The Phantom of the Opera is based on the novel and in the game, one player takes on the role of the Phantom (Erik) and the other Christine.The Phantom of the Opera is the latest game from designer Geonil, who also designed Jekyll vs Hyde from 2021. Like the first design, Phantom is a 2 player trick taking game. The goal of the Phantom is to complete a sheet of music by placing tokens on each note while Christine’s goal is to prevent this.
The game components consist of a deck of cards of 4 suits, a game board or sheet of music (3 different boards are included), 12 markers for the sheet music and 1 die.
Players are dealt their hands and they must each exchange one card. The lead player for the round (the Phantom starts the first round and Christine the second) chooses one of the numbers of the 2 exchanged cards as special and uses the die to note the number.
Players will then play their hand out in a series of tricks. It is a must follow game and there are a few twists in regards to trump. The mask suit is always trump but there may also be super trump which depends on the last trick taken and marked on the music sheet. Above each bar is an icon for one of the 4 suits and if the last trick was taken in that bar then the corresponding icon becomes super trump.
The sheet music has 12 notes, some of which are on or below the middle line and some of which are above. The notes on the music sheet that are on the middle or lower half of the staff and those tricks must be won by the Phantom who places a token over the note. Notes on the upper half of the staff must be won by Christine in order for the Phantom to place a token on the note.
If a special number card is played during a trick, the players must immediately trade cards from their hand. In addition if the trick is correctly won corresponding to the music sheet, an extra token is placed on the music. If the trick is incorrectly won, then the last 2 tokens placed are removed from the sheet music.
After the first is played the cards are collected and shuffled. Tokens are left covering the music. Christine starts the second round. If the Phantom covers all 12 notes they win immediately. If Christine is able to prevent this until the end of the round they win.
Final thoughts: Trick taking games that can be played with 2 players are rare and finding an interesting one is even more rare. I’m glad I found this one!
The Phantom of the Opera is nicely thematic following the tale we all know so well. The art is well done with the suits corresponding to key points of the story.
I really enjoy the little twists to the game play. Deciding when to play a special number and what cards to exchange provides lots of crunch decisions in a short time. The challenge of needing to win or lose certain tricks in a set order makes it a bit more interesting than just trying to win X amount of tricks such as in Fox in the Forest. The asymmetric winning conditions make it an interesting game where playing both sides is fun like in Jekyll vs. Hyde.
No gold – but there are games at the end of that rainbow
Another Gathering of Friends has come and gone, as has another week of trying to recover from staying up too late and eating less-than-healthy meals at weird times. . . . This is an exhausting week for me; as much fun as I am have, being around that many people for that much time takes a toll on my energy. This is the largest con I attend, and I don’t think I could handle anything larger. The reward of an entire 7 days of playing games and spending time with good friends is well-worth the sleep and vegetable deprivation as well as the emotional energy I exhaust being there.
My only regret is that I didn’t get to play as many games with my co-Opinionated Gamers as I’d like, but I did manage a few plays with them. My original plan was to take some photos of the OGers and include them here, but I failed right from my very first game, alas. Here are some highlights from my games played (42, with 32 different players).
Good thing I work in the non-clinical side of healthcare. . . .
I do not like to do too much advanced scheduling of my days at GoF, since that feels way too much like work, but I make two exceptions and one is for my friend Bruce, since I want to be sure to get a game in with him every year. Fun fact – I met Bruce at my very first GoF in 1999. This year we chose Quacksalbe (which by chance we played with some of the OGers as well). Quacksalbe is an odd little trick-taker from way back in 1998. Each player is a physician specializing in an area of medicine; this is noted by the color of the card in front of them. Each round a new patient is revealed, and that patient will have some requirements about the treatment they need. Each player plays a card of their choice; following suit is not required. After each player plays a card, the color of the highest value across all cards played wins the trick. If the requirements of the patient are met, you place them face up (positive points at the end of the game) and if the needs are not met you place them face down as a corpse (negative points at the end of the game). It’s weird and unique and I definitely have not figured out the best way to play it, but it is interesting and always fun. I am not sure how the theme would do if it were to be reprinted, and it is not widely available, so I am happy to play it when I have the chance.
