On The Horizon: Evolution...

North Star Games has released some of the most enjoyable party games that have come out in years.  To be honest, Wits and Wagers is about the only trivia game that I think is worth playing.  So when they start posting on BGG to let everyone know that they are going to start publishing strategy games, I think this should be a cause for excitement.  Their first choice:  an update and reprint of a Russian game from 2010 called Evolution: Origin of Species.  Lucky for us, they've taken some time to develop the game further to iron out some of the balance issues with the original version.  They've also been kind enough to provide DoM with a prototype copy so we could get some plays in before the release.

Evolution is a game about creating species and evolving them to survive and thrive.  In fact, it's really a game about eating as much food as possible, whether it be the grass you innocently consume or the other players that you happily devour.  The play is relatively simple and card-driven with the cards serving multiple purposes.  The first thing that happens at the beginning of every round is the players must each select a single card to throw face down in the centre for plant food (each card has a little number in the corner stating how much plant food its worth).  After that, players one at time play all the cards they want to either:

1. add a useful trait to a species, up to a maximum of 3 traits,
2. discard to increase a species population size or body size by 1, or
3. discard to create a whole new species in front of them.

Extra cards can be held for later turns which can be quite useful.  Once all the cards are chosen, the plant food is revealed.  This is often to the sound of groans of the players as there will usually not be enough plant food for all species, especially in the later rounds.  Then, going around the circle one at a time, players take plant food till it runs out.  Once the feeding is done, species' populations drops to the amount of food recovered and the food taken is set aside to be scored at the end of the game.  Often species will not capture any food in the round and will go extinct much to the dismay of the owning player.  

Prototype pieces...  not the real thing

What makes the game interesting are the traits players add to their species to try and increase their chances for survival.  Traits like 'foraging' (species takes 2 food each time), 'unstable dna' (player gets another species when plant food is revealed), and 'cooperation' (neighbouring species gets a food when the species gets a food) all make things a little less predictable.  But the most important trait, by far, is the 'carnivore' trait which allows a species to attack and consume other species, including possibly another of the same player's.  Carnivores can't eat plant food so they must attack another species of a smaller body size.  Each attack drops the victim's population by 1 (zero population and you go extinct!) and the predator gains a number of meat food equal to the victim's body size. 

Now this particular aspect of the game will probably be what people like and dislike the most about the game.  Once players go carnivore - and they will need to at some point as plant food is so sparse as populations increase - the direct attacks will be swift and vicious.  But since so much food is generated each time from 1 population they don't usually eliminate a species.  And if they do, the victim gains extra cards to compensate - a nice balancing rule for this new edition of the game. Since players can replace traits with new ones, one can also swiftly respond to carnivores in future rounds by evolving differently with traits like 'climbing' and 'hard shell'.

Some more traits

So the "take that" aspect of the game is definitely there but not overwhelming.  One can easily defend by evolving differently or just fattening up their species.  Once the cards run out, the final round is played and then the players score up their points for all the food they took throughout the game and the number and population of their surviving species.  Simple.  There were a few rules issues we had to iron out in our plays but this makes sense for a game that is still officially "under development".

Real artwork for the game

All in all, it's a pretty straightforward game which is keeping with the simplicity of the current canon of North Star titles. However, with Evolution North Star has moved directly into the strategy game market.  Evolution is a good choice: an easy-to-learn, strategic but not heavy game of hand-management which has enough chaos and nastiness to appeal to Ameritrash lovers but not enough to alienate a Eurogamer like myself.  It's smart strategy by a company that clearly knows exactly where they're heading.

If you're interested, you should check out their Kickstarter campaign for Evolution which launched last Monday.  They've already reached 480% of their goal.  Their strategy seems to be working....

Adventures on the Tabletop

Only 3 days left! If you havent heard already, an upcoming Board Game documentary is on Kickstarter. But only 3 days left to help this project be even better. I highly recommend you help sponsor this project by signing on to Kickstarter and finding a funding level that interest you. If you like board games, you are going to want to see this movie.

The film maker is Douglas Morse. I had the pleasure meeting him at the Gathering of Friends a couple months ago. Doug's goal with this movie is to make a film for board game fans, that helps pull back the curtain on the whole board game design/publishing process, and let everyone see the adventure games go through to get to our tables.

