Almost every game has an element of luck in it. Some games suck as Candyland, and Battleship, are almost entirely luck. Some games like Go, or Chess™, claim to have no luck (but even in these cases, someone has to be chosen to go first). But i’m not here to look at the extremes on the scale of luck. I’m here to talk about “why people put luck in their games?” and “what counts as too much (or to little) luck?”.

One of the main reasons people put luck in their games is to provide uncertainty. A game where you know exactly what will happen isn’t really a game anymore, you would always know the best decision to make, so there would no longer be any strategic thinking involved. There are a couple ways to stop this from happening, one way is to simply have too many possibilities for a human to calculate, another way is to have some information hidden from certain players, and of course the aforementioned approach of adding luck.

Another big reason to add luck into a game is to add excitement. The tension of rolling a 6 sided dice and needing it to land on a 6 is an extremely fun experience. And it’s made even better if it does land on a 6, but the key part is that if it doesn’t land on a 6 it is still a fun experience. What’s less fun is rolling a 6 sided dice and needing it not to land on a 1, and it lands on a stupid 1! The key difference between these 2 scenarios is that in the first one you are not expecting a positive result, so a failed roll is not a disappointment. But in the second scenario you are expecting a success, so if you fail you will fell like it should have been a success, and that it was stolen away from you by some cruel luck god.

So what i’m saying is that you should always make the chance of rolling something successfully in a game unlikely? No, i’m not saying that, there are couple reasons for this: For example if you’re rolling against another player and you only succeed on a 6, if you roll a 6 it will feel just as bad for that other player as it would for you when you roll a 1 on a die when any other number would have worked. One of the other reasons to not just have unlikely chances is to make calculating risk vs reward more interesting. If certain actions in your game have a higher chance of succeeding but aren’t as good as actions with lower chances of succeeding , that adds an interesting layer of strategy.

But I think the most interesting way to use luck is to change that game in ways that will affect all players relatively equally. For example a supply and demand system having prices change every round would fit in this category. Let’s say in this hypothetical supply and demand example you have invested heavily in creme brûlée (a wise move). At the begging of the round you roll the supply and demand dice and creme brûlée goes down in value! But you won’t feel as upset as you would if you failed to roll a certain number on a dice, because this dice roll effects everyone. This can be made to work even better if different dice have different risk values.

You might be saying “wait a second, how’s this any different from the previous examples?”. Fair enough, they do sound very similar, but the outcome effecting everyone really does change things. Even if you backed creme brûlée and nobody else did, you would still feel like you’re no less unlucky than the other players (even if you are). Because that game tricks you into thinking that all the players are having the same luck. This system adds uncertainty (and to a lesser extent: excitement), but it doesn’t add the feeling of you being robbed of the win.

If you think you finally understand what i’m trying to say, think again! Because i’m going to contradict myself once more. I don’t think you should use the previously mentioned method in all games. Because using this method means that the whole table must be involved in every dice roll. If there is a combat between two players (and there are more than two players in the game) then you will need some system to resolve the combat. If we assume that for the sake of this example you want there to be some uncertainty. Now, you can do this with hidden information instead of luck, and a lot of the time that works very well. But if you’re using hidden information you’re probably using secret cards. And how are you going to draw those cards? through luck. If you let people choose what cards to draw they will always choose the best one. And if you know what card someone will choose, then the information isn’t hidden. But you can fix this by making there not be a “best card”. You can make a system where card one beats card two, and card two beats card three, and card three beats card one. Like rock paper scissors. And what’s the main mechanic of rock paper scissors? Luck!

I have rambled a lot now, so let me boil this all down into a small bowl of stew. Luck and uncertainty are like wasabi and steak (they can’t be separated). Games without uncertainty aren’t fun, and as I hope i’ve convinced you, luck is needed for uncertainty. So luck is a necessary evil? Well… maybe, I think that we have to realise something which sounds obvious: that first and foremost, games should be fun. You can have a game that’s design is objectively amazing, but in practice is not fun. You can have a game that’s design is terrible, but it still remains fun. And luck adds and subtracts fun from games. It adds fun in the form of excitement, and subtracts fun by making winning and losing feel less in the players’ control. If you just want a straight up answer to the question “is luck bad?” I would say no, it’s not. But the question of how much luck to put in a game can be an extremely important one. I’ll end by giving a piece of advice about when to put luck into your games. Look at an aspect that involves luck in your game, and look at every possible outcome. And if all of those outcomes are fun, then put it in your game, otherwise don’t.

