Among The Stars is a derivative and highly repetitive card drafting game about building space stations. Players pass “Location” cards around the table and add them to their personal tableaus by spending “Credits” and “Energy Cubes”, which scores them points and activates abilities (which usually score more points). There are variable player powers and shared objectives to vie over for points as well, but they’re mostly inconsequential. The vast majority of player scores comes from the location cards. The game is played over four essentially identical rounds, and the player with the highest score after that wins. This exceedingly brief summary is about as far as I’m going to go into the overall structure and rules of the game, aside from some particulars which I’ll be getting to in a moment, as the focus of this review will be comparing Among The Stars to its two most obvious tabletop relatives: Suburbia and 7 Wonders. Spoiler alert: they are both far superior games. The set-up rules for Among The Stars begin with an immediate red flag: “The game can be played in two modes: Aggressive and Non-Aggressive.” Is it so much to ask designers to design their games instead of leaving it the players? I’m all for optional variants and other methods of extending the longevity of a game that may otherwise exhaust itself after a few too many plays, but to place this choice front and center in your game’s set-up betrays a serious lack of confidence in the appeal of your game. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just a…
Saboteur is a poor game that doesn’t do the little it does very well. As a bluffing game, it is pathetically one-note. As a take that card game, it is lifeless and undramatic. As a route building game, it is simplistic to the point of mindlessness. I know the game has earned its fair share of devotees over the 15 years since its release (there are some very enthusiastic reviews on BGG as evidence of this), but this is a view I do not share in the slightest. It’s a fairly unique title, sure, but it’s also shallow, repetitive, and obnoxious. In fact, the game’s flawed nature is so openly admitted to — even by its fans — that perhaps there’s not much of a reason for me to be writing this review. Thing is, though I agree with all the commonly acknowledged problems that Saboteur has, I personally find it to have many, many more. Saboteur is a game about a group of dwarves mining for gold. Some of the players play as good little dwarves trying to get to the gold stash, while others play as the titular Saboteurs: evil, butthole dwarves eager to stop the gold from being found. The game is played over a series of three rounds. At the beginning of each the map of the mine is set up by placing the entrance card at one end of the table and three “Goal” cards face-down at the other, one of which is hiding the gold…
Ambitious doesn’t even begin to describe Vast: The Crystal Caverns, a five-player, highly asymmetric take on the well-worn “Knight vs. Dragon vs. Goblins vs. Thief vs. Sentient Cave” theme. The workmanship here is plain as day, as evidenced by an impressive slew of mechanics and ideas that connect through an enticing narrative core that keeps the action centralized and on track. It’s no wonder that upon release the game garnered acclaim for its unorthodox approach to the traditional dungeon crawl and for aggressively pushing the boundaries of asymmetric game design. It is quite unfortunate then that, despite its ambition and creativity, the experience of Vast: The Crystal Caverns amounts to little more than dealing with an unwieldy mess of overly specific rules and player interactions. Even more, Vast‘s problems run so far and deep that it calls into question whether asymmetry on this scale is even desirable in a tabletop game. Leder Games seems to think it is, as they have since doubled down on the concept with the highly praised 2018 title Root. But alas, that is another game for another review, and currently we must get back to the disappointment at hand that is Vast. Let’s start with something (relatively) positive for once: the art. Vast is colorfully illustrated in a charming comic-fantasy style that personally calls to memory the Spaceman Spiff strips from Calvin & Hobbes. Judging by the art alone, you might think the game is a simplified miniature tactics game such as Arcadia Quest. It isn’t. Not at all. So there’s a…
Arkham Horror doesn’t want you to play it. It wants to happen to you. At almost no point in the game do your decisions have any bearing on what’s happening. It is a frustrating and pointless title that has been improved upon several times over and there’s no reason to return to. In fact, a third edition of the game dropped just last year which I’ve not yet played (I’m too scared). And back in 2013, the ever-popular Eldritch Horror released, which essentially functioned as a massive bug fix to Arkham Horror‘s myriad core issues. There have also been expansions, card games, spin-offs, you name it. So Arkham Horror is a bit of a franchise at this point, and certainly one of Fantasy Flight Games’ flagship products. The original version came out way back in 1987, which is the only reason I can think of for the game’s legendary status, because it is horrible. It probably has the worst ratio of rules complexity to strategic complexity of any game I’ve ever played. It is also interminable, obnoxious, dull, and lifeless. I hope you’re not expecting an exhaustive rules refresher on a terrible game from 15 years ago, because I’m not going to give one to you. What I will say is Arkham Horror is a co-operative game about defending the city of Arkham from a variety of Lovecraftian monsters, including the likes of Cthulhu himself. Players choose investigators, deck themselves out with a variety of items, weapons, and spells, and go traipsing about the city looking for clues…
Within the first few minutes of my first game of Hive I was overcome by a sense of despair, of its source I could not be quite sure. It was only when the game wrapped up and the thought of playing another round deeply depressed me did I fully understand that the problem was Hive itself. I deeply disliked it. But why? It’s beloved by many, and the general sentiment is that it’s a modern classic. The answer is Hive is messy, uninteresting, and fundamentally misunderstands the elements that make abstract games work. I am well aware that seemingly no one else shares this opinion, so let’s just get on with the review. Hive is two-player abstract about a pile of bugs crawling all over each other in big nasty clump of filth. Gross. Players are given 11 hexagonal tiles depicting Beetles, Grasshoppers, Spiders, Ants, and a single Queen Bee. I suppose in the universe of Hive insects and arachnids of all walks of life have learned to unite as a nation under a common flag. There’s a life lesson in there somewhere, but I’m not sure what it is. Anyway, one of Hive‘s big selling points is that there’s no board. I’ve heard many, many people praise this feature, saying they love how “portable” the game is (“It even comes with travel bag!”). Let me just say that a game’s portability has never once influenced my opinion of it. As often as the two are conflated, portability and quality have literally nothing to do with each…
What do you get when you take Skull and add monsters, heroes, stats, and dungeons? A significantly worse game, apparently. Welcome To The Dungeon is a shallow attempt to add theme and additional flavor to a classic game that needs neither. Nerd versions of good games like this are embarrassing. Not every design needs a fantasy action re-theme, people. Worse still, every mechanical change Welcome To The Dungeon makes to Skull‘s system hurts the experience. So not only is it a lazy re-theme, it’s also a massively inferior design. Not the best combo! To begin a game of Welcome To The Dungeon the players collectively choose 1 of 4 brave heroes and lay them and their unique set of equipment tiles in the center of the table. Then, a deck of monster cards is shuffled and placed nearby. That’s it. Hey, at least the set up is quick! Players take turns by drawing cards from the deck and deciding to either add the monster to the dungeon, or keep the card and remove one of the hero’s equipment tiles. If a player doesn’t want to draw a card they may pass instead. When all but one player have passed, that player must send the hero into the dungeon with whatever equipment tiles are left. One at a time, the monster cards that have been added to the dungeon are flipped and resolved. Monsters deal specified amounts of damage to the hero unless a piece of equipment is still in effect that can dispatch them safely.…
Jamaica is a gorgeous, easy to play, family-friendly racing game that is also really, really bad. Its microscopic decision space, inconsistent theming, and complete lack of player agency make it very difficult to suffer through. You’d think a game about tearing a path through the Caribbean in a pirate ship would be at least mildly exciting. Think again. This game is boring. Its age rating may be 8+, but I’d say just 8 might be more accurate. Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Jamaica‘s production is phenomenal. The board is beautiful, the art is ebullient, and the components are outstanding. The single exception is the rulebook. Jamaica‘s rulebook can go fudge itself. I hate it. Whoever thought unfolding a rulebook like it’s a gosh dang treasure map wouldn’t get old is an imbecile. It gets one point for novelty and loses a hundred for utility. Not a good trade-off. I have never felt more ridiculous looking for the answer to a mid-game rules question, as amusing as I’m sure my vexation was to the other players. Note to y’all game publishers out there: don’t get cute with your rulebooks. Anyhow, as previously stated Jamaica is a racing game. Players who cross the finish line by the end score the full amount of points for the race, and the others are scored on how close they were to finishing. Additional points are awarded for amassed gold and treasure, so you can actually win the game even if you don’t finish the race. Seems weird,…
Fairy Tale is a clumsy little card drafting game which predates 7 Wonders by 6 years and it shows. Aside from being first, Fairy Tale offers nothing of interest that newer, better drafting games haven’t improved upon several times over. I know many board game critics put a lot of stake in which-game-featured-what-mechanic-first chronologies, but I’m not one of them. Of course I enjoy tracing the origins and influences of game systems and ideas across the years — a process I derive extreme personal edification from — but these reviews are about whether or not a game is good. There are plenty of bad games with good ideas in them (in fact, I’d say most of them have at least one), but distinguishing the good idea from the good game is no simple task. Be that as it may, let’s aim to do just that. I respect Fairy Tale and the creativity of its design — especially for its time — but it is a dated, unpolished game that there’s just not much of a reason to return to 15 years after its initial publication. Playing Fairy Tale will feel very familiar to anyone who’s played more recent drafting games like 7 Wonders or Sushi Go!. The game takes place over a series of rounds, players are dealt hands of cards, they select a card to keep then pass the rest to another player, and this goes on until everyone’s selected a full set of cards. However, unlike those other games, Fairy Tale follows this drafting phase with an additional card-playing phase. Players…
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…
Pandemic is not half as fecund a core design as it may initially seem. Its social puzzle approach to co-operative gaming and fresh theme were groundbreaking, don’t get me wrong, but its mechanical innovations were simply not foundational enough to be successfully transposed wholesale betwixt systems like Puerto Rico‘s and Dominion‘s were. Apparently, its designer Matt Leacock seemed to be the only one who didn’t notice this and Pandemic‘s two follow-ups, Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert, burst onto the scene a short while after it like no big thang. Forbidden Island is basically babby’s first Pandemic, which is all that needs to (or can) be said about it. Forbidden Desert, while a significant improvement, is still nowhere near unique or interesting enough an experience to stand on its own in its predecessor’s wake. It doesn’t help that both games are simple to the point of mindlessness. Now I get it, these are children’s games, basically just toys, and I probably shouldn’t even bother reviewing them. On the other hand I’ve played games with lower age ratings that I consider masterpieces, so let’s do this! Let’s start with Forbidden Island, a game about hunting for treasure on a sinking island. I’m going to forego my usual structural/mechanical overview and instead paint this one in broad, abstracted terms. This will only work if you’ve played Pandemic. If you haven’t then I’m not sure why you’re even reading this, but hey, you do you. Forbidden Island is often described as Pandemic-lite (notably by Leacock himself), but to me it feels more like Pandemic-minus (minus…