It’s a Good Place

Tonight we are talking about Welcome To… which is published by Deep Water Games. This copy was purchased by myself and this is an independent review.

Welcome to is a game set in the early 1950’s. You and up to ninety-nine of your closest friends are building your very own subdivisions. You will each have a sheet with three rows of houses each of which is slightly bigger than the last. You do this by filling in each house with a number between one and fifteen. The catch is you can only use one of each number in a row and they must be in ascending order from left to right. Unlike similar games that use dice, Welcome to uses double-sided cards in 3 decks of twenty-seven cards. The previous card is the ability you will use and the current card determines the number available. You will choose one of the three available sets each turn and then draw three new cards. Each of the abilities can modify how many points you score at the end of the game. You can see below on the reference sheet what each card does.

Now that I’ve given you the basic gist of the game I would like to talk to you about whether it is worth your time and money. Simply said yes it is well worth your time and money. This game is the perfect opener to a game night, a great family game, and I wholly recommend it as a gateway game. I have played this with friends, family, strangers, groups small and large. It has been a hit with everyone. You can teach it in five minutes and it plays in under thirty minutes. It has enough strategy to keep me coming back time and again. The one suggestion I will remake is get yourself some better pencils as the ones included in the box are quite tiny.

Infinities Defiance of Fate

Today we take a look at a game I was very excited to see arrive. Infinities Defiance of Fate is a lot of game. This prototype was provided for the purpose of this written preview. The art and assests are not final and are subject to change. The game is scheduled to go live on Kickstarter on 2/20/18.

Where to start? There is a whole lot of game in this little box. Infinities is several things. It has a story based adventure mode about a world caught between two different times. It has a team based skirmish mode. It even has a free for all skirmish mode. The game plays 2-4 people and takes about 20-30 minutes per player. It is a blend of tactical war game and strategy card play. The board is a hex based modular board that you create as you play. You will each select a leader from a choice of not only two very distinct factions but also multiple leaders per faction. Now this is where things get interesting. Each faction has its own deck. This deck is shared among the players whose leaders belong to that faction. Your leader boards contain most of the information you’ll need as you play. Your play area will look something like the picture below. You will roll dice to determine what actions you take on a turn. These dice can be manipulated using your special abilities. Once you lock a die in (by placing it on your leader board) you may no longer manipulate (change the face of) the dice.

As you can see your leader board will contain three rows of abilities used to manipulate the action dice. They also have a set of unique powers called gambits. Two of these abilities are activated using the gambit spaces under the leaders picture. The other two are activated by the dice themselves. If you look you will see that there are three spaces on the card that contain white circles. These are your play area for cards and the white circles indicate how many cards can be in that area. There is a hand limit of five. You may have three cards in the prepared area, and a further four in your group. While your hand is self-explanatory let me clarify the meaning of prepare and group. To prepare a card you pay one energy to place it in that area. On the next turn you may pay another energy to activate the card and add it to the group. This allows certain cards to use special abilities but also allows you to play them a little cheaper. Strategically this can be very important. The group is your units that are used for combat. Each card has a cost, specific attribute which affects the tracks on your leader card, and of course an ability. There is another type of card that are not units but just abilities. These are played and then discarded. These are just the barest basics of card play.

The map is modular and consists of both timelines as you can see in this picture.

The rift is your starting tile in skirmish. From there in turn order you will then play two tiles from either stack. You’ll move your leader (designated by a pawn in the prototype). Now as you can see each tile has a number. That is influence and determines play order. The other symbols give you abilities to use either by going through, starting, or ending a turn on them. This is the most basic of explanations of course. The tiles themselves can be flipped, moved, and manipulated also.

In adventure mode the two factions have branching narratives with asymmetric actions, win conditions, and objectives. The skirmish modes (free for all and team) are a points game. You each have a tide marker that starts at 50. If someone hits 0 or 100 the skirmish is over. There is an objective card chosen at random which gives points for specific actions. So as you can see there are a lot of moving parts at play. I don’t want to spend all of our time together reading you a rule book however. As is customary when I do these previews lets talk about how feel about the game. For more detail on rules make sure to check the board game geek page for the game. Now on to my thoughts on the game.

