Techlandia, a game by Dan Ackerman

Techlandia

Designed by Dan Ackerman

TL,DR Corner

• Players: 1-4
• Time (on box / actual): 60-90 minutes / 30 minutes
• Setup / Teardown Time: 5 min./5 min.
• Footprint: Small table
• Components: 2/5
• Fun-factor: 1/5
• Replayability: 2/5
• Style: Solo, dice rolling, hand-management 
• Summary: a game that has a fun concept, but manages to be underwhelming in all respects.

Sometimes I pick up things on Kickstarter just because the theme sounds like a lot of fun. Such is the case with this small box game by tech journalist, Dan Ackerman. Mixing Lovecraftian lore with tech is an area I’ve quite enjoyed since getting into Charles Stross’ “Laundry Files” books, so it was with high hopes that I backed this that it would give me a simple little game with a similar vibe.

Like many other gamers I know, I like to take pictures of the games I play, especially for sharing online. You’ll notice that there are very few pictures taken to accompany this review. This is because what you see in the shot above is pretty much all you can expect to see in this game. I started feeling like maybe this game had a low level of effort attached to it, as soon as I started looking through the cards and realizing that the designer had used the same art for each card type, front and back. Backs make sense, of course, but in a game that wants to convey a Cthulian atmosphere, you want to set a mood, and none of the card art really accomplishes that. Double down on this fact with reusing the same art on each card in a given deck (all the Gear cards have the same art, all the Encounter and Investigation cards, likewise, as well as the Enemy cards) ... my heart began to sink before I’d even started reading the rules and setting up my first game.

I mean, yeah, I’m spoiled by artwork from the likes of the incredible Andrew Bosley, or Nolan Nasser, and so many others. ... well, I would just have to try the game out and see if maybe the game had more under the hood.

A game which I completed, successfully, in around 30 minutes, rules-learning not included.

The box says 45-90 minutes, and perhaps with especially ponderous players, that might be the actual time it takes to play this game.

The rules are really really simple: two actions per turn, except for playing cards from your hand of Gear, and those can give you anything from free actions to automatic combat successes. You spend one action per “move” from hex to hex. You have to use an action to Investigate a hex (the outer four to the left and right of the main column). When you Investigate, you draw a random card that either grants you a “success” (revealing a piece of the MacGuffin you need in order to win the game), or a success and spawns an “enemy” ... or a failure that can spawn an enemy, move you to another location, or other things that were fairly tame.

Oh, the goal of the game is to 1) investigate all four rooms, 2) gather four “QR code fragments” 3) take them to the Security hex, 4) scan them, one by one, with your phone’s QR code reader to figure out which one is the real deal. If you fail, oops, you are eliminated! Now, you can get “Decryption codes” by defeating enemies elsewhere, which give you an automatic retry (thus avoiding instant player elimination), so you might want to do that, too, before trying to finish the game. Assuming you find the right code, just jaunt up on your next turn, using both actions to step lively to the Elevator hex and win the game.

Of course, all of this does have to be accomplished before your 20 turns are up, and if you lose to enemies enough times, there’s a marginal reset and acceleration of the timer, and some of this might become more tense with multiple players, but due to the nature of the highly randomized encounters / investigation and randomization of the MacGuffins, plus the ability to get out of trouble or shift the trouble to other players with the Gear cards, it’s mainly going to come down to who has the best hand of Gear and has the most luck with dice rolls. 

I hate ripping into a freshman effort. I like rooting for the underdog. There has to be some level of knowledge you take into designing a game before you put it out there, however, that this design shows a complete lack of understanding and/or respect for, leaving it feeling like more of a cash grab or the result of someone losing a bet with a buddy at CES.

There are inconsistencies in the card texts (ex. “Automatic combat win” vs. “Win a battle” ... what is the difference?), outright omissions where a card tells you to base your result on rolling a die and getting either a “Success” or a “Failure” ... but where there is no definition of what constitutes either, that show that either this had a very limited play test in front of a bunch of friends, or none at all.

The rule book claims that there will be “other scenarios” to be found on their site. Right now, there are two videos there... an unboxing video and a set up video for play, but not even a play through. I honestly don’t see them carrying through with extending this game, if the initial game design is any reflection of their dedication, and sadly enough, there are just too many other games on my shelf that look and play far better for my time for me to really care.