I am a little bias, as I might be featured in the film, but even beyond that, I am very confident the content in this film will be amazing. Some of the exclusive and candid interviews Doug Morse has been able to attain are priceless. The chance to hear from legendary board game designers like Alan Moon, and significant publishers in the industry like Hans Im Gluck, is incredible rare and will be very entertaining. We are talking about people who love and make games. Of course they are fun people.

So check out the preview below, and please consider supporting this project. Also, please go out of your way and recommend this project to a few people you know who might be interested in the film. At the very least you will earn some bonus points with your friends & family that you recommend this to them, because it shows you were thinking of them.

-- Daryl Andrews

(PS - you can see me at 0:48 & 2:25 in the preview)

On The Horizon: Euphoria....

....or the full title - Euphoria:  Build a Better Dystopia.  (If you're not sure what a dystopia is, think the opposite of a utopia.  Or just play the excellent video game Bioshock: Infinite.)  The Kickstarter campaign for Euphoria launched today and I'd be promoting it just cuz the designers are such nice guys.  But after having read the rules, I can happily say this one looks pretty darn cool, too, and dripping with theme.  Yes, dripping with theme much like their previous game Viticulture... which should be arriving in the mail for me next week!

This upcoming game is a heavy worker-placement game like many designs out today, but its definitely got a few clever twists.  The cleverest part of the design, in my opinion, is that workers are represented by dice (a bit like Alien Frontiers) and the higher the value of the die (knowledge) the better the actions it can do.  However if the sum of your worker dice (knowledge) exceeds a certain amount, then one of your workers runs away.  Aha!  Get it, they're getting too smart for their own good and seek freedom.  As well, there's buildings that once completed take away options from the players who don't help construct them.  Nasty, and again totally integrated with the dystopian theme.

Definitely check out their Kickstarter campaign and take a look at the rules.  The images so far are gorgeous and if Jamey and his team over-fund this campaign as much as they did Viticulture last year, then the bonus pieces will be just as magnificent.

Sum Wars on Kickstarter...

My family has been subjected to many games over the years and there are a few that can get a bit rowdy, particularly with my mother.  She's a sharp player and picks up rules very quickly, but throw a frantic game at her where everyone plays at once and she comes out swinging.  HA!  My sister and I can recall many rounds of Dutch Blitz which got way out of hand.  Another game which was a frantic, violent favourite of ours is called Pick Two.  It was basically Scrabble on speed.  Players draw two tiles at at time to add to their crosswords and once one person uses them all everyone immediately has to draw two more, whether they want to or not.  It's a riot. 

Well, a new game Sum Wars is currently campaigning on Kickstarter and it's kind of like the mathematical heir to Pick Two.  And since I loved Pick Two and I studied math in university for far, far too long, I am particularly interested in this game.  In Sum Wars, the crosswords are now built with simple equations and you always have access to the addition, subtraction, and equal tiles.  There are also bomb tiles which allow you to remove other players tiles and will add more to the interaction and nastiness.



I'm an avid supporter of math education and if Sum Wars does for numbers what Pick Two did for spelling, then I imagine it would be an excellent addition to any math classroom or even just your own board game collection.  Check out the video above or the Kickstarter page here for more info.

...Huh.

.......................................This.

Gunrunners on Kickstarter....

I'm trying not to get too involved in the whole Kickstarter thing due to the glut of prototypes on the site.  I've mentioned a couple games, only because I received copies beforehand and was able to get a game or two in to verify that, yes, they were play-tested and solid titles.  I do think I can break the rule on this one, though, as Steve Finn's track record is actually pretty good.  He designed Biblios a few years ago which is a short, smart little auction game that I'm happy to own a copy of.  Gunrunners seems to be along the same lines - simple, quick, and dynamic - this time using area control as the major mechanic. 

Definitely worth watching the videos as it gives you a pretty good feeling of how the game plays out.  

A short review of 'YOU Are The Maniac!'

They say that imitation is the sincerest from of flattery.  In that case, I'd like to think the publishers of Guillotine, a quick and humorous little card game that has been out for over a decade, should be very flattered.  I've only played Guillotine once a couple months ago but I only needed to read the rules for YOU Are The Maniac to realize that it's pretty near the same game.  Oh, the theme is different and Maniac adds a few new twists (plot twists, final girls, etc.) but the inherent gameplay is pretty much the same.

Basically a line-up of victim cards is made (horror movie victims in Maniac, French aristocrats in Guillotine) and each turn a player may play an action card then takes (kills) the first victim card in the line-up.  The actions do things like re-arrange the order of the victims, force opponents to discard cards, switch hands, etc.  Now certain cards give more points for certain victims, some cards combine to provide bonuses, etc but in general that's the game.  And in both cases it's featherweight-light and very short.  If either of these games lasted more than 20 minutes, I would cry tears of sheer boredom. 

