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Times Played: 2 times to three wins and a handful of random plays (Not played Solo)
During World War II, the Germans were using the Enigma Cipher Machines to communicate in a way that only they, the ones with the Enigma Machines, would understand. Enter a group of code breakers, who hole up in an old Victorian Mansion who are trying to break the Enigma Code while in a Mansion that seems to evolve and change all the time. Everyone has their goals, all of them are surely good, right?
In Enigma Beyond Code, up to five players will be taking turns looking into rooms to discover where they are in the mansion, and taking actions based on where they are. This is all in an attempt to gain the knowledge that your role needs in order to end the game. Be careful though, use too much time and chaos begins to descend on the players and the mansion.
Schotten Totten is a classic Reiner Knizia 2-player “suits and numbers” card game that debuted way back in 1999. A number of OGers are big fans of the game. Recently, IELLO announced that they would be releasing the game’s sequel, Schotten Totten 2, in time for Essen. As a result, the new game found its way onto the Spiel Want Lists of quite a few of us. The online rules were just posted, so I thought it would be a good idea to summarize them and explain how they differed from the original game, for all those Knizia fans out there.
The basics of the game remain the same. Two players are trying to place the highest ranking melds at various locations on the table. After that, though, everything is pretty much different.
To start off, the new design (which I will refer to as ST2) is an asymmetrical game. One player is the Attacker, who is trying to conquer a castle via a siege. The other player is the Defender, whose job is to hold off that siege. (In the game, these roles are represented by figures of a Cook and a Chicken, respectively, which is pretty bizarre, but still an improvement on the insulting stereotypes of Scotsmen from the original Schotten Totten, so I guess we shouldn’t complain.)
There is a deck of 60 Siege cards, consisting of five suits (colors), with ranks from 0 to 11. There are also 7 Wall tiles, which are laid out between the players at the start of the game. Finally, there are three Boiling Oil tokens, which are given to the Defender. Each player starts with a hand of 6 Siege cards.
As in the original game, each player’s turn consists of playing a card to their side of one of the Wall tiles, and drawing a card to replenish their hand back to 6. However, unlike the stones in Schotten Totten, the Walls in ST2 are all different. The size of melds needed to claim the Wall varies from 2 to 4 cards. In addition, some of the Walls require specific types of melds—at some, you can only play Straights; at others, only Flushes; at still others, only n-of-a-kind melds. For these Walls, if a meld isn’t of the specified type, then it can only win if the opposing meld also doesn’t qualify, in which case you see which meld has the higher sum of cards. For the Walls with no restrictions, the rank of the melds is the same as in the original game: straight flush, n-of-a-kind, flush, straight, other.
Another difference is that only the Attacker can claim a Wall tile. If she can show that her meld at the Wall is either higher than the Defender’s meld, or that it cannot be beaten, no matter what active cards the Defender plays, then she damages the Wall tile, by flipping it over. The cards on both sides of the Wall are discarded and both players can once again play cards at it. The damaged side of the Wall may show a different type of meld that has to be played there.
The biggest change in the game comes from the special ability each player has. At the beginning of every turn, the Attacker has the option of Retreating. If she does so, she can discard all of the cards she has played from any of the Walls she wishes. Since the Defender has no such ability, the idea is that if the Defender is in an advantageous position at a Wall (because you, the Attacker, played some low ranking cards there), you can start over by scrapping your cards there. This, of course, is completely different than the original game, where the whole point was to delay committing to a stone for as long as possible. In ST2, for the Attacker at least, there is no final commitment and you can start over (in theory) as often as you like.
The Defender also has a trick up his sleeve. At the beginning of his turn, he can play a Burning Oil token on a Wall and force the Attacker to discard the card closest to the Wall (which is the earliest card she played there). This can only be done once per turn and the Defender only has the three Oil tokens for the whole game, but this is obviously a way to take down even the strongest of positions.
There’s one other quirky rule. If a 0 card is played at a Wall when there’s an 11 of the same color on the opposite side, both cards are discarded. The Attacker doesn’t have to take this possibility into account (nor the possibility of a Oil token being played) when showing that her meld at a Wall cannot be beaten.