4 Towers in this case. . . .
Since I started with a card game, I’ll keep going with card game highlights. I was curious to try 5 Towers, since I was told both that it was a great game and it was an abomination. Spoiler alert – I fell solidly in the upper middle of that. It didn’t wow me, but I enjoyed it. Your goal is to build high towers in five colors to score points and win the game. Each round five cards are up for bid. You bid the number of cards you are willing to take. If you win,you take those cards and place them on your towers or create new towers. However, the value of the cards decrease as the tower goes higher, so you have to be strategic about what you are placing. You can always discard the top card of one tower every time you win a bid, but those cards count against you at the end of the game. Once you top a tower with a 0 it is finished and you can do nothing else with it, but your score for that tower will be doubled at the end of the game. I thought I was doing somewhat poorly, since I had towers but capped them early with 0s, but that turned out to be a winning strategy. I’m probably not running out to buy this one, but I’d gladly play it again.
PiesMoriBacon
I had a pile of card games I hadn’t had a chance to play, so roped some friends into playing through a few. First up was Pies, which was fine but not really my cup of tea.
Next up was Mori, which was really good. It’s a fairly standard trick-taking game in which you must follow suit, but when you win a trick you take a die, which can be played on a later turn; the die can be played at any time, and does not have to follow suit, giving you some flexibility. That flexibility is important, because some tricks have negative points (skulls) while others have positive points. It was very interesting and I look forward to future plays.
After that we played Bacon. I wasn’t too sure about this one, but it turned out to be pretty fun. It’s a climbing game, which can be played as a partnership game but since there were 5 of us we played individually. One player leads a combo and other players either have to play that same combo at a higher value, a special (kind of like a bomb in Tichu) or pass. First player to get rid of all their cards wins the hand.
I did play a few new (or at least new-to-me) games at the Gathering, and my favorite was Imperium: Horizons, a game I never heard of but am very glad I played. I am a big fan of engine builders and this one did not disappoint. This is an additional set of cards for Imperium Classic and Imperium Legends (which you can read our review of here), and why I didn’t seek that game out at the time I don’t know. You have a deck of cards to start, and each turn you either activate (play a card or use an ability), innovate (get a new card), or revolt (remove cards from your hand/discard pile). There’s a whole lot more to it than that, but it all worked very well together and I quite enjoyed it.
My spouse and I have a fair amount of credit at our local-ish game store thanks to the awesome auctions they run, which allows me to unload games we no longer want in return for credit at the store (Diversions, who I highly recommend because they are awesome). Having two gamers loose in a store with what feels like free money leads to us buying games just because we like how they look or the description on the back of the box. I am happy to report that all 3 of these games are good games, and I’ll provide a detailed review of all 3 in the coming weeks. Here they are in alphabetical order.
Arborea – my first reaction when shown this game was not “oh, that’s looks cool”, it was “my eyes hurt just looking at that” but Mark was intrigued so we picked it up, with consolation from one of the employees that it was much less visually daunting when on the table. Well,. I am not so sure about that, but once you have played it a couple of times it is much easier to look at it and know what is going on. You place workers on paths that move, having them hop off to follow a trail that will gain you rewards. Do you leave them in place on the path to get juicier rewards, or do you have them hop off early for a more immediate bonus? There is a lot going on here and a lot of interesting mechanisms, and after 4 plays I look forward to more, although perhaps with 2 or 3 and not 4. More to come.
Tentacles for days. . . .
Cosmoctopus I did not remember on first sight, and solely picked it up because it had cute tentacles. As soon as I read the back of the box I remembered Matt had given a preview of it after GenCon, and it looked promising. I am happy to report it is not just cute, but a good game. It’s an engine builder in which you collect resources to complete constellations to gain tentacles for your cosmoctopus. We got lots of attention while playing it because of the cute bits, but there really is a good game underneath.
Some of my favorite people right here
Rats of Wistar – I saw this in play quite a bit during the con, and I managed to play it twice. You’re a rat who has escaped from a lab, and you need to build a home for your family while also exploring a nearby farm to get food and resources to help you along the way. You take 3 actions every turn on a rondele that rotates 60 degrees every round; actions on the rondele are paired with base actions printed on the board, but the pairings change due to the rotations so there is a lot of coordination and optimization happening. It’s a very good game. I mentioned earlier that I generally make only 2 scheduling exceptions, and this is the other one – any day I get to have lunch and play games with Scott and Cato is a great day.
Life in Reterra – a new game from Hasbro and designers Eric Lang and Ken Gruhl. We only had about an hour, and we were able to learn this one from the rules and play it in that time. Players are rebuilding the earth by placing tiles and buildings. There is some player interaction, but you are mostly just building your own little world. It was definitely light and perhaps meant as a family game, but I enjoyed it.
Viticulture workers – now with hats!
Viticulture Worlds – I really enjoy Viticulture Tuscany, so was willing to give this a whirl when Tim suggested it. It plays a lot like regular Viticulture, but you have to get everyone to a certain victory point level as well as advancing another token to a certain point as well. You take similar actions, but work together to get tiles onto to the board to improve various action spaces and to make them available to more players. It was definitely hard and we failed, but we got close and had fun trying. I really want to try this one again.
