Leviathan Wilds: A Spectacular Homage to a Classic

Somewhere in the video I say that Leviathan Wilds should not work. The fact that it does is a miracle, a conjuring, some sort of arcane trickery that animates paper and wood into a daunting physical act. If you boil Leviathan Wilds down into genre, you appropriately get boiler plate tags. Co-op. Boss-battler. Action selection. But if you distill it into essence you get only one word - magic.

Leviathan Wilds is a valiant attempt at translating a premise not at all dissimilar to Shadows of the Colossus into board game form. In it, you’ll climb, leap, hop and glide across the terrain of gargantuan creatures trying to liberate them from blighted crystals. It’s snappy, feather-light and more-ish in a way that only modern co-opeartive games can be.

But it’s beating heart lies in adaptation and how effortless it makes it feel. I still don’t know why Leviathan Wilds works, but I’m glad I got to experience it. For more, please watch the review above.

Earthborne Rangers is One in a Million

Earthborne Rangers is a shower game. Don't actually play it in the shower, the cards will melt quicker than you can say "enviromentally sustainable." But do play it. And afterwards it will haunt your thoughts.

You'll think about Earthborne Rangers when you're having your lunch sandwich on a park bench, when you look out your kitchen window with your morning coffee, when you're walking your dog, and yes, every time you have a shower.

Earthborne Rangers is a game that stays with you because it's a game that gives more than it has. It's unusual structure ensures that every session ends with more lingering thoughts, questions, mysteries, that hook you in for just one more play.

Oh, and it's also a co-operative "LCG inspired" campaign game with all that deck construction cardy-combo goodness that you expect from games like Lord of the Rings and Arkham Horror the Card Games, but comparing it to those does it an injustice. It's so much more!

My Favourite Game: El Grande

Introducing - My Favourite Game. A series of videos focusing only the best of the best that board games have to offer. In each episode Efka and/or Elaine will regale us with tales of their favourite representative of a given board game genre. Finally! A video series that is absolutely guaranteed to provoke as many “do you even like board games?” comments as possible.

In our inaugural episode we’ll take a peek at El Grande, a modern classic all the way back from 1995 that very recently got a new coat of beige paint. El Grande is an area majority game a terse calculated fight over how many men you can round up into regions of Spain. It’s got a touch of numbers and heaps of deviousness and if that’s your marmalade - you’re in for a treat!

Can a Board Game Save the World? | Daybreak Review

What's that law about the title being a yes or no question? The answer is always, yes, right? (No one correct me.) Ha ha, well jokes on you, this one is a straight N.O. How would a board game even save the world? With its dashing smile and can-do attitude?

Haaaaaaving said that... I think that maybe Daybreak is as close as we'll get, and I know, I know - that's corny and a tad sensationalist but... I dunno. There's something kinda transcendent about it. Something that makes it more than a board game. Actually, scratch that. That implies that a board game can't ever amount to being transcendent. What I mean is, Daybreak feels like just a bit more.

In both setting and gameplay, Daybreak feels like it's breaking ground, and to see both executed so well is a rare treat. So please, enjoy me gushing about a fantastic board game for 15 minutes - a treat for everyone, I am sure.

Sky Team is So Tense, it Game Me Hiccups

The Crew, The Mind, Magic Maze and now Sky Team, each wonderful games that want you to sit down and shut up (ha ha). The premise is simple. Land a passenger airplane without talking. Isn’t that just the best pitch? We’ve all dreamed of being a pilot. Sky Team says - you can do that, without the ridiculous complexity of Flight Simulator and none of the dangers of real planing. Here’s our review.

What follows is a transcript of our video.

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Sky Team asks a very simple question: have you ever wanted to land a passenger aeroplane? To which of course the answer is:

Elaine: NO! I don’t know the first thing about planing, I don’t want that kind of responsibility.

Efka: Relax, you’re not piloting an actual aeroplane, just a pretend board game one with dice. Let me show you how it works.

In Sky Team you and one other person will play as the pilot and co-pilot responsible for landing said aeroplane. You will do this by placing dice one at a time on this true to life accurate representation of a pilot’s dashboard.

There’s just one problem, just like in a real aeroplane, you’re not actually allowed to talk to each other. So that’s fun, but if that wasn’t enough, let me show you some other things you shouldn’t do.

Normally when we explain a board game, we like to start by telling you how you win, because that gives you context for what you’re trying to do. With Sky Team, I will instead be telling you how you lose.

This is the altitude track. It goes down by one at the end of every round.

If you haven’t reached the airport by the time it reaches zero - you crash and lose.

If you overshoot the airport at any point - you crash and lose.

If you don’t arrive at the airport before the last round - you crash and lose.