The Reckoners, by Nauvoo Games

The Reckoners

published by Nauvoo Games

TL,DR Corner

• Players: 1-6
• Time (on box / actual): 75 minutes / 120 minutes
• Setup / Teardown Time: 7 min./10 min.
• Footprint: Large table
• Components: 3/5
• Fun-factor: 4/5
• Replayability: 3/5
• Style: Co-op, dice allocation, simultaneous action
• Summary: a co-op that requires some strategy and communication between the players to deal with ever-increasing threats, hampered slightly by its footprint, and slightly mired in some design choices made more for aesthetics than for game play.

I’m a sucker for co-op games. Ask anyone who knows me: I’ll play just about any co-op you put in front of me over nearly any competitive game. So it was, when Gen Con was approaching, I perused the list of games coming to the show, and saw a very shining review by Tom Vasel, about this super-non-hero game that could be played solo and up to six players, based on a book series by Brandon Sanderson. I’d never read the series, but otherwise this hit pretty much every button for me, and I decided I would take a chance on it.

On first impressions, the game itself is a beast, which might be a tad intimidating, until you notice that most of the components are bulky and there's actually very few components in the box. Thanks to the GameTrayz designed boards, everything fits mostly snugly, though there's definitely enough room for things to slip around and out of their places, especially the dice, which fit in this track-system that doesn't appear to be designed to come out of the box for use during play. This is good and bad, as I'll get into, later.

The goal of the game is defeat the Big Bad - one Epic named Steelheart, who has taken over the city of Chicago, given it a shiny steel gleam (think "Midas," but he turns inanimate things into steel), and declared himself the lord and master of this "Newcago." Unfortunately, he's immune to all damage, at the beginning of the game, and it'll be the players' job to research his weakness, make him vulnerable, and take him down, all while trying to keep his minor Epic minions from wantonly murdering the populace of normal people.

A City District with Epic. Steelheart is in this zone,
along with three "Enforcement" units

The game board consists of 3 - 7 (no. of players, plus one) "City District" trays, which have a space for a minor Epic, markers for their Research level and Health, and a slider to indicate what their power level is at any point in the game. Each player also takes a character tray, and their starting ability card, plus three dice in their character's color, and three white "generic" dice for their starting dice pool. Steelheart's tray is set to the side, with his Research track in place, starting Research levels set according to the number of players, and starting power levels set to the first space for each of his four rows of actions.

The Reckoners tray.

Lastly, the Reckoners tray is set to the other side, with a track for Populace (which is your countdown to losing), another track for money gained (for buying Equipment), a track for Steelheart's progress finding one of your hideouts, Equipment cards available for purchase, and spaces to "lock" dice that Steelheart takes when he finds your hideout.

The rules are very simple:
Players take their phase, which consists of rolling their characters' dice, and deciding which ones to keep, Yahtzee-style (two re-rolls allowed, not including anything from equipment they gather over time), using the symbols on those dice to take actions, and then buying any equipment or gaining any rewards they might have earned from dice or defeating the minor Epics in each City District.

Using dice is simple enough. The player can take the action shown on the die (remove Enforcement, Research an Epic of the District they are in, Attack an Epic of the District they are in, gain money, "Contain" an Epic of the District they are in, or gain a Plan token for next turn). Alternatively, they can use a die to remove any Barricades from any District in the City, or to move to another District that is not Barricaded. Any Plan tokens that the players have previously earned may be spent as a "wild" to act as any of the symbols on a Basic die, so stocking them up is often a wise decision that will give you flexibility to react to situations around the city.

Once the players have defeated Epics and taken the rewards from those Epics (which might include things like giving them Research hits on Steelheart, Contain actions, money, etc.), they can then spend any money they have collectively to purchase Equipment from one of the four available in the Reckoner base tray. More Equipment cards are revealed as soon as one is purchased, so there's really no limit to the number of Equipment that can be bought per Reckoner Phase other than available money. At this time, players may also choose to spend money to unlock dice that were taken away by Steelheart finding their base during his part of the Epics Phase.

