Patrick Brennan: Game Snapshots – 2024 (Part 1)

While the gaming has never stopped over the last year, there’s been a few things going on (all good) in my life that reduced time and motivation for writing about gaming. I’ve recently finished up at work though so, with time on my hands, I thought I’d re-boot my modest contribution to the hobby.

OK i’ve been stuck on pics from Australia for awhile, but let’s go with a different theme for 2024 recaps from Patrick…

There’s a little catching up to do but here’s where we left off.

BOONLAKE (2021): Rank 458, Rating 7.7 – Pfister

The game centres around the revolving choice of 7 actions which allow you to do the normal Euro things like gather cards, settle land, build buildings etc. The longer it’s been since an action’s been taken, the more attractive the game makes it. Everyone gets to do something on an action which keeps things constantly ticking over, sometimes too fast if anything because card choices can be hard and require thought. It’s a massive rules teach with a lot of iconography which is not always intuitive, and doing well unfortunately requires you to understand all the special things you can buy to build a strategy around which takes even longer. So there’s upside if I could get it to the table again but the barrier to entry is just so high.

Rating: 7

CANVAS (2021): Rank 522, Rating 7.3

This takes Mystic Vale’s overlay mechanic and applies it to a card drafting icon collection affair. You get 3 shots at building a 3-overlay card to meet the scoring rules for this game. The problem is everyone has the same scoring conditions and everyone wants the same icons, which means everyone wants the same cards with those icons. So you hope to get lucky that something is left in the draft that’s affordable and useful on your turn otherwise you just have to make the best of what’s left. The puzzle of working out the best combination of overlays for each scoring shot is decent enough though, if potentially AP inducing. I suspect the cool paintings that the overlays create may somewhat explain the high BGG rating.

Rating: 6

CASTELLUM: MAASTRICHT (2018): Rank 10559, Rating 6.7

The aim is to build columns of cards that will each have a high enough strength to beat the enemy card assigned to it at the end of each of the 4 rounds. You use your workers to gain resources and buy cards to place in your columns. Then each player gets enemy cards of varying values to place against either their own column (a low strength one for instance) or another player’s column (to trigger a loss for them). Which makes it more king-makery than I prefer and, while the game-play was otherwise fine in your usual Euro-y way, it didn’t provide too much of interest to call me back.

Rating: 6

JOHN COMPANY (2022): Rank 2029, Rating 7.4 – Wehrle

Players start with and then compete to hold on to a number of asymmetric roles that all have different responsibilities in managing the “company” with different means of earning VPs. You’ll also move between wanting to keep the company healthy and profitable, and driving it into the ground depending on your share investment levels. It’s an interesting challenge trying to absorb all the interweaving aspects and working out how to position yourself for best effect, but then it turns out that the game is Euro-trash – fates are often decided by the roll of the dice and, with only 5 (long) rounds in the game, it only takes one bad result to send your ship adrift. Usually such games feature quick turns and a fun theme so you have fun regardless of the result, but the long turns and dry-as-dust theme here does the game no favours.

Rating: 5

KANBAN EV (2020): Rank 47, Rating 8.4 – Lacerda

Same comment as the original Kanban, with more surety though that I don’t need to play further: This game feels difficult to grok after a single play, let alone what one might think of its long term replayability. It’s not so much too many moving parts, but the means to success seems to rely on non-thematic game-play. You’re in a car factory, but the aim is not necessarily to generate cars … you might instead be aiming to earn points by collecting blueprints and converting them into designs, or by activating the assembly line to move cars to the test track, or by acquiring cars from the test track, or by investing in car parts. Thematically, it just seems a too-hard-to-explain mess, and it makes for a wandering we’re-not-playing-to-win, just-to-understand-it type of first game which is unsatisfying. There’s some sense of desire to play again with experienced hands to see if the gameplay evolves into an interestingly competitive grind-out of VPs where the interlocking mechanisms shine and the decisions are delicious. Which may well be the case, and it offers that promise as the action selection mechanism is quite cool (and replay-worthy). But the other part of me sees the game-play as too much hard work and not enough “fun”, and the game requiring too heavy a time investment for any potential (and uncertain) reward, and therefore wants to walk away.