As you fly towards the airport, there will be other aeroplanes in the way. You and your co-pilot can shoot them down from the sky with this radio action. If you fly over any of them - you crash and lose.

Let’s say your aeroplane reaches the airport on the penultimate round. On the last round it needs to have a speed equal or lower to your brakes value. If it doesn’t – you crash and lose.

Let’s say your aeroplane reaches the airport on the penultimate round and on the last round your speed is lower than your break value but you haven’t perfectly balanced out your plane - you crash and lose.

Let’s say your aeroplane reaches the airport on the penultimate round and on the last round your speed is lower than your break value and you balanced out your aeroplane, but you haven’t deployed all your flaps - you crash and lose.

You haven’t deployed all your landing gear - you crash and lose.

You tilt your plane too far to either side - you crash and lose.

You flew through some clouds at the wrong angle - you crash and lose.

You ran out of fuel - you crash and lose.

You haven’t completely trained your intern - obviously that last one is fine, interns don’t really care about on the job training, they’re just doing it for exposure ARE YOU KIDDING ME, YOU CRASH AND LOSE.

Just one or two things for you to worry about as you’re not communicating with your team-mate. Unless, maybe you are.

As mentioned, each turn, one by one you’ll be placing one of the four dice you rolled at the beginning of the round.

You can place these dice anywhere you like, as long as the spot matches your dice colour – blue for pilot, orange for copilot – and the number restrictions. For example, I can only place a one or two here to deploy some of my landing gear. Each time you place a die, you perform the corresponding action.

That’s how you deploy brakes, landing gear, flaps, shoot other planes out of the sky, cross all the dots and i’s or even make some coffee.

Most actions are simple. Place a die, it does the thing. And when I say thing, nothing miraculous happens. If you radio to shoot a plane out of the sky, you just remove that plane. If you increase your brake value – well, you just increase your break value.

However. Two actions, balancing tilt and speed, are mandatory, and require a die from each the pilot and the co-pilot. Which means, two of the four dice you have, are spoken for every round. And that’s where communication comes in.

Let’s say it’s my turn and for my first die I put a 1 on the tilt action. If Elaine also puts a one, our tilt remains the same. If, however, she puts a higher die, such as a three, the tilt will move towards her equal to the difference. Tilt too far to one side - you crash and lose.

So me placing a one here is an outrageously brazen move! I have no idea what’s behind Elaine’s shield, it could be all fives and sixes in which case that’s an instant loss. But think about what I’m communicating with that one.

Because I placed it as my first move, I’m saying to Elaine, this is my problem die.

Elaine: Your face is a problem die.

Efka: It’s true. I haven’t got anything better for there, and if you haven’t got low dice you have four turns to figure out a solution.

I’m also saying, all my other dice are probably low too, so adjust your plans accordingly. Maybe send a die to the coffee space, which, like in a real aeorplane, makes coffee and adjusts die values by plus one or minus one.

And if worst comes to worst, we can always spend the very hard to come by reroll token.

I want you to think about how tense all these situations are in play. I said you’re not allowed to communicate, but I can bet you ten pounds no one’s going to stop themselves from a painful wince if someone places a two on tilt on their last turn when all you have behind your shield is a six.

Or the agony of deciding whether to use a reroll, which lets everyone reroll any dice they want, but you have two of these for the entire game.

And obviously you can’t confer when to use it. You just have to decide to use it. For both players. Whilst the other person is giving you a deadeye stare. And you just sit with that. And stew. I mean, forget hiccups. This game is so sweaty it legit gave me swamp butt.

What truly makes Sky Team a masterclass in board game design is that it knows how to de-escalate that tension in the most dramatic way.

Die by die, move by move, mind read by mind read you watch as you and your partner sync up and read each other and your plan is maybe, possibly, just about coming together.

Still in silence! Until that very last die placement where you’re finally allowed to high five each other and go OMG that was perfect! How did you know I still had a four behind my shield when you put a 3 down on speed?

Or the alternative to that, where someone makes one misstep, like the co-pilot forgetting that they need to shoot down an aeroplane and instead putting the die down to retract the flaps. And the mad silent scramble by both players to somehow find a fix before they literally cause an international catastrophe.

Last year everyone’s darling was Heat, a racing game that didn’t simulate racing, but high drama movies about racing.

Sky Team, along with obviously being a future mega-hit, does exactly the same thing. It simulates not actual aeroplane landings but movies about aeroplane landings.

You’re not playing a pilot, you’re playing Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, maybe even Gerard Butler or Tom Butler.

Elaine: Who’s Tom Butler?

Efka: He’s the actor that plays the pilot in Snakes on a Plane.

Elaine: Oh. Why Snakes on a Plane?

Efka: Cause we needed a segue for the criticisms.

This isn’t gonna be long, don’t worry. My only real criticism is that Sky Team is incredibly precise and particular with the timing of actions. You move forward at the exact moment when someone places the second die on the speed action for example, not at the end of the round.

There’s a reason for that, it lets you set up more strategic moves. If you can’t shoot down the aeroplane that’s two spaces away because you’ve only got dice with like ones or sixes, you can move forward one space, and now your 1 die is eligible to take that enemy passenger plane DOWN!

But that sort of thing can be very fiddly during the portion of the game that has to play out without people talking to each other so when someone forgets - it’s tense, tense, TENSE… Oh wait you forgot to move your flap marker. No longer tense.

Aside from that, I mean, it’s a dice game where you roll dice and the values matter. So at easier difficulty levels, it’s tuned quite well towards that communicating without communicating action. Whereas with the really difficult scenarios, it’s just, did we roll the right dice? No. Okay. Let’s try again I guess?

Which isn’t really a criticism. Sky Team is an experience game. You can get better at it, but you don’t play it to get better at it. You play it for kicks, and let me tell you, this aeroplane’s got legs.

Also, don’t play this with strangers. In fact, don’t even play it with like acquaintances or co-workers or virtually anyone with whom you haven’t developed a level of comfort where you can just chill in each other’s company. Sky Team relies on intimacy to create that tension, so a disaster in the wrong hands.

But as long as we’re talking about scenarios, and as much fun as that base game is, this tiny box is a treasure trove of well thought out game-modes. From an intern you need to train, to fuel you have to manage to ice-breaks, wind - every module (aside from the hackneyed real time mode), offers an interesting spin to make sure that when you’re feeling comfortable with planing, it’s got another spanner to chuck in your face.

Try the intern module after your first game to vary it up a little bit, add the fuel module if you’re into players forgetting to do important actions and watching disastrous consequences unfurl in silence, and put on some ice-breaks when you really feel like taking things up a notch.

Sky Team is a top-notch recommendation from us. If your evenings are getting a bit stale and you’re bored of binge-watching streamers, inject a bit of swamp butt into your routine.

Voidfall and the Contentification of Board Games

Hey everybody, big space game just dropped. That’s right, once more cardboard is inviting us to put spaceships on hexagons and claim more teritorry than your neighbor. The twist this time is that instead of uneasy alliances, territorial tensions and tumbling dice, every body plays the space lions - methodically calculating the most efficient ratio of action to victory point.

Below is a transcript of our video review of Voidfall.

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They say space is impossibly big, but is it big enough to contain Voidfall? Don't answer that.

Take the game's resource system for example. In other games when you produce a resource you just get it. In Voidfall you have five resources: food, energy, materials, credits - which can be spent as the other free but only in certain situations – and science.

To get these resources first you must build an appropriate guild. Food guild for food resources, science guild for science resources, and so on. The number of guilds you have in a given sector is then multiplied by the population value of that sector. Add those values together for all of your sectors - the result is the production value of your guilds of that type. But that's not how much you produce, that's just a value, but that value directly modifies the output value which is how much of that resource you produce when you do the produce action.

This is Voidfall - a big space game of grand strategy, grand spaceships, grand asymmetrical factions, and grand brains. That intro should have given you a pretty good idea of the level of complexity that Voidfall is aiming for. In fact I think the two talking points that will gravitate around this game's orbit are:

·         It's just too complicated

·         It's just a euro game masquerading as space strategy.

Keep these two in mind through the course of the video.

You'll notice there's one or two game pieces on the table and whilst it definitely adds to the grandness of it all, strangely what's really important is this small area over here.

This is the agenda offering. Each agenda card is another potential way of scoring points and having the most points wins you the game. Your House - that being your space faction - will come with a starting agenda, but you will want to pick up more ideally overlapping in goals so you can score the things that you achieve multiple times.

For example, this is House Nervo, an industrious faction of humans who abandoned flesh for efficiency. Effleshiency? That sounds right. And naturally they'll score points for every sector that has all of their guild and space station slots fully filled up, and advancing as far as they can on the three civilization tracks.

Which means agendas like Industrial Conglomerate which reward you for having Guilds in different sectors and filling them up to capacity will score you points for things that you're already doing anyway, whereas agendas like Bleeding Edge that score you points for combat rewards and improved Technologies force you to divest your energy into things that aren't necessarily profitable.

And almost always the more sectors you have the more times you can multiply these scoring conditions, and that's on top of the resource farms you can build on them, which is where we arrive at the why.

To win, you need points to get points you need agendas and agendas want more sectors so what do you do in this game?

EXPAAAAND! And just in case it wasn't clear what you do in this game - EXPAAAAND!

That was fun for about 3 seconds but now let's get back to our homework.

