemented across the entire series and it carries the theme well. There was a good mix of cisgender representation, but not a lot of racial diversity, especially as would be suggested by the historical setting of the game (for example, Berbers in the area had skin tones ranging from light to to dark brown).

The components for Paladins of the West Kingdom are well made.

There are wooden meeples, an assortment of foldable boards constructed from cardboard, and various plastic coated card decks. We found the rulebook to be clear and direct, and there weren’t any items we had to look up online. It would have been nice if the designers included a player aid in the components, but I was able to compensate for the oversight by downloading a detailed player aid another user uploaded to the forums on BoardGameGeek.com.

Paladins of the West Kingdom is my favorite game of the West Kingdom series. All of the worker types and available actions make sense within the context of the theme, the mechanisms (worker placement, card drafting) integrate tightly with the scoring system to provide opportunities for building a victory point engine, and the game is complex and interesting yet still accessible for new players. The game is also a great value at its price point (approx $50) given you’ll get dozens of multiplayer games in before even a hint of same-o same-o creeps in. Many games with comparable replayability and complexity are double the price of Paladins. There’s also a solo play mode, which provides an additional way to explore the game.

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Publisher: Renegade Game Studios
Players: 1-4 (We played with 2)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 2 hours per game
Game type: card drafting, worker placement
Retail Price: $50

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

When Wingspan was released in 2019, it caused quite a stir. It's a compelling board game that detours far far away from the usual themes of conquest or agriculture. The game romanced me with its beauty, mechanics, and unique subject matter (see my review here). Later that same year, the first expansion (Wingspan: European Expansion ; review here) was released. It proved to be more of a subtle change to the footprint of the game versus a turn-everything-upside-down-and-wow-you kind of addition. It took me awhile to warm up to it, and I wasn’t sold on it as a must-have item. More recently, Wingspan: Oceania Expansion, was released in 2020.  After several games, I’ve taken to this expansion much more than the previous one. That might be, at least in part, because my expectations have evolved for the series. Taking a lesson from my experience with the previous expansion, I assumed when opening the box that the designer (Elizabeth Hargrave), wasn’t likely to include any major disruptions in the mechanics that would upend the game as we know it. Instead, I expected another subtle shift in the mechanics and a widening of the bird inventory, both of which we did get.

Oceania  introduces:

• New bird cards from the Oceania range (some with spiffy game end powers)
• New round goals
• New bonus cards
• Eggs in a new color

As in the base game and previous expansion, the artwork is stunning. Here are some of my favorite new birds, based solely on appearance:

The cute and cuddly Little Penguin

 

The exquisitely beautiful Many-Colored Fruit-Dove

Major Mitchell’s Cockatoo (this badass will totally steal your lunch money)

Guild’s Finch (performing at the Copa Cabana nightly)

The punk rocker Crested Pigeon

Beyond my expectations, this expansion also introduced a new type of food - nectar. Nectar is both more useful than then other types of food (it can be spent as a wild food, substituting for other foods in most cases, and putting spenders in line for end game “biggest spender” point awards in the process) and more restrictive (any nectar left in your supply at the end of a round must be discarded). Along with the nectar comes new dice with nectar depicted and new player boards with spaces to hold spent nectar.  Elizabeth also provided a detailed explanation for the reasoning behind including nectar in the expansion rulebook and I thought that was a nice touch. I found that playing with nectar changed the emphasis of my actions to acquiring and spending nectar as much as possible in order to get the bonus points at end game for most nectar spent per action row.

The new player boards provided with Oceania also make it possible to refresh the dice in the feeder, refresh the cards in the face up draw pile, and have changed the resource quantities harvested when completing actions. There’s been an overall shift to more food and more cards while scaling back egg production. This may have been done to address concerns with egg spamming in the base game– a powerful, late game strategy in which players spend their last few turns laying eggs in order to capitalize on the point value of the eggs and the bonus cards that focus on egg production. We didn’t feel any pain in the reorientation away from egg laying because we played our games with only the new round goals and the new bonus cards (none of which focused on egg laying) to get a good feel for the expansion. But I’m not convinced that weakening the egg laying action row was really a good idea. On the surface, it seems to heavily discourage egg laying at all except as minimally needed for playing more birds. And it feels like a heavy disadvantage if you’re saddled with a bonus card oriented toward egg laying and your opponents aren’t. Oceania  also introduces some birds with egg laying powers, so that might balance out the action row weakening somewhat, but it would probably take hundreds of games across varying player counts to properly evaluate the net effect of these changes.

Despite my reservations about how the egg laying engine seems to have been crippled in this expansion, I still highly recommend it based on the twist in play the nectar brings and the replayability gains from the new card and goal inventory (especially for players who’ve played through the base game a ton and are getting a bit bored with the goals). I understand that the automa mode has also been updated quite a bit with this expansion, although I haven’t played that yet and am not covering the solo mode in this review. 

I’m three games into the Wingspan franchise and as a completist, I'm firmly committed to maintaining a complete collection; it’s certain I’ll be picking up the next expansion when it’s released.

 

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Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Players: 1-5
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 90 minutes per game
Game type: card drafting, dice rolling, action selection, set collection, solo

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Almost a decade after my interest was first sparked in reviewing games for Rio Grande Games, I finally met someone on the inside of the company in a mutual FB industry group and made a connection. Soon after, a review copy of Beyond the Sun by Dennis K. Chan was at my door.

Game Reviewing as a Hobby: A Peak Behind the Scenes I have always had a soft spot for Rio Grande Games. I spent part of my childhood growing up in New Mexico, and graduated from New Mexico State University, where the actual Rio Grande itself was practically in my backyard. Because of my time in the area, I really enjoy supporting New Mexico businesses. So there's that. And the first "serious" board game I ever played was the Rio Grande distribution of Power Grid, which is still one of my favorites. We own over 30 games from the Rio Grande catalog, including Dominion, Puerto Rico, Carcassonne, Race for the Galaxy (another favorite), Stone Age, Underwater Cities (this game is amazeballs), and more. But I've never done a review for Rio Grande Games before. A million years ago, before I was ever a board game reviewer, I regularly reviewed books for publishers. When I first fell in love with board games, I thought I'd approach the publisher of my favorite games - Rio Grande Games - and establish a partnership. I was very used to the review procedures at major book publishing houses where the marketing departments are run by MBAs (who may or may not enjoy reading books themselves), the review process is formally structured and well publicized for reviewers, and introductory discussions between reviewers and publishers are focused on marketspeak like "demographic penetration". I remember feeling exasperated at the time that the Rio Grande Games website didn't have a marketing page with straightforward information on requesting review copies, nor contact info specifically for their marketing department. I had to do a bit of digging to reach someone at the company and that's when I found out that it wasn't a cold corporate monolith, but a small company where people wore many hats and everyone involved loved board gaming with all their heart. I didn't know any of those people personally (I hadn't been to a gaming convention yet) and trying to approach them from a traditional marketing relationship perspective (I think I sent a formal email about demographics!) went nowhere so I just gave up. I loved board games so much that I just started writing reviews for new games we purchased and played and didn't make any more attempts to establish connections with publishers after my run in with Rio Grande Games that left me spooked. A few years into the hobby, I started attending Gen Con, where I met a lot of publishing folks face to face and made a lot of great connections based on a shared love of gaming. It was only then that I started receiving review copies and maintaining formal relationships with the various board game publishers. While it's true that the board game industry has become more sophisticated in its marketing and organization as it's matured, a lot of board game publishers are still small time operations and when I connect with these folks, it feels like being part of a family.

My first observation: the cover art, by Franz Vohwinkel, is phenomenal.

In Beyond the Sun, players take on the role of faction leaders on the move, colonizing space and researching new technological breakthroughs in a post apocalyptic universe.  Each turn, players make decisions on what action to take and what resource to produce. However, most of the action spaces on the board are initially blocked off. A blocked action space can only be used by a player once they’ve taken the prerequisite actions on previous turns of researching the technologies associated with the blocked action. These technologies and associated actions are presented in a tree display with the level 1 technologies/actions branching off into level 2, 3, and 4 technologies/actions. 

After the action and resource phases of a player’s turn, they may claim an achievement, if they’re eligible. There are multiple achievements laid out for each game and players compete for the limited spots on each achievement card. When 4 achievement discs have been placed, the final round is triggered, followed by scoring.

 

After a thorough read through the rulebook, I got the game on the table pretty quickly. It’s a well written rulebook by the way, with humor to boot. I especially love the rule for determining first player (see #13 under setup).  

With the pandemic in full swing and social isolation in effect, I’ve focused on 2 player games of Beyond the Sun between my husband Chris and myself. During our first game, we spent the first few rounds aggressively fighting over one system we both wanted to colonize. Back and forth, back and forth, the control shifted. At some point this power struggle became more about a matter of stubborn will between the two of us and less about strategic play and I have to admit, I got a kick out of the ability to passive aggressively annoy and rattle my husband in this way. Eventually I gave in on that and moved on to focus on claiming the easier achievements while Chris focused more on building his engine through research and got caught up in trying to get to level 4 on the technology tree. That proved to be his downfall. Focusing on colonizing and the low hanging fruit of completing more level 2 research in lieu of making it to level 4 won that first game for me, 59 to 49.

I occasionally ran into a bit of analysis paralysis in during my plays of Beyond the Sun, but nothing too severe. And the components (dice, plastic coated cards, wooden tokens, ore crystals, player boards, player aids, and the central board) have held up well. They’re not as beautifully designed as the cover art, but the illustrations on them fit the theme and carry the story as intended.

We really enjoy this game at 2 players. It’s a solid engine builder that’s quick to learn but variable in play to keep the boredom at bay, and quite thinky. Our only complaint is that the game doesn’t come with a score pad to do the math at the end to determine the winner (the publisher would like to you know that you can download scoresheets on their website). A great addition to any well curated board game collection, I highly recommend Beyond  the Sun.

 

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Publisher: Rio Grande Games
Players: 2-4
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 90 minutes per game
Game type: worker placement, point to point movement

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Years ago, on a snowy winter excursion to Bavaria, I took a tour of King Ludwig (Mad King Ludwig) II's  castles. I really feel for the poor chap Ludwig II. He was very excited to be king and wanted to be a *real* king of the old order with power and dominion. Alas, he was born much to late in Germany’s evolution for such things and was reduced constitutionally to being a mere figurehead (such as Queen Elizabeth II is in England today). So he consoled himself by building castles throughout the countryside where he would escape and  fully immerse himself in his pretend kingdom where all subjects worshipped him and did as they were told.  Linderhof was one of the first castles he built and it was pretty modest so the taxpayers didn’t really bat an eye. This was the first stop on our tour.

The same could not be said for his next building project: Castle Neuschwanstein. This grand and glorious castle (just up the hill from his parents’ country castle) was the castle to end all castles. He fancied he’d build himself a castle in medieval style (probably because that was a time when subjects dutifully respected their king or perhaps because it appealed to his alpha-male decorating sense) and he spent his way through a good portion of the national treasury before the impoverished taxpayers had enough and called shenanigans. The castle was never finished, King Ludwig II came to a premature end and within a year the political leadership had turned the castle into a tourist attraction. It was *this* castle, by the way, that Walt Disney held in his mind’s eye when designing the Disney Princess Castles. With the snow falling softly around it, it was truly an amazing site to behold. So beautiful!

With the happy memories of the castle tour, I was drawn to Castles of Mad King Ludwig  when it was released by Bezier Games a few years later.

Another Bezier release – Suburbia – is in my top 10 list, so the positive track record with the publisher was another indicator that I’d probably enjoy Castles. After a bit of research, I found the general consensus in the board game community is that Castles  plays so similar to Suburbia that it feels like a reskin of the game with a castle theme. Players purchase tiles from a market to build a great infrastructure, with various points awarded based on which tiles are used and how they are arranged. After this discovery, I actually didn’t follow through with the purchase, as I’ve never been one who is keen to get every iteration of a game. For example, I rarely keep both the card game and board game version of a given game in my collection – I force myself to pick one and let go of the other. Since Surburbia was so close to my heart, I let go of any ideas to purchase Castles.

A year after Bezier released Castles, Stonemaier Games released Between Two Cities. In BTC, players draft tiles and then use them to build cities collaboratively with other players.  We build one city with the player to our left and a separate city with the player to our right; each of our partners also contributes tiles to our respective cities in common. At the end of the game, all cities are scored and the lower scoring city of the two we helped build is assigned to us as our final score. The player with the highest score at the table wins. It’s a pretty unique approach to scoring and forces you to give both of your cities equal attention throughout the game. I don’t own a copy of this game either, mostly because I only began collecting Stonemaier games after I fell in love with Scythe in 2016, and have focused heavily on acquiring new releases (vs picking up their earlier games). 

In 2018, Stonemaier (in collaboration with Bezier) released Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig. This game is designed by Ben Rosset and Matthew O’Malley and it takes the best of Between Two Cities and Castles of Mad King Ludwig and marries it all together. Now we find ourselves at the game table, working to build two castles at once, simultaneously but separately collaborating with our left and right neighbors. At the beginning of each round, each player draws nine tiles, comprised of various indoor and outdoor room types. Each turn, we select 2 tiles to keep (one destined for the castle we are building with the player to our left and the other for the castle we are building with the player to our right).  We pass the rest of the tiles to our neighbor (to the left in round 1 and to the right in round 2). Once everyone has selected their tiles and passed the leftovers, we begin collaborative discussions with each of our neighbors regarding the tiles we selected and where they should be placed within our castles. There are a few straightforward rules governing placement (for example, downstairs rooms can only be placed below the ground level) but generally the selection and placement decisions should be guided by maximizing victory point scoring. Also of note, when the third or fifth regular room tile of the same type is placed, a placement bonus is earned and redeemed immediately. These bonuses provide either additional tiles (including specialty room types) or bonus cards that award conditional victory points at the end of the game. After tile placement, the turns repeat in the same fashion three more times, except that on the last run, there is only 1 tile left after selecting two for placement and that tile is discarded out of the game. Round two begins, and follows the same process as the first round, with the only change being the direction the unselected tiles are passed around the table.

In anticipation of the upcoming Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig  expansion release (Secrets and Soirees), I received a review copy of the base game from Stonemaier.

Opening the eye-catching box (with artwork by Agnieszka Dqbrowiecka, Laura Bevon, and Bartlomiej Kordowski), we inventoried the components (cardboard tiles, wooden tokens, plastic coated cards, and score sheets) and set up our first game. The rulebook was easy to follow (as it always is with Stonemaier) and the handy player aids included proved valuable as we worked our way through the game. There were five of us playing that first time, including two teenagers, and I was surprised to see just how varied each team’s castle was from the others.

I worked really hard to give my all to both castles I was constructing, knowing that I would only score for the one that brought in the lower victory point total. I had to to correct my efforts a few times as it started to feel like one castle was building to a much higher score than the other. With both my neighbor on my left and right, I focused on bonus cards and tiles to increase point totals, whereas the competing castle builds leaned more heavily on amassing points directly through the regular room tiles. My strategy worked, and both of the castles I helped build were higher scoring than everyone else’s, giving me the victory even when taking the lower score of the two. In later games, my husband Chris and I played against each other, using the special 2 player rules in which a dummy player (“Ludwig” of course) is controlled by one of the players during the first round and by the other player during the second round. I focused on the same things in these two player games that I had previously at higher player counts. Meanwhile Chris focused almost exclusively on standard room tiles to accumulate points. Every time we played, the castle that Chris and I built together was by far the highest scoring one in the game (scoring highly on regular room tiles thanks to Chris and on bonus tiles and cards thanks to me), and my castle with Ludwig was runner up, giving me the victory again. 

I really really love this game. Much more than I thought I might, given its straightforward and simplistic mechanisms (I usually prefer complex strategy games).  Pick two tiles and arrange, rinse repeat. Sounds like it should get boring fast, but it never does.  I think the real draw of Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig,  that keeps engagement and enthusiasm high even among experienced gamers, is the puzzle of having to work both castles at once. Dividing your time between two equally important projects simultaneously that will be scored against each other is a personal challenge, regardless of your skill level, because you’re competing against yourself. That’s genius, and I can’t think of another game I own that implements this kind of scoring. The only drawback to this scoring mechanism is that players who are significantly weaker in strategy or skill than the rest of the group will drag down the scores of their partners, giving a clear advantage to the remaining players who weren’t yoked to the underperformer. Tactfully, since the game scores average in the direction of the weaker player on each team, this is a game to play with a group of your intellectual peers, unless you want to stew in resentment over how irrelevant all of your hard work turned out to be when it came to scoring.

In addition to the puzzle aspect of the game, the quick gameplay (less than an hour), family friendliness, and low level of analysis paralysis all help to make it an excellent go-to game, even on weeknights. 

I’m glad I gave Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig  a chance on our game table, and our friends who played with us have already asked when they can come over to play again. I’m quite excited to see what the upcoming Secrets and Soirees expansion adds to the game.

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Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Players: 2-7
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 45 minutes per game
Game type: card drafting, tile placement, set collection

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

I had a board game first this summer: I read an entire series of novels in preparation for playing a board game. When Jamey Stegmaier announced he was designing a new game with Alex Schmidt based on the award winning Red Rising  series by Pierce Brown, his excitement was so palpable that I wanted to understand the draw of the saga held for him. I checked my local library and the first book was already reserved, with a long waiting list in line before me. So I took the plunge and purchased the whole series from Amazon, hoping it would captivate me as it seemed to have done for Jamey.

Start with a narrative universe politically ordered by a tightly controlled color coded caste system;  pull in the concept of a boarding school with quirky teachers (like Hogwarts from Harry Potter) but introduce some structural changes to the school so that only the most socioeconomic elite in the caste system are permitted to attend; have the students compete in fight to the death brutal competitions (evocative of The Hunger Games but more violent and rape-y); explore the dynamic of class struggles and the penchant for revolution the lower castes foment; and you’ve got a good understanding of the Red Rising series that details the life and times of our protagonist, Darrow O’Lykos. To be honest, it’s an intense and difficult read due to the graphic nature of the violence (definitely not a story I want to see acted out on the big screen). But it’s well written literature and it makes you think.

Once I finished the book series, I was emotionally charged and ready to play Red Rising. I unboxed my review copy, invited over a few friends, and sat down for my first game. Jacqui Davis, Miles Bensky, and Justin Wong designed the artwork for the game and I’d describe it overall as futuristic, with a cartoonish bent when it comes to the character cards.

Before we get into the mechanics of the game, the components for Red Rising  Collector’s Edition warrant a discussion. I loved the weight of the metal influence cubes and fleet tokens handed out to each player. Likewise, the start player token, sovereign token, central board, and house cards are well constructed. And I appreciated the gold foil on the character cards. However, our first group of players gathered around our game table (and subsequent groups I played with) identified nuisance problems with some of the components. Each player’s set of metal influence cubes is  a different color and the yellow and gold sets are difficult to distinguish from across the table. The card holders included exclusively in the Collector’s edition are a disaster.

Every single person I played with managed to accidentally knock over their holder several times during a game, spilling out their hand for all to see repeatedly. Finally, the character cards reveal some questionable graphic design and font choices. For example, it was very difficult for all of us in the middle age cohort to read “obsidian” printed on the black cards.  None of these issues are significant enough to downvote the game, but I hope to see them corrected in future print runs.    

Onto the mechanics… Red Rising  is a mid-weight board game with a primary focus on cards and hand management. At the start of the game, each player is dealt 5 character cards and a house card (which grants a special ability). One of the primary goals is to build a hand of highly valued character cards (tabulated at the end of the game using the interaction formulas printed on the bottom of each card). To build this hand, players will use most of their turns to discard a character card from their hand to the board (called deploying) and then pick up a character card from a different column of the board. 

To spice things up, each card has a deploy ability that is triggered when the card is deployed (for example, a card might let you banish another card, move a card from one column to another on the board, immediately choose another card on the board to redeploy, etc). And each time you pick up a character card, you get a bonus immediately that edges you closer to victory along the path of one of the other strategic goals established in the game – either the receipt of helium tokens (worth 3 VPs each), forward movement along the fleet track (increasing VPs for each step forward), the possession of the sovereign token (10VPs if held at end of game), or influence cube placement on the influence area of the board (worth 4/2/1 VPs each, depending on your player’s rank in the influence cube area population). Instead of discarding+picking up on your turn,  there’s also an option, called scouting, to simply draw from the deck, place the drawn card on a column on the board, and then gain the bonus for that column. This option might be used when you are completely satisfied with your hand and can’t bear to part with any of it, or when you’re trying to pad the columns with cards of certain colors (some cards give you end game points per card of X color on the board) and crossing your fingers you can draw them.  It should be used sparingly since you miss out on the deploy ability when scouting.

I didn’t encounter a lot of analysis paralysis when playing this game, and it plays in under an hour (maybe 90 minutes for your very first time at higher player counts).  There’s plenty of replayability in the box given the large assortment of cards, but I do wonder if they’re going to eventually release an expansion for Red Rising  to keep things fresh for experienced players with different character card abilities or new point tallying interaction rules.

Jamey and Alex have hit on an accessible and winning combination by supporting a large spectrum of player counts (1-6), providing mid-weight complexity, keeping the gameplay tight enough to finish in under an hour, and selling it for under $60 at launch. And perhaps most importantly for players who worship theme and backstory, playing the game feels incredibly personal after you’ve read the books. I felt connected to the characters as they were revealed from the deck because of my experience reading the series. I was delighted to have the Sevro card in my hand, giddy to be given the House of Mars player role, and I flushed with anger when the Jackal card appeared on the board. I spent a lot of the game explaining the highlights of each character to my friends as new cards were laid down. Pretty sure I had to fight back tears when Eo’s card came up. In one of our games, my friend Malinda played Apollo and probably didn’t understand why I worked so tirelessly to thwart her efforts. Red Rising  is a solid OUI! OUI! OUI! from me for those who have read the series (and a OUI! OUI! for those who haven’t). Get the Red Rising  book series and read it and then get the game and play it. In that order. And consider pairing  the series with the game as a generous present for someone you love who loves board games and great dystopian novels.

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Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Players: 1-6
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 45 minutes per game
Game type: hand management

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

I had the opportunity to play a preview edition of Quests & Cannons: The Risen Islands  from Short Hop Games in advance of the game’s upcoming Kickstarter campaign. Designed by Eric and Shannon Geller, the preview edition arrived in a bright and colorful cover box that hinted at the beautiful artwork within.

We got it on the table for a family game straightaway. As we unpacked the contents of the box, I was impressed with the quality of the wooden components. Especially for a preview copy, everything was incredibly well made and sturdy, which speaks to the care and enthusiasm Eric and Shannon have put into the game. The illustrations on the components are just lovely! The artists (Lily Yao Lu, Tony Carter, Regis Torres, Sita Duncan, and Lilia Sitailo) did a really great job integrating the theme into the materials. 

Quests & Cannons  is very easy to setup and the rules are straightforward,  so you can get started playing pretty quickly; no one is going to be stuck spending an hour reviewing the rules upfront. The only thing you really need to work out is whether you want to play the game solo, cooperatively, free for all, or in teams.  Regardless of the mode you choose, you’ll sit down as a leader of a kingdom, tasked with bringing prosperity (i.e. victory points) to your people as you explore new islands that have suddenly cropped up in the sea. The revelation of the islands has coincided with devastating famine and drought hitting the kingdoms to varying degrees, so you’re also on a quest to find a way to reverse these plagues.

And since prosperity can be gained through attacking other leaders during explorations, you’ll need to be thinking about battle defense and offense.  My kids are teens, so they handled the attacks pretty well, but your mileage may vary with your youngsters, depending on their age and temperament.

The underlying mechanics of the game are pretty simple:

• Explore to gather resources across the islands and turn those resources in to complete quests (pick up and deliver)
• Follow explicit instructions on map clue cards to do X action at X location
• Attack rival ships

Players can do three actions on a turn, choosing freely between move, gather resources, and attack. 

All of the how-to and particulars governing these actions are detailed in the rulebook (and in video play-throughs online). Variability in movement rules, attack/defense power, and resource storage capacity is dictated for each player by the leader card they’ve chosen at the beginning of the game (each one comes with special powers and differing stats) and the upgrades performed on their ship.

I did find a few issues with the mechanics for the Geller team to address before the final version is distributed:

• Explain in the rulebook what should be done if the map clue drawn cannot possibly be used
• Add a 0 space to the action point track on each player’s ship to track the exhaustion of the final action point
• Implement monsters or other descriptive elements with differing effects into the treacherous sea spaces to add more complexity

Outside of these issues, I recommend Quests & Cannons as a family game for gateway gamers (i.e. new to the hobby) or those who gravitate toward light strategy games. It’s kid-friendly and there isn’t any analysis paralysis inherent in the game.  It plays in under 90 minutes, gives kids exposure to different play modes within the same game, tackles conflict resolution, and comes with a variety of board layouts to keep things interesting over multiple plays. Note that this is not a game I’d recommend for players who prefer deeper strategy. Highly experienced gamers drawn to seafaring themes and beautiful artwork can find similar mechanisms with a bit more depth and complexity in other games such as Islebound (designed by Ryan Laukat from Red Raven Games).

