Designer: Peter Hayward
Artist: Snow Conrad
Publisher: allplay
Players: 2-6
Age: 6+
Time: 20 minutes
Review copy provided by allplay
Reviewed by Jonathan Franklin (played 7-8 times)
Things in Rings is the sort of party game I like. It is clever and leaves room for creativity. The gameplay is snappy and the post-game discussions can be as fun as the game itself.
Welcome to River Valley! The beautiful pieces of glass that can be found along the river here have attracted the most entrepreneurial of woodland creatures to set up shop.
In River Valley Glassworks, you play as one of these pioneers, drafting glass from the market of river tiles. To do so, you have to play a piece from your inventory into the river. Each river tile can take only a specific shape, and you must play into a space adjacent to where you want to draft from. After you pick up your glass, the river shifts forward, revealing new pieces and new opportunities.
Store the glass you pick up strategically in your shop. Depending on how the glass pieces are placed, your score will change drastically. Fill in rows and columns to gain bonus points, but don’t draft too many of one type to avoid negative points!
I’ve been gradually working thru a backlog of games but this is where I start covering the games I played at the Gathering of Friends back in April. I played 89 new-to-me games there, which will take the next 11 or so articles to work through, so I’m going to stretch out the side commentary a little to match.
I spent a week prior to the Gathering in New England, which I’ve never visited before. I flew into Boston, drove north up to Acadia NP in Maine, and then across New Hampshire, Vermont and upper New York to get to Niagara Falls. Along the way I was chatting to my fellow OG’ers about my experiences and here are a few snippets:
– While I wasn’t expecting it exactly to be balmy in Ogunquit, Maine, my first port of call, I’ll just call out that holy mother of all holies, it is SOOOO COLDDDD! I mean I packed some warms because I’m not totally stupid, but my god, I wasn’t expecting a polar fleece, full balaclava, insulated gloves style Arctic inquisition. I may have under-packed a little. I swear, if those GoF games rooms aren’t tasty warm, I’ll be lighting fires and using every game of Flip 7 as kindling.
Rumble Nation was a highly anticipated SPIEL 2019 game for me; I had been introduced to the original release (then called Tenka Meidou) by James Nathan; but, of course, like all of the great JP games of his that I have played, it was essentially out-of-print and quite unavailable by the time that I learned about it!
The rights to the game have been acquired by Hobby Japan, and the game is being released to a wider audience. It has had rave reviews from most gamers, and it certainly merits its “award-winning” status; it is the 2018 Tokyo Game Market Awards Grand Prize winner.
Fliptown
Summary:
I backed Fliptown when it was on Kickstarter and finally brought it to game day, and it was really fun. Fliptown is a unique flip and write game where players navigate the wild west to gather gold, money, stars all the while trying to avoid getting their Wanted level too high to avoid the Sheriff’s attention. Not only do you have to manage your own player board resources, you also get to play 3 hands poker! A deck of playing cards is used at the top of each turn and one card is used to control the location, the other card for the action, and one card is for the poker hand.
The game has a lot of fun content and depth, and variability with player character cards and achievement cards, but in my first couple of playthroughs with different groups of experienced gamers, I realized everyone was just enjoying the lay of the land of their player board, so I decided to omit the character cards and achievement cards so players can learn the mechanics. Those cards could then eventually be added later on in another game so they could have something to look forward to.
Gameplay:
In Fliptown, each player starts with an erasable player board where the main game takes place, and an erasable marker. The sturdy erasable player board folds out to track the location visits, actions and the player’s resources. Since I had this game in storage for a while before playing it, I was worried some of the markers had dried out, so I easily substituted them with newer ones that I had laying about. The game comes with a Western-looking deck of cards, all within its own tuck box; those cards are shuffled thoroughly without the Jokers. 3 Bounty Cards (achievement cards) are also revealed with the (7) points face up. Once you are familiar with the mechanics, each player can be given 1 of the 14 player Character Cards as well. (When playing with new players I recommend removing the Bounty Cards and Character Cards since there are a lot of action spaces they need to learn about.)
The game is played over 3 rounds, each round consisting of 5 turns.
In a round, start by shuffling the deck of cards, and set the top card aside without revealing its value, and that is the Sheriff. The Sheriff card will arrest players that have too much Wanted and take their resources. Then players take their turns simultaneously. But to help players new to the game we took turns individually and explained our moves until midway in Round 2. It also made it more engaging, and helped people learn about the locations and strategies from someone who has played before.
In a turn, flip and reveal 3 cards to the center of the table. Cards have the standard A-K, Spade, Heart, Club, Diamond values. Players may choose to use the cards, or pass to visit the Cemetery (explained later on). To use the cards, each of the 3 cards will be assigned once to (1) a Location, (2) a Value, and (3) a Poker card. When everyone has finished their action(s) the next 3 cards are revealed. Until 5 sets of cards have been revealed. You can track this by looking at the Poker Hand area.
Using the Suit as a Location card – Choose a card for their suit (club, heart, spade, diamond), to go to that location. Heart will take you to the Trail. Spades take you to the Badlands, Diamond to the Mines, and Clubs let you go to the Town.
Using the Value as an Action card – Choose a card for its number value (Your Card Value). At the location you choose when using the Suit, look at that area and find Your Card Value to circle the space and use its ability.