Next up is the Epic Phase, where you replace any Epics who were defeated in the Reckoners Phase, activate abilities for every Epic in the City (going clockwise around the trays, starting where Steelheart is located). Those abilities may either increase Steelheart's action tracks, kill populace, or heal / improve neighboring Epics. After that, they increase their action track level by 1 plus the number of Enforcement in their District, which makes leaving Enforcement out a dangerous proposition. Finally, Steelheart takes all the actions on his four tracks, which includes killing off populace, searching for the Reckoners base, adding Enforcement to the Districts, and adding Barricades to the Districts. A player rolls to see where Steelheart moves next. Players pick up their dice and start the next Reckoners Phase, and this is how it goes until either the Populace is reduced to zero, or the players work Steelheart's Research track and Health track to 0.

The players really have to work together to keep track of the threats in the city and continue working down Steelheart, or it's amazingly easy to get overrun. Those Contain actions are used to knock down action tracks of Epics, and are essential for making sure that the Epics don't spiral out of control, but you also need to make sure Enforcement is handled, so they don't balloon Epics action tracks, etc. Overall, this makes for an involving process of cooperation between players, and it can be very satisfying to come to the sudden realization that you can take down a couple Epics simultaneously with some well-coordinated dice work.

The components are all well made. The dice are especially satisfying to roll, though their size and weight, when all players are rolling them at the same time, makes for quite the clattering. The minis are not especially exciting, but they are solidly built. The artwork is really nice, and the graphic design work overall is well done, with plenty of examples throughout the rule book, and a helpful reference on the back. There are player aids as well, if you don't want to keep the rulebook on the table, though you will need it for initial set up, as the tables that indicate starting health/research levels for Steelheart are squirreled into the first few pages.

Saving table space is a big concern with this game, however. The pictures above show a simple two-player setup (though I played it solo for that game, they recommend a 2p setup for solo). It took the better portion of our kitchen table, with extension. The extra dice, which you'll need for people to acquire dice from when they purchase certain Equipment cards, have no place to stay but in the box, or piled next to the other board pieces on the table. The tray that holds Enforcement and Barricades has to fit there, too. We barely fit four people around the table for that play-through, and I'm not sure how we'd manage to pull off a full six-player game in our available space.

The player trays present a few issues: The dice that the players roll are kept track of on their player board, but the slots on the player board don't really mean anything. In fact, the only space on the player board that really matters is the little space for keeping track of Plan tokens that are available during their turn. Every other space on the board is mechanically irrelevant. There are no limits to the number of dice you can keep in one roll... if you like all the dice you roll on your first roll, you can keep them all, but the trays at first glance make you think that there is a cap of three dice kept for each roll. Secondly, there are six slots for you to place allocated dice during the Use Dice phase, but you can (and should) gain more dice through equipment, and there is no limit to the number of dice you can choose to use.

The City Districts, as well, point to a design that revolves far more on looks than efficiency. The GameTrayz have a space for "everything" but each City District is exactly like the others, except in artwork. There is no point to them, other than to make things look better, but they sacrifice much-needed table space for that artistic choice. It feels like there might have been an attempt to make each District add some other mechanic, but it feels like they ran out of time to fine tune the balance issues that would arise from giving each District a unique mechanic. Similarly, the minor Epics have their action tracks, but those actions don't really feel thematically tied to their abilities, so the theme is very much skin-deep. You could boil the game down to a score pad that kept track of Steelheart's Research and Health levels and feel about as immersed in the goal of taking him down as you do with the big, chunky trays.

The important aspect here is that I did have fun, as did the others who played with me, and they're interested in playing again. I don't see this having as long of a replay value as other co-ops, where there is more variance, or deeper ties between theme and mechanics, to draw players back. Certainly, the design could have been made more compact, less ostentatious, and still kept some of its artistic flair, and they could have in that same design decision, brought down the price. The GameTrayz in this case are, except in one tray's design, purely extraneous, and I'd rather have seen more focus on gameplay variance than on the glamour of having these trays that take up a lot of space but add nothing in terms of utility.

If you're looking for something in the Reckoners universe, and you have the space, it's a fun, big game that definitely looks impressive on a table. I'm betting some other co-ops that have a similar feel (to me, Thanos Rising: Infinity War feels pretty similar) will hit my table more often, but mostly because of their more tightly designed, or compact nature, when I have limited space. It will be interesting to see what changes the designers make over time, if any, as I've heard some people mention that the designers wanted to start off with a very streamlined experience to start with, and were considering adding other layers over time. I hope they do so, otherwise I don't see this going much beyond its initial peaking interest.

