• Designer: Reiner Stockhausen
• Publisher: dlp games
• Players: 2-5
• Ages: 12+
• Time: 60-120 minutes
• Times played: 3, with a copy I purchased

If there was an award for cutest start player marker, Altiplano would definitely be in the running, But is there more to the game than just a totally adorable alpaca? Let’s see.

In Altiplano you are a resident of a mountainous region in South America, where you are trying to make a living farming, fishing and mining. It’s not easy, though and resources are limited, so you’re always trying to make improvements.

There are seven location tiles that make up the village; they are placed randomly in a circle. Each location has tiles and/or cards that can be purchased there. Off to the side is an extension strip, where you can purchase cards that give you additional action options on your turn.

Each player has an identical action board, a warehouse, a cart and player markers. Players draw a role tile and place it face up next to their action board; the role card gives you an additional action option as well as indicates your starting tiles and money. You put the tiles into your bag and you are ready to go.

All players simultaneously draw tiles from their bags; the number drawn is equal to the number of available planning spaces you have on your board. You start with 4; your number of available spaces can be fewer if you didn’t place all your tiles on your previous turn or can be more if you’ve expanded. Tiles you acquire and spend throughout the game are placed in your cart; when you need to draw a tile and your bag is empty you dump the contents of your cart back into your bag and continue drawing.

Next, all player simultaneously move their tiles from planning spaces to action spaces on their board, role tile or any extensions they have purchased. Once the start player announces they are done moving tiles, each player in clockwise order declares they are done; once you declare you are done you may not make any changes.

Next up is the action phase; all players take turns carrying out their actions until all players have passed. To take an action you must be located in the space where the action you want to take is based – so if you want to produce wool at the farm your piece must be located at the farm. You start the game on a space of your choosing, but you’ll have to move eventually. All players start the game with a cart that allows them to move up to three spaces at no cost once each turn. You can also assign one food to move one space on an additional turn or acquire additional carts to move an additional 3; additional movement beyond your free cart always costs one food.

When you take an action you spend the required tiles and put them in your cart; any tiles you gain as part of the action also go in your cart.

Most actions get you a tile, but there are also cards with houses and boats that give you bonus points and orders that will give you points if they are filled, road extensions (that allow you to use more tiles each turn) and extension cards that give you additional actions.  You can buy additional carts to increase your movement. In addition each player has a warehouse; at the village you can choose to place one or more goods in your warehouse following the warehouse placement rules – no food and only goods of the same type per row with the exception of corn, which can be placed in any row that already has a tile in it (if corn is placed first in a row you can only place corn there). Tiles in your warehouse are not available to you but will score at the end of the game.

The round continues until everyone has passed; you are never required to carry out actions you have programmed, so if circumstances change you may choose to pass with tiles on your action board; those tiles remain on your board for the next round.

The start player moves to the left, carts are moved back to the unused positions and if someone bought an extension the market is adjusted and filled in.

The game continues until all tiles and cards on at least one of the locations have all been taken or if an empty space on the extension cannot be filled in. The current round is finished and then one final round is played.

Players score for all of their tiles except food and money, boats and houses, fulfilled orders and bonus points granted by houses. Players then get storage points; for each completed row in his own warehouse, a player scores the number of points indicated at the end of the row. The player with the most points wins; ties are broken by most money.

MY THOUGHTS ON THE GAME

I enjoy the game. I am a big fan of deck building, and this is essentially a deck builder in a bag. Planning your actions based on what you drew is appealing to me, and I find there is usually enough variety that you have something interesting to do. If you don’t, you have the ability to set yourself up for a future turn. There is more than one path to victory; although there are goods that are more valuable than others, savvy manipulation of extensions and bonuses give you lots of way to maximize what you have.

The rules are well-written and cover most everything. The components are mostly of good quality, although I suspect our alpaca will need some surgery to keep her upright over time. The colors and symbols are clear and not easily confused with each other. The board is easily viewable by all players.