Schotten Totten is a game with a simple premise. There are two tribes who each have their own territory they control. There is a border in between these two territories marked with some stones. As the ruler of one of these tribes you’ll probably think “wouldn’t it be so easy just to push the stones a little bit into the other tribes territory, to expand mine?”. And the answer is yes, it would be. If the other tribe doesn’t do it first!

In Schotten Totten there are nine stone tiles laid out on the table in a line. You win by claiming 5 stones, or 3 stones that are adjacent to each other. On your turn you play one of your 6 cards, and then you draw a card. That’s all you do on your turn, it’s really that simple. In fact this whole game is very easy to understand, but there is a lot of strategic depth. I feel like every time I play Schotten Totten I learn something new about the strategy.

When you play one of your cards, you play it on any stone tile that has not yet been claimed, and the tile you place your card on can’t already have three cards that you have played on it. Once both players have three cards on a stone tile, whoever’s 3 card combination is stronger gets to claim that tile. There are 6 different colours of cards each with 1 card of each number from 1 to 9. The best possible 3 card combo is having 3 cards adjacent numerically and of the same colour, the next highest combo is having 3 of the same numbered card, 3rd highest combo is 3 cards of the same colour, then three numerically adjacent cards, and finally the worst combo is just having three random cards. The player with the better combo claims the stone. If both players have the same combo, then the player with the highest sum of numbers on the cards they played on the stone claims it.

The final twist of claiming a stone is that if you can prove that your opponent could never win a certain stone, you can claim it for free. And that’s the whole game, so simple it can be explained in a paragraph. But a lot of the strategy in the game comes from the fact that you have to play a card every turn. Let me give you an example of some interesting risk vs reward gameplay that can happen in Schotten Totten: you have the red 4 and 6 in your hand. If you played them both on one stone and then drew the red 5 you would have a colour run (which is the best combo). But, if you’re opponent draws the red 5 they can play it on the board and prove you can’t make a colour run and have an easy time beating you on that stone. So maybe you should just play the six and wait a bit so you can stay flexible. But if you do that you might have to waste some space on some other tiles by playing cards that aren’t too useful to you, since you don’t have anything else to play. It’s situations like these where you have to weigh up keeping yourself flexible on a stone, or not filling up too many spaces so you will have more choices later in the game.

Ok, when I said “that’s the whole game” earlier, I lied. There is an optional variant which adds new cards called tactic cards. When you draw a card in the tactic card variant you can choose to draw from the regular deck or from the deck of tactic cards. These cards offer all sorts of different fun powers. some of them are units that act as wild cards, some of them change the way the battle is fought on a particular stone, and some of them let you move and destroy cards. These tactic cards make the game a bit less luck based, because you can rely a bit less on drawing specific cards from the regular deck. The powers are also fun to use, and add some variety for seasoned veterans of the game. They really do changed up the game a lot, but they add quite a bit of complexity. So I would recommend playing a couple of games of the regular version of Schotten Totten before adding tactic cards in.

Schotten Totten is a very fun, 10 minute game. Though I do love long multi-hour strategy games, I don’t always have time for them. And with Schotten Totten only needing 2 players, it’s really easy to play anywhere. But just because it’s a quick game does not mean there is a lot of strategy. It does have quite a bit of luck in it, but usually if you play smart you won’t need to worry about bad card draws. If you want to do a deep statistical analysis you can, but if you just want some quick fun you can also do that with Schotten Totten.

What does Ethnos have on it’s face? An Eth-nose! Thank you for reading this review of Ethnos, have a nice day.

You’re still here? Alright, I guess I can tell you a bit about Ethnos’ gameplay. Ethnos is a game for 2-6 players set in a land called (surprise surprise) Ethnos. You must create bands of different fantasy races, such as: halflings, minotaurs, centaurs, and wizards (which are apparently a race). A band must have all units from the same race, or the same region. Bands of larger sizes will give you lots of points later in the game. Then you select one of your band members to be the “leader”. You then get to place one of you control tokens in the same region as the region the leader is from. But if you have equal or less cards in your band then the amount of control markers you already have in the region, you cannot place another control marker there. If you have the most control markers at the region at the end of an “age”, you get a certain amount of points depending on the region. Another important thing about your leader is the fact that you get to use their races special power when you play the band.