Everdell, by Starling Games - A review

Everdell by Starling Games

Everdell is a combination worker-placement, tableau-building game with a dash of engine-building, that plays 1-4 players.

The Evertree has become overcrowded, and it's time to establish cities outside of its welcoming branches. Each player will compete to develop the greatest city, comprised of 15 cards that represent Constructions and the Critters who run it. The player with the most Victory Points at the end of the game wins, with ties broken by the players who completed the most Events, and failing that, the player with the most resources in their collection.

I backed the Collector's Edition of the game, so I received both the standard components and the fancier components, which included metal 1-and-3-value coins for VP scoring, plus Occupied token-discs that I had to put stickers on, and bonus cards (which I did not incorporate into our first playthrough).

Components: 8 (components) / 9 (art) of 10

I am going to give this an 8 of 10 for the grade of the basic components and 9 of 10 for the artwork.

A small sampling of the art in this gorgeous game!

The easiest part to explain of that is the 9 of 10 for art - this is one of the most gorgeous games in my collection now. Andrew Bosley's art is top notch, with the only thing keeping me from giving it a full 10 of 10 being that in some cases, the artistic choices mean that text size can be either inconsistently sized, or in some cases, so small that you'll probably need reading glasses to make out the text. This is especially apparent when looking at the tags that indicate if a Critter can be played for free due to a Construction already being built in your city.

The Husband can be bought with three Berries or if you have already added a Farm to your city, can be played for free. Easy concept, but the tags in the upper-left corner of the cards are a bit tiny and hard to read when the tag has more text, as in the Chip Sweep's card.

The 8 of 10 for component quality comes from the fact that the tree, while also very pretty, is a little wobbly, even assembled according to the updated instructions, and we almost toppled it a few times due to the suggested area for the cards being tucked between its legs. While a good idea to keep table space compact (which is a valid consideration ... this board, plus your player cities, will monopolize most large tables), due to the shortness of the lower platform, drawing cards poses a high risk of toppling or at least sending into disarray the components held on its two platforms with an inadvertent knuckle or clumsy reach for the cards.

See those cards down there? Not a lot of space between where they are and the first platform... and I'm a clutz by nature.

It's a mite crowded up here, waiting for the seasons to change!

The second point I deduct will be due to the logs, which roll pretty freely. They have the slightest of weighted or indented sides that will stop them from rolling once brought to a halt, but not enough to keep them from swiftly rolling off the board or table if they are given the slightest accidental nudge. If/when they create a second printing, I hope they put some thought into giving them a larger flat surface side to stop that.

Fanboy moment: the tactile feel of the berries is amazing! They can be a bit roll-happy, but because they made the top and bottoms flatter, and added texturing to the top side, they are not as prone to rolling right off the table at the slightest provocation. They also have a bit of squish to them, as they seem to be composed of some sort of rubbery material. I would DEFINITELY make sure that if I were playing this with or around little kids with a penchant for taste-testing, to keep an eye on them or keep these components as far away from them as possible.

The stones are smooth, hard and flat, and a tiny bit hard to pick up due to those features, but altogether quite usable.










Cards are of a high quality linen finish. I think I had the wrong Euro-size sleeves, because the Euro-sized cards would not fit in them without bending.

The meeples for each player are differentiated by both color and shape, which will be a win for any color-impaired players.

Lastly, the box art in my case came with gold-foil text and a slipcase, featuring unobstructed art from the cards free of text.

Rules / Rulebook: 8 of 10

Again, Bosley's artwork shines through every page of the rulebook, and the important text here is fairly easy to read and laid out well. The rules are simple enough in concept, with only three basic actions to keep track of, but their interaction seems a bit fuzzy at first:

• You can place a worker at any location that is exclusive (indicated by a complete oval around a paw print), or non-exclusive (indicated by an incomplete oval) location either on the board, or in a player's city if the location is marked as "Open" and take the associated action ... if you place a worker in another player's city-location, that player gains one VP as a benefit from your visit; 
• You can play a card either from your hand or from the Meadow (the tableau of 8 cards in the center of the playing board) if you have the resources or tag to pay for it, adding it to your city (they suggest three rows of 5 cards, each);
• You can choose to Prepare for Season, but only after you have no more meeples to place, triggering that season's effects for yourself (which changes based on whether it's Spring, Summer or Autumn you are preparing for), collecting the extra meeple(s) associated with that Season (1 / 1 / 2, respectively).