The game is essentially multiplayer solitaire. This doesn’t bother me, as I am perfectly happy to have my own little space in the mountains to work in, but there is no real player interaction; someone might take the extension tile or bonus card you wanted, but that’s about it.

Some aspects of the theme do not tie well to the actions; why do 2 fish make a stone? I suppose you could argue that you are trading the 2 fish to someone for one of their stones, but since there isn’t really any player interaction the idea that it is a trade still bothers me. I want 2 fish to make something that comes from fish. It doesn’t really affect the gameplay, though – just the feel.

Many people compare it to Orleans, but I’ve only played Orleans twice more than a year ago, so I leave that comparison to others to describe.

Thoughts from Other Opinionated Gamers

James Nathan (2 plays): I’m a “compare & contrast” kind of reviewer, so it’s hard for me to discuss Altiplano in a vacuum. I loved my first play of Orleans; liked the first half of my second play of Orleans; and then realized every game would be the same for me.  In Orleans, I found myself pursuing the same strategy in each game, and nothing in the setup or that other players seemed to do was causing me to change that.

I love Stockhausen’s overall Orleans/Altiplano bag/deck building system – using pairs of discs (typically) to buy a new disc – rather than worrying about number of actions or balancing different currencies; leaving discs on certain spaces to have them half-completed for your next turn; and in Orleans, certain actions not only giving you the benefit of the action, but clogging your bag with extra of that disc as a form of abuse/corruption/waste.

After my first game of Altiplano (3-player), I was “neutral”.  Part way through my second game (4-player, with Mission cards), I realized I liked it, and it may climb higher. Altiplano has asymmetric starting conditions in both bag composition as well as an entangled action space. This would add something to such a game, but I think it shines even more due to how difficult it is to get a few resources – with your basic actions, you have no way to acquire Alpacas, Fish, Cocoa, or Pointy Rocks.  This only come in through starting abilities, building extensions, and finding some at sea in your canoe. I found this to add delightful layers of contingency planning.

In the 2nd game we used the optional Mission Cards which I doubt I will ever not use again.  These give each player some hidden objectives to shoot for (e.g. first to fill a warehouse row with only corn; acquire 4 cocoa), and added some nice direction to your strategy.

I’m not a recipe-fulfillment sort of person, so it’s hard for me to imagine ever taking one of the order cards – and that was no matter in our 4-player game, as all but 1 was taken anyway.  (That’s sort of how I do with sprawling point salady games – I pick one module and ignore it.)  There are plenty of other ways to score points, and I lucked out in having the Glass House, the chocoholic Mission Card, a chocolate shop market extension, and opponents who didn’t realize how much glass I was hoarding.

We sometimes lost track of who’s turn it was, as both this and Orleans suffer a little from “most of your turn can be simultaneous but sometimes it can’t and nobody is patient enough to wait their turn and then we lose track of what’s going on”.  Maybe we suffer from that and the game is simply a blank canvas on which we project our own short-comings.

My only other concern is that the starting abilities may point me too much in the same direction.  That is to say, if I get starting tile X this game, and starting tile X next game, is it just back to Orleans for me?  My current answer is “I don’t think so.”  The Mission Cards will help steer you just slightly off track enough that I think it won’t be a problem, and we had sufficient competition for the House and Canoe cards, that our choices felt driven by the precise moment, and not pre-determined by our lot.

Craig M. (1 Play): With only an initial play, I’m not sure where I stand hence the neutral rating. I really do need to try it a second time. My take at the moment is the game is Le Havre meets Orleans given the mechanics lineage of the former and the huge variety of goods from the former. The lone play felt extremely uninteractive, much more so than Orleans. I don’t think I ever gave a thought as to what the other players were doing. To be fair my score was doubled by the winner in that game so maybe I should. The asymmetric start is interesting and a plus. James Nathan is spot on regarding the mission cards. I recommend using them right out of the gate.

