Sheriff Of Nottingham provides a serviceable bluffing experience that sadly fails to excite beyond its initial shallow thrill, which is a real shame because a game about border smuggling has instant classic written all over it. It’s a perfectly functional design insofar as none of its flaws are catastrophic or complete deal-breakers, but most of what the game actually is fails to take advantage of its exciting premise in any meaningful way. Its overall structure and cadence are routine and uninspired and claiming victory amounts to little more than boring set collection. For these reasons, Sheriff Of Nottingham operates in a strange middle-ground between tension and vacuity, struggling to be anything more than uniquely mediocre. Its momentary action can feel quite impactful at times and yet the total package feels dull. Maybe those seeking only a few solid “Gotcha!” moments will find this a fulfilling way to spend an hour or so, but asking for anything more memorable or flavorful than that will likely be answered by disappointment. In Sheriff Of Nottingham, players take turns acting as the titular officer while the others embody merchants attempting to bring goods of all kinds through the city gates to sell at their stands. In the center of the table is a massive face-down draw deck of “Goods Cards” and two face-up discard piles. Goods cards come in two forms: legal and contraband. Legal goods may be declared truthfully at the gates, but the only way to make any money off that sweet, sweet contraband is to…
I’ve always taken people’s criticisms of Feld’s designs as “soulless Euros” or “dry cube-pushers” with a grain of salt and roll of the eyes, but games like La Isla make it all too apparent there’s a kernel of truth to such disparaging remarks. This is a game with no attention paid to anything other than making a bunch of little systems talk to each other. It has no theme, no narrative, no player interaction, no meta, and only the thinnest veneer of strategy. It is also one of the most repetitive games I’ve ever played. Your turns are indistinguishable from each other. You do the same actions in the same order every single round. A designer with a smaller pedigree would’ve never gotten this published, at least not without a pretty significant overhaul. La Isla‘s flaws are way too obvious and way too severe. Hey, at least that means this should be a quick review! La Isla is a card game about capturing endangered animals on an island. You start by setting up the island and distributing 5 different species of creatures randomly across the board. Each creature space is bounded by 2-4 player spaces that you will be placing workers into to surround and capture them. Every turn, players draw 3 cards and assign them to 1 of 3 actions. One will be used to learn its pictured ability, one will be used to take its pictured resource, and one will be used to increase the point value of its pictured animal species.…
There are games that make my hands sweat and games that make me take notes, but Alchemists is the only game that makes me take notes with sweaty hands. A modern masterpiece that combines deduction, worker placement, and bluffing in equal measure, Alchemists mixes a multitude of mechanisms into an intoxicating send up of publish-or-perish academia. Upon first glance the game may seem like a whimsical take on Potions class at Hogwarts (and in a way it is), but underneath that boiling cauldron is a fire stoked by the heat of deeply burning brains. It’s no secret that Alchemists can be a somewhat intimidating learn, but many of the best games are. It’s not that the game is particularly opaque or unintuitive. It’s just that there’s so much going on. But there is a hefty reward for taking the time to familiarize yourself with its vast systems and idiosyncrasies: the enjoyment of playing one of the most exciting, unique Euros ever made. Stripped to its absolute core, Alchemists is a worker placement game played over 6 rounds. Players take on the roles of struggling researchers vying for reputation in the field of alchemy. Each round starts with players selecting different places in turn order which determines whose actions will activate first. Lower places in turn order earn you bonuses for selecting them in the form of “Ingredient” and “Favor” cards. Ingredient cards come in 8 different varieties and are combined to make potions, while Favor cards are used for various one time abilities such as extra actions…
Onitama belongs to specific category of 2-player abstracts I call “Worse Chess“. These are perfect information, direct conflict games played on a square grid where the goal is to capture a particular playing piece of your opponent’s. The Duke is another popular example, and there are many lesser known titles in the genre as well. I can state without embellishment that I genuinely don’t understand the appeal of these games. Just play Chess. Chess has history, culture, immense depth, and a vast community of players. “Worse Chess” is a watered down Chess-like experience without any of those things. Onitama, despite its acclaim, is no exception. Onitama is played on a 5×5 grid. Each player starts with 4 “Student Pawns” and 1 “Master Pawn,” which they line up on their side of the grid with the Master in the center. They are both dealt two random face-up “Move” cards, and a fifth Move card is placed to the side of the board. The rest of the cards will not be used and are returned to the box, potentially to be involved in future games. Onitama differs from Chess in that the player pieces do not have dedicated move sets. Instead, players take turns by selecting 1 of their 2 Move cards and applying its movement rules to any piece of their choosing. After doing so, they exchange their selected card with the one to the side of the board. In effect, this means that the available moves will cycle between players as the game is played, because every card you use…