These special powers are quite major powers that can really change the course of the game. For example: the wingfolk let you place a control marker in any region instead of the one they come from, the trolls let you take a troll token with a value up to the amount of cards in your band that can break ties for control of a region, the merfolk even have their own scoring board! There are 12 races in Ethnos and each game you only play with six of them so it’s not overwhelming. Doing this gives Ethnos the benefit of letting you really get to know each of the races powers, but it also allows you to have more variety and replay-ability in future games. These powers are really interesting, and they add some extra strategy to the final (arguably most important) layer of the game: actually getting the units to be in your bands.

At the begging of every age you deal face up six cards each with a race a region on it. On your turn you can play a band of allies, or draw one of the face up cards, or draw from the deck. Interestingly you do not replace a card drawn from the line of face up cards with a card from the deck. The face up cards are actually refilled when a player plays a band. Because when a player plays a band, all the other cards in their hand go face up for other players to take. I really like this for two reasons: 1) because it adds a layer of risk vs reward ” do I want to draw another card for the chance to make a bigger band but risk having to end up throwing it away where other players can take it, or should I just play my band as it is now?” and 2) because it adds a type of player interaction I don’t normally see in games, where instead of undermining the other players, you’re giving them something.

Ethnos feels very cleanly designed, and intuitive. But it also exhibits a lot of really interesting strategy. Taking only half an hour to an hour, and having a very wide range of player counts. Ethnos is both good for all sorts of situations, and very strategic. The only downside is that there is quite a bit of luck when you draw cards from the deck (which happens quite often). But in the end, the best player should still win. I hope I sold Ethnos well enough to you, because it’s quite hard to sell. You really need to play it to understand how fun it is. And I would definitely recommend playing it. Thank you for reading this review of Ethnos, have a nice day.

I like to usually start off these reviews with a funny segment about the game, or it’s theme, or anything at all really. But today I want to devote the whole review to the game, because Tigris and Euphrates is a tricky game to make an elevator pitch for. You can really only understand how good it is when you see the whole picture, and even then it might not seem that fun until you try it. And I have to respect that, because Tigris and Euphrates is not trying to sell itself, it’s trying to be a fun game. So why don’t I try to sell it to you.

Tigris and Euphrates uses a mechanic called tile placement. It involves, wouldn’t you know it: placing tiles. But Tigris and Euphrates isn’t a game just about placing tiles, it’s a game about war, resource management, coups, and weird bulls that look like horses. But the tiles are important because they are the soup base which you need to be able to add all the elements of delicious game design stew. You see, each of these tiles come in red, black, blue, or green. You will always have six of these tiles behind your screen. Each of these tiles will score it’s colour victory point when you place it down, if you have a same coloured leader in its kingdom.

“What is a leader?” you might ask. Well i’ll tell you: you get four leaders at the start of the game (one of each colour), each leader (regardless of colour) must be placed next to at least one red temple tile. Still with me? good, because I still have a bit more to tell you about leaders. If a leader is connected to a tile, that tile and all the tiles it’s connected to are called a kingdom, remember if you have a leader with the same colour as a tile placed in a kingdom you get a victory point of that tile’s colour. Why does victory point colour matter? Because you score at the end of the game isn’t how many victory points you have, it’s how many victory points you have in the colour you have the lowest victory points in. Sound confusing? Well in practice it’s actually quite intuitive. Now bare with me, I only have 3 more things to tell you and then I hope you can see why I like this game so much.

One very important mechanic is the war and revolt system. If you ever place your leader in a kingdom with the same coloured leader from a different player a revolt begins, if you connect two kingdoms with at least one same coloured leader in each a war happens. The player with the higher “strength” in a war or revolt wins the battle (with defenders winning ties). Strength in revolts is the amount of red tiles your leader is next to plus any amount of red tiles you would like to bid from behind your screen, strength in wars is the amount of tiles you have of the current leaders colour on the kingdom they are on plus any tiles you want to bid of the same colour from behind your screen. If you win a revolt you remove your opponents leader and gain a red victory point, when you win a war you remove your opponents leader and all their tiles they used in the war and you then get a point for each of their tiles you removed.