Joe Huber (1 play): I must admit to being drawn to the idea of a bag-building game; avoiding the need for constant shuffling is a welcome change from deck-building.  But – every bag-building game I’ve played, including Altiplano, seems to suffer from not knowing when to stop.  I enjoyed Altiplano more than either Orleans or King’s Pouch, as the theme worked better for me in spite of a couple of odd goods transformations.  But the game still went on too long, turning my mild enjoyment into tedium.

Brian Leet (1 play): As with Joe, I like the idea of bag builders. This one worked for me, but didn’t excite me (yet). Orleans was a game I wanted to like more than I do. The strategy just seemed too narrow leaving the selection of actions mechanical. In Altiplano I felt much more like I was selecting a strategy from multiple options, both in how I placed resources and also in how I built my bag. I did find the odd upgrade trees pulled me a bit out of theme sometimes, and overall our first play ran a bit long for my tastes. So, I’m neutral for now but would gladly try this one again.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Tery, James Nathan
• Neutral. Craig M., Brian L.
• Not for me… Joe H.

The Quest for El Dorado (Re-Review)

• Designer: Reiner Knizia
• Publisher: Ravensburger
• Players: 2 – 4
• Ages: 10+
• Time: 30-60 minutes
• Times Played: 5 (with 2, 3, 4 players)

[Editor’s note: Normally, we re-review a game after a much longer period of time… but for The Quest for El Dorado, we’re taking another look now as there is a new English-language version available from Ravensburger North America, and the game will be widely available soon…]

— original review by Jeff Lingwall below —

Wettlauf nach El Dorado (Race to El Dorado, or simply El Dorado) is a new game from Reiner Knizia, the famed German designer of classics such as Tigris and Euphrates, Ra, Ingenious, Keltis, and Lost Cities. El Dorado is currently nominated for the 2017 Spiel des Jahres, where it faces Kingdomino and Magic Maze for the coveted German Game of the Year prize. At heart, El Dorado is a streamlined deck-building game in which players use cards to race across a modular map. The game is excellent–charming, simple but deep, and expandable. I’ve enjoyed it with gamers and family alike and expect it to have a good shot at winning the Spiel. Continue reading →

• Designers: Michael Kiesling and Andreas Schmidt
• Publisher: Eggertspiele
• Players: 2 – 4
• Ages: 12+
• Time: 60-90 minutes
• Times played: 4, with purchased copies

Aside from being a board gamer I am also a craft beer fan. I generally do not try to merge my hobbies, aside from perhaps enjoying a beer while playing a game. However, I must admit that the title “Heaven & Ale” caught my attention while I was reading up on new releases at Essen and I added it to my list to check out. I was able to play a demo and immediately marched over to the sales stand to buy a copy as soon as we were finished with our game.

In Heaven & Ale  you are a brewer at an ancient monastery. You are trying to develop your gardens and manage your monks to make the best beer possible, but there are lots of competing demands for your time and resources.

Each player is given a board with spaces for 30 resource and/or monk tiles, as well as spaces for storage sheds. One half of the board is light and one half of the board is dark; this is important to note for when we get to tile placement. The board also has a numbered track along the left side and on the top; this is where you keep track of your resources needed to brew your beer as well as the quality of your beer. On the right side of the track are the spots for scoring your tiles (more on that in a minute, too). You also get twenty five dollars and a set of bonus cards.

The main board is a track around which players will move to gather tiles. In the center of the board are the monk tiles, which show you how many rounds are left in the game, and the bonus tiles.

There are four types of spaces.