Elder Sign – it is a tradition with a particular group of friends to play at least one Cthulhu-fighting game, and this year we went with Elder Sign with a couple of expansions. There were 7 of us, but Tim took on the role of DM while the six of us just barely escaped from the tentacles (a bit of a theme of the week) of our evil villain. It’s been a while since I played this one, and I am not sure why, as it was quite enjoyable. It has all the feel of Arkham Horro and Eldritch Horror, but the set up and play time was much shorter. I still like those two, but this is a good choice for when you want a shorter experience with the same sort of gameplay. I do think the expansions added to the experience, so I will have to look into those.
Daybreak – Keeping up the co-operative games, Daybreak saw a lot of play and I got 2 plays of it in. This is my favorite type of co-op- shared goals but your own sandbox – and Matt Leacock did a brilliant job of integrating the theme into the gameplay. I am really enjoying this one, even if I have only managed to save the world on 2 occasions. . . .
MonsDRAWsity – I am not much of a party gamer these days, but I received this game as a gift and I seized this opportunity to get it to the table. One player secretly looks at a card for 20 seconds, trying to remember as many details as possible. They then put it face down and describe it to the other players, who try to draw what they are hearing. Clearly none of us have great memories or art skills, but it was silly fun and sometimes a good laugh at the end of a long day of learning rules is what you need.
My last game of the Gathering is always DasMotorsport Spiel. It’s a racing game with limits on how you can move and the ability to get various flags that can cause you to have to go through the pit or possibly going down in a burning heap of flaming metal. We also play with a 20 second timer, because apparently it is not stressful enough. I am not very good at it, but it’s a fun experience and I managed to make it to the podium this time. We don’t know need to worry about which place on that six-spot podium I made it to. . . . .
Other games played: Just One, Bonsai, Was Sticht, House Of Cats, Medicine, Djinn, Lovecraft Letter, Faraway, Hadrian’s Wall, Three Sisters, Tinderblox, Rafter 5, Ark Nova, Clank Catacombs, 21 Days, Yggdrasil, Splendor Duel, Scratch House, Tipperary, Cheese Factory, and Havalandi.
Opinionated Eaters and Drinkers
Niagara Falls is not a hotbed of culinary delights. The best local opportunities are the ones brought by other attendees – I make cookies (this year chocolate chip, speculaas, and rainbow rave) and others brought stroopwafels, Belgian chocolate, Tim Tams and beer. I did have a delightful dinner in Tonawanda that I neglected to take any photos of (Prescott’s Provisions, if you find yourself in the area) and some delicious beer from Mortalis Brewing in Buffalo.
Divinus is a competitive, legacy, tile-laying, digital hybrid game in which you play as a demigod seeking to gain the favor of the Gods and ascend to a new pantheon. Players embark on a twelve-scenario campaign that will see them exploring lands, completing quests, interacting with Gods, and impacting the outcome of the epic clash between Greek and Norse pantheons.
At the beginning of each campaign scenario, players open a sealed box of new quests,
components, stickers, Gods, gameplay mechanisms, and more. The Divinus app provides a narrative for players and sets the stakes for what is to come. Each turn, players spend dice from their pool to explore new tiles from the world board. Laying tiles into their demigod map, they must place tiles adjacent to one another and with matching features while working towards overall quest and God goals.
Throughout the campaign, players make permanent changes to their demigods by collecting powerful artifacts, forging their dice by altering their faces, and earning titles for the feats they achieve. Players will also permanently change the game world by altering tiles and placing new locations, heroes, and monsters onto the map tiles. When players complete quests or other significant goals, they can make pivotal decisions through the Divinus app.
Players will decide the outcome of dilemmas such as choosing which side is victorious in battle, building or destroying a holy site, and choosing whether a God lives or dies. Whichever outcome the player chooses, the game components may be changed and the Divinus app will remember and present contextual options in the future that are impacted by the decision. Returning to a fort that you helped the Norse Gods build could see you praised, while demigods favored by the Greek pantheon could be shunned.
The Divinus campaign is ideally played over several game sessions due to the persistent and changing world. The rulebook grows with each scenario as new rules and content are unlocked. Once the campaign is complete, players can replay their unique copy of Divinus with a post-campaign Infinite Replayability mode.