There are certain things a solo game can do if it wants to be something more than a niche form of Solitaire and Onirim does none of them. What’s weird about this is that it almost feels intentional, as if the central design goal of Onirim WAS to create a niche form of Solitaire. I suppose in that sense the game is somewhat ambitious. Without the reactive social force of other human minds to contend with much of the allure of tabletop gaming is lost, so to design within such disadvantageous boundaries is sure to bring up some difficult, yet interesting problems. Now that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because interesting problems can yield very interesting solutions. For example, games like Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, The 7th Continent, and Mage Knight Board Game all work quite well solo. And though these games have almost no mechanical similarities, each is a mentally stimulating and thematically expressive experience in its own way. A good multiplayer game’s tension and intrigue typically manifest as natural results of its system handling goal-oriented inputs from several minds in opposition. So how could a solo game possibly hope to accomplish something along the same lines? By driving the player as deep into their own mind as possible so they start having similar conflicts take place inside their own brain. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective has nearly impossible mysteries to solve. The 7th Continent has a truly massive island to explore. Mage Knight Board Game‘s turn-by-turn hand-management is unbelievably rich with options. Each of these approaches ensures a constant state of tension inside…
You’re relaxing at home, enjoying a rewatch of Akira Kurosawa’s seminal 1954 action film Seven Samurai, when a thought pops into your head: “Someone should adapt this into a co-operative version of Blackjack and also add furries.” Your heart sinks. You’re thinking those dangerous thoughts again, the ones your therapist warned you about. You entreat your brain to come back to reality as intense feelings of disassociation sweep over you once again. A few harrowing minutes pass. Gradually, you return from the abyss. You barely made it this time. You schedule another appointment with your therapist. Two weeks later, you are on Board Game Geek browsing through Antoine Bauza’s list of published games. You really like 7 Wonders, so you want to see what else he’s made. You are just about to ask yourself why this French dude is so obsessed with China and Japan when you see it: Samurai Spirit. It’s co-operative Blackjack. And it has furries. You cancel the appointment. Of all the games in the world that don’t need to exist, I think Samurai Spirit might not need to exist the most. Thematically, it’s pure dreck, an insipid knock off of a classic piece of cinema with the nauseating addition of furry transformations. Mechanically, it’s a crude co-op puzzler largely determined by the shuffle of the deck. The production is decent enough, but decent illustrations of furry samurai men are still illustrations of furry samurai men. If you’re in the mood for a laugh, check out the “Author’s Notes” section at the end…
If the potential to assist players in committing suicide by cop was the primary factor in the assessment of board games, Ca$h ‘N Guns would be the greatest ever made. Alas that is not the case, so I am compelled to express the depths of which I despise the embarrassment of its experience. This is a game that’s appeal hinges entirely on a single flimsy gimmick: pointing foam guns at each other. There is nothing else to say about it. If you think pointing foam guns at your friends for a half hour sounds like a hoot, you will probably like Ca$h ‘N Guns. Personally, I think it sounds like hell (apparently not always though, something made me buy the game after all…). Maybe if the game built around this gimmick wasn’t shamefully rudimentary and uninteresting I’d feel differently, but I mean of course it is — this is a game about pointing foam guns at each other. Ca$h ‘N Guns is a high concept, low effort flub that fails in every way to be expressive of its theme and has so little going for it I’m surprised it even exists, much less has a second edition. The first time my friends and I played Ca$h ‘N Guns was such a dismal experience I’m reluctant to drudge up its memory. Every single person at the table loathed it; we didn’t even finish the game. To this date, it’s one of the most viscerally negative reactions to a new game I’ve seen. But why? What about…