So at this point you might be wondering 'Okay we have space empires, we have space-agons, how do they translate into space agendas and space points? Well I'm not going to show you this entire game, but I do want to showcase a few mechanisms and how they shake out.

The majority of what you do is determined by focus cards. You play one of these a turn, and choose two out of the three possible actions on them.

For example, this is House Bellitan. Their whole stick is that they've said 'Emotions? That stuff's for crying babies! It's all about RAW CALCULUS POWER!' and also 'RAW MILITARY POWER!' So they grew extra brain tissue outside of the skull and then jacked cables into it. Is that brain tissue protected by anything? No! Do they care? Remember, no emotions - they just don't give a [ships].

Anyway, so you picked a faction that's all about... guns and money. Oh, they looked so nice in the picture.

Naturally you'll be wanting to expand with the guns to get more money to get more guns and so on. The reinforcements card will let you take the muster action by paying two material. Then for each shipyard you have in your sectors, simply make one spaceship.

Other actions are also equally simple. For example, if something lets you build a Guild simply pick any Guild that you would like and just place it in your sector, adjusting the output of the resources it makes based on the sector's population.

Even the resource production system we lampooned in the intro is actually reliably free of hassle once you understand the literal cogs that make it turn - anytime you make a resource simply look up how much of that resource you produce and then add it to your total.

Aside from combat, which we will talk about, later no system in this game is complex or something that a person used to euro games couldn't wrap their head around. It's the consequences of what you do that will make your brain hurt.

Each time you produce more resources than can be stored by your capacity they go to waste, but you immediately get three additional victory points. Is that worth it? Hard to say. But there's also a faction that will give you bonuses each time you overproduce which would incentivise them to build a lot of guilds, but every time you fill up a sector with guilds, that increases the demand for food - which you have to account for at the end of every cycle or lose victory points.

Agenda cards also increase your demand for food, however you can cover up that demand with trade tokens. But you can also spend the trade token from your agenda to take all three actions on your focus card instead of just the requisite two, which is very strong but then everyone is starving again.

Remember building ships? The action is as simple as described, but you can only build spaceships if they're available in your supply. If you don't have any you have to make them available via an action that is on an altogether different card, meaning it will suck up one of the actions for the cycle. Or take the exert action on the temptation card which lets you do both but then corrupts either; one of your sectors, or your agendas, or one of your civilization tracks - which will make them ineligible for scoring.

None of this is hyperbole in fact this is the simplified version of the brain loop roller coaster you're standing in line for if you're considering Voidfall as part of your collection. You could not unreasonably spend 10 minutes just deciding which one card am I going to play, and the tenor of this game is such that your opponents won't even mind because they've very likely been doing the same.

This isn't a criticism, it's in fact the intended experience - further reinforced by galactic event cards. The whole game is split into three cycles, each offering an opportunity to score agenda cards at the end, and then punctuated by the galactic event.

It sets up the stage for what's important this cycle. For example, an event might say 'At the end of the cycle you'll score extra points for controlling sectors with finance guilds', and they're quite a bit more complicated than that.

Often there's two different conditions for getting bonuses and quite frequently they change the game state but all it is a very clever way of funnelling you into new objectives. A galactic event creates play arcs and puzzles, it gives this mishmash of pieces and space-agons a direction.

Which honestly you could ignore if you wanted to, but they're precisely tuned to each scenario. Scenario that has specific factions, technologies, a map layout, and a set of these cards.

Everything speaks to a curated experience and intentionality and you can just feel it during play as you brute force every ounce of efficiency, clawing towards the next space-agon you understand why this map is laid out like that, why you're allowed these technologies and not the others, why these specific Houses are in play. It's very smart and it wants you to glimpse that smartness so you can overcome the challenge its deliberately posing.

By this point of the video you're probably... a bit bored, because I'm talking about a space game and so far I haven't told you about how you forge alliances in betrayals with other players, how you smash your spaceships to take over a hexagon - you know all that juicy space game stuff. Well, here's the thing. None of that happens here.

Technically you can fight other players but mostly you're separated by so much space that getting into territorial skirmishes takes about as much time as realistically depicted interstellar travel.

I'm not saying this as a criticism I'm just managing expectations. Voidfall is 95% a euro game with a few other bits added to pass the visual litmus test of 4X or whatever you want to call this genre. If you're familiar with board games this is more Gaia Project than Eclipse and if you're not familiar with board games this is 'Space! The complicated math game'.

Uh talking of complicated I've got a bit of a bone to pick with how board gamers perceive complexity.

Complexity is a strange thing and we attribute weird qualities to it. Being a board game reviewer makes you privy to a lot of opinions and sometimes they're quite revealing. For example, when we review a complicated game negatively, there will always be some people who are like: 'Well, you are just too stupid to understand it!'

