Dale Yu: Review of Distilled

Distilled

  • Designer: Dave Beck
  • Publisher: Paverson Games
  • Players: 1-5
  • Age: 14+
  • Time: 30min/player
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Distilled is a highly thematic strategy card game about crafting spirits in a distillery, with resource management and push-your-luck elements. In the game, you have inherited a distillery and are hoping to someday achieve the title of master distiller through purchasing goods, building up your distillery, and creating the world’s most renowned spirits. Use cards to purchase new ingredients and invest in upgrades to your distillery, all while eventually distilling the spirit and sending it to the warehouse. Once in the warehouse, age your spirit to enhance its flavor and bottle it to sell it for major profits! Achieve the title of Master Distiller by having the most victory points at the end of the game. Points are obtained by distilling and selling spirits.

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Dale Yu: Review of Flip Circus

Flip Circus

  • Designer: Julien Gerard
  • Publisher: IELLO
  • Players: 2
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 15 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by distributor, Flat River Games

In Flip Circus, the artists amaze the crowd as they move about the stage, but you have a larger goal in mind: using their special powers — and your recollection of which artists are where on each side of the tokens — to line up three artists of the same type. Do that, and you collect their portrait from the poster.

Collect three of the five portraits and you win — or maybe you’ll find the five clowns to let you honk your way to the victory circle…

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Dale Yu: Review of Adventure Party: The Role-Playing Party Game

Adventure Party: The Role-Playing Party Game

  • Designer: David Smith and Travis Winstead
  • Publisher: Smirk & Dagger Games
  • Players: 3-8
  • Age: 14+
  • Time: 20-60 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Adventure Party delivers a robust role-playing experience that can be enjoyed within 2 minutes of explanation. In this cooperative guessing game, 3-6 players take the roles of adventurers in a classic fantasy role-playing world, facing monsters and attempting heroic deeds. Over the course of 3 Adventure scenarios, the party will work together and collectively attempt to score the most Experience Points possible. Players will take turns, rolling their 20-sided die in secret. Based on how well or poorly they rolled, they will describe what their character does; first outlining their plans and then describing the outcome of their actions. The goal of which is to provide enough detail so that the GM for that turn can GUESS the number they rolled as closely as possible, earning the entire party Experience Points.

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Dale Yu: Review of Harmonies

Harmonies

  • Designer: Johan Benvenuto
  • Publisher: Libellud
  • Players: 1-4
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 30-45 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Harmonies, build landscapes by placing colored tokens and create habitats for your animals. To earn the most points and win the game, incorporate the habitats in your landscapes wisely and have as many animals as you can settle there.

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Dale Yu: Review of Karvi

Karvi

  • Designer: Torgeir Tjong
  • Publisher: Hans im Glueck
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 14+
  • Time: 120-180 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by Asmodee NA

As a Jarl, you travel the northern seas to achieve immortal glory. Under the sails of your own ship, which is built like a karve (Karvi), you‘ll lead a crew, trade with foreign cultures and plunder other lands. Strengthen the skills of your crew by upgrading your ship and hiring stronger warriors. Whether you wish to establish new trade routes to secure rare goods or battle distant settlements to plunder their riches, your path to glory is yours to choose. But make sure to remember to stock up on beer and bread, so you have enough supplies to outmaneuver the competing clans. Successful planning will make you renowned throughout the lands, and secure your place in Norse legend as a fearless Jarl.

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Posted in Essen 2023, Reviews | 1 Comment

LX Con: “And Fun Was Had By All”

As I wrote last week, “With yet another trip around the sun, my personal odometer has turned over and I am… sixty years old. When I was younger, 60 sounded really, really old… and sometimes the aches & pains of my aging body remind me that younger me wasn’t completely off base. But most of the time, I feel like my attitude about life is younger than my physical age.”

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

In that spirit, I welcomed Dale Yu (our illustrious leader here at the Opinionated Gamers site) into my home along with my two gamer sons (Braeden – age 23 and Collin – age 19) for a long weekend of gaming, laughter, and friendship. 

We played thirty-three different games (two of them twice) from Wednesday afternoon (after I got off work) until Sunday evening. Interestingly, after crunching the numbers, all four of us had a winning percentage between 31% (me) and 35% (Braeden). (Note: my non-gamer wife, Shari – who made sure we were fed & taken care of throughout the weekend – did actually play one game with us. More on that later.)

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