Next we need to talk about monuments, if you ever have 4 of the same colour tiles in a square shape, you turn it into a monument with it’s colour on it. Monuments will give the player with a matching leader a matching colour point every turn. But those 4 tiles turned into a monument will no longer help you in wars so do it at your own risk. Finally there are treasures, which can be any colour victory point you like at the end of the game. At the start of the game you place some red temple tiles on the board, each of these temple tiles start with a treasure on them. If a kingdom ever has 2 or more treasures in it then the player with a green leader in that kingdom gets all but one treasure. If only two treasures are left the game ends, but the treasures serve another very import purpose: they encourage war. Because if you have a treasure in your kingdom and so does your neighbouring kingdom, then you may want to start a war with it since you need 2 or more treasures in one kingdom to collect a treasure.

And that’s pretty much the game, I skipped a couple rules because it’s got quite a lot of rules and I didn’t want to bore you. But even though it has a lot of rules they all are pretty intuitive, because of the very visual nature of placing tiles all rules seemed to make sense to the people I played Tigris and Euphrates with naturally. So even though it might seem complex I would still give it a try if you can. I say if you can because there’s one big downside to Tigris and Euphrates, it’s out of print. I only got to play it because a friend of mine was nice enough to let me borrow it. I know I know, I shouldn’t of been hyping up this game just to drop the news that you can’t play it. But this games design was just too elegant for me to pass up the opportunity to review it. And I truly believe that Tigris and Euphrates is such a good game that there is no way it won’t be reprinted within a couple years.

I know all my reviews seem really positive, and that’s because i’m not a professional reviewer so I only buy games that I think I will like. And so far I have never bought a game I don’t like (doesn’t mean  haven’t played games I don’t like). But I want you to trust me on this one, because I am not overhyping Tigris and Euphrates. It really is a masterpiece of design. If you can find a board game cafe that has a copy you could trying playing I would recommend you set up and day to go because I feel like every one interested in game design, everyone interested in games should play this. Even if you don’t end up liking it you will have to admit the the design is so clean so polished so excellent. I think perhaps my favourite part of the design is the scoring, where your score is your lowest point colour. Because it forces you to make a well rounded civilisation, you can’t just keep placing the same colour tile and making you kingdom immune to wars of that colour, the game makes it so you have to really think “do I really need another red tile?”. Sure the art is nothing to write home about, sure the theme is abstract and barley even there. But I think anyone who loves games will love Tigris and Euphrates.

The loch ness monster, Bigfoot, the yeti, and the chupacabra. All legendary beasts, all with unknown motives, and all with an aura of mystery around them. But the biggest beast, the most villainous creatures you will face: the other explorers looking for these cryptids. Because who cares if these creatures are proven to exist if you’re not the one to prove it! You’ve done your research to find intel on these creatures, and nobody else deserves to steal the credit from you!

Cryptid is a deduction game where each player has a secret clue which only they know. These clues and the map the game is played on are randomised at the beginning of the game. And using some wizardry and a lot of spare time each time the game is played, exactly one tile (out of about 50) is the one tile which all the players clues line up on. The clues can range from things saying what terrain the creature is in, if it’s near a certain type or colour of building, or if it’s near and animal hunting ground.

And having a range of different clue types is so important for Cryptid because it forces players to look at the game at many different angles. Giving the game a really satisfying “a-ha!” moment when you look at the game from the correct angle and figure out someones clue. And because when you question someone about a space they can only say whether the creature can be there or not according to their clue, it makes the information you’re getting simple to understand but hard to figure out.

The final wrinkle Cryptid offers you is the option to “search” a space. Normally on your turn you just choose another player to ask if the cryptid can be on a certain space. But searching requires you to place a yes token (which are just things you put on the board so that people remember what you said yes and no for) on a space you know the cryptid can be and then going in a circle players can either place a yes or no token depending on their clue. As soon as one player places a no token the search is over, but if everyone places a yes you win! So it’s a bit of a risk reward situation, because whenever you search you are giving valuable information. And the game forces you to place a no token on a space you know the cryptid can’t be if another player places a no token somewhere on your turn, so a failed search causes you to have to play a yes and no token!