1. Resource spaces are spaces where you buy goods tiles – wood, yeast, water, hops, and barley. The tiles range in value from 1 to 5, and what you pay depends on where you plan to place the tile. A tile placed on the dark side of your board, where it will generate income, costs its face value, while a tile placed on the light side of your board, where it will generate resources costs double the face value.
2. Monk spaces are spaces where you buy monks, who will help you get money and resources. Each monk space has a set cost for those monks, but you’ll still pay double if you want to place them on the light side.
3. Scoring disc spaces allow you to take a disc and place it on one of the scoring spaces on your player board; doing this allows you to carry out the scoring action of that particular space. For example, if you place the disc on your wheat space, you would score all wheat tiles currently on your board – you’d get money equal to the value of the wheat tiles on the dark side and you’d move your wheat marker up a number of spaces equal to the value of the wheat tiles on the light side.
4. Barrel spaces allow you to take one or more bonus tiles if you have met the criteria; the first player to take the bonus gets four points and the second player gets two points.

The game is played over a number rounds based on the number of players. On your turn you move to any forward spot of your choice where you can perform the related action.

If you took a resource tile or a monk you pay the cost and place it on your board in the space of your choosing. If placement of the tile would cause a shed space to be fully enclosed you add up the value of all surrounding tiles (resources are worth their face value and monks are worth zero) and take the shed that matches that value (there’s a chart on your player board) and place that shed in any orientation you’d like. Based on the shed you will be able to activate zero – four tiles that are adjacent to the shed. Lesser value sheds will only let you activate zero or one tile, but will move your brewmaster farther along the brewing track. Higher value sheds will let you activate two – four tiles, but will not advance your brewmaster nearly as much.  Activating a tile lets you take its benefit – resources on the light side or money on the dark. A monk activated this way simply moves your brewmaster up one space on the track.

If you took a scoring disk you place it on one of your ten scoring spaces; where you may place it is dictated by the space you took the disk from. You are only going to activate each space at most once. When you score it, you take the related action. For the resource tiles you either choose the spot that scores all resource tiles of one number value or you choose the colored spots that will allow you to score all of one resource type. You can also place on one of the monks, which will trigger each monk of that type to score all tiles adjacent to that monk; any monks who happen to be adjacent will move your brewmaster up on the track.  If placement of your disc completes one of the pairs, you may choose to play one of your five bonus cards and take the bonus it provides. Unplayed bonus cards can also be turned in at any point for three dollars, but you then lose the ability to take the bonus later in the game.

If you stopped on a barrel space you take all bonus tiles that you have fulfilled.

At any point a player can decide that they are done with the round and exit the board onto the starting spaces. There are 4 spaces – the first player space has no bonus; other spaces give you two dollars, move you up on a resource track or move your brewmaster up. You take the bonus and wait until all players have completed their turns.  

Any tiles remaining on the board are left there and the board is reseeded, which means some spaces may have more than one resource tile or monk; you may buy any number of tiles on one space that you can afford.

After the sixth round the game ends and players calculate their scores. You look to see what space you’re brewmaster is on and what the current exchange rate is. You then must even out your resource markers as much as possible using this exchange rate. Let’s say your exchange rate is 2:1. That means that to move your lowest marker up 1 space you must move one higher resource back 2 spaces or a combination of two higher resources back one space each. You keep doing this until you cannot move a marker forward without decreasing another marker below it. You then add up all remaining money in your hand and move a piece forward one space for every ten dollars remaining in your hand.  You take the value of your piece that is furthest behind on the production track and multiply that value by the victory point value your brewmaster is one; add the value of any barrels you collected and add a point if you went first in the last round and that’s your score.

My Thoughts on the Game

This game is an interesting puzzle to me, one that I have not yet managed to successfully solve. I have not yet found the path that allows me to move around the track at the right pace, score at the right moment and maximize my resources, all without running out of money. Every choice I make feels fraught with the possibility that I am missing another better, choice. You can’t wait until things are perfect to score and collect resources/money, because those purple disks are SCARCE, but if you score too early you can struggle to get things where they need to be.  I am frustrated every single time I play this game, but frustrated in a good way that makes me want to play again immediately. The mechanism of the dark side versus the light side is very cool, and balancing the different ways to score your tiles throughout the game makes for some interesting decisions.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Nathan Beeler: The game was fairly enjoyable for me, since it uses the “you can’t go backwards” mechanism that I adore in other games like Egizia. However, I’m still unsure if Heaven & Ale will age well, or if it will go flat and find itself in the “fine” game purgatory like so many others. The variance I could see happening between games seemed to be more of the tactical variety. And it didn’t feel like it had much of a dramatic arc that I tend to enjoy in games that have real legs. For the moment, though, I give it three cheers.