Oh yeah? Well if I'm stupid, would I be wearing this?

That's right I would! Because I *am* stupid! I'm a buffoon! A dunderhead! A nincompoop! A board game village idiot!

I say this because some people who play these uber complex board games think that it requires intelligence to navigate them, and let me tell you right now there is nothing in this manual that is any more complicated than just navigating yourself through daily life.

And that's not to say that this is easy, it's just that daily life is harder. At least here I have a comprehensive stratified guideline that'll tell me the outcome of all of my decisions. This is written in stone. When I'm walking my dog in the park and a stranger asks me 'Hey how you doing?', I can think of 10 possible replies and I have no idea what the result of any of them will be. How do I choose? Where is the rule book for that? And more importantly, what would it look like?

Some people don't like complicated board games not because they're "too hard" or whatever but because that's not what they want. They want immediate fun or immediate complexity. They want to get to the decision space faster because, for them, that's where the meat is.

And also - now I'm just going to upset everyone - complicated board games aren't somehow worse just because they have more rules, they aren't just "complexity for complexity's sake", they deliver a different kind of experience. There's a joy to be found in navigating systems, and exploring and untangling arcane yarn balls and willing them to behave how you want to. It's an incredibly rewarding part of play.

To sum up, simple games are no less complex just because they're not convoluted and complicated games are no less good just because they *are* convoluted. It's simply a matter of preference.

And if you ask me which of these I prefer, the answer is 'yes'. I like games period. I like exploring what their strengths and weaknesses are, not because of what type of game they are, but how they work within the context of the genre or type or whatever.

I think this game will stick around because it evokes the familiar tropes of Eclipse and Twilight Imperium but implements them in a different way. This isn't a game about all out war, on a table spread with beers, curry, and plastic spaceships. It's about efficiently working out what you need to do this turn to get to where you want to be four turns later through a litter of interlocking mechanisms.

It's extremely good at telegraphing its intentions and expectations, at showing you where to start picking out the thread so you can pull it apart at the seams, and just leaves you alone to do it, sometimes coming back to gently check in on you and slightly nudge you back on your path.

One of the most downtrodden phrases in board game marketing is 'innovative action selection mechanism', which makes me want to avoid the games that advertise themselves with it like they were racist relatives. We acknowledge their existence but we're not going to that wedding if they're invited.

The problem is that some games are indeed more complex than they need to be, because they shift the complexity towards taking the action itself. I need to work out a physics problem before I can, I don't know, build a spaceship - let alone weigh the pros and cons of doing it. That's not play, that's the world's slowest hurdle race.

Voidfall, on the other hand, makes every one of these actions as simple as it can be but interlocks it with five other systems introducing a thousand consequences just for putting on a shoe.

So when you do the action you're not sure whether you should wear it on your foot or on your head. Honestly, still not sure which one of these is more efficient.

This is good game design because it leverages what you want against what you want. You can't have everything, so every action you take has consequences that then need to be levelled out and that's before we consider various technologies that affect every design aspect, and the frankly ludicrous number of factions that lean further with strengths, weaknesses, and unique abilities.

There's not much more I need to say about Voidfall. It's cobbled together from so many familiar tropes and it borrows so earnestly that you can easily trace its lineage to a number of other popular games.

Feeding your people? That's like Agricola. A euro game masquerading as a 4X grand strategy game? That's Scythe. Events for every round? I'm looking at you New Orleans, and a bunch of others. Tech upgrades? Twilight Imperium wants a word. Tracks that unlock bonuses? Half the euro games of the world are knocking on your door.

I'd say that out of all of these Scythe has such a profound influence that you can figure out if you like Voidfall if you don't mind the idea of Scythe but in space, but twice as complicated. In both of these games you select an action block and execute a choice of actions from it, you expand at the peril of losing access to your hexagons and the resources they generate, you have asymmetrical factions, and combat is a feature that's technically present but barely rears its head (unless we're talking about fighting the automated neutral faction). And it's not just mechanisms. The vibe and flow of the game is very similar.

What I don't want you to take away from this, is that Voidfall is derivative. I mean, it is, most board games are, and euro games are particularly prone to cannibalize. A measure of a good game isn't whether it reuses mechanisms developed by others, it's how well it understands what makes those mechanisms interesting.

And every time Voidfall borrows, it builds and re-interprets, which is all a very long way of saying that it's fun to figure out how to feed your people in Voidfall.

I do have a couple of criticisms. There's so many different icons in the game that the icon reference, which doesn't even contain all of them, is 4 A4 Pages big. So very often you're told to: 'Place five squiggly cog, arrow down, arrow up, dash, red line, does not equal, wavy blue, ampersand, ampersand.' What?