Where Maniac diverges is by adding more chaos to the formula.  At certain points, plot cards will need to be drawn, and the final victim on the wall is always worth a hefty ton of points.  And if you're into the theme of horror movies, it actually is quite amusing.  In our game the Final Girl was killed in Part 1 but then escaped and showed up in Part 2 (the second round) and I immediately pictured Jamie Lee Curtis making to Halloween 2.  But these chaotic elements definitely remove what miniscule control one has over anything in the game.  Again, short game, thank god.

I guess your enjoyment of the game will hinge on a few things - theme, originality, and lightness of play.  The horror theme actually is a bit amusing and the characters add some amusement.  But if you own Guillotine, I dare say you don't need theis game.  It's pretty much the exact same game re-skinned but confused by some extra rules.  They are so similar that even The Count and Countess cards in Guillotine are renamed as Prom Queen and Prom King and score exactly the same in Maniac.  Yikes.  As well, as I said, it's very chaotic and random so this will aggravate anyone who doesn't like that sort of thing.

But if you're looking for a card game with a horror theme, I'd say this is dripping with it. It's being launched on Kickstarter here for 7 more days so you can contribute and have a copy sent to you (it's already reached its goal).  I dare say you should grab a copy before the Guillotine people find out....

Preview of Viticulture....

Kickstarter has been used to launch some pretty great games like Alien Frontiers and even now big and emerging companies like Queen and Tasty Minstrel Games are using it to fund their projects.  Still, the majority of gaming projects on the crowd-funding website are independently produced labours of love.  And there is always some risk with helping to fund these projects as the games don't necessarily go through the rigorous development and testing that a major company's release would see and often the reviews are quite limited.

Still, I've had some great success with indy games lately - Alien Frontiers which I continue to mention, Vanuatu which I own but have yet to play, and Morels which wasn't crowd-funded but is still wonderfully produced and delightful.  I'm happy to say the upcoming game Viticulture seems like another winner.  We managed to play a 6-player round of a prototype copy after the Blitz yesterday evening and despite a few issues, the overall experience was surprisingly enjoyable.  I've had the prototype all week and had hoped to play it sooner but this just happened to be one of my busiest AND sickest weeks this year.  Yuck.

Drinking wine while playing a wine-making game

In short, Viticulture is a worker-placement game which lightly simulates managing a vineyard and creating and selling wine.  Now I know a ton of wine-making games have cropped up in the past few years, none of which I happen to have played yet as the complexity of many of them sounded high.  Viticulture manages to keep things fairly simple, thanks to easy-to-explain actions and a wealth of cards.  The quirk that keeps this game different from the abundance of other worker-placement games is that there are two distinct rounds of placement, a summer and winter season, and you need to spread your workers over both which requires a bit of planning.

Overall, it presented a relaxing but strategic experience involving planting vines, giving tours, harvesting and crushing grapes, and bottling and selling wines.  Now, there were a few glitches we experienced mostly due to the ruleset but I am certain we did not have the final version (and I will be sending some suggestions to the designers).  As well, some of the cards did seem a bit wildly powerful (note to future players - grab as many visitor cards as possible) but I know the designers have actually modified a few since we were sent a copy.  One other thing came to light while we played was a possible "perfect" strategy but this may or not be a possibility in a game with less than 6 players.  A certain player who designs games himself decided to choose the same action of giving vineyard tours every round.  He upgraded his building to get an extra point every time he did.  Combining that with one other action and repeating this every round, he managed to win the game by a narrow margin.  Now, I suppose a boring strategy like this can often win as well in a game like Dominion, you know just buying coins repeatedly and taking no actions until you can afford to buy everything.  But still this is something to be aware of.

In general, though, Viticulture is a very well put-together and engaging game.  It's got some chaos in the card draws but I kind of like that as I find worker-placement games can often be quite stiff.  There is a definite satisfying story arc and a relaxed pace to the game as you build up your infrastructure and workers over a few years (rounds) until you can finally produce and sell wine.  And considering how well the Kickstarter campaign is going, this game is going to be a gorgeous production.  It's clear the game has been playtested and that they are still fine-tuning it.  Good to see.

Future artwork

If this sounds interesting to you, definitely check out the Kickstarter site - there are 7 days to go and the designers have already hit enough stretch goals to add specially designed pieces, double-sided gameboards, and wooden buildings.  I kickstarted it, perhaps you might want to, too.

First Plays: Fealty and German Railways...

There was a  full-frontal nerdity again last night at UW games night and, as usual, I forced people to play some of my new games that have been waiting patiently to be played.

We started with Fealty, a sharp, nasty, tactical game that is remarkably short.  8 turns and you finish and score.  It was an interesting experience and a relatively simple game but figuring out the right play seems nearly impossible.  I think it'll require a few games to get a handle of but I imagine it'll be just excellent with 2 players.

Final layout with scoring tokens.  Colourful.  I lost horribly.

We also got German Railways to the table.  It definitely felt like the successor to Chicago Express but different enough to stand on its own merits.

The clever turn-order mechanism made this one feel a bit like Power Grid, you know, all about the timing, and the winning condition (most money overall, stocks worth nothing) made correct bidding paramount much like a great game of Modern Art.  In fact, in our game the top 2 players at the end ended up owning the least amount of stock.  This is a very, very interesting game - quite devious and very much open to table-talk and coercion.  Definitely a favourite of the new year and in my mind an even better game than Chicago Express.

One caveat, though:  Queen really messed up this design by leaving one thing out.  There are 8 different railroads each with a unique power and in the original Winsome title these powers were clearly laid out ON THE BOARD!  In this reprint, Queen stupidly removed that and just left it on the back page of the rulebook.  This was a horrendous oversight and something we kept screwing up over and over.  We had to continuously check the rulebook throughout the game every time we went to make an action. I'm really not sure what the hell they were thinking and I'm actually considering taking a Sharpie to the board and writing them on myself.  Painful.

A game of 'Politics'...

Game designer John Ruf was kind enough to send a review copy of his new card game Politics.  He self-published it on TheGamecrafter.com but is looking to produce a much higher quality version by raising money on Kickstarter.

Now, I've just been too damn busy to get the game on the table in the last couple weeks but I plan to give it a try and post some thoughts by the end of the week.  But you should go take a look at his page on the Kickstarter site as he's got 17 more days to raise the money.  Go.  GO!

Today in pure awesome....

Remember Mousetrap?  Course you do.  I remember being enthralled as the Rube Goldberg-esque machine got built up over the game and then proceeded to run its course, devastating the lives of my poor plastic mice (I also remember never, ever playing a version of the game where all the pieces were actually there).  Having played it recently, I can say the game isn't half as interesting as I remember, but I was a kid then and much less cynical/fussy.

Well, what do you know, via BoardGameGeek News and Youtube, here's a group of people who decided to recreate that magic live.  And it's pretty awesome....kinda makes me feel like a kid again.



And if you actually want to get involved with this group of artists or even just help out, their website is here with links to their Kickstarter campaign.

Getting a kick start....

One of the great and yet also annoying things about the growing popularity of board games is the number of entries into the field each year. Whereas in the late 90's there was usually 1 or 2 must-buys a season, now there's at least 20 or 30. And the more people who play games, the more people there are who come up with some great ideas for them (including a few myself which may never see the light of day). And most games don't get noticed by big publishers so the designers often have to go it on their own.

That's where Kickstarter can come in to help. It's a pretty damn cool website where artists, musicians, creative folks, and, yes, board game designers can run funding drives for their projects. And Kickstarter has successfully launched a few great games now, including the wonderfully fun and polished Alien Frontiers, a true testament to the great possibilities of indie game design.

If you read other board game blogs, you may have seen mention of many games on Kickstarter vying for attention.  A game on Kickstarter that I think really deserves a look is Phillip DuBarry's Kingdom of Solomon, what looks to be a pretty interesting worker-placement style game with some network-building and bit of a push-your-luck twist.  Phillip previously got his print-and-play game Revolution! (which I admit I have yet to play) published by Steve Jackson Games which I think is a pretty admirable accomplishment as SJG is not normally known for producing Euro-style strategy games.  Now I openly admit that Phillip is a reader of this blog which is kinda nice but I still wouldn't mention the game if it didn't think it was going to be pretty awesome.  And I could describe it more to you but perhaps I should let the designer talk about it instead:



If this sounds good to you, maybe you should consider stopping by the Kickstarter site to make a pledge. Pledge enough and you'll get a copy sent to you when it's published (plus it'll make ya feel good, too).

Now, back to that little idea for an auction game that's been rolling around in my head foe months now......