I think cryptid does something that a lot of deduction games like clue, or guess who don’t. Which is letting the player make logical deductions, not just guessing based on whether you think your friends are lying or not. Making it less of a bluffing game and more of a game about deduction. In fact i wish there was just a tiny bit more bluffing, even though that’s not the focus of the game. I have pretty much explained all the rules in this review, so you can see the game is pretty simple to learn. And this game gets one of those ever so desirable “easy to learn hard to master” award from me. It even has a built in hint system if you get stuck. The game is very quick and fun for all skill levels. because it’s so quick and fun, it’s really a game you want to play a couple rounds of in a row. Overall I think cryptid has a fun art style, a unique theme (even though the game ends up being a bit abstract), and some of the best deduction i’ve done in a game for a while. The only draw back is if you don’t like deduction games, this game won’t change you’re mind. But if you enjoy, or think you will enjoy deduction games, then this is a great game to play and get people into deduction games!

I tried to make a great Coup pun in the title, I really tried. It’s so close, the “view” in review sounds kinda like Coup. But it’s not close enough, I just couldn’t make it work. I feel like i’ve failed as a review. It would have been so cool if I suceede… wait a second, cool and Coup can become Coupl. You’re welcome. And you know what else you should be thanking me for? Brining the game Coup to your attention.

Because Coup is one of the best games i’ve played, and it’s $10(less if you find it on sale). That’s one of the cheapest (good) games you can find on the market. It’s also really quite simple, the main thing you need to learn is all the powers of the cards. I actually really like it when games do this because you can start playing with just a few rules and learn the rest of the rules you need to know from the cards you draw. And because it’s so simple to explain, I will explain the whole game.

Each player gets two cards and two nebulous money things (we’ll just call them NMTs). This is all the setup you need and then you can start playing. And those two cards you got, you’ll never draw another card for the whole rest of the game. Then on you’re turn you can take a basic action or a character card specific action.

The basic actions are: taking a 1 NMT income, taking a 2 NMT action called foreign aid, Or staging a Coup (hey that’s the name of the game), in which you pay 7 NMTs to force someone to discard one of their cards. Then their are each of the character card actions which give you the really good powers: the duke can let you take 3 NMTs, but can be blocked by another duke. The captain can let you steal two coins from another player, but can be blocked by another captain or an ambassador. The ambassador can take two cards from the deck and replace itself with one. The assassin can, for 3 NMTs can “assassinate” another player forcing another player to discard a card, but can be blocked by the contessa. The contessa blocks assassinations, that’s all she does, no really that’s all she does.

That’s almost all the rules, there is one more piece of spice to add to the soup that is Coup, and it’s a delicious creamy spice that makes the meal. And that spice is the challenge mechanic. You see, you can play any character card even if you don’t have it. But if someone calls you out on not having the card, you are forced to reveal the card. If you told the truth you’re given a new card to replace that one and you’re opponent is forced to discard a card, but if you were the liar then you are forced to discard a card. Lose all your cards from any means, and you’re outta the game. Ok, ok, I know not everyone likes player elimination, it can end up having a player doing nothing well the other players play out the rest of the game. But in coup a game is 5 to 10 minutes, so it really isn’t a problem.

The challenge mechanic turns a very basic card game into a beautiful box of bluffing. If you don’t like lying to you’re friends, this game will make you love it. There’s something magical about the moment between when a player challenges and a player reveals whether they were right or not, it’s a tense moment every single player at the table can feel, even if they aren’t directly involved in the conflict. And though the game is small it can still be fun for hardcore board game players. I recommend Coup to anyone, it’s a great game for a reasonable price and it’s deceptively easy to make a pun out of.

Maximising efficiency, sitting in silence thinking at a table, brining friends to your house just to not interact with them. Do those things sound fun to you? If they do you’ll love euro-games. Because euro-games are board games stripped of nearly all player interaction and just give you a puzzle to think about. And then at the end of the game you look at your friend’s puzzles and you say “oh, you puzzled better than me” Dice Forge is a euro-game, yet I somehow find it quite social. And I hope by the end of this review I can figure out why.

Let me bring you up to speed by explaining the basics of Dice Forge. In Dice Forge it uses a unique mechanic of you customising your dice and rolling them. Each turn everyone rolls their two dice and get some rewards. then the player whose turn it is gets to either buy a card or upgrade one of their dice faces. To upgrade a dice face you spend gold (one of the game’s currencies) and buy a face, you then physically remove a face on one of your dice and replace it with a new one. Now I know what you’re thinking “this is obviously a gimmick, why can’t you just have a deck of cards instead”. Fair point, but once you pop off a dice face and replace it with a new one, you will realise how fun it is to customise your dice. Because if you’re not interested in a tactile and social experience, just go play a video game instead. And Dice Forge gets this and makes a game that is tactile, social, and still a great puzzle.

