 October 2024 Games I played for the first time this month, from worst to best, along with my ratings and comments. |
 ÂRiver Valley Glassworks – 7/10 ÂIf you’ve played Niagara, the Spiel des Jahres winner from two decades earlier, you’ll probably see some echos of influence in River Valley Glassworks. Both games have players performing set collection by fetching variously-colored pieces from an ever-moving river. But whereas Niagara has players often fighting the currents and stealing from one another, River Valley Glassworks is more subdued and peaceful, as well as boasting even simpler rules. The glass pieces come in six different shapes and eight different colors. (Neither the colors nor the shapes are quite distinct enough from one another, adding a pinch of needless frustration to the overall experience.) When you collect a piece, it will be placed onto your personal board. Pieces of the same color are always placed in the same column, and the more each column has, the more points it will score. But horizontal rows provide just as much scoring opportunity, yet only if the row is fully complete with differently-colored pieces. So there is natural tension here in valuing variety versus consistency of colors. In order to collect glass pieces, you must give up a glass piece from your “pan” (separate from your board). The shape of the piece given up will not only dictate what space you can take from, but will stay on the board, modifying the available choices for other players. Every so often, you will run out of pieces in your pan and thus need to take a turn off simply refilling your pan without getting any new glass to add to your board. Deciding when to do this is another choice, but only a marginally impactful one. The structure is so simple that it’s almost bland. Fortunately, the “optional” addition of player powers and endgame scoring goals saves the day. Technically, these are part of an expansion, but one that has so far been included in all copies sold (Kickstarter). When a retail edition comes out, this expansion will be essential, and so I hope the publisher is wise enough to simply include it. With the addition of those optional bonuses, River Valley Glassworks acquits itself well as a lightweight 30-minute game with cute anthropomorphic animals and quality components. Fans of Azul who are interested in something even a bit lighter will likely quite enjoy this one. |
 ÂLure – 8/10 ÂIn real life, fishing is often a lengthy affair, filled with peaceful lulls punctuated by moments of excitement. But the newly-released Lure dares to ask, “What if we just did the exiting parts?” Lure then equips players with a proverbial tackle box full of dice and modifier tokens and then pits them against one another in a competition to be the greatest angler. Each round, a few cards with fish on them are flipped up. Each has a certain required number or numbers that must be achieved in order to catch that fish. For example, one fish might require you to roll a 2, another fish might require two of the same number, and another fish might require a total of at least 10. Then, each player secretly selects any number of dice to roll. In the example above, you might think “shouldn’t I just roll all of them?” and you’d be right except for one thing: whoever rolls the fewest dice gets to go first. Thus the game constantly has players subtly declaring which fish they intend to get, and trying for all of them is often a fool’s errand. Still, a player who chose to roll many dice may reap the benefits of some unlucky opponent rolls. Speaking of which, no one ever leaves empty-handed in Lure; if you fail to catch any fish, you are compensated with a random token that can be used in a future round to modify your dice rolls, score extra points, etc. Each player can roll up to five 6-sided dice each round. But supplementing this is a d12, a d20 (and a d4 if you play with the expansion). These open up whole new considerations, but they can’t be used two rounds in a row, regardless of your success or failure. So on each round, a player will be asked to assess the available fish, choose quantity and quality of dice (taking into account both likelihood of success and trying to minimize using too many dice, especially the special ones), as well as deciding which tokens, if any, to supplement their dice with. These are individually simple decisions that won’t create analysis paralysis, yet pack a serious tactical punch considering how simple they are to understand. Even on shelves brimming with board games, there’s always room for another solid filler. And Lure is certainly the best new filler I’ve played this year. Pick this one up, and get the expansion while you’re at it; as all fishermen know, you can never have too many lures. |
 A highly recommended game that I have most certainly played prior to this month, probably many times.  ÂDistilled – 9/10Â For some reason these days, brand new designers seem to absolutely knock it out of the park with their first published game. Maybe it’s the barrier to entry for a new designer that so ensures a truly sublime debut. Or maybe it’s simply the fresh perspective and new ideas that they bring. But in any case, Dave Beck is a newcomer to watch if his freshman effort is any indication. In Distilled, each player takes on the role of a competing distillery, trying to score points by crafting the finest spirits. The game takes place over seven rounds, and at the end of each round, each player will complete exactly one spirit. While the game takes about two hours to play, this scant quantity of point scoring opportunities makes the time fly by. In order to craft a spirit, you will need ingredient cards which must include at least one sugar, one yeast, and one water. More expensive ingredients will yield more points. An alcohol card is added for each sugar you included, then all these cards are shuffled up. After this, the top and bottom card of your stack are removed, simulating how distilleries will remove the first liquid that comes out (as it can be poisonous) and the last liquid that comes out (as it often tastes bad). Yes, it would be exactly the same to simply remove the top two cards, but I find little thematic touches like this quite charming. As in real distilling, these removed liquids can be reused in future batches, so if one of them ends up being a pricey sugar you purchased, you haven’t actually lost it. The remaining sugars determine what type of alcohol you’ve made and of what quality. Depending on the type, it may benefit from barrel-aging, allowing you to forgo scoring points until later for a greater benefit, but also delaying your payout which could be used to buy higher quality ingredients now. This tension is wonderful and well-balanced. Various types of barrels (as well as fancy bottles) can also be purchased from the marketplace along with ingredients. The fancier cards come up randomly, but large stacks of basic barrel, bottle, and sugar cards are always available to ensure you are never locked out of your plans. Distilled demands difficult decisions and careful planning. Nevertheless, these plans are often reactive and tactical rather than proactive and strategic. A player who can optimize while remaining opportunistic is likely to thrive here more than one who comes to the table with a scripted plan before the first cards are dealt. So if your tastes in mid-weight euros tend more towards long-term, abstract gameplay, you’d be forgiven for giving this one a pass. But the little pinch of luck that is added to this highly-tactical formula is a perfect recipe for my personal palate. |