Well as you can see above I gave a very general introduction of some of the more important aspects of the game. It truly is a very strategic game. It also has multiple layers. You have two separate factions which have different styles of play. You have to be mindful of the map itself as it is being manipulated by other players. Another layer of strategy comes from the cards you get and even the way in which you bring them to the field. I could go on and on about the strategies I’ve thought up but I think it is more fun to discover yourself. The narrative that surrounds the adventure mode is also very fascinating to me. I really am excited to see how the narrative plays out. All three game modes work very well even though the factions are different they are balanced. The art direction is great. The prototype has a lot of place holder art but the art that is there is fantastic and evocative of this very foreign world it inhabits. Allow me to share a couple of my favorites below. The top image is Auren (The Lord of Ashes) one of my favorites from the Ob’dija timeline and the other is W-01A (the World Bracer) from the Xilsen timeline.

The game is very crunchy though. It will take a couple of plays to really get the feel for all the moving bits. That is before you really start learning the ins and outs of the strategy. In short you’ll certainly get more out of this game than the box leads you to believe. I could ramble on about how much I liked what I played, and how deep a rabbit hole of strategy and quality that this game contains. The important take away and my final word on the subject is that you should back with confidence. This is something special and unique. It is an awesome experience and one I personally cannot wait to dive into once its finished.

Oh Cluck!

Today we are looking at Oh Cluck! A chicken fighting card game fo 2-6 players. This game was provided for the purposes of this preview.

Oh Cluck! is a battle card game. The game is split into two decks as seen above. The players will draw a number of green rooster cards to form their coop. The number of roosters is decided by the number of players. Then the players get five of the blue action cards. Their are four types of action cards as shown in the picture below.

Above you see the main types of cards. The four types of action cards are Dodge, Attack, Counter, and Special. There are also a couple examples of rooster cards. Each rooster has unique health (feather), point value (eggs), and an ability of some kind. There are a couple unique cards but I do not want to spoil them.  The first player to score 12 points wins. Now battles are the real meat of the game. A player will select a rooster as target and play a card. It is important to note that you draw a new card immeadiately. Now the targeted player has a chance to counter that card. So this can actually go back and forth for a bit and adds a really nice sense of struggle to what could of been  War with chickens. Other players can also sometimes affect battles they are not involved in. It is possible to lose all your roosters before somebody scores 12 points. This means that you are eliminated. No worries the game plays quick enough that you will not be out for long.

So on to my thoughts. The game is quick to teach and quick to play. It is a perfect lunch break or party opener. I really like the art style and some of the humor is spot on. The cards are varied enough that you never quite know whats coming from your opponents hand. In short we had a ton of fun playing this game over lunch and I look forward to bringing it out at family get togethers. The preview copy I received is a few cards short of what they would like to ship backers. If you like a quick take that style game I feel more than comfortable recommending you take a look at this games kickstarter. The kickstarter will go live on the 25th of January 2018. Thank you all very much for your time and until next time play some games.

Dashing Crustaceans

Today we are looking at a prototype for Crab Dash. 

This is a racing and betting game for 3-6 players. You start by putting the six crabs in the center of the board. Like in the picture below. This was taken after the first movement of the game. 

You then remove the event cards from the deck of cards, shuffle, then deal three cards to each player.  You will then give each player a specified amount of pearls according the number of players. You then choose a color and are given ten betting cubes of that color. You will then make a token pool with four spill tokens and a number of reroll tokens equal to twice the number of players. You then assign a first player and place a betting cube on one of the six crab boards and then in reverse order do so once more. The board is divided into lanes and crabs will either move straight or sideways in a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction depending on the dice roll. The board indicates the cost of betting depending on the location of the crab (one, two, or three) and also indicates the number of crabs that could be in a space (one, two, or three).

Now that you’ve set up your game its time to play. This is done by rolling the three dice. The white die indicates which two crabs and in what order they move. The red and blue dice indicate the number and or direction the crab moves. They also dictate whether you draw a card or reroll token. During your turn you may pay to place a betting cube either on a lane or crab card. You may also choose to play a card during your turn.

Now on to whether or not we had fun and what I think about the game. Let me open by saying that we had a lot of fun playing this game. The dice do a pretty good job actually imitating a hermit crab race. During our first play through the orange crab literally spun in circles in the middle of the board. This was a source of much laughing as bets were being made and adjusted. The cards have some nice effects that break up just the basic movements. A lot of the games strategy comes to the front in how you use reroll tokens and of course where and how often you bet. I fell victim to over zealousness when I decided the blue crab was destined for victory. He was not unfortunately. This game would definitely be something I would regularly play with my son but also deep enough that my adult friends enjoy it too. The art and pieces in the game are in the prototype stages so they may change. That being said I really like the art on the crabs. They exude great personality. I certainly enjoyed my time with this game and suggest ,if your interested in a good kids game or a game to open up your game night with, that you take a look at this game when it hits Kickstarter soon.