In the Badlands (Spades), you get to rob and steal by flipping over a new card. If Your Card Value is equal or over you win all the rewards. If you lose you’ll receive some penalties and less rewards.
On the Trail (Hearts), you can stop anywhere on the trail equal to or below Your Card Value and gain the reward on the space you stopped at. You can never go back to a skipped space.
In the Mines (Diamonds) you can mine for treasure. Starting from the top of the mine entrance, choose which path to take and gain that resource. To go further down into the Mines you must first have circled and dug the space above it. And if you dig all the way down a path you gain end game VP.
In the Town (Clubs) you get to build buildings. You can get a reward the first time visiting, and each building has it’s own unique ability. For example, buy a Work horse for $3 to gain a Hammer and Star (VP), or a Trail Horse ($4) which helps you move further on the Trail. One of the buildings even has a mini game where you try to color in all 9 squares.
And the last place is the Cemetery. If you decide not to use your Suit or Value cards, you can go to the Cemetery, or another reward sent you to the Cemetery. The Cemetery is it’s own mini puzzle game to gain rewards. By circling an available tombstone you gain the reward between 2 circled tombstones.
Players can try chaining actions that allow you to visit another Location. So it’s interesting to work out how to make the most of your action.
Every time a Wanted, Money or Gold is collected it’s circled on their respective tracks. Money is used to purchase items, and gold can be used to modify the suit, or modify the value of a card, and gold can be used to bribe the Sheriff. Any time you reduce a resource e.g. you remove 4 Wanted by visiting the Hideout in Town, you cross out the resource. So there’s rarely any time you’ll need to use the eraser in the game, unless you made a mistake.
Add the 3rd card in your Poker Hand: Finally the 3rd card is used to add to your Poker Hand. Circle and note down the card’s suit and value. Since each turn you’ll be using a card as your Poker Card, after 5 turns you end up with a full 5 card poker hand. Aiming for straights, full houses, and so on will earn you more points and money.
After everyone finishes their actions at the end of each of the 5th turns, everyone checks their own Poker Hand for that turn and resolves their reward.
To end the round out, everyone pans for gold and goes to work. Players gain a gold for every circled gold pan, and gain $2 for every circled hammer they own. And finally they deal with the Sheriff who’s trying to catch players who have too much wanted. Players can decide if they first want to bribe the Sheriff by paying 1 gold for every Wanted they have to ignore the Sheriff’s effect temporarily (No Wanted levels are crossed out and reduced). Then the Sheriff card is revealed and those that didn’t bribe will compare the card against their own wanted level. If the Sheriff Card is equal or higher than the Wanted level the player is safe. Otherwise they must pay a hefty sum by crossing out their money or stars. Which ends the Round.
After 3 Rounds, players count up all their stars, their end game victory points, they earn 1 star for every $4, and 1 star for every 2 gold, and whomever has the most wins!
Impressions:
This game is an enjoyable experience. Each time I play I try something different. The Town has so many options to take and I’ve seen some really funny and interesting choices. There are so many spaces to discover, I made it to the bottom of the Mines once, and I haven’t even made it to the end of the Trail.
I think the 3 card decision is really fun, it’s like a puzzle where you have to find your optimal move. Should you use the card as your poker hand, or to go to a location, or for its value? I also enjoyed the chaining aspect of the game. It’s a game where you enjoy collecting resources, and even the Wanted levels. But if we got ahead of ourselves we could easily end up with 14+ Wanted and get caught by the Sheriff.
The Bounty cards are similar to achievement cards and added an element of interaction, but were more advanced. I usually remove these. I haven’t tried the character cards yet, but I’ll leave that for more advanced play.
I didn’t expect this flip and write to get some chuckles but we did, and made some fun memories. This game felt like there were mini games inside a game and it did it in a very coherent and thematic way. What a clever way to integrate Poker into a game and it was a very unique flip and write game with well thought out areas to explore on the player board. I’m already looking forward to bringing Fliptown to my next game day!
Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers
Do you like lasagna? I imagine most people do. If I asked you what your favorite lasagna is, would you base it on the one that has the most flavorful cheese on top, or maybe with the best cooked noodles? Or are you like me, who wants the best combination of noodles, meat, sauce, and cheese, all stacked up in one perfect bite? Do you want to focus on just one element of the dish or the entire package?
That’s a somewhat fanciful (but delicious) lead in to what the Designer of the Year awards are all about. The idea is not to recognize what the best game of the year is (lots of awards do that), but to honor the game designer who had the best overall body of work over the previous calendar year. I’ve been handing out those citations for over 20 years and folks seem to like them, so let’s do it again for 2024.
Okay, let’s start with the rules (we’re gamers, after all). What games are covered? Just about any title that comes in a box. Boardgames, card games, dexterity games, Euros, thematic titles—toss ‘em all in. The one type of game I leave out are children’s games, since their criteria for success is pretty different than games for adults or older kids. And expansions are also excluded—I want to focus on original designs. But I do include spinoffs, standalone expansions, and redesigns of previously published games, although they’re not weighted as heavily as original titles.
One thing I want to do is to make this as objective a process as possible and not based on my personal likes and dislikes. My own tastes have no more validity than anyone else’s and besides, there’s a ton of games I’ll be considering that I’ve never played. So to facilitate that, I’ve come up with a ranking method for each of a designer’s games that’s based on the following three criteria:
