Quinns: Woo! I don’t know what your weekend was like, Ava, and I don’t want to be coy, but I played a *very* large board game that I’ll be covering in our big, year-end blowout review.
Ava: How large are we talking?
Quinns: OK, imagine how big a board game should be.
Ava: *closes eyes* I’m doing it.
Quinns: It’s even bigger than that!
Ava: Oh my.
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Flowers falling from the sky! In FlowerFall, players attempt to form large garden patches containing more of their color flower than their opponents. Each continuous patch will score points at the end of the game. Adding cards to the table is not as simple as placing them down, however. You must carefully drop them, letting them flutter through the air. Skill improves your chances, but the whim of the environment may thwart you.
FlowerFall is a quick, portable game you can play anywhere. The location you’re at becomes the terrain!
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Impulse is a quick-playing 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) game set in space with the game board being composed of cards that have actions on them. Players also have cards in hand, and in addition to featuring one of ten possible actions, these cards have a color (red, yellow, blue or green) and a size (1, 2 or 3, as indicated by the number of icons on the card). Each card also has six edges, and these edges connect adjacent cards in the hex-shaped playing area.
The cards in the playing area start face down, with each player controlling a card(their Home) on a corner of this area. Each player has two transport ships in the center of his Home card and a cruiser on an edge. Cruisers are used to patrol sectors of space and destroy opposing transports, while transports let you activate sectors that you enter.
On a turn, a player adds a card to the Impulse from his hand, then (optionally) performs an action for a tech in his playing area, then (optionally) performs all the actions in the Impulse, then draws two cards and adds them to his hand. The Impulse is a line of cards shared by all players that changes turn by turn as players add cards to it and as cards fall off once it reaches maximum size. Thus, players need to feed the Impulse with actions that benefit them more than opponents, but that’s easier said than done.
When you perform actions – whether from moving transports to them or using the Impulse – you can boost them by having minerals of the same color or lots of transports. Each action has a single numeral on it, e.g., “Command [1] ship for one jump” or “Build [1] cruiser at home”; when you boost an action, you increase that numeral.
Players score points by destroying enemy ships (one point per ship), by controlling edge spaces on the central card (one point per edge), and by taking other actions via cards. The first player to score 20 points wins!
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n 64 A.D., a great fire originating from the slums of Rome quickly spreads to destroy much of the city, including the imperial palace. Upon hearing news of the fire, Emperor Nero Caesar races back to Rome from his private estate in Antium and sets up shelters for the displaced population. Reporting directly to Nero, you are responsible for rebuilding the structures lost in the fire and restoring Glory to Rome.
Glory to Rome is a card-based city building and resource management game with a novel mechanism. Each card may act as a building, a client, a raw material, or a valuable resource, frequently forcing players into difficult decisions regarding how each card should be used. In addition, much of the game is played from the discard pool, giving players some control over what cards are accessible to opponents. Actions are triggered by a form of card-driven role selection — the active player leads a role, and other players may follow if they discard a matching card from hand (to the pool). Players who don’t follow may ‘think’ to draw more cards. There are thus strong interactions between the different uses of cards. Scoring is a combination of completing buildings and storing resources, with end-of-game bonuses for storing a diverse assortment. Game length is player-controlled, and is triggered in a few different ways.
The lighthearted artwork of the original editions was replaced by minimalist art in the ‘black box’ edition, and both have been the source of great controversy. Many of the non-English editions use more conventional artwork.
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The rules of “Red” are simple: highest card wins! But “Red” is just one of seven games you’ll be playing in Red7, and if you’re not winning the current game at the end of your turn, you’re out! The last person standing wins the round.
The deck in Red7 is 49 cards: each of the colors of the rainbow numbered 1 to 7. A hand takes just a couple minutes!
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Ava: Welcome to an occasional series introducing you to a single, storied game designer. Today I want to tell you about the games of a man called Carl. Certain designers have a set of obsessions that shine brightly when you put all their work together. There’s a pattern of passions that unite their work. Carl Chudyk is my my board game design crush, and it’s because he ploughs a furrow that nobody else could. His games are relics from a weirder, smarter world. He builds layered puzzle-systems where possibilities multiply at every turn. They’re challenging to learn, but a delight to wrangle. It’s odd though. I struggle to recommend them to people, even though they’re my favourites. I don’t like to push people into an experience that might feel horrible the first time round. It’s like asking someone to dive into a river that will be cold until they adjust. But I want to talk about Carl Chudyk anyway. Once you’re swimming with him, you’ll find something you couldn’t get anywhere else. You’ll open tiny boxes and find yourself tucking ideas under possibilities and watching your table turn into a sea of systems. You’ll still be finding surprises on your hundredth play. You’ll get stories. Stories of the time a game felt different to anything else. These aren’t reviews. There’s no time for that. Instead I’m going to dissect a few games, pull out a few gutsy details, and see if I can read in the entrails why Carl is the way he is. Why he fills me with wonder and what makes me scream. Take a deep breath. It’s a fast river, you might not be able to get out.
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This game by Carl Chudyk is a journey through innovations from the stone age through modern times. Each player builds a civilization based on various technologies, ideas, and cultural advancements, all represented by cards. Each of these cards has a unique power which will allow further advancement, point scoring, or even attacking other civilizations. Be careful though, as other civilizations may be able to benefit from your ideas as well!
To win, you must score achievements, which you can attain by amassing points or by meeting certain criteria with the innovations you have built. Plan your civilization well, and outmaneuver your opponents, and with some luck you will achieve victory!
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Quinns: Ava, before we get started on the news, I have to tell somebody. I had the most fabulous time playing Don’t Get Got last night. Ava: Oh yeah? Quinns: Oh my goodness. The paranoia. The guile. The outraged howls outside the pub when I managed to win just before we all went home by … Read more
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October 31, 2019 Reviews barenpark, Conflict-Free Games, SU&SD Recommends, Barenpark: The Bad News Bears While Quintin takes a couple of weeks off, Matt dives into a world of BEARYTALE IMAGINATION. There’s no-one else here to keep an eye on things, so the gloves are fully off when it comes to awful puns. Expanding upon the … Read more
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October 31, 2019 Card Games that Don’t Suck Card Games that Don’t Suck, Bourré This week, our series on the best games that you can play with a 52 card deck gets WILD. Bourré is the most outrageous gambling game that you’ve never heard of. It has heaps of suave cardplay, and features not just … Read more
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