Again a familiar trope. Board games use iconography because if you memorize 20 pictures you internalize the game's language and then everything flows really smooth. Here's what I learned playing Voidfall:

Every time I see an icon that isn't one of the 10 basic icons I ignore it and don't try to understand it and instead look it up in this glossary, which has the full rules explanation for every card and element in this game. I suspect many people will do the same, because learning that many icons just isn't reasonable.

Quick aside, as much as I loathe the amount of icons, I do have to acknowledge the existence of this glossary. I've just never seen such a comprehensive rules explanation of absolutely every element that exists in this game, and just how useful and practical this was trying to navigate it. I don't think I've ever encountered a glossary like this and I'm very grateful that it exists. Publishers take note, this was invaluable.

Now on to my second criticism. The setup for this game takes an hour. And no, you can't reduce that with experience. That's it. That's my second criticism.

That's a minor gripe and once again I reiterate, I think this game is really good. I like it. I enjoy playing it, and that is the end of this review. Please don't watch anymore because there is nothing else coming afterwards. Ignore the text underneath because this is literally the last bit. Positive board game review! Happy ending for everyone. The End. Goodbye. Konets. Finito. Pabaiga. No more.....

I did mean that by the way, I do like Void fall quite a bit but there's just this one thing surrounding this game's orbit that I want to talk about and no, it's not space colonialism - I'm not touching that with a 10 ft pole - I'm going to touch something that's going to upset people even more.

I did mention that there's scenarios in this game. There are in fact 11 scenarios for each player count, totaling at 33. Plus eight solo scenarios, plus seven scenarios for the two-player co-op mode, six for the three player co-op mode, and four for the four player co-op mode.

And yes, there is a co-op mode adding a cavalcade of extra rules on an already pretty dense game. The way Voidfall is positioned is as everything for everyone. Don't like combat? Well, here's a scenario with little combat. Feel like there's not enough combat? There's a scenario for that too - make it much combat. Want it competitive? Cooperative? Solo operative? Step right up, only a dollar. It's almost like a Bethesda game or a Marvel show – just content on top of content on top of content. For all occasions - weddings, funerals, bar-mitzvas, doesn't matter! Just content!

My experience of playing Voidfall, which I like and this is a positive review, was that I played the tutorial scenario and I enjoyed that, and then I played another scenario and I really enjoyed that. But then when I had the choice of moving on to another scenario I just wanted to play the same one I played before. I didn't, because my job is not to, but there are so many variables and intricacies that to explore all of them would have taken me so many plays. I could literally just play that one scenario forever and I'd be happy with that. Honestly, that would do me fine.

I don't begrudge variety but it's important to recognise that variety always has a cost. Sure, there's 247 scenarios, but how many of them are sound? How many of these special houses, that accommodate the ideas in these scenarios, are sound? How many map layouts? I don't know, but I've definitely encountered a couple of houses with special abilities that made sense on paper but as soon as you put them into the context of how this game plays, their abilities were just not that interesting.

And... the rules for combat. They're advertised as purely deterministic - you can figure out the outcome before you even start the combat. That's not a lie, and I understand why they need to be like that.

The gist is that there's two steps: 'approach' and 'salvo'. First, you go to the approach step, which is where any combatant with approach damage deals one damage and anything that has approach shields shrugs it off. Then there's the salvo step where the same thing happens except only things with salvo damage deal damage and things with salvo shields shrug them off. And then Salvo keeps looping until there's one side remaining.

Sounds simple, but once you start factoring in all the tech and unique ships and special abilities, you have something so arcane that the developers felt like they needed to make an assistant app just to calculate combat results. And then the community decided that the assistant app wasn't good enough and made their own assistant app. And I don't care how you feel about complexity, if that app needed to happen maybe you've taken things one step too far.

But then combine the elements of player combat barely occurring and it being completely deterministic and you end up with a game where this happens:

'I'm going to attack you! ... Wait, just going to look up first the five Corvettes versus one Corvette, one Destroyer, one Star Base, tech... actually forget about it I'm just going to do some economy instead.'

Funny the first time, tedious forever after. I started to wonder why is combat like that? If the goal was to have a game with simple actions but a complicated decision space, why design a fighting system where you need a calculator just to figure out how to do it, but then have the result be so binary and dull?

It is literally the opposite of this game's design ethos. And then I played the game in co-op mode and ohhhh okay, it needs to be like that for co-op to work. Do you see my problem?

The way Co-op works is that you are literally playing the same game but you also have another deck and when you draw a card from that deck it tells you to draw a card from another deck, and when you draw that, it will tell you to do something this turn but with a penalty - or it's going to go on the doom board.

When cards pile up on the doom board - not the official name - they increase the severity of punishment at the end of every cycle, and then if they fill up the doom board they can trigger a catastrophe. Three of those and you lose the game.

