Alison Brennan: Game Snapshots – 2025 (Part 4)

To paraphrase some Facebook repartee I had with a friend recently, there’s a lot of undiagnosed Monopoly trauma out there in our communities folks so, here we are, helping save the world one game at a time.

New-to-me games played recently include …

DUNGEON RUMMY (2024): Rank 18534, Rating N/a

A cardy co-op that played better in my mind than in practice and which will almost certainly play better physically than the it-takes-an-hour-longer implementation at BGA. Each player gets a deck of 2-Ace cards in their own colour. You’re building sets and runs (ie rummy) but the catch (and the main conceit) is that cards in sets must be in different colours and you can never have two cards of the same colour next to each other in a run. You can add cards to everyone’s play area and you get three free moves of cards between areas. Knowing nothing about the other hands, you simply do what you think is best given the cards in your hand and what’s required to beat the monster, ignore any sucked-in table-talking breaths (and angsty “what are we allowed to say/imply” verbals), and … well, there’s very little co-op really and play is rather straight-forward. Try to extend melds to their natural end-point and then discard them to inflict damage on the monster. Kill 3 of those plus the boss, and you win.

Rating: 5

GNOME HOLLOW (2024): Rank 4205, Rating 7.0

Play 2 tiles from a display of 8 to form circular paths, similar to Fairy Trails/Tantrix, and then either reserve an incomplete path to score later, or trade in the mushrooms you’ve collected so far (as shown on the paths you’ve completed so far).Which sounds Carcassonne-y type of decent in theory but in practice had massive downtime – you couldn’t plan ahead much given the tile turnover in the display, and processing 8 potential tiles for path angles and desired mushrooms and determining a best/satisfactory pair takes time unless you’re prepared to throw fairy dust to the wind.

Rating: 6

RISE TO NOBILITY (2018): Rank 2136, Rating 7.0

I was keen to give this a go – I like managing the fates thrown at you by dice and I always wanted to be a princess, right? Right! The action spots are restricted by dice pips (the best spots require the higher values) but the total dice pips you can play each turn is restricted by your reputation. First point of order obviously is to increase that. Second is to get your economy going. You must garner resources, spend them on settler cards to get workers, deploy workers to the board for gold, build buildings using workers and gold to get points. That’s it, one strategy. And if you’re 3rd player and get all high rolls and the reputation spots are taken by the time it’s your first turn, well you’re only getting one action and you’re already a full round or two behind the other players and, because everyone’s executing the same strategy and needs the same spots, there’s no catching up. Adding to my dismay is that spots keep getting taken and your upcoming actions continually need revision and therefore turns can be non-short. With ~35 actions per player our 4p game took 3 hours … and it takes 6 players. Princess, schmincess, never again.

Rating: 5

RISE AND FALL (2024): Rank 4487, Rating 8.0 – Boelinger

Firstly I loved the map construction using overlaying tiles to represent contoured terrain, which then translated into a used-defined area-control map. Usually area-control doesn’t do it for me but the piece rules won me over. You have 6 different types of piece to place on the board, each with different terrain restrictions, revenue ability, transformation ability, etc. The clever bit is that each piece has a card you must play to trigger all of that piece. If you have all 6 types in play, you’ll only play each type once every 6 turns before you cycle your cards. If you have just 2 types in play you can trigger them every 2 turns, but that’s not sustainable because each time a player gets all of one type on the board (that hasn’t been maxed before), everyone loses a card. If it’s your last card and you don’t have money, you’re eliminated. Which sounds harsh but it’s “easily” avoided by maintaining a strong focus on income (to buy those cards back). But that comes at a cost of doing other things. There’s a lot to think about, a lot to learn, and it plays more quickly than I anticipated as well.  A preview from the KS campaign

Rating: 8

RIVER VALLEY GLASSWORKS (2024): Rank 2373, Rating 7.1

Add a token to an allowed river space (based on the token’s shape) to collect all the tokens in an adjacent space, trying to fill your warehouse for points for completed rows (a row must contain tokens of different colours) and completed columns (each column can only contain tokens of one colour). Any token you can’t fit (there are more colours than columns) is minus points. There’s minimal look-ahead due to constant change, resulting in downtime, and you’re very subject to fate. Try and keep flexibility in what spaces you can go for and hope for the best. It’s ok, mainly because it finishes appropriately quickly.

Rating: 6

SPLITTER (2021): Rank 6867, Rating 6.4

As simple a roll-and-write as it gets. No bonuses, no chains, just write in two numbers. The catch is they must be written in mirrored spots on your sheet. A 1 scores 1 pt if it doesn’t touch another 1, a pair of 2’s scores 2 if it doesn’t touch any other 2’s, …, and a group of six 6’s scores 6 if it doesn’t touch any other 6s. Sounds easy but those pesky dice rarely go how you’d love them so there are constant decisions, made trickier trying to maximise those extra-score spots. The novelty will wear off due to its simplicity but it’ll hit the table for a while until then.

Rating: 7

STONESPINE ARCHITECTS (2024): Rank 2173, Rating 7.6

In each of the 4 rounds you’ll be drafting cards 7 Wonders style and playing each chosen card in one of the four slots in the next row of your dungeon. (Because dungeons are built in rows!) You want cards that extend your path from the entrance and towards the exit, that give you lots of gold (to buy monsters, traps and secret passages), that fulfil the requirements of your personal blueprint, and that advance you in the common goal and your personal goals. Which is quite the challenge, decent fun, and features rather excessive bemoaning that each and every card didn’t do all of the above. Occasionally you get miracle cards but otherwise its tough choices for what’s an engaging mid-weight Euro that is surprisingly good (in spite of the box artwork). Physically it’s probably a 7 but virtually (where the scoring is done for you) makes for a go-to 8 with a ton of replay so let’s go there.  A full review here

Rating: 8

THE STRING RAILWAY COLLECTION (2024): Rank N/a, Rating 7.5

I’ve only played the base game (I believe), where you get 5 turns – put out a card (representing a station, worth varying points for connecting first, second, etc, usually with restrictions on how many people can score it) and then place one of your strings on the table, expanding your string network outwards to touch as many stations and score their points as possible, losing a point for each string you cross (which can be worth it). It was too simple and had too few turns to engage me, but it did generate smiles at how neat the concept was and how pretty the table was by the end.

Rating: 6

Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:

Alan How:

I’ve really enjoyed Rise and Fall. The map creation ensures a different game to puzzle through. Christophe Berlinger is one of my favourite designers and it is one of his signature styles to make games that are different from many other designers.

I learnt of River Valley Glassworks from BGA and was captivated by its simplicity and scoring system that had Azul like similarities. So I backed the Kickstarter and am delighted by the physical game as much as the virtual version.

Stonespine Architects is another puzzle type game to solve in a roll and write style. You focus on your own dungeon but the interaction comes from competing for the purchase of better elements to fill the dungeon.