 December 2024 Games I played for the first time this month, from worst to best, along with my ratings and comments. |
 Kelp: Shark vs. Octopus – 5/10 Sometime in the early 2000’s, I acquired a free copy of N.Y. Chase, a hidden movement in the vein of Scotland Yard. Despite wanting to play as many new games as I could, after reading the rules, I just couldn’t psych myself up to teach it to anyone. At the time, I found this inexplicable. But a couple decades later, it’s become something of a trend. With rare exceptions (Captain Sonar), these hidden movement games just don’t seem to grab me. The best reason I can articulate has something to do with the frustration that arises when your careful logical deductions are disrupted by randomness. “I’ve perfectly solved it! I know just where you are!” And the game coldly responds, “Well done, now play rock-paper-scissors to see if you win.” In Kelp: Shark vs Octopus, this is no exaggeration. Rock-paper-scissors, performed with three cards per person, is exactly how combat resolution is done when the Shark player finds the Octopus player. Of course the components are lovely. Chunky Mahjong-style tiles compliment color-coordinated dice. A plastic shark figure silently patrols the lavishly-illustrated board. The cards are also illustrated well, portraying spurts of ink and flashes of teeth in an energetic, almost comic-book style. “I’ve got you cornered again!” And the game coldly responds, “Well done, let’s leave this one up to a coin toss.” That’s right. Upon the second encounter, it becomes a 50/50 shot instead. The final encounter, if it gets to that point, will reduce the Octopus’s chances of escape to nil. Does this system feel rewarding, to either player? But the Octopus player has more to do than just hide. By moving a little riskier, the Octopus can devour various tiny sea creatures throughout the board. Devour all four and win, an alternate victory condition to simply running out the clock until the Shark is exhausted. Balancing this risk is key to success. For the Shark player’s part, careful observation of the opponent’s tells will lead to success. A rookie Octopus player will often clumsily give away everything. You’re not as clever as you think, my eight-legged friend. Ignore my rating, you lovers of hidden movement. If you want a lighter, faster-playing Mind MGMT, Kelp is here for you. If you think Specter Ops would be better as a 1 vs. 1 game, spend some time here in the briny deep. But I’m going to sail on by. |
 Vindication – 6/10 Sometimes, you want to make a product that appeals to multiple demographics. Pixar is known for this, producing movies that appeal to both adults and children by hitting on timeless emotions that affect people of all ages. Others have failed in this endeavor; Star Wars Episode I is my go-to example here, as it pairs esoteric trade disputes with fart and poop jokes. What does all that have to do with Vindication? Well, it’s a euro cube-pusher that cloaks itself in the trappings of an adventure game, with an enormous box, plastic minis, and a map full of hexes to explore. And my inclination after a single play is that it’s closer to Jar-Jar Binks than Buzz Lightyear. Your turn is simple. You move, activate an adjacent tile, and gain some cubes, in any order. Cubes will be used to acquire cards that grant extra abilities as well as points. Many tiles also grant cubes. Some can increase your movement speed, or allow you to upgrade your cubes to perform various special actions. The tiles will be fully explored quite early on in the course of the game. Moreover, certain tiles may fit the bonus goals of some players more than others, and getting to these first is a matter of pure chance. With the board established, players can seek to control and then steal control of the tiles from other players, which grants bonus points but has no other effect. It’s tempting to think that a larger board with more tiles or a randomized setup with all kinds of tiles could lead to more interesting game states. But there are so many tiles that absolutely must be included in the game for it to function that only a handful can really be swapped out, despite a large variety of options in that regard. It’s not all bad, however, not by a long shot. This abstract optimization puzzle has its merits and the variety injected by the cards you purchase is quite interesting. The way in which you upgrade your cubes is also simple yet strategically dense. I think if the game were a bit more streamlined in terms of box size, price point, and additional rules options, it would probably fare better in my estimation. 2025 will see a reimplementation of this game as Vestige, and I’m keeping an eye on it to see if this system can be leveraged into a cleaner, more thematic design. |