Craig Massey (3 plays): So far I’m finding Heaven & Ale to be an intriguing puzzle to solve in order to play well. Not that I’m necessarily doing that, but my scores are slowly going up. The decisions points are interesting as you balance and short term cash flow with long term barrel improvement while trying pay attention to your opponent’s needs. It’s hard to predict if we’ll be playing this a year from now, but it has a shot.

Melissa Rogerson (4 plays): I bought Heaven & Ale at Essen with very little forethought – just “I heard this is great, I should get it.” So far, it’s exceeded my expectations – that purple disc scarcity really hits one of my favourite elements in a game. Of my four plays, two have been with just two players, one with three, and one with four. I definitely prefer it with four, as I feel that with the longer game you have more time to achieve something – I’m notorious for badly timing my mid-game. With two, the game is played over just three rounds and so is very very tight; with three, it’s played over four rounds – better, but it still doesn’t feel as though you get enough payoff in the midgame. It definitely takes a couple of games to get a handle on how to optimise your score (I’m still learning). So far, I’ve only played this with novices – looking forward to exploring more depth as we become more familiar with it.
Top Teaching tip: Explain the end-game exchanges and scoring BEFORE you teach the game, and then again afterwards.

Larry (2 plays):  I got to play this twice at The Gathering with a practically-finished prototype and I loved it.  Both the mechanics and the objective are original and the tension you feel as you advance on the track (“Please don’t take that monk!”) is palpable.  It seems extremely well designed and developed.  This is the game I have most anticipated from the current Essen crop and I’ve been very gratified to see how well received it has been.  I can’t wait to finally play the published version!

Joe Huber (5 plays): While I’m not at all convinced Heaven & Ale is a great game, it’s a very solid and very enjoyable design.  I picked up a copy based upon observation of half a game and the positive comments from folks including Larry, and haven’t regretted it.  It’s not my favorite of the Essen releases, but it’s such a clean game that unlike Craig I do expect to get a lot of play from it for some time to come.  I do think I still prefer Domus Domini in the “games about monks making beer” category of games…

Dan Blum (2 plays): So far it’s a very interesting game of managing a variety of interlocking constraints. Expectations may need to be adjusted for player count, even though you should in theory get about as many actions per game no matter how many players there are; I did a much better job of moving everything up in my second game (with three) than in my first (with four) but ended up with exactly the same score. Of course I may just be bad at the game.

Greg S (1 play) Just played Heaven & Ale and am intrigued.  I performed horribly, but hopefully I learned from my mistakes and errant choices.  As others say, it is certainly “puzzly” and there is always that tough choice of what to purchase and where to place it.  Balancing the constant need for ducats with the long-range need of increasing the value of the various ingredients is tough.  With a theme of producing beer, I think I may have actually performed better if I was drinking a beer instead of a Diet Mt. Dew!

Alan H: (3 plays) plays at The Gathering and at a post Essen con reminded me how clever the game is with built in tension because of the go forwards movement, then the frustration of not getting your ideal tokens followed by the limited number and opportunity to get purple scoring tokens. Offsetting this is the planning you carry out to make progress. It’s not my favourite release from Essen 2017, but a very good one.

Simon N: (3 plays:  2-player, 3 Player & 4 player): This game is easy to learn and whilst there is the solo element of building an efficient collection of tiles on your own player board, you have a lot of interaction on the main board and a bit of push your luck over whether to risk buying another tile or going to the badly needed scoring token. The game works well with both families and hardened gamers. It scales well and the 2 player game with only 3 rounds in which to get your markers into the scoring zone is quite challenging. overall a cracking game and probably my favourite from this year’s Essen crop.

