July 2024
Games I played for the first time this month, from worst to best, along with my ratings and comments.
This Game is Killer – 7/10
It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve given an overly-enthusiastic rating to a 15-minute game that ended up not holding my interest in the long term. But as of now, I think this hot-off-the-presses game is a pretty strong entrant for a high player count game that I will reach for quite often. It’s not always easy to find games in that space that aren’t roll-and-writes or social deduction games, and this game is neither.
Thematically, you can think of yourself as a member of the crew of the Nostromo in the movie Alien. Each round, the alien will hunt in a random location on the ship, and your goal is to survive these attacks. You can do this in various ways: hiding, grabbing an escape pod, or even killing the alien. It’s common for multiple players to win, each in a different way.
You will each be dealt a two-card hand. Each card has a location and an action. You must choose an action from one card and a location from the other, meaning you really only have two possible options on a given turn. But you do play these one at a time in turn order, so situations exist where you might affect someone else’s choice based on what you’ve done or where you’ve gone. Once everyone has played their two cards, the alien attacks at a random location and one of the players there will die, unless their action allowed them some type of protection.
The alien won’t revisit a location until it has visited each one, so as the game continues, the attacks become more predictable. You might want to end up in the room with the alien if you have a flamethrower action, but might instead simply be trying to hide. Once all locations have been visited, they are reshuffled and can be visited again, though it’s also likely that some parts of the ship will be destroyed by that time.
The card actions themselves are what defy the game’s simple rules structure to really make it shine. Each action presents you with a fascinating choice about how best to survive and win, and also demands a bit of prediction of what your opponents will do. It’s not a deep game, but it delivers tension, laughter, and fun with very little overhead and demands to be played many times in a row.
Arcs – 8/10
The hottest game of the moment is Arcs, a charmingly-illustrated sci-fi wargame with from Cole Wehrle, the creator of Root and Oath. As in those games, players will have asymmetric powers and starting positions that will inevitably lead them into conflict with one another. But rather than have set factions with these powers, Arcs has players randomly pair two of them and then draft them, in a manner reminiscent of Small World. The endless combinations of moderately-impactful powers seem a lot more appealing to me than the just a few combinations of highly-impactful powers offered by this game’s predecessors.
While you might not even notice it at first, Arcs is truly a trick-taking game. Player actions are determined by card play each round, with the winner of the trick getting to go first next time, but with low cards granting more powerful actions. Brian Boru is a much lighter game that does a similar thing, but Arcs is undoubtedly the stronger design of the two. Arcs’ card-play decisions are always challenging, sometimes because there are too many good choices and sometimes because there are too few.
Above all else, Arcs is highly interactive. Inexperienced players especially will find themselves brutalized by veterans, in ways that could easily sour you on the game. It is impossible to defend everything you need to while still seeking after your goals, yet the smallest chink in your defenses can have disastrous consequences. You are constantly torn between the twin pitfalls of overcommitting and undercommitting in every part of the game.
A quick glance over the adjectives that early commenters have used should tell you everything you need to know. Brutal. Cutthroat. Vicious. Grueling. Punishing. But also: Rewarding. Tight. Dynamic. Brilliant. Genius. It’s hard to disagree with any of the preceding words. If you’ve ever wished that Cosmic Encounter was more about strategy than negotiation, this might well be your new favorite game. For me, the jury is still out on whether Arcs warrants the analysis paralysis and long playing time that comes with that additional complexity. But do I want to play it again to find out? Absolutely.
Ezra and Nehemiah – 9/10
Shem Phillips and SJ MacDonald’s latest game takes the successful mechanics from their other games and puts them to use in the cleanest, most interesting way so far. I can’t predict if this is the zenith of their collaborations, but it’s certainly the best one so far.
Though this is a competitive game, the players will thematically be working together to rebuild the ruins of the walls and temple in Jerusalem, with whoever contributes the most efficiently being declared the winner. This is done through worker placement, but the cards in your hand will dictate where each worker can go and how effective they can be.
On your turn, play a card. It will have three banners on it, in one of three colors. Each color represents a particular action. So if your card has a lot of white banners, for example, you may wish to choose a wall-building action. On your next turn, you will play another card, but you also get to add the banners from your previously played card to it. The more banners you have, the better your action will be. Sequencing your actions is very important here and it feels great when you get your cards in just the right order to do all the things you want.
Most of these actions also require placing a worker, and each worker needs to be fed at the end of each round. Many of the actions and free sub-actions revolve around converting resources from one type to another. You will need food for workers, stone for wall and temple building, wood for offerings, money to buy special abilities, etc. There are too many subtleties to fully discuss, but suffice it to say there is a tech tree, workers to manage, cards to sequence, and resources to allocate. Ezra and Nehemiah is on the higher end of the complexity spectrum, but every additional rule justifies its existence by adding additional strategic options.
With only one play under my belt, its impossible to verify if broken strategies or repetitive play patterns exist. But there is enough player-mitigated randomness in the game that variety and adaptability seem guaranteed. So long as you can handle the rules complexity, there is probably something here you will enjoy. A strong Game of the Year contender.
A highly recommended game that I have most certainly played prior to this month, probably many times.
Ponzi Scheme – 9/10
Ponzi Scheme is a game of valuation and negotiation. Despite the players buying stocks, it’s really not a stock holding game. The stocks don’t vary in value based on the market, you simply get more points the more you have, kind of like the scoring in Coloretto.
The big hook with the game is that in order to get these stocks (and get money), you need to take out investments that are all very bad in the long term. Eventually you will have to pay back more than you borrowed, and you will do this by taking out even bigger loans with an even worse rate of return. The game finally ends when this catches up with someone who goes bankrupt and is eliminated regardless of how many stocks they own. It’s even possible for several players to be eliminated at once and I’ve seen games where someone has won simply by being the only non-bankrupt player, even though they had very few points. This aspect is reminiscent of the end of games like High Society and Cleopatra and the Society of Architects.
But my favorite part of the game is the Clandestine Trades that occur. Once per turn, each player has the option to make a secret offer of money (passed in a leather wallet) to another player. This amount represents an offer to buy a stock from that player. That player then has a choice. They can either take the money, giving up their stock or they can match the amount of money in the wallet and pass it back, stealing a stock from the offerer. So a player who makes an offer will either end up stealing a stock (points) or getting money but losing a stock. In practice, a sharp player will notice when an opponent is desperate for money (and so will likely accept a very low offer) as well as noticing when a player is desperate for points and will gladly pay lots of money. It is almost impossible to calculate these values and I love games like this where the choices are more intuitive than calculable.
I find both the clandestine trades and the way in which this simulates the inevitable collapse of a Ponzi scheme to be very appealing. This game is right in my wheelhouse. |