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Publisher: Short Hop Games
Players: 1-6 (We played with 4 and 5)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): about 90 minutes per game
Game type: pick-up and deliver,hand management, action points, kid-friendly, solo

Rating for Gateway Gamers: 

Rating for Advanced Board Gamers:                                          

Rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

I really love the card game Lost Cities, designed by Reiner Knizia. When my husband Christopher and I were first getting to know each other, we used to meet up at Starbucks sometimes and play games. Lost Cities was one of our frequent picks. It’s a head to head, two player game in which both players are trying to outscore each other by laying down ascending runs of card suits on a small board between the two of them. There’s a theme laid over the mechanism (completing expeditions in the lost world) but it’s basically pasted on and so that is the last we will speak of it. So there we were, newly in love, eyeing each other across the table, smiling and flirting, and doing our best to beat one another at Lost Cities. It was awesome. And now, with the roll & write genre having made an impressive rebound a few years ago (let’s not forget the mechanism has actually been around since the 50s with Yatzee), Knizia has ported his award winning game Lost Cities  into this format, releasing Lost Cities Roll & Write  in 2021. 

You can play the new Lost Cities  with up to 5 players, but in an ode to our romantic beginnings, Christopher and I played it exclusively with one another in successive matches.  The components are compact, lacking the pretty illustrations of the original game, and few in number – the rule book, a scorepad, three pentagonal trapezohedron dice (that’s 10 sided dice for the uninitiated), and three 6 sided custom dice with color suit symbols. Oh, and some pencils. That’s it. We could have played on an even smaller Starbucks table if we had this back in our dating days.

The cards from the original game (wager cards and numbered cards 2 to 10, in five different suits) have been translated into dice roll results. On each turn, one player rolls all the dice and chooses one of the six sided dice to represent the suit and one of the ten sided dice to represent the number. A zero on the number die can represent either zero (mimicking the wager card from the original game which serves as a multiplier for the total score in the selected suit) or ten (mimicking the highest card in each suit).

In place of the tableau built up on a central board, each player tracks the progress of wager and number cards they’ve collected for each suit in color coded columns on their individual score sheet. Wager cards have been transformed into little circular boxes to be marked off from a suit column when rolled, while the numbered cards from the original game have expanded to include the number 1 and are recorded as numbers written manually in the square boxes running up each column. Whereas in the original game, only cards higher than the last card played in a suit were permitted to be played on subsequent turns by the same player, in Lost Cities Roll & Write, numbers that are higher than or equal to the last number recorded for a suit may be written into the column after future dice rolls. Expanding beyond the concepts from the original game, Knizia has included artifact icons on select spaces in each column and when those spaces are filled by a player, they may fill in one of the jars in the artifact column. Likewise, he’s included arrow icons on select spaces and when those spaces are filled by a player, they may fill in the next box in one of their suit columns with the number from the previous box in the column – note that it does not have to be the same column in which the arrow was filled.  There’s also a column for filling in dice shapes to represent rolls where a player could not or did not want to use any of the dice results. The latter column is particularly tricky to manage effectively, as it provides a similar point progression as the rest of the columns (negative scores for the first 3 boxes filled and then positive score for the rest) up until the last box in the column. If you color in that box, your score for the dice shapes column drops from 70 to 0. The bonus points awarded in the original game (20 points for laying down at least 8 cards in a suit) have been implemented in Lost Cities Roll & Write  for each column (including the artifact and dice shape columns) as a 20 point bonus to the player who is the first to fill in 7 boxes in the column on the scorepad. The roll & write game ends when either both players have filled in the dice shapes column completely or all eight columns have passed the bonus point marker. In our experience, the completed dice shapes column is a much more common trigger.

I’ve played a ton of roll & write games over the past few years. Some are instant objects of adoration, while others are infuriating piles of poo (I’m looking at you Imperial Settlers R&W). Lost Cities Roll & Write is fantastic; a great addition to the genre. Knizia did an excellent job of translating the feel of the original game into the new mechanism. The iconography is clean and easy to read and the game can be taught and played in less than a half hour. And of course, it takes up very little table real estate, making it perfect for travel or tight spaces (when traveling as a passenger, simply roll the dice into the box cover). If you twisted my arm and forced me to choose between Lost Cities or Lost Cities Roll & Write, I’d be forced to pick the original, but only because of the lovely artwork on the cards and the sentimental value I have attached to the game after my love and I played it in our early days. But who would go around doing such arm twisting? Nobody. Therefore, with a retail price point under $15 for each of these, unless you’re down to your last $15, I recommend you pick up both. Play the card game with someone you love when you have a little more table space. Play the roll & write anywhere, with up to four additional friends. 

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Publisher: Kosmos
Players: 2-5 (We played with 2)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): about 20 minutes per game
Game type: roll & write, dice rolling

Rating:

Rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig is one of our board game library essentials. There’s a great puzzle aspect to the game, it plays in under an hour, it’s family friendly, and it keeps analysis paralysis to a minimum. It also plays up to seven players, filling that niche when so many other games are capped at 4 or 5. For all of these reasons, when the Secrets and Soirees expansion debuted, we knew we had to have it.

The expansion offers additional room types for your castle, extra bonus cards, two new solo modes, higher player count (up to 8), and a new variant of head to head castle building where each player builds their own exclusive castle.

My personal favorite bit of the expansion is the puppy room!!! Adorable little corgis, just like we have at home.

We have played the expansion dozens of times. The first few months we had the game, we stuck to standard play, with everyone building two castles, and just focused on the fun of the new room types. These are activity rooms, secret rooms, and ballrooms. The activity rooms are thematically just that – clever little rooms themed around activities that give you points for each other room adjacent or penalize you if the listed prohibited room type is within the radius. The secret rooms are quite innovative. Each one has a little arrow printed on the tile pointing up, down, left, or right and takes on the same identity as the room indicated by the arrow, giving players a lot of flexibility based on placement in the castle. The ballrooms score points for specific room types in your neighbors’ castles. I really enjoyed these plays with the expanded room types and have not ever wanted to go back to playing with just the base game tiles again.

More recently, we’ve explored the new variants provided by the expansion. The Mad King’s Demand variant has players each build a single castle instead of managing two castle builds at once. It solves the problem of weaker players bringing a section of the entire table down in scoring and it plays so much more quickly than the regular game, so it can be a good choice for player counts larger than two. While it’s also easier and smoother in a two player game to play this way versus playing with the 3rd NPC player normally required in a two player game, I’m much less fond of using this variant with two players. I like the extra tiles to choose from when a third castle is in the mix; it helps make it a bit more challenging and feels more interactive.

The Automa solo mode is very easy to learn and it’s the most enjoyable solo game I’ve ever played because it feels like you’re actually playing against other players.  I played on level 3 – normal difficulty – and won 58 to 55/55. I actually found myself wishing for longer rounds. The other solo mode (which is dubbed the Introvert variant and noted by the rulebook as technically not an Automa mode) feels less like a game against peers and more like a game of solitaire puzzling. It’s faster than the Automa solo mode and has the quirky hack of allowing you to force the NPC opponent to take a specific tile you don’t mind it having when there’s only one that meets the selection filter used to draft a tile for them. This is because, in this mode, the NPC follows an algorithm to pick between a tile you’ve marked as favored and desired for yourself and all the other tiles in demand under its selection filter that round. If there’s only one tile that meets the filter and you mark another tile you actually want, there’s a 50/50 chance you’ll lose your coveted tile to the NPC. However, if you mark the tile that meets the filter as if you wanted it for yourself, it’s forced to select it. Then you can choose whatever tile you actually prefer for yourself instead. The introverted solo mode is pretty great if you like that sort of thing, but I prefer the feeling of playing against others, so I’ll stick with the Automa solo mode, or competitive play against real life opponents.

With a retail price of just $15 on the Stonemaier website, and having so much quality content in the box, the Secrets and Soirees expansion is a must-have.

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Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Players: 1-8
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 45 minutes per game
Game type: card drafting, tile placement, set collection

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

At every company, there’s some guy trying desperately to figure out a way to harness a current wave of consumer demand and somehow direct it right onto the doorstep of the company. “Even better…”, that guy explains to rest of management, “If we can deliver something on *that* demand that our customers will gobble up and that will drive their demand up for our *other* established products, we’ve gone above and beyond! A cross-promotional windfall!”  Well, it looks like someone at Stonemaier put that guy in charge of roll and write game development and Rolling Realms was the result. It’s meta game of sorts that mostly serves as an advertisement for the rest of the Stonemaier product line, as each card in this roll and write game is named after a different Stonemaier game title. 

 

On the plus side, Rolling Realms is a pandemic friendly, easy to learn, and quick to play roll and write that plays as easily over zoom with 20 people as it plays in person with a few people around a table. Every card presents a different way to earn victory points as it’s filled in, and in a standard game, 9 cards from the supply of 11 varieties are chosen and used (3 cards per round x 3 rounds).

Environment sparing bonus: the cards are all laminated and dry erase markers are provided, so you can play unlimited games without killing endless trees. The Tapestry card gives me a headache with its Tetris like spatial relations exercise, but otherwise I enjoyed all the cards and their creative use of point collection.

   Despite its positives, Rolling Realms does not make the cut for my recommendations list. I played many, many games of Rolling Realms to give it a fair shake, and here’s the thing – it’s a perfectly adequate roll and write game. But in this modern era of board gaming, there are a ton of roll and write games on the market or in development and adequate just doesn’t cut it. Add on the creepiness factor of the cross-promotional marketing gimmick (BTW, can anyone tell me why the card for Red Rising is named “The Society” instead of RR?) and yeah…just no. Keep the game if someone gives it to you I suppose (I’m probably keeping mine), but don’t go out and spend your own money on Rolling Realms when there are so many other better roll and write games out there you could buy instead. I’m talking Cartographers. I’m talking Hex Roller. I’m talking Qwixx and Quinto. I’m talking Railroad Ink. I’m talking Noch Mal. And for the ultimate challenge, I’m talking Fleet or Hadrian’s Wall.    

As a final note, I want to let you know that I’m very sad I finally met a Stonemaier game that didn’t bring me joy. I mean, it was inevitable that it would happen someday, but it’s still sad. I've been reviewing games from Stonemaier for a few years now. I got drawn in by Scythe initially (amazing area control game) and then, with each new game the company released, I crossed my fingers and hoped that it would be awesome. I really respect Jamey Stegmaier as a designer and a business owner and I'm rooting for his continued success. And so far, it's all worked out, because I've fallen in love with each Stonemaier game that's come my way, outside of Rolling Realms. For example, Tapestry and Between Two Castles are amazing, as are their expansions, and I urge you to give them a try. Also, I hope Jamey doesn’t listen to any more bad ideas originating from the guy with the marketing gimmick idea that was behind Rolling Realms, whether he was one of the voices in Jamey’s creative imagination or an actual employee at the company.  

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Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Players: 1 - many
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): about 20 minutes per game
Game type: roll & write, dice rolling

Rating:

Rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

The good folks at Stonemaier Games sent us a review copy of the newest expansion for Tapestry recently. We have the base game and the previous expansion, Plans and Ploys, in our game library. Arts & Architecture is designed by Jamey Stegmaier and Mike Young, with artwork by Andrew Bosley and landmark sculptures by Rom Brown. The expansion adds more of the familiar components: five new civilizations, six new capital city mats, 5 new landmark cards with landmarks, twenty new tapestry cards, and eleven new tech cards. Arts & Architecture also adds completely new features to the game, including an arts track with accompanying landmarks, twenty masterpiece cards, twenty inspiration tiles, and an upgraded science die to include iconography referencing the arts track.

The new arts development track is quite useful and thematically blends well with the overall concept of the game.

It gives you the opportunity to place more of your income buildings, score victory points for tech cards and exploration tiles, acquire masterpiece cards which provide benefits during income turns, and place inspiration tiles on your income mat over existing income tracks to improve the rewards gained during income turns. In the first few games I played (2 player), I concentrated heavily on the arts track, progressing to the end of it easily before game end, all the while also making steady progress on two of the base development tracks.

