In Yak, the village elder has given you (and others) the task of constructing a great stone tower to guide the merchants and their yaks in the Himalayas. Each turn, a yak pulls its cart into your village. Will you find stones for your tower, or food for your reserves? Or will you need to visit the market to find what you need?
Can’t Stop is one of the classic games of our hobby – being a nominee for the SdJ in 1982. It was one of the first European Games that I owned. The base game is a classic press-your-luck game where you roll 4 dice each turn, making two two-dice combinations. For example, on their turn, a player rolls four dice and arranges them in duos: 1 4 5 6 can become 1+4 and 5+6 for 5 & 11, 1+5 and 4+6 for 6 & 10, or 1+6 and 4+5 for 7 & 9. You use those two summed numbers to move your markers up the corresponding tracks on a stop-sign shaped board. The catch is this – you only have three markers each turn, and your turn ends immediately if you cannot make a combination that matches the track that one of your three markers is on. It can also stop when you voluntarily end your turn.
Flamecraft is one of the rare games that the cover art pretty much sold me on the game. The art of Sandara Tang is simply beautiful, and I’ve always had a thing for all things dragony, so I was pretty much interested in the game from the get-go. The backstory here: “Artisan dragons, the smaller and magically talented versions of their larger (and destructive) cousins, are sought by shopkeepers so that they may delight customers with their flamecraft. You are a Flamekeeper, skilled in the art of conversing with dragons, placing them in their ideal home and using enchantments to entice them to produce wondrous things. Your reputation will grow as you aid the dragons and shopkeepers, and the Flamekeeper with the most reputation will be known as the Master of Flamecraft.” After getting a nice demo of this resource gathering game at the Lucky Duck stand at SPIEL 2022, this was high on my list of games to play as soon as I got home.
Flatout Games is a design studio that has come up with a number of great family-leve games such as Cascadia, Calico, Point Salad and Truffle Shuffle. Many of their games have been licensed through AEG, and Verdant is the next game in that partnership. Given the rampant success of Cascadia (oh, and that Spiel Des Jahres award) – I had high hopes for this one: “Verdant is a puzzly spatial card game for 1 to 5 players. You take on the role of a houseplant enthusiast trying to create the coziest interior space by collecting and arranging houseplants and other objects within your home. You must position your plants so that they are provided the most suitable light conditions and take care of them to create the most verdant collection. Each turn, you select an adjacent pair of a card and token, then use those items to build an ever-expanding tableau of cards that represents your home. You need to keep various objectives in mind as you attempt to increase plant verdancy by making spatial matches and using item tokens to take various nurture actions. You can also build your “green thumb” skills, which allows you to take additional actions to care for your plants and create the coziest space!”
In this game, you’re putting together your (green)house – which is a 5×3 checkerboard of rooms and plants. You start the game with a random room and a random plant. Each plant card has a verdancy requirement – this can be met by placing it next to rooms with appropriate light qualities or by using things such as fertilizer or water. If you have placed enough verdancy tokens on a plant, you can pot it. The sooner you pot the plant, the more likely you are to get bonus points for your pot.
This post is two things: a review of the newest Unmatched box AND commentary on the latest Unmatched news… from someone who’s played and playtested a good bit of Unmatched over the last few years.
For those following along at home, a brief reminder of the Unmatched content here on the Opinionated Gamers site:
Let’s start with the newest Unmatched box… which brings us two new interesting characters with really great card art and impressive figures. The box also includes a new map (King Solomon’s Mine) that uses the same “secret passage” element from the Baskerville Manor map in Cobble & Fog – but this time sized for 1 v 1.
On the difficulty scale, I’d place both of these characters at medium difficulty. (For reference, other characters we put at that level are Beowulf, Ghost Rider, and the T-Rex.) The biggest issue for both Houdini & The Genie is deck management… many of their abilities are powered by boosts, which can leave you depleting your deck too quickly and taking damage in order to chase down your opponent.
As usual, the production of the game is top-notch (one of the hallmarks of Restoration Games products) and the rulebook does the always excellent job of laying out the basic game rules as well as the special rules relating to the characters (particularly Houdini’s “Boost Tricks”).
If you’re a fan of the Unmatched system, this is a must-buy. If you’re trying out the game to see whether you’ll enjoy it, I’d probably suggest the Volume 1 or Volume 2 box first… but this would be an excellent second purchase to add more characters and a new map. Reminder: with the exception of Deadpool & Bruce Lee, every Unmatched box is playable by itself.
