Times played: 5, with review copy provided by Edition Spielwiese
The Boldest is set is some sort of futuristic/dystopian or fantasy setting. You are in a kingdom that has multiple competing army factions, each seeking to be labeled the Boldest for their exploits. Many of the creatures that you fight appear to be mechanical hybrids, and things are so weird in your land that new recruits are not swayed by high wages but apparently more by tastier stews.
Design by John D. Clair Published by AEG 2 – 4 Players, 45 minutes – 1 hour Review by Greg J. Schloesser
I appreciate originality in game design. Most games will use existing mechanisms and combine them in various fashions in order to produce a game that hopefully feels somewhat fresh. Sometimes, a designer will tinker with an existing mechanism, giving it a new twist or facet that can also make the overall game feel a bit different from its predecessors. It is a true rarity when a designer invents something brand new, as this is usually a breath of fresh air. Of course, this new mechanism cannot stand on its own; it must be surrounded by a fun and entertaining game.
Fortunately, that is the case with John D. Clair’s Mystic Vale.
So what is this clever new mechanism? It is known as the “Card Crafting System” and allows cards to be physically changed by adding new features and advancements to them. It is a dramatic addition to the familiar deck building genre.
In Mystic Vale, the tall cards are inserted into card sleeves. The basic cards have their powers printed on one-third of the card (top, middle or bottom). Card advancements are printed cards of the same size, but these new cards have a transparent background. As with the basic starting cards, a small portion of this transparent card depicts the advancement, which is also depicted on only one-third of the card. These advancement cards are inserted into the card sleeves over the basic card. However, any previous advancement—including those on the basic card—cannot be obscured. In this fashion, a card can be upgraded two times (three if originally empty) if cards are acquired that have the advancements printed in the proper places. With nearly one hundred different advancement cards available—more with expansions—this makes for a seemingly infinite number of ways to construct a card. Brilliant.
Before describing the game, a word about the theme is in order. As one could surmise from the name, the game has a fantasy setting wherein players assume the roles of “druidic clans attempting to restore the cursed lands to their former vitality.” Card advancements represent new life and vitality for the land, which is helpful in the restoration process. The goal is to acquire and properly assemble these advancements, with the acquisition of even more powerful “Vale” cards adding to the restoration.
Designer: たきざわ まさかず（Masakazu Takizawa） Artist: 井上 磨（Osamu Inoue） Publisher: こぐま工房（Koguma Koubou） Players: 1-5 Ages: 9+ Playing Time: 10-45 minutes Times Played: 7 with a friend’s purchased copy. Availability: The copy I have I bought from booth.pm. At the time of this review, copies are available (or should be soon) from Big Cat Games in the US.
Here’s something: it’s an anatomical structure from a carp. A sort of growth off of a vertebrae that connects the swim bladder to the, uh, inner ear. But here’s what it does. The fish gets to use the swim bladder as an echo chamber. It amplifies what the fish can “hear” through the water. It doesn’t do much good to hear things in your swim bladder, but luckily this “Weberian Apparatus” makes a shortcut to the ear.
That’s not the thing Ernst Heinrich Weber was known to me for. He wasn’t known to me at all until I started reading about the Weber-Fechner Law to prepare for this review. I only knew about what the law relates to, and that’s how we’re getting to Hikotrune shortly: just noticeable difference.
It’s one of those terms that tells you what it means. If I turn up the volume on some music, shrink your ice cream pint, crank down the AC (whichever direction that is), when will you notice? What is the smallest amount of change before you notice? It’s the just noticeable difference.
Hiktorune turns haptic just noticeable difference into a fantasy quest.
Times played: 3, with review copy provided by Catch Up Games / Blackrock Distribution
In Fertility, players are each a Nomarch (i.e. mayor) of an Egyptian city – trying to improve their own metropolis into being the best by having the best shops and erecting the most statues on the board. The board itself is comprised of a number of different sections, filled mostly with empty squares but with a number of lakes and wheat fields scattered amongst the empty spaces. A start tile is placed on the most central eligible location.
Times played: 5, with review copy provided by Feuerland
Fuji is one of the new games from Wolfgang Warsch – you know the guy who was nominated for just about every major boardgame award except for the Kinderspiel des Jahres last year. Though he is new to boardgame world, he has already amazed me with the breadth of his game designs. Fuji represents yet another type of game – this being a dice rolling cooperative game. Though I’m normally not one for cooperative games, the track record of Herr Warsch was enough to make me take a look at this one.
Times played: 11, with review copy provided by Asmodee NA
Tom Lehmann has always been one of my favorite designers. He is a joy to game with, and he is one of the most enthusiastic gamers that I’ve ever played with. It’s amazing to watch him work on games at conventions such as the Gathering of Friends where you can see his ingenuity at work as he is able to come up with revised versions of games literally overnight based on feedback from other people. One recent design of his that I loved was Jump Drive, a game that compresses the idea of deck building down into a 15 to 20 minute game. In Res Arcana, players take on the role of mages, as they try to use the essences (Life, Death Elan, Calm) as well as Gold to take control of Places of Power and to control Dragons and Creatures. This engine building game is also supposed to play in a short amount of time, and I was super excited about it once I first read about it.