Rating: 6

QUEENSLAND (2016): Rank 7062, Rating 7.0

A brain-burny Carcassonne-inspired game. Each player builds their own tile tableau and you now pick a tile from the draft. Its position in the draft dictates how many toad meeples you must place on that tile and after you place the tile, the arrows on the tile indicate the direction and number of tiles all your toads move. If you can get exactly 5 onto a Pond tile, they’re removed and score. But every tile with toads on it at the end is removed which can be rather devastating to your score (which is the size of your largest completed area in each terrain type). Each turn is quite the challenge: balancing toad numbers vs the terrain configuration vs the arrow direction. Thankfully there are only 3 tiles in the draft so it doesn’t get too foul but it’s definitely a step up from Carcassonne. It may not quite be “beautiful one day, perfect the next”, but it’s worth visiting.

Rating: 7

QWINTO (2015): Rank 1375, Rating 7.0

What a fun little dice game. Choose what combination of dice colours to roll, and each player can apply the sum in any of those colour’s rows. You can place numbers anywhere as long as, by the end, numbers in each row are ascending and numbers in each column are different. You max your score by completing two rows and getting big numbers in the 5 columns that score. It’s very simple but it creates a lovely atmosphere of egging people on, good-natured cursing, laughing along, and there are nice decisions on when to go with the crowd, when to forge out on your own, how much risk to wear on your own rolls (the penalty is steep if you can’t place the resultant number), when to follow, when not. A top end 15-minute dice filler.

Rating: 8

SAGANI (2020): Rank 1715, Rating 7.1 – Rosenberg

In the Habitats family. Choose tiles from the draft each round, place in your tableau, aiming to get the coloured arrows on each tile pointing to tiles in those colours to score the tile. You’ll put yourself in contention if you max the number of times you can score the reverse direction as well. Which requires serious think-time planning out all the possible rotations and placement options for the tiles left you. For replay, the height of the challenge needed to overcome its abstract nature and the killer downtime (especially at 4p) but it couldn’t do so for me.  (Full review here)

Rating: 6

Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:

Mark Jackson: I’m actually playing Boonlake: Artifacts (base game with expansion) solo right now… I’m not sure exactly why it’s hooked me in, but Boonlake has managed to stay in the collection when other similar games have departed. Patrick’s right – it’s a cool game with a pretty serious rules barrier to entry.

Larry:  Welcome back, Patrick!  Some interesting games here and our opinions co-incide about them.

Boonlake – I’ve enjoyed this, but yes, the teach is tough and it didn’t seem to have the staying power of Pfister’s best games.  Still, it’s a quality design and I’d be happy to play it again.

Kanban – Patrick provides the money quote:  “It’s not so much too many moving parts, but the means to success seems to rely on non-thematic game-play. You’re in a car factory, but the aim is not necessarily to generate cars.”  This is pretty much how I feel about every Lacerda game I’ve played and why I don’t play his stuff anymore.  They all seem to be about mastering the side actions that don’t have much to do with the main activity and figuring all this out just doesn’t do it for me.

Qwinto – Terrific filler.  For me, this is Gamer Qwixx.  Qwixx is a decent time filler which I’ll play if the group wants to, but I’m much happier if Qwinto is chosen.  And it’s still a pretty easy game to teach.  Really good and a game that should be better known, IMO.

Dale: Wow a full recap with a bunch of games I mostly haven’t played.  Boonlake has only made the table here in a 2p game, and it was fine at that count.  But umm, man, I don’t know if I could make it through a longer game.  And, if I hadn’t had a great rules explanation, the game wouldn’t have gone as well as it did…  The link to my Sagani review is above.  Nice to have you back in the fold, Patrick.  I’ll start hunting for more pics to head your columns now :)