Dale Yu: Review of In The Footsteps of Darwin

In the Footsteps of Darwin

  • Designers: Grégory Grard, Matthieu Verdier
  • Publisher: Sorry We Are French
  • Players: 2-5
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 20-30 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by Hachette USA

As part of our buildup to the announcement of the Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres this weekend, we are looking at the 3 nominees for each award again.

Per the publisher: Twenty years after his expedition around the world, Charles Darwin is writing On the Origins of Species. He wants to gather new information about animal life, particularly about continents he hardly explored. Who other than young naturalists, eager for discovery, could help the renowned scholar finish writing his most famous work? In In the Footsteps of Darwin, players are junior naturalists who have just arrived aboard the Beagle to help Charles Darwin finish his book On the Origin of Species. During this journey, you will study animals, carry out cartographic surveys, publish your findings, and develop theories…. Your goal is to score more points than your opponents to determine who contributed the most to On the Origin of Species.

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Dale Yu: Review of Captain Flip

Captain Flip

  • Designers: Paolo Mori and Remo Conzadori
  • Publisher: Play Punk
  • Players:2-5
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 20 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided publisher; also played with publisher’s copy at convention

Ahoy, Captain! Hoist your flag, recruit a crew, and fill your coffers with shiny, gold coins.  Captain Flip is a game of obvious simplicity explained in less time than a cannonball shot. On your turn, draw a tile from the bag. You like it? Keep it! You don’t like it? Flip it! Then place it on your board to form your crew.  With its nine characters and four boards with different tactics, Captain Flip offers an immediate, fun, and subtle gaming experience.

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Dale Yu: Review of the Guild of Merchant Explorers

The Guild of Merchant Explorers

  • Designers: Matthew Dunstan and Brett J. Gilbert
  • Publisher: AEG
  • Players: 1-4
  • Age: 14+
  • Time: 45 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

As part of our buildup to the announcement of the Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres this weekend, we are looking at the 3 nominees for each award again.

the guild of merchant explorers

The backstory: “The Queen has sent out a call to the Guild of Merchant Explorers, asking brave adventurers to voyage to all corners of the kingdom of Tigome.  While the kingdom is flourishing, its maps have not been updated in some time and its great cities have lost touch with one another.  WIth your team of explorers, you will journey over rough seas, towering mountains, vast deserts and lush grasslands to establish trade routes between cities and discover new villages that have emerged. The player with the most coins at the end of the game wins.”  (Yes, that last sentence doesn’t make sense in the lore of the story, but that’s what is written in the rules…)

In The Guild of Merchant Explorers, each player starts with one city on their personal map board.  The game comes with 4 different maps, and there are already at least 2 more maps in the micro expansion that was released at the same time as the base game.  Make sure that all players are using the same map!   Continue reading

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Dale Yu: Ticket to Ride: Legends of the West

Ticket to Ride: Legends of the West

  • Designers: Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock, Alan R. Moon
  • Publisher: Days of Wonder
  • Players: 2-5
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 20-90 minutes (per the box)
  • Played with review copy provided by Days of Wonder
  • Affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3MmRYiQ

As part of our buildup to the announcement of the Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres this weekend, we are looking at the 3 nominees for each award again.

Well, it’s really hard to review a legacy game – well, difficult if you want to do it and not give away any spoilers about the campaign.  As you likely know, the joy in a legacy game are the surprising twists and turns that you discover as the story unfolds.  If you read a review that tells you what happens, there might not be any reason to play the game!  For this game, we’ll probably write a few things about it.  For this initial piece, I will talk about only the first game (and still leave out any possible spoilers that might come out at the end of the first game).  

The goal here is to help you see what the first game is like, and this might help you make a decision if you want to invest in the game and get involved in a multi-game campaign.  Just about all of the information here comes from the rulebook – and this can be downloaded online, so no secrets there…  And, since the game comes out today – it seems like the perfect time to talk about the game!

So, the story from the publisher:

In Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West, players embark on twelve journeys across North America as 19th century pioneers. The campaign begins on the East Coast, with players working their way to the West from one adventure to the next, meeting challenges along the way. As in Ticket to Ride, completing your tickets will remain your primary goal, but you will need to develop other skills if you hope to overcome the unexpected events and your resourceful rivals. Game after game, route after route, you will continuously fill your vault with earnings. As the story progresses, you will open frontier boxes that unlock new rules, content, and many more surprises.

In the Legacy style, Legends of the West is a unique experience molded by player choices. Each player has their own role to play, allowing them to change the way the story unfolds around them. Combined with evolving mechanisms that change as the game progresses, players will have a new experience every time they gather around the board. At the end of the twelve games in this legacy campaign, you will have transformed your game into a unique copy that you can continue playing for a lifetime.

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Dale Yu: Review of Daybreak (eMission)

Daybreak

  • Designers: Matt Leacock + Matteo Menapace
  • Publisher: CMYK
  • Age: 10+
  • Players: 1 – 4
  • Time 60-90 minutes
  • Played with copy provided by publisher

As part of our buildup to the announcement of the Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres this weekend, we are looking at the 3 nominees for each award again.

Daybreak (aka eMission in Germany) is a co-operative game about climate action. Each player controls a world power, deploying policies and technologies to both dismantle the engine of global heating and to build resilient societies that protect people from life-threatening crises.

If the global temperature gets too high, or if too many people from any world power are in crisis, everyone loses. But if you work together to draw down global emissions to net-zero, you all win!

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Dale Yu: Review of Orichalcum

Orichalcum

  • Designers: Bruno Cathala & Johannes Goupy
  • Publisher: Pandasaurus (Catch Up)
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 12+
  • Time: 45 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by Pandasaurus

Says the publisher: “Orichalcum is a tense and fast-pace strategy game – similar to a short 4X. Each player has their own Island board to explore and develop. On each turn, they choose a set of one Exploration tile and one Action : recruit hoplites, produce precious orichalcum (a legendary metal from Greek mythology), construct buildings granting powerful bonuses, or try to get rid of Monsters infesting your island (and preventing you to build new building). To prevail, you will need to erect majestic temples, forge orichalcum tokens or win the favors of titans (by creating areas of their favorite landscapes. The first to get to 5 victory points while clearing their Island of all Monsters wins the game.”

Orichalcum is a race… against your opponents. Whoever will be first to have collected 5 Victory points above their board and eliminated all the Creatures on their island will be the winner! There are three ways to earn victory points: draw the attention of Titans, erect Temples and forge precious Orichalcum medallions – that legendary metal that only the Atlanteans know how to extract.

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