I'm avoiding explaining a majority of the rules but the gist of it is that on top of playing this complicated euro game, you're also constantly bombarded with extra things you need to concern yourself with.

And it's not without its intrigue. You could, for example, fill up this doom board with cards and then, with one masterminded action, clear all of them. But it increases the mental load by about 50% for a game that was already 300% of an average euro game.

And on top of that when you check whether you won, you check against the score of the lowest scoring player, which is an abominable rule. The game points a finger at one person and says 'Hey, it's your fault we lost. Feel bad.'

Naturally with this increased load you just can't have a combat system that is anything but deterministic. After all this workout of working things out, the last thing you want is to lose because of a dice roll. Which would be fine in a competitive game. If one person hubrisses it, that's a story. But if it affects the entire table, that's just the game making everyone feel miserable.

At the start of this video I said that there's two criticisms that people will have for this game: that it's too complicated which, I mean, that's just what it is - people enjoy that. And that it's a euro game dressed up as Twilight Imperium.

And you know what? As simplistic as that criticism is, I think that second one is true. That euro game core is a clever, complex puzzle. It feels good to explore it. But everything bolted on top of that euro game feels like a weird mismatch. It strains the design and makes it gloopy so that it can fit into a mold that it was never meant for.

Listen, I don't begrudge this game having a cooperative mode or a solo mode. I bet there's hundreds of you leaving a comment right now saying 'But "insert mode" is my favourite mode!' and that's legit. I don't want you to not have it, I just want you to imagine how much better this game would be if instead of having to develop all the others, it would *only* be 'insert mode' and the design space didn't need to accommodate a car that's also a boat, and also an aeroplane.

In a world where Agricola and Caverna exist, in a world where some people own one or the other or both, I cannot see why Voidfall couldn't have been two distinct games, each leaning into the strengths of what they are trying to achieve.

But that's what games are like right now and it all comes back to my favourite subject - crowdfunding. Let's face it you can't rely on people to be excited about your game and shout about it from the rooftops. But gaming the crowdfunding algorithms, by including every conceivable mode and 5,000 content, all but guarantees at least moderate success.

And thus, we have the contentification of board games. Hey, it's like the title of the video! I want games to be made for people, and not for computers. And I know some of you are like 'I don't see the problem'. No, this is precisely the problem. This is a good game but it has the potential to be a truly astounding one. I can see it in there I just can't fish it out from all the debris of modes and content.

And I don't mean to imply some cynical ploy here, in fact the opposite. It is absolutely clear that Mindclash put so much care into this game - more than I see most publishers do. This is a labour of love.

I just wish that that labour was better applied.

In fact, I think most publishers by now feel the same way about all this extra cruft, they just see it as a necessity to survive in the crowdfunding environment. They need to contentify their board games. They need to make it so that everyone will like this one game forever ... until they buy another one one week later.

Anywho, that's it. I once again reiterate I like Voidfall. I think it's pretty good. This is a positive review, I just went on a tangent about this one thing that I didn't like. And if that outrages you, by all means absolutely please leave those angry comments that boost the visibility of this review, and get immediately deleted anyway.

If you enjoyed my tangent and want to support tangent work, we are entirely independent from publishers - supported just by people like yourselves, who watch us and give us some money every month. So please extend your own financial tangent towards our Patreon.

A review of Caesar!: Seize Rome in Twenty Minutes in twenty minutes

What’s green, white and has croutons? That’s right, it’s Caesar, once again invading your pallette with questionable art and incredible gameplay. Today Efka tells you all about Caesar!: Seize Rome in Twenty Minutes in exactly twenty minutes.

Caesar!: Seize Rome in Twenty Minutes is a two-player only area control game by famed designer Paolo Mori, and we think you owe it to yourself to check this wonderful gem out. It’s quick, it’s smart and it’s really good.

Brian Boru Review

Brian Boru: The High King of Ireland is the latest game from designer Peer Sylvester, also responsible for our 2020 Game of the Year - The King is Dead. This however, is a bigger grander feeling strategy game, full of clever twists and unexpected spins on familiar mechanisms.

A Review of Everything Too Many Bones

Howdy bone fans. What a video today - a comprehensive review of everything ever published for Too Many Bones so far. In this monstrous video you’ll learn about the popular dungeon crawler, why you’d want to buy it, why you wouldn’t want to buy it and what to buy or not buy. Is it a buyer’s guide? Yes. Is it a critical analysis? Yes. Is it too long and overambitious? Yes. The game, or the video? Yes.

Enjoy!

Cascadia Review

What do you get when you put a bear together with Carcassonne? Ironically, something with less bite than Carcassonne. Which absolutely shouldn’t deter you from giving Cascadia a spin because sometimes gentler does not mean worse. In today’s video Efka gives you the rundown on the latest tile-laying game from Flatout Games, taking you to the Pacific North West on a journey through nature and a crunchy good time.

