Review of expansions for Era: Medieval Age by Jeff Lingwall

• Designed by Matt Leacock
• Published by Eggertspiele
• 1-4 Players
• Playing time: 45-60 minutes (expect longer plays than with the base game due to increased complexity, at least at first)

The Basic Idea

When the Opinionated Gamers reviewed Matt Leacock’s Era: Medieval Age some time ago, the reaction was generally lukewarm. Two OG’s rated the game “I like it” and five listed themselves as “neutral.” Although I’d been a longtime fan of the Roll Through the Ages series, I hadn’t yet played Era when the review was published. If I had, I would probably have been in the “I love it” camp. I enjoy dice games, city building, simultaneous action, games with “toy” value that a younger child can play with regardless of the rules, and sandboxy engine building. Era combined all those elements in a pretty package, and so when I finally got on board the game received quite a bit of play.

Since its release, Era has seen three mini expansions called “Collector Sets” and one major expansion called “Rivers and Roads”. The expansions generally add more: more buildings, more ways to score points, more geometry to puzzle through for optimal placement, more disasters, and so on. I very much enjoy the additional creative space opened up by the expansions, but that space comes at the price of substantial increased complexity, at least when playing with all expansions together.

Faza

Designed by Benjamin Farahmand

Illustrated by: Scott Chantler

Published by TheFAZA.com

Impressions (after 5 plays) by Jonathan Franklin

As I was about to write a review of Faza, I saw a question posed on BGG, “If I like the art of Faza, is it too similar to Pandemic or Horrified to consider?” For me, this question made writing this review easier and I decided not to rehash the rules as found in a traditional review. For a rules overview, see other reviews and videos of the game. 

Faza is of the same weight as Horrified and Pandemic.  It can be played casually or with quite a bit of planning. It is a co-op with a puzzle underpinning. That said, I feel Faza is different enough to be worth consideration.  Instead of rehashing the rules, I tried to set out what I see as the major differences, which should help you figure out if it is a game for you.

Shamans

• Designer: Cedrick Chaboussit
• Publisher: Studio H
• Players: 3-5
• Age: 10+ 
• Time: 30-40 minutes
• Review copy provided by Studio H

Shamans arrived on my doorstep a few weeks ago, but it took awhile to get to the table because we have a surprisingly large backlog of new games to play right now – and because our group is taking the opportunity to play some campaign games which span weeks of our game sessions.  But, we’re always up for trick taking games, and Shamans advertises itself as a trick-taker, and so I wanted to give it a try.

Per the publisher: in this game, “Shamans try to restore harmony in a world threatened by Shadows. You’ll need to pick a side.”  That’s somewhat true, as there are some times where you might get to pick – but oftentimes, you end up on the side that you were randomly assigned to…  In this game of shifting allegiances, players are assigned to either the Shamans or the Shadows.  In a 4 player game, three players are secretly assigned to be Shamans and one player is a Shadow.

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Jubako

• Designers: Michael Kiesling, Wolfgang Kramer
• Publisher: Ravensburger
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Ravensburger USA

In this game, players each get their own board which represents a Jubako box – that is a special sort of bento box where meals are organized.  Jubako are normally used for New Year’s Day, but thankfully, in this game, you’ll use them every day of the year.

The jubako board has a 5×5 grid in the center with some preprintedj squares on them.  There are 12 different foods in the game, and they are scattered amongst 78 different domino tiles.  These are shuffled, and each player gets a starting hand of 2 domino tiles.  The rest are placed face down on the table, and then a display of 4 domino tiles is revealed.  There is a scoring track that runs along the outer border of the player board, and you put your marker on the 0 space to start.

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