There are two ways in which the Attacker can win. Either she damages 4 Wall tiles or she damages the same Wall tile for a second time. The Defender wins by keeping these from happening. If the last card of the deck is drawn, the Attacker gets one more turn to try to win. If he doesn’t succeed, the Defender wins.
ST2 also comes with a built-in variant that is reminiscent of Battle Line, the souped up version of ST that is also 20 years old. The new game comes with 11 Tactics cards. These are similar to the Tactics cards from Battle Line. If the players want to use the variant, the Tactics cards are shuffled to make their own deck and each player has a 7 card hand. When drawing, the players have their choice of which deck to draw from. Either a Siege card or a Tactics card can be played on your turn, but the total number of Tactics cards you’ve played can only exceed the number your opponent has played by one. All of these rules are the same as in Battle Line and the specific Tactics cards are similar to the ones in the older game as well.
So there you have it. Two games that share a name and some basic concepts, but which appear to have very different gameplay. I’m definitely looking forward to trying this out and I’m sure many a Knizia lover feels the same way!
So normally a lot of us here at Opinionated Gamers would be writing about traveling to Essen and getting our shopping and demos done. Since Spiel.Digital is new I thought maybe a help list might be needed.
The first thing I noted is it’s hard to actually find the registration page. Here is a link https://bit.ly/37qz5rl that I hope works. You’ll then receive a confirmation email. You also need to be able to access Tabletopia, BoardGameArena and Discord if you want to play games. Of course awesome reviews from Opinionated gamers and others can found as well discussion with designers and publishers.
As an added bonus, Registered visitors will find the premium accounts for Tabletopia and BGA via their SPIEL.digital user accounts – this means that you can play all the games for free during the days of SPIEL.digital!
Some publishers like CGE, Heidlbar and Horrible Guild have a separate free sign up https://ti.to/3d-booth/spiel2020 and again you will need Discord.
Bezier seems to be running everything via their Discord server and Meetup.
Bezier Games
Louisville, TN 16Players
This is a group for scheduling and organizing digital demo tables for Bezier Games. We will utilize this for conventions, as well as weekly streaming. We utilize Tabletopia, a…
Here are the games that I would likely have bought if I was at actually at Essen. They are in no particular order.
Cloud Age: I have yet to meet a Pfister game I don’t like, so seeing his name immediately puts a game on my radar. This one has engine building and deck building, two mechanisms that I especially enjoy, so I am really looking forward to this one.
Monster Expedition:I am always on the lookout for quality games that can be played in a short amount of time; it used to be to serve as a filler at game day and is not for when we have 45 minutes before dinner and want to play something. This is Pfister, so that’s a plus, and it sounds like Can’t Stop with some monsters added, so I am in.
Monasterium: They had me at “innovative dice mechanism”, and it’s from dlp, a publisher I have generally enjoyed. The theme of the game sounds interesting, and I am curious to see the dice mechanism. I’ve only played one other game by the designer – Pagoda – and I thought it was a very interesting design, so that adds to my interest.
Bonfire: Feld is somewhat hit or miss for me, but the hits are great and the misses are never painful, so he is generally a must-try for me. I like the sound of the puzzle aspect for this one.
Castles of Tuscany: I love Castles of Burgundy (a Feld hit for me), so I’m interested to see how this one differs.
Influentia: I am a big fan of trick-taking games and am always on the lookout for new or innovative games. This one sounds interesting – trick taking with card activations. I am not sure when I’ll be able to get this to the table, since it is a 3-4 player game, but I am still interested.
Faiym: I am intrigued by the idea that you play your cards, and then you play them again in reverse order, and it’s an engine-builder by the designer of one of my favorite engine-builders, Power Grid, so this immediately landed on my list.
Orleans Stories 3 and 4: I really enjoyed Orleans Stories 1 and 2, but it hasn’t been hitting the table since the novelty has worn off, even though the stories are definitely replayable. I look forward to seeing what the new stories bring.
Adventure Game; Grand Hotel Abbadon: This one sounds like an interesting game experience to me. Cooperatively explore and solve a mystery with your fellow players, I like that it combines elements of a puzzle hunt and an escape room, and I have a particular group of friends I think this would be especially fun with.