 Wandering Towers – 7/10 The success of Harry Potter really solidified the idea in the public consciousness that wizards need to take tests at school. Prior to that, they certainly did their reading from dusty tomes, but usually did so locked in imposing citadels while growing big beards. Wandering Towers is themed in this more modern way, with fresh-faced youths scurrying about, making potions and trying not to be late for class. Class, in this case, takes place in a black tower, into which you will race to deposit your wizard meeples before the other players can do so. Movement is performed by playing movement cards from your hand, two per turn. Some movement cards simply move your wizard a certain number of spaces, but others will move the towers themselves, along with any wizards atop them. Not only do you have to get all your wizard meeples into the tower to win, you also need to fill all of your potion bottles. You get to fill a potion bottle anytime you pop a tower overtop of a meeple, which is something you’d like to do to your opponents to prevent them from moving anyway. As the game progresses, these single tower sections tend to grow taller and taller, only shrinking again as people need to break them up to free their trapped wizards. These potion bottles, once filled, can also be used to activate some special abilities. Each game will only have two of these from a selection of eight possibilities, adding some replayability and variety to the mix. There are a lot of lightweight, 30-minute games with table appeal out there. And Wandering Towers is certainly one of those games, making it perhaps inessential. But it really does strike just the right tone with its pairing of abstract strategy with card and dice randomness. |
 Fishing – 7/10 The trick-taking renaissance continues with an entry from the illustrious Friedemann Friese. And all the standard mechanics are here: following suit, trump cards, trying to take as many tricks as possible, etc. The twist here is that cards you take in tricks become your hand for the next round. While it’s great to get points by leading your unbeatably high card, everyone will doubtless throw off their lowest possible cards to you in that case, making your hand much worse next time. Maybe you should lead low, so no one wants to take the trick at all. It’s a tough balance. Players who score worse will naturally take fewer cards. A person who didn’t win any tricks in the first round won’t even have a deck from which to draw their new hand. In cases where that is true, players supplement their hands from a deck of special cards, which are always better than any of the cards in the game so far. For instance, the starting hands have no trump at all and the highest card in each suit is a 10. Trump cards enter the game from this special deck, as do 11s, 12s, 13s, and so on. Not only that, but the deeper into the deck you go, the better the cards get, meaning this pattern continues throughout the whole game. You need to take tricks to win, but you only want to take very useful cards in those tricks, but maybe you don’t really want any tricks at all so you can draw from the special deck, but if you don’t get any tricks you won’t get any points… and so on. My sense after just a couple plays is that there is some depth of tactical play that I’m not quite grasping. Certainly you need to manage the balance of cards you are taking, but there is a chaotic undertone, hinting at maybe more luck than is ideal. If fun is the priority, it’s definitely here, but I’m also hoping to uncover some new patterns and gambits as my plays continue. |
 Lisboa – 8/10 In 1755, the city of Lisbon, Portugal (called Lisboa by its residents) suffered a devastating earthquake, which created a devastating tsunami, and then devastating fires which burned for days. It’s time to rebuild, and you’re in charge. You’ll need to clear the rubble, fires, and floodwaters in order to build new shops and public buildings. You’ll also want to restart the economy by producing goods, building trade ships and shipping goods, and, most importantly, collecting wigs. What? That’s right. Apparently wigs were a real sign of wealth in this time and place and so that is how the victory points are represented. In a sense, the turn structure is quite simple: you play a card from your hand of five, do what it says, then draw a replacement card. But describing the game this way is almost comically reductionist. Each card has two different ways it can be played in two different locations, for a total of four possibilities. A card played to the first location will grant you the bonus of the card, then allow you to take up to two of seven possible actions, each requiring resource payments of various kinds. A card played to the second location requires a totally different payment type and then will grant one of four completely different actions than the aforementioned seven or else perform yet another action as dictated by the card itself. And each individual action can require carrying out as many as seven sequential steps. Oh, and some cases, other players can also piggyback onto the action you’ve chosen. Fortunately, the player aids are extremely helpful in this regard. Each player receives their own, fully eight-pages, color-printed and stapled into a booklet. They even include a section that is a real boon to new players, including answers to questions like “How can I get more money?” and “When do I have to spend influence?” So many games of this type have clearly defined goals, but leave players baffled on how to accomplish them. That’s not the case here, to its credit. But let’s be clear, as useful and necessary as these player aids are, they exceed the length of the complete rules for many other board games. Games like Lisboa should probably come with a warning label. This is a triple-black-diamond in terms of rules complexity, mandating at least an hour of teaching. If you dropped your jaw or burst out in incredulous laughter at that statement, you’ll get no judgment from me; this game is clearly not for everyone. And yet, the various sections of the game are so seamlessly-integrated and elegantly-designed that there is no way to remove even a small portion without lessening the experience. This integration is also what makes the teaching process so challenging: every mechanic is so interconnected that there is no good place to start. Lisboa is a game that you should play regularly, or not at all. With the time invested into learning it, it’s quite rewarding with lots of paths to explore and a ton of strategic depth. But your gaming life won’t be any less rich if you decide to skip this one. |
 Fromage – 8/10 There is always a place in my heart for another 60-minute mid-weight euro, and this one even has cheese! In Fromage, players will compete to become the best cheesemaker in France. Fromage is a worker-placement game, but you’ll only ever have three workers to use. This small quantity demands strong tactical planning, but there’s another wrinkle as well: you’ll get more value if you leave a worker on the board for a longer period of time. Each of your three workers is also a different color, and some spaces require that color of worker to be used. So you’ll need to plan at least a few turns ahead to have any hope of success. But the centerpiece of the components is also the centerpiece of the game. The board is divided into four sections which form a wheel. You can only place workers on the section of the board that is currently in front of you, and the board then rotates after each turn. This means you’ll constantly be looking ahead trying to figure out what options you’ll be giving up in the future if you take certain choices now. As an added bonus, this also means all players can take their turns simultaneously, without blocking one another, which engenders crisp, snappy turns. On top of this, you’ll also be managing your own farm board, purchasing cattle and buildings that generate the resources you need to maximize the value of your actions. It might sound like a lot, but it’s very intuitive when it’s all laid out in front of you. I’m really looking forward to playing this one again, as well as to the forthcoming sequel, Formaggio, in 2026. |
 A highly recommended game that I have most certainly played prior to this month, probably many times.  Apiary – 9/10 So here’s the pitch: it’s Planet of the Apes, except bees. And the bees grew really big. And the bees discovered interstellar travel. Giant Space Bees in Outer Space. Are you sold yet? In contrast to this peculiar theme, Apiary is mostly just a typical worker-placement engine-builder. But the execution really elevates it above the competition. On your turn, you will place one of your worker bees on a location and perform the action there. But this bee doesn’t block the location from other players. In fact, you are often hoping an opponent will go there too and displace your worker bee, because when this occurs, your bee gets upgraded to a higher level. Certain actions get better when performed with higher-level bees and some can only be performed by bees that have achieved a certain threshold. Despite these limitations, Apiary always feels like a buffet of delicious choices from which you may only select one item each trip (taking a clean plate each time, natch). Restrictions are more about sequencing your actions and building your engine than they are about blocking other players. Couple this with the additional strategic decision about how often to skip a turn to recall all your worker bees, upgrading them and farming resources in the process, and you’ve got some lovely choices to make. Apiary is far from a solvable puzzle, injecting a good deal of variety (read: randomness) into the available actions. For example, while you always have the option to use a worker to get a farming tile, each tile itself is different and your favorite one may be buried at the bottom of the draw pile for the whole game. This type of variability not only leads to sessions that play out differently each time, it also requires tactical adaptability instead of mere strategic scripting. This design philosophy is exactly in my wheelhouse. Apiary is a well-produced middleweight euro that avoids the common pitfalls of its brethren in the same niche. Far from being a stuffy cube-pusher about trading in the Mediterranean, it offers a charmingly bizarre theme overlaid atop elegant and varied mechanics. Come see what all the buzz is about. |
