The Polish-based Lucky Duck Games was out in full force with several good looking titles in constant play. The most colorful was probably Potions of Azerland where players make potions to sell, or to drink themselves for other benefits. Players bid for priority in five actions at once. The actions then proceed in order with high bidders getting a better benefit. In the worker-placement Critter Kitchen, players are again gathering ingredients, this time to make different food courses to satisfy the critics and score points. Temple Code is a quick card-based game of group Mastermind as players use uniquely designed cards to try and deduce their personal 3-symbol code. Finally, We’re Sinking! had the loudest portion of the booth where players were welcome to help each other save their boat while fighting off enemies. Of course, everyone is also a pirate so perhaps they could spare a moment to pick up some personal loot. Whoever has the most loot wins… unless the ship sinks, then the player who helped the most wins.

Potions of Azerland

Potions of Azerland has players gathering the ingredients for potions to make and sell to waiting customers. But wait! Sometimes drinking your own potions will give you the edge you need to get ahead of your competition. Players have to juggle collecting, brewing, selling, and even upgrading their potions as they move through the game.

Each round, players will secretly bid for a series of five actions. The high bid for each action gets the best use of that action. It is essentially five auctions occurring simultaneously. The various actions are then resolved in order, everyone performing the first action, then everyone the second, etc…

The first action (Forage) gives players dice to roll to produce ingredients. Each successive player gets one less dice to roll. The Study action is a bit of a tech tree, allowing players to make upgrades to one of the three main types of potions – Speed, Love, and Intelligence. The upgrades provide points but also boost the abilities of the potions when used.

Next is the market where players can buy cards with gold they’ve earned. It’s first-come first-served in that each player, in order, can buy as many cards as they can afford. The cards are not replenished until the next round.

After the market round is the brewing phase. Players turn in ingredients to make their potions, with higher priority players getting more potions brewed. Finally, the fulfill phase has players turning in their potions to customers scoring points and earning other benefits. These include instant, ongoing, and/or end-of-game bonuses.) As before, selling is first-come first-served. The buyers for the next round are always visible, so players can plan one round ahead when gathering ingredients and making potions.

Players can drink their own potions, just before revealing any new tiles. Each of the three potions give different benefits, with higher level potions giving better benefits. Speed potions can give a bidding advantage (you get a “0” bid) as well as mess with the market and resource areas. Love potions mess around with the customers and may give bonuses to fulfillments. They can even be drunk to force all the other players to pay you a dollar. (I guess you’re just too sexxy…) Intelligence potions let you add more reagents (I think), but may also let you roll the “big die” full of fun bonuses. Improving your potions can also grant benefits (even before you drink any) with a special bonus you get after researching to the first level.

Critter Kitchen

Critter Kitchen is a worker placement game for 1-5 players. Players simultaneously decide where they want to send their chefs to locations to pick up ingredients to make dishes for hungry animal customers.

The worker location tableau has a truck, several shops, a special mystery-type shop, and a place to pick up a sous-chef (I mean “zoos-chef”.) Once the chefs are all sent out, the locations activate in a left to right order.

Players have a handy screen to keep their recipe fixins hidden while they work, and it acts as a great reference chart for how to score points.

Players are trying to collect sets of ingredients to create various courses. Every ingredient has a point value. Special items include Soup – which can substitute for any ingredient and spices – which double the value of one ingredient.

Every game has a special critic (chosen at random) that affects the game in some way. At the end of the game, players serve them a final multi-course meal. For example, in the final meal the mouse-critic will double the value of cheese. The game critic is picky about ingredients, but players only know some of their opinions. Players can sometimes collect rumor tokens instead of ingredients. These can be turned in to find out what secret preferences the critic has.

Optionally, the game can become slightly asymmetric by assigning each player a “famous” chef for the course of the game (Goatin Ramsay, Jamie Owliver, etc…), each with a unique special ability.

The final scoring, satisfying the critics, varieties, majorities, and some other bonus accouterments. There’s an expansion that adds in food carts to the main board (they fit in the little notches) and ups the player count up to a maximum of 7 players.

Temple Code

Temple Code, for one to four players, has players trying to deduce their own 3-symbol code on a card which is observable by all the other players.

Each round, players are dealt two cards, symbol-side-up. The active player will take the two cards in front of another player, give them one and keep the other for themselves. The magic of the game is that the back of each card can be lined up with another to reveal clues about any symbol matching involved. Blue circles indicate symbols that are the same and in the same location, while red triangles mean there is a matching symbol but out of position.

After both players check their cards, the game moves to the next player in line. Any player can make a guess about their symbol card at any time. If correct, they get to score it, it only takes two correct guesses to win. Regardless of the outcome (correct or not) the guessing player is dealt a new symbol card to guess.

We’re Sinking!

There was a nicely blinged-out table of We’re Sinking! in the booth. It’s almost a cooperative game, as everyone works to keep the pirate boat floating while simultaneously defeating the oncoming threat (kraken, skeleton pirates, megalodon, or sirens.) Each turn, players choose one of four actions: bail out the boat, fix the boat/cannon, fire at the enemy, or plunder loot.

It’s the plundering loot that becomes the problem. Players may all agree on a plan, but when actions are simultaneously revealed, some players may have decided to prioritize themselves (get loot) over the good of the group. If the ship (and crew) survive, the player with the most loot wins. If the ship sinks, the player with the fewest cards left (presumably helped the most?) is able to flee on the lightweight raft… I have in my notes that it comes out in September, but I’ll have to admit my homebrew shorthand is somewhat dicey…