The other side of the game is the cards, and these are where you get the big bucks. If you want to start racking up the real victory points you will need to spend sun and moon crystals (the games other two currencies) to get cards. Cards provide different special powers and straight up victory points. The game also provides you with more types of cards than you can fit in one game, so once you’re experienced enough you can choose what cards you want to play with. And all of these cards are creative and fun, from the big point scoring hydra that everyone races to grab before they’re all gone, to the hammer that lets you spend any gold you earn on a track which if you get far enough on you get victory points.

This interplay between the cards and the dice make foe a really interesting game where in the early game players make a mad dash for the dice faces until they realise that the haven’t made a single victory point and start rushing for cards. And you will also stop collecting die faces because you have limited resource storage(that can be upgraded by a card). This does however become a bit of a problem, because in the late game it’s never really a question of “should I get a die face or should I get a card?” anymore, it’s almost always the best decision to get a card. But there is still strategy of which card to get.

I think Dice Forge might be social because you’re all rolling dice at the same time. It’s a group activity, you can laugh at your friends misfortune, and despair when they succeed. This bit of luck makes the game more lighthearted, and because everything you roll is good for you, you can never get to upset about a bad roll. But even the luck can’t counter dice forge’s biggest problem: snowballing. You see, if a player does really well in the early game it will be hard for them to lose later on. They just get really good dice that they use to buy the best permanent cards, and then they grab all the high point cards before anyone else can get a chance to catch up. The closest to a close ending you can get is a close race between two people, which is fun for those two people, and those two people.

Bur if you can still enjoy a game while you are losing and know you can’t come back, you will almost definitely enjoy dice forge. And even if you’re like me and don’t like losing, you probably will still enjoy Dice Forge. It’s got deep puzzles but is quick and approachable for new players as well. I don’t consider myself an artist, but I really like the artwork. And it’s got a fun gimmick that doesn’t detract from gameplay. If you wan’t a great entrance into euro-gaming, then I would Dice Forge is definitely a game for you.

I have been enjoying making board game reviews on this blog, but I have been thinking recently “what if I made video game reviews too?” I will try to make a case for and against me making video game reviews and I am hoping people will comment wether they want me to do it or not.

The case for me making video game reviews is pretty simple. It will provide more review material for me and more options for me to choose from to review. It will also challenge me personally to write about both board games and video games and still remain consistent. Since I am doing these blogs as a personal writing challenge that is a plus for me.

Now let me tell you the case against video game reviews. The first point is that the market is oversaturated. There are so many different video game reviewers and I don’t think I would be saying anything unique. There are still lots of board game reviewers, but significantly less than video game reviewers. Another problem is that I will make less board game reviews. So if you only care about board game reviews please let me know. And the final point is that if I jump between video game a board game reviews too much I might not be able to write as good reviews for each one.

My thoughts on the matter is that I am enjoying board game reviews right now, but I think it will also be fun to do video game reviews. All of the points I stated earlier are things I agree with, both for and against. It is tricky for me to decided what to do, that is why I am asking you. So what should I do?

The day was grim, the sky was spitting small clumps of rain onto the ground, and fog hides almost all major structures from view. But as you walk through the land, the fog clears and you can see a battlefield in the distance. Over 15000 warriors stand tall, each fighting for it’s own life. After several hours of watching these cardboard warriors do battle only one remains standing. As the clouds clear a ray of light coming from the sky shines on it just enough for you to make out its name: Gloomhaven. But this leaves a question unanswered”is Gloomhaven indeed the strongest warrior, or was it’s victory just a statistical fluke?”

That battleground was the website boardgamegeek.com, a website that is attempting to catalog every single board game and have it’s users rank them. And out of all the games Boardgamegeek users voted that Gloomhaven is number one. So I feel like I should tackle this review with extra care. This review might be a bit longer than usual because I have so much to say, I honestly don’t know where to start.

Alright, I think I should probably start by explaining the concept of “legacy games”. A legacy game is a game where you make permanent decisions that affect future play throughs of said game. This was popularised by board game designer Rob Daviau when he designed Risk Legacy and then Pandemic Legacy (both legacy versions of pre-existing games). I have played Risk Legacy, and I really enjoyed it. But it seems like every designer wants a crack at it now and its just lost its novelty. It’s still really cool when used correctly but now when I see a game has “legacy elements” I just feel like the designer is trying to use legacy elements to glue together meaningless pieces of cardboard, that on their own don’t make a compelling game game.

