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.