Personally, I really enjoyed playing The Genie – the challenge of maintaining my hand and “lunging” at the right time with his extra action power is a tremendously interesting puzzle. Houdini’s escape power is impressive – but I didn’t do as well with it. (I need practice!)
Let’s start with the bad news… Restoration Games announced on Monday (February 13th) that they are putting two Unmatched sets “into the vault” – Cobble & Fog and Robin Hood vs. Bigfoot. Both of these sets will not be reprinted when the current stock runs out.
“With the success of the line and its continual growth, we find ourselves with an ever more crowded roster,” said Restoration Games owner, Justin D. Jacobson. “This, in turn, presents challenges for our retailer partners in deciding what to order and for our customers in deciding what to buy. By putting these titles in the vault, we can give more focus to our active and upcoming sets.”
The good news? On Twitter, Justin clarified that “vaulting” these sets was more like the old Disney film/VHS system, where something could come back out of the vault. That said, there’s no promise that the boxes will return to print – just that they are not permanently shelved.
The ping pong game continues with more bad news – though this information wasn’t entirely a surprise. Due to the expiration of publication rights, the Restoration Games Unmatched vault already contains the Jurassic Park, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Deadpool, and Bruce Lee sets.
Ready for more good news? The press release also mentions that there are FIVE new sets coming in 2023 and 2024, including an unannounced licensed property. (And I’ll note that one of the unannounced sets we helped playtest was a delight, so there’s even more to be happy about!)
So, if you’re interested in picking up Robin Hood vs. Bigfoot (my pick for least expensive solid intro box to the game – what with two great characters and two maps) or Cobble & Fog (the box with the trickiest figures to play well – great for gamer-y types), I’d go ahead and do that.
Here’s how many times we’ve played each set since September 2019… boxes marked with an asterisk (*) were played numerous times during playtesting (plays recorded here are just with published boxes).
Note: I received a review copy of Unmatched: Buffy and Unmatched: Houdini & the Genie… the rest of my Unmatched collection was purchased with my hard-earned cash. Which reminds me – anyone want to buy my copy of Epic Duels?
Matt C. – I’ve not played Unmatched (yet another 2p game I’d love to get to the table, looks like it would be one I enjoy. Unfortunately, my best opponents seem to have grown up…) Mark also asked for comments about the whole “into the vault” thing. While I felt the Disney deal seemed rather pointedly trying to force people to purchase, this case seems to be arising out of economic need. Games (and expansions) go out of print all the time, and a publisher may not be able to float having every expansion available at all times. Having a heads-up about specific game expansions leaving store shelves (for now) is a good thing. This sort of thing happens all the time without publishers saying anything.
I love it – Mark Jackson, Erik Arneson
I like it –
Neutral –
Not for Me –
A BOARD GAME AUTOBIOGRAPHY. By Mitchell Thomashow
This essay is part of a larger book project that explores “Learning Memories.” Those memories serve as the basis for deepening awareness and meaning in the present moment. The project includes four sections: Play and Sports, Music and Sound, Illumination and Light, Illustration and Text. The Board Game Autobiography is in the Play and Sports section. Some of the other essays in that section include Wiffle Ball, Frisbee, Marbles, Pick-Up Games, On Dice and Life, and Pinball. I hope this short essay spurs your own memories and perhaps inspires you to write your own board game autobiography!
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I don’t remember the specifics of my earliest board game experience. During my 1950’s middle class childhood, I recall encounters with many different toys and games—Tinker Toys, Colorforms, Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets, Chemistry Sets. This was prehistory—there were no Legos around! None of those construction or science toys really interested me very much. I liked gameboards.
We didn’t have many games in our house. My parents weren’t particularly interested. But most households had a Checkers set, and during birthdays or gift-giving occasions, I would sometimes receive a board game as a gift. I don’t remember the first game I played—it was undoubtedly Candyland or Uncle Wiggily, two luck-based games where you followed winding paths. Checkers grabbed my attention. I was fascinated that a simple pattern of red and black squares could yield such an interesting game. There was magic in the mystery of how the checkers moved across the board, jumping each other, doubling up and becoming Kings, and then gaining the power to move backwards. Eventually I graduated to Chess which offered a whole new level of sophistication. I was never particularly good at either game but I enjoyed playing them. I took great pleasure in the beauty, rules, and structure of Chess and Checkers. The simple red and black checkered board stimulated excitement, curiosity and wonder. Continue reading →
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