Now legacy elements are just another thing that Kickstarter game designers can use to rope people in to buying their game before they have even tried it. Because why risk bad reviews when you can just cram your cooperative miniature heavy legacy game down unsuspecting buyer’s throats. Gloomhaven is a cooperative miniature heavy legacy game funded by Kickstarter.Does that make it just like all the other overly ambitious Kickstarter games? yes and no.

Because Gloomhaven is overly ambitious, but somehow it still works. Legacy mechanics aren’t used as the core driving force of Gloomhaven, but some extra flavouring to an already robust core game. If you read my Star Wars: Rebellion review you would have heard me say that Rebellion was too big and expensive (but still a great game), but that’s nothing compared to Gloomhaven. Gloomhaven has 18 cardboard pop out sheets (none of which I have had to fully pop out yet), 13 characters of which I have used 3, and it includes over 1700 cards!  For the price of $140 (if you can find an in stock version) Gloomhaven is the most expensive game I own. Removing some components could have brought that price down, but also the game’s first Kickstarter release had it priced at $80 for as far as I can tell the same game.

But lets put all that aside and look at Gloomhaven in an isolated void so we can see how Gloomhaven works. And there is quite a lot to understand. But a turn is relatively simple, each card is divided into a top action and a bottom action. Everyone picks two cards and chooses one two reveal. The card that they just revealed will have a number on it that represents that player’s initiative. Players then go in initiative order and pick one of their two card’s bottom action and the other one’s top action. Instead of revealing a card you can long rest which lets you get back all the cards you have discarded this battle but you must lose one discarded card for the rest of the battle. But a long rest is also one of the few actions that let you get items back (more on that later) and heal. If you are just interested in getting cards back you an do a bonus short rest at the end of you turn and get your discard back while losing a card without any of the other benefits of a long rest.

This rest system provides a lot of interesting strategies. You need to rest to get cards back but the less you rest the less cards you permanently lose. And you need to decide when it is worth it to long rest. And that’s pretty much it for things you can do on your turn, but that’s only scratching the surface of Gloomhaven. And that’s because each character has very different types of cards each with their own play styles. For example: there is an element track in the game that has all sorts of rules about how the elements charge and can be used. And do you want to know how many times we used an element? Once, once in the whole time we’ve played. That’s a whole chunk of rules that you probably won’t end up using, possibly ever.

And this is probably because of the many characters in Gloomhaven. There are still enough characters to build a small army at the beginning of the game, and you only unlock more afterwards. And to make those characters stronger you can buy permanent items that can be used in battle for a small edge. You can get the funds you need for those items from the quests you do and Gloomhaven’s random event system. These random events have some well written dialogue (But I mean, there is really no point in trying to write something well while you have this blog around to be compared to) and a moral choice which also has some effect on gameplay. These events aren’t a huge addition to the game, but they provide a nice break between the pretty intense battles. You get other story bits through the missions themselves, usually in the form of flavour text about the area you are going to. But there are some multi mission plots that will sometimes give you choices about which level to do next. These strings of levels are where a lot of the legacy elements come in.

Each player will also get a goal for their character. Once they complete that goal their character “retires” and they unlock a new character. But the purpose of these goals is actually to create interesting player interactions. Even though Gloomhaven is co-operative, sometimes you might “accidentally” cause your friend to get hit to pick up a couple pieces of gold, or let that monster live for some more XP that you get from your goal that you were given for that battle. This makes for some hilarious moments where your so called friend makes you almost lose a battle just because of greed, but it does bring up a problem: you can blame your teammates for a loss. That’s not necessarily a problem, but Gloomhaven doesn’t do anything to make you feel like you could have done something so they wouldn’t make that mistake. That is made even more of a problem because the game gives you a vague limit on communication. Limiting communication does fix the problem of players just telling other players what they do until those other players aren’t playing a game anymore, their just moving cardboard according to instructions. But it does make it so you can’t make epic co-ordinated attacks. But then again, when you do succeed with limited coordination it feels awesome.