Monkey Business is a bit of a mash-up of the classic games of charades (where you pantomime something) and werewolf (where you’re trying to discover the odd person out in the mix. All but one player (or all but two, if there’s more than 6 players) are given the same activity to perform while the odd ones out, the “scammers” have to just play it by ear to cover up the fact that they don’t know what they should be doing. After a few moments of acting, players then all must accuse a player to be the “scammer” – the one who was just copying everyone else. Players who are correct keep their card, scammers win half of the remaining cards. After six rounds of play the game ends and the player with the most cards is the winner. Monkey Business is a fun little party game that gets people moving. It won’t carry an entire evening of gaming but is good for a short distraction, perhaps to loosen up a group of people who may be taking themselves too seriously.
Monkey Business Publisher: Add-A-Game Players: 4-12 Ages: 8+ Time: 15 min (review copy provided by publisher)
Boardgame Geek has just announced the nominees for their game awards for the 2023 calendar year, the Golden Geeks. As usual, these were determined by selections made by the BGG community. With 15 different categories, there are too many citations to list here, so we’ll just focus on the three Game of the Year (GOTY) categories, for Best Light Game, Best Medium Game, and Best Heavy Game. 10 games were nominated in each of these categories. It looks like the voters did a pretty good job this year and included most of the most notable games released last year. The final results will be announced on or around May 15. Here are the nominations, with each game’s designers listed in parentheses, followed by its publisher. Congratulations to all!
LIGHT GOTY
Art Society (Mitch Wallace) – Mighty Boards
Bonsai (Rosaria Battiato, Massimo Borzi, Martino Chiacchiera) – DV Games
Faraway (Johannes Goupy, Corentin Lebrat) – Catch Up Games
Knarr (Thomas Dupont) – Bombyx
Nimalia (William Lievin) – La Boite de Jeu
Point City (Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, Shawn Stankewich) – Flatout Games
Rebel Princess (Daniel Byrne, Jose Guerrero, Kevin Pelaez, Tirso Virgos) – Zombi Paella
That’s Not a Hat (Kasper Lapp) – Ravensburger
Thunder Road: Vendetta (Rob Daviau, Justin Jacobson, Dave Chalker, Brett Myers, Noah Cohen, Jim Keifer, Brian Neff) – Restoration Games
Trailblazers (Ryan Courtney) – Bitewing Games
MEDIUM GOTY
Apiary (Connie Vogelmann) – Stonemaier Games
The Castles of Burgundy: Special Edition (Stefan Feld) – alea
Distilled (Dave Beck) – Paverson Games
Earth (Maxime Tardif) – Inside Up Games
Expeditions (Jamey Stegmaier) – Stonemaier Games
Forest Shuffle (Kosch) – Lookout Games
Sky Team (Luc Remond) – Scorpion Masque
Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West (Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock, Alan Moon) – Days of Wonder
The White Castle (Isra C., Shei S.) – Devir
World Wonders (Ze Mendes) – MeepleBR/MUNDUS
HEAVY GOTY
Age of Innovation (Helge Ostertag) – Feuerland Spiele
Darwin’s Journey (Simone Luciani, Nestore Mangone) – ThunderGryph Games
Dune: Imperium – Uprising (Paul Dennen) – Dire Wolf
Evacuation (Vladimir Suchy) – Delicious Games
Great Western Trail: New Zealand (Alexander Pfister) – eggertspiele
Hegemony (Vangelis Bagiartakis, Varnavas Timotheou) – Hegemonic Project Games
Kutna Hora (Ondrej Bystron, Petr Caslava, Pavel Jarosch) – Czech Games Edition
Nucleum (Simone Luciani, David Turczi) – Board&Dice
Scholars of the South Tigris (Shem Phillips, SJ Macdonald) – Garphill Games
Voidfall (Nigel Buckle, David Turczi) – Mindclash Games
Designers: Baptiste Derrez, Marc-Antoine Doyon, Gabriel Durnerin
Publisher: Scorpion Masque
Players: 1-4
Age: 7+
Time: 30 min per chapter, 4 chapters
Played with review copy provided by Hachette USA
Flashback is back in a scary universe that will give you chills. Take on the role of Lucy, a young woman with strange powers, who inherits a mysterious mansion in which dark and disturbing events have taken place. Explore this eerie place and learn more about Lucy, her power, her family, and her role in this grand story.
Using the Flashback mechanism, travel into the past through Lucy’s visions, and meet the shadow that haunts the mansion. Put yourself in the shoes of the characters and discover their points of view, collect clues, solve mysteries, and answer the questions you’ve been asked.
In Flashback: Lucy, you will be travelling from era to era, discovering the mansion at different moments in time. Before and after each of Lucy’s visions, explore the mansion with her cat, Gredin, in an interactive comic strip. And, of course, discover even more original and immersive gadgets!