Bloodborne: The Board Game Review

I need to stop going into a big project after another big project with no little project to fill the gap in between. So expect something small and cute for our next video - but right now we have big, scary, moody, dark and expensive. Is it good? No. Is it interesting? Heck yes.

Bloodborne: The Board Game is not a fantastic game but it gets close. If you’re tickled by near greatness, this review delves into the whys and hows.

Sprawlopolis Review | Pocket Series Part One

Announcement! For the next six weeks we’ll be celebrating the best that small board games have to offer. Tune in for this first episode where we feature Sprawlopolis - one of the best city building games out there fitting into a demure 18 cards, a rulebook and a wallet to fit it all in. What could be more pocket than that? Answers on a pocket postcard.

Cloudspire Review - 50% Genius, 70% Disaster

Oh no, there he goes again bashing another big Kickstarter board game, you might say. And you know what, you would be right. Cloudspire is so big and so indestructible (no, really) that it can take a big swing. But here’s the trick, frequently if you give large containers filled with various bits a good bashing - things will fall out. And sometimes those things might be amazing. So let’s see if this Kickstartosorous will leave a nugget of gold after you sift through it.

We Review (nearly) Everything Arkham Horror: The Card Game - Part 1

What makes Arkham Horror the Card Game so captivating? Perhaps it really is that good. Perhaps, like The King in Yellow, once you’ve experienced it you’ll just never be able to get away from it. Either way, we want to help you decide which parts are worth the entry cost. So we’ve sat through it. All of it. And here it is, act one of our Mega Review of Arkham Horror: The Card Game.

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Tainted Grail Review

After 7th Continent we did not think we’d be intrigued in seeing another ‘continent composed of cards on your table’ open world board game but here we are. Better sharpen your scythes as you take on the role of hapless villagers trying to unravel a world-ending mystery so “dark” it’ll give Vantablack a run for it’s money.

Tainted Grail is everything “Kickstarter board games” but hyperbolized. The scope? If you want to finish this beast and have time to play some other board games in your life - better take all your annual leave at once. The bling? Let’s not mince words because Awaken Realms does not mince plastic - it’s all truly gorgeous. The cost? Actually, forget other board games - if you bought this - you can no longer afford them. Whether you should buy it is another matter altogether.

Irish Gauge Review

An Irish Gouge, much like Bradd Pitt’s character in the movie Snatch, doesn’t sound like something very nice or Irish. Thankfully today we are not reviewing Irish Gouge, but Irish Gauge, a delightfully devious and quick train game with drumroll stocks!

That’s right, much like it’s dreaded bulky cousin - the 18xx genre - Irish Gauge combines the joy of stocks and auctions with laying track onto hexagons. But unlike it’s cousin, it manages to remain light and fluffy - like a coal powered meringue. Is it worth your time?

Sabotage Review

Today we have the pleasure and delight of shining a light on Sabotage, a strange strange design from board game extraordinaire Tim Fowers. Thematically, you’re either spies or supervillains fighting in a head to head game of cat and mouse. Mechanically… you’ve got a team asymmetrical hidden movement dice placement programming game which is something I had to learn to say out lout with confidence for this review. Does it all hold together or fall apart at the seams? Only one way to find out.

Tapestry Review

Tapestry! When you lose control and you get no bonus,

Tapestry! When the resource’s gone and you can’t go on it’s hard to be….

Wait, put down that pitchfork - this was a fine homage to a horrible song and admit it - deep down in your heart you liked it. Just like I had to admit that deep down in my heart I liked Tapestry, a civilization themed game that asks you to go up four tracks that will propel you as high up as space (and other human achievements). But, my oh my, I don’t think everyone will enjoy this trundle through history and as always, the hardest job falls on us - helping you figure out which camp you’re going to be on before you hit ‘purchase.’

Black Angel Review

If you were ever looking for a game that would irritatingly make you sing an altered version of The Penguin’s Earth Angel whilst your friends are tearing their hair out desperately trying to figure out how to most optimally sequence their moves - on paper Black Angel is it. Coming from a design trio most famous for Troyes, this 2-4 player game taking 2-3 hours won’t sit there quietly as its bright neon pinks purples and blues will dominate everyone’s attention on looks alone.

But if you’ve been listening to our podcast you might have already heard that this spaceship bearing box didn’t land so well with us. Why? Only one way to find out.

Watergate Review

Fresh off the heels of us discussing this little gem on our podcast Efka is already ready with a video review. We’re going to keep it brief this time and point you straight to the video because the person behind the keyboard might or might not be crushed by a horrendous migraine right now. We can at least promise that this game is no headache!