Where things feel a little strange is that, either due to bad planning or sometimes bad available card draw, you may find yourself being in a new Season before other players. This is why the end of the game states that players may end up passing and waiting for other players to finish out their seasons.

You're going to need this page for a bit.

 Secondly, they could easily have fit a quick cheat-sheet / player aid on the back cover of the book, which would be handy reference until players are all familiar with the various icons used in the game.

Lastly, there are some card interactions which are not completely clear, such as the Mole Miner who allows you to duplicate any other player's Green (essentially, Production) card in their city ... I need to find clarification on what happens if you do so on a Green card that is not an Open location, such as the Storehouse, for example.

I suppose a good addition to that cheat-sheet would also be in going over scoring, as it's somewhat easy to forget things. Your end score will be determined by any Events you achieve (such as basic ones like having 4 or more Green Production cards in your city, or unique events that are played to the bottom platform of the Evertree at the beginning of the game, which are usually more complicated to achieve but worth more points), added to the value of all the cards in your city, plus any bonuses from special Critters / Constructions in your city, plus any Journeys you sent your meeples on in Autumn.

Theme: 8.5 of 10

The art really sells the theme, the rules mostly back that up, especially in some of the card interactions, such as the Husband and Wife Critter cards, who can be paired up on a space in your city and are worth more points if they are. The fact that you can populate your city through a combination of paying for Critters (with berries) or using Constructions (by keyword) helps reinforce that certain Critters are attracted or related to those Constructions (ie. You can build a Farm, which then allows you to "build" for free, either a Husband or Wife on a later turn). Rounding that out is the flavor text and work put into the theme in the card text and rules text (such as a cute exchange of letters between Husband and Wife). At the base of it, you can't get away from the fact that its worker-placement roots are obviously front-and-center, but that really doesn't detract from the theme in any way and integrates nicely with the other mechanics.

Final Thoughts: 

Our first game took about 2 hours, with setup, punching out components, and learning the rules.

One notable rule we messed up was in the hand-limit mechanism; as written, you can only ever draw up to your hand limit of 8 cards. If you take an action that would give you a card draw, and your hand is full, you have essentially wasted that action.

However, we also had forgotten about one of the spaces on the board, Haven, which allows you to discard as many cards as you like from your hand, and collect resources on a 2:1 basis (1 resource per 2 cards discarded), which would have helped to remember early on, when a player had plenty of cards they couldn't use, but not enough of the right resources to use the ones they wanted.

There is some capacity for player interaction... as with most worker-placement, you can block key spaces, but there are usually more than a couple ways to gain resources (even if you have to sacrifice cards at Haven, which is not an Exclusive space). There are even a couple cards (the Fool) you can play into another player's city that take away points at the end of the game, but there are still other cards you can utilize to remove Critters and Constructions from your city, so that can be mitigated.

I haven't had a chance to try out the solo rules, yet, though I've read a couple people saying that it was challenging. I'll update this post when I can get around to that.

All in all, a very solid game. I'm very happy with the quality of the components and the game play is interesting enough I think it will see regular visits to the table. It offers a wide variety of actions and routes toward victory, without feeling wholly "point-salad" oriented. There are 16 unique Event cards, only four of which are used per game, randomly, and 11 Forest location cards that are also randomized, with only four used in a 3-4p game, offering enough variety that I think it'll be awhile before we've played out all the possible combinations.

Final Verdict: Two Paws Up

Thanos Rising: Avengers Infinity War

published by USAopoly

TL,DR Corner

• Players: 2-4
• Time (on box / actual): 45 minutes / 90 minutes
• Setup / Teardown Time: 4 min./5 min.
• Footprint: Medium table
• Components: 3.5/5
• Fun-factor: 4/5
• Replayability: 3.5/5
• Style: Co-op, dice allocation, team-building
• Summary: A rules-light co-op game whose difficulty hinges more on randomness, but still allows for some tactical decisions to save the day.

Getting the right balance of difficulty down in a co-op game is tough. Often, because you're not focused on balancing players against each other, you must create some sort of engine that is easy to get running to act as the adversary. Too much scripting can lead to experiences that get quickly stale, with nearly a one-shot feel to them. While perhaps satisfying the first time, they quickly lose their appeal as the players reveal whatever scripted elements are hidden from view initially. Meanwhile, too much reliance on randomness (whether it be via card draws, dice rolls, or similar mechanics) can leave players feeling godlike in one game, and crippled observers in the next, the very definition of a "swingy" gameplay experience.

TR:AIW is definitely weighted on the random side of the scale. The challenge comes from attempting to construct teams that provide enough bonuses (in the form of hero-healing, or giving the team more dice to roll) to quickly take down the major villains of the game. They can only win by defeating 7 of his minions (represented by a certain type of card, set in an array around a three-sectioned board) before he manages to 1) KO an entire team, 2) KO 10 heroes, or 3) collects all of the Infinity Gems into his gauntlet. Therefore, it becomes a co-op game of risk-to-reward, building synergies between team mates without leaving your fellow players no team members to recruit. Meanwhile, everyone is watching Thanos become stronger with each passing turn.

The game is themed strongly enough that it really does feel like you're working with the actual characters of the MCU, unlike some games with a pasted-on theme that could be swapped out with almost anything, and yet stay fundamentally the same. It's not so tightly themed, however, that one must know all the details of the MCU to enjoy it, nor does it give away anything from the movie after which it draws its name. It's also engaging enough that players will constantly have to be watching the board evolve, and discussing with each other next steps, heroes they'd like to enlist, and villain targets that look ready to cause major mischief if they are not dealt with quickly.

Those discussions carry one downside, in that they can be the source of some lag in the play of the game, but they really convey the coordination needed between all these heroes to handle the threat that Thanos and his minions pose.

The game comes with four hero teams to start with, as well as their team's Team Leader. Each team has a special power that can occur during their initial dice-roll on their turn, though all the Team Leaders seem to have a variant on the "Get an extra die of [x] color if you have a team member that matches type [y]" ability. The Avengers, for example, led by Captain America, are really good with combat (they always start with four red combat dice), and Cap gives them an extra combat die if there is another Avenger on the team (signified by a matching color on their card), and if they roll a total of 6 combat symbols on the first roll of their turn, they can deal an extra damage to any villain that is on the board. Dr. Strange gets an extra Mystic or Cosmic die if they have another Mystic hero (such as Loki, Thor, Heimdall, etc.), and can gain an extra Bonus Token (which might grant anything from extra dice to healing or removing cubes from the Infinity Stones boards) if the player rolls four Mystic symbols on their opening roll.

These abilities all work together fairly smoothly, though it does feel very tempting (and in fact, can turn out to be very rewarding) to only recruit characters of your "class" in order to maximize those combinations. Meanwhile, the villains, if left unattended, will help Thanos rack up more Infinity Stone markers, or bash the hell out of heroes. This leaves the players with a balancing act where they are trying to build up enough heroes that they can survive longer, combining their powers to deal damage to the villains, or taking the team they have out to deal with those villains.

Component-wise, the cards are nicely made, the art on them appears to be concept art or something close to it from the actual movie, but not movie-stills. The boards are sturdy, and the dice feel good to throw, appearing sharp and well-crafted. The damage and the status cubes in my copy, however, bore sprue-marks, or dings or chips, and the Thanos miniature has a nice base-paint level, but shows flashing around certain parts, as well as some molding errors that seem a touch underwhelming for a game at this price point. (Again, I haven't heard of anyone else seeing issues like this, and they don't have any effect on the game's play.)

Lastly, not a lot of cards are provided in the game, so you'll regularly see the same villain cards come up from game to game. This might start to drag down replay-value, if they don't release expansions with new villains and hero teams. Nevertheless, in four games, there were plenty of close calls, and it held an almost exactly 50:50 win-lose ratio, so there is plenty of game to master here, from the time you first open the box.

These small quibbles aside, in all four or five games I've run so far, I've only heard positive remarks from the players, who greeted the challenges warmly, even when they were trounced by a combination of bad draw and bad rolls. Players were eager to play again and keep trying at it, which is a hallmark of a good co-op experience. I hope to see USAopoly release some expansions in the near future, but in the meantime, I'll have fun taking on the mad Titan at home and at shows with friends.