Doug G: (3 2-player plays): Shel and I spent the past weekend obsessed with this one. As Alan says above, this is very “clever” and works as a puzzle that’s VERY tight with just 3 rounds for 2 players. Also, the variance of when the resource tiles become available from game to game can lead to wide changes in one’s ability to stay ahead of the money curve. Big numbers are costly, but can reap major dividends if placed effectively. Getting two of the same monk can be a huge boon, though making them pay off can take quite awhile. I’m pretty sure it’s best to focus on getting the brewmaster ahead rather than zooming ahead with your various resources, but we’ll be exploring this one often going forward.  Plays in less than 45 minutes with 2.

Simon W: (2 4-player plays): This is not a magnificently challenging game but it is fun and not too long. The tension is great as you try to get the spots you want on the main board and attempt to maximise scoring on your player board by getting the right mix of monks and counters to the left and right. It is definitely a game requiring at least 2 plays too learn, since here you have a timing constraint or tipping point between part 1: build up your resources and part 2: maximise your scoring.

Dale Y (5 plays): This is one of those games that doesn’t bring any significantly new to the table mechanistically, but everything is wrapped up in a nice package and works together well.  I will admit that I’m not sure if I’ve see the multiplying scoring mechanism done before, but it seemed familiar.  I’ll have to do more research on that.  But, back to the game – I love the way that this game constantly challenges you to decide how far to move along the track.  Sometimes you have to take a big jump forward in order to get something you really want – though you end up giving up a lot in opportunity cost for all the spaces left behind.  The game is super-tight financially, and I always feel like I’m spending a lot of the early game making sure that I have enough money to do stuff – but in the end, you have to play on the other side of your board in order to really score points.  I have found that the game feels a lot faster in 2p and 3p games.  While you might get the same number of actions in general, the fewer trips around the board make the scoring discs come up proportionately fewer times AND it makes far jumps ahead that much more costly in the opportunity sense.  Our 4p games have had winners in the 50-70 range.  My most recent 3p game had a winner at 28 (and we had all played the game before).  I love this one so far, and I would not be surprised to see this on a short list of games for the Kennerspiel.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!  James Nathan, Melissa Rogerson, Larry, Joe H. Alan H, Doug G., Simon N., Dale Y
• I like it. Tery,  Nathan Beeler, Craig Massey, Dan Blum, Greg S., Simon W.
• Neutral.
• Not for me…

Spirit Island

• Designer: R. Eric Reuss
• Publisher: Greater than Games
• Players: 1-4
• Ages: 14+
• Time: 90-120 minutes
• Times played: 3, with review copy with Spirit Island

[Ed note – my review of this was published right as the game came out, and though it was not the sort of game for me… there were a number of other Opinionated Gamers who had a chance to play the game in the intervening months, and I thought it would be a good idea to re-do the review with their counterpoints included as their experience was much different than mine.  I felt like it would be beneficial (and fair) to republish the review with their comments.  DY]

In Spirit Island, players are powerful Spirits that live on an isolated Island.  They must use their powers to fight off invaders which are trying to colonize said previously isolated island.  The game is cooperative, with all Spirits acting simultaneously to fight off the invaders.  The Spirits will win if they can destroy the Invaders while they lose if the Invaders are able to entrench themselves on the Island OR if any of the Spirits is completely defeated.

To setup the game, you first set up the Invader board – making both a Fear Deck and an Invader Deck.  The Island board is made up of the appropriate number of map pieces, and the board is seeded with Invaders, Dahan (the native inhabitants), and Blight icons.  Blight is the decay of Nature as well as damage from the Invaders.  Blight is taken from the Blight card on the Invader Board and if it is ever removed from the board, it is placed back onto the Invader Board.  As Blight is added to the game, it will cause Spirits to remove their Influence markers.  Be careful as Blight placement can easily cascade into neighboring areas. Continue reading →