BOARD GAME REVIEW QUICK THOUGHTS

So another week where I haven’t had a chance to play games enough to get a final opinion. So instead I will give my first impressions of a bunch of games I have played. 

Outlive: a pretty cool game. It is essentially Fallout as if you are managing your shelter. I like the pressure mechanics and the worker strength. Some of the rules and terminology feel very odd though. 

Barbarians the Invasion: a cool game. Effectively a worker placement game that is card driven. This is pretty enjoyable. There is one balance issue with the starting gods and starting player order, but this is solved by just doing a reverse turn order draft of the gods. 

Empires Age of Discovery: There is allot to like about this game. Unfortunately it also feels very restrictive. For example, only one person can get a soldier (or two if you pay), meaning it is very hard to keep up in an arms race. For the length of the game, I am unlikely to be very forgiving of it. 

So that was three games I have played and my initial thoughts on them. 

BEST BOARD GAMES OF 2017 (THAT I HAVE PLAYED)

In this list, I will highlight the five best new-to-me board games of 2017. Sometime in the future I will go back and rank all the new to me games from 2017 from best to worse (particularly because there are several that are probably going to be added in when I play them a bit more, such as Gloomhaven). I will try to stick to 2017 releases and I have not played all the games, with the big list of games probably incorporating older games. So without further ado, here they are:

UNLOCK- An escape room in a box. There has been a few come out this year. I have not played them all, but the one I did play (Unlock) hooked me in. Space Cowboys have done a good job of app-integration, and the non-consumable nature means that you can sell this off and not have it break the bank (similar to TIME Stories). I would imagine EXIT, Escape Room in a Box, etc. would also be high up if I played them.   

CODENAMES: DUET- Codenames was a good game with a couple of small problems. However, after playing Duets, it makes the original Codenames feel lacklustre for me. Things like downtime and bending rules go away. The only downside is it loses support for large number of players (realistically, you wouldn't play Duets with more than 4 at most), but what you gain in the card deduction and mechanisms more than makes up for it. 

7TH CONTINENT- This game is a big sprawling world where you go around and have adventures. It is one of my most played games despite its length. Eventually, I guess world knowledge would reduce the thrill of exploration. However, I think I am still 40 or so hours away from even contemplating this. 

SWORD & SORCERY- A generic name with generic classes and generic enemies. This game proves you don't need to have oddball or unique themes to be a great game. Solid mechanisms that reward teamwork without feeling forced, meaningful choices and intriguing stories. make this a compelling experience When the Kickstarter stuff becomes available I am looking forward to getting more of this.

AVENTURIA ADVENTURE CARD GAME: THE DARK EYE- A great system where there is a bunch of cards in your deck that are all good, but you must sacrifice a couple of them each turn to get mana. I don't care too much for the duelling mode, but I like the adventure mode. It is quick to setup, teach and get stuck into while giving a very lite roleplaying adventure story leading up to it, its main strengths are its intriguing card play and how fast it is. Coming back to it doesn't feel like you have to relearn allot of rules. Once I get started on building experience and deck building I imagine this is going to climb.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

    PHOTOSYNTHESIS- An intriguing game that is a spatial timing puzzle around resource management and area denial with some gorgeous trees. Can be a touch too mean though. Also I haven't played it enough to see if it has long term appeal.

   BARENPARK- On the opposite end of the spectrum from Photosynthesis, a cool tile-laying game. However, there is a slight lack of interaction to truly make this stand-out compared to Patchwork. An expansion that increases the interaction (but without being mean) a bit would be really good.

  ASSAULT OF THE GIANTS- A very assymetric game that isn't quite as assymetric as first appears. Falls into the trap of railroaded strategies for each faction to be most effective and have a chance at winning. 

   TIME STORIES EXPEDITION ENDURANCE- Another TIME Stories by Space Cowboys before there disappointing last couple of scenarios (Lumen Fidei and Estrella Drive). This delivered on the promise of exploring a time period, playing around with time travel mechanics and having an engrossing adventure and puzzles for the first time. I wish things from this, Prophecy of Dragons and Under The Mask get incorporated bettter in the future instead of fake difficulty and a railroaded story. The only reason this missed out is because it is technically an expansion.
  

Board Game Review- Terra Mystica

  Terra Mystica is a territory control-style board game for 2 to 5 players. In it, you play as a race of magical beings who are attempting to terraform the planet through mystical means to suit there own habitats (i.e. Mermaids into water, Elves into forest). Hence the name Terra Mystica. In order to achieve this, the players have to manage the resources of money, divine priests, energy and buildings.

  Terra-Mystica is played out on a hexagonal board, each split into one of six different terrain types. Each race can then use various amounts of resources to terraform the landscape, build houses and then try to upgrade the buildings into churches, fortresses and the like.

 What actions you can do during your turn governed by how many of all the different types of resources you have at your disposal. There is never enough resources to do everything that you want to do. It makes it imperative to plan out what you want to try to do and then work towards getting the resources you need to complete this strategy. This is both the greatest strength and biggest weakness of the game. There are so many different resources to manage and keep track of that the game can often slow down just so each player can fully assess their options.

 There is also no direct way to interact with other players. The most you can do is try to spoil their plans by getting resources before them. There is no trading of resources between players or a way to directly attack them. This gives the player interactions a very negative feeling as opposed to any feeling of positive satisfaction or gain between the players.

Another problem is the downtime between turns. With no direct ways to interact between players and some turns taking a long time due to the amount that you need to keep track of, it is very easy to lose interest when it isn't your turn. This is worsened when you can't do many actions compared to other players (due to lack of resources) so you are often left just waiting.

 Overall, Terra-Mystica is a game with allot of potential. I do have to mention that the board and all the components look stunning and the theme is nicely woven into the game. However, for too many games I was struggling to stay interested except for the brief time that it was my turn. It may work better with only 2 or 3 players, which I haven't tried yet, but that may run into the problem of no interaction between players as the territories are too spread out. With all the competition with better territory and resource management games, I would give this a miss.

 1.5 out of 5 mystical waffle landscapes.