I haven’t really talked about what your team is fighting against much in this review. In Gloomhaven you fight against monsters, but the monsters might be the most confusing part of the whole game because of their A.I. I will try to explain it quickly so you get an idea of it, here goes: each turn draw a monster card for each monster type, each monster card will have some different things the monster will do such as move attack apply certain effects and so on, each action the monster is doing will either have a modifying number on it that effects the base ability value of that monster, the monster card also shows the initiative of that monster and when it will play in the round, on the monsters turn it will attack the nearest player with a couple of finicky rules that are not worth me explaining here but make the monster A.I even more complicated. Got all that? Good. The A.I might be complicated, but I found it to be really good actually. It doesn’t have the level of depth to a video game A.I but it does it’s job really well.

When you hear me mention video games you might think that this whole game sounds a bit like a video game. And you would be right, this is a board game trying to emulate a video game. But I think it is so good because of the limitation of being a tabletop game. The designer really had to think out of the box to make Gloomhaven work. And yes, it does work. It really works. Sure it’s got a long list of problems and it’s not the most unique game ever created. But the game is really built around your hand of cards and I think that makes it feel like a really fun complete experience. Does this mean you should buy Gloomhaven? No. Gloomhaven is expensive and there are some really fun alternatives for much cheaper. But does Gloomhaven deserve the number one spot on Boardgamegeek? I actually think it might be a contender. Gloomhaven is quite a long game which makes it a bit hard to find a time to play it, but I found myself still playing it quite often for a game it’s size. Why? Because I really wanted to play it, and then play it again and then again. Gloomhaven has enough missions to last you several hundred hours and some surprises left hidden in un-opened envelopes for me and my friends to discover. So maybe you should buy Gloomhaven if you really appreciate admiring a great idea. Because Gloomhaven is a great idea.

The Smallworld ride might be amongst the most famous of Disneyland rides. But you have come here today for me to answer one simple question “is it good?”. The ride opens with you entering a boat with som… wait, i’m not reviewing the ride Smallworld? I guess i’ll have to cancel the animatronic delivery then. SO then I guess that leaves me with another question “is Smallworld the game good?” Yes, I think it is very good.

So how do you play? Each player takes a turn to “conquest”. Conquesting means you pick up all your  units except for the one on each space you’re on and you get to use them to attack the other players. You need two more units then the amount of units on a territory to take it over (even if there are no units on that territory). None of this involves randomness, every attack you do you know exactly what will happen. Except for the final attack, because on your final attack you can roll a die to see if you can win it even if you don’t have enough units. And this is a great use of randomness because you are never expecting to get a certain result and get frustrated when you don’t get the result you want. It provides enough uncertainty but your strategies are never foiled by luck.

Next you get to reallocate your units from different territories you control to other territories you control. You get money(which is the games victory points) for each territory you control. And thats most of the game right there. Does that sound fun? Maybe a bit. Bu there one more thing in Smallworld that makes it great. And it’s the fact that you don’t just play as one army. Because instead of playing a turn you can choose to skip it and go into decline. When you go into decline you remove all units except one on each territory you control, you can no longer control that army(but you still get money from them), but most importantly you get to choose a new army.

And that’s where a lot of the theming comes in. From the surface Smallworld might look light a generic fantasy theme with some nice artwork. But Smallworld is really a satirical parody of fantasy settings. You don’t play as a courageous hero, you play as a corrupt warlord killing the innocent locals on the island your attacking with your armies, and discarding said armies as soon as your done with them.

And each army is randomly generated with a fantasy race and ability. For example you could have the flying halflings, the hill orcs, or the berserker humans. Each of which have a drastic effect on gameplay. Some things effect the amount of money you get for each territory, some let you build forts, some races let you continue to control them even after you decline them. Without these powers there might not be optimal moves in Smallworld, you would never really have interesting strategies. But with these powers you can find an opportunity to switch to a different race and just destroy the other players(until of course they switch). Because declining your current army is wasting a turn you might want to wait until the last second to do it, but then you will be too thin on the ground. There are so many interesting puzzles because of this one mechanic.

This makes Smallworld a very focused experience. You never feel lost or too overwhelmed with possibilities. But there is still enough choice to keep things interesting. And you can Smallworld with a little as two players and it is still fun. If you are looking for a reasonably simple war game with a neat twist I would definitely suggest Smallworld. It’s only real negative is that someone could just be in the right place at the right time and get a super overpowered race and power combination. Luckily they will still eventually have to decline. Now if you’ll excuse me I have a ride review site to create.