In the most recent game (4 player), I didn’t use the arts track much at all, which was a huge mistake, landing me in third place while the frontrunners leaned on the arts track significantly. I’ve previously noted in my review of Tapestry (https://www.thatswhatjennisaid.com/2020/07/board-game-review-tapestry.html) and Tapestry Plans and Ploys (https://www.thatswhatjennisaid.com/2020/12/board-game-review-tapestry-plans-and.html) that to win the game, you must diversify and progress on at least two tracks simultaneously, but to be careful trying to do much more than that or you’ll spread yourself too thin. With this expansion, I’ll amend that to note you’re unlikely to win the game unless you focus on the arts track as well as two of the base development tracks, as the arts track is really an enhancer for all the other tracks. It will be interesting to see how development track focus will need to be adapted when Stonemaier releases additional expansions for the game (anticipating a religion track at minimum; every civilization has its religious scholars).

The additions to the tapestry deck include a new ability type - continuous. These abilities begin when played and continue for the duration of the game instead of just the current era. There are also new tapestry cards that allow you to place landmarks on them for scoring as an alternative to placing the landmarks on the capital city (or on the map as some civ powers allow you to do). I did not have a chance to play any of the continuous tapestry cards during my recent games (although they look useful), and I passed over playing any of the landmark tapestry cards I acquired as they did not seem as beneficial as the other tapestry cards I had in my hand.  I don’t think I’m a big fan of any of the cards that let you place landmarks on the for points (including the new tech cards with this feature); I prefer to prioritize my city map for landmark placement first. Maybe I’m just doing it wrong, but I haven’t made use of my landmark cards at all, even in the games where I won by a large margin. They seem to be an entirely optional aspect of the game and not necessary for a win.

 

One more change with the Arts & Architecture expansion is another refinement of the civilization adjustments first introduced in the Plans and Ploys expansion. This fine tuning of civilization powers comes as a result of extensive real-world player testing and aims to rebalance the game for greater fairness. I think it might need further refinements because my husband Chris played the Architects civilization in our last game and the adjustment afforded him 30 VPs at the start of the game as some sort of handicap to balance out perceived weakness, but his city mat was so perfectly attuned to his civilization (the mesa) that he won in a landslide (80 points above the second place player).

Overall, I think that the Arts & Architecture expansion is a great addition to the Tapestry portfolio. It adds more variety, layers in additional ways to strategize and score, and provides some new opportunities for player interaction on the map, without causing any additional complexity. While it’s not a must have for the base game, it’s certainly a nice-to-have addition that I’m happy to recommend.

Beyond the details of the new expansion, I did want to take this opportunity to mention that with repeated plays of the base game as well as across the expansions, I’ve noticed that 4 player games are much more competitive than two player games (at least in our household). There isn’t a single time Chris and I have played the game by ourselves that I haven’t walloped him by 100+ points, yet when we play at 4 players, he has won twice or been neck in neck with the winner, whereas my scores are significantly lower. That’s got to be tied to the dynamics of how this game plays at higher player counts because it doesn’t make any sense that all on my own I could go from being a genius at 2 player to just average at 4 player.

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Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Players: 1-5 (We played with 2 and 4)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 3 hours per game
Game type: tile placement, hand management, dice rolling, area control
Retail Price: $45 direct from the publisher https://store.stonemaiergames.com/products/tapestry-arts-architecture

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

I'm completely obsessed with Obsession! I received a review copy of the updated second edition along with all the expansions (Wessex, Useful Man, Upstairs Downstairs) and from the moment I took everything out of the boxes, my excitement was over the top. Actually, that's not even the half of it - I remember I was already quite excited before the game even arrived. I'd wanted to get my hands on a copy as soon as I learned there was a game that brought the lifestyle that we all fell in love with watching Downton Abbey to the gaming table. Back in 2021, I was having a great time at the Dice Tower Summer Retreat and a new friend Bonnie sang the praises of Obsession. She had seen me eyeing the box on the shelf and gave me a summary of the game mechanics as she owned the first edition. She explained that the theme is centered on running an estate in Derbyshire and competing against others to have the best home, reputation, gentry guests, etc. Based on her enthusiasm and description of the game, my husband and I sat down to play it that afternoon. I ruthlessly squashed him 96 to 78 in our first game and I was hooked.

 

Back at home, months later, with the second edition and the expansions in front of me, my first task was organizing everything into one box. The publisher had included all of the expansions to ensure I had the complete experience, but as far as I could tell, some of the materials sent were duplicate cards or tiles. And that was true, even after carefully reviewing and incorporating the items that seemed to be dupes but turned out to be replacements for base game components with subtle changes. I think this happened because the Upstairs Downstairs expansion comes with materials to update the 1st edition of the base game, but those materials are already included in the second edition of the base game that I received, resulting in duplicates. I mention it in case you order the newer edition and all the expansions and find yourself wondering what’s going on with extra items you find. I just set them aside in my spare parts box.

Anyway, let’s start by cataloging the components in the base game, shall we? The 2nd edition comes with:

• Supply Board
• Used to hold the Builder’s Market of improvement tiles available for purchase, as well as the guests, servants and objective cards that may be acquired as the game unfolds.
• Round Track Board
• Keeps the progress of the game flow through each round and season (a season is 3 rounds plus a special round called a courtship). There are 16 or 20 rounds to a game, depending on whether you play a standard or extended game. The Round Track also holds the theme cards, the victory point cards, and the two very special guests every estate is dying to get an audience with – Mr. Charles Fairchild and his sister Elizabeth Fairchild. 
• Player components (given to each player)
• Family board to organize and process their estate’s reputation, servants, improvement tiles, and hosted events
• Starting estate tiles (improvement tiles)
• Set of basic servants
• Small hand of family guest cards + 2 casual guest cards designated as starter guests
• Reputation wheel counters
• Reminder tiles
• Player aids
• Any addl bonus guests, rooms, money, or servants granted by the family’s unique profile
• Other components
• Money (pounds)
• Scorepad
• Improvement tile bag
• Components for solitaire play
• Rulebook and Glossary

These components are all well made and under normal use should last a long time and wear well. The rulebook is well written and the glossary makes it evident this was a passion project for the designer, as it goes into great detail regarding the historical significance of the various tiles and guests. Absolutely love it! Both the font and the artwork help to carry the theme across the components, which was a great point of detail.

Gameplay is relatively straightforward. Across their turns, players are responsible for managing estate tiles, guests, and servants while seeking to conform to courtship themes, improve their reputations, and complete objectives. At the end of the game, the player with the most victory points is the winner.

Managing Estate Tiles

During the game, each player will be responsible for managing the improvement tiles on their estate. Initially, each player only has a handful of starter tiles, but over time their estate will expand to include additional tiles purchased from the supply board. Each tile confers one or more benefits (called favours) when played, in the form of money, the ability to draw additional guests or dismiss guests one already has, the ability to hire additional servants, increased reputation, and end game victory points. Improvement tiles are flipped over after first use, typically revealing different favours on the backside. Most tiles remain on their backside after initial use, but some improvement tiles are designed to be flipped after each use. Note: each improvement tile has requirements as to which type of guest[s] and servant[s]  are required to host an event with that tile so it’s essential that players approach estate tile management in a coordinated fashion with guest and servant management.

Managing Guests

In addition to their estate tiles, players must also manage a hand of guest cards (which are discarded individually after use to a personal discard pile and recalled en masse when passing). At the beginning of the game, the hand is comprised of family members and casual guests dealt directly to players, but as with the player estates, as the game continues into successive rounds, it will expand. Additional cards added to the hand will be drawn from the casual and prestige guests on the supply board. Just as improvement tiles provide favours, so do guests.  Prestige guests give better favours and are generally worth more end game victory points. Some guests, based on their thematic description, have destructive favours that you have to watch out for. For example, a male guest labeled a cad might lower your reputation should you invite him to an event and offer negative victory points if you find him in your hand at game’s end. Adding a bit of complexity to the puzzle, guests may often have requirements for servants printed on their card; this is in addition to any servant[s] specified on improvement tiles used to host events.

Managing Servants

With improvement tiles to host prestigious events and guests to attend those events, of course servants will be needed to keep things proper in high society. After all, the guests aren’t going to serve themselves! Not to worry; players begin with a few starting servants, and will hire on more help as they wish to during the course of the game.  In this way, staff management becomes the third leg of family affairs.  Servant management can be especially tricky. This is because you typically cannot hire additional servants without having one of your most useful servants available (the butler). Additionally, to be kind to our staff and not overwork them, after a servant has been used during a turn, it’s not available again until two turns later (although a player can spend reputation if they are desperate and force a servant back to work early). It’s very easy for a player to back themselves into a corner with plenty of improvement tiles and guests ready to go and a shortage of servants to make the event happen.

Courtship Themes

At the beginning of each season, an event theme is drawn, revealing the improvement tile category that will be evaluated at the end of that season, during the courtship round. During evaluation, the player with the most victory points showing on the tiles in their estate matching the theme will be awarded a victory point card and their choice of the Fairchild guest cards.  The victory point cards offer a player the choice of a useful one time in-game benefit or a chunk of end game victory points. And while the player must give the Fairchild guest back at the end of the next season, having them in hand during the next season to take advantage of their favours is very beneficial. Hence, tailoring improvement tile purchases and tiles selected for hosting (to flip them and reveal their higher VP side) to the theme each season is an essential tenant of good strategy and game winning players tend to correlate with VP card awardees.

Reputation

You cannot win this game without paying attention to reputation. Every improvement tile and guest card has a minimum prestige rating printed on them (or implied as in the case with family and the Fairchilds) which represent the minimum reputation required to use them for a hosted event. If you don’t improve your reputation as the game plays out, you’ll eventually be shut out of using the tiles and guests that have the greatest impact on final scoring. Additionally, a player’s reputation level at game end directly confers victory points, ranging from 1 point (for having a reputation level of 1) to 45 points (for having the maximum reputation level in an extended game). Finding ways to steadily increase reputation through favours found on improvement tiles and guest cards is very important. In every game I’ve played, the winner was among those with the highest reputations at game’s end.

Objectives

At the beginning of the game, all players are dealt a number of objective cards. These are end game goals, that if accomplished, reward victory points. They may be variable, such as x VP per servant on staff, or fixed amount, such as 16 VP for a player if they have tiles x,y, and z in their estate. While objectives are a great source of victory points and should not be entirely disregarded, I have generally found that the winners in our games are not the players who attain the most VPs from objectives. For example, in our most recent game, my friend Brian won a 5 player game with a total score of 221 (next closest player had only 189) and yet he brought in 28 of those points from objective cards while I had 38 points from objectives and two of the other players also had higher VP totals from their objectives than Brian.

Player Turns

On a player’s turn, they begin by rotating their servants a step toward active service. If they’re currently resting in the servant’s quarters they move to active service and if they were in the expended service area they move toward the servant’s quarters. Next, the player observes any round events (for example, some rounds designated as village fairs provide income and some tiles provide favours at the beginning of each round). After that’s completed, the player decides which tile they’d like to use to host an event, moves it to the active event box on their player board, and decides which guest[s] (of those that meet the requirements) will attend the event. To be eligible, the guest[s] must be in the player’s hand and not their discard pile. This is the point where they most also provide the required servants – placing those required by the tile on the tile and those required by the guest[s] on the guest[s] card. To be eligible, the servant must be in the available service area of the player’s board. Once servants have been placed, it’s time to collect favours from the tile and the guests (gathering or giving up money, reputation, additional guests, and additional servants as indicated). As a final step in the turn, a player may buy an improvement tile from the market. The market is setup with tiles that have been drawn randomly from the tile bag and placed in market slots with prices listed above. When a tile is purchased, tiles in higher priced market slots are shifted over to fill the gap and a new tile is drawn from the bag and placed in the most expensive market slot. Normally, each player is limited to buying only one tile during a round, except during a special round that represents the Builder’s Holiday that allows them to buy as many tiles as they can afford and wish to purchase. Once a player finishes their turn, play passes to the next player. Once every player has had a turn during a round, the round marker is moved to the next round and the process begins again. During the courtship round of each season, no player actions are taken; this round is used exclusively to evaluate player performance against courtship themes.

So that’s the nuts and bolts of the base game. It’s on point and the gameplay is both a challenging puzzle and entertaining adventure at the same time. Highly recommend! I can’t find a single fault in the game. Not a one. I could probably play Obsession dozens and dozens of times as presented in the base game and still be enthusiastic about it, just like my friend Bonnie was. But I was lucky enough to have all the expansions in front of me from the get go, so of course I started incorporating them as well, in the second or third play of the game. Let’s go over those now.

Wessex Expansion

Wessex adds a fifth family to the game, giving players an additional choice when selecting starting families. Dan provides a great deal of narrative backstory for the new family in the expansion insert booklet and I just love that. Again, great attention to detail, and it’s really appreciated by players like myself who care about theme and want to understand the backstory of who we are playing in a game and what our motivations are all about. This expansion also includes two new improvement tiles and an extended mode solitaire option. You’re going to want to pick up this expansion for the variability it provides. I have a personal goal to win the game as each family, so this adds to my challenge.

Upstairs Downstairs Expansion

This is a major expansion that adds complexity, variability, and extra joy to the base game through a lot of new and updated components. There are four new servant types, each of which has a variety of effects when integrated into the game. Very clever and all seamlessly thematically appropriate. There are dozens of new guests (including very unique promotional guests), objectives, and improvement tiles. There’s a new set of cards called milestones that offer in-game shared objectives that award victory points to the players who complete them first. There’s even a new round track board to facilitate a new game variant.  For those who aren’t madly in love with the cute little mini sized VP and Objective cards included in the base game, this expansion provides a duplicate copy of these decks in a larger format. It’s actually a little debate in our group as to which set of decks to use every time we sit down to play as I really like the little cards but some of my friends appreciate the easier-to-read larger cards. As an added bonus, the expansion also allows the game to scale to 5 or 6 players (by providing an additional family/extra improvement tiles/extra basic servants). You’re going to want to pick up this expansion because it’s nothing short of amazing. It's a can’t live without.

Useful Box Expansion

This expansion is mostly a correctional tool, updating tiles from the base game (both the 1st and 2nd printings) that have errors as well as problematic tiles from the Upstairs Downstairs expansion. There are also a few new tiles and some components to expand solitaire variants. While this expansion was necessary for me, I would expect the entirety of the  corrections and new tiles to be folded into the next printings of the respective games (base or U/D expansions) and likely unnecessary for future buyers. Just make sure to check your edition to determine if this expansions provides value for you or not before you spring for it.  

Etsy Stickers

I might be on the dark side of the publisher for recommending these (as they appear to be unlicensed) but I found these adorable meeple stickers on Etsy (https://www.etsy.com/listing/1008836394/obsession-meeples-upgrade-kit-free) that really took the servant components over the top. Highly recommend them.

I just want to add a final note about theme. Obsession is so perfectly themed, that it lends itself to glorious costuming around the game table in historical period appropriate attire. If you’re not willing to take it that far, at least consider hosting a formal tea with gourmet sandwiches and delicate sweets for your friends who come to play the game. It really elevates the whole experience.

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Publisher: Kayenta Games
Players: 1-6 (We played with 2,3,4,and 5)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 3 hours per game
Game type: worker placement, hand management, tile placement games
Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Whenever Martin Wallace designs a new game, I am all over it. This is because I absolutely love Brass Birmingham (another MW designed game); in fact Brass Birmingham is my #1 board game of all time. Over the years, his other games I've tried have been pretty good, but not necessarily amazing must-buys. Still, I keep trying each new release of his, searching for that next star performer. That's why I'm excited to report that Anno 1800 is, in fact, a star performer, and an amazing must-buy board game.

Anno 1800 was adapted by the publisher (Kosmos) from a Ubisoft video game of the same name. In the board game, players take on the role of industrialists, charged with developing their island economies and exploring other islands. Each player begins the game with a personal industry board with trade & exploration ships, a shipyard, and industrial goods tiles printed on the board.

A starting collection of workers (wooden cubes) of various types to produce the goods is also provided to each player. A specific type of worker must be placed on a goods tile on a player’s personal industry board to produce the good, and it remains there until an action is taken (the festival action) to move all the workers back to their unused (“residential”) area. Each player is also dealt a hand of population cards and a couple of trade and exploration tokens. The population cards have a requirement that must be met (depicted on the face of the card; typically the production of a good, or the relinquishment of trade or exploration tokens) before they can be played. The trade tokens are a prerequisite for using an opponent’s goods and the exploration tokens are a prerequisite for sailing to other islands.

In the center of the play area, there is a common industries board, with a limited number of each type of goods tile stacked in little piles for the taking, as well as shipyard and ship tiles. If you’re familiar with Brass Birmingham, the layout on the central board in Anno 1800 is somewhat akin to how the industry tiles are stacked on your personal playing board before you remove them to place on the central board in Brass.

To round out the setup, there are stacks of population cards (sorted by the type of worker each card is associated with), new world cards (basically a twist on population cards; given out as a benefit when you explore new world islands), expedition cards (provide opportunities for additional end game scoring; these are given out as a benefit by population or new world cards but can also be purchased with exploration tokens), and a handful of common objective cards (each one provides end game scoring bonuses for players who meet the objective).    

During a player’s turn, a player chooses from among several actions:

• Expand industry by adding the ability to produce new goods to their island (construct new industry). To do so, a player will take a goods tile from the central board, flip it over, and place it onto a free space (or over top an existing goods tile they are willing to lose the ability to produce going forward). Some goods tiles have prerequisites that must be met in order to construct them on a personal industry board. For example, to gain the ability to produce soap, a player must place the required type of workers on their personal industry board to produce pig fat and coal. Once they’ve done so, they may take the soap tile from the common industries board.
• Expand industry by adding a new shipyard to their island (construct a new shipyard). To do so, players will take a shipyard tile from the central board, flip it over, and place it onto a free space along the coast of their island (or over top an existing shipyard tile they are willing to lose the ability to produce ships from going forward). There are level 1, 2, and 3 shipyards, corresponding to the type of ship they can produce. Like goods tiles, shipyards have prerequisites that must be met in order to construct them on a personal industry board.
• Expand industry by adding new ships to their island (construct one or more new ships).  To do so, players will take as many ship tiles  as they’d like to build from the central board, flip them over, and place them onto free spaces in the harbor of their island (or over top an existing ship tiles they are willing to lose). There are level 1, 2, and 3 ships, corresponding to the type of shipyards that produced them. Like goods tiles, ships have prerequisites that must be met in order to construct them on a personal industry board. Additionally, ship production is limited to 1 ship per established shipyard on a player’s personal industry board.
• Increase the workforce by up to three new workers by meeting the prerequisites for recruiting each worker. When this action is taken, a player takes the worker cubes from the central supply that they have met the recruiting prerequisites for and adds those workers to their home island, placing them in the residential area. Note that each type of worker taken also requires the player to draw a population card corresponding to that worker type from the central card stacks. This card is added to the player’s existing hand of population cards.
• Upgrade up to three workers by meeting the prerequisites for upgrading each worker. When this action is taken, a player takes the worker cubes from the central supply that they have met the upgrade prerequisites for and adds those workers to their home island, placing them in the same general area that the worker they are replacing was located. This means if a player upgrades a worker from the residential area on their personal industry board, the upgraded worker should be placed in the residential area as well. But if the player upgrades a worker that was already in place on a goods tile, the upgraded worker should likewise be placed back on that same goods tile.
• Play a population card from their hand and fulfill the card’s requirement to receive a one time benefit (more workers or worker upgrades, gold, trade or exploration tokens, expedition cards, an extra turn,  new world resources,  or the ability to discard cards in hand without otherwise playing them first). Most of these benefits can be redeemed (“activated”) at any time after playing the card – on the current turn or on a future turn – and these activations are bonus actions, so you can do as many of them on a turn as you wish. Once they are activated, they are turned face down and kept in a player’s personal area. Playing a population card also amasses victory points (called influence points in Anno 1800) to be scored at the end of the game; these will make up the bulk of a player’s influence points when the game is concluded. 
• Swap up to three population cards from their hand with the same number of cards from the communal population decks. This might be done if a player didn’t find the cards in their hand useful and wanted to gamble for better cards from the central decks.
• Sail and explore an old world or new world island by expending exploration tokens.  Exploring old world islands extends the manufacturing spaces of a player’s personal industry board and provides an immediate one time bonus as depicted on the old world island drawn. Exploring new world islands provides access to three new raw materials (such as cotton, coffee beans, or tobacco) per island that can be obtained using trade tokens. These materials are accessible only by the player who drew the island (a private relationship with the island natives). If a new world island is explored, the player must also draw three new world cards from the central stacks and add them to their hand.
• Take an expedition and draw up to three expedition cards by expending exploration tokens. Each of these cards show an animal and an artifact discovered on the expedition. At the end of the game, assuming the player holding the expedition cards has the requisite workers in their supply to oversee the animals and artifacts depicted, they will receive influence points for the specimens.

For any of the above actions that require a prerequisite good that the player cannot or does not want to produce, the good can be obtained from an opponent by trading the required number of trade tokens in exchange for the production of the good. Likewise, for actions that require a worker that the player cannot currently supply because it has been exhausted already, the necessary worker can be returned to its residential district before the action by paying the required amount of gold to entice them home. 

• Celebrate a festival to reset all workers and replenish trade and exploration tokens. When this action is taken, a player moves all of their workers back to the residential area of their personal industry board and refills each of their ships with the type and number of token specified.   

The game continues, turn after turn, action after action, until a player plays or discards their final population card. Once that happens, that player gains the 7 VP fireworks token, and the rest of the players are allowed to complete their turns in the current round and one additional round, prior to final scoring. Scoring is detailed in the rulebook, but to summarize, it consists of points from population cards, expedition cards, gold, the fireworks token, and the objective cards. Note that scorepads are not included in the game, but can be downloaded from the publisher’s website.

It’s suddenly clear to me that when I really really REALLY love a game, I get so excited about it that I take the time to explain in detail all of the rules of gameplay like I’ve done here for Anno 1800. For most games outside my top 10, I stick to my opinions on the game overall and simply comment on the rulebook (which is well written in this case, by the way) and advise you to read it yourself if you want details on all the gameplay.

Let’s talk components. Highlights of the Anno 1800 component artwork include the box cover and the reproduction of the box cover art on the back of the player boards. The rest of the artwork across the components I’d classify as adequate; it does its job to reinforce the theme without being overly distracting. The component construction and durability are adequate also, and should hold up fine over several plays, except for the population cards. We’ve played less than 10 times and the cards are already bending at the edges. They don’t seem to be high quality I know it’s a little unfair to compare the quality of cardstock used in the high end Kickstarter games I’ve gotten used to with that of the cardstock used in a retail edition of a board game like this one, but it’s really an area that Kosmos could have put a little more care into. You might want to sleeve your population cards to prevent damage if you play this game frequently.

Getting into the gameplay, there’s lots of strategy to explore, game after game. Reading over strategy forums online, I see a lot of discussion on trying to win the game by hoarding all the red workers, getting architect workers first to build ships, creating a strong feedback loop of acquiring new workers and 8 point population cards, etc, etc. Everyone thinks they’ve devised the very best strategy to ensure victory and there is much debate. And of course, the effectiveness of any given strategy varies across different player counts. What works exceedingly well in a 4 player game may not work at all in a 2 player game.

I didn’t face a lot of analysis paralysis in my plays of Anno 1800, and since I’m prone to AP more than most, that bodes well for the rest of you. There just isn’t the complexity here to induce a brain freeze and because you must consume all resources in the same turn that you produced them, long term resource planning isn’t a possibility.

The one drawback in the mechanics of the game is that a player can hijack the entire spirit of the game by attempting to rush the end conditions by disposing of their cards as soon as possible after the game starts. All they need to do is go out first, and if they can do that before any other player has laid down many of their population cards, they can easily come out ahead if no one else is paying attention, given they’ll also be awarded the 7 point fireworks token. What I want to say about this is that if you pay attention when you spot a player trying to do that, you can switch your strategy to focus on completing the 3 and 5 point population cards before they go out instead of the 8 pointers you might otherwise be prioritizing and you should still be able to come out ahead of them when they bring an early end to the game. Alternatively, you can just stop inviting over the friend who sucks the fun out of the game by rushing the ending.

Just as with Brass Birmingham, what we have here in Anno 1800 is a well themed (love me some industrial action) board game with mechanics that are easy to learn, yet in their interoperability, provide depth to the game, especially when combined with the scarcity of certain resources like the red workers. There’s also  a highly addictive quality to Wallace’s games like this one, wherein you construct a thing that produces things, and then you produce those things, and then you use the things you produced as input to construct another thing or produce more things. I love that resource chaining in Brass and I love it here!

Anno 1800 is a strong buy recommendation from me; pick up the game online or from your FLGS (shout out to mine: https://www.geek-city.com/) and get it on the table. I’d love to know what you think of it also – you can comment here or tag me on IG @thatswhatjennisaid .

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Publisher: Kosmos
Players: 2-4 (We played with 2 and 4)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 2 hours per game
Game type: worker placement, hand management, card games
Retail Price: $69.95 direct from the publisher https://store.thamesandkosmos.com/products/anno-1800

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Expeditions is my favorite game in the Stonemaier Games portfolio to date. The game is a sequel to Scythe, and continues the narrative years in the future. It has taken everything I loved in Scythe and expanded on it, while chucking out everything I didn’t care for (the combat).

Designed by Jamey Stegmaier, Expeditions brings us into an age when a meteorite has crash landed into Siberia and things begin to go sideways for all who encounter it. One team after another sets out to investigate the crash site and they are never heard from again. No one knows what happened to them. Now it’s our turn to find out what’s really going on, each of us leading a competing expedition team into Siberia to bring back desperately needed answers.

During a game of Expeditions, all players are seated around the game board, which is made up of individually placed hex tiles laid out as shown above. At the bottom of the game board is an insert affectionately known as the base camp. The base camp holds the glory scoring track, some reminders for end game scoring, and serves as the physical start point for player mechs. Each player also has a small board – their faction board – in front of them, featuring both a guile (turquoise) and power (orange) marker as well as a track for these markers to move up and down during the game. A player keeps their hand of cards face up to the left of their faction board and plays cards from their hand to their tableau on the right side of their faction board.

All players perform their expedition work using mechs and meeples. The mechs are used to venture out from the basecamp, traveling from hex to hex (the move action) to gain access to the benefits printed on the tiles (the gather action). Mechs also provide asymmetrical powers for each player.  The meeples are used in conjunction with laying down cards in your tableau (the play action); most cards have a special ability that can be activated by placing a meeple of the matching color on the card when it is played. As with Scythe, players must select a different group of actions (choosing from move, gather, play, and refresh) to complete each turn. For example, if you moved and gathered last turn you cannot do so again this turn, but you could move and play, or gather and play, or refresh (this is where you pull all your cards from your tableau back into your hand and all your meeples back onto your player mat). A nice bonus is that on the turn after each refresh turn, you may do three actions instead of two.

The play action is the most complex action in Expeditions as it involves so many different abilities. You play a card from your hand to your tableau, gain the card’s core value (bump up your power and/or guile by moving your token up the track), and then optionally activate the card’s ability using a corresponding meeple from your available pool. Both the core value and the ability of a card may be enhanced if you meet certain conditions as specified on the card. As detailed in the rulebook, the card abilities can be instant or ongoing and include:

Rescue: take a card from your tableau and put it back into your hand and return any meeple to your available pool.

Gain: take a card from the indicated location (either one of the faceup cards between the hexes or the draw pile) and place it in your tableau; do not gain the core value or activate its abilities.

Discard: discard a card from your hand to your tableau; do not gain the core value or activate its abilities.

Trash: return the indicated component (card or token) from your player area to the box; it is out of the game.

Activate: activate another card’s ability without placing a worker on it.

Solve: pay the indicated solve cost on the card, gain the benefit shown below the solve cost on the card, and tuck the card under the top of your mat in the solved quests area; you must be on the indicated numbered hex to do this action and you can only solve 4 quests during the game unless otherwise indicated. The number of quests you complete is a factor in your end game scoring.

Vanquish: spend your power or guile (moving your token down the track on your faction board) to take the topmost corruption tile on the hex your mech is on; spend power to vanquish power corruption tiles (orange) and guile to to vanquish guile corruption tiles (turquoise). These corruption tiles are drawn blind from a bag and placed when the hex tile is first flipped.

The move action is pretty straightforward and most of the spicy adventure here is moving onto unexplored hex tiles to flip them over and see what benefits they offer and how much corruption someone will need to vanquish in order for everyone to gain access to all the benefits on the hex tile.   Because most of the game tiles are shuffled randomly and placed facedown, there is always variability in the layout and you never know what is going to be on the other side of an unflipped tile you’ve moved onto. Maybe the hex tile has the benefits you’ve been searching for, or maybe it’s no help to you at all right now.

The gather action is also pretty straightforward. You simply collect the benefits visible on the hex tile where your mech is located. These benefits are varied and include options like gaining more cards into your hand, gaining new meeples, and playing cards from your hand.  There are three special benefits that can be gathered: upgrade, meld, and boast, but these benefits only become available once all corruption on the tile is vanquished. Upgrading a card lets you pull an item card from your hand or tableau and tuck it under your player mat so that only the ongoing ability is visible. Now the item’s ability is permanently activated for you and at the end of the game each upgraded card is also worth victory points (coins). Melding a card is almost the same as upgrading one except you meld meteorites instead of items and when you tuck them under your mat you get a meld bonus as specified on the card, plus you receive all your previous meld bonuses again. Boasting is the action of putting one of your scoring stars on the basecamp boasting track, selecting one of the glory categories for which you have met or exceeded the goal. Once a player puts down their 4th scoring star, the end game is triggered and each player gets just one more turn. If you’ve played Scythe, or other Stegmaier designed games, this end game triggering mechanism and scoring is very familiar to you.

It’s easy to outline and teach the basics of how to play Expeditions, as I’ve done above, but solving the puzzle aspect of the game more efficiently than your opponents is hard to master and the answer to winning the game. It’s also what makes the game so enjoyable. The artwork is pleasant, the components are well made (as with all Stonemaier games), but the reason to buy this game is for the logic puzzle at the heart of it. You’ve got to take into consideration your mech special ability and how to leverage that to improve the efficiency of your process flow. You’ve got to time your refreshes just right in order to extract maximum value from your play, move, and gather activities. You’ve got to balance your work toward solving quests, upgrading items, and melding meteorites so that you’re in a position to place glory tokens for meeting the goals in these areas. And the unique aspect of this game wherein your hand is always laid down in front of you on the left of your player board means your possible play action choices are laid out for all to see, so you’ve got to keep a close eye on what your opponents are doing and how close they are to meeting the glory token goals and ending the game before you can complete everything you want to. And unlike in Scythe, nobody is coming to steal your resources, so it’s all thinking and no fighting.

I’ve a half dozen or more games of Expeditions under my belt, and some very close to winning scores, but I’ve yet to win a game. Still, I keep coming back for more, and I know that someday I might finally crack the puzzle wide open and figure out how to make every step of the process work together for my win.

Please note, for all you solo players out there, Expeditions comes with a robust automa mode.

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Publisher: Stonemaier
Designer: Jamey Stegmaier
Artist: Jakub Rozalski
Players: 1-5 (We played with 3, 4, and 5)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 90 minutes per game
Game type: worker placement, hand management
Retail Price: varies; direct from the publisher https://stonemaiergames.com/games/expeditions/

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Last year I reviewed Expeditions and ranked it #1 among all Stonemaier games on account of the challenging intellectual puzzle it presents. This year I have played my way through the new expansion, Gears of Corruption, and I’m delighted to let you know that it makes the base game even better. That the expansion so cohesively builds on the base game should not be a surprise to anyone who closely examines the original box for Expeditions. All expansion components perfectly fit in that box including the 2 new mechs that nestle in the placeholder cubbies clearly made for them.  That can’t be coincidence. There might a few features rolled into Corruption of Gears that were developed as a result of consumer feedback on the base game (I’m looking at you, wild meeple), but my theory is that Stonemaier did a Lord of the Rings maneuver with this game and its expansions, designing the entire game with most of the additions integrated up front, and then breaking it into base + expansions for marketing and distribution.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the components and features in Gears of Corruption:

 

• 2 new mechs
• Both new mechs use map tokens as discards to gain a benefit. The Scarecrow adds an extra action to your refresh turn while the Mole lets you access hex actions covered with corruption tokens. The Mole felt especially powerful in play.
• Replacement mech mats for the original mechs + 2 new mech mats for the new mechs
• The new mech mats are GREAT. They have inset spaces for the guile, strength, and action tokens to prevent player components from sliding off the mat during player.
• Hero worker meeples
• These meeples function as wildcards, and everyone is given one at the start of the game. This speeds up play and helps avoid the heavy disadvantage for the 3rd player and after who can’t get to the gain worker hex on their first turn.
• Replacement discovery card for one of the original cards in the base game + 5 new discovery cards
• The cards are all items and most if not all of them provide ongoing benefits in the form of when you do X also do Y
• 7 mech cards
• These cards are used for drafting/assigning a mech mat to each player and they also provide a list of starting resources to shorten the length of the game
• 12 corruption cards
• These cards are used both to control an additional mech on the main board (representing a malicious presence among us) that inflicts penalties on players whose mechs it would otherwise bump into AND to provide additional corruption targets for vanquishing by players. If all the corruption cards are vanquished, the corrupted mech wandering the board returns to the box, the threat eliminated. Three cheers to the player who accomplishes that!
• 4 pairs of new starting cards (character + companion)
• The new character/companion combos are pretty standard but one of the pairs (Baaliahon & Zephon) plays off the corruption card scoring added with this expansion. I played as this fellow and was competitive in all my games. A+ would recommend! ***Interesting side note: While I was researching the origin of the name Baaliahon (turns out to be a Phoenician name that means so that Baal will favor), I came across the website for the artist and worldbuilder on Expeditions, Jakub Rozalski. He’s got fantastic stories and lore for the game as well as additional artwork on the site and I encourage you to check it out at https://jrozalski.com/projects/JvAvPZ
• 6 new corruption tiles in lower values that the base game
• These tiles have a strength of only 2, making it easier to remove them.
• 6th player capacity
• Playing with an additional player DOES increase the game length, but this is well balanced by the time saved thanks to the new hero worker meeples and mech cards
• Additional coins & map tokens

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Expeditions Gears of Corruption is a fantastic (although not absolutely mandatory) expansion for players who love the base game, like me. But this is not one of those expansions that fundamentally alters the overall feel or play of the game so if you’re among those that didn’t go gaga for the base, this will do nothing to change your mind. Yep, I see some of you over there complaining about the solitaire racing aspect of Expeditions and lack of strong player interaction, and to you ladies and gents I say go back to Scythe where you belong.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Publisher: Stonemaier
Designer: Jamey Stegmaier
Artist and Worldbuilder: Jakub Rozalski
Players: 1-6 (We played with 3, 4, and 6)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 90 minutes per game
Game type: worker placement, hand management
Retail Price: varies; direct from the publisher https://stonemaiergames.com/games/expeditions/gears-of-corruption/

Rating:

COVID has put the kibosh on much this year, but it can’t stop the capsule TIFF reviews. From the plague-ready, off-model edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, here’s my annual collection of mini-reviews.

The greatly cut-down slate included only slivers of the festival I’d program for myself in a regular year: four to five from international auteurs and a couple examples of global genre cinema. The missing items either are waiting in limbo as sales agents the world over hope that theatrical exhibition will return, or didn’t even get shot.

This list features more Canadian films and documentaries than I’d see at the fest (as opposed to catching them later.) Festivals tend toward the dour and downbeat but that was doubly true this time out. If we’re still trapped in our homes next year, I’ll likely be more vigilant about sorting through the slim pickings, supplementing our streaming experience with titles already available on other platforms.

That said, the overall hit rate was probably as strong as any other recent year. The average score on my numerical ratings would be higher, actually. It’s just that I saw the same festival everyone else did, starting with the film that garnered nearly universal acclaim, nabbed the People’s Choice Award, and will surely be part of the Oscars race—whatever the heck that will look like.

Films are listed in order of preference. Within categories that doesn’t mean much and entails a lot of apples-to-oranges comparisons. A festival near you, or not so near you but within your territory for geolocking purposes, may be virtually screening some of these soon.

The Pinnacle

Nomadland [US, Chloé Zhao, 5] When her town closes down in the wake of its gypsum mine’s closure, a self-reliant widow (Frances McDormand) moves into her van and joins the ranks of the nomad subculture, people who rove the US, taking whatever hard work they can get and living out of their vehicles. Rooted in social realist cinema, marked by a triad of transcendent qualities: poetic visual beauty, an indelible central performance and a deep love for the characters from the writer/director.

Recommended

Another Round [Denmark, Thomas Vinterberg, 4.5] Burned out high school teacher (Mads Mikkelsen) embarks with three colleagues on an experiment to enhance their performance by maintaining a blood alcohol level of 0.5% throughout their days at work. Not only an original booze movie, but a big one, full of turns and ambiguities, and an utterly masterful performance from Mikkelsen.

City Hall [US, Frederick Wiseman, 4] The latest of Wiseman’s distinctive epic-length observational documentaries studies the quotidian, procedural and human moments of human life as seen through the processes of municipal government in Boston, as held together by the thoughtful charisma of Mayor Martin Walsh. Improbably absorbing as always, this institutional cross-section offers a beguiling vision of an oasis of good government in the USA.

True Mothers [Japan, Naomi Kawase, 4.5] Parents of a kindergartner react with dismay when a woman contacts them claiming to be his birth mother. Luminous, delicate drama of shifting perspectives.

Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds [US, Werner Herzog & Clive Oppenheimer] Documentary explores the science and mythology of meteor, from Chicxulub to ʻOumuamua. The intersection between scientific discovery and religious awe, central to all of Herzog’s beautiful and delightful nature docs, rises from subtext to text through the intercession of traditional elders, joyful researchers, and the Jesuit scholar of the Vatican’s heaven stone collection.

David Byrne’s American Utopia [US, Spike Lee, 4] Filmed version of the Broadway version of David Byrne’s recent tour features joyous choreography, simple but arresting stagecraft, and songs from his Talking Heads and solo eras. When you shoot a concert film featuring David Byrne, you have to bring it, and Lee does that ably, finding countlesss different ways to shoot within a proscenium.

The Father [UK, Florian Zeller, 4] Retired engineer (Anthony Hopkins) struggles to piece together the confusing reality of his living circumstances as his daughter (Olivia Colman) copes with his progressing dementia. Impeccably performed stage play adaptation puts the viewer inside the contradictory shifts of the protagonist’s subjective viewpoint.

Night of the Kings [Côte d'Ivoire/France , Philippe Lacôte, 4] When the red moon rises over MACA, the Ivory Coast’s toughest prison, its inmate boss appoints the new arrival as storyteller—a post that results in death if the tale ends before sundown. Prison drama with compelling narrative hook widens out to encompass ancient warfare, contemporary politics, and even a wizard duel.

Summer of 85 [France, Francois Ozon, 4] Love between two young men in a French beach town leads to a bizarre crime. Teen emotions run high in a sunlit melodrama of Eros and Thanatos.

Spring Blossom [France, Suzanne Lindon, 4] Bored with her classmates, an awkward 16 year old (played by the writer-director) pursues her attraction for a ruggedly handsome stage actor (Arnaud Valois.) Character drama sets aside the sexual aspect of this staple French cinema situation to focus on the emotion, periodically breaking from naturalism to have its characters express their feelings through dance.

Get the Hell Out [Taiwan, I-Fan Wang, 4] Taiwan’s notoriously pugilistic parliament tips into arterial spray when the effluent of a controversial chemical plant triggers a zombie epidemic. Zombie comedy features an eye-searing palette and an onslaught of optical overlays, and is paced like a quarter kilo of crushed Adderall.

Preparations to Be Together For an Unknown Period of Time [Hungary, Lili Horvát, 4] Top neurologist questions the accuracy of her recollections when she moves back home from the US to Budapest for a romantic rendezvous, only to find that the object of her affections professes not to remember her. Quietly suspenseful drama of psychological uncertainty.

Shiva Baby [US, Emma Seligman, 4] The ambient social pressures of a post-funeral gathering skyrocket for a directionless college student (Rachel Sennott) when attendees include not only the expected ex-girlfriend (Molly Gordon) but also the sex work client she’s caught feelings for. Knife-edge comedy of emotional suffocation uses a plucky suspense score for that extra frisson of social anxiety.

Under the Open Sky [Japan, Miwa Nishikawa, 4] Out of prison after a long sentence, an aging yakuza (Koji Yakusho) struggles with his volcanic temper as he attempts to go straight. Bittersweet drama anchored by a lead performance from Yakusho, a mainstay of contemporary Japanese cinema.

New Order [Mexico, Michel Franco, 4] A wedding thrown by a wealthy family during a growing insurrection suffers a murderous attack by protestors and the kidnapping of the bride. Wildly disturbing vision of political violence and degradation takes its time unreeling its allegorical purpose.

Limbo [UK, Ben Sharrock, 4] Syrian oud player grapples with guilt over family left behind as he cools his heels with other refugee claimants at a center in the bleak and isolated Outer Hebrides. Moments of deadpan humor and stark landscapes layer this exploration of displacement.

Violation [Canada, Madeleine Sims-Fewer & Dusty Mancinelli, 4] Woman (Madeleine Sims-Fewer) exacts meticulous revenge after her brother-in-law rapes her. Although this jarring, meditative drama includes gruesome imagery and horror-exploitation motifs, it’s closer in spirit to Michael Haneke than Dario Argento or Wes Craven.

Shadow in the Cloud [New Zealand, Roseanne Liang, 4] When an WWII RAF Flight Officer (Chloe Grace Moretz) boards a Samoa-bound cargo plane bearing a mysterious package, a monstrous gremlin on board is just one of the surprises. Enclosed space horror-action thriller tips an 80s-style hat to Carpenter and Cameron.

Beans [Canada, Tracey Deer, 4] As the 1990 Oka standoff envelops her Mohawk community, a shy tween achiever (Kiawentiio) decides to toughen up by ingratiating herself to the tough kids. Mixing the docudrama and coming-of-age structures offsets the inherent trickiness of both, but it wouldn’t work without an appealing and touching performance from its charismatic young lead.

Akilla’s Escape [Canada, Charles Officer, 4] Weed dealer hoping to leave the business (Saul Wiliiams) tries to recover his boss’ ripped-off cash and product without sacrificing a young gang member who reminds him of his younger self. Moody, laconic crime drama contextualized by the political history of Jamaican gangsterism.

Enemies of the State [US, Sonia Kennebeck] Documentary pulls apart a labyrinth of contradictory evidence around Matthew DeHart, an Indiana man who was framed for child pornography by the FBI as part of a Wikleaks espionage case, or created a story of secret files to shield himself either cooked up a Wikileaks-related espionage smokescreen to mask his sex crimes. Invites the viewer to join a filmmaking team as it goes ever deeper down a rabbit hole.

The Inconvenient Indian [Canada, Michelle Latimer, 4] Essay-format documentary examines the Indigenous struggle for sovereignty and cultural reclamation in North America, as hosted by novelist Thomas King and inspired by his nonfiction book of the same name. Makes its case through cinematic language, pushing the archival footage and talking heads format to the background.

Beginning [Georgia, Dea Kulumbegashvili, 4] Depressed wife of a pastor bears the brunt of a persecution campaign from a local man hostile to their minority Baptist faith. The camera acts as a pitiless eye in this harsh, austere drama of pervasive male oppression.

The Truffle Hunters [Italy, Michael Dweck & Gregory Kershaw, 4] An aging generation of Piedmontese truffle hunters carries on the search for the elusive delicacy, fearing the poison bait left for their beloved dogs by ruthless newcomers to the trade. A documentary balm for lovers of food and canines luxuriates in the presence of sumptuously photographed forest eccentrics and their very, very good dogs.

Lift Like a Girl [Egypt, Mayye Zayed, 4] From ages 13 to 18, under the tutelage of a volcanic, motormouth coach, with a rubble-strewn lot on a busy Alexandria street, weightlifter Zebiba trains to be a champion. Fly-on-the-wall documentary inhabits a hardscrabble community powered by loving verbal abuse.

The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel [Canada, Joel Bakan & Jennifer Abbott, 4] Polemical documentary deploys narration, stock footage and talking heads (some appearing via lockdown video conference) to survey corporate capitalism and the struggle against it from Reaganomics to COVID and the George Floyd protests. Comprehensive primer for the prospective young progressives includes a call to continued electoral action.

40 Years a Prisoner [US, Tommy Oliver, 4] Documentary recounts the 1978 standoff between members of radical Black back-to-nature organization MOVE and Philadelphia police through the efforts of the son of two of the group members to secure their parole. A strong emotional hook greatly assists in telling a tenaciously complicated story.

Good

Pieces of a Woman [US, Kornél Mundruczó, 3.5] Grief tears a couple (Vanessa KIrby, Shia LaBeouf) apart after the death of their baby in childbirth, abetted by the insistence of her domineering mother (Ellen Burstyn) that they pursue legal action against their midwife (Molly Parker.) Wrenching drama marked by deep performances and key long take scenes. An otherwise masterful script reaches for the conventional when it hits its climax.

Wildfire [UK/Ireland, Cathy Brady, 3.5] After going missing for a year, a bipolar woman (Nika McGuigan) drops in on her sister (Nora-Jane Noone), opening the wounds of shared tragedy. Raw, unsubtle family drama against the backdrop of Northern Irish politics as Brexit threatens a fragile peace.

Fauna [Mexico/Canada, Nicolás Pereda, 3.5] Narratives nest within narratives when an actor visits his girlfriend’s family in a sleepy small town. Comic misunderstandings, naturalistic locations and twisting meta-story may remind seasoned festival-goers of the works of Hong Sang-soo, with Coronas instead of soju.

The Water Man [US, David Oyelowo, 3.5] Imaginative kid (Lonnie Chavis) heads into the Northwestern forest in search of a legendary immortal, thinking he holds the secret to curing his mom (Rosario Dawson) of leukemia. One of the more successful of a recent wave of films that put a somber sin on 80s kids adventure, thanks to a well-constructed script and Oyelowo’s sure control of tone.

The Way I See It [US, Dawn Porter, 3.5] Documentary profile of Obama-era Official White House photographer traces his arc from work for the Reagan administration to anti-Trump social media firebrand. Whether American viewers consider this slickly fashioned film heartfelt or sentimental will depend on party registration. It’s certainly explicitly designed to fire up Ds to get out there to de-elect the current president.

Okay

Bandar Band [Iran/Germany, Manijeh Hekmat, 3] A pregnant singer, her husband and their guitarist try to get their van through a floodstruck region to attend a contest gig in Tehran. Neorealist drama where the obstacles in the characters’ path are literal.

Penguin Bloom [Australia, Glendyn Ivin, 3] A former surfer left paralyzed from the chest down by a freak accident reluctantly bonds with a magpie chick named Penguin, which one of her young sons has rescued. Sun-dappled animal-related family drama about the depression and anger that can accompany a life-changing injury.

Falling [US, Viggo Mortensen, 3] Pathologically forbearing airline pilot (Mortensen) attempts to find a new situation for his lifelong miserable prick of a father (Lance Henriksen) as his dementia worsens. With one character incapable of change and another not needing to change, almost all of the scenes repeat the same dynamic.

Gaza Mon Amor [Palestine/France, Tarzan & Arab Nasser, 3] Middle-aged fisherman discovers a Greek statue and courts a wary dress shop clerk. Deliberately paced dramedy of life under oppression.

Concrete Cowboy [US, Ricky Staub, 3] After yet another expulsion from school, a troubled teen (Caleb McLaughlin) gets dumped for the summer with his father (Idris Elba), who belongs to Philadelphia’s threatened culture of inner city horse owners. A rich social milieu is the star of the show in this affirming drama, which could do with a stronger drive to activate its protagonist.

I Care a Lot [UK, J Blakeson, 3] Corrupt legal guardian (Rosamund Pike) who slaps unsuspecting seniors into care facilities to bleed them dry triggers a cat-and-mouse game when her latest prey (Dianne Wiest) turns out to be the mother of a wealthy gangster (Peter Dinklage.) Engaging thriller— until it betrays the contract it has established with the audience.

Not Recommended

Memory House [Brazil, João Paulo Miranda Maria, 1] Racist harassment from German co-workers drives dairy worker to vengeance. Blunts the political anger of its subject matter with enervating pacing.

For years TIFF has been intentionally or otherwise making it incrementally more difficult to do the event diehard style, as we have always done. Often it announces changes that blindside longtime loyalists—sometimes, as this year, after they’ve purchased their expensive memberships and ticket packages. This time around they surprised us by taking a tier of titles that any other year would be available through the package we purchased and moving them into a premium package previously reserved for the most publicized Gala films. For good measure, they threw in a couple of other medium-sized irritants.

To recreate something closer to our usual experience, we programmed another 25 titles already available on streaming platforms. Some actually played TIFF in the past; others were the types of movies that could have played the fest but didn’t.

I’m glad that we did, because the TIFF titles we were allowed to choose from included all of the duds of a normal year and none of the surprise masterpieces. Granted, it was a miracle that any films got made this year, and those that did tended toward the sorts of modest chamber pieces that could be produced under COVID protocol conditions.

This year crystallized a gradually growing realization we’ve been trying to suppress. So much has changed in the world of international cinema, from the festival’s position in their life cycle, to their subsequent availability, and even the style of the movies themselves, has completely changed since we started doing this in the mid 80s.

We have always gone to the fest for great films that we could otherwise never see, and started doing it in the VHS era. We don’t care about seeing things before anyone else does, or seeing the stars wave at us from the stage beforehand, or hearing audience members ask directors rambling questions afterwards. Even the virtues of a big screen experience are blunted by a dirty secret — a packed TIFF venue is not actually an ideal place to see a movie. Talkers and smartphone screens abound in every screening, and the bigger venues they convert into movie theaters for ten days are universally terrible.

You’d think that programming films from existing streaming platforms eliminates the other key part of fest-going, the surprise from out of nowhere. Except we got more of those with our alternate schedule than we did with the official titles this year.

In other words, after 36 years we are retiring from our vacation. Next year we’ll be doing a fully alternate replica of TIFF as we think of it from the past. The old rodeo is dead. Long live the new rodeo.

Here then is my final set of Toronto International Film Festival capsule reviews.

(Capsules for the 2021 Robin and Valerie International Film Festival will drop over time in Ken and Robin Consume Media.)

Recommended

Murina (Croatia, Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović) Teen (Gracija Filipovic) chafes at the agitated authority of her command-barking father (Leon Lucev) as he hosts a rich, glamorous old friend (Cliff Curtis) to try to sell him on a resort proposal. Taut, superbly acted family drama set against the stunning yet slightly sinister beauty of the rocky Croatian coastline.

Saloum (Senegal, Jean Luc Herbulot) Three gunslingers—the mastermind, the hard case, and the magic user—take an unscheduled pit stop at an eccentric communal resort, which harbors horrible secrets of both the man-made and supernatural varieties. Gorgeously shot, tightly edited contemporary horror western with political resonance and cool monster design.

Compartment No. 6 (Finland, Juho Kuosmanen) Traveling alone on a trip she was supposed to take with her Muscovite professor girlfriend, a Finnish archaeology student finds herself sharing a compartment on the train to Murmansk with a loutish miner. Naturalistic light romantic drama of human connection overcoming barriers of class and personality.

OUT OF SYNC (Spain, Juanjo Giménez Peña) Isolated sound mixer (Marta Nieto) is unnerved to suffer a strange delay in her hearing, which becomes all the more inexplicable as it worsens. Realist weird tale makes smart use of cinema’s relationship between sight and sound. 

Zalava (Iran, Arsalan Amiri) In pre-Revolutionary Iranian Kurdistan, a pig-headed police sergeant interferes with a djinn exorcism, sparking village hysteria. Tale of communal terror and its hazards generates suspense by skillfully modulating its pace.

Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash (Indonesia, Edwin) After meeting cute by beating the crap out of each other at a construction site, two lovers navigate the vicissitudes of fidelity, vengeance, and impotence. A martial arts flick that isn’t an action movie, but rather an allegorical romantic drama with elements of satire and magic realism to go with its bruising 70s style fights.

Hold Your Fire (US, Stefan Forbes) Documentary recreates the 1973 robbery-turned-hostage incident in which a group of young black Sunni men hoped to steal guns from a sporting goods shop to protect themselves from the Nation of Islam, in which the beginnings of hostage negotiation techniques were created and implemented on the fly. Archival footage and compelling retrospective interviews illuminate a complicated narrative with resonances into the present day.

A Banquet (UK, Ruth Paxton) After her husband’s death, a brittle woman (Sienna Guillory) struggles with her eldest daughter’s (Jessica Alexander) visionary transformation, which has taken away her need to eat. Slow burn realist cosmic horror filters eating disorders, emotional control and female rage.

Kicking Blood (Canada, Blaine Thurier) Vampire (Alanna Bale) connects with a detoxing alcoholic, prompting her to reconsider preying on humans. Frosty supernatural indie drama extends the vampire-as-addiction metaphor.

Yuni (Indonesia, Kamila Andini) High schooler with a yen for purple chafes at the narrow expectations her religious school, family and village have for her.  Observational social drama enlivened by a vivid color palette.

Good

The Daughter (Spain, Manuel Martín Cuenca) Teacher at a juvenile detention center helps a pregnant 14-year old escape so she can live secretly with him and his wife at their mountain home and give them the baby when it is born. Ultra-restrained domestic thriller could stand a notch or two less restraint.

Dug Dug (India, Ritwik Pareek)  A local saint cult springs up when a motorbike keeps mysteriously returning to the site of its owner’s death. Gentle satire of faith and religious merchandising shows the sort of color and verve that raises hopes for a fresh wave of Indian art cinema.

Tug of War (Tanzania, Amil Shivji) A callow Marxist subversive falls for an Indian girl who has escaped her arranged marriage in British-controlled 1950s Zanzibar. Political romantic drama adopts the language of classic Hollywood glamor, albeit without the magnetic movie star performances the style depends on. Based on a classic Tanzanian novel.

Okay

Earwig (France, Lucile Hadžihalilović) In a creepy manor, an anxious loner (Paul Hilton) looks after a girl with teeth made of ice, at the behest of mysterious masters. The director’s first English language film pushes her dream narratives of childhood transformation into the far fringes of austerity.

Not Recommended

You Are Not My Mother (Ireland, Kate Dolan) A withdrawn teen’s depressed mother briefly disappears, prefiguring the revelation of a supernatural family secret. Contemporary folk horror with stronger direction than script, with extensive foreshadowing genre fans will be well ahead of and an inactive menace that doesn’t do enough to propel the story.

Snakehead (US, Evan Jackson Leong) Smuggled immigrant (Shuya Chang) works off her debt by acting as the right hand to the matriarch (Jade Wu) of an NYC Chinatown crime family. Socially conscious gangland drama features the bane of longtime documentarians turning their hand to fiction:  awkward, exposition-heavy scripting.

Arthur Rambo (France, Laurent Cantet) Rising literary star (Rabah Nait Oufella) plummets when the hate-filled tweets of his old alter ego resurface. Refined, uncinematic debate film presents thesis, antithesis, and credits.

Medusa (Brazil, Anita Rocha da Silveira) Member of AN ultra-right Christian school’s violent, pallid-masked theocratic girl gang  goes undercover at a coma ward in search of a disfigured model. Overlong, unfocused political allegory references the horror genre, chiefly by adopting Dario Argento’s color palette.

After Blue (Dirty Paradise) (France, Bertrand Mandico) On a psychedelic alien world, a young outcast (Paula Luna) frees the statuesque, wish-granting death-dealer Kate Bush and she must accompany her hairdresser mother (Elina Löwensohn) on a quest to hunt her down. Invokes the spirits of Jodorowsky and Barbarella for a sleepwalk trudge through an arbitrary sequence of dream-logic events. Like its influences it is perhaps intended for a chemically altered audience.

La Soga 2 (US, Manny Perez) Dominican hitman (Perez) has gotten out and is living with a devoted new girlfriend, until a corrupt CIA officer pulls him back in. Scrappy microbudget crime flick is Dominican. 

1. Second Nine news executive leaves in wake of cultural review  Sydney Morning Herald
2. Nine executive quits embattled network  news.com.au
3. Another executive departs beleaguered Nine Network  Daily Telegraph

McLaren 750S 2025 track review  Chasing Cars

1. ASX falls as banks drop; MinRes sinks, James Hardie rallies  The Australian Financial Review
2. Wages growth slows, CBA logs flat first-quarter profit, ASX falls — as it happened  ABC News
3. Markets today: ASX slides as ‘Trump trade’ peters out on Wall Street; miners, banks fall  Sydney Morning Herald

1. NSW nurses strike heaps wage pressure on Minns government  The Australian Financial Review
2. Hundreds of elective surgeries cancelled as 10,000 nurses and midwives walk off job in NSW  ABC News
3. Nurses took to the streets after ‘insulting’ pay offer. Next stop, court  Sydney Morning Herald
4. Almost 700 surgeries cancelled as 12,000 NSW nurses strike for better pay  9News

1. Elon Musk’s job as Trump’s bureaucracy buster could be just the start  The Australian Financial Review
2. Elon Musk tapped for ‘government efficiency’ role by Donald Trump  Sydney Morning Herald
3. Evening News Bulletin 13 November 2024  SBS News
4. Donald Trump wants Elon Musk to slash regulations as he reveals his role  ABC News

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Tarot: Headless Horseman edition Nick Lawyer REDFeather (October 28, 2023) Reviewed by N. Richards What a wonderful way to honour the Irving Washington classic gothic story of 1822, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” and the season of autumn as well as the art of Tarot all in one hit of […]

The post Card Deck Review: THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW TAROT first appeared on Hellnotes.

The Eerie Brothers and the Witches of Autumn Sheldon Higdon Scary Dairy Press LLC (September 4, 2023) Reviewed by Nora B. Peevy The Eerie Brothers and the Witches of Autumn finds Horace and Edgar, the twin Eerie brothers, battling monsters to stop Hex from collecting one of the four globes to absorb the abilities of […]

The post Book Review: THE EERIE BROTHERS AND THE WITCHES OF AUTUMN first appeared on Hellnotes.

Ink Vine Elizabeth Broadbent Undertaker Books (April 12, 2024) Reviewed by Nora B. Peevy When I heard Elizabeth Broadbent do a reading from Ink Vine, I knew I had to get my paws on that book. Her authenticity and unique voice, plus her sense of humor, shine through in this tale about standing up against […]

The post Book Review: INK VINE first appeared on Hellnotes.

Of Teeth and Pine Desiree Horton Independently published (October 31, 2024) Reviewed by Nora B. Peevy Desiree Horton’s second novel is filled with blood, a taste of the beautiful outdoors, and a lot of snark. I fell in love with her main character, Vick, the female forest ranger who will not put up with any […]

The post Book Review: OF TEETH AND PINE first appeared on Hellnotes.

Wicked Abandoned A New England Horror Writers Anthology Edited by Rob Smales and Scott T. Goudsward Published by Wicked Creative, LLC  (September 25, 2024) Reviewed by Carson Buckingham All I have to say is that New England sure grows a bunch of great writers! Wicked Abandoned is one of the best anthologies I’ve read in […]

The post Book Review: WICKED ABANDONED first appeared on Hellnotes.

Monday I'm going to be running in the 25th Capital of Texas Triathlon!  It's my first triathlon (Olympic distance) in twenty years and I'm pretty jazzed.

Steely-eyed determination 20 years ago. :-)

One of the great things about triathlons (and running races in general) is that you get to occupy unusual spaces: the last ones I did were Leon's Triathlon in Hammond, Indiana, a couple of Bud Light triathlons and others in Chicago. Leon's had a swim in Wolf Lake (shudder), followed by a cycle leg on an elevated highway that ran past the old U.S. Steel plant, and a run leg through an industrial downtown.  The Chicago ones were on the lakefront, just north of Navy Pier, with a bike on Lake Shore Drive and a run along the lake.

2013 CapTexTri

The CapTexTri also has a great location in downtown Austin, with a 1.5k swim in Lady Bird Lake; a 40k (24.8 mile) bike on a quadruple loop through downtown Austin, including Congress Avenue and Cesar Chavez; and a 10k (6.2 mile) run through Zilker Park.

The only thing I'm not too keen on is the bike route, since it requires you to do the same loop four times with a bunch of corresponding hairpin turns.  I don't like loop routes because I always think of how many more times I have to do the thing...Still, going up and down Congress Avenue without any cars is going to be pretty cool. As long as there are no poles in the middle of the road, I should be okay. :-).

Don't ask.

I feel fairly good about my training.  I've maintained good running mileage after the Austin Marathon and Austin Distance Festival and got some good workouts in even while traveling doing school visits.

On Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis

The swim is probably my weakest event -- I could stand to do more work on technique and probably do more open water swimming, but the distance won't be an issue.  Also, Lady Bird Lake isn't going to have waves (I seem to recall a couple of triathlons in Chicago with 3-4 foot waves on Lake Michigan (and this was on the near side of the breakwater).  Also, I won't have to deal with a wet suit.  My biggest concern is to not get kicked in the face. :-).

Lady Bird Lake during 2013 CapTexTri

The bike I'm feeling good about as well.  I'll be using the bike I used for my triathlons back in the day - a Trek 1000 I bought when I was in grad school for $450 (a guy at one bicycle shop here tried to sell me a new one, asking if I had a "nostalgic attachment" to it.). I do, but I also don't think a new bike is going to drastically transform my performance.  At least not $2000 worth :-). (A guy at another bike shop told me the Trek 1000 was his first road bike and he wished he still had it.  It's possible he was being kind :-)).

Tomorrow is packet pick-up, bike drop-off, and a chance to scope out the transition area, which I'll need because I can't see without my glasses...:-)

Oh, well.  Qapla!

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Government to order review of rail fare prosecutions The government is set to order an independent review of rail fare prosecutions and enforcement by train companies following reports of disproportionate action against passengers by revenue protection teams